Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

A Wild Bunch and Studio Ghibli co-production, The Red Turtle was met with critical acclaim following its premiere at Cannes last year and received a nomination for Best Animated Feature Film at the Oscars. While the film’s contemplative pacing and dialogue-free narrative may deter some audiences, The Red Turtle’s home release offers an opportunity for viewers to become engrossed in its beautifully sketched visuals and richly layered themes.

Directed by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit, The Red Turtle begins on an unnamed man who is left stranded on a desert island after a ferocious storm. The man goes about exploring the island – finding fruit, drinkable water and a surplus of bamboo to build a raft with. After three failed escape attempts, the man discovers that a giant red turtle is the culprit behind his trio of wrecked rafts. When the turtle crawls inland, the man vengefully hits the sea creature and pushes it onto its back – but later he becomes wracked with guilt at his violent actions. Following a surreal transformation, a mysterious woman arrives on the island, and the man begins to make peace with his predicament as the pair form a romantic bond.

The Red Turtle’s gentle pacing and minimalist narrative afford us time to get to know the central male protagonist despite being both nameless and wordless. It also delves into the features of the beautifully rendered landscapes of this desert island. Dudok de Wit’s elegant hand-drawn animation endows the film with an extraordinarily gorgeous depth and texture, masterfully developing our sympathies with the marooned man and placing the wonders of nature firmly to the forefront.

While the first half of the narrative does become slightly repetitive, the film’s second half delivers an affecting scene of natural destruction, and its fantastical twist evolves The Red Turtle from a desert island movie to a meditative, melancholy fable on the cycle of life and our relationship with nature. Deceptively deep in both its sumptuous visual imagery and in its subtly moving themes, The Red Turtle is a transcendent little gem.

The release boasts just one extra, but it’s as absorbing and calming as the film itself. In a 17-minute feature, Dudok de Wit gives an intriguing and detailed account of the process involved in sketching the movie’s characters and landscapes.

THE RED TURTLE / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: MICHAËL DUDOK DE WIT / SCREENPLAY: MICHAËL DUDOK DE WIT, PASCALE FERRAN / STARRING: EMMANUEL GARIJO, TOM HUDSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s impossible to consider Joe Dante’s follow-up to Piranha without comparing it to An American Werewolf in London, the lycanthropic tragi-comedy that overshadowed The Howling on its 1981 release. Both include huge set pieces taking place against porn backdrops, and each involves an isolated and superstitious community thematically contrasted with the metropolitan sophistication of the protagonists’ home territory. There is also, this being the early 1980s, a fetishisation of the metamorphosis and its achievement via prosthetics.

Whereas John Landis’ film concentrates on the personal and medical effects of the transformation, Dante is more interested in the Freudian cod-psychology of the shapeshifters, throwing in a vast amount of metatextuality for good measure. So here we have cameos from the likes of Kenneth Tobey, Roger Corman and John Carradine, along with characters named for the directors of earlier werewolf movies. The Howling is a horror aficionado’s wet dream.

It’s not an entirely successful one, though, and it’s never enjoyed the pre-eminence of American Werewolf. Landis’ film wore its influences with an air of self-deprecation, often immersing itself in its cinematicality, but Dante occasionally struggles to bring together the tonal dissonances of his disparate themes. The material in Los Angeles has the look and feel of a 1970s TV policier, whereas the relocation to the Colony attempts to integrate this with symbolic compositions, occasionally jarringly so but sometimes to great effect; it’s a disjunct brought into sharp relief in the restored Blu-ray transfer, which copes admirably with most of the soft focus but betrays some of the effects as extremely questionable. The Blu-ray also includes a nice enough selection of extras, but one that nevertheless feels inconsequential due to the non-participation of many of the major players.

Like Gary Brandner’s book this is the story of a marriage breakdown set against the carnality of nature reasserting itself, and Dante’s additional media focus provides a distance between the spectator and the material, allowing the observation to be separated from the consequences. Karen White (E.T.’s mom) is a news anchor being stalked by and on the trail of an apparent serial killer who refuses to abide by the distinction between his primal urges and civilisation’s sanitising effect, and a conspiracy is hatched that unfolds at a neat pace across the second half of the film. There’s also a killer twist in this tail, although one that’s so absurdly achieved it almost upsets the entire enterprise. The acting choices are equally inconsistent, albeit unsettlingly so for the viewer. This is in many ways a difficult film; an easy enough watch, but hard to immerse oneself in. 

The Howling is Network meets The Island of Dr Moreau, a treatise on nature versus nurture that isn’t afraid to poke fun at its practitioners, and while it’s not as entertaining as American Werewolf, in the final reckoning it is in many ways the superior movie.

Special Features: Howlings Eternal / Cut to Shreds, Terence Winkless interview / Horror’s Hallowed Grounds / David Allen interview / Gary Brandner commentary

THE HOWLING / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: JOE DANTE / SCREENPLAY: JOHN SAYLES, TERENCE H. WINKLESS / STARRING: DEE WALLACE, PATRICK MACNEE, DENNIS DUGAN, BELINDA BALASKI / RELEASE DATE: 9TH OCTOBER

Justin Barber uses the world famous Phoenix UFO incident, when literally thousands of people saw a triangular formation of lights on the night of the 13th March 1997, travelling over the state of Arizona, as the launching point for his fictional take on the matter.

 

The film opens with the Birthday Party of 6-year-old Sophie on 13 March 1997, then it cuts to the present day, showing the adult Sophie (Florence Hartigan) flying back to her home in Phoenix, Arizona. She is filming a documentary about her brother Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts) and the events that occurred after that fateful day.

 

Josh’s old bedroom hasn’t been changed, it still has a telescope and science fiction posters on the walls. Her Mum hands Sophie an old video tape, saying ‘This is how it all started.’ The label on the tape has the handwritten words ‘Sophie’s 6th Birthday’ crossed out on it, replaced by ‘Phoenix Lights’. The video shows the party interrupted by the arrival of seven bright lights moving in a V formation in the night sky. ‘Definitely not a plane’, one person says, then they suddenly disappear. As they are puzzling over these UFOs, jet aircraft loudly fly over their home.

 

Subsequently, Josh becomes obsessed with the sighting. Whilst making a video asking local people’s opinions about the incident he meets Ashley Foster (Chelsea Lopez) who is keen to become a journalist.

 

Clips from Josh’s videos are interspersed with news footage of the Phoenix UFO reports and TV footage showing that not long afterwards Josh, Ashley and their friend Mark Abrams (Justin Matthews) went missing.

 

Sophie finds more tapes showing the three teens out in the desert where they see more UFOs, and with a bit of investigation she discovers another tape showing what really happens to them when they got too close to the truth about these objects.

 

The interlacing of the different interviews, found footage and news reports builds to a dramatic climax to the mystery. Barber delivers a dramatic Blair Witch Project for UFO fans, and anyone else who likes to wonder about what is lurking in our skies that the government doesn’t want us to know about.

 

PHOENIX FORGOTTEN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JUSTIN BARBER / SCREENPLAY: T.S. NOWLIN AND JUSTIN BARBER / STARRING: FLORENCE HARTIGAN, CHELSEA LOPEZ, LUKE SPENCER ROBERTS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

1931’s The Public Enemy is still at this stage one of the best gangster films ever made. James Cagney achieved fame and movie immortality from his performance as Tom Powers, and time has done nothing to diminish the impact of either Cagney’s work or the film itself. It tells the cautionary tale of Powers from a youth spent building from standard childhood mischief into actual criminality and, as bootlegging brings him enormous wealth but just as much trouble, and his eventual starkly violent end.

It’s directed with a docudrama approach by William A. Wellman, and takes us through a little over 20 years of Tom’s life, stopping on the way at the years where the big events shaped Powers’ eventual fate. Cagney’s ambitious hoodlum is clearly inspired by Al Capone but takes in elements of any of the Prohibition-era criminals who built criminal empires from the ban on alcohol. In that, the story is not a surprising one nor does it go anywhere you wouldn’t expect. Given that this is almost the template for so many gangster films that followed it’s not surprising, but it’s worth keeping in mind these problems were contemporary for viewers at the time, and concerns over the explosion of violence that hit American cities were one of the most important issues of the day.

Warner Bros got around any accusations of wallowing in pre-Code displays of crime by advising audiences to view the film as a warning. Another film of nearly 60 years later, Goodfellas, essentially tells the same tale of glamour and desire, success and decline but comparably The Public Enemy has style to spare too. Wellman’s direction is flawless, his camera swooping and prowling and threatening, but finding poetry too. Cinematography, editing and a solid screenplay all contribute to the film’s ultimate success. Performances are all very good, but of course Cagney absolutely dominates as Powers. He is extraordinary, a mix of charisma, vulnerability, but most of all a bruising, burgeoning sociopathy. It’s tough, hard and bleak stuff. An outstanding, all-time classic.

As for this HMV-exclusive dual-format release, like their other recent gangster reissues there’s nothing new extras-wise but everything that has been on previous DVDs shows up here: an informative commentary, their nifty Warner Night at the Movies presentation which showcases the films along with a newsreel, comedy short, cartoon and trailers, as well as a good 20-minute featurette (with Martin Scorsese) and the foreword that accompanied the 1954 re-release. As for the transfer, though not a new scan, it’s in generally good shape, clear and sharp for the most part. A nice HD release of one of the great films of American cinema.

THE PUBLIC ENEMY / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: WILLIAM A. WELLMAN / SCREENPLAY: KUBEC GLASMON, JOHN BRIGHT / STARRING: JAMES CAGNEY, JEAN HARLOW, EDWARD WOODS, JOAN BLONDELL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Although this collection is entitled Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal Season 1 Complete Collection it actually contains both seasons 1 and 2 of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal. 

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal is the third spin off from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! And it is weakest iteration of the franchise up to that point. It contains many of the same flaws that affected Yu-Gi-Oh! GX during it’s run, without any of the factors that went some way to redeeming that show. 

The problem stems from Zexal‘s main storyline. Throughout the episodes there is some time spent building up mysterious foes that Yuma faces, and there is some mystery to the disappearance of the character’s father before the events of the first season. These developments might have been more intriguing were it not for the pace at which they occur. These mysteries never really get satisfying answers during the episodes present in this collection.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal Season 1 Complete Collection also suffers from comparison to the other members of its franchise in terms of how it treats its cast. How Yu-Gi-Oh deals with its characters that aren’t the spiky haired protagonist, the villain, or the grumpy rival has always been a bit of a problem for the series. In the case of Zexal this problem is the worst it has ever been. Barring one or two episodes any character that isn’t Yuma only serves to confront him, or support him. They are of such little importance that they can vanish for episodes at a time without their loss having any impact on the experience.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal Season 1 Complete Collection doesn’t have any special features on offer. So there isn’t anything to make the experience of watching the show via this box set than streaming it online.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal can be a fun show, and sometimes it shows similar promise to the other Yu-Gi-Oh! Offerings. It is let down by a plot that is often pushed aside in favour of duelist of the week episodes. As a result, it is never really allowed to develop. By the time episode 49 has finished the show has advanced less in terms of narrative than other similar anime would have in half the time. The result is an anime that can be fun to indulge in the odd episode of, but doesn’t work as a whole. When you throw in the lack of DVD specific extras, and the ease of finding Zexal on streaming services, there isn’t much to recommend about this collection specifically unless you really like the anime.

YU-GI-OH! ZEXAL SEASON 1 COMPLETE COLLECTION / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: SATOSHI KUWABAR / WIRTERS: VARIOUS / STARRING: ELI JAY, MARC THOMPSON, SEAN SCHEMMEL, EILEEN STEVENS, CHRISTOPHER KROMER/ RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Blade Runner has re-spawned quite a bit since it originally limped out to mixed reviews in 1982. Such is the pull of this extraordinary SF parable; it’s no surprise to find that Warners have now upscaled 2007’s Final Cut to 4K digital for home release. This is the version where Ridley Scott had, for the very first time, total creative control over the edit. And now it looks even more astonishing.

Although this release comes in a variety of formats, including a steelbook edition and 4-disc box set, all the extras have been ported over from the 2007 Final Cut release bonanza, so don’t go looking for anything new on that front. Mind you, if you’ve never sat through Ridley Scott’s commentary (one of four re-included here) now’s a good opportunity because it’s wonderfully insightful (he always saw Blade Runner as being in the same universe as Alien and imagined the crew of the Nostromo hanging out at that noodle bar where Deckard chows down). He’ll also have you re-winding scenes where he’s just revealed some sleight of hand, such as the early bit of old-style detective work Deckard does in a bathroom where the actor isn’t even Harrison Ford, but his regular double Vic Armstrong, shot in profile and half-light.

But for most fans this purchase is all about the 4K ultra HD transfer. With original 35mm elements scanned at 4K and the 65mm effects shots scanned at 8K (before the final 4K mastering), you can die happy that there won’t be a better visual representation of the film, ever. Probably. The colour spectrum and blacks are heart stopping and the Dolby Atmos soundtrack renders those swooping Spinners and that entrancing, diaphanous Vangelis soundtrack all around your head like a mad symphony of crystal clear noise. The whole thing will make you tingle in places you’d forgotten existed. That’s our impersonation of Home Cinema Choice over with.

As great as the film looks in 4K now, it is only serves to enhance the scale of Scott’s achievement in 1982, not least his collaboration with FX guru Douglas Trumbull (he of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running) filming those insanely detailed miniatures. As Scott tells it in his commentary, the challenges involved in selling the futuristic model city – including achieving the right depth of field, aerial perspectives, lighting and smoke effects – were massive, but the results were and are so jaw-dropping that in 2017, Blade Runner in 4K stands as the ultimate middle finger to CGI.

Points off for expecting us to pay for extras we already own, but if you have the kit to experience Blade Runner in 4K you’ll not be passing this by.

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT (4K ULTRA HD) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: RIDLEY SCOTT / SCREENPLAY: HAMPTON FANCHER, DAVID PEOPLES / STARRING: HARRISON FORD, RUTGER HAUER, SEAN YOUNG, EDWARD JAMES OLMOS, DARYL HANNAH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Mario Bava is one of the most important directors in genre cinema and if you haven’t checked out any of his films, now is the perfect time. Bava’s background in fashion photography clearly influenced his highly stylized, psychedelically colored, genre films, which have benefitted more than most from Blu-Ray clean-ups. Arrow’s new release of Kill Baby Kill (aka Curse of the Dead) is an exquisitely realised revisit of one of Bava’s finest moments.

Released in 1966, Kill Baby Kill came after a slew of successful features that put Bava at the front of the Italian film industry. The last of Bava’s Euro Gothic films, films which he had found great success with, Kill Baby Kill follows the story of a town in the Carpathian Mountains haunted by the ghost of a little girl who drives her victims to suicide. Bava appears to be riffing on Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, but most importantly Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 film The Bad Seed, which perverts the traditional assumptions of childhood in its psychopathic brat Rhoda Penmark. Bava merges LeRoy’s cynical new age paranoia with the generic Europe-centric Gothic of increasingly lucrative Hammer productions.

The result is a film void of the stale good vs. evil approach found in much of those Hammer films. Bava’s entrancing style, the euphoric sweeps of color, the perfect cinematography, a cool bass-led soundtrack from Carlo Rustichelli, make Kill Baby Kill a perfectly pop Gothic masterpiece. Sticking to sickly greens and yellows, Bava paints a town rotten to its core, where the murderous ghost of a little girl is not as bad as the ignorance and superstition it breeds. And yes, it’s still scary.

Bava was nothing if not an accomplished conductor of atmosphere, dragging the audience into whatever fever dream he desired. For the most part Kill Baby Kill relies on the shock of its deaths and the tension of the girl’s appearances, but on another level it triumphs through moral ambiguity and trippy disorientation. In the last act, Bava achieves some wonderfully loopy sequences, which call the casual surrealism of David Lynch to mind, an artist who has cited Bava as an influence. The influence doesn’t stop with Lynch though. Fellini in Toby Dammitt would use the image of an angelic little girl in a white dress, playing with a ball. The haunting image of a child scratching at the window would turn up again in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot. Hell, even the 2006 film adaptation of Silent Hill feels like a thematic remake of Kill Baby Kill.

Bava is now famous for Blood and Black Lace, the film that instigated giallo and laid the blueprint for American Slashers, but he was an accomplished purveyor of Sci-fi, Euro Gothic, and Westerns also. Touches and reference points to Bava can be found far and wide in the horror genre and beyond. Kill Baby Kill is one of his most influential moments, a perfect Gothic horror film, and a kind of sign-off from the “classic” phase of the genre, which had served him so well since Black Sunday in 1960. Arrow’s release is gorgeous and has some great bonus features too, including a revealing interview with Bava’s son, and a fascinating video essay on the Gothic child from Kat Ellinger.

KILL BABY KILL / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MARIO BAVA / SCREENPLAY: ROMANO MIGLIORINI, ROBERTO NATALE / STARRING: GIACOMO ROSSI-STUART, ERIKA BLANC, FABIENNE DALI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

As a franchise, the Power Rangers brand needs no introduction. But, whilst even casual fans are familiar with the adventures of Jason, Zack, Billy, Trini and Kimberly from the original Mighty Morphin’ series (and recent big screen reboot), some of the later installments have slipped under the radar. This isn’t without good reason. Shaky offerings like Operation Overdrive (2007) and Megaforce (2013) almost sank the series but thankfully Dino Charge is a blistering return to form. 

Saban made the unusual choice to opt for a staggered DVD release of the series and RISE is the fourth chapter in the rollout. It covers episodes 13-16 with special Halloween-themed episode The Ghostest with the Mostest thrown in as a bonus. Since RISE picks up in the middle of the season, let’s quickly recap the premise. 65 million years ago antagonist Sledge tried to take control of the Energems, a source of great power in the universe, but he was thwarted by an alien called the Keeper who bestowed the gems to the protection of the dinosaurs. As you do. In present day, the Keeper meets scientist Kendall Morgan, and together they team with a new group of rangers to find the Energems before a returning Sledge can get his evil clutches on them. 

Sledge is a fun villain who harks back to the golden age of Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa. The same can’t be said for the Keeper, who is a less polished version of Zordon, but where Dino Charge truly excels is in its diverse and likeable cast. The series benefits from freeing its protagonists from the binds of high school, and the inclusion of Koda and Sir Ivan as a fish out of water provides a depth rarely seen in the PR-verse. The series also scores top marks for pushing the talented Camille Hyde (Shelby) and Claire Buckwelder (Kendall), particularly given its history of relegating female cast members to supporting roles in previous offerings.

Let’s be real, no Power Rangers episode is going to win a Peabody for outstanding writing or performance, but that’s not the point of the show. Dino Charge is usually entertaining, and at times genuinely funny. There’s nothing significant in terms of story development in this particular selection, and whilst the episodes are solid in their silliness, there’s no classic PR standout like Forever Red or Green with Evil to be found here.

Even though this is one of the stronger Power Rangers series, there’s no denying that the show is primarily aimed at under 10’s. Dino Charge isn’t likely to convert any adult fans that enjoyed this year’s movie reboot. That doesn’t prevent it from being great fun, and there’s no better way to nurse a Sunday morning hangover than indulging your inner ‘90s kid than with some nostalgia-fuelled shenanigans.

POWER RANGERS DINO CHARGE: RISE – VOLUME 4 / CERT: PG / DIRECTORS: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: BRENNAN MEJIA, CAMILLE HYDE, YOSHI SUDARSO, MICHAEL TABER, JAMES DAVIES / RELEASE DATE: 2ND OCTOBER

Food Wars! Season 1 is proof that an over the top battle anime can be made out of anything, including cooking. The series follows main character Soma as he attends an elite cooking school. One important aspect of life at this school are the titular food wars, contests between chefs to see whose cooking is better. 

These food wars are treated with the same dramatic weight as a battle between characters in an anime that is about fighting. This dramatic tone extends to cooking in general. Throughout the show the characters are constantly set challenges by their teacher that will result in their expulsion if they fail. Because of this every time we see a character cook the stakes are high. 

The show has a main character in the form of Soma, and at first it looks like this character will take too much focus, to the anime’s detriment. Food Wars! Season 1 avoids this in two ways. Firstly, Soma doesn’t always win. The character always loses to his father, and he battles another chef to a tie more than once. Secondly, the show occasionally puts its focus on someone besides Soma. This results in Food Wars! ending its first season with a more fleshed out cast than it started it with. Occasionally Soma seems too good to be someone at a food school, but this is a side effect of the anime’s focusing on the students proving they are already great, rather than being shown to learn. 

The cooking itself is completely over the top. Any little flourish the characters might make is animated as dramatically as possible. When someone tastes food they really like, their reaction is extreme, and often sexual. Such scenes usually play out like overdrawn orgasm metaphors. This is usually bizarre enough to be funny, but it happens so frequently that it sometimes comes across as overdone. Seeing a character’s clothes come off as they explain why they like someone’s cooking starts to feel a bit routine a few episodes in. This is a problem that Food Wars! struggles with during the second third of this season. 

The special features on offer here are typical for what can be expected of an anime release. There is the option to watch both the opening and closing animations without the credits. There are also previews of upcoming anime. These videos are a good way to check for potential shows to watch after Food Wars! Season 1.

Food Wars! Season 1 is bizarre. The characters and situations are constantly presented in an exaggerated fashion. It supports this with a strong set of characters. Underneath all the strange antics, Food Wars! is ultimately a show about a group of people who overcome constant challenges, and grow for the better. 

Special Features: Clean opening animation/ Clean closing animation/ Also available from Sentai Filmworks 

FOOD WARS! SEASON 1 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: YOSHITOMO YONETANI / WRITERS: VARIOUS / STARRING: BLAKE SHEPARD, JAY HICKMAN, STEPHANIE WITTELS, BRITTNEY KARBOWSKI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW 

Koch Media’s reissues of Reeltime Pictures’ Myth Makers interviews arrive here at The Big One, the Tom Baker collection – and it’s a bittersweet affair. While on the one hand it includes perhaps the pride of the Keith Barnfather collection, a fifty-minute interview with the fourth Doctor himself, elsewhere the interviewees are notable for how many of them are, in all cases devastatingly prematurely, no longer with us.

The three seasons of Doctor Who produced by Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes between 1975 and 1977 are feted by fans as the series’ glory days, an unrepeatable golden period of unforgettable moments, glorious dialogue and terrifying monsters. The icing on the cake was the programme’s regular cast, the redoubtable Tom Baker bestriding the production like a colossus, the Man Who Was Born to Play Doctor Who. The succession of companions he acted alongside each brought out different aspects of his otherwise opaque character, Sarah Jane for example eliciting an often-softer Doctor, while against Leela a rather tetchier Tom was much in evidence. 

The Tom Baker Years concentrates most heavily on these earlier seasons, all but one of the set’s participants having debuted prior to the end of 1977. John Leeson, better known to all as K9, makes for an affable if slightly grandiloquent subject to close the collection, whereas Louise Jameson (whose selection is peppered with various readings in a Victorian museum in Leeds) is intelligent, engaging and game for a bit of fun. It’s a good job, indeed, that so many of Doctor Who’s luminaries don’t mind sending themselves up somewhat, especially in the earlier of Nicholas Briggs’ interviews, where we find Mary Tamm impersonating Alice to Briggs’ White Rabbit, running around in the grounds of Eynsford Castle in Kent – chosen presumably because it’s in the same county as Leeds Castle where The Androids of Tara was shot – before settling down to have a rather slighter but still indispensable chat.

The meat is on disc one. Alongside a quite substantial conversation with Elisabeth Sladen, recorded before her modern televisual reinvention, there’s a rare opportunity to enjoy Ian Marter talking Target novelisations and Doctor Who Meets Scratchman while ambling about the Terror of the Zygons locations. Ultimately, though, what really sells this collection’s importance is the three-quarters-of-an-hour spent in Tom Baker’s company in East Hagbourne (site of The Android Invasion) in 1989, before the affectation took over entirely and so with perhaps as much honesty as Baker has ever allowed about the programme and his place in it.

As usual the low budget archive sound and picture issues are but tiny niggles, when placed beside the value and enjoyment offered up by such a tremendous and truly essential collection of interviews. 

Special Features: Introduction by Briggs and Barnfather 

THE DOCTORS: THE TOM BAKER YEARS / CERT: E / DIRECTOR: KEITH BARNFATHER / PRESENTER: NICHOLAS BRIGGS / STARRING: TOM BAKER, ELISABETH SLADEN, IAN MARTER, LOUISE JAMESON, MARY TAMM, JOHN LEESON / RELEASE DATE: 18TH SEPTEMBER