PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 421

Back to scrounging movies off of YouTube today. Taking a break from Supermarionation before tackling the last puppet series. First up was Lost: Black Earth, a dull SF story about some people on a future earth taken over by aliens. It's a 2004 Australian movie, though barely 48 minute long, that spends most of it's time wandering about in the countryside. That might be nice but it's rather uninterestingly filmed and the people in the frame add an additional level of boredom that makes it less fun to watch. It scores a remarkable 4.5 on the IMDb, at least until you look at the mix of votes. It received ten votes each for 1 and a 10. That's 20 out of 68 votes for one or the other. Forty two of the votes fall in the 1-4 range so I think you know where the votes really should fall. No matter, just don't bother.

Next was Spaceflight IC 1, a 1965 British film about a spaceflight to another planet. The Earth has become crowded and they want to see if they can set up another place for humans. There are 4 couples, 4 kids and 4 more adults frozen for later use. After a year one of the women gets a fatal pancreatic infection and the Captain won't turn the ship back. When the Captain won't let her have another child she kills herself. Some of the crew rebel and lock the Captain up. One of the other men lets the Captain out. The rest of the crew can't believe it when the Captain plans to execute the Doctor who locked him up. The Captain orders the Doctor to unfreeze the Doctor in storage so he can be replaced when he's executed. Nice guy, that Captain, and I didn't mind much when the unfrozen Doctor killed him. He'd unthawed poorly and his brain was damaged. He died minutes after killing the Captain. The ship continues. The movie is over.

It's a Robert Lippert film, one of the batch he did in the UK, and like many of his movies it's not quite good enough. It was filmed at Shepperton Studios. The script is by Harry Spalding, writing under the name Henry Cross, and it wasn't that great a script. The director was Bernard Knowles who had worked on a fair bit of TV after making about a dozen movies. He worked on the 1950s British Robin Hood series, Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and The Buccaneers. Most of those episodes are much more entertaining than this film. He's also the uncredited director of The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour.

Science Fiction Sunday 420

I got Destination Planet Negro from the library and decided to watch it today. It's science fiction.

It's got space ships, robots, time travel and Negros. It's 1939 and some black men have built a rocket ship that they want to take to Mars so the black man can have a home of his own. The rocket takes off and the three astronauts wind up in the future. They interact with the people of our 2013 world and have some adventures.

It's well made, good actors, and a good script. Kevin Willmott is the writer and director of the movie and he plays the professor at George Washing Carver University who takes the trip with his daughter and their pilot. Kevin does a great job. It's got a nice sense of humor, some good social commentary, and a happy ending. Well, happy for the black and red man, not so much for the redneck racist asshole and the Uncle Tom's. I'd highly recommend it.

Science Fiction Sunday 419

I finished the last disc in the Joe 90 series today. I watched them at a fast jog so I could get done with them quickly. These last episodes are about the same as the others. I was glad to be done with it but didn't hate it or anything. It was just not as entertaining as I had hoped it would be.

Keeping in mind the Supermarionation theme already established I decided to watch the first 2 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000's KTMA season. For the longest time the first 3 KTMA episodes have been lost. All the rest had been taped by one person or another. It's too bad the guys making the show didn't save high quality archive copies. In the 1st episode we get a look at Invaders from the Deep and in the 2nd we've got Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars. Both are Gerry and Sylvia Anderson films complied from episodes of Stingray and Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons. The 1st episode aired November 24 1988 and the 2nd a week later. The 3rd episode hasn't been found yet.

Invaders from the Deep is complied from the Stingray episodes Hostages of the Deep, The Big Gun, Emergency Marineville, and Deep Heat. Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars is compiled from the Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons episodes Shadow Of Fear, Lunarville 7, Crater 101 and Dangerous Rendezvous. I liked Stingray better than CSATM but stringing a series of random episodes together doesn't make much of a movie. Each series had two compilation movies but I don't see the others on YouTube and they weren't included in either show's DVD release. They did have VHS releases back in the 80s, you can see the covers of these two above.

The KTMA MST3K episodes are a bit raw. In the 1st episode Joel intros the show and then goes off to watch the movie. He doesn't arrive for a while and all we see is the movie and the seat silhouette. He doesn't say much of anything after he does get settled in, then there's a break where we get introduced to Crow. There's no Tom Servo yet, he won't appear until the 2nd episode. In this series Tom Servo is silver in color and he's voiced by Josh Weinstein. Kevin Murphy won't take over for a couple more years. I always found Kevin's Tom to be more entertaining. In the second movie segment Crow joins Joel watching the movie. It takes a while before they start commenting. I guess they wanted to ease everyone into the process.

They still have long gaps between comments in the 2nd episode. It's Thanksgiving and Joel is making a cornucopia in Gypsy's mouth. Tom Servo joins Joel and Crow in the theater. Like the other available KTMA episodes the jokes are a bit weak, this is compared to the later episodes, but some of them made me laugh a bit. Not out loud though. The host segments are OK, Joel does some prop gags and talks with the bots. This early on there isn't any interaction with the "guys at the station" who sent him a fax with the movie details. You can see most of the MST3K episodes on YouTube if you look a bit.

Science Fiction Sunday 418

Joe 90 disc 3 has 8 more episodes. I did just read on the IMDb that the series never aired in the US. I know we had it in Canada because we watched it as kids. Joe goes on more missions for the World Intelligence Network. Big Rat puts the Knowledge & Experience of an explosive expert, an expert balloonist, a safe cracker, a jet pilot and more into the our pint size spy.

Joe 90 gets the K&E of a racing car driver and joins his dad and their WIN handler Sam in a race against a speedy military vehicle. Neither of the vehicles look that great in my eyes. They do use some footage of real mountain roads as the view out the vehicles windows.

There are two dream episodes, one of which is set in the American West. Joe's the sheriff and when he asked for a milk on the rocks his drink comes with no ice in it. Did they not know what on the rocks meant?

Oh, well, nothing too special about any of the episodes on this disc either. There's only the one disc to go then I think I'll watch something else for a while.

Science Fiction Sunday 417

I spent some more time with Joe 90 today and didn't find the second disc much more entertaining than the first. Joe has 7 adventures this disc and he gets into some big scraps working for World Intelligence Network. They aren't the best employer that's for sure. The guy who's Joe's contact with WIN, a guy called Sam, is supposed to be a pal of Joe's dad but he's sure willing to lie and cheat to get Joe into some scraps. He sends Joe on vacation with the wrong imprint, a military weapons expert instead of a surf boarder's experience. Then he follows Joe and his dad to the vacation spot he recommended and gets Joe to go on the mission by screwing up their vacation. Why Joe or his dad would trust Sam after that I can't figure.

That's the office of Sam's boss, it looks like the corner of a crappily designed ballroom in a shitty hotel. What were the designers thinking. Hadn't they been in an office before.

Some of their other buildings look better on the outside. It doesn't help the stories much but at least I have something to look at. The new puppets were smaller, lighter and more humanly proportioned. The problem was that they were difficult for the puppeteers to handle and they don't move the characters around much. Often walking is from the waist up with the puppet looking like it was being moved on a dolly or something. Just adds to the disappointment. Only two more discs to go.

Science Fiction Sunday 416

I'm back watching more Gerry Anderson programing with the first disc of Joe 90. I watched this show when it was new in 1968 but I didn't have that good an opinion of it. Now that I watched the first 8 episodes I still don't have that good an opinion of it.

The 1st episode is the origin story. Joe is a 9 year old boy that his scientist dad uses in his experiments. He has a good invention but it has some stupid limitations. The machine on the left is used for extracting, recording, storing and transferring knowledge and experience from one person to another. To get the that out of someone all they have to do is point a small antenna at the person, and zap, all the knowledge and experience are on tape in that machine.

To get them into Joe, he's the one the machine's chair was designed for, they have to sit him in the chair and spin that big ball like thing around him. Once the knowledge and experience are into his head they only stay there while he has some electrodes attached to his temples. In the field Joe has to wear some special glasses with built in electrodes. In one episode Joe has to play the piano like someone and after scanning that guy Joe can tickle the ivories just like him.

Joe and his father live in that nice little thatched cottage. The thatch is made from human hair. Under the house they have the secret lab that houses the BIG RAT (Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record And Transfer) machine. A friend of Joe's dad works at the World Intelligence Network and he gets dad to send Joe off on missions for the agency.

In each episode Joe is sent off with the knowledge and experience of someone else. Above Joe hides in a crate of small arms so he can be smuggled into the bad guy's storage area. Then he can signal where it is so WIN can come and arrest everyone. I suppose that homing beacons are pretty pricey. For a 9 year old Joe seems more than capable of handling any situation, even murder. In that same episode Joe has a gun battle with the arms dealer and blows up some other guy with a grenade. The missions aren't always quite as dangerous, in one episode Joe gets the memories of a surgeon and preforms a special operation, in another Joe helps break up his dad and his spy girlfriend's relationship.

Joe's dad has a goofy looking flying car, the show is set in 2012 or 2013, so you've got to expect that sort of thing. Not all the vehicles are that goofy, some are OK, but some are poor. Sets and scenery is pretty good. Some of the buildings are interesting for their shapes. It's a well enough made show and the puppets are pretty good. Like the Captain Scarlett puppets the Joe 90 puppets have more human proportions.

In The Unorthodox Shepherd episode the production uses an actual church to film in. They even film the puppets on location. It's all very weird. Kind of like the show. I wish I found the thing more entertaining and not just because I bought the set. It didn't get great ratings when it came out and I can see why. I'm still liking Supercar the best. Only 3 more discs to watch.

Science Fiction Sunday 415

Einstein's God Model is a 2016 movie about a guy who loses his fiance and tries to contact her with a magical device made by a dead scientist. He's all driven and unwilling to give up on his dead fiance. He connects up with a couple of guys who worked with the dead scientist and they have a lot of conversations on psychics and other dimensions. It's a well enough made movie but kind of slow moving. It's all sad and there's way too much yakkin' among all the characters. Speaking of talking I just don't buy into the talking to the dead so much. Not too interesting to me. I kind of started speeding up the movie to get to the end quicker. I'd give it a miss if I were me.

The Second Best Science Fiction Movie Ever Made isn't. It's not even in the top 1000 best SF movies ever made. It is a 2010 release that the IMDb says was made in 1996. It is about some astronauts that were kidnapped by aliens, taken to a planet where they had a great time but caused problems. None of the characters is very likeable so I had no one to root for. The aliens got tired of the astronauts fighting and have returned the astronauts to the Earth so they can fight it out. It lacks a good script, the scenes seem rather disjointed and unconnected to each other at times. It's kind of dull on top of that. I didn't really need to see it and I wouldn't recommend it.

Alien Strain is a 2014 film about an alien abduction. A couple is camping when the woman disappears. The man searches for her and a year later she returns. She's different and her body has open sores on it. The movie jumps around in time, the man is in a mental institution in some scenes and he tells the doctor most of the movie in flashback scenes. It wasn't clear for a while what was going on. It's the first film from writer director team Robert Benavides Jr and Andy Palmer. They've mostly been production people. With a bit more practice, and a better script, they might wind up with  better films in the future. They produced a decent looking film, mind you they had a $2,000,000 budget, but the story lets me down. I gave it a 4 on the IMDb for having an interesting concept.

Science Fiction Sunday 414

P-51 Dragon Fighter is a 2014 movie that's directed by Mark Atkins. I thought his name was familiar and sure enough I had seen his Asylum movie Merlin And The War Of The Dragons fairly recently. It was pretty poor. He works for The Asylum a lot. He's responsible for directing that company's Princess Of Mars and Battle For Los Angeles. Mark is often a cinematographer and editor. The movie is set in World War II and the German's have gotten hold of some dragon eggs and gotten robed women to manipulate them mentally and with song. The dragons fight the fighter planes and ground troops effectively. Rommel doesn't want the dragon's to exist because he believes a prophecy that says the dragons will destroy the world. He opens a door for the Allies bomber mission to take out the nest and kill all the unborn dragons.

It's a technically well made video that fails, like efforts from The Asylum often do, in the CGI. It's their weakest link. I have to admit that I like the idea of swastika wearing Nazi dragons and I also have to admit that that dragon in the screen capture just isn't that great. The effects look even poorer during the night scenes with the dragons and P-51s. Apparently the planes used in t he film were the wrong planes. They used the P-51D's when they should have been the P51A's. I don't know if that's right, it was on a forum on the movie's IMDb page, but I know people are often anal about that sort of detail so it could be true. I also know that they wouldn't have had a black pilot in the group which the movie depicts. Still there's dragons so you can't expect historical accuracy. All in all not a great film but sort of watchable. I helped it along by fast forwarding some of the dull parts. It scores a 2.8 on the IMDb but I gave it a 3. Mostly for the swastika's on the dragon's wings.

Lifeform is another movie from Amazon Prime. A space probe has returned to the Earth and it brings something back. It's a 1996 movie written and directed by Mark H Baker. It's Mark's only director job. He also wrote the story for Flight Of The Navigator. He has no other credits on the IMDb. The story is about the Mars lander returning to Earth with an alien life form on it. It gets out of the lander and into the base. The scientists want to capture the critter and the military guys aren't too keen on that especially after the critter shows it's got some defenses. Men die. It's much better than the previous film but still not much more than barely average. It's got a kind of weak ending which I read online was due to running out of money near the end of production. That sort of thing happens. It's not something I would feel I need to see again. I did like the critter somewhat.

On The Shoulders Of Giants is a 2012 British low budget film that cost $6180 to make. That's pretty cheap, huh.The director is Kenneth D Barker. The movie is set about 300 years in the future and there is space travel and alien contact. A ship with a new space drive is on a maiden voyage. There first mission is to track down the Leviathan, a ship that used an earlier version of the same drive. It got lost 15 years earlier. They have some trouble with their ship along the search but they do luck onto the Leviathan. It's not a bad story but the script has some so-so dialog. There's a lot of cheap looking CGI and weak visual effects. I got bored after a while and started fast forwarding when it got dull. It's a 112 minutes and it could have been cut by 20 minutes and still work well. The movie hasn't had 5 votes at the IMDb so it didn't have a rating yet. I gave it a 4 because I thought a 3 was a bit low. It's got a good idea but a weak execution.

Science Fiction Sunday 413

The last disc of Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons has the final 8 episodes of the series. It only lasted the one series and they were onto the next project. I'll be checking out Joe 90 starting next week. Like Captain Scarlet I had seen Joe 90 back when it was new but I have no actual recollection of it, other than the vague memory of not liking it that much. I liked SCATM better than Joe 90 back then but I've not been impressed with the series as I revisit. I'll see how I like Joe 90 in th near future.

Flight 104 has the Mysterons trying to sabotage a meeting with an agenda on the Human's return to Mars. The Mysterons Captain Black drugs the crew and the Mysteron's take over the plane. Captain Scarlet gets control of the plane but dies in the crash landing. He'll be OK next week.

Noose Of Ice has the Mysterons attack an arctic mining operation. The mine is floating on the ice at the North Pole. The Human's are mining a made up element that they need for their spaceships so they can return to Mars faster. The Mysterons cut the power to the mine and the ice starts to close in.

Don't worry Captain Scarlet will get things hooked up again. He does get shot but manages to save the mine before he croaks it. We see the Mysteron agent electrocuted on some metal stairs. That's quite the sight.

Codename Europea has the Mysterons using a scientist to attack some European politicians.

Flight To Atlantica has the Mysterons going to eliminate Atlantica. The staff of Spectrum get into trouble for hosting a non-alcoholic champagne party for the 1 year anniversary of the organization. The champagne came as a gift. Colonel White is a hard ass and not really much fun but he's right since the champagne turns out to be doctored somehow and that effects the Spectrum agents. Only Colonel White and Captain Scarlet didn't have any champagne and they aren't acting strange. You'd think an organization like that would check gift champagne through their security system. Sadly the disorganized pilots cause some damage.

Treble Cross has the Mysterons threaten to destroy Futura City, the world's Capital. Captain Black kills a pilot in a car crash and after he leaves with the reconstituted pilot some doctors find the crash site and restore the real pilot to life. The fake pilot tries stealing an armed bomber but crashes. Spectrum finds out about the real pilot in the hospital and tries to use him to trick the Mysterons.

Attack On Cloudbase has yet another attack on the Spectrum HQ. Symphony Angel has crashed in the desert and Captain blue wants to go help find her because he's in love with her. Colonel White says he can't go because of the high alert on the base. The Mysterons have come to Earth in their ships and they attack Cloudbase. Disappointingly it was all a dream in the head of the crashed Symphony.

The Inquisition is a clip show. Captain Blue has disappeared for three months and upon his return he tells an Intelligence Officer some stories from other episodes. Turns out they were Mysteron agents and Captain Blue had only been drugged for a while. Captain Scarlet comes to rescue him.

Inferno is the last episode and the story doesn't have any sort of ending. The Mysterons try to destroy an irrigation complex in South America.

Now that I've seen the whole series I am sort of disappointed. They productions get better technically but the stories remain weak. I've got a feeling that I'm going to keep on being disappointed with them upcoming programs in the Supermarionation world. We shall see.

Science Fiction Sunday 412

The third disc of Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons has another 8 episodes to watch.

The Trap is about the Mysterons setting another trap to assassinate Earth's military commanders. It happens at that big castle. Captain gets killed putting a stop to the evil plot.

Model Spy has Spectrum find out that the Mysterons want to kill and replace a French intelligence chief. Colonel White sends Captain Scarlet and a couple of the Angels to act as security. Captain Black kidnaps the French guy but Captain Scarlet has slipped a homing device on him.

Dangerous Rendezvous takes place after Crater 101 but of course the DVD set has jumbled the episodes around. The Mysterons threaten Cloudbase, the Spectrum HQ. Spectrum has a device to finally communicate with the Mysterons.

Special Assignment is about the Mysteron plot to destroy the North American continent, starting with Nuclear City. Rather an unattractive place, huh. Captain Scarlet goes undercover to try to get to the men at the center of the plot.

Place Of Angels has the Mysterons after a deadly virus.

Crater 101 is the location of the Mysteron complex on the Moon. Spectrum wants to destroy the place and Captain Scarlet and pals invade.

Expo 2068 has the Mysterons planning to attack the Atlantic Seaboard of North America. A nuclear reactor is being shipped and Spectrum think that it's a target. They are right, it's already been stolen by the Mysterons.

Traitor has the Mysterons tell Spectrum that there is a traitor in their midst. They use a big clip from the first episode as Captain Blue tells a tale to other Spectrum Agents in Australia.

Like Captain Scarlet I'll remain ever vigilant, at least until the end of the series next week. There's a short featurette on the writers of the show.