Charity Begins Elsewhere

Children In Need is looming again. I do hate these mainstream charities, they're so obvious. Oh look there's some children! And they're in need! Let's give them all our money, shall we? Surely there should be some imaginative effort involved in giving to charity. We should seek out unpopular causes: Paedophiles In Peril or Adopt A Gypsy.

(You know what people always say to anyone who tries to defend gypsies - 'How would you like it if they came and lived next to you?' Well now's your chance to find out! For only a small fee, Adopt A Gypsy will rehouse a Dale Farm family in your garden! Any takers?)

No. Not even Vanessa Redgrave, who was defending the Dale Farm 'travellers' on Jeremy Vine, only for practically every caller to ask her that question. The problem is, it's a rhetorical question, because even if you said you'd be perfectly happy for a fleet load of caravans to descend upon you, no-one would believe you anyway. Vanessa merely mumbled that it wouldn't be practical, she had a small garden, instead of, as she should have done, declaring: 'What would I do if they lived next to me? I'd shoot them, Jeremy! Shoot them, and their babies too. Hypocritical? Yes, but what you fail to understand, Jeremy, is that I AM VANESSA REDGRAVE.'

I really don't know what to think about the Dale Farm Massacre, as it will no doubt be known to future generations, but I wasn't reassured by the police spokesman on Jeremy Vine, who said that taser-happy police were only 'reacting to prior intelligence' - as opposed to what was in front of them, I suppose - 'intelligence' which stated that 'missiles' were to be found on the site. Hang on, weren't we in Basildon a moment ago? Now we seem to be in Iraq. But the police spokesman goes on to explain that he isn't talking about Exocet missiles; no, a missile in his terms 'could be anything'. Right, so the police were reacting to 'intelligence' which stated that there 'could be anything' on the site. It's good to know we're in safe hands.

My own favoured charity is, of course: Stop The Pigeon.

Hard Labour

In London an Oriental man suddenly stepped out in front of me in Berwick Street and demanded to know where Chinatown was. Is it terribly racist of me to have felt like saying 'You should know'? I was on my way to the London Film Festival. Once more I got to tread the red carpet that was there for something I wasn't seeing. None of the assembled photographers acknowledged me. Shallow bastards.

'Are there going to be any famous people here?', asked a naive woman in Vue Screen 6. Not unless they don't want to be seen, I thought to myself. The film was Hard Labour, a Brazilian drama in which a woman's attempt to run a grocery store is undermined not only by the economic situation (her husband has just been made redundant) but by - SPOILER ALERT - the corpse of a werewolf that's walled up on the premises. Most critics felt that the horror elements did not mix well with the rest of it, and I could indeed see why a dead werewolf might be considered an irrelevance in a social drama; but it worked for me. It was interesting to see the way the couple reacted to the beastly corpse. Not like people in a horror film, running around screaming, but quietly disposing of the body as if it represented their secret shame.

Which it does: it's as though the husband's feeling of redundancy has been made manifest in these grotesque, absurd remains, which are helping to poison the wife's business venture (because traditional masculinity dictates that if she succeeds, then he is doubly shamed). A dead werewolf also functions perfectly well as a symbol for dehumanisation, emasculation, something rotten in the heart of the system, and - well, you name it, a dead werewolf symbolises it as far as this viewer is concerned.

I am painfully aware that not everyone else thinks like me. The film even taps into the 'shame' of watching a B-horror movie instead of a respectable social drama, which is one reason why I fear people won't get it. By the end, I was starting to convince myself that I was the only person in the room who really understood it, and that included the writer-director (one of the writer-directors, at any rate). I mean, he did seem awfully young. No doubt I am wrong - someone selected it for this festival, didn't they? - but it didn't help that the last audience comment in the Q&A (which I was far too timid to join in) came from a woman who praised the film highly - but mainly, it seemed, because it had been shot in and around where she used to live, and her old teacher was in it. She even asked the director to 'say hello from me!' when he went back to Brazil.

So anyway, I'm taking to the internet to say it: Hard Labour - great film. But you probably won't like it.

Not For Turning

In a moment of desperation Dave and I found ourselves watching the Conservative Party Conference. The Minister for Science and Universities was hailing 'the broccoli of the future'. Was this a metaphor? For young people? Perhaps not, because he went on to say it was available in Marks and Spencers.

Considering that they were preaching to the converted, the various ministers seemed rather unconvinced themselves. The exception was Michael Gove (a veteran of The Late Review or whatever the hell it's called now) who said that he 'would not rest' until all schools in the UK were 'as good as the best', and said it in a voice so authoritative (and so strangely similiar to that of Victoria Coren) that you could almost believe that he really believed what he was saying, even though such a situation, were it ever to come about, would only result in remarkably well-informed rioters.

Where are we to turn as the economic system collapses? Jeremy Vine didn't have any answers, and soon turned from the topic to the human interest story of an elderly woman from Romford who was arrested for dangerous driving. Apparently she went round a roundabout the wrong way, wandered from one lane to another, and drove really slowly on a motorway. So slowly that the resulting 'police chase' consisted of a policeman running alongside the car and tapping on the window.

JV interviewed her, and she turned out to be very posh and also very furious - all the time, by the sound of it. She was particularly outraged that she had been put in a police cell 'against my will' - as though people would normally be consulted about this. Adamant that she had done nothing wrong, she seemed to embody the spirit of the British Empire in her remarkable attempt to 'colonise' the motorway. They should make her Prime Minister. She's bound to know just what to do about the economy. And she can probably fuck it up a whole lot quicker than this lot will.

SNODS, CLODS and severed heads

We used to deal with DTC's (Donor Transplant Co-Ordinators) but now we deal with Senior Nurses in Organ Donation and Clinical Leads in Organ Donation, or SNODs and CLODS in other words. Not sure if they were consulted about the name change - I suspect not. One CLOD was having trouble erecting a banner stand, so I asked her to send it over to see if I could get it up in our office. I not only got it up, it stayed up all night. I told the CLOD and she said she'd talk to one of her SNODs about it. I think she was impressed. And this is my working life, difficult as it is to believe.

While the banner stand was upright, it radiated a powerful message about organ donation into the surrounding area. Ben the temp did a double take when he encountered it on leaving - almost, he was moved to hand one of his kidneys to a colleague right there and then. I explained that this was a new marketing strategy. Instead of targeting the widest possible number of people, the new focus, 'going forward', would be on much smaller audiences: for example, him. 'If any street theatre breaks out in your vicinity, you'll know what it's about.'

All this exposure to the message has had its effect on me too. I have been conducting my own research into organ donation in the way I know best - by exposing myself to films on the subject. It may be that The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant starring Bruce Dern is not the most scientifically-credible guide to the field (half-close your eyes, and you're watching a Will Ferrell comedy) but we learn some valuable things. Don't sew a violent madman's head onto the body of an educationally-challenged hulk, for example.

Which brings me to The Man With The Severed Head, just out on DVD from Arrowdrome. Whoever they are. When I bought this in HMV the man said, as they are forced to do, 'Have you found everything you're looking for?' No, as it turned out.

I suspect that this isn't the best introduction to Paul Naschy, Europe's greatest horror icon (if you forget that England is in Europe). However, it must serve as mine. Naschy plays a thief who gets a bullet in the brain. Luckily he knows a doctor who knows a doctor who is an expert in 'the field of brain transplants', this being apparently the only cure for his affliction, though the doctor, through the terrible dubbing, does warn that there might be 'personality problems'. What, a brain transplant causing a personality change? I've learned something already.

But first an unwilling donor must be found. Exercising rigorous quality control, Naschy's cohorts immediately settle upon Naschy's arch-enemy, a man known only as 'the Sadist' - hmm, nope, can't see a problem here. As it turns out, this is 'only' a partial brain transplant, and therefore wrapped up in minutes by the doctor's wife (because the doctor's hands don't work for some reason I failed to grasp). It is an operation whose finer points are clearly hard to take in, since they have eluded even the author of the blurb on the back of the DVD, which claims that Naschy's brain is transplanted into the Sadist's body. This makes much more sense, but it isn't what happens in the film. Just as well, I suppose, since as a vehicle for Naschy the film would have been a bit of a damp squib if, having spent the first half of it in a state of unconsciousness, his character was, on awakening, played by somebody else.

As it is, we get a decent helping of Naschy running amok with a bandage round his head, glowering balefully. It seems that having part of a sadistic criminal's brain inserted into yours can transform you, through some kind of weird supernatural process, into a sadistic criminal. Although, since we saw very little of Naschy before the bullet hit him, we have to take it as read that he wasn't like this anyway.

Also present on the DVD are 'additional erotic scenes'. These are much more fun, I find, if you think of them, not as deleted scenes, but as behind-the-scenes footage - as if the whole film was just an excuse for everyone to get together and have sex. Which, as I understand it, is indeed the reason most films get made.

Curiously, one of these 'erotic scenes' merely shows a nude female corpse toppling out of a wardrobe. One for specialised tastes, I suppose.

As for the film's effectiveness as a marketing tool for organ donation, I am going to have to rate this one: low. Next week: Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.