The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz

Tom Fisher - Mr No/Tomas Katz
Ian McNeice - The Police Inspector
Tony Maudsley - Taxi driver
William Keen - Cuthbert
Andrew Melville - Minister of fisheries

Ben Hopkins' surreal arthouse fantasy The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz is a strikingly youthful slice of film-making that is influenced by German expressionism, Pete’n’Duds Bedazzled, The Goons, Monty Python and early Derek Jarman. Shot largely in B&W with sepia tinted segments, the low-budget apocalyptic tale fuses muddled MTV-generation symbolic imagery with hit-and-miss black humour.

The story follows a mysterious alien traveller Tomas Katz (Thomas Fisher) who emerges from a hole beside the M25 and hitches a ride to London in a black cab. A total eclipse of the sun is due later in the day, and, as the stranger sequentially takes on the identity of everyone he meets (taxi driver, government minister, London Underground controller, security guard etc.), chaos spreads in the capital, observed by a blind, rotund Metropolitan Police Chief (Ian McNeice) who senses danger and has connections with the astral plane.