It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive

by Mark Kermode

  While Pierce was taking it upon himself to redefine the parameters of the popularly accepted rules of musical engagement, Muriel, Her Majesty Mrs Strepsil, was going at the works of Benny and Björn as if they were the outpourings of the Bard himself. Her interpretation of ‘The Winner Takes it All’ owed more to the murder scene from Macbeth than to the pure pop traditions of Eurovision. When Muriel said/sang that ‘I don’t wanna talk …’ you understood that she really did not want to talk. At all. Ever. EVER. Agog, I waited for her Shakespearean take on Abba’s worst Scando-English lyric ‘A big thing, or a small’ and was not disappointed. By the time the song was finished the palms of my hands were bleeding, my uncut nails having dug into them in a fever of pseudo-stigmatic ecstasy.

  To be clear, the film is awful. And yet, and yet, and yet …

  Somehow, in the middle of all that awfulness, something wonderful happened. As the tidal wave of poop crashed over my head, the world seemed to perform a peculiar axis-altering tilt whereby north became south, black became white, pleasure became pain, and (against all the odds) good became bad – and vice versa. Even as every critical faculty I possessed told me to run screaming from the theatre right now , I felt my heart swelling, my eyes welling up, my pulse starting to jump, and my general aura going all pink and cuddly. I presume this is what it is like taking heroin – really bad, but in a way which is strangely appealing at the time. I say ‘I presume’ because all I know about heroin is what I learned from Lou Reed and Trainspotting, namely that the soundtrack is nice but you end up screaming in a pool of vomit while swivel-headed dead babies march across the ceiling, or chasing cack-encrusted suppositories round the U-bend of an Edinburgh public toilet. Neither of which sound great.

  But Mamma Mia!, for all its hideous flaws, had miraculously started to sound absolutely brilliant. It is a fitting testament to the power of Benny and Björn’s songwriting that their work appears to be unassailable even when James Bond himself has been licensed to kill their songs. When you do this sort of thing to the Beatles’ back catalogue you wind up with William Shatner gaily massacring ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’, leaving Lennon and McCartney looking every bit as stupid as Captain Kirk. But the Abba songbook is made of sterner stuff, and no amount of inappropriate celebrity honking can dispel the magic of those pure pop classics. By the time La Strepsil started rhapsodising that her daughter was ‘Slipping Through My fingers’ I was in floods of tears – tears of laughter, tears of joy, tears of (let’s be honest) shame, but tears nonetheless. And as I looked around the darkened auditorium at my fellow cowering critics, I realised that I was not alone, although several of my wet-faced comrades would thrice deny their uncontrollable physical responses as the cockerel’s crow heralded the arrival of their crucifying reviews in the morning papers.

  Don’t get me wrong – Mamma Mia! is rubbish. But rubbish the likes of which we shall not see again for some time. And rubbish which somehow left in its wake a trail of resplendent joy and bonhomie which would have satisfied Morecambe and Wise’s oft-sung request that we bring them fun, sunshine, and love, and leave Ken Dodd thanking the Lord that he’d been blessed with more than his share of happiness.

  Mamma Mia! went on to become the fastest selling DVD ever in the UK, although I remain convinced that in order to appreciate it fully you had to see it with an audience. We were on holiday in Cornwall when Mamma Mia! came out, so Linda and our daughter went to see it at the fabulous Screen Seven of the Regal Cinema in Redruth (tag line ‘Stairway to Seven’) and had a ball. Meanwhile I endured Transformers with our son who enjoyed the robots hitting each other but couldn’t understand what useful role was served by Megan Fox. I tried to explain to him that the film was directed by Michael Bay who is, in his father’s twisted opinion, the Antichrist and Enemy of Cinema, but he still wanted to own it on DVD the day it came out. Hey-ho.

  Back to Southampton Street, and Time Out, and Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. In case you don’t know (and there’s little reason why you would) Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death was actually a UK retitling of an American movie called Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. The film had undergone its subtle name change in order to circumvent the peculiar prejudices of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) who, in the mid-eighties, had acquired the state-legislated power to rate, cut, and ban all videos released in the UK. Unfortunately, during the pre-regulated ‘video nasties’ scare, a number of titles including the word ‘cannibal’ had been seized by the police and prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act – titles such as Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Apocalypse, and the immortal Prisoner of the Cannibal God which starred bonafide screen legend Ursula Andress. Under the iron rule of the ever vigilant James Ferman, the BBFC had been given instructions to look very carefully at anything which invoked the spectre of the ‘video nasty’, and apparently this jumpiness extended to any movie – no matter how innocuous – which sounded even vaguely disreputable, particularly if their titles contained a tabloid-baiting buzzword like ‘cannibal’. Thus Colourbox, an independent company who had picked up the rights to Cannibal Women cannily changed the title to Piranha Women in order to ease the video’s progress through the censors’ offices.

  The other word that our censors got a bee in their bonnet about was ‘chainsaw’, thanks to the notoriety of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its variously banned sequels. This led to one of the maddest pieces of video retitling (again by Colourbox) for Fred Olen Ray’s harmless splatter spoof Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers which had the actual word ‘chainsaw’ taken out of its title and then replaced by a small outline drawing of (you guessed it) a chainsaw! Thus, although the cover art featured a small silhouette of a chainsaw and a gaudy picture of scream-queen Michelle Bauer in underwear and heels brandishing a bloody huge chainsaw, technically the word‘chainsaw’ never actually appeared anywhere so the video didn’t get banned. Stupider still, the film was now officially called Hollywood ***** Hookers which made it sound like a porn flick, although I’d love to see someone attempting to ‘relax’ in a gentleman’s way to a film in which anything that comes up comes off– if you see what I mean.

  As for Piranha Women, the actual content of the film (sex, nudity, violence, flesh-eating, etc.) was solidly tame. In fact, the movie had very little to delight either the gore-hounds or the hand-shandy brigade, despite leading lady Shannon Tweed’s centrefold status. What it did have was a really decent screenplay by writer/director ‘J. D. Athens’ who later turned out to be J. F. Lawton under a pseudonym. Lawton would go on to write a darkly interesting script entitled 3000 about a rich man who hires a prostitute to pretend to be his girlfriend for the titular fistful of dollars. The premise smacked of Pygmalion (and therefore of My Fair Lady) although Lawton’s story ended with the hooker going back to her downbeat street life rather than joining the rich man in his vacuously extravagant champagne lifestyle. After various rewrites which effectively removed all the unpalatable rough edges, 3000 finally made it to the screen as Pretty Woman– one of the biggest money-spinning blockbusters of the decade. Lawton would subsequently pick up writing credits on movies starring everyone from Steven Seagal, Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman to Martin Landau and Robert De Niro. But that was all in the future – back in the late eighties he was just another goofy pseudonymous B-movie chancer, with nothing to distinguish him from the terrible Troma pack other than the fact that his movie was actually pretty good.

  The story of Piranha Women goes like this – following a Vietnam-style military debacle, ethno-historian Dr Margot Hunt is sent by the CIA into the avocado jungle in search of eminent renegade feminist Dr Irma Kurtz, a former chat-show stalwart turned man-eating Piranha Woman who has ‘gone native’. Accompanying Hunt on her quest is bozo guide Jim, played with gusto (and luxurious mullet) by Bill Maher, and pneumatic airhead student Bunny (Karen Mistal). As they journey into the heart of darkness, Hunt and her colleagues encounter a tribe of emasculated males named the Dona
hues, and a splinter radical feminist tribe who have declared war on the Piranhas following a dispute over which sauce best accompanies freshly peeled man (they favour clam dip over the Piranha’s dressing of choice, guacamole). After various shake-and-bake shenanigans, Dr Kurtz refuses to return to civilisation, recalling ‘the horror, the horror’ of appearing on the David Letterman show.

  For anyone who had witnessed the breast-beating infighting of radical eighties gender politics first-hand, Piranha Women ’s central condiment conceit was pretty funny, unlike all the Surf Nazis and Rabid Grannies of this world whose only jokes were their titles. I laughed pretty consistently at Piranha Women and went on to say so in print in Time Out , after which I thought no more about it.

  Until, a couple of weeks later, I met a feisty young woman named Cass who worked for Colourbox video in the role of press-officer-cum-general-Ms-fixit. I’d been receiving press releases from her for a few months, and because I like to put names to faces we had agreed to meet up for a drink in Wardour Street, just across the road from Colourbox’s fantastically unglamorous office. Cass arrived bearing a bag of VHS preview tapes (this was in the days before DVD, remember, when videos were still considered to be handily compact) of forthcoming straight-to-video releases including the abysmal Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars which turned out to be so utterly rotten that even Colourbox didn’t much fancy releasing it. We talked about the company’s battles with the censors over titles like Intruder (a mild store-bound slasher that had been hacked up by the BBFC) and she promised to slip me an uncut preview tape if she could find one. Then, as we were finishing our drinks, she said in an off-hand manner: ‘The funny thing is, ever since that Piranha Women review came out I’ve had people asking what strings I had to pull to get a good review in Time Out. It’s hilarious. I told them I had nothing to do with it – that some bloke called Mark Kermode just apparently really liked the film. I told them I’d never even met you.’

  ‘And what did they say?’

  ‘They said, “Good thing too. You don’t want to be hanging around with the kind of bloke whose idea of a really good movie is Piranha Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.” Ha ha ha!’

  Over the next few years I came to know, respect, and really like Cass (or ‘Cassie’, as she was better known). She was terrifically energetic, always good-natured (not easy when your job involves dealing with journalists, who are generally miserable gits) and most importantly, refreshingly honest. She worked hard at her job, and in all the time I knew her she never once tried to spin me a line about how great a movie was – she simply alerted me to its existence and imminent release (or non-release in the case of Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars) and left it at that. She was great. And then she died, quite suddenly, of an undetected condition, at a shockingly young age. I always think of Cass whenever the subject of Piranha Women comes up, which it does with increasing frequency. There’s something strangely poignant about the fact that its key players went on to have such stellar careers, and it reassures me to think of Cass laughing heartily in that pub about the inherent ridiculousness of the movie business.

  Alongside the prestige of appearing in print, Time Out was soon to open another door for me. One day, I was working in the office, filling in for Derek Adams who was taking a couple of weeks’ well-deserved leave. Derek, it turned out, was a drummer and for a while he and I had toyed with the idea of forming a garage band, bashing out old rockabilly standards and wondering whether the world was ready for a British answer to the Stray Cats, who were themselves an American answer to the Polecats. As I sat there methodically screwing up the listings (I had improved, but not that much) the phone rang and I answered it …

  At which point, one of two things happened.

  In the version of this story which I remember, and which I have repeated ad infinitum to anyone who will listen, the voice on the other end of the phone asked for Derek Adams. I told them he was away for a fortnight but that I’d be happy to help.

  ‘Oh,’ said the voice.

  ‘Oh, what?’ I asked, politely.

  ‘Oh, it’s just that we need someone to do some video reviews for us this Sunday. On LBC Radio.’

  There was a moment’s pause – probably not even that – before I leaped unbidden into the fray.

  ‘I’ll do it!’ I announced.

  ‘Really?’ said the voice, somewhat uncertain.’But we need someone with radio experience …’

  ‘Oh I’ve got that,’ I lied, ‘loads of it.’

  ‘Have you? Where from?’

  ‘Oh … Manchester,’ I answered vaguely, figuring that nobody who worked in the media in London would have any idea what happened north of Watford.

  ‘Right,’ said the voice.’Great. Well then, can you be here by eight o’clock on Sunday?’

  ‘No problem,’ I answered confidently.’8 p.m. Sunday I’ll be there. Incidentally, where is “there”. Or “here”?’

  ‘“Here” is our studios in Gough Square, up by fleet Street. And it’s not 8 p.m., it’s 8 a.m. We’re a breakfast show.’

  ‘Great. No worries. I love breakfast,’ I babbled.’See you at 8 … a.m.!’

  That’s the version of the story which would appear in the TV Movie of My Life, providing a wonderfully serendipitous moment in which my future as a radio broadcaster would be sealed by being in the right place, at the right time – even if I was the wrong person.

  However, the respected broadcaster Sarah Ward, who co-presented LBC’s weekend breakfast show with Ed Boyle back in the late eighties, assures me that this story is baloney. According to Sarah, someone from her programme called me after she and Ed read my reviews in Time Out and decided to give me a broadcasting break. Whatever the truth – whether they were looking for me or Derek – I know that I lied to them about having ‘radio experience’ because the awful consequences of that lie still haunt me to this day.

  For reasons which I have never fully understood, I had a pretty clear but utterly fanciful view of the way live radio worked. Here’s what I thought would happen: I would arrive at the studios at the appointed hour of eight o’clock to be met by a helpful assistant who would show me into a large boardroom generously furnished with coffee and croissants. Into this room would file the assembled team of broadcasters who would jointly present the breakfast show which probably kicked off around 9 a.m. Before the broadcast began, we would all be introduced to one another and swap a few casual niceties before settling down to discuss the business of what we would actually talk about ‘on-air’. To this end, I would bring along a large sheaf of notes with several suggestions of videos on release which may be of interest to the listener. We would discuss these possible candidates, with me probably flying the flag for more obscure fare like Piranha Women while the presenters would doubtless argue for some more mainstream titles. After an exchange of polite banter, we would agree on a happy compromise, and I would retire to gather my thoughts (and my notes) before going ‘on-air’ at a leisurely pace sometime around ten o’clock.

  Here’s what actually happened.

  I arrived at the LBC studios in Gough Square at the appointed hour of 8 a.m. So far so good. I rang the doorbell. No answer. I rang it again. Again, no answer. I started to think I was in the wrong place. Then, just as I was preparing to leave, a voice on the intercom said: ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, hi,’ I replied, struggling to sound unflustered.’It’s me, Mark Kermode. From Time Out . I’m here to do the video reviews.’

  No answer. Just a buzz. I pushed the door. It opened, and I stepped inside.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Then a noise. A door opening and closing. Someone running down a corridor. Another door banging. Then, suddenly, someone grabbed me by the arm and propelled me down the corridor whilst speaking very fast and somewhat agitatedly …

  ‘… news overran so we couldn’t come and get you, thought you’d make your own way to the studio, bit of a panic this morning, breaking news blah blah blah, that door there, ye
s yes yes, that door, blue mike, bye …’

  And the next thing I knew I was in the studio. And on-air. Live.

  Jeezly buggers!

  ‘And now,’ said a voice which was either in my head, or out there in the ‘real world’ or both (I really couldn’t tell) ‘here’s Mark … Commode, with the video review. So Mark, what’s out …?’

  You know that dream that everybody has (or at least I assume that everybody has) about waking up naked in the middle of your maths O-level exam (no? nobody else? Just me then …)? Well, it was like that, only LIVE ON-AIR and crucially NOT A DREAM. And faced with this frankly unforeseen circumstance, I did what I believe any other thoroughly unprepared person would do.

  I panicked – vociferously.

  With nothing but the sound of my own blood thrumming deafeningly in my ears I started to speak, to babble, to spew forth sounds which occasionally had meaning but equally often were just pure animal noise. You know the yelping sound that a dog makes when you accidentally trap its paw under the foot of your swivel chair while it attempts to warm itself around the electrical snug of your malfunctioning computer (no? just me again, then…)? It was like that, only human. Just about.