And now, dearest reader, I beg your assistance for a demonstration of my vast psychic abilities. If I say, "British comedy inspired by the Great Roswell forgery starring Ant And Dec" then your first thought is...
(a) Gosh, that sounds brilliant. Who knows what hilarious high jinx might ensue.
(b) Can it possibly equal The Boys In Blue starring Cannon and Ball?
(c) I would gladly lose a limb to a dull rusty blade than fester in a cinema with that shit.
You’re thinking (c), right? Or I hope you are. If you plumped for (a) you’re possibly reading the wrong film column. And if you said (b) seek urgent psychiatric attention.
I was a (c) person. I was happy as a (c) person. But I’d be lying if I didn’t concede to lapping up Alien Autopsy with an eagerness rarely displayed outside the union for lesbian porn kittens.
In Ant and Dec’s feature debut haphazard abandon rules. What’s the deal with Harry Dean Stanton? Here playing a retired military cameraman, you long for someone to prod the old fellow with a stick to rouse him from his slumber. “Don’t tell anyone it was me,” he entreats Dec, handing him a reel of super secret footage of an alien autopsy conducted at (weary sigh) Roswell. No danger they’ll recognise you in that state, mate.
This, however, is merely the start of the Geordie boys’ misadventures. Based on the staggeringly tall tales of Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, the British hoaxers behind the notorious Roswell footage, Alien Autopsy builds to an astonishing admission. It wasn’t a real alien. It was a dummy padded out with sheep bits from the butchers and raspberry jelly. There was, of course, a real alien film, but they lost it. Ahem.
Playing like a delightfully extended spoof one might hear down the pub, Alien Autopsy, like Shaun Of The Dead, makes a comic virtue of its Englishness, forming a parade of pink wafer biscuits, kebabs and sausages and pineapple on cocktail sticks. Characters are introduced with the convoluted rhythms of practised fibs – “I met the psycho Hungarian art dealer with a passion for crop circles at a convention for Detroit muscle cars of the 70s.”
To borrow a line from the great Leonard Nimoy, this account of an alien encounter is true. And by true, we mean false. It’s all lies, but they’re entertaining lies, and in the end, isn’t that the real truth?
Works for me.