With Friends Like These...

This is one of the most unusual movies I've ever encountered. Atrocious in every aspect, but unusual. For clarity, we must travel back to the halcyon days of the late 1990s. DVD was making its first strides to make VHS obsolete, with DVD players becoming affordable, and the imminent arrival of the PS2 with inbuilt DVD player meant the ability to watch movies on disc was becoming more common in households across the world. In the U. K. a new release cost £20 (insane given that DVDs were much cheaper to make than VHS tapes) so it wasn't long before companies cropped up to try take advantage of this growing market.

The 2 most prominent here were Prism Leisure and Hollywood DVD. Prism discs came in at £5.99 and were unashamed B movies. A lot of Full Moon stuff and mid-range 80s horror or action flicks found their way onto these discs. Then there was Hollywood DVD. At an absolute maximum these cost £4.99, but we're usually in special offers to get cheaper, things like 3 for £10. The problem with Hollywood DVD was you genuinely had no idea what you were getting; if you were lucky it was a Nu Image creature, but there was more chance of you getting a TV Pilot that wasn't picked up. They were notorious for picking up awful movies that had stars before they were famous and editing the sleeve to give them too billing, regardless of their part.

It was one of those aforementioned deals I found myself in possession of With Friends Like These... via alongside Ken Wahl's failed vigilante tv pilot The Gladiator and The Legend of Bogg Creek II. You know the worst thing? I was looking forward to it! It's sleeve had a bit of mystique about it - no pictures, and a 3 line, vague blurb that told me nothing. All I had to go on was a monstrous figure reaching out on the cover and an 18 rating. What was this that they couldn't even show pictures from?

They were probably embarrassed. It's an anthology, and quite impressive in that it has 3 opportunities to present stories and managed to make an utterly awful job out of all of them. There's a bookend 'plot' revolving around a bus and a narrator who chronically over uses the word 'Relationships'. The purpose appears to be our protagonists are all on that bus at some point but don't expect any explanation beyond that.

Our first focus falls on a hapless man who buys a classic car that telepathically communicates with him and starts to dominate his life. Christine it ain't.

The second and probably the most interesting, though that's a low bar, sees a slobbish man discover the tuna casserole in his fridge evolve into a sentient being that tries to help him improve his life.

The third, and mercifully final, tale involves a girl who meets the perfect man on a dating service only for him him to prove more than meets the eye.

Yeah I'm not beating around the bush, this is awful from start to finish. Awful dialogue, bland plots that offer no excitement, acting that I'm being generous even describing as such (very few people involved in this movie appeared in another) this is a complete full house of awful. I genuinely believe someone at Hollywood slipped the BBFC some money to ensure this got an 18 to give it some street cred as there is nothing to earn it.

This film has no redeeming features. It's not so bad it's funny, it's just unrelentingly, mercilessly, awful. Thankfully it's now very hard to come by, and frankly it wouldn't be any great disaster if every copy of it were to be destroyed.

This is a very strange film, with a no-name cast and virtually nothing known about it on the web. It uses an approach familiar to those who have watched the likes of Creepshow in that it introduces a trilogy of so-called "horror" shorts and blends them together into a connecting narrative of the people who are involved in the segments getting off a bus. There is a narrator who prattles on about relationships, but his talking adds absolutely nothing to the mix at all and just adds to the confusion. As for the stories themselves, well.. I swear I have not got a clue why this movie got an 18 certificate in the UK, which would bring it into line with the likes of Nightmare On Elm Street and The Exorcist. Nothing here is even remotely scary.. there is no gore, sex, nudity or even a swear word to liven things up, this is the kind of thing you could put out on Children's TV and no-one would bat an eyelid. I can only think if it had got the rating it truly deserved (a PG) no serious horror fan would be seen dead with it, so the distributor probably buffeted the BBFC until they relented. Anyway, here are the 3 tales in summary: 1. A man becomes dangerously obsessed with his telekinetic car to the point of alienating his fiancee. 2. A man who lives in a filthy apartment is understandably freaked out when a living organism evolved from his six-month old tuna casserole. 3. A woman thinks she has found the perfect man through a computer dating service.. that is until he starts to act weird.. And there you have it. Some of them are pretty amusing due to their outlandish premises (my favourite being number 2) but you get the feeling they were meant to be a) frightening and b) morality plays, unfortunately they fail miserably on both counts. To sum up then, this flick is an obscure curiosity.. for very good reasons.

I acquired this film a couple of years ago and on trying to find some info about it I found that even the mighty IMDb didn't have it listed. That should have been all I needed to know.

With Friends Like These is an anthology that plays like a collection of second rate Twilight Zone / Outer Limits episodes all linked together by a bus journey that never really seems to tie in with the rest of the film. Of the three stories, the only one that I gleaned any entertainment value from was the second episode in which a man (of sorts) grows out of the bacteria in a guys fridge. This episode wins points for a few spots of humour and it's bizarre premise. Other than that there is an episode with a talking car (bland and directionless) and an episode where a girl visits a very unique dating agency (my dog guessed the ending of this one).

As has been mentioned in other comments, the 18 rating is entirely unwarranted. There is nothing to offend here. If you're after a good horror anthology check out Asylum or the Creepshow films instead.

I found this little beauty in a local game shop selling for the hefty price tag of £2.99 and I have to say it was worth all of the 299 pennies spent.

After all, who wouldn't pay that much to own a classic contradiction of film rating?

This series of films was rated an '18' over here in the United Kingdom. I only watched the first film with Brum and the Matthew Broderick wannabe and still got the impression that something was seriously wrong with the BBFC..

How could a talking car and a man with a bleeding nose deserve an 18? It's not as if it is a film from the 50s where perhaps it would merit some certificate of this nature.

Now I have not yet got around to sitting myself down and watching the next to films, but I have a feeling that things are not going to get a whole lot better. The attempt at putting some thought and meaning into the film with the narrative at the beginning suggests that these people are trying to make something that will leave us pondering our own existence. It is obvious that the directors are not wanting to spoil their thoughtful 'masterpiece' with careless violence.

This is what I am going on when I doubt the caliber of the following two films. That and the fact that someone else that has rated the film has claimed it devoid of any violence, nudity or swearing despite the '18' rating (which I will be inclined to say attracted me to the title).

Don't get me wrong, though. I loved the first short I saw, and hope that the other two (by two other directors) follow the same sort of theme. It is the ridiculous and childish premises that make it fun, (that and the nervous man from the beginning, spinning around to bellow 'NO!' at his girlfriend who appeared to have something growing between her first two teeth.) and will watch it again because it reminds me what it was like to sit down and watch CITV after school. I even showed my nine-year-old little brother. I think he mentioned something about taking it to school to show his class.

I might have to leave a note for his teacher, telling her not to be fooled by the '18' certificate, the film is just child's play..

-Stoate

One of two anthology films on my list for reviewing, With Friends like These was donated by a man who said 'It looked too rubbish to even watch'. It's also the 'b-side' of one those two-for-one double disc thingys which also does not bode well.

But I've got the flu and was too weak after re-watching House of Lost Souls last night to put too much thought into films that I'll have to make an effort reviewing (Bronx Warriors, Entity Force), so I put this one on instead.

It's kind of like the other anthology film I've got, Freaky Fairy tales, in that it's quirky and funny and filmed in that dodgy late-eighties/early nineties way, but it ain't got any nudity or gore, which Freaky Fairy tales has (I'll review it soon once I've studied the err Goldielocks shower bit a few more times) So this one starts off showing modern life and people getting on a bus while some chugnut spews out all kinds of cod-philosophy about relationships when we finally get to our first story - the one with the talking car.

Alex's missus is one of them types who reckons that the old house/kids/dowhatyou'refeckintold routine is the way to go in life, but after Alex finds himself using their savings to buy a wisecracking MG, things take a turn for the worst. This MG promises a lot, but...ah you know the drill with talking cars. This segment was OK in that the lead actor was pretty into acting like the henpecked boyfriend, but there was no real conclusion.

The next part is the highlight of the film (read: the only good bit). Frank is a dirty slob who lives in a minging apartment and is harassed by his landlord. After leaving a tuna casserole in the fridge for six months, he finds some sort of weird substance at the bottom of the fridge and touches it. Next thing you know there a mutated tuna/human in the fridge who is kind of neurotic and is always nagging Frank. This segment is as stupid as you'd think but plays out pretty well. Still, no gore, no paps, nothing.

The last segment is a let down on the other two. It's got no redeeming features whatsoever. A chick who works for a designer firm gets set up with her perfect date who is not quite what he seems. You know the drill with this stuff as well. What got me about this was that about five minutes after hooking up with this guy, she constantly started nagging him for just about everything he did! Don't you know you gorra get him in the sack first missus before you try that crap out? Anyways this is all cheaply done, and I suppose is trying for the old Twilight Zone feel, but stories one and three don't have much imagination at all, and it's only the middle piece that's worth a look. Get Freaky Fairytailes instead.