No.326 : White Cargo (1942)

White Cargo at the IMDb

It’s the present day (well it was in 1942) and a young man is starting work at a rubber plantation in Africa. The office is clean and has air conditioning. 'It wasn’t always like this' says the aging boss as the film dissolves back to the frontier days of 1910.

 

A small group of British rubber workers manage a large plantation and many native workers as they fight the climate, lack of women and disease. The booze soaked doctor wanders about stealing folks’ whiskey and plantation manager Walter Pidgeon is being driven bonkers by the endless steam of young trainees sent to help, who all ask about the hunting and the friendliness of the natives.

 

New man Langford is appalled by the sloppy operation and vows to set a good example by not drinking and shaving every day. His pith helmet and lack of language skills amuse the natives and his plant rearing skills leave a lot to be desired.

 

After half an hour of them floundering about we meet the star attraction - native woman  Tondelayo, played by Hedy Lamar. Tondelayo has a bit of a reputation, possibly as a Hollywood star blacked up as a native, as her hair and make up is always perfect despite the humid jungle conditions and the seeming lack of a hairdressers. Her English is poor and she refers to herself in the third person - ‘Tondelayo like silk and trinkets’. This quickly gets old but Langford is soon mesmerised by her bra top and willingness to please.

 

The other men at the plant, who look to have had their own share of encounters with the naughty native, try to warn him off but soon the pair are married. A few months pass and Tondelayo is bored - will she take ‘till death do us part’ literally and will Pidgeon’s local law mete out a fitting punishment for her? Maybe a trip back to the present day will reveal all!

 

I quite liked the first half hour of this film which saw a bunch of character actors all bicker and offer up a few laughs. Lamarr certainly brightened things up when she arrived but her annoying speech pattern and unlikely look took any realism out of the film and you just knew she was going to screw over the first sucker to give her the time of day.

 

Fair enough she was a cracker, and the jungle didn’t have a lot of options, but it seemed extreme for someone to offer her marriage despite her still asking for tat in the midst of a proposal. Still that’s women for you!

 

I liked Walter Pidgeon best as the Clark Gable like plant manager who was going slowly mad though the heat and tedium of his role. The familiar part of the dipso doc was well executed by Frank Morgan but I was less convinced by the love struck Richard Carlson.

 

The film had good locations and, although I doubt they navigated the Congo for the sets, there was a good sweaty and uncomfortable vibe about the whole affair. If they had made Tondelayo a bit more convincing it would have been a better film but I guess they knew their market and Hedy in a bra for an hour guaranteed success.

 

 

A fun oddity which will probably be buried forever more due to it’s use of black face and indigenous worker abuse - and rightly so!

 

Best Bit : Acclimatise! ‘W’ rating 14/23

 

No.325 : What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974)

 

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? at the IMDb

Well if nothing else, at least this Italian effort secures the ‘Longest title’ award from this long running blog - eat that ‘W.’!

I found this on Amazon Prime and for all intents and purposes it looked like a badly dubbed exploitation flick and, to a great extent, it was. It did however try to veer into social commentary; moral high ground that crumbled somewhat when you have a look at that poster!

The film opens with a caption saying that the film serves as a reconstruction of the facts - the implication being that all the brutal murders and teenage nudity are nothing to do with them, but are due to those bad folks who wrote the script. They just made the film you understand.

The film’s stall is immediately set out as some policemen burst into a flat to find a naked teenage girl, who has been hung from the rafters. We meet Detective Silvestri, who is a dead ringer for Henry Cavill and new to the job lady DA Stori who has a bit of Sophia Loren about her. The death initially looks like a suicide, but after some fortunate detective work involving a peeping Tom, they decide the girl has been murdered.

The grisly death is soon all over the papers including a full frontal front page of the dead girl hanging from the rafters, despite her being only 15 - at least the actress was 20 at the time, but is was still unnecessary.  The girl gets identified and her mother reveals, in a naked daughter flashback, how she discovered the teen was taking birth control pills. Mum engaged a private eye to watch over her wayward daughter, but this lead cools when the cops find his car complete with his body in several pieces. These are comically put back together by the boys in the morgue with his wife insisting on a full look before screaming the place down.

All is not lost though as an audio tape is found that reveals lots of teenage girls are part of a prostitution ring that involves some influential people. Soon a motorcycle riding, cleaver wielding nutter is on the scene and every girl - and the cops are in danger. Who will survive the chopper onslaught?  And how high does the conspiracy go?

This film was a decent bit of exploitation slasher nonsense for the first hour, but it ran out of puff towards the end with the big finale looking daft and staged - well the big crowd behind the barriers was a clue!

Closing captions revealed that 8,000 girls go missing in Italy every year and nothing was being done. How kind of the producers then to make this kind of risible nonsense that would appeal only to the kinds of people they were looking to decry? Teen girls jumping around in the buff between scenes of gory, and at times comic, murder made for an unsettling viewing experience.

The main cast were decent albeit badly dubbed. The detection angle faded badly as the film progressed with the cleaver baddie being identified when they checked who had bought motorbike tyres recently, with one purchaser being listed as a butcher. Didn’t know Goodyear needed your CV to sell you a couple of tyres!

There were a couple of half decent chases but the villain was pretty ineffective and there was no real mystery or scares.

As a moral piece the film floundered badly, and as an entertainment it failed miserably. There were a couple of unintentional lighter moments but these were lost in a morass of suspect subject matter and unconvincing body parts.

Best Bit : Let’s Put This Guy Back Together  ‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.321 : When the Bough Breaks (1994)

When the Bough Breaks (1994) at the IMDb

We recently watched another ‘When the Bough Breaks and this 1994 version safely occupies the coveted ‘2nd Best ‘When the Bough Breaks’ award’ berth. Indeed if we find the 1947 version I can see this one moving into the bronze medal slot.

This and the 2016 version share only a title, with this effort being a detective thriller that makes no sense, and has no thrills whatsoever.

The film opens with a caption telling us we’re in Texas and it’s the 4th of July - regular captions chart the date as we head towards the 16th which is soon given some significance. Despite it pissing down road workers are digging a hole and teens are partying in the streets, but their endeavours are cut short when a pair of hands is discovered, flushed out of a drain. Cowboy hat wearing sheriff Martin Sheen is puzzled and can’t even offer a witty pun along the lines of ‘need a hand’ or ‘check out the second hand store’.

Instead he calls in FBI profiler Audrey (Ally Walker) who looks like she’s facing a chauvinistic department at first, but everyone turns out to be really helpful. She has Gillian Anderson’s hair off ‘The X-Files’ and as character traits she smokes a lot and is claustrophobic. She also has scars on her back for reasons that were unexplained. It may have been that they were laying character points for future sequels but happily those amounted to one straight to video offering only.

It seems that Audrey is the only one doing any work and she quickly establishes that a pair of numbered hands shows up every year and suspects a serial killer. Let’s hope so, or else a lot of villains must be getting handy. With some proto-internet skills she manages to identify a lot of the victims and soon tracks down a young mental patient who draws numbered hands on his walls. Gotta be a clue there surely? The boy chooses to be a mute, so slowly Audrey manages to get him out of his shell and the case starts to come into focus.

With July 16th approaching, and a girl already abducted, can Audrey solve the crime before another juggling career is destroyed for good?

This was an awful film that made no sense at all. The poster suggests a psychic element which isn’t covered in the film. It does turn out twins are involved but their psychic link is in full HD and never explored.

The detection was all over the place, including the uncovering of a red herring paedophile who drove about in an ice cream van wearing clown make up. Creepy as that sounds there was in fact loads of them working for a franchise. There must be a whole Texan generation of kids with an ice cream phobia! This was so ridiculous it was funny, with a flashback showing a child snared by a ‘free ice cream’ sign.

Despite his prominent poster presence Sheen does very little with all the work done by the dull and unengaging Ally Walker. I think she was let down in the edit however, as all her character’s quirks go nowhere and her breakthroughs were random and illogical.

I knew who the baddie was going to be early on as Ron Perlman was listed as appearing but didn’t show up until 70 minutes! His scenes were dreadful as was the whole finale which was lifted wholesale from ‘The Silence of the Lambs’.

You could argue it was left to the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that would just excuse glaring plot holes and bad writing. Having the mute ‘boy’ played by an obvious girl was a mistake especially as she looked like a young Justin Bieber - why not just use real twins or indeed have the twins be the same sex?

Anyway, I won’t waste any more time looking for nits and plot holes as it’s clear that the production didn’t bother, so why should I?

Te film was unintentionally funny in places, but overall this was just an incoherent mess.

Best Bit : Clown Face Ice Cream - ‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.295 : When the Bough Breaks (2016)

When the Bough Breaks at the IMDb

A kinda prequel to ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ now - it’s not the nanny who is a mentalist - it’s the surrogate mother.

John and Laura are a rich black couple who have it all - except a baby. They have suffered several miscarriages and are on the lookout for a surrogate. They receive a video from Anna who seems too good to be true - and of course she is.

The couple invite Anna over with her boyfriend, Juice out of ‘Sons of Anarchy, and they like her but dislike him. We know he’s a controlling asshole, who's only in it for the money. Our couple are desperate however, and are down to their last viable embryo, so they go ahead with the surrogacy.

Things start to look somewhat dubious when Anna gets beaten up by Juice and then shows up at John’s office after sending him sexy videos. She moves in and lawyer John warns Juice off, safe in the knowledge that he is due to be deployed in the Middle east and out of their hair.

John was however discharged and Anna is still seeing him and listening to his plans of fleecing our couple for as much as possible. We get a wrong foot however, when Juice checks out and Anna goes full on psycho. She has fallen for John and wants him for herself. John isn’t so keen but is mindful that Anna is carrying their baby.

Will the baby be born and who will take custody? Is Anna full on mental or just a bit hormonal?

I didn’t mind this film too much despite not having an interest in any of the themes. It was less good than similar BBC drama ‘The Nest’ but followed the same lines. Indeed, I would be surprised if ‘The Nest’ writer hadn’t researched this film before coming up with their plot.

The two principals were good as the desperate couple, although the wife was that annoying in that strong and always right way. Morris Chestnut as John was better and you could almost hear his inner turmoil as the young surrogate tried to seduce him. Less good was Omar off ‘The Wire’ who phoned in a performance as John’s fixer.

The initial villain Juice was terrible and a real pantomime bad guy, complete with ominous musical cues every time he appeared. It was a neat twist to have him exit stage left after an hour and leave Anna with all the psycho duties. I didn’t really buy her as the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, but she looked very nice in her skimpies so we’ll let that pass.

The conclusion was a bit extreme and I’d be surprised if adoption is granted in such circumstances! The film was however well made, with good pacing and enough to keep me engaged throughout.

Best Bit : Midnight swim - 'W' Rating 16/23

No.288 : Wind River (2017)

Wind River at the IMDb

Hawkeye out of the Avengers and the non-twin Olsen sister star in this mystery thriller set in the Wind River native American reservation in Wyoming.

Hawkeye is out tracking a mountain lion as part of his role as a wildlife and fisheries officer. He stretches his range by showing he is good with a gun as well as a bow when he shoots a coyote in a scene a bit too real for my liking. Hope they at least ate the body afterwards. Instead of his quarry he finds the body of a young woman, six miles from anywhere, in her bare feet.

The local tribal police call in the FBI and get Olsen for their troubles. She was the nearest officer and has to be kitted out in some 80’s ski wear that once belonged to Hawkeye’s daughter before she can visit the murder scene. We learn that he married a native American woman and had a son and daughter, but the marriage fell apart when the daughter died in unsolved circumstances three years earlier,

What follows is a bit of ‘Witness’ style ‘fish out of water’ detective work as Olsen, with Haweye’s help, tries to solve the crime whilst avoiding putting her foot in a big cultural pat. They run down some junkies and, after shooting one, get a clue. Ultimately all the clues are tracks in the snow, so just keep looking down and you’ll do fine.

Issues with the death certificate mean that Olsen can’t call in all the Feds she’d like, so she has to make do with the tribal police and her own instincts. All trails point to the local oil drilling settlement and with a gruesome flashback and plenty of gun play the truth will out. Can we have some healing too please?

This was a superior offering that was well worth it’s high IMDb rating of 7.8. To be honest it had passed me by on release as it does look a bit bleak from the outset. It is ‘inspired by true events’ and the closing caption says loads of native American girls are raped and murdered but no totals are kept. You can see that the film was therefore motivated by an agenda, but it was a worthy one and it was wrapped in an exciting and thoughtful blanket of thrills.

The detection was OK, but when the body was found two options were given for the victim’s starting point and it turned out it was one of them. The oil drillers were a mental bunch and their behaviour did seem a bit ridiculous both in the flashback and in the showdown scenes. One says the snow and silence drove him mad but that didn’t explain their collective mentalness and a shootout that made the OK Corral look like water pistols at dawn.

Hawkeye was a familiar character as the broken man looking for redemption, but he gave good value. Olsen was a poor version of Jodie Foster as seen in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ as the rookie FBI officer, but she was prepared to get down and dirty with no make up and a series of unflattering outfits and I was grateful to her for that.

The massive body count and brutal fights mean this isn’t one for the squeamish but it was fast paced and exciting and the locations were fantastic. It did seem unsatisfying that Hawkeye’s daughter’s death wasn’t explored in more detail but I guess a resolution to that may have seemed a bit too neat to be believable. Maybe for the sequel.

Best Bit : Wyoming Standoff  ‘W’ Rating  : 20/23

No.259 : What Happened to Monday (2017)

What Happened to Monday @ The IMDb

No question mark for this seemingly interrogative title - maybe it’s just a report as to the fate of the weekday monikered heroine?

This was a pretty enjoyable Netflix offering with a good cast, plenty of action, nudity and violence to keep things ticking over. The scene is set with a familiar montage over the opening credits as the world goes to shit. Over-population has led to a new policy of ‘one child per family’ with any extra siblings put into 'cryo-sleep' until things get better.

Willem Dafoe lacks a social conscience so when his wife, who dies in childbirth, hatches seven daughters he decides to keep the lot of them. As there are seven he names each after a day of the week, meaning each girl can go out on their name day each week. Lucky he wasn’t a Disney fan or Grumpy would be waiting for Bashful to get out of the goddamn toilet.

Anyway we fast forward 30 years and the plan is going well. Willem has disappeared off the scene with no explanation given - guess he was only booked for the first half hour. The girls share the identity of ‘Karen Settman’ and manage to hold down a job at a bank by giving the others a bed time run down of the day’s events so the rest can pick things up on their day. Guess Saturday and Sunday got the best of this deal!

Things go awry when Monday doesn’t come home after her day at work. The rest, all ably played by Noomi Rapace, try to work out what has happened whilst trying to keep their own secrets safe. Meanwhile evil politician Glenn Close is trying to get to high office where her plans for even more draconian laws spell trouble for everyone - well except the planet.

Soon our fish are well and truly out of the water and the hunt is on - how many will survive and what has happened to Monday?

This was an above average sci-fi thriller. It’s a pretty dystopian 2073 - pissing down and rubbish on the streets are your clues! Some of the tech like the well designed palm phones and a digital punch bag sit uncomfortably with the all rat diet but I guess you can piss away resources on some shiny stuff while making do on rodent stew.

The seven sisters are well realised with predictable quirks and differing haircuts setting each apart and the editing is excellent so you really can’t see the joins when Noomi is on the screen as seven characters all at once. The flashbacks with Dafoe are well done although they did lift that finger chopping bit from ‘The Prestige’ more or less wholesale.

What surprised me was the level of violence with some really brutal men versus ladies fist fights with plenty of blood. I was also surprised that some siblings were lost but not so much about the big reveal.

There was a bit of an attempt for some social commentary regarding climate change and overpopulation, this was however a bit muddled. Glenn Close is seemingly a mental baddie but her policies will save humanity whereas Dafoe is the hero father who's spewing out kids faster than the midwife can catch them. I guess the theme is 'difficult choices' but as Close said if everyone procreated like Dafoe the planet wouldn't last five minutes.

At a bit over two hours the film could have lost 20 minutes, with the last third decidedly flabby. It was however well constructed, so that a potentially confusing tale of seven identical twins was easy to follow. The title was a bit poor though - I’d have went with ‘The Secret Seven’. No wait, ‘Sister Act 7’.

Best Bit : Blonde Karen syncs with the guard
W Rating : 17/23

No.253 : Waterfront (1944)

Waterfront at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity - a 1944 American film that barely scrapes past an hour and is essentially a propaganda film. Still, we’re a broad church at the ‘W’ Movie Blog so let’s have a look.

The film opens as a man is being wrestled down at the docks after dark. No, not like that. Some passing drunks alert the cops but the man denies he’s been molested despite the drunks’ protestations. It turns out he’s the local optician and after getting in a predictable ‘they should get their eyes tested’ line he’s sent on his way.

It quickly transpires however that he was indeed robbed and the reason he couldn’t tell the policeman is that he’s a Nazi spy and all that was taken was his code book. Soon he’s joined by Marlow (John Carradine) who is also a Nazi agent keen to get his orders deciphered - a task rendered impossible by the loss of the code book. The two plan to shake down some local suspects but not before Carradine has scored himself some lodgings a guest house, having threatened the landlady’s family with a concentration camp back in the homeland.

The landlady’s daughter is stepping out with a young insurance agent who is near a life changing deal and he works for a German American who runs the insurance company - keeping up? Carradine doesn’t believe that the code book theft was a random robbery and he’s proven correct when the thief makes contact seeking $5000 for its return. The remainder of the film is taken up with cross and double cross as the code book remains elusive. Will it be recovered and will the nest of spies be rounded up?

As an oddity this film was OK but it lacked any credibility or tension. There was never any doubt that the spies were going to get caught and the method to make it so was somewhat drawn out and convoluted. There was plenty to aid the war effort not least the German American writing a confession to the FBI so that others wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did.

Carradine was always watchable but as a spy he was rubbish - no one notice the foreign chap with the large floppy hat down the docks then? Did his excessive tips not draw attention or his subtle plan of buying editions of every newspaper before throwing them away in frustration in front of the news vendor seem unusual?

He was quite brutal with three enemies dispatched in the same way - his Mauser raised (note : don’t use a German gun for your murders!) and fired while the victim died off camera - ‘Reservoir Dogs’ this was not.

Despite being just over an hour the film managed to tack on an unnecessary romantic subplot which added nothing apart from some wholesome values for the folks back home.

I wouldn’t go and seek this one out but if it shows up on TCM or somewhere, it will pass an hour without too many demands being made of you.

Best Bit : Why are you hanging about the docks?
‘W’ Rating 12/23

No.183 : World Gone Wild (1987)

World Gone Wild at the IMDb

Well here’s a first for the 100+ W Movies Quest - no not a reader, although that’d be nice - an actual request. OK it was a request borne out of vanity as the person making the request only did so as he almost shares the name of one of the characters, but we’ll take what we can get.

This dystopian action thriller is absolutely dreadful and I doubt you’d be able to find it anywhere apart from my hard drive and numerous land fill sites - but let’s have a look anyway.

The film opens with some scene setting narration. The production evidently didn’t have the cash for a scrolling paragraph so instead poor old Bruce Dern is tasked with setting the scene. It’s the late 21st century and a 75 year war has left most people dead and it hasn’t rained in 50 years. Realising their shaky premise and the abundance of clouds in the film, they add in ‘cruelly there are clouds but no rain’ - you can’t fault science like that.

After a dreadfully tacky credits sequence with the cheapest TV movie graphics and over filtered colours we get to the nub of the action. The writer has seen ‘Mad Max 2’ and thought ‘Yeah no one will notice if I steal that’ so he sets us up in a remote compound filled with people in white clothes and hair bands. He cleverly substitutes the rare resource from gasoline to water to make it all original. Anyway the school only has four books, so at least it’s an improvement from today’s education cuts - little bit of politics there, and the kids have no pencils and a teacher lacking most of her clothes.

The lesson on etiquette is interrupted when Adam Ant appears, towed by cape wearing lackeys, resplendent in his flying goggles and in a hollowed out helicopter. I ‘d say ‘you couldn’t make it up’ but clearly someone has - drugs really screw you up. Ant is playing the ridiculously named ‘Derek Abernathy’ and after spouting a lot of shite for five minutes starts shooting up all the peaceful locals along with his dead eyed henchmen. Total carnage is averted when Bruce Dern turns up and kills a bad guy by booting a hubcap into his throat - clearly he’s not a man to be messed with.

Ant crawls off with some of the settlement’s young men (Operation Yew Tree?) to brainwash them into his cult, yes that's cult, while those who remain take stock and fix their hair. They know Ant will be back and Dern sets off to town for reinforcements. The town is a hell hole with women in basques running about while dying babies are denied water. Sounds like my kinda town! After some recruiting of colourful sidekicks Dern returns to fortify the settlement and wait Ant’s next attack. Can the mismatched gang of renegades and mercenaries take on Ant’s formation bike riding team of white clad brainwashed youths? Will the inevitable explosions kick start the environment? Hell yes!

This blog has been guilty of exaggerating the awfulness of many films but I defy anyone to see this and declare it even a partial success. Well OK, pished up students may be able to laugh ironically at the many plot holes, dreadful acting and atrocious dialogue, but we’re a bit higher brow at this blog.

For a start where, in a world with no rain for 50 years, do they find an endless supply of brilliant white clothes, never mind endless bullets and enough TNT to make 9/11 look like a box of Aldi fireworks? For a world scrabbling in the dirt to survive everyone looks well nourished and there is frankly an over abundance of motorcycles and capes.

OK, we can set these gripes aside, as long as the cast is strong and the plot is tight and coherent. Er, sorry. Ant fails to stand and deliver in the acting stakes and it is baffling how he managed to get through the audition. To be fair in a film where “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” is the best line, the standards were never going to be high. Bruce Dern fails to deliver his usual mania and he seems largely disinterested in a film that doubtlessly looked more fun in the script than in reality.

The gang of misfits were uniformly dreadful from ‘Nitro’ the dynamite expert to some other guy who created a ‘snake pit’ trap with precisely 4 small snakes in it - at least they squashed them together for the close up
shot - Indiana Jones this was not.

The plot was virtually non-existent and they even had two goes at the finale both of which failed to elicit any excitement or tension. Ant had one of the lowest key demises of any movie baddie despite being seemingly bullet proof for the first 90 minutes. The big conclusion was ridiculous as it was predictable and frankly if the new rains had washed this effort out of existence no one would be complaining. Well apart from Mr Abernethy at any rate…

W Rating 6/23
Best Bit - Ant ain't no Goody Two Shoes

No.168 : We Own the Night (2007)

We Own the Night on IMDb

It’s 1988 in New York and things are going well for club manager Joaquin Phoenix. He has girlfriend Eva Mendes getting frisky on the sofa and all the drugs his bloated frame can manage. We soon learn that he is in the employ of the Russians and as anyone who has ever seen a film knows, they must be up to some bad shit. He knocks off work early so that he and Eva can attend a police function in a church basement, a strange affair that keeps the same hours as a hot disco.

Joaquin’s brother, Marky Mark, and Father, Robert Duvall are high ranking cops and they are concerned at our hero’s erratic behaviour and the company he is keeping. The Russians are dealing drugs out of Joaquin’s club and they’d like him to do some snitching for them. The lounge lizard club boss is having none of it but reconsiders when Marky Mark narrowly escapes the attentions of an incompetent hit man.

The bad company Joaquin keeps don’t know of his family connections as he changed his Polish name to ‘Green’ to fit in. This oversight leads them to spill far too many details of their plans to control the drug trade and put a cap in the ass of poor old Robert Duvall.

With this new motivation Joaquin decides to turn squealer and infiltrates the mob’s drug factory, which is frankly rubbish next to the one in ‘Robo-Cop‘. As you’d expect the main bad guy escapes and turns his attentions, quite understandably, on Joaquin and Eva who foolishly stood by her man and indeed took the part.

With the claret flying we learn about a big drug deal going down - if only some implausible bit of deduction can lead them to the remote meeting place where they can wrap up everything neatly and just in time.

This was an OK film but nothing you haven’t seen loads of times before. A kind of low-rent ‘The Departed’ for slow people. The main issue is hanging the whole film on the acting talents of Joaquin, which must have taken some doing as they are hard to spot. His broody silences look like he’s waiting to be given his lines and his manic shouty outbursts just look ridiculous. He does get some quality time with Eva Mendes, who serves as little more than eye-candy, but I guess that’s the benefit of having a producer credit.

Marky Mark is well short of his ‘The Departed’ showing especially at the end where he takes a sudden and unheralded character twist that sets up Joaquin to be the hero. Duvall does what you’d expect but you see no chemistry at all in the family trio.

The bad guy Russians are your stereotyped tattooed psychos but exuded very little menace, even in the supposedly tense ‘wearing a wire’ scene. The action, as it was, was weak with a confusing and poorly orchestrated car chase that had me wondering what was happening. The big shoot out at the end was a damp squib and it beggared belief  the cops shouted out their appearance giving the Russians the time to tool up and flee from the rear windows.

You can see what they were going for here but the whole good son, bad son routine failed to ignite as did Joaquin’s redemption - he looked like he was having a far better time at the start! I did laugh when the police chief made Joaquin a probationary cop for the big raid and said ‘After this you’ll need to go to the Police Academy’. At last a vehicle worthy of his talents! - hope he rooms with the guy who makes computer noises!

Best Bit - Hey Eva that sofa hasn’t been Scotch guarded!
Score : 14/23

No.163 : Wrong Side of Town (2010)

Wrong Side of Town at the IMDb

You’d have thought an action flick starring a couple of wrestlers would have swept the board at the Oscars but as always it’s not who you know it’s who you blow.

In truth the only reason to watch this film is for the laughably bad acting and dialogue but I’m sure there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Hmmm, let’s see sticking your willy in a blender for one and then …

No neck midget wrestler Rob Van Dam takes the lead as Bobby a simple family man who is living the suburban dream. The fact that he’s got a cissy pony tail and more tats than a council estate isn’t mentioned. He meets his new neighbour, a bookish black fellow, and despite our hero looking the front man for a BNP rally he quickly agrees to a night out on the town. Bobby has some reservations as the club is on the ‘wrong side of town’ but goes along anyway.

Despite the club being the hot spot in town Bobby gets in with his t-shirt on and settled down to dinner in the least convincing restaurant you’ll ever see. As he predicted things soon kick off when Bobby’s wife gets molested by a dickwad on drugs. Bob saves the day but the bad guy falls on his own knife setting our hero against the miscreant’s father.


Despite his obvious innocence Bob is quickly on the run, well waddle, against a lacklustre army of deadbeat gang bangers and an unconvincing bent cop. The journey home is peppered with low-rent bust ups as Bobby does his best at kicking some face. Once home he discovers his daughter has been kidnapped by Mr Big and he has to set off on his Harley with his shades on at 2 am with only some other WWF guy to help.

This is a real comedy classic and if it wasn’t being played straight you’d think it a masterpiece. I know you can’t expect a lot in a film starring Rob Van Dam in the acting stakes but this is really cringe making stuff. Rob is actually only dreadful in the lead as a black ops guy with more muscles than a sea food restaurant. He doesn’t even master the basics like remembering to limp after he’s been shot in the leg and the emotional scenes with the daughter will make you wince and snigger in equal measure.

You’d imagine that when you have wrestlers in the main roles you’d get them a bit of support in the cast but no! Seth, the main villain, is played by possibly the worst actor you’ll ever see. He heads a gang of baldies that are as menacing as the Teletubbies. His maniacal rantings and burst of anger come across as mild annoyance and his henchmen, including a mute black man in sun glasses, beggar belief.

The action scenes are really poor and amount to a few people getting kicked in the balls. Obviously wrestling moves don’t translate to street fighting, what with the lack of folding chairs and all, so all our muscle bound main man can manage is a couple of bitch slaps.

The whole thing wraps up pretty neatly in the course of one night and hopefully that’ll also cover the span of the careers of all those involved.

Best Bit : Rob Hits the Strip Joint
‘W’ Rating 11/23

No.162 : Whiteout (2009)

Whiteout at the IMDb

It’s kind of hard to motivate yourself to watch a film like ‘Whiteout’ in the midst of the coldest winter in memory but alas ‘Couples Retreat’ doesn’t start with a ‘W’.

The film had the dreaded ‘DVD Premiere’ tag which seems strange as it’s a perfectly decent thriller with high production values. Maybe it couldn’t find a spot at the multi plexes due to the dominance of ‘St Trinians 2 : The legend of Fritton’s Gold’.

The film opens in 1957 with a Russian plane struggling through a winter’s storm to an unknown destination. The pilot and co-pilot chat in subtitles and it’s clear that a plan is afoot. The co-pilot goes into the cargo hold and plies his passengers with vodka before trying to shoot them all. The plan is pretty poor, as is that of the passengers who start machine gunning everything including the pilot. Luckily the plane manages to land itself leaving the secret cargo intact and stuck in the ice of the South Pole.

As you’d expect things soon melt into the present day where we meet US marshal Carrie (Kate Beckinsale) who suffers from sepia flashback fever. She does her best to warm things up by stripping off for a shower but that’s pretty much your lot as it’s all mittens and no muff from here on in.

The base is closing down for the winter with the bad weather set to descend in 72 hours. It’s poor timing therefore that lets the pilot with the best eyesight in history spot a body on a remote glacier. Our able copper is soon on her way helped by Tom Skerritt’s crusty doctor and a mysterious man from the UN who is keen to avoid Antarctica’s first murder getting out of hand.

After some implausible deductions our heroine is soon checking out a remote Russian base only to be attacked by a nutter with an ice axe. She manages to get away with the loss of only a few digits and soon she’s found the source of all the trouble - it’s that downed Ruskie plane - knew it was there for a reason.

With the bodies stacking up and the weather closing in can Kate solve the mystery of the Black Tragic Box?

This is a perfectly decent thriller that looks good and has some exciting set pieces. That said I fear it’s memory will be lost like snow off a dyke. It is well made and well acted it’s just nothing that special or different.

The settings are great and the weather is always a threat. When Kate is having an ice axe fight in the snow you wouldn’t guess that it’s the door handle that will score the most points. The sense of isolation is also well worked as is the lack of help when the shit inevitably hits the fan.

Kate Beckinsale does quite will with a thinly drawn character who is transparent from the off. She’s obviously on this remote detail due to some incident in the past and we get frequent flashback clues to the deadly event. The problem is that you’ll guess the whole story from the first flashback so when you finally get the big reveal towards the end it’s a total anti climax.

The mystery element is OK although the various schemes to secure the illicit cargo seem unnecessarily complicated - old Tom Skerritt could of achieved the same aim with a well zipped up soap bag! The big fight in the blizzard towards the end was poorly executed however as you has three people in parkas and goggles scrapping in a snow storm - as you’d guess it was kinda hard to make out what was happening!

All in all ‘Whiteout’ was a decent thriller and had enough going on in it’s 100 minutes to keep me interested. Just a pity that the thrills and chills were so widely spaced that they may be digging for 50 years to unearth it once it’s done the rounds.


Best Bit : Kate Gets Fingered
‘W’ Rating : 14/23

No.160 : Weekend With The Babysitter (1970)

Weekend With the Babysitter at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity from 1970 that garnered a frankly woeful 1.4/10 at the IMDb. It’s a hard film to categorise - it’s a sort of soft porn, action thriller fantasy with a bit of education and stoner wisdom thrown in for good measure.

We open with scenes of a young girl on a moped inter cut with some action at the border. The customs are shown to be doing a bang up job and although that seems incongruous with the carefree girl all will become clear soon. Or not, depends if you can stay the course really.

Anyway our hot chick arrives at her destination and we find that she’s the titular babysitter - but there’s been a mix up! The wife is indeed going out but not with the husband who is staying in. As he waves the wife off he tells the girl to stay so he can pay her for her time. The dirty bastard.

The pair settle down on the sofa and the girl starts reading a script that the chap, who is a director, is due to film next week. The girl laughs at how crummy the script is (oh the irony!) and tells him that the kids don’t talk like that. To prove her point she takes him out to meet her skuzzy friends.

Meanwhile, we learn that the wife has a drug problem and is visiting her dealer. They want paid and all she can offer is a loan of her husband’s boat which could bypass the customs problems we witnessed earlier. They take her along on the smuggling trip and after doping her up make her indulge in some lesbian sex for no other reason, it would seem, other than to secure an ‘X’ certificate for this tame offering.

Back at the house the husband is flat on his back after the night on the tiles but the girl stays over to make him breakfast and take him to the speedway, like you do. After lots of unnecessary shots of screaming bikes and babysitter nudity he realises that his wife is missing and commandeers a friend’s plane to search for her. Once spotted he rallies his new biker chums to intercept the bad guys and save the wife. Will lives be lost and will our man take his junkie wife back over the nubile babysitter?

This is quite a funny film if you don’t take it too seriously. The two leads are awful with the silver haired director as convincing as a hat stand. We’ve no idea what the baby sitter’s motivation is in seducing the old timer but fair play to him seeing as this was before the time of Viagra. The sex scenes are pretty tame although I did like how one ended with a cut to an anchor splashing into the water!

The kids all get a say and one boy’s assertion that not all bikers were bad was proven when they intercept the bad guys and destroy their drugs rather than toking up themselves. The twangy early 70’s soundtrack is a bit of a distraction but if ever a film was of its time this is it.

It’s certainly not as bad as the low scoring suggests but by no means a classic either. For your money you do get a fair bit of nudity, some cringingly bad sex scenes and dialogue you wouldn’t hear in a porno - so a wise investment all round then!

Best Bit : Pilot calling the control tower and asking them to call a biker bar for help

‘W’ Rating 11/23

No. 152 : Wheels Of Terror (1990)

Wheels of Terror (1990) at the IMDb

Here’s the first doubler of the ‘W’ quest with this feature unrelated to the Ollie Reed World War 2 fest we enjoyed slightly way back when. This film has an iconic poster that I remember from the home video hay day of the early eighties. I never saw the film then as the shop never had it in but having seen it now I wish I had kept the air of mystery as it is complete crap.

It was made as a TV movie so you have to give it some latitude but not much as it’s patently awful. The film is effectively one big chase with a few bits of nonsense bolted on for the sake of the running time. We open with a single mum moving to a remote town. She has a history of being a driver (remember that) and has a job driving a school bus which has a souped up engine courtesy of a friendly Mexican (remember that too!).

Mother and daughter relocated to get away from crime ridden LA but wouldn’t you know it that the small town is being menaced by a bad car complete with its own ominous musical cues. We know the car is bad as it has blacked out windows and is a bit dirty. Despite the town being tiny no one seems to notice this dirty Dodge Charger crawling about outside the primary school. Soon a girl is abducted and is retuned interfered with so we know we are dealing with a nonce with a dirty car - the worst kind.

He soon elevates his crimes to murder and the local town meeting is in brouhaha crisis although they pooh-pooh the bad car stories. Despite being the main voice of caution the bus driving mum sees her daughter taken next and embarks on a half hour cross country chase in her school bus to reclaim her captured child. After the seemingly endless chase the car goes off a cliff but then reappears suggesting something supernatural, but then it goes over again and into a dynamite shack for good measure and that’s that.

This film marks a nadir in The Quest and frankly I’m regretting some of the low ratings I’ve issued before as this is the worst of the lot. The ‘bad car’ just comes across as daft and annoying. We never know the driver or his history and all attempts to make a character out of the vehicle itself fail miserably. It does have headlight eyes and a growly voice but that’s it. It’s not even that fast failing to out run a school bus (albeit a souped up one) and it’s really wimpy when given even the slightest bump.

The heroine working mum struggling with her single parenthood and holding down a job is a real cliché but she does buck that somewhat by doing some mean driving stunts in a bus. The seemingly endless chase sequence is really poor with the same put the bad guy into a spin move done a dozen times. There are a couple of humorous moves where the car jumps out, especially one where it flattens a motorcycle cop, but it never graduates from the ridiculous. The coup de gras ending where it lands on a hut marked ‘EXPLOSIVES’ is straight out of Looney Tunes and is a fitting ending to a rubbishy and far fetched TV movie that wants the style of ‘Vanishing Point’ but has all the charisma of vanish stain remover.

Best Bit : Watch out for the TNT shack!
‘W’ rating : 1/23

No. 150 : Wake of Death (2004)

Wake of Death at the IMDb

Good old Jean Claude Van Damme, he’s never one for lofty aspirations like doing Shakespeare or Brecht, he knows his audience and sticks to a strict formula for every film. ‘Wake of Death’ is as you’d expect a revenge thriller with high kicks and a high body count but what did you expect?

To give some credit they do try and be a wee bit clever with a big car chase and deadly peril for JCVD right at the start. Before he cops it the film flashes back and it’s over an hour before we get back to the opening scene again. I hope Jean Claude’s fans weren’t too confused by this non-linear experiment but don’t worry it’s not ‘Memento’ or anything, just a cheap way to open with an unearned bang.

Anyway Jean is a club owner who has just retired from his job as a hench man for the local mafia boss. He has a pretty wife and young son and wants to be nice. Fat chance! The wife works at immigration and when a boat is found full of Hong Kong refugees she takes a little girl home, like you do. But no! This little girl saw her Dad kill her Mum and she’s on the run.

Nasty Dad touches down in LA minutes later and sets about reclaiming his daughter. After some gratuitous sex Van Damme heads to work only for his wife to be killed by the baddie with his big stiletto knife. Claude has about 30 seconds of blubbing and flashbacks to happier times before a chinaman jumps through his window with a samurai sword and it’s game on.

The rest of the film is basically Jean and his pal high kicking their way through the Yakuza. He uses his underworld contacts to do some pretty nasty torture on his behalf and lets his pal do most of the high kicking as he’s getting on a bit himself. As the end nears and we pass the bit we saw earlier we have to wonder if Jean will reclaim his son, save the nice little girl, get the bad guy and have a little bit of redemption for himself.

If you put your brain in neutral you’ll have a good time with ‘Wake of Death’. It ticks most of the boxes with some good fights and explosions. You also get a small dose of angst, some nudity and a man being stabbed in the balls. The plot is as predictable as they come but at least some effort is made to show that Jean isn’t a totally nice guy and some of the deaths are brutal to say the least.

The villains are a bunch of oriental caricatures but this was never going to be a film with a layered and fleshed out bad guy. The ending on a ship, in the fog at night was a straight lift from ‘Lethal weapon 2’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’ with every door offering a fresh seaman for a colourful dispatch. The ending may have a small element of surprise but that’s the only bit in this workmanlike, straight forward and highly enjoyable thriller.

Best Bit : Wife makes up for the Chinese Takeaway
‘W’ Rating 13/23

No. 127 : Wild Things (1998)

Wild Things at the IMDb

Here’s a saucy number that you’ve probably seen but I feel these things are best examined closely. For the subtle nuances in the detective case you understand, not the lithe young bodies sweatily gyrating around. Hardly noticed that at all.

The film is set at a Florida school and sees Matt Dillon’s PE teacher rather unwisely allow Denise Richards to wash his jeep. We don’t see what goes on but she cries rape and the case is investigated by Kevin Bacon’s cynical detective. The case looks shaky until skuzzy local Neve Campbell says he raped her too and even used the same dirty talk - how lazy is that?!

As Richards’ family are local royalty the case is high profile but it all goes awry when under cross examination from Bill Murray’s sleazy lawyer, Campbell breaks down and admits it was all a set up. Clearly wronged Dillon gets a massive pay off from Richards’ family but far from being over the shocks and bodies come thick and fast as layer upon layer of conspiracy is revealed and pretty soon we’ve no idea who’s doing what to whom and for what.

This plot summary is only a brief recap as any more would spoil a few surprises, most of which I’d forgotten since my last viewing which must have been a decade ago. In truth some of the twists are ridiculous and the planning and timing necessary to pull off some of the schemes would have NASA’s computer buzzing for weeks. The scheme isn’t really the thing of course and when you have various combinations of sexy young people getting it on it seems churlish even to mention it.

The film maintains a fast pace and despite a few incredulous moments I was happy to stay the course through wrong foot after misdirection. The excellent cast keep a straight face throughout and I imagine Dillon asked how much he’d have to pay to secure the role. I liked Theresa Russell as the slutty Mom and she was ably assisted with Robert ’Number Two’ Wagner as her attorney. I also liked Denise Richards who can deliver a ’Fuck Off’ like no one else and Campbell was fine despite being a bit shyer than the others.

The film also has a nice touch during the credits where we get a few unseen scenes from the film which demonstrate how things actually went down behind closed doors.

Given the fate of most of the cast it is a surprise that this film spawned two sequels which no doubt maintained the successful recipe of sex and violence. As a detective tale it’s a bit daft but as a sexy thriller with a few laughs it can’t be knockers. Er, knocked.

Best Bit : Hotel Reunion
‘W’ Rating : 16/23

No.93 : Waist Deep (2006)

 Waist Deep at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of bad ass action from South Central, ma hoodies. I can’t go on like that for long but this film manages it for 90 minutes without pausing for breath or providing subtitles.

Tyrese Gibson stars as a single dad stuck at his low rent security job. He’s a two time loser trying to make good for his boy. He is due to pick up the kid but is let down by his relief meaning that he has to take his gun home with him. This seemingly unnecessary detail is included to show that our man is a victim of circumstance and not a trigger happy bad ass as some people, a jury for example, may think.

He manages to get to the boy somewhat late but makes good with a toy horsey. For reasons unknown the boy goes to sleep in the back seat and is taken along with the ride when our hero is car jacked. After some massive gun play the baddies get away and our man’s only link to them is through the sexy street suit saleswoman who may have been the set up girl for the car jackers.

Eventually the gangsters get in touch and demand $100K for the boy’s safe return. We learn that our man is just out of jail for a robbery and the hoods think he may still have the loot stashed away. He of course doesn’t and has to embark on a massive crime spree to collect the ransom and save his boy. The girl tags along unwillingly but when she is promised a cut of the take she helps out hoping to free herself from her own crappy existence.

With the cash raised the trade off is arranged but can our man survive the many double crosses ahead of him and stay out of the clutches of the understandably keen police?

This is a really rubbish film but that’s not to say it doesn’t have its moments. Most of these are unintentionally funny scenes where the gun play and over the top action stretch your disbelief and then break it. It is churlish to pick nits as I’m clearly not the target audience. I can see loads of Ali G types getting their wannabe gangster wish fulfilment addressed every time a gun is held side on or someone is addressed as ‘Mofo’.

The ‘hero’ is shown as a decent man fighting for what’s his but he comes across as a terrifying and reckless manic who shoots folk execution style and sticks up banks without a thought for the terrified staff and customers.

The plot is simple as ABC which is probably necessary as subtle plot points would be missed as you punch the air and shout ‘Cap his ass’ a lot. The characters are also wafer thin with development strictly in the ‘arrested’ mode. The two leads are quite decent given the limited material and despite its moral vacuum and terrible message you could do worse for a night‘s guilty pleasure.

Best Bit : Shawshank Steal

‘W’ Rating : 12/23

No.78 : Wild Side (1995)

Wild Side at the IMDb


‘Wild Side’ is a sexy thriller that is strangely devoid of sex appeal and indeed thrills. Anne Heche plays an expensive (no such thing as ‘high class’!) hooker who has a night of grinding planned with the dodgily coiffured Christopher Walken. He is a bad guy money launderer and has been targeted by the FBI in the past in honey trap operations. He thinks Anne may be an agent but reasons that if she is really a hooker she’ll shag his body guard for $500. Anne is a hooker but laughs off the low rent deal only to get raped by the body guard, who is in fact an undercover FBI agent. Keeping up?

Anne reports the rapist agent to his bosses but rather than investigate the crime they tell her that  unless she cooperates in nabbing Walken that they’ll tell her banking bosses of her sexy sideline. Anne doesn't like her day job at the bank, as all the clients play grab ass, but she needs the job to keep her house so reluctantly agrees to go along with the dubious plan.

Sexy Joan Chen then shows up at Anne’s bank and the two soon become lovers. We learn Joan is married to Walken and a three way scam starts with the alliances unclear. They plan to infect the banking system with a virus and steal $160 million in the process. Things complicate further when the romantic tangle causes Joan to overdose on pills. With the relationships straining against the stress of the complex cycle of duplicity and muddy plotting we have to guess who’ll end up with who and at what cost.

This was an atrocious movie with some of the worst acting you’ll ever see. Tony the sassy bodyguard come cop is as convincing as Big Bird would have been in the role and he equates shouting with acting in every scene. Walken is usually good value but he wilts under the twin strains of a bad wig and shocking script.

The plot, which seems to be deliberately meandering and vague, is all over the place and if it’s trying to mimic the complexities of the characters’ relationships, it succeeds only in duplicating their annoyingness. There are plenty of sex scenes to keep the casual pervert happy involving all of the cast in various combinations. “Do I look like a lesbian to you?” screams Anne in somewhat feigned outrage.

The dialogue is really bad with lines like “banking is like the Mafia- you’re in it for life” - say what? Walken also threatens to kill someone who is attempting suicide without any apparent irony. “ She leaves an I blow your genitalia off“ from a faux Italian Walken also stood out as did “It ain't Ben Dover, Idaho“.

Anne is pretty enough and has a good body which she’s not shy about showing off, but her sexy scenes left me a bit cold. It may have been the blue lighting or the fact that she was grinding Walken who was wearing a Beatles wig, but erotic it was not. Her thin reedy voice and pain of a character made it hard to empathise with her situation and frankly I was cheering on Walken, wig and kinks included. Chen looked pretty uncomfortable doing the lesbian scenes and he weedy character was the same as she trotted out in ‘Twin Peaks’.

If you watch this with ironic detachment you will find a few laughs with the crappy dialogue and chronic acting. You also get a few bangs for your buck, but overall this film should be an embarrassment to all involved.

Best Bit : Walken confronts guard with Trojan as Anne puts fingers in ears.


‘W’ Score 8/23

No.74 : Waz (2007)

Waz at the IMDb

The IMDb gives the title of this film as ‘W Delta Z’ which seems a bit literal to me but to be fair they do use the Greek letter as a substitute ‘A’. Never mind, gets on the list either way!

‘Waz’ is a detective thriller in which a serial killer is on the loose. Jaded detective Eddie Argo and his fresh faced partner Helen notice that the bodies have unusual injuries and have an equation carved into their flesh. Lab tests reveal the presence of horse tranquilliser and as good fortune would have it there is only one source of the drug in the area. They raid the supplier and find slightly wacky lab man Dennis Pennis and the self same equation on the black board. It transpires that Pennis is just the supplier and he only has a few clues to assist the detectives.

The cops notice that the bodies are linked and that they appeared to have been given the choice to be killed or allow a close friend or relative to die in their place. We learn that Eddie had a high profile case collapse that involved many of the now dead people and his only link is the victim in that case, a rather grubby looking Selma Blair. Things move quickly when we learn that Blair is indeed the killer and that she’s been working on the equation which she believes proves that we’ll always seek self preservation over the welfare of others, even if they are our children or grandparents.

The last surviving acquitted man is in police protection but manages to fall into the killers hands. Eddie now has a choice should he let the man die or place himself in the killer’s hands?





This was a pretty horrible post ‘Saw’ serial killer with an elaborate plan movie. I don’t know what’s wrong with a good old fashioned killing spree as nowadays it seems to be a requirement that the killer has a scheme and a sound proof basement. The tortures such as nails bashed into finger nails and knees hammered were really gruesome and certainly not my idea of entertainment.



The detection angle was pretty good, although as soon as we meet the scarred and weird Blair there is no doubt that she’s the baddie. They did well to dispel any notions that her plan was unworkable by having her enlist unwilling strangers to help he move burly men by acting weak and needy.

The big reveal at the end did catch me unaware but on reflection it wasn’t really believable and nothing that had gone before gave it any credibility. The torture scenes were brutal and nasty and although necessary in the frame work of the film you have to wonder who’d enjoy seeing them.

These torture horror crime films are getting more and more prevalent and it isn’t welcome trend. This film wanted to be ‘Se7en’ but fell well short of that and barely scraped its way to parity with the likes of the ‘Saw’ franchise. It did have a good cast but when you have Melissa George and Selma Blair looking like a pair of hags you are clearly not making the most of your assets. Of course grimy and squalid is what the director aspired too and the fact that he achieved this meant only that my enjoyment was curtailed.

Not one to recommended unless you are a sick son of a bitch!


Best Bit : How much do you love Granny?

‘W’ Score : 12/23

No.50 : Who Dares Wins (1982)

Who Dares Wins at the IMDb


The whole world watched as the S.A.S. stormed the Iranian embassy in 1980 killing terrorists and freeing hostages. Considerably fewer people watched ‘Who Dares Wins’ which is a crappy 1982 cash in starring Lewis ‘Bodie’ Collins.

The film starts with a ‘Ban the Bomb’ demo that has some really catchy slogans “5-6-7-8 we don’t want to irradiate” they chant. A man is the killed by a crossbow (very environmentally friendly there) and we learn that he is a government plant who had been discovered by the radicals. The Brass now have a problem - they know the Peoples’ Front have a high profile target, but what can it be?

In order to infiltrate the gang S.A.S. Captain Peter Skellen fakes some brutality on his men and is kicked out. Acting (term used loosely) all disaffected Skellen meets and instantly beds the terrorist leader who, to be frank, is a bit easy - but he is wearing his good blazer. Now on the inside Skellen starts to feed info to his contact but isn’t trusted by Triffid botherer John Duttine, who plays Red Rod.

When he is spotted snogging his wife and chatting to men on boats Skellens’s cover is blown but when his family is kidnapped he has to play along with the terrorists’ plan. They seize the American ambassador and a room full of brass and make the reasonable request that the government nuke Holy Loch for their release. Can Skellen help the impending rescue attempt from the inside using all his specialist training?

When I first saw this film when 12 I thought it was pretty cool and Lewis Collins a God, but sadly it isn’t and he’s a tosser. The whole set up is ridiculous for a start. Why is an S.A.S. captain being used as a covert operative? M.I.5 and C.I.5 all busy? I suppose this does explain why Skellen is a rubbish agent, getting made by everyone as soon as he shows up.

The scene where he seduces the lady terrorist is a laugh as blazer clad Lewis opens with “I want to take you to bed” and gets an immediate ‘OK‘. This hard as nails bitch basically gets all her pals killed as the next day Lewis is moving in and calling the shots. As a feminist radical Judy Davis’ character is a joke and she must have cringed when directed to fawn over Lewis and then simper up to him, asking advice.



The back up crew of Edward Woodward as the head copper and Richard Widmark as the ambassador basically show up for the paycheque. There is one laughable scene where Widmark debates the situation with the terrorists under gunpoint and still has them running off in tears - one up for the good guys!

The rescue is basically a straight steal of the real life event, even down to the trooper getting set on fire by flaming curtains. Only one gung-ho hostage bravely dies for a return of every terrorist including the black Scottish guy out of ‘Porridge’.

You obviously can’t take it too seriously with its caricature Red baddies and desperate acting, especially in a career ending performance from Collins, but it is OK as throwaway entertainment. The attempts at politics and commentary were heavy handed with a nasty Arab handing over fat cheques and dining with pinkos at parliament.

Another childhood memory tarnished thanks to the ‘W’ quest! That said, the two hours passed quickly and I still got a thrill when Lewis lead the troupe through the embassy with his Uzi. Just don’t tell anyone I said that.

Best Bit : Lewis smooth talks the knickers off the baddie

‘W’ Score 14/23

No.40 : Walking Tall (2004)

Walking Tall at the IMDb

The Rock comes home to his town and finds it a crap hole. He cleans house. Er. That’s it.

Well I never thought ‘Walking Tall’ would be plot heavy and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. It was quite good fun though, and at 73 minutes you could watch it while making love to a beautiful woman and still have an hour to fill.

The Rock is an ex-special forces man and heads home after 8 years away. The town looks perfectly nice but we know it’s a stink hole when he walks past a pawn brokers and a dirty book shop. He has a belligerent Dad who doesn’t like guns (remember that for later kids!) and a nephew who is about to go off the tracks.


He meets up with his pal Johnny Knoxville, who has a record and sleazy acquaintance Neil McDonough who inherited the good old mill only to close it and build a casino instead. Sounds like a solid business plan but The Rock doesn’t agree, possibly due to a lacklustre lap dance they give him. After getting conned at dice he wrecks the joint but is carved up by some baddies who bushwhack him - didn’t he learn anything in the WWF?

After his nephew nearly overdoses on casino brand drugs The Rock heads over and beats the crap out of everyone. Unsurprisingly he gets charged but in an OJ style verdict he not only gets off but elected sheriff too! When he goes after the casino boys they take umbrage and try to kill him, his family and his now girlfriend lap dancer. After some carnage the final showdown is arranged at the Old Mill which is now the Old Crack factory. Can our man win the day? Or will the baddies triumph with the aid of dirty tricks and a folding chair?

It’s hard to criticise ‘Walking Tall’ as it does what it says on the tin. Yeah, the shades of black and white are absolute and the violence ridiculous but it’s good snappy fun with a likeable cast of heroes and villains. Why the bad guy wants to run a rigged casino when he has a guaranteed money making machine anyway is anyone’s guess, but if it was me I’d let the guy try and roll a six - you’ll be ahead more often than not. The love interest was pretty forgettable but give her her dues, she looked fine shooting guns in her red bra.

The conclusion was a bit too pat for my liking with no real casualties on the good guys side and a wealth of lawsuits, no doubt lined up by the baddies’ many orphans. It’s a lot of old cobblers but at just over an hour it’s a fun load of old cobblers that you won’t regret having watched. Unless you’re one of those ‘I like quality films’ people, then you’d be disappointed.

Best Bit :Get me my plank!

‘W’ Score 15/23