“Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer, he’s a demon on wheels.
He’s a demon and he’s gonna be chasing after someone.
He’s been around a lot, you’d better look alive
‘Cos he’ll be revvin’ up the powerful Mark 5.
And when the odds are against him and there’s dangerous work to do,
You bet your life Speed Racer will see it through.
Go Speed Racer, go Speed Racer, go Speed Racer, go!”
—– theme song

In TC6, we praised ‘Akira’ and ‘Warriors of the Wind’ as shining examples of Japanese animation. This may have led you to believe that all Oriental cartoon series are artistic and morally sound. ‘Speed Racer’ proves, beyond all doubt, that this is not the case.

The opening sequence of this surreal 1967 movie has the above lyrics, set to a hideously archetypal late 60’s song, behind which we see a car-race going along a fly-over – suddenly two cars collide, one of which ploughs through a crash-barrier and explodes in a fireball! Those of you who’ve seen the A-Team and their 70-mph multiple pile-ups, rollovers and crashes, after which the baddies climb out uninjured, will understand my shock as this U-rated cartoon starts to resemble an animated ‘Faces of Death’.

The first thing in the film proper is a clown driving a car. This explodes, leaving the driver with an umbrella dropping from the top of the screen, Mary Poppins style. The clown explodes. In his place is a girl; I use the term ‘girl’ for want of anything better as she could well be the result of some illegal, bizarre genetic experiment involving giraffe DNA – the length of her neck is only exceeded by the length of her legs. She introduces the Stunt Car Spectacular, where the aim seems to be to drive your car down a ski-jump and clear a number of sports cars piled vertically in front of it. The first contestant is Mr Guts Wheeler (sic) – he shoots down the ramp, crashes into the second top car and brings the whole lot down, leaving him trapped among the wreckage. The next driver up, Mr Hi Octane, fares even worse, hitting the top of the pile and the car smashes into a concrete wall and explodes. Mr Octane rolls onto his back, twitches and lies still. This sort of thing occurs irregularly throughout the 65 minutes of the cartoon.

Our hero, Speed Racer, is the driver for a racing outfit run by his father, with the assistance of Speed’s kid brother Spridle (and pet monkey Chim-chim), his girlfriend Trixie and mechanic Sparky. Their car, the Mark 5, is entered in the Alpine Race, a gruelling endurance event, though judging from the number of Yawning Chasms present, the Swiss government stopped any spending on roads some time ago. Against them is the Car Acrobatic Team, seven drivers out to win at any cost in cars equipped with extending wings to help them cross Yawning Chasms. Speed’s team (minus Sparky, thanks to an argument about whether Speed should race at all) work through the night to try and fit similar wings (“even I’m going to help”, says token female Trixie in what seems a fine display of assertiveness until we discover she merely popped off to put the kettle on) but Speed’s dad collapses with the effort.

Undaunted, Speed works on (Trixie’s playing at nurses, naturally) and manages to fit the wings. “Now I’ll see if the wings work…They do!!”, he says – to be strictly accurate, while they do go out and in fine, he never bothers to see if they’re any good at actually keeping him up. Hopefully, Boeing operate slightly more stringent test procedures. Anyway, he makes it to the start line just in time, and is joined by Racer X (“Speed does not know that the driver of this car is his older brother, Rex, who ran away from home years ago”) who specialises in platitudes like “As a professional racer, I’ve got to meet the challenge”. Within thirty seconds of the start, we have the first crash-and-burn and not long after we get the first Yawning Chasm.

Now, Speed argued with his mechanic so his brakes aren’t working too well and he skids, backwards, down a Yawning Chasm. Naturally he’s rescued by Sparky, who suffered a pang of conscience and lassoes the entire car from a helicopter piloted by, of all people, Nurse/Tea-Lady/Pilot Trixie. The brakes are fixed and Speed catches up with the rest of the field, including what’s left of the Car Acrobatic Team, at a Yawning Chasm, appropriately named Yawning Chasm Pass. The six drivers who decide to go on, including Speed, Racer X, and chief C.A.T. driver Snake Oiler, draw lots to see who goes first but it’s all fairly pointless since they all end up at the bottom of the Yawning Chasm, Speed included.

Fortunately, as Yawning Chasms go it ain’t up to much – not only is Speed merely knocked out, but the Mark 5 has nary a scratch and starts first time. On regaining consciousness, Speed seems to suffer an acid flashback and stares at the sun for so long he is blinded. But Racer X is also there with another undamaged car and Speed is able to drive by following the sound of his engine… This isn’t totally effective (Speed’s eyesight might improve if he tried opening his eyes instead of driving with them shut) and to help Speed, Racer X crashes his car and pretends to have injured his legs so he can sit in the Mark 5 and give directions (yes, I know – why didn’t he do that without resorting to self-inflicted smashes?). These start off as “left 10 degrees”, but soon degenerate to “faster…even faster”.

They catch up Snake Oiler, whose car, it will not surprise you to hear, still works (some damn Yawning Chasm!) but is leaking oil and will blow up if he doesn’t slow down. Speed pulls alongside to try and warn Snake but he fails to believe Speed and, lo and behold, his car explodes torching the occupant to a cinder, leaving Speed the winner to the wild cheers of the crowd who would have instantly forgotten the messy fatal accident on the home straight. The C.A.T. drivers haven’t, and swear revenge…

Animation quality is ‘primitive’ it’s safe to say; plenty of loops with the same car going past multiple times. Dialogue fails to match the lip movements at all, despite more groans, gasps and moans on the soundtrack than your average porno movie. This film was clearly constructed of 3 twenty-minute episodes slammed together as every so often it pauses and you get a brief voice-over of previous events. An animated version of ‘Death Race 2000’, this film should be required viewing for anyone who thinks ultra-violent kiddie cartoons are a modern invention.

[Beware: at least two cassettes of ‘Speed Racer’ are available; the one reviewed here is on the ‘MY-TV’ label (MYTV 20027); the Parkfield Junior release may have been cut and is noticeably less vicious]

She walked in a pool of light.

It tracked her perfectly, the endless battle between light and shade waged over her form – waxing and waning lakes of cream flowed across fields of blue velvet as her muscles bulged and smoothed away. She walked with the power and finesses of a Kung Fu extra on rice paper, with the patience of a Highgate angel. Every nerve ending in my skin applauded electrically, currents of heat and pain washed over my back, shorting across the sweat that formed like dew. An impossible breeze cooled me to the core, but I was already frozen.

Once in a lifetime
Once over there
She stood in doorways
She stood on the edge
Her point of view was fever
On a thread of light
My point of view was shaken
She took my mind

I had just stepped out the back door of the joint into the alley – cool, dark and only slightly less full of boxes, bins, cans and abandoned Skodas than Janet Street-Porter’s mouth was full of teeth. There are still a few pubs in London that haven’t been turned into groovy wine bars, mock Edwardian railway stations or yuppie clone-zones, and this wasn’t one of them. Though there had to be a seriously pressing reason why I was here, it’s importance was rapidly diminishing in the face of two dangerously strange facts. I was watching the personification of Lust in a dress walk past, and the world was starting to career about like a turbocharged rollercoaster on the way to the Chemists.

Jeez, that last Bushmills tasted like a hippopotamus’s underarm deodorant. I watched a guy in a trenchcoat sway alarmingly, teetering on the brink of gravity’s domain, tracing a Mandelbrot with his arms. I don’t know what he was on, but I’d have some of that and so would my parrot. Call me Finn. Mickey Finn.

The parrot on my shoulder guffawed like a Victorian clown marionette, scratchy and repetitive, mocking me through a Doctor Who sound effects echo. The angel seemed sublimely oblivious to the sudden plasticity in the local space-time continuum. My mother wouldn’t like what I was thinking, but I figured there wasn’t a lot of point doing something if your mother did like it. I tried to call after her, but my
words came out in Helvetica Medium and kept swimming around like sperm and arranging themselves into potential candidates for the names of new Balkan states. After a while they got bored with that and tried for the Guinness Book of Records for the longest palindrome ever, making “a man, a plan, a canal – Panama” seem like a four year old’s first attempt to spell “video”. As the words stretched out of sight they began to curl, form strings of DNA helix and promptly mutated into a hippopotamus with a clothes peg on its nose. And a large drinks bill.

Break open my body
Hold my mind in your hands
Drag me down in deep waters
Down in fields of flowers
For there’s no sanity
To stand me on my feet
My point of view exploded
She fucked my mind

She led me with a smile and a wiggle like a seahorse on a fishtank, and I waded after her robes which were white enough to make Persil’s ad-men break down and weep. The door parted round her and left me wondering why my wallet contained so much that was either invalid, expired or both, and why my Visa card took its abuse so personally that it tried to bite me when I offered it up to the door lock.

The interior resembled a fifties Batman set rather better than I would have liked – all primary colours, four pane windows and giant telephones. An urban playground full of exciting niches for bad guys to leap out of holding Hollywood prop six shooters with eleven chambers. The man in my boots appeared to be trying to moonwalk while holding his breath for the benfit of a large but invisible audience who thought this was the warm-up before the appearance of some smutty northern comedian.

Abruptly, I had got my boots back again, and a man who was as familiar as Hell was arguing with the angel with the volume turned real low. She drew an exquisitely carved knife from the warmth of her thigh and slit his throat, the smile never leaving her lips.

The lights winked out. The knife in my hand was warm and slippery. Somewhere in the dark a man drowned noisily in his own blood.

Please don’t disturb me
Just wrap me in clean white sheets
I’ve seen her cool white skin
I’ve seen her hands
While mine like desires
Untouched, betray me
With cruelty and love
She left my mind

Some think Dario Argento is God, some think he’s got a bad attitude when it comes to sex-violence but all agree he’s one of the most influential and inventive horror film directors of our time. Recently, he spoke to TC’s man in Europe, Roman Guttinger, in Profondo Rosso, the film shop he owns in Rome:

TC: Two weeks ago, you were in London at ‘Shock Around the Clock’. Did you like it and was it your first time in London?
DA: I’ve been to England before, I’ve got a lot of friends there but it’s quite a long time since I was last there. Yes, I enjoyed it. It’s definitely important to talk to my fans, it’s always interesting to hear their criticisms – some of them even make suggestions and tell me what they like…!

TC: You presented ‘Two Evil Eyes’ at the festival, your latest movie which you did with George Romero. You worked with him on ‘Dawn of the Dead’. Now, 11 years later you’ve done another. Do you like working with him?
DA: George is an old friend of mine and so I enjoy working with him. We have a similar taste – we have a lot in common. That doesn’t mean that our films are similar: on the contrary, we film totally differently, but our ‘visions’ are close together.

TC: I heard he offered you another movie, but you didn’t want to do it. Why?
DA: Yes, the budget was too high. I don’t like to work on too big projects – I can’t do what I want to when I always have to care about the money. Anyway, at the moment I’m rather busy, I’m producing Michelle Soavi’s ‘La Secta’ and next year I’m going to direct a movie in the States.

TC: What can you tell us about these two projects?
DA: ‘La Secta’ starts in the 16th century where you see a sect carrying out gruesome ceremonies. Then in the present day you see the sect still exists, practicing their unholy rituals. They wait for an important day – during the movie, the spectator realises what this special day is… Sergio Stivaletti [‘Demons’, ‘The Church’, etc] is again doing the effects – there’s one especially good effect with a very big bird. I can’t tell you a lot about the other project next year. I can just say that Dennis Etchinson will be the co-writer for the script. He’s quite famous in the States. The movie will be in the style of ‘Tenebrae’ and ‘Opera’, more mystery than pure horror like ‘Demons’.

TC: You also want to do some more short stories inspired by Edgar Allen Poe.
DA: Yes, next year I’ll be doing some shows for Italian TV. Tom Savini, with whom I worked on ‘Two Evil Eyes’ will do the special make-up effects again.

TC: Why do you think the US and British rating boards cut your movies so heavily? ‘Day of the Dead’ or ‘Re-Animator’ for example are much bloodier than your pictures.
DA: I really don’t know why, it gives me a headache when I think about it… Most of the cut scenes don’t contain violence, just dialogue. They destroy my whole work!! I think probably they don’t respect foreign movies, they don’t try to discuss with foreign film-makers about censorship because it’s too far away. So they take the simplest course and cut the movies.

TC: Have you had any problems in Italy with the censors?
DA: When I’m making movies for Italian television, I sell them my pictures and they cut out what they think isn’t possible to show on TV. For the TV companies it means money – the earlier they can show it, the more money they earn! when I sell them the rights to my pictures, they can do whatever they choose.

TC: What about your popularity in Italy – when you walk through Rome, do the people recognise you? And do you like it when they start talking to you?
DA: Yes, every day some people start talking to me, but I think it’s ok. It makes me proud, finally here’s my ‘earnings’ that people like my pictures. The people here in Rome aren’t watching me like a star, more like a friend, “Ciao, Dario, how are you?”, things like that.

TC: You’ve got one Profondo Rosso shop in Rome and another in Ferrara [near Bologna]. Was Forbidden Planet in London an inspiration for your shop?
DA: Yes, I know F.P and I wanted to have something similar in Italy. I also wanted to have some sort of meeting point for horror fans here in Italy. Luigi Cozzi [ aka Lewis Coates, director of ‘Contamination’, etc ] and I are going to open another store in Milano around November 1990. It’ll be the biggest shop and there will be upstairs a museum of some of my movies. It’ll be the same style as my other shops, just twice as big. But first there will be the official opening of the P.R shop in Ferrara on the 6th of October. It’s been open since the beginning of August, but we’re having a party for everyone who’s interested in it that Saturday. We’ll have some special effects performances and… you’ll see!

TC: I heard there are plans for a Profondo Rosso magazine.
DA: At the moment it’s just a project but we hope that the first issue will be out in November 1990. Most of it will be comic strips inspired by my movies.

TC: “Suspiria Strikes Back”?
DA: [ laughing ] Yes, something like that! But there will be reviews of the latest horror-movies too.

TC: Will there ever be a real third ‘Demons’ film? In Britain, they released a movie called ‘Demons 3: The Ogre’ by Lamberto Bava, but it’s just one of his TV-productions.
DA: Yes, it has nothing to do with a sequel to the movies. Actually ‘La Chiesa’ [The Church] should have been the third movie, but after I and II I changed my distributor and they didn’t want to make sequels so they changed the script and took out all the demon sequences. So ‘Demons III’ died.

TC: Do you have a lot of contact with other Italian directors like Bava or Fulci?
DA: I’ve a lot of contact with Lamberto Bava because he’s also a friend of mine but I’ve no contact with Fulci. I like his old movies more than the new ones – they aren’t my cup of tea!

TC: Which directors do you admire most in general?
DA: [thinking]… There are just two – Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock.

TC: I’ve heard you’re a vegetarian. Is that true, and if so, why?
DA: Yes, it’s true – I’m a vegetarian because I don’t like the idea of killing animals. I could never arrange it with my conscience!

TC: So what do you think of the cannibal movies which contain real animal killing?
DA: I don’t like them, they are disgusting! It’s sick when they show the slaughter of innocent animals. It’s the same with the child porn movies – disgusting, I could never do that!!

Shock Around the Clock 4
August 11-12th, 1990
Electric Cinema, London

“Whenever two or three horror fans are gathered together in my name, they will hold a festival, and the name of the festival shall be Shock Around the Clock”
—— The Book of Jaworzyn, Chapter 13, Verse 10.

Four hours before the doors opened up, people were already queuing up for the most eagerly anticipated event since whatever-the-last-eagerly-anticipated-event-was. Not that I was there at 8 am, I only asked someone at the front. Having spent 30 minutes trying to find somewhere to park, the editors of TC and ‘Sludgefeast’ arrived about ten to eleven, joining the advance party dropped off earlier to hold a place in the queue. Some frantic competitive ‘zine selling to the bored masses in the queue followed, honours ending about even, though I wasted half the income thus obtained buying other bits and pieces. I had just sold to the back of the queue when the doors opened and we were allowed into the new venue of the Electric cinema on Portobello Road.

The opening film was Roger Corman’s ‘Frankenstein Unbound‘, based on the book by Brian Aldiss. In it, Dr. Buchanan~ (John Hurt) is sent back in time to 19th century Switzerland, where Byron, Shelley & Mary Godwin are having their notorious party on the shores of Lake Geneva, and Something is killing local livestock and people. It will come as no surprise to learn of the presence of a Dr.Frankenstein… It’s typical Corman hokum, enjoyable in a mindless way, but every time it starts getting momentum going, it manages to screw things up – the worst case of this is having Michael Hutchence, lead singer of INXS and Kylie’s ‘friend’, playing Shelley (sorry, Cathy!). The audience found him highly amusing. Large amounts of picturesque pseudo-Swiss scenery (it was shot in Italy) give it a slight travelogue air – overall, it just about works thanks to some nice touches on the monster and imaginative use of optical effects.

Next up was ‘Blue Steel‘, reviewed in TC5 (I must admit the audience here seemed to like it more than I did), but preceded by a BBFC certificate, which provoked loud jeers from the audience. For some reason, this annoyed Stefan Jaworzyn, who came on afterwards and ticked us off in a pretty condescending manner – he seemed to think we were booing the film, when I, and I assume most people, were showing dislike for the BBFC. In any case, his reaction was a bit much given co-organiser Alan Jones’ quote in Time Out: “We do not show certificated or cut versions“. This was a lie, as ‘Nightbreed’ was definitely censored. Now, to be fair, I’ve always found both organisers very helpful and friendly in any personal dealings I’ve had with them, but they are perceived by many as egotistic and superior, not wanting to be regarded as one of the ‘fans’. This is a shame – with the access to films and guests they have already, if Shock could borrow the attitude of Black Sunday they’d have one hell of a festival. As it is, they don’t seem too bothered after the event sells out. End of polemic, back to the films.

The first real treat of the festival came on next – a preview reel for ‘Highlander 2 – the Quickening‘. Always difficult to get an accurate impression of such things, but it looks very expensive and very impressive. Set in 2024, after the collapse of the ozone layer, it stars Lambert and Connery again – how the latter fits in is unsure, given his demise in the original and his non-appearance in the promo reel – battling against Michael Ironside.

Every festival has it’s dog, and Shock’s was the next film, ‘Carnival of Souls‘. Made in 1962, before 90% of the audience was born, this newly-printed print may well be slavered over by the art-house horror crowd for things like ‘subtle black & white cinematography’ and ‘eerie, atmospheric restraint’. I found it dull, repetitive and almost totally predictable – imagine a Herschell Gordon Lewis film without the gore, and the acting toned down to the mediocre and you get my impression. Under different circumstances, I might have enjoyed it, but not here – I’d rather watch modern crap than antique crap!

I could cope with it, however, biding my time for ‘Miracle Mile‘, originally dropped but reinstated when the reaction at Black Sunday was so good. This film has provoked total unanimity across all audiences – again, undoubtedly the hit of the festival and I have yet to hear anyone say they find it less than superb. Personally, I found it even better on a second viewing – the beginning dragged less and the ending was more harrowing this time, knowing the outcome in advance. All I can do is repeat the advice given last time: go and see it.

Clive Barker swept in, signed some autographs, charmed the audience by making totally slanderous and 100% unprintable comments about Margaret Thatcher, and swept out, leaving us to watch ‘Nightbreed‘. Based on ‘Cabal’, it bombed in the States, thanks to an advertising campaign that made it look like a stalk ‘n’ slasher but is, more accurately, a monster movie – 200 or so of them, courtesy of some very impressive Image Animation work. It takes a while to really get going, but it gradually builds up a large head of steam. This is thanks to a surprisingly good performance from David Cronenberg, than the hero and heroine, who struck me as unconvincing. I enjoyed it – Barker said he was going for the slightly claustrophobic, set-filmed atmosphere of the Hammer films, and I reckon he succeeded.

A welcome break followed, and then Dario Argento arrived, via a side door to avoid the massed hordes of his worshippers. He got up on stage, said a few words in his limited English and was then lost to view for half an hour under a scrum of autograph-hunters. I went to the toilet. Came back in time for ‘Two Evil Eyes‘, a co-production between Argento and zombie-meister George Romero, with each directing a story ‘inspired by’ Edgar Allen Poe. Romero’s was first, and was disappointing – his strengths are in plot and characters, almost the opposite of Argento’s, and it needed more inspired directing to kick some life into a story that could have come from ‘Tales of the Unexpected’; a wife and her lover bumping off the husband to collect his inheritance, only to find him returning from beyond the grave. Scarcely novel stuff. The second half was Argento’s, with “The Black Cat”. Now, my feelings about Argento should be well known to you, but in all fairness, I have to say I liked this quite a lot. Although, again, the plot is an old one – a man kills his wife and walls up her corpse – it had some new twists, lots of typically flashy camerawork and more than enough gore, a substance strangely lacking up to now at the festival.

‘Hardware‘ came in at no.6, see last issue for details – although audience opinion on it was definitely mixed, I still find it an astonishing film given the minuscule budget (less than a million pounds), and the relative inexperience of Richard Stanley, the director. He’s only 24, give him twenty more years and he could be up there with Argento. Unfortunately, it looks like the film will be heavily cut, losing about 10 minutes, in the States anyway, after the distributors and censors have had their wicked way with it.

No such problems with the next film, because it has no distributor in the UK and is unlikely to get one, since it would be shredded by the BBFC. Mind you, if ‘Bad Taste’ can get through, maybe Peter Jackson and the censors share a sense of humour, in which case his latest epic, ‘Meet the Feebles‘, might yet be seen. It’s loosely based on ‘The Muppets’, with a troupe of puppets struggling to put on a variety show but there, the similarity ends, as Jackson gleefully slaughters every taboo within reach in a plot that would take several pages to summarise. You’ve got walruses having sex with pussycats, a junkie crocodile who’s a ‘Nam vet to boot (lovely flashback sequence), a shit-eating fly gutter journalist, a rat who makes porno movies (while selling smack to the croc on the side), a rabbit with AIDS, an elephant fighting a paternity suit brought by a chicken and a psycho hippo. Despite occasional weak points, it’s astonishingly inventive, wonderfully stupid and unbelievably gross, another cult classic in the making.

‘Maniac Cop II‘ – zzzzzzzzzzz….. And I think most other people chose this one to catch up on a few winks, in preparation for ‘Leatherface – Texas Chainsaw Massacre III‘ (I wasn’t the only person to look at the program and wonder what film ‘Acre III’ was, not having noticed it was merely the leftover from ‘Texas Chainsaw Mass-‘ on the previous line!). Directed by Jeff Burr of ‘The Stepfather’, it’s far better than the flaccid TCM II, returning to the spirit of the original, while fortunately dispensing with the flares. A couple driving through Texas encounter the family of cannibals, now extended to include a mother and a young daughter (that’s another child who’ll grow up totally warped!), and come off second best, at least initially. A healthily nasty streak runs through it, and it’s another one you are unlikely to see here, although I believe the Scala are planning to show it.

And that was that, for another year. 20« hours, 10 films, virtually all of them worthwhile at least for one viewing and we departed, leaving behind some vaguely miffed staff looking at the rubbish generated by keeping 450 people in a small space for 24 hours. The decision to move it to the Electric was a mixed blessing, the seats did have slightly more leg-room and the sound system was definitely better, but the place got far too hot very quickly and there was a lack of room to stand around and chat between, or even during, films. All in all, a worthwhile weekend, even if at £25 they’re in danger of pricing themselves out of the market.

China O’Brien (Richard Clouse) – Cynthia Rothrock, the star of this film, isn’t very pretty and she can’t act for peanuts. However, she is 97 times World Terminal Karate Champion, or some such stuff and is thus perfectly suited for this picture, where kicking ass is the order of the day. Her father is a Sheriff, killed by some Bad Guys and Cynthia takes over his job. Fill in the rest yourself, it’s not hard. Nice fight sequences, but why is every blow accompanied by a sound like a wardrobe smashing? 5/10.

Cyclone (Fred Olen Ray) – Not one of Fred’s better ones, despite a promising start with Jeffrey Coombs as the inventor of a super-duper, top secret motorbike. Unfortunately, he is killed early on (too expensive for old F.O.R, no doubt), leaving his girlfriend to try and save the bike from all the baddies after it. She’s played by Heather Thomas; whatever her considerable attributes might be, acting isn’t anywhere on the list. Only a couple of nice car stunts at the end, and Heather getting 30 Amps through her thighs, made this anything above not-very-good. 3/10.

Die Hard 2 (Renny Harlin) – If ever a film was damned by it’s budget, this is it – every second you see on the screen cost over $10,000 and there is no way any film can live up to that. It’s a gallant attempt though. “Ten men went to blow, went to blow some airplanes” and only good ol’ Brooce can stop them, armed with stealth, cunning and enough weaponry to take on Iraq. Definitely the highest death toll of any movie this year, thanks to 200+ people in a crashed jet, not to mention the first recorded case of icicle violence (reduced to get the ’15’ rating, I think!). Mindless, totally implausible and no attempt at any characterisation whatsoever, but suddenly, half way through, I realised I was enjoying it. From then on, I was happy – still not a patch on the first one. 7/10.

Gremlins 2 (Joe Dante) – Incredibly cute, awesomely cuddly and impossible to resist taking to bed with you. But enough of Phoebe Cates, what about the movie? Like all sequels, it attempts to be bigger than the original and it certainly succeeds – no more smalltown America, Mogwai is in a New York genetic lab at the top of a skyscraper and before you can say ‘bright lights!’ (in a high-pitched voice), he’s had a shower and exploded into thousands of you-know-whats.

Courtesy of the genetic lab, they rapidly mutate to produce bat-lins, brainy-lins and even a fem-lin and then things start to get really silly, culminating in a large musical number in the skyscraper foyer. Galligan and Cates return as the stars, but yet again the FX win; jaw-droppingly effective. And add Christopher Lee, too many film jokes to mention, office satire and Bugs Bunny. Awesome. 8/10.

The Killer (John Woo) – Trailers for this were shown at Shock 4 & Black Sunday 3, piquing my curiosity enough to go and see this Hong Kong cop thriller about an assassin who goes on one last job to pay for an operation to salvage the sight of a cute singer, whom he accidentally blinded in a gun-battle. Sweet, huh? However, 130, count ’em, people get shot – this excludes those beaten up, blown up, crashed up, stabbed and the unfortunate bystander who suffers a fatal coronary! In between these bursts of beautifully portrayed ultra-violence, are saccharine-sweet interludes straight out of Mills and Boon which give it all a surreal air and were, to this novice, hysterically funny. Given the high body count, it has a very coy attitude to nudity – a girl is shot in the chest and taken to hospital where the doctor staunches the wound by sticking the bandage down her dress! 7/10.

Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout Video (who cares?) – The purpose of this film is perfectly clear, to give adolescent American boys something to jerk off to in their bedrooms. Unfortunately, I don’t have a video in my room, so I can’t tell you if it succeeds in this aim, but I suppose you might enjoy this as a film if you like the sight of Ms.Quigley rubbing her crotch against a carpet, leading some zombies in an aerobics session or having four friends (combined IQs brushing double figures – it’s very much a case of ‘the bell is ringing, but Mr. Intelligence is not at home’) over for a slumber i.e. lingerie party. Directed with a frightening lack of skill or imagination, just a single-minded obsession centred on Linnea’s naughty bits. Now, a Winona Ryder Workout Video I could go for… 1/10.

Robocop 2 (Irvin Kershner) – part sequel, part remake, all action; ‘Robocop 2’ is superbly-engineered comicbook-styled entertainment, that more than makes up for it’s lack of originality with wall-to-wall violence and relentless pacing. The Detroit police force is on strike (again!) and social order is breaking down as gangs of murderous thieves roam the streets thoroughly freaked out on the highly addictive drug “Nuke”. Only our heavy metal hero (Peter Weller, back in armour) is still on duty to splatter gangsters over the sidewalks but when he tackles Cain, the man behind Nuke, the cybernetic Murphy is reduced to a pile of rubble.

OCP initiate a program to create Robocop Mk. 2 but after Cain gets his come-uppance from a rebuilt Murphy, his brain is transplanted into the new creature which proceeds to go on the rampage. A dazzling visual treat for action movie fans with some brilliant effects by Phil Tippett and Rob Bottin. The screenplay by Frank Miller & Walon Green is crammed full of movie references (Frankenstein to King Kong) and comic culture themes.

There are faults: the characters are mere cyphers and some of the illogical events, where commonsense is abandoned for the sake of narrative expediency and superheroic vigour, do tend to be a little distracting. It lacks any of the humanist concerns of Verhoeven’s original, replacing that film’s erudite sub-text with the unsophisticated nature of pulp adventure. Excellent as graphic actioners go, but negligible as science-fiction. 9/10. (TL)

Robot Jox (Stuart Gordon) – See how the mighty are fallen. Difficult to believe the director of the all-time classic ‘Re-Animator’, the pretty-damn-good ‘From Beyond’, and the not-bad ‘Dolls’ can be responsible for this live-action Transformers movie. Perhaps something was lost in the crash of Empire Pictures. After WW III, international disputes are settled by giant robots battling it out, controlled by men in their heads (remote control not being conducive to the plot, I assume). After an accident kills 300 spectators, the US champion, Achilles (yes, it’s US vs USSR – passe‚ or what?) retires, only to be dragged back for a last battle. Any guesses as to the outcome? The FX are more realistic than the acting, and in the future, you’ll be glad to know white boiler suits are in. 3/10.

Special Effects (Larry Cohen) – One of the best psychological thrillers I’ve seen in a long time, has Zoe Tamarlis playing an actress, murdered by a director (Eric Bogosian), who films the event and uses it as a basis for his next film, getting the murdered woman’s husband to play the murdered woman’s husband, and an actress, played by Zoe Tamerlis, in the role of the victim. Then art starts imitating life… Inventive and gripping, with Tamerlis giving both characters depth, and Cohen’s direction keeping the viewer locked in their seat. Is it real or is it Memorex? Who cares, when the result is this good! 9/10.

Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven) – Four directors, innumerable rewrites and $63 million after starting, the most-expensive-movie-ever-made arrives. Was it worth it? First of all, forget the Philip K.Dick story; this was “inspired” by it but you’d have as much ground for claiming ‘Robocop’ or ‘Commando’ were the base sources. All the subtle nuances and disquieting paranoia goes out the window, except where it allows Arnie to blow up a few people/objects/vehicles, and you’re left with a generally predictable story. Characterization is next to non-existent as far as Schwarzenegger goes – he plays the same character as in his previous movies, dumb and tough with a basically good heart.

Yet it is one hell of an action pic – Paul Verhoeven could make ‘Brookside’ a tense and gripping drama so given the large amounts of pyrotechnics available here, he’s on home territory. Michael Ironside, as the chief violent opposition for Arnie, is psychotically vicious and delivers the groceries. Overall, the film does so too – in terms of FX, sets and nice touches to give the future some substance you’ll not see better this year, but I was sorta hoping for something more than ‘Rambo on Mars’. 7/10.

Wild at Heart (David Lynch) – Judging from the furore round this one, I was expecting ‘Dawn of the Dead’ crossed with ‘Debbie Does Dallas’. It’s not, despite some messy bits that suggest Peter Jackson was a second unit director. Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern are Sailor and Lula, lovers who run off, pursued by a detective and a vicious hit man, both unleashed by Lula’s vengeful mother. Lynch keeps his audience on their toes by spraying fragments from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ left & right and throwing in disconcerting sequences that would get laughed off screen anywhere else – it’s all played with straight faces for most of the time. The occasional flash of genius succeeds in lighting up the movie like the fires which punctuate it and it’s often these seeming irrelevancies that are most chilling, as when the lovers come across a car accident and are forced to watch one of the passengers die, but it lacks a really powerful central performance to hold the whole thing together. A flawed diamond. 8/10.

Xtro (Harry Bromley Davenport) – Small kid sees father abducted by UFO – no-one believes him. Then, some time later, Dad comes back. Or is it really an extra-terrestrial with strange desires? Three guesses! Interesting British horror/sf pic takes a while to warm up, though when it does, it belies it’s low budget and scarcely world-famous cast and pulls off one top-notch sequence that will make you look askance at Action Man for a long time to come. Includes Maryam ‘The Living Daylights’ d’Abo as an au-pair and yes, she does take her clothes off, which has to be worth a few minutes of anyone’s time… 7/10.

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Stop Press Darkman (Sam Raimi) – It looks like our Sam has finally proved he can make a successful film without the words ‘Evil’ and ‘Dead’ in the title; has he sold out to join the Hollywood gravy-train? In a word, “No”. While this movie has elements which could be compared to ‘Robocop’, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and, of course, ‘Batman’, it produces something totally distinct, individual and really quite wonderful. The hero, played by Liam Neeson, is Peyton Westlake, a chemist developing artificial skin whose fiancee (Frances McDormand) comes across a memo which implicates her boss, property developer Louis Strack (Colin Friels) in corruption and graft. Strack sends in the heavies, who blow up Westlake’s lab, leaving him hideously burned and barely alive. He escapes from the hospital where he’s been treated (beats me why he’d want to do this when he has Jenny Agutter for a nurse!) and recreates his laboratory. He uses the artificial skin to make masks, which are then used to impersonate members of Strack’s mob to try and bring the evil empire down, or allow him to rejoin his fiancee – temporarily, as unfortunately the skin only lasts 99 minutes before melting into sludge.

It all builds to a climax on top of a skyscraper, licking ‘Batman’ into a cocked hat, before the usual sequel-open ending. And it beats that obvious comparison in almost every other area too – the plot is far more coherent, justification being given for almost every detail, the acting is solid if unexceptional and the effects (with the exception of some shaky back-projection) look a lot better than they should given the budget. But, as in all his other films, the direction overshadows almost everything else – only Raimi could get away with a point-of-view shot for a rivet! There is one sequence involving a helicopter which is just jaw-dropping and other scenes leave you with the breath ripped out of your lungs. It’s not really violent or gory; the most squirm-inducing scenes all involve fingers (I’ll leave the interpretation to the psychologists out there). It is tense, exciting and tremendously entertaining – if the rest of Hollywood could show as much imagination per dollar, the whole world would be trading in their TV sets. 9/10.