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Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
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by Lee James Turnock
Although Pete Walker - an unusual choice for a cinematic [i]enfant terrible [/i]who spent most of his career kicking against the pricks, in that he was a lifelong Tory voter with a private plane - is best remembered for the gritty and graphic horror films he made in the middle of his career (most notably 1974's [b]Frightmare[/b], whose genuinely frightening central character was drilling people's brains a full five years before Abel Ferrara's infamous [b]The Driller Killer[/b]), this controversial drama from his late-seventies fallow period is worth a look for fans, if only because it features one of his favourite recurring themes - the yawning gulf in outlook and attitudes between the free-and-easy younger generation and their morally censorious, vengeful, and vindictive elders. James Aubrey is Mike Beresford, a good-looking and successful songwriter who is the driving force behind the chart-topping Bad Accident (played here by real-life hitmakers Jigsaw, with an unlikely additional member in the form of Chris Jagger, the less charismatic brother of Rolling Stone Mick) - and whose charmed life takes a turn for the worse when he embarks on an ill-advised affair with Ginny, a teenage hitch-hiker who turns out to be well below the legal age of consent. Rather than playing the unsavoury proceedings for tasteless shock value and exploitative thrills, Walker and his screenwriter Murray Smith present the illegal liaison in a commendably level-headed manner, and the resultant storm of outrage that blows up when the news of Mike's indiscretion breaks. True, neither Walker nor Smith had the firmest grasp on popular culture - considering the film was released at the height of the punk rock and new wave boom, Bad Accident come across like a cross between [b]The League of Gentlemen[/b]'s Creme Brulee and a Poundland Bee Gees, whilst lines like 'You were humping a minor, and that's death for a band like Bad Accident' don't do anyone any favours - but it's all part of the film's time capsule charm, as are the fleeting cameos by David Hamilton and Annie Nightingale. Jigsaw also provided the soundtrack score, and most agreeable it is too, whilst Walker's regular cinematographer Peter Jessop gives the film a thoroughly professional look. [b]Home Before Midnight[/b] may not be to everyone's tastes, but if you're keen on home-grown seventies exploitation and can overlook its occasional crassness, it's well worth investigating.