Hamish Crawford
In Defence of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
Anyone who’s been following Cult Britannia’s excellent re-appraisals of the James Bond movies in the run-up to Skyfall’s release may have noticed a continued criticism of one element of the recent films, one I’ve never noticed before. Regular screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade “don’t have the writing chops to deliver anything unique, original or [...]
Don’t Look Back in Anger: Steed and Mrs. Peel’s 1990s Revival
It may surprise you to know that the years between 1985 and 1992 were quite successful ones for The Avengers. In 1982—five years since The New Avengers fizzled out in a blaze of budgetary cock-ups—Channel 4 repeats of 1967-era episodes (ironically, the first time many British audiences got to see The Avengers in Colour in [...]
Quatermass Returns? A Cautionary Post-Script to “Quatermass Keeping Calm”
Yes, yes; the last part was even called ‘The Quatermass Conclusion’. I know, gentle reader, you’re thinking that like Nigel Kneale, I have some difficulty letting go. But apparently it’s not just Nigel and me. I was checking ‘Quatermass’ on Wikipedia the other day (to see if I had left anything out, you understand, not [...]
Hellraiser: The Technically British Horror Series
In what will be the first in a semi-regular series, I’m looking back at those curious hybrid films—the occasionally unloved stepchildren of international co-production shotgun weddings. Though created and filmed in Britain, and often staffed and produced by Brits, you’ll seldom find them mentioned alongside Four Weddings and a Funeral, Remains of the Day, or [...]
Quatermass Keeping Calm, the Final Part
John Cleese recalled the greatest difficulty he faced writing a second season of Fawlty Towers was that viewers had remembered the highlights of the first season to be the standard, so it was necessary to write something not just better, but better than those peaks. Every sequel has an element of this hype to surmount, [...]
Nobody Does it Better: Fifty Years of James Bond Music
I know you’ll judge me—but it’s true. There was a Heineken ad recently, and whereas 99.98% of you might see it and think, “Oh, they just played the James Bond theme”, I thought, “Oh, they played the David Arnold arrangement of the James Bond theme from the end of Casino Royale (which played over the [...]
Holistic Detection For a New Age: Dirk Gently
I know this is an odd start to the article, but have you been watching Doctor Who? I thought the cowboy episode was bad, but the most recent one gave new meaning to the word. With Doctor Who the television series degenerating into a rytalin-fuelled series of scatter-gun sketches connected by lazy sci-fi plot devices [...]
The Jubilee of Anno Dracula
Kim Newman’s field of knowledge is so dense that the only reason I know he is a human being is the delicious sense of humour pervading all his writing. It’s not just the diversity of his wisdom that is so dauntingly impressive, but the insight he gains from the most moribund film (OK Connery anyone?). [...]
Alan Barnes’ Sherlock Holmes on Screen
It can only be the effects of summer heat and Olympics over-exposure—for, vampire-like, I find myself retreating into cool dark studies in dire need of some good books. So Titan Books’ updated edition of Sherlock Holmes on Screen, Alan Barnes’ thorough, opinionated, and entertaining guide to a century of Great Detective cinematic exploits, couldn’t have [...]
Quatermass Keeping Calm, Part 2: An American Quatermass?!
American-accented British characters have been sending shivers down right-thinking fans’ spines for decades. The disastrously infantile studio logic that ‘international (i.e. American) audiences’ will run screaming from proper pronunciation has spawned Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood, Uma Thurman’s Mrs. Emma Peel, Val Kilmer’s The Saint, Keanu Reeves’ Jonathan Harker and John Constantine—choosing between Yankee pronunciation and [...]
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