No.167 : The Entertainer (1960)

The Entertainer at the IMDb

“He’s never been on the telly” says one urchin as he looks at the posters advertising music hall star Archie Rice’s current show. Entertainers such as Archie are on the decline, playing old tunes to half full houses with a few saucy jokes thrown in for free.

This 1960s British offering is a cracking snapshot of a nation in decline in the post war years. Made in 1960 this classic has Laurence Olivier in the title role as the boozed up sex maniac, Archie, who has the tax man on his tail and a career that’s fading fast.

In the kitchen sink tradition he lives and argues with his wife Phoebe and deals with his three children - Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Joan Plowright - try getting in the family play in that household! Finney’s ‘Mick’ is off to Egypt to fight in the Suez Crisis whilst Plowright’s ‘Jean’ has a pushy boyfriend trying to get her to move to Africa. Bate’s ‘Frank’ plays the piano in clubs, and is under the shadow of Archie, who in turn under the shadow of his own father, Billy, a music hall star still held in high regard.

Archie has the offer to anagea hotel in Canada with Phoebe, but despite his debts he’s keen for one last big show. His pecker gets the better of him however and soon he is romancing a 20 year old who got second place in a beauty contest he was comparing. His hopes of having her family finance the show are scuppered when his old Dad grasses him up to save him looking foolish. Meanwhile Mick has been captured in Egypt.

Things look up however when news come through that Mick is being released and old Dad is coming out of retirement to give Archie a hand with his new show. This however is a black and white British film from the 60’s and happy endings are hard to come by…

This was a great film from the British Woodfall Studio. Suitably bleak and decaying the film is relentless in wearing down the cast with even glimpses of happiness soon torn from their grasp. Olivier is great as the sleazy song and dance man Archie with his questionable charms and loose morals. He never seems to love performing but it’s all he knows and he can’t leave it even when it’s clear it is destroying him. Plowright, who gets an ‘introducing’ credit is excellent as Archie’s long suffering daughter and it’s only a shame we don’t see ore of Bates and especially Finney, who only gets one scene.

There are famous faces all over the place with Charles Gray and Thora Hird also getting a look in amongst a bevy of scantily clad showgirls and bathing beauties who earned the film an ‘X’ certificate on its release. 

The message is clear throughout that the Empire is crumbling - and not just the theatre. Offers of escapes to Africa and Canada are dangled and pulled back as the cast have to fester in a dingy and soulless Britain.

It’s not a heart warmer but the performances and script are excellent and as a ‘slice of life’ you won’t beat it as a peep hole into a now forgotten world of greasepaint and caravan love ins.

THE Tag Line : Yew Tree calling! 80%

No.8 : The Yakuza (1974)

The Yakuza at the IMDb

Hollywood big shot Robert Mitchum stars in this 1974 thriller which was directed by Sydney Pollack that seems to be somewhat forgotten despite the talent on show. According to IMDb the script cost a then record $300,000 and you’d have thought for that money you might have gotten something a bit more innovating and exciting but all in all it’s a pretty decent offering with a few juicy scraps.

Mitchum plays Harry Kilmer an American returning to Japan after a long time away. His friend, who has a bad wig, has asked him to help out, as his daughter has been kidnapped by the titular clan and is to be killed in 4 days. Mitchum has a bit of history in Japan and soon shows up at his old squeeze’s place and meets her foxy daughter.

Despite his strong line in chat and his no-nonsense camel hair coat Mitchum soon starts to encounter all the honour and obligation nonsense that always annoys you when you see a Japanese film. I’m all for a bit of culture clash but all this bowing and apologising can grate a bit.

Anyway, after negotiations fail Mitchum shows up all guns blazing and rescues the girl. Fortunately for him the Yakuza have to kill with swords so he’s a pretty good bet with his 12 bore! The Yakuza don’t take his interference lightly however and send an assassin to get him at the sauna, who fails miserably with his small fruit knife.

With the shit now hitting the fan at great speed the action hots up with an attack at the girlfriend's house shortly followed by another at the wig man’s. The big ending takes place at one of those paper houses and has more slashes than the urinals at Glastonbury. By now the aged Mitchum is looking a bit tired so he lets his pals do most of the work which he watches, resplendent in his duffel coat.

Like all ‘fish out of water ‘ films this one relies a lot on the difference in culture. Mitchum’s no nonsense approach gets short shrift with the inscrutable Japanese who are always going on about honour and then stabbing everyone in the back.

There’s not an awful lot of plot going on with Michum’s character not very believable - he's a kind of hat stand in a polo neck wooing all the girls and blasting a shotgun like it’s free cartridge day. The action scenes are pretty good and I especially liked the chopped off hand flying through the air while still firing a gun.

There were a couple of surprises along the way and given a body count of at least 20 there’s enough to keep the blood thirsty element appeased. There wasn’t really enough to engage me, but overall this routine thriller was a decent distraction with some memorable moments.

THE Tag Line : Need a Slash? We’ve Got Plenty! 60%

No.7 : The X-Files (1998)

The X-Files at the IMDb

Before we start, a quick word for all our pedant followers. Yes it’s a definite article and yes it’s two words. People may say oh that really called ‘The X-Files Movie’ or ‘X-Files : Fight the Future’, but they’re wrong, don’t listen to them. The dash doesn’t makes it less of a word either - you get an X-Box and G-force they’re still definitive items!

Anyway let’s have a look at the big screen spin off for the popular TV show. Such films are usually a bit crappy and a cash in , obviously ’Holiday On The Buses’ excepted, but this is a pretty fair offering and was certainly a lot better than I remembered it.

The film opens with some icy cave men running through the snow in what is now Texas. They find a cave but as you’d probably guess an alien is living there and they all get in a big fight. The cave men show some mettle and one survives after killing the alien in a stabbing frenzy. We fast forward to present day Texas when the cave is found by a group of kids when one falls in. The alien has been lying dormant and its tarry bloody infects a boy and his firemen rescuers.

We then meet up with Mulder and Scully on a routine FBI job. The X-Files has been disbanded and we the viewer are soon wondering if we’ve been sold a fast one. The agents are looking for a bomb in a government building and getting no where fast. Mulder playing his usually reliable hunches has a look in a building nearby and after failing to get a soda succeeds in finding the bomb. Luckily the bomb has a helpful countdown timer and the bomb disposal dude is on the scene with five minutes to spare. Unfortunately his union mandated five minute break has just started and he has to sit and watch as the clock counts down and the building explodes.

The Feds want a scapegoat for the blast and for the deaths of a boy and three fireman - remember them from the last paragraph? After thorough grilling Mulder hits a bar but is interrupted by Martin Landau of ‘ Space 1999’ who has parked his Eagle to tell him the blast was a deliberate ploy to conceal evidence. With this nugget of info Mulder is on the case and after rousing Scully for a quick autopsy they soon start to unravel the conspiracy which eventually leads to a showdown in Antarctica and some solid revelations for once.

I really enjoyed my first look at ‘The X-Files’ since 1998 and was surprised how much was explained. I used to enjoy the TV show but went off it as it seemed to spin out the storylines to an intolerable degree. Here you get the whole set up and resolution inside two hours saving you at least 70 over the TV box set.

The film does exist in the same continuity as the TV show and fits in between seasons. The ‘Colonisation’ storyline is brought to the fore and we learn a lot of things that had previously only been alluded to. We get a lot of scenes with the bad guys conspiring in a ‘Pentabulate’ style meeting room as well as The Cigarette Smoking Man clocking up the air miles as he tries to stay ahead of the tenacious ‘tecs.

My main gripe would be that a lot is crammed in, maybe too much. Great characters like Skinner and The Lone Gunmen merit only brief cameos and some of the exposition is practically read out for you lest you fail to keep up. The denouement in Antarctica is well played although there are a few MCGuffins thrown in to let Mulder find Scully in a spaceship as big as the ones in ‘V’ with just as many ready meal humans to choose from.

If you think of this as a ‘Greatest Hits’ from the TV show you won’t be disappointed and you even get a couple of ‘shits’ for your trouble too - ooh dangerous. The production values and effects are pretty good and I was glad that a few cats were let out of their long term bags - the fate of Mulder’s sister for one.

As a standalone film I think this succeeds and it also goes a long way to keep the fans happy too.

THE Definitive Tag Line - X Hits the Spot 76%

No.6 : The Wraith (1986)

The Wraith at the IMDb

I’d never heard of ‘The Wraith’ before I sat down to watch it and imagined it would some sort of spooky gothic horror with screaming teens. I was therefore slightly surprised to find it was about a space car seeking revenge to a backing track of 80’s power ballads and shagging kids. The reality may sound better than the guess work but alas after 90 minutes of this pish I was wishing it had been a man with a sheet over his head going ‘whoooo’ after all.

We open as we mean to go on with a dude with blow dried hair our for a drive in his muscle car with his massively over haired blonde girlfriend by his side. Life is good as he speeds along to some anonymous power ballad - but wait! Baddies lurk around every bend. Not your usual teen delinquents you understand, these guys are all over 30 and spent way too long at the mirror this morning.

Rather than steal the dude’s car they demand a race with the loser forfeiting his wheels. The race “makes it all nice and legal” when they take his car away after the inevitable win. Now, I’m no big city lawyer (Gasp!) but I’m pretty sure a contract enforced at knife point has a pretty shaky legal standing. Anyway these bastards rule the town and no one can stop them - not cousin Eddie from the ‘Vacation’ films who has found a job as sheriff, and not some wimpy guy at the burger bar whose brother died in mysterious circumstances, possibly in a haze of hairspray, I don’t know.

Things are however looking up on the justice front when a big kick ass car shows up as does Charlie Sheen on his motorbike. You might think people would put these two appearances down as more than a coincidence but they don’t, and neither should you lest the ‘surprise’ revelation fails to knock you off your seat.

Mysterious Car soon takes on the bad guys at their own game and quickly kills all of them using exactly the same trick every time - letting them crash into him and then magically reforming- even down to the dirt of the front bumper. The local sheriff is having none of it and tries to solve the mystery but he fails to do any actual detecting at all, choosing instead to show up at the aftermath of all the crashes gnashing his teeth and borrowing money off Clark.

Eventually it’s down to the bad guy’s leader, the laughably unthreatening Packard, to take on the killer car and to try and get his girl Sherilyn Fenn off Charlie Sheen before the credits roll to one last power ballad.

This is a really terrible film that looks like it’s been spewed from an 80’s time capsule. For your money you basically get half a dozen car chases and a few explosions. There is no characterisation and precious little in the way of plot. Some red herrings are sprinkled in such as the removal of the baddies’ eyes after they’re dead and a magical component that glows and disappears after the explosion. There are included to add a bit of intrigue but really just serve to make the whole mess more nonsensical than it already is.

The cast is uniformly ghastly apart from the lovely Sherilyn Fenn who does what she does best for what must have been the first time in her tittering, sorry glittering career. In truth she only gets one boob out but don’t worry there are plenty of boobs littered throughout the cast to keep you distracted. Sheen and Cousin Eddie should have known better but I imagine they were blinded by the paycheque or at least by the ear bleeding soundtrack which would have swamped any notes of dissent.

The car chases, on which the whole film is hung, were pretty pedestrian and once you’ve seen one explosion you’ve really seen them all. On the positive side I did like Clint Howard’s hair and the ‘car from space’ was pretty cool although it’s origins and motivations were largely ignored.

If you disengage your brain and drink twelve beers beforehand you might just give ‘The Wraith’ pass marks but frankly this is one banger that qualified for the scrappage allowance 20 years ago.

THE Tag Line : A Wraith of Time 37%

No.5 : The Vanishing (1993)

The Vanishing at the IMDb

A lot of people will tell you that this Hollywood remake of the Dutch film ‘Spoorloos’ is a lot of old toot but what do they know? At least it starts with a ‘The’!

The film opens with a creepy Jeff Bridges getting ready for some mischief. He tests the potency of his chloroform and practices his ropey ‘get a woman into my car technique’ - can’t beat kittens Jeff! At first we think he’s a bit strange but we soon see that he has a family and a cabin in the hills as well as an academic job.

Elsewhere Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock are having a squabble on their holidays. Kiefer ditches her to go and get petrol and after a teary reconciliation he promises never to leave her again. He soon regrets his hasty vow however when Sandra disappears with his beer money never to be seen again. The flatfoots do their usual bang up job and before we know it three years have passed and Keifer is all unshaven, wearing an unfashionable coats and still looking for his girlfriend - well she does have the car keys.

Kiefer meets up with waitress with a heart Nancy Travis who manages him to get him away from his quest, much to the annoyance of Jeff who was quite enjoying the struggle from afar. With his plaything lost to the waitress Jeff ups his game and reveals his hand to Keifer who is willing to take any chance to find out what happened to his moose key ring.

With Kiefer drugged he better hope that Nancy puts the pieces together to save the day or at least that someone has changed the grim ending from the original film.

Despite its many failings I quite like this film and its study of evil and obsession. Jeff Bridges is genuinely creepy but I was never really convinced of his story that he had to be as evil as possible to justify his daughter’s love. Can’t he just take her to a Miley Cirus concert like every one else? The idea that a respectable family man can be capable of acts of untold evil is a scary one but not one that really convinces - never saw Fred West or Peter Tobin as the philosophical self drugging types.

In the original film there is no happy ending and no redemption and of course this was changed for the American version. And rightly so too - who wants to see the bad guy win and everyone die? Weirdoes that’s who!

It was nice to see a young Sandra Bullock who doesn’t even merit her name on the poster but still offers a lot especially when she’s the one doing the vanishing - if our Sandra is expendable can any one be safe?! Keifer is OK but a bit one note and not too obsessed when trying to be really obsessed. Nancy seems to have only one setting and that’s shouty but as least she saves the day with her bad hair and poor drunk act.

The film has enough good ideas and ‘what would you do?’ situations to keep you interested and the final log cabin showdown is well paced and has enough reversals to keep you guessing. It’s by no means a classic but a pretty solid and scary effort that’s worth a look.

THE Tag Line : The Vanishing Found Acceptable 65%