ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

If I claimed that Topper was a science fiction movie, you folks would think I was crazy!

Well, I there's no doubt that I am crazy, but the idea has more merit than you might think. Consider the way the comical premise of this movie is presented.

Free-wheeling and fun-loving George and Marion Kirby are racing along a winding country road in their futuristic 1936 Buick Roadmaster (with a big tail fin) —





— at a very unsafe speed when they miss a tight curve, crash through a wooden fence and smack into tree.

We see the car on its side and the Kirby's lying on the ground, unconscience but not visibly injured.





But translucent images of the couple rise up and sit down on a nearby log without noticing their bodies on the ground. When they finally do, they contemplate the fact they seem to be dead.





However, this is the closest the movie comes to anything remotely religious — and that only occurs in the first moments when George and Marion gaze at their own bodies near the wrecked car and assume that they're dead. Briefly they wonder if they’ve done enough “good deeds” to go a nice place, although never refer to the place as “heaven” name.

Right here is when it occurred to me that this movie might not be about two dead people at all! It might actually be about two physical beings who experienced a traumatic event which caused their non-corporeal essence to disconnected from their physical bodies!

Well heck, that might be what death really is, according to religious beliefs. But the movie ;handles the concept in a very different way.

Topper buys the Kirby's amazing car after they've passed away, but when he takes it out for a drive he gets a flat tire and runs off the road at the very spot where the Kirby's had their wreck.





Topper is shocked and confused when the disembodied couple speak to him while they’re still invisible, and then materializing before his eyes,

But they tell him they have a limited amount of "ectoplasm" they can use to make themselves visible. Marion asks him if she can “save some of her energy” by becoming invisible again while they chat.





George volunteers to change the flat tire on Topper's car, and before doing so he says, "Well, I'm darned if I'm going to waste any ectoplasm while I'm doing it!"

What follows is a fantastic special effect which shows the entire tire-changing process while George is invisible. He pulls out the spare tire, jacks up the car, removes the flat, and puts on the new tire!


[img]https://i.imgur.com/TML0wba.png]


Frankly none of these elements of the story sound quite like the acts of “ghost” as much as the acts of “non-corporeal beings”.

But wait . . . there's more.

Later in the movie, this “energy” is frequently used to give themselves physical substance. It allows them to be completely "real" to the people around them!

The best example of this occurs when an intoxicated Topper is supported by George and Marion as he stumbles through the lobby of the Kirby's ritzy apartment building and helped into the car at the curb. A group chauffeurs standing on the sidewalk come over after the trio get into the car, although the Kirby’s are still invisible.

One off the men makes a remark that Topper objects to, and he punches the guy! When all the chauffeurs attack Topper, the Kirby’s become visible and wade into the fight to rescue Topper!







Another example of the Kirbys doing things that are more "non-corporeal" than "ghostly" is the way they couple occasionally change clothes — but not by just “wishing themselves” into a different appearance.

Before going out together for the evening, George tells Marion, “Wait a minute while I dissolve into a suit”, then he dashes upstairs to his bedroom briefly and returns wearing a suit he took form his closet.







Obviously the idea that George and Marion Kirby are just "ghost" is not consistent with the evidence presented by this imaginative movie — such as the way they can appear to other people at will, communicate with the folks around them, and do normal human things like driving cars and changing cloth.

Folks, I’m just having fun with the notion that Topper breaks all the rules that normally apply to ghost stories. And yet it does seem to follow the rules concerning non-corporeal life forms if they have special abilities.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Of course you remember the TV version with Jan Sterling and Leo G Carrol ( TARANTULA and MAN FROM UNCLE.) . That's where I first became familiar with TOPPER. I really vividly remember sitting on the rug in front of our 19 inch Philco wondering if there really were ghosts around us...watching everything we do! Boy, talk about a guilt trip! Just don't shake it more than three times! You never know who's watching! (If it was Jan Sterling I hope she was impressed!)
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

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In a parallel universe there's a world populated by ghosts like the Kirbys that are haunted by living people who used to be ghost. But they reached the end of their ghostly existence . . . . and became alive!

Then they haunted their relatives and friends.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)