Book 'em, Han-o....

This particular "mash-up" video is showing up all over the place, but I liked it enough to want to share it here. I'm generally not overly amused by these sorts of things, but I was quite impressed by the thought that went into editing this, and how well the images were synchronized with the classic Hawaii 5-0 theme and that television show's original opening credits. Enjoy.

PLANET OF THE APES #21 (Marvel Comics)

Stumbled across this fantastic, fiery painting by the great Earl Norem for issue #21 of Marvel's Planet Of The Apes black and white magazine (June, 1976), and thought I should share it here, so everyone could enjoy it. Clearly based on Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, it also nicely evokes the pulp magazine covers of the 30s and 40s, with its well-endowed female victim and her tattered clothing.

I haven't written - or posted - enough here about the Apes franchise, which is certainly some sort of oversight, especially since it was by far the highest-profile sci-fi property of the 70s... until Star Wars came along. I loved the movies, the TV series, the cartoon, the Mego figures... and even the Marvel Comics.

That reminds me... I really need to upgrade my Apes discs to Blu-Ray. I have the original DVDs, and they're not even anamorphic....

CLIFFHANGERS! (1979)

Anyone else (other than Dusty and I) remember Cliffhangers!, a short-lived (10 episode) attempt to revive old fashioned Saturday matinee adventure serials in prime time?

It was an ambitious 1979 production developed by veteran genre TV producer Kenneth Johnson (The Incredible Hulk, Alien Nation) for NBC.

Each weekly installment featured 15-minute chapters of three ongoing serials – Stop Susan Williams, starring Susan Anton as a sexy reporter in constant peril, The Secret Empire, an unabashed rip of Gene Autry's 1935 Western/sci-fi serial, The Phantom Empire, but without the singing and with Mark Lenard as one of the heavies, and The Curse of Dracula, featuring Michael Nouri (The Hidden) as a romanticized King of the Vampires, teaching history at a California college!

It's another show that I, as a 16-year-old kid, loved, but its unlikely to ever see a legit DVD release.... but I think I know of a source where I can get copies of the show. If I do, I'm sure I'll get around to writing more about it here one of these days.

Captain's bLog 0921.10

I have a lot of work this week, but I do hope to have a few articles for Space: 1970 posted over the next few days.

• Thanks to a generous reader, I now have all of the Man From Atlantis episodes to watch. With my recent acquisition of the complete Fantastic Journey, I now have that much more 70s sci-fi to write about!

• Speaking of Man From Atlantis, I was at a small comics convention on Sunday, and found three issues of Marvel's MFA comic in a bargain bin for a buck! Scripts by Bill Mantlo, nice stylized art by Frank Springer and Frank Robbins... I'm really looking forward to reading them.

• I also earned some extra money at the con selling some of my own books, so I decided to finally order the Genesis II, Planet Earth and Strange New World MOD discs from Warners Archive. Unfortunately, I discovered that the WB online store won't accept debit cards or Paypal, and since I won't use a credit card anymore in protest of the banks' extortionate practices (and don't even have one at the moment), it appears that I won't be getting any of the Warner Archives stuff for the foreseeable future. (I looked up the same discs on Amazon, but they were way more expensive.)

Oh well. Anyway, stay tuned.....

The SPACE: 1999 Movies

Science fiction TV is expensive to produce, and studios like to try and recoup their investments as many ways as possible, so, like Battlestar Galactica and the Planet of the Apes television series, Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999 also saw several of its episodes edited together into "feature films" for TV syndication, international theatrical exhibition and home video. There were four of these (as far as I know): Destination Moonbase Alpha, Alien Attack, Journey Through the Black Sun and Cosmic Princess.

The quality of the films varies. Two were assembled by the ITC in England and some care and thought appears to have gone into their execution. Reportedly, the other two were put together by the company's New York office, and suffer from some poor editing choices, cut-rate titles and the addition of some bad library music or mismatched musical cues from other Gerry Anderson shows like Joe 90 and UFO.

Living in Maine during the Eighties, where the series did not air in reruns, there was no other way for me to see any Space: 1999, except for renting the VHS tapes that U.S.A Home Video released under the "Sybil Danning's Adventure Theater" label. This was intended as a companion line to their Elvira-hosted horror tapes, with the statuesque B-movie starlet wearing odd costumes and giving brief, goofy intros to the films. It was in this format that I saw Destination Moonbase Alpha (my first real exposure to second season 1999, in fact) and Alien Attack.

After the jump, I'll break down which Space: 1999 episodes were edited into which movies, and show the trailers created for each.

Coming Attractions: STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)

I saw Starship Invasions on network television in the late 70s, and haven't seen it since. I remember Christopher Lee and Robert Vaughn and lots of New Age/Erich von Däniken/Pyramid Power/Bermuda Triangle stuff, and that it seemed to be trying to attract fans of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And that it wasn't very good. Of course, that doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy seeing it again....

My STARCRASH (1978) Blu-Ray Review

I spent all of last night delving into it's vast trove of treasures, and now I've posted my review of Shout! Factory's new Blu-Ray edition of Starcrash over at my DVD Late Show website.

You may gather that STARCRASH is one of my favorite movies, and you're right. I've always maintained that the only bad movie is one that fails to entertain, and by that criteria, STARCRASH is far from a bad movie. In fact, I find it vastly more pleasurable and rewarding than any of the STAR WARS prequels. If you're willing to give it - and its unique charms - a chance, you may enjoy it, too.

You can find the full review HERE. Enjoy.

News: SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1974) DVD Details

TVShowsOnDVD has the official press release and pre-ordering information for the upcoming Six Million Dollar Man: The Complete Series DVD set from Universal/Time-Life.

The muscular set - the 4th most requested unreleased show at TVShowsonDVD.com - will be housed in ultra-collectible packaging sporting an audio chip and eye-popping 3-D lenticular artwork. Across 40 DVDs, the complete series will feature all 100 digitally-preserved hour-long episodes, all of which have been remastered from the original, uncut broadcast versions. The set also contains more than 17 hours of all-new bonus material, specially created just for this collection, highlighted by new in-depth interviews with Lee Majors (Col. Steve Austin) and Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), among others. Also included will be the three pilot movies "The Six Million Dollar Man", "Wine, Women and War", and "Solid Gold Kidnapping"; the three reunion movies "The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman", "Bionic Showdown" (with Sandra Bullock) and "Bionic Ever After?"; and the never-before-released cross-over episodes of The Bionic Woman, all of which have also been digitally restored from the original source material.* Additionally, for the true completist, the set also contains the alternative syndicated edits of the pilot and reunion telefilms, which, when added together, makes for more than 30 unbelievable hours of bonus programming.

Check out the complete article HERE.

Once again: speaking only for myself, I hate these exclusive "complete series" sets that come out long before individual season sets (usually without all the extras) are available to consumers. Not all of us - especially these days - has TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY DOLLARS (plus shipping) available to blow all at once on a TV show, even one as long-awaited as The Six Million Dollar Man. Twenty-five or thirty at a time for a single season is a lot more feasible, especially with retailer discounts figured in.

Oh well....

DEATHSPORT (1978) DVD Review

This is the first of Shout's Corman titles that I've been disappointed in, primarily because I was hoping for a DEATHSPORT presentation that was superior to the old DVD I already owned, and I didn't get that. I'm not sure what happened there, but it is a disappointment. That said, the package overall is quite good, and the audio commentaries, in particular, are especially welcome. 

My full review of the new Shout! Factory double feature DVD edition of Deathsport (starring David Carradine) and Battletruck (a/k/a Warlords of the 21st Century, 1982) has been posted on my DVD Late Show website. Check it out.

REBEL MISSION TO ORD MANTELL (1983)

Here's a cool bit of Star Wars arcana that I'd never heard of before today, an original audio adventure released on LP back in 1983 written by Brian Daley, author of the "Han Solo Adventures" novels (he also wrote the Star Wars NPR adaptations), relating an incident mentioned in passing in The Empire Strikes Back.

The voice acting is just adequate, kind of on par with those old Star Trek and Space: 1999 Power Records, but the story's pretty good. Here's a download link.

Thanks to Jason for the head's up!

Disclaimer: I didn't upload the album, and take no responsibility for it. I'm just posting the link for informational purposes.

Revisiting THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: INTO INFINITY (1975)

A reader of this site generously sent me a copy of the Gerry Anderson production of The Day After Tomorrow: Into Infinity, an educational science fiction special that originally aired on American television in December, 1975, as an installment of the irregularly-scheduled NBC Special Treat series for kids.

I watched it tonight for the first time since I was ten. It's amazing how much of it I remembered.

The hour-long telefilm has virtually no plot. A spaceship, the Altares, possessing a revolutionary new "photon drive" that will allow it to travel at speeds approaching the speed of light, is sent on an exploratory probe to Alpha Centauri, with the choice of continuing past that point left up to the crew. The crew is composed of two families, each with a young child - Captain Harry Masters (Space: 1999's Nick Tate with a faux American accent) and his daughter Jane (Katherine Levy), and Dr. Tom Bowen (Flash Gordon's Brain Blessed, in an uncharacteristically restrained performance), who is accompanied by his wife Anna (Joanna Dunham) and his dour son, David (Martin Lev). Interestingly, both children are full members of the crew - Jane is the co-pilot and David assists his parents with their scientific duties.

The trip to Alpha Centauri is relatively uneventful, and after deploying a bunch of data-gathering satellites, the crew votes to continue on into the galaxy. Unfortunately, a malfunctioning photon drive sends them farther and faster than they ever intended, and they find themselves lost in an unknown part of the galaxy, powerless, adrift, and caught in the gravitational pull of a red giant star that's on the verge of going nova.

More of a "pink giant," actually.

Captain Masters manages to repair the engines in the nick (ha!) of time and escape the exploding star, only to soon find themselves in peril once again - caught by a voracious black hole. As the film ends, the Altares has passed through the singularity and emerged in another universe, and the crew finds themselves facing an unknown future.

Intended to dramatize Albert Einstein's relativity theory to young people in an entertaining way, Into Infinity does spend a great deal of time explaining stuff like time differentials (which is also used to justify the presence of children on the ship - although it would have been more logical for Earth to simply send childless astronauts) and doppler shifts, but Byrne's story also indulges in plenty of wonky pseudo-science and insanely improbable coincidences, too.

Produced between seasons of Space: 1999, Into Infinity was written by frequent series scribe Johnny Byrne and directed by 1999 vet Charles Crichton. The special effects were by Brian Johnson's 1999 FX team, and the music was by Year Two composer Derek Wadsworth. Every adult cast member had - or would soon - appear on 1999, and UFO's Ed Bishop provided the narration.

The Altares was a new, wonderfully designed and detailed miniature by the great Martin Bower, but the space station it launched from was a portion of the "Ark" model recycled from the episode "Mission of the Darians," while the Altares' interior appeared to be a redressing of the "Ultra Probe" set from "Dragon's Domain" with a few bits and pieces of other old 1999 sets incorporated.

"A whole new universe. Huh."

I really enjoyed watching it again, and - as I said above - it was amazing how much I remembered from my childhood. One thing that struck me this time was how "British" (despite Tate's attempt at a Yankee accent) the characters were, facing each new peril with remarkable calm and "stiff upper lip" stoicism. By the time they're caught in the clutches of the ominous black hole, they're apparently so resigned to being jerked around by the universe that they just hold hands and calmly await their fate.

Seriously - I choked up.

The only character that generally displays any genuine emotion is young Jane, who has to reluctantly leave her pet dog behind at the beginning of the show (if it was me, I'd never leave my dog behind, but I'm a wuss), fears for the safety of her father when he has to repair the ship's engines, and expresses both wonder and fear at the various cosmic situations the crew finds themselves experiencing. By contrast, David might as well be a Vulcan for all the emotion he displays, and the adults maintain a suitably "professional" detachment at all times.

It's kinda like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey... for kids.

That's a black hole, all right.

The effects work is about on a par with the team's usual work on 1999, although the black hole - probably in a nod to the program's "educational" nature - is just a, uh, black hole in space, and not nearly as visually interesting as the phenomena the same team created for the 1999 Year One episode "Black Sun." The actual journey through the hole is very colorful, however, employing techniques that would reappear in 1999's "Space Warp" episode the following year.

The depiction of the crew's passage through the black hole is a bit of a hoot, though; apparently at a loss as to how to visually represent getting sucked through a singularity, Crichton simply had his cast run around the set back and forth with their arms outstretched and shot them in slow motion, then blurred it out in post!

"You do get that we're in space, right, kid?"

Despite the mostly cold and inexpressive characters, lack of dramatic conflict, or really, even much of a narrative, Into Infinity is still entertaining. Tate and Blessed have enough natural charisma and screen presence to hold the attention, and maybe it's just my love for old school miniature effects and 70s sci-fi production design, but I really enjoy just looking at the film. The sets are convincing (if familiar), the design of the Altares is fantastic, and the passage through the black hole is appropriately psychedelic.

Overall, it's a solid little piece of 70s juvenile sci-fi, maybe not quite as "scientifically accurate" as it pretends to be, but fun.

THE HUMANOID (1979) Theatrical Posters

I admit that I've never seen The Humanoid, another Italian Star Wars knock-off from 1979, starring Richard Kiel, Barbara Bach and Corinne Clery... but I desperately want to.