No Time For Love, Dr. Jones

From that depressing moment when we wake up alive, we proceed to spend our entire day existing in a world of lies. With friends, families and strangers being granted the curse of speech, every living moment is simply another adventure up the river of bullshit. If Piers Morgan is anything to go by then the general rule should be that if it has a pulse and something resembling a face then just don't trust it, stab it with a fork, burn it with fire.

It's not only an exposure to people either that we should be worried about. All day long we're bombarded by adverts convincing us to buy shit that we don't need in exchange for our dignity, souls and, worst of all, cash. They tell us that wearing deodorant will get us laid and that eating chocolate will result in an orgasm. The only way that buying an aerosol might get you fucked is if you sprayed it directly into your victim’s eyes. There's only one possible process in which chocolate can make you cum and that's by slipping it melty-end first up the arse hole. In that unrealistically honest world ‘Toblerone’ would be shaped less like a mountain range and more like a sweet, honeycombed cock. With popping-candy…

Believe it or not but cinema too is guilty of its fair share of truth bending. If Pretty Woman was real, Julia Roberts wouldn't have found love with Richard Gere. She'd have been a crack addicted single mother who'd end the film rolled up in a rug and plunging headfirst towards a polluted river.

More importantly though according to the movies, archaeology is an action packed adventure through dangerous jungles after treasures and trinkets of huge cultural significance. In reality archaeologists are rarely allowed out in the sunlight and are only released to scrabble around in mud and dig up some shiny shit that was dropped a good time ago by a couple of long-dead wankers. If you ask me, an archaeologist is just a road sweeper with a degree.

But fuck it- I don't watch movies to see the truth, I watch them for entertainment. Watching the Indiana Jones Franchise is more fun than visiting a museum and anyone who says different is clearly wearing their anorak too tightly. At this point there are four movies in the series and despite the luke-warm reviews for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I do hope they make another. Although, I do hope they make it quickly as I'd much prefer to watch Dr Jones searching for something because it's valuable and not just because his dementia has set in. As soon as we get to Indiana Jones and the Wreaking Stench of Piss it's probably high time to hang up the whip.

Now regarding the current four films, I'm not an idiot. I know that without question Raiders of the Lost Ark is clearly the best and most well made film of the franchise. I think it could also stake a claim to being one of the few perfect movies in existence. There are no skinny aliens, Jones always shoots first and it's presented in good old fashioned 2D. So far the only 3D film I've been excited about is Titanic and that's only so I can get a more accurate look at Kate Winslet's rounded tits.

As much as I love Raiders however, my guilty pleasure has got to be the hugely under-rated Temple of Doom. I'm not saying that it's the better film but simply that I get more boyish-giddyness out of it- kind of like visiting a prostitute for fun whilst your partner sleeps in bed at home. It's not that you love the whore more it's just that she lets you stick it up her bum without threatening to leave you the next day.

Temple of Doom starts off in a Shanghai nightclub and with an enjoyably catchy musical number. This is our introduction to Willie who is to be both Dr Jones's fresh slice of screaming fanny and also one of the biggest gripes people have with this film. After she finishes warbling and Indiana stops playing pass the poison with a couple of sinister looking misters, the two exit the club via the traditional method of jumping out the window. Luckily, to break their fall is Short Round, a young Japanese child who is both being groomed by Jones for his own personal reasons and also the second character in this film to get on some peoples tits.

After being chased by a mob of gunmen for seemingly not paying his drinks tab, Dr. Jones and his gang board a plane to escape. Unfortunately though the pilots’ shifts end mid-flight with them deciding to empty the fuel tank and fuck off home. I'm assuming this isn't standard aeronautical procedure although it's probably less dangerous than eating some of the shit they serve on commercial flights. I'd honestly much rather see the pilots pissing off past my window than put some of that processed gunk in my mouth. I ordered some bacon once that arrived to me in a small tin tray looking like a pork chopped vagina. Thanks to that flight, both Kermit and I now know what it feels like to go down on a pig.

As he sees the plane is about to crash, Indy has the genius idea of leaping head first out of the open door and surviving the fall in an inflatable dingy. Personally I wouldn't have thought that a thin sheet of rubber would make much difference at a height like that but I'm not a Doctor like Jones is, so fuck it what do I know. Thankfully the children's inflatable prevents the gang’s legs from penetrating their shoulders and instead they all go on an exciting ride down to the base of a mountain. At the bottom they are greeted by a surprise cameo from a mental looking Ghandi.

At the local village, Indy is finally told the plot of the film. Apparently both a magical stone and all of the local children have been stolen by a nearby ruler. If he can return the stone then everybody will be very grateful, if he has time to grab the kids too then even better. We're told that the people living here are starving due to the lack of food. Bringing the kids back would just result in more mouths to feed so sod them- just get the shiny fucking rock and let’s move on.

So like King Bitch of the Peasants, Jones does as he's told and trundles off to grab their treasure. This latest adventure takes in a lot as he encounters the usual booby-trapped rooms, a Donkey Kong mine cart chase and even witnesses the human sacrifice of a man that I'm pretty sure is Spud from Trainspotting.

Of course this film isn't as good as Raiders but that doesn't make it bad. For me the whole point of an Indy movie is to simply be fun and I don't think anyone could say this is dull. With its rip-out-hearts and demonic baddies, the film has been criticised for being too scary with Spielberg himself even stating that, “It was too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific.” Personally, I just think this argument is a little bit bollocks- as a 10 year old watching it for the first time, I loved every second. Sure I got scared at times but that just added to the enjoyment. If I was that traumatised by it I wouldn't have spent the next few days putting my hand over people’s chests in an attempt to remove their hearts. In the end I figured it was quicker to just use a knife and blame it on God.

The action here too is just as exciting and just as relentless as you'd expect from a genre king like this. There's the opening club shoot out, conveyor belt wrestle, and of course the run away mine chase. Once things kick off, they just don't let up to the point where even I felt tired just from watching. If woman was made from one of Adams ribs then I can only assume that Harrison Ford was made from a slither of Thor's scrotum. The amount of stunts and scrapes that poor Dr. Jones goes through really is enough to make me wonder what my teachers were moaning about. All in the name of education, Indy is caught by a cult and forced to drink poison from a decapitated head. We only had one teacher who'd have been prepared to do that and that was mainly because she was a suspected alcoholic. 

The humour too is in my opinion much more obvious in this film. Temple of Doom caters exactly for my inner 8 year olds needs by clearly upping the icky with more bugs, gore and suspiciously coloured gunge. If I was Kate Capshaw and a fat man showed me his ‘snake surprise’, I think I'd be relieved when things started slithering across the table and he kept his porky little knob hidden firmly under his chubby pocket of belly-flab. Some people think the jokes here are a little too broad compared to the previous movie but they're wrong. Slap-stick or not they're still funny in the intended manner. The last movie had a singing Gimli, a Nazi-monkey and a fat man who can't take his drink, so neither film is exactly Oscar fucking Wilde.

When it comes to people’s gripes with this film, it seems the finger of blame is pointed at the inclusion of both Willie and Short Round. Regarding Willie, yes, she's a wailing pain in the arse but she's supposed to be. From what I can tell, she's a throw back to those scream-queens of ye olde Hollywood, with the pleasure being in not enjoying her company but seeing her in trouble. Willie has a horrible time throughout this movie and I'm glad because seeing her upset amuses me. When she shows up I don't think “I hope she survives”, I think “fuck her- throw another fucking spider in her face”. People wonder why Indy likes her but I don't think he does. He carries a whip around for God’s sake! Do we really think that kind of kinky, pervert is out hunting for marriage material? He's a guy and she's presumably got a working vagina so personalities are really not that relevant.

As for Short Round, I genuinely like him and I think the affection that Indy has for him is very sweet to watch. It's nice to see that Jones has a paternal side with it also being interesting to witness how similar his parenting is to his own father’s. Both Indy and Dr. Henry Jones prioritise teaching their kid independence which might also explain why we never see Short Round again. Either the child has been taught to stand on his own two feet or more likely Jones one day swapped him for a couple of camels at the market. The desert is a big place, if you're going to brave it you'll be needing something to fuck... Camels keep better secrets than little Japanese boys.

These two characters don't annoy me because throughout the film we're taking the piss out of them. Plus has anyone else seen The Fifth Element? I think once you've seen Chris Tucker in that then nobody ever seems annoying again. No matter what bible-bashing pain in the arse knocks on my front door, the first thing I always think is ‘Thank God it's not Chris Tucker’. If I can't see what that whiney slab of noise is doing, then there's always a chance he's just been killed in a car accident. I'm not saying that's what I'd want but just that's it's possible... In comparison, I think Willie could only be as irritating as Tucker if she stuck some bagpipes up her fanny and gassed out an hour long queef of sloppy, Scottish pain.

However- just because I don't mind those two doesn't mean I think the film is perfect. The main baddy doesn't show up for the first hour and even then we don't get to know him properly. He's kind of like Darth Maul in that he puts in a brief appearance, looks cool and then dies. It's not that I want to start dating these characters but it would be nice to know how they became the tattooed bloody rotters that they did. Mola Ram is the big-bad in Temple of Doom and yet he basically only pops up for a cameo at the end. Kind of like turning up at your own birthday party just to announce you're going home. Although I guess it's not too much of a problem because like a birthday party, everyone else is already having a good time without you.

Temple of Doom is so much fun that it deserves its status as a bona-fide classic. If music bypasses our logic and hits us directly in the emotion then this film heads straight for our inner youth and gives it a kick up the arse. It's well made, exciting, funny and everything you could want from an Indiana Jones film. I do like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but there's no doubting that this film looks even better when compared to a bomb-proof fridge, pixelated gophers and renowned actual cannibal Shit laBeef swinging with the monkeys.

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Same Old Bite

When it comes to film adaptations we seem to be getting rather desperate. These days, source material comes from books, computer games, life and fucking toys. It was bad enough when Michael Bay's cinema AIDs started infecting the screen with the grossly sexualised, misogynistic depiction of Cybotron's talking cogs but now others have begun to follow suit. Battleships was seemingly not only a Transformers rip off but also based on a game with less imagination than a trainspotting, dust enthusiast in a coma. Tim Burton's latest movie too is an adaptation but more forgivably of a 60/70's soap opera called Dark Shadows.

However, unlike the soap operas set here in Britain, Dark Shadows has a more supernatural element to it. Most of our shows are based in some form of realism although I've often assumed that the morbid grim-ness of Eastenders is due to it being set in a manic depressives head. In fact, our shows are so tediously dull that one of the most unbelievable aspects of them is simply how everybody knows each other. I've lived in the same house for over a decade but if one of my neighbours stabbed me in the tits, shouted their house number and then raped me I'd still wonder who they were. The closest our soaps get to dealing with the supernatural is probably Coronation Street's shambling corpse Ken Barlow. He's an actor who’s played that same part for so long that to fire him would probably require an exorcist more than it would a P45. It would be less like taking a man's job from him and more like removing the sets haunted book case. He just lingers and likely never leaves the set…

Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows starts with a typically gothic sequence set in a 1752 Liverpool which introduces us to the Collins family. As soon as they see a financial opportunity however, they leave the area and set up a business in America with no intent on returning. They're basically The Beatles of the canned food industry. As time rolls by, Barnabas Collins grows up into Johnny Depp, a promiscuous playboy whose undoing is a result of shagging the wrong girl. Back in Liverpool, this would have probably been someone named Gemma who pushes a pram around the docks and has a fanny full of clap. In America however, Barnabas sticks his cock into a witch who proceeds to curse him for not loving her enough. Turns out that no matter what period you live in, there's always some deranged bitch who’s watched The Notebook once too many (with once being too many).

As a result, Barnabas develops pale skin, a desire to kill and starts to sleep during the day. What separates him from the average scouser however is his need to drink blood. With Barnabas now obviously a vampire, his real true love does what Piers Morgan should and throws herself from a cliff to a violently painful death. Learning of his affliction the locals start to panic too. Reacting to their fears of vampires and Liverpudlian's they bury Barnabas alive before he can commit any crimes. With him safely chained up beneath the ground, the area is therefore devoid of both a murderous demon and the risk of benefit fraud for almost 200 years.

By 1972 the Collins family is in ruins. Their mansion is a wreck, their finances non-existent and their staff consists of one single stuttering inebriated Rorschach. Luckily for them however, there's a vampire buried in the garden who happens to have their best interests at heart. After accidentally digging him up like a fucking dead family pet, Barnabas makes it his mission to restore both their name and wealth to its former glory, though before he can do anything he must acclimatise himself to the grim realities of his present day.

As he runs about enjoying the 1970's, he kills a few hippies including Cassie from Skins, hypnotically manipulates people and worst of all, breaks a television. He also notices that the family’s new maid looks a Hell of a lot like the reincarnation of his old dead wife. Wooing her and rebuilding his canning business would however be a lot easier if it wasn't for the witch who originally cursed him. Like a typically obsessive ex-partner, the bitch is still roaming the local area and making his life a misery. At one point she even re-buries him with a pair of her knickers on his face. To be fair though, the witch is played by Eva Green so that sounds great to me. Sleeping all day long with an erection and the whiff of her sweaty French flaps isn't the worst thing that could ever happen.

So far the reviews for Dark Shadows have been fairly mixed. If the soulless Alice in Narnia is Burton's low point then I would say that his Forrest Gump/Freddie Krueger crossover Edward Scissorhands is his best. This latest Gothic effort is probably somewhere in between. It's not vacuous but nor is it particularly well balanced. Plot points just appear out of nowhere with the snarling Chlo-Mo conclusion being noticeably random. Speaking of Hit-Girl, if there are any paedophiles watching then you'll particularly enjoy the reference to her fingering herself. You can't get arrested for what you imagine, so for those with a taste for the young, it's jailbait-tastic. She's fifteen and I'm not a disgusting fucking kiddie fiddler so the thought does absolutely nothing for me. Not for another twelve months anyway.

The biggest problem here for me however was simply how neglected Barnabas's allegedly reincarnated wife was. She's so ignored throughout the whole film that she may as well have stayed fucking dead all along. Despite her darkly romantic conclusion, her screen time is the equivalent to that of a lamp shade or particularly eye-catching duvet. At least as a corpse she might receive some proper attention by having a morbidly lucky necrophile come across her. In my opinion, perhaps part of her problem is that she shares quite a lot of scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer. Where that sexy catwoman is concerned, I wouldn't notice if The Pope was next to her leaking rainbows from his tits and sucking off a novelty crucifix-shaped dildo. Therefore any moment in which Barnabas shows his suspected love any attention, you're simply drawn to how undervalued she has previously been.

On the plus side though there's plenty of the usual joy from the brain of Tim Burton. It's as typical as his films go but fuck it, that's what I like. If he wants to make gothic horror films with the same black eyed, pale faced actors over and over again, that's fine by me. Like Wes Anderson, Terry Gilliam and Ed Wood, his distinct style pisses off plenty of people which simply proves that not everybody can be right at once. Nobody expects Mike Leigh to make an action film or complained about the lack of explosions during Vera Drake’s abortion scenes, so why should Burton have to change?

Highlights here include Barnabas's ghoulish attacks, Eva Green’s tits and cameos from both Christopher Lee and Alice Cooper. Mr Lee is unfortunately nearing the end of his neck biting career and it's nice that we keep squeezing a few more performances out of him. That dark-lord fucker is too much of a legend to be sitting in an old folks home when there are horror films still being made. Alice Cooper on the other hand clearly hasn't aged a day since 1972. Although in his case, the trick was to start off looking like a man in his mid-sixties and spend the next four decades already partly decomposed. At one point, Barnabas's refers to the ageing rocker as, “the ugliest woman I've ever seen”, which despite being funny simply means he is yet to lay eyes on Paris Hilton.

The tone might be wonky and it's not as funny as the trailer suggests but Dark Shadows is still worth a watch. In a way, by setting up so many various sub-plots, it kind of feels like a highly produced television pilot which then suddenly has to tie everything up at the end. Sort of like those annoying porn videos which are five minutes of blow-job followed by one minute of mechanically, joyless grunting and shagging. Dark Shadows is Burton working below his best but even his average is better than anything Michael Bay or the director of Battleships could come up with. It might be an oddity- and for the wrong reasons, but in a world of blandness and idiocy that is still something that should be appreciated. 

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Super Trooper

Nostalgia is a drug that turns the past into a dream. This world is a shitty place to live but thanks to that rose-tinted antidepressant, we remember things a little bit better than they where. In all honesty I think we can credit it for being the sole reason that people from the 1980's haven't committed suicide yet. If Margaret Thatcher’s reign of terror wasn't enough to be ashamed about there was also AIDs, racist skin-heads and worst of all nobody trimmed their pubes. It was a decade in which John Lennon was shot dead and yet human-gremlin Chris De Burgh was allowed to warble his nauseating cries in a shockingly bullet free environment. However, as well as being a sort of self-prescribed Lithium, nostalgia is also one of the main ingredients in plenty of films. One movie that relied heavily on it that I happen to have recently seen is J.J. Abram's monster movie Super 8.

Super 8 starts in a warm suburban area during the 1970's as a gang of pre-pubescent kids plan to make a short film. These days they'd just record themselves happy slapping and then stick it on Facebook, but this gang have instead bizarrely decided to make something with a story and zombies. As a scene is to be shot at a railway station in the middle of the night, the kids sneak out one evening to get the footage and without telling their parents. Thankfully, the 70's were a time in which paedophiles didn't exist and so the only thing the kids have to worry about is a train being de-railed and an alien escaping from one of the carriages. Unfortunately for our young Ed Woods, this is exactly what happens with the entire crash being captured on their camera.

After that night the kids make the decision to keep the incident to themselves. Partly because they believe they'll get into trouble, partly because the man who caused the crash waved a gun at them and partly because the army is looking to kill any witnesses. Despite this threat however the kids instead decide, “fuck it, let's finish the film”. They grab their parents’ porno camera and continue filming their amateur zombie flick. At this point too, the Alien starts acting like a proper fucking scallywag by playing silly buggers with the locals dogs and stealing car engines. It's basically a thieving Winona Ryder but with six arms and scales.

As I mentioned, the movie relies heavily on nostalgia. Nostalgia for the 70's and nostalgia for the childhood that we all wish we'd had. The decade is lovingly recreated with old cars, disco music and not a mention of the Bond movie Moonraker. I don't care how bad Idi Amin's dictatorship got, it can't have been worse than watching a bird do a double take as Roger Moore rides a boat through the streets of Venice…

In regards to childhood, this movie takes the Stand By Me approach. It shows being young as such an independent, adventurous time that I wish I'd occasionally ventured into the mythical land of ‘outdoors’ and gone exploring myself. In reality I would go out occasionally but only if my Mum had spitefully hidden the Nintendo hand-controller. The closest I got to a nostalgic childhood adventure was watching a young girl from my road doing a shit under a slide. She told me it was “our secret and if anybody asks we should say it was a dog”. I informed her that as far as I was concerned, “it was done by a dog” and we never played out together again. Hardly the fucking Goonies was it?

Abrams has made no secret of the fact that this film is a love letter to the works of Steven Spielberg. As such it contains elements of everything from Close Encounters, E.T., Jaws and even Jurassic Park. It's kind of an odd film in that way as by being intentionally derivative of Spielberg it contains everything that is great about his films but in a way that is not quite as good. It's the equivalent of somebody now going around Whitechapel to chop up some whores but wearing a Jack the Ripper costume. On the one hand you can see the loving references to everything you enjoyed the first time round but on the other you can't help but wish that it was a little more original. Maybe instead of boiling their organs he could deep fry them or eat them with a Pot Noodle? The point is you can't do better than the things you're replicating so rather than carbon-copying them, why not do something a little different? If it was me I'd probably stick the whore’s heart in the microwave and then have it with a cup of tea and some chocolate hobnobs. But that's just me...

The other problem with Super 8 is that you don't see the alien for the majority of the film. Generally that's not a problem as in the case of 2010's Monsters. In that film, the beasts were just slime-ing around in the background doing their best to avoid the plot. Here though the creature is sort of forgotten about and then returns as the centre piece of the movie. The only problem is that by the time he comes back I've already lost interest in him. It's a little bit like having a respectable dinner party and just before dessert, Mr. Blobby runs in, smashes the place up and has a wank. It's not that we don't like Mr. Blobby but rather that things were going really rather well until he ruined it by spraying the post-meal trifle with his presumably pink spunk.

I guess the issue is that the film is composed of two genres. Half of it is a sci-fi movie and the other a coming of age drama, however by being so character heavy, it's the latter aspect that works the best. A relationship starts to blossom between two of the kids however they conclude the film by going alien hunting. A more natural progression of their story arch would obviously be a disastrous attempt at finger banging each other followed by estrangement and then probably suicide. With its Stand By Me cast of kids trying to make a movie- one of the films that this closely resembles is Garth Jennings Son Of Rambow. Super 8's last act becoming The Goonies from Space is a little bit like if Stallone had turned up as Rambo in that other film, slit the two kids’ throats and then skinned them. Obviously Stallone murdering two children in order to wrap up a family movie would be a disastrous decision. He's an awful actor and would no doubt ruin it with his post-stroke, gorilla grunting.

Despite that, in my humble opinion, Super 8 is still a really good film. If you want to celebrate everything that is great about Spielberg without watching any of his work then this is the DVD for you. I'll definitely be watching it again simply because of how much I enjoyed the company of those characters. They were brilliantly acted, realistically written and for kids, they were unrealistically likeable. Where child actors are generally concerned I think most people start praying their film’s plot is about to incorporate infanticide. Even as a kid, my thoughts when seeing the young Anakin were, “what an irritating twat”.

There's only one point in which the Sci-fi and the “coming of age” combine and that's in the magnetic jewellery conclusion. I know it's the sweet music and the manipulatively sentimental imagery, but fuck it- I enjoyed that too! Perhaps this film is in too much of a debt to Spielberg but at least it's not a franchise. In a land of sequels, prequels and remakes, anything even close to new should be celebrated. It's made by a phenomenal film-maker who will do even better when one day working with his own material. One of the best things about Spielberg’s films is the fact that they're clearly made by a man full of love. Like the boiling pot in Jack the Rippers final murder, plenty of heart is definitely what this film contains. If anybody deserves a nostalgic letter of admiration for their work then one to Spielberg from JJ Abrams is the one I want to see. Having said that, one to Ken Loach from Michael Bay might be fun too. Who wouldn't pay to see the bird explode at the end of Kes 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

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Granny-lingus

I think it's about time we admitted that we've not been kind to our horror movies. At its worst, there was the video nasty scare of the 80's during which any film to feature a weapon sharper than a wooden spork found itself banned. The Daily Mail, several politicians and religious organisations felt that it was in our interest to keep this genre off the shelves and away from our impressionable eyes. Because of this, films like The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre became illegal to distribute on video due to an alleged moral corruption that thankfully the press, the government and the God botherers could never be accused of. Those hypocritical big three were the equivalent of Joseph Fritzl slagging off McDonald's for reducing a child’s life expectancy whilst snugly warming himself by his family made, eco-friendly, baby-furnace.

Nowadays we can thankfully watch whatever the hell we want. If I want to see a manatee get fucked up the arse by a crying Jesus and a cheese dildo then the odds are good that Google can help. The naughties has therefore had to find a new and inventive way to mistreat the horror genre. Rather than censoring them, the movie industry has instead more damagingly commercialised them. Anything with a brand name has been whored out, remade and sold to a brain dead public with no idea of their heritage. Once upon a time horror movies were made for a small budget and relied on imagination and creativity to appeal to an audience. Today all it needs is a recognisable title, a comfortably unchallenging formula and a production credit for Michael cunting Bay. In the 80's we forced The Last House on the Left to sit outside in the rain with a packet of crisps and some lemonade. Now we're making it walk the streets in a plastic mini-skirt as we ponder how else we can fuck it for cash. As crappy sequels to these shitty remakes prove there is always one more orifice to stretch out and exploit.

Thank God then for Sam Raimi! The Evil Dead was considered the worst of the video nasties but praised by horror fans such as Stephen King for it's boldness and originality. Now in our current time of crisis he has once again raised his head and given us Drag Me To Hell.

The film was released in 2009 which was coincidentally the same year as Rob Zombie's sacrilegious Halloween 2 and Bay's own Friday the 13^th. Quality aside, Drag Me To Hell was therefore a standout for simply being a new film. The fact that it included scenes in which an old woman gets a ruler to the back of the throat and a stapler to the head was simply an erotic bonus.

The film starts with an ambitious but kind hearted bank loan officer played by Allison Lohman doing her best to impress her boss for a promotion. Rather than wanking him off under a flannel however, she unusually decides to work harder and prove herself genuinely worthy. To demonstrate her eligibility for the role she concludes that the best thing to do is reject a third mortgage extension for an old, snotty gypsy with a manky eye. It's a well known fact in employment that your superiors love displays of sociopathic hatred towards the elderly so well done to her for trying!

This scene is basically what would have happened in Spiderman 2 had Doc Ock not interrupted when Aunt May was begging for her payment extension. All that we can take from this is that Raimi likes writing about old women in poverty and then making them beg. I can only imagine the depths that his version of Calender Girls would have sank to. I am picturing a cross between The Queen and the end of Requiem For A Dream and I'd be disappointed if Bruce Campbell didn't make a cameo.

Reacting to her imminent eviction, the gypsy causes a bit of a fuss by having a little grovel and then announcing she's been shamed. I imagine it was a similar scene to the time Sarah Jessica Parker was denied a bale of a hay and a couple of sugar lumps. Luckily however, no matter what age you are, the bank security are always more than happy to physically toss you out on your arse to make you look a cunt. In fact, old women tend to be the easiest to throw due to their general frailness and the satisfying crunch as they hit the floor. From my experience it sounds like a fat man stamping on a Cornetto and then crying... Hope it's not just me with the erection.

Recently I did a stint working as a checkout monkey for a high-profile supermarket chain. During my sentence, a super skank of a woman sneezed onto her palm and then proceeded to hand me her money. I don't know if she did it out of trampiness or to simply degrade me even further but the end result was a three week cold that left me near death and worried I'd contracted aids. With the coughing and spluttering emanating from Drag Me To Hell's Hungarian hag, Allison Lohman's character proves herself a saint by not hitting the panic alarm straight away. The ungrateful old bitch doesn't see it this way however and as is often the way with an angry gypsy, decides to put a curse on her.

From this point on some unusually nasty things start to happen. Lohman finds an eyeball in her food, gets tossed around a room, kills a cat and then starts violently menstruating through her nose. She also discovers that she has three days to save her soul from a powerful demon during which the troublesome crone from the bank keeps popping up to play a dribbling game of mouth to mouth. Honestly, the amount of times that Lohman and the battleaxe make lip contact is both unnecessary and grossly enjoyable. After watching them repeatedly kiss throughout the movie you start to think this might actually be a twisted, rom-com and wonder when the two are going to get over their prudishness and just shag. To me it seemed that they were just one smooch away from a full on, sloppy session of Granny-lingus. To say I had blue ball would be an understatement.

As the Demon gets angrier and more violent, Raimi brings his camera's trademark kineticism to the table. In many ways, this film is the exact opposite of the amateurish looking Paranormal Activity which relied on a slow build up and left most of the horror to your imagination. Beyond taste and sensitivity, Raimi skilfully leaves nothing off-screen. This is most obvious in a scene in which the gypsy has an anvil dropped on her head causing her eyes to pop out and her guts to burst out of her wrinkled, flat face. Raimi's horror films may not be the best examples of subtlety, but fuck it- I get more pleasure from seeing an angry, talking goat than imagining what kind of Kermit like frog monster is making the door wobble in Paranormal Activity.

Drag Me To Hell isn't a perfect film but that doesn't matter. The effects are a little ropey in places but never as bad as the rotting Disney character suit they used to play beast in X-men: First Class. The dialogue too is a little flat to start with, but this is a Raimi film. I don't watch The Evil Dead for the dialogue in the same way I don't watch 12 Angry Men to see Henry Fonda fucked by a tree.

Contrary to the DVD box, nor is Drag Me To Hell the scariest film of the decade, although there are some tense scenes in it. From the point that Lohman forgets Zombieland's 31^st rule of checking the back seat until she goes arse-over-tit in her new blue coat, the movie is just good, old fashioned fun. Unlike something as crap as Hostel, the gore here is not used to illicit feelings of disgust but rather pleasure. This is basically the monkey brain eating scene from Temple of Doom but stretched out to 90 minutes. Kind of like a roller-coaster- it's fast paced, thrilling and although it's unlikely to cause ejaculation, it will be just as enjoyable each new time you strap in.

In a time where Bay has been given free reign to fuck the quality out anything we once loved, Drag Me To Hell deserves to be championed more than it has been. It's been three years since that film hit cinemas and nobody has even mentioned cashing in with a sequel yet. Although it's not the only decent horror movie that has been released since then, it is in a depressing minority. Where this mistreated genre is concerned, we have entered the age of the moron. Thank God for films like this one and well done to Sam Raimi. This might be an inferior cousin to The Evil Dead but it's related nonetheless and that can only be a good thing. What it lacks in Bruce Campbell it makes up for in granny slobber- so check it out and enjoy.

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