Now here’s some horror hokum that will be lost on anyone not familiar with the names Keith Chegwin, Joe Pasquale, Russell Grant and Tony Blackburn, who all star in this horror comedy about a group of morning TV personalities being knocked off by the notorious ‘Breakfast Cereal Killer’. Yep, the bad puns come thick and fast in Kill Keith, a bargain basement effort that looks like its been made in between the tea breaks of the real-life ITV Daybreak (which it spoofs).
Danny (Marc Pickering) is a TV runner with dreams of landing a job on the sofa with the woman of his dreams, Dawn (Susannah Fielding) - the host of the Crack of Dawn breakfast TV show. When her vile co-anchor announces his departure, a list of replacements is drawn up and the killing begins. Following a death by exploding milk and porridge and another by razor blades in a monkey suit (don’t ask), the list starts to narrow down. Then, Tony (actually a stand-in who just happens to be the real Tony - again don’t ask) is kidnapped and Dawn reveals she has been receiving death threats. So it falls on Danny to save the day.
The ludicrous plot holes, disjointed murder scenes and unimaginative direction serve only to make this hatchet job a dire experience. I was really hoping for a spoof in the same league as 1973's Theatre of Blood (in which a bunch of British theatre critics get sliced and diced after giving Vincent Price's hammy Shakespearan actor Edward Lionheart bad notices). But Kill Keith, which pays homage to that genre classic in two of its death scenes, just doesn’t ‘rise to the occasion’ (to quote Lionheart). Although I must admit, I did get a chuckle at Tony Blackburn dressed in S&M bondage gear.
Kill Keith is released on DVD 26 March http://youtube.com/v/55NMKTNbrKc
