Odd references
Helen from Big Brother 2 - remember her? If not, you’d have had no chance with my old 10 Rillington Place review…
A lot of the reviews on this site were written two decades ago… which, as I have already mentioned in this blog, puts them very much in the “different times…” bracket.
I don’t think I ever went too far with my observations, and they were all done with a supposed ironic wink about the times in which the films were made (when young women would possibly have been referred to in derogatory terms that even by 2001, would have been inappropriate). The idea was to call this out, in a funny way. Doesn’t make it right, though.
One of the other consequences is the inclusion of some bizarre links to the pop culture of the time.
Take the 10 Rillington Place review, for example. I was obviously quite desperate to shoe-horn any kind of “funny” into my thoughts on what is a very serious, and indeed grim, piece of cinema.
So I took pot shots at star Richard Attenborough’s shaved-bald head, his “paedo glasses”, and out-of-shape body. Utterly un-hilarious, and kind of missing the point given he was playing a real-life sex murderer.
But I also added in some odd things I’ve been keen to remove for a while now, because to any casual reader they just look odd.
The first was a reference to the British Gas shares option ad tagline, “If you see Sid, tell him”. Yes, Christie is using the gas piped into his home to kill people. But adding the Sid line doesn’t make any sense - in fact, I think it was probably quite an old reference, even at the time.
But the one which must have confused more than its fair share of readers comes shortly after, as we’re introduced to John Hurt’s character. He’s Welsh, and I’ve added the following quote:
“I like blinking, I do.”
This isn’t in the film.
“What does it mean?” Historians of the future will ask (or would have done, if I hadn’t just deleted it).
Allow me to right a wrong which has been annoying me for a while.
This is actually a quote from the second series of Big Brother, which was on at the time I wrote the review. A nice young Welsh lady called Helen Adams was one of the break-out stars of that series, and it was a line she said, amongst a few other random “mouth opens, words come out” statements she became famous for.
That’s it, the sole link being the Welshness of John Hurts character.
Aaah, that feels better. Possibly the thing that has annoyed me most about my own work over the last two decades. What a blessed relief. Now you know.
