Ivan_Bradley

A Paul Sampson Film.

Occasionally I watch a film that leaves me so dumbstruck that I go and look it up on the ol' net thingy. This is one such film. I watched amazed as this trope-fest unfolded in front of me, shook my head and went looking for the reviews. My amazement at the film was nothing compared with my amazement at the glowing reviews with their talk of fine acting and marvellous story, superb direction, lavish sets..

I was so amazed that I checked the profiles and review of a couple of the critics. Yep. it was the only film they'd reviewed. I checked a couple more, then another half dozen, then a dozen... Sure enough, in each and every case it was the only film they'd ever reviewed on IMDb. I gave up after just over half of the reviews. All were on-offs. Am I seeing a smoking gun here, anyone? Of course, my selection of reviewers was made blindly, though apparently with the sort of randomness that makes us all lightning-struck lottery winners. Maybe the ones I didn't look at were all seasoned critics who had never met Paul Sampson. You can do your own leg-work - or let your inner statistician decide.

A Paul Sampson Film.

The hilarity began with the opening credits.. A Paul Sampson film, handled by Sampson Enterprises. Produced by Paul Sampson. Directed by Paul Sampson. I think maybe Wardrobe by Paul Sampson, Catering by... I'm sure you get the picture. Starring wait for it... wait for it, it'll be a surprise... PAUL SAMPSON!!!

Rather like - Starring George Lucas as Darth Solo!!!-

Now I've absolutely nothing against vanity enterprises. Some great art has come our way thusly. This isn't some of it, unfortunately. This is to film what the Dave Clarke Five was to drumming - pretty boy with the business plan at the front of the stage. In this case, pretty boy with (it seems) a lot of friends with favours he can call in, in front of the camera. The whole premise is "look how handsome/cool I am.. how can I wrap some kind of plot around that to justify me mugging at the camera for an entire feature film?" Well, he's appealing enough in a caricature-handsome large-featured kind of way and he's in pretty good shape, but boy, he wants us to notice it. If anyone doubts this, check out the whole new genre of "Sword and Underwear" he seems to have invented as an answer to decades of chain-mail bikini fantasies. Unfortunately it presents as very dry parody, which is often a wonderful thing - but not when it's this clumsy and the thing being parodied is the ongoing film itself. Anyway, the acting, and "feel" of the entire film was that of a comedy TV series doing a sketch based on an early 80s porn film, without any of the porn. Not the Swedish/Dutch "I haff cumm to mends your vashink machine. It looks ferry vet down there, let me get my tool out while the funky guitar and keyboard play..." but the American/German "We have rented a place in the country and have only one reel of film. Let us party and think up a situation we can finish up by being naked and smearing each other with offal and ketchup" type of entertainment that my grandmother so likes to watch, but purely for the soundtrack.

I enjoyed the watching of the film, rather than enjoyed watching it if you see the difference. Sometimes I enjoy the process of watching the film-making, not necessarily the end result. Here the end result was risible, which is rather a shame because a couple of the cast were really putting something special into it and it was nice to see Carradine again though the parallels with Béla Lugosi in Plan Nine From Outer Space drew rather poignant grid lines. Sadly missed, both. Worth seeing as a curiosity, and if I must draw another parallel - in intent if not style or subject matter - I'd say Easy Rider for the focus on the ac-tors rather than the pseudo medievalism of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - which was far funnier on a smaller budget. Knights/Night Templar was not intentionally funny, and was not terrible enough to be really great as some truly memorable turkeys are, but it is an awful, fascinating train wreck of a movie which has no charm whatever. I feel the same cast could have pulled it off with more astute direction, but we'll never know for certain.

Oh - nice to see Mr Mxyzptlk again, playing The Butler.

3 out of 10 as it stopped me thinking about the overdraft and sciatica for the duration.

I watched this two nights ago, then watched it again last night with The Young Daughter, whom I had to bribe to sit down with me because she "hates westerns" and has the attention span of a teenage girl/guppy. As the film progressed, she became more and more focused and more and more astonished. Part way through, she said, "I don't know if I like it…" and then she went on to explain in great detail exactly how much she DID like it. Her only negative - if indeed that is what it was - comment was that it scored 11/10 on the BatSh**CrazyOmeter. "I want to be Nobody. He's awesome!" she announced, adding him to the list of fictional characters she finds inspirational. The others are, I think, Sherlock Holmes and Death, along with Neil Gaiman who is less fictional than the others.

Me? I found myself thinking of everything by Kurosawa, and The Seventh Seal, and, for a moment or two, Blazing Saddles. It led to discussions about Carlos Castaneda and Danté's Divine Comedy. The Tibetan book of the Dead was also right in there as it surely had to be. What it maybe lacked in conventional narrative it more than made up for in provocation,inspiration and philosophical stimulation and it was a truly wonderful daddy/daughter meeting place. I'd recommend it for that alone.

Like being exposed to some pieces of classical music which aren't quite as immediate as pop culture offerings, she realized that she really enjoyed it only after seeing it through, and wants to see it again.

At the moment, I think it's probably the finest film I've ever seen, but that is context dependent, of course. It's hard to compare apples with oranges, or cheese with girders. However considered, it is a wonderful - awesome - film which I enjoyed immensely - more so on the second watching. There's not a spare shot anywhere in the film. Definitely on the re-re-watch list. One minor caveat: if you turn the sound up enough to catch the quietest dialogue, the guitar cutting in will take your fillings out.

Don't attempt to operate heavy machinery immediately after watching it.