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powerfulupton
Reviews
Cheap Cheap Cheap (2017)
hilarious car crash sitcom/quiz show.
What can you say about cheap cheap cheap ? It came from out of nowhere really, a new channel 4 quiz show that the alan partridge esque presenter noel edmonds presented after deal or no deal had finished its season.
I remember watching it at the time not because it was a good show but to see if it whould be as gut wrenchingly awful as last week and it never failed to dissapoint.
Basically you had edmonds as some sort of shop keeper asking contestants to say which grocery item was cheapest, the more they got right the higher up the money went.
If that sounds bad wait, there is also some sort of sitcom element here, daft 1970,s cliches turn up like a worker at the shop who is a bit dim, some sort of yugoslavian woman with a horrific accent, a dizzy blonde shop worker and edmonds at the helm of this insanity.
I cant work this 1 out, either edmonds stupidly thought it was on some level entertaining or (and id like this to be true) he was playing some sort of trick on people by deliberatly making the WORST gameshow ever seen on t.v.
Honestly if you can find it (its not available anywhere really) watch it and wonder where he went wrong (or right) with this 1.
Juvenile Liaison (1976)
Sergant rays story pulls no punches
A good film this, sort of a cross between a episode of panorama and a episode of the sweeney.
It follows members of blackburns juevenille liason team as they scour the streets looking for schoolchildren who are truanting from school.
We see a woman do this job and she comes across as sort of a prim and proper schoolmistress, 1 of the best lines she has is when she is cross examining a young girl and delivers this line "your a slut, people will call you a slut, do you want to be a slut".
The real star of this piece though is sergant ray, he pulls no punches and comes across as sort of a northern version of the terminator in his never endign quest to get kids back to school/give them a bollocking for mouthing off at their parents/ give them a walloping for doing any of the first 2 things.
Basically his job was to scare young kids so they didnt keep offending and getting in trouble ending up in jail and his methods and a tad excessive to say the least.
We see him kicking a bedroom door down and dragging a 15 year old boy out of bed to the calls of "yes and when he is done with you your going to get one from me as well" from his dad, its strange how he sort of terrorises these 12 to 15 year old kids but the worst thing for me was when he talked to this 8 year old kid in a police cell who stole a cowboy outfit, the dialogue went like this "do you like this place" "you know if you dont behave you will end up here" "they turn the lights out here at night" "it is a scary place at night" "bad things happen here at night" a few minutes later he takes the terrified young boys hand and leads him away, perhaps a moment where he let his guard down.
The film is mesmorizing for a number of reasons, it is just so brutal and real you can hardly believe he is doing this stuff to young kids but on the other hand you cant help but wonder if it was a better time when there was a bit more disipline for young kids.
A great watch if you can find it, its not a easy film to find at all and has been banned several times but they sometimes put the full film on youtube, i think that adds to the mystery of the film.
Double X: The Name of the Game (1992)
Watchable but just about.
O.k. i watched the film last week because lots of people said it was a terrible film and i like bad films plus i like norman wisdom and was looking forward to seeing him play a diffrent style of role than he usually plays.
Wisdom plays a gangster, well a safecracker in a gang he is sort of the brains behind the operation a mild mannered quiet fellow who hasent got quite the sort of mean spirit the rest of the gang have.
So the story is this, a man visiting scotland from chicago who was a policeman meets wisdom in a empty hotel restraunt, he chats to him and is interested in him somewhat (we find out why later, i dont want to give it away but it is a nice twist).
Anyway wisdom is acting edgy and after the fella buts into wisdoms business wisdom takes him hostage and orders him to drive wisdom to the ferryport, while driving wisdom tells the man his story, how wisdom was a safecracker for a gang but felt they were going to kill him after his next job so he sort of set the gang up (more on that later) and ran away from the gang but not before they kidnapped his daughter hilariously tying her up and putting her in a "silence of the lambs" style dungeon conveniantly put in the basement of a club the gang member owns.
So wisdom has escaped the gang but they are after him, so he has to form a unlikely truce with the american so wisdom can escape to safety but things dont exactly turn out as planned.
Thats all i really can tell you as the twist about halfway through is best kept for you to watch for yourself.
Now for the film itself, wisdom puts in a tired performance to be honest, if you want to see him tackle a serious role watch "going gently" or if you want to see him in a diffrent light to his usual films watch "whats good for the goose" thats a great film as its sort of a naughty sex comedy quite diffrent to wisdoms usual style of film.
I think because of wisdoms previous slapstick films it can be at times difficult to take him seriously, there were numerous parts in the film where i was half expecting him to shout "MR GRIMSDALE" and fall down a set of stairs but unfortunatly it didnt happen, he was quite old in this film and im afraid it shows, theres a part in the film where he has to slap a woman and its such a feeble slap im surprized they didnt reshoot it.
As for the other actors in the film the always good "bernard hill" (yosser hill from boys from the blackstuff) plays a gangster called ignatious "iggy" smith and he is a shining example of how a actor should play that sort of role, im serious his performance really makes the film so so SO good, he maniacally chews his way through every scene and is a joy to watch, he is a disabled gangster with a bad leg (ha) so bad is his leg all someone had to do when confronted by him in a scene was to push him over and he was lifeless as a darlek, he has all the good lines here whether throwing his boss out of a helicopter or taking part in hilarious slow motion gun fight in a warehouse where his bad leg seems to hilariously get better he is phenomenal in the role.
Chloe annett sleep walks through her role, as do most of the actors and i think thats the main problem here because apart from bernard hill and norman wisdom (for the time he is in the film) the other actors and actresses just dont do much.
So its a watchable film, but it whould have been a lot better off as a 2 part crime thriller on bbc or itv, thats the level we are at here people, a highlight for me was a ridiculously english drive by shooting where the gunmen open fire on 2 men from a bargeboat on a english river !!!!.
If you do like the film another film to check out is the hilarious chris twemlow masterpiece (cough cough) the 1983 film that is g.b.h. that film is the bees knees and makes this film look like citizen kane, you have been warned.