Clue (1985)

"Husbands should be like Kleenex; soft, strong and disposable."

"You lure men to their deaths like a spider with flies."

"Flies are where men are most vulnerable..."

Clue: a film so good that even the episode of Family Guy based on the film is one of the finest ones. I remember seeing and liking this film since before I was truly old enough to understand the style of humour but, frankly, as soon as I realised that this was a film by Jonathan Lynn of Yes, Minister fame I knew I was in for a good time.

Is it the first class comedy performances from the likes of Tim Curry (he may be even better here than in Rocky Horror) and Christopher Lloyd? Is it the abundant wit of the film, one of the wittiest ever? No; I think it's the plot, a gloriously meta exploration of how silly the whole country house murder mystery is. The fact that there are three different, equally plausible endings is a perfect deconstruction of the genre; after all, who cares about the arbitrary identity of the killer when we're having this much fun? It's true to say that the structure of this film is as witty as the dialogue.

But as good as the film is Tim Curry, whose performance in the final minutes of the film is exhilarating and extraordinary. One of the great comedy films of all time.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

"Planet, schmanet, Janet."

I'm not sure, in hindsight, that watching this film on the telly, alone, after Mrs Llamastrangler had an early night; it's a film that should be watched with others and with audience participation. Oh, I enjoyed it, but I've seen the live show- and can do the Timewarp flawlessly, he said, trying to keep a straight face- which was a much more fun experience than seeing the film. It falls rather flat when watched alone on a small screen. I've seen it, but not, I suspect, at its best.

Still, I love Tim Curry's performance. And the Charles Gray cutaways are a brilliantly cinematic touch. The design is inspired, the clothes a clear influence on punk fashion. And, well, it's Rocky Horror. And this time I get the film references. It's an inspired one-off, and it's amazing to think that such a very LGBT film was getting such a following back in 1975, just eight years after homosexuality was legalised in England and Wales- and was still illegal in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Brad and Janet, the essence of heteronormativity, are thrust into a joyously gay, bisexual, transsexual milieu which gleefully seizes control of the narrative from them- and note that Frank N Furter's sin is none of this, but the murder of Eddie; his alien executioners are as LGBT as he is.

I enjoyed this film but, well, it's not one to be watched alone.

IT

Part One

"A clown brought us down here. We all float."

I hadn't heard of this before, but my uber-coulrophob ic fiancee bought this years ago and, in spite of her phobia, rates it very highly. It's a 1990 two part US TV adaptation of Stephen King's novel of four years earlier, a novel which, arguably, did as much as John Wayne Gacy to make clowns in the modern world figures of fear rather than fun. Also, Tim Curry is superb, John Ritter is in it and we even get a glimpse of a very young Oz from Buffy. What's not to love?

It's a fairly straight, for which read long, adaptation. The first part is the atmospheric one, and thus the better of the two. We begin, though, with a little girl, and a little cultural difference between Yanks and us Limeys; apparently for them it's Itsy-Bitsy Spider, not Incy-Wincy, who falls down the spout. Fancy that. There are also cultural and visual differences between the two time frames within the film- the 1980s present day and the late 1950s, a time when I Was a Teenage Werewolf was a current film. Mike, our central character, is a black man living in the USA,a fact which has somewhat different connotations in our two time zones, either side of the Civil Rights era as they are. The contrast between these two particular time zones make it hard not to think of Back to the Future.

We have a small group of seven kids / adults, including Beverly, our one token girl, and we follow their contrasting fortunes, haunted by the awful Pennywise, up until the present. Mike, the only black character, is our point of view yet also an oddly passive and unambitious character. Bill, a successful writer, is Stephen King, but harbours a deep guilt over his brother's death. Ben is annoying as an adult, yet more vulnerable and likeable as a kid, and demonstrably the same person. He reminds me of Tony Stark. Stan is the intellectual Jewish kid who dies at the end of the episode rather than face Pennywise again. Eddie is the sexless, mother-dominated hypochondriac, a deeply tragic figure. Richie is, if you'll forgive me, the clown. And Beverly is an abused woman whom we desperately want to get together with Ben, her childhood sweetheart. All of them have character traits that, rather too neatly, reflect their future jobs as adults.

Glimpses of Pennywise are, rightly, rationed and put in a child's perspective, but are deeply effective for all that. He has a strong New England accent.I 'm not sure what this is meant to signify: is this a traditional Maine accent or does it paint him as an outsider? He represents, I think, paedophilia, a subject so awful that it is often wise to approach it obliquely. He's not the only villain, of course; there is also the deeply disturbed bully Henry Bowers, seen here only as a youth. He is left the most marked by Pennywise, becoming confined to an institution.

One of the creepier moments is where a photo is made to move; this is like something straight out of Sapphire and Steel and is deeply unsettling.We end with a showdown, some excellent use of stop motion, a pledge, and a suicide.


Part Two

"You're too old to stop me. You're all too old."

This episode is not as good. Having said that, though, it is perhaps inevitable that the atmospheric set-up episode will outshine the part that has to do the donkey work of resolving the plot; the two episodes should not really be considered separately.

Our protagonists, passive until now, are faced with having to go after Pennywise and destroy him, thus achieving catharsis over their childhood demon(s). They have quite a foe; we begin with Pennywise goading them with the above quote and a library soaked in blood. There's rather a lot of blood; even tea becomes blood, proving that nothing is sacred. That's before we even get to the fortune cookies. And a lot of people from our protagonists' pasts are possessed and say awful things. Henry, meanwhile, being weaker than our protagonists, becomes its pawn.

Our protagonist have a good wine-fuelled night, but the time comes to face what they have to do. Eddie is the most reluctant. His back-story is perhaps the most developed; his asthma is non-existent, he's a virgin and, it's implied, he's gay and closeted. The scary events continue apace, including a scene of a typewriter typing with no typist which may well have influenced one Steven Moffat for both Doctor Who and Jekyll.  There's a moment, where Henry stabs Mike, where we assume he's dead because of the "black guy dies first" trope. He doesn't, but there's still a bit of metatextuality there, methinks. Henry, rather predictably, dies next. There's nowhere else for him to go having fulfilled his plot function, besides he's both a baddie and a tragic figure. He has to die.

We approach the climax, and there's a rather good stop motion giant spider. Eddie dies a forty-year-old virgin.The rest all survive the showdown, but there's no conclusion; Pennywise will be back in  thirty years' time. If we're looking for a happy ending then we must make do with Ben and Bev finally getting together.