This fear was compounded some months later when Jesus of Nazareth was screened. Kids of my age tended to hide behind the sofa when Dr Who was confronting the Daleks; I leapt for cover when Robert Powell was dishing out loaves and fishes.

When these religious traumas had finally subsided, I sought more orthodox thrills. I quickly found out that ‘horror’ was much more scary fun than the New Testament. Horror had blood, fangs, claws, rubber foreheads, pointy ears, mad scientists and hysterical music. At the age of six, all this seemed much more palatable than Heaven and Hell.

My real ‘horror education’ began with Dennis Gifford’s book ‘A Pictorial History of Horror Movies’. I gawped at its pictures of deformed monsters and evil doctors for hours on end, usually in the front room while my mum played Abba records. So much so, I can’t listen to ‘Fernando’ now without thinking of Lionel Atwill. But one thing frustrated me: where could I see these fantastic faces in action??

In the late 70s I got a portable TV for my bedroom. It wasn’t because I was spoiled, it was because I talked about TV so incessantly, it seemed like I might become mentally impaired if I didn’t have one. Switching the TV off on me was like trying to put Rain Man on a plane. Needless to say, I was overcome with excitement when it was installed. And it wasn’t long before that excitement was justified, because I soon discovered BBC2’s summer Saturday late-night strand: “Horror Double Bill”.

This strand had been running since 1975 (it ended in ‘81), and sported a number of umbrella titles, including ‘Masters of Terror’ and ‘Dracula, Frankenstein and Friends.’ Whatever the title, it immediately became the icing on my summer holiday cake. It didn’t matter that the films they showed were often old (and I mean old: highlights included The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Devil Doll (1932) and Doctor X (1932)). In the pre-home video days, a TV screening of a horror film from any decade was a cause for celebration.

It was Horror Double Bill that really provided me with an exhilarating introduction to Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, as well as to Tod Browning, Val Lewton, Ray Harryhausen, shrinking men, giant ants and beasts with five fingers. There was something darkly magical about those misspent summer nights. So I was thrilled to see that Second Sight are honouring, perhaps unwittingly, that short-lived but never-to-be-forgotten TV tradition with their release this month of the Karloff/Lugosi vehicles The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935) (which formed their own double bill, if you’re interested, during the 1977 season). I recommend you watch ‘em on a Saturday night, preferably one straight after the other.

“A terrible disappointment in which an ingenious and deserving all-American serial killer nearly gets lost in the meandering treatment of cops and journalists obsessed with the case. A great deal of Fincher’s energy and most of his aggression are gone. Perhaps he would say he has grown up … But it begins to suggest that American movies are still best just short of growing up.”

Indeed, for those who are passionate about Fincher’s Se7en and Fight Club, Zodiac’s apparent conservatism may have an underwhelming effect. It is, as Thomson suggests, albeit disparagingly, ‘grown-up film-making’: it seeks to slowly absorb you rather than batter your senses.

I can see why this rattles Thomson’s cage; it probably puts him in mind of the careful, earnest cinema of Stanley Kramer. But, being a middlebrow type myself, I really liked Zodiac: it harks back to a time when mainstream American cinema did seem grown up, or at least to be growing up. It strikes its clearest parallels with the slow-moving, procedural thrillers of the seventies: Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City — films that assumed an attention span was alive within the audience.

I have more respect for the film after reading the Zodiac books by Robert Graysmith. Graysmith’s tomes are repetitive and clunkily-written, and they tend to get stuck in the tabloid sludge of the gummiest true-crime writing. They are packed with detail, some of it fascinating: Graysmith was on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac was sending taunting letters to the editor.

But the author failed to flesh out the key characters in the story — detectives Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), SF Chronicle writer Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) and, not least, himself. Fincher addresses this. Ruffalo may look a little too much like Columbo, but his weary, laconic cop is a quietly fascinating performance, and steals the film from Downey Jnr, who, as the flamboyant Avery, seems to be making a clear lunge for next year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

For me, though, much of Zodiac’s compelling power lies in its attention to visual detail: the recreation of the Chronicle’s late sixties newsroom; the shiny, boxy cars and hemmed-in fashions of the period; the loose-leaf-stacked smokiness of the detectives’ office; the outdoor police phone that Ruffalo uses on a busy highway and the siren he sticks – Kojak-like – onto the roof of his car as he speeds away.

Fincher isn’t just expertly funnelling a warehouse-full of case facts into an accessible movie here, he is also vividly recreating San Francisco (Zodiac’s stomping ground) at precise moments in time. One scene, indicating the passage of years, uses CGI to recreate, in faux time-lapse photography, the construction of the city’s Transamerica tower. This little nugget is as inventive and as audacious as anything Fincher has done before.

Fincher may be growing up, becoming less aggressive, but he’s still pretty fascinating to watch.

In This is England, the setting is 1983, a time period that is harder to evoke than you might think: last-gasp flares, un-gentrified town centres, post-punk hair dos, wooden-framed tellies, luxury Ford Granadas, legwarmers, Ataris, Soda Streams. OK, it might not be as difficult as recreating the 1920s - something that the BBC drama department does almost every week - but here Meadows replicates the grubby provincialism of the era with such precision it almost seems to contrast with his deceptively loose approach to acting and dialogue.

So what? you might think. If the stories are convincingly told, what does it matter about a few lazy anachronisms slipping in, as long there’s a general sense of the time period? Well, Quadrophenia is a case in point. The shoddiness of that film’s attention to detail ruins the entire experience.

Released in 1979 and set in 1964, Quadrophenia only had to time-travel back 15 years (easy, you’d think), but instead director Franc Roddam is content to show mod Phil Daniels scootering around on his Vespa in streets that are so clearly awash with the trappings of the late seventies it becomes laughable.

In one infamous sequence, when the mods and rockers riot on the seafront in Brighton, a cinema in the background clearly displays Warren Beatty’s 1978 film Heaven Can Wait on its marquee. (Go to IMDB to check out the rest of Quadrophenia’s goofs. There are plenty.) This sort of thing would be mildly amusing if the material didn’t deserve better treatment.

This Is England is not without its accidental anachronisms, but they are eclipsed by Meadows’ obvious passion for his material, and for the period. There is an expert aesthetic judgement at work here. And by creating a mis-en-scene that is so convincing, the honesty of the mood and the perfomances follow smoothly.

Thomas Turgoose, as 12-year-old-Shaun, fatherless and rudderless until he falls in with a benevolent gang of skinheads, looks and acts as if he was plucked right from a fading school photograph of the era. And Stephen Graham as Combo, an original skinhead from 1969 who’s done time and rejoins Thatcher’s Britain an embittered racist, encapsulates the danger and volatility of the period with a frightening authenticity.

Such character verisimilitude, of course, has been de rigeur in Meadows’ films so far, but This Is England, in its more advanced aesthetic and political ambitions, represents something of a step up. The director seems more than ready now to broaden his horizons, at least beyond the Midlands. Pehaps he could have a crack at something epic and historical, as Ken Loach (a not dissimilar director) went on to do.

We need more directors like Meadows to look into Britain’s past and present a convincing snapshot of an era, even if it isn’t a particularly pretty picture.

Dispatches from this year’s Hay-on-Wye literature festival, courtesy of MovieMail correspondent Graeme Hobbs, confirm that director Robin Hardy is in fine fettle and still promising to deliver a much awaited ‘re-imagining’ of his cult 1973 film, The Wicker Man. Hardy has published a novel called Cowboys for Christ, which presents a new take on the Christian-cop-infiltrates-Pagan-island scenario. This time, it is a God-fearing couple from Texas who arrive at a remote community and find their welcome, like Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie in the earlier film, somewhat less than warm. (Although being burned to death in a wicker man could be regarded as a very warm welcome.)

Details about the potential film adaptation of Cowboys for Christ are sketchy though. Hardy appeared confident that the new film is going to happen, and the IMDB says it’s in production. But then the IMDB often says that, even if all that’s happened is a favourable lunch meeting with a potential director and someone who knows a bloke who knows a bloke with access to funding.

And Hardy has been hauling this property for a long time. About six years ago he was attached to a project — announced on IMDB as being in ‘pre-production’ — called The Riding of the Laddie. Since then it’s done the rounds as May Day, before surfacing as the new novel. Hardy is certainly a persistent hawker. But is he a serious film-maker?

I’ve always liked The Wicker Man, but I feel there’s something a bit Emperor’s-New-Clothes about its elevation to “greatest British film of all time” or whatever else it’s been called. I get the impression that critics new to it approach it with unquestioning piety and respect, rather like Sergeant Howie entering a church. In fact, I’m beginning to think that EMI did the film a favour by burying it in 1973. If it had been released with all guns blazing, would it have the same reputation now? There’s nothing like suppressing a movie and chopping it to bits to mobilise an army of fans.

Still there’s no question that, flaws aside, The Wicker Man is a remarkable experience. As a ‘horror’, it stands far above Hammer’s po-faced, studio-bound output. But it’s also brave in its resistance to the horror classification. Half of it looks like a jaunty musical — it could be Finian’s Rainbow with a very grim ending. It has a humour and an earthy stylishness (literally). There’s also Edward Woodward’s performance as Howie, probably the best thing about the film.

But personally I don’t think The Wicker Man is any better than Sidney Hayers’ Night of the Eagle or Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon or Ealing’s Dead of Night, or even a few films without ‘night’ in the title. And, even if you think it is, why does Hardy need to make it again? Can’t he do anything else? It’s worth remembering that his only other directorial effort, The Fantasist (1986), is one of the worst films ever to run through a projector. We can’t blame EMI for that.

Nevertheless, I do hope the Cowboys for Christ project gets off the ground. Until then we have Hardy’s novel, which is effectively a prose screenplay anyway and which, in Graeme’s words, is “thoroughly cliched and enjoyably scurrilous; a decent afternoon’s read”.

My recent MovieMail blog, Don’t Bisect Grindhouse, lamented the decision to split the not-yet-released Robert Rodriguez–Quentin Tarantino double-bill extravaganza in Europe and release Tarantino’s segment on its own. It argued, before I had seen the film, that cutting Grindhouse clean in half was against the spirit of the enterprise.

I’ve now had the opportunity to see it on the big screen and I still feel the bisection is fundamentally wrong: ‘double bill’ is very much its raison d’etre. However, I do now have to concede that some pretty severe editing is necessary.

Grindhouse kicks off with Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, a sci-fi horror yarn about Iraq war veterans infected with a zombie disease. Cue lots of splattery shoot-outs, bubbling latex and projectile blood-letting. It’s fun for a few minutes, especially in its evocation of crummy low-budget film-making (scratchy footage, poor acting, lame dialogue). But it soon become immensely tedious, largely because, when the joke’s worn off, we’re left with a deliberately poor film. That’s OK for 30 minutes, not for 90. And very soon you’re thinking, hasn’t Rodriguez done this better before, in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn?

Tarantino’s episode is another matter entirely. Death Proof, which starts as an oddball buddy-girl flick before descending into stops-out, auto-collision madness, is in a class of its own. The first half is like the love child of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Death Race 2000. To that end, the fake scratches and ‘missing reels’ seem a bit redundant: this is beyond grindhouse, and it is quite hypnotic.

But after the jolting first-act denouement, Death Proof also goes downhill, when Tarantino tries to retread the first scenario with four far less appealing actors (one, Zoe Bell, a real-life stuntwoman, gives the most grating performance in a Tarantino film since, well, Tarantino himself.) This second half does, however, offer an impressive, if overlong, car chase, before climaxing in an orgy of female violence that strikes parallels with Marleen Gorris’s radical Dutch film, A Question of Silence (I did say it was unclassifiable!). This heady mixture, of course, will guarantee Death Proof attention when it is released as a solo picture in September, but the movie is even less likely to carry its second-act flaws with extra scenes added.

So here’s what I would do: boil Planet Terror down to 45 minutes, discard the second half of Death Proof (yes, even the car chase) and release Grindhouse as a double bill of two shortish features. The fake cinema ads and half of the trailers could be dispensed with (Kentucky Fried Movie did these 30 years ago), with the exception of Edgar Wright’s funny Don’t and Eli Roth’s note-perfect Graduation Day/Prom Night pastiche, Thanksgiving (which, as the cliche goes, is almost worth the admission price alone). That’d make an entertaining 100 minutes, and retain something the grindhouse experience.

As it stands, 3 hours 11 minutes is certainly too long to watch two directors goofing around.

I reacted with some caution over the news that the Dutch consortium Cyrte Investments has bought Hammer Films and intends to revive some of the studios old favourites for modern audiences.

Haven’t we been here before?

As early as 1980, four years after its last theatrical horror film (the stillborn To the Devil, A Daughter) Hammer head Roy Skeggs was waxing lyrical about the new future TV was bringing to the company, thanks to the helping hand of Sir Lew Grade’s ITC outfit. The result was 13 episodes of Hammer House of Horror. But rather than turn around the company’s fortunes, the shows were so lacklustre they effectively knocked another nail in its coffin.

In 1984, another attempt was made to revive the Hammer cadaver on TV, this time courtesy of a co-production arrangement with 20th Century Fox. The result was a handful of episodes of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, which turned out to even worse than the previous series, and ended up languishing on the TV landfill site that is late-night, non-networked programming.

In 1993, the company rose again to announce a new slate of film production. The media took up the story with gusto (the 9-year absence of Hammer had intensified the nation’s fondness for the brand). Pictures of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Dracula and Frankenstein briefly graced the pages of the daily newspapers, and pundits speculated about which of the classic tales would be remade. This time, nothing happened.

In 2000, Hammer was acquired by a private investment consortium, which included advertising guru Charles Saatchi. The consortium announced plans “to resurrect the Hammer name across all types of media, including the internet and digital television.” (Exactly what Cyrte has just said.) But, again, nothing happened.

So now it’s over thirty years since the last Hammer horror film, and, arguably, forty since its last good one. Sometimes, re-igniting the brand seems as likely as launching a new series of Carry On films (another long-defunct franchise that occasionally raises its head above the parapet).

But there is hope. The recent Cyrte transaction was headed by John De Mol, who runs Endemol. One of the more bold and innovative production companies of the last decade, Endemol is known chiefly, of course, as the maker of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. As egregious as those series may be, they do seem to get the entire world watching and talking for several months every year. So if anyone can kick-start the Hammer brand, perhaps John de Mol can.

But even if Cyrte actually succeeds in getting a film into production, it’ll have to be aware that those creaky old Hammer franchises will need to be considerably ‘re-imagined’ if they’re going to have a sporting chance in today’s A-budget/B-picture world. And there’s a few key characters they’d be foolish to revisit. Dracula? He’s been revamped, either on TV or the big screen, almost every year since the old Hammer series ended. The Mummy? Surely Universal’s lively The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) has put paid to that. Zombies? After Land of the Dead (2005), the new Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and 28 Days/Week Later (2002/2007)? Not likely. Frankenstein? Perhaps. Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 version wasn’t up to much. Sherlock Holmes? Maybe, but do we need it after umpteen prestigious TV outings every five years?

I think De Mol’s best bet would be to revive Professor Quatermass — interestingly enough, seeing as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) was Hammer studio’s first real foray into horror. TV has returned, effectively, to the character a couple of times (in 1979 and 2005), but a new version, on a bigger, modern scale, would be an enticing prospect indeed. The storylines for all three Hammer Quatermasses — The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass II and, especially, Quatermass and the Pit — are ripe for retelling. Nigel Kneale’s original scripts needn’t even be altered significantly; they’re still powerfully inventive. But lending them a fresh eye, with all the confidence that CGI and other modern special effects techniques would bring, could work absolute wonders, if the integrity of the original material is adhered to.

I, for one, was disappointed with the special effects in Roy Ward Baker’s otherwise superlative 1967 version of Quatermass and the Pit, as good as they may have looked when it was first released (although Kubrick’s 2001 was only a year away). Anyone under 40 watching Baker’s film now would find it hard not to snigger at the clunky model work and primitive pyrotechnics. (I don’t mean this disrespectfully; I just feel where the story still shines, the visuals have gone mouldy.)

Nigel Kneale’s work, of course, was about ideas, not special effects — that’s what made him one of the greats. But you’ve got to get bums on seats, so if New Hammer remade Quatermass and the Pit and pulled off a fusion of the two, things might take off nicely.

I don’t know what I was expecting from Ken, but he was a disappointment, looking bored and engaging in uninspired conversation with housemates sixty years his junior. He ruffled a couple of feathers with his grumpiness, but even at his most badly behaved he couldn’t compete with the histrionics that eventually took hold of the house. If anything, Big Brother made Ken Russell look diffident and restrained — an achievement indeed!

It’s not clear what Russell wanted to prove by going in, but he appeared to fail in his quest. When he left, without fanfare, I doubt any of the TV audience rushed out to buy his films, or joined the various petitions to persuade Warner Bros. to re-release The Devils (1971). This is a shame, because Russell’s oeuvre is woefully under-represented on DVD. And the continued absence of The Devils is the saddest thing of all.

An account of the heresy trial of Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) in the town of Loudun in 17th Century France, The Devils has weathered the passage of time much better than other British releases that unbalanced the censor in 1971, such as Straw Dogs. A testament to Russell’s skill not just as a purveyor of shocks but also as a practitioner of the art of cinema, The Devils is an incredible, visceral experience (thanks to Derek Jarman’s sets, David Watkin’s cinematography and a jarring, unconventional score by Peter Maxwell Davies). It is also notable for Reed’s performance, which, during the torture scenes particularly, conveys a power that is still deeply unsettling.

The most complete version of the film was shown at the NFT in 2004, and fairly intact versions have had rare screenings on TV. But its last UK video release was ten years ago, pre-DVD. And other films from Russell’s best period —The Music Lovers (1970), Savage Messiah (1972) — have been just as hard to see.

The argument for not releasing these is commercial — they are not likely to give The Da Vinci Code a run for its money (although even Salome’s Last Dance, one of Russell’s worst movies, is better than The Da Vinci Code.) But if there’s a DVD audience for Impromptu (about Chopin) then surely there’s one for The Music Lovers. If Xanadu can secure a release, why can’t The Boy Friend? If people pay good money for The Agony and the Ecstasy, surely they’ll fork out for Savage Messiah!

The Devils will require expensive special edition treatment if its potential audience is to be satisfactorily catered for. But it’s unlikely that this is the only reason Warners are hanging back. The film is clearly still too provocative, too blasphemous for a major corporation to put its name to.

We can be thankful, at least, that Russell’s most successful film. Women in Love (1969) is available, and it is fitting that Tommy (1975) has been blessed with a double-disc release. It is encouraging to see a couple of his ground-breaking early TV films — Elgar (1962) and Song of Summer (1968) — have made it to DVD. The terrific Mahler (1974) is also worth seeking out. But surely Russell needs to be comprehensively honoured on DVD while he is still alive (he’s about to turn 80). We need his insight and commentary on the films, his advice on the transfers. Surely this is a better use of his time than locking him up with Jade Goody.

It looks like splitting Tarantino movies in two has gone to Harvey Weinstein’s head – it seems he’s about to do that to the long-awaited Grindhouse before it sees a UK cinema release (if it gets a UK cinema release at all). But the reasons are different from the decision to release Kill Bill as a two-parter. This time it’s purely profit-related and, ironically (considering Grindhouse actually consists of two completely separate films, one directed by Robert Rodriguez, the other by Tarantino), it is a lot less sensible.

In an homage to the US Skid Row exploitation double bills of the 60s and 70s, Grindhouse comprises Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof — both of whose titles are self-explanatory — and is linked by some phoney (but reportedly hilarious) trailers advertising equally nefarious-sounding offerings, such as Werewolf Women of the SS. Sadly, Grindhouse has pretty much bombed at the US box office so far, with a ‘disappointing’ first three-week take of $23 million, which has prompted Weinstein, the film’s backer, to suggest halving the feature for overseas distribution. His thinking probably is that the Tarantino episode might make some theatrical money on its own (it’s said to be the superior of the two films), whereas the Rodriguez offering can probably be put on hold until the DVD release. In this case the fake trailers will more than likely be consigned to the DVD release as well.

But even without the linking trailers, the whole raison d’etre of Grindhouse is to seize and weaken the audience for a marathon bout of violent thrills and shameless titillation. It aims to recapture that salacious optimism that grindhouse-goers felt when they hungrily sought out these guilty pleasures in sleazy urban cinemas and lawless drive-ins: if the first film’s no good then stick around for the second, because that will blow you away! And look what’s coming next week: giant ants, cannibal worms, girls with exploding breasts!

This feeling will be alien to many modern cinemagoers, of course, especially in Britain. While those of us in our mid-thirties or over will at least remember the value of a double or triple bill (and of “getting our money’s worth” or “having a good shelter from the rain”), few outside the bigger US towns and cities will have lived the grindhouse or drive-in experience. But the outre thrills that they were promised (if rarely served) have travelled the world in one way or another, not least in the video boom of the early eighties, when a lot of what could be considered grindhouse fare got British exposure (with or without the knowledge of the BBFC!) for the first time: The Corpse Grinders, The Wizard of Gore, Vixen!, Let Me Die a Woman, Death Race 2000, King Frat, Psychic Killer, Squirm. (This may be an inconsistent selection, but it’s what I remember from the shelves of my local Spar, circa March 1982.)

For those of us who were bored by what the mainstream had to offer (and who were young enough still to get high on fizzy drinks and cheap fairground rides), these titles held electrifying promise. Of course, they didn’t deliver – but, after a while, that wasn’t the point. Rodriguez and Tarantino know that the experience of Grindhouse is more than the sum of its films. Chopping it in two may squeeze an extra few quid from its theatrical run, but it will surely kill the spirit of the enterprise.

Although The Last King of Scotland, which reaches DVD this month, is another feather in writer Peter Morgan’s cap (topping a remarkably fertile 12 months that has seen him deliver The Queen for the cinema, Frost/Nixon for the West End and Longford for TV), it is far more notable for Forest Whitaker’s performance as Idi Amin.

This, of course, has been the consensus since the film first saw the light of day, but it has taken on an extra importance in the wake of Whitaker’s Best Actor Oscar win in March. Even though his performance had already been showered with awards and nominations, the Oscar represents another quiet step forward for black actors in Hollywood.

Not a great deal has been made of the fact that Whitaker is only the fourth African-American actor to win the Best Actor award in the 77-year history of the Oscars. And from that lengthy legacy, three of those awards were given in the last five years (Denzel Washington for Training Day [released in 2001]; Jamie Foxx for Ray [2004] and now Whitaker.) Until 2002, Sidney Poitier stood alone as the only black actor ever to win an Oscar for a leading performance (for Lilies of the Field [1963]), a fact that says less about Poitier than it does about the racism inherent in the system.

Despite Hattie McDaniel’s famous win for Gone with the Wind (1939), African-American supporting actors have fared little better. No other black performer won in this category until 1982, when Louis Gossett Jnr was rewarded for An Officer and a Gentleman. Since then, only five more black actors and actresses have picked up the award for a supporting role. (I know The Guardian calls everyone ‘actors’ but I’ve got to make a distinction here.)

At an Oscar ceremony in the early nineties, Eddie Murphy made a very gentle criticism (the only way Hollywood can handle it) about the Academy not playing fair with the black community. That comment didn’t alter anything, perhaps because it wasn’t strident enough to upset anybody.

So what has changed in the last five years? It’s not that black actors have only just started giving Oscar-worthy performances. Is it another reaction to 9/11, an event which galvanised Americans of all colours (if not all religions)? Indeed, the first Oscar ceremony after the attack on the World Trade Centre was something of a seminal event. It not only saw Denzel Washington pick up his gong, but saw Halle Berry become the first (and only) black performer ever to win in the Best Actress category (for Monster’s Ball). Not only that, it featured an unprecedented live appearance from Woody Allen, who made a rare trip west to present a segment about New York.

None of this is to suggest that Whitaker’s win represents tokenism. Quite the opposite – it is one of the most fully deserved awards of the year. Ironically enough, I don’t believe Washington or Berry really ‘deserved’ their Oscars for Training Day and Monster’s Ball. (Perhaps, like Poitier, Washington was being rewarded for a body of work rather than an individual film). But they represented a belated ‘acceptance’ that has served as a valuable catalyst for the honouring of true achievement. Maybe the next few Oscar ceremonies will see Hollywood settling the debt it owes to black film-makers, as well as performers. There will have to be a lot of awards given out (‘deserved’ or not) to redress the balance.

“Ritual, ideas, relativity/Only building, no people, prophecy/Time slide, place to hide, nudge reality/Foresight, minds wide, magic imagery.”

Something about the Big Audio Dynamite (BAD) song E=MC2, which evokes the world of director Nicolas Roeg, seems to capture the essence of the man’s work even in the face of some decidedly crass lyrics: “Met a dwarf that was no good/Dressed like little red riding hood.”

By their nature, BAD were an ideal band to pay homage to Roeg’s skewered geometry; they were one of the first mainstream acts to experiment with manipulating the form, innovating with early sampling techniques and discarding the notion of the well-constructed pop song for a visceral blend of musical styles and influences. Indeed, BAD had some of the spirit of Roeg in many of their fractured, provocative anthems. So we can forgive them the odd “Space guy fell from sky/ Scratch my head and wondered why.”

This line refers to The Man Who Fell to Earth, which gets a DVD re-release this month (along with Track 29; Insignificance and Bad Timing are out on April 30). And BAD’s confusion is forgivable. The Man Who … might be the archetypal Roeg film — it is quite magnificent and yet utterly frustrating.

Of course, to assess the film in a conventional way is to miss its relevance as a splintered satire on capitalism and as a cold conundrum of sex and alienation. Visually and intellectually, it is bursting with brave ideas, jarring juxtapositions. And it is prepared to alienate the audience in order to convey them. Similarlly, the casting of David Bowie is a both stroke of genius and a something of a let-down. As Newton, an advanced alien from a dying planet, hoping to secure a water supply from Earth by patenting inventions way ahead of our time, the singer brilliantly epitomises the look and feel of the film whilst failing to deliver his lines with any real conviction.

When E=MC2 was released in 1986, Roeg had completed seven features as director: Performance, Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bad Timing, Eureka and Insignificance. The final film notwithstanding, each conveyed a uniquely distorted view of the world, fusing offbeat but beautiful visuals (Roeg was previously a cinematographer) with time-juggle storytelling and varying degrees of sexual perversion. But BAD’s timing proved to be unnervingly good: from this point Roeg’s career fell into uncertainty and unfulfilled promise.

Of the theatrical films that followed — Castaway, Track 29, The Witches, Two Deaths, Cold Heaven — only The Witches, a film for children, seemed to focus its artistic energy effectively. After that, a slew of made-for-TV movies reduced the director to little more than a journeyman: Heart of Darkness, Full Body Massage, Samson and Delilah. One wonders what BAD would have had to say after viewing these.

Roeg then became all but dormant, surfacing only to give interviews about his best work. But browsing the IMDB recently, I was encouraged to learn that he not only has a new film ready for release, but that it looks like it might actually be ‘a Nic Roeg film.’ Puffball reunites the director with Don’t Look Now’s Donald Sutherland and is due out this year. Reportedly, it is “a haunting thriller about infidelity, the paranormal and bad weather.” Let’s hope it sees the old rogue back to his cinematic tricks.