While the press has been full of doom-and-gloom stories about the "British film industry" (whatever that is) dying on its feet, 2012 proved to be yet another year in which the UK punched above its weight thanks to the work of adventurously non-parochial film-makers like Peter Strickland. In the extraordinary (anti)revenge thriller Katalin Varga (2009), writer/director Strickland unravelled a mythical archetype against the backdrop of the Carpathian mountains. Now, with Berberian Sound Studio (2012, Artificial Eye, 15), he turns his eye towards Italy and the evocatively vivid giallo-inflected horrors of Mario Bava, Dario Argento et al, which set the stylish template for a generation of saleably derivative American 70s schlockers.
The brilliantly versatile Toby Jones (whose Christmas TV performance in The Girl gave Anthony Hopkins a run for his money in the forthcoming Hitchcock) stars as Gilderoy, an uptight English sound engineer from Dorking who has been called to the continent to provide the aural effects for "The Equestrian Vortex", which he mistakenly imagines to be about horses. Faced with scenes of fearsomely gaudy brutality (the director, Santini, tells him that "no one has seen this 'orror on screen before"), Gilderoy retreats into dreams of the pastoral English countryside, inspired by letters from his mother detailing the changing birdsong in their garden back home. But as the new movie works its strange black magic, the line between fact and film, documentary and drama, starts to melt like a frozen frame of 35mm celluloid, burning its way into Gilderoy's tortured brain.
That Strickland should have conjured a supremely cineliterate fantasy is unsurprising. I detected nods to sources as diverse as Spanish director Fernando Trueba's The Mad Monkey (from Christopher Frank's French-language novel); Canadian maestro David Cronenberg's epochal Videodrome with its visions of the new flesh; Henri Georges Clouzot's unfinished Inferno, the subject of a recent revelatory behind-the-scenes investigation/reconstruction; and the celluloid incantations of Kenneth Anger – alongside (of course) everything from Suspiria to Amer.
At the centre of it all is the brilliant Jones, who has breathed life into everyone from Truman Capote to Dobby the house-elf, here proving that he doesn't need prosthetic makeup or complex computer graphics to transform his features from British bewilderment to something altogether more uncanny. It's a treat for the ears too, with indescribable sights conjured from the sound of pulverised vegetables negating the need to show the movie in whose reels Gilderoy becomes increasingly lost. Fittingly, this award-winning gem was released in the same year that Warp Films celebrated its 10th birthday, standing as a testament to the independent artistic spirit which the punchy production company helped foster in the UK. Along with the unexpected Danish costume drama A Royal Affair (from the equally anarchic Zentropa stable), this was my highlight of 2012 – adventurous, enigmatic and sound as a pound.
After raising the roof at FrightFest, the Irish monster-pic Grabbers (2012, Sony, 15) enjoyed only a fleeting UK cinema outing as a prelude to the DVD release on which its true fortunes depend. A raggedy mishmash of the creature-feature nostalgia of Tremors and the remote village-life intrigue of Local Hero, this enjoyable romp pits the residents of a tiny island against marauding tentacular space aliens which seem to have escaped from the set of Andrzej Zulawski's one-time video-nasty Possession. Delightfully, the vampire squid with a thirst for human blood turn out to be allergic to alcohol, so the best defence for the islanders is to descend en masse on the pub and get pissed. With its rambunctious cast, eye-catching scenery, chuckle-rich script and high production value CGI effects, Grabbers is gloopy, head-ripping fun – enjoyably broad in its comedic strokes, rewardingly blunt in comic-strip gore.
As far as I can tell, the only reason the American TV movie Code Name: Geronimo – The Hunt for Osama Bin Laden (2012, StudioCanal, 15) saw the inside of a UK cinema was to cash in on the growing buzz surrounding The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow's forthcoming Zero Dark Thirty. Her eye-opening, nail-biting reconstruction of well-rehearsed events turns war movie cliches on their head, but this depressingly formulaic back-slapping plodathon follows all the usual rules of engagement to the letter: macho military posturing – check; unfaithful servicemen's wives – check; blah blah blah. The only interesting thing is how much the failure of this by-numbers dirge-fest accentuates the radical ambitions and achievements of Bigelow's potential best film contender. Even with a curry and six-pack, this is dispiritingly disposable fare, and anyone watching at home will be sorely tempted to fast-forward or just change channels.
And so to Australia with A Few Best Men (2012, Disney, 15), in which a young British lad travels around the world to tie the knot with his beach-holiday sweetheart, his slappably "madcap" best mates in tow. From the moment you meet the bride's father's prizewinning ram and spy the mother's washing line, you wonder how long it's going to be before someone puts lipstick and underwear on the animal and shoves their hand up its arse. Not long at all, as it turns out.
Nor are we left disappointed as every other heavily telegraphed gag arrives honking and squawking like a freight train huffing and puffing its way into a station. See those big ball-shaped foliage things on the lawn? See that wedding tent by the cliff? Do you think… oh, sod it, you do the maths. Quite what Olivia Neutron Bomb is doing here (other than supporting home industries) is anyone's guess, although presumably the chance to play pissed up on booze and cocaine was a novelty. Bring back Xanadu.
