SHOW PIECES
Dead And Clubbing It
RELEASED 29 JUNE 2015 | 18 | SVOD Director Mitch Jenkins Cast Siobhan Hewlett, Darrell D’silva, Andrew Buckley, Khandie Kisses
Traditionally, Alan Moore has had a strained relationship with the films based on his work. Show Pieces is something different: it was penned by the Great Beard of Northampton specifically for the screen. It initially began life as a series of shorts.
The three shorts brought together for this streaming debut (two more brief ones were included in a pricey limited edition DVD/CD/book box set) are all directed by Mitch Jenkins and work best taken as parts of a longer tale. In “Act Of Faith” a young woman (Siobhan Hewlett) prepares for a night out, but things go very wrong when she indulges in an auto-erotic act. In “Jimmy’s End” and “His Heavy Heart” sleazy bar-hopper Jimmy (Darrell D’Silva) walks into an eerie Northampton (well it is by Alan Moore) club, but finds himself forced to account for past crimes in a purgatorial realm.
It’s gruelling stuff at times, with “Act Of Faith” unflinchingly bleak and “His Heavy Heart” effectively a bloodless torture movie. Still, Moore’s sense of humour is never far from the surface. At times Show Pieces recalls the northern gothic of The League Of Gentlemen, and Jenkins has a rich visual style that evokes both David Lynch and Moore collaborator Dave McKean.
Northampton has form with creepy clowns, having been plagued by a wave of mysterious sightings of one back in 2013.