The Comic

In a dystopian city, aspiring comedian Sam Coex (Steve Munroe) murders Joey Myers (Jeff Pirie), the leading comic on the club circuit, and takes his place in the limelight. Soon after, Sam hooks up with drug-addict stripper Ann (the beautiful but untalented Berderia Timini), who is the cause of his downfall.

I first saw The Comic at the legendary Scala cinema in King's Cross, at an event called Splatterfest '90. Since IMDb says that the film was made in 1985, I can only assume that it languished unreleased for quite a few years on account of it being so completely and utterly awful. It should have stayed on the shelf, in my opinion; what were the organisers thinking when they added this to the programme? I recall that the film was so poorly received at Splatterfest that its director Richard Driscoll, who was present at the screening, sloped off without saying a word.

Having just watched the film again after 30 years, I can confirm that the film is every bit as awful as I remembered it to be. Worse, in fact: it can now add 'looking horribly dated' to its long list of cinematic offences. I hate this film with every fibre of my being. I hate the dreadful dialogue and corny performances. I hate Coex's terrible orange hair (Coex is supposed to be a top comedian, but his hair is the only funny thing about him). I hate the over-use of a smoke machine (99% of the film is swathed in smoke, Driscoll clearly a man who likes to get his money's worth). I hate the gaudy coloured lighting. I hate Coex's badly wall-papered apartment. I hate the totalitarian guards with their stupid little ponytails (what I like to call 'punytails'). To be honest, I hate everything about this film and everyone involved for making such a joyless train-wreck.

1/10. Definitely in my Top Ten Worst Films Ever list, and I've seen a lot of rubbish.

Like the guy who posted the first comment I bought this film for only 1GBP, I knew the film was going to be bad. I hoped that it would be in the so bad it's good category. It's so much more than that, it's appalling, it's the pits, it is without doubt the worst film I've ever seen, I had to watch it in five sittings. It's 89 minutes of the hoariest clichés and cod psychology. It has the worst cast, the worst sets, the cheapest and nastiest special effects. I could go on but I don't want to over egg the pudding !

I've not seen every film ever made so I'm not qualified to call it the worst film ever made but I can't imagine that any other film could be worse than this. Like the guy who made the first post, I too like bad films. If 'The Producers' (you know, Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder) had picked this script, it would have totally spoilt that movie for their theatre audience would have walked out and never come back.

It's a howler, watch it with a companion because you'll be begging them to kill you before the film is halfway through. Druggies save yourself some money, you don't need any mind altering drugs, just watch this film it will be a trip. If finding the worst film ever is you're Holy Grail, find this, buy it, take it back to your Camelot and stick it in ye olde DVD player, watch it and then write to thank me for putting you on to this.

I will treasure this film for ever. Thank you Richard Driscoll !!!!

PS, does anyone know if any of the cast or crew ever worked again, apart from in McDonalds that is ?

PPS, if you only see one bad film before you die, make sure it's this one.

Sam Coex (Steve Munroe) is a stand-up comedian who just can't get a break. After a rival comedian is murdered in what must be the only nightclub in town, Sam takes his place and goes on a prostitute and stripper killing binge.

The Comic has lofty ambitions, but it is hampered by a small budget and bad acting. Steve Munroe lacks charisma in the lead role and his Christmas cracker jokes are poorly delivered. In an odd design choice he also sports dyed, day-glo orange hair like a clown wig.

Any commentary about a dystopian society are hampered by an insipid script. This is not A Clockwork Orange or 1984 level of atmosphere. It's bizarre. The brutal guards look like weedy and people get about in horse and carriage for unknown reasons.

For exploitation and horror fans there are some surprisingly nasty murder scenes with a fair amount of blood. Also a few long sex scenes.

This film has gone onto gain a bit of a cult status due to VHS tapes doing the rounds in the 90s and screenings at horror film festivals. It's a mediocre at best film and one wonders what the intended vision was had the budget been into the millions. The Blu-ray from Arrow has a sharp print, good sound and English subtitles.

There is very little doubt in my ruinous, B-Movie barbecued mind that maverick independent film-maker Richard Driscoll's hyperbolically weird 'The Comic' remains one of the more garishly eccentric genre films Britain produced in the 80s. While I actively celebrate the unbridled lunacy of the director's singularly skewed vision, as his idiosyncratically downbeat, pan-dimensional narrative about a perplexingly humourless comic's murderous rise to fame is not readily categorized! If Andy Milligan had directed a transfixingly ponderous, visibly penurious, bathos-laden long form Fields of The Nephilim video, one crudely adorned in faux Dickensian squalor, its luridly blue-gelled dystopian palate, dismal dialogue and cheapjack Orwellian rhetoric transform 'The Comic' into a monolithically mental micro-genre unto itself, and bravura bad actor Steve Monroe's hysterically unfiltered, unconventionally unsubtle, disturbingly childlike 'performance' as the hateful, orange-haired harlequin Sam Coex is mesmerizing to behold! 'The Comic' is, perhaps, not an altogether amenable watch for B-Movie newbies, since its manifest absurdity, turgid prose and the inventively contrarian acting choices of Steve Monroe actively guarantees that none of your more delicate sensibilities remain unmolested!

Vividly expressing all the innate humour of a cold war Thatcherite Britain, the curiously caustic cinematic charms of Richard Driscoll's outlandish, fabulously off-beat, pathologically strange phantasmagoria are grimly revivified on this brand-new HD restoration of 'The Comic' for the rarefied edification of hardcore bad movie masochists and scurrilous schlock collectors alike! At many points this majestically melon-twisting misshape feels like the most vexing, dayglow delirious, THC-spawned fever-dream made celluloid flesh, and for that especially edifying, reality corrupting reason alone, I have a grudging admiration for its confounding uniqueness!

'The Comic's uniquely melon-twisting dystopia is a monolithically mental micro-genre unto itself!' - Weirdlingwolf / Dirty Kunst Video.

Very, very bad.

This is the first time I took the time to share a screenshot of a scene with friends as I wouldn't believe the level of mediocrity I was witnessing. And this was at 13 min in the movie!!! At least, Plan 9 and The Room are entertaining to some level.

This is like watching a slow motion video of toilet unclogging in close-up, with similar feelings involved.

Captivating, but in a very very bad way....