Return to Devil's End runs for just under an hour & is a reunion documentary featuring some of the cast & crew from the five part Doctor Who story The Dæmons (1971) that is set in & around the small English town of Aldbourne in Wiltshire where The Dæmons was filmed some twenty years prior.
It features the Doctor himself Jon Pertwee, John Levene who played Sgt. Benton, Nicholas Courtney who played Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart & Richard Franklin who played Captain Yates as well as the director of The Dæmons Christopher Barry. They chip with memories which aren't exactly staggering but one has to remember that The Dæmons was made over a very short time twenty plus years before Return to Devil's End was made, hell I can barely remember what I did twenty days ago! I have only just finished watching The Dæmons again & it's a great story, I think they visit just about every location used in the story (right down to the road junction where the Devil's End signpost spins round) although to be honest they aren't that different & it's not that exciting seeing an empty field or a plain looking village green.
The anecdote's are kept to a minimum & again I just think it's down to the amount of time that had passed, Barry recalls how they were behind schedule & had to work on a weekend either the Saturday or Sunday with Pertwee insisting it was the Saturday because he had something else lined up for the Sunday which meant Barry had to miss his sisters wedding. Barry also says that it snowed at one point & they couldn't film because of it. Other than that there's plenty of fond recollection I suppose but little hard facts. It's nice to hear the participants views, recollections & opinions on The Dæmons especially Pertwee's observation that the story worked so well because of the atmosphere & story rather than trying to show men in rubber suit monsters off at every opportunity which is exactly how I feel about the story myself... Great minds think alike I suppose!
Despite a bit of repetition it's still a good solid documentary, to hear & see the cast in the original locations reminisce about their time making The Dæmons is nice & certainly worth an hour of any Doctor Who fan. I'm not sure how easy it is to track Retrurn to Devil's End down or how widely distributed it was, I doubt that it will be on the eventual The Dæmons DVD since it's not a BBC production which also leads to the fact that there are no clips from The Dæmons since it is copyrighted BBC material although there is some interesting 8mm home movie footage taken by a villager while the cast & crew were there shooting.
Return to Devil's End is a nice companion piece to The Dæmons & it would be nice if it turned up on the DVD but I doubt it will happen. Worth watching if your a fan of the series but otherwise it would be of limited appeal & interest to more casual viewers as they probably won't find much here to interest them & I recommend you take the time to track down & see The Dæmons itself instead.
It features the Doctor himself Jon Pertwee, John Levene who played Sgt. Benton, Nicholas Courtney who played Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart & Richard Franklin who played Captain Yates as well as the director of The Dæmons Christopher Barry. They chip with memories which aren't exactly staggering but one has to remember that The Dæmons was made over a very short time twenty plus years before Return to Devil's End was made, hell I can barely remember what I did twenty days ago! I have only just finished watching The Dæmons again & it's a great story, I think they visit just about every location used in the story (right down to the road junction where the Devil's End signpost spins round) although to be honest they aren't that different & it's not that exciting seeing an empty field or a plain looking village green.
The anecdote's are kept to a minimum & again I just think it's down to the amount of time that had passed, Barry recalls how they were behind schedule & had to work on a weekend either the Saturday or Sunday with Pertwee insisting it was the Saturday because he had something else lined up for the Sunday which meant Barry had to miss his sisters wedding. Barry also says that it snowed at one point & they couldn't film because of it. Other than that there's plenty of fond recollection I suppose but little hard facts. It's nice to hear the participants views, recollections & opinions on The Dæmons especially Pertwee's observation that the story worked so well because of the atmosphere & story rather than trying to show men in rubber suit monsters off at every opportunity which is exactly how I feel about the story myself... Great minds think alike I suppose!
Despite a bit of repetition it's still a good solid documentary, to hear & see the cast in the original locations reminisce about their time making The Dæmons is nice & certainly worth an hour of any Doctor Who fan. I'm not sure how easy it is to track Retrurn to Devil's End down or how widely distributed it was, I doubt that it will be on the eventual The Dæmons DVD since it's not a BBC production which also leads to the fact that there are no clips from The Dæmons since it is copyrighted BBC material although there is some interesting 8mm home movie footage taken by a villager while the cast & crew were there shooting.
Return to Devil's End is a nice companion piece to The Dæmons & it would be nice if it turned up on the DVD but I doubt it will happen. Worth watching if your a fan of the series but otherwise it would be of limited appeal & interest to more casual viewers as they probably won't find much here to interest them & I recommend you take the time to track down & see The Dæmons itself instead.
