ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Presented here for your perusal, a story about a doctor with a secret, a Vulcan who's missing, and a discussion about the design of Romulan/Klingon warships.





Pick one and reply to it or you'll never be considered an honorable Klingon (assuming that would be bad a thing by your way of thinking.)
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Dr. Renault's Secret (1942)

Here's a demonstration in how to come up with new posts for All Sci-Fi to keep it from dying out like so many other messages have done since I first created the original version of this one in 2006.
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First, look for the full movie on YouTube and post it in the deluxe style I do. Like this!

__________ Dr Renault's Secret 1942 Full Movie


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Then simply copy-and-paste Wikipedia's spoiler-laden synopsis and prove that my initial comments on this move are guilty of selling this interesting movie short!

While doing that, you can have fun "revising" the Wikipedia synopsis by fixing its typos and adding the punctuation and paragraph breaks the all seem to desperately need!

That's what I did with the one below.
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A young doctor named Larry Forbes (Shepperd Strudwick) arrives in a French village in order to wed the niece of prominent local doctor, Dr. Renault (George Zucco).

Dr. Forbes learns from the innkeeper that a storm has washed out the bridge to Renault's house, and he ends up spending the night at the inn. There he meets most of the film's main characters, including Dr. Renault's strangely deformed man servant, Noel (J. Carrol Naish).

It is during the night that the first of the murders occurs. Another tourist takes a room in the Inn and is killed mysteriously!

The next day, Forbes travels to the house of Dr. Renault, where he is reunited with Renault's pretty young niece, Madeline (Lynne Roberts).

A sequence of strange events, including an incident in which Noel is viciously attacked by a stray dog that Madeline picked up, convinces Forbes that there is something unusual about Noel, but he does not know what it is.

Also, it quickly becomes clear that Noel is interested in Madeline as well. (Uh-oh . . .)

Renault confronts Noel, and it is revealed that his man servant is actually an experiment — an animal given the physical and mental characteristics of a man. Fearing for Forbes' life (as well as his own), Renault locks Noel in a cage, but the former animal is able to use his strength to escape and follows Forbes and Madeline to a carnival.

There he is heckled by a pair of villagers — who are promptly murdered in their homes!

Forbes' suspicions increase, and he sneaks into Dr. Renault's laboratory. There he finds a book detailing the experiments Dr. Renault carried out to transform Noel from an ape into a man. Renault catches Forbes reading his notes and threatens to kill him if he reveals the truth to anyone.

But Noel sneaks up on the both of them, and he kills Dr. Renault!

In the closing sequence, Madeline is abducted by her gardener, an ex-convict named Rogell (Mike Mazurki), and Noel pursues them. After a lengthy chase, Rogell shoots Noel. Before succumbing to his wounds, Noel strangles Rogel.
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Right after doing this, I discovered that the new YouTube version I posted above is stretched horizontally — something I really hate! But the Double Feature version I posted earlier looks terrific!

After watching a few scenes from the latter part of this movie, I realized that this sci-fi story from FOX is considerably more to my liking than many of the old Universal horror movies, with all those non-sci-fi vampires and mummies!

Having said that, I'm now tempted to check the 2nd feature on the Double Feature version which YouTube offers — The Undying Monster! ]
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Star Trek: The Search for Spock (1984)

IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ When negotiating Kirstie Alley's contract for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Paramount Studios did not offer or include any options or clauses regarding any possible sequels. According to director Leonard Nimoy, this left Alley open to negotiate a new contract for this film, resulting in Alley's excessive salary demands, which led to her being dropped and replaced by Robin Curtis.

Note from me: Although she's a competent actress, Kirstie is not exactly Sarah Bernhardt, and her performance as Saavik, a Vulcan, was a bit beyond her ability. Sadly, Robin Curtis was no better. Just cheaper to hire . . .

~ Production was endangered by the great fire at Paramount Studios. William Shatner helped fight the fire and rescue a crew member before firefighter reinforcements arrived.

Shatner said that his motivation for doing so was purely to save a day on the shooting schedule, as he had to make a deadline to be available for shooting on a new season of T.J. Hooker (1982).

Note from me: Anybody who would help fight a fire is exhibiting bravery, even if they later claim it was done for reasons which benefited them.

~ The film's villains were originally intended to be Romulans, but upper studio management wanted Klingons to be used, since they were better-known enemies.

By the time the decision was made, the Romulan warship was already built, and they did not want the expense of replacing it. However, since Star Trek (1966) had already established that the Klingons and Romulans had shared technologies and ships in the past (for exactly the same real-world cost-cutting reasons), the idea of Klingons using a Romulan-style vessel was not a problem.

Note from me: Correct me if I'm wrong, but do we ever get to see the original Klingon ships in the other TOS-cast movies, other than in ST: TMP? If not, that seems strange. Weren't the three Klngon ships in ST: TMP actual models — and wonderfully detailed models, too!

So, were they destroyed after the movie was made?





~ Nicholas Meyer, director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), was originally asked to direct, but refused because he thought that Spock's death should have remained final. He directed the final film of the original series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

Note from me: I'd like to think that Meyer would have approved of the idea I came up with after I saw the movie and disliked it so much I wanted to "fix it". Briefly, my version goes like this.

Spock's body was revived by the Genesis Effect, similar to what happened in the movie, but not as a child. However, despite having all his memories intact, his mind no long has the Vulcan training needed control his emotions.

For this reason, we see the kind of Vulcan which existed thousands of years ago — the savage and undisciplined beings before the Vulcan race used logic to keep from destroying themselves.

But this also means that Spock is prone to show all the other emotions his ancestors experienced — including humor, pride, eroticism, and selfishness!

And so, Kirk and company must deal with a highly intelligent (but wildly unpredictable) version of Spock who is the polar opposite of the person they've known for years. All this is happening while they're attempting to elude the Klingons and return Spock to Vulcan for the mind meld which will restore his full Vulcan discipline.

~ To keep the secrecy, the name "Spock" was never used in the movie script, but instead the alias "Nacluv" - "Vulcan" spelled backwards — was used.

Note from me: Hey, that's revelc! (A Vulcan word . . . )

~ Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), Captain Kirk's yeoman in season one of Star Trek (1966) and returned as transporter chief in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), makes a cameo appearance during the Enterprise's docking sequence. She is the red haired officer in the spacedock lounge who shakes her head in disapproval as she sees the ship's damage.

Note from me: I watched the clip of that scene on YouTube and notice Miss Whitney. By gum, she looks SO much better with that lovely red hair than she did in the silly "bee hive" wig she had to wear in TOS.

Every time I see it I feel sorry for all those poor homeless bees! [
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CSS Georgia

Morbius, I've wanted to do skin diving all my life, because it would exactly like FLYING . . . except that you have to move slowly, and you have fish all around you, and you might get bitten by a shark.

Other than that, it would be the closest I could get to being a bird or Peter Pan or Superman on a date with Margot Kidder!

Thanks for sharing you aquatic story!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)