Tuesday 26 May 2015


Biggles (AKA Biggles: Adventures in Time)
Dir: John Hough
1986
**
After the cult Dirty Mary Carzy Larry and the family favorites Escape and Return to Which Mountain, Biggles should have been John Hough's big action blockbuster opportunity to finally make his career. How it went so terribly wrong is puzzling, I mean, how did they not realise in 1986 how bad the film looked? How did they not see that the leading man, Alex Hyde-White, had all the charisma and screen appeal of a brick? The script is pretty awful, the acting abysmal and the effects a little tired. It was 1986 and they had money, there is no good excuse. I believe they relied far too much on Peter Cushing's involvement to get people to the cinemas. In its defense though, it had some scary and quite gory scenes, Neil Dickson was absolutely perfect as Biggles and I actually quite liked the cheesy 80's music, even though it was woefully inappropriate. Too be honest, I liked seeing the 80's London I grew up in the most. It's not 'So bad it's good' but it has the same curiosity appeal that those films generally have and I couldn't look away, no matter how much I tried. John Hough followed it up with two of the worst horror films I've ever seen; American Gothic and Howling IV.


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