I love Moviedrome’s sixth season. I mean, I love pretty much every season of Moviedrome - even the worst year is worth countless terrible movie strands on other networks. But what is it I love so much about Year Six? Well, it’s not the selection of films, although that’s incredibly strong. Nor is it the quality of Alex’s introductions, although it’s incredibly high. No, the thing I love about Moviedrome Six: City Under Siege are the opening titles.
Even just thinking about our host Alex Cox sat at his Wurlitzer brings a smile to my face. The jauntiness of the tune he’s playing, the cheesy looks he casts over his shoulder - it’s equal parts hilarious and adorable. Add to this clips of Alex gate-crashing classic movie like The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Thing From Another World and you have one of TV’s great titles sequences. Not just a great Moviedrome credit sequence, you understand? This is the sort of thing they ought to be handing out BAFTAs for.
When your opening’s as strong as this, you can subsequently get away with murder. But while Season Six did feature one of the worst movies ever to air on Moviedrome (Abraham Polonsky’s Romance Of A Horsethief), this year was also brimming over with UK television premieres. The uncut Django, fellow spaghetti westerns Requiescant and Face To Face, quirky horror anthology Grime Prairie Tales - Alex Cox and Nick Freand-Jones deserved the thanks of film fans the country over for making these four movies available to a TV audience.
Season Six was also notable for its screenings of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels, Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, Vincent Ward’s The Navigator, Bob Fosse’s Lenny and Sidney Lumet’s The Hill. There was also a cracking jailbreak double-bill comprising Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped and Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz (Alex recorded the intro for the latter within the titular prison) plus an evening of films by the journalist-turned-author-turned-solider-turned-filmmaker Sam Fuller.
As for the intros, Alex was now such an old hand when it came to thumbnail sketches, the ones he crafted for Year Six ought to have been displayed in a gallery. From using a screening of Rebel Without A Cause to explain how tricky it is to assess the cultural importance of James Dean to criticising the casual racism in Sam Raimi’s Darkman, this was classic Cox.
Further highlights included his into for Walter Hill’s The Long Riders in which he pondered whether menstrual envy might be a thing; his quoting Anne Billson in his piece on John Waters’ Cry-Baby so giving a wonderful critic the spotlight she richly deserves; and his championing of Joseph H Lewis’s The Big Combo which was so breathless that staying up past midnight to catch the classic noir felt less like a chore and more like a duty.
And there there was the evening of July 4th 1994, the night on which Alex Cox introduced the Phil Kaufman remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. With Don Siegel’s adaptation having already received the Moviedrome treatment, our host kicked off with a fine discussion of whether a retread can ever eclipse an original. That I have vivid memories of this screening has less to do with Alex’s essay - excellent though it is - than with the film, or more specifically the film’s ending. I can’t tell you how weird it was to walk to work early the next morning with the sound of that scream and the images of a post-pod world running through my head.
‘But it was just a film!’ you scoff, and you’re right. But a film seen late at night and on Moviedrome, it’s the sort of thing that can stick with you for decades…
Moviedrome - Season Six (1993)
Darkman (May 30th, 10.15pm)
House Of Games (June 6th, 10pm)
Escape From Alcatraz (June 13th, 10.35pm)/A Man Escaped (June 14th, 12.35am)
The Hill (June 20th, 11.10pm)
Cry-Baby (June 27th, 9.40pm)/Lenny (June 27th, 11.50pm)
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (July 4th, 9.55pm)/Romance Of A Horsethief (July 5th, 12.50am)
Gothic (July 11th, 9.55pm)/The Navigator (July 12th, 11.50pm)
Weekend (July 19th, 12.55am)
Rebel Without A Cause (July 25th, 10.35pm)/200 Motels (July 26th, 12.25am)
Django (August 1st, 9.50pm)/Grime Prairie Tales (August 1st, 11.30pm)
Run Of The Arrow (August 8th, 10.15pm)/Verboten (August 8th, 11.40pm)
The Long Riders (August 15th, 10.25pm)
The Big Combo (August 23rd, 12.05am)
Face To Face (August 29th, 10.55pm)
Requiescant (September 6th, 12am)
What Have I Done To Deserve This? (September 20th)
Carrie (September 26th, 10.15pm)
Romance of a Horse Thief, bailed on this after ten minutes on the night.