No.14 : The Enforcer (1976)

The Enforcer at the IMDb

This is the middle film of Clint Eastwood’s five outings as ‘Dirty’ Harry Callaghan, the no-nonsense San Francisco police inspector, and is easily the bloodiest. In short it’s the Tyne Daly one that ends at Alcatraz.

The film opens in pretty low key fashion with a foxy chick luring two city workers to their deaths at the hands of her blonde, blue eyed boyfriend. Meanwhile Harry is doing what he does best by shooting the asses off a gang of liquor store robbers. ‘I wanna come in and talk’ says Harry and is invited in by the gang who clearly missed the first two movies. After Harry turns the store into a drive thru he gets his customary dressing down from his by the book boss. It’s only a cliché because Clint started it!

With him transferred off homicide Harry starts his new role in personnel even though “personnel is for ass holes”. After some glorious PC bashing with a ‘Ms.’ from the mayor’s office, in a scene that is a bit too broad for my taste, Harry is teamed up with Tyne Daly’s fresh faced new recruit after his partner get knifed by the creeps we saw at the start. It turns out that they are a bunch of ex-hookers and Vietnam vet revolutionaries who have raided the arms depot and want $1 million - well that was a lot of money then.

There are a few scenes where Daly struggles to be accepted in the man’s world and we’re pretty sure she’ll turn out all right. Some of these, the autopsy one for a start, seemed a bit contrived as did the captain telling her to be quiet when we all knew she had the juicy info to impart. The bad guys make their first mistake when they send a man in floppy hat to bomb the police station and after an overlong chase to an overbearing jazz soundtrack they get their man by way of a porno shoot.

Harry’s investigation is derailed by an ambitious mayor who is soon undone himself when the revolutionaries take him hostage. With Harry on suspension and the mayor locked up in Alcatraz the ransom due there’s just time for the .44 to be reloaded and for Tyne to get her life insurance up to date.

This is a film of its age and it’s hard to criticise things that were fine then and seem strange now. The portrayals of woman and ethnic minorities are almost charming in their sexist and racial naivety. It’s plainly signposted that Daly is going to come good despite her various faux pas and once she bonds with Harry you know the writing’s on the wall.

The white revolutionaries are poorly drawn and are off the screen too long in the first hour. By the time we see them plotting to kidnap the mayor we’ve almost forgotten they exist amid all the inter departmental bickering. The lead bad guy does a reasonable crazy stare but he’s certainly no Scorpio out of ‘Dirty Harry’ and barely a David Soul out of ‘Magnum Force’.

Some of the action is OK but it’s only the scenes at Alcatraz that take this away from run of the mill fare. The best parts are Harry’s run ins with his superiors but by now in the third film it is getting a bit samey. Harry is stuck off the force for a record short period with the ink barely dry on his suspension before they go crawling back.

The anti-liberal theme is fine, and really what you’d expect when you watch a ‘Dirty Harry’, but when the agitators are all a bunch of dumb clucks it makes it less satisfying when Clint makes his day. It is still quite an enjoyable film with a few classic ‘Harry’ moments but for the most part this film is largely superfluous and not a patch on the original.

THE Tag Line : Harry Rotter 62%

No.13 : The Deep (1977)

The Deep at the IMDb

If you mention ‘The Deep’ to most people the first thing they’ll mention will be Jacqueline Bisset’s wet t-shirt, that appears in the opening scene. Well maybe not the t-shirt itself, but you get the idea. This is a bit of a shame as the slight titillation is over after the first five minutes and if you expect any more you’ve got a dull two hours coming your way.

The film is set in Bermuda and opens with 8 dialogue free minutes and Bisset as Nick Nolte enjoy a bit of scuba diving. It’s all jolly stuff, and not a little Jacques Cousteau , but soon we get down to the nitty gritty of scrabbling about in the dirt for some stuff. Nolte finds an innocuous ampoule bottle which is brushed over too quickly to be insignificant and then a medallion to go with his hairy chest.

Back at the beach they make the mistake of showing the scuba rental guy their finds as pretty soon word has gotten to local ‘bottle collector’ Louis Gossett who shows up at their dinner table. They suspect he’s not revealing all and this is confirmed the next day when he kidnaps them and strips Jacqueline bare (no, sorry) while searching for the loot. They had unknowingly been relieved of the bottle the night before by Robert Shaw, a local salty dog treasure hunter who lives in a lighthouse, like you do.

They return to trade notes and find that the bottle is in fact morphine from a sunken world war two warship. Gossett is keen for the drugs and doesn’t mind a bit of voodoo or cat nailing to get it. Added to the mix is Adam Coffin a survivor of the warship who can be bought for a bottle of rum and a gang of henchmen on both sides who make the WWF look like the best actor nominees.

We soon find out that the drugs have landed on top of an old galleon full of treasure and the race is on to salvage the goodies and keep the drugs off the streets.

This is a strange mix of a film. In some scenes it’s like something from Disney’s world of nature and in the next a man is getting an outboard motor stuck in his face. The characters are all thinly drawn with the baddies particularly crummy, with a ‘boo hiss’ complimenting every appearance. There are some elements of subterfuge, with it left unclear for a while whose side Shaw is on, but you are never really in much doubt. Eli Wallach as Coffin does a decidedly poor turn as the embittered lackey, keen to switch sides but it was good to see he hadn’t shaved since ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly‘.

Shaw seemingly took the job for the money and I doubt a few months in Bermuda hurt either. That said he died the following year so maybe all that voodoo bobbins worked after all! He seemed to do his own diving in the film although it was strange that he does it in his shirt and trousers - must have forgotten his swimming costume.

Nolte and Bisset didn’t have much chemistry and their love scene are wisely kept to a minimum. With her plumy accent and his bad acting it was always going to be a tough match. Louis Gossett (no ‘Jnr,’ here) is still five years away from his ‘Officer and a Gentleman’ Oscar and it shows in his totally menace free offering. He tries to use moody silences as threats but I kept thinking he’d lost his script. He does however get some redemption points for possibly the best demise in cinema - ouch!

It is kind of hard to dislike this film with it’s sunny sets and bikini girls running around. The threat is mild but there are some good fights and the sea life is cracking. If you don’t need any deep thinking ‘The Deep’ may just rise to the occasion for you.

THE Tag Line : Deep Shit? No, it’s actually not that bad. 68%

No.12 : The Collector (2009)

The Collector at the IMDb

If someone asked you to draw up a list of slasher movie clichés’ you could save yourself a lot of time by just handing them the script for ‘The Collector’. It really does sweep the board from unkillable bad guys to lusty teens getting theirs to the lone cop showing up to save the day, but wait! You could argue it’s a winning and successful format but more correctly you could just say it’s lazy torture porn trash and you’d be right too!

Our hero is Arkin who is pretty unsympathetic from the off and gets less likable from there. He does odd jobs for cash and pays the mother of his daughter the cash she needs to keep the loan sharks off her back. It’s never enough however and things could get nasty if she doesn’t have the cash by midnight - I don’t know why maybe they’re vampire loan sharks - it isn’t really explained.

Anyway Arkin has seen a business card at his last job saying the home owner was owned a rich jeweller so he decides to break in and help himself to the contents of his safe. HUGE mistake! Arkin soon realises that he isn’t alone in the house and a trussed up man in a box from the pre-credit sequences says it’s The Collector, a strange villain who collects people and kills the ones he doesn’t like - a bit like a trading cards fan who only keeps the chase cards. Again it doesn’t explain why or how he ‘collects’ people and I guess it was just thrown in to justify the title.

Arkin soon finds that the house is done out like a set from ‘SAW’ and that’s where the similarities continue. Every room has an elaborate trap from being filled with razor wire, to bear traps, to having a knife chandelier - this collector dude fair plans ahead. He finds the man of the house tied up and the wife in the bath but not in a good way. He looks to escape but finds the 10 year old daughter is in danger too and having bonded earlier in the film with her at her Mermaid’s tea party he defies all his character development thus far and goes back to tangle once again with the man in the mask.

As you’d expect other people appear despite it being in the middle of the night but who’d say no to Madeline Zima off ‘Californication’ who shows up briefly to take her top off and get killed? We also get the solo policeman who may as well have worn a red shirt off Star Trek for all the good he was every going to do.

As you’d guess our hero starts to fight back by turning the traps on the bad guy but as ever he never quite finishes him off and - look out he’s getting up again!

This isn’t a terrible film, but it is a squalid and nasty one that seems to delight in gouging out bits of flesh with fish hooks and pruning tongues with clippers. I know the ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ films do good business but what kind of people see these films and enjoy them? I’m not for censorship but I think if you buy this sort of DVD a light should go red on the local police computer!

It really has nothing new to say or offer and the traps that have been set up, although imaginative, are patently ridiculous. ‘Honey why is the pest control man bringing 20 bear traps into the house?’ ‘Shut up he charges $50 a hour!’. The bad guy was OK and I liked that his eyes were opaque like a rat’s. His motivations were never explained apart from the ridiculous ‘collecting’ angle spouted off by a man in a box - and he’d know!

The production values were decent enough with a few gory kills such as the man falling backwards into the bear trap room which was a real ‘ouch’ moment. The cast were OK although the lead didn’t really have what it took to carry our sympathies or indeed the film - he was a kind of a weedier Sean Penn so it was somewhat surprising to see him duke it out with the beastly Collector.

I wouldn’t recommend ‘The Collector’ but it did have its moments - it’s just a shame that you had to wade through so much nastiness and clichés to see the pair of them!

THE Tagline : Garbage Collector 55%

No.11 : The Beach (2000)

The Beach at the IMDb

Time for a bit of sunshine to brighten these dark winter days at the Definitive Article Blog.

Danny Boyle’s film of Alex Garland’s book has a poor reputation, with most people (as usual) preferring the latter. I’m about halfway through the book and as good as it is I do have a soft spot for the cracking locations and extra sex scenes included in the movie.

The film follows the adventures of Richard, an American backpacker doing all the touristy things in Bangkok. He’s trying to do something different but unfortunately everyone else has the same idea and he ends up fighting the throngs and watching old movies instead. That is until Daffy shows up in the next room and over some lovely drugs he tells him of a paradise beach unspoiled by the beery yobs, for now.

Richard takes it with a pinch of salt but when he finds a map from Daffy pinned to his door and the dope addled Scotsman dead he decides to look it up with his two French pals in tow. The beach is meant to be remote and hard to find but clearly we want to get there as soon as possible soa few quick edits later we’re there, inside the first twenty minutes.

The beach is as lovely as suggested but dangers lurk nearby in the shape of dope farmers and sharks in the lagoon. Such concerns are saved for later and we then get maybe an hour of idyllic beach life with a cracking soundtrack and girls in bikinis before a shark attack changes everything. With one person dead and another dying the camp starts to split over what to do next. Actually just one French bloke stops to look after the victim while the rest get on with having fun.

Obviously the hedonistic lifestyle can’t go on for ever and when another group appear armed with a map from Richard it’s clear that things are going to get pretty bad pretty soon.

I enjoyed the first hour of the film and it’s a shame that there had to be some dramatic elements inserted to stop it just being a promo film for the Thailand tourist board. These are the film’s undoing as the character arc of Richard is totally unbelievable even with Leo Di Caprio doing his best. Basically he goes from wide eyed tourist to jungle ninja and back again in half an hour. There is an attempt to show his character being slowly seduced by Sal, the camp’s enigmatic leader, with him first agreeing to a bit of tooth pulling before condoning to murder and worse.

Sal herself, played by Tilda Swinton, isn’t that well defined either with her motivations unclear - is it the power or the life style she likes? Or is it just shagging the campers? I suppose to some a beautiful beach with unlimited dope would be great but I think I’d be bored after a week and missing the football scores. The subtext of the beach and the community corrupting the youth who are quick to shelve their values and ideals for a bit of lounging around didn’t really work for me and as a lesson in human nature it could learn a lot from ‘The Lord of the Flies’.

The cast are all very likable with Johnston out of ‘Peep Show’ doing a great turn. The sets are wonderful as is the emotive soundtrack that only failed in not using ‘Pure Shores’ by All saints to greater effect. The shark bite make up is also worth a mention with it having a real ‘bet that hurt’ quality about it. Also painful is the scene where Leo turns into a video game - I bet the farmer’s field was plundered the night they came up with that bit!

Overall this is enjoyable film that trails off towards the end. The vibe for the first hour is great and the cast are clearly having a cracking time as you’d expect. The road to damnation was signposted early on but at least we had some fun getting there.

THE Tag Line : Life’s a beach and then you get eaten by a shark 70%

No.10 : The Avengers (1998)

The Avengers at the IMDb

If The Avengers was any good, and given that it’s about the weather, it’s tag line could have been ‘Brolly Good Fun’. Sadly it’s not, so it isn’t and it has to make do with ‘Pure Pish’ instead.

As you probably know the film is based on the 1960’s TV show of the same name and the slightly less good re-hash ‘The New Avengers staring Gareth ‘rhyming slang’ Hunt. The film opens with Ralph Fiennes in a slightly too large bowler hat walking down a street and doing battle with a copper, the milkman etc. Don’t worry his John Steed isn’t on an ASBO he’s doing a test for ‘The Ministry’ and of course passes with flying colours.

He is soon briefed by ‘Mother’ his handler who explains that the Prospero project has been blown up. This is a net that covers the country and protects it from unspecified attacks. We also meet Mrs Peel (Uma Thurman) who has knowledge of the project and is also the prime suspect for the attack given that she’s shown doing it on CCTV. Showing some unbelievable good faith Mother sends them out into the field to crack the case.

Their first, and to be honest only, port of call is the palatial home of Sir August De Wynter a weather expert who is a bit nutty and who has a grudge against the government. Not much detecting needed here! De Wynter is played with OTT enthusiasm by Sean Connery and his hair weave and he offers little in the way of menace as do his henchmen Eddie Izzard and Shaun Ryder out of ‘The Happy Mondays’ - honestly I’m not making this up!

De Wynter wastes no time in black mailing the country with his crappy weather - looks like he won the war in Scotland years ago! Our two heroes have to take on the ageing meteorologist and diffuse his big bomb or it’ll rain for ages. It really is that serious.

This was a real box office bomb when it came out and it’s not hard to see why. For a start loads of it makes no sense and the continuity is all over the place. I’ve read that it was practically cut in half after stinky test screenings and it shows, especially when characters changes clothes mid scene and refer to events that never happened.

The two leads struggle badly with their terrible parts and it’s hard to see how we were ever expected to like or empathise with Fiennes’ John Steed who comes across as a tit constantly on the look out for a cup of tea. Thurman is slightly better with her twin roles as Mrs Peel and her clone but her constant verbal sparring with Steed is really tiresome especially as they’re duelling with wit as blunt as a herring.

Connery must have cried into his pay cheque when he saw the results of his efforts that include him running a meeting of bad guys whilst wearing a teddy bear suit. The scene from ‘Goldfinger’ is played out with the dissenting collaborators quickly executed - it did lose some of it’s resonance when it was two big brightly coloured bears that slumped forward. Elsewhere Eddie Izzard got away with only one line in the whole mess “Ok fuck” - one I’m sure he repeats every time someone reminds him of this project.

You do get the sense that the film’s slinkiness was spotted early on as the special effects are clearly scaled back as the movie progresses, with the Ministry’s secret HQ becoming a bus and London being reduced to some cardboard boxes as the storm of the century puffs in.

It does have some slight moments of enjoyment such as the original theme flirting in and out and Patrick Macnee showing up in voice only in an invisible man cameo but these serve only to highlight what a waste of the material this mess was.

THE Tag Line : The Avengers Tragedy 34%

No.9 : The Zodiac (2005)

The Zodiac at the IMDb

Wait, wait , wait comes the cry - that David Fincher film staring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. was called ‘Zodiac’ not ‘The Zodiac’ what a con - I want my money back.

Well, dear reader, you are bang wrong. This 2005 movie is indeed ‘The Zodiac’ and stars the library detective out of ‘Seinfeld’ and one of the lesser Culkin children. Yes the cast list is that starry and it does have a TV movie sensibility but let’s have a look and see if it competes with its behemoth brother.

Both films follow the case of ‘The Zodiac’, a serial killer who plagued San Francisco in the late 1960’s and was never caught. His elusiveness creates a problem for the film makers as there is no resolution to the tale. This to me leaves the whole thing a bit unsatisfying and I did feel slightly cheated after three hours of the Fincher version to be basically told ‘that’s all folks’.

Obviously they can’t make up an ending or pin it on some dead guy but if there isn’t an ending you have to wonder if it’s a good subject for a film in the first place. Both films go for the same approach and that is to follow the detective angle. This is fair enough because all the killers actions and motivations can only be speculated on whereas the investigation is a matter of public record.

In the Fincher film they follow amateur cartoonist sleuth Jake Gyllenhaal whose character, although based on a real person, isn’t touched on in ‘The Zodiac’. This film follows the investigations of Inspector Matt Parish who is charged with solving the case by his library detective boss who presumably had some fine to collect. He follows a few angles and soon gets so obsessed that he undoes his collar and forgets to shave.

We also see the impact the case has on his family with his creepy son seemingly allowed free access to the evidence locker to trawl through the grizzly snaps on his own. There is also an ambitious reporter whom I think is meant to come across as sleazy but in fact seems to be doing a bang up job of keeping the public informed.

The killings themselves are seen from the Zodiac’s P.O.V. and are clumsily handled. The fear and terror he would have carried are totally missing and the murders seem like a Crimewatch re-enactment rather than a slaying in progress. As the years pass the film shows stock footage of the moon landings and race riots as the murders rack up. The Inspector pins all his hopes on one suspect and when that fizzles out it’s hard not to feel that you’ve wasted your time.

The lead actor Justin Chambers, whom I’d never heard of but is seemingly a big noise in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, is very poor especially in the scenes where his obsession threatens to derail his marriage. When we are meant to think he’s going overboard he just comes across like a boozy jerk.

The case is an interesting one and the unanswered questions and unsolved picto-grams make for interesting reading but for a film it just doesn’t work for me - in either version. In it’s favour ‘The Zodiac’ is only 90 minutes and they cover more or less the same plot points as the bloated big budget effort. It is let down by its cheap production however with 1960’s San Francisco never less convincingly evoked - I especially liked the establishing shot of the university sign with a big bit of tape stretched across the area where its web address presumably was.

As a TV movie it may spark some interest that’ll lead you to looking up the details of an interesting case but as an entertainment I’d give the whole Zodiac movie franchise a wide berth. Which is best? Probably ‘The Zodiac’ but only because we’re biased and it’s half the length of its rival.

THE Tag Line : Whodunit? Dunno 56%

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 was 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 meet 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 miserable 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 shift 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 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%

No.4 : The Untouchables (1987)

The Untouchables at the IMDb

Loosely based on that episode of ‘The Simpsons’ where Homer becomes The Beer Baron ‘The Untouchables’ tells the tale of the battle for the streets of Chicago in the 1930’s.

It’s the era of prohibition and Robert De Niro’s Al Capone runs all the rackets with an iron baseball bat, free from prosecution given that he has all the cops on his payroll. Things start to change however when treasury agent Elliott Ness (Kevin Costner) is appointed to take on the Mob.

It starts a bit slowly for the good guys, and after a failed bust that leaves Ness looking like a total parasol he decides to rethink his strategy. He firstly recruits an old Irish beat cop in the shape of Sean Connery and then Andy Garcia straight from the Police Academy - possibly because he can do funny computer noises - it isn’t really explained. To fill out the foursome they also get an accountant who should really stop going on about the tax situation - that’ll never solve anything!

Things quickly improve with a few successful raids that soom get Al on the ropes. He fights back with a few hits of his own and soon it’s down to who can survive the overlong slo-mo shootout and indeed the court room that will win the day.

I’m not a great fan of the director Brian DePalma who, apart from the opening scene in ‘Carrie’, has done little that I’ve enjoyed - his remake of ‘Scarface’ for example is practically unwatchable. This however is his best work, no doubt due to the scriptwriting of David Mamet whose work for Definitive TV show ‘The Unit’ is exceptional.

The cast all do good work too, apart from the miscast De Niro who never convinces as the psycho kingpin of crime. Sean Connery is great as Oirish copper Malone and got an Oscar for his efforts; maybe more for time served than this alone but he is undeniably watchable. His accent deviates from ‘Danny Boy’ to ‘Rob Roy’ but what the hell, he’s good value and tough as nails.

Costner does solid work in most of the films where he isn’t directing and apart from ‘Field of Dreams’ this is his best picture too. Andy Garcia makes an early appearance and despite being somewhat underused he still shows a bit of star quality.

Overall the film is a goodies vs. baddies affair and although plainly drawn they all offer a lot by way of character and excitement. I liked the white suited hit man, Frank Nitti ,who was marvellously evil and his polar opposite in the weedy accountant who was pretty tasty with the shot gun. The rights and wrongs of prohibition are never really challenged with Ness’ straight ‘the law is the law’ arrow tested when his by the book views are stretched by the scofflaw bad guys.

The violence is brutal throughout and I liked that no one was safe from a grisly death. Of course history is played with fast and loose but if you are looking for a documentary a big Hollywood production shouldn’t really be your first port of call.

It’s not all plain sailing with a few too many arty directorial touches thrown in for no good measure and the final courtroom show down between Ness and Capone, which never happened, is a bit OTT.

Overall however you get a cracking fast paced crime movie set in the always cinematic Chicago with plenty of grisly action and a few wrong foots. The sets and the Armani costumes are great as is the score by Ennio Morricone - apart from a couple of misplaced 80's synthesisers. A Definitive hit!

The Definitive Tag Line : Fought Ness Monster! 77%

No.3 : The Twonky (1953)

The Twonky at the IMDb

The many followers of ‘The Definite Article’ have been clamouring to have their favourites rated and we are certainly amenable to suggestions. First up is 2000ad boarder ‘Satchmo’ who, when he is not Louis Armstrong, creates a scrawly web comic that is contemporary yet features dead writers such as Edgar Allen Poe - that don‘t make a lick o sense! It looks like a five year old has got the crayons but it is insanely funny and can be found at http://renegadeartsentertainment.com/spinechillers/comic/ Anyway enough of the unread blogs circle jerk, let’s have a look at Satchmo’s suggestion ‘The Twonky’ which better not be as shit as it sounds.

I’d never heard of this low budget, 1953 comedy drama which was described by none other than Garageman as "The Twonky" (1953), obscure sci fi about an alien brainwashing/fascist telly. Unmissable and prescient.”

Strangely this film is quite easy to find on the web, but that’s possibly due to it’s cult status. Yes that’s cult I said. The film stars someone you’ve never heard of as a man getting a new TV. Remember this was possibly a big event in 1953 but it still seems a lot of hoopla over nothing at all. His new set is installed and his wife heads off to her mother’s leaving him to a night on ‘Men and Motors’.

After finding the manual he takes out a cigarette only for it to be instantly lit by a beam from the TV or ‘Twonky’. Obviously this is a bit of a surprise but not so much when he does it about 20 times throughout the film. Well if you invest in a crappy special effect you might as well use it. As the day progresses the Twonky starts to take over all aspects of the man’s life - shaving him, doing the dishes and creating money to pay the TV shop with - sound pretty good ,and he even disappeared behind the curtain for five minutes with it too!

As you would expect however all is not well. The TV soon starts to dominate and in a scene that was either racist or emancipating it chases off the black house keeper and does the vacuuming - bloody Twonkys taking our jobs and women! It also manages to brainwash people using a beam in a metaphor so obvious it should’ve had a ‘metaphor‘ brand sash on.

The thin plot thickens slightly when guests start to arrive all of whom marvel at the TV set’s great talents. It even gets a debt collecting woman’s bra off. Where do I sign up? As our man realises the Twonky’s unholy influence he tries to get rid of it but this is one smart TV who manages to half strangle the TV repair man with its aerial and even gets reinforcements in the shape of it’s less talented cousin. As things get to a mental climax the TV is soon driving the car and running around the street - can the terrible English actress maybe save the day?

I didn’t much care for ’The Twonky’. In fact it’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve seen in a long time and I’ve seen ‘Knowing’! You could argue it’s an important social document foretelling the influence the then fledgling TV service would eventually have over our lives. Or more accurately you could say it’s a sissy looking TV prancing around with some dismal stop motion special effects.

The production values are very poor with some of the actors looking like they’d wandered on set to fetch a lost hat. The doctor was visibly straining to read his lines off a board - and he was Laurence Olivier compared to some. The origins of the TV are not revealed although I’m sure the cinema owners didn’t mind a bit of bad publicity for their new rival. Sadly the ploy must have backfired as anyone who went to the cinema to see ‘The Twonky’ wouldn’t be back in a hurry.

I’m sure the better read definite article film fans will lambaste me for overlooking the communist paranoia subtext and the disintegration to the family unit by television but I was more inclined to notice a TV doing the dishes being passed off as entertainment. It also has a really annoying and invasive score which is the only score this pile o’ pish deserves!

THE Tag Line : Wonky Twonky is a Donkey 22%