Movie Reboots – 28 JAMES MAYS LATER

The BBC Top Gear boys get to grapple with rabid monsters in this novel re-imagining of Danny Boyle’s gory zombie thriller.

It begins innocently enough. James May is depressed because he is unable to keep up with Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson: the duo are currently appearing in every single television show broadcast in Britain. So, with the help of an unhinged BBC executive, James May decides to clone himself. Unfortunately, things, as they always do in these sorts of movies, go horrifically wrong.

The cloning machine turns out to be faulty. ‘Because it was manufactured in Germany…’ Clarkson later tells us, ‘by French engineers… you think they would have learned… about teaming up… after they collaborated on the Vichy government.’

The clones are all evil, and quickly dismiss the reason for which they were created. They certainly prove to enjoy the taste of brains more than the taste of fame, ably demonstrated when they crack open the head of the original James May like it was an egg, and eat the goo within. And, because they’re James Mays, they even use the correct cutlery.

It’s not long before the James Mays are chomping their way across the country. Each bite turns its victim into a drooling, savage, and psychopathically famished James May, adding to their terrifying numbers. The only words they can speak are ‘Would you mind awfully if I just killed you?’ Within hours, Britain is literally swarming with James Mays, and there are only two men who can stop them: Hammond and Clarkson.

‘Well, if there’s one thing of which we can be sure,’ drawls Clarkson, ‘…it’s that May’s about as quick… as a Fiat Panda… that’s been engineered in Poland… by a one-armed Serbian goat herder… with AIDS…’

Their sluggishness makes them easy to deflect and herd into a giant vineyard, a feat the twosome accomplish through a combination of Hammond’s dazzlingly white teeth, and Clarkson’s increasingly loud and unhelpful comments about foreigners.

‘I’ve not been involved in many post-apocalyptic scenarios… except if you count my recent trip to Belgium…’ Clarkson says, ‘but I’ve got to say… that this must be… one of the greatest threats that mankind has ever faced… in the world.’

IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: It’ll Be Alright on the Night of the Living Dead. Dennis Norden (who has been dead for thirty years) takes us through the most side-splitting (literally, in some cases) zombie mishaps and outtakes. See also: I am Legless. Will Smith fights his way through New York, beating people up, talking to dummies, shooting zoo animals, playing golf off the top of skyscrapers, and sleeping in his bath, until somebody points out that he’s just had a bit too much to drink. Out later this year, the terrifying House of Ruby Wax.