Jimmy and Stiggs (USA 2025: Dir Joe Begos)

Joe Begos's world turned dayglow around 2019 when, following his first two rather sedate features (Almost Human and The Mind's Eye from 2013 and 2015 respectively), he leapt onto the stage at London's FrightFest with a battle cry to "watch this movie, motherfuckers!" and gave the world the vampire/art movie Bliss. Awash with bright colours, neon drenching and a lot of grunge, Begos set the tone for his movies to come. VFW, from the same year, was a more sedate but equally colour rich tale of veterans under siege in a bar; and the bright blues and greens lighting up his seasonal robo Santa movie Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) were entirely in keeping with that movie's general er, excess.

Dayglow is present and correct in Jimmy and Stiggs, but sadly it's the only thing going for it. Like most of the director's films, the premise is brief. Jimmy (Begos, who also had a part in his last movie) is an unpleasant, unhinged film director whose latest project has fallen through (I'm guessing nobody wanted to work with him) and decides to snort and drink everything in sight to compensate for the bad news, ignoring his prospective date in the process. The result is a blackout, where 12 hours of his life go missing - but not entirely. His morning after recollections suggest that there may have been an attempt at alien abduction (and at this early point the audience are probably thinking that they're welcome to him).

Jimmy, who lives in an apartment littered with half empty bottles (I'm guessing he would never see them as half full), pills and powders, invites his friend and sometime filmmaking partner Stiggs (Matt Mercer, go to indieweird actor) round to help him figure what the hell's going on. On the TV Jimmy's hoovering up programmes about alien probes, but in case people are jumping to conclude that it's all in the guy's head, there are visiting aliens; and Jimmy and Stiggs must go to war with them.

The hyperbolic dialogue between the wretched pair is matched by attention deficit editing and a colour scheme which outdoes all his other movies; the best comparator here would be the insufferable characters in Ryan Kruger's 2020 movie Fried Barry crossed with the dayglow VHS nightmares created by Cassandra Sechler and Craig Jacobson. The practical FX, which look like they might be impressive, are lost in the oversaturated look, and there's only so long you want to spend in company of a couple of bums, one of whom has a death wish booze and drugs habit. Sure it's anarchic, over the top and relentlessly gloopy, but so's a custard pie fight, and I stopped finding them good value a long time ago. 

Jimmy and Stiggs is available on UK and Ireland digital platforms from 16 February 2026  

VFW (USA 2019: Dir Joe Begos)

Hot on the heels of Begos's other 2019 movie Bliss comes this note perfect homage to low budget 1980s gang based exploitationers with a side swipe at modern America.

A group of ex Vietnam/Korean vets hang out at a run down bar, managed by ex staff sergeant Freddy (Stephen Lang, excellent). The VFW of the title, also the name of the bar, stands for 'Veterans of Foreign Wars'; and the location is a real one, post 2494 in Irving, Texas.

As the guys shoot the breeze, and plan a birthday treat for Freddy after hours at a nearby 'titty bar,' just across the car park on the site of an equally decrepit cinema a different war is taking place; America's Opioid crisis has deepened, triggered by a new lethally addictive drug called Hype. Drug baron Boz (Travis Hammer), who as the film opens has casually caused the death of one of his entourage, Lucy (Linnea Wilson), while looking for a Hype fix, looks set to do a deal to sell his stash and skip town. But Lucy's sister Elizabeth aka Lizard (Sierra McCormick) steals the drugs as revenge for the killing, and hides out in...guess where? Yep, the VFW bar.

And so the stage is set for a battle of the generations as Boz's team of reprobates lays siege to VFW, while the vets - accompanied by new soldier Shawn (Tom Williamson), who picked the wrong day to pop into a soldier friendly establishment for a quiet beer - gallantly protect Lizard with a combination of American grit and lethal home made weapons.

Now I wasn't as enamoured as many by Bliss, and on the surface Begos's follow up stylistically treads the same ground; shot on 16mm with lots of saturated neon, oodles of murky but impressive gore and Steve Moore's pounding, authentic recreation of those well loved slightly wonky synth soundtracks of 80s genre movies.

But this is so much more than a pallid homage to the action films of yesteryear, although its debt to films like John Carpenter's 1976 movie Assault on Precinct 13 is considerable. One of the first things that strikes is the location: in a lengthy tracking shot which is actually pretty shocking because what is photographed seems totally undressed, the Texan urban wasteland unfolds, all graffiti, burnt out shops and broken wire fences. As Freddy drives to the bar, swigging from a hip flask, he and passenger Abe (Fred Williamson) bemoan the state of the streets, ironically pretty much unchanged from the same streets we've been used to seeing in 'urban' films from the 80s. "In this neighbourhood, gunshots are like crickets," someone remarks; clearly not much has changed in three decades.

And the casting of 80s exploitation regulars in the vet roles is both inspiring and referential - those exploitation movies that Begos loves did exactly the same thing. So we have: Stephen Lang, as seen in Michael Mann and George P. Cosmatos films; 80s action regular Fred Williamson; Martin (The Karate Kid I, II and III, plus a whole heap of others) Kove as sleazy used car salesman Lou; and best of all William Sadler, as the rheumy, sozzled Walter Reed, who rediscovers his inner solider at the appropriate time. These guys get all the best lines - "We leave at 23:00 or whenever I finish urinating" says Reed at one point - in contrast to the younger gang members who in the credits are mostly denied names (although Dora Madison, who memorably played Dezzy in Bliss, gets a little more character definition as the brutal Gutter).

Any American movie made today which touches on the haves and the have nots could be called 'Trumpean', but the extra angle here is Begos's thinly veiled criticism of America's treatment of its war veterans, and despite all the choreographed mayhem, chopped limbs and thundering soundtrack, this remains a very human story about not writing off older people in society. Excellent.


VFW is available on Digital Download now