Edgar Wright gets the horn (and Jesus has a wank)

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      It’s nice to see The World’s End appearing on so many Top 10 movies lists this year.

      Badass Digest, Collider, Den of Geek, and a bunch of contributors over at rogerebert.com all gave year-end props to the third and best film in director Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, in which his cohorts Simon Pegg and Nick Frost confront the chilling truth about middle age during an ill-advised pub crawl. With robots from space.

      Anyway, as the Straight’s Ken Eisner put it: “Coupled with beyond-funny performers and Wright’s trademark visual flair, full of pint (or Cornetto) -size details, the profane script is endlessly witty.”

      When we got writer-director Wright on the phone, he traced his own profane comic gifts back to the source—Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, specifically, in their no-holds-barred and no-martini-refused roles as Derek and Clive.

      “Growing up, people that I would find particularly funny would be Monty Python, the Goodies, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore,” Wright said. “Probably the first time I ever heard the c-word was listening to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Derek and Clive albums, which are three master classes in swearing. I remember listening to those albums when I was a 14-year-old and thinking it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard…”

      Having destroyed Britain's moral fibre with those three records of heavily improvised filth, Cook and Moore finally called it a day with the 1979 film, Derek and Clive Get the Horn. By then the two comics could barely stand each other. Wright said the film “is like the black box recorder of a duo splitting up.” Which is true, but its best moments are still painfully funny. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, but maybe send the Pope to bed first.

      Here’s a taster:

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