Providing stiff competition to that Michael J. Murphy set as the most insane "where did that came from?" career-spanning Blu-ray collection out there, Severin Films sublabel Intervision introduces Bloody Legend: The Complete Cliff Twemlow Collection, a sprawling ten-disc set devoted to an obscure, mostly direct-to-video Manchester figure with an insane life story. The centerpiece here and the best place to start is the 2023 Severin and Nucleus Films documentary Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow (124m7s) directed by Jake West (Evil Aliens) charting how martial arts devotee Cliff moonlit as a library music composer and segued into the home video action and horror market while earning regular paychecks as a nightclub bouncer. His music career alone is something else, including the catchy "'Cause I'm a Man" famously used during the redneck zombie shoot sequence in Dawn of the Dead, and it's represented in this set with that tenth disc, a CD compiling his library music and movie theme work.

Back to the doc, it's an endearing and extremely thorough chronicle of Twemlow's life and work loaded with clips, archival news coverage, TV commercials, and interviews with pretty much every living person who worked with him, wrote about him, or shares DNA with him. Despite Twemlow dying suddenly of a heart attack just before hitting the age of 60, the story that emerges here is one of a very full life with more adventures including unrealized projects (which turned into novels), the building of a DIY film scene in Manchester, some crazy tangents stretching around the globe including Iceland, bodybuilding, and much more. The film itself looks great as expected with a solid DTS-HD MA 2.0 English stereo track and optional SDH subtitles; on top of that, you get a 57m25s reel of fun deleted scenes with more anecdotes ("I was perhaps a werewolf"), clips, and other ephemera as solid as the main feature. Also included are an extensive Manchester locations tour (14m19s), while "The Swedish Connection" (13m13s) with Jonathan Sisson, son of sales exec and Twemlow onetime bankroller David Sisson, covering the story behind and showing off the archival remnants of two aborted projects, Mason's War and the Joan Collin killer fish movie The Pike. He also goes into the making of Twemlow's G.B.H (Grievous Bodily Harm), originally shot as The Mancunian, including a hilarious solicitation response from CBS Fox. "The Pike Rediscovered" (19m35s) is an exhaustive and crazy look at the creation of the killer fish complete with archival production footage and new interviews telling the whole story including a very ill-fated press stunt and the role of the TV show Salvage Hunters in finding the monster's current location. Also included are a Q&A at the film's Manchester premiere (46m22s) with the filmmaker and interviewees, a phone-shot look (11m32s) at the film's intro at London's FrightFest, another phone capture (22m1s) of the presentation at the Glasgow premiere, the trailer, and a massive 29m11s gallery of... well, everything involving Twemlow's films and the documentary.

The rest of the Blu-rays comprise Twemlow's work as an actor and/or writer (and composer), including numerous projects left in varying states of limbo but presented here as close to completion as possible. Disc two is devoted to a film that takes its title and not much else from Twemlow's supposedly autobiographical 1980 novel, 1982's Tuxedo Warrior (93m26s) only features the man himself (who served as one of the screenwriters) in a small supporting role in the first stretch as a bouncer, Chaser. Instead actor John Wyman (just after For Your Eyes Only) takes the leading man honors as the very Twemlowvian Cliff, a Zimbabwe bar owner who's moved from Manchester. Enter his ex-girlfriend Lisa (Carol Royale) and ace hacker and thief Wiley (Hawk the Slayer himself, John Terry), the latter seen ripping off a bank electronically in the opening sequence. Cliff's extremely shady clientele have him in the crosshairs of the law (particularly new incoming police chief Ken Gampu) even when he steps in to help buddies like jewel thief Grigg (James Coburn Jr.) and ends up with a stash of diamonds in his bar, and he still makes time for some romance with nature photographer Sally (Holly Palance). Fisticuffs and betrayals ensue. Director Andrew Sinclair (who had earlier helmed the odd sorta-horror Oliver Reed film Blue Blood) seems to be going for a lot of different genres at once here with romantic melodrama, mid-level action, heist intrigue, and buddy comedy all swirling around here in an odd mix mainly of interest for not casting Twemlow in the lead role he should have had. That factors in later in this set in a big way, which we'll get to shortly. Released on VHS several times in the U.S. and Europe in the '80s and '90s to no fanfare, the film looks superb here with nearly pristine transfer from the negative with excellent detail and color throughout; the DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono audio is also in fine shape and comes with optional English SDH subtitles (as do the remaining features in the set). Extras are limited to a gag reel (3m7s), a weirdly hypnotic and uncomfortable set of sex scene outtakes (3m57s), and the trailer in a beautiful fresh scan.

Disc three is devoted to the aforementioned G.B.H., Twemlow's big 1983 local passion project and one that somehow ended up on the infamous Video Nasties hit list as a Section 3 title (seizable but not ultimately prosecuted as with titles like Zombie Lake, Prom Night, and Friday the 13th). Trimmed down from its initial The Mancunian cut presumably to help it pick up distributor interest, this shot-on-video wonder stars Cliff as Manchester bouncer Steve Donovan who spends most of the film socking people in the face or the abdomen. His ire is primarily directed at the mobsters trying to muscle in on the nightclub where he works -- and where the locals spend all of their time disco dancing or singing. He also seduces any woman who gets in his eyeline, all captured on glorious one-inch video since this was geared for the local VHS market. Presumably the bloody cover art of a hatchet-wielding Twemlow is what got this into a little trouble as it's otherwise just a fun, meat and potatoes '80s action film clearly inspired by the recent wave of '80s Brit crime films.

The film is presented in its 88m40s prerelease version and the more familiar 73m37s home video cut, but the longer one is recommended since it features a lot more dancing, more of that infectious theme song (written by Twemlow who handled all scoring duties as "John Agar!"), and general local flavor. This film alone justifies putting this set under the Intervision banner as it epitomizes that glorious SOV action aesthetic complete with dirt bike mayhem, shotguns, and stage blood all getting heavy workouts in the big finale. The acting and camera blocking are all charmingly awkward, which somehow feels just right. Both versions look excellent considering the limitations of the source, with the longer cut edging ahead and looking at least a generation better. However, the shorter cut also comes with a new commentary with David Flint chatting with "inner circle" actor Brian Sterling-Vete about his memories of the actors (and non-actors), rumors about the mob trying to get into Manchester via the Krays, the "North vs. South" British attitudes at play, Twemlow's own personality and "showman" work ethic, a funny breakdown of the line "He's one man but he farts like four," and much more. Other extras include an alternate credits sequence (5m24s), a teaser and trailer, that infamous TV segment on The Pike in its 10m56s entirety, and the 5m33s promo for the unrealized Mason's War.

Next on disc four you get a double feature of cursed SOV madness right in the face starting with 1983's Target: Eve Island (84m38s), also written by and starring Twemlow with G.B.H. director David Kent-Watson. Weirdly, this is basically a sequel to Tuxedo Warrior with Cliff playing Chaser again now in a bigger scale adventure hopping around to Grenada (where they captured footage of the real invasion at the time) and Barbados. Unfortunately as was covered in the documentary, the production was a disaster in pretty much every possible way and now exists in this barely coherent assembly. Here the main character, more or less, is Grant (G.B.H.'s Brett Sinclair), Chaser's fellow security agent colleague, who gets selected to rescue valuable scientist Professor Lindberg (Kay Harris) when she falls into Soviet hands. Lots of sub-James Bond intrigue and action ensues, much of it rewritten on the fly due to the involvement of multiple governments, too much partying among the cast and crew, and insufficient sound recording. In fact, the weirdness of the production led to the gang being conscripted into creating a Granada tourism promotional film (1m52s) which is included on the disc as well for posterity.

Also on the same disc is The Ibiza Connection (93m17s), another stab at seaside adventure here revolving around a movie crew in what amount to Twemlow ditching Kent-Watson and making his own Day for Night. Or something. Here he plays Wolf, the director of a ramshackle production in Ibiza called Thunderflash featuring a hi-tech car, Striker (which of course doesn't do much). After losing his leads, Wolf makes a financial deal that forces him to bring in his bankroller's wife, Jane (A View to a Kill's Fiona Fullerton), as the new star, igniting a love triangle also involving the new male lead, Brett (Sinclair again). This time future pro director Howard Arundel took over but was surprised upon arrival to find out he'd be the main director, saddled with a video camera and insufficient sound recording equipment that meant the whole film had to be dubbed in post-5- badly. It's a strange, disembodied viewing experience with lots of weird meta touches if you're watching these in sequence -- and once again the characters are almost all wildly unsympathetic but fun to watch anyway. Both films are presented here in their final cobbled-together versions for what will likely be a very perplexed public, looking kind of sludgy and strange but likely the only way they'll ever get released. Target: Eve Island comes with a lively Sterling-Vete commentary with producer Martin De Rooy (plus 4m29s more commentary outtakes separately with them and Severin's Carl Daft), while Ibiza Connection has Flint and Arundel going into great detail about how the whole insane production came together and then promptly fell to pieces with Twemlow himself inflicting multiple bodily injuries on himself that had to be worked into the script. Other extras for Target include two trailers, an 11m3s batch of four scene rushes, and a 4m22s alternate credits sequence.

And on we got to disc five which kicks off with The African Run (93m52s), a 1985 redo of Tuxedo Warrior that adds 12 minutes of VHS-shot footage (mostly near the beginning and also viewable as a separate reel with breakdown notes) to make Chaser more of a central character to the story including a lengthy backstory before the film proper begins that has him on Wiley's trail. You also get some more fighting and a pretty funny extra twist ending, so it's worth a look in either form. The music has also been substantially changed, and the Blu-ray version uses the HD scan of the original film as much as possible with the VHS inserts very, very easy to identify.

Also on the disc is one of the most confounding Twemlow films and a rare one to be shot on film (16mm in this case), Moon Stalker (90m42s) from 1988, which somehow ended up hitting the MGM HD channel and getting a VHS release as Predator: The Quietus. At least this one beats out The Wolf of Snow Hollow by decades in the "is it or isn't a werewolf movie?" category with its lackadaisical story about an English village being terrorized by something furry and murderous at night. American reporter Kelly O'Neill (Cordelia Roche) comes to get the scoop on the killings and crosses paths with professional hunter Kane (Twemlow, of course) who's out to bag the beast. Inspired by the real-life cattle-killing Beast of Exmoor several years earlier, this barely qualifies as a horror film with all the violent stuff happening off camera; however, it does get weirdness points for its music numbers, quirky bar drunks, and a pair of bikers who figure into the plot at some point. This being the back half of the '80s, you also get a fun, cheap synth score and a lot of absurd, earnest dialogue that make it a logical progression point in this set. The transfer looks nice and shows off the wildly overachieving cinematography of David Tattersall who went on to shoot The Green Mile, George Lucas' three Star Wars prequels, and most importantly, Con Air. Somehow this was even given a stereo mix which sounds way better than you'd expect, and Flint and Sterling-Vete dive into another packed commentary explaining how they passed Manchester off as the primary location, the favorite spots and actors you'll see pop up here, and the actor's self-evaluation playing a villainous role. Also included are a completely insane 007-style test footage reel for The African Run credits (2m49s), the alternate Predator opening and closing credits for Moon Stalker (7m30s) and its trailer, a wild 4m56s promo for the never-completed The Blind Side of God, and a Harassing Moments showreel (5m9s) showing off the hammy skills of frequent repertory actor Jerry Harris.

We switch back to SOV on disc six with The Hitman (88m43s), a crime thriller shot in 1986 and sort of released between 1988 and 1992 (as The Assassinator) about a guy named Chris McCall (John Saint Ryan) who, as the opening crawl informs us, has spent the last seven years building a new life and identity after serving in the military as Captain Lewis. Now he's an assassin for a very shadowy branch of the government called The Bureau and wants to get out after a botched job due to a "bureaucratic cock-up" involving a Chinese supermarket guru, with various parties jockeying to recruit his services at any cost -- even if it jeopardizes his family. Kent-Watson returns as director here after a long split with Twemlow, and it's a welcome reunion as this is a much tighter and more efficient film than the past few. Twemlow doesn't have much of a role this time outside of a bit of fighting, but it gets the job done in a modest direct-to-video kind of way with a handful of reasonable action scenes and a crazed, extremely nasty twist ending that pretty much justifies a watch all by itself. The quality here is very good with a surprisingly solid native 2.0 stereo mix as well.

Made around the same time by Kent-Watson with all the usual suspects including Sinclair, Saint Ryan, and Cliff himself is The Eye of Satan (79m1s), an amusingly cheap 1987 action-horror quickie with Twemlow back as the star here. This time he's playing another character named Kane (or maybe the same one), a panther-owning and very 'roided-up emissary of Satan who comes "from a world too incomprehensible for mere mortals to understand, a land that lies beneath a cloak of unending darkness." That means his eyes occasionally turn green, he exudes sexual magnetism for any woman around, and he's less than amused when his latest assignment involving protecting arms dealer's daughter Christine (Ginette Gray) goes wrong. Good luck following all the plotlines here involving a police procedural, a stolen Satanic red jewel, and a lot of really strange gay jokes, but it's certainly not dull. This doesn't look or sound as good as The Hitman but it's passable enough here, especially given the film's rarity. Extras include a trailer (flat matted to 1.85:1 which looks awful) and alternate The Assassinator title sequence for The Hitman, plus two trailers, 10m28s of deleted and extended scenes, and funny bloopers (2m10s) for Eye of Satan including Cliff au naturel.

Then it's more shot-on-video obscurity on disc seven starting with the 1991-ish Firestar: First Contact (94m9s), the "chronicles of John D. Trooper, Security Officer - Solar Command, Patrol Ship - Firestar" during solar date 2022.87. Naturally Twemlow plays Trooper telling a story in flashback that started when his boss (Oliver Tobias, incredibly) ordered an ill-advised attack on an alien ship that boomerangs back on them. This doesn't sit well with the top boss (Charles Gray, even more incredibly), which leads to a ticked-off alien boarding the ship and trying to bump everyone off. Very obviously inspired by a certain hit Ridley Scott film, this is exactly as daffy as you'd expect a Twemlow space movie to be with the usual romantic interludes and a Mother-inspired voice that... doesn't exactly land the same. The film looks fine given the SOV aesthetic and amusingly ratty effects; ditto for the modest mono sound mix. Extras include a very confusing trailer and a deleted 2m47s fight sequence, while the disc also includes one of the most fascinating elements of the set: Tokyo Sunrise (22m27s), an abandoned action film now reconstructed here via the salvaged rush tapes, Cliff's uncovered script, and other bits from its promo shorts. Basically it plays like a turbo-charged Twemlow short film augmented with some Simon Boswell music from the doc to fill in the gaps and other fun touches like a Wilhelm scream near the beginning. The story basically involves Cliff trying to crush a brutal crime boss (Max Beesley) who is trying to flood to population with Tokyo Sunrise, an addictive drug disguised as a new soft drink. Gray is here again as a model who stumbles on the plan and falls in the sack with Cliff, here under the irresistible name Johnny Zero. As you'd expect, this is one of the best-looking SOV offerings in the set with extras including a newly-created and amusing making-of featurette (8m52s), a blooper reel (4m56s), and two promos.

The last completed feature film from Twemlow comes on disc eight with the inevitable G.B.H. 2: Lethal Impact from 1991, presented here in its unreleased 109m53s initial cut as well as the much tighter 99m11s release version. Twemlow returns here as Donovan, now pushed into Charles Bronson territory when his young niece, Catherine, kills herself after being forced into sex slavery. As the documentary illustrates, the backstory here is actually more unnerving than the film itself since it was largely funded by members of the Manchester mob and ultimately didn't get any more exposure than Cliff's other films right before it. The film also comes up with an outrageous explanation for Donovan's presence in this film given how the last one ended, which helps mitigate the queasy tone of the proceedings here about wiping out a ring of child predators. The flashback-heavy longer cut is really one for the die hards, while the standard one is a reasonably entertaining vigilante yarn on a shoestring that, once again, barely seems to have been seen anywhere until now. The completely bizarre "shocker" ending is really something else, too, topping off a weirdly structured film and Twemlow's entire narrative feature career on an appropriate "wtf?" note. It's a nastier and grungier film than the first one for sure with some extremely politically incorrect moments even by early '90s standards, so brace yourself. Image quality is the same between the two versions, so it really depends how much time and energy you have to devote here. Also on the disc is 1991's Bad Weekend (41m24s), listed as Cliff's final production, which was supposed to be a pilot for a TV series that features way more sexual assault and slaughter than you would ever actually see on the air. It's essentially an excuse to see Cliff play a total bastard and say the title during one bit of payback, which might be enough.

The final disc is mainly a curiosity piece featuring two 1991 instructional videos made with Twemlow's involvement, albeit in different states of clothing. Delivering exactly what it promises, Fitness Over 40 (55m6s) offers lots of tips about exercise and other self-care once you pass the big 4-0 in England complete with lots of Cliff lifting weights and others doing their own demos before it all wraps up with... bikini-clad women frolicking in the surf. Then you get The Art of Nude Massage (45m30s), which... well, also delivers exactly what it promises, essentially an off-brand version of those Playboy and Penthouse softcore massage videos that were everyone on VHS at one point. Cliff turns up at the beginning to get slathered in oil by a blonde masseuse, and otherwise it's strictly the usual drill made interesting by the fact that Ginette Gray was behind the camera here as a director and Brian Sterling was one of the writers. Both of these look and sound fine given what they are. It's a crazy way to cap off the set, but by this point your mind will be so fried it'll seem completely normal.

Reviewed on November 10, 2024.