THE SNAPPER. (1993) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE SNAPPER. (1993) DIRECTED BY STEPHEN FREARS.

BASED ON THE BOOK BY RODDY DOYLE.

DISTRIBUTED BY ELECTRIC PICTURES.

MUSIC BY STANLEY MYERS.

STARRING TINA KELLEGHER, COLM MEANEY, RUTH MCCABE, PAT LAFFAN, BRENDON GLEASON, STUART DUNNE AND RYNAGH O’GRADY.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Are you all right, Sharon…? Are you all right there…?’

‘I suppose a ride’s out of the question…?’

Oh my God, I love this film. It’s a gem from the early ‘90s that I hadn’t seen for years and years, so when I found the DVD in a charity shop recently, you can be sure I nabbed it. After paying the euro to the old lady first, of course. The book is one of Roddy Doyle’s BARRYTOWN TRILOGY, which also features THE COMMITMENTS and THE VAN, each of which have also been turned into iconic Irish fillums.

It’s the story of the Curley family, as chaotically Dublin at they come, and in particular of its eldest daughter Sharon, who is expecting a happy event in the next few months . . . a baby conceived on a drunken night out with the girls.

To be brutally honest, Sharon is actually raped by George Burgess, the father of one of her friends, who takes advantage of a drunk girl too pissed to make an informed decision about whether or not she consents to the act of union.

But the movie is billed as a charming comedy, possibly the funniest film of the year, so I guess it’d be too ‘woke’ to go on about the act of violence that brings the baby, the little ‘snapper,’ into being…

The film follows Sharon as she first tells her shocked parents about her news, then her best friends, the ‘girls,’ with whom she has every intention of continuing to party, right up until her body tells her it’s time to stop. She’ll keep on working at the supermarket too, until it all gets too much.

Her dad Dessie, hilariously played by Colm Meaney, sounds off a bit at first, but then he gets used to the idea of a new baby in the family, though he’s not happy that Sharon, out of shame and embarrassment, is refusing to disclose the identity of the father.

His pals, including a very young Brendan THE GUARD Gleason and also Stuart Dunne who goes on to play notorious gangster Billy Meehan in Irish soap opera FAIR CITY, give him an awful ribbing about it, but Dessie will fight anyone who calls his eldest daughter a slut, so don’t you even think about it, right…?

‘What will the neighbours think?’ That’s a question that Sharon’s mum throws out there. It’s a question that would have troubled the minds of every Irish parent with a daughter pregnant out of wedlock back then, and it’s such a tremendous relief when Colm Meaney bursts out with, ‘Fuck the neighbours!’ As reassuring and refreshing as that is, though, it’s Sharon who has to bear the brunt of their hurtful gossiping and cruel stone-throwing.

‘Sharon Curley’s pregnant, didja hear…?’

‘She had that coming, the slut…!’

‘Who’s she having it for…?’

‘I’d like to see her fit into those jeans now…!’

Just wait till George Burgess’s daughter Yvonne, one of Sharon’s inner circle, gets wind of who’s supposed to have knocked up her best mate. Will the skin and hair fly? What do you think…?

In vain will a desperate Sharon try to convince her family and friends that it was a passing Spanish sailor who got her in the family way. Some secrets are clearly not meant to stay secret. And then the contractions start…

Particularly funny scenes involve a hugely pregnant Sharon doing karaoke to Madonna’s controversial ‘Eighties hit, Poppa don’t Preach, and a delighted but sceptical Mrs. Curley, Sharon’s long-suffering mother, benefiting (sexually!) from Dessie’s exhaustive study of Sharon’s pregnancy books. I think he’s discovered where certain things are to be found on a woman’s body, lol…

Sadly, some of the marvellous Irish actors who starred in THE SNAPPER have since passed away.

These include;

Rynagh O’Grady plays a nosy neighbour in THE SNAPPER, but is best known for starring as Mary to Patrick Drury’s John in clerical sitcom FATHER TED. A couple of shopkeepers by trade, they routinely knock lumps out of each other in private but are as sweet as pie to each other in front of Ted and Dougal.

John to the priests, after Mary has tried to drown him in a bucket of water:

‘Ah, Fathers! Mary was just, eh, washing my hair; she has such lovely soft hands…!’

Ted Laffan is as well-known for playing Georgie Burgess, the infamous impregnator of young girls, in THE SNAPPER as he is for portraying the mad, sex-crazed milkman known as Pat Mustard (aka the Hairy-Baby Maker) in FATHER TED. He died in 2019 aged 79.

Mrs. Doyle: ‘Father, Pat wants to know if he can put his enormous tool in my box…?’

Pat Mustard: ‘It’s too big for the milk float. I’ll get it tomorrow.’

Other now-deceased actors with small parts in the film include Birdy Sweeney, Cathleen Delany, Tom Murphy, Virginia Cole, Conor Evans, Robbie Doolin, Marie Conmee and even the stunning-looking-in-her-heyday Patricia Laffan who played Queen Poppaea in QUO VADIS alongside Peter Ustinov in 1951. I can’t find her physical presence in THE SNAPPER but she’s on the cast list, and these don’t usually lie. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

Sad that so many of the cast have passed on, but it was thirty-one years ago, I suppose. The film is so old but it doesn’t look dated, more like a lovely cuddly stroll down Memory Lane, what with all the stone-washed denim jackets, pints and chips with the girls, hailing taxis outside the pub in the rain when you’re almost too pissed to stand, then being sexually assaulted by your mate’s dad over the bonnet of his car when you’re too intoxicated to stand up…

Okay, yeah yeah, I ruined that lovely train of thought with my #metoo wokey-woke bullshit, lol. Enjoy the fillum, it’s a great laugh. Except for the… Right, right, not another word out of me. Over and out.

FLASHDANCE. (1983) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

FLASHDANCE. (1983) DIRECTED BY ADRIAN LYNE. STORY BY TOM HEDLEY.

STARRING JENNIFER BEALS AND MICHAEL NOURI.

MUSIC BY GIORGIO MORODER.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I’m so freakin’ happy that I found the DVD of this iconic romantic dance drama from the ‘Eighties in a charity shop the other day, along with that of THE BREAKFAST CLUB. I played ‘em both back-to-back over Saturday night dinner, much to the delight of my (adult) kids, who enjoyed them immensely.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB taught my autistic son that you don’t always have to stay in the ‘boxes’ people put us into when we’re younger; we can be whomever we want to be. And FLASHDANCE taught him that you don’t have to be a good dancer to get an audition with the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance & Repertory. All you need is a rich, older boyfriend who has the ear of the all-important Arts Council, and Bob’s your uncle, job’s a good ‘un, and so forth.

Alex Owens is an eighteen-year-old welder from Pittsburgh. Yes, I said welding. Despite only being of school age, she apparently has the qualifications that allow her to work in a big dangerous steel works in Pittsburgh that seems to only employ much older males and no other women at all.

I think the film might have worked better if they’d left the welding out of the script altogether, as it’s a bit far-fetched, but I suppose then we wouldn’t have that brilliant scene in THE FULL MONTY (1997) in which the would-be stripper lads all gather together to watch ‘old Flashy-Tits there’ in the hope that it’ll teach them summat about dancing, but all they really learn is that Alex’s welding is ‘all to cock an’ all.’ Bit of a let-down, lol.

Alex’s boss at the steel mill, the attractive and mature older man Nick Hurley, notices her existence when he sees her working nights as an experimental dancer in Mawby’s Bar. The good thing about the bar is that she doesn’t have to strip for her money; the bar genuinely encourages her and its other dancers to get out there and perform their asses off in the creative routines they’ve choreographed and rehearsed all by themselves. Would that really have happened in sleazy old ‘we love topless dancing’ 1980s America? The truth is I don’t really know as I wasn’t there.

Alex is as attracted to Nick as he is to her, though he’s twenty years older than her, divorced and filthy rich. Actually, that makes him sound like the perfect man, haha. Alex is smitten, anyway, and they have sex in her fabulously spacious warehouse apartment which she’d never be able to afford if the film were set in today times. She also possesses an adorable, endlessly loyal mutt called Grunt, one of my favourite characters in the film.

Alex’s real passion is to be a ballerina, although she’s afraid to apply to the aforementioned Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance & Repertory because of all the formal training they want to see listed on the application form, of which she has none. But she’s taught herself to dance and she’s a phenomenal dancer, so all she needs is a chance to show the snooty Board of the Conservatory what she can do. Enter Nick and his Friends in High Places…

The character of Hanna Long, an ancient former ballerina who acts as Alex’s mentor in the film, could have used a bit of back-story to pad that part of it out a bit. They could have gone a few steps further with her by making her a Russian former ballerina, who maybe defected from Russia to America when she could bear the regime no longer.

And maybe she’d been unable to find work as a ballerina in Pittsburgh and had to take a menial job to pay the bills, but she’ll never forget her days as a Russian ballerina and she’s trying to live vicariously through Alex. Alex, of course, is nervous about taking that big definitive step towards classical ballet, but that’s where her big-shot rich older boyfriend comes in…

Alex’s relationship with Nick is a little concerning. I mean, I’m concerned for Nick, not Alex. She practically beats him up when she finds out he got her the audition she’s been longing for. What a bastard; how could he do such a foul thing? He’s only trying to help, goddammit! Some women would actually be grateful, might even say thank you.

Also, she cycles to his fancy mansion in the dead of night and hurls a bloody great rock through his window when she- mistakenly- thinks he’s been cheating. God only knows what the future holds for such a volatile, mismatched couple.

Some random facts about the movie. It was directed by Adrian Lyne, the man who a few years later would make the film that would scare the men of the world into staying faithful to their wives for just a little longer than they normally would; FATAL ATTRACTION.

Also, the lady who plays Alex’s best friend Jeanie in the movie, Sunny Sue Johnson, died of an aneurism in real life the year after the movie was made. She was only thirty years old.

She played Jeanie, the waitress in Mawby’s who aspired to be a figure skater, and she was dating Richie, Mawby’s short-order cook who really wanted to be a stand-up comedian. Jeez, did no-one who worked at Mawby’s really want to work at Mawby’s? Seems to me like they all would have preferred to be somewhere else…

By the way, you might see a familiar face on the panel at the dance auditions and working as the secretary of the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance & Repertory. Lucy Lee Flippin- an unusual name, I think you’ll agree- played Almanzo Wilder’s prim and proper older sister, Eliza Jane Wilder, in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE from 1979 to 1982.

I do remember I loved her character. I’m fairly sure she was a school-marm in it. If ever someone was born to play a buttoned-up school-marm, that someone is Lucy Lee Flippin. That’s not an insult; she just plays the part really, really well.

Finally, the fantastic theme tune, FLASHDANCE; WHAT A FEELING, was taken to the top of the charts by the recently deceased Irene FAME; I’M GONNA LIVE FOREVER Cara, and was a collaboration between herself, musical genius Giorgio Moroder and musician and record producer, Keith Forsey.

The song- and the film- won too many awards to list here- we all have places to be- and there was a great music video made consisting of clips from the movie; a sad Alex welding and a happy Alex dancing and being given flowers by her rich older boyfriend, Nick Hurley. Suddenly, loads of music videos started featuring clips from the movies they came from. Well, a good idea is a good idea…!

I just remember the song being Number One for ages in the summer of 1983. A great song for a great movie. Yes, the film had its loopholes and what have you, but we loved it and how we all wanted to make it as dancers in the summer of 1983, lol, before we got that nonsense knocked out of us on returning to school in the autumn.

If you’re familiar with the film, go and watch it again for a great big slice of nostalgic gold. If you’ve never seen it before, you don’t know what you’re missing. Watch it asap; it’s a pure ‘Eighties gem.

PS! I’m thrilled to be able to say that the lady whose real-life story inspired the movie FLASHDANCE, Maureen Marder, has read my review and very kindly contacted me to say that she likes it, which I’m delighted about! Maureen was in fact a welder by day and a dancer by night back in the day, and to think I said that they should have canned the welding because it wasn’t believable…! Shows what I know, lol. And Maureen, like Alex Owens in the film, also aspired to enrol in a swanky dance school like the one in the movie, so I’m more than interested to find out how it all went for her. Maybe she’ll tell us sometime.  

FIFTY SHADES FILM TRILOGY. (2015, 2017, 2019) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

FIFTY SHADES FILM SERIES:

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. (2015)

FIFTY SHADES DARKER. (2017)

FIFTY SHADES FREED. (2019)

ALL BASED ON THE BOOKS BY E.L. JAMES.

DIRECTED BY SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON: FILM 1, AND JAMES FOLEY: FILMS 2&3.

STARRING DAKOTA JOHNSON AND JAMIE DORNAN.

A TRIPLE-FILM REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘You’re biting your lip. You know what that does to me.’

Slagging off the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY books and their author E.L. James has been a popular pastime since the phenomenon exploded onto the literary scene in 2012. I, however, am not one of the detractors, naysayers and denigrators.

I’m happy to go on record as saying that I enjoyed the trilogy of books immensely and I have nothing but respect and admiration for E.L. James. If I could achieve in my entire lifetime even a fraction of the success she’s enjoyed in the last decade or so, I’d die a happy writer.

Clearly I’m not the only one who feels the same about FIFTY SHADES. So many millions of women purchased the sexy books that the term ‘mummy porn’ was coined for this type of writing.

A whole generation of readers and writers of erotica had been born, and the rising prevalence and popularity of Kindle readers meant that women could read their dirty books anywhere, even on public transport, and no-one would be any the wiser.

While I’m not sure how many women would actually go into a hardware store to buy cable ties, I do know how huge the genre of erotic writing has become in the last few years, thanks in no small part to FIFTY SHADES.

Right. Now that I’ve gotten that little lot off my chest, let’s talk about the plot of these films that were on everyone’s lips not too many years ago. Each film came out in the February of their year of release, by the way, just in time for, you know, whatsits, Hearts and Flowers Day, I forget what it’s called…

I think most people are familiar with the basic plot of the films, which as far as I can see is pretty faithful to the books. Shy, virginal (literally!) English Literature student Anastasia Steele meets and falls head over heels (also literally…!) in love with handsome Seattle-based millionaire, Christian Grey. So far so normal, right…? Wrong.

Christian is your average handsome millionaire in all respects but one. He’s into kinky sex in a big, big way. You name it, he digs it. Spanking, whipping, blindfolds, bondage, fisting- both anal and vaginal- and a whole host of other depraved pursuits, all of which he wants to do to Anastasia in what she terms his ‘Red Room Of Pain.’

‘I don’t make love,’ he tells a bewildered Anastasia. ‘I fuck. Hard.’

Get you, Mr. Grey!

We see Anastasia losing her virginity to Christian in full techni-colour glory, as it were, and then having sex with him almost non-stop for the rest of the film. You see everything. Well, nearly.

You don’t see Christian’s willy, but believe me, you see everything else. Ana’s boobs, her ass, his ass, the pubes leading down to his willy, but it just stops short of his willy. Shame. I’m sure it would be as veiny and muscular as the rest of him, nom, nom, nom…

The three films are full of sex, naturally. Sex, spanking, flogging, whipping, pretty much everything that’s in all three books, as far as I can remember. The two leads spend most of the movie running around in the nip.

The sex looks great and is hot and hard, but Christian spends an awful lot of time with his mouth clamped to Ana’s groin, whereas the film-makers don’t allow her to return the favour. Christian doesn’t get so much as a single blowjob anywhere in the trilogy. Surely that would be unusual in any relationship, never mind a dominant-submissive one.

The movie has so much sex in it that I can barely remember there being too many bits of plot in it. But that’s okay, because everyone knows that it’s the sex-and-spanking that’s important here. Ana writhes and bucks and moans at his slightest touch, which must be pretty gratifying for him. She’s practically orgasm-ing while he’s still lowering his strides.

I’ve heard it said that Christian Grey is a rubbish dominant. He only gives Ana seven rather indifferent spanks during the course of the entire trilogy- I said spanks, not spankings- and he does little else besides tickle her tummy with a peacock feather and drizzle some kind of syrup over her nips. She’s such a novice that she probably thinks his actions are well hardcore, innit.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the leads. I don’t like Jamie Dornan, I’m sorry to say. I know he’s a big sex symbol at the moment and has been incredibly successful in drama series THE FALL, but I just don’t dig him in that way. Sexually. You know what I mean.

There’s something just a bit off about his features, to me. Like someone whacked him in the face with a shovel or something and he didn’t bounce back quite right. I know that’s getting a bit personal but it’s all right, I’m a reviewer. We’re allowed to do that.

So much for Jamie Dornan. Dakota Johnson, on the other hand, is a different matter. She’s gorgeous, with a slender body, bright blue eyes and a moist, red mobile mouth, and she’s utterly perfect for the role of unsophisticated Anastasia.

I’m the straightest woman you could ever meet in a month of Sundays, but I could not take my eyes off her for a single second she was on-screen. She’s mesmerising. Mind you, she is acting royalty, after all, seeing that she’s the daughter of Don MIAMI VICE Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and the grand-daughter of Tippi Hedren, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘ice-cool blondes’ and star of hugely successful horror film, THE BIRDS.

I just wonder if she’ll ever feel bad or embarrassed about appearing naked in these films and engaging in ‘kinky fuckery’ on the big screen with a heart-throb of the day. Maria Schneider, who starred alongside Marlon Brando in the erotic classic LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972), was reviled and ridiculed for the role she played, which was that of a docile younger woman to Brando’s heavyweight middle-aged man with an axe to grind with life and death. No doubt she was told to ‘go get the butter’ or was teased about dirty old pigs more times than she cares to remember post-Tango. Let’s hope Dakota Johnson doesn’t encounter any such problems.

Nothing much extra happens in FIFTY SHADES DARKER. More sex, and Ana is working in publishing at a place called Seattle Independent Press. She also discovers that Christian is, in his own words, ‘fifty shades of fucked up,’ because of the two most important women in his life before he met Ana; his mother, who abandoned him to the foster care system when he was a young ‘un, and a sophisticated older friend of his adoptive mother’s- older than him, not his adoptive mother- who made him into her submissive for six years, starting from when he was in his mid-teens. Ana is understandably furious about this sexual predator and scathingly calls her ‘Mrs. Robinson.’ In the film, ‘Mrs. Robinson,’ or Elena Lincoln, is played by a still-hot Kim Basinger.

In FIFTY SHADES FREED, the dominant and his submissive are married and being pursued by someone who has a grudge against Christian Grey. Well, he didn’t get to be a twenty-seven-year-old billionaire by taking care not to tread on other people’s tootsies. The list of suspects is probably as long as your arm.

Oh, and Anastasia is now preggers. Knocked up. With child. On the nest. Pregnant by the king of designer stubble. Does their story have a happy ending? You probably already know by now, so I’ll tell you. Yes. Yes, they do. Any danger of a sequel? I don’t think so, but you never know. So yes, probably, yes, at some point, yes. Lol.  

FIFTY SHADES is a terrific old sexy romp of a movie trilogy. Okay, so it ain’t Tolstoy- or Tolkien- but the books are a jolly good read and the films are a good laugh and they’ve brought bondage and other sexy shenanigans into the mainstream where they belong. That can only be a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’m tired of so-called literary snobs looking down their noses at FIFTY SHADES. The books and films are t’riffic, so get used to it. Oh, I forgot, you are used to it, on account of the books being twelve years old and counting, lol.

Do the films perpetuate the somewhat dangerous myth that all a woman wants is a rich, dominant bloke who’ll pay for everything as long as he can give her the occasional good hiding into the bargain? Don’t ask me that. I don’t have the answer. Some people think that it does, but my personal jury’s still out on that one.

 All I know for now is that I’m a FIFTY SHADES and E.L. James supporter for life and a diehard fan of kinky sex to boot. Now, for the love of puppies, can somebody please tie me up and give me a spanking…? It’s a full-on emergency…

CALIGULA. (1979) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

CALIGULA. (1979) DIRECTED BY TINTO BRASS.

PRODUCED BY BOB GUCCIONE AND FRANCO ROSSELLINI.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY GORE VIDAL.

STARRING MALCOLM MCDOWELL, HELEN MIRREN, TERESA ANN SAVOY, JOHN STEINER, JOHN GIELGUD AND PETER O’TOOLE.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a version of the Emperor Caligula’s life and times, and it’s filthy, full of real sex, did you know? No, I won’t wait here patiently while you go and see for yourself, lol. Go check it out after first reading this review, right?

It’s probably the least ‘woke,’ least politically correct film you’ll ever see. I love it for its brilliant casting of Malcolm McDowell as Caligula; his face manages to pull off expressions both angelic and demonic at will. He masterfully demonstrates Caligula’s descent into madness after the death of his sister. (Descent? You mean he wasn’t born as mad as a cracked egg…?! But I could have sworn…)

As the deranged Emperor of Rome, he’s simply sublime in looks and actions. How easy it is to imagine him as the real Caligula, swanning around in his cloak and sandals dispensing harshness and cruelty with one hand and, erm, harshness and cruelty with the other as well. Because he’s harsh and cruel, right, with virtually no redeeming features. Except for his oh-so-brotherly love for his sister, the fair Drusilla. He spends half the movie bedding her, so we can be greatly assured of this royal’s love…

Caligula becomes Emperor after the death of his great-uncle Tiberius, who looks to be dying of some horrible mix of venereal diseases. He’s all scabby and everything. So much for Peter O’Toole as Tiberius, anyway. His role is pretty short-lived, as is John Gielgud’s as Tiberius’s pal, Nerva, who kills himself when he knows that Tiberius is on the way out. Maybe he does it to escape what he knows will be a living hell under Caligula. Maybe it’s a smart move…

A fascinated Caligula to a dying Nerva: Does it hurt, dying? What’s it like…?

Rome under Caligula is a nightmare. He confiscates the senators’ estates for himself and forces their wives to work as prostitutes. (Don’t tell me those horny old biddies, neglected by their ageing hubbies, weren’t all up for it!) He desecrates the old religion and makes his armies prepare for a mock invasion of Britain.

He is a violent, greedy and bullying ruler. Just look what happens to poor Macro, who’s supposed to be his friend. Okay, so it’s a cool, visually arresting death, death by super-scythe, but still, friends…

The whole time, he continues to have sexual relations with his sister, Drusilla, until she dies of a fever, and with Helen Mirren as Caesonia, his girlfriend who gives birth to a child, their daughter. God help her, seriously, the daughter, when she’s old enough to have sex with…

The name of Rome is sullied, a laughing stock, thanks to Caligula’s disgraceful shenanigans. In between things happening, the entire court is having sex, wild, uninhibited glorious sex, sometimes even anonymously, as in, they don’t even know the owner of the cock they’re sucking or the pussy they’re penetrating.

Why so hardcore? All I know is this; Bob Guccione, the owner of Penthouse, another magazine you read for the articles, ordered a lot of nudie sex scenes to be made and added post-production, to the horror of both Gore Vidal the scriptwriter and Tinto Brass the director.

Without having seen a sexless version of the film, which would last, I think, about seven and a half minutes, I think I can safely say that I prefer the sex-filled one. And so would most people with eyes, lol. It’s a marvellous movie, now a cult classic. Just don’t stick it on for the kids by accident…

2023 Best

PRISCILLA. (2023) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

PRISCILLA. (2023) WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND CO-PRODUCED BY SOFIA COPPOLA.

STARRING CAELIE SPAENY AND JACOB ELORDI.

BASED ON THE BOOK, ELVIS AND ME, BY PRISCILLA PRESLEY.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I watched this one recently and I can’t help feeling a tad disappointed. Never mind the Baz Luhrmann fantasy, they told me. Wait for the much grittier, blood-and-guts tell-all from Sofia Coppola, coming soon. Well, I waited and I did enjoy it, and I was even entertained at times, but I was also bored, especially in the first half of the film during that seemingly interminable courtship.

In 1959, Elvis is in the U.S. army, stationed in Germany, and he meets a cripplingly shy, teenage Priscilla when one of his army mates brings her along to a get-together at Elvis’s house.

Priscilla, in Germany with her own army family, falls for the handsome, already famous singer immediately. Why wouldn’t she? She’s an impressionable little girl, and I’m sure he was well aware of the effect he had on women.

Despite the ten-year age gap, Elvis takes to the fourteen-year-old and they start a relationship, though they save the sex for the wedding night, apparently. This is at Elvis’s insistence, though I always thought he was as randy as all-get-out when it came to the wimmin. Was some sort of sexual dysfunction at work here, or genuinely a type of moral prudishness? Who knows?

The scenes of Priscilla going endlessly back and forth to her parents’ house and to school after being with Elvis are immensely tiresome to watch, so no doubt they were equally so for the real Priscilla to go through in real life. Things don’t change much when she gets to Graceland. Except the young Priscilla, that is…

Elvis, a decade older and with a domineering personality, tells Priscilla to dye her hair black and wear more of the black eye-up that was the style of the time. He chooses her clothes and a lot of the movie is just Priscilla parading ever taller hair and differently-patterned ‘sixties dresses for Elvis’s- and even his hangers-on’s- edification. I wonder how Priscilla felt about the constant presence of the so-called ‘Memphis Mafia’ in their lives and in their marriage…?

The worst part of the marriage was probably Elvis’s frequent absences. He went to film sets and on tour and on little jollies to Las Vegas, and he never allowed little wifey to come with.

‘I need to know you’re at home waiting for me, baby,’ he tells her in his trademark mumble, and that just about sums up Priscilla Beaulieu’s part in their marriage.

It also hurt her immeasurably to read in the papers about Elvis’s romances with his co-stars, women like Nancy Sinatra and Ann-Margret. Elvis usually denies all wrongdoing, but other times he confesses and says it was just ‘one of those things,’ usually an on-set romance, I would say.

His moods were unpredictable and sometimes violent, especially when he was arguing with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker (who doesn’t feature in this movie at all except as a voice we don’t hear on the phone), or brooding over the fact that he only got sent a certain type of light, sunshine-y movie script that involved the wearing of Hawaiian shirts and flower garlands round the neck, rather than anything more weighty.

He also introduced her to pills and drugs that would ‘help’ her to ‘keep up’ with the pace of life as his wife, but drug-taking didn’t agree with her. She just wanted a nice cosy domestic life with the man she loved and their baby, Lisa-Marie, and it simply wasn’t sustainable.

I’m leaving you, she says, and he mutters something incomprehensible and then she leaves. End of. A bit anti-climactic after all the hype but still an entertaining enough one-time watch.

Priscilla, just going by this film, doesn’t seem to have had a huge amount of personality, just looks and youth. Still, I guess that was enough for Elvis, who had charisma enough for both of them, or so I’m told. I guess the actor who played him, though undoubtedly good-looking, was holding back a little in this film.

THE CROWN. (2016-2023) A SUPERB NETFLIX SERIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE CROWN. (2016-2023) AN HISTORICAL DRAMA CREATED BY PETER MORGAN.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

My kids and I have been glued to this Netflix show all December long. We were, quite simply, addicted to the drama and the brilliant, sparkly writing, not to mention the glorious period costumes and the gorgeous interiors and exteriors.

It tells the story of the second Queen Elizabethan era, from her coronation in 1952 to the marriage of Prince Charles and Queen Camilla in 2005. There are six seasons, containing ten hour-long episodes each. The main cast is changed every two seasons to allow for the natural ageing of the characters. This really pissed one off in the beginning, but one grew used to it…!

Claire Foy is phenomenal as the young Queen in seasons One and Two. She’s clearly madly in love with her husband, Prince Philip, who, at this stage in the show, is portrayed as being repeatedly unfaithful to his best gal.

She’s devastated by his lack of feeling, but the stiff upper lip endowed upon her by her grandmamma, Queen Mary, has already kicked in and she bears her disappointments stoically.

We see also the abdication of King Edward VIII, Elizabeth’s father’s brother, who gives up the throne in order to marry the love of his life, American socialite, Wallis Simpson. This is the shocking event that catapults Elizabeth onto the throne, as her father, now King George the Sixth, only lives for a few years after taking over from his brother.

I love John Lithgow as Winston Churchill, by the way, and also Pip Torrens as Tommy Lascelles, the Queen’s advisor and the Man who says No to Everything, lol. He’s such a stickler for tradition, Gawd bless ‘im.

Poor Princess Margaret, the party princess, marries sleazy photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones, after being denied the love of her life, as she sees it, by the Queen… Group Captain Anthony Jones… Margaret turns into Helena Bonham-Carter in seasons Three and Four, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking raconteur, the life and soul of every party, but at her core, an emptiness…

Olivia Colman is a dead ringer for the more middle-aged Queen as she strides spryly around the grounds and stables in all weathers with her beloved horses and dogs. She is obliged around this time to navigate the Thatcher era, and the first ever female Prime Minister, a novelty for all. She has many official chats with the Iron Lady herself.

Elizabeth may not particularly like Mrs. T., but there’s a mutual respect between the two women, who, after all, are the hardest-working gals in the United Kingdom. Gillian Anderson is sublime as the delightfully posh-voiced lady boss; though I may not agree with her politics, I cried when Gillian Anderson as Maggie got the push, lol. Don’t judge me; she’s a bloody good actress!

Elsewhere, Camilla Shand-Parker-Bowles makes her first appearance, even before the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana. I was kind of shocked by this. I never knew Camilla was a fixture as far back as that. I always just assumed she turned up later in the story.

But no, she was already in the picture as the real love of Charles’s life by the time of the royal wedding. I liked her, funnily enough, though I can’t even imagine how her husband felt, having to answer the phone every five minutes to Prince Charles asking to speak to his wife…!

Charles is appallingly-behaved towards Diana in seasons Three and Four, spending as much of his time as possible away from her in different palaces (it’s well for some!), and screaming at her that Camilla is the love of his life and he’d do anything to protect her.

He did very little, it seemed, to protect Diana, his wife, from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I felt disgusted with him and very much on Diana’s side, all the way through to the portrayal of her horrible death.

Charles as played by Dominic West in the last two seasons seems to be much more Diana-friendly, but it’s too late then. I absolutely loved the drama with the Al Fayeds, and was genuinely shocked at the sight of Dodi’s dad, Mohamed, so cruelly manipulating his eldest son into orchestrating a relationship with Diana, just to suit his own ends. The stuff I didn’t know about before watching this show…!

Imelda Staunton was surely born to play the Queen in old age. The Queen never puts a foot wrong, never uses the wrong fork or wears an inappropriate dress, never shows an emotion beyond mild pleasure or mild disapproval, never slobs around on the couch wearing sweatpants, never even raises her voice.

Just think of all the emotions she must have suppressed over the years, and yet she seemed to be as healthy as a horse, so fair play to her. She got up, got dressed and ‘Queened’ every day for seventy-odd years. She beat Queen Victoria, as she so obviously wanted to do.

I don’t believe in monarchies and royal families because I think everyone is born equal, and I certainly think that the world’s wealth should be more evenly distributed (so much money for one family is utterly, utterly obscene!), but, if you’re looking for a steady, reliable sovereign who shows up every day and ‘Queens’ with all the breath in her body, then I guess Lizzie’s your man. And it doesn’t seem like Philip was ever much of a support, even going so far as to say to her face that she was his intellectual inferior. Oh yeah, like he’s so smart…!

By the time the show ends, Charles and the endlessly patient Camilla have finally tied the knot. The Queen even relents enough to give them her blessing, though Charles is going out of his mind waiting for her to step down, something she’s clearly not going to do. Blame Claire Foy, folks, haha. It’s all her fault.

Princes Andrew and Edward barely get a look-in, and not much air-time for Anne either. William’s met Kate Middleton by now, whose mum is not dissimilar from Mohamed Al Fayed in terms of manipulation, and ‘bad boy’ royal Harry is already acting out, presumably in an effort to deal with his feelings surrounding his mother’s death.

Elizabeth Debicki makes an almost unbelievably believable Diana. Charles Dance was great as Lord Mountbatten, and Jane Lapotaire as Philip’s mother, Princess Alice. I bawled my eyes out at the death of Princess Margaret.

The entire show is moving, well-written and compelling. And so addictive, we were never able to watch just one episode. Two, three or even four was much more the norm. And we learned so much history! Best TV series since The Sopranos. Don’t go breaking my balls over it now. The critic is always right…