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Red Alert Oct 2017
regeneration news!
WELCOME ABOARD, JODIE The Master was right – the future is all girl in Doctor Who
Jodie Whittaker is the Thirteenth Doctor – and the first woman to play the title role after 54 years. “Her audition for the Doctor simply blew us all away,” says incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall, who worked with Whittaker on Broadchurch. “Jodie is an in-demand, funny, inspiring, super-smart force of nature and will bring wit, strength and warmth to the role.” Whittaker made her screen debut in 2006’s Venus. She’s also starred in Black Mirror and Marchlands, and played opposite Star Wars star John Boyega in Attack The Block (2011). Her casting was revealed in a teaser clip shown after the Men’s Wimbledon Final on 16 July. “To be asked to play the ultimate character, to get to play pretend in the truest form – this is why I wanted to be an actor,” she says. “To be able to play someone literally reinvented on screen – what an unbelievable opportunity.”
The key to the Tardis and to our hearts.
Jodie Whittaker will debut as the Doctor in this year’s Christmas special, “Twice Upon A Time”.
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Red Alert Oct 2017
SCI-FI Y M
Here’s how the show prepared the way for the Doctor’s gender change:
NEWS WARP
SFX: “It was a one-liner, a good soundbite. So no, we didn’t consider a woman back then. I wish we had now, it’s so exciting.” 2009’s “The End Of Time Part Two” acknowledges the possibility on screen. “I’m a girl!” cries Matt Smith, mistakenly. 2011’s “The Doctor’s Wife” references a gender-hopping Time Lord named the Corsair while 2013 minisode “The Night Of The Doctor” sees a dying Eighth Doctor offered a choice between “Young or old, man or woman” by the Sisterhood of Karn. Missy is the first Time Lord we meet reimagined as a woman. “Some of us could afford the upgrade,” states The Artist Formerly Known As The Master. The first male-female regeneration we actually witness is in 2015’s “Hell Bent”. “Back to normal, am I?” asks the General, now played by T’nia Miller. “The only time I’ve been a man, that last body. Dear Lord, how do you cope with all that ego?”
HIGH-SPEED FACTS
PETER CAPALDI “She’s going to be fantastic. The whole gender thing I just don’t get. She’s just a really, really wonderful actor, and she‘ll just be great in the part. That’s always interesting to see – what a wonderful actor does for that part.”
STEVEN MOFFAT “What every fan is going to say is ‘Jodie Whittaker is really good, and oh by the way she’s got ovaries.’ It’s not a big deal. The Doctor isn’t a man. He’s an alien who looks like a man. Now we’ve an alien who looks like a woman. I don’t think it’s going to feel like that big a change.”
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MICHELLE GOMEZ “She’s a terrific actress. I’m really excited to see what she’s going to bring to the role. I know Missy’s dead, but she’s been dead before. It would be fun to see what happens when those two meet further down the line. I’m sure that’s going to happen.”
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WHO SAID IT
The outgoing TARDIS team give SFX their verdict
A sad month for sci-fi/fantasy: Space: 1999 and Ed Wood star Martin Landau has passed away aged 89. True Blood’s Nelsan Ellis has died at 39. 1960s Doctor Who companion Deborah Watling has died at 69. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad wins this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award. George RR Martin to produce adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death for HBO. Simpsons/ Futurama creator Matt Groening heading up fantasy drama for Netflix, Disenchantment Netflix says “yes please!” to show based on My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy comics. Star Trek: Discovery’s Rainn Wilson to front alien drama for AMC. The Walking Dead zombie make-up guru Greg Nicotero heading up anthology series Shock Theater. Starz greenlights The Rook, a supernatural spy drama from Twilight creator Stephenie Meyer. Game Of Thrones: The Touring Exhibition to travel the world from this autumn. Stranger Things and Westworld pick up Emmy nominations.
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It was Tom Baker who first floated the idea of a female Doctor, back in 1980. Leaving the role he declared, “I wish my successor, whoever he or she might be, the best of luck.” It was a prank to bait the tabloids, but the debate had begun… In 1986 series creator Sydney Newman pitched a reboot with a female lead: “I want to avoid a flashy Hollywood Wonder Woman, because this kind of heroine with no flaws is a bore.” Joanna Lumley became the first woman to play the Doctor in The Curse Of Fatal Death, a 1999 Comic Relief skit by an up-and-coming Steven Moffat. Arabella Weir was an alternate Doctor in 2003 Big Finish audio drama Unbound: Exile. We’re told a Time Lord can only switch gender if the previous incarnation has committed suicide. Some claim BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning Jane Tranter eyed Judi Dench to lead the show’s 2005 revival. Not so, Russell T Davies tells
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The This Is The End star reveals his sci-fi and fantasy faves FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY MOVIE 2001: A Space Odyssey. I hated it when I was in high school but there was, obviously, something in it that kept making me watch it again. And again. Somewhere along the line, something in me clicked and the sheer, unbridled, Ring Cycle-esque fever dream that is 2001 just made sense to me, even if I’ll spend my life trying to understand it. There is absolutely nothing else like that movie. FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY TV SHOW Game Of Thrones. Yes, yes, it’s always lame to dig something that millions of other people do, at the very apex of them liking it, but fuck it. The show is amazing. Just amazing. It has more scope, balls, and heart than 90% of movies playing in theatres down the street. It is also, very clearly, made by people who have a great deal of respect and care for the world they’re creating and the stories they’re telling and the action is always just fucking wicked. The best – unparalleled in the history of television. FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY COMIC Kind of hard to beat Superman. He’s comics’ first friendly alien and has been at the vanguard of science fiction and extrapolatory thought for almost 100 years. Through Superman, generations of kids have been given an entry point into SF. I posit that Superman is the gateway to Asimov and Silverberg and Clarke. SF/FANTASY GUILTY PLEASURES I have an embarrassingly high tolerance for the Assassin’s Creed film. Goon: The Last Of The Enforcers will have a UK release date later this year.
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the epic tv preview star trek: discovery
NEW SHOW!
the age of discovery Star Trek
warps back to TV with a new prequel series. Joseph McCabe beams aboard a show with a lot to say about our strange new world... 40 | sfx magazine | october 2017
the epic tv preview star trek: discovery
SEASON 1 US BROADCAST: CBS All Access from 24 September UK BROADCAST: Netflix from 25 September
pace might be the final frontier, but it’s also an infinite one. Not only in size, but in its limitless potential as a backdrop for socially relevant storytelling. The original 1966 Star Trek took full advantage of its setting, spinning morality tales that addressed then current hot-button topics like civil rights and the Vietnam War. Now, its latest offspring, Star Trek: Discovery, seeks to do much the same for a world facing new challenges. “It is for a time such as this,” says Sonequa Martin-Green when SFX sits down to chat with the star and her castmates at this year’s ComicCon International in San Diego. Best known to genre fans as The Walking Dead’s Sasha Williams, Martin-Green tells us that “cross-culturalism” is one of the key issues explored in Star Trek: Discovery, set 10 years before The Original Series. “It’s such a phenomenal picture of acculturation,” remarks the actor. “The ideal, the utopia, is one where acculturation happens without assimilation. Where I am able to take on the processes and customs and rituals of your culture without losing those of mine, and we can come together. Because you have the original culture you were born in, but then, so often, we have so many examples in human history of that core culture being lost. Star Trek explores that, always has, and certainly explores it to the next level with our show. Where we see how you
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the epic tv preview RED DWARF
red dwarf Xii SEASON 12
UK BROADCAST: Dave, autumn US BROADCAST: TBC
The Jupiter Mining Corporation’s finest onsidering the lengthy hiatuses Red Dwarf fans have had to endure over the show’s three-decade history, waiting a mere year for new episodes feels like a walk in the park. Although series XI and XII were shot back to back, however, writer/director/co-creator Doug Naylor says the new run of six episodes has a “different flavour”. “Red Dwarf XII has a quite different feel to XI,” he tells SFX. “I think it’s more out there, there’s a kind of interesting looseness to it, and there’s some interesting ideas – things like a ship where criticism is illegal, corporations that make certain products invisible so you have to buy theirs, a cure for evil...” We also get an episode where Rimmer, Lister and the Cat experience life as mechanoids – the result of Kryten star Robert Llewellyn getting his own back on Chris Barrie, Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules for all those years spent buried under prosthetics, perhaps? “It didn’t come from Robert’s revenge,” laughs Naylor. “On Red Dwarf X, Craig and Danny both came in after a show wearing discarded Kryten heads, and people were absolutely killing themselves. They were saying, ‘We’ve got to do a show as Kryten!’ My attitude was it’s very easy for you guys to say that, but it’s got to be a story that isn’t just you guys having fun in your masks! It came from their genuine enthusiasm that it would be amazing to be Kryten for a week, and of course, I don’t think anyone quite appreciated the difficulty of it.” “It was a unique, fun, great experience...” adds producer Richard Naylor, “that no one would ever want to do again.”
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Can’t quite put a finger on it, but there’s something different about the Red Dwarf crew... Looks like Lister’s really letting himself go this year.
the epic tv preview inhumans
lucifer SEASON 3 US BROADCAST: Fox from 2 October UK BROADCAST: Amazon Prime TBC
Lucifer gets his wings back – and a new rival
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Just a normal day on the set of Red Dwarf? Retro fashions are back in for Arnold J Rimmer.
the exorcist SEASON 2 US BROADCAST: Fox from 29 September UK BROADCAST: Syfy TBC
New horrors await the demon-battling priests… ith its first season concluded, TV’s The Exorcist has finished its adaptation of the classic William Peter Blatty novel on which it’s based. The show’s executive producers tell SFX that the show will now adopt an anthology format, tackling a new threat each season. “That was our intention for the show from the very beginning,” says executive producer Sean Crouch. “You can’t tell a seven-year story about one family that just keeps getting possessed over and over again without the audience just kind of starting to hate you for putting one family through so much shit. So the idea is every year we’ll have a different case. A different possessed individual, a different family. But it’s Marcus and Tomas and Bennett, our priests, who are recurring characters, that you’re going to follow and have that investment with.” Season two’s case takes its priest protagonists to a woodland isle off the coast of Seattle, and a foster home for troubled teens run by Star Trek’s John Cho, one of whom is played by Deadpool’s Brianna Hildebrand. “Then we go into the Vatican this season,” says EP Jeremy Slater, “and really get into the story with Father Bennett, and hopefully that’s our connective tissue in the mythology of the show… We’re going to do other types of horror. We’re going to do haunted house horror. It’s all demon-related, but we’re going to do nature horror, connecting it with J-horror and Ringu and Dark Water a little bit.”
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he start of Lucifer season three is, technically, a four-episode mini arc cut from last season’s episode count revolving around Lucifer (Tom Ellis) getting his wings back. After that storyline, the series welcomes a brand-new character in Tom Welling’s police lieutenant, Marcus Pierce. Executive producer Mike Dringenberg explains, “I’ve been a long-time Smallville fan and through that I knew what Tom could do, and the range he has. We’re excited that the reason we could get him is that this is a role that is very different from what he’s played before.” Fellow executive producer Ildy Modrovich concurs adding, “You’re not going to see the mild-mannered Clark Kent at all. He’s got a little edge.” And they also confirm that Pierce has his romantic sights set on Chloe Decker (Lauren German). The exec producers tell SFX they’re looking at changing the character pairings this year to shake up the storytelling dynamics. Dringenberg details, “When it comes to the mixing and matching, our challenge is playing with the dynamic and then moving the characters on a journey so the next time they’re paired up it’s a completely different dynamic.” Modrovich continues, “We consider, ‘Who haven’t we put together yet, and what would that be like?’ In the premiere episode, Ella (Aimee Garcia) and Amenadiel (DB Woodside) have a lovely little scene together because they haven’t really met before. She’s the woman of faith and helps him remember what faith is. It takes this quirky little scientist to remind God’s favourite son what faith is.”
the epic tv preview electric dreams
dream states New anthology show
Electric Dreams
dramatises classic tales by Philip K Dick. Ian Berriman speaks to executive producer Michael Dinner
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the epic tv preview electric dreams
NEW SHOW!
SEASON 1 US BROADCAST: Amazon Video TBC UK BROADCAST: Channel 4 from September
lade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, The Man In The High Castle… though he was pretty much a prophet without honour in his lifetime, the list of adaptations of Philip K Dick’s work has grown and grown since the SF author’s death in 1982. But somehow no one had thought to attach the PKD “brand” to an anthology show – until Michael Dinner was approached by the Dick estate about five years ago. “They said, ‘Do you realise that he wrote over 120 short stories? Why don’t we find one that interests you and make a series out of it?’” the veteran producer recalls. “So I started reading the short stories. After a couple of weeks I called them and said, ‘Okay, not to sound like a pig, but how about all of them?’” The 10-episode series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams is unusual in two respects. Charlie Brooker is partially responsible for the first. “Channel 4 approached us because they were losing Black Mirror [to Netflix], and wanted to replace it,” Dinner explains. As a result of their commission, filming was divided equally between the UK and the US – with all the obvious logistical problems that entails. “We made it work the best we could,” Dinner says, with the air of a man who’s conducted one too many 6.00am Skype calls... Secondly, instead of taking US TV’s usual approach, with episodes “broken” by a writers’ room, Dinner drew on established TV talents like Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D Moore, Life On Mars’ Matthew Graham, and The Fades’ Jack Thorne. “We approached people that we really liked, both in Great Britain and the United States,” Dinner explains. “A number were familiar with Philip K Dick’s work, and came to the table with stories that they’d always loved. And we really encouraged unique, disparate points of view.”
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blade stunner Browse through Dick’s collected short stories and you soon realise that the 10 chosen – all first published in SF magazines in the ’50s – are pretty slight, generally 10-15 pages in length. As a result, the TV adaptations have to open them out and expand upon them. It’s a task different writers have approached in different ways. “Some are fairly faithful to the original material,” Dinner explains, “And with some it’s extracting just a kernel of an idea – it depends on the personal preoccupations of the writer.” In the case of Jack Thorne’s “The Commuter”, for example – shot partly amidst the ersatz architectural traditionalism of Poundsbury, a
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Close Encounters face to face with the biggest stars
NOOMI RAPACE
Playing seven people in one movie? You do the scary math... Words by Richard Edwards /// Photography by Christopher Patey
How do you go about moving between seven characters? I had to create rituals for when I was switching between them. I listened to different music for each one, wore different smells... I had to shower to wash off the perfume to step into the new one. Then when I was clean I walked over to the next room with the make-up and hair people. We were in some weird concentration together, where they started creating the sisters, painting my face, and when they put on the wigs and I had the music on, I was getting my head into the next one. How challenging was playing seven roles logistically? Technically it’s never been done before, so we had to invent a shooting formula, a way to work. I had to be aware of my own acting in a way that I’ve never been before, because I had to show the doubles what to do, how I was going to move. Every scene, whether it was all of me, or five of me, I had to almost have a bird’s eye perspective, and be ahead of myself. I had to be 100% present, even though sometimes it was just me in a green room with tennis balls, with an earpiece, answering my own dialogue.
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The seven sisters have very different skills and personalities. Are any of them particularly like you? I’ve realised that they’re all different versions of me. It was very important to me to not fall into clichés. When you have seven characters they need to stand out or it’s just going to be confusing for the audience. So Saturday is one side of me – she’s playful, she’s funny, she’s witty, and deeply romantic. But Friday is very intelligent, yet can’t really interact with the others. It was a thin line to balance on, but I realised they’re all just extremes of me. Did you do much to immerse yourself in the 2073 world where the movie’s set? For humans, psychologically it’s the same as now – it’s just things around us that will change. I saw this Mexican film about the different zones in Mexico City, where it’s segregated, the rich live behind big walls and you need an ID card to pass between the different sections. Or the one child policy we’ve seen in China. Our movie’s just turning up the volume on things that we already sort of have. In December we’re going to see you as a villain in Bright, from Suicide Squad director David Ayer. What can you tell us about your character? I love her! She’s an elf and she’s evil as fuck, but she’s not cold. I had a long conversation with Marilyn Manson, who’s a good friend of mine, and he loves villains. We talked about the fact that villains should get an opportunity to prove their point. If you can trace it back to why she’s doing it and what her passion is, then it becomes more interesting. You look different every time you do a movie. How big a part of your process is finding the right appearance? I start by doing research; sometimes I interview people. It’s almost like I’m collecting information and then when I have all the pieces I digest it. Then the next step is about finding the look. I don’t force it, it kind of comes to me. I’ve just wrapped Stockholm, where I play a hostage trapped in a bank for six weeks, falling in love with my captor. It’s really twisted and strange but I understood her totally. I wrapped on the Saturday at 5pm, and I was on a flight at 8pm, complete chaos inside. It was like, “Who am I now? Who is Noomi?” Then I realised that it’s actually not about going back to me. It’s finding the new me. Every character I’ve done, something is permanently changed in me. I’m evolving with them. The transformation is part of my life.
Biodata Occupation Actor Born 28 December 1979 From Hudiksvall, Sweden Greatest hits The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, Prometheus, The Drop, Child 44 Random fact Her original surname is Norén. She and her then-husband Ola chose new surname Rapace together when they married – it means bird of prey.
What Happened To Monday is available on Netflix from 18 August.
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he’s the original girl with the dragon tattoo. She’s hung out with Sherlock Holmes. She’s even performed DIY surgery to remove an alien from her abdomen. But little on Noomi Rapace’s eclectic CV can have prepared her for playing seven different characters in new Netflix movie What Happened To Monday. Set in a future where families are strictly limited to one child, it focuses on seven identical septuplets who’ve slipped through the net. Named for the days of the week, they now live in hiding, taking it in turns to go into the outside world using the made-up identity they share. “When I read the script it was just mind-blowing and terrifying,” Rapace tells SFX over coffee in a London hotel. “I couldn’t even picture how to do it. The way I act is all about the connection between me and the other actors, so every take will be different, because they will do something different and I will do something different – it’s like a dance. So this scared me to the deepest place in my soul – but then I’m very drawn to things that are scary!”
close encounterS noomi rapace
“I’m very drawn to things that are scary!”
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robert patrick
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robert patrick
As Terminator 2 returns to cinemas with a new 3D release, Ian Berriman talks to star Robert Patrick our SFX correspondent is frozen like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut. One of the universe’s most deadly killing machines – a mimetic polyalloy T-1000 Terminator – is just a couple of feet away, and has locked onto its target. Now, as its laser-like gaze burns into your quivering hack’s eyeballs, its clawed hand is describing an arc through the air, coming to a halt scarcely an inch from his chest. Yikes. Rewind. The time zone: the year 2017. The place: The May Fair Hotel, London. The T-1000’s new programming: promote a reissue of 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, now
upgraded to 3D. The form the shapeshifting assassin is wearing – the same cop it imitated during its pursuit of the young John Connor – is noticeably older, the skin a little less taut, but those eyes still burn like they did when they were key to struggling young actor Robert Patrick winning the role that changed his life. “I was sold as a cross between David Bowie and James Dean by my agent,” Patrick recalls. “That got me in the door with the casting director. Then I had to figure out how to pique her interest. I remember I deliberately kept my eyes on her. I waited for her to look away, then look back at me, and I was staring at her like
I was gonna blow her brains out! All I knew was they wanted an intense presence. Okay, how do you create an intense presence? Well you just slow everything down and move very deliberately. They said, ‘You’re sense aware’. So I started hearing with my eyes…” Patrick slowly sweeps his peepers from side to side, like a searchlight, as he recalls the improvisatory session. “I was doing this free-for-all of movement. I remember doing a thing where I was like an Indian tracker: putting my hand on the floor, kneeling and looking around. Then at a certain point I said, ‘I’m gonna put my back to the october 2017 | sfx magazine |
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it
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it
happens
Stephen King’s fear-soaked masterpiece hits the big screen at last. Joseph McCabe discovers its filmmakers aren’t clowning around... october 2017 | sfx magazine |
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heroes & inspirations alice lowe
alice lowe The director of Prevenge tells Kimberley Ballard about the strange animations and empowered women that have influenced her from a young age
ince her breakout role in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Alice Lowe has been redefining what it means to be a woman in horror cinema. She spent the noughties working as an actress, in 2012 she co-wrote Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and in 2016 made her directorial debut with Prevenge, where she starred as a woman driven to kill by her unborn baby. Lowe’s shift behind the camera is part of a new wave of women taking creative control in horror, while she continues to act in the likes of psychological chiller The Ghoul. “I thought it was one of the best scripts I’d ever read,” she tells SFX. “It’s hard to pin down what it actually is in terms of genre. It’s sort of mindbending and psychological but it has a very creepy feeling in a David Lynch sort of way.” Here Lowe talks about the artists who inspired her. Jim Henson
A lot of my earliest memories are seeing things like The Dark Crystal in the cinema when I was really, really tiny and having my mind blown. And seeing things like Labyrinth, which is one of my favourite films. I liked The Muppets as well, but that didn’t have the same profound effect on me as the more fantastical stuff did. It gave me a lifelong love of practical effects. When I was younger I even wanted to do work experience at Jim Henson’s Workshop.
Early on in my career I went into theatre and for me, you’re
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As a child, Lowe loved Harryhausen’s animation.
Jan Švankmajer
Lowe’s passion for puppetry was fuelled by Jim Henson.
I’m really into Jan Švankmajer, the Czech surrealist animator. I got into his work really early on because they used to play weird animation on Channel 4 as part of this thing called Four-Mations, and I used to watch that late at night [laughs]. It was the weirdest stuff, like Jan Švankmajer’s Alice In Wonderland. He uses taxidermy and false teeth to create stuff, and there’s lots of clay animation so there
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Ray Harryhausen and puppetry
trying to create magic on stage in a physical kind of way. Puppetry is a huge part of that. Ray Harryhausen was an early childhood inspiration. I always loved films like Clash Of The Titans and Jason And The Argonauts, where he’d done plasticine models and stop-frame animation. As a filmmaker I have a strong opinion [on effects]. There’s the odd computer effect like Gollum in Lord Of The Rings that I like, but I’m a believer that it’s human artistry that makes those things come to life and gives them a kind of uncanny soul. When I watch something like ET or Alien or The Thing and I know there are puppets involved, to me that’s what makes those films so memorable. You know that there’s a physical reality to the effects and that people were genuinely reacting to things almost in a theatrical sense, like the chestburster scene in Alien. Someone like Harryhausen was pioneering these effects because there wasn’t an alternative. I feel there’s so much to learn from him.
heroes & inspirations alice lowe
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Reviews
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cinema
IT
Big shoes to fill released 8 September
15 | 135 minutes Director Andrés Muschietti Cast Bill Skarsgård, Finn Wolfhard, Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Nicholas Hamilton, Wyatt Oleff
Stephen King is one of those authors whose work is always at some stage of being adapted for screens big and small. So any new project based on his writing is judged not only against its peers but, as with this new IT, any previous versions that have emerged. Which is hardly fair in this case, since the Tim Currystarring ’90s miniseries is a very different beast. Still, the movie – the first of two planned parts handling the story – is an effective monster on its own merits. Mama director Andrés Muschietti maintains the basics of the original novel – a group of kids known as the Losers Club decide to investigate why so many kids (and a few adults) continue to go missing in the small industrial town of Derry, Maine, only to discover the grinning, terrifying, otherworldly truth – and shifts a few things around. The time period here is the late ’80s, with all the pop culture references that brings. Fortunately, the movie cannily uses it (much as King usually does) to invoke
We don’t trust your shy act one bit!
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genuine nostalgia rather than overwhelming the plot. New Kids On The Block have seldom been mined so well. This story lives and dies on two crucial elements: the kids and the clown. While Curry’s take from the TV version may forever be ingrained in our collective consciousness, Bill Skarsgård and the movie’s practical and digital effects team do enough to give this version his (its?) own sense of menace and intensity. Lurking in sewer grates to lure unwitting victims, staging elaborate hauntings targeting our heroes’ buried fears and stalking his subterranean lair, Skarsgård doesn’t just let the make-up do the work, instead bringing his own twinkle amid the chills. And Muschietti gleefully ramps up the scare level as the film progresses, leavening the more obvious jump scares with a real sense of atmosphere. Sticking to his belief that real-world devices and tricks can be blended with CG, the director subjects his main cast to some devilishly horrifying moments, able to go to places that the TV movie couldn’t touch while making sure that it’s all drawn from character. One or two of the scares don’t quite land, but enough do to make the whole work. Shambling lepers, a nervy encounter in a library and
Pennywise was all dressed up with nowhere to go. Pennywise’s own machinations all add up to make the first half of IT one of the more satisfyingly nerve-wracking films of the year. The Losers Club also works well, giving off an authentically dweeby Freaks And Geeks feel when needed, but also stepping up to the challenge later on when no one else in town will combat the threat. A couple of stand-out performances include Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough, who’s shouldering the weight of a recent family tragedy, and particularly Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh, who’s dealing
Muschietti subjects his cast to some horrifying moments with both a creepy father figure (Stephen Bogaert) and a difficult transition into adulthood that isn’t helped by finding blood-covered bathrooms and a creature that’s obsessed with her and the people
Reviews RED NOSE SLAY Four more of our favourite creepy clowns
THE KILLER KLOWNS
S adistic aliens land in a spaceship shaped like a Big Top in cult 1988 horror Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Their gruesome arsenal includes guns that cocoon people in candy floss, acid-filled custard pies, and balloonanimal dogs that hunt down their victims.
THE CHIEF CLOWN
A mysterious “Psychic Circus” was the setting of 1988 Doctor Who “The Greatest Show In The Galaxy”. With his sinister smiles and array of flamboyant hand gestures, Ian Reddington stole the show as the baddie who commands a squad of robot clowns and glides around in a hearse.
MR JELLY
she meets. If the high watermark for such random assortments of kids on screen is Stand By Me or The Goonies, then IT comes close to matching them for sheer likeability and charm. The kids don’t feel like movie-perfect nerds and outcasts – instead they have a real-world vibe, like children you could actually meet. Whatever work the child actors and their director did to cement these bonds paid off wonderfully. If there is a problem here, it’s that the group doesn’t always seem to form as organically as it might (an issue that stretches back
to the book), with the addition of Chosen Jacobs’s Mike Hanlon feeling more forced than it might have been. He’s also handed a much less subtle backstory and bully encounters than some of the other children in the Losers group, though Jacobs manages to pull it off admirably. And though the film does occasionally suffer from the weight of familiarity often found with King’s stories (particularly those that have been tackled before), IT manages to carve its own space in the world. It was a risky gamble, even for the
franchise-happy cinematic world in which we live, to split the story and promise the final resolution in another movie, but part one not only feels like a satisfying narrative in its own right, but makes you eager to see what comes next – and not just by reading the book. King’s work might still be everywhere, on book shelves and on your TV, but not all adaptations can claim to work as well as this latest take on the clown-faced horror. James White Hugo Weaving almost played Pennywise, and Will Poulter had the part before scheduling conflicts forced him to depart.
L ooking to liven up a children’s party? Then book Psychoville’s amputee entertainer! His “box of a hundred hands”, featuring attachments like a comb and a bunch of flowers, is sure to delight the kiddiewinks.
TWISTY
I t takes something to be stand-out freaky in American Horror Story, but this disfigured serial killer managed it, thanks to his terrifyingly toothy mask and penchant for juggling-pin bludgeoning.
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Best Episode “In The Crimson Halls Of Kane Hill” (1.04), a completely insane journey through a psychedelic asylum with added drug-crazed killings a-plenty.
Season 1
Blood Drive
Being a lollipop lady will be very different in the future.
Pedal to the mental UK Broadcast Syfy, Thursdays US Broadcast Syfy, Wednesdays Episodes Reviewed 1.01-1.05
When episode five of Blood Drive features a sex virus, with crowds of the infected shagging themselves to death in oceans of semen, you’re left wondering if the series has climaxed early. And if you think that pun’s bad, wait until you see the show. Sarcasm, you have officially been replaced as the lowest form of wit. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing in the case of Blood Drive, because the show is unashamedly grindhouse, revelling in the lurid
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tropes of the genre. Where once movies could be so bad they were fun, these days producers will happily make deliberately bad shows and films under the guise of “homage” or “parody”. Does this make them critique-proof? After all, what’s the point in highlighting cheesy dialogue and corny plots when these are the show’s raison d’etre? Instead you have to ask, “Is the show inventive enough to prevent it becoming the same gags every week?” So far, Blood Drive seems to be succeeding. Blood Drive is basically Death Race 2000 with vampire cars (they use blood for fuel) competing in a
scuzzy From Dusk Till Dawninfluenced near-future dystopia – nearly every episode has scenes that look like they’re taking place in the Titty Twister. America has been rent asunder by a frackinginduced earthquake (you get the feeling the creators chose fracking not for political reasons but because it sounds like “fucking”). An Evil Mega Corporation called Heart is in control of everything. And Blood Drive, created and compered by the odious Julian Slink (a goth ringmaster who looks like he’s escaped from Gotham), is about to go from underground cult to prime-time entertainment.
It’s Wossername! Marama Corlett, brilliantly bonkers here as pervy AI Aki, was also one of the best things about Sky 1’s Sinbad, in which she played feisty thief Rina. Did You Spot? In the episode “Steel City Nightfall” (1.03) the monsters are created by a chemical called Trioxin, which is the zombie-creating substance in the Return Of The Living Dead films. Trivia In the US, Syfy has set up a complaints line for the series, the main purpose possibly being to gather audio material for their website. Best Moment The stomach-churning advert (with its hilarious disclaimers) for the addictive candy Smax in “In the Crimson Halls Of Kane Hill”.
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best in show
The characters who make TV great
Please bring back Depeche Mode. Strait-laced cop Arthur Bailey (Alan Ritchson) is press-ganged into partnering with Grace d’Argento (Christina Ochoa) when he stumbles across the illegal races; he’s fitted with a chip that means his brain will explode if a) he strays too far from Grace or b) they come last in a race. Competitors include Fat Elvis; a squabbling middle-aged couple; and a posh Brit, the Gentleman. Meanwhile, Arthur’s cop buddy Christopher (Thomas Dominique) is imprisoned by Heart and subjected to pervy torture porn by a sex-crazed AI, Aki, whose hammer drill jerk-off technique will leave all men wincing. Over the first five episodes the series manages to keep the OTT sex and gore amusingly fresh and inventive. Cannibalism, STDs, incest, psychedelic drugs and asylums all provide grist to the mill. The show also has fun with faux ads, comedy disclaimers and meta gags. The stand-out character by far is Slink, who quickly becomes the main source of satire; there’s a whole subplot in episode three about the network’s
It revels in the lurid tropes of the grindhouse genre ideas for “mainstreaming” Blood Drive that must be based on the showrunner’s own experiences. But can the series sustain the fun? Already by episode five an arc involving Heart and Grace’s lost sister is becoming central, and it’s not interesting. And while Arthur and Grace are fun in short doses, they’re not particularly engaging in terms of carrying a series. The torture porn goes on for too long, suggesting the show may continue to rely on such unsubtle padding techniques. And for a series about motor racing, the auto action is far from fast or furious. Blood Drive is hardly finelytuned, then, but it’s accelerating off the starting grid nicely. Dave Golder
She doesn’t need to see your papercut that close up.
CASSIDY
Preacher’s hard-living-dead vampire is a wild take on a comics legend UK Broadcast Amazon, Tuesdays US Broadcast AMC, Mondays
Proinsias Cassidy, to give him his full name in the Preacher comics created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, is described as a creature of exuberant attitude, rapacious wit and parasitic vampire tendencies. But on the show (loosely) adapted from their run, as played by Misfits veteran Joe Gilgun, he’s something slightly different. The wild behaviour and open love of drink, drugs and sex are there, but Preacher’s TV team have sprinkled in some additional sweetness. While Cassidy has been shown in the comics to be capable of deep friendship, love and sacrifice, the live-action take on the character is just that little bit more human. It doesn’t hurt that Gilgun fits the role perfectly, and is a past master at bad behaviour with a twinkle in his eye. Yet don’t go thinking that this Cassidy is somehow less of a hellraiser here – he’s introduced taking down a
plane full of religious zealots and surviving the crash injuries by blood-letting a nearby cow. In his time, he’s beaten up angels, gone on binges at the least opportune time, let his friends down and, as in the comics, fallen for Tulip (Ruth Negga). While both she and Dominic Cooper’s Jesse Custer have provided their share of entertainment so far, it’s Cassidy that keeps the laughs coming. His prime moment happens early in the second season, in what can only be called a comedy narcotics rampage alongside wayward celestial being Fiore (Tom Brooke), shot as one of the funniest montages to appear on TV in 2017. With his cheeky smile, wide range of gawkward sun-avoidance clothing and surprising hatred for The Big Lebowski, Cassidy’s the mad highlight of a show that has yet to meet a boundary it didn’t want to push. James White october 2017 | sfx magazine |
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