30th August 2008 - Courtyard Theatre - 7.15pm

Don't let the sour grapes of Jonathan Miller dissuade you from acknowledging that David Tennant is a genuinely good actor. What he may lack in experience he more than makes up for with sheer charisma alone. It's obvious that a big percentage of this season's audience for Hamlet will be here by dint of 'that man from Doctor Who' and I bet the RSC are more than happy to see Shakespeare inspire a wider catchment. Miller confuses celebrity with talent. They aren't mutually exclusive, for sure, but you can certainly work out who has the talent and, frankly, who's simply interested in getting into the pages of Hello! magazine.

Hamlet is a long play, exists in various forms, and is subject to cutting from any company that seeks to perform it. Director Gregory Doran gives us a three and a half hour epic, minimally staged to focus the audience on the performances and the story. The production is immaculately done and uses a huge set of revolving mirrored panels at the back of the set to allow actors to move from scene to scene and enable quick set changes. The mirrors also symbolically shine onto the audience itself much like the way Hamlet describes holding a mirror up to one's true nature. For me, the major point about Hamlet is whether the actor playing the part chooses one of two interpretations: he actually is mad or he's simply acting mad, whether he actually is that cruel to those that love him or he's just out to deceive his bete noir, Claudius, by any means necessary.

Tennant handles much of Hamlet's 'madness' well. He's unrelentingly cruel to both Ophelia and his mother, Gertrude and Tennant is very steely when it comes to finally getting to the point. Which is good because Hamlet spends much of the play clouded by self-doubt and recrimination as to whether avenging himself on Claudius is the proper thing to do. The soliloquies are all present and correct and give due deference to Hamlet's inner turmoil. 'O, that this too too solid flesh would melt...' allows Tennant to try and strike the difference between 'good' and 'bad' Hamlets that any audience must get from the lead actor.

This is melancholic Hamlet, despairing over the situation he finds himself in and is a lead into the later 'to be...or not to be' speech where he's got himself in such a tizzy that he's considering taking his own life. This is technically done very well, and naturalistically, by Tennant but my main criticism is of his tendency to then push the 'mad' Hamlet into the territory of comedy. Even when Hamlet has inadvertently killed rambling old Polonius and Claudius and his Switzers have captured him with a view to packing him off to England to quietly assassinate him, Tennant is playing for broad laughs. Admittedly, he is very funny as only Tennant can be in 'charismatic charmer' mode.

But, it dissolves the very real threat from Claudius and whereas another actor might let the audience know that Hamlet totally understands that threat I feel that Tennant didn't achieve that. There is a lack of clarity in the performance that left me unmoved at times. You should be at the end of your tether with Hamlet because he prevaricates where you want him to strike but then you must sympathise with his psychological ruminations too. The bluff of his madness should show his cleverness and humour not just what a bit of prat he is. Tennant had me disliking Hamlet for being a twit when I should be loving him for both his self-determination and morbidity. However, Tennant does manage to make him athletic, fast and powerful too which is exactly what a production like this needs. He may not have quite nailed the central performance but by golly he gives it masses of energy and carries the whole thing for three hours plus.

Patrick Stewart as Claudius is, for me, the real centre of the play. His dual role as the ghost of Hamlet's father also shows his real prowess. As the ghost he's unearthly and commanding. He is quite breathtaking in the way he turned Claudius into the Don Corleone of the Elsinore court. Sharp suited, velvet voiced but scheming and pernicious, he turned the King into a razor sharp manipulator of all those around him. His soft entreatments to Gertrude, use of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the various court diplomats provide you with the exact measure of him - a suave snake in the grass - and Stewart was perfection. There is a stunning lead up to the interval where Claudius finally reveals to the audience that he did do the dirty deed and murder Hamlet's father. Hamlet overhears and finally gets the courage to stab the murderer. Knife raised, crescendo of music and we're plunged into the interval waiting to find out if Hamlet has killed him. An unusual place to rest the narrative but quite effective. An old fashioned cliffhanger.

The rest of the company carry off their parts with precision. Oliver Ford Davies is irritating and yet endearingly funny as the silly old codger Polonius, Penny Downie spirals from grand dame of the court to tragic, worn out victim as Gertrude and Mariah Gale was especially good as the doomed Ophelia and as a portrayal of true madness brought on by grief after the death of her father it showed Tennant's somewhat overly bombastic performance for what it was in some respects. Hauntingly sad, she encapsulated the real consequences of Hamlet's own avenging manipulations.

It's a modernist, populist Hamlet to be sure with a very strong cast, elegant production and Gregory Doran's firm direction. It lacks much psychological depth - the clash between Hamlet and Gertrude in her bedroom abandons any Freudian reading and that's a mistake as it doesn't allow you to form connections between the way the male characters work with or against the female characters beyond the plot, especially the potential mirroring between Hamlet and Ophelia - and it energetically builds up the tension and yet allows it to fizzle out just when it should be at its peak in the duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Tennant's good but not great, Stewart towers over them all and fortunately three and a half hours does go by quite nippily.

Images courtesy of Jamie Wallace.

Hamlet - In rep until 23rd November at the RSC, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon. Transfers to the Novello Theatre, London from 3rd December. Booking for London opens to the public on 15th September.

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EPISODE 5: THE NEW GIRL

Don once again finds himself having to deal with issues between TV comedian Jimmy and his wife, Bobbie. Joan finally finds Don the perfect secretary.



Watch the episode here:

The New Girl on SupernovaTube

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The Invasion Of Time

February 1978

‘You have access to the greatest source of knowledge in the universe’
‘Well, I do talk to myself sometimes’

Looking back on the Williams era, I do recall that this was a time when my viewing of the series was getting very sporadic. I would see the odd episode but not entire stories. With ‘The Invasion Of Time’ I remember clearly the moment when the Sontarans appeared at the climax of episode four but I never saw the concluding episodes until many years later. My commitment as a viewer was gone and would only return in 1980. Now why was that? I had a sense that somehow I hadn't got the joke. Read on, dear reader. And, to many of us, that opting out may have been a blessing in disguise.

These six episodes of Doctor Who are clearly the point where the foundations on which the programme itself rested and the way it was received and perceived by an audience were turned on their head. Sometimes very crudely and sometimes with great subtlety. I have been rather negative about this story in the past but a recent viewing of the DVD has allowed me to soften my approach.

...what should have been a design tour-de-force, the inside of the TARDIS, is reduced to location filmed hospital corridors and a swimming pool

In terms of the production, it does look rushed and hastily put together which is very symptomatic of Season 15 as a whole. The production design is really quite dreadful. Apart from the re-decorated President’s office with its cog motif lead lined walls, a crude visual symbol of time, like a broken clock, the rest of the production makes Gallifrey look like a strangely cramped and deserted airport lounge. Wincingly awful plastic loungers litter the sets, the Panopticon resembles a game show set, despite the pleasing multi-level aspects of it, and what should have been a design tour-de-force, the inside of the TARDIS, is reduced to location filmed hospital corridors and a swimming pool with the odd setting used glibly to pad out the last two episodes.



It’s also become The Tom Baker Show. It’s here that you really do recognise that the leading man has been elevated in importance and the narrative drive of the series has switched from the motives of the protagonists as a whole to the desires of the main character/actor. He gets all the best lines, the story is firmly framed from the Doctor’s perspective and the Doctor as the hero figure has been transformed into a nonchalant man about galaxy who only cares about the balance between good and evil if it’s something he can do between meals without running his appetite. And surely, if the Doctor is so nonchalant about the events around him then the audience will become equally complicit in this?

The scenes between John Arnatt, as Borusa, and Baker are the best things in the whole story.

The Doctor is central to the narrative and everyone else becomes a cipher, including Leela. It’s so alarming to see Leela reduced in this way and the writers don’t care if she doesn’t get a good exit or why else would they marry her off to a drip like Andred with whom she’s had but a single conversation. It’s sloppy and thoughtless. And Rodan is the Romana 1 character out for a test drive. And they forget about her half way through the story. The only actors who seem to come out of this with good marks are Milton Johns and John Arnatt. Johns is great as the slimy Kelner who switches allegiances at the drop of a hat and is a vibrant symbol of corrupt Time Lord society where survival is the name of the game. The scenes between John Arnatt, as Borusa, and Baker are the best things in the whole story. They are played as reflective drama where two powerful individuals evoke a grudging respect for each other despite their past history. It adds depth to a Doctor that spends most of the story saying ‘ Look at me, aren’t I clever, fooling you all with my madness and trapping the Vardans.’



This could have been an exceptional story. It’s essentially about an apparently insane, god-like Doctor who sells out the Time Lords to the Vardans after ensconcing himself as Lord President. This had the potential to be 'Caligula In Space' or 'Madness Of Lord President Doctor' but it falls so very far from that because it’s too easy to spot the bluff in Baker’s performance and the Vardans are really so crudely drawn as villains, not just as bits of tin foil flummery but also in their rather dull human forms. We never know the motivation behind the Vardans and the Doctor’s plot to trap them on Gallifrey apart from it being a trap within a trap laid by the Sontarans. Is he unpicking the Gallifreyan defences just because he can? The Vardans are just….there…and they don’t do anything despite bragging that they can travel along any wavelength. The feigning of the Doctor's madness just isn't used to its full potential here and there are too many nods and winks to the audience along the way to give it any dramatic punch.



Unfortunately, the Sontarans don’t fare well, either. Yes, we see more of them this time but they end up spending episodes five and six simply chasing round the TARDIS gradually reduced to comedy monster/villains. The notion of them being a threat is all but a fleeting memory. And cockney accented Sontarans, at the time, must have sounded very strange. They still do. Dudley Simpson does have a better time with them, giving the score a signature Sontaran theme with some squashy bass synths that adds much to their impact.

...a spin on the nature of heroism and the notion of the Doctor as ‘hero’ and what it means to be a hero with an ego, with authority, pride and the notion of deceit

There is a lot thematically here that’s interesting but it’s really hampered by the crudeness of the settings and the ciphers that the other characters are reduced to. As well as a spin on the nature of heroism and the notion of the Doctor as ‘hero’ and what it means to be a hero with an ego, with authority, pride and the notion of deceit, there’s also a great deal about world politics and the demise of the UK to almost third world status in the late 70s. At the time there were attempted military coups to replace Wilson, and this is reflected in the way the Doctor seizes power as President. The story also has a number of things to say about revolutions, dictatorships, state control and political allegiances. The banished Time Lords are Russian dissidents sent out to Siberian labour camps, the Panopticon and its Time Lord ranks yet another representation of Cold War Russia.



For me, it is the very last scene of The Invasion Of Time that neatly sums up what the programme had become at that point. Its legacy rumbles on today. The Doctor is in the TARDIS, alone again, has said goodbye to Leela and K9 and what does he do? Pulls out a massive box labelled K9 Mark II and laughs his head off into camera. To me that, and the equally infamous ‘even the sonic screwdriver can’t get me out of this’ address to the camera aren’t clever ‘breaking the fourth wall of television’ notions. They are direct assaults on the audience’s perception of the show and the narrative. For fourth wall cleverness just watch Up Pompeii because it at least gives you the reason why they did it – Frankie Howerd. Tom isn’t Frankie and the show isn’t a sit-com with a live audience in the studio but Williams and Baker perhaps would like you to think so. They see the deconstruction of narrative production as a clever acknowledgement of a sophisticated viewer. There’s a sense of overweening hubris in that final scene. ‘We’re getting away with murder and having a good laugh at ourselves, the programme and even you, dear audience, and don’t you just love it?’

...it depends if you like your Doctor Who frivolous or whether you like it a bit more serious

It’s the last nail in the coffin of naturalism and the ushering in of meta-narrative structures and performance codes that on the one hand make the following seasons really very interesting but also on the other begin the ‘Doctor Who eats itself’ cycle that finds its apotheosis in the JNT years. At least at the end of 'School Reunion' when yet another version of K9 is constructed, we didn't see Tennant and Sladen laughing their heads off to camera. Unless they cut that bit out, thinking it was an in-joke too far. In the end it depends if you like your Doctor Who frivolous or whether you like it a bit more serious. As a teenager I found the frivolous version rather embarrassing but now I take it in my stride, understanding what Graham Williams was striving to do on an ever shrinking budget, beset by strikes and a Tom Baker who clearly wanted more say in the programme.

The DVD carries an interesting and lively commentary from Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (K-9), Anthony Read (Writer) and Mat Irvine (Visual Effects Designer), a documentary
Out of Time: The cast and crew look back at the making of this story, featuring Chris Tranchell (Andred), Milton Johns (Castellan Kelner) and Colin Mapson (Visual Effects Designer), The Rise and Fall of Gallifrey: A look at how the portrayal of the Time Lords and their home planet has changed over the years; The Elusive David Agnew in which script editors Terrance Dicks and Anthony Read try to find out who really wrote The Invasion of Time; Deleted Scenes From the film sequences for Parts Five and Six and some optional CGI effects where the tin foil Vardans just about manage to look better. Anything's an improvement.

THE INVASION OF TIME (BBCDVD2586 Region 2 DVD Cert PG)

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27.08.08

DISCLAIMER: Cathode Ray Tube does not host the episodes itself. Links are via third party hosting sites like Megavideo. Often those episodes get pulled off the hosting site and the link doesn't work. That's out of this site's control and apologies if you came here and found dead links. We're looking for new ones all the time so we'll post them when we can.

OK, I've just checked and the embedded versions are unavailable. However, the direct links to Megavideo do work so don't click on the embedded version, click on the Megavideo links in the post. I'll remove the embedded versions.

22.08.08

More streaming episodes from Season 2 of Mad Men . Quite simply one of the best dramas on television at the moment.

As ever follow the links to Megavideo to enable full screen playback and don't be fooled by the poker. Just click on the centre of the screen.

EPISODE 4 - THREE SUNDAYS

Peggy's family hosts lunch for a new priest in their church. Don and Betty enjoy a family weekend together. Freddy and Ken take a client out to lunch who stirs Roger Sterling's heart. Sterling Cooper staffers work double time to prepare for a last minute pitch meeting.

Three Sundays on Megavideo

EPISODE 3 - THE BENEFACTOR

Trouble arises on the set of a commercial while Don plays hooky from the office. Meanwhile, Harry, determined to make improvements in his career, tries to gather support around a controversial sponsorship. Betty joins Don when he attempts to appease his clients with a friendly dinner.

The Benefactor on Megavideo

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Like a jump cut in a film...we're back to the present. John Foxx has been incredibly prolific since 1997. Before then he'd actually become 'the quiet man' figure that appears throughout his early work. The collaboration with Mancunian Louis Gordon seems to have brought him out of the shadows and their 10 year working partnership was capped in 2006 with the release of two albums, From Trash and Sideways. When you listen to the two albums together it's really astonishing that they came out of the same sessions.

FROM TRASH
John Foxx & Louis Gordon
Released 6th November 2006
Metamatic META12CD



It's as hard as nails, this. Where Sideways is a nostalgia driven synth-pop paradise, this is Foxx and Gordon in purer form, full of 'you and whose army?' attitude. The trance-y opening title track declares 'they will always come from trash' as Foxx describes working class revolution through pulp sub-cultures. The beats are meaty and pump away over ragged synth riffs whilst you can imagine an army marching towards you. Freeze Frame is a funky electro-brutalist ditty that raises the fear of ultimate identity theft through a web of static and big squashy synth swoops.

Your Kisses Burn, a weird psycho-sexual cinematic cry for help via Iggy's Nightclubbing finds Foxx on very good form vocally. The album goes rather electro-pastoral with the enchanting Another You, a lovely song about escaping your roots by becoming another person. It's a classic piece of Foxx synth pop with a memorable chorus and a Kraftwerk minimalism in its construction. Tumbling drum patterns herald one of the album's stand out pieces, Impossible. Foxx intones about reaching out for impossible dreams and his Moby like cries scream over a drum, guitar and synth background that sounds like that wonderful Australian band, Severed Heads. It's quite superb and has a big, panoramic, wide-screen feel to it.

...a classic piece of Foxx synth pop with a memorable chorus and a Kraftwerk minimalism in its construction.

Boomp3.com

Thanks to Louis for rescuing Never Let Me Go. The simplicity of this, in a very Laurie Anderson Big Science manner, is sweet and a sensitive counter to all the blood and thunder of the previous track. It's short but heartfelt. For me the best thing on the album is A Room As Big As A City. It's about the vast power of imagination even if you're confined to one room in the chaos of an all devouring city. An electro-mantra for our times, Foxx whispering into your ear about the possibilities of dreaming, a keyboard riff that emerges echoing Kraftwerk's Neon Lights and sweeps that remind me of Endlessly ...this is one of the best songs he's ever done. Brilliant. (Catch the extended version on Sideways)



What sounds like the opening to the Casualty theme doesn't prepare you for the audio assault of A Million Cars with Foxx in wonderfully crooning mode over a heavy, hard drum and rhythm track and stinging synth washes. Definitely a major track on the album, its Panavision Technicolour imagery conjures up streams of vehicles shooting through vast cityscapes late at night. Gorgeous. Foxx gets funky again with Friendly Fire, with his love of Iggy Pop clearly showing in the swaggering drum track and pumping synths, as he examines media spin and conspiracy. The album closes with a further examination of changing identities in The One Who Walks Through You. A shuffling drum track, squealing synths and the killer chorus echo Systems Of Romance.

Certainly the strongest of the Foxx-Gordon collaborations, it contains at least three or four very outstanding songs and a consistent atmosphere and progression with loads of references to pulp SF tropes, including contemporary fears about rampant technology and the loss of individualism. Highly recommended.

SIDEWAYS
John Foxx & Louis Gordon
Released 3rd April, 2007
Metamatic META13CD



This is a 2 CD set with the second disc given over to an in depth interview with Foxx about the From Trash sessions. Let's deal with the interview first as it's relevant to the review of From Trash. He's interviewed again by journalist and manager Steve Malins and Foxx first explains that the From Trash album is rooted in both his and Louis' Northern working class backgrounds and how they both negotiated their way through their careers. But it's also about Northern attitude and curiously Malins picks up on a sort of Liam Gallagher approach in the way Foxx and Gordon articulate their position as Northerners working in the industry. It's reflected in the music too.

Films like The H Man, Robot Monster and Planet Of The Apes seem to be indelibly printed on Foxx's brain...

Foxx goes on to talk about 'trash' elements like B movies, science fiction, comic books and synthesisers. I really empathise with Foxx's comments about people dismissing his favourite things as 'rubbish' when he dearly loves them and with his observations about going to the cinema as a child. Films like The H Man, Robot Monster and Planet Of The Apes seem to be indelibly printed on Foxx's brain much as Doctor Who is probably burnt into my own. This is a whole area that I didn't know Foxx was into and listening to him felt like meeting a kindred spirit.

Influences such as Sunset Boulevard, film noir and Technicolour are touched on and Foxx also comments on the inspiration for the song Impossible where it articulates the adult imposition over childish ambitions and dreams. He sees life as something that needs the dimension of dreams and fantasy for it to keep evolving. Another You also touches on the feeling of being trapped in the past, marooned in re-evolving confrontational sub-cultures and reinventing yourself to manage the challenge. He name checks Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music as an inspiration for using trash aesthetics to move on from the redundant late 1960s. The conversation moves onto urban living. Cities as new entities, including rain composed of human sweat, he sees as just another possibility amongst many in a series of interconnecting maps that we can choose from. This is reflected in the songs A Room As Big As A City and A Million Cars.

The discussion closes with some observations about personality changes and fractured identities and the B movie ideas of possession.

Malins also mentions Foxx's intention to junk the track Never Let Me Go and Gordon rescuing it for the album and how it feels very similar to Laurie Anderson in its simplicity. Friendly Fire is his comment on the nastiness of political jargon and spin doctoring but also a wider human fallibility where help is often a hindrance. The discussion closes with some observations about personality changes and fractured identities and the B movie ideas of possession. Freeze Frame seemed to prompt ideas about news gathering and surveillance footage as well as obscured narratives. He notes the use of improvisational singing for the album to give the vocals that 'frayed at the edges' quality and the need to be imperfect in the three week production of the music. Malins discusses the tracks that never made it to From Trash, particularly Neuro Video, which eventually arrived on the Sideways album. This last section delves into the whole production period for the album and provides fascinating insight to their working methods. Foxx is very relaxed and erudite. I sat through the whole interview in one go.

Now, Sideways. Disc 1.



This opens with And The World Slides Sideways which suggests an alternate dimension created through rampant technology by way of Wendy Carlos meets The Beatles. Its washes of synth, tinkling percussion, crashing drum machines and Foxx's treated vocals are superb. Very atmospheric and suggests the album is going to take us on an electronic archaeological dig into futuristic nostalgia. If you loved Metamatic and Systems Of Romance, then welcome back.

Underwater....has guitars! Shock....horror. Pulsing bass synths and keening melody lines form the structure with Foxx's vocals, here sounding much more like the Foxx on those earlier albums, crooning about a submerged Ballardian world. This is followed by X-Ray Vision, which is quite frankly an instant Foxx classic, all sweeping, dare I say it, Numan-esque synth riffs and then a fantastic vocal that's thrillingly psychedelic. It's like The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, that old Ray Milland Roger Corman B movie, as scored by George Harrison and Gary Numan.

Car Crash Flashback does, forgive the pun, a bit of a left turn, and it's like Yello and Kraftwerk had a baby. Punchy rhythms and snaky synth riffs, vari-speed vocals so totally old skool it's gone through a time warp to meet itself in the future. Again, it's Foxx dabbling with the Ballardian obsession of the human merging with the machine. In A Silent Way is meaty drum beats, lovely synth riffs, sing-song melodies and is a trip back to Systems Of Romance. Did he time travel back to Conny Plank's Cologne studio and bring this back for us? An outstanding nostalgia fest, a sort of reconfigured I Can't Stay Long for us old reprobates, and with a contemporary twist that'll keep the ravers happy. Stunning psychedeli-synth (oh, is that a new word...) pop genius.

Did he time travel back to Conny Plank's Cologne studio and bring this back for us?

Boomp3.com

I'm still of the opinion that Sailing On Sunshine is the weakest track here. For me, it's...a bit too 'up' and brings back scary moments from In Mysterious Ways. It's a competent enough bit of surrealist pop but not my favourite. Great ending though with the crashing drums and synth riffs and floating backing vocals. A grower, I think. The synth-gasms keep on going with Use My Voice, another retro, psychedelia infused seranade. Foxx's voice is in fine form as he describes 'mapping the city, mapping the sky' and confirms 'we're losing the streets'. He's calling out to a landscape of the past that he knows urban expansion has already engulfed. Great stuff.

What sounds like Tubular Bells having sex with Giorgio Moroder via David Cronenberg's Existenz assaults your brain on Neuro Video. Foxx's techno obsessions, both musically and thematically, get a thrashing rhythm track, bubbling synthesisers and booming, treated voices intoning 'direct transmission'. 'Who did we kiss?' indeed. The album concludes with a superb little instrumental Phone Tap - moody and evocative. Like something off the flip-side of Bowie's Low album. There are also two bonus tracks - extended versions of A Room As Big As A City and Impossible - see the From Trash review for a view on those.

Phew. More like this please, John and Louis.

Live photos of John and Louis courtesy of Mark Smith.

John Foxx's MySpace page: Foxxmetamatic

Websites: www.metamatic.com Quiet City

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SILCD1267
CD released 22nd September 2008
MP3 downloads currently available from Silva Screen

I've been rather ambivalent about both series of Torchwood to date and I still feel it hasn't yet found its feet. The proposed Children Of Earth 5 episode epic promised for Spring 2009 will I hope be the specific shakedown that the format still needs. However, one thing that I'm impressed with on the series is the music composed by Murray Gold and Ben Foster. Boy, they've kept us waiting for a CD release but it's worth it. The album boasts 32 cues with a total of 78 minutes of music so you certainly get your money's worth here.

Murray's work is actually limited here to work he did for Series 1. I believe he covered the theme, the incidentals for the first and fourth episodes of Series 1 and then handed duties over to Ben Foster. Ben, an alumnus of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama has been orchestrator and conductor for Doctor Who, and has collaborated with Murray on many other projects including the films Alien Autopsy, I Want Candy and Death At A Funeral. Ben has also orchestrated scores for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The League Of Gentlemen.

His work for Torchwood has so far received nominations for Best Music at the 2006 and 2007 BAFTA Cymru Awards. Many of us will also have seen Ben brilliantly conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Doctor Who: A Celebration, which was held at the Wales Millennium Centre in November 2006 as well as similar duties conducting the BBC Philharmonic at this year's Doctor Who Prom.

...a surprising and welcome expansion beyond the original work

So, here we get some of Murray's cues from the very first episode of Torchwood and the main theme. The theme is the same opening titles music you'd recognise - all shifting strings, treated vocals and urgent rhythms - but it then segues into a selection of the incidentals for the show and adds a driving piano motif. It's a surprising and welcome expansion beyond the original work. There are also some creepy electronic tonalities in the incidentals for the very first episode of the series, Everything Changes, that bear the Murray Gold 'experimental' trade mark.

The rest is a well deserved showcase of Ben Foster's work on both series to date. Foster's approach is to put a singular emphasis on the lush use of the string section of the orchestra whereas Gold often goes for more brass and woodwind. Both composers also have a pop sensibility and will throw in electronic washes and beats as well as electric and acoustic guitars. And Doctor Who is a very different beast, where Gold is not only trying to provide a consistency overall but is also putting together soundscapes for 13 episodes that have a different setting and flavour week in week out. What's clear here is that Foster has created a rich, consistent mood for Torchwood that's much darker, more melancholic than the more schizophrenic qualities of Doctor Who. His aim is to get under the skin of the characters in the series, give them definite themes and motifs as well as musically framing the series darker settings. Series 2 is given greater representation here and I think justly so, no matter what you think of the quality of the individual episodes themselves, because the trajectory of Series 2 was the loss of two main characters, Owen and Toshiko and the tragedy of Jack's past catching up with him in the form of his brother Gray.

...that builds and builds into a smashing piece of epic music and is as good as anything Gold has provided for Doctor Who

The tragic nature of the Gray story arc is brilliantly evoked by Memories Of Gray and Gray's Theme (from Adam and Exit Wounds) where the vocal talents of Annalise Whittlesea, combined with fabulous strings, create an elegaic mood for the character's downfall. The themes for Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato are also given plenty of room here with the utterly wonderful Owen's Theme; a subtly shifting piano and guitar motif with bold colouration from strings and those recognisable Torchwood electronic tonalities that builds and builds into a smashing piece of epic music and is as good as anything Gold has provided for Doctor Who, and Death Of Doctor Owen Harper; a lovely orchestral piece with choir and a repeat of the piano motif. This is again used on Owen Fights Death to even greater effect when the piano motif is given a full blown orchestration and develops into a huge, epic piece that gradually gathers speed. Toshiko gets a melancholic theme played on woodwind in Toshiko Sato - Betrayal And Redemption, combined with urgently driving percussion and strings with a final coda on what sounds like an oboe which is often reminiscent of Gold's score for Blink.
Boomp3.com

Captain Jack is represented by a thrilling theme of chugging strings, brass flourishes, pulsing electronics, guitars and crashing percussion, iterations of which are heard throughout the series, and it is certainly a highlight of the album. In contrast you also have Jack's Love Theme that again showcases Foster's use of strings and piano and is a much slower, more contemplative piece. I also love the Jack Joins Torchwood theme too, using that little Torchwood signature with woodwind and strings to slowly build up to a variation on Jack's theme proper.

Pearl And The Ghostmaker shows that Foster can deliver something slightly different in its use of a slowed down carnival motif

Welcome to Planet Earth is supremely poignant and has a feel of Michael Tippett with those high strings. The Chase is a theme from Sleepers and watching at the time I thought the music was exceptional and had moved on a level from Series 1. It drives along energetically and is a very rousing action theme. Pearl And The Ghostmaker shows that Foster can deliver something slightly different in its use of a slowed down carnival motif and that signature passage of piano that's almost vaudeville like in feel combined with the harps. Definitely the music is a stand out element from a very risible episode.

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There are some other equally good moments - I Believe In Him - a sensitive piece of orchestration and piano, Goodbyes - the moving and sad coda to Exit Wounds that encompasses passages of the Owen and Tosh themes, Death Of Toshiko - stunningly beautiful and highly reminiscent of the Philip Glass music from The Hours. Special mention to for the achingly sad music for Adrift - both A Boy Called Jonah and Flat Holm Island are gorgeous chamber pieces that were a notable element that went into the success of that episode. The album closes with The End is Where We Start From. Appropriate that we leave Torchwood at that point as the music signals a triumphant moment of hope that the remaining members will carry on. The Mahler like sweeping strings are joined by percussive beats and an uplifting coda. Lovely.

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This is an exceptional album with hardly a duff track but perhaps it's a little too melancholic for those used to the more ebullient and triumphal music that's become much loved in Doctor Who. It might not get the big concert adulation that Gold's music has but Foster is as equally gifted a composer. Torchwood is darker and the music reflects this but it's no worse for that with its concentration on themes for each of the characters and their respective story arcs. Judging by the splendid compositions here, I for one would be interested to see what Ben Foster could do with Doctor Who itself.

Torchwood Series 2 Reviews: Torchwood Archive

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Those of you with reasonably intact memories will recall my review of the 2 CD reissue of John Foxx's seminal work Metamatic...oh back in November of 2007. Now, I've been meaning to revisit Foxx's work since then simply because since 1997 he's been incredibly prolific. Well, here we are finally catching up with the electronic music pioneer. Foxx has since taken the Metamatic album out on the road, performing all of it live, and has released new material on a regular basis.

OK, I'm going to discuss a number of releases over the next few days, initially with a look at those related to Metamatic and then a few leaps forward to recent albums like Sideways and From Trash.

A NEW KIND OF MAN
Released 28th April, 2008
Metamatic META16CD

Essentially this is a live album, recorded during the 2007 Metamatic tour, and is therefore a fitting legacy that captures Foxx and collaborators Louis Gordon and Steve D'Agostino presenting the original album and related B sides to an appreciative audience. The striking thing about this album is how it accurately recreates the rough and ready synth sound of the 1980 tracks and also gives them a subtle reworking to give them that necessary 'kick up the arse' live versions would require. Gordon has been quietly beefing up the drum tracks whilst Foxx has extended and tinkered with various songs, notably Plaza, A New Kind Of Man and Touch And Go, and buffed up the various B sides from the period, including the Smash Hits flexi-disc track My Face and the recontextualised 21st Century (it was originally 20th Century, the B side to Burning Car).

Foxx also sounds in good voice too. I've always thought he was a pretty good singer even though you couldn't really describe his singing as belonging to the typical manner of a pop crooner. The later albums, The Garden and The Golden Section tend to be better showcases for his voice, but he appears to be in fine fettle on tracks Underpass and No One Driving. The other elements that leave you giddy with excitement after listening to this are the sense of power you get from revisiting those old compositions with their brittle percussion, all enveloping drones and buzzing. The alienating electronic swoops and screams and the often brash metallic rhythm tracks and noises create a bizarre tension between nostalgia for the original sounds and a newness, as if hearing the whole album for the very first time. That's a clever thing to do and Foxx and his band manage to make a 'future nostalgia' out of Metamatic and it fits right in with the current interest in 'old skool' analogue electronic sounds from contemporary bands and musicians.

The debate is, naturally, what's the point of a live album that just recreates what happened in the studio? There are slightly tweaked and extended versions here and that's great but many of them have been released again as 'live studio versions' on Live From A Room (As Big As A City). A New Kind Of Man is a thrilling last hurrah to the Metamatic period and it will satisfy old and new fans alike, especially those who saw the 2007 tour and fans (yes, like me) will snap up every version of every track that's offered. Foxx, Gordon and D'Agostino have clearly spent much effort in making the live presentation of Foxx's masterpiece work for a modern audience and by the sound of it they lapped up every minute of it.




METAL BEAT
Released 4th October, 2007
Metamatic META14CD

A limited edition companion piece to the remastered reissue of Metamatic in 2007 this 2 CD set finds John Foxx in conversation with Steve Malins, primarily to recall the making of Metamatic back in 1979 and 1980. Each 15 minute segment of chat on the first CD is bookended by demo versions of No One Driving and Touch And Go and various electronic tinkerings whilst the second CD has extracts from the demo of Like A Miracle, an extended version of Plaza as well as a short piece called Jane and tracks rescued from a 1980 tape.

The 'interview' starts off a little unevenly with Foxx a little unsure and guarded but Malins puts him at his ease and the conversation really starts to flow. Foxx describes, in his softly spoken Lancashire burr, being 'burnt out' after fronting Ultravox and retreating to a cramped studio in North London, Pathway, to work on the ideas that would eventually form Metamatic. It's clear that he valued the entrepreurial spirit of Punk and certainly without that sense of DIY it's unlikely that he'd have had the guts to set up his own label, the now legendary Metal Beat, and get signed to Virgin. However, like many so called New Wave bands and musicians he could see how the Punk movement would eventually get filtered through corporate commercialism and he's very honest about how boring he felt it had become. He certainly saw the writing on the wall.

He clearly sees Kraftwerk as a modernist German response to the hideous social scars of Nazism and WWII

The chat turns to working with Gareth Jones and Foxx obviously has warm admiration for his collaborator on Metamatic just for his sheer willingness to experiment with and uncover new sounds. He also discusses many of the artistic and literary influences that filtered into the album - Jean Tinguely's self-destroying machines, the Futurist movement, Burroughs and Ballard. What comes across here is a man very passionate about art, architecture, films and books and that for me confirms much of my own reading of his work. This man isn't a mere diletantee pop musician; he's an artist with plenty to say about the modern world, the role of technology and media and the way our environment is constantly changing. He is a keen observer of his surroundings and makes some very interesting comments about London in the late 1970s and how you can never truly get back to your roots because the city and landscape of your past is being rewritten as you live and breathe. I was particularly intrigued about how he links the Beatles with Kraftwerk. He clearly sees Kraftwerk as a modernist German response to the hideous social scars of Nazism and WWII in much the same way that the Beatles were a working class British response to post-war austerity. This implies to me that his response to Punk and the Britain of Labour's 'winter of discontent' was in a similar vein and it took the form of a European electronic psychedelia.

Ballard's unique observations of the world, of cities, cars and buildings were filtered in a subtler way through Foxx's music...

The second CD takes up the story with Richard Branson's creation of Virgin and how it was run so effectively by Simon Draper. Foxx acknowledges the good support from them and Draper in particular. He suggests that touring Metamatic at the time would have been difficult and he wasn't exactly keen. Current technology however now allows him to present it the way he wants to, including the potential use of shooting the audience with infra-red cameras and timelapse and the rich possibilities of using phone cameras. He's excited by the way he can now re-think live presentations. He acknowledges the influence of Ballard, through Crash and The Drowned World, as the only English middle class author who reflected the way the world constantly fell apart and rebuilt itself. Ballard's unique observations of the world, of cities, cars and buildings were filtered in a subtler way through Foxx's music and he also comments on Last Year In Marienbad as a romantic, stylist influence. He sees Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition as a prescient work about today's media and Crash as a 'metaphor for post-carbon conditions'.

They chat briefly about the discovery of Cinemascope and To Be With You on some old demos and how these were rebuilt for the re-release of Metamatic. He recalls the creation of Jane for a New York DJ - 'a sort of ident thing' (it's quite lovely) and it seems quite sad that he never sent it to her. Malins then asks him about the commission for '20th Century Box' - a Janet Street-Porter arts programme (a track which became 20th Century), the recording of Burning Car and This City. The construction of Metamatic is described as a process of stripping away ('an anti- Trevor Horn') and what became The Garden as an opposite process, putting stuff back in and playing in a band again. He also mentions an affiliation with Asian dub and how this influenced the album where he and Gareth would physically dub the tracks on the production desk and mentions bass player Jake Durant's and keyboard player John Barker's contributions.

The CD concludes with a chat about the image of the suit in the armchair which is apparently a powerful cue from a still seen in Famous Monsters Of Filmland and Foxx recognises a universal pool of shared references that other artists like Cindy Sherman and David Lynch dip into. A lot of Metamatic is regarded as a commentary on films and cinema and how other worlds can be opened up by films - a 'dream grammar' - and Foxx eloquently talks about screen logic and the disjointed nature of cinema.

I would recommend this CD if you want to hear Foxx talk about his craft because he's a fascinatingly erudite but reserved man. The snippets from the demos and experimental work don't dominate but are also intriguing in themselves. Let's hope we can get a similar discussion going when the remasters of The Garden and The Golden Section are released later this year.

If you liked this then I would highly recommend you pop over to read the following interviews with Simon Sellars too: Ballardian

John Foxx's MySpace page: Foxxmetamatic

Websites: www.metamatic.com

Up next: Reviews of From Trash and Sideways

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Mad Men is set in the world of Manhattan's advertising industry of the 1960s and its ensemble cast take us through the emotional ups and downs, the pressures and self-abuses of both the ad-men and their secretaries, their wives, children, friends and neighbours. The first season is now available on a three disc Blu-Ray edition with a boat-load of extras and commentaries.

...he can sell you everything from cigarettes to slide projectors in a very unique way

The focus is on Don Draper, played with such efficient coolness, mystery and ruthlessness by the lovely Jon Hamm, who is deemed one of the advertising gods at the series' main setting of ad agency Sterling Cooper. He's on the way up, knocking aside those in his way whilst also dealing with younger colleagues out to usurp his position. And he hides plenty of secrets and isn't who he seems to be. But he can sell you everything from cigarettes to slide projectors in a very unique way. He can make anything uninteresting the most glamourous thing in the world and he can make you want it. This culminates in the the stunning episode The Wheel where Draper brilliantly pitches the idea for the Kodak Carousel slide projector whilst the episode itself uses it as a metaphor for the ideas of nostalgia, the unrecoverable past and the relentless wheel of progress. One of the first season's main plot lines was to slowly chip away at the stony exterior of this man, who frankly can be the most unpleasant and uncaring individual when he wants to be, and expose some of his inner workings.

Whilst the first season attempts this, and still keeps his enigma intact, we also get to see how he and his office colleagues manipulate each other, their secretaries and the various clients they come into contact with. Into this mix, bearing the 1960s background in mind, we also get to see the casual racism, sexism and emotional exploitation that goes with the territory. The series doesn't hide from the vices of over-drinking and chain-smoking, the disasters caused by casual sex, the flagrant acceptance of anti-Semitism, the angst of deeply closeted homosexuality...it's all here in all the self-loathing glory and hypocrisy of the early 1960s when the world was on the cusp of massive social and cultural changes.

Peggy gets sucked into this dog eat dog world but it's her ambition to be more than a mere letter taker and phone call fielder that raises the interest...

The pilot, shot over a year apart from the actual first run of episodes, introduces and establishes this milieu and centres on Elisabeth Moss' character, the new secretary Peggy. Peggy gets sucked into this dog eat dog world but it's her ambition to be more than a mere letter taker and phone call fielder that raises the interest here and it's fascinating to see how creator Matthew Weiner uses her to depict the hideous exploitation of women in this workplace as well as illustrate the nascent feminist ambitions lurking under the surface. Moss is really superb as Peggy. She's charmed by one of the younger ad-executives, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser in a stunning role as an utter slime-ball), who has a one-night stand with her before he gets married and she emerges, emotionally battered but with a fiery gleam in her eye, to get on and beat these dysfunctional men at their own game.

Whilst this transpires, she's mentored by office manager Joan, an uber secretary who knows how to play all these games. Contrast both women with Betty, Don's wife, a repressed and brittle blonde whose ambitions and emotional life are subservient to the whims of her husband. She's not an entirely sympathetic character, even though Don is hopping into bed with the bohemian Midge and, later, Jewish store owner Rachael, because she's so distant from him and from us as an audience. Their relationship consists of stone cold psychological warfare with Don wheeling Betty out as a pretty face to impress clients, using an analyst to delve into her apparent psychosomatic ailments and Betty behaving almost like the children she's bringing up.



Throw in the two partners of Sterling Cooper - the creepy, sleazy Roger (a barnstorming performance from John Slattery) and the mad as a box of frogs Bertram, who seems to be more bothered about his devotion to Zen than the client melt-downs of the company he runs - the snobbish neighbours, various sets of parents, relatives popping out of the woodwork and you get a fascinating ensemble of wounded characters, all with their own hang-ups, glittering against the chic 1960s design of the offices, restaurants, hotels, bars that are full of wonderful detail and observation.

...writing that's witty and sharp and observes the way media impacts on our social and psychological well being

This is all delivered with a leisurely pace, allowing us to explore characters and issues with great depth and detail. This pace won't be everyone's cup of tea. If you're looking for remarkable acting, writing that's witty and sharp and observes the way media impacts on our social and psychological well being, stunning period design and slowly evolving plots and character development...then welcome aboard. If you're after explosions and car chases...try elsewhere. In this first season, I would highly recommend the following episodes: Marriage Of Figaro; where Campbell returns from honeymoon and the Drapers have a birthday party for their kids with a razor sharp observation of the class and social divide; New Amsterdam; where Campbell pitches an idea to a client and tramples all over office etiquette and Draper uses the opportunity to take him down a peg or two; 5G where Draper's past comes back to haunt him and we find out he's not who he seems; The Hobo Code where closeted designer Salvatore is given the spotlight and we delve further into Don's shady past; and Long Weekend where the excesses of an office party have serious consequences for Roger. Plus add in the aforementioned The Wheel and you've got a very consistent, high quality drama.



The season hardly puts a foot wrong and I would say there isn't one really duff or dull episode in the whole run. The drip-feed plots and sub-plots keep you watching and once you get to know the characters, even if you can't stand most of them, you actually care about what might happen to them. The entire season is stunningly presented in HD on this Blu-Ray disc and the image quality is immaculate. Lovely flesh tones, vivid colours, deep blacks and the detail in the 1080p resolution is breathtaking. This is a fine example of HD and should prove to the many nay-sayers that the format can truly deliver and make the viewing experience so pleasurable with a rich palette that echoes the period setting and captures fine detail. It really is superb. Sound quality is high too with a DTS lossless mix that provides crisp dialogue and a suitably atmospheric sound field. It isn't an action series so the field is relatively low key anyway but again the standard is very high.



Extras a plenty too. There are 23 commentaries! Pretty much all the cast members are involved, and producer/writer Matthew Weiner, the directors, designers...some episodes even feature two commentaries. I've listened to three on this set so far with the ensemble cast commentary on Marriage Of Figaro one of the best. They are a bit dry, especially the solo commentaries, and some are more successful than others but I've only scratched the surface. Featurettes Establishing Mad Men, Advertising the American Dream, Scoring Mad Men all do what they say on the tin and provide a good grounding in the making of the show and the cultural backdrop it's set against. Music Sampler is a wasted opportunity and only gives us some of the music featured in the show. I suspect a rights issue might have held them back from including the full music soundtrack. Pictures of Elegance is an HD gallery and there's a brief preview of Season Two but it doesn't feature any new footage.

If you missed this on BBC4 or BBCHD then now is the time to catch up with a truly excellent drama that was well deserving of its Emmy, Peabody and Golden Globe awards. It won't be back for Season Two on BBC4 until 2009 so you've no excuse not to get this Season One Blu-Ray DVD. This Blu-Ray release hasn't arrived in the UK yet (only a standard DVD release is available) but you can get this on import and it will play quite happily in your PS3 Blu-Ray drive because it's region-free.

(Screencaps courtesy of Blu-ray.com, Anthropomorphic Fruit and LadyBlueLake)

Mad Men - Complete Season One (Lions Gate Blu-Ray - Region Free - 3 Discs - Not Rated - 0031398240761)

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Underworld
January 1978

‘The Quest Is The Quest’

‘Going on and on…and unable to remember why’

This is going to be hard. I’m trying my best to accommodate the Williams era, often having an internal argument over the way the producer was shaping the show, within the budgetary constraints at the time and the results he produced. So far, it’s been very up and down in terms of quality. With Underworld we reach perhaps one of the lowest ebbs of the Williams era.

...the series itself has always been littered with CSO nightmares

No, I’m not going to have a go at the CSO. It’s clearly a design decision forced by the production having gone over budget. Sometimes, you sneakily admit that it comes off in some scenes, just about, but on most occasions it really does look so wrong. However, the series itself has always been littered with CSO nightmares and the Letts/Pertwee era is equally at fault. It gets away with it because Letts always argues that they were very much experimenting with a new technique. With Williams, it’s a budgetary decision purely and simply. And the received wisdom that watching it in black and white makes an improvement is rubbish and is a very feeble argument for the lacklustre nature of the story.

‘Aren’t we clever, re-telling a Greek myth on a Saturday tea-time?’

But we shouldn’t beat ‘Underworld’ over the head for the CSO. No. It commits a far greater sin. It’s actually very boring, fairly obvious and lacking in drama. Plot in a nutshell – the Doctor and Leela join Jackson and his crew on a quest for a lost Minyan ship and to rescue the Minyan race banks. Throw in a mad computer and that’s your lot. Where it tries to elevate its own status is in making the plot a space-age retelling of the Jason & the Argonauts myth. It sounds better if you’re saying to the audience, ‘Aren’t we clever, re-telling a Greek myth on a Saturday tea-time?’ No, frankly, you’re not. Especially when there is a very weak coda at the end of episode four where the Doctor wistfully points out to the viewers…’oh, you’ve been watching a re-telling of Jason & the Argonauts, betcha hadn’t spotted that!’

And somewhere in the middle of this, there is a non too subtle attempt to jump on the then in vogue bandwagon of Joseph Campbell’s analysis of myths and archetypes. Star Wars ransacked that particular cupboard in 1977 and Underworld plays with a few of the scraps and throws in Time Lords as the ancient Gods to the Greeks of Jackson and Co of the R1C. Greek myth is an important storytelling element in the classic series and in the new but here it’s simply window-dressing for a dull plot about a maniac computer called the Oracle. We’ll get a similar reworking of Greek myth in The Horns Of Nimon and arguably that’s a far more interesting and entertaining story for all the wrong reasons.

Richard Conway’s visual effects are really very impressive

It’s a shame, as the first episode is actually very good. The design of the R1C is excellent (it probably blew the design budget which resorted to the production using CSO for the rest of the episodes, I suspect) and Richard Conway’s visual effects are really very impressive, the model work almost as good as that seen on big budget productions like 'Space:1999'. The costumes and props for the crew of the R1C are pretty good, especially the shield gun design, and there’s visual excitement that matches the pace of that first episode.



But then we get to episode two and in the lair of the Oracle. It’s all so brown and dull just like the rags that the Trogs are wearing. I quite like the black outfits and the hoods of the slaves of the Oracle but without a good actor, used to working through masks, the threat posed by these villains is negligible. In fact, the threat from the Oracle and its slaves is so underwhelming that even the Doctor sounds rather tired when he realises he’s up against a raging machine and points the cliché out before the audience does. And that lack of threat is what is wrong here. The series needs credible, motivated and scary villains/monsters even if they’re played so over the top they become pantomimic (which they do during the Williams era, to a degree, when they do appear). Here we have hooded thugs with no charisma and a ranting computer that resembles a bad lightshow in the Top Of The Pops studio.

Its other problem is that it postulates rather a lot of bad science, a Bob Baker and Dave Martin trademark, especially about the formation of planets, the nature of gravity and mass and that old bugbear, radiation. I’m not a fan of hard science fiction but where the series dips into that area I would hope that at least some of the science is basically right.

...all running around in caves with bad costumes and acting

The regulars acquit themselves well, Baker’s a bit on remote control (i.e. wind him up and point him in the right direction and he’ll do OK) but Jameson holds this together with a good performance, one of very few that make an impression here, with the other being Alan Lake as Herrick. The rest of the cast are fairly unforgettable which demonstrates how bland this is. The naturalism of the previous years is gone and the satirical whimsy that replaces it does sometimes work in the hands of good writers and directors – The Sunmakers being a good example – but here it’s just a bit of food colouring to try and make a rather uninspiring cake a bit more interesting. Oh, dear. No matter how you look at it, even if it was made with the swankiest visual effects, Underworld remains a dull runaround in CSO caves and that’s a story problem not a production problem. It's also what inspires a horribly inaccurate view of the series - all running around in caves with bad costumes and acting - that comes back to haunt the series again and again.

UNDERWORLD (BBCV7264 VHS PAL deleted Cert PG)

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It was with great pleasure that I finally sat down and watched the new release of this cult British horror film. Fans of Michael Reeves' film have been waiting a long time for MGM/Fox to release this. Why? Because MGM turned up all of the cut scenes in their vault a while ago and set about restoring the film.

...shots of topless tavern wenches at the behest of 'producer' Louis Heyward

Witchfinder General has had a chequered history on VHS and DVD. Numerous versions have been doing the rounds. I think Redemption released an uncut version on VHS, restoring the cut sequences from a laser disc version and then Prism, later Optimum, released a 'Director's Cut' on DVD along with a European version in the same DVD set which included shots of topless tavern wenches at the behest of 'producer' Louis Heyward. However, their restoration of the cut sequences used what looked like inserts from a VHS version. This was a shame as the actual print they were inserting these into wasn't bad at all. So, finally, in September 2007, Fox put out a completely restored version on DVD in their Midnite Movies range. This is the definitive version as all the gore and violence, originally cut by the BBFC, has been properly returned to the film.

...a deep seated appreciation of an English arcadia that's used as a backdrop to examine the nature of war

It stands as one of my personal favourite British films...full stop. Michael Reeves essentially transposes the John Ford western to the English countryside. Calling it a horror film has always slightly done it a disservice in my opinion. Yes, it is violent and gory but it isn't fantastical. It's based on an historical figure who actually did profit from exposing innocent men and women as 'witches'. So it's more of a historical pastiche than anything else. There is some stunning imagery here - beautifully composed landscapes, driving tracking shots of riders and their horses dashing across vast stretches of countryside. Particularly lovely are cinematographer John Coquillon's establishing shots for Hilary Dwyer by the stream, Vincent Price framed against a diminishing row of trees, Ian Ogilvy going full pelt on his horse through a parting wave of sheep. These evoke a deep seated appreciation of an English arcadia that's used as a backdrop to examine the nature of war, revenge, evil as a contagion...



Coquillon's work here is a revelation and he went on to photograph a number of Sam Peckinpah's films. Equally triumphant is the score by Paul Ferris. How a score as beautiful as this could be removed from the US VHS version and replaced with a synthesiser based score is beyond me. It's rightly returned to the film and again plugs into an English sensibility about the countryside with its orchestral riffs on Greensleeves. It's long overdue for a proper release on CD and last I heard rights owners DeWolfe were planning a commercial release.

Reeves was clearly influenced by Westerns in his treatment of the subject matter and the main character

Coquillon and Ferris manage to add an epic quality to what was essentially a low budget British film and director Reeves was clearly influenced by Westerns in his treatment of the subject matter and the main character. He sensibly reined in Price's campier excesses, was perhaps a little ungracious in his treatment of the venerable actor by doing so, and gets a superbly intense performance from the actor. One of Price's best efforts for the screen and a superb essay in how evil men can manipulate innocents to do their bidding but also taint those that would oppose them. Ian Ogilvy is also rather good as the initially morally good soldier who ends up carrying out an insane vendetta against Hopkins. The film is littered with turns from some truly great British character actors from Rupert Davies, Patrick Wymark and Wilfrid Brambell. As the female lead, Hilary Dwyer is fine if a little unsure and her character, the epitome of innocence, is yet another casualty of Hopkins corruption.





It's still an incredibly powerful film, way ahead of its time in 1968, and now that the nastier bits of torture, witch burning and axe killings have been properly restored the bleakness of its brutal, grim message is further underscored. It comments much on the times it was made in, with 1968 very much a year of generational clashes, moral argument and a come down from the hedonism of the mid-1960s. It's certainly a film about 'reality' and therefore is in direct contradiction to the Gothic fantasies of Hammer and Amicus. The moral ambiguity and the very realistic approach to violence that the film raises was probably the first time that a British 'horror' film took this route. It may be a period film but the issues it was dealing with were, and still are, utterly contemporary. For me, it has a direct line to films like Straw Dogs.

For this 2007 release, the restoration ups the picture quality over the Region 2 version with colours and sharpness much improved. There are less scratches and speckles than on the UK version too. The Region 1 DVD also includes a really great commentary track from producer Philip Waddilove, actor Ian Ogilvy and writer Steve Haberman. It's full of lively and amusing anecdotes and behind the scenes stories and is worth listening to. There's also a short documentary 'Witchfinder General: Michael Reeves’ Horror Classic' with interviews and an overview of director Reeves' short career. But don't chuck out your Prism/Optimum versions - they do carry the European Cut and another documentary 'Blood Beast: The Films of Michael Reeves' which are worth keeping.

Oh, and it isn't anything to do with Edgar Allan Poe...even though the sleeve says it is. Bit of a blunder there MGM/Fox and an obvious hangover from the film's retitled release in the US as part of the AIP Poe adaptations.

Witchfinder General(Region 1 - Fox 108765 - Not Rated) Released 11th September 2007

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