Moviedrome

[colinr0380]

The big event of the week though is BBC4 doing a tribute to Moviedrome on Thursday 10th July. The films being shown are nothing too exciting, just the original Wicker Man and Don't Look Now again, but they are going to be shown with their original Moviedrome introductions for the first time since their original broadcast. jlnight brought this up to me a few days ago that there is a BFI Southbank season of Moviedrome films with their original introductions showing throughout July and August, so this must be the BBC's contribution to tie in with that season. The 1988 Alex Cox introduction to The Wicker Man was the very first Moviedrome introduction, showing the director's cut version of the film on television for the first time, and that is followed at the other end of the series by Mark Cousins' 2000 introduction to Don't Look Now, during his 'white void' period (which was the one that was providing the initial suggestion that the BBC were giving up on Moviedrome by having Cousins do all of his links in a studio rather than in evocative locations as had previously characterised the series. The other sign that the BBC were giving up on the series was also that the final series was the one in which they did not show the best available versions of the films they screened - most notably in Cousins talking up a half hour longer 'director's cut' version of Luc Besson's Leon, and then we got the theatrical version, pan-and-scanned to add to the indignity! And Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx was also shown pan-and-scanned and dubbed into English. Although to balance it out even in that final year there were screenings of Clubbed To Death and the surprisingly little shown since Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine team up Blood & Wine to savour).

Amusingly, as Cox says in his introduction, The Wicker Man was cut down on its original theatrical release to act as the second half of a double bill with... Don't Look Now. So in addition to the Moviedrome tribute, the BBC have cheekily recreated the theatrical release of the films here!

Here's the BFI discussion about Moviedrome with Nick Freand Jones and Alex Cox.

The clips mentioned that get cut out of the discussion, in order that they get mentioned:
the Film Club introduction to The Long Goodbye by Cox
Barry Norman on RoboCop
Moviedrome: Sunset Boulevard
Moviedrome: The Terminator (interestingly the film was not shown for the first time uncut on UK television until a few years after that, in Robert McKee's Filmworks series in 1993!) - Also if they wanted examples of Cox being a bit disgusted by modern cinema violence, the two big ones that come to mind are the Moviedrome introduction to Darkman and the Forbidden Weekend intro to Bad Taste
(NB: re: Samira Ahmed's mention of the controversy about it, The Last Temptation of Christ was shown in Channel 4's "Century of Cinema" season in 1995)
Moviedrome: 200 Motels
Moviedrome: Assault on Precinct 13
(The mention of the locations and having a 'San Francisco season' is presumably the one where they did the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers on location at the Transamerica Pyramid. And the 'Hungary season' is presumably Cox's final one in 1994 with titles like Contempt and Apartment Zero - love the slightly bored hairdresser looking on in that intro!)
Moviedrome trailer from 1997 introducing Mark Cousins
Moviedrome: Exotica
Kennedy Night: The Parallax View

When was the last time that The War Game was shown on the BBC? The last Peter Watkins in general I remember was a surprise appearance of Culloden on BBC2 back in April 1996, and I think that only occurred because it was the 250th anniversary of the battle!

I believe the only previous showing of The War Game was on 31 July 1985, as part of a season marking the fortieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So now I guess it's for the eightieth?

I was in the audience for the BFI Moviedrome discussion, though at a different angle to the stage than the cameras.

Great stuff, Colin!

Moviedrome locations:

1988: studio in Television Centre (Film Club intros in the Lloyd's building)
1989: Arizona
1990: Spain
1991: LA (concreted LA River, Chateau Marmont, Santa Monica Pier, etc.)
1992: New York
1993: San Francisco (Escape From Alcatraz of course)
1994: Budapest
1997/98: ?
1998: ?
1999: Edinburgh
2000: white void studio

I did like the anecdote in the discussion about Nick Freand Jones being called up and berated by the producer of some Timewatch documentaries that aired just before Cox's introduction to The Parallax View in that "Kennedy Night"! No wonder they got so riled up when Cox talks about documentary crews thinking they are breaking new ground by interviewing those involved and then reporting the established line as gospel - even if he had not intended it to be a slight against the documentaries shown beforehand, the reaction of the Timewatch person probably revealed that at least they thought so!

I attended the screening of The California Dolls, with Nick Jones introducing. I thought he was just going to do the intro then go home but no, he sat through the whole thing. Afterward at least one audience member approached him to sign their Moviedrome Guide, which he did. I spent a few hours in the BFI library beforehand - managed to find info that Electra Glide in Blue got about 3m viewers on its Moviedrome screening. That would have been about average for that timeslot wouldn't it?

The BFI have just uploaded the just under 50 minute documentary Moviedrome: Welcome To The Cult, which presumably was made in tandem with last year's film season.

(We may need to move the Moviedrome-focused posts from this thread to a dedicated Moviedrome one in General Film Discussion, if possible)

Thanks for the heads-up! That doc was made exclusively for the BFI Player so I'm surprised they uploaded it to youtube. You couldn't even access it from the Mediatheque at the BFI. To be honest Jones and Cox have pretty much told the same story of the genesis of the strand through all the articles last year, the on-stage talk at the BFI and this documentary.

I didn't realise how wobbly the start of the Scarface intro was! I could not have imagined that would be used in a retrospective show years later.

I have a Moviedrome mega-post to unleash but it's not quite ready yet. I was at the BFI the other day to extract more info for it and verify a few details. Maybe another time.

[colinr0380]

I thought that we needed a dedicated threat to the BBC's Moviedrome series presented by Alex Cox from 1988-1994 (and Mark Cousins from 1997-2000), especially after the BFI's dedicated season to it last year. A lot of the introductions are on YouTube at the moment, but the "Video Tasties" channel has just begun to helpfully collate every available video introduction into season long videos. They currently have the first season from 1988 and the second series from 1989 up, and hopefully will be continuing to do the others.

For those without currently uploaded video introductions there is the Moviedromer Tumblr site, which has all of the introductions in written form and links to other uploads of the introductions on YouTube.

(For my part I can add an unfortunately low audio quality version of the introduction by Cousins to White of the Eye in 2000 to the roster)

[The Curious Sofa]

I loved Moviedrome but often didn't feel on the same page as Alex Cox when it came to the introductions and found that Mark Cousins was far more to my taste.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I only originally caught Moviedrome during the Mark Cousins era and then Scene by Scene. He was a great gateway to excellent films when you're just starting out.

And his style can be nicely parodied too
https://youtu.be/qX9crnz6vQg?is=1pcg1jakTKSu5uLf
A Story of Children and Film was a fantastic documentary too.

[jlnight]

I know Colin has posted the video to Clubbed to Death but here is the transcript to the intro.


Moviedrome locations:

1988: studio in Television Centre (Film Club intros in the Lloyd's building)
1989: Arizona
1990: Spain
1991: LA (concreted LA River, Chateau Marmont, Santa Monica Pier, etc.)
1992: New York
1993: San Francisco (Escape From Alcatraz of course)
1994: Budapest
1997/98: Amsterdam
1998: Berlin
1999: Edinburgh
2000: white void studio

[jlnight]

Moviedrome: The ratings (BARB-arella)

Spoiler

During the Moviedrome retrospective in 2025 there were a bunch of interviews doing the rounds, with Cox stating in Starburst mag:

"Moviedrome was on at the time when there were only four television stations in Britain… so when we showed The Terminator, it would play on national television and 20 million people watched it, which is pretty amazing. But that was a different time."

Was it really 20 million? Well no, not quite.

The following is a compilation of BARB ratings of the Moviedrome films, extracted from various issues of The Listener, The Stage, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Times and Broadcast magazine. The ratings are in millions, the numbers in brackets () indicate the positions in the BBC2 weekly chart (top 10/30), if at all.



Electra Glide in Blue - 3.25m (no.9)
Barbarella - 3.30m (6)
Johnny Guitar - 3.25m (joint 10)
The Fly (1958) - 4.90m (4)
The Man Who Fell to Earth - 2.35m (10)
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - 6.10m (1)

The Man with X-Ray Eyes - 3.98m (3)
Jabberwocky - 3.10m (9)
DOA (1949) - 2.71m (joint 10)
Thing From Another World - 3.63m (7)
Incredible Shrinking Man - 3.38m (6)
California Dolls - 4.70m (2)
THX 1138 - 2.41m (10)
Night of the Comet - 2.08m (23)
The Grissom Gang - 2.61m (7)
Ace in the Hole - 1.65m (11)
Two-Lane Blacktop - 2.07m (16)
Trancers - 4.66m (1)
Buddy Holly Story - 3.67m (5)
Five Easy Pieces - 2.67m (12)
Sweet Smell of Success - 2.21m (17)

Assault on Precinct 13 - 6.69m (1)
Brazil - 1.30m (19)
Get Carter - 4.28m (1)
Goin' South - 2.49m (7)
Terminator - 6.30m (2)
Honeymoon Killers - 1.73m (16)
Ulzana's Raid - 1.96m (17)
An American Werewolf in London - 3.55m (3)
Yojimbo - 1.45m (23)
A Wedding - 3.08m (5)
The Phenix City Story - 1.96m (15)
Walk on the Wild Side - 1.71m (22)
The Big Silence - 2.91m (5)
A Bullet for the General - 1.98m (19)
Down By Law - 1.21m (26)

The Beguiled - 3.17m (5)
Vamp - 4.15m (1)
Knightriders - 2.36m (12)
Something Wild - 5.02m (1)
Carnival of Souls - 2.17m (17)
Badlands - 3.97m (5)
Performance - 2.57m (13)
At Close Range 2.78m (8)
The Duellists - 1.59m (18)
Music Lovers - 1.37m (24)
Manhunter - 5m (1)
Hell's Angels on Wheels - 3.65m (5)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - 2.34m (15)

Mad Max 2 - 7.46m (1)
Dead Ringers - 4.63m (5)
Rabid - 1.93m (23)
Junior Bonner - 2.81m (joint 10)
The Serpent and the Rainbow - 3.68m (7)
Escape from New York - 5.83m (2)
Alligator - 5.30m (1)
Q The Winged Serpent - 3.15m (7)
Wise Blood - 1.44m (29)
Play Misty for Me - 3.76m (12)
Walker - 1.51m (26)
Day of the Locust - 1.78m (22)

Darkman - 4.70m (2)
Escape from Alcatraz - 4.14m (1)
Cry-Baby - 1.88m
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978) - 3.58m (6)
Gothic - 1.79m (26)
Rebel Without a Cause - 2.03m (21)
Django - 3.34m (5)
Grim Prairie Tales - 1.57m (20)
Run of the Arrow - 3.76m (5)
Long Riders - 3.68m (6)
Carrie - 3.09m (6)

The Parallax View - 2.17m (24) (JFK Night) (Timewatch got 2.51m, no.18)

Andromeda Strain - 1.90m (16)
Carnal Knowledge - 2.45m (13)
Coogan's Bluff - 4.22m (3)
Narrow Margin - 1.51m (27) (The Hyams remake was shown the previous night (ITV) and topped the films chart with 9.40m!)
The People Under the Stairs - 2.30m
Race With the Devil - 2.65m (10, Sunday Times have it as "Rave With the Devil")
Excalibur - 2.66m
Naked Tango - 2.28m
Major Dundee - 2.3m (Times TV Top 20 feature films)

Scarface - 2.47m
Westworld - 2.11m
The Fly (1986) - 1.97m
Exotica - 2.33m
Spanking the Monkey - 2.13m
Logan's Run - 2.66m (10)

Cat People - 1.57m
Carrie - 2.02m
Leon - 3.79m (8) (9 on barb.co.uk)

Carlito's Way - 1.78m
The Osterman Weekend - 1.81m (28) (barb.co.uk)

Rumble in the Bronx - 3.27m (7) (10 on barb.co.uk)
Walkabout - 2.18m (13 on barb.co.uk, 2.19m)




Analysis: where do we start with this? I suppose you could say that if you wanted eyeballs on your channel back then, the answer would be to programme a load of violent action films. We loved Arnie, we loved Clint and we went ga-ga for (early) Mel Gibson, with Mad Max II (opening film of the '92 season) representing a kind of ratings peak which it would never reach again. On the other hand ratings were never the object for Moviedrome. These were, after all, films that didn't quite fit into the schedules easily, shown on the national broadcaster's second channel on a Sunday night.

Even though the data here should not be taken too seriously in terms of the quality of the titles, the numbers are solid and represent the most original take on Moviedrome that is not just another discussion about what defines a 'cult' film.

The other thing to look out for is that in weeks where there was a double-bill shown, the first film always outrated the second film, which mirrors what Nick Freand Jones said about late-night cinema double-bills where you would stay awake for the first feature and wake up during whatever followed it. Clearly the viewer would be committed, up to a point, then decide they had to prioritise what they were doing on a Monday morning (work, school, college, hospital appointment, court appearance, etc.). Look at the significant drop off between, say, Dead Ringers and Rabid!

The Cousins era data was more difficult to come by (BARB ratings were compiled in an inconsistent way, across all publications) but some of the same things applied, with violent action films like Leon and Rumble in the Bronx proving the highest-rated titles with the viewers.

By the time Moviedrome ended in the year 2000 terrestrial TV had added another channel, satellite and cable subscriptions felt like they were more prominent than they were in the early 1990s and VHS rentals and sell-throughs provided more exposure for home viewing than when the series started. Lower viewing figures might not be surprising given this context but it also felt like it was more of an 'event' when a film turned up on the telly. The more avenues for viewing at the end of the decade maybe diluted this communal experience. Who knows? (Quien sabe?)

If anyone is curious as to what kept Terminator off top spot for its relevant week then it was Argentina v Romania at Italia 90. Arnie, I'm afraid, was no match for Maradona or Hagi! (To demonstrate how live football was a big draw even back then, the third spot was taken by second-half coverage of West Germany v Colombia).



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