Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow (FrightFest 2023) (Review)

Jake West’s new documentary, Mancunian Man, opens with a quote from its subject, the late director, actor, bouncer and bodybuilder Cliff Twemlow: “It is far better to be a resident on the brink of hell than spend a whole life in pursuit of a mythical heaven“. Which is an odd quote because … well, there’s a thousand reasons why it’s an odd quote, but Twemlow did spend his life chasing a dream. He dreamed of being the Lancastrian Chuck Norris, of making ass-kicking action flicks with a distinctly Northern English flavour. I suppose the difference is that Twemlow’s heaven wasn’t mythical. He reached it, and if there were pitfalls along the way (there were, and West’s film documents every single one of them), there were also triumphs and plenty of good times. The result is a hugely endearing documentary that laughs with, not at, the street-corner Stallone it chronicles.

Twemlow’s journey into the movie industry began when he wrote a novel, Tuxedo Warriors, that was optioned by the alarmingly-named production company Manson International. Written as a gritty, authentic tale of Manchester club life, Twemlow was frustrated when writer-director Andrew Sinclair decided it should be about diamond smuggling in Zimbabwe instead. Vowing to keep his next film true to his roots he came up with 1983’s weirdly homoerotic gangland epic G.B.H. Released on pre-certification VHS, the cover showed a blood-soaked Twemlow holding an axe that doesn’t appear in the movie, and the tagline promised an experience “more brutal than The Long Good Friday“, so it ended up on the Section 3 “video nasties” list alongside Dawn of the Dead and Rabid.

This may be where West first heard of Twemlow, since West’s earlier film Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Lies and Videotape rediscovered the previously-ignored Section 3 list. Before that, West made his name making cheerfully unpretentious horror-comedies like Doghouse and Evil Aliens. This shouldn’t make the standard of his video nasty documentaries a surprise, but it did as they go beyond the simple fannish enthusiasm of most documentaries about cult films and become genuinely scholarly. Mancunian Man combines several strands of West’s work. It’s a heartfelt salute from one proud British trash auteur to another, it’s fearsomely well-researched, and it’s genuinely evocative to boot. When West illustrates Twemlow’s business plan to target the video market with a dense montage of early ’80s VHS commercials, you realise you’re watching the joyous fruits of a wasted youth renting anything with a Vipco label.

Twemlow’s films have a certain so-bad-they’re-good element to them and West’s documentary certainly doesn’t shy away from the humour. Equally though, a lot of the film’s most entertaining anecdotes come not from the finished features, but from the rough-and-tumble of low-budget movie production. Shady producers, stunts that become a little too dangerous, hit-and-run filming on streets you’re not meant to be on … these are all common to any set with more ambition than money.

Like Orson Welles, Twemlow enjoyed the creative rush of making films more than he did finishing them, but this did mean he always had a new project to look forward to. Despite the film addressing his depressive spells and steroid-induced mood swings, that optimism seems to have defined him. Whatever you may think about Twemlow’s body of work, nobody has a bad word to say about the man. Twemlow’s female leads were always glamorous and frequently undressed, yet they all attest to him being a perfect gentleman on set – even when, during one career lull, he starred in an erotic massage video (West has footage of this and it has to be seen to be believed).

Indeed, West has footage of everything, even the short promo scenes Twemlow made to attract investors to films that were ultimately never made. Some of these make the case for Twemlow as an ahead-of-his-time visionary – the one about energy drinks being spiked with genetically engineered drugs would work well today as a satire on Prime-mania. In a similar manner, The Blindside of God (in which Twemlow’s Johnny Zero hunts down what the voiceover bafflingly calls “members of the paedophile”), has the makings of a modern box-office hit. In the case of the latter promo, Twemlow managed to rework his script into Lethal Impact – a ten-years-later follow-up to G.B.H. – meaning we can add the legacy sequel to his list of innovations.

There’s a lot of fuss over Sound of Freedom, but does it contain a scene as astonishing as the one in Lethal Impact where Twemlow puts a shotgun between a paedophile’s legs, hoists him off the ground with it, then shoots him in the knackers with a bullet that blows the creep’s face off before growling “How’s that for a blow-job”? It does not.

That’s the kind of scene only one man can deliver – a Mancunian man.

Graham’s Archive – Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow