The Comic (1985)

"Quite Phenomenally Awful"

To say anything else would be to mislead the unsuspecting who may not have heard of THE COMIC, or the man who made it. Now it has been released on Blu-ray, a film that was booed off screen on its UK premiere in 1990 - five years after it was made - and directed by Richard Driscoll, a name familiar only to students of appalling cinema, Her Majesty's Prison Service, and those unlucky few who may have happened across his numerously-titled 'works' in Tesco and been suckered into buying them. One wonders what Arrow was thinking (especially as that process has not extended so far as to provide any stills in their press pack - aha!)

In a dystopian land where 'people do not survive, they only exist' (no I don't know what that means, or more importantly what it is intended to mean, either) budding standup comedian Sam Coex (Steve Munroe) resorts to murder to get his big break, gets involved with a booze and drug-addicted dancer who leaves him for Mr Big, and frequently gets beaten up by officers of the brutal regime that represents the law.

There. I think that's what THE COMIC basically is. Anyone who watches it. however, may come away with a summary more like this:

Orange hair. Screaming. Badly recorded sound. Straw everywhere. Unfunny jokes. Terrible acting. Stilted direction. Badly dubbed sound. Multiple dream sequences involving legs. A grey demon with matching underpants. A man taking his little daughter to escape by boat when the tide is so far out you can't see any water. Terrible dance routines. A set that looks as if it has been wallpapered with wet toilet roll. Awful juggling. Smoke machines turned up to eleven so sometimes you can't see the actors. Sound recording so poor if you're still with it you'll be glad of the subtitle option. Or not. 

So there it is, a film that makes Bruno Mattei look like Stanley Kubrick and Ed Wood like Billy Wilder. I will admit as the film goes on it is does start to weave its own bizarre spell as your mind tries to impose reason and rationality onto what is happening. Is Driscoll making fun of David Lynch films? Is this actually a brilliant parody of every up itself, pretentious, arty, first-year-film-student-needing-a-slap film project ever made?

No.

Arrow's disc has some extras. There's a slightly embarrassed-looking Steve Munroe to introduce it and he has a 17 minute interview on here as well. Most interesting is a Richard Driscoll selected scene commentary track which runs for about 50 minutes and helps explain quite a lot. For example, the reason for the straw being everywhere is because he was shooting on sets left over from Freddie Francis' THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS and nobody could be bothered to clear it up. 

I will admit that THE COMIC is not the worst film I have ever seen. In fact it doesn't come close. For that one needs to search deeper within the Driscoll oeuvre to examine (or run away from) THE LEGEND OF HARROW WOODS which I reviewed on here a long time ago (and yes it's nine years since I have watched a Driscoll film & I should have stuck to my vow). If you really want an incoherent retitled waste of time, talent and celluloid that's the film to check out. Oh yes, THE COMIC was just the warm up act. 

Richard Driscoll's THE COMIC is out on Blu-ray (who ever thought anyone would be typing those words) from Arrow on Monday 31st August 2020