Cast: Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattrall, and Alastair
Duncan
Director: Tony Maylam
90 minutes (18) 1992
101 Films Blu-ray region B
[Released 27th July]
Rating: 7/10
Review by Steven Hampton
Set in 2008, sci-fi monster-movie Split Second remains, in many ways, a grimly British version of Predator 2 (1990), genre-spliced with Blade Runner (1982), not least because
of the presence of Rutger Hauer, here playing an anguished and paranoid - and
probably psychic - super-cop named Harley Stone. The supporting cast alone are more
than sufficient to win this effort cult status. There’s Ian Dury who runs Jay
Jay’s strip-club, Pete Postlethwaite (The
Last Of The Mohicans, Alien 3) as
police squad senior Paulsen, and RSC actor Alun Armstrong is good fun as Stone’s shouty
boss Thrasher. The hero’s new partner is detective Dick Durkin (Alastair Duncan,
credited as Neil Duncan), supposedly providing the brains to match Stone’s brawn.
At the city necropolis, Stone meets his murdered
partner’s widow Michelle (Kim Cattrall). Flooded by rising sea levels, London crumples
under the pressure of climate change, and is besieged by plague rats, while
Stone and Durkin hunt a serial killer, that appears with deadly efficiency, and
evades capture or even pursuit. Like an inhuman stalker with claws and fangs, this powerful monster has apparently supernatural powers. “The only thing we know for sure is that
he’s not a vegetarian.” The slayer rips through metal doors, leaves
extremely bloody murder scenes daubed with occultist symbols, and the creature’s
victims get their hearts torn out.
Atmospheric locations are furnished messily, with a flourish
of gothic lighting evoking the retro styled grunge of disused futurism previously on display in Morton and Jankel’s iconic TV-movie Max
Headroom (1985). The double-act of Stone and Durkin form a smart parody of
chalk ‘n’ cheese partnerships in American buddy-movie traditions, that resulted from the likes of 48 HRS (1982), and Lethal Weapon (1987). As a title, Split Second is a clever pun concealing
thematic resonance within its nest of spoofy off-handed charm. The hasty and heavily-armed showdown
against the fast-moving beast, is dramatically staged in an abandoned Underground station,
where the director, Tony Maylam (The
Burning, 1981), was helped by Ian Sharp (Who Dares Wins), to finish off this production with plenty of B-movie
mayhem.
101 Films ‘Black Label’ edition has a second Blu-ray disc
with a Japanese version of Split Second
in standard-definition video format. Extras include interviews:
- Great Big Bloody Guns! - producer Laura Gregory with Alastair (Neil) Duncan (27 mins.)
- Call Me Mr Snips! - composer Stephen Parsons (22 mins.)
- Stay in Line! - producer Laurie Borg (23 mins.)
- More Blood! - creature effects designer Cliff Wallace (32 mins.)
- Shoot Everything! - cinematographer Clive Tickner (19 mins.)
