They do everything else with sickening panache, but the French have never got to grips with the slasher flick, which makes this back-to-basics horror as unexpected as it is violent. A sexy teen (Cécile De France) is invited to the family home of her best friend (Maïwenn Le Besco) out in the French equivalent of redneck country. She meets mum, dad and little brother, night falls, a rusty old van pulls up outside, a fat bloke gets out and starts graphically raping and killing everyone. No intellectual chit-chat here, then.
Emerging in 2001, these Detroit brothers lash the hard-livin' loucheness to traditional country ache. Frontman/songwriter Kurt Marschke's wail is Jaggeresque and there's lonesome balladry aplenty ("27 Hours", "Such A Crime") plus enough "Happy"-like fretwork to suggest what might have been had Gram'n'Keef really got it on. "Entitled" pits the sideways chug of The Breeders' "Cannonball" against early Replacements sneer, and dobro/pedal steel player Peter Ballard tints the big skies with a yearning airiness. Seriously impressive.
Swiping gleefully at management, and more affectionately at the unions, this uproarious satire on the politics of British working life is probably the best-loved Boulting Brothers movie. Ian Carmichael stars as the well-meaning university stooge used to provoke a strike by crooked industrialists Richard Attenborough and Dennis Price—but the film belongs to the ever-nimble Peter Sellers, sublime as the buzzcut factory shop steward with a Hitler moustache. A by-the-book cartoon, but curiously sympathetic.
