Comedy (Ali Berg)

Starring Oscar nominee Julie Walters, Denholm Elliott and Richard E. Grant, Killing Dad is an hysterical comedy about happy families, hair tonic, hammer and homicide.

Alistair, a neurotic door-to-door hair tonic salesman (Richard E. Grant), is less than anxious to welcome back his long lost father Nathy (Denholm Elliott), who 23 years previous had nonchalantly “slipped out for a packet of cigarettes” never to return.

When Alistair travels incognito to Southend to find Nathy, he discovers his notorious father is still every inch the disgraceful rogue, moving from hotel to hotel, drinking, lying, borrowing money and living with his girlfriend (Julie Walters) a bleached blonde beauty several decades younger than himself.

Alistair finally decides that drastic measures must be taken if this awful man is to be stopped.
The results are hilarious!

NOTE: REG describes this film as a flick that played one week in the West End and then went straight to video.

Best REG line: “I fought to have this hairstyle, It’s the best thing about the film.” (It needs to be seen to be believed!)

Keep The Aspidistra Flying – a.k.a Comstock And Rosemary a.k.a. A Merry War (USA)

Drama (Gordon Comstock)

A Merry War is based on a novel by George Orwell, and the title refers to a line in the book that describes the dynamic between Rosemary and Comstock. Helena Bonham-Carter and REG play wonderfully off each other, squabbling and sparring with malicious affection. Eventually, Rosemary – a sharp, uncommonly modern woman – winds up in a predicament that compels her to demand that he make his choice, and his long overdue decision, which serves as the denouement, comes as quite a relief.

Best REG line:”Why CAN’T I have sex in the afternoon??” and……….”I’d like to breed but Rosemary won’t let me”

Buy the DVD

Buy the Video

Drama (Nick Balmer)

A drama series, written for British television by Dennis Potter, just before he died. It follows the tale of a crotchety old screenwriter Daniel Field (Albert Finney) who’s latest movie “Karaoke” is currently being edited. His film comes to life, and he starts to see scenes acted out before him, with real people speaking his lines. REG plays Nick Balmer, an obnoxious film editor who doesn’t get along with Daniel and is having an affair with the movies leading actress. It’s a great series, with a quite disturbing and gripping storyline, which twists and turns in all sorts of ways. It has a pseudo sequel “Cold Lazarus“, also written by Dennis Potter, set far into the future, but which revisits the characters from “Karaoke” through the dead writers mind.

EPISODE 3 — Following the revelation that a real “Pig” Mailion (Hywell Bennett) exists, Daniel is reassured that the similarity of his script to real life is pure coincidence. Nick’s affair with Linda Langer leads him into a murky blackmail plot, and Daniel learns that Sandra is determined to take revenge on Mailion for his vicious attack on her mother.

EPISODE 4 — Mailion exacts brutal revenge on Nick, who is forced to admit his infidelity to his wife. When Daniel learns that he has only eight weeks to live, the death sentence galvanizes him to take fate into his own hands.

Best REG line: “I’d have given you a bonus if you’d flattened him, and I’ve have doubled it if you reversed back and finished it. Squishy guts – what a great sound.”

Comedy (Jack)

Finally! REG gets a starring role. Jack and Sarah is billed as a romantic comedy, but you get slapped in the face quite early on with a very real tragedy. REG plays Jack, a frantic father to be, and seeing him hang off the side of a car and run around crazily, you think it’s the same old stuff from REG, but when his wife dies in childbirth and Jack is left to look after the baby, his grief is overwhelming and he shuns his new born.

The warmth and love shown by his family and eventually by Jack is truly heartwarming. Baby Sarah is gorgeous and attracts the inevitable love interest, who appears in the form of a hapless American baby sitter played by Samantha Mathis. The story is “cute” it’s along the lines of Three Men and a Baby, but the range of emotions REG shows is fantastic. He saves this movie from being sappy, and it actually succeeds in being quite moving. Great supporting cast too…Judi Dench as his mum and Ian McKellen as his “man” are fabulous.

Best REG line: This isn’t so difficult!

Action / Comedy (Darwin Mayflower)

Ignore absolutely everything you’ve heard about this film, it’s brilliant! The combination of REG and Sandra Bernhard as Darwin and Minerva Mayflower is quite simply a stroke of genius. I loved everything about this film, from the candy bar eating CIA, to Leonardo Da Vinci. Even Danny Aiello’s ridiculous re-writing of the ending to preserve his character from a firey death. The whole film just works. The bad press and torturous working conditions meant that REG has ended up hating this movie, but his performance as the most outrageous villain is just fabulous and I think it goes to prove that he works best under pressure. Stop what you’re doing, and rush to the video store NOW! Go watch this film!

Best REG line: “I’ll torture you so slowly, you’ll think it’s a CAREER!”
April likes: “If Leonardo were alive now he would be eating sushi with us naked in a limo!”

To read the shooting script for Hudson Hawk click here. This script has an alternate ending to the actual film. (There were MANY rewrites!) It’s seven webpages of delicious stupidity!