Film

An archive of blog entries about films and film production.

UK TV

Review: The Haunted Airman/Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity

1 November 2006 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Toby Jugg

In the UK: BBC4, October 31st, 10pm

As everyone knows, October 31st is the pagan festival “Dennis Wheatley Night”. It’s a time of the year when occultists of all varieties traditionally get together to wonder why Wheatley, whose books were once as popular as Agatha Christie’s, was such a right-wing Nazi loon*.

This year, BBC4 chose to celebrate Dennis Wheatley Night with a dramatisation of one of his stories, The Haunting of Toby Jugg, and a documentary about his life that had a group of experts wondering why he was such a right-wing Nazi loon.

Continue reading “Review: The Haunted Airman/Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity”

News

Sad news: William Franklyn and Nigel Kneale have died

1 November 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

William FranklynTwo pieces of very sad news. William Franklyn, best known for a hell of a lot of things, actually, but principally as secret agent Peter Dallas in Top Secret and as the voice of Schweppes, has died. He was 81. Over his 50-year acting career, he played numerous roles in shows such as The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Avengers and French and Saunders. He also took over from Peter Jones as the voice of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the BBC Radio 4 serial.

Nigel KnealeNigel Kneale, one of the best writers television has ever had, died on Sunday, aged 84. Apart from the Quatermass series and an adaptation of 1984 that caused national furore, he was also responsible for a number of spectacular one-off plays such as The Stone Tape and The Road. Virtually all genre writers today owe him a great debt. He’ll be sorely missed.

MST3K reunion

30 October 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Mike Nelson’s clearly got a skill – making fake directors’ commentaries for bad movies. He wrote and starred in Mystery Science Theater 3000, in which he and others would comment on bad movies. He’s launched RiffTrax, in which he makes fake directors’ commentaries. But now he’s joined forces with his old Mystery Science Theater 3000 buddies for The Film Crew to… make fake directors’ commentaries for bad movies.

Enough already, guys. We get the point.