Brainwashed
Don’t forget THE FORGOTTEN!
My latest article is over at the Auteurs’ Notebook, where you should leave your comments if you have any.
Robert Fuest’s visionary THE FINAL PROGRAMME is one of the less obscure films I’ve treated in THE FORGOTTEN, but justice won’t be done until it’s better-known than STAR WARS.
shadowplay 
January 22, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Just posted over there. LOVE this one.
January 22, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Yeah, it’s a beaut. Jerry Cornelius for Prime Minister!
January 22, 2009 at 6:16 pm
and Frank for Defence secretary?
January 22, 2009 at 7:20 pm
That would be a scary thought. Thinking of the novels, though, I wouldn’t mind Jer’s old mum in that position.
January 22, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Thinking of the novels ( especially the Pyat ones ) its surprising that Mrs Cornelius ISN’T defence secretary, or at least sleeping with whoever is currently….
It would be good to compare lengths (ahem) and extras on yr French Final Programme and my US final programme DVD’s … see if there is anything either of us is missing…
January 22, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Meanwhile (somewhat sci-fi related) It’s Neil Patrick Harris Day!
January 22, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Good old NPH — he sounds like a super fellow.
Ah, the US DVD has the deleted Hawkwind scene, right? The French one has a good transfer, but just a ratty old trailer or two as extras.
January 22, 2009 at 11:54 pm
I have the US DVD and I don’t remember any deleted Hawkwind scene… I really think I’d remember that! I did show the film to a friend of mine a few years back without knowing that her brother-in-law produced it, which was an odd little co-incidence.
January 23, 2009 at 12:02 am
Sandy Lieberson or John Goldstone? or one of the execs?
January 23, 2009 at 12:06 am
http://www.starfarer.net/photos15.html
Scroll down halfway for image and backstory. I was sure this was included on an official release, this scene, and I was disappointed it wasn’t on my French DVD.
January 23, 2009 at 11:43 am
I haven’t seen The Final Programme, but for some unknown reason I am thinking about Almodovar’s Hable Con Ella, one of my favourite films. No connection whatsover of course.
January 23, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I haven’t seen the Almodovar, so I can’t tell you if there’s a connection — beyond maybe bright colours!
January 26, 2009 at 1:03 pm
There is also a great blog interview somewhere about how British All-In wrestler Mick McManus co-wrote Hawkwinds silver machine hit… and an unreleased theme for saturday afternoon wrestling tv that has a line ( I can’t remember exactly) .. “there’ll be trouble when I strangle Moorcock’s Double” plus more info on the link between Dickie Davises Moustache & Rock & Roll,, so by extention I would have hoped that Fuest has a hidden Wrestling Film that we have yet to find out about… I’ll see if I can google up the link..
January 26, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Wow. There IS a wrestling scene in TFP, but it’s mud wrestling, which is technically a different sport, I would think.
I could see Fuest making a good Mexican masked wrestler movie, with a Peter Blake influence. The Kendo Nagasaki Story, perhaps.
February 20, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Would love to see the off-cuts (if any) and/or some kind of definitive/director’s cut – this film has obsessed me since I first saw it 6-7 years ago. Strangely out of its time, like a capsule from a parallel UK 1970s, and vastly quotable. Shame Fuest didn’t do many more films after this haunter.
Reimer
February 20, 2009 at 10:58 pm
It’s a positive tragedy, and one that points to something seriously wrong with British filmmaking. Must get round to writing something on Fuest’s surprising porno, Aphrodite.
February 21, 2009 at 12:18 am
Oh, I should say, I’ve never heard any reports that the film as it stands is other than Fuest’s preferred cut. The one where he was messed around is The Devil’s Rain, butchered by AIP, which damaged his career considerably.
February 21, 2009 at 1:10 am
Oops – never saw your question above in reply to my anecdote. Sandy Lieberson, is the answer. I have The Devil’s Rain ready to watch – Lupino! Shatner! together at last! – and can lay hands on Aphrodite if it’s worth the trouble. Is it?
February 21, 2009 at 1:18 am
The Devil’s Rain is a mess, but it’s not Fuest’s fault. You can occasionally glimpse the kind of film it would have been had it not fallen into the hands of chumps with no sense of timing or narrative or drama.
Aphrodite is better than I expected, and quite curious. A sort of Emmanuelle type thing that slowly creeps towards hardcore. The period setting implies some political message, and some mythological resonance, and I have to see it again before I can decide if that’s there really. At any rate, there’s the Caligulaesque guilty pleasure of seeing respected thesps jostling footage with quasi-penetrative material…