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| Horror |
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BURNDOWN
Rating: 
UK. 1989.
Director – James Allen, Screenplay – Anthony Barwick & Colin Stewart, Based on the Novel by Stuart Collins, Producer – Stewart, Photography – Paul Michelson, Music – Tony Britten, Special Effects – Rick Creswell, Production Design – Mike Fowlie. Production Company – Loggia Film.
Cast:
Peter Firth (Sheriff Jake Stern), Cathy Moriarty (Patti Smart), Michael McCabe (Doc Frank Roberts), Hal Orlandini (Dr James Manners), Hugh Rouse (George Blake), Victor McIlleney (Henry Warriner)
Plot: In the small town of Thorpeville, Florida, the sheriff and the coroner discover that the body of a slaughtered woman, the third such identical killing, is radioactive. The only possible source of radiation is the nearby nuclear power plant which was shut down five years ago. However plant management strongly deny any possibility of leaks. But as the sheriff persists in his investigation through official coverups and attempted frame-ups, he discovers a secret in the heart of the power plant.
Despite the Florida location and American accents, this thriller is actually a British production, filmed for the most part at Pinewood Studios. It is not a particularly well known film. The way guides tend to synopsize it – “police search for a radioactive serial killer” – it sounds like a really cheap tv movie or a would-be Silence of the Lambs (1991) cash-in with some bizarrely crossbred pretensions to Green politics. None of which is actually the case nor does the film’s respectably serious plot justice. And all of which suggests a luridness which the rather dreary film could well do with the aid of.
Unfortunately it is all made in a flat, dull directorial style. Director James Allen really drags proceedings out, repetitively moving between various killings, Firth and Moriarty’s meetings up at a bar, conspiratorial goings-on and denials from the plant, and back again. Peter Firth adopts a quite convincing American accent but still plays in the same cold and closed off manner he always does. There is some attempt to inject a horror film atmosphere with cuts away to partial glimpses of a leprously rotting figure – but the effect is too reminiscent of cheap 1950s horror films and clearly sits at odds with the more naturalistic explanation the film opts for. However the dreariness of the film is almost entirely saved by its twist ending – a real surprise which does enter into the realms of science-fiction – and which almost does makes the film worthwhile.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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