ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Here are three posts from seven years ago that you might have missed . . . or at the very least, you've forgotten.

My favorite is the one about the Disneyland episode that predicts would highways would be like in the future. The predictions were remarkably accurate!

See?





The entire Disney episode is available on YouTube.
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Magic Highway USA - Disneyland episode (1958)

Magic Highway USA is one of the fabulous Disneyland science fact episodes from the 1950s which inspired a generation with dreams of a bright Utopian future.

This episode stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Man in Space, Man and the Moon, Eyes in Outer Space, and Mars and Beyond.

As with the ones mentioned above, this Disney episodes presented mind-boggling artwork which made most of the science fiction movies from the 1950s look pale by comparison. The obvious exception to this would be Forbidden Planet -- which (as we all know) employed Disney animators.

None of the Disney Treasure box sets include Magic Highway USA, despite what an IMDB listing mistakenly suggests. But I have a reasonably good copy from the Disney Channel, made years ago.

However, here's a few jpegs I found on line, just to make us all weep at the injustice of having to live in the "real" 21st Century instead of the one which Walt and his brilliant team predicted back in 1958.

Think about it, folks. What if this was the world we now lived in!
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Our cities would be breathtakingly beautiful.





Our roadways would be engineering marvels.



The family car would be serviced and refuel right in the home.



The cars would be automated, allowing quality time for the family.



Dad could conduct a conference call while driving to work.



Emergency vehicles would fly above traffic and arrive at accidents within minutes.



When the family reached the city, the car would actually separate!



Dad would be taken directly to work -- where his car would be stored walking-distance from his office!





Giant automated freight carriers would travel hundreds of miles over high-speed highways --

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-- and deliver their cargo directly to city destinations, to then be automatically unloaded.



Powerful machines would build new roads -- boring right through solid rock!



Bridges would be built by machines which actually formed the structures beneath them!



Vertical roads would lift cars straight up cliffs thousands of feet high.



The grandeur of scenic environments would be combined with aesthetic works of engineering.







Even the ocean floor would be traversed by enclosed roadways which connected undersea cities!



This fantastical Disney program ended with an inspiring shot.



Magic Highway USA predicts a future as noble and exciting as anything ever presented in science fiction.

This episode (and all the other Disney "science fact" programs) should be shown to children so they can dream about a future that looks more like this ---



--- instead of this.



Welcome to the 21st Century, kids. What do you think?
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Adventures of Superman!





I loved this show when I was a kid in the 1950s. George Reeves was such a hero of mine that I remember sitting down on the front porch of my house and crying after reading that he had "killed himself".

I still don't believe that is was suicide, and I'm not the only one who doesn't.

If the Adventures of Superman is a favorite of yours, too, sound off here!

Bud-el, the Last Son of Krypton
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Spiders (2013)





I saw this one as a streaming video from Netflix and I was quite entertained by it. It's well written and well directed. It starts out with some nice shots an old Russian space station in orbit, with dead bodies in spacesuits floating around and spiders crawling on the walls. I guess spiders could still crawl on walls in a weightless environment. They certain don't have any trouble crawling on walls or ceilings under normal gravity.

I didn't really know anybody in the cast, but they did a fine job with the spider aspects of the story and the dramatic subplots as well.

The spiders start out regular sized and are very aggressive. They begin by killing the rats in the New York subway, and when transit employees and exterminators go down to find out what's going on, one of them is attacked and covered by a swarm. The exterminator pumps insecticide foam all over the struggling, spider-cover man — but it doesn't affect the spiders.

The spiders don't suddenly become gigantic right away (the way they would in a low-budget production). And we find out that the Russians created the spiders in an experiment at the space station before the fall of the Soviet Union and the de-funding of the space station. The soviet scientist who designed the experiment is working with U.S. government authorities who also know about the experiment, and they're doing secret things, too.

No surprise there, eh?

I know that sounds like a cliched plot device, but it's handled well here without Real Evil Government Agents that we're all certain the spiders will kill in the climax.

The spiders bite people and leave eggs inside their stomachs. The story plays out as a well-written "outbreak" story, with the spiders presenting a plague-like threat to New York. A few dozen captured spiders are confined, and the scientists determine that they are growing at a rate of six inches per hour.

Fortunately, there's no excess of scenes in which terrified people run screaming from nasty, oversized, CGI spiders. Instead we get several subplots which involve government intrigue and escalating danger.

Just to keep things fresh and imaginative, the spiders have and extra-terrestrial connection that I was impressed by.

The FX of the spiders are just as good as they need to be. This is a $7,000,000 production and it looks like one. There are a few nice battle scenes showing soldiers vs spiders in the streets of New York, and they're pretty well done. This movie is everything we wanted from Eight Legged Freaks but didn't quite get.

The music by Joseph Conlan is good, especially in the tense scenes of the male and female leads trying to avoid capture by the authorities who want to prevent them from telling the public the truth about the spider invasion.

By the end of the movie the queen spider (remember, there's an alien connection here) does get very big, and the scenes of her in New York reminded me of the 1998 Godzilla (a movie I adore.) Even the sound which the queen made seems to have been borrowed from Godzilla.

I highly recommend this movie. It manages to deliver thrills and chills with very little gore — a rare thing these days.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)