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Billy The Kid And The Green Baize Vampire
01/10/2006 . Source: Rod MacDonald 
DVD: Network 7952517. time: 90 minutes. Price: £12.99 (UK) Rated: 15) stars Bruce Payne, Louise Gold, Richard Ridings and Don Henderson. Buy Billy The Kid And The Green Baize Vampire in the USA - or Buy Billy The Kid And The Green Baize Vampire in the UK  check out website: www.networkdvd.co.uk
This movie should never have been resurrected. There is nothing I can say to recommend it to anyone. I imagine the cast, especially Alun Armstrong who is quite a good actor, must cringe at the thought of it being released again.
When this movie was made almost 20 years ago, snooker was at the height of its popularity with a regular TV audience of millions. It is still popular today to some extent but many find it tedious, akin to watching proverbial paint dry. (Uncle Geoff would agree me with me on this one.)
Ray Reardon, six times world snooker champion in the seventies, looked like Dracula, hence the connection to this movie which is essentially about a young whizz-kid player challenging the existing champion. This is a Rocky Horror spin-off, badly made with terrible stage settings and atrocious music. I would say watching this is even more boring than watching snooker on television.
Writing a synopsis of this movie is rather difficult. Like snooker itself, nothing much happens. The stage is set with the establishment of the two main characters, the Champion and Billy. Large sums of money are being gambled on who will win (obviously the sub-plot) but the main action is with the snooker and chronic music. We have many scenes where nothing of relevance happens. My mind switched off at an early stage, even before the exciting shootout between the two protagonists. I will not spoil this for you by saying who won! This essentially this is all there is. How could you want for anything more?
Who would want to purchase this DVD? Snooker fans, even the brain-dead zombie ones, would probably be disappointed because today's game is much different from that of 20 years ago. Horror fans and/or musical fans would rather put their head in a bucket of boiling water.
I think someone somewhere will likely buy this as a present for a friend, perhaps unaware of the true nature of the DVD, only to make an instant enemy of them. We'll see this in a supermarket basket along with other movies of a similar nature, all going for a song. I'm sorry, Sound and Media Ltd, but this vampire film is a miss stake.
Rod MacDonald
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