No.278 : Watermelon (2003)

Watermelon at the IMDb

Rochdale born actress Anna Friel mangles her way through this 2003 ITV TV movie with the worst Irish accent this side of the Blarney Stone.

Friel plays Claire who is meant to be a free spirit but just comes across as a total nightmare. She drags her dim-witted boyfriend from Dublin  to London on the pretext that she has a job lined up. Of course she doesn’t, and it’s only an interview which goes terribly apart from some flirting with a dishy young man on the panel. The interview ends suddenly when Anna throws up on some fish, but yer man isn’t put off and the two head to the pub.

After a full sesh she spurns the young man’s advances only to find that, in a surprising moment of wisdom, her boyfriend has decided to head back to Ireland. Without missing a beat Anna calls back the shorn suitor and the two spend the night together. Things are soon looking up, with Anna getting a photocopying job at the same magazine she threw up at along side the new smitten boyfriend.

But wait! We need drama, and Anna finds out she’s pregnant. The two move in together and in a quick montage we see Anna’s belly swell up so that she looks like the watermelon of the title - think I’d be taking my watermelon back to the green grocer if it looked like that! Anna knows the baby’s father is boyfriend one, but being a conniving wee cow, sorry free spirit, she doesn’t tell the hapless fool. Things come together when her waters break at work and she has to tell the hospital that she’s gone full term. Even the dopey new boyfriend manages to work out that he only started boffing Anna 7 months ago so he’s holding another man’s baby.

Mildly upset he stomps off and Anna heads back to Dublin and into the home of her shamed parents, including mum Brenda Fricker off ‘So I Married an Axe Murderer‘. Anna suffers some minor travails and Dad has a heart attack owing to his daughter being a tart and all that. She also bad mouths the innocent father who gamely offers to come back on the scene. Meanwhile, the London lover has shacked up with his frankly better option boss but loses the rag when she tries to repaint the nursery.

The scene is set for a big confrontation as the two men, for reasons unknown, vie for the affections of the free loving Anna and her screaming kid.

This wasn’t so much a modern day morality tale as some sink estate wish fulfilment. I couldn’t see any redeeming features in Anna’s character at all, although to be fair, she did do some excellent bath work. The two male leads were dreadful with neither having a spark of personality. The big restaurant denouement was a shouting match with handbags that was more cringey than gallant or brave.

Overall this was a throwaway piece of fluff that offered nothing in the way of social commentary or even entertainment. The character arcs were unbelievable and the happy ending didn’t ring true at all.

Best Bit : Bath Time! W Score 11/23

No.250 : We Still Kill the Old Way (2014)

We Still Kill the Old Way at the IMDb

 Here’s some fun in the shape of a British set ‘em up and knock ‘em down revenge thriller. It’s knowingly rubbish and peppered with a lot of ‘I thought they were dead?’ type stars, but it’s good fun and no doubt a bit of wish fulfilment for the Daily Mail set who long for the days when criminals looked after the community - Gawd bless ‘em!

The film opens with two drivers heading to different destinations. A beardy Ian ‘The Saint’ Ogilvy is in Spain while some yoofs are on their way to rob someone’s flat. Ogilvy is a retired East End criminal and living the good life in Spain. Meanwhile Aaron and his ‘E2’ crew are terrorizing Ogilvy’s old manor - noising up pensioners and single mums alike.

Aaron also shows his charms with the ladies by bedding a posh girl before taking photos of her and robbing her house. She’s not easily put off however and when Aaron suggests a second date down a dark alley she eagerly accepts. Huge mistake! - Aaaron’s plan is to ‘introduce’ her to his crew. What he doesn’t bank on however is that Steven Berkoff is dining nearby and takes on the feral rabble to save the girl. He gets killed for his trouble but we learn that he’s Ogilvy’s brother and soon the Saint is back in town and looking for revenge.

He gets together his old crew including James Cosmo off those bank adverts and DI Burnside off ‘The Bill’. What follows is a predictable hunting down of the bad guys by the slightly less bad guys until order is restored and the streets are safe for honest folk once again.

I quite liked this film but the pay off didn’t live up to the build up. Ogilvy was good as the O.C.D. Ritchie although I’m not sure he really caught the menace needed for a lethal old school gangster. He was likable and charismatic though, and it was hard not to take to his character. His henchmen weren’t as good, although they did have less to do. He was backed up by Lysette Anthony, who was almost unrecognisable, playing the woman from the neighbourhood who missed the good old days of knife fights and protection rackets. Her part was bolstered by her technology skills which enabled Ogilvy to track his quarry.

All the while the police investigation rumbled on with Alison Doody (off ‘Taffin’) playing the D.C. who respected the old school methods, especially those employed by Ogilvy, when her daughter turns out to be the one being abused by the baddies. The feral yoof were a bit too shouty to be menacing and did that side on gun grip that is so annoying. I guess they were painted this way to show their ineptitude against our ‘heroes’.

I was hoping for more once the battle lines were drawn but there were too few killings and the muddled shoot out at the hospital was somewhat disappointing. The final scene suggested a sequel could be in the offing and I certainly would be up for another slice of this ‘New Tricks’ for Bad Slags.

Best Bit : “Detective Constable? You should take out the ‘Detective’ and the ‘able’.
‘W’ Rating 15/23

No. 145 : Werewolf of London (1935)

Werewolf of London at the IMDb

Having recently reviewed one of the most recent werewolf films let’s have a look at one of the earliest. ‘Werewolf of London’ dates from 1935, several years before Lon Chaney Jnr. made the monster famous in ‘The Wolf Man’. This effort is very dated and seems more like a comedy than the horror that the dramatic score suggests. It doesn’t even have Warren Zevon on the soundtrack - what a rip off!

We open on a sun baked ‘Tibet’ which looks suspiciously like that California desert where they always film ‘Star Trek’. On checking I found that the whole effort was shot in California so let’s hope for some authentic London touches later on. Anyway, our hero is an adventurer botanist who is in Tibet to locate a rare flower that only blossoms by moon light. He manages to find one in a valley where no one has ever emerged from but gets bitten by a man in a mask for his troubles.

Back in London our hero, Dr Glendon, holds a society bash and is met by a mysterious Dr Yogami who needs some of the flowers to help some werewolf men who are terrorising London. Clearly seeing him as a nutter Glendon sends him n his way but gets a bit concerned when his hands go hairy - mother always warned me about that. He finds that the juice of the plant stops the onset of wolfiness but is in trouble when an unseen robber steals the last of the blooms.

The next full moon Glendon transforms and after scaring a society lady chooses to kill a well dressed street walker instead. The police are obviously baffled and choose to ignore the young detective who guesses the wolf related problem at once. Glendon reads up on his situation and sees that he’s most likely to kill the one he loves most and so chooses to move away to a remote boarding house run by a nice drunk lady. After another killing he returns home to get some more flowers, only to be met by Yogami who has a similar need for the blooms. We learn the two have met in the past and soon realise that there is only one way this is going to end.

Although by no means a classic there is a lot to like in this film. It’s very of it’s pre-war day with the ladies knowing their place and everyone being very mannered except for the working classes who are all drunks. There are only two killings, both off screen, and both victims ‘deserved it’, one being a prostitute and the other an adulteress. The werewolf itself is extremely non scary with the costume consisting on some hairy gloves and a wig. The transformations are done in a very rudimentary fashion with cuts visible as our man passes some pillars, growing more hairy at each shot. Later on match cuts are used but these look too obvious to be convincing.

The wolf man himself is a strange creature, choosing to put on his coat, scarf and cap before heading out on a blood frenzy - doesn’t he realise that he’s got a fur coat on? He’s also a bit wimpy getting beaten up by an upper class twit - I guess they had to show these common wolf types their place. ‘London’ looked OK and they wisely kept away from any landmarks. The streets are all fog and carriage lamps and there are enough English character actors peppered about to keep things somewhat on topic.

Most of the acting is dreadful with a lot of dramatic pauses where the actors struggle to remember their lines or at least utter the fanciful dialogue they’ve been given. Worst of the bunch was Warner Oland as the enigmatic Dr Yogami whose slow delivery accounts for about half of the film’s 70 minute running time. He is better known as cinema’s Charlie Chan, a stereotype far more suited to abilities.

Many of the familiar werewolf conventions are missing with no silver bullets in sight although he does go to visit wolves in the zoo - a scene laterreprised in ‘An American Werewolf in London’. The film doesn’t scare in the slightest but as an oddity it’s quite interesting both in terms of the genre and of the period as a whole. The class divide shown is unimaginable today in terms of the portrayal of the working classes and their expendability. The toffs on the other hand are a bunch of party going gadabouts, so no change there then!

Best Bit : Boarding house banter
‘W’ Rating 13/23