Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

From busty blondes throwing themselves at the leading man, to stereotyped gay villains and lingering shots of the stars in some vertigo-inducing and frighteningly dangerous-looking actual locations, The Eiger Sanction is the very definition of unreconstructed male fantasy. Ostensibly a cold war spy thriller with the irony of the Connery Bonds, suffused with the Man With No Name’s trademark amorality, Clint Eastwood’s fourth film as director is as ill-fitting in the twenty-first century as its apparent sexism, racism and homophobia would suggest – but none the less fun for that. It’s a product of its time, being the approximate mid-point between Where Eagles Dare and Escape from Alcatraz. 

Eastwood plays Professor Jonathan Hemlock, a retired mountaineer and government assassin now teaching classical art, while acquiring it on the black market; when Hemlock’s old friend Henri Baq is assassinated, Hemlock is coerced out of retirement by his albino ex-boss Dragon, joining an expedition up the north face of the Eiger in order to identify and “sanction” the second of two men responsible.

A huge chunk of the first half of the film – we don’t get to the Eiger until well beyond the hour mark – is taken up with Hemlock’s training at the Arizona desert resort hotel of another old friend Ben Bowman (Kennedy), where essentially the same story plays out twice, Hemlock identifying and deciding upon a course of action while simultaneously attempting an insurmountable peak. It’s the resolution he arrives at in Arizona that necessitates him thereafter travelling to Switzerland at all, Hemlock being a typically Eastwood character, deliberately making things more difficult for himself than they need be. Eastwood is just as terse as elsewhere in his career, balancing the dry humour of his 1970s films with the impassive qualities he brought to the earlier Sergio Leone movies.

What’s interesting is that as a director, Eastwood takes the script (based upon the 1972 novel by Rod Whitaker, writing as Trevanian) and underplays Hemlock’s personability while simultaneously making him popular and venerating his talents – much as Eastwood himself has always earned respect by his antipathy towards compromise, becoming hugely likeable despite his generally demure exterior. There’s almost a sense of hero worship in the way he depicts a man so driven as to undertake an unnecessarily Herculean task with the aim of performing a simple act of retribution, as if the means would in some way justify the ends.

With its swift bursts of fisticuffs, languorous focus on unforgiving landscapes, and contemporary comedic non-sequiturs, the unrestored non-anamorphic widescreen print on the review disc is the perfect metaphor for the non-revisionist content on display. Not one of Eastwood’s classics, The Eiger Sanction is nevertheless a paradigm of the actor’s 1970s work.

THE EIGER SANCTION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: CLINT EASTWOOD / SCREENPLAY: HAL DRESNER, WARREN MURPHY, ROD WHITAKER / STARRING: CLINT EASTWOOD, GEORGE KENNEDY, VONETTA McGEE, JACK CASSIDY / RELEASE DATE: 11TH APRIL 

As children, we used to sing the main song from this musical, replacing the lyrics with “Georgie Best, Superstar, wears frilly knickers and a padded bra.’ How it made us laugh, despite us being far too young to know what we were singing about. 

Such is the power of that song that we bet most of you reading this can sing it too, even if just that one bit, which is quite something given that the film came out in 1973 and isn’t one of the most revived of pieces on stage.

You know the plot, of course you do, as the musical follows the final days in the life of Jesus Christ, as seen mainly though the eyes of Judas and as told by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Time Rice, in the style of a rock opera where there are no spoken lines.

In the sunbaked sandy wastes of a desert landscape, amidst temple ruins and scaffolded pillars, a bus arrives bringing with it a load of passengers who look like they’ve taken a wrong turn on the way to Woodstock. They get off the bus, passing out costumes and props, taking a huge cross off the top of the bus, hugging, swaying and generally being very 1960s. Very clearly, this is class one religious education for the ‘Hair’ generation. 

With no bothersome explanation of what’s going on, who they are or why they are there, and in the great tradition of musicals, these crazy hippy kids kind of ‘put on a show’, becoming the biblical characters leading up to and including the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate, King Herod, Judas and JC himself all get to belt out a few numbers.

So, what does a rock opera, which was born out of the flower power generation of the 1960s, have to say about 2000 year old stories here and now in 2016?

On the down side, for lo, we shall beginneth there, things get off to a shaky start because, what was satire free in 1973, now comes across a bit Spinal Tap in the opening numbers, all pompous rock guitars and people gyrating all over the place. Songs where disciples are singing lines to Jesus like ‘What’s the buzz, tell me what’s-a-happenin’ don’t help and plant the film squarely in its era. A number involving Jewish high priests plotting to overthrow the new would-be messiah looks AND sounds like Russell Brand and Nabu from The Mighty Boosch have joined the tour bus, not helping to set the appropriate tone.

However, thanks to a some stand out songs like ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’ and fabulous routines such as Herod’s gloriously camp ‘Try it And See’ and of course the title track, you do get drawn in and, no matter what you believe, there’s no denying it’s a cracking story. 

The performances are wildly enthusiastic, with Carl Anderson and Ted Neeley making a committed double act in Judas and a quite beautiful Jesus, whilst Yvonne Ellimen shines as Mary. Director Norman Jewison keeps things pacey and, as the crazy kids get back on the bus, leaving an unressurected Jesus behind, you just know they’ll be making love, not war. But what they were doing there in the first place, God only knows. 

JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR (1973) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: NORMAN JEWISON / SCREENPLAY: MELVYN BRAGG, NORMAN JEWISON / STARRING: TED NEELEY, CARL ANDERSON, YVONNE ELLIMEN, BARRY DENNEN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There is little chance of Smokey And The Bandit being considered highbrow in terms of its plot; and yet it is a ridiculously entertaining way to spend an hour and a half. Two cowboy truckers, Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds) and Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Reed) are tasked with bootlegging a trailer full of Coors beer all the way from Texas to Georgia, simply to satisfy the extravagant thirsts at a Southern shindig. Along the way they get involved in the sort of scrapes and adventures that only two “good ol’ boys” can, while evading the clutches of the erstwhile and highly determined Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Gleeson).

Smokey And The Bandit was launched on unsuspecting audiences in 1977, and alongside more “serious” cinema fare such as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Saturday Night Fever and the behemoth that is Star Wars, somehow managed to be one of the biggest films of the year. A surprise blockbuster in every sense Smokey caught the public’s imagination through it’s unavoidable Southern charm and frenetic energy that keeps the film’s pace speeding along; even if effectively many of the scenes are variations on the same simple theme.

Car chase, therefore, follows car chase as the stunt-filled action descends into destruction derby-esque carnage, and the inherently inept law enforcement unsuccessfully pursues the coolest driver on the planet across curiously empty highways, down dusty tracks and even airborne over rivers! The gas-fuelled spectacle that the film develops into, once the pleasantries are out of the way, is hugely entertaining, with Reynolds clearly relishing a role that allows him to play up to the camera through his effervescent mischief-making. This is Reynolds clearly at his peak, drawing the camera in with effortless charisma, as if tantalising a new lover.

Viewed through today’s eyes some of the one-liners and ad-libbed “banter” seem a little out-dated, with everyone from women to black people on the receiving end of bluntly delivered put-downs. There is also the hollow role that is Sally Field’s love interest Carrie. Apparently talked into taking the part by then boyfriend Reynolds, it is a pointless character that provides nothing more than a foil for some questionable gags, and leads to an awkward romantic interlude out of tune with the rest of the film.

There is no doubt, though, that despite it’s flaws Smokey And The Bandit deserves to be considered as an American classic. From the catchy sing-a-long theme song to the glint of Reynold’s perfectly white smile, this is a film to be celebrated for what it is, rather than what it isn’t. Crack open a Coors, grab some potato chips, and simply enjoy the ride.

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: HAL NEEDHAM / SCREENPLAY: JAMES LEE BARRETT, CHARLES SHYER, ALAN MANDEL / STARRING: BURT REYNOLDS, SALLY FIELD, JACKIE GLEASON, JERRY REED / RELEASE DATE: 28TH MARCH 

Julian Gordon (Brian Aherne) and Mae Feather (Annette Benson) are beautiful and talented stars of the silver screen, a kind of 1927 Brad and Angelina (but only if you stand on your head and squint at their pictures very very hard, preferably through a blindfold.) At the moment they are co-starring in the romantic Western ‘Prairie Love’, until an errant dove has other ideas. Meanwhile, slapstick comic Andy Wilks (Donald Calthrop) is shooting his new comedy on a neighbouring stage. Andy, whose stage character is obviously based on Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, might enjoy the adulation of his fans but unlike Julian and May, when he takes off his costume and make-up he is anonymous.

Events come to a head when Julian asks Andy to take his wife home, and Andy and Mae discover an unlikely attraction towards one another. Andy had planned to take Mae to the theatre, but when she tears up the tickets, it’s obvious she has other plans for their evening. But how long will their affair last, and what will happen when Julian finds out about it?

Shooting Stars is a wonderful film, and revolutionary in its attempt to show audiences what really happens behind the scenes of a film studio. For us, the mechanics of moviemaking are commonplace but, in 1927, there was still alchemy to the filmmaking process. Shooting Stars strips much of that alchemy away but holds enough back to dazzle us, including some fantastic editing and a long overhead tracking shot that’s as innovative as anything Orson Welles would do, fourteen years later, in Citizen Kane. Just as impressively, writer / director Anthony Asquith’s screenplay is a masterful blend of romantic drama, slapstick comedy and behind-the-scenes expose, which was also quite unique for its time. Asquith may have had to share directing credit with A.V. Bramble (because this was Asquith’s first time as a director, Bramble was brought in to supervise) but it’s obvious that Asquith knew what he was doing behind the camera – he went on to enjoy a long and hugely successful career and, in his importance to British cinema, many critics have placed him alongside Alfred Hitchcock. Looking at Shooting Stars, it is easy to see why.

The BFI’s Blu-ray release of Shooting Stars is absolutely superb and includes a terrific new musical score from John Altman, which compliments the chameleon-like moods of the on-screen action perfectly (yes, this is a silent film but don’t let that put you off). There is also a plethora of perfectly chosen special features, including a short documentary about British Instructional Film (the company that produced Shooting Stars) and a look into ‘The Making of Cinematograph Film’ from 1922. One of the best extras – ‘Starlings of the Screen’ – follows the entrants of a 1925 ‘search for a star’-style competition, as they are auditioned for a part in the movies. It is naïve and unintentionally hilarious and just goes to prove that some things never change…

All in all, this is a fabulous package showcasing a superb and incredibly important film that deserves to be much better known. Highly recommended.

SHOOTING STARS (1927) / CERT: PG / DIRECTORS: ANTHONY ASQUITH, A.V. BRAMBLE / SCREENPLAY: ANTHONY ASQUITH, JOHN ORTON / STARRING: ANNETTE BENSON, BRIAN AHERNE, DONALD CALTHROP, WALLY PATCH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

‘Once I had it all. Now, I just have everything.’

Pity the man who seeks his fortune in gold, only to find that life lived as a rich man makes you suspect that everyone else is gold digging for themselves…

Loosely based on a true story, Nicolas Roeg’s seventh feature tells of the fortunes both personal and financial of Klondike prospector Gene Hackman. Here is a man determined never to rely on another man’s sweat to find his way in life, and years spent trying to find gold in the snowy Canadian mountains finally pays off when he slips into a cave following a mystical near death experience.

Inside the cave, a beautifully realised piece of production design by Michael Seymour (Alien), the liquid gold flows, almost drowning Hackman in wealth. At one point he emerges from beneath a golden pool in a reflection of the classic shot of Donald Sutherland lifting his dead daughter from the water in Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, only here the man is full of hope for a dreamt of future not made real.

And as he emerges from this pool, he glances around suspiciously, looking out for anyone who might claim the gold he now considers his own. This is how the rest of his life will unfold.

Years later and the richest man in the world wants for nothing in material wealth on his island in the Bermudas, whilst his wife drinks to relieve the tedium and his daughter (Roeg’s own wife Theresa Russell) marries a man Hackman is convinced is after his fortune, brilliantly played by Rutger Hauer from Blade Runner.

As greedy investors move in seeking to develop on his land, and against a backdrop of war and voodoo occultism, Hackman’s heightened paranoia finds him isolated and looking back at a life which should have given him everything. His paranoia though is not unfounded. 

When it was released in 1983, Eureka didn’t get many gold stars from the critics, and it certainly doesn’t achieve the grand status of the likes of Roeg’s best works, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth or Don’t Look Now. However, there’s much to enjoy here if you’re familiar with the director, his signature style in full evidence – cross cutting between time periods, juxtaposing images which are seemingly unconnected, handheld shots amidst formality and stunningly beautiful photography.

Whilst the always-brilliant Hackman is on screen, it grips like a tight gold chain, and the supporting cast is great too, including early performances by Mickey Rourke and Joe Pesci. But, and here comes a big spoiler, following one of the most grisly and disturbing murder scenes you’ll ever see, the last half hour suffers from his absence and there’s a feeling that the film could have and should have ended at that point, the continuing story of Russell and Hauer being of less dramatic interest.

If you’re a fan of Roeg’s work, there’s a lot to gain from Eureka but it’s probably not the best of his work to catch if you’ve only ever seen The Witches, as good as that is.

EUREKA / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: NICOLAS ROEG / STARRING: GENE HACKMAN, RUTGET HAUER, MICKEY ROURKE, JOE PESCI, THERESA RUSSELL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

As seems to be de rigueur with book to screen adaptations nowadays, Mockingjay -the final part of The Hunger Games series – has been stretched out to one film more than necessary. The upside of this means that, whereas Mockingjay Part 1 consisted mainly of Jennifer Lawrence et al hiding in a bunker for two hours, Part 2 is the one where stuff actually happens.

When we left things, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) had become an unwitting figurehead in the rebellion against President Snow (a magnificently hammy Donald Sutherland), the deeply unpleasant leader of Panem – that’s post-apocalyptic North America to the uninitiated. She’s being used as a mere propaganda tool however, the face of a rebellion, masterminded by less-nasty President Coin (Julianne Moore) and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Plutarch Heavensbee – easily the winner of most bizarre character name in a franchise full of them.

Having previously united the various districts of Panem, the rebels march on the capital in order to overthrow President Snow. In keeping with her role, Katniss’ team is ordered to stay behind the front lines and shoot propaganda footage. In a neat twist on the series’ origins, as they progress through the city, they face a series of lethal traps set by the Gamemakers – the designers of the Hunger Games – with the resultant deaths televised. Instead of the deadly reality show of the first couple of films, this time around, war itself has become reality TV.

What sets The Hunger Games apart from other YA franchises such as Divergent, Maze Runner and Twilight is that it touches on bigger ideas. The blurring of the line between entertainment and cruelty has been a central theme of the series, as has the role of propaganda in warfare, with the rebels attempting to turn things into a Katnis-centric reality show. It’s come a long way from its Battle Royale, but for kids’ roots.

Equally important, at least to certain sections of the audience, there’s also the ongoing love triangle to be resolved. Will Katniss end up with super-hunky Gale (Liam Hemsworth) or Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a man whose special skills include baking, painting himself to look like a tree (seriously) and crying a lot? Oh, and when we last saw Peeta, he’d been brainwashed to kill Katniss, just in case it was a difficult choice. It may not be as exciting as the blowy-up fighty bits, but it’s a story that’s been well told throughout the four films, and is satisfactorily resolved here.

As the moody, sometimes unlikeable Katniss, Jennifer Lawrence is typically excellent. Over the course of the series, she’s grown into one of Hollywood’s biggest, most exciting stars, and for good reason. She’s ably supported by stalwarts such as Sutherland, Julianne Moore and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (who died during filming). Some other cast members however feel a bit short changed. Jena Malone – one of the standouts of Catching Fire – is wasted, as are the likes of Stanley Tucci and Elizabeth Banks. Likewise, series newcomer Gwendoline Christie has a single scene, getting even less screen time here than she did in Star Wars.

As with the novels, the finale of The Hunger Games series is not quite up to the standard of the first two entries. However, it’s a distinct improvement on the protracted Mockingjay Part 1, and a great end to what’s by far the best of the current crop of YA series.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2 / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: FRANCIS LAWRENCE / SCREENPLAY: PETER CRAIG, DANNY STRONG / STARRING: JENNIFER LAWRENCE, JOSH HUTCHERSON, LIAM HEMSWORTH, WOODY HARRELSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Two years after the BBC’s popular seasonal version of The Box of Delights, they attempted to replicate its success by adapting Lucy M. Boston’s 1954 novel The Children of Green Knowe in the Christmas run-up of 1986. It’s much less well-remembered and somewhat less spectacular, but nevertheless engaging and a rather agreeable children’s drama. 

The story, essentially a three-hander, begins when young Tolly arrives one dark and flood-bound night at the house of his great-grandmother Mrs Oldknow, the eponymous Green Knowe – now known as Green Noah, and regarded by all as an impervious Ark set within a moat and the overflowing nearby river. Very soon Tolly begins to feel a sense of belonging, and as his “Granny” tells him stories of their ancestors who used to inhabit the mansion, he begins to feel their presence still within the building and its grounds. It quickly becomes clear that Mrs Oldknow too experiences visitations from the children of the past, and the stories she tells begin to dwell on the generation that were around Tolly’s age during the reign of Charles II. There’s a sadness surrounding the fate of these children, and a reason why the “ghosts” that haunt Green Knowe are permanently caught in their youthful innocence, but there is also a seem of Yuletide fellowship – mingled with a faint religious undertow – threaded throughout the four episodes. Generally the tone is one of benevolence rather than threat, despite the appearance of a Green Man within the house’s boundaries, which is called upon in order to give the story a vague sense of peril in the final instalment.

As the post-war public schoolboy Tolly, Alec Christie is an awkward presence – particularly when called upon to emote – but is nonetheless an eminently likeable young actor, easily holding the viewer’s attention throughout. The older cast, Daphne Oxenford as Linnet Oldknow and George Malpas as her manservant Boggis, are both kindly and encouraging, and the 110 minutes pass much more quickly than the very slight narrative would lead you to expect. Much of the story takes place in the stables and grounds, where Tolly is increasingly included in the visiting children’s pastimes, and develops a fascination for the horse that belonged to his forerunning namesake Toby. It’s a sweet story that pays off in predictable but nicely played ways, never running the risk of surprising the viewer but never threatening to become tedious either.

The all-on-video look of the production will probably be off-putting to modern eyes, but frankly this release is aimed squarely at those who remember The Children of Green Knowe from its original broadcast thirty years ago, and with its lyrical, Restoration-influenced Paddy Kingsland score and pastoral preoccupations, it’s unlikely to disappoint. 

THE CHILDREN OF GREEN KNOWE / CERT: U / DIRECTOR: COLIN CANT / SCREENPLAY: JOHN STADELMAN / STARRING: ALEC CHRISTIE, DAPHNE OXENFORD, GEORGE MALPAS / RELEASE DATE: 28TH MARCH

It is 2027 and women have mysteriously become infertile. The world is on the brink of collapse except for Britain, which is still holding itself together. Former activist Theo (Clive Owen) is contacted by his ex-wife (Julianne Moore), who is the leader of a political rebellion group called The Fishes. She asks him to help transport a girl named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to a boat, as she is miraculously the first woman to get pregnant in 18 years.

Alfonso Cuaròn is probably best known for Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban, regarded to be the point in the series where it started to get good, and for the supremely entertaining and exciting Gravity, for which he won an Oscar, but it is Children of Men that is his true masterpiece. A political action thriller, the film is thought provoking, intelligent, entertaining, exciting and disturbing, and is unique in a genre that needs more diversity and thought.

An adaptation of the P.D. James novel of the same name, Children of Men starts with a big what if? And runs with it. The setting is a slightly futuristic but disturbingly plausible one. As the world has started tearing itself apart under the pressure of worldwide infertility and the impending end of mankind, with only Britain still barely holding it together. As usual fear has manifested into hate, and the government has a zero tolerance policy towards illegal immigrants and refugees, detaining them and deporting or killing them. This creates distressing but plausible images of refugees held in cages by armed guards and attack dogs, and immigrant camps the size of small towns; a society where refugees and immigrants aren’t even treated like second-class citizens, but like animals. This situation has also created violent political groups, fighting against the vicious government regime. With the current refugee crisis and political climate all over the world, Children of Men is still a hugely pertinent and relevant film.

The camera in Children of Men, overseen by Oscar winning Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, moves around with the characters, placing you firmly in the action, the camera very rarely moving above head height. It gives the film an almost documentary style, as it moves with the characters, occasionally turning away to focus on something else, which builds a bigger picture of the world, whether it be a mother crying while she holds the dead body of her child in her arms or an immigrant pleading from inside a cage. These are images that are shown on news programmes almost nightly and the film puts you right there in the thick of it, confronting you with them. The camera always retains its focus and purpose, there is no motion sickness inducing shaky-cam here, creating exciting and kinetic sequences. If you have seen Gravity then you will not be a stranger to Cuaròn’s use of a long takes and Children of Men features several stand out shots. An attack on the party as they travel, shot entirely within the confines of a car, and an extended sequence shot inside a prison camp that is being torn apart due to gun fighting, are astonishing and exhilarating sequences that stick in the mind long after.

Children of Men is a very underrated and brilliant film. A political action thriller that both excites and makes you think, it is the filmmakers working at the top of their talent. If you haven’t seen it, rectify that immediately.

CHILDREN OF MEN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: ALFONSO CUARÒN / SCREENPLAY: ALFONSO CUARÒN, TIMOTHY J. SEXTON, DAVID ARATA, MARK FERGUS, HAWK OSTBY / STARRING: CLIVE OWEN, JULIANNE MOORE, MICHAEL CAINE, CLARE-HOPE ASHITEY, CHIWETEL EJIOFOR / RELEASE DATE: 28TH MARCH

Few TV series can lay claim to actually having popularised a word in the English language. Doctor Who may have ingratiated ‘Dalek’ into the Oxford English but in the early 1970s the word ‘doomwatch’, to a British TV audience, at least, was irrevocably connected to this dramatic – sometimes wilfully melodramatic – series, created by Dr Kit Pedler and his co-writer Gerry Davis. The pair’s concerns about the potential dangers of unchecked and unmonitored scientific development had already created the iconic Cybermen for Doctor Who a few years earlier; initially, the Cybermen were humanoids, who replaced their body parts to avoid disease and ageing, ending up as cold, emotionless and ruthless machine-people. Doomwatch (based on the exploits of the fictional ‘Department of Observations and Measurement of Scientific Work’) was to be an altogether less fanciful affair. Across its 38 episodes (including one which was never transmitted) Doomwatch brought science into the audience’s sitting rooms, unnerving and occasionally terrifying the public with stories about killer rats, plastic-eating viruses, genetic mutation, the dumping of toxic waste and slightly less hysterical topics, such as the perils of jet lag and the difficult business of being slightly too tall.

Doomwatch’s head honcho is Nobel Prize winner Dr Spencer Quist (John Paul), a force of nature with his shock of grey hair and a nice line in comfy mustard-coloured cardigans. He’s a brusque, no-nonsense guy, riddled with guilt by the death of his wife, from radiation poison, and his own culpability from his work on the Manhattan Project. Quist is passionate, driven and single-minded but he’s no people person – he’s terse and officious, even to his closest colleagues – and he’s regularly butting heads with the pompous, blame-averse Minister (John Barron). Doomwatch’s man-of-action is Dr John Ridge (Simon Oates), a magnificent early 1970s male stereotype, a symphony of cravats, crazy shirts and prehistoric sexist attitudes. “She’s not talking to me because I pinched her bum just before lunch,” he offers, as an explanation for why a female colleague is giving him the cold shoulder in the first episode. The breakout star of the first season, though, was Robert Powell as fresh-faced new recruit Toby Wren, who joins Doomwatch in the classic first episode The Plastic Eaters. Willowy and animated, Toby Wren became a national heart-throb and his death at the end of the first series (in an episode no longer available, dammit) not only became a water cooler TV moment but also, inevitably, robbed the show of one of its greatest assets. Doomwatch made a number of attempts to replace Wren in subsequent seasons – Jean Trend’s Dr Fay Chantry turned up in episode four of season two and John Nolan as the inquisitive, spiky Geoff Hardcastle drifted in and out of the storylines – but the loss of Powell remained keenly felt throughout the rest of the series’ run.

Doomwatch is resolutely a product of its time. Most of it is shot on the now long-obsolete studio-based videotape system, primitive by today’s standards but offering an intimacy of performance not always available in modern filmed series; in You killed Toby Wren, the first episode of season two, the furious face-off between Quist and Ridge explodes out of the screen and the tension between the two is palpable. In many episodes, there’s clumsy use of stock footage, and special effects are often risibly unconvincing; the attack by ferocious killer rats in Tomorrow, The Rat involves actors, with stuffed rats sewn onto their clothes, hurling themselves around the set and pretending to try to wrench the animals free.  But like the best British sci-fi (if Doomwatch can really be classified as such) it is about ideas and not effects and, at its finest – especially during the first two seasons – Doomwatch is extraordinarily gripping and remarkably prescient, often touching on subjects which continue to hit the headlines nearly fifty years later.

By the time the third season rolled around – only three of the twelve episodes exist following one of the BBC’s infamous 1970s videotape purges – the show’s impact had become diluted, thanks to the interference of producer Terence Dudley. Pedler and Davis walked away from their creation and the show quietly fizzled out – we may never know what delights episodes such as Safe Knife, Fat Man and The Killer Dolphins might have held (although we can make an educated guess on that second one) but this seven-disc DVD set does include the unscreened Sex and Violence, the show’s very last episode. This is a remarkable piece of television, largely consisting of a group of stolid British character actors playing thinly-disguised versions of polarising anti-smut campaigners like Long Longford and Mary Whitehouse, sitting around a table trying to decide whether the UK’s censorship laws should be tightened, as Quist sits in the background watching with interest. Despite its title, there’s no sex or violence, just a lot of talking.

If you can cope with Doomwatch’s creaky production values and its occasional high-handed moralising, there’s much to enjoy in these engrossing, studied dramas. The fact that the series is incomplete in the BBC Archives (only season two exists in its entirety) means we can never get a proper sense of the show’s scope and scale, or its real strengths and weaknesses, but what remains is a fascinating snapshot of a long-gone era of British television and a brave and forward-thinking series, which dared to put its head above the parapets during an era of rapidly evolving technology. The episodes presented here aren’t remastered or cleaned up – many are washed-out looking recordings returned from territories overseas – and the picture quality varies enormously. But the set is still a worthwhile investment for fans of genuine classic cult TV; Doomwatch is more than worth a rewatch.

Special features: The Cult of Doomwatch /  2006 TV documentary

DOOMWATCH – THE REMAINING EPISODES / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: JOHN PAUL, SIMON OATES, ROBERT POWELL, JOBY BLANSHARD, JEAN TREND / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 4TH

Retitled from the original Uncaged, Beast Within, perhaps inadvertently, reflects the schizophrenic nature of its lycanthropic lead. Bright-eyed teen Jack (Getz) discovers, to his horror, that he’s a werewolf (thanks to an unfortunate incident involving his parents when he was a child) and during a weekend away with two chums he finds himself waking up naked in the middle of nowhere having gone werewolf walkies during the night. But what’s he been getting up to during his night-time frolics? He decides to strap a mini-camera to his head to find out the truth… Beast Within is equally confused about its own identity; is it a horror film, a thriller, a comedy? Frustratingly it ends up trying to touch too many bases and comes across as fussy and undisciplined, losing a potentially-interesting (if not entirely original) twist to the traditional werewolf yarn, under a stodgy confusion of half-hearted gangster clichés and clumsy and tiresome torrid teen shenanigans.

In theory, the story of a naïve youngster realising he has to bear the burden of transforming into a monstrous ravenous killing machine under the baleful glare of the full moon really ought to be enough – it worked wonders for An American Werewolf in London, after all. But Beast Within’s sluggish script muddies the water, when our hairy hero crosses the path of a languid, can-barely-be-bothered gangster who seems to have wandered into the story purely to facilitate a bit of a blood-frenzy when Jack transforms and indulges in some long-awaited and much-needed gory blood-letting. Elsewhere Jack’s friends get fairly short shrift; Turner (Kirkpatrick) is a slightly boring jock whose girlfriend performs a neat disappearing trick before drifting back into the story to meet an unfortunate end and Jack’s nerdy cousin Brandon (Weiner), who provides the film’s beating comedy heart, is an unholy cross between The Inbetweeners’ Simon Bird and SuperBad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse. When he disappears from the film, it loses its sense of fun and a lot of its watchability.

Beast Within is well made, efficiently directed and it offers some decent special effects on an undoubtedly microscopic budget. But one more pass on the script could have removed some of the flab which drags the story down and, whilst it mercifully avoids the ‘found footage’ gimmick its headcam conceit suggests is lying in wait, there’s not really enough energy or invention on show to make this anything other than a footnote in the history of werewolf movies.

BEAST WITHIN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DANIEL ROBBINS / SCREENPLAY: DANIEL ROBBINS, MARK RAPAPORT / STARRING: BEN GETZ, KYLE KIRKPATRICK, GARRETT HENDRICKS, ZACK WEINER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW