Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Red Lights / Cert: 15 / Director: Rodrigo Cortes / Screenplay:Rodrigo Cortes  / Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, Robert DeNiro / Release Date: Out Now

Director Rodrigo Cortes made something of a splash two years ago with the film Buried, which put Ryan Reynolds in a box for an hour and change and managed to remain gripping throughout. Hopes were high for whatever Cortes would come up with next. His latest film, which he wrote and directed, is Red Lights, and whilst it’s not a bad film, it’s somehow slightly disappointing.

Red Lights follows paranormal debunkers Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) as Buckley becomes obsessed with proving that renowned psychic, Simon Silver (Robert De Niro), is a fake when he comes out of retirement suddenly. Strange things start happening around Buckley and when tragedy occurs things only get weirder.

It’s an intriguing set up and was ripe with possibilities but Red Lights sadly has one of the clunkiest screenplays seen for a while. Whereas Buried was stripped down and brilliant in its simplicity, Red Lights has a few scenes which set up what Margaret and Tom do for a living, with some character development, which take up the entire first act. We get a perfectly good idea of all this from the first scene (although it is dangerously close to the recent Apartment 143 which Cortes also wrote) so the next twenty minutes just feel like padding that would have been better spent exploring the back stories of Silver and Buckley. Of course this being a film about the paranormal and debunking there has to be some kind of twist or revelation (which there is) and truthfully the film would be better off without it. When the reveal comes all the good character work seems like a bit of a waste and it’s further evidence that the film didn’t need to be nearly two hours long. Some people may like where the story goes but the film was at its most interesting and intriguing exploring the possible supernatural goings on and the apparent malevolence of De Niro’s character. It’s almost as if Cortes had to include a twist because it was expected and didn’t have the courage to go in the more interesting direction and explore the themes that the film was playing with.

Despite this the film looks great, Xavi Giminez lights the performers extremely well and the sound design gets the most out of the random bangs in the night to make the spine hairs tingle. Sigourney Weaver and De Niro also give their best performances for a long time, unfortunately both belong in a better movie.

Red Lights is a film that, like its subject matter, will divide people. A few may find it brilliant but the rest of us are left feeling underwhelmed.

Extras: Cast Interviews, Director Interview, Making Of, Behind the Scenes.

DVD Review: The Uninvited / Cert: PG / Director: Lewis Allen / Screenplay: Dodie Smith, Frank Partos / Starring: Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Alan Napier / Release Date: October 29th

Finally available on DVD, this 1944 supernatural classic is often forgotten but highly regarded by those who remember it. Now is a perfect chance to catch the film in a fantastic package.

Siblings Roderick and Pamela (Milland and Hussey) come across a neglected hilltop mansion, Windward House, and manage to purchase it for a knock down price. They soon find the property comes with a number of drawbacks; young Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), the daughter of the previous owner, who is emotionally attached to the property, and a malignant spirit that refuses to rest.

Almost everything about this film is brilliant, from the acting to the sets and the evocative music. Director Lewis Allen manages to raise goosebumps in ways not seen in cinema before and helped set the template for the look of ghostly films to come, some 20 years before the granddaddy of haunted house films, The Haunting. It has a poetic nature and the black and white photography (which was Oscar nominated) is perfect, with plenty of shadows dancing across the scenery and the ghostly effects and sounds can tingle even the sturdiest spine. This is definitely a film that should be in every classic horror fan’s collection, and is the epitome of “They don’t make them like this anymore.”

This release, from Exposure Cinema, looks great, if not perfect, but is certainly a whole lot better than the previous VHS releases and no doubt the best the film will look without a million dollar restoration. It also includes a nice booklet packed with rare photos and essays on the film, its stars and Hollywood ghost stories in general, which rounds off a really well presented package.

For more information about the film, check out the in depth feature in Starburst issue 375, and in the current (#382) edition’s The Fright of Your Life.

Extras: 24 page collector’s booklet, stills gallery, trailer, two vintage radio adaptations (1944 and 1949) both starring Ray Milland.

Review: Flight of the Navigator / Cert: U / Director: Randall Kleiser / Screenplay: Michael Burton, Matt MacManus / Starring: Joey Kramer, Veronica Cartwright, Cliff de Young, Sarah Jessica Parker, Paul Reubens (voice) / Release Date: November 19th

Disney’s 1986 kid’s sci-fi romp Flight of the Navigator is one of those 1980s movies which just fell through the cracks and, unlike better-remembered movies from the same era such as Back to the Future, Ghostbusters and especially E.T., it never managed to gain the iconic status it was clearly aiming for.

Viewing it now on shiny Blu-ray over twenty-five years later it’s really not hard to see why. This is a film that wants to be E.T. so much it hurts; it borrows the basic storyline of Spielberg’s family favourite – kid befriends benevolent alien intelligence – but doesn’t really have anything new to add to it and with no real sense of jeopardy and nothing very exciting happening, it just passes by in a blur of affable pleasantness, never making much of an impact.

Slightly whiny 12 year-old David Freeman (Kramer) finds himself inexplicably transported from his Florida home in 1978 to 1986 where he’s quickly experimented on to find out why he hasn’t aged. Meanwhile a sleek, impenetrable extra-terrestrial spacecraft has crashed nearby and soon David is communicating with it telepathically. A handy service robot takes him to the captured ship and once aboard he makes the acquaintance of a mechanical artificial intelligence which he nicknames Max. David becomes ‘the navigator’ and soon the ship is bursting free of its confines and racing across the world to the befuddlement of NASA bigwigs who are trying to track it down and bring it back.

That’s about it. It’s an easy-going, charming little tale but it’s not really very exciting and never really amounts to much. David never seems to be in any real danger, the ‘alien intelligence’ Max (voiced by Paul Reubens) quickly becomes harmless comic relief and ultimately the film is most memorable for Alan Silvestri’s catchy but painfully-dated synthesiser score, the ground-breaking early CGI effects sequences (which still stand up well today), a few cute wire-operated alien puppets and an early appearance from Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker. Flight of the Navigator has its moments, it’s an interesting and well-intentioned curio but despite its visual ambition and a few neat SF concepts it never quite takes off.

Extras: Director commentary.

Review: Daddy, I’m a Zombie! / Cert: PG / Directors: Joan Espinach, Ricardo Ramón / Screenplay: Daniel Torres / Starring: Paula Ribó, Núria Trifol, Ivan Labanda / Released: Out Now

Not another zombie flick? Well no, actually. You see Daddy, I’m a Zombie! (no, you’re not) is the story of Dixie, an animated adolescent girl with issues who dies and has an adventure in the afterlife. So we’re all agreed then? Not a zombie. We could bang on about Dixie and many other denizens of this afterlife being referred to as zombies throughout the movie but we’re just going to let this go; it’s just semantics, after all. Anyway, Dixie has the usual problems of an estranged mother, bullying classmates and a father who’s a mortician; no wonder she’s opted for the goth-look. After an accident with a tree she goes even more goth and makes friends with a mummy, a ghost pirate, a (grateful) dead hippy and battles with some kind of villainess who is stealing the minds of the zombies (we told you they weren’t zombies). You see, turns out she’s got a legendary MacGuffin thing that does something that is quite important for some reason. Couldn’t tell you what exactly; not without watching it again and we just don’t want to.

Unfortunately, Daddy, I’m a Zombie! is probably awful. When we say ‘probably’, what we mean is that despite its ‘family film’ tag, it seems to be aimed very specifically at pre-teen girls and none were available at the time of review. We did try to get the reviewer’s son to watch it but despite the offer of staying up late he lasted about five minutes until the attraction of a sensible bedtime proved to be preferable to watching anymore of what he confirmed to be ‘a girl’s film’. So if a story about girls being bitchy and then realising the importance of friendships is your kind of thing, you might find something to enjoy here. But we warn you that it involves a friendship bracelet and a romance/jealousy subplot so it really isn’t for the fainthearted on that front. Other than that we can confirm that it isn’t funny, it isn’t frightening and every set-piece action scene is a dismal failure. On the plus side, it is quite atmospheric; the music is pretty much bang-on and the sets and cinematography look great. The stylised animations would be rather good too, if they didn’t all go wrong with the legs and make everyone walk funny.

The film also features the Most Predictable Twist of All Time but as pre-teen girls have seen fewer movies than us it might get away with it. In the end Dixie learns that every problem conceals something positive but ‘it’s just a matter of finding it and adding some colour’. Nope, we have no idea what that means either. Definitely no zombies, though.

Extras: None

Review: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World / Cert: 15 / Director: Lorene Scafaria / Screenplay: Lorane Scafaria / Starring: Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Melanie Lynskey / Release Date: Novermber 5th

For her first film as director, Lorene Scafaria has created a new subgenre, the romantic comedy-cum-apocalyptic road movie (apoca-rom-com?). All attempts to stop it in its course having failed, a massive asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, and humanity only has a few weeks to live. Abandoned by his wife and bitterly regretting a wasted existence, buttoned-up insurance salesman Dodge (Carell) thinks he might as well just sit tight and wait for the end. But when he belatedly gets a letter from the love of his life, he’s galvanized into action and sets off to track her down. Tagging along with him in hopes of hitching a plane ride which will reunite her with her parents is his neighbour, flaky Brit Penny (Knightley).

Scafaria helms the early stages of the movie very well, wittily capturing society’s gentle slide into anarchy. Some people, like Dodge’s Hispanic housekeeper, struggle to get their heads around what’s happening and doggedly turn up for work as usual. Others beat the asteroid to the punch by jumping out of windows. For many, orgies, drug-taking, the articulation of long-held grudges and the hasty ticking off of bucket lists become the order of the day. There’s a bit of rioting, but in general the streets are eerily empty as people disappear to be with their loved ones.

All this is very entertaining and feels reasonably on the nail. What’s much less believable is the rom-com element as Dodge and Penny supposedly warm to each other on their road trip. To be fair, Scafaria handles it with some tact, making it more a matter of glances and smiles than of clinches and declarations, but even so there’s an obstinate lack of chemistry between the co-stars.

Knightley plays her role in a faded granny frock, hair in a raggedy bob, eyebrows unplucked, but dressing her down in this way has the reverse effect of making her seem even more palpably attractive and out of Dodge’s league. And as for Carell, he starts off by exuding such a stern, judgemental, unprepossessing interior that his subsequent mellowing feels contrived – if he’s harbouring any emotion, it’s probably hatred, not love.

Those of you keen on your ’60s pop will also deduct points for a scene where Dodge puts on a Scott Walker solo LP only for a Walker Brothers tune to come out of the speakers. But all that said, the film definitely has its moments, and it’s graced with a fine performance by Knightley, a winning mixture of kookiness and melancholy. The conclusion, too, is dignified and moving. You wouldn’t want this to be the last movie you ever see, but it’s well worth a spin if you’ve got the time.

Extras: Trailer, Outtakes, Music for Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, A look inside Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Review: The Lost Episode / Cert: 18 / Director: Michael Rooker / Screenplay: Joe Nelms, Sue Bailey / Starring: Hayleigh Duff, Beverley Mitchell, Michael Rooker / Release Date: Out Now

Michael Rooker’s directorial debut leaves a lot to be desired. Suffering from awful cinematography, diabolical acting, poor scriptwriting and what feels like a shoestring budget, it’s a wonder The Lost Episode ever made its DVD release.

The plot follows a group of teens who arrive at the infamous mental asylum of Pennhurst (on a dare presumably) and the leader of this dreary bunch recounts a horror tale of an ill-fated camera crew that also came to Pennhurst a year or so ago. The narrative proceeds to follow the crew as they work their way through a series of spooky locations and increasingly bizarre, nonsensical encounters to their inevitable meeting with The Lost Episode’s big bad, Doctor Death, played by Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead). Doctor Death is nothing if not resourceful and kills each character in varied and mostly entertaining ways.

Setting The Lost Episode at the state school and hospital of Pennsylvania’s Pennhurst is a bold move by Rooker. The real Pennhurst became synonymous with abuse and neglect and eventually closed. Its very name having seeped into the public consciousness as bad mojo and would on the face of it seem like an ideal choice to stage Rooker’s drama. And in fairness to Rooker, he doesn’t pass judgment on the former patients. He actually goes out of his way to highlight the abusive practises that took place there, if only for the purpose of dramatic narrative. He also skilfully steers the film clear of any social commentary. Which is a shame, at least then The Lost Episode might have served as an engaging slice of controversy.

Right from the start, The Lost Episode runs into trouble. The tag line on the cover reads: Years after its closure, a TV crew returned to the most haunted asylum in America. Long after their disappearance, their footage has been found…

So based on that blurb one would assume the film to be an entry in the found footage subgenre of horror, something along the lines of Blair Witch Project, Rec, or Grave Encounters. Well, one would be wrong. There’s very little found footage in the film at all; The Lost Episode relies on conventional ways of telling a story. A strong enough departure to make this reviewer reach for the DVD case to make sure he’d read it right in the first place.

Bad marketing aside, The Lost Episode goes on to suffer from terrible lighting, possibly to create the ambiance Rooker felt he needed for this ghost/slasher yarn. It doesn’t work. Scenes are either too dark or are lit up like the 4^th of July. Not that there’s much to go on, anyway. Characters are flat, lacking back-story or dimension, consequently their deaths mean nothing other than to coax a visceral reaction from the audience – Rooker succeeds in this part. The acting is shoddy at best, with the only noteworthy performance coming from Michael Rooker, even then it just doesn’t sit well.

At least The Lost Episode gets the gore right. Genitalia extraction and the trans-orbital lobotomy are two of our favourites, but sadly these moments are few and far between.

It’s a poor first outing for Rooker in the director’s chair. The film’s direction and focus are a hopeless tangled mess and ultimately becomes an exercise in frustration and disappointment. All from a man capable of so much more.

Extras: None

Blu-ray Review: Storage 24 / Cert: 15 / Director: Johannes Roberts / Screenplay: Noel Clarke, Davie Fairbanks / Starring: Noel Clarke, Colin O’Donaghue, Antonia Campbell-Hughes / Release Date: Out Now

To judge by the movies, Britain ranks pretty low on visiting aliens’ lists of places to eat. Or at least that’s how it used to be; these days, they seem to be stopping by for supper more and more often. In this instance, a military cargo plane crashes in central London, causing confusion and power outages, as a result of which a group of characters find themselves trapped inside a 24-hour storage facility. Trouble is, there’s something in there with them, and, yes, it’s got a bad case of the munchies…

It’s the tried and tested monsters-and-confined-spaces set-up, but served up a l’anglaise with low key acting and Eastenders-style fractiousness. At the centre of the story is the soapy relationship between misery guts Charlie (Clarke) and his tight-lipped ex-girlfriend, Shelley (Campbell-Hughes). Smarting after being abruptly dumped, Charlie turns up at the facility to divide their shared belongings, only to find her already there, doing the same – talk about awkward. What with his whining and her sharp-tongued retorts, it’s almost a relief for everyone else present (his bestie Mark and her friends Chris and Nikki) when the alien’s taloned fist comes punching through the ceiling.

The ensuing action largely retreads ground familiar from other movies – their nemesis pouncing on them from the ceiling cavity or scuttling along the walls as they flee in terror, the characters squeezing through air vents and scrambling for makeshift weapons – but it also manages some quirky, imaginative touches, which we won’t spoil for you. The alien’s quite handy, too – a bug-eyed tough nut who’s idea of first contact is performing the Heart Rip move from Mortal Kombat. Alright, it’s basically a man in a creature suit, but a superior one (with a fetching array of mouth tentacles-cum-fingers), and it stands up well to the scrutiny of this HD release.

Johannes Roberts over-directs a little in the opening reel, but moves things along with aplomb in the latter stages, bringing the film home in a brisk hour and 29 minutes. The script (by several hands and based on an original draft by Clarke) doesn’t exactly sparkle, but hits it beats in an unpretentious, workmanlike way, and the storage facility is a great idea for a setting. It’s not exactly genre-defining or even particularly ambitious, and – perhaps its most serious demerit – you might well struggle to warm to its dramatis personae of rather selfish, taciturn Londoners. But Storage 24 still leaves the impression of being a well-crafted mini-actioner that capably navigates between Hollywood slickness and a British kitchen sink mentality. The Blu-ray is fleshed out with over 90 minutes of excellent behind-the-scenes extras, so a full evening’s entertainment is guaranteed.

Extras:  Commentary by Noel Clarke and Johannes Roberts, Deleted Scenes, On Storage Set Featurette, A Day In The Life of Noel Clarke, A Day In The Life of Colin O’Donoghue, Photo Gallery, Creature Development Featurette, Look and Costume Featurette, Music and Sound Design Featurette, On Storage Set Featurette, Weekly Blogs x 3 Noel Clarke, Weekly Blogs x 3 Laura Haddock, Weekly Blogs x 3 Antonia Campbell Hughes, Scene Commentaries by Noel Clarke, Antonia Campbell Hughes & Colin O’Donoghue x 4

Blu-ray Review: Halloween 5 – The Revenge of Michael Myers / Cert: 18 / Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard / Screenplay: Dominique Othenin-Girard, Michael Jacobs, Shem Bitterman / Starring: Donald Pleasance, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr / Release Date: Out Now

Hot on the heels of its financially lucrative predecessor, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is a mixed bag of squandered opportunities, excellent set pieces and a string of teenage characters that beg to be knifed, gouged, and mutilated in every conceivable manner.

Eager to jump on the bandwagon, director Dominique Othenin-Girard (After Darkness, Omen IV: The Awakening) rushed production and released this turkey in under a year to immediate worldwide scorn. Despite doubling its money on the opening weekend, Halloween 5 slipped from the charts and made a poor return on video sales. And it’s easy to see why. The original screenplay was significantly altered to create an odd, jumbled event which can’t begin to reach the greatness of Carpenter’s first two instalments.

We begin with stock footage of the end of Halloween 4. Michael is shot, dumped in a grave by the local police, then blown up for good measure. This – and it shouldn’t come as any surprise – doesn’t kill him and he escapes via a river, only to be found by a local hermit, credited as Mountain Man and played by the late Harper Roisman. Mountain Man inexplicably cares for Michael over the course of the next year, Michael having fallen into a coma for this entire time. No attempt to explain Mountain Man is ever made and after Michael wakes up and kills him (just before Halloween) it ceases to matter.

So far, so uninspired.

At the end of Halloween 4 we also saw little Jamie (Danielle Harris) taking up Michael’s mantle and killing her mother with a carving knife in the bathtub. The expectation being that little Jamie would then become the killer for Halloween 5, or at the very least a sidekick/apprentice. However, this wasn’t to be. The idea was at least briefly entertained before producers decided to play it safe and keep Michael as the big bad. Consequently, it’s revealed that little Jamie didn’t kill her mother. It was all just a bad dream – although she does hold a psychic connection with Michael.

Michael predictably bumps off the final girl of the last film, Rachel Carruthers (Ellie Cornell) a standard trope for Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13^th fame. He’s obviously been taking notes. He goes on to slaughter the sullen boyfriend and hunts down Rachel’s best friend, Wendy Kaplan (Wendy Foxworth). All part of Michael’s plan to lure little Jamie out of the children’s hospital, apparently.

Amidst the ensuing carnage we have plenty of unintentional laughs. Halloween 5 is very much of its time. Fashion and hair is in full ‘80s mode and a welcome blast from the past. This reviewer particularly liked the sullen boyfriend character with a single ear piecing to indicate his gritty on the edge rebel persona. Quaint by today’s standards.

The bumbling authority figures, Loomis aside, are played strictly for humour, and the teenage party scene was clearly written by somebody who has never been to one.

There are so many things wrong with Halloween 5 that it becomes fun in a really bad, guilty pleasure, kind of way. The plot meanders along with plenty of padding and subplots to bore even the most ardent of fans, but just when your hand hovers over the fast forward button, a gruesome death scene is thrown in and it’s business as usual.

Halloween 5 was originally released in 1989 around the end of the slasher craze where we were treated to the likes of Friday the 13^th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nightmare on Elm Street. All three franchises having signed their death warrant the same year with the uninspired likes of Jason takes Manhattan, The Dreamchild and Leatherface.  Halloween 5 fails somewhat spectacularly to offer anything new to the genre, instead falling back upon tried and tested formulas every step of the way. Small wonder then, it took six years before the next Halloween instalment reared its ugly head.

Still, it’s not all bad. No, really, it’s not. Donald Pleasance delivers a convincing performance as the increasingly harassed and seemingly indestructible Doctor Loomis. Danielle Harris can actually act: a rare treat for the franchise. Towards the end, Halloween 5 manages to deliver its one scary scene (hats off to Dominique Othenin-Girard for at least getting that right) with little Jamie hiding from Michael – the Shape – Myers in a laundry shoot while he tries various different ways of prising her out.

Almost from the start of Halloween 5 we are introduced to fairly repugnant characters, so it should come as no surprise that we want Michael to kill these annoying one-dimensional teenagers, in scenes that are as bloody as they are ridiculous. Demand it we say. After a while, it’s possible to sympathise with Michael’s need to kill bimbo after bimbo. We mean, who wouldn’t want to kill a self-obsessed, fashion conscious, neo-adolescent. Are we right, or are we right…

Well, perhaps not. If you’re a fan of the series, then the Blu-ray will complete your collection. Just don’t tell your mates. If you fancy a walk down memory lane to a simpler time when monsters were monsters and teenagers were killed in predictable but sufficiently gory ways, then this also is the film for you.

If not, then you probably want to pick up Rob Zombie’s reboot and forget this ever happened.

Extras: None

Review: Doctor Who – The Claws of Axos (Special Edition) / Cert: PG / Director: Michael Ferguson / Writer: Bob Baker and Dave Martin / Starring: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney, Roger Delgado, Richard Franklin, John Levene / Release Date: Out Now

‘Classic’ Doctor Who often gets it in the neck for its so-called low production values; dodgy special effects and wobbly sets are the sticks most often used to beat the show with by sniffy smart-mouthed 21st century critics of the old episodes. But they did have a point from time to time and it’s not impossible that 1971’s ‘The Claws of Axos’ is where much of the criticism started. Everything wobbles in ‘The Claws of Axos’; walls wobble, floors wobble, doors wobble… even Jon Pertwee’s bouffant has a bit of a quiver every now and again. But this lively colourful serial is also a fine example of what Doctor Who has always done – it fearlessly and cheerfully tells a story which is really way out of the reach of its budget and it has a damned good time just getting on with it and making the best of it.

In 1970 Doctor Who sailed confidently through its earliest cancellation crisis. The show had been struggling at the end of the 1960s and only survived the transition into colour production and with a third actor playing the Doctor because the BBC couldn’t come up with anything in a similar genre to replace it (beyond a half-hearted idea about rebooting the old Quatermass franchise). Season seven had seen Doctor Who reborn but for the eighth season producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks set about redefining the Doctor-exiled-to-Earth format they’d reluctantly inherited from their production predecessors, moving the show away from the edgier, grittier and defiantly more adult tone of the four serials which had made up Pertwee’s first year. So out went the Doctor’s brainy Cambridge scientist assistant Liz Shaw (the late Caroline John) and in came ditzy mini-skirted trainee spy/UNIT agent Jo Grant (Katy Manning), a much better fit for Pertwee’s cloaked and rather patrician Doctor. Out too went the long seven-part narratives of the previous series (at least two of which, ironically, remain amongst the most absorbing and mature stories in the show’s entire fifty-year canon) and, to move the show a bit nearer its roots as a children’s/family show, in came boo-hiss Time Lord super-villain bad guy The Master (Roger Delgado). Coupled with more garishly colourful production and storylines to match, arch and much less realistic performances along with a generally lighter tone, the show was well on its way to becoming a TV comic strip.

‘The Claws of Axos’, the third serial in the 1971 series is big, brash, unsubtle stuff, its headlong storyline lights years away from slower-paced and more thoughtful (and believable) serials such as ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ and ‘Inferno’ from the year before. UNIT’s five-man army spring into action when a long, cylindrical UFO crashlands on a shale beach in the South of England in the shadow of a Nuclear power station which apparently provides most of the country’s power. Once aboard the ship (most of which has, conveniently for the props guys, buried itself underground leaving just a saucy-looking gaping opening up on the surface) the Doctor, the trusty Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Courtney) and an assortment of turtle-necked boffins and stiff-necked politicians find themselves in the company of the body-stockinged, golden Axons. These apparently benevolent aliens have arrived on Earth just to power up their organic spaceship and offer humanity a wonderful gift – a supply of axonite which will enable the human race to end the problems of world hunger at a stroke by increasing the size of food resources so everyone gets a decent helping. But the Axons aren’t quite as benign as they appear; they’re secretly a bunch of shrieking, bright orange tentacled monsters and they’ve come to earth to drain it of its resources. “The claws of Axos are imbedded deeply into the Earth’s carcass!” exclaims the Doctor in one spectacularly memorable display of deathless dialogue.

‘The Claws of Axos’ actually takes the template of the seventh season – scientific establishment, technical mumbo-jumbo, starchy scientists, aliens of dubious intent – and makes it a little less stodgy and a bit more palatable than the slightly long-winded stories of the previous year. These are four rattling, fast-paced episodes, low on credibility (UNIT guards this downed space vessel – which attracts remarkably little attention from anyone else – with just handful of soldiers who allow various characters to come and go as they please with nary a ‘who goes there?’) but high on (melo)drama, peppered with typically 1970s set pieces (the stunt men of HAVOC are rolling all over the place in their cumbersome Axon costumes in various action scenes). The mix is shaken up a little with the addition of tough, gruff CIA agent Bill Filer (Grist) who, in a modern version of the story would probably have a bit of a thing for Jo, and Peter Bathurst’s stereotypical civil servant Mr Chinn whose pomposity is regularly pricked by Pertwee’s barbed Doctor. The Master’s back too – unsuspecting 1971 viewers had no idea the newly-introduced character would feature in each of the year’s serials – and here he’s initially a prisoner of the Axons before escaping and hatching his own plan to escape Earth in the Doctor’s TARDIS which itself makes a long-overdue reintroduction (Letts and Dicks reminding the audience of the show’s original ‘adventure in Space and Time’ remit) and perhaps the best twist in the plot occurs where it appears that the Doctor is about to team up with the Master to finally escape his Earth exile, allowing the planet to face its own fate from the rapidly-expanding Axos threat.

Originally released on DVD in 2005, ‘The Claws of Axos’ is presented in this new two-disc ‘special edition’ mainly because of technological advances which have allowed previously poor quality colour episodes to be replaced by much shaper and more vivid restorations which are still clearly not derived from the original UK broadcast tapes but certainly of considerably better quality than we’ve seen before and probably as good as this story is ever going to look. Time has actually been surprisingly good to ‘Claws of Axos’ as a story; as always it’s very much ‘of its time’ and its production short-comings (even Dudley Simpson’s woefully-misjudged whining incidental score and the eye-raisingly childish unfortunate Axon victim Pigbin Josh with his constant cries of ‘Ooh-arr’) serve only to accentuate the constant scale of ambition and imagination of the show set against the cash available to make it look good on the screen. Unlike much modern Doctor Who though, ‘Claws of Axos’ just sets out to tell an exciting and dynamic adventure story without smugness or self-satisfaction or any sense of ‘look how clever we are’. ‘Claws of Axos’ isn’t perfect Doctor Who but it’s a far better of example of what the show can and should be than any number of dinosaurs on any number of spaceships…

Extras: Apart from the improved picture quality the new extras include ‘Axon Stations!’, an enjoyable if fairly standard ‘making of’ which features, amongst others, an especially frisky Katy Manning and ‘Living with Levene’ a brilliant and fascinating documentary, one of the finest in the DVD range to date, where comedian/superfan Toby Hadoke spends a weekend in Salisbury with the eccentric John Levene, the actor who played UNIT’s reliable Sergeant Benton in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the other extras, including the commentary with Manning, Richard Franklin and producer Barry Letts are ported over from the original release.

Review: Cockneys Vs Zombies / Cert: 15 / Director: Matthias Hoene / Screenplay: James Moran, Lucas Roche / Starring: Georgia King, Lee Asquith-Coe, Michelle Ryan, Alan Ford, Honor Blackman / Release Date: October 22nd

Like the shambling, bloody corpses we see on screen, the zombie genre keeps on coming seemingly without end. The latest film in the sub-genre to impress is Cockneys Vs Zombies which has a love of the zombie film as well as a love for a sub community of our nation’s capital that seems to be sadly disappearing in our modern age.

Starting with the opening of a tomb beneath a new housing development which leads to the unleashing of an old virus of some sort we then go into a brilliant comic book inspired credit sequence and this sense of comic book fun continues throughout the remainder of the film. Two brothers (Rasmus Hardiker and Harry Treadaway) decide to stage a bank robbery with their cousin Katie, dim witted Davey and mental case Mickey, to save their Granddad’s (Alan Ford) old people’s home from being demolished to create another new housing development. During the bank robbery and with hostages taken, the zombie apocalypse begins with the virus unleashed in the prologue. The gang have to make it across to the East End to rescue dear old granddad and the other inhabitants of the home as the world goes chicken (Chicken Oriental = mental).

Far from a mickey take, the film has a fondness for the residents that make up the characters of the film and their language and beliefs. There are funny moments involving cockney rhyming slang and all of its peculiar offshoots that are really great to listen to; the film has a very working class ethic and affection for the disappearing importance of the family and the sing song around the piano that make you yearn for a simpler time. With the housing development plot line as well as the zombie apocalypse, the sub-text is there although it’s not immediately obvious on first viewing.

Substance is one thing but films like this live and die by their action and gore content and Cockneys Vs Zombies has this in spades. Heads explode, faces are ripped off and all manner of graphic disembowelling’s happen. For what was a low budget British affair, the film portrays an epic apocalypse in the capital very well with lots of zombies and shots of smoking ruins off in the distance. The characters are all very likeable in their down to earth no nonsense dialogue delivered with tongue placed firmly in cheek and you actually care for them the way that you don’t necessarily with the exaggerated cartoon characters that populate Guy Ritchie’s London set thrillers.

Cockneys Vs Zombies sounds like a disaster on paper but turns out to be one of the most entertaining, thrilling and touching zombie films of 2012.

Extras: Behind the Scenes, Zombie School, and Trailer