This movie feels like it belongs to no set time and space. I can freely admit that it's not good, but also that I'm fascinated by it. If asked to describe it in ten words or less, I'd say, "Imagine if Cafe Flesh was about comedy and not good."

It's set in a fascist police set of the future, but shot on the sets of Freddie Francis' The Doctor and the Devils. Nobody bothered to clean those sets, so they are covered with straw. This movie is to straw as Conquest is to fog.

Sam Coex (Steve Munroe) is a stand-up comedian who can't get booked, so he kills - not like you kill on stage - his rival Joey Myers, buries him in his garden and takes over his career, becoming a big success. He starts sleeping with stripper named Ann all while the zombified Joey starts to haunt him An American Werewolf in London-style.

You have to wonder what the Welsh miners and doctors whose hard-earned money went to funding this thought when they saw the final result. As for its writer and director, Richard Driscoll, he was found guilty of a $2.3 million tax fraud over the invoices for his movie Eldorado, which starred Daryl Hannah, Caroline Munro, Brigitte Nielsen, Peter O'Toole, Rik Mayall, David Carradine, Jeff Fahey, Steve Guttenberg and Michael Madsen. He served three years in jail for the crime. Some would say his worst offenses would be the films that he makes, which are Bruno Mattei-esque jabs at recreating other films like Kannibal (Silence of the Lambs) and at least two movies with a title close to Grindhouse.

Man, now I have a whole new thing to be obsessed about and yet, I know in my heart that the films of Driscoll are not in any way good. Such is how it goes. Also, the lovemaking scenes in this movie disturbed me and I grew up watching the Dark Brothers films, so just imagine the things that I have seen.

Like the guy who posted the first comment I bought this film for only 1GBP, I knew the film was going to be bad. I hoped that it would be in the so bad it's good category. It's so much more than that, it's appalling, it's the pits, it is without doubt the worst film I've ever seen, I had to watch it in five sittings. It's 89 minutes of the hoariest clichés and cod psychology. It has the worst cast, the worst sets, the cheapest and nastiest special effects. I could go on but I don't want to over egg the pudding !

I've not seen every film ever made so I'm not qualified to call it the worst film ever made but I can't imagine that any other film could be worse than this. Like the guy who made the first post, I too like bad films. If 'The Producers' (you know, Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder) had picked this script, it would have totally spoilt that movie for their theatre audience would have walked out and never come back.

It's a howler, watch it with a companion because you'll be begging them to kill you before the film is halfway through. Druggies save yourself some money, you don't need any mind altering drugs, just watch this film it will be a trip. If finding the worst film ever is you're Holy Grail, find this, buy it, take it back to your Camelot and stick it in ye olde DVD player, watch it and then write to thank me for putting you on to this.

I will treasure this film for ever. Thank you Richard Driscoll !!!!

PS, does anyone know if any of the cast or crew ever worked again, apart from in McDonalds that is ?

PPS, if you only see one bad film before you die, make sure it's this one.

When I first watched The Comic a year ago I dismissed it in my mind as 'a turd'. But I think I may be wrong. The Comic, after having lived in my head for a year, and on another viewing, is, possibly, the greatest undiscovered work of genius film-making produced in Britain since the Sixties - that or a sustained display of amateur ineptitude which, just by being so incredibly crap, manages to completely bypass any form of criticism.

With most bad films you have some idea what the film was trying to do: it's an unfunny comedy, it's a not scary Horror film, it's an unthrilling thriller. With The Comic you don't have a clue. I really haven't got any way to start to work out what the film thought it was other than to liken it to other films which it resembles (slightly - and then almost certainly by accident). Plot-wise I think it's the rags to riches and back again, rise and fall story (think David Essex in That'll be the Day / Stardust) but set in an authoritarian future where jackbooted militia can beat the crap out of people in public for no real reason, then throw them in gaol without trial, and the highest form of culture appears to be the working man's club circuit. It's obviously heavily influenced by David Lynch's unfiltered stream of unconsciousness imagery; uncomfortable, grainy, double-framed shots of nothing much happening are sustained beyond any sensible length. At the end of the film several of these, seemingly totally unrelated shots, are repeated as if they are DEEPLY SIGNIFICANT. There are nightmare/dream sequences with the smoke machines pumping away so much that, at times, it's hard to figure out what is going on on screen.

The cutting jolts all over the place leaving audience confusion in its wake - for most of the film I had very little idea of where any of the 'action' was taking place; apart from a shot of some boats in a harbour and a couple of establishing shots of a big house all the film takes place indoors - even the scenes which are obviously meant to be outside feel like interiors. (Mostly down to the crappy sound work.) The setting is weird too, the street (shot in what appears to be some sort of living museum heritage centre) is knee deep in straw. The rich get about in horse-drawn carriages or vintage auto-mobiles. The protagonist's 'flat' consists of one ground floor room with a door that opens straight onto the street and has shop windows - and some of the worst wrinkled wallpaper-hanging I have seen. A metaphor maybe for all the many layers of meaninglessness on display? A thin covering to be peeled away to reveal even shallower layers of meaningless beneath? And just why does the protagonist's mullet change colour from yellow to orange, then back again, quite so often? What was that grainy, sepia-toned flashback to the granny getting her throat slit by total strangers all about? Who is the whore in the red dress and what has she to do with anything going on in the rest of the film? Why does the hero pay for his daughter to be smuggled out of the country with a small bag of undefined something like a character from a historical movie? and why doesn't the smuggler look to see what's in the bag? - it could be toenail clippings for all he knows! Why is 'the comic' at the centre of the film so incredibly bloody unfunny? the only really funny stand-up delivered joke of the whole film comes from a character we have never met before (and never seen again) suddenly appearing mid-frame to deliver a seriously surreal gag before vanishing from the movie. What. Is. Going. On? This sort of thing keeps me awake at night.

I think producer / writer / director / editor / sounds effects arranger Richard Driscoll was trying to do something very simple - an SF reworking of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in the northern Working-men's club circuit - but somehow, accidentally, managed to make the most accurate, sustained, parody of every bad, overly-arty first year Film Student movie ever produced.

It's comedy heaven.