The early 1980s saw a veritable host of fantasy movies arrive on cinema screens - inspired no doubt by the 'magic' sword waggling of the first two Star Wars movies - such as 'Hawk the Slayer', 'Dragonslayer', 'Clash of the Titans', 'The Beastmaster', 'Conan the Barbarian', 'Krull', 'The Dark Crystal' and of course John Boorman's epic retelling of the story of Arthur and the magic sword that waggles above all other waggly magic swords, 'Excalibur'.

Forever doomed to be the second best retelling of the Arthurian legend - "You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you"- Boorman's version is still a bold if slightly overlong, stark if often a tad indistinct, violent and misogynistic reinvention that discards the epic chivalry of Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur and in it's stead presents a version of the legend that literally glows with mythic resonance whilst never shying way from the blood and mud that would characterise such a time - "Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here!" (I'll stop quoting 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' now, I promise).

To tell his story Boorman assembled cast of then little known but now budget busting actors including Helen Mirren as (Morgana Le Fay), Patrick Stewart as King Leodegrance, Liam Neeson as Gawain and Gabriel Byrne as King Uther Pendragon but it's Nicol Williamson as Merlin who dominates every scene he's in and is sorely missed from those he isn't.  This movie was Boorman's passion project following a decade of career highs, lows and 'Zardoz' and when he finally got the go ahead he threw everything he could at the screen telling a story that encompasses the entirety of Arthur's life which perhaps was not necessarily the best idea but restraint is in no way a characteristic of this film and as an auteur piece it is perfectly realised whilst as a love letter to the pervasive power of the Arthurian legend it is, almost, unsurpassed.

"Look upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then... this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, "I was there that night, with Arthur, the King!" For it is the doom of men that they forget."

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Co-written by novice director Terry Marcel and legendary Hammer composer Harry Robertson (The Oblong Box, The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil) and born out of their shared love for sword and sorcery novels, 'Hawk the Slayer' crams every Tolkien and Robert E. Howard trope it can afford - a witch, an elf, a dwarf, a suspiciously ungigantic giant, a magic sword and massed armies of several - into it's £600,000 budget (of which star Jack Palance was reportedly paid a sixth) to create a ridiculously fantastic travesty of a movie that personally I have a bit of a soft spot for.  

The storyline is essentially a thinly disguised riff on The Magnificent Seven with the six shooters swapped for swords and bows and with the action relocated to a chilly, dry ice drenched park in Buckinghamshire.  Obviously made with an eye to the international market the producers cast two Americans in the leads, the aforementioned Palance and debutant action hero John Terry and they are both, well, they're both pretty terrible.  Of the latter it's perhaps kindest to say that he's ineffectual and wooden and way out of his depth but would mature into roles in 'The Living Daylights', 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Lost' whilst the former gives a scenery chewing performance of epic awfulness.  Acting around them we have a troupe of reliable Brit supporting actors such as Carry on... staple Bernard Bresslaw (who would return to the fantasy genre again three years later in Krull), One Foot in the Grave's Annette Crosbie, Patricia Quinn (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), Harry Andrews (Theatre of Blood), Patrick Magee (The Skull) and Roy Kinnear (The Bed Sitting Room) all of whom do much of the heavy lifting and keeping admirably straight faces.

Released at a time when fantasy movies of this sort were extremely thin on the ground and when interest in the fantastical was hitting fever pitch in the wake of Star Wars, Hawk was a box office bomb but one that quickly acquired a devoted fan following and whilst no sequels were ever made (until Garth Ennis' 2022 comic series) it has been credited with triggering the flurry of similar movies that followed in it's wake such as Dragonslayer, Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, The Beastmaster and the aforementioned Krull to name just a few.

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Made in 1973 'Nothing But the Night' was the sole production from Christopher Lee's Charlemagne production company for which he roped in the talents of his friend Peter Cushing and various other familiar faces of the time such as Diana Dors, Keith Barron and Fulton Mackay and 'Doomwatch' and 'The Stone Tape' director Peter Sasdy.

Lee plays retired policeman Colonel Bingham who is reinstated to the force to investigate the deaths of various wealthy members of the board of trustees of a Scottish orphanage.  His investigations soon focus on 'Mary' (played by Gwyneth Strong later to be better known as Cassandra in 'Only Fools and Horses') the sole survivor of a bus crash that has killed 3 more trustees and her mad as a hatter mother played by Diana Dors who was never the greatest actress and here is way out of her depth gnawing on every available piece of scenery and, not her fault I know but, if you watch closely you'll notice while fleeing the police on the island she hides under the same bush twice which always makes me chuckle.

The end result is unfortunately a bit of a mess with the film suffering under a miniscule budget, underwhelming characters - Lee in particular seems unable to invest any actual life into his role perhaps as a result of the producer responsibilities hanging over him - and a script in desperate need of a rewrite.  In his career Sasdy made some great work but he did have a tendency for sluggish pacing in his movies and such is the case here and frankly there are too many red herrings and scenes that in retrospect just make no sense and at the end alongside the who, the what and the why we are never given a satisfying how and so are left with a somewhat unfulfilling but shockingly brutal ending.

'Nothing But the Night' has a poor legacy and, in truth it's one that is well deserved, but equally it's always fun to see the two greats together and we can only lament what could have been and chalk this up as an intriguing failure and in its finale see a premonition of the greatness to come in Lee's next movie.

Buy it here - UK /  US - or watch it below.





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Released in the US as 'These Are The Damned' this is one of Hammer's rare forays into science fiction.  Most widely known for their horrors (50 of the studios 158 movies were in that genre) the studio occasionally veered sideways into sci fi often with very memorable results.  This darkly disturbing tale tells three sets of stories that weave in and out of each other before coming to a brutal and harrowing conclusion.

US tourist Simon (Macdonald Carey) is mugged in a Weymouth back street by a gang of leather clad "teddy boys" led by a very mod looking King (Oliver Reed) before running off on his boat with King's sister Joan (Shirley Anne Field) with the gang hot on their heels.  Meanwhile sculptor Freya Neilson (Viveca Lindfors) has moved into the cliff top home of beauraucrat Bernard (Alexander Knox) who works in the nearby facility and who seems to exert a level of power over various high ranking military officers.  And, locked in a bunker deep in the cliffs are a group of nine very polite but increasingly rebellious and ice cold eleven year old children who Bernard communicates with via closed-circuit TV.

Director Joseph Losey had been - and would be again - a director of art house movies who had studied under Bertolt Brecht and who would go on to create a close working relationship with Harold Pinter and this background in non-mainstream film-making is on display here.  The film is a strange mix of teenage rebellion movie, cold war paranoia and European art-house that make for strange bedfellows.  Very few of the characters have any redeeming features whatsoever and nobody comes out of it well, Bernard because of his utter dedication to his beliefs and his cold detachment towards the cruelty he's inflicting, King's violent nihilism and his incestuous protectiveness towards Joan which has driven her into the arms of the much older, chauvinistic, father figure in the form of Simon simply because he had been nice to her by offering his arm at a crossing and Freya, possibly the only truly moral person here and doomed because of it.

There is, of course, an inherent question within the statement of the title as we have to ask just who are 'the damned' and in a movie that is populated with children, with rebellious "teens" (Reed was 25 at the time) and establishment figures, with artists and intellectuals and with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat coming to an inevitable collision there can surely only be one answer.

Buy it here - The Damned - or watch it below.



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If you were science fiction fan in the very early 1970s then there was a very good chance that you were one of the up to 13.6 million people who tuned in each week to watch 'Doomwatch'. Running for three series on BBC1 between 1970 and 1972 at which point Tigon Films stepped in and made a movie adaptation starring newcomers to the show Ian Bannen and Judy Geeson, written by future 'Survivors' scriptwriter Clive Exton and directed by Hammer regular Peter Sasdy (Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula) who would also direct Nigel Kneale's 'The Stone Tape' that same year.

Created by the writing partnership of Gerry Davis and Dr Kit Pedler who had first teamed up on Doctor Who where the former was story editor and the latter the show's scientific advisor for which they created the iconic Cybermen who closed out the tenure of William Hartnell as the First Doctor in 'The Tenth Planet'. 

The Doomwatch group or the 'Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work' as they wisely avoided calling it was an agency tasked with investigating the excesses of science often in stories with a distinctly environmental slant. The movie continues that tradition as Dr. Del Shaw (Bennen) is sent to investigate the effects of an oil spill off the island of Balfe but once there he disovers a conspiracy to cover up a much more profound problem.

As was too often the case at the time the BBC in their infinite wisdom wiped the original tapes and so only 24 of the 38 episodes survive thanks to its Canadian broadcaster or as telerecordings and these are currently available as a box set here - Doomwatch - Series 1-3 The Remaining Episodes [DVD].

The movie is essentially a standalone feature and despite being made and released after the show had ceased broadcasting is a great introduction to a series whose themes have only increased in relevance over the years and is surely due a reappraisal if not a remake (other than the one made and then seemingly forgotten by Channel 5 in the late 90s).



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The 1980s wasn't exactly what you'd call a golden era for British horror movies.  There were some good TV series and some good novelists but the horror movie industry in the UK mostly gave up and stayed home.  It did though occasionally pop its head out from under the bed and give us the goods.

Very loosely adapted from stories written by British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes, 'The Monster Club' is, in the great tradition, a portmanteau featuring three tales told inside a framing story which in this instance involves a vampire named Eramus (Vincent Price) taking the human author also named R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) that he's just chewed on for a drink at the titular club. 

In the club we and Chetwynd-Hayes are treated to four musical performances by The Viewers, B.A. Robertson, Night and The Pretty Things and three stories about a shadmock, a vampire and a ghoul.

Like the music the three stories vary wildly in terms of quality.  The story of the lonely shadmock (James Laurenson) with its murderous whistle being robbed by heartless villains Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward  feels like a filler story that has fallen out of one of the Amicus anthologies which is hardly surprising given that this particular movie was produced by that company's founder Milton Subotsky and directed by the great Roy Ward Baker who'd made two of them ('Asylum' & 'The Vault of Horror').  The vampire tale is played strictly for laughs featuring a frumpy looking - if such a thing is possible - Britt Ekland and The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water himself Donald Pleasence as a civil service vampire hunter. The third story, and according to Chetwynd-Hayes the only one to resemble his source material, is the most effective and tells of a horror movie director searching for locations who happens upon a mist shrouded village where he is set upon by corpse eating ghouls and has to take refuge on holy ground all to a lovely, haunted synth tune called 'Ghouls Galore' by Alan Hawkshaw and some fantastic John Bolton illustrations.


'The Monster Club' was a flop on it's original release in 1981 and it's not hard to see why,  even at the time it was horrendously dated looking, the monster costumes laughably cheap and shoddy, the stories daft and the acting hammy but to me all those things sound like positives and I have long loved this film since I first saw it on my old black and white portable TV with both me and the television set hiding under the blankets because it was on late on a school night.

Buy it here - UK - or watch it below.



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'The Night Caller' (or 'Night Caller from Outer Space' or 'Blood Beast from Outer Space') is a UK science fiction film made in 1965 and is the story of aliens (from Jupiter's moon Ganymede) kidnapping young women via an ad in the pages of 'Bikini Girl' magazine to breed with in order to repopulate their devastated home.

Directed by John Gilling who would, a year later, go on to direct Hammer's 'Plague of the Zombies' & 'The Reptile' with, in the grand tradition of 1960s UK science fiction, an American lead this time in the form of the always reliable John Saxon (Roper in 'Enter The Dragon') accompanied by ITC regular Patricia Haines, Maurice Denholm ('Countess Dracula' & 'Night of the Demon') and Alfred Burke who provide a rock solid core at the heart of the drama.

Like the Quatermass movies this is a take on the cold war analogous red menace alien invasion movies of the 1950s but unlike Quatermass it doesn't have Nigel Kneale writing it so it just isn't as good but few things are so we're not going to hold that against it.  What it is is a big, silly, rubber-suited and jaguar driving alien monster (called Smith) sci-fi movie that feels as joyously dated as it actually is.

Buy it here - UK / US - or watch it below.



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Loosely based on the life and crimes of Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Báthory who was tried and convicted of multiple murders in the 1700s and whose subsequent legend includes tales of her bathing in blood in the belief that she could retain her youth this late period Hammer movie was one of the last of the period gothic chillers Hammer was to produce.

Whilst retaining a modicum of the dark magic tropes of old, Countess Dracula is very much a shift away from the big bad creatures of the good old days and at its heart is a woman; a vain, psychopathic and profoundly broken woman but just a woman and this is very much a tale of the seductiveness of youth and the cruelty of vanity.

Dominating the movie is the wonderful Ingrid Pitt utterly dominating the screen, by turns a seething, violent harridan and a seductive, lethal beauty drunk on her newfound vitality, obviously relishing her second lead role in two years following 1970s 'Vampire Lovers' for the same company.  She is ably supported in this by Nigel Green as her spurned lover Captain Dobi and the great Maurice Denham as the librarian Grand Master Fabio although Sandor Eles makes for an ineffectual male lead lacking both the chops and the presence.

For a film about a serial murderer bathing in the blood of virgins it is a remarkably bloodless affair with director Peter Sasdy choosing to focus on slowly escalating the horror that Bathory's addiction to the youth her actions bring over Pitt's desire for more gore. Watching now it seems to me that both were correct and it's a bit of a shame that a compromise wasn't reached but as noted earlier the finished article is a different sort of movie to what had gone before and it mostly eschews the action and the histrionics for a much quieter movie but that certainly doesn't detract from what was to be one of the final flourishes of the studios golden years.

Buy it here - UK /  US - or watch it below.



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Ed Gaughan and Andrew Buckley play Davis and Bennett (Ed Gaughan and Andrew Buckley) two fabulously disheveled functionaries for an enigmatic agency run by The Colonel (Jason Isaacs) that travel the countryside on assignments to psychically extract the metaphorical skeletons quite literally from people's closets.  Their newest assignment finds them at a remote cottage helping a woman (Paprika Steen) and her children (Tuppence Middleton & Josef Whitfield) find out what's happened to her husband.

In the grand tradition of odd couples our bickering pair are both damaged souls, the latter is 'going native' desperately trying to connect with and help his clients deal with, rather than just expose, their issues whilst Davis is 'glow-chasing', mining is own memories for comforting experiences.

I first saw this film not long after its release back in 2010, I went in cold, chuckled for an hour and a half and came out raving it to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. The script by writer / director Nick Whitfield is witty and strange, bittersweet and beautiful and has gentle and leisurely pace that allows you to slowly sink into the world.

The idea of people being haunted by their own ghosts is by no means a new idea but when it's done well it can be a joy and here Whitfield has created a sensitive and quirky play on the theme and populated it with eccentric, damaged and entirely human characters to create something lovely.

Buy it here - Skeletons [DVD] [2010] - or watch it below.



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In 1968, at the height of his ape fame, Roddy McDowell took a break from the prosthetics to take his one and only turn in the director's chair to make his adaptation of the Scottish ballad, 'Tam Lin'.

The original story tells of the rescue of Tam Lin by Janet, his true love, from the Queen of the Fairies where he is at risk of being given as a tithe to Hell. In order to save him Janet braves the Queen's magic as Tam is changed into various creatures and even burning coal until the Queen grudgingly admits defeat.

In McDowall's retelling Michaela Cazaret (Ava Gardner) is a rich and seemingly benevolent den mother surrounding herself with and indulging her glamorous coterie of hipsters as they engage in a nonstop party at both her city and country homes.  When her current favourite Tom Lynn (Ian McShane) falls for the local vicar's daughter (Stephanie Beacham) and begins to pull away from her Michaela's true nature comes to the fore and things take on a much darker hue.

'The Ballad of Tam Lin' has had a troubled existence. Shelved by the studio for several years it's eventual release as 'the Devil's Widow' meant that it had to a great extent missed it's moment and the woeful tagline they saddled it with - 'She drained them of their manhood ... and then of their LIVES' - certainly couldn't have helped. It was finally restored in the late 90s to reflect McDowall's original vision.

McDowall obviously has an actors eye for a talented colleague and populated his film with a rock solid cast including Richard Wattis, Cyril Cusack, Sinéad Cusack, Magpie's Jenny Hanley, Withnail & I's writer / director Bruce Robinson and Joanna Lumley who gets to deliver the immortal line, "Life is an illusion therefore nothing is permanent. I think I shall go to Sweden" and it has a soundtrack by acid folk band Pentangle that is redolent of the traditional setting and entirely relevant to the modern and composer Stanley Myers' score for the psychedelic nightmare of the hunt is astonishing.

It's a shame that McDowall was never again to direct as he has an interesting eye and his is a bold, engaging and respectful take on the story that deserves a wider audience.

Buy it here - Tam Lin Aka the Devil's Widow [Blu-ray] [1970] [US Import] - or watch it below.



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A joint UK and Canadian production with links to the Amicus studios via producer Milton Subotsky, 'The Uncanny' is a portmanteau horror film where author Peter Cushing tries to convince publisher Ray Milland that cats are evil supernatural masterminds out to kill us all.

Cushing tells three stories starting with the best that finds greedy nephew (Simon Williams) plotting with his aunt's maid (Susan Penhaligon) to diddle her cats out of their inheritance.  It's a quick and easy little tale of the type studios like Amicus and Hammer could knock out in an afternoon filled with Kensington Gore and profoundly grisly endings for those involved.

The two Canadian stories share a far more North American aesthetic.  The second tale has a strong central performance from Katrina Holden Bronson as an orphaned child relocated to the home of her unpleasant aunt and her bratty bullying daughter that has borrowed it's effects from Land of the Giants but certainly doesn't scrimp on the brutal ending whereas the third is played far more for laughs as murderous cat hating thesp Donald Pleasence is made to pay for his crimes by his wife's vengeful cat.

'The Uncanny' was a flop on release, is still poorly regarded and was certainly made at least 10 years too late coming some 4 years after the shift to much more sophisticated horror with films such as The Exorcist and being released the same year as the big budget extravaganzas of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind but personally I like it very much. My heart has always been in the B Movies and the schlock and this is very much both of those and let's be clear here the idea that cats are evil supernatural masterminds out to kill us all is undeniably plausible.

Buy it here - The Uncanny [1977] - or watch it below.



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The original novel that spawned 'Night of the Big Heat' was written by UK writer John Lymington (real name John Richard Newton Chance) who produced a seemingly endless stream of sub John Wyndham sci fi through the 1960s, 70s and even into the 80s - indeed fellow sci fi writer Brian Stableford suggested that Lymington chose his nom de plume specifically because of it's similarity to Wyndham's name - and this, his first, is very much in that category.

Set on the island of Fara where despite it being winter the locals are suffering in an intense heat wave.  Onto the sweltering island comes vampish secretary, Angela Roberts (Jane Merrow) in an attempt to rekindle her affair with novelist / publican Jeff Callum (Patrick Allen).  Already on the island are various locals including Dr Vernon Stone (Peter Cushing), a team of meteorologists and a brash scientist called Godfrey Hanson (Christopher Lee) who is investigating the heatwave and uncovering some unexpected results.

Directed by Hammer stalwart Terence Fisher (The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula) and starring that companies two biggest stars - although Cushing is very much a supporting cast member here - it seems strange that this was made by the obscure Planet Film Productions but perhaps that goes a long way to explaining just how cheaply made it seems but continuity errors and dodgy effects are the stuff that all our favourite B-movies are made of and this is definitely a B (possibly even a C).

The film is often achingly slow being a creature feature with an uninspiring creature that resembles a stranded jellyfish and with a script that was, at least in part, written by  Pip and Jane Baker - more familiar for their work some 20 years later on Doctor Who - this is a film that is saved by it's cast as Lee is obviously relishing his role, Cushing dominates each of his few scenes and Merrow is deliciously vindictive as the bonkers femme fatale.

In all it's a mess but it's a mess with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing at it's heart and that's a pairing that is always going to make me happy.

Buy it here - UK / US - or watch it below



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Witchfinder General was the third and final film by Director Michael Reeves before his death from a barbiturate overdose and stars his childhood friend Ian Ogilvy and is based on a fictionalised account of the life of self appointed 'Witchfinder General', Matthew Hopkins, played here with sleazy conviction by Vincent Price.

Following the witchcraft accusation and hanging of a priest, 'John Lowes' (Rupert Davies) and the rape of his niece (and Ogilvy's fiance) 'Sara' (Hilary Dwyer) by Hopkins and his brutal assistant John Stearne (Robert Russell) Ogilvy's roundhead officer 'Richard Marshall' sets out looking for revenge against the despicable duo.

Reeve's vision of Civil War era England is one adrift in political turmoil, rife with misogynist superstition and in the thrall of the charismatic Hopkins.  Both the world he conjured and the film he made are unrelentingly and unrepentantly brutal; with the exception of the short burst of hammering as a gallows is constructed the film opens and closes to the sound of screaming with little respite in between.  The fact that it is mostly shot, presumably for budgetary reasons, mostly in daylight and amidst the bucolic delights of the English countryside only adds to the intensity of the experience as every act of callous violence is thrown into stark relief.

Buy it here - Witchfinder General [DVD] - or watch it below.



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Based on Terry Pratchett's book of the same name this animated adaptation was made in 1997 by Cosgrove Hall Films, home of Danger Mouse, Count Duckula & the Doctor Who animation, Scream of the Shalka.  Sticking closely to the plot of the book (Granny wouldn't have had it any other way) it tells to tale of the murder of Verence, the King of Lancre by the deeply unsuitable and unstable Duke Felmet and of the three witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick - who hide the King's infant son, Tomjon, and protect both him and the - very angry - land until he comes of age.

There's a nicely rustic quality to the animation, if you've grown up on high budget animations from the likes of Studio Gibli and Pixar you may find it all a little crude but for those of us of the Roobarb generation that's, at least, half the appeal.  The voice cast is top notch with the likes of Christopher Lee (DEATH), Jane Horrocks (Magrat), June Whitfield (Nanny Ogg) and Annette Crosbie (Granny Weatherwax) all perfectly cast but I'm less (much less) enamoured of Les Dennis' performance as The Fool.  The joy though is of course the source material which Cosgrove Hall treat with the utmost respect and which the extended run time allows all the space it needs.

I have to admit that I've never been much of a fan of the Discworld books but in recent months I've been having another go (on audio) and have discovered a real fondness for the books featuring the witchy trio with this one being a particular favourite, it's Shakespearean allusions never failing to raise a chuckle from me and hopefully from you too.



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Released in 1973 Theatre of Blood stars Vincent Price as Edward Lionheart a hammy actor exacting Shakespeare inspired revenge on the theatre critics he blames for ruining his career.

With a line-up that includes the cream of British character actors of the likes of Michael Hordern, Robert Morley, Arthur Lowe, Dennis Price, Diana Dors, Joan Hickson, Eric Sykes & Jack Hawkins and with Vincent Price and Diana Rigg in the lead Theatre of Blood is a gloriously over-casted extravaganza of ghoulish camp.

Theatre of Blood was the third movie in three years that saw Price taking revenge for perceived wrongs and indeed it bears a very strong resemblance to the first of these, 1971's 'The Abominable Dr Phibes', but for all Theatre of Blood's many charms for me it lacks something of it's predecessors gleefully macabre charms.

Vincent Price is of course Vincent Price, here revelling in the chance to deliver key Shakespearean soliloquies as only he (and possibly William Shatner) can and surely thoroughly enjoying the chance to dish out gruesome retribution to an array of critics.  Diana Rigg is, as always, effortlessly wonderful and the menagerie of faces I mentioned earlier are all blatantly having a ball in a movie that is ridiculously good fun.

Buy it here - Theatre Of Blood [DVD] - or watch it below.



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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Throughout the 1980s there was a surge in fantasy cinema with a constant stream of both low and high budget hack and slash movies appearing, some with more ideas than budget and some very much the opposite.  Billboards and video store shelves were groaning with images of hunky men holding aloft various swords, axes or glaives. From Hawk the Slayer to Dragonslayer, Dark Crystal to Deathstalker, Yor the Hunter From the Future to Conan the Barbarian this craze kept makers of woolly loincloths and longswords pretty busy.  Britain with it's landscape of castles was always keen to get in on the action and - often with backing from elsewhere - produced some fine entrants into the genre (the first three of those listed above were filmed in the UK).

One of the most fondly remembered entrants was the 1983 science fantasy escapade, 'Krull'. Made on a massive $30 million budget Krull is a giant, glorious mess of a movie.

The arrival of 'The Beast' in his space travelling mountain and his kidnapping of Princess Lyssa (Lysette Anthony) spurs the formation of an unlikely band of heroes led by Prince Colwyn (Kenneth Marshall) that includes the likes of Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane, Freddie Jones, Bernard Bresslaw and Todd Carty.

Despite it's budget and it's sprawling scope 'Krull' manages to be a fairly low-key sort of thing with it's roots in the Arthur myth, it's head in the Star Wars and it's feet firmly in the walk and talk heritage of Lord of the Rings but director Peter Yates singularly fails to build any sort of satisfying action sequence with the final showdown between Colwyn and The Beast where the fabled 'glaive' is finally used being particularly anti-climactic.  But that aside this is a movie I first saw when I was a young fella with a then burgeoning love of all things sword and sorcery and a well established fondness for science fiction and so to see them brought unapologetically together like here was a real treat.

Buy it here - Krull [DVD] [1983] - or watch it below.


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As you can probably infer from it's title sound is very much at the heart of 'The Shout'; the sonic experiments of Anthony Fielding (John Hurt), Crossley's (Alan Bates) playing with his wine glass, the diegetic sounds of the rural setting, the progish / ambient soundtrack by Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks of Genesis. and, of course, the mortiferous Shout itself.  The sound design by Alan Bell is the shining jewel at the heart of the movie.

The Fielding's, Anthony and Rachel (Susannah York), live an idyllic existence in a small coastal village until their lives are turned upside down by the arrival of the interloper Crossley who claims to have lived with Australian Aborigines in the outback where he has learnt their magic; a magic that he soon brings to bear on the couple.

Based on Robert Graves fantastic short story Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski brings a decidedly arthouse sensibility to the film with time jumps, sudden switches to black and white and slow motion and a deliberate and slow pace that allows the menace in Bates' performance, the confusion in Hurt's and the loss of self in York's to build to palpable extremes before the film culminates in a thunderous if perhaps slightly anticlimactic ending.

Buy it here - The Shout - or watch it below.



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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain