The Friday Question: Scary stuff

Charlie Brooker’s much-anticipated zombie homage / Big Brother parody ‘Dead Set‘ is on our screens on Monday and Hallowe’en is just around the corner. It’s generally a time of year when the channels stick a load of old horror films on, into the night, in a half-hearted nod to the time of year.

The scariest things I’ve ever seen in TV haven’t been late night horror films, however. They’ve been from far less likely sources.

Stranger danger adverts that should really have been laughable, ‘Charley Says‘ miaowing like some freaky banshee, anything by The Children’s Film Foundation… I wasn’t a particularly nervous child but all of these things gave me the willies.

So – think back and let us know…

What TV stuff has scared you silly?

Nature Shock: Alien Ice Bear

I like nature programs – especially ones about weird animals. The opening credits hinted that I’d be seeing some pretty alarming stuff, making me really excited for things to get started, not just because the first episode was entitled ‘Alien Ice Bear’.

‘An alien bear?’ I thought. ‘Wicked!’

The program opened with a lot of reconstructions and talking heads. Apparently, some American businessman had gone off to shoot a Polar Bear and had ended up shooting something that wasn’t a Polar Bear. He got into a lot of trouble because he only had a license to shoot a Polar Bear.

Now, I should point out that I shoot things occasionally – rabbits mostly, and then I eat them – but the idea that anyone would be allowed to shoot a Polar Bear horrifies me. They’re rare and their habitat is rapidly shrinking, so we should be doing everything we can to protect them. This probably doesn’t involve letting American businessmen shoot them for shits and giggles.

The businessman shot the bear and posed for photos. The photos showed that this bear had black eyeliner on, so it wasn’t a Polar Bear. Teen Polar Bears don’t become goths to rebel, so this meant he’d bagged some other species. When you do shoot a Polar Bear you have to bring some bits back to show some Rangers so that they can be sure you shot it and not a moose or something.

At this point we got to listen to a CSI-type person waffling on about how they couldn’t tell what it was. A taxidermist also rambled on about how they had never seen anything like this before. We eventually got the point that he’d managed to accidentally shoot something even rarer than a Polar Bear.

After thirty minutes of these people saying ‘Gee wizz! We killed a unicorn!’ they dropped the bombshell that you can cross-breed Polar Bears with other bears. People used to do it in zoos all the time – those crazy Victorians, eh?

The bear, which I was starting to get bored of, was actually just a cross-breed and not that alien at all, really. Nobody had ever heard of a hybrid being born in the wild, so they’d ultimately proved that it could happen by shooting it. Great.

So, after an hour long program they had conveyed information that could be summed up in a paragraph of text.

Next week they’re covering some man-eating river monster that killed someone. They never found a body. I’m going to presume that the vicious monster that killed a person was a rock and go and read a book instead. Or shoot a Gorilla.

NewsGush – Mum’s Gone To Boots

Good news for idiots – specifically those who like to discuss the ins, outs and shake-it-all-abouts of untalented minor celebrities. Click here for the ‘big’ story.

Kerry Katona appeared on This Morning with Phil & Fern and slurred her way through the interview. She didn’t look pissed and the explanation that she happens to be on anti-psychotic drugs covered her phonetic sludge, yet this has somehow made the national news. Must’ve been a slow day.

In WWM’s defence, I’ve stuck this clip up knowing full well that Katona’s name alone will guarantee a good few handfuls of extra hits. It’s a mercenary world.

Though I was a fan of Katona’s early work with Atomic Kitten, I felt (and continue to feel) that she’s really come into her own with her appearances on the Iceland ads. I don’t follow the populist view that the Nolan sister who features in the more recent clips has diluted the franchise – I actually feel very strongly that Katona has become stronger as a thespian working alongside another untalented old boot.

NewsGush – Secret Millionaire’s Bad Apple

When I first saw thieving arsehole James Benamor on Secret Millionaire I did find it weird that Channel 4 were championing a cunt who ‘sells loans to those with bad credit ratings’.

‘But he’ll be giving money to the kinds of people he rips off in the first place’ I cried, as my better half kicked the TV in half with disgust.

And it turns out the truth is worse – and we can thank the BBC for smelling the rat and using it as the basis for an investigation into the shyster’s ways.

His companies, which include Tenant Loans and Advantage Loans, offer to arrange loans for people with a poor credit history.

Half-a-million customers have signed up in the past year and many of them pay a £50 brokerage fee.

But when the paperwork comes through, the clients don’t get the loans they were expecting. Instead, they are simply sent the phone numbers of other banks and lenders.

I’d laugh at Mr Benamor’s misfortune in being exposed if only so many folk hadn’t been buried deeply in the shit, partially because of his exploitative business practices. It beggars belief that people sit at their desk and work out the best way of rinsing some of the most desperate people around for everything they have for their own personal gain.

What a twat.

The Secret Millionaire was ripe for the axe anyway – let’s hope they pull it as soon as possible.

Scarlett Johansson – Anywhere I Lay My Head

Random internet people, I need you to do me a favour.  If I ever get to the point of meteoric stardom (and with no acting talent and a face like a slapped arse it’s only a matter of time before I join Eastenders) I need you to arrange a hit on me. 

Nothing flashy, or too machiavellian – just hire one of those hoodies to knifecrime me in the back of the head.  

You’d be protecting me from the negative sides of celebrity.  Having so much money and fame would effectively alienate me from the rest of the populace, meaning I would be living in my own world, surrounded by a group of ‘yes men’ – spineless arse-kissers who realise they can let me indulge in any hair-brained vanity project so long as they market it the right way.

Which brings me to Johansson.  She’s the one of the latest stars to hit A–List status and thus she’s decided to record her own album. Unlike other A list bands, who tend to be poor copies of whatever’s popular at the time, it’s a covers album.  Of Tom Waits songs.  Yes, that Tom Waits. 

What next? Keira Knightly records her own version of Trout Mask Replica?  

The song in question is one of Wait’s better ones, ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’. It’s basically a horn section and Wait’s voice, which sounds like a gravel pit with a forty-a-day habit. From the bottom of the bottle, Waits rasps on about the changes he’s going to make to his life after being spurned by a lover. It sounds something like a male ‘I Will Survive’ but in that fuzzy state of consciousness where your head is spinning and you lost coherent thought-processes ages ago.

While Johansson’s voice doesn’t add anything to the song, her vocals take away all the character and feeling. Waits fans aren’t going to want to listen to somebody murder a good song, so this must have been written for people that just happen to be fans of both. Or, more likely, it’s written for pretentious twunts who want both a bland, inoffensive recording by a famous face and something they can put on their iPod that’ll let other people think they are cultured and well-versed in popular music. 

Which is all well and good if you’re that kind of soulless parasite, but that means the rest of us have to put up with a steaming pile of shit.

Which is why I want you people to knifecrime me. Or at least, when I’ve made a few good films and start recording ‘Ugeine Sings Led Zeppelin in French’, please have the balls to tell me it’s rubbish.

I’d hate to inflict such a misjudged project on an unsuspecting public, simply to stroke my own ego and to give some idiots music cred points.

The Wave (Die Welle)

It must be difficult being German sometimes; moving on from the atrocities that dominated much of your country’s history in the last century whilst being respectful enough never to forget the lessons that were learnt. How many generations must offer remuneration before it feels like an inherited debt? How many populations must profess guilt before resenting the act? How many children must apologise for the sins of the fatherland before living memory passes on?

It’s an interesting subject, and one that cinematically Germany has only recently begun to address. The Edukators, Goodbye Lenin, The Lives of Others and Downfall are just four of the films that look at the behaviour and fallout of Germany’s turbulent political actions in the 20^th Century, told from the perspective of a nation coming to terms with its fascistic heritage.

The Wave is another of those films and looks at how, only three generations later, the nations youth are already desensitised to the atrocities of the second world war and the political misdirections of the post war years. ‘The Nazis sucked’ states one bling-clad student before he is swiftly indoctrinated by a class autocracy project gone wrong – ‘we get it’.

The Teacher is one of those hip teachers that only exist in movies; a Ramones loving punk, a leather-sporting smoker whose anarchic spirit never left him – despite a career of enthusing bored teenagers with politics. Teaching an autocracy project and shocked at the disinterest of the students, he creates a class gang called ‘The Wave’ and begins to demonstrate how easily tribal allegiances can be formed and how quickly fascistic characteristics can form.

He’s a fantastic teacher, because within two days he already has his autonomous gang of Droogs wearing identical uniforms, making MySpace pages with gang logos and terrorizing the town with a campaign of graffiti and aggressive hood wearing. Despite several prior scenes where the students quite aptly discussed the societal requirements of a rise to the right – financial upheaval, low unemployment, influx of immigrants etc – they abandon all intellectual interpretation of what is happening and instead embrace their new found mass because, like, it means they don’t get picked on at school, n’stuff

Before you can say “Disturbing Behaviour was just a rip off of The Stepford Wives” the Wave starts swelling in ranks, starts buying guns off the internet, starts picking fights with hilariously-dressed anarchists and starts organising support for the water polo team. By the third day the whole Breakfast Club has been swallowed – the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal – all revelling in the positive effects of mass uniformity.

Had the film tried to be more of a parable, staying within the confines of the school, it could have been much more interesting. Had it used the natural hierarchy of high school as a metaphor for society, or been more of a satire, it could have worked better.

As it stands it plays more like a horror film, where fascism lurks in the shadows, ready to pounce on any slightly disenfranchised teenager who feels the warmth of acceptance. It feels like the inverse of Red Dawn, where uniformity parachutes into the classrooms of a resting nation.

At the end, the teacher reveals that it was just a lesson, an example of how easily people can be lead towards fascism. Of course by now it’s now too late, the Wave are an autonomous mass of upheaval, calling for a conquering Germany and stringing up those who oppose them. A class project lasting six days has united a school and turned mallrats into an army… the audience gasp… the lesson has backfired… fascism has occurred again… the horror… the horror…

It’s a profoundly silly film – well-meaning and with some good ideas but ruined by a ridiculous timeframe and an over-simplified idea. What was initially an interesting debate soon turned into a version of the Blob, where the children fight a quite literal political enemy and not just a metaphoric political enemy that looks like a giant blob from outer space.

There’s still room out there for a really good movie about how the new generation of German youth view their country’s history, but this isn’t it. This is a quite entertaining, but accidentally funny horror film with good intentions, but very little self-awareness.

Newsgush – Total Recall

In our irregular, slightly unpopular news item we take a little look at Marketing magazine’s Adwatch feature, this time dated 15th October. And what a cracker it is this time around.

So – if you’ll do us the honour of casting your mind back – you’ll remember Adwatch gathers information from those rotten swines, the general public. Then –using computers – it figures out which ads are more easily recalled in the empty, addled and simple minds of the unwashed masses (that’s us).

Let’s have a look at the Top 5. At this point, please imagine ‘The Wizard’ by Paul Hardcastle playing in the background. Or click here if your imagination is feeble. 

5.) Greggs
I don’t actually remember ever seeing an ad for Greggs appear on my TV. I’m finding it difficult to believe they actually advertise, as the Greggs near my manor is essentially a doss-house for crackheads and ageing ladies of the night. Every time I walk past, it’s scattered with the flaking imagery of the Hackney undead. Perhaps they’re attracted by the delicious cream horns.

4.) Subway
Balls to Subway and their revolting food. Have you ever been in one?
It’s ridiculous. You stand in a queue and go along on a meet-and-greet with the chain-gang employees (no doubt being paid tiny peanuts) trying not to be pernickety about how many kernels of corn you want in your ridiculously elongated bap. If you ask for steak and cheese, they put a small tray containing a mass of what genuinely resembles bum-pickings into a microwave. It’s deeply unappetising. I can’t recall the advert.

3.) Hovis
Again – this one’s gone straight over my head – if I’ve ever seen it. Do people really buy bread based on an advert? I can’t say I’ve ever seen a loaf on TV and made a mental note to purchase one the next day at dawn. There are too many other thoughts banging around my brain like ‘if I don’t do some work in the office tomorrow I will get fired‘, ‘they should, one day, make a gameshow with a skyscraper made out of jenga blocks‘ and of course, the perpetual repeat-playing of the question ‘have I got a terminal disease?‘.

2.) Marks & Spencer
That’s more like it! Of course I remember this. M&S have pulled off the trick of putting a piece of crumpet in their advert, running around in her underwear again. The fact they do this every single time means this is a successful campaign. I like the fact that, in the new one, she’s running around a fairground in her smalls. If she’d tried that in any of the travelling fairs I attended as a child she’d have promptly been dragged off to a dark area behind a lorry by the feral-looking monster who ran the waltzers. Someone should have a word with that naughty French siren – and I’m volunteering.

1.) Confused.com

ARGH. AAAAARGH. AAAAAAAAARGH!
This advert makes me want to kill, maim and die. dot com. Lobotomised spectres walk around a white nothingness.com, containing only badly rendered cardboard-cutouts.com painted by children.com. It makes me confused.com and I can’t bear it. (dot com)

So there we have it. Once again, we see that the adverts we remember are, on the whole, the ones that…

a.) make us want to kill, or
b.) show us perfect-looking ladies running around in their pants.

Razorlight: Wire to Wire

 

Complete and utter dogshit.

 

 

 

And do your fucking shirt up, you ninny.