Μύ After garnering a cult following on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Two, The League Of Gentlemen went wide screen with their gothic comic take on the Apocalypse. It was praised as a "hilarious fusion of The Truman Show, Monty Python and Hammer Horror", but there are currently no plans to release it stateside where one suspects its uniquely grotesque sensibility would leave moviegoers scratching their heads.
The End Of Everything
Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith et al talk about avoiding the pitfalls of devising a movie spin-off in a 'making of' featurette that spares us the usual waffle about plot and characters. Screenwriter Jeremy Dyson insists that including the writer/actors in the narrative (to play themselves) and the notion that they were sick of their alter egos, didn't come from real life. "We never really had that conversation with each other," he says, "But that did come out, ironically, as we were doing it."
Fans of the TV show will enjoy a tour of The Real Royston Vasey courtesy of Pauline Campbell-Jones (Pemberton) although residents of the small town of Hadfield will probably be less amused. ("It has an almost inbred feel to it," notes Shearsmith.) Meanwhile, the featurette A Cast Of Thousands exposes the CG cloning procedure that enabled the actors to play up to three characters in a single scene. "It's hard on your face," moans Pemberton - referring to the hours in makeup between each set up. At best though, this is a cursory look at visual effects.
We get even more up-close-and-personal with Pemberton in A Gentleman's Diary. It chronicles just one day of filming but the shoot extends from dawn till dusk and that's still not enough time to get all the footage required. Director Steve Bendelack stays in the background (in fact, he contributes nothing to this DVD) so this featurette merely amounts to a lot of mucking about between takes. Again there's very little on the visual effects that were so integral to the film.
In League With Lunatics
There's a lot of fumbling about for the mystical "keys of ingress" in sixteen suitably daft deleted scenes. In addition, David Warner does an impressive bit of maniacal laughing as Erasmus Pea - "with an 'a'" - and Victoria Wood pops up with her brilliantly blithe take on Queen Mary ("Eugh. What's that smell? Oh, it's Tuesday.") A couple of scenes with Pemberton (as Herr Lipp playing Pemberton) err a little too far on the creepy side and a 10 minute outtakes reel just isn't funny at all.
Finally, The League Of Gentleman get together for a boisterous and intermittently insightful commentary. We learn a bizarre multitude of things, eg shooting took place in Ireland "for tax reasons," the small town of Hoath is "a very popular place for scattering ashes," and "you should never work with giraffes" - especially while trying to jam a six foot pole up one of their backsides... No doubt this is information that might some day come in handy, otherwise this DVD is pretty low on the nitty-gritty of putting a film together. On the other hand, it's a lively package that builds on the appeal of the series - as wonderfully weird as you’d expect from the locals of Royston Vasey. (Definitely in a league of it own.)
EXTRA FEATURES
