Dir: “A.J. Nelson” (Vic Savage)
Star: Vic Savage, Shannon O’Neil, William Thourlby, John Caresio

“Anyone who experienced that catastrophe and survived, would never go there again…”

The above line is one of the many lines of narration spoken during The Creeping Terror, but is just as appropriate a summary for the entire movie itself. While there can never be a unanimous choice for the worst film ever made, going forward I will refuse to take seriously the views of anyone who does not at least acknowledge the credentials of this as a worthy contender. I’ve seen films with bad sound, poor special effects, amateur performance or any other number of flaws. But this tale of alien invasion is so inadequate in so many areas, it’s difficult to conceive how it could ever have seem adequate.

Almost from the get-go, you get a sense of how bad things are going to be. The shot of the alien spacecraft descending to Earth is, very obviously, stock footage of one a V-1 rocket taking off, played backwards. Yes: really. That the makers thought no-0ne would notice, or that the craft seen on the ground bears no resemblance at all to the the stock footage, sets the bar of expectations appropriately. The next thing to kick in is the narration, and its use may mark a new low-water mark. Even at best, it’s a dodgy technique, usually a replacement when the director’s skills aren’t up to the task of showing the necessary emotion or conveying the plot points in a less-clunky manner. Here, it seems a technical necessity caused by insurmountable audio issues: two characters will be having an animated conversation, but rather than hear them, the narrator describes what’s being said. It feels like the narrator is reading an early script treatment.

Let me provide a couple of samples to show you what I mean:

• “Martin was outraged by the government’s intellectual approach to a monster that had already killed and caused the disappearance of his two close friends. Caldwell tended to agree with him, but stated that he had to follow his orders.”
• “The Sergeant, a shaken man, returned babbling about what had happened. Realizing the full danger of the situation, Caldwell decided he had only one means left to stop the monster: grenades. Now Bradford made a drastic move. Acting on his superior authority, he forbade Caldwell to destroy the creature. The Colonel, more concerned with saving human lives than advancing science, told Bradford to “Go to Hell.””

However, what elevates this, more than any other aspect, lifting it from the realms of “Somewhat Sucky” into the pantheon of all-time greats, is the monster. I’d heard tales of this cinematic abomination, but nothing could prepare me for the amazing sight. At first, it was largely hidden behind some trees, but it seemed as if the makers finally realized the pointlessness of trying to conceal the thing, and opted instead to give the audience plenty of opportunity to play “Let’s laugh at the monster.” The general consensus is that it resembles a pile of carpet remnants, and who am I to argue with that? It appears to consist of a man under a blanket, pulling a large quilt behind him.

It’s reported that there were actually two different monsters used – if you look closely, you can tell the difference. The reason for this has also been explained: “According to actor/makeup artist Byrd Holland (who played the sheriff), Lackey was banned from the set by Nelson after a dispute over the ownership of the monster “suit”, whereupon the monster suddenly went missing. Lackey supposedly informed the crew that the monster was “in hiding” and would not reappear until he got paid. Apparently Lackey never got paid and Nelson decided instead to rebuild the monster on his own.” Hard to tell whether this was a boon or a bane: neither is exactly going to give Rick Baker sleepless nights.

There are two factors which render it particularly non-terrifying. While that half of the title is singularly inappropriate, there can be no doubt that it certainly lives up to the ‘creeping’ part. It moves at the pace of a reluctant sloth on downers, and the only way it can consume anyone, is because they stand still and let it. It is not necessary to run away. It not even necessary to walk away. You could amble, and still comfortably out-pace  the alien. The other issue is that the creature’s mouth – at roughly the level of the man in the front’s knees – is basically a hole. Due to this, the only way for a victim to be swallowed is if they obligingly climb into the mouth, then more or less pull themselves down its throat.

I am also somewhat confused by the sounds it makes, which appear to resemble stock audio from a big-game hunt, though I am impressed that it can make them even while swallowing its prey. However, the creature’s finest moment probably comes later in the film, when it attacks a group of cars parked in the local Lover’s Lane. While absorbing its victims, at one point it climbs into a convertible (shown, right), and for a glorious moment, we imagined the alien driving off in the automobile, the wind blowing in its…er, shag-pile.

This is, however, only slightly more entertaining than the preceding sequence where it attacks a local dance-hall, apparently managing to avoid the cover charge (probably claiming it was “on the list”).  The same people who were frantically fruggin’ their hearts out on the dance-floor, now find themselves incapable of any motion at all, and the creature eats its fill. A particular highlight is the guy who gallantly pushes his date towards the monster, though I also enjoyed the town drunk – one of the few people with an excuse for not being able to move out of the way. There is reportedly also a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ in this scene, with an escapee throwing a woman out of the way and accidentally tearing off her top. I can’t say I am curious enough in 60’s b&w boobies to investigate further.

There are any number of other aspects worthy of derision, but I’ll just mention these in passing. The way the alien craft contains very clearly terrestrial dials with Earthly numbers (below). The shot of the hyper-secure crash site, where you can see a kid playing in the background, oblivious to the camera.  The tactics of the army [or, at least, the single-digit number of soldiers we get here] against the monster: even though attacking across open ground, they bunch up into an area no larger than an elevator, so that it can gobble them up as well.  Gratuitous, and apparently serious, use of the word “hootenanny,” followed by offensive use of a guitar, the likes of which would not be seen again until Animal House. The way the hero and heroine invite the hero’s best friend over, simply it seems in order to make out in front of him. The fat guy who bears an odd resemblance to Harry Knowles, and is tripped up by some pesky river-bed gravel.

The weird thing is, there is actually the potential for a half-decent movie here. The creature is very different from most aliens of the time, and its purpose here – absorb humans to find out their weaknesses, so it can transmit them back to its home planet as data for a future invasion – is inventive too. It’s the kind of movie begging for a remake, perhaps with a nod to how the original was actually government disinformation, designed to cover up a real incident by creating a target of ridicule. However, I am fairly sure I came up with better ways to use a concept like this when I was writing stories aged seven or so. You can see why the MST3K crowd pounced on it, but it’s one of those cases where there’s not really much more they need add: the film’s insane stupidity doesn’t need much in the way of commentary. Not that, of course, this stopped us adding our own.

But as a bad movie, it’s an awful lot of fun, fully deserving its reputation in the field. After a spell where I’d been grinding my way through dull films, it was a refreshing delight to come across something like this, possessing in spades the loopy charm which attracted me to the field of incredibly bad cinema to begin with.

B+
[February 2010]

Movies seen theatrically in 2009: three. Yes: you could count then on the fingers of one hand, while still hanging on to your large popcorn. This continues a trend noted in last year’s review, though was exacerbated by us moving house in the middle of the year. As well as the experience occupying us and then leaving us drained of energy for the summer blockbuster season, our new location doesn’t have quite the same easy access to cinemas. Though two of the three movies did make it into the top ten – the other being Avatar – I will also admit that four of the listed films arrived in TC Towers, shall we say, in unofficial ways.

Still, when the top five for the year included not only Avatar, but also Transformers 2 and Twilight: New Moon, Hollywood largely has itself to blame for my absence. But since overall American box-office was up 10% on 2008, and cracked the ten billion dollar mark for the first time, I doubt they noticed. However, I also think this does prove that any claims the downloading of movies is killing the industry are clearly nonsense, just as the music business somehow managed to survive audio-cassettes.

As usual, links go to the most appropriate review, which may be here or may be on GirlsWithGuns.org, and I am limiting myself for the purposes of this list, to movies that got their first North American release in 2009.  But here’s also a list of films seen in the past, which might have merited cond for a previous year’s top ten (having been rated B or better]. Lights in the Dusk, Vantage Point, The Memory of a Killer, In Bruges, Let the Right One In, The Wrestler, The Insurgents, Singh is Kinng, Ils, Black Book, Traitor, Fermat’s Room, King Arthur, Stuck, El Rey de la Montaña, Man on Wire, The Strangers, Let Him Have It, Princess Aurora

10. Raging Phoenix
Following up on Chocolate, which made last year’s list, Jeeja Yanin proves that when it comes to action-heroines, the Thais have it. Though not quite as “untainted” [in the sense that this time, the lead’s undoubted talents were more obviously enhanced by some wirework], the action was gloriously hard-hitting, in particular the final confrontations with the scary Roongtawan Jindasing, whom Chris was convinced was a man. The clash of power and flexibility was a joy to behold.

9. Ghost Image
Initially seeming as little more than a lame rip-off of The Ring – a haunted videotape, not seen that before – this managed to get past that, and deliver a genuinely creepy effort, that had a solid script and performance that made it credible. The ghost story has been one of the most over-mined genres of recent years [and the success of Paranormal Activity means that is likely to continue in 2010], but Ghost Image proved that there is still potential for fresh and interesting angles on the area.

8. Monsters vs. Aliens
The trailers didn’t do this justice – it looked like another in the apparently endless line of formulaic CGI animated movies churned out by Hollywood. However, that hid some smart writing, which elevated the film well above its competitors e.g. Bolt, and delivered a loving throwback to monster movies of the 50’s and 60’s, both in the West and Japan. Enjoyable for kids of all ages, this never forgot that the most important point of entertainment, is to actually be entertaining.

7. The Hurt Locker
That is also important for this film, which succeeded where many previous attempts to make a movie centred on the Iraq conflict have failed. It didn’t bother taking sides, and there was no discussion about whether the bomb-disposal unit should be there. They were, and this concerned their efforts to survive, in a world where death conceivably lurked behind every pile of rubble or with each approaching bystander. With tension amped up to 11, it was the year’s most highly-caffeinated movie.

6. Zombieland
Continuing to show that there’s life in the old undead yet, this was probably less a true zombie movie, than a road movie set against a backdrop of shambling flesheaters. Certainly self-aware, but at no time sinking into self-parody [there’s going to be a Scream 4 coming out? Really?], and with four beautifully-drawn central characters, each possessing their own quirks and foibles. Add in an all-you-can-shoot zombie bloodbath at the end, and you’ve got another good entry in the reborn genre.

5. Star Trek
The term “reboot” gets thrown about a lot in Hollywood, and the results have been variable, shall we say. However, this one worked very nicely, managing to return to the two-fisted style of the classic series, while still respecting the original (not least in what was probably the year’s best cameo). They got the casting just about spot-on too, with the actors chosen credible as young versions of the well-loved characters. While I am still not entirely sure about the whole Uhura-Spock thing, this was still a fine re-start to the franchise.

4. The Machine Girl
This lurid tale of betrayal, deep-fried limbs and mechanically-enhanced revenge painted the walls red, at the kind of firehose levels of blood pressure only ever seen in Japanese splatter movies. OTT excess is all the better, when done with a perfectly-straight face, and that’s what we have here. It hits the ground running with an opening sequence (below) that can only be described as berserk, and hardly pauses for breath the rest of its 96 minute running time. If you saw only one movie featuring drill bras last year, this was probably it.

3. District 9
It’s interesting to compare this to Avatar. Both films are about a human who is sent into an alien race, initially with malevolent intentions, but he comes to realize that they are not quite as painted, and he eventually [spoiler alert] becomes one of them [end spoiler alert]. District 9, however, managed to do it with a great deal less ham-handed bludgeoning of the audience, even if the apartheid symbolism here was kinda obvious. Technologically, it was a seamless meshing of CGI – you literally could not see the join – and it was also among the most credible depictions of what might happen when/if we finally have our first encounter.

2. Princess
Denmark is not really regarded as a hot-bed of animation, but this piece of work certainly made up for in impact anything that it lacked in mind-blowing technical quality. Truly a film which could only be done in animation [due to some truly shocking scenes involving the very young child at the center of things], it packed an emotional wallop far greater than all the tentacle rape flicks ever to come out of Japan, and uses live-action flashbacks and fantasy sequences, pulling the viewer in, to the point where the wallops which the movie then delivers have all the more tragic impact.

1. Martyrs
After a stream of highly-touted foreign horror movies that failed to live up to the hype. this one finally delivered the goods on all levels. While not skimping on the gore, with some of the nastiest violence to come across the screen, it was the fact that there was more than sheer psychopathy at work which made it disturbing. The perpetrators truly believed what they were doing was entirely justified, believing the ends justified the means ( I imagine the Nazis probably thought similarly). The degree of man’s inhumanity to man – or woman to woman – shown here can only be admired, in an appalling sort of way.

Regular readers will know that we’re big fans of conspiracy theories here at TC. While not necessarily believing them all – especially the all-encompassing, shape-shifting lizards from another dimension type ones – they’re like intellectual table-salt. They enhance the flavor of life, and help foster a sense of cynicism about the motives and actions of government and those in power, which is certainly extremely sensible. However, just as conspiracy theories cover the gamut from plausible to completely-loopy [though remarkably entertaining], so does coverage of them in the mainstream media range from sober, serious consideration of the possibilities to… Well, to Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.

We should probably have got some kind of inkling from its location on Tru TV. The channel used to be known as Court TV, but changed its brand in 2008, now operating under the slogan, “Not reality. Actuality.” Going by shows such as Operation Repo, “actuality” appears to mean making stuff up and trying to give the impression it’s real.  Saying Tru TV does not have a good record for serious investigative journalism is like saying Michael Jackson had some deficiencies as a child-care provider.  But, hey, we’ll cut it some slack: after all, host Jesse Ventura remains one of the few people to crack the two-party system, during his spell as Governor of Minnesota. If there’s anyone capable of cutting through the BS, it’d be him.

Unfortunately,  any hope of a balanced look at the topics under investigation evaporates in the fiery heat of the near-hysterical approach to the subject matter. After the jump, we’ll bravely go through the entire series, episode by episode, and expose the deadly truth about Conspiracy Theory!!!! Ok, perhaps not, but after you’ve watched a few of these shows, the style does tend to rub off…

Witness the first episode, looking at the HAARP project in Alaska. This is something we’ve been talking about for a long time, having previously covered the topic in 2003 – Ventura, however, was clearly not paying attention, cheerfully admitting he’d never heard of it two weeks previously. Ok, everyone has to start somewhere, and while the qualifications of the ‘crack team of researchers’ in Ventura’s ‘war-room’ are never produced (they include June Sarpong, a crony of Tony Blair and owner of an MBE – hardly an establishment outsider), they do talk to the right people, notably Dr. Nick Begich.

Begich is not just one of the most knowledgeable people on the topic, he’s also one of the most level-headed: he carefully avoids making outrageous claims, just lays out the facts and how he interprets them. This is in sharp contrast with the tone here, which labels HAARP as a weapon for causing tsunamis, controlling minds or even, as Ventura breathlessly intones, “a death ray.” This reaches its epic apex just before a commercial break, when Begich’s harmless demonstration of piezo-electic transduction to play music inside the Governator’s head is breathlessly previewed as: “Coming up: HAARP invades Jesse Ventura’s brain!” I can just imagine poor Dr. Nick watching this nonsense unfold and slumping, embarrassed, ever-lower on his sofa. We were right there with him.

The series keeps trying to provoke conflict where none is present, such as sending Ventura to the gateway of the HAARP facility in remote Alaska. After a spot of hanging around, a bemused security guard, having drawn the short straw, is sent down to discuss things with the former Governor, and advises him to come back during one of the scheduled open days. Yes, this top secret, brain-frying, death-dealing facility has open days. Truly, the Cold War is over. Guess they ensure the tsunami-creating device is carefully hidden in a cupboard or something on those occasions.

In the second episode, Ventura took on the Kennedy assassination of our generation: 9/11, with particularly unimpressive results. The main theory being floated for it was the ‘false flag’ one, that it was concocted to provide a pretext for invasion – but the obvious question was never answered. If that’s that case, why make all the terrorists Saudis, if we wanted to invade Iraq and/or Afghanistan? That’d be like the Nazis staging the Gleiwitz incident, and dressing the “Polish” corpses in kilts and sporrans. The episode instead bangs away at the missing black boxes from the two Manhattan planes, speaking to a couple of people who say they saw them being recovered. Interesting, to be sure, but hardly prima facie evidence for US government involvement.

The next installment took on global warming: initially, this actually seemed like the most plausible and, as a result, effective one.  While scientific consensus tends to support the idea of man-made climate change, it’s by no means an absolute certainty – and, interestingly, those who are set to cash in on changes to counter this, include some of those who have been most prominent in pushing the idea, such as Al Gore. If they’d stopped there, the show would have been fine. Unfortunately, Ventura and his team then charged off in search of an over-arching plot, and the man in charge turned out to be determined to be billionaire Maurice Strong, a former top man in the UN (OMG! NWO! ZOG!) who now lives in… China (communist!). Needless to say, the team failed miserably to get any kind of interview with, or comment from, the man in question.

Roll on to part four, and the erosion of personal liberty and the growth of the surveillance culture is the topic. I’m beginning to detect a theme here: specifically, these are all reasonable, potentially important topics, covered in such a facile way as to make them ludicrous. There were any number of directions this could have gone, but after a couple of interesting anecdotes (such as the guy whose telephone call to his bank, led to a rapid visit from government representatives), the program derails into an investigation of Infragard. Wikipedia calls it, “a program run by the United States Federal government, which partners Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies with private corporations, so that they can share intelligence information.” Really? That’s the biggest threat to personal freedom and liberty they could find? You gotta try harder, Jesse.

The hysteria certainly rose to previously unsurpassed levels as he investigated the Bilderberg Group and its members – who might be called “Bilderbergs” or “Bilderbergers,” there seemed to agreement at the point. Botox queen Sarpong pronounces gravely: “We’re proven they exist.” No shit, Einstein – what gave you the clue? Their Wikipedia page? As usual, the program charges off in the wrong direction, like a watchdog chasing after a passing car. There’s no mention, for example, that founder Prince Bernhard was a member of the honourary German Reiter SS Corps and also worked  for IG Farben, the company which owned the patent on Zyklon B.

Instead, it wheels out the usual talking heads like Daniel Estulin and Alex Jones, who have both made good career out of fomenting the more extreme claims about the Bilderbergers and – woohoo! – even David Icke. He goes on about “they” a great deal, in the context of world rulers – yet the program carefully omits that to Icke, “they” means shape-shifting reptilians from another dimension [or did, last time I needed a laugh and checked his website]. They straight-facedly promote the idea that the Bilderberg Group are planning the wholesale depopulation of the globe, leaping from there to the Georgia Guidestones, with their proclamation that 500 million is the right number for humanity. It’s the “A-> B -> C -> Z” school of conspiracism. We were, however, disappointed that there was no attempt by Ventura to “storm” a Bilderberg group meeting. That would have been fun.

Episode Six was on Manchurian Candidates – mind-control, as carried out by the US military. Now, there’s no denying the reality of things like Project Mkultra, which operated in the 1950’s and 1960’s, before – at least, officially – vanishing. And Jesse’s “crack team of researchers” have no problem wheeling out 40-year old documents which refer to such experiments. The issue is not whether such experiments took place. It’s whether they are ongoing. And there, the evidence presented is a lot more flimsy – and, as usual, draped in the kind of paranoid nonsense which makes the entire concept laughable to neutrals, and tremendously irritating to those who feel there may be something to it.

However, I was particularly amused by the efforts the show depicted them having to make, to track down alleged mind-control operative Robert Duncan O’Finioan, liaising with Dave Corso in the back of a van parked in a Las Vegas lot, before eventually meeting O’Finioan in a deserted garage. I guess it was just too much trouble to go to his website, where a helpful block says, “To contact Duncan O’Finioan regarding speaking engagements please send an e-mail to info@duncanofinioan.com” He says he has multiple implants, stuck in as part of the mind-control process. Oh, good: physical proof, the crack team of researchers will be all over tha… No: a couple of blurry shots, and that was it. It may be significant, that when you type Duncan O’Finioan into Google, the first completion it suggests is “Duncan O’Finioan fraud.”

Finally – and it’s probably for the best, as the coffee-table probably needed a break from us banging our heads off it – we had the season finale, with 2012. Again, the show took nuggets of truth (yes, the government does have a lot of secret underground facilities; no, you and I won’t be welcome in them if disaster strikes), and wrapped them in insanity such as 2012 and the Denver Airport murals – as they have a tendency to do, the conspiracy theorists only ever show part of them. Taken as a whole, the work by Leo Tanguma is a good deal less sinister.

A particular highlight of this episode was June Sarpong driving all the way into the middle of nowhere to be turned away at a gate. Her conclusion regarding these facilities is, and I quote: “A lot of them have landing strips. That would help get materials in and out. It would also be a way to fly people in.” Wow, what a stunning revelation: I’d never have thought that landing strips might be used for…landing. Great investigative work there, June. Now, go get another injection of Botox, why don’t you?

Not everyone is quite as down on the show as us. A friend, who is deeply embedded in conspiratorial circles, but is definitely short of the lunatic fringe – we’ll call him “Agent B”, simply to create an entirely artificial air of Something Sinister Going On – sent us his thoughts on the show

You must be able to tell, as I can, that the man does, at least, have conviction when it comes to the subjects he pursues on the show.  Further, his efforts far outweigh the lies, spin and utter distraction courtesy of mainstream media.  As a fellow conspiracy researcher and concerned citizen, I’m all for a show like this.  Yes, it sensationalizes just about every topic they investigate, but that is purely the fault of the network top brass.  When someone wants to do a show on so-called “fringy” topics, there is always a compromise between those who really want free reign to investigate and what the show producers and the network actually want aired.  I don’t like it any more than you do, but I say “exposure at all costs.”  It’s amazing that the show is even aired and that taboo topics like 9-11, HAARP, Mind Control and the ever-so secretive Bilderbergers are even broached.

Heck, I was approached by a movie and TV production company about three years ago.  It never happened, but the producers also wanted to create a weekly conspiracy show that would cover many of the same topics, but they wanted it to be even more edgier.  The main producer was actually interested in having me as the lead, but he introduced ideas like having me air some late night podcast in a dimly lit scenario to ardent listeners, some of whom would call in and be guests (maybe similar researchers and topics like on Ventura’s show).  I would also have to flit about from place to place in the cover of darkness for my own so-called safety in order to create a greater sense of paranoia and danger.

So, you can see that, even though they say they love a good conspiracy, the higher-ups are only interested in creating something that is entertaining for the most part, as well as profitable.  If the public happens to be educated or even empowered by the intellectual material, that’s a mere side effect.  I bring this up because Ventura’s show could have ended up being way cheesier.  He may not be the most charming or well spoken ex-Marine, but, at least, he investigates… period.

There’s certainly a lot of merit in that approach, but I’m afraid I can’t be quite as charitable. There is a psychological process – I forget it’s name – but it controls how people react when presented with information outside their sphere. If someone is neutral on a topic, and is given data that’s somewhat positive or negative, it will tend to pull them in that direction. But if the data is extreme, at either end, it will tend to push the recipient away. For instance, show a neutral person evidence of conspiracies like Iran-Contra, and they’ll think more favourably of the field. But lock them in a room with David Icke for eight hours and they’ll never speak to you again.

That’s why the show feels to me like disinformation. Not that Ventura is in on it, I should stress, but it takes interesting or even important subjects (such as government surveillance) and portrays them is such an outrageous and extreme way, that it’s difficult to see how any neutral viewer could leave with anything except a snigger. The series reminds me of the time the late, lamented Weekly World News had a story on the CIA pushing drugs in LA. It was so far off their usual stomping-ground of aliens and Bigfoot, that the real purpose was painfully obvious: discredit the story, by placing it next to Batboy.

These are topics that do not need hysterical presentation – there’s enough meat on topics like 9/11, that a straightforward presentation of the facts would be more effective in creating a groundswell of interest. Of course, as “Agent B” points out, sensationalism = ratings, and it’s possible that is what’s behind TruTV’s over-the-top approach. At best, the show may have encouraged some viewers to do their own research. However, for anyone with access to a Google search box, there was basically nothing in the show to justify the tagline, “Think you know it all? Think again!“

Everyone else is doing their top ten films of the decade piece, so why buck the trend? Though I’m not even going to start getting into the whole “Well, technically, the decade runs from 2001-2010…” thing. This is based entirely on movies released in years that start “200”, with Wikipedia being the source of information on the date of a particular film.  You may notice some differences from the year-by-year lists previously published. This is mostly because some films stand the test of time better than others. The year-end lists tend to be based on a single viewing, while all the titles listed below hall gone through multiple viewings [in some case, multiple-multiple viewings], and been found to be just as effective – or even more so – than when initially seen.

Links go to the most appropriate review, either here or on GirlsWithGuns.org. Honorary mentions [in alphabetical order]: The Animatrix, The Booth, Children of Men, Finding Nemo, Gladiator, Kung Fu Hustle, Nine Queens, The Returner, The Ring, Shoot ‘Em Up, Signs, Sin City, Sexy Beast, 300.

• 10. Sick Girl
  Horror movies should make you uncomfortable. They should make you squirm in your seat. And even the jaded horror fans that Chris and I are were made very uncomfortable by this, more so than any other of the hundreds of genre entries that strayed across our eyeballs in the past decade. Martyrs made a late push to dethrone this, but Leslie Andrews’ performance here is just so disconnected and matter-of-fact, as she carries out the most unspeakable of acts on her victims. Horror – true horror, not torture-porn – is absolute indifference to the suffering of others, and it’s this chilling effect which lies at the heart of Sick Girl and its impact.
• 9. The Dark Knight
  Would certainly have ranked higher, if we didn’t have a strong urge to clear our throat, every time Bale’s caped crusader spoke. Otherwise, however, this is near perfect, highlighted of course by the stunning performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker. Every time we come across the film on cable, we have to put it on, especially if it’s in time to see the sublime “How about a magic trick?” scene. The scope and scale of Christopher Nolan’s vision is the perfect backdrop for this larger-than-life performance, which succeeds in engaging both brain and heart in a way few “comic-book” movies have ever managed to do.

• 8. Versus
  At the risk of mixing my metaphors terribly, this fuels up on adrenalin and goes full-throttle straight for the action jugular, Ryuhei Kitamura coming out of nowhere to deliver one of the most purely-entertaining action flicks of all time. Packed with characters who can best be described as “fascinating,” it combines impressive imagination with spectacular execution on a tiny budget, punches far above its weight as a result. Zombies, swordplay, really-big guns and martial-arts combine in a delightful and heady cocktail that is quite unique. Some of Kitamura’s subsequent work has been solid; nothing has quite matched Versus.
• 7. Kill Bill, Volume 1
  Proof that, when Quentin Tarantino reins in his verbal diarrhoea and keeps himself off-screen, he is capable of delivering a thoroughly-entertaining piece of work. He is now 1-for-6 there [not see Inglorious Bastards yet], thanks to the best action-heroine film to come out of Hollywood in the decade. Uma Thurmann’s Bride was a tornado of revenge, chewing up and spitting out any and all who got in her path, be it old friends like Vernita Green, new enemies such as Go-Go Yubari or, in the film’s most impressive sequence, an entire pack of enraged, masked Japanese men wielding samurai swords.  A marvellous swirling of popular cultures.

• 6. Wall-E
  Not the last Pixar movie you’ll see in this list, and the studio dominated the decade as far as animation goes, in the way Studio Ghibli did the mid-80’s to mid-90’s. After a bit of a road-bump with Cars [pun not intended], Pixar roared back with a tale about a garbage clean-up robot that falls in love with a probe. James Cameron could have learned how to make non-human characters – indeed, non-organic ones here – sympathetic. They could conceivably have made the entire film without a single word of meaningful dialogue, and it would still have been eqally as marvellous. Or possibly even more so.
• 5. Borat
  I still have absolutely no idea how this subversive piece of surrealist theatre managed to get a massive release across the entire world [except, I suspect, Kazakhstan]. Too much of what passed as ‘satire’ in this decade was toothless, but Sacha Baron Cohen hit his marks with impeccable precision, as he tore across the United States from New York to Pamela Anderson. Great satire should offend people – especially its targets – but Baron Cohen exposed not just the prejudice inherent in Western society, but also its remarkable tolerance for and patience with outsiders. It made us laugh, cringe, and think, a unique triple-play.

• 4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  The only martial-arts movie to ever make me shed a tear, because for once, equal attention was given to the characters as to the ass-kickery. The relationships between them had a genuine, timeless feel to them which meant the period setting was not a strait-jacket for the storyline. The amazing action sequences which punctuated proceedings, by Yuen Wo-Ping, had a lyrical grace and imagination to them which has rarely been matched: the duel between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Zi-yi was probably the finest one-on-one fight in the period covered here, like watching water go over a cliff. Add the emotional punch of the end, and it’s a masterpiece.
• 3. Monsters Inc.
  Oh, look – another Pixar movie. I could just copy and paste the paragraph above, about the ability to make non-human characters work.  However, this was not only a very sweet and innocent love story, it was also riotously-funny, and showcased a blizzard of pure imagination – the lifeblood of animation. This was apparent, not only in the construction of Monstropolis, but also the characters which populated it, and all the way to little things like the street signs [Stalk/Don’t Stalk]. CGI animation is no longer anything rare or unusual; however, this film transcends the medium and is simply great movie-making.

• 2. Shaun of the Dead
  Probably counts as our most-watched film of the decade. Any time it’s on – even on a non-premium channel, where it has been been formatted to fit the screen, run in the time allotted and edited for content – we just have to watch it, rejoicing in the glorious dialogue and marvellous combination of horror and comedy, two notoriously difficult genres to combine well [many have tried – most have failed, and few things are worse than a horror-comedy that is neither horrific nor funny]. There is not a wrong step, weak moment or wasted sentence to be found in the entire thing. Makes me proud to be British.
• 1. Lord of the Rings – Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and Return of the King
  To commemorate the end of the decade, I decided it was long past time to pull out all three entries in the series, and watch them back-to-back-to-back, see if they all held up. The versions in question were the extended cuts of parts one and three, and the regular version of part two – we really didn’t feel that it was a film particularly in need of additional footage of tree pontificating. The results of this furry-footed marathon are a separate article, which can be found here.

Watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one sitting is something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while, almost since the third movie came out. It makes sense because it is basically one epic, split into three parts due to length, so putting them back together again seems like the best way to appreciate the trilogy as a whole. However, the gap between theory and practice proved difficult to bridge, for a number of reasons. I almost did get there at Thanksgiving 2009, but technical issues involving our new Blu-Ray DVD player meant it had to wait until we got a new TV set too. However, on Boxing Day, the stars aligned, the decks were cleared, and an intravenous drip of caffeinated beverages installed.

I must confess to wondering  how I’d cope. Even though we had skipped the extended version of The Two Towers, we were still looking at 640 minutes from one source in a single day, which would easily smash the previous record of about 350 minutes [set back in Christmas 2002, when we watched eight episodes of 24, for three consecutive days]. However, I hoped that the unarguable quality of the works in question would ease their consumption – it should be easier to watch eleven hours of the greatest trilogy ever than, say, 11 hours of American Idol. Well, so went the theory, anyway.

This is therefore not so much a review as a live blogging of the event. If you want “reviews”, you should go here, here and here for the three parts respectively. This will be more of a stream of consciousness, and will likely not make a great deal of sense, unless you have already seen the films. [And if not, how was Mars?] Because of this, I will not be exercising any caution in the spoiler area. Time stamps given are straight off the DVD timer, and as noted, are based on the extended editions, except for Part Two – we’ll get into the reasons for this in due course. And with that…

The Fellowship of the Ring

Disk One

• 0:00 Rated PG-13 for epic battle scenes and some scary images. They should have used that on the poster: “Epic battle scenes! Scary images!” — MPAA
• 0:01 So, there were actually twenty rings in total. The other 19 are kinda irrelevant, given the whole “One ring to bind them” thing
• 0:02 I’m with the MPAA. Epic battle scene #1. This one features Mr. Anderson. How many people have been in *two* trilogies to gross more than $1.5 billion?
• 0:05 Oh, Prince Isildur. If only you hadn’t been such a plonker. It’d have saved me about 10 1/2 hours.
• 0:07 That’s enough voice-over, I was beginning to wonder if I was watching the DVD with a commentary-track by Galadriel.
• 0:09 “Pipeweed”. Yeah, sure… Explains the hobbit apathy and apparently-perpetual munchies, shall we say.
• 0:22 Elijah Wood Looks Concerned. #1 in a series of… quite a lot. Collect the set!
• 0:31 Wikipedia can be so distracting. I thought I recognized Andy Serkis playing a hobbit, and somehow ended up reading about the Moors Murderers.
• 0:35 “Is it safe?” demands Gandalf. Laurence Olivier’s estate gets a shiny new penny.
• 0:39 Asks Frodo, “No-one knows it’s here, do they?” Gandalf’s stunned silence is very reassuring.
• 0:44 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely Landscapes.
• 0:45 There go the elves. Splitters!
• 0:47 Remember I asked “How many people have been in *two* trilogies to gross more than $1.5 billion?” Well, here’s Christopher Lee of LotR and the Star Wars prequels.
• 0:48 He and Ian McKellen have a Facial Hair Face-Off for the ages.
• 0:50 And then fight. Their combined age is more than 140, but it still works.
• 0:53 Hobbits entranced by mushrooms. Yep, I see why hippies like the book.
• 0:58 Peter Jackson cameo!
• 1:01 And one ring to fit them all, it appears – Sauron, Isildur, Gollum and now Frodo’s little stubby finger.
• 1:04 The Nazgul are loaded with mystical power, but apparently unable to tell the difference between a Hobbit and a pillow.
• 1:10 Orcs are ugly.
• 1:14 Aragorn proves Ring Wraiths are vastly over-rated.
• 1:17 Uruk-hai are even uglier. This seems to be the way Middle-earth works. Ugly = bad. Pretty = good.
• 1:23 Arwen tells the Ring Wraiths to come and have a go, if they think they’re hard enough. Elf-powered tidal wave 1, Ring Wraiths 0.
• 1:27 Come to Beautiful Rivendell and See Our Lovely Landscapes.
• 1:30 Ah, turns out Ian McKellen joins Weaving and Lee in the $1.5 billion club, for LotR and X-Men.
• 1:34 The Arwen-Aragorn romance kicks into gear. “I would rather share one lifetime with you, than face all the ages of this world alone.” Sniff.
• 1:40 OMG! Strider is Aragorn! This revelation might have had more effect if a) I knew they explained why that was important, and b) if I hadn’t been calling him that for the past 1:40.

Disk Two

• 0:00 I thought changing discs in the middle of a movie went out with LD. Apparently not.
• 0:05 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely (360-degree) Landscapes.
• 0:07 You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you? You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did.
• 0:16 I have to say, the way of getting into the mines of Moria appears to come from a poor D&D adventure.
• 0:17 A tentacle not-so languidly breaks the surface.
• 0:26 Nice city. Shame about the dead dwarfs littering it.
• 0:27 “We have barred the gates…but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes. Drums…drums…in the deep. We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark.” Never a good sign.
• 0:31 Legolas running up the troll’s chain onto its head, and firing an arrow down into the skull. Cool.
• 0:32 But otherwise, the troll does look a bit Playstation-y. There’s no doubt WETA’s work improved as the series went on.
• 0:37 Now, that’s what I call a yawning chasm.
• 0:38 “Nobody tosses a dwarf.”
• 0:39 Ah, that’s why the orcs ran. Don’t blame them.
• 0:42 And “Fly” is only a 3rd-level AD&D spell too. Guess Gandalf must have gone with “Fireball” instead.
• 0:51 I imagine when you’re an elf and so near-immortal, you don’t… need… to… speak… with… any… urgency.
• 0:57 Or blink, apparently.
• 1:04 Galadriel turns into Santa Claus, handing out gifts like Halloween candy.
• 1:07 Gimli the hair-fetishist. Who knew?
• 1:11 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely Rivers [But not our giant statues, for they are CGI]
• 1:15 Chris adds Orlando Bloom to the $1.5 billion club: LotR and Pirates of the Caribbean.
• 1:21 Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Legolas unleashes the semi-automatic bow and arrow.
• 1:25 Uruk-hai decapitation. PG-13 rating. Hmmm. Lack of resulting arterial spray, I assume.
• 1:32 Hobbits hugging. The film must almost be over.
• 1:34 “I don’t suppose we’ll ever see them again,” says Frodo. Not for about another eight hours, no.
• 1:42 The official fan club credits start.
• 2:02 The official fan club credits end. I notice the list include Sir Ian McKellen, plus an Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd and Christopher Lee, but not Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom or Liv Tyler.

The Two Towers

• 0:00 What? No ‘Previously, on Lord of the Rings“?
• 0:01 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely Snowy Mountainscapes
• 0:03 Now, that’s “falling with style”
• 0:07 Gollum! Hooray! A great gift to celebrity impersonators everywhere, just like Christopher Walken.
• 0:08 I hope Sam had his rabies shots.
• 0:10 Andy Serkis should have won the Oscar.
• 0:13 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely Expanses of Plains
• 0:15 Saruman: “The old world will burn in the fires of industry. The forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war with the sword and the spear and the iron fists of the Orc. We have only to remove those who oppose us.” I imagine Lee’s operatic version of Tomorrow Belongs to Me is in the extended version.
• 0:23 Rated PG-13 for brief scenes of orcish cannibalism, I suppose.
• 0:25 Why, yes, Chris – that is Dr. McCoy from the new Star Trek playing Eomer..
• 0:28 Orc head on a stick! Get your orc head on a stick!
• 0:32 Here comes the talking tree. Well, that’s ent-ertainment.
• 0:35 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Not-so Lovely Bogs, Marshes and Swamps.
• 0:38 Elijah Wood has been biting his nails. Maybe that’s method acting.
• 0:44 Gandalf 1, Balrog 0.
• 0:46 Shadowfax arrives. The extended cut also includes his younger brothers, Shadowemail and Shadowtwitter.
• 0:47 Now this is what I call an evil fortress.
• 0:54 Personally, I would think twice before appointing any adviser called Grima Wormtongue.
• 1:00 Another great facial-hair face-off, this time between Gandalf and Theoden.
• 1:09 Eowyn – clearly not just a wallflower princess, who replies to the question “What do you fear?” with “To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.” You go girl…

• 1:13 Sam and Frodo bickering like a married couple. I wonder if there’s LotR slash ficton?
• 1:14 Oh, god. “Results 1 – 20 of about 469,000 for lord of the rings slash”
• 1:15 Yep: Andy Serkis really should have won the Oscar.
• 1:19 Those oliphaunts are quite large. They are, however, not as big as the F-sized ones in Return.
• 1:25 Eowyn vs. Arwen. Now that’s the kind of slash fiction I could cope with.
• 1:28 Legolas swings from the ground to a galloping horse. Never mind Aragorn, I think Legolas may be even cooler in battle.
• 1:35 I guess Grima somehow missed the forces of darkness massing outside the tower in their tens of thousands, on his way in.
• 1:36 More than an hour since we last heard from Pippin and Merry. Still with the ent. No change there, then.
• 1:43 It’s not exactly looking good for the forces of light, is it?
• 1:48 David Wenham does look like he could be Sean Bean’s brother.
• 1:52 Serkis chews the scenery to great effect: “MY PRECIOUSSSSSS!” Marvellous.
• 1:56 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely Lands… What? Did we do that already?
• 2:01 Pippin and Merry. Still with the ent.
• 2:09 The elves show up. Must be part of the National Elf Service. Thank you: I’ll be here all week.
• 2:11 The enemy shows up. There’s a lot of them.
• 2:12 And they appear to be upset.
• 2:15 One of those shots, panning along the battlements of Helm’s Deep, that still makes you go “Wow.”
• 2:16 The ents continue to debate. This would be a good part of why we decided an extended version of this one was not worthwhile.
• 2:18 Is that Uruk-Hai carrying an Olympic Torch?
• 2:21 After careful consideration, the ents decide to…do absolutely nothing,
• 2:24 I think there was a Peter Jackson cameo here, third spear-chucker from the left or something.
• 2:26 Somehow, the words “epic battle scenes” don’t quite do this justice.
• 2:31 The ents experiences a change of…sap, or something, I guess, and charge into battle. Run, forest, run!
• 2:40 I’m sorry. My jaw has just been slack for the past ten minutes.
• 2:42 Had to laugh at the ent, its head on fire, running into the advancing waters to put it out.
• 2:49 “Samwise the Brave” – “Samwise the Gay, more like” snorts Chris.

The Return of the King

Disk One

• 0:04 Hobbiticide! I’d forgotten Gollum was a hobbit, before the ring got to him.
• 0:05 No fish were harme… Oh, well – never mind.
• 0:09 Do you think they are actually barefoot, or just wearing shoes that look like hairy hobbit feet?
• 0:15 Saruman does some very good taunting for altitude, like the French castle on Holy Grail.
• 0:16 Saruman and his Magic 8-Ball (TM) fall from grace onto a conveniently-pointy waterwheel.
• 0:21 Dwarf flatulence. Oh, hold my aching sides.
• 0:23 Serkis vs. Serkis again. In a film of great performances, I’m ever more convinced this one was the best.
• 0:29 Wizards sleep with their eyes open. Which makes sense, when you think about it.
• 0:41 It’s gone a bit low-key for the moment. I get the sense of pieces being moved into place for the final battle.
• 0:42 Minas Tirith. Ok. I’m impressed. But why does it need a helipad on the roof?
• 0:44 It’s Dr. Walter Bishop! Ok, it’s John Noble, but I’m so used to seeing him spout non sequiturs on Fringe, that seeing him as a broken steward of a kingdom is… interesting.
• 0:52 Nice to see Billy Boyd actually get to do a scene with some dramatic oomph to it, and he does quite well.
• 0:58 The Witch-King is deeply peeved. I know I said the Uruk-Hai were, but they barely count as miffed. Which isn’t bad given he doesn’t actually have a face.
• 1:03 Is it just me, or does the subplot involving Osgliath and Faramir, not add much to the storyline overall.
• 1:05 Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Pippin! He has been setting alight to our beacon, which, I just remembered, is grail-shaped.  It’s not the first time we’ve had this problem.
• 1:06 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely Lines of Beacons
• 1:15 No, I’m sorry – I’m still seeing Dr. Bishop
• 1:19 “I will break him”, mutters the Witch King about Gandalf. Didn’t realize Dolph Lundgren was in the series.
• 1:30 “Your father’s will has turned to madness!” says Gandalf of Denethor. Well, he does have something in common with Dr. Noble then.
• 1:32 I’m sure charging headlong into the forces of darkness seemed like a good idea at the time.
• 1:33 Come to Beautiful New Zealand and See Our Lovely War-Machines Being Pushed by Hideous Trolls.
• 1:40 “You ride to war, but not to victory.” Aren’t you a little bundle of joy, Elron?
• 1:46 Yeah, it’s all turning into a bit of a gloomfest at the moment.
• 1:47 If I recall correctly, these chasms are the same ones used at the start of Brain Dead.
• 1:50 Eowyn gets a dashboard ornament for her war-horse, in the shape of Merry.
• 1:56 Skullvalanche! In a movie of Very Cool Things, that has to be one of the coolest.
• 1:59 “Release the prisoners.” And who said monsters had no sense of humour?
• 2:02 Duelling catapults. And let battle commence.
• 2:06 It’s a good job no-one thought to get the gunpowder recipe off Saruman.

Disk Two

• 0:00 Peter Jackson cameo. And possibly the best reponse to “You and whose army?” ever.
• 0:07 In which Frodo gets coated in white, sticky stuff. Slash fiction hysteria ensues.
• 0:12 Gandalf looks all surprised when the Wolf’s Head battering ram begins to assault the gates. Guess he missed it rolling up to the main entrance. And it wasn’t quick – they started moving it in broad daylight, and it’s now after dark.
• 0:16 In which Frodo gets all bukkaked by Shelob. Slash fiction meltdown ensues.
• 0:25 and twenty seconds And THAT is the money shot.
• 0:29 and zero seconds No, that is.
• 0:31 Crap. I’ve just remembered this battle isn’t even close to the climax.
• 0:32 For example, here come the F-size mumakil.
• 0:40 Witch King: “You fool, No man can kill me. Die now.” Eowyn (removing her helmet): “I am no man.” Loud, sustained applause.
• 0:42 Legolas enters ultimate cool mode, taking down a mumakil and its passengers. “That still only counts as one,” grumbles Gimli.
• 0:43 Eowyn says goodbye to her dying father. For me, the most emotionally-intense moment of the whole trilogy.
• 0:55 Sam and Frodo escape. I must confess to not having really paid attention.
• 1:03 Orc brawl. And am increasingly convinced that Frodo is a wuss.
• 1:11 Decapitation of the Mouth of Sauron. I will say this, the agents of evil lose their heads quite easily. Hohoho.
• 1:20 One last epic battle scene? Oh, go on then…
• 1:24 Frodo gives Gollum the finger.
• 1:27 Now, why exactly does the destruction of the Ring cause Mordor to collapse into a gaping chasm?
• 1:33 And now the hobbit-hugging starts in earnest.
• 1:39 “My friends. You bow to no-one,” And that’s where the film should have ended, but noooooooo…
• 1:46 Still going. Elves shipping off and taking Bilbo.
• 1:50 Chris think Billy Boyd could be a future Doctor Who.
• 1:51 Elijah Wood looks concerned, for the last time, and sails off with the elves. Surely that’s the end now?
• 1:52 No. Not yet.
• 1:54 The End. Finally.

Conclusion? It’s only when you watch all three movies back to back, that you can appreciate how Jackson managed to tell so many interweaving stories. I felt that the trilogy was more even in quality on this viewing: Towers didn’t drag as much as I felt it did originally, while Return wasn’t quite as astonishingly good. All told, it stands as an epic (there’s that word again!) feat of imagination, one that is certainly worthy of its position on top of the decade’s movies.