Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy, 1967–2015

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The Last Night gets off to an old trope of a start when the manager of a small provincial theatre arrives upstairs just too late to hear a radio announcement that two armed and dangerous criminals have escaped from Broadmoor prison top security wing and are on the loose. Inevitably, some of the more extensive damage does remain, particularly on the early films, but this improves substantially on the newer films. Shirley, meanwhile, has similar doubts about Oliver and Debbie, whom she learns are involved in an incestuous relationship. Hopefully, others will get more out of this one than I did, but with so many other films of greater interest in this set, not responding to this one didn't exactly leave me feeling hard done by.

He shot on a variety of formats over the years, including 8mm and 16mm film, standard definition mini-DV, and HD video, but it turns out there's a lot more to it than that. But, contrary to the initial announcement, the original versions of The Rite of Spring and Tristan (1999) are sourced from 16mm - it's only the re-edited DVD versions that are SD-only (of necessity, since they were assembled on SD in the first place, with new electronic titles and sometimes VFX that were easier to create digitally). Back in the late 1960s and 70s when Murphy started making short films, it was a different story, and I'm speaking from the voice of personal experience here.

It feels like something is missing from the finale (one character undergoes a huge attitude switch in the course of a single edit), and the final reveal seems just a tad rushed, but on the whole this is a decent remake and expansion of the earlier film. To start tinkering with the image to give it a more film-like grading at this stage would, I think, be inappropriate, and the drama itself is often so absorbing that it quickly ceased to be an issue for me. This is an astonishing release that brings the work of a largely unknown British independent filmmaker to the attention of a wider viewing public, but does so by restoring every surviving frame of film and video that he created and uniting the results with a jaw-dropping collection of special features. King tells him it's bollocks and fires him on the spot, but as soon as Alistair has angrily left the building, King admits to the film's lead actress Judy Brooks (Catherine Rowlands), with whom he is having an affair, that the film is really good and will likely make him a fortune. Fitfully available on videotape, and barely represented on DVD, this comprehensive and long-gestating ten-disc Blu-ray collection seeks to rectify that situation once and for all.

Having cut his teeth on a variety of homemade 8mm shorts, he had completed three feature-length productions by the age of eighteen. Seriously, if you choose to watch every cut of every film and every special feature in this 10-disc Blu-ray set, I've calculated that it would take you approximately 56 hours, and that's if you only watch each film once. Murphy reveals that some of the dialogue was re-recorded in post to improve the acoustics, worries that an essentially silly premise is undermined by sequences that take it too seriously, winces at the memory of difficult to film scenes, and says of a lock used to keep the heavily muscled Dan from escaping, "That lock is so flimsy it I don't think that would stop a chihuahua trying to break in.It's noted in the booklet that thousands of instances of dust and sparkle were removed and damaged frames repaired, and even in the less vibrant UK shot films, the detail and colour are often very good, and while contrast can be punchy on some, on others it's most attractively pitched. It was because the idea of capturing stories on film and entertaining an audience was always something that completely fascinated me.

Largely focused on thrillers along with the occasional horror, fantasy, or sci- film over the course of his 30-film feature career that started in his late teens, Murphy is still quite obscure even in cult film circles with most of his work very difficult to find outside of scouring British VHS bins. In other respects, it hits many of the same story beats as the previous film (which I'm not about to reveal here in the likelihood that you've seen neither), one difference being that the home help hired in the first film is already on site at the start of this one in the shape of strapping gardener Patrick (Colin Efford, here credited as David Slater). Good-looking 21-year-old Paul (Russell Hall) hires a holiday apartment in Greece and starts a friendship with his older married landlady Gill (Carol Aston), one that quickly develops into something more. Yes, the production must have cost about as much as you'd pay for a rusty car with no engine (sea journeys are done on a papier mâché boat with a sheet for a sail in the darkness of night to avoid having to show the surrounding water), but once you make appropriate allowances for this, Tristan (or if you prefer Legend of a Hero) is really something.When Jacky threatens to leave and go straight to the police, Laura's husband Alan (Stephen Longhurst) warns her that "he" will stop her if she tries. His critical view of his own work at one point sees him compare his working methods to those of Edward D. Credibility is stretched like loose elastic here, but Murphy is clearly having a ball staging cheapjack takes on a range of horror works, as the drama is repeatedly put on hold so that Alistair can watch tapes of movies featuring those on whom he intends to wreak his wrath. When work delays his father's arrival, Terry is able to spend some time alone with Alex and work on his latest story, but he seems to be planning something sinister. You're also at the mercy of the weather, and rescheduling a shoot just isn't an option when you only have access to your cast and location for a couple of weeks.