Legend of stage and screen Rampton Caine quietly passed away in a Sierra Leone field hospital this morning. Adam Lee Davies looks back over his turbulent life and extraordinary career.

To sum up the life of any man is no simple thing, but when it comes to a man as complex and private as actor Rampton Caine then the threads of truth, legend and vicious innuendo become harder to disentangle than a blind fisherman’s tackle-box. Often described as a self-hating racist, devious and manipulative, a liar, braggart and – according to director and friend Roger Ipswich – ‘the sort of man who would call out his own name during sex’, Caine has always remained an enigma, the key to whom his many biographies have consistently failed to conjour.

Born the son of a Bolshevik soux-chef in 1933, Caine’s early life was spent in almost comical poverty above a fishmonger’s on the Goldhawk Road in West London. His only escape from a homelife of tedious left-wing rhetoric and fishy updraft was visiting his uncle Barty who worked as a clapper loader at nearby Ealing Studios. It was here that he took his first steps toward acting, pestering producers into indulging him with parts in such post-war boosters as ‘The Wooden Walls of England’ (’47) and the incomparably mawkish East End wrestling fable ‘The Kid Who Couldn’t’ (’48), helmed by future business partner Grafton Wilde.

By 1950 he was beating out other fresh-faced hopefuls Dirk Parsons and Nicholas Bogard for junior romantic leads in such winsome comedies as ‘Saints Preserve Us!’ (’50) and ‘Pardon My Parson’ (’52). But it was the one-two of doomed bomber-pilot ‘Wonky’ Wilkins in lavish WWII folly ‘Operation: Cummerbund’ (’56) and the lead in pointlessly grim kitchen-sink drama ‘The Lonesome Ballad of Newton Heath’ (’57) which brought him back to the attentions of Grafton Wilde, then prepping his seminal Canadian Western ‘Guns By Suppertime’ (’58).

Caine’s Atlantic crossing began a love affair with Canada, a place to which he would frequently return – often of his own volition – and somewhere he credited with gifting him ‘a renewed sense of wonder, many lifelong friends and a much needed dual passport’. Ironically, the role of grizzled trapper Chip Manners had originally been offered to old rival Dirk Parsons, but after he was killed in a brutal, and apparently motiveless, street attack the part came to Caine. It was an opportunity he took with both hands, pricking the ears of Hollywood and ultimately marrying co-star Verna Palermo.

The relationship would not last. Her fiery temperament and many infidelities dismayed Caine less than ‘her bloody cooking’ and they were divorced months later. By this time he was in Hollywood starring in TV series ‘The Magpie’. As suave English sleuth Simon Magwitch, whose catchphrase ‘I’ve got the negatives!’ would soon enter the national lexicon, Caine’s mediocre thespian chops were abetted by a series of co-stars ranging from old pros like Bettina Kermode to such rising talent as Hunter Boyd. These were the salad days, with Caine slipping in the co-financed spy-caper hit ‘Twelve Minutes to Zurich’ (’61) and ensemble disaster behemoth ‘Timeclock’ (’63) between palling it up with the Rat Pack and campaigning for presidential hopeful Richard Nixon. It was also around this time that he began his own long, bitter and wholly unsuccessful lobbying for the role of James Bond. It would later become an obsession.

The remainder of the Sixties saw him split between the UK and US for a variety of TV shows, films and hotly disputed tax-related issues. Few will now recall the nasty period colonial carry-on of ‘A Town Called Hitler’ (’68) or swinging zombie flick ‘Chelsea Babylon’ (’66), but his fondly remembered ATV series ‘Mine’s a Large One!’ and sweaty, vaguely existential Tex-Mex double-crosser ‘The Eye of the Duck’– which grazed the top ten earners of 1969 – kept him near, if not at, the top.

However, some injudicious remarks about Sean Connery, an open letter to the Washington Post claiming the moon landings were filmed in a seed barn in Vancouver and divorce from his second wife – Peruvian art dealer Llama Paz – meant that the close of the decade couldn’t come quickly enough. Although he had scored a few notable hits, he spoke in his frankly unpublishable diaries of being ‘consumed by doubt and riddled with syphilis. What now for Rampers..?

The answer was to come from the most unexpected source. While Caine was paying the bills with fluff like ‘The Styrofoam Incident’ (’70) and Sino-Italian costume picture ‘The Contessa and the Cobbler’ (’73) a young Californian filmmaker was casting his merchandise-friendly sci-fi saga ‘Battle Beyond Space’ (’76). Its massive success would introduce Caine to a whole new audience and open many doors. Unfortunately, just as he was enjoying this new-found position, his friend – and co-director in their Ginger Palomino production company – Grafton Wilde was killed when a the brake cables of his vintage glider failed. A stoic Caine, who learnt the news on the first day of filming on Euro car chase picture ‘TR-7: The Movie’ (’79), said that he was ‘stirred and confused’ by the tragic accident. By day’s end he had sold the company to Thorn-EMI for a sum infamously reported by the Financial Times to have been ‘well naughty’.

Security, however, brought its own problems. Wilde had always advised his partner on career choices, but without his guidance Caine embarked on bizarre series of projects. With the distasteful mercenary romp ‘The Carrion Crows’ (’80) already in the can, he made sleazy drug-peddling thriller ‘The Union Square Shuffle’ (’81), bawdy modern-day pirate guff ‘The Treasure Chest’ (’83) and an ongoing series of threatening phonecalls to Roger Moore before withdrawing from the limelight.

It was around this time that myths started to circulate pertaining to both Caine’s state of mind and whereabouts… Had he holed up in a dojo in the foothills of Mount Fuji, or become a mountain man in the wilds of his beloved Canada? Had he undergone experimental reconstructive surgery in Panama or lost his mind on bad acid in a teepee in Wiltshire? Rumours also abounded that he had in fact appeared under numerous guises and aliases in art-house navel gazer ‘The Oceanographer’s Niece’ (‘86), DTV schlocker ‘Deathbarge’ (’87) and as the masked killer in ‘Something About the Way You… Die!’ (’88). Upon his shock return to the public eye in 1990 he refused to confirm or deny any of these stories, but looked every inch the elder statesman in an eye-catching cameo role as a retired astronaut in Brandon A. Spelling’s Oscar-baiting autumnal romance ‘The Ineffable Wind’ (’92).

A return to TV in primetime PI applesauce ‘The Sayonara Boys’ opposite old mate Nicholas Bogard kept him busy through much of the Nineties, though he did find time to camp it up in student comedy ‘Bakersfield Rocks!’ (‘96) and serial killer hokum ‘Johnny Serious’ (‘99). But a mixture of what, in an interview with Time Out in 2001, he called ‘swathes of Shakespearean guilt and debilitating jealousy’ caused him to turn his back on the film world and retreat to his first love of crossbreeding waterfowl on his tumbledown Norfolk estate.

He surfaced now and again in the odd BBC adaptation – most memorably as the Duke of Croydon in 2005’s ‘A Catered Affair’ – and in dictionary corner on Channel Four’s teatime workhorse ‘Countdown’, but his most well-known and lucrative appearance was as the Green Arrow’s sagacious valet in Colin Sawyer’s comic book adaptation ‘Arrow Arrow’ (’07). He took the role, he said, mainly to please his grandchildren, to whom, at the time, he owed a great deal of money, but it also served to remind millions of cinemagoers of his precise comic timing, considerable physical presence and freakishly high-pitched voice.

In an untransmitted television interview with Tony Milton in 1974, Caine was asked how he would describe himself, ‘Oh, balls to all that! I’ll leave it to the obituary writers ifI may, old stick.’ It is the reply of a man who never looked back, who esteemed his brittle muse above all else and who point-blank refused to answer a simple bloody question. So, with your permission, Mr Caine, might we say that there’s a new star in celluloid heaven tonight, and everything it touches… is its kingdom.

Rampton Caine, 1933-2009

By Adam Lee Davies

adamleedavies@timeout.com

Please feel free to leave your memories of Rampton Caine below…

Beautiful Brutal Bronson

My sole aim in life is to be romantic. Forget all that flowers and chocolates bullshit, I mean proper romantic-like taking your girlfriend to a spectacularly violent film.

One Word

Saturday night at the movies, who cares what picture you see? I do. I chose ‘Bronson’, mainly because I like one word titles for films (‘Fargo’, ‘Goodfellas’ as opposed to ‘The curious case of Benjamin Button’ or ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford’). My girlfriend (‘The Spaniel’) had not heard of Britain’s most dangerous prisoner, in fact she thought that I should bear that moniker, except that I had clearly escaped and used deep make up to disguise my tagging device as an oversized skin blemish.

I told The Spaniel that it was a violent film and that there might even been be some swearing in it. She punched me in the face and called me a cunt. Everything was in place for a romantic evening. We booked tickets in advance as I had had a crazy notion that it might be a popular choice for a Saturday night out. We sat in the 72% empty Duke of York’s and I realised that I had misjudge the mood a tad-perhaps the Hanover hippy crowd weren’t so down with the prospect of watching a man with serious mental issues beat the shit out of everyone in his path.

Sociopathic Monster

There was no time for heavy petting before the first jaw crushing punch flashed across the screen. I realised I had to go into protective male role at once-The Spaniel was sure to be traumatised by this level of unbridled brutality and I would be there to reassuringly offer my broad chest for support. Except for she seemed to be transfixed and was rolling with the on screen punches and exclaiming something like ‘Cor!’ as Bronson disfigured another speechless extra. It seemed that I had once again misjudged the mood. The reality seeped into my little brain-The Spaniel was a sociopathic monster-ten years of kickboxing classes had quite literally gone to her curly head. Frankly, she scared me more that Tom Hardy’s twelve foot high bulk in front of me. I tried to shuffle to another seat but she gripped my hand, clicking knuckles and I sat my bum back down.

As screws and gypsies fell (and were pissed on), as ‘Cunts!’ was roared from between heavily spittled lips, The Spaniel looked on, wishing she was ‘inside’ and kicking a prison warden in the balls. (Ok, perhaps she was wondering what pub to go to after the film, but who wants to hear that?)

Film reviews often spend five hundred words trying to tell you very little (see above). They muse on comparisons with other films in the genre, the director’s other work when all you really want to know is, ‘Is it shit?’ So, seeing as I have talked crap throughout this piece so far, here are my thoughts in easy to read bullet point form (mail me for the full PowerPoint presentation slides).

-It is (despite its violent premise) a beautiful film.
-Great soundtrack.
-Offers no explanation of how Bronson became quite so bonkers.
-Far from glamorising him, he comes across as lonely and horribly pathetic.
-I liked it.

Review written by Tim Smillie with help from The Spaniel

‘You talkin’ to me?’; ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry’; ‘Go ahead, make my day’… we’ve heard them all a million times. They are the moviegoing world’s favourite quotes and in one re-ordered, repackaged or rejigged form or another, they find their way onto the same dull lists year after year. Well, frankly, we here at the Hussy don’t give a damn, so here for your perusal are our own personal favourite movie quotes…

‘Bad day… Fuck it!’

The Usual Suspects (1994)

It can be reasonably argued that the übercool East Coast patsies of Bryan Singer’s seminal crime puzzler never truly had their fates in their own hands. But it’s when – on their enforced sabbatical to sun-baked California – twitchy trigger-man MacManus (Stephen Baldwin, below) unilaterally decides that enough’s enough and blithely plugs two of the LA underworld’s biggest hitters after rationalising that his afternoon can’t get much worse, that the net really starts to tighten…

‘We do not have time

for your damned hobbies, sir!’

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

The intended Galapagos Islands venturings of Paul Bettany’s nerdy, Darwin-lite man of science run afoul of Russell Crowe’s gruffly observed naval imperatives as a thirst for knowledge butts up againstthe governing principals of war, trade and conquest in this rollicking Napoleonic seafaring yarn from Aussie lubber Peter Weir.

‘Y’know what woke y’up, Lee? Y’just had yer throat cut…’

The Missouri Breaks (1976)

When cash-rich, Oscar-laden loon Marlon Brando rocks up for the role as universally feared and detested hired killer Robert E. Lee Clayton with a new gingham bonnet, an enjoyably impenitrable Irish accent and the harpoon gun that’s strapped across his majestically flabby shoulders, you know you’re in for a long day. Jack Nicholson – himself no slouch when it comes to unnecessarily gauche scene-thievery – is the unfortunate focus of the Big Man’s dire intentions and is ultimately reduced to but one choice…

‘I dunno, what are the hours..?’

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

In the last and very least line of Rob Reiner’s enduring musical spoofumentary, lead lead guitarist of fading English metal behemoths ‘Spinal Tap’, Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) reveals the full extent of his ongoing dedication to the rock’n'roll lifestyle by all but applying for a hypothetically presented job as a haberdasher during the films closing credits.

‘We get the right sort, this might work. We get some Buckaroo…’

The Hunt For Red October (1990)

Sean Connery, Stellan Skarsgard, Joss Ackland and Alec Baldwin in the same film? In a good film, yet!? Contemporaneous form in sleazy nugget ‘Miami Blues’ and parading an unimpeachable set of brass-balls through 1992’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ suggested that Baldwin Major was the right sort; an increasingy lamentable succession of later shenanigans on and off screen have persuaded many that he was in fact a mere buckaroo.

‘Can I cook, or can’t I…?’

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Shatner meets Shakespeare in this, the greatest of the ‘Trek’ films. Narrowly beating out Kirk’s enigmatic last, dying words from ‘Star Trek: Generations’ (1994) – ‘It was…fun… Oh, my!’ – is this little gem from his scientist ex-paramour, Caroline Marcus. Having just created a device for terraforming dead planets, one might expect something a little more stentorian, but Marcus is a hippy-chick at heart and instead couches it in the hash-brownie/homemade explosives jargon of her Haight-Ashbury days.

‘Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn’t very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired. Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.’

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)

‘Nuff said

‘Detriments you call us? Detriments? Well I want to remind you that it wuz detriments like us that built this bloody Empire AND the Izzat of the bloody Raj!’

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

Another back-of-the net for Caine, as he informs British High Command exactly what he thinks about what they think about he and his partner Sean Connery in John Huston’s Bank Holiday classic. A feckless pair of chancers, bruisers and blue-sky thinkers, they’re soon high into the Hindu Kush setting themselves up as Kings of men and Gods of repute. An epic of greed and humbled arrogance to rival Britain’s own colonial misdeeds in the Subcontinent.

‘In the annals of history people are going to be talking about three things: the discovery of fire, invention of the submarine, and the Flint, Michigan Mega Bowl.’

Semi-Pro (2008)

He might be a big-boned, gimlet-eyed assclown, but even a blind squirrel finds the odd nut, and Will Ferrell hit the mothrerlode with this righteous 2008 b-ball comedy. While not achieving the white-eyed glossolalia of trailer park ecstacy that set ‘Talladega Nights’ (2006) apart from his usual mud-juggling efforts, ‘Semi-Pro’ scores as a finely judged requiem to those amongst us whose best has ever been revealed to be just not quite good enough.

‘Gosh, you’ve really got some nice toys here…’

Blade Runner (1982)

In a line that, it could be argued, sums up the preoccupations of the entire film, Rutger Hauer’s Milton-spouting killer robot Roy Batty allows us a glimpse of the child within. With his batteries running down, Batty attempts to make contact with his maker via corporate underling JF Sebastian – who lives in a delapidated slum with an array of mechanical pals and AI gizmos. The line between human intelligence and technological ‘mimicry’ becomes impossibly blurred in this fragile scene of dependency, deceit and acquiescence.

Written by Adam Lee Davies

aldaldald@hotmail.com

Presidential Moves
 

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush – W. (2008) 

 We kick off with a real double-whammy in Oliver ‘Mad Dog’ Stone’s surprisingly gentle dissection of the man perhaps best described by Russell Brand as ‘that retard cowboy fella’. Not only do we get Josh Brolin’s expertly mannered turn as Dubya, but there’s plenty of room left over for James Cromwell – who plays Lyndon Johnson in both the 2002 TV Movie ‘RFK’ and the upcoming ‘Flying Into Love’ as well as fictional presidents in ‘The West Wing’ and the latter-day jack Ryan romp ‘The Sum of All Fears’ (‘02) – to steal the show as George Snr. Both manage the extraordinary task of making a pair of shitkicking warmongers seem somewhat sympathetic*. 

* Lefty website slams Bush administration – Stop Press!!! 
 
 
 
 Bill Clinton – Contact (1997) 

 Media-shy shut-in Bill Clinton played himself Robert Zemeckis’s drawn-out cosmic think piece about extra-terrestrial communication. He only has his chubby, red face onscreen for a moment or two during a television address, and even that – to be fair – could be easily mistaken for stock footage, but he is the only president to have played themself (or, indeed, anyone else) on the silver screen. Rumours that Richard Nixon has an uncredited cameo in Woody Allen’s ‘Bananas’ (’71) remain unsubstantiated. 

Ronald Reagan – Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) 

 It says much about the mood of the time that the only celluloid outing for the Rocket Ronnie was left on the cutting room floor of the harebrained, scattershot, anything goes sequel to cinema’s most enduring spoof. Essayed by world-class grouch Rip Torn – best known for playing Larry Sanders’ boss on TV and Will Smith’s boss in the ‘Men In Black’ films – we can only speculate as to the result, but as Reagan himself was a B-movie actor of note in projects as varied as Don Siegel’s vicious caper flick ‘The Killers’ (1964) and bizarre monkey business ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ (1951), perhaps the man himself had already done enough to earn his big screen stripes. 

Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford – Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993) 

 More spoofery is afoot in the unasked for sequel to Charlie Sheen-starring ‘Rambo’ send up ‘Hot Shots!’ (’91). Passable look-alikes Ed Beheler and Larry Lindsay are required to do little more than stand on the White House lawn and allow Lloyd Bridges to whale on them with a rusty shovel. That Carter was also a farmer and Ford is slapstick godhead Homer Simpson’s favourite president lend the scene a sly post-modern wit much lacking in the rest of the film.

  Richard Milhous Nixon – Secret Honour (1984) 

 Currently being fleshed out by Frank Langella in Ron Howard’s ‘Frost/Nixon’, the most complex and compelling 20^th Century American president has been played by such diverse actors as grandstanding Welsh garbler Anthony Hopkins (who also delivers the world’s longest, most hand-wringing speech of all time as former prez John Quincy Adams in Spielberg’s ‘Amistad’ (1997)) and hirsute Brooklyn Jew Dan Hedaya – best known as Carla’s scumbag husband in ‘Cheers’. But it is Philip Baker Hall who takes the laurels for revealing the full extent of Nixon’s mania in Robert Altman’s ‘Secret Honour’. Pacing around in his study armed with a revolver and a bottle of hooch, Baker delivers a ninety-minute monologue that reveals the true ends of power. 

Lyndon Johnson – The Right Stuff (1984) 

Plymouth’s favourite son Donald Moffat is no stranger to the Oval Office. He memorably warned Harrison Ford not to ‘come in here and bark at me like some jumped-up junkyard dog’ in ‘Clear and Present Danger’ (’94), played Roosevelt in ‘Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years’ (’77) and is a regular visitor to ‘The West Wing’. But it was as then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s majestic history of the ‘Mercury 7’ astronauts that he really caught the eye. Stentorian in his Stetson and righteously miffed not to be allowed to press the flesh with John Glenn’s nervous wreck of a wife, LBJ descends into a fit of childish pique and starts smashing the place up. 
 

John F. Kennedy – Thirteen Days (2000) 

Enduring liberal icon or the serial philandering son of a mobbed-up bootlegger? – JFK seems more divisive as the years go by. Onscreen he is usually a scion of hope and a touchstone for well-intentioned ideals, but Kevin Reynolds’ superb 2000 drama ‘Thirteen Days’ gives a far more complete picture of the man who somehow steered America – and his own administration – through the Cuban missile crisis. The redoubtable Bruce Greenwood (who also played the Chief Exec in Nicolas Cage howler ‘National Treasure: Book of Secrets’ (2007)) lets a natty haircut and mercifully gentle Boston accent do the spade work and gets on with an investigation of moral courage in which Jack doesn’t come up smelling entirely of roses… 

.
 
 
 

Just another word for nothing left to lose

illustration by Rob Connigale

Escape your mundane life at the flicks ­- but surely there must be more to ‘freedom’ than an anti-Semitic Australian in a kilt. Adam Lee Davies explores what other solutions Hollywood has come up with

Cinema is chock-full of uplifting tales. Escapism has always been Hollywood’s watchword, but these days a film is adjudged to have failed in every way if the audience doesn’t walk out of the cinema wearing the beatific smiles of the chemically castrated. Unfortunately, once this buzz has worn off, we soon find ourselves reclaimed by the cold, grey shadows of our everyday lives, picking our way toward the grave with nothing to look forward to but quiz night down the pub and two weeks on some flyblown Greek island every July.

 These films offer a utopian promise that most of us yearn for, but are never likely to realise. The heart-swelling emancipation of The Shawshank Redemption or the transmigratory epiphanies suggested by the closing moments of Close Encounters of the Third Kind are simply beyond what most of us might reasonably expect from the average day. There are, however, a few films in which freedom from one’s responsibilities, worries and disappointments are won not by logic-free prison breaks or benign alien abduction, but by embracing the less desirable, less aspirational elements of the world.

 Sick office syndrome

The most obvious component of our daily lives is work, and as novelist Chuck Palahniuk notes in his paean to the daily grind, Choke, “masochism is a valuable job skill”. Unless you number amongst that minute, ever-decreasing and unutterably smug fraction of the workforce that actually enjoys its trade, the lion’s share of your life will consist of huge brown swathes of terminally stifling drudgery.

The outlook might seem bleak, but if you were to follow the fine example of Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) in John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar, you’d realise that the treadmill is in fact a yellow-brick road that leads to the Elysian Fields of freedom. Lying, cheating and dreaming his way through the working day, Billy proves that those Germans were really on to something with the phrase ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’… 

Billy Liar

Workplace tedium was also very much the lot of Sam Lowry (Jonathon Pryce) in Terry Gilliam’s absurdist dystopian fever-dream, Brazil. Threatened with torture when the authorities suspect his new ladyfriend of being a bomb-crazy terrorist, Sam does the only rational thing and takes a total psychotic break from reality. This wise move finally affords him the Eden that the rusty cage of his recently departed body has only ever denied him.

Blessed solitude

Madness may seem an extreme solution, but it’s mere bagatelle to the hero of I Am Legend. Previously filmed as The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, the most recent incarnation of Richard Matheson’s horror novel saw Will Smith as the only survivor of a global biological apocalypse. Big Willy has no demands upon his time and can indulge his every whim but, with no-one else around to show-off to, he starts to suspect that he’s gone a little overboard in his pursuit of that permanent vacation.

The rest of us can gird ourselves for such lone shenanigans when next season’s brand of viral Armageddon ­- be it SARS, bird flu or the return of the mad cow – is served up to us.

Mind games

Any number of drug films suggest themselves for contention, as do the excesses of such drink-dramas as Leaving Las Vegas and The Lost Weekend, but let’s sidestep the obvious for a more allegorical take on short-term memory loss. Christopher Nolan’s thorny puzzler Memento presents us with the confused and forgetful Guy Pearce waking up every day with a newly-minted tattoo: a finer metaphor for the morning after than night before is hard to imagine. Those who forget the past may well be doomed to repeat it – but they are at least spared the shackles of conscience that so constrain the rest of us.

Kiss of the spider woman

Incarceration is the name of the game in both Kiss of the Spider Woman and The Enigma of Kasper Hauser. In the former, William Hurt and Raul Julia are freed from the mundane to gambol through a fully realised fantasy world by the desperate privations of an especially squalid South American prison cell. Kasper, on the other hand, spends the first 17 years of his life in a windowless cellar somewhere near Nuremberg with no form of human contact whatsoever. Booted out into the gale-force pandemonium of early-19th century Germany, the poor sod must have felt like anything was a plus after his cruelly overextended stay in the naughty corner.

The enigma of Kasper Hauser

The unseen ministrations of an all-powerful Big Brother assure the continuation of Jim Carrey’s Arcadian existence in underwhelming media satire The Truman Show. Born into his own private universe, where cameras lurk to record his every move, Truman’s subsequent life is screened 24/7 to the mouth-breathers and chowderheads out there in TV Land. Only when he starts asking some uncomfortable questions do the golden-fretted halls of his own personal Asgard come crashing down. The lesson is clear – if God gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

The Truman Show

What, no spoon?

In the future as predicted by The Matrix we will see a massive growth in such superintended pod-life. The most persuasive of many science fiction films to investigate the oft-predicted paradigm shift between man and machine, it promulgates an inevitable evolutionary leap after which humankind will be kept in blissful suspended animation while our atrophied bodies are used to power the machines that wet-nurse us through our virtual lives. No job, no bills, no hassle, just leather trench coats, killer shades and fun, fun, fun.

Let freedom reign indeed.

written by Adam Lee Davies

ITV1’s feeble Ross Kemp-laden offerings not quite hitting the spot? Cruise through Christmas Day with our non-stop Movie Mood Matcher. By Adam Lee Davies

9.00am “A Charlie Brown Christmas’ (1965)

The calm before the storm: pea-headed masochist Charlie Brown and his muckle-mouthed chum Linus, repelled by the crass commercialism and gale-force pandemonium of the festive season, attempt to divine the true spirit of Christmas, bumming everyone else out in the process. The ideal film with which to gird your loins for the hate, bile, recriminations and crippling alcohol abuse to come…

9.25am  ’Gremlins’ (1984)

The kids are up, the presents are out and the shit’s already nearing the fan. Joe Dante’s gleefully unhinged slice of anarchy makes the perfect accompaniment to the carnage escalating around you. A criminally irresponsible dad buys his son a cute little rodent from a wizened old Oriental shopkeeper in an ethnically sketchy Chinatown. Unfortunately, the Yuletide reverie of their cloying, picture book town is destroyed when the furry little bastard spawns a pack of punky, flesh-eating terrorists with scant regard for authority.

11.11am ‘Trading Places’ (1983)

Time to bring it down a notch with a few brazil nuts and John Landis’s acerbic but stately life-swap comedy. Here, Christmas is exploited as the paradisiacal backdrop against which his capricious employers strip Dan Akroyd’s snooty commodities broker bare. The presents are done, lunch is a little way off and you’re at something of a crossroads in the big day. Like Aykroyd, you are presented with the option to resign yourself to your plight or take arms against the river of shit to come.

1.07pm  ’The Poseidon Adventure’ (1972)

Everyone’s fannying about in the kitchen, so best to slap on something undemanding and/or you’ve seen a thousand times before. But even while you’re buttering your parsnips and changing Gran’s colostomy bag, out of the corner of your eye you’re bound to catch sight of the Poseidon’s Christmas cruise capsizing and, in the pit of your stomach, know that your day is destined to follow much the same course. Open another bottle.

3.04pm  ’On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ (1969)

A Bond film is the cornerstone of any Xmas viewing experience. The Asti Spumanti and simmering ill-feeling served up at the dinner table are starting to take hold as 007 takes his brand of pointless mayhem and Christmas cracker punning to Austria for festive fun with Telly Savalas and a harem of lissom tarts.

5.26pm ‘Batman Returns’ (1982)

Christmas in Gotham and the dark half of Yuletide is exposed after one to many egg-nogs and a cheeky line or two off the back of your new Coldplay CD. It’s just all so fake; so patently contrived. Nobody’s what they seem, none of it makes any real sense and you can’t wait for it to end. The film’s a bit iffy too.

7.30pm ‘Die Hard’ (1988)

Christmas at Nakatomi Towers is a brutal experience. Bruce Willis is bloodied, bruised and forced to parade around in his undies, but it’s a walk in the park compared to the powderkeg of spite, resentment and brandy butter speedballs that’s inevitably about to blow your Christmas Night wide open.

9.28pm ‘L.A. Confidential’ (1997)

The Bloody Christmas beatings of 1951 lights the touchpaper of Curtis Hanson’s peerless adaptation of James Ellroy’s diamond-hard noir procedural. While it’s all kicking off onscreen, the havoc is mounting in the front room as one too many Tia Marias have sent everyone over the top.

11.01pm ‘101 Reykjavík’ (2000)

They’re shouting, they’re swearing, and you’re drinking wine straight from the bottle. We’re through the looking glass now people, but things can’t get as bad they do for Hlynur in this boozy Icelandic gem. Not unless you manage to somehow impregnate your mother’s lesbian lover in the next hour.

12.57am ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999)

Mum’s gone to bed so it’s time to put the ‘X’ into Xmas with a Christmas mucky. Or so you’d hope. Kubrick’s last roll of the dice is a spectacularly loopy skin-flick that displays precious little nudity, a preponderance of pondering and takes for-fucking-ever getting precisely nowhere. Cruise and Kidman spend the holidays wandering around Pinewood’s feeblest approximation of Manhattan while your cinematic Christmas grinds to a confused and flaccid halt.

3.12am ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968)

By now you’re sitting alone in a pool of crapulence, sweet wrappers and fomenting regret. Your siblings have deserted you for their PS3s, your parents are already preparing the hideous déjà vu of Boxing Day and every notion of joyful nativity has been inverted. Christmas with the junior antichrist offers the only remaining option for you now.

Happy holidays.