Girls With Guns

Linda Marlowe in Big Zapper

Zombies Have Fallen (2017)

"Go careful boys, she's not your average kind of girl"

It's the zombie apocalypse...in Greenock?!

Whilst watching North West Tonight earlier this evening I was intrigued by a report about the Bolton based filmmaker and recently graduated student from the University of Cumbria Sam Fountayne (also seemingly known as Sam Hampson going off the IMDB credits) who has just released and secured a prized distribution deal for a zombie action horror film he made for just £500!

Zombies Have Fallen was clearly a labour of love for the student turned writer/producer/director Fountayne, as well as for his cast and crew. Pooling resources they uploaded various scenes to YouTube where Green Apple, an American distribution company, saw it and made him an offer. They subsequently sold it to Amazon Prime which - thanks to the free monthly trial I take up every year - is where I headed to see just what all the fuss was about. 

Kyra (Tansy Parkinson) is a young woman in need of help. Escaping from some top secret clinical institution with the help of a mysterious benefactor, she takes his advice and heads to Scotland's Gretna Green to track down a potential ally in the shape of semi-alcoholic loner John Northwood (Heath Hampson). It appears Northwood is a former protege of Kyra's elusive benefactor who reveals to him, via a prerecorded video message, that Kyra is in fact is no ordinary girl; she possesses special telekinetic powers which resulted in her parents being killed and her being held against her will in the clinic since childhood by its proprietor, the evil businessman Raven (Ken Richardson). Hot on Kyra and Northwood's heels is Max (Tony Gardner) a bitter and ruthless mercenary determined to bring the girl back to his paymaster, Raven. And then the zombies show up...

In all honesty, the major flaw in this film is the zombies. I can't help but wonder if they were a late addition to the plot at the behest of the US distribution company. It would certainly explain why the title was changed from Bad Blood to the particularly feeble Zombies Have Fallen (presumably a rather dumb and inexplicable cash-in to London Has Fallen, given the similarities in the poster design) and it would also explain why the whole plot seems to do a completely disorientating 360 around the 45 minute mark to become an extremely tongue-in-cheek romp with gun toting priests and mini-mart workers taking down this sudden arrival of zombies. After the taciturn thriller elements of the first half, this change in tone came as a big disappointment and the plot that had been slowly developing simply goes out the window for the cheap thrills and laughs of the campy zombie genre instead. They literally lose the plot! If this all really did come from Green Apple then it's a real shame that Fountayne (or Hampson) has allowed his artistic integrity to be bought right out of the starting gate. If the film kept to where it seemed to be going, I'd have rated this at least an extra half star more than I have.

The effects on display here are the kind you'd see in mid '80s Doctor Who, the acting is on a par with a porn film (and Raven looks like a cross between cockney bog-brush haired rocker Joe Brown and former EastEnder Paul Moriarty...after a strict pie diet), the score just lies there like a damp carpet, the sound is terrible - with ADR being louder than anything else in the mix, and most striking of all - to me at least - they misspell Bounty Hunter as 'Bount Hunter' in the dossier up on Raven's plasma TV screen, but what do you want for 500 nicker? 

That a film could be made for just £500 (or $622 if you're across the pond) is an achievement worth discussing, and it's nice to see that the central character of Kyra is actually played by an ordinary looking young woman (with actual thighs!) rather than some highly sexualised object.

Handgun (1983)

Much as I enjoy, respect and admire the work of Tony Garnett I was a bit hesitant to watch Hangun, the film he wrote, produced and directed in America in the early 80s. I don't know why, as he loses none of his power, skills or critical perceptions filming in the US and proves the old adage that it sometimes takes an outsider to understand a situation properly.

Whilst Handgun is ostensibly a rape/revenge thriller, it is also about the controversial, liberal gun laws of the US (still sadly a terribly hot topic) and the macho male identity the state of Texas possesses, with a principal male character clearly believing that violence is a right to him - both in the ability to carry a weapon and use it recreationally, and in terms of his sexual identity and pursuit of the opposite sex.  

Tony Garnett on the set of Handgun with star, Karen Young

Karen Young stars as Kathleen Sullivan, a timid, happy young schoolteacher from Boston who accepts a position at a school in Texas, and catches the eye of Larry (Clayton Day) a gun aficionado. Larry may be young and he may dress hip in accordance of the fashions of the day, but he quickly proves to be an unreconstructed alpha male; he is proud of his Texas roots and hankers after the golden age of male role models such as John Wayne, instead of the film stars of today, the likes of which he brands as ''faggots''. 

Having only recently come out of a relationship, Kathleen may be attracted to Larry but she has no intention of entering into anything more serious with him than simple friendship. This rebuttal comes to light back at Larry's after a date, and he quickly proves completely unable to tolerate such a sexual rebuff. He makes it clear that he believes he is due intercourse with her as his male prerogative and, as such, he proceeds to rape her, virtually at gunpoint, twice. 

"I feel sorry about how things got outta hand back there", he says after the first assault - which Garnett keeps a respectful distance from. "But its partly your fault for being so irresistible" he concludes, proving to us that Larry clearly sees no problem with, and has no guilt over, what he has just done - indeed he believes Kathleen's unwillingness to have sex with him signifies a frigidity or psychological fault she needs to address. He even suggests she seeks professional help for it!

Kathleen attempts to report Larry to the police but she finds that the authorities are completely ineffectual in the case and that, overall in such instances, the law is stacked in favour of the man/perpetrator. Consumed by an understandable rage and, with a desire to get revenge upon the man who violated her, Kathleen comes to the conclusion that she must take matters into her own hands. She cuts her hair short and begins to take an interest in guns for herself, joining a gun club and purchasing weapons. 

What follows is an uncompromising, documentary-like look at America’s freely accessible, liberal gun laws and its almost sexualised, fetishistic and paranoid hand gun culture, shown through the eyes of the traumatised rape victim, Kathleen. Like Garnett's previous film, Prostitute, you could be mistaken for thinking you were watching a piece of reportage rather than a film. Certainly this is not your standard exploitation revenge thriller that Hollywood regularly churns out, especially in this era when video nasties like I Spit On Your Grave were rife, and that's in part because Garnett - as he often did - used a mix of professional, though unknown, actors and non-professionals in key roles and operated right at the apex of contemporary social issues. With this cinema-verite style, he upholds the traditions of the utterly authentic, socially aware films he produced with Ken Loach in Britain during the '60s and '70s.

Handgun has an authenticity and a gravitas you simply will not find in the likes of the aforementioned and much better known I Spit On Your Grave. Whilst it cover similar ground, Garnett is far more interested in presenting the downward spiral into physical and mental breakdown that victims of a sexual assault experience than he is with the tropes of the rape/revenge thriller. The desire to get closure, to take control of their lives once more is key here and its explored realistically and believably even when Garnett takes it to its all too logical, sympathetic extreme.

Karen Young gives a bravura performance as Kathleen, utterly convincing in every facet of her character, from sweet natured innocent, to tragic victim to ruthless, hardened seeker of revenge. Remarkably, this was her first film and it's a truly stunning debut showcasing great talent and range - it's easy to see why she's remained steadily in work ever since, even though she has never attained major star status. 

Want to know why you may not have ever heard of Handgun or why it didn't set Young on the road to stardom? Well, you have to blame Clint Eastwood I'm afraid. Eastwood's Diry Harry film Sudden Impact was coming out around the same time as Garnett's film and it explored a similar story of a rape victim out for revenge. Warner Brothers offered a distribution deal for the film with Garnett which he accepted, whereupon the company - eager to ensure top drawer star Eastwood's film got a smooth passage - promptly sat on Handgun, releasing it only to a few select cinemas in New York and with no marketing whatsoever. 

Cheers Clint! Sudden Impact was shit, this isn't. This has more in common with Bowling for Columbine than it does with any of its then contemporary genre rivals.

No Blade Of Grass (1970)

1970s' No Blade of Grass is a laughably heavy handed ecological post apocalyptic movie that seems so proud of its green message, that it scream it at the viewer, taking it so seriously that it ultimately becomes utterly hysterical and overheated. True exploitation, the film's producer and director, Cornell Wilde, doesn't seem to understand how unsavoury it is to place real life footage of starving and dying African children alongside his Boy's Own macho action scenes. It doesn't help either that the unrelentingly grim air is populated with terrible performances and some incredibly stilted unintentionally hilarious dialogue; it's all "My God Pirie, I'll have to tell my wife Janet, Roger and the two boys", just in case we've forgotten the characters in the film. It also has a truly lousy score; Roger Whittaker's interminable warbling takes up the film's first five minutes and the incidental music, a dated acid jazz funk nightmare is laughably out of place over the exploitative rapes, murders, beatings and riots that the film delights in.

The lead actor is Nigel Davenport as Custance, a rather bluff, conceited ex Korean war veteran and successful architect who in light of the global crisis and the breakdown of society obsessively leads his family to his brother's farm in the north. He's not really a very sympathetic character, as he seems to openly embrace the position he's found himself in and glories in being a tinpot leader. Also, he's quite a hypocrite; he  expresses snobbish disgust at scenes of the rioting populace in big cities, and a hatred for stick up merchants trying to fend for themselves, yet he seems perfectly comfortable waltzing across the country shooting to death anyone who gets in his way, including soldiers doing their duty...and his family seldom blink an eye at his actions! Speaking of eyes - Custance only has one. Davenport sports an eyepatch which immediately makes him even more laughable as its clear the film thinks it somehow makes him look as grizzled, macho and hardened as the events and repercussions they're trying to convey are. In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king they say and, to prove it, Davenport's disability doesn't seem to put the young and jet black haired Wendy Richard off who, as one of the stragglers he picks up during the journey, spends half of her time pointing her not inconsiderable tits in his direction much to her husband's disgust, and the other half of her time moaning. An actress who had seemingly built a career on having a perpetual face like a slapped arse, when she's not fluttering her eyelashes at Davenport that is,  I think it must have been this gloomfest gig that got her the part of chief moaner in EastEnders...though it could be argued Walford is slightly more bleaker than a lawless country ravaged by famine and marshal law. 

No Blade Of Grass is so earnest and unrelenting in ramming its point home that it hurts. Nevertheless both the film and its source novel, John Christopher's The Death of Grass, predates things like the Terry Nation penned Survivors, an excellent BBC TV series from the late 70s which covered a similar apocalyptic plot and was remade again for the BBC a few years ago before being cruelly cancelled after just two series. 

Watching this though is both an interminable and ridiculous experience but I can't help thinking it's likely to be a favourite of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace stars Matthew Holness and Matt Berry. 

RIP Tom Adams

Another sad passing in the world of entertainment, veteran actor Tom Adams has died following a battle with cancer aged 76.

Their really isn't many left like Tom, a real saturnine smoothie, urbane and square of jaw who, realising perhaps that such a stereotype was on the wane, exploited it's naff old world charms really well in three James Bond spoof movies of the late 60s, Licensed To Kill (aka The Second Best Secret Agent In The Whole Wide World) from 1965, Where The Bullets Fly the following year and lastly Somebody's Stolen Our Russian Spy (aka OK Yevtushenko) in 1969. Adams starred as Charles Vine - the brainchild of exploitation director Lindsay Shonteff  - the man the British government turns to when their first choice James Bond is too busy. Shonteff would make a further three films featuring Vine - 1970's Number One Of The Secret Service, Licensed To Love and Kill from 1979 and finally, 1990's Number One Gun - but none of these featured Adams and Vine was played by Nicky Henson, Gareth Hunt and Michael Howe respectively.

Adams had a long career starring in the likes of Emergency Ward 10, The Avengers, The Persuaders, UFO, General Hospital, The Onedin Line and Doctor Who. He also starred as Dai Nimmo, aka 'Diversions', in The Great Escape.

In later life he became something of an adverts king and much desired voice over man. His dark vocals could be heard on E4 whilst he appeared in person in ads for Aero, Dixons, Stannah Stairlifts and perhaps most famously for the endless, eternal DFS sale.... 

DFS - Dreadful Fucking Sofas haha! That ad was from 1994, remember it as clear as day, and yes - the sale is still on!

RIP, here's Sammy Davis Jr with the theme tune to his first outing as Charles Vine (last heard in the big screen adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)

Girls With Guns

Christina Lindberg in the 1973 Swedish cult classic Thriller - A Cruel Picture (known on the American Grindhouse circuit with characteristic originality as They Call Her One-Eye) A huge inspiration on movie magpie Tarantino, of course.

Here's Christina sans gun and eyepatch. She's now a journalist in her native Sweden.

Girls With Guns

Swedish lovely and star of Italian exploitation Janet Agren

Here she is looking less deadly, but just as hot

Fancy a kickabout? ;)

I Start Counting (1969)

Remember the photo of Jenny Agutter I posted yesterday? Well that was from the film I Start Counting, which I'm going to talk about now. See? Everything is carefully planned here! 

It's a largely forgotten movie from the late 1960s which is a shame. Even more of a shame is the fact that it seems to have been wilfully forgotten in some quarters because its plot of a fourteen year old schoolgirl's sexual awakening is deemed moderately controversial, perhaps largely because the character is played by Jenny Agutter who was still only sixteen/seventeen at the time. 

To be fair, I think we're living in a cotton wool society if we can't accept that most fourteen year olds are discovering their sexuality. In fact, I would say most fourteen year olds today have probably already discovered and experimented. I Start Counting does not deserve the controversy it has garnered as it's all rather winsomely handled and, unlike Baby Love, (which I blogged about on Saturday, see? I tod you nothing is left to chance here!) the sexual awakening Agutter experiences isn't used to manipulate or for sordid salacious effect (though admittedly, the publicity photoshoot, an example above, does seem to veer towards that aspect, but I stress the film does not) In fact it's a very naive, innocent and foolishly romantic burgeoning sexuality which sees her devote all her feelings to her 32 year old step brother played by Bryan Marshall. 

It's an intriguing film that plays out at a pleasing pace suggestive of a half waking dream, helped enormously by the soft textured cinematography employed (though to be honest, that may have just been the rather washed out print I saw) and the flimsy fragile theme sung by Lindsay Moore. It's well directed by David Greene from a novel by Audrey Erskine Lindop. Jenny Agutter plays the central character of Wynne with a great wistful air and she's helped enormously by Clare Sutcliffe as her more earthy friend Corrinne, who provides some good comedy. Their relationship as two schoolgirl friends is utterly believable and completely timeless. There's a pleasing and understated Alice In Wonderland motif that the film seems to want to draw comparison with itself to the classic literature, being that they both focus on a girl on the cusp from childhood to maturity. Naturally, with Wynne's sexual awakening also comes maturity and the facing up to and discovering of the harsh realities of life, a million miles away from Wynne's romantic daydreaming. 

The film's crux is that Wynne as well as secretly harbouring desires for her stepbrother, also suspects him of being responsible for several recent murders of young girls in the town, so she sets out to surreptitiously investigate and follow him to find out the truth. It's the kind of plot that would still be perfectly serviceable in an ITV1 drama these days, albeit with significantly less charm than here, and of course is totally dependant on anyone having the balls to address a fourteen year old having sexual urges for her 32 year old stepbrother.

The film was shot on location in the new town of Bracknell, Herts. I'm no fan of new towns as previous posts here and personal experience will prove, but it's interesting to note that this film depicts one pretty much as the town planners originally considered them; clinically white (Agutter's adopted family live in a completely white modern build home, stark contrast to the cottage she continuously runs away to, earmarked for demolition) ultra clean and almost complete that has the ambition and desire to be a future idyll. It's a world away from how Bracknell was depicted just three years later in Sidney Lumet's excellent The Offence (again, previously blogged about) a failed crumbling and empty wasteland with no community spirit. Of course both films have their own agenda when depicting the town, and as much as The Offence needs a setting that mirrors the festering wound that is Sean Connery's character's damaged psyche, I Start Counting is a film that possibly needs to paint its environs as progressive, to look to the future as much as Wynne's oncoming adulthood. Indeed even the murders that have occurred in the course of film are said to happen in or around the Common, where the old houses are. Also of note is that Wynne's own former home was the scene of a tragedy which she has flashbacks too. The future, the new town, is a better place.

Oh and there's also a brief appearance from Bruce Robinson's old pal Michael Feast as the token pill popping hippy (not a million miles from his part in Private Road) and Agutter gets a delightfully charming little drunk scene.

Baby Love (1968)

Baby Love is a 1968 exploitation feature that is very much mired in controversy. 

The story is about Luci (Linda Hayden) a young teenage girl in the North of England whose mother, the local prostitute, played as a brief non speaking cameo by Diana Dors, commits suicide rather than die of the cancer she has been diagnosed with. Luci is subsequently 'adopted' by former local boy made good Robert Quayle (Keith Barron) who had previously had a love affair with Dors before he left the town to go to Oxford. A grieving Luci suddenly finds herself in London, in the lap of luxury and a new family, Robert his wife Amy (Ann Lynn) and their son Nick (Derek Lamden) But there's no happy ending; Luci holds some resentment towards Robert for leaving her mother and cheating them of this kind of family life from the start. More, Luci's need to be loved for the first time in her life, coupled with her burgeoning wanton sexuality, starts to blur the lines of the physical or familial, distorting and twisting the lives of everyone around her as one by one she bewitches Nick, Robert and even Amy with her advances and desires.

It's a very interesting premise from the writing/producing and directing team of Guido Coen, Michael Klinger and Alasteir Reid (who adapted from the novel by Tina Chad Christian) in that, like the very best of exploitation cinema, it forces the viewer to consider the darkness, a subject matter that could easily be brushed off as sordid, and realise that it is in fact psychologically interesting. Luci is first seen brazenly walking out of school, a crowd of gawping admirers following her, heading towards a gang of boys where she promptly French kisses the leader. Clearly, Luci has learnt life's lessons far too early witnessing her mother in action. Yet in the next scene, when she stumbles across her mother's dead body in the steam filled bathroom - where we presume she's slit her wrists open - Luci suddenly becomes her age, a fearful frightened and grieving little girl. It's this flux, this precarious nature, with Luci trying on different aspects of herself - the little girl and the sexually awakened female - to gain favour, appeal and love from others, that the film concentrates upon. It's a controversial subject indeed, but it is a valuable insightful subject. However, Reid immediately hampers himself into even further controversy by casting Linda Hayden as Luci, who was just 15 years old at the time. A lot of what may be intellectually interesting to explore in exploitation is lost because there inevitably is a charge of whether the film itself is exploiting a minor, in both its subject matter and required nude scenes which Hayden performs. 

It's an extremely interesting film to watch too from today's stand point, knowing what we now do about the likes of Jimmy Savile. Reid depicts the big city Luci finds herself in as utterly preoccupied with sex and in getting into her knickers specifically. One wonders just how morally loose the swinging 60s actually were when it came to underage sex and just how this didn't seem such an issue as it does now. There's a cameo from TV comic Dick Emery as a friend of Robert's who, despite being married with a family of his own, is clearly very fond of the younger lady and no one bats an eyelid. He's seen before Luci's arrival at a party held in Robert's house chatting up a young blonde girl under his wife's nose. Later when Luci arrives, he's utterly besotted by this Lolita like figure in a genuinely creepy improper and leery way.

We also see Vernon Dobtcheff, in another non speaking cameo as a total stranger at a cinema, all sweaty top lip and leering expression as he gropes a surprisingly calm and complicit Luci's bare leg, much to Nick's disgust and, perhaps importantly, his entrancement.

In another scene, Nick takes her to a nightclub ( with a live band called Katch 22 performing the ostensible theme of the film 'Baby Love') and the moment he goes to the bar, Luci is picked up by a young heavy set black man, again causing Nick further disgust and entrancement. It's a strange scene in which, the black man then invites Luci over to meet his friends, each of whom sit around in stony, sweaty spaced out silence. The meaning is clear; they're on drugs. And if it wasn't clear Katch 22 helpfully throw in some discordant thrashing guitars to suggest tripping. It's a weird scene, because the black man suddenly has no interest sexually in Luci, yet Nick barges in and rescues her regardless, to save her curious mind from taking anything (the black man is later seen again in a fantasy of Luci's back at home complete with jungle sound effects which show up the rather stereotypical immature allusions of both the film maker and possibly of the audience at the time) Perhaps the most interesting thing in this club scene now is to spy a young and uncredited Bruce 'Withnail and I' Robinson, as one of the spaced out clique, who gains a couple of glorious close ups that shows his beauty, but also a rather large pimple on the end of his nose.

Towards the end of the film Luci and Nick are ambushed in a lakeside forest by some leering posho rowers who clearly have a bit of sex and violence in mind for the pair. An almost Peckinpah-esque view of rape/sexual abuse occurs, mercifully slightly out of shot and interrupted before it goes too far. 

Each of the scenes detailed serve to show just how aware Luci is of not just the feelings towards her from each potential partner/abuser, but principally to those of Nick's, and just how much of a manipulative prick tease she is with him. Yet, it's not always so cut and dried; in an earlier scene in which Amy takes Luci shopping (to Roberto Roma) she is so giddily excitable that she wanders from the changing room across the shop floor in just her pants, bra and tights gabbling animatedly about all the fab clothes she wants to try on. Here, she seems completely unaware of the effect her body and her sexuality has. It is here where she seems like a complete child. There's also a scene where she experiments with make up that shows off her immature nature.

Such naivety doesn't last. Luci suffers nightmares in her new home with flashbacks brought on by steamy baths and water depicting both her mother's death and her 'work' which she's had the misfortune to see first hand from an early age. Amy's natural concern for her mental well being is subtly played upon by Luci until the love starved wife (it's made clear Robert pays little care or attention to her needs) now sharing a bed with her succumbs to hitherto closed off lesbian feelings.

It's perhaps Robert who is the hardest to break, chiefly because he sees in Luci exactly what he saw in her mother all those years ago. Luci remarks that Robert was the only man her mother ever truly loved, but one can't help but wonder if the same is true for Robert? It would certainly explain how he views and treats Luci as Kryptonite to keep at arms length given how much she reminds him of her mother, and would explain just why is marriage to Amy is so cold and dead. There's a strange mix of love, dislike and straight up, albeit coldly, paternal feelings in Robert's character that makes for a Keith Barron I've never seen before. When it becomes clear he's considering sending her off to boarding school, Luci panics that she'll be in another loveless situation and figuring any love is better than no love she throws herself at him, nude in the garden. He spurns her advances, which lead to her injuring both him and Nick in a fit of rage. At the film's conclusion, both Robert and Amy are now totally aware of the malign influence the girl has and are determined that she be removed from the house. But Luci has other ideas, and as the pair head off to a party, she invites herself, dressed in fine clothes and looking more and more like a woman. The film ends there leaving the viewer to make their mind up on what potential outcome their may be in the strange set up.

For all its inherent exploitative issues, Baby Love is still an engrossing look at the darker aspects of life and in turn of cinema at the time. Whatever your opinion of this sort of film, what cannot be denied is the amazing central performance from Hayden. She was clearly at that time a star in the making and it's a shame that star only shone for a brief period in numerous exploitation and low budget features, such as Expose (blogged about earlier in the week) and the Confessions series of films, in the following decade. That she was only 15 at the time of this may be controversial, but it's equally stunning that someone of that age could produce such a mature compelling performance that depicts the deep complexities of mind and character on which the film hangs.

Road Games (1981)

Road Games is another Ozploitation film from 1981 and...Oh my this is wonderful!

A great esoteric homage to Hitchcock, Road Games owes a special debt in particular to Rear Window, as it plays out like that movie set instead on the open highways of the Australian outback, replacing the apartment for a truck driver's cab. 

Stacy Keach is an amiable delight as Quid an ex pat American trucker who believes he is on the heels of Australia's answer to The Ripper, sharing his theories with Boswell his prized Dingo. It's a charming central performance, a hero in the Hitchcock mould; determined, a little stupid and occasionally doubtful. I believe Richard Franklin the director had hoped to bag Sean Connery for the role originally, but the budget didn't allow it. Well, I'm glad as Stacy Keach is perfect and couldn't have been bettered. Along the way Keach picks up a hitch-hiking fellow American Jamie Lee Curtis and the pair's interplay is very sparkling, a real highlight to the film. And just in case we haven't got the references to Hitchcock, the scriptwriter Everett De Roche has Quid call her 'Hitch' throughout.

The locations are absolutely stunning, Australia really does have a beautiful and distinctive landscape which the film naturally shows off as, because of the set up, we literally follow Keach across the length and breadth of the land. 

There are some great directorial set pieces from Franklin including many tracking shots, a complete 360 around a road house full of local characters as Keach is on the phone trying to alert the authorities, the atmospheric murder scene and a stunning chase sequence in which a boat being towed along gets smashed to smithereens. Franklin understands suspense and tension brilliantly and teases every measure of it from De Roche's script right until that amazing jump in your seat ending. 

But like Hitchcock movies, it's also very eccentric and very funny with a host of characters - the community on the road - that Keach comes across including, that man again, Patrick star Robert Thompson as 'Sneezy Rider' a biker with hay fever and the hapless 'Captain Careful', the owner of the demolished boat.

Another Ozploitation regular, Brian May provides the soundtrack which is at times grand and almost cavalry western like for the wide landscapes of Australia's highways, whilst at others it mimics Mars; The Bringer Of War by Holst. In short, it's just as knowing and esoteric as the film.

Though it runs on fumes on occasion, Road Games is an overlooked gem of a movie that oozes likeability.

Expose (1976)

An early video nasty,  Expose is a film that goes by several names, such as Trauma (as shown above) or even House On Straw Hill. Though truthfully it may as well have been called Nymphet Nutjob!

Linda Hayden is the sex charged psycho in question. It's the one film she is on record as regretting, claiming it was not the film she thought she was making. Frankly one can only wonder what she initially thought she was making given that her character has three masturbation scenes (all taking place in one day) a rape scene at gunpoint and then a lesbian  romp with the death mask featured Soho legend Fiona Richmond. Oh and she gets to kill people too; her rapist (Karl Brush Strokes Howman) and his mate, the housekeeper and Richmond. Only Udo Kier (dubbed) escapes her homicidal advances, which is a bit daft seeing is it's him who she seeks revenge upon in the first place, for stealing her husband's manuscript for his first novel whose great success led to his suicide. Incidentally, Kier is not averse to the sexually charged nonsense of the film, having two goes on Richardson himself, wearing latex gloves?!

It's hardly a film that covers itself in glory, it's pure exploitation. I saw the 80 minute version which I believe has a massive 30 cuts to it. But when all is said and done Expose does manage to have a deeply unsettling tense air about it, helped greatly by a rather nice piano and synth based soundtrack.

And there are some nice directorial touches once in a while. And Norfolk looks nice, the rural setting for horrific sex and violence reminding the viewer of Straw Dogs. Though admittedly Norfolk doesn't look as nice as Hayden!

Despite her regrets, Hayden recently performed a cameo in a remake of this entitled Stalker, directed by Martin 'Spandau Ballet' Kemp. I haven't seen it (yet) but I've heard it fails to improve on the notable weaknesses that this original has, which surely should be the point of a remake.