Cold Fish

Having recently rented this movie I have to recommend it to all the readers on IMDb. It really is a really great thriller. A Great story with some strong acting and some really wonderful and engaging imagery. Using selected news footage the film makers have manipulated them to produce images of real artistic quality.

This film takes you quite literally in to the dark and ominous world of The Henleys, a pair of scandal hungry video artists. Their reality of how they produce some of these images is investigated and uncovered by the freelance video journalist Alex as he ventures in their distasteful world. This film may shock some people but I could thoroughly recommend it to those brave enough.

Let's get one thing straight from the start: THIS IS A ROTTEN MOVIE! I know because I'm one of the few people to have seen it, one of the few that will ever see it and because I know a lot of people who worked on it and had to hear their horror stories about how bad the shoot was.

OK, but a bad film shoot experience doesn't necessarily mean a bad end product so I'll stick to JUST the movie review. First of all, it's not a disturbing film because of the material: You hardly see any of the "execution" footage and the characters are so laughable and unconvincing you don't find the premise convincing either. The plot of execution footage for art was the plot of an old episode of "Doomwatch" back in the early 70's. Just rip off Doomwatch, no one will notice..... The script is also littered with inappropriate swear words in the wrong places, much like Spock's "they're not the hell your whales" line in Star Trek IV. "If you think the f*** you can sleep with my wife..." And they try to add a love triangle/quartet plot in there which is frankly, the f***, is hard to believe...as if any of the main characters could find each other attractive.

I mentioned the characters and unconvincing characters are made worse by having inept acting. It's saying something when the two best performances come from "cameos" from Christopher Biggins and Rose Marie. The supposedly "sinister" couple are straight from an amateur dramatics company with the least threatening villain since the con man from "Bodger and Badger" (the gun up the bottom scene raises many unintentional laughs) making threats in a totally wooden delivery. Oh, speaking of wooden, I forgot to mention Jon-Paul Gates. What is with his accent? It's high pitched, whiny and somewhere between the West Country and the land of the Chipmunks. He's supposed to be a virile, dedicated newshound and sex machine and yet....with his strangulated accent and tendency to go cross eyed when he's concentrating, I end up trying to curb my laughter.

The lighting is also all over the place...massively overlit for the most part and with smoke machines pouring out pointless smoke effects through white light to give it that 80's Duran Duran video look. Only it doesn't quite pull it off. I say doesn't quite but I really mean to say it overshoots it and crash lands in a burning, twisted mess.

It's a shame they're not making any more episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 because it's prime fodder for them. Oh, and Dave 777 from London really likes this film so much he's written 3 different reviews of it! And 3 people have voted this movie a 10! And the director's first name is David...wow, what a coincidence.

Well, I just rented 'Cold Fish' from Blockbuster, being in the mood for something edgy and slightly disturbing. Did it live up to this promise? Well, not really. The first problem is the acting. From the outset, the standard is generally poor overall, however I found the characters of Jo (Alex, the lead's ex-junkie girlfriend) and Jon Henley (one of the baddies) the most distracting. Both actors are very wooden and their line delivery is very stilted; I started hoping Jo might go back on the drugs if it might deliver a bit of emotion in her performance! Other reviewers have criticised the lead actor Jon-Paul Gates (Alex), and, whilst it was hardly Oscar-winning, I didn't find him too off-putting.

The second problem was the supposedly shocking and edgy subject matter. Well, maybe I'm acclimatised to this sort of thing, but it seemed no more risky than watching the BBC evening news. Yes, they used archive clips of genuine executions and disasters; but these have been played a hundred times over already on TV and in documentaries, and their use in a film seemed nothing more than repetitive. By the end I was wondering what content was supposed to justify the 18 rating of the film.

Overall, the plot is interesting enough to sustain you for an hour and a half, and whilst the denouement is rather predictable, it's not that bad a film; just a bit lacking in places and severely restricted by the clearly very low budget.

"Cold Fish" is a low-budget made for video/TV thriller that delivers with an interesting story about some underground video artists who exhibit people being killed at stuffy cocktail parties. A young "wannabe" reporter has to penetrate and expose the ring. The concept is kind of out there but it was an enjoyable film if you like B genre thrillers where villains are unmistakably villains. Potential cult favorite!

When I watched Cold Fish, I had heard rumors that when it was first screened people walked out, not because it was bad, but because it was very disturbing. I recently watched this film, and from the opening scene, I knew I would have to have a stomach to digest this film and its images. What made this so? Well, It wasn't the violence or depiction of drug use relative to the story or it's commentary on what is acceptable to the public from media. It was the use of actual video footage of hangings, shootings, terrorist activity and pure murder that shocked me. Although, the use of these images is attached to the characters, The Henleys, who use them to gain acclaim in the Art world, it's the psychological terror that two people can inflict into destroying somebodies life that makes this film an attention grabber. Violent, disturbing but extremely enjoyable!