Firestar: First Contact (1991)

In space no one can hear Cliff Twemlow kicking your ass. Journeying beyond their usual Mancunian settings, Firestar: First Contact finds the GBH double act of director David Kent-Watson and lead man/writer Cliff Twemlow looking up to the stars (and Ridley Scott's Alien) for inspiration.

Currently only available on DVD in Germany, where presumably the sight of North West observatory Jodrell Bank being passed off as a NASA style space base 'Solar Command' will go unnoticed, Firestar: First Contact stars Twemlow (acting under his latter day pseudonym Mike Sullivan) and Oliver Tobias as world weary astronauts who spend the working week blasting UFOs in space and their days off partying hard in Manchester. In a cheeky move Twemlow gives himself an "and introducing" credit, even though he had first appeared in front of the camera nearly thirty years earlier as an extra on Coronation Street.

On a return trip to Earth, John D. Trooper (Twemlow) and Captain Bremner (Tobias) receive a dressing down from their boss Commander Vandross (Charles Gray) who never the less takes an interest in the star shaped object the pair have discovered in space. Despite grounding Bremner on earth, Vandross soon sends the rest of Trooper's motley crew back into space, where a none too pleasant extra terrestrial surprise awaits them. Slow to start, with lots of earthbound dead air (there to get the money's worth out of name actors Gray and Tobias) Firestar is a bit of a slog until an Alien finally makes an appearance and starts dispatching the crew in nasty ways. Firestar is by far the bloodiest of all the Twemlow/Watson films, hearts are ripped out, arms pulled off, faces are shredded with glass, and flying metallic objects embed themselves in people, suggesting that Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm might also have been an influence.

Firestar's cast is rounded out with familiar faces like Brett Paul (a.k.a. GBH's Brett Sinclair) and one time Bond villain John Wyman (who once portrayed Twemlow in the 1982 film Tuxedo Warrior). However it is left to everyone's favourite former bouncer and library music composer to square off against the green, bug-faced alien, who sports secondary mouths in the palms of its hands.



In retrospect Kent-Watson and Twemlow really didn’t have the budget to do this outer space scenario justice, all that early 1990s CGI hasn't aged well, to put it mildly. Firestar: First Contact capitalized on the era’s craze for Laser Quest, the indoor laser tag game. The entrepreneurial Twemlow persuaded the owners of the local branch of Laser Quest to let them film in there, and an instant sci-fi movie set was born. Financing for the film partly came from the notorious Dutch millionaire Ger Visser (convicted of forgery and bankruptcy fraud in 2016).

Twemlow is his usual charismatic self, but his script is uncharastically banal. Maybe Twemlow was out of his comfort zone writing a sci-fi movie, or maybe the script was written in a hurry to take advantage of the availability of Laser Quest, but his personality and sense of humour is largely lacking here, save for a couple of witty scenes between Trooper and the ship’s female computer. It’s the only one of his films that I’ve never really connected with. The ultra gory last half hour partly reprieves it and since the production gave the cast an excuse to run around Laser Quest, swear, and end up dunked in slime and Kensington gore, a good time seems to have been had by all. Well, apart from the chap that played the alien, who suffered an on-set groin injury after an explosion left him with a shard of plastic embedded in one of his testicles. Literally and figuratively, Firestar truly is a film that took balls to make.

Although it isn’t my favourite of the Twemlow films, this is undoubtedly one of his most popular and well travelled offerings. Firestar: First Contact played on UK cable channel ‘HVC’ in the 1990s, was released on VHS in Japan and Germany and has turned up twice on DVD in Germany (once under its original title then later as ‘Spaceship Firestar’)

Beyond the Street

“Beyond the street, the city jungle waits, love’s exploited, there for hire, buy and get what you desire, help the devil burn his fire beyond the street” wrote Cliff Twemlow in the song Beyond the Street, one of umpteen songs Twemlow penned for the DeWolfe music company under the name Peter Reno (you can hear the song intacto here). Chances are the streets Twemlow had in mind when he wrote those lyrics were those of his hometown Manchester, a consistent muse of his and whose violent netherworld Twemlow knew well. Twemlow returned to the role of documentarian of the sordid side of life (with an equal mixture of tut tut moralising and carny barker enthusiasm) in his book ‘The Tuxedo Warrior’ where he writes of the 1970s "Homosexuals and bisexuals could finally let their hair and trousers down. Pornography could now be purchased from the many devious seedy establishments lying in solitary seclusion in and around our cities, where patrons could be observed entering and leaving, their features concealed behind dark glasses and large hats- mysterious anonymous collectors of sensual hard core literature and film."

 

Of course its unlikely that Twemlow would even recognise the Manchester City Centre of today, which has undergone a massive facelift since his death in the 1990s. However, unlike London's Soho district which has largely kissed goodbye to smut now, pockets of the sleaze which Twemlow brings to life in that song can still be found down the crumbling backstreets of Manchester. In an age when people are turning to the discretion of the Internet for their porno its likely that time will be soon called on some of these places as well. Since this photo shoot of Mancunian fleshpots took place the Shudehill Book Centre (whose 2nd floor was once rumoured to have been a ‘knocking shop’) has gone the way of many a soho sex shop and been renovated into a wine bar, but for now (and for whatever future document exists) here are some of the sights you can encounter.... beyond the street.

The Ibiza Connection (1984)

With winter nearly upon us what better time to sit near the fireplace and watch a film made in the sun-drenched Ibiza of the 1980s, so lets push pineapple n’ shake the tree as we take a look at another film from Mr. GBH himself Cliff Twemlow, 1984’s The Ibiza Connection.

TWEMFEST (Cliff Twemlow screening)

The Cliff Twemlow rarity Moonstalker aka Predator: The Quietus (1988), is due to be screened as part of this year’s Salford Film Festival, along with the behind the scenes footage of Twemlow’s aborted film version of his book The Pike.

I’ve never seen either Moonstalker or the Pike footage, so will definitely be attending this. If anyone else is interested in this free screening, here is the publicity blurb and contact information….

“TWEMFEST - A Celebration of Cliff Twemlow

is proud to present

MOONSTALKER

plus Documentary Short - THE PIKE

SUNDAY 14 NOVEMBER - 2pm

at the Kings Arms, Bloom Street, Salford, M3 6AN
0161 832 3605

Admission Free

CP Lee
c.lee@salford.ac.uk
0161 295 6058”

Cliff Twemlow Book Write-Up

Received my copy of the Cliff Twemlow book last Thursday (not even a postal strike it seems can stop Cliff), so I’d imagine pre-orders are being sent out this week.
The authors have done a tremendous job of locating Cliff’s key collaborators for the book, as well as all of Cliff’s films, ranging from the ones that had Pre-Cert video releases (GBH, Tuxedo Warrior) to rarer, seeming unreleased ones like Target Eve Island and The Ibiza Connection, to near impossible to locate items such as 1986’s Harrising Moments, an aborted TV comedy vehicle for GBH supporting player Jerry Harris, which sounds like the Twemlow equivalent of Andy Milligan’s Red Rooster and features Twemlow regular Steve Powell in drag, and Cliff himself in a nappy. More intriguing is mention of 1988’s Moonstalker a.k.a. Predator, which I’d only heard of by title before, but here is given the full synopsis/write up treatment which reveals it to be Cliff’s take on “Beast of Exmoor” story, seemingly mixed in with elements of An American Werewolf in London.

The book argues a good case for Twemlow being an unacknowledged low-budget maverick, who against considerable odds, such as the fact that the British film industry was going down the pan at the time, managed to set up his own B-movie universe in 1980s Manchester, channeling all his creative and physical energy into making film after film that would see him and his collaborators shoot in locations as diverse as politically shaky 1980s Grenada to an off-season scout camp in Worsley. The book’s revelation that Twemlow saw little profits from his later films, in fact he seems to have lost money on a few of them, makes his dedication even more impressive, and its a testament to his character that his reparatory company came back for film after film, despite some of them having moved on to bigger things. Not to mention the fact that -judging by what the book has to say- a few cuts and bruises were guaranteed on a Cliff Twemlow set. The casting of a panther for The Eye of Satan, predictably resulted in some chaos on set, while the unfortunate actor playing the alien in Firestar: First Contact was the subject of a (literally) ball-busting accident.














(Japanese VHS release of Firestar:First Contact)

Access to Twemlow’s brother and son also allows the authors to expand on Cliff’s own 1980 autobiography The Tuxedo Warrior, as well as contradict it, a peculiar discovery made during the writing of the book is that while most celebrities choose to take a year or two off their age, Twemlow actually added five years to his life for his autobiography, a secret he kept up in his personal life, to the degree that even his gravestone bears an incorrect date of birth. Previously thought to have been in this late fifties/early sixties at the time of his death, the book reveals Twemlow was only 55 when he died. His early death, while seemingly unavoidable due to his lifestyle, seems even more tragic given several quotes suggest him to have been something of a visionary, accurately predicting back in the 1990s that films would be watched on and made for computers in the future, how sad then that his early death prevented him from bringing his particular brand of filmmaking into the internet age.

The book isn’t able to clear up the mystery over the murky release history of the Twemlow films, with hard to confirm or deny rumours that the films were the subject of overseas video releases and TV broadcasts, but still manages to bring some new nuggets of information to the table. I’d never heard before for instance, of the different versions of Twemlow’s final film, the rape/revenge shocker Bad Weekend, nor the three alternative versions of Tuxedo Warrior released on UK video in the 1980s.

With many of the films discussed still obscure and tricky to track down (hence the “Lost World of”) its particularly satisfying to see Cliff and his films getting the full length book treatment, unpretentious, entertaining and clearly a labour of love, the book is certainly in the spirit of Cliff’s films, and despite revealing his real age, something you suspect the great man would heartily approve of.

Cliff Twemlow - book launch and film screening

To tie-in with the publication of “The Lost World of Cliff Twemlow”, there will be a special launch party for the book this November as part of the Salford Film Festival, as well as a screening of one of Cliff’s films (details TBC.)

The Launch/screening takes place at 2pm on Sunday 22nd of November, at The King’s Arms on Bloom Street in Salford. The launch is open to all and reservations to attend can be made by emailing: tickets@hotunpress.com

See this site http://www.hotunpress.com/booklaunch.html for more information about the book launch, and here for details about the book http://www.hotunpress.com/
They also have some Cliff badges for sale!!!

Cliff Twemlow - New book

A new book about Cliff Twemlow, the bouncer, actor, library music composer, and horror paperback writer is due out at the end of the year. Since Twemlow already wrote his autobiography in 1980, the new book intends to focus mostly on his subsequent film career in the likes of GBH, The Eye of Satan and Firestar: First Contact. The book's authors have tracked down an extensive collection of very rare films and Twemlow’s friends and family for the book, its looking very impressive.

There is also some interesting Twemlow related memorabilia and info at their website, including newspaper cuttings from around the time of GBH’s video release.
http://www.itsahotun.com/Cliff_Twemlow.htm