This film is the brainchild of Bruce Robinson, the man-genius behind Withnail And I. Now Withnail is my favourite film of all time - but this is definitely in my top 5, if you thought Richard E Grant was neurotic as Withnail, he was positively laid-back compared to Dennis Bagley.

Bagley is a high-flying advertising executive who can sell anything to anyone, until that is, he starts to have a mental breakdown over some spot cream. The breakdown manifests itself as a series of hallucinations as he believes the boil on his neck is starting to talk to him, which causes him to behave in very strange ways.

Bagley starts to rant and embarrass himself, he exposes social trends as marketing campaigns designed to control consumers and his relationships with friends, work colleagues, and his all start to break down.

This film is a fantastic piece of work - Richard E Grant is beyond fantastic and the visuals are disturbing; a boil with a face and moustache starts to grow into a second head. As a viewer you even start to wonder if the boil is in fact a figment of Bagley's fragile mind, or if it actually *is* slowly taking him over. The rambling mess of a man actually talks sense though, the film acts as a successful diatribe on the fakeness of modern society and the corporations which control us. This film will hopefully inspire the cynic in us all to try and see through the promotional material used to tempt us (or allow us to justify in our own heads) buying things.

Bagley's journey and the constant politically loaded speeches have been dismissed as some as overbearing and longwinded, but for me the energy behind the delivery gives them unlimited re-watch value and the frantic expression on his face simply adds to the humour. This is the most perfect modern satire of the recent age, it may look quite 1980s by today's standard, but the message is more relevant now than it ever was.


Without doubt an absolute classic and one which thoroughly deserves the cult status it has achieved.