I wanted to try something different drawing-wise so I decided to do a few drawings of scenes/characters from some films I found particularly affecting.

This is the first I did - an illustration for the Andromeda Strain (1971)

It tells the story of an alien substance that massacred a small desert town, and the attempts of a select group of scientists to contain and understand it. It becomes apparent that the substance had been intended for use as a biological weapon by the USA.

Visually I thought it was beautiful, with long sequences of mono-colour decontamination chambers that satisfied the recovering OCD part of me. I have long had an interest in the USSR and Cold War anxiety, but since watching the claustrophobic Moon (2009) a few months ago, I have appreciated the appeal of slow, ‘hard sci fi’.

I wanted to try something different drawing-wise so I decided to do a few drawings of scenes/characters from some films I’ve found particularly affecting.

Here is Nancy and her amazing beehive hairdo, from the 1961 movie Cape Fear.

Though I’m unsure whether this film is too late to be considered Film Noir, it obviously draws hugely from the genre, to create a perfect vision of domestic bliss torn apart by evil.

Jail sentence over, a rapist (Robert Mitchum) wants revenge on the witness (Gregory Peck) who testified against him, and decides to do so by making ominous, grinning threats about raping the man’s teenage daughter, Nancy. He makes detailed plans which he soon exacts, though ends up foiled by her father.

First I wanted to draw Robert Mitchum’s villain, but he was just so sickening, so despicable, that I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I realised that that was why this film stood out, in particular, for more than being a great piece of cinema; it brings every woman’s fears simmering to the surface. Nancy is a normal girl, habituated to her safe life. And suddenly she is hounded by a big strong man who wants to hurt her, and she’s scared.

How old were you the first time you were wolf-whistled at or shouted at by full grown men? I was 12 years old.

Cape Fear was a great film, and a reminder that girls aren’t given the chance to be children for very long.

Third in my drawings of movies I’ve watched recently that affected me…

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, released 1983, directed by Nagisa Oshima.

In a WWII Japanese POW camp in Java, British Colonel Lawrence is the only person fluent in both english and japanese, and he tries to help each side understand the other in an attempt to avoid bloodshed. Tension escalates when David Bowie’s defiant character Jack Celliers arrives, and refuses to accept the cruel treatment of his fellow prisoners. But Celliers was only spared from execution by the young Captain Yonoi, who is in torment from his fascination/attraction/obsession with Celliers. But one day, to save his comrade, Celliers kisses Yonoi on the cheek, and is soon sentenced to a slow, tortuous death. But in the dead of night, Yonoi cuts a lock of Celliers’ hair, and holds it dear, then walks away.

I generally dont watch war films for reasons of machismo, glorification of violence, etc etc, but decided to make an exception for something starring Bowie. And I’m glad I did, since this was a very beautiful and intensely moving film that studied both the internal turmoil of repressed illicit gay attraction, and cultural clashes between facist-era japan and westerners; in particular, notions of human worth and a man’s fragile honour. And ofc both Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto (in full make-up) were totally dashing. 

‘Spoor’, about an eco-radical spinster who murders the men that killed her dogs.