28th March 2011.

I'm writing this on March 25th: the day that WAKE WOOD, the latest and hopefully the most Hammeresque film thus far from the recently resurrected Hammer Films, is being released in UK cinemas. Great! A British genre movie on the big screen! How long's it been since the last one? Let's not count BASEMENT, which was not only barely a horror film, it was barely a film. Possibly MONSTERS, although that wasn't really a genre title: it's a low-key indie romance/road movie which happens to have some oogly monsters flapping around in the background from time to time. Nothing much wrong with it, but DISTRICT 13 it ain't.

But before we shell out the 40,000% mark-up for the jelly babies and fizzy pop at the concession stand and settle back to watch WAKE WOOD, one small question: where the hell can we actually see it? Well, it's on at the Prince Charles in Leicester Square and.... er, well, that's it. One screen. ONE SCREEN.

That's below feeble.

British, Hammer, an 18 certificate, "contains strong violence and gory images", and one solitary screen in London's glittering West End is the best you can do? It's not even playing the whole day - one showing every evening! Not a single showing at a single Odeon, Vue or Cineworld across the entirety of the UK. Really, unless you're handy for London in the next six days, you're stuffed. Especially as the film is coming out on DVD on Monday! What is the point of that? Why even bother with the so-called cinema release?

Presumably it's the critical notices the film will get. And it is getting decent reviews: three stars from Time Out and the Telegraph, four from Total Film and The Guardian, 3/5 in the Express. These might not be five-star raves, but they're not one-star pans either. Compare to some of the one-star "product" that gets wide, wide releases and hangs around the 'plexes like a bad smell for months - the same 'plexes that won't give screen space to WAKE WOOD, but will allocate twice the space to every digimation that comes along because they're showing both the 2D and 3D versions.

Admittedly I'm better placed to see it than many: it's not like I live in the middle of the Lake District or the Outer Rings of Saturn. Apparently, however - and I know this because I rang the distributors this morning - it MIGHT be getting a slightly less limited theatrical release at ten PictureHouse sites from next Friday (so that would be after it's been released on DVD, then). And one of those locations might be Cambridge which is slightly better for me personally. But it still rankles that an apparently perfectly acceptable British horror film from the most iconic of genre studios is getting piddled away to the small screen.

Some of us - we mere filmgoers - actually like to see these things on the big screen. And incredibly, some of us don't live in London or incredibly handily for the Piccadilly Line. Personally I'd have to spend around £17 to get down to London, another £6 ticket (I'm a Lifetime Gold Member, otherwise it would be a tenner). Or I could just sit out the weekend and buy the DVD on Monday for less than half that. Or even just add it to my rentals queue. Hell, I'm almost - almost - tempted to do the unthinkable and just torrent it: if they can't be bothered to give it some kind of distribution I'm not sure why I should give them my money.

I'm not angry, I'm just very disappointed. Well, I'm angry AND disappointed, really. I've been looking forward to this for a while and - well, it'll turn up on DVD in the post at some point. Much like BASEMENT did.

Until the next time...

Richard Street.

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