Go Fuck an Iceberg! A Brit's Take on Guns, Tits and Other Fun Movie Stuff: Ice Dog Movie Guide, #1

By Dave Franklin

A bawdy, politically incorrect and scattershot guide focusing on movies from the last half of the 20th century.

 

Dave Franklin has also written ten novels.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baby Ice Dog Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201440091

Dave Franklin

Dave Franklin is a Brit who lives Down Under. He has also written ten novels ranging from dark comedy and horror to crime and hardcore porn. His naughty work includes Looking for Sarah Jane Smith (2001), Begin the Madness: The Straitjacket Blues Trilogy (2014), The Muslim Zombies (2018) & Welcome to Wales, Girls: A Violent Odyssey of Pornographic Filth (2018).

Book preview

The Ten-Year Summer of Jenny

So who’s your dream movie girl?

The one who gets your heart pumping?

The one so far removed from your mundane existence that if you’re honest you know you’re not worthy to share the same planet. In fact, you’re not even sure such a divine vixen is from Earth. Perhaps God lowered her from the heavens to give you an unobtainable glimpse of perfection for no other reason than he hates you and wants you to suffer.

Who knows?

But one thing’s sure: Throughout the ages generations of sad, lovelorn men have pined for a particular pin-up girl, some beguiling beauty they would not only respect and adore, but want to do really peculiar things with, like talk to deep into the night and maybe even raise children together. In the fifties such men often fixated on Marilyn Monroe atop a subway grate pushing down her billowing skirt. Before long they were trying to shove Bond out of the way in a bid to get at a wet, bikini-clad Ursula Andress rising from the surf. A little later the doe-eyed sexpot Susan George sauntered along. Femme fatale Kathleen Turner might have been next with her sensationally steamy debut while a magnetic Scarlett Johansson captivated endless hearts during her Tokyo sojourn.

Then again, maybe you’re a weirdo who always fancied a roll in the hay with the Wicked Witch of the West.

And me? Little ol’ me? Who was the one I most wanted to run hand in hand through a summer meadow toward a glorious setting sun before shyly asking if I could spank her?

Jenny.

Jenny Agutter.

Sure, there were the curves and a pleasing tendency to disrobe, but there was also that cute, upturned nose, the obvious intelligence behind those limpid green eyes, and the lilting, ever so posh voice. Seriously, no one enunciates like Jenny. That girl could dismiss me in person as an inadequate pustule who needs to stop objectifying women and start filing some accurate tax returns and it’d be pure bliss to hear my worthless name entangled within such beautiful diction.

And apart from all that, she’s a very good actress who made three bloody terrific movies.

Girl in Walkabout (1971)

OK, so this is the one with a teenage Jenny in a school uniform wandering around the Outback. The same one in which she discards the aforementioned uniform and goes for a nude swim accompanied by a lush orchestral score...

O Lord, help me. Help me find the necessary restraint to keep my hot, blurred thoughts somewhere within the realms of decency and write something that won’t bring the cops rushing to my door...

Best forget that particular scene for now. I’ll just say it’s difficult to find a visually richer movie. Of course, director Nicolas Roeg had already provided some eye-catching cinematography on terrific movies like The Masque of Red Death, but the look of Walkabout really is a triumph. Filled with indelible images of an ancient landscape, it’s packed with scorpions, frilled lizards, red sand dunes, eagles, curious wombats, giant termite mounds, slithering snakes, playful cockatoos, bleached animal bones, Jenny in a school uniform...

Stop it, Dave. Just get a bloody grip.

Anyhow, it also has one of my favourite beginnings to a movie, a strange, essentially unexplained passage in which an uptight father takes his two children into the desert ostensibly for a picnic. One moment he’s checking some complex work notes and half-scolding his very young son for talking with his mouth full of candy, the next he’s trying to kill them at a distance with a pistol, a half-hearted escapade that simply results in him setting the car on fire and turning the gun on himself.

Jenny does exactly what you’d expect a somewhat perturbed schoolgirl to do and immediately leaves the burning vehicle and gets the hell out of there. For a while she amusingly tries to keep up a sense of normalcy, shielding her kid brother from the truth while telling him to take care of his blazer and not ruin his shoes.

We don’t want people thinking we’re a couple of tramps, she primly says, rather than doing her best to find food and shelter. But, of course, two rich, white softies are never gonna last long in such unforgiving terrain. At a rapidly drying waterhole, a teenage Aborigine (the ever reliable David Gulpilil) turns up and immediately shows the parched pair how to get water, leaving them no choice but to accompany him on his walkabout...

This is a movie that needs repeat viewings in a bid to grasp it all. It certainly doesn’t go the way you expect. Rather than despairing at their life-threatening predicament, both the relentlessly polite Jenny and her amazingly agreeable brother seem to adapt well, frequently appearing to be at one with nature. Race is barely mentioned. There’s even an odd humorous interlude involving a bunch of lecherous meteorologists, which underlines what an idiosyncratic filmmaker Roeg is. He utilizes a style that includes still photography, time jumps and reversals while flicking through some scenes as if newspaper pages are being turned. What’s more none of the characters have any names so you can come up with whatever interpretation you like, but there’s most probably some Garden of Eden stuff going on.

There’s also a constant play on the similarities and contrasts between Outback and city life. Didgeridoo music accompanies shots of busy streets. Rock faces are compared to brick walls. Kangaroos are graphically clubbed while a High Street butcher chops up meat with a cleaver. And although we like to think we’re more civilized and clever than spear-chucking darkies who plod around in the burning sun with fly-infested lizards tied to their midriffs, we’re the ones trying to murder our children. We’re the ones who have no clue how to live off the land. We’re the ones who’ve lost touch with something intangible yet vital.

Furthermore, our cruelties are woven throughout, sometimes in the most subtle ways, such as a cookery show radio presenter casually giving details of a gourmet delicacy that includes keeping a young bird in a light-deprived box until it’s old enough to be drowned in cognac.

About the only thing that’s predictable in this masterpiece is our Aboriginal hero finally grasping Jenny’s as cute as a button. Now while I can’t blame the guy for having a go, wooing a girl by daubing yourself with white paint, sticking feathers in your hair and doing a wide-eyed jerky dance is never gonna end well. And how do I know? I once tried the very same thing at a school disco with the pig-tailed, off-limits Tracey Sharpe. Took years to live that one down.

Anyhow, Walkabout works as a beautiful mood piece, an unsentimental coming of age drama, an allegorical puzzle, and an unorthodox piece of cinema without any pretentious overtones. More than half a century later, its reputation remains undimmed. It really is lightning in a bottle stuff.

Oh yeah, and if you ever get badly sunburned, try smearing on some cooked kangaroo guts.

Jessica-6 in Logan’s Run (1976)

Amusingly lampooned by that freebasing horn dog Richard Pryor for presenting a future dystopia entirely devoid of blacks, the sci-fi cult favourite Logan’s Run is most definitely not without its faults. It’s campy, very much a movie of two halves, and suffers from a lazy, Dr Who-style ending in which an all-powerful computer shits its pants simply because it doesn’t like the answers it’s given.

On the plus side, Jenny is skimpily dressed throughout and goes for another nudey swim.

Set in 2274, Run begins with a bang as we witness the dramatic spectacle of Carrousel, a rejuvenating process everyone must undergo upon reaching thirty. White cloaked figures enter a revolving arena in front of a wildly cheering crowd as a calm female voice intones: Be strong and you will be renewed. They then magically levitate before being shot by a laser from a giant crystal. It’s quite obviously ritualized murder on a grand scale, but the city’s inhabitants have long been brainwashed into thinking they will immediately be reborn as babies.

Silly sods.

State cop Francis-7 (Richard Jordan), a vaguely sadistic bully who’s employed to hunt down and kill anyone who tries to skip their big day, is all for Carrousel. Keeps everything in balance, he tells best mate and colleague Logan-5 (Michael York). One is terminated, one is reborn. Simple, logical, perfect.

This is a convincing setup as well as a concise explanation for how controlling, essentially evil societies can slither into being and continue to function. The first hour presents a well-realized, youth-obsessed world. Life is hedonistic, dominated by technology, and lived entirely within the city’s great domes. Not sure about all those escalators, though.

However, Logan’s cushy existence of state-sanctioned murder begins to unravel after beaming Jessica-6 into his living room for a bit of uncomplicated nookie. For a start she won’t bang him despite turning up nearly naked. And while nursing a prime set of blue balls his life clock’s fast forwarded and he’s given a worrying mission to find and destroy Sanctuary, a place outside the city where all those who’ve fled Carrousel allegedly end up.

There’s so much to love here, especially the colourful, well-designed sets, Jerry Goldsmith’s great score, the cool handguns that cause a ball of fire to erupt on their target, the automated flying cleaners that spray acid onto newly terminated Runners, the convincing deterioration of Logan and Francis’ friendship, the memorably mad, seven-foot tall Box who’s obviously some bloke encased in shiny silver cardboard standing on a skateboard, and the younger cast members who look like they’re limbering up to appear in the next Pat Benatar video.

Sadly director Michael Anderson drops the ball when a catfight between Jenny and Farrah Fawcett lasts less than two seconds, surely depriving 70s cinema of one of its greatest scenes in which they roll around tearing each other’s clothes off. The pace also flags following the city exit where the running pair is sappily won over by the old-fashioned ramblings of an aging Peter Ustinov, who plays his part with a full range of tics like a chubby, pussy-obsessed Rain Man.

Still, there’s a fair bit of thought-provoking meat in this tasty sandwich. Walkabout perhaps illustrated a biblical story, but I see Run more as a religious allegory highlighting the dangers of blindly accepting ingrained beliefs. Sanctuary is a stand-in for heaven, people are happy to kill to protect the most ridiculous lies and... Hey, did I tell you at one point a lucky lizard darts up Jenny’s lovely thigh and disappears under her mini-skirt?

Alex Price in An American Werewolf in London (1981)

First seen in a crisp white uniform opening a hospital room blinds, Alex Price is so wholesome and delectable throughout this horror classic that you’re unlikely to ever encounter a more idealized version of a nurse. This is a relentlessly compassionate caregiver. She’ll cut up your food and slip appetizing morsels into your mouth. She’ll sit alongside and read to you. She’s good with kids. She won’t arrange for you to be lobotomized like certain other nurses. And after you’ve been discharged, she’ll invite you into her warm bed, not even minding too much if you end up sprouting hair and fangs and slaughtering a whole bunch of people.

Christ, if you took a girl like this home to meet the folks they’d be offering to pay for a full-blown church wedding and month-long Caribbean honeymoon before the evening was out.

David Naughton is the lucky bastard on the end of her tender care after surviving an attack by a lycanthrope on the Yorkshire moors. Three weeks later he wakes up in a London hospital to be told his best mate is toast, an escaped lunatic was to blame, and there’s nothing more to be done.  Well, who cares about such frivolities when Jenny’s at your bedside attending to your every whim? As a doctor tells him: Nurse Price will see to all your needs.

Too bloody right.

You can even tell the exact moment Naughton gets smitten. He wakes up in bed and secretly watches her stretch like some super sexy kitten with breasts and no fur. Before long she’s taken him back to her apartment. A steamy shower follows, allowing him to lather the small of her back in the shower as she nibbles his shoulder.

And of course that’s me in there with her. Every single time.

(Well, why bother with reality when fantasy is always so much more comforting? For the record I once had to go into a British hospital when my waterworks went wrong. Did I get to meet the equivalent of Nurse Price and bask in her saintly care? Did I fuck. But I can recall awkwardly lowering myself into a bath to soak off the bloodied dressings only for a stout, middle-aged nurse to barge in, stare between my legs and grunt in a vaguely contemptuous way: "Urgh! That looks sore.")

Anyhow, American Werewolf is undoubtedly one of the great horror comedies, a Limey love letter that contains an extraordinary number of things aside from Jenny to recommend it. The mood is perfectly set by the opening shots of the chilly moors as the melancholy bars of Blue Moon spring up. Then there are the whacked-out regulars at The Slaughtered Lamb (You made me miss), some great jump out of your seat moments, and a startling transformation scene that remains the wolf’s bollocks. Not to mention a naked man running around London Zoo stealing balloons and a bunch of whiney undead in a porno theatre.

Still, it’s a little strange how a Yank like John Landis managed to make such a quintessentially English movie. This is a flick full of red telephone boxes, ridiculously polite, arrest-averse Bobbies on the beat, eccentric folk in centuries-old rural pubs, and businessmen with clipped accents carrying briefcases and furled umbrellas. Not to mention the shots of iconic landmarks like Tower Bridge, scenes set on the London Underground, and plentiful jokes about the crud weather, the Royal Family and tabloid newspapers.

And, of course, radiant at the centre of all this Englishness is Jenny Agutter, the supreme English rose.

Savage Streets (1984)

After starring in The Exorcist at the tender age of fourteen, the world was Linda Blair’s pea green vomit-covered oyster.

She followed up that groundbreaking horror classic with the stodgily directed TV movie Born Innocent and the much-mocked Airport 1975, whose main contribution to cinema was helping birth the glorious Airplane!

In spite of their rampant lack of quality, both Innocent and Airport were massive hits. Linda was on a hot streak, but in 1977 she put her hand up for the inevitable Exorcist sequel.

Oops.

Jesus Christ, have you seen this incoherent, continent-hopping abomination? Despite attracting a heavyweight director and a newly crowned Best Actress Oscar winner in Louise Fletcher, the giggles start escaping the moment an apparently drunk woman attempts some menacing tribal singing over the opening credits. One of its major problems is that Regan is happy and well-adjusted but the priestly, po-faced Richard Burton decides otherwise, spending the whole uproarious gig trying to find a cure she doesn’t need.

There’s literally no conflict.

All The Exorcist’s obscenity and danger have been removed, replaced by stuff like Burton catatonically catching a train and James Earl Jones pretending to be a leopard.

Still, Burton does deserve credit for managing to keep a straight face throughout, even though he’s saddled with the most staggeringly absurd dialogue at the fag end of an increasingly sad career. The entire two hours is an unholy mess of locusts, flashing lights and tap dancing, remaining bizarrely horror-free until the craptastic last ten minutes when the old bucking bed puts in an appearance.

And Linda?

She’s eighteen years old and radiantly beautiful here and... Oh, that’s it, actually. She can’t get a handle on her role anymore than the viewer, cast adrift by the fact she’s no longer possessed by a demon and Ellen Burstyn’s very wise decision to run for the hills. Her career (or at least her chance of ever starring again in quality fare) suffered accordingly, such was the colossal stink of this fascinating (and very watchable) fuckup.

Next was 1979’s Roller Boogie in which she strapped on roller skates to tackle mobsters before the new decade saw her sink up to her pretty brown eyes in a mire of exploitation/grindhouse trash.

Not that I’m complaining.

Let the likes of Meryl Streep gather those Oscar nods for playing holocaust survivors and nuclear whistle blowers while mastering one fancy accent after another. Who wants to work with Spielberg and Scorsese when you can do Halloween rip-offs and the straight to video thing instead? By the mid-80s, Linda, whether she liked it or not, was already well on her way to becoming a cult actress banged up in dyke-filled prisons or morphing into a leather-clad avenger in reprehensible garbage like Savage Streets.

Mind you, don’t go thinking reprehensible garbage is anything other than the warmest of recommendations. This movie is a very funny blast, ideally accompanied by cold beer and hooting mates. It’s as simplistic as Death Wish II and almost as nasty, continually making me regard the crossbow-toting Linda as nothing less than Bronson With Tits.

So, where to start?

Well, I might as well introduce you to the four-strong boy gang called the Scars that Linda (playing a sassy high school girl) eventually goes up against. These are the sort of guys who are always monkeying around, mock-fighting and grabbing each other’s crotches. They’re adorned with bandanas, leather waistcoats and studded wristbands. At night they cruise the streets, swigging beer and gesticulating at other drivers. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to think they’re cool and rebellious, but after a couple of minutes in their two-dimensional company I just wanted them to die in a fireball. Anyhow, although they’re very likely to fail to obey traffic signs, they simply don’t seem capable of gang rape and tossing pregnant brides-to-be off viaducts.

Their leader is Jake. He sports a black leather jacket and a razorblade earring. He mainly snarls and grimaces, although sometimes he will grimace and snarl. Disconcertingly, he bears a strong resemblance to the 80s Irish pop singer Feargal Sharkey so I shall call him Evil Feargal from now on.

His immediate subordinate is Fargo, who loves showing off his taut upper half. He looks like a muscular version of Joanie Cunningham from Happy Days. And do Evil Feargal and Muscular Joanie enjoy a kiss at any point? Well, yes, and Muscular Joanie is topless at the time, but... but... before you go launching any gay slurs at these fine, upstanding young men you do need to put things in context. Namely, they immediately laugh it off and there isn’t a second peck. Only someone with a really twisted agenda would hint at a homo-erotic underpinning, especially as they spend so much time discharging their sexual energy by spitting out lines at Linda like: The game’s over, bitch. First, I’m gonna fuck you. Then I’m gonna slice you into pieces. I’m sure you’ll agree that such a superheated avalanche of misogyny counts far more in establishing their true sexual orientation than one jokey, brief meeting of male lips.

Next we have Red, whose fondness for teased hair and eyeliner suggest he’s about to head off to a Cure concert. Finally, we get the only member of the gang still in high school. He’s amusingly lacking in height, is plagued by a conscience that continually pisses the others off, and looks like a shit-scared, baby-faced Al Pacino.

In truth, it’s baffling why the Scars so badly want Scared Al (who’s just not into anything they do) to remain in their loving embrace. I guess it’s because without him there’d only be three, a decrease that might lead to a bit of insecurity. I mean, if another one dropped out, they’d be down to two and no one in their right mind could call two people a gang. Then they’d just be mates.

Meanwhile, Linda shows up swaggering along the street with her five besties. From the first sight of her on full beam in a tight, off-the-shoulder, braless top, it’s clear she’s going to let the jiggling magnificence of her splendid breasts do the bulk of her acting. Her crew includes her deaf-mute virginal sis, a Mexican about to get married, and a token black. Apart from sis (who’s treated like she’s brain-damaged), these are straight-talking, no bullshit kind of gals, who smoke and swear and have an earthy attitude toward sex.

At one point they pop into a newsagent to giggle over Playgirl. Would you check out the schlong on him? one shrieks. I bet he has to put it on the nightstand when he goes to bed! Another adds: Hey, anything over ten inches is a waste, I always say. Frankly, this kind of sexist banter is demeaning, but as the ladies in question are highly fuckable I’ll let it slide.

Next they peek in a shop window containing guns, bear traps and crossbows. It’s the sort of place you just don’t get on a British or Australian high street, adding weight to my theory that Yanks have to be among the most fucked-up people on the planet. This small scene is important because it’s where Linda will later acquire all her weapons and complete her awesome transformation into the mighty Bronson With Tits.

Anyhow, they then cross paths with the Scars, who almost (but unintentionally) run down the deaf-mute sis. This leads the angry girls to pinch their car, go joyriding and abandon it filled with garbage. Frankly, it’s little more than a skirmish and we’re soon at school in the delightful company of Principal Underwood, played by John Vernon.

I’m sure you know this guy. I just love him. He’s the one with a weatherworn face and an amazingly rich voice, appearing in a boatload of classics such as Point Blank, Charley Varrick, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Animal House and, of course, the flustered mayor in Dirty Harry. How he sank so low in such a short time is a mystery, but perhaps an awful lot of luck is needed when it comes to choosing the right projects (see Linda Blair). Here he gets second billing, despite only appearing in three or four scenes and making no contribution to the plot whatsoever.

But boy, does he make the most of it. He wears a sour expression that telegraphs both his utter disdain for know-it-all punks and having to work at a place where every day is obviously a bit shittier than the last.

And then there’s his dialogue. Never in my life have I heard a high school principal caress the English language like this silver-tongued educator.

Go fuck an iceberg, he tells Evil Feargal after catching the Scars wandering around the corridors. Why don’t you take your faggot asses out of here?

Elsewhere in the gym, Linda’s deaf-mute sis is sweetly giving her a heart-shaped necklace, prompting Linda to hug her and say: Oh God, I love you so much. In the background you can almost see someone holding up a placard which states: Uh-oh. The retard is about to get horribly abused and killed.

But even though the signposting is clear, we’re not really prepared for the sheer viciousness of the revenge in which the Scars take turns to fuck her on a toilet floor. Given those feisty gals only borrowed and dirtied their car, it’s a pretty excessive reaction, but I guess if they just decided to call them names and maybe egg a window or two there wouldn’t have been much of a movie.

Scared Al, of course, has to prove his manhood and gang allegiance by being forced to commit the first rape. I’m not sure how being slapped, half-stripped and shoved between a sobbing girl’s legs encourages a clearly half-terrified teenage rapist to perform, but he still manages to take her cherry with a decisive thrust. Plus, he’s even kind enough to not deface her naked flesh Death Wish-style like the others.

Meanwhile, instead of looking out for her helpless sis, Linda is having a full-on locker room catfight with a busty blonde who accuses her of sniffing around her boyfriend.

Linda is unfazed. That faggot? she replies in a diplomatic master class. You stupid, stuck-up cunt... I wouldn’t fuck him if he had the last dick on Earth. Amazingly, this doesn’t cool the situation, the inevitable brawl somehow resulting in two other naked girls having a separate tussle. In other words, a double catfight. Savage Streets surely deserves credit for introducing such an inspired innovation.

After the fight is broken up by the gym teacher, Linda is sent to Principal Underwood. Her appearance in his office clearly does little to improve this poor guy’s mood. A year earlier in the groovy Chained Heat he’d played prison warden to Linda’s wide-eyed convict. In that WIP movie at least he had a hot tub in his office to ease away his stress. No such perks during their reunion in this rundown inner-city school. Now he has to put up with a smirking Linda playing with her black finger gloves and lighting a fag, an in-your-face attitude that suggests he’s not generating the greatest of respect.

I don’t understand it, he gently begins in his latest attempt to offer sage advice. "You’re a bright girl, got a pretty face, a good figure." Er, who wrote this? In which corner of the universe do principals speak this way to teenage girls?

Linda, of course, stomps off, telling her waiting posse outside that Underwood’s a moron who’s been trying to get into her pants since she was a fresher. This might actually be true. A few moments later they discover the sister’s appalling violation. Somehow those spirited gals are stumped about who did it, despite their rumble with the Scars the previous night. As they tearfully talk things through in their nightclub hangout, they’re asked what the school is going to do.

Linda can only sneer. Put us in the gym and make some speech, she says. Even the cops are a bunch of pussies. It’s up to us to put things right.

Wow.

Not even one scene in which police officers are shown to be ineffective, disdainful wimps that would rather protect the perps than do their job. Or perhaps the implication of a broken ‘system’ was so subtle I missed it. Anyway, vigilantism is obviously the only solution. Cue Linda’s very appealing transformation into Bronson With Tits. Events quickly spiral out of control with all the panache of being hit over the head with a house brick and having it rammed up your ass. And then being hit over the head with another house brick.

I’m not going to spoil the rest for you, but I will say a tarted-up Bronson With Tits looks better in a black cat suit than the bare-chested, early-seventies Bronson could ever hope to. Savage Streets is a sleazy, triumphant whirlwind of priceless dialogue, cheesy songs, explicit group showers, appalling behaviour in bouncer-free nightclubs, another even more graphic catfight I didn’t have time to detail, well-meaning teachers who encourage students to wax lyrical about oral sex, and a fiery warehouse finale. Females were clearly cast on the basis of their breast size, which I guess is as good a measure as any (and if acting skills were required, I’m not sure Linda would have made the cut). Surprisingly, there’s even a dollop of suspense as it takes our no-shit star more than an hour to unveil her sensational goodies in the bath.

In 1990, six years after this indefensible piece of sordid schlock, Linda’s career came full circle when she spoofed her demonic self in Repossessed, a comedy that was sadly nowhere near as funny as Exorcist II. Now in her sixties, and with only a handful of movies made over the last couple of decades, a late career renaissance appears unlikely. Will she look back and be disappointed at the near-total absence of quality?

Who knows?

But one thing’s for sure. She’s had a pretty interesting life and is held very dearly in the hearts of cult movie enthusiasts. She also got to star in The Exorcist which trumps anything you and I are ever gonna do.

Now go fuck an iceberg.

Ten Memorable Acts of Violence

Growing up in 1980’s Britain with the video nasty scare, I implicitly absorbed movie violence was bad and if I watched enough I’d one day take an axe to random passersby. Now while this proved unfortunately true, most people remain unaffected. In fact, someone like you has probably already forgotten hundreds, if not thousands of murders and maimings. Perhaps that’s because for onscreen violence to really hit home it has to be part of a well-constructed illusion.

You have to be engaged.

And let’s face it, an awful lot of movies (especially violence-heavy slashers and torture porn) are nothing more than a ropey load of old bollocks. But sometimes, just sometimes, an act of cruelty in a well-staged film sneaks through and lodges in your head. It might be Leatherface hoisting a thrashing victim onto a meat hook, a pinioned Rick Deckard having a couple of fingers snapped by a none-too-happy replicant, or the unbelievably gruesome, scissors-based demise of the Castle Rock killer.

Hell, we’ve all seen stuff we just can’t let go.

Here are ten brutal snippets of celluloid carnage I’ll take to my no doubt lonely grave.

Comic Violence: Fargo

Now we all know in these PC times you have to say there’s nothing funny about violence but, well, an awful lot of Fargo’s fucked-up shit is funny. Frances McDormand may have nabbed an Oscar for her role as the pregnant cop, but for