Moviedrome began on BBC2 at a time when there were just four TV channels in the UK, satellite broadcasting was in its infancy and streaming was decades away. It offered audiences a portal into the world of weird and wonderful cult cinema. To launch our season, join Moviedrome presenter Alex Cox alongside series producer and this season’s curator Nick Freand Jones, for a conversation with broadcaster Samira Ahmed about this influential and inspirational series.
Moviedrome: Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen
‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult films are very bad. Others are very, very good. Some make an awful lot of money at the box office. Others make no money at all. Some are considered quality films. Others are exploitation.’ From 1988 to 2000 Moviedrome was presented by Alex Cox and then Mark Cousins. Across that time, more than 200 features were shown, and generations of movie fans and filmmakers would be informed and inspired by the selection, alongside the wit and wisdom of the introductions that preceded each screening. Moviedrome was a portal into the world of weird and wonderful cinema. This two-month season features some of the most notable titles screened and wherever possible they are preceded by the original televised introduction.
Nick Freand Jones, season curator and producer of Moviedrome
Nick Freand Jones: There was a lot of film on the BBC at that time. Across the two BBC channels you’d have possibly 25 or 30 movies showing a week. Satellite TV was in its infancy, there was no streaming. And we had hundreds of library titles that you could select from a list that each studio would have. Consequently, there was a catalogue of films as thick as a phonebook to choose from, including foreign language and older titles, and also stuff from the 70s and 80s.
We thought to create a new strand for all this library material, some of which was a bit curious. I had in my mind the cinemas that – when I first moved to London in the 70s – were showing late night double bills, places like the Paris Pullman, the Scala, the Academy. The double bill would start at 11 – you might stay awake through the whole thing, or you might start watching Two-Lane Blacktop [1971] and wake up in whatever followed it. If you didn’t live in London, you couldn’t see films like that unless you happened upon them on television.
So when we were casting around for what sort of movies we should be screening, this broad definition of cult came up. And Alex seemed like the man [to present the films] because he had a kind of cult reputation of his own. He clearly knew a lot about cinema. He had technical expertise as well as cultural acumen. And he was opinionated and political and quite different to the sorts of faces that you would traditionally see on the BBC.
For the first movie, we showed The Wicker Man, which didn’t at that time have quite the storied cult reputation it does now. It was beginning to be thought of as a film that maybe had been cut too heavily. We had traced a longer version of the film to the Roger Corman offices in Los Angeles and I remember there was great excitement about the presence of some extra scenes. It seemed like the ideal first film for this run really – a genuine find.
With both Alex and Mark as presenters it was the same principle. We didn’t want them there to be salesmen. We wanted them to be there as people who would have interesting things to say about films, even those that might not appeal to them directly. Because the cult definition was so broad, the selection could go from the very highest of high art to the lowest of low art and everything in between. And that’s what made it different; everything prior centred around films that people liked, whereas Moviedrome was a way of smuggling into the BBC schedule these kinds of oddities.
There were certain obvious titles that we wanted to have for the BFI season. The Wicker Man, because it was the very first. Scarface [1983], because that was Mark’s first movie that he introduced when he took over. Curiosities like Carnival of Souls and The Great Silence [1968], a then very rare spaghetti western which Alex had identified as one that would be really interesting. Also, ideas like having both versions of The Fly [1958/86], which played in different series. Or putting Mommie Dearest [1981] and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [1962] together, something we hadn’t done on the show itself. It was a way of not just replicating, but maybe embroidering what had been done before.
I’m very heartened by how people seem to have these great memories of it. There’s this whole second life on the internet, with people talking about it and putting the intros up on YouTube. I recently worked with John Maclean [director of Tornado], who said Moviedrome was his film education because he grew up in a small village in Scotland and there wasn’t a cinema. And Edgar Wright has been very vocal about Alex’s influence through the series. I think curation is needed just as much, if not more, in the modern film landscape. With the big streamers, it’s not even a human who’s making the decisions about what gets prominence.
Nick Freand Jones was talking to Matthew Taylor, bfi.org.uk, June 2025
With thanks to
Bob Cummins and Sharon Maitland
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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