Three episodes in and I’m already rooting for the extraterrestrials.

Idiocracy should be moved to the documentary section.

I don’t say it often enough but thank you to those who keep Primewire going. It’s a treasure trove of films that fire up and route the memory circuits to long forgotten pleasures, and in this particular case, my childhood love of The Rescuers! 78 minutes of truly great animation, narrative and songs that went by in a flash, from a time when a Disney film was worthy of its name.

What an episode! The CGI is used to spectacular effect!
Obviously I had to search elsewhere to watch episode 7, but I felt strangely compelled to return and comment on PW as it’s a hard habit to break - let’s hope against hope that this link situation isn’t irreversible.

Back in the cold war of the 1980s, America may have had Christine, the psychopathic car but Czechoslovakia went one better with Ferat Vampire, a car that kills and drinks blood as fuel!
This is such an entertaining science fiction/horror film that is played straight but is so darkly comedic in an understated way. The director Juraj Herz is sadly little known in the English speaking cinema world but films like this and his Beauty And The Beast adaptation are wonderful and well worth checking out.

Great first episode and remarkable acting by David Tennant.

For those who have followed the entire NXIVM saga via the media or the Escaping NXIVM podcast series, this is the documentary that takes it to the next level with an extraordinary level of involvement by some of the main players in the group, couple this with incredible archive footage of the group and its members as well as its “official” media productions.
NXIVM is a truly fascinating phenomena, a sort of C21st Scientology with elements of hardcore BDSM, mind control, Clockwork Orange style deprogramming, sex cult practices,
a smattering of celebrities, media personalities and occasional members of the super rich.
With such a rich cocktail of elements, this is going to be one interesting documentary series.

An absolute TV classic of the paranoid conspiracy mystery genre and yet it seems hardly known about, even compared to other 90s classics like Dark Skies or Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms never mind the X-Files.
As a UK viewer it only came across my radar in the first wave of file sharing in the early 2000s and I was totally hooked - kind of a cross between the The Prisoner, Parallax View and the Twilight Zone.
Kudos to the uploader for making the series available on PW as I’m sure more episodes will be going up shortly.

In the wake of so many badly concieved redux re-imaginings that seem hellbent on turning any much loved film or TV series into moronic crap, I approached Dexter:New Blood with a certain amount of anxiety and dread.
I shouldn’t have worried, this is shaping up to be something special.

Fake season 17 premiere episode, its the old first episode of season 16 but has an air date of April 19th 2021.
Reported it.

One of the best non-English speaking dystopian/satirical sci-fi films of the sixties and it being the fashionable decade, also one of the most stylish.
This is also the first film to employ the ‘reality television’ trope of hunter/hunted, used to great success in films like Battle Royale and Running Man.
If you are not one of those people who have an aversion to subtitles I would also recommend a similar made for TV film from Germany, called ‘Das Millionenspiel’ and released in 1970.

If you have ever pondered over the nature vs nuture debate then this documentary will give you plenty to reflect upon: what starts out as a series of apparent coincidences gives way to something much darker and deliberate. Definitely one to watch.

This is about as good as it gets - forget the remake, it’s all about the original Wim Wenders film. What makes this so good is the way it appeals across the board - whether you like more mainstream films or prefer the art-house type, it doesn’t matter, it’s just an incredible film - it did for Wenders what The Elephant Man did for David Lynch and though very different films, the genius of each director shines through.

great classic 70s tv series , did the 70s predict our POSSIBLE future ?

Polish director Wojciech Has directed many films and next to The Saragossa Manuscript this is his most well-known.
At the risk of stating the complete obvious, it’s a very different film but retains that hallucinatory feel and the use of colour is exquisite.
Kudos to the uploader for giving these films a hopefully new audience and the good news for anyone who gets hooked is you can pick DVD copies of both films for very little cost on the usual auction site :)

Ku! One of the best Soviet era Russian science-fiction films - If you like the films of Terry Gilliam you are going to love the space/time hopping of Kin-dza-dza! The cinematography is incredible, at times it reminds me of The Man Who Fell To Earth and the acting is just spot on as is the dark humour which permeates the entire film.
I must have watched it a dozen times over the years and it never gets old or boring. Ku!

This a sure must watch. Listened to this case on the murder squad with Paul Holes and Billy Jenson. Holes worked with Michelle McNamara on her book before she died and was a lead investigator on The Golden State Killer cold case. If you check out their podcast they’ll tell you about the guy, where they were when they got the news about him and how they caught him after DNA evidence sealed his fate after decades of hiding. Crazy good stuff.

Kudos to the Doom Patrol for navigating effortlessly through the always difficult third season (I’m looking at you American Gods) with panache and style.
At times I felt a real Legion vibe to the third season (high praise indeed) and the best news of all is the announcement of a fourth season.

The Cremator is one the best films ever to come out of post Prague spring Czechoslovakia and features the dream team of director Juraz Herz and actor Rudolf Hrusínský in a dark comedy set against the backdrop of the thirties and forties.

The Jeffrey MacDonald case has fascinated me for decades because it goes to the heart of the very idea that ultimate truth and certainty can be sculpted out of evidence and testimony.
Out of all the directors who could have focused their lens on the case, Errol Morris is the natural choice and even if he had not already taken a deep dive into the case in bestseller book form, he would still be the ideal filmmaker for the task as he seems to implicitly grasp the core issues of memory, narrative, testimony, evidential findings and human fallibility that lie at the heart of the justice system.

If you can resist a rush to judgement and live with uncertainty you will find this compulsory viewing, just like his previous opus Wormwood, Errol is on top form.

PS I would really recommend the companion podcast called Morally Indefensible which takes an in-depth look into the Fatal Vision book on the case written by Joe McGinniss which also forms the basis of the TV series of the same name.

This is the perfect follow up to the NXIVM documentary series The Vow, though it’s made by different people and India Oxenberg, the absent subject of The Vow, is the ideal person to bring NXIVM down to an individual level and understand just how the NXIVM machinery of mind control operated.
The Vow documented the awakening of individuals from the cult and its subsequent destruction, while India and others tell us in incredibly honest and insightful testimony how NXIVM brought people into the cult through successive levels of indoctrination and manipulation.

It was fascinating to see footage of Dr. Brandon Porter and the testimony concerning the Clockwork Orange fright experiments and heartbreaking to watch the testimony of a former child member of The Children of God cult recount how her violent and repeated rape as a young child in one cult was symbolically reenacted in NXIVM and yet another example of how psychopaths like Keith Raniere have this instinctive radar that allows them to prey on traumatised individuals under the guise of ‘healing’.

I keep hoping for a genetically mutated strain of marijuana that will take me back to 1969!

This is such an incredible film - if you like your cinema with a dose of high strangeness then this is one definitely for you.
Kudos to whoever posted this, I saw it a couple of times when it came out and its such a pleasure to revisit it as it is one of those films that seem to improve with repeat viewing.
File under independent/arthouse but in the best sense of the terms.

This is one show that will haunt me the rest of my days. He is a monster. This show was very well done and created to bring focus and attention back to the beautiful Shanaan, Celeste, Bella and Nico and how precious they were. Not to just give the monster all the attention. He showed absolute guilt several times before he confessed in my opinion.

This season, like Raised By Wolves in general, is so well paced and episode 4 totally sets up the grand drama of what’s to come. If you prefer the more traditional sci-fi tropes of technology, sentient androids and AI combined with universal and archetypal themes. (over whatever is flavour of the month in the mainstream media) then this is one to watch.

Over fourty years on and the penny finally drops on the ‘Wile E. Coyote’ name! Haven’t seen this episode for decades but it brought back childhood memories of fruitless searching for the Acme brand in UK shops and having hours of fun with small multicoloured rubber balls that seemed almost supernatural in their bouncing abilities.
Six minutes of time well spent! Thanks uploader!

Excellent documentary miniseries by Marina Zenovich on one of those strange Christian religious/cult groups, always led by a ‘charismatic’ leader that seem to be particularly prominent in America.
Despite the cautionary tales of recent history been littered with cult leaders like Jim Jones or fraudsters and predators like Jim Bakker and Jerry Swaggart who all used religion in the service of their own needs, the lessons seem seldom learned.
I have to say though, the shock ending does make you think there is a strange cosmic justice in operation.

This is an excellent TV adaptation of the Aldous Huxley novel, it really brings the book alive with its portrayal of a genetically engineered hedonistic control system.
Ironically, in terms of the current ‘cancel culture’ and the eradication of history, the book and the film is more relevant than ever.

The phrase ‘more money than sense’ could be tailor made for the couple featured in this fascinating documentary - the original premise of the documentary was to follow the building of the biggest house in America but the 2008 economic crash sends the film off into a totally different direction.
While I wouldn’t say I have any sympathy for the couple (the put upon maid is in fact the only person I can really relate to) and part of the film feels like you’re watching a car crash in slow motion, it does remind you that money can’t buy happiness or indeed for that matter, taste.
I wrote these few lines because the couple of people who bothered to vote for it gave it low marks and I feel it deserves a little praise as the 7.1 IMDb score suggests.

Another classic Disney animation that has far more going on plot wise than just the spaghetti scene it’s famous for - though in fairness, it’s eons since I last viewed it but I am definitely glad I gave it another watch.

Betrayed and drugged by an FBI informer before being assassinated by the police while he slept, Fred Hampton was the one Black Panther who fit FBI director Hoover’s fear of the appearance of a ‘black messiah’ - someone who could unite all the races and saw class not racism as the key organising principle of revolution with his concept of the Rainbow Coalition that embraced grassroots working class groups like the Young Patriots, composed of poor displaced white youth.
Unfortunately the prevailing historical view of the Black Panthers is of gun-toting macho male revolutionaries even though the majority of the membership was young black women and I can’t help but feel that the vision of Fred Hampton was lost because of this distorted view of the Black Panthers.
One of the most essential documents of the radical seventies, the film and the message of Fred Hampton is more needed than ever.

The 2nd season of Raised By Wolves is the gift that just keeps on giving. The interplay and tension between the organic/technological and religion/atheism is so well done and it makes the show one of the best sci-fi series of recent times.

Imagine The Matrix meets Idiocracy.

There was a small explosion of great American television around this period with Twin Peaks, Dark Skies, Gothic, Nowhere Man, X-Files and of course Oliver Stone and Bruce Wagner’s Wild Palms.

This was a period when the concept of Virtual Reality was just surfacing out of the margins and into the mainstream via films like Lawnmower Man etc (though writers like PK Dick and obscure German films like Fassbinder’s World On A Wire had been exploring these concepts for years).

I’ve always thought Wild Palms was visionary television at its best and one of Oliver Stone’s most under-rated projects - its definitely not mainstream viewing but if you enjoy series Twin Peaks then this is for you.

Oooh! Why have I not heard of this before?? I love the book, so an automatic add to my watch list.

Perfect lockdown material for the UK! It may have been small in budget but it was huge in the science fiction imagination of the 1970s. As the creators have stated in past interviews, because it was made for ‘children’, the ITV censors and controllers pretty much left them alone, free to add their own left-leaning radical and subversive ideas.
Of course as a youngster watching it at the time, I was only dimly aware of its subversive undercurrent but as an adult who has re-watched it over the years, I marvel at the imagination, creativity and radical approach to children’s TV by the creators.

“This original series…” nope, this one has you beat by 4 years…
https://www.primewire.li/tv/165642-watch-evil-lives-here

For children of all ages and especially for the adults who have forgotten the wisdom of The Lorax who speaks for the trees!

The story of an ‘offbeat boarding school’ description really doesn’t do the film any justice as this French language arthouse film is an altogether more surreal almost Lynchian affair. There is something very dark and disturbing about this film and despite repeated DVD viewings, its mystery remains.

Unbelievable story of murder and deception that will keep you guessing until you are absolutely horrified at the end! Well done Dateline!!

A dark twisted tale of adolescent obsession and longing with sixties icon Jane Asher as the object of desire. This is one dark, creepy film that really draws you in and like other UK films of a similar timeframe such as Clockwork Orange, Oh Lucky Man and Don’t Look Now, it captures the post-sixties shift into darker psychological realms, plus in an excellent scene shot in the seedy underbelly of London’s Soho, you get to hear the music of the then unknown German band Can and their song Mother Sky played to great effect.Throw in fifties starlet Diana Dors in a ‘Mrs Robinson’ role and you have quite rightly a British film cult classic.

One of the essential cult/underground/bizarre films of the 195Os - watch it along with the 1964 ‘7 Faces of Dr.Lao’ for added high strangeness!

This was one of the all time favourite films of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia (who played a big part in the film’s restoration) and of surrealist artist/film maker Luis Bunuel and writer Neil Gaiman and into that illustrious company, it’s also one of mine.

There really is no film quite like it and perhaps like an Escher painting, it’s more accurate to say it’s a film within a film within a….
Anyway, there has been much written about the film which is based on an 1805 book titled ‘The Manuscript Found in Saragossa’ by the Polish author Count Jan Potocki (1761–1815). It’s set during the Napoleonic War and relates to earlier events that took place during the reign of King Philip.
Though that’s an accurate overview, it’s a little like saying 2001 A Space Odyssey is about a trip in outer space or A Clockwork Orange tells the story of a teenage gang of robbers - the film is about so much more and
despite owning the DVD and watching it multiple times and devouring every review about the film, it still feels like a fresh magical experience with each sitting.
Of course it’s not a film for everyone and I appreciate a black and white Polish film set in the late 1700s doesn’t sound that enticing on paper but for those who enjoy non-linear storytelling this is something special (and the ‘fan’ names I mention earlier should signal this.)

The most clear and detailed analysis of the film can be found if you do a search for “The Saragossa Manuscript, A Film by Wojciech Has
Outline by Martin Schell”. He divides his analysis into three sections - preliminary notes, outline and explanatory notes) and I’ll leave the final words to him:

“Your first viewing of this amazing film may make you feel confused, dazed, or even drowsy. It may take a second viewing for you to follow the plot enough to realize how its innermost levels interact. The story is not only very subtle, but also very humorous.”

In my opinion the three greatest short films are Chris Marker’s Le Jetee, Alain Resnais’ Night And Fog and Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon. Curiously, all three films are French and yet are so different in genre, style and subject matter, but all three are worth watching back to back to give you a sense of what is possible in just over 90.minutes of film making, the length of an average film.
However, if you’re looking for a single film to make you smile, The Red Balloon is for you.

The director Todd Solondz is an oasis of talent in a sea of gross mediocrity and pretty much every film he has made is well worth watching with perhaps ‘Happiness’ topping the bill.