Mubi Monday: The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford (2026)

You may struggle to find many glowing reviews for this film, but everything else I have seen written about it online seems to share one common compliment: Peter Mullan is fantastic in the lead role. If you have also seen all of those other reviews then you may as well skip this one. I'm in complete agreement with most people. This is an okay film, at best, but it's lifted up by Peter Mullan being fantastic in the lead role.

Mullan plays Kenneth, a tour guide in a small Scottish town who takes great pride in telling people all about a local notable figure, Sir Douglas Weatherford. Nobody really seems to understand the historical importance of the man though, or maybe Kenneth is in the wrong for trying to maintain the legacy of someone who has already been forgotten, if he was ever known at all, by so many. The town suddenly becomes very busy, however, when a very popular TV show is filmed there, resulting in an influx of fans, which means even more people who aren't all that interested in what Kenneth has to tell them.

What could have been a fantastic comedy drama exploring the ideas of tourism, the preservation of history, and small communities trying to stay thriving and relevant, often by any means necessary, is, sadly, a huge missed opportunity. Having lived in Edinburgh for numerous decades, I know very well what division is caused when businesses and entire areas focus on catering to the money coming in from the tourist industry. I also know that I have enjoyed visiting various small villages and sites throughout the UK, and further afield, and have been more than happy to play the role of the grinning tourist happy to be the centre of so much attention, relatively speaking, as I decided to spend some of my money on tat and souvenirs that often end up languishing in a box somewhere in the darkness of the attic. 

Having given himself such a great starting point to work from, writer-director Seán Dunn helps himself further with a very good cast, a perfect location for the fictional area being depicted, and a unique and wonderful score from Gazelle Twin. Which all makes it even more frustrating that he doesn't do well enough when it comes to the clarity and sharpness of the points that he wants to make.

It would be redundant for me to praise Mullan here once again, take that as given, although it is worth saying that this is, for all the faults of the film itself, one of the best roles he's ever had, in terms of screentime and being allowed to carry a movie with a mix of humour and grit. Jakob Oftebro is pretty good, playing the star actor who becomes the lightning rod for what our main character so strongly dislikes, Lewis MacDougall is fun as a youngster who ends up assisting in an attempted push back against the pandering to the TV show fanbase, and both Saskia Ashdown and Gayle Rankin do very good work as women who, for different reasons, end up concerned for men in their lives. 

I didn't chuckle much, I didn't really stay invested in the fate of the main character, and I didn't appreciate the many ways in which this fell flat. I do consider some of the film thought-provoking, but only in the way that I was often thinking about how there was a much better film to be made from this concept. But, and feel free to repeat after me, Mullan is fantastic in the lead role.

4/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing. All links are HERE.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Shudder Saturday: The Stuff (1985)

This is the second film in as many days that I have revisited with a very different "head on my shoulders". I first saw The Stuff when I was about 12 years old. It was a horror (apparently) that I'd already heard plenty about, with most people being interested in it due to one fun scene occurring during the final act, and I wasn't disappointed when I finally got to see it. It had the strangeness, it had the gloopy moments, and it had that fun scene as a highlight. AND I wasn't too scared by the time the end credits rolled. In fact, I don't think I was scared at all.

What I can see nowadays is that The Stuff is a damn fine satire, something that would be obvious to many viewers but wasn't obvious to 12-year-old me. It's a film about whatever makes the special sauce so special. The trademarked recipes of Coca Cola and those KFC flavours? The Stuff highlights the dangers of not knowing exactly what we're eating . . . especially when it is something that could also be eating us.

Things get started quite quickly, when a group of workers discover a white substance seeping out of the ground. It's sweet, it's addictive, it's soon packaged up and being sold to every consumer as The Stuff, a fine new product with no artificial ingredients and no calories. But it's not as good as it might first appear. It might even be alive, which alarms a young boy (Jason, played by Scott Bloom) when he sees it move. He's not the only one who becomes aware of the sentient nature of The Stuff. There's also David 'Mo' Rutherford (Michael Moriarty), an ex-FBI agent now working on his own, and currently hired by businessmen who want to know more about the sensation that is affecting their own businesses.

Written and directed by the talented Larry Cohen, The Stuff has just the right mix of comedy and thrills to hold up as a fun bit of entertainment. It might not be as scary or gross as it could be, with the horror coming more from the idea than the effects on display, but it has a couple of really good set-pieces (one involving Jason hiding inside a tanker) and is a lot smarter than some might expect, although fans of Cohen should always know that he likes to deliver a decent amount of subtext and thought-provocation with his thrills.

Moriarty is great in the role of Mo, especially in the times when he explains why he goes by that name (altering it slightly, depending on who he is speaking to), and Bloom is very good as the teenager lashing out at something without any idea of how to properly deal with the situation. Andrea Marcovicci is the main female, an advertising executive who sees the error of her ways, and she does equally good work, and you get Garrett Morris giving a memorable turn as 'Chocolate Chip' Charlie, as well as small roles for Danny Aiello and Paul Sorvino.

Time has been kind to The Stuff, perhaps because viewers can now approach it as the satire it is rather than the horror it was marketed as, and I think it's one well worth revisiting, or checking out for the first time. It may even become one you go back to often. Because, as the advert says, enough is never enough.

7/10

You can try to get enough of The Stuff here.
Americans can have their fill here.

The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver (1960)

Based loosely on the classic novel by Jonathan Swift, The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver is a superior fantasy with plenty of comedic moments throughout, both satirical and non-satirical. It benefits from decent special effects, some of which come from the great Ray Harryhausen.

The story begins with a good doctor named Lemuel Gulliver (Kerwin Mathews) considering some time at sea. This would make him a good bit of money, something that keeps causing trouble between himself and his good lady, Elizabeth (June Thorburn). Despite her protests, Lemuel heads off, only to discover that Elizabeth has stowed herself on board. One bit of bad weather lately and our hero finds himself washed up on a strange shore. It is the land of Lilliput, a land full of tiny people. Lemuel eventually manages to calm the inhabitants of the island, but finds himself in the middle of a war between Lilliput and the nearby island of Blefuscu. The cause of the war is so ridiculous that it would seem to be something easily resolved. Sadly, thats not the case. When Lemuel finally gets away from the island he ends up on the island of Brobdingnag and is reunited with Elizabeth. The only problem is that they are now two tiny people in a land of giants. That wouldn't be so bad, if only Lemuel didn't try to educate his hosts and make himself appear to be a very talented witch.

The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver works as well as it does thanks to the script written by Arthur A. Ross and director Jack Sher. It may not cover every part of the original novel, but it takes the essence of the whole thing (and the most well-known aspects) and still packs in plenty of little pointed observations that fans of the source material will enjoy seeing put onscreen. It certainly works more of the source material into the script than the 2010 movie.

Kerwin Mathews is decent and earnest enough as Lemuel Gulliver, though there are also times when he does himself no favours. The character may not go through as many hardships or changes as he does in the novel, but at least viewers get to see that he's not a complete saint. June Thorburn does well enough in her role, despite it not giving her that much to do, and the other main players - Basil Sydney as the Emperor Of Lilliput, Gregoire Aslan and Mary Ellis as the King and Queen of Brobdingnag, Charles Lloyd Pack as Makovan and Sherry Alberoni as Glumdalclitch - do well with parts that allow them to have some fun.

The work of Ray Harryhausen may not be all that prevalent, but the two main sequences that make the most of his involvement are highlights, though the film doesn't really have any low points anyway.

I'd encourage fans of the classic story to check this out. It's a film full of many little pleasures, no pun intended.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-3-Worlds-Gulliver-DVD/dp/B00005UWUA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369772725&sr=8-1&keywords=the+3+worlds+of+gulliver