Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Hotel Transylvania / Cert: PG / Director: Genndy Tartakovsky / Screenplay: Peter Baynham, Robert Smigel / Starring: Adam Sandler, Andy Samber, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi / Release Date: February 4th 2013

No, we never thought we’d see the day either. Dracula, a doting single dad, changing nappies and strumming a ukulele. And going into the hotel business. Actually, that last bit we can believe – the Prince of Darkness always did dress like a maitre d’. What’s next, though – Jason Voorhees opening a summer camp?

Anyhow, welcome to Hotel Transylvania. The resort in question is a human-free haven where misunderstood supernaturals can cower in safety from the outside world (for a price, presumably, so cash-strapped denizens of the night should probably steer clear or apply for a job as a porter). It’s here that Drac (Sandler), traumatized by the death of his beloved wife and shunning mankind, has raised his daughter Mavis (Gomez). Despite his best efforts to dampen her curiosity, she longs to experience the world beyond the hotel walls, and things come to a head when Andy Samberg’s fresh-faced backpacker dude accidentally gatecrashes her monster mash of a 118th birthday party.

Afraid of causing a stampede among his people-allergic guests, Dracula disguises the backpacker, Jonathan, as his ‘Frankenhomie’, then has to struggle to keep him away from his instantly smitten daughter. Jonathan, meanwhile, takes it upon himself to up the tempo of what is a decidedly dull gathering. Part of the reason for this yawn-worthiness is the control freaky Count himself – “Mr Tight Coffin,” as one character puts. But it’s also due to the fact that these monsters are getting on a bit and it shows. As the jokes about their senile fuddy-duddiness pile up, they quickly start to seem less like dark outsiders than the cast of Cocoon, only with fangs and capes. Consequently, instead of the parable about intolerance it sets out to be, Hotel Transylvania turns into another one of those twinkly Hollywood how-cute-is-your-grandad comedies, with horror spoof and teen rom-com trimmings.

Tweens should cope with this well enough, but you could imagine younger kids growing a little restive. What will keep them in their seats, however, is the wonderful job done by the animators in cramming every frame with motion and colour: a dogfight with flying dinner tables, Kevin James’ Frankenstein (the big guy has rarely had more swagger), and the kind of background hustle and bustle that will furnish new delights even on a fourth or fifth viewing. All of this attention to detail bursts from the screen on Blu. You can almost feel the difference between Wayne the werewolf’s Brillo Pad bristles and the silky down which coats Dracula and Mavis when they’re in bat form. The worm cake looks deliciously moist, too. Adding to the longevity of the disc are some well executed and child friendly extras.

Extras: Commentary with Director Genndy Tartakovksy, Producer Michelle Murdocca and Visual Effects Supervisor Daniel Kramer / Goodnight Mr. Foot Mini-movie / Deleted scenes / “Monster Remix” Music Video with Becky G and will.i.am / Meet the staff and Guests: Voicing Hotel Transylvania / Making the Hotel / Progression reels

Review: Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (Grindhouse 3) / Cert: 18 / Director: Ken Dixon / Screenplay: Ken Dixon / Starring: Elizabeth Cayton, Cindy Beal, Don Scribner / Release Date: January 14th 2013

Look beyond the cleavage, and this isn’t a bad little movie. A deep space, textile-challenged redo of Richard Connell’s oft-adapted manhunt story The Most Dangerous Game – best version, Hounds of Zaroff (1932) – it sees escapees from a life of bikini-clad serfdom Daria (Cayton) and Tisa (Beal) crash landing on an alien planet, where they fall into the hands of playboy by day, hunter by night Zed (Scribner), who has a quiff, two robots and a jungle fortress with Trump Towers décor.

A broad spoof seems imminent, but in fact writer/director Ken Dixon plays the story relatively straight, his surprisingly joined-up script flagging Zed as an over-privileged sicko and the two girls as plucky (not just bimbos, honest) heroines. Performance-wise, the results are mixed – he elicits a pleasantly hammy and overripe turn from Scribner, but the inexperienced leading ladies have more snappy banter than they know what to do with. (According to IMDb, Cayton ‘studied her craft at the New York Academy of Theatrical Arts’, but who knows, maybe she majored in mime.)

In terms of production values, though, Dixon gets quite a bang for what were probably minimal bucks. The sets, with their Mayan temple vibe, are nicely thought out, and there’s some strong creature design. Zed’s metal henchmen are like dustbin versions of the rusty robots in that recent Doctor Who episode, bickering and laser-slicing through the necks of their master’s latest victims (he mounts the heads on a trophy wall). Lurking in the jungle are locked-‘n’-loaded, Predator-like monsters. When all of these elements come together, the collision of aliens, mechanoids and cuties trying to keep their clothes on gives Slave Girls the feeling of one of those deliciously lurid Paul Naschy creature features.

This new release on the Grindhouse Collection label is no doubt an improvement on previous transfers, but it’s still somewhat gloomy and soft-grained, making you long for the zing of a full-scale restoration job on Blu-ray – it would be worth it, as we’re talking about a movie of some charm, with an attractively retro pulp SF sensibility. Given what fun it is, it’s odd that Slave Girls seems to be the last of only two features that Ken Dixon helmed, the other being the fishy-sounding Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1975). Apart from that, his name (a pseudonym perhaps?) is attached to several compilation documentaries, of which one, Famous T&A, appears here as a bonus and offers an hour of footage from assorted did-they-really-make-that Eurocrap movies of various screen sirens getting their kit off. Nonsensical insult alert for a bit where a bloke calls Brigitte Bardot a ‘goddamn slut’ for refusing to sleep with him and Jane Birkin.

Extras: ‘Famous T&A’ (1982) Ken Dixon Bonus Film / Full Moon Trailer Park / Stills Gallery / Original Trailer / Reversible sleeve incorporating original artwork /

Review: Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror / Cert: PG / Directors: Henric Hirsch, John Gorrie / Screenplay: Dennis Spooner / Starring: William Hartnell, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford / Release Date: January 28th 2013

True to its original Reithian remit to “educate and entertain”, 1964’s first-season closer The Reign of Terror sees the Doctor and his chums Susan, Ian and Barbara travelling back in time with neither a robot nor a futuristic lizard in sight. Dennis Spooner’s six-part script sends the travellers to 18th century France (courtesy of cramped BBC studios) and a rather ponderous, occasionally surprisingly mature, story of treachery, duplicity, spies, prison cells and guillotines.

It’s difficult now, in the CGI world of modern Doctor Who, to imagine how a 1964 audience took to a six-week epic like Reign of Terror. This is slow, wordy stuff. Spooner’s script often feels like a history lecture as we’re told about the background to the French Revolution and are introduced to notable personages like Robespierre and Napoleon. But it’s a clever and sophisticated script, too, and it makes no allowances for Dalek-impatient kids sitting at home. In Part 2, when Susan and Barbara arrive at the Conciergerie prison in Paris, Barbara is taken to one side by a sleazy gaoler who offers her special privileges if they can become “friends” – one can only surmise he’s not after beehive-hairdo tips.

Carole Ann Ford’s Susan is a bit whiny in this one, succumbing to some pointless stomach bug for much of the time, and William Russell’s Ian has the unenviable job of carrying the not-especially-interesting “secret message” subplot. So it’s very much William Hartnell’s story; the actor relishing the chance to dress up and show off, pompously get one over various flowery officials and, in one particularly amusing scene in Part 2, overpowering a brutal road works overseer on the way to Paris by hitting him over the head with a shovel. And fans say Matt Smith’s Doctor is callous!

This DVD presents the story’s two missing episodes (lost in the BBC’s ’70s videotape purge) as animated reconstructions, marrying existing audio to effective, if occasionally somewhat minimal, new visuals. The Reign of Terror, being largely static, is an ideal candidate for this approach; and whilst fan opinion is already divided over it, realistically it’s the only way we’re ever likely to see these two episodes in anything even remotely resembling the way they were originally broadcast.

Like a lot of early Doctor Who, The Reign of Terror can be a bit of a slog. But there’s a lot here to look out for. The sets are sumptuous and the whole production is ambitious way beyond its tiny budget. It boasts the series’ first ever location filming (Hartnell’s double walking through the countryside en route to Paris) and the scripts subtly suggest the genuine fear and horror of the French Revolution without the necessity for graphic scenes of torture and execution (although the scene where Robespierre, shot in the mouth off-screen, is dragged from his office holding his jaw and screaming in agony is surprisingly graphic). Fans of the show’s more typical monster fodder may get a bit restless, but those who can embrace Doctor Who’s time-travelling ethos and are comfortable with stately, character-based drama, will find much to admire in this attractive and atmospheric release from the show’s pioneering early years.

Extras: Audio Commentary / Making of documentary / Photo gallery / Trailer.

Review: Comedown / Cert: 15 / Director: Menhaj Huda / Screenplay: Steven Kendall / Starring: Geoff Bell, Adam Deacon, Jacob Anderson, Calum McNab, Duane Henry, Sophie Stuckey Jessica Barden / Release Date: March 11th

Typical. You wait years for a tower block-based thriller and then two come along in the space of a couple of months. But whereas James Moran’s suspenseful Tower Block fell at the final hurdle in a head-scratchingly disappointing denouement, Menaj Huda’s more visceral Comedown has to battle against a sluggish pace and a cast of gratingly unsympathetic characters whose deaths come as a relief because it means the audience has to endure one less irritating, shouty, self-obsessed teenager, the sort of kids this reviewer is more likely to cross the street to avoid, in all honesty.

Huda previously directed the more accomplished Kidulthood and he’s back on familiar territory here (in every sense of the word) in the story of Lloyd (Anderson), just out of prison and keen to stay out of trouble for the sake of his pregnant girlfriend Jemma (Stuckey). But Lloyd is tempted by some of his loud friends to rig up a pirate radio station aerial at the top of a grim and deserted tower block. Once it’s installed, it quickly becomes clear that the group are more intent on partying than broadcasting to London’s yoof, but the party turns into a nightmare when Jemma goes missing. She’s not the last, and before long the group are picked off one by one, falling prey to someone (or something!) prowling the dark, grubby corridors of the tower block. Actually, we won’t build your hopes up; it’s a someone, a lone psychopath stalking the tower block for his own gruesome ends.

Well, we’ve all been here before, of course and in some ways Comedown is almost comfortably familiar as it deftly deals with the clichés inherent in its scenario. Huda’s tight, slick direction teases maximum tension from the film’s dark, cramped setting and there are a few effective shock moments and grisly death sequences. But with the core characters being so one-dimensionally dislikeable, it’s hard to get really caught up in their predicament or escape the conclusion that they’ve brought all this on themselves by breaking into a building they’ve really no right to be in. But it’s a well-made, watchable film, another British genre movie criminally ignored by UK distributors who’d much rather fill up our multiplexes with six screens all showing the latest Twilight (Nooooo…!) rather than give struggling homegrown talent a bit of a helping hand. But Comedown will nevertheless find an appreciative, if undemanding, audience, on DVD and Blu-ray.

Extras: Behind the scenes / Extended interviews with selected cast and director.

Review: Piranha / Cert: 15 / Director: Joe Dante / Screenplay: John Sayles / Starring: Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Barbara Steele, Dick Miller / Release Date: January 28th 2013

Recent killer fish exploitation remake Piranha (2010) and its sequel Piranha 3DD (2012) are breast… sorry, best forgotten. Produced by the legendary Roger Corman, Joe Dante’s fiesty 1978 Piranha, spawned by the success of Spielberg’s Jaws in 1975, is your one-stop shop for a decent dose of piscine pandemonium. Tidied up for this new Blu-ray release – apart from a bit of grain, it’s a sharp transfer – Piranha is as cheekily wry and tongue-in-cheek as it was thirty-odd years ago, its make-do visual effects and its mixture of coy bloodshed and graphic gore still remarkably effective in this do-anything age of digital wizardry and gross-out body horror where no orifice is left unexcavated.

When two teenagers skinny-dipping in an abandoned military installation go missing, insurance investigator Maggie McKeon (Menzies) is dispatched to find out what’s become of them. She teams up with surly Paul Grogan (Dillman) and their investigations at the installation brings them into contact with raving scientist Robert Hoak (McCarthy) who tells them that the installation was the home for Operation: Razorteeth where a strain of cold water-resistant piranha were being bred for use as a weapon in the Vietnam. Weapons of mass consumption, if you will. Unfortunately the piranha are surviving and thriving and they attack a kid’s summer camp and are now moving as fast as their fins will carry them to a newly-opened water park. Chaos ensues. Grogan rushes back to a nearby closed-down smelting plant with the intention of killing the piranha with pollution before they can escape into the world’s oceans but the plant is underwater and the piranha are in hot pursuit.

Piranha is good, fast-paced fun, taking itself just seriously enough but with the wit and confidence to offer a sly wink or two at its audience now and again, not least in a post-credits sequence which directly references Jaws itself. The piranha – memorably characterised by their furiously burbling trilling – are ferocious predators; the attack on the school summer camp is full of nipping and biting and screaming but the gloves really come off when the theme park is attacked and the water runs red, and ghoulishly-mutilated, eviscerated bodies loom towards the camera. Snappily directed by Dante and with winning turns from the underrated Dillman and the lively Menzies, Piranha is a 1970s treat which has admirably stood the test of time and maintains its reputation as the cheaper, only slightly stupider cousin of the more majestic Jaws.

Extras: Audio Commentary with Joe Dante and producer John Davison / Behind the scenes / Making of featurette / Outtakes / Stills gallery / Radio and TV spots / English subtitles for hard of hearing

Review: The Possession – Uncut Edition / Cert: 15 / Director: Ole Bornedal / Screenplay: Juliet Snowden, Stiles White / Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick, Natasha Calis, Madison Davenport / Release Date: January 21st, 2013

You feel for Clyde, the father in The Possession. He’s already stuck with the ex-wife from hell and a snarky elder daughter, so it’s no wonder he grows perturbed when his sweet younger daughter Emily becomes the host for a demonic spirit. Gregory Peck had the spawn of Satan foisted on him, but at least he never had to deal with all that other crap.

Another kind of haunting is at work here too, as Danish director Ole Bornedal is only the latest filmmaker to be stalked by the long shadow of The Exorcist. You can see it in the casting. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Clyde, has the dark, beetle-browed look of Jason Miller (aka Father Karras), while young Natasha Calis (glowering in the obligatory white nightie) is a dead ringer for Linda Blair. The cosy/chilly autumnal visuals, too (served up by cinematographer Dan Lausten, who shot the wonderful Brotherhood of the Wolf) hark back to that never-to-be-forgotten masterpiece.

Still, The Possession has one cool new gimmick up its sleeve, in that what we’re dealing with here is an Orthodox Jewish exorcism, as opposed to the common-or-garden Catholic variety. Recollections of that joke about a Jewish bloodsucker in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Slayers are quickly brushed aside, because the Dibbuk Box which Em finds at a yard sale (a dibbuk being a “dislocated spirit” in Yiddish folklore) turns out to be the undoubted star of the show. Dark and creepy, it opens all by itself, and out tumble big hairy moths (way traumatic, and think of the damage to the family’s woollens).

Tzadok (Matisyahu), the Hasidic Jew who gets roped into combating the evil, is a pleasant enough character, but he’s no Father Merrin. In fact, it’s little short of amazing how, 30 years on, The Exorcist still trumps its imitators for sheer spectacle. All the same, we get a moderately rousing showdown, plus a crowd-pleasing sequence where a nosy teacher is thrown around her classroom. Sedgwick spits so much venom as Clyde’s ex, you wonder if he could get a two-for-one deal and have her exorcized too. Otherwise, the performances are all thoroughly credible, with the two young girls excellent and Morgan confirming his rep as an actor on the rise.

Given that it shares script-writers (Juliet Snowden, Stiles White) and the marquee name of Sam Raimi (here the producer, there the director) with the upcoming remake of ’80s hit Poltergeist, it’s tempting to see The Possession as a trial run for that blockbusting project. But it’s a lot more than that – a classy old-school spooker that brings much-needed dignity to the slightly dodgy child possession subgenre.

Extras: “The Real History of the Dibbuk Box” featurette / Audio Commentary by writers Juliet Snowden and Stiles White / Audio Commentary with director Ole Bornedal

Review: The Girl From Rio / Cert: 18 / Director: Jess Franco / Screenplay: Harry Alan Towers, Franz Eichhorn, Bruno Leder / Starring: Shirley Eaton, George Sanders, Richard Wyler, Maria Rohm / Release Date: January 21st 2013

Spanish legend Jess Franco (Vampyros Lesbos) returns with yet another Harry Alan Towers production, this time featuring the Sax (Fu Manchu) Rohmer femme fatale, Sumuru (played with relish by Goldfinger glamour girl Eaton).

The film follows playboy Jeff Sutton (Wyler, Man From Interpol), whom the underworld seem to think is harbouring $10 million in stolen cash. This puts him at risk from two parties, Brit-in-exile mobster, Mr. Masius (an end-of-career role for Sanders) and Sumanda (this being the name Sumuru – the self-styled leader of the all-women army of Femina, a base hidden away in the Brazilian jungle – goes by in the script, while the end credits have her as Sumitra). Sumanda attempts to find the whereabouts of the money, while trying not to fall for the suave Sutton, who is in fact a mercenary, on a mission to rescue a heiress from the compound. It gets no less confusing as Masius wants in on the stolen money that doesn’t actually exist.

While it may not be James Bond, The Girl From Rio has a campy, kitschy charm, akin to In Like Flint, or Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. The Femina army would have appealed to the feminist movement had they not all been clad in short tunics and filmed so luridly, in true Franco fashion. Eaton has a whale of a time, in what would be her final role before retiring from acting, strutting around threatening Sutton in her monogrammed mini dress, and inexplicably changing hair colour from scene to scene. There’s plenty of fun to be had, be it from the tongue in cheek dialogue or the action-in-inverted-commas scenes which include a woman being tortured with a plastic electric fan.

There’s a certain lowered expectation you apply with these type of films, and while they could never be considered great, they are enjoyable in their own way. This release is actually the first time the 1969 film has had a UK home video release, and considering its age and budget, it looks fabulous, with plenty of garishly bright colours and flesh on display. It’s certainly worth a try if you enjoy the likes of Danger: Diabolik, Barbarella or ’60s camp spy films. Just don’t expect a masterpiece. This is Jess Franco after all.

Extras: 15 min interview with Jess Franco, Harry Alan Towers and Shirley Eaton

Review: Doctor Who – The Legacy Collection / Cert: PG / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Daniel Hill, Denis Carey, Christopher Neame/ Release Date: January 7th 2013

Douglas Adams’ Shada, planned as the final serial in the 1979/80 seventeenth season of Doctor Who, is the famous “lost” story from the show’s canon, its production halted and eventually abandoned thanks to one of the many industrial disputes which so bedevilled the BBC in the 1970s. But in truth Shada has been “found” several times in the intervening years, so its air of mystery has been somewhat diminished across the decades. The surviving footage was available on a bootleg video back in the early 1980s (so we’re told); the BBC issued the story on VHS in 1992 (the same version now presented on this new DVD) with linking narration by Tom Baker to fill in the (many) gaps; and the whole thing was reworked into a audio drama starring Paul McGann and finally novelised (after a fashion) by current show writer Gareth Roberts and published earlier this year. Given all that, you might expect most Doctor Who fans to be able to recite Shada off by heart by now, such must be their familiarity with the material. But for anyone new to Who or for those who just haven’t been tempted by the story’s presentation so far, its appearance on this new three-disc box set along with copious special features may well be the time to take the plunge and find out quite what was supposed to be so great about this mysterious, legendary story.

Much further along in his career, Adams himself looked back at his unfinished Who masterpiece and made comments to the effect that it really wasn’t that good a story. Watching the cobbled-together remains of Shada on this DVD (only a week’s location filming in Cambridge and one of three planned studio sessions was recorded before the plug was pulled) it’s probably fair to say that perhaps he had a point. The problem is and always will be that, whatever format the story turns up in, it’s impossible to be quite sure what the finished TV version would have been like. But I’d be willing to wager my sonic screwdriver collection that it would have been the same sort of slightly shambolic, slightly silly fare the rest of the season had served up, albeit spruced up with some refreshing location footage (the previous three serials having all been entirely studio-based). But Shada still starred Tom Baker at his ripest, along with some arch performances from the supporting cast and a script which never knowingly strayed across the line into serious (even by Who standards) drama.

Camp baddy Skagra (Neame) escapes from imprisonment in deep space and speeds off to 1979 Cambridge to track down Professor Chronotis (Carey), living in splendid isolation surrounded by his books in his cloisters. Chronotis is an old friend of the Doctor’s and he has in his possession The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey, a mysterious and all-powerful tome from the home of the Time Lords. The Doctor and Romana (Ward), enjoying a bit of punting on the Cam, have been lured to Cambridge by mysterious voices and before long Skagra, looking way beyond ludicrous striding around Cambridge in his early New Romantic cape and whites, is on the attack with his mind-sucking floating sphere and his plans to take over the Universe with the power of thought. Or something.

The surviving Shada footage has been hopefully sliced into six episode lengths; but with much of the completed studio footage comprising material in Chronotis’ Cambridge rooms, the story quickly drifts into frustrating narration mode as the Doctor rushes out of the room and we cut to Tom Baker telling us where he went next and what he did there (usually to another set which was never filmed on). Parts 1 and 2 are the nearest we have to complete episodes here, boasting most of the location footage and sequential Chronotis material. Later episodes run to around fifteen minutes and are comprised of the handful of scenes filmed on the spaceship set and some cheesy freeze-frames of earlier material to visually represent characters we haven’t actually been able to see on screen for two or three episodes. But from what remains – and there are a few new visual effects here and there – it seems likely that Shada would have deteriorated into an increasingly fanciful runaround of escapes and captures boasting, in the slate-like Krargs (one of which does at least appear in a couple of recorded sequences), one of the show’s less memorable monsters. But there’s some witty dialogue, Baker’s off-screen chemistry with co-star Ward is wonderfully evident on screen and Carey is a hoot as the archetypal absent-minded Professor who’s actually quite a bit more.

No matter how many ways the story is retold or reinvented, Shada will always have the whiff of legend about it and fans will undoubtedly forever dream of what might have been. But the simple fact is that, on the evidence of what survives and the way it’s been assembled here, the story would really not have been much more than an acceptable and enjoyable enough finale to a season which had seen Doctor Who slip further and further into tongue-in-cheek parody and irrelevance as it unknowingly embarked on the long journey which would lead to its cancellation ten years later.

Shada and its attendant special features occupy the first two discs of the Legacy Collection box set. Disc 3 leads with the 1993 BBC TV documentary More Than Thirty Years In The TARDIS, an extended ninety-minute edit of the sixty-minute TV broadcast. This is undoubtedly the best documentary ever made about the series, but now, some twenty years later, and with the benefit of knowing how the Doctor has subsequently been spectacularly revived, it seems uncomfortably dated, shot through as it is with a wistful poignancy about a show which had already been dead for four years when it was made and which had a few more years in limbo left to endure. Even more depressing is the fact that it features prominently so many classic Who faces who are no longer with us; Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier) narrates and appears, Jon Pertwee whizzes around the South Bank in his Whomobile, Elisabeth Sladen and her young daughter escape the attentions of a Sontaran, 1960s producer Verity Lambert pontificates about the origins of the show.

The rest of disc 3 seems to be a dumping ground for a grab-bag of stray bits and pieces which haven’t fitted onto other releases and have been shoehorned in here under the Legacy title. So we get vintage interview material with Peter Purves (Steven Taylor in the Hartnell era) and Verity Lambert, a rather touching tribute to the late Courtney (the standout piece across all three discs) and a collection of camp on-screen and off-screen Doctor Who talent discussing the merits of Those Deadly Divas – Doctor Who’s most dangerous ladies. Oh well… it’s always nice to see Camille Coduri (Rose’s Mum Jackie) again.

The Legacy Collection box set is a rather scrappy and random way to launch the 2013 Doctor Who release schedule, and even though there’s an interesting selection-box mix of material here, the slightly maudlin documentary and the frustrating unfinishedness of Shada give the set an air of barrel-scraping desperation which was surely never intended and really isn’t deserved.

Extras: Shada boasts the usual “making of” (or in this case “not making of”) documentary which takes cast and crew back to Cambridge to reminisce about a TV show they half-made and why they never finished it; Strike! Strike! Strike! looks at the series’ history of BBC disruption; Being a Girl considers the representation of women in Doctor Who; Now and Then revisits the Cambridge locations and the McGann animation is computer-accessible.

Review: Stan Lee’s Lightspeed / Cert: 15 / Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy / Screenplay: Steve Latshaw, John Gray / Starring: Jason Connery, Nicole Eggert, Daniel Goddard, Lee Majors / Release Date: Out Now

Although we haven’t done the research, we’d wager there was a moment in the early ’70s when some TV exec said: “This Six Million Dollar Man idea is dynamite! But here’s the thing… how are we going to convince the audience that he’s running at these tremendous speeds?” At which point, presumably, he was shown some test footage of a guy in tracksuit apparently moving faster than those around him but shown entirely in slow motion. Suitably impressed by this low-tech solution that relied on the audience’s imagination, he would have probably said, “Brilliant! Let’s do it!”

You can’t help wondering whether a similar conversation took place during the development of Stan Lee’s Lightspeed. Except that in this case, the exec was shown test footage of a man in a ski-suit onesie speeded up to look like the Keystone Cops, with billows of smoke to give the idea of burning rubber. “OK! Don’t spend more that 45 million and don’t mess it up!”

Watching Lightspeed induces a nagging feeling that the makers of this movie are having a laugh. Is the presence of a surprisingly sprightly (until he stands up) Lee Majors just part of an elaborate in-joke? And that costume really is terrible. Our hero buys it in a sports shop to prevent windburn (no, really), so it’s got a plausible rationale. But you can’t help being reminded of that moment in Spider-Man (2002), when we’re expecting the first appearance of the classic outfit but get Tobey Maguire in his pj’s instead. That was a joke that worked. In Lightspeed, the sartorial faux pas haunts the movie as we’re repeatedly subjected to Jason Connery looking like Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards making a cameo in a Benny Hill sketch. Mind you, it does clear up the mystery of which side Connery dresses on.

Any good points? Well, it certainly has a comic book feel, and Daniel Goddard actually does quite a good turn as the particularly nasty Python – a villain who gets through so many henchmen (he even dispatches a few himself) that you’re left wondering how they recruit these people. It might have actually attracted some younger viewers, but for some bizarre reason they decided to chuck in such a surprising amount of violence that it earned a 15 certificate.

Why did Stan Lee let them put his name on it? Why is it getting a re-release now? Were they serious? Lightspeed is a film that raises more questions than it answers.

It’s on the left, by the way.

Extras: None

Review: Berberian Sound Studio / Cert: 15 / Director: Peter Strickland / Screenplay: Peter Strickland / Starring: Toby Jones, Antonio Mancino, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Cosimo Fusco, Fatma Mohamed / Release Date: 31st December

The studio in question is a post-production place in Italy. It is here, sometime in the ’70s, that timid Dorking-based sound engineer Gilderoy (Jones) arrives, full of misgiving, to work on The Equestrian Vortex, a low-budget shocker about two boarding school girls battling witches. Very soon, Gilderoy has horrors of his own to contend with as he tries to pry his travel expenses from a frighteningly pretty secretary and does his best to cope with moisture in the condensers. The producer, spivvy Francesco (Fusco), bullies and needles him. The director, Santini (Mancino), is a buffoonish figure who wanders in occasionally with his dog. Silvia (Mohamed), one of the actresses, flirts with him vaguely, but that’s disturbing too (Francesco warns him, “Be careful of that girl. There’s poison in those tits of hers.”).

Plus there’s the unpleasantness of the film-within-the-film, which requires sound effects for seemingly endless scenes of torture and mutilation. We never get to see any of this footage ourselves; instead, we witness the foley artists and Gilderoy doing their thing, massacring fruit and vegetables in sync with the lurid on-screen antics. Initially a somewhat comical spectacle, it gradually becomes disturbing. Gilderoy rips some cherry tomatoes off their stalks to imitate the sound of hair being torn out by the roots, and his face contorts with rage, a sign that this world of fictional violence into which he’s been plunged is getting to him.

The first hour of Berberian Sound Studio is evocative stuff. The ’70s exploitation flick milieu is recreated in convincing detail, with some nice touches to amuse the aficionado, such as the master tape being operated by a black leather-gloved hand, a la Dario Argento. The mediation of horror through cold technology has been done many times before, but in this instance the banks of retro gadgetry in Gilderoy’s snug control room add extra allure – rows of plug-ins, dials and oscillators in battleship-grey units. And upon this period setting, writer-director Peter Strickland has overlaid an unsettling atmosphere of mystery and miscommunication.

But what happens next is much less satisfying. Reality collapses around Gilderoy, and the film collapses too. Overwhelmed by so much horrific imagery, it would seem that the troubled Brit has lost the ability to tell fantasy from actuality. But the director also dangles other possibilities which suggest that Gilderoy’s delusions go deeper and predate his current predicament. Finally, all of the loose ends cancel each other out, and the result has about as much cohesion as a crushed watermelon. Still, it remains a provocative parable about the diabolical nature of cinema, one that seems to hint that making a movie can be a bit like selling your soul to the devil.

Extras: Interview with director Peter Strickland / The Making of Berberian Sound Studio / Deleted Scenes / Production Design Gallery / Extended Box Hill Documentary / Berberian Sound Studio Short / Trailer