As soon as the 1970s exploitation-style title credits roll over the film’s eponymous anti-hero walking through a grimy-looking Hackney – taking in Dalston market, the pirate DVD sellers lurking around Tesco and vast brutalist council estates – you know this ain’t going to be an easy ride.
Meet Tony – wiping his bum in the opening shots, yuk! – an unemployable loner, sporting a terrible moustache and a very dodgy haircut, who spends his waking hours watching action films and wandering the streets of my part of London.
And pity anyone who befriends this slug of a man because Tony has a secret – he’s a serial killer. But he’s no ordinary bloodthirsty butchering psycho. No, our Tony’s quite the gentle soul really, who only targets deadbeats; a couple of smack-heads who only want his money to buy drugs; an unsavoury Essex bloke who just wants a place to kip; and even the television licence man – well, no loss there.
Because his victims are so unlikeable, Tony’s murderous spree doesn’t seem that bad. In fact, he’s more like a refuse collector of the outcast and the dispossessed, than a senseless killer. But that doesn’t mean he’s likeable. In fact, he’s very creepy and downright seedy (he keeps a box of tissues and some Vaseline to hand, double yuk).
But Tony is very, very funny. From sleeping with a decaying corpse: ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ to trying to buy the services of a prostitute: ‘How much for a cuddle?”, Tony has more in common with Leonard Rossiter‘s Rigsby than the real-life serial killer Dennis Nilsen that his character resembles. And this is down to Peter Ferdinando‘s eerily-brilliant portrayal of the ‘nonce-faced’ loner.
A smart, sharp-witted, black comedy that’s unsettling but never ever depressing, Tony is a wicked, polished debut from Gerard Johnson, which benefits hugely from the dark, funny script, and a unsettling (if under-used) score by The The‘s Matt Johnson.
Johnson also has a great eye for detail (he gets Tony to wrap chunks of flesh in newspaper carrying an article about Francis Bacon paintings; and even replicates the famous murder scene from Hitchcock’s Frenzy), while the gritty, mis-en-scène photography works perfectly despite the very low budget.
All-in-all, Tony is a humour, twisted journey into perversity and murder that works better than most of today’s genre films and really stands out in a league of its own. Class stuff!
Released 5 February (Also showing on Sky Box Office & FilmFlex)
Is this film funny? It seems the humour you mention was missed on me.
I personally found it deeply disturbing and stomach churning to watch Tony interacting with his dead house guests and chopping up bits of their bodies (admittedly it probably wasn’t a good idea to watch it over dinner).
It is class stuff though, you’re right. The gritty London world that Tony inhabits is so brilliantly observed that it left me thinking, ‘could I have walked past a killer today?’ Powerful.