My next film is another with a micro-budget, but achieves fantastic things for next to no money. You’ve likely never heard of 2016’s Good Tidings (alternately titled Blood Tidings, depending on what streaming service you find it on), but I find it to be a shocking surprise, a homegrown British psycho slasher/siege film made in Southport for less than £10,000. It’s the harrowing, unrelenting tale of a community of homeless people under attack on Christmas day by three vicious lunatics dressed in Santa suits. Vagrant war veteran with a shady past Sam (Alan Mulhall) must step up and use all his skills to try and keep himself and his pals alive before they’re all picked off one by one.
It's dark, disturbing stuff with a cast full of relative unknowns who do a sterling job. The film’s location is fantastic, appearing to be a huge, old, abandoned courthouse where our protagonists squat. I get the feeling that director Stuart W. Bedford likely did some shrewd deal to get this place then structured his plot around it. It’s an awesome setting for a spine-tingling siege tale, full of nooks and crannies but, crucially, boarded up meaning there are no escape routes.
There are shades of Victor Salva’s nightmarish Clown House, with not much being known about our baddies, other than they’re insane, mute and have stumbled across some festive outfits to wear on their killing spree. They clearly see the homeless community as easy pickings on Christmas day when nobody will be on the streets to help them. They don’t reckon with Mulhall’s Sam who is no Steven Seagal but in the tradition of ex-military movie heroes, we learn just enough about his past to know he’s not to be messed with. I like how economical the film is in its exposition - we’re told this guy has seen and done some dark shit, which is all we need to know.
There’s some exhilarating carnage with defenceless tramps being toyed with and chopped to bits. More than a few references are made to them being treated ‘like cattle’ and the film makes some serious points about attitudes towards and perceptions of homeless people. These poor souls are all afforded some back story and are treated as human beings, rather than wasters and winos and they’ve been pushed too far. Roxy (Claire Crossland), who acts as Sam’s sidekick is revealed to be a former heroin addict, but is treated as a fighter and a hero, rather than a waste of space. I like that.
Sam has the expertise and the gargantuan balls to take these sickos on, but he’s no Rambo, just an angry guy with a bit of training and nothing left to lose. There will be blood. Mulhall, an amateur actor, really impresses, with shades of the great Paddy Considine in Dead Man’s Shoes. His Sam is a hard, determined bastard who refuses to back down. I love that this feels like a wild fusion of the horror and action genres…at Christmas!
I enjoy this way more than I could have expected from an obscurity buried in the deepest depths of Amazon Prime. It’s made with some skill and never slows down. It also gets bonus Christmas points for having one psycho’s M.O. being stabbing victims in the eye with freshly sharpened candy canes. Nice.
The scuffles are down and dirty with lots of painful looking injuries including dislocated shoulders and scissors in the eye. These guys are really put through the meat grinder. It’s brutal and not for the squeamish, but lacks the budget, choreography and finesse of the great siege movies like The Raid. Still, it’s a chilling, invigorating watch and I admire what these guys have pulled off on a tiny budget. It’s not trying to be smart or ‘meta’ or any of that nonsense you might associate with modern horror. It's just a scary, effective thrill ride that gets the job done.
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