Coming Attractions: LASERBLAST (1978)

I actually went to see Laserblast in the theater when I was sixteen, probably after seeing the TV spot below. At the time, I kinda enjoyed it, more for what the movie could have been than for what it was. The story is actually pretty cool - an "alienated," angry teenager stumbles across a powerful weapon that slowly transforms him into a literal alien as he uses it - but the execution is just terrible. The acting is horrible and the direction by Michael Rae is worse. No wonder it was his only film.

It's even become one of the more popular Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, and gives the MST3K crew plenty of fodder. Still, I actually own Laserblast on DVD and I even dig it out and watch it once every couple of years. I like the green, Hulk-ish alien make-up, the laserblaster prop, and David Allen's stop-motion extraterrestrials are amusing and well-animated (even if some of the sequences are poorly staged and composited), and I still think there's a potentially decent story buried in there somewhere. Someone should remake it.

THE BLACK HOLE (1979) Theatrical Posters

It's probably obvious that Disney's The Black Hole is one of my favorite science fiction movies of the 1970s. There's so much about it that I love - the production design, the amazing miniature effects, the robots, the cast, John Barry's marvelous score - and all of these cool posters!

Don't get me wrong - the movie isn't perfect, and I'm not blind to its flaws, but man, it's just so much fun, and a great example of the genre as it existed in the late 70s, with its strange mix of heady pseudo-philosophy, frequently dark tone and Star Wars-inspired 'bots and laser battles. I'll definitely be writing a lot more about this movie as time goes on.

Cover Gallery: MAD about STAR WARS

Nothing much to say except that I bought the first two of these issues when they came out, even though I usually preferred Cracked. Yeah, I was that kid. What can I say - I liked John Severin more than Mort Drucker....

METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN (1983) DVD Review

Long-desired on DVD by many cult film fans, the Charles Band (Parasite) science fiction Western, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) finally makes its digital disc debut from Universal. Unfortunately, those who've been anticipating this title since the beginning of the DVD era are not going to be happy.

On the desert planet Lemuria (which looks a lot like the California desert) a Ranger (or Finder, depending on the scene) called Dogen (Jeffrey Byron, wearing a leather ensemble identical to Mel Gibson's in Mad Max) rescues crystal miner Dhyana (a young Kelly Preston) after her father is slain by the evil warlord Jared-Syn (Mike Preston of The Road Warrior). They set out together to avenge her father's death; a perilous quest that brings Dogen into conflict with Syn's cyborg son Baal, hordes of angry Apaches - I mean, "Cyclopeans" - sand snakes, and masked nomads in Road Warrior-model dune buggies. Fortunately, Dogen manages to acquire a few allies along the way, including a burnt-out, alcoholic ex-Finder (or is it ex-Ranger?) named Rhodes (the great Tim Thomerson) and a noble Indian chief - dammit, "Cyclopean" chief - called Hurok (Richard Moll).

With a plot cribbed from a dozen B-Westerns, banal script, terrible acting by the leads, shoddy effects work, and laughably blatant 3D moments (lots of stuff sticking in the camera), Metalstorm cannot be called a "good" movie. Even the direction by Charles Band (Trancers, Meridian) is only barely competent, with endless -and often repeated - shots of our hero driving his space jeep around the overly familiar California locations (including Vasquez Rocks and Bronson Canyon), and a non-ending that clearly sets up a sequel that never happened. And that title, "Metalstorm?" Never explained.

Still, brother Richard Band provides the flick with a rousing score, the supporting cast - especially Thomerson and Moll - enliven their stock roles, and there's plenty of Road Warrior-inspired vehicle chases and stunts, usually ending with explosions. And there's just something comforting about its awfulness - whether it's nostalgia from when this thing played repeatedly on HBO back in the 80s or just the chutzpah of the filmmakers attempting this sort of adventure on such a meager budget, I don't know. But I can't deny that I enjoyed the 90 minutes I spent watching it.

Now, about the DVD. Seriously, Universal - WTF?

Originally released in 3D format with a 2.35:1 'scope aspect ratio, Universal has inexplicably decided to release Metalstorm on DVD with a 1.33:1 pan & scan transfer (except for the opening credits, which are widescreen), a decision that disappointingly recreates a VHS viewing experience, right down to the lack of a chapter menu or menu of any sort. I don't get it - this is 2010, not 1997. Everything is being released widescreen these days - even stuff that wasn't shot that way (another problem altogether), since television sets are moving toward a 16x9 HD standard. Why anyone would choose to release a widescreen 'scope film in a full-frame, pan & scan edition at this point in time is a mystery -- oh, wait. It's Universal.

As to the image quality itself, it is soft (and often out of focus), lacks detail, and is littered with specks and dust. From the look of it, it may actually be the VHS source material from the 80s. Audio is 2.0 Dolby Digital. There are no supplemental features whatsoever. Not even subtitles. Oh, in addition to the shoddy transfer, the studio's chosen not to use the fantastic original poster art (seen above) on the DVD sleeve, instead opting for a bland and unimaginative Photoshop job. At least the old VHS tape box had the cool artwork.

If you're a fan of the film, and your VHS copy is no longer watchable at all, then maybe you'll want to pick up this disc. At least it's relatively cheap. But I can't recommend this to anyone else. Sure, I love this stupid movie, but Universal has once again shown their contempt for both their catalog titles and consumers. There's no excuse for this kind of half-ass product. Today's consumers expect their DVD movies to - at minimum - be presented in their proper aspect ratio.

One wishes that they'd licensed the title out to a company like Shout! Factory or Anchor Bay or Image instead....

News: MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978) on DVD

As a reader notified me in the comments section of the previous Message From Space post, apparently there is an authorized, English-dubbed DVD of the movie now available from Toei/Eastern Star. It's listed at Amazon, although at the moment, the listing states that the title is temporarily out of stock.

Here's the link: Message From Space.

I've checked out a couple of online reviews for the disc, and it appears that the film is presented in its correct widescreen aspect ratio and is sourced from a reasonably decent print.

I can't afford it right now, but I've got it on my Wish List, and will try to get my hands on it one of these days. I have a particular fondness and fascination with these foreign Star Wars imitators. The cultural differences - magic walnuts! - are interesting to me.

It's also astounding to me that in the ten months since I started this blog, so many long-desired titles that seemed unlikely to ever become available legally in the U.S. have come out or been announced on DVD and Blu-Ray. When I began this blog, I had virtually no hope whatsoever of ever owning a legit release of Starcrash (in HD, no less!) or Message From Space or the 70s Gene Roddenberry pilots. But all of them are now, or soon will be, on legal discs.

Not that I'm taking any of the credit, of course... no, really, I'm not!

ESCAPE FROM WITCH MOUNTAIN (1975) and RETURN FROM WITCH MOUNTAIN (1978)

In the comments a while back, someone asked me if I was going to cover The Cat From Outer Space here; and you know - I might. As a kid in the Seventies, I saw a lot of Disney films.

Often in the summer, on nights that my dad worked the dusk-til-dawn shift at the mill, my mom would pack my sister and I, along with a paper grocery bag filled with home-popped (in oil) popcorn, into the car and take us to the Augusta Drive-In (which wasn't actually in Augusta, but Manchester) to Disney double-features. These were almost always comprised of an animated re-release backed by one of their live-action comedies or adventures. My younger sister would invariably fall asleep shortly after the second movie began, but I was a film buff even then, and I never did (much to my mom's frustration, I'm sure). Among the many flicks I made myself stay awake to watch on those late summer evenings were most of the Love Bugs, Island At The Top of the World, The Incredible Journey, The Shaggy D.A., 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea... and the original Witch Mountain movies.

They may not have been as exciting as the other sci-fi stuff I loved from television, like Star Trek and Space: 1999... but they were sci-fi, so I wanted to see them. And if they were short on laser battles, at least there was a flying saucer. For a few seconds.

When Disney released Race To Witch Mountain (which I actually rather enjoyed) to theaters last year the studio found itself required to re-release the Seventies Witch Mountain films on DVD as part of their (very blandly packaged) "Walt Disney Family Classics" line.

If you never saw these perennial Disney favorites before, here’s the basics: two blond pre-teen orphans with mysterious mental abilities (including telepathy and telekinesis) - Tony (Ike Eisenmann, who also starred in the 70s sci-fi series The Fantastic Journey with Roddy mcDowell) and Tia (Kim Richards, Tuff Turf) - search for the truth about their origins while trying to elude various Terran criminals intent on exploiting the kids’ psionic powers.

In the first film, Escape To Witch Mountain (1975), millionaire Ray Milland (Sire Uri in the Battlestar Galactica pilot) is after the kids, while in the second, 1978's Return From Witch Mountain, Christopher Lee and Bette Davis have their greedy hearts set on controlling Tony’s TK talents.

As directed by journeyman John Hough, both films feature primitive special effects and a certain flat, TV look, yet the stories and characters are still quite engaging, both for nostalgic adults and young children. A few years ago, I loaned the movies to my young niece and nephew, and, despite being raised on today’s flashy CGI-heavy fantasy flicks and video games, they loved the movies, watching them so many times my sister begged me to take the discs back.

Both films have been released on DVD before, first in bonus-laden special editions back in the dawn of the DVD era, and then as a bare-bones double feature disc in 2006. These new releases include all the extras from the original release, plus all new pop-up trivia subtitles. Both films are presented in their original 1.75:1 theatrical aspect ratios and are anamorphic. Both films include commentary tracks, behind the scenes featurettes, music video montages, and other Disney-styled features. Of special interest to readers of this blog is a video montage of "Disney Sci-Fi."

My favorite extra is on the Return disc, an interview with Christopher Lee promoting the film in Italy, where we see the veteran screen heavy demonstrating his mastery of Italian! It’s a great bit, once again confirming just how friggin' cool Lee is.

If you haven’t got these wonderful family adventure flicks already, you certainly should. They're hokey, but that's part of the charm - at least if you saw them as a kid. If you don't have that nostalgic affection for them, you may find it tough going. But when I'm in the right mood, they're fun to re-visit.

Coming Attractions: MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978)

Actually, I never saw Message From Space in the 70s, In fact, I've only seen it once, about six or seven years ago, when it aired on one of the Encore movie channels (and, man, was I surprised to see how much George Lucas seemingly cribbed from it for Empire and Jedi). But, I did want very badly to see it when I saw the advertisements in the local newspaper back in '78 (and that's one of them, below), and I also owned model kits of several of the spaceships.

I also vaguely recall being uncommonly frustrated by an nigh-unplayable arcade game in the early 80s, that, like Dragon's Lair, used laserdisc technology and large quantities of the special effects sequences from the movie. (ADDENDUM: Yep, apparently I'm not senile quite yet - according to the IMDb, the game did exist and it was called Astron Belt. Wow.)

This Toei production was distributed in the U.S. by United Artists, so I would like to see MGM release it on R1 DVD in widescreen, but as MGM no longer seems to have any interest in its library titles, the chances of such a release seem remote...

My Models: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978)

Here are some more of photos of the built-up, classic spaceship models I assembled as a teenager back in the Seventies. This time, we're looking at the Battlestar Galactica model kits issued by Monogram back in 1978.

First up is my dusty model of the Galactica itself - except that it's the Pegasus:

Since I consider Commander Cain cooler than Adama, I chose... well, actually, I tore the Galactica decal when I tried to apply it. Fortunately, the kit included a Pegasus decal as well, so my model became Cain's battlestar instead. For the record, though - I do think Cain was pretty damned cool.

Here's my legendary "battle-scarred" Viper, another casualty of my 15-year-old fingers' inability to apply those wet-transfer decals without shredding them. In this case, I decided to try and pass off my screw-up as "detailing," and proceeded to assault the plastic with a light black paint wash and some passes with a cigarette lighter, all to simulate combat damage.

Here's the Cylon Basestar, pretty much as it came out of the box. As it had only a few parts, and required no painting or decals, I didn't mess anything up.

My Cylon Raider is pretty dusty, and it looks like I once glued on a couple of spare pieces for extra detail (they've since fallen off, leaving some glue "scarring'), but I remember being extraordinarily pleased with myself for successfully painting the cockpit windows black, without obscuring any of the window "framing."

Anyway... next time, I'll post pics of my two surviving (sorta) Star Wars models. It won't be pretty....

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978) TV GUIDE Article

Here's a silly little puff piece from my scrapbook of TV Guide clippings, published just prior to the debut of Battlestar Galactica, showcasing some of the culinary "masterpieces" (ha!) created as props for the Carillon banquet sequences in the pilot film. The write-up is rather smug and condescending (although it's hard not to be, with such absurd photos), comparing the upcoming series to Star Trek and Quark!

Funny how things change. In recent years, TV Guide has really embraced sci-fi fandom with special issues, collectible covers, etc.

(Click on image to see it bigger.)

MAN FROM ATLANTIS (1977) Opening Titles

Like The Six Million Dollar Man and Logan's Run, 70s sci-fi didn't have to be set in outer space for me to enjoy it. Spaceships were the best, of course, but submarines were cool, too, so I was also a big fan of Man from Atlantis.

Now, I haven't seen a single episode since 1977-78, when they originally aired, but I remember really digging the show in junior high. The show started off with a couple of TV movies in the summer (if I recall correctly), and they were pretty big events. When the TV Guide Fall Preview issue (my favorite issue of the year!) confirmed that Man From Atlantis was going to continue as a weekly series, I was thrilled.

I had at least the first two Marvel comic books, and still own my paperback novelizations of the first two TV movie pilots. (In fact, I re-read the first one a few months ago - not bad!) We had a pool when I was a kid, and I really got pretty good at mimicking Patrick Duffy's dolphin-like swimming style.

I had quite a crush on Belinda Montgomery (and still did, when she was Doogie Howser's mom in the 80s), thought the Cetacean submarine was incredibly cool, and the theme music (as heard in the video clip above) is one of my favorite sci-fi themes of all time.

I'm sure that most of the episodes were pretty hokey (there's a clip on YouTube with a guy in a giant seahorse costume that's goofy as hell), but I'd still love to have the whole show on my DVD shelves, next to all my other 70s childhood favorites.

I know that the pilot film is available from Warners Archive, but it's just a bit beyond my budget these days. I'd like to get it - I'm very curious as to whether it holds up at all. Of course, it would have to be pretty damned awful for me not to enjoy it - as we all know, my tastes are pretty much exactly what they were when I was thirteen.

M.I.S. - Space:1999

Quite often, due to the vagaries of television production, a series will make substantial changes in its format and cast as it goes along. Nowadays, producers are likely to try and explain these changes within the context of the show itself, often building whole stories and arcs around them. But back in the 1970s, these changes were just made, and loyal viewers were left to wonder just what the hell happened. Especially on science fiction shows, which had a tendency to burn out fast on the networks and often experienced game-changing behind-the-scenes shifts in personnel and dramatic mid-course re-toolings.

The "Second Season Curse" is extremely familiar to those of us that grew up during the Space: 1970 era. It was rare enough for a genre show to even get a second season, and for the few that somehow managed that feat, drastic changes were almost inevitable. Thing is, back then, the people who made these shows seemed to think that no one would really notice the changes, or wouldn't care. And, frankly, most people probably didn't.

But those of us who really followed the shows - and not just watch them casually - usually did care, and when characters disappeared without explanation, or whole formats suddenly, inexplicably changed, it left us with questions. And being fans, we wanted explanations that made sense within the context of the show itself.

For example: what ever happened to Victor Bergman?

When Space: 1999 returned for its second season, there were a great many changes in look and overall tone of the show. As a kid, I could roll with the new costumes, Maya, and the newly-open (and kinda disturbing) romantic relationship between Koenig and Dr. Russell. What I couldn't just roll with - and desperately wanted an explanation of - was what happened to Victor, hot-headed Paul and creepy cyber-worshiping Kono, and why everyone was hiding in a tiny, windowless closet underground instead of running things from the gorgeous Main Mission set.

Since no one was offering said explanations, I had to make one up myself. The simplest and most logical one was that Main Mission had been destroyed (presumably in an attack by hostile aliens - on Space: 1999, there was pretty much no other kind), while the aforementioned characters were on duty. While this was logical, I still wondered why nobody ever mentioned them again or discussed their reasons for moving their control operations downstairs. And, of course, the exterior shots of Moonbase Alpha didn't exhibit any evident damage of the sort, either.

Of course, while this is among the biggest of the Space: 1999 mysteries, there are plenty of others; questions that bugged me even when I was a kid.

How did Victor Bergman always know the names of the strange new planets they encountered? (And he was always right!)

While still living on Psychon, Maya transformed herself into several Terran animals. How did she know about creatures like lions, anyway?

Why did they start wearing jackets indoors in the second year? I presume that they were keeping the temperatures in the base lower to conserve energy, but it was never actually stated on the show.

Where was Tony locked away during the first year, and why did they let him out?

And, of course, the big one: how come they never ran out of Eagles? Those things were blowing up all the time. Surely Alpha wasn't equipped with a manufacturing plant? Hell, in "Space Warp," the rampaging Maya-beast trashed a bunch of them - and the hangar! Of course, nobody seemed to care afterward.

Is it sad that I still ponder these questions?

News: DARK STAR (1974) "Hyperdrive Edition" Announced & Available for Pre-Order

After literally years of rumors and teases, it looks like VCI Entertainment finally will be bringing the Dan O'Bannon-John Carpenter classic, Dark Star, back to DVD in a new, improved, "Hyperdrive Edition."

This new DVD will contain both the shorter 1974 “Original” student film version and the longer 1975 “Theatrical” release version. The 2010 “Hyperdrive Edition” DVD has been sourced from a new 16x9, 35mm transfer, with a further painstaking, frame-by-frame digital restoration of the video master to produce "the best picture ever seen." The soundtrack has also been digitally enhanced and restored to Dolby Digital 5.1.

The disc will also include 2 hours of bonus features, including a new retrospective documentary featuring interviews with actor Brian Narelle, cinematographer Doug Knapp, art director Tommy Lee Wallace, SFX artist Greg Jein, distributor Jack C. Harris, and the late Dan O' Bannon. Additional supplemental material includes an interview with novelization author Alan Dean Foster, a "3-D Guide to the Dark Star ship," an audio commentary by fan Andrew Gilchrist, and more.

Dark Star - Hyperdrive Edition is already available for pre-order at Amazon (see link below), and is due to hit the streets on October 26, 2010.

Pre-Order from Amazon: Dark Star - The Hyper-Drive Edition