Horror Shorts 3: Good Day for the Bad Guys (1995)

In North America, we're not really familiar with the 'panto.' It's a particularly low-brow form of theater with some audience interaction. An actor in panto is either at the beginning of his career and desperate, or his career is dying. That might explain why so many of the characters in a Good Day for the Bad Guys are angry and depressed. A Good Day is set in a rather heinous panto based on little red riding hood. John (Peter Mullan) plays the wolf and his day is getting worse and worse: a child spits in his face, his fellow actor keeps whining about being stuck in panto, his boss is sexually harassing pretty little red riding hood during offstage breaks and nobody seems to like him. That's when he starts hallucinating/fantasizing murdering his boss and taking his job.

Good Day is a very economical dark drama that uses its short runtime to build up a powerful sense of despair. Nobody really wants to be in panto, these characters included. They hate it, but they need it. The exception is Jockie. He is the bad guy and he's having a fine day in panto, sexually harassing women, threatening his underlings, and generally being a bastard, but still getting lots of love because he plays a good guy on stage. Although I was with him for such a short time, I really cared about John enough to make this an emotionally brutal experience. His nightmare is being thought of as a bad guy and the panto plays that nightmare out for him every day; his dream is to be thought of as the good guy he believes himself to be, but it doesn't appear to be forthcoming.

Not really recommended for anyone seeking anything overtly horrific; this comes closer to Bug than The Exorcist.

4/4

Dir: Peter Mullan
Writer: Peter Mullan
Runtime: 25 min.

Where to watch it?
The special features section of the DVD for Mullan's Orphans