hash tag
Books, not bombs
Battleship Potemkin certainly left a mark as being particularly grim.
en.m.wikipedia.org
What’s the grimmest, bleakest or most pessimistic film or tv show you’ve ever seen?
- Thread starter Orang Utan
- Start date
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Female Trouble by John Waters is now up there for me.
It's a grower. I saw it at the cinema a couple of months ago and its unremitting pessimism is only now really hitting me.
It's a grower. I saw it at the cinema a couple of months ago and its unremitting pessimism is only now really hitting me.
mwgdrwg
Be a Pisces. Jam.
I don't believe it!
Here's some words from Mike Hodges about his film 'Get Carter' (1971)...
"Soon after its release in 1972, the film was banished to the dark shadows of cult status. It was, after all, not considered a very nice film here in the UK. But then most of my films have been more appreciated beyond these shores, particularly in the US and France. That changed when, in 2009, the BFI decided to release it again; albeit in a limited way. This time around I think British audiences found the endemic corruption intimated in its every frame more acceptable. By then their rose-tinted glasses were off. [In 2009] We no longer saw our country as a beacon of propriety, and law and order. Our parliamentarians, police, press, the whole damn edifice, had been found wanting. They all had their noses in the money trough. The cancer of greed had reached every organ of British society. Maybe, just maybe, 'Get Carter' had been an accidental augury?"
Just about everything in 'Get Carter' is grim, nothing is glamomous - the storyline, the characters, the violence, the porn, the architecture, the environment, early-70s Newcastle itself, the abandoned industry, the weather, the physical and metaphorical mess.
Not a single character comes out of it well. You know from the very start that everybody in it is doomed in one way or another. Few of the characters generate any sympathy (a young Alun Armstrong getting a kicking he probably doesn't deserve, maybe). The only character who is portrayed as honourable or likeable is Jack Carter's brother, and he's already dead before the film even starts. The only line of humour I can remember is shortly after Bronby has been lobbed off the top of Trinity Square car-park, with one of the architects saying "I don't think we're going to get our fees on this one".
There's none of the glamour or riches or material rewards that you glimpse in other gangster films - whether 'The Long Good Friday', 'Goodfellas', 'The Godfather' trilogy or even the shallow lad stuff like 'Lock Stock'. And that is it.
Still Michael Caine's greatest film though.
"Soon after its release in 1972, the film was banished to the dark shadows of cult status. It was, after all, not considered a very nice film here in the UK. But then most of my films have been more appreciated beyond these shores, particularly in the US and France. That changed when, in 2009, the BFI decided to release it again; albeit in a limited way. This time around I think British audiences found the endemic corruption intimated in its every frame more acceptable. By then their rose-tinted glasses were off. [In 2009] We no longer saw our country as a beacon of propriety, and law and order. Our parliamentarians, police, press, the whole damn edifice, had been found wanting. They all had their noses in the money trough. The cancer of greed had reached every organ of British society. Maybe, just maybe, 'Get Carter' had been an accidental augury?"
Just about everything in 'Get Carter' is grim, nothing is glamomous - the storyline, the characters, the violence, the porn, the architecture, the environment, early-70s Newcastle itself, the abandoned industry, the weather, the physical and metaphorical mess.
Not a single character comes out of it well. You know from the very start that everybody in it is doomed in one way or another. Few of the characters generate any sympathy (a young Alun Armstrong getting a kicking he probably doesn't deserve, maybe). The only character who is portrayed as honourable or likeable is Jack Carter's brother, and he's already dead before the film even starts. The only line of humour I can remember is shortly after Bronby has been lobbed off the top of Trinity Square car-park, with one of the architects saying "I don't think we're going to get our fees on this one".
There's none of the glamour or riches or material rewards that you glimpse in other gangster films - whether 'The Long Good Friday', 'Goodfellas', 'The Godfather' trilogy or even the shallow lad stuff like 'Lock Stock'. And that is it.
Still Michael Caine's greatest film though.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Jude Rogers also wrote this in The Quietus - excellent article:Radio 4 is doing a thing about Threads on 21 September.
‘The most horrific, sobering thing I’ve ever seen’: BBC nuclear apocalypse film Threads 40 years on
Ahead of a timely re-airing of Mick Jackson’s famously bleak docudrama, its director recalls why he unleashed a mushroom cloud on Sheffield in 1984www.theguardian.com
Surviving Threads: Why Are People Drawn To The World's Most Harrowing Film? | The Quietus
Threads mega fan Jude Rogers asks why such a positive community has sprung up around what is probably the world's most harrowing film
thequietus.com
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Reading that prompted me to find this Leeds & The Bomb pamphlet online:
It was given out to all and sundry in 1983, so I would have been 10.
Me and my friends were obsessed with that leaflet! It probably had more impact on me than any book I’d read.
We would pore over this map in particular:
Most of us were lucky enough to live in the red and orange zones, and we’d tease the posher kids who lived in the yellow and white zones as we’d get vaporised instantly and they’d survive longer but get radiation sickness and suffer terribly like Jim & Hilda in When The Wind Blows.
It was given out to all and sundry in 1983, so I would have been 10.
Me and my friends were obsessed with that leaflet! It probably had more impact on me than any book I’d read.
We would pore over this map in particular:
Most of us were lucky enough to live in the red and orange zones, and we’d tease the posher kids who lived in the yellow and white zones as we’d get vaporised instantly and they’d survive longer but get radiation sickness and suffer terribly like Jim & Hilda in When The Wind Blows.
Nine Bob Note
Self-Isolating before it was fashionable
We were told in school in the years following the end of the USSR that Barrow would have been a first strike target and as such everyone would have been very dead with no chance of survival. I'm sure as kids we took some pride that our famously shitty town was clearly so feared by a mighty enemy. I remind myself of that whenever I contemplate buying generators, water-purification tablets or other such shit off Amazon 
PTK
Paul Kegan
I can't download from the link, as it may pose a security risk. Who produced this leaflet?
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
That’s grim reading Orang Utan and a salient reminder. Cannot believe anyone can read that pamphlet and still be in support of having nuclear weapons and being prepared to use them unless they are totally lacking in humanity
King Biscuit Time
Well-Known Member
I have the Sheffield version of that somewhere. I think they exist as a result of Labour councils kicking back against the central gvmt messaging at the time (Protect and Survive) which was about filling your bath with water and sitting under a door in your cellar with a camping stove until things blow over. Still petrifying clearly, but perhaps with a pinch of unrealistic hope that was included to stop people losing their shit.
Seems like Sheffield and Leeds were having none of it.
Seems like Sheffield and Leeds were having none of it.
Mrs Miggins
Eternal
Lillya 4-Ever that is so unrelentingly grim I remember one of the ushers as we left the cinema asking people "enjoy that, did you?". I'd not choose to watch that again.
ETA Ah! Looks like this one has several mentions!
ETA Ah! Looks like this one has several mentions!
ash
Inittogether
The original one was the most sinister imoOne of the films that really stuck with me the first time I watched it in terms of twist and shock, which I think made the build up and finale fit this thread, was this version of The Vanishing.
The Vanishing (1988 film) - Wikipedia
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
That is the original. The US remake misses the whole point of it.
There is a US remake of Speak No Evil out at the moment, which I’m worried will do another Vanishing.
Dunno why I didn’t mention the original Speak No Evil on here actually.
I think it’s maybe cos I was telling my friends NOT to watch it as it was so bleak.
tommers
It was... Rebekah Vardy's account
"We need to talk about Kevin".
Unremitting grimness. Nothing good happens. At one point you think a good thing might happen but it's actually just foreshadowing of a really bad thing.
We did laugh once. A bitter laugh at her standing next to the guys drilling the road so she couldn't hear her son crying. Our son had just turned two.
Unremitting grimness. Nothing good happens. At one point you think a good thing might happen but it's actually just foreshadowing of a really bad thing.
We did laugh once. A bitter laugh at her standing next to the guys drilling the road so she couldn't hear her son crying. Our son had just turned two.
ash
Inittogether
I meant the original maybe as it was in black and white I thought it was earlier. It really affected me.That is the original. The US remake misses the whole point of it.
There is a US remake of Speak No Evil out at the moment, which I’m worried will do another Vanishing.
Dunno why I didn’t mention the original Speak No Evil on here actually.
I think it’s maybe cos I was telling my friends NOT to watch it as it was so bleak.
Regarding speak no evil I saw the 2024 one first and then watched 2022. They are almost the same until the last quarter and then totally different. The original was far more bleak (and I suppose realistic) than the remake.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
seventh bullet
sovietwave
I remember Loach's My Name is Joe from 1998 being a little bit grim, particularly towards the end. I saw it while an inpatient at a psychiatric unit.
Another film from around that time, this one being Tim Roth's adaptation of The War Zone.
And lastly, a more recent film (2022) called Palm Trees and Power Lines. It's a pity it didn't seem to get talked about much. Or maybe it did, and I was oblivious.
Threads is on BBC 4 tonight.Radio 4 is doing a thing about Threads on 21 September.
‘The most horrific, sobering thing I’ve ever seen’: BBC nuclear apocalypse film Threads 40 years on
Ahead of a timely re-airing of Mick Jackson’s famously bleak docudrama, its director recalls why he unleashed a mushroom cloud on Sheffield in 1984
MickiQ
In My Defence I was left Unsupervised
Poignant is the word there's another really good one where Fry is convinced his brother stole his lucky four leafed clover adopted his name and went on to live the life Fry had dreamed of. He went to the graveyard determined to dig up the grave and take back the clover only to discover that it wad the grave of his nephew who his brother had named after him.I also found the episode of Futurama in which Fry’s dog from his original timeline is shown waiting for him every day outside the pizza place where he used to work for the rest of his life and until the poor thing dies of old age absolutely fucking brutal
Plumdaff
joy in people
Through the 40th anniversary I've discovered the Atomic Hobo podcast; it's a really interesting (if often very bleak) podcast exploring how we prepared for nuclear war, particularly notable for a four minute by four minute deep dive into Threads which is excellent if not episodes to listen to on a bad day.
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