No.22 : The Manitou (1978)

The Manitou at the IMDb

Here’s a campy bit of sub Exorcist 70’s horror starring Tony Curtis as a phoney psychic who happens on an old curse in the shape of a foetus growing on his girlfriend’s neck. They don’t make them like that any more!

We open with a lady at the doctors. She mildly concerned that in three days a growth the size of a grapefruit has appeared on her neck. Strangely unconcerned the doctors send her home after they discover it’s just a baby growing on the back of her head. Meanwhile Tony Curtis in a funny cape is draining old women of their cash by giving them tarot readings. Well he has some Harry Hill style shirts to buy.

He gets a call from the grapefruit neck woman and after a fun day out in San Francisco he gets lucky in front of his open fire. But wait! The woman mutters something in her sleep that was probably meant to be as memorable as the bit out of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ but it totally isn’t as I’ve forgotten it already.

Lumpy heads in for surgery but she mutters stuff while under sedation which cause the surgeon to cut his own wrists - she probably told him her health insurance had lapsed. A further attempt with a big laser also goes wrong and it’s clear that it’s up to Tony to save the day with a lot of mystical gubbins that involve talking to wise Indians about ancient curses and the titular demonic spirits.

After getting some political stuff from an Indian named John Singing Rock Tony manages to enlist the redskin after agreeing to pay $100,000 to the downtrodden tribes and pretty soon Father Merrin, sorry Singing Rock begins his quest to rid the woman of her lump neck. His initial plan to put a circle around the bed fails when he fails to negotiate a wall and pretty soon Tony is wondering if he backed the wrong red skin or indeed script.

After flailing an orderly the Manitou emerges from the woman’s neck in a scary scene that looked a lot like a man getting out of a bag. How a fully grown man fitted in her neck is only covered by some talk of x-rays but largely you’re expected to run with it. Despite the place being wrecked and a body on the floor a sensible doctor is shouted down for foolishly suggesting that the police are called and we know that a lot more chanting lies ahead.

The Manitou starts to show off his skills of animating the dead but shows a strange aversion to a man tapping sticks in his general direction. With some remarkable straight faces in the face of some deathly dialogue and ropey effects our heroes have to muster all their strengths to see off the demon and his undead allies - and you will too if you are to stay for the whole 100 minutes.

This is an easy film to slag off but if you accept its limitations and enjoy the ride you won’t be that disappointed. Tony Curtis running in slow motion with a large mystic cape on is worth the rental alone and although it’s totally derivative of ‘The Exorcist’ it has a few side steps that offer a bit of interest and unintended amusements.

The pious Indian character is really annoying and he doesn’t miss a chance to bang on about his peoples’ injustices. He seems to make it up as he goes along with him immediately agreeing to Tony’s idea of turning the computers against the baddie - oh yeah the sprit world well up on Apple Macs are they?

They do try to expand on the possession angle with the spirit being made flesh and then summoning up his chums who turn the ward into ice and then space in some really unconvincing effects. Curtis’ character arc is non-existent but he deserved an award for keeping a straight face through some of the most far fetched dialogue you’ll ever hear.

As an oddity ‘The Manitou’ has a lot to recommend it but in truth it’s pretty dreadful and a guilty pleasure at best.

THE Tag Line : The Exorcist - With Explosions! 55%

No.21 : The Limey (1999)

The Limey at the IMDb

If you are going to upset someone you’d better first check that it’s not Terence Stamp’s character Wilson who’s as mental as a sack of frogs and not shy of spilling the claret either.

We meet up with Wilson as he arrives in Los Angeles looking for answers about his daughter’s death - think of it as ‘Get Carter’ in the sunshine. He quickly hooks up with Luis Guzman’s able stooge who had written to Wilson letting him know of his daughter’s mysterious death. Wilson is fresh out of jail after stealing the gate receipts for a Pink Floyd concert - must have been pay at the door in those days.

After no detective work at all the dynamic duo head to a back street lot where they know shady dealings go on. Wilson manages to get a name and then a right good kicking but not one to bear grudges he marches back in and slaughters everyone apart from a boy left alive to spread the word.

Next stop is the luxurious home of playboy record producer Peter Fonda who is having a party where no invites are needed. Stamp has a good butcher’s around and tosses a guard off a cliff for good measure but saves the coup de gras for another day as “it’d be too easy” - good work ethic there.

Fonda’s security man gives chase and after a scrap where we loses his Beamer he enlists some pool hall hustlers to take down our man. The deed is of course botched and Stamp is saved by some rogue DEA agents who are happy to see the villains , including drug money launderer Fonda, get theirs anyway they can.

With all the interested parties heading down the coast for a big shoot out we soon find out if revenge is best served cold or with a nice Bordeaux.

This is another film that I’d seen before but had retained almost no memory of - that Windowlene drinking craze of my early 30’s has a lot to answer for! I was glad I revisited it on behalf of this project as I really enjoyed it.

I think first time around I disliked Stamp’s almost Viz like portrayal of an Englishman abroad; all Cockney rhyming slang and wide boyness but this time it came across as a lot of fun although not exactly convincing. For a start he keeps on saying “china - china plate = mate” which seems a lot of work over just saying ‘mate’. They do play on it though with the rest of the cast all bemused at his every utterance. “there’s just one thing I don’t understand” say a cop “Every fuckin’ word that came out your mouth”.

The plot is a straightforward revenge thriller but director Steven Soderbergh does well to keep the interest level high by flirting back and forth as the characters speak showing scenes from their past and more tellingly their futures. I think the idea is that they are on paths already set with no chance to change and you see this is the case with the final shots.

I also liked that they used footage from the film ‘Poor Cow’ to show a younger Stamp with his daughter - certainly beats a bad wig or ropey CGI. The film is undeniably Stamp's with a real powerhouse showing throughout. Pass marks are also won by Guzman’s willing and strangely motivated helper and Peter Fonda who does a great sleazebag when he wants to, which seems to be always.

There are not too many surprises or big set pieces and you get the idea they could have shot the film in a couple of days given the lack of elaborate sets or costumes and the sometimes wobbly cameras. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as you get a fast paced, engaging thriller that has equal laughs and shocks.

THE Tag Line : Make Miney A Limey! 73%

No.20 : The Krays (1990)

The Krays at the IMDb

This bio-pic of the 1960 east London gangsters starts and ends poorly with some old bag wittering on about a swan but the bits in between are OK, in a British film sense.

The legendary gangsters, who were always good to their mutha and never hurt their own, are played in decent fashion by Spandau Ballet duo Gary and Martin Kemp. We open with the lads being born and having a tough upbringing in war time London. The boys’ Dad is a lazy draft dodger constantly on the run from the police in the shape of Blakey off ‘On the Buses’ and all they have is provided by Ma and the lady neighbours all of whom have high opinions of themselves.

The Kray household run by Billie Whitelaw who plays the matriarch who shapes the boys’ lives. After seeing how hard things can be they start up a life of crime after taking advice from Michael Elphick in military prison - never a good plan.

They start small with a run down club but pretty soon they are the biggest crew in town. Not all is rosy however as bi-sexual Ronnie is going a bit mental and soppy Reggie is getting married to an annoying woman who pouts a lot. They also face incursions into their territory by rival gangs and from within their own organisation in the shape of Tom Bell’s Jack ’The Hat’ McVitie.

When Reggie’s wife kills herself the pair decide to settle some scores committing two murders that spell the end of their empire. The film closes with their Mother’s funeral and the pair reunited for one last scowl and a few more lines about that god darn swan and its magic eggs.

I’d never seen this 1990 film before and only remembered the general slagging it got on release over the casting of the pretty boy leads. Despite some early reservations over a pile of clichés and pretentious chat I was won over by the sarf London setting and some pretty gruesome scenes.

The film hangs on the relationship of the twins and although it’s not fully explained why one is nice and the other mental they play well off each other and there is often an air of real evil about. Gary has the harder job as the gay mental one and to be honest he struggles a bit, doing a low menacing voice a bit too often to be convincing. He has a couple of awkward gay scenes and his annoyance by his brother’s marriage is conveyed with a lot of staring.

Martin is a bit better as Reggie although his character arc leaves his acting talent behind when the wife tops herself - presumably because she’d watched her own performance that far. The director obviously knew he had a tough task making the film with two pop stars in the lead roles so he wisely filled out the cast with every actor you’ve ever seen in a kitchen sink drama. Whitelaw has most of the big speeches, but doesn’t have the same menace she had in ‘The Omen’; more of a tiresome old bag a bit too fond of her own voice. Tom Bell also shows up but seems to be drunk most of the time while flailing about wildly.

It was also fun to see Stewpot of ‘Grange Hill’ in a bit part and Steven Berkoff too, doing his usual shouty performance before getting shot in the mole on his forehead - handy that!

The film tried hard to balance the glamour and the violence but to be honest it all seemed a bit of a wretched lifestyle. I thought it was a mistake ending things as soon as the murders took place and I could have done with some of the trial and lost half an hour of women talking about having it hard in the war.

The film is a decent enough effort but it does lack any sense of being something substantial. Basically they have it tough, they slash a few people and they get stuck in the nick for 30 years. A morality tale? A story about conditioning and maternal controls?, of the bond between brothers? Nah it’s a guy getting a sword in the face that you’ll remember.

THE Tag Line : Chant Number 6 out of 10 60%

No.19 : The Jacket (2005)

The Jacket at the IMDb

The ‘jacket’ in question is a straight-jacket and it helps someone travel through time. Sounds a bit fanciful and light? Not really, it’s so grim that bits had to be filmed in Scotland!

We open with Adrien Brody fighting in the Gulf War and getting his just desserts, in the form of a bullet in the head when he tries to help a gun toting tot. We see him again a few months later back home, after he has been discharged form a military hospital. His lucky streak stays hot when he fixes the car of a mother and her young daughter but gets the bum’s rush as a reward.

Things look up slightly when he hitches a lift, but wouldn’t you know it? the driver is a nutter who goes on to kill a cop and frame our man for the crime. Adrien gets the worst punishment imaginable - he gets sent to a Scottish mental hospital that doubles for the USA and gets Kris Kristofferson as a doctor.

Kris is a bit of a maverick in the care stakes and his treatment consists of drugging up patients, sticking them in ‘the jacket’ before bunging them in a mortuary drawer. This cruel and unusual treatment has a side effect on Adrien who manages to jump through time, by the time honoured route of the camera darting into his eyes.

He wakes up in 2007 and manages to snag a night on Keira Knightley’s sofa. He finds his army dog tags and soon works out that Keira is the young girl with the dodgy car we met in paragraph two. She sensibly poo-poohs his far fetched tale and tells him that the real Adrien died years back, a mere four days after he went into the drawer.

Adrien spends the rest of the film darting back and forth through time in a bit to solve the mystery of his apparent death and to try and secure a better life for Keira who seems to have grown up a bit skanky. He also gets the information in the future that buys him his favours in the past, in a sort of causality loop that would make the Borg explode if they tried to work it out.

I saw this film way back in 2005 and couldn’t remember much about it what with my own time machine in the shop and all. At first I thought it was going to be a bit grim but an intriguing plot and a top notch cast made it a really enjoyable and thought provoking experience.

It shares a lot with ‘The Butterfly Effect’ although thankfully not Ashton Kutcher. The non-linear narrative and the other world sense throughout keeps you guessing and it’s gratifying when all the pieces come together. Some of the cast do buy into the time travel angle a bit too eagerly and I think I’d be wanting some lottery numbers rather than a few snippets any punter could have gleaned from the papers.

Adrien Brody gives his usual great performance and he’s the kind of actor who seems genuinely likable. Keira does OK and fills the role of the druggy waitress well with her slender frame. In the second string we have Kris as a not quite menacing enough doctor and a pretty frumpy looking Jennifer Jason Leigh as a doctor on the fast track to losing her licence. For your money you also get Daniel Craig as an overacting patient and the great Fish out of Marillion showing he can twitch with the best of them.

The mechanisms in place are never explained and although you could come up with something along the lines of ‘he’s dead at the start’ or something you’d be better off just believing that it’s a magic drawer and be done with it.

The familiar theme of redemption worked its usual magic with me and although the ending wasn’t exactly happy we did get a bit of hope for our troubles - and Keira got a slightly nicer car out of it too!

The direction was great also with the unnerving world of the mental hospital and the claustrophobic environment in general well realised. It doesn’t quite all come together with a few plot strands and ropey performances letting the side down but it’s certainly worth a look and an enjoyable night in (a drawer)

THE Tag Line : This Jacket Required 73%

No.18 : The Informant! (2009)

The Informant! at the IMDb

You can almost see the scene; the marketing team for this movie have a hard job. It involves complex ideas of bribery and corruption and has no sex scenes or car chases - how can we convince the audience that this is in fact a jaunty comedy worth their seven quid? Yes, I’ve got it - stick an exclamation point on the end of the title, that’ll do it. We can also make the graphics a bit wacky and have a seemingly inappropriate kooky soundtrack - that’ll show them.

I actually quite enjoyed this film, but to call it a comedy would be stretching things and the whole films hangs on a single premise - Matt Damon lies a lot. Damon plays Mark Whitacre a bio-chemist at a chemical plant who has found himself in a corporate role. He develops products from corn and finds himself in a hard spot when a new strain of a chemical fails. He tells his boss that there is sabotage in place and he’s received a demand for $10 million for the name of the mole and the formula to save the new chemical.

Things go smoothly at first when the guy off ‘Quantum Leap’ is assigned to be his FBI handler in their investigation of the extortion attempt. Mark thinks that he’s being set up as the fall guy as he regularly calls Japan, the source of the ransom demands. He decides to become an informant against the company and spills the beans on all their schemes involving global price fixing.

For a while Mark is the hero and gets evidence of secret meetings and deals. Things start to go awry however when his stories start to get a bit far fetched and his own dealings come under scrutiny. Before long egg is on all the faces as Mark is exposed as an inveterate liar and the biggest crook at the table.

With the company and the FBI both looking a bit silly can Mark stay out of jail and keep his ill gotten gains which keep escalating in value as the film progresses?

That quality overview of the film may make it look a bit dry and to be honest it is. The set up is OK and I enjoyed the various companies and agencies all being as incompetent as each other. Matt Damon does a good job with the lying and we genuinely believe his character is a corporate crusader at first before his world of lies gradually unravels about him.

It’s probably all the ‘Bourne’ films on his resume but I wasn’t convinced that the 40 year old Damon was this flabby, balding lair with a bio-chemistry degree and nice taste in ties. He gives good value in the more ridiculous scenes but less so in the ones where he was being earnest and forthright. His get out clause is of course that his character is a liar so any unbelievable stuff was just that character trait bleeding out.

The film does well to maintain your interest through a lot of scenes that are just middle aged men talking around various tables. The running gag that the money embezzled went up every time it was mentioned was quite funny but apart from that there weren’t too many laughs. I did like Mark’s internal monologue which often had no bearing on the matter at hand but came into sharper focus as the lies tumbled down.

Further down the cast list it was nice to see Kurgan off ‘Highlander’ in a tie and Scott Bakula did OK as the hapless FBI agent. Damon’s wife was a bit thinly drawn and we never really got to the heart of her motivations - I guess it was keeping the nice house and that’s it.

The film opens with a caption saying they’ve changed stuff and ends with some others that explain what happened next. Seeing as you don’t know what’s was true and what wasn’t this was pretty pointless but overall I quite enjoyed this tale of lies, greed and more lies.


THE Tag Line : Believe Me It’s Not Bad 66%

No.17 : The Happening (2008)

The Happening at the IMDb

Problem : You have an opinion that you want to get across to an audience but it’s not really backed up by any facts or evidence.

Solution : Make a film where the environmental bogeyman takes the form of whispering trees and kills us all.

Outcome : Widespread ridicule

‘The Happening’ must be one of the worst reviewed films of all time and it’s easy to see why. It has dreadful acting, a ludicrous concept and dialogue that wouldn’t cut it in a porno film. There are a couple of moments that make it almost worth a watch, but not quite.

We open in New York where a busy crowd suddenly stops dead in their tracks and start killing themselves. We think at first it might be an Emo convention but no! We then move to a building site where the workers start diving off the scaffolding - that economy has a lot to answer for.

We then move to a Philadelphia school room where teacher Marky Mark is discussing the reason for environmental problems. He’s interrupted by the principal who sends everyone home as the government is declaring a terrorist emergency. Marky hooks up with his wife Zooey Deschanel and his pal John Leguizamo who brings along his cute daughter.

They head out of town of a train but as always with trains it stops and the most portentous guards you’ll ever meet declare that all is lost. They soon split up and John comes to a sticky end when he hitches a lift in the wrong car. Marky hooks up with a weird couple, the male of which likes to wax lyrical about the greatness of hot dogs. The narrative as it is, is kept moving by sporadic information that comes from phones, passers by and, handily, a radio tied to a fence in the middle of nowhere.

They encounter more scenes of mass suicide and realise that it’s nature herself that they are fighting and their only hope is to stay in small groups. They end up in a remote farm house occupied by an old mental woman and the bets are on to see if they’ll survive and whether the incident is isolated or a precursor of worse to come.

The message in this film hits you like you’ve been kicked in the nuts by a deep sea diver. The ‘mystery’ of the event is signalled like the four minute warning with every event heralded by some trees rustling and we quickly realise that nature is fighting back. If that wasn’t clear enough we get other subtle hints like massive cooling towers pumping out, well water vapour, and some houses built in green belt land. We had it coming I tells ya.

In mitigation there are a couple of disturbing scenes like the lemming builders and the mass hanging but these serve only to highlight the total mess all around. Marky and Zooey have no chemistry and they both have scenes acting to objects such as a mobile phone and a rubber plant and it’s quite clear that we are not witnessing a master class from either.

The whole concept is ridiculous and justified with some really ropey science about tobacco plants defending against beetles. OK, even if you accept that, why do the plants instruct people to take elaborate steps like a man turning on the petrol and then the ignition of a lawn mower before jumping in front of it - hardly the actions of an irrational man taken over by a silver birch. Similarly why does the man woman chose to smash all the windows when killing herself to endanger Marky - that was one specific gust of wind!

To nit pick a mess like this is like picking flies off a turd - messy and totally pointless. A really awful film that is almost so bad it’s funny but not quite.

THE Tag Line : Happening Is Non-Event 34%

No.16 : The Game (1997)

The Game at the IMDb

We stay in San Francisco for our next offering that sees Michael Douglas go on the game. Well the recession has hit Wall Street hard and all.

Naw, not really although I’m sure that would be a jolly romp. ’The Game’ sees Douglas as a ruthless and driven businessman who has no time for anyone and who has never gotten over his father’s suicide. After a few scenes of him being cold and detached he meets up with his ner do well brother, Sean Penn, who has got him an invite to a mysterious organisation for his birthday.

Douglas is less than impressed but chooses to have a look when he’s on other business in the building where the mysterious organisation is based. When I get a present like this it’s usually a chance to subscribe to some timeshare newsletter but not here, this is the movies you understand. After a battery of tests which include questions about animals and masturbation (was Richard Gere originally meant to star?) Douglas is soon informed that he’s failed the test which presumably is game speak for ’passed’ as stuff starts to happen pretty much right away.

The scale and scope of ‘the game’ is soon made clear when a news anchorman starts to address Douglas personally mid broadcast. Soon Douglas is seeing operatives real and imagined around every corner and the paranoia begins. He hooks up with a mouthy and knicker free waitress on a mild adventure that involves some modest climbing but that’s just an taster for the fun ahead.

Douglas soon sees his buttoned down life unravel and before long he finds himself begging in Mexico. We start to wonder if it all is really a game or whether that’s just the front of a sinister organisation dedicated to relieving people of their cash. The previously cosseted Douglas manages to find reserves of strength and ingenuity he never knew he had but will it be enough to recover his cash and expose ‘the game’ for what it is?

I really like this film which is directed by ‘Se7en’ maestro David Fincher. Douglas basically starts out as Gordon Gekko and ends up a sort of Bruce Willis with floppy hair. I did think his character embraced the idea of the game a bit too readily but that could be explained by his keenness to keep his brother happy. A few times I felt that he should really stop and say ‘that’s it’ instead of running from the cops or brandishing a gun but I guess if you watch ‘the game’ you want to see it played out.

The schemes and deceptions were well played and not so elaborate that you’d thing that they’d never work in the real world. Of course many of them rely on Douglas doing what they expected but again this was covered by the extensive testing. The only real flaw was that there weren’t any - in the real world you’d turn a corner and find the hit man looking at his lines or you’d know the ‘waitress’ from some sitcom or other.

Douglas does well in a quite demanding role than needs him to by cynical and gullible all at once. When he loses all his cash and has to break into his own house he is perhaps a little too grounded and his mania never quite reaches the heights of ‘Falling Down’. Of the second string Penn does OK as the shiftless brother although I’m sure most of his stuff was filmed in a day.

Overall the film has a great sense of paranoia and although I never bought that the game was any more than just that I was buying the fact that Douglas’ character did. The idea of a big conspiracy is a well worn one but it’s always fun to see spooks and ciphers behind every pillar and in plain sight too. The ending may have been somewhat pat and Hollywood but I think it was earned and a fine climax to an above par thriller.

THE Tag Line : Good Game Good Game 75%

No.15 : The Frighteners (1996)

The Frighteners at the IMDb

Michael J Fox stars and Peter Jackson directs in this 1996 smash that had previously been unseen by myself. I’m never a big fan of paranormal goings on and that opinion hasn’t really shifted after seeing this spook fest.

Fox plays Frank Bannister who makes his living as a ghost hunter. We are sceptical at first as he touts for business at a funeral but as soon convinced when a fully fledged poltergeist attack is cleared up by our man. Things aren’t as they seem however - the ghosts are real but they are in Frank’s employ.

His shady tactics are brought into sharp focus however when a spate of heart attack deaths blight the small community. We get a lot of exposition about a serial killer, played by Jake Busey , who was put to death in the electric chair after trying to outdo the scores of his hero killers from the past and when Fox starts to see numbers appear on the foreheads of victims to be he thinks the killer may be back from the dead with his moll a willing accessory.

Meanwhile the Feds sent their strangest agent to try and solve the case and it’s soon clear that he has Fox in his sights. With the help of a pretty widow doctor, Fox visits the afterlife himself in an attempt to solve the mystery and to put an end to the killings.

This is an OK film but I thought it rambled on an awful long times with too many plot strands floating around like so many disembodied spirits. It looks like they had enough story for an hour and then had to try and flesh it out with a lot of padding and unnecessary set pieces.

The concept was OK and it was a kind of ‘Ghost’ / ‘Shocker’ hybrid but overall it was uneven with more CGI that you could shake a virtual stick at. The effects were obviously state of the art for the time but now they look really fake and intrusive. Every time some one leaves a room the walls all bulge with faces and after a while it gets a bit dull and ultimately when all is revealed it makes no sense at all.

Fox does his usual everyman routine and although he’s always likeable I certainly wasn’t buying his widower’s anguish and tortured soul. His undead henchmen were a better bet and it was good to see the drill sergeant out of ‘Full Metal Jacket’ doing his thing once again.

Peter Jackson tries to liven things up with a lot of cuts and inventive angles but fails to resurrect the script into something worth watching. When the long final showdown was halfway through I didn’t really care what the outcome was or even if I fully understood what was going on - why did Busey bother with the big sheet in the first place when it was notoriety he was after?

I think the main problem is that the film flits between horror and comedy, and while that can work in films like ‘The Evil Dead’, it fails here as you’re never sure what to make of what’s happening on screen. It’s a competent enough film but the stretched script, ropey CGI and lack of bite mean that this is one that’s not worth resurrecting from the video shop vaults.

THE Tag Line : Low Spirits Scare Off Viewers 61%