Solid Geometry

Director: Denis Lawson
Writer: Denis Lawson
Producer: Gill Parry
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ruth Millar, Peter Capaldi
Year of release: 2002
Country: UK
Reviewed from: UK TV broadcast

This short story by Ian McEwan was very nearly filmed by the BBC in the mid-1970s but production was cancelled at the eleventh hour because (allegedly) a make-up artist objected to one of the props - a pickled penis in a jar. That may well be true, in fact, as the Beeb was certainly riddled with enough union politics at that time to make it easier and cheaper to scrap a whole production than replace a make-up artist. Now Denis 'Biggs Darklighter' Lawson, having already directed one short, has adapted the story as part of a Scottish short films project.

I haven’t read the original story, but McEwan is a ‘literary’ author, not an SF writer and this production certainly betrays the hallmarks of someone dipping their toe into the genre and then wasting a good idea by completely failing to understand the field’s potential. Basically, Scottish advertising exec Phil (Lawson’s nephew, the ubiquitous Ewan McGregor, who made this the same year that he made Attack of the Clones) receives several boxes containing 42 volumes of his great-grandfather’s diaries plus various esoteric items - including a (very large) pickled penis. His grandfather has endowed £25,000 to Phil if he will edit the diaries, which contain vast amounts of esoteric mathematical formulae and some very naive discussions of sex.

Increasingly obsessed with the diaries, Phil packs in his day-job, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend Maisie (Ruth Millar). In a nicely edited flashback we see that his great-grandfather (Peter Capaldi: Neverwhere, Wild Country) discovered an esoteric geometric shape which was in some way multidimensional - “the plane without a surface” - which unfortunately is represented here by an origami chrysanthemum. When perfectly created, this shape will disappear into another dimension, taking with it anyone who happens to curl themselves around the shape.

Phil and Maisie grow more distant, then seem to come back together again, but has Phil really forgiven his girlfriend for petulantly smashing the jar with the penis in, or does he have other plans?

Actually, this makes the thirty-minute film sound considerably better than it actually is. Not only is very little explained (that’s fair enough) but even less is explored. We don’t see or understand Phil’s growing obsession, nor is there even the slightest discussion of what such a discovery could mean, either in the flashback or the main story. Mostly this is an excuse for McGregor to get his kit off yet again and indulge in some lengthy romps with Millar which totally fail to add anything to either character or plot. It’s difficult to make a half-hour short drag unnecessarily, but Lawson has managed it here.

Without knowing the source material, it’s impossible to say how much of this lacklustre story is McEwan’s and how much is Lawson’s creation. But whoever is responsible, this is a real disappointment which simply doesn’t do anything or go anywhere. And why is there a pickled penis? Who knows? It’s entirely irrelevant to what little there is of the ‘plot.’

Some nice digital cinematography by Robin Vidgeon (Hellraiser) and editing by Kant Pan (Summer Scars, LD 50) don’t make up for the lack of story and shallowness of characterisation.

MJS rating: C-
Review originally posted 10th December 2005

Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit

Director: Mark Jeavons
Writer: Mark Jeavons
Producer: Mark Jeavons
Cast: Rob Leetham, Adam Rickitt, Gabrielle Amies
Country: UK
Year of release: 2011
Reviewed from: screener
Website: www.peteblaggit.com
Watch now - Distrify link at end of review

The title of this low-budget sci-fi comedy unfortunately brings to mind the notorious turkey Whatever Happened to Harold Smith. Touted as the great white hope of British cinema, that film flopped on its belly and killed the nascent cinematic career of Robert Lindsay stone dead. In its day, it was a byword for the hubris of the British film industry. I never actually saw it, but then neither did anybody. That’s the point. Years later, Lindsay is still doing penance for that mistake by starring in yet another joke-free series of My Family.

Anyway, that film has no connection with this one.

Peter Blaggit’s real name is Pete Blagmore and we’re told that he acquired the nickname ‘Blaggit’ because of his constant tendency to blag things, although this idea is slightly scuppered by the fact that not once in this movie do we see him ever attempt to blag anything. Blaggit (played by Rob Leetham, who was also in another low-budget British sci-fi, Waiting for Dawn) is a loser, a jobbing wedding video producer with unkempt hair who still wears the same hideous check suit he had in the 1980s.

Helping him is his brother Eugene (Andy Pandini: Harold’s Going Stiff) and their mate Clive (Corrie’s Adam Rickitt). Blaggit still lives with his ex-wife Tracey (Gabrielle Amies, who is both co-producer and executive producer) despite having been divorced for six years. A tragic secret from their married life explains some of what has happened since.

Pete Blaggit is an angry, unpleasant man; angry with everyone around him because he is angry with himself. He rants and yells and orders people about, including people getting married. Some of his venomous insults are quite imaginative but after a while this constant yelling and puerile abuse (he’s fond of calling people ‘faggots’ which seems an inappropriate americanism) becomes a bit tedious.

After an amusing fake archive advert for Blagmore Wedding Services, the film takes a long time to get going and, when it does, it’s never clear where it’s trying to get to. Weird things start happening to Pete Blaggit. His wife’s fridge seems to contain a dimensional portal. He sees an ugly, small blue thing which calls him ‘Daddy’. He gets abducted by aliens and deposited back on Earth naked, but fortunately with his clothes nearby.

Eugene also sees weird things happening while watching The Wizard of Oz but that may be due to the pot he’s smoking at the time.

Two white skinhead thugs (Anthony Baines and Russell Barnett) threaten him about some money he owes his ex-wife. And two black brothers (Carl Coleman and Christopher Tajah), who are somehow connected with the two white thugs, want revenge for ruining a wedding day.

Via a casino, Pete and Clive somehow get involved with a mysterious, moustachioed Russian, Uri Poppolochovechski. The film culminates with Pete being forced to help the white thugs and black brothers rob a warehouse, but then a load of stuff happens after that too.

If none of the above makes much sense then it’s a fair reflection of the film. Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit’s biggest problem is that not only do we never find out what happened to Pete Blaggit, we can’t even tell what’s happening to him while it’s happening. I’m sure writer-producer-director Mark Jeavons has the whole thing figured out in his head and there’s some reference near the end to an “alternate timeline” but honestly, the plot here is completely impenetrable.

The publicity talks about Blaggit having “a mind-blowing opportunity to put right his past wrongs, will Pete be able to turn his life around before it's too late?” so throughout the film the viewer is waiting for some sort of It’s a Wonderful Life-style revelation or perhaps a Groundhog Day second chance but nothing like that happens. There are just some weird, unexplained things, then the film ends. There’s no consistency to the weird things, no structure to them, they don’t even build in intensity or frequency.

Surely, thinks the viewer, at some point either Pete Blaggit will discover what is going on, or we will. But we don’t and neither, it seems, does he.

For some reason, Uri is also played (very obviously) by Rob Leetham. When he first appears to Clive, after Pete has nipped off to the gents, the thick accent and even thicker facial hair led me to assume that Uri was Blaggit in disguise, perhaps having travelled back from the future, trying to put things rights. Most of Uri’s scenes are on the phone and he also has an abusive turn of phrase but whether he is supposed to be Pete Blaggit, or just somebody who looks like Pete Blaggit, or the actor who was originally going to play Uri just didn’t turn up - who can say?

I have no idea what was going on with the robbery at the end. Clive seems shocked at a late-in-the-day revelation from Tracey about Pete’s compulsive gambling, despite having spent much of the film with him in casinos. And an early scene of Eugene smoking dope while watching Wizard of Oz and listening to Dark Side of the Moon in synch is completely at odds with his character throughout the rest of the film as ‘the sensible, responsible brother.’

The film is quite nicely directed and the actors all give good performances, especially Rickitt who is much better than one would expect from a former soap star in a low-budget indie. Unfortunately Leetham’s voice and mannerisms have a distinct touch of the Simon Pegg about them and this is likely to generate unhelpful comparisons with Shaun of the Dead. The effects vary from good (glowing fridge) to awful (blue thing). The music by Phil Mountford (who scored a Tomb Raider fanfilm) seems pretty good.

Honestly, I don’t know what else I can say. Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit just doesn’t make any sort of narrative sense. It’s not trying to be arty or pretentious or avant-garde, I think it’s trying to be clever and smart. But it raises lots of questions that it never answers. Not philosophical questions or moral ones but basic questions like ‘Who is he?’ and ‘Why is he doing that?’ and ‘What’s going on?’ and ‘How does this bit relate to anything else?’

This could have been a likeable little film. It starts out endearingly as a comedy about a wedding video producer who is monstrously unsuited to his chosen profession, but then it drags. A lo-o-o-ng sequence of Pete ruining the black guy’s wedding makes its point but then shows no sign of stopping. And when the promised weirdness appears, any hope of a coherent plot goes out the window. At the end of the film we have no idea what has happened or why.

I don’t think it’s just me. I rarely read other reviews before writing my own but on this occasion I had to see if anyone else had figured out what was going on. All I could find was negative reviews which thought the film made no sense and positive reviews which pretty much paraphrased the publicity about an opportunity to turn his life around. I can’t find any evidence that anyone, apart from Mark Jeavons, actually knows what’s supposed to happen in this film.

All credit to Jeavons and his cast and crew for the work they’ve put into this film, most of which was shot (on super-16mm) in 2006 and then sat on the shelf waiting for sufficient funds to be completed. Any feature-length film is an achievement but I would be lying if I said that watching this was in any way satisfying.

MJS rating: C+

Night Wars

Director: David A Prior
Writer: David A Prior
Producer: Fritz Matthews
Cast: Dan Haggerty, Brian O’Connor, Steve Horton, Cameron Smith
Year of release: 1987
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK rental VHS (Screen Entertainment)

I picked up this ex-rental VHS tape because (a) it was 50p and (b) it had a truly dreadful painting on the front. It turned out to be one of those double-sided sleeves so if you don’t want the awful painting you can see a ghastly, slightly out-of-focus photograph instead.

Trent Matthews (Brian O’Connor: Encounter at Raven’s Gate) and Jim Lowery (Cameron Smith), who calls Matthews ‘Sarge’, are Vietnam veterans. They were held captive by the enemy and tortured by a traitor from their own platoon, the clearly insane McGregor (Steve Horton). Somehow they managed to escape, taking with them their comrade Johnny (Chet Hood: Time Burst: The Final Alliance) - the end credits spell it ‘Jhonny’! - who was being held in a pit.

But Johnny/Jhonny was shot and they had to leave him, though he begged them not to. Since then they have been experiencing pangs of guilt and even nightmares, which are becoming more real. While test-driving a secondhand car (the insincere salesman is Jack Ott from Spiders), Matthews sees Johnny drive past and chases him - but of course it’s a complete stranger who looks nothing like Johnny.

Later, Matthews dreams that he, Lowery and the rest of the platoon are back in 'Nam, but if it’s a dream, how has he got a shrapnel wound in his hand when he wakes up? Things get worse: he imagines McGregor in the car next to him, jumps out and finds himself back in 'Nam again, where he sustains a cut to his neck while trying to rescue Johnny, who loses a finger to a Vietcong machete.

Matthews’ wife Susanne (Jill Foor: Moonstalker) is upset about her husband’s state of mind, about the unexplained injuries he is suffering - and about the finger she finds in their car! She takes this to family friend Dr Mike Campbell played by Grizzly Adams himself, top-billed Dan Haggerty. (Haggerty was also in Terror Night and a 1978 TV movie called Revenge of the Savage Bees, and he is the voice of Terl in the Battlefield Earth cartoon). Haggerty has the fing- wait a minute, there’s a Battlefield Earth cartoon? Ye gods! - has the fingerprint checked and it turns out to be Johnny’s.

What has happened is that time has somehow got twisted because Matthews and Lowery came home without Johnny, who they believe is still held prisoner by the Vietnamese and is contacting them through their dreams. The impression given is that Johnny is still there now, but he looks no older and has apparently been kept in the same hole in the ground for the past 15 years or so. McGregor is out to get the two men, and what they do in their sleep affects what happens in 'Nam, as when a dreaming Matthews runs out of ammo so the watching Lowery hands him a fresh clip in LA - and he suddenly has a fresh clip in Vietnam.

They buy $2,000 of weaponry from an arms dealer (Mike Hickam) who sells from the boot of his car. Dr Campbell initially tries to stop them, believing they’ve both gone loopy, but is convinced when he calls Susanne to tell her he has her husband under sedation and she says no, he’s right here. Of course it’s not Matthews. He looks like Matthews but after he has raped Susanne she sees it’s McGregor, who then stabs her violently. Dr Campbell rushes over but is too late to save Susanne from her invisible (to him) attacker.

Matthews seems entirely unfazed by the news that his wife is dead, and Campbell doesn’t even bother to explain the frankly unusual way in which she met her end. Instead he helps Matthews and Lowery to rescue Johnny. The two men suit up, black up and arm themselves with plentiful weaponry, then lie down on a double bed and go to sleep (the homo-erotic subtext is of course completely ignored!).

They somehow manage to rescue Johnny but bullets rake the bedroom and the doctor is (I think) killed. It ends with three sweaty men dressed in camo gear lying in each other’s arms on a plush double bed - and still there’s no hint of a gay subtext in any but the most jaundiced minds!

What a daft load of nonsense this all is. It’s basically Hamburger Hill meets A Nightmare on Elm Street and though it’s done sincerely enough it doesn’t exactly hang together, albeit the mixing between reality and dreams is adroitly handled. On the other hand, the pyrotechnics are dreadful (special effects by Chuck Whitton who has no other credits of any sort whatsoever it seems, unless the credits spell his name wrong too). All the explosions in the war scenes are clearly little thunderflashes which send up a shower of sparks but conspicuously fail to move even a handful of actual earth the way that real rockets and shells do.

Of course it goes without saying that all the Vietcong soldiers are lousy shots who can’t hit GIs standing in plain sight only a few yards away, whereas the Yanks can hit obscured targets, shooting from the hip while somersaulting. Speaking of which there is also a plethora of extras leaping in the air and flipping through 180 degrees as the feeble explosions go off behind them, very reminiscent of the two stuntmen employed on Space Mutiny.

The reasonable make-up is by Robin Slater (Severed Ties, Love Bites, the 1989 Masque of the Red Death) - the painted video sleeve tries to make it look like there are zombies in the movie but there aren’t. Cinematographer Stephen Ashley Blake also photographed the far more entertaining Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. The anonymous GIs include among their number Troy Fromin (Class of Nuke ‘Em High II and III) and none other than Joe Lara, a couple of years before he first donned the loin-cloth in Tarzan in Manhattan.

Writer/director David A Prior is a self-taught Alabama-based film-maker with nearly 30 feature films - almost all of which have two word titles - to his credit, including Death Chase, Future Force, Raw Nerve, Mutant Species and Codename: Silencer (aka Body Count). The original story for this is credited to Prior, his brother Ted (who served as art director) and casting director William Zipp

When it comes to Vietnam War/supernatural horror crossgenre pics, give me House any time.

MJS rating: D+

Nightmare Street

Director: Colin Bucksey
Writers: Dan Witt, Rama Laurie Stagner
Producer: William Shippey
Cast: Sherilyn Fenn, Thomas Gibson, Steve Harris, Rena Sofer
Year of release: 1998
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK TV screening

From an interesting premise, this American TV movie completely fails to develop, and ultimately wastes both its star and director. Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks, The Wraith) is Joanna Burke, a single mother who takes her six-year-old daughter to an event at the local park. Wandering off, the girl is nearly hit by a truck and, in saving her daughter, Burke is herself knocked down.

She comes to in a hospital, being called ‘Sarah Randolph’, with a sister she didn’t know she had. Her wallet has a driving license in her ‘new’ name and photos of a dead son instead of her daughter. She is somehow in a different reality where she is somebody else - shades of Quantum Leap, but with neither explanation nor exploration of the premise. Someone else lives in her house, and people she knew are now in different jobs with different names.

For some reason, her doctor (Dharma and Greg star Thomas Gibson, also in Eyes Wide Shut and Psycho Beach Party) comes to believe her - and they fall in love too, which is both clichéd and medically unethical. There are one or two nice touches - an acquaintance who passes her on an escalator recognises her and calls her by her ‘old’ name, then fades away - but these are, like everything else, neither explained nor developed. The closest the movie gets to an interesting plot thread is Burke’s growing realisation that in this reality her son’s death was not an accident but murder - and she was the killer. But like everything else in Nightmare Street, nothing is made of this.

Eventually she goes back to the park, where the crucial event has not yet taken place; it’s not explained whether she has travelled back in time too, or whether the event happens a few days later in this reality. Knocked down again (careless but convenient) she comes to as herself.

Nightmare Street is all street and no nightmare. There is no attempt to explore the alternative, rational-but-paranoid angle - that this is some massive set-up for some reason. Burke simply accepts, once she is over the initial shock, that she is somebody else. The script, based on a book by Margaret Tabor, has no depth whatsoever and the film plays more like a daytime soap opera than an SF/fantasy idea. British director Bucksey (Bergerac, Sliders, Space Island One, Miami Vice) does what he can with the material, but it’s precious little. Ultimately this is a bland, dull, disappointing movie, which is a shame because the central concept has a lot of promise.

Cinematographer Jan Kiesser previously shot Fright Night and The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space. Writers Witt and Stagner were respectively responsible for a Benji the dog film and a biopic of mother-and-daughter country stars the Judds. Special effects, such as they are in a not exactly effects-heavy film, are credited to Tony Lazarowich (Elf, Catwoman, Romeo Must Die, Sanctimony).

MJS rating: D+

MindFlesh

Director: Robert Pratten
Writer: Robert Pratten
Producer: Robert Pratten
Cast: Peter Bramhill, Carole Derrien, Christopher Fairbank
Country: UK
Year of release: 2008
Reviewed from: screener disc
Website: www.mind-flesh.com

Robert Pratten’s second feature arrives five years after his impressive debut London Voodoo (I received a screener of this in November 2007 but it has a 2008 copyright date). MindFlesh is a more complicated and esoteric film that its predecessor; it is billed as a ‘Cronenberg-style horror thriller’ and it certainly falls into the ‘body-horror’ subgenre with which the Canadian director is most closely associated.

But this is a British film, about a London cab-driver named Chris (whose license, in an irrelevant but fun touch, is due to expire on Halloween). Driving around London late at night, Chris (Peter Bramhill: LovecraCked! The Movie) has frequently seen a mysterious woman - the statuesque Carole Derrien (Nature Morte) - by the side of the road and has in fact become slightly obsessed with finding out who she is, to the extent of keeping a log book of ‘sightings’ and plotting them on a map on his wall.

Among his associates are another cab driver who suspects his girlfriend is cheating on him, an aggressive bloke who likes to hang out at lapdancing clubs, and Chris’ ex, a conceptual artist with whom he remains on friendly terms. Over the course of the film, Chris’ relationship with the woman develops in intriguing and frankly disturbing ways. He starts seeing her in his flat and they actually begin a relationship, although she still has a tendency to not be there when he turns round. Gradually, she becomes not only more permanently corporeal but also the dominant sexual partner.

However Chris has also been seeing something distinctly less attractive than the shapely form of Ms Derrien - a grotesque monster which we never see clearly (although you can see a maquette and the suit under construction in photos on this page). This is a being from another dimension (I think) and its message to Chris is that he must face his hidden fears otherwise all his friends will die.

Now this is where the film lost me. The creature is clearly presenting Chris with a warning of danger, not a threat of violence, but I couldn’t understand why these people would die if Chris didn’t uncover his repressed childhood trauma. Nor, for that matter, could I determine the connection - if any - between the monster and the lady. I can only assume that she is also from another dimension but whether she is working with or against the monster, that passed me by.

MindFlesh is based on a novel, White Light by William Scheinman, and on the printed page there would be much more room to explore what was going on. Conflating that into an hour and a half, much of which is tautly edited scenes with little dialogue, leaves the viewer admiring the style, the atmosphere, the imagery - but confused about the actual plot. There must be some reason why Chris has to face his trauma, some reason why this is important to the creature and some reason why his friends will die if he doesn’t, but it all comes across as an arbitrary McGuffin and in a film like this (bearing in mind also Rob’s excellent first movie) I just can’t believe that it’s arbitrary, yet I can’t discern the rationale.

Although a plot such as this might seem ripe for a Final Destination-style race against time with characters meeting gruesome ends, in fact there’s very little death in MindFlesh. Chris, who has been having flashbacks to his childhood and his relationship with his mother, does eventually uncover and face the traumatic memory which he has kept hidden and even in today’s cynical world it’s a shocking one. But how does that set things right in this dimension and wherever the monster and/or woman come from?

Christopher Fairbank (Moxy from Auf Wiedersehen Pet, who was also in Alien3, The Fifth Element and The Bunker) turns up as an author/professor who has some idea what’s going on and wants Chris to keep away from him, but he doesn’t impart this crucial information to the audience, leaving us aware that something bad is happening but unsure what or why.

Maybe it’s just coincidence or perhaps Carole Derrien picks films like this deliberately, but Mindflesh confused me as much as Nature Morte did, and is certainly as stylish as that film although thematically there’s no connection between the two. As with Paul Burrows’ thriller, I just let the cinematic style wash over me and didn’t worry about figuring out the substance of the actual plot. What else could I do?

For the record, here’s the mini-synopsis from the film’s website: “Chris Jackson is a gateway for obsessions to pass from the mind to the physical world. To close the gateway he must face his childhood trauma before everyone he knows is killed by extraterrestrials.” As you can see, that doesn’t help much. Here’s the one on the promo postcard that accompanied the screener: “Mindflesh tells the story of a taxi driver, Chris Jackson, whose obsession with a supernatural goddess becomes real. Add cruel extraterrestrials that punish Jackson for pulling the goddess from a parallel dimension and Mindflesh establishes what could be a very successful franchise in the tradition of David Cronenberg.”

The references to the Canadian ‘body horror’ director are valid, incidentally, as Chris is also noticing strange fleshy protuberances on his stomach which come and go, but these are not explained any more than the woman, the monster or any of the rest of the weird things which happen to the luckless cabbie.

Mindflesh is a very different film to London Voodoo without being a significant departure for Rob Pratten, if that makes sense. If you enjoyed the first film for its story and characters, Mindflesh may disappoint you. If you enjoyed the presentation, the photography, the music, the mise-en-scene, the direction, the design - well, then you may enjoy Mindflesh just as much or even more.

Also in the cast are Roy Borrett (London Voodoo), Cordelia Bugeja (The Pool), Lucy Liemann (The Bourne Ultimatum), Steve O’Halloran (London Voodoo) and Charlotte Milchard inside the monster suit. Crew returning from Rob’s first feature include cinematographer Patrick Jackson, editor Matt Jessee, composer Arban Severin and sound recordist Ryan Chandler (who also does Top Gear!). First AD Maxwell Smith also worked on little-seen British sort-of-werewolf feature Lycanthropy while production designer Daneeta Loretta Saft made the Making of London Voodoo featurette. Sangeet Prabhaker designed and built the impressive monster suit; his previous work is mostly in the theatre and includes prosthetics for the stage versions of Little Britain, The Mighty Boosh and Lazytown!

This is not an easy film to watch so if you’re looking for a fun monster flick, look elsewhere. But if you want a movie that will make you think, make you wonder and make you argue with other people over what it’s actually about, try Mindflesh.

MJS rating: B+

review originally posted 9th December 2007

Magic Island

Director: Sam Irvin
Writers: Brent Friedman, Neil Ruttenberg
Producer: Debra Dion
Cast: Zachary Ty Bryan, Andrew Divoff, French Stewart
Country: USA
Year of release: 1995
Reviewed from: UK VHS

Ladies and gentlemen, the Dick Van Dyke Award for the Most Preposterous British Accent in a Motion Picture goes to… the entire cast of Magic Island, a mid-1990s children’s fantasy from Charlie Band’s Moonbeam Entertainment.

Throughout the history of the talkies, there have been many hilarious attempts by otherwise competent American actors to replicate a British accent, any sort of British accent: from DVD himself and his notorious catchphrase “Cor Blimey, Maori Poor Pens!” to Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as Victorian England’s only Californian surfer dude. And never let us forget the monstrously bad Mary Reilly in which Julia Roberts’ accent took a walking tour of the entire United Kingdom, something which she actually acknowledged in media interviews but tried to excuse by saying, “We wanted to give the impression that Mary had lived and worked all over Britain and picked up lots of different accents.” (I’m not making this up. I saw her on TV saying this with a straight face, which I suppose shows that she is a good actress after all.)

Anyway…

Thirteen-year-old Zachary Ty Bryan from Home Improvement plays Jack Carlisle, the sort of clean-cut blond American 13-year-old traditionally played by child stars from Home Improvement. As an American playing an American, his accent is okay and the same goes for his obligatory single parent (Schae Harrison: The Bold and the Beautiful) who is too busy with work to notice that her son has no friends. When Jack’s mum skips dinner for a business meeting he is left with their Haitian cook, Lucretia (Ja’net Dubois, mostly a TV actress although she can be spotted as ‘Momma Bosley’ in the second Charlie’s Angels movie), whose accent sounds okay although I can’t guarantee authenticity as I have never met anyone from Haiti. Still, West Indian with a hint of French seems reasonable.

Lucretia gives Jack a book about pirates into which he falls, plummeting out of the sky, together with his shoulder bag. Boy and bag land on Blackbeard’s head, knocking the legendary pirate to the sand and thereby saving his opponent in a scene which will have you thinking, “That’s a point – I must watch Time Bandits again.”

Blackbeard is played as a sort of Happy Shopper pantomime villain by the Wishmaster himself, Andrew Divoff. He has a useless, foppish, heavily bewigged first mate named Saperstein (Third Rock from the Sun’s French Stewart, whose other DTV claim to fame is the title role in Inspector Gadget 2) and two dense comedy pirates, Duckbone (Abraham Benrubi: George of the Jungle, I Woke Up Early the Day I Died and later a regular on ER) and Jolly Bob (Sean O’Kane - who is actually Scottish!). Facing off against them are a trio of ‘buccaneers’ – so they’re like pirates, but good – led by Morgan (Edward Kerr: seaQuest DSV) who is the King of England’s nephew. (There is a scene later on where Morgan bemoans how his father never had time for him, thus mirroring Jack’s situation. Except, well, Morgan’s father was brother to the divinely appointed ruler of a globe-spanning empire, providing  close support to a blood relative who was continually embroiled in domestic and foreign politics and usually fighting at least one war, while Jack’s mum needs to get the Atkinson account faxed by Thursday. It’s not really the same thing.) Morgan is confident if not forceful but makes up for this with his choice of companions, a fierce-some wench named Gwyn (Lee Armstrong: Leprechaun 3) who is “the finest swordswoman in all of Ireland” and a black bodybuilder named Dumas (Oscar Dillon, who was one of Harvey Dent’s henchmen in Batman Forever that same year).

Between them, the pirates and the buccaneers are responsible for, I would say, seven of the ten oddest accents ever heard in a feature film. Gwyn’s is possibly the worst which is odd because: aren’t there some Irish people actually living in America? With the exception of Dumas, who is meant to be West Indian (we eventually find out that he is an ancestor of Lucretia and one of his relatives wrote Jack’s book), the actors produce accents which can only be described as ‘Britoid’. That is: they are clearly meant to be British accents, and they sound more British than, say, French or Japanese, but that doesn’t mean that they even remotely resemble any of the many accents spoken throughout the British Isles. They’re not Southern English, Scots or Irish although there are hints of those accents so presumably those are stronger influences than, say Brummie, Geordie or Welsh. (Dumas has a vague accent which seems uncertain whether it should be West Indian, American or Britoid. By comparison with the others it’s quite reasonable.)

You just wonder whether any of these actors has ever actually met anyone from the UK. Or seen a British film or TV show. Perhaps American actors train for British roles by watching Mary Poppins, Mary Reilly and re-runs of Frasier (famous for managing to extract a hilarious Britoid accent from an actress who was actually British).

Anyway, the pirates and the buccaneers are both searching for a treasure on Magic Island, a storybook isle populated by ghosts and monsters. Morgan and friends consider ‘Mad Jack’ to be a sorcerer and he impresses them over the course of the film with modern day miracles such as a Walkman and a cigarette lighter (though there is never any suggestion that he is enough of a rebel to actually smoke – it’s just a plot device). Climbing a pizza tree for food, Jack encounters a ‘sandshark’ – basically a big lizard which burrows through loose sand like a sort of low-rent Tremors graboid, except this actually has a shark fin on its back. Jack defeats it using bubblegum. He subsequently encounters Lily, a young mermaid who saves him from drowning and thereby is magically granted legs for one day. Which is convenient.

Played by 13-year-old Sally-Ann Friend, Lily is a real problem because she spends the whole film wearing a sea-shell bra and a loose, flimsy skirt. There is a romantic subplot between her and Jack which ends with a couple of chaste kisses which is just creepy. I mean, bless, young love and all that, but I think that I speak for adult heterosexual males everywhere when I say that watching skinny, scantily clad 13-year-old girls makes us uncomfortable. Unless they’re playing a coquettish Lolita in some serious drama, 13-year-old actresses should not really be strolling along beaches - wearing what is, effectively, a small bikini – while making goo-goo eyes. (Lily’s accent, while not Britoid – god I love that word now! – is nevertheless very, very odd. Fair enough, it’s not clear what accent a mermaid would actually have, but why not just stick with the actress’ natural accent? Or maybe that is her natural accent.)

Among the other strangeness encountered on the island, as the buccaneers and pirates make their separate ways towards the treasure, occasionally encountering each other, is a trio of carved talking heads – one silly, one angry, one female – voiced by no less a trio than Martine Beswick (Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Cyclone), Isaac Hayes (Shaft, South Park) and Saturday Night Live alumnus Terry Sweeney. Eventually a stone door is located by both parties, which Jack successfully opens by lifting the toenail of a large stone statue sat astride the entrance. This then comes to life – and so, in turn, does the film.

Animated by Joel Fletcher, who also worked on Dragonworld and now does CG animation on movies like King Kong and X-Men III, this 30-foot high statue is the undoubted highlight of the film. It’s very Harryhausen-esque, almost like Talos’ little cousin, and is not only well-animated but very well matted into the action as well, actually interacting with the background and the characters. Without wishing to belittle Magic Island – which is a fun kids film that TF Simpson thought was great – the sequence with the stone giant is like something from a different, better film. It has certainly notched this movie’s MJS rating up a couple of points.

After Jack defeats the stone guardian, the opposing teams meet up again inside the chamber where a vast amount of treasure is stored. This was hoarded by a warlock named Carabas who is in fact still there as a golden face on the wall – which is actually director Sam Irvin sticking his head through a hole in the set. Blackbeard suffers for his greed by being turned into living gold, unable to move as the walls start to grind towards each other, threatening to crush pirate and buccaneer alike. Everyone escapes but, alas, Lily’s legs have vanished and she’s back to being half-fish, so Jack pulls her out on a rug, just before the walls finally close.

Having returned Lily to the sea, and with Saperstein, Duckbone and Jolly Bob eager to be Morgan’s new crew, Jack takes his leave back into the book – and wakes up in his bed. His mother has skipped the meeting and come home to be with her son, which is a happy ending although it’s not exactly narratively satisfying because Mrs Carlisle’s change of heart is unexplained and unrelated to her son’s magical adventure. Normally you would expect the character who has the adventure to learn something about themselves and alter their attitudes or habits, but here it’s the other half of the faulty relationship who mends her ways, for no real reason.

Lily gave Jack a seashell to remember her by, which had all the hallmarks of being the item that would make him think ‘Was it really a dream?’ but in fact that is not mentioned in the epilogue whereas Jack’s torn and wet jeans are clear evidence that what he went through was real.

With its comedy villains, harmless swashbuckling and spooky encounters, Magic Island is good, solid fun for undemanding kids. I can’t see it going down so well with youngsters of Jack’s age but that’s okay. You should always make your child protagonist older than your child audience because kids aspire to be older. For adults, the highlights are the stop-motion stone giant and, of course, the hilarious bad accents. Irvin’s direction is fine, the sandshark and other special effects are okay and the Mexican locales are suitably photogenic and magical.

Zachary Ty Bryan, who was halfway through his eight-year Home Improvement run, had starred in Bigfoot: The Unforgettable Encounter the previous year (some sort of contractual thing I guess as his Home Improvement co-star Taran Noah Smith went on to make Little Bigfoot 2 a couple of years after this). Bryan later had roles in The Rage: Carrie 2, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and episodes of The Outer Limits, Buffy and Smallville. Andrew Divoff’s massive genre CV includes Neon Maniacs, Graveyard Shift, Oblivion 1 and 2, Xtro 3, Nemesis 4, Brian Yuzna’s godawful Faust and a 2002 version of Dracula starring Patrick Bergin.

Director Sam Irvin was a protégé of Brian de Palma and has directed a wide range of features, ads, video etc; from our point of view the interesting ones are Oblivion I and II, Elvira’s Haunted Hills and a Making Of featurette for Gods and Monsters (a film on which he was co-executive producer). He also produced Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy. Neil Ruttenberg wrote Deathstalker II and also Prehysteria 3 on which he collaborated with Brent Friedman. Friedman’s other credits include Syngenor, American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, Prehysteria 2, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and episodes of three series on which he got a producer credit: Dark Skies, Enterprise and the 2002 version of The Twilight Zone.

Cinematographer James Lawrence Spencer lit a whole bunch of Band films in the 1990s, including kidflicks such as Prehysteria 2 and 3 and more adult fare: Beach Babes from Beyond, Dreammaster: The Erotic Invader, Blonde Heaven and Beach Babes 2. He DP-ed second unit on Castle Freak and Lurking Fear, and as a grip/gaffer/sparks he has worked on the likes of Creepozoids, Assault of the Killer Bimbos, Critters III and IV, Puppet Master II, Trancers II, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Amityville Dollhouse and The Dead Hate the Living.

MJS rating: B

review originally posted 12th October 2006

Last Lives

Director: Worth Keeter
Writer: Dan Duling
Producer: Steve Beswick
Cast: C Thomas Howell, Jennifer Rubin, Billy Wirth
Country: USA/Germany
Year of release: 1997
Reviewed from: UK rental VHS

I picked this up in a charity shop and fully expected it to be shite. As it turns out, while Last Lives is far from what you could call ‘good’, by the end I was actually quite interested and starting to enjoy it.

Judge Reinhold (Gremlins, Big Monster on Campus) plays a bonkers scientist on a parallel Earth who thinks he has found a way of transporting people between the two worlds - his and ours. Well, I say parallel (and so does he) but his world is a global totalitarian regime with technology impossibly far advanced from ours, so there’s not that much parallel about it. Reinhold’s character, incidentally, is named Merkhan which unfortunately sounds enough like ‘merkin’ to provide some juvenile humour.

For his test subject, the government provides him with a convicted rebel, Malakai (Billy Wirth: Body Snatchers, Space Marines) who wears his hair long and has two expressions: slightly moody and very moody (well, three if you include ‘blank’). He is suitable because he is obsessed with his deceased true love - another rebel who was killed when they were captured - and so has some sort of psychic link to her equivalent in our world. This turns out to be a woman named Adrienne, played by Jennifer Rubin (Screamers, Little Witches, Sanctimony) in a hairstyle that makes her look so much like Big Brother presenter Davina McCall that it is difficult to think of anything else when she is on screen.

After an initial brief foray into Adrienne’s bedroom, Malakai breaks out of the massively spacious (but entirely unfurnished) high-tech cell which he shares with two psychopaths, Khafar and Benza (Robert Pentz - Cyborg - and David Lenthall - The Rage: Carrie 2 - who were both in The Stepford Husbands). These two never say a word but grin whenever they kill people (which they do, a lot). They can be distinguished because one of them is skinny with an automatic rifle and one is fat with a grenade launcher, but I’m not sure which is which.

Malakai and his two goons knock Merkhan unconscious and zap themselves from his massively spacious (but almost entirely unfurnished) laboratory to our world ... arriving outside a church just as Adrienne is inside getting married to Aaron (straight to video king C Thomas Howell). They knock out the congregation with some sort of gas bombs, stab the best man with a bloody great knife, knock out Adrienne with a sort of gas-mask thing and then shoot Aaron. Actually, the skinny psycho blasts away with his M16 (weapons technology being one of the few things in his world that is parallel, apparently), knocking chunks out of the pews behind which Aaron is ducking - and this is not a big church, so the range is about ten or twelve feet tops - without hitting him until he stands up.*

Grabbing the unconscious Adrienne, the three bad guys make their escape in the white stretch limo parked outside, just as Merkhan zaps himself into existence on the church steps.

Before he left his world, Merkhan took from an alcove a large cylinder with ten things wrapped round it that look like futuristic wristwatches. He puts one of these on Aaron and, hey presto, his wounds disappear and he returns to life. Merkhan tries the same trick with the best man but to no avail, apparently because he has been dead slightly longer. In the background, we see someone trying to stand up but it’s not clear whether this is the congregation coming round or just an extra who wasn’t paying attention. (We do later hear on a police radio that, “Everyone in the congregation is wandering around like zombies.” Which of course isn’t grammatically correct, but what are you going to do?)

Merkhan and Aaron set off in pursuit of the limo, using some sort of telepathy to determine its route, I think. Malakai is certainly a telepath, absorbing a knowledge of cars and driving skills by touching Adrienne’s temples. Anyway, Merkhan explains what these wristwatch doodads or ‘lifebands’ actually do, and this, I felt, was worth transcribing exactly because it is some of the most ring-a-ding technobabble I have ever come across:

“Each lifeband is a muto-genetic cloning stimulator. I designed them to be activated by the biomechanisms of dying. Within a short span of time, depending on the severity of the damage, the body can be fully reanimated.”

Right...

The limo stops at ‘Stan’s Gas and Food’ to refill, where Khafar and Benza decided to kill everyone inside the diner for no apparent reason. Before leaving, they fire a grenade at Aaron’s rapidly approaching car which explodes but remains in one piece, smashing into the petrol pumps, which also explode, although not as much as one would expect. Incredibly, Aaron and Merkhan both survive intact although they are critically injured; Merkhan gives Aaron the remaining lifebands so that he can track down Malakai (who apparently presents a terrible threat because he will “kill everybody” though it’s not clear how or why).

There were originally ten lifebands but two were damaged (apparently) and Aaron has already used one. He slips the other seven onto his arm just before expiring, but his injuries then disappear (in quite a nice morphing shot) and he is whole again. His next problem is the cops who turn up, led by Lieutenant Parks (JC Quinn: Maximum Overdrive, CHUD, The Prophecy). When they arrive, Aaron has changed into the gas attendant’s overalls for no obvious reason (and they are suspiciously devoid of bloodstains). He tries to escape in a police car but is shot through the head (“Nice warning shot,” says Parks, drily) but one of the lifebands activates and brings him back to life, enabling him to drive off as the cops look on in amazement. (Thinking about it, he’s fortunate that all seven lifebands weren’t “activated by the biomechanisms of dying” as that would have blown his remaining lifelines.) The middle act of the film is then a long car chase between the limo and the police car.

What we have here is the idea of limited immortality: Aaron can cheat death six more times. He has seven lives and he has just used up his first one. Unfortunately, this means that not only do we know that any potentially fatal threat won’t harm him, but we are actually counting down the lives as they are used up and will know when the crunch comes. There is also no real link between the idea of an escaped convict from a parallel world and a wristband which can restore the dead to life. This feels like two movies which have been merged into one.

Malakai, his goons and his hostage hole up in a large, deserted hunting lodge, to where Aaron tracks them. This final act perks up a lot (apart from a short, tasteful sex scene which starts as Adrienne dreaming about Aaron before jolting into reality when she wakes to find Malakai on top of her). Once Aaron is sure that he can’t be killed, he despatches the two goons by luring them, one at a time, into fatal situations then committing suicide. One of these tactics involves blowing himself up and there is a neat but loopy shot of a hand and arm melding back together. It’s loopy because we subsequently see that although his arm may have been blown to bits, his sleeve remained intact. And you have to wonder at his luck that the other arm, the one with the lifebands on it, did not become similarly detached and cause all the devices to fall off.

The ending, as cops surround the lodge, is not terribly surprising although it does contradict what it says in the video sleeve. There is a short epilogue, set a few years later, which presents a nice twist in a surprisingly clever way.

Despite my initial misgivings, this worked out okay. The first act is bollocks, admittedly, and the middle act car chase is singularly uninvolving, but the third act, as Aaron turns his defence mechanism into an offensive weapon, is not bad at all. None of the acting is spectacularly good but none is spectacularly bad, possibly because none of the characters are particularly deep or complex. The script makes sense within its own parameters and doesn’t try to cheat, although there is some decidedly dodgy dialogue. I particularly enjoyed Malakai’s description of his world as: “A world where war was constant, life was torture and dreaming was a punishable offence.” That’ll be Blair’s Britain then (little bit of politics...). And Parks has a corker of a line, even if it is meant ironically: “Don’t worry about any crazed killers speeding away from here. We’ll deal with them at the right time.”

Also in the cast are Richard Fullerton (who was also in The Stepford Husbands) as Merkhan’s boss, the extraordinary-looking John Bennes (The Night Flier, Children of the Corn II, Weekend at Bernie’s) as the minister at the wedding and writer Dan Duling (who has written plenty of other scripts but has no other produced credits) in a cameo as a cop.

Worth Keeter kicked off his directorial career with the straightforwardly titled lycanthrope picture Wolfman in 1979, taking in such stereoscopic classics as Tales from the Third Dimension, Rotweiler: Dogs of Hell and Hot Heir before settling down to a career making episode of Power Rangers and other less well-known Japan-derived Saban product (VR Troopers, Beetleborgs, Masked Rider).

Producer Steve Beswick was also responsible for Alien Express and Tim Bond’s The Shadow Men. The Inaccurate Movie Database lists John Kramer as executive producer which would be an unusual career move if it actually was the Canadian editor of that name. In fact the two executive producers of this Promark/Videal GmbH movie are Jon Kramer (The Shadow Men, Metamorphosis) and Conny Lernhag. Cinematographer Kent Wakeford also lit China O’Brien I and II and Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade while composer Greg Edmondson contributed music to Firefly, Quantum Leap and, erm, Cop Rock.

MJS rating: B-
review originally posted 11th December 2005

* LJ Brooks of Kingston, Ontario informs me that this not in fact an M16 but "a gazed-up copy of a Sterling-Patchett 9 mm Submachine gun".

Artie Saves the Hood

Director: Ed Radmanich III
Writer: Ed Radmanich III
Producer: Ed Radmanich III
Cast: Ed Radmanich III, Jason Brown, Kai Kekai
Country: USA
Year of release: 2005
Reviewed from: US DVD

Artie Saves the Hood may be not much over 35 minutes long. It may have been shot on video in people’s houses and gardens. It may be written, directed, produced and edited by the star and it may have a cast and crew made up of his friends. But none of that matters because Artie Saves the Hood succeeds in what it sets out to do.

This is a very, very funny film.

Comedy is often a very difficult thing for ultra-low budget indie film-makers to pull off. A lot of it is in the timing so you need very good editing. You also need - and this is crucial - a funny script, plus people who can act and production values which won’t obscure or detract from the gags. Action movies and horror movies have their own problems, but comedy is probably the toughest genre to work in at the bottom rung of the film-making ladder. Mind you, it’s pretty difficult at the top of the ladder too and I’m sure we could all name one or two big budget ‘sci-fi comedies’ which fell completely flat.

So I’m delighted to announce that Ed Radmanich III (as the phrase has it: crazy name, crazy guy) has put together a thoroughly entertaining little film.

Radmanich stars as Artie Guy, a pretty relaxed sort of fellow whose main hobby is hanging around with his mates, video game addict Mason (assistant director Jason Brown) and porn addict Fry (fight choreographer Kai Kekai). Occasionally he seeks wisdom from his other friend Manny (art designer Manny Marmolejus) or takes time to mock his Hispanic neighbour (Jon Maraspini).

Artie’s problems start when he finds something which looks like a bar of green soap stuck in a hole in his wall. When it gets wet, this has the power to teleport him. The ‘green soap’ originated in another dimension where black-clad, masked stormtrooper types are chasing the last two rebels (or whatever they are). They kill the guy (Alex Mackey) but the girl (Victoria Walters) escapes into our dimension, armed with a bar of ‘blue soap’ which can blast small fireballs. The stormtroopers follow the girl to our world but they haven’t reckoned with the laid-back but well-armed Artie and his friends.

A lot of the film is Artie and Mason blasting casually away at the bad guys, who apparently - despite being thoroughly evil - aren’t familiar with the concept of guns. A lot of the comedy comes from the characters’ casual acceptance of these events. Artie and Mason are to some extent descended from Bill and Ted by way of Jay and Silent Bob - a couple of slackers who end up saving the world despite themselves. They're the American equivalent of the three boreed English guys in Life's a Blast. This is the sort of film where one character can casually describe the problem as “ninja Nazi clonebots from another dimension” and his friend will understand - and accept - this without question.

While the acting is, shall we say, variable, the limited emotional range displayed by the characters works to cover up that slight deficiency. And there is some great dialogue here, my favourite exchange coming after Artie has blasted a pasty-faced Manny who was trying to gnaw on him. “He was a zombie.” “Really?” “Hope so.”

Radmanich’s direction is faultless, with each scene and each shot as taut and tight as necessary. The special effects by Phil Mohr (who is also credited with music and cinematography) are great, with people appearing and disappearing in a shaky, sparkly effect that would have been the preserve of the big studios not so many years ago. But what is really impressive is the army of clonebots because, a little way into the movie, something dawned on me.

These guys have only got two of these costumes.

Tight editing and creative camerawork - and a few shots with multiple green-screen effects - have created dozens and dozens of these black-costumed grunts. But, aforesaid effects shots aside, there are never more than two on screen at any one time. However, as I said, it took me a while to notice. And after I noticed, it didn’t matter. It takes real skill as a director and editor to overcome a limitation like that.

Another brave move is having all the bad guys - and the girl they’re chasing - speaking interdimensional gibberish. This is subtitled in the early scenes but after a while subtitles become superfluous and the untranslated alien tongue just adds to the humour.

But what is most commendable about this film is its brevity. A lot of people would have been tempted to pad it out to about twice this length and sell it as a feature, but Radmanich clearly knows that too many short features still manage to outstay their welcome. Truth be told, there probably is enough scope in this story and these characters to fashion a feature but kudos to the writer-director for making the choice to go for a half-hour short.

The home-produced DVD includes a trailer and a two-minute short film called Bad Night which is basically two guys fighting in a living room. It’s a well-shot, well-lit, well-choreographed fight - but that’s all it seems to be. There may be an inside joke there that I’m missing. There are also three entertaining animations about ‘Artie Guy and Jay’ which are seen briefly on some TVs in the main film. Crudely animated using some process that seems to fall midway between Flash and Etch-a-Sketch, these betray an obvious South Park influence. And damn me if they aren’t almost as funny as the main film. The longest one is an impressive nine minutes and maintains its high comedy level the whole way through.

I can honestly say that Artie Saves the Hood kept me laughing for a full 35 minutes without the aid of alcohol. It looks like it was made for about $2.49, certainly, but it has been made with skill, with talent, with enthusiasm and, most importantly, with an understanding that even low-budget films have to please an audience. Two thumbs up (or whatever it is those American fellows say) for Ed Radmanich III and his terrific little film. (Artie and Mason returned a few years later in Coldspot.)

MJS rating: A-
Review originally posted 11th October 2005