Ribbon of Memes

It's been over a century and a quarter since the first moving picture was committed to celluloid - the "ribbon of dreams", as Orson Welles mellifluously intoned.

And so, welcome, one and all, to Ribbon of Memes, a new podcast in which Roger Bell_West and Nick Marsh supply grateful listeners hot takes about films considered masterpieces by critics or filmgoers in general.

The rules: we choose one "masterpiece" from every year from the earliest days of cinema to our dreadful modern dystopia. Do we agree these films are classics? Are we entertained? Did we even understand what the film was trying to say? The questions are endless!*

We start in 1973 (for reasons explained in the first podcast) and progress vaguely chronologically (unless we think of another film that makes an interesting comparison to the one we have just seen, or are otherwise distracted by shiny new things).

Yes, that's right, we decided that what the world really needed was two more uninformed middle-aged white guys telling the world about media largely produced by similar people. Find out whether we were right or not herein!

*Actually, no, that's most of them.

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The Devil Rides Out (1968) 11 April 2026

Nick and Roger take another dip into the barrel of Hammer with Christopher Lee in Wheatley's terribly serious tale of satanism, 1968's The Devil Rides Out.

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Tags: horror

  1. Posted by J Michael Cule at 12:59pm on 11 April 2026

    I think of Charles Gray as the Criminologist in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

    I think in the books (it's been a long time and I have no intention of ever reading them again) that Simon (surname Aron) is Jewish and it feels like he is very much a token character there so that the other characters can show they aren't prejudiced.

    The second Duc de Richelieu book with magic in it (STRANGE CONFILICT 1941) was about a Voodoo priest using dreamwalking to spy for the Nazis. The racial thing was even weirder there but it had a damn good depiction of raising several of the central characters as zombies.

    I also have good memories of THE KA OF GIFFORD HILARY though TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER left less of an impression. I would probably revolt re-reading any of them but Wheatley could tell a tale well.

    Is the Talisman of Set in the film? It was the magical McGuffin in the book and was the mummified penis of a god. Oooh errr, missus especially for the period.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 10:39am on 12 April 2026

    I fear it is too late for me to enjoy Wheatly's writing. If I'd met him when I was twelve I could have been a teenage satanist (or satanist-hunter).

    In the film, Simon has the surname (at least in the credits, I don't remember its being spoken), and he's the son of an old friend rather than one of the band to start with.

    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a god's penis is a good guy with a god's penis? Modesty forbids, etc.

  3. Posted by J Michael Cule at 12:48pm on 13 April 2026

    I think the Talisman of Set was a one off. Very few gods have multiple penises.

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