Badlands

Terrence Malick, 1973

The subject of lovers-on-the-run has been a long standing theme in film for over 70 years, from Louis King's Persons in Hiding in 1939, to David Lynch's Wild at Heart in 1990, with the standard plot consisting of a young fugitive couple, fleeing from the law, and condemning themselves to a life a crime and death on the road. In 1973, six years after the release of the immensely popular Bonnie and Clyde, Terrence Malick directed his début feature Badlands, a film that was also based on real events, more specifically, the Charles Starkweather murder spree of 1958. The film follows Holly (Sissy Spacek) a teenage girl living in a small Midwestern town, as she meets and falls in love with Kit (Martin Sheen), and becomes his accomplice as he commits a series of murders whilst travelling across the country, with police in pursuit. Holly acts as narrator, giving an innocent tone to the film that brilliantly contrasts with the harsh string of killings committed by her lover, with her nonchalant account of events and stories being read as if from a diary. 

Martin sheen's performance as Kit is far more in depth and brilliantly crafted than he has recieved credit for, exploring behavioral characteristics that precede his homicides, which reveal Kit's apparent sociopathic mannerisms such as megalomania, lack of remorse and cruelty to animals, traits which are infamous in the field of psychiatristy as early indications of psychopathy. Kit and Holly's detachment and cold manner towards the preceedings are far more chilling than any outburst of rage that is standard in numerous other movies, with Holly so seperated from reality at the hands of her lover, that she feels no remorse for the murders she witnesses. The movie creates a spellbinding chemistry between the two, juxtaposing the childlike innocence of Holly, with the reserved attitude of Sheen's persona. Kit's apathetic and emotionless state acts as a precursor for Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, a character also swamped with delusion and paranoia, predating De Niro's performance by almost 3 years. 

Badland's influence on pop culture over the past 30 years is evident, using the romantic story of two anti-heroes driving across America as inspiration to everything from Thelma and Louise, to Bruce Springsteen. Quentin Tarantino's two screenplays for Natural Born Killers and True Romance feature similar story lines to Badlands, with the latter even mimicking a similar light, xylophone composition, but whereas Badlands uses this to affect, blending the score with Holly's childlike narration to create the illusion that this may be taking place in her head, True Romance uses it lavishly, making it seem out of place with the themes of the film. Although the film may have been interpreted into, or inspired various works over the years, Badlands remains as not only a phenomenal directorial début, but as one of the most significant films to be released in a period that is considered to be the height of film making.
words by danny walker.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Bruce Robinson, 1989

Of all the directors who have chosen to keep their output to a minimum there is nobody who’s criminally low number of films is more of a shame than Bruce Robinson. Aside from a few screenwriting credits he has so far managed to direct a mere three films since his debut, cult classic Withnail & I, in 1987. How to Get Ahead in Advertising sees Richard E Grant take the starring role again as Denis Dimbleby Bagley, an advertising executive faced with creating a campaign promoting a brand of pimple cream. As he battles with writers block he becomes so stressed he eventually suffers a total nervous breakdown, rejecting advertising and everything it stands for. He also grows a pimple of his own however, a pimple that grows in size until it starts to resemble a second head, complete with it’s own moustache and conflicting views on the advertising world.
 

Richard E Grants performance is every bit as good as his iconic turn as Withnail, playing Bagley with the same manic hysteria as his predecessor. Bagley himself doesn’t resemble Withnail in his character though, although both are in creative fields they are worlds apart with Bagley sharing far more in common with a character such as American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman- his obsession with social status and brand names, only expressing greed and disgust, and his questionable mental state. As with American Psycho it is never clear whether the events occurring on screen are truly real, whilst people hear Bagley’s boil speaking (reciting slogans from popular adverts) it is only when he glances in a mirror that the human face he believes is there seems to become present.
 
Withnail & I was Robinson’s lamentation on the end of ’the greatest decade in the history of mankind’, the 1960’s, a film that raised the question of where things could possibly progress from there. How to Get Ahead in Advertising appears to be Robinson answering his own question, conceived and filmed as the yuppie culture of the 1980’s was coming to a head it satirises an era that someone of Robinson’s bohemian background must consider to be the total antithesis of everything he grew to believe in.

 
This year Robinson will be making his first foray into film since 1992’s Jennifer 8 with his adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s only fiction novel The Rum Diary. It’s been said before that Withnail & I is more like a Hunter Thompson novel in it’s spirit than any official adaptation has managed so far, hopefully it’s production will run more smoothly than it did on Jennifer 8 (it’s troubled making-of responsible for Robinson‘s unofficial retirement), and we can look forward to Bruce Robinson returning to cinema and the prolific output his early works implied he would deliver.
words by pete bond.

The Squid and the Whale

Noah Baumbach, 2005

The past decade has seen the commercial and critical success of American Independant cinema releases, ranging from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, to Marc Webb's (500) Days of Summer last year. One such film maker whose output has been grossly overlooked is Noah Baumbach, who's releases have been consistently outstanding, with the culmination of his career so far being 2005's The Squid and the Whale. With his last several films having  autobiographical qualities running throughout, using direct influence from his own life experiences, The Squid and the Whale accounts the separation of his parents and the profound effects this has on himself, and his younger brother.


Set in Brookyln, 1986, the film follows a middle class family and their individual adjustments to the break-up of their household. Jeff Daniels gives an outstanding career-best performance as dad Bernard, a once successful novelist, highly pretentious in his approach to literature, referring to Dickens as one of his predecessors, whilst also claiming that A Tale of Two Cities is a minor work. The tension between his wavering career and his wife's (Laura Linney) recently acclaimed publications come to an almighty head, and their announcement to sons Frank and Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) ignite a series of self destructive events undertaken by the boys as a result of the stress, with each taking opposing sides of the divided family, Walt with his father, encapsulated by his intellect, apeing his speech, viewpoints, and even his arrogant viewpoints, with a total misunderstanding of the subject, announcing that Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is "Kafkaesque".

The movie deals with the sexuality of the characters, percieving the mother, Joan and Bernard's newly found independance, and exploration of their sexual desires, whilst Walt is thrust into a relationship that soon becomes intimate for his liking, and Frank explores a dark series of masturbatory events, including two incidents in which he smears semen over a bookcase in his school library and a classmate's locker. Joan in particular is seen to be highly promiscuous, a fact which is soon realised by her son Walt, and by which he is terribly affected by, referencing this, is a poster hanging in his room featuring Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore. Bernard, whose opinion of Joan's new boyfriend Ivan is that of distaste, has no problem in engaging in his own sordid affair with a student of his, Lili, whom Walt begins to grow feelings for, and which he eventually acts upon, only to be met without compliance. 

The main ploy of the film is to adress the self destructive nature of the two boys post-seperation, both struggling to deal with adjustment in polarizing ways, with Walt attempting to cope with his emotions and stress internally, convincing himself, and eventually others that he has written a popular Pink Floyd song, whilst Frank expresses his feelings externally, through his descent into alcoholism and public masturbation. Bernard, whose belligerent attitude throughout the film seemingly encloses him from any emotional damage, shows a moment of heart-breaking dejection, as he announces the torture his wife has put him through, almost eradicating any previous conceptions the viewer may have. As the movie draws to a close, and Walt overturns the long-standing favour of his father, leaving his hospital bedside, and separating himself from that relationship, he runs across New York, (echoing Woody Allen's Manhattan) to the Museum of Natural History, to observe the squid and the whale diorama, two giants beasts fighting in an embracive struggle, perhaps a metaphor for his perception of his parents.
words by danny walker.

The Wayward Cloud

Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005

Over the past decade Chinese language film has seen a renaissance, with an increasing number of films seeing worldwide distribution and critical success. The most famous director to have emerged is Taiwanese Oscar winner Ang Lee, who has touched upon increasingly controversial and taboo subjects in his films culminating in the most recent film to hail from his native land, Lust, Caution, a film which gained notoriety through it’s explicit sex scenes. One director who has enjoyed massive success in Taiwan but has seen significantly less attention abroad is Tsai Ming-Liang, a director who like Ang Lee has continued to approach taboo subjects in an increasingly graphic manner, with arguably his best work so far being The Wayward Cloud.
 
The Wayward Cloud continues the story of the characters of Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-Sheng) and Shiang-Chyi (Chen Shiang-Chyi) from Ming-Liang’s previous film What Time is it There. Set in the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, the story chronicles the couples relationship during a massive heat wave that has in turn caused a water shortage, leading the government to issue news bulletins suggest that citizens hydrate themselves by drinking the juice contained within the watermelons that appear to be available in abundance.

These melons become the recurring visual motif in the film, repeatedly being employed for a variety of scenes. There is a large musical sequence in which the streets of the city are filled with umbrellas featuring a watermelon print, in another scene the river flowing through the city becomes mysteriously filled with watermelons and there is of course the ever present glasses of watermelon juice being drank by their characters. As the film is primarily free of dialogue, filmed using long takes and largely static shots, the brightly coloured fruit helps to create a visually arresting Mise-en-scène and their often unexplained presence adding to the surreal fantasy of the film. The watermelons also give way to many of the films more comic scenes, such as when a woman who has been washed in watermelon juice realises she is covered in ants and is forced to strip nude in a crowded elevator. 
 There most unusual deployment comes however during many of the films graphic sex scenes, including the opening ten minutes in which two characters have sex whilst the woman holds one half of a sliced watermelon between her legs. Once the contents from inside the melon are all but gone, the empty shell is then placed on the mans head for the continuation of the scene. This fetishization of food is most prominent in when it is directly linked with sex in this manner but can bee seen throughout all the film, with the inclusion of numerous shots of things such as lingering close ups of noodles crackling as sauce is poured onto them.

 
Perhaps most interesting is the lack of dialogue in the film. Despite the focus of the film being on the relationship between Hsiao-Kang and Shiang-Chyi, barely a word is spoken between the central characters, with Hsiao-Kang failing to utter a single line of dialogue throughout the whole film, with the only time we hear his voice being during the musical sequences. One particular musical number occurs when he sneaks onto the roof of his apartment block to bath in it’s water tank, here he sings of his desire to fall in love. Whilst he is only capable of expressing himself physically through his sex scenes with Shiang-Chyi these interludes give the viewer an insight into the feelings of the characters, and gives the film the emotional core that the static, silent approach taken throughout the rest of the film cannot deliver.
 
These sequences are unique in that by exposing the characters inner desires they serve a purpose outside of simply offering the entertainment of the fantastical dance sequences in the musicals Hollywood has to offer. As China continues to grow in it’s stature so too will it’s film industry, and with it’s newly granted freedoms it’s filmmakers will hopefully continue to push the envelope of what is acceptable in cinema, creating ever more experimental and controversial films.
words by pete bond.

Made in Britain

Alan Clarke, 1982

The conversion of stage plays to television and film has been a long standing transition, ranging from Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men to Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth. This alteration of mediums has had many successes, most notably with independent dramas, creating an intimacy and intensity that exists both on stage and screen. From 1956-mid 80's, British television was host to a new form of social-realist style drama labelled the 'television play', whose roots where embedded in the theatre, and were adapted into kitchen sink realism, mostly depicting social and political issues forming around working class families. Play for Today was an anthology series that transmitted some of the most important British programmes ever created, and introduced audiences to some of today's most established directors, such as Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke. 


In 1982, Clarke directed Made in Britain, his next feature following the highly controversial Scum. The film follows a 16 year old, white power skinhead, Trevor, played by Tim Roth in his acting début, on a self-destructive, downward spiral through the judical system, with his constant confrontation of authoritative figures, set against the backdrop of Thatcher's Britain. After a series of court trials, Trevor is sent by his social worker, Harry, to an Assessment Centre under the belief that he can reform. His time spent in the centre is spent assaulting staff, sniffing glue, and hijacking cars amongst other such acts. Totally undermining stereotyping of the skinhead culture as mindless hooligans, Trevor presents himself as a coherent and intelligent character, brainwashed into a xenophobic mindset, bitter at a world that rejects his views, and obnoxious to the guidance of his social workers. 

Much like Archer in Scum and Bexy in The Firm Trevor is a character most typical of Alan Clarke's work; a smart young man, suppressed by authority with a belief that he can fight the system. Behind his belligerence and hostility, there are moments of clarity, and self-awareness, unmasking his hard outer shell to unveil a confused, lonely individual, making it frustrating for those trying to help and rehabilitate him. During his time in the rehabilitation centre, Trevor befriends a black offender, Errol, who accompanies him on his unconscientious activities, stealing cars, defecating on their assessment records, and even on racially motivated attacks. It's the power and ferocity of Roth's character that enables a pliable young black boy to follow the same mind set as a white power skinhead. Trevor's attitude toward Errol is condescending and patronizing, conscious of his own intelligence and eventually uncaring in his attitude towards his unlikely accomplice.

With his discovery of the Stedicam prior to the filming of Made in Britain, and his notoriety for being impatient whilst arranging and producing difficult tracking shots, Clarke uses a mass amount of kinetic energy and fluency with in his camera-work, with each shot following Trevor around each of his endeavours, adding intensity and realism, and forming an almost cinéma vérité style feel to the film. Chris Menges' grim cinematography brilliantly sucks the life from the film, delivering a harsh, gritty portrayal of a Thatcher-esque London, themes that seep into his other work, such as Local Hero, Kes and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. 

Filmed during the same era that This Is England is set, Clarke's Made in Britain runs many parallels to Shane Meadow's 2006 independent drama, with the two movies featuring key actors in their debut roles, nationalist and racist themes, and both films showing the struggle of the Labouring class, in a time of tense social unrest, with mass employment, IRA attacks on mainland Britain, The Fawklands Conflict, and riots taking place nationwide prior to the miner's strikes of 1984/85. Where This Is England deals more with the reintroduction of an offender into society, contrasting dark and light elements of childhood, Made in Britain shows the eventual incarceration of the offender, with only the options of conformity, or internment. With an abrupt end to the movie, the audience is left to assume the latter.
words by danny walker.

Best Film of 2010

Pete’s Choice- Enter the Void

Gaspar Noé, 2010

Gaspar Noé’s first feature in eight years was met with decidedly mixed reviews upon its initial release, with a large portion of these being negative. Critics accused the film of being overly self-indulgent, pretentious, and unnecessarily graphic both in its portrayal of violence and of sex. What they failed to credit it with is just how much it accomplishes with it’s aesthetic, structure and experimental approach.
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The film is shot entirely in the first person, from the perspective of Tokyo drug dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), with the only cuts in the otherwise fluid camerawork occuring when he blinks. Shot dead during a drugs raid, his soul proceeds to ascend from his body and begin flying over Tokyo, revisiting elements of his past before facing reincarnation.
 
Despite referencing the Tibetan Book of the Dead, on which Oscar‘s path to resurrection is based, the trip his soul embarks on is not supposed to be real, simply his final drug induced hallucination as he reflects on the life he is leaving behind. Therefore the Tokyo his soul flies through is every bit as bright, colourful, and sometimes scary, as it is would be experienced under the effect of hallucinogenics. With this Noé brings to the screen a representation of psychedelic drugs more accurate and visually mesmerizing than anyone before him.
 Noé cites Stanley Kubrick as one of his main influences, particularly 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here it shares both the grand scope of its narrative, attempting to condense the whole of Oscar's life experience into a two and a half hour running time just as he did the history of mankind, as well as it’s fantastic cinematography and framing. It’s important to note that 2001 was similarly divisive of opinion on it’s initial release, only finding the acclaim it deserved as time passed, hopefully this will prove to be the case for Enter the Void also.

Dan’s Choice- I'm Still Here

Casey Affleck, 2010

One of the most commercially unsuccesful, and serverly overlooked movies of this year has been the Casey Affleck directed mockumentary I'm Still Here, which follows Joaquin Phoenix on his transition from recently-retired actor, to hip-hop artist, and exposing the dark side of the star's personal life. In many ways, Phoenix is the perfect candidate for a film documenting his supposed breakdown, with his upbringing in the religious cult the Children of God, the death of his brother River Phoenix, and his rehabilitation for alcholism in 2005.

The movie can be easily compared to the films of Christopher Guest, such as Best In Show and This Is Spinal Tap, using similar awkward and embarrasing situations and docu-style filming, with the camera stalking 'Jo-pho' as he embarks on his rap career, issuing demos to an underwhelmed Sean 'Diddy' Combs, binging coke and prostitution and being defecated on by his maltreated assistant.

I'm Still Here is the performance of Phoenix's career, and a showcase in method acting, with him lending over two years of his life to his character, devotion that hasn't been seen since Vincent D'Onofrio's mesmerizing portrayal of Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, or De Niro in Raging Bull. With Affleck's announcement of its fraudulence soon after it's release, I'm Still Here was largely disregarded by critics and audiences alike, dismissing the film as self-indulgent and narcissistic, but in truth, it is alot more than that, a journey into the psychosis of a lost and lonely individual. Whilst the film may have flopped in theatres, the place it will gather momentum on is dvd and blu-ray, and the movie is foreseeable to gain a major cult following.

Slacker

Richard Linklater, 1991

The Oxford definition of a Slacker reads: a young person (especially in the 1990s) of a subculture characterized by apathy and aimlessness. Whereas previous generations had chosen to express their dissent from the attitudes and beliefs of their parents by becoming increasingly radicalised and vocal, Generation X took the wholly different approach of manifesting their disillusionment not by trying to change the system, but by simply refusing to be part of it. Cultural phenomenon’s such as Beavis and Butthead, Nirvana and filmmakers such as Kevin Smith would serve as the spokespeople of this generation, the defining work of this period was to be supplied by Richard Linklater though in the form of Slacker.
 
Richard Linklater’s second feature after the largely unseen 1988 film It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (an extra on the Criterion version of Slacker) is an episodic look at the lives of the youth inhabiting Austin, Texas. The format of the film sees the camera fluidly following one set of people whilst they talk, before another set of characters pass and we begin to follow them and their discussion instead. The conversations themselves are the focus of the film, their subject matter varies but they accurately display the slacker ethos, characters discuss philosophy, conspiracy theories and authors such as Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy displaying both their education and intelligence. However, whenever the question of what they’re doing with their lives is raised they all respond similarly, stating they are currently unemployed and listing their interests as activities such as sleeping and watching television. The high brow conversations they hold are contrasted with their total lack of motivation, they have all the knowledge and intelligence necessary to succeed, they just don’t want to. Their viewpoint can be seen as a result of many of the events they discuss as having witnessed in real life or the news- car accidents, assassinations, a man being shot by the police, all traumatic events whose occurrence they could never anticipate or prevent regardless of what choices in life they make.

The film doesn’t shy away from questioning the attitudes of it’s inhabitants, in one particular scene there is discussion on the merits of travelling abroad with the decision reached that there is no point as you ‘might as well have watched it on TV’. Shortly after this conclusion is reached, a pair of older characters cross paths with them and the camera suddenly switches to follow them. Although the viewer enters their conversation halfway through the aged woman is describing a scene abroad so vividly that she could only have witnessed it first hand, purposely contrasting the two of them could only be to show that real life experience is still more significant and worthwhile than the youth of Austin would believe. Although Linklater’s preoccupation with slacker culture in both this and his later film Dazed and Confused would suggest he agrees with their worldview (he even cameos as one of the lost youths of the film in the films opening scene) moments such as this make you question whether he does truly agree or just fascinated with this culture of apathy.
 

The film acts as the 90’s equivalent of a Godard film with it’s experimental use of tracking shots and meandering coffee shop conversations, it could also be closely compared to the films of Woody Allen in this with it’s discussions of the meanings of love, life and death. Along with the films such as Sex, Lies and Videotape this was one of the films that set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the revival of independent cinema in the 90’s and see filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino become the most prominent directors of the decade. As with Josh Harris of We Live in Public fame, it also foresees the ever growing dependence of society on living lives virtually, wanting to live their lives via a television set in the same way people have chosen to exist through the internet who’s rise would begin at this time. Although the lesser known of the two, it is a great counterpart to Dazed and Confused and definitely worth much wider attention.
words by pete bond.

Straight to Hell

Alex Cox, 1987

A year after The Clash announced an indefinite hiatus, singer/guitarist Joe Strummer made an attempt to redefine his career, and cross over into the world of acting, starring in Alex Cox’s third feature length movie after the critically acclaimed Sid and Nancy. The film centres around three hit men, who, after an erroneous job, hold up a bank, then seek refuge in a small Mexican village, populated by coffee-addicted psychopaths. The film was a by product of a failed Nicaraguan concert tour, which after being cancelled left a multitude of musicians out of work for a short amount of time. In place of this, Cox assembled a hurried script, a disused location in Almería, Spain, with four weeks of shooting, the purpose being to cast the artists in a low-budget homage to his favourite genre; the Western.

In turn, Straight to Hell transpires to be a movie of two very different aspects, the first being the direction and cinematography, which, in keeping with Cox’s previous work such as Repo Man, is highly idiosyncratic, reflecting the ethos and influence of the late 70's/early 80's punk movement. Cox merges this with further influence from directors such as Luis Buñuel, Akira Kurosawa, and most notably Sergio Leone; in fact, in one scene there is a clear homage to Once Upon a Time in the West, as a wheezing harmonica plays during a standoff, echoing Ennio Morricone's haunting score. The second aspect of the movie is what proves to be its downfall, as Cox’s use of non-actors and poor scripting override any degree of positivity the movie might have. This really is a case of style over substance, and Cox’s off-beat direction, is let down by terrible dialogue and irritating characters, one example of which being Courtney Love's character ‘Velma’, a heavily pregnant, underage love-interest of Sy Richardson's ‘Norwood’, who screeches her way through the script, mimicking Cloe Webb's character in Sid and Nancy. Her performance is excruciating to watch, think ‘DJ Ruby Rhod’ in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element. However Richardson’s performance as Norwood is the exception of the piece, as his righteous persona and sharp style brings to mind Samuel L. Jackson's role as ‘Jules Winnfield’ in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, predating it by seven years.

Straight to Hell could be labelled a surrealist or absurdist comedy, constantly using non-sequiturs, with statements and events having no relation to previous ones, which gives the movie an unpredictable quality, for example, in one scene, Sy Richardson’s character dons a pink shower cap in the build up to a duel, for no apparent reason. Other humorous aspects of the movie appear in bad taste, almost becoming dark and sadistic in their use, such as the abuse and eventual death of a young hot dog vendor, and the shooting of his dog earlier in the film. Whereas in other directors hands, this use of ludicrous and bizarre humour could be used to their advantage (for example Terry Gilliam’s Brazil) Cox’s twist of preconceptions comes across as unoriginal and non-intelligent. 

The movie itself seems to exist purely on the basis to exploit the audience, capitalizing on the cult devotees that follow the artists in the film, such as Elvis Costello, The Pogues and even Strummer himself being the main attraction, the title of the movie being named after his 1982 single, from the album Combat Rock. Beyond the amateur performances weighing Straight To Hell down, there is a decent movie trying to get out. Cox obviously has a good artistic scope, and a range of respectable influence, borrowing styles from the likes of John Ford, shooting on location, and using wide shots of desolate terrain, composing asymmetrical frames and using the depth of field to his advantage, with the placement of characters and objects contributing to the impression of the depth. His mix of striking and ludicrous imagery is strangely reminiscent of the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, such as El Topo or The Holy Mountain.

Alex Cox released his next movie Walker in December 1987. The film was a commercial failure, ending all involvements with Hollywood Studios, and effectively blacklisting him. With no work left for him in feature films, Cox next found work 5 years later with Mexican crime-drama EL Patrullero. In 1996, Cox was employed by producer Stephen Nemeth to write and direct an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his first creditable project in over nine years, but after creative disputes with not only Nemeth but Thompson himself, he was kicked out of production (the film later being taken over by Terry Gilliam). Cox self proclaims himself to be a ‘cult director’ and a ‘radical filmmaker’, in fact the only true cult movie he has produced is Repo Man, which is retains popularity with film lovers because of its originality and ability to distance itself from standard conventions, unlike Straight to Hell, who’s cult appeal appears preconceived, as to appeal to fans of the musicians involved.

The Clash sang in 1980 “Death or glory, becomes just another story”. While there is death and bullets, Straight to Hell lacks any glory, and is easily forgotten in the pantheon of great Westerns, such as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and The Wild Bunch.
words by danny walker.