From 30th October to the 9th November, Imagine Film Festival invites you to reconsider John Boorman’s much maligned horror sequel to 1973’s record-breaking success The Exorcist – the ill-fated film Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). William Friedkin, who directed the original, held nothing back in his verdict of Boorman’s film, […]
Pop Culture
Mag Mag (Imagine Film Festival 2025)
While self-explanatory, a director only gets to debut once, so they better make it count. A note that the popular Japanese comedian Yuriyan Retriever took in her stride with her first feature film, Mag Mag, which played at 2025’s Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam (and Frightfest’s 2025 Halloween event, too). […]
Incomplete Chairs (Grimmfest 2025): The Serial Killer / Furniture Builder Film We Never Knew We Needed
Ken’ichi Ugana returns to Grimmfest, after the showing of Love Will Tear Us Apart in 2023, with Incomplete Chairs further showcasing his imaginative storytelling. His latest is more akin to another of his films currently playing festivals this year, The Curse, in leaning more into outright horror than comedy. Incomplete Chairs opens with Shinsuke Kujo (Ryu Ichinose) […]
Outside of the Blue Box: Annette Badland
Saying ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Eastenders’ in the same sentence sends a shiver down old Whovians spines. While the debate rages over whether ‘Dimensions In Time’ in all its hard swipe cut aways and craggy faced companions’ glory is canon or not (I promise not to mention it again), the two […]
Doctor Who A-Z #91: The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977)
In a lot of ways, The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the culmination of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s vision for Doctor Who. It had to be: the furore over The Deadly Assassin would see Hinchcliffe forcibly moved on after this, while Holmes stayed on for just half of the subsequent […]
Doctor Who A-Z #90: The Robots of Death (1977)
The Robots of Death is one of those Doctor Who stories that’s become a perennial favourite among fans because – and I hope you’ll forgive the lapse into lit-crit jargon here – it’s really, really good. Every aspect of it, in fact, is good, and every aspect is good from […]
Doctor Who A-Z #89: The Face of Evil (1977)
The longer Season Fourteen of Doctor Who gets talked about in hushed tones as an all-time pinnacle of the show, the more it’s worth rewinding back to its transmission and remembering that it wasn’t always one discrete block of nigh-on flawless episodes. The Face of Evil is the first story of […]
Doctor Who A-Z #88: The Deadly Assassin (1976)
There is a temptation when writing about classic series Doctor Who to treat all of its controversies as items in the fossil record, but the ones surrounding The Deadly Assassin are still live grenades. As evidence, I watched this on Britbox, where the original final shot of episode three – […]
Doctor Who A-Z #87: The Hand of Fear (1976)
By Season Fourteen, the style that script editor Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe have brought to Doctor Who has been so carefully refined that it’s hard to imagine any writer being at odds with it. Their first season saw them coax a gritty, sophisticated and original script out of Terry […]
Doctor Who A-Z #86: The Masque of Mandragora (1976)
The Masque of Mandragora is an interesting story, because everyone always forgets about it. I realise that implies it’s not very interesting at all, but consider the context. This is a story with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, the consensus favourite Doctor-companion pairing. It’s produced and script-edited by […]