Something a little different, but still within the spirit of this subject matter.
Sometimes, a TV show will be made, and indeed aired, which really shouldn't have been for one reason or another. More often than not, these shows will be pulled from schedules and archived, never to be shown in full again, and only referenced in the odd documentary here and there. Suffice to say that said shows are never given a second series either, and it makes you wonder sometimes as to exactly who gave the green light for these shows to be paid for by TV networks....leading viewers to wonder "what dafuq did I just watch?".
Heil Honey, I'm Home! (Noel Gay TV/Galaxy Channel - 1990)
Probably one of the more well known "dafuq?" TV moments. "Heil Honey, I'm Home!" was a 8 episode series that aired in the early days of what would go on to be called Sky Television.
The premise of the series was that Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun were living in an apartment block with Jewish neighbours, and the shows humour, if you could call it that, was derived from a combination of Hitlers anti-semitic rantings, usually followed by him being outsmarted by the Jews in some fashion.
One episode aired at 9:30pm on the 30th of September 1990 before Galaxy channel (the station on which it was broadcast), quickly removed it from the viewing schedule, due to the massive number of complaints received from viewers who cited it as being tasteless, crass and anti-semitic amongst other things.
The writer and creator of the series, Geoff Atkinson, stated it was his intention to examine the process of the pre-war appeasement of the Nazis in an entertaining manner, so he decided the best way to do this was to create what he called a "farcical sitcom which lampooned American style 50s sitcoms in a satirical manner".
Viewers, and the board of executives at BSB didn't find it funny, and to date, the series has never been shown in full or released for home consumption.
World Series of Dating (BBC Three - 2012)
BBC Three had been trying, with a questionable degree of success, to recapture the BBCs dominance over the comedy genre, a position which BBC 2 had enjoyed for many years throughout the 1990s, but had fumbled and lost to SKY and Channel 4 as the millennium came and went.
One show which the Beeb hoped would be successful was "World Series of Dating", being as it had fly on the wall elements mixed in with a kind of quiz show atmosphere.
The premise of the show was that 6 men would attempt a "speed date" with 6 women, with the winner of each episode being decided by two faux-American accent sporting commentators who would make quips "in the style of" American sports commentators. During the various rounds, points would be awarded and penalties would be given by a man dressed as a baseball umpire.
Quite honestly, having personally watched a few episodes of this series whilst waiting for family guy to come on, i really, really, really fail to understand what BBC Threes controller was thinking when they gave the green light for this show. Quite literally there was not a single laugh to be had from anything said or done on screen while this show was taking up space on the schedules, with the male contestants visibly uninterested in what they were supposed to be doing, and the female contestants either looking bored or revelling in the attention they were getting from strangers, all while two dickheads with dodgy fake accents talked about their own supposed sexual prowess etc.
After one production run of a dozen episodes, most of which were shunted to post midnight airing slots, and scathing reviews, the show vanished, never to be heard from again.
Show Me The Funny! (ITV - 2011)
ITV has always had a bit of a "hit and miss" relationship when it comes to stand up comedy. On the one hand, shows such as the "An Audience with...." series allowed many successful British stand up comedians to get an hours worth of airtime on a Saturday night prime time viewing slot, whereas ITVs numerous attempts to make a successful copy of the hit US Show "Saturday Night Live" have always been doomed to failure due to their over reliance on unknown or unpredictable alternative comedians.
"Show Me The Funny!" was an attempt to marry up stand up comedy with a fly on the wall type "documentary/journey" series, with he premise that 10 unknown (although this was most certainly NOT the case as it turned out) stand up comedians would compete for a place in the live final to be held at Hammersmith Apollo, with one of the unsuccessfuls being voted off each week by a panel of judges. The grand prize for the eventual winner being that they would receive a nationwide tour (backed up by the two runners up) and a DVD released before Christmas 2011.
While the concept was new and had the promise to be somewhat interesting, the main problem was that for a show which was centred on comedy...it wasn't actually that funny.
The majority of the shows hour long episodes, which ran over 7 weeks during the summer of 2011, focused mainly on the "journey" of the contestants, as they were taken to a new place each week and then expected to come up with a new 5 minute long routine based on their experiences of that week, in essence, limiting their material to purely observational and anecdotal comedy.
By week 3 viewing figures for the series had plummeted to almost nil, as viewers weren't interested in watching what was supposed to be a comedy program which featured little to no comedic content, other than from heavily edited down sets shown at the end, before the judges voted someone off.
The show was eventually won by the Irish/Iranian comedian Patrick Monoghan, who by the time he won, had already performed several times at the Edinburgh fringe festival, and had received several comedy awards.
The show was, understandably, not picked up for a second series.
Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos (Nine Network, 1992)
Produced as a spin off to the show "Australia's Funniest Home Videos", the show attempted to show some of the more "risque" clips sent in by viewers which would not normally be shown by the more family orientated version.
The story goes that on the night of transmission, the Director of Nine Network, Kerry Packer, was out to dinner with friends when he spotted the show on a television, and was so offended by what he saw, he rang the station up immediately and told them to "get that shit off the air now!". The show went to a commercial break at the halfway mark, and was then hastily replaced by a repeat of an episode of the American sitcom "Cheers".
Osbournes Reloaded (Fox - 2009)
Hoping to cash in on the success of the Osbournes previous docu-drama show, as well as the somewhat reknewed interest in variety shows, this strange program had members of the Osbourne family presenting a musical variety program.
After one episode had aired, reviews were scathing, causing many Fox affiliate channels to either shelve the show or play the remaining 5 episodes of the series in late night slots.
Fox themselves never aired any of the remaining shows.
Married...For Life (ITV - 1996)
The US sitcom "Married...with Children" had garnered a cult following in the UK (where it was most affectionately called "The Bundys" in our house and the homes of several friends) however
in 1996 ITV decided to try and make a British version of the show. This concept
had previously been successful in the form of "The Upper Hand", which
was a British remake of the American show "Who's The Boss?", so, what on
earth could go wrong?....
Starring Russ Abbott as "Ted
Butler/Al Bundy" and Hugh Bonneville as "Steve Hollingsworth/Steve
D'Arcy", the series lurched through seven painful episodes which saw
gags from the original series "Britishified" and failing miserably, as well as the other members of the "Butler" household having little to none of the dynamic that the members of the "Bundy" family had in the original.
The
series got shunted around as is the norm with these things, before
never being mentioned again...but ITV didn't learn their from their mistake of
trying to "Britishify" American sitcoms.....
Days Like These (ITV - 1999)
An attempt by ITV to remake the successful American sitcom "That 70's Show" which took the basic premise and characters and transplanted them from 1970s Wisconsin to 1970s Luton.
Needless to say, it lost a lot of what had made it funny in the transatlantic journey, with many jokes being recycled from the original, albeit with some slight name changes to link it to 1970s Britain, and one big mistake in making the character "Rasmussen" into an extremely racist stereotype of east European people.
Originally airing in a prime time Friday night slot, the show was quickly moved to a less conspicuous graveyard slot, before vanishing altogether with only 10 of the 13 filmed episodes being shown.
Minipops (Channel 4 - 1983)
A rather bizarre program which came about after a novelty music album, the titular "Minipops" was released featuring preteen children singing versions of popular songs was released in 1982.
Consisting of 6 30 minute episodes, the show featured children aged between 5 and 10 singing and dancing along to various pop songs.
Although initial viewing figures were somewhat encouraging, it soon dawned on the public, critics and network executives alike that the concept of a show featuring preteen children dressed in provocative clothing and singing various adult themed songs was somewhat disturbing, and soon enough, the show was quite rightly being described as a "paedophiles dreams come true".
The show was not renewed for a second series.
Tuesday, 13 January 2015
EPis0dIC! - Hyperdrive "A gift from the Glish" (Se1 E01 - 2006)
In the year 2151, the Wendover class starship HMS Camden Lock travels the stars, protecting and promoting British interests in the wider universe.
Captain Michael Henderson (aka "Mike", "Lucky Jack", "Hendo") and diplomatic officer Chloe Teal welcome representatives of the Glish on board (after he stops his weapons officer from firing missiles at their approaching ship) in order to conduct trade negotiations, with a view to the Glish setting up businesses in the Peterborough area.
Unfortunately though, the Glish are a repulsive species, whose various bodily orifices exude a disgusting mucus, and whose greeting ritual includes having them lick the hands of those whom they are meeting with.
The trade negotiations seem to go well though, regardless of this, however when a deal is about to be struck., the Glish announce that it is their tradition to lick the face of one of the representatives, which ends up being Officer Teal. Captain Henderson starts off being relieved that he didn't have to endure this, but then causes a diplomatic fall out by refusing to partake in the other part of the ritual, which would call for the Glish to rub their genitals on his face. It is also at the same time that the Glish admit that they have no interest in doing business with the British government, and instead are just killing time until they go to meet the Americans, and, as a big "fuck you" parting gift, they leave a small, but deadly, carnivorous parasitic creature on board the Camden Lock.
Hendersons superior is obvioulsy unhappy that the trade deal wasnt set up, and reminds Henderson that the captain of the space ship which shuttles school children on day trips to the moon (otherwise known as "The Brat Run") will soon be needing a new captain, as the current one is due to take early retirement due to stress.
Henderson quickly reviews all the available alien planets to find someone who would be willing to broker some sort of trade deal. Most of them are dismissed due to already setting up deals with other countrires, however Henderson finds that the planet Uberon hasn't yet set up any deals with anyone, mainly because they are isolationist and highly xenophobic, so, he orders the ships navigation officer to set course for Uberon at maximum speed, which he is unable to do, being as he has spilled coffee on the navigational computer (an accident engineered by the ships technical officer to prove the point about why drinks are not allowed on the flight deck), rendering it inoperative.
Hendo orders the computer repaired as soon as possible, however just then the ships paranoid and highly sociopathic weapons officer, Eduardo York, reports that the Glish creature has begun killing crew members, starting with the ships guinea pig. Hendo orders the creature to be hunted down and killed before they get to Uberon, a task which York relishes.
Henderson, getting bored by chief engineers Jeffers constant insistence of doing the repair job properly, over rules him and simply restarts the ships computer to factory settings, which although fixing the problem with the navigation system, causes other problems, such as making the ships toilets insisting that people wanting to use them input digits from their ridiculously long PIN numbers, and resetting the ships small arms to require a lengthy health and safety questionnaire to be completed before they will actually fire (The subject of health and safety concerns is a running gag throughout the series).
The ship finally arrives at the planet Uberon, where Henderson is contacted by Fasmoff, a representative of their government, who promptly tells him to bugger off. As Henderson launches into an impassioned speech to try and get to speak to someone about setting up a trad emission in Peterborough, but Fasmoff has no interest in speaking to him until he spots Chloe Teal in the background, and remembers her from his University days. After a brief bit of banter, Fasmoff says he will come aboard the Camden Lock to meet with Teal to reminisce.
When Fasmoff arrives, York still hasn't caught the alien parasite, so Hendo orders that it be caught quickly before Fasmoff notices it, but by this time, the creature has graduated on to killing actual crew members, starting with the "slowest", and York is relishing in the big game hunt, causing further problems as his over indulgence in the spirit of the hunt causes him to miss several good opportunities to capture or kill it.
Over thecourse of their talks, Fasmoff says he realises that a political shift at home will soon bring an end to his species isolationist stance, and that trade with Britain would be a good idea, but, Peterborough would be too small for their needs, so he would require Ealing, Doncaster and the entirety of Wales as well, Hendo agrees, just to get him to sign the trade agreement, but as they enter the conference room, he notices a severed leg on the table, so hurriedly escorts Fasmoff to "meeting room 2", which is in fact the ships urine reprocessing room, all while assuring Fasmoff he is perfectly safe.
Angry that York hasn't killed the creature, Hendo and Teal leave Fasmoff in the urine reprocessing room and grab some weapons to join the hunt, but Fasmoff, knowing that something is wrong, radios for pickup and heads to the nearest air lock, where he is attacked by the creature.
Hendo, Teal and York save him, but as they try to kill it, the creature attacks Jeffers, and their weapons insist on a long health and safety questionnaire being completed before they will fire. Eventually, Fasmoff kills the creature with his own gun, which is hardly bigger than a small dog, and insists on returning home in a state of shock, and not being really interested in trading with Britain after the days problems.
Hendo, understandably angry about the prospect of being captain of the Brat Run, orders Teal to do whatever she can to get a trade deal signed, so she resorts to cold calling random planets to try and sell the deal, which results in the whale people swearing at her as they hang up.
Captain Michael Henderson (aka "Mike", "Lucky Jack", "Hendo") and diplomatic officer Chloe Teal welcome representatives of the Glish on board (after he stops his weapons officer from firing missiles at their approaching ship) in order to conduct trade negotiations, with a view to the Glish setting up businesses in the Peterborough area.
Unfortunately though, the Glish are a repulsive species, whose various bodily orifices exude a disgusting mucus, and whose greeting ritual includes having them lick the hands of those whom they are meeting with.
The trade negotiations seem to go well though, regardless of this, however when a deal is about to be struck., the Glish announce that it is their tradition to lick the face of one of the representatives, which ends up being Officer Teal. Captain Henderson starts off being relieved that he didn't have to endure this, but then causes a diplomatic fall out by refusing to partake in the other part of the ritual, which would call for the Glish to rub their genitals on his face. It is also at the same time that the Glish admit that they have no interest in doing business with the British government, and instead are just killing time until they go to meet the Americans, and, as a big "fuck you" parting gift, they leave a small, but deadly, carnivorous parasitic creature on board the Camden Lock.
Hendersons superior is obvioulsy unhappy that the trade deal wasnt set up, and reminds Henderson that the captain of the space ship which shuttles school children on day trips to the moon (otherwise known as "The Brat Run") will soon be needing a new captain, as the current one is due to take early retirement due to stress.
Henderson quickly reviews all the available alien planets to find someone who would be willing to broker some sort of trade deal. Most of them are dismissed due to already setting up deals with other countrires, however Henderson finds that the planet Uberon hasn't yet set up any deals with anyone, mainly because they are isolationist and highly xenophobic, so, he orders the ships navigation officer to set course for Uberon at maximum speed, which he is unable to do, being as he has spilled coffee on the navigational computer (an accident engineered by the ships technical officer to prove the point about why drinks are not allowed on the flight deck), rendering it inoperative.
Hendo orders the computer repaired as soon as possible, however just then the ships paranoid and highly sociopathic weapons officer, Eduardo York, reports that the Glish creature has begun killing crew members, starting with the ships guinea pig. Hendo orders the creature to be hunted down and killed before they get to Uberon, a task which York relishes.
Henderson, getting bored by chief engineers Jeffers constant insistence of doing the repair job properly, over rules him and simply restarts the ships computer to factory settings, which although fixing the problem with the navigation system, causes other problems, such as making the ships toilets insisting that people wanting to use them input digits from their ridiculously long PIN numbers, and resetting the ships small arms to require a lengthy health and safety questionnaire to be completed before they will actually fire (The subject of health and safety concerns is a running gag throughout the series).
The ship finally arrives at the planet Uberon, where Henderson is contacted by Fasmoff, a representative of their government, who promptly tells him to bugger off. As Henderson launches into an impassioned speech to try and get to speak to someone about setting up a trad emission in Peterborough, but Fasmoff has no interest in speaking to him until he spots Chloe Teal in the background, and remembers her from his University days. After a brief bit of banter, Fasmoff says he will come aboard the Camden Lock to meet with Teal to reminisce.
When Fasmoff arrives, York still hasn't caught the alien parasite, so Hendo orders that it be caught quickly before Fasmoff notices it, but by this time, the creature has graduated on to killing actual crew members, starting with the "slowest", and York is relishing in the big game hunt, causing further problems as his over indulgence in the spirit of the hunt causes him to miss several good opportunities to capture or kill it.
Over thecourse of their talks, Fasmoff says he realises that a political shift at home will soon bring an end to his species isolationist stance, and that trade with Britain would be a good idea, but, Peterborough would be too small for their needs, so he would require Ealing, Doncaster and the entirety of Wales as well, Hendo agrees, just to get him to sign the trade agreement, but as they enter the conference room, he notices a severed leg on the table, so hurriedly escorts Fasmoff to "meeting room 2", which is in fact the ships urine reprocessing room, all while assuring Fasmoff he is perfectly safe.
Angry that York hasn't killed the creature, Hendo and Teal leave Fasmoff in the urine reprocessing room and grab some weapons to join the hunt, but Fasmoff, knowing that something is wrong, radios for pickup and heads to the nearest air lock, where he is attacked by the creature.
Hendo, Teal and York save him, but as they try to kill it, the creature attacks Jeffers, and their weapons insist on a long health and safety questionnaire being completed before they will fire. Eventually, Fasmoff kills the creature with his own gun, which is hardly bigger than a small dog, and insists on returning home in a state of shock, and not being really interested in trading with Britain after the days problems.
Hendo, understandably angry about the prospect of being captain of the Brat Run, orders Teal to do whatever she can to get a trade deal signed, so she resorts to cold calling random planets to try and sell the deal, which results in the whale people swearing at her as they hang up.
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Horror Anthology - The Monster Club (1981)
Following on from the Amicus series of horror anthology films produced during the 1960s and 1970s, director Roy Ward Baker decided he wanted to make another film in a similar vein, having directed both "Asylum" and "The Vault of Horror" (he had also worked with many of the actors before whilst directing numerous "Hammer Horror" films). Filmed in 1980 and released in cinemas in 1981, the film ended up being a major flop, as it was unable to secure distribution in the US, and critics savaged its low production values, camped up acting and bizarre musical sequences. The film ended up becoming a small cult hit in later years, following its release in video and an intermittent place in the late night film schedules.
As is the norm for anthology films, the story of "The Monster Club" consists of three short stories, linked by a framing story...
Late one night in London, a man (John Carradine playing a fictionalised version of British horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes whose book "The Monster Club" served as the basis for this film ) is approached by what appears to be a drunken tramp (Vincent Price) who claims to be starving. The man offers to get the tramp some food, to which the tramp responds by biting the mans neck.
When he comes to, the now revitalised tramp introduces himself as the vampire Erasmus, and, as a token of thanks for his "small donation", he offers to take the man to an exclusive gentlemans club for drinks, the man, still in shock from being bitten, accepts.
Erasmus takes the man to "The Monster Club", a private club where various supernatural creatures drink, dance and make merry. They sit at a table and are served with drinks, Erasmus complains that the glasses of blood they have been served aren't as good as the fresh stuff, but better than nothing.
They talk a while and then Erasmus directs the mans attention to a picture on the wall, showing how the various types of monsters can interbreed and create new creatures with characteristics and powers in a class of their own, although all hybrid monsters are descended in some fashion from the "big three", Vampires, Werewolves and Ghouls.
The man points to a creature at the bottom of the pecking order called a "Shadmock", saying he has never heard of them before, so, Erasmus tells him a story about one...
The Shadmock
Angela and her controlling boyfriend are in serious financial trouble. While Angela tries to find a job, the boyfriend spends all his time plotting to steal or swindle money from somewhere, but both of them agree that all they need is one "really good chance" to get some money from somewhere and they will be well away.
The chance comes when Angela responds to an advertisment for a librarian from a mysterious man named "Raven".
Raven lives alone in a secluded manor house, with only birds for company, he explains that he does not have any friends and his family members are scattered all over the world, so he doesn't see anyone that often. As he offers Angela the job, she sees his face for the first time, he is hideous to her, with a pallid complexion and sunken, blackened eyes, but she accepts the job after being persuaded to by her boyfriend who realises that Raven is actually quite rich, and they would probably be able to steal from him.
Time passes, and Raven goes about his odd daily routines of playing with his birds in the gardens while Angela cleans and tidies the house, however one day a stray cat makes its way into the garden and kills one of Ravens birds. He is so distraught by the loss of the bird he reveals his dark power...anything he whistles at is burnt by hell fire, as Angela discovers when she finds the burning remains of the cat when she investigates what the strange high pitched whistling sound is.
Raven eventually shows Angela his safe, which contains money, gold and jewels worth millions, but Raven says he would trade it all for love, he then asks Angela if she will marry him.
Angelas boyfriend is delighted at this news, he tells her to say she will accept on the proviso that Raven gives her a 3000 year old ring he showed her as an engagement ring, then, when Ravens family are invited to their engagement party, she is to slip away, open the safe and steal as much money as she can carry and make a run for it. Angela reluctantly agrees.
Raven is overjoyed when Angela says she will marry him, and has no hesitation about giving her the ring she asks for, he also says he will have a masked ball to celebrate their engagement, with everyone wearing masks as some of his family members may be a bit much for her to take.
On the night of the party, Raven tries awkwardly to explain to her that he is not a Human, but a Shadmock, but fails and says his uncle, a werewolf, might be able to explain it better than he can.
As the assembled guests dance and make merry, Angela slips away and begins rifling through the safe, but Raven catches her in the act. He tells her that the riches he has accumulated over the centuries mean nothing to him, and if she wants to take it all and give it away then she can do so if that what she want to do, but he still wants to marry her, and hopes that despite his odd appearance, she could still love him. Angela says she was only ever interested in the money, and tells him that she could never love a creature like him, heartbroken, Raven starts to whistle....
Angelas boyfriend hurriedly packs their things, ready for Angela returning to him with untold wealth.
The door to their flat swings open, and Angela, wearing a hooded cloak, enters and runs straight for a dark corner, the boyfriend asks if she has the money, to which she simply replies "you could still love me", before removing her hood and revealing that Ravens whistle has reduced her face to being a charred, oozing and repulsive mess. Angela walks towards the boyfriend, pleading with him to love her, he stands there speechless and horrified, and the sight drives him into an incurable state of catatonic insanity.
Back at his mansion, Raven is comforted by his assembled family members......
After a brief musical interlude, Erasmus and the man further discuss the intricacies of monsters. The man asks if monsters can breed with humans, Erasmus replies that they can, just then, a man takes to the stage and introduces himself as the famous film director Lintom Busotsky (an anagram of the films producer, Milton Subotsky, whom was also responsible for many the "Amicus" anthology films), who has come to the club that night to show the patrons an excerpt from his latest film, which is a semi autobiographical account of his own childhood....
The Vampires
Lintom is relentlessly bullied at school. Despite having both a mother and a father, he rarely sees his father as he works at night, and spends most of the day sleeping in his private room in the cellar of their house. He asks his mother (Britt Ekland) what his father does for a living, but she is unable to give him a straight answer. When his father finally awakes that night, he asks him the same question, to which his father replies that he "takes a little food from those who have lots of it for the betterment of all", Lintom assumes this to mean his father works in the food industry in some fashion, but is still unhappy as he is unsure why his father must always work at night and sleep all day. The father avoids going into further detail but offers one piece of advice to his son...avoid men in suits who carry violin cases... however, before he can elaborate on this bizarre statement, Lintoms mother steps in and says now is not the time to be discussing the family business.
The next day, his mother tells him that his father came from eastern Europe, where he is a count, making her a countess and Lintom a viscount, Lintom finds this news pleasing, however later when he blurts out his new found noble heritage in front of the bullies at school, it just earns him further teasing.
While the bullies are delivering a beating to him, a man wearing a suit shoos the boys away and save Lintom from being attacked. The man, who introduces himself as Pickering (Donald Pleasence), says he will escort the boy home, but Lintom refuses when he sees Pickering is wearing a suit and carrying a violin case.
As Lintom arrives home that night, he finds that Pickering and a few other men similarly attired, have followed him home in a van, where they burst in and demand that they be taken into the cellar.
While down there, they find Lintoms father, who is revealed to be one of the last vampires in England, asleep in a coffin. Pickering and his men methodically proceed to stake him through the heart, but, just as Pickering leans over the vampires body to make sure it is dead, Lintoms father sits up and bites Pickering, drinking deeply, before passing out.
Pickering recoils in horror, and demands that his men get him to a hospital quickly, but, as Lintoms mother points out, as he has been almost completely drained of blood, he too is now a vampire, and thus Pickerings men, who are all a gang of inept vampire hunters, are duty bound to destroy him by staking him through the heart too!. Pickerings men grab him and stake him there and then, despite Pickerings best efforts to try and escape, and once they are sure he is dead, they put him on a stretcher and carry him out to the van, apologising for any inconvenience they have caused.
Lintom and his mother return to the cellar to mourn, however, Lintoms father sits up and pulls the stake from his chest, revealing that he, being the cleverest vampire in England, had always been one step ahead of Pickering and his men, and thus always wore a stab proof vest under his shirt, with a bag of tomato ketchup over it to make it look like blood. He turned Pickering into a vampire because he wanted him to know what it felt like to be as despised as he was, and the plan had worked, and, with Pickering gone and his gang believing him to be dead, he was now free to live a proper life without having to watch his back all the time....the family rejoice.
After another musical interlude, the man declares that he must leave, as he has things he should be doing. Erasmus wont hear of it and implores the man to stay, offering to tell him another tale of monster life...
The Ghouls
A temperamental movie director is scouting for locations to use in his latest film when he comes across the quaint village of Loughville in Norfolk. He asks around to see if anyone can give him permission to use the village as a shooting location, but the dim witted locals aren't much help. As he tries to leave, he finds his car wont start, and when he checks the engine, he finds that it has been smashed beyond repair, he demands an explanation for this, but is told he cannot be allowed to leave, and is then promptly knocked unconscious.
He awakes to find himself locked in an unkempt room, his only company being a young woman called "Luna" who brings him food. He notices that her clothing appears dishevelled, and she replies by saying that it came "from the boxes, just like most of the food they have does". As it turns out, the boxes she mentions are in fact coffins, unearthed from the local cemetery, and Loughville is actually a village inhabited by ghouls.
Luna herself is only half ghoul (a "huugoo"), as her mother was an outsider. Her mother died when Luna was born, and, after she was put in a box, she was dug up a year later and was "good eating!". Luna explains that the local cemetery has now been emptied, and the ghouls have taken to kidnapping outsiders in order to replenish their food supply, with the director being their next meal once they've killed him and buried him for a while.
The man balks at this and says he intends to escape, Luna says she will help him provided he takes her with him to the outside world, where she has heard they have nice clothes and the London underground has some really "good eating" (it is explained huugoos are human in every respect apart from they have an almost insatiable craving for human flesh), she tells him to hide in the church, because the ghouls cant enter it, then during the day, they will sneak away.
The ghouls rumble this plan though, and as Luna and the man try to escape, Luna is killed. The man manages to escape to a motorway, where he is picked up by a police car, unfortunately for him though, the police men are ghouls, and they just take him straight back to Loughville, where he is still on the menu for the ghouls upcoming feast.
The man says it is now definitley time for him to leave, and he thanks Erasmus for his hospitality, Erasmus stops him from leaving, and says that as a further token of his gratitude, he will make him an honorary member of the club. The club secretary, a werewolf, and most of the assembled clientele, object, as the man is a mere human, and not a monster in any way, but Erasmus explains that humans, despite not having fangs, claws or supernatural powers of any description, have somehow managed to come up with the most horrible weapons and devices of torture imaginable, and, that in the previous 60 years, humans have managed to find many and creative ways to kill off 150 million of their own kind. To sum up, humans are the biggest monsters of all.
The assembled monsters are won over by this logic, and welcome the man to their number, while the resident band plays another song to welcome him.
The film itself fails miserably to be a "Horror" film, as the story lines wouldn't be out of place in a childrens film, minus the odd bit of gore of course.
The scenes featuring Price and Carradine are superbly acted, with the two veterans hamming it up almost as if they were trying to out-ham each other, however the musical interludes, where the monster clubs resident bands play a series of songs, are just cringeworthy in the extreme, as numerous "monsters", most of whom are just wearing unconvincing rubber masks, disco dance. Most cringeworthy of all is that at the end, Price and Carradine join in with the poorly co-ordinated dance routines.
Of the three stories featured in the film, "The Ghouls" is probably the best, however "The Shadmock" is the most disturbing, simply for the "reveal" scene at the end which features Angelas disfigured face.
Its no surprise that to many, this film marked the end of Subotskys career as a biggish film producer. Although he did produce numerous other films and TV productions after this films release, none of them were ever "big".
A semi famous anecdote about this film states that when Christopher Lee was approached for the role of R.Chetwynd-Hayes, he refused to even look at the script after being told the films' name, so too did Peter Cushing when he was approached for a role. Also, this film marks the one, and only time that Vincent Price played a vampire in a film, despite starring in numerous vampire films in the past.
One thing I liked about this film was the portion of the sound track played in "The Ghouls", which featured some electronic music that was particularly catchy.
Sunday, 4 January 2015
B-Movie Weekender (03-04 Jan 2015)
Well, no sooner has the new year started than the good old British climate decides that I wont be going anywhere or doing anything, so in order to make practical use of the available time, I decided to sit and watch some old fillums, like you do.
The criteria for this was simple, any film made between 1950 and 1970 which wasn't (at the time) considered to be a massive big budget blockbuster (although these rules are flexible in some cases, lol).
So, supplies for this grand undertaking in hand (mostly stuff left over from christmas), I sat back to relax and enjoy...
The Earth Dies Screaming
(Lippert Films - UK, 1965)
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This film, although its run time of 62 minutes barely qualifies it as such, comes from a time when the film industry in the UK imposed a quota on cinemas requiring them to show "home grown" films as well as American made films, and thus was born the phenomenon of the "quota quickie" (this explains the short run time of the film when you think about it).
Anyways, starring no one I've ever heard of, this low budget bit of celluloid combines sci-fi with a bit of good old fashioned cold war paranoia to create an interesting enough invasion film.
Simply put, suddenly one day people in 1960s Britain are all killed in what appears to be some sort of gas attack, and a small group of survivors try to figure out what happened and who the mysterious spacesuit wearing men they keep seeing are up to.
A good film, even by modern standards, even though the special effects budget must have been less than a tenner.
Invaders from Mars
(20th Century Fox - USA, 1953)
Long considered (at least by me) to be one of the definitive B-Movies, "Invaders from Mars" treads the much worn path of films depicting alien invasion.
In a nutshell, a martian spacecraft lands in rural America and begins abducting people in order to sabotage American efforts to perfect and mass produce deep space rockets equipped with nuclear weapons. The only witness to this landing is a young boy who struggles to get anyone to believe his wild stories about aliens and people being mind controlled.
Another film which clearly reflects the time when it was made, theres lots of talk about the then new sciences of atomic fission and rocketry, as well as mention made of "if any nation dare attack us" etc etc.
This film enjoyed so much cult status that it was remade in 1986, albeit with a drastically altered storyline.
Quatermass And The Pit
(Pathe - UK, 1967)
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A feature film version of the BBC serial of the same name (cut down into a 90 minute feature from a 3 hour long TV series) again, this film is an alien invasion flick, however this time round theres a twist...
The film tells the story of a failed attempt by martians to escape their dying planet 5 million years ago by genetically engineering various earthly ape men to have characteristics similar to them, however this plan ultimately failed and the martians all died out.
5 million years later, one of the martian space ships is found buried underground while works are carried out on one of Londons tube stations, setting in motion a series of events which could finally see the martians grand plan succeed.
The film, carrying on from the TV series, handles the subject matter in an intelligent way and refrains from using any of the traditional "alien monster" movie cliches, it even manages to make various commentaries on human society and behaviour.
The Day Of The Triffids
(Rank - UK, 1962)
An adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel by John Wyndham, which takes the basic story as presented in the book and takes extreme liberties with it.
In a nutshell, most of the worlds population is rendered blind by a mysterious meteor shower, leaving the few who can still see to try and survive in a post apocalyptic world where giant walking carnivorous plants stalk humans as prey.
The film takes way too many liberties with the source material, for example, the main character, Bill Masen, is unexplicably changed from being a British scientist who specialises in Triffids into an American merchant navy sailor, and for some reason, the makers of the film decided that for their adaptation, the Triffids themselves would be easilly killed by being brought into contact with salt water.
Its an enjoyable enough film, provided you dont measure it against the standard set by the original book, or even the much more faithful 1981 BBC TV serial.
Robinson Crusoe On Mars
(Paramount - USA, 1964)
The two man crew of "Mars Gravity Probe 1" are forced to abandon ship in orbit around the planet Mars after a near collision with a meteor exhausts all of their fuel. Christopher "Kit" Draper USN manages to survive his crash landing but his partner "Mac", played by Adam West, does not, thus, Kit becomes the first man to set foot on Mars, and at the same time finds himself stranded there, with only the ships experiment monkey "Mona" for company. "Kit" finds that he is able to survive and eke out a meager existence on Mars, however while exploring he finds that Mars has had visitors before.
Soon enough, Mars receives more visitors, this time alien, and Kit, along with an escaped slave he calls "Friday", have to hide and await rescue.
An enjoyable, if somewhat silly, film that gives a bit of a new take on an old story.
This Island Earth
(Universal Pictures - USA, 1955)
A nuclear scientist is approached by a secretive organisation to assist them in their goal of putting an end to war by the peaceful use of atomic power, however not is all as it seems when it turns out the group is actually a front for aliens.
Again, this is another piece of classic sci-fi that is essential viewing. I cant find fault with this film at all, it tells a good story and has decent special effects.
The Thing From Another World
(RKO Pictures - USA 1951)
Based on the short story "Who Goes There?" this film tells the story of a group of scientists who find a crashed flying saucer at the north pole, but to their horror, they find that one of the crew has survived!.
Another must see film in the sci-fi genre that combines elements of a "locked room" type mystery with a "whodunnit" style story, and adds an alien invader to the mix to create an interesting story.
Village Of The Damned
(MGM - UK, 1960)
Another film based on the works of John Wyndham, this time round its "The Midwich Cuckoos" that get the film treatment.
The fictional village of Midwich is suddenly struck down by a mysterious force that causes all life within 5 miles to become unconscious. Despite numerous attempts by the army to penetrate the invisible barrier, no one is able to step more then a few feet inside its boundary without fainting.
Without any explanation, after 3 hours, everyone recovers, leaving scientists to wonder what actually went off, a mystery which is further perplexing when it turns out that all women of child bearing age within the boundary have suddenly become pregnant.
This understandably causes problems, as some of the now pregnant women are known to be virgins, and some of them are married, so infidelity is suspected. Nevertheless, all of the women give birth on the same day 9 months later, however, right from the beginning, it becomes apparent that these are no ordinary children.
A really good film and typical of Wyndhams works, which is reproduced almost faithfully to the original book.
A sequel film "Children of the Damned" followed in 1964 and a remake which changed the location and some of the details came along in 1995.
Horror Express
(Indipendant production - UK/Spain, 1972)
Its 1906, and Professor Saxton (Christopher Lee) is traveling to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Express. In the Trains freight car is the fossilised remains of an ape-man he found whilst exploring a cave system in Manchuria, a fossil which he hopes will provide the "missing link" and prove that the theory of evolution is correct once and for all. Unfortunately for him though, the fossil is far from dead, and just happens to harbour an evil force that has been on earth since prehistoric times, which then sets about killing people within the cramped confines of the train as it speeds through the desolate wasteland that is Siberia.
This film, although low budget and not made by any studio of any note, stars a surprising number of well known actors in the form of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas, not only that, but it manages to tell a decent story as well.
The criteria for this was simple, any film made between 1950 and 1970 which wasn't (at the time) considered to be a massive big budget blockbuster (although these rules are flexible in some cases, lol).
So, supplies for this grand undertaking in hand (mostly stuff left over from christmas), I sat back to relax and enjoy...
The Earth Dies Screaming
(Lippert Films - UK, 1965)
This film, although its run time of 62 minutes barely qualifies it as such, comes from a time when the film industry in the UK imposed a quota on cinemas requiring them to show "home grown" films as well as American made films, and thus was born the phenomenon of the "quota quickie" (this explains the short run time of the film when you think about it).
Anyways, starring no one I've ever heard of, this low budget bit of celluloid combines sci-fi with a bit of good old fashioned cold war paranoia to create an interesting enough invasion film.
Simply put, suddenly one day people in 1960s Britain are all killed in what appears to be some sort of gas attack, and a small group of survivors try to figure out what happened and who the mysterious spacesuit wearing men they keep seeing are up to.
A good film, even by modern standards, even though the special effects budget must have been less than a tenner.
Invaders from Mars
(20th Century Fox - USA, 1953)
Long considered (at least by me) to be one of the definitive B-Movies, "Invaders from Mars" treads the much worn path of films depicting alien invasion.
In a nutshell, a martian spacecraft lands in rural America and begins abducting people in order to sabotage American efforts to perfect and mass produce deep space rockets equipped with nuclear weapons. The only witness to this landing is a young boy who struggles to get anyone to believe his wild stories about aliens and people being mind controlled.
Another film which clearly reflects the time when it was made, theres lots of talk about the then new sciences of atomic fission and rocketry, as well as mention made of "if any nation dare attack us" etc etc.
This film enjoyed so much cult status that it was remade in 1986, albeit with a drastically altered storyline.
Quatermass And The Pit
(Pathe - UK, 1967)
A feature film version of the BBC serial of the same name (cut down into a 90 minute feature from a 3 hour long TV series) again, this film is an alien invasion flick, however this time round theres a twist...
The film tells the story of a failed attempt by martians to escape their dying planet 5 million years ago by genetically engineering various earthly ape men to have characteristics similar to them, however this plan ultimately failed and the martians all died out.
5 million years later, one of the martian space ships is found buried underground while works are carried out on one of Londons tube stations, setting in motion a series of events which could finally see the martians grand plan succeed.
The film, carrying on from the TV series, handles the subject matter in an intelligent way and refrains from using any of the traditional "alien monster" movie cliches, it even manages to make various commentaries on human society and behaviour.
The Day Of The Triffids
(Rank - UK, 1962)
An adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel by John Wyndham, which takes the basic story as presented in the book and takes extreme liberties with it.
In a nutshell, most of the worlds population is rendered blind by a mysterious meteor shower, leaving the few who can still see to try and survive in a post apocalyptic world where giant walking carnivorous plants stalk humans as prey.
The film takes way too many liberties with the source material, for example, the main character, Bill Masen, is unexplicably changed from being a British scientist who specialises in Triffids into an American merchant navy sailor, and for some reason, the makers of the film decided that for their adaptation, the Triffids themselves would be easilly killed by being brought into contact with salt water.
Its an enjoyable enough film, provided you dont measure it against the standard set by the original book, or even the much more faithful 1981 BBC TV serial.
Robinson Crusoe On Mars
(Paramount - USA, 1964)
The two man crew of "Mars Gravity Probe 1" are forced to abandon ship in orbit around the planet Mars after a near collision with a meteor exhausts all of their fuel. Christopher "Kit" Draper USN manages to survive his crash landing but his partner "Mac", played by Adam West, does not, thus, Kit becomes the first man to set foot on Mars, and at the same time finds himself stranded there, with only the ships experiment monkey "Mona" for company. "Kit" finds that he is able to survive and eke out a meager existence on Mars, however while exploring he finds that Mars has had visitors before.
Soon enough, Mars receives more visitors, this time alien, and Kit, along with an escaped slave he calls "Friday", have to hide and await rescue.
An enjoyable, if somewhat silly, film that gives a bit of a new take on an old story.
This Island Earth
(Universal Pictures - USA, 1955)
A nuclear scientist is approached by a secretive organisation to assist them in their goal of putting an end to war by the peaceful use of atomic power, however not is all as it seems when it turns out the group is actually a front for aliens.
Again, this is another piece of classic sci-fi that is essential viewing. I cant find fault with this film at all, it tells a good story and has decent special effects.
The Thing From Another World
(RKO Pictures - USA 1951)
Based on the short story "Who Goes There?" this film tells the story of a group of scientists who find a crashed flying saucer at the north pole, but to their horror, they find that one of the crew has survived!.
Another must see film in the sci-fi genre that combines elements of a "locked room" type mystery with a "whodunnit" style story, and adds an alien invader to the mix to create an interesting story.
Village Of The Damned
(MGM - UK, 1960)
Another film based on the works of John Wyndham, this time round its "The Midwich Cuckoos" that get the film treatment.
The fictional village of Midwich is suddenly struck down by a mysterious force that causes all life within 5 miles to become unconscious. Despite numerous attempts by the army to penetrate the invisible barrier, no one is able to step more then a few feet inside its boundary without fainting.
Without any explanation, after 3 hours, everyone recovers, leaving scientists to wonder what actually went off, a mystery which is further perplexing when it turns out that all women of child bearing age within the boundary have suddenly become pregnant.
This understandably causes problems, as some of the now pregnant women are known to be virgins, and some of them are married, so infidelity is suspected. Nevertheless, all of the women give birth on the same day 9 months later, however, right from the beginning, it becomes apparent that these are no ordinary children.
A really good film and typical of Wyndhams works, which is reproduced almost faithfully to the original book.
A sequel film "Children of the Damned" followed in 1964 and a remake which changed the location and some of the details came along in 1995.
Horror Express
(Indipendant production - UK/Spain, 1972)
Its 1906, and Professor Saxton (Christopher Lee) is traveling to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Express. In the Trains freight car is the fossilised remains of an ape-man he found whilst exploring a cave system in Manchuria, a fossil which he hopes will provide the "missing link" and prove that the theory of evolution is correct once and for all. Unfortunately for him though, the fossil is far from dead, and just happens to harbour an evil force that has been on earth since prehistoric times, which then sets about killing people within the cramped confines of the train as it speeds through the desolate wasteland that is Siberia.
This film, although low budget and not made by any studio of any note, stars a surprising number of well known actors in the form of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas, not only that, but it manages to tell a decent story as well.
Monday, 29 December 2014
The Champions (ITC 1968-1969)
One thing that 60s TV shows did fairly well was produce a number of series that centerd around Spies, Detectives and people with special powers, sometimes combining the three with varying degrees of success.
With the 60s being the height of the cold war and people wondering on an almost daily basis if they were going to finally hear those air raid sirens before having to scramble into bomb shelters when the DIRTY COMMUNISTS!1!1!1!! decided to start some aggro, it was understandable that the most popular programs would centre on people actively trying to prevent armageddon in some fashion.
"The Champions" is a sci-fi/spy/detective/action/mystery tv series consisting of a single series of 30 episodes.
Similar in format to the much more successful "Mission: Impossible" and to some extent "The Avengers", the series concentrates on the adventures of a team of three special agents, who work for the (fictional) U.N backed intelligence/police agency code named NEMESIS (it is never explained whether the name is a name or an acronym for something, probably chosen just cos it sounds cool)
Unlike other secret agents, "The Champions" (this title is never given to them officially, and is only spoken by the series narrator when referring to them) are not your run of the mill types, as in the very first episode of the series it is explained that while the team were on a mission to steal samples of an experimental biological weapon from the Red Chinese, their plane crashed in the Himalayas, where they were rescued and operated on by a group of reclusive, but advanced people who lived in the mountains of Tibet. This operation, as well as saving their lives, gave the three secret agents superhuman powers, including enhanced strength and stamina, perfect memory recall, enhanced cognitive abilities and enhanced senses, as well as the ability to perform a limited form of telepathy to communicate with each other over distance.
The three members of the team are:-
Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) - British code breaking and electronics expert.
Craig Stirling (Stuart Damon) - American pilot and all round action man.
Sharron MacReady (Alexandra Bastedo) - British Doctor and research scientist.
The three, who were based at the NEMESIS headquarters in Geneva, would receive their orders from "Tremayne" (the only other character to appear in every episode in some fashion), who was not aware of their super powers, but who would occasionally ask them to explain how they managed to escape from seemingly certain death type situations unharmed (sometimes it appeared that Tremayne was a bit thick not being able to figure out what was going on, although this added to the suspension of disbelief required to watch this type of show).
Each episode would typically begin with a short featurette with one of the team using (or abusing) their powers to somehow outsmart someone else, for example in one episode, Craig is shown watching a weightlifter showing off his strength by lifting a series of heavy barbells, before Craig then walks up and effortlessly picks up the same weights and throws them around like they weighed nothing at all.
Most of the stories from the series revolved around the team fighting communist plots, South American dictatorships, neo nazis, drug dealers and criminal gangs, but on the odd occasion an episode would throw in some deliberately comedic touches, although not to the level of "eccentricity" reached in "The Avengers".
The main characters were quite well rounded out and believable, given the subject matter, although the secondary characters (ie, the bad guys) tended to be over the top comic book villains, most of whom had dodgy east european or faux-latino accents, although to its credit, the series did actually use chinese actors for chinese parts (mainly in the form of Burt Kwouk ) and didnt resort to having white actors don dodgy looking eye make up and start mispronouncing their Ls and Rs.
All in all though "The Champions" is one of those oft forgotten gems from 1960s British TV which could make for a fairly entertaining remake/reboot now.
With the 60s being the height of the cold war and people wondering on an almost daily basis if they were going to finally hear those air raid sirens before having to scramble into bomb shelters when the DIRTY COMMUNISTS!1!1!1!! decided to start some aggro, it was understandable that the most popular programs would centre on people actively trying to prevent armageddon in some fashion.
"The Champions" is a sci-fi/spy/detective/action/mystery tv series consisting of a single series of 30 episodes.
Similar in format to the much more successful "Mission: Impossible" and to some extent "The Avengers", the series concentrates on the adventures of a team of three special agents, who work for the (fictional) U.N backed intelligence/police agency code named NEMESIS (it is never explained whether the name is a name or an acronym for something, probably chosen just cos it sounds cool)
Unlike other secret agents, "The Champions" (this title is never given to them officially, and is only spoken by the series narrator when referring to them) are not your run of the mill types, as in the very first episode of the series it is explained that while the team were on a mission to steal samples of an experimental biological weapon from the Red Chinese, their plane crashed in the Himalayas, where they were rescued and operated on by a group of reclusive, but advanced people who lived in the mountains of Tibet. This operation, as well as saving their lives, gave the three secret agents superhuman powers, including enhanced strength and stamina, perfect memory recall, enhanced cognitive abilities and enhanced senses, as well as the ability to perform a limited form of telepathy to communicate with each other over distance.
The three members of the team are:-
Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) - British code breaking and electronics expert.
Craig Stirling (Stuart Damon) - American pilot and all round action man.
Sharron MacReady (Alexandra Bastedo) - British Doctor and research scientist.
The three, who were based at the NEMESIS headquarters in Geneva, would receive their orders from "Tremayne" (the only other character to appear in every episode in some fashion), who was not aware of their super powers, but who would occasionally ask them to explain how they managed to escape from seemingly certain death type situations unharmed (sometimes it appeared that Tremayne was a bit thick not being able to figure out what was going on, although this added to the suspension of disbelief required to watch this type of show).
Each episode would typically begin with a short featurette with one of the team using (or abusing) their powers to somehow outsmart someone else, for example in one episode, Craig is shown watching a weightlifter showing off his strength by lifting a series of heavy barbells, before Craig then walks up and effortlessly picks up the same weights and throws them around like they weighed nothing at all.
Most of the stories from the series revolved around the team fighting communist plots, South American dictatorships, neo nazis, drug dealers and criminal gangs, but on the odd occasion an episode would throw in some deliberately comedic touches, although not to the level of "eccentricity" reached in "The Avengers".
The main characters were quite well rounded out and believable, given the subject matter, although the secondary characters (ie, the bad guys) tended to be over the top comic book villains, most of whom had dodgy east european or faux-latino accents, although to its credit, the series did actually use chinese actors for chinese parts (mainly in the form of Burt Kwouk ) and didnt resort to having white actors don dodgy looking eye make up and start mispronouncing their Ls and Rs.
All in all though "The Champions" is one of those oft forgotten gems from 1960s British TV which could make for a fairly entertaining remake/reboot now.
Friday, 26 December 2014
Apocalypse How? - Meteor (1979)
Oooooh, its been a while since I thought about extinction level events, but while furtling around youtube tonight I found this forgotten gem.
Meteor is a 1979 disaster film released by American International Pictures.
Sean Connery stars as Dr. Paul Bradley, a former scientific advisor to the U.S government who had a "falling out" with them after they co-opted his design for a space based anti meteor defence weapon to serve as a strategic nuclear missile platform to threaten the Russians with.
The film itself takes place over the course of a week.
On the first day (Sunday, December 1st) "Challenger 2", the U.S mission to put man on Mars, arrives at the asteroid belt after ground control receives telemetry suggesting a comet will pass through this belt, and they would like the ship to gather as much data as possible.
Unfortunately though, the comet strikes an asteroid, which explodes and sends a 5 mile wide chunk of rock hurtling towards Earth, as well as destroying the space ship.
The next day (Monday) Dr. Bradley finds himself being pulled back to the department of defence, who inform him of the incoming meteor, and require his expertise in using the orbital weapons platform, named "Hercules", so they can destroy the meteor ("Orpheus") .
At first Bradley is somewhat bitter at the request that has been made of him, being as the military thought that his notion that the Earth could ever be threatened by a meteor was ridiculous and stole his idea to use as a weapon, but when he is confronted with the cold facts by his friend Harry Sherwood, he decides to help as best he can.
By this time, the Soviets have also detected the approaching meteor, but, in the USSR just the same as the USA, politics begins to gum up the works of actually being able to effectively defend the Earth from total annihilation.
By day 4 (Wednesday) Bradley has calculated that even with the 12 missiles available to him from Hercules, there wont be enough power to deflect or destroy the meteor, however, as both he and the military have long suspected, the Soviets also have a similar space based weapon equipped with missiles, the main problem lies in getting them to admit it.
The Soviets send Bradleys opposite number, Dr. Dubov to speak with him, and Dubov eventually provides the information that, theoretically, if the USSR had such a weapon, which may or may not be called "Peter the Great", it would, in theory have roughly the same number of missiles with the equivalent explosive payload.
The military presence in the control centre (which is hidden in a disused subway station beneath the AT&T building in New York), represented by General Adlon (Martin Landau ) takes an intense dislike to handing over the matter to scientists as it is, but has an especially distasteful attitude towards allowing communists to participate, even though as Bradley tries to explain, if they are going to stand any chance of pulling the mission off successfully, they need the Soviet Unions help, after a loud argument in the control room, Dr. Dubov telephones the Soviet Embassy and orders them to allow him to use "Peter the Great" to back "Hercules" up and ensure success.
On days 5 and 6, smaller splinters from Orpheus begin impacting on Earth, most of them burning up harmlessly, but others manage to hit and cause massive disasters, including tidal waves, avalanches and earthquakes.
The two weapons are repositioned, and a final plan is formed, "Peter the Great" will fire first, then 2 hours later, "Hercules" will launch, both sets of missiles will rendezvous in space and travel to a set point in the meteors path, where they will explode in 3 waves. The shockwaves from these blasts will either deflect or destroy the meteor before it impacts, however, as Harry points out to the President, no one has ever attempted anything like this before, and, given the massive variables inherent to an operation like this, the odds of success are anyones guess, but, if it fails, 2 hours after detonation, the meteor will destroy the Earth.
On the final day (Saturday, December 7th) the Soviet satellite fires its missiles without any problems, however, with less than 2 minutes to go before Hercules is due to fire, Bradley receives a message from the Joderell Bank observatory that a fragment of the meteor will impact New York just before they are due to order the launch of the American missiles.
Bradley orders everyone to wait, and just after Hercules launches, the fragment hits, destroying most of the business district and burying the command centre under tons of rubble.
In space, the missiles link up and begin their attack run, although along the way some missiles malfunction and careen off into space.
Back on Earth, the command centre personnel are recovering from the meteor strike, some of them, General Adlon included, were killed. Bradley finds an escape route which will lead them out through the subway tunnels, however just as they appear to be making good their escape, the walls of the tunnel begin to collapse and water from the Hudson river begins pouring in.
In space, the missiles impact the meteor, successfully destroying it.
On Earth, just after the meteor is destroyed, the command centre survivors manage to get themselves to another subway station, and with the assistance of other survivors from the station, they mange to dig themselves an escape tunnel back to the surface, where they learn that the missiles were successful.
In a ceremony of grand pomp and circumstance, Dr Dubov and his translator wave goodbye and depart for the Soviet Union, while a narrator states that the film was inspired by the real life findings of Project Icarus.
When first released, this film as panned by critics, mostly citing bad acting, poor scripting, cold war cliches and ridiculous special effects.
I can agree with the poor special effects, as some of them are proper cheapo-nasty, and the script isn't particularly anything worth shouting about, but, despite the distinct "TV movie" feel to this film, it isn't all THAT bad, and is quite entertaining to watch so long as you don't place too much by way of expectation on its shoulders.
Its certainly much better than "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon" because it doesn't rely on cheesy sentimentalism to carry it, instead, it shows that against something as awesomely powerful as a meteor, all mankind can really do is cross their collective fingers and hope that everything goes ok.
Meteor is a 1979 disaster film released by American International Pictures.
Sean Connery stars as Dr. Paul Bradley, a former scientific advisor to the U.S government who had a "falling out" with them after they co-opted his design for a space based anti meteor defence weapon to serve as a strategic nuclear missile platform to threaten the Russians with.
The film itself takes place over the course of a week.
On the first day (Sunday, December 1st) "Challenger 2", the U.S mission to put man on Mars, arrives at the asteroid belt after ground control receives telemetry suggesting a comet will pass through this belt, and they would like the ship to gather as much data as possible.
Unfortunately though, the comet strikes an asteroid, which explodes and sends a 5 mile wide chunk of rock hurtling towards Earth, as well as destroying the space ship.
The next day (Monday) Dr. Bradley finds himself being pulled back to the department of defence, who inform him of the incoming meteor, and require his expertise in using the orbital weapons platform, named "Hercules", so they can destroy the meteor ("Orpheus") .
At first Bradley is somewhat bitter at the request that has been made of him, being as the military thought that his notion that the Earth could ever be threatened by a meteor was ridiculous and stole his idea to use as a weapon, but when he is confronted with the cold facts by his friend Harry Sherwood, he decides to help as best he can.
By this time, the Soviets have also detected the approaching meteor, but, in the USSR just the same as the USA, politics begins to gum up the works of actually being able to effectively defend the Earth from total annihilation.
By day 4 (Wednesday) Bradley has calculated that even with the 12 missiles available to him from Hercules, there wont be enough power to deflect or destroy the meteor, however, as both he and the military have long suspected, the Soviets also have a similar space based weapon equipped with missiles, the main problem lies in getting them to admit it.
The Soviets send Bradleys opposite number, Dr. Dubov to speak with him, and Dubov eventually provides the information that, theoretically, if the USSR had such a weapon, which may or may not be called "Peter the Great", it would, in theory have roughly the same number of missiles with the equivalent explosive payload.
The military presence in the control centre (which is hidden in a disused subway station beneath the AT&T building in New York), represented by General Adlon (Martin Landau ) takes an intense dislike to handing over the matter to scientists as it is, but has an especially distasteful attitude towards allowing communists to participate, even though as Bradley tries to explain, if they are going to stand any chance of pulling the mission off successfully, they need the Soviet Unions help, after a loud argument in the control room, Dr. Dubov telephones the Soviet Embassy and orders them to allow him to use "Peter the Great" to back "Hercules" up and ensure success.
On days 5 and 6, smaller splinters from Orpheus begin impacting on Earth, most of them burning up harmlessly, but others manage to hit and cause massive disasters, including tidal waves, avalanches and earthquakes.
The two weapons are repositioned, and a final plan is formed, "Peter the Great" will fire first, then 2 hours later, "Hercules" will launch, both sets of missiles will rendezvous in space and travel to a set point in the meteors path, where they will explode in 3 waves. The shockwaves from these blasts will either deflect or destroy the meteor before it impacts, however, as Harry points out to the President, no one has ever attempted anything like this before, and, given the massive variables inherent to an operation like this, the odds of success are anyones guess, but, if it fails, 2 hours after detonation, the meteor will destroy the Earth.
On the final day (Saturday, December 7th) the Soviet satellite fires its missiles without any problems, however, with less than 2 minutes to go before Hercules is due to fire, Bradley receives a message from the Joderell Bank observatory that a fragment of the meteor will impact New York just before they are due to order the launch of the American missiles.
Bradley orders everyone to wait, and just after Hercules launches, the fragment hits, destroying most of the business district and burying the command centre under tons of rubble.
In space, the missiles link up and begin their attack run, although along the way some missiles malfunction and careen off into space.
Back on Earth, the command centre personnel are recovering from the meteor strike, some of them, General Adlon included, were killed. Bradley finds an escape route which will lead them out through the subway tunnels, however just as they appear to be making good their escape, the walls of the tunnel begin to collapse and water from the Hudson river begins pouring in.
In space, the missiles impact the meteor, successfully destroying it.
On Earth, just after the meteor is destroyed, the command centre survivors manage to get themselves to another subway station, and with the assistance of other survivors from the station, they mange to dig themselves an escape tunnel back to the surface, where they learn that the missiles were successful.
In a ceremony of grand pomp and circumstance, Dr Dubov and his translator wave goodbye and depart for the Soviet Union, while a narrator states that the film was inspired by the real life findings of Project Icarus.
When first released, this film as panned by critics, mostly citing bad acting, poor scripting, cold war cliches and ridiculous special effects.
I can agree with the poor special effects, as some of them are proper cheapo-nasty, and the script isn't particularly anything worth shouting about, but, despite the distinct "TV movie" feel to this film, it isn't all THAT bad, and is quite entertaining to watch so long as you don't place too much by way of expectation on its shoulders.
Its certainly much better than "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon" because it doesn't rely on cheesy sentimentalism to carry it, instead, it shows that against something as awesomely powerful as a meteor, all mankind can really do is cross their collective fingers and hope that everything goes ok.
Sunday, 7 December 2014
EPis0dIC! - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century "Space Rockers" (1980)
Buck, Wilma, Dr. Huer, Twiki and Dr. Theopolis gather in Huers office to watch a performance by the pop group "Andromeda".
Huer explains to Buck that the group has reached an unparalleled level of popularity amongst young people all over the galaxy, which Buck points out isn't unknown, as back in the 20th century The Beatles had a similar effect on young people too.
Huer goes on to state that for some reason, whenever Andromeda makes a broadcast from their base, a former military satellite which has been repurposed and renamed "Music World", there is an almost immediate increase in youth crime on all planets that receive the broadcast, and Huer asks Buck if he can think of any reason as to why this would happen, as there appears to be nothing out of the ordinary, and they don't suspect any involvement or use of drugs.
Buck says that in his time, music generally gave young people something to look forward to, and not something to riot over, so something must be amiss, especially as for some reason, some of the young people have started wearing black uniforms and behaving aggressively.
Huer explains that they have an operative undercover on Music World, who has managed to get a job as a sound technician working with Andromeda, and he usually sends reports hidden in the stations broadcasts, however his most recent transmission was cut off in mid flow.
Meanwhile on Music World, Andromedas manager, Mr. Mangros, kills the undercover operative and flushes his body into space with the refuse, then he and his henchman activate a device which emits a high pitched tone.
Back on Earth, the young people listening to Andromedas broadcast begin rioting and fighting, and a young couple steal Bucks starfighter from the spaceport and take it for a joyride, Buck pursues them in another ship but fails to convince them to stop.
Just as the broadcast finishes, all of the fighting and rioting ceases, and the couple joyriding in Bucks fighter come to their senses and allow him to guide the ship back to port on remote control.
The couple, neither of whom had previously been in any trouble with the authorities, say that they have no idea what came over them. Buck is initially dismissive of their claims, but allows them to go free.
Dr. Huer and Buck come up with a plan, Buck will go to music world and introduce Andromedas next broadcast, which will be their first show to be simultaniously transmitted to all planets in the galaxy, and while he is there, he is to find out what is causing the young people to behave strangely.
Mangros is planning the galaxy wide broadcast with Andromeda, where he seems to be quite charming and supportive, however behind their backs he explains to his henchman that his plan is simply to use them as a means of using his mind control device to cause the youth populations of the inhabited worlds to cause civil unrest, and thus if the governments want order to return, they will have to come to him.
Buck, Twiki and Dr. Theopolis arrive on Music World, only to find a gang of black uniformed youths waiting to ambush them. Buck easily fights off the youths but cant understand why they were attacked.
He discusses the attack with Andromeda when he finally meets them, but they say that sadly, some of their fans are like that, they don't know why but their music attracts allsorts, even the undesireable ones.
After concluding that the band are genuine and have no intention of causing harm to anyone, Buck and Dr. Theopolis review the information they have about Mr. Mangros, as it turns out, prior to becoming Andromedas manager, Mangros was a scientist who specialised in particle movement devices and theory, but that doesnt appear to have any connection with the youth problem.
Buck has a poke around in the space stations control room, finding a microchip hidden under one of the consoles, but is seen by Mangros' henchman, Mangros, still furious that the gang of youths he sent to attack Buck earlier failed in their task, decides to try again, only this time much more subtly.
Mangros has Joanna, one of his groupies go to Bucks quarters to "entertain" him, as a means of proving how much she loves Mangros.
Buck is rather surprised when the young woman suddenly turns up and begins making lustful overtures towards him. Just as she moves in to embrace him, one of Andromedas songs begins playing through the stations speakers, and Mangros activates his hidden device again.
Joanna pulls a poison filled hypo from up her sleeve and makes to stab Buck with it, but he notices her strange behaviour and quickly disarms her. confident that his assassination plot has worked, Mangros turns off his machine, Joanna suddenly stops trying to kill Buck and give the same confused reaction as what the other youths Buck saw on Earth did.
Dr. Theopolis returns and says he has found that Mangros had previously experimented with a mind control device which used a charged particle wave to transmit a signal which can be modulated to induce any emotional state in the people it is directed at. Buck figures the mystery out, Mangros is using Andromedas music to transmit signals to the youth population to induce them to riot.
He informs Andromeda about what their music is being used for, at first they dont believe him, but are soon convinced when he gets the lead guitar player to remove the necklace Mangros gave her while some of their music is playing, and she proceeds to violently attack him. Buck explains that the band members are not affected by the signals as their necklaces block the hidden signals being piggy backed on their music.
Understandably, the band are horrified and they confront Mangros, who simply laughs at them and has them locked up, saying he no longer requires them to finish his plans as he will just use prerecorded footage for their next broadcast, and then make sure they all have an "accident" once he has what he wants.
Dr. Theopolis tracks the source of the mind control signals to Mangros' office, but says that Buck wont be able to get up there unnoticed through the waste disposal system as he is too large, but Twiki should have no trouble.
After Twiki has set off, Buck is taken away by Mangros' goons and locked up with Andromeda, and, just as Twiki tries to destroy the transmitter, the garbage disposal activates and he nearly ends up being flushed into space.
All over the galaxy, young people pour into bars and youth centres ready for the pan-galactic broadcast of Andromedas latest concert, Mangros checks to make sure that everyone is listening, and then begins the broadcast.
Meanwhile, Buck and Andromeda have figured out that they can use one of Andromedas instruments as a makeshift sonic weapon which will smash down the door of the room they are locked in and allow them to escape. The device works and Buck makes his way up to Mangros' office to stop the transmission.
All across the galaxy, the youth who are listening to the music start to become violent, Mangros instructs his henchman to wait until he appears on stage and then turn the machine up to full.
Buck manages to take the henchman by surprise and knocks him out, then smashes the machine, which causes all the youths to stop rioting. At the same time, Mangros begins a transmission instructing the assembled youths of the galaxy to begin large scale riots, as he and Andromeda will show them the way to "take control of their own lives" etc etc, however, as the mind control machine has been destroyed, all he is greeted with is raucous laughter as the youths perceive him as being a "whacko"...he walks off stage just as the real Andromeda arrive and begin playing, much to the assembled youth populations delight.
Dr Huer, much relived that Mangros' evil plan has been foiled, and thus the police didnt have to hurt anyone in quelling the riots, orders Mangros to be arrested, while Buck and Twiki listen to the concert from the sidelines.
This is one of the many "gimmick" episodes of this series, this time concentrating on issues affecting youth culture.
Its not a bad episode overall, although Buck Rogers does look a little uncomfortable "getting down with the kids" considering at the time, actor Gil Gerard was 37 years old and had to deliver lines explaining and relating to youth issues.
Huer explains to Buck that the group has reached an unparalleled level of popularity amongst young people all over the galaxy, which Buck points out isn't unknown, as back in the 20th century The Beatles had a similar effect on young people too.
Huer goes on to state that for some reason, whenever Andromeda makes a broadcast from their base, a former military satellite which has been repurposed and renamed "Music World", there is an almost immediate increase in youth crime on all planets that receive the broadcast, and Huer asks Buck if he can think of any reason as to why this would happen, as there appears to be nothing out of the ordinary, and they don't suspect any involvement or use of drugs.
Buck says that in his time, music generally gave young people something to look forward to, and not something to riot over, so something must be amiss, especially as for some reason, some of the young people have started wearing black uniforms and behaving aggressively.
Huer explains that they have an operative undercover on Music World, who has managed to get a job as a sound technician working with Andromeda, and he usually sends reports hidden in the stations broadcasts, however his most recent transmission was cut off in mid flow.
Meanwhile on Music World, Andromedas manager, Mr. Mangros, kills the undercover operative and flushes his body into space with the refuse, then he and his henchman activate a device which emits a high pitched tone.
Back on Earth, the young people listening to Andromedas broadcast begin rioting and fighting, and a young couple steal Bucks starfighter from the spaceport and take it for a joyride, Buck pursues them in another ship but fails to convince them to stop.
Just as the broadcast finishes, all of the fighting and rioting ceases, and the couple joyriding in Bucks fighter come to their senses and allow him to guide the ship back to port on remote control.
The couple, neither of whom had previously been in any trouble with the authorities, say that they have no idea what came over them. Buck is initially dismissive of their claims, but allows them to go free.
Dr. Huer and Buck come up with a plan, Buck will go to music world and introduce Andromedas next broadcast, which will be their first show to be simultaniously transmitted to all planets in the galaxy, and while he is there, he is to find out what is causing the young people to behave strangely.
Mangros is planning the galaxy wide broadcast with Andromeda, where he seems to be quite charming and supportive, however behind their backs he explains to his henchman that his plan is simply to use them as a means of using his mind control device to cause the youth populations of the inhabited worlds to cause civil unrest, and thus if the governments want order to return, they will have to come to him.
Buck, Twiki and Dr. Theopolis arrive on Music World, only to find a gang of black uniformed youths waiting to ambush them. Buck easily fights off the youths but cant understand why they were attacked.
He discusses the attack with Andromeda when he finally meets them, but they say that sadly, some of their fans are like that, they don't know why but their music attracts allsorts, even the undesireable ones.
After concluding that the band are genuine and have no intention of causing harm to anyone, Buck and Dr. Theopolis review the information they have about Mr. Mangros, as it turns out, prior to becoming Andromedas manager, Mangros was a scientist who specialised in particle movement devices and theory, but that doesnt appear to have any connection with the youth problem.
Buck has a poke around in the space stations control room, finding a microchip hidden under one of the consoles, but is seen by Mangros' henchman, Mangros, still furious that the gang of youths he sent to attack Buck earlier failed in their task, decides to try again, only this time much more subtly.
Mangros has Joanna, one of his groupies go to Bucks quarters to "entertain" him, as a means of proving how much she loves Mangros.
Buck is rather surprised when the young woman suddenly turns up and begins making lustful overtures towards him. Just as she moves in to embrace him, one of Andromedas songs begins playing through the stations speakers, and Mangros activates his hidden device again.
Joanna pulls a poison filled hypo from up her sleeve and makes to stab Buck with it, but he notices her strange behaviour and quickly disarms her. confident that his assassination plot has worked, Mangros turns off his machine, Joanna suddenly stops trying to kill Buck and give the same confused reaction as what the other youths Buck saw on Earth did.
Dr. Theopolis returns and says he has found that Mangros had previously experimented with a mind control device which used a charged particle wave to transmit a signal which can be modulated to induce any emotional state in the people it is directed at. Buck figures the mystery out, Mangros is using Andromedas music to transmit signals to the youth population to induce them to riot.
He informs Andromeda about what their music is being used for, at first they dont believe him, but are soon convinced when he gets the lead guitar player to remove the necklace Mangros gave her while some of their music is playing, and she proceeds to violently attack him. Buck explains that the band members are not affected by the signals as their necklaces block the hidden signals being piggy backed on their music.
Understandably, the band are horrified and they confront Mangros, who simply laughs at them and has them locked up, saying he no longer requires them to finish his plans as he will just use prerecorded footage for their next broadcast, and then make sure they all have an "accident" once he has what he wants.
Dr. Theopolis tracks the source of the mind control signals to Mangros' office, but says that Buck wont be able to get up there unnoticed through the waste disposal system as he is too large, but Twiki should have no trouble.
After Twiki has set off, Buck is taken away by Mangros' goons and locked up with Andromeda, and, just as Twiki tries to destroy the transmitter, the garbage disposal activates and he nearly ends up being flushed into space.
All over the galaxy, young people pour into bars and youth centres ready for the pan-galactic broadcast of Andromedas latest concert, Mangros checks to make sure that everyone is listening, and then begins the broadcast.
Meanwhile, Buck and Andromeda have figured out that they can use one of Andromedas instruments as a makeshift sonic weapon which will smash down the door of the room they are locked in and allow them to escape. The device works and Buck makes his way up to Mangros' office to stop the transmission.
All across the galaxy, the youth who are listening to the music start to become violent, Mangros instructs his henchman to wait until he appears on stage and then turn the machine up to full.
Buck manages to take the henchman by surprise and knocks him out, then smashes the machine, which causes all the youths to stop rioting. At the same time, Mangros begins a transmission instructing the assembled youths of the galaxy to begin large scale riots, as he and Andromeda will show them the way to "take control of their own lives" etc etc, however, as the mind control machine has been destroyed, all he is greeted with is raucous laughter as the youths perceive him as being a "whacko"...he walks off stage just as the real Andromeda arrive and begin playing, much to the assembled youth populations delight.
Dr Huer, much relived that Mangros' evil plan has been foiled, and thus the police didnt have to hurt anyone in quelling the riots, orders Mangros to be arrested, while Buck and Twiki listen to the concert from the sidelines.
This is one of the many "gimmick" episodes of this series, this time concentrating on issues affecting youth culture.
Its not a bad episode overall, although Buck Rogers does look a little uncomfortable "getting down with the kids" considering at the time, actor Gil Gerard was 37 years old and had to deliver lines explaining and relating to youth issues.
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