Ed Wood (1994)

"Nobody cares! These movies are terrible!"

That Tim Burton would make a biopic of Ed Wood is delicious. That it should be so bloody good is even more so. Monochrome, stylised and deeply evocative of both 1950s Hollywood and the schlock genres, this is a well-structured, good-natured and fun look at one of Hollywood’s more eccentric “talents” with an extraordinary performance of Johnny Depp at the centre of it all.

The opening titles, with the parade of ‘50s genre tropes and the glorious theremins, are wonderful, and set the mood perfectly. Then we move to setting up who Ed is, his transvestism, and the story of Glen or Glenda, complete with lots of 1950s trans people including the aristocratic but delightfully camp “Bunny” Breckinridge, played to perfection by Bill Murray. We then follow Ed’s, er, career right through to Plan 9 from Outer Space and see him happily married to a fellow geek- and then we stop, before we get any hint of his decline, alcoholism and early death.

Instead we see the tragedy of the great Bela Lugosi’s final years, forgotten by Hollywood to the point of appearing in Ed’s films, alone, homesick for a Hungary to which he can never return, behind an Iron Curtain. Martin Landau plays him with skill and much pathos, but also not without humour (“Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit!”).

We also see Juliet Landau (nepotism; fun for all the family), bizarrely using her native accent, and a superb cameo by Vincent D’Onofrio as the great Orson Welles. But this film belongs to Depp, and to Burton, who has conjured up perhaps his finest cinematic world.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

"The bastard son of a hundred maniacs."

Well then. You can tell from the staggering number of years since I blogged the second film in this series that, as I said at the time, I was less than enthused by. I'm now far less likely to wait so long until the next one. This was bloody good.

We get lots of splendid visual horror from the start, well directed and making you jump, and this continues all the way through. But what really makes the film work is a solid plot based around a mental institution and fear of sleep and, in a film where Freddy Krueger is ever-present but appears surprisingly little- a successful formula- but the only disappointment here is that nasty Dr Simms doesn't die. And likeable characters do.

So what are my highlights? A very young Patricia Arquette? An early appearance by a young Laurence Fishburne? A rare Hollywood example of D&D being played? The delightfully '80s metal soundtrack by Dokken? The skeleton of Freddy Krueger resisting burial by means of stop motion? Probably the latter, but there are many. And the plot is actually quite gripping, and as twisty-turny as it is suspenseful.

Fellow Doctor Who fans: I believe that this is the earliest Hollywood film credit of one Rachel Talalay...?

Little Nicky (2000)

"Remember you have to shove a pineapple up Hitler's ass at 4pm..."

Every so often I just have to blog an utterly crap film to provide balance and, well, this "comedy" is as awful as they come and completely unfunny. It stars Adam Sandler. Oh, wait... that's a tautology.

Literally the only funny joke in the entire film concerns the turning of Coke into Pepsi, and that was only worth a mild titter; how this ever got made with any serious expectations of at all being funny is utterly beyond me. And, even more incredibly, beyond the awful Sandler this turd of a script actually managed to attract a decent cast who would all, doubtless, have been more gainfully employed elsewhere. It's a shame, as the central conceit- a power struggle on Earth between the three sons of Satan- is a good one.

Reese Witherspoon deserves praise as Nicky's valley girl Angel mother, and Harvey Keitel is good even when phoning it in as he is here, and rightly so. But no amount of polishing can save this turd.

This is the worst film I've seen in 2016. Yes; worse even than The Black Knight.