The Land Before Time (1988) – Review

Up until Steven Spielberg and Don Bluth teamed up here the typical dinosaurs you'd find rampaging across cinema screens were treated as either life-threatening monsters or simply large dumb prehistoric animals that were best avoided less one gets stepped on, but in 1988 Amblin Entertainment gave the world its first dinosaur story that was from the point of view of the dinosaurs themselves, and through the medium of animation we not only got dinosaurs as protagonists we were also treated to something far beyond what stuff like The Flintstones had provided in the past, in this film we the viewers were taken back to a land before time.

When it came to making this film the edict given to Don Bluth from Steven Spielberg was clearly along the lines of “Give me a dinosaur version of Bambi, but let’s not traumatize the kids” and with that contradictory idea Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time was born, a tale of friendship, adventure and a dash of heart-stopping terror, which certainly sounds easy enough to pull off. The basic premise of the film has to do with several herds of dinosaurs seeking an oasis known as The Great Valley after the land has been struck with a massive famine, and when the group is attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, referred to as a “Sharptooth” by the dinosaurs in this film, it results in the death of the mother of a young Apatosaurus named Littlefoot (Gabriel Damon), a tragedy that is compounded by a cataclysmic earthquake that divides the herds and forces a small group of young dinosaurs, led by Littlefoot, to find The Great Valley on their own.

Note: Bluth, Spielberg and Lucas originally wanted the film to have no dialogue at all, like the segment "The Rite of Spring" from Disney’s Fantasia, but the idea was abandoned in favour of using voice actors in order to make it more appealing to children.

Now, as much as Spielberg and Lucas wanted this movie to have the flavour of Disney’s "The Rite of Spring" it became rather clear to Don Bluth that any on-screen violence would have to be toned down considerably, with Spielberg stating, after seeing the first cut of the film "It's too scary. We'll have kids crying in the lobby and a lot of angry parents. You don't want that." To solve this problem the film focused on the idea that dinosaurs of different species didn’t actually get along, that Littlefoot being a longneck would not be allowed to play with a three-horned dinosaur and that they're were taught not to associate with each other, in what could best be described as a not too subtle allegory for racism. But despite this institutional racism, our plucky protagonist picks up an oddball crew on his search for the Great Valley that includes Cera (Candace Hutson) a bossy and prideful Triceratops, a cute Saurolophus “bigmouth” named Ducky (Judith Barsi), Petrie (Will Ryan), a Pteranodon that can’t fly, and a baby stegosaurus they call Spike (Frank Welker), and with this assortment of friends, Don Bluth took us on a heartfelt voyage of friendship and discovery that would also be full of laughs and screams.

 

A prehistoric Incredible Journey.

Stray Observations:

• Though this film doesn’t commit the cardinal sin of showing dinosaurs and mankind living side-by-side it does show a variety of dinosaurs that came from different eras and that were separated by millions of years.
• The narrator (Pat Hingle) tells us that Littlefoot was the only child born to this particular herd of “longnecks” but when we first see his egg it is surrounded by other eggs that looked to have already been hatched. Were these baby longnecks killed or eaten before they were hatched? If so, that is pretty damn dark.
• The film depicts dinosaurs as consisting of two class structures, herbivore and carnivore, but then it shows Petrie and all other Pteranodons as herbivores when, in fact, they ate fish, not plants. We also see a Pachycephalosaurus depicted as ferocious carnivores despite these creatures being either herbivores or omnivores.
• Littlefoot’s mother (Helen Shaver) plucks a lone leaf from atop a tree and gives this “tree star” to her son saying “It is very special and helps you grow strong” and the idea that Littlefoot wouldn’t immediately eat the leaf is hard to swallow.
• This mixed herd of dinosaurs are heading to what they call “The Great Valley” but none of the dinosaurs have actually seen this fabled valley and when Littlefoot asks how they know it’s really there his mother answers “Somethings you see with your eyes, others you see with your heart.” Is this film saying that dinosaurs had some kind of faith-based religion and if so, I’m not okay with that.
• Sharptooh and all the other meat-eating dinosaurs are depicted as mindless killing machines, that have no language of their own, and that’s just racists.
• Petrie rolls up Littlefoot’s “tree star” and puts it across his shoulder like a rifle, imitating a marching soldier on guard, despite guns and soldiers not existing for several millions of years to come.

 

This film definitely intended Petrie to be a Robin Williams type of comedic relief.

Say what you will about the thirteen sequels and the television series that followed Don Bluth’s original vision what we got here was quite the spectacular achievement and the beautiful animation on display was more than equal to what Disney was producing at the time, unfortunately, to achieve a PG 13 rating eleven minutes of footage, comprising a total of nineteen fully animated scenes, were cut from the final film which resulted in an end product that was barely over an hour-long, but according to Don Bluth he claims to have a personal copy of his Land Before Time that has all that cut footage, so let us all say it together “Release the Bluth cut!”

 It should also be noted that Don Bluth’s dinosaur adventure film was released the same day as Disney’s Oliver and Company and proved once and for all that the House of Mouse was not the only game in town when it came to animated movies and though this particular entry may have borrowed elements from Bambi, and its particular take on the prehistoric world won’t likely be showing at any natural history museum that I can think of, the film is still an incredibly entertaining adventure story with a lot of heart and an overall solid message of love and acceptance.

Caveman (1981) – Review

In 1981 two films were released that were set during the dawn of mankind, with humanity struggling to survive in a hostile world where cavemen faced untold dangers at every turn, now, one of these films was a Canadian-French co-production called Quest for Fire, which told the story of a tribe of cavemen in search of a new source of fire and it also won several motion picture awards including the Academy Award for Best Makeup, the other film featured Ringo Star, Barbara Bach and Shelly Long in a somewhat prehistoric love story called Caveman, it did not win any awards.

The history of cavemen movies is not what one could call all that well regarded, with most of the entries ranging from poor to terrible and consisting of scripts that would leave most audiences wondering if the screenwriters did their research by watching episodes of The Flintstones where man and dinosaur were shown living together despite the 65 million years that separated them, which brings us to writer/director Carl Gottlieb’s slapstick comedy Caveman, a film that was intended to be spoof such silly Hollywood offerings as One Million Years B.C. but it’s safe to say that good ole Carl missed the mark a tad with this entry. Like most films of this kind, there really isn’t much of a plot as it was more a travelogue of misadventures for our heroes and heroines to travail than it was anything else, and in the case of Caveman, we have a cave-dwelling misfit named Atouk (Ringo Starr) lusting after fellow cave-dweller Lana (Barbara Bach), the shallow and beautiful mate of Tonda (John Matuszak) who is the tribe's physically imposing leader and primary bully of the scrawny Atouk. Things take a turn for the worst when Atouk’s job as taste-tester for the tribe leads to the discovery of a narcotic plant and his offering a drug-laced fruit to the cavewoman of his dreams.

 

The prehistoric roofie makes its first appearance.

To say that the scene with Atouk trying to have sex with a drugged and unconscious Lana is a less than a heroic moment for our film’s hero would be a pretty big understatement, and I’d like to think that even back in the 80s rape jokes weren’t considered funny, but I guess the fact that Atouk actually fails in his attempt at sexual assault we are supposed to forgive him, I don’t and neither does Tonda who quickly kicks his ass out of the cave. After being banished from the tribe Atouk meets up with his friend Lar (Dennis Quaid), a fellow exile who got kicked out after being injured during a dinosaur attack, and the two of them soon run into Tala (Shelley Long) and the elderly blind man Gog (Jack Gilford), two cave people who are trying to make their way in a world, which takes everything you got, and the idea that Tala will eventually become Atouk’s love interest is quickly apparent while Jack Gifford’s blind caveman will literally stumble into one predicament after another.

Note: This movie features some truly great dinosaurs that were provided by stop-motion animator Jim Danforth who had previously worked on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

As mentioned, there really isn’t much of a plot to Cavemen as it’s more of a series of comedic set-ups and executed gags that often surrounded Atouk and his band of misfits as they discover fire, music and the surprising discovery that manly hugs have chiropractic advantages and transform them from hunched over semi- simians to fully upright homo sapiens. We also must suffer through several fart and dick jokes because when the script consists mostly of grunt filled dialogue you’re not going to find Monty Python level of humour, which is probably one of the film’s biggest missteps because going the route of films like One Million Years B.C. and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and have your cast speak a cave people language that consists mostly of people shouting "macha" and "zug zug" it gets kind of tedious. It’s just odd that co-writer Carl Gottlieb, who penned the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, didn’t understand that a goofy parody didn’t need to try for “realism” when it came to their prehistoric languages and with its 90 minutes running time many a viewer may find themselves becoming annoyed and bored by the constant gibberish. It should be noted that one of the misfits that joins Atouk and his band is an Asian caveman who inexplicably speaks English and if he’d been revealed to be a time traveller sent back to research early man this movie could have gone in a more interesting direction, sadly, that was not the case. And it’s not like the film was striving for any kind of historical authenticity as not only did they thrust dinosaurs and man together but our characters stumble across a “Nearby Ice Age” and encounter an abominable snowman.

 

“Hey man, after Empire Strikes Back this was the only job I could get.”

Another key problem with Cavemen is that it was trying to satirize a genre that had never quite achieved the popularity of its own and thus there were no classic tropes to make fun of, like Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams had to work with when they made the Airplane! and Naked Gun films, and so Caveman had no real firm basis from which to properly parody. Ringo Star does his best to create a lovable goofball, and at times he does come across as a Buster Keatonesque type hero with some of that required charm such a character needs, and sure, seeing a Tyrannosaurus Rex getting high and falling off a cliff does have some intrinsic comedic value, but that’s not really enough to hang an entire feature film on.

Note: Jim Danforth’s goof comedy dinosaurs pretty much steal this movie and their very existence demands that someone make a Gary Larson Far Side movie.

That all said, there is a certain charm to Caveman and watching Ringo Starr and a young Dennis Quaid romp through a prehistoric setting certainly had its moments, as was watching future Mrs. Starr Barbara Bach traipse around in a fur bikini and a Vidal Sassoon hairdos, but aside from Jim Danforth’s stop motion creations, there isn’t a whole lot to be found here to make this film an easy one recommend, it’s more an interesting oddity than a feature film

Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-1981) – Review

Created by Marvel Comics writer Steve Gerber and produced by animation house Ruby-Spears Productions the Saturday morning cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian may have only thrilled children for two years but forty years later and you will still find many fans of this animated classic, a series that could be considered the precursor to shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

In the history of Saturday Morning Cartoons, one title stands apart as an example of a show striving to give something more challenging to audiences than what was the norm and with Thundarr the Barbarian the people at Ruby-Spears Productions did just that as not only did they make an exciting adventure series they also targeted a more mature audience, and to paraphrase Joe Ruby who once stated, “Shoot high, what kind of kid wants to be talked down to?” this is exactly what they did, but this then prompted the question, “What kind of mature stories are we going to tell?” Well, during the 1970s fantasy was on an upswing with the likes of Frank Frazetta’s amazing paintings of Conan the Barbarian creating a renewed interest in the genre among teens and with the blockbuster hit that was Star Wars the idea of cartoon series dealing with science-fiction and fantasy must have seemed quite obvious, well, at least obvious to these guys. Enter one of the greatest openings to a television series ever, live-action or otherwise.

 

“Hey, kids, how about we start off with the end of the world?”

“The year, 1994. From out of space, comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man's civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn. A strange new world rises from the old. A world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice. With his companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword, against the forces of evil. He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!”

 

“Now that you are all completely traumatized, on with the show!”

As mentioned in that amazing intro, the hero of this show was a barbarian named Thundarr (Robert Ridgely) who along with his companions, the powerful sorceress Princess Ariel (Nellie Bellflower) and the mighty leonine humanoid Ookla the Mok (Henry Corden), this noble barbarian vowed to free humanity from their enslavement by a variety of evil wizards – it should be noted that we never do come across any good wizards – and this trio travels across a post-apocalyptic world to help whoever and whenever they can. For twenty-one episodes, viewers were treated to some truly stunning locations as Thundarr and company would come across awesome remnants of a now-lost civilization that were so well designed that background artists for this show were all deserving of Emmys as the ruins depicted here were perfect settings for these action-filled adventures.

 

"Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

In their travels, our heroes would encounter a variety of mutants, monsters and wizards that were clearly inspired by Greek mythology, with them fighting off sci-fi interpretations of Janus, Argus, Circe, the cyclops and the Amazons, which added some nice scholarly spice for older viewers who could play “Spot that mythological reference” while watching the show.  Thundarr, Ariel and Ookla would not only fight across North America as they’d also venture down into Mexico and even battled under the shadow of Big Ben in London, England – that our heroes travelled all that distance via horseback makes this feat pretty damn impressive – but as impressive as their travel itinerary was their skills in battle were equally remarkable. Thundarr had his all-powerful Sunsword, a blade made of pure energy that could cut through most materials, and with it, he could also deflect energy attacks from those pesky evil wizards.

Note: The energy blade extends out of the hilt much in the way a certain lightsabre would in a popular space saga film.

If Thundarr’s primary weapon was borrowed from Luke Skywalker his basic persona was more in keeping with the likes of Conan the Barbarian as he pretty much charged into battle against monsters and wizards with a certain amount of savagery, often bellowing out such war cries as “Demon dogs!” or “By the Lords of Light” before opening a can of whoop-ass on his enemies. To balance out this rage-fueled machismo we had Princess Ariel, a sorceress with incredible magical powers. Her backstory is that she was the stepdaughter of an evil wizard and that she learned knowledge of magic and the Earth's history from his library – this gives her the ability to point out ancient landmarks and technology to Thundarr and Ookla – and it was she who saved her two companions from a life of slavery. In fact, she is easily the more powerful member of this trio as her magic could be used to fire energy bolts to stun people, create magical spheres to imprison her enemies, use light constructs to form bridges or slides to provide access or escape for her and her friends, she also has the power to hypnotize people and can re-animate ancient machinery, hell, at one time she even teleported directly into the lair of an enemy wizard, and that is only a fraction of what we see her magic accomplish.

 

Why wasn’t this show called Princess Ariel, Sorceress Supreme?

Well, it turns out she has to have her hands free to activate her spells so at one point in a battle we would often hear her cry out “Thundarr, I cannot move” when she finds herself bound by the villain of the day. Sure, the Damsel in Distress trope is a little disappointing here but without it, the two male members of the trio would be pretty much unnecessary and Thundarr himself would be relegated to being Ariel’s boy toy. It should also be noted that this show does try and sneak in a little romance to offset all the action, depicting a bit of unrequited love between Ariel and Thundarr, with the Princess trying to coax Thundarr into admitting that he finds her beautiful while the big dolt acts totally oblivious to this…or is he? One can’t expect much of a “Will they or won’t they” relationship on a Saturday morning cartoon but the one developed between Thundarr and Ariel was rather charming because Thundarr wasn’t this big dumb brute he appeared to be, despite his tendencies to charge into combat without a plan, he’s actually rather charming and witty at times and the fun sarcastic banter between the two of them was a nice counterpoint to all the action and violence found throughout the show. Now, speaking of action and violence this brings us to the third member of the trio, Chewbacca, sorry, I mean Ookla the Mok.

 

Ookla the Mok seen here doing a little rat-man bashing.

Series creator Steve Gerber wasn’t too keen on the character of Ookla the Mok, he was basically told by the higher-ups to create a Chewbacca-like character to be Thundarr's faithful companion, and as the third member of the trio, his qualities were a little less decisive. As in the case of Chewbacca, only best pal Thundarr could understand Ookla’s grunts and growls but where Thundarr would often go charging into danger half-cocked our furry friend Ookla was even more apt to smash without thinking and much of that “animalistic fury” was used for comedy – he once smashed the controls of the helicopter out of frustration, but we're left wondering why his friends would expect him to be able to fly a helicopter in the first place – and his strength ranged from “Hulk Smash” levels of carnage, with him tossing vehicles around like Tinker Toys, to him sometimes having trouble breaking free of simple rope bindings.

 

“Thundarr, getting out of these types of situations is why I have you and Ookla around.”

Stray Observations:

• In the show’s opening we see the Moon ripped in twain by the passing rogue planet but throughout the series, the Moon simply looks badly cracked to varying degrees, as if the force of gravity has pulled the pieces back together. That is pretty darn cool.
• In the ruins of Manhattan, Thundarr and friends come across a poster for Jaws 9 which was a bit optimistic as the Jaws franchise only made it as far as a fourth movie.
• Gemini and many of his wizard brethren had robotic goons which allowed the writers to skirt the “No killing rule” that hobbled many kid’s shows at the time, thus Thundarr could hack these metal minions apart without regard to Standards and Practices getting all up in their faces about the violence, well, up to a point.
• In the episode “Harvest of Doom” the villains have a red poppy-like flower that knocks a person unconscious, which was most likely inspired by the poppy field in The Wizard of Oz.
• The evil amphibious Amazon usurper commands “Release the Kraken” a line we’d hear a year later in the Ray Harryhausen classic Clash of the Titans.
• In “Valley of the Man-Apes” the remains of the robot Kong from the 1976 remake of King Kong is rebuilt and brought to life, which was a nice treat for film fans.
• River pirate captain Corden’s ship consists of log pontoons for a hull, the deck of an aircraft carrier and the superstructure of medieval castle battlements, how does that even work?  Cartoon physics, I guess?
• The evil sorcerer Gemini looks quite a bit like the DC comic book villain Darkseid, and he even shoots what looks like Omega Beams from his eyes.

Note: The evil wizard Gemini was also the only villain to reoccur, but only once at that, and he could easily have been this show’s Skeletor if the show had lasted.

When it came to creating this show Joe Ruby and Jack Spears took one of Marvel’s best writers Steve Gerber, the man behind such bizarre outing as Howard the Duck, and to aid him on his quest to create this post-apocalyptic fantasy world the legendary comic book writer-artist Jack Kirby and equally amazing Alex Toth were given jobs as production designers for the show. If there is any great takeaway from this series it’s on how simply gorgeous it all looked, almost every background painting is a bloody work of art that would look amazing hanging on anyone’s wall or really cool mural on the side of a van. Jack Kirby’s style is quite apparent in the designs of wizards, with mutants and secondary characters looking like they’d be at home in his “The Fourth World” comics on either New Genesis or Apokolips, which does explain why Gemini looked so much like Darkseid. On the other hand, Alex Toth brought a very pulp fantasy feel to the proceedings with not only nods to Conan the Barbarian but to the likes of Flash Gordon and John Carter of Mars as well, his and Kirby’s work here is what truly elevated the show far above its contemporaries.

 

A Titan to draw a titan!

In an era of limited animation Ruby-Spears Productions bucked the trend for Thundarr the Barbarian because even though it recycled animation, a cost-saving measure all animation houses used at the time, it also provided viewers with some truly dynamic action with Thundarr and his friends battling across a plethora of spectacular locals while blasting away at a variety of villains, and the studio even went so far as to use the rotoscoping technique to make the horseback riding sequences look even more realistic. Unfortunately, the action and violence of this show may have been a little too good as Standards and Practices at the time were quite hesitant to let characters even punch each other let alone kill a villain, something you would expect to see on any adventure show, and when you consider the ludicrousness of Batman not being allowed to throw a punch on Superfriends double that with the concerns they must have had with a sword-wielding barbarian, even if the minions he was fighting were robots and monsters. It was this issue, not its ratings, that saw Thundarr the Barbarian come to an untimely end after only two seasons, with Ruby-Spears Productions going on to produce cartoons like The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show with Hanna-Barbera while relegating Thundarr to the dustbin of history. If a show ever deserved a revival it is this one and maybe someday a Netflix original series based on Thundarr the Barbarian will be born and a whole new generation will be reached and once again homes will ring out with the cry of "Demon dogs!"

Note: That this show didn't get a plethora of cool action figures and amazing playsets is a crime all on its own, all kids of the time ended up with was three "action" figures and one bloody board game.

Salvage 1 (1979) – Review

“Once upon a time, a junkman had a dream,” and that dream was to kick start a science fiction adventure series, of course, this was not actually the dream of a junkman but that of Salvage 1’s creator Mike Lloyd Ross, who had the notion of a program dealing with the wild adventures of a scrappy group of salvage operators whose goal was to salvage the NASA equipment left on the moon’s surface during the Apollo missions. You have to admit that’s a pretty cool concept, and in the late 70s "science" on television was a really booming market, but getting that particular premise to work as an ongoing weekly series was a whole different kettle of fish.

The show introduced us to Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) who was not only a top-notch salvage man but also your basic conman with a heart of gold, and he had a simple goal, “I want to build a spaceship, go to the moon, salvage all the junk that's up there, bring it back, sell it.” Unfortunately, that particular goal wasn’t all that simple, so he had to recruit ex-astronaut Skip Carmichael (Joel Higgins), who he found working in a used car lot, and scientist Melanie "Mel" Slozar (Trish Stewart), an ex NASA expert in rocket fuel and explosives and is now working in movie special effects business, and it's her knowledge of a chemical called monohydrazine – a fictional fuel that sits alongside such things as unobtainium for bullshit science fiction plot hole fillers – that will make their flight to the moon possible.  With this super fuel, and Skip’s theory of the trans-linear vector principle, their spaceship will be able to travel to the moon faster than any spacecraft used by NASA, and they may just make it to the moon if the government doesn’t stop them that is.

The pilot for Salvage 1 was a taught little movie, with our small band of heroes overcoming one obstacle after another and in that format, it was overall was quite effective, but you had to bring a hearty helping of “Suspension of Disbelief” along with you, that is if you intended to survive a viewing with your credulity intact. The show was billed as an adventure/comedy, with a heavy accent on the comedy aspect, and any actual science to be found in the shows seemed to be there almost by accident. Now, Isaac Asimov was listed as the show's scientific adviser but they must have ignored most of what advice he had to offer for as clever as the idea of building a rocket ship out of salvaged parts; constructing it out of a Texaco gasoline semi-trailer tank truck, a cement mixer as the capsule and the notion of a single-stage rocket landing on the moon was more in the realm of science fantasy than science fiction, add to all those problems we also have our plucky band of astronauts doing it all under the watchful eye of Special Agent Jack Klinger (Richard Jaeckel), who the FBI sends to stop Harry and his friends from doing whatever it is they are trying to do, which made the show even more unbelievable.

The pilot movie ended with a successful mission, though compromises with the government resulted in the salvaged Apollo gear being given to NASA at a bargain price, the team was quickly asked to use their spacecraft, which they had aptly named The Vulture, to survey the South Pole to determine the feasibility of moving polar icebergs to drought-afflicted areas in the States. This leads to the next big question, “Why do you need a spacecraft to fly over the arctic?” and the answer to this was, of course, there is “No reason at all” and this gives you the first clue as to why the series didn’t even manage to finish a second season. How exactly they planned to take this premise and run with it, one that worked great as a movie but seemed somewhat impossible as a series, and turn it into an ongoing series is beyond me. What we got was Harry and company landing The Vulture in Africa - having taken a detour to get some monkeys for a zoo - where they ended up being menaced by a giant ape, or they’d perform orbital retrievals and space station rescues, in truth, their cobbled together spaceship got very little screen time over 18 episodes.

So if Harry and the gang weren’t flying missions to Mars what exactly are they doing? Well in season one they salvaged Harry’s old B25 bomber, which he had flown during Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, which then led to them encountering a Japanese soldier (Mako) who was still fighting WWII, a standard trope even by this time.  Next, they had to rescue a little girl from a bomb shelter when an earthquake trapped her behind tons of rock, and then there were a couple of episodes dealing with them hunting for lost treasure.  Now, some of these episodes were pretty darn good, like the team rescuing Klinger from an evil African dictator (Moses Gunn), but it's when episodes focused on the team trying to solve communities that things got a little shaky, not helped by the iceberg retrieval being the show’s main continuity as this plot thread kept popping up in season one until being resolved at the beginning of season two, but then we got two dreadful episodes that focused on the plight of horses in America, and I’m not kidding, in the episode “Round-Up” Melanie wants Harry to figure a way to save some wild horses from being slaughtered, and then in the very next episode called “Harry’s Doll” we get Melanie refusing to let an injured racehorse be put down and so she contacts a special doctor to heal its break with laser surgery.  This begs the question, "Wasn’t this show about wacky salvage operators in a spacecraft going on crazy missions, what’s with all these After School Special themes?"

Note: Neither of the two episodes featuring Horses in Danger aired, so I’m guessing the network saw the strange direction the show was going and pulled the plug before it could get even worse.

Season one had some fairly goofy moments to be sure, Harry being mimicked by an alien trapped on Earth being especially weird, but that was the charm of the show, yet when season two rolled around we got these placid Hallmark Channel moments that just didn't fit the tone of the series, and thus it’s not surprising that the network brass saw the writing on the wall and cancelled it. To illustrate how desperate the show’s creator had gotten they had even decided it was a good idea to add a plucky kid (Heather McAdam) as a regular cast member, where Melanie all of a sudden gets motherly urges and decides to adopt her, and the whole tone of the show veered dramatically away from its science fiction roots.

Salvage 1 was a fun show, and certainly a product of its time, but the idea of it becoming a long-running series never made any sense for the get-go and thus early cancellation was a forgone conclusion, but if you happen to stumble across the pilot for this show I do recommend you check it out as it is quite entertaining.

 

You'll have to admit The Vulture is a cool spacecraft.

Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space (1972) – Review

When a film franchise starts running out of ideas it’s not uncommon for the solution to be “Let’s set the next one in outer space” but in the case of the original Josie and the Pussycats series from Hanna-Barbera, which only had one 16 episode season, it didn't quite have enough time for anything to get stale but that didn't stop the second season being retitled Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, where our favourite all-girl group would find themselves venturing off to new worlds while also fending off a variety of alien menaces.

Saturday morning cartoons were known for producing a variety shows for the kiddies but one thing they rarely provided were pilot episodes or much in the way of continuity, which made airing re-runs easier, and though pilot episodes explaining the premise of shows like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! or The Jetsons where not needed in the case of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space a little set-up certainly couldn’t have hurt. And exactly how did Josie and the gang end up in outer space? The show provides little information for this other than what we see during the two-minute opening title sequence which is that while the group was taking a promotional photo at the launch site of a new spaceship a jealous Alexandra Cabot (Sherry Alberoni) elbowed the cast aside in order to steal the spotlight from Josie (Janet Waldo), which causes the group to fall back into the ship where she then accidentally triggers the launch sequence, sending them all off into deep space.

 

“In space, everyone can hear you sing.”

The premise of this second season was fairly simply with Josie and her friends travelling through space until eventually encountering some alien racer or other and, at some point, the Pussycats would perform a song before continuing their quest to find Earth, with Alexandra continuing to screw up any chances of the group getting home.  Basically, Alexandrea figures into the series as if she were a space-going Gilligan as it is always her fault a "rescue" is thwarted. Of course, the premise of a group of people being “lost in space” can’t help but be compared to Irwin Allen’s science fiction series Lost In Space but this animated show has even more similarities than just that basic premise, such as it is, the duties of Professor Smith from the Irwin Allen series is almost split amongst Alexandra, who caused them to be lost in space in the first place, and her twin brother Alexander Cabot III (Casey Kasem), who provides the cowardly comic relief that Jonathan Harris so aptly brought to Lost in Space.

Note: In the Irwin Allen series Penny Robinson had Debbie the Bloop as her alien pet while in this show Melody (Jackie Joseph) has a fluffy alien creature called Bleep (Don Messick), clearly, the writers of this show were not going out of their way to be original.

Stray Observations:

• No matter how or where the Pussycats are taken into captivity their instruments would somehow magically appear so that they could perform, but when they escape and are forced to leave them behind the instruments will miraculously be back on the ship for the next episode.
• The group is lost in space yet they are seen constantly flying by Mars and Venus, which makes Valerie’s supposed genius-level piloting called into question.
• In the episode "The Sun Haters" an alien race wants to destroy their own sun because it hurts their sensitive eyes, which begs the question “How did this race evolve with such a genetic flow? Were they once subterranean creatures? “ Also, even bubbled-headed Melody points out that without the sun everyone will die, including the aliens.
• Almost every friendly alien race they encounter programs the Pussycats' ships auto-pilot to take them back home and every time Alexandra manages to screw it up and we are left to wonder “At what point do you just tie Alexandra to her seat so you can get home with no further problems?”
• In the episode "The Hollow Planet" the Pussycats encounter a planet-sized ship that looks a lot like the Death Star from Star Wars.

 

"Have any of you guys seen a dude in a dark helmet with a breathing problem?"

If an all-girl pop music group thwarting mad scientists and would-be world conquerors seemed a little far-fetched in the previous season what is found during this run of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space makes those episodes seem downright plausible by comparison. The group’s bassist Valerie Brown (Barbara Pariot) was clearly the brains of the operation in the last season, what with her ability to hack into pretty much any device a mad scientist could come up with and then turn the tables on the villains, but this time out she inexplicably has the ability to pilot a spaceship as well as still being able to hack into whatever sci-fi piece of equipment they encounter during their deep space travels, which often includes reprograming a variety of alien robots to change sides and aid the Pussycats, but what is more unbelievable than Valerie’s inexplicable mad skills at space travel is the gang’s inability to stop Alexandra from messing up their chances to get home.

What is an improvement this time out is that the musical performances by the Pussycats were no longer something to simply bookend an episode but were often used to thwart the alien threat of the day, either as a distraction so they could escape or possibly even shatter an alien city with their powerful pop music soundwaves, of course, the real reason was so that we could be treated to some more incredibly catchy tunes.

As the target audience for Saturday morning cartoons was obviously kids and with studios not given much in the way of budgets when it came to the animation, which was always fairly limited and relied heaving on the ability to recycle – groups of characters seen running past the same background elements over and over again was a prime example of this – but while the varied settings of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space provided the artists with more free reign and creativity when it came to building alien worlds the animation was still a step back and at times the characters looked as if they’d been drawn by a sleep-deprived pre-schooler. They also saved money by simply re-using the footage of the band performing their songs from the first season, despite the fact that this footage shows them in their traditional Pussycat costumes and not their spacefaring garb, and there is no reason to believe they would have had those outfits with them when they fell into the spaceship, not to mention how their instruments mysteriously ended up on board.

 

Were they wearing their Pussycat costumes under those space outfits?

The idea of sending Josie and the Pussycats into outer space was certainly an interesting direction to take the show and legendary artist like Alex Toth, the man who gave the world such animated classics as The Herculoids, Space Ghost & Dino Boy and Thundarr the Barbarian, provided the special model designs for this wacky space adventure and so one can't help but admire what the show was trying to achieve with its science fiction setting, unfortunately, Alexandra’s idiotic behaviour was even more tiresome this time out and with the show ending after just sixteen episodes and us never even finding out if they ever made it home, there were some disappointing elements that would end up concerning some viewers. Overall, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space was a light and goofy show that was never to be taken seriously but it wouldn’t have hurt things if the writers had taken their jobs a little more seriously and given us more than simple cardboard adventures for our heroes to face.

Note: It would take three decades before Josie and the Pussycats would be able to again escape the pages of Archie Comics, this time in a live-action film that would end up becoming a cult film favourite.

Josie and the Pussycats (2001) – Review

The fictional all-girl music group Josie and the Pussycats has had quite the storied history, with their origin dating back to the early 1960s as simple guest stars in Archie Comics, that is until eventually landing their own title and a competing Saturday morning cartoon in the 70s, but their rocky road to stardom wouldn’t see a feature film until 2001 when the writing and directing team of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan were finally able to realize a true live-action musical epic.

That 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats was a box office bomb cannot be disputed, earning back only half of its $39 million budget, but over the years the film has been re-discovered and re-evaluated and has become something of a cult favourite that many consider being an Idiocracy version of the music business, with its lampooning the idea of branding and product placement to a startling degree – the filmmakers have clearly stated that they made not a single dime off of all the logos and product placements that litter the film – and it should also be credited for being a spot-on depiction of manufactured pop bands and is made all the more brilliant by creating some of the funniest songs that would be worthy of Spinal Tap. The movie opens by introducing us to such a band, which is called DuJour and features the likes Breckin Meyer, Seth Green, Alexander Martin and Donald Faison as this rather clueless boyband who are “killed” off when they discover a subliminal track hidden inside their music.

 

I do wonder how many teens fully understood the lyrics to “Backdoor Lover.”

With the world’s number one pop music band out of commission, it’s up to MegaRecords executive Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming) to find a replacement band and, lucky for him, he stumbles into the nearby town of Riverdale where he discovers a local garage band called The Pussycats, which consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Josie McCoy (Rachael Leigh Cook), bassist Valerie Brown (Rosario Dawson) and drummer Melody Valentine (Tara Reid) – in a role that Reid was born to play – and being the fact that their last gig was at the local bowling alley anything would be a step up so they quickly sign the Standard Rich and Famous Contract and are soon whisked to the Big City, but Valerie is quickly disturbed when Wyatt renames the band "Josie and the Pussycats" without their permission.

Note: This movie is clearly set in an elseworld where product placement and promotional ad campaigns have run out of control, this could never happen in the real world.

The plot of this movie is much in keeping with the animated series, usually involving some kind of world-conquering scheme, but in this case, it's the revelation that MegaRecords had been using subliminal messages to brainwash teenagers into buying consumer products, shocking, I know. The company’s CEO Fiona (Parker Posey) has been in league with the United States government in the hope of tapping the unchecked wealth of this particular demographic and with plans to expand their operations globally. The 1972 Hanna-Barbera cartoon often had the Pussycats thwarting a variety of would-be world conquerors but the evil machinations in this film are not only fairly plausible but rather prescient, in fact, Parker Posey and Alan Cumming don’t just try and steal the will of America’s teenagers they also do their best to steal the film away from Josie and the Pussycats.

 

Parker Posey is a national treasure and should be protected.

Where the film drops the ball is when it comes to being an adaptation of the comic or the Saturday morning cartoon as the inclusion of their manager Alexander Cabot (Paulo Costanzo) and his sister Alexandra (Missi Pyle) are not given much to do and Alexandra’s jealousy of Josie and her constant plots to steal Josie’s thunder, as well as her boyfriend, from the comics and cartoon is completely missing in this film. Speaking of Josie’s boyfriend, the love story between Alan M. (Gabriel Mann) and Josie seems rather forced and once again the screen time is given to this subplot is no more than a threadbare development of his character, and when he finally declares his love for Josie during the film’s final act I’d almost forgotten his character existed. Now, to be fair, this film had to balance building the friendship between the three girls and this crazy brainwashing plot so secondary characters from the comic book were bound to get a little short-shifted and though these secondary characters popping in from time to time did tend to hurt the film’s pacing it was not to a great degree.

 

“Girls, watch me as I edit out most of your friends from the movie.”

Stray Observations:

• Alan M is credited as being “The sexiest guy in Riverdale” and while Gabriel Mann is a handsome enough man he is far from the muscular beefcake that the character was in the cartoon.
• They give Alexandra Cabot brown hair with a whitish-blonde streak instead of her trademark black and white “skunk look” hairdo but they make up for this misstep by having her answer the question as to why she came along with the band by simply stating “Because I was in the comic book.” 
• Valerie is almost being left behind when their limo pulls away could be a reference to Hanna-Barbera decision back in the day to make Valerie Caucasian, instead of African American as she was in the comic, only to be argued out of the change by their music producer who had already hired an African American singer and refused to fire her.
• When Fiona gives her speech about mind control to the visiting foreign dignitaries she points out that “The Chinese guy knows what I’m talking about” which is a nice nod to the film The Manchurian Candidate.
• In the Pussycats, Valeria is the group’s bass player and yet in the cartoon all we ever saw her play was the tambourines, so it was nice to see her really rock out in this movie

 

Rosario Dawson, a badass bass player.

So with all that great stuff going for it why did it fail? Well, the terribleness of the Spice Girls movie certainly didn't help as it came out a few years earlier and poisoned the well, and Universal didn’t give Josey and the Pussycats the greatest marketing campaign as such I'm sure many people didn’t know exactly what kind of film they were about to see. Also, films based on cartoons had been more hit than miss over the years and film about an all-girl band based on a 70s cartoon, that was itself based on an Archie comic book spin-off, could have kept away audience members who otherwise would have got a kick out of the fun and subversive elements of this delightful satiric comedy. Another element that should not be overlooked is the songs as not only were the boyband parodies we got from DuJour hilarious the ones we see The Pussycats perform are actually worthy of topping the charts, in fact, even though this film bombed at the box office its soundtrack went gold and that's impressive no matter how you look at it. Overall, this film was an incredible fun satire with a stand-out cast bolstered by some truly great songs, if you haven’t seen this gem of a film do yourself a favour and track it down.

Note: Due to the level of profanity and adult themes in this adaptation of Josey in the Pussycats the people over at Archie Comics denounced the film and discouraged people from seeing it, but years later they would be fully behind the CW series Riverdale which had way darker themes than could be found in this movie.

Josie and the Pussycats (1970-1971) – Review

With the popularity of their animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! Hanna-Barbera Productions decided that if one group of teenagers running around thwarting criminals worked then creating a second team of youngsters was an obvious follow-up, and to ensure this came to fruition Joe Ruby and Ken Spears went to the Archie Comics spin-off series Josie and the Pussycats to find this new group, a comic about an all-girl band and their zany adventures.  This subject matter was deemed to be perfect comedic fodder for a Saturday morning cartoon and was considered a perfect counterpoint to the Archie cartoon which had been created by rival animation studio Filmation.

The premise of Josie and the Pussycats revolved around a teenage all-girl pop music band that toured the world with their "entourage" while encountering a variety of nefarious villains, the leader of the group was Josephine "Josie" McCoy (Janet Waldo) the ginger-haired lead singer as well as songwriter and guitarist for the band, next we had Valerie Brown (Barbara Pariot) the band’s African-American bassist who was often seen playing the tambourine but even though she was a backup singer to Josie she was really the brains of the group and it was often her intelligence and ingenuity that got the group out of trouble, last but not least there was Melody Valentine (Jackie Joseph) as the band’s drummer and even though at a glance she appeared to be your typical bubbled-headed dumb blonde she was also the heart of the band and where Valerie was the brains it was her perpetual sweetness and optimism, not to mention her infectious giggle, that made her one of the more memorable characters on the show. Also, that her ears wiggled when the group was in danger gave the Pussycats an edge when it came to facing off against would-be world conquerors.

Trivia Note: Jackie Joseph was the speaking voice for Melody but her singing was provided by one-day Charlie’s Angels star Cheryl Ladd, who went by the name Cherie Moor at the time, and was hired by music producer Danny Janssen, along with singers Kathleen Dougherty and Patrice Holloway, to become a member of a live-action version of the trio.

To round out the cast of characters we have Alan M. Mayberry (Jerry Dexter) the band’s roadie and Josie’s love interest, not that we see much of that on screen, and then there is Alexander Cabot III (Casey Kasem) as the group’s manager and self-proclaimed coward of the group and, finally, we have Alexandra Cabot (Sherry Alberoni) who is Alexander’s twin sister but with no actual job with the band, other than to be a pain in the ass, and she mostly hangs around with them in the hopes of stealing both Josie’s thunder, but more importantly, stealing away Alan M. Aside from the villain of the week, and it is Alexandra who will cause much of the show’s conflict with her constantly trying to upstage the band, believing that she should be "The real star of the band" while trying to trick Alan away from Josie. Her plots to steal the spotlight usually fail in a humiliating fashion but they also often kick start the adventure with her causing the group to go off course from their planned gig and landing them in the lair of some supervillain or other.

 

I think she’s just overcompensating for being born with skunk hair.

The basic formula for this show was established in the very first episode with "The Nemo's a No No Affair" where the ship that the gang were travelling on gets sunk by the great-grandson of Captain Nemo (John Stephenson), who sounds a lot like Boris Karloff, and the Pussycats end up thwarting his plan to become ruler of the Seven Seas in a timely fashion. It’s this element that really separates this show from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! as Josie and her friends are musicians not mystery solvers and most of the villains Josie and friends encounter are of the “world-conquering” variety and are more comparable to what was found in the animated adventure series Jonny Quest than that of the swindlers and conmen the Scooby gang tends to meet, with the exception of the episode "The Jumpin' Jupiter Affair" where a group of aliens are unmasked to be diamond thieves exploiting the local natives, in fact, the adventures of Josie and the Pussycats have quite higher stakes when compared to many shows and not just with whatever evil the villain-of-the-week has planned but for the fact that most of them literally try and kill Josie and her friends.

Death Note: In that first episode Captain Nemo locks each of the gang members inside glass tubes, which he then sends to the bottom of the sea attached to anchors, and one must admit that is some pretty dark shit for a Saturday morning cartoon.

Similarities to the Scooby-Doo series:

• Not only is the character of Alexander Cabot III voiced by Casey Kasem, who provided the voice for Shaggy, but like his Scooby gang counterpart, he was an abject coward.
• The group’s roadie Alan M. is a tall blonde piece of beefcake and wears an ascot just like Fred Jones does. Question: Were ascots ever really a thing among teenagers in the 1960s?
• The group would often put on goofy disguises to fool the villains but unlike in the Scooby-Doo series, the whole gang would often participate in these charades.
• In the Scooby-Doo series Fred would come up with a trap to catch the “monster of the week” while in Josie and the Pussycat that job fell to Valerie.
• At one point in each episode, the gang would be chased by the villains in a montage overlaid by a fun pop song, which was a staple of Scooby-Doo.
• The show would end with the villains being handed over to the authorities and we’d even occasionally get a “Meddling kids” grumble from the villain of the week.
• Josie and the Pussycats may not have a talking Great Dane but Alexandra's cat Sebastian was more than capable of aiding our heroes in and out of trouble.

Note: Don Messick voiced the cat Sebastian as well as the Muttley from Wacky Races and they both characters have wonderful snickers and mischievous personalities.

It’s true that like many cartoons of the time, Josie and the Pussycats was rather formulaic throughout its run, with the gang either stumbling across a diabolical mad scientist, whose plan is to turn everyone into plant food, or somehow they’d come into possession of top-secret plans or some high-tech device, but with the band being musical globetrotters the series was able to send our heroes to a variety of fun locations, from Paris the City of Lights to the danger fraught jungles of the Amazon Basin, and production designer Iwao Takamoto brought such locals to life with a great visual flourish, especially when considering this is just another Saturday morning cartoon show, and though every episode would end with Alexandra once again failing to interfere with a Pussycats' performance, with her getting egg often literally on her face, the show was just loaded with charm and consisted of a collection of fun and memorable characters. This is not to say the show was perfect, as memorable as the likes of Melody, Alexandra and Sebastian were Josie herself was kind of boring and was forced to be the “Straight Man” of the show, but things could have been a lot worse if William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had got their way.

 

Valerie was almost turned into a Caucasian member of the band by the studio execs.

In the early days of production, Hanna-Barbera wanted to change Valerie to a Caucasian even though she was already established as African-American in the Archie Comics, and they wanted to fire Patrice Holloway who had been cast as Valerie's singing voice but Danny Janssen, who was producing the real-life group's Capitol album, refused to fire Holloway and Hanna-Barbera relented. So we will call that a win against segregation in cartoons and thus Valerie became the first African American woman to be a regular on an animated series.

 

Question: Why were these crooks dressed up as The Phantom?

Overall, Josie and the Pussycats was a fun-filled adventure show with crazy villains and wacky antics, as well as having one of the greatest theme songs to appear on a cartoon – I challenge anyone to not sing along with the lyrics “Josie and the Pussycats. Long tails and ears for hats” – and if you ever feel like a light and a frothy nostalgic trip there’s no better company than that of Josie and the Pussycats.

Trivia Note: That one episode where Josey and the Pussycats encountered fake aliens could be considered a herald of things to come as the second run of the series they would be launched into space to meet the real thing in Josey and the Pussycats in Outer Space.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) – Review

Film adaptations of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe date back to the silent era and since then there have been numerous versions from Walt Disney comedic take on the story starring Dick Van Dyke as a Navy officer, who meets a beautiful island girl he names Wednesday Lt. Robin Crusoe U.S.N. to the gender-swapped version back in 1954 with Miss Robinson Crusoe, where both the title character and Friday were female, but it was in 1964 that we got the most far-out adaptation of the classic story, one that took the plot away from its standard tropical island location and into the far distant reaches of outer space.

The movie opens with Commander Christopher "Kit" Draper (Paul Mantee) and Colonel Dan McReady (Adam West) orbiting the red planet Mars in their spaceship, Mars Gravity Probe 1, that is until they are forced to avoid an imminent collision with a large orbiting meteoroid and then descend to the planet’s surface via two separate lifeboats. Draper’s escape pod has a rather bad landing that is made worse when it is hit by a roving fireball – it should be noted that these flaming configurations continue to plague the surface of Mars with no explanation as to what they are – but Draper survives all this and quickly sets up a camp in a cave he located high up a rock face. Later, on one of his planetary excursions, he comes across McReady's crashed pod and lifeless body amongst the wreckage and it’s at this point I was wondering if the name of “lifeboat” should have been changed to “deathboat” as they appear to be crap at their one job.

 

“Holy crash-landings Batman, these things are a death trap!”

Lucky for Draper he finds Mona (The Woolly Monkey), the ship’s monkey, alive and well as she somehow survived the crash, and yeah, this Mars probe had brought a monkey along for what I’m sure were important scientific purposes and not because this little monkey had more screen personality than Paul Mantee had on his best day. We spend an interminable amount of time with Draper trying to figure out how to survive on an alien planet, such as discovering rocks that when burned give off oxygen, and when he notices Mona doesn’t seem to need water he follows her to a nearby cave where finds a pool of water in which edible plant "sausages" grow.

 

Meet the real hero of this movie.

As this is an adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe the film eventually gets around to Draper encountering this film’s version of “His man Friday” and in this case, it’s a human-looking slave that had escaped his alien captors and who  Draper quickly names Friday (Victor Lundin) “In deference to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe” and the two become reluctant friends as they both try to survive the hostile landscape of Mars.  Of course, a hostile alien world is the least of their problems as they are occasionally menaced by those pesky returning alien slavers, who tend to just hover in the sky and blast the planet at random, which brings us to the film’s key problem, and that would be it’s pondering slow pace with no actual narrative structure to speak of. Now, much of this stems from it being an adaptation of Defoe’s novel, which was presented as an autobiography by the title character and his 28-years spent on a desert island, but with Robinson Crusoe on Mars what should have been a thrilling adventure, instead, we get a rather meandering plot that was punctuated by arbitrary events until the story abruptly ends with the arrival of a rescue ship.

 

When the end credits appear it is we the viewers who are truly saved.

If I seem to be a little harsh towards a film that many consider to be a science fiction classic, and there are a lot worse examples out there and this is certainly no Fire Maidens of Outer Space, but unlike many of the space adventure movies that came before this one has very little action and almost as little accuracy when it comes to the science, and sure, at this point in time there was still not a lot known about the planet Mars but we certainly knew that the planet wasn’t plagued by firestorms and volcanic eruptions. It’s quite laughable that the lobby card for this movie had an official-looking statement "This film is Scientifically Authentic . . . It is only one step ahead of present reality!" which clearly indicates that the studio had either no understanding of actual science or blind faith that their audience wouldn’t have a clue that 95% of what they'd see on screen was utter bullshit.

Note: The film was shot in Death Valley National Park but the production didn't even bother to tint the location scenes reddish in colour by the simple use of coloured lenses or post-production filters.  Talk about laziness.

Stray Observations:

• A space helmet that makes you raise its visor so that you speak into your radio seems like a really poor design, especially when on an alien world in a hostile environment.
• The air is so thin on Mars that Draper has to use some of his precious oxygen supply to start a fire, but how the fire continues to burn he doesn’t seem to question. Lucky for him it turns out that the rocks on this planet generate their own oxygen, somehow.
• If physically exerting yourself will deplete your precious oxygen supply making your base in a cave that requires a rope climb of twenty feet to access is not all that practical.
• When Draper finds their monkey Mona alive he takes the poor animal's oxygen supply stating “Well, you obviously don’t need that” is there something I don’t know about primates and their need for oxygen or is Draper just a dick to monkeys?
• The aliens in this film clearly shopped at the same place that George Pal did when he outfitted his astronauts in Destination Moon.
• Friday looks like he’s wearing the garb of a Roman slave which could be a clue that maybe the aliens had visited Earth sometime in the distant past, too bad the film didn’t bother to investigate such interesting possibilities.
• Though the aliens in this film are not actually from Mars, visiting the Red Planet only for mining purposes, they are flying around in the Martian war machines that look a lot like the ones from George Pal’s War of the Worlds.

 

Maybe these aliens got them from a Martian used spaceship dealership.

The film does have some superb special effects, and Albert Whitlock’s matte paintings are quite beautiful, but I found that all this incredible technical achievement was wasted on a pedestrian script that just meandered from point “A” to point “B” without trying to engage the audience in any way whatsoever. Director Bryon Haskin was a seasoned veteran of the genre so it’s a shame that while watching Robinson Crusoe on Mars I felt very little for the plight of the stranded astronaut and I hate to put down actor Paul Mantee but maybe this film would have been better off if it had been Adam West who had survived the crash and not him, regardless, this science-fiction entry is a decent stepping stone that would soon lead to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and for all its faults it does have some stunning visuals.

 

Note: Matt Damon would have had a blast being stranded here.