Jacob Kelly's Funeralopolis Vol. 1 Issue 2

In this weeks issue:

Page 1-'Navigating the vulgarities of contemporary popular culture'

Rambo Reviewing makes its return. A head first dive into 21st century ugliness exploring the perversity and obscenity evident in popular culture and how best to reflect that on the screen. Bodies Bodies Bodies is reviewed.

Page 8-'What has happened to all tomorrows parties?: withdrawal, boredom and over compensation in the age of domestication'

After the Queen's death Bonehead Bill goes on a spontaneous trip to an Irish village called Lettershandoney. Therefore, Kelly gets bougie with Long Tall Sally and reviews the latest Dinner Table Horror Who Invited them? Kelly ends up wine drunk and discussing his own fears of selfenforced domestication. Now streaming on Shudder.

Page 13-'First Time Watch of the Week: The Allure of the Angels'

Just what is it that is so appealing about the Hell's Angels? Why does this mostly forgotten and disregarded genre need re-evaluation? The Losers is used to examine the split trends in the biker genre and the cinematic misrepresentation of biker culture.

Page 18-'TV of the Week: Could this Hawaiian shirt loving, moustache donning king become of TV's Toughest?'

Does the pilot for the iconic cheesy cop show Magnum P.I. have the essential ingredients of 80s pop television entertainment? How would it play on a modern audience?

Navigating the vulgarities of contemporary popular culture

Right, we're back to Rambo reviewing. By that we mean it's getting as many beers in the cinema as possible like you're bloody John Rambo, John Matrix or Travis Bickle or whoever the fuck with all the weapons they just seem to stick to themselves. Full arsenal. Couple under the sleeves. The jacket pockets inner and outer. You get the idea. One should never see themselves as merely going the cinema. I prefer to see it as though you've embraced the role of the paratrooper. You get dropped in to the cinema from the skies each week armed with instruments as barbaric and primitive as a knife, a baseball bat or maybe even just your damn fists and you're tasked with the simple mission of clearing the way. Strategies are limited and attacks can be brutal. The only objective: get to the other side! Soon as the credits roll you should be like come on then bring it on. Like you're Bear Grylls on some raw Born Survivor shit.

The record still remains 8 beers. This is hard to beat for 3 reasons. Firstly, where to hide them all? Any more and I'm gonna have to go full Leeds Festival and begin "gooching" them. Secondly, how to drink so many in the run time. This is probably the easiest of three. Finally, a little thing called the bladder. Fuck this one up and you're spending half the movie going back and forth to the toilet. That you do not want. As of late, I've been wondering Maybe we need to rethink the whole strategy. On this front I am all ears, anything to aid the cinemagoing experience, add something new to the endless pile of criticism and meet a movie head on.

Bodies in the Bodhi tree. Bodies making chemistry. Bodies on my family. Bodies in the way of me. Bodies in the cemetery. And that's the way it's gonna be! This weeks big new movie: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Bodies Bodies Bodies had me all cans out in the first 20 minutes and I didn't dare go the toilet. A strike out. We had us a whodunnit on our hands and I didn't want to miss a single clue. Oddly, I didn't expect to like this at all. Not as much as I did anyway. I'd been wondering whether this would be a Spree or a Spring Breakers. It was clear from the trailer and the reviews that this was intended as a Gen Z satire.

Despite evident self awareness could that make it any less insufferable? The trailer made it seem so overwhelming and intoxicatingly forced. Every line an assault of buzzwords popular only from the last few years. As though it was hiding behind its own self awareness and that didn't make it any better. A mask as such in place of true creativity. I refer to this as "the Deadpool". Rewatched the first of those Ryan Reynolds movies the other day and I actually hated the fact that I did indeed find some of the jokes rather funny. Although, I couldn't call it a great movie because it uses the humour to mask its lack of creativity. Mocks the entire Marvel catalogue whilst offering little in its place. It still follows the same formula as the rest of them and I wouldn't call it a standout because it doesn't really present an alternative.

My response to the trailer of Bodies Bodies Bodies was like that scene in Fight Club when they first meet on the airplane. Tyler seems so sarcastic and withdrawn as he says lines like, "I get it you're very clever", "how's that working out for you" and "keep it up then, keep it right up". He then walks out and leaves debating whether to give the ass or the crotch on his way out. A noble question every man ponders upon a tight exit.

So I'm currently 25 and being born in 1996 is always meant to baffle the nerds I hear. It doesn't quite fit in to the neat little categories they have. By the age of 4 you really have started developing memories and so there's a part of you attached to the 90s but then most of your childhood is spent in the 2000s and you come of age in the 2010s. So you remain at a strange cultural crossroads. Some categorise you as millennials and some even as Gen Z. It's right on the edge being the end of one and the start of another.

Can't say I follow these things too closely. First and foremost, I am Jacob Shitting Kelly. I'm mostly something of an ostrich with its head in the sand. I haven't been on twitter in probably a year and do not plan on ever returning. I'd be more likely to get off Instagram next. I can't stand all the little reels that appear. I watch one out of casual interest and then all it does is give me more of that despite never being that interested. Those bloody algorithms trying to redefine my interests for me. Trying to shape my view of the world. It finds you a little corner and holds you there dictating your whole understanding of culture for you. Annoyingly it doesn't even give me what I want. In the words of Dave Batista, "Give me what I want!".

It's such a waste of time and I always used to defend Instagram as being the best one cause it was just a little place to see lovely pics of the homies. When did it get so bombarded with useless content? Every other lovely photo is Instagrams choice of "because you watched a reel from". I don't know what that's about. Only recently did I hear the format had been trying to copy Tik Tok.

Now that's one I've never been on and if that's the hellscape Instagram has become, I won't be on there any time soon. So anyone wanting to see me do some twerking for the Tok, it's not happening sorry chiefs!

Generally, I try to keep my abode a timeless entity. However certain words do invade the fortress and send my head for a walk across the block. Gaslighting, gatekeeping, girl bossing, vibe checking, bussin. I don't even know if people are using these words ironically any more. Honestly, I didn't even know this "bussin" word til a couple of weeks ago. Mostly, I just have a you do you attitude to it and ignore it but then it's unavoidable when you spend half your time at the cinema. Begins to filter in somewhere or other and that's when it'll irritate me. You get this tiktokisation or memeification of movies. The ruiner of good movies. Take this years Everything Everywhere All At Once. In that film there is an amazing family melodrama and kung fu movie but its destroyed by the onslaught of bad Internet jokes. Then you get the completely inhuman ones that are literally set on the Internet like The Emoji Movie and Space Jam 2. The devil's work. I tend to promote staying out of kids films and not being too harsh on them quality wise but those two just seem dangerous. No kid needs to be seeing shit like that and thinking its normal.

That's not to say there hasn't been good art made because of the Internet and modern culture. The Social Network, Shame, Her, Blade Runner 2049 and Drive are all fantastic movies, which tackle contemporary culture and would only have come from the creation of the internet. Musically, Radiohead and Oneohtrix Point Never have managed to find interesting things to say about it too.

Spring Breakers still remains a mighty critique of people today. Its something of a phenomenon to me in that it fully embraces so much of the vulgarity of modern culture and yet the movie itself is extremely watchable and hard to take your eyes off. It immerses you in unrelenting ugliness and so much of what I personally despise and yet it achieves a strange kind of beauty. Or rather poetry if you can recall the bizarre Britney Spears cover. Everything about going so head first in to a critique like that seems wrong. Normally satire seems to work best with a slight distance from the material but that movie fully rides its own repulsions.

I've always thought of Spring Breakers as a kind movie equivalent of Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. An album which is undeniably embedded in the culture it's satirising going so far as to have a track like "All of the Lights". Oh God I can't stand that song. That's the point at which Kanye fully sludges about in the filth of the pop music of that time and it's not even a bad choice cause it works in consideration of his albums narrative.

Talking music with Spring Breakers, look at who does the score? Fucking Skrillex. If the enemy of electronic music fans could have a face it would be his. He is the poster boy of all they hate. A man with a shit hair cut who ruined the anonymity and anti capitalist roots of the scene with his grand promotion of what you could call stadium electronic music. He brought the rocknroll to what was originally about a rejection of that sort of glamour and fame. What was originally about turning up to a field somewhere and hearing an endless loop of beats, dancing away the working weeks troubles lost all its meaning and purpose.

You could well argue that Daft Punk pretty much did the same thing but no one could ever bring themselves to hate Daft Punk. They are the darlings of the fun and silly movement and will be protected til the end of time! Anyone who even dares to besmirch their good name will be inevitably met with the fists of thousands.

Might have got side-tracked there with the love of those two French Robot DJs but what I was trying to say is that Skrillex represents everything bad in this world and the destruction of everything that was good and pure! His inclusion in Spring Breakers is insane. This shit keeps me up at night. How on earth did Harmony Korine embrace everything so disgusting and yet make such a great movie about it all. It's a fucking anomaly. Could well be the greatest piece of pop art ever created. How on earth does it even hold itself together and remain artful whilst examining such low, shallow and even obscene cultures such as the early 2010s party scene?

Could Bodies Bodies Bodies really capture that magic of Spring Breakers? It was surely an impossibility and as I've said I can't even work out how Korine did that. What was more likely on the cards, was that Bodies Bodies Bodies would be a Spree. Spree was a movie which came out a couple of years ago and weirdly got some respect. Had people referring to it as an "American psycho for the Internet age". It wishes. More like another "Nerve".

Actually that seems mean to Nerve. Although, I haven't seen Nerve it does look kind of cute doesn't it? Dave Franco and Emma Roberts running about in some neon tinged teenage vision of the future. May change my mind if I ever saw it but I feel like you can't diss something so clearly juvenile and blatantly targeted at such a young age group of girls.

From what I gather on the topic of Nerve, it doesn't want to have a seat at the table with high concept sci fi so probably no point comparing it to such. So let the kids have their fun and try not to 'gatekeep' as they would say. That's not to say I wouldn't fall guilty of abandoning that stance upon viewing and bearing witness to its supposed irritations hahaha but it's good to have some principles in place right?

The problem with Spree is that it follows no rules. I get it's the kind of movie that is perhaps not set in reality but that doesn't mean you can grow lazy. Not at all, in that scenario your job is to create your own reality and set of rules. Establish them and stick to them. Something the movie does not do for a second. Therefore it essentially becomes this sloppy rant about the current obsession with followers and the depraved acts one could do to achieve them. Not necessarily a bad idea for a movie today but ultimately one that isn't effective in Spree. Had they spent more time to establish consequences for the actions I might have got more behind it.

There's no real impact though cause you wonder where are the police in this world? Because there's no limitations, there is no too far and as such then nothing is depraved of perverse. That's the movies one great flaw is that when you take away that barrier of authority stopping you from committing such acts, then nothing is really offensive or shocking. Transgressive art doesn't even exist at that point. In the end its just Joe Keery of Stranger Things fame running around like a bellend committing unshocking acts for the camera.

Going in to Bodies Bodies Bodies, I was wondering whether it would follow the path of Spree or Spring Breakers. Even thought of a couple of films I'd watched again recently like Carpenter and Hoopers debuts Dark Star and Eggshells. These are absolutely incredible at capturing the hippie movement of the 60s but since I find those people so irritating I can't really enjoy those movies. Sometimes even if you do a superb job at dissecting a particular community and do so with great awareness, that doesn't change the fact the subjects are just a nightmare to be around. You think oh great a filmmaker willing to laugh at these people, I can go in this with some objectivity and learn about these people without the parts that put me off being around them. Yet the film still ends up being annoying. This just makes Spring Breakers an even greater achievement to me cause I can get so absorbed in a culture I thoroughly dislike.

I got in to the cinema ready to watch Bodies Bodies Bodies and I'm on edge through all the trailers thinking fuck am I going to love this or hate this. My fears were soon forgotten and they genuinely won me over by frame one (hehehe). Not long after the opening scene they were blaring that Daddy AF tune by Slayyyter. Fucking hell I still remember the first time I heard that tune at some gaff. Ended up on a sofa with next to no clothes on feeling Daddy as fuck. Unfortunately though I did not end up "fuckin models" as the opening line of the song goes. From the opening few scenes I could see this movie wanted to play and I was like ok I'll play and responded by cracking in to can number two.

Not long after this it was followed up with another banger courtesy of Azealia Banks 212 Hip House mega hit. Trust me right I'm not easily won over by a couple of humdingers on the soundtrack but something seemed right about this one. It wasn't Booksmarts obnoxious use of Death Grips combined with really shit Uber jokes. No, this was like when Redbone comes on in Get Out and you just embrace and give in to modern music in film. It's cool and zeitgeist, you're in the bloody moment and "vibing". You get high on the way it catches you. Nothing other than right time, right place.

I thought Bodies Bodies Bodies would be something I'd spend the entire run time wrestling with it. Picking bits apart and being like oh I like that but not that so much. This didn't happen at all. Early on there was just this feeling. As though the film took you by the hand and said, "do you want to have fun?". Well I'm no buzzkill or party pooper. If you want to offer me a good time then I'm all for it. Don't care who you are or what little community you belong to if you're willing to have a good time, I'm down. Hit me up. Bypassing the bullshit and just getting down to having a laugh with the drinks I can stand by this. If you can't embrace that sometimes well you're just a nerd aren't you!

As it went along, I began to think less and less of Spree and Spring Breakers and more so of the numerous Slumber Party Massacre films, April Fools Day and the dreadful Promising Young Woman. Bodies Bodies Bodies was actually great by the way and I was shocked by just how much I enjoyed it. They nailed the campy tone completely. I felt like for once I was seeing a good modern take on a slasher. Most of all I prefer these days if they just make throwbacks and forget the modern stuff because there's too much that's changed and they can't get it right. They can't adapt the characters to the times. So just forget it and go with the old. For no apparent reason, they've switched more to woke and progressives these days. When this game was always about laughing at the filthiest little degenerate assholes and then having them get killed off each week. No-one wants to hang out with a nerd or someone even remotely pleasant do they? We do that enough in the week. Let's go laugh at misogynistic some dumb jocks and then kill them. That's how I like to spend my Friday nights. I'm sorry but if you're not seeing some poor horny teenagers get sliced up every Friday night, you're just not really living are you.

There was no denying though this film really made the new stuff work. This one had that sort of girly charm of the slumber party massacre films. Nothing too serious or forced just a bunch of teen girls slowly being killed off before your eyes. Above all it had the structure and feel of a slasher. It didn't reject its origins at all and it didn't thrust its modern

ideas down your throat. Overall, a really good balance. Rejection of what has come before is the very reason I hated Promising Young Woman. It was so obvious they hadn't seen anything else in that genre and had a completely false and unfair disdain towards that kind of movie. So they were just trying to make a new one up, which is not necessarily a terrible idea if you're under the assumption that all the classics there have been made by men and so you want to create a new form of cinematic identity. However, the one they went with just clearly didn't work and the entire experience is just pathetic. I remain irked that Revenge, which was directed by a woman wasn't as equally praised. That followed the right path and distinguished itself with the camera and the way the woman is shot in it. The cameras eye is one of empowerment in that movie. It respects the old while adding something new.

Exactly the reason, I loved Bodies Bodies Bodies. They got it right. From the pacing to the tone to a bunch of rich fuckers who you want to see die. Not going to lie Pete Davidson (whos stand up I can't stand) is amazing here. 100% the guy you want in this kind of movie. That nob head just being a complete utter prick. Here he looks even more sleep deprived and coke addled than usual. He looks like the only person in the last 20 years who's had less sleep in Hollywood than Vince Vaughan. Offers the film an edge I've not seen in years. It's like watching Bill Landis's terrible pornos knowing he was blacking out through the production and waking up mid sex scene. Its got that pungent smell you'd get from watching a sleazy 70s movie. Far from the kind of more glamorous studio horrors churned out today. Huge fan of his black eye in this film. I was half convinced before they were pointed it out to be the result of a punch to the face that these were just bags under his eyes. As though for the whole shoot he'd just been getting on the gear. That fuckers eyes are weird looking anyway here they're just 'orrible. To top it off at one point he moans about being "sweaty". Put the sweat back in cinema baby! Make it ooze from the frames!

The trailer definitely made this seem like every other line was an attempt to get in the gen z satire. Truthfully, the film isn't cut that way at all. Its a fun slasher first and a satire second. That's when this games at its best. When the foundations are strong. Writing that kind of dialogue is a bit like writing a hip hop song. You have your bars that you have to stick to (unless you're MF Doom and you're another fucking anomaly). When you're making a slasher, there are certain rules you have to follow (ones which Wes Craven clearly knew inside out and why Scream is hilarious). I'm not gonna list the entire rules but let's say a big one is a kill every few pages to keep things interesting. As well as that the opportunity can crop up for a good one liner. So every now and then you throw in a good one liner to personalise your movie when it's fit. You have that perfect space (inside the bar of a hip hop song) where its well-timed. If you go outside your bars you just come off as uncontrolled and are at big risk of destroying the entire thing. That's what the trailer was, a complete and utter mess. On the other hand, the movie does it brilliantly. The body is very strong and it takes its opportunities to modernise aspects at the right times.

Success in the 90 minute horror game is one of precision mastering that kind economy. Hats off to Bodies Bodies Bodies for a really impressive job. It's a strong genre movie that takes its shot well. I was expecting it to be more of aggressively satirical movie. It is not that. It's a true old fashioned slasher, which in the right moments updates itself with its mocking of the teens of today. The scenarios are the same, they run the same length but the reason for the kick offs are modernly motivated. I can handle this and want to say the film is one best films I've seen at trying to bring the slasher in to the present without completely destroying all that we love about it.

Undoubtedly better results than this years Scream film, which has just descended into the Stab series. Tries to pass itself off as clever when it takes cheap shots at really easy new additions to horror. I mean the fact that they're making another one so soon says it all really doesn't it. Making one every 10 years or so would be a great idea you know using it as a tool to analyse and critique shifts in the horror genre. What could have possibly happened in the genre in the space of like a year? For a film which markets itself on its intellectual superiority maybe it needs to accept that it's become just a standard slasher series. Likeable as Scream 5 was it didn't really bring much to the table did it? Credit to Scream 4 for making the entire narrative part of that which it was critiquing. Scream 5 was just all out lazy with nothing other than a few comments on "elevated horror" and "requels". Bodies Bodies Bodies was much better. Whilst it's narrative is not as clever as Scream 4, it did what it did well. Full respect to it, it’s the best Scream movie of the year.

Ah yes, I also mentioned how this was reminding me of the plot of April Fools Day. Whether it goes that way or not you'll have to watch and find out. I spent the whole thing like I've worked out the killer. This is easy. I've seen this game before. Well, take my whodunnit credentials away cause I didn't see that killer coming. I'm handing in my badge, turning out my locker and getting the fuck out of town. I'm no fucking Benoit Blanc it seems. He'd have worked this out sooner no doubt. The final reveal had me in fucking stitches.

They even brought in the Irish mob guy right at the end!

Connor O'Malley is a wellrespected comedian and who's work in Joe Pera Talks With You is amazing but me and the boys have taken to just calling him the Irish mob guy on account of how funny that sketch is. Always glad to see that man show up. Without a doubt

Bodies Bodies Bodies is one of the most fun horrors this year but there's no beating Ti West's X!

Bonus Points:

-Daddy AF and 212 blaring over all the party scenes, which had me crip walking down the aisles of the cinema

-The Slumber Party Massacre vibes

-Pete Davidson looking genuinely coked out his mind, like he hasn't slept in weeks or taken a bath and sweating profusely

-The absolute alpha male of the pack opening a champagne bottle with a sword

-Maria Bakalova for taking someone out with a fucking dumbbell

-Irish mob guy popping up at the end

Overall Score: 4/5

What has happened to all tomorrows parties?: withdrawal, boredom and over compensation in the age of domestication

Want to start this by saying I have come up with a name for the kind of gonzo style writing I've tried to develop over the years. It needs a name. Just has to. So here it is. I have decided it is called Psycho-Schradism. Think of it like Psychobilly, you know what the cramps were doing back in the 80s fucking with the old rockabilly. Anyway PsychoSchradism. What does it mean? Who gives a fuck what it means. Just sounds funny doesn't it. So say it back to yourself a few times. Mock it. Deface it. Dig it through the mud. The dirtier it gets the better but I will not rest til this stupid term is in the grand lexicon and public consciousness. And feel free to refer to yourself as a Psycho-Schradist if you subscribe to this particular brand of nonsense and utter garbage that seems to find its way on to the page.

Right so for this weeks movie from the streaming services. Tried to get hold of Bonehead Bill to see if he wanted to have a few beers and get a movie on round mine. There was no getting this man to sit down for five minutes this week. Only had the odd sporadic message off him. Generally he's a hard man to get a hold of but this was even worse than his usual response time. You see Boneheads been on a bender ever since he heard the news of the queen's passing. That's actually the reason I knew she'd called it a day. Did check a few times on BBC news for an update on our majesty's health on the day in question. However, it wasn't until I got a message off Bonehead just saying, "Kelly, you got any coke numbers?" that I knew it was official, the old bird had stacked it.

Obviously that message was on Thursday night. On the Friday, I messaged him about coming round for a movie and didn't hear anything back from him. I woke up on Saturday morning to a video of him doing a line bigger than the stupidly long one snorted in the crazy opening five minutes of Takashii Mike's Dead or Alive. At the start of Boneheads video, before he puts his nose to work, he looks in to the camera and goes "The era of King Charles hath begun!". To get an impression of just how big it was, in the video he does it across no less than 6LPs of The Smiths The Queen is dead. So take that in for size. I was torn between calling the Guinness World Book of Records or an ambulance. Instead, I just went with reacting to his video with the laughing emoji.

Woke up to another similar eerie video on Sunday morning, which ruined any notion of resting on the good lord's day. Except this time he was in a boozer singing IRA songs with a bunch of people. Some God awful rendition of Celtic Symphony from someone who was not much of a singer to begin with. Came captioned with "Curtains for you Elizabeth, my dear!". I didn't even think they had boozers open that late on a Sunday. He says it's a secret Irish boozer. The type where you go down into a basement and its pitch black. Time doesn't matter when you're down there. They don't operate by the same rules as the rest of the country. They also wanted him to sign up for something or other. From what he described it seemed like he'd become a guest in some kind of exclusive lock in. A lock in with a cult or even potentially a few IRA members. It didn't seem to make much sense but it did seem like he was enjoying himself.

When he was still partying on with these guys in to Monday evening and mentioned that they had embraced him as one of their own and wanted to take him back to their home village called "Lettershandoney", I started to get a little worried for the fella. Belled him up to make sure he was alright and was just like, "Lettershandwhat?".

"Lettershandoney!" he kept shouting back at me like I was supposed to know this tiny Irish village that he definitely didn't know existed til 10 minutes ago. I was like Christ doesn't this fella have work to go to? Dropped in another message saying "go home Bonehead, go home!". Reminded him he had a job somewhere to keep (I have no idea as to Bonehead Bills place of employment). A good few hours later, I got a message back saying not to worry he'd gotten the time off work. "What the fuck how?" , I asked. He then proceeds to send me a screenshot of a message he'd sent to his boss. I'll share it here:

Couldn't tell you if "Barry" has taken this long winded excuse for an absence seriously or not but he has just replied with a single line, "Ok fine. Make sure you bring in a doctor's note". Not seen a screenshot for this one so we'll just have to take Bonehead's words for it. Wouldn't surprise me though if all they were arsed about was the formalities.

For the last week I have received a flurry of messages from Bonehead Bill keeping me up to date on his spontaneous Ireland getaway. He informs me that the Irish guys have really taken him in as one of their own and shown him around.

According to Bonehead Bill, Lettershandoney is a lovely little village with a population of about 500 people. Situated about 6 miles from Derry. His new friends inform him there is something of an unemployment problem out there but they are single-handedly working on fixing this issue. He tells me they're really nice people that he's staying with even though one of them's brother is currently serving some time in a correctional institution for trying to blow up a police officer.

In fact, Bonehead Bill claims these Irish gentlemen rather took a shine to him because when asked his thoughts on incendiary devices, he replied that he'd "been blowing things up in the woods behind his school since before Beavis and Butthead made it cool". I believe that this, Bill's contempt for authority and his anti-royalist agenda made him strike up a perfect friendship with these people. He remains over there currently as of writing this. He's even formed a close bond with one of them's sister, whom he describes as a "corker of an Irish lass" named "Shauna" and thinks he could find a new life over there. Even went as far as to say he was thinking he could see himself going back and forth for the next few years and maybe marriage could be on the cards. I told him that's wonderful news but how does he plan on getting back? He does not know.

Since Bonehead clearly had his hands full I decided it was time to crack on and check out Who Invited Them. Another movie in a genre I like to refer to as Dinner Table. This splits off in to two sub genres Dinner Table Sci Fi and Dinner Table Horror, this film belongs to the latter. In order to qualify for this genre, there usually has to be a strong focus on the disturbance of the bourgeois household. Set pieces do as the name suggests tend to be centred around the dinner table as family members deal with outside forces. They are a kind of home Invasion thriller but instead more mainstream and designed specifically at couples to sit around and ponder their own fears from the comfort of their own home as they sip wine.

Invitations and unexpected guests tend to be common place as threats begin to emerge. Recent hits in the genre over the last few years have been Coherence, Game Night, Cheap Thrills, The Gift and The Invitation. They're an easy shot at some real return because you don't need too much money to make them just a living room and a decent script.

In this game the one to measure against remains Pasolini's Theorem. Obviously, that's a much artier effort and so what you're essentially is trying to tone it down and give it some commercial appeal whilst not losing the essence of that kind of movie. Although, at first many of these newer takes could be dismissed as silly trashy entertainment aimed at Caucasian couples, beneath their surface lurks an interesting form of terror. At its best this genre can reveal what the solid and supposedly unbreakable household fears most at any one time whether it be foreign influence, infidelity or homosexuality.

The outside guest breaks up the melancholy of the home exposing their inner most secrets and desires. What's most interesting about them is that a lot of the time, they literally cannot expel their guest for fear of further danger. Yes, the removal strategy becomes even more risky. Therefore, the home owners get in to this predicament in which they have to keep their guest for a longer duration. For example, in Death Game (which was recently remade by Eli Roth and titled Knock Knock), a married man let's two women in to his home, sleeps with them and then has to extend their stay as they threaten to tell his wife. Intriguingly, the character in that film never sees his actions as wrong but only reacts with hostility when it then threatens his stable life.

Usually, I like watching these kinds of films with a member of the opposite sex as they play better when there's two of you. These films often split up members of the household so you really want to be seeing someone else's reaction and how they respond to it, which is all part of the fun. Hence why I invited over Long Tall Sally. Long Tall Sally is a rare thing in my world. A truly platonic relationship. Trust me, you need at least one of these in your life at any one point in time. Problem is I'm a horny man and these things don't last long but me and Long Tall Sally have been doing a pretty good job all these years. So she ended up getting a call in Bonehead's absence.

Who Invited Them opens with a couple moving in to a new neighbourhood. The pair host a house warming party and get everyone round. Had to give it to Ryan Hansen, husband of the house. The dude establishes himself as a prick from the outset. Even the other guests comment on it and in just a few lines you know exactly the piece of shit you're dealing with. Low key loved him. He was going round the gaff berating his guests saying "don't touch the records!" and then goes on to make some speech where he genuinely says, "#NewCrib". Oh god what a loser. That kind of idiot with illusions of climbing the social ladder. Who'd forgotten his entire past for upper middle class integration. Bless him.

Before the party, he's getting over excited at the prospect of now having two sinks in the bathroom. His wife's unsure about the move to a richer neighbourhood and he's like "BABE TWO SINKS". Hes under the impression he's made it bless him. Think it was safe to say I loved this man from the outset. So dumb, he was constantly providing the entertainment. Long Tall Sally was saying she thought he was a dick and hated him already. Had to rush to my man's defence and be like, "na na this is a king".

Following the party, everyone leaves and the home owners are sat on the sofa discussing how the party was a great success. Both of them are baffled by a couple neither of them invited. Those who like their film titles said in the film will enjoy this moment. Before they can work out who these gatecrashers were, a noise is heard in the bathroom. Who comes out the door? The uninvited couple. Who are they? They dress in all black. They're young. The female is Hot with a capital H. The dude looks like the late Anton Yelchin and is dressed in a turtle neck with a blazer. What's most striking is they don't lack for confidence. Despite the awkwardness, these young gatecrashers handle themselves rather well. They explain that they're actually the neighbours who came over as one of the party goers crashed in to their car but got sidetracked by their own curiosity.

Instantly, my man the husband of the house is giving it the don't worry about it, we've all gatecrashed a party before. His wife responds by saying, "when have you literally ever gatecrashed a party?". Long Tall Sally had a good chuckle at that one. The husband quickly comes back in with oh "Before we were together of course!". Hahaha he's such a loser, you gotta love him! You do.

Had to say to LTS, "Come on now, if my guy says he's a serial gatecrasher, he's a serial gatecrasher". I'm backing my horse all the way, he can do no wrong. Forgetting the awkward first encounter, the foursome now decide to restart over and have some drinks. Now the party really begins! These parts got me so excited. Had that magic of the mystery involved in partying with strangers. A world of possibilities, all you have to say is let's do this, let's see where this goes. The good old days! The newly moved are a couple in their thirties or so and they're really taken by their new "neighbours" youthful energy. It's a chance for them to return to their past lives and they take it without hesitation. These two are entering a new stage in their lives with a new home, 6 year old kid, dad on the ladder, mother switching from dreams of being a musician to housewife. Clearly, they may not be ready to make the switch so soon.

The party goes on and the husband turns the music down saying, "we don't want to wake up the neighbours". Anton Yelchin clone just goes, "we are the neighbours!" and turns it back up. LTS and I poured each other another glass of wine and cheers'd to that one. The show goes on! Finally, after a bit of dancing and unsolicited eye fucking from the husband (LTS wouldn't stop saying "ew gross" over and over), the foursome split off. Yep, it's guy talk and girl talk. I could have watched a whole 90 minutes of this satire before the "threat" came in. Anton Yelchin clone claims to be a wealthy man so of course husband brings out the brown nosing. I could watch those two back and forth for ages. Was killing me. Obviously, husband sees the opportunity for "networking" and what finished me was Anton Yelchin clone being like "that talks for the golf course!". Goes on to propose that the husband of the house become his new golf partner and work on his swing. Aw look at these two new best friends. Reminded me of Peep Show when Mark meets his dates father and just suddenly starts talking shop hahaha.

We move away from business and in to real guy talk. Anton Yelchin clone discussing the local "husband tax" finished me. He adds that he would like the husband of the house to fuck his wife and that he would watch. Husband can't even hide his excitement at the idea.

Throughout the whole interaction I was in hysterics, whereas LTS just said "I hate them both". She demanded, "show me the girls!". LTS got her wish. The girls are discussing former flames and the given up career of being a musician. This becomes equally naughty as the wife calls up an ex-boyfriend band member for a reunion. All is not well in this home. "Dirty cheat!" I yelled. LTS had to remind me of the previous interaction between the two men. "Na na, that's just guy talk. That doesn't count as serious. Just dudes being dudes". She shook her head and I could only snigger. Rattled.

Later the "neighbour" wife explains what the couple were doing in the toilets. Not sex but coke. Both the girls are in agreeance nodding at each other quickly saying "gross gross". The wife of the house then says, "I dabbled a bit back in college but gross gross. Actually do you have any more?". Hahahaha nailed on that one. Had me wondering what our good friend Bonehead Bill was up at that exact moment. Probably burning through more grams than he could pay for and having the time of his life.

I had to give it to Who Invited

Them, it was an ode to all yesterday's parties. It gave me a much needed youthful kick. A reminder of a time when you were allowed to get away with a few things. How to deal with all that in the next stage of your life. Begged the question are you ready to move on from it and put it in its place? Was this a good couple? Would their relationship survive this step? Also who are these mysterious guests exposing their insecurities and threatening to divide them? Can't be ruining those. Wack the movie on, find out for yourself.

After it finished, it left me a little depressed as though coming off a kind of high. Those were the days when anything could happen. Can't even remember the last time I gatecrashed a party. They were the best cause there was no saying where those nights would go. These days Jacob Kelly is unfortunately something of a domesticated beast. Those days are kind of gone. But now the drinks go down even quicker and the small feeling of satisfaction lasts even less. Somewhere along the line you wonder when did all the doors close and when did we grow so cold? We know where the late nights go and what is there left to gain? So we hit the hay to spare the next day's hangover. Pro plus and the black coffee powder replaces the white powder. We grow wise but at the expense of something deep within. What has happened to that mystery which the night do behold? Where have all tomorrows parties gone? Fuck sake maybe I should have just gone Lettershandoney with Bonehead Bill.

Bonus Points:

-Husband of the house being a total dick and getting really excited when his little curated playlist with DJ Shadow remixes get complimented

-The suave Anton Yelchin clone in the turtle neck being a voyeur and discussing golf

-The wife giving up her cocaine sabbatical punching her husband cause he's a little shit and her tolerance runs out

-A pleasant youthful party energy, critique of the corporate ladder and guide for new couples to handling domestication in parenthood

Overall Score: 3.5/5

First Time Watch of the Week: The Allure of the Angels

Remember Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction? Who Doesn't? Stupid question. Reason I bring it up, you know that long scene that kinda outstays its welcome a little when Butch and that foxy French Fabienne are in the hotel room and it's clearly trying to rip off Godard's Breathless? Yeah juvenile homage scene and I'm sure Tarantino would probably admit too that this scene is the work of a young filmmaker overly obsessed with his influences and the reference detracting from the movie. In the scene, Butch gets rattled by the loud TV and asks what his birds watching. Fabienne replies with, 'A motorcycle movie, I'm not sure the name'. Well that motorcycle movie is in fact Jack Starrett's The Losers, this weeks first time watch of the week.

The Losers is an attempt to merge the biker movie with a Vietnam war movie/Filipino actioner. A legitimate one too with exactly the right kind of cast that you would assemble to do just that. Main star William Smith (the white William Smith that is) is a B movie legend who's starred in sleazy action classics such as Action USA and Seven (the Andy Sidaris one not David Fincher). Co-star Vic Diaz is alongside dwarf legend Weng Weng, one of the biggest Filipino action stars made famous through a lot of the Roger Corman produced Women in Prison movies. Finally, its director Jack Starrett you'll recognise from potentially namsploitations most known and popular film Rambo First Blood as one of the cops. Why is it they always cast typically anti authority figures as law men? Seen that trick multiple times with Roger Corman himself and Joe Bob Briggs. Starrett went on to direct some blaxploitation films like Slaughter and Cleopatra. In 1975, he even had another go at the biker films, Race with the Devil remains a notable later entry to me and one i believe deserves more respect cause of the quality of the relentless stunts pre-Mad Max. No doubts in my mind though this is a solid team with the ability to make the biker and 'nam films meet.

There is a fantastical story here based on some truth. In 1965, Sonny Barger who was leading the Hell's Angels sent a letter to president Johnson offering some of his biker boys for the war effort. Something that was eventually turned down, I can only assume based on these guys unpredictability. Always find that mad when you start to thinking who was the biggest threat to the US government in the 60s, the Angels, the hippies or the black panthers? These are violent rapists and yet somehow I imagine the US government would have ranked these the least dangerous of the three based on the fact they don't actually pose a threat to the entire system. So who was a heavier problem the hippies or the black panthers? Panthers would use the threat of violence but not got as many numbers so who knows? As for those Angels it seems they were not one for changing the system. They reject it and want to live outside of it but they do not possess the intelligence or will to do anything about. Pretty much the reason they get and even accept their title as losers. Regardless, there was no chance the US government were trusting them in the war. So instead of sending them over to Vietnam, they just sent a few actors over to the Philippines instead. That is how we ended up with the story in The Losers. A kind of imagining of an event that never happened. Original title was meant to be Nam's Angels, I can't pick which is better.

Right so here's what I was hoping for on this movie, some kind of action packed badass Dirty Dozen type. An Inglorious Bastards violent and rebellious unit. Spent much of it thinking come on speed things up and give me my set pieces. Instead a large part of the run time is dominated by this rocknroll in the jungle hangout movie. Luckily, it can pretty cool here and but there are a few moments that do in fact drag. Respect in some ways though for massively inspiring Apocalypse Now but Coppola definitely improved on that.

How fucking good is that scene In Apocalypse Now where that band come out and start performing Suzie Q and the playboy models all arrive by helicopter? Cinematography and lighting porn that. My favourite cinematographer would be Robert Richardson (sorry Roger Deakins stans) and then maybe Apocalypse Now's Vittorio Storaro and the great Michael Ballhaus can fight it out for the number two slot. Soldiers in that scene get so horny they end up trying to climb onto said helicopter and one of them ends up with his pants down and his mate clinging on. Now that's a rocknroll movie in the jungle. Wipes the floor with this The Losers. Exactly the kind of psychedelic mad shit that goes way too far into excessive you want to be seeing when you hear rocknroll in the jungle. Still, as I said, fair play to The Losers for coming first and was loving the Jim Morrison looking dude.

Appreciated one amusing review on Letterboxd for this which was simply, 'Apocalypse Late' cause all the good stuff didn't really explode in til around the third act. It was hard to deny but when it does arrive, it saves the movie for me so be patient on this one cause the last half hour is a total blast. Crazy enhanced bikes looking like something out of Death Race 2000 and mad jumps in war battle scenes like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Yet unlike that belter, this time we get blood spurting across the screen true exploitation style. Yep, to say this third act doesn't go OFF and deliver the goods would be an understatement. The movies badass appeal on this one is ruined a little by two aspects, the pacing and the fact that our outcasts are completing all the action sequences whilst donning their little Nazi flags and no they're not undercover like The Basterds. They're actually not technically speaking Nazis either. The history of both the biker cycle and the Hell's Angels is certainly one of complexity that even many film fans and historians have given up trying to understand.

On the one hand there's a strong argument to say these guys are the last of America's great folk heroes, outlaws like Billy the Kid and represent what's left of the American Dream. Their bikes the modern equivalent of the old horses. Proper phallic symbols stretching out from their groin. I wonder what Freud would have made of them. They go about antagonising with the law, the last set of people with any real balls and sticking it to the man. Unfortunately on the other hand they're also arguably a bunch of rapists and edge lords going about in swastikas.

Now, I've seen a fair amount of movies from the biker cycle and I still haven't figured these fuckers out. A near impossible task because reality and fiction don't always match up. Many of the films in the biker cycle definitely amped up the Nazi symbolism and gang rapes as part of cheap thrills to get bums on seats. Having said that, it would be a lie to deny such events didn't take place. Some of the symbolism I can understand. Use of the Iron Cross is actually pretty smart. This is a not quite as offensive as the swastika and was used before Hitler came in to things as a reward for bravery in battle. So the idea behind the bikers using it was kind of like a fuck you to the old man. We're talking about a generation of kids growing up post World War Two who wanted to differentiate themselves from the previous generation. What better way than to almost collude with the enemy? Indirectly, it also does improve relations with Germany and allow the different nations to move on from Nazism. As for the swastikas that's purely edgy and offensive. I don't care if these guys aren't Nazis and it's mainly just to shock the squares. Just like get a grip isn't it? Apparently, some of the bikers do feel the same way and have tried to remove the swastikas from the scene.

Guess that's the problem with any movement. Due to the size and numbers you can't really end up sharing one collective idea. There's always splits and fractions. Everyone has different reasons for being in the group. Can you really say you like many people with the same set of political beliefs as you and your own little communities you're part of? If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that they all get atleast a little corrupted at some point and usually its on the account of individual egos. I can imagine there would be some members of the Angel's who would go wild at the thought of some attention and fame. Money too, you can't forget these weren't well off people. Who's to say there weren't a few who would do anything a journalist tells them for a few extra bucks? Why would they correct their reputation on the screen when it gives them celebrity status and notoriety? Can the actions of a few corrupt the intentions of the entire group? You'd have to address what the intentions of the movement are but unfortunately, I'm not sure there really is a coherent one. These are not the brightest of people.

There is an allure to this gang of people in that they're a bunch of guys who have each other's backs, they stick together and they don't take no shit from the police. They wouldn't dare call themselves communists but there is some of that in the way they do share everything and don't get lost in material wealth. If someone doesn't have much money it is custom to buy that person drinks and food. Although, the more I've thought about I'm not even sure that they're that cool. At first you think, yeah sure a bunch of guys riding on bikes together trying to live outside the system, love that. Then you think well why don't they do anything about the system? Riding off on a highway doing their own thing, pretending it’s the old days. That sounds like cowardice to me. They're losers, I'm afraid.

I've seen so many clueless biker movies in my time that don't really add up and the image of them seems so contradictory. Honestly, it wasn't until I read Hunter S Thompson's debut book Hell's Angels that I began to get any real understanding of them and who they really are. He spent a year with them and really separates the truth from the bullshit in the movies and the ridiculous newspaper headlines from the 1960s. It was upon reading that book, I realised I'd gone about them all wrong. He explains that there's no point trying to understand these people from a moral perspective. Instead, you can only try to understand what created them. An amazing point because if you approach it from a moral angle you're literally coming head to head with the complex history of America.

In his book, he talks about how they were formed, which was based on post-war disillusionment. A group of people returning from the chaotic nature of the battlefield, not wanting to return to structured home life with wives and kids so turning to the road. Alongside them the disturbed kids of veterans trying to seek out others like themselves and form a community of likeminded individuals. Therefore, they resort to recapturing the original dreams of going out west and prospering. And we all know that's built on terrorisation and massacring of the Native Americans. Hence why really trying to moralise these people brings you head on with the complex history of America.

When it comes to the kind of what came first the chicken or the egg like argument, you could argue the first initial image of the bikers actually came from the movies. Go right back to Marlon Brando's The Wild One from 1953 and that could be argued as the birth of it all. Many people saw that and they wanted to be just like it. A great picture too, not politically challenging, just Brando and his boys turning up in a town on bikes and causing mischief. It's a fun movie, which basically just takes the format of an old western.

One of the next notable additions in the biker genre was Kenneth Anger's 1963 experimental short film Scorpio Rising. Both Gaspar Noe and Nicolas Winding Refn notably share a joint love of this film. Anger never intended this to be a serious portrait of biker culture but rather just a sleazy S and M movie fetishising leather and featuring lots of homosexuals. This presentation ended up rattling many bikers who believed they didn't go that way. Bizarrely, whenever cameras were put on these people they would start kissing the nearest member of the same sex as another attempt to shock the squares. Confuses me why they would get so rattled by Anger's movie when they would engage in those behaviours for the camera. I'm not for one second suggesting these guys are closeted homosexuals but spending so much time together, fighting for each other and sitting on large penises between their legs does have a few gay connotations.

The next three big biker movies would be The Wild Angels, Easy Rider and Quadrophenia. First off Quadrophenia is a British movie about a bunch of doo wop fans from Brighton. Totally different kind of movie and culture so not sure you can really link it in here, despite being so good. Easy Rider is another great movie, which actually shares very little of the philosophy of US bikers and has less trashy influences like the French New Wave. Hopper's movie is mainly an allegory for the death of the American dream and the hippie movement. As we've already pointed out here though, the hippies and the Angels aren't necessarily the same. In fact the Angels notoriously broke up an anti-war demonstration once. I'm guessing the Ken Kesey truce in which he invited them all over to take LSD at his place didn't really have much effect. God damn hippies trying to solve things with their peace and acid.

Whilst far from a masterpiece, The Wild Angels is probably the best movie ever made about what the Hell's Angels and various biker gangs stood for. The link with the westerns is further cemented here through Peter Fonda. His dad Henry used to star in a lot of westerns. Two different generations and genres but both equally controversial films attempting to tap in to a portrait of America.

Corman's The Wild Angels paints them as desiring freedom. They're not looking for trouble but will dish it out if they are challenged. Above all though, they just want to party. A clever point to make as that could win most people over. Even if you haven't seen the film, many of you will know a quote from it, which was sampled in the Primal Scream song Loaded. 'We want to be free. To do what we want to do. And we wanna be free to get loaded. And we wanna have good time. And that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a good time. We're gonna have a party!'.

Primal Screams use of the sample is very smart and finds new meaning in the free party scene. One which was all about escaping the restrictions of law enforcement. A movement which sure pissed off the UK government because people found a way to enjoy themselves for free and they weren't seeing a dime of the action so naturally they went in hard on this focusing on the drugs and dangers of attending such festivals.

After The Wild Angels, these movies generally take two paths. Either needlessly attempting to copy Angels and failing drastically in finding the true meaning of the movement and often lazily focusing on the rapes, violence and Nazi imagery. At best these films are just clones of The Wild Angels and offer little improvement. Crazy considering Angels really isn't that deep either. They fail to address the history and as I mentioned the only real successful document at doing that is Hunter S. Thompson's book. Most of them are boring, shallow creations, which only come alive when the bikes hit the highway and some '60s psychy garage rock banger starts playing. Hunter branded these guys 'losers' and damned them all to be exterminated and meet the bomb like the end of Apocalypse Now. However, even he had to admit seeing them to take the road on the bikes was unexplainably cool and appealing.

Examples of those lazy clones would be Angels Die Hard, Hells on Angels on Wheels and Angels from Hell. I mean you can kind of tell they're rip offs from the titles can't you. There's plenty of them out there and they basically repeat the same message with less effect.

On the other side, you have the ones that went another direction. These began trying to implement other genres to keep people hooked, expand on the cool aesthetic and stray away from the more tackling the complicated political aspects. These are genuinely entertaining and there isn't nearly enough of them. All for seeing these combined with whatever some nutcase thinks of. Herschell Gordon Lewis's She-Devils on Wheels and Peeter's Bury me an Angel bring in a feminist spin on a macho world. The latter being very Freudian and explores this arena, in a way none of the others have.

Psychomania and Werewolves on Wheels incorporate zombies and furry beasts of the night. I wouldn't normally advocate this but if you do happen to watch Werewolves on Wheels, make sure it's the version on YouTube where the songs have been replaced by Electric Wizard songs. Typically, I would be against such bastardisation by a randomer but it's so good. Trust me, Werewolves on Wheels is a great movie. I regularly get it on when I want to hear some tunes from the Wizard and get some images with it whilst sinking a few beers. I recommend it. Nothing but good times. Finally, you get the actioners focused on stunts like Mad Max, Race with the Devil and this weeks movie The Losers.

More recent efforts have mainly gone for parody and homage such as Hell Ride and Mandy. It's hard to pick, which was the more cowardly route. Going more cartoonish or sticking to attempting to depict what the movement was about. I change my stance on this regularly. Mostly, I just think well if you're not going to do anything interesting with the movie and expand on the ideas why using realism, then why not just go for cartoony entertainment merging with other genres? Does leave you wondering a few things though. Why's no-one gone back and tried to make a perfect movie that captures the history of the Angels and what makes them so fascinating in spite of their ugly past?

You might say fuck 'em, they're violent rapists. And I would most definitely agree. Don't like these people any more than most. In fact I pretty much hate them but there's a strong argument to say the biker genre is the most important American genre since the western. See that's where my interest lies. They're as problematic as John Wayne's characters in the movies but from an artistic point of view they best represent America. Most genres can be copied but the western and the biker film are distinctly American. How can we ignore this? Even the critics seem to have totally disregarded these movies. It was the French who first pointed out the importance of the western, before then they were read as trashy b movies. Where are those guys to do the same here? Maybe a new biker film needs to be made that reaches the full capabilities? I think it's about time someone made a new one trying to do what The Wild Angels did but deeper and with a fresh pair of eyes. Also if such a person wanted to incorporate a few horror elements or action stunts from the later hybrid films, I wouldn't stop them!

Bonus Points:

-Bringing Rock'n'roll to the jungle prior to Apocalypse Now

-The action packed and bloody finale involving multiple bike jumps and personalised bikes

Overall Score: 3.5/5

TV of the Week: Could this Hawaiian shirt loving, moustache donning king become of TV's Toughest?

Here we have an episode titled, 'Don't Eat Snow in Hawaii'. Since Hawaii isn't really known for its snowy weather, it didn't take too much Detective skills to work out this episode was going to be about one thing and one thing only: cocaine. And yes just like it's nickname snow, this is falling in from the skies. Who's dropping it? We need names and we need them now. Criminals it's time to pack your shit in. Someone's getting their ass whooped in this cop show of week. We're talking 80s classic Magnum P.I.

In this pilot, we first meet our titular hero as he gets up to some shady dealings. Mischiefs on the menu. Sneakily he arrives on to a beach via the seas and begins breaking in to an expensive looking property. In true noir style, we're hit with the narration for every little action we can see on the screen. Our moustache donning Magnum (the mighty Tom Selleck in his iconic role) informs us that he is indeed breaking in to the high priced beach house but he is not a crook. This is technically speaking his gaff. Magnum has worked out a sweet deal in which he is able to live at this place for free if he can test the security every once in a while. The gaffs real owner is a rich author who is barely around. Therefore, it's just Magnum, some Alfred Pennyworth like British Butler and a plethora of sexy female guests the author frequently let's stay there.

Magnum's mission for the day is to break in to the property and steal the author's Ferrari. So has Magnum got the tools? Before he can be tested, there is a moment where he touches a scar on his arm. We freeze frame and then cut to a black and white flashback of his time spent in Vietnam. Note, the black and white just to show these experiences as extra traumatic. Oh how cheesy, I was loving it already. Robert Loggia being his squad leader in the war just tops it off. What other role would he be playing but the angry disturbed squad leader?

Back in the present, our boy makes it past the two guard dogs, sprints across the garden and makes his way over the Ferrari. He's home free right? But oh no the Ferraris had an alarm that's been put on. Magnum has about one minute to crack the code or else the game is up. Of course, he manages to work it out in the time allocated. On the prospect of failure he lets us know, "Fate just wouldn't do that to me". That could well be the coolest thing anyone has ever said. At this point this weeks sexy house guests arrive and he informs them he'd take them for lunch to celebrate but he's got a friend to meet so off he goes in the Ferrari. Despite this being possibly the simplest security system I've ever seen, I had to hand it to Magnum he was a badass alright and this show was behaving exactly as it should. Introducing us to a character we could happily watch week in week out.

Following this initial successful little mission, we get the main plot of the pilot begin to creep in. Before Magnum can meet his old navy friend, the guy is killed and framed as a drug smuggler. Our private investigator then has the remainder of this two part pilot to figure out who set his friend up and why. The clocks ticking! What blew me head off instantly was that the "bad guys" shoved either 30 ounces or 80 ounces of coke (cannot remember which) down his friends throat and made him swallow them as part of the set up. That's got to be some of the most expensive framing I've ever seen. That's minimum 1 kilo, maximum just over 2.

Just who on earth are we dealing with? Knew straight away either this writing was stupid or we were dealing with some big time players who could be wasting up to 120 grand. Actually could well be even more here because this was straight off the plane. This ain't no small potatoes! Someone paid good money for this set up and you bet Magnum is going to find out who.

Standouts in this 90 minute opener were mainly in the first half with the confrontation with the navy commander, the binocular and shower bursting incidents and the shootout car chase. Firstly, I got well excited when he busted in to his old navy superiors office. Slams the door open fuming with no respect and bounces straight in to this guys office ready to have it out with him because he knows its bullshit about his friends framing. God I love a central character with no respect for authority. He comes out with a cracking line here, something like, "you gonna tell me what's going on here or you going to have to file me for assault?". This King is taking no shit. Turns out him and this navy fellow don't get on too well and have a bit of a history. So here's what we know from Magnums file so far: he's a nam war vet, who then became a navy man but became disillusioned with that life and now he's a god damn P.I.! Works for me.

Both the binocular and shower bursting incidents play out quite controversially from a modern perspective. We have the main character spying on women in the sea and then not respecting privacy as he deliberately enters a bathroom when ones in the shower. First case was well funny because they turn it in to some slapstick routine where he's trying to take a phone call across the room and stretching it as far as possible so he doesn't have to move from his perfect spot for spying. oddly, the girls even asked him to join them. Instead he just opts to stare at them. No idea what that's about the dirty little pervert! Put the binoculars down and get in with them!

Can't say I didn't appreciate the Rear Window/Body Double thing going on. Whole thing was quite Hitchcockian too with the mistaken identity/proving innocence plot line. Not enough sleazy perving in cop shows today, its become sort of absent in our current times. There was a time when it came with the territory. Take me back! In real life, don't condone it but in this field, it's something of a necessity. What would James Bond be without the playful perving? Therefore a lack of inclusion is actually marks down. Since its present here, more marks to Magnum PI.

Finally, the shootout car chase. Oh wow. That was the finest part of the pilot. A hairy foreign dude half sticking out the window spraying a machine gun at Mr Magnum. Typical arguably xenophobic shit with "foreign scum" bringing in those nasty drugs. This is good old American action. Got to give it to them, this pilot almost had it all. An adequate amount of 80s pleasures. Moustaches, licensed PI, cocaine, Ferraris, shootouts with foreigners, recognisable actors (judge Reinhold shows up in the second half!), fancy car showing off, a fine set of ladies, big houses, British butlers and Lacoste T shirts. Nearly all you could ask for from this kind of entertainment. Not quite the giant of Miami Vice and as legendary as that one's Pilot, "Brother's Keeper". Only thing missing is the AOR, yacht rock and synthpop. Hopefully we'll see some more of that culture as the episodes swing our way. Could this Hawaiian shirt loving, moustache donning king become one of TVs toughest? After 90 minutes in this world, I can thoroughly say we're on the right lines.

Bonus Points:

-All the sleazy 80s TV cop essentials: The women, the cars, the boats, the mansions, the cocaine, the Hawaiian shirts, the Lacoste shirts, the British butler, the shootouts!