If Moviedrome Year 5 holds a special place in this writer’s heart, it's because it aired during my first year at university. And since it was while I was at uni that a mild interest in movies turned into a bona fide love of cinema, the films that aired during the 1992 run made that much more of an impact.
Likewise Alex's introductions. For within a year of hearing our host sing the praises of F For Fake, I was writing a dissertation on Orson Welles. Likewise, Mr Cox elevated my mild curiosity about Junior Bonner into an full-blown obsession with all things Sam Peckinpah which wouldn't be sated until I wrote a book about 'Bloody Sam' in 2000.
And yes, I can see how the above paragraph might sound like bragging. And no, I'm not entirely going to apologise for that. But still, it was in Year Five that I stopped being merely interested in movies and became determined to write about them.
Of course, it didn't hurt that Moviedrome Five: Flux was jam-packed with terrific films. Kicking off with a Mad Mad 2/F For Fake double-bill, Messrs Freand-Jones and Cox treated us to two scoops of Cronenberg (Dead Ringers, followed by Rabid), a brace of monster movies (Lewis Teague's Alligator and Larry Cohen's Q), rare outings for ace foreign language films such as Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques and Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, plus - to close things out - John Schlesinger's The Day Of The Locust and Moviedrome MVP Robert Aldrich's The Big Knife, a double-bill that makes filmmaking looks less like an art and more like an abattoir.
Since Moviedrome could only ever be so niche, there was still the odd visit to the mainstream. However, Alex seemed increasingly determined to point up the short comings of these bigger budget offerings. Take John Carpenter's Escape From New York which our host - not inaccurately - suggested would've have been twice the picture had it actually been shot in the Big Apple. And in using a screening of Clint Eastwood's Play Mistry For Me to criticise the fad for thrillers in which unstable women are the principle purveyors of pain, he did a great job of encouraging the audience to argue about rather than accept what it was presented with.
As for a downside to this year, it was that, cum 1992, it was very clear that not every film that was promised actually ended up appearing on Moviedrome. Take John Byrum's Interiors, which Alex mentioned in the season opening and which would have looked very much at home alongside The Big Knife and Day Of The Locust.
But for the occasional - very mild - disappointment, there were plenty of things to cherish about this particular year. Things like the series trailer for Lolita which made its screening sound like the movie event of the summer. And then there were those credits, in which a guy who'd grown up obsessed with the original King Kong was given the chance to go ape in black-and-white.
Yes, Season Five was prime Moviedrome. Prime-ate Moviedrome, if you must.
Moviedrome - Season Five (1992)
Mad Max 2 (May 24th, 9.20pm)/F For Fake (May 24th, 11pm)
Dead Ringers (May 31st, 10.15pm)/Rabid (June 1st, 12.10am)
Junior Bonner (June 7th, 9pm)
The Serpent And The Rainbow (June 14th, 10.25pm)
Les Diaboliques (June 29th, 12.30am)
The Spider's Stratagem (July 6th, 12.30am)
Escape From New York (July 12th, 9.40pm)
Alligator (July 19th, 9.55pm)/Q - The Winged Serpent (July 19th, 11.25pm)
Wise Blood (July 26th, 10.40pm)/Witchfinder General (July 27th, 12.20am)
Lolita (August 2nd, 11.30pm)
Play Misty For Me (August 9th, 9.30pm)
Walker (August 16th, 9.50pm)
Tracks (August 23rd, 9.40pm)
The Day Of The Locust (August 30th, 10pm)/The Big Knife (August 31st, 12.20am)