It Couldn't Happen Here

What an intriguing little film It Couldn't Happen Here is. Not necessarily a good one, but an intriguing film nonetheless.

In turns dark and pretentious, it was filmed at a time when the Pet Shop Boys were still melancholy, "ironic" performers, and so Tennant's slightly anaemic vocals are made bearable by not being underscored by a full disco production. The title song is one of their best, an esoteric album track that favours orchestra over synthesiser. The songs form backdrops to the majority of the film, while the two pop stars are just about passable as actors. The characters they play seem to have some form of communication, but it is entirely non-verbal, they never exchanging words with each other once throughout the movie. In fact, Chris Lowe (keyboards) doesn't speak at all until almost half an hour in, only having 28 words in total.

Tennant, meanwhile, is quite the opposite, carrying the bulk of the plot in his continual monotone monologues. Some of these are naive, would-be meaningful commentaries, such as the siloquoy that "Ever since I was a child the comic and the hostile seemed to go hand in hand". At other times he quotes from his own songs, an unfortunate act that highlights their limitations. Apparently wearing a wig, his interactions with the other actors (including an irksome Gareth Hunt in multiple roles) are less successful, but still adequate for a `music' film.

Symbolism is evident, linked alongside film referencing. Nods are given to Brief Encounter and North by Northwest, while the use of surrealism (men with zebra faces, burning businessmen, billboard posters of blank walls) go to show the production team had been watching their Peter Greenaway movies. Where the film really succeeds is in its distorted psychological makeup. Arguably, the film doesn't happen on any conventional sense of reality, but entirely in a mindscape. The duo walk nonchalantly through a deserted English seaside town, where motorcycle gangs trade places with SS nuns and sexual intent is prevalent. This is a film that will be infinitely more successful with English audiences, where it's depiction of repressed sexuality and cultural disfunctionality is more telling. Lacing the whole plot thread together (not that there really is a plot, of course) is a look at the more terrifying face of Catholicism.

The film concludes with a performance, as all band films do, though this time it's audience is a group of ballroom dancers, with the ubiquitous existentialist dummy getting the final word. If all this sounds a little bizarre, then it is. Not exactly original, It Couldn't Happen Here still triumphs as being quite unlike any film you've ever seen.

If you're a PSB fan like me, the music is terrific (combination of the Please and Actually albums and some of the songs are remixed).

You get to see scenes that were incorporated into some of the group's videos from the Actually album.

As for the film, it's one of the strangest films I've ever seen (No idea why but it had the mood and dark scenes that reminded me of Clockwork Orange).

You get to hear Chris speaking which is a rarity and Neil does a good job throughout the film.

Might be an interesting project to resurrect this movie with newer PSB hits and updated footage.

Maybe Neil and Chris as pensioners 😃

On the back of releasing their album 'Actually', which plays like a greatest hits and includes the iconic "It's a Sin", PSBs decided to release this musical, feature length music video, depending how you'd like to look at it. As a film, it is disjointed, pretentious, with some fairly dreadful dialogue, delivered mostly in Neil Tennant's dull monotone. As a music video, it's perfect, full of odd and surreal goings on, with a few hand fulls of sexual innuendo, interspersed with catholic imagery, nuns in suspenders, a killer priest, Barbara Winsor, an appallingly over the top used car salesman and Clacton acting as the backdrop, the not so proverbial coastal town that they forgot to close down. We all know the landscape, and the songs, fast forward the bad bits by all means, but It Couldn't Happen Here, It's a Sin, Heart, Suberbia and One More Chance will each leave you encapsulated and wondering why more bands don't give this a try. Flawed yes, but Neil and Chris, thank you for give us this.

Wonderfully eccentric mix of influences - catholicism, run-down seaside towns, naughty nuns, greasy spoon caffs - this has got the lot.

Obviously, not as much fun for people that don't like the Pet Shop Boys - but even they might find some amusements here.

I love this film...its so odd. Filmed in part at Clacton By The Sea...a coastal town north east of London. A place i used to summer at when i was a child and living in Colchester.

The movie is full of strange and funny ramblings...hilarious one liners...theatrical delivery of "classic" Pet Shop Boys songs.

This movie reminds me of other artists such as Laurie Anderson or Mikel Rouse.

The (vague) plot is somewhat hard to follow (as it is intentionally designed being a surrealistic (pop) "art" peace).

Characters are amusing and the dance numbers...right out of the mid 80's mtv craze...reminds one of the elaborate videos of Micheal Jackson or Madonna.

If you like the pet shop boys....if you remember fondly (and perhaps with some embarrassment) the 80's. This is great! As far as i know this film is long out of print... however one can easily find it as a rather small torrent file on the web for immediate download.

Seek it out if you like the odd and the unusual...and 80's disco pop!! -k