djjimmyvespa Reviews

Threads (1984 TV Movie)

Extremely graphic and disturbing nuclear drama

[8/10 · 2 May 2006]

Put simply, THREADS takes every disaster movie you've ever seen - even the huge budget offerings from Hollywood - and unceremoniously skewers them on a rusty skewer. Very few films have the ability to suck the life out of a viewer and leave them feeling drained and shaken in quite the same way that this does. The world may have moved on since 1984, but the central message of THREADS - that politicians have the power to pretty much destroy the whole world and wipe out life as we know it in a matter of minutes - remains horribly relevant. So, if you're looking for shocks and jolts, where to start? Burning cats, dead kids, dogs buried in rubble, incinerated babies, mutants, synchronised vomiting, hospital floors awash with excrement, blood and urine, point-blank shootings, stillbirths, characters we've come to know and care about starving to death or slowly dying before our eyes, extreme incompetence on the part of government-appointed officials, radioactive sheep...the list is endless. If you find the scene where the bomb is dropped on Sheffield city centre on a bustling weekday morning upsetting, then I strongly advise you to switch off, because the rest of the film is unremittingly bleak, nauseating and devoid of hope. It will give you nightmares for weeks. THREADS is not a film to be watched, it's a film to be endured, and if you feel you don't have the stomach for it, go with your first instinct and give it a very wide berth. It makes the so-called 'video nasties' look like a frivolous waste of time.

Fritz the Cat (1972)

Has its moments, but it's easy to see why R.Crumb hated it.

[5/10 · 22 April 2006]

I have mixed feelings about Bakshi and Krantz's 1972 film adaptation of the Fritz the Cat books. Robert Crumb is one of my favourite underground cartoonists and satirists, and it's more than a little frustrating to see the liberties the director and producer take with his priceless characters. When the screenplay sticks closely to Crumb's original comic strips, it's fine, but every time it deviates from the source material, it falls as flat as a pancake. Bakshi, who constructed the screenplay from various Fritz stories written and drawn by Crumb between 1964 and 1968, proves himself to be rather incompetent, piecing and patching together the diverse elements with tiresome experimental sequences, dull musical interludes and downright crude sex and violence - Crumb certainly never steered clear of putting down his darkest fears and fantasies on paper, but Bakshi's scenes of a horse-woman being whipped with a motorcycle chain and Fritz chasing after a buxom female crow are embarrassingly wide of the mark. For all his excesses, Crumb knew when to exercise restraint, and Bakshi's refusal to do so is what ultimately sinks this film. There are, however, some very good scenes and the animation is occasionally brilliant, which is why the chapter select button on your DVD remote control will certainly come in useful should you decide to check this one out. The film is also remarkably truthful in its depiction of the New York City of the late sixties as it really was, with bad vibes, segregation, drugs, rape, murder and squalor as far as the eye could see. Sharp-eyed Crumb enthusiasts will also spot Av 'n' Gar (or is it the Simp and the Gimp?) and Angelfood McSpade in a couple of scenes.

Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story (2005 Video)

Superior extension of a much-loved TV series

[8/10 · 18 April 2006]

Following a near-death experience at a swimming pool (and a brush with the afterlife), Stewie Griffin decides to devote more time to being nice, especially to his friendly enemy Brian the intellectual dog. When it becomes clear that he's faking it, the devious toddler takes to heavy drinking to dull his true 'hateful' persona, but when this leads to a nasty accident at the Drunken Clam, Stewie is forced to accept that he can't change his own nature - but could a mysterious, familiar-looking stranger three thousand miles away in San Francisco help the youngster come to terms with his own complex psyche? This is terrific fun for Family Guy fans, and a lot of fun for everyone else. The laughs come thick and fast, there are no dull moments, the cutaways and in-jokes are plentiful and the one-liners, as always, are priceless. Although there's a lot of good stuff to choose from, the Bugs Bunny parody and the (extremely distasteful) Walt Disney quickie are the real standouts. In short, if you like subversive animation and intelligent adult comedy, you'll have a great time with this. Recommended.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Sly social commentary on the absurdity of life

[9/10 · 10 April 2006]

Last House On The Left is one of the most disturbing, bleak and harrowing films I've ever seen, largely thanks to the slow build-up. For the first half hour or so, Craven's film deals largely in stereotypes - the 'nice' family, the 'bad' girl, the sleazy villains who are blacker than black, the clumsy comic relief. You have no problems convincing yourself that it's only a movie. But when the thugs get those girls into the woods, Craven pulls the rug from under your feet. The going gets incredibly rough. The villains lose control in the worst way and try to pull it back by indulging in degenerate behaviour that shocks even themselves. When their playthings wind up dead, they react with a queasy combination of sorrow, regret and confusion, like children who've just dropped an ice-cream on the road. It's this middle section that provides the film with its formidable reputation. But there's more to it than that - as David Hess (who plays the ringleader of the thugs with chilling authority) has pointed out, Last House also points to the absurdity of the human condition. The only cops in town are lamebrained incompetents. The villains are amateur-night goons who resort to sickening violence when the slightest hindrance to their plans comes to light. The victims are helpless innocents whose suffering is magnified by the fact that it's all happening practically in their own back yard. The revenge - taken by one girl's whitecollar parents - is a clumsy, slipshod affair that succeeds more by accident than design. Everything in this film's moral universe is hopelessly askew, and Craven never misses a trick in showing us how and why it's the way it is, or in providing a window of understanding into how acts of callous violence occur. The film's shoddy technical credits only add to the convincing, documentary feel. If you like slick horror films that place awesome effects and cheap shocks above skin-crawling tension and food for thought, you'll hate Last House. If you're prepared for a dark night of the soul that'll haunt you for weeks to come, then you should go out and buy this film at once.

Nightmare (1981)

The dream you can't escape without laughing!

[7/10 · 10 April 2006]

One of the most contentious of the so-called video nasties, Romano Scavolini's piece-and-patch homage to several other movies (have fun counting all the stylistic swipes, references and ideas that seem to have wandered in from elsewhere) landed its British distributor in prison and upset the moral busybodies with a 'tasteful' advertising sideshow, inviting customers to guess the weight of a damaged brain in a jar. So, twenty years and change later, does this film really live up to the hype? Most certainly! It's a deranged, difficult, obtuse, wilfully distasteful exploitation scatter-bomb, with something to offend everyone. Pink Floyd fans especially, since all the music in this film sounds like out-takes from Dark Side of the Moon. Really bad out-takes. Then there's the uncomfortable combination of sex and violence, and the sight of children wielding shotguns and axes remains jarring today, but the most compelling aspect of this sleazy exercise in darkly comic horror is Baird Stafford's no-holds-barred performance as the troubled (to put it mildly) psycho at the centre of the blood-soaked proceedings. He makes Jack Nicholson in The Shining look rather subdued in comparison. Nobody foams at the mouth with as much conviction as Stafford, as amply demonstrated during two of the most notorious scenes. If you can stand the sight of tomato sauce, prosthetic limbs and a smirking brat who needs to be locked in a room with Supernanny for a few weeks of behaviour therapy, you will have a good time with NIGHTMARE.

Gulliver's Travels (1977)

Looking older than its years

[2/10 · 3 April 2006]

This was painful! Recently given away as a free DVD with a British newspaper, this British-Belgian co-production from 1977 (could've fooled me, it looks ten years older than that at least) is quite deservedly obscure and if you make it past the half-hour mark, consider yourself a trouper. The combining of animation and live action is ropey at best and downright dreadful at worst, which makes you wonder why it was decided to even attempt making the film in this manner when clearly the technology wasn't really there. Harris is no more than a human prop and the animation is some of the most flat and lifeless I've seen, with the obligatory 'trippy' moments (especially where the animation of the brainiac-type Subtracto character is involved) that rendered countless cartoon features from the late sixties onward instantly dated. The screenplay by Don Black provides a convincing argument for the usually resilient lyricist to stick to what he does best, and the pace is so slow that even the very young will be bored. As for adults, stick to Jonathan Swift's original novel.

Madhouse (1980–1985)

Was it really twenty-six years ago?

[30 March 2006]

As a kid (I was born in '74), I would never miss Russ Abbot's Madhouse on a Saturday teatime. His shows were so bizarre, surreal, ludicrous and full of broadly-drawn characters, they were irresistible. My favourites were Vince Prince, the swaggering but gormless Teddy boy (typical exchange - Vince rubs his nose and moans "I've got a seen-us!" "Do you mean a sinus?" "No, I was out with a girl and her husband seen-us!"), and Cooperman, an incompetent would-be superhero that was just an excuse for Abbot's dead-on Tommy Cooper routine - and for the studio audience to indulge in some good-natured heckling! These days, Abbot is something of a forgotten man as far as British comedy goes - he disappeared from the TV schedules sometime in the nineties and reinvented himself as a pretty good serious actor and sometime song and dance man - which is a shame, because he was a hard-working and likable performer who all the family could enjoy, without a trace of filth or bad taste in sight. (Unless you find outrageously corny jokes distasteful, that is!) If there was a DVD release of this series, I'd certainly go right out and buy it.

The Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985)

A very educational series!

[30 March 2006]

Yes, I said educational. Whenever somebody in my house switched on The Dukes of Hazzard, I used to leave the room and go and read a book. To quote Mr Cranky, my abiding memory of this show is that I hated it. It used to air on Saturday nights when I was a kid, which meant that the playground and classroom on Monday morning would be echoing with asinine cries of "Yeee-haw!" (that was about as sophisticated as the dialogue in this show ever got) and re-enactments of the car chases (on foot) by all the sugar-rushing kids from the slow learner's class who didn't know any better. Meanwhile my friends and I would be in a corner discussing the Goodies or Russ Abbot's Madhouse, waiting for the bell to ring so the wannabe Bo and Lukes would shuffle off to the special room in the basement and get on with the difficult business of drawing crayon pictures of that stupid car whilst messing their pants. To be absolutely fair though, the FAMILY GUY episode 'To Live and Die In Dixie' did a fantastic job of spoofing this trash, they even got Waylon Jennings to do a spot of narration!

Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974)

More classics per episode than most shows manage in a lifetime

[30 March 2006]

How do you begin to describe Monty Python's Flying Circus? Carefully! To begin with, it takes all kinds of comedy genres, verbal, observational, satirical, visual, physical, absurdist, surrealist, lowbrow, slapstick, cerebral and just about anything else, and aims this rich mixture full-force at the world in general, not just hitting but destroying all its targets, however insignificant or po-faced they are, from suburban mothers to deranged vicars, cannibalism to the Royal Family, wildlife documentaries to dead-end jobs and all points inbetween. This might not sound too revolutionary nowadays, but at the time it was VERY new indeed, and the Pythons upset just as many people as they delighted, including their paymasters at the BBC. Although the first series was high on great sketches, it felt slightly creaky and amateur, but by the beginning of series two (the Spanish Inquisition, the Ministry of Silly Walks, Ethel the Frog exposes Doug and Dinsdale Piranha, the New Gas Cooker Sketch etc), the team were dazzlingly confident and the classic moments started rolling in. Too many to list, in fact - "Is your name not Bruce, then?", height-obsessed archaeologists, woody and tinny words, Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days, Denis Moore, the most awful family in Britain, Ken Cleanairsystem, the Cheap-Laughs, Njorl's Saga, Colin Mozart the rat exterminator, "are you suggesting eating my mother?", the dirty vicar, the urine donor, free dung from the book club, Mr and Mrs Git...I could go on and on, in fact I already have. But if you care about surreal and edgy comedy, you should check out this classic series, it was the grandfather of them all!

An Evening with Kitten (1983 Video)

Here's a curious one.

[2/10 · 30 March 2006]

The video case says 1993, the copyright notice on the programme itself says 1983, so I'm guessing it was unreleased for ten years. And I can see why. This is a poor excuse for a sell-through video, inter-cutting three not-bad Kitten Natividad strip routines with a series of 'comedy' skits that are so painfully bad even Benny Hill would have winced. To give you some idea of the 'quality' of the entertainment on offer here, a kung fu teacher (and a pretty offensive stereotype at that) breaks some concrete blocks in front of Kitten. Kitten does some kung fu moves, then swings her considerable bosom at a tree and knocks it down. The sketch ends. A tennis match is disrupted when Kitten keeps shaking her huge cans at one of the players - his opponent turns out to be her boyfriend. The sketch ends. When the sketches aren't feeble and lower than lowbrow, they're surreal nonsense - there's a ripoff of the Goodies' 'Kitten Kong' episode, a medieval number in which Kitten's newborn baby turns out to be a frog puppet (I'm not making this up, I promise), a Dracula fantasy where the bloodsucking creep ricks his neck just as he's about to sink his teeth into Kitten's chest...it's all pretty dreadful and uninvolved, and it only lasts for a paltry half-hour, but it feels like much longer. It's a missed opportunity that could have been so much more.

(Kitten does look amazing in some of those outfits, though...)

South Park (1997– )

To begin with, a welcome breath of foul air. After that...

[28 March 2006]

One of the golden rules of television comedy (and one of the rules least heeded) is this - when you run out of things to say, shut up. John Cleese apparently called a halt to the delirious FAWLTY TOWERS after only a dozen episodes, because only twelve things annoyed him about hotels, and once he'd worked out those grievances, there was nothing more to add. That's why FAWLTY TOWERS remains a classic. There was no jumping the shark, no undignified senescence, no ratings decline. Ideally, SOUTH PARK should have ended after the first thirteen episodes, leaving its mark on comedy history as a hilarious smash and grab raid on pop culture, American morals and political correctness. Had that been the case, it would still be revered as a classic to this day. Unfortunately, its creators Parker and Stone realised there was a huge cash cow in their midst begging to be milked regularly, and the world promptly sank under a welter of t-shirts, dolls, spin-off albums (their decision to rescue coke-addled wife-beater Ike Turner from obscurity on the Chef Aid disaster speaks volumes about their warped sense of 'cool'), posters, stickers and God knows what else, most - if not all - of it aimed at prepubescent kids. Early fans, who struggled through Channel Four's erratic scheduling and lack of sleep to catch the first run, got their first whiff of high-smelling excreta when series two limped into 'action' with a Terrance and Phillip 'special'. Yes, thanks guys, twenty-two minutes of sped-up Canadian voices, worse animation than usual and fart gags. Go ahead and insult our intelligence, have fun, I'm sure the rest of the series will be better. When the rest of the series turned out to be dismal, the damage was done. People jumped off the SOUTH PARK bandwagon in droves, and although the third and fourth seasons offered isolated moments of bad-taste fun (Cartman inadvertently joining NAMBLA being a particularly warped highlight), the glory days were dead and gone. The movie, unsurprisingly, ran out of steam after the first twenty minutes, and expected adults to laugh at the sight of a small boy watching his mother eating feces on a German fetish website. In their endless desire to be perceived as 'cool' by the world's immature teenagers, Parker and Stone painted themselves into a corner and fell asleep, leaving the coast clear for the far more intelligent, ballsy and tightly-written FAMILY GUY to replace their paean to bad taste in the hearts and minds of discerning viewers on both sides of the Atlantic. I've read that they hate Seth MacFarlane's subversive satire, for what the opinions of a the one-trick lame donkeys behind ORGASMO and BASEKETBALL are worth. Probably not enough poop jokes or ejaculating dogs for them.

I never liked THE SIMPSONS - too arch and self-referential for me - but in the final analysis, SOUTH PARK stands as the bigger disappointment because it took a giant, corporate-sponsored dump on the very people it initially set out to entertain. Screw Parker and Stone, I'm going home.

The Last Unicorn (1982)

Ambitious and visually impressive (if slightly flawed) animated fantasy

[8/10 · 28 March 2006]

Although it's strictly a cult item nowadays and is even reviewed as such on the 'Unknown Movies' website, THE LAST UNICORN actually had a decent-sized cinema release in the UK. In fact I remember going to the cinema to see it as a child, then I saw it again a couple of years later when it was shown as the end-of-term treat at my middle school. (If all this makes me sound old, that's because I am.) Unfortunately, for all their achievements, Rankin-Bass were never going to hold the same credibility with parents or youngsters as the Disney trademark, so this much-undervalued adaptation of Peter S.Beagle's classic novel slipped under the radar - to the best of my knowledge, it has never been broadcast on British terrestrial television, which is a real shame, because it's so much better than a lot of the mindless dreck that schedulers use to fill a couple of hours (how many times is it possible to show SPICEWORLD, for the sake of all that is good and holy?).

The first thing I noticed about this old favourite after watching it again (last night) is how vibrant and detailed the animation is. The backgrounds, in particular, are extremely beautiful. Occasionally, the characters (rendered in traditional ink and paint) don't quite gel with them, but that didn't really bother me about WATERSHIP DOWN or all those Charlie Brown specials, so I didn't let it bother me here. Then there's the background score - how can you go wrong? Jimmy Webb is an excellent songwriter (Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get To Phoenix, MacArthur Park - all his) and I really can't imagine the dreamlike, ethereal songs he contributed to this project being performed any better than they are by (the unfairly maligned) America. Well, maybe the Carpenters would have done a pretty good job, but we'll let that one rest.

THE LAST UNICORN is also thankfully free of the clever-clever, hip, arch, ironic, 'knowing' - call it what you will - tone that blighted so many eighties movies and grated so much on the nerves of audiences and reviewers who were even more cynical than the writers. It's all done with a commendably straight face and a genuine sense of awe and wonder, and you can't help feeling like a child again as you get swept into the film's dreamlike world. (Be warned, though, this is strictly for older and more intelligent children, because if you lose concentration at any point you'll be left confused about what's actually going on - I remember being befuddled by some of the references, dialogue and the motivations of the characters and their actions when I was eight and on the antsy side.) It's an incredibly rich film, raising so many ideas, legends, sides to the characters and their stories, themes and fantasies, that you really feel slightly overwhelmed by it all. Beagle's screenplay crams an amazing amount of material into just under ninety minutes, but the film only occasionally feels cramped.

On the downside, the design of the main characters occasionally leaves a bit to be desired. Schmendrick is essentially a comedy character, but even so, his nose is impossibly huge. Now and then, the film's elaborate animation technique slips into the slightly jerky territory of anime, which is a little irritating when you notice how impressive most of the sequences really are - even by modern standards. A little more work could have been done in the recording studio also, because there are some snatches of dialogue that seem uncomfortably flat or muffled, and the lack of lip-syncing (okay, so making a unicorn's mouth move like a human mouth must be a heck of a task - I wouldn't like to try it) is a bit distracting from time to time. But a lack of CGI and slick visuals never held back the Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry, and they were made forty years before this little odyssey, so let's not get too bogged down in nit-picking. The fact remains, even to the most casual observer, that THE LAST UNICORN is an amazing film, not without its flaws, but certainly deserving of a wider audience - and maybe its long overdue DVD release will help it find some of the admirers it deserves.

This review was based on the British DVD release on the Carlton label from 2003. Picture quality is extremely good throughout having been digitally remastered (barring a few vertical glitches, possibly a fault with the print used as the source), and the film is well served by the widescreen format. Although there's no before-and-after comparison, check out the original trailer to get some idea of how the original video release might have looked! The sound quality could be better - occasionally the music sounds 'warped', as though you're listening to a worn piece of vinyl - but the songs are as gorgeous as ever and most of the dialogue is clear and distinct. There are also production notes, character profiles and a rather lame gallery. Still a worthwhile purchase, and certainly worth investing in if you really love this film.

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Poor attempt at Python / Goodies style madness

[2/10 · 24 March 2006]

I remember the first time I watched Blazing Saddles, having heard all the hype, and expecting to see one of the funniest films ever made. Instead, for the majority of its running time, I sat there thinking to myself how tedious and crass it was. Was there ever a time when exchanges like "You spare the women?" "No, we rape the s**t out of them" were considered amusing? Just about every racial stereotype you can think of is here, including Mel Brooks as a very Jewish native American chief, as well as plenty of slurs and insults that grate on the nerves and numerous sequences that drag their heels and wind up absolutely nowhere. After such a promising start with The Producers - where Brooks made his intentions clear from the get-go, filling the screen with parallel universe grotesques, broadly drawn caricatures and bad taste madness that effectively defused criticisms in the manner of the most florid twenties slapstick - Mel Brooks seemed to fall into the trap of thinking everything he did was comic gold, and there weren't enough people willing to tell him it wasn't. That's probably as good a reason as any why Blazing Saddles will test the patience of anyone with half a brain.

The Cheaters (1974)

Give this one a wide berth if you're easily shocked!

[1/10 · 21 March 2006]

This unpleasant little movie, clocking in at just under an hour, could generously be described as a 'roughie' - if you're one of the few people in the world who managed to sit through either SEX WISH or FORCED ENTRY more than once, go ahead and see if you can track this one down! Apparently the soundtrack score is the work of Iron Butterfly (The lovable stoners behind "In-a-gadda-da-vida"), but I didn't notice the music, largely because the on-screen events are so shocking. The sadistic members of a motorcycle gang have kidnapped the bosomy girlfriends of a rival gang, and...well, you can guess what happens. I'd like to say that this was the work of film-makers having fun with the very business of busting taboos wide open by laughing at them and rubbing the viewer's face in the insane degradation, but that would be a lie. This is seventies sleaze that wears its non-PC credentials like a perverse badge of honour, and if it makes even a jaded trash fan like me feel the need for a long hot shower, God only knows what it'll do to the unsuspecting. You have been warned.

Lineman (1972–1991)

Bizarre and occasionally disturbing cartoon series

[15 March 2006]

La Linea, never listed in the television schedules (at least not here in Britain), occasionally popped up as a filler during the school holidays, and good Lord, it was completely weird. Against a bright, primary coloured background, a human hand drew the outline of a big-nosed, bad-tempered, constantly squawking little man, whose strange 'adventures' always started out well, but then bad things began to happen to him well before the end. I remember him having half his face shot off and being tormented by a monkey in a palm tree, with that unsettling bass-voiced "Ah yom be dom, a yom be dom" scat-singing going on in the background all the while. It was a warped precursor to the 'Mr Bill' shorts made famous by Saturday Night Live, if you like. La Linea has recently been released on DVD, but a little of this stuff goes a long way. Don't overindulge.

Jamie and the Magic Torch (1976–1979)

A great childhood memory

[15 March 2006]

A close-up of the moon, zooming out to reveal a tranquil street, bathed in a calming blue light. Tinkling piano notes, hints of slide guitar and high bass notes. Distant cats on the prowl. A child's bedroom, Jamie being the child in question, a young lad with an Osmonds blow-wave, yellow pyjamas and a bobble-hatted English sheepdog as his constant companion. "Sleep well, Jamie", says his unseen mother. Then - all hell breaks loose! The calming music gives way to a fierce piano riff and a rocking pub band sounding quite a lot like the Who, as Jamie climbs out of bed, shines his magic torch on the floor and opens the gateway to 'Cuckoo Land', a bizarre parallel universe that's reached by a psychedelic helter-skelter ride. Cue the hoarse-voiced vocalist singing about "the strangest people you've ever seen, and that torch with its magical beam". This was the 1.46 opening sequence to one of the most fondly-remembered and distinctive children's animations ever seen on British television, and chances are if you're about thirty years old, that's got the memory banks working overtime. I need really say no more, except that this made lunchtimes in the seventies and eighties a whole heap of fun, and paved the way for more Cosgrove / Hall classics like Danger Mouse and Count Duckula. Brian Trueman did ALL the voices, brilliantly. Grab yourself the DVD and wallow in this stuff for a whole evening, pausing only to drink Tizer and sugar-rush on Sherbet fountains. You'll feel like a child again.

Family Guy: Brian in Love (2000) Season 2, Episode 4

Unexpectedly touching!

[6 March 2006]

The most subtle difference between Family Guy and something like South Park is that the characters are believable and the way they relate to each other is credible. In this episode, Brian is having a midlife crisis - he's seven years old in human terms (in case you didn't know, the maximum life expectancy of a dog is fourteen) and can't stop himself from peeing on the carpet. He blames it on Stewie at first, but when he's caught in the act he decides to see a psychiatrist. The unsettling truth comes out - he's in love with Lois, his owner's wife. This is the cue for a number of surprisingly sensitive (but also funny) scenes in which Brian gets hot under the dog collar watching Lois and Peter chasing each other with a hosepipe, Brian barely containing his emotions whilst he and Lois watch the news together, and Stewie flirting quite outrageously with his mother just to annoy the lovesick pooch! It's a testament to how well-made and thoughtful this series is that I actually felt myself not only identifying with Brian but also falling in love a little with Lois - well, who wouldn't sell their soul for such a sympathetic character who'd fight to the death for her husband and kids, and who cooks a mean 'noodle caboodle' with M&Ms substituting for paprika?! This episode revealed a new dimension to Family Guy, and helped me enjoy the series in a completely different light. No doubt the no-brainers whose idea of sophisticated humour is Cartman kicking somebody in the nuts would find themselves getting antsy during this show, but as Stewie would no doubt say, damn them to pus-filled blood-gutted hell!

Family Guy: Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows (2002) Season 3, Episode 17

Classic Family Guy - not enough Stewie, but still!

[1 March 2006]

The cultured canine Brian's latest date turns out to be a disaster, and the fact that he has to explain how it all went wrong with a hastily improvised song during Lois's piano lesson only adds to his misery. He gets pulled over for drunk driving and is sentenced to community service, where he is assigned to the outreach to the elderly programme, visiting and cooking for an elderly recluse named Pearl who hasn't left the house in thirty years. They don't get along until Brian discovers that Pearl was once "the jingle queen" who attempted a serious music crossover, only to be booed off the stage at Carnegie Hall by an audience who wanted her to sing her old advertising tunes, rather than arias from Carmen.

This is a great episode, full of clever one-liners, quickies, throwaway comments and a superb production number from Brian, done in the style of the Genie's showstopper 'Friend Like Me' from Disney's ALADDIN, which not only has excellent lyrics ("Political correctness has raised the bar, a word like 'redneck' is a step too far, today you'd say 'country music star'...") but a tune that wouldn't shame a West End show, and if Seth MacFarlane is Brian's singing voice too, then he deserves sincere congratulations!

Family Guy: Lethal Weapons (2001) Season 3, Episode 7

Very good Family Guy episode

[1 March 2006]

Contrary to the opinion of the other reviewer, I really liked the second half of this episode - it's mostly the cast beating the crap out of each other, with plenty of surreal and bizarre touches, and the punchline where Peter begins bad-mouthing the network only to have the show's budget cut - and he begins jerking around the room in South Park style limited animation - is a killer! I suppose it's whatever catches you in the mood, but I haven't seen an episode of Family Guy yet that didn't contain at least a couple of laugh out loud moments. Elsewhere, the stuff about the 'leafers' - brash New Yorkers who come to Quahog every year to watch the trees change colour - was really hilarious, and something I could identify with. I live in a British midlands town and every year there's a hot air balloon festival, and the town gets choked up with tourists and visitors for the whole weekend, turning my entire street and the surrounding streets into a big unofficial car park. I wish I had Lois on my side at times like that - better yet, Stewie, to put some mind-meld on them!

Return of the Goodies (2005 TV Movie)

Goody to see you again!

[9/10 · 28 February 2006]

After a newsflash reports the disappearance of the Millennium Dome, it is revealed the BBC used the site as a dumping ground for sets and props from 1970s comedy shows - and this gives the Goodies the chance to look around their old office and relive some of their classic moments. This is the framing device for this one-off BBC2 special, aired over Christmas 2005, which also takes in tributes from fans including Ronni Ancona, Phill Jupitus, David Quantick, Jon Culshaw, Emma Kennedy and Rolf Harris, as well as documentary-like sections detailing the rise to fame of the three members of the team, their troubles with the BBC (dumped to make way for Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - scandalous!) and their various extra-curricular activities, including the famous incident of a viewer who died laughing at one of their shows, their pop career, what they did next and where they are now. It's a real treat for Goodies fans and offers an insight into an unjustly neglected comedy gem from more innocent times, and my advice to you is if you didn't see this, beg, steal or borrow a copy from someone who had the good sense to record it!

Monty Python's Flying Circus: Salad Days (1972) Season 3, Episode 7

This episode will catch you off guard...beware!

[20 February 2006]

I can't believe the Python boys got away with such a grisly riot of pantomime gore and blood-gushing excess back in 1972! For the most part, this episode moves along quite nicely, taking in classics like the Cheese Shop and bizarre bits like Storage Jars and Biggles dictating a letter, but in the last five minutes, all hell breaks loose when 'Philip Jenkinson' (a real life film critic, played here by Eric Idle) announces that Sam Peckinpah is changing his ways by adapting the genteel musical 'Salad Days' for the big screen. At the time, Peckinpah's name was mud with most critics (and the British censors) for his somewhat flippant treatment of rape and extreme violence in Straw Dogs, so it's surprising that the BBC actually allowed what happens next to be broadcast. Eyeballs are burst by tennis balls, arms are torn off, hands are severed along with heads, people are impaled by piano keyboards and tennis rackets, then Jenkinson gets machine-gunned whilst a caption says "TEE HEE"! It's absolutely gross but also very funny if you're able to tolerate slapstick violence taken to its outer limit. The Pythons then up the subversive quotient by offering an insincere apology, followed by a denial of the apology, and a couple of weird little blackouts featuring BBC newsreader Richard Baker and John Cleese in an unlikely historical costume stalking up and down a beach, apologising that the show's a bit short this week and there are no more jokes! It's not the best episode ever but it's one of the most memorable, it shocked the hell out of me when I was thirteen, and what a nifty experience that is for any adolescent!

Delinquent School Girls (1975)

So morally skewed, it looks like it came from another planet!

[3/10 · 9 February 2006]

Oh Lordy! Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. Having seen the cut-to-ribbons British release version on some ropey little label when I was a youngster, I recently became curious to see this exploitation roughie again, and finally tracked down a copy after months of trying. And while I was watching it (or more precisely, watching most of it - the video copy I located had about twenty minutes' worth of vertical rolling and picture snow, rendering the first act unwatchable) I couldn't help thinking how the memory has a nasty habit of cheating. The buxom, bouncing women are all there, present and correct, and Stephen Stucker is just as funny as I remembered him (he also gets to show off his piano playing), but I'd forgotten - or was too young to fully comprehend - just how crass and insensitive this film really is. Sam Peckinpah upset the moral majority by showing Susan George coming to enjoy being raped by her ex-boyfriend in the gruesome potboiler STRAW DOGS, but in this sleaze-fest the idea that women enjoy being molested and violated is repeated again and again, even to the point of previously sobbing, near-hysterical victims sitting down to enjoy a glass of wine and a little light refreshment with their assailants moments after their ordeal! And yes, there's another male myth proudly on show here - the women who (almost literally) "ask for it"! In the pre-politically correct seventies, this was standard X-film fare, but seen thirty years later it seems so outrageously corrupt and wrong-headed that DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS looks every bit as if it came from a weird parallel universe that has yet to catch up with our more enlightened times. The film's technical credits are every bit as fumbled as the hapless victims - the photography is grimy, the lighting poor, the sound muffled, the editing looks as if it was done with a hacksaw and the performances are dire (Bob Minor looks embarrassed, and who can blame him). Then there are the 'action' scenes, which are so poorly choreographed they resemble a skit from The Goodies that somebody forgot to speed up. A karate adviser is credited, but judging from what's on show here he didn't hang around the set for long. When he's not contriving up-skirt shots or leering over the mistreatment of his buxom female cast, Gregory Corarito's direction is as static as a house brick. And what's the deal with the inane, parping, faux-Benny Hill music that accompanies the double rape scene in the kitchens? DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS is a shot of pure sleaze, right between the eyes, and won't disappoint anyone looking for mean-spirited misogyny.

The Shining (1980)

Everything there is to say has already been said...

[9/10 · 30 January 2006]

THE SHINING. Love it or hate it, it's still a classic. And the reason it's a classic is because it's good. Everything just clicks. It's in the use of space and silence as malevolent forces. It's in the peerless photography and the statical shots. It's in the performances, with Jack Nicholson typecasting himself forever as a broadly comic villain who's still terrifying even when he's hamming it up like Robert Newton possessed. It's in the unresolvable questions, which means this film is different - quite literally - to everyone who sees it. Are there time warps? Are the ghosts 'real'? Is it all in Jack's head? What the hell is going on with the flood of gore that the elevator disgorges? The explanations are there, certainly, but it's up to you to find them. Kubrick never pandered to the beer and popcorn crowd, but assumed a level of intelligence and a capacity for abstract thought in the viewer that sadly some people are incapable of, which explains the non-plussed reactions and negative reviews THE SHINING will continue to get for as long as it's in print. To love this film, you have to work at it. The rewards, rest assured, are there.

"Wendy, I'm home."

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

One of the most bizarre and unique films ever attempted

[8/10 · 30 January 2006]

Of course it's not perfect...how could it be? Stanley Kubrick, the obsessive-compulsive auteur was the only choice (except for Ken Russell, who would have had a ball with it) to bring Anthony Burgess's brutally compelling novel to the screen, and he does a fine job. The opening shot, of a smirking, unblinking Alex, staring down the gradually retiring camera as he drinks spiked milk prior to going on a violent rampage of vagrant-beating, gang fights, joyriding, housebreaking and rape, makes sure the film grabs you from the start and doesn't let go. And what a journey it is! A CLOCKWORK ORANGE takes in everything, and I do mean everything, from high farce, black comedy, surrealism, British smut and schaedenfreude to some of the most disturbing, troubling and thought-provoking sequences ever committed to celluloid. It's a film that delights in pulling the carpet out from beneath the viewer, again and again and again. And it works on all kinds of levels, too - beneath the 'futuristic' veneer (which, for all I know, could have already looked dated in 1971) there's a virulent satire on the sheer, eyeball-coruscating ugliness of modern architecture, particularly the neo-brutalist school of characterless concrete blocks and swathes of hideous white cement that was cropping up all over Britain at the time. Then there are the 'minimalist' interiors, hideous costumes (especially on the female characters!), Godawful pieces of pop art trash...it's clear that Kubrick really HATED this stuff, and it must have been a conscious decision for him to dump the classically-minded misfit Alex (whose taste for Beethoven and the most sordid aspects of the Bible mark him out as one who abhors a shallow modernity, and rebels against it wherever possible) in the middle of a world that's so alienating and drab. A common complaint among British youths of the seventies, the nascent 'punks' in particular, was that "everything's crap" - and looking at the ghastly (and surprisingly, not TOO exaggerated) world of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, you can understand where they were coming from! I could banter about this film all day, druggies, but this is my perspective - it's one of the most vicious pieces of social satire ever created, and the legacy of the horrible world little Alex was rebelling against is still with us, decades later. Viddy well, little brothers!

The Mighty Boosh (2003–2007)

I don't know where to start with this one...

[24 January 2006]

You know what it's like. Someone whose opinions you value recommends a programme to you, and you sit and patiently watch it. You don't like it, but you stick with it to be courteous. I watched a couple of episodes of The Mighty Boosh (that's a really annoying title, by the way, especially when spoken by middle-class students in that ridiculous smiley-smiley gritted teeth accent they all seem to share...'Beesh', I ask you) at a friend's house, and I didn't really know what to make of it. So I borrowed the DVD and watched another six episodes at home. I still didn't know what to make of it. So here are a few observations, that you can take or leave.

First of all, I'm usually a big fan of surreal or silly comedy - in fact, I'd rate Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies as my all time favourite TV shows. I also love darker, weirder stuff like Chris Morris's Jam and Brasseye, and Ch4's little-seen late night puppet-com Pets. By rights, I should like The Mighty Boosh. But it didn't click with me. To begin with, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding seem less concerned with the business of being funny than they are with looking 'cool' and 'subversive'. They deliver most of their lines in a monotonous mumble and don't spark each other like all the best comedy teams should - it's like overhearing a tedious exercise in mutual back-slapping by the smuggest sixth-formers in town. They seem to think that occasionally breaking into ridiculous improvised songs about soups and llamas makes them seem 'random'. It doesn't, it simply makes them irritating. Then there's the supporting cast. A more sorry lot you'll never see. A man in a gorilla suit, an 'enigma' who seems to be an animatronics version of a really bad actor, people who shout a lot or do bad would-be 'comedy' accents...it goes on and on. It's like watching a college revue full of ideas that doubtless seemed hilarious on paper, but came a cropper when they were actually performed. The dialogue is occasionally painful - "You're about as edgy as a satsuma" - and I ran out of fingers and toes trying to count all the obvious swipes from other comedy shows. Here's something they nicked from the Goodies, here's a steal from Python, here's a bit of The Young Ones, over here, a soupçon of Reeves and Mortimer. If you're going to steal, steal from the best isn't a bad motto, but The Mighty Boosh steals from everyone. I did find certain elements daftly endearing, but I couldn't help thinking that the decent ideas were spread pretty thin and the writing was too content to lazily coast along with unpromising jokes that should have been consigned to the waste paper basket.

It's not surprising that The Mighty Boosh has a fan base - most shows that favour form over content have their followers, and given BBC3's appalling record for comedy so far (Little Britain is dire, and the less said about Tittybangbang, the better), they must be grateful that the occasional handful of expensive mud they've thrown at their expensive wall has stuck, but trying to justify the self-indulgence of this overlong private joke with the inevitable comparisons to genuinely funny groundbreaking shows of decades past is pointless. The Mighty Boosh is a passing fad, and I'm confident that within five years people will be faintly embarrassed that they ever latched onto it.