This film is currently unavailable

This film is certified

Contains mild language

I accept this guidance

Title of error

Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire

Alan Clarke’s once derided feature is surely the only vampire snooker musical in cinema history and a genuine cult artefact ripe for rediscovery.

Musical 1985 90 mins

Director: Alan Clarke

Rent for £2.50

Overview

Once regarded as something of an oddity, if not a misstep, in the career of Alan Clarke, Billy the Kid is undoubtedly the only vampire snooker musical in cinema history and a genuine cult artefact destined for rediscovery.

One of the legendary television director’s few forays into features, Clarke collaborated with screenwriter Trevor Preston for the story of a duel between backstreet snooker player Billy Kid (Phil Daniels) and world champion Maxwell Randall (Alun Armstrong). The film was made at the height of snooker’s improbably success on British television, and Preston was inspired to write the tale from watching a showdown between young pretender Jimmy White and veteran Ray Reardon (nicknamed ‘Dracula). Clarke’s contrasting of ostentatious musical numbers with claustrophobic and sterile locations betray his longstanding interest in the work of Bertholt Brecht, and composer George Fenton (a recent Oscar-winner for Gandhi at the time) supplies the wonderful score with its eccentric songs and diverse switches of style. One of the strangest films to emerge from 1980s Britain (in a decade that offered a fair few contenders); Billy the Kid is a delightful slice of eccentricity from one of the UK’s most uncompromising filmmakers.

Director

Alan Clarke

Featuring

Phil Daniels and Alun Armstrong

Genres

Musical and Sport

Certificate

Contains mild language

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Rent for £3.50

Oh... Rosalinda!! Oh... Rosalinda!!

Musical 1956 99 mins Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Like the gloriously camp, all-singing, all-dancing cousin of The Third Man, the Archers’ take on Strauss’s operetta of infidelity is as frothy as the champagne it celebrates.

Rent for £3.50

Singin' in the Rain Singin' in the Rain

Comedy 1951 103 mins Director: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

Hollywood’s troubled transition from silent to talking pictures at the end of the 1920s provided the inspiration for this greatest of movie musicals.

Rent for £3.50

Babymother Babymother

Musical 1998 77 mins Director: Julian Henriques

Neeta and her crew rise to dancehall fame in North West London's Caribbean community, in the first Black British musical.

Rent for £3.50

Lisztomania Lisztomania

Biopic 1976 103 mins Director: Ken Russell

Ken Russell's characteristically spectacular biopic of Liszt, with Roger Daltrey portraying the composer as a rock god, is a heady brew complete with garish Freudian symbolism, Hitler, spaceships and Ringo Starr as the Pope.

Rent for £3.50

The Boy Friend The Boy Friend

Musical 1972 136 mins Director: Ken Russell

A timid actress is forced to cover for the injured star and falls for the leading man, in Ken Russell's thoroughly British variant on the MGM musical.

Rent for £3.50

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Musical 2001 92 mins Director: John Cameron Mitchell

The trailblazing cult musical about a transgender punk from East Germany who reinvents herself as a rock diva.

Currently unavailable

Achilles' Heel Achilles' Heel

Drama 1973 56 mins Director: Alan Clarke

Alan Clarke’s film of a day in the life of a professional footballer as he deals with the newfound pressures of money, glamour and celebrity in the 1970s game.

Currently unavailable

The Gold Robbers: The Arrangement The Gold Robbers: The Arrangement

Crime 1969 53 mins Director: Alan Clarke

Alan Clarke directs this episode of a 13-part serial inspired by The Great Train Robbery of 1963, starring Peter Vaughan as the dogged detective on the case.

Rent for £4.50

blur: To the End blur: To the End

Documentary 2024 104 mins Director: Toby L

Britpop legends Blur reunite for their biggest gig at Wembley Stadium, in this raw documentary steeped in nostalgia.

Rent for £3.50

Meantime Meantime

Drama 1983 107 mins Director: Mike Leigh

Tim Roth, Phil Daniels and Gary Oldman star in Mike Leigh’s TV film about an East End family try to stay afloat during a recession.

Rent for £1.00

Anoop and the Elephant Anoop and the Elephant

Children's 1972 52 mins Director: David Eady

Fun-packed comedy for kids, in which a boy befriends a baby elephant – then teams up with his friends to stop it being sold

Rent for £3.50

Possum Possum

Horror 2018 85 mins Director: Matthew Holness

"Can you spy him deep within? Little Possum. Black as sin." The reliably deranged Sean Harris is plagued by an evil puppet in this dark, brooding fable from Matthew Holness.

Rent for £3.50

Rita, Sue and Bob Too Rita, Sue and Bob Too

Drama 1987 93 mins Director: Alan Clarke

A married man seduces two teenage babysitters in Alan Clarke’s mix of bawdy comedy and social comment, based on Andrea Dunbar’s Bradford plays.

Rent for £3.50

Made in Britain Made in Britain

Drama 1982 76 mins Director: Alan Clarke

Tim Roth burst onto British screens with his coruscating performance as a teenage skinhead in this TV play from Alan Clarke and David Leland.

Rent for £3.50

South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic

Documentary 1919 81 mins Silent Director: Frank Hurley

An extraordinary story of survival in the wastes of Antarctica.

Rent for £4.50

Night Courier (Mandoob) Night Courier (Mandoob)

Comedy 2023 112 mins Director: Ali Kalthami

A desperate delivery driver gets caught up in the dark underworld of Riyadh in Ali Kalthami’s gripping, pitch-black satire.

Rent for £3.50

The Ballymurphy Precedent The Ballymurphy Precedent

Documentary 2018 108 mins Director: Callum Macrae

John Pilger's film on the conflict in Northern Ireland is a skilful mix of investigative journalism, documentary storytelling and reflections on contemporary history.