Fans of HOST (Rob Savage, 2020) will know that the limitations lockdown places on film making can be a boon to inventive not to mention low budget horror. Ben Wheatley has gone for the equal and opposite approach here, a film made almost entirely out of doors and with only four central characters and unlike … Continue reading Land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in #6: In the Earth (2021)
While I’ve seen plenty of people talking about Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year (1722) and various works concerning the 1918 influenza epidemic, most notably Pandemic 1918 by Catherine Arnold (2018), perhaps the most human story of life in lockdown is rarely discussed. In many ways this isn’t too surprising. As a play first … Continue reading Foreign Countries #28: The Roses of Eyam (1973)
The BBC anthology series Play for Today is 50 this month. In celebration, the BFI is releasing a Blu Ray of previously unreleased episodes, including one of my favourites, John Bowen's A Photograph. Play for Today was one of the most important and influential series of British television, running for 14 years between 1970 and … Continue reading The Man from Another Place #6: Play for Today: A Photograph (1977)
Nigel Kneale had an impressive career. Interviewed by the BBC when he died, Mark Gatiss referred to him as the man who invented popular television and it’s a sentiment that’s hard to argue with. His collaborations with Rudolph Cartier brought about the first proper serial for television with The Quatermass Experiment (1953), The Year of … Continue reading Foreign Countries #27: The Woman in Black (1989)
I’ve mentioned before that the way we consume TV/film/any other format of ‘content’ shapes expectation. Streaming services have only accelerated the osmosis between television and film, and the COVID pandemic may see the film industry and the theatrical release model irrevocably altered. This doesn’t have to be all bad news and innovative indie filmmakers can … Continue reading Land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in #5: HOST (2020)
Two of my more recent discoveries on Amazon Prime were a selection of the BBC anthology series Play for Today (1970-84), (sadly no A Photograph), and ABC’s gothic daytime melodrama Dark Shadows (1966-71). This unique and unlikely hit gave its creator Dan Curtis the chance to successfully pitch some classic horror adaptations to the U.S. … Continue reading Enter freely and of your own free will! #2: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1974)
Four weeks into lock down, and while we all try and remember the last time we went this long without setting foot in a pub, we also marvel at how quickly we adapt to the new normal and wonder if things will ever truly return to how they were, or if they even should. The … Continue reading Enter freely and of your own free will! #1: Mystery and Imagination: Dracula (1968)
This is a revised version of a post that first appeared on Room 207 Press in 2018. I originally wrote this as the Windrush scandal enveloped the United Kingdom. The controversy of the deportation of British citizens who emigrated from the Caribbean brought down the then Home Secretary, although many lay the blame at the … Continue reading Foreign Countries #26: Quatermass and the Pit (1958/9)
I'm writing this post in the shadow of Orford Castle on the Suffolk coast. Built sometime between 1165 and 1173 to consolidate Henry II's power in East Anglia, it's probably best known these days for its uniquely designed keep but readers with an interest in such matters may know it more from the climax of Witchfinder … Continue reading Foreign Countries #25: Dramarama: Spooky: The Keeper (1983)
There was much faux outrage at Liverpool fans' booing of the national anthem in this season's Community Shield match but it wasn't much of a surprise. Liverpudlians can give a list of reasons, historical, cultural and political why they feel estranged from the rest of England, and fans of other teams once again paint the … Continue reading Foreign Countries #24: Scully (1984) and Mark McGann Interview
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