Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited to the first screening of the microbudget Scottish comics themed movie Electric Man at the Edinburgh Filmmhouse. Regular readers will know we’ve been following the production since the Dugbus crew set around trying to raise some independent finances for the film the other year and just recently we posted up a link to a trailer for the film. Well it is in the can and after seeing it I can tell you it is an absolute wee cracker of a film.
Jazz (Toby Manley) and Wolf (Mark McKirdy) are two likeable losers running a comics store in Edinburgh (the city’s real Deadhead Comics on Candlemaker Row stood in for the location) that is doing less than steller business. Worse than a lack of sales the duo find themselves liable for repairs to the premises to the tune of five thousand pounds and their landlord (comedian Andre Vincent) is not a patient man. But their lives are about to cross with those of Uncle Jimmy (played by singer and actor Fish) who may – or may not – have killed his own brother to get his hands on his priceless comics collection, Edison Bolt (Mark McDonnell), a collector obsessed with the Electric man comic, and the striking Lauren McCall (Jennifer Ewing) and one of the world’s most expensive comics, the original first issue of Electric Man, published a whole year before the Action Comics introduced Superman. Through a series of convoluted events the purloined issue ends up concealed in Jazz and Wolf’s comic shop, creating a lot of surprise when they find it, even more when they find themselves menaced by the Glasgow gangster like Uncle Jimmy and romanced (or just used?) by the stunning red-headed Lauren, both of whom claim true ownership of the comic. Meanwhile Bolt, frustrated in his attempt to purchase the issue for a vast sum of money is also sneaking around and thinks nothing of tasering Wolf and the store’s customers as he does so… Throw in the return of Emily Lockwood’s Victoria, a seemingly go ahead, organised professional woman who chucked Wolf because of his lack of drive, now back because she still loves him, and you have a great caper movie with some romance thrown in (and plenty of comical misunderstandings too).
Although the plot circles around the amazingly precious comic issue and much of it takes place in a comics store this isn’t just a film for comics fans; comics folks will get more of the references (including some well-kent faces from the Scottish comics scene at a convention), but really this is a great wee Indy Scottish film for anyone to enjoy and totally belies the tiny budget they guys had to work with. Right from the opening animated titles (based on art by Scots artist Graham Manley) the film looks far more than its small budget, with the animated titles effectively telling even the most comics illiterate the backstory of the Electric Man character and the comic so it doesn’t require an exposition info dump later. The characters are very well realised, getting under your skin quite quickly, and the plot has plenty of nice twists and turns, as well as some great dialogue, some good will-they, won’t-they romantic scenes and plenty of humour running through it too, plus the city of Edinburgh as a backdrop. The store in the film shows off a lot of independent comics artwork and titles (partly as a way of avoiding any possible infringement of copyright by having the likes of DC or Marvel titles clearly visible on the shelves). In fact I spotted issues of Edward Ross’ Filmish on the racks, then a customer buying some issues, which was kind of fun as A) I like those comics very much and B) Edward was sitting right next to me in the audience at the time!
Writer Scott MacKay and director and co-writer David Barras told me after the screening that they are off to London later this month to meet with some movie company representatives to try and persuade them to pick up Electric Man for distribution and I wish them the best of luck (never the easiest thing, to get distribution for an Indy movie, I know of many fine films I’ve seen at the Film Festival which got great word of mouth but still struggled to get picked up for distribution). But I have my fingers crossed for the guys – I’d reckon Electric Man has the comics folks almost as an inbuilt audience right away and as I said at the start this isn’t simply a comics movie, it’s a terrific Indy movie set in Edinburgh that anyone can enjoy. The audience of that first screening gave it a great reception and I really think you’re all going to enjoy it too, hopefully more folks will get a chance to see a screening in the not too distant future and when they do I hope you’ll all give them a lot of support.
August 9th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Great to see Fish in this, we’d never had known about it otherwise and it looks to be a fab watch indeed – well done all involved, looking fwd to the dvd release.