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Film inna pub: The Taking of the Pelham 123

Film // Steve // 6th May 2007

I'm breathing deeply, trying not to invent new earthquake-level swear words, about the decision by Harvey Weinstein to split Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse double feature into two for Europe, and hold them back 'til Autumn for the UK.

He might as well as well have provided the link to the torrent with the press release, 'cos that's what everyone is going to do now. I'd rather see it at the cinema, as always, but if they're going to butcher it...

Over at the newly done-up Rainbow on their inaugural film night on Monday, the boys from Soulsonic Cinema attempted to recreate the fleapit/video nasty/Grindhouse feel. I don't think they actually arranged for the pissed bloke to harangue the screen and make racist comments, but he fitted in.

All we needed was for a dirty raincoat type at the back, and it would've been like travelling back in time to Theatre One in Coventry. Mercifully Drunk Twat, with no other children of his own mental age around, got bored after about 20 minutes and left us to it.

You've seen the main feature "The Taking of the Pelham 123" about a million times, surely. Walter Matthau, as Lieutenant Gerber of the New York City Transit Police, engages in battle with Robert Shaw, a guy with "a heavy English accent" who "could be a fruitcake", given that's he's just hijacked a subway train.

It's ace, you love it, but this was probably one time too many for me. I could sing along to much of the fruity Noo Yoik dialogue - "...I'm gonna nail his pecker to the goddamned wall for this", etc.

But the best bit for me was the trailers and ads the Soulsonic chaps showed at the start. Short films and trailers work much better in a pub environment - as proved by the wonderful 7inch cinema, who also play at the Rainbow.

We've dragged out the clips that played that evening from YouTube. I'd forgotten about this Kinder egg commercial from the 80s: I didn't like it at the time, but now I find it really disturbing. Kids, look away now.

"And now my little flower, I'm gonna taste your honey." This is "Turkey Shoot" - also known as "Blood Camp Thatcher"...

And now, an Italian hunchback going gun crazy in "Rome Armed to the Teeth" - also known as "The Tough Ones":

The Soulsonic boys played the English version: it didn't make much more sense, and it didn't really need to. The soundtrack, by Franco Micalizzi, sounds blasting too.

But the top trailer, the piece de resistance - or more appropriately, the capo di tutti capi, was this fantastically over-the-top trailer for Duke Mitchell's "Godfather" exploitation flick "Massacre Mafia Style" (IMDB plot keywords:Spy, Crucifixion, Desk Lamp, Electrocution, Execution):

The other Duke Mitchell picture, "Gone with the Pope" is also on YouTube. Plotline: Duke wants to kidnap the Pope and charge every Catholic one dollar. All I can think of is the administration overhead. The YouTube'd trailer is massively NSFW, don't say we didn't warn you.

Film night is every Monday at the Rainbow in Digbeth, Birmingham.