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T O P I C R E V I E W
Airbolt
Posted - 09/11/2007 : 23:23:18 Has anyone else heard of this film? It's one of the oddest films ( in a good way ) i have seen in a long time . It was recommended so i made the effort to find it.
Imagine a weird mixture of everything British studio Hammer were producing in the 1960's all in one film . Its a romance, biker, horror AND science fiction movie! It sort of works and also has one of the most bleak endings ever.
Anyway it is like nothing I've seen , so perhaps i can describe it
Like many British films of this era , it features an american actor in the lead in order to recoup some costs in the US. Said lead visits a windswept part of the British coast ( in black and white BTW ) . In the course of his travels he takes a liking to Oliver Reed's sister ( never a good idea! ) Ollie is in fine carpet-chewing mode as the leader of a Biker gang with a bizarre accent. The Biker Gang are very much stage trained thesps straining with cod "street" accents.
The Biker movie lurches into romance and horror . The couple waxlyrical in an abandoned cottage on a cliff. Outside are weird statues resmbling half melted humans. The cottage belongs to a fairly mad lady sculptor who has a scandanavian accent. She is in thrall to a local squire for some unexplained reason.
Still with me? Ollie gets jealous ( hmm , issues much? ) and comes for the couple along with the boys in leather. They all find themselves outside a forbidding military outpost full of secrets. The couple end up in the sea ( i forget how ) and are saved by some VERY English school kids.
SPOILER******************************
These kids live in a cave under the cliff where their only contact is with the landowner via TV monitors . He acts as teacher and they are all in school uniforms. Their home is essentially a Dr Who set.
These children are different . They are cold to the touch. The couple ( and Ollie ) decide to rescue them when a squad of soldiers arrives in protective suits. Somehow the rescue prevails and they make it to the surface.
The landowner meets the sculptor on the cliff and explains the plot. These kids are the Governments attempt to survive a war - they were born radioative and cant be harmed. Thy have to be isolated because they kill everyone who comes close to them. The sculptor is horrified and refuses to keep quiet . There is an extraordinary exchange
Landowner : You realise what you are saying Sculptor : It means you are wasting what time i have left
She walks to one of her statues . Very shortly after the landowner shoots her in cold blood.
The rescue party are " already dead " . In some of the finest dystopian scenes in a British film Oliver Reed and a child escape in an open top car while a huge miltary helicopter flies at zero feet following them. Ollie is in a bad way , he lets the screaming child out - who is scooped into a helicpter by the alien looking soldiers in Bio suits.
The couple sail away in a launch with another huge copter right above them . They head back to pick up some of the children left behind but they are obviously doomed.
That it - extraordinary in its cynicism about the lengths that any Government will take faced with the unbearable. The truth is that the "villains " look as trapped as the heroes . There is a feeling of inevitable doom about the final ten minutes tht is very eerie.
A very different film that says a lot about the atmosphere it was made in . Hammer had a fairly low-rent reputation in film circles as their output was exploitation and horror films mainly. Perhaps that is why this film seems to have been largely forgotten.
If you do see it dont let some ripe-as-gorgonzola acting put you off.
