Video

Rip It Up, Issue 213, 1 May 1995, Page 40

Video

NATURAL BORN KILLERS Director: Oliver Stone

The Quentin Tarantino film that isn’t was definitely the movie event of 1994. This visual onslaught has its scale lessened somewhat by its swing to the small screen. At the same time, this makes it seem all the more like a demonically extended-music video. A multitude of film styles are employed rapid fire, ensuring the tale of Mickey and Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson) is as eye popping as it is stomach churning. Essentially the tale of a mass murderous honeymoon and its consequences, the Stoneconspiracy twist comes via a large chunk of this story being told by the big bad media. Heading the charge of the Bullshit Brigade is the digger-ish Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Junior), host of the Hardcopy style American Maniacs. The show’s story on the Knox’s murder spree ranks second only to Manson’s, which drives Gale ratings rabid. His quest to better the second best leads to more massacre, and the whole caboodle plays live to air. If you like more bang for your buck, but aren’t keen on sending your brain on holiday for a couple of hours, you can’t go past Natural Born Killers.

BRONWYN TRUDGEON

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES Director: Gus Van Sant

With a cast of actors you wouldn't expect to see in a movie at the same time (Uma Thurman, Angie Dickinson, Roseanne Arnold, John Hurt and Crispin Glover included), you’d think this movie would be a blast. What it lacks in script, it makes up for in sheer cartoon colour, overall ridiculousness, and some very funny moments. Thurman plays Sissy Hankshaw, a total fox, who is born with abnormally large thumbs. Therefore, she decides her destiny in life is to “move”, that is to hitchhike.

Sissy has a friend in New York (‘The Countess’), a total queer queen played by Hurt. Sissy is his muse. He has helped Sissy with her modelling career by making her the face of feminine hygiene product range. The Countess bundles Sissy off to his health ranch, where she is to do a new hygiene ad. She meets the naughty cowgirls, led by Bonanza Jellybean (Sissy’s love interest, played by Rain Phoenix), who want to take the ranch over from the horrid countess, and do so in a fashion never seen before. It's quite neat really.

SHIRLEY CHARLES

BOXING HELENA Director: Jennifer Chambers Lynch

Most film buffs have probably read more about this fiasco than anyone should have bothered writing, so I won’t waste too much ink on it. The personalities involved include director and screenplay writer Jennifer Chambers Lynch (daughter of David Lynch), Sherilyn Fenn (who was roped in when Kim Basinger walked) and Julian Sands (who continues to work despite remarkable evidence he shouldn’t). The story around which this fuck fest’ is strung concerns a limp dicked doctor named Nick (Sands), who is obsessed with a rotten bitch named Helena (Fenn), who hates his guts. When Helena is run over by a car, Nick sees it as a wonderful way to make her need him. Before you can say “riding on Daddy’s coat tails”, Nick’s chopped Helena’s legs off. This upsets her and makes her.throw stuff at him and hoot around in her wheelchair very fast. Of course the only solution facing Nick is to chop off her arms, which he does. No, you do not see any of the operating business. What you do see is a lot of ridiculously prolonged rooting, a tonne of really bad kissing and some of the worst serious acting ever filmed. ' I can't even bear to relive this any further. Sod all else happens anyway.

BRONWYN TRUDGEON

TRUE LIES Director: James Cameron

Arnold Schwarzenneger plays a spy called Harry. His wife Helen (Jamie-Lee Curtis) thinks he’s a computer sales person. While Harry is out at night — saving the world from nasty Arab type terrorists, banging dogs’ heads together, cleverly dodging 10,000 bullets, chasing suspects through the streets, hotels and-even a hotel’s lift on horseback, generally having a good old time — old Helen waits home alone for him, thinking what a dull-fuck marriage she has. A big dork called Simon tries to seduce Helen during her lunch hour by pretending he is a spy. Helen is entranced (she wants some action). How ironic, we all think, because her own husband is the action packed man she really wants! Anyway, one thing leads to another and, before we know it, Harry and Helen are both captured by the terrorists, taken to an island and shown what fine arsenal the terrorists have, i.e. a large nuclear bomb. Much shooting, fire and romance (rekindled) follows... and the story ends happily ever after, naturally. The stunts are very exciting. The story is very dodgy, but amusing. Jamie-Lee’s boobs are entrancing.

SHIRLEY CHARLES

THE DARK HALF Director: George A Romero

The Dark Half is Stephen King movie number 24. It tells the tale of writer Thad Beaumont (played here by Timothy Hutton), who finds success writing hardcore horror novels under the pseudonym George Stark. Like King (with his Richard Bachman pseudonym), Beaumont has his cover blown and decides to publicly bury his ‘dark half’. He and his wife are photographed grinning over Stark’s gag grave stone, but the joke’s on them when the photographer is found clubbed to death by his artificial leg. Beaumont’s jilted alter-ego (an unrecognisably ghouled up Hutton) has come to life and is not happy about losing his celebrity status. Stark leaves fingerprints identical to Thad’s .all over the show, and kills in the same manner as brutal Stark character Alexis Machine. Understandably, all eyes are on Beaumont, who looks guilty as buggery and is becoming increasingly prone to conjuring up swarms of sparrows (the harbingers of doom and heralds of Stark). The Dark Half holds you in your seat until its feathery finale, where you’ll see the kind of bodily mutilation (right down to internal organs being ripped from bones) most ‘good’ horrors are too holy for these days.

BRONWYN TRUDGEON