1985
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians
Gotta Let This Hen Out!
(Jettisoundz)
Can I call you Gladys? Or: how, on a limited budget, Hitchcock (the director -- you know him) manages to transfer his random flashes of brilliance and his quaintly psychotic Rock 'n' Roll muse to the small screen. I probably expected weirder than I got.
Most of Hen is filmed live at The Marquee: uniformly good and sufficiently tinkered with to be consistently watchable (if not always stunning). Real darkness and continuity is provided by short inserts which feature Hitchcock and naked guitar performing (excellent) strangely Bowiesque acoustic numbers against a whitewashed wall.
It would've been very nice had it all been as fascinating as "The Man With The Lightbulb Head", an animated fantasy about just that: shady and skeletal and charming; an acid version of Tony Hart at play and a useful hark back to an anglepoise lamp fixation.
A lot of Hen is more predictable ("Only The Stones Remain" -- Stonehenge, "I Often Dream Of Trains" -- journey), but some of it is almost great -- like the closing closeup of the Hitchcock fillings, the intermittent flicks through TV channel choices, or the opaque black humour of "My Wife And My Dead Wife".
In the end, comfortable and eminently enjoyable, if patchy. But worth it, I think, for the curious shot of Robyn flailing around outside the Job Centre. They probably wouldn't let him in.
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