Cliff Twemlow is an obscure figure even by British B-movie standards, a handsome, no-nonsense former Manchester nightclub doorman who attempted to create a Hollywood of the north in the early ’80s …
Twemlow’s story might have ended there, and in some ways it does, since almost all his other films were never quite finished, or any better, or even released. But Jake West’s respectful but often very, very funny documentarygoes on to paint an engaging portrait of a man full of ideas and imagination whose eyes were bigger than his budget and who, with a bit more common sense and better business practice, might have taken on the world.
His early screen appearances, shot for the then-burgeoning home-ent market, don’t blow up well for the big screen, and the primitive style ofsuggests we’re in for an irreverent sketch-portrait of an eccentric outsider artist, a kind of ’80s amalgamation of Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau. Twemlow, though, is a more complex character than either, a smart and charismatic man who went from fancying himself as the new James Bond, like every man his age, to wanting to be the Dino de Laurentiis of Eccles.
That Twemlow was not successful is pretty evident, and the cast of talking heads assembled by West deliver proof of that failure with a stream of priceless, precision-honed anecdotes. The tone, though, is always droll and affectionate, like the eye-witness recollection of a car chase that ended in a very convincing crash — convincing because it actuallya crash .
Twemlow never made a masterpiece, but this sweet, moving film will convince you that in a funny way he did. Many, in fact, all in his head, and this film is the closest we’ll ever get to seeing them.
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