Perhaps it was because of the strange split series of previous years. Maybe it was due to the licensing budget being cut. Either way, Moviedrome 1999 was a decidedly truncated affair.
Spanning just nine weeks and comprising only 11 films, Moviedrome’s ninth season* wasn’t much of a season at all. If they didn’t have a whole lot to work with, host Mark Cousins and producer Nick Freand Jones could be commended for packing the strand with banger after banger (as the young people, by which I mean that nice black man in the BBC advert, are prone to say). Oh yes, and there was a new credit sequence - an Ipcress File-esque affair which brought to mind the excellent Third Man-inspired titles of Alex Cox’s final year.
As for those bangers - yeah, I’m running with it - they comprised a 200% cult movie in the shape of Jonathan Demme’s women-in-prison picture Caged Heat, plus Peter Chelsom’s eccentric seaside story Funny Bones and Robert Siodmak’s 1946 adaptation of The Killers (little did we know that Don Siegel’s 1964 stab at Hemmingway’s tale would screen in a later season).
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