THE COMEBACK – It was inevitable I’d raise my Hallowe’en goblet to Pete Walker, he’s been long due a visit round my neck of the woods. Or maybe a Comeback… in which crooner Jack Jones stages a career resurgence in dowdy-looking late seventies London whilst Pamela Stevenson and Compo lurk in the background and try to convince us they’re not mask-wearing giallo-esque killers. ‘The Comeback’ has steadily grown on me over the years. It’s true to say that it’s the least superficially impressive of Walker’s more well-known films in that it isn’t immediately exploitation-heavy in the way that ‘Frightmare’ and the McGillivray collaborations etc. might have been, but getting to know it is rewarding in the long run. Set against that earlier stuff, ‘The Comeback’ is a more considered, atmospheric work that still manages to make room for a bevy of nastiness, from the opening kill that freaked the hell out of me when I saw it on TV in the eighties, to mansion corridors that boom with witchy cackling, not to mention that maggoty head down the cellar. It might all go a bit scooby-do, but I liked the more supernatural / dream-like nods right up to the hastily delivered backstory at the end, and of course there is that trademark Walker feel of a grubby, down-at-heel England somehow reaching its last days. I’m certain he had more of these in him – shame this pretty much ended Walker’s run of gloriously bleak, cynical schlockers, but what’s there is plenty, QED ‘The Comeback’.
 |