Ex-Rent Hell presents… Big­gles: Adven­tures in Time

Ex-Rent Hell is a col­umn ded­i­cat­ed to the seami­er side of the 1980s VHS boom. Each week, ERH selects a film from this cursed era and asks one sim­ple ques­tion: what went wrong?

A sleek, silent, neon-trimmed Siko­rsky attack heli­copter hov­ers above a Domini­can con­vent in war-torn 1917 Bel­gium. Mean­while, diminu­tive Yes front­man Jon Ander­son belts out pul­sat­ing elec­tro-pop anthem Do You Wan­na Be a Hero? over the cat­er­waul­ing sound­track. A dead-eyed Amer­i­can nobody with poufy hair dec­i­mates the script with flat­u­lent mid-’80s ref­er­ence-bombs… Wel­come to the unfuck­able nine-sided whore that is Big­gles: Adven­tures in Time.

Yes, the Jubilee, the Roy­al Wed­ding and the Olympics – aka the End­less Flo­ra Mar­garine Rah-Rah Street Par­ty™ – has so bloat­ed Ex-Rent Hell with patri­ot­ic fer­vour that we’re side­step­ping our usu­al trawl through psy­chotrop­ic LA sleaze and stewed Big Apple gutrot for a jin­go­is­tic jaunt through the mud-spat­tered fun-canal of the First World War. We’re in the com­pa­ny of boy’s own fly­ing ace/​xenophobic idiot James ​‘Big­gles’ Big­glesworth and his plucky pals Algy, Gin­ger, Wavy Gravy, Dr Snug­gles, Bum­fluff and Slot-Bad­ger. (Note to younger read­ers – Big­gles is like a Bake­lite James Bond but with touch rug­by instead of sexy birds and lash­ings of gin­ger beer rather than vod­ka martinis.)

Or at least we thought we were. The film’s pro­duc­ers – an unlike­ly-sound­ing duo named Pom Oliv­er and Kent Wal­win – have oth­er ideas. Bad, strange ideas involv­ing Amer­i­cans and time trav­el and all kinds of oth­er hokey non­sense that will treat the orig­i­nal source mate­r­i­al like a baby treats a nap­py. Big­gles, you see, isn’t deemed strong enough to car­ry a Big­gles movie. What he clear­ly needs is some form of unlever­aged nar­ra­tive buy-out that will see him con­tin­ue to head up the film in an ambas­sado­r­i­al capac­i­ty. All the while, the day-to-day run­ning of the con­cern reverts to an ashen-faced Yank plucked from a prison act­ing work­shop and jim­mied cross­wise into a times­lid­ing mael­strom of son­ic weapons, synth-pop, clock­work goril­las and milky tea.

This Eure­ka! moment would appear to have occurred to the scriptwrit­ers when their mid-morn­ing nap was dis­turbed by the impos­si­bly loud ker-ching! ema­nat­ing from the open­ing week­end box office of time-twist­ing titans Back to the Future and The Ter­mi­na­tor. Indeed, the Amer­i­can actor in ques­tion (Alex Hyde-White, son of Wil­fred) looks a lot like Michael Biehn as styled by Mar­ty McFly, sport­ing the star-span­gled ensem­ble of an out­size red blou­son, stonewashed Wran­gler Blue­jeans and ice white high-tops throughout.

Big­gles, on the oth­er hand, as essayed by the like­able but fair­ly awful Neil Dick­son – who looks like Jason Patric if Jason Patric was a Sec­ond Divi­sion foot­baller – couldn’t be more British if he were a steam-pow­ered bull­dog shit­ting out crum­pets and crick­et balls onto a Union Jack. The result­ing dis­con­nect is on a par with para­chut­ing a wiseass Cal­i­forn­ian teen and his pet robot into Lord of the Rings.

The First World War set­ting, time trav­el histri­on­ics, uncom­pre­hend­ing pro­tag­o­nist and blast­ed loca­tions can some­times make Big­gles feel like 12 Mon­keys as seen from the mon­keys’ point of view. More often than not it resem­bles stock footage culled from a data­bank of Cul­ture Club, a‑ha and Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd music videos that’s been stitched togeth­er by south­paw orang­utans and served on a bed of cheapo orches­tral stabs so loud, crass and jar­ring that they would make Gior­gio Moroder burn his Syn­clavier and feast on its ashes.

War, as we all know, is hell. Time trav­el, mean­while, is con­fus­ing. Big­gles is as con­fus­ing as hell. And that’s not just Ex-Rent Hell talk­ing – that’s physics.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 43: the On the Road issue.