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.
____________________________________________________________________

Welcome to the 1,072nd Saturday of the 21st Century. Gosh, it seems like just yesterday it was the 1,072nd Friday! My how time flies . . .

To celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime occasion, here's three classic sci-fi films from the middle of the 20th Century which suits this occasion to a T . . . and by an amazing coincidence, T just happens to be the letter all the titles start with! (Yes, folks, it's happened again. Creepy, huh? )

Just to demonstrate that adding a quick reply to a thread is both easy and fun for the whole family, I'm about to slap quick comments onto the posts below — without even knowing what they'll be!

My God, the suspense is killing me! I can't wait to read my replies after I finish them!
____________________________________________________________________

The Time Travelers (1964)

______

This is one of the best posters for a sci-fi movie from this era.

The movie gets off to a rousing start with some gorgeous title credits in dramatic block letters against colorful space backgrounds — very 1950-ish. And the rest of the film is enjoyable if you don't judge it too harshly for looking so much like an episode of "The Time Tunnel".

Director Ib Melchoir has a painfully static way of shooting scenes, holding the camera on uninteresting scenes for far too long. But the story (written by Melchoir himself) really has fun with the time travel concept. And the manner in which he gets his characters from the present to the future is both interest and funny.

They walk.

Scientist Preston Foster and crew open a "time window" in their lab. The window looks like a big view screen, showing a sunlit deser. The scientist simply step through into the future 107 years hence.

But once they are on the other side, the "window" collapses, trapping them in a post-atomic-war world where an underground complex protects the survivors from the murderous mutants on the surface. Androids (portrayed by actors in simple but effective makeup) help the survivors build a rocket in which they hope to escape the ruined Earth.

The scenes showing routine android repair (replacing heads, etc.) are clever, but their purpose in the film is a bit too obvious ("See, folks? These aren't just actors, they're androids!").

Forrest J. Ackerman has a minor role as a technician. The same basic plot was given a less satisfying treatment just three years later in 1967's "Journey to the Center of Time". ____________________________________________________________________

The Tingler (1959)



The master trickster of the cinema, producer-director William Castle, is the guiding force behind this unique little experiment in audience involvement.

A doctor (Vincent Price) makes a startling discovery concerning human physiology when he learns that a large insect-like creature grows on the spinal cords of people when they become terrified.

The creature is destroyed the instant the victim screams. But if they don't scream . . . the creature grows larger and larger inside the host body until it causes death by pinching the nerves.

Price captures one of the Tinglers by scaring a deaf-mute woman until the Tingler is a fat lump along her back, then he surgically removes the huge wiggling thing. Naturally it gets loose, but the novelty comes from the fact that (gasp!) it gets loose in a movie theater!

In fact, it gets loose in your theater -- the very one in which you're watching this movie!!

On screen, Vincent looks out at the audience and says, "The Tingler is loose in this theater! Scream or you'll die! Scream for your life!"

This is where the newest Hollywood gimmick comes in -- "Percepto". Selected seats in some theaters were actually wired with oversized buzzer units which startled the audience. Some theaters even placed bogus patrons in the audience who pretended to faint and were then carried out by the ushers.

Many people today still remember this movie with fondness and admiration ( . . . and they always check under their theater seats for hidden wires).
____________________________________________________________________

Tobor the Great (1954)

_____

* Note the sneaky blurb at the top of the poster. Tobor is carrying an unconscious woman in elegant clothes, and the slogan suggests he's got lecherous motives!
_______________________________________

Watch this one with child-like eyes and you'll have a great time. "Tobor the Great" is a terrific kid's-fantasy-come-true.

Tobor ("robot" spelled backwards) is the invention of an elderly scientific genius who develops a robot to serve as a pilot on dangerous space flights in place of astronauts.

The inventor's grandson (Billy Chapin) befriends the robot during the development of its complex brain and artificial personality. Commie spies kidnap the inventor and the boy, attempting to get their hands on the valuable robot.

Tobor is incapable of speech, which gives the robot an interesting quality of mystery and strangeness. But he does have the ability to sense human thoughts and emotions — he can tell when someone is up to no good! In the climax, Tobor has to break out of his own lab to rescue the boy from the evil commies who kidnapped the youth to gain control of the robot.

Tobor's physical design is pretty impressive. Although he doesn't have the aesthetic appeal of Robby or Gort, he is solidly constructed and a pleasure to watch in action. Although Tobor is less agile than a human being, he moves around much better than Robby or Gort — which comes in handy when Tobor has to lift the back end of the bad guys' car and prevent them from escaping!

The movie includes a scene in which the inventor opens Tobor's chest to show his interior to a group of reporters when Tobor is presented to the public. Obviously the reason for the scene is to show the audience that this is no mere suit with a man inside. It's a real robot!

It's a nice little touch in a movie designed to inspire younger viewers . . . and to entertain older ones.

The direction by Lee Sholem is decidedly unskilled, and young Billy Chapin is a mediocre actor at best (he's no Michel Ray of 'The Space Children', I'm sorry to say), but Charles Drake holds his own as the boy's father. William Shallert plays one of the reporters in the scene mentioned earlier.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)