Hard Candy (2005)

 

What if...? is the central question to any writer. First you write what you know, then you ask 'what if...?'. I never thought a seriously thrilling psychological movie would - at least in my mind - spawn from an episode of To Catch A Predator. It is difficult to make a movie with a moral or societal message that doesn't come off as biased or preachy, and given today's climate, it is probably suitable that a movie like Hard Candy was made in the mid-'00s, just on the precipice of artistic expansion, mere years before the populace apparently became too precious to take a joke, or to acknowledge genuine social commentary when it presents itself. I cannot imagine a movie like Hard Candy being made either today, or even five years ago. It is sometimes terrifying how quickly the societal landscape evolves, and often not for the better, especially when it comes to freedom of artistic expression.

Hard Candy is an amazingly intelligent, sensitive and thrilling movie that is effectively a 90-minute  two-hander of intense conversation, like Educating Rita or Venus in Fur. Elliot Page plays Hayley, a fourteen-year-old girl who meets middle-aged photographer Geoff (Patrick Wilson) on a chatroom, and gets together with him at a local coffee house. They hit it off and she talks him into taking her back to his place, where things take an unusual and *SPOILERY* turn. Hayley roofies Geoff and he wakes up in a slightly less horrifying scenario than the fellas in Hostel: tied to a chair, threatened with bodily harm... and accused of child abuse. Hayley has targeted Geoff as a predator, but once he is subdued, the identity of the predator is suddenly up for question.

I thawt yew wawnted to be shayved... down thayr

It is rare, as the writer and director of this picture both remarked, for a movie to be so succinctly summarised, but as is often the case with character-driven pieces, plot is not necessarily pertinent. Almost Famous and Me Without You are two examples that spring to mind of one-line-plot movies that find their momentum in their immensely detailed characters, who feel like real people. Although Hard Candy is much harder-hitting material than either of these movies, it is essentially a character profile with genuine dramatic tension. Hayley is a vigilante and Geoff is a sinner of the worst kind who tries to spare his reputation the truth right until the end. It could work well as a stage play in its excellence with dialogue and characterisation, and purposeful use of literal frames to reflect the photographic lens through which Geoff allegedly sees the world. 

Hard Candy hangs heavily on its two leading actors, and they carry it with simultaneous ease and torment. Page, given the duality of Hayley, is required to craft a base character, and an alter ego masquerading as a naive teenager, and it is eerily effective. She shows little glimmers of flirtation and precociousness, while maintaining an adolescent naivete; later she suggests entirely through facial expression that her character was molested as a child, and sees this whole ordeal as retribution for not only herself, but for every other young person who was ever victimised. Wilson, meanwhile, runs the gamut of emotion, and is essentially the characterisation of the audience itself, reacting to the each new twist of the ordeal he finds himself in. Importantly, he never once shows true evil to anybody. He goes through flirtatious manipulation, lust, confusion, anger, mortal fear, rage, guilt, submission, but he never lets us see the side of him that caused Hayley to target him in the first place. He is a real, complex person with many layers, and Wilson's performance is nothing short of athletic.

For tonight is the night that my beautiful
creature is destined to be born!

Not only is this movie an intense emotional ride, but it is like wandering through a chic, minimalist art gallery to look at. Everything has a sleek Scandinavian flavour to it, with expressive pops of colour hinting at some thematic undertone. Indeed, the opening credits are a simple shifting of a single red shape among a variety of white backgrounds, suggesting a small but lingering figure stalking just beyond the periphery. And not for the first time, we are forced to consider who this figure really is. Perhaps their identity depends on what sort of a person is looking. Those with devious skeletons in their closet may see that figure as the reason they still look over their shoulder every day. Those of a more innocent nature might consider it the unremarkable perpetrator of terrible cruelty. 

St. Trinian's (2007)

 St. Trinian's has attitude oozing from every cinematic and dramatic pore. It typifies the last peak of real comedy, before fear of offending people became such a central social construct. It perfectly ties the visual wackiness of Ronald Searle's cartoons, the very kinky camp of the newly liberated '60s movies, and the wider spectrum of weirdness that was the nova of the 2000s. It achieved all this before the scene imploded into the comically-emasculated era we are now stuck in. Drag, drugs and innuendo are the heart of this picture, in perfect keeping with the infamous reputation that St. Trinian's has held for decades. I saw this movie in the cinema upon its initial release, and as a fifteen-year-old, really enjoyed the rebellion and overall craziness; but it has proven to be one of those movies like Beetlejuice or Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, that I realise, upon each subsequent viewing, contains lots of clever and well-masked adult jokes. This is your perfect 'family' movie, the kind that is all but dead now, but was still staggering on during my own teenage years.

Don't worry - they are all of age.

Annabel Fritton (Talulah Riley) is marooned at St. Trinian's school by her rich, neglectful father (Rupert Everett), where her estranged aunt Camilla (also Rupert Everett) is the flirtatious and boundless headmistress. Her new classmates put Annabel through the ringer, testing her ability to be one of them, while the school's chaotic educational and financial habits put it into foreclosure. In a staunch effort to avoid being sent to 'normal schools', the girls plan a heist in which they will steal a priceless piece of art and sell it on the black market to bring their beloved sanctuary back into the black. Helming this mission are Flash Harry (Russell Brand in his mid-'00s heyday) and head girl Kelly (Gemma Arterton). 

It's hard to make a movie that really speaks to young people. Teenagers were a newly-discovered breed in the 1950s, and music and book genres scrambled to keep up with the fresh demand. But real young adult cinema has always been a rare underdog of a genre, and any picture that dared to walk the line generally fell on either the terrible side, or the fantastic side. Roger Ebert once said of Richard Linklater's School of Rock, "[it] is about as serious as it can be about its comic subject, and never condescends to its characters or its audience. The kids aren't turned into cloying little clones, but remain stubborn, uncertain, insecure and kidlike." His take on School of Rock ran through my head for the entire running time of St. Trinian's. This movie is aligned entirely with its young characters, completely understanding their emotions and motives; meanwhile, adult figures of authority are also rounded people, whose vices form a common ground between child and grownup. 

Love story of the century

Miss Fritton carries on the grand tradition of the headmistress of St. Trinian's being a man in drag. Rupert Everett, a veteran of campy comedy, is the jewel in this crown. His performance is affected just on the verge of silliness, always taking itself only as seriously as it can be. He accommodates a big white flipper with a poncy sort of lisp, dresses like the Queen on her downtime, and leans fully into his romantic interest in Colin Firth, who lends the second appendage in this spicy little two-hander. Firth is a government minister of education, and plans to rehabilitate Britain's schools by starting from the bottom: St. Trinian's. When he rocks up to "the gates of hell", he discovers not only an underground vodka distillery, a crucified student and a tropical zoo, but that the captain of this ghostly ship is his former university lover. Firth and Everett enjoy a stiffly flirtatious relationship, before she finally gets him drunk one night, and he wakes up in far fewer clothes than he remembers having on.

Heh. Didn't recognise her without
her brother's dick in her

The British film industry has experienced a lot of peaks and troughs over the years. When the original St. Trinian's movies were made in the '50s and '60s, films were on the decline due to the sharp rise of TV in the home. However, what you couldn't get on TV was sex and violence, which in turn led to a boom in small-budget horrors and sexy comedies, like the Carry On and Hammer movies. Aside from the odd worldwide sensations like the Harry Potter or James Bond franchises, the British film scene rarely eeks out into the wider audience, especially now that Disney and other such soulless corporations are buying up any property worth having. It is only fitting that the reboot of St. Trinian's would be a bombastic, utterly British picture, absolutely bursting at the seams with both new and experienced British talent. Firth and Everett are alongside the likes of Celia Imrie, Toby Jones and Lena Headey, while the student population consists of Gemma Arterton, Lily Cole, Juno Temple and Paloma Faith, among others. It's an absolute smorgasbord of UK names.

It takes a really keen director and/or writer to make a truly enjoyable movie for young people. Stephen Spielberg directing Hook, or any John Hughes project, or Rob Reiner on Stand By Me: these guys absolutely understood being young, and what fun and fear and frolics were. St. Trinian's is directed by Barnaby Thompson (producer of the Kevin and Perry movies) and Oliver Parker (who started out in classic literature movies and merged into comedy), and their backgrounds play so nicely into their management of this project. They both understand playful kiddish humour, but can structure a decent narrative and appreciate old source material. They prove to have been the perfect choices for this picture, which could have gone so far awry. Revivals of beloved old properties usually have a hard time reintroducing themselves and gaining traction, and for one reason or another, they are often quite awful. St. Trinian's is such an entertaining experience, that treads the path of its predecessors without it being dated. It is a modern Carry On, the likes of which could have spawned others of its ilk, much to the joy of the British audience. 

School of Rock (2003)

Would you tell Hendrix to sell his guitar?!

And we shall teach rock...to the world.

If you answered 'yes' to this question, then getchow ass outta my neighborhood! School of Rock holds at least one record in my life: it is the only movie I ever watched twice in the cinema... in one day! My sister and I went, then went again - it was that good of a movie. And most of all, it inspired us to get more into music. My siblings and I were heavily influenced by our mother to make music, and to this day, I play eight instruments and sing. Although I didn't get into a serious band until I was 15, I spent years pursuing music because of this amazing movie.

Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, your typical pub-singing rock musician, whose "rock'n'roll authority" is deemed too much for the band that he founded. The band kicks him out, and he declares that he will find an awesome new group to kick their asses. Dewey lives with his friend and former bandmate Ned Schneebly (Mike White) and his pain-in-the-ass girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman), who constantly pressure him for the rent he owes them but can't give them, thanks to his unstable professional habits.

STEP OWWFFF!

When Dewey answers the phone relating to a teaching job offer for Ned, he sees his opportunity to pay off his debts and maybe get fucking Patty off his back for a while. He easily lands Ned's job at a posh prep school, naively headed by Principal Mullins (the hilarious Joan Cusack), and quickly hijacks the class as the next upcoming rock band and their extensive crew to play at the upcoming Battle of the Bands. While Dewey find his professional and spiritual calling, the kids feel liberated from their strict middle-class upbringings, and everybody embraces their skill and happiness. It is a shared turf of happiness for people of every age and background.

So what makes School of Rock so fucking awesome? Well Jack Black has to be awarded a considerable amount of credit. He is the kind of character that most people had in their school class at some time; someone charismatic and funny and annoying and enviable. I certainly remember a girl called Lotte who was my class's Jack Black. He, like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey before him, improvs so much of his performance, and is as engaging and loveable as both of the guys aforementioned. I imagine that even without the amazing script by Mr Schnaaayblaaay himself Mike White, Jack Black's improvisation skills would have carried the movie.

The script and direction is reminiscent of John Hughes, with a childish naivete in adults that turns out a miraculously compassionate coming-of-age film. It doesn't pull a "how do you do, fellow kids", or make every child character a brainless brat with no second (letalone third) dimension. The kids have their own struggles, from weight issues to overbearing parents, and they are really relatable - Tomika's line "cos I'm fat" breaks my heart every time. These were not experienced kid actors (except perhaps for Miranda Cosgrove), they were young and enthusiastic musicians who brought their own spark to this amazing ensemble movie. And God knows that in the company of Jack Black, they were clearly made to feel like a million dollars in their own selves, and each one of them shines.

"Bubblegum!"

Jack Black is a really special dude. To many adults, he probably comes across as a maddening man-child who has never 'grown up'. He presents a real Peter Pan sitch. He clearly lives every day in joy and fun and fulfilment, and it doesn't hurt anyone. In fact, it seems to do so many people so much good: from his fans, to his kids, to his colleagues, to his own self. His personality is infectious and has such a liberating quality. I don't care how few people admit to it, many folks would love to feel so comfortable as to be a Jack Black of this world. I sure know I would. It's the kind of feeling adults only get on drugs or at festivals.

The adult creators have never lost their roots, and totally get what it is to have adolescent angst, and manage to channel them into creative arts. It is so rare for a movie that truly understands kids to be released, and God knows, at that stressful and crazy point in life, kids need a couple of movies that speak to them. School of Rock can be that to pretty much anyone. I still haven't played in a hardcore rock band that people love, but this movie makes me feel like I still can.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

Making films, music and literature based - either loosely or otherwise - on real events, and more specifically, on true crime, is far from a modern trend, and yet it is still a divisive topic on moral grounds. The better known serial killers, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, continue to inspire recreations of their lives and crimes, and the human condition of morbid curiosity keeps ensuring return on profit is seen. The question of whether it is ethical to rehash such crimes for 'entertainment purposes', and how such recreations can impact the survivors and their loved ones, continues to be asked, yet it seems to have little effect on the industry's production of such movies, or on audiences' viewing of them. Monster and The Girl Next Door are serious and well-made productions based to varying degrees on true crime, but for every Monster, there are easily a hundred The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

Critics have been slamming this movie for many reasons, and Lionsgate have been pulling out all of the damage control stops to ensure people still give their movie the benefit of the doubt. Not only is this not a well-made film, but it is a very inconsiderate one. It doesn't seek simply to recreate the crimes of the Manson family in 1969, but to put a supernatural twist on things, and perpetuate dismal rumours first circulated by the media mere hours after the news broke fifty years ago: talk of infidelities, open relationships and devil worship somehow being the cause of those events is tasteless and speculative at best. What, I ask you, could possibly be gained, or added to this story, by the suggestions of Roman Polanski (who is not portrayed onscreen in this movie) 'cheating' on his wife, or Gibby Folger and Wojciech Frykowski manipulating Sharon into a position of vulnerability? It drags this whole sorry tale to the depths of tabloid fodder in the least tactful way possible.

The media spin that continues to embody the Tate-LaBianca murders could be an interesting way to tell this story, but this is clearly not what the makers had in mind. If nothing else, its only real goals are to paint Sharon and her friends as people they were not, with an aim to add a sense of suspicion and tension that never existed. And this is not to say that this movie manages to achieve even the slightest feeling of suspense. It consists primarily of repetitive sequences of Sharon creeping wide-eyed around her dark house, convinced that she is in danger but for some reason doing nothing about it.

For some reason, Hilary Duff 'stars' as Sharon Tate, and we are suddenly and rudely reminded of why her repertoire never really expanded beyond Lizzie McGuire and being Steve Martin's stroppy teen daughter in Cheaper by the Dozen. She looks and sounds nothing like Sharon Tate, despite her fleeting attempts at some sort of regional accent. Duff is very strangely directed throughout this picture, in every way from accent to emotion and mindset. There are odd moments at which she seems to react to things in ways that just don't match the action, and her character's thought processes are sloppy. This heavily pregnant woman, whose several friends are literally in the next bedroom, keeps creeping around this dark house when she suspects intruders. No guns, no phone calls, she doesn't even turn on the lights or scream for someone. She just keeps skulking around in the dark.

The main narrative bookending this piece is what pissed me off the most. The movie opens in black and white, and purports to show us Sharon giving an interview in 1968. The interviewer asks her if she has ever had any experiences she considered psychic. Now this in itself is not crazy, as there was quite a trend for metaphysics, spirituality and psychedelia in the '60s and '70s, and this could have been an interesting approach in more competent hands. But Sharon responds that she had a nightmare in which she and her friends are murdered, which "I guess you could consider a psychic experience". We are given no other indication at this point in the story's timeline that could give weight to this idea that a simple bad dream is some form of premonition, and the narrative only seems to show Sharon come to recognise this much later on. This terribly contrived plot device is the frayed string from which the entire narrative precariously hangs.

Now when I did some basic research into this film (which I did when I got to this very point in writing my review), I made a striking discovery about the resume of writer/director Daniel Farrands. Not only is his filmography comprised almost entirely of horror sequels and true crime movies, but he actually wrote the aforementioned The Girl Next Door, which was a very good and considerately handled movie. Interestingly, that was more or less the first thing he wrote in twenty years, preceded by Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995. This in itself makes me wonder why and how Farrands' ability to craft believable dialogue that propels a difficult narrative seems to have evaporated. On top of this, his more recent credits include another dreadful Amityville movie, and production on an upcoming piece titled The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. There is a definite pattern there, which I might not take such a distaste to if not for Farrands' sharply declining standards. In 2007, he proved himself capable of taking a horrific true crime, dramatising it in a way that gives context to the behaviours of its characters, and approaching what is essentially an exploitation picture with utmost dignity, respect and care. Somehow, he is now a shadow of his former professional self.

Farrands' habit of running with the scrag ends of existing narratives smacks of commercial and artistic cynicism. He demonstrates little ability to create original material, and he has absolutely forgotten - or neglected - the way real people speak, which is so crucial to his line of work. Often when we hear of true crime stories, particularly those in which people are somehow convinced or manipulated into committing crime by others, the mind really boggles at how things get from A to B. What does a person have to say, and how do they have to say it, in order to get another person to commit such cruelty on innocents? With The Girl Next Door, Farrands showed us just how an evil adult could have manipulated neighbourhood children into torturing and killing a young girl, and it was his way with dialogue that made these unimaginable events believable. Now, he can't even convince us that a woman is trying to tell her friends she thinks she is being stalked. I mean damn, that's not a lot to ask of a writer who has previously shown his mettle with conveying difficult ideas on screen.

Although The Haunting of Sharon Tate is nowhere near as technically inept as I had expected it to be, it is just a sad, sorry and puzzling excuse of a film. A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be redeemable, but this is just the laziest form of 'retelling', and is not entertaining, scary, intriguing or compelling. As unethical as it can seem, it is undeniable that our nature as humans is to find curiosity in the extraordinary, in the things we don't see every day or have never seen before. Whether this is a motorway pileup or a murdered film star, we can't help but be fascinated. But there are so many elements of the Manson crimes that actually warrant elaboration and exploration, that don't disrespect the memories of the victims, and better filmmakers have explored these. Cult mentality, the transition to a life of crime, the death of a social movement; these are all insights that can be gained from these awful events that people can learn from. We gain nothing from 60 minutes of Hilary Duff creeping around in the dark and 25 minutes of crass crime scene recreation. This movie is utterly worthless.

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

The Rage: Carrie 2 was probably one of the first sequels I ever saw to a classic horror movie. Carrie, as I have documented before but have yet to formally review, was a conquest of my early adolescence that bordered on obsession, and it remains one of my favourite horrors of all time. My stepsister showed me this sequel when I was about 14, and strangely, I have grown to love it. Years ago, it was a movie I would watch in deepest secrecy, for fear of word getting out that I actually enjoyed such an obviously inferior product; nowadays I adhere to the Dave Gorman school of thought when it comes to the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ (look this up if you don’t catch my meaning – it’s most amusing and true). I used to love to ride this movie’s ass and say how dreadful it was, but my understanding of film grew at twice the rate of my every other form of maturation, hence my now differing opinion .

How do filmmakers usually achieve a sequel when the lead characters have already been killed off? They resurrect the characters; they repeat the events of the first movie with a new bunch of characters; they continue the story of those who may still be living. Enter Amy Irving, who wisely or not decided to reprise her role of Sue Snell, who is now a middle-aged woman, working as a high school counsellor, somewhat haunted by her involvement in the whole Carrie White debacle some twenty years earlier. That’s fine, but she wasn’t the one with a special power, and it wouldn’t be Carrie if it didn’t have telekinesis. Enter Emily Bergl as Rachel, an unusual looking grunge kid who lives with gnarly trucker foster parents thanks to her own mother’s incarceration at the local asylum. She embodies the ‘90s Nirvana mood – listening to Marilyn Manson and Billie Holliday, passing her evenings working in a photo hut, sneaking her beloved dog Walter into the house at night. She is so befitting the revival of the tormented high school girl.

Boy, didn't think the critics would hate it
this much!

It wouldn’t be a modern high school flick without cliques, which is the engine of this movie’s climax. Rachel is the usual grungy outcast, and her only friend Lisa (Mena Suvari) promptly kills herself in a spectacular effects sequence, having been dumped by a jock she questionably gave her virginity to the night before. The jocks keep a crass system, awarding points to each other according to the girls they sleep with, and Lisa is the game’s latest victim. When the jocks realise they could be in deep shit - having played around with underage girls, prompting one to commit suicide - they decide that ‘damage control’ is the way to go, and they set about making sure Lisa’s only friend won’t squeal on them.

In the midst of all this, one particularly upstanding jock, Jesse (Jason London) decides that what they are doing is wrong (several girls into his scoresheet, of course), and happens to grow close to Rachel. This attracts the cattiness of Tracy, the girl he has blown off, who also becomes determined to take revenge on Rachel. In a mere week, Rachel has gone from invisible virgin outcast with one living friend, to deflowered public enemy #1 with no living friends. High school, eh?

No way the chicks can resist our wet-look
hair gel and sweater vests, man!

Was there a part of you that ever felt like Chris and Billy got off easy in that spinning firey blaze of a car, or that Norma’s assumed unconscious death by smoke inhalation could have been more brutal? Fear not, friends, for this is a late ‘90s movie, and more blood must be spilled than from that suspended metal bucket. That means exploding eyeballs sharded with glass, and testicles ripped off with harpoons, and even a fatal stabbing by CD (guess the format knew it was doomed, wanted to take a bitch out with it!) The finale of the film is a thoroughly enjo

yable flaming bloodbath, and doesn’t it always suck that little bit more when the location being torched is a multi-million dollar mansion of a house, rather than a crappy old school gym?

So what’s the catch? What makes this Carrie 2? The big revelation is that after Carrie’s Daddy Ralph ran away (this is much more detailed in the novella than the 1976 film), one of the hussies he gave a damn-good Bible lesson to was Rachel’s mom, impregnating her with a telekinetic spawn ready to wreak havoc on her high school in later years. That Ralph! 

Ohhh no ya don't! If we have to endure Jason
London's horrible delivery, you do too!

This movie is by no means perfect, and there are still some parts that make me chuckle. Jason London’s delivery, having arrived at the finale party late and found nothing short of a mass teenage grave in flames, runs to Rachel saying, ‘They’re all dead – we gotta get outta here, let’s go’. As if he were a secretary announcing the name of the next patient the doctor was ready to see; totally casual. The asylum is staffed by the most incompetent nurses ever, who fail to notice a patient escaping, but grab another patient who was right next to the door at the same time and drag them off in a backwards-run. I mean, no need to soothe a mental patient dude, just grab them from behind unannounced and literally run with them. No biggy. It’s the small things that make the movie unintentionally funny, and the big things that make it unintentionally good.

Me, pretending to be outraged by this movie

For a number of years – ever since I grew to not hate myself for enjoying this film – I have been firm in my opinion that this would be a good movie, were it not the sequel to Carrie. If this could have just been The Rage, without any links to Brian DePalma’s movie or even Stephen King’s book, and been your average teen angst horror, it would have been great. But by adding that little subtitle, and insisting on trying to milk the bosom of a twenty-five year old movie, it throws away any such credibility.

Artistically, the movie is fairly sound. Some fun is had with black-and-white visuals, and distorted angles and frame speed, while the aforementioned suicide sequence still blows my mind to this day, and I wish the DVD had some kind of documentary that would explain their technique. Because I’m still not quite sure how they did it, and that is the kind of movie I admire. The music is a major strength, with a beautiful haunting theme melody that is performed alternately on piano, keyboard and electric guitar. It is grimy, atmospheric and so well suited. It is perhaps the best thing about this film. The script is nothing special, but it is surprisingly well acted – particularly by the younger members of the cast – and looking back, it fits very nicely into the young late ‘90s horror landscape. It’s very much worth an hour and forty of your time. Just try to forget the whole ‘it’s the sequel to Carrie’ thing.

Pretty Baby (1978)

I confess that I first sought out Louis Malle's Pretty Baby merely because of the torrent of ongoing online controversy that encircled it some forty years after its making. At that point, I was a 19-year-old college student, and of the whole cast and crew, was only familiar with Susan Sarandon (whose career I devised my entire second year film studies project on). Nowadays, I know much about many of the people involved, and most recently, began to read Brooke Shields' autobiography There Was a Little Girl, which details the infamous relationship she had with her mother Teri. I sometimes wonder at how society seems to have gone backwards in so many of its ideas and tolerances, and how the more time goes by, the more incredible it seems that a movie like Pretty Baby was ever made; it certainly wouldn't be nowadays, perhaps in the same way as Lolita, which director Stanley Kubrick later lamented that he could not take to the full extent of his source material, because of 1960s Hollywood censors.

Pretty Baby is a period piece, about a prostitute named Hattie (Sarandon) and her pre-adolescent daughter Violet (Shields), who live in a New Orleans brothel in the early 20th century, just before and during and after the legal clamp-down on the sex industry. Much to the uproar of the small-minded back in the '70s - and to this day - the visual narrative includes a couple of very brief shots of young Brooke Shields, who was only 11 or so when she filmed, naked. But let us start this debate by going back to the definition of pornography, which is material created with the intent of titillating or arousing the viewer. Now, if you are of broad mind, you will accept that a photograph or video of a person naked - whatever their age - does not fit this definition, as nudity is not inherently sexual; an idea modern society is losing grip of. I would argue that the next step in this logic is that a movie tells a story through a combination of narrative media: visuals, sound, etc. As I have mentioned in previous reviews, we as an audience need to see and hear and feel the full extent of our characters' lives if we are going to feel for them. If we had not seen in gruesome detail the cruelties of Joffrey Baratheon, would we have as much reason to hate him?

The movie opens with the gutteral groans of a woman, and a fade in of the bemused and intrigued Violet's face. We all instantly ask the same question: is she witnessing pain or ecstasy? The questions that these speechless opening moments force us to ask ourselves carry on throughout the movie. As it happens, Violet is watching her mother Hattie give birth to another john's illegitimate baby. But, I concede, whether Violet had been bearing witness to childbirth or paid fornication, the experience would have been just as relevant to her life, and to our experience as an audience.

Violet and Hattie live in the glamorous brothel of Madame Nell (Frances Faye), a wide, darkwood classical house with moody burgundy interiors and all the sophistication of the many palaces the elder March daughters visited in Little Women. Here, men of position go there to fulfill their fantasies, and one day, the time has come for young Violet, whose age is never explicitly revealed, to be deflowered by a paying customer. The girl sweet-talks the winning bidder in the naive, scripted way only an eleven-year-old who has been instructed what to say could - much to his disdain.

In between all this action, a photographer has arrived at Madame Nell's, seeking models for his intimate portraits of Louisiana prostitution. He is Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a stern but sensitive being whose heart breaks over the auctioning of Violet's virginity. Among his work with the other women, the girl becomes enamoured with him - again, as only eleven-year-olds do - and he with her, though in a far more paternal and protective fashion. When the fuzz are closing down all the brothels, Hattie moves out with the john  who impregnated her and their illegitimate son, leaving Violet behind. Bellocq marries her in an attempt to save her from a life of imminent poverty and abuse.

Pretty Baby is a long, brooding and sensuous movie, and anyone who pays attention to it can see it for what it is. The odd naked shot is a natural extension of the situation, and as Roger Ebert so gracefully put it, "it's an evocation of a time and a place, and a sad chapter of Americana". The young Brooke Shields shows immense capability that her later career didn't seem to present opportunities to demonstrate, while Carradine conjures the same sorrowful, fair-haired onlooking lover that Peter Firth did in the same year in Roman Polanski's version of Tess.

I love Pretty Baby. It is a rare sort of movie that gives me the low, underlying stirrings of sympathy and yearning that real life relationships give me. Not the kind that make you shout at the screen about what the characters should do, but the kind that moves you, as if your close friend were living this same existence, and an external feeling of remorse and sorrow, yet lack of control over the chaos.

Sweet Hostage (1975)

As Exhibit D in the Linda Blair Victim Files, Sweet Hostage is on a different level to the others. Here, Linda Blair is Doris Mae Withers, and she is by far the spunkiest and most independent of Blair's characters up to that point. While the title conjures up some images of an innocent young girl in a flowing white dress being violated by a slobbering psychopath (and not all of these connotations are unfounded), the extent to which Blair's character is a victim, or even really a hostage, is very minimal indeed, and this is by the will of both the lead characters in this surprisingly moving two-hander.


Linda stars alongside veteran Martin Sheen, whose paternity over several of the Brat Pack is so wonderfully obvious from the offset. It is like Sheen is creating a living, breathing mold for what his son(s) would become, and when I say this, I think, of course, of Charlie. Here, Sheen plays a manically sophisticated escaped mental patient with a penchant for romantic poetry, and a tendency towards the occasional flip-out. He has that sort of omniscient life force about him, an energy and buzz that seems superhuman, in the same league as Jack Nicholson, that makes anything he does simply fascinating to witness.

Blair and Sheen make a remarkably formidable pair. They have such chemistry from their very first encounter, a sort that, despite the great talent of these two actors, surely goes beyond make believe. In the same eerily ever-present way that Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling had such simmering sexual tension in a beauty-beast relationship, this sweet 15-year-old and this eccentric stranger 20 years her senior have a tangible connection that enables their entire story to ease by, under unspoken promise of meaningfulness. As it turns out, Linda Blair later revealed in an interview that she fell in love with Sheen whilst filming.

Doris Mae starts off the film as a young tomboy, living in some rural Southern town, where she chatters with the locals with familiarity, but acts as an exasperated onlooker throughout her parents' frequent conflicts at home. She generally seems her normal happy self when she is away from the farm where she lives. In the opening sequence, we are introduced to Leonard Hatch (Sheen), a gallant fellow who bows and recites poetic stanzas for the ladies. He is also on the run from a not too harsh-looking mental institution, and blends in remarkably well: he seems to be one of those selective psychopaths, who knows when to play it cool, which is why Doris Mae thinks nothing of hitching a ride with him when her truck breaks down.

After a little engaging banter, it becomes evident that Leonard does not plan to drop his new Lady Fair off at the farm. Yet Doris Mae is no victim. She insists on holding the power over her captor. "If you're gonna rape me, just pull over and get it over with!" she demands. But Leonard has no such vulgar intentions. His intentions may be rather unclear, but if anything, he seems more in want of a companion, and perhaps a pupil, to whom he can impart all of the romantic wisdom deemed by the doctors to be illness.

The pair live together in a little abandoned farm, and grow to love each other. It says all you need to know about rural Southern towns in the '70s when the thing that causes authorities to be alarmed to a possible kidnapping is Sheen's character purchasing women's clothes at a store. For whatever reason, the store girl deems this highly suspicious/inappropriate and calls the police, who seem to share her suspicions enough to pursue this women's-clothes-buying deviant. It also says all you need to know that this incident demonstrates more effort to save Doris than her parents ever do. But Doris doesn't need or want saving, and the inevitable fallout of the law's involvement turns the story into a sort of Romeo and Juliet tragedy.

For what some might deem an exploitation picture typical of the mid-'70s TV movie scene, Sweet Hostage is a poignant and touching film that deserves much wider viewing and acclaim than it has ever received. Blair and Sheen carry the movie flawlessly, and seemingly without much need for direction, and make one of the most sweet and unconventional romantic couples of lost cinema.

Showgirls (1995)

Showgirls is surely the best bad movie ever made. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, it’s a really shit movie, but it is sooooo shit that it is humiliatingly enjoyable. I advise from experience that anybody watching Showgirls with a partner or group do so from the outset: I have been driven mad by the many idiot friends I had squatting in my house in the past, who would wander in halfway through and say, ‘What’s this fucking porn you’re watching?’ I guess writers Verhoeven and Eszterhas would be thrilled at the prospect, but it wore my patience thin.
Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley from Saved by the Bell) hitches her way to Las Vegas to be a ‘dancer’, and gets her suitcase stolen. Somehow, by vandalising a car and almost getting mowed down by another car, she attracts the affection of seamstress Molly, even when she is breathing vomit breath like….right into her fucking face. Molly’s a good friend. A few weeks later, the girls are best friends. Molly works on the show Goddess sewing costumes, while Nomi has found gainful employment at the gentlemen’s club The Cheetah (ref: Roger Ebert’s definition of a gentlemen’s club). Nomi dances like a hot epileptic on amphetamines. But she gets naked and I guess that’s what the johns pay to see, so she somehow makes a living this way.

Gross

Meanwhile, she naturally dreams of rising to the top, and becoming the headline star of Goddess. Obnoxious glamorous redneck Crystal Connors (Gina Gerschon) is top of the bill, in the bosses’ high esteem, and the squeeze of sleazy hotel promoter Zach (Kyle MacLachlan). Nomi’s sociopathic attitude makes her a perfect fit in Vegas and a perfect match for the slimeballs she has to audition for to wiggle her way to the top. But her outrageous behaviour, which must surely place her somewhere high on the autistic spectrum, is good for laugh-a-minute comedy. Consider the fate of the poor French fries, having found their way into Nomi’s cardboard tray outside a diner. She is angry at being questioned by Molly, and having practically disembowelled a bottle of ketchup with a single thrust, she sets about the poor innocent fries and shoves them all over the table in a frustrated jerk. This must be some new trendy kind of eating disorder. Everything she orders hits the deck before she even unwraps it!

Showgirls is bad, like I’m bad, chamone, you know it. And almost every line makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons. When it’s not dialogue that’s making you bite your tongue, it’s usually one or another factor of Berkley’s frenetic physical delivery. The infamous pool sex scene between Nomi and Zack leaves us all wondering how she escaped the debacle without either a broken back or water on the lungs; while her licking the strip pole of the Cheetah club leaves us all wondering if she escaped the debacle without several venereal diseases.

I have long wondered to what extent Showgirls portrays the true Vegas underground. I mean, who could resist auditioning for a guy whose opening line is ‘A lot of people say that I’m a prick – I AM a prick!’? What fat slobbery male in the rabid audience of the Cheetah could fail to spunk his pants over the riddle ‘Ya know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!’? That is apparently meant to be a joke, but quite frankly, I have heard funnier things during biopsies. At some point you have to ask yourself how Ezsterhas ended up being the highest paid writer in Hollywood in the mid-‘90s, when his most rousing one-liners were the likes of ‘Dancing ain’t fucking’ and ‘You ain’t just a pain in my head and a pain in my dick, you also a pain in my ass!’ I am of the educated assumption that his status has slipped somewhat in the years since.

However, some of the characters and their whole beings are caricatures created entirely for the LOLs. Al, the slimy cigar-chewing manager of the Cheetah club was born to be in the business, and beautifully describes his profession to new girl Penny in the elevator pitch of the century. ‘He pays, you take him in the back. You can touch him, he cannot touch you. Unless he gives ya a big tip. If he cums, it’s OK. If he takes it out and cums all over ya, call the bouncer. Unless he pays ya. You wanna last a week, you gimme a blow job. First I get ya used to the money, then I make ya swallow.’ Don’t call us Al, we’ll call you.

Nomi, bless her dumb liplined little heart, is an unwitting source of comedy in her idiocy. From her now-legendary mispronunciation of Versace, to her hideously OTT reactions to most situations, she is comedy gold. Of course, in real life, she would have no friends and considerably more mutilations. She talks to people like shit, throws and smashes things continually, and is in the habit of making men feel instantly uncomfortable by talking about her period. Take that Al – your misogynist shit is no match for period talk!

She also has the oddest ideas about what turns people on. Her dance routines are absurd, her boning technique probably the cause of many a fractured penis over the years, and her stripteases are more like paid face-rapings. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Zach having been humped to within an inch of his life in a strip club, who now had to try and enjoy the rest of his night out with cum in his pants. I mean, is that what his girlfriend paid $500 for? The logistics of this could have been better planned, methinks.

Showgirls has to be seen to be believed, and loved. It stands as a favourite of many cult figures such as Elvira and Michelle Visage, and enjoys the same sort of midnight cult following that Rocky has embodied for decades. It is the sort of movie that should be enjoyed responsibly with a crate of beer and some pizza – while you sit back and secretly thank your stars for Nomi not being there… that pizza would be under the wheels of the nearest pick-up truck before the box was even opened.

Edgeplay: A Film about The Runaways (2004)

L-R: Cherie, Jackie, Joan, Lita, Sandy

The Runaways are my favourite band. I mean, Bowie's my favourite solo artist, no questions, but when it comes to a group of musicians who rocked hard, put on amazing shows and made their mark on the industry, The Runaways cannot be beat for me. Despite my classic rock upbringing and at the time budding love of the '70s, I had not heard The Runaways' music until 2010. Fans will know that this was when Floria Sigismondi's movie about the band, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart was released. That summer, I was watching E! News (don't judge me), and was nothing short of captivated by the sudden sight of 15-year-old Fanning in a corset and stockings, singing to a crowd of screaming teens with a rock band. I had to know more. The movie The Runaways got a very limited release in the UK, but I tracked down a local cinema that was playing it for about two days, and was treated to an empty theatre!

I loved the movie, and it got me hooked on a few of the band's signature songs. But it was when I started looking into the real Runaways that I fell in love. They were five girls of no more than 17 years old when, in mid-70s LA, they were found by maniacal music producer Kim Fowley, who put them together and worked them like 'dogs' (as he so often referred to them), and made them a controversial overnight sensation. The band's run was short but fierce, and it broke barriers and paved the way for generations of female musicians to come. By 1980, they had all gone their own separate ways, to various fates. But their story is an amazing one, and in 2002, one-time bassist Vicky Blue (or Victory Tischler-Blue) had got into filmmaking, and decided to document the rise and fall of The Runaways.

Although there were a few lineup changes in the very early and late chapters of The Runaways' life, the band is mainly remembered as five key members: Joan Jett (who you may have heard of, I say sarcastically) was the engine, lead songwriter, rhythm guitarist and occasional singer; Lita Ford, who also went on to a long musical career, rocked out lead guitar; Jackie Fox, now an attorney, was on bass; the late great Sandy West worked magic on the drums; and one of the most memorable frontmen in band history took centre stage on lead vocal in the form of Cherie Currie.

All very different girls, but together they constituted a miracle formula for grimy, hardcore, teen-angst rock. Looking back at my own fifteen-year-old self, what The Runaways actually achieved is all the more phenomenal. I was lead singer and bassist in a band at fifteen, and was only asked to play bass because I stood like such an awkward moron when only singing. I would be the first to admit that I had no charisma, and no stage presence. The Runaways were each determined, for one reason or another, to make it big, and each drew major inspiration from key idols: Jett's was Suzi Quatro, Ford's was Richie Blackmore, Jackie Fox loved Gene Simmons, and Currie obsessed over Bowie (girl after my own heart). These teen girls took to the stage, time after time, and did things no other band was doing. Their signature song Cherry Bomb was often performed by Cherie in her trademark corset and stockings, and they were thanked for their efforts with such critical reviews as 'these bitches suck'.

I acknowledge that the '70s wasn't totally rainbows, sunshine, free sex and dollar-acid. It was a key time for the feminist movement, and many industry professionals were at best taken aback and at worst utterly pissed off that females, and not even adult ones at that, were trying to strut their platform boots all over the male stomping ground. So the band was bearing the brunt of a lot of criticism and outrage, but they were 16 and 17 years old, so they reacted with a massive middle finger. But as awesome as the situation sounds - being a talented sixteen-year-old with four wild contemporaries, on the road playing rock gigs - the behind-the-scenes reality was quite different, as Edgeplay shows us.

The one thing Edgeplay is sadly lacking is Joan's participation - for whatever reason, and she is known to be almost suspiciously detached nowadays from a lot of the Runaways stuff. She decided against appearing in the film, or permitting any of her material to be used. This was a major bummer, as about 80% of the band's material is credited to her. I have to admire Vickie Blue's tenacity with pressing forward with the project anyhow, and finding ways around the predicament. It has left some corners cut, with some filler music from Suzi Quatro et al, but audio and video of the band performing songs written either by other members, or other people entirely were a-OK.

Vickie Blue makes a great film here, structurally. Where Sigismondi's quote-unquote biopic was focused almost solely on Joan and Cherie (and steered off the path of truth on more than one occasion), Edgeplay is about the five (or seven, including Vickie and former band songwriter Kari Krome) people who made the band what it was, and chronicles their lives, as narrated by themselves and their parents, and their time together. It also very poignantly looks at the aftermath of The Runaways, which seemed to particularly affect Sandy. Towards the end, we see her close to tears, recounting the terrifying things she'd resorted to in recent years, practically begging the others for a reunion. It's so obvious that the band was her life source, and even twenty years after its demise, it was all she cared about,

As a documentary, Edgeplay is brilliant. Although Vicki Blue directs and asks the odd question on camera, narrative is left to the band members. There is also stock input from that fabulously wired svengali Kim Fowley, who offers his trademark eccentric eloquism (sidenote: Fowley's father Douglas was an actor - he played the exasperated director in Singin' in the Rain) in defense of the various tragedies and successes he was responsible for. And all members interviewed are wonderfully upfront, and Cherie and Sandy's parents offer their perspective as long-distance caregivers, scared for their absent daughters' wellbeing. A very rounded, and at times varied, account is built of the career of The Runaways.

All is held together with some fantastic, grainy old footage of the band, playing live shows, and riding in the backs of cars, and walking through airports, and giving press conferences. It's excellent, evocative stuff. I don't know if a version approaching complete will ever come to be. Cherie's autobiography Neon Angel, a redraft of her original book, is a vivid account of her time with the band, among other things. But to date many intriguing and disgusting perspectives have come to light. Both Kari Krome and Jackie Fox have said Kim Fowley sexually assaulted them. Cherie, after decades of describing Fowley on par with Caligula, brought her cancer-afflicted former manager into her home and cared for him in the months before his death. She and Lita, whose mutual hatred is infamous in the history of the band, have appeared together at an awards ceremony and sung each others' praises. A lot has changed over the years, but Edgeplay is a great combined telling of the story of a significant and, in my opinion, fantastic band, and should be seen by anybody whose soul is either partially or fully comprising of rock.

Edgeplay: A Film about The Runaways (2004)

L-R: Cherie, Jackie, Joan, Lita, Sandy

The Runaways are my favourite band. I mean, Bowie's my favourite solo artist, no questions, but when it comes to a group of musicians who rocked hard, put on amazing shows and made their mark on the industry, The Runaways cannot be beat for me. Despite my classic rock upbringing and at the time budding love of the '70s, I had not heard The Runaways' music until 2010. Fans will know that this was when Floria Sigismondi's movie about the band, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart was released. That summer, I was watching E! News (don't judge me), and was nothing short of captivated by the sudden sight of 15-year-old Fanning in a corset and stockings, singing to a crowd of screaming teens with a rock band. I had to know more. The movie The Runaways got a very limited release in the UK, but I tracked down a local cinema that was playing it for about two days, and was treated to an empty theatre!

I loved the movie, and it got me hooked on a few of the band's signature songs. But it was when I started looking into the real Runaways that I fell in love. They were five girls of no more than 17 years old when, in mid-70s LA, they were found by maniacal music producer Kim Fowley, who put them together and worked them like 'dogs' (as he so often referred to them), and made them a controversial overnight sensation. The band's run was short but fierce, and it broke barriers and paved the way for generations of female musicians to come. By 1980, they had all gone their own separate ways, to various fates. But their story is an amazing one, and in 2002, one-time bassist Vicky Blue (or Victory Tischler-Blue) had got into filmmaking, and decided to document the rise and fall of The Runaways.

Although there were a few lineup changes in the very early and late chapters of The Runaways' life, the band is mainly remembered as five key members: Joan Jett (who you may have heard of, I say sarcastically) was the engine, lead songwriter, rhythm guitarist and occasional singer; Lita Ford, who also went on to a long musical career, rocked out lead guitar; Jackie Fox, now an attorney, was on bass; the late great Sandy West worked magic on the drums; and one of the most memorable frontmen in band history took centre stage on lead vocal in the form of Cherie Currie.

All very different girls, but together they constituted a miracle formula for grimy, hardcore, teen-angst rock. Looking back at my own fifteen-year-old self, what The Runaways actually achieved is all the more phenomenal. I was lead singer and bassist in a band at fifteen, and was only asked to play bass because I stood like such an awkward moron when only singing. I would be the first to admit that I had no charisma, and no stage presence. The Runaways were each determined, for one reason or another, to make it big, and each drew major inspiration from key idols: Jett's was Suzi Quatro, Ford's was Richie Blackmore, Jackie Fox loved Gene Simmons, and Currie obsessed over Bowie (girl after my own heart). These teen girls took to the stage, time after time, and did things no other band was doing. Their signature song Cherry Bomb was often performed by Cherie in her trademark corset and stockings, and they were thanked for their efforts with such critical reviews as 'these bitches suck'.

I acknowledge that the '70s wasn't totally rainbows, sunshine, free sex and dollar-acid. It was a key time for the feminist movement, and many industry professionals were at best taken aback and at worst utterly pissed off that females, and not even adult ones at that, were trying to strut their platform boots all over the male stomping ground. So the band was bearing the brunt of a lot of criticism and outrage, but they were 16 and 17 years old, so they reacted with a massive middle finger. But as awesome as the situation sounds - being a talented sixteen-year-old with four wild contemporaries, on the road playing rock gigs - the behind-the-scenes reality was quite different, as Edgeplay shows us.

The one thing Edgeplay is sadly lacking is Joan's participation - for whatever reason, and she is known to be almost suspiciously detached nowadays from a lot of the Runaways stuff, she decided against appearing in the film, or permitting any of her material to be used. This was a major bummer, as about 80% of the band's material is credited to her. I have to admire Vickie Blue's tenacity with pressing forward with the project anyhow, and finding ways around the predicament. It has left some corners cut, with some filler music from Suzi Quatro et al, but audio and video of the band performing songs written either by other members, or other people entirely were a-OK.

Vickie Blue makes a great film here, structurally. Where Sigismondi's quote-unquote biopic was focused almost solely on Joan and Cherie (and steered off the path of truth on more than one occasion), Edgeplay is about the five (or seven, including Vickie and former band songwriter Kari Krome) people who made the band what it was, and chronicles their lives, as narrated by themselves and their parents, and their time together. It also very poignantly looks at the aftermath of The Runaways, which seemed to particularly affect Sandy. Towards the end, we see her close to tears, recounting the terrifying things she'd resorted to in recent years, practically begging the others for a reunion. It's so obvious that the band was her life source, and even twenty years after its demise, it was all she cared about,

As a documentary, Edgeplay is brilliant. Although Vicki Blue directs and asks the odd question on camera, narrative is left to the band members. There is also stock input from that fabulously wired svengali Kim Fowley, who offers his trademark eccentric eloquism (sidenote: Fowley's father Douglas was an actor - he played the exasperated director in Singin' in the Rain) in defense of the various tragedies and successes he was responsible for. And all members interviewed are wonderfully upfront, and Cherie and Sandy's parents offer their perspective as long-distance caregivers, scared for their absent daughters' wellbeing. A very rounded, and at times varied, account is built of the career of The Runaways.

All is held together with some fantastic, grainy old footage of the band, playing live shows, and riding in the backs of cars, and walking through airports, and giving press conferences. It's excellent, evocative stuff. I don't know if a version approaching complete will ever come to be. Cherie's autobiography Neon Angel, a redraft of her original book, is a vivid account of her time with the band, among other things. But to date many intriguing and disgusting perspectives have come to light. Both Kari Krome and Jackie Fox have said Kim Fowley sexually assaulted both of them. Cherie, after decades of describing Fowley on par with Caligula, brought her cancer-afflicted former manager into her home and cared for him in the months before his death. She and Lita, whose mutual hatred is infamous in the history of the band, have appeared together at an awards ceremony and sung each others' praises. A lot has changed over the years, but Edgeplay is a great combined telling of the story of a significant and, in my opinion, fantastic band, and should be seen by anybody whose soul is either partially or fully comprising of rock.

Eden Lake (2008)

Holy shit, what a movie!! Our British cinema industry isn't really in too much of a habit of making horror movies nowadays, although Hammer was recently revived for periodic releases. Eden Lake is a tragedy, a living portrait, a social statement - it is everything you don't really find in modern horrors. Back in the '70s and '80s, as I have discussed in other reviews, horror was used as a channel for points to be made. Black Christmas examined the defensive patriarchal opposition of the women's liberation movement, Last House on the Left reflected on class tensions and Vietnam angst, and it is exactly the movie that I saw serving as inspiration throughout Eden Lake. It is a powerful, gripping, appalling horror of the strongest kind: the ones that lie squarely within the bounds of reality and possibility.

Jenny (Kelly Reilly) and Steve (Michael Fassbender) are your typical young middle class couple with their whole lives ahead of them. Jenny, a sweet thing with a very Mia Farrow quality about her, is a nursery school teacher, and approaches everything sensitively and smilingly scorns her partner for swearing. Steve is the lovable, rugged Irishman, who likes to kid about, but thinks and acts with reason. Steve is planning to propose to Jenny, and so takes her for a weekend away at a remote quarry that he visited with his dad as a kid, which is due to be developed into a luxury gated community. The first night of their trip, the couple stay at a pub B&B, where flabby slobs wearing tracksuits and gold chains clutch pints of 'Wifebeater' and spit at the pavement. The beer garden is overrun with gobby Northerners who smack their kids about and constantly yell. The opposition is established.

When the couple get down to the quarry, it is a vast and beautiful wildland with a lake running through the centre, but thankfully, they are driving some fancy Jeep which handles the terrain with relative ease. The sign for the new development called Eden Lake is graffitied with the eloquent slogan Fuck Off Yuppy Cunts! Down on the beach, a gang of chavs show up and start wreaking chavoc (see what I did there?!) Naturally, they have an aggressive dog in tow, that terrorises strangers, and an obnoxiously loud boombox. Steve casually approaches, and quite reasonably asks them to turn the music down and keep the dog in line. Here we have a defining moment, which fully establishes the theme of the picture as class conflict.

I have lived in various parts of England all my life, and have a fairly diverse experience of social classes and cliques. Our society has changed immensely in recent years as 'benefits culture' and what sociologists refer to as the Underclass have been on the dismal rise. This means that the timewasting dickheads from school who came from bad homes no longer have to earn a lifestyle for themselves, but have it handed out to them, and the formerly widely-held working class pride of providing for one's family seems to have gone out of the window. The actual working class, who work in lower paid and lower skilled roles, is shrinking in population, as the effortless underclass lifestyle begins to be inherited. A whole generation have seen their parents sitting on their arses, smoking and screaming and getting everything for nothing, and so the cycle begins. The majority of violent offences are committed by people of this very nature. In this country, turn on the TV at 9am and you will be treated to a smorgasbord of the nation's most dim-witted, thuggish, shameless and useless, being made into a spectacle, and at the most tasteless of times, celebrities.

Eden Lake addresses the battle of the classes. Jenny and Steve are middle class, respectable and well behaved. The gang of youths, which includes Jack O'Connell and Thomas Turgoose from This is England, are the underclass, who have no respect for others and no idea of civil boundaries. A wide shot of both parties sat on opposite sides of the beach illustrates the spectrum of not only class, but inherently morals, values and humanity. The gang further antagonise the couple, and steal their car. This leads to a fistfight in which Steve accidentally stabs the dog. You can practically see the infamous 'red mist' fall over the owner's eyes. From this point on, it's fair game, as far as the kids are concerned.

Let's discuss the kids, and that's what they are. The ringleader is the terrifying thug Brett (O'Connell), who is volatile, controlling and violent. Everything that goes on is his idea. He has a few other boys with him, some look no older than 12, and a witless girlfriend Paige, who is ordered to film the gang's atrocities on her phone. Brett literally forces these children to inflict violence on the couple, and when things don't go his way, the most effective, yet vile and haunting moment in the movie takes place. Another child, a very young boy named Adam, who looks about ten or eleven, is roped into the proceedings, and when Jenny narrowly escapes her death and runs for the hills, Brett hangs a petrol-soaked tyre around the child's neck and sets his head on fire. This image haunted me for years after I first saw this movie, and it was with it in mind that I approached a rewatching with caution. But it is exactly what it should be: it is the crucifix in The Exorcist, it is the eyeball in Hostel... for a serious movie (and I say this to exclude any ceaseless exploitation fests that are lesser works) to reach its full impact, it has to dare to make its statement without any sugar coating. If we are to fear for society, for our children, on the message we take from watching this movie, we have to be given something to really fear. And here, we fear not demons or even evil adults, but twisted children. Brett's rage is boundless, he is wicked to the very core, and this we can be sure of, because of this single act.

Poor Steve has bled to death and been burned after being captured and tortured by the kids. It looks like Jenny might make it, now that she's managed to kill one of the kids, stolen a van and sped off towards town. But if the middle class heroes, or at least one of them, survived the ordeal, then the movie wouldn't be making its point. She unwittingly crashes the van in the garden of (here comes the Last House twist) Brett's parents' house. The family assist her at first, until they get a frantic call from Brett telling them what's happened, and they realise the van belongs to a family member. As is typical of these sorts of people, a gang of about half a dozen furious men arrive to avenge their thug kids, and Jenny is dispatched. But not before we see Brett appear, and get beaten like a puppy by his old man, and disappear to his room where he glares at himself lengthily in the mirror, as if in acknowledgement of his disease, but gutless self-absolution. He sees his own treatment, as many a PC social worker would, as justification for his own actions. He is not human enough to recognise his responsibility in breaking the cycle he knows all too well the effects of.

There is a primary and secondary message in all this. The first is that Britain is finally broken; no matter how the civilised reason and negotiate, they will be beaten down by senseless violence. The second is that violence is a cycle; the aggressor was formerly the victim of a senior aggressor, and has been conditioned into a mindset of violence. Eden Lake is terrifying because it is so true. It was met with some criticism over stereotyping of working class people, but as I have already addressed, the numbers of people like the children in this movie are on the rise, warranting a classing of their own. There is still, as ever, a perfectly peaceful, respectable working class out there who live honest and good lives. But in a country where Jeremy Kyle can make three shows a day for ten years and still find new people to appear, I concede that people can't really be blamed for drawing such conclusions.