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SFX|Holiday Special 2023First ContactBODY TALK Rebecca Hannant, email I wasn’t sure I would like Bodies but after the first episode I was hooked. The narrative was brilliant and I loved bingeing each episode trying to find all the hidden details. The story reminded me somewhat of that great show Life On Mars, which managed to pull lots of different genres into one, but in a way that didn’t feel convoluted or forced. Although the story arc wasn’t fully formed until episodes five and six, there was enough to keep me wanting more. As a sci-fi geek, I fully appreciated it. And from speaking to friends, even the non sci-fi fans seemed amazed by it, and that crowd is usually hard to win over. Also, as a resident of Hull, where parts of it…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023The Perfect Christmas Gift for just £41.99plus FOUR BBC TARGET BOOKS Great reasons to subscribe ★ FourDoctor WhoTarget novelisations worth £31.96 ★ Delivered direct to your door ★ Never miss an issue A YEAR’S WORTH OF ISSUES. 1 PAYMENT. SIMPLE. Print Edition £41.99 EVERY 12 MONTHS Get 13 issues of SFX in print over 12 months, and save 41% Digital Edition £36.99 EVERY 12 MONTHS Get 13 issues of SFX in digital form over 12 months, and save 35% Treat yourself or gift a magazine subscription today SUBSCRIBE NOW ONLINE magazinesdirect.com/SFX/XE94 PHONE 0330 333 1113 and quote code XE94 Terms and conditions: Offer closes 31/12/2023. Offer open to new UK subscribers only. Pricing is guaranteed for the first 12 months and we will notify you in advance of any price changes. Please allow up to six…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023NEWS WARP➔ Director David Robert Mitchell reuniting with Maika Monroe on They Follow, a sequel to 2014’s It Follows. ➔ Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan joining Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation The Life Of Chuck. ➔ Cinematic dream team Vanilla Ice and Chuck Norris signing on for action-comedy Zombie Plane. ➔ Veteran schlockmaster Charles Band producing Barbenheimer. Yes, it’s going to be a real movie… ➔ The Hunger Games set to be a stage show, opening in London’s West End in autumn 2024. ➔ Daisy Ridley joining reanimation thriller We Bury The Dead. ➔ Sam Raimi returning to horror with castaway chiller Send Help. ➔ True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto writing/directing an “occult detective story” for Blumhouse. ➔ Keira Knightley starring in dystopian SF tale Conception, directed by Silent Night’s Camille…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Green DeathCOUNTING “INFERNO” AS HIS “favourite Doctor Who story of all time,” Gary Russell is now writing a spin-off series for Cutaway Comics. Illustrated by John Ridgway, Inferno – The World Dies Screaming! takes place in the alternate fascist Britain first seen in the 1970 Third Doctor seven-parter, which along with 1971’s “The Mind Of Evil” is one of two Doctor Who stories scripted by Don Houghton. “We’ve ended up with access to both of Don Houghton’s stories, which makes the universe just that bit bigger,” Russell tells Red Alert. “I could immediately see how, if you have a planet that’s post-‘Inferno’’s holocaust, an alien mind parasite that feeds off powerful negative emotions might just look around and go ‘Woo-hoo, lunchtime!’ “This meant the survivors not only had to contend with…4 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023PHYLLIS COATES 1927-2023CAST AS LOIS LANE IN 1951’S Superman And The Mole Men, Phyllis Coates played the Daily Planet’s tenacious hack “like a horse with a bit in my mouth, hard driving.” Born Gypsie Ann Evarts Stell in Wichita Falls, Texas, Coates performed as a chorus girl and found a gift for comedy playing risque skits with vaudevillian Ken Murray, who discovered her in a restaurant on Hollywood and Vine. At 17 she won a contract with 20th Century Fox and began a movie career. Superman And The Mole Men was the first feature film to be based on a DC property, though the Man of Steel had already come to the screen in two cliffhanging serials, where Lois was portrayed by Noel Neill. It was essentially a test run for the…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE FIFTEENTH DOCTOR◆ He stands out. It’s the other way around with Ncuti – by some miracle, we were the people who got him. That’s a man who was leaving Sex Education, had decided to do that and, frankly, could have walked into any job in the world, let’s be honest. And he actually wanted to be Doctor Who. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but he genuinely said to his agent, “Oh, I fancy being the Doctor”, not believing he’d ever get it. He was the last person to audition – we had very long auditions, and he was the last. He never had a second audition. We just all went, “That’s it!” No second audition, just everyone liked him… You don’t tell someone on the spot they’ve…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023MUMMY DEARESTspoiler alert (EVEN THOUGH THE STORY IS OVER 130 YEARS OLD) CREEPING AROUND A SPOOKY old manor is all in a day’s work for SFX – it’s either that or a quarry – but there’s something extra special when it’s Halloween and you’re on set for A Ghost Story For Christmas with Mark Gatiss. It’s Thursday 5 October, to be precise for future TV historians, and we’re at Rothamsted Manor in Hertfordshire, a 900-acre estate that’s been around since the 12th century. It’s been the location for many film and TV productions – including Midsomer Murders and Grantchester, we’re informed – but today evil lurks in the dark for filming of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story “Lot No 249”. “As always, every year we have no money,” producer Isibeal…12 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023“WE WANT THE MONSTERS IN THEIR FACE!”VFX supervisor Sean Konrad comes to Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters with credits on Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla: King Of The Monsters (2019). “One of the things that [showrunner] Chris Black said to me early on was ‘We’re going to the small screen, and we still want to have our giant monsters, but we want our people to be in the thick of the action with the creatures,” he tells SFX. “‘We don’t want to be, okay, there’s a couple of people on the side, looking at the action. We want the monsters to get into their face and share a frame with them.’ “The way you achieve that is you frame it tighter so that you still get the Gareth Edwards philosophy that the creatures are too big to contain…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023The A-Z Of DISCWORLDA IS FOR ANIMATIONS In 1994, beloved animation studio Cosgrove Hall embarked on creating the first ever screen adaptations of the Discworld novels. Two were made: 1998’s seven-part Soul Music was the first into production, but it was beaten to the screen by the studio’s six-part version of Wyrd Sisters, which aired in 1997. The animations included a pretty great cast for the time, with the likes of Christopher Lee (as Death, naturally), Jane Horrocks, Neil Morrissey and Eleanor Bron all lending their vocal talents. B IS FOR BRIGGS, STEPHEN Author and dramatist Stephen Briggs was one of Pratchett’s close friends and collaborators for over 20 years. The pair met when Sir Terry attended Oxford’s Studio Theatre Club’s stage production of Wyrd Sisters in 1991. Having given the club the…11 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE MARVELS▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 105 minutes ▶ Director Nia DaCosta ▶ Cast Brie Larson, Iman Vellani,Teyonah Parris, Samuel L Jackson, Zawe Ashton A few days before TheMarvels opened in cinemas worldwide, Marvel Studios released a final trailer for the film. Front-loaded with footage of Iron Man, Captain America and Thanos – all men, none of whom feature in this movie – it had the desperate air of a last-ditch attempt in the wake of poor projected box office takings. “Remember when you liked this stuff?,” the trailer seemed to scream. “Please come back, this one is like Marvel in the old days!” The thing is, in a weird way, The Marvels does feel like an old-school MCU movie, one from somewhere in that Phase 2-3 sweet spot. Offering…4 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023GODZILLA MINUS ONE▶ RELEASED 15 DECEMBER TBC | 125 minutes ▶ Director Takashi Yamazaki ▶ Cast Ryunosuke Kamiki,Minami Hamabe, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando Produced to mark the 70th anniversary of the big fella’s debut in 1954, Godzilla Minus One takes the King of the Monsters back to first principles. In Ishiro Honda’s original kaiju classic, Godzilla represented Japan’s fear of atomic annihilation. Now, in the hands of writer and director Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla becomes the embodiment of war itself. The story begins in 1945 with Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a fighter pilot who fails to carry out his kamikaze mission, choosing life – and disgrace – instead. Post-war Tokyo is a burned-out wreck, yet hope blossoms when Kōichi meets Noriko (Minami Hamabe). They’ve both lost their families in the conflict, but Noriko…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023DREAM SCENARIO▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 100 minutes ▶ Director Kristoffer Borgli ▶ Cast Nicolas Cage, JulianneNicholson, Michael Cera, Lily Bird The man of your dreams becomes the stuff of nightmares in this ingenious fantasy satire, in which a beige college professor and clueless family man gets both celebrated and castigated for appearing uninvited in strangers’ subconsciousnesses. Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) has no idea why he’s making cameos in other people’s dreams, but enjoys the overnight fame it gifts him. When his nocturnal doppelgänger turns violent, though, he becomes a scapegoat in Kristoffer Borgli’s pin-sharp skewering of cancel culture and insta-fame. Cage’s performances have been so diverse and prolific that it can sometimes be hard separating the accomplished from the merely average. Paul, though, gives him one of his best…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023WONDERLAND GOTHICUK Sky Arts, finished airing/available to stream on NOW ▶ Writer/director Adrian Munsey EPISODES 1.01-1.04 There’s something a bit “write the theme tune, sing the theme tune” about the credits of Wonderland Gothic, which is written, directed, produced and scored by Adrian Munsey – but everything he’s done here, he’s done very well. It follows on from last year’s Wonderland, a documentary series examining children’s fantasy literature, and while it’s still rooted in books, it broadens the scope to examine the Gothic in art, architecture, theatre and film. In terms of the texts covered, there aren’t a lot of surprises here: it focuses on the established canon, kicking off with Frankenstein and following a line through Dracula, MR James, Angela Carter and Get Out. Thankfully, though, it doesn’t fall into…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023QUENTIN BLAKE’S BOX OF TREASURESUK streaming on iPlayer from 1 December; on CBBC 5/6 December ▶ Series director Massimo Fenati ▶ Cast Adrian Lester, Simon Pegg, Huw Huckstep, Grace Nettle EPISODES 1.01-1.02 Quentin Blake is best known as the premier illustrator of Roald Dahl’s work, but he’s written dozens of his own magical picture books over the years. Box Of Treasures is a new animated series that brings some of his most celebrated stories to life. There will eventually be six in total; the Beeb is releasing the first two as a festive treat. A satirical look at parenting, “Zagazoo” is the tale of a couple gifted a shapeshifting baby, while in “Jack and Nancy” two adventurous children take an umbrella flight to a tropical island. Adrian Lester narrates both with a cheery self-awareness,…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1958 | U | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Richard Quine ▶ Cast James Stewart, Kim Novak, Elsa Lanchester, Jack Lemmon BLU-RAY DEBUT After their immortal pairing in Vertigo, James Stewart and Kim Novak reunited for this whimsical tale of romance and witchcraft in New York. Adapted from a stage play, it’s charming Technicolor froth with a coolly ironic late ’50s vibe, playing out against a Greenwich Village backdrop of jazz joints and hip art stores. As the Manhattan sorceress, Novak is remarkable, giving a sultry, self-assured performance every bit as feline as her scene-stealing Siamese familiar, Pyewacket – in fact at times she verges on scary (“You know I can make you sorry…”). She’s a perfect foil for Stewart, caught here between the stammering, befuddled screen persona…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS Volume Two▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1974-1978 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Directors Lawrence Gordon Clark, Derek Lister ▶ Cast Michael Bryant, Lalla Ward, Denholm Elliott, Kate Binchy BLU-RAY DEBUT It may have been a dependably chilling cornerstone of seasonal telly but, as this second box set proves, A Ghost Story For Christmas was a more shapeshifting presence than popular memory tells us. The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas, first and best of the collection, is everything you might expect: a dread-steeped adaptation of an MR James tale, full of slime, greed and spectral guardians of That Which Must Not Be Disturbed. The Ash Tree suffers by trying to wrest the scuttling horrors squeezed between the lines of James’s prose into physical form, though the collision of cuteness and creepiness at the climax…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023EYE OF THE DEVIL▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1966 | 15 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT The Wicker Man fans will be intrigued by this horror, centred on another small community united in a sinister enterprise. They’ll soon guess why a Marquis is glum to be recalled to his ancestral seat, where the crops are failing… The Château main location is rendered very atmospheric – all Dutch angles and shadows – and the casting fascinatingly juxtaposes British cinema royalty (Deborah Kerr, David Niven) and swinging ’60s faces (Sharon Tate; a supernaturally handsome David Hemmings). + Extras Trailer.…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023WORZEL GUMMIDGE DOWN UNDER▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1987-1989 | PG | Blu-ray ▶ Creators Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall ▶ Cast Jon Pertwee, Una Stubbs, Bruce Phillips, Olivia Ihimaera-Smiler BLU-RAY DEBUT For anyone used to the quaint British run of Worzel Gummidge from the ’70s, the first series of Down Under is a bit of a shock. Less because of the location shift to New Zealand, and more because it’s gone really dark, with zombie scarecrows, a recurring villain, knives, bonfire treats and even an arc plot of sorts. None of which sits comfortably alongside Jon Pertwee and Una Stubbs’s vaudevillean performances as Worzel and Aunt Sally. The jarring nature of the tone is often weird and unsettling. The second series feels more like the charmingly dippy Worzel of old, even while it’s embracing…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023ROUND UPHarrison Ford bows out in INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, 4 December), which pits Indy against a rocket scientist set on changing history by erasing Hitler’s mistakes. We said: “Most of the connecting scenes feel a little drawn out… May not match the excitement of Indy’s early adventures, but it’s better than Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.” Bonuses: a five-chapter Making Of (57 minutes), and an isolated score. A mechanic’s son symbiotically fuses with a superpower-endowing alien scarab in BLUE BEETLE (4K/Blu-ray/DVD, out now), the last DCEU film made before James Gunn and Peter Safran took the wheel. Bonuses (64 minutes): a four-part Making Of, a piece on veteran actor Adriana Barraza and a series of scene breakdowns. We said: “Seems set from the off on challenging…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE GILDED CROWN▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Marianne Gordon ▶ Publisher HarperVoyager The well-worn phrase “No good deed goes unpunished” proves most apposite for Hellevir, the heroine of Marianne Gordon’s impressive debut novel. As a young girl, Hellevir discovers that she can visit Death and (at a cost) bring back those who have recently passed on. That’s not a secret that’s easy to keep, and Hellevir becomes entangled with the royal house of De Neid when she resurrects Sullivain, princess and heir to the crown, following an assassination. Hellevir makes a compelling protagonist, someone who holds remarkable power yet feels utterly out of her depth trying to navigate court intrigues, plots of rebellion and threats against her family. Then there’s the clash between Hellevir’s rustic faith and…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023WHOTOPIA▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 324 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Writers Jonathan Morris, Simon Guerrier, Una McCormack ▶ Publisher BBC Books Subtitled The UltimateGuide To The Whoniverse, this is an impressively comprehensive guide to the world of Doctor Who – though only the on-screen version. Everything here is written “in-universe”, so if it’s actors or anecdotes you’re interested in, this isn’t the book for you. It’s divided into sections of Heroes, Villains, Monsters, Machines, Worlds and Technology, further split into subsections and past, present and future, with entries for everything from the First Doctor to the Eighth Master, as well as King Hydroflax (Villains Of Space>Megalomaniacs), Giant Maggots (Monsters of Earth>Present-day Threats) and many, many more. Whotopia covers the whole of Classic and New Who (pre-60th anniversary specials), and clearly a…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023ALIENS: BISHOP▶ RELEASED 5 DECEMBER 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author TR Napper ▶ Publisher Titan Books A follow-up to the originalAlien trilogy, Aliens: Bishop arrives with a title that appears to be doing exactly what it says on the synthetic skin – resurrecting a fan-favourite character, before shoving them out onto the spin-off assembly line. But this book has more moving parts, with the title having three potential interpretations by the end. There’s the obvious: it’s named after Lance Henriksen’s character in Aliens, introduced here ready to be shut down after all that he’s seen. There’s the twist, as the android’s dad, Michael Bishop, pops up to weaponise what’s inside Bishop’s brain. And there’s also a final reading, which we won’t spoil here. Whatever the title means, Aliens: Bishop is…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023GOOD GIRLS DON’T DIE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Christina Henry ▶ Publisher Titan Books Celia finds herself trapped in a picture-perfect small town where there’s been a murder. Allie gets dragged to a cabin in the woods with her friends where a man with a knife kills them one by one, and Maggie’s being forced to run through an elaborate Hunger Games-style arena, with lethal obstacles lurking round every corner. Each of them knows her way around her individual scenario scarily well – they’ve all been dropped into fictional worlds of their favourite kind – but now, someone wants them to prove it… About as high-concept as it gets, Christina Henry’s mystery novel digs into the tropes of cosy crime, slashers and post-apocalyptic dystopia, and finds misogyny…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE PENGUIN▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writer Tom King ▶ Artist Rafael de Latorre ISSUES 1-3 In the extensive Rogues’ Gallery of Batman villains, the Penguin has always been a bit of an outlier – iconic enough to be well-known, but not as immediately cool as the Joker, Catwoman or the Riddler. However, in the wake of Colin Farrell’s more grounded take on the character in The Batman, DC are now giving the character a reinvention and truly making him a force to be reckoned with. This new ongoing series follows current Batman continuity, and picks up with gangster Oswald Cobblepot exiled to a quiet married life in Metropolis, having lost his crime empire. Unfortunately, a government agent decides to use the Penguin’s new wife as leverage,…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023BIG GAME▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Mark Millar ▶ Artist Pepe Larraz ISSUES 1-5 Bringing together over 20 of Millarworld’s properties into a blockbuster crossover is an impressive achievement in itself, and on the whole this five-parter all works admirably as a typically bombastic, entertaining read – although there’s nothing here as ingenious as the recent Nemesis Reloaded’s big reveal that the world is secretly controlled by a cabal of supervillains. Harking back to 2004’s first actual Millarworld title, Big Game builds on that revelation, as Wanted’s Wesley Gibson and the Fraternity, in cahoots with Nemesis, set out to exterminate the superpowered individuals that have started popping up all over the planet of late. “Promising a high body count, Millar definitely delivers” Nominating himself as the…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023ALAN WAKE II▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶Reviewed on PS5 ▶ Also available on Xbox Series S|X, PC ▶ Publisher Epic Games VIDEOGAME Thirteen years have passed since the first part in this Stephen King-inspired actionhorror series, and troubled writer Alan Wake has been trapped in the “Dark Place” that whole time. The malevolent presence within feeds off art, but Alan is able to twist his own fiction in order to write himself back into the real world, and hopefully write the Dark Presence out for good. The catch? Alan’s realitybending fiction must follow the genre conventions of what came before, and he’s trapped in horror. Using tropes from his past as a mass market crime fiction author, he follows the trail of Alex Casey, the fictional detective who made him famous, investigating…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE BOX OF DELIGHTS▶ RUNNING UNTIL 7 January ▶ Venue Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon ▶ Director Justin Audibert STAGE PLAY With its mix of Car-o-Planes, Herne the Hunter, Christmas carols and crime capers, John Masefield’s 1935 festive fantasy is a curious melange of seemingly disparate elements, which impressively come together in this energetic adaptation. First performed in the intimate surroundings of London’s Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017, it’s now moved to the larger expanse of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage. Director Justin Audibert deftly balances War Horse-style puppetry and dazzling video projections with more basic theatrical effects. While much older than his character, Callum Balmforth brings a youthful exuberance to orphan Kay Harker, who is on his way home for the holidays when he befriends enigmatic Punch and Judy man, Cole Hawlings. Played…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023FUTURE TECHQUESTION 1 In Her, Samantha starts off as “the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system”. What is the product actually called? QUESTION 2 An ansible is a communicator capable of broadcasting over vast distances instantaneously. The term’s been used by many SF writers – but who coined it? QUESTION 3 Which James Bond has a Rolex watch containing an electromagnet and a miniaturised circular saw? QUESTION 4 Picture Question What is this device known as? QUESTION 5 Which fictional agency uses Eye-5 (I5) contact lens cameras? QUESTION 6 In Fantastic Voyage, scientists are miniaturised via nanotechnology to enter a human body. What condition are they trying to treat? QUESTION 7 Name the pillar-shaped cubicle that functions as an instant sex machine in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. QUESTION 8 Picture Question What…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023The People Under The StairsWhen Wes Craven made The People Under The Stairs in 1991, he flipped the popular view of what threatened America. The news was filled with reports on gangs of irredeemable black criminals with their eyes set on engulfing polite suburbia, but Craven’s film depicts white participants of the “American Dream” as the true evil. Cruel landlords “Mommy” and “Daddy” are a brother and sister pair played by Twin Peaks co-stars Everett McGill and Wendy Robie. They made their fortune selling overpriced coffins to grieving families. Not content with that depravity, they have brought the family of 13-year-old Poindexter “Fool” Williams (Brandon Adams) – and the wider community – to its knees, evicting people en masse, and leaving Fool’s mother too poor to have her cancerous tumour cut out. Fool joins…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Return Of The KingGODZILLA HAS SMASHED skyscrapers, annihilated airports and kicked Kong, yet the monster’s latest live-action outing is a surprisingly unique entry in the long-running series. Godzilla Minus One, as the name suggests, happens before the very first incarnation of Godzilla stomped across Tokyo. It primarily takes place in 1947, after the Second World War, when Japan’s military had been disbanded. In other words, Japan is defenceless, making this period the perfect setting for a threatening new Godzilla attack. “When you have a group of people with no means of easily fighting back, I thought it would make a more compelling story when people are using their intellect,” director Takashi Yamazaki tells Red Alert. “Godzilla is not fighting a government entity with a military behind it, he’s only fighting against civilians, which…4 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Future ForceAFTER 2022’S EDITION of anthology Revelations paved the way for the recent Dark Droids crossover, this year’s issue lays the groundwork for what is to come in Marvel’s Star Wars stable over the next 12 months. “The main goal here is to seed upcoming storylines, drop some clues to bigger things ahead and introduce some new and exciting characters – and maybe a few you thought you wouldn’t see again,” editor Mark Paniccia tells Red Alert. “Last year, our goal was to show the interconnectivity among the original trilogy books and reveal the possible outcomes of Dark Droids – some of which are still playing out, so wait till you see what happens in January’s Bounty Hunters issue 42! “This year we wanted to take a different approach, where instead…3 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023SFX SPACE AND TIME Celebrating 60 years of DOCTOR WHO◆ Filming for the 2025 series of Doctor Who, series two, starring Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson, commenced on Monday 23 October. ◆ An upcoming episode will be co-written by Kate Herron and Briony Redman. Herron was previously director and executive producer of Loki season one and a director on Sex Education. Redman is an actor, comedian and award-winning writer. Herron said: “Clearly I can’t get enough of time travel. It is an absolute honour to write for Russell and Ncuti. We had so much fun and can’t wait for you all to see it.” Redman said: “As a big fan of Doctor Who and Russell T Davies, it’s been a dream to write on this show.” Davies said: “This is when I absolutely love my job. Working with the…5 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023RUBY SUNDAY◆ I spotted her. I’m very proud of the fact that I spotted Millie – I’m the last person in the world still watching Coronation Street. It’s me. So I watched Millie and I can tell when writers love writing for a character and love writing for an actor, when stories pile into them. They were obviously so obsessed with Millie that at one point she was drug-dealing and holding her stepfather hostage, while winning Regional Hairdresser of the Year. I literally watched that episode thinking, “They really like this character because this is non-stop. This is the complete logjam of stories.” That’s a sign. When she came in to audition, I think her last episode of Coronation Street had just transmitted on the Friday, and she came in on…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023TUNNEL VISIONDOCTOR WHO’S FIRST title sequence predated any conception of a mysterious time traveller and a telephone box. In 1960, Norman Taylor was working as an Operations Manager at the BBC’s Lime Grove studios. Norman Taylor: “Sometimes we were allocated to two minor programmes in the same studio on the same day. This often resulted in a gap of activity between the transmission of the first and the start of rehearsals of the second. On one of these days, I used the gap to experiment with a camera looking at a monitor displaying its own picture. I got the usual effect of diminishing images of the monitor disappearing into limbo, when suddenly some stray light hit the screen and the whole picture went mobile with swirling patterns of black and white.…11 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023ANGEL OF DEATHIT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE ONE OF THE REASONS I wanted to make a Christmas horror movie was there’s not enough of them,” writer Michael Kennedy tells SFX. He’s not wrong. Of what there is, his favourite is the 1974 Black Christmas, a film he watches “several times a year”; he gave the 4K Blu-ray to all his friends last December. For his own entry into the (decked) halls of notoriety, he’s only gone and splattered gore over one of the most beloved festive films of all time. “I knew when I set out to do a Christmas slasher I wanted to riff on It’s A Wonderful Life,” Kennedy explains. “I jokingly put [the title] on an outline document when I started writing, as a gag to myself. “Then once I…8 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Where There’s A Willy There’s A Way“DID I WATCH WHAT, SORRY?” director and co-writer of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory prequel movie Wonka Paul King asks. “I don’t think I know what ‘Statistics’ is.” SFX is discussing music with King because his new leading man – not Paddington Bear this time – brings a bit of experience to his latest film. “Ah, I have seen the rap video,” he says of Timothée Chalamet’s viral internet school musical offering. “He showed me the rap video, I think just to make fun of himself. It was entirely social. Maybe he just hopes that I was the person who was really going to help him break out into that world. He chose the wrong person!” It was another of Chalamet’s performances from LaGuardia’s School of Music and Performing Arts…11 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023GEOFF RYMANEVEN THE MOST ESTABLISHED AUTHORS encounter setbacks. One such moment occurred to Geoff Ryman when his Cambodia-set 2006 novel The King’s Last Stand received a sniffy review in The Guardian. “I knew I was in trouble,” he remembers. “It was a book that was meant to be slightly bigger, slightly more mainstream.” A novel that, he still thinks, might have done well had travellers to Asia been able to buy it in Heathrow, rather disappeared. So, the casual reader could be forgiven for thinking, did Ryman. He’s back now, with Him, a bold retelling of the story of Jesus that casts the messiah as transgender. But it’s been 17 years between novels. In truth, Ryman has often been busy. He worked on an unpublished “bizarro novel”. He taught creative writing.…4 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 109 minutes ▶ Director Emma Tammi ▶ Cast Josh Hutcherson, MatthewLillard, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail In the golden age of videogame movies, a point-and-click survival horror seems like it’d be the least adaptable of the bunch. Five Nights At Freddy’s, however, has defied the odds. As it turns out, terrifying Chuck E Cheese-esque animatronic mascots which come alive at night translate pretty well onto the big screen. The result is a fun, kid-friendly hack-and-slash horror that warms the heart more than it delivers the scares. There’s enough Easter eggs, fan-service and game-accurate plot points to appease the franchise’s insanely dedicated fanbase, but not enough scary moments or strong characters to draw in a new audience. The movie combines the game’s extremely grim lore with…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE LAZARUS PROJECT Series Two▶ UK Sky Max, Wednesdays/streaming on NOW ▶ Creator Joe Barton ▶ Cast Paapa Essiedu, Anjli Mohindra, Caroline Quentin, Charly Clive EPISODES 2.01-2.08 Joe Barton’s time travel show returns for a second run whose complexly folded narrative at times threatens to make your brain leak out of your ears – and which is almost as compelling as the first. Perhaps the only thing that results in a slight dip is the nature of the overarching mission. Series one saw our POV character George (Paapa Essiedu) – new recruit to an organisation who can reset time to a 1 July “checkpoint” – proving that, like Meatloaf, he will do anything for love, engineering the explosion of a nuke to bring girlfriend Sarah back from the dead. Series two’s task: travel back…3 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023LOKI Season TwoUK/US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Head writer Eric Martin ▶ Cast Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson,Sophia Di Martino, Gugu Mbatha-Raw EPISODES 1.01-1.06 With all its to-ing and fro-ing through time, the first season of Loki was often referred to as the MCU’s answer to Doctor Who. Season two hones that comparison to a particular era: the Steven Moffat period. In what way? Let’s just say there are more closed loops than a bowl of spaghetti hoops, and a montage sequence in the finale that would give Peter Capaldi a chronic case of déjà vu. Season two kicks off with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) bouncing uncontrollably back and forth in time within the Time Variance Authority’s HQ, trying to get someone to listen to him about the threat of He Who Remains (Jonathan…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFf*ck/US Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunners BenDavid Grabinski, Bryan Lee O’Malley ▶ Cast Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman EPISODES 1.01-1.08 Making ScottPilgrim into an animated series is one of those stunningly obvious ideas that simply had to happen at some point. The original 2004-2010 comic series has such a distinct, manga-influenced visual style (especially in its OTT fight sequences) that the medium feels like a natural fit. Now we have an animated show that features voice work from the entire cast of the 2010 Edgar Wright movie. It’s a project where it’s easy to go in expecting a less-compressed interpretation of the original six-volume series, and that’s certainly where the series begins. Episode one gives us a very faithful take on slacker indie-rocker Scott Pilgrim falling…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023DOCTOR WHO: THE UNDERWATER MENACE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1969 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Julia Smith ▶ Cast Patrick Troughton, AnnekeWills, Michael Craze, Frazer Hines BLU-RAY DEBUT Dismissed by Patrick Troughton as “a bit of a dog”, this unloved, half-lost Second Doctor adventure now gets the animated treatment. Reimagined in full colour, it’s not afraid to tweak the live-action original – the iconically ludicrous Fish People are given a ’60s Marvel makeover that may irk the purists, while the villainous Zaroff has more than a touch of Vincent Price in his character design. Playing out against one of Doctor Who’s multiple-choice versions of Atlantis, it’s a breezy, bog-standard romp given a little more spectacle now, from an eerie fish god temple to a scene-stealing pet octopus. The basic but brightly appealing visuals enhance…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023FEED ME▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 18 | Download This gruesome horror- comedy is at its best when indulging its wilder impulses. Jed (Christopher Mulvin) meets cannibal Lionel (Neal Ward) and agrees to be consensually eaten. Ward gives a bizarre but enjoyable performance – all OTT Ted Lasso accent and cheap wig – in a film that’s never quite sure which tone to settle on, with seemingly sincere discussion of eating disorders and suicidal ideation one moment, gross-out comedy carnage the next. It feels ill-judged in places, but the gore is fun.…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER▶ RELEASED 4 December 1991 | 15 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT In this Hong Kong actioner, a dim-bulb cop takes on bank robbers after becoming a sort of bullet-proof, electricity-powered zombie. The fight sequences and car chases deliver, but the humour – which often revolves around bodily functions – is puerile, the performances awfully broad. Nauseating hom*ophobia further spoils things, with lines about the danger of “catching AIDS” from “perverts”. Yuck. + Extras Interview; trailer; gallery.…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE GINGER SNAPS TRILOGY▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2000-2004 | 18 | Blu-ray ▶ Directors John Fawcett, Brett Sullivan, Grant Harvey ▶ Cast Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Mimi Rogers, Kris Lemche BLU-RAY DEBUT The thing about werewolf movies is that there just aren’t that many great ones. You’ve got An American Werewolf In London, Dog Soldiers and, erm… Then there’s a good argument for Ginger Snaps. Using lycanthropy as a metaphor for adolescence, and swapping silver bullets and full moons in favour of a (pseudo)scientific explanation, this low-budget Canadian cult classic feels as fresh and smart as it did in 2000. Teenage sisters Ginger and Brigitte exist in a world before iPhones and social media, but their desperation to escape a conventional suburban future still feels relevant. And the practical make-up effects used for…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023First Read AN EXTRACT FROM A NEW BOOKHouse Of Open WoundsCharged with saving the lives of the un-saveable, this motley crew of healers use methods that are by necessity unusual, unorthodox and utterly unsanctioned. It is a vision of hell. The air is made of screaming. Like a picture where the gap between two objects is revealed, after a squint, to be just more of the same, here the gap between throat-stripping shrieks is just less-insistent sounds of men and women in agony. A hierarchy of torment so constant and yet so varied it becomes something close to a choir. Here, then, is the choirmaster. A great weight of a man who nonetheless passes through the bloody clutter of the space with an appalling deftness. Like the thing in your dream, that cannot possibly follow you into the small spaces,…8 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE GHOSTS OF BEATRICE BIRD▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Louisa Morgan ▶ Publisher Orbit Books “Ghost” is a word with many connotations – both the scary, chain-rattling, dead-but-still-here-and-not-happy-about-it kind, and the type we are all haunted by, the remnants of people both living and dead who stay with us every day. Therapist Beatrice Bird, unfortunately, knows not just her own but those of everyone around her. After a childhood gift for empathy develops to a psychic extreme in adulthood, she is eventually unable to walk down a street without being assailed by the pain and trauma of everyone around her. She retreats to a small island where she can be alone, but it’s not long until the arrival of Annie Iredale, haunted by ghosts of both the traumatic and…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE ART OF THE CREATOR▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 208 pages | Hardback ▶ Author James Mottram ▶ Publisher Titan Books Director Gareth Edwards admits in his foreword that Making Ofs were integral to his cinematic education, and it’s easy to imagine this exploration of his latest film, The Creator, inspiring a new generation of talent. While books of movie art can often feel like they’re going through the motions, James Mottram’s in-depth tome (subtitled Designs Of Futures Past) has a genuine story to tell, thanks to the unique nature of a visual effects-heavy blockbuster made with the guerrilla sensibilities of Edwards’s 2010 debut Monsters. Filming predominantly on location in Thailand, Edwards took a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach, as he and production designer James Clyne built their futuristic world around what was captured…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023DAVID WHITAKER▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 456 pages | Paperback ▶ Author Simon Guerrier ▶ Publisher Ten Acre Films David Whitaker was DoctorWho’s first story editor, commissioning and writing early scripts for William Hartnell (and penning further stories as a freelancer, including Patrick Troughton’s debut). Beyond that, he’s long been an enigmatic blank. Simon Guerrier’s biography (subtitled In An Exciting Adventure With Television) goes to remarkable lengths to address that – 42 pages of citations bear witness to his exhaustive research. He’s clearly spent days at the BBC Written Archives; hunted through census records; scoured papers ranging from The Times to the Bedfordshire Mercury; read family memoirs. On amassing such a pile of data, it’s tempting to include too much, and the results can get hard-going. Interesting tidbits are scattered here and…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS – CREW HANDBOOKBULLET TIME A BOOK IN BULLET POINTS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 89 pages | Hardback ▶ Author Chris Farnell ▶ Publisher Titan Books ● Designed as a guidebook for new crew members. Don’t expect a serious manual – as with the show, comedy is to the forefront. ● Includes a detailed guide to series lore and, as you might expect, it’s very picture-led. ● There are brief character profiles, presented in the form of log entries. ● There’s also a loose guide to the USS Cerritos’ journeys to date – not including season four – alongside a pretty impressive schematic of the ship. ● The crew appear throughout via a series of annotations and corrections on the “unfinished” document. It’s in keeping with the show, and works if you like…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023ALSO OUTAs ever, there’s plenty more titles we couldn’t fit in. This week’s “new spin on Peter Pan” (okay, slight exaggeration, but doesn’t it feel like there have been loads?) is NEVER (5 December, Orion). Jessa Hastings’s fantasy romance sees Peter finally coming for Daphne Darling (granddaughter of Wendy) when she’s 17. Expect a love triangle between the two of them and Jamison Hook, pirate son of Peter’s nemesis. Erika Johansen’s THE KINGDOM OF SWEETS (out now, Bantam), meanwhile, reimagines another classic story: Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker (or, if you prefer, ETA Hoffmann’s short story). A dark, creepy take, it’s centred on the embittered relationship between twin sisters Clara and Natasha. The mysterious disappearance of 37 miners in a titanium mine is the focus of Justin Holley’s sci-fi horror HELLWEG’S KEEP…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023PETE TOWNSHEND’S LIFEHOUSE▶ RELEASED 19 DECEMBER ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writers James Harvey, David Hine ▶ Artists David Hine, Max Prentis GRAPHIC NOVEL In 1970, The Who’s Pete Townshend conceived an ambitious multimedia rock opera called Lifehouse, set in a polluted future where rock music no longer existed and human experience was administered intravenously. There was only one problem: no one except Townshend understood it. Trying to communicate Lifehouse to others drove the guitarist to a nervous breakdown, and the best songs were diverted onto a conventional LP, 1971’s Who’s Next. To coincide with a lavish Super Deluxe edition reissue of Who’s Next, his concepts have been rendered into this graphic novel – included in that box set, but also available separately. James Harvey and David Hine have not just brought…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023NEMESIS THE WARLOCK▶ RELEASED 5 DECEMBER ▶Publisher Rebellion ▶ Writer Pat Mills ▶ Artists Kevin O’Neill, Jesus Redondo COLLECTION One of 2000 AD’s weirdest and most acclaimed sagas is finally coming back into print via a new series of remastered, larger-format Definitive Edition collections. Nemesis The Warlock displays the comic’s punk-influenced spirit in full effect as the titular alien freedom-fighter fights back against a xenophobic human empire. It’s a fast-paced, bizarre adventure that blends sci-fi with dark fantasy, and this first of five volumes uses its oversized pages to showcase the turbo-charged madness of the late Kevin O’Neill’s gorgeously grotesque art. While Pat Mills’s scripts feature his usual sharp blend of action, twisted concepts and pitch-black humour, it’s O’Neill’s jaw-dropping art that pushes Nemesis into the legendary category. From the bizarre, attention-grabbing…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023CHILDREN OF THE CIRCUS▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 129 minutes | CD ▶ Publisher AUK Studios AUDIO DRAMA With its killer clowns and robotic bus conductor, “The Greatest Show In The Galaxy” is one of the more memorable stories from Sylvester McCoy’s time in the TARDIS. This audio drama, which reunites the surviving cast, is a sequel, although direct references to Doctor Who are noticeable by their absence. Unlicensed by the BBC, it’s very much a continuation of Stephen Wyatt’s original story rather than the series that spawned it. McCoy and co-star Sophie Aldred do feature, but playing unrelated characters. The Gods of Ragnarok still exist, and the survivors of the Psychic Circus, Bellboy (Christopher Guard) and Flowerchild (Dee Sadler), have decided to take them down once and for all. To do so involves…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE INVINCIBLE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Format PS5 ▶ Also on PC, Xbox Series S|X ▶ Publisher 11 Bit Studios VIDEOGAME The Invincible not only draws on Polish author Stanisław Lem’s 1964 novel of the same name, but fittingly evolves into a broader love letter to Golden Age science fiction. Thankfully it’s style and substance, as chrome rocket ships and janky, domed robots become a gateway to stream-of-conscious musings on nature, evolution and humankind’s relationship with technology. Sounds a bit heavy? Don’t fear, The Invincible is ultimately a game of exploration, both of ideas and the planet of Regis III, as astrobiologist Yasna wakes on this planet X with no idea why she’s there or what has become of her crew. What follows is a journey of discovery across and below…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023WIN! A WORLD OF DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES!Thanks to our friends at BBC Audiobooks, we have 16 audiobooks in digital download format to give away from the Doctor Who range, currently celebrating the diamond anniversary with a feast of new releases. To enter, scan the QR code above! We’ve also got five copies of Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace, the newly reanimated Patrick Troughton story, to give away on shiny disc from BBC Studios. In addition, we’ve also got five copies of Doctor Who: Whotopia – The Ultimate Guide To The Whoniverse, the new reference publication from BBC Books. To enter to win a disc and book bundle, scan the QR code and answer the question!…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Captain’s LogTypical. You wait ages (well, a year) for a new Doctor and then two come along at once! All very exciting for the viewer at home, but it doesn’t half play merry hell with deadlines and the overworked but wonderful Doctor Who publicity team! I think we’re all in need of a holiday. But what a journey – you might even say the trip of a lifetime. That first special! That new TARDIS! Fun fact – SFX were the first (non-licensed) publication on the new TARDIS set. But that, as they say, is a tale for another happy time and place… The joy of Doctor Who is so massive that we just had to do another special issue to celebrate the arrival of Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson – expect…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Holy Holiday!SAY THE WORDS Batman and Christmas, and our mental jukeboxes immediately conjure “Jingle bells, Batman smells…” But come this December, Warner Bros Animation hopes to replace that ditty with their brand-new animated holiday special, Merry Little Batman. It takes the comic character Damian Wayne – son of Bruce and Talia al Ghul – reduces his age and puts him centre stage in his own Christmas adventure. A long-time fan of Batman, director Mike Roth tells Red Alert that he teamed up with art director Guillaume Fesquet and assistant art director Daby Zainab Faidhi to to create a holiday special inspired by the work of famed British illustrator Ronald Searle. “We decided to attack it like it’s a moving Christmas children’s book,” Roth says of their approach to the special. “It…4 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Feline FestiveTHIS YEAR’S HELLBOYWinter Special pits mythical Icelandic feline Yule Cat against Mike Mignola’s demonic detective. The idea sprang out of some preparatory illustrations which writer/artist Matt Smith did before embarking on illustrating the 2021 one-shot Long Night At Goloski Station. “My first move was to start sketching Hellboy to make sure I could actually pull it off,” Smith tells Red Alert. “But instead of sketching Hellboy in various positions like a normal person, I started sketching out a short story. My logic was this would prompt me to draw Hellboy in various ways, such as small within an establishing shot, or expressions for reaction shots. “So, without a script, I started sketching a half-dozen pages based around a trip I had made to Iceland. These were of Hellboy walking around…3 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023New Old MutantsJUST IN TIME FOR their 60th anniversary this year, the founding five members of the Merry Mutants are once again journeying in time. Christos Gage’s new one-shot Original X-Men springs out of not only Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s seminal ’60s issues of Uncanny X-Men, but also 2013’s Brian Michael Bendis-scripted All-New X-Men, which saw Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman and Angel travel to the present. But the writer insists that neither is essential reading. “We’re pulling the Original X-Men from a very specific time in the run, so everything that happened to them up to that point informs their actions,” says Gage, who teams up with artist Greg Land. “It takes place after the Bendis storyline that brought them into their future and then returned them, so that informs…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023ALL I WANT FOR CHRIST MAS IS WHOHE’S THE man of the moment – and that moment is Christmas, quite frankly. You’ve barely had time to catch your breath from three 60th anniversary specials but there’s a new Doctor, a new companion and a new beginning to look forward to this Christmas Day. The new era has properly begun so without further ado – he’s a busy man, and every (printable) word’s a gem – we give you the showrunner of Doctor Who, Russell T Davies. Tease the Christmas episode… ◆ It’s completely a reinvention. Reinvention of the show, brand new, but not a reboot, it’s the same old show, everything starts again, everything’s seen through the eyes of Ruby Sunday and it’s that lovely feeling of here we go, a new era beginning. Lovely. Kind of…16 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023BOX OF DELIGHTSONE OF THE NEW PRODUCERS on Doctor Who, Chris May is a very happy fellow. “I’m currently working on season two, and it’s busy,” he tells us from the studios in Cardiff. “Oh crikey, it’s busy. But it’s exciting. It’s going to be a very exciting series, I’m not gonna lie. I feel like I’ve got the best job in the world. Oh! It’s wild!” Like we weren’t worked up enough already! But before any of that – Christmas Day marks a new beginning… Did this feel like the start of something new for you? ◆ Absolutely. I’ve never worked on Doctor Who before. I joined the Whoniverse after they completed filming the first three specials, so I joined to do the Christmas Special, which is Ncuti’s first full ep.…4 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023NEW MOON RISING“THEY’RE SWORDS!” DEBORAH Snyder, one of Rebel Moon’s producers, bellows affirmatively. SFX is rightly getting told off for calling the weapons Doona Bae’s cyborg swordsman wields in the intergalactic epic a pair of lightsabers. “They’re space swords, let’s be honest,” the movie’s director – and Snyder’s husband – Zack adds with a laugh. It’s a fair mistake to make. Rebel Moon was, after all, at one point pitched to Lucasfilm as a potential new instalment in the Star Wars saga. The idea that eventually became Rebel Moon, however, had been kicking around in Zack’s head for over 20 years, dating back to his time in college, when, as an assignment, he was tasked with pitching a movie. STELLAR CONFLICTS “I pitched The Dirty Dozen in space, Seven Samurai in space,…12 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE PATH OF BEAST RESISTANCEWHEN IT COMES TO unleashing kaiju on the screen, it’s all a matter of perspective. “You don’t go to see a Godzilla movie because you want to see the people,” argues Matt Fraction, executive producer of Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters – a series that brings cinema’s celebrated city-smashing beast to television, along with an entire menagerie of supersized threats to property values. “The movies are about people being stepped on. The show is about the people underfoot. In the film the cameras are up, looking down. In the show the cameras are down, looking up. It’s all about the ant beholding God, rather than God beholding the ant. “Films are spectacle, especially these kinds of films. They’re things you leave your house for. In a perfect world you see them…10 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023DESIGNING THE LAZARUS PROJECTCONCEIVING THE TBI We had to create a time machine, and in one way that’s a very exciting thing; in another, it’s quite a scary thing because there’ve been some less than successful time machines in the past. The idea we focused on was the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. So we thought of an underground tunnel which is incredibly long and allows objects to reach very high velocities. Joe [Barton, writer] had always set it in the Alps, and we liked the idea that it was in a vast cavern beneath the mountain. Interestingly there is, in Texas, an abandoned collider [the Superconducting Super Collider], the beginning of which was built. They spent a lot of money on it, and didn’t finish it – it’s still there, still abandoned.…5 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023SUBSCRIBE TODAY and get a free XP5-X Plus Bluetooth controllerFREE GIFT ➔ Play Xbox Games from the Cloud Play over 100 Xbox games on your compatible mobile phone or tablet from the cloud. ➔ Integrated Power Bank Experience power galore with an internal 3000mAh rechargeable battery that extends your gameplay, or can be used as a Power Bank. ➔ Wireless or Wired Play Utilise Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy support to play in wireless (BT) mode or switch to USB mode for wired play on your PC or Android phone. WORTH £56 Choose your package One payment. A whole year of issues delivered straight to your door or device. Simple FREE GIFT INCLUDED ANNUAL PRINT EDITION £67.99ANNUAL PAYMENT 13 issues of PC Gamer in print over 12 months SAVE 25% ANNUAL DIGITAL EDITION £57.99ANNUAL PAYMENT 13 issues of PC Gamer…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THANKSGIVING▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 106 minutes ▶ Director Eli Roth ▶ Cast Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks The line between replicating and parodying genre classics is a subtle one. Horror movies like The Cabin In The Woods and Scream have managed to walk that tightrope. But with his latest film Thanksgiving, Eli Roth – not a filmmaker known for nuance – spectacularly fails at both. It is neither a good old-fashioned slasher movie, nor a decent send-up of them. Based on the mock trailer he created for 2007’s Grindhouse, Thanksgiving exposes how some ideas shouldn’t make it past development stage. The plot is bare-bones: a Black Friday riot ends with a deadly stampede; a year later a killer with an axe hunts down some…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023WISH▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 92 minutes ▶ Directors Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn ▶ Cast Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Evan Peters The best of Disney’s animated features (lovingly referenced over the credits of the studio’s 62nd) have clear-cut, watertight premises that can be readily understood and appreciated by audiences of all ages. It’s a shame, then, that its latest has one sure to float as high above the heads of younger filmgoers as the wish-containing globes its villain keeps like baubles in the fairy-tale palace from which he presides over the fantastical realm of Rosas. Outraged to learn that preening potentate Magnifico (Chris Pine) only selectively grants the wishes his subjects have entrusted to his care, would-be apprentice Asha (Ariana DeBose) decides to make a wish of…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023CURSES! Season OneUK/US Apple TV+, streaming now ▶ Creators Jim Cooper, Jeff Dixon ▶ Cast Gabrielle Nevaeh, AndreRobinson, Lyric Lewis, Rhys Darby EPISODES 1.01-1.10 As any fan of Indiana Jones can tell you, ancient artefacts belong in a museum. Here lies the core concept of this DreamWorks animated series, which sends its cheerful young protagonists Pandora (Gabrielle Nevaeh) and Russ (Andre Robinson) around the globe to restore items pillaged from villages or temples by their thieving ancestor, Cornelius Vanderhouven (Robert Englund). There are several reasons for this task: the family is cursed to turn to stone unless all these items are returned, plus many of the objects are cursed – a screeching baboon head is especially memorable. The main motivation, however, is morality: returning these treasures to their cultures is the right…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023GREMLINS: SECRETS OF THE MOGWAI Season OneUK BBC iPlayer, streaming now US MAX, streaming now ▶ Head writer Tze Chun ▶ Cast Izaac Wang, Ming-Na Wen, Gabrielle Nevaeh Green, Matthew Rhys EPISODES 1.01-1.10 Considering that the creature chaos in Joe Dante’s two Gremlins films was heavily influenced by the cartoon carnage and child-friendly sadism of Looney Tunes, it’s somewhat surprising that an animated spin-off has taken so long to arrive. But 30 years late, here we are, with a CG prequel series. Set in 1920s China, it provides a whole new mythological background for the Mogwai in a whistle-stop tour of Chinese folklore. After a slow start with a couple of disappointingly bland episodes that feature few actual Gremlins, finally some Mogwai chow down after midnight and the real fun starts. It becomes so delightfully dark…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE CRIMINAL ACTS OFTOD SLAUGHTER▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1935-1940 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Directors George King,David MacDonald, Milton Rosmer ▶ Cast Tod Slaughter, George Curzon, Stella Rho, Marjorie Taylor, John Warwick BLU-RAY DEBUT Talk about nominative determinism… Tod Slaughter’s surname couldn’t have been more apt really, given that the actor made his name playing gleefully murderous villains. This box set collects eight “barnstormers” – all British “quota quickies” clocking in under 72 minutes. They have a great deal in common. Slaughter – who recalls the Child Catcher at times, Aubrey Morris at others – plays essentially the same figure in most of them: a leering, sociopathic blackguard delighted by his own wickedness. Even ’80s Master Anthony Ainley spent less time evilly chuckling. The stock Slaughter type is a man of status – perhaps…3 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023GENIE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | PG | SVOD ▶ Director Sam Boyd ▶ Cast Paapa Essiedu, Melissa McCarthy, Alan Cumming, Marc Maron SKYCINEMA In the canon of Richard Curtis flicks, Bernard And The Genie is something of a forgotten gem. Broadcast in 1991, it had a fleeting life on DVD and has only recently popped up on BritBox, so it’s long been harder to see than any of his more famous big screen outings. However, the writer of Four Weddings And A Funeral and Love Actually is clearly proud of this little TV movie, hence this bigger-budgeted, American-set remake. Paapa Essiedu is Bernard Bottle, an unassuming art buyer for a top New York auction house, with a faltering marriage due in no small part to his tyrannical boss (a…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023CANDY CANE LANE▶ RELEASED 1 December 2023 | PG | SVOD PRIME VIDEO The imaginary stars of the “12 Days Of Christmas” song (lords a-leaping, geese a-laying etc) come to life in this family flick starring an admirably reined-in Eddie Murphy. He plays a Christmas-loving suburban dad who’s tricked into collecting the song’s five gold rings for an evil elf (Jillian Bell). The end result is predictably syrupy festive nonsense, which may divert the kiddies but is at least half an hour too long. Oh, and Nick Offerman’s English accent is an assault on all the laws of nature.…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023DOCTOR X▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1932 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Michael Curtiz ▶ Cast Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster BLU-RAY DEBUT When someone says “’30s horror”, Universal Studios spring to mind, but Warner Bros dabbled in the genre too – albeit somewhat reluctantly. Directed by Michael Curtiz, who later helmed Casablanca, Doctor X is a leading example. It centres on a medical academy run by the titular Dr Xavier (Lionel Atwill), which has fallen under suspicion after a series of murders, all committed during a full moon. There’s no shortage of oddballs on staff, but which is the killer? Xavier convinces the police to let him investigate, using waxworks, reconstructions and an apparatus of “high frequency coils” and “thermal tubes” that’s essentially a fancy-dan lie detector.…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023JEAN ROLLIN▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1975/1979 | 18 | Blu-ray (4K/standard) ▶ Director Jean Rollin ▶ Cast Jean-Loup Philippe, Annie Briand, Jean-Pierre Lemaire, Brigitte Lahaie “Death sometimes take the form of seduction,” warns cult leader Hélène in Fascination . It’s a line that stakes the heart of director Jean Rollin’s body of work. On the surface another tale of the underclad undead, this sensual Euro-chiller delivers an elegant and intriguingly fresh twist on the vampire myth. Set in 1905, it stars Brigitte Lahaie as part of a blood-craving sisterhood that lurks in a remote chateau, enticing and entrapping a fugitive thief. It’s a film built on striking imagery, whether it’s a near-naked Lahaie wielding a scythe or the incongruity of a woman in an immaculate white dress framed among the dead…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023HIM▶ RELEASED 5 DECEMBER 366 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Geoff Ryman ▶ Publisher Angry Robot Even those of us without faith grow up surrounded by religion. In the UK, the language of the King James Bible permeates everyday conversation. We draw on the parables of Jesus, however we might interpret them, when making arguments. The sight of a church in the centre of a community is familiar, reassuring. For all that it’s said that Christianity is in decline in Britain, this is a living, breathing and still evolving religion. Importantly, for reasons Geoff Ryman discusses in this issue’s interview (see page 82) in relation to African SFF novels, this isn’t a fantastic belief system; when we look at Bible stories, we’re not delving into a secondary world. Rather, we…3 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE LOST CAUSE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 368 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Cory Doctorow ▶ Publisher Head Of Zeus What will the world look like in 30 years’ time? In Cory Doctorow’s latest take on the near future, the problems caused by global heating are an everyday fact of life. Refugees from blighted zones are on the move. Plutocrats, meanwhile, are living out on the high seas, safe from government interference, and hawking cryptocurrencies. But in a novel offering a deeply political take on the future, there are grounds for optimism. People have acknowledged the sheer scale of the crisis and are taking action. Disaster relief has developed to the point where it’s somewhere between an art and a science – and increasingly necessary in a time when rising sea levels are…2 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023THE SECOND CHANCE YEAR▶ RELEASED 5 DECEMBER 336 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Melissa Wiesner ▶ Publisher Headline Eternal It’s hard to imagine wanting to live through any of the last few years again – wasn’t it bad enough the first time? But for pastry chef Sadie, it seems like a good idea. During her last year, she was dumped by her boyfriend and fired from her posh restaurant job. Now she lives in a friend’s spare room and spends her days eating ice cream on the sofa. Surely, knowing what she knows now, she could do things better? After a drunken encounter with a fortune teller on New Year’s Eve, she gets her wish. But are second chances all they’re cracked up to be? Because Sadie relives an entire year, and only…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023AND… ACTION! MY LIFE IN TELEVISION▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 233 pages | Hardback ▶ Author Andrew Morgan ▶ Publisher Telos Publishing Andrew Morgan began his career with the hope of becoming an actor, but ended up on the other side of the camera instead. As a director he steered an impressive number of British TV shows, including Doctor Who and Blake’s 7. And… Action! begins by recounting Morgan’s school days (brutal, by the sounds of it) before swiftly moving into work. The bulk of the book is a show-by-show account of everything from big hitters like Sherlock Holmes to obscurities like Who Pays The Ferryman? The parts of most interest to SFX readers concern Morgan’s involvement in Doctor Who. He was initially offered Fifth Doctor snoozeathon “Time Flight”, but turned it down. When showrunner John…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023COMIC BOOK PUNKS▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 485 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Karl Stock ▶ Publisher Rebellion The Sex Pistols told us there was “No future”. Ironic, then, that 2000 AD, presented here as one of the key parallels between the punk revolution and an equally explosive shift in British comics, gave us the most thrilling future imaginable. Karl Stock charts the history of the industry with a focus on the ’70s to the ’90s, showing how a generation of creators shook up the local newsagent before exporting their ferocious energy, black humour and sharp intelligence to the USA. While the likes of Action, 2000 AD and Battle are acknowledged as the progenitors of everything from Watchmen to Deadline, Stock makes a case that the “opening salvo” was actually Tammy, a girls’…1 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023Patrick RothfussTHE WRITE STUFF THE SFX AUTHOR QUESTIONNAIRE Do you have any personal mementos on your desk? ◗ Right now I have some prototype coins from my world here. I’m a geek for currency, and I work with a place called Shire Post. They’re a family business, and we’re both the same sort of crazy. They’re always willing to roll with whatever madness I throw at them, and have developed new technology and processes to make various coins. My readers enjoy them too, and I sell a lot of them for charity. Do you find it helpful to listen to music while writing? ◗ Absolutely not. That’s a horrifying thought. I wouldn’t play a game on my computer while rendering graphic files in the background, or running Photoshop. There’s no way…3 min
SFX|Holiday Special 2023PROJECT: CRYPTID▶RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Ahoy Comics ▶ Writer/artists Various ISSUES 1-3 Drawing on real-life reports of mythical creatures, this eclectic anthology title approaches the beasts from a sympathetic angle, often casting humans as the bad guys. Mark Russell’s opening tale in issue one stars one of the best-known cryptids in the Yeti, and comes to a predictable but still powerful ending, enhanced by Jordi Pérez’s moody art. In contrast, the issue’s second half, a Paul Cornell and PJ Holden tale about the Mongolian Death Worm, brims with screwball humour and ends on a poignant, sweet note. This is echoed by the equally heart-warming conclusion of Alisa Kwitney and Mauricet’s “Chupahuahua” in issue two. Solidly illustrated by Steve Bryant, Alex Segura’s enthralling “Diana Montalvan And The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker” is the…1 min
