Tag Archives: fiona moore

Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 26, 1968] 2001: A Space Odyssey: Three Views

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A Trip To Tomorrowland?


by Fiona Moore

People who don’t like trippy, confusing endings for their movies are in for a bad time of it these days. The ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey at least makes more sense than the ending of The Prisoner (the filming of which series overlapped with 2001 at Borehamwood Studios, meaning Alexis Kanner had to share his dressing room with a leopard). The question is, does this make it a better piece of SF visual art?

No, I don't know either.
No, I don't know either.

The plot of the movie is fairly thin. Millions of years ago, we see human evolution directed by a strange black monolith, in a premise strikingly similar to that of the recently-released Quatermass and the Pit. We then jump to the near future of 2001, where a similar monolith is discovered on the moon and another near Jupiter. A space mission is dispatched to check the latter out, but things go wrong in a memorable subplot when the sentient ship's computer, HAL 9000, goes mad and kills the astronauts before sole survivor Dave Bowman finally shuts it down. The psychedelic denouement contains the distinct implication that the next stage of human evolution has now been directed by the monoliths, and Bowman has become the first of the new species of elevated humans.

The monolith near Jupiter, about to mess with your head.
The monolith near Jupiter, about to mess with your head.

Interspersed with the plot is a lot of depiction of the future thirty-three years from now, with its space stations, ships and moonbases. Despite some very impressive and well-thought-through effects, with actors seeming to stand upside down or move at right angles to each other in zero-G environments, the overall impression was depressingly banal and rather like one of the corporate-sponsored imagined futures in Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland attraction. We may be able to travel to the moon, but we still have Hilton hotels and Pan-Am spacecraft. The characters are also banal, in the case of Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood almost to the point of seeming robotic: HAL is much more of a character than either of the two astronaut dolls.

Captain Scarlet is much more animated than these two.
Captain Scarlet is much more animated than these two.

As an anthropologist, what interested me most was the film’s questions about violence and human nature. The message seemed to be that humans are inherently violent, however evolved we are: the first thing the ape-men at the start of the movie do once they discover tool use is to kill a tapir and then make war on a rival tribe. Bowman’s last significant act as a human is to kill a sentient machine, and we have no idea what the evolved Bowman will do as he approaches the Earth. While the current scientific consensus on the inherent violence of humans is more nuanced (I note that the film also espouses the now-outdated theory about the first tools being discarded bones, suggesting that Arthur C. Clarke isn’t as up on his anthropology as he is on his astrophysics), it perhaps works well as a cautionary note about our current political situation and the possibility that we might wipe ourselves out through nuclear warfare.

Raymond Dart came up with this theory in 1924; we're over it, Arthur.
Raymond Dart came up with this theory in 1924, we're over it, Arthur.

2001 is a beautiful and lyrical movie which raises some interesting questions about the nature of humanity, but which also bogs itself down in the dull minutiae of an imagined life in the future. Three out of five stars.

Love At First Sight


by Victoria Silverwolf

Unlike Tony Bennett, I left my heart in Los Angeles.

I happened to be in that city during the initial run of Stanley Kubrick's new science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. I understand that the director has cut the film slightly, to tighten the pace a bit and to add a few titles to the various sequences. (The Dawn of Man at the beginning, for example.) What I saw was the original version, and it knocked me out.

Instead of just gushing about the movie, let me introduce you to the little demon sitting on my left shoulder, who will do its best to convince me I'm wrong.

Giving the Devil Its Due

ZZZZZZZ. Oh, excuse me. I fell asleep trying to watch this thing. It's got the frenzied pace of a glacier in winter and all the excitement of a snail race.

Cute. Real cute. Some people are going to consider it boring, I'm sure, compared to an action-packed film like Planet of the Apes. But that's a matter of apples and oranges. I found every second of this leisurely movie absolutely enthralling.

No accounting for taste. What about the actors? What a bunch of bland nobodies! They could be replaced with wet pieces of cardboard and you wouldn't know the difference.

First of all, let me deny the premise of your objection in at least two cases. During the Dawn of Man sequence, a fellow by the name of Daniel Richter does an extraordinary job of playing the prehistoric hominoid who discovers how to use tools. (Of course, this character isn't named in the movie itself, but I believe the script by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke calls him Moonwatcher. We'll know for sure when the novel comes out.)


Not even the demon can deny that the makeup and costuming for this sequence is fantastic, better than in Planet of the Apes.

Then there's my favorite character, HAL 9000. Canadian stage actor Douglas Rain's voice is used to magnificent effect. It's exactly how I expect a sentient computer to talk.


Like everything else in the film, the design of HAL's eye is superb.

OK, I'll grant you those two. And I'll even throw in the costumes, sets, and props that appear in this turkey. But what about the actors who aren't hiding in a monkey suit or behind a glowing red circle? They're as dull as ditchwater.

Unlike Kubrick's black comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, this film doesn't have any big name stars in the cast. I think that's deliberate. Nobody is larger-than-life; they all seem like very ordinary people involved in something extraordinary.

Let's take a look at the three main human characters.


William Sylvester as Doctor Heywood R. Floyd.

William Sylvester was born in the USA but has lived and acted in the UK since the late 1940's. He's done a lot of British low budget films. I know him best for his lead roles in the horror films Devil Doll and Devils of Darkness.

Ha! And that gives him the experience to star in a multimillion dollar blockbuster? You've been watching too much Shock Theater, lady.

I can't deny that, but let me continue. Consider the two astronauts aboard Discovery in the depths of the solar system.


From left to right, Gary Lockwood as Doctor Frank Poole and Keir Dullea as Doctor Dave Bowman.

Gary Lockwood has done a lot of TV, and had the lead role in the fantasy film The Magic Sword. Keir Dullea has been in a few movies, and is probably best known for playing one of the two title characters in David and Lisa.

Let me guess; he didn't play Lisa. Anyway, you've just offered up two more minor league players. You're making my point for me. Where are the famous actors who would dominate the screen?

That's the problem. They would dominate the screen, and this is a movie best appreciated for its images and its ideas. You want to escape into its world, and think I am looking at the future and not There's Charlton Heston.

Point taken. So what about that goofy ending? What's that supposed to be, a San Francisco hippie psychedelic light show? Groovy, baby, pass the LSD!

I won't deny that the final sequence of the movie is ambiguous and mystifying. It's also a dazzling display of innovative film technique. In addition to what you call a light show, there's the eerie scene of Bowman in what looks like a luxurious hotel room.


A stranger in a very strange land.

What does it all mean? Don't ask me. Maybe the upcoming novel will make things clearer. But I adore this movie, and I expect to watch it dozens of times in the future, assuming it keeps coming back to second-run theaters. Maybe even if it ever shows up on TV, although it should really be experienced on a very big screen.

And the music! Goodness, what a stroke of genius to make use of existing classical and modern art music instead of a typical movie soundtrack. The Blue Danube scene alone is worth the price of admission. And the recurring presence of Also Sprach Zarathustra! Magnificent!

Five stars, and I wish I had more to give.

***sigh*** No use arguing with a woman in love.

You Damn Beautiful Apes!

by Jason Sacks

Man, who'd a thunk it? Just a couple weeks removed from seeing Planet of the Apes, there's another science fiction movie in the theatres which involves apes.

You might have heard of it, because this new film has the portentous title 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I loved Planet of the Apes. Just two weeks ago in the pages of this very magazine, I praised the film's restrained story, its tremendous special effects, its lovely cinematography and its spectacular use of music. Heck, I thought POTA was perhaps the finest science fiction movie in years. It's a thrilling, delightful sci fi masterpiece.

But 2001, man, wow, it's transcendent.

2001 is immaculate and powerful, smart and elliptical, with the greatest special effects I have ever seen in a motion picture. It tells a heady, fascinating story so vast it transcends mere humanity and expands into the metaphysical.

Many have criticized this film for being slow – heck, look at the devil on Victoria's shoulder to see just one example of that. But the slowness is obviously intentional. Director Stanley Kubrick clearly wants the viewer to see this film as stately and calm, playing astonishing space scenes juxtaposed with gorgeous classical music.

It's a work of genius to juxtapose Strauss's "The Blue Danube" with the image of a spinning space station. This juxtaposition and its stately pace allows the viewer to make connections, to see how a journey down a river in the 1860s will be as ordinary and beautiful as a journey into space in the year 2001. In the same way, using "Also Sprach Zarathustra" invites the viewer to imagine transcendence and evolution in an ecstatic way, bringing both a connection to the past and to the future in a way that perfectly suits Kubrick's themes.

Kubrick makes efforts to tether the viewer to his film with scenes like this.

What makes it even more thrilling is when he cuts that tether and demands the audience make connections ourselves.

What is the strange monolith that appears at different times of human evolution, and how does it propel us forward? Is the monolith a literal gift from alien beings (who might as well be gods – or God) or a symbol of mankind's evolution?

Why does the HAL-9000 computer, perhaps mankind's greatest achievement and an electronic being that achieves sentience, go crazy and destroy people?

What is the meaning of the trippy journey the astronaut takes towards the end of the film, and what is the meaning of the very strange place he finds himself? Why does he age? What is this place?

And what is that strange space baby we see at the end?

What do we make of any of this?

Kubrick asks the viewer to make up our own minds, to build our own interpretations of those scenes. 2001 feels overwhelming, in part, because it is participatory. This film demands we become involved with it as a means of determining some kind of truth and meaning out of it. Take this film in, interpret it, and determine your own truth. Like in life, there are no clear answers when considering the biggest questions.

Mr. Kubrick on the set with his actors.

Kubrick's previous film was Dr. Strangelove, a deeply cynical and polemical film (which is also hysterically funny) in which the director tells viewers what to feel. 2001: A Space Odyssey is the opposite. It's optimistic and ambiguous and highly serious. Strangelove was black and white and 2001 is glorious, rich color.

Stanley Kubrick is American's greatest living filmmaker. 2001: A Space Odyssey proves that fact.

Kubrick's film is an absolute masterpiece. Sorry, Fiona. The angel on Victoria's shoulder is right.

5 stars




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TV

[March 12, 1968] Be Seeing You (The Prisoner)

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The weekly news is up!  Please watch, enjoy, and mail in your comments to the station!


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Television and Films over the last few years have been littered with spies. Many of them have been forgettable but one was ahead of the pack: Danger Man.

Example image of Danger Man showing McGoohan as John Drake

Starring the brilliant Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, it took a more cynical and grounded look at the world of secret agents, compared with the more fantastical exploits of James Bond or John Steed.

We were meant to be getting a new series of Drake’s adventures, produced in full colour for the American market. Instead, we heard, he was concentrating on a new espionage series, The Prisoner. I had expected some cross between the former show and The Fugitive. What we got was quite different.

Shot of The Village where the residents are chess pieces on the board

After resigning, the un-named McGoohan is transported to a village. There he is assigned the Number Six and the authorities try to either probe him for information or get him to do their dirty work. So far this could have been an episode of Danger Man similar to "Colony Three". But there are much stranger elements.

Firstly, the whole village is not simply an island prison, it has the unnerving sense of enforced jollity. Which makes it more unnerving. I found myself reminded of the planet in Doctor Who’s Macra Terror, with both having that holiday camp feeling with dark tensions underneath.

Number Six goes down to the beach to look at another resident who has been dragged ashore by Rover.

Then, we have Rover, the Village’s loyal “Attack Bubble”. It should not be scary for a giant roaring soap sud to be scary, but the way that people are trapped within it, straining to get out makes for a terrifying image.

There is also the governance of The Village, where (in spite of a system of elections and councils) the power lays with “Number Two”, a figure who changes each week (or even multiple times in a week) with their own different experiments.

Number Six dressed as Sherlock Holmes on a fairground ride.
Just another day in the strange life of Number Six

As the series progresses it gets stranger in its plots. We have duplicate number sixes, dream journeys, trips to Old West, not to mention the world’s strangest martial arts. Over the seventeen episodes McGoohan moves us from a man trying to escape into the surreality we would more expect from The Corridor People or Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Number Six on the operating table with a probe pointed at his head.
You WILL enjoy The Prisoner

These offbeat choices may have put some people off but I enjoyed them, albeit with a couple of caveats. It would sometimes go too much into trying to be direct satire, rather that something more broad and nebulous, particularly in McGoohan’s directed episodes. These tended to work less well as it felt like to author was trying to pontificate to the audience and never gave a sense that this world had an existence outside of serving these points.

The other, is that, all these choices played against trying to give a solid finish to the story. For example, we are shown two characters and told that they both represent forms of rebellion. One we are not sure if we have seen before (the actor appeared previously but the character may be new) and the other only a couple of times in a position of authority. In a less experimental format I could see these challenges being overcome and a tighter solution put together.

A group of hooded and masked people dancing.
All the different factions celebrating the show.

However, as an experiment it is still one I enjoyed seeing and exploring the fascinating setup from McGoohan and co.

A high four stars


by Fiona Moore

Lots of people who tuned in to The Prisoner and watched to the end are, apparently, disappointed. Those people are missing the point. The Prisoner isn’t a spy series, or an sf series, or a metaphor… and yet, it is all of those things. The Village is a real place… and yet it’s also a state of mind, a cloying conformity that, as the series itself demonstrates, could be found in London or the Wild West as much as in Portmeirion, where the series was actually filmed. The point many critics are missing is, The Prisoner is first and foremost a Rorshach test.


Make of him what you will.

Even the most straightforward episode of The Prisoner can be interpreted through multiple lenses. Want to see it as a spy series, a kind of Manchurian Candidate with extra surreal elements? As a spoof of spy series, dialling the conceits of Danger Man or James Bond up to maximum so the viewer is confronted with how ridiculous they actually are? As a Jungian exploration of one man’s psyche, and how it crumbles under the strain of atomic-age paranoia? As a metaphor for childhood, and the way in which we go from complete dependence on our parents to adolescent rebellion to (one hopes) a more balanced adulthood? As a twisted, op-art version of the Tibetan afterlife, as the soul refuses the temptation to return to the Wheel of Samsara and eventually seeks peaceful oblivion in Nirvana? You can find all of those in there. But you’re also never going to find one interpretation that fits the series throughout, because that’s not what it’s all about.


Is this the real Village?

The fact that the series’ ending is chaotic and strange is, therefore, perfectly in keeping with that. You could see “Fall Out” as a commentary on rebellion, or on nuclear proliferation, or on the relationship of the id to the ego and the superego. You could also just sit back and let the imagery flow past you, and draw from it the meaning that personally speaks to you, that allows you to relate the series to your own life and the personal and political struggles you face in the turbulent and strange times we live in.


No, it doesn't have to make sense.

The point is not to over-interpret, or to seek a prescriptive meaning for the series. Does it always succeed? No. But does it fail? Only if you wanted a story with a nice neat ending, where The Prisoner is (definitely) John Drake and Number One is some bald-headed type in a Nehru suit stroking a fluffy cat. Otherwise, I’d say just turn on, tune in, and enjoy where the ride takes you.


The Prisoner and friends enjoying the ride.

Six..er..four out of five stars.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 14, 1968] Triple John (February 1968 Galactoscope)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson

Drugs seem to be everywhere these days in science fiction. From Aldiss’ Acid War stories in New Worlds, through Dick’s Faith of Our Fathers in Dangerous Visions, to Brunner’s Productions of Time in Fantasy & Science Fiction. Some days I wonder if I am the only person in fandom that isn’t getting high and floating up among The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice.

As such, it was only a matter of time before we got a real hip novel that fully blurs the boundary between fantastic and the psychedelic. Anderson is the one to give it to us.

One Pill Makes You Larger

So, what is this book about? On a basic plot level it is about Chester and Mike (fictionalised versions of the author and his sometimes co-writer) who seem to be sort of hippies living in 1977. They discover people affected by a mysterious new drug called Reality Pills, which cause psychedelic hallucinations to physically appear, such as a kid able to create butterflies and another person with their own halo. They set about tracking down the source of this, which, as the cover gives away, turns out to be extra-terrestrial.

As you can imagine, this gets very surreal quickly. Here is a sample conversation:

“Excuse me,” said another tall blue lobster, making its way to the john.
“One of yours?” I wondered. “I thought it was one yours.”
“I don’t like blue lobsters.”

Your willingness to just go with these kinds of sections without any prelude will likely dictate your enjoyment of the novel.

One Pill Makes You Small

But that, for me, isn’t what the book is really about. Rather, it gives us a window on to a subculture, the lives of dropouts and experimental rock groups in Greenwich Village right now. As I have not been there myself, I cannot speak to the reliability of Anderson’s vision but it is a vivid one imbued with a feeling of time and place, just as clear as if someone was talking to me about Middle Earth Club in London.

That is not to say I understood it all, and New Yorkers may well be able to “dig” more of it than I do, but it feels real and lived in, in a way so much science fiction does not.

And The Ones Your Mother Gives You, Don’t Do Anything At All

There are certain parts that do not work as well for me. It is filled with a lot of references to New York life and pop culture, some of which I understood (e.g. use of an obscure Tolkien simile) but other meanings were totally lost on me.

Perhaps more importantly, I am not certain if it is really “about” anything much. With its style and boundary pushing content, it is clearly aiming more for the literary than Campbell-esque end of the market. But Last Exit To Brooklyn this is not, whilst the current trial for that book’s UK publication hinges on its merits as a great work of literature, I cannot help but feel that argument could not be made in this case. Scenes like the Goddess Fellatia attempting to rape a police officer feel added more for the sake of shock value than any complex point being made.

Remember What The Dormouse Said, “Feed Your Head!”

Having said all that, I believe it still passes Sturgeon’s Law and is better than 90% of science fiction on the market. It is not perfect by any stretch and falls down in a number of areas. But it is still quite a groovy trip to take.

Four Stars

Here are some damning short takes from Kris and Jason–and both involve Lin Carter and Belmont Books!

The Thief of Thoth, by Lin Carter, and …And Others Shall Be Born, by Frank Belknap Long

"Belmont Double? Don't Bother. Dead Boring, Better-off Dreaming!"

Tower at the Edge of Time, by Lin Carter

"Ugh I just can’t get into this stupid barbarian book. Lin Carter’s writing is so full of stereotypes and clichés. I’ve tried a few times to get through it and can’t. I’m tagging out for this month."


by Gideon Marcus

Ace Double H-40

Here's another shortish take, simply because this Double doesn't merit more:

C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb


Art by Jack Gaughan

The first interstellar journey results in horror: of the five crew, only three remain alive. The other two are carriers of an extraterrestrial disease, or perhaps worse–unwitting vessels of an alien invasion.

Someday, someone might write a superb book or series of books about a private investigator who jaunts through the asteroid belt, trying to thwart a Martian plot to weaponize alien technology (in the guise of infected humans) to gain an upper hand against Earth. This one isn't it.

It's not bad, but it's back to the humdrum potboiling that's associated with Tubb (sad, because we know he, and Ace, can do better–viz. The Winds of Gath). Part of the issue is the length; this is really a long novella, and the ending is rushed and pat–probably as a result.

Three and a half stars.

Alien Sea, by John Rackham


Art by George Zei

A ruined ship crewed by extra-terrestrials, the last survivor of a devastating planetary conflict, makes a close approach to their alien sun. As its hull chars and the crew and passengers succumb one by one to the heat, their only hope is that their cometary orbit will swing it quickly back for a rendezvous with their doomed world. But when they reach home, they find the doomsday weapons have sunk the two warring continents. All that is left is waves…and survivors on an enemy satellite. Together, they must build a new society, one free from strife.

Great premise! I was certainly hooked. Sadly, that's just the first chapter.

Then there's a jump of two millennia, and the focus is on a human conflict. Earthers have arrived on this alien world, unaware of the planet's history or inhabitants, intending to establish a fueling station. But rivals from Venus, peopled by intellectual exiles from Earth, have made contact with the indigenes. They are putting together an alien/Venusian invasion force to take Earth for their own.

The main body of the text, involving a telepathic sensitive who records experiences for television audiences at home, as well as the panoply of beautiful and topless (but at least capable) women he encounters, reads like a tepid planetary adventure from the '50s, complete with two-page digressions to lovingly describe some new piece of technology.

Two and a half stars.


by Fiona Moore

Chocky, by John Wyndham

John Wyndham’s latest novel, Chocky, an expansion of a novelette of the same name published in Amazing Stories in 1963, will be something of a disappointment to fans of the blend of cutting social commentary and dystopian science fiction which has characterised most of his novels to date. It’s much more in the mode of Wyndham’s earlier short fiction, but stretched out to the point where the conceit fails to hold the reader’s attention.

Plotwise, not an awful lot happens. A young boy, Matthew Gore, develops what his father, our point-of-view character, takes to be an imaginary friend, Chocky. It’s fairly apparent to the reader, though not so much to his family and teachers, that Chocky is an alien scout who is investigating the Earth through a telepathic rapport with Matthew. Chocky asks a lot of questions about things like geography, internal combustion engines, and gender; in return Chocky teaches Matthew sophisticated mathematical concepts like binary systems, and is sometimes able to take him over and impart abilities he doesn’t naturally possess. After a couple of incidents where Chocky, working through Matthew, does something which winds up in the national press, the family comes to wider, and possibly more sinister, attention.

And… well, that’s it. The action never gets exciting enough to be a thriller. Matthew and his family are never well-developed enough for this to become a poignant character piece. Details like the fact that Matthew is adopted are introduced but never achieve wider relevance. Matthew’s collection of busybody relatives lurk in the wings as a threat to Chocky’s privacy, but that’s all they remain: a minor complication. There’s very little sense of peril or threat from Chocky as there was from the children in The Midwich Cuckoos; the alien is just here to observe, not to take over. The setup, with a cosy suburban family, suggests that Chocky will upend that cosiness and force their prejudies and banalities into the open, but we’re disappointed on that score too. Wyndham does have some of his usual fun with the foibles of middle-class British society, but he never really twists the knife.

It’s frustrating because this could have been a much more exciting and relevant book. A story in which a little boy’s life is torn apart by scientists and politicians desperate to make first contact with aliens could have been heartrending; a story in which a lonely child’s isolation is used for sinister ends by a non-human being likewise. The first part of the book focuses so heavily on the social pressure Matthew’s parents felt to have children that one thinks this will be one of the themes of the story, however, this isn’t paid off either.

But there’s not much point in speculating about what Chocky could have been. It is what it is—an overextended novelette that promises much but delivers little, and is a disappointment compared to the works which made Wyndham famous. Two out of five stars.



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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1968] The Power of Cinema (The Power, a movie)

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KGJ News has a new episode for the week!

All you need to know in just four minutes:


by Fiona Moore

Having had the opportunity to attend a premiere of George Pal’s latest movie, “The Power”, as the guest of a friend who works at Borehamwood, I’d recommend it for any fans of the current crop of mind-bending, psychedelic, nightmare movies.

An image I'm not going to remove from my brain easily

The story (which takes place, according to the chronon at the start, “tomorrow”) revolves around a facility whose purpose is to test the limits of human endurance, with the specific aim of identifying people with the qualities required to live in space. One of its directors, an anthropologist, has been conducting tests on his fellow board members as a pilot project for a survey of the wider population, and discovered that someone in his sample possesses more-than-human talents, including the ability to bend others to their will, to create illusions in the mind, and even, apparently, to use these powers to kill.

After the anthropologist meets a strange death in a gravity-simulating centrifuge, leaving behind a cryptic note appearing to blame someone named “Adam Hart”, our hero, Tanner (George Hamilton), investigates, while his mysterious antagonist seems to be constantly one step ahead of him, killing off board members one after the other and framing Tanner for the murders, though never quite managing to do in Tanner himself. The final confrontation of the film reveals the true reason for his miraculous survival.

Can *you* spot the bad guy?

The film’s weak points are largely in the scripting area. The plot is thin, though, to be fair, the action is so non-stop you don’t really notice. I was able to guess who the culprit was fairly early on, just through process of elimination and through considering the sorts of roles various actors are usually cast in, and there’s a party scene two-thirds of the way through which is simply interminable. Although the concept of an institute aimed at testing human endurance is interesting, the link to the space programme is fairly sketchy and seems mostly included as a way of justifying the centrifuge scenes. The idea of an ubermensch who is “the next stage of human evolution” is also well-worn: the film is based on a 1954 book of the same title by Frank M. Robinson, which may explain the use of a conceit which will, these days, strike the well-read sci-fi fan as more than a little bit dated.

The characterisation is also fairly light and boiler-plate. There’s the handsome young man, the pretty girl, the bow-tied scruffy scientist and his unhappy alcoholic wife, the seen-it-all cop, and so on. The casting is about what you’d expect, including as it does George Hamilton, Michael Rennie, Suzanne Plechette and, erm, “Miss Beverley Hills”. While all the performances are solid, none particularly transcends what you’d expect for a thriller movie.

On the other hand, handsome people do get their kit off a lot.

The thing that saves “The Power” from being just another schlocky thriller is the imagery. George Pal treats us to genuinely nightmarish sequences of mental manipulation, such as a scene where a character is trapped in his own office, the doors and windows apparently disappearing every time he turns around. Another powerful sequence has Tanner unable to get off of a fun-fair merry-go-round, with the images flicking back to the centrifuge which was the site of the original murder. There’s one scene which will ensure you never trust one of those ubiquitous dipping-bird toys ever again.

George Hamilton about to have an encounter with a dipping bird.

Pal also cleverly plays with the mental-manipulation conceit. For instance, at one point Tanner is lured through a desert by the image of an oasis, which the viewer interprets as another obvious illusion—until we discover that it is all too real, and is a target area on a USAF gunnery range. At another, Tanner sees the familiar words of a “DON’T WALK” sign turn into the sinister command “DON’T RUN”, and, several scenes later, is startled to see the words “DON’T RUN” on a newspaper headline… only to realise that the headline refers to a political incumbent warning off a potential rival from taking him on in an electoral race, and the use of the phrase is simply a coincidence. The landscapes around our hero also take on nightmarish qualities, with even the ordinary setting of a suburban garden becoming like a lush, mysterious jungle, and the scenes taking place in the desert seeming genuinely alien. The film’s ability to take ordinary, even pleasant, settings like fun-fairs, toyshops, conferences and parties and turn them into sinister, terrifying sequences recalls The Prisoner in places.

There are other good things that stand out in the movie. German, Japanese and Eastern European characters appear without their ethnicity being a plot or character point (although the German does briefly sermonize about how living under the Nazis has given him insight into the dangers of charismatic supermen). There are several female characters with names, even if they do only talk to each other fairly briefly, and Suzanne Plechette’s love interest character is disappointingly flat and dull, her most memorable scene being a censor-baiting coitus-interruptus with Hamilton. It’s also worth re-watching the early scenes once you know who the villain really is. As noted, the film also maintains at best an ambivalent attitude towards the idea of supermen, and the question of whether or not they can be good people: Tanner at one point muses that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mrs Van Zant is Japanese, and why shouldn't she be?

“The Power” is, in sum, surprisingly good…for an SF horror blockbuster, with a few nice twists and an entertaining approach to the concept of the mind-manipulating superhuman being. It certainly sets a new high standard in visual effects and unreliable storytelling to challenge future filmmakers in this area. It's still plot-thin and character-lite, however.

Three out of five stars.



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Movies, TV

[January 22, 1968] The Magical Mystery Tour (February 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction…plus the Beatles movie!)

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KGJ Weekly News is back!  Come watch and find our what happened this week


by Gideon Marcus

A small pond

We have exciting tidbits from both sides of The Pond today, so stay tuned for both.  But first up, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I got a letter from Ted White the other day.  Seems he's no longer assistant editor over at F&SF, which is a shame.  Apparently, he was once under consideration for editor at Fantastic (and possibly Amazing) back when Celle Goldsmith (Lalli) left!  Boy, would that have been an interesting tenure–certainly more interesting than what we got under Sol Cohen.

Anyway, keep reading, because this isn't the only time Ted's name will come up.


by Ronald Walotsky

The Colonies

Stranger in the House, by Kate Wilhelm

We've been seeing a lot more of Kate Wilhelm, lately, which is generally a good thing.  Stranger seems as if it will be a fairly typical, if sinister, haunted house story.  A middle-aged couple moves into a house in the country, a surprisingly good deal, to escape the hustle and bustle of the city after the husband suffers a heart attack.  Immediately, the wife begins to suffer fainting spells and strange visions.  A little research uncovers that, since 1920, the place has seen an inordinate number of deaths and inexplicable illnesses amongst its ocuppants.

Is it a vengeful spook?  Radon poisoning?  Actually, as we quickly learn, it's an alien in the basement.  Not just any alien: this one was sent on a first contact expedition.  The hope of its race was that they would get to see that transient moment when a species first makes the jump into space.

The problem is, said aliens are hideous, live in a toxic atmosphere, shed acid, and communicate via a telepathy that is about as conducive to human communication as an icepick in the forehead.  How, then, can there be a meeting of the minds?

I love a good "first contact" story, and I appreciate that Wilhelm has created a truly alien being.  What keeps this piece from excellence are a couple of factors.  For one, it is overlong for what it does.  More importantly, much of the story, particularly that told from the alien's point of view, is detached and told in past tense.  This lack of immediacy in a story that deals with turbulent emotions puts a muffling gauze over the proceedings.  I wonder, in fact, if the whole story might have been improved by only including the human viewpoint.

Three stars.

The Lucky People, by Albert E. Cowdrey

Why stay hitched to three channels on the boob tube when you can watch the cannabalistic mutants that prey on your neighbors from the comfort of your own picture window?

Notable for being the first mention of Star Trek I've seen in print science fiction, it is a cute but frivolous tale.

Three stars.

The Stars Know, by Mose Mallette

A young ad exec, graduate of Dr. Ferthumlunger's 40-week handwriting analysis course, is convinced that his boss, the comely Lorna D., is in love with him.  How else to explain "the sex-latent capitals, the rounded n's and m's, the generous o's and a's, and the unmistakably yearning ascenders in late."

Never mind that the note which our hero has examined is an angry exhortation to get his work done on time.

The misunderstanding continues, with Lorna actually becoming infatuated with the exec, but said exec steadfastedly refuses to believe it, analysis of subsequent notes revealing (so he believes) that she isn't interested at all.  Of course, he doesn't actually read the contents of the notes.  He only looks at the handwriting.

What seems a silly story at first is actually, upon further analysis, an indictment of those who miss the forest for the trees: the mystics, numerologists, saucer enthusiasts, and what have you, who ignore the evidence and invent their own patterns to reinforce their beliefs.  It's really quite brilliant satire!

Or…perhaps I'm reading too much meaning into the thing.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Aperture in the Sky, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas' essays are usually not worth the single page they are written on.  This time, however, he's hit on a good'n: artificial satellites designed to occult radio sources for better measurement of their distance.  It sounds rather brilliant to me.

Four stars.

From a Terran Travel Folder, by Walter H. Kerr

Less successful is this one page program, I think advising aliens on the joy of eating people.  I read it a few times and did not find myself enjoying it.

Two stars.

He Kilt It with a Stick, by William F. Nolan

Then we hit the nadir of the issue.  The author of Logan's Run offers up a tale of a man who hates cats and does horrible things to them until they get their inevitable, macabre revenge.

Not only is this story cliché in the extreme, but if I never read another account of cruelty to cats, it'll be too soon.

One star.  For shame.

Wednesday, Noon, by Ted White

Quality returns with this short piece by Ted White.  When the rapture comes, the music may not be heavenly in origin, but it'll be compelling, all the same.  This story took a whopping three and a half years to be printed from the date of submission (latter 1964), but I'm glad it finally made it.  White has a real knack for living in his characters, conveying their sensory experience and internal monologues with visceral effectiveness.  Wilhelm's piece could have used his touch, I think.

It helps that White lives in New York, the setting of the story, and lived through that brutal summer when Martha Reeves' classic first hit the airwaves…

Four stars.

The Locator, by Robert Lory

Gerald Bufus, accountant, is meticulous to the extreme.  He also has a hobby: tracking the visitations of flying saucers to ensure he can one day be present at a landing.  Sadly, his overwhelming addiction to symmetry compells him to greet the alien ship at the exact center of their predicted arrival site.

Three stars.

I Have My Vigil, by Harry Harrison

The three human crewmembers of the first interstellar flight go mad in hyperspace, and presently, none are left alive aboard the vessel except the one robot steward, who mechanically goes through the motions of serving the dead humans.

The twist at the end is ambiguous: has the robot also gone insane?  Or is he actually a fourth crewmember, who has retreated behind a fictional metal shell in his own kind of insanity?

Four stars.

To Hell with the Odds, by Robert L. Fish

I love "deal with the Devil" stories, and this one, about a washed-up golfer who bargains to win this year's Open, is great all the way up to the end…where it flubs the finish.  The problem I have is the clumsy phrasing of his final wish (an attempt to get out of the deal, which of course backfires,) given that he had 18 holes to perfect it.

Three stars.

The Predicted Metal, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor continues his series on the discovery of metals, this time recounting the creation of the Periodic Table.  It's a fine piece, but I feel as if it was recycled from his 1962 book, The Search for the Elements.

Four stars.

The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis, by Booth Tarkington

The last is a 40-year old piece.  Two scholars meet to discuss a legend of Atlantis in which the women not only win equality, but then fight a cataclysmic war with Atlantean men for the right to retain the distinction of their femininity–the veil.

Tarkington wrote the piece to poke a bit of fun at the war between the sexes that was waging in the 20s, whereby women had the temerity not only to demand the vote, but also to engage in male or female fashion and hobbies as they chose, and men were affronted by their cheek.

Interesting as an artifact, I suppose.  Three stars.

Summing up

All in all, a decent but not outstanding magazine this month.  And now onto something in an entirely different vein…


by Fiona Moore

At the outset of The Magical Mystery Tour, which premiered in black and white on Boxing Day but which was released in colour on 5 January this year, we are promised the “trip of a lifetime,” and, later on, we are assured that everyone is “having a lovely time.” Whether or not this includes the viewer is more open to question.

The Mystery Bus attempting to flee its critics.

The movie has the loose framing premise of Ringo Starr taking his Auntie Jessie on a Mystery Bus tour, in the company of the other Beatles, a few swinging hip types, an assortment of British pensioners who seem a little nonplussed by the proceedings, and The Courier, a Number Two figure who leads the tour assisted by Miss Winters and Alf the Driver. What follows is a series of short musical interludes featuring a selection of numbers from the eponymous album, interspersed with sketches that are a cargo-cult cross between At Last The 1948 Show and The Prisoner, which seem to miss the point of either.

There’s a sketch with a sergeant-major drilling the tour participants; a sort of school games’ day and car race around an airfield or test track (featuring Angelo Muscat, the Butler in The The Prisoner); a whirlwind romance between Auntie Jessie and a character named Buster Bloodvessel; a tent in a middle of a field that turns out to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. But no real sense of what all this is supposed to be saying to the audience.

Yes, but why?

The highlights of the film are definitely the musical interludes. “Flying”, when seen in colour, is actually rather beautiful (which is rather lost in the black and white version). There are also short films for “Blue Jay Way,” featuring George Harrison playing on a chalk-drawing piano, and “Fool on the Hill”, with Paul McCartney standing on, well, a hill. Everything really comes together, though, in “I Am the Walrus”, with the surreal costumes of the performers echoing the imagery of the song, and the Beatles all seem to be enjoying themselves. This is far from true of the other sketches, in which John and, in particular, George seem more than a little surly.

Everyone having a lovely time, apparently.

The film hit its nadir, for me, with a rather disgusting dream sequence of Auntie Jessie being served mountains of sloppy spaghetti by John Lennon in a restaurant, while the bus crew sit around half-naked drinking milk. Similarly peculiar was the decision to have a sequence where the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band perform their song “Death Cab for Cutie” in a strip club complete with stripper, watched by George and John. And the movie more or less ends right there, with that sequence going straight into a 1950s Hollywood-musical-style production of “Your Mother Should Know.”

I’d say this is definitely one for Beatles completists more than anything else.

Two out of Five stars.

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 18, 1967] We Are The Martians: Quatermass and the Pit, Bonnie and Clyde, The Day the Fish Came Out and The Snake Pit and the Pendulum

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by Fiona Moore

This month sees the release of a film I’ve been anticipating for a long time: Quatermass and the Pit, the final instalment in Hammer Film Productions’ adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy. With a whole new cast of actors and a very different look and feel to Hammer’s earlier movies starring Brian Donlevy, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957), this represents a concerted effort to bring Quatermass into the 1960s.

While reportedly this film was considered as another outing for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Julian Glover as Breen provide great interpretations. Keir is the most likeable of the Quatermass actors, while still managing a bitter world-weariness in keeping with the character. Rising star Glover is a bold choice as Breen, being considerably younger than Anthony Bushell in the TV serial, but this casting shifts the interpretation from an old officer too set in his ways to acknowledge the impossible, to an immature, overpromoted man falling back on rigid denials to cover the fact that he is out of his depth. Barbara Shelley as Barbara Judd is more sexy than the usual Quatermass women, wearing outfits that one would think not very sensible for an archaeologist.

Likeable: Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Barbara Shelley as Miss Judd

The basic narrative has had only a few updates. For instance, rather than a new building, the construction work which revives the ancient horrors is the digging of a new Underground extension, something which many Londoners are having to put up with right now. The story has been compressed from six half-hour episodes to a lean 97 minutes, meaning that the plot cracks along at a ripping pace without every feeling overpadded, and we lose most of Kneale’s excruciating working-class stereotype characters. On the more negative side, the film lacks the slow buildup of tension that the TV serial had. Crucially, the themes of the original are all present. Perhaps because Kneale is here adapting his own screenplay, we do not lose the sense of anger at military proliferation, colonialism, and humanity’s self-destructive tendencies.

Colonel Breen, representing humanity's negative side.

One aspect which remains unchanged, however, leads to a rather specialised criticism I have of this movie, speaking as an anthropologist. While in 1959 the dominant theory about human evolution was, indeed, that large brains would precede upright walking, more recent discoveries by Louis and Mary Leakey in East Africa are starting to move the consensus more towards the idea that the opposite was true.

The colour film and production values give the film a much more lavish feel than the austere Donlevy movies, but are a mixed blessing. The alien spacecraft is a thing of beauty compared to the crude cylinder of the serial, but this makes the idea that it could be initially thought to be a German V-weapon less credible. The simple ground-shaking effect in the TV serial when Sladden (played here by Duncan Lamont) accesses his primitive side was somehow more terrifying than the wild poltergeist activity seen here. However, the climax of the film uses its production values to build on the sense of terror as humanity succumbs to the Wild Hunt: we have a chilling scene where a group of people surround a man and beat him to death telekinetically with stones and masonry. Rather than concluding with an explanatory speech by Quatermass, the film simply lingers on the image of Quatermass and Barbara sitting among the ruins, shattered by what they’ve experienced.

Hammer's take on the Martians.

Quatermass and the Pit provides evidence both that the themes of the original Quatermass stories remain fresh and relevant almost a decade later, and that Hammer are still capable of producing a decent horror film without relying on gore and nudity to bring in the shocks. It’s a shame there’s unlikely to be a Quatermass 4.

Four out of five stars.


by Jason Sacks

Bonnie and Clyde

And while Fiona praises Quatermass and the Pit for its lack of gore, I have to praise Bonnie and Clyde for its copious use of gore.

You're probably aware of this newest film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. In the two months since its New York premiere, perhaps you've seen the numerous newspaper articles focusing on the highly violent nature of Bonnie and Clyde, or articles which have condemned the idea that the film makes heroes of its bankrobbing protagonists.

Or perhaps you've read the rhapsodic review of Bonnie and Clyde in the latest issue of The New Yorker by their new critic Pauline Kael and possibly dismissed it because of your annoyance with Kael's now legendary condemnation of The Sound of Music three years ago in McCall's.

I've had the most amazing experience since I saw Bonnie and Clyde last weekend after it premiered at the Northgate Cinema: I've been raving nonstop to my friends about this film.

Like Kael, I was thrilled to see a film which is so bold, so intense and somehow so contemporary feeling. Despite–or perhaps because of–its setting in during the Great Depression, this film feels like a deconstruction of the myths we have told ourselves about the past. Bonnie and Clyde makes villains out of the brave federal men who chase our heroic criminals. This isn't an episode of The FBI. This is an inversion of what it means to be a hero. And in that inversion I saw myself in the faces of people who lived and died 35 years ago.

Because the world in which Bonnie and Clyde live feels like a real world. It's dusty and ugly and people wear worn clothes. Some banks have collapsed and others are near collapse and peoples' lives are miserable. In that misery, ordinary people are desperate for someone, anyone, who is able to triumph against all odds, even if the fate of those heroes seems horribly preordained.

Like all of us, the characters in Bonnie and Clyde are deeply flawed. I was especially swept up in Clyde's foibles. We're all used to seeing Warren Beatty as the smooth handsome lover in movies like Promise Her Anything and Splendor in the Grass, but here Beatty plays a man who's just not interested in love, or maybe more truthfully Clyde is a man who gets his thrills from robbery and not from women. Faye Dunaway is thus not quite Beatty's girlfriend on screen as much as she is his accomplice, fascinatingly contrary to what we expect.

With its echoes of the French New Wave and its shattering of cliche and audience expectations, Bonnie and Clyde feels like a revolution–a harbinger of the types of films I hope to see as the new decade dawns.

4½ out of 5 stars


by Victoria Silverwolf

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis had an international hit with Zorba the Greek a few years ago, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three. With that success behind him, I guess he figured he could do just about anything he wanted. He decided to do something different.

The Day the Fish Came Out

The film starts with an unseen narrator telling us about the tragic incident last year when a B-52 bomber collided with a tanker during mid-air refueling, killing most of the crew. Four nuclear bombs fell out of the doomed aircraft, three of them landing near the Spanish village of Palomares and one falling into the sea. Since this movie is a black comedy, this frightening story is accompanied by three flamenco dancers.


They also have the ability to sing with subtitles, giving away the plot.

In the future year 1972, a plane carrying a pilot, a navigator, two atomic bombs, and a mysterious metal box crashes near a tiny Greek island. The unfortunate pair of flyboys lose their clothing, and spend most of the film in their underpants.


Colin Blakely (left) and Tom Courtenay (right) offer a little beefcake.

A bunch of military types, pretending to be folks interested in building a hotel on the island, search for the bombs and box. They get the bombs back, but it seems a local fellow found the box and thinks it has a treasure inside. Unfortunately for him, it's sealed tight and can't be opened except by a laser or a special chemical. (Keep that latter possibility in mind.)

Meanwhile, a bunch of tourists, attracted by the rumor of an upcoming hotel, flock to the island. Like almost everybody else in this movie (not including the locals or the barely dressed airmen), they wear clothes that would be rejected by Carnaby Street as too extreme. They also dance a lot.


In fact, if you get a chance to watch the trailer for this movie, you'll think it's a beach movie.

After more than an hour of this stuff, the plot gets going with the arrival of Electra Brown, played by Candice Bergen, the beautiful daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She's supposed to be an archeologist, but the way she behaves with one of the military guys makes me think she's more interested in human biology. Bergen made her film debut as a lesbian in the classy soap opera movie The Group, but here she is very heterosexual indeed.


Electra Brown in one of her more conservative outfits.

Electra has this weird device that uses a special chemical (sound familiar?) to cut through metal in order to make replicas of ancient objects. (No, that didn't make much sense to me either.) Long story short, the guy who found the box steals the gizmo, opens the box, and . . .

Well, without giving away too much, let's just say that the depressing ending finally explains the title. This movie badly wants to be Dr. Strangelove and it fails miserably. The comedy isn't funny, the satire falls flat, and there are long stretches where nothing much is happening.

Two stars, mostly for the wacky costumes.


Designed by the director, who also wrote and produced.

Stay away from this one unless you want to laugh at it. Read a book instead.


Maybe not this one.


by Cora Buhlert

Horror in the Real World

1967 is certainly turning out to be a year of disasters.

Belgium has barely recovered from the devastating fire at the À l'Innovation department store in May and now two express trains and a local passenger train collided near the village of Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher in the French-speaking part of Belgium on October 5, leaving twelve people dead and 76 injured.

FEXHE LE HAUT CLOCHE traincrash
Aftermath of the train crash of Fexhe-Le-Haut-Clocher in Belgium.

The photos of the wrecked trains bring back memories of another terrible railroad disaster that happened only three months ago in East Germany. A barrier at a railroad crossing near the village of Langenweddingen malfunctioned. As a result, a passenger train crashed into a tanker truck, setting the train on fire. 94 people died, 44 of them school children en route to a holiday camp. The Langenweddingen train crash is the worst railroad accident not just in East Germany, but in all of German history.

Langenweddingen train crash
Aftermath of the devastating railroad crash in Langenweddingen, East Germany. Note the burned out train cars.

Horror on the Silver Screen: Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum)

Compared to the many horrors of the real world, watching a spooky movie in the theatre feels almost cathartic. And so I decided to get away from the real world by watching the new West German horror movie Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum) at my local cinema.

As the title indicates, the film is a (loose) adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum". Of course, we already had a very good (loose) adaptation of that story by Roger Corman only six years ago. And indeed, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum intends to be West Germany's answer to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the UK's Hammer horror films and the lurid horror films from Italy, all of which are popular, if not necessarily critical successes in West German cinemas. So how does The Snake Pit and the Pendulum hold up?

Snake Pit and the Pendulum 1967
Judge Richard von Marienberg (Lex Barker in a wig) setnences Count Regula (Christopher Lee) to death.

Pretty well, it turns out. The movie starts with a bang, as a bewigged judge and a scarlet-masked executioner visit Count Regula (Christopher Lee) in his cell. The judge informs Count Regula that he is sentenced to death for murdering twelve virgins in his quest for immortality. However, the immortality elixir requires the blood of thirteen virgins and the final virgin managed to escape the Count's clutches and alerted the authorities.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The bodies of the twelve murdered virgins are arranged in a censor-friendly way, covering up any stray breasts.

The death sentence is to be executed immediately and a most bloody sentence it is, too. First, a bronze mask lined with spikes is nailed onto Count Regula's face – reminiscent of Mario Bava's 1960 horror movie La Maschera del Demonio a.k.a. Black Sunday. Then Count Regula is led onto the market square of the fictional town of Sandertal – portrayed by the Bavarian town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is famous for its medieval architecture – where his body is torn apart by four horses. Of course, we have seen similar scenes in Italian and French historical and horror movies many times, but by the rather tame standards of West German cinema, this is a remarkably bloody opening.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The judge (Lex Barker) and the thirteenth virgin (Karin Dor) oversee the execution of Count Regula.
Snake Pit and Pendulum
The executioner is ready for action.

The movie continues in the same vein. For true to form, Count Regula has vowed bloody vengeance from beyond the grave, not only on the judge who sentenced him to death and that pesky virgin who escaped his clutches, but also on their descendants.

Snake pit and the pendulum
A creepy extra in "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum"

Vengeance from Beyond the Grave

The story now jumps forward by thirty years, from the early nineteenth century into the 1830s. A mail coach is traveling to Sandertal. The passengers are the lawyer Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker), Baroness Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor), her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) and Fabian (Yugoslav actor Vladimir Medar), a highwayman masquerading as a priest. Roger and Lilian have both been summoned to Castle Andomai via mysterious letters. Roger, who is an orphan, is supposed to learn more about his parentage, while Lilian is supposed to receive the inheritance of her late mother. Both letters are signed by Count Regula, the very same Count Regula whose bloody execution we just witnessed.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor) and Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker) compare the latters they received from Count Regula.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The mail coach makes a pit stop in the woods, so Lilian of Brabant, her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker), Roger Mont Elise and Priest Fabian (Vladimir Medar) disembark
Schalngengrube und das Pendel
The woods around Sandertal are certainly spooky.

En route to the castle, the coach and its passengers must not only travel through a spooky forest where the bodies of hanged men are dangling from every tree, but are also assailed by bandits intent on kidnapping the two women. Roger and Fabian manage to fight off the bandits. But even more trouble awaits them at the castle, where the undead Count Regula and his equally undead servant Anatol (played by the delightfully creepy Carl Lange) are about to make good on the Count's dying threats.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange) is about to revive his master Count Regula.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Roger Mont Elise meets the undead Count Regula (Christopher Lee) and his equally undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange).
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Anatol harrasses Lilian.

For unbeknownst to them, Roger and Lilian are the descendants of the judge who sentenced Count Regula to death and the virgin who escaped the Count's clutches (and clearly did not remain a virgin). A gruesome fate awaits them at the castle, a fate that involves a pit full of snakes and a razor-sharp pendulum.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Roger and Lilian explore the spooky dungeons of Castle Andomai.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
The ladies' maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) is about to meet an unpleasant end.
Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Count Regula and Anatol don't just employ pits and pendulums. Here they are about to guillotine Lilian.

The Snake Pit and the Pendulum is not quite up to the high standards set by Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations on the one hand and the Hammer movies from the UK on the other. However, it is an enjoyably spooky film that will send a shudder or two down your spine.

Harald Reinl is a veteran of the Edgar Wallace, Dr. Mabuse and Winnetou movie series and probably the best director working in West Germany right now. His skills are on full display in this movie and he uses existing locations such as the medieval town of Rotenburg ob der Tauber or the Extern Stones in the Teutoburg Forest to great effect.

The cast is excellent. Christopher Lee has graced many a Hammer movie and now brings his horror skills to West German screens. Carl Lange has specialised in playing dubious characters and outright villains for a long time now and his performance as a hangman forced to execute his own son in Face of the Frog is unforgettable. I'm always stunned that Lex Barker never got to be the A-list star in Hollywood that he is in Europe, but their loss was our gain. That said, at 48 Barker may be getting a little too hold for hero roles. Finally, I'm very happy to see the always reliable Karin Dor back in a West German production and with her natural brunette hair after the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice wasted her talents on a cliched femme fatale role and foisted a terrible red wig on her, too.

Snake Pit and the Pendulum
Lex Barker and Karin Dor are enjoying themselves on the set of "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum".

Almost fifty years ago, the horror film genre was born in Germany. But like so many other things, horror film making in Germany died with the Weimar Republic. Let's hope that The Snake Pit and the Pendulum heralds a revival of a film genre that was pioneered here.

Four stars

Snake Pit and the Pendulum



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 10, 1967] Badger Books: A Farewell and an Introduction

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by Fiona Moore

The great British pulp imprint Badger Books ceased trading earlier this year. This is a mixed blessing, but nevertheless a significant event. So it seems like a good time to provide a brief introduction for people who, like me, have a taste for schlocky and pulpy science fiction. Stuff which can make you wince and laugh by turns, but which has its heart, broadly speaking, in the right place.

This is what we're losing.

Badger Books was an imprint of publisher John Spencer and Co., which started off publishing pulp magazines in a variety of genres including SF, but branched out in the 1950s to publishing pulp novels. Badger Books are cheap as chips; they have no copyright pages, and they do have two to three pages of advertisements salted through the text, usually for items like good luck charms, muscle building systems or creams that magically affect your body in some way (cheekily, bust enhancement and reduction creams are usually advertised on the same page).

Badger’s output covers all popular genres, but the two lines most of interest to Galactic Journey readers are the science fiction and paranormal ranges, which are almost entirely written by a single person under a variety of pseudonyms. That person is Lionel Fanthorpe, schoolteacher, mystic and general eccentric, also known as Pel Torro, Leo Brett, Bron Fane, Robert Lionel Fanhope, Mel Jay, Marston Johns, Victor La Salle, Oben Lerteth, Robert Lionel, John E. Muller, Elton T. Neef(e), Phil Nobel, Peter O'Flinn, Peter O'Flynn, John Raymond, Lionel Roberts, Rene Rolant, Deutero Spartacus, Trebor Thorpe, and Karl Ziegfreid.

Even Mr Fanthorpe isn't always sure who he is

Fanthorpe has written as many as 250 books, by some estimates, for Badger between the early 1950s and 1967 (though some credible sources indicate his wife deserves some of the credit). Exact numbers are hard to tell, because other writers share the same pseudonyms, but he is estimated to have written one 158-page book every twelve days at the height of his productivity. Another reported detail is that the books are generated by the publisher sending Fanthorpe a copy of some cover art and asking him to write a story based on the images: sometimes, also, these images come from previously-published Ace or Avon books.

Knowledgeable readers may be able to identify the source.

Sometimes these inspirations make more sense than others: Exit Humanity, for instance, is based on the cover of John Brunner’s The World Swappers, which depicts a crowd of humans going into a giant spaceship; Fanthorpe’s story involves a race of aliens deceiving humanity into thinking that the sun is about to go nova, and enticing them into what the humans think is a rescue ship that will take them to a new home. Sometimes the connection is more opaque: Space Trap, a story where two alien spaceships crash-land in medieval China, for instance, has a cover featuring a caveman and a man in an iron lung.

Yes, this really says "medieval China" to me too.

Reportedly Fanthorpe dictates his stories onto tape and sends them out to be typed, though this only partly explains the lackadaisical nature of his work. Character names change from page to page; subplots are abandoned or introduced depending on the needs of the word count; books change focus and plot without warning. World of Tomorrow, for instance, which opens with a pitched space battle, goes on to have the Earth stricken with plague courtesy of a misfired missile from the space battle, and then shifts to the story of an Earth astronaut who comes aboard one of the space ships and has to find his way back. The titles are often only tangentially related to the story inside the covers.

Don't expect it to make sense.

Ethnic stereotypes regrettably abound. For instance, there are the long, painful sections of Exit Humanity which feature a stereotypical Englishman, Irishman, Welshman and Scotsman musing in embarrassing dialect about the abandonment of the Earth by humanity. Arguably even worse is the homicidally excitable Chinese scientist in World of Tomorrow (named, I am very sorry to report, Hi Mi Fun), and the frequent use of the word “yellow” to describe East Asian characters in Space Trap. Asteroid Man features a Barsoom-like society divided into Black, Red, Green and White members, but the essentialism by which these are described is a little too reminiscent of the less enlightened literature of our time.

And yes, Fang Guy really *is* in the story.

However, Fanthorpe is not your typical dreadful pulp writer. He is also literate, imaginative, possessed of a distinct sense of morality, and seemingly determined to have fun. There’s a lot to like in Space Trap, for instance: two sets of combatants from a galactic war between a species that look more or less like humans and a tiny insect species are stranded in medieval China. The first one deceives a local peasant boy, one Aladdin, into trying to retrieve the spaceship of the second, which looks surprisingly like an oil lamp, and whose denizens are able to win Aladdin over by seemingly doing miracles. Familiar hijinks ensue.

In Micro Infinity, a story about the human race encountering an intelligent species of bacteria with a gestalt mind, all the characters are based on ones from The Canterbury Tales, and the reader can have great fun spotting the references. At an exciting point in The In-World, Fanthorpe ratchets up the tension with, erm, a historical geography of the city of Amsterdam. For the fans, he’ll throw in mentions of the likes of Quatermass and the Pit when you least expect it. Fanthorpe will also work ideas from paranormal research even into his SF novels, for instance in Exit Humanity, where a plot point revolves around the Fortean idea that humans are naturally telekinetic.

The stories can also have a strong, and generally positive, moral streak. Despite the lurid Orientalism of the cover of The Face of Fear, for instance, the story itself features an ecumenical and diverse group of paranormal researchers—- including a Church of England vicar, an Irish Catholic priest, a Buddhist, an implied-to-be-Jewish woman secretary and a Black boxer—- coming together to defeat a villain who is not, in fact, Oriental, but faking his identity. The good aliens in The Space Trap briefly provide a lecture on the evils of slavery and advise Aladdin to purchase slaves in order to free them. In World of Tomorrow, only smokers are affected by the alien plague, and humanity can be saved by people giving up that filthy habit.

He's a fake fakir.

On the one hand, a lot of these stories would be improved with an editor, or two, or three. On the other hand, part of what makes Fanthorpe’s work so irresistible is its spontaneity, its sense of someone throwing down words in a way that gives them pleasure, sharing jokes with readers in the know, not caring if it makes sense in the final analysis. For all their awfulness, Badger Books will definitely be missed.

Postscript: The copy of World of Tomorrow which I purchased from Porcupine Books arrived with an advertisement for family planning services tucked into the pages. Perhaps Fanthorpe readers really do have more fun?

Yes, this really happened.



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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 4, 1967] Bond Movie.  James Bond Movie (Casino Royale)

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by Fiona Moore

When Albert R. Broccoli acquired the rights to the James Bond novels, the one exception was for Casino Royale, because in 1955, producer Gregory Ratoff had bought that particular story from Ian Fleming. Following Ratoff’s death in 1960, his widow sold the rights on to Charles K. Feldman of What’s New, Pussycat? fame, and he, together with Jerry Bresler, produced and released the movie this year.

Casino Royale is advertised as a “spoof” of the Bond franchise. However, having recently watched the picture courtesy of my local cinema (The Regal in Staines) I’d argue that this was a miscategorisation. It certainly has spoof elements, but it’s best seen as an example of the surreal absurdist comedy which has emerged as an entirely new subgenre in this decade.

I can’t adequately discuss this film without revealing plot details, so consider yourselves warned.

David Niven: the pure BondIn plot terms, Casino Royale is two almost entirely separate films, tenuously linked by a handful of scenes. The ‘first’ plot features David Niven as a retired, now celibate, British agent named James Bond, who is returned to service when all other agents are being killed off due to their fondness for sex. Bond recruits a new agent, Coop (Terence Cooper), and instigates an anti-sex training programme, thus allowing the movie to have its cake and eat it through sequences of Coop being sexually tempted but boldly resisting. Mata Bond (Bond’s daughter by Mata Hari) is recruited by her father and discovers a plot to auction SMERSH agent Le Chiffre’s collection of blackmail materials to various military forces from across the world, whose senior staff have been photographed in compromising situations.

At this point, the ‘second’ plot, starring Peter Sellers, kicks in, and it is this one which mines its source material most comprehensively. Sellers plays a professional gambler, recruited by the British government agent Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) to defeat Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) at baccarat at Casino Royale, using the alias James Bond. Although he succeeds in his mission, he subsequently falls into the clutches of Le Chiffre and is killed by Vesper Lynd during a surreal mind-torture sequence.

A strangely appropriate bad guyMeanwhile Mata and Bond travel to Casino Royale, where they discover the mastermind behind SMERSH, Doctor Noah, is in fact Jimmy Bond, Bond’s nephew (Woody Allen), who has become a supervillain through feelings of inadequacy. Noah is tricked into swallowing a pill that turns him into a walking atomic bomb and a free-for-all breaks out in the casino, with invasions by cowboys, Indians, seals, the Keystone Kops, a French legionnaire, and actor George Raft — the whole thing eventually blowing sky-high as the heroes fail to prevent Noah from exploding.

Mata Bond finds herself in a different movie altogetherCertain elements of the story are indeed more or less direct spoofs, either of the James Bond franchise itself or of the wider spy series craze. The film starts with a pre-credits sequence which is just a tiny scene of Bond meeting a French agent in a pissoir, simultaneously setting up and destroying expectations of a James Bond-style pre-credits action sequence. Mata Bond’s trip to Germany places her within a stage set straight out of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, in a nod to the huge debt the spy film genre owes to Expressionist artform. The supporting cast includes people who’ve either appeared in Bond movies or the many independent television spy series that have cashed in on the Bond craze, notably Ursula Andress but also Vladek Sheybal and promising young character actor Burt Kwouk. As in many spy series, doubles and duplicates turn up frequently. The bizarre conceit of having all the agents, male, female, and, by the end of the adventure, animals, named James Bond/007, can be construed as a sly comment on the fact more than one actor has played Bond, or even a metatextual joke about the proliferation of code-names and numbers in such series. And, of course, the villain is motivated by a sense of personal and sexual inadequacy—what spy series villain isn’t?

A comment on The Beatles movies?However, both plots reach their highest, as well as their lowest, moments when they embrace the surreal comedy ethos. Arguably this started with The Goon Show, of which Sellers was a key member, before really finding its home with audiences in the Sixties. Current examples of this genre include What’s New, Pussycat?, Round The Horne, the Dadaist stylings of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and At Last the 1948 Show. The trend is gaining strength: reportedly Paul McCartney is also a fan and is keen to adopt fantastical elements into Beatles films. So it’s not surprising, given the involvement of Sellers and Feldman, that Casino Royale would be taken in such a direction.

Peter Sellers getting self-indulgentThe picture’s surreal comedy doesn’t always work. For instance, there’s an annoyingly self-indulgent sequence which seems just an excuse for Sellers to dress up as historical characters. Others are better: Niven’s Bond, for instance, lives on an estate guarded by a pride of lions (“I did not come here to be devoured by symbols of monarchy!” protests the Soviet head of espionage), and the idea James Bond and Mata Hari had a relationship is a somehow appropriate melding of the archetypes of the male and female spy. Mata Bond stops the auction of Le Chiffre’s compromising photos by switching the projector to a war film: as if triggered, the British, American, Chinese and Russian representatives instantly all start fighting each other, in a comment on the Cold War worthy of Doctor Strangelove.

Orson Welles' magic tricks take on a political subtext.Furthermore, the surrealist aspect transforms some of the problems and conflicts that arose during its production, from potential flaws to part of an overarching psychedelic atmosphere. Orson Welles had apparently insisted on performing magic tricks on camera, but these become both a send-up of the contrived “eccentricities” of spy-series villains and a deeper comment on illusion and artifice. The title sequence, which starts out as a simple riff on Bond films’ animated credits, becomes increasingly disconcerting, the imagery including walls of eyes staring pitilessly out at the viewer, with connotations of surveillance and voyeurism.

The title sequence just gets weirder from hereAt the climax, the presence of multiple James Bonds escalates into a scenario where literally everyone becomes the titular hero; and this, together with the recurrence of doubles and duplicates, poses serious questions about how we construct our identity in modern society. At the end, everyone dies, going to Heaven or Hell, the accompanying random images and cheery music underscoring that there can be no guaranteed rescue or happy-ever-after in the atomic age.

Perhaps the ethos of the movie is best summarised by Bacharach’s blockbusting theme song, which becomes more and more like a giddy stream-of-consciousness riff on spy picture clichés as it goes along (“The formula is safe with old 007, he’s got a redhead in his arms… they’ve got us on the run, with guns and knives, we’re fighting for our lives… have no fear, Bond is here!”). The viewer is led to acknowledge the vapidity of spy film clichés, but also to see them transmuted into something that’s less easy to define. Guided by the familiar phrases, one is tempted to search for meaning, but at the end of it, the meaning is simply what the viewer wants to make of it. Three and a half stars.



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Movies

[July 6, 1967] Humour, British-style (Carry on Screaming)

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by Fiona Moore

I’m a lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London, one of two all-female institutions in the group, but I also moonlight in pirate radio. I recently saw the horror/comedy film Carry On Screaming at the second-run theatre in Cinderford while on a recording session in the Forest Of Dean (and I can certainly recommend The Palace Cinema to all travelers on the Journey). And so, since it’s still in general circulation, though it was released last year, I will review it here.

The plot, such as it is, has Detective Sergeant Sydney Bung (Harry H. Corbett) investigating the mysterious disappearances of young women from Hocombe Wood. Bung’s investigation leads him to the Bide-A-Wee Rest Home, residence of the mysterious Valeria and Orlando Watt (Fenella Fielding and Kenneth Williams), their strange servants, and the mummy of an Egyptian pharaoh. A police scientist successfully regenerates a hirsute finger found at the scene of the most recent crime, producing an ape-like hominid identical to the Watts’ henchman Oddbod; a lavatory attendant previously employed by the Watts as a gardener dies under mysterious circumstances; and one of the victims turns up apparently transformed into a shop-window dummy. Bung attempts to entrap the kidnappers by disguising his underling, Detective Constable Slobotham (Peter Butterworth), as a woman; Bung’s wife (Joan Sims), suspecting him of having an affair, follows along and is kidnapped along with Slobotham. The police confront the Watts, only to discover that they are transforming their victims into shop-window dummies. Watt is killed when the Egyptian mummy, revived by a lightning strike, pushes him into one of the vats used in the transformation process. Although it transpires that the victims can be returned to life with the application of electricity, Bung opts to leave his wife in dummy form, and moves in with Valeria.


Orlando Watt rises from the grave


Fenella Fielding is smoking

On the whole, it’s a very silly film. It lacks the coherence of the best comedy films, where a throwaway line or scene will pay off later and the story holds together. Carry on Screaming does have a narrative through line, but it is also full of set pieces and storylines that seem to be only there for the sheer hell of it. Kenneth Williams’ character, Doctor Watt, is dead and needs to be regularly revived with electricity; his hirsute assistant develops a clone; the motivation behind the above mentioned shop-window dummies scheme is never satisfactorily explained. The audience waits in vain for these points to be followed up or explained or linked together. The puns and double-entendres are entertaining (the Egyptian mummy is named Rubbertiti, for instance, and Fenella Fielding’s vampish character takes the line “mind if I smoke?” literally at one point), but only that.


”Admit it, you’re a stereotype!”

Speaking as a women’s libber, I also found myself a little sympathetic for poor old Joan Sims, portrayed as a nagging wife and harridan, but frankly given the generally negligent behaviour of her policeman husband Bung, upbraiding her, going out at all hours and falling into clinches with Fenella Fielding, I thought she had grounds for complaint. In cleverer hands, this hoary trope could have been subverted, but as it is it’s just simply a familiar music hall gag thrown into a modern horror movie. You could probably make a case that the shop-window dummies storyline is some kind of clever riff on the way in which horror movies objectify and silence women, but I’m not sure if this reading is intended or not.


A trip to the gentlemen’s conveniences (actually the South Lodge at Pinewood Studios)

I would definitely recommend this film, though, for television and cinema fans. The gags are full of knowing inside humour about the British horror movie scene, and the contemporary British film and television world generally. There’s a lot of overlap both behind and in front of the camera between Carry On Screaming and the Hammer horror films, notably the cinematographer, Alan Hume, but also Angela Douglas, Fenella Fielding, and Bernard Bresslaw. The fact that it’s filmed in and around Windsor, like the Hammer films, adds to this as well as providing a lot of fun for location-spotters. The film delightedly sends up the horror genre’s fetishization of Victorian and Edwardian classics, with nods to Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Jeckyll, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Mummy. The villains’ henchman is named “Oddbod,” conflating British horror quickies with James Bond movies and perhaps suggesting that the latter are trashier than they pretend to be, and the action takes place in “Hocombe [Hokum] Wood”, undoubtedly a slyly derogatory reference to Borehamwood Studios.


”All right, which of us is the most famous TV star?”

There are also playful nods to modern television, with the soundtrack cheekily quoting the Z Cars theme as the police go about their business investigating the disappearances, and the theme from Steptoe and Son as a reminder of Harry H. Corbett’s best-known role. When not quoting well-known television themes, the soundtrack is an on-the-nose pastiche of the sort of over-the-top classical music that usually backs the Dracula and Frankenstein movies. Kenneth Williams’ charismatically camp performance as Doctor Watt has definitely put him on my radar as someone who could easily take over the role of Doctor Who should Patrick Troughton ever decide to hang up his recorder, and indeed Doctor Watt informs us that “Who” is his uncle, or might be, we haven’t seen him in some time (perhaps a reference to the 1965/66 twelve part adventure). Just to bring the point home, Doctor Watt is an expert in regeneration—no doubt a joke about Doctor Who’s change of face last year.


Kenneth Williams, camp comedy icon

Arguably, there is also a subversive political element to the film as well. With growing tolerance of homosexuality in British society and calls for sodomy to be decriminalized, it’s possible to see a message of normalization in jokes like the one where Jon Pertwee, as a police scientist, apparently finds homosexuality in his guide to early hominids (“Homo… Homo… Homo…” [long pause] “Wrong homo!”), or the exchange “Why should a man be dressed as a woman?” “I don’t know, perhaps his parents wanted a girl!” reflecting current debates in medicine about the causes of homosexuality and sex-change patients. Lines like “I hate these law-abiding people, why can’t everyone be horrid like us?” also take on a double meaning when one considers the laws still on the books. Camp Kenneth Williams, well known for playing homosexuals on such venues as Round the Horne, steals the show as a charismatic villain one secretly hopes will get away with it all in the end. While on the face of it, one long sequence takes place in a public toilet seemingly for no reason other than to make childish jokes about bathrooms and voyeurism, it’s also possible to see it as a celebration of cottaging: the idea that strange and sexual things take place in secret in the conveniences, with the police unable to find or arrest the culprits, is a little more on the nose since the Wolfenden Report.


Jon Pertwee reflects on the many meanings of the word “homo”.

Carry On Screaming isn’t a game-changing movie, but if you’re in the know, it’s a lot of fun. Although it’s not really progressive from a women’s lib point of view, it’s surprisingly outspoken on the subject of homosexual rights. The Carry On team are definitely capable of better, but it’s still not a bad addition to the series.



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