The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960) – Review

After tackling the fantasy world of Sinbad the Sailor, based on the collections from the stories found in Arabic tales of One Thousand and One Nights, Ray Harryhausen and company took up the mantle of the stalled production of Jonathan Swift’s classic tale Gulliver’s Travels, and with the wonders of "Super-Dynamation", they attempted to bring Swift’s satirical masterpiece to life.

Like the book, the movie follows the adventures of Dr. Lemuel Gulliver (Kerwin Matthews), an impoverished surgeon who sets sail aboard a sailing ship but after a shipwreck, he finds himself ashore on the island nation of Liliput, a land populated by people only six inches high, what the movie adds is Gulliver’s fiancée Elizabeth (June Thornburn), who strongly believes Gulliver should settle down in a nice cottage with her and not risk being boiled in a put a pot by savages on some foreign shore, clearly, studio heads thought that Swift’s classic social satire needed a love interest to make the story more palatable to modern audiences so we have Elizabeth stowing away aboard his ship, because why not, and while she doesn’t show up during his Lilliputian adventures she does pop up when he washes ashore in the land of Brobdingnag.

 

“I didn't ask for a girl action figure?”

The portion of the film that deals with Gulliver trying to prevent war between Lilliput and the neighbouring island nation of Blefuscu is fairly faithful to the book, or at least in spirit, as we find Gulliver' befuddled by the Lilliputian's silly reasoning for war, something to do with which end of an egg a person cracks that becomes the basis of a deep political rift, but even though he ends the war by capturing the Blefuscudian fleet, with no casualties on either side, he is met with more hostility as the Lilliputian admiral points out “Who heard of a war without anyone getting killed, where is the sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty?” Refusing to embrace the absurdness of war, and after embarrassing the Emperor (Basil Syndey) and Empress (Marian Spencer), spraying them with wine to save them from a fire, he flees Lilliput in a newly constructed boat. This segment does manage to capture some of the satirical aspects of Swift’s novel, with it pointedly calling out authority on waging war for no rational reason, and I especially liked the Emperor stating that “Of course, I don't need a prime minister to fight a war! But I need one to blame in case we lose it” unfortunately when the movie continues onto Brobdingnag any such insights are abandoned.  This segment of the movie is easily the most faithful to the source material, which to be fair isn't saying much, and it does have some truly iconic visuals and Ray Harryhausen's optical work is quite impressive.

 

Question: Just how secure is a tied-down giant if the ropes are embedded in the sand of a beach?

When Gulliver’s boat arrives at Brobdingnag, a land populated by giants, he is found by a little girl named Glumdalclitch (Sherry Albonie) and he is brought to the palace because, apparently, the law requires all small creatures to be brought before the King (Grégoire Aslan), and Gulliver is delighted to find that his beloved Elizabeth is there as well. It’s at this point that the movie completely abandons any pretense of following Jonathan Swift’s story as it turns into a battle of science versus superstition, with Gulliver at odds with the court sorcerer Makovan (Charles Lloyd-Pack), who fears for his place at the King’s side and accuses Gulliver of being a witch. In the book, the conflict arises from Gulliver recounting the splendid achievements of his own civilization but his description of the British government and the history of England causes the King to conclude that the English must be a race of “odious vermin” and when Gulliver offers to make gunpowder and cannons the king is horrified by the thought of such weaponry. Why was this changed? Were the filmmaker afraid of offending the British and losing a market share? Sure, why have an astute political discourse when, instead, you can have Gulliver snatched up by a squirrel?

 

Can we assume that the squirrel thinks Gulliver is nuts?

Stray Observations:

• Kerwin Matthews is slightly more believable here as an 18th Century British doctor than he was as an Arabic sailor in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.
• For budgetary reasons the production raided prop houses for whatever they could find and thus we get such anachronisms as the Lilliput populous wearing middle-eastern garb while the sets are medieval European.
• Gulliver fake sneezes to blow away saboteurs who are shaking the tightrope his friend is performing on, but such a blast, as we see, would have surely blown his friend away as well.
• A palace fire is extinguished by Gulliver spitting wine over the flames, unfortunately, he also sprays the Emperor and Empress and is given a death sentence for this act, in this instance, the book is slightly different from Swift’s story in which Gulliver puts out the fire via urination. This is a change I can understand as the visuals of Kerwin Matthews whipping out his dick to put out a fire would have been too much for audiences of the 1960s.
• On their first night together in Brobdingnag, Gulliver discovers that Elizabeth is against premarital sex so he has Glumdalclitch wake up the Royal Court so that the King can marry them, talk about horny and impatient.
• Gulliver is snatched by a “giant” squirrel and taken into its burrow, but why? Are Brobdingnag squirrels carnivores?
• Gulliver is accused of being a witch by the King’s court sorcerer and sentenced to death, which begs the question “Why is witchcraft illegal but not sorcery?”
• For this film Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation technique is upgraded from being called Dynamation to Super Dynamation despite this being an entry with the least amount of his work on screen.

 

That crocodile is pretty cool, but it doesn’t quite compare to a living skeleton or a giant cyclops.

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was four-part satirical work that mocked English customs and the politics of the day and for the film the “four-part” aspect of Swift’s story was obviously abandoned because even though the title of this movie is The 3 Worlds of Gulliver he only travels to Lilliput and Brobdingnag and thus the “third world” was must be referring to England, which is a bit of gip if you’ve read the book. That this movie only focuses on the land of little people and the land of giants isn’t anything unusual as most adaptations never touch on the flying island of Laputa nor its neighbouring island of sorcerers, not to mention on his fourth adventure taking him to Houyhnhnms, a land ruled by a race of intelligent and benevolent horses who don’t even have words for deception or evil. There have been several adaptations of Gulliver’s Travels and none have come close to fully embracing the source material – why couldn’t Jack Black have met up with talking horses in his version – but as much as this adaptation failed to capture the essence of Swift’s novel it’s still a fun adventure film and if not the best adaptation it's still a movie that can be enjoyed by the whole family.

Note: Ray Harryhausen's The 3 Worlds of Gulliver is a decent enough movie but, to date, the best adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels is still the 1939 animated film by the Fleischer Brothers.

Underdog (1964 -1967) – Review

In the annals of superheroes, there is one such individual who stands head and shoulders above all others, a paragon of virtue and unbridled strength whose belief in Truth, Justice and the American Way makes him noble if a little naïve, of course, this hero is Superman, the last son of Krypton, but in 1964 a cereal company called General Mills sponsored a cartoon about a very similar character, a mild-mannered shoeshine boy who would burst out of a phone booth with the cry of "There's no need to fear, Underdog is here!" a cry that would make even the most dangerous criminals shake in their boots.

Back in the 1960s, Saturday morning cartoons were basically something that was placed between commercials for toys and children’s cereal and like many others of its kind Underdog was created by an ad agency working for General Mills to help promote their latest products. Total Television, an ad agency founded by Buck Biggers, Joe Harris, Treadwell D. Covington and Chester Stover, were given the opportunity to compete for a much-coveted NBC timeslot but with only one simple guideline “It must be super” and with that inspirational note they began to rack their brains as to what kind of cartoon would fit the bill and the obvious conclusion was to make a superhero show, but what kind of superhero could they make? Buck Biggers had no interest in doing a “straight” superhero and then one night he caught an episode of I Love Lucy that featured George Reeves as Superman and Lucille Ball in a goofy Superman costume, this comedic take on the superhero genre would prove to be the catalyst that would see the birth of the world’s first canine superhero.

 

Lucille Ball, the original Underdog.

Like many cartoons of the day, there was no thought to giving Underdog (Wally Cox) an origin story, he’s not the sole survivor of a doomed planet he's simply an anthropomorphic canine in a baggy costume with amazing powers, but his similarities to a certain caped wonder cannot be denied. Instead of being a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, Underdog’s alter ego would be that of the "humble and lovable" Shoeshine Boy, and no Superman analog could exist without its Lois Lane, so for Underdog, we have Sweet Polly Purebred (Norma MacMillan), an anthropomorphic canine TV reporter and possible love interest if this wasn't a kids cartoon.  The similarities don’t stop there as Underdog’s primary villains Simon Bar Sinister (Allen Swift) is a mad scientist very much in the vein of Lex Luthor and the character of Riff Raff, an anthropomorphic wolf gangster, was very much in keeping with the gangster types that George Reeves would have tackled in The Adventures of Superman back in the 1950s. 

What makes Underdog stand out as a hero is that he’s not all that good at his job, and even his success comes at a cost, in the first episode “Safe Waif” he destroys two banks after learning a child is trapped in a safe; the first bank is wrecked because Underdog didn’t both to check if it was the right bank and the second one is destroyed after he blasts through the bank vault and on into the building next door, next he starts a major fire with his X-ray vision, which he then puts out with his super-breath, that in turn, blows the entire building down. And this only begins our hero’s unbridled collateral damage over the course of the series, but whenever someone complained about the damage, Underdog would simply reply “I am a hero who never fails, I cannot be bothered with such details." Underdog, great superhero, or colossal jerk, you be the judge.

 

Apparently, there is a need to fear if Underdog is near.

Stray Observations and Trivia:

• When Shoeshine Boy transforms into Underdog he literally explodes out of the phone booth, completely obliterating it. proving that Underdog is a total dick to public service equipment.
• Underdog’s rhyming couplets such as "When Polly's in trouble, I am not slow, It's hip-hip-hip and AWAY I GO!" are one of the character's most unique aspects and set him apart from many superheroes and I’d like to think he was an inspiration for the DC comic character Etrigan the Demon, who also spoke in rhyme.
• Many of the characters are based on popular Hollywood stars, Simon Bar Sinister’s voice is a dead ringer for Lionel Barrymore while his henchman Cad sounds a bit like Humphrey Bogart and Riff Raff is a canine version of gangster actor George Raft.
• On the rare occasion when Underdog had to replenish his powers, he would take an "Underdog Super Energy Pill”, but later censorship would remove this aspect of the character in fear that it would promote drug use to children.
• Like the 1960s Batman television series with Adam West, the Underdog cartoon often ended with a cliff-hanger that would be continued next episode.

 

"Looks like this is the end! But don't miss our next Underdog Show!"

An element that should not be overlooked is that this show contains one of the greatest theme songs ever to be written and it’s almost impossible not to sing along with its stirring lyrics, “When criminals in this world appear and break the laws that they should fear, and frighten all who see or hear. The cry goes up both far and near, for Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!” Just reading that gets my blood pumping and for that alone Underdog should be listed as one of the greatest cartoons ever produced. Of course, Underdog was not the only star of his show as each episode consisted of four segments, two of them being Underdog while the others would consist of adventures of Go Go Gophers and Klondike Kat as well as Commander McBragg, a pompous britt whose tall tale rival those of the legendary Baron Munchausen, but while these interludes were fun they were clearly overshadowed by Underdog.

Klondike Kat never got a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Underdog was unceremoniously cancelled after three seasons, with General Mills basically saying “Thanks guys, but that’s enough” yet the legacy of this great canine continues for new generations as the 62 half-hour episodes that made up The Underdog Show would live on in syndication to brighten the lives of many more children, unfortunately, things did take a dark turn in 2007 when Walt Disney Pictures released a live-action version where the character of Underdog was portrayed as just a regular dog rather than an anthropomorphic one, and the nicest thing I’ve heard said about this live-action adaptation is that it was "mostly forgettable" and having seen that particular Underdog I now do my very best to forget it ever happened. In conclusion, if you want an evening of pure unadulterated fun track down the original Underdog cartoons and enter a truly whimsical and entertaining world, where a rhyming superhero will not only save the day but possibly steal your heart as well.

Note: The 2007 live-action Underdog movie is available on Disney Plus but do yourself a favour and never watch it as it takes everything that was fun and engaging in the original cartoon and flushes it right down the toilet.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) – Review

After destroying Coney Island, tearing down the Golden Gate Bridge and laying waste to Washington D.C. and the Roman Colosseum in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth, legendary effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen decided to move on from telling contemporary stories and focus his efforts on creating cinematic adventures based on fables and myths, stories that have lasted for centuries, and for the first of those he chose The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

With Ray Harryhausen's interests shifting from modern-day sci-fi monster thrillers to fantasy adventures it’s not surprising that he’d dive into the tales found in the Arabian tales of “One Thousand and One Nights” as this opened up so many possibilities when it came to wonderful monsters for Harryhausen to bring to life, and by that I mean Harryhausen took character and creatures from the Arabian tales and made his own stories because nothing in this film remotely resembles the story of Sinbad’s Seventh Voyage as found in those old tales, which had something to do with bird-people and Sinbad being captured and sold into slavery, needless to say, I think Harryhausen’s take on Sinbad was great and his amazing mythological monsters are still my go-to version of the Arabian myths, what is kind of weird is that he’d name his first Sinbad film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad when the seventh voyage was actually Sinbad’s last. Another odd thing that is not so much weird as it was a product of its time, is the fact that Sinbad looks pretty damn white for an Arabic sailor, he doesn’t even have a tan.

 

“Sinbad, aren’t we just so adorably white?”

In this particular adventure we find Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) on route to Baghdad with his fiancé Parisa (Kathryn Grant), the Princess of Chandra, only to have this voyage interrupted by an unexpected detour to the island of Colossa, a mysterious and foreboding place full of monsters and ancient temples, but as their ship was running low on supplies this pitstop is almost fortuitous. Needless to say, a few complications arise as no sooner do they fill up some casks with water they are confronted with the sight of giant cyclops chasing a man across the beach – a sight that at this point in Sinbad’s career would be called a Thursday – but the man is actually the sorcerer Sokurah (Torin Thatcher) and he invokes the genie of the lamp he carries and orders it to form a barrier between them and the raging cyclops. Unfortunately, even though the genie (Richard Eyer) created a powerful and impenetrable barrier it also came with a height restriction and thus the cyclops could lob boulders over it, which results in their boat capsizing and the magic lamp ending up in the drink.

 

Rule Number One: Never Underestimate a giant cyclops.

Sinbad and company make it safely back to Baghdad, where his wedding to Princess Parisa will unite Baghdad and Chandra and prevent a war, but throughout all these festivities we get Sokurah constantly begging for help in recovering his lost magic lamp but as stories of the dangers of Colossa have already spread amongst the populace his chances of getting a crew to undertake such a voyage would be next to impossible. Not one to take no for answer, Sokurah uses his prowess and powers to unveil a dark prophecy about a war between Baghdad and Chandra, one that can only be averted if they go to Colossa, seeing through this rather transparent ploy the Sultan orders Sokurah to leave the city under pain of death if he remains. That night Sokurah slips into the palace and casts a spell that shrinks the princess to the size of an action figure, and when her father discovers this, he tells the Sultan, “Look upon your city, enjoy the sight, for soon it will be rubble and bleach bone.” That may seem like an overreaction, but Sinbad takes it to heart and quickly races after the only man he thinks can solve this dilemma, Sokurah the sorcerer!

 

“Yes, I can help you, and to be totally clear, I didn’t cause this problem in the first place.”

Sinbad learns from Sokurah that the only cure for Parisa’s condition is a potion whose key ingredient is a piece of an egg from the shell of Giant Roc, that can only be found on the island of Colossa, and hey, isn’t that the same place Sokurah has been weaselling a journey to all this time? It’s at this point we come to the realization that Sinbad may be a great sea captain but he’s not all that bright because even a four-year-old could easily connect the dots. Let’s review, Sokurah the dark sorcerer wants to go to Colossa, but no one will help, dark magic shrinks the princess and the only cure is on the island of Colossa, gee I wonder if there is a connection? This is the only major stumbling block in an otherwise great adventure film, it just makes Sinbad look colossally dumb, but it does lead to a return trip to Colossa and all the cool action that follows. I’ll overlook a lot of faults if the end result is a battle with a two-headed roc, a fight between a fire-breathing dragon and a giant cyclops, and a finale that would pit Sinbad against a living skeleton.

 

The duel Sinbad has with the skeleton is pure cinematic gold.

Stray Observations:

• Sinbad’s marriage to Princess Parisa creates an alliance between two kingdoms, in the hope of preventing a war, but Sinbad is only “like a son” to the Caliph so I’m not sure how this works politically.
• When it comes to Grand Viziers or Magicians in the Tales of the Arabian Nights it’d be best to simply behead them on sight, that would save everyone a lot of grief.
• When Sinbad is told they need a piece of an egg from the shell of Giant Roc he immediately points out that this is “A monstrous bird that nests on the peaks of Colossa” which is a bit of an odd piece of knowledge for him to have considering he only briefly set foot on the island.
• More proof that the Sinbad of this film isn’t too bright is when learns from Sokurah that there have been mutinous mutterings from the crew and he simply blows it off stating “The weapons are safely secured and without swords or knives there is nothing they can do” but as 99% of the crew consists of death row inmates, they don’t really need weapons to be a threat.
• Torin Thatcher would again play an evil magician a few years later in Jack the Giant Killer which is pretty cool typecasting.
• Actor Richard Eyer may have been young, but he was no stranger to fantastic tales as he also starred in The Invisible Boy with Robby the Robot.
• Kerwin Mathews was also the star of Jack the Giant Killer and when you watch that film you will be shocked at how much more than just the stars they borrowed to make that movie.

 

I guess if you’re going to steal you may as well steal from the best.

With this film Ray Harryhausen was able to marshal all the skills as an animator and a storyteller that he had accrued over the years to create one of the best fantasy adventure films to date, years later this movie still holds up perfectly well, if you are able to look past the unfortunate Caucasian casting, and with Bernard Herman’s rousing score and Torin Thatcher’s pitch-perfecting turn as the villainous sorcerer there is a lot to love about this film and it’s one I can’t recommend enough. So, if you like high adventure and fantastic beasts, and want to know where to find them, then check out The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, you will not be disappointed.

Note: Ray Harryhausen often has his creation go out in a dramatic fashion, much akin to that of a dying opera singer, and like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms the fire-breathing dragon’s death is quite operatic.

Star Trek (2009) – Review

When the previous two Next Generation movies received a less than stellar reception at the box office Paramount Pictures fell back on the old tried and true solution for a flagging franchise, the ever-reliable reboot, but this particular reboot would get a bit of twist as it wouldn’t be a simple case of recasting young actors in the iconic roles, instead, it would be a rather larger resetting of the entire Star Trek universe, one that would create an entirely new and separate timeline for this series of movies to exist, a universe that director J.J. Abrams would populate with an exciting new take on the classic Trek characters as well as a shit load of lens flares.

Time travel is certainly nothing new to the Star Trek universe but with this entry it’s not so much used as a plot device as it is a mechanism to create the filmmaker's rebooted continuity. In the opening sequence, we jump right into the action as a strange and evil-looking ship is kicking the crap out of a Starfleet vessel. Onboard this ship is First Officer George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth), who is about to be a father to a baby who will become the legendary James T. Kirk, and it’s his final act of dying heroically, which not only saves his newborn child but the crew of his ship, is what causes the timeline divergence and sets up this whole Kelvin Timeline shenanigans. Without a strong father figure, a young Jim Kirk is a rebellious little shit who grows up to be a rebellious larger shit, this particular James Kirk (Chris Pine) hits on women, gets into bar fights and…wait a minute, that does kind of sound a lot like the Jim Kirk we all know and love.

 

“Who let the Gorns out?”

Sure, this version of Kirk is a bit more brash and headstrong than the one depicted by William Shatner but we are also introduced to him in his pre-Starfleet days, so it’s not hard to believe that the Kirk we knew, the one who never thought twice about putting his dick in a green alien or punching a Klingon in the face, wouldn’t have spent time macking on the ladies and getting into bar fights before venturing to the Final Frontier. The characterization of Spock (Zachary Quinto ) is a little further off-model than that of Kirk, as not only do we get to see him punching out fellow Vulcan children, who make the mistake of calling his human mother a whore, but once he reaches adulthood we find him in a serious relationship with Uhura (Zoe Saldana), even odder is that his violent streak is maintained to the point where it doesn't take much provocation for him to almost strangle Kirk to death.

 

He doesn’t even have the madness of Pon Farr as an excuse.

The rest of the cast of characters are kept closer to their television roots, with Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) being a crotchety med school cadet who hates space travel, while Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) are only given basic character traits – Chekov is easily excitable and Sulu likes to have a good swordfight – and when the group is eventually introduced to Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg) it’s pretty much treated like a family reunion, one with all the prerequisite in-fighting that one would expect from this crew. The USS Enterprise itself has the biggest character upgrade as not only does engineering look like a brewery – kind of fitting that Scottie would end up there – but the bridge looks like a glorified Apple Store.

 

I’m not sure how they can even pilot that ship amongst all those lens flares.

The plot of this reboot is fairly silly, with the mysterious ship that killed Kirk’s dad turning out to be a Romulan mining ship from the future, one that is captained by a nasty Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana) who really wants to see Spock suffer. And why is this?  Well, he blames Spock for the death of his homeworld and has chased him through time to get revenge, and sure, there’s stuff about "red matter" and chasing Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) through a black hole and it’s all rather ridiculous, but due to time delineation he arrives years ahead of Spock and is forced to wait around twenty-five years for Spock to eventually show up. Things get a little complicated when Nero encounters a young Spock and Kirk but being a time-travelling Romulan he rolls with the punches and gets his revenge mojo on. It should be noted that Eric Bana isn’t given much to work with here, he just broods a lot and occasionally snarls at the camera and his character literally makes no sense, nor can the very essence of his revenge plot survive even a couple of seconds of scrutiny. He’s evil and that’s about all we are supposed to care about.

 

“Hey Kirk, I killed your dad and now I’m going to kill Spock’s mom, is that evil enough for you?”

And exactly what was Nero doing during those twenty-five years that he was waiting for Spock to show up? If you check out the deleted scene you learn that George Kirk’s kamikaze run against Nero had damaged the Romulan supership enough so that it ended up in the Neutral Zone, where he and his crew were then captured by the Klingons and imprisoned, that is until their eventual escape twenty-five years or so later. This scene was jettisoned from the movie because not only would this have needlessly extended the film’s runtime but it also raised more questions than it answers.  Such as, "How did Nero and his crew escape? Did the Klingons park Nero’s ship in orbit around the prison planet so he could steal it back?" And if the Klingons had access to a vessel from the future wouldn’t that have resulted in the Klingons upgrading their own ships to the point where they'd have the technological superiority to take over the universe? All good questions that the screenwriters definitely didn't want to answer, so with the Klingon prison sequences jettisoned we are left to wonder what in the hell did Nero do to pass the time.

 

Note: I love that when it came to designing a mining vessel the Romulans decided to go with a Lovecraftian motif.

Stray Observations:

• In the film’s prologue Nero’s futuristically advanced ship is damaged by a lone Starfleet ship but then twenty-five years later it is somehow able to destroy an entire fleet without so much getting a scratch on its paint job.
• Nero’s ship is clearly not OSHA approved as it consists almost solely of platforms and stairways that have no handrails or guardrails in sight.
• Why would Captain Pike give the rookie helmsman’s the job of announcing their mission over the ship-wide intercom, especially when said helmsman has a hilariously bad Russian accent?
• An angered Spock orders, Kirk, to be shoved into an escape pod and sent down to a neighbouring planet, but was that the only option, does this new Enterprise not have a brig?
• This ice planet must be from the “Plot Convenience” sector of space because Kirk’s pod lands near where the Romulans had marooned Spock.
• Nero blames Spock and the Federation for the destruction of his people and their home planet but don’t the Romulans have to harbour some of that blame for some of this? According to this script, they just sat around on their planet hoping somebody else would come along and stop their sun from going supernova, how about evacuating to somewhere safe while you wait?
• Why does Nero even bother with this whole revenge plan against Spock and Starfleet, he now has time to warn his home planet of the impending supernova, wouldn't giving them a heads up be a better use of his time?
• Kirk is granted command of the Enterprise without even graduating from Starfleet Academy.

 

Kirk doesn’t get the girl in this film so they give him the ship instead.

The cast assembled for this reboot all do remarkably fine jobs with what they are given, and with this re-inventing of these iconic characters, J.J. Abrams brings some of his temporal shenanigans from his days on Lost to the world of Star Trek, in what is a rather clever tactic that gives him relatively free reign when it comes to shaking up the canon of one of the longest-running science-fiction franchises out there. In this first entry of the Kelvin Timeline we get a fun and exciting space adventure that has much to please both Trekkies and average fans alike, but do yourself a favour, try not to think too hard about the plot, you could sprain something.

20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) – Review

When it comes to Hollywood’s depictions of creatures from outer space, of which there are many, the aliens are mostly humanoid in form while arriving on a variety of spaceships, but in 1957 Ray Harryhausen and longtime collaborator Charles H. Schneer gave the world a different kind of visitor from outer space, a creature that was not bent on world conquest but simply wanted to go home, and nobody was letting him make a phone call.

Of all the Ray Harryhausen movies 20 Million Miles to Earth has one of the more dramatic openings, with a single-stage rocket crashing into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sicily, a couple of brave Italian fishermen entering the spacecraft to look for survivors, the tour of the doomed craft’s interior while glimpses of dead crew members add to the horror and suspense, and finally, its plunge beneath the waves never to be seen again. One must admit that’s a pretty good hook and it only gets better from there. As the plot unfurls, we get the young and industrious Pepe (Bart Braverman) finding a translucent cylinder that washed ashore from the wreck and then him selling its gelatinous contents to local professor of zoology Dr. Leonardo (Frank Puglia), so that he can buy a cowboy hat, and then the strange creature hatching to a very surprised professor.

 

“Should we call Ripley’s Believe it or Not?”

What makes this creature feature stand out from many of its brethren is the creature itself as Harryhausen brought so much empathy to his little clay model that you can’t help but side with it, this isn’t just a monster designed to rampage through a city, though it does get a nice rampage, this is a being that was yanked from its homeworld and thrust into an environment that it neither understands nor likes. This puts the Ymir in the same family as King Kong where any blame for citywide destruction falls on the idiot humans who brought him there in the first place – Note: The name Ymir was given to the creature by Harryhausen but is never mentioned in the movie – and when the beast is killed by the military, while wreaking havoc at the Roman Colosseum, it is a tragic ending and only the hardest heart couldn't help but feel saddened for the creature's demise. When the movie ends with one of the scientists stating, “Why is it always, always so costly for Man to move from the present to the future?” I couldn’t help but think, that maybe kidnapping a defenceless alien creature from his home isn’t the best way to move into the future.

 

Sure, he’s not exactly defenceless but you get my point.

And exactly why is the military so hot and bothered about capturing this monster? Turns out that scientists believe that the planet Venus is loaded with valuable minerals and they hope to study the physiology of the creature to find a way that will allow man can survive the harsh environs of Venus, which would allow them to do some good ole fashion mining and plundering of a world’s natural resources. America, fuck yeah! But one thing that isn’t made clear is how exactly they plan on using the biology of a Venusian animal to help humans live on Venus? Is there a mad scientist somewhere stateside setting up a lab where he will splice human DNA with the Ymir? If so, I want to see that movie.

 

“We need that creature in the name of exploration and commerce because we’re assholes.”

As with most science fiction/creature features of the era any plot, no matter the type, whether it be invading aliens or rampaging monsters, you must stick in a love interest and in the case of 20 Million Miles to Earth that comes in the form of Col. Robert Calder (William Hopper), the sole survivor of that expedition to Venus, who is put in charge of the hunt for the creature for some reason, but like any stock hero character he does make time for a love interest and for this film we get Marisa Leonardo (Joan Taylor) the daughter of the aforementioned zoologist and who is also a third-year med student, which results in Calder repeatedly calling her “Almost a doctor” because what kind of hero isn’t also an asshat? The most unfortunate aspect of many films by Ray Harryhausen is that as much praise as he deserves for his wonderful stop-motion creations, which he more than deserves, the same cannot be said about the actors forced to perform alongside these special effects, clearly, producer Charles H. Schneer knew that the money spent on effects was more important than paying for better actors and thus these films are mostly full of B-Movie actors of varying degrees of talent.

 

We all know who the real stars of these films are.

Stray Observations:

• At its nearest point Venus is 38 million miles distant from the Earth making the title of this movie a little off the mark
• The rocket hits the water nose first but remains sticking out of the water for quite some time, allowing the fishermen to explore the interior, but what stopped it from sinking immediately? Is the ocean floor off the coast of Sicily made of quicksand?
• The character of Pepe is the Italian equivalent of the annoying “Kenny” character who can be found in countless Godzilla or Gamera movies.
• General McIntosh states that “The atmosphere on Venus is such that a human being cannot breathe and survive for long, even after using what we considered foolproof respiratory equipment” but that’s understating things a little. Venus not only has an atmosphere 90 times more massive than that of Earth, consisting of yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid, but the surface temperature reaches upwards of 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead, which makes any plan to mine the planet for valuable minerals futile.
• The reporters are told that the creature has no heart or lungs but a network of tubes, which is why bullets were not effective, yet do we see its chest rise and fall in a breathing fashion. This is another case of scientists talking out of their collective asses.

 

“We have to hurry, Victor Frankenstein has this lab booked for the afternoon.”

The genesis of most of Ray Harryhausen's films starts with a simple premise that either he or his partner Charles H. Schneer would suggest to the other, whether that be a flying saucer or giant monsters, and then Ray would head off to the drawing board and work up some cool action sequences, once that was done a screenwriter would be brought in to connect these moments together in some form of cohesive plot, now, in the case of 20 Million Years to Earth that was screenwriters Bob Williams and Christopher Knopf who clearly never opened a science book in their lives as in every other scene in this movie we get a character spouting complete and utter nonsense.  This is all well and good because as audience members we're there to see a creature tear apart the Roman Colosseum and not get a realistic treatise on interstellar travel, so I can see why they weren't concerned with the fact that there's no veracity in the science being bandied about, and I can’t honestly say they weren't wrong.

 

“Damnit, I was promised a re-write in my contract!”

Ray Harryhausen’s 20 Million Years to Earth may have a fairly implausible plot and collection of third-rate actors giving a variety of cardboard performances but no one can deny the power and the majesty of the Ymir and it's the creature's tragic fate at the hands of these stupid humans that makes one wish we had an island where the likes of Kong, the Rhedosaurus and the Ymir could live in peace, but even though they all met horrible fates these stories they still live on in our hearts.

 

The Incredible Hulk (1977) – Review

With superhero shows exploding across various streaming services and network channels it’s almost hard to believe that a television program based on a comic book character would have been a hard sell, but in the 1970s there were only a few examples and very few worked, there was very successful Wonder Woman series with Linda Carter but that was after the failed attempt with Cathy Lee Crosby, and then there was the rather poorly constructed Amazing Spider-Man show and two failed Captain America pilots but in 1977 the world was also introduced to the dynamic duo of Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno in The Incredible Hulk in a series that took the comic book world a little more seriously.

When the head of Universal approached writer/director/producer Kenneth Johnson, the man who brought to the world The Six Million Dollar Man television show, the option of creating another action/adventure series only this time with a Marvel comic book character as the protagonist he wasn’t in the least bit interested, nothing about men in spandex appealed to him, but as he was reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable at the time the idea of taking a such a project and ingesting it with a little bit of Victor Hugo and a nice helping of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde you could build it into a nice psychological/drama and it all started to sound a little more intriguing and the rest, as they say, is history.

To say this series diverged from its comic book origins would be a vast understatement as aside from a scientist named Banner being bathed in gamma radiation, resulting in him transforming into a hulking green creature, there isn’t much in this show that can be found in the pages of Marvel Comics. Where the comic book protagonist was a physicist exposed to gamma rays during the testing of a gamma bomb, in this show, David Banner (Bill Bixby) is a medical researcher/physician who has become obsessed with people who have somehow displayed remarkable feats of strength during times of great stress. This obsession stemmed from his own failure to save his wife from a similar incident, an overturned and burning car, and it's his desire to find out why others could find the strength while he couldn’t is what drives him into reckless territories.

 

If only he had Lou Ferrigno on speed dial.

Banner is joined on his scientific quest for answers by colleague Dr. Elaina Marks (Susan Sullivan), who has secretly been in love with Banner for years, and their frustration over not being able to come up with a common denominator that links the people who have displayed extraordinary feats of strength is finally solved when the examine each of their individual DNA and discover that all of the subjects have an adenine and thymine content that is abnormal, but when they discover Banner has the same abnormality they are, once again, flummoxed as to why he failed to exhibit greater strength while those others could. Lucky for him, or unlucky depending on how you look at it, he eventually makes the connection that on the days that his subjects were able to tap into their dormant inner strength gamma radiation from the Sun was at peak highs, while conversely, on the day he could not save his wife, gamma radiation levels were at an all-time low. Excited but unable to reach his partner with the great news his only obvious solution was to run over to the radiology lab and dose himself with gamma radiation.

 

Not quite as thrilling as being caught in the blast of a gamma bomb but just as effective.

The origin of the Incredible Hulk was far from the only change that Kenneth Johnson orchestrated within his television adaptation, his creature was far from the immense powerhouse that was his comic book counterpart, wherein in the comics the Hulk could toss tanks with ease, as well as survive a tank shell exploding on his chest, in this small-screen incarnation the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) could uproot a tree just fine but tossing armoured vehicles through the air was not something you were going to see him perform on a weekly television show.  As for his comic book invulnerability, in the pilot episode, he is shot at by a concerned camper but instead of the bullet bouncing off impenetrable green skin he simply heals fast from the wound. Fans of the comic may have found this a tad disappointing but they should feel thankful that not all of Johnson’s changes were allowed. It seems that he had also wanted the Hulk to be coloured red rather than green, his reason for this being that red, not green, is perceived as the colour of rage, and he also thought red was a "human colour" whereas green was not. Lucky for us, Stan Lee firmly stated that this was not something that could be changed because of the Hulk's iconic image and thus he remains a jolly green giant.

Trivia Note: Later in the comics’ long-time nemesis Thunderbolt Ross would voluntarily transform himself into a Red Hulk in the hopes of avenging his dead daughter.

The pilot of this series began with a simple title card stating that “Within each of us, ofttimes, there dwells a mighty and raging fury” and that was a very adept and economical way to set up the basic premise of the show and when watching the pilot to The Incredible Hulk it becomes quite apparent that Kenneth Johnson was not going to give viewers a comic book television series but more grounded one, an emotional journey that would, of course, occasionally be interrupted by a large green monster-bashing through walls. Though it should be noted that we don’t get a lot of Hulk action in this Incredible Hulk movie and aside from intrepid yellow journalist Jack McGee (Jack Colvin), who was this show’s version of Inspector Javert from Les Miserable, there really isn’t really an antagonist for the Hulk to fight in the pilot as his transformations here are mostly caused by his anger fueled by frustration and not from being attacked, the idiot camper being the one exception.

 

“You and you alone can prevent Hulk transformations.”

For the rest of the series, David Banner would find himself being attacked by a variety of thugs and ne'er-do-well mobsters who are often running protection rackets, yet once Banner was tossed out of sight he would then transform into his giant green alter ego, in a scene that would inevitably have one of the antagonist decrying “Where’d he come from?” but in the case of this pilot movie, the story focused more on the drama of Banner’s guilt over the death of his wife and his burgeoning relationship with Elaina Marks and not so much on comic book heroics, a theme and format that Ken Johnson and Bill Bixby would try and instill into each and every episode. Even the creature itself was given more pathos here as it isn’t simply a rampaging monster yelling “Hulk smash!” in fact, this Hulk never speaks but simply growls, and though this was Lou Ferrigno’s first true acting job his performance here is excellent, and when he holds the dying Elaina in his arms it was a very touching moment.

 

“David, you’re getting green grease paint all over me.”

Stray Observations:

• Performing an untested and unsupervised experiment on yourself is right out of the mad scientist handbook, which calls into question just what kind of doctor is David Banner?
• The Hulk meeting a little girl by the lake is a nice nod to James Whale’s Frankenstein.
• Banner states that the glass in the windows of the hyperbaric chamber is six inches thick but when the Hulk puts his fist through one it’s clear that they are panes of regular thickness.
• Elaina and Banner talk of trying “X-Ray reversal” to reverse the process but I’m not sure how something like gamma radiation poisoning could be reversed and certainly not by something using X-Rays.
• The laboratory explosion was caused by the reaction of two agents accidentally mixed in the chemical storage room, which any scientist worth his salt would not have stored together which, once again, calls into question the type of people this institute hires.
• For the entire run of the series reporter Jack McGee hunts for the elusive Hulk, the creature being considered responsible for the death of both Dr. Elaina Marks and David Banner, but it was McGee’s trespassing and knocking over of the chemicals that caused the explosion, so he’s the one guilty of at least manslaughter, not the Hulk. Cue a five-year-long ironic manhunt.
• Banner is assumed dead and is given a grave marker next to Elaina’s grave, which is sweet, but wouldn’t it make more sense for him to be “buried” next to his late wife?

 

How did the funeral home figure out they were a couple?

What this pilot did that was rather unique, as was the case with the series that followed, was that it not only dealt with the dichotomy of man and what that would look like as a physical manifestation, but it also got to tackle some serious issues in the trappings of science fiction, which was not something often found on a network series during that period in time and not really seen since Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek left the air. Another interesting thing about The Incredible Hulk was that it could be as intelligent and dramatic as it needed to be at any given moment and then on a dime, it could turn into a big action-packed fun that would please the younger fans, making it a show that was accessible to all age groups, and sure, the clunky transformations and Lou Ferrigno’s dodgy green makeup can be a little humorous to a modern audience but the stories themselves are timeless and this pilot episode was the first step in taking the genre seriously.

 

"Mr. McGee, Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) – Review

When it comes to alien visitations the Earth must have a huge “Kick Me” sign posted on its backside because even peaceful aliens like Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still brought along threats of violence when he stopped by for a visit, but in 1956 special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen took up the mantle dropped by George Pal and his adaptation of War of the Worlds and give his own spin on things while also cashing in on the “flying saucer” craze that was sweeping the nation at the time, the result of this was the sci-fi classic Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.

The genesis of what would become Earth vs. The Flying Saucers began when producer Charles H. Schneer brought a clipping of a UFO sighting to his longtime collaborator Ray Harryhausen and posited the simple question “Would this make for a good movie?” Clearly, the answer was yes, and soon stop-motion animator and special effects wizard Harryhausen would be filling the skies of Washington D.C with a fleet of flying saucers. The plot is what would become the standard for alien vision stories with a group of plucky heroes banding together to figure out a way to defeat a scientifically advanced enemy but with Earth vs. The Flying Saucer, it was a rather small band consisting of scientist Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his new bride Carol (Joan Taylor) and a couple of characters they meet along the way. It is the character of Dr. Russell Marvin who first catches the eye of the alien invaders because he oversaw something called Project Skyhook, an American space program that was launching monitoring satellites into orbit, and it was his involvement that had them make first contact with him.

 

“Honey, why don’t you pull over and let them pass?”

Due to a communication breakdown, the aliens had not properly taken into account something called “Time Dilation” and thus their broadcast to Russell only came across as a loud hum, and this resulted in their supposedly announced arrival at Project Skyhook to be met with gunfire from the military. Now, normally this would be considered a case of the gun-happy military firing first and asking questions never but as it is later revealed that aliens had fled their own dying solar system in hopes of setting up shop on good ole Earth, whether the current inhabitants like it or not, that we would be engaged in a shooting war was a foregone conclusion. One of the more interesting aspects of Earth vs. The Flying Saucers is the fact that the aliens want peaceful dialogue with humanity only to prevent them from having to rule over a shattered and unruly planet. Basically, their attitude was “Please surrender to us so we don’t have to ruin the place as this would be an inconvenience.” These beings aren’t the stern aliens from The Day the Earth Stood Still, who wanted to warn humanity about the dangers of fooling around with atomic weapons, these aliens are more like unwanted house guests who will most likely eat you out of house and home, and possibly vaporize the cat.

 

“Nice planet you have here, shame if anything were to happen to it.”

Unlike the alien invaders found in the H.G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds these beings from another world, though weak and frail, were not going to keel over and die because of the common cold, which is why the heroic Dr. Russell Marvin must step up and help devise a weapon that can take down these hostile visitors. From the observations made by him and his fellow scientists, Marvin develops a counter-weapon against these flying saucers, a weapon that somehow negates the anti-gravity field that keeps the saucers aloft, and before you can say “Independence Day” the alien ships are falling into the Potomac and crashing into national monuments. It’s these scenes of mankind fighting back against the alien invaders that make this one of the more memorable entries in the genre, but what is interesting here is that most of the classic scenes of destruction in this movie are not due to the aliens attacking, instead, it's of them crashing out of control and dying.

Note: The destruction of national monuments in this film set up the formula of such alien destruction that would become a staple of the genre.

Stray Observations:

• Dr. Russell Marvin states he has “A date with a three-stage rocket” but the rockets in these launch scenes are clearly single-stage Viking and V2 rockets and are also not capable of launching satellites into orbit.
• Russell tells the General that they can’t postpone the launch because they are on a tight schedule but I’m sure information like “All your previously launched satellites have been destroyed” would have maybe altered that decision so the General is a bit of an idiot for not speaking up.
• When an outpost observer calls in that a flying saucer is approaching he is laughed off by the air control tower officer, but any craft violating military airspace would not be laughed at no matter what it looked like.
• You would think an advanced race of space travelling aliens would have worked out the bugs of “time differentials” before trying to communicate with the people of Earth.
• The military doubt that Russell and Carol actually saw flying saucers despite the fact that saucers have been seen flying at low altitudes over several major cities in broad daylight and causing public hysteria.
• The scene where they use the corpse of a dead alien to understand its technology is a direct lift from George Pal’s War of the Worlds.

 

"Please ignore our goofy spacesuits and focus on our cool flying saucers."

It’s clear that Ray Harryhausen and his flying saucers were the stars of this movie, with the great animator bringing personality and life to these whirring alien craft, but this is, even more, the case when you consider the fact that production cast Hugh Marlowe as the film’s protagonist, a man who is the acting equivalent of dry white toast. Marlowe has appeared in a couple of other notable science fiction movies over the years, such as the aforementioned The Day the Earth Stood Still and the time-travelling adventure World Without End, but his dry and unemotional delivery of dialogue tends to hamstring whatever film he is cast in. Now, in the case of The Day the Earth Stood Still he was playing the dickhead boyfriend of the lead female and thus us not liking him works in the film’s favour, but in this outing, he’s supposed to be the forceful leader who brings people together to combat the alien menace, unfortunately, what we get is a person who couldn’t rally a PTA meeting.

 

Revel in the vacancy that is Hugh Marlowe.

Setting aside Hugh Marlowe’s rather “non-performance” The Earth vs. The Flying Saucer is a perfect example of the genre being done well, with its cold and unemphatic aliens threatening global destruction, even if it is mostly delivered through the brilliant use of stock footage, and those wonderfully designed saucers had more character and personality than many a Hollywood villain and certainly more than poor Hugh Marlowe, and even though Ray Harryhausen himself wasn’t a big fan of this film, stating in his biography that this was the least favourite of his films, it’s still a fun and exciting example of the genre and well worth checking out.