The Big Switch

With a movie that's little over an hour long there's not really a lot to say. What I liked best about the film is the setting of a decadent London in the death throws of the swinging sixties, the ending at a fairground is well done, I love the scenes with the old machines you could play.

As for the story, John Carter( Sebastian Breaks) is implicated in a young girls murder, and along with Cathy (Virginia Wetherall) is forced by gangsters into posing for pornographic photos. The two leads are decent enough, especially Wetherall who would go not to appear in a few horror movies in the coming years.

This film takes bad to a whole new level. It's very clear that second takes were never attempted throughout the filming. From actors flubbing their lines and the flubs remaining in the final to waiting for two vehicles to enter a roadway and having to LITERALLY wait as oncoming traffic from both sides delay the shot. We sit and wait for traffic to clear, one vehicle pulling into one lane (blocking one car that had the right of way) and then turning on to the roadway and the second following close behind, still blocking a car that had the right of way.

The acting is terrible, the plot is impossible to follow...as if they made it up according to whatever they were able to catch on a good exposure of film...and the sound track. Oy...the sound track. Trying to imply action where there is none.

If you enjoy schmalz, this might be for you. If you prefer viable films with something to say...avoid.

After about half an hour from the beginning, you realize that nothing has happened. After another half hour, you're still waiting for something to happen. And, nothing happens. Then you realize it's the kind of movie you want to finish faster. Probably the worst English movie ever made.

Sir Godfrey Beanbag, 9 and and third Earl of WuggPork Estate travels across flormtittsbury Nebula in a spacksuit to be retrieving of the mysterious bottlejohns with only a turtleless shellsnail for company.

He only eats from the Westbury mustard and his hair falls out in every scene so they kept gluing in the scene with his hair on so it's a bit repetitive.

My fabric television didn't have a good enough thread count to see the finer pixons, but I think I could make out little Jimmy Swimmson stealing my counterfeit flower press handle forgery collection and a house, which I live in. Now I don't know where I or my fake pressed flowers are. Small matters in the Grant Scales of Rings.

With his groundpenny thin as a weasel and the mouse door in keeping (tin and rum thistle excluded), the swimming lesson was complete. Jenny said toe, Murray said no. And the kettle drone foo makes us all better for it. And it continued on like that for a bit.

Back at Snailpork manor, a porksnail megapork snail was making its way across the isles of scilly towards a larger-than-usual pork drum snail aquaittence missile tactical coffee morning warhead, but it turns out it was just a tactical meganail pork medallion chamber containing 4 porksnails from the previous pork pail scene if you remembered them but you were probably too busy sniffing the sands. Pork nail.

This was like Ed Wood on a slightly higher budget set in London in the Swinging Sixties--the HEIGHT of that era, in fact. To that end, the ONE redeeming quality to this film is performance footage of a relatively obscure but FANTASTIC psychedelic rock band of the period, Timebox.

Otherwise, the acting is WELL below par, the direction entirely direction-less, and the incidental music used to give the illusion of excitement when nothing more is happening than that a car gets stuck waiting for an opening before merging onto a highway. The number of scenes that were clearly first takes in which the actor moves in some noticeably awkward way like they don't really know what to do with themselves is amazing, but they seem to let these stand probably for purposes of staying within or under budget or something.

But maybe the funniest thing is that British Film Institute chose this turkey to spend restoration money on. I'd have tossed all of it but Timebox's three minutes in the early nightclub scene.