Not British? What a choker!

When I re-started the site at the beginning of 2022, I went looking for a load of old reviews I knew I’d written during the fag end of the site’s original run, but had never published. You’ve now seen them all (for better or worse), which means I’m stuck with writing up some brand new ones… recent viewings soon to appear on the site include The Ballad Of Tam Lin, What Became Of Jack And Jill? and Dark Places.

Oh yes, I’m not going for the obvious crowd pleasers here… we’re continuing to delve into the box marked “obscure”.

One of the reviews I unearthed was for a post-war shocker which I’d clearly loved, but could not remember anything about. What was even stranger was that it appeared I’d never even tried to publish it anywhere (most of these “unpublished” reviews had at least surfaced on a blog).

So, whistling a happy little tune, I obliviously rang it up as a “new” review, pasted it into the site template and innocently posted a message on social media saying it was an upcoming review for the week.

At which point I was informed by people much more switched on about this stuff than me that the film in question wasn’t actually British.

Der.

And I call myself an expert. I mean, I ask you. What a plonker.

Of course, as soon as this was pointed out to me, it rang a vague bell. The exact same thing had happened to me a decade earlier, hence the review’s non-appearance during the site’s original heyday.

So I was left in a quandary – what to do with this review? Well, I’ve been giving it some thought and I’ve decided to publish and be damned – but not as part of the site, just as a bonus extra. It won’t appear in the A-Z and I’ll add a caveat explaining why it is on the site at all.

Because the thing is, although we have to stick to some semblance of a theme for my film reviews (otherwise I’d go insane), this site exists because what I’ve always wanted to do is share my love of this genre, and bonkers old films in general, with other people. And The Brighton Strangler is well worth shouting about, even if it is as British as eating a corn dog whilst watching a little league baseball game whilst wearing one of those caps with the beer cans on the side [insert your own xenophobic American stereotype here].

So please, take a look at my review of The Brighton Strangler. But remember that although it’s set in the UK, is full of British accents, and even has the word “Brighton” in its name, it isn’t actually British. 

And I’ll try and be more careful in future.