Don’t call it a comeback! Literally, given the number of alternative titles Pete Walker’s 1978 chiller goes under. Best-known as The Comeback, stars crooner Jack Jones as crooner Nick Cooper – a stretch, then – who is all fresh from a stay in rehab and ready to record his comeback album. The process is interrupted by artistic conflicts, record industry politics, scary ghosts and a hag-masked killer armed with a sickle. Not necessarily in that order.
The first in Pop Screen’s 2023 Halloween month sees Robyn Adams rejoin the show to talk about the genius of Sheila Keith, Walker’s gift for an outrageous title – including some contradictory advice given to his female protagonists – and the sheer weight of classic comedy connections in this ostensibly straight-faced horror film. If you’ve ever wanted a slasher featuring the stars of This Is Spinal Tap, Not the Nine O’Clock News and Last of the Summer Wine, this is for you, you absolute weirdo.
If you’d like to help us detox from heroin and restart our tarnished careers, you can donate to our Patreon, where you’ll get a monthly bonus episode of this show. The next one, about aliyah’s posthumous role in Queen of the Damned, is out tomorrow. Plus a new series of reviews of Asian genre classics in Fantastic Asia, cult franchises go under the lens in From the Video Aisle, weekly reviews of Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and The X-Files, and much more. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and that which once was Twitter for more.
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