Members Club

 If someone, somewhere has been searching for a horror comedy about middle-aged male strippers encountering an ancient witch, this one's for you. The ahem members of the troupe, Wet Dreams, are booked in for a gig in Essex at a strangely deserted working men's club. Then something stirs.....

The set-up is fine, a sub-plot about stripper Alan's attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Daisy emerging as all hell breaks loose. There are some laughs and a bit of gore. It's all good fun. Oh, and Peter Andre turns up in a ludicrous wig for no discernible reason. 

The gender politics are harder to determine. Is this meant to be a reversal of the age-old premise of hot young strippers being imperiled? Most of Wet Dreams have seen better days and the lads spend most of the film clad only in tiny glittery shorts. Then there are the witches, in multiple. Is witchcraft inherently bad? Not clear. There is quite an ugly scene toward the end that rather ruined the viewing experience, as Alan suddenly steps up to take action, urged on by his mate Deano. 

Ah, yes, Deano. So, Deano has an interesting anatomical feature only revealed right toward the end. Is this meant to be a joke? Is the whole film a health film in disguise? Not clear. A bit of a dampener, one might say. 

"It's cock-a-clock!" one character announces. If that appeals, this is your film. 

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Studio One Forever

 This documentary almost feels like it should have an exclamation mark at the end of the title. As West Hollywood councillor John Duran stands on stage, he bellows the words to his audience of former revellers and the attendant unseen angels. More on that later. 

There is no exclamation mark but the entertaining film revisits a lost gay club popular in the 1980s with plenty of archive footage and remembrances from staff and visitors. There is quite a large quotient of name-dropping, as well as everyone from Elton to Cary to Sylvester was there. Chita Rivera (RIP) is interviewed about launching her cabaret at the club's back room and admitting how daunting it was crossing the dance floor to get to her show. 

All of this great but so what? Lots of clubs existed in the 1980s. What made this one special? The hook is that the now-shuttered club is about to be demolished in 2018 as a big bad developer has taken over the property. Duran and his pals are keen to stop the demolition, and they put on a reunion to raise the club's profile. It takes until the 70th minute for anyone to mention AIDS and then it turns into a memorial as Duran speaks of all the lost angels looking down on them. This is moving but many people who were mentioned earlier are never given their due. What happened to them?

The editing is bizarre, skipping from a declaration that the club owner ran a racist admission policy to talking about Can't Stop the Music and then on to the DJ playlist. Visits to a local archive are interesting and there is a brief glimpse of some lost and now found photo negatives. But it's a bit of a mishmash. 

If this gives a new generation an idea of how club life functioned in WeHo pre-AIDS, then all to the good. I do wish there had been a bit more reflection on Studio One's cultural context. Spoiler: the party ended very, very badly. 

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Portraits of Dangerous Women

 This British indie film is a real burst of fresh air, quirky, inventive and surprisingly moving. Pascal Bergamin is not a name with whom I am familiar, but the writer-director has crafted a delightful film, peopled by a brilliant cast, among them the luminous Tara Fitzgerald, Yasmin Monet Prince, Mark Lewis Jones and Jeany Spark, abetted by small cameos from Sheila Reid and Joseph Marcell. 

These characters navigate around each other in an unnamed small British town with outstanding scenery. Everyone seems to live in a period cottage while Lewis Jones' character operates a small art gallery. Who are these people? How do they fit together? The film takes its time establishing links but I found it refreshing it was neither broad comedy, trite romance, nor heavy drama. 

The titular portraits are small found photographs of women in unusual poses, from shooting to climbing. They are gathered by Ashley (Monet Prince) who is trying to establish herself in the art world and strikes up an alliance with John (Lewis Jones). Meanwhile Tina (Fitzgerald) and Steph (Spark) work in the same school, but in very different contexts. Steph is a teacher while husky-voiced Tina spends her days in a boiler suit skulking around toilets and testing chairs, as she is the school caretaker. 

Watching Fitzgerald at work is fascinating, her way of inhabiting this moody, flinty character suggesting hidden depths. It's a marvellous performance and anchors the film, even if Spark and Lewis Jones have more showy parts. 

Broken relationships, a dead dog, many unexplained financial issues. These all figure in this film but really it's a clever ensemble piece featuring flawed human beings attempting to find their ways through. A triumph. 

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Inherit the Witch

 Well, Hellooooo, camp as tits folk horror film! We have missed you! Inherit the Witch is a batshit crazy lower than lo fi UK film featuring an OTT witch running amok in the New Forest, plus a toxic gay couple and family drama galore. 

Cory returns to his hometown for his dad's funeral, alongside Scandi f-buddy Lars but never makes it as he is visited by estranged sister Fiona who wants him to remember weird shit that happened in their childhoods. Plus, an older couple are enacting some ritual with a metronome. Then Fiona stumbles into a basement..... 

Bizarre set pieces, terrible acting, a nonsensical plot and some questionable accents mean that this one is a very, very guilty pleasure but I enjoyed it mostly. I really wanted to see a proper Final Girl but Fiona is so, so passive, spending her time in peril mostly gasping for breathing and shrieking. FFS, girl. Run!

At least Fiona gets some nice lighting, especially when she is bumbling through the forest with her lit torch, hunted by robotic Lars and possibly satanic Cory. Hide, girl!

One part Hammer Horror mixed with The Owl Service, Inherit the Witch is not a great film. But it is entertaining. 

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Fitting In

 For the first ten minutes of this new film by writer/director Molly McGlynn I thought: "Wow! This film is amazing. So clever and well written!" Fitting In tailed off after that but is still a thought-provoking watch. 

Lindy is a teenager who has never had her period. Her mother Rita is concerned and anxious. Lindy has friends, runs track and is seeing a hunky guy. Her mother has her own issues that are so quickly established, you might miss the fact she has had cancer treatment. Later this will come up again. 

But then Lindy discovers she has a medical condition which explains her lack of periods. She actually has no uterus and what the gyno calls "a vaginal dimple". The medical terminology is quite eye-opening and the film is very good at putting you right in the middle of Lindy's consultations with an array of male medical consultants who do nothing to put her at ease or make her feel good about her body. She feels obligated to try stretching her vagina with a dilator so that she might experience sex as she sees it, i.e. penis in vagina. Nobody seems to want to suggest there are other ways of having sex although there is an entanglement with a non-binary character that promises more than it delivers. 

So, the film zooms from a breezy family comedy drama right into an intense healthcare journey which means jarring tonal shifts. 

I wish we had seen a lot more of Lindy's interactions with her best friend Viv, rather than her repetitive meetings with her boyfriend Adam and her arguments with Rita. A lot of scenes end with Lindy running out of rooms and it gets a bit tiresome. She has an array of suitors she treats badly and she also ignores Viv for most of the film. As a result, Lindy becomes more and more isolated and unhappy. 

But lessons are learned and toward the end there is a rather on the nose scene in which Rita shows her daughter her own surgical scar that leaves the viewer thinking Eh? Surely, more time could have been spent understanding the mother's POV rather than shoehorning it in at the end. I also did not like the way the film seemed to let Lindy off the hook for her own obnoxious behaviour, particularly toward a guy she used for sex. 

Kids, eh?

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Days Out: Chelsea Physic Garden

 Having lived in London for more than 29 years,  I am attempting to hit some places I have never visited. Having read a book recently in which the main character has a day out at Chelsea Physic Garden and decides to change her career, I thought I might do the same. 

I chose a Sunday morning and arrived just before opening time to discover the doors were open so in I went and spent a few hours wandering the grounds of this lovely spot tucked away in Chelsea on the banks of the Thames.

First I strolled through the green houses and discovered a hidden channel that ran along the back. I do love a green house, ever since my first visit to one in the New York Botanical Garden in the 1970s. The balance between humidity and heat is always a challenge. But I emerged into the fresh air and made my way round the perimeter, checking out the various gardens, such as Edible Plants and Useful Plants. I think there were beehives in one corner but they are away from the path. 

I stumbled across the Tank Pond and wondered how many unsuspecting visitors attempt to take a short cut through it and fall in. I stopped to look at the male and female ginkgo trees entangled across a path. I took a breather in the Garden of Medicinal Plants, then cut back across the lawn for a look at the Cool Fernery, disturbing a robin which flew out an open window. I finished up with a peep at the carnivorous plants, always fun. 

It really is a dreamy spot, only spoiled by a quite outrageously priced cafe, but that is the way of things nowadays. 

I have not yet changed career, but I don't discount the possibility. 

While I have pictures I want to upload for this post, Google will not allow me to do so. 

GRACIE AND PEDRO: Mission Impossible

An animated feature about a dog and a cat teaming up to find a way home after getting lost by an airline, this film is a mixed bag. The animation is very much of the moment--the animals look pretty cool but the human beings have a weird rubbery texture that is oddly in vogue. The humour is dorky and the film plays out as a series of set pieces putting the titular pets in danger time after time: will they make it out of the airport, the desert, the abandoned theme park? 

What is interesting is the notion of home the film presents. Mom and Dad venture out to bring the missing pets home, while Grandpa stays to look after the kids. The teenagers, Sophie and Gavin, squabble but team up to put out a video on social media slamming the airline for losing their pets, which is one of the high points. Gracie and Pedro also argue but are united in their determination to make it back home, a home they have never seen as their family was moving. 

The impediments are structural as well as physical: airline bureaucracy, human foolhardiness, greed. Interestingly, all the other animal species understand them, including a rabbit voiced by Susan Sarandon. Human beings, on the other hand, seem rather inept in their communication. 

The voice work is disappointing. The main characters have no chemistry but the A listers are all given cameo roles, including Brooke Shields as a horse and Bill Nighy as some kind of predatory bird that lives on a train. Many plot points like this are bizarre and seem random. A plot point putting them on a bus to Las Vegas with a magic troupe promises much but delivers nothing. 

In the end, lessons are learned and peace is restored. Mission accomplished. 

Gracie and Pedro will be coming to UK cinemas from 9th August. 

Trailer