SCIENCE FANTASY FILM CLASSICS (1978)

Pat of the fun of being a sci-fi fan in the 1970s was that the success of Starlog magazine (which owed much of that success to the unprecedented popularity of Star Trek reruns in syndication combined with the one-two boxoffice punch of Star Wars and CE3K in '77) inspired a number of other publishers to flood the newsstands in the latter half of the decade with science fiction film magazines of their own. None of them matched Starlog in quality or longevity, unfortunately.

Another short-lived Starlog imitator was the awkwardly-titled Science Fantasy Film Classics, which had a four-issue run from late 1977 through 1978. The issue at the top of this post, the fourth and final issue, was the only one I ever bought, and unlike some of the other genre film mags of the era (Space Wars, I'm looking at you), it was in color and reasonably well-produced. (If I recall correctly, that Mattel "Code Name: Galactica" toy insert that I posted here a while back, originally appeared in this magazine.)

Anyone else out there remember this mag?

Behind-The-Scenes Pix #13: BUCK ROGERS

Space ace Gil Gerard waits in the cockpit of his Earth Directorate starfighter for clearance to launch into an interstellar dogfight on the set of 1979's Buck Rogers In The 25th Century - the first season of which has just been re-released on DVD by Universal Home Video.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Season One
 

January's Space Babe: Joanna Cameron

The first (Super) Space Babe of 2012 is sultry super-heroine JoAnna Cameron, star of the Saturday morning adventure series, Isis (a/k/a The Secrets of Isis), produced by Filmation Studios for CBS beginning in 1975 as a companion series to their popular Shazam! program. The mighty Isis  - with the occasional assistance of Shazam’s Captain Marvel - fought crime and saved lives every week, usually managing to teach kids a nice moral lesson before the end credits, too.

JoAnna Cameron radiated confidence, strength and a serene wisdom both as the mysterious Isis and as her bookish alter ego, California high school chemistry teacher Andrea Thomas. Using a magical amulet to imbue herself with the powers of an ancient Egyptian goddess, Isis protected children from a wide variety of dangers and disasters - and their own poor judgement. With her slender, finely-turned legs showcased by her white miniskirt, Isis gave prime time’s Wonder Woman a run for her money as TV’s sexiest super-heroine for two seasons in the mid-70s. (And for my money, Isis wins.)

The lithe and lovely JoAnna Cameron was born in 1951 and appeared in a handful of movies and television shows (including a two-part episode of the prime time Amazing Spider-Man) during the early and mid Seventies before retiring from acting in 1980. Reportedly, she moved to Hawaii, where she has enjoyed a career in the hotel industry.

Captain's bLog: 0109.12

• For various reasons that I've addressed previously, my Space: 1970 blogging dropped off a bit over the last couple of months. To my surprise, the site still managed a fair amount of new traffic during November and December, and my recent post of those Frank Frazetta TV Guide ads for Battlestar Galactica (which I had the foresight to clip and save back in the Fall of 1978!) got linked to by SyFy's "Blastr" site and the Retroist blog, among others, which brought a surge of new visitors to S:70 just this past week. In fact, the last four days have had, by far, the highest number of unique visitors and page views to date. I hope that some of these new folks hang around.

•  The last Space: 1970 Poll, posted waay back on November 4th, asked the immortal question: "Should Space: 1970 cover the superhero shows/films of the 1970s, as well as sci-fi?"

Well, the answer was a resounding, "Yes!" Of 203 votes cast by blog visitors, a whopping 176 were in favor of me adding 70s super-hero fare like The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Shazam! and Isis, and Superman: The Movie to the mix here on the site. I still have my reservations (it feels like I might be opening something of a Pandora's Box), but I can't ignore such unbridled enthusiasm from the S:70 faithful. I'll start working on integrating our favorite costumed crusaders into the site over the next couple of months....

• I finally saw Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, and enjoyed it enough to pick up the Blu-ray and add it to my Apes collection. I still prefer the original movies, but I admit that Rise turned out to be a much better flick than I had initially anticipated. I'm still not a huge fan of mo-cap/CGI characters, but in this particular case, it worked well enough. I did enjoy the clever references to the original film cycle, of course.

•  Support Space: 1970: The site now has more than 350 "followers" here on Blogger, and the S:70 Facebook fan page is up to over 770 "likes." My sincere appreciation to everyone for their support! I also want to thank everyone who have used the Amazon links on this site to make purchases of vintage sci-fi on DVD/Blu-ray (and the few who've made Paypal donations - if you'd like to contribute, there's a link in the right-hand sidebar). Every little bit helps.

•  Shameless Self-Promotion: Anyone who enjoys my writing and reviews on this site should check out my DVD Late Show site, where I have been reviewing B-movies, cult films and genre television shows on DVD and Blu-ray disc since 2005. Among the over 700 reviews are plenty of Space: 1970-era favorites, like Battle Beyond The Stars, Damnation Alley, Starcrash, The Starlost, the Space: 1999 Blu-rays, and many more.

• That's it for now. January's Space Babe will be posted shortly....

UFO (1970) International Movie Posters

Here's a selection of "fab," International (mostly Italian, I believe) posters for ITC's feature film compilations of episodes from Gerry Anderson's first live-action science fiction series, 1970's UFO, all of them featuring Ed Bishop's Commander Straker. I love how some of them look like James Bond spy movies, while others have a very 50's pulp "alien invasion" vibe - which, now that I think of it, is a pretty fair way of describing the program.

Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote about these UFO "movies" and posted some art from a couple of the film releases, but I knew there were a lot more of them. I've been hunting and collecting scans over the last year or so, and here are the results of my various Google safaris. Gorgeous, aren't they?

PROJECT UFO (1978) Promo

Another video rarity discovered on YouTube: a static network promo for NBC's Jack Webb-produced series Project UFO, from 1978, that, from the music at the beginning, sounds like it aired right after an episode of Saturday Night Live!

SPACE: 1999 (1975) Tie-In Novelizations

I know that these novelizations of first season Space: 1999 episodes by E.C. Tubb &  Year Two by Michael Butterworth have been reprinted and re-issued in recent years with some new cover art and some additional, original adventures, but these are the Space: 1999 paperbacks that I had as a kid (and still have, obviously - note how beat-up and scuffed those covers are!).

Each of these books took three or four episodes and linked them together as a single story (much like Alan Dean Foster's early Star Trek animated "Logs" novelizations) and for many years - since we only got Year 1 here in Maine and it was never re-run - they were my only way of re-experiencing the stories and enjoying the ones that I missed on TV. In fact, I still scour used bookstores for the volumes I'm missing....

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) Art By Mike Saenz

This atmospheric rendering of the cast of Phillip Kaufman's 1978 remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, appeared in the sixth issue of Fantastic Films magazine, cover-dated April, 1979. The artist is Mike Saenz, an illustrator and graphic artist whose work has appeared in numerous comics, magazines, graphic novels and computer games.

In fact, in the 80s, Saenz pioneered the use of computer-generated art for comics with Shatter, a series published by First Comics, and the graphic novel, Iron Man: Crash.

Original Frazetta BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978) TV Guide Ads

A couple months ago, when I was going back through the entire blog replacing images that had disappeared, I realized that I had never posted these first three Battlestar Galactica ads, published in TV Guide in 1978 to support the premiere ("Saga Of A Star World") and subsequent two-part follow-up ("Lost Planet Of The Gods"). One of my first posts on this blog did showcase Frank Frazetta's original paintings for this ad campaign, but I never got around to scanning and posting the actual advertisements that I clipped and saved back when I was 15.

I did scan and post several of the other Galactica ads, and even Frazetta's for "War Of The Gods," but missed these - and then, I was without a functioning scanner for a year or so, and apparently forgot that I'd missed them.

Anyway, I've got a new, working scanner now, so I'm remedying the situation. Click on the images for slightly larger views.

I'm planning on having 2012's first Space Babe posted before the end of the week, and will hopefully fall back into regular posting again as the month goes on. Happy New Year!

Season's Greetings!

Best wishes from R2-D2, C-3PO and all of the busy droids and robots here at Space: 1970. Have fun, stay safe, and we'll see you all here again after the holidays - whichever holidays you celebrate!

William Shatner For Commodore Computers

Star Trek's William Shatner shills for Commodore Computers' VIC-20 - "The wonder computer of the 1980s" - in this vintage commercial from around 1981. Gotta love the cutting-edge video "transporter" effect!

Behind-The-Scenes Pix #12: STARCRASH

Here's a cool shot of a modeler (perhaps Armando Valcauda?) detailing the special effects miniature of Stella Star's spaceship for Luigi Cozzi's Starcrash. Personally, while there are plenty of valid criticisms one can lob at the movie's model work and effects, I must admit that I truly love the funky spacecraft from this flick!