The Cheap-Arse Film Review #18- "THE MIND SNATCHERS."

NAME: THE MIND SNATCHERS

RATED: 15

WRITTEN BY: RON WHYTE, BASED ON THE PLAY "THE HAPPINESS CAGE," BY DENNIS REARDON

DIRECTED BY: BERNARD GIRARD

STARRING: CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, RONNY COX, JOSS ACKLAND

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND

PRICE: MY JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY

It's snowing where I am right now. Quite alot. And my people, that being the British, are doing what they do best, which is losing their fucking minds totally and without hesitation. All forms of transport have been rendered useless. Express any desire to go outside and you'll be looked at like you just said you think it sounds like fun to run through the middle of a gun fight. People will open fridges hysterically stuffed with food and exclaim fearfully that there's nothing to eat (hello, Mum). It's the second Ice Age (which lacked the heart of the first one, but at least Scrat was still funny), a nuclear winter, The Lord himself has grown bored with humanity as an experiment and decided to kill us all by sufficating us with his dandraft.

With things currently being the way they are, I really wish I had a snow-based movie to cover this week. The only one I had lying around was "White Christmas," which I was foolish enough to cover over Christmas, and as was discussed at the time, didn't really feature that much snow (or Christmas). So instead I've chosen this week to completely go back on my word. Yes, this is the same 4-in-1 DVD that had "Leprechaun in the Hood" on it, the one I said I was going to judge based on the quality of one movie and one movie only. And yet here I am, reviewing another one. Well, obviously I'm a lying bastard and you can never trust anything I say or do ever again. I was actually going to take a bunch of pictures of me using the snow to get free advertising, including one of this place's initials seemingly spelt out in the snow with piss. Unfortunately I didn't have the guts to really get my old chap out in public, so I tried to do it with any fluid I had lyng around that was vaguely urine-coloured, but they all proved useless, so I had to scrap the idea. So not only am I a liar, but in my inability to successfully lie I've discovered I'm also a failure and a coward, too. That's good to know.

See, "Vampire Killer Barbys?" That's how you go all meta out of nowhere!

Actually, I didn't set out to be a liar with this one. I really do throw away the movies I pan. A friend recently asked me if he could borrow one I'd rubbished, saying I'd made it sound like a laugh, and I had to tell him it was probably at the tip by now. And this one really was in the bin, I swear. However, I was then informed by one of my readers (hello, Dr. Ashens. Please visit www.ashens.com to watch videos of a very funny man from Norwich review electronic crap) that the Christopher Walken movie on here was originally released in 1972 under the title, "The Happiness Cage," which caught my interest enough to make me fish it out of the bin (not even the little one I have in my bedroom, the main house one at this point), wipe it off, and put it back in my "To Watch" box.

Christopher Walken these days exists in an area of fame that's difficult to describe. I don't want to call it post-modern, because people who call things post-modern need to be headbutted. I don't even want to say parody, because that's wrong. If you look hard enough on The Internet, you can find a painting of him building Optimus Prime in what looks like a shed. That's not parodying anything, that's just amazing. I suppose the best way of putting it is, he's in the same place now William Shatner is, and has been for some time, that being his actual, real life persona is percieved to be as much of a character as the people he plays on-screen. His facial expressions, the way he dresses, and especially his voice. Everybody thinks they can do a Christopher Walken impression, just the same as everybody thinks they can to a William Shatner impression. The sad downside of this kind of fame is, it can kill an actor's career stone dead, because it makes it almost impossible to buy them in a role. You never fall in love with the characters they're playing, because no matter how hard they try, all you see is Christopher Walken pretending to be somebody else. In some cases it doesn't matter, like with Shatner, because he seems truly at piece with how his career has turned out, and is more than comfortable playing himself in any vehicle that comes his way. It's a bit of a shame with Walken, though, because with all due respect to Captain Kirk, he's a better actor than Shatner has ever been. Take his performance as Leonardo DiCaprio's father in "Catch Me If You Can," where he displays a range of emotions that most of his current fans are unfortunately unaware he's capable of. It's a genuinely moving turn, and when watching him there you can't help but shake the feeling that he probably deserves to be in more Steven Spielberg movies.

The movie begins with a monkey, which straight away is a mark in it's favour. Sadly it's a monkey in a cage with a bandage around it's head, but any monkey is better than no monkey. Christopher Walken is looking at it in a sort of passive manner (as you would), then the image freezes and we get the credits, as creepy-yet-strangely-upbeat music plays over them. As openings go, it's oddly unnerving, as you're straight away asking questions. "Who's that?" "Where are we?" "Why does that monkey seem to be suffering from severe head trauma?" All very mysterious, all very much what you'd expect from a movie called "The Mind Snatchers." Or even one called "The Hapiness Cage" really, because, well, there's a cage. The movie then begins with Walken's character, Private James Reese, entering a house party. Seeing Walken this young is quite an eye-opening experience, because you realise what a striking looking man he was. I mean, he still is now, don't get me wrong, but in his youth there were few men who looked the way he did. They say that some people look like animals (I'm told I look like a Mole when I remove my glasses, which is second only to my total blindness in reasons why I don't take off my glasses), well, Walken looks, to my eyes at least, like a lizard. His face is all angles, his mouth is wide and he has these tiny piercing eyes. He looks a bit like Thom Yorke from Radiohead's more attractive younger brother here. And I mean much more attractive. "The brother that wasn't caught in the fire"-more attractive.

It turns out this party is being frown by an ex-girlfriend of his, who he finds in her bedroom talking to another man. You should see this fool, he's got long fluffy hair and is wearing a white-checked jacket and sunglasses inside. I hope he gets the snot knocked out of him. Sadly he doesn't, as Reese just throws the woman's present at her, angrily asks her if she forgot his invite as she asks him when he got out (of the army I'm presuming, although as this film goes on it becomes obvious she could have been refering to a great many things), and the proceeds to cause a scene, ask girl he claims is, "sitting there, pretending you don't know me," to dance with him, before either whispering into, licking or biting her ear. He then proclaims her in need of, "a severe tongue-lashing," which it goes without saying doesn't go down to well with her boyfriend, who at first seems like he's about to get in Reese's face, but then thinks better of it. probably a wise move all things considered, as it's established here that Reese isn't all the ticket, and pretty much hammered home when he catches the girl he'd just embarrassed telling is ex she should kick him out and tells her, "I don't care if you're a girl, I'll punch you right in the mouth." He then punches a wardrobe so hard the door comes off one of it's hinges and then...

... suddenly he's in bed with his ex? This actually happens quite alot throughout the movie, there's several abrupt, I suppose technically bad cuts, where you'll find yourself shunted from one scene into another that's tonally completely different, sometimes even following the same characters as we do here. I can't decide if this is a stylistic choice, as if the film is visually representing what it must be like to swing from one emotion to another, or if it's just a mistake made by people who didn't know what they were doing. I'd like to think it's the first one, but it's probably the second one. Whilst they're laying there together, she tells him his behaviour isn't normal (no shit), and that she wants to help him. Ah, the old cliche of women being with bad men because they think they can change them. I wonder if that was even much of a cliche back in the early seventies. They're about to start going at it, when there's a loud knock at the door and Reese finds himself being confronted by two soldiers, following up a claim that he'd attacked a woman tonight. Reese tries to get them to go away by telling them he's in bed with someone, to which one of the soldiers responds, "I don't care if you're in bed with a four-star General!" I bet he would care. They manhandle him, and when he gets to the base its revealed that Reese's arm was broken in the scuffle. He continues to be a smart-arse to the person trying to admit him, before signing and then being subjected to what seems to be a psychatric evaluation, where he claims that every night he stays up and prays that the sun will rise the next morning, and sees the fact that it does indeed rise as proof that he's right to do so. I have to say, as portrayals of complete nutjobs go, this is a fairy convincing one. Usually actors take the fact that they're playing somebody mentally unstable as an excuse to g into full-blown cartoon mode, but Walken plays Reese in a very unpredictable, unnerving and occasionally humourous way, but it's funny in a manner you feel a bit uneasy laughing at, just like you would if you really were laughing at somebody like him.

We're then shown a room full of men sitting down listening to a recording of this conversation, as well as another between Reese and his ex when she comes to visit him, the reason for this being that they want to see if Dr. Fredrick would be interested in taking on Reese to use in is experiments, which he is, as it's noted that he's articulate and complex, but also shows signs of being a Sociopath and a Schizophrenic. Fredrick is played by Joss Ackerland, who some of you might remember as the dude with diplomatic immunity that Danny Glover shoots in the head at the end of "Lethal Weapon 2," although I very unfortunately recognised him instantly as Hans, Emilio Estevez's mentor from, "The Mighty Ducks." Now, he's a good actor, and I'm sure he gives a very good performance in this film, but I can't say I really noticed, because I found myself distracted everytime he was on-screen by his hair. It's... absurd. There's no other way of describing it. Not so much the cut, but it's colour. Or as I should more accurately put it, colours, because most of it is typical old-man greyish-white, with the exception of the fringe, which is, I kid you not, bright orange. It has to be a wig. It just has to be.

So Reese, broken arm and all, finds hmself shipped to this huge mansion, where he finds he is one of only two other patients- Tommy, who lies in his bed groaning and covered in bandages until he finally kicks the bucket on the operating table, and Miles, a Sargent from The South who makes Reese look like a totally rational human being. He's played by Ronny Cox, who in many ways steals the show, because without getting too far ahead of myself, during the course of the film, Miles will say, do, and admit to having done some truly terrible things, and it's a testament to the actor playing him that he remains at the very least engaging throughout.

Reese soon begins to smell a rat when Miles automatically assumes that he's dying, because the people they bring here usually are, himself included, and all Reese has is a broken arm. His alarm is raised even further when he discovers that Tommy has a massive hole in his intestines, and for some reason has bandages covering his head. "This place is alot of laughs," Miles says, "and there's only one way out." Sounds like he's describing the plot to "Patch Adams" to me, but never mind. Reese then enters what seems to be his default mode, which is to attempt to annoy anyone and everyone, switching the TV on and off for no good reason. This is the beginning of the love/hate relationship between Miles and Reese, and it's quite fascinating to watch, due in part because they're alot of long scenes together to flesh it out, and also because both men seem to know their characters inside-out and never feel like they hit a false note. Every moodswing feels perfectly judge, as does the other person's reaction to it, as does the other person's reaction to their reaction.

Reese attempts to get some information from Fredrick about why he's there, only for the doctor to abruptly leave the room and Reese to claim that he doesn't have a good feeling about him, which upsets Miles as he clearly thinks he's great. Actually, the film's handling of Fredrick is really admirable, as it doesn't stoop to portraying him as an evil mad scientist. His methods and procedures are questionable, but he's still a decent man who who refuses to abuse his power, only performing his experiments on his patients when they give their full consent. How much stock he should be putting into the consent of people who clearly don't have a full grasp on their faculties is never addressed, and the film still feels the need to present us with a remorseless bad guy in the shape of The Major (Ralph Meeker), but it tries harder at complexity than alot of films today do, so I think it should still be applauded. Anyway, following the Fredrick leaving, there's another strange cut as we go from Miles laughing hysterically (and with little reason) at Reese for saying that he studied English at college, to Miles lying in bed reading a book using his overhead lamp. My old Media Studies teacher would have done his nut at a cut like that. Curiosity gets the better of Reese and he decides to explore his surroundings, until he finds a room full of monkeys in cages, all of whom have seemingly had things implanted into their heads. I could go on about how terrible the security at this place seems to be, especially since it seems like they have alot of things worth hiding, but I won't be too harsh because I like this scene, as the footage of the monkeys jumping around, some of them even trying to remove the things that've been put on their heads, as this beautful-yet-sinister music plays in the background, growing gradually louder until it's almost overwhelming, is a very effective and creepy combination.

When he comes back to his room, he finds Miles going out of his mind, using a pair of binoculars to spy on Anna Kraus (Bette Henritze), a lovely little Red Cross nurse that plays Checkers with Miles, who he's obviously obsessed with and has claimed is constantly coming onto him. This poor character is, frankly, punished for the sins of the filmmakers, as during her brief time on-screen, she's reduced to tears by Reese and then raped (mercifully off-screen) by Miles. The scene where he's aggressively coming onto her momentarily descends into farce when she tells him there's no way he could love her because she's fat, to which he responds, "Fat girls turn me on." I find this objectionable for a couple of reason, the lesser being that this woman isn't that fat, but the biggest being that the only reason I can see for those two lines being put in there would be to get a laugh, and, y'know, there's nothing I want to do more during a scene where a man is trying to force himself on a woman than laugh (in case you're one of those people who takes everything they read on The Internet literally, that was sarcasm). But again, I have to give it up for Cox's performance, because only a few scenes ago he was essentially an emotional seesaw, talking one minute in an animated fashion about how horny he was, the next sadly talking about how he's been divorced for eight years, how nobody except the Red Cross woman comes to visit him, and how he never thought he'd die lonely. You go from feeling sorry for him to being annoyed by him to being repulsed by him in a matter of minutes. And he still manages to somehow make you give a damn about his plight by the end.

I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I think I'm going to end up jumping around alot more than I usually do, because as you've probably figured out, this is a very talky movie ( it was originally a stage play), so I don't feel as bad as I usually would about leaping around and addressing events out of sequence a bit.

Following his discovery that the building is surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire that points inwards, obviously designed to keep people in and not out (although it'd still do a good job of keeping people out), as well as being patrolled by angry guard dogs from the inside (again, this would still be a decent deterent for anybody thinking of breaking in), Reese finally confronts Fredrick properly, telling him he's figured out that he's a "brain doctor," and wanting to know what's going on. Fredrick is amazingly forthcoming, telling him about his experiments on Tommy's brain, done to see if he could stop him experiencing the crippling pain that had him crying out, and also that he died on the operating table ten minutes ago. Reese finds this disgusting, but Fredrick insists that Tommy was with it enough to know what was going on at the time, and was happy to know that the techniques they were using on him could go onto help other people. Again there's complexity here, as you sort of get the sense that the only reason Reese is so pissed of is because he's now terrified that the same thing is going to happen to him. He can't care about Tommy really, because it's been established already that he doesn't really care about anybody.

Oh, and after this scene, we get another horrible cut, this time to Miles sitting up violently in bed from a nightmare screaming, "BENSOOOOOOOOON!" "Who's Benson," Reese asks, and Miles tells him to remind him to tell him before he dies.

It's not Reese who gets to hear that story though. During a pretty pathetic fight between the two of them following Anna's rape (and again, I didn't buy for a second that Reese was really indignant about that, but rather just using it as new material to get to Miles), Miles starts violently coughing up blood, and is later told by Fredrick that he has a few months to live, tops. Miles then tells him the story of what happened to Benson when they were in Vietnam together ('NAM FLASHBACK!), how he was a "coloured" guy he didn't like much, and that he pushed him onto a live grenade in order to save himself. He'd been so ashamed of himself that he'd told everybody that Benson had thrown himself onto the grenade to save him, leading to him being decorated as a hero following his death. Using this story as leveage, Fredrick convinces Miles to allow him to perform experments on him, so that his life may actually have some meaning.

We now discover why Miles and Reese are being kept at the mansion- because Fredrick has a very specific experiment he wants to try out on them, attempting to cure their bouts of anger and violence by implanting something into their brains that stimulates it's pleasure centre whenever a little buzzer is pressed. It's at this point the movie gets a bit silly. The way they stimulate Mile's brain is to implant two mental pipes into his head, and then hook those up to some wires. It looks a bit Mickey Mouse, but then this was obviously a movie made to a strict budget over 30 years ago, so I can't complain too much. However, the way the Miles expresses the pleasure he's getting from pressing that buzzer is another thing altogether- he starts breathing and groaning heavily, holding the buzzer with both hands over his groin, looking like he's, well, pleasuring himself. And that was obviously the point, as when they ask him where he felt sensations the most, he says, "My crotch." I guess it ties in with Miles stating before how horny he is, but it feels a bit crude. And he's given full control over the buzzer, as Fredrick wants to avoid manipulating people as much as possible, which leads to him pressing it continually and becoming hopelessly addicted to it. When Reese finds him and unhooks him from the machine (after he's thrown Fredrick around ina fairly comical manner), he starts bawling like a baby that's had it's bottle taken away, and the sight and sound of it is genuinely disturbing, to the point that I found myself feeling sympathy towards a man who is little more than a rapist and a killer.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Reese decides to flee, taking out the main orderly with a well-placed and meaty door to the face. He goes on the run in the forest surrounding the building, being followed by the orderlies until he's eventually recaptured (all this as bafflingly cheerful music plays over the top). The same procedure is then performed on him, but not before Fredrick is told that he was dooped into signing the consent papers the second he entered the place, thus causing Fredrick to have accidently betrayed his principles, which all but destroys him. Being left with no choice though, he tries to convince Reese to push the buzzer (interestingly, in the, I don't know, few hours it's been since they did this to Miles, the technology seems to have moved on enough that it's now portable and Reese doesn't need to be hooked up to anything. I guess it's true what they say about how fast technology becomes outdated), only for Reese to tell him to fuck off with a speech that reminded me totally of that "I NEED MY PAIN!" one Captain Kirk gave in one of the "Star Trek" movies. I can't remember which one off the top of my head right now, which I'm sure is going to have the hardcore Trekkies putting a price on my head. I'm also far too pleased with myself about the fact that I've managed to connect Walken to Shatner within the context of this movie, too. I really need a girlfriend

In the end, The Major has enough of all this touchy-feely bullshit and presses the buzzer himself, which brings Reese to his knees, exclaiming, "God!" They then trot him out in front of the press as proof that their experiments are a success, where he's kept in-line with a few strategic presses of the buzzer, as Fredrick looks ashamed of himself and The Major soaks up the praise like a smug bastard. There's no music over the end credits, we just hear them answering more questions, claiming amogst other things that nothing ever went wrong with what they were attempting.

I don't really know what this movie was doing on this disc, as by practically anybody's standards, it's not a horror movie. The brief write-up of it on the back of the box compared it to "A Clockwork Orange," and that's also not fair, because while they may share a few themes, it put together with nowhere near the flair and confidence that movie was. Which is not to say it's a bad film, because it's not. Like I said, it's wordy, and if you like your movies to have a little more kinetic energy about them, you'd probably be wise staying away. But the acting's good, especially from Walken and Cox, and the script for the most part does a good job of putting across it's themes and giving the characters individual, interesting voices, which is a must for a film like this. If I had to describe it as anything, I'd call it a Sunday Night Movie, the kind you watch when you're coming down from the madness of the weekend, but not quite ready to snuggle down with something too warm and cosy

FINAL VERDICT

KEPT!

Second time's the charm. I think from now on, if I get anymore multi-packs, I'll probably watch two movies before making a real decision about it.

Until next week, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and do you know how you got that dent in your top lip? Way back before you were born, I told you a secret, then I put my finger there and I said, "shhhhhhhhh."

The Cheap-Arse Film Review #17- "VAMPIRE KILLER BARBYS."

NAME: VAMPIRE KILLER BARBYS

RATED: 18

WRITTENBY: JESS FRANCO & PATIX IRIGOYEN

DIRECTED BY: JESS FRANCO

STARRING: SILVIA SUPERSTAR, CARLOS SUBTERFUGE, CHARLIE S. CHAPLIN, ALDO SAMBRELL, SANTIAGO SEGURA, MARIANGELA GIORDANO,

GENRE: EROTIC HORROR

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND

PRICE: MY SOUL

When I was about 11 or 12, realising that girls were not he worst thing in the world and had begun to find myself drawn to them in ways I didn't really understand (and still don't, if I'm totally honest), I would sometimes go into the local independent video rental shop (PIP Tank Video) under the guise of wanting to play the glitchy "Street Fighter 2," machine they had that allowed you to beat your opponent in literally one second if you knew how to exploit it properly (the key was to play as either Ryu or Ken and throw a Dragon Punch the second the round started, as doing that would also throw about a million Fireballs at your opponent), and walk around looking at the back of all the movies rated 15 and up, in the hope that I'd find pictures of women in some state of undress, or if I was lucky the occasional bare boob. And I mean occasional, I think you can count the number of nipples I saw doing this on the fingers of one hand.

Why am I telling you this incredibly embarrassing fact about myself? And how does it relate to the movie I'm going to be covering today?

Because there's pubic hair on the back of this box. And it definitely isn't mine.

I picked this up in the same day I bought "Code 46," and in my rush to get to the counter with that, I didn't really give the box the good once over I usually do. I didn't really worry about it too much because, well, it's called "Vampire Killer Barbys." Who wouldn't want to review a film called "Vampier Killer Barbys?" What more do you need to know? So I'm sitting on the bus on the way home, inspecting my purchases, when I looked on the back of the box for this film and saw a picture of a topless woman running through some forest or something. "Huh," I thought "there's something you don't see anymore in these politically correct times," casting my mind back to the days previously described. So based on nostalgia alone, I already had warm feelings towards this film.

Then I noticed she wasn't wearing any jeans. Then I noticed she wasn't wearing... anything. At all. I mean, it's not the largest picture in the world, and it's not like it's one of those "Hustler"-style gynecological centerfolds, but the fact remained, on the back of this movie that I had just bought for a pound, there was a picture of a woman, and I could very clearly make out her breasts and pubic mound. I'm not the easiest person in the world to shock, but I think on this crowded bus, I may actually have gasped. Because this was something new. This was something I had never encountered before. I had never found full frontal on the back of a video or DVD box before (excluding porn. Obviously). And suddenly those nostalgic feelings went away, because even during my bout of puberty-spurred curiosity, I didn't think I would ever see... that. To be brutally honest there's a very good chance I wouldn't have known what I was looking at if I had. It just makes me laugh that we live in an age where everybody is walking around on eggshells terrified of saying or doing something that would upset anybody, and I was able to go into what is essentially a discount supermarket and buy something with a picture of bush on it (and no, I'm not making that joke. One of the many good things to come out of the recent Presidential election is that joke can now go away, hopefully forever). Oh, and there's also a picture of a bearded man holding a scythe, grinning manically, flanked by two dwarfs, who also seem very pleased with themselves. On any other box, this picture would have been the star attraction.

This move is the work of Jess Franco, who I've come to discover has something of a cult following amongst horror fans. I was talking about movies recently with a friend down the pub, and totally unprompted she dropped his name as a director whose work she enjoys. He apparently started composing music at age six, before eventually discovering film, where frankly prolific isn't the word- he has a staggering 189 directorial credits listed over at IMDb, dating back to 1957's "El Arbol de Espana," all the way up to 2008's "La Cripta de las Mujeres Malditas," AKA "A Bad Day at the Cemetery." He's also a writer, a composer, an editor and an actor, very often working on his own films under an amazing array of pseudonyms (my personal favourites being Adolf M. Frank and Clifford Brawn). Even "Jess Franco" is a pseudonym, his given first name being Jesus. Alot of his work has been in the Erotic Horror genre, and I'm sorry, but that idea doesn't work for me. I can just about get my head around the concept of Erotic Thrillers, because most of them just feature sexed-up versions of the old Film Noir Femme Fatales, but I don't get the concept of Erotic Horror at all. To me, I don't see how it's possible to be frightened and horny at the same time. They just seem like naturally-opposed emotions. And even if you don't mean it like that, if you just mean it as in blood and guts, then that doesn't work for me either, because without going into too much detail, there's enough blood in my personal life already without me introducing it into the bedroom (that was marvelously cryptic of me, wasn't it?)

Also the band featured here is real, and apparently still active today, a Spanish punk-pop band, the only difference being they spell "Barbies" how you'd expect. Apparently the only reason it was changed in the promotional material was because Mattell predictably kicked up a stink. Humourously, the correct spelling of the band's name is all over the film itself, from their drumkit to their van, which just goes to show you just how much attention Mattell's lawyers were really paying. I don't know for a fact if all the people playing the band here are actually in the band, but the lead actress, Silvia Superstar (which I'm also guessing isn't her real name), definitely is.

The beginning is like Horror Movies 101- it's dark, the moon is full, there howling somewhere, and we see a large close-up on the face of a stuffed wolf. This happens quite alot during the film actually, we'll suddenly find ourselves zooming in on one of these, as if the director thinks, "LOOK! STUFFED WOLF! SCARY!" Um, no. Real wolf, kind of scary, stuffed wolf, something you're fairly likely to see round your Nan's. A bloodied man runs semi-dressed out of a large building. This is referred to as a castle several times over the course of the film, but it looks more like a mansion to me. I suppose it doesn't matter what you call them, in the end they're the same thing, just big houses. He's running for his life, stalked by Arkan (Aldo Sambrell), a balding man dressed like a butler, and Baltasar (Santiago Segura), the aforementioned bearded gentleman, sadly for the moment without his tiny posse (I said posse. Get your minds out of the gutter). The poor dude manages to give Arkan the slip, only for Baltasar to sneak up behind him and slit his throat. It's one those film school specials too, where the knife leaves a trail of blood across the neck without actually causing a wound. Baltasar cuts off the man's ears, taking it back to his little friends Pipa and Pipo and attempting to decide which of them deserves to have this little treat, before deciding on... one of them (I can't tell the apart, I'm not going to pretend I can), his reason being that "the kindness and gentleness you reserve for me at night deserves a reward." Oh Lord, he's sleeping with them. Even worse, we find out later that these two are in some way supposed to be his children. Erotic Horror, ladies and gentlemen! Arkan then goes to address the lady of the house, The Countess, who's little more than a skeleton at this point in the film. A skeleton in a dress. You cold probably get it a role on "Hollyoaks." He tells her he's got a present for her, that being a jug presumably full of blood, and then say that "He" has returned, and they are once again under his "devilish protection." Who "He" is, we never actually find out, and as you'll see later, his protection amounts to jack shit.

Follow the credits sequence that appears to happen over a painting of Vigo from "Ghostbusters 2's" fat sibling, we finally meet The Killer Barbies themselves, performing at a concert, and... they're not bad, amazingly. They don't reinvent the wheel or anything, but they're decent enough, and the song they play in full here, "Love Killer," is incredibly catchy. I caught myself humming the chorus hours after I'd finished watching the film for the first time, which is usually a good sign. We also get a look at Arkan in the crowd, watching them perform with a scowl on his face. He's clearly a purist. After the gig, they take their payment, which they're informed is, "enough for some joints maybe," which is funny, because the next scene seems them turning down a guy who offers to sell them some grass (HA!). Once they get in the van and start driving, the movie briefly turns into a twisted, perverted version of "Scooby Doo." Sharon (Angie Barea), the only other female member of the band, starts openly blowing Billy (Billy King, the only person here using his real name, and I think also the only person other than Silvia actually in the band for real at this point), causing Mario (Charlie S. Chaplin) to comment that "if you're still hungry, my fly is at your disposal." What a charmer. Flavia (Superstar) takes her top off so Rafa (Carlos Subterfuge, who looks just like Shaggy if Shaggy were evil, which is probably the main reason this scene feels so Mystery Machine), will let her drive, causing a man to fall off his bike when he sees her (heh). They're listening to their own music whilst all this is happening, by the way, seemingly the same two songs on a loop, including "Love Killer." What a bunch of nasty little narcissists.

At this point I would usually make some observations about the acting talents of those involved, but with this film that's almost impossible, because as you've probably figured out be the names of alot of the people involved, this isn't an English language film, but rather Spanish. I usually like to watch foreign movies with subtitles, partly because I'm just a bit of a pretentious twat, and partly because you get a better sense of the acting abilities of someone when you hear their real voice. On this disc though, no subtitles are available, so all we get is an English dub. And my God, it's horrific. Almost nobody's voice matches up with the character they're playing (Rafa sounds like a cartoon dog, Flavia sounds much older than her claimed 19 years) and the ones that do sort of make sense are ruined by voice actors who either realised what kind of movie they were doing and just phoned it in, or have probably never done this sort of thing before. They even dub over people laughing! "Ha! Ha! Ha!" Is that strictly necessary? Laughter is one of the few things that can be understood in any language (Christ, when did I turn into Bono?).

The van predictably breaks down, and Arkan, who had seemingly been riding around on a little boat just to pass the time just moments earlier, shows up to offer them a place to stay until someone can show up to fix it tomorrow. They take him up on his offer, with the exception of Sharon and Billy, who stay in the van to fuck. I'm not being crude saying that. We cut back to them several times, and that really does seem to be all they're doing in there, for hours at a time. They don't even switch positions. Once the others arrive, they all notice a painting of the Countess, presumably done before all her skin fell off. "I've got this feeling I'll recognise her," Flavia says. What do you mean, you think you'll recognise here? You're staring at a painting of her right now, either you recognise her or you don't. "She's as beautiful as she is mysterious," Rafa chimes in. How does he know she's mysterious? He's bee in her house for all of five minutes. For all he knows, she could be on the toilet. "Yeah, she's not my type, but I'd still bang her," Mario offers. Okay, fair enough.

Upstairs, Arkan visits The countess' quarters again, and amazingly, she now has flesh. It would seem that drinking blood restores her, and at least we now have a reason for him to want the band to stay, even though it's never revealed why he chose them specifically to be the next victims. He takes the band to their rooms, and everything seems alright with them, until the next scene where Flavia and Mario sneak around and find Arkan seemingly calling for a tow-truck for their van, only for them to discover what he was actually speaking into was an intercom, so he didn't really call anybody. Okay, two things- 1)If he really didn't know they were there, why was he pretending to place a call for a fake tow truck? What was that in aid of? 2) Why were Flavia and Mario even sneaking around? Two seconds ago they were insanely happy with this arrangement, now they're tip-toeing down stairs like like a couple of kids playing detective. It makes no sense. It also doesn't lead to anything, as they go upstairs to tell Rafa what they've seen, he tells them not to worry, so they... don't. Meanwhile, The Countess drinks some more blood and continues to look and act stronger. She asks Arkan how much he loves her, to which he replies, "Madam, listen to me, nobody has ever loved anybody so much, I love you more than Paul loved Virginia, more than Cyrano loved Roxanne, and Romeo loved Juliette." Ahhh, that's actually quite lovely. He's a sly old charmer, that Arkan.

Hey, anybody wondering what Billy and Sharon are up to back at the van? No? Well, tough, because you're going to find out, as the movie cuts back to them. And as I said, they're both rutting away like rabbits, Sharon still mostly dressed and very obviously still wearing a thong, as Baltasar, Pipa and Pipo look on. And dear God, they're still listening to "Love Killer!" It's like they're determined to turn me against the one thing in this movie I quite like. The Little guys break into the car, steal the Barbie dolls the band has hanging up as decorations, and also plant a quite disturbing winged thing on the rear-view mirror, all without Billy and Sharon noticing. And Bathasar? He has a wank. Erotic Horror, ladies and gentlemen! Sharon sees the thing hanging from the mirror, and freaked out, talks Billy into coming with her to the mansion. When they get there, they bump into Arkan, who tells them of something that apparently happened there, of a satanic monk that fell in love with an aristocratic lady, tortured and raped her to death, then created a potion made from her blood and his semen that brought her back to life. Billy then asks him what the time is, he says he, "lost track of time centuries ago," and when they're backs are turned, he just disappears. Okay, now I'm confused. From this story, it would be safe to assume that this monk was the "He" Arkan mentioned earlier. However, from all the sledgehammer-subtle hints being dropped, it's also fairly safe to assume that Arkan is the monk, so what sense would it make for him to say "He's" returned, when it seems like he's always been there? It also renders that lovely declaration of love he made earlier decidedly less lovely.

Billy and Sharon go in the house, have a brief chat with their bandmates, than suddenly decide not to stay there after all. I can't say I blame them after that story, but it does make me laugh how much of a sheep Billy is. He literally does whatever Sharon tells him to. This proves to be a wrong move, as they are promptly set upon by Baltasar and Arkan, who slit Billy's throat and then chase the naked Sharon (I love how she makes love for hours with her clothes on, and then decides right this second that she's going remove them. It's like she remembered, "Hey, these come off!") through the forest, until Baltasar decapitates her with his scythe, which doesn't best please Arkan, but they're both like, "Fuck it, this'll do." They take her and Billy back to some place on the mansion grounds there a verity of mutilated bodies are hung up in the air, their blood collecting in jugs, that's then added to a pot along with some white stuff that I assume is supposed to be semen. Baltasar actually dips his finger in the spunk and licks it, and even though I know it's fake, this still got a shudder out of me. So well done movie, you managed to at least gross me out using a partially sexual situation. He also handles the most obviously fake dead body I've ever seen. The arms and legs don't move at all, and the arms are straight up in the air, like the guy died doing the YMCA.

Having regained her strength, The Countess finally appears, and she looks... alright. She's played by Mariangela Giordano, and she does look damn good for a woman who was pushing sixty at the time. Much like Jennifer Tilly looks damn good for a woman of 50 (I know, I can't believe it either). I will take exception to Rafa calling her, "the most beautiful bitch I have ever seen in my life," though, because, dubious compliment aside, if that's true, he's obviously not lived. He's instantly smitten, and she seduces him into coming upstairs with her, which initially angers Flavia, until she reveals, "I'm just mad because he should have found a way to include me." This movie was very clearly partially written by a very old man. Upstairs, The Countess ties Rafa to the bed, and they start... actually, I'm not sure what happens. She scratches him, then she just starts rolling around on the bed, groaning and moaning. At one point I think the only parts of her even touching him are her feet, and they're just touching his leg. And strangely he seems to be having as much fun as she is. I will say though that the fact that this woman is as old as she is gives this scene a sort of anarchic edge, like the filmmaker is actually trying to make some kind of statement about age and beauty and sexuality. He's probably not, he probably just wanted to see her tits, but it's quite an interesting thought all the same. Eventually they start having something that look like sex, only for The Countess to produce a knife and start stabbing him during the act. This is it. If you were to ask me to close my eyes and come up with a visual representation of Erotic Horror, this is what I would come up with, a person killing another person whilst they're shagging. Erotic Horror, ladies and gentlemen.

And also once again the knife produces blood without actually breaking the skin. Maybe it's magic.

There's actually a fair bit if runtime left, but if I'm honest, not much else happens. Flavia discovers the bodies and freaks, Mario kills Arkan with a crossbow to the head (where the fuck did he find a crossbow? And if Arkan's supposed to be a ghost, how can he die?) The Countess gets killed being thrown out of a window and being impaled on a spike (I always found it strange why evil monsters would just leave so many spikey things lying around...), and Billy, who is somehow not dead even though he had his throat slit several hours ago now, traps Baltasar in their truck and sets fire to it (using lighter fluid left next to some hay, if you can believe that). He kills himself and the dwarfs, but not Baltasar, who comes after Mario and Flavia, only to be run over by a steamroller. The dummy they used is very obviously a blow-up doll. At one point I think you see one of the arms pop. Flavia and Mario then escape on Arkan's boat, and we're treated to a little spoken-word wrap-up, translating the text that's on-screen...

"Flavia and Mario without any further problems returned to the city, where they continued their artistic career. They are still bonded together by a strong friendship"

Okay, so that's just a long-winded way of saying they're still making music together. Gotcha, with you so far.

"Olga Lujan and Arkan disappeared without a trace. The castle was turned into a first-class hotel for tourists."

Um, okay, so their bodies disappeared, that's what you're saying. Still doesn't explain how you could kill a ghost with a crossbow, but never mind.

"Baltasar was punished for his crimes and became food for worms and vermin. Then he returned to him mosterous offspring hoping to have one day a new oppertunity."

Um... so he's dead? You mean he met up with his kids in Hell? And what kind of oppertunity could he be waiting for in Hell?

"Killer Barbies has a new car in which they travel across the country."

Thank you, I really wanted to know what you did about the whole wheels situation.

"Finally, nobody really died. The proof of that is that we can applaude the group this evening in Velencia. Our story is, in reality, a creation of pure fantasy."

...

...

... WAT?!?!?!

That's how youre ending this movie?! "Guess what, none of this actually happened!" Well, DUUUUUUUUUUUUUR! Could never have figured that out without a clearly disinterested voice-actress teling me so! Wow, who would have guess that movies are fake (except for the ones based on true stories, and they're very often faker than they want you to believe)? In all seriousness, I hate it when people try to pull this meta shit completely out of nowhere, it makes you feel like a fool for ever being emotionally invested in the story to begin with. And yes, believe it or not, there are people who could bring themselves to be emotionally invested with even something like this. In many ways, and admire and envy them.

As I said before, there are things wrong with this movie that aren't the faults of the filmmakers. I can't hold them responsible for the dub, because they probably had no say in what was done there. And I'll lay off the acting, because the dub is so distracting it's impossible to tell whose good and whose not. However, even with those two small mercies, there are still a crippling amount of things wrong with this you can blame them for, the biggest of all being just how cheap and tawdry the whole thing feels. I get the feeling Franco was trying to give this a Hammer-like quality, but the thing with the Hammer horror movies was, even with all the gore and nudity you'd often see, their productions still managed to have an air of class about them, something this is missing from almost the first frame. It's a mish-mash of horror cliches that have been used better in other movies, with some flesh thrown in to hopefully keep people interested, and it fails because it's not scary, and I personally didn't find it even slightly arousing (I'm not going to go into detail on that one either, use your imaginations if you really need to. Probably better off doing that anyway).

FINAL VERDICT

BINNED!

Before I go, I'll leave you with a gift, the best thing in his movie, so you don't have to even consider buying this to experience it. Don't say I don't ever do anything for you.


Until next week, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and when I first joined the force, I assumed there was semen on everything.

The Cheap Arse Film Review #16- "TOUGH & DEADLY."

NAME: TOUGH & DEADLY

RATED: 18

RELEASED: 1995

WRITTEN BY: STEVE COHEN & OTTO C. POZZO FROM A STORY BY OTTO C. POZZO

DIRECTED BY: STEVE COHEN:

STARRING: BILLY BLANKS, "ROWDY" RODDY PIPER

GENRE: ACTION

BOUGHT FROM: CEX

PRICE: £1.00

I have two great loves in my life- cinema, and professional wrestling, both of which took root in my childhood. The first movie I ever went to see was either "Tranformers: The Movie," or "An American Tale," in this old cinema in Romford that is now sadly a nightclub. My family always made a big deal of going to the movies together, which is why when my Dad asks me if I fancy going to see with him and my Mum, I'll still very often say yes, even at the age of 26. My first wrestling-related memory isn't even of anybody wrestling, it's of Hillbilly Jim, this shirtless, overalls-wearing hick, and "Mean" Gene Okerland, a bald man with a killer mustache and a suit, standing in front of a wall of TVs, recapping the week's events in the World Wrestling Federation. They were the strangest pairing I had ever laid eyes on in all my six years on this planet. I was immediately transfixed, and a lifelong obsession had begun. Soon everything I had was wrestling related- I had the toys, I subscribed to the magazines and comics, owned replica title belts, everything in my bedroow was covered by images of gurning men, from my wallpaper to my curtains to my bedsheets. I attended live shows with my family. I watched The British Bulldog (RIP) win a battle royal in the Royal Albert Hall and got so excited I ran out of the booth we were sitting in and collided with another boy, splitting my lip open and spending the entire train journey home holding a Hulk Hogan bandana full of ice on it (probably should have had stitches in that. Still got a scar there to this day, which I can sometimes be seen absent-mindedly chewing on). I also attended "WrestleMania XX" with my Dad nearly five years ago now, travelling to New York, sitting in the crowd at Madison Square Garden (which if you're a wrestling fan is pretty much Mecca), watching Eddie Guerrero (RIP) retain his WWE Title, and Chris Benoit (RIP... anyone noticing a theme here?) win the World Heavyweight Title, and then embrace Guerrero, his real life best friend, as they both stood in the middle of the ring with belts people told them they would never hold, confetti and fireworks going off around them. It was one of my favourite memories, but recent events have seen it become somewhat... tainted.

So yes, I do get rather excited when these two worlds collide. I'm giddy like a school girl at a Westlife concert about seeing "The Wrestler," and am elated at Mickey Rouke picking up the Golden Globe for Best Actor. I only hope he turns the momentum into Oscars success too, and that when he gets off stage he grabs Sean Penn by the scruff of his neck, bends him over and then violently sodomises him with the award, as half the crowd gasps and the other half cheers (I really don't like Sean Penn. Is it obvious?). And back when I was a kid, it was a different level of hysteria altogether. As a confirmed Hulkamaniac (something I still am a bit today, even though I'm now what they call a quote-unquote "Smart" fan and should consider Hogan The Devil), I had to see every movie Hulk Hogan was in. My tiny mind couldn't figure out why he wasn't in everything. I saw "Suburban Commando," (which also had The Undertaker in it, with the... voice of a... small child...) and "Mr. Nanny," in cineams, and considered them masterpieces. Of course, looking back on them now, I realise they... weren't. But I still have a fondness for them, and also "No Holds Barred," which I missed theatrically, but later watched on video. To this day I associate Tiny Lister completely with the part he played in that film. Even when he popped up in "The Dark Knight," for a brief cameo, I wanted to scream, "ZEUS!!!!!"

I wasn't that familiar with the films of Roddy Piper, though. The only one I can remember watching as a boy was "Body Slam," which also featured Dirk Benedict and "Captain" Lou Albano. Even though I've not seen it yet, let's just say I can pretty safely assume it's not "The Wrestler," in terms of quality or realism. Even back then I remember being fairly underwhelmed by it. But then that was to be expected, right? After all, Roddy Piper was nowhere near the star Hulk Hogan was, so of course his movies weren't going to be as good.

It would take me until I was 19 to see "They Live," for the first time, and my eyes were opened. In this violent, clever, hilarious B-Movie, he was a movie star. Moreso than Hulk Hogan ever was. If you go back and watch his movies now, Hogan has the look of a deer in the headlights, The World's most famous wrestler finding out, to his horror, just how little that meant when the director called action. Piper, on the other hand, was a charismatic, cocky son-of-a-gun, who may have rivalled even Bruce Campbell with his ability to take even the silliest lines and turn them into catchphrases. As a man, he was also far more interesting than Hogan ever was, a hard drinking, harder partying Canadian with a healthy interest in the white stuff. There are many stories out there about him, but my favourite has to be the one Ric Flair recounts in his autobiography, of the time Piper got paid for a show with a spittoon full of cocaine that he spent the entire car journey back to the hotel shoving his face into like some kilt-wearing Tony Montana.

He should have been a star. It should have saved him from the wrestling industry, which he loved as many do, only to have that love repaid with a body that has been utterly smashed to shit, as many have (he continued to wrestle regularly for years with an artificial hip). At the absolute least, he should have had the kind of career Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson now enjoys, that being the best thing in bad movies (a streak he recently broke with "Get Smart," where he fell behind Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway and Bill Murray cameoing as the guy in the tree nobody wanted to talk to, to be the forth best thing in an actually pretty good movie). But instead he had to make do with movies like this.

Before I get into the meat of this, I want to first comment on the title of this thing. Basically, I think it's amazing. At first I thought it sounded like a joke, like some parody of an action movie. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out it co-starred McBain. But now I've lived with it a bit, I have a higher appreciation for it, because it's unpretensious, totally without bullshit, an action movie boiled down to it's very essence. If it were a cologne, it would probably smell like a mix of blood, sweat, gun powder, cocaine and both male and female sexual fluids. I'd wear it. Fuck, I'd bathe in it.

This horrible and annoying keyboard score kicks in, and then the movie's off, treating us to some aerial shots of a road near a stretch of water, before we settle on what looks to be an old Jaguar driving along said stretch of road. I have no idea where this is supposed to be taking place. I don't think it's supposed to be America though. The car eventually pulls up outside a mansion, and out of it steps a large black man with a buzzcut, wearing a trenchcoat. This is John Portland. Actually, it's not John Portland, at least not at this point, at this point he has another name and goes by the codename Quicksilver, only be given the name John Portland when Roddy Piper's character, Elmo Freech, throws a dartboard into a map of the United States. But he's called John Portland on the box, and the credits have him listed as just "John Portman," so I'm going to call him John Portman. He's played by Billy Blanks, seven-time Karate world champion and a legitimately hard bastard who most people will have the best chance knowing from his range of Tae Bo workout videos. There was a period of my life when I was pretty obsessed with Tae Bo, and would tell people that Billy Blanks was going to reshape my body from the pale, flabby monstrosity it had become into one a Greek God would be proud to own. Then I hurt my leg a bit doing one of the kicks and never watched any of his videos again.

No sooner does he enter the mansion and sit down to talk to the person who lives there, who claims to have information Portman's might want to know about, than the residence is set upon by a group of about four people who seem to be dressed like pool cleaners. At first I thought they were the good guys, but then the second they get inside the place they start randomly shooting people in the head, including a woman just sitting at a table reading a book, which doesn't seem like a very heroic thing to do. They drill through one of the floors to use a camera to see if Portland and friend are in the main room, which they are, and I can't help but think that's alot of needless work. I also refuse to believe neither of them heard a bloody drill coming through the ceiling. They try to knock out Portland with a dart and fail, the other poor guy gets a bullet in the head like everybody else, and then we're into the first fight scene on the film.

And it's one of the worst fight scenes I've ever seen.

This really isn't the fault of any of the actors or stuntmen. They do there bit well, but the shooting, sound effects and especially the editing of this scene just kills it. Blows very obviously don't land, there's horribly cheesy "THWACK!" sound effects, and there are just seemingly random cuts thrown in, and I don't mean in and MTV, ADD kind of way, I mean someone will go to throw a punch or a kick, then there'll be a jump-cut and the punch will have landed without us seeing it. It's a cliche, but it really does look like somebody was let loose on this with a pair of blunt scissors. It happens in other fights too, I'll mention them when we come to them. The only explaination I can think of is that these cuts were made to make the BBFC happy when the movie was brought over here for classification, and because it wasn't going to be a blockbuster or anything, people just hacked stuff away without any care and shoved it out. I can't imagine even a movie of this level doing something like that intentionally. So all this is going on, somebody gets kicked over a balconey in slooooooow moooooootion, until finally somebody gets a dart in Portland and they all beat the shit out of him, dragging away his limp body, because for some reason he needs to be brought in alive.

And then suddenly the film comes alive, because finally Roddy Piper appears. It's not like his scenes are any better written or directed than any of the others, but there's alot to be said for star power, and when he's on-screen, boom, star. You're still having shit flung at you, it's just not being thrown with as much force. We discover he's a former-cop-turned-private-investigator when he tries to bring in a large man named Tiny (fiction in general never gets tired of this joke, does it? "Hey, this guys fat/thin/tall/short! Let's call him "Skinny!"/"Tubby!"/"Stubby!"/"Stretch!"), who he finds in some apartment with another dude, doing drugs and watching a show with a guy in a chicken suit in it, as a woman in her underwear lies on the bed seemingly ignored and unfulfilled. Other than the other guy and the drugs, I can totally relate to this. Tiny decides he doesn't want to go quietly, and then there's another fight scene (the second in just under nine minutes) and while I wouldn't call it good, at least it's not affected by the editing problems that blighted the last one. My favourite part is when Piper gives the other dude a two-handed chokeslam onto the bed as if we're expected to believe this will hurt. They somehow end up on the roof of the building, and Elmo bitch slap's Tiny's friend off the side of the building with he falls into an empty swimming pool in slooooooow moooooootion. The police then show up to pick up Tiny, and nobody really seems that concerned with surely dead gentleman, all they do is trade snide comments with Elmo.

We then return to Portland's plight, to see his beaten up body is transported somewhere by car for questioning. Sat next to him is a man administering drugs to him to keep him sedated. "He'll be asleep for a long time," he says, and before he's even really finished that last word, Portland headbutts him in the face and we're in yet another fight scene (third in 13 minutes). Its not really much of one, because there's only really so much you can do in such a cramped space and HOLY SHIT PORTLAND JUST KICKED A DUDE THROUGH THE WINDSCREEN WHO THEN GOT RUN OVER BY THE CAR! Okay, I'll give it to them, that was great. It does call into question my theory for all the edits earlier though. I mean, if I was right about the BBFC, wouldn't this be one of the first things to go? I can see a man thrown through glass and left as roadkill, but I can't see someone throw a punch? Also the dude went through the glass in slooooooow moooooootion. Everytime someone dies this seems happens. Watching this movie is like playing "Fallout 3."

The car crashes, and everyone dies, except Portland, who's left a bloody heap. He's discovered by a bus driver and taken to hospital, where he's discovered by Elmo, who instantly takes an unusual interest in him. They at least give a reason for this to begin with, that he thinks there might be some money in it for him if he turns out to be a missing person, but when nothing turns up on him, Elmo still sticks around, protecting him from another hit (by throwing the guy out the window in slooooooow moooooootion) and having him hide out in his apartment. And the only reason we're given for this is that, well, that's the plot. We also get the first of a couple of scenes set at the main offices of the CIA, who it turns out Portland works for. These consist of people sitting at a very long table, in a room that seems to be some kind of light vacuum, as all around them is darkness. Maybe they've vampires. CIA Vampires intent on protecting the World so they'll always have a fresh supply of blood on hand. Actually, I'm going to write that down, that's a pretty good idea. Nobody nick it. It's in these scenes that it's established that Portman is almost impossible to track, as he no longer officially exists after he nearly died on a field mission after taking a shotgun blast at point-blank range. Okay, I'll buy alot in movies like this, but I'm not buying that. I refuse to believe that even in a movie called "Tough & Deadly," could a man take that and live. He wouldn't be intact, let alone alive.

So Elmo and Portland become instant best friend, with Elmo bringing him to his place of work, introducing him to his assistant/secretary Mo, and deciding to help him heal up. His idea of healing up doesn't involve letting Portland rest up though, no. Instead, we're treated to a training montage! I can't believe this movie was released in 1995, it's so eighties. They run, do push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups. It's really just an excuse for Billy Blank to show how in-shape and bendy he is, but I'll give it to Roddy Piper, he's cut. He was never really one of those wrestlers who had an amazing physique, but here he looks great. He obviously didn't want to be shown up and put the hours in at the gym. Then, suddenly, Portland is working for Elmo, helping him bring guys in, starting with some drug trafficker. They go to a bar to find him, ony for Portland to piss off a truly wild-eyed dude with long hair in a cowboy hat by accidently knocking his beer over his girlfriend. This leads to (say it with me, children) another fight scene, one that's edited even worse that the one right at the beginning. There's a point where Portland is thrown over the bar, only for hi do jump back over the bar, seemingly about to throw a kick and... suddenly he's standing on the ground and the other guy is selling a blow we never saw land. At the very least everybody fell down in real time.

The next day, Elmo asks Portland to show him some of his newly-discovered fighting skills. At first he's reluctant to, but Elmo talks him into it, there's a misunderstanding, that then we have another fight scene. Well, it's not really a fight scene, it mostly consists of Blanks and Piper falling in and out of shot, presumably after taking blows off-camera. What I like to imagine happened before they filmed this was Roddy made it clear that he wasn't down with taking that kung-fu shit, and this was the best compromise they could come up with. The cheapness of the whole production is exposed here too, because not only do some walls wobble when they crash into them, but Elmo also falls into a radiator, and it's immediately noticable that, not only is it not attached to the wall, or even made out of metal for that matter, but it also seems to come in two parts. After their horseplay, they follow up a new lead on the guy they were looking for the night before, this time taking them to a pool hall, where yet another fight scene breaks out. I've properly lost count of how many there have been at this point, and we're not even halfway through. There's also more shitty editing. This time we're not allowed to see a pool ball thrown by Portland collide with someone's head. Anyway, they find there, and the guy Elmo'd been fighting with only seconds ago stands up as if nothing happened and informs him that "Mr. Milan ain't gonna like you busting one of his family like that." Thank you very much for coming back from your severe beating to drop a name that's sure to be important in a little while, strangely camp thug.

Infact, it's going to be important right this second, because in the very next scene we meet Milan, discover that the guy they just picked up is his nephew (even though the guy from the previous scene actually looks older tha this guy, at least to my eyes), and sends a couple of boys to administer some "dental work" to Elmo. The thugs turn up in Elmo's office, and... you know. Elmo disposes of them quickly, shooting one in the knee, the other in the foot, kneeing him in the face, and then we get another horrible edit- this time he's holding the guy as if he's going to punch him, and then the next second the guy's staggering backwards as if he were drunk. Hell, that's all I have to go on. It's not like I actually saw anything done to him. We then find out the men Elmo and Portland have pissed off are the same men who had Portland beaten at the beginning of the film, and that they also have people within the CIA, who are now actively trying to kill both of them.

Portland and Elmo discover someone spying on them as they head out of Elmo's apartment for somewhere a little bit safer. Elmo appears to be in trouble for a second, until Portland FLIES IN OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE WITH A BODY SCISSORS! It's not cool on the same level as kicking a man under the wheels of a car he was riding in is, but it is cool. They don't get anything out of the guy, but they note that he didn't fight like one of Milan's guys, so he must have ties with someone else. They reach Elmo's friend's place, where for some reason they seem to think the coast is clear. The guy eve says, "Peaceful here, isn't it?" He may as well have heard a twig snap and said, "I'll go and check that out," because he ends up dead about a minute later when the bad guys unload a machine gun into the house. Portland makes the guys think he's dead so he can get the drop on them, taking them all out single-handedly taking the last guy out by kicking him through a window in slooooooow moooooootion, and then off a balconey (lots of balconies in this movie...) in slooooooow moooooootion. I have no idea where Elmo was during all this, or why he doesn't seem too upset that his good friend is now dead when we finally see him again. All I know is they now end up on the doorstep of his assistant, Mo. "Guys," she tells them, "I am really tired. One of you is gonna have to watch."

...

"Guys, I am really tired. One of you is gonna have to watch."

...

"Guys, I am really tired. One of you is gonna have to watch."

... Speechless.

So the rest of the movie is them now taking on the might f the drug runners and the corrupt forces within the CIA, as John starts to slowly regain his memories. They use Milan's phone records to discover Milan has been calling an old army base and a number in Washington (the number is 555-0000, if you need any more proof of how litle effort was put into this script). They go to one of Milan's warehouses, where more fights happen, and Piper gets to pull off the obligatory wrestling move all wrestlers have to do when in movies like this by body slamming someone. Milan slips away during all this. Do they follow hot on his heels? No, they go back to Mo's apartment and nearly come to blows over music. You see, Elmo wants to listen to a country CD, whilst Portman wants to listen to a rap one. Isn't that funny? A black man and a white man both like two totally different types of music!

Fuck this movie.

Eventually John remembers everything, and this leads to one last big battle at the CIA army depot that was listed amongst Milan's phone records. He heads out alone, and predictably he's captured, but overwhelms his guard with both his hands in cuffs. I think he may also kill one of them with his chair, as he lifts it into the air with a dramatic flourish and starts to bring it down in slooooooow moooooootion, before we very abruptly cut to a shot of Elmo's car pulling up after he's realised where Portland's gone. He sneaks up on one of the bad guys and...

... puts him to sleep with a Sleeper Hold. I've... never experienced anything like this before. I'm literally so happy at what I've just seen that I'm actually afraid to express that happiness, lest I do something silly like run out into the street naked reciting passages from The Bible in song.

Portland goes fucking Terminator on everone, taking them all out with fists and feet and guns even though he's been shot, discovering how Milan is working with the CIA to smuggle drugs into the country on military flights, and that he was taken out after he discovered this. There's some more fighting, Portman looks like he's about to be killed, before the good CIA show up. The bad guys are taken down, Portland has his memories and his job back, Elmo, who stopped seemingly the only small truck full of drugs there was on the site, that also happened to have the drug lord himself riding shotgun, is told he'll be nicely financially compensated for helping out, and they finally take Portman to the hospital. The End.

I don't feel like mincing my words tonight- this movie was awful. It's badly written, badly directed, and features almost universally bad performances, the worst coming from Billy Blanks himself. I really wanted to avoid making any puns based off his last name when talking about his acting abilities, but... there really is nothing there. He's beyond wooden. He barely has anything to say in the whole movie, other than lines that only exist to push the plot along, so I'll give them credit for seemingly realising what they were working with, but he's so bad he can't even do that properly. And the one thing he can do, which is fight, is sabotaged due to him working with a director who doesn't know how to shoot a fight scene, and an editor who doesn't know how to edit. The one good thing about this movie? Roddy Piper, so I guess he was trying to follow The Rock's career model, the only problem being he chose to appear in bigger turds than The Great One ever has.

FINAL VERDICT

BINNED!

Oh well, at least I've still got "The Wrestler," to look forward to. I'm going to go see that with my Dad for his Birthday.

Until next week, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and I was frozen today!

The Cheap-Arse Flim Review #15- "CODE 46."

NAME: CODE 46

RATED: 15

RELEASED: 2003

WRITTEN BY: FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE

DIRECTED BY: MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM

STARRING: TIM ROBBINS, SAMANTHA MORTON

GENRE: SCI-FI/ROMANCE

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND

PRICE: NOPE, NOT DOING IT

Okay, here's the thing about Poundland- as far as their DVDs go, they sell alot of shit. Shit with awesome titles that often look like they'll at least be fun to watch and write about, but shit all the same. But every now and again, I'll be skimming the shelves, and I'll stuble across something genuinely interesting, that may actually star people I know, be made by someone I've heard of and have been financed and distrubuted by a production company that doesn't operate out of its Dad's shed. I mean, up until recently they were selling the single disc version of "Donnie Darko," which, if you're reading this and for some reason you've never seen it, I can't recommend doing so enough. And their four-in-one collections usually have at least one film on them that's worth a peak at.

But even taking all that into account, I was shocked to have found this. I mean for a start it stars Tim Robbins and Samamtha Morton, who I'll admit may not be massive draws to the casual movie fan, but they're very respected in their field, and most people will at least know Robbins from "The Shawshank Redemption." It's also directed by someone of note, Michael Winterbottom, who's up there with the most respected British filmmakers working today. He's not quite the draw that, say, Danny Boyle is, but unlike him he's not really succeeded in making himself one of the top draws for the movies he makes, a brand if you will (And I mean "brand," in the possible way, I want to point out, I mean it in the way Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino and, on a much larger scale, Steven Speilberg are brands. Most people aren't going to see "Slumdog Milionaire," they're going to see, "The New Danny Boyle Move"). But he's still made some wonderful movies, such as "24 Hour Party People," (also written by the writer of this one), and "A Cock & Bull Story," both starring Steve Coogan, and both probably finding their way past the halfway mark in my top 100 movies of all time (although "... Party People," would be placed above "... Cock & Bull Story," if I'm honest). And even the films he's made that weren't as well recieved, like the sexually explicit "9 Songs," (which I've not seen, so you know what that means...), he's still found himself given respect for being willing to take chances. And there was one of his films, sitting sandwiched between two low-budget erotic horror movies (more on them another time). Suffice to say, I picked it up and ran for the counter like I was afraid it would turn to dust at any second.

Prior to the film starting properly, we're greeted, as we were with the last movie I covered, to more text, informing us of the following...

CODE 46

ARTICLE 1

ANY HUMAN BEING WHO SHARES THE SAME NUCLEAR GENE SET AS ANOTHER HUMAN BEING IS DEEMED TO BE GENETICALLY IDENTICAL THE RELATIONS OF ONE ARE THE RELATIONS OF ALL

DUE TO IVF, DI EMBRYO SPLITTING AND CLONING TECHNIQUES IT IS NESCESSARY TO PREVENT ANY ACCIDENTAL OR DELIBERATE GENETICALLY INCESTUOUS REPRODUCTION

THEREFORE:

i. ALL PROSPECTIVE PARENTS SHOULD BE GENETICALLY SCREENED BEFORE CONCEPTION
IF THEY HAVE 100%, 50% OR 25% GENETIC IDENTITY, THEY ARE NOT PREMITTED TO CONCIEVE

ii. IF THE PREGNANCY IS UNPLANNED, THE FOETUS MUST BE SCREENED. AND PREGNANCY RESULTING FROM 100%, 50% OR 25% GENETICALLY RELATED PARENTS MUST BE TERMINATED IMMEDIATELY

iii. IF THE PARENTS WERE IGNORANT OF THEIR GENETIC RELATIONSHIPTHEN MEDICAL INTERVENTION IS AUTHORISED TO PREVENT ANY FURTHER BREACH OF CODE 46

iv: IF THE PARENTS KNEW THEY WERE RELATED PRIOR TO CONCEPTION IT IS A CRIMINAL BREACH OF CODE 46

As you can plainly see, that is alot of text, and also alot to take in before the credits have even rolled. I find myself slightly more forgiving of this technique than I was when it was use in "Stag," because whereas that movie used it so it didn't have to bother establishing who any of the characters, here it's used to illustrate what will undoubtably be one of the main plot points of the movie. However, I can't help but think they could have just had a character at some point explain what Code 46 is, in a more efficient way than this does. All you really need to know is that, in the future, there are lots of people walking around unknowingly related to each other, and Code 46 exists to stop them reproducing. And even if you did feel like going into more detail than that, it's not like this movie was running long, including the credits it lasts a little less than 90 minutes.

So the movie starts properly now, and we see Tim Robbins' character, William, arriving at Shanghai by plane and being driven to the city, as we hear a woman's voice speaking over the top of what we're watching, speculating about what he must have done to reach his destination and eing proven write with every jump-cut. Some people feel the same way about voiceovers as I do about needless text, but I've never minded it really, especially not when it's used properly, which I feel it is here. It's not really used to fill in plot holes as it is to give us an insight into the mind of another character. When the car reaches the one of the checkpoints into the city, it is accousted by those that live (or as William's driver puts it, "just exist") in the desert surrounding it, attempting to sell them things. William takes a shine to one of the Outsiders, buys two sherbert fountains off him, and then gently lets him down when he says he can't get him into the city, telling him not to give up trying. This gets him telling off from his driver, who informs him that he shouldn't give out hope like that, as people who can't get in places usually can't for a reason. See? Something was established within the movie using characters, dialogue and actions! That wasn't so hard, was it?

Following this we meet the woman who was providing the voiceover for the proceeding scenes, Maria, played by Samantha Morton, when a talking screen near her bed wakes her up and wishes her Happy Birthday. I'm a huge fan of Samantha Morton. She's an amazing actress, but that's only part of it. In all honesty, I suspect she may be an Angel. I mean, she's not a typically attractive woman. "Quirky," I suppose is how most would describe her. But she just radiates this... it's difficult to put into words, but... she gives off this luminous, frail beauty, in every role she plays. You can't take your eyes off her, and you don't really want to. She... I'm going to stop now, because I've just read this paragraph back to myself and it's coming across as really creepy, and I've a feeling it'll only get creepier. She's fucking wonderful. Let's get back to the movie. Maria tells us via voiceover of a dream she has every year on her Birthday, that she's on a train, walking from carriage-to-carriage, looking for someone, she only has twenty stops to find them, and every year the train makes it to another stop. She tells us tonight she's down to the last station, and that if she's allowed to sleep, maybe she'll discover what she's who she's lookng for, or at least where she's going. It's all very cryptic, as you can tell.

Over the next few scenes we discover Michael's job, which is that of insurance freud investigator, and that he has been called in by The Sphinx, a company that makes insurance cover documents, or "Papeles," that allow people to travel to places they wouldn't normally. Apparently, someone has been creating forged Papeles for people, and the company would like William to discover who the culprit is. We also find out that William is able to read people's minds when they give him a piece of information about themselves, which is why he's so good at his job. He has this ability through the use of a specially created "Virus," that allow the people that are infected with them to do things they normally couldn't. I like the whole virus concept, and I also like that it's implimented in a very real-world way, with people not looking to become superheroes or anything special, but just to be better at their jobs. There's also a funny line later where Maria tells of how she was once infected with a virus that allowed her to speak Mandarin, only for her to not know what she was saying afterwards.

The Sphinx has already narrowed down a list of suspects for William to interview, based on the printer the forgeries came from, and he interviews them one-by-one, getting them to tell him something about themselves, leading to some very good pieces of dialogue, especailly from the woman who admits to having a fetish for freckled skin, which is made even funnier by William's amused reaction. I think I'm halfway with her on that one. Whilst I don't think I have a fetish about it, specifically, I do think freckles are nice. The only person who gives him any trouble during these interviews is, predictably, Maria. He takes this as a chance to flirt with her in a roundabout way, asking her what she's doing tonight, which lead her to tell him it's her Birthday, which of course lets him into her mind and causes him to look sternly at her and almost growl, "Happy Birthday." Now, we know why he's suddenly turned like this, because he's obviously just found out something about her that he'd rather he hadn't, but she doesn't know that, and if I were her, this sudden change in demeanour would have me slowly backing towards the door.

So once it's established that it's obviously Maria doing the dirty work, William goes and intentionally fingers the wrong man (I hate it when the wrong man gets fingered...). And he does this so he can transparently get into her knickers. Actually that's not fair, this is a classier movie than that, I suppose you could say that he's drawn to her in a way he's not used to, and in looking into her mind maybe he feels like he's made more of a connection to her and all that. But the problem with making small movies like this is that often, alot goes unsaid, and sometimes people's actions can feel like they come right out of left-field. So alot of the time you're left to just assume people's motivations for things, and I don't think it makes you a bad person if you assume that a guy who just let a woman he's just met that he's obviously attracted to off a fairly serious crime because he's horny.

He follows her onto a train, they talk some more, and agree to go and get something to eat. I have to say, there's real chemistry between them, they have this warm fondness when they look at each other that you see from people who find each other attractive and enjoy each other's company (and it is possible to have one without the other, believe me). It goes along way to counteract the age difference between them that can play on some people's minds. I've met people who just outright refuse to watch "Lost in Translation," because the find the thought of Bill Murray romancing Scarlett Johansson repulses them, makes their flesh crawl. It's not as extreme here as it was in that movie, Tim Robbins would have been in his mid-fouries when this was filmed as opposed to his early-fifties, and Samantha Morton isn't as young as Johansson was, but I know some people will stii hae a problem with it. To me it also helps that Robbins looks remarkably youthful for a man of his age, whereas Murray... to put it politely, he appears to have lived a hard life.

They go to karaoke bar, which bizarrely has Mick Jones from The Clash up on-stage singing, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" (I can't decide if this joke is clever or too clever for it's own good). Here William and Maria meet up with one of the people she's sold a Papele to, Damien, who intends to use it to travel to Delhi to study bats. Oddly, William picks this moment to become stern again, parroting what his driver said earlier about how there's usually a very good reason for people not being given permission to go to certain places. I mean, seriously mate, make up your fucking mind. You can't suddenly go all authoritarian. You've already let her off and pretty much defanged yourself in front of her. You gave her a sherbert fountain for her Birthday, for Christ's sake. She even pretty much confirms this when he asks her why she's showing him all this, saying he could have her arrested at a moment's notice, and she just casually says, "You won't." So just chill and have a dance. Oh good, you are.

William ends up back at her apartment, where they keep up up their friendly chatting/flirting. She tells him that one of her figers is younger than all the others because of a childhood accident that caused her to have to grow it back. William jokingly suggests maybe he should have the same thing done to get rid of his old face, but she tells him he doesn't need that done. That's nice. She shows him her moving image scrapbook made up of her memories, including some of her parents. She falls asleep where she's sitting (CHARMING!), he carries her to bed, and she begins to have the train dream... only for him to wake her up with coffee. She get up, and they both start singing Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry," her on the toilet at the time, and of course, they have sex. I talked to a friend of mine about this movie, and mentioned this particular bit to him to him as I thought it was profoundly strange, and in his opinion this sounded like the most realistic part of the movie, because, and I quote, "Most women take a piss when they know for a fact that they're going to get laid, so they don't have to stop in the middle." I love my friends.

There are a couple of sex scenes in this movie, and both of them are a bit, well... yuck. The second one is yuck for a couple of additional reasons, but they both share the same basic problems. I think it's the way they're shot, as though we're seeing the act from William's point of view, which in theory should be okay because we get to see none of his obviously gurning face. But the thing is, I don't think Sam Morton really knows how to do sex acting. She's just sort of writhing around almost as if she's in pain, and if something off-shot is biting her legs off. It's really not erotic at all, which would be fine if that were the point, but I don't think it is. If the crtics are to be believed, this scene may have been an indicator of things to come for Michael Winterbottom's career...

They wake up later that night, and William is now quite abrupt and hurriedly getting ready to leave. You could chalk it up to him only having a 24 hour pass, and there's some cuddling between them, but you can clearly tell he just wants to get out of there. And when he gets home, we discover why- not only does he have a son, who he's already mentioned, but he also has... A WIFE! I'll admit that maybe I'm a little naive, but I was actually a bit shocked at this reveal, inwardly going, "OF COOOOOURSE! HE HAS A WIIIIIFE!" I mean, yeah, he'd mentioned the kid, but having a son doesn't mean you have to be married. And of course this information colours the previous sequence of events a bit. Before, he was a guy who found himself strangely drawn to a woman he's just met in a way that confused him. Now he looks a bit like a letch who used his position to get himself some from someone he knew for a fact that he'd never see again. Bad form.

The movie has the sense to realise people may feel this way about the character now, so William is shown attempting to call Maria, only to get no answer, and is also seen looking up information about her and her family on his computer. His virtual stalking is interrupted when he's informed that Damien, the guy he met in the bar with Maria, has been found dead in Delhi. This part of the movie I really like because it portrays the Power That Be as more than just evil megalomanics that want to control everybody. Damien was denied access to Delhi because he had a genetic weakness to Wards Disease, which causes the sufferer to bleed to death. We're told that it's rife in that area of the world, but most of those that live there are immune to it. So there was a real, legitimate reason for him being told, "no." It adds a level of complexity to things that I approve of. It's now obvious that William has fucked up on a rather grand scale, and he's reluctantly sent to bring in Maria.

One problem though- she seems to have disappeared, taken away by oficials due to a "body issue." Using his empathy, he discovers that Maria is pregnant, and has been taken to a clinic "Outside," for violation of Code 46. Almost halfway through this movie and finally the title and all that stuff at the beginning make sense...

... wait... if they've violated Code 46, then that would mean...

... no, I'm not gonna think about that, not until I absolutely have to.

He finds the clinic, only to discover that his empathy is useless here, as the place is filled with "Anti-Viral Bacteria," that cancels it out and also gives him a cold (I like the ideas this movie has, and the way it impliments them), preventing him from guessing the password of the woman on the desk (played in a cameo by Nina Wadia, who UK readers may recognise from "Goodness Gracious Me!" amongst other things). However, instead of turning him away, she tells him, "Here on The Outside, we do not have access to some of the pleasures freely availiable on The Inside." Taking the hint, he tries to bride her, only for her to inform him, "I don't need wealth, I just need... a little encouragment." Now, maybe it's my dirty mind, maybe it's the way she says the line, or maybe it's just the coy-yet-knowing smirks both people have on their faces but... I think she's saying she'll let him in if he has sex with her. And the next scene is his walking around the clinic talking to a doctor, so use your imaginations. This guy.

William is finally taken to see Maria, only to find out that she doesn't remember him. He's finds out that this is due to the fact that, as always happens when Code 46 is accidently breached, the woman is taken into custody, the pregnancy is terminated, and the memory of the person she was with (i.e. William) is removed. Under the guise that he needs her for his investigation, he takes her from the clinic and back to her apartment, where he uses her memory scrapbook to show her that he knows her, that he fell in love with her, and that the memories of him have been taken from her. She freaks out. Who wouldn't? I would. Thought not as much as I'd freak if I discovered what William does next- he takes a sample of Maria's hair to a genetic screening clinic, has it compared with his own, and finds out the inevitable, that they're (gah...) technically related. Worse, she's (GAH!) a 100% genetic match with his mother. Oh dear Lord. His next course of action is to get the fuck out of Dodge immediately, driving to the airport and trying to get on the next plane back home, only to find that he can't leave, as his cover has expired, leaving him with no choice but to ask Maria to get him a forged Papele, which she does with great difficulty, as she's practically been rumbled and relocated to a new position.

On the train to meet him, however, she flashes back to her Birthday dream, and suddenly her memories of him come flooding back. She tells him this, and he decides to use his cover not to go home, but instead to go to a place called Jebel Ali, taking her with him. I'm not sure if I buy this scene, to be honest, it's another point whee we're just left to assume things. For William to go from being so desperate to get back to his family, to deciding that he'd rather be with Maria, just because she remembers him, doesn't ring true to me. I mean, I know he loves her, but it's just such an abrupt turn. In any event, they arrive, do some sightseeing, find a place to stay, and then...

... oh no. Oh nonono. Maria wants them to have sex again. And he want to, too. I think I'm going to be sick. Worse, the people who erased her memories also gave her a virus which would make her physically fight back against having sex with him if they ever tried, which since she's insistant they do so, she gets him to tie her wrists to the headboard of the bed with their belts. So this scene is going to feature, for lack of better words to describe it, the consentual rape of a woman who is genetically the guy's mother, with light bondage thrown in for good meas...

... VAGINA!!!!!

Ahem.

Sorry.

I was just... caught off-guard for a second there, because William just removed Maria's skirt, and there was a long, lingering close-up of Samantha Morton's... vagina. I didn't even know you could do full-frontal in a 15-rated movie. Actually scratch that, I recently saw "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," for the first time, which is also a 15, and was surprised by the amount of Jason Segal's penis that was in it. But still. Anyway, this sex scene's no improvement on the last one, only this one comes with added Oedipus complex. In an interesting twist, the next day it's revealed that the virus comes with a failsafe built into it, which causes the person infected with it to call in and report the offence they've just comitted, and then not want to leave the scene of the crime. Camly, as if accepting his fate, William convinces her to leave, buys a car, and they begin to drive of into the desert, being followed by another car. It's here I was expecting, well, maybe not a big stand-off, but maybe something a bit dramatic, last standish. But that's not what happens at all. What happens is, William and Maria are involved in an accident when he suddenly swerves to avoid people riding camels on the road. That's it, that's the big climax. They're both captured, William has all the memories of Maria erased and is sent back to his family, where he's shown being very happy, and Maria is exiled to The Outside, her memories left intact, as she now no longer matters. The last line of the film is delivered by Maria in voiceover- "I miss you."

I know some people will make it to this point and decide they're never going to watch this movie just because of that ending. And I can understand that, I can understand people thinking it sounds totally unsatifying. Even I'll admit to watching the credit start to role and thinking to myself, "... Huh. Okay. That really is it, then?" But still, I liked this movie. I liked the performances from the two leads, even if I have no idea what kind if an accent Morton was attempting. I liked the cinematography, this really is a beautifully-shot film, even moreso when you take into account that they probably didn't have alot of money to work with. I like the music. I don't talk about music enough in these things, but I'm going to start doing so from now on. The score's great, emotional without being cloying or cliched, and they even manage to use a Coldplay song at the end and not make me want to roll my eyes. I like the version of the furure put across. Most films either go the route of everything being drity and in a state of disrepair, ala "Blade Runner," or go the clean-and-clinical "Brave New World" way. This one takes elements of both, and smooshes them together in a way that seems more realistic. I could believe that this is what the future could be like. But most of all, I liked how... warm this movie feels. Looking at the box are and the title, I expected this to be very detatched, but instead it's a remarkably human story full of love. Love that doesn't win out in the end, but love all the same.

FINAL VERDICT

KEPT!

A rare victory for Poundland. Savour it, boys and girls, because I think it's going to be something of a rarity.

Until next week, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.