The Acid House *** (1998, Stephen McCole, Maurice Roëves, Garry Sweeney, Kevin McKidd, Martin Clunes, Jemma Redgrave, Ewen Bremner) – Classic Movie Review 677

More twisted tales of the Scottish city, with author Leith-born Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting, Filth) adapting a surreal triptych from his collection of short stories. It’s hard to imagine, but it seems even more extreme than the movies of Trainspotting (1996) or Filth (2013), leaving you queasy and feeling banged over the head.

It’s a commendably ambitious film, imaginatively made by director Paul McGuigan in 1998, filming on Edinburgh (Leith, Pilton) and Glasgow locations. But perhaps you wouldn’t want to sit through these tales of abuse, drugs, displaced personalities and insect life twice.

As is usual in compendium movies, the three-part nature of the film leads to an unsatisfactory feeling, even though they are very much part and parcel of the same landscape and amount to an in-depth portrait of a tumbled-down Scots urban existence and its extremely unappealing inhabitants. You imagine the Scottish Tourist Board would like to ban this one, though the Scottish Arts Council was happy to support it.

It would be really hard to put your hand on your heart and say it’s enjoyable, even if you could say you admired at least some of it. On the whole, the sum of the parts is less than the splashy individual highlights.

The tales are:

1: The Granton Star Cause, the best of the trio, in which Maurice Roëves plays a God who uses strong language, a cause of controversy at the time,

and Stephen McCole stars as Boab, a Leith lad who’s dumped by his football team, his girlfriend and his parents, arrested and beaten up by the police and turned into a fly by God, whom he meets in a pub;

2: A Soft Touch, in which Kevin McKidd (also in Trainspotting) plays Johnny, who man is too soft to do anything when his wife moves in with the thug upstairs;

And 3: The Acid House, in which Ewen Bremner (also in Trainspotting) stars as Coco Bryce, who is tripping on acid and struck by lightning, causing him to switch bodies with a new-born baby.

Jenny McCrindle, Alex Howden, Tam Dean Burn, Michelle Gomez, Gary McCormack, Martin Clunes, Jemma Redgrave and Arlene Cockburn also star. Roëves also plays a drunk in A Soft Touch and a priest in The Acid House.

Welsh appears as Parkie in The Granton Star Cause.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 677

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