Kill Keith

Introduction

 Keith 'Cheggers' Chegwin has been around since, like, forever.  For those of us of a certain age, we remember him first as the outside broadcast man for Noel Edmonds on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and getting it on with one of my earliest crushes, Maggie Philbin, and having a minor hit as Hot Sauce with I Wanna Be A Winner (calm down, dear…) before launching Cheggers Plays Pop a few years later.  He also popped up in the 90's doing his outside broadcast stint again, but this time for Chris Evans' Big Breakfast.  Then time wasn't so kind, and he ended up on Channel 5 doing some naked quiz thing that got him back in the papers, but mainly so people could laugh at his bits over their breakfast.  And now, he's back, this time as the star of a film.

Kill Keith centres around the daily breakfast show Up The Crack of Dawn with hostess Dawn (Susannah Fielding) and obnoxious host Cliff (David Easter), the latter being forced off the show and whose exalted position on the sofa next to Dawn is the object of much speculation.  Contenders for Cliff's spot include Vanessa Feltz, Joe Pasquale and Cheggers himself, but someone is offing them all one by one - dubbed the tabloid-esque Breakfast Cereal Killer.  

The one man who may be able to save the day is hapless show runner Danny (Marc Pickering).  Assigned to 'coffee and arsewipes', Danny is hopelessly in love with Dawn but will she notice?  Or will the killer do the nation a favour and destroy the banal morning TV show?  

Visual  

Nice visual style and good production design, starting with the mock Bond opening sequence with Susannah Fielding.  It does wander into some rather strange territory though with the cellar bondage shot.  

The artwork is a reference to Tarentino's Kill Bill, but that's as near as we get to Quentin.  

Extras  

Commentary with producer Tim Major, director Andy Thompson and actor Marc Pickering  

Behind The Scenes featurette - a look behind the scenes rather than the more usual glossy EPK  

How Would You Kill Keith - very short featurette with a few of the other stars in the film explaining just how they would off Cheggers if given the choice…  

Trailer

Overall  

I have to admit that I went into this thinking it was going to be rubbish, but actually I loved it.  It's not a great film and certainly doesn't live up to the hype as the best British horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead, maybe the only one.  Still, it's always good to see someone considering bizarre ways to off second rate celebrities, such as blowing up Vanessa Feltz by feeding her porridge and milk or dropping razor blades into a packet of muesli and twisting it on Joe Pasquale's squeaky annoying head.  

This film is a great pastiche of breakfast TV, a rather annoying and banal genre of TV with some great digs and jokes including a rather funny Cheggers surprising an old couple in bed first thing in the morning - which was the exact point when, despite Cheggers playing himself, I knew I was going to like this.  It's rather odd as well as Cheggers is actually a pretty decent actor, flipping well between his more usual cheery on-screen persona to the dark, empty-eyed lunatic.  

The romantic plot between Pickering and Fielding doesn't quite work as well as it should, despite the couple being the main focus of the film.  Pickering doesn't quite get the tone of the film right whilst Fielding is hampered by the two dimensionality of her character.  Luckily, placed alongside the Z-list celeb massacre plotline, the deficiencies in this will-they won't-they plot are not as noticeable. 

One of the best performances in this film is actually one of the smaller roles, that of Stephen Chance as phone quiz question writer Brian Stokes - a man whose job is in danger as not enough people seem to be getting his very simple questions right.  There's also a rather bizarre standing joke re. Tony Blackburn, who is played by Joe Tracini throughout the film and employs the real one as his lookalike to fool the killer.  Not the best joke ever but at least the ex-R1 DJ plays along with it in the spirit of the piece.  

Not great and with its flaws, but a pretty good laugh overall.