George & Mildred (1980)

The 1970s and 1980s was a hard time for British cinema with money scarce and seemingly ideas even scarcer. Popular sitcoms and other TV shows were ruthlessly plundered to make low budget and relatively low risk movies. George & Mildred was a popular TV sitcom that ran in the late 1970s and became the latest show to hit the big screen. It was also such a colossal flop it pretty much ended the practice.

Truthfully the feature length versions of these sitcoms and dramas has produced some turkeys (and some decent fare such as the Sweeney movies). How about George & Mildred the movie? It's not as bad as you think, it's certainly not good by any stretch of the imagination but it could have been so much worse.

Starring Brian Murthy and Yootha Joyce the film involves various ridiculous scenes in a posh hotel (where George is mistaken for a hitman - the sheer bizarreness of this one of the best things about the film). Ultimately though the film is too far removed from the original show and what made it popular.

Blue Lightning (1991)

Hong Kong: it seduces you, inspires you, attracts you but it's a tough mistress. The streets have the bright lights and a myriad of attractions but in a dark alleyway something is always ready to bite you on the ass.

Danny Lee plays a drunk ex-cop whose ex-wife is killed by person unknown. Only their kid survives. But why kill the woman? That's the question on the lips of cop Tony Leung Ka Fei. As they investigate the crime they start to delve into a world of blackmail, corruption and underage sex...

A bigwig in HK is preparing for election but has a dark secret the assassin is trying to cover up. The assassin comes back for more to remove the evidence, including the friend of the deceased woman in the form of Olivia Cheng (in her last film before she changed career to become a golf instructor). And then he comes after Danny. The bigwig has the police in his pocket, can he be stopped?

A hard bleak and very violent film. In this film HK is sleazy, HK is brutal, and HK doesn't care as another victim bleeds to death on it's tarmac...

Murder Weapon (1989)

A sex slash gore movie basically. There is an awful lot of murder, an awful lot of sex and it's also pretty awful.

The premise of the film involves two girls (played by Linnea Quigley and Karen Russell) recently released from a psychiatric hospital inviting some of their ex-s to a party who then start getting killed.

Quite a simple premise, and of course it needs some setting up but the film takes ages doing that - including some interminable flashbacks to where the girls are psychologically assessed.

When the murders finally start they are low-budget gore cheese and completely ridiculous. To sum this film up: the sound and set design is all over the place, acting fairly non-existent and the story makes little sense. So obviously it's brilliant. Or would have been if it had cut out a bit of the waffle.

Seven Days to Noon (1950)

A renegade scientist steals a nuclear warhead from a British research centre. If that's not bad enough he's now in London and threatening to blow the city up if the government doesn't renounce nuclear weapons in seven days...

Barry Jones plays the idealist scientist and Andre Morell plays a Scotland Yard superintendent leading the manhunt to find him. While the almost impossible search takes place the government begins the enormous task of evacuating one of the largest cities in the world. This goes pretty well though all considering, though we're only a few years after WW2 so the Army and authorities had plenty of practice in mass personnel deployment!

A tense and well structured suspense movie. The characters are well drawn, the scientist for example is misguided rather than evil. Supporting characters add a bit of lightness where needed.

The Transformers: the movie (1986)

The Transformers: the movie was an animated feature to help sell the toys... i mean tell the remarkable story of the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons...

The film is notable for some of the actors who lent their voices to the characters, especially Orson Welles who voiced Unicron. Amazingly this was the great man's last role. Other stars who you can hear in this film are Leonard Nimoy, Casey Kasem and Eric Idle. Not many films can boast that kind of line-up!

The story itself is decent enough with nothing too innovative. The film flows well though your attention may wander after a while, what works as an half hour long TV episode does not necessarily translate into an hour and a half long movie. A problem with the film, i feel, is that it was too much like the TV series...

Visually however it is still a treat and the soundtrack... well if you like late 80s US heavy metal then you'll love it. Otherwise you may want to bring ear plugs. Personally i love it and own the OST too.

Overall its a decent enough animated film. Maybe it didn't work as a movie that well but it certainly was light years ahead of the endless CGI-fests that are the Transformers movie experiences today.

Quiet Fire (1991)

1991 action movie Quiet Fire stars Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as ...guess what? A Vietnam vet! Well that is a surprise...

Lawrence's ex-commanding officer is now running for the US senate and he thinks Lawrence has the dirty on him which could derail his blossoming political career.

Therefore he sends an army of assassins (including two female bodybuilders - no really) and bent cops (including Robert Z'dar) to kill him. Luckily everyone is pretty inept at killing our hero though there is plenty of collateral damage.

The film is hilarious, and very little of that intentional. The action comes thick and fast but is generally pretty shoddy though entertaining along with most of the acting. There is also plenty of unnecessary but gratuitous female nudity. Plus a heavy amount of cheese.

Therefore it has all the ingredients to make a great trash movie. And it is. I enjoy this kind of film a lot and particularly this one, Lawrence had the right amount of charm and goofiness to suit the nonsense going on around him.

Bluebottles (1928)

Bluebottles is a charming comedy short starring Elsa Lanchester, one of three stories written for her by H.G. Wells and with a small cameo from her future husband Charles Laughton.

In the film Elsa plays an innocent happy-go-lucky girl who gets drawn into a cops and robbers gun battle by accident and also by accident ends up the heroine. The film is often quite surreal and often in the vein of a comic strip, the robbers for example all have stripey jumpers - all they needed were bags over their shoulders with "Swag" written on them!

While everyone else in the film is drawn as a fairly conventional and one dimensional stereotype Elsa displays a whole range of expressions and emotions and the overall effect is quite amazing. A very enjoyable little film.