And never brought to mind ...

This year’s Winter of Discontent has been a blast. We’ve had sex, violence and bad language; hard-nosed crims, seductive women, and a hobo with a shotgun. We’ve had vampires, cannibals and zombies. We’ve had “based on a true story” and “you couldn’t make this shit up”.But now this third annual festival of filmic feculence is over and I find myself at a crossroads. Although I’m posting this at year’s end, I’m writing it on a spectacularly rainy evening...

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Hobo with a Shotgun

Come listen to the story of a hobo who turned sour,Dude got no name but he’s played by Rutger Hauer,Rode into town on a freight train belchin’ steam*But life on the streets is where it’s really unclean.In a town called Hope, where actually there’s noneAnd the sign’s been repainted so the name’s now Scum,Our hobo hero dude who ain’t go no nameGoes beggin’ on the sidewalk for a handful of change.Ragged and dirty, ignored and overlooked,All our guy...

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Lifeforce

It was a few months ago that I watched ‘Lifeforce’, already with a mind to writing it up for the Winter of Discontent. Reviewing my notes, I realise there’s no other way of engaging with the movie than to present, unedited and without contextualizing footnotes, the 500 words of appalled scribbling I produced during the two hours of this holy-fucking-awful excuse for a moving picture:Five minutes in; first question: when Henry Mancini wrote the score,...

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Rod Serling

It's not just Jesus's birthday today, it's Rod Serling's too. He would have been 88. Dude created 'The Twilight Zone', a show that plugged itself directly into my imagination and threw the switch. Here's to you, s...

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Late Night Trains

I’d been told that Aldo Lado’s ‘Late Night Trains’ was a pretty damn nasty movie. I’d been told it was ugly, brutal, squalid and cynical. That it was cold, hard and unflinching. That it made for uneasy viewing. That I’d come away from it feeling battered and soiled. And I’m glad I was given those warnings. But I didn’t realize how truly sickening its most horrible, most repulsive moment would be: four entire minutes in which my sense of aesthetics...

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Inglorious Bastards

It was probably just as well for Quentin Tarantino that some enterprising distributor decided that Enzo G. Castellari’s ‘Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato’ would clean up in the English-speaking territories if it was retitled ‘Inglorious Bastards’. Somehow, Tarantino’s epic wouldn’t have benefited from borrowing the title ‘That Damned Armoured Train’. For a start, there’s no train in the Tarantino film.There’s most definitely a train in Castellari’s...

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The eye candy at the end of the world

Just in case the Mayans got it right, this is The Agitation of the Mind signing off in the company of 13 favourite femmes fatale. It's been a pleasu...

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Cold Eyes of Fear

The phrase “London-set giallo” conjures some classics of the genre. Sergio Martino’s ‘All the Colours of the Dark’, Lucio Fulci’s ‘A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’ and Massimo Dallamano’s ‘What Have You Done to Solange?’ spring immediately to mind, not to mention the latter half of Luciano Ercoli’s ‘Death Walks in High Heels’.Enzo G. Castellari’s ‘Cold Eyes of Fear’ is set in London. And it’s kind of a giallo. That’s about all.The opening credits sequence...

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Les Demoniaques

Against a backdrop of flames brightening a shoreline by night, their faces superimposed as if in oval picture frames, Jean Rollin introduces us to the dramatis personae of ‘Les Demoniaques’. It would be appallingly cutesy if the flames weren’t the burning wreck of a ship and the characters in question a villainous bunch of wreckers. Meet the Captain (John Rico): And meet the Captain’s lady, Tina (Joelle Coeur) – although “lady” might be pushing...

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SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: Joelle Coeur in Les Demoniaques

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WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Red State

In which Kevin Smith pulls the rug out from under his audience’s feet. And then the floorboards. And then the foundations. And then what you were kind of hoping was some semblance of solid ground. ‘Red State’, in short, is a film that sets out to fuck with you.It fucks with you via its title and the way it’s advertised. ‘Red State’. The DVD cover art shows an attractive young woman clutching a fuck-off big semi-automatic rifle. Hmmmm, political thriller,...

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