End of my 20s - Battle Royale

Well, this has been my last film of my 20s. I'll keep this one short as well, because I've got half a bottle of champagne in me! Ultraviolence in Japan. Quentin Tarantino loves it.

Now I'm going to go and be a year older. *sob*

End of my 20s - Evil Dead II

"Groovy."

My next film of the day, after washing up and feeding the cats, has been Evil Dead II, which, coincidentally, is subtitled on some versions as "Dead By Dawn". So I've seen two dawny, deady films today. There's a theme, somewhere...

Anyway, it's a silly film, with a plot that's not terribly challenging. To be frank, it's not much more than an exercise in physical comedy to put Bruce Campbell through his paces. It has some stop-motion puppetry that would have Ray Harryhausen weeping in his muesli. You can see strings, wires, the top of the set and Ted Raimi's bottom hanging out of his posessed mother costume (as he spins like a horror pinada). It's silly and has its faults by the dozen.

But it's just such good fun. Zombies, chainsaws, three distinct primary colours of blood, flying eyeballs, shotguns, posessed hands, laughing zombie deer heads... they're all here. And it's an MTV-attention-friendly 82 minutes so it's all packed in tight and furious. Fab.

My retrospective tale of this film... I first saw this film in Jonathan Nash's flat, whilst I was working at Your Sinclair for a week on the final issue - June 1993. I was knackered and fell asleep after twenty minutes, so he put it on a second time and I finally saw it all. I lapped up the lot. That same week I saw Braindead with him and Andy Ounsted in the tiny cinema in the middle of Bath; that film being one of Peter Jackson's zombie flicks. I was torn between watching Evil Dead II and Bad Taste, Jackson's other zombie flick today, but went for Evil Dead II simply because it's been longer since I last saw it. Either way, there was going to be a Jonathan Nash link, one way or t'other.

And now of course, Evil Dead's director Sam Raimi commands respect for his Spiderman movies, and Peter Jackson did some films with hobbits and limited appeal. *cough* Nice to know ultra-low-budget film makers end up with big bucks in the end.

No links this time because there's far too many already. =)

End of my 20s - Withnail and I

"We've come on holiday by mistake!"

Yep, my second film today has been Withnail and I. Takes me back 11 years, I guess. First saw it after drinks in a pub in Ponty, The Maltsters. Eventually got hold of a copy of my own - a dreadful recording off defunct satelite platform BSB (the one with those 'squariel' dish affairs) - in 1994. The sound was about as quiet as you can imagine, but with my old VCR hooked up to my old hi-fi, it was watchable. Bought the tenth anniversary VHS copy in 1996, it must've been. Bought it on DVD a couple of years ago because it was cheap in HMV.

Like Dawn of the Dead I've seen it a while heap of times, and I used to know the entire script off by heart. It turns out I still remember the lion's share of it. I still smile when I see the various 80s cars (there's a white Escort with white hubcaps that you can't miss, and a plethora of others) and the big fat M25 sign - these days they'd be CGIed out, but in Withnail it's quite charming.

Great film. IMDB link and a website refered to in the DVD booklet. Ace.

End of my 20s - Dawn of the Dead

Well, today is the last day of my 20s, so I've taken the day off work so that I can do a few things to celebrate. The first thing I did, at 10am, was watch the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead on DVD. This is my all-time favourite film, and I clock it at about the 40th viewing. It's by no means a perfect film; it has continuity errors, bad effects (like completely opaque blood) and has dated somewhat, but I love it to bits.

Part of its appeal to me is it's datedness. It was made in the end of 1977 and released in 1978, and it's obvious. And the scenes in the shopping mall take me back to 1978, when I was four, and I have clear memories of going around the shopping centre in Gloucester with my cousins when they were visiting us, and the decor was the same.

Another part of the appeal is due to when I first saw it properly. I'd caught a bit of it on video about 10 years ago, but paid it little attention. The case it was in was a dire, schlock-horror type thing, which did a good job of turning me off watching it, and I was a smidgen drunk. Still, I saw enough of it to keep the name and subject locked up in my brain. I first saw it properly in early 1997, when it was on late-night BBC2 in a slightly cut form. It sticks out because at the time I was beginning to suffer very badly from depression prior to moving house - something I haven't shaken off seven years on, sadly - and this film was the only thing that made me stop wallowing, stop shaking and stop crying. I think it must've envolved all the right circuits in my brain, or something. As a result, it has remained very special to me.

There's plenty of info on IMDB and Homepage of the Dead to explain the film in full. I'm not going to do that because I've got other things to do today, and I want some lunch before doing them. But consider it a recommendation.