Reviews

HORROR C‘JMED r’ BUBBA HO-TEP (15) 92min 0.

The priceless nrerriise suggested by Sf,f(;f:fl‘.‘./fli(:l Joe R Lansdale's own Bram Stoker Awardnominated short story explains what really did happen to Elvis Presley. Dodging the fame that had dogged him for too damn long by his later. Jump-suited years. Elvis hires a stand-in named Sebastian Haff in order to allow himself a bit of time off. But when Haff decides he likes life under the spotlight. Elvis gets the cold shoulder. Subsequently shaking those hips one time too many, the former King ends up stuck iii a retirement home in Texas where he is befriended by an African- Arnerican who's big on conspiracy theories and who believes himself to be the dead Presrdent John F Kennedy. Things go from the sublime to the ridiculous when an Egyptian mummy is accidentally delivered to Texas. and. being one of the immortal undead. begins to stalk the self same retirement home. sucking the souls of those about to say grace.

Elvisly useless

That premise alone should be enough to get any self-respecting fan of the camper side of horror Cinema all shook up. but add to that cheesy leading man and Evil Dead franchise star Bruce Campbell playing Elvis and you should have a cult classic in the making. Hell, the terrifically titled Bubba Ho-tep's even got a B-movie genre whiz Don Coscarelli, the director of The Phantasrn film series calling the shots.

Sad to say. then, that Bubba Ho-tep fails to live up to both its premise and its casting. Not nearly funny, witty. chilling or gruesome enough. and without the budget to pull together a decent soundtrack, this Curiosity is a frustrating disappointment. (Miles Fielder)

I Selected release from Fri 8 Oct.

MUSIC DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL EXPRESS (15) 90min «0

This is a fascinating addition (and some would say missmg link) to a chain of films abOut the early rock festivals that from Monterey in 1967 to Watkins Green in 1973. Festival Express details a journey that the era's great and good groups took by train across Canada at the invitation of 22-year-old Canadian business students Ken Walker and Thor Eaton.

It was an offer that few refused Janis Joplin and her band. the Grateful Dead. the Flying Burrito Brothers. the Band and Buddy Rich were all there. it was gonna be one hell of a ride from Toronto to Calgary.

INTERVIEW

DARK DAYS

Miles Fielder goes underground with NIMROD ANTAL, the director and writer of the Metro-set Hungarian horror thriller KONTROLL.

One day, back in the mid-1990s, aspiring young Hungarian American filmmaker Nimrod Antal was taking the Budapest Metro to the capital’s film school. At one of the dozen or so stops en route, a gang of tough looking men boarded the train, slid red bands onto their arms and started hassling everyone. ‘These were the ticket inspectors,’ says Antal. ‘I remember them in their plain clothes. They created a lot of tension; they were despised.’

Cut to 1 January 2000. Film graduate Antal and eight friends are back on the Metro, shooting, without permission, a fake trailer for a film he wants to make. It’s a calling card for what’s going to be a blackly comic, surreal and heavily metaphorical thriller about life after death - or perhaps life after communism - filmed entirely underground.

Cut to 20 November 2003. Antal, who’s now been earning a living for the past seven years making commercials in Prague, Zagreb, wherever, has finally secured a modest budget to make his movie. With $200,000 from a German financier and the rest from the Hungarian Film Foundation, Antal’s set to make Kontroll. He and his crew don’t see daylight for the

Cut to May this year. Antal’s out of the darkness and under the sun on the care d’Azur, where the 30-year- old debuting feature filmmaker collects a prize, the Award of Youth, for Kontnoll, which has just been screened at the Cannes Film Festival. ‘It was hilarious,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think I had a chance in hell.’

Making this bizarre, meandering narrative about Bulcsu (Séndor Csanyi) a ticket inspector who works and lives below ground, Antal had a hell of a time securing permission to film on the Metro. ‘The Metro had practical concerns to do with a film crew disrupting the system,’ says Antal. ‘But they were most concerned about the film portraying the inspectors in a negative light.’ Antal thinks his film empathises with them. After six meetings over nine months, the authorities said yes. ‘On the condition that the head of the Metro could introduce the film,’ he adds. And so there’s an odd (though not inappropriate) preface, in which a bureaucrat explains how the film doesn’t mirror reality.

Antal’s not looking to preach. This promising filmmaker, who cites as inspirations everyone from Andrei Tarkovsky to Ridley Scott to David Lynch, simply says: ‘Filmmaking is so polarised. There’s Hollywood and there’s Bela Tarr. I wanted to make an entertaining film with a message.’

I Kontrol/ opens at GFT, Glasgow on Fri 76 Oct. Film/rouse. Edinburgh on Thu 22 Oct and Cameo.

next two months.

But trouble started almost immediately when a group of protesters stampeded the gates to protest at the concerts 814 entry fee. The pattern continued throughout the trip and because of it the paying fans started staying away. So the train show started haemorrhaging money but. instead of cancelling the gig and cutting their losses. Walker and Eaton ploughed more money into it and treated their beloved muSiCians like royalty. SO yOu had the CurIOus Situation (caught a few times on camera here‘i of a bunch of muSiCians. best known fOr their hippie credentials. sticking up for the man and big busmess. but who can blame them? If Woodstock was for the fans. the Festival Express was definitely for the muSiCians.

Edinburgh on Fri 29 Oct.

There's some great concert footage here but the really interesting stuff comes from the carriage Jamming sesSions where bourbon and hallucmogens make a heady brew for fun and great music. Would this ever happen today? Not a chance in hell. Where would they put all those bodyguards and egos? (Raul Date I Film/rouse. Edinburgh from Fri 75 Oct.

PERIOD CHILDREN'S FANTASY FIVE CHILDREN AND IT (U) 89min 0..

Authoress E Nesbit may not be as currently fashionable as JK Rowling. but On the evrdence of this charming adaptation of Five Children and /t. she deserves a reVival. If yOu've never read it, it blends the childish camaraderie of Enid Blydon With the magical tricks of Harry Potter. During WWI a Quintet of siblings are bundled off to their mad Uncle Albert (Kenneth Branaghi while they await the safe return of their pilot- father. Soon enough. in a nearby sandy alcove. they discover the Sand Fairy (animated by Jim Henson's Creature Shop and brilliantly veiced by Eddie

|//'ar<li. a grouehy creature who begrudgingly grants them a 'wish a day. And before you can say 'be careful what you wish for'. iiiisa'l/e'itures aplenty occur. While the upeeai effect“. are evrdently low budget. this is not enough a strongly told piece of f)lfl‘iét‘)"l|f)'l‘:’i entertainment. Well acted by the children and adults alike. the theme of the devastation war

to detract from what l‘.

can bring to families adds an emotional

dimension rarely achieved l'l U-rated fare. The result is like Harry Potter with a heart. i‘Jaiiies Mottram.

I General release from Fri 7'3 Oct (Scot/and only)

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