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WHAT’S BEHIND THE DOOR? SYLVESTER McCOY GETS GORY IN NEW HORROR THE OWNERS. BUT THE TARDIS IS NEVER FAR AWAY…
WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD
The clue’s in the question… but what exactly isit?
S
YLVESTER MCCOY IS A doctor. But probably not the one you were expecting.
“He has a wife, who he cares for and loves deeply, and she has
Alzheimer’s,” the star of The Owners tells SFX, teasing his role in the home invasion tale. “They live in a big house, and the cleaning lady knows that there is a door, a huge safe door. She happens to mention it to her son, who happens to mention it in the pub, and a couple of lads think, ‘My god, there must be loads of money there,’ so they break in. And the old couple arrive home. And then things go awry…”
The Easy Rider remake was pretty radical stuff.
McCoy gives a soft chuckle and goes no further, clearly mindful of spoilers. There’s a grisly secret at the heart of his new film, one that may just upend your expectations. Straw Dogs and Home Alone, it’s safe to say, were never quite like this. “It’s so difficult,” he frets, with that familiar Dunoon lilt.
“You don’t want to give it away…”
Adapted from the graphic novel Une Nuit De Pleine Lune, the twisted thriller teams the former Time Lord with ’60s Brit movie icon Rita Tushingham, cast as the other half of this secretive couple. Maisie Williams is one of the young intruders, tagging along with the rural low lifes out for an easy score.
If you only know McCoy as the paisley-scarved incarnation of the Doctor then a gore-happy horror may seem an unlikely place to find him. But his career has always resisted pigeonholes. An impish, anarchic presence, equally at home in Tiswas and Shakespeare, he started out amid the theatrical lunacy of the Ken Campbell Roadshow, bashing nails up his nose and wrangling ferrets in his trousers (not a euphemism). Since then he’s played everything from the Pied Piper to the wizard Radagast – and even real-life murderer Michael Sams.