To celebrate the 75th Anniversay of Fritz Lang's classic film noir You Only Live Once, on June 4th Studio Canal are releasing the film on DVD. Cathode Ray Tube has three copies to give away!

For Lang (reknowned director of Metropolis, M, the Dr Mabuse trilogy, Fury, The Big Heat and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt) this was his second American film after arriving in Hollywood and fleeing Nazi Germany in 1934. An early film noir made in 1937, You Only Live Once demonstrates Lang's visual power as a film maker and how successful he was making the journey from silent cinema into the era of sound. It is an expressionistic exploration of an anti-hero, Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda), trapped in a cycle of violence, corruption and paranoia.

Eddie is a convict completing his third term for felony. One more offense, the warden warns him, and he will be returned to prison for life. Taylor is not a bad sort though, he has made his mistakes, but he has paid for them. All he wants now is a job, a home for the girl who has been waiting for him, Joan Graham (Syvia Sidney) and a family. He gets a truck-driving job, marries Joan and even makes a down payment on a little house. Sadly, everything falls apart: he loses his job, and a hat, bearing the initials “E.T”, found at the scene of a fatal bank robbery, is enough to convince a jury of his guilt. So he is forced to flee with his wife and baby on the way. In trying to avoid capture, Taylor becomes a murderer.

As Senses of Cinema suggests, the film presents "Eddie’s existential odyssey, a journey that begins with him succumbing to the cruel, violent forces of society, but ends in his tacit decision to combat and transcend these forces." It is regarded as perhaps the best of Lang's American noir that also includes Scarlet Street (1945), The Blue Gardenia (1953), The Big Heat (1953) and While The City Sleeps (1956).

At the time of release, the film was considered too violent and 15 minutes of footage had to be trimmed from the film. The story is also partly based on the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde and You Only Live Once explores the intense relationship between Eddie and Joan as they take to the road to escape the authorities. Lang's film would initiate the 'couple on the run' genre that later included Arthur Penn's own Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973).



DVD Special Features:
•    Introduction by critic George Wilson
•    70 minute audio interview with Fritz Lang recorded at the National Film Theatre in 1962
•    Inside You Only Live Once - film reel showing the creation and filming of the highly celebrated rain soaked bank robbery sequence

You Only Live Once
Cert: 12 / 82 min approx. / Region 2 / Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 / Black & White / Audio: Mono 2.0 / English language / Cat No: OPTD2346



Cathode Ray Tube has three copies of YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE to give away courtesy of StudioCanal. Simply answer the question below and submit your entry.

• - This competition is open to residents of the UK only but not to employees of Studiocanal or their agents. 


• - Entries must be received by midnight GMT on Sunday 3rd June 2012


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• - Only one entry per visitor per day. No multiple entries allowed.


• - The winners will be the first entries with the correct answer drawn at random.


• - The winners will be contacted by email. The DVDs will be posted one week after the competition closes (unless delayed by postal strikes).


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• - By entering the free prize draw, entrants agree to be bound by any other requirements set out on this website. Entry is via email to frank_c_collins@hotmail.com. No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received, only partially received or delayed for whatever reason. Paper entries are not valid

Question: Where was Fritz Lang born?

Email your answer to the question above, with your name and address, and we'll enter you into the prize draw.

Transmitted in February 1974, Terry Nation's Death to the Daleks followed hot on the heels of Malcolm Hulke's Invasion of the Dinosaurs. A mid-season story, over four weeks it bore the stamp of its writer and his narrative concerns within Doctor Who's ever flexible format. However, there is a sense of transition within the production of the series itself as Robert Holmes, the incoming script-editor, was already trailing the current incumbent Terrance Dicks after Dicks had already announced he was bowing out at the end of the season. Producer Barry Letts signalled his departure during the production of Death to the Daleks and Jon Pertwee, having played the lead role for five years and 128 episodes, was also leaving after an announcement made to the press on 8 February 1974 just before episode five of Dinosaurs went out. 

Nation had agreed with the production team that he would have first shout to write any proposed Dalek stories for the series, unhappy about how his creations had been treated after giving permission for their inclusion in Louis Marks' Day of the Daleks in 1972. After contributing Planet of the Daleks the previous year, Nation discussed his commission, offered in March 1973, for Death to Daleks over a long champagne fuelled lunch with Dicks in July that same year. As noted by Jonathan Bignell and Andrew O'Day in Terry Nation, a post-lunch letter outlined Dicks' concern for Nation not to repeat himself (pun also intended about the author's digestion): "The main necessity is to avoid any resemblance to your previous show, i.e., a group of fugitives hunted through the jungle by Daleks. Instead of jungle, think of bleak, rocky, foggy quarry."

... familiar Nation-isms 

Presumably, Daleks hunting human fugitives in a Dorset quarry was considered enough of a contrast by the time Nation delivered his scripts in November 1973. Dicks also advised Nation to make the female roles stronger in the scripts, including those of Sarah Jane Smith and what would eventually turn out to be the guest character of Jill Tarrant (Joy Harrison), a member of the Marine Space Corps expedition featured in the story.

The story, originally titled The Exilons and then The Exxilons, was sans Daleks and Nation was asked by Dicks and Letts to include them within his outline about the quest to find a cure for a space pandemic, an elixir located on a world where the once technological Exxilon society had been reduced to barbarism. It was Robert Holmes who felt the connection between the elixir and the the title of the story was too obvious and suggested Nation change the story to feature the possession of the mineral parrinium, rather than an elixir, as the objective of the human expedition.

Once further changes had been made, particularly to the final episode which originally saw the Daleks leave with the mineral and the expedition assist the Exxilons in the rebuilding of their society, production commenced. Location filming took place in November at the ARC Sand Pits at Gallows Hill, Dorset with director Michael E. Briant returning to the series after The Green Death. Briant's recently published memoir and his commentary on this DVD both cover the trials and tribulations of filming. This included out of control Daleks using dolly tracks to negotiate the quarry's sandy surface; a cherry-picker almost overturning as it tried to lift one of the Exxilon city's roots into the air after being submerged in a pond and missing Exxilon extras, camouflaged by L Rowland Warne's costumes, nodding off in the sand dunes undetected. 

Location and studio recording continued to be something of a learning curve for Lis Sladen too as she and Pertwee were still working out the nature of their professional relationship. In her autobiography she recalled being "steered" by Pertwee, his hand on her neck, after she arrived at the Dorset quarry and he made to introduce her to other members of the cast. She rationalised this as Pertwee's need to dominate physically over smaller people. She also recalled that make-up supervisor Magdalen Gaffney's assistant was of the opinion that as Doctor Who was "a space programme" then everyone had to have silver make-up and, briefly, Sarah Jane Smith's face was "luminous" before Gaffney took charge again. Regarding faces, there's a nice little anecdote from the autobiography where, on location, she recalls being asked by Briant to slap Pertwee's face because he'd gone blue with the cold.

For the studio recording at TC4 in December, Briant had persuaded Barry Letts to allow him to tape the story in set-by-set order over two days rather than using the usual schedule of completing all scenes from a single episode per day. As the production notes attest, this experiment caused some confusion with a number of props and pieces of set delivered to the wrong studio and actors becoming somewhat anxious and feeling the pressure with their scenes for two episodes being recorded out of order and in a single day. The DVD offers some behind the scenes studio recording footage from those sessions in December and the strain is often evident on Pertwee as he makes several attempts to get a number of scenes in the can. Sladen also recalled the intense workload of making two episodes in one day as something of an "ordeal" that "knocked him for six" and ultimately led to his decision to leave.

During the December studio sessions Nation also discovered, via Dicks' invitation to these recordings, that his scripts had been "amended" because of worries from Head of Serials about their violent content. As noted by Bignell and O'Day in Terry Nation, caution had been advised over a number of sequences in episode one where Exxilons "rained down blows" on their victims and in episode two in which Sarah becomes their sacrifice and where the scene "must not show her being restrained by ropes" and the inhaling of a drug should "not show it being forcibly held under her nose."

What emerges is a story that betrays its lack of budget somewhat more keenly than some of the other stories in Pertwee's final season and yet contains its fair share of visually arresting moments and impressive sequences. The location filming for the most part is excellent and, despite the ubiquitous quarry standing in for the surface of Exxilon, Briant manages to make the most of it. His opening to episode one, where stuntman Terry Walsh takes an arrow and ends up in a pool, is suitably bleak, shot day for night, lit dramatically and wreathed in smoke. The TARDIS losing power and making a forced landing on Exxilon maintains this mood and perhaps offers, as many have observed, a wry comment on the oil crisis and power cuts of October and December 1973.

It also ushers in a storyline in which Nation sets out his stall for the two dramas he would subsequently make at the BBC, Survivors (1975-1977) and Blake's 7 (1978-1981). Nation's themes about the struggle to survive in a world devastated by a virulent plague, the reliance of advanced societies on technology which then proves to be their downfall, and the shades of grey within the exercise of power and its moral consequences find their counterpart in the battles and uneasy alliance between the Marine Space Corps and the Daleks as well as the back history of the Exxilon race and their city. Nation's exploration of totalitarianism and dystopia in both dramas, and through his 1970s Dalek stories, certainly chimed with the feeling that by 1974, when Labour returned to power in that year's second election, Britain was lurching towards a hard-left dominated socialism that would eventually lead to a Communist-led government.

It is Galloway (a great guest role for Duncan Lamont) that Nation uses to explore the hard moral decisions needed to survive in such a harsh environment. As Alan Stevens has pointed out, Galloway is "a violent, bitter and self-serving type" who sells out his fellow crew, the Exxilons and the Doctor and Sarah to the Daleks and condones murder in order to get hold of the parrinium at any cost, but at the end of the story "still performs an almost incomprehensible act of self-sacrifice" by ensuring the bomb planted on the Dalek ship explodes. The character of Galloway is an attempt to defy certain heroic conventions but it is very hard to have much sympathy for him in the end.

As well as a curtain raiser to dramas that would explore those themes in a more sophisticated and in-depth manner, the story also returns to some familiar Nation-isms: the quest story structure (epitomised by the Exxilon city and its various tests and traps) and the notion of 'epic' action drama (there's a flavour of the Western and King Solomon's Mines about Death to the Daleks) that featured as early as The Keys of Marinus and The Chase and the exploration of his anti-totalitarian liberal agenda within groups of disparate individuals who take political positions in order to survive. There is also a dose of the then in-vogue Von Däniken theory of ancient civilisations influenced by alien visitors to Earth when the Doctor and Bellal discuss the origins of the city. Oh, and the use of the name Tarrant.

Daleks viciously gunning down all and sundry with machine guns

Director Briant, well versed in the larger scale, more action orientated Who stories such as The Sea Devils, is a good match for the adventure elements of Nation's script and he adds his own visual signature to the story - with a penchant for point of view shots from the Exxilons, the Daleks and the human characters as well as an appetite for action set pieces that feature various Daleks under attack from the living city's roots and bands of Exxilons - that makes up for some of the inadequacies of the production.

While the location work still just about passes muster, some of the studio-bound work struggles against the limitations of the multi-camera, low budget staging. It is also painfully obvious that there are only three operational Daleks, lovely as they are in their silver and black frocks, setting out to subjugate the planet Exxilon. There's an addiitonal one but it tends to sulk quite a bit in the background and refuses to join in.

Designer Colin Green does his best to replicate the sand dunes of Dorset in the studios but the fake rockery is never that convincing under the glare of the studio lights. Yet, as is pointed out on the commentary, the studio lighting by Derek Slee really comes into its own in the atmospheric scenes set at night as the Exxilons and humans rest after mining the parrinium for the Daleks, during the Exxilons attempt to sacrifice Sarah and her subsequent escape in the tunnels of the Exxilon city.

There are also more of Briant's exotic, often psychedelic visual touches in the scene where the Exxilons attempt to drug her and later when the Doctor is 'attacked', via the joys of Mirrorlon, in the Exxilon city. These touches do lead to some unintentionally funny moments, including the Daleks' target practice using a miniature TARDIS (they must really hate that Doctor) and Michael Wisher, voicing the Daleks, 'giving it large' as one of them gets in a tizzy and has something approaching a nervous breakdown after failing to spot the sand bag masquerading as his prisoner. Mind you, not many of us could tell the difference between a sand bag and the character of Jill Tarrant.

Adding to the mix is an unconventional score from Carey Blyton and if you couldn't get on wth his krumhorn dominated incidentals for Doctor Who and the Silurians then prepare for more atonal doodlings from the London Saxophone Quartet that may or may not be to your taste. He combines saxes, clarinets and horns with some Radiophonic trickery to provide an atypical musical lexicon for the Daleks and the startlingly effective primitive chants of the Exxilons which, according to Hilton Gough in the British Federation of Film Societies' monthly magazine, are "an imposing edifice of choral sound built up entirely from a solo voice."

Performance wise, the aforementioned Duncan Lamont and Arnold Yarrow, as the glowing, Bungle voiced subterranean Exxilon Bellal, win this hands down. Yarrow has a great rapport with Pertwee and has a physical investment in the role that has a child-like charm and attraction. Pertwee is rather subdued, perhaps an indication of his growing desire to move on, but the interplay with Yarrow is a highlight. Despite Dicks' atempts to get Nation to strengthen the female roles, Lis Sladen tries to make as much as she can out of a Sarah Jane Smith that hasn't quite fully formed on the page and Joy Harrison is left to deal with the somewhat ineffectual Jill Tarrant. The rest of the human characters don't fare much better and even the ubiquitously brilliant John Abineri only gets a cough and a spit as Railton. There are also some editing and timing issues, as indicated by Briant in his book and on the commentary, that reduce the cliffhanger of episode three to the Doctor and Bellal seemingly threatened by nothing more sinister than a bit of 70s flooring.

Overall, Briant's directorial flair, some of the performances and the Daleks viciously gunning down all and sundry with machine guns should ensure you'll enjoy what is a moderately interesting Pertwee serial. It is darker in tone - plenty of actual violence, implied sacrifice and moral ambiguity - and that hints at the Hinchcliffe and Holmes double act waiting in the wings and, under their auspices, Nation's rewriting of early Dalek history in Genesis of the Daleks.

Special features
Commentary with actors Julian Fox (Peter Hamilton), Dalek operator Cy Town, director Michael E Briant, assistant floor manager Richard Leyland, costume designer L Rowland Warne and special sounds maestro Dick Mills. Moderated by Toby Hadoke.
Beneath the City of the Exxilons (27mins)
Cast and crew look back on the making of this story with Nick 'the world's biggest Death to the Daleks fan' Briggs. Featuring interviews with director Michael E Briant, actors Arnold Yarrow and Julian Fox, AFM Richard Leyland and costume designer L Rowland Warne.
Death to the Daleks Studio Recording (24mins)
A rare and fascinating glimpse into the production of the story, this selection of material is from the 4th December recording blocks and covers the attempts to get a number of scenes in the can while managing complex visual effects and stunt sequences in the studio. The whispering Daleks are an hilarious highlight.
On the Set of Dr. Who and the Daleks (8mins)
Noted Hammer historian Marcus Hearn takes us briefly behind the scenes on the first Dalek film in 1965 with the help of ITV's Movie Magazine. Although the original programme no longer exists in the archive, mute film trims have survived and these brief but delightful sequences are woven throughout a series of interviews including actor Jason Flemyng (son of the film's director Gordon), first assistant director Anthony Waye and Dalek operator Bryan Hands.
Doctor Who Stories: Dalek Men (13 mins)
Another edition of extended interviews used in The Story of Doctor Who documentary from 2005. This time the spotlight falls on Dalek operators Nick Evans and the late, great John Scott Martin who both discuss how they brought the Daleks to life by "sitting in a wooden bath chair" where they "peddled away like mad". Evans dominates and regales us with some lovely anecdotes about working on the early days of the series including how he managed a discreet comfort break inside a Dalek on location for The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
A fact-filled set of notes and trivia from Martin Wiggins
Photo gallery
Good selection of colour and black and white images from the story.
Coming soon trailer for The Krotons.

Doctor Who: Death to the Daleks
BBC Worldwide / Released 18 June 2012 / BBCDVD3483 / Cert: PG
BBC 1974
4 episodes / Broadcast: 23rd February - 16th March 1974 / Running time: 97:49

There are several types of Doctor Who memoir - those which outline a busy career in television and film production (such as Barry Letts' recent book Who and Me) or those which are more personal and cover life's experiences rather than the day job.

Personality and a full and interesting life are very important to the success of a memoir. Anneke Wills' books, for example, are a complex, extremely moving journey of a woman's journey into maturity whereas Letts' book is about the development of a writer, actor and director and the changing nature of television production. Both can work extremely well as long as the author's exploits emerge from the page with enough enthusiasm, humour and insight. However, it's often difficult to get the balance right between the personal and the professional and the most successful books are those that can manage to juggle the two and appeal to a broad range of readers.

Classic TV Press have now convinced Michael E. Briant, a television director who has amassed some significant credits ( Z Cars, Blake's 7, Secret Army, Warship, The Onedin Line, Howard's Way among others) during what was regarded as 'the golden age' of television drama and beyond, that his personal and professional exploits would be of interest to those asking the question, Who is Michael E. Briant? Apparently, he's been asking that question too and this book would seem to be a rather good place to start. It fulfills many of the above criteria. While it is not an emotional confessional in the style of Wills' books, it does offer an insider's view of working at the BBC, a significant chunk of which was on Doctor Who, and a personal journey taking him from selling Revlon cosmetics to adventures sailing around the world.

It's written in a very accessible style, is bright, breezy and often witty, and yet still contains a great understanding of television production spanning several decades and his career progression through the BBC as floor manager, production assistant and director. As well as hair-raising tales about the dramas he worked on, he often reflects on production techniques and methodology that made these programmes so successful, elements of which he feels are sadly absent in today's hectic world of television production. More of that in a moment.

Naturally, we start with Michael's childhood and his budding child-actor career as a alumnus of the Italia Conti school as one Michael Tennant. It was a career which he saw through rose tinted spectacles as a life that demanded "no educational requirements, very long holidays between jobs, and the possibility of foreign travel." After elocution and deportment classes, Michael found work in plenty of stage and television productions, discovered a brief passion for racing pigeons and then was bitten by the 'messing about in boats' bug after starring in a John Gregson film vehicle, True as a Turtle.

The film's location work on a sailing yacht led to a lifelong infatuation with boats and sailing that gradually becomes evident as you make your way through the book. Coincidentally, the money he earned from the film enabled him to buy a cine camera and take his first steps in what would be his other passion of making television drama. The racing pigeons were quietly forgotten.

As the acting work dried up, Michael became a rep for Procter and Gamble, flogging Daz and Fairy Snow to the shopkeepers of post-austerity Britain in a Burtons suit and trilby. There's a very nice story about his job with Revlon that I think illustrates Michael's quick thinking and insight, something that would later hold him in good stead during the making of Death to the Daleks. Instead of lugging suitcases of samples around the chemists in his area, he decorated a hotel conference room, put on a Christmas exhibition of Revlon products and, with a bit of cheap sherry as enticement, brought the chemists to him. As he sat and waited for the chemists to arrive (with the eventual gathering "like a crowded Doctor Who convention") he saw a job advertised at the BBC for which he successfully applied. He was on his way, even if Revlon's Sales Manager thought he was mad for turning down a counter offer of a new car and a £750 wage increase.

"the camera should be the third person in the room"

Working at the BBC as an AFM, his first day was clearly a portent of the future. He was instructed to assist the AFM on Doctor Who and learned to leave Bill Hartnell's favourite armchair well alone and trust to the vagaries of the Visual Effects Department and to avoid Hartnell's ire if you dared to muck about with the TARDIS controls. He worked with Douglas Camfield on The Crusade, having the unenviable task of wrangling ants, procured from London Zoo, to eat the honey smeared on the arm of one Viktors Ritelis standing in for William Russell who clearly did not fancy an encounter with killer ants. This tale does not augur well for Michael's continuing relationship with Equity defying creatures and the star struck likes of iguanas and maggots were delights yet to come in his career as a director.

He describes BBC office etiquette and the roles of Production Assistants, Floor Managers and Directors and how he got into the habit of keeping a little black book of actors he worked with that would function as his own version of Spotlight. His experience was also shaped by the likes of fellow directors Christopher Barry, Hugh David, Michael Barry, Joan Craft, Rex Tucker and Peter Hammond and he is clearly very grateful for such invaluable training on the job, taking to heart Hammond's advice "the camera should be the third person in the room". As PA, he was lucky to work with Barry on The Power of the Daleks, on which the AFM was the irrepressible, and future Who director, Graeme Harper, and was present at the arrival of Patrick Troughton. He, Patrick and producer Innes Lloyd were certainly confounded by Sydney Newman's interpretation of the Second Doctor as a 'cosmic hobo' to such an extent that it required a drink in the BBC club and Patrick coming to the rescue.

A superb chapter about the making of Fury from the Deep follows with plenty of anecdotes about hiring helicopters, getting foam machines to an anti-aircraft platform in the Thames Estuary, seasick BBC crews (a recurring motif) and a tricky moment, filming the landing of the TARDIS on the sea, that saw Michael clinging to the side of helicopter skid a hundred feet above the waves. A successful day's filming also literally brought the house down, in true Errol Flynn style, at the crew hotel in Margate. His graduation to director is accompanied by a fascinating account of the short film he made at the BBC training school, The Kiss, and through the good auspices of Ronnie Marsh, who had become Head of Serials, his proper go at making an episode of Z Cars. He sadly found it a disappointing experience in comparison to directing four episodes of what he believed to be the better scripted The Newcomers. However, there are some great perceptions into the processes of making programmes and how they were assessed inside the BBC itself.

"an eighteen-month-old-baby crawling could have escaped from it and, if angered, finished it off."

His reflections on Colony in Space, his next Doctor Who, do cover quite a few of the anecdotes that he provided on the recent DVD commentary and the stories will therefore feel more familiar but I couldn't help raise a chuckle over the pitfalls of using the Portaloo in the Carclaze quarry location and rather sympathised with Michael as he felt somewhat out of his depth, encouraging his own death wish by thinking of crashing his car to get out of directing Colony in Space. The design and function of the IMC robot is a particular target of his disappointment, believing "an eighteen-month-old-baby crawling could have escaped from it and, if angered, finished it off." Considering it's a serial not held with much regard by Who fans and was something of a baptism of fire for him, I understand his frustrations.

At 28, Michael decided to go freelance as a director and, despite fearing the worst, found himself in gainful employment courtesy of Ronnie Marsh and the BBC and back working on Z Cars. Here, he again details some of the innovations of the time when he uses OB equipment, crews used to covering sports events and new lightweight cameras to record the episodes. Suffice it say, the OB van nearly overturned while shooting a vehicle pulling away using a car mounted camera and stunt man Stuart Fell put something of a dampener on one of the cameras too. His thoughts turn to how such dramas were built out of rehearsing the script, usually at the BBC's rehearsal rooms at the 'Acton Hilton', and genuine collaboration between actors, crew, producer and director. Clearly, it's something he feels is missing in the production equation of today's television drama.

Working on The Sea Devils kept his seafaring ambitions afloat, despite his concerns about costuming the eponymous creatures and building sets that conveyed their underwater habitat, and increasingly as his career progresses you can tell he gets a kick out of working on dramas that feature the sea or boats of any kind. It reflects his increasing ambitions to become a professional sailor that are encouraged by his work on Gerald Glaister's series Warship after further dealings with Doctor Who in the shape of giant maggots, Daleks and Cybermen and the perils of dropping ballcocks out of helicopters, watching John Scott Martin lose control of his Dalek and confronting the curse of Wookey Hole. An interesting aside in the chapter on Death to the Daleks is how he persuaded Barry Letts to allow him to record the episodes set by set rather than in story order. It inaugurated a rehearse record system that eventually became standard across the BBC.

Beyond Doctor Who, and a chapter about his sterling work on Robots of Death, there are some entertaining and informative sections about the filming of Warship (trying to film Bernard Lee with a seasick camera and sound crew and hanging out of helicopters to film ships and aircraft), Treasure Island (a run in with German naturists) and The Onedin Line (using six extras to film an attack on a pirate ship) and several examples of Michael's very quick thinking when things didn't always go to plan. While making the first episode of Blake's 7, he also shows how he recognised the talent of others and in this instance when designer Martin Collins enabled him to record everything in studio using one modular set. He also clearly enjoyed working on Secret Army and with the series's producer Gerry Glaister "who had a brilliant feel for good actors" and to whom he would later pitch the idea for Howard's Way.

After working on an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, a Francis Durbridge thriller Breakaway and the very intriguing Blood Money, which ran into problems with the Royal Household and the BBC, Michael found himself directing episodes of Secret Army spin-off, Kessler. While planning the series, he was naturally messing about with boats and a rather tense section of the book essays his sailing baptism by fire after he had to be rescued by a French warship during a major storm while crossing the Channel. From here on in the book becomes a love letter to his growing passion for sailing around the world and his directing career diverges to covering episodes of Emmerdale and EastEnders, a disastrous attempt to set up a production company, a brief spell as a reluctant HGV driver, and the vagaries of trying to teach the Dutch how to direct drama and sit-com and helming their versions of The Two of Us and After Henry. The final chapter culminates with a nail biting run in with Yemeni pirates as he sailed across the Red Sea.

Who Is Michael E. Briant? comes recommended. It's a highly entertaining book about Michael's growing confidence directing and working behind the scenes on prestigious (and not so prestigious) television drama and his derring-do on the high seas. It offers observations into how television was made in the 1960s and 1970s, is a story of personal achievement told with gentle and good humour and has a foreword from fellow Who director Christopher Barry.

Who Is Michael E. Briant?
A Memoir by Doctor Who Director Michael E. Briant
(Classic TV Press / Published 4th May 2012 / ISBN 13 978-0-9561000-6-1 / Format: Paperback / £12.99)

Hammer fans are certainly in for a treat this year as StudioCanal unveil the results of their restoration project with the studio. A total of 30 films are currently being given the love and attention they have long craved for in a joint effort to restore Hammer's back catalogue being coordinated between StudioCanal and major studios such as Warner, Columbia and Fox. Dracula Prince of Darkness is the first fruit of this labour to see release on dual format Blu-ray and DVD, following on from StudioCanal's splendid high-definition release of Quatermass and the Pit last year.

Released in January 1966, on a double-bill with another highly regarded Hammer classic Plague of the Zombies, it was one of a package of films that Hammer produced in association with 20th Century Fox, Associated British and Seven-Arts and their recently signed combined contract ensured that Hammer remained in production throughout 1965 and 1966. Fox would release the films in the American market while the deal with Associated British would see Hammer product released through their ABC chain of cinemas. In the summer of 1965, four films squeezed into the modest stages of Bray Studios, keeping the facility busy at a time when it was becoming increasingly expensive to run and because, at the time, Elstree was unavailable. Producer Anthony Nelson Keys wisely saw the economic sense of making Dracula Prince of Darkness back to back with Rasputin - The Mad Monk, using the same sets and a repertory company of actors in both films.

Two of Hammer's rarer features, the historical adventures The Scarlet Blade and The Brigand of Kandahar made their DVD debut recently. Thanks to StudioCanal, you can win both films on DVD in our latest competition. Details below.

The Scarlet Blade, made in 1963, stars Lionel Jeffries, Oliver Reed and Jack Hedley and was directed by John Gilling.

In 1648 the civil war raged in England as the republican Roundheads clash with the Royalists, supporters of the deposed King Charles I. Allegiances split family loyalties, and intrigue, treachery and death overshadowed every household. Set against this troubled background the drama surrounds two families, the Beverlys and the Judds, and the conflicts that they face against each other and themselves.

An unlikely romance blossoms between two people from these opposing camps – one from the Roundheads, the other from the Cavaliers. Colonel Judd (Jeffries), a villainous anti-royalist loyal to Cromwell, is bewildered by his daughter Clare’s (June Thorburn) Royalist sympathies. Judd’s right-hand man Captain Sylvester (Reed) is an enforcer for Cromwell’s parliamentarians and also June’s boyfriend. Much to the consternation of Judd and Sylvester, Clare falls for Edward Beverly aka The Scarlet Blade (Hedley) a dashing Robin Hood figure leading the Royalist rebels.

John Gilling also directed The Brigand of Kandahar, made in 1965, starring Ronald Lewis, Oliver Reed and Duncan Lamont.

1880. British India. Robert Case (Lewis), a mixed race lieutenant, is unjustly discharged from the British Army. He joins the rebel Bengali tribesmen offensive led by Eli Khan (Reed) against the colonial enemy. They capture a foreign journalist and Case recounts his story of false accusation on trumped-up charges, instigated by the bigotry and racism of his commanding officers. Following a successful attack by the British against the rebels, Case is brutally shot by Colonel Drewe (Lamont), his accuser. The journalist returns home determined to report the true story of The Brigand of Kandahar.

Both films are presented in their original 2.35:1 scope ratio.

To win one set of both DVDs just email the answer to the following question, with your name and address:

Which three Hammer horror films did director John Gilling eventually make for the studio? 

COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. Congratulations to the winner Alex Wilcock.

It is suggested that the Oberhausen Manifesto, a declaration made by young German filmmakers at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen on 28 February 1962, was the impetus for the New German Cinema movement that rose to prominence between the late 1960s and the 1980s. Among the group that would eventually produce work within that period and would go on to receive international acclaim were Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff and Wim Wenders. The Tin Drum is certainly regarded as Volker Schlöndorff's greatest critical and commercial achievement. It is a key film in the New German Cinema, both epitomising a cinema that Stephen Brockmann, in A Critical History of German Film, describes as showing "the personal implications of politics" and underling the importance and success, with acclaim for The Tin Drum in the form of the Palme d'Or and an Oscar, of a national cinema to West German audiences.