Droming On - Moviedrome Year Four
Introducing that staple of grindhouse cinema, the double-bill.
And lo! In the year of our lord 1991, the double-bill - for so long a key part of the drive-in/grindhouse cinema landscape - became a Moviedrome fixture. And the Moviedrome viewers saw that it was good, and yet again wondered out loud why it hadn’t been a part of the strand from the off…
Whatever the reasons for the double-bill delay, these pairings would be among the real highlights of Moviedrome IV: The Voyage Home. Badlands and The Prowler; The Duelists and the original Cape Fear; Hells Angels On Wheels and Rumble-Fish - true, some of the combinations made more sense than others, but no matter. That Sundays now sometimes meant two movies and two Alex Cox intros helped turn casual Dromers into die-hards.
Kicking off at 9.50pm on May 19th with a rare screening of Don Siegel’s The Beguiled, Year Four came complete with a smart new credit sequences in which the camera swirled around a diner - populated by various incarnations of Mr Cox - only to pull back and reveal that the set is in fact a miniature, above which lurks a life-size Alex complete with clapper-board.
The movie selection, meanwhile, were notable not only for the duo-screenings but for bringing George A Romero (Knightriders), Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris) and Ken Russell (The Music Lovers) into the BBC cult film fold. As with previous years, Cox and producer Nick Freand-Jones made the odd concession to the mainstream - Michael Mann’s Manhunter and James Foley’s At Close Range were both that bit slicker and more star-studded than your standard Moviedrome offering. However, if it was out-and-out cult pictures you were after, Herk Harvey’s Carnival Of Souls, Richard Wenk’s Vamp and Nicolas Roeg/Donald Cammell’s Performance were guaranteed to hit the spot.
Speaking of Performance, I can’t be the only person who’s never been quite the same since its July 7th ‘Drome airing. With Harry Flowers’ white Rolls-Royce speeding off into the distance and Randy Newman’s ‘Gone Dead Train’ kicking in on the soundtrack, I was as doubtful that I would ever again see anything quite like it as I was certain that Performance was unlike any…. anything I had experienced before.
A superb if shattering experience, Roeg and Cammell’s masterpiece might have been a good note on which to close Year Four, especially with Moviedrome’s future being anything but certain. In the end, Paul Schrader’s Mishima brought the curtain down on the first day of the second week of September. Eight months without Moviedrome - why, it’d be enough to drive a man to drink. Which might be why Year Five started things off with a double…!
Moviedrome - Season Four (1991)
The Beguiled (May 19th, 9.50pm)
Vamp (May 26th, 9.50pm)
Knightriders (June 2nd, 10.35pm
Something Wild (June 9th, 10pm)
Carnival Of Souls (June 23rd, 10.10pm)
Badlands (June 30th, 9.35pm)/ The Prowler (June 30th, 11.10pom)
Performance (July 7th, 9.25pm)
At Close Range (July 14th, 10.15pm)
The Duellists (July 21st, 10.15pm)/ Cape Fear (July 21st, 11.55pm)
The Music Lovers (July 28th, 10.15pm)
Manhunter (August 4th, 10.10pm)
Hells Angels On Wheels (August 18th, 10.30pm)/Rumble-Fish (August 19th, 12.05am)
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (August 25th, 10.15pm)
Solaris (September 1st, 10.15pm)
Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters (September 8th, 10.15pm)