Our Summer of Genre comes to an end: in this month’s podcast, Alan returns to a genre that was a favourite of his during his childhood. He is joined by Sam and Matt to discuss what they call ‘tactile fantasy’: those (largely) pre-CGI films that used physical special effects, miniatures, puppetry and stop-motion to bring the tactile to the screen, from evil, ravenous dragons to 18^th century fabulists flying on cannon balls. Starting with the 1981 dark fantasy Dragonslayer, continuing with Jim Henson’s 1982 cult classic The Dark Crystal and concluding with Terry Gilliam’s grand folly The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), our trio remembers a genre that has largely been supplanted by digital visual effects. What is the magic of tactile fantasy? How well do these films hold up in a post-Jurassic Park world, where bits and bytes can come together to create pretty much anything filmmakers can imagine? Was CGI the only reason why this era of cinema ended? And is tactile fantasy gone entirely from our screens in this day and age?

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