ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Three fine movies that couldn’t more different, story wise.

~ A remote island is the site of strange experiments to turn animals into humans.

~ An 20th Century man spends 500 years in suspended animation at the North Pole.

~ Alien’s attack Washington D.C. and destroy several national momuments.

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Island of Lost Souls (1932)

A good cast indeed! The thread for The Island of Dr. Moreau could use a little traffic, so I'll hurl the gauntlet right here with my take on that film, and we can continue the discussion over there: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)

That version made a valiant effort to stand on the shoulders of greatness and recreate the creepy thrills of The Island of Lost Souls.

Unfortunately I think it ended up standing in its shadow. But like you said, Pow, it certainly wasn't the fault of the fine cast.

Barbara Carrera had just the right combination of beauty and bestial strangeness (a subtle hint of darkness), and Michael York was excellent as always, playing the man who didn't realize that strange things were afoot on that remote island — until it was too late.

Burt Lancaster put his signature intensity into the role of a man driven to madness by the pursuit of knowledge. With Charles Laughton, it was more a matter of pride and ego.

My only complaint with the 1977 film was that it did too many things in broad daylight which would have been better in the dark — as the original film demonstrated.

The makeup was great, but the movie failed to be scary for the same reason people don't sit around campfires and tell ghost stories . . . at five o'clock in the afternoon.
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Buck Rogers (1939)

A wacky idea came to me when I read your post, Pow.

How would 1930s audiences react to the 1980s TV series if we loaded film cans into my 2001 Chevy DeLumina (with it's flux capacitor and built-in time machine) and took the show back to that era?

Come to think of it, how would those folks react to a 2001 Chevy Lumina?

Just a thought . .


* Note the license plate. ____________________________________________________________________

Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)

As good as Bradbury was, I don't think a sequel to Earth vs the Flying Saucers would be his kind of story.

However, I submit that it's my kind of story, and I had some nifty ideas for a sequel back around 1989. They involved efforts on the part of mankind to master all the alien technology the aliens left behind after their defeat in the final battle.

Some of the saucers were brought down in a manner that would not have damaged them severely, and the device Hugh Marlow's team invented did not harm the engines, it just weakened them so that the saucers crashed.

The sequel would open with a shot of four saucers in formation, cruising slowly over the desert as they approach an Air Force base. Jet fighters are flying along with the saucers as escorts as they approach, and the fighters break off as the saucers land near several large hangers — in which more saucers are seen, with scaffolding along one side of each, and repairs are obviously being made.

The opening scene would look something like this:


* I couldn't find pictures of 1950s fighters that were angled like I wanted, so I had to use F-16s.

And here's the basic story.

After the remaining invaders are repelled and they depart, Earth begins to examine the captured flying saucers. The alien translation device gives them access to the Infinitely Indexed Memory Banks and we learn that when the invaders left their "disintegrated solar system" (which the aliens told Hugh Marlow they were the survivors of), their fleet was actually made up of two battle groups, each under the command of a high ranking officer.

The leaders of the two battle groups disagreed on which planet should be invaded and enslaved. One group elected to come to Earth, and the other group went to a planet also inhabited by humanoid aliens very similar to humans. Their civilization was not as technologically advanced as Earth.

Earth's authorities learn from the Infinitely Indexed Memory Banks on board the saucers that the aliens who fled Earth after the battle had decided at the last moment of the battle to head for the other planet and get reinforcements from the other battle group, and then return to Earth.

A frantic race begins to complete Earth's own fleet of saucers — some which are repaired alien ships and others that are being built from scratch. A coordinated global effort is made, with mankind united in this monumental undertaking.

A desperate plan is formed to mount a preemptive strike on the aliens by attacking them on the other planet before they know that Earth is prepared to use their own technology against them.

So, after establishing all this, we see thousands of soldiers boarding the Earth fleet of saucers (complete with the Air Force insignia on the sides). This fighting force is comprised of specially trained soldiers in battle armor which comes equipped with personal force fields derived from the captured-and-reverse-engineered alien technology.

Ditto for the hand weapons.

The fleet takes off and soon reaches the other planet in a not-to-distant star system.

Unfortunately I don't have much after that, except for some ideas about various characters. Naturally there will be a saucer-against-saucer battle, probably in the planet's atmosphere, since their weapons were said to be "sonic" in the 1956 movie.

But the Earth ships could be equipped with some surprise.

We could also have fun with a few changes to the saucer designs, like ships that are larger and a bit slimmer vertically, and some (or all) that have transparent domes on top, instead of the opaque ones the originals had,

I don't really have a title for this story, other than a jokey one I thought up.

Earth Uses The Flying Saucers

Like I said, it's just a joke.

Thoughts, anyone?


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