Number 78: The Tony Blair Witch Project (2000)
I write this on the day Jeremy Corbyn has become leader of
the Labour party, with a bigger majority then Tony Blair had in his landslide
victory in 1994 and a big slap in the face to all Blairite Labour members. If
this was a satirical film this might be appropriate, unfortunately all this has
to with Blair is the title.
If I might allow myself a moment of self-congratulations,
this was a really frigging hard movie to find.
A lot of these films are easy enough to find as many are
public domain, such as Body in the Web
and Beast of Yucca Flats. Some more
modern films have been surprisingly tricky such as Simon Sez and with foreign movies it can prove challenging finding
English subtitles (and I’ve even admitted defeat on that for Iranian flick Deportees 2). But The Tony Blair Witch Project just didn’t seem to exist anywhere.
And I had to search the real back bowels of the internet to find this turd.
Was it worth it? Well, it was everything I expected and
less. I don’t really get it. From what I can tell this was never released in
any cinemas and wasn’t put on TV anywhere, hence the difficulties in finding
it. It just seems to be a bunch of college kids messing around with a camera,
making their own Blair Witch Project spoof
and put it on the web. But somehow, it found its way on to IMDB.
This was made in 2000, when The Blair Witch Project kick-started the whole found footage genre.
So, obviously it was ripe for parody, in this case using then British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, for no reason other than his name is Blair. If you’re
expecting some cutting edge satire, you’ll be very disappointed as it is
painfully obvious that the only thing the maker of this, Michael Martinez,
knows about Tony Blair is that he was the British Prime Minister. Though to be
fair, it should be noted this was made pre-Iraq, so it’s probably not too
surprising they don't know anything beyond his name.
We have a bunch of people who go off looking for ‘The Tony
Blair Witch’, including a guy in a Tony Blair mask who is supposed to be the
man himself. Maybe I’m wrong on the satire but damned if I know what it’s
trying to say. There is one bit near the end where Blair says for Britain to
move forward it must become a Monarchy. So…carry on as it is then.
It’s a bunch of screaming and running around in front of the
camera, as the ‘actors’ practise various voices. It mostly follows the Blair Witch Project, apart from one bit
that briefly turns the movie into Deliverance,
as the other people in the group start to disappear. And the Tony Blair witch
kills them all.
I noticed the IMDB page credits one of the writers as Alan
Smithee. If you aren’t familiar with movie parlance, this is short hand for
when someone thinks a project is so bad they don’t want their name attached to
it.
The Tony Blair Witch
Project is one not very funny joke stretched out over an hour. Not worth
the effort.
Number 77: Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)
For those not familiar with the first Lawnmower Man, Pierce Brosnan uses mind enhancing drugs and a
virtual reality world on a simple gardener, Jobe. However, as Jobe becomes
smarter he becomes more dangerous, with designs beyond cyberspace.
While we are on the subject of The Lawnmower Man let us take a moment to address the Stephen King
issue. This has nothing to do with the sequel but hopefully you’ll realise in a
moment why that is relevant. Stephen King is credited as a writer on The Lawnmower Man except he didn’t write
any of it. He did however, write a short story of the same title in 1976 that
has nothing in common with the 1993
movie. So why is his name on the credits? Because Stephen King was the hottest
horror writer on the planet, why wouldn’t the producers of the movie try and
cash in on that? King won a lawsuit to have his name removed from the credits.
It was all a cheap, marketing trick from the producers.
It’s the same for the sequel but with a different set up.
Jobe (played by Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer) who is now a human computer
able to access any system on earth. A corporation intends to use him to create
a virtual reality world for the people of the earth to interact. Doesn’t sound
so evil but it’s presented as such, so it must be. If the objection to them was
based on the ethics of using a vulnerable human being to power their system I would understand but
no, nobody has a problem with that. They just want to make money, which despite
being the point of any business large or small, means they must automatically
be evil.
Jobe on the other hand, has a plan of his own to make the
real world so crap everyone will want to stay in his cyber-world. Which
naturally, he is the ruler of.
Opposing him is Dr Ben Trace (Patrick Bergin) who is rather
like a cross between Christopher Lambert and comedian Milton Jones. He’s
assisted by Peter Pan and his lost boys (well, one of them is a girl but the
main one is called Peter and the first scene you see them in they are flying
through a VR Neverland).
There’s a countdown to something called the Global
Interface, which I believe was the time Jobe would be connected to everyone in
the world simultaneously and Dr Trace and his gang have to stop him. There’s a
lot of guff about a computer chip and ‘Egypt’ (which is meant to have some
relevance to how the chip works). They stop Jobe and he returns to his former
‘simple’ state, which I guess is a good thing?
Lawnmower Man was
always a case of style of substance but Lawnmower
Man 2 doesn’t even have the style. There is not a lot of time spent in the
VR world and what there is doesn’t look very good. This is a big deal as the
first movie sold itself on it’s (for the time) impressive visual effects.
Without the cool effects, Lawnmower Man 2 is just a run-of-the-mill sci-fi flick.
(these are from IMDB Bottom 100 list as it was on 31st August 2015)
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