Captain's bLog: Supplemental

A few quick notes....

•  With a little luck, my new DVD of The Black Hole will arrive in the mail today or tomorrow. With the passing of co-star Ernest Borgnine over the weekend, I'm particularly eager to revisit the film. I've always felt that the cast was one of the genuine joys of the movie, and Borgnine's reporter, Harry Booth, was a somewhat unusual character for a space-based film. I always wondered how he was filing his articles...

•  We also saw the passing of actor Andy Griffith last week, which put me in mind of his Space: 1970-era genre television series, 1979's Salvage 1. Griffith played salvage expert Harry Broderick, who, with the aide of a couple of ex-NASA experts (Joel Higgins and Trish Stewart) built a spaceship (the Vulture) out of junkyard scraps and traveled to the moon to salvage all the equipment left there after the Apollo space missions.

I remember being really excited about the original TV movie/pilot that January, and forcing my cousins to watch it since I was staying over at their house that weekend. Once it went to series (a very short-lived series), I found it much less compelling as the subsequent stories were considerably more Earthbound. Still, it has stuck in my memory, and I probably should have mentioned it here earlier.

As for Griffith, he was as charming and amiable in Salvage 1 as he was in most of the other productions he appeared in. He wasn't the sort of actor generally cast in genre shows, but he did have a memorable role in the first season Bionic Woman episode, "Angel of Mercy."

• Well, a couple of days ago, I went ahead and ordered the Region 2 DVDs of the 1975 British-German series Star Maidens with some early birthday cash I received from my generous mother-in-law. I've only seen one episode - on YouTube - but it was enough to let me know that, aesthetically anyway, the show is right up my alley. Pure. Seventies. Style.

Hopefully, the DVDs will be here in a week or so. I'm looking forward to reviewing it here, too.

• Blu-ray.com has posted an advance review of Warners' forthcoming Outland Blu-ray disc. From the sound of it, it is a quantum leap in quality over the old, and sub-par even for its age, DVD. Apparently, there's a very informative audio commentary track by writer/director Peter Hyams, as well, who reportedly acknowledges the film's debt to Ridley Scott's Alien in its look and feel. I've always said that it didn't take much to pretend that Outland and Alien took place in the same universe...

•  I did recently get my hands on an affordable "previously-viewed" set of the Star Wars "Original Trilogy" Blu-rays. While I - like many first-generation SW fans - am more than a little annoyed at the fact that George Lucas didn't choose to make the original cuts of the films available on the discs alongside the Special Edition versions (and also made additional digital alterations to those!), I have to admit, that it's very nice to see those characters (and spaceships, etc.) in nigh-flawless high definition.

•  Oh, and I finally finished watching The Invisible Man DVDs! Look for a review here later this week.

Coming Attractions: OUTLAND (1981) Theatrical Trailer

And, for those who don't remember the movie very well, here's the theatrical trailer for Peter Hyam's Outland. Featuring a great cast - Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen - and a fine score by Jerry Goldsmith (Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Alien, Logan's Run, etc.), Outland is one of my personal favorites from the latter part of the Space: 1970 era. As noted yesterday, the movie will be receiving an HD Blu-ray release from Warner Home Entertainment in July.

News: OUTLAND (1981) Coming to Blu-ray in July

The 1981 space Western, Outland, directed by Peter Hyams and starring Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances Sternhagen, is coming to Blu-ray disc in July, just in time for my birthday. Considering how crappy the 2007 DVD looked, I'm hoping for a full-fledged, HD remaster. Since Warner Home Video generally does a decent job on their catalog titles, I'm hopeful.

The plot is High Noon on Io, with Connery as a Marshall stationed at a mining colony, who finds himself pitted against both the corruption of the company running the colony, and hired assassins imported to kill him. Even though the story is familiar, I like the production design and miniature effects a great deal, and the cast does a solid, professional job with the material, bringing a lot of humanity and conviction to their stock roles.

You can preorder the Blu-ray (currently priced around $15) at Amazon: Outland [Blu-ray]

OUTLAND (1981) Theatrical Posters

Outland is another favorite space Western of mine. When I saw this in the theater during the summer of 1981, I was at the peak of my James Bond fanaticism, and, as far as I was concerned, Sean Connery could do no wrong. Of course, the best thing about this film is Frances Sternhagen, although I really like the production design, miniature effects and Jerry Goldsmith score, too.

Despite the "functional" look of the Io mining station sets, Outland is no more realistic than most of the other films I write about here at Space: 1970. Slightly less fanciful, perhaps, but it's still good, old fashioned space opera, just dirtied up a bit.