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The music and film writer and editor Kieran Grant joins us to discuss the 1987 comedy/drama Five Corners, a cult film we love that has been hard to see properly for many years.

The first American production from George Harrison’s HandMade Films, Five Corners featured two actors on the brink of stardom (Tim Robbins and John Turturro) and one on the brink of superstardom (Jodie Foster, in one of her first screen roles after John Hinckley tried to impress her by shooting President Reagan). It was released hot on the heels of Moonstruck, the film that won the playwright John Patrick Shanley a screenplay Oscar, but this one was not as much of a crowd-pleaser. Audiences were divided over the film’s tone, starting off as an oddball slice-of-life comedy about intersecting characters in a Bronx neighbourhood in 1964 but then suddenly taking an unexpected lurch into horror/thriller territory.

Kieran I discuss first seeing Five Corners as teens, the thrill of seeing successful tone shifts in movies, why it vanished into obscurity for a time after HandMade Films closed shop, and how the themes (and cast) of this movie must have been an influence on Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing 2 years later.

Five Corners is currently streaming on Tubi and on Criterion Channel.

Trailer for Five Corners (Tony Bill, 1987)