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Reviews
Number Seventeen (1932)
If this is your first Hitchcock film, don't do it.
There's no chance this will ever be called a classic, though it's nowhere near as bad as it's been painted.
Whatever you do, make sure that you watch the first five minutes. Hitchcock clearly has had a lot of fun showing off the tricks of the trade that he had learned in Germany, and the film is often a delight to watch.
On the other hand, the plot is complete tripe, and it can start to grate in the middle of this short film. People get captured and freed more often than in an old Doctor Who episode. But the basic plot can't be that awful -- it has been used regularly enough in the cinema -- groups of strangers gather by accident in a deserted house and are rarely what they seem. And when did anybody worry about consistencies in the plot of a Hitchcock film? However, if you get tired of the nonsense that develops, simply fast-forward to the final, and very long, chase sequence, which is genuinely exciting (even if there's more of the capture and rescue). There's a twist, a happy ending, and a cheery laugh to round everything off, which is a trick Hitchcock didn't learn in Germany.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Good Evening Aberdeen!
BBC4 last night showed the legendary 1976 documentary, So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star, which is said to have been the inspiration behind Spinal Tap. At last I got to see it! If you missed it, make sure you're watching the next time the BBC repeats it (which doubtlessly it'll be doing for years). It takes up just over an hour of your time, and it is hilarious.
The group featured in the documentary, The Kursaal Flyers, are also second-rate, but far seedier than Spinal Tap. The documentary starts with Pocket Money, a song that contains a riff you'll quickly recognise from the film. The lyrics are stupid, the instrumental is bad, and the group have attitude. Their conversations are unbelievably plonking. And the documentary just goes on like this, swinging from bathos to bathos. The director must have known he had a classic.
In writing this, I don't mean to diminish Rob Reiner's film in any way at all, only to guide you to a wonderful documentary that will greatly add to your pleasure.