This month sees the release of a number of highly anticipated literary adaptations. There’s Lone Sherfig’s One Day, Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre and Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Gary McKendry’s Killer Elite and Douglas McGrath’s I Don’t Know How She Does It all hitting in a four week period. Needless to say there’s bound to be a few of you who’ve read the source material for one of the above. In addition, we’re knee deep in festival season with high profile premieres of Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and (most anticipated by this writer) Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

Putting to one side the oft repeated discussion of whether or not there are any original ideas coming to the multiplex*, for this month’s ELSF Staff Miscellany we’ve decided to talk about cinematic literary adaptations that interest us (for better or for worse). Below you’ll find a discussion from each of us on a book we love and how successfully the film was adapted from it. In addition, we each discuss a book we love which has yet to be made into a film and make a case for why (and in some cases how) it should be put on the silver screen.

So, without further ado:

DAN AUTY

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg, 1991, Canada/UK

(Based on the novel by William S. Burroughs)

If anyone was ever going to bring William Burrough’s 1959 beat classic The Naked Lunch to the big screen, David Cronenberg was the obvious choice. Nevertheless, it doesn’t change the fact that attempting an even vaguely faithful adaptation of Burrough’s unique, freeform, taboo-busting prose would have been nigh on impossible; as Cronenberg famously put it: “it would cost $400 million to make and would be banned in every country in the world “.

So eyebrows were definitely raised at the start of the ’90s when the Canadian horror maestro announced Naked Lunch as his next project. However it quickly became clear that Cronenberg was taking a very different approach to the material, and what emerged was part-biography, part a drug-fuelled art house horror thriller; a film that divided critics and fans but was ultimately a bold fusion of the sensibilities of these two maverick artists.

If the film is about any one thing, it’s about the writing of The Naked Lunch itself. Peter Weller plays Bill Lee, the alter ego that Burroughs used for himself throughout his fiction, a bug exterminator, drug addict and struggling writer living in New York in the 1950s. As in Burrough’s real life, Lee is friends with two other upcoming, confrontational authors (Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, here known as Martin and Hank), is a closest homosexual, shoots his wife dead during a drunken game and heads to Tangiers, Morocco, to work on his magnum opus. Into this autobiography Cronenberg weaves elements from the book – talking, bug-like typewriters, sinister doctors and ex-pat novelists, conspiracy theories, narcotics extracted from the bodies of giant blank centipedes, bizarre sexual encounters, and mugwumps, those grotesque, spindly creatures who inhabit the bars of Tangiers (or as Lee refers to it, Interzone).

Love it or hate it, there’s something impressively uncompromising about Naked Lunch, and it seems amazing that Cronenberg and producer Jeremy Thomas were able to raise a $17 million budget back in 1991 to make it. The start of the first Gulf War meant that the planned location photography was abandoned, but the set-bound recreation of Tangiers works perfectly, creating a strange sense of unreality that mirrors the guilt-ridden disintegration of Bill Lee’s mind. Peter Weller delivers a career-best performance, ably supported by Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider and, err, Julian Sands, while Howard Shore’s reliably terrific score captures the era well, mixing angular orchestral work with jazz legend Ornette Coleman’s wailing atonal sax. Naked Lunch is scary, sexy, funny and a complete one-off, and proof that in the right hands, any work of fiction can be brought memorably to the screen.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS BOOK:  Geek Love by Katherine Dun

Published in 1989, Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love has become something of a cult favourite while never breaking through to mainstream, modern classic status. Little wonder, as the title, cover, subject matter (the life and loves of a travelling carnival freak family, created through the application of drugs and radioactive material by their deranged parents while still in the womb) and even the quotes on the cover seem to be designed to put readers off. Yet despite some very dark and disturbing sections, this is a beautifully written, human and ultimately moving exploration of family dysfunction. A movie adaptation would be a tough sell (and would obviously draw comparisons to Todd Browning’s Freaks, although Geek Love really isn’t a horror story), but I’ve always thought it would make a terrific animated feature. The material seems perfect for someone like Jan Švankmajer or perhaps Henry Selick to get their hands on; a stage version appeared in 2004 but to date no movie…

JORDAN MCGRATH

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: Blade Runner, Ridley Scott, 1982, USA

(Based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Phillip K. Dick)

Does an adaptation have to be faithful to the source material to seen as a successful adaptation? My argument would be a firm no.  I agree films have failed because they have taken too many liberties with the novel they have been influenced by but for me with a book to film adaptation you really only have to capture the essence of the material for it to be successful.  For example the Bourne Trilogy, the films don’t even follow the same plot as the Ludlum books but they got the essence of that character and that’s why it works.

It’s the same with Blade Runner, there isn’t as many liberties taken as the Bourne films but reading the book and watching the film are very different experiences but writers Fancier and Peoples’ script alongside Ridley Scott’s direction they adapted one aspect of the book perfectly, the atmosphere.  As long as you got the atmosphere correct the job was half done, characters have different motives, theme’s between the film and book differ so with all these discrepancies can Blade Runner be called a failed adaptation?  Of course it can’t because it’s one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS BOOK: The ‘Sandman’ Series by Neil Gaiman

I know this is a little bit of a cheat because it’s a comic book series but I would have chosen American Gods but that’s getting a part mini-series on HBO now so that was out the window.

Many will think it sacrilege to even think of adapting The Sandman, which is possibly Gaiman’s best work to date.  The story and characters are so rich and so intricate that it would be seen impossible to adapt an effective and coherent film from it and I would agree that’s why I would propose it to get the same treatment American Gods seems to be getting from HBO, make it into mini-series because that way you will have the correct amount of screen time to tell the story correctly.

Gaiman’s written for TV before so there’s no reason why he couldn’t be involved in the adaptation even if just as a consulting producer and if you could get a decent show runner it could really work.

GARY McCONNACHIE

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: It, Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990, USA

(Based on the novel by Stephen King)

WHEN it was announced there would be a film adaptation of Stephen King’s terrifying novel It, horror fans (like myself) were wary.

It’s a book I loved. It paralysed me with a fear of clowns. And it was a Stephen King story.

There have been quite a few attempts at turning his work into film. Some are great – Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, Carrie and Misery. I would have mentioned The Shining, but that was so different from the book it was barely recognisable. But others have been catastrophically bad – Sleepwalkers, Dreamcatcher and Children of the Corn. How would It be tackled? The book was huge (although nowhere near the size of The Stand). There was a lot of ground to cover. And just who would be cast in the roles of the heroes?

Oh, and what about the director? Who’d get that job?

When Tommy Lee Wallace was given the task of helming it, I was relieved in a sense – mainly because he was the man behind Halloween 3: Season of the Witch – yes, the one without Michael Myers. I loved that departure from the norm for such a franchise. But that relief was tempered with the knowledge he was also responsible for a lot of TV series episodes and films. As for the main stars? John Ritter was a good choice as the grown up Ben while a fresh-faced Seth Green starred as the young Richie Tozier. There were a few more recognisable faces (Annette O’Toole as Beverly). With Tim Curry as the blood-thirsty clown Pennywise, things were looking up.

Sadly, It became another made-for-TV film that was barely passable with a few okay scares but was overly long – it was split into two parts with a total running time of over 192 minutes. Curry was great as the creepy, pointy-toothed clown but too much of the film was spent on exposition that wasn’t necessary. Give me kids being killed by a monster-clown any day of the week. It’s hard to pinpoint just where It went wrong in it’s switch from page to screen, but It is just another example of how difficult it can be to adapt a King book.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS: The Strain Trilogy by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

Anyone who is a fan of the fantastical horror brought to us by Guillermo Del Toro will love his collaboration with Chuck Hogan for their ‘The Strain’ trilogy.

A tale of a vampire epidemic that threatens to destroy the world is both engrossing and rich in character development. Already two books into the trilogy (The Strain & The Fall), this is a story that is ripe for a trip onto the silver screen. In fact, I’m so caught up in it that I’ve found myself selecting who’d play the characters in the books. At the moment I have chosen Sir Ian McKellen in the role of aged vampire hunter Setrakian while someone like Jon Hamm would be perfect as director of CDC Ephraim Goodweather. And what about the evil ‘Master’? Well, that one is still being mulled over.

Making this written trilogy into a film trilogy could, hopefully, bring the horror back to vampires after the Twilight series (shudder) removed all that made them scary.

MIKE WILLIAMS

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: Watchmen, Zach Snyder, 2009, USA

(Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons)

It’s no secret that Alan Moore’s genre defining, neo-apocalyptic, alternate-reality graphic novel- hailed as one of the greatest ever in a recent Time Magazine poll- is without doubt a huge challenge to convert to the big screen. Over the years directors have come and gone, as Zack Snyder was finally, in 2008, attached to the monstrous challenge of bringing Watchmen to life.

The film itself was received with mixed opinion; some hardcore fans of the novel chose to hate it before it had even begun filming, as seemed the opinion of creator, Alan Moore, expressing, “Do we need any more shitty films in this world?” Suffice to say the man has never watched it and refuses to, but there were audiences who liked and praised it.

What Snyder successfully manages to do is make the film look good in its own right; a director that obsesses with green screen and CGI, as you need only take a look at 300 to get an idea of his aesthetic. Characters visually mirror Gibbons’ art work, even though a chunk of the story is told in a simplified way, however the movie fails to grasp the emotional depth and layering that the novel does. Instead the characters feel lacking in the rich manner they are explored on paper. It was always going to be tough, but this absence of depth is one of the film’s ultimate downfalls.

The sheer size of the graphic novel makes it wholly difficult to translate as well. The over-long film stands at 164 minutes and that’s without side stories and additional snippets of info that makes the novel great. The film is forced to delete these extracts, including newspaper articles and police reports, which are scattered within each chapter. It’s clear their inclusion wouldn’t have the same effect in a live-action sense, as it fails to include the ongoing ‘Treasure Island’ story involving a young kid who attentively reads a newsstand comic book on a street corner.

Snyder’s Watchmen is a clear case of style over substance. Yes, it’s bold and visually superb at times, but cannot entirely capture the huge volume of detail crammed into the ultra slick, stylistic and profound literature of Moore or match the phenomenal artistry that makes the graphic novel so special.

There’s certainly not as much venom in the cinema take; key scenes, including the violence, are toned down for audience accessibility. It’s no wonder Moore was against it from the start and for what it’s worth he was right. Whilst I enjoyed the film, it didn’t engage me anywhere near as much as the novel, thus the literary form forever holding a place in my heart, and as enjoyable as the filmic effort was, it will only ever resemble a clock without a craftsman.

As for adapting a novel, there’s plenty out there I love, but all seem to have been adapted or are in the process!

ANDY SHAW

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: No Country for Old Men, Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007, USA

(Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy)

Of all Cormac McCarthy’s novels, this is by far the most film friendly. The novel of The Road was a mood piece, low on character or conflict, which made the adaptation process a tricky one but No Country For Old Men is pure narrative. A lean, fast paced crime thriller with an undercurrent of fatalism to appeal to mainstream and art house crowds in equal measure, the Coens barely had to change a thing. They wisely kept McCarthy’s downbeat ending and unorthodox time skips, which rob the audience of the catharsis they look for in conventional thrillers. A controversial choice, but one that sets it apart from a rather bloated and predictable genre.

Copying a great novel verbatim won’t give you a great movie, and what makes the film work is their impeccable command of tone and pace. The way they shoot and edit together the intense chase sequences reflects the way McCarthy’s spare prose moves across the page. The only notable deviation from the text is to skip over one character death that just came across as cruel and gratuitous in the book, instead the Coens subtly suggest their death and it’s a major improvement.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS: The Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

It’s low on any real narrative drive, with a more contemplative pace than No Country, but it’s filled with compelling characters and packs a ferocious punch in its depiction of violence in the old West. This is a story that has eluded many great directors, including Ridley Scott and Todd Fields, because it is impossible to tone down the ugliness of the racism or the violence without compromising the powerful themes that McCarthy was working with. What studio is going to finance an epic (and expensive) Western where babies are brutally murdered? One day a madman with a lot of disposable income will throw it at the feet of a visionary director and we could find ourselves with the next Apocalypse Now.

CHARLIE BRIGDEN

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: Jaws, Steven Spielberg, 1975, USA

(Based on the novel by Peter Benchley)

It’s hard to imagine a movie that’s as perfect as Jaws, so I was surprised as anyone when I read the book as a kid only to find out that not only is it very different from Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster, it’s also not very good.

The tales of who wrote what for the film are well-documented, with Peter Benchley writing drafts based on his novel, Spielberg writing a draft, and Carl Gottlieb working the final draft after un-credited contributions from Howard Sackler, John Milius and Robert Shaw. Benchley’s Jaws is a big departure from what we eventually saw on screen (or vice versa), with one of the things that stand out being Benchley’s decision to take a decidedly more adult tone to proceedings.

But while it’s more “adult,” it’s also trashier. A section of the book is dedicated to Matt Hooper’s affair with Ellen Brody and it’s written like a Wal-Mart romance, with one particularly horrendous section where they discuss the tightness of a chicken’s vagina over dinner. Yum.

This also leads to tension between Hooper and Chief Brody when they’re hunting for the shark, and Spielberg specifically took that whole plot out because he didn’t want them on that boat trying to kill each other instead of the shark, whereas we get a bit more male bonding in the film. And no sign of poultry genitalia.

The final third is also a lot different, with Hooper eventually succumbing to the shark when it rams his cage, which was obviously changed for the better in the film as Hooper is too good a character to be mindlessly killed off. The ending is straight out of Moby-Dick, Quint gets caught on a harpoon and is dragged to the bottom of the sea as the barrels take their toll on the shark’s mobility and it drowns. As opposed to exploding spectacularly. Mythbusters may have discounted the whole tank + bullet = KA-BLAMMO! thing, but it’s an ending that’s original and cathartic.

So, to sum up, Jaws the movie rocks, Jaws the book doesn’t, and it’s one of the reasons why it’s my favourite adaptation.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS: At The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

Unfortunately, there has not yet been an adaptation of the wonderfully creepy H.P. Lovecraft novella At The Mountains of Madness, good or otherwise, despite Guillermo Del Toro’s best intentions. Del Toro was set to direct with James Cameron producing, but the film was apparently nixed by Universal because they wanted a PG-13 rating, whereas Del Toro was booking for an R. It’s likely because of this that he recently said that horror directors who work under the PG-13 are “cowards”. Or he could be just mental.

In any case, it’s a fantastic story. Told through first-person narration, a bunch of scientific-types from a university go on an expedition to Antarctica, where they discover a giant range of mountains hiding the ruins of an ancient civilisation with terrible secrets. Discovered on the expedition are the remains of creatures that fit into neither flora nor fauna, and that are unnaturally evolved. They begin to learn of their history and further existence when reading great murals in the city that show fantastic horrors that no man can comprehend.

There are a bunch of things that are the reason ATMOM has generally been considered “unfilmable”. Things like the Shoggoths, creatures that can attain any form at a thought, or the alien city which bears no resemblance to human architecture, or the fantastic stories of the creatures’ dealings with the great Cthulhu and his spawn as portrayed on the murals. I imagine these would be shown in some kind of flashback as the murals are being interpreted, but the challenge of showing that and making it as horrific and nightmarish as Lovecraft’s famous descriptions is probably something few filmmakers are up to.

There is also the famous ending, where one of the scientists looks back at the city from the plane they escaped in, only to be driven mad by what he had witnessed. Now that’s an interesting conundrum; do you leave it to the audience imagination and risk them getting angry at not knowing what it was, or do you show it and risk them being let down?

Controversially, I’m not convinced Del Toro was the best choice. He’s a very good director, and he would certainly have the upmost reverence for the material, but can he bring that quality of absolute dread and horror the film would require? I’m not sure myself who would be the best for the task, a circa 1970s post-Exorcist William Friedkin perhaps, or maybe it could be a comeback for John Carpenter, who has tackled both Antarctic dread (The Thing) and Lovecraftian themes (In The Mouth of Madness). Perhaps even Stuart Gordon, who is always warmly-received by the horror crowd for his adaptations such as From Beyond and Re-Animator.

Then again, like the world of the Old Ones, maybe it’s just better left alone.

DAVID HALL

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay, 2002, UK

(Based on the novel by Alan Warner)

Amazing book, amazing film. How often does that happen? Although Alan Warner’s debut novel is a revelatory modern British classic, it’s Ramsay’s extraordinary, fierce and lyrical adaptation that stays with me and whose images haunt me still. With this, her second film after Ratcatcher, Ramsay delivers a work which, rather than trying to radically change or emulate the novel, acts as a visual and sonic accompaniment to its original source. Make no mistake this is one of the key underrated films of the last decade.

Warner’s original story is taut, gripping, emotional and darkly funny. When her boyfriend commits suicide on Christmas Day 19 year-old Morvern, working in a dead end supermarket job in Scotland, takes his unpublished manuscript and passes it off on her own. She disappears to Andalucía with the cash and her best mate for a riot of Es, booze and casual sex, only to find that escape – from your current life or your past – isn’t always possible.

Warner’s book is largely an internal monologue spiked with mordant wit and grim comic asides. Ramsay’s adaptation favours visual ambiguity over dialogue and makes Morvern (a mesmeric Samantha Morton) an even more fascinating, multi-layered and inscrutable character. The traditional British way of adapting something like this would be to make it into a lengthy, worthy TV adaptation. Instead Ramsay economises an already short book into a cinematic poem with an incredible soundtrack.

I have never seen a film which so perfectly understands the transformative power of music or so clearly represents it with such precision. Music as escape forms an integral part of Warner’s book and Ramsay takes this to logical extremes, having Morvern almost permanently wired into the mix tape left by her boyfriend. It’s a great way of bringing you closer into the internal world of the central character and the amazing soundtrack – featuring Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Stereolab, Broadcast and Lee Perry – creates a journey which is sonic as much as it is cinematic.

There are some wild liberties taken in the film. Budding writers may well scoff at the idea of a publishing house giving an undiscovered writer a hundred grand and then letting her simply disappear abroad with the cash to go guzzling Es and getting off her tits. And by dispensing with some of Warner’s back-story and characters there is the risk that, for some, Morvern may come across as too callous. Personally I think that’s one of the films strengths. It isn’t afraid to show Morvern’s reactions to grief as being peculiar and unfathomable. Isn’t that often the case?

Ramsay understands that filming a novel is not simply documenting the words and scenes on a page and uses cinematic tools to tell the story with breathtaking clarity and confidence.  Inventive angles, editing and film stocks are employed and Alwin Kuchler’s beautiful cinematography, so harshly beautiful in Scotland and lushly saturated in Spain, is rich and meditative. But it is Paul Davies’ sound design and the revelatory use of music that truly elevates this film.

Incredibly, or perhaps not given the perilous state of UK filmmaking at the time, Ramsay didn’t work for  eight years after making Morvern Callar. We were denied her take on Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones (turned into a gruesomely confused Technicolor yawn by a director more comfortable with CGI than humans). But knowing that Ramsay has now filmed another explosive debut novel – We need to talk about Kevin – fills me with anticipation and excitement as to how she might transform another difficult text. So if you haven’t yet seen Morvern Callar do so, and read the book. In either order, it really doesn’t matter.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS: Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

It seems incredible in these days of vampire saturation – where almost all fangtastic tales old and new appear to have been drained for inspiration – that Brite’s dazzlingly odd and original debut novel hasn’t been dug up by some enterprising executive. Surely its decadent rock and roll world of pleasure-seeking pan-sexual gothic vamps high on chartreuse is absolutely right for the current climate? Or maybe Brite’s dark, decadent, fantastical vision is a bit too out-there for most producers? The first series of True Blood had a Brite-like vibe and shares with it a Deep South setting and similarly homo-erotic charge. It may be that Brite’s lucid, erotic and feverish prose wouldn’t translate brilliantly to the screen but it would be fascinating to find out –if only for a new generation of vamp-fans to discover an original and relatively unknown horror writer.

JAMIE LEE NARDONE

NOTABLE ADAPTATION: Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, 1968, USA

(Based on the novel by Ira Levin)

It is often argued that a film version of an already published book does not carry the same artistic merit. Most of the time, this is true. However, this is not the case with Ira Levin and Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

What works so well in Ira Levin’s bestselling book, and indeed most of his work, is that unlike your standard horror, where you go on holiday and there’s an axe murderer on the loose or evil spirits surrounding a cabin, killer shark etc, Levin’s protagonist discovers that the real evil is in her luxury apartment in Manhattan; in a building which is so desirable that its dark history of cannibalism and murder is overlooked. Rosemary’s enemies are her upper class neighbours, but they’re not just old and doddery. Oh no-they worship the devil, conspire with her husband and impregnate her (via rape under the influence of drugs) with the son of Satan. Rosemary becomes trapped in her apartment with no one to turn to. The suspense is heightened as the reader is unsure at first of what to believe. Is there a cause for concern or is she going mad? Also, as Levin wrote and directed many plays in his career, his style of writing is extremely visual and claustrophobic, which translates brilliantly on screen.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was Polanski’s American film debut. Unaware he could make changes, the film stayed true to the book. Despite being banned from theatres various times, the film became an award-winning success and secured a cult status. Polanski’s adaptation of Levin’s work highlights the true horrors going on in Rosemary’s world, which she is too scared to confront alone. He has no need for crafty cinematic tricks, prosthetics, silly make-up or dramatic knife fights. This is horror at its most real and terrifying. Oh, the mass devil-orgy scene is elaborated on though. Old people and orgies go together about as well as Keanu Reeves and acting. It works but it shouldn’t.

I would highly recommend both the book and film versions of Rosemary’s Baby with equal measure, which I can’t say for any other book/ film combo. Ira Levin is one my all-time favorite authors, and Polanski’s film really did the book justice when he brought it to the screen. Let’s not just ‘pray for Rosemary’s baby’ as the film’s tagline suggested, but for the remake plans by Michael Bay to stay shelved.

PLEASE ADAPT THIS: Money Shot by Christa Faust

If I had the chance to see a published work of fiction get turned into a film, it would be Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime /Titan Books). After attending Europe’s biggest crime literature festival in Harrogate a few weeks ago, I had the chance to meet lots of fantastic writers such as Lee Child and Dennis Lehane (author of Shutter Island and Mystic River). However, it was a plucky American lass and her even pluckier crime thriller that caught my attention. Introduced by a mutual friend, Christa oozed the style of a forgotten era and had a no holds barred attitude to life. I was, of course, smitten and bought her book immediately, reading Money Shot in a record time. It’s dark, sexy and stylish with razor-sharp wit.

It follows former porn-star-turned-agency-boss Angel Dare in LA, where she is tempted back in front of the camera for one last shot. But that’s exactly what she gets, and is left for dead in the trunk of a car. What ensues is a clever tale of revenge, sex appeal and deceit with a hell of an ending that really packs a punch. Literally.

My version of Money Shot would be a film noir, with typical stylistic, thematic and narrative attributes that you would come across such as a femme fatale and an alienated hero. There would be a strong narrative from Angel throughout, with flashbacks of her past, or of her going back to the shooting. The setting is also important in film noir, so there would be fantastic shots of LA, including really dark and desolate surroundings used to exaggerate Angel’s situation.

I envision the film to be directed with a hint Tarantino (who once described Christa as a ‘Veronica in a world of Betties’) or Rodriguez, with a dash of Lynch and a smidgen of Fincher. As sexy and dark as they come, with as much sass from Angel that these boys could muster. Oh, and we would need Jacob from Twilight as a bratty porn-star (just because it would be funny and we could see him actually make some use of those barely- legal abs). And Danny Trejo in there somewhere. Why? Why the hell not. I want maximum visceral damage with guns, punches and bitch slaps.

Film producers of the world-get thy arses in gear and bring Angel Dare to our cinema screens!