ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

If you're not a member of All Sci-Fi, registration is easy. Just use the registration password, which is —

gort



Attention members! If you've forgotten your password, just email me at brucecook1@yahoo.com.
____________________________________________________________________

Everybody likes variety!

That's why millions of loving mothers buy their kids these for their school lunches each week.


__________


With that in mind, I hope you'll enjoying reading the posts below — like the one for the James Bond movie, Doritoes Are Forever!

Or the post that discusses Jack Arnold's classic, It Came from Outer Lays.

And of course, there's the classic sci-fi adventure from 1933, King Funyuns!
____________________________________________________________________

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)


The quality of the Connery films forms a lop-sided bell curve, in my opinion, with a sharp upward slant on the left side, and the peak at Goldfinger, after which the whole spy craze slowly faded.

It was a wild and wonderful time for a 16-year-old guy who was dating like there was no tomorrow and who desperately wished he could be as cool as a certain British secret agent who had gadgets in his car that did real practical stuff like spray oil on the road behind him and throw unwanted passengers through the sun roof.

I spent a few hours one Saturday evening in the mid-sixties constructing a handmade shoulder holster out of cardboard covered with electrical tape, attached to a strip of elastic I snitched from Mom's sewing box.

I secretly wore it to church the next day under the coat of my Sunday suit -- with a small starter pistol, the kind used for races. I don't remember where I got it -- but I still have it somewhere, complete with a three-inch piece of aluminum tubing taped to the top as a "scope".

A scope . . . on a pistol.

I'll dig it out soon and take a picture of it. You'll die laughing. But they can't arrest me for it, because I have a license to kill. I made it myself. ____________________________________________________________________

It Came from Outer Space (1953)

____

Jack Arnold directed this screen version of Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Meteor", about a crashed spaceship in the mid-western desert.

Overall, the story is pretty good, avoiding things that would later become clich??s, long before they even became clich??s. It's not an alien invasion yarn, it's an alien-in-distress yarn, and it gives us the most alien-looking aliens we've ever seen in a movie — even sixty-one years later. I mean, damn — just look at this guy!





And I promise you, we've never seen this creature head to foot (figuratively speaking) like it appears in THIS photo!



No arms or legs — much less hands — so apparently it floats around on pure brainpower, and it's got a 400 cubic-inch brain under the hood that would probably do zero-to-sixty in ten seconds flat!

And yet the FX guys gave it one big, wiggly-wobbly eye in the middle that makes the whole thing look thoroughly alive and wet-your-pants scary!

And since we never get to see the aliens as well in the movie as we do in these photos, I might be first person to ever ask this disturbing question . . .

What the hell is THIS thing?



How this creature managed to transform into a human within seconds is never even hinted at — but it can"t just be a hypnotic illusion, because Richard Carlson discovers that they stole clothes out of his closet, and we see the human version of Russell Johnson talking to the alien Russell Johnson, with the alien imposter wearing a pair of overalls it apparently found in the repair truck.

And yet a few seconds earlier that same alien's hand was smoky and transparent as it reached out towards Barbara Rush's shoulder before turning solid an instant later.

Admittedly we don't see the sleeve of the garment, so maybe they just needed the clothes for . . .

. . . for . . . ummm . . .

Okay, I got nothin'. Help me out, guys.

Anyway, the human characters are a nice assortment. Science writer Richard Carlson lives on the outskirts of a dried-up little town in an area that looks remarkably like the surface of those rocky earth-normal asteroids featured in Twilight Zone episodes.

Girlfriend Barbara Rush wins our foolish hearts in the first ten minutes with her flirtatious manner and her to-die-for face.





Charles Drake ("Tobor the Great") is the skeptical sheriff who can't figure out what's going on, but he wants to take immediate action anyway, just to be on the safe side. Russell Johnson plays both a human and an alien in his best sci-fi related role.



Bradbury's tendency to become a trifle too poetic is apparent in the dialogue when the characters wax philosophic from time to time, and frankly I wish they hadn't. When phone repairman Joe Sawyer stands on a ladder and tells us that the wind gets into the wires and talks from time to time, it's just a bit too ethereal for my taste.



The mushy scenes between Richard and Barbara at the beginning don't last long before a spherical spacecraft with a geodesic exterior ( -- and enough sparks falling off to give Smokey the Bear a stroke --) comes streaking down from the sky and smacks the desert hard enough to make a crater so deep that within a few weeks the little town will be organizing mule rides to be bottom, like they have at the Grand Canyon!





Stalwart old Richard, however, hikes to the bottom on foot without any assistance just to see . . . well, I have no idea what he expects to see, but what he does see is worth the trip — and it gives us the best scene in the movie.



That big door closing is a right good special effect, friends and neighbors, and it still impresses me every time I see it.



Richard has to beat a hasty retreat when a landslide starts, covering the ship. Frankly I've never been able to figure out how the spaceship managed to hit hard enough to make a crater that deep and then push itself sideways into the mine shaft it winds up inside.

After Carlson climbs out of the crater and tries to tell people what he saw, none of the local authorities believe his story about a buried spaceship filled with alien invaders.

_

The movie employs some impressive indoor sets that work really well. I found two behind-the-scenes photos that are very impressive.





And I found the picture below on a website that offered no info about it — such as, why it shows a distant explosion being observed by Carlson and Rush when there's no scene like this in the movie!



Many fans of Jack Arnold's sci-fi films consider this one his best. I was just five years old when it came out, so I wouldn't have appreciated it then, but if they'd released it around 1958 I would have watched it all the way through without blinking a single time.

And it certainly got the full Hollywood treatment when it was released, judging by the photo below. Wow, I'd love to hop back in time and attend this little shindig.



The climax is a sci-fi Hootenanny with all the trimmin's -- a glimpse inside an alien spaceship, and a showdown between our heroes and the high-minded nonhumans willing to blow themselves up to keep their dangerous technology out of our hands.





The special effects are credited to David S. Horsly and Clifford Stine, the art direction to Bernard Herzbrun, and the makeup to Bud Westmore. One of the original designs considered for the aliens was later used as the Mutant from Universal's This Island Earth.

The film was originally released in both 3-D and stereophonic sound. This explains why so many scenes look strangely composed. Objects occasionally fly towards the camera or seem to be pushed toward the audience. In 3-D, these scenes worked as novelty FX. The title work was designed to float a few feet in front of the screen.

The fine music is by Henry Mancini -- often credited to Herman Stein as the head of the studio's music department.
____________________________________________________________________

King Kong (1933)

I don't know what to make of this odd thing I noticed today while watching King Kong on TCM.

Denham seems to have TWO MAPS of Skull Island that he shows to Driscoll and Englehorn. He pulls the first one from his wallet, unfolds it, and lays it down in front of Englehorn.



We do not get a close up of what he puts on the desk until a few minutes later. The skipper looks down at it briefly, then says "Let's have a look at the big chart," and Denham says, "You won't find that island on any chart, Skipper."



He tells the two men about the captain who rescued the natives in the canoe and how the survivor described the island.

Seconds later, Denhams says, "Here's what the island looks like," and he picks up a folded piece of paper from the desk in front of him, to Englehorn's right.





He unfolds it just like he did with the map he took from his wallet, and he spreads it out on the desk. Then we get a close-up, but it's not the first map showing the island's position, it's the second one showing the island's appearance.



I just thought it was interesting that he pulls a map out of his wallet, showing the position of the island, and then — in the same shot without any edits — he picks up a second map of the island itself, which we get to see in the close-up.

But the really amazing thing I found today was this "deleted scene" from King Kong, which takes place on the ship after they've put Kong aboard.

I never knew this even existed!


_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)