To all things an ending.
In fact, given that Alex Cox was still in demand as a writer-director throughout Moviedrome’s tenure - he made both Highway Patrolman (1991) and Death And The Compass (1992) during his time manning the ‘Drome - we were fortunate we’d had him as long as we had.
As for his and Nick Freand-Jones’ commitment to the strand, Season Seven’s stellar selection demonstrates that the pair weren’t about to half-arse things on their way out the door. Kicking off with Robert Wise’s superior Michael Crichton adaptation The Andromeda Strain, the last year with Alex took in a brace of out-there biker movies (Girl On A Motorcycle and Psychomania) a pair of pictures about cops wrangling tricky clients (Don Siegel’s Coogan’s Bluff and Richard Fleischer’s The Narrow Margin), together with the first independent movie to emerge from Jamaica - Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come) - the only Hitchcock film to air on Moviedrome - 1948’s Rope - and To Sleep With Anger, the UK TV premiere of which introduced writer-director Charles Burnett to people for whom black American cinema meant Spike Lee, Richard Roundtree and/or the Wayans brothers.
All of the above and a new credit sequence - a beautiful pastiche of the Harry Lime reveal from The Third Man. Stylish, classy and perfectly executed, you could be forgiven for daydreaming about what a Cox noir might look like. At least, you could be if the films that followed it weren’t so endlessly fascinating.
The aforementioned To Sleep With Anger screening really was a coup for Cox and Freand-Jones. Of course, to off-set so niche a movie, room had to be made for relatively mainstream offerings such as John Carpenter’s Halloween (excellent but almost too successful to be thought of as a cult film) and Wes Craven’s urban horror picture The People Under The Stairs. You also get the feeling that Alex wasn’t too chuffed about the South Of The Border pairing of Leonard Schrader’s Naked Tango and Apartment Zero, with Cox’s scorn for the latter including a sound trashing of Colin Firth’s acting technique, or lack thereof.
Other memorable Alex-isms from Moviedrome Seven: Mission To Moscow include his observation that Ted Post’s The Baby has “the most outstandingly sick ending of any film yet shown on Moviedrome”, plus his canny use of his introduction to Godard’s Le Mepris (aka Contempt) as a means of thanking the EU in general and France in particular for defending government film subsidies - “I never thought I’d be grateful to the French for anything…”
The patchier film selections from Season Seven also provided our host with an opportunity to sing the praises of The Band (Robbie Robertson starred in and co-wrote the otherwise unremarkable Carny) and the chance to deliver an introduction for the laugh-free, Lorne Michaels-produced Nothing Lasts Forever that bares so little relation to the film proper, it ought to have aired on April 1st. As for Alex’s suggestion that the script for campy biker horror flick Psychomania might’ve been written by Harold Pinter, I’m still smiling about it almost 30 years on for his having made it.
If it’s the true highpoints of Year Seven you’re interested in, you need look to the season’s final two weeks. For on the penultimate Sunday, Moviedrome proffered a double-bill of Sam Peckinpah pictures, Major Dundee and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. What Alex had to say about these films had such an impact upon this writer, I heavily quoted from both intros throughout The Pocket Essential Sam Peckinpah, the book I was lucky enough to write about ‘Bloody Sam’ in 2000.
Speaking of personal matters, the last movie to air during Alex’s Moviedrome days couldn’t have meant more to Mr Cox; it being Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, a film our host so admires, he lifted both its McGuffin and its unusual credit scroll for his debut feature, Repo Man. Of course, we didn’t know at the time that that was that for Alex curating Moviedrome. But the further removed from it we are, the selection of that final film feels more and more appropriate - a reminder that the films we’d been lucky enough to watch with Alex had had such an effect on him, they’d shaped the films he’d made.
Knowing that Alex was off to shoot still more of his own movies made his departing Moviedrome far easier to stomach. But little did we know that, just three short years later, the ‘Drome would be back, under new, Northern Irish management!"
Moviedrome - Season Seven (1994)
The Andromeda Strain(May 15th, 10.35pm)/Fiend Without A Face (May 16th, 12.45am)
Talk Radio (May 22nd, 11.30pm)
Carnal Knowledge (May 29th, 10.35pm)
Coogan’s Bluff (June 5th, 9.30pm)/The Narrow Margin (June 5th, 11.05pm)
The Harder They Come (June 19th, 11.10pm)
Salvador (June 26th, 11.25pm)
The People Under The Stairs (July 3rd, 11.10pm)
Halloween (July 10th, 10pm)/The Baby (July 10th, 11.40pm)
Carny (July 17th, 11.30pm)
Girl On A Motorcycle (July 24th, 10pm)/Psychomania (July 25th, 12.35am)
Race With The Devil (July 31st, 10pm)/Detour (July 31st, 11.30pm)
Rope (August 7th, 10.10pm)/84 Charlie Mopic (August 8th, 12.10am)
To Sleep With Anger (August 14th, 11pm)/Contempt (August 15th, 12.45am)
Excalibur (August 21st, 10.20pm)/Nothing Lasts Forever (August 22nd, 12.40am)
Naked Tango (August 28th, 10.40pm)/Apartment Zero (August 29th, 12.15am)
Major Dundee (September 4th, 10.20pm)/Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (September 5th, 12.25am)
Kiss Me Deadly (September 12th, 12.10am)