Alex Cox MovieDrome Intro Compilation

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[Applause] it's side

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[Music] [Applause]

tonight on movie Drome the kind of film which should make everybody happy a movie which was both a popular hit and a

critical Su scal Halloween Halloween was directed in 197

8 by John Carpenter it's one of the earliest and most imitated of that

overworked 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 mad house in total darkness in their underwear what else would they do I must

confess that when I saw Halloween in 1978 I found it ridiculous and utterly uninvolving but I am stupid the sort of

spoil sport idiot who says I wouldn't do that or that doesn't make sense in the same way I can't find any point of entry

to Mrs Doubtfire or the piano they just seem ridiculous to me maybe I'd feel different if I hadn't grown up on dead

of night an Easy Rider well anyway tonight's film features Donald Pleasants

in the kind of role he always seems to play his performance like Halloween itself received extravagant praise from

some of the most eminent film critics in the UK on its release it also features Jam Lee Curtis in the

role of the Plucky and resilient heroin Jam Lee is of course the daughter of Janet Lee star of that even more

celebrated Maniac at large movie Psycho this is just one of Halloween's many conscious or self-conscious references

to other movies Carpenter even goes so far as to use video extracts from earlier films like Forbidden Planet and

the thing a movie he was to remake a few years later much has been made of the

persistent use of steady cam in Halloween and of the camera as Killer's point of view which here in movie Drome

you will experience in the full Majesty of its original cinemascope form this technique has been done to death ever

since although devotees of the genre would say never to such ambiguous good effect for this reviewer John

Carpenter's best film is still his first the seriously funny space Saga darkar

made as a student film at USC and co-written by Dan O banan he also deserves credit for the extraordinary

first half of they live his 1988 alien takeover movie one fact for True

Carpenter Buffs the villain of tonight's piece is called Michael Myers reputedly

the director's odd way of saying thanks to the chief exec of Miracle films if it's a good film it's a miracle

distributors in Britain of Assault on Precinct 13 but for now trick or treat

here it is Halloween

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transes is another example of the lowbudget science fiction that came out of Los Angeles in the early

1980s some of it like KN of the Comet which is also part of this season was made by the new independent companies

like Atlantic some was made by the venerable Roger Corman at his studio in Venice California a former lumber yard

and a lot of it including transes came from an independent outfit called Empire run by a man called Charles band who is

the director of this film most of this science fiction rips off alien or Star Wars Wars transas is a

ripoff of Blade Runner with a substantial nod to the Terminator in that sense its taste is excellent it has

the time traveling cops and the flying police cars but its eyes are bigger than its appetite everything in this film is

much too clean even the street people are freshly washed and laundered its greatest assets are its Father Christmas

scene which is fantastic and its locations it was all filmed in the industrial Wasteland south of Los

Angeles which really does look like a cross between the 1920s and a post-apocalyptic

landscape also don't fail to note the sequence in the LA River a huge concrete

Channel which divides the city in two and provides so many movies with

locations Merry

[Music] Christmas now on movie drum a very fine

variation on the same theme as ESC from Alcatraz r a man

escaped made in 1956 it's based on the true story of Andre dein a French

officer who was imprisoned by the Germans and the vichi collaboration government at Mont Luke jail in

1943 Bron was a former painter and script writer who was himself a prisoner of war from June 1940 to April 41

perhaps for that reason a man escaped is quite unlike Escape from Alcatraz or or any other film in this familiar genre

the story exists entirely in small details the minute mechanisms of the hero's Escape Plan the matter of fact

approach to violence which is quite terrifying although entirely unseen the natural use of sound and the absolutely

real performances no actors were used in this film that's part of Bron's Unique Style

as well he thinks that actors are incapable of projecting the truth all they can do is act and Bron isn't

interested in acting instead he always works with real people Bon's most famous film is the

trial of Joon of Arc made 6 years later in 1962 it too has a spare visual style in

which abstract details communicate much of the story it too employs non-actors in an intensely passionate and revealing

way given that the French Cinema has now degenerated like our own to the level of the rock video it's a great pleasure to

present this classic film and Great Adventure movie a man escaped

[Music]

[Music] tonight's film is Night of the Comet a science fiction Opus made in Los Angeles

in 1984 its premise is very similar to Day of the Triffids a British science

fiction movie based on the book by John Windam its working title was Teenage

Comet zombies night of the comet is a mixture of the wide-eyed 1950s type of science

fiction movie and the post-apocalyptic Punky science fiction style it had a lot

of time-lapse photography whereby the camera runs slowly shooting only two or three frames every second and as a

result cloud formations or what have you go extremely fast it also has a lot of

colored filters on the camera lens whereby an ordinary Street or sky or whatever is made to look

weird but what it doesn't have really is a sense of driving manic purpose compare

it to the Incredible Shrinking man or to the thing both part of this season they

were made in the 1950s and don't have the same attempts at humor they're better I think KN of the Comet does

feature one essential cult element in the presence of Mary waren of the very tall actress who starred in many Paul

Bartel films it also contains dick Roode from Repo Man and Chris Peterson from

Suburbia as mutant Punk Supermarket Bag Boys as often with this kind of film you

really sort of wish the villains were the heroes

American Werewolf in London isn't strictly speaking a cult film it was far

too popular with large numbers of people and made lots of money nevertheless it

is part of a very honorable cult genre the werewolf SL vampire

film the rules of these films are standardized and if you're watching this you probably already know them for

beginners vampires are blood drinking living corpses whose mere bite can turn you into one of their number werewolves

are people who turn into wolves or wolf-like humanoids every full moon their bite turns other humans into

werewolves vampires can only be killed by fire removal of the head or a stake through the heart werewolves can only be

killed by a silver bullet or the SAS

American wolf in London was directed by John Landis an American whose most notable cult feature was The Blues

Brothers he's also very famous for his work on Twilight Zone it's influenced by

dead of night a classic British aor film which also forms part of this season the

film contains every conceivable song in which the word moon appears it features a nice Cameo from Mr Frank Oz The

Muppet's genius and director of The Very Funny Dirty Rotten Scoundrels he he plays Mr Collins the man from the US

Embassy uh you can also spot Rick M playing chess in a pub called the slaughtered lamb alongside Brian Glover

who's a very good actor uh the film's a weird mixture of naive comedy and apocalyptic violence

with an Abrupt ending if you sit through all the credits you'll see that the film is dedicated to their Royal highnesses

The Prince and Princess of Wales on the occasion of their marriage which should set you up very well for the uh national

anthem at the end

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[Music] good evening tonight's film has a

historical subject it's an epic spanning an entire

continent it was directed by a legendary Italian director has scores of plots and

subplots thousands of extras lavish sets authentic period

props and costumes a highly acclaimed musical score it's also much too

long if it had been directed last year by Bernard baluchi it would have won a dozen

Oscars but it was made in 1966 by serg Leon and it's a Weston

called The Good the Bad and the Ugly The Good the Bad and the Ugly is the third in a Trilogy of films that

began with a fist full of dollars in 1963 all the Italians that made that

film were so nervous at that time about making a spaghetti western because it was one of the first but they all

masqueraded behind American pseudonyms we only chose the named Bob

Robertson they were also very concerned to have an American actor in the lead role but the first actor that Leone

approached James Coburn turned him down the second person he approached was

an American ex Patriot living in Rome called Richard Harrison but Harrison

didn't want to be a West and done by Italians and he turned him down too Le only said do you know anybody else I

could approach and Harrison said yeah I know a guy in La he hasn't got any work he might do

it Le only said has he done any films before and Harrison said not really but

he did play Rowdy Yates on rawh height the actor's name was Clint

Eastwood and the rest is

history this is BBC 2 now Alex Cox introduces tonight's movie drone presentation of the Terminator

although this film has been edited for television some viewers may still find it disturbing

[Music]

[Applause]

Terminator is a 1980s La science fiction film in the style of transes or teenage

Comet zombies which as you may recall we saw last year it contains all the necessary

elements of the sub genre punks chases down alleys tracking shots through the

Cop Shop obsession with guns what raises it above the level of the normal are the script and the bad

man who gets star billing in the film The Script is credited to James Cameron

and Gail an herd respectively director and producer this is a little misleading

though since the real source of the story is an old episode of The Outer Limits called Soldier the story of an

assassin sent back in time to kill someone and change the Future Soldier was written by Haron

Ellison terminator's greatest asset of course is Arnold Schwarzenegger it was the first of a

series of big budget science fiction action films which included Predator The Running Man and most recently the $75

million Total Recall what can you say about schwarzeneger well he Austrian he has

enormous muscles he obviously has a sense of humor and he's very rich he's

also a Republican and married to the daughter of one of America's most influential political dynasties

unfortunately Arnold isn't a native born American and so he can never be president but he's still doing his best

so sit back slam a few shells into the Chamber of your pump action load up the

30 or 6 and slip the safety off your 357 as Arnold does his bit for truth justice

and the almighty box office if you're interested in learning more about this film the other films

we're going to show or the ones we showed last year or the year before you can acquire for a very modest fee a

movie Drome book which also tells you where you can get Stills and soundtrack albums Terminator cost about $6 million

Terminator two now in production is budgeted at 60 million more than half of

which is fees $60 million is what the United States spends in military assistance to El

Salvador in one and a half months it's also what the wing of a stealth bomber costs makes you think or maybe

not I'll be back more Mayhem next week with the

rarely seen extraordinary honeymoon killers

w

[Applause] [Music]

[Applause] now on BBC 2 here's Alex Cox to introduce this week's offering from the

movie Drome [Applause] [Music]

[Music]

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[Music] Vamp is the perfect movie drum

film I don't mean a perfect film artistically this is no performance no

or is the direction on a par with say Joseph loses in the prowler or oron Wells In Touch of Evil actor wise you're

not about to see any Charlton hon or Joan Crawford's here Vamp is not a

perfect film by any means but it is a perfect movie Drome film a rarely seen

cult exploitation movie with irrelevant actors average Direction a Daft script

borrowing from other equally daed movies and guest appearances by such cult l Min

Aries as Grace Jones and Lisa lion plus original furniture by Keith Herring and

Andy Warhol Vamp is the story of some horrid college fraternity boys who go to the

big city to hire a stripper to perform in their Clubhouse could anything sound more awful don't worry it's going to be

great luckily for us the film is directed without any pretension the actors are completely mindless they just

point these big red and blue lights at them and go actually there's one good actor hidden in in there too his name's

Sandy Baron and he plays the Cockroach eating nightclub owner Vic Grace Jones

ain't bad either it's her best role to date even better than the James Bond film in fact they ought to let Richard

wank the director of Vamp loose on a couple of James Bond films or maybe the next Batman he certainly keeps the pace

going though he's no herk hervy like hervey's Carnival of Souls also in this year's collection and the Romero Living

Dead pictures vampo is a considerable debt to the old EC Alias educational

horror comics which if you're very very old you may remember with the subject of parliamentary debate and banning in the

1950s these comics with titles like the Crypt of Terror and the Vault of horror

had a sort of gleeful blankness about them till the mask of fear was torn away and ultimate horror revealed in the

final panel on the last page anyway without more Ado here's Vamp the first

film of Richard wank from New World pictures

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[Laughter]

[Music] tonight A rarely seen drama set during

World War II it's the hill directed by Sydney lumet the American director most famous for his dramas like Network and

Dog Day Afternoon it was made in 1964 the year after lumet's tense nuclear war

drama fail safe and the year before he made the then Sensational porn broker the hill is the story of a

British camp for Army prisoners in North Africa among the convicts are sha connory aie Davis and Roy kir it's an

outstanding cast the offices are played by Ian Bannon and Michael Redgrave and Harry Andrews is regimental sergeant

major Wilson who has designed a Mayan death cult style pyramid in the center

of the prison compound which the men are forced endlessly to run up and down this

hill is of course a metaphor for all sorts of stuff the army war obedience and Society with all its file

institutions and demented sexual sadism the film is so brilliantly photographed though that none of this symbolic stuff

intrudes until the end when the film's origins at a stage play do unfortunately become apparent the camera work was by

Oswald aie Morris how come nobody's called Aussie anymore he also photographed Moby Dick The Guns of

Navarone The Spy Who Came in from the cold and sleuth the opening shot is one

of those long takes that you read about in film textbooks it's certainly On a par with the famous opening of auson

Wells Touch of Evil the film uses wideangle lenses and long takes very effectively particularly in the scene

where the men are introduced and in the Interiors they even managed to make a jail cell

interesting as the warden says in Escape From Alcatraz this isn't about reforming

malactor there's no possibility of making good people here only good prisoners or in this case soldiers as

connory observes in Andrew's prison even the screws are doing time given how much of the hill is excellent it's strange

that it isn't more celebrated certainly it's equal to lumet's other work which sadly has degenerated lately into

formula ex Studio films perhaps the hill is largely unknown because it's so odd a

British war film with an American director and a relentlessly pessimistic take on everything no one gets off the

hook here there is no room for sentimentality and the script remains cruel and strong and plausible almost

until the very end

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[Applause] [Music]

sometimes also known as kill and say your prayers reques is a spaghetti

Weston directed by Carlo litani in 1968 lisani was a journalist and film

critic who published a major survey of Italian film cha Italiano in

1953 he's also a stage director seen here at the opening of one of his plays in Rome giving encouragement to a young

admirer unlike God whose leftist ideology led him to experiment with film

form in a way guaranteed to alienate the general audience bisani was attempting to communicate with as large a group of

people as possible popular Cinema seems to require considerable dollops of violence and the depiction of women as

victims and hence maybe a dubious vehicle for social reform nevertheless

some of the best art has a moral purpose and contains a message consider Picasso's gica a great painting born

from the artist's grief and outrage over Nazi atroc ities during the Spanish Civil War anyway about this spaghetti Weston

re esant as in requ escan in Pache rest in peace or in this case pieces is the

name given to the central character played by Lou Castell Castell is an interesting actor little scen he was the

bad guy in a bullet for the general and appeared sinisterly playing the piano in Vim venders the American friend here

he's a young innocent found wandering in the desert a traine preacher with the soul of a murdered gunfighter crying out

for Revenge you get the picture the film has a dark sense of humor and some genuinely bizarre moments that rival

anything in Johnny Guitar or Django kill check out the scene among the skeletons or the ingenious murder games even more

interesting is some of the casting Mark Damon is an excellent villain and several of the Pelini actors including

Neto Davoli and Franco chiti appear as indeed does that great Italian director

Pelini himself the role of a machine gun packing priest the previous year Nani made

another Western with the Magnificent title of the Hills run red unfortunately the film directed under the pseudonym of

Lee W Beaver didn't live up to the promise of its fine name requ esant does

like face to face requ esant works on a psychological as well as a political level here as a weird meditation on how

biology determines Destiny in the form of a boy born with gunfighters genes g n

s for the Discerning Enthusiast we profer the new movie Drome guide you can

[Music] find Cape Fear is a film of some

notoriety when it came to Britain in 1962 the sensor was a gast he demanded 6 minutes

of cuts before granting the film an X certificate tonight we've restored those cuts prepare to be

corrupted the problem wasn't with anything that happened on screen so much as with the character played by Robert

Mitchum Max Katie Katie is a sex offender who turns up in a small Florida

town and proceeds to terrorize the local Barrister played by Gregory peek his

wife Bergen and their 12-year-old daughter who wears a push-up bra Cape Fear has a very obvious

screenplay which lays the plot out clearly every chance it gets it's very modern in that respect modern in its

finality and inability to leave anything to the imagination the director is Jay Le

Thompson who was born in Bristol but made most of his films in the United States he too is a straightforward bread

and margerine director best known for The Guns of Navarone and Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris

epics what's best about Cape Fear is its performances The Supporting Cast

particularly Telly savales with hair and Martin Balsam very good but peek and Mitchum are just great peek never fails

to deliver the goods always communicating a sense of decency bewilderment anger and deep

frustration recently he played the writer Ambrose beer in the Dreadful Old Gringo he was the only good thing in the

film Max KY may be 's basest and best performance he plays it cool sexy smart

and really evil it's the sincerity of PEX and Mitchum's performances that make

Cape Fear a good film Cape Fear made a sizable impact on the minds of certain film directors

Nicholas Rogue filled his picture Track 29 with references to it even beginning with a shot of the Cape Fear Bridge and

Martin Scorsese has just remade it in the Florida Everglades with Theo in the MCH roll Nick n as Gregory peek and

Jessica Lang as Polly Bergen Mitchum Balsam and savales all make Cameo

appearances in the scorsi movie which is that director's first for into cinemascope apparently the music in the

scorsi version is the original score by Bernard Herman in the end Cape Fear

doesn't entirely work Florida is one of the most brutal police states in the USA

and if a man like Max KY were really to show up and start threatening the public prosecutor he would wouldn't be around

for very long but the American cinemar likes to pursue this fiction that all a crook has to do is hire himself a lawyer

and the copper hands are tied it's a great dramatic contrivance used in all the Dirty Harry films here Martin msom

tells us you can't arrest a man for something that might be in his mind that is dictatorship tell that to the Los

Angeles Police Department or to lonard Peltier or jono Pratt you might even try

it on the US Supreme Court which recently decided that coerced confessions are

constitutional where was Amnesty International that

[Music]

day oh my God

tonight from movie BR we present Escape from New York co-written and directed by

John carpenter carpenter is a director of a series of horror and science fiction films the most famous and

successful of which is Halloween his first film and in some way his best with

a science fiction comedy called bar star about sers in space bar star was written

by one Dan Oban who later wrote alien alien in spite of a much larger budget

and the inimitable chocolate box photography of lley Scott is essentially the same story with black star mad alien

of spaceship picking off the crew minus the very funny humor of K's original

super low budget film car is a varable director and in some way escap from New

York is one of his more disappointing films sometimes he really pulls it up as

we a f on PR 13 or his remake of The Thing Once he made an almost brilliant

film The highly underrated they live they live is one of the few recent American films to feature a homeless

person as a hero the first hour it's a mesmeric revelation of how yies and the

Soho video and advertising crowd are R Onan who having taken over the planet

and thrown the rest of us out of work they live fall down at the end stumbling

as do many modern science fiction films into a b Welter of chases down corridors and high-tech gunfire and even in this

it's not alone similar mes effects total recoil and terminated too escape from New World really should have been a

brilliant film it premises that 5 years from now all order has broken down and

New York has been turned into a vast Maximum Security Prison encircled by a giant World budgeted in 1981 at 7 milli

in bar it was carpet of most expensive fil toout date it featured some Splendid

actors including Le van C haran Stanton John deal and Kurt russle doing a very

funny Eastwood imitation with a great premise decent money and a good cast

what a state New York go wrong partially I think it's because of the inadequate special effects which were done at Roger

corman's Chapo studio in a Los Angeles rber yard if you study the C closely

you'll see the name of One Jim Cameron who St of a photographer and not artist

could this be the renowned James Cameron of Terminator and the abyss fame maybe

it could if you recall how bad the model work and the matters were in Terminator 1 more to the point well is that the

film obviously doesn't take place here in New York for budgetary reasons it was shot in St Louis and Century City Los

Angeles neither of which resemble Manhattan at all there's a certain laziness and sping quality to this

script which never really gets going the from the level of in jokes such as subsidiary characters named Romero and

cronenburg nevertheless here it

is now on BBC 2 tonight's movie drone presentation Manhunter introduced by

Alex Cox and based on the novel red dragon by Thomas Harris it depicts the hunt for a brutal serial killer the film

contains strong language and some viewers may find the subject matter disturbing

[Applause] [Music] [Applause]

[Music]

if you ever go out to the pictures or even if you only watch television programs about the pictures you can hardly fail to have heard about a film

called Silence of the Lambs directed by Jonathan Demi it's the story of a

hideous but Charming serial murderer named Dr Hannibal Lecter played by

Anthony Hopkins and an FBI agent played by jod Foster who uses the incarcerated

lector's homicidal instincts to track down another serial killer currently at

large what you may not have heard is that there is another film in which the Mad former psychiatrist and Bon Vivant

Lector appears it's called Manhunter and it was directed by Michael man in

1986 comparisons being invidious let's make some Jonathan Demi is a very good

director who keeps improving Michael man is the creator of Miami Vice and an incorrigible faddist Demi's film is

tightly plotted man's is not Demi's film has a real sense of place and so does

man's note the use of the High Museum Atlanta as the location for the high security mental hospital where lecta is

kept Manhunter is full of La stereotypes like the burned out big city cop who lives in a penthouse on the beach and

keeps a Lear jet waiting on the Run way he's more like a TV producer than a cop in fact man's hero is played by William

Peterson essentially reprising his role in to live and D in La both films have

their share of high technology and running jumping hiding shooting cops in Black SS outfits Silence of the Lambs

ends as Manhunter begins seen through a set of high-tech Green Tinted video night vision goggles symbol of psycho

Killers everywhere why then are we showing Manhunter three reasons one is that it's very similar to Silence of the

Lambs and was made four years earlier both films are in fact based on books by the author Thomas Harris second is Brian

Cox the outstanding Shakespearean actor who plays Dr Lecter the Mad intellectual

of whom we earlier spoke Cox and Hopkins looked the spitting image of each other and isn't it interesting that when they

need a literate psychopath in these movies for example Lector or Claus Von buou they cast a heavyweight English

actor and a question why is it that in cop Rock movies like this and To Live

and Die in LA all the characters stand with their heads permanently cocked to one side like this

oh my god oh

[Music]

tonight's offering is a horror film directed by only George clo it's called Le diabolic and yes it's in French with

subtitles in English down at the bottom of the screen but please don't turn off don't change channels and end up

watching some alternative cult film movie drone probably rejected keep watching you will not be disappointed

this film is at least 15 times more frightening than Friday the 12th part 14 or any of the other innan sequels you

can rent down at the news agents this is a real film directed by a real film director and it's really frightening if

you watch diabolique all the way to the end you will be scared guaranteed it's

very unfortunate my having to throw myself at your feet like this and beg you to watch diabo leque but there really does seem to be a lot of

resistance to foreign language films not only in this country but all over Europe France and Britain are relatively

civilized in showing foreign films in their original language assuming they get shown at all Germany Italy and Spain

on the other hand will generally only screen d foreign movies and all across the eec the most popular films are the

American ones with local products coming a distant second and other nations movies hardly registering at all welcome

to 1992 yet imagine a triple bill of repulsion diabo and Paul ven the Fourth

Man three fantastic sexy Euro horror films pit them against the Contemporary

Hollywood product say pet cemetery Freddy's Dead and William friedkin's the guardian why would anybody want to watch

films like these if they could watch films like those well social justice notwithstanding here is diaboli I can't

really tell you what it's all about since the plot is fraught with too many strange twists and surprises let me

instead briefly mention the director H kuo kuso's second feature Loro was made

in 1942 and produced by the german-owned Continental films the film's negative

and depressing view of provincial France was seen as German propaganda and as a result clo didn't direct again until

1947 when he made K cluzo evolved into a cynical highly pessimistic filmmaker and

also a very brilliant one his most celebrated film is the adventure drama wages of fear which was remade not badly

by the aforementioned William friedkin before his fall from high State wages of fear the story of four men paid to truck

High explosives through jungles and across mountains in Honduras is one of the greatest films of all time it was

made entirely in the south of France diabolique has much of the same intensity and mad invention though

unlike wages of fear it's about women not men it features implacable Simon Sor

and the fabulously beautiful Vera cluso wife of the director she was also the glamorously cringing love interest in

wages of fear

one of the problems of working for small independent film companies is that sometimes the funding for their small

Independent films runs out in the middle and the film is never finished or if it is finished the company goes bust and

never brings it out one of the problems of working for Big Rich Studios is that the studio May

lavish lots of money on big ambitious intellectually stimulating artistic films and then just not like the

finished product and refuse to bring it out this is what happened to Brazil

Brazil was made in 1984 by Terry Gilliam it's the film that 1984 wasn't and

should have been it has all the atmosphere and the preoccupations of Orwell's book plus references to heavy

metal comics eisenstein and mad gilam said when asked where the story took

place somewhere on the Los Angeles Belfast border it was also inspired by

his experiences of a police riot in Los Angeles and by a visit to Port Talbert in

Wales Gilliam began his career as a Cartoonist but made his reputation as the inventor of the cutout animation on

Monty Python's Flying Circus in 72 he co-directed Monty Python and the Holy

Grail the first and funniest of the Python films he then made jabuki which we saw last movie Drome season if you

recall and Time Bandits which was a big International hit gilam like Stanley

Kubrick is an American filmmaker who resides in Britain he's a highly skilled

visualist Batman was shot by Roger Pratt who photograph Brazil for Gilliam it

looks identical only not as good Gilliam is also a skillful director of actors

how can this be in one who comes not from the theater but from the drawing board Gillam's answer you just cast the

movie right and then the actors do the work gilliam's contract with the large

and nameless Studio said that the film had to be a maximum of 2 hours and 5

minutes long when he submitted a cut that was 2 hours and 11 minutes long the

sensitive Executives announced that they were going to re-edit the film take out the nasty and the naughty bits and

release it at a length of 90 minutes this happens all the time in Hollywood the same Fate beell The Magnificent

Amberson Star is Born Naked City Red Badge of Courage Invasion of the Body snatches and most of s paginas films the

same Studio when it couldn't figure out how to re-edit a film would simply sit on it this happened with two-lane black

top the last movie and rumblefish Brazil didn't get a wide release in the USA But Gile did manage

to prevent them from re-editing his film by going to war with the studio in the pages of variety gilean made the

executives look stupid and won a Los Angeles critics award for himself and for his film he called Brazil part two

of a Trilogy about the ages of man and the subordination of magic to realism part one being Time Bandits and part

three Baron Monken the studio Executives called Brazil inter minable to sit through and

unreleasable here are all 12,842 fantastic feet

Brazil something truly horrible for

you 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 hangam 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 higher in fact in the sense that they don't initiate their own projects but direct whatever comes along

a good American example would be Gordon Douglas who did fine work on movies as diverse as Baro and them on our side of

the Atlantic Mike Hodges Springs to mind he directed Get Carter Flash Gordon and

morons from outer space some directors start out for hire and become URS Don seagull being the

obvious example others start out URS and do the reverse William friedkin for

instance who after making sorcerer one of the most expensive personal projects of all time was reduced to doing ch

chase vehicles and ripoffs of his only The Exorcist like the guardian even highly respected American

directors hire themselves out on worthless projects from time to time cppa on Peggy Sue got married Scorsese

on The Color of Money in the hope of getting buck for personal projects Down the

Line Tonight Ted post takes us on a weird 60s Excursion which resembles a

cross between Play Misty For Me and the beg like the beg or which is whatever

happened to Baby Jane the baby is All About Women obsessive oppressive haridan

or predatory innocence who look and sound a lot like characters from an rrum cartoon or from a Corman Ed Gren Poe

movie the heroin appears to live in the house of aser too the dialogue by

Abraham psky who also co-produced the film with another psky Milton is

Sensational though made in 72 the baby is pure Hippa do you like physical

exercise says I'm a Scorpio we're very cautious which occasionally Rises to the

sublimely manic Heights of whatever happened to Baby Jane when you're a winner Alba the possibility of losing

doesn't exist Ruth Roman is excellent as Mrs Wordsworth a mad combo of Joan Collins

Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Crawford and Anna jet coma is a more than able foil I

didn't mean any harm Mrs Wadsworth I just want to help baby reach his full potential

are you sure that's all you want Mrs Gentry what more could there

be the baby does descend into the familiar girls creeping through the darkened corridors of the old darkhouse

mode in the last wheel but it redeems itself completely in its final minutes with the most outstandingly sick ending

of any film yet shown on movie drum

[Music]

[Music]

face to face is one of three political Western by the Italian director Sergio solima who sometimes operates under the

pseudonym of Sterling Simon the other two films with a big gundown an excellent Bounty Hunter movie starting

van CLE and Thomas Milan and run man run a rather worse than mediocre sequel

involving the Further Adventures of Milan they were political in much the same way as all the spaghetti western

setting up a rural urban conflict in which the city dwellers are always Insidious to generates or urious bankers

and the rural characters innocent exploitee Often championed by a glamorous social Bandit it's a

straightforward simple-minded view that you can find even in supposedly sophisticated Italian films the most

numbering example perhaps being 1900 face to face which was made in 1967

has been described as a parable of the rise of European fascism well maybe it certainly has the

political schematic outlined above but to me it seems more a basian tale of fate and

doppelgangers you can take your pick it also has and this is where it gets good some of the most improbable character

names and some of the most outlandish haircuts ever seen in a western Jan

Maria volun plays Professor Brad Fletcher a consumptive Boston University

teacher who heads West for his health Volante is of course one of the great spaghetti western actors he was the

Bandit Chief in Fistful of Dollars and for a few dollars more and he was the unwilling revolutionary in a bullet for

the general volunteer was a serious actor who'd been blacklisted for being a communist Leon was the first director to

break ranks and give him a job later he went on to appear in more serious political films including sacko and

vanetti and Franchesco rosi's lucky luchano he's always good and this is one

of his better Western roles in face to face Brad Fletcher becomes involved with

a Mexican Bandit with the unlikely moniker of Solomon borgard Bennett

leader of a hippias Outlaw gang called Bennett's Raiders borgard is played by

Thomas Milan theum actor who appeared in salma's other political Western and in many other spaghettis including the

truly extraordinary D Jango kill Milan like B is a proper actor he played the

priest in Dennis Hopper's Peruvian epic the last movie and recently was seen as one of the anti-castro Hitmen in Oliver

Stone's JFK the chemistry between Volante and Milan is really interesting and it keeps the film alive when it

might otherwise expire as for instance in the in congruous hippie commune scenes there are also those haircuts to

contend with but face to face is really quite an entertaining and intriguing film watch out for several spaghetti

western regulars including William Burger as the mysterious Charlie Singo Aldo sell as the treacherous Polecat

Zachary shot and anel Del porel in the role of the gentleman gunfighter

maximilan Doon for the Discerning Enthusiast we

profer the new movie Drome guide you can find out how to order your copy at the

end of tonight's film I have an Ann

now on BBC 2 we begin a new weekly series called movie Drome

good evening my name is Alex Cox and welcome

to the movie drone a season of cult films what is a cult film cult film is

one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody James Bond movies are not cult

films but chainsaw movies are just because a movie is a cult movie

does not automatically guarantee quality some cult movies are very bad others are

very very good some make an awful lot of money at the box office others make no money at

all some are considered quality films others are

exploitation one thing they do have in common is that their old genre films that's to say a French word meaning the

type or category of film in question for example gangster films or

Western cult films also have a tendency to slush over from one genre Nora into

another so that a science fiction film might become a detective movie or vice

versa they're also generally cheaply made most of the films in this season

cost under $2 million some of them cost a great deal less they share common themes as well

themes which I would suggest are the common themes of all drama Love Murder

and greed murder and greed predominate in this

season tonight's film is called the Wicker man it was written by Anthony Schaffer who's the author of

sleuth cine fantastic magazine called it rather optimistically The Citizen Cane

of horror films it was directed by Robin Hardy a British director who formerly

specialized in television commercials it has a cult reputation

although most of the people who rate it very highly as a cult as far as I'm aware haven't seen it at least not in

its original version it was originally 102 minutes long but the owner of the film decided

that it would be much better if they cut 15 minutes out and put it on the second half of a double bill this was back in

the days when when you went to the pictures you used to get two films for the price of one so they cut it down to

87 minutes and in 1973 released it on a double bill with don't look now

as the years went by and the film's cult reputation grew attempts were made to restore the missing

portions but attempts to find the original negative were frustrated apparently the negative ended up in the

pylons that support the M4 Motorway the version that we're going to

show tonight contains a number of the original scenes that were thought to have been lost however there's one

principal scene still missing it's an early sequence in which Edward Woodward

who plays a Scottish police officer is introduced and we're told he's engaged

to be married and he has not yet known a woman so bear that in mind as you enjoy

the Pagan Delights of the Wicker man which include Lindsay Kemp the mime

artist Christopher Lee without his cape and Brit Eckland dubbed in Scottish

[Music]

movie drum as you may know is supposed to be a forum for cult films with this in mind we've shown the work of cult

directors like Robert Aldrich Don seagull John Waters and Roger Corman and we've screened some genuinely hardto

find cultist Rarities including honeymoon killers and Carnival of Souls because films of this nature don't

necessarily attract the biggest audience and Nick Jones the produc producer and director of the series and the man who

picks these movies is under an obligation to the corporation to attract some viewers now and then at times we

have departed from our brief in order to show commercial as hell super Blockbusters such as

Terminator tonight Nick and I both wish to atone for such incorrect Behavior by

screening a cult movie Power Excellence a 200% cult classic Frank zappers 200

motels you must remember 200 motels it was always playing at midnight on Saturday at the Scara back when you were

protesting against the Vietnam War and listening to atam Hart mother that's right it's that film probably you saw

the advert in the paper or on the Marquee and equally probably you didn't go and see it now you

can 200 motels was directed by Frank zapper and Tony Palmer in

1971 Tony Palmer was a British television director who also made musical biopics including one in which

Sir Richard Burton played Vagner example was as you're probably aware the leader of a famous band from the' 60s

and70s called the Mothers of Invention 200 motels is a rockumentary precursor

to spinal tap and contemporaneous to the monkey's head unlike say early Beatles movies where there was some attempt to

find a plot The Disappearance of Paul's Granddad for instance 200 motels has no

plot and consists of concert footage and comedic sketches of Aon and Martin's laughing nature naturally featuring

members of the band there is also so some animation of a sub Gillum variety

the movie was shot on video and later transferred to film there's actually some very funny stuff much of it

centering around the character of Jimmy Carl Black who at one point remarks just

as long as I get some beer and get paid I'll do anything I'm

professional it's interesting to note that 200 motels was made in Britain at Pinewood Studios this was the time when

American Studios were actually coming to England to do Productions because it was so much cheaper now European production

costs have driven the Americans and in many cases the Europeans mismos back to the United

States apparently Frank zampa conceived 200 motels as a musical work to be performed live in concert he attempted

to have the London philarmonic Orchestra play it but venue officials declared the libretto obscene and refused to allow it

to be performed on daunted Zappa turned the magnum opus into a film

incorporating footage of the Mothers of Invention shot over the previous 5 years the results follow among them Keith Moon

as a nun Ringo Star on the final solution to the orchestra question and Jimmy Carl's Immortal Lonesome Cowboy

Bert oh and the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey I wonder what you'll make of it

Frank Zappa is by any standards an extraordinary man in addition to this film and Records too numerous to mention

he owns a mail order business Barco swill which turns over a million dollar a year he once described himself as

never a hippie always a freak but never a hippie in politics he sees himself as

a traditional conservative although he views politics not as a matter of leftwing and right-wing but rather of

fascism versus Freedom as a pragmatist he is a registered Democrat but says he

might prefer to vote Republican if you were to extract the evil influence of the religious right from the Republican

Party

[Music] TW was brillig and the slidy toes did

guy and gimbal in the wave all Mimsy were the

boves and the mom wraths out grave beware the jabberwock my son the

Jaws that bite the claws that catch beware the Jubjub bird and shun the

fumus bander snatch he took his vpal sword in hand

long time the manom foe he sought then rested he by the tum tum

tree and stood a while in thought and as in offish thought he

stood the jabberwock with eyes of flame came whiffling through the tgy

wood and burbled as it came Snick snack Snicker snack the vpal blade

went through and back he left it dead and with its head

he went galumphing back and as thou slain the jaok come to

my arms my Beamish boy oh frous day c

c he chortled in his Joy it was brillig and the slidy toes did

guy and gimbal in the wave all Mimsy were the B

go here's Alex Cox [Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

in Invasion of the Body snatches is that rare thing a remake that is as good as the original film there have been

countless lousy and incompetent remakes stage coach for instance or Father of the Bride sometimes they are so bad they

have to be concealed under a different title the remake of out of the past was called Against All Odds off hand I can

think of only one other instance in which a genuinely good remake was made and that was William freins wages of

fear a truly inspired retelling of the French classic when Wes of fear was a

great film based on a great film it was also a Monumental failure at the box office Invasion of the Body snatches is

a good film based on a good film needless to say it made lots of money and made its director Philip cman that

equally rare thing an independent American filmmaker whom the studios considered bankable from Humble and

intelligent Beginnings like the great Northfield Minnesota raid he went on to achieve Grand eloquence in the form of

the right stuff and the unbearable lightness of Daniel de Lewis the original version of the Invasion of

the Body snatches has been shown on movie Drome as the gentle viewer will no doubt recall made in 1955 it was a dark

and Moody science fiction Thriller a bit intellectual and a tad more subtle than the radioactive Cloud that turns men

into giant ants 50s Norm directed by Don seagull was a parable of the

encroachment of a dangerous alien Conformity upon a small California town

at the time the great manufactured paranoia was communism and the film could be viewed as a warning against

said political Doctrine or as a criticism of those who would suppress it at all costs communism remained the Great

American fear through six presidencies justifying the enormous military expenditures of the Truman Eisenhower

Kennedy Johnson Nixon and Ford years by 1978 Carter was president and the Red

Menace didn't seem to Menace anymore in fact for a brief while it began to appear that the Menace might actually be

domestic rather than foreign hence the very different take of Philip cowman's film instead of a small town in northern

California we're in San Francisco a city filled with already threatening people and job

descriptions long before the aliens show up in force it's obvious that something's wrong the post Vietnam post

Watergate fear of big unseen power politics lurks at the edges of the film

one of the symbols of lurking corporate encroachment in this version of Invasion of the Body snatches is this oddl

looking skyscraper a little like a stretched out version of the Masonic pyramid on the dollar bill it appears

several times and always manages to aggravate our sense of unease ironically or maybe not this building is called the

trans Amer Tower Trans America being a massive corporation that owned among other assets United Artists the producer

of this film watch out for Don seagull playing a small role as a taxi driver

and Kevin McCarthy star of the previous body snatches reprising one of the scen from the original film also be on the

lookout for a 5-sec appearance from Robert Duval whose part is so small he doesn't receive a credit and Leonard

Nimoy in a nonoy eared role Grateful Dead fans should prepare to enjoy Jerry

Garcia on the banjo

[Music]

here on two tonight's film in the movie Drome is Ken Russell's controversial account of the composer trov tempestuous

sexual and emotional life introduced by Alex Cox

[Music]

a

[Music]

[Music]

[Music] Ken Russell is according to the conventional wisdom the baddest boy of

British Cinema it's fashionable among the critical and produc serial Elite to deride our Ken and treat him as a

finished madman from a bygone age this in spite of the fact that in just the last 2 or 3 years he's made at least

four feature films and in spite of the fact that any video shop you go into is

bound to be a veritable Trove of Russell films the list of his important films is extremely long the Devils Tommy Savage

Messiah women in love the boyfriend Valentino even his bad films principally Altered States have some very

interesting stuff in them and his recent work in salam's last dance and the lair of the White Worm shows no significant

dimming of Russell's Creative flare it's not hard to say why Russell's pictures tend to go the critics in the

intelligencia for a start he himself is a noted critic Basher having accosted a

notable critic on live TV in addition he's somewhat self-indulgent no recent

Russell film can be complete without a fantasy sequence featuring crucified sheep and writhing naked nuns but his

worst crime maybe is that no matter how elevated his subject matter his approach to it is always resolutely

anti-intellectual there is nothing Russell likes more than broad humor and hosts of people drinking and taking off

their clothes tonight's film the music lovers is the life story of chaikovsky

Russell is very fond of biopics about composers and other artists his early work for the BBC included dramatic

biographies of Rickard Strauss and Frederick Deus imagine how the music lovers would

have been if for example David partam had made it long reverential credit sequence black screen credits go on and

on music builds more credits cut to a fabulous Country House in the Ukraine

cut to 100 extras ping in the fields cut to a butler pouring a glass of vodka cut

to a shot of sunlight streaming through parted curtains onto a man at the piano music builds and so on for the next 3

and 1/2 hours we're talking Oscar material our Ken will have none of this his chaikovsky is a gay man married to

an infomaniac with a bit of music on the side a lot of music actually it's great

it's really funny has a screenplay by South Bank supro Melvin Bragg Great Performances particularly from glender

Jackson as Mrs chaikovsky and from Richard Chamberlain who appears to be really playing the piano in the concert

scenes I think it's this determination not to make a well-made film but rather

to make an entertaining madap film which really catches your attention that annoys the critics so your cultural

Elite like to believe that fellas like chaikovsky and mzori and rimsey corov are their property what Russell does is

to attempt to make highbrow stuff less posh less exclusive sometimes he fails as in his

Nightmare on Elm Street version of the Byron Shelly story Gothic but more often he succeeds as in salam's last dance or

in the Devils if you haven't seen the Devils you should try and get a copy on tape they don't make films like it

anymore and it isn't going to show up on TV uncut anytime in the next 5,000 years

but for tonight the music lovers set in Russia in the 1870s shot in England in

the 1970s a big budget British film with

balls the Silver Screen on the small screen now on BBC 2 with Alex Cox as a supporting feature just before a movie

drum double bill

[Music]

inside

[Music]

tonight movie drone 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 Nicole 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 Borman as an

alternative to his long planned but never executed version of Lord of the

Rings the buletin is an interesting take on this long rambling project observing that there is such a thing as too

personal a project an idea turned over for so long that it's individuality gets trapped inside it the consensus film

making dreamt of by Hollywood committees whoa well it's certainly is as unfocused

as a lot of Hollywood committee movies as Borman struggles to incorporate a lot of history and Legend and poetic sources

into an epic tale with no particular Central character but among the long proceedings

there is much good as well as bad the cast is great Helen mirin is a splendid

Morgana and the Knights are a veritable who's who of Future movie stars leam

niss is s gain Gabriel burn is Uther pen dragon and Patrick Stewart Captain Jean

luk Picard of the Starship Enterprise is Leon de gr the special Optical effects

are by veteran effectson Wally beavers and the special photography is by Oxford scientific films

the production designed by Anthony Pratt is sometimes predictable but sometimes fascinating as when the knights ride

into a medieval settlement and discover a hell's mouth wonderful period detail in the form of a stage on which

depictions of hell and other religious torments were portrayed by actors the predecessor of theater and

film my problem with Excalibur is that it's so legendary it's sometimes hard to

care what's going on will sir bucket find the Holy Grail or will he fall into to the fiery pit it's only interesting

if I know who so bucket is is he a minor league Knight or a major player how many

chattles does he have how many vassals how many surfs toil in his fields and

what sort of toiling do they do do they produce anything or merely gravel in mud as in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

now that film was full of surfs and so the film was grounded or mudded in this

film you rarely see a commoner it's all so long ago and shrouded in the mids of necromancy that it's a tad difficult to

relate to of course the director screenwriter producer might reply it's

not reality it's myth it's Legend and he'd have a very good point although if

it is meant to exist on a Mythic not mundane level shouldn't it be a bit bigger a bit more magical note the fine

beginning for example with its red sky and horses apparently breathing fire the kurasa would have cut to the big night

shot with a thousand men with flaming torches running down the hill excam anything but a cheap film but Borman

keeps almost everything in medium shock the search for the Grail if this is myth or Legend could take us to the Gobi or

Sahara Desert even to the rainforests of Mexico or Brazil but no all these canoby

Knights do is ride around the damper parts of Ireland in the Mist mustn't Grumble though whatever the film's

virtues and faults it was a tremendous achievement of the director producer getting many million dollars out of

Columbia Pictures Warner Brothers and Orion to make a film about a British subject with no American actors at all

this was back in the m and shrouded days of 1981 of course such a Mythic Quest

might not be as attainable today

[Music]

[Music]

oh my God [Music]

[Music]

good evening and welcome to the fifth season of movie Drome you see there really is no shortage of weird and

interesting cult type films in spite of the abysmal Dre which passes for entertainment in the Contemporary Cinema

in keeping with our traditional policy of only presenting the most positive and uplifting visions of the Dream Factory

we have three pictures depicting Hollywood as hell day of the Locust inserts and Robert aldrich's the big

knife Aldrich Remains the most prolific movie Drome director but he receives

strong competition this year from Canada's own David Cronenberg we're presenting the TV premieres of dead

ringers and the depraved rabid perhaps Mr cronenberg's most horrible and Brilliant film we have directorial

offerings from auson Wells Larry Co Clint Eastwood Stanley kubric and hly

George clol and Sterling performances by Dennis Hopper Vincent Price Ed Harris

Ida Lupino Bob Hoskins Shelley Winters Peter cers and Marilyn Chambers we have

a giant alligator in the New York sewer [Music]

system and a pterodactyl in the krya [Music] [Applause]

building several ingenious murder plots and a befuddled University Professor

infatuated with a teenage nymphet we even have a nonviolent peinar film to

say nothing of no less than two movies with the word serpent in the title how can the Discerning copile

resist our first film tonight is one of the last gasps of the once proud Australian Australian Cinema madmax 2

Mad Max one you may recall was a lowbudget science fiction action thriller which introduced M Gibson to

the agog world madmax 2 is that rare thing a sequel which is actually better

than the original the only other instance I can think of is for a few dollars more the sequel to a fist full

of dollars interestingly in both cases the director Remains the Same Leon of

course went on to make an even better sequel for Good the Bad and the Ugly the second Mad Max sequel Beyond Thunderdome

was by all accounts not of the same caliber despite the presence of the noted actress Tina Turner and Mr Gibson

yet again Mad Max 2 released in the US as the road warrior is a tremendous action film

benefiting from a bigger budget than madmax one it also lacks its predecessors dazzley borrowings and

pretentiousness it still borrows extensively from Road movies spaghetti Weston Punk fashion and John Ford

Cavalry films but in a very clever and entertaining way the director was George Miller and for my money it's his best

film but what's best for the Discerning viewer isn't always what's best for our favorite planet and Mad Max 2 really

should have been forced to file an environmental impact report before beginning shooting what with all the

burning tires blazing diesel fuel wasted petrol and the inevitable mounds of Styrofoam cups and flattened beer cans

dumped in the desert Mad Max 2 and all of its ilk of action films stands as a major ecological Menace as to all Motion

Pictures when you consider the volume of toxic chemicals produced by the processing laboratory and ultimately

dumped into the groundwater and the sewage system of the unhappy city where the film is edited films are a

petrochemical process and a waste intensive industry and if this relatively humble offering is bad what

about a 30 or a 40 million Buck Exploder armor such as Die Hard 3 or Terminator 9

can you imagine the amount of pollution generated by Arnold Schwarzenegger's camper or Mel Gibson's Lear jet

ultimately of course this trade means nothing films are big business like Napal manufacturer or the second

generation Concord but to reduce waste in the entire entertainment business

don't watch big budget Hollywood movies which are disproportionately idiotic in their excess don't ever watch

commercials or rock videos for the same reason and stay tuned to movie Drome home of the lower budget marginally

ecologically Sounder films yay

[Music] [Applause]

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 movie Drome and there's a reason for that while movie Drome 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

I've always wished for more artistic talent well Verda can be an art too the power

to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create in fact the fame of rope is

slightly exaggerated there are at least two exchanges of close-ups at crucial moments in the film and an opening

exterior but the rest of the film is played as if it were one continuous shot

uninterrupted by close-ups medium shots or Masters at the time the average film

had anything up to 600 separate Cuts in it today with the fast editing

popularized by television programs and MTV videos the cuts can number in the thousands and there's nothing inherently

wrong in that a film can exist any way the filmmaker wants it to and some filmmakers as diverse as Bruce Connor

and Nicholas Rogue have produced fascinating films whose Excellence was in the

editing at the same time editing strategies especially the modern exchanges of televisual close-ups can

become predictable the long take if done well cannot remember the extraordinary

opening shot of Touch of Evil would that sequence be remembered today it had been accomplished by 30 shots instead of

one in rope Hitchcock goes one better than any other exponent of the long take

fashioning a film which appears to be one continuous sequence obviously it can't be a roll of 35 mm film is at the

maximum 1,000 ft long approximately 10 minutes hence every 10 minutes Hitchcock

and his cameraman Joseph Valentine were forced to find a solution to the problem of the real change and they often joined

reals by having a character walk past the camera momentarily blacking out the

frame if R the story of two dispassionate young Killers based on the Leopold and lobe murder case resembles

theater it's not surprising it's based on a play by the British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton his work has

recently been rediscovered rope was revived this year in London the entire film was shot on a

sound stage in a set specially constructed with flying walls and Furniture which moved on especially

greased rollers a special dolly was invented by the key grip Morris Rosen to

allow the bulky Studio camera greater freedom of movement as many as five

microphone boom operators were working simultaneously to record live sound to

complicate matters still still further it was Hitchcock's first color film and they had great problems creating the

right effect of evening light towards the end of the film when cameraman Valentine left the picture due to

illness Hitchcock reshot the final five reels in spite of its theatrical Origins

rope is far from staging able to act out entire sequences sometimes 10 minutes in

length the actors are able to deliver performances as opposed to Snippets

James art as the suspicious professor and John D and Farley Granger as the killers are

outstanding take it easy philli rubit on to something he isn't

now let got to have a drink brandid enough you're not take your hand off my arm don't you ever again tell me what to

do and what not to do I don't like it Brandon and I'm not going to take Ino I

uh hope I didn't upset Philip you never let me no no he's more likely mixing his

drinks you seem rather upset yourself do what special praise is due the model

making section of the art Department who produced a giant perspective model of the New York skyline outside the

apartment Windows including replicas of the Empire State and krysler building

the skyline contained 6,000 flashing lights 200 miniature neon signs 26,000

ft of wire and was operated by 47 different different switches the said

model also included cloud formations made from spun glass and chicken wire under the direction of the famous

meteorologist Dr Dinsmore alter rehearsals for rope took 10 days

filming began on January 22nd 1948 and ended on February 21st 4 weeks later

because it was based on an actual event rope was a cause of anxiety in certain parts of the United States it was banned

in Chicago where the crime occurred and also in Spokane Memphis and

Seattle well now on BBC 2 a welcome back to Alex Cox to introduce a new season of

cult films in movie Drome good evening and welcome to the

fourth SE season of movie Drome this year's selection of cult and obscure ephemera will take us from Finland to

Lawrence Kansas and from Notting Hill gate to Cape Fear most movie Drome movies aren't big

hits in Hollywood either with Cinema goers or the studios that Finance them in fact if there's a typical movie Drome

film it was probably financed by a major Studio which fired the director halfway through and then pulled out entirely

leaving the cast to pull their savings and finish the film and in another country under the directorship of a

generous used car dealer don't be surprised if many of the films we show were made by the likes of Joseph losy

Terrence Malik Richard rush and Aon Wells all of whom were given the old heave Ho by the conventional movie scene

likewise don't be surprised to find them making films about tormented artists to it this season's biopic of Mishima

chaikovsky and Lenny Bruce if you love big glossy Hollywood

Productions starring Robin Williams and Steve Martin Robert Redford and Merill stre stop watching turn off now be

warned the Drone may prove damaging to your taste but if you actually like

films that were shot in abandoned fun fairs in Lawrence Kansas or in the bowels of Russian rocket launching tubes

stay tuned [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

[Music] a

[Music] Clint Eastwood made three films with the Italian director Sergio Leon and five

with the American Don seagull he parted company with Leone in ' 66 and with seagull in the 70s and since then has

been pretty much his own director though he usually bequeaths the director's seat to someone else he hangs on to the

Reigns so to speak producing all the films in which he appears certain movies for certain reasons he directs himself

and most of those show substantial debits to Don seagull and Sergi Leone

Leone and seagull were top-of-the-line action directors in their respective countries Leone collaborated with Robert

alrich on Sodom and Gomorrah and directed Eastwood in three Millennial spaghetti westons seagull who had begun

life as an editor graduated the Top Flight B movies such as riot in cellblock 11 and The Killers seagull and

Eastwood made kuan's Bluff in 1968 it's an effective film about an Arizona

Sheriff who comes to New York to catch a bad man was his first film without a horse or a mule in 1970 they both made

Two Mules for Sister Sarah a dismal imitation spaghetti Weston co-starring Shirley mlan Eastwood appeared in

several imitation Italian Western actually including Ted post's Lively hangam high and Joe kid a wretched

ripoff of the big silence which we saw on movie dome last year in 1971 Eastwood

and Don seagull made the majorly successful Dirty Harry and in 1979 they did Escape escaped from

alcatra but in between Eastwood and seagull found time to make another film one that's extremely weird and

uncharacteristic of them and that's the film we're going to see tonight it's another Western set in the Civil War and

called the beged the begal is unlike anything else that seagull did for a start it's mostly

about women Eastwood is the only male character in the film nor is it a conventional cowboy film there are no

cowboys instead of his us heroic self Eastwood plays a deserter from the Union Army wounded but game for whatever's

going on in a weird Gothic house full of obsessive Confederate spinsters who decide to keep him it's a cross between

a jacoban tragedy and Ambrose beus which is not very far apart at all beus was a

civil war Scout who later became a cynical journalist and vanished in Mexico looking for Pancho via he wrote

about a dozen short stories set during the Civil War which just extraordinary really Vivid and grim and beautifully

written be's victorians or prev victorians are very mod in their evil

banality so are the villains of jacoban tragedies although a tad more flamboyant

and the characters in the beg well they're sort of 60s is in fact the beg

comes from that happy time when it was possible to experiment with Cinema play with film language with multi exposures

and dream sequences the era of Midnight Cowboy and the last movie today when the American film

industry makes a film about the Civil War they fill it with lies about honor and nobility and the privilege of being

gunned down carrying the flag and call it Glory Wilfred Owen would not approve

but be would be amused [Music]

up Alex Cox and the team are going out tonight with a bang it was the 70s thinking man's horror movie that Drew a

new benchmark [Music]

[Music]

[Music] the slow motion naked school girl shower

fantasy you are about about to see is one of the distinctive Hallmarks of the cinema of Brian the Palmer director of

Wan's wake get to know your rabbit Phantom of The Paradise Scarface The

Untouchables and various other films Thea is often described by film critics

as the air to Hitchcock but though he may share certain misogynistic traits in

common with the master the films which are mostly referred to as hitchcockian body double dress to kill and blowout

seem to be ripped off not so much from as from Dario agento agento as you

may recall is the Italian director of such films as four flies on gray velvet tpia Opera and the recent trauma most of

his films are so extremely horrible that they're not showable on television I'm serious here I honestly don't think that

argenta's films should be seen by The Accidental portion of a remote control button you have to want to see them

which many people do just as many people want to go and see pink flamingos or Peter Greenway m person on pass it does

seem odd to me the British Board of film sensors allows Dario agento films to be shown but still won't give a certificate

to Monty helman's fighter one of the very best American films of the 70s by what standard are we not allowed to

witness fights legally staged in the United States that we are permitted to watch the violent disemboweling of

women in our gento films or the Palmer's body double I suppose the answer would be that one is offensive to animal

lovers and the other is entertainment and agento and depa are good filmmakers there's no doubt about

it one agento film we might considerably show is his first movie bird with Crystal page it's a good filler with a

great soundtrack by anyo morone check out the music of Crystal plumage and the soundtrack of body double they are at

some points very similar the Palmer of course actually began to use Monon as his composer on his more recent films

anyway her tonight's film carry this was the Palmer's first big hit he made it

in' 76 a couple of years after his cult successes sisters and Phantom of The Paradise his films are marked by a

considerable degree of black humor and are sometimes framed as nightmares or dreams there are often paroxysms of

violence in the fury John cavetti explodes repeatedly from different camera angles which departa states is

his incorporation of eisenstein's theory of Montage as conflict film is violance

he has been quoted this saying Kye was the first film in which the name of Steven King appeared it's based on

his novel today of course it's impossible to see a horror film which doesn't bear the moniker of Step King

except the lawnmower man whose produ of King sued to force him to take his highly valuable nomenclature off the

poster not sure why speculation is that the film wasn't up to the normal artistic standard of your regular

Stephen King film well there have actually been some good Stephen King films among them Kujo and The multipart

Creep Show for my money carry is the best of them all the script is good has

great performances from SP and pyi the pal direct will abandon and it

provides an early example of the trick ending staple of all horror films thereafter often used to set up the

endless round of sequels as with Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday the 13th do not reveal the ending to your

friends for the Discerning Enthusiast we profer the new movie Drome guide for £3

and a limited number of the original guide at a special price of £5 for the

two copies are available by sending a check or Postal order made out to BSS to

movie Drome PO Box 7 London W3 6xj

[Music]

[Music]

[Music] welcome to the sixth season of movie

Drome this year we proudly offer a selection which includes several insane

Western a clutch of prison escape

dramas welcome to alcatra and the British premiere of no less than

four cult features never before publicly screened on these shs go

f

go I'm so sick of people trying to run my life you know babe bra this babe bra

that what's my name you dumb ass it's B brother my name is Sam Samuel sit

out what you I can't understand for the Discerning Enthusiast

we also profer the new movie Drome guide for a mere £3 and a limited number of

the original old movie Dome guide at a bonus price of £5 for the two buy both

and save a pound found copies of these heirloom quality Publications which future generations of

cave dwellers will undoubtedly be mystified by are available by sending a check or Postal order made out to BSS to

movie Drome PO Box 7 London w36

XJ tonight a film by Sam Ry director of the Evo dead you probably recall the

controversy surrounding ry's lowbudget 1980 Horror Picture in the cold light of day it's hard to see what all the

posturing was about Evil Dead was a good competent Cabin in the Woods horror flick certainly not a CO salor worthy of

all the anguish and outrage that surrounded its release on video ry's bigger budget crime wave made in 1985

was considerably less successful but Evil Dead 2 was a tremendous film full of all sorts of man

originality manic originality is less in evidence when we witness Sam ry's first

Studio picture Darkman late in 1990 Darkman was obviously

intended to be a sequel procreator along the lines of Batman the music for both films was composed by Danny Elfman

however it didn't work out that way Darkman lacks the well-developed comic book roots of Batman o Dick Tracy and

spends rather too much time referring to the Phantom of the Opera or indulging in familiar grotesquery definitely a case

of too many writers with no less than five names credited with the screenplay nevertheless blessed with with a massive

budget Ry does come up with some impressive action scenes though seemingly the picture was taken away

from him by the beneficent Studio during editing directors for hire John Landis

and William deer have tiny acting roles as do several hack producers from the studio what they couldn't find any

actors in Los Angeles ry's most recent film is Army of Darkness a sort of sequel to Evil Dead 2

which takes place where the previous film dumped its protagonist the dark ages one rather distasteful thing about

dark man is its use of the common American movie cliche the Disposable black man I had a girlfriend who worked

one of the major studios in Burbank California and she and the other secretaries were allowed to see the new

studio product every week and they used to take BS among themselves as to what real the black character would die in no

kidding this was a few years ago but nothing has changed to judge from Clint Eastwood's unsavory use of Morgan

Freeman in Unforgiven for a while it seemed like every action movie coming out of Hollywood had a white hero with a black

best friend who dieded somewhere between reals 2 and eight in order to supply the hero with a convenient Revenge motive oh

we don't go to see those Hollywood pictures much but a couple of years ago I made the mistake of seeing dark man

and David Lynch's Wild at Heart in a single weekend at the start of Wild at Heart The White hero beats a black guy

till his brains run from his head in dark man Ry establishes the villain's villainy by having him cut off a black

man's fingers with a cigar cutter coincidence or something else well I

don't know and I expect that sort of thudding mindless racism from thudding mindless Blockbuster directors but Lynch

and Ry come on boys do

[Music]

better but now on BBC 2 We join Alex Cox who will tell us a thing or two about tonight's classic cult film big

Wednesday ah big Wednesday which was made in 1978

is a film about the big score in its purest form three American Surfers in

search of the perfect wave it was critically unpopular when it first came out it was accused of being

grandiose and pretentious which it is but a lot of good films are grandiose

and pretentious including citizen Cain the director's name is John milus

he also co-wrote Dirty Harry Apocalypse Now and wrote and directed a magnificent

film called Red Dawn he has a reputation for being the

most right-wing film director in Hollywood which is rather like being the tallest player on a basketball

team he's a good director though very highly regarded I don't know if it's really

true about him being extremely right-wing or not I only saw a photograph of him one time and he seemed

a fairly normal guy um except that he was wearing a green beret uniform

I think he's upfront about the fact that he's a looney though and we should respect him for that and he is a very

good film director which is even more deserving of our respect his films are very well put together the acting is

normally excellent this film is based on his early days because in his youth he was a

surfer and when you see his name in the titles the photograph that accompanies the title is of millius and some friends

with their boards maybe one of the reasons the film wasn't popular the critics is that the

critics aren't Surfers but if you like the ocean if you admire these guys who get up really early in the morning and

go out where it's really cold and wet you might like big Wednesday it's milus

his American Graffiti one of the actors in it Gary buzy who played Buddy Holly in The Buddy

Holly Story taught himself to sing and play guitar for Buddy Holly and learned to swim and surf for this film big

Wednesday

portrayal of life in this divided country and contains strong language and disturbing scenes

[Music]

[Music]

inside 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 and 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 vious 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 can 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

film and so authentic that it was completely overpowering even in a tiny screening room at 3:00 in the afternoon

no get out of the car out the car

whatever you do doctor whatever you do okay don't get on the ground Jesus

Christ man this is scary Salvador is based on the experiences of American journalist Richard Bo who

covered events in El Salvador in the early years of the Reagan regime in Washington Bo is a great character

wonderfully played by James Woods a freeco ambulance Chaser whose partnership with the James Belushi

character Dr Rock seems more than a little based on the characters of Hunter Thompson and his American Samoan lawyer

Dr Gonzo in the celebrated counterculture narrative Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in fact by

borrowing so heavily from fear and lothing in Las Vegas Stone has achieved The Impossible created a film with a

journalist protagonist whom you actually like because it's part of the course for Liberal films about foreign policy

issues to have a reporter for their hero think of the Year of Living Dangerously The Killing Fields and Under Fire all of

them miserable propagandistic failures with Bland wishy-washy Heroes who spend 2 weeks whatever the action is then run

back to New York to pick up their pullit of prize Under Fire was a particularly egregious example where the filmmakers

went so far as to pretend the Nicaraguan Revolution was actually won by American journalists interesting notion from my

experience reporters who spend a lot of time in war zones are a lot more like James Woods or Hunter Thompson than like

the saintly Wier Hero Of The Killing Fields face it war or as the Americans called

the ongoing massacre in El Salvador low intensity conflict is a dirty nasty

pointless and horrific business and any reporter who makes a living out of covering Wars is seriously Disturbed

which Richard Bole has written by Stone and played by Woods quite clearly is Salvador is that extremely rare item a

well-made thoroughly entertaining political film it does a lot more than the real boil did placing its

protagonist at the scene of the murder of Archbishop Romero by a right-wing Des Squad and having him on the spot

immediately after the Salvadorian Army murdered four American nuns it also depicts the political conversion of the

American ambassador played very well by Michael Murphy a conversion which actually occurred ultimately of course

the film cops out following a battle between the Army and the fmln guerillas who rided the town rather imp probably

on Horseback there comes the obligatory scene where the rebels shoot some of their prisoners and woods runs back and

forth shouting you're just as bad as you each other you're just as bad as each other to both sides actually the line

looks like an afterthought as if it had been dubbed in in post- production over Wood's back why then does stone having

depicted a grand eloquent high energy but especially truthful series of events undercut his own message at the end in

different circumstances one might blame the studio or the executives well they forced him to do it but in this case the

production company is hemdale and whatever the vice of messes da and Gibson neither one was ever were accused

of being a minion of right-wing politicians or liberal Aesthetics I'm afraid it's a case of the director

pulling his punches at the last minute because he's afraid to depict a National Liberation movement in too positive a

light in the same way in his most recent film having the Earth it's not the Americans but the Viet Kong who rape the

Vietnamese heroin this small quibble aside Salvador is an impressive piece of

work it was made mostly in Mexico by some of Mexico's best filmcraft people

it features some of the better Mexican actors Salvador Sanchez Rene Pereira and Roberto SSA in supporting roles the

editing by CLA Simpson and Carlos pente is outstanding and the camera work by a

Duo of American cinematographers Bob Richardson and Tom Richmond is

magnificent has anything changed in our Salvador since the film was made unfortunately it seems not in the runup

to the March elections 40 fmln candidates were killed by death squads and the US military has resumed war

games with the Salvadorian Army meanwhile the country slips further into a cycle of poverty and repression the

reason the Civil War began in the first place

oh my god oh

tonight we present the first of two films directed by David Cronenberg a Canadian biochemistry student who

switched to English language and literature Cronenberg can legitimately be described as the most original

director currently working on the North American continent his films which are always shot in Canada Canadian cities

doubling for New York or marac fall generally within the horror genre they deal with secret scientific experiments

gone wrong cannibalism sexual mutation and epidemic disease depending on your

point of view Cronenberg is either a maker of sick exploitation movies or an aesthetic profet of the Modern

Age Shivers made in 1975 was his first feature it dealt with a hotel suddenly

ravaged by a sexual virus which drove all the guests insane scanners deals in

exploding heads and mind control rabid the second film in our double bill tonight is the story of a woman who

mutates into an erotomaniac cannibal The Dead Zone deals with a man whose

precognitive gifts lead him into madness and political assassination and the Fly is about a man who turns into a giant

fly tonight's tale is that of Beverly and Elliot mantle twin gynecologists

from Toronto whose perverse relationship with their patients and each other leads them into familiarly nightmarish

Cronenberg territory compared to the MA's other films dead ringers is remarkably un bloodthirsty it's based on

a book called twins by Barry wood and Jack jand and is apparently a true story

not that it matters I doubt that the original tale of the mantles was any more like dead ringers than cronenberg's

Naked Lunch was like the William Burrows book Cronenberg films are always first and foremost Cronenberg films the only

compromise to which dead ring had to submit was a title change the word twins having been appropriated by an Arnold

Schwarzenegger film in some ways dead ringers is unique however it's the first Cronenberg film

which features really good acting now I know there are those who will insist that James Woods was good in video Drome

or Christopher walin excellent in The Dead Zone but to my taste the acting in the great man's films has always been

deliriously wooden dead ringers on the other hand has a genuinely fine performance by Jeremy Irons who plays

the twin gynecological brothers it's photographically remarkable too laid down on film via a process called motion

control whereby the camera's moves can be duplicated via computer animation thus enabling Mr irons to play one

brother and get changed go back and play the other brother while the camera tracks ahead of them around corners and

through doors in the old days of film about twin brothers you may recall the camera had to remain in one position and

there was always a blue line running down the middle of the screen the excellent of Photography was Peter

suitski Jeremy Irons is reported to have said that the way he differentiated between his two roles was by always

having one brother on the ball of his feet the other on his heels can it be true or is there more to

his extraordinary performance judge for yourself as you relax kick back and

enjoy dead

ringers did you you like that now movie Drome proudly presents

one of the finest cult films of all time rabid by David Cronenberg Cronenberg is

as we have said the director of The Fly remake and shivers and the Naked Lunch scanners in The Dead Zone a venerable

roster of cult horror movies surpassed by no other practitioner of the genre

not West Craven not Todd Browning not Mario Bava not Dario Argento not John

Carpenter not even the ineffable James whale made as many genuinely weird and

unsettling horror films of the above mentioned only our gento has as thoroughly thought out a worldview and

consistent take on vicious horror lurking behind the most mundane things

yet Argento is preoccupied by a rather infantile misogyny of the depa brand and

like dep makes ultimately boring films Cronenberg on the other hand transcends

misogyny and even misanthropy he stands like Fant in moller's play aside from

things disgusted by them yet amused and physically and fiscally involved as well

the ultimate Celluloid cynic cronenberg's movies portray a sense of physical horror at human sexuality

unmatched in any other charted area of Cinema in addition his films are

preoccupied with the mechanics of surgery and the transmission of disease bearing viruses many of the early ones

including rabid bear a a considerable debt to Night of the Living Dead Cronenberg is one of the only

English-speaking directors allowed the luxury of an unhappy ending could the unspoken rumor that cronenburg is

actually a renegade US army colonel from Fort detri biological weapons station

Maryland attempting to blow the whistle on secret releases of Airborne viral toxins in the New York Subway system

really be true no it could not Cronenberg is as we have said a Canadian

I had the pleasure of reading one of his scripts in the assistant to the producer's office and it was a highly pleasurable experience because there

were no embarrassing and Elementary mistakes of spelling and grammar such as you normally find in screenplays and

director's scripts in fact there were no mistakes at all I mean this guy is not only a great filmmaker he's

literate rabid is in my opinion cronenberg's best it was made in 1976

and is the story of one Rose played by Marilyn ch whose unfortunate involvement in a

motorbike accident leads to bizarre and disastrous results Marilyn Chambers you

may recall as a child was the Miss Purity soap advertising symbol all across the USA and in adulthood became a

major porno star combining the twin American obsessions of cleanliness and sex Miss Chambers is the quintessential

Cronenberg actor next on movie Drome life in and

out of the

saddle Steve McQueen and Ida Lupino in s Pekin PA Junior Bon

now bringing BBC 2's Kennedy night to a close slightly later than scheduled a movie drum special Alex Cox introduces a

highly charged political thriller The Parallax View

[Music]

in September 1963 a man called Richard case Nagel walked into a bank in El Paso

Texas and fired three shots into the wall he then sat down outside the bank

and waited to be arrested when the police came for him he surrendered peacefully telling them he

wanted to be in federal custody because the president of the United States was shortly to be assassinated and he did

not want to be the psy when the assassination occurred Nagel was a US Army intelligence agent

and if we can believe a new book about him also a Soviet spy that in itself is not implausible

double agents with questionable loyalties are the stuff of John lare novels and of actual spycraft consider

our own Kim filby or Anthony blunt agents are always being turned and working for both sides

simultaneously what's interesting about Nagel's claims reported in the book The Man Who Knew Too Much by the American

journalist dick Russell is that he says Lee Harvey Oswald was a double agent

too you don't have to believe all of what Nagel says he's a slippery customer

he served several years in jail for bank robbery although he made no actual attempt to rob the bank and he was later

arrested by stassy agents on the wrong side of the old East German border and exchanged for one of their top

spies but for the record Nagel says that he Oswald and a number of other military

men were sent by US Army or Naval intelligence to various Iron Curtain countries posing as

defectors their mission was to win the confidence of their KGB or Stasi minders

plant false information and come back with the real Goods in the case of Lee Oswald the real

Goods might even have been Marina the woman whom he married there she was the niece of a high-ranking Russian

intelligence Colonel whom the West Was anxious to have defect Nagel says that

he himself became uncertain of his loyalties he alleges Oswald a mediocre

Marksman whom the Marines had uncharacteristically taught to speak Russian actually went over to the other

side and returned to the United States a Soviet agent just as the right-wing

conspiracists always said he was in fact now on the 30th anniversary of the

JFK assassination we're presented with TV documentaries and books like case closed and conspiracy of one which

surprise surprise revealed that Oswald really did act all alone he wasn't a spy at all not for them not for us he didn't

have any friends or co-conspirators I really find it risible to see these CIA and KGB men shaking

their heads and saying ah he was a nut we had nothing to do with him well what do you think they're going to say these

men are paid professional spies employers of Assassins and Killers I question the common sense of any TV or

print reporter who Journeys to Minsk or Langley Virginia pokes a camera in the face of Lee Harvey oswal's case officer

and expects to get the true truth out of the guy it's a trifle naive to say the least the true truth about the JFK

assassination was probably known to most of the major intelligence organizations within a few days if not a few hours of

its occurrence of course the Russians have a big file on who killed JFK and Robert Kennedy they wouldn't be doing

their jobs if they didn't in the same way the FBI must have a file on who killed enrio mate the Italian

industrialist who went up against the Texan oil boys in the 1960s the Indians undoubtedly know who

blew up General Zia's plane the nicaraguans certainly know who ordered the murder of Olaf Palm they've been

dropping hints to that effect for years maybe the French can tell us who killed Hilda ml but of course they won't

because the purpose of secret intelligence is that it be kept secret not from our enemies because they know

already nor from our allies because they're spying on us too but from us

because it's very important we don't know now 30 years on from the most

notable political assassination of the century let's consider a few of the others and there have been a lot and how

the media have explained them to us mate General Zia president of Pakistan

General toos president of Panama all all died in plane crashes reason for the

accident unknown Dr Martin Luther King murdered by a lone assassin definitely

no conspiracy there palm murdered on the street by a lone madman who evaded the

police for months was no conspiracy there either San Francisco Mayor Moscone

and gay supervisor Harvey Milk murdered by a man who'd been driven temporarily mad by eating candy bars no one else

involved last year Petra Kelly murdered apparently by her lover who went mad and

shot himself as well no conspiracy at all well maybe it's comforting perhaps

to imagine all these murders mostly of left-wing politicians were the work of Lone loonies unpaid for and

unplanned but what if they weren't What If there really were conspiracies behind

one or more of these crimes which brings us to The Parallax view a feature film directed in 1974 by

Alan J pul what in it Warren batty and Paul Apprentice played two reporters in

Seattle somebody's trying to kill a lone assassin murder at top the Space Needle set some thinking what if the Assassin

didn't act alone what if a conspiracy was involved in this case the murder

itself seems modeled on the Robert Kennedy assassination with its gun wielding waiter its elusive Second

Assassin and even a briefly glimpsed girl in a polka dot dress the aftermath

however is pure JF FK a Warren Commission style cover up followed by a series of mysterious deaths of witnesses

and journalists the JFK murder really was rough on reporters and Witnesses the

catalog of witnesses who died from heart attacks car and plane crashes gun accidents karate chops to the neck Etc

is very long and justly notorious what's less known is the small core of journalists who lost their lives

investigating the case tonight Paul Apprentice displays a reporter clearly based on the popular

American columnist Dorothy kiligan the only journalist allowed a private interview with Jack Ruby who died of an

overdose of alcohol and bitrates after publishing several articles indicating a conspiracy was

involved two other reporters who dug into the Jack Ruby story also died one of them shot in the head by a patrolman

in Long Beach City Police Headquarters The Parallax view was

co-written by Lorenzo SLE Jr who penned the equally paranoid three days of the Condor along with the early

Batman TV shows he has a fine dark sense of humor as in the scene where batty finds

himself aboard a plane that's carrying a bomb the excellent cinemascope photography is by Gordon Willis who also

shot The Godfather and many of Woody Allen's films The Parallax view was influential

both on pula's own All the President's Men and on Oliver Stone's JFK which

revitalized the media's interest in the Kennedy assassination and contributed to the release of a large quantity of

doctored US Government files an uncharitable listener might suggest that

John Williams soundtrack for JFK was not uninfluenced by Michael Small's

excellent musical score for Parallax view pakula's film inevitably refers to

the Manchurian Candidate that prophetic tale of double agents brainwashing and political assassination magnific

recently filmed by John frankenheimer in 1962 interestingly frankenheimer also

made a film about an attempted military coup in the United States 7 days in May

the same year Kennedy was killed who done it in tonight's film a mysterious

company called The Parallax Corporation appears to be hiring Hitmen and PSIs in

order to commit perfect political crimes Jim Garrison the New Orleans da

who was the hero of Oliver Stone's movie actually accused the canadian-based company permindex of doing much the same

thing hiring political Hitmen to kill canedy and to attempt to kill

deal 70% of the adult American population believe their president was

murdered by a conspiracy who was behind the conspiracy depends on the political and social

inclinations of the person that you talk to right-wingers still claim from time to time that kusov or Castro did it via

their commi prot J Oswald almost everyone in Texas seems to think that Lyndon Johnson had a hand in

it people on the left are not slow to point out that Richard Nixon flew out of Dallas on the morning President Kennedy

died there's tremendous circumstantial evidence that the mafia was involved not least the use of Mafia Hitman Ruby to

silence the alleged assassin Mark Lane and Jim Garrison always said the CIA did it Kennedy

didn't like the CIA they said it led him into a political Fiasco at the Bay of Pigs he threatened to Splinter it into a

thousand pieces and he fired CIA head Allan Dulles and deputy director Charles

P Cabell whose brother was the mayor of Dallas on the fateful day it's possible

but the thesis of Dick Russell's book The Man Who Knew Too Much presents a new version the CIA says Russell was by the

early 60s pretty thoroughly infiltrated by the Russians remember CIA is

theoretically a civilian body which has fought turf wars with the US military since its Inception in

1947 Russell speculates that the clues pointing towards CIA as culprits in the

assassination were in fact false laid there by Texas oil men and an extreme

right-wing faction in the US military this group stretching beyond

the United States in fact an international fascist cabal had the president killed they picked oswal as

the py Russell says because he had intelligence fingerprints all over him

American Soviet and remember he was also a paid informant of the Dallas FBI he was the perfect Fall Guy

disgruntled alienated knowing just a little bit too much his death and that

of a few Witnesses satisfies the different Power groups allowing them to maintain much of their status while the

conspirators move a little higher up the ladder and settle comfortably into place

if it was a coup it was something of a gentlemanly one compared to the Bloodshed following Pet's takeover of

Chile or sukar's reign of terror in Indonesia all quite civilized except for

those Witnesses of course and to Dorothy killigan

one of their top spies but for the record Nagel says that he Oswald and a number of other military

men were sent by US Army or Naval intelligence to various Iron Curtain countries posing as

defectors their mission was to win the confidence of their KGB or Stasi minders

plant false information and come back with the real Goods in the case of Lee

Oswald the real Goods might even have been Marina the woman who whom he married there she was the niece of a

high-ranking Russian intelligence Colonel whom the West was anxious to have defect Nagel says that he himself

became uncertain of his loyalties he alleges Oswald a mediocre Marksman whom the Marines had

uncharacteristically taught to speak Russian actually went over to the other side and returned to the United States a

Soviet agent just as the right-wing conspiracists always said he was in

fact now on the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination we presented with TV

documentaries and books like case closed and conspiracy of one which surprise surprise revealed that Oswald really did

act all alone he wasn't a spy at all not for them not for us he didn't have any

friends or co-conspirators I really find it risible to see these CIA and KGB men shaking

their heads and saying ah he was a nut we had nothing to do with him well what do you think they're going to say these

men are paid professional spies employers of Assassins and Killers I question the common sense of any TV or

print reporter who Journeys to Minsk or Langley Virginia pokes a camera in the face of Lee Harvey oswal's case officer

and expects to get the true truth out of the guy it's a trifle naive to say the least the true truth about the JFK

assassination was probably known to most of the major intelligence organizations within a few days if not a few hours of

its occurrence of course the Russians have a big file on who killed JFK and Robert Kennedy they wouldn't be doing their

jobs if they didn't in the same way the FBI must have a file on who killed enrio mate the Italian industrialist who went

up against the Texan oil boys in the 1960s the Indians undoubtedly know who

blew up General Zia's plane the nicar aans certainly know who ordered the murder of Olaf Palm they've been

dropping hints to that effects for years maybe the French can tell us who killed Hilda ml but of course they won't

because the purpose of secret intelligence is that it be kept secret not from our enemies because they know

already nor from our allies because they're spying on us too but from us

because it's very important we don't know now 30 years on from the most

notable political assassination of the century let's consider a few of the others and there have been a lot and how

the media have explained them to us General Z from the most notable

political assassination of the century let's consider a few of the others and there have been a lot and how the media

have explained them to us mate General Z president of Pakistan General torios

president of Panama all died in plane crashes reason for the accident unknown

Dr Martin Luther King murdered by a lone assassin definitely no conspiracy there

palm murdered on the street by a lone man mad man who evaded the police for months were no conspiracy there either

San Francisco Mayor Moscone and gay supervisor Harvey Milk murdered by a man who'd been driven temporarily mad by

eating candy bars no one else involved last year Petra Kelly murdered

apparently by her lover who went mad and shot himself as well no conspiracy at

all well maybe it's comforting perhaps to imagine all these murders mostly of

leftwing politicians were the work of Lone loonies unpaid for and unplanned but what if they weren't What

If there really were conspiracies behind one or more of these crimes which brings us to The Parallax

view a feature film directed in 1974 by Alan J Pula in it Warren batty and Paul

Apprentice played two reporters in Seattle somebody's trying to kill alone assassin murder at top the Space Needle

set some thinking what if the Assassin didn't act alone what if a conspiracy was involved in

this case the murder itself seems modeled on the Robert Kennedy assassination with its gun wielding

waiter its elusive Second Assassin and even a briefly glimpsed girl in a polka

dot dress the aftermath however is pure JFK a Warren Commission style cover up

followed by a series of mysterious deaths of witnesses and journalists the JFK murder really was

rough on reporters and Witnesses the catalog of witnesses who died from heart attacks car and plane crashes gun

accidents karate chops to the neck Etc is very long and justly notorious what's less known is the small

core of journalists who lost their lives investigating the case tonight Paul Apprentice plays a

reporter clearly based on the popular American columnist Dorothy kiligan the only journalist allowed a private

interview with Jack Ruby who died of an overdose of alcohol and bitrates after

publishing several articles indicating a conspiracy was involved two other reporters who dug

into the Jack Ruby story also died one of them shot in the head by a patrolman in Long Beach City Police

Headquarters The Parallax view was co-written by Lorenzo SLE Jr who penned

the equally paranoid three days of the Condor along with the early Batman TV

shows he has a fine dark sense of humor as in the scene where baty finds himself

aboard a plane that's carrying a bomb double agents with questionable loyalties are the stuff of John lar

novels and of actual spycraft consider our own Kim filby or Anthony blunt

agents are always being turned and working for both sides simultaneously what's interesting about

Nagel's claims reported in the book The Man Who Knew Too Much by the American journalist dick Russell is that he says

Lee Harvey Oswald was a double agent too you don't have to believe believe

all of what Nagal says he's a slippery customer he served several years in jail for bank robbery although he made no

actual attempt to rob the bank and he was later arrested by stassy agents on the wrong side of the old East German

border and exchanged for one of their top spies but for the record Nagel says that

he Oswald and a number of other military men were sent by US Army or Naval

intelligence to various Iron Curtain countries posing as defectors their mission was to win the confidence

of their KGB orasi minders plant false information and come back with the real

Goods in the case of Lee Oswald the real Goods might even have been Marina the

woman whom he married there she was the niece of a high-ranking Russian intelligence Colonel whom the West was

anxious to have defect Nagel says that he himself became uncertain of his

loyalties he alleges Oswald a mediocre Marksman whom the Marines had uncharacteristically taught to speak

Russian actually went over to the other side and returned to the United States a

Soviet agent just as the right-wing conspiracists always said he was in

fact now on the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination were presented with TV

documentaries and books like case closed and conspiracy of one which surprise surprise reveal that Oswald really did

act all alone he wasn't a spy at all not for them not not for us he didn't have

any friends or co-conspirators I really find it risible to see these CIA and KGB men shaking

their heads and saying ah he was a nut we had nothing to do with him well what do you think they're going to say these

men are paid professional spies employers of Assassins and Killers I question the common sense of any TV or

print reporter who Journeys to Minsk or Langley Virginia pokes a camera in the face of Lee Harvey Oswald's case officer

and expects to get the true truth of the guy it's a trifle naive to say the least

the true truth about the JFK assassination was probably known to most of the major intelligence organizations

within a few days if not a few hours of its occurrence of course the Russians have a

big file on who killed JFK and Robert Kennedy they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't in the same way the

FBI must have a file on who killed enrio mate the Italian industrialist who went

up against the Texan oil boys in the 1960s the Indians undoubtedly know who

blew