Film Blitz

Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) – Something nasty is prowling the canals of Amsterdam, doing away with a selection of inhabitants at a rate of knots. A swim ‘n’ slash pic? Maybe, it’s just like we’re back in 1981, save a lack of teenagers. There’s a bit of a cop-out at the end – to say more would spoil the deftly (or indeed, Delft-ly) generated tension. A slight air of Dutch Tourist Board here; you get to see Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ on a flimsy pretext, but is at least tulip-free. It reminds me of ‘Taggart’ with bad dubbing. Nice boat chase, too! 7/10

Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow) – Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie cop who blows away a low-life scum store-robber, only for said scum’s gun to vanish. People then start getting shot, and bullet cases with her name on them are found at the scene… The plot of this is annoyingly flimsy, with any number of holes, contradictions and ridiculous twists – for example, we are asked to believe an untrained stockbroker is capable of wielding a .44 Magnum with 100% accuracy (except when shooting at Jamie Lee, naturally!) from when he first picks it up. Ignore these, and Bigelow screws up the tension with skill, despite a climax ripped off straight from ‘The Hitcher’. presumably by Eric Red who wrote that one and co-wrote this one. Curtis still can’t act for peanuts, though she does a fine Martina Navratilova impression. Leave your logic at home. 6/10.

Celia (Ann Turner) – A little girl possessing an overactive imagination, a rabbit and Communists for next door neighbours are the ingredients in this impressive debut from Australian director Turner. Set in late 50’s Victoria, it’s another of those childhood-loss-of innocence films, with rampant McCarthyism and a plague of wild bunnies having disastrous consequences on the life of the title character, played with unsettling intensity by Rebecca Smart. Looking at the past through refreshingly non-sentimental eyes, it evokes the childhood world of rituals, gangs and the incomprehensible nature of adults with clarity and style. The first film I’ve seen with a credit for ‘Rabbit Wranglers’! Recommended. 8/10.

Class of 1999 (Mark Lester) – A storyline of robots-in-public-service, a la ‘Robocop’, who are closer to ‘The Terminator’ in style, may score low points for originality, yet ends up as further proof that if you purloin ideas from decent films and have a cast, crew and FX of any merit, you can still produce useful product. The robots in question here are teachers, sent in to control a Seattle school, where pupils check in their weapons on arriving. Needless to say, the androids get a little out of hand, killing the hero’s brother and kidnapping his girlfriend (who’s also the Principal’s daughter) before he leads a gang of students into the school for the final battle. Lots of weaponry on view, not the least of it on the teachers – the performance of John P.Ryan as the History teacher is especially chilling and the tension & violence build steadily until the (fairly predictable) end, producing a pseudo-rebellious film that succeeds in wasting a lot of property en route. 7/10.

Date With An Angel (Tom McLoughlin) – Blatant ‘Splash’ clone in spirit, with an angel hitting a satellite and plummetting into a swimming pool to be discovered by the hero who has to save her from being exploited while she heals. His fiancee (Phoebe Cates) sees her and misunderstands totally, etc, etc. About rescued by nice touches as fiancee gets increasingly psycho; totally salvaged by the angel – she’s played by Emmanuelle Beart who does little apart from squeak, open her eyes wide and flutter her wings yet still leaves fellow world ranked beauty Cates a moist smear on the carpet. Absolutely gorgeous; if angels are really like her, I’m converted. The film gets 6/10. The angel 10/10. Amen.

Dead Man Walking (Godfrey Brown) – Not read much about this one, surprising as the cast includes Wings ‘LA Bounty’ Hauser and Jeffrey ‘Re-Animator’ Coombs, and a pity as it’s one of the better post-apocalypse (plague, to be specific) films. Coombs’ girlfriend is kidnapped by an escaped criminal and taken into a plague zone; he hires Hauser, who’s terminally ill (and enjoys playing Russian Roulette using a chainsaw!), to rescue her. A well-thought out world structure, excellent ideas and some memorable moments plus a healthy dose of violence to produce a film which could easily pass for ‘Mad Max 4’. Try not to confuse it with the TVM of the same name about capital punishment! 8/10.

Faceless (Jess Franco) – Rumours that Franco was the man behind ‘Edge of Sanity’ made me seek out this, which had been widely described as better than his average. Not much of a compliment perhaps, but it is a classy mad surgeon movie – after his sister is scarred by acid, Dr. Flamand (Helmut Berger) tries to build her a new face with the aid of his nurse (French porn queen, Brigitte Lahaie), by transplanting one from a beautiful model (Caroline Munro), whose father (Telly Savalas) sends a private eye to track her down. Good cast for a Franco movie, huh? After a shaky start. the effects start to fly, with a lot of surgical splatter, a chainsaw decapitation and a syringe in the eye that deserves entry in TC4’s Eyeball Violence chart. Only a heavily overused, rotten song prevent it from being watchable both on sex ‘n’ violence and aesthetic grounds. 7/10.

Hardware (Richard Driscoll) – As a distillation of 80’s genre cinema, this film is near perfect. Aliens, Terminator, Hellraiser, Predator, Max Headroom and Blade Runner are all ruthlessly milked of their best parts, not to mention ‘Paris, Texas’ and every woman-alone-with-a-psycho film to date. If the monster thus created isn’t up to the sum of these parts, ‘Hardware’ is, to use the cliche, a roller-coaster ride, albeit one we’ve been on before. Plot is slim (android goes berserk) and there’s a disconcerting change of focus in the middle when attention switches from hero to heroine but you don’t notice the flaws at the time – the imagery (75% pop video, 25% Nescafe advert), a detailed futureworld, good effects, cool soundtrack and more flashy camerawork than I’ve seen in ages help execute the cinematic equivalent of the three-card trick. There’ll no doubt be the usual predictable whining from certain predictable quarters, yet it surpasses it’s budgetary and location limits, setting up (and discarding, unfortunately) some lovely ideas on the way – Motorhead’s Lemmy as a taxi driver??? 8/10.

Heathers (Michael Lehmann) – Suffering deja vu? Yes, it was reviewed in TC4 when I expressed disappointment that it wasn’t black enough. I recently saw it again, and enjoyed it a lot more, possibly because I had different, more accurate expectations; although I’m still not happy with the ending and dialogue that borders on the unintelligible occasionally, the lovely camerawork, good acting and a vicious streak a mile wide more than compensate. If perhaps I’m being swayed slightly by lust for Shannon Doherty and Winona Ryder, who cares? Upgraded to 9/10.

I Changed My Sex (Ed J. Wood) – aka Glen or Glenda aka I Led Two Lives aka He or She aka… An early plea for tolerance of transvestites, partly auto-biographical since the director is widely reported to have gone into several WWII battles wearing lacy panties under his fatigues. Not quite as exploitative as it might have been, it still seems tasteless, even without Bela Lugosi saying lines like “Beware, beware, beware the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep!”, for no apparent reason. You’ll never be able to look at an angora sweater again without giggling. 5/10.

Kali-Film (Brigit & Wilhelm Heim) – Weird film of eight sections which seems to be trying to explore the way the cinema sterotypes both men & women. The best of these were two in the middle, the first of which was just a sequence of stills, taken from movies, of women being terrorised & assaulted. Taken out of context, their power is multiplied, leaving this viewer feeling very uncomfortable. This is followed by a series of clips, which show women acting aggressively themselves; far more acceptable, including bits from ‘Reform School Girls’, ‘Ms.45’, ‘I Spit on Your Grave’, ‘Chained Heat’, etc, making a Violent Femmes Greatest Hits compilation. Another good pair of sections contrast fictional war with grim reality. A slight tendency to over-kill everywhere doesn’t hurt too much. 7/10.

Living Doll (Peter Litten & George Dugdale) – A classic case of a nice idea foiled by poor direction and a pedestrian script, despite valiant acting. Mark Jax plays a morgue worker who worships a flower seller from afar – when she’s killed in an accident, he flips and steals her corpse, believing her to be suffering from a form of catalepsy. He dresses the body up, talks to and eventually ‘marries’ her; then she starts to talk back. Sort of “live fast, die young and LOVE a pretty corpse”. Too tastefully done, skirting all the details you REALLY want to know; the highly average direction overpower Jax’s neatly underplayed necrophile and the occasional frisson. 6/10.

Orgy of the Dead (A.C.Stevens) – If you removed the topless go-go dancing from this movie, you’d get a gorgeously silly horror movie about a couple that crash their car near a cemetery and discover the Emperor of Darkness within. However, it’d only be 15 minutes long, as at least 80% of this picture is taken up with various ghouls, all female, ‘dancing’ round a tiny, ultra-cheap set. This ‘Eurovision Zombie Contest’ is alternately numbingly & hysterically dull; not many films can provoke jeers at the Scala by showing naked nubiles! 9/10 for everything but the dancing, 2/10 for that.

Scarecrows (William Wesley) – No danger of this film wearing out the guns in your TV since it all seems to take place in a cellar at midnight. You’ve got to be a genius (Ridley Scott) to get away with lighting like that, and William Wesley isn’t one. Despite scarecrows animated by the souls of dead people being a neat twist on a theme and a quite high mess factor, by BBFC standards, the characters aren’t engaging on any level, being a mix of kooks, cowards & killers, and as spam-in-a-cabin films go, this is very ordinary. 3/10.

sex, lies and videotape (Steven Soderbergh) – This film could easily have been some sort of prequel to ‘Videodrome’; James Spader looks very like a young James Woods, and his character, who goes around filming women talking about sex because he’s impotent, also resembles a prototype Max Renn. It’s a little slow in places, to the point of tedium, yet has a bleak beauty that does sustain interest and the characters are realistically complex. As a debut movie for the director, it’s impressive – the man is clearly one to watch in future. 8/10.

A Short Film About Killing (Krsysztof Kieslowski) – The 12″, disco remix cinema version of one of his ‘Ten Commandments’ series, shown recently on BBC2, is perhaps the best argument I’ve seen against capital punishment. It depicts the crime and the state’s retribution in stark focus, comparing them and noting uncomfortable similarities. Initially a study of three characters. The murderer, his victim and the defence lawyer, it gradually focuses on the first & last, then finally the lawyer alone. A savage indictment of violence, committed by individuals or society. 9/10.

Der Todes King (Jorg Buttgereit) – ln 1988, ‘Nekronantik’ crashed onto the scene, provoking acclaim, disgust and bewilderment in equal amounts by its tender portrayal of necrophilia. Two years on. Jorg’s back – has he mellowed? Well… ‘The King of Death‘ is a collection of segments, one for each day of the week, each of which depict a facet of death; Monday, for example, has a suicide by overdose and Thursday is about a bridge and the people that have jumped from it. These segments are linked by time- lapse photography of a corpse decaying – very Peter Greenaway! The soundtrack also provokes comparison, sounding impressively like Michael Nyman on a bad trip. As with other ‘compilation’ films, the result is uneven. On their own, the segments are mainly intriguing and shocking – Tuesday was my personal favourite, being laced with poisonous irony and a delightful parody of ‘Ilsa, She- Woll of the SS’ (specially remarkable given Buttgereit’s nationality). This is the only time it plumbs the depths of taste as explicitly as ‘Nekromantik’ did, the others concentrate rnore on generating atmosphere (with success) and less on blatant shock tactics.

The overall effect isn’t quite as impressive. After a while, apathy starts to set in and the episodes become blurred – was that Friday or Saturday? The links between the days (where they exist at all) are at best tenuous and at worst annoying. A couple of the later sequences are. let’s be honest, disappointing and smack of padding ~ “we’ve still got two days to fill. folks!”. Overall, however. it’s a relentlessly depressing movie, perhaps a little too much so. Appreciate it best by watching it one day per day – that way it’ll ruin your whole week… 3/l0 to 9/10.

Torrents of Spring (Jerzy Skolimowski) – Nastassia’s latest, previously seen as ‘Les Eaux Printenaires’, now in English, albeit very briefly (it lasted two weeks in the cinema here!). Plot is as described before: Timothy Hutton falls in love with Valerie Golino and they get engaged. He then decides he’d rather have Nastassja. A wise move, until his fiancee finds out. Definitely a classy pic, probably her ‘best’ since ‘Paris. Texas‘ and she’s looking lovely ~ there’s one scene at a gypsy wedding which is the stuff of dreams, where she doesn’t look like a mother of two in her thirties! As a film. 7/10, + bonuses as applicable depending on how much you value the Kinski content!

Tremors (Ron Underwood) – Wonderfully gloppy monster movie provides us with another new way to cook spam: spam-in-a-valley, an allusion made concrete when one character says “This valley”s one long smorgasbord“. The inhabitants of Perfection. Nevada (pop. 14 – no, make that 13. Oh, now 12…) are under attack by giant worms: wisely, no attempt at justification or explanation, “Them’s not local boys for sure” being all we have time for. The rest of the film is just as unpretentious. social comment being restricted to a husband & wife survivalist team (car registration UZI 4U). Likeable characters and a lot of orange slime add to the ambience ~ it’s really tough to think of anything that would make this film any better as sheer entertainment. Even the ‘15‘ certificate is on the lenient side! 9/IO.

When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner) – What was that flying out the window? That, Jim, was your street-cred. Films like this remind me why I prefer watching films like ‘Nekromantik’ to this predictable, over-inflated. mindless pap for people who dislike having to confront anything. It’s not badly acted: Ryan & Crystal struggle bravely but are finally buried under a script so laden with inanities. cliches and desperate attempts to avoid offending anyone that it’s the most vacuous viewing I’ve seen in a longtime. As for the notorious ‘orgasm’ scene. I’m sure 1 saw an electric flex running up her leg. 3/10

The ACME of Animation

Go into your local video sell-through store, bypass the feature film section, wander past the music videos and you’ll eventually arrive at the children’s section. Without a doubt you’ll be able to track down several tapes of classic Warner Bros. animation – Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester & Tweetypie, Elmer Fudd, Pepe Le Pew and maybe even the odd Speedy Gonzales. Notice any missing names? Yep. You will hunt in vain for any Wile E. Coyote (aka Famishius Vulgarius Ingeniusi) and Roadrunner (Birdius High-Ballius) cartoons. It’s difficult to see why they’ve been so ignored as for me they represent a distillation of all that is entertaining about animation, impossible to recreate as a live-action film.

The first cartoon ‘Fast and Furry-ous’ appeared in 1949. The series was originally conceived as a satire on the chase cartoons which were highly popular at the time, but nobody saw it that way, they were all too busy laughing at the chase sequences. The series continued for the next fifteen years under the guiding hand of Chuck Jones, culminating in an Academy Award nomination in 1961 for ‘Beep Prepared’ – other directors have since tried their hand at making the films, but just as Fred Quimby must be considered the essence of Tom & Jerry, so Chuck Jones is to Wile E. Coyote (Evereadius Eatibus) and Roadrunner (Digoutius Hot-Rodius).

Their appeal, to some extent, lies in the way they produced an infinite number of variations on the chase theme, a great many of which produced the same result; Wile E. falling down a canyon, accompanied by a whistling sound and with an expression on his face that says “Oh No, here we go again!” far better than any words. The tension is generated in a classic, almost Hitchcockian style – you tend to know exactly what is going to happen, you are just totally unsure how, or indeed when. An example: the Coyote is standing on an overhang, trying to reach the Roadrunner who is on the other side of a canyon. He sets up a see-saw and staggers onto it carrying a boulder, which he throws in the air. What happens next?

  • a) It lands on his head?
  • b) It propels him vertically upwards onto the bottom of another overhang above – he then drops down onto the see-saw, the boulder goes back up and then lands on his head
  • c) It propels him horizontally across the canyon into the opposite wall, just below the Roadrunner, from where he falls down into the canyon.
  • d) The boulder lands on the other end of the see-saw, doesn’t move it at all and rolls down on top of him.

The correct answer, in fact, is e) The boulder lands on the other end, tipping the see-saw alright, then continues down through the overhang, leaving a nice hole – the Coyote slides down the see-saw and into the hole, cue Wile E. falling down a canyon, etc. Give yourself a point nonetheless; the other answers are almost correct as I’ve seen all of them, and several more besides, happen in various Chuck Jones cartoons.

One of the hallmarks of the series was the appearance of objects made by that well-known company called Acme; we have the Acme Giant Rubber Band (For Tripping Roadrunners), Acme Tornado Seeds, an Acme Rocket, etc. About the only thing these have in common is a tendency not to fulfill their specification, tho’ to be fair, this is often at least PARTLY due to misuse by the client! The name ‘Acme’, incidentally, used to be chosen by companies because it put them near the start of the Yellow Pages, back in the days before AAAAAAB Taxis.

  1. This reliance on Acme products is enshrined in Chuck Jones’ Rules; these are taken from his book ‘Chuck Amuck’ (Farrar Strauss Giroux, New York), a part-autobiography, part-textbook on how to make animated cartoons. As he says, “there are – there must be – rules. Without them, comedy slops over at the edges. Identity is lost”. Here are the rules in full:
  2. The Roadrunner cannot harm the coyote except by going “Beep-beep!”.
  3. No outside force can harm the Coyote – only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products.
  4. The Coyote could stop anytime – if he were not a fanatic (Repeat: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim” – George Santayana).
  5. No dialogue ever, except “Beep-beep!”.
  6. The Roadrunner must stay on the road – otherwise, logically, he would not be the Roadrunner.
  7. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters – the Southwest American desert.
  8. All materials, tools, weapons or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme corporation.
  9. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
  10. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

Desultory Nights

It’s an old fashioned story.

I wanted to be a hero. But I’d got to earn my spurs, prove to you that there is more to me than meets the eye.

The moment I had stepped into the house, the party was in full swing. Snogging couples even hung from the light shades, and the music…well, it sounded like a lot of fat boys snorting.

I idled up to the bar where my girlfriend’s mother was rationing out the beer.

“Seen Cilla?”, I asked, not really expecting her to reply.
“She’s upstairs with another fella.”

I took the stairs at a run, missing the middle section altogether.

Bob stopped me on the landing : “How about gatecrashing this party again?”

I laughed off the joke and progressed towards the bedrooms, not knowing in which one Cilla was ensconced.

Leaning against one of the doors was my long lost pen pal, Peter, who had evidently dropped acid in the not too dim and distant past, boldly going beyond the frontiers of sanity… He pointed along the corridor – I forged on, anger gathering itself for a sudden impending release.

I stormed through the door he indicated.


Peering through the half-light, I saw my moral tutor sitting on the floor, guiltily unhanding himself.

I decided this was not the right time to broach the subject of my Degree course, especially as he retreated under the bed in some apparent confusion as to my intentions. I nearly dragged him out again, to piss into his mouth. That would be no more than he deserved.

I tried the door of the ensuite bathroom.
“Cilla! I know you’re in there.”


Inside my head, I knew all along that I was pursuing a rat around the universe.

The space lanes were too obvious free-for-alls where peak capped individuals saluted the bright disco-like lights that jockeyed between the commodity planets.

If she was here, she would no doubt be disguised as a refugee from Star Trek, still bemused by the particular peccadilloes of her own version of Captain Kirk.

No, I must digress – towards the Dark, where lurked those monsters who had failed the auditions. She smiled at their inability to count their own limbs.

Little did I know she was crouching within her own womb, desperate to shed the outer skin that did her no justice at all.


The bathroom was a right sauna. It was just as if I had come off the cold Norwegian forest lands into the near reaches of a Sun system that only need to grow slightly hotter to disappear up its own arse.

I handled her pert, finely nippled breasts as if they had been poured from my clapped out motor’s engine. I exploded the myth of her mouth with the legend of my tongue. And little bits that came off me explored further into her gullet.

There was also a man in the bath with her. And I bent down his head violently, so that he could feed off his own privates.

I sweated like a pig in an oven.


The party continued for another day and another night. Most gradually came off the medicine towards the end, but some never recovered.
Some are ever on call for dress rehearsal of an old-fashioned TV series, never knowing whether they are to be cast as hero or monster.

Cilla? She’ll probably go off with my moral tutor to form a pop group called ‘Insider Dealing’. Her mother will play all the instruments backstage, as they mime up front, during the desultory nights of the future…

The Sun has gone out on me. Somebody no doubt pulled out the light fittings – now there’s nothing of me to meet the eye. I’m writing this in the dark – so maybe I’ve got the ending wrong.

The TC Interview: James Lorinz

TC doesn’t normally go in for interviews, the idea that someone is interesting purely because they are famous not holding water, as Linnea Quigley proves beyond reasonable doubt. However, the following piece struck us as weird – Paul Higson interviews James Lorinz, star of Street Trash and the forthcoming Frankenhooker. No information was available on either participants’ state of mind – we recommend putting this article away until you’ve seen the film, as it might make more sense then, though we’re making no promises…

Paul Higson: A cult is said to have arisen around you after your appearance in Street Trash. In what form has this manifested?
James Lorinz: A small group of Marxist London garbage collectors worship me and voted me most likely to throw tea in the harbour.

PH: Would you call yourself acerbic?
JL: No, but I have some relatives from the Baltic States.

PH: How much did you ad-lib on your Street Trash stint?
JL: Perhaps 60% ad-libs done with the writers on the set.

PH: In the John Hughes film Some Kind of Wonderful there was a doorman character that seemed to have been loosely based/ ripped off from yours.
JL: Sorry, haven’t seen it. My lawyers will look into it.

PH: Is there somebody you would like to see melt? If so, who?
JL (after some careful thought) : The actor William Hurt.

PH: Have you written any scripts yourself?
JL: Yes, I’m in pre-production of a short film I will direct titled Mr Softee: An American Tragedy concerning the trials and tribulations of a man made out of ice-cream.

PH: I know that after Frankenhooker was made, you were given a special credit for dialogue. With you, Henenlotter and Uncle Bob Martin on the script as such, we should be able to expect some of the funniest character interaction of the coming year.
JL: Yeah, I guess so. You’re the boss.

PH: I have yet to see any explanation for the role of Honey yet. How is the character related to the movie?
JL: Honey acts as a liason between J.Franken and the girls he needs to rebuild his sweetheart. She also brought me tea promptly at 2pm every day.

PH: Another cult figure to appear in the film was Shirley Stoler [star of The Honeymoon Killers]. How did you get on with her?
JL: She must live in a “whine” cellar.

PH: Did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte was poisoned by wall-paper?
JL: No, but I know they auctioned off his shrivelled, mummified penis ten years ago [This is true!] and it had a distinctly recognisable paisley design from the wall-paper on it [Er…].

PH: In one part of the film, you seem to drill a hole in your own head from one of the shots seen or is this a potential suicide following Elizabeth’s death? If the power drill was running and running through your head, how was the effect rigged up?
JL: What effect? That was real! The catch? After returning home from the war in Korea, I had a metal plate implanted in my skull.

PH: Patty Mullen is an absolute beauty. You did behave yourself with her on set, didn’t you James?
JL: Yes, I did. Though I often felt like taking a lead pipe to her head.

PH: The make-up job on Patty was highly reminiscent of the work performed on Malcolm McDowell in Britannia Hospital, don’t you think?
JL: What make-up? Actually, she looked more like Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

PH: I understand that Alan Jones was on the set collecting interviews.
JL: Don’t know him, but I’ve heard he’s a nasty bloke.

PH: Is there anyone you have a gripe with, be it in the making of Frankenhooker or otherwise? Offload it here.
JL: Why can’t we all just love each other?

PH: Anyone you suggest we never trust? Absolutely anyone.
JL: The guy who wrote England on $35 A Day.

PH: Where do you see yourself going from here?
JL: I’m currently starring in a television sitcom with Valerie Harper titled City on the CBS network, soon to be syndicated to the BBC. I shall return to features as soon as my schedule permits – I hear they’re remaking The Crawling Eye [ aka The Trollenberg Terror ].

PH: Did any children’s television programme ever scare you as a child or even today?
JL: A puppet show entitled Thunderbirds and the puppets would smoke cigarettes and perspire. It made me feel like I was on LSD.

PH: Thank you.
JL: Paul, you sound like a nice bloke but you are a little bizarre. Lay off those Robyn Hitchcock records for a while.

It’s Competition (result) time!

Section 1 : Spot the Quotes

Take a bow, Michael Gingold of ‘Scareaphanalia’ for getting 8 right. Also take a bow, the entrant who failed to get any right at all, but gained bonus points for imagination…

  1. “Wake up – time to die!” – 40% right
    Correct answer : “Blade Runner”
    Best alternative : “The Toxic Avenger”
  2. “I will not be threatened by a walking meatloaf!” – 60%
    Correct answer : “An American Werewolf in London”
    Best alternative : “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” [ think about it! ]
  3. “I cut off his legs. And his arms. And his head. And I’m going to do the same to you” – 60%
    Correct answer : “The Hitcher”
    Best alternative : “Re-Animator”
  4. “I don’t know what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird and pissed off whatever it is!” – 40%
    Correct answer – “The Thing”
    Best alternative – From a documentary, by the policeman outside 10 Downing Street…
  5. “No tears please – it’s a waste of good suffering” – 50%
    Correct answer – “Hellraiser”
    Best alternative – “Argh! Like #1 this is as familar as hell!”
  6. “While everybody else is opening up their presents, they’re opening up their wrists” – 60%
    Correct answer – “Gremlins”
    Best alternative – “Santa Claus, The Movie”
  7. “Couldn’t enjoy it any more, Mum. Mmmm-mm-mmmm” – 0%!
    Correct answer – “Repo Man” [OK, it was a bit of a personal joke!]
    Best alternative – “Re-Animator” again; the cut scene involving Barbara Crampton and Dr Hill’s severed head, or “Psycho 2” or “Rabid Grannies” or “Pink Flamingoes”.
  8. “Don’t you fucking look at me!” – 40%
    Correct answer – “Blue Velvet”
    Best alternative – “Manon des Sources” [an explanation of this one would be appreciated!]
  9. “Although we may run out of Pan-Am coffee, we’ll never run out of TWA tea” – 0%!
    Correct answer – “Crimes of Passion” [Kathleen Turner, dressed as an air-hostess]
    Best alternative – “The Railway Children” [and this one!]
  10. “We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw – does that sound ‘fine”?” – 30%
    Correct answer – “Evil Dead II”
    Best alternative – “Heathers”

Special no-prize for the best non-answer goes to Glyn Williams, whose response to #9 was:

“A line from the forthcoming ‘Airport 90’ in which 700 passengers are trapped at Heathrow Airport by a French air traffic controller’s strike (see also ‘Airport 85’, 86, 87, 88 and 89). Within hours, the catering manager, played by Arthur Kennedy, starts to run out of refreshments and only a daring mid-motorway transfer of coffee from the Newport Pagnell service station (closed) prevents unrest. Charlton Heston plays the called out of retirement coffee-truck driver, Linnea Quigley plays the bubble headed air-hostess who falls for Chuck’s charms, Nastassja Kinski plays a singing nun (lynched by passengers in reel 2) and Marlon Brando plays a jumbo jet.”

At the bottom is a scribbled note, “I’ve just got the TWA-T joke!”….

Section 2 : Part-time employment

Given 10 famous people (someone didn’t know who Jim Bakker was), the entrants supplied suitable screen roles, providing interesting insights into their psychology…

  1. Wendy James (lead singer, Transvision Vamp)

Beyond the expected comments about home-made videos, the two best or at least most intriguing suggestions were the title-roles in ‘Annie’ or the combined sequel to ‘Dumbo’ and ‘Bambi’: ‘Bimbo’.

  1. Jim Bakker (ex-TV evangelist, now serving a very long jail sentence)

The perverse Jesus Christ-like figure in ‘God Told Me To’ or Elvis’ role in ‘Jailhouse Rock’

  1. Mikhail Gorbachev (leader of the Soviet disUnion)

At least one contestant got a little confused here and swapped his answers to #3 and #4 round – at least I hope so, or his suggestion of “the woman who beats up all the surfers in ‘Surf Nazis Must Die'” is very worrying. Mind you, the alternatives of Leatherface or a role in ‘Auf Ghanistan Pet’ don’t indicate much better states of mind.

  1. Gabriella Sabatini (nubile advertising hoarding)

More semi-deviant ideas, the best one being Bo Derek’s role in “10(is)”. The bad news is she’s already booked for “Gabi Does Dulwich”. “A paper-clip” and “a dead donkey in ‘Un Chien Andalou'” do not bear thinking about.

  1. David Gower (English cricketer, though I use the term ‘cricketer’ loosely)

A wide selection : The Toxic Avenger, Pee Wee Herman or in any vampire movie. “an entertaining but inevitably short-lived appearance as a (middle order) bat”.

  1. Salman Rushdie (Satan incarnate)

Surprisingly, only one entry went for The Invisible Man. Rambo’s testicle was suggested as being “nicely inconspicuous” but the best suggestion was “any movie which requires a nice, busty blonde…”

  1. Edwina Currie (Conservative MP. For the moment…)

The eggman in ‘Pink Flamingoes’? “With a little more cleavage”, Elvira? The Wicked Witch of the West? Cruella de Ville? Attila the Hen? Who cares any more?

  1. Kate Adie (BBC TV’s #1 news reporter)

I’ve had a lot of respect for her for a long time, ever since a Panorama programme on violence on TV which was the best investigation of it I’ve seen. So had the entrants, with the suggestions being mainly complimentary : She-Ra, Princess of Power, Karen Silkwood and, probably most plausibly of all, replacing Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens’.

  1. Bob Monkhouse (game-show host and Mr Sincerity)

No respect here. Norman Bates was the least libellous, ahead of the evil ventriloquist’s dummy in ‘Magic’ [look at the video – the resemblance is striking!] and Fuad ‘Blood Feast’ Ramses. Vitriol prize: ‘The first victim who appears only briefly before being offed extremely bloodily and painfully’.

  1. Pamella Bordes (bimbo of the year, 1989)

Oddly, two suggestions were for biographical films: one, replacing Julie Walters in ‘Personal Services’ and the other to play Mary Whitehouse… “The snake-woman in ‘Lair of the White Worm'” probably falls somewhere in between!

And there it is. The three contestants all wanted different videos so I declare the competition a triple tie between Andy ‘Surf Nazis’ Waller, Glyn ‘She’ Williams and Simon ‘Satan’s Dog’ Wood. Thanks also to Michael Gingold and Paul Higson for entering, even though they couldn’t win anything, and to Psychotronic Videos for taking the unclaimed prizes off my hands and giving me an original of ‘Videodrome’ instead! I’m acquiring bad videos and good quotes at a steady rate, so there’ll be another competition sometime. You’ve been warned…