ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Phantom's post about Tales of Tomorrow inspired me to watch a few episodes of that series, and they were great!

I highly recommend it.

After you read Phantom's post, read mine below it.



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The Quiet Earth (1985)

The Quiet Earth (1985)

Intriguing film from New Zealand in which three people seemingly find themselves the sole survivors on Earth after a scientific experiment goes wrong.

The movie is neatly divided into three segments, each about thirty minutes long, the most striking being the first act in which Zac Hobson wakes to find himself on what appears to be a totally deserted planet. His slow discovery of a landscape devoid of people, which he describes as, “This quiet Earth” and his eventual disintegration into insanity, is stretched to the breaking point, a tour de force for a single actor. Despite its length, it never becomes tedious, mostly due to the inventive script that finds new challenges for Hobson.

The entrance of Joanne and eventually, Api, a Maori, begin the second and third acts and alter the dynamics of the action, setting up a duel motivation of jealously and struggle for control. It is somewhat disappointing and rather banal after the first two thirds of the movie.

Cinematic images of ruined, deserted cities are charged with an unsettling ambiance. The early scenes in Target Earth, the breakdown of civilization in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, the empty streets of New York City in The World The Flesh And The Devil (a kindred spirit of The Quiet Earth) and the final images of On the Beach are often all that remain in memory.

Some of the photographic effects are striking. When Hobson visits his job at the scientific lab where he works, he is bathed in an eerie blue light. Later, at the height of his madness, he eschews his own clothing for the comfort of a woman’s slip and gathers together an audience of manikins to which he delivers a speech from the balcony of a mansion, augmented by recorded cheers. In a truly bizarre sequence, Hobson enters a church waving a rifle and looking for God for some answers. Striding up to a statue of the crucified Jesus, he demands, “Come out or I’ll shoot the kid,” then proceeds to blow away the statue, the ultimate blasphemy of a man who has lost all reason. It is at this brink that he pulls himself together, dives into the ocean and emerges baptized and reborn. Maybe God answered him after all, even if somewhat belatedly.

There is a haunting moment when Joanne visits a deserted hospital with rows of empty baby cribs and another when she and Api jog along a country road shrouded in a blue mist that is almost liquid in consistency.

The movie leaves us with more questions than answers.

There are indications that others were alive after the disaster. Hobson discovers the disfigured body of a co-worker in the lab. At one point, he samples a cherry on a cake he finds in a deserted store and later finds the bodies of two people beside the road. However, these events take place days, perhaps weeks after he wakes into the deserted world, yet the cake and cherry are still edible with no signs of decay and the bodies appear to have died only a short time before discovery.

Each character is given a brief flashback as they attempt to reason the situation. Api is attacked by an unknown assailant and wakes in the middle of a stream to see an unusual light in the sky. Joanne appears to have been electrocuted while using a hair dryer. Hobson wakes from sleep and we see a medicine bottle on the shelf with a warning about over use.

So, where are they in time and place? Is this Hobson’s dying hallucination? Are these his final desires, fears and prejudices exploding like some psychological Big Bang in his brain? Or, do they all really exist, trapped in some purgatory, waiting to be transported to another existence? Is this some form of hell in which they are eternally shunted to an infinite number of planes, each with their own set of inscrutable laws?

The final famous image leaves us with no clue.]
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Strange Case of Dr. RX

This was in the package of mystery-horror movies from Shock Theatre in the late 1950's.

Someone is carrying out vigilante justice by executing criminals who have been judged innocent in court trials. Samuel S. Hinds hires Patrick Knowles to find out who.

I don't have much affection for it. Most of the film is just talk with no action. It runs about 65 minutes and it isn't until the last ten that it really comes to life, at which point it inexplicably becomes a horror movie with the masked vigilante wheeling Knowles into a laboratory where he keeps a caged ape. There is no explanation for any of this.



Too much time is spent with Mantan Moreland and Shemp Howard who supply the comedy and the uncovering of the hooded killer lacks real tension.

A sinister Lionel Atwill is wasted in a small role. Anne Gwynne provides the eye candy. But the whole thing is just so-so.
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Tales Of Tomorrow (1951 - 1953)

From the Wade Williams dvd release: