Island of the Fishmen aka L'isola degli uomini pesce

Well, it's been a while since I wrote (or watched, for that matter) anything as gloriously silly as Island of the Fishmen. Whilst I have seen it before, it was only once and somewhat over a year ago, so I thought this re-imagining of Dr Moreau's isalnd was ripe for another watch. And what a (ahem) treat it is!

It opens as you might expect a tense serious monster film to: the sea is still, several injured men look silently at the camera and a gull screeches overhead. Something has gone very wrong here, but we just don't know what! Maybe this will be, despite the name, a slow-building tense affair, all hinted-at flashes and unsettling curiosities..... OH WAIT, NO! MONSTERS HAVE ARRIVED!

The boat rocks, the men shout and scream, despite clearly being in a studio rather than the ocean they are plunged into the sea! We see flashes of fishy monster hands and eyes... and all this in the first five minutes.

The greatest thing about this film is that, unlike many of its ilk, it never really slows down. All too often, I've watched dull films with snappy titles, fun beginnings and then a tedious 45 minute crawl towards a decent finale, the kind of film that makes 90 minutes seem like a very long time indeed. Thankfully, Island... is not one of these. The pace does dip and wobble but the sense of threat and excitement never really leaves. Even within the first half hour or so most of the first characters meet grisly fates (more fishmen!) , presumably-poisonous snakes have threatened the others and native islanders have attacked and captured our heroes. Through all this carnage walks the impressive mustachioed badguy, Rackham (Richard Johnson), sneering and snarling his lines at his captive would-be wife and our shipwrecked hero.

From here on in it just gets sillier. We learn about the rediscovery of Atlantis, the origin of the savage clawed fishmen and the dastardly Rackham's true plans. It's chaotically silly stuff that makes little sense to anyone but it romps on through with gleeful abandon. And it is great fun.

I don't want to give too much of the fabulous plot away but I couldn't help but mention the volcano shots... Every now and then the camera cuts to some very impressively shot footage of erupting volcanoes - obviously lifted from a nature documentary - which, when contrasted with the unspeakably silly Fishmen costumes, makes them look even more ridiculous than they otherwise would have done.

N.B. This was re-cut and re-released in the US as Screamers. I'm not really sure in what ways that version was different, as I watched the Italian print, but I do know that Roger Corman re-shot the intro to add more gore... The poster for Screamers bears almost no relation to what happens in the Island of the Fishmen!

Angel Blade

The last thing I posted here (see below) was a rant/argument about how the "b" in "b-movie" didn't mean bad. Sadly, as is so often the way when you try to make an argument, the next thing to come along so totally undermined my point that I'd have quite happily pretended it didn't exist. But I shan't, if only because admitting that there are exceptions to any argument is a good thing to do.

That next thing that came along was Angel Blade.

[WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! THIS REVIEW REVEALS THE PLOT OF THE FILM]

Now, I'll be straight about this from the begining; I bought Angel Blade on DVD for £0.99 at the nearest er... 99p shop. So I'll admit that I wasn't necessarily expecting a masterpiece (although I did pick up a couple of Dario Argento films there too... Wine some, lose some). And masterpiece it most certainly wasn't.

I would have no hesitation in naming Angel Blade as one of the worst films I have watched in recent memory.

The creative 'team' doesn't exactly bode well. From the "Deavid Heavener Entertainment Group" comes a film that is written by David Heavener, produced by David Heavener, directed by David Heavener and starring David Heavener. The guy has taken the role of the auteur to a higher degree. You feel it was only really physical impossibility that stopped him giving himself all the other parts in the film. Oh yeah, and the fact that his (and only his) numerous sex-scenes wouldn't have been as fun for him to write/direct/star in if there wasn't anyone else around...



I'm getting ahead of myself though. I'll go back to the premise of the film. A mysterious killer is murdering prostitutes in LA. So far so good. Anyone who's seen Franco's New York Ripper or indeed pretty much anything made in Italy between 1960 and 1980 can tell you that this is a fine starting point for a film. It guarrantees you a good dose of sleeze, gore, intrigue and action. Perfect. Who could mess this one up?

David Heavener, that's who.


By null at 2010-03-30

The plot manages to be both confusing and dull, the sex scenes bear very little relation to the film - more like sexual interludes than actual scenes - and the 'astonishing' secret of the film is laughable. (Oh yes, here come the spoilers...) Not content with merely being writer/producer/director/lead policeman character, David Heavener's character is also the psycho killer. His reasons? Just wait and see... (drumroll) The reason that David Heavener, once-good cop, has gone on a pregnant-prostitute killing rampage in LA is because... his pregnant girlfriend/wife walked off a roof and died.

Yes.

I'll write that again. The reason that David Heavener, once-good cop, has gone on a pregnant-prostitute killing rampage in LA is because... his pregnant girlfriend/wife walked off a roof and died. It wasn't that she was killed in the line of duty. It wasn't that she was even killed at all. She was looking through the viewfinder of her camera and, in perhaps the most implausible moment in cinema history, she walked. off. the. roof. of. a. building. Splat.

Oh dear.

If however, all this gives the impression that I didn't enjoy this film, you're very much mistaken. Cinematic genius apart, Angel Blade is a stunning example of just how badly you can tell a nonsense story and, as such, is totally worth a watch! I might leave it a while until a second viewing though...

The 'B' in B-Movie Doesn't Mean Bad: A Rant.

As you can probably tell from just the briefest glance at this blog, I watch a lot of what would commonly be called ‘bad films’. Before we go any further, it should be made clear that this is a misleading and unfair label for these films. Films today tend to break down into depressingly few categories. They are either Big Budget, Independent, ‘Art-house’ or Foreign. Anything else tends to get labelled as bad. What’s even more disappointing is that, in the vast majority of cases ‘independent’, ‘art-house’ and ‘foreign’ often run together. So we’re left with: Big-Budget-Small-Brain-Blockbusters (the kind you eat popcorn with), Arty/Weird/Intellectual/Foreign/Independent (the kind you sip red wine with) and ‘the rest’ (the kind you drink lots of beer with).

robot intersection dance; zombie attack-bird!
Originally uploaded by ٭betenoir٭

This ‘the rest’ category has a bad image nowadays. Once-upon-a-time, in the days of the b-movie, these films were important. They didn’t have the cash of the Hollywood hits, nor the intellectual/pretentious (delete as appropriate) element of the indie/arty/weird/foreign film. No. They were made on tight budgets, with tight time-limits and tight resources. They were made to be enjoyed. This is pulp cinema. Nowadays we associate the term ‘b-movie’ and perhaps even ‘pulp’ with ‘bad’. This is simply not (necessarily) the case.

Compare film to literature. Again, we find the blockbusters (your Dan Browns etc), an appreciation for ‘classics’, an appreciation for the experimental/philosophical/foreign/intellectual but you also find an considerable about (albeit way less than there used to be) of pulp literature. Whilst you might very well want to label Dan Brown as pulp (and are probably correct…), there is a difference. By pulp I’m talking about the books that are churned out at an astonishing rate. The detective stories and murder mysteries that fill shelves in bookshops and libraries and lie discarded on trains, benches and café tables.



These are not high-art. Nevertheless, they are also – to put it simply – not bad. The most essential thing whilst writing genre-fiction to be sold, read and forgotten about is obviously not to be inventive, challenging or weird – that’s not what your readers (or perhaps better, customers) want – but the author is required to at least write a cracking story. It’s got to be exciting. It’s got to be mysterious. It’s got to keep you turning the pages. They might not be books you’d recommend to a friend, see reviewed in the newspaper or ever want to read again, but they should be books that are gripping reads.

The same applies to film, or at least used to.

Most of the films I prefer to watch do not have brilliant special effects. They don’t have exquisite cinematography. They don’t have big name stars neither in front of nor behind the camera. They don’t have challenging dialogue, open-ended ambiguity, subtleties or philosophical concerns. They are simply good fun.



Sadly it seems that nowadays many people can’t help but sneer a little at the thought of watching Hammer Horror, Toho Godzilla films or anything that wasn’t made by James Cameron or Michael Bay. At the opposite end of the spectrum there are those that sit and smirk at everyone else, whilst claiming there is no such thing as cinema outside of the masterpieces of Michael Haneke, Kurosawa et al.

What confuses me still more is that we seem perfectly content to watch the same kind of material on TV. We watch hours of detective shows, crime dramas etc, many of which are feature length and produced with no greater budget nor skills than the films we have been content to ignore. Is it simply the element of laziness? Is it just because we can sit down on the sofa, sip our mug of coffee and let it all wash over us? The answer, sadly, is probably yes.

Blood and Donuts

For a first real Women in Horror Recognition Month post, I chose to watch Holly Dale's Blood and Donuts. I'll be honest; I only chose the film because it has a female director and female-directed feature-length horror is all too rare. I must admit that, going on only the title, I really wasn't expecting much.

How wrong could I be?



Though I won't pretend that this is absolutely essential viewing, this is a clever, fun, sensitive vampire film; sharing much more with thoughtful films like Interview With The Vampire and Let the Right One In than with Hammer's neck-biting romps. At the heart of this film we have the indefinitely old vampire, Boya - a "humanist vampire" as we discover. Much like Brad Pitt/Louis in Interview With The Vampire, this leaves Goya to lead a less than glamorous life, munching on rats and pidgeons as privately as he can and trying not to court too much attention.



If we're completely honest, the plot doesn't exactly go anywhere and there're a handful of unsatisfyingly loose ends (bad scripting or unfortunate editing, who knows?) but the bulk of this film is about the relationships between Goya, Molly the waitress at the coffee and donut shop and Earl, a cab-driver leaned on by some shady gangster types. Though, as I said, the story doesn't really take these characters very far, the actors are surprisingly good for such an obviously low-budget affair. Gordon Currie, as Goya, is superb and creates a suffering vampire who we really do care for, whislt Helene Clarkson and Justin Louis are also both convincing in their roles - although perhaps a little too quick to accept Goya as a vampire.



It's by no means flawless - a handfull of (really) dodgy special effects are decidedly disappointing, the title is excruciatingly awful (I know that's not a major point, but still....) and, after creating such an interesting vampire, it's a shame we learn so little about Goya's life (or rather, existence. Life's probably the wrong word). For all that, it is a well-paced, interesting vampire flick which manages to both follow a good deal of vampiric folklore (excepty stakes to the heart apparently) and bring something fresh to what can, at times, be a fairly tired, predictable and plodding genre.



As if to further reward you, David Cronenburg's extended cameo does add some more fun to the bill; he and his mobster subordinates are mostly an excuse for some vampire action - the characters are never really fleshed out at all - and both help to create some tension in the film but also to undermine the plot somewhat. Their inclusion is never really explained satisfactorily - it is as if someone forgot to include a little chunk of plot that might have bound it all together a lot more tightly.

Minor gripes aside, this is definitely a film worth watching and came as a wonderful surprise.

The Killer Shrews

If I asked you to think of a fictional movie-title that would be undoubtedly awful, entirely silly and should probably never be made, do you think you could come up with better than The Killer Shrews?

Sometimes I really do wonder how on earth these things get pitched before creation. THis is low budget, but no so low that it didn't have some funding. The conversation must have gone something along the lines of:

Mr Money: So, what is this film you were asking for funding for?

Jay Simms (screenplay): Ah, well. It's going to be an exploration of the dangers of science. We're talking themes of genetic mutation, we're talking science going bad, human achievement getting so far ahead of itself that it puts humanity in danger. We want people to think about science, about whether it's a good thing, about where the limits of 'playing God' lie.





Mr Money: (yawning) yeah, yeah. Ok, same old, same old. Isn't that what every science fiction book and film has tried to do? So what makes you the new HG Wells? What's the actual premise?

JS: Well, let me buy another round first. Whiskey as well? Yep? Good.

[goes to bar]

JS: Where were we?

Mr Money: You're explaining the premise of your story? Where's it set?

JS: Well, we're opting for an island. You know, our heroes are trapped on an island with these beasts. We're going to set it up so that they can't leave: I'm thinking hurricane or tropical storm, that conveniently imprisons these people on the island at exactly the worst moment, when these monsters are at their most dangerous.

Mr Money: You mean like full moon or something? Are we talking werewolf?

JS: Erm.. not exactly. No. We're talking animals that have been made larger and more vicious through scientific experiments. They've escaped from the lab and are roaming the island. So our heroes arrive just as they're running out of food and turning on their creators. More drinks?
Barman! Two pints, two whiskies ... make them doubles!



Mr Money: Go on...

JS: Well we'll obviously go for the trapped-survivor tensions. We've got it mapped out perfectly, pair of scientists - one completely work-obsessed - pretty blonde girl with nasty coward boyfriend and one handsome rogueish seaman. Oh and we'll throw in a black guy and a Mexican as well

Mr Money: They're the expendable characters?

JS: Oh yes, we'll kill them off with little or no time wasted on characters or emotions.

Mr Money: Well, I must say, that all sounds rather good. What did you say the monsters were again? Was it savage dogs? Spiders?

JS: Not exactly...



Mr Money: Well come on, tell me, I want to know...

JS: Ah... shrews.

[Long silence]

Mr Money: Shrews?

JS: Shrews. Savage, dog sized shrews with massive pointy teeth.

Mr Money: Shrews? I think I'm going to need another drink before I sign that cheque....


And, after that next drink he signed over his cash and so The Killer Shrews was made. Replete with dogs-in-furry-costumes playing the shrews, this is one of the most ridiculous films I've seen. It's not even that bad: well paced and you're guarranteed to be laughing throughout...

Lady Terminator

Oh me, oh my. Where to begin?

Sometimes, someone recommends you a film and it's pretty good. You note down the recommendation, you go off and watch it and you are pleased. This friend of yours made a good recommendation.


Sometimes however, the recommended film is so mind-bendingly brilliant/bizarre that you are left in shock; you are almost angry that no-one has recommended this film before. Lady Terminator was made 1983. That means it has existed for all 21 years of my life. With this firmly in mind, how is it possible that I haven't seen it before? The world has been hiding a gem from me!

I'll try and sell it to you: it's an 80s Indonesian exploitation action-movie, that robs heavily from Cameron's Terminator and can't quite work out whether it's set in New York or Indonesia. If that doesn't sell it to you, I don't know what will. I guess if that summary isn't appealing then it probably just isn't your kind of film; you're missing out.





In a tour-de-force of sublime bonkers-ness, Lady Terminator mixes bizarre Asian folklore with unstoppable killing machines. The (entirely unecessary) back-story presents us with an angry goddess-lady who, defeated by some guy, swears revenge on his grand-daughter (yes... so far so odd). She achieves this by er.... throwing her soul into a bit of the sea and hoping that something will happen.

Something does indeed happen: young anthropology student, Tania, goes diving in the area and is posessed by the soul of this rogue goddess, returning to surface as a murderous beast on a killing rampage. Oh yeah, she's also pretty much totally invincible. Cue long gunfights, a ridiculously brilliant body-count and blood splatters all over the place.





I really did enjoy this film so much that it pains me to say anything bad about it. Yes, the vast majority of the special effects are crappy, yes, the acting is basically atrocious, yes, the dubbing leaves much to be desired.... but all these complaints are missing the point. What we have here is a brilliant mix of crazy fantasy and Terminator imitation that is enormously fun for all of its 80 minute run-time.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Quest for the Lost City aka The Final Sactrifice

The version I watched said 'Quest for the Lost City' on the titles, but this was the best cover art for it.

OK, OK, let's get the good bits out of the way first, that shouldn't take long. The cinematography here is pretty good: for a decidedly low budget flick, they never try to do anything beyond their means and it's preet well shot.

It's just a shame that the screenplay, plot, acting, etc. just wasn't anywhere near as good. At the time of writing, this film was the 14th worst rated on IMDb, which should give you some idea what we're dealing with. In truth, this is nowhere near as bad as that makes it sound; this film was given the MST3K treatment and as such got far more exposure than it otherwise would've done. Were it not for this, it'd surely merely be wallowing amongst the 'rubbish' rather than the 'shockingly awful'.

Hero Troy, look pensive

I'll have to break this into two halves; as my opinion changed quite dramatically halfway through. At first, and for a good 30 minutes of its 78 minutes, I really couldn't understand why this was made. Budget films tend to aim towards a niche; you have cheap gore films - made by fans of gory films for fans of gory films -, exploitation flicks - more often than not with added nudity to attract an otherwise uninterested audience, etc. etc. What I'm getting at is that you can usually tell roughly who a low budget film is made for.

Bad guys! With weapons!

Here, however, I was completely puzzled. A boy (I really have no idea how old he was supposed to be...) called Troy discovers his dead father's archaeology file and finds a map to a Lost City, no sooner has he done so, than mysterious baddies turn up at his house with the intention of retrieving it. So far, so sub-Indiana-Jones-good. But who watches sub-Indiana Jones adventures? It was clear that it had never been anywhere near a cinema and you could hardly imagine (at this stage) anyone, child or adult, getting terribly excited about it on vhs...

Bad Guys! With weapons! In car! Oh, the trauma!

Some while after Troy has teamed up with the ageing, moustachioed Zap Rowsdower (!) however, things take a turn for the more bonkers as it emerges that they are battling a weird cult (who killed Troy's dad, no less) who are descendants of a pre-American Indian hyper-intelligent civilization who er... mysteriously died. Taking their fabulous, 'better-than-anything-in-Egypt' city with them. These rifle and chainsaw wielding descendants, lead by the impossibly deep-voiced 'Satoris', are trying to sacrifice enough people to the idol, so as to restore their city. Mmmm....right, Ok then.



At this point, yes it is still sub-Indiana Jones (and it will continue to be) but at least it's a bit more fun. We've had balaclava-wearing baddies chasing our heroes through the words, revelations about Zap's past and an implausably easy 'secret' map key (Honestly: you draw a big cross on the map. Where the lines make an 'x', that's where you want to go...). I am beginning to wonder about this Lost City however (a Lost City surely always deserves capital letters, no?). Perhaps the reason that most films that I've seen use distant and exotic locations is that, as an ignorant Western audience, we know so little about the places that it seems quite possible that someone wandering through a jungle could stumble upon a previously long-lost civilization (hey, that's more or less what happened with Machu Picchu...). It seems that little bit less likely that a mega-city is going to turn up in Canada. So, at this point I begin to wonder: the film is only called Quest for the Lost City. Quest is no guarrantee that it'll turn up... could they really be that cheap as to trick me out of my Lost City? How dare they...



I won't reveal anything about how the ending is acchieved, but I will say this: they come up with the goods on the Lost City and, even more extraordinary, it's pretty good and convincing.

This film is not a masterpiece but neither is it deserving of it's record-breaking disdain. The plot is basically rubbish and the acting is functional at best, but it does carefully avoid overstretching itself, a weakness often found in cheap films. However unconvincing what's actually going on is, visually it is always convincing. You get the sense that with a bit of cash for better cameras and some effects, this would be quite a pretty films.

Of course, you could throw as much money at it as you like, but the plot would still be rubbish...

[Sadly I can't find a trailer. The MST3K version is on youtube, but that's just not the same]

Microwave Massacre

Oh dear, here we go again. I definitely don't plan to make this the norm, but I'm afraid that this is my second spoiler filled post. I think I can justify it again though. With Underwater City, I didn't feel to bad about giving spoilers as 1)You will probably never see it 2)If the opportunity does arise, you should probably turn it down. Forewarned is forearmed, afterall, and Underwater City isn't a particularly attractive prospect.

Here, it's a somewhat different case, as Microwave Massacre is really an awful lot of fun. I think I can still get away with spoilers though as 1)You will probably never see it (it's out-of-print, though copies are floating around on ebay) and 2)Knowing what happens really won't spoil your enjoyment of this great-fun low-budget cannibalistic slasher.

So here we go. This post will be somewhat heavier on pictures than words as they really do most of the talking for themselves. Infact, this is less of a review than just telling the story. I'm sorry. But I can promise that telling the story will make you want to watch it far more than a review ever could!



The story revolves around Donald, a middle-aged construction worker. Poor Donald is just an average guy really; he likes the simple things - he works, he has a beer and then he goes home to his wife for some good ol' home-cooked American food. Except, just his wife, since buying a super new microwave only wants to cook exotic foreign dishes. Stand-up rows over "food you can't pronounce" ensue and Donald gets more and more miserable.

So far, so normal. At this stage the film really is showing very little promise. The dialogue is clunky to say the least and nothing much is happening. Donald's exchanges with his (younger, hipper) co-workers are fairly funny but nothing much to shout about. They do slip in a brilliant visual gag though... as Donald's work-mates get out their humble foil-wrapped sandwhiches, Donald fishes in his cool-box for the lunch his wife has prepared him: an entire crab in a massive bap!



With tension rising, you just know something's going to break, and break it does. After getting perhaps a little too drunk, Donald returns home in a rage and drunkenly kills his wife. Whoops.

At this point the movie is still distinctly so-so. We're a good chunk through and there's no hint of a massacre, the microwave is only lurking in the corner and you could perhaps feel a little cheated. But persevere! as things are about to get a whole lot better.

Being a little bit inexperienced at this murdering lark, Donald cuts her up into pieces, sticks her in the fridge and is content to forget about her for a bit.



Completely by accident however, Donald mixes up the left-over food from the fridge and finds himself munching on a piece of his late wife. Even more surprising is that she tastes pretty good! Once over his initial revulsion, Donald tucks in quite happily and soon begins eating her for every meal .... including lunch at work.



Donald's co-workers agree that the meat is pretty good; by this point the film's great fun. Watching Donald and his work-mates tucking into chunks of human flesh is begining to give us something of what the film promised. Still not really a massacre though....



Oh wait, here we go! Running low on surplies and very conscious that his wife is rather tough as meat goes, Donald soon begins to solicit girls on the street and bring them home. Once there, they all seem a little puzzled by how little desire he shows for them. What they don't realise until too late is that it's not so much their bodies that Donald is interested in as their flesh! He chops, slices, dices and microwaves. Then shares it with his - now much friendlier - work-mates.





I shall leave the (slightly lacklustre) ending not entirely spoiled; although I think you know by now more or less what you're in for.

It's a fun film and, at 76 minutes, I'd recommend it unreservedly. Although a little slow to get going and boasting some astonishingly wooden acting, this film is a lot of fun - and be honest: you're not going to let bad acting put you off low-budget campy horror are you? Sometimes, when watching decidedly low-brow, low-budget films there is a tendency to wonder "how did it ever seem a good idea to make this?". By the end of Microwave Massacres though, I'm sure you'll be wondering how it could ever seem like a good idea NOT to make this. Flawed, cheap and trashy, Microwave Massacres is a triumph of b-movie cinema.


The trailer here happily labels it the "worst horror film ever"!


(I tell a lie: it isn't entirely out of print and is infact available from Anthem DVD in the USA, looks like there was never a Region 2 DVD though)

Poster Hunt #4 - The Incredible 2 Headed Transplant

As we've moved into October, it's about time that Poster Hunt returned with another helping of cinematic presentation wonder...

This time, we've left behind the Nazisploitation and Spillane's Man-Woman violence and moved to the uh.. somewhat unrecognised 'Head Transplant' sub-genre. Infact, The Incredible 2 Headed Transplant is IMDb user's 6th Favourite Head Transplant film. Out of 6.



It was released to DVD fairly recently, coupled with the The Thing With Two Heads. I think there might be a theme running there....

Several site claim to have the full film available to view online. The ones I tried didn't seem to be working (my connection is slowww) and, to be honest, I didn't try too hard. This is one of those where I suspect the poster is better than the film...

Murder Party

Murder Party. Has there ever been a film so perfectly summed up by it's title? Apart from Underwater City of course. Oh, or Godzilla Vs. SpaceGodzilla. Or actually pretty much half of the films I watch....

Regardless, Murder Party is both described by and lives up to it's title. And the tagline? "Everybody Dies"? Believe it.

The film has split it's viewers. With IMDb boards claiming that it is both the best film of 2007 and the "worst movie I have ever seen". I have to say I don't understand the haters at all; this film is a work of genius. It's well-thought out, darkly comic and really great fun. The only negative point I'd pick up on is that it's perhaps not the best paced film of all time; more on that soon.





The premise is this: a handfull of achingly hip art-students have formed a plan. They, being so terribly avant-garde (darling) are going to break boundaries, smash taboos and cross lines like never before. Modern Art often sets out to shock or offend. Or both. These guys are going to smash previous efforts out of the water; they are planning to murder in the name of Art. To this end, they scatter invites to come alone to a "Murder Party" on Halloween, in the hope that some dumb lonely fool will take the bait and turn up. Needless to say, he does. Dressed as a Knight in carboard armour.

It's all here: the characters are perfect larger-than-life stereotypes. From face-painted coke-snorting video-artist Lexi, through heavily side-burned Paul - ever reaching for his medium format camera - to Alexander, rich-kid art poser, giving pre-prepared pseudo-intellectual speeches.

The humour here is curious. Many of the complaints on IMDb are that "it was supposed to be funny and we didn't laugh once in the whole film". Well... I'm not sure if I laughed out loud once either, it's just not that kind of funny - but it's certainly not meant to be either. This is one of the only films where you could ever hear "paper-mache elements of a massive multi-media meta-structure" coupled with "staple a pancake to his face and push him infront of a train". There's slapstick, there's violence, there's perfectly pitched piss-taking of art-students (Lexi wants to film the murder and call it 'Valediction in Black', Alexander assures them that the hapless Knight's death certificate will read 'Art' as cause of death). I might not have laughed out loud as I watched, but I didn't stop grinning at all.





Now for the problem with the pacing. The film divides more or less into three sections. The setting up of the premise and the capture of the Brown Knight is never less than interesting. The end third is completely bonkers, with some brilliant bloodshed all over the place. But the middle third? The middle-third is undoubtedly the cleverest bit; the dialogue is pretty incredible, but never means a lot. They play an inspired game of 'truth or dare', preceded by shooting up CIA-grade Truth Serum (supplied by 'Zycho' the Eastern-European (?) drug-dealer). The only shame is that the clever middle-third doesn't amount to much in terms of plot; it creates the brilliantly realised characters, yes, but never really reaches its full potential, which is a shame.

But, despite any of these criticisms, the film is fantastic. Being low-budget should never be an excuse for a film's failings but here we need no excuse. The budget here has been spent impeccably; almost never do they attempt to create an effect beyond their budget (though Macon's burns would be debateable...), which is so often the failing of a low-budget film. No, this is a case of ambition kept carefully within budget and it is all the better for it.

I have tried to give almost nothing away about the end-segment, and I believe it'll be all the better for it. This is by no means a perfect film, but it is definitely a very good film, a funny film, and a film that suggests good things for an inexperienced director's career.





If I needed to say it again, the ending is totally awesome.


I would never normally advertise a DVD, but hey, this costs a fiver in the UK or just 8 bucks in the Us. It's easily worth that much.

Trailer here: