Kremmen The Movie (1980)
Having been interested in the career of Kenny Everett, I wondered if there was anything else that he did that was worth discovering. One of the highlights of his radio show were the adventures of Captain Kremmen, who was a real superhero, even if he did say so himself. In November 1977 the single “Captain Kremmen (Retribution)” (credited to Kenny Everett And Mike Vickers) was released and reached no. 32.
By the time that Kenny’s ITV series launched in 1978, Kremmen appeared in animated form. And then in 1980, this was turned into a full-length science-fiction film (well, one about 25 minutes). I don’t think that this has been released on DVD (well it’s not featured on The Kenny Everett Video Show boxset), but I have managed to track this down online.
Kremmen The Movie was written by Kenny’s usual collaborators Barry Cryer and Ray Cameron, and featured typically bizarre ideas. Set some time in the future, we meet Kremmen (voiced by Kenny, as were all of the other characters), who considers himself to be rather marvellous, he has an IQ of 498 and everything. His assistant is American Carla, who is rather voluptuous, along with Professor Gitfinger.
We start with Kremmen receiving a special award that is only given out once an eon. “It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole eon since they gave me my last award!”. He really is not modest at all. He is then given a spaceship, and he is needed back on Earth, because only one person can save the day, and you probably guess who that is.
Kremmen also meets a rather unusual character called Q who really makes the most of his scene. At the halfway point of the film, we get an advert for Pupil Prompt, which is really great. Kremmen and his team continue to fly past all of these strange planets, and for some reason the computer’s voice has changed by this point, maybe he crashed and needed to be rebooted.
They then have to deal with a big monster, before going off to discover new adventures, if the writers can think of any. What was that all about? I think that Kremmen The Movie was shown at least once on Channel 4 rather late at night in the 80s, and Cuddly Ken’s only other real film was the comedy horror Bloodbath At The House Of Death, I might review that one soon too.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 