Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy, 1967–2015

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Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy, 1967–2015

Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy, 1967–2015

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For items that are dispatched using our standard service, we ask that you wait 14 days from the date of dispatch before reporting any items as undelivered. If he wins, the King has pledged the hand of his beautiful daughter Iseult (Catherine Rowlands) in marriage to the ageing King Marc in a move that would will cement an alliance between the two lands.

Murphy stopped shooting on film after the disaster that befell the initial attempt to film Skare in 2001, when a huge chunk of footage went missing in transit to the lab*. Also included here is: Seventh Day (second version) Outtakes (2:11), which consists of eight shots not used in the final cut of the film, the first of which makes creative use of a reflection and is really well lit. Includes a snippet of a discussion between a group of crew members in which the sort of middle-class xenophobe who would nowadays be parroting Tory anti-refugee propaganda tries to tell his more humanist colleague that not being racist is actually racist. This happened to Murphy and not only wrecked the film he was making but cost him thousands of pounds that he could ill afford and was unable to retrieve.Unfortunately, the sole film elements of three of his better-known titles ( Avalon, Death Run and Legend of a Hero) were destroyed in a fire at a storage facility - thankfully after they'd been telecined, so at least they survived in some form.

The performances here are a little stronger than those in the preceding films, with three of Murphy's regular actors starting to polish their skills, and while I may have winced every time Hall says the word "Yes" (the one word that feels like it's being read off a cue card every time), when he silently stares at Shirley, he exudes an air of brooding menace that really works for his character. A psychodrama that oddly feels simultaneously plausible and a bit of a stretch, one whose situation I became more invested in than the characters, particularly the ominous clues that are dropped in the early scenes. Far from being shocked, Vicky is relieved to now be free to marry Steve, sell the house, and leave an island she has clearly dreamt of escaping from for years.

Murphy kicks off by outlining why he will not be attending the festival in person, and it seems so typical of this humble and immensely likeable filmmaker that one of the reasons is that he's just not comfortable being the centre of attention in front of a crowd of people. The one I liked the most has a woman being served one of her husband's buttocks for dinner by an upper-crust cannibal in a dinner suit. We use cookies to give you the best possible experience on our site, provide personalised content and advertising, analyse our traffic, and ensure you see more of what you love. Not the most persuasive of sells, partly because it looks as cheap as the film probably was to make.

He's charmingly self-effacing here, noting early on that the lines being delivered are "not the world's best dialogue" and later going the whole hog and describing it as "quite a weak script. Well, even with access to the original film elements, the restoration team is at the mercy of the original material, and as Murphy alludes to in the special features, when you're working on film and have to sometimes wait for weeks for it to be processed, by the time you realise the exposure was off by a stop or two, the actors have departed and the budget has run dry, so you have to live with it. This will see me swim against the prevailing tide a little, as while Murphy's minor cult status is built around his horror works, for me, there are far more interesting films in his oeuvre. Some shots linger on for longer than is needed, but the cut from Boadicea and Prasutagus kissing on the shore to Boadicea cradling her first child is a genuinely inspired time-jump edit.I presume this is the real deal, and while I have no doubt the record was scanned and animated to fake the image of it spinning on a real turntable, whoever was responsible certainly took their job seriously, as it really does rotate 45 times over the course of a minute. Although he was not so happy with a key change made by Jupp for his alternative take, he admits to enjoying the film, despite some technical shortcomings, and notes that, "It's a laugh, sometimes for the wrong reasons. The soundtrack clarity has seen better days, and here the optional subtitles really came to the rescue for this tinnitus-afflicted viewer. Helen is wrestling with some past demons, and politely rebuffs the younger Mark's amorous advances, claiming that she wants to avoid a repeat of the emotional hurt she suffered after a recent breakup, but this doesn't stop her from seducing good-looking Greek actor Andreas (Paulos Charalambidis).

Murphy is joined by three of the film's principal actors for another entertaining collection of anecdotes and good-natured piss-taking at their own and each other's expense, with praise for the costumes, the sets (particularly the doorways for some reason), and some of the effects work, which is joined by gentle digs at what doesn't quite come off. One for us older viewers, as a Phil Lyndon pretends to be Judith Chalmers visiting Loggos in Greece in one of her sunny location reports from the long-running holiday series Wish You Were Here.Products labelled '*item fulfilled by Exertis on behalf of hmv' will be supplied to you directly by Exertis via their approved couriers. Murphy reveals that some of the dialogue was re-recorded in post to improve the acoustics, worries that an essentially silly premise is undermined by sequences that take it too seriously, winces at the memory of difficult to film scenes, and says of a lock used to keep the heavily muscled Dan from escaping, "That lock is so flimsy it I don't think that would stop a chihuahua trying to break in. According to the opening caption, Murphy sold about 20 copies of the tape featuring a double-bill of both films. Good-looking 21-year-old Paul (Russell Hall) hires a holiday apartment in Greece and starts a friendship with his older married landlady Gill (Carol Aston), one that quickly develops into something more.



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