Slap Shot [DVD] [1977]

Whoever says this film is strictly for ice hockey fans needs to cool off in the sin bin.

The movie is more in the tradition of the likes of Brassed Off and The Full Monty (there is even an on-ice strip show of sorts during the film's finale) than a sports buff's movie.

Of course, ice hockey fans will love it, but so will cult film enthusiasts, Newman fans, and your typical lads and ladettes.

The movie's lead, ice-cool Newman, is on familiar territory as an anti-hero. His Chiefs player-coach is a boozed up loser with an estranged wife, a mid-life crisis and and a team full of misfits.

To exacerbate Newman's problems, the main factory in town goes bust. With the townfolk struggling to put food on their tables, Newmans gate receipts will plummet. The team will soon face ruin. And without a single hint of tealent between them, the players futures look grim at best.

With the debtors zeroing in, the Chiefs manager gives in to the inevitable - he puts the rink up for sale to big business to turn it into a shopping centre. But steel-eyed Newman rumbles him. With the Chiefs his and his team's only hope of a sufferable future, he has to get his skates on (sorry!) to solve the mounting crisis, and get the fans back in - whether they can afford it or not.

Rumbling a plan is one thing, but making money out of the league's least-liked team is another entirely.

But Newman has an inspiration - and this time it's not eating eggs cool-hand Luke style. He gets his team to pander to the ice hockey crowd's instatiable thirst for blood.

And to inspire his Chiefs to brutalise some scalps, he hires the most feared players in the league: the lank-haired, bespectacled Hanson brothers, whose casually violent schtick is nothing less than hilarious.

The immature agressors beat up vending machines, trash hotel rooms, crunch opponents, and slam referees even before games start - they even knock out the organ player!

Hell, it's carried outn with such humour and aplomb that it is a side-splitting ride. Of course, as with all films where humour or action is the main point of interest, the links to the action are dull. But with action as bloody, gritty and funny as in Slapshot, the lulls are well worthwile.

Anway. Do they win through in the end, or does Newman's Stone Ageplan force a retreat to the caves? The only way to find out how the visual feast unfolds is to experience itn yourself. So what the puck are you waiting for?

It has lots of set plays where you just wait to see what happens next, from the drunk hockey star to the poser - it's got it all. From a bunch of loser with no back bone to the roughest toughest bunch of winners in the league it builds up to a bloodbath then leaves you completely bemused with the weirdest ending to a sports film ever.

You have to see this film. If only just to say you have, but once isn't enough.