Whatever happened to... Juliet Landau?

“The pixies in my head whispered it to me.” - Drusilla.

Drusilla

Juliet Landau is probably best known for playing my favourite character in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the deadly, alluring and incredibly mad as a bucket of frogs Drusilla the vampire. For those of you who are not familiar with the Buffyverse (shame on you), Drusilla was a virginally pure victorian girl who the vampire Angelus drove mad and turned into a vampire. She then became the paramour of another one of Angelus's offspring, Spike. Together, Spike and Dru rampaged around most of the known world before ending up in Sunnydale and confronting Buffy and becoming (in my humble opinion) two of the best characters in the series.

Juliet was no stranger to the acting world before she joined the world of the Slayer. Her parents were, in fact, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, the lead characters in Gerry Anderson's live-action sci-fi series Space 1999 and she had small roles in various tv series and films, the most notable being Loretta King opposite her father in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994).

However, after Buffy, whereas a lot of the other main characters found roles in other TV series and film franchises (Bones, How I Met Your Mother, Scooby Doo, Little Britain), Landau seemed to vanish, which seems quite perplexing for such an animated actress.

The main reason as to a lack of visibility is that she turned more towards voice acting in animations: Ben 10, Star Wars The Old Republic and Green Lantern to name but a few.

As well as this, she has been acting on stage in plays such as Awake & Sing, Failure of Nerve and Al Pacino's The Three Sisters. She has also been turning her hand to directing. In 2008 she directed Take Flight, a documentary film about Gary Oldman and has also written short films as well.

However, perhaps the biggest news for sci-fi and fantasy followers is that in July 2013, Big Finish announced that Landau was to lend her voice to a future incarnation of the time lord Romana in the Doctor Who audio story Gallifrey VI.

I can't help but wonder what The Doctor would think if his former travelling companion had come out with a line like, "Spank us till Tuesday, we promise to be bad if you do." I think it might have made both his hearts beat a touch faster, don't you?

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Films You Have To Watch: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

As anyone who has read my vampire western short story entitled High Moon will know, I'm a big fan of westerns - especially the spaghetti westerns. There's just something that grabs me about them. Perhaps it's the wide, open vistas. Perhaps it's the sound of pounding hoof beats. Perhaps it's the random sporadic killings. I'm not sure, but out of all this genre my ultimate favourite has to be Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I can just crash out on my well-loved sofa with beer and freshly microwaved popcorn and let the whole epicness of the masterpiece bathe me in its panoramic beauty.
It starts off with perfect introductions to the main characters, painting a precise picture of their individual, flawed, characters and then progresses to knit their progressing narratives together against the background if the brutality of the American Civil War in the hunt for buried treasure. What more could you ask for?
And as for the music... I have this soundtrack on my music system and every time it randomly blasts from my speakers my living room is transported into the Wild West and I'm Clint Eastwood riding my horse through the sun-baked desert of New Mexico.
Then there's the acting... I just can't begin to talk about this without drooling in rapture! Eastwood as the enigmatic Blondie, Van Cleef as the ruthless Angel Eyes and Eli Wallach as the wheeling dealing Tuco; they just work together perfectly. The final Mexican stand-off in the centre of the midst of the graveyard is cinematic history.
But perhaps the thing that blows my mind about the film is that it was actually a prequel and set before the Dollars movies in order to flesh out the story of the Man With No Name (towards the end we actually see him obtain his eponymous poncho). There wasn't a Gungan in sight. Perhaps George Lucas should have studied this before he penned Phantom Menace?

Thank you for reading this blog. If you like what you see, please click on the “follow” button.

Also feel free to visit my website (www.aschambers.co.uk), follow me on Facebook (A.S.Chambers) or stalk me on Twitter (@ASChambersUK) where you can find various bits and bobs regarding books, films TV series and whatever drops into my lap.

If you fancy a bit of bedtime reading then please drop in on Amazon and purchase The Casebook of Sam Spallucci. (It's only £1.53 on Kindle – what a bargain!)