I LOVED Moviedrome when I was younger. As a callow teenager I spent innumerable hours glued to the telly every weekend waiting to see what incredibly strange, sometimes sleazy and often downright bizarre filmic treats awaited me on that much-loved BBC 2 show.
As a rare TV platform for the dustier corners of cult movie heaven, it introduced me to some of my favourite ever films, films I still love to this day. It was Moviedrome that opened my eyes to everything from Walkabout to Witchfinder General. I gobbled up all the information the oddly skeletal figure of Alex Cox spewed out in his little introductions before the films rolled and I loyally videotaped every week’s weird and wonderful offering. I remain indebted to all concerned.
That’s why I’m so pleased to see that Moviedrome is back. Thanks to the good people at Belfast Film Festival Back To The Moviedrome is a series of screenings taking place in Belfast’s cosy Beanbag Cinema in Donegal Street every Thursday night. Arriving with the blessing of Alex Cox himself and later host Mark Cousins, it’s a series of events that promises some magical movie experiences for cult aficionados and first timers alike. A film from each season of the show that ran from 1988 to 1997 will be screened, often with those cute little Alex Cox introductions intact.
Already this has thrown up the devilish delights of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s brilliant 1982 debut film Diva and Roger Corman’s masterful slice of crazed 60s sci-fi The Man With The X Ray Eyes. Next up is the incredible Carnival Of Souls (June 8). Herk Harvey’s film is one of the cheapest but strangely affecting B-movie horrors ever made, coming over like a Bergman arthouse film made by a carnival huckster. Using old deserted fairground locations and boasting amateur actors hamming it up in excessive face paint, it’s a truly creepy, dreamlike exercise in cheap and cheerful drive in movie magic.
Made for next to nothing in rural Kansas in 1962, it feels like a lost Twilight Zone episode such is it’s dreamy almost surrealistic tone. Candace Hilligoss is a nervous young blonde who goes along for the ride when two local hot rod hoodlums challenge each other to a race. On a narrow bridge one of the cars plummets into a flooded river, throwing Candace to her apparent doom. As the police drag the mud for bodies she suddenly turns up, dazed and confused, by the side of the road. Her nightmarish visions are only starting though.
If that doesn’t float your cult canoe how about John Huston’s utterly sublime Wise Blood (June 11)? A late in the day masterpiece from the great director, it’s a mean and moody slice of true Southern Gothic.
Other titles promised for future screening as part of Belfast Film Festival’s Back To The Moviedrome season include the brilliant 1978 reboot of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, the original Westworld and Sam Peckenpah’s utterly unhinged Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia.
:: More at belfastfilmfestival.org
