Assault on a Small Boat

Do you remember that film where Frank Sinatra and his buddies salvaged a sunken U-Boat and used it to hold up an ocean liner?  Assault on a Queen it was called, which these days might be mistaken for a harrowing drama about homophobic violence, but in this case, the 'Queen' of the title was the liner Queen Mary, back before she was moored up in California as a tourist attraction.  It came to mind today when I was reading about the capsizing of that boat full of refugees near Greece, resulting in possibly hundreds of deaths.  What if it wasn't an accident, I speculated, but what if some bunch of right wing anti-immigration loonies had secretly salvaged a U-Boat and were using it to torpedo such vessels?  OK, I know that only yesterday I was railing against right-wing kooks using public tragedies as opportunities to push their anti-immigration agenda, but bear with me - I'm not pushing anything here except a perfectly legitimate hatred of Nazis.  Besides, I have satiric intent here.  No, really, I do.  Because these bastards do, sort of, have form for this, chartering boats to try and disrupt operations to rescue refugees, for instance, or calling for every small boat in North Africa to be sunk by the RAF in order to stop them from being used by refugees and asylum seekers.  

Of course, when I say 'right wing anti-immigration loonies', I actually mean,, say, Nigel Farage, but obviously, if I was to mention his name, that might be libellous, so I won't.  But if anyone was to make a modern version of Assault on a Queen, it might well feature a villain who looks a bit like Farage captaining a salvaged submarine as it cruises the English Channel attempting to sink small dinghys full of asylum seekers.  Actually, to be fair, he and his merry men would probably be targeting the RNLI lifeboats trying to rescue stricken asylum seekers - they'd probably wait until they'd picked up the occupants of several small boats and were heading home before torpedoing them, so as to ensure maximum casualties.  Obviously, if such a person were to captain a sub under such circumstances, it would probably run aground off Felixstowe or end up beached at Dover.  Plus, if this was a contemporary version of the story, they'd have to change the origin of the salvaged submarine - I doubt very much that there are any U-Boat wrecks left that are even close to salvagable.  So, maybe a sunken Russian or North Korean submarine - one of the diesel powered ones rather than a nuclear powered boat.  After all, we wouldn't want to make it seem too implausible, so no nukes of any kind.  After all, surely even right wing loonies wouldn't be so crazy as to want to use nuclear weapons against unarmed immigrants, would they?

Death at a Discount?

Has there been a horror film themed around 'Black Friday'?  I was idly wondering the other day what festival options were still available for such movies.  After all, there a Christmas themed  slashers and shockers, (Don't Open 'Til Christmas, Silent Night, Deadly Night, for instance), St Valentine's day horrors (My Bloody Valentine), not to mention some set at Easter, featuring murderous Easter bunnies.  Even Independence Day has its own movie, albeit an alien invasion film rather than outright horror.  The only date of note I could come up without a dedicated horror flick was 'Black Friday'.  A completely made  up 'holiday', (but technically, for those of us without religion, so are the others), but nonetheless so far devoid of a supporting movie.  Sure, I know that there was an old Bela Lugosi movie back in the early forties titled Black Friday, but that concerned brain transplants rather than discounted shopping.  But how could we fashion a horror film around 'Black Friday'?  Most of these seasonal movies tend to focus on some seasonal icon going on some kind of homicidal spree during the festive period.  You know the sort.of thing - slasher Santas and killer elves.  A variation sees the festive icons themselves being targeted - a serial killer of Santas, for instance, as in Don't Open 'Til Christmas.  But 'Black Friday' has no such icon, (other, perhaps, than the mighty dollar), associated with it.

I suppose that, instead, you could have a plot involving people being trapped in a shop during 'Black Friday', hunted down by some bargain hunting psycho, hell bent on stopping anyone from getting to the bargains before him.  A sort of capitalist satire spin on Chopping Mall, (which featured people trapped in a shopping mall, being menaced by malfunctioning security robots).  Perhaps a more original approach would be to have a crowd of homicidal shoppers, possessed by the spirit of avarice, running amok in a shopping centre during 'Black Friday'.  Or even take the Wicker Man route and imagine bargain hunting as some sort of capitalist cult, for whom 'Black Friday' is their main festival.  In order to ensure a bounty of bargains on the day, they have to sacrifice a 'Black Friday' virgin - who has never participated in the annual shopping madness - the night before.  Perhaps their plan could be to burn them to death on a pyre of last year's models of TV sets and other electrical appliances.  Then again, maybe the Stepford Wives or Halloween III: Season of the Witch approach might prove more fruitful, with ruthless capitalist store owners plotting to create a population of perfect consumers by replacing shoppers with androids programmed to spend, spend, spend.  'Black Friday' could be the day for their global activation, when they'll stampede flesh and blood shoppers to death in their haste to get to the deals.  So, there you have it - with a bit of imagination, even 'Black Friday' could be the basis for a horror movie franchise.

Queen Zombie

So, what are the odds that the Queen comes back as a zombie and disrupts the coronation of King Charles III?  You could just see the zombie Queen crashing into Westminster Abbey, tear the crown off of Charles' head and knock the orb out of his hand before she tries to tear his throat put with her bare dentures.  Doubtless, he'd be flailing around trying to beat her back to death with the sceptre, shouting to his security detail to 'shoot her in the head'.  Maybe the whole of the recently deceased Royal Family could crawl out of the tomb at Windsor, in various states of decay and cause mayhem at the coronation.  Prince Philip, (who, face it, looked like the living dead in his last days), could lurch toward Liz Truss )if she's still Prime Minister), arms out stretched like Bela Lugosi in Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman, and try to tear her head off, while the Queen Mother could try to eat the Archbishop of Canterbury, (so long as her jaw doesn't fall off, mid bite).  Doubtless, it would transpire that they'd been resurrected by a Royalist faction unhappy at Charles' 'too woke' reign and his plans to slim down the royal Family by dispensing with the hangers on.  See, this stuff just writes itself.  Perhaps we need to get this going as a conspiracy theory - that the Queen will rise from the tomb at the coronation in order to save the monarchy.

Well, it would make a great movie, if nothing else.  Surely somebody put there must be planning something like this for a direct-to-streaming release?  Or are we past peak low budget, shot-on-mobile-phone zombie movies?  Even if we weren't, I'm not sure that anyone would have the nerve to try and make something like this - there's just too much deference to the monarchy about in the UK.  Besides, you'd never get away with filming it in the UK - the tabloids would be all over it, shouting 'Treason' etc and the production inevitably shut down.  It would have to be shot overseas in some unlikely location pretending to be London.  Preferably one which gives tax breaks to film productions.  I mean, you'd be amazed how much like London Luxembourg looks.  At least, that's what the makers of some direct-to-video Jack Higgins adaptations tried to make us think back in the nineties.  (There was also, I vaguely recall, one of those cheesy Charles and Diana romance TV movies which tried to convince us that Luxembourg looked like central London).  Nowadays they tend to prefer Hungary or Romania as locations for these sorts of things - let's face it, for international audiences who have never been to the UK, as long as there are lots of old buildings and a red double decker bus, then it looks like London.  

Anyway, that's my latest low budget movie idea: Zombie Queen, Queen Zombie, Queen of the Zombies, or whatever.  I'm putting it out there for potential backers - just the publicity it would generate by getting the right wing press' piss boiling would surely guarantee a hit.

The Third Secret

So, the other day I was watching, (or rather, half-watching, because it was background to me doing something else), one of those conspiracy theory programmes on some digital TV channel or other.  It was called Forbidden Histories or some equally pretentious title and, despite claiming it would offer new revelations about some historical 'mystery', you knew that it was going to be bollocks as it was being presented by that lightweight pillock Jamie Theakston.  Anyway, this particular episode was about the 'secrets of Fatima', (which, coincidentally, had come up in conversation with someone a few days earlier).  These, for those who don't know, these were three visions and prophecies imparted to a group of Portuguese children by an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917.  Two of these secrets - one a vision of Hell, the other a prediction that World War One would shortly end, but that a second global conflict would occur in the near future - were revealed in 1930 in the memoirs of one of the children.  The third secret was supposed to be revealed by the Vatican in 1960.  Except that it wasn't, leading to speculation that it involved a revelation so disturbing and devastating that the church had decided that the public had to be protected from it - the end of the world, the assassination of a Pope or the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, were all favourite candidates among the conspiracy nutters. 

In 2000, the Vatican did finally reveal the third secret, which turned out to be a vague vision of the future whose elements, half ruined cities, huge crucifixes and an apparent martyrdom of a figure who might have been the Pope, could be interpreted to fit any of the scenarios favoured by the conspiracy theorists.  Except that they weren't satisfied by the revelation, claiming that it just wasn't dramatic enough.  There have been all sorts of allegations that either what was revealed wasn't the 'real' third secret, or that it was only part of the third secret and that the real version is far more dramatic.  Of course, this is always a problem faced by conspiracy theories: they build up expectations around 'secrets' and suppressed knowledge, which can never be fulfilled.  The revelations, when they come, are always an anti climax and are inevitably followed by allegations of cover ups and the like.  The truth, it seems, remains elusive, (as it always must for the conspiracy theorists, or they'd be out of business).  But the whole business, as presented on this TV programme, set me thinking: just what sort of 'revelation' would the so called Third Secret have to contain for the Catholic church to go to such extreme lengths (presenting a fake Third Secret) to suppress it?  What would they think would disturb their congregation so much?  The only answer I could come up with is that it predicted a gay Pope.  Such a revelation would rock the church to its core, threatening the whole fabric of its belief system.

Maybe that's what that last vision really was: the Holy Father getting it on with another guy.  (Would he be 'giving' or 'receiving' though? Which would be considered more Christian, to be receiving the love of his flock or giving out his love through administering a good 'pounding' to a Monsignor?)  Or perhaps those kids in Portugal saw a vision of a future Pope involved in a gang bang with a conclave of Cardinals.  Or, (and let's dial up the offensiveness here), they saw him getting down and dirty with the leader of another faith - cavorting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, enjoying a tryst with the Dalai Llama or even embracing the Grand Mufti.  The sub text here would be clear: not only should the church embrace homosexuality, but it should also use the power of gayness to unite with other faiths, to create one global, all encompassing religion celebrating a non-gender specific deity of universal sexual orientation.  I mean, sod the apocalypse, this is the sort of thing that would really disturb the Catholic church.  Imagine, an openly gay Pope would inevitably result in huge numbers of Catholic priests coming out of the closet, not to mention ordinary churchgoers finally feeling that it was safe to come out as gay or lesbian.  Churches painted in rainbow colours, Bishops in full regalia hanging out in gay bars.  It just doesn't bear thinking about.  Yep, if you ask me, that's what the Third Secret of Fatima is really about.

Ignorant Bigots

What is wrong with people?  Why is it that some people feel the necessity to take every possible opportunity to spout hate and bile, regardless of how inappropriate that might be?  To give an example, te other day I was watching a video on You Tube - it was pretty innocuous, the original opening titles for seventies sitcom Man About the House, in fact, which includes a lot of footage of seventies London.  I then made the mistake of glancing at the comments beneath the video.  Whilst the majority were relevant to the subject matter, discussing the show and its stars, one stood out glaringly: 'London in the days before it was full of foreigners and a multicultural shit hole'.  I mean, really?  Who would think that an appropriate thing to post anywhere, let alone under a video about an innocuous seventies sitcom?  I remember a time not so very long ago when being a racist was something to be ashamed of, something that bigots knew to keep to themselves.  But now it seems to be a badge of honour.

But, like all bigots, this idiot is ignorant, on several counts.  The most obvious being that the Man About the House titles do depict a multi-cultural London, most notably in the form a prominently feature bus conductor, who is clearly British Asian.  Which, obviously, brings us to the principle area of this guy's ignorance: the London of the seventies was clearly multi cultural, with people from a wide variety of ethnic origins living there, many brought there by the former British Empire.  Moreover, it had been a multicultural city since anyone can remember - as capital cities, particularly those which are also major ports and commerce hubs, usually are.  You'd think that by now this sort of thing would have stopped appalling me.  But, thankfully, it doesn't. I say 'thankfully' because this level of casual race hate should always shock us.  The day it doesn't is the day the racist bastards have won, by normalising this shit. 

Of course, there are those who say that this sort of thing is simply a result of the anonymity the web allows people - they are able to express opinions which they would never normally be able to publicly express, for fear of opprobrium.  Except that it isn't just online we come across these things: it seems like a growing trend, endorsed by some sections of the media, to see racism and hatred as somehow acceptable forms of public expression.  It would help, of course, if comments sections and forums online were more closely moderated and such comments removed, (and no, suppressing racism isn't the same thing as repressing free speech).  Just recently, my local paper ran an article about how the local Mosque was holding an open day - the sort of comments that appeared under the online version of the story were depressingly predictable with the usual references to terrorism, ISIS and grooming, not to mention ignorant.  Yet it took the newspaper an age to take down the most offensive and those left are still pretty offensive.  They really needto police these things better - or just disable the comments: I can't remember the last time I saw one, on any story, that wasn't idiotic, ill informed, prejudiced and full of hate. 

Only Human?

I was half listening to some kind of audio hagiography of Margaret Thatcher on the radio the other night as I was drifting off to sleep when they got to the bit about how the 'Iron Lady' was just human like the rest of us.  It's a sequence common to all such biographies - after we've established how tough, uncompromising, hard working and efficient the subject was, (usually adding in how bold they were in pursuing unpopular policies or taking political risks), you get the segment where they try to humanise them, with anecdotes from colleagues about how they were kind to small animals or performed ingognito at children's parties.  In the case of Thatcher, we were presented with the likes of Kenneth Clarke and Matthew Paris telling us, in astonished tones, how Mrs Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, once made them a cup of tea!  Apparently that showed that she was really just and ordinary housewife, even when she was in the midst of destroying the coal industry and creating mass unemployment.  But all that was OK, because she was really human.

To which my response was to think that the same thing could be said of Hitler.  It's well documented, after all, that, even in those dark last days in the bunker, Hitler was always nice to his secretarial staff, regularly taking tea and crumpets with them.  He was also very nice to Geobbels' children, often reading them bedtime stories.  Presumably, following the logic of the Thatcher programme I heard, this somehow exonerrates him from the war crimes that he was responsible for.  I mean, what do the concentration camps and attempted genocide matter - he liked children and was good to the ladies in the typing pool.  Whilst it is always good to remind ourselves that even ruthless dictators are also human beings, it is important to remember that this still doesn't absolve them of guilt.  It's all too easy to demonise the likes of Hitler, turning them into inhuman monsters, as if by dehumanising them somehow seperates them from us, making them 'special cases'.  Establishing that they were still human beings, who still did mundane things like the rest of us, still had feelings, still loved and grieved and cried, reminds us that they aren't 'special cases', different from us because they were inherently evil - they started off just the same way as the rest of us, as ordinary people.  But it doesn't alter the heinousness of their deeds.  In the case of someone like Thatcher, learning that she was 'just human', makes the callousness of her policies even worse.  Sure, she wasn't Hitler (despite my earlier analogy) but she still destroyed a lot of communities and ruined a lot of lives.  Worse still, her policies fatally eroded the better values of our society, putting materialism and personal gain above care and compassion.  All whilst making tea for Kenneth Clarke.   

And So it Begins

Only a couple of days into the next five years of the new dark ages and already there are anti-Tory riots going on in London.  Not that you'd know anything about them if you were solely reliant upon the UK's mainstream media, who seem to be maintaining some kind of media black out with regard to the protests.  Thank God for the internet - no wonder the Tory bastards want to censor it.  Trust me, today it's internet porn, tomorrow it will be independent news sources.  Which is why I urge everyone to protest by looking at even more internet pornography than they do already - it's the only way we can safeguard our freedoms.  I know it will be hell, but we've got to do it.  If that doesn't have all those knee-jerk reactionaries out there harrumphing with displeasure, nothing will.  Actually, while I remember, there's a question I'd like to ask all those bastards who voted Tory out there:  did Dave 'Swinging Dick' Cameron keep his top hat on when he took you up the arse in the polling booth?  Because that's what it all amounts to: the political equivalent a quick knee trembler.  You might well have been flattered by the posh git's attentions at the time, but trust me, now that you've dropped your pants and he's got what he wants, he won't call you for another five years.

Jesus, you can see how much this election result has pissed me off: I'm still posting rants about it on a Saturday.  I can't remember the last time I posted anything on a Saturday!  Personally, I blame the SNP.  Well, today I do, at least.  Trust me on this, but a Tory majority in Westminster was exactly what they wanted - what will be perceived as an English Tory government will be used to further inflame anti-Union sentiments North of the border.  All that SNP talk of coaltions with Labour, or even just supporting a minority Labour government were cynically designed by the SNP leadership to whip up anti-Scots nationalist feeling in England and scare people into voting Tory.  But to return to the original point of this post: good luck to the protesters in London. Clearly they've heeded my long-standing counsel that it will need a revolution to change anything in this country.  Until we start putting some of the bastards up against the wall and shooting them, the city fat cats and their ilk will never take us seriously.  But to be slightly more serious - it was the failure of Labour to connect with the protesters who hit the streets five years ago and harness their energies, which played a large part in the party's poor showing last Thursday.  These people have perfectly legitimate grievances, but feel they have no option but to resort to street protests because they aren't being adequately addressed by mainstream politicians.  Whoever succeeds Ed Miliband needs to pay heed.

A Fitting Tribute

The other night I found myself watching the beginning of a film being shown by Channel Four as a 'tribute' to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.  I say 'tribute', but I have a sneaking suspicion that Before The Devil Knows You're Dead was scheduled long before the actor's untimely demise.  As I watched the film's opening scenes I couldn't help but wonder if this really was a fitting tribute to Hoffman.  Don't misunderstand me - I'm not impugning the quality of the film itself.  After all, it was directed by the great Sidney Lumet (his last film), of whom I'm a great fan, so it goes without saying that it was an intelligent and well made film.  It's just that as I watched Hoffman's character huffing and puffing as he sweatily made love to his screen wife, Marisa Tomei, doggy-style, I couldn't help but ask myself whether this was the way anyone would want to be remembered in a 'tribute'.   Not that it was bad acting, I can testify from personal experience that this kind of activity can leave middle-aged men of a certain girth wheezing wrecks, fearing they are about to suffer a coronary.  It's just that I'm not sure it was an appropriate tribute to the man. 

Anyway, as I watched this scene, my mind couldn't help but wander, (the further from his desperate humping the better).  What if his character was to suffer a fatal heart attack, mid-stroke, I thought.  Taking her from behind, as he was, his prone body would inevitably collapse forward, over his wife, leaving her trapped under his, not inconsiderable, bulk.  How would she get out of that, I wondered.  After all, it would be unlikely, lying flat on her front, the breath knocked out of her, the poor woman would be able to move his dead weight.  If a bedside phone or mobile wasn't within reach, there would be no way of calling for help.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that there was a small-scale art house movie in this situation.  The sort of thing which wins prizes at Cannes: ninety minutes of a woman struggling to escape from beneath the bulk of her dead lover.  We could follow her attempts to physically move, then to get help by shouting, tapping messages in morse code on the wall.  Maybe there could be a few flashbacks exploring her relationship with the deceased to open things out a bit, maybe also some interior monologues for her.  Whichever way you look at it: a winner,  Now, if only Hoffman had made that film, then it would have been a more fitting tribute to him!

Pitch Perfect

I'm afraid I've really been off the ball this month - until yesterday I hadn't even realised that the Edinburgh Film Festival was already underway. For some strange reason, I had the idea in my head that it ran concurrently with the main Edinburgh festival. Clearly, I was wrong. Anyway, the point I'm groping blindly toward is that this represents yet another missed opportunity. As you might recall, about a month ago I mentioned my regrets at having missed the opportunity of pretending to attend the Cannes Film Festival, seeing if I could convince people that I was off in France pitching a movie. Sadly, I've now missed the opportunity to try this same gag with regard to Edinburgh. Which is a real pity, as the other day I even came up with an idea for the fake film I would allegedly have been pitching - The Magnificent Seven, but with zombies instead of bandits.

That's right, I'm going for that cross-genre thing that seems popular right now, (Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter - need I say more?). The set-up is pretty straightforward: Mexican villagers being terrorised by zombies, or even zombie bandits - actually, I like that even better, the idea of a local bandit leader raising an undead private army - but the neither the authorities nor the Catholic church will either believe or help them. So, instead they send a delegation to a border town to recruit some bad assed gunfighters to protect them from the living dead. Cue the recruitment of two star actors and five other mildly well-known performers, all portraying characters with a variety of personal problems and character quirks. Heck, as this is a horror movie, one of them could even be a priest who has lost his faith! Leave no cliche unturned, I say! Anyway, I think sounds a reasonably plausible movie to claim to be pitching, all I've got to do now is wait for another film festival, then take a couple of days off work and see if I cam convince anyone I'm there making a pitch. It's worked a few times during the Edinburgh Festival, when I often tell people I'm performing a one-man show at the Fringe.

(And if I hear of anyone trying to develop a film along these lines, I will be suing, you plagiarising bastards!)

Ocean's Fourteen: The Egyptian Job

Now, I know that Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney don't want to make another Ocean's Eleven movie, but really, recent events in Egypt really should make them think twice. Amidst reports that valuable antiquities had allegedly been stolen from museums during the rioting and unrest, I was left suspecting that the whole thing had been staged as a cover for a daring robbery. After all what better distraction could there be than a revolution? All the police and army are out on the streets, rather than guarding banks, art galleries and museums. You could make a getaway under the cover of being foreign tourists fleeing the country on a specially chartered flight. The fact that a dictator gets deposed in the process is an added bonus.

Then again, maybe Mubarak was behind it all - he deliberately stirred up opposition against his regime to facilitate his partners in crime. After all, wasn't it a bit convenient when all those pro-Mubarak supporters turned up in Tahrir Square and started attacking the protesters? Suddenly, the security forces had their work cut out separating the two sides, ensuring that they couldn't prevent any other crimes in process. Moreover, it ensured that the eyes of the world were on that square, rather than noticing any robberies taking place nearby. The final distraction was Mubarak's sudden resignation, no doubt helping to cover the robbers' getaway. I daresay the former President's cut of the job would provide him with a very handy retirement fund. Of course, if it was a caper movie, then the final reel would see George Clooney double-crossing Mubarak at his holiday home on the Red Sea, before making a daring escape on a paraglider, or something.

"Oh, Miss Jones!"

Going back to Monday's post, and my ideas for a Hollywood movie version of Rentaghost, I've had a few thoughts as how to translate another British comedy classic to the US big screen: Rising Damp. Now, I know that, technically, there already has been an attempt to adapt the series for the US - there was an unaired CBS pilot with Jack Weston in the Rigsby role entitled Steam Heat, made in the late 1970s - not to mention a UK film version in the early 1980s with most of the original cast, but I'm talking here about a 're-imagining'. You know what I mean - it's Hollywood's favourite buzz word: you take an old TV series or film, throw away everything that made it popular or distinctive, and instead produce a heap of shiny shit. But getting back to the point: Rising Damp - clearly, the key thing here would be the casting of Rigsby, the sad middle-aged sexually repressed and bigoted landlord. Obviously, the late Leonard Rossiter would be a hard act to follow, but I think I've got it cracked - Christopher Walken.

One of my favourite actors, Walken can make just about any character skin-crawlingly weird. His bizarre intonations and wild gaze have enlivened many a totally crap movie for me. Just imagining his delivery of the classic line "Oh, Miss Jones!", whilst drilling peep holes in his female lodger's walls so as to cop an eyeful of her getting dressed, sends shivers down my spine! Indeed, making Rigsby a full blown voyeuristic pervert, is, I feel, key to this re-imagining. Walken could spend his time sat in his musty basement, whacking off as he watches his tenants through hidden cameras. Add to this the fact that he is a traumatised ex-Vietnam veteran, and the recipe for hilarity is complete. You can just see the Christmas episode, where Rigsby forces Alan and Philip to sit around the kitchen table, wearing paper hats from the crackers, and play Russian Roulette. Or how about an episode where the delivery of a Chinese take away to Alan triggers a flashback to the My Lai massacre for Rigsby. Before you know it, Walken is hiding behind the sofa, wearing camouflage face paint and toting an M16, taking pot shots at anyone coming down the stairs, before trying to burn the house down. This one could really have legs!

We've Got Spooks and Ghouls and Freaks and Fools...

Ok. let's forget about Christmas and the cold weather for this post, shall we? I'm already tired of both of them. Instead, I've become entranced by those weird Hollywood rumours about supposed film projects and alleged casting. Obviously, most are absolute bollocks. One which struck me as such on first sight was that Russell Brand had been cast in a Hollywood remake of the old BBC children's TV series Rentaghost. Now, it isn't the idea of Hollywood turning a crap old British TV series into a movie which marked this one out as a fake. These days they'll remake anything. Especially children's programmes. Damn it, in the States they've just released a big budget Yogi Bear movie mixing live action and CGI, featuring Dan Akyroyd and Justin Timberlake as the voices of Yogi and Boo Boo. OK, I know that sounds completely made up, but, trust me, it's true. So, a Rentaghost film isn't improbable, and neither is the casting of Russell Brand. After all, he's pretty much established himself now as a credible transatlantic star. No, what gave the story away as bollocks was the claim that Brand was to play Fred Mumford. Oh, for God's sake! Anybody who knows anything about Rentaghost knows that Fred Mumford was the really boring conventional ghost. There is no way any competent casting director would put Brand in that role. It's the sort of role you'd give to Bill Pulman, or Kevin Costner - dependable, but dull as ditch water.

Now, if the story had claimed that Russell Brand had been cast as manic court jester poltergeist Timothy Claypole, then I would have believed it. Damn it, he even has the same beard as the original Claypole, not to mention the deliberately archaic speech patterns and propensity for over acting. If anyone was to make a film version of Rentaghost, the main casting problem would be the third ghost, Mr Davenport, who, as I recall didn't actually last long in the original series. He was a pretty boring character, (even more so than Fred Mumford), some kind of effete Edwardian gentleman. maybe they could play him as all out camp and cast Nathan Lane. In the interests of balance, they'd probably have to make Fred Mumford black. Which would at least make him mildly interesting. Eddie Murphy would be ideal casting, but I suspect they'd actually get Sinbad. Or one of the Wayans brothers. All of which leaves the main non-supernatural character to cast - the ghosts' sleazy and grasping landlord Mr Meeker. Who else but Harvey Keitel? I can just see him wearing Meeker's trademark trilby hat and sporting his dodgy seventies 'tache, growling "Get out of here you fuckin' spooks", as he tries to collect the rent. So, there you have it - my formula for a Rentaghost film. If you re a Hollywood producer, my consultancy fees are very reasonable.

Abattoir 2

I'm not ready to let go of this horror franchise yet - I've had some new ideas for Part Two. Forget the health food store built on the site of the old abattoir. In fact, forget that abattoir altogether. In the new Part Two, there are a series of horrible murders (naturally), all performed in the manner of a slaughter house. You know the sort of thing - electrocuted, throat cut and blood drained out, captive bolt gun, smacked over the head with a sledge hammer, I'm sure there are more, but I'm not an expert on abattoirs, for God's sake! Anyway, the killings are all carried out by someone dressed as a slaughter man and, all of the victims are people involved in the meat trade: butchers, and, er, butchers.

The twist is that the perpetrator, far from being the demonic abattoir owner of Part One, is actually one of the surviving veggies from the first film, driven mad by their experiences and now exacting their revenge on the meat trade! Pretty neat, huh? This approach has the advantage of both being a direct sequel in that involves at least one of the original characters, and is thematically linked by developing the 'meat is murder' concept from the first. This avoids the problems besetting most horror sequels: either they are simply a re-run of the first film, but cheaper, or they are merely a sequel in name only, an arbitrarily re-titled direct-to-DVD release which is vaguely similar to the original. So, having cracked the sequel, all I have to do now is sort out number three. Maybe that health food store idea does have merit...

Abattoir!

So, with Halloween imminent, one's thoughts naturally turn toward horror films, wondering whether there will be any decent cinema releases in this traditional season of the witch? The answer is, of, course, a resounding 'no'. All we get offered, it seems, are yet more instalments of tired old franchises like Saw. And let's face it, they weren't much cop as horror flicks in the first place. Horror cinema these days seems to be obsessed with simply serving up gross-out shock sequences with no context, rather than giving audiences things like plot, suspense or characterisation. But what do I know, eh? I'm still stuck in the days of Hammer and Tigon. Nevertheless, I still think that I could come up with a better horror film franchise than most of the dross that passes for terror cinema these days. First of all, you need some kind of 'high concept' to underpin it all, mine is 'meat is murder', which, in turn, gives us the title: Abattoir!

The premise is simple - a block of luxury flats are built on the site of an old abattoir and, here's the first 'twist', the occupants are all vegetarians! Obviously, pretty soon the residents are experiencing weird shit - disembodied mooings in the night, the bleating of phantom sheep and the agonised squeals of pigs as they're slaughtered. Naturally, investigations show that strange things had gone on at the abattoir before it was demolished - animal cruelty, perhaps. Or, it could transpire that the villainous owner had been passing off regularly slaughtered meat to the local Muslim community as halal meat. Or, he could have been passing off non-Kosher meat as Kosher to the local Jewish community. Or, he could have been slaughtering local down and outs and selling the meat to local butchers.

Anyway, whatever the terrible dark secret turns out to be, the terror is then notched up a gear, with animal blood pouring out of taps and shower heads, nut cutlets mysteriously turning into real cutlets, sides of beef hanging in wardrobes, and herds of demonic pigs chasing people down corridors. Finally, the ghostly abattoir owner could turn up, (or maybe he isn't dead, he's just been hiding in the cellars, where he's set up a new secret slaughter house), and start hanging people from meat hooks before killing them with a captive bolt gun and slicing up their bodies.
It could all climax with him force feeding the surviving veggies with meat. But not just any meat, but the remains of their friends and neighbours! Finally, and just in the nick of time, the ghosts of his previous animal victims turn up and trample the slaughter man to death, or drag him back to Hell. Or something. All in all, I think this is a pretty good idea for a franchise. Certainly, it's no crapper than, say, the Saw or Hostel movies. I've even got an idea for a sequel lined up - with the flats demolished or burned down, or something, after the events of the first film, Abattoir 2 could open with a health food store having been built on the site. This stuff just writes itself! Now, where did I put Roger Corman's number?

Carry on Dying

If your idea of heaven is chortling at the merry toilet pranks of Carry On At Your Convenience or marvelling at the cutting critique of British Imperialism that is Carry On Up The Khyber, then prepare to enter paradise! British film production company HandJob Films has announced that it is negotiating to acquire the rights to make a new series of Carry On films. However, the company aims to avoid the mistakes made the last time an attempt was made to revive the franchise - the limp Carry On Columbus. “The mistake that time was to cast new actors in the roles”, says HandJob executive Jod Bank, “the public wanted the old stars and that’s what we’re going to give them!”

HandJob plans to use new technology to virtually recreate dead comic favourites such as Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques and put them into brand new productions. HandJob producer JR Rank promises that it won’t just be the now sadly departed Carry On stars that will get the virtual treatment. “We will also be featuring the surviving performers, but virtually enhanced to take them back to their prime - Barbara Windsor, well we’ll be doing some restoration work on her bust, It is sagging a bit these days, isn’t it? Punters today will want to see something a bit more pert!”

The company’s head writer, Sherm Tank, assured us that the new films would be true to the spirit of the classic series, but would feature up-to-date plots, ripped straight from the headlines. The first production planned is a hard-hitting satire of funding crises in the National Health Service - Carry On Dying. Sid James will feature prominently as hard-drinking and womanising surgeon Dr Grope (“I like a quick stiffener in the morning!”), who expires from a fatal heart attack whilst fondling Nurse Rosy Cheeks (Barbara Windsor) during a vital heart operation. Inexperienced and incompetent Dr Fumble (Terry Scott) is forced to take over, but inadvertently removes the patient’s knob instead. Consequently, the patient (Charles Hawtrey) sues the hospital, resulting in a major funding crisis. Much hilarity ensues. Meanwhile, Matron Mona Loudly (Hattie Jacques) also expires suddenly - whilst coming to orgasm with senior hospital administrator Henry Smallpiece (Kenneth Williams) - “Ooooooh Matron!” - crushing him in the process. Smallpiece is rushed to the plaster room to set his broken bones (“I don’t think we’ve got a splint small enough....”). Much hilarity ensues. In a hectic comic climax, Smallpiece receives the accidentally removed penis in an emergency transplant before solving the hospital’s funding problems. He arranges to have Matron Loudly cremated in the hospital furnace - providing heating for the entire building for the next year and thereby saving half a million pounds, exactly the amount of the maimed patient’s out of court settlement. Smallpiece starts to be influenced by his new member, mincing around the hospital and groping handsome porter Johnny Biggun (Jim Dale). Much hilarity ensues as the end credits roll.

If Carry On Dying proves popular, the HandJob team has other productions planned. “We were thinking of doing an updated version of Carry On Teacher , set in a modern inner-city school,” Jod Bank told us. “It could feature Frankie Howerd as a hypocritical schools inspector who once slept with a pupil - the twist being that it was a male pupil who is now a teacher at the school he is inspecting! The film could climax with the persecuted teaching staff giving him a bloody good caning in the gym, before the ex-lover gives him one up the arse!” Rank, Bank and Tank also believe that the virtual recreation of the Carry On stars will allow them to “cast” against type. “Kenneth Williams, for instance, could be portrayed as a virile bisexual shag machine, rather than a wimpy homosexual mummy’s boy,” Tank enthused. “The possibilities are endless!” Much hilarity, no doubt, will ensue.

The Empire Strikes Back?

Recent years have seen the release of a number of Hollywood blockbusters which have falsified history in order to glorify the US whilst patronising the rest of the world. U-571, for instance, attributed the capture of a German Navy enigma code machine in World War Two to the US Navy, when in fact the action was carried out by the British Royal Navy. The latest such movie to provoke outrage outside of the US is Pearl Harbour . There have been allegations that several anti-British sequences had to be cut from the film before its UK release. One of these apparently showed wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (played by Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue fame), concluding a secret deal with the Japanese to attack the US fleet in order to force the peace-loving US into the war. Churchill is seen personally authorising a shipment of gold bullion to Tokyo aboard a Royal Navy submarine as payment for the attack, and agreeing to provide British military assistance. Another deleted sequence is said to show British Spitfires being repainted in Japanese colours - their RAF roundels being painted over with the Japanese rising sun symbol - before flying from secret pacific bases to strafe the US fleet at Pearl Harbour. Whilst the film’s makers have angrily denied that any such sequences were ever filmed - claiming that it was just another internet hoax - there can be little doubt that much recent Hollywood output has shown a distinct anti-British bias. The Patriot showed British soldiers behaving like Nazi storm troopers during the US War of Independence, whilst Braveheart showed English troops doing much the same thing in Scotland during the 13th Century. Whilst some might argue that this is an apt response to theUK inflicting the likes of Phil Collins on the US, the beleaguered Brits are now set to strike back, courtesy of UK producer/director Sid Dukie.

Dukie is planning a series of TV dramas in which he plans to reveal the truth behind some of the US’s best-loved Presidents. He aims to start with George Washington, War of Independence General and first US President, long extolled by the US as an exemplar of truth, honesty and wholesome values. According to Dukie the truth was very different: “He was a broad-chasing booze hound! He lost his teeth in a bar-room brawl with a pimp over his refusal to pay the full rate for a prostitute he claimed had not given full satisfaction!” Washington replaced his lost teeth with a revolutionary set of painted wooden teeth. He quickly found that many women were sexually aroused by these teeth when he kept them in whilst performing oral sex. Consequently, he set up in business supplying wooden teeth as a sex-aid to American men - Benjamin Franklin was a particularly enthusiastic user - later branching out into carved wooden dildos and other sex toys. However, it was this trade which brought him into conflict with the British authorities. “The British Inland Revenue were after him for at least half a million pounds worth of unpaid sales taxes on these dildos”, Dukie claims. “No wonder he was so keen on starting a war - establishing an independent US government was the perfect way for Washington to evade his outstanding tax-bill!” Another target for Dukie’s series will be Thomas Jefferson, third President of the US. “When Jefferson wasn’t busy porking the slaves, he was obsessed with elephants”, reveals Dukie. This strange obsession started when the fossilised remains of prehistoric elephants such as mastodons and mammoths were discovered on the East Coast - Jefferson became convinced that living elephants roamed the hitherto unexplored interior of the continent. He consequently financed, at huge expense to the US tax-payer, several expeditions in search of these mythical beasts. Hundreds of men were lost in this vain quest. Nevertheless, Jefferson remained gripped by elephant-mania and took to performing elephant impressions at every opportunity. “At the drop of a hat he’d do his ‘white eared elephant’ impression by pulling out his trouser pocket linings, whipping out his plonker and trumpeting at the top of his voice - it caused quite a stir at official receptions and at state banquets”, the director claims. “By the end of his term of office he’d managed to train his schlepper to pick up buns, like an elephant’s trunk. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long enough to reach his mouth with them.” Jefferson also insisted on importing several African elephants and allowing them to roam freely around the official Presidential residence. “Contemporary writers thought it was disgusting - elephants pissing and crapping everywhere. Apparently the smell was quite unbearable at the height of summer”, Dukie explained.

Abraham Lincoln, possibly the most revered of all US Presidents, is also exposed in the TV series. The stove-pipe hatted Republican with the silly beard apparently liked nothing better than to drink his own urine - claiming that it had many health-giving properties. In fact, so enamoured of these properties was Abe, that he actually bottled it and frequently presented samples to visiting dignitaries. “He was planning to market it commercially once his term as President ended”, Dukie believes. “Fortunately for the civilised world he was assassinated by a renegade urologist who was horrified by Lincoln’s plans. If Lincoln had lived the Americans might have been drinking urine to this day, instead of coffee!” Lincoln also enjoyed bathing in urine, and often held pool parties at which all of the guests would urinate into a communal bath, before leaping in and enjoying it while it was still warm. Dukie admits that finance and casting for the series has yet to be finalised, but if it goes ahead it will not be the first time that he has courted controversy with his anti-American sentiments. In 1996 his feature film Patton: Lust for a Glory Hole portrayed the celebrated Second World War US general (played by Bob Hoskins) as a closet homosexual and secret cross-dresser, whose rapid drive for Berlin 1944-45 was motivated by his love for a German pole-vaulter he had met at the 1928 Olympics. In the course of the movie Patton is seen bitch-slapping a GI under his command who criticises his shoes and lipstick during the 1943 Sicily campaign.

On Her Majesty's Cash-Strapped Service

The past is another country - they do things differently there. I was reminded of this the other day whilst watching Octopussy for about the 300th time. It wasn't just the fact that the film was made at a time when the old Soviet Union was considered to be a super-sophisticated world power, waiting to deploy its massive and efficient armed forces against NATO, which dated it, but also the fact that Roger Moore spent an inordinate amount of time toward the film's climax searching for a public phone on which to contact London. "Why don't you just use your bloody mobile!" I found myself screaming. But, of course, this was 1983, and only the world's four wealthiest men had mobile phones. The depiction of the Kremlin's main operation room was mildly hilarious, with its rotating seating and giant electronic maps. The reality would probably have been a dank basement dripping with water, with the entire Politburo huddled around a one-bar electric fire. If they were lucky they might have a paper map. Mildewed at the edges. On first sight, the portrayal of the British Secret Intelligence Service seems equally bizarre - a technologically advanced organisation with apparently vast funding and super-efficient operatives. However, on closer examination, Octopussy is actually giving us a radically revisionist view of the Service.

They certainly seem pretty short staffed - Smithers, who is first seen driving a London cab sent by Bond to follow Khan, later turns up again as one of Q's assistants. Come to think of it, perhaps he wasn't on duty when he was driving that cab. Maybe he was moonlighting and being in the right place to follow Khan was purely coincidental - he was taking a fare to the airport, anyway. Not only that, but Q himself takes a turn standing watch for 007 in India. For God's sake - how thin on the ground do you have to be before you start using your chief technical expert - who must be one Hell of a security risk with all the knowledge he has - in the field? Surely you'd keep him locked up in your London HQ? Actually, while we're on the subject of Q - just why does he seem to turn up, complete with a fully equipped lab, wherever Bond is operating? Surely that can't be cost-effective? Not only that, but there are other '00' agents - does he do the same for them? Perhaps that's why he's always so irritable, ("For goodness sake, 007, stop arseing about and pay attention - I've got to fly out to Macao after this to sort out an exploding vibrator for 008.")

But it's not just Q who seems to be forced to carry out menial tasks - M himself appears in Berlin to brief Bond. Jesus Christ! Who in their right mind would send the head of the Secret Service to do a job a clerk could (and should) do? Those public spending cuts imposed by the Thatcher government were clearly biting hard. The penny-pinching is most obvious at the film's climax. Does the British government send the SAS or SBS to raid the villain's lair? No, they instead use a band of female circus performers. Does Bond arrive in a helicopter? No, he appears in a hot air balloon, piloted by the septuagenarian Q. Not just any hot air balloon, but one emblazoned with a huge Union Jack. Covert operations, eh? But like I said before, this was 1983 and things were different then - the world could still be saved by a middle-aged bloke with a public school accent who even wears a jacket and tie when he's in the jungle. (Actually, by this time in the series, Roger Moore was looking dangerously like a dirty old man as he raised his eyebrows and directed single-entendres at attractive young women).

How times have changed. Nowadays Bond wouldn't be saving the world, he'd most likely be trying to find one of those laptops the MoD keeps losing on trains. Maybe that will be the pre-title sequence of the next film: Bond is carrying out surveillance on a Starbucks, when he spies a suspicious looking character trying to sell a laptop to another customer, a furious chase through the coffee shop ensues, culminating in him beating the shit out of the thief before retrieving the computer. Of course, back in Roger Moore's day, he'd have tried to foil the theft of the laptop in the first place, landing on top of the hapless MoD official's train home, in a hot air balloon, probably piloted by Q. But then again, we didn't have laptops back then, did we? Haven't we come a long way? From hot air balloons and circus performers to Daniel Craig punching a laptop thief in the face. That's progress.

The Magnificent Twelve Apostles

I know it's Easter, but I really do object to being accosted in the street by faux-nuns and getting preached at. On the one hand, Easter is another of those pagan festivals co-opted by the Christians (even its name derives from a pagan fertility goddess), so we should all be dancing naked around some stone circle, rather than listening to the likes of the Archbishop of Canterbury droning on. On the other, the people accosting me weren't even 'proper' Christians, they were from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (which has several denominations, the best known of which are the Mormons). Strangely enough, on a freezing cold Bank Holiday, with snow trying to fall, I'm really not in the mood to engage in theological discussions. Mind you, it isn't just on the street that the God-botherers are accosting us - I've had a double dose of Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster in past few days; on TV denouncing human-animal hybrid embryo research, then in The Guardian today denouncing atheistic secularism. I find it quite disturbing that Murphy-O'Connor, the child molester's friend, is allowed to bang on about how embryo research will 'create monsters'. Can't the Catholic church stand the competition?

Is it any wonder that church attendances (of all denominations) are falling if this sort of thing is the best they can do in terms of recruitment. Really, Catholic Bishops ranting out anti-science bigotry and trying to influence the legislative process of a Protestant country, or simply annoying strangers on the street, are not the best ways to showcase your beliefs. Neither presents a particularly positive or progressive image. No, what they need to do is put a modern spin on their faith, one which today's youth can relate to. What they need to do is make a film which 're-imagines' the story of Christ in much the same way that Hollywood has 're-imagined' all those old TV shows like The Dukes of Hazzard, or Mission Impossible. Perhaps they could have Steven Seagal as Christ, who tries to bring justice to the Roman-occupied Holy Land through peaceful means, but finally has to admit defeat and decides that he needs both a new approach and heavy weight help to fulfil his mission. Consequently, he goes off and recruits twelve kick-ass apostles, much in the manner of Yul Brynner in the Magnificent Seven. Each of them could have some kind of special skills based on their professions: the fishermen could hurl nets at villains to entangle them, for instance. They could all be played by action stars like Bruce Willis, Claude van Damme, Stallone and Arnie. Maybe Vin Diesel could be Judas Iscariot. Overcome with remorse at his betrayal of Jesus, he goes on a rampage, using his pieces of silver as weapons to take out Roman soldiers, before finally being cut down. Believe me, this could be a winner - and it would be far better than accosting people on street corners.

Cultural Imperialism

It's that time of year again, when hordes of people descend on Glastonbury for the semi-annual mudfest. This also means that we have to endure those bloody insulting TV trails for the BBC's coverage of the festival. You know the ones I mean - they feature local people, mainly middle class and middle aged going on about how the music all sounds the same from a distance, etc. Basically implying that anyone who dares offer the opinion that much modern music is shit must be an un-hip old fuddy duddy. However, the most offensive of these trails is the one they show most frequently - the one with the bloke with the thick Somerset accent going on about how "I went in back o'car" once as the result of seeing a young woman festival goer "she were topless". If this guy was being used as a representative of any group other than rural farm workers, the BBC would be accused of racial stereotyping. They seem to have gone out of their way to find the most inbred-looking yokel, with the thickest accent the could find, brandishing a glass of cider as he remonstrates about "you shouldn't do that alongside a main road". The clear subtext here is that those of us who live outside of Britain's sophisticated urban areas - principally London - are just a bunch of degenerate carrot crunchers who just can't appreciate the bohemian culture of the metropolis. Hell, we haven't even seen a topless woman before (outside page three of The Sun, obviously)! But don't worry, those nice people at the BBC are bringing us their culture in the form of Glastonbury.

There can be only one response to this: "Fuck off you pretentious ponces!" If your idea of 'culture' is spending several days wallowing in mud, shitting in holes and listening to a load of dance music, with a smattering of has-been rock 'legends', you can keep it! As for topless women, out here in the provinces, we've had fully naked women dancing around huge wicker penises, in which we burn virginal big city intruders as part of our fertility rites, for centuries now! Don't bloody come down here in your Chelsea tractors patronising us! If we're really lucky, maybe a bunch of zombie druids on their way back from the midsummer festivities at Stonehenge will descend on the Glastonbury revellers, tearing them limb from limb for no obvious reason, much in the manner of the Blind Dead Templars in those 1970s Spanish horror films. Even better, perhaps a horde of crazed local 'yokels' - foaming at the mouth after being fed rabies-infected pies by hippie festival goers as 'a joke' - will invade the festival site and pitchfork them all to death. There's the basis for a great low-budget British horror flick there. Having said that, they'd inevitably balls it up by assigning some middle class ponce as director. Anyway, getting back to the point - isn't it about time they canned those trails? I know the BBC would claim that they are merely 'ironic', but that really isn't a defence for what amounts to very offensive regional stereotyping, not to mention cultural imperialism by the middle class London media elite. Fuck off you bastards, before I set my bull on you.

When Eight Bell Ends Toll

I've always thought that would make a great title for a porn movie. I was reminded of it the other day when setting the video to record When Eight Bells Toll off of More 4. God alone knows what the plot would be - something about ship loads of Dutch pornography bound for sex-starved 1970s Britain being hijacked, perhaps? Some hugely endowed freelance investigator could be dispatched by Dutch porn barons to find out what's going on - a mission which undoubtedly requires him to bonk a multitude of mightily bosomed women in highly unlikely situations. Obviously, it all turns out to be a plot by Scotland Yard's 'Dirty Squad' in collusion with the Treasury to drive up the price of porn by restricting its availability, before flooding the market with inferior, over-priced homegrown product. Not only would this boost domestic porn production, but the demand generated by the previous lack of product would ensure huge revenues for the Treasury from the newly introduced Porn Tax. As I've said before, this stuff just writes itself...

Whilst checking my videotapes to find a blank one to record When Eight Bells Toll on, I rediscovered a recording of Lifeforce. Now, there's a film that everyone should see. Nude space vampires attack Britain, No, really, that's the plot. Personally, I never tire of watching it. It really is just a big budget B-movie, with a cast of distinguished thesps all at sea amongst excellent special effects and production values, but an execrable script. At one point the British Prime Minister greets the news that the Home Secretary has been killied by vampires by mumbling, "Yes, that's rather unfortunate". Amongst other delights, Mathilda May - usually seen in European art house movies - performs her entire role in the nude, Steve Railsback kisses Patrick Stewart on the lips and Peter Firth keeps sweeping into rooms barking: "I'm Captain Kane, SAS!" Great stuff! Lifeforce just goes to show that professional film makers with a big budget can make just as bad a film as amateurs like Ed Wood. Indeed, at least the likes of Wood have an excuse foe their films being so bad - lack of talent, money and resources. There really is no excuse for the likes of Lifeforce. Having said that, I'm bloody glad they did make it!