Moviedrome

A science-fiction double-bill, starting with The Andromeda Strain. A thriller based on a novel by Michael Crichton. The first such thriller, I think. It was made in 1970 in CinemaScope. This was the era of great experimentation in American film styles and The Andromeda Strain reflects this overtly in its use of split-screen sequences, as per The Boston Strangler and The Thomas Crown Affair. Tonight you’ll see Andromeda Strain in its original CinemaScope form. The three Michael Crichton films that I’m familiar with are Westworld, Jurassic Park and this one. And they all seem to have the same basic theme. In each film man creates a hi-tech, electronic and mechanical paradise which invariably goes haywire and turns on its customers and creators. The Frankenstein story applied to theme parks and government installations. In The Andromeda Strain, an American satellite returns to Earth with a deadly organism from outer space. A life-form which kills almost all humans on contact. While the scientists urge nuclear destruction of the affected area and politicians weigh up the likely consequences of incinerating select portions of the USA, a team of ace biologists and surgeons struggle to isolate the alien bacteria and find a cure. What’s really interesting about this movie is its matter of factness. There are no movie stars, no love interest, no action until almost the very end; there’s no music for the first hour of the film; the dialogue is often mundane and trivial, like the dialogue in that science-fiction masterpiece, 2001. Which is just as it should be, since the events in question: encounters with alien life, the possible annihilation of the human species, are so momentous. Ratchet it up just a notch, these could be Kubrick scientists with their animal experiments, their top secret government assignments and their obsessive cleanliness. Perhaps not surprisingly, Special Photographic Effects are by Douglas Trumbull who did the special effects on 2001 and later d

Next, a variation on the Andromeda Strain theme: Fiend Without a Face. Alarmed by a series of mysterious deaths, an isolated Canadian community blames an American military atomic experimental power-station, that’s situated nearby. Though set in Canada, Fiend Without a Face was shot right here in Great Britain by the producer’s associates in 1957. It was directed by Arthur Crabtree, who also made the infamous banned movie Horrors of the Black Museum; and the script was by Amelia Reynolds Long. Presumably it was set in North America in order to more effectively compete with the wave of American science-fiction films of a similar ilk. This was the era of the great Jack Arnold movies, like The Incredible Shrinking Man, Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, This Island Earth and Them! In other words, pretty stiff competition. And how does our home-grown sci-fi hold up in comparison? Well, although there’s some good stock footage of aircraft, a la Dr Strangelove, this doesn’t really look like Canada to me. Or if it is, it’s a part of Canada that’s filled with surreal little English bungalows. The actors are rather like the second and third row of troops in Dad’s Army. And the only concession they make to being Americans is saying “labra-torry”, instead of “laboratory”. None of this applies to the extremely sexy Kim Parker in the role of Barbara Griselle, by the way. One place though where I think Fiend Without a Face does compete very favourably with its American contemporaries is in the monsters, when they finally appear. It takes a while for this to happen, because they are, like the killer plague in The Andromeda Strain, invisible. In fact, when I first saw the footprint or tail print of the invisible fiends, I thought ‘Oh no, this isn’t going to be any good at all. They did this much better in Forbidden Planet’, but no! I was deceived! Because when the fiend without a fiend actually ceases to be inviisible the result is absolutely horrible! And there isn’t

Talk Radio is a film by Oliver Stone, based on the true story of Alan Berg, an American radio phone-in host who was murdered by neo-nazis in 1984. As such it’s the perfect Stone vehicle. Featuring a tortured, maligned but righteous anti-hero, fighting fascism while trying to come to terms with his own male chauvinism and find a girlfriend. The source material was, as you might expect, a stage-play by Eric Bogosian, who also plays the lead role. Olly is of course a great director and a Great American. “Goddammit, he went to Vietnam, instead o’ smokin’ dope at Ox-FORD!” Or worse, protesting against the war. He’s one of the few American directors living - the other two who spring to mind being Spielberg and Woody Allen - who get to write their own ticket and do whatever the heck they want. His best films for me are Salvador and JFK. Talk Radio is a pretty interesting film. Stone is obsessed by pressing social issues: corruption on Wall Street, U.S. imperialism, the rise of neo-fascist groups, and above all the notion that the United States lost its innocence in the 1960s as a result of Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War. This is of course what the Americans call “bullshit” and John Milius wouldn’t buy it for a second. But it’s a popular notion among wet liberals who like to view political assassination and out of control militarism as the exception rather than the rule. It’s the same sort of wishy-washy revisionism we get from David Puttnam, who tells us in The Killing Fields that the Americans bombed Cambodia by mistake and how they won the war for us in Memphis Belle. It’s all ludicrous, but it’s the ludicrosity of the limousine liberal and there are a lot of those in Hollywood; and vicious, betraying gangsters that these liberal studio bosses are, they solve their charred consciences by funding liberal social issue films like this one. Talk Radio is beautifully photographed by Robert “Bob” Richardson; the script by Bogosian and Stone is intermitten

Tonight, a classic film about angst-ridden middle-class middle-aged Americans. Carnal Knowledge. Carnal Knowledge was directed by Mike Nichols in 1971. Nichols is the doyen of directors of films about angst-ridden middle-class Americans. He made The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, as well as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Catch 22.

From a cop escorting a prisoner to a cop escorting a vital witness. Tonight’s second film is The Narrow Margin, a noir thriller made in 1950. It stars nobody famous, it was made for $230,000 and it was a big hit.

Tonight on Moviedrome, the ultimate music-related non-rockumentary cult classic. The Saturday late-night show par excellence, The Harder They Come. Made in 1972 in Jamaica. The film, as you probably know, stars reggae genius Jimmy Cliff, in the role of Ivan. An aspiring young Jamaican musician who plans to make it as a reggae star.

Salvador was directed in 1986 by Oliver Stone. Although it always features in his filmography as Stone’s first film as a director, it was actually his third or even fourth. For some reason his early triumphs are not referred to by critics earnestly intent on evaluating the great man’s work. Okay I’m being a bit facetious. The truth is, the worth of Stone’s other films apart, Salvador is a really great film. I first saw it at the Film Market at the Cannes Film Festival. It was the film’s first international screening and there were two other people in the audience. This was of course before the success of Platoon, also made by the Stone/John Daly/Derek Gibson team. For my money, Platoon is complete rubbish; a nasty bit of propaganda which suggests that if the poor, poor American GIs had only had better officers they would have won the Vietnam War. By Salvador however I was blown away. I was so impressed by and involved in the film that I couldn’t remember where i was. So strong was the

The People Under the Stairs was written and directed by Wes Craven, whose Serpent and the Rainbow you saw on Moviedrome a couple of years ago. It is, I’m pleased to say, a much better film. It’s also the film’s first screening on terrestrial television. It was generally viewed as a return to form by Craven, who had been highly regarded for his earlier horror film, The Hills Have Eyes. It’s unusual for a Craven picture, or for any horror film, in having non-white protagonists. In this case the impoverished black family, fronted by a little kid called Fool.

Tonight on Moviedrome the kind of film which should make everybody happy. A movie which was both a popular hit and a critical succès de scandale. Halloween. Halloween was directed in 1978 by John Carpenter. It’s one of the earliest and most imitated of that over-worked and seemingly endlessly popular genre: the serial killer/maniac stalker on the loose in pursuit of hapless teenagers movie. The kind of film where you know beforehand exactly what’s going to happen. Of course the teenagers are going to split up and explore the madhouse in total darkness in their underwear. What else would they do?

The Baby was directed in 1972 by Ted Post. Ted Post is probably not a name that most people conjure with, yet for me he was one of the best American directors for hire. Having made a very passable spaghetti western imitation with Clint Eastwood, Hang ‘Em High, and perhaps also the best of the Dirty Harry films; certainly the best of the Dirty Harry sequels, Magnum Force. Most film and TV directors are directors for hire, in fact; in the sense that they don’t initiate their own projects but direct whatever comes along.

Carny was directed in 1980 by Robert Kaylor. We will say no more about him, since he directs in a TV-movie style which is overlit and thoroughly predictable. Let’s talk instead about the second lead actor, co-author and producer of the film, Robbie Robertson. Robbie Robertson was the founder and songwriter of one of the seminal American bands of the ‘60s and '70s, The Band. I know that out there are adherents of all sorts of other sixties groups.

Now another deranged biker movie, this one made in England in 1972. There seems to be a French connection here, as well; because the script is by one Arnaud d'Usseau. Unless of course ‘Arnaud d'Usseau’ is actually a pseudonym. Wasn’t David Hare writing biker movies around this time in order to pay his way through Socialist Realism Polytechnic? I think we should be told. The film stars George Sanders and Beryl Reid, though both appear far too infrequently in my opinion. The bulk of screen time is devoted not to George and Beryl but to a biker gang appropriately named 'The Living Dead’. Appropriately since they are led by a deceased biker who has been buried astride his cycle.

…a pair of movies demonstrating the perils of road travel. The first is an odd, unusual horror film from 1975, Race With the Devil. Directed in Texas by Jack Starrett, author of Slaughter, Cleopatra Jones and A Small Town in Texas, Race With the Devil combines elements of the road movie, a counter-culture movie, a motor-home movie and Night of the Living Dead.

Next as part of the tastefully titled “Keep Death on the Road” double-bill, a strong-message film in favour of seat-belts and cordless telephones, Detour. Detour is an early film noir made in 1945. The director was Edgar G. Ulmer, who was born in Austria in 1900. Originally a production designer who worked in both film and theatre for such names as Max Reinardt and Alexander Korda, Ulmer came to the United States in 1931. He began his career as a director in 1934 on a studio picture, The Black Cat.

Tonight’s film, Rope, is a famous thriller by the director of so many famous thrillers, Alfred Hitchcock. In seven years this is the first Hitchcock film we’ve shown on Moviedrome and there’s a reason for that. While Moviedrome, in theory, is a selection of cult and weirdo type movies, Hitchcock is the epitome of the commercial director. His films were designed to be seen by the largest of mass audiences, in the United States, Europe and all over the World. Of all Hitchcock films, perhaps only Psycho and The Birds - odd uncharacteristic movies made late in his career - could be described as cult movies. Why then are we showing Rope? Because in addition to being a celebrated thriller, Rope is also famous as a cinematic experiment: an attempt to give the illusion that the film was made in one continuous shot.

Next in tonight’s double-feature of cinematic experiments is a little-seen Vietnam movie, making its terrestrial premiere. ‘84 Charlie MoPic’ is the name of the unseen cameraman, who is one of the characters in this film; making a continuous record for the US Army Motion Picture Division - hence 'MoPic’ - of a platoon on a highly dangerous patrol. It’s the first feature of director Patrick Duncan and it was made for very little money in 1989. While most Vietnam War films seem to get made in the Philippines, this one was shot in Southern California in Super-16mm. What’s principally interesting about it is its style: it’s all shot as if it were documentary footage of an actual event in progress. Unedited news-reel material, in fact. Thus, as long as we remember that the cameraman is a participant in the story, the film functions as a stylistic experiment such as Lady in the Lake: a film noir in which the camera was also the protagonist. The actor, Robert Montgomery, being glimpsed occasionally in mirrors during the course of the film. This was also to have been the style of Orson Welles’ first feature, based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In fact, Welles was to have appeared at the beginning of his projected but unfilmed production explaining to the audience that they were the eyes of the protagonist. Given Welles’ grandiloquence and lack of experience in the medium, perhaps it’s for the best that Heart of Darkness foundered and that he went on to make a more conventional film, Citizen Kane, instead. The concept of 84 Charlie MoPic is excellent and it’s often quite an interesting film. Its big failure is in the appearance of the actors, who no matter how desperate their situation always look as if they’ve freshly emerged from the bath and coiffure salon. Of course, the same can be said of Platoon or the Rambo movies, but they were at least shot in the tropics rather than in somebody’s back garden in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. The style is so good, in fact,

This film is by the best of the black American directors, and one of the better directors of the modern American cinema itself. He is Charles Burnett. It’s very possible you haven’t heard of this film, and even more likely - unless you’re French or a devotee of Cahiers du Cinéma - that you haven’t heard much about Burnett, although he was a guest of the London Film Festival several years ago. To Sleep with Anger is Burnett’s third feature, made in 1989, and given a limited release in the United States the following year.

Le Mépris - alias Contempt - is Jean-Luc Godard’s version of The Odyssey. Or, to be more precise, his version of an American film producer trying to make a film version of The Odyssey with a French screenwriter at Cinecittà Studios outside Rome.

Tonight, Moviedrome presents Excalibur, the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Known during development and pre-production by a variety of titles, including Merlin, Merlin Lives and Knights, it’s held together partially by the character of Merlin the magician; portrayed by Nicol Williamson in a silver skull-cap. The Monthly Film Bulletin was scathing about Williamson, calling his performance “abysmal”, but I don’t really agree. He has a difficult job, holding together a vast array of unrelated and sometimes incomprehensible elements and I think he does it well. Apparently, Excalibur was conceived by director John Boorman as an alternative to his long-planned but never executed version of Lord of the Rings.

Nothing Lasts Forever was directed by Tom Schiller in 1934. Schiller was assistant prop-man on King Kong. It is he, covered in boot polish, who stands on top of the giant gates on Skull Island shouting “Kong! Konga! Kong!” as the giant ape comes looking for Fay Wray. The same year - 1933 - he directed the first of a series of docu-dramas about the lives of great pianists. Nothing Lasts Forever - the story of the concert pianist, Adam Beckett - is the second in his long series of piano-oriented films.

Tonight, as the first half of our south of the border, down Buenos Aires way double-bill, we proudly present a network premiere of Naked Tango. Set in the 1920s underworld and based on unpublished manuscripts by Manuel Puig - the author of Kiss of the Spider Woman - Naked Tango is a bodice ripper for the 1990s. The cinematic equivalent of those large chest-heaving novels by the likes of Barbara Cartland and Fabio.

Next in our down south way America double-bill, we present the network premiere of Apartment Zero. A British-Argentinian co-production made in 1988. Although it came as a surprise to President Ronald Reagan that South America was not one place but a variety of places - “Hey,” he observed, after a goodwill tour, “they got all different countries down there!” - it is to his credit that he recognised this. Argentina, where Naked Tango was also set, is infinitely different from Peru or Bolivia. Highly unlike Brazil, as well. Far from being a bunch of poncho-wearing pipe-playing indigenous peoples, the Argentinians pride themselves on being of European extraction. Buenos Aires is reputed to be the most European of Latin American capitals.

“Until the Apache is taken or destroyed”. These words form the coda of tonight’s Peckinpah western, Major Dundee. The film was shot in Mexico in 1964. It starred Charlton Heston and Richard Harris and was the big budget opportunity of a former TV director, Sam Peckinpah, who had directed two highly creditable low-budget westerns: Deadly Companions and the classic Guns in the Afternoon. The film is the thrilling story of an obsessive quest by Union Major Dundee (played by Heston), whose determination to capture or kill an Apache marauder forces him to enlist the services of a group of black volunteers and Confederate prisoners of war. The latter group under Captain Benjamin Tyrene, played by Richard Harris.

I saw tonight’s film - Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - years ago. And hated it. I saw it with a friend, Greg Hersov (now the Artistic Director of the Exchange Theatre in Manchester, I believe) and he was much more positive. But, for me, Alfredo Garcia seemed corny and a messy betrayal of the talent shown by its director Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch and Guns in the Afternoon. Twenty years later I must admit that I was wrong and Greg was right. What he knew instinctively I only figured out over the course of the years. Alfredo Garcia is an extraordinary film. Perhaps Peckinpah’s best after The Wild Bunch and certainly his most personal film. Hidden behind the sometimes dubious b-movie veneer. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is the story of Bennie, a worn out bar room piano player portrayed by Warren Oates. Bennie learns there is a large reward available for the head of his best friend, Alfredo Garcia. Since Bennie knows Alfredo is dead he volunteers to dig the corpse up and

Tonight we present the ultimate Moviedrome movie. A film that best embodies all the qualities that enable films to ascend to Moviedrome status. Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, made in 1955.

Tonight on Moviedrome, Naked Under Leather, or rather The Girl on a Motorcycle, as Jack Cardiff’s film became more chastely known. It forms the first half of our mad motorcycling double-bill. The second feature of which will be Psychomania. Girl on a Motorcycle is an Anglo-French co-production made in 1968. It stars Marianne Faithfull; and as you might expect, goes in for lashings of the old solarised images and weird colour and bizarre super-impositions, faithfully recreating the hallucinogenic experience, in order to prolong the travelogues and render the bunk-ups more artistic. It’s a nutty but highly entertaining film.