From 1988 until 2000, Alex Cox and Mark Cousins presented a series of cult films every Sunday night on BBC Two. Over 200 eclectic movies were shown across twelve seasons including Barbarella (1968), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and Psychomania (1973). Now, Moviedrome returns with screenings of cult classics at BFI Southbank during a two-month season, The producer of the original TV show and curator of the new season, Nick Freand Jones, spoke to us about it.

STARBURST: During Moviedrome‘s development, you had access to the BBC archives, which had a significant library of films, some of which had never been broadcast on British television at that time. Why was the decision made to screen cult films and obscure oddities?

Nick Freand Jones: Good question. Well, we’d been running a series called The Film Club on BBC Two in the few years prior to Moviedrome, which was a more conventional mixture of art house, foreign language, a couple of Hollywood films, but broadly with a slightly more dignified cultural remit, you could say. And those were introduced by directors, writers, actors, actresses, film critics – all sorts of people came in and spoke. It was usually a double bill and they would choose the films or at least speak about them in favourable terms, in critical terms.

And that was on Saturday nights and it had been going for a while, and as I recall, the idea was – what could we do that was a little bit bolder, a little bit cooler, and would be in a Sunday night slot where you could be more experimental with the kinds of films that you put in… potentially single films or double bills, as came to be the case later in the series. So, that was it really. We realised we had all these films. Some of them were quite odd. You could either just plonk them into late night or not play them at all, which sometimes happened. But they weren’t films for morning or daytime or primetime. They were definitely films that were darker or more obscure or sometimes trashy.

I’d lived in London for a few years at that point. When I first came to London, there were cinemas that programmed these sorts of movies all the time on Fridays and Saturdays. You’d go along at 22:30 or after the pubs are closed, and there’d be maybe a couple of movies back to back, and you’d sit there and watch them… fall asleep in one and wake up in the other, or enjoy them both, whatever. So, the kinds of films that I’d seen in that context seemed like a very good template for this potential strand. And we had so many films – there were thousands of films in the BBC vault at that point. Some owned in perpetuity like the RKO library, but many were films that were licensed for five years or seven years at that time. So we had them for a long time, and there were often movies that just languished and didn’t get played or were chucked away late at night. It seemed like, okay, why don’t we contextualise them? And Alan Yentob, who was the controller of BBC Two at the time, was a very film-oriented guy – he had a lot of interest in cinema, he had good connections in Hollywood, from Mel Brooks to David Lynch – so he was very in favour of the notion.

Alex Cox had been hired to present a couple of movies in The Film Club strand and did a great job, looked amazing, was very kind of cool and super informed. He had a great combination – he was a working film director, he’d made his own batch of cult films by this time – Repo Man [1984], Sid and Nancy [1986] – so he introduced the double bill of Point Blank [1967] and The Long Goodbye [1973] for The Film Club, and clearly had the knowledge and the interest. He was British but was working in America. So we spoke to him and he was up for Moviedrome and that first season of films was assembled. We shot the intros back to back in a studio in Television Centre. That’s kind of the story.

For Moviedrome‘s debut episode, an extended version of The Wicker Man was broadcast, which we believe was from a negative acquired from Roger Corman? It’s a fascinating story, and now for the BFI’s Moviedrome retrospective, you are screening The Wicker Man: The Final Cut. In curating Moviedrome, for both television and the BFI’s retrospective programme, how much freedom did you have?

Yeah, we had very little interference, if any. I can’t remember an instance of interference actually. We were trusted. I mean, that’s what we did in that department, we programmed films, so we had a very experienced team of people who knew what worked where on BBC One, BBC Two. There were only two channels, obviously. There was no iPlayer. And so there was plenty of editorial knowledge within the department. And when a film like The Wicker Man came along, my colleague David Thompson – he had programmed The Film Club and was a great film expert – said, I think I’ve heard there’s a version in the States that may or may not be substantially longer. We weren’t quite sure because it wasn’t like they could send us a link to view what they had. So, we waited with bated breath for this… as I remember, it was something like a tape. It might even have been a U-matic or something. And it arrived finally, only about a week before the broadcast, but there was a great deal of worry, would we actually have a longer version to show or would we not? But we did. It turned up and it was a little bit longer and a little bit different to the version that I’d seen on a double bill with Don’t Look Now [1973] when it was released initially as a B feature. Now, if you’re going to ask me exactly how different it was, I’m not sure I can remember, because there have been so many versions since that I get a bit confused. I think Alex refers to some scenes that were additional, but there were still missing scenes. It was no way as complete as any of the subsequent longer cuts, but it was at least a nod in the right direction.

The selection of films for Moviedrome has always been strikingly eclectic, from creature features to spaghetti westerns. Were there any movies that you personally wanted to broadcast but never had the opportunity, maybe due to licensing?

My god! I mean, of course, yes, there were many. What we didn’t have necessarily was a free reign to spend, you know? So, Moviedrome was really seen as a way of using existing library. And then, I suppose when deals were being done, we’d say, oh, that could sit well in Moviedrome, for instance. It might affect the selection of the additional features that were coming in these big packages that were being bought from Universal, Warner Bros, whoever. But we didn’t have an open cheque book.

We did buy some films. Alex was obviously a great enthusiast for the spaghetti western, so we purchased films with his taste specifically in mind, or films that he’d identified as being worth having. I’m thinking of A Bullet for the General [1966] for instance, The Great Silence [1968], which was a film that had not been seen in the UK at all actually until we screened it on Moviedrome. And then there were odd little horror films that might have come, not even from a studio, but from a sales agent somewhere in the US, like Carnival of Souls [1962], which again, what such a strange, fascinating, perfect little film, you know? But yes, we never showed, for instance, Eraserhead [1977], which would have been very high on my list. There were there were lots and lots of films that either we didn’t have because Channel 4 might have had the rights, or Sky Television might have owned the rights.

But yes, the selection you see, the 200-odd films that played over that 10-12 year period, were largely made from existing lists. or lists that we could then adapt as the series grew in stature, I suppose, or became a regular feature, because under Alex, Moviedrome would have played every year for seven years. So, that was already well over 100 films by the time you add those up. But The Wicker Man was the perfect start.

When we were speaking with Alex, we discussed that a notable aspect of Moviedrome was the freedom he had to be critical of the movies selected for broadcast. He could discuss interesting factoids, but was also highly opinionated and passionate about the films and their flaws. Do you agree that this is what distinguished Moviedrome from other TV series that preceded it, like The Film Club?

Definitely. From the get-go, it was obvious that we shouldn’t put words into his mouth, because that was why we wanted him. He was outspoken, he was very political, he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he had very distinct tastes. I think that meant that some people who watched the series were annoyed by him, and found his opinions, for whatever reason, incorrect or abrasive or whatever. But a lot of people did like that!

I work a lot with Mark Kermode now, and in some ways they’re not dissimilar. They’re not the same, but they’re not dissimilar in that Mark has very, very strong opinions about some films and will defend movies that I think are terrible to the death. With Alex, it was really important to allow him his free reign, really. And my only editorial note was if you’re trashing a film, if it’s The Terminator [1984] and you really hate it, well, find something interesting to say, you know, because otherwise why are we here?

I’m preparing some clips for the panel discussion on Friday, and I was watching a few intros that I pulled out, one for THX 1138 [1971], the George Lucas film, which he also doesn’t particularly like, but he’s very interested about its evolution and some of the talent in it. And at the end, he says, “I think it’s not a great film, but…” So, I’d rather have someone saying that to me than trying to soft-soak me into thinking it’s a work of genius or whatever. I’d probably be more intrigued by an intro like that, with some personality. I was also watching his introduction to 200 Motels [1971], the Frank Zappa rock doc, and he begins by saying that he and I have been programming and presenting this thing and occasionally we’ve strayed from the path. And we now wish to atone for our sins for showing films like The Terminator by showing a genuine 100 percent cult classic: 200 Motels. So, there was some wit and humour and a sort of admission that sometimes you did things for the ratings, you know?

Alex did mention The Terminator…

I would argue that sometimes big budget hits can also have cult appeal. And I think The Terminator is one of those movies. Usually the big budget films that become cult films are the ones that are total box office flops. Hudson Hawk [1991] or something like that, when millions and millions have been spent on it and it’s failed to find its audience. Or a film that Mark Kermode loves, Howard the Duck [1986]. So, there’s lots of those kind of films, but the thing about The Terminator was that it was a massive success at the time and spawned all the sequels. I still think it’s got the components of a cult movie about it. You know, I would still defend that decision. And Alex was quite right to to lodge his complaint at the time.

Cult film is such a broad definition. Moviedrome lasted seven seasons with Alex Cox and ended in 1994. What led to its revival a few years later in 1997 with Mark Cousins?

I think at the time that Alex finished, we thought, okay, let’s draw a full line under that, put a full stop next to it. Then its lack of existence was felt, and the idea came that we could bring it back but we don’t need it to be exactly the same. It could be with a different presenter, who would come with a different style. So, the question then was who, and we thought about all sorts of people. I remember Peter Jackson [Bad Taste, 1987] was one of the names that came up in meetings. There were various directors around who might have the right set of qualifications.

But I was working with the Edinburgh Film Festival at that point and I’d met this guy, Mark Cousins, who was the artistic director, who was poles apart from Alex in some ways. He looked very different, he had a whole different style. Alex was much quieter, more dry, I guess. His humour was drier. Mark was much more passionate, much louder, and also had films that he loved that I knew wouldn’t necessarily fall into Alex’s canon and vice versa. So, we talked to Mark and he was very excited by the idea. And I think it was his participation really that sealed it to come back as it did in ’97, and then I worked on two seasons with him only, because in ’98 I left the BBC to start the Film4 channel.

I wasn’t around any more, so I had to leave it then to my colleagues who had taken over – Andrew Abbott was one of the producers – and they worked with Mark, I think, for another two years. So, I think he did four years altogether, and it was very interesting to see how he was different to Alex. He was a younger man. He came from a different background. He had very different tastes, although shared some of the same tastes. And his whole way of talking about things was just different. It was important that he didn’t try becoming Alex Cox Mark II. Very, very big boots to fill, but I think Mark did a very good job in his own way, in his own right.

There is a social aspect to curated TV programming like Moviedrome, so how do you feel about the shift from public service broadcasting to algorithm-driven VOD platforms?

I’m not great with algorithms. If the machine tells me I’ll like this because I liked that, I tend to think I’m never going to watch that, but that’s just me. I think the world has moved on so massively, really, in terms of film distribution. I work with Mark Kermode on the BFI Player. We do a thing every week where we pick a movie or he picks a movie, then talks about it. It’s not a million miles away from Moviedrome. It’s slightly more settled in its format, you know, and Mark is a critic, not a filmmaker. So, I think that curation is still there.

I think MUBI have anf interesting way of curating films, in the way that they program. Netflix, who knows? Sometimes there’s good stuff on there, sometimes there isn’t. The iPlayer, I’m slightly disappointed in the BBC, because it still has a lot of films on its books, not as many as it did back in those days, but the iPlayer could be a great forum for that sort of curation. You know, you could do it very easily and present little seasons of films, or groups of films, or maybe a version of Moviedrome. I’m not saying it should come back, because I think it was great then and let’s enjoy that. I do a show with Mark on Radio 4 called Screenshot, which is also a kind of deep dive into genre and themes. Each week we take a theme and explore the cinema or television timeline with that. So, I think stuff is still happening, and on YouTube there are fascinating video essays out there to be found.

But, we’re talking about a time in the ’80s when this started with four channels and a little bit of satellite TV and nothing else. VHS was the medium. It was still the case that if you wanted to see something, you had to hunt it down, maybe at BFI Southbank [previously known as the National Film Theatre] or in another cinema somewhere, or hope it was on VHS and you could import it. But now everything’s available all the time. It’s kind of overwhelming. Moviedrome was about trying to celebrate film, and pique people’s interest, and get them to go off and explore other things. I’m very touched by how much fondness there is for it, and how many episodes are available on the internet. The BBC, of course, have wiped everything. So, hilariously, they’re doing a couple of movies on BBC Four around the time of this BFI season, and they contacted me to ask if I could help them with materials for the original intros. I said, well, try YouTube. That’s where I’ve been looking.

I think it would be lovely if somebody could reinvent this in some way and do it again. But maybe people are different now. I always tell this story – one of my kids when he was in his early teens, I found him listening to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the most obscure ‘70s rock band with a guy called Vivian Stanshall, the lead, and another guy called Neil Innes, who went on to work for Monty Python. The weirdest most obscure tributary of music to find a 13-year-old listening to. I said, wait, how did you find that? How did you get there? And he said, well, I was on YouTube and I was watching someone, and then I was sent to another guy who was doing something, and that’s how it works! It’s sort of like a relay race, you know, the baton is handed. So, I think there is a curation out there, but it’s much more scattershot than it was in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Moviedrome: Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen is at BFI Southbank from July – August; a collection of Moviedrome films, including a new short documentary about the series, will also be available to stream on BFI Player.