0.25 out of 10
Release date: 5th May 2008 (DVD premiere)
Director: Steven M Smith (The Test / Haunted 5 / Haunted 4 / Haunted 3 / Haunted 2 – Apparitions / Red Army Hooligans / The Howling (2017) / The Doll Master / Borstal / Invasion Earth / I Am Hooligan / Essex Boys – Law of Survival / Hooligans At War / Haunted (2013))
Cast: Laura Penneycard, Geoff Shaw, Colin Bower, Rob Pheby, David Farrington, Jeremy Hill, Dominic Fowler, Nicola Freeman-Wright, Paul Agar
Writer: Steven M Smith
Trailer: TIME OF HER LIFE
Digging back into the past can be a painful experience for some of us. Here at Britpic we’ve dug into director/film fan defiler Steven M Smith’s movie making past and it wasn’t just painful, it was excruciating. But there was also a surprise lurking within the agony. Whereas I was prepared for a bout of film torture to the millionth degree (this sucker director has form) there was also a shock factor and not in the way you’d expect. The biggest WTF aspect to this very early Smith feature is how its no worse than the films that he’s currently flinging at us on a regular basis (this was made in 2006 <?> and released in 2008). Yes, this is a case of directorial arrested development on a dangerous scale. Well, he’s hardly Michael Bay (thank god), but its amazing how little his abilities at shooting and directing have improved. OK, I retract this a little bit – his acting, when he chooses to take a role in his own films, has improved because his bit-part in this item of embarrasment is a real corker – he’s been taking tips from his mate Jon-Paul Gates.
After seeing A Dark Song, where contact with the ‘other side’ was very difficult and arduous, all the characters in this fim have to do is take a piss behind a tree. I’m not lying. So what springs forth in The Time of Her Life (what a duff title) is a rip-off of Dracula minus the fun and fangs. Dopey reporter, Ally (LAURA PENNEYCARD – HAUNTED (2013)) visits a stately home with some mates only for her to bump into the ghost of a former lord (GEOFF SHAW). She starts to have visions of a former life to when she was girl under employ of the Lord 200 years earlier. With the help of a cipher, ahem, I mean a crafty old gardener and the readily available ghost they piece together a mystery/ultra lame love story that is really hard to solve. It’s only hard to solve because you’re fighting the urge not to set your television on fire. Otherwise its hardly a head scratcher.
You will struggle. and I mean struggle find a more amatuerish love story than this. The performances and dialogue belong in a badly dubbed Chinese porno, the performers so leaden and gormless – I think the director got these guys out of the lost and found box at the local Kwik Save. Again Smith is guilty of not doing his research of the period setting, he’s also shooting a film without reading the camera or sound equipment manual. Also, there’s a good chance that he’s never actually seen a real film. He might have heard of a film but he’s certainly never seen anything good enough for him to want to exert any effort into making anything but slipshod, sloppy sh*t like this.
The DVD boasts an ‘extra’ of the crew catching a real ghost on camera – thats my ghost coming to haunt the f*ckers who made this piss poor comedy of errors not terrors. Most people would be better off dying a pleasant death than sitting through this. Its so stultifying you actually do think that decades may have passed whilst you’ve been sat on the sofa watching this mind-numbing cack. You may, if you were a really, really, nice charitable angel venture that this is a dimly-decent first attempt at a feature BUT with the benefit of hindsight – the added knowledge of the parade of butt-baked movies that followed, I’ll call it what it is. A real CLOWN turd.
0.25 out of 10 – Lacklustre like a morforrr. The poor quality of this film will amaze you. It’s straight-faced demeanour makes the whole endeavour even easier to ridicule. Giving this a bad review felt like belittling a 3 year old who’s showed you a crap crayon drawing. But hey I don’t have children. Neither does Joe Pesci II.
This review is by Joe Pesci II – he thought it was shit too. But not as shit as Smithy’s latest films.
This website has reviewed several films from the oeuvre of producer/director Steven M Smith, and has generally found them wanting. It is entirely reasonable that we here at what used to be Britpic but which is now the much more snappily titled Rise of the Zombie Hooligan Films say what we think of those projects. And it is within Mr Smith’s rights to respond, which he has done, usually (and understandably) with attitudes ranging from dismay to anger. But Mr Smith has, we feel, gone further, and a little too far, and has attempted to cause us to desist in discussing his work. As another film-maker has said, if Mr Smith put as much effort into making films as he did in criticising critics then he might make films which we didn’t need to criticise. So I thought I’d look at TIME OF HER LIFE, an early Smith film, one which might tell us more about the Smith enigma: auteur or charlatan? Storyteller or charlatan? Ambitious, imaginative film-maker or charlatan?
Reader, the results don’t look too good for Mr Smith.
TIME OF HER LIFE tells the story of Ally (LAURA PENNEYCARD – HAUNTED (2013)), a photo-journalist who visits a stately home with some chums, two of whom treat the trip as an opportunity for hanky-panky in the Britishest sense, while the third is soon unveiled as a sex pest. As well as suffering from the unwanted advances of a man who finds acting difficult, our heroine also has a funny reaction to the country house and its grounds. So obviously she goes back to find out why.
After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and annoying a tour guide who fails to notice our heroine looks exactly like the girl in a recently discovered nineteenth century portrait, Ally makes contact with a ghost (GEOFF SHAW) (the one who scared the pervert off earlier). Unfortunately it appears to be the ghost of former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg (looking sad). She can see him as they have ‘a connection’. This doesn’t explain why he was seen earlier by the pervert bloke urinating against a tree. Anyway, Nick Clegg is haunted by a past which saw him in love with someone who looked exactly like Ally, but their love could not be as she was a servant and he was a posh bloke and his dad was grumpy about it all and had some henchmen Dick Dastardly would have refused to employ.
At one point we encounter a gardener who knows everything that’s useful to the plot except where the bodies are buried (literally). He’s played by an actual professional actor, with a small list of screen credits going back a few decades. The role is rubbish, but the film almost benefits from his professionalism. He gives Ally some letters between Nick Clegg and 18/19th century servant-Ally, which explain the whole story so there’s no need for any actual investigation. A few flashbacks, and a post-script in the surprisingly impressive-looking Chelmsford Library (where Ally seeks the curiously titled A History In Essex, only to find a modern-day Nick Clegg-a-like is already perusing the volume) (we know he’s modern day as he’s got an earring) and it’s all over apart from the song. Yes, the credits are accompanied by two enthusiastic warblers attempting a wannabe-Sondheimesque schmaltzy duet. It’s horrifying and should never have been allowed out of the studio. What makes it worse is that it’s so unexpected; by this point we can reasonably be assured that the worst is over; after all, how can you fuck up a film’s end credits? Mr Smith achieves it by spelling at least one cast member’s name wrong and subjecting us to this sub-Webberesque atrocity.
So is there anything good, or even vaguely acceptable here, apart from the gardener? There were one or two attempts at interesting shots. And the bit in the basement, where the light at the window spirals into blackness, is at least an attempt at a bit of a special effect, even though it has no bearing on anything we see on screen.
Sadly, there is much that is not good. The story is thin and constructed primarily of plot-holes and gaps in logic. For some reason there are a lot of shots of the back of the heroine’s head. Most of the acting is, at best, almost enthusiastic. The script displays no understanding of the following subjects: journalism, tourism, the supernatural, libraries, human nature, narrative, logic, history, class, love, stately homes and gardening.
TIME OF HER LIFE is almost forgiveable tripe as it’s not pretending to be anything amazing. It’s a team finding out what does and doesn’t work. The shame is that Mr Smith has learnt lessons which were perhaps not the lessons he should have learnt. The most significant is that it’s possible to get away with anything if you have utter contempt for your viewers. Witness for example one of the extras on the DVD, an extra which is prominently trailed on the box. Mr Smith claims to have footage of an actual real-life ghost! How amazing! And, truth be told, I cannot explain the phenomenon in any logical, non-supernatural way. Partly because I can see no ghost. There is apparently a blob which briefly passes along a wall and behind a bad actor. And well, wow, if Mr Smith has the imagination and perspicacity to use this vaguely wandering light as a major selling point for his film, it shows he has no shame.
TIME OF HER LIFE has a kind of innocence, like a new-born foal/deer/lamb/calf making its first steps in the world. And it isn’t the fault of the film that such atrocities as Steven M Smith’s THE DOLL MASTER exist. TIME OF HER LIFE wants to be a sweet fairy-tale-type film, which is not unreasonable. It just lacks everything that might have made that happen (credible story, competent actors, director etc), but there are worse films around; the problem is that most of them are made by Steven Smith, and more recently.
WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?
- Laura Penneycard: Haunted (2013)
- Jeremy Hill: Red Army Hooligans, The Howling (2017), Haunted (2013)
RISE OF THE ZOMBIE HOOLIGAN FILMS 