Reviews

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the film that stopped the xenophobic alien monster pictures of the 50's being the norm and enhanced the 2001 view of wondrous things to come for mankind.

With the possible exception of the more far out Jodie Foster film Contact, I can't think of another film which seriously examines the circumstances of the inevitable meeting of humans with extra terrestrials.

The notion of the little green man pointing his ray gun at an Idaho farmer and saying to him in a voice sounding like Kenny out of South Park "Take me to your leader." is gone forever.

In 1977 Spielberg could have just made sequels to Jaws and he would have made a mint but it is all credit to the guy he diversified the way he did.

It is worth reflecting that since this film was made, the first "UFO" has been created and is on its way to another star system. I am referring to the Voyager spacecraft which is now billions of miles from Earth. It is designed to be informative to whichever species picks it up. It carries tape recorded messages and images of peace on board. Not nearly as hi tech as in Encounters, but at least its a start.

Star Wars nerds can keep their light sabres in their scabbards as far as I'm concerned. When the all important first meeting takes place, a handshake will achieve a hell of a lot more than a gunfight.

Why draw comparisons between this film and with Silence of the Lambs ? If anything, the plotline is closer to SOTL prequel Manhunter. In Manhunter, the main crook catcher has undergone a mental breakdown and has to be persuaded to catch a serial killer. But in SOTL, Clarice Starling has never met Lecter whereas in Manhunter, investigator Will Graham is well known to the villain. Will Graham has to exorcise Lecter, and Sigourney Weavers character Helen Hudson has to confront tormentor Daryl Lee Cullum, played in an excellent cameo by Harry Connick Junior.

I found the premise of the story entirely original, and if you blink, you will miss the significance of the very final scene. Without giving too much away, you can't lick it !

It's 1992 and Silence of the Lambs has just won the Best Picture Oscar. Streetwise TV producers start rediscovering Michael Mann's Manhunter and by the time they are being shown together as a double bill, public pressure is put on Thomas Harris to write a sequel.

If any film was crying out for a prequel, it just has to be Manhunter, AKA Red Dragon. If the hunt for the Tooth Fairy and Buffalo Bill was engrossing enough material for two films, why have we not seen how Will Graham almost mentally destroys himself capturing Lecter in the first place ?

It is revealed in SOTL that Buffalo Bill was a former patient of Lecter. Maybe the cornered Lecter was plotting far ahead and knew he must eventually be caught. Maybe his best chance of freedom or at least prison favours lay with the betrayal of madmen whose psychosis he had cunningly nurtured.

We know very little of Lecter's sexual nature or what compelled him to become the monster he was. For those who like plot twists how about if the young Lecter makes a mistake with his first victim and is about to be uncovered by a small town policeman called Officer Starling who he arranges to have killed in what is made to look like a bungled robbery ?

In the history of Hollywood we have only ever had one Best Film Oscar have its film sequel also win Best Picture (The Godfather). If Brian De Palma or John Carpenter are looking at guaranteed box office interest in a prequel, I've got stacks of ideas on this one if Thomas Harris isn't interested !

The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary could do worse than defining the expression "thought provoking" as "a film such as 2001".

The Dawn of Man sequence at the start of the film could yet prove to be the most visionary piece of work ever made. I don't know of any previous philosophy or writing which challenges the theory of evolution in this unique way.

Mankind has been searching for over a century now for the so called "missing link" between the apes and homo erectus. What Arthur C Clarke is suggesting is that the missing link never existed and that knowledge was bestowed on man in one fell swoop. Surely after 100 years of digging and not finding the missing link we should be prepared to at least examine the possibility that mankind is in fact an introduced species.

All life forms on planet earth are dependent on one of those life forms developing the intelligence necessary to travel to new worlds and take the other life forms with it. If this were not the case, then we might as well shoot all the giant pandas and endangered species now because eventually the sun will expand and burn everything on earth to a crisp.

Strange isn't it that by consensus we are prepared to accept the big bang theory where everything in the universe was created in a split second but we shy away from Clarke's theory about the creation of intelligence.

It was strange for Kubrick of all people to make this film. We are all aware of his fanatical obsession with attention to detail so it must have been a personal nightmare to create spaceships and orbiting space stations that would stand up to public scrutiny.

2001 is a marvellous film and for those of you who believe in omens, in a recent TV interview Arthur C Clarke stated that on the evening that he agreed the final script for the film with Kubrick, they stood outside their hotel in Manhattan and watched a UFO climbing into the sky.

We in Britain may have invented the modern vampire lore in the 19th century when Bram Stoker went to bed after a dish of crabs and had a nightmare about a bloodsucking fiend he chose to call Count Dracula but it took Stephen King to translate it into the modern world and he came up with a cracker in Salem's Lot.

The Hammer Horror movies would have you believe that Drac only got fed when the occasional Transylvanian virgin wandered within fanging distance of his castle high up in the Carpathian mountains. Without being too cynical, I think the food supply would have dried up pretty quick because the newly created vampires (First Blood ?) also needed nourishment.

King takes it to its logical conclusion. George Bernard Shaw once said that in heaven an angel is nobody special. What happens when vampirism is a plague and there are more undead in a town than the living ? If there are 5,000 vampires in a town and one guy with a mallet and stake who's the odd one out ?

I was frightened the first time I saw Hitchcock's Psycho but I appreciated it much more in later years when I found it was in effect a jet black comedy. In some ways Salem's Lot falls into this category. The main vampire being green gives it away. Vampire hasn't sucked blood in a while complexion white. Vampire sucking in profusion complexion ruddy. So how do you end up with a green vampire ? What had it been supping ? chartreuse or creme de menthe ?

And surely James Mason was a mickey take as guardian to "The Master". In the book he is supposed to be German so I guess in casting terms that equates to asking Mother Theresa to play the part of Zsa Zsa Gabor in a biopic.

Salem's Lot is a great film but next time you see it look for the comedy element. Councillor Tim O'Kane

Beautiful People is an easy watch jet black comedy.Heroin addiction and extreme racism are given an improbable humorous edge in a way that you don't expect. The film has some startling switches in it. My only criticism would be that the scene explaining the psychiatrist's diagnosis of Bosnia Syndrome should have come earlier on to help explain to viewers the odd actions of the actors.

Notwithstanding that it is a great film. Bonus points if you can pick out the scenes that were shot in Liverpool instead of London and watch out for handy hints on how to peg out washing with a head full of heroin !

Cllr Tim O'Kane