Billy The Kid And The Green Baize Vampire - DVD Review

Snooker hotshot Billy The Kid (Phil Daniels) is dragooned into a high-stakes game against six-times world champion Maxwell Randall (Alun Armstrong), the Green Baize Vampire. Can he win? His manager (Bruce Payne) hopes not – if Billy doesn’t take a dive, he’s going to be in big trouble with the local Mob...

Imagine The Hustler filtered through the musical sensibilities of Julien Temple’s Absolute Beginners and you’re close to understanding the full horror of this 1985 Thatcherite Brit flick. The songs are lame, grab-bags of cliché and half rhyme, the plot crawls with smug self-consciousness and even likeable sorts like Daniels and Armstrong grate as they spit out lines with absolutely no foundation. Shot in murky Can’t-See-A-Bloody- Thing-o-Vision, it’s difficult to believe that the director is Alan Clarke, the man who also shot hard-hitters like Made In Britain and Scum.