the vampire movie database
Billy The Kid And The Green Baize Vampire
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| Release Date: | 1985 UK | Running time: | 90' (cover 90') - Source: DVD (RC 2/PAL) | Rating: | UK: 15; US: NR | ||||
| Main Crew: |
Director: Alan Clarke (Made In Britain 1983; Scum 1979) Producer: Zenith / ITC Entertainment Score: George Fenton Writer: Trevor Preston Director of photography: Clive Tickner |
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Cast: |
| Summary: |
Billy Kid (Phil Daniels) is a seventeen year old boy who loves to play snooker. He could be the best in the world, but the seven times world champion, Maxwell Randall (Alun Armstrong), disagrees. Both characters are a tad eccentric - Billy lives in a cowboy fantasy and Maxwell sleeps in a coffin - and a showdown is staged between the young cowboy and the old vampire, in which the loser will never play professional snooker again... | Note: |
- Probably the only example in the film world of a avant-garde vampire snooker musical ever made (ironically, the film was financed through a tax deal that required it to have international sales potential) |
- The film's two main characters are based on two real snooker-players: Ray Reardon (whose real-life nickname was 'Dracula') and young pretender Jimmy White. - Director Alan Clarke had a longstanding interest in the work of German playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose output included several didactic, socially-conscious musicals whose style clearly inspired this film. Writer Trevor Preston (who was suffering badly from depression, which led to his near-withdrawal from the project long before it had finished production) strongly objected to Clarke's ultra-stylised approach - staged in a series of near-abstract, claustrophobic indoor rooms and corridors - envisaging it at the time of writing as an exuberant location-shot piece. - Snooker (one of the most popular of all British television sports in the mid-80's) is a billiards sport that is played on a large (12 feet � 6 feet) baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. It is played using a cue, one white ball (the cue ball), 15 red balls (worth 1 point each) and 6 colours: a yellow (2 points), green (3 points), brown (4 points), blue (5 points), pink (6 points) and black ball (7 points). A player wins a frame of snooker by scoring more points than his opponent.
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short review: will come soon!!  |