You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!

Stew and Paul's list of films you should see.
A rant by both Paul and Stew. Here be the premise: me, (that is Stewart), and my mate, (that is Paul), oragnisers of the quiz we have come to know as 'You're gonna need a bigger boat', have taken it upon ourselves to broaden the filmic horizons of you, (The Beautiful People), by prescribing ‘X’ amount of movies you may or may not have seen but really, really should. You are free to pick and choose from the lists below, but I must insist that when next we meet, you have to have seen at least eight of them, or you’re a cultural Thalidomide with metaphorical flappy little arms and you can’t wipe your own bum. On what grounds do I and my associates deem ourselves sufficiently nabob-esque in our cinematic knowledge that we feel ourselves blessed with the divine right to tell you, gentle reader, what the fuck you should watch during the few hours you have spare between snowboarding and taking loads of drugs in Islington bistro bathrooms? Well, We are much, much, much Better Than You, in every way possible. We can turn lead into gold, and we shit ten pound notes. So there. Big cocks an’ all. No, scrap that; we just know that most of you have probably had better stuff to do with vast portions of your time, effort and money than blow any/all of them on watching stupid films, and as such we pair of geeks are kind of better qualified than most to introduce noble seekers of Video Truth to a couple of Holy Grails of unseen, unappreciated, or just plain un movies. Mind you, we do have big cocks. Well, Paul does anyway. Mine was shot off in ‘Nam. Sniper. Bang. Clean off. But I digress… Best get this out of the way; Paul won’t be making any contribution to this thing other than compiling his own actual lists, as he's busy planning the first quiz. I, Stewart, will be passing unwanted opinion on every film mentioned, and my views in no way shape or form necessarily represent the views of my mate; it’s just that I do the writing around here and I say whatever I fucking well want. So, if for instance I say that one of Paul’s favourite movies is Williams Friedkin’s Al Pacino gay cop freak-out ‘Cruising’, on the grounds that Paul digs hanging out in hardcore fisting clubs and believes Friedkin really ‘captured the vibe of The Scene’, it’s not necessarily true. Puerile yes, but true? No. Not necessarily… Also, the lists are in no order, have no real merit or value system attached, no hidden agenda – shit, I’m writing about them and I haven’t even seen some of them. Our only group ethos is: have a gander. You might just like what you see. And if you don’t, bollocks to you. Anyway… Paul’s List - Paul is my co-conspirator in this whole crazy quiz endeavor; his genuine favourite movie is ‘Tron’. He owns it on every available format except Super-8 film; he even has the laserdisc, despite neither he nor anyone he has ever met in the whole wide world owning a laserdisc player. Now that shows commitment. Or blatant fucking stupidity, one or the other… The Rainmaker. Francis Ford Coppola’s version of a John Grisham novel starring Matt Damon. I haven’t actually seen this, but Paul assures me that it’s a good film, with both Damon and Danny De Vito delivering a full portion of the goods. However, his sole reason for including it on this list, (seeing as how it is a big Hollywood movie, and as such there stands a chance that even the least interested amongst you may have rented it on a damp Tuesday), is for, quote unquote, “ a fucking blinding performance from Mickey Rourke”. It is vitally necessary that I explain the unnatural love that Paul has for Mickey Rourke; besides Kiefer Sutherland in ‘The Lost Boys’ The Rourkemeister has been Paul’s one constant style icon for nigh on the past two decades. Fashions may come and fashions may go, but Paul’s fucked-up belief that wearing a filthy mackintosh like Mickey in ‘Angel Heart’ is the height of hipaliciousness remains steadfast. I didn’t witness it, but Paul once bought a dead expensive designer overcoat, walked into the house all chuffed with himself, entered the front-room, snagged it on the doorframe on the way in, and ripped the arm clean off. Divine intervention, methinks. Even Paul has to admit that swollen-cheeked junk-monkey Mickey ain’t looking too grand nowadays, but to give him his due he can turn in a decent performance in the few supporting roles he’s been thrust into of late. Of his recent throw-downs, check out indie crime flick ‘Thursday’ for further proof; his sleeping talent actually opens one eye momentarily before rolling over, farting and getting a bit more kip. However, avoid action abortion ‘Double Team’ like a polar bear’s liver; that said, Rourke is still pretty cool in it, (it’s Van Damme and Dennis Rodman who stink up the screen like a poor person’s crotch), and dies the most spectacular death known to man as, stood on a landmine in a Roman ampitheatre, he is knocked off balance, (thereby detonating it directly beneath him), by a fucking great Bengal Tiger! He and the tiger die as one! Ace! You couldn’t fucking make this up! Mickey One. Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s hep early-60’s psycho drama about a stand-up comic who owes money to the mob. In no way anything like the film you would imagine the above précis to describe, this is genuinely brilliant. Every aspect of it, from sparse jazz dialogue to forward-thinking cinematography to Beatty, in his first mean performance, (screw ‘Splendor In The Grass’), just reeks of class. Beatty himself also holds a particular allure for Paul; on one occasion during our shared past, he was presented with an unappetising sexual encounter by a lunatic mutual female acquaintance of ours under bizarre circumstances, and would have avoided this tete-a-tete if not for the fact that, to quote unquote once more, “Beatty’d do it”. To divulge any further information would be unseemly, disloyal and not a little bit unpleasant; let’s just say that, yes, Beatty would have done it, and probably done it a whole lot better and slightly more in time. But at least Paul does his own stunts. Strange Days. Another movie some of you will have seen, but more of you will have avoided like some kind of virulent blood-plague for any number of reasons. To wit: Ralph Fiennes; unfavourable reviews; unnecessarily dense storyline over heavy running time; slightly derivative sub-‘Blade Runner’ vibe; Ralph Fiennes; James Cameron’s not-quite-hip ‘future-tech’ storyline; the highly dubious appearance of Skunk A-fucking-nansie as end-of-the-millennium entertainment in Times Square as the clock’s a-tickin’ down; and last but by no means least, Ralph Fiennes. Again. Super-much-maligned and a perma-frost-coated mammoth of a flop on release, ‘Strange Days’ is in fact a very rewarding film in many ways, and if it does go slightly adrift at times, it’s worth sticking with on the grounds that it never commits the cardinal sin of boring the living shit out of the viewer. For once, Ralphy-baby’s ‘oh tish, I’m going to cry any minute, so sensitive am I to the restless ennui of existence’ schtick works like butter, his not-quite-hero demeanor fitting the scuzzy fuck-up ex-cop lead character almost perfectly. Shame the bastard played John Stead like a recently-buggered choirboy, but them’s the breaks, eh? You really need to watch this more than most others on this list. And without giving too much away, yes, Tom Sizemore is wearing a wig, but that’s because he’s meant to be… The Stuntman. Genius, genius, genius. Richard Rush directs Peter O’Toole and the great lost talent that is Steve Railsback in a supremely fucked-up flick about an escaped criminal, (Railsback), who is roped into pretending to be a dead stuntman by maniacal director O’Toole, who has hushed up the real stuntman’s death in order to continuing shooting. That’s about as far as you can go in describing this film’s plot without making it sound like some awful Chuck Sheen action donkey, but take it from both Paul and myself when we say that this is a quality piece of work, and if you’re up for it, is left-field 80’s film-making at its very, very best. Rush went on to direct Bruce Willis knob-dangling flick ‘The Color Of Night’, but we all make mistakes; admittedly, most of our mistakes don’t involve close-ups of Bruce Willis’s ballbag, but hey, you know… Railsback did this and ‘Lifeforce’, then disappeared off the face of the earth (or at least the bits with a film camera pointing at them), for nigh on a decade or more, then just popped up in an episode of ‘The X Files’ a few years back as a anally-probed astro-nutter. ‘Lifeforce’ actually nearly made my list – a kitsch 80’s space vampire movie shot in Britain – until I remembered that, fond memories of youth aside, it is truly abysmal. The just-barely-entertaining moments of ‘Lifeforce’ are derived from the physically pleasing Mathilde May walking about starkers in every single frame, and Peter Firth being the very butchest SAS man in the world ever, making Lewis Collins in ‘Who Dares Wins’ look like a member of the cast of ‘A Chorus Line’ whilst also simultaneously revealing himself to be the most closeted queen in existence. Bizarrely, Paul actually got to interview Richard Rush when we were at the 2001 Cannes film festival, where he was promoting a documentary about the making of The Stunt man. He nearly wet himself with excitement, bless him. Everyone Says I Love You. Another unanimous vote; my mom always says she hates Woody Allen films, despite never having seen one, fearing that their ostensibly intellectual bent will alienate and belittle her when in fact they’re just, you know, films, not sensory weapons capable of burning her brain to molten brown slop. Despite my best efforts, she refuses to watch ‘Everyone Says I Love You’, even though she would love the arse off it. An anachronistic throwback to old-school Hollywood musicals, the sheer goodwill and exuberance of the film overrides any possible grounds for criticism; yes, it was clearly once an hour longer, with ‘name’ actors sort of drifting in and doing nothing as their roles were cut before release; yes, Woody gittin’ it awn with Julia Roberts is obviously a wank fantasy too far; yes, you do see the entire film crew reflected in a massive mirror for nearly the full length of one big song-and-dance sequence; but does the film make you feel so joyful and full o’beans that you decide to delay that trip to McDonalds with a sub-machine gun and a pound of gelignite strapped to your chest for another day? Damn right it does. Watch it and smile. Then call my mom, and tell her to watch it. We’ll wear the old bitch down… Any Which Way You Can. Clint Eastwood orangutan road-movie. Saw it once when I was a kid and absolutely fucking hated it, but Paul loves this bastard to all hell and back. To give him his due, he forced me to try and watch it a short time ago and it was kind of alright, but I was drunk and fell asleep about twenty minutes in, and, unless Paul pays, I’m never going to get pissed enough again to repeat the experiment to fruition. Personally, I can only glean so much enjoyment from a monkey farting and hitting people, but Paul holds this film up as a shining testament to Movie Making Genius. I’ll be fucked if I know why, but in the spirit of Glasnost I’ll let it stand and move on. Just so long as you know I’m crying inside. Flash Gordon. You get these wankers wafting along to late-night movie shows, quoting what passes as the script of ‘Showgirls’ at the screen and using ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ as an excuse to parade their sublimated transvestisism, but where pray tell is the crowd of fucking arseholes dressed up as Ming The Merciless or Voltan, leader of the Hawkmen? Nowhere, that’s where, and for that we must be truly grateful. The seeds of Camp Cult Classic are all there, but the ramparts of Castle Flash hold strong, and nary a businessman in fishnets shall storm its walls. This film makes ‘Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert’ look like ‘Platoon’ - terrifyingly quotable script, (best line: noble Prince Barin rounds a corner on Mongo, faces up to three heavily armed guards, fires on them and screams “freeze you bloody bastards!” in a thick Welsh accent. And these dudes are all from another planet!); great actors, (Max Von Sydow, Timothy Dalton, Topol), knocking out so much ham its like they’re walking through a pigpen with a stungun; chi-chi production design of such staggering queerness that you half expect Sylvester to come strutting down the stairs at Ming’s palace singing ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ during the final battle sequence; a leading man with elegant hair, (Sam J. Jones), hewn from the rock of buffness, in actuality so fey they had to dub another, more ‘butch’ actor’s voice onto him in post-production; and last but by no means least in this cavalcade of fragrant lunacy, Brian Blessed wearing a pair of wings, shouting like a fucking Banshee every other second at absolutely everybody and everything, quite unnecessarily. Oh, and to top it all off, ‘Blue Peter’s Peter Duncan sticks his arm in a gnarled tree root and gets fatally stung to death on the wrist by a madness-inducing space-scorpion that looks like a big green bollock. Essential viewing. Capricorn One. This film is fucking brilliant; that’s all there is to it. Elliot Gould, James Brolin, Karen Black, Sam Wanamaker, Mars Space Landing government cover-up conspiracy-theory thriller, what more do you need? Okay, how about Telly Savalas as crazy crop-duster Albain, helping crusading journo Gould outrun the Feds in his fucked-up bi-plane? This film has that ‘the world is going to hell’ vibe of 70’s movies such as ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Parallax View’, but manages to bang in a thinly veiled dig at the faked US moonlandings which keeps it on a track of its own. Oh yeah, and pre-rampage O.J. Simpson turns up as an astronaut, which is kind of neat. Road Games. I never actually saw this early 80’s film, but Paul informs me that ‘Road Games’ is a long-lost gem; from what they say, its ‘Duel’ meets ‘Halloween’ in the desert, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (not literally, obviously) starring Stacy Keach, (world’s shittest drug-runner), and Jamie Lee Curtis, (apocryphal hermaphrodite). I want to see this a lot, and if I want to see it I think you should want to see it too, for no reason other than the film may be that good it deserves people seeing it. If you get my drift… Blow Out. The film that chopped the nuts off John Travolta’s serious acting career in the 80’s and fed them to the dogs, but Christ knows why as he turns in a quality performance here as a Hollywood soundman who accidentally records the sole proof that a senator’s car ‘accident’ wasn’t. An accident, that is. ‘Blow Out’ is a tremendously ingenious film, with more twists than something, you know, quite bent up and that, and the final couple of scenes will really bum you out, (but in a good way, like these kind of movies should do). This was perhaps director Brian De Palma’s finest hour – should you have recently witnessed the career bonfire that was ‘Mission To Mars’, watch ‘Blow Out’ and weep. The day I saw ‘M2M’, (and yes, it was actually officially referred to by that acronym), was literally the only cinema-going occasion in living history where everybody cheered for the kid screaming “this is shit!” at the screen, rather than wanting to visit gross physical violence upon him. Paul once called some kids ‘motherfuckers’ for talking all of the way through ‘Deep Blue Sea’, such is his love of film. And big fuck-off sharks. Deep Rising. ‘Deep Rising’ is possibly the final word in terrible monster movies set in totally spurious locations. A big-bastard-sea-serpenty-thing goes apeshit on board an ocean liner, mowing down a load of extras first off, before moving on to the grade-B-and-below ‘talent’, (including the deeply talented yet inexplicably unemployable Treat Williams, pre-‘X Men’ dumpster-bound Famke Jansen, that okay ginger geezer from ‘Lock, Stock...’ and the bad-ass Red Indian cat from ‘Last Of The Mohicans’), then being wiped out itself by the ready-to-hand nuclear weaponry that just happens to have been introduced ten minutes into the film. Bet you never thought that warhead’d be making a reappearance before the end of the story did you… ‘Deep Rising’ is actually pretty damn great, for what it is. Everybody knows they’re in a terrible movie, even the bloody sea monster, so as such you can’t find it in your heart to hate them or the movie itself, (unlike the cast of, say, ‘Scream’, who really think they’re the fucking bollocks and dead post-modern, like, when in fact the movie hums like an old people’s home in July). This movie should appeal to the adolescent ‘Iron Maiden’ fan in you all - big silly fun, very old-school in its approach, and, had it been made before the advent of computer technology, would have given employment to an entire village of South American rubber-tree farmers. As it stands, the CGI beastie is actually very unpleasant indeed, being responsible for one of the most vile screen deaths either of us have ever seen – one of the Mercenaries (don’t ask) is swallowed by the beast, only to be spilled out of a tear in one of its numerous gullets, half-digested yet still alive. The effect is truly, truly revolting, looking so incredibly realistic that we hardened hombres both nearly puked. Of course, we are unaware as to what a realistic half-digested mercenary actually looks like, but we reckon the effect here must be pretty close. Drive. Another should-have-been-big-screen flick consigned to the home video shitpipe, ‘Drive’ holds a unique place in my heart, (let alone Paul’s), on the grounds that it is the only martial arts movie I actually like. Paul loves all of this chopsocky shit in his less Bohemian moments, but I’ve never been able to hack it – never seen a Bruce Lee film, watched a couple of Jackie Chan’s and was bored stiff, endured a gamut of shite Michael Dudikoff/Van Damme late-night drunken ‘this-is-brilliant’ post-pub video sessions in the name of irony, but no – I fucking hate martial arts movies. Except ‘Drive’. But we may already have established that; as for why, I’d have to say that the script, camerawork and performances are top notch, easily opening a cocktail umbrella up the urethra of major action fodder like yer ‘XXX’s and yer ‘Mission Impossible 2’s, and more importantly the plot drives the action, rather than the other way round – ie. an ass is kicked, and that has ramifications on the rest of the movie, whereas usually some musclebound borderline retard will bust a move on someone’s head just ‘cos he looks good sweaty. Although to be fair, one of the best bits does involve star Mark Dacoscas running up a high vertical wall for no good reason other than he can, but we’ll let that one go… Trust. Oh God, sorry Paul. I know I should have seen Hal Hartley’s entire back-catalogue in my official capacity as a self-important pseudo-intellectual wanker, but I’ve never got round to it. I did see ‘Amateur’ at university; well, I didn’t really ‘see’ it in ‘visual’ terms – I’d been up since seven that morning editing some pretentious ‘video art’ and ended up sleeping for the vast part of its running time. Hey, at least I was in the same building as the cans of film. The only Hal Hartley thing I can say I know with any great conviction is this smart dance scene set in a bar from ‘Simple Men’, and I only know that because we were going to rip it off, (sorry, pay homage to it), for a pop video that fell through a few years back. Enough people seem to like his work, so on those grounds, dear reader, go for your life; just don’t expect any help from me. Cross Of Iron. We watched this during our ‘Fargin’ War’ marathon in the fortnight prior to the release of ‘Saving Private Ryan’; averaging three war films a day every day over a fourteen-day period, Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Cross Of Iron’ was by far one of the most impressive. (Why watch this many war films? Fuck it – seemed like a good idea at the time, what can I say? And the ‘Fargin’ War’ title applied to our grand folly is apparently a quote from a character in the Michael Keaton gangster comedy ‘Johnny Dangerously’, but I’ve never seen it so I’ll take Paul’s word for it. Yes, life really is one long, endless round of film-geek one-upmanship around our campfire.) ‘Cross Of Iron’, a superb anti-war film starring James Coburn and Maximillian Schell, is actually based on a book of the same name by Sven Hassell, a former soldier allegedly writing these tales of combat from first-hand experience. I had all of Sven Hassell’s books when I was a kid – each one would get progressively more bloodthirsty and lurid as it traced a group of German soldiers through various campaigns during World War 2; in foreign territories, the books weren’t credited to ‘Sven Hassell’ and were apparently quite respected works in their native German, but when we British got hold of them we decided upon translation to make them as utterly sodding macho as possible – what with the name ‘Sven Hassell’ being redolent of Vikings fucking up your shit, as it were. My particular favourite title was ‘The Bloody Road To Death’ – how evocative, eh? The fact that the characters couldn’t physically have fought in a number of the battles due to the skirmishes featured in successive novels actually running concurrently on different continents in real life didn’t stop old Sven – big sellers back in the 70’s, his books were. Mind you, so were Grifters, and they hurt your arse too. Class Of Nuke ‘Em High. Jesus Paul, you’ve gone and fucked it. He told me expressly that ‘Class Of Nuke ‘Em High’ makes it onto the list wholly on the grounds that it features Tromi The Nuclear Squirrel. I shit ye not. A fucking radioactive nut-gathering rodent. Like 99% of all Troma movies, this one is pretty goddamn terrible in every way yet still perversely entertaining, overflowing with cheap special effects, ridiculous violence and just plain nude ladies’ tits. The other 1% don’t exist. Troma invited us to their party in Cannes last year, (free booze, plus go-go dancers, dudes in rubber masks, a genuine giant, a live midget, and some freakish female wrestler with the most unpleasantly gigantic-yet-raisin-like bosom it has ever been my misfortune to inadvertently gaze upon, accompanied by her dangerously-mulletted violent redneck husband ‘The Axeman’), and for a brief time we were dangerously close to being involved in a foray into video distribution with them; really nice people, very publicity-savvy, but some of their back-catalogue is just crap. And, there but for the grace of God and a decent backer, we could have been the UK agents responsible for foisting the aforementioned excrement on the British public! Yee hah! Stewart’s List - My favourite film is ‘Jaws’, which, in one of the most irresponsible parental acts ever committed, my mom and dad took me to see on re-release in 1979. I was so scared afterwards, I wouldn’t walk on the blue bits on our carpet in case the shark jumped out and got me. Scarred for life, I was. My mother now explains that they took me to see it because I kept on at them to do so, which is all well and good, but they didn’t have to acquiesce to my demands in the slightest, on the grounds I was fucking six! Nevertheless… The Relic. For the same reason Paul picked ‘Deep Rising’, I choose ‘The Relic’. However, this movie is a far classier affair, the grade B cast actually nearly edging over into A-minus territory due to the presence of Tom Sizemore, here promoted from best mate of the lead to the lead, (probably because he was cheap to be honest, but what the fuck). The usual monster-on-the-loose bullshit goes down in the middle of a natural history museum - one of the more unlikely locations for mass murder and consumption of human hormone secretions, you have to admit. There really isn’t much to say about the plot – enormous scary creature goes nutzoid, much death ensues – but at least ‘The Relic’ does subtly apply some logic to proceedings. For instance, Sizemore’s cop sidekick, despite having ‘corpse’ written through him like a stick of Blackpool rock, uses a searchlight in dark corridors, shoots at scary-looking stuff then runs away rather than approaches it asking it what it is, and doesn’t die in a noble-yet-unnecessary fashion – in the world of shit monster movies, these kind of things constitute new ideas, and a few of them can’t hurt every now and again… Slapshot. Foul-mouthed 70’s Paul Newman ice hockey movie, like ‘MASH’ on skates, (woohah, I’m shitting poster quotes today), notable for its sharp dialogue, obscene joy at acts of gross violence, and the fact it is incredibly badly dubbed. This movie has that laid-back anarchic anti-authority thing that a lot of 70’s movies have, surfing the arse end of hippy into a more ‘fuck you’ state of mind. As for the story, Newman leads a shit-bird team to popularity by inciting them to fight on the ice. And that, dear reader, is it. As for the dubbing – look, none of the voices match the fucking mouth movements! I can appreciate that you’d have to post-sync a lot of the dialogue because it was filmed in big echoey hockey stadiums full of screaming punters, but for fuck’s sake, you know? While they didn’t have computer-aided technology back then, it ain’t that hard to at least try to have the sound in the same vicinity as the lip-flapping. Some of these bastards speak and their voices arrive seconds later. Mind you, while ‘Slapshot’ is very sloppy in some of its technical areas, it’s also very funny, fast-paced, frenetic and many other words beginning with ‘f’. Newman wears a great leather trouser-suit in it as well, which is worth a look. Er, yeah, anyway… Thick As Thieves. Undeservedly-straight-to-video crime caper starring Alec Baldwin, Andre Braugher and numerous other jive turkeys. It would be quite easy to pass this movie by, as at first glance you could be forgiven for thinking it yet another tepid horseshit crime flick. The shelves have been crammed with so many sub-Tarantino shit-burgers these past few years, its been hard to weed out the Filet O’Fish from their number, but in this movie we have a delightful piscine treat floating head and shoulders above a sea of processed cow lips. Terrible metaphor, but you can dig it. The dialogue is cool, the story is tight, the performances uniformly classy, so why didn’t this get at least a limited cinema release? I’ll fucking tell you why – Alec Baldwin, that’s why! A much-under-rated American actor, Baldwin is solid lead material cruelly robbed of major stardom thanks to peculiar choice of acting vehicles early on in what was supposed to be a glittering career – ‘The Shadow’: really quite dull superhero movie about a crimefighter with a big nose who isn’t a very nice bloke. ‘The Hunt For Red October’: a sterling performance as Jack Ryan, only to have Sean Connery steal the picture with a poor Russian accent then have the Ryan role handed to Harrison Ford in the sequel. ‘Miami Blues’: nobody went to see it, despite it being the best Tarantino movie he never directed, with a brilliant Baldwin performance at the centre. ‘The Edge’: nobody went to see this superb film either, despite the presence of Big Tony Hopkins and a mad bear. I swear, there’s a conspiracy against the poor bastard; great actor, seems like a nice bloke, but if he appears in your movie, its fucked! He’s like an American Charles Dance! Excalibur. I can not account for the peculiar love I hold for John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ – I will even admit that it’s overlong and quite dull in parts, and some of the acting really isn’t up to much, but there’s something about the film as a whole that I really like. It looks fucking gorgeous, which is obviously one thing in its favour, and it doesn’t get too stupidly ethereal and elf-ridden, which can’t hurt, but that’s not enough to justify my arcane fascination. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Dungeons and Dragons freak, obsessively masturbating over three-quarter-inch pewter figurines of Orc priestesses in full battle armour; I have no interest in getting togged up in a car-seat cover, painting my nuts blue and pretending I’m ‘Braveheart’ in a cold wet field of a Sunday morning alongside two hundred other real-ale-quaffing beard-monsters; I have not read and will never read anything by Terry Fucking Pratchett; I just love this film. ‘Excalibur’ is as far as my fantasy leanings go, at least in the whole sword/sorcery department; the horror and science fiction parts, however, are well covered. I’ve even seen ‘Metal Beast’, for Christ’s sake; 72-minute straight-to-video piss-poor-a-thon about a government-created bullet-proof werewolf able to regenerate it’s body parts like a big hairy Terminator 2. Jesus. I bet even the people who made it haven’t seen ‘Metal Beast’. Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers. A classic sci-fi story with allegorical connotations, first filmed in the 1950s, then remade twice. First, a superb exercise in 50’s Cold War paranoia; then, a superb exercise in late-70’s post-Nixon paranoia; finally, a mid-90’s exercise in how to fuck up a great story by letting smack-fiend Abel Ferrara anywhere near it. I favour the 70’s version, seeing as how it really shits you up, especially the bit where a man and his dog end up morphed together in a bizarre pod-related incident, resulting in a man-faced dog running around the joint. And I love Donald Sutherland – a brilliant actor who somehow managed to achieve utter invisibility around 1983. Where the hell did you go, Donnie? And now you’re here, what the hell are you thinking? All those years in the wilderness, and you come back with a couple of Pantomime villain roles in ‘Outbreak’ and ‘Virus’? Okay, ‘Six Degrees Of Separation’ was cool, but Christ, man; I watch ‘MASH’ and I weep! And don’t think ‘Space Cowboys’ is going to help matters either, because its just not, okay? Mute Witness. This film is fucking terrifying. The first half deals with a mute make-up girl accidentally discovering that the studio facility where she works is being used to make snuff movies after-hours, while the second half involves her and her sister (plus boyfriend) evading the clutches of said murderous cinematic perverts. The whole snuff angle makes it sound a little sleazy, but ‘Mute Witness’ is a calculated exercise in inducing ball-wrenching suspense in the viewer. And it works too. Interestingly, Antony Waller, (who directed this in the mid-nineties, moved on to the mind-blowingly pish ‘American Werewolf In Paris’, then vanished), spliced in some footage from a totally unconnected student film he shot years earlier featuring Sir Alec Guinness, which has a most bizarre effect – when the character appears in scenes where Waller doesn’t have any Guinness material to use, he just drops a big fucking shadow over a stand-in’s face and uses a completely different actor’s voice. This wouldn’t present too large a beef, if not for the fact that the substitute actor’s accent is clearly Latvian, while Guinness’s… just isn’t. Nevertheless, in pure terms of pant-shitting Hitchcockian suspense, Waller pulls it out of the bag. Oh, and Fay Ripley out of ‘Cold Feet’ turns up as the mute girl’s sister, doing a most irritating Yankee accent. However, as I quite fancy her in a ‘stern-faced auntie’ kind of way, I’m willing to let her off. Looker. You won’t find this anywhere, (except for Paul’s dad’s video shop – details available on request). Plastic surgeon Albert Finney unearths a fashion industry conspiracy to computer-render then kill physically ‘perfect’ models, thereby owning and controlling their images - Finney cops a whiff that there’s malice afoot when they start bumping off loads of his patients; he also discovers an experimental hypnotic device that freezes human perception for brief periods of time by inducing stroboscopic fits, (although there are special goggles that deflect the rays). Almost unparalleled in its bizarreness, perhaps the most odd aspect of the whole movie is the fucking enormous permed quiff sported by Mr. Finney, which makes him look very much like William Shatner in ‘T.J. Hooker’. Deserves to be seen just to prove it actually exists. The Way Of The Gun. This came out a few years back, but played virtually nowhere and is only just about available on UK video/DVD. A throwback to the likes of ‘The Getaway’ and ‘Straw Dogs’, this film is fairly slow paced but tough as hell, with some nice dialogue and groovin’ performances from the likes of Benicio Del Toro, Ryan Phillipe and James Caan. It is, rather predictably, a crime flick about a kidnapping that goes wrong, but for once this film actually has some new moves to add to all the old routines. I’m the only cat I know who enjoyed it, but there again I like films where nothing happens for a very long time – my amigos hated ‘Boogie Nights’, for example, which I love; for anyone else who hated ‘Boogie Nights’, at least ‘The Way Of The Gun’ ends with half an hour of well-scripted, painfully realistic gunplay rather than ten seconds of a rubber dick. Taking Of Pelham 123. The text book from which one Mr. Q. Tarantino stole all of his best moves, this film deserves to be heralded for its balls-out bass-heavy jazz-funk soundtrack alone. A real low-key 70’s crime caper, starring acting giant Robert Shaw as a right narky bastard who leads a band of useless thieves in holding a subway car to ransom, each time I watch it I revel at the fact that the whole set-up is brought to book by Walter Fucking Matthau. For a brief period in the 70’s, baboon-faced individuals such as Matthau, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould were the only thing preventing the downfall of society, and with nary a well-toned muscle or rocket-launcher between them. When a fellow physical derelict is up there on the Big Screen kickin’ ass and takin’ names, it fills us ugly folk with the same kind of swell of pride that must have been felt by the African-American Community upon seeing ‘Shaft’. Or maybe not. Hey, what do I know, eh? Street Trash. A vile little bastard, this one. The basic premise involves an unscrupulous liquor store owner selling bottles of ‘Viper’ he unearths in a crumbling wall cavity to the local street bums; this ‘Viper’ shit causes the bums to go crackers, mutate and eventually melt, (for no good reason, but go with it), and that’s really all she wrote. Thoroughly despicable from beginning to end, the highest low points involve a game of catch played with a man’s ripped-off dick, an old tramp dissolving into a toilet bowl and accidentally flushing himself away, and necrophiliac gang-rape. So why am I recommending ‘Street Trash’? Because I never said these films had to be good for you, I just said you had to see them. The Adventures Of Ford Fairlane. Much-maligned mid-80’s ‘shock’ comic Andrew Dice Clay’s big movie opportunity, playing a hip leather-clad detective specializing in Music Industry cases. This is an example of Bad Video Snobbery at its best – very few people have seen this, but Those Of Us Who Have, we love it. A flop of unmitigated proportions on its original release, it leaked out onto rental video like a liquefied cheeseburger through Elvis’s nappy over here, and remains generally unavailable absolutely everywhere other than Paul’s dad’s shop. Despite its box office embolism, it is actually a very well made, very expensive action movie with a bunch of faux-shocking smart-arse one-liners, delivered by America’s then-hottest stand-up, someone who had made said delivery his highly-lucrative stock-in-trade. This film was expected by everybody to spawn a long-running popular franchise, (it even had a tie-in DC Comics mini-series prior to release), and for no known reason made absolutely fucking no money whatsoever at all amen. Totally beyond comprehension – every penny is on the screen, the movie is wildly entertaining in every lowest-common-denominator way possible while still carrying enough knowing hipness to please the likes of me, (ie. people who fancy themselves a bit), and, in Andrew Dice Clay, a ready-made Willis-esque working class hero who swaggers across the screen with the dynamic confidence of a man who knows he’s in a big hit movie… As it stands, ‘…Ford Fairlane’ is the last word on Dice Clay’s movie career of any great note; his politically-incorrect stand-up style lost favour, his follow-up biggish-budget movie ‘Brainsmasher: A Love Story’ evaporated prior to release, and, last I saw of him, he was in a short-lived US television comedy playing a slightly-belligerent-yet-warm-hearted mailman with a loving wife and two scampish kids – ie. sucking The Man’s cock for a couple of crumbs from the TV table. Other than that, while idly scanning the Bravo channel on cable late the other week, none other than Andrew Dice Clay cropped up as one of two Maverick Cops out to thwart an Evil Drug Baron in some diabolically crap 1999 action movie. Old, grey, overweight, it took a couple of minutes before I was able to confirm that this lumbering fat fuck before me was indeed the lithe, wise-cracking Diceman gone to seed. How the mighty have fallen. Despite the aforementioned ‘Brainsmasher’s general widespread unavailability, (we don’t know if it was even given a final, actual UK video release), Paul does have a timecoded preview copy, thank God. In this, an action comedy about a nightclub doorman who punches so hard he leaves fist-shaped indents in peoples’ skulls, The Diceman, (as confident and smart as always, if a little wider around the waistband), saves pre-fame Terri Hatcher from the clutches of a bunch of mystical Chinese Warlords, and much foul-mouthed action hilarity ensues. If anything, ‘Brainsmasher’ is even more ridiculous fun than ‘…Fairlane’ and, yet again, one of those films that deserves a wider audience – made today with Ben Affleck or Will Smith, either of Dice Clay’s movies would clean up. ‘Brainsmasher’ in particular has a very pop culture/post-modern thing going on that would work perfectly for yer kids nowadays. Still; there we are. Two perfectly reasonable movies lost down the sofa cushions of history, most likely never to be seen again. If you should find these two gems hiding away in a video store, do give them a whirl. As one final postscript to Andrew Dice Clay’s small stitch in pop culture’s quilt, it should be noted that he is now most famous as the man responsible for the “whoooooah!” sample on long-gone pop-scamps EMF’s biggest hit ‘Unbelieveable’. Fucking hell; if I went from playing sell-out 15,000-seater stadiums to being an answer in a pub quiz, I’d slit my wrists in a warm bath.