FILM SCOTTISH
BACARDI BLACK
I Braveheart: At a projected cost of around £40 million. Brave/wart. which details the life and times of Scottish hero William Wallace. began its five- week Scottish shoot near Fort William last week. The film »~ directed by and starring Mel Gibson —‘ will then move to Ireland for creative. not tax incentive. reasons. The fact that the Irish locations will be within a reasonable distance of well-equipped studios — something Scotland currently lacks — was a major draw. ‘We tried to stay here.‘ said the star at a Lochaber press conference. ‘but it was just impossible to find battlefields and locations which met with our budget requirements.’
The 38-year-old actor — at 5ft Sin and Australian. an unusual choice to play
the Scottish six-footer — has been nurturing the script for close on three years. Wallace led the army that defeated the English at Stirling Bridge. went on to become Guardian of Scotland at the end of the 13th century and met a gory death. being hung. drawn and quartered. No chance of a sequel. then. ‘From all the evidence I can gather . . . Wallace was really a remarkable man.‘ enthuses Gibson. ‘He's the stuff of legends — and it happened. I‘m certainly not trying to stir up a national incident. I‘m just trying to tell a good story.‘ I Home Movies: London‘s Museum of . the Moving Image (MOMI) has 1 launched a national appeal for members of the public to loan their post-war home movies to the museum. Selected films showing some aspect of British 1 life and culture post-1945 will be screened in a special one-day programme on 17 September. Application forms are available from MOMI Education on ()71 815 1339. I Honours List Greenock-born actor Richard Wilson. seen last year on the big screen in Peter Capaldi‘s Soft Top. Hard Shoulder and well known as the award-winning Victor Meldrew in ()ne I’m” In The Grave has added an ()BE I to his recent slew of BAFTAs.
:— In the blood
Brigadoon, it certainly isn’t. There’s an evil spirit draining the blood from junkies on a run-down Scottish housing estate, a series of events that leads a local doctor to the sleazy drug orgies held by the mysterious Sir Ruari. Ifo kilts and fey comedies in the world of Blood Junkies: the influences here aren’t Bill Forsyth and Sandy Mackendrick, more like Roger Corman, Fred Olen Ray and Hammer. Nevertheless, this is a vampire with a strong Gaelic heritage, whose connections reach back in time to the Knights Templar and Robert The Bruce.
Writer-director Bruce Ilaughton and producer Keith Bradley were keen to make a straight-to-video movie that would have enough commercial edge to make some money, but which would also be appreciated by friends and neighbours in Pllton and Muirhouse, where the project originated and was shot. laughton planned it as a film that would “make up the third slot of a three-videos-for-a-fiver deal at your local shop’ - a small, but realistic aim, perhaps, but anyone who caught the five-minute clip of Blood Junkies which screened as part of the Video Access Centre’s recent Dawn Of The Video Upstarts programme at the Edinburgh Filmhouse will know that this is no cheap rip-off. Shot on 16mm, but edited on video, the gory effects are extremely effective and the acting, by a cast of mainly newcomers, not at all bad.
Market research had indicated that horror was the best genre to yield some profits in the low-budget field and so, with the crew working on points, the project was off and running with a good lighting deal and £500
l
20 The List 17 -3() June 1994
Blood Junkies
, from First Reels. The first out came in
1 at six seconds under an hour, but
i Naughton, by now shouldering heavy
, personal debt, knew that he needed 80
minutes of usable footage for a
commercially viable product.
i Additional shooting should go ahead
1 in the next few weeks, thereby
1 allowing him to fill up holes in the plot
and craft a more rounded narrative. ‘After we’d settled on vampires,’
Naughton explains, ‘we went to see
Coppola’s Dracula and expected to be
1 disheartened. But if he messed up
i with millions of dollars, we knew we
, could do better. Everyone said his
movie was an allegory of AIDS. Well,
AIDS is a real problem in Muirhouse,
so we wanted to get rid of the allegory
1 but keep AIDS, safe sex and drugs in
; the storyline. What we didn’t do was
; sensationalise or feed off the back of
1 the tragedy.’ (Alan Morrison)
sponsored by BACARDI BLACK
AMOS 8: ANDREW
After bumbling his getaway to Canada with a suitcase of money, Amos Ddell (Nicolas Cage) ends up in a cell courtesy of the local police on an upmarket, summer-residence island. Meanwhile, black activist and celebrity Andrew Stirling (Samuel Jackson) has discovered that his new neighbours aren’t as liberal as he’d been led to believe, as his new home is beseiged by police thinking that any coloured man in an expensive house has to be an armed burglar. Realising his mistake and sensing the media backlash against him, the racist Chief of Police tries to strike a deal with Amos whereby, in exchange for an easy escape, he would become the fall-guy holding Andrew hostage.
The slack opening pace of this superior straight-to-video comedy soon picks up as misunderstandings escalate, racism and class snobbery are brought to the surface of a polite but scummy backwater pond, and
h clashing personalities send out sparks. Misrnatched reluctant buddies, Amos and Andrew become the Abbott and Costello equivalent of The Defiant Dnes. Cage is sleazlly laid-back and appealing; Jackson hits the right note as the uptight straight man. And all around them are a supporting cast of oddities, from Michael lemer’s pompous lawyer to Brad Dourif’s trademark nutter of a cop. (Alan Morrison)
Amos & Andrew is available to rent on the PolyGram label.
I Menace II Society 1‘ 18) Bleaker and with a harder edge than other depictions ofstreet violence in black neighbourhoods. the Hughes twins' feature follows the fortunes of Caine and his homeboy t)-l)og. For a change it's not the aspiring I)Js or college hopefuls of the community who are the centre of attention. but those doomed to play their
, The pairing ofClint Eastwood and Kevin Costner wasn't the box-
had expected. perhaps because of the needless : sub-plot with grizzly Clint
part in the ongoing cycle of murder and crime. (First Independent)
I A Perfect World ( 15)
growing relationship with
his young hostage. has
E many hidden depths.
(Warner)
’ I Ilard Target (18) John
Woo tones down (only slightly) his manic screen
violence. and in the process allows Jean- Claude Van Damme the chance to appear in one of the best US actioners of last year. Intriguing plot.
plenty of style and another
1 deliciously nasty baddie
role for Lance Henriksen. (CIC)
office dream ticket many
and criminal psychologist Laura l)ern that gobbled up screen time. The core narrative. however. following Costner‘s kidnapper and his
I Le Jeune Werthert 15) A delight to discover on video. Jacques l)oillon‘s portrait of a group of young French teenagers coming to terms with the suicide of a friend is one of the most intelligent films ever made about childhood. Convinced that unrequited love lies at the heart of the tragedy. they seek out a girl whom they believe had caught the dead boy's heart. The discovery of mortality and the minor tragedies of young love are presented without a hint of sentimentality. (Tartan £15.99)
I Rape Of The Vampire (18) Redemption‘s best release of recent months. Jean Rollin's debut shows a higher than usual artistic level ofcomposition within the black-and- white frames. The story. which concerns a vampire queen‘s dominance of a small community. is confused and confusing. but has interesting elements ~ the persecution of those perceived to be different. vampirism as mind and body control. the power of mass hysteria. (Redemption £12.99)
but the sound advice from the presenters may help , the more inhibited who
. e would rather get tips . indirectly via their TV screens. (Pride Video £19.99)
I Cup Final (15) Even in time of war. football is the great leveller. A11 easy- going Israeli soldier is captured in Lebanon in 1982 by a PI.() unit. and so he misses his trip to the World Cup Finals. Sharing an appreciation of
I The Unknown Comic
I Better Gay Sex (18)
the Italian side. the enemies discover a common humanity that emphasises the senselessness of their conflict. (Tartan £15.99) I The legendary Bruce Lee battles his way into the sell-through market
(15) The gimmick is weak — a man with a paper-bag over his head — and the stand-up lines are less- than-inspired. After being stood up. The Unknown Comic goes bowling and
proceeds to annoy us by with The Big Boss. Came following his cringing : Of Death and The Way I" puns with a gratineg false The Dragon ( l8.
PolyGram £10.99 each); the Madame anary story
3 is transferred to post- independence India in
’ Maya (15. Channel Four
: Film/First Independent
£12.99); Bob Hoskins
receives the widescreen
treatment in Mona Ilsa
(18. Lumiere £10.99); and
and more explicit than ? Alison Maclean's Kiwi
anything allowed in the ; thriller Crush revels in the
fiction market. but a bit darker side of sexual
pretentious with it. Sure. attraction (15. Tartan
it's designed to titillate. £15.99).
laugh. Believe me. John Hurt was funnier trying
out the same trick in The [flop/um! Mun. (Lumiere £9.99)
Breaking the heterosexual monopoly on sex- education videos. this is stylishly done. sensual