CAPTAIN SCARLET IS 50! - magzDB

THE MAGAZINE BEYOND YOUR IMAGINATION

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9 772514 365005

0 5

ISSN 2514-3654

INFINITY ISSUE 5 - £3.99

SAPPHIRE AND STEEL • VWORP, VWORP!

DOCTOR WHO & THE VINTAGE COMIC UNIVERSE

RIP HUNTER - TIME MASTER • THE INVADERS

NEWS, COMPETITIONS & MUCH MORE…

DOUBLE-SIDED

POSTER INSIDE!

ALAN

MOORE

COMICS

TO MOVIES

FROM HELL!

IT’S GORILLA WARFARE!

BEHIND THE SCENES OFPLANET OF THE APES

THE TV SERIES

CAPTAIN

SCARLET

IS 50!JOIN THE

PARTY

INSIDE

PLUS:

THE INCREDIBLE HULK

THE NOT-SO-JOLLY GREEN GIANT!

INFINITY 3

GHOULIS

HPUBLISHING Editor: Allan Bryce

Design & Production: Kevin Coward

Advertisement and Subs Manager:

Yannie Overton-Bryce

[email protected]

Online publisher: Ghoulish Publishing

ww.ininitymagazine.co.uk

Advertising enquiries:

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Website: ww.ininitymagazine.co.uk

Published by: Ghoulish Publishing Ltd,

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Printed in the EU by Acorn, W. Yorkshire.

Distribution: Intermedia, Unit 6 The Enterprise

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© Copyright 2017 Ghoulish Publishing Ltd.

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DOUBLE-SIDED

POSTER INSIDE!

ALAN

MOORE

COMICS

TO MOVIES

FROM HELL!



THE TV SERIES

CAPTAIN

SCARLET

IS 50!JOIN THE

PARTY

INSIDE

PLUS:

THE INCREDIBLE HULK


8 14

48

42

52 56

60 62

08: ADVENTURES IN TIME

A look back at the TV cult classic Sapphire and Steel,

starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.

14: A STUDY IN SCARLET

It has been 50 years since Captain Scarlet first

battled the Mysterons. Something to celebrate!

20: GORILLA WARFARE

Mark Phillips reports on the monkey business behind

the Planet of the Apes TV series…

38: DOCTOR WHO’S VINTAGE COMIC UNIVERSE

Giacomo Lee chats to a very special fanzine about

some of the Doctor’s lesser known adventures…

42: M IS FOR MOORE

That’s Alan Moore, the undisputed bearded

Northampton-based God of the British comics realm

46: A RIP IN TIME

The adventures of Rip Hunter… Time Master, a DC

comics hero from their Golden Age…

48: THEY’RE HERE!

50 years on from its debut, The Invaders still packs a

punch. Remembering a landmark sci-fi show.

52: AN ENTERPRISING ENDEAVOUR

Effects wizard Ken Ralston on organising the visual

excess of Captain Kirk and company...

56: NOT-SO-JOLLY GREEN GIANT

He was Marvel’s first big TV success and we loved him

when he was angry. The Incredible Hulk revisited…

60: THE JAMES BOND OF CRIME

Allan Bryce takes a look at Mario Bava’s swinging 60s

spy-fi classic, Danger: Diabolik…

62: THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G.

The life and cinematic crimes of B-movie maestro

Bert I. Gordon, whose films were bigger than life!

20

38

Cover art by Peter Wallbank (www.petewallbankart.com)

06: INFINITY NEWS ROUND-UP

12: YOUR LETTERS AND EMAILS

19: THE DARK SIDE PROMO

27: TAKE THE HELM

29: REVIEWS

45: SUBSCRIPTIONS

67: NEXT ISSUE PREVIEW

4 INFINITY

WEB: www.infinitymagazine.co.uk EMAIL: [email protected] FACEBOOK: Infinity Magazine ADDRESS: INFINITY Magazine

Ghoulish Publishing Ltd 29 Cheyham Way, South Cheam, Surrey, SM2 7HX

SCI-FI MOVIES AND THE HUMAN TOUCH…

One of the tricky things about doing a

magazine that only comes out every

six weeks is it’s impossible to keep fully

up to date with all the new releases.

For example, Blade Runner 2049 hit UK

cinemas on October 6th, but it wasn’t

screened before we went to press at the end of

September, so though we would love to have brought

you a review we just never had a chance. I’m guessing

it’s going to be good, but it does seem to be hellishly

long, a good forty minutes longer than the original

in fact. Wouldn’t it be odd if this followed the

pattern of the original and was a big flop in

2017 and feted in 2049? I bet the studios

wouldn’t see the funny side though…

Infinity may be a mag about futuristic

movies and TV shows but we do love to

look back more than we do forward. It’s

a cosy nostalgic approach that is yielding

dividends because five issues in and our

sales are going from strength to strength.

Luckily there is not a shortage of great old TV shows

and movies for us to cover, and we have some cracking

ones for you this time out, everything from Planet

of the Apes and The Invaders to The Incredible Hulk

and Sapphire and Steel. The latter was a particular

favourite of mine back in the day, but kids nowadays

would probably have a right old laugh watching the

show because the effects were very tacky - all the

budget went on the salaries of stars Joanna Lumley

and David McCallum.

Getting back to the first Blade Runner, I must

confess that I didn’t like it when I first saw it, and

that was back when it opened in the Leicester Square

Theatre in 1982. My pal Gary and I came out enthusing

about the amazing special effects but we were both

disappointed with the rather dreary storyline. We

wanted to see Harrison Ford in chipper Han Solo

guise, not looking like he was miserable and in need

of strong laxatives all the time. We also wanted to see

him in a proper punch-up with Rutger Hauer. Where’s

the fun if your villain can’t be arsed whether he lives

or dies? Blade Runner was judged the second greatest

sci-fi film ever made in a Time Out poll earlier this

year. Doesn’t surprise me with that lot. 2001: A Space

Odyssey was their number one and I think that’s

overrated and pretentious too. I saw it as a teen and

wasn’t impressed. I quizzed my mum about the ending

and she suggested drugs were involved. The original

Planet of the Apes movie followed it into cinemas and

it was a lot more fun. I saw that one twice. The

Time Out mob also judged Terry Gilliam’s

Brazil one of the top ten sci-fi films of all

time. Yeah, sure, much better than War of

the Worlds (1953), Forbidden Planet (1956)

and The Thing From Another World (either

version). At least they got it right that The

Empire Strikes Back was the top Star Wars

picture, after The Ewok Movie of course.

Yes, Blade Runner and 2001 are great sci-fi

films but for me they are too cold-hearted and lacking

in humanity, though they probably fit right in with

our modern world. But I recently rediscovered on

YouTube one great little sci-fi film you won’t find on

Time Out’s list, namely Charly (1968), an intensely

moving adaptation of the Daniel Keyes novel, Flowers

For Algernon. Cliff Robertson (pictured above),

deservedly won an Oscar for his portrayal of Charly

Gordon, a man with an IQ of 68 who becomes a genius

overnight after taking part in a scientific experiment.

His advancement parallels that of Algernon, a

super-mouse who has been operated on, and when

Charly sees that the mouse is regressing he realises

that his super-intelligence will also be short-lived. A

really poignant and touching film with a great deal of

humanity, sadly an ingredient that many so-called

sci-fi classics seem to lack.

Allan Bryce.

HELP US KEEP UP TO DATE WITH WHAT YOU WANT

We value every single reader and they value us, which is why we are flourishing

at a time when print magazines everywhere are having a tough time. We want to

encourage you all to send in your views on Infinity so we can get a lively letters

section going, and if you have news of sci-fi-related conventions, movies, books

etc, we will be happy to give you some publicity for them. Most importantly,

please tell us what we are doing right and (perish the thought) what we are doing

wrong! You can reach us by via:

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DO YOU DARE JOIN US FOR OUR VERY FIRST DARKFEST?

YES, I wish to attend the very irst Dark Side DARK FEST! Ticket Price - £30.00 (inc P&P)

Please state how many tickets you require:

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• FILM MEMORABILIA • COLLECTABLE FIGURES

• DVD, BLU-RAY & VHS • STILLS • POSTERS

• MAGS and MORE!

SUNDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2017 - 12 Noon to 11PM

THE GENESIS CINEMA - ADMISSION: £30Payment in advance only. Use the form on the right or via

our website shop at www.thedarksidemagazine.com Post your order form to:

29, Cheyham Way, Cheam, Surrey, SM2 7HXNB. A photocopy of the order form will sufice

Once payment is received we will post you a signed, bespoke individually-numbered ticket!

Ticket Purchase Deadline: Friday 17th November

Sunday November 26th12 noon - 11pmGenesis cinema93-95 Mile End Rd London, E1 4UJ

THE FILMS*

OUR VERY SPECIAL GUESTS* DARK SIDE BOOK LAUNCH

THE ATTRACTIONS*

THE DETAILS

SUSPIRIA - IN 4K!In association with CultFilms we are proud to present the stunning new 4K restoration of the 1977 Dario Argento classic, made in collaboration with Italian partners Videa under the aegis of Dario himself!

VALERIE LEON(Carry On Girls, Blood From

The Mummy’s Tomb, Space

1999, Never Say Never Again)

CAROLINE MUNRO(Dracula AD 1972, Golden

Voyage of Sinbad, Captain

Kronos, The Spy Who Loved Me)

MARTINE BESWICK (Doctor Jekyll and Sister

Hyde, Thunderball,

Prehistoric Women, Seizure)

LADY FRANKENSTEIN The irst ever UK cinema screening of the Nucleus Films 2K restoration of 1971’s Lady Frankenstein (1971). It’s the most complete version ever seen of this movie, and Sara Bay will look amazing on the giant screen!

NIGHT OF THE DEMONJacques Tourneur’s 1957 Night of the Demon needs no introduction. It’s one of the greatest horror movies ever made and we will be showing the longer HD version straight from the BFI National Archive.

ASYLUM You have nothing to lose but your mind. An Amicus compendium classic from 1972 on the big screen! We will be premiering the great new 2K restoration from Severin/Second Sight. You’d have to be insane to miss it!

HORROR EXPRESSTickets please for a Dark

Side favourite, and let the train take the strain as you share a tense and terrifying big screen HD journey with Peter Cushing, Christopher, Lee and a prehistoric version of The Thing!

MORE MOVIES TO BE CONFIRMED, AND EVERY FILM WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY TRAILERS AND SCARY SHORTS!

MO

RE

GU

ES

TS

TO

BE

CO

NF

IRM

ED

A FULL DAY OF FEAR,

FROLICS & FUN FOR ONLY

£30!

*The Films, Guests and Attractions listed are subject to change

OR

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OR

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The Dark Side, The World’s Best-Selling Print Horror Magazine is now throwing

its irst ever one day ilm festival. It’s Sunday For One Day Only - naturally - and

you are all invited - well, as long as you buy a ticket in advance of course!

Our very irst DarkFest is being held on Sunday November 26th at London’s

fabulous retro Genesis cinema. It’s going to be a fun event. There’s an all-day

bar, decent parking nearby and you will get to meet all the Dark Side team and

a host of celebrities in between enjoying some classic vintage horrors on the

giant screen. We might even lay on some choc-ices and Kia-Oras!

PLUS! We will also be launching the new Dark Side book - Hammer,

The Haunted House of Horror, the deinitive history of Hammer Films!

THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HOR ROR

Join us at Dark Fest for your chance to

purchase our hot-off-the press, brand new

Dark Side Book - Hammer, The Haunted

House of Horror, the deinitive history of

Hammer Films, written by highly respected

Dark Side contributor Denis Meikle!

HAMMER

6 INFINITY

Name of feature

6 INFINITY

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

The Infinity team bring you the latest news on your favourite TV shows and movie franchises,

including our exciting one-day film festival and brand new book on the history of Hammer!

COME TO THE DARKFEST

Let’s start with some personal news. As publishers of The

Dark Side magazine we are holding our very own DarkFest

on Sunday November 26th and we hope that many Infinity

readers will also consider joining us for a day of fun and

fearful frolics. Aside from screening five great

movies we are delighted to be able to host three of

our favourite Bond movie glamour girls, Sister Hyde herself,

Martine Beswick, the lovely Caroline Munro of Starcrash fame

and Valerie Leon, famous for her Carry On film roles. It’s going

to be a great day out and we’d love to see you there. You can

find details of how to order tickets in our advert on page 5.

Be sure to get in before the ordering cut-off date!

Also check out our brand new 180-page glossy, full colour

book: Hammer: The Haunted House of Horror. Those who

bought our earlier history of Amicus films will know what to

expect - pages and pages of gorgeous rare stills and posters,

plus entertaining and informative text by Denis Meikle, one of the world’s leading

authorites on Hammer. Go to our website at www.thedarksidemagazine.com for a

sneak preview and you can even get your name in it if you order a copy early!

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO

The first annual Thunderbirds Day

took place on 30th September 2017.

To launch this historic celebration of

the beloved Thunderbirds franchise

and the premiere of new episodes

of Thunderbirds Are Go on CITV, ITV

Studios Global Entertainment (ITVS

GE) and Transport for London (TfL) are

partnering on a Thunderbirds Are Go

takeover of TfL’s iconic Emirates Air Line

cable car in east London. The activity will run until Sunday 29th October offering

families and visitors the chance to travel through the Tracy Island themed cable

car terminal featuring large models of Thunderbird 1 and Thunderbird 2, and

take off in one of the themed cabins amidst the palm trees to the iconic 5-4-3-2-1

countdown. The cable car terminals and all the cabins will be fitted with plenty of

selfie opportunities for all the family to enjoy.

Emirates Air Line family tickets will be available at the discounted price of

£27.50 for two adults and up to three kids.

To complement the activity at the Emirates Air Line, InterContinental London,

The O2 will be hosting a Lady Penelope-themed Afternoon Tea. Visitors will be

able to relax in the stylish and decadent surroundings of the Meridian Lounge

as they sample delicious themed treats fit for International Rescue’s most

stylish field agent including Tracy island coconut pineapple verrine, FAB 1

pink bonbon torte and Lady Penelope macarons. Two specially created Lady

Penelope cocktails will also be on offer providing the perfect finishing touch to

a decadent afternoon. The event will also be attended by the Lady Penelope and

Parker puppets themselves, as seen on TV recently in the ‘Halifax Savers Are Go’

adverts. The Meridian Lounge will display bespoke prints from cult pop art studio

Art & Hue. Guests will receive a welcome card with a special message from her

Ladyship, signed by Rosamund Pike as Lady Penelope, her role in CITV’s reboot

Thunderbirds Are Go.

MARK IS MR. BILLION

It was revealed at the end of 2014 that Mark Wahlberg

was planning to make The Six Billion Dollar Man, an

adjusted-for inflation movie of the classic TV show

The Six Million Dollar Man. He was originally going

to make it with his regular collaborator, director

Peter Berg (Patriots Day, Deepwater Horizon, Lone

Survivor) and the plan was to get the movie in

cinemas on December 22nd 2017. That isn’t going

to happen because the film hasn’t even started shooting yet. It also has a new

director in Damien Szifron. Never heard of him? You’d better run, not walk, and

rent Wild Tales then, a work of sheer cinematic genius that has been the

Argentinian-born filmmaker’s calling card to a big Hollywood career.

According to Hollywood sources the movie will be focused on the 1970s

television series starring Lee Majors as a former astronaut who is

“upgraded” with bionic parts and employed by our government to embark

on convert missions. The show, though, was also inspired by Martin Caidin’s

novel Cyborg, and it has been suggested that the Mark Wahlberg movie

may borrow from the pages of that book, as well. Chances are we won’t

see this one until late 2018, because appropriately enough the production

seems to be running in slow motion…

SIZE DOES MATTER

In our book they really don’t make enough movies about people being shrunk to

minuscule size, and we even love the likes of Attack of the Puppet People (which

you can read about elsewhere in this issue). So we are delighted to see that this

is the theme of a new sci-fi comedy called Downsizing, which is already being

tipped as potential Oscar material.

Directed by regular Oscar nominee Alexander Payne (Sideways, The

Descendants, Nebraska), Downsizing is set in a world where scientists have

discovered a way of shrinking people down to the height of five inches as a

solution to overpopulation. Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig star as a middle-class

couple who decide to undergo the procedure after learning that their savings will

stretch further in this downsized existence, allowing them to live a life of luxury.

Christoph Waltz, Neil Patrick Harris and Laura Dern also star.

The film marks something of a departure for

Payne, being his biggest budget movie to date

and his first entry into the mainstream Hollywood

sci-fi arena. It premiered at the Venice film

festival to a favourable critical response and after

a screening at this year’s London film festival it

opens in UK cinemas in early 2018.

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT

“If only you could see what I’ve seen with your

eyes!” Well now you can see Blade Runner in the

best ever picture quality with the release of the

movie on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. Now it is regarded

as a classic it is easy to forget how troubled a

production it was. Ridley Scott was

fired and the film edited against his wishes, and it flopped on

release in 1982. It found new life on home video and went

from strength to strength, going on to have a profound

influence on modern cinema.

Like Close Encounters, this has had lots of

different releases in various different cuts. The first

release of Ridley Scott’s Director’s Cut came on VHS

and LaserDisc in 1993. It was followed by a DVD

THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF HAMMER FILMS – BY DENIS MEIKLE

THE DARK S IDE PROUDLY PRESENTS:

T H E H A U N T E D H O U S E O F H O R R O R

HAMMER

INFINITY 7

Name of feature

INFINITY 7

release in 1997, and then The Final Cut DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD release in 2007.

Now, on its 35th anniversary, Blade Runner: The Final Cut has landed on 4K Ultra

HD Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Brothers in a four-disc + Digital HD set.

Designer Kev is a masive fan of the film. He attended a screening of it recently,

and pronounced the sound quality amazing, though he and I saw a 2K version

projected at the BFI’s Stephen Street cinema and he tells me that he couldn’t see

much difference between the two. I guess that’s a whole different debate, but if

you are a Blade Runner fan who is lucky enough to own a 4K telly and a 4K player

then this is a must.

Extras include three audio commentaries with Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher,

David Peoples, Michael Deeley, Katherine Haber, Syd Mead, Lawrence G Paull,

David Snyder, Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich, and David Dryer. We also get the

SD documentary: Dangerous Days which at 211 minutes is longer than the film!

And in case The Final Cut isn’t enough you can watch all three different versions

of the film: the original 1982 domestic cut, the 1982 International version, and the

subsequent 1992 Director’s Cut. There’s more, but we haven’t the space, just buy

it already.

SOMETHING ABOUT HARRY

We sincerely hope that there’s not a ‘No Smoking’ rule in heaven, but if there is

then they are sure to waive it for the great Harry Dean Stanton, who managed to

survive to the grand old age of 91 despite seemingly puffing away on the old coffin

nails from dawn to dusk. He was gaunt and bedraggled and nobody’s pin-up, but

as film critic Roger Ebert once said: “No movie with Harry Dean Stanton in it can be

altogether bad.

Though never a major star he was certainly up there as one of the greatest

character actors who ever lived, and boy did he have some great roles in his long

career. Sci-fi fans will remember him as Brett, one of the ill-fated crew members in

Alien (1979) and as Brain in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981), as well

as the degenerate Bud in Alex Cox’s Repo Man (1984). Among my own favourites

are his unlucky gangsters Homer in Dillinger (1973), and Jerry in Straight Time

(1978), plus all the great work he did with David Lynch.

Born in West Irvine, Stanton served in the Navy during WWII. After the acting

bug bit he headed to California to study at the Pasadena Playhouse.

He made his small-screen debut in 1954 in an episode of the NBC show Inner

Sanctum. He was credited as Dean Stanton in most of his early roles to avoid

confusion with the actor Harry Stanton, who died in 1978.

On the big screen, Stanton’s earliest, mostly uncredited work was in Westerns

and war pics, making his feature film debut in 1957’s Tomahawk Trail. He also

guested on many TV Westerns, including The Rifleman, Have Gun — Will Travel,

Bonanza, and Gunsmoke.

Genuine movie stardom of a sort came late in life to him. He was 58 years of age

in 1984 when he starred in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas and in the cult hit Repo Man.

In 1986, Stanton enjoyed one of his biggest mainstream roles as Molly Ringwald’s

unemployed father in Pretty in Pink.

A close friend of Jack Nicholson, Stanton was best man at Nicholson’s 1962

wedding, and they lived together for more than two years after Nicholson’s divorce.

He was also a friend of Marlon Brando’s and appeared opposite both Brando and

Nicholson in The Missouri Breaks (1976).

Stanton also led his own band, first known as Harry Dean Stanton and the Repo

Men and later simply as the Harry Dean Stanton Band, and would play pickup

gigs in L.A. area clubs. He was friends with Bob Dylan, with whom he worked on

Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Hunter S. Thompson was

another close pal and Stanton sang at his funeral.

A confirmed bachelor, he never married, but when asked about it he said he had

“one or two children.”

Let’s leave the last word to David Lynch, who wrote: “The great Harry Dean

Stanton has left us. There went a great one. There’s nobody like Harry Dean.

Everyone loved him. And with good reason. He was a great actor (actually beyond

great) – and a great human being – so great to be around him!!! You are really

going to be missed Harry Dean!!! Loads of love to you wherever you are now!!!”

FAREWELL TO OSCAR GOLDMAN

We also recently lost Richard Anderson, a familiar character actor whose credits

spanned more than 180 film and TV roles over six decades. He will be best

remembered, however, for playing Oscar Goldman, the handler of the bionic duo

of Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers, played by Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner

in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. The combined franchise ran

for more than 150 episodes from 1973-78 and spawned several TV movies, two of

which Anderson produced. The Goldman character was so popular that Kenner

introduced an action figure of him - complete with an “exploding briefcase” that

would “detonate” if opened incorrectly.

Anderson’s film credits include the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, Stanley

Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, Martin Ritt’s The Long Hot Summer, John Sturges’ Escape

From Fort Bravo and John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May. On TV he had roles

in Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O, Dynasty, Dan August, Perry Mason, The Fugitive,

Charlie’s Angels, The A-Team, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Bonanza, Ironside, Daniel

Boone and Murder, She Wrote.

Born on August 8, 1926, in Long Branch, NJ, Anderson was raised in New York

City until moving to California at age 10. After serving in the Army during World

War II, he enrolled in the Actors Laboratory in

Los Angeles, which later became the Actors

Studio in New York.

Lee Majors paid tribute to him saying: “I met

Richard in 1967 when he first guest starred

on The Big Valley - we worked together on five

episodes. In 1974, he joined me as my boss,

Oscar Goldman, in The Six Million Dollar Man.

Richard became a dear and loyal friend, and

I have never met a man like him. I called him

‘Old Money.’ His always stylish attire, his class,

calmness and knowledge never faltered in his

91 years. He loved his daughters, tennis and his

work as an actor.

He was still the same sweet, charming man

when I spoke to him a few weeks ago. I will miss

you, my friend.”

8 INFINITY

Strange, enigmatic and disturbing,

Sapphire &

Steel entranced television

audiences in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as

Robert Fairclough reports…

This page:

Though Sapphire

and Steel was

originally planned

as a children’s

show, the signing

of big name

stars Joanna

Lumley and David

McCallum made

it too expensive

for a teatime slot.

The marketing

spinoffs, however,

were obviously

aimed at a

younger audience

TWO ELEMENTS OF CULT TV GOLD

here was definitely something in the air

in the 1970s regarding the paranormal,

possibly as a hangover from the interest

in mysticism that 1960s counter-culture

had helped popularise. In 1971, David Bowie sang

about making way for “the homo superior” in ‘Oh!

You Pretty Things’ and, throughout the decade,

advanced beings with powers such as telepathy

and ESP were a staple of children’s TV drama: Ace

of Wands (1970-72), The Tomorrow People (1973-79)

and Sky (1975) all featured characters who could lay

claim to being the heralded master race.

There was also a concurrent fascination with malign

supernatural forces in the chilling series The Changes

(1975) and Children of the Stones (1977), as well as in

adult TV fiction like Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale’s

unsettling The Stone Tape (1972) and the series it may

have inspired, The Omega Factor (1979).

Sapphire & Steel, arriving in July 1979 courtesy

of ATV - one of the regional TV stations that, at

the time, made up the ITV network - was in many

ways the culmination of British television’s 1970s

fascination with the paranormal. Peter J. Hammond,

who had written for both Thames Television’s Ace of

Wands and the company’s supernatural anthology

series for younger viewers Shadows (1975-78), was

asked by both series’ producer Pamela Lonsdale to

devise another paranormal-leaning series aimed at

a young audience.

“I’ve always been fascinated by famous

mysteries like the Mary Celeste and Bermuda

Triangle, and also by stories of time travel,”

Hammond remarked. “I watched my children

watching an old version of H.G. Wells’ The Time

Machine and they were riveted. So I decided to write

a story about time from a different angle. Instead

of people going from everyday life into time, I had

time breaking into everyday life.”

In effect, time became the enemy: a mysterious

force attacking the present, personified in ghosts

from the past and creatures from the beginning and

end of its span. In Hammond’s new series, originally

titled The Time Menders, these esoteric threats were

combated by the two title characters, a male and

female duo of mysterious agents with powers that,

in the trend for super beings in childrens’ TV of the

time, possessed powers that marked them out as

‘more than human’.

Steel, the man, could take his body temperature

down to zero. He also possessed great strength and

the ability to move objects and immobilise people

through thought control. His partner Sapphire was

able to manipulate time (to a limited extent), project

illusions and (somehow) discern people and objects’

biographical and background details.

Stressing their separation from normal humans,

there was also telepathic communication between

the pair. There was no more back story to them

than that, a striking departure for the TV drama of

the time (apart from the suggestion, in the solemn

opening voiceover, that Sapphire and Steel may

have evolved from the “medium atomic” elements

they were named after.)

Crucially, audiences could relate to them –

and the series – because the investigators were

essentially “good cop” (Sapphire) and “bad cop”

(Steel), Hammond being a prolific and experienced

writer of police dramas: between 1969 and 1978,

he wrote 33 episodes of the BBC’s Z Cars, and also

contributed to New Scotland Yard (1973-74) and

The Sweeney (1976). Despite the promising and

unusual scenario, however, Hammond recalled that

“(Thames) couldn’t see how good it was… Director of

Programmes Jeremy Isaacs said it had no mileage.”

Undaunted, the author submitting the project

to Southern TV, who had a reputation for quality

children’s programming with series such as The

Black Arrow (1972-75, based on Robert Louis

Stevenson’s adventure novel), but the company

apparently wanted to consider more episode

breakdowns before they committed to a series.

When The Time Menders was subsequently

forwarded to ATV, it found an immediate ally in Head

of Drama David Reid; Hammond recalled that Reid

had been unable to sleep after reading the proposal

and, on the strength of the initial script’s unsettling

power, gave the green light for a full series without

hesitation. It was also Reid’s idea that the title be

changed to the more alluring Sapphire & Steel.

AURA OF MYSTERY

Adding to the aura of mystery, no individual story

titles were given on screen, and when the series

began in July 1979, ‘Adventure One’ betrayed

its genesis as a children’s series by having as its

‘audience identifiable’ characters the young Robert

Jardine (Steven O’Shea) and his younger sister Helen

(Tamasin Bridge).

However, during production of this first six-part

serial, Sapphire & Steel’s producer/director Shaun

O’Riordan quickly realised that, as Reid’s sleepless

night suggested, “If (it) had gone out at 5.30 it would

have terrified children.” Hammond’s powerful, adult

mixture of “suspense, mystery and unseen horror”

was consequently promoted to an early evening slot,

running for half an hour (with a commercial break)

from 7.30pm for all 34 episodes, between 1979 and

1982. Each episode ended on a cliffhanger.

Another factor that may have promoted Sapphire

& Steel to a primetime slot was the engagement of

two stars in David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.

Both actors were A-list and not the kind of artists

you expected to see in a low budget children’s

drama. As O’Riordan noted, the “above the line”

cost of one episode of Sapphire & Steel in 1979

was a modest £5,000, and McCallum’s fee added

up to almost the same amount. He and Lumley

were attracted to the series by the originality of

Hammond’s writing, the discerning McCallum

proclaiming the first story “great stuff,” while

Lumley found it “a thrilling idea”.

Their starring roles were brokered by ATV’s

charismatic chairman, Lew Grade, whose had

previously paired The Saint’s suave Roger Moore

Twith Hollywood star Tony Curtis to winning effect in

The Persuaders! (1971-72).

McCallum was a blonde-haired, striking and

sophisticated British-born actor who’d made his

name in America opposite Robert Vaughn in the

groovy TV secret agent caper The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

(1964-68), and the rather more serious World War

II BBC/Universal Studios drama Colditz (1972-74).

The statuesque, regal Lumley, acting since the late

1950s in small and supporting roles, had become

a household name in another spy show, The New

Avengers (1976-77), a revival of the stylish 1960s series

starring Patrick Macnee. Both actors were perfect

casting as their respective characters: Sapphire

dazzling, beautiful and mesmerizing, while Steel was

focused, enigmatic and, occasionally, threatening.

PICTURE THE SCENE

A remote, windswept house, a variety of clocks

ticking in the many rooms. A teenage boy does his

homework at the kitchen table while his parents

play with their small daughter, singing her the

nursery rhyme ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’. Slowly, all

the clocks wind down and stop ticking. The voices

of the parents suddenly fall silent, replaced by an

unearthly, vaguely electronic murmur…

Steel, who somehow knows the boy’s name,

arrives with a young woman, Sapphire. He says

they’ve been sent to help, speaking of “lots of

old, old echoes” in the house, while Sapphire

cryptically mentions “a corridor… the corridor is

time. It surrounds all things and it passes through

all things. You can’t see it – only sometimes, when

it’s dangerous… You cannot enter into time, but

sometimes time can enter into the present. Break in.

Burst through. Take things – take people.”

In the small girl’s bedroom, as Sapphire recites

‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’, ghosts from the past appear

and one wall of the room telescopes alarmingly into

the distance…

In a time before convention-breaking dramas

like Twin Peaks (1990-91, 2017), Lost (2004-2010),

and Legion (2017- ), Sapphire & Steel really was

revolutionary. At the time, the only series that

matched its deliberately ambiguous format was

Patrick McGoohan’s paranoid, open-ended spy

thriller The Prisoner, made over ten years before (for

ATV’s international arm, ITC).

Where that had combined the filmed action

thriller with surreal fantasy, Sapphire & Steel was

minimalist and sinister: recorded on videotape

– as the majority of domestic British TV drama

was between the 1950s and 1980s – it relied on

an ambience of menace and suspense, powered

by dialogue and usually confined to one, isolated

location: Adventure One’s family house, followed by

a railway station, a time machine berthed on top of

a tower block, a rundown boarding house, a country

house and a motorway cafe.

In this respect, it’s not pretentious to suggest that

Sapphire & Steel was the telefantasy equivalent of

the British playwright Harold Pinter’s work.

INFINITY 9

Name of feature

10 INFINITY

Such ground-breaking plays as The Birthday

Party and The Dumb Waiter (both 1957) defined

his ‘Pinteresque’ approach – a term he hated – to

drama: a tense atmosphere in a confined, claustro-

phobic space; an ambiguous approach to time, place

and the characters’ identity; tense, long pauses and

a sense of threat expressed largely through what the

characters say.

Sapphire & Steel incorporated all of these

Pinteresque touches, together with the binding

element crucial to the success of any drama

production – absolutely committed, convincing

performances.

McCallum and Lumley compelled the viewer’s

attention from the start, the latter easily winning

the trust of the Robert and Helen, at the same time

suggesting an alien otherness with her sometimes

blank expressions and blue, pulsating eyes.

McCallum, meanwhile, conveyed focused intensity

in underplayed, quiet phrases like “take (the nursery

rhyme) downstairs – and burn it.” O’Riordan’s belief

in a theatrical production style suited to atmospher-

ically lit, shadowy video won a loyal following from

the start, with the first episode accruing 11.8 million

viewers as the fourth most watched programme,

nationally, of the week 7-13 July 1979.

PRETENTIOUS NONSENSE?

Despite the series becoming immediately popular,

perhaps because of its designation as science

fiction – a genre frowned upon by critics at the time

– reviews in the press were initially unenthusiastic.

“I’m told that Sapphire and Steel, the twice-weekly

sci-fi serial, is becoming a cult programme among

children,” noted Margaret Forwood in The Sun,

going on to say rather more damningly, “The only

explanation I can think of is that the little dears

are watching this pretentious nonsense strictly for

laughs… It has no right to be hogging primetime

once a week. Perhaps a time warp allowed it to

escape from Children’s Hour?”

In The Daily Mail, two different reviewers

grumbled at, respectively, “An unvaried, unrelieved

half an hour of… haunted stuff up and down the

stairs (which) struck me as a conspicuous abuse

of viewer tolerance,” as well as the programme’s

carefully constructed air of mystery: “Who and what

Sapphire and Steel are remains unclear. During the

production McCallum told me he thought he was an

angel. I offer that titbit without any confidence that

it will be in the least helpful.”

Significantly, a more positive opinion could be

found in the broadsheet Daily Telegraph, with the

paper’s Sean Day-Lewis appreciative of the series’

creative ambitions: “It was… quite gripping in its

mysterious way and though Shaun O’Riordan’s

direction ensured performances unexcitable to a

fault, the sinister atmosphere was well made and

maintained.”

Unshackled from the need to cater for children,

Adventure Two is arguably the definitive Sapphire

& Steel story. Set at night in a derelict railway

station and adjoining hotel, the unquestionably

adult subject matter features the resentful ghosts

of a dead soldier, fighter pilot and submariners,

recruited by time as a fighting force. Its eight parts

last for nearly four hours and are remarkable for

demonstrating how a mood of unease and tension

can be maintained by a small cast, with only three

principal actors to the fore – McCallum, Lumley and

Gerald James as the naïve ghost hunter George Tully.

The story also reinforces the agents’ ruthless side,

as Steel brokers a deal where in exchange for letting

the wartime ghosts rest, time takes Tully’s life.

Hammond recalled that the second adventure

was made to a very tight schedule: “The first five

episodes were in production while I was still writing

the last three. In other words, no-one, including

myself, had any idea what the ending was going to

be while the show was being made. A nerve-racking

experience but an exciting one, often bringing the

best out of all those involved.”

There was some compensation for the author at

the end of recording, when he spent an enjoyable

evening “drinking with the railway station ghosts in

the bar.”

With the series now fully into its mature stride,

the TV reviewer in The Scotsman praised Adventure

Two’s “genuine feelings of loss and waste and death.”

The story was interrupted by an ITV strike that

saw the whole network off air between 9 August

and 23 October, but Sapphire and Steel’s second

assignment gained more devotees when it was

repeated from the beginning in November 1979.

With such an enthusiastic response to the

first series, ATV commissioned two new

stories which were transmitted in early

1981. Adventure Three’s attempt to do something new

with Sapphire & Steel’s ‘isolated location’ scenario

wasn’t entirely successful: the only location filming in

the series – on the top of a nondescript city building

– didn’t add much to Hammond’s story of futuristic

vivisection in a time capsule, while an increased

demand for overtly science fiction-style effects

showed up the limitations of the series’ budget.

The third serial did, however, develop the

characters’ back story, with the introduction of

Silver (the equally well cast David Collings), a

Specialist Technician skilled in electronics, who was

also able to create new tools from the raw material

of different objects (another agent, Lead, a strong

man played by Val Pringle, had appeared in the first

story). Lumley and Collings played well off each

other, implying a flirtatious relationship that Steel

was clearly jealous of.

At a concise four episodes, Adventure Four

challenged the duo’s second assignment for the

accolade of the archetypal Sapphire & Steel story.

“Old photographs have always fascinated me,”

Hammond revealed, “and the idea of sepia children

climbing in and out of them was exciting to write.

I also enjoyed creating ‘Mister Shape’, the first

identifiable adversary that Sapphire and Steel had

so far encountered.” The duo’s enemy in this story

was truly unnerving, a black suited, bowler-hatted

man with no face, a close cousin to the similar

characters portrayed in the paintings of the

surrealist artist René Magritte (1898-1967). Mister

Shape, or The Shape, features in Sapphire & Steel’s

single most disturbing scene, when the screams of

a young woman trapped inside a photograph can be

heard as The Shape sets it on fire.

The character was played by ingénue actor Philip

Bird. “The fitting of the mask to cover my face was

fairly frightening,” he remembered. “I just had a little

straw to breathe through, they slapped stuff all over

my face, and I felt very vulnerable and claustropho-

bic. I remember standing in front of a blue screen so

that they could isolate me and slot me into various

photographs (the character I played, The Shape, was

a kind of Zelig who could hide in photographs) and it

was terribly important that I stayed on the mark and

all the movements were exact. My eyes were opened

ROBERT FAIRCLOUGH

With the series ending, the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Knight

was on hand to pay tribute: “The end of the current series

will mark the end of one of the cleverest, most intriguing

little sorties into television sci-i we have seen for some time

INFINITY 11

to the kinds of things actors are asked to do. It’s

not just shouting in the evenings.”

After four stories Hammond was temporarily

at a loss for ideas, so on the six-part Adventure

Five, premiering in August 1981, writing duties

were split between Anthony Read and Don

Houghton, two experienced script writers who

had both worked on the BBC’s evergreen sci-fi

series Doctor Who (1963-89, 2005- ). Presented in

the trappings of a 1920s’ country house murder,

Read and Houghton wrote alternating episodes,

delighting in devising cliffhangers for the other

to write his way out of.

By now, critics had become accustomed

to the series’ individual style. Peter Knight

praised the latest adventure at considerable

length in The Daily Telegraph: “If it were not

done with such style and conviction, with the

statuesque Joanna Lumley and the enigmatic

David McCallum holding everything together,

it would collapse like a pack of cards. Some of

the past series have been a little too clever for

their own good, taking themselves much too

seriously and often sinking without trace in their

own complexity. This time the correct balance

seems to have been struck between the scientific

mumbo-jumbo and the realism of the setting,

even though the clock has been wound back 50

years and has a disturbing habit of hiccupping

backwards and forwards from time to time.”

FINISHING ON A CLIFFHANGER

The following August, it was announced in

the press that Sapphire & Steel was coming

to an end. Making the series was particularly

problematic for McCallum as, during his last

twelve months of working on the production, he

did the 6,000 mile round trip between America,

where he lived, and Birmingham – where the

series was recorded – 20 times. “‘It meant a lot

of jet lag,” McCallum told the press, with some

understatement. “But I was supervising the

building of my home in Long Island, New York. I

wanted to be there as often as I could.”

Joanna Lumley remembered that Adventure

Six was designed to finish on a cliffhanger, while

Collings’ recollection is that although

another series was planned, in the

end the two stars decided that they

didn’t want to continue. When ATV

lost its broadcasting franchise in

1981, it seemed an appropriate time

for the series to end. The last story

was transmitted in August 1982

by Central Television, the new ITV

network which replaced ATV.

Adventure Six has both an ominous air of

finality and tantalising hints at more back story,

as for the first time Sapphire and Steel become

hunted. Together with Silver, they are lured to

a remote motorway cafe cut off from the rest

of time and space. Most of the humans there

from different time periods – a pair of lovers,

an old man and a children’s entertainer, Jolly

Jack (a young and sinister Christopher Fairbank)

– are really “Transient Beings” from the past,

matching the investigators in strength and

power, hunting Sapphire and Steel for unknown

enemies. The story, and the series, ends with the

duo imprisoned in the cafe “forever”, looking out

from the window at a bleak starscape.

With the series ending, the Daily Telegraph’s

Peter Knight was on hand to pay tribute: “The

end of the current series will mark the end of one

of the cleverest, most intriguing little sorties into

television sci-fi we have seen for some time…

Usually (the stories) have had just enough hard

logic behind them to support even the most

preposterous developments… Joanna Lumley

is as stunning as ever while David McCallum

looks suitably worried and determined at each

surprising eventuality.”

During its run, the series’ fans could delight in

typical 1970s TV spin-offs: a novelisation of the

first story, an annual (for 1981) and a well-drawn

comic strip in the “junior TV Times”, Look-In,

as well as a prestigious senior TV Times cover

promoting the first series.

The most bizarre item of merchandise

associated with Hammond’s sinister saga has

to be Lyons Maid’s Sapphire & Steel Ice Lolly,

featuring “Cool blue raspberry ice on a stainless

steel stick”. Amusingly, whoever had written the

copy for the ice cream’s advert clearly knew their

subject matter, as it included the nursery rhyme

‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’. Even the blurb for Sapphire

and Steel was in character: the former enthused

that the lolly was “Out of this world,” while the

latter typically stated, “I don’t trust it!”

A LASTING IMPRESSION

Despite only being shown once (apart from the

repeat of the second story), Sapphire & Steel

is one of those programmes, like The Prisoner,

Star Trek and Doctor Who, that made a lasting

impression on the young (and not so young)

minds that originally watched it. In 2004 the

company Big Finish, best known for releasing

original Doctor Who audio dramas, secured the

rights to produce full-cast Sapphire & Steel plays,

written by enthusiastic authors inspired by the

TV series. McCallum and Lumley were asked to

reprise their roles but declined, so the central

roles were recast with the veteran actor David

Warner playing Steel and Susannah Harker

ably taking on the mantle of Sapphire.

David Collings returned as Silver, and there

was a new addition to the ranks of the time

agents with Lisa Bowerman playing Ruby,

an element who has an affinity with music.

Unlike the TV series, the audio plays had

individual names, with evocative titles such

as ‘Water Like a Stone’, ‘Cruel Immortality’

and ‘The Mystery of the Missing Hour’. The

new writers pushed the story forwards, with

all the new adventures taking place after the

events of Adventure Six.

After 13 stories, the audios ceased in

2008. Seven years later in 2015 – with

Sapphire & Steel now 25 years old – the

enduring power of the concept was highlighted

when Neil Cross, the creator of the BBC detective

series Luther, announced that he was reviving

the two investigators in a new series that would

feature “ghost stories and monster stories” in

which “time is the villain.” Despite the suggestion

that a prominent UK broadcaster was interested

in financing the revival, and P.J. Hammond’s

involvement, a rebooted Sapphire & Steel has (so

far) failed to appear.

Hammond himself remains proud of the show

and has fond memories of the production team

who worked so hard on his series over three

years. “Because Sapphire & Steel was regarded

as something of an innovation at the time of its

production, all those working on the show became

very involved. I suppose it made a change from all

the social realism dramas that had been around

for so long. Actors and production crew alike

would often come up with ideas.”

“I think we were one of the last shows

where the visual effects were hand-made,”

O’Riordan adds. “If we had had the facility of

digital enhancement or digital effects, I believe

Sapphire & Steel would have lost some of its

penetration… The acting and the strength of

thinking that went into the stories was heavier

than it is now with a computer-generated effect.”

With that in mind, perhaps it’s best that – the

audio plays aside – Sapphire & Steel’s haunting

tales of isolated places where extraordinary,

bizarre events occur remain mesmerising

video-era period pieces.

As rewatching the six Adventures illustrates,

the enigmatic ‘fantasy Pinter’ has a power,

intensity and strangeness unlike anything seen

on television today.

Above:

Lumley and

McCallum as

Sapphire and

Steel. Not that

we want to be

pedantic but the

introduction talks

about elements

and their atomic

weights, but

sapphire is

a gemstone

composed of

the mineral

corundum, an

aluminum oxide,

and steel is an

alloy of iron,

carbon and other

elements. We’ll

get our coat, er, I

mean our anorak!

SAPPHIRE & STEEL

12 INFINITY

We love Close Encounters with our readers so drop us a letter at 29 Cheyham Way, South Cheam, Surrey SM2 7HX

or an e-mail at [email protected] and you have a good chance of seeing your own name in print

YOUR LETTERS AND EMAILS

Dear Infinity,

Great magazine, a real goldmine

of good stuff. I was prompted to

write to you after reading Kevin

Coward’s excellent article on The

Black Hole in issue 3. I am the

same age as Kevin and I also

went to see The Black Hole in

1979, in the wake of the cultural

earthquake that was Star Wars.

Unlike Kevin, I must admit that

I was a little disappointed in the

film at the time. As Kevin said in

his article, the film dragged a bit

in the middle. The problem for me was that I thought

it dragged at the beginning and the end as well.

However, after reading of Kevin’s obvious enthusiasm

for the film, I decided to go back and take another

look at it. You know what? It wasn’t as bad as I seem

to remember. Let’s face it, any film will fall short in

comparison to Star Wars, right? But if you view The

Black Hole as some sort of bonkers Hammer horror in

space then it’s much more satisfying.

So thank you, Kevin, for prompting me to take

another look and rediscover this classic. By the way,

sorry to hear about your incident with the evaporated

milk, but don’t get me started on how many

thousands of Weetabix I ate in order to collect a few

free cardboard figures.

Yours queasily, Mark Finlayson, Crawley, Sussex

Kev thanks you for your kind comments, Mark. I too

wasn’t a big fan of The Black Hole when I first saw

it, but I still bought the John Barry score and I was

impressed by the film’s ‘haunted house in space’ vibe.

Even then it struck me as odd that the Cygnus craft

was as spacious as Dracula’s castle. It can’t have been

fuel efficient, surely? Unless it ran on evaporated milk.

Dear Allan,

I’ve been meaning to congratulate you on Infinity for

some time, since issue 1 in fact, but what has finally

made me put pen to paper is your article on Fredric

Brown, an author I have long regarded as one of the

greats. It says a good deal about your great taste and

judgement that you have put the spotlight on Fred so

early in Infinity’s run, when there were so many more

famous SF writers you could have covered - more

famous but often inferior!

I’ve been banging on about Fred Brown in the

pages of The Paperback Fanatic for many years now,

beginning with an article in 2011, but your piece

will introduce many new readers to the great man. I

enjoyed your amusing anecdote about trying to order

a Fred Brown book from WH Smith in the far-off BC

days - that’s Before Computers.

I fondly remember that giant catalogue into

which the assistant would peer. It seemed to be full

of promise, a promise not always fulfilled, which is

why the advent of Forbidden Planet with its shelves of

imported US paperbacks brought such joy.

Incidentally, issue 2 of my ‘zine, Worlds of

Strangeness, to be published in Autumn of 2017,

includes a story by Graham Andrews with the droll

title of The Lights In The Sky Aren’t Stars. Just thought

I’d mention that by way of a plug.

Bearing in mind Barrie Wright’s complaint in The

Dark Side that

you only print

letters of praise I

thought I’d better

include a few

mild criticisms,

so here goes.

There were a

couple of errors

in your article. Mr

Jinx, which you

credit to Brown, is

a story by Robert

Arthur. More

glaringly you mis-remembered the

title of Brown’s magnum opus. It’s

Answer, not Question. A question that

arises for me is how an error of this

kind could originate since you quote

the final sentence almost verbatim.

Am I right in detecting the pernicious influence of

Wikipedia or is this just my immense anti-internet

bias coming out?

As you can probably tell from the fact that I’m

writing this letter using pen and paper, I’m something

of a dinosaur, a bit of a technophobe. You could call

me a TrogLuddite. But I do find these basic errors

worrying. They undermine one’s confidence in the

other info.

Of course an alternative explanation for your lapses

could be the three bottles of vodka you consume

daily, as reported in Dark Side 185.

I don’t want to finish on a negative note and so I

will return to the praise. I love Fred Brown so much

ans he made me very covetous of Mrs Murphy’s

Underpants. Isn’t there a warning about that in the

Old Testament.

Nigel Taylor, Rickmansworth, Herts.

There is indeed such a warning, Nigel, it is in there

alongside the warning, ‘verily it is written that nobody

loves a smartarse.’ Having said that, yes, the old grey

matter isn’t what it used to be and just remembering

things off the top of my head doesn’t always work

these days. In my defence, I do have ice in my vodka.

And a slice of lemon. Great to meet another Fred

Brown fan anyway, keep spreading the word and I will

keep an eye out for your zine!

Hi Allan,

I wanted to let you know my thoughts on the first

issue of Infinity. I live in Adelaide, South Australia. I

saw a copy at my local newsagent and had to have

it (and it was reasonably priced), as the front page

intrigued me so. After reading it,

I now know you are affiliated with

The Dark Side (which I also get).

All the issues were very

interesting, although I’m not a

great fan of Dr Who and Star Trek,

I skimmed over these. I really

enjoyed the pulp science-fic-

tion section, and overall a very

nice little magazine. I have

now organised with my local

newsagent to pick up the issues

from them, but I did miss out on

issue 2 which I have today ordered

from your website.

Before I go, just wanted to

put it out there that I still can’t

understand why people insist

on digital instead of good old

magazine format. There truly is

nothing like holding a magazine / book in your hand.

KEEP ON GOING WITH THE PRINT FORMAT!

Anne Nolan, All the way from Australia

As I have said to our readers many times before, Anne,

there will never come a time when we go just digital

with either Dark Side or Infinity. I would rather close

the mags than do that, but we are doing better than

ever with both now, which I think is proof that if you

produce a consistently good product at a reasonable

price then people will buy it. Also, you can’t swat flies

with a rolled up iPad.

Hi Allan,

After 45 summers of living on this earth, this is the

first time I’ve ever written a ‘fan’ correspondence

of any kind. I just felt compelled to write to you

to say how much I’m enjoying reading your new

Infinity magazine. I purchased a couple of Dark Side

magazines (which are very good by the way) and

through that I was introduced to your new Infinity

mag. I have to say, I’m loving it.

As an avid Trek fan I am particularly enjoying

the articles on the original Star Trek series. I always

loved watching the intrepid adventures of Kirk and

crew. I mean, The Next Generation was okay, but I

found Picard well… a bit boring really. He was always

a bit too serious for my liking. Now Kirk on the other

hand, well what a cool dude (not sure it’s right for a

bloke in his forties to say cool dude but bollocks to it,

it just feels right). He just had this knack of cheating

death, working out how to destroy the boss alien and

yet still have time to kiss the bird covered in green

paint - what a guy. So what if he sported a black curly

“I’ll be back to

give you laser

surgery on the

other eye later”

“I told you that eating

all that Weetabix

would bind you up”

Name of feature

INFINITY 13

hair toupee in TJ Hooker? The bloke’s still a hero in

my eyes.

I’ve just read issue 3, there is so much stuff I loved

about it, Space 1999, John Carpenter, The Man from

U.N.C.L.E, the list goes on.

One thing I was thinking of, was maybe including

a piece on the golden age of the video shop, perhaps

focusing on cult sci-fi/video nasties? I think that

nothing will ever beat the feeling of trawling through

a video shop looking for the next cult classic to watch

(although I do like my Netflix subscription haha). As

a kid growing up in the eighties, I vividly remember

going round my mates house and watching The Thing

on his parents’ betamax. And there was always a

cocky kid at school who managed to get his hands on

the latest pirate videos. The picture quality was crap

but no one seemed to care. Terminator, now there is

another good film to cover in your mag.

Nick Mandis, by email

Don’t be ashamed of calling Bill Shatner a cool dude

Nick, I’ve heard him singing ‘Rocket Man’ and ‘Bohemian

Rhapsody’ and there is nobody cooler. It’s singing, Nick,

but not as we know it. We are indeed planning a video

shop feature but that will be in The Dark Side, a cunning

way to make sure you buy both mags!

Dear Infinity,

Congratulations on a great magazine. I love the

mix of articles that you have, including the TV and

films of the 50s and 60s etc, also including shots of

merchandise. It brings back memories of my youth,

especially the Gerry Anderson article as I was into

Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet etc. I still have a photo

of myself wearing a Captain Scarlet outfit. There are

not many magazines that deal with past

sci-fi programmes and films. I have

got Infinity 3 and again a great

issue, especially the Adam

West interview even though

it was done 30 years ago.

Also the Space 1999

article. It was sad that

Martin Landau died a

few days before the

magazine came out. I

met Catherine Schell

who played Maya at

a memorabilia event

in Birmingham in

November 2009. I got

her autograph and had my photo taken with her. There

is an event at the NEC in Birmingham every March

and November. They have some really great guests.

It is now called ComicCon which is mostly Manga and

anime stuff.

Last November, Collectormania was held at the

NEC for the first time and my brother and I attended.

I got John Barrowman’s autograph, he of Torchwood,

Arrow etc. I have met Colin Baker in the past as well

as Katy Manning and one or two other Doctor Who

companions.

Will your issues continue doing episode guides? I

hope so. It would be great if you could do articles on

Irwin Allen and his shows. Of course you have already

done Land of the Giants. It would be great if you could

do articles on Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea, The

Time Tunnel, Lost In Space and of course other Gerry

Anderson shows such as UFO, The Protectors, Captain

Scarlet and Stingray.

I am happy that a magazine like Infinity is finally on

sale. Keep up the good work. I used to get Dreamwatch

magazine (remember that?) and was sad when it

finished, and it is nice to have you take its place.

Paul Craig, Coventry

Plenty of great suggestions there, Paul, and you can

be sure that Gerry Anderson and Irwin Allen shows will

feature heavily in future editions, starting with our

great Captain Scarlet coverage in this very issue. Are

we good to you or what?

Dear Allan,

Loving Infinity. I’m 51 years young but I feel like I

used to waiting for your mag when I was 14 waiting for

my Titan comic. The covers are great. Noticed you put

Martin Landau on your cover and he died. Can

you please put George Osborne and Piers

Morgan on your next cover? Could

you do an article on Alexandra

Bastedo (The Champions) or

at least run a picture of her,

she’s the sexiest female in

sci-fi - after Lady Penelope

of course. Great mag.

Alf Cage (51 1⁄2),

Mossley, Manchester

You’re a bad lad Alf, we

can’t put Piers and George

on the cover of Infinity,

because we are not a horror

mag. However, we put Salem’s Lot on the cover of The

Dark Side and Tobe Hooper died, so watch this space.

The candids of Lady Penelope are in the post and we

are waiting for Alexandra to return our call, but, for

now, you can make do with this cracking image of her!

62 INFINITY

As the man behind

Halloween, The Fog,

Escape From New

York and The Thing,

John Carpenter was

undeniably one of

the major directing

talents of the 70s

and 80s. Chris

Hallam takes a look

back and wonders,

where did it all

go wrong?

THINGS AIN’T

INFINITY 63

ohn Carpenter is a legend. If you were reading

that statement in 1984, you wouldn’t be

questioning it for a moment.

At the time he was only 36 years of age,

but had already done enough to take his

place among the giants of the movie world.

In the past decade alone he had directed

a number of horror and science fi ction

classics: Dark Star, Halloween, The Fog, The

Thing, Starman, not to mention the iconic

thriller Assault on Precinct 13.

You could mention him in the same

breath as Steven Spielberg and Stanley

Kubrick without provoking a fi ght amongst

a nearby crowd of fi lm geeks. For here was a

young man with a solid CV of classics under his

belt, some hits, some near-misses, but as yet no

1941-style disasters. Here, we would agree,

was a man with a bright future.

So, like a waiter once famously said to

George Best, where did it all go wrong?

Because here we are in 2017 and we

can all agree that John Carpenter didn’t

manage to live up to all that early promise.

Now nearly seventy, he was obviously not the

second coming as had been predicted in some

quarters. He wasn’t even the fi rst M. Night

Shyamalan, because he didn’t manage to make

a signifi cant comeback after making too many

mediocre movies.

Carpenter has done good fi lms since the

1980s, but his output has been erratic, to say

the least. The quality of his movies has been up

and down like a fi ddler’s elbow. That said, as with

the most famous J.C (also a carpenter), legions

of fans still await a spectacular comeback from

their hero. Could it happen? Don’t expect any

prophecies from me.

But enough generalities. Let’s begin at the

beginning. And it all began in space…

A (DARK) STAR IS BORN

Four losers in space. The concept was later the

premise for the UK sitcom Red Dwarf but in

1974 it formed the basis for twenty-something

John Carpenter’s $60,000 feature debut, which

coincidentally you can read more detail on

elsewhere in this issue.

Like the Dwarfers, the four-man

crew of Dark Star have been driven

slightly out of their minds by

the loneliness of deep space.

They are twenty years into

an emotionally unrewarding

mission

which has seen them systematically destroying

“unstable” planets unsuitable for colonisation.

The captain having been killed during an

accident in hyperdrive, the remaining crew are at

a low ebb and the ship is in a state of disrepair.

A cult favourite today, Dark Star suffered as

a result of creative tensions between Carpenter

and co-writer Dan O’Bannon (who also plays

Sgt. Pinback in the fi lm and who later wrote

1979’s Alien. A student fi lm made over a long

period of time, it was turned into a rather

uneven full-length feature with cash from movie

entrepreneur Jack H. Harris. However, many

people (not all of them stoned at the time)

enjoyed scenes like the never-ending fi ght

between Pinback and a beach ball-like alien. The

fi lm also showed Carpenter’s talent for getting

great results on a very low budget.

At the time, Dark Star failed commercially.

As John Kenneth Muir writes in his book The

Films of John Carpenter, Dark Star “failed as

a calling card, the average moviegoer had not

really understood or liked Dark Star very much.”

Neither Carpenter or O’Bannon made much

money from it either, they were paid $5,000

apiece for several years of work, and Carpenter

was forced to resort to writing to make his living,

very much a second-best option from

his viewpoint.

He was not unproductive during this time,

however, producing a script which would later

become the Faye Dunaway box offi ce hit The Eyes

of Laura Mars and writing the basis for what would

later become Escape From New York.

In 1979, he directed a TV fi lm based on the life

of the then recently deceased Elvis Presley. When

it comes to Elvis fi lms, there have been more than

one for the money, with Val Kilmer, Jonathan Rhys

Meyers and Michael Shannon among the actors

playing “the King”. But Carpenter would have

cause to remember the star of Elvis: it was his fi rst

collaboration with Kurt Russell, until then best

known for his work with Disney.

By 1979, Carpenter was himself a star. This

was partly a result of his action thriller Assault

on Precinct 13 (1976). Following the release of

Dark Star (1974), Carpenter was approached

by a group of investors who gave him carte

blanche to make whatever kind of picture

he wanted, albeit with a very limited

budget. Although he wanted to make

a Western, he knew he wouldn’t have

the resources to make a period piece.

He wrote Assault on Precinct 13 as a

highly stylised, modern-day western,

essentially remaking Rio Bravo (1959),

which was directed by Carpenter’s hero,

Howard Hawks. Carpenter acknowledged

this debt to Hawks and Rio Bravo by using

the pseudonym of ‘John T. Chance’ for his

fi lm editor’s credit, which was the name of John

Wayne’s character in Rio Bravo.

Assault on Precinct 13 was a bigger hit in

Britain than it was in America, largely because

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CARPENTER’S CRAFT

Above:

Jamie Lee Curtis

braves a right pea

souper in The Fog

Inserts:

A sniper takes

aim in Assault

On Precinct 13

and Michael

Myers realises

Joan Crawford is

not going to be

very happy in

Halloween

IN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE

thriller







1941-style disasters. Here, we would agree,

was a man with a bright future.






second coming as had been predicted in some

quarters. He wasn’t even the fi rst M. Night

Shyamalan, because he didn’t manage to make











1941

thriller






Illu

stra

tio

n: R

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Me

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sava

ge

.co

m

THE APOLL0 11 MOON

LANDING - THE TRUTH?

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE US/USSR SPACE-RACE, HENRY KISSINGER

SECRETLY FLEW TO LONDON TO MEET WITH STANLEY KUBRICK,

THEN DIRECTING 2001 - A SPACE ODYSSEY

KISSINGER EXPLAINED THAT, NASA DID NOT HAVE THE TIME OR

FINANCIAL RESOURCES TO GET A MAN ON THE MOON BEFORE

THE RUSSIANS, AND THIS WAS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE OPTION

FOR PRESIDENT KENNEDY

KUBRICK ACCEPTED. HOWEVER, BEING A PERFECTIONIST

AND ENSURING 100% ACCURACY IN THE PROJECT, HE…

…INSISTED THAT IT BE SHOT ON LOCATION!

KISSINGER, HAVING SEEN FOR HIMSELF THE INCREDIBLE SETS

FOR THE MOONBASE SEQUENCES, ASKED KUBRICK TO ASSIST

HIM WITH ‘FAKING’ THE APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING

The new series of

Strictly gets off to

a shaky start…

14 INFINITY

A STUDY IN SCARLET

AT

First aired in

1967, Captain

Scarlet and the

Mysterons has

a huge cult

following. Roger Crow

talks to puppeteer

Mary Turner (right),

and Sylvia Anderson’s

daughter Dee about the

most grown-up of all

the SuperMarionation

TV shows…

16 INFINITY

Name of feature

wouldn’t like to meet him

down a dark alley”. It’s a

phrase that suits TV legend

Captain Scarlet to a tee - for

the countless villains he faced. Spectrum’s most

dashing agent, forever cool under pressure, with

Cary Grant’s charm (and a not dissimilar voice,

care of Francis Matthews), was always the guy you

wanted on your side in the 1960s.

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, now

celebrating its 50th Anniversary (having been first

broadcast on 29th September, 1967), opens on

Mars in 2068. A few minutes in, it sees one Earth

team’s fateful destruction of a Martian base. Even

now the thought of manned vehicles exploring the

red planet in 50 years’ time seems feasible, but if

the first explorers do find life, let’s hope they don’t

shoot first and ask questions later.

Most know how that turned out for series

antagonist Captain Black. Yes, a lifetime as a pawn

for vengeful Martians, the Mysterons.

In case you hadn’t gathered by that chilling intro

of an offscreen gunman trying to kill the eponymous

Spectrum agent, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were

setting their stall out early. Darker and edgier

than previous shows, this was Thunderbirds’ more

anatomically correct big brother.

In previous Anderson series, a solenoid which

operated the mouth in time with recorded dialogue

was located in the large puppet head. By moving

it to the body, the craftspeople could craft smaller

heads and more realistic characters.

MODEL MAESTRO

One of the maestros behind those characters is

Mary Turner, who literally created Scarlet. She

helped control him and other ’actors’ from a gantry

or ’bridge’ overlooking the set.

It was great to be able to have a chat with Mary,

who’d worked on Anderson productions since

1958, honing her skills on Thunderbirds’ Lady

Penelope and Brains. For starters I wondered if Paul

Metcalfe’s more famous alter ego was a favourite

puppet, or if she preferred a lesser character?

“Captain Scarlet was my favourite character

from the series – mainly because I modelled him I

expect, but I was quite fond of Captain Blue as well,”

she explains.

Asked about her happiest memories of working

on the show, she says: “By the time we got to the

Captain Scarlet series with all the main characters

made, and filming having started, I was supervising

and making sure the puppets were on the right

set on time, and ready for action rather than

manipulating the puppets from the ‘bridge’. The

happy moments were when filming was going well,

no strings breaking and all puppets working.”

There were so many incredible scenes, but Mary

says: “I am afraid it is too long ago to remember

and I have not viewed them much since. What I

enjoyed was helping to set up the crowd scenes

as they were quite a challenge. Controls and wires

had to be workable round the ‘bridge’ above and

puppeteers stretched to their limits.”

The Captain Scarlet puppets are more in human

proportion than Thunderbirds. Mary remembers

that: “Because the Scarlet heads were so small, they

were much more difficult to work than our previous

series with the larger heads, and the feel of them

was different because the weight of the solenoid

was moved down into the chest, making the heads

much lighter. The movements had to be more subtle

too, and it was very important that the costumes

did not bind the neck.”

Making a puppet series with state-of-the-art

characters and effects must have been far different

to most shows. Mary remembers a typical working

day for her “would be to arrive well before the

starting time of 8.30 to have everything ready for

when the directors expected to be able to start

setting up their first shot.

“There may be requests for extra puppets, which

I would have to chase up, and I would make sure

everything was being prepared for what was coming

next during the day. Everyone needed a break by

lunch time as it was quite concentrated work. Six

O’clock we finished and then went to the viewing

theatre to see what had been filmed the day before,

hopefully with no retakes needed – no digital

cameras then!”

ROGER CROW

Left: Dee Anderson,

daughter of Sylvia. Now

Captain Scarlet is 50, Dee

thinks it will attract a whole

new generation of fans.

“There is nothing like this

on TV at the moment,” she

says…

As with just about

every other Gerry

Anderson TV show,

Captain Scarlet

inspired some

great collectable

merchandise!

INFINITY 17

I was hooked on every episode as a five

year old, (and still am, 44 years on). In Mary’s

opinion, the show was a bit too dark for kids

under five at the time. “But nowadays they

look at anything and everything,” she explains.

“TV is like wallpaper.”

Back in 1967 things were a lot different

and Mary didn’t realise that she was helping

make TV history. “At that time, TV programmes

came and went and were forgotten – stored

away,” she explains. “New things were coming

on all the time. There were no DVDs. It never

crossed our minds we would see any of the

puppet series again. I have been amazed at the

popularity of them on coming back as there is

so much else around now.”

Finally, I asked her if she was making the

characters on Captain Scarlet now, what one

thing would she change?

Her answer was refreshing. “At the time

when we were asked to make the puppets

for Captain Scarlet, we, the puppeteers, were

upset that they had to be made to human

proportions as we thought it would not be easy

to portray their characters. Looking back, I

think they were right for the stories they had

to portray, so I personally would not want to

change anything.”

A SLOW PROCESS

Gerry Anderson’s idea for Captain Scarlet

didn’t arrive fully formed. After Thunderbirds

was cancelled in the summer of 1966, backer

Lew Grade wanted a new series.

A slow process during pre-production

led from Scarlet’s creation to the rest of the

colour-themed agents. Put all the Spectrum

hues together and you have arch villain

Captain Black.

Inevitably Barry Gray was chosen to score

the series after the success of his work on

Thunderbirds. Using an orchestra on a kids’

show was unheard of, let alone a maestro who

conducted in his vest. But he and his fellow

musicians conjured up the mood with

assured skill.

And when it came to special effects,

nobody did it better than Derek Meddings in

his pre-Bond, Superman and Batman (1989)

days. The fact movie guru Stanley Kubrick had

wanted Gerry’s effects crew for 2001: A Space

Odyssey says it all.

Derek was tasked with designing the SPV,

Cloudbase and the Angel Interceptors. As he

thought other vehicles in the show would be

“less important”, he left them to colleague

Mike Trim, who really “went to town”, designing

props such as the Spectrum patrol car,

Spectrum Maximum Security Vehicle,

Helijet and Spectrum Passenger Jet.

THE TERRIFIC TRIO!

Dinky Toys was the brand name for die-cast miniature

vehicles produced by Meccano Ltd. They were made in

England from 1934 to 1979, at a factory in Binns Road

in Liverpool and were among the most popular diecast

vehicles ever made. Now they are extremely collectable

and we are grateful to PR legend Richard Leon for

letting us showcase some of his enviable Captain

Scarlet Dinky Toy collection. He wouldn’t let us come

round his house and play with them though!

18 INFINITY

that made Scarlet stand out from the crowd.

While the Spectrum ground agents were

predominantly male, in the air was a formidable

female force. The Angels added sex appeal in their

Interceptor fighter planes, and obviously Sylvia

Anderson was key in ensuring the show didn’t get

too macho in an era when feisty TV heroines were

few and far between.

I imagine if there was one thing better than

watching Captain Scarlet on TV as a kid, it must

have been growing up with a mum who was one of

the most glamorous creative forces on the series -

Sylvia Anderson.

I had a chat with her daughter Dee Anderson

about the show, her memories and thoughts on

Spectrum’s longevity.

SYLVIA’S DAUGHTER SAID…

Captain Scarlet was the first series I fell in love with,

and I began by asking Dee why she thinks it is still

so popular 50 years on?

“It’s because it appeals to everyone,” she explains.

“It certainly inspired a few female pilots to take up

flying, either in the military or passenger jets.”

Her own early memories of the show come from

the initial development stage “where Gerry and

Sylvia would sit on the sofa at our home bouncing

ideas around. I did help the wonderful Mary Turner

in the puppet workshop a few times, sanding heads,

of all things!”

Her own favourite episode is Seek and Destroy,

“with Scarlet, Blue and Destiny under attack at the

roadside following the destruction of their SPV by

the Mysterons. Of course it all works out in the end.”

Dee’s mum had such a powerful influence on

Captain Scarlet. I wondered if there was an episode

for her which stood out as pure Sylvia Anderson,

whether through the look or the attitude.

“Sylvia’s influences show in all the episodes,”

she replies, “but maybe Model Spy, (featuring) the

fashion show with the Angels as models.”

The Angels were pretty empowering for a

generation of girls, and Dee says: “As my mother

Sylvia created them all, I was definitely inspired by

her. I was always encouraged to take on challenges,

and take risks as a female, and not to let that stand

in the way of my achieving anything at all. Similar

to the Angels.”

Now Captain Scarlet is 50, Dee thinks it will

attract a whole new generation of fans. “There is

nothing like this on TV at the moment. I’m sure if a

channel were to pick up the show that they would

have a big hit on their hands, just like in the previous

showing on BBC2 in the nineties.”

According to Dee, the show still stands up so well

technically “because all the various departments

involved always wanted to do better than the

preceding shows. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle:

without one of the pieces it would not work.

“It’s because of the care from the effects

department, sound effects, puppet workshops and

of course Barry Gray, that the show is timeless and

certainly will stand up against today’s television.”

Finally, Sylvia Anderson referred to Derek

Meddings as “a genius” and his work on Scarlet

underlines the fact. What are her thoughts on his

work with Spectrum and company?

“Derek and the rest of his amazing crew would

try anything,” she says. “No effect shot was

impossible for them. With the more lifelike puppets

from Scarlet onwards “the effects had to match

a more “real” feel to the show. I think we can say

Derek and his team succeeded in this task. SIG.”

AN ALIEN CONCEPT

These days, with DVD box sets available to any

collector, it’s easy enough to binge watch entire

series in a day.

However, in the 1960s, the thought of repeats was

an alien concept to Gerry. He thought once a series

had been shown it would be “locked in a vault”,

never suspecting it would have the longevity it

achieved in the decades that followed.

And when the format was revamped for a series

in the noughties, I’d hoped a new generation would

warm to Spectrum’s adventures.

I had a phone chat with Gerry a few years before

he died (he passed away in December 2012, Ed).

He was unhappy with the way the revamped CG

Captain Scarlet had been aired. He’d expected it to

be a prime time event instead of being sandwiched

around Holly Willoughby’s early days on Saturday

morning TV.

Given Peter Jackson’s passion for all things

Gerry Anderson, let’s hope he’ll work his magic on

a revamped version of Scarlet for a 21st-century

audience one day. Or rather a Century 21 audience.

Happy 50th Captain Scarlet. It seems you

genuinely are indestructible.

*With thanks to Mary Turner, Dee Anderson,

ITV Studios Global Entertainment (for all Captain

Scarlet stills), and Richard Leon PR for help with

this article.

Here’s a fantastic prize that will appeal to all Captain Scarlet fans. Thanks to the

generosity of ITV Studios Global Entertainment we have these FAB goodies to

give away to one lucky reader, and in addition we will be sending copies of Captain

Scarlet: The Complete Collection to two runners up.

All we want to know is who voiced Captain Scarlet? You can send us your answer

via post to 29 Cheyham Way, South Cheam, Surrey SM2 7HX or via e-mail to

editor@the darksidemagazine.com.

The comp closes 12th November

so don’t delay!

1. The Vault, by Chris Bentley: The definitive story of the television classic.

2. Captain Scarlet: The Complete Collection: All 32 episodes and extras.

3. 9” Collectors’ Figurines: Hand-painted figurines of your favourite

characters, including Captain Black, Captain Ochre and Symphony Angel.

4. Captain Scarlet Board Game: A rerelease of the 1967 original.

5. 50th Anniversary Audio Box Set: Audio shows and a great documentary.

WIN A FULL SPECTRUM OF CAPTAIN SCARLET GOODIES!

INFINITY 19

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RO

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MA

GA

ZIN

E! O

FFICIA

L!!!

Issue 187 £3.99

REMEMBERING GEORGE ROMERO

JUDITH O’DEA INTERVIEWED

KONGA VS GORGOMONSTER FIGHT OF THE CENTURY!

WITCH

REPORTFALL UNDER THE

SPELL OF MARIO BAVA -

THE GODFATHER OF

ITALIAN HORROR

MISTRESS OF THE DARK

SCREAM QUEEN EMMA TALKS

DEATH ON THE SET

CURSED MOVIES

DAWN OF THE DARKFEST

WILL YOU BE THERE?

PLUS:

HP LOVECRAFT, SUFFER LITTLE

CHILDREN, HAMMER HORROR BOOK,

REVIEWS, NEWS AND MUCH MORE!

THE MAGAZINE OF THE MACABRE AND FANTASTIC! FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF

Issue 187 on sale NowFull details and subscriptions can be found online at

thedarksidemagazine.com and on our Facebook page Dark Side Magazine

Calum Waddell Sybil Danning

The DarkSide 76 The DarkSide

MISTR ESS OF THE

DAR KBill Mac chats to award-winning

ilmmaker, actress and model Emma Dark, star and director

of Seize he Night and Salient Minus Ten…

talented, yet modest and very approachable

person, Emma Dark irst came to notice in

2010 as a glamorous model with an Goth look.

Then in 2012 she joined the Indie/synth band

X-kiN as their female vocalist and featured in

several of their videos.

In 2013 she appeared in the Kim Wilde

horror-themed music video, Every Time I See

You, as a sultry vampire and this whetted

Emma’s appetite for making movies of her

own. And so it was that she teamed up with genre fan Merlyn

Roberts to make and star in a horror short, Island Of The Blind

Dead, an homage to classic 70’s horrors. This led to Seize The

Night, her inest work so far.

In this acclaimed horror short, which she wrote, starred

in, directed and produced, we saw Emma as Eva, a vampire

assassin forced to work for a top secret agency. After

escaping, she is hunted down and has to ight various

vampires and werewolves. The ilm won numerous awards

and deserves to be a feature/series. You can still ind it online

and I urge you to check it out.

Emma followed this up by appearing in the funny horror

short Frankula, alongside Hammer stars Caroline Munro and

Judy Matheson and Please Sir’s David Barry (better known to

fans of the show as Frankie Abbott).

Multi-talented Emma also writes regular articles for Digital

Filmmaker magazine where her Ask The Filmmaker column

is a popular helpline for budding ilmmakers. She is deinitely

going places, so we decided to grab an interview before she

gets too famous to talk to us!

Hi Emma can you tell us about your latest film?

Yes, it’s called Salient Minus Ten and is a 12.5 minute sci-i/

horror starring the amazing Alan Austen (Star Wars, Indiana

Jones) as the protagonist, with a secondary lead role for

myself as the antagonist, plus very strong supporting

performances from actors Chris Hampshire, Beric Read and

Samantha Oci. It’s set in the present, although it has a retro

‘near future’ sci-i vibe.

It’s very much a cerebral ‘last man standing’ style ilm with

a surrealist dreamlike quality. I wanted to make something

very beautiful and was super lucky to have Philip Bloom

onboard as cinematographer. Philip is a household name in

the realm of independent ilmmaking and is highly respected

as a world leader in DSLR cinematography. He actually

worked for George Lucas on the ilm Red Tails (2012). So

that’s two people in my cast and crew that have worked for

George - Philip and Alan. I was also so pleased that US-based

composer Eric Elick was able to come onboard the new

project after doing such a fantastic job of scoring of my

previous short ilm, Seize the Night. His music attracted an

incredible amount of compliments when the ilm was it’s

primary festival run, and I have to say his score for Salient

Minus Ten is nothing less than stunning.

I wanted a retro synth score, which admittedly is something

that’s become more popular these days. Eric surpassed all

of my already high expectations and I really think his score

is going to blow a lot of other stuff well and truly out of the

water. He’s genuinely captured an authentic retro essence.

Davy Simmons was back on VFX after providing some

explosive effects for Seize the Night, again which garnered

a lot of attention, and Mike Peel provided the SFX makeup.

Mike is an SFX pro, having worked on ilms the likes of The

Descent (2005), and Harry Potter and the Order of the

Phoenix (2007).

Finally, I brought Chris Collier on board as sound designer.

I wanted the sound design to have a very prominent place in

the ilm and really sit alongside the visual and score and be

noticed as an artistic element rather than something that just

‘is’. Chris did an absolutely amazing job, his sound design just

really brings everything together and adds so much. Again,

like the rest of the cast and crew, Chris is a true professional

and really easy to get along with. I brought back more Seize

the Night alumni in other crew roles too.

Did all go as planned when making your film?

Does anything ever (laughs)? In terms of keeping to my vision

it certainly did. In terms of the time it took to make it deviated

a reasonable amount. I originally shot some scenes with a

different lead actor, but things were not really working out

and it would have been a mistake to have continued down

that path, for the actor’s sake and for the sake of the ilm.

It’s safe to say that things don’t always work, and I think it’s

better to hold your hands up and learn from your mistakes

rather than trying to push on regardless.

I can only blame myself for miscasting, it happens in

Hollywood, it also happens in the indie world, whether people

care to admit it or not. It doesn’t make anyone feel good, but

rather than ploughing on it’s better to stop and take stock of

everything. Essentially pressing the reset button seemed the

better option, though it was also an incredibly dificult

one as well.

This ultimately added a number of months to the shooting

schedule and diminished the budget. On the positive side of

things I believe I really did, ultimately, ind the most itting

actor for the role in Alan, who replaced the previous

actor. And we would not have had Philip, Mike or Chris

working on the project otherwise.

A

Promo photograph

by Victor Kerzwell

46 The DarkSide The DarkSide 46

n the early 1960s, interest in Gothic horror ilms had

superseded the science iction monster movies of the

previous decade. Yet the genre that had spawned a

multitude of prehistoric creatures (The Beast From

20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, Behemoth The Sea Monster),

radioactive mutations (Them, The Beginning of the End),

and huge creepy crawlies (Tarantula, The Black Scorpion) was

about to end with more of a bang than a whimper, thanks to a giant

gorilla named Konga, and an enormous dinosaur called Gorgo.

Both ilms were funded by American money and both were

released within a few months of each other in 1961 (Konga

in April and Gorgo in November). Extensive ad campaigns,

and shameless ballyhoo guaranteed strong box ofice receipts

for UK distributors Anglo Amalgamated and British Lion, as well

as Associated British Cinemas (ABC). And, unlike some of their

monstrous 1950s predecessors (The Beast of Hollow Mountain, The

Giant Claw, or The Deadly Mantis), whose ilms are long forgotten,

the legacy of the over-sized ape and the city-stomping dinosaur

lived on, thanks to two long-running comic book series.

In Konga, a small, loveable chimpanzee grows overnight into a

giant gorilla, which is then sent on a murderous spree through the

darkened suburbs of South London by mad scientist Dr. Dekker.

In the ilm’s colourful climax, an overdose of the doctor’s

experimental growth serum

transforms Konga into a

30-metre-high monster.

Gorgo on the other hand is

already a colossal 20 metres

tall when he is captured by two

unscrupulous businessmen and

sold as a zoo exhibit to Dorkin’s

Circus in Battersea Park. The

problem is, Gorgo is just an

infant and halfway through the

movie, his 76 metre-long mother

comes to the rescue, decimating

half of London in the process.

Mama Gorgo’s destruction

of the metropolis was akin to

the devastation caused by the

original King Kong’s rampage

through New York City in 1933.

Whereas, apart from smashing

through the roof of Dekker’s

suburban domicile, and

demolishing the greenhouse in which the sinister botanist is forcing

his attentions on his buxom lady friend, Konga does very little apart

from rolling his eyes at some trigger-happy soldiers in the shadow

of Big Ben.

Konga was the brainchild of American B-movie producer Herman

Cohen, who co-wrote the screenplay with Aben kandel (Horrors

of the Black Museum, Black Zoo). Cohen was a showman, whose

previous ilms included two teenage science iction movies, I Was

a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957).

Both were low-budget stories of disaffected youths swapping

an embarrassing outbreak of acne for a terrible and monstrous

disigurement. But these daft movies were extremely popular

among groups of leather-jacketed teenagers at the local drive-ins.

CHEESY APE SUIT

So it was on the strength of their combined success, that Cohen

announced a third ilm in the series entitled I Was a Teenage Gorilla.

This was soon changed to Konga, after the producer paid RKO

Radio Pictures, the studio responsible for King Kong, $25,000

to re-use the Eighth Wonder of the World’s moniker in the new

ilm’s publicity campaign. ‘Not since King Kong has the screen

thundered to such mighty excitement!’ was the exciting tagline

above American artist Reynold Brown’s poster design. Depicting

a ferocious-looking giant ape towering over the London skyline

clutching a scantily clad young

woman in his monstrous paw,

Brown’s artwork portrayed a far

more dynamic looking gorilla,

than the cheesy ape suit with its

rictus grin that appeared in the

actual movie.

Yet, contrary to the

advertising tagline, the screen

didn’t thunder to any kind of

Kong-style excitement, because

most of the budget was spent

on an overly chatty subplot

about Dr. Dekker (Michael

Gough) and his infatuation with

big-bosomed blonde-haired

student, Sandra (Claire Gordon).

It’s not until the inal reel that

the ilm attempts to live up the

hype generated in the publicity,

when Dekker’s jealous

assistant, Margaret,

HEAD

TO

HEAD

THE GREATEST MONSTERS OF THE 60s

THIS IS THE BIG ONE!THE MIGHTY BEAST!

In 1961, two monsters unleashed their fury on bewildered cinema audiences. One was a

giant ape called Konga, and the other was an enormous dinosaur called Gorgo.

Richard Holliss takes an affectionate look back at these screen giants…

THE DARK SIDE PROUDLY PRESENTS: A RICHARD HOLLISS PRODUCTION

FOR

ONE MAG

ONLY!

The DarkSide 47

Contrary to the advertising tagline, the screen didn’t thunder to any kind of Kong-style excitement, because most of the budget was spent on an overly chatty subplot about Dr. Dekker (Michael Gough) and his infatuation with big-bosomed blonde-haired student, Sandra (Claire Gordon)

This page:

Claire Gordon

has a tough

choice to

make, should

she go with

tall, dark and

hairy Konga (this image)

or (below)

lecherous

Michael Gough?

A tough call

indeed…

22 The DarkSide The DarkSide 23

Mario BavaHoward Hughes

SUPER MARIO

Howard Hughes

discusses the movie

career of the legendary

Mario Bava, a Jack-of-

all-trades in the Italian

ilm industry, who was a cinematog-

rapher and special

effects designer

as well as writer,

director, and producer

of some of Italy’s most

famous genre movies

irector, cinematographer and special effects

virtuoso Mario Bava was one of Italian cinema’s

great visual stylists and a craftsman of the

highest order. He remains a great favourite

among clued-in Dark Side readers who realise

that his groundbreaking work paved the way

for the likes of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci

(as well as one very lucrative US horror lick

franchise).

Dubbed “The Maestro of the Macabre” by

those in the know, Bava’s gorgeously grotesque horror ilms were

a cosy, creepy treat back in the days when ilms were largely shot

on studio sets. The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday (1960) is still

one of the most atmospheric horror ilms ever made, and Blood

and Black Lace (1964) sears the eyeballs with its amazing colour

palette - and hotcha cast of sizzling fashion models. It started the

slasher craze, but Mario didn’t boast about that.

Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966), Danger Diabolik (1968) and A Bay of

Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), the latter an obvious

inspiration for the Friday the 13th series, have also come to be

revered as cult classics, but Bava never really hit the big time in

his own lifetime. He was a hard-working ilmmaker who went to

his grave little realising that one day he would become legendary

for his triumphs over shoestring budgets and his colourful,

imaginative approach.

DAWN OF ITALIAN CINEMA

Mario Bava was born on 31 July 1914 in the town of San Remo,

on the Italian Riviera’s Mediterranean coast. He was the son of

Eugenio Bava, the father of Italian special effects. Mario trained

to be a painter, but ended up following his father into the ilm

business, working initially at Rome’s ilm academy, the Istituto

Luce, where in the 1930s he found himself creating opening

credits for imported American ilms.

In 1939 Bava became an assistant cameraman to the cinema-

tographer Massimo Terzano, and worked on ilms directed by

the great Roberto Rossellini and Roberto De Robertis. Bava’s

camerawork was an instrumental factor in developing the screen

personas of such stars of the period as Gina Lollobrigida, Steve

Reeves and Aldo Fabrizi.

As the Italian ilm industry got back on its feet following the

devastation of the war years it gained international recognition

for Neorealism, a national ilm movement characterised by

stories set amongst the poor and the working class. But Bava

wasn’t interested in ilming grainy ‘everyday life.’ In an interview

published in 1979, he noted: “To me, shooting a ilm means tricks,

inventions, magic. When I think about Neorealism, I can’t help but

laugh: that wasn’t much of an effort, was it? You just have to walk

along a street and shoot!”

Bava was more interested in creating fantastic imagery and

one area in which he excelled was in his (often uncredited)work

on the popular ‘peplum’ (costume) epics ilmed in Italy in the

1950s and 1960s.

TECHNICIAN, MAGICIAN

As a friendly, reliable Jack-of-all-trades, Bava was often called

in to ‘save’ ilms when there were production problems. Proliic

Italian director Riccardo Freda became something of a mentor to

him, and when they worked together on I Vampiri (1957), which

was Italy’s irst ever sound horror ilm (Mussolini having put the

block on the genre).

Bava was originally hired as the cinematographer, but when

Freda walked out on the project midway through production,

Bava completed the ilm in several days, even creating the

innovative special effects that were needed. Freda did a similar

disappearing act on Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959), and

Bava once more took the reins.

By 1960 Bava had earned his irst solo director’s credit, and

chose to make The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday (1960), a period

horror ilm that mixed witchcraft and vampires, giving British

actress Barbara Steele one of her most iconic roles.

Over the next 20 years, from 1960 to his death in 1980, Mario

Bava directed ilms in many genres – from sci-i spectaculars to

DThis image:

Barbara Steele’s evil witch Asa Vajda has the Mask of Satan hammered on to her face before being burned as a witch in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960). The inset shot opposite shows Bava clowning with Boris Karloff on the set of Black Sabbath (1963)

If you enjoyed this issue of Ininity and are

not of a weak or nervous disposition we

recommend you pick up a copy of our sister

magazine, The Dark Side, which is guaranteed to

scare you to death* (*or your life refunded, terms

and conditions apply, zombies not eligible).

Rick Melton’s stunning cover painting of

Barbara Steele as the evil witch in Mario Bava’s

Black Sunday (1960) ushers in one of our most

spellbinding issues to date, with a whole host of

fascinating features from the weird world of the

macabre and fantastic. Bava was one of Italian

cinema’s master visual stylists, and his movie

Planet of the Vampires has long been thought of

as one of the inspirations for Ridley Scott’s Alien. We take a look back at his eventful career and

single out his scariest movies in our deinitive cover feature, which is packed with amazing

stills from the Dark Side archives!

Also in this issue you’ll ind interviews with up and coming British scream queen Emma

Dark and Night of the Living Dead’s Barbra,

actress Judith O’Dea. And if you enjoy a good

punch up then we can offer you a ringside seat

for the titanic tussle between Gorgo and Konga, which did more than Brexit to harm property

values in London. If you are a fan of the video

nasty era then you are deinitely going to want to read John Martin’s article on Suffer Little Children, a movie about possessed kids in New

Malden that fell foul of the BBFC in a big way

just as the Video Recordings Act was coming

into force. The story behind it is certainly much

more fascinating than the movie itself, but at

least its makers didn’t suffer the kind of curse

that has aflicted some of the most famous horror ilms ever made - we look at the strange events that brought tragedy to the making of the

likes of Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Omen and

Twilight Zone - The Movie. There’s a lot more of

course, but we will leave you to discover that for

yourself - if you dare. That’s Dark Side 187, in

shops right now. Accept no substitute.

20 INFINITY

GORILLA

WARFARE

SMALL SCREEN SIMIAN STARS

If you thought the recent

War for the Planet of the

Apes was rough, check

out the monkey business

behind the Planet of the

Apes TV series, as Mark

Phillips reports…

This image:

Apes always look great on horseback.

Mark Lenard is the hostile gorilla Urko

Opposite: The stars of the 1974 CBS TV series:

Ron Harper, Roddy McDowall and James Naughton

Images supplied by Mark Rogers

INFINITY 21

E

ew people, network executives

or otherwise, felt that Planet

of the Apes needed much publicity before it

premièred on CBS in 1974. As a reporter told its

star, Ron Harper, “You finally have a TV series that

will be a winner – this one can’t miss!”

Despite that prevailing optimism, one gimmick

backfired. A popular TV host agreed to be made up as

a Planet of the Apes chimpanzee, but someone got

the bright idea of bringing in a real chimpanzee to

meet its alter-ego and the fur flew. The small chimp

took one look at the host’s ape makeup and screamed

in horror. The terrified animal ran off the set, threw

several books at reporters, slammed its fist into a wall

and then burst into the studio’s control room, where it

began ripping telephones from the wall and smashing

electrical wires. A local vet, two trainers and several

police officers converged on the agitated primate and

managed to subdue it, placing it in handcuffs and

escorting it from the studio.

Veteran stuntman George Robotham was grateful

the apes on the TV series were portrayed by mere

humans. “The guys playing gorillas were all great

stuntmen and real gentlemen,” recalls Robotham, a

first-class stuntman himself who started his career in

Batman serials of the 1940s. “Real chimpanzees are

unpredictable, they can go wild on you,” he said of

his own experiences. “I could tell you stories that you

probably couldn’t print. For instance, there was one

time where…” No, on second thought – never mind.

Planet of the Apes (the TV series) ran for an embar-

rassingly short time, September to December 1974

(14 episodes). Robotham’s time on the show was even

briefer. “Two bloody hours,” he says, “That’s how long

it took me to realise I couldn’t stand being stuck in

that miserable gorilla makeup. It was the only time

I’ve ever quit a job.” He ripped off his gorilla face and

handed it to his shocked friend, stunt coordinator Paul

Stader. “I said, ‘Paul, I’m done. I don’t need this crap.

See you later. Good luck.’”

The apes needed more than luck. Lavishly budgeted

and strategically placed in what seemed to be a good

time slot, Apes became the subject of media ridicule

as it died a humiliating death. Network executives

struggled to understand how their prized show had

ended so disastrously. It never cracked the top 35,

could not attract sizeable audiences over the age of 14

and finished the 1974-75 season at an average of 67th

place out of 84 shows, becoming the lowest rated CBS

show of the year, aside from Khigh Dhiegh’s dismal

detective show Khan, which had replaced Apes and

ended up doing worse, at 80th place. Fantasy-wise that

year, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (74th) and Six Million

Dollar Man (51st) hadn’t done so well either.

EXPENSIVE RISK

The original 1968 movie was an expensive risk for 20th

Century Fox but it made a fortune and was a critical

success. Charlton Heston played the astronaut who

landed on a post-nuclear war Earth of the future and

found it ruled by apes. James Franciscus took over

as another astronaut in Beneath (1970), where the

world was finally blown up. Friendly chimps Cornelius

(Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter) travelled back

in time in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, landing

on present-day Earth where they are eventually killed

by hostile humans. But their son, Caesar, (Roddy

again) survives to lead a revolt of apes in Conquest.

The movie series ended with Battle (1973), more apes

vs mutants, and very modest box-office receipts.

Producer Arthur P. Jacobs decided the features

had run their course, but he wanted to produce a TV

series. He asked Rod Serling (creator of Twilight Zone

and co-writer of the first movie) to devise an outline

in 1973. Serling created the storyline

of two 20th century astronauts Virdon

and Kovack, accompanied by the

friendly chimp Galen, as they explored

this strange world of the future, finding

new civilisations every week. They

were pursued by gorillas, who wanted

to kill the astronauts before they could

contaminate other humans with their

thoughts of freedom and technology.

Serling specifically noted, “Galen

will have the precise logical mind of

Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.” Jacobs died

suddenly in June 1973 but executive

Fred Silverman continued to press

CBS network President William Paley

to do an Apes series. Paley refused,

still upset over an awful “monkey”

show from 1972, Me and the Chimp, a debacle about

a fugitive NASA chimp who lives with a suburban

family. Paley was against “any more ape shows on

my network.” But when CBS aired the first three Apes

motion pictures to huge ratings, Paley changed his

mind: could a weekly series, based loosely on the first

film, really work?

Anthony Wilson, who had written the pilots for

The Invaders, Land of the Giants and had one of the

best creative minds in Hollywood, re-worked Serling’s

outline, making it less science fiction and more

like The Waltons, the successful 1930s Depression

family saga because Paley wanted a programme that

reflected warm human values.

The expensive ape makeup would be its biggest

challenge (the ingenious prosthetics were originally

devised by John Chambers, who won an Oscar for the

first film). Dan Striepeke and Frank Westmore took

over for the TV show, armed with a big budget and a

team of makeup men. A tragic setback occurred when

famed monster maker Janos Prohaska and his son

Robert, who were looking forward to participating in

the TV series, were killed in a plane crash in March

1974. Top stuntmen such as Tom McDonough, Ron

Stein and Eldon Burke were hired, and they also played

many of the gorillas.

One near-casualty of the TV series was the

spaceship, seen only in the first episode. Built in 1966

for almost 30,000 dollars, the ship was used in the first

three films. Arthur Jacobs kept the spaceship sitting

outside in the 20th Century parking lot for years, with

seemingly no future (Conquest and Battle were space-

ship-less). Many people at the studio grew to hate the

spaceship. One top Fox executive wrote a scathing

memo urging that “this eyesore” be either trashed,

traded or hauled away. But Jacobs kept his investment

and even paid property taxes on the rotting vessel.

Jacobs didn’t live to see the ship re-appear in the

1974 TV series, and it looked spectacular as it lay

smoking in a mountain valley after a violent crash-

landing. “To kids in our audience, I bet that spaceship

looked really amazing,” said Ron Harper, who played

astronaut Virdon. “But it wasn’t much of anything. It

was just a wooden, hollow shell. There was nothing

inside. But what did look great was the way they dug

that deep burning burrow behind the ship, to make it

look as if it had taken half a mile to land.”

CASTING CALL

Casting came next. A columnist asked Charlton

Heston if he had any regrets about not being in the

video show. “None at all,” Heston replied, adding

that he wasn’t interested in playing the same role

very week but he did wish the series luck. James

Franciscus turned down the role of Virdon, so it

went to Ron Harper, best known for his 1967-68 war

series Garrison’s Gorillas. Virdon was determined to

get back his own time of 1980, so that he could be

reunited with his wife and son. James Naughton,

as the other astronaut Pete Burke, played it more

humorously. Naughton turned down the role three

times, finally accepting it because of the money. Years

later he would say, “The only wonderful thing about

doing Planet of the Apes was that it led to a lifelong

friendship with Roddy McDowall.”

CBS was surprised when Roddy McDowall’s agent

told them the actor would be interested in starring

as Galen, the friendly chimpanzee. A deal was made,

rumoured to pay him 25,000 dollars per segment, with

a 100,000 insurance policy taken out on his face, in case

of damage done by 50 hours per week of wearing the

makeup. Mark Lenard, best known as Mr. Spock’s father,

had narrowly lost getting the role of Captain Gregg in

the Ghost and Mrs. Muir series in 1968, and was often

overlooked as the villain on TVs Here Come the Brides,

so he jumped at Apes “because I knew it would be a

big hit.” But when he learned they wanted him to play

chief gorilla Urko, “My feelings were hurt,” he said. “Why

didn’t they consider me to play one of the astronauts?”

After much soul searching, he took the role.

Herbert Hirschman, the show’s executive producer

(and previously a Twilight Zone producer) stated,

“We’re not aiming primarily at kids, we’re appealing

to the entire family. We’re seeking honest stories that

make comments on our times.” He stressed it was not

going to be a fantasy. “We’re not writing exotic tales

of science fiction. These will be real stories that make

valid statement’s on today’s society.” Stan Hough,

the producer, also weighed in. “We understand our

series will lack the sweep and pageantry of the motion

pictures, so our thrust will be good stories.”

Harper was embarrassed to say he had not seen any

of the films until CBS screened the first movie for him,

which impressed him. “I’m cautiously optimistic our

show will run two years, maybe more,” he said. This

was his fifth TV series and all of his previous shows

had failed. However, media reports in the summer of

1974 said that Apes was going to be a winner. As UPI

predicted, “This fall, Planet of the Apes will wipe out all

of its opposition. What kid in his right mind could pass

up such a show?”

Two other sci-fi pilots, Gene Roddenberry’s Genesis

2, about a scientist (Alex Cord) who awakens in the far

future, and Space: 1999, a British series with Martin

Landau and Barbara Bain, were rejected by CBS in

favor of Apes. President Robert Wood liked both pilots

but said, “We only want one science fiction series on

our network at a time.”

PRODUCTION CHALLENGES

The TV Apes endured many production challenges.

Angry wasps spooked Roddy McDowall’s horse,

Name of feature

22 INFINITY

which reared up and dumped McDowall to the

ground. It took him hours to recover.

Long-time western actor Ron Soble found that

playing a gorilla, “was a miserable experience”

and the long hours of makeup drove him back

to a dreaded habit he once conquered, smoking.

David Sheiner, a guest chimpanzee, tried to avoid

the 110 degree heat by sitting under a tree and

reading a book. Still, he admitted he could not

wait for the experience to be over. Other ape

actors lost up to ten pounds a day, some passing

out and collapsing from the heat and others were

constantly wheezing, scratching and swatting at

hungry flies. Comedian Beatrice Arthur (Maude,

The Golden Girls) brought her two sons to the set

because they were such fans. Another fan was

Alan Alda’s wife, who arrived via a jeep from the

nearby M*A*S*H set to watch filming.

Jacqueline Scott agreed to do two guest

roles, as a mother chimp of a farm family in

“Good Seeds” and as Galen’s fiancée in “The

Surgeon,” where she performed life-saving

surgery on Virdon. Scott, who had appeared in

TV shows such as Twilight Zone, Outer Limits

and The Fugitive, recalls, “They had at least

seven full-time makeup artists on the show and

they were the absolute best but it was all very

expensive.”

Even though it took three to four hours to

apply the makeup, she adapted right away. “Just

before they applied the bottom chin, they fed

you breakfast because once it was attached,

you could not eat. You had to sip nourishment

through a straw. You couldn’t laugh either, that

could crack your face. I never got used to looking

like a chimpanzee. I would glance at myself in

a mirror and it scared the daylights out of me. I

remember my mother hated to see me as an ape

on TV! But the casting director, Marvin Paige,

said that Beverly Garland and I were the two

actresses who dealt best with the makeup. After

a few days, Roddy came up to me and said, ‘I’ve

noticed the makeup doesn’t bother you as much

as it bothers other people,’ and it didn’t.

“Roddy was just marvellous. He and everyone

else who played apes looked out for one another.

We’d check each other’s face for cracks or

smudges and offered morale support.”

McDowall, as the lead ape, had makeup that

was painstakingly applied. “I wish I could tell

you what it was, because I can’t explain it, but

there was something different about Roddy’s

makeup,” Scott says. “It was not the same as

anyone else’s. Ours seemed glued onto our faces

but his had much more flexibility.”

For his own comfort, McDowall had an air-con-

ditioned motor-home and a stipulation he would

work only four days a week, to preserve his face.

It didn’t always work. “After four or five episodes,

his face looked like raw hamburger because of

the rubber appliance,” recall Ron Harper. “He had

to take a week off for his skin to heal.”

One thing McDowall wanted to do but couldn’t

was to curl his lips back in a snarl, exposing his

teeth (like Tarzan’s Cheetah). But his mask didn’t

allow that. McDowall loved the Galen character,

describing him as a bit of a conman with a great

sense of humour. “As Galen, I am suppose to be

both intellectual and sensitive. How do I convey

that? Well, for one, I sound British.”

During the production of Escape from the

Planet of the Apes (1971) in Beverly Hills, a

woman had pushed past security guards and

fiercely grabbed Kim Hunter (Zira). ‘You’re so

cute,’ the woman exclaimed and tried touching

her face, nearly bringing Kim to tears. Roddy,

who justifiably called the intruder “a dumb

woman,” angrily stepped in and stopped the

woman’s harassment of his co-star. “When we

are in makeup, people will do the most annoying

PLANET OF THE APES - THE TV SERIES

Images on this

spread:

Behind-the

scenes shots

from the show

featuring the

main stars, and

Roddy McDowall

being made up as

as Galen

Left: Booth

Colman as Dr

Zaius and Mark

Lenard as Urko

before and after

the application

of their Ape

make-up

All images

supplied by Mark

Rogers

INFINITY 23

things. They can be very intrusive,” McDowall

snapped.

Ironically, while filming the first movie in

1967, McDowall’s makeup often frightened

bystanders, who staggered away in revulsion

and fear. “People were put off when they would

see me,” McDowall claimed. That changed over

the years. While dressed as a chimp, the actor

was prodded, poked, badgered and disrespected

by some people. “There should be a Society for

the Prevention of Cruelty to Actors,” he said.

When wise-ass reporters began making jokes

about “going ape” or “monkeying around”

McDowall rolled his eyes in frustration. “Truly,

I’ve really grown soooooo tired of hearing those

expressions,” he said.

“People really did treat us like animals,” says

Jacqueline Scott. “I was walking outside the

studio with a fellow ape when a car suddenly

screeched to a halt. People jumped out and

grabbed us. ‘Come here! Don’t run away – we

want a picture with you!’ We had no say in the

matter. They didn’t speak to us kindly or with

respect, they were very demanding, and kept

trying to touch our faces. Oh, it was very rude! It

was not a fun experience but it was fascinating

how these normal people became so impolite

and pushy. Roddy McDowall told me that’s how

he learned to really hate people because they

did the same thing to him all of the time.”

The media reported that many actors were

clamouring to play apes but she doubts that.

“I personally knew many actors who refused to

do the show, they didn’t like the idea of all that

latex and rubber on their faces and vanity was

probably a part of that. But I loved the challenge

of expressing myself as that character.”

Guest stars who endured the makeup well,

and were brought back, included John Hoyt,

Martin E. Brooks and Pat Renella. Even James

Naughton’s younger brother David got a kick

out of playing a chimpanzee for one segment.

McDowall said there could be confusion over who

was under the makeup. Director Don Weis once

drew “Galen” aside to instruct him on how to play

a scene until a muffled voice from within the ape

identified himself as Davey Rodgers, Roddy’s

stand-in.

When accosted by annoying people while

wearing his ape guise, McDowall would suddenly

adopt an American accent and tell visitors he

was actually Roddy’s brother from Chicago, a

charade that often worked. Out on location, Ron

Harper tried to demonstrate to a TV Guide writer

how easy it was to identify the stuntmen playing

gorillas. “Tom, hey Tom!” Ron yelled to a nearby

ape. The gorilla ignored him and briskly walked

away. “Sorry,” a chastened Harper conceded, “so

it wasn’t Tom.”

EATING PROBLEMS

After filming “The Trap” in the city backlot, an

episode where Urko falls into a subway station,

Mark Lenard was horrified to find his mask and

suit infested with hundreds of blood-sucking

fleas. On another occasion, Lenard ordered a hot

plate of spare ribs, only to discover his heavy

ape snout prevented any eating. “All I could do

was sit there, as my plate got cold, and drool.”

He switched to munching carrots and celery but

the Planet of the Apes sound-man found the

crunching sounds unbearably loud, so Lenard

was forced to go back to quietly sipping liquids

through a straw.

“The Good Seeds,” about an ape family who help

the astronauts and Galen, was actually the first

episode filmed, designed specifically to imitate

the family-friendly ambiance of the CBS hit,

The Waltons. “Escape from Tomorrow,” the first

episode telecast (which introduced the astronauts)

While dressed as a chimp,

McDowall was prodded, poked,

badgered and disrespected by

some people. “There should

be a Society for the Prevention

of Cruelty to Actors,” he said.

When wise-ass reporters

began making jokes about

“going ape” or “monkeying

around” McDowall rolled his

eyes in frustration. “Truly, I’ve

really grown soooooo tired of

hearing those expressions…”

Jon Abbott

24 INFINITY

was actually the third episode filmed. The idea

was to give Ron Harper and James Naughton

more time to develop camaraderie and chemistry

between themselves for the premiere show.

“Jim and I, for whatever reason, were never

as close as we could have been,” says Harper

vaguely. “Maybe it was the old thing of two

leading men trying to work together.”

There was actually a third astronaut, Jones,

who didn’t survive the spaceship landing and

was quickly buried by the gorillas. Everyone

from Ron Harper to A.D. Bill Derwin has racked

their memory in vain, trying to recall who played

that bit part. Whoever he was, he deserves credit

for maintaining an impressive dead-eye stare

as he is seen slumped over in his chair with a

broken neck.

Some of the program’s other guest stars

included Marc Singer, Sondra Locke, Royal Dano,

Roscoe Lee Browne, Geoffrey Deuel, William

Smith and Jackie Earle Haley. Eileen Dietz

played the teenaged chimp in “Good Seeds” who

develops a crush on the injured Galen. She had

just completed the role of the green-faced devil

(doubling Linda Blair) in The Exorcist and a week

after moving to Los Angeles, heard about the

Planet of the Apes TV show. She snuck into the

20th Century-Fox building and located casting

director Marvin Paige. “I told him I had just done

The Exorcist and was used to sitting for hours

in the make-up chair as my

life-mask was made.”

She got the role and Dietz

performed well in the blistering

heat of Malibu Canyon. “The only

uncomfortable thing were our

big ape feet had sneakers hidden

inside them and that made our

feet really sweat. But everyone

was nice to me, especially Roddy.”

But her feelings did get hurt.

“In New York, whenever a show was finished, the

cast and crew would always get together for a

drink and talk about the day’s work. But in Apes,

after we wrapped for the day, everybody just left.

They all disappeared. I remember standing there

alone, going (plaintively), ‘Where did everybody

go?’ It took me awhile to realize that it was

nothing personal. Everyone lived so far away that

they had a long drive to get home. They didn’t

have time to sit around and chat.”

She couldn’t wait to see her show on TV. “I was

really excited and I invited everybody I knew

in California to my house to watch it. But as it

played on my TV, everybody got really bored and

began talking. I remember being very distraught

and saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute, people – stop

talking. Please! My show is on.’”

After doing Apes, Eileen played a cavegirl in

Hanna-Barbera’s series Korg 70,000. “My Mom

said, ‘Eileen, are you ever going to play a part

where you can show your face?’” Eileen is proud

of “The Good Seeds” and has seen it several

times. “It showed the kind of backward racism

the apes had towards the humans. The story

examined their fear and prejudice.” It ends with

the ape family and humans becoming friends.

PERSISTENT MYTH

As the series geared up for its CBS premiere

on September 13, McDowall tried to correct

the persistent myth that he was continuing

his role from the original film. “No, that is not

true - Cornelius is dead,” McDowall said. “Galen

is an entirely new character.” The confusion was

caused by a chimp in the first film named Galen,

played by Wright King, but he had no relation

to the TV character. “We are not borrowing

anything from the motion pictures,” McDowall

This page:

Scenes from

the show plus

some original

promotional

advertising,

and two of the

four spin-off

paperback

novels written by

American sci-fi

author George

Alec Effinger,

published

between 1974

and 1976

INFINITY 25

stressed. “They have run their course.”

Apes was originally supposed to air Tuesdays,

competing against Adam-12 and Happy Days.

But when comedian Redd Foxx walked off

Sanford and Son, CBS knew a Foxx-less Sanford

on Friday nights would be extremely vulnerable,

so Apes was switched opposite Sanford and a

new show, Chico and the Man. Unfortunately,

Foxx returned to Sanford at the last minute,

with a lot of publicity. Still, many people placed

their bets on Planet of the Apes, including many

advertising executives in New York.

An agency man named McHugh said, “Apes

will trample its competition at first but if the

show turns out to be poorly done, ratings will fall

off immediately and CBS will be left with a real

bomb.” Another advertiser agreed that Apes had

a good chance but he resented how CBS kept

saying Planet of the Apes would get a huge 40%

of the audience every week. “No one can say that

for sure,” the agency man warned. Sadly, Apes

would end up averaging a pathetic 24% share.

The early reviews of the premiere episode

were encouraging. Movie historian Steven H.

Scheuer noted, “the wooden astronauts and apes

riding on horseback are silly but it’s a lively show

and Roddy McDowall is delightful as Galen.”

Charles Benbow of The St. Petersburg Times said

Apes was “excellent” television, betrayed only

by one disappointing production short-cut: “The

landing of the spaceship happens off-camera!”

The Los Angeles Times predicted Apes and

Born Free (also destined to die by mid-season)

would be big hits. The Christian Science Monitor

called Apes “fascinating and superb” while Rex

Polier of The Philadelphia Bulletin said, “It is

well-produced, provocative and entertaining.” Jay

Sharbutt of The Associated Press was one of the

few naysayers: “Apes will slip on its own banana

peel by December.” Columnist Ken Murphy was

just plain mean: “The only people who will have

use for this garbage are Star Trek fans.”

But it was the ratings that would kill the

beast. The first episode ranked 37th out of 56

shows. The second episode was 43rd, the third

episode 47th and the fourth episode 53rd. The

competition, Sanford and Chico and the Man,

was always in the top five. The Chicago Tribune

noted, “Apes has been getting creamed by NBC

and it has turned into a sorry flop for CBS.” The

death watch had begun.

Yet the show must go on. Sandra Gimpel, who

was Billy Mumy’s stunt double on Lost in Space

and performed hundreds of stunts in films like

Towering Inferno and Escape from New York,

recalls thinking that doubling as a chimpanzee

for Jane Actman in “The Deception” would be

“no big deal. I just sat there as they applied the

prosthetics for two and a half hours, breathed

through a straw and fell asleep.”

As a blind chimpanzee, she falls off a cliff into

the Pacific Ocean. “I was in the water, screaming

and splashing, and James Naughton’s character

swims out to save me.” By the time work was

over, “I had worn this makeup for over six hours.

We wrapped for the day, I sat down for them

to remove this stuff from my face and… they

couldn’t. The salt water had adhered the makeup

to my face. The reaction by everyone around

me was ‘Oh no!’ I will never forget sitting there,

holding on tightly to the arms of the chair, with

tears rolling down my eyes and they were trying

and trying to get it off my face.” They finally did,

but Gimpel recalls that experience as “horrible,

just horrible.”

LONG, HOT DAYS

A very young Cheryl Downey was halfway

through her Directors Guild of America appren-

ticeship to becoming an Assistant Director

when, as a DGA trainee, she worked on Apes with

second A.D, Ed Ledding “where we had to handle

everything.” She had to be at the Fox ranch (now

called Malibu State Park) at 3:30am to check

on the makeup and hair team. Her day finished

around 9:30pm.

“Almost everything was shot at the Ranch, so

five days a week I had a 45 minute commute,

speeding each way! Those 18-hour days were

brutal, especially in the summer heat. I had to

sleep round the clock Saturdays to try and make

up for my week of four hours of sleep per night.”

It was an experience she has never forgotten.

“The Prince of the cast was Roddy McDowall.

The foam rubber appliance glued to the faces of

the principal actors playing chimps and gorillas

prevented eating anything until their removal.

Only liquids could be consumed. Roddy faced

this daily prospect with good cheer. He was

always prepared, never complained, even though

the skin on his face deteriorated from the glue

and the glue removal.”

She recalls only one landline telephone on

the ranch, “no mobile phones” which added

to the challenges of production coordination.

“We tried to shoot all of Roddy’s scenes as soon

as possible,” she recalls. “The heat and sweat

caused the appliance to sort of melt, requiring

extensive repairs after lunch.”

There was also a lot to move

between filming – horses, goats,

chickens trailers and lots of extras. “The

directors learned to compromise their

‘dream shots’ in order not to fall behind

schedule.” She remained on the series

for its entire six months of production.

“Roddy was my favourite person on

the whole show but I worked later with

James Naughton who was also a real

professional.”

Story-wise, kids looking for fantasy

instead got mundane scenarios

about the astronauts curing malaria,

teaching a human to fly a hang-glider,

being subjected to brainwashing or

participating in a horse race. Outdoor

locales boiled down to either the Fox

Ranch, the Pacific Ocean or the old

ruined city sets. No matter how far

the trio travelled, the same mountains kept

popping up behind them. Virdon’s goal was to

find an advanced civilization with a computer

that could interpret Virdon’s flight disc, and then

build them a spaceship. Had the astronauts

decided on Houston or Florida as a specific

walking destination, to locate old spaceships

stored at NASA centres, it would have given

them a geographical goal rather than aimless

wandering.

As the show continued, critics became

tougher. “If apes in zoos had TVs, this show

would be number one,” said columnist MIchael

Drew, “but humans over the age of 14 will be

very bored.” The Monster Times said, “The series

rests primarily on the capable talents of Roddy

McDowall and a fine supporting cast – and no,

we’re not talking about the third-raters imitating

Charlton Heston and James Franciscus.”

The Calgary Herald suggested viewers read

Pierre Boulle’s original Planet of the Apes novel

instead, bitterly complaining that series could

have been a winner, “if it had more thought and

good writing.” Even NBC got into the fray, with its

vice-president calling Apes, “A Saturday morning

cartoon show that is not working.” However, when

NBC’s friendly lion series Born Free got cancelled,

the NBC men shrugged and said, “Well, I guess

this wasn’t the year for apes or lions.”

A California viewer named Bill pleaded with

CBS to move the show to a different time period,

Wednesdays at 8pm, where it would be up

against Michael Landon’s Little House on the

Prairie and a comedy, That’s My Mama. “Yes, if

Planet of the Apes still remains a poorly rated

show after that, then I would not fault CBS for

taking it off,” he said. But no one was listening,

the network had determined that nothing could

save the show.

This page:

Stuntman Tom

McDonough

takes a break

from filming with

an umbrella as

a sun shade -

many thanks to

Tom himself for

this pic

Above:

More

mechandising

spin-offs

including a 1976

paperback and

3D Viewmaster

images. Bottom

image above

is a single that

designer Kev

bought of a tune

that was used in

a Levi ad back in

the 1990s, and

he has included

it to show how

similar it looks in

design to the Apes

Viewmaster cover.

26 INFINITY

RACIST ACCUSATIONS

Besides ratings, there were other concerns. One angry

viewer wrote to a newspaper to say she didn’t like “the

way this awful show is pushing evolution.” A.D. Bill

Derwin recalled that the series was also being unfairly

accused of being racist. “As the show went on, the

behaviour of the gorillas was toned down and it soon

became The Planet of the Benevolent Apes.”

An associate director of CBS research remained

aghast at how poorly Apes was doing against Sanford

and Chico. “I find it hard to believe NBC is doing so well

on Friday nights against us,” he lamented. Adding to

the confusion was that Apes merchandise was selling

like wildfire, everything from toys, action figures and

puzzles. The department store Woolworth’s reported

that the merchandise was selling so well, “it’s hard to

keep it in stock.”

Another network executive was so disbelieving

of the reportedly bad ratings that he did his own

stealth research by pointing his telescope out of his

high-rise apartment on Friday nights and scanning

all of the TV sets flickering across the New York City

skyline. He discovered the bitter truth: almost every TV

reflected the antics of Sanford and Chico. The Nielsen

ratings were right, these two situation comedies were

conquering the planet of the apes.

The Oakland Tribune’s Robert MacKenzie loved

literary science fiction but with the exception of

praising Land of the Giants, he felt every other show in

the genre - Star Trek, UFO, Invaders, The Starlost and

now Apes - had blundered their potential and produced

bad television. “Planet of the Apes is just men wearing

plastic masks and it’s one dull chase after another,” he

said. He also felt the franchise was being mercilessly

exploited. “These poor apes will be worked by the

studio until there is not another dollar left to be

squeezed from their furry hides.”

TV Guide made the first official pronouncement

that the Apes saga was doomed in their October 26,

1974 issue. “The network and many other people were

positive a new series based on the features would be a

solid success,” the magazine said. “Not so and Planet

of the Apes is as good as gone by January.”

“When we shut down in November, we did not know

if the network was going to renew us and we were

cancelled shortly thereafter,” says Cheryl Downey.

“Although the show was very ambitious, it could not

approach the standards set by the feature film.”

Its surprising demise left a lot of questions. “We

don’t know what went wrong,” said William Shatner’s

father-in-law, Perry Lafferty, an executive at CBS.

“We are shocked that our judgment was so wrong. We

figured Planet of the Apes would eliminate Sanford

and Son in quick order. The first three Planet movies

last year had amazing ratings on CBS. But when we

ran the fourth movie this year (Conquest), it got a very

poor rating.” The Washington Post was annoyed too:

“For months we heard how Planet of the Apes couldn’t

miss, that it would be in the top ten – and now, come

January, its missing!”

Charlie Pike of High Point Enterprise offered

false hope when he wrote, “There’s still a very good

possibility Apes will pop up on another network.”

That didn’t happen, although NBC made a Saturday

morning cartoon series, Return to the Planet of the

Apes, in 1975. A fan asked columnist Dick Kleiner if

astronauts Virdon and Burke would ever get back

home? “No,” Kleiner said. “Never. The show has been

cancelled. The astronauts will never get home. Those

two guys are trapped there forever, with all of those

apes.” Cecil Smith of The Los Angeles Times liked the

series but was surprised when his own children and

their elementary schoolmates begged him to stop the

cancellation. But there was nothing Daddy Cecil could

do. Nevertheless, when the series’ 14 episodes were

later sold to countries such as England, Japan and

Australia, the show proved to be a big hit.

UNIMAGINATIVE WRITING

Many of the show’s actors felt the show could have

been better. “The stories went progressively downhill

and it got boring,” says Harper. “If you analyse the

episodes, we used one basic plot - one of us gets

captured, the other two have to rescue him. Well,

that is not very imaginative writing.” Harper felt that,

among other ideas, it would have been interesting for

the trio to have encountered a rescue expedition from

Earth. Booth Colman, who played Dr. Zaius, agreed.

“The only episode done well was our premiere show,

it had a good script. After that, we fell into the usual

claptrap of unimaginative, inferior stories. Still, with

time, it could have gotten better.”

Mark Lenard said, “It was a big mistake for the

human villagers to talk – I liked it better in the first

movie, where the humans were mute and kept in

cages!” McDowall considered Planet’s loss a tragedy.

“It was a much better series than it was ever given

credit for,” he said years later and felt the apes

merchandise could have carried the show in lieu of

bad ratings but that wouldn’t have compensated for

sponsors’ products of soap and automobiles not being

purchased by Apes’ biggest demographic, kids aged

2-11 years old.

“Maybe if Charlton Heston had starred in the TV

version and Rod Serling had written all the scripts, it

might have survived,” opined The Evening News but

that was unlikely too. Apes fever on television had

simply waned.

In 1980, 20th Century-Fox syndicated 10 of the 14

episodes by combining them into a total of five TV

movies, and gave them such outlandish titles as Life,

Liberty and Pursuit on the Planet of the Apes. Some of

these ersatz movies contained new footage of Roddy

McDowall as an ancient Galen, sitting in a cottage

with a 1970s Commodore PET computer flickering

behind him. Galen provided brief commentary but his

eccentrically coy dialogue was dull, except to reveal

that, “Virdon and Burke did find their computer and

they disappeared back into space….” Galen turned

down their offer to fly back with them.

As late as 1994, McDowall held out hope someone

would ask him to do a TV reunion film. “After all,” he

said, “you could be 90 years old and yet, with the

makeup on, you would still look the same!”

Planet of the Apes is still fondly remembered by

a generation and in retrospect, much of its acting,

humour, and many well-written (and often poignant)

scenes still play well. Gerald Finnerman’s cinematogra-

phy was also excellent.

“I thought it was really stupid for the network to

cancel Planet of the Apes in the first place,” says

Jacqueline Scott, who counts herself as a loyal fan.

“Children just loved the show and even today, it has not

dated. It’s now on DVD and it will go on

forever and ever.”

INFINITY 27

t was the scarecrows that triggered the

first real sense that things didn’t bode

well, a sinister sting to the senses that

something malevolent loomed just over

the ridge. In a short time that feeling of unease

erupted into full blown disorienting fear and one

of the most iconic and nerve-shattering set pieces

in fantasy cinema history - a shocking attack on a

bunch of helpless humans in a field of corn. Some

of the barely-seen attackers were on foot, slicing

the corn with switches, others were on horseback,

stampeding the fleeing people like cattle. The

scene culminated in a stunning shot of one of the

horse-mounted riders in a final mind-blowing reveal:

a ferocious ape in black leather wielding a rifle.

This was my adrenaline-charged introduction

to the original 1968 Planet of the Apes on UK

television. I was aged about six and it was in the mid

1970’s. I’m not sure of the exact year, but it must

have been around 74 because the TV spin-off started

that year and I promptly became an avid, excitable

viewer of the show.

Planet of the Apes, in both its movie franchise

and TV show formats was a phenomenon for

pudding basin haircut sprogs like myself, and it

quickly became an obsession. Me and my mates

wanted the lot: Mego action figures, comics, jigsaw

puzzles, masks etc. Weekly trips to the shops

ensured that parents, nans granddads and monkey’s

uncles were parted from their pennies.

While all this monkey business was going on, to my

great delight I discovered that The Circus Hoffman

Planet of the Apes live touring show was coming to

a town near me. Real-life apes on stage. I had to go,

and used good behaviour as a bargaining chimp, er,

chip. So it was, one chilly Wolverhampton Saturday

evening in November of 1975, that I persuaded my

parents to take me to see it. The journey there was

exhilarating to the point of seizure for an impres-

sionable kid like me, and I was beside myself with

gleeful anticipation, swinging from the trees as we

travelled from West Bromwich to Wolverhampton

Racecourse in our blue Austin Maxi.

Upon arrival at the venue I was lured by the

siren call of the merchandise stand, where Dad

bought me a General Urko pin badge, a slightly

bigger than 8 x 10 colour photo of the same Urko

picture and a plastic ape mask with movable jaw.

I was a very lucky boy indeed and knew it, so I

treasured these.

Besides Urko

they had pics and

badges of Galen,

Zaius and astronauts

Burk and Virdon from

the TV show, but it

was obviously too

expensive to buy them

all. General Urko was

the coolest character

though, every kid in the

playground wanted to be

him, if only for an excuse

to duff up his human

mates. Only the wussier

kids wanted to be Galen,

or maybe the elderly

Dr Zaius.

Taking our places in

the bleacher-style seats,

the show finally kicked off,

and although the passing

of time has distorted the

exact plotline I vividly recall the two astronaut

characters being chased around the circus-like

arena by a squad of soldier apes led by the

mighty General Urko, gorilla leader of the ape

army. Some were astride horses, with a band

of soldiers on foot firing rifles. The humans

were captured, then escaped again, were

chased into the audience and weaved their

way in and out of the rows of

seats before going back into

the arena.

The show was packed

with impressive stunts and

well-choreographed fights

and shoot outs. All the time

the characters drew

whoops, cheers and

delighted squeals

from the kids in

the audience. And

there were gasps

and jeers as the

villainous Urko and

his henchmen baited

the fans, drawing the odd

frightened grizzle from

the more ‘delicate’ kids,

the ones who rooted for

Walter the softie from

the Beano’s Dennis

The Menace. Of course

credibility is key to being

suckered into the fantasy,

and the costumes and ape

masks were very convincing

to my six-year-old eyes.

Looking at photographs from

the touring shows online I’d

say they stand up incredibly

well after all these years, so

no expense appears to have

been spared in the show’s

production design.

When the show reached its rousing climax,

swarms of babbling children got to meet, and get

their photos taken with, their favourite characters.

General Urko was the most popular and the queue

to meet him was too long so I got my pic taken

with Dr Zaius instead. At least my Urko badge was

proudly displayed on my green 70s coat that my

Nan always said I looked a right Bobby Dazzler

in (and I really did folks). It was one of the most

delightful experiences of my childhood and has

remained a cherished memory.

APES ON STAGE

Of course being just a kid I knew nothing of the

origin of the Planet of the Apes shows, but here

we are in the age

of the internet

and so I decided

to check into their

background for this

article. Better late

than never, eh?

The transition

of Apes from film

and TV to live

touring shows was

apparently the

brainchild of Big

Mike Caulfield,

who in 1975,

as head of

INFINITY FANS TELL OF THEIR OWN SCI-FI EXPERIENCES

THE TRAVELLING APE SHOW

‘TAKE

THE HELM’

Simon Pritchard heard through the ape vine that we were doing a Planet of the Apes special so he

sent us this fun piece on his childhood memories of seeing General Urko and company on stage!

I

This image:

Young Simon with

one of his Apes

heroes. He hasn’t

changed a bit since

then (see right)

28 INFINITY

Simon Pritchard

Television Character

Promotions, hit upon

the genius idea of

taking the basic

character and plot

elements from the

Planet of the Apes

TV series which had

aired its one and

only season the year

before. Ironically for

something so beloved

of kids everywhere

and backed by a

wealth of popular

merchandising, the TV

show was cancelled

after only one series

due to low ratings.

Talk about slipping on

a banana peel.

Back at Television

Character Promotions,

Big Mike landed the

rights from Twentieth

Century Fox studios

to create a touring

show that would visit

venues across the

UK between 1975

and 1978. To further

secure the show’s

success another deal

was cut with the UK

arm of Marvel Comics,

who published the

Planet of the Apes

comic book here in

Blighty. The deal was

that Marvel would

endorse a Planet of

the Apes fan club

through the comic.

The Apes comic

proved a success

and was inundated

with fan mail, so

eventually TCP took the strain off Marvel by joining

forces with an official Apes fan club through which it

could promote the live touring shows. This new club

was launched in 1975 and Big Mike and his team of

five TCP employees (which included his wife June)

set about creating a spectacular Planet of the Apes

production utilising the most inventive costumes,

masks and make-ups they could muster on the

budget they had. Mike himself wrote the scripts for

the shows and also cast himself in the role of ape

leader General Urko in a number of the performances.

With Marvel running the ads for the club it was

quite a winner, gathering memberships from all

around the globe. Fans received combo packs of

badges and colour photos featuring characters from

the TV show plus other sundry goodies like stickers

and of course a regular newsletter.

Then the live shows hit the road, travelling the

country like an army of marauding chimps and

invading circuses, festivals, fairs, showgrounds and

racecourses like the one in Wolverhampton where

I saw it in 75. Meanwhile, various offshoot groups

from TCP made appearances at shopping centres,

supermarkets and department stores to promote the

full blown performances, drawing crowds everywhere

they went.

A DIFFERENT DIRECTION

By the end of the summer of 1976 the company

decided to cut back on the live arena shows and

take their apes in a slightly different direction,

creating a Planet of the Apes stage show with newly

written scripts. Pre-recorded dialogue was utilised

for the ape characters so that audiences could hear

lines that were muffled behind the masks. These

characters mimed to the dialogue while the humans

recited theirs live. Two groups of players were formed

so two stage shows could be running in two separate

theatres for the 1976 summer season. One was

booked into Stratford’s Theatre Royal in East London

and the other one into the Windmill Theatre in Great

Yarmouth in Norfolk.

Both runs were sellouts, proving incredibly

popular with general audiences and fan club

members alike. It was hoped that they could be

expanded into a full-on countrywide theatre tour,

but by the end of 76 it became apparent that this

was not to be. By then Mike Caulfield was working on

other projects for the company and the Apes shows

were beginning to wind down. They still appeared at

Tesco supermarkets across the country during 1977,

but probably just to buy bananas.

Meanwhile, Television Character Promotions had

downsized its

office in Piccadilly

to a smaller one

in Ilford and

Marvel Comics

had dropped its

advertising for

the fan club when

their Planet of the

Apes comic was

cancelled.

A few minor

Apes shows were

performed during

1978 and the

same year Mike

Caulfield was

invited to direct

a revived Planet

of the Apes stage

show at the Pier

Pavilion Theatre

in Cleethorpes.

It seems to have

been be a great

success. Caulfield

expressed his

delight with the

show and added

that he hoped to

take it on tour, but

nothing came to

fruition.

That’s where

my research hits

a brick wall as it

appears Television

Character

Promotions

disappeared off

the radar after

August 1978,

taking the UK’s

only official Planet of the Apes Fan Club

with it. What happened to Big Mike, his family and

other team and show members I don’t know, so if

anybody knows any further details I’d be interested

to hear them.

This feature has been a simplified overview

of the live Planet of the Apes shows from

the 1970s. I just wanted to express my

own memories of that special day back in 75

when I saw the touring show in Wolverhampton,

experiencing an exciting spectacle that was an

amazing extension of that wonderful TV show and

the films that spawned it. Judged by modern high

tech standards that same show would probably

come across today as basic, threadbare and I

guess simple. Yet I recall it being full of action and

intensity with decent stunts and special effects.

More important at the end of the day was its sheer

entertainment value, all in the best vaudeville

and pantomime tradition. All it needed was for

someone to say, “Look out, Urko’s behind you!”

and everyone went apeshit. Happy days.

You can see more of Simon’s glorious artwork at:

www.artbeat64.com/

Left:

Simon’s superb

rendition of the

Planet of the Apes

TV show characters

INFINITY 29

SCIENCE FICTION LIBRARY

THE WONDERFUL WORLDS OF RAY

HARRYHAUSEN, VOLUME TWO:

1961-1964. Blu-ray.

Out: November 13th. Powerhouse/

Indicator. Cert: PG.

Powerhouse continue to be the

Ray Harryhausen fan’s best friend

with a second great volume of the

stop-motion effects maestro’s sci-fi/

fantasy favourites.

For a start we have Mysterious Island

(1960) a fast-paced and entertaining

fantasy set at the time of the US Civil

War. Michael Craig is the leader of a

bunch of Union soldiers who escape

from a Confederate jail by hot air

balloon. They descend into the sea

and wash up on the shores of a remote

island where they are menaced by

giant bees, monster crabs, and other

outsize perils. The creatures are the

results of growth experiments carried

out by Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom),

who hopes his mutations will solve

the world food shortage. But the old

erupting volcano routine puts paid

to his plans. The plot has plenty of

holes, but in general this is one of the

better-written Harryhausen ventures,

supported by lively direction and an

impressively atmospheric Bernard

Herrman music score performed by the

London Symphony Orchestra.

Next up is Jason And The Argonauts

(1963), to my mind the very best of the

Ray Harryhausen/Charles H. Schneer

fantasy epics. This wonderful movie

brings you right into the fanciful world

of Greek Mythology, with dragons,

living statues, harpies and Gods. The

film’s only liability is the wooden

performance of hero Todd Armstrong,

who isn’t anywhere near as engaging

a character as Nigel Green’s crusty

Hercules (who goes out of the movie

far too early on). The screenplay is

better constructed than usual, and

Jason’s seagoing quest to find the

Golden Fleece and regain the throne

that was stolen from him at birth has

quite a number of visual highlights.

The Harryhausen effects are uniformly

excellent, particularly the bronze

giant Talos, who gave me nightmares

as a 10-year-old! The sword-fighting

skeletons are also unforgettable, and

the vivid photography of the beautiful

Mediterranean adds immensely to the

film’s all-round entertainment value.

Superb stuff for kids and adults alike.

The great Bernard Herrmann wrote the

inspired score.

The final film in this set is First

Men In The Moon (1964). One of Ray’s

most enjoyable movies, this colourful

adaptation of the famous H.G. Wells

story is nicely scripted by Nigel

(Quatermass) Kneale and has a bright

performance from Lionel Jeffries as the

eccentric Victorian inventor Professor

Cavor, who winds up on the moon when

testing his new anti-gravity paint on

a spherical metal ship. Along for the

ride are playwright Edward Judd and

Judd’s fiancee Martha Hyer. They are

captured by Selenites, funny little

insect creatures who are actually

children in suits. Harryhausen uses

his amazing stop-motion animation

skills elsewhere in the movie to create

a giant caterpillar and the Great Lunar

creature who rules over the Selenites.

Great fun, and the ingenious framing

flashback is the icing on the cake. Nice

Laurie Johnson (The Avengers, The

Professionals) music too.

All three films look stunning, with

4K restorations of Jason and the

Argonauts and First Men in the Moon

and a 2K restoration of Mysterious

Island, all from the original camera

negatives. All movies come with mono

and 5.1 surround sound audio options.

Extras: Ray Harryhausen audio

commentaries, and an additional

Mysterious Island audio commentary

with film historians Randall William

Cook, C. Courtney Joyner and Steven C.

Smith. There’s also an additional Jason

and the Argonauts audio commentary

with filmmaker Peter Jackson and

Randall William Cook. Other features

include Jason and the Argonauts

original skeleton fight storyboards,

Ray Harryhausen on Mysterious Island

and Hal Hickel on Mysterious Island,

Islands of Mystery a vintage featurette,

Randall William Cook Introduces

First Men in the Moon, Tomorrow the

Moon, another vintage featurette,

new and exclusive interviews with

crew members, including camera

assistant Ray Andrew (Mysterious

Island) and production manager Ted

Wallis (First Men in the Moon), Back to

Mysterious Island comic-book, archival

documentaries and interviews, Super

8 versions of Mysterious Island and

Jason and the Argonauts (used to have

these!), isolated scores, original trailers,

teasers, TV spots and promotional

films, John Landis trailer commentary

for First Men in the Moon, limited

edition exclusive 80-page book. This

comes in a Limited Dual Format Edition

Box Set of 6,000 numbered units. AB.

Allan Bryce, Steve Green, David Flint and Mark

Foker cast a critical eye over the latest sci-fi

and fantasy movie and home video releases…

BLU-RAY, DVD

& CINEMA

Review Ratings

= Excellent

= Good

= Average

= Below Average

= Abysmal

30 INFINITY

INFINITY REVIEWS

THE KILLER B MOVIE COLLECTION. DVD

Out Now. Fabulous Films. Cert: 15.

Fabulous Films have been putting out a lot of great

old sci-fi and horror movies of late and just in case

you missed them you can scoop up nine of their most

popular titles in this 9-disc set for around a fiver a film.

Best of the bunch for me is The Blob (1958), starring

a young Steve (then Steven) McQueen in a classic teen

sci-fi horror which really sums up the spirit of 50s

drive-in movies. The setting is a tiny Pennsylvania

town, where a blob of purple goop from outer space

starts consuming the locals, getting bigger and bigger

with each meal. McQueen and the boring female lead,

Anita Corseaut, try to get the grown-ups to believe

their story, but in the end it’s up to the teen population

of the town to settle the Blob’s hash. Some of the

effects are a bit cheap and cheerful, but the film is still

a lot of fun and has a lovely small-town atmosphere

about it. Classic scenes include the Blob taking over a

movie theatre and swallowing a diner. The title song by

Burt Bacharach is pretty groovy!

Also a lot of fun is 1951’s The Man From Planet X.

A fine example of what can be done on a low budget,

this imaginative little sci-fi flick was shot in six days

by cult favourite Edgar G. Ulmer on sets left over from

Joan Of Arc (1948) and cost a mere $50,000 to make. It

features Robert Clarke as a reporter who visits a foggy,

studio-bound Scotland to confront a friendly bug-eyed

alien in a fishbowl helmet. The alien has come to plead

for aid for its freezing planet, but since this is the

paranoid 50s he gets blasted by bazookas. Short and

sweet, with pacy direction and performances, this is

easily one of the director’s best efforts.

The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) is the third

Creature From The Black Lagoon movie and starts out

well with scientists tracking the “Gill Man” (still played

by Ricou Browning in the underwater scenes) down in

his Amazon lair. A frantic battle ensues, during which

the fish-man is badly burned. Returned to the U.S. for

study, he is given an emergency tracheotomy enabling

him to live on land. It also seems to make him grow a

lot bigger - but maybe that’s because the monster on

land is played by bulky Don Megowan in an ill-fitting

suit. Penned up like a dog in the home of scientist Jeff

Morrow, the Creature looks out to sea yearningly, but

he doesn’t get up enough energy to bust out of his

chains until Morrow tries to frame him for murder. A

mediocre script and routine direction make this the

least of the series despite one or two exciting scenes.

The Deadly Mantis (1957) is one of the cheapest

and least satisfying of 50s Universal monster movies,

which sees a giant praying mantis thawed out of the

Arctic ice and flying to America to cause havoc in

Washington DC and New York. It finally meets its end

in the Holland Tunnel. Craig Stevens is the stolid hero

whose rugged charms steal Alix Talton away from

the arms of boffin William Hopper (good name for a

star of a film like this!). Loads of stock footage and

poor effects make this tough going even for the most

dedicated fan.

The Time Travellers (1964) is an imaginative

low-budgeter that has a group of 1960s boffins

accidentally stumbling 107 years into the future through

a time portal. There they find that nuclear war has

almost destroyed the human race, apart from a small

bunch of survivors who live underground and are trying

to construct a spaceship to escape to another planet.

The efforts of the survivors are being hampered by a

race of mutants who want to destroy the last remnants

of normal humanity. What the film lacks in budget it

makes up for in imagination, with some striking scenes

and a highly effective - if downbeat - ending.

We covered Dr. Cyclops (1940) last issue, it’s

a gorgeously Technicolored fantasy thriller with

Albert Dekker in the signature role of his career

as the not-so-good Doctor of the title who shrinks

unwanted visitors to his secret Amazon jungle lab.

Amazing special effects for its day and still tense and

entertaining almost 80 years on!

The Beast With A Million Eyes (1961) is one of

the cheapest monster flicks around, an early Roger

Corman effort set in the desert and telling of a family

menaced by a creature from space who inhabits the

bodies of normally tranquil animals and turns them

vicious. Thus Corman neatly gets round the problem of

having to show his “Beast,” though those suckered by

the lurid poster and title can’t have been pleased.

Also pretty bad is Angry Red Planet (1959), one of

the low-budget science fiction movies produced by

American Sidney Pink in Scandinavia in the late 50s.

This tawdry effort takes place amid sets that look like

they were all painted on glass, and yep, they were. A

group of astronauts blast off for Mars in a cardboard

spacecraft and encounter a giant spider-bat and some

strange-looking monster plants. Then they get in the

ship and come home again. Because Mars is known as

the red planet, Pink shot his movie in a process called

‘Cinemagic,’ which makes everything look negative,

but with a reddish glow. It also gives you a headache.

Finally, when I was a young lad at the mercy of

raging hormones I spent many a late night developing

hairy palms and double vision over the extremely

racy paperback version of Reptilicus (1962) issued

as a movie tie-in back then. When I eventually got

round to seeing the movie after many years I was

very disappointed to discover that all the sexy stuff in

the book was nowhere to be seen in the movie! What

we’re left with is a pretty pathetic low-budget monster

movie, shot in Scandinavia. A group of oil drillers come

up with a mangled tail of some prehistoric beast. The

tail starts to regenerate, and it grows into a fierce

beast that wreaks havoc on Copenhagen. Ridiculous

puppet-type effects doom this one from the start, but

it’s good for laughs on a cliched level.

To be fair, all of the movies look pretty decent

here, none of your old Public Domain dupes like you

get in the States, and so at around fifty quid this is a

worthwhile purchase even though it contains a few

duds alongside the B-movie treasures. I’d also argue

that Dr. Cyclops and The Blob were never B-movies, by

the way. AB.

CYBORG 2087 (1966) Blu-ray.

Out Now. Kino Lorber. Cert: N/A.

2087 must have seemed a long way away when they

made this movie, now it is only just around the corner

- I’ve pre-ordered my 2087 iPhone already. There’s

not much future in watching this crappy sci-fi movie

though because it’s a boring cheapie which wastes the

germ of a decent premise - later used to much better

effect in The Terminator!

Made back-to-back with Dimension Five (also

reviewed here), this anti-Communist effort stars a

tired-looking Michael Rennie (who died four years later

at the age of 61) as Garth, a Cyborg from the oppressed

future (2087 to be exact) who time-travels back to

1965 (in a machine that looks like a giant spark plug)

to confront Eduard Franz, the scientist who invented

Cyborgs in the first place - hoping to prevent him from

going ahead with his work, and in the process saving

the future from becoming a world where free thought

is banned. Anti-Commie? Well it’s no accident that the

scientist’s name is Marx!

Rennie is pursued by two killer cyborgs from the

future who look like a couple of refugees from the

Blue Oyster bar in the Police Academy films. I hasten

to add that I have caught flack from gay allusions in

the past and to avoid offence I am sure these guys are

straighter than the pole that your mum dances on.

Phew, dodged a ‘causing offence’ bullet there.

But back to Cyborg 2087, half-human, half-machine,

all fairly rubbish. The film has a plastic, made-for-telly

look about it, and has special effects that could have

come free in a Corn Flakes packet, but if you enjoy bad

sci-fi movies from the 60s then this could supply you

with some entertaining viewing, particularly as the

Blu-ray looks so good.

Extras: Former Fangoria editor Chris Alexander

provides a decent commentary in which he discusses

the whole Terminator/Harlan Ellison Soldier, Outer

Limits episode inspiration for the tale. Trailers for

other Kino releases: The Satan Bug, The Earth Dies

Screaming, Chosen Survivors, Panic in the Year Zero

and The Quatermass Xperiment. AB.

DIMENSION FIVE (1967) Blu-ray.

Out Now. Kino Lorber. Cert: N/A.

At the same time as Jeffrey Hunter starred in the

Star Trek pilot show, he toplined this silly sci-fi thriller

playing Justin Power, a smooth secret agent working

for Espionage Inc. (a clever title that explains exactly

what they do for a living). Better than Universal

Exports we reckon.

Powers is sent to stop the nuclear bombing of Los

Angeles by a Chinese communist organisation called

The Dragon. This entails him travelling back in time

via a handy dandy Time Belt, which also helps keep

his trousers up. He’s accompanied on his low budget

mission by the sultry France Nuyen (wife of I Spy’s

Robert Culp and a frequent guest on that show), and

his nemesis is a sinister character called Big Buddha -

played by Goldfinger’s Oddjob himself, Harold Sakata,

who has been dubbed here by Paul Frees. He’s also

in a wheelchair throughout, like an evil Man Called

Ironside, though nobody pushes him around.

INFINITY 31

SCIENCE FICTION LIBRARY

Whilst the plot sounds like fun, it’s not. Little use is

made of the Time Belt, Hunter’s character is arrogant

and stupid, and he has zero chemistry with his female

co-star. Director Franklin Adreon started his career

shooting Republic serials but you’d never guess it

from the flat way he stages the action scenes. In

fact he doesn’t seem to have any directorial flair at

all, preferring to leave the camera rolling in a static

location and pop off to the canteen for a cup of tea

while the actors try in vain to make Arthur C. Pierce’s

naff dialogue sound convincing. You’ll probably want

to join him. Two sugars please, and a Garibaldi if

there’s any left.

Extras: Audio commentary by Videodrome (Gideon

Kennedy, Matt Owensby and John Robinson). Opened

in 1998, Videodrome is now Atlanta, Georgia’s only

video rental store, and these guys find a lot to say

about this movie in an entertaining fashion. Trailers

and stills gallery. AB.

THE DOCTORS: THE TOM BAKER YEARS (2017) DVD.

Out now. Koch Media. Cert: E.

Even as someone who regards Jon Pertwee as “my”

Doctor, I wouldn’t deny Tom Baker was the first of the

Tardis’ tenants to inhabit the role totally in the public’s

eyes, combining relative obscurity (The Golden

Voyage of Sinbad fortuitously opened just as the

casting process began) and a personality which could

fill even a blue box considerably larger on the inside

than the inside.

By 1989, Reeltime Pictures founder Keith Barnfather

had built up a professional relationship with Baker by

hiring him for voiceover work on TV commercials, but

was still understandably delighted when the actor

agreed to be interviewed by Nicholas Briggs for one

of Reeltime’s Myth Makers video profiles. Unsure

exactly how much material would emerge from their

encounter in East Hagbourne, the sleepy village

originally used as the setting for 1975’s The Android

Invasion, Barnfather recruited John Levene to provide

dramatic padding by recreating his performance as

the serial’s fake Sgt Benton. As it turned out, Baker was

in fine form and Levene’s participation was limited to a

rather vestigial cameo at the close.

As with the previous Troughton and Pertwee

volumes, this two-disc compilation also includes

interviews with Baker’s on-screen companions: Lis

Sladen (filmed in 2000 at Peckforton Castle, location

of her first appearance as Sarah Jane Smith, The Time

Warrior, with Jeremy Bulloch popping up briefly to

mention how he’d hoped mediaeval archer Hal might

become a regular); actor and novelist Ian Marter,

interviewed weeks before his sudden death in 1994

(this release includes 12 minutes of previously unseen

material); Louise Jameson, filmed at a Victoriana

museum in 1993; Mary Tamm, wandering around

castle ruins in 1990; John “K9” Leeson, combining a

1984 interview by Keith Harrison with Briggs’ 1995

follow-up. Notable by her absence is Lalla Ward, who

seems to have maintained a polite distance from the

Who phenomenon (and ex-husband Baker) until 1993’s

non-canonical charity reunion Dimensions in Time.

Whilst I could do without the superfluous scripted

sequences (the footage of Mary Tamm and Nicholas

Briggs as Alice and the Mad Hatter are especially

irksome), this series provides by far the most in-depth

personal insights into television’s longest-running

science fantasy franchise. SG.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND 40TH

ANNIVERSARY EDITION (1977) Blu-ray.

Out Now. Sony. Cert: PG.

Can it really be 40 years since Steven Spielberg’s UFO

blockbuster was first released? Apparently so, though

it seems like only yesterday to me. Mind you, I was

abducted by a flying saucer not long after the release

and have spent the last 4 decades in limbo being

probed in unmentionable places. Anyway, watching

this digital 4K restoration had me entranced and

humming the aliens’ theme tune - a five-note John

Williams motif - all over again.

In the unlikely event you didn’t know already, the

film stars Richard Dreyfuss (in a role turned down

by Steve McQueen) as cheerful Wichita, er, I mean

Indiana lineman Roy Neary, who experiences a close

encounter of the first kind when he witnesses UFOs

soaring across the sky.

A close encounter of the second kind then comes

with government agents unearthing physical evidence

of extraterrestrial visitors - in the form of a lost fighter

aircraft from World War II and a stranded military ship

that disappears decades earlier only to reappear in the

middle of the desert.

Meanwhile Roy becomes increasingly obsessed

with subliminal, mental images of a mountain-like

shape and begins to make a mashed potato sculpture

of it. Seeing a television news programme about a

train wreck near Devils Tower in Wyoming he realises

the mental image of a mountain plaguing him is real

and sets off to reach the site where both he and the

government agents will have a close encounter of the

third kind – contact.

When I first saw Close Encounters I thought it was

great, though perhaps slightly overlong, and to be

quite honest I was a bit pissed off the aliens were so

benign. Spielberg apparently rushed to complete it

and when it was a smash hit Columbia gave him $1.5

million to produce what became the “Special Edition”

of the film. Their only insistence was he showed the

inside of the alien mothership so they could have

something to hang a reissue marketing campaign on.

In retrospect Spielberg regretted it. This special edition

added seven minutes of new footage, but also deleted

or shortened various existing scenes by a total of ten

minutes, so that the 1980 Special Edition was three

minutes shorter than the original 1977 release.

The Special Edition features several new character

development scenes, the discovery of the SS Cotopaxi

in the Gobi Desert, and the aforementioned view of the

inside of the mothership.

But that’s not all folks. In 1998, Spielberg recut

Close Encounters again for what would become the

Collector’s Edition, a re-edit of the original 1977

release with some elements of the 1980 Special

Edition, but omitting the mothership interior scenes

which Spielberg felt should have remained a mystery.

He now regards the Collector’s Edition - also dubbed

‘Director’s Cut’ as his definitive version of the film.

Which one is the best? Still the original for me, I’m

afraid. I’m not in favour of all this tinkering. But you

can make your own minds up because all three are on

this new 4K Blu-ray release. If you have an Ultra HD

player you can see it in all of its 4K glory. I saw it on

normal Blu-ray and it still looks stunning.

Extras: All-new interviews with directors Steven

Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and Denis Villeneuve reflecting

on the legacy and impact of this iconic sci-fi classic,

Steven Spielberg’s home videos and outtakes,

Making Of documentary. Steven Spielberg: 30 Years

of Close Encounters featurette, 1977 featurette: Close

Encounters Of The Third Kind – Watch The Skies, deleted

scenes, storyboard comparisons, stills and trailers. AB.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) Blu-ray.

Out November 13th. Arrow. Cert: PG.

Here’s a movie I am absolutely delighted to see getting

an HD upgrade, one of my favourite sci-fi thrillers of

the 1950s, scripted by the great Richard Matheson

from his classic pulp novel.

While on holiday with his wife, Scott Carey (Grant

Williams) is enveloped by a strange cloud. A few days

later he discovers that the cloud was some form of

atomic waste, and it is causing him to shrink in stature.

He gets smaller and smaller, until he is eventually

forced to relocate to a doll’s house to get away from

the family cat!

Later he becomes insect-sized and takes up a

sewing needle to do battle with a spider before the film

reaches its remarkably existential conclusion - one

that leaves us with an interesting view of humanity’s

place in the universe.

The special effects are remarkably convincing, and

the oversized props created for the film were a feature

of the Universal Studios tour for many years, but it’s

Matheson’s intelligent writing that gives this one classic

status. Kudos also to director Jack Arnold, who whips

the tale along at a fair old pace, bringing out the 50s

paranoia inherent in the scenario.

The only false note is struck by the hero’s brief affair

with a circus midget - the use of a full-size actress for

the role was a bad mistake.

32 INFINITY

INFINITY REVIEWS

Extras: Auteur on the Campus: Jack Arnold at

Universal – an extended documentary about the

early career of director Jack Arnold at Universal-In-

ternational studios. He was of course the filmmaker

behind many of the studio’s greatest sci-fi and horror

movies, such as Creature From The Black Lagoon and

Tarantula. There Is No Zero: Writing The Shrinking

Man is an in-depth conversation with author Richard

Christian Matheson about his father and the creation

of the original Incredible Shrinking Man novel. And as

a final nice bonus we get the Super 8 cut-down version

of the film, which I must have seen about a hundred

times back in the day. “The mist… that mist!” AB.

DAMNATION ALLEY (1977) Blu-ray.

Out November 20. Signal One. Cert: 12.

Fox didn’t initially think that Star Wars was going to be

a box office success, but were really enthused about

this movie, thinking it was sure to be a blockbuster.

Boy did they get a wring number. While Star Wars

became a box office phenomenon, Damnation Alley

tanked so badly that it took me a year to catch up

with it as it slunk round the UK fleapit circuit. Shame,

because being a big Jerry Goldsmith fan I was looking

forward to hearing what his score sounded like in

‘Dimension 360.’ As it happened, the tiny cinema I

saw it in hadn’t even upgraded to stereo. Jerry had

previously scored The Illustrated Man for Damnation’s

director Jack Smight.

Based on Roger Zelazny’s novel, Damnation Alley

kicks off in a post-apocalyptic environment where the

only survivors leave an underground military base to

trek across the desert in a pair of tank-like all-terrain

mobile homes. For some odd reason Albany, New

York is the only place not wiped out, and that’s their

destination. Along the way George Peppard, Paul

Winfield, and Jan Michael Vincent encounter mutated

cockroaches, psycho rednecks, weird electrical storms

(the sky is a different colour in every scene) and pick

up sultry Dominique Sanda and juvenile delinquent

Jackie Earle Haley. Oddly enough there is no sex

between Sanda and any of the men, despite the fact

that they haven’t had a nibble in years!

You know a film is in trouble when the vehicles

the heroes travel in are more interesting than the

characters themselves, and the effects here are

pretty awful for a big budget studio production.

Okay, so it is just about watchable on a bad movie

level, but wait until you see that ridiculous ending.

Fair play nevertheless to Signal One for giving this

a nice-looking HD upgrade, though the increased

definition doesn’t help the ludicrous opening scene

where we see Jan Michael Vincent on a motorbike with

an obviously human passenger which he ditches to

decoy some giant scorpions. We then see that it is an

obvious store mannequin he has fed them. Yeah, sure.

Extras: Audio commentary with film expert,

Paul Talbot. Audio commentary with Producer, Paul

Maslansky. Interview with film Expert Chris Poggiali.

Survival Run: a look at the challenges of adapting the

celebrated novel with Co-Screenwriter, Alan Sharp.

Road To Hell: Producer Jerome Zeitman details the

process of making the film and the difficulties it

encountered along the way. Landmaster Tales: a

detailed examination of the now-famous Landmaster

Vehicle from the film. AB.

PHOENIX FORGOTTEN (2017) DVD.

Out Now. Signature. Cert: 15.

I’m no great fan of the “found footage” format; for

every [Rec] or The Last Broadcast, there are a dozen

entries where concocted context is deployed to

excuse ‘shakycam’ amateurism and ill-conceived

narrative inadequacies. Unfortunately, Phoenix

Forgotten falls heavily into the second camp. I’m not

entirely certain what “shocking untold true events”

inspired first-time feature director Justin Barber and

co-writer TS Nowlin (one of the team behind the Maze

Runner screenplays), but it’s established fact that

thousands of people reported seeing unidentified

flying objects during the 1997 ‘Phoenix lights’

incident. The duo use this alleged close encounter

as a springboard, building their initial storyline

around three Phoenix teenagers who decide to shoot

a documentary investigating the phenomenon. (This

section includes one of the film’s rare entertaining

moments, when two elderly astronomers pour scorn

upon the youngsters’ “ufo footage” and urge them to

learn how to focus properly.)

The Scooby Gang’s subsequent disappearance in

the Arizona desert is still a mystery 20 years later,

when a new investigation is launched by Sophie

(Florence Hartigan, from forthcoming animated

horror Malevolent), whose elder brother was one of

the original three. Needless to say, her own trajectory

is equally ill-fated. However, there is a genuine

conundrum at the heart of this tiresome 85-minute

home movie: what on Earth (or elsewhere) persuaded

Ridley Scott to come on board as a producer? For

some, regrettably, Phoenix Best Forgotten will be

further proof that his retirement is long overdue. SG

ORIGIN WARS (2016) DVD / Blu-ray.

Out now. Lionsgate. Cert: 15.

Pitched as the opening chapter in a new science fiction

franchise, Origin Wars should appeal strongly to fans

of Josh Whedon’s short-lived TV series Firefly and its

big-screen spin-off Serenity. This is SF without the

more fanciful Star Wars-style trappings of aliens and

telekinetic monks, a more gritty and character-driven

action drama than most of its genre contemporaries.

Fearful for his daughter’s safety in the wake of

a planet-wide emergency, military officer Kane

(Daniel MacPherson breaks out of the orbiting base

where he’s stationed and crash-lands upon the

surface of his home world. He encounters escaped

convict Sy (Kellan Lutz, Ghosts of Goldfield and the

Twilight series) and offers him sanctuary in a secret

underground bunker in exchange for helping rescue

the missing Indi (Teagan Croft). Director Shane Abbess

and co-writer Brian Cachia have sketched out a rather

grim future, but there’s clearly much more in store

for Indi, whose story arc is far better indicated by the

film’s US title, The Osiris Child. Ms Croft is impressively

confident in her movie debut, and I certainly hope this

release proves successful enough to justify a second

instalment.

Extras: None on this screener. SG

FEED THE LIGHT (2014) Blu-ray.

Out Now. Intervision. Cert: N/A.

Based very loosely on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour out of

Space, Feed the Light is an ultra low-budget ($14,000)

movie that makes up for any budgetary restrictions

with a great deal of imagination and style. Shot in

black and white (apart from intrusions of red, mostly in

the form of blood, and sudden flashes of psychedelic

colour), it’s a bizarre, hallucinogenic trip of a film.

Lina Sunden plays Sara, a young mother who is

determined to snatch back the child that she has lost

custody of. Tracking the father to huge warehouse, she

breaks in, only to find herself in a strange, timeless

world where a mysterious woman and her assistants

are keeping a mysterious light source – and where

strange shadow monsters lurk in the dark corners. This

is a world where doors appear and disappear, and no

one can leave – but as Sara makes her way through the

various levels of the warehouse, looking for her missing

daughter and a way to escape back into the real world.

This is a film that is more about atmosphere than

narrative coherence – which is not to say that the

film doesn’t make any sense but simply that it is

more concerned with creating visual nightmares and

creeping the viewer out than in giving us a straightfor-

ward story. In that, it succeeds well, the intentionally

degraded monochrome and sepia visuals and the

simple but effective shadow creatures, together with

a succession of weird and unsettling characters, make

this a dream-like experience that is best enjoyed by

not worrying too much about what it all means, and

instead allowing it to flow over you. There’s an almost

old-fashioned underground cinema appeal about Feed

the Light, and director Henrik Moeller does a fine job

with minimal resources. This is well worth

checking out.

Extras: Making of featurette; interview with Moeller;

trailer. DF.

THE MAGAZINE BEYOND YOUR IMAG INAT ION

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INFINITY 37

Their shared nemesis comes in the guise of Poppy (Julianne Moore) a psychotic

megalomaniac who has a thing about 50s TV programmes. Her secret Vietnam

hideaway is in the form of a 50’s Diner in the middle of the jungle, where she makes

handmade burgers using a man-size mincer…you’re way ahead of me here.

Moore is obviously having fun with this character and camps it up to eleven. But

not as much as her hostage Sir Elton John (played by Sir Elton John) who she forces

to perform private gigs or get be snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

Poppy deals in all kinds of drugs and just wants to be taken seriously as a

businesswoman. So she decides to teach the world a lesson by flooding the market

with her own brand of deadly narcotics, but can the joint agencies Kingsman and

Statesman thwart her evil plans and save the world? Well, anything James Bond

can do…

I loved the first Kingsman. It was fresh and funny, a brash new take on the

spy genre done with flair. At its heart was the Professor Higgins/Eggsy Doolittle

relationship that really worked well.

Unfortunately, (I’m sorry to say) the plot of this one isn’t strong enough to sustain

a running time of two hours twenty minutes. Having big US stars on board was a nice

touch, but Channing Tatum’s character doesn’t have enough screen time and I would

have liked to have seen his character getting more involved. Halle Berry’s Ginger

Beer is also underused. Queerly.

Jeff Bridges, who I always love to watch, mumbles his way through the film, but

the man does have screen presence. And just to get a little bit ‘Points of View,’ “why,

why, why?” was Sir Elton John asked to be part of the plot? If you use a famous face

as a cameo, it’s funny that one time but he keeps popping up as himself ‘effing &

jeffing’ in silly extended cameos which seem increasingly pointless.

The other minor gripe I have is the way that the move brings back a couple of

characters who clearly died in the first movie. Yes it’s nice to have Colin Firth recover

from being shot in the head last time out but this sort of takes away any feeling of

real danger. No matter what happens to the main

protagonists, there’s a chance they will still pop up in

the next in the series, as spry and chipper as ever.

I only have one more grumble, about an

unnecessary icky-scene where Eggsy has to plant

a tracking device, literally inside the lady parts

of Clara, Charlie’s girlfriend (played by Poppy

Delevingne) so she can lead Eggsy and Merlin to a

secret drug factory. Most of the audience made an

‘Eyeeew!’ sound in unison.

Having said all that, there are some great

moments of comedy and a few good action set

pieces to saver. Pedro Pascal is a great addition

to the cast as agent Whiskey, looking like Burt

Reynolds in his Smokey and the Bandit prime.

Matthew Vaughn was looking for a Reynolds type for

the role and he certainly found one.

Taron Egerton is solid, as is Mark Strong as Merlin,

and of course Colin Firth is Colin Firth, always good

value for money. The film was slightly disappointing

for me but I’m sure if the Leicester Square crowd

was anything to go by it will make a huge amount

of money.

Mark Foker.

IN CINEMAS NOW

KINGSMAN AND THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (15)

I have never seen such excitement by movie fans as I witnessed in London

recently. The circus had truly come to town as Kingsman swallowed up

Leicester Square. There was a plethora of stars who turned out for the

premiere, and each one of course thoroughly delighted to be working with

director Matthew Vaughn.

The star names were Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Jeff Bridges,

Halle Berry, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Hanna Alström, Keith Allen, Pedro

Pascal, Edward Holcroft, Poppy Delevingne, Sophie Cookson and Sir Elton John - I

kid you not!

It was back in 2014 when a British secret service agent called Harry Hart ‘code

name Galahad’ (Colin Firth) recruited a young rough and unrefined London lad

called Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and trained him up to be a Kingsman, defenders of

the downtrodden and saviours of the World.

The film came from a 2012 Mark Millar graphic novel Kingsman: The Secret

Service, and was turned into a screenplay by Jane Goldman and Matthew

Vaughn, who also directed the movie which became Kingsman: The Secret

Service. The 007 spoof delighted audiences with its action-packed fight

sequences, a razor-sharp wit and an unusual chalk and cheese relationship

between the two main characters.

Fast forward to 2017 and Eggsy has matured into a real gent of an agent

but maintains his London roots. His friend and mentor Harry was murdered by

Samuel L Jackson’s character Valentine at the end of the first outing. But faithful

gadget man Merlin (Mark Strong) is back, still looking out for Eggsy and doing

his best Sean Connery imitation. There is also a new man in charge, Arthur (

Michael Gambon).

Eggsy bumps into an old adversary Charlie

(Edward Holcroft) who went through the Kingsman

training school with him but now has an artificial

hand and works for the bad guys. The early

confrontation between them turns into a thrilling

fight in the back of a black cab and on the roof and

the open door while speeding through the streets of

London. A great opener to the film.

The Kingsman headquarters then get blown up by

the unknown organisation who Charlie now works for,

leaving Eggsy and Merlin to look for help with their

American counterparts, The Statesmen, who reside

in a whisky brewery in the heart of Kentucky.

Their first encounter with The Statesmen brings

Eggsy and Merlin face to face with ‘Good Ole Boy’

Tequila (Channing Tatum) complete with massive

Stetson and shotgun. Tequila introduces them to The

Champ (Jeff Bridges) head of The Statesmen and

the rest of the team, data analyst Ginger Beer (Halle

Berry) and Whisky (Pedro Pascal, Netflix’s Narcos

and Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones) another

cowboy with laser whip (this is almost getting into

innuendo territory now). Plus, they have a special

surprise in the form of an old Kingsman colleague.

Name of feature

38 INFINITY

VWORP, VWORP! Doctor Who & the Vintage Comic Universe

Giacomo Lee chats to a very

special fanzine about some

of the Doctor’s lesser known

adventures…

INFINITY 39

Doctor Who Fanzine

Opposite:

‘Frobisher the

shapeshifting

companion’,

1984 art by

John Ridgway

Above left:

Vol 3 cover art

by Adrian ‘Ade’

Salmon

Top: Black and

white art by John

Ridgway from

Grant Morrison’s

1987 World

Shapers strip

Also shown:

Vinyl sleeve art by

Tim Keable and

the front cover of

Vworp Vworp! with

work by various

artists

In the latest Doctor Who finale, The Doctor

Falls, we saw our titular Time Lord tied to

a chair, explaining to his captors a theory

he holds that Cybermen are an inevitable

part of intergalactic evolution. Amongst

the planets he named where people eventually

unleashed the Cyber peril upon themselves

were a few of the more familiar names, such as

Earth and Mondas, along with a reference that

would have gone straight over the head of many

viewers sitting at home, glued to their own

chairs : ‘Marinus.’

Any Grant Morrison fans who also watch

the show may have got the reference, though,

Marinus being the location of his Cyberman

tale The World Shapers, a comic strip released

in a 1987 edition of Doctor Who Magazine, back

when Morrison was yet to break it big with his

trademark ‘meta’ take on heroes in capes and

cowls. Marinus on the TV show had been location

to a species called the Voord, as encountered

by the First Doctor; by the time the Sixth Doctor

arrived there in the comics, the Voord had begun

to upgrade themselves into Cyberman form.

Despite having a history as long as the show,

this is one of the very few times the revival of

Doctor Who has given a nod to the comics, thus

making them canon. With so much history and

so many stories told in the Doctor Who universe,

though, the greatest danger isn’t forgetting

what’s in continuity and what isn’t, but how easy

it could be to lose hold of all the great material

and charming idiosyncrasies from the comic

side of the franchise. And that’s where Vworp

Vworp! comes in.

A fanzine that was first unleashed on the

world in 2010, Vworp Vworp! stands out from

other Whovian projects in the printed realm in

that it solely covers the world of Doctor Who

comics, with a special emphasis on material

published before the revival.

Coming in at two hundred pages with over

three covers to choose from, the latest volume

also comes with

a free audio

tale called The

Mechanical

Planet, a

specially

produced

adaptation of

a Dalek comic

written by Dalek

creator himself, Terry

Nation. This willingness to

push out the boat for fans in

both content and bonus ephemera

struck me as a reader, and I didn’t

hesitate to reach out to the zine’s creators,

Colin Brockhurst and Gareth Kavanagh, to

find out more on this humbling project of work.

The main impetus behind Vworp Vworp!

seems to be to ensure such a rich history

behind Doctor Who is never forgotten,

regardless of whether its canon or not. Would

you say that was the main reason behind

starting the zine?

Colin: It was Gareth who had already come up

with the idea of Vworp Vworp!, some time before

I was brought on board. It was originally to have

been a book, which evolved into a magazine.

Soon after, Gareth was looking for a designer

and, having worked with me on promotional

material for the pub in Manchester he was

running at the time, he asked me. I’d had

experience putting together fanzines since the

early 90s, but nothing as sophisticated as Vworp

Vworp! - colour, gloss, free gifts! It was very

exciting. Once I’d got my teeth into the project,

I brought in all the stuff about Doctor Who

Magazine, and it kind of snowballed from there.

To me, the non-canonical material inspired

by Doctor Who over the years is often more

interesting than the series itself, and I celebrate

everything from the annuals to TV Comic to

the movies. Now that the BBC

has a tighter rein on its licenses,

the related merchandise is a lot more

faithful to the TV series and consequently,

in my eyes, often a lot less creative and

colourful compared to the early days.

Your latest volume features interviews with

comic god Alan Moore and the Sixth Doctor,

Colin Baker. Who would you like to feature

in future? Do you have a list of ‘dream’

interviewees?

Colin: Alan Moore was such an incredible coup, I

don’t know if we could ever top him. But we’d still

like to talk to Grant Morrison, because he’s Grant

Morrison and because his Cybermen-on-Marinus

strip, The World Shapers, is now canon. It would

be lovely to chat with the new series’ Doctors,

especially Peter Capaldi - how interesting it

would be to discuss comic strip art with him.

And Neil Gaiman. And Russell T Davies. Actually,

lots of people.

Gareth: I think Colin pretty much has it covered,

although there’s still so much more to cover.

I’d actually add Martin Geraghty to that list

- arguably THE most influential Doctor Who

comic artist in recent years.

Vworp Vworp! is unique in how it

commissions artists to finish sadly

half-finished comic tales from yesteryear, or

Name of feature

40 INFINITY

follow up on forgotten characters specially

created for the classic strips, e.g. Robot

Agent 2K. Are there other examples of

these you’d like to do in future, or any other

comic stories you’d like to re-introduce to a

modern audience, as you’ve done with The

Mechanical Planet?

Colin: There are actually, most of which I think

we’d like to keep under our hats for now. One

day, maybe, we’ll inish Iron Empire, the sequel

to (Fourth Doctor strip) The Iron Legion which

Lance Parkin wrote for us that didn’t get

beyond a script and a couple of pages of

cracking artwork.

Gareth: Iron Empire for deinite, such a

great story.

I love how VV! not only talks about the

comics, but also printed ephemera such as

story cards given away with sweet cigarettes

back in the 60s. Are there any obscure parts

of the Doctor Who franchise you’d like to

tackle next?

Colin: I’d like to leap into the crazy world of

the annuals and get a feel of what it was like to

work for World Distributors from artists like Paul

Crompton. And I think we’ve barely scratched

the surface of Doctor Who Magazine’s comic

strip - all 38 years’ worth of it!

Gareth: There’s deinitely something to explore

in some of the wildly inappropriate merchandise

from over the years and the art behind them!

Even if it was just a whisper or proposal, I think

imagining these ‘what if’ pieces is an area in

which Colin and Vworp really excels.

Colin: Haha, we’ll have to talk about that one!

Gareth and I have yet to agree on what falls

within Vworp Vworp!’s scope. For me it’s the

art and design of Doctor Who, plus Doctor Who

comics and magazines.

Gareth: Keeps it interesting though! Always

plenty to explore, within reason of course. And

then, of course there’s always the increasingly

bonkers free gifts we produce, upping the ante

every time.

What are your favourite eras of the comics?

And are there any eras readers should avoid?

(Controversial!)

Colin: For me, the exuberance of the 60s comic

strips, most of which played fast and loose with

Doctor Who as we know it but remained wildly

entertaining - often, admittedly, for the wrong

reasons. And I think there’s pleasure to be had

in all eras. Some I don’t often revisit but there’s

always enjoyment to be found when I do.

Gareth: For me, it’s unquestionably the post-’79

Tom Baker strips. A portrayal of Doctor Who as

bold, bright and conident which must have had

an inluence on the last 10 seasons of the show.

The backup strips are also wonderful. Dark, grim,

nihilistic little slices of death where the universe

has to get by without the madman and his box.

Moving forward, the Eighth Doctor run is another

game changer for the strip, with Scott Gray and

Martin Geraghty conidently reshaping Doctor

Who at a time when it would have been all too

easy to just look back nostalgically. As for those

that are less successful, the early Sylvester

McCoy stuff is a little dumbed down, sadly,

although it’s still not without merit. Which, to

be fair goes for every era of Doctor Who in every

medium!

Which classic foes do you think have had

interesting portrayals in the comics, showing

them in a different light to the TV show?

Gareth: Without doubt, this is a real strength

of the backup strips. The monsters get their

day in the sun! The Black Legacy Cybermen are

particularly memorable, as is the friendly Kroton

from Soul of a Cyberman. I love the way Steve

and Alan Moore are able to consider a single

aspect of, say, the Cybermen and spin it off into

a satisfying and thought-provoking story.

The same goes for Adrian Salmon and Alan

Barnes’ The Cybermen strip from the 1990s,

which is bold and bonkers. It’s funny how the

Cybermen have become the bellwether for

change and innovation in the strip! Of course,

all of these innovations surely have their roots in

the TV 21 Dalek strip, which is almost a Dalek I,

Claudius. As far as they are concerned, it’s their

story, they are the good guys!

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

1964 was when Doctor Who irst appeared in sequential art form, with all-new adventures for the First Doctor

appearing in the weekly anthology TV Comic. Anyone looking to read about the Doctor’s battles with the Daleks would

have been disappointed though as despite the advent of Dalekmania there was no sign of the tinpot foes within its

pages. This was due to the rights being owned by creator Terry Nation, who would soon allow rival comic TV Century 21

to publish The Dalek Chronicles, a strip where the species were the starring show - but with no sign of the Doctor, due

to his usage rights being owned by the BBC.

An interesting inversion, you’d agree, and soon necessity demanded the Daleks turn from baddies to anti-heroes in

absence of the good Doctor. Many strips saw them ight for survival against the greater of two evils, aliens which never

appeared on the show such as Mechanoids and Monstrons. Intriguingly, other comics would see extra dimensions

added to other classic foes, especially in the backup tales that appeared in Doctor Who Magazine, which would pick

up the comics baton from the end of the ’70s onwards. These stories left out the Doctor to focus on the villains; Alan

Moore’s The Black Legacy for example saw the Cybermen at the mercy of a sentient virus that haunted their dreams,

in a spooky strip that practically humanised the metal men. These comics also saw the creation of popular characters

such as Abslom Daak, the Dalek-hating mercenary who was popular enough to have his mugshot shown during recent

revival episode Time Heist.

Above:

Two 1993 Abslom

Daak sketches by

Lee Sulivan

Right:

A Dalek from a

1965 TV 21 comic

strip, artwork

by Richard

Jennings (and a

big ‘thank you’ to

Christopher Hill

for the scan)

Name of feature

INFINITY 41

Which characters or tales from the comic

would you like to see either on the show or

revisited in the current comics?

Colin: I’d like to see the REAL Emperor of the

Daleks - I find it quite bizarre that such an

iconic design as the Golden Emperor hasn’t

made it onto the screen (I’m not counting

Remembrance). Editor’s note: a Golden Emper-

or-lookalike called the Imperial Emperor featured

in TV arc Remembrance of the Daleks.

Gareth: You’re spot on with the Emperor Dalek,

Colin. It’s a curious miss that one. Alpha and

his Humanised Daleks from Children of the

Revolution would be wonderful. Same goes for

(Cyberman companion) Kroton, especially if they

can make him like Luke Cage as Ade Salmon

always imagined! Oh, and the Voyager arc,

but only as long as they can get Peter Jackson

to reconsider directing. At last, the show can

approach the heights of visual flair the strip has

been delivering for nearly 40 years!

Colin: I think Abslom Daak should be seen over

Jodie Whittaker’s shoulder in a big Daleky battle

scene, but off in the background because I don’t

believe any actor could match the Daak conjured

up in my head by Steve Moore and Steve Dillon.

Finally, what’s been your proudest

achievement to date with the magazine?

Gareth: I’m thrilled we managed to get Alan

Moore to not only talk about Doctor Who but to

engage so thoughtfully and energetically about

his work and the contemporary series. It’s also

a very sad fact that the Grim Reaper has taken

his toll in recent years, so getting the chance to

talk in detail with Steve Moore and Steve Dillon

about their amazing Doctor Who work was all the

more important and really justifies the decision

we made back in 2009 to explore some of these

lesser trodden paths.

Colin: Probably finding something new to

say about the TV Century 21 Dalek strip, and

completing a further instalment in the story.

And giving away an audio play starring David

Graham as the Golden Emperor of the Daleks!

I’m ridiculously proud of our third volume.

And so they should be! Grab your own copy

of Vworp Vworp! Volume 3 at

www.vworpvworp.co.uk, where you can also

read exclusive excerpts. Thank you to Gareth

and Colin for talking to us, and I look forward

to their next volume.

THE MARVELS OF MORRISON AND MOORE

The monthly Doctor Who Magazine is well-known for being home to original comic tales of the Doctor, but

less well-known is that the publication was owned for almost twenty years by the UK branch of Marvel Comics,

beginning with its original inception in 1979 as Doctor Who Weekly. Fitting, then, that this would be the place

where future stars like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison would cut their teeth.

Before writing classics like Watchmen and The Killing Joke, Moore was one of the writers on backup tales in the

magazine, working for the first time with his future collaborator on V for Vendetta, artist David Lloyd. The mag

meanwhile may have been where fellow Brit Grant Morrison picked up his penchant for surreal science-fiction.

Long before Doom Patrol and The Invisibles, Morrison was writing for the Sixth Doctor, the incarnation who

arguably had the trippiest escapades of them all in comics (read the dream-based delirium of Voyager for an apt

introduction). These were the same comics where the Doctor was partnered with a shapeshifter most comfortable

in the body of a penguin, after all. Said shapeshifter, Frobisher, appears in two of Morrison’s tales for the magazine;

his final script would see the Seventh Doctor take on an alien-infected dinosaur, of all things. Neither Morrison nor

Moore have written for Doctor Who since the 1980s, but Morrison did sneak a Dalek into the Batcave for his first

issue of DC’s JLA: Classified!

From top:

The Woman Who Killed The Doctor, art by

Steve Andrew, 1979’s Kroton, The Cyber

Companion, art by Steve Dillon, Frobisher

the Shapeshifting Companion art by

John Ridgway, Vworp Voworp! and Doctor

Who Weekly

Above:

1980 Black Legacy, art by

David Lloyd, and directly

below is the Japanese variant

of the Mechanical Planet

vinyl album, with art by Phil

Stevens and Andrew Orton

Name of feature

42 INFINITY

Alan Moore is the undisputed

bearded Northampton-based

God of the British comics

realm, and he has been

notoriously prickly on the

subject of film adaptations

of his own works, as Chris

Hallam reports…

In 1977, Alan Moore, a twenty-four-year old

employee of the Northampton gas board,

decided to quit his job and pursue a career as

a comic writer. The timing might have seemed

odd to some. Moore was not rich and he was

married with a baby on the way, but for him it was a

“now or never” moment.

“I knew that if I didn’t give up the job and make

some sort of stab at an artistic career before the

baby was born that… I knew I wouldn’t have been up

for it once I had those big imploring eyes staring up

at me,” he said later. “So, I quit.”

The gamble paid off. First, it was just a few

cartoons in heavy metal magazines and the odd

Tharg’s Futureshock for the new science fiction

comic 2000AD. But then the trickle turned into a

flood. Soon came V For Vendetta in Warrior, The

Ballad of Halo Jones and then, amongst many other

things, Watchmen, perhaps the most acclaimed

graphic novel ever. In full flow, Alan Moore was

arguably the biggest name in British comics to

emerge in the Eighties.

Moore was initially keen enough when people

began to talk of filming his works. The first was

Return of the Swamp Thing (1989), based on a DC

strip by Moore, but early plans for a V For Vendetta

TV series and a film of Watchmen faltered. The

timing was not yet right.

By the start of the 21st century, following the

success of Blade and The X-Men, filmmakers began

snapping up every comic or graphic novel they could

get their hands on: Road To Perdition, Ghost World, A

History of Violence and TV’s The Walking Dead were

all consequences of this trend. But the four attempts

at filming Alan Moore’s works in the first decade of

the millennium yielded somewhat mixed results,

and they did not make their creator happy at all.

“The idea that there is something

prestigious about having your work

made into a ilm, that is something which infuriates me because it seems to be something that everybody else in the industry absolutely believes.” Alan Moore.

A RIPPING YARN

The comic: From Hell (1989-1996) produced with

illustrator Eddie Campbell. The film: From Hell (2001).

Directed by the Hughes Brothers and starring Johnny

Depp, Heather Graham, Jason Flemyng, Ian Holm,

Robbie Coltrane, Sir Ian Richardson.

In print: Moore’s take on the notorious Jack the

Ripper case is probably one of his less accessible

stories. At one point, for example, it draws a rather

strange connection between the timing of the 1888

Whitechapel murders and the conception of Adolf

Hitler in Austria-Hungary which occurred at about

the same time. From Hell thus seemed rather an odd

choice for the big screen treatment.

On screen: The Hughes’ Brothers broke with the

original story early on, choosing to make the tale a

whodunnit (something Moore had gone out of his way

to avoid doing) and viewing it from the perspective

of Inspector Abberline (Johnny Depp’s performance

virtually identical to his turn as Ichabod Crane in Tim

Burton’s Sleepy Hollow in 1999), rather than from

that of the Ripper himself, who in the graphic novel is

identified early on as Sir William Gull (Ian Holm).

Moore’s view: As Moore’s biographer Lance Parkin

has written, the author’s approach to the films at this

stage was more one of indifference than outright

hostility. He accepted payment for the film and was

apparently pleased by the casting of actress Heather

Graham as she had a small part in one of his favourite

TV shows, Twin Peaks. But having recognised early

on it was not going to be very similar to the original

story, Moore distanced himself from the film and has

never bothered to watch it.

Verdict: “I’d be quite happy if they made Carry On

Ripping. It’s not my book, it’s their film.” Moore’s

verdict is correct. From Hell is a silly, over-the-top film

full of clichés and bad acting.

INFINITY 43

Alan Moore

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

“Mr. Alan Moore, author and former circus exhibit (as

‘The What-Is-It from Borneo’), is chiefly famed for

his chapbooks produced with the younger reader in

mind. He astounded the Penny Dreadful world with

such noted pamphlets as ‘A Child’s Garden of Venereal

Horrors’ (1864), and ‘Cocaine and Rowing: The Sure

Way to Health’ (1872) before inheriting a Cumbrian

jute mill and, in 1904, expiring of Scorn.”

Author description of The League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen (illustrated by Kevin O’Neill, 1999-2007).

The film: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

(2003). Directed by Stephen Norrington and starring

Sean Connery, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, Peta

Wilson and Stuart Townsend.

In print: Not to be confused with the classic 1960

British movie crime caper starring Jack Hawkins, or

the early 21st century Royston Vasey-based dark

BBC comedy series (both just called The League

of Gentlemen), this witty Victorian pastiche was

reportedly optioned before artist Kevin O’Neill had

even finished drawing the first issue. Bringing together

the cream of fantastic Victorian fiction - Captain

Nemo, the Invisible Man, Allan Quatermain and Jekyll

and Hyde amongst others – into a formidable

superhero-style team, it should have been perfect

for the big screen. In theory…

On screen: A commercial success, LXG (as some

promotions referred to it) was an unruly disaster

and remains the worst Moore screen adaptation yet.

Minor changes were made, such as the introduction

of characters Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray and

there were also issues affecting the copyright of the

Invisible Man’s character - in the end “an” rather than

“the” invisible man appeared.

But these seemed minor quibbles because the film as

a whole was a chaotic mess and a complete travesty

of the original. It was also a notoriously bad shoot,

with Connery (playing King Solomon’s Mines hero

Quatermain) falling out big time with director Stephen

“Blade” Norrington. According to some reports, the two

men actually came to blows on set. Connery, a screen

legend then in his seventies, vowed never to appear in

a film again, and he has kept his word. Norrington has

never directed another feature film since.

Moore’s view: “The League film cost 100 million

because Sean Connery wanted 17 million of that - and

a bigger explosion that the one he’d had in his last

film. It’s in his contract that he has to have a bigger

explosion with every film he’s in. In The Rock he’d

blown up an island, and he was demanding in The

League that he blow up, was it Venice or something like

that? It would have been the moon in his next movie.”

Worse was to come. A lawsuit was brought against

the film alleging it had plagiarised another script

called Cast Of Characters. Moore, who had never

wanted the film anyway was questioned for hours

because of the suggestion that he had only written

the comic as a front to disguise the film’s supposed

unoriginality. The case was settled out of court but in

the meantime the author got very annoyed indeed.

Verdict: Guilty of the crime of ending Sean Connery’s

long film career, The League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen also turned Alan Moore off film versions of

his comics forever. Not that he was ever exactly super

keen in the first place…

REMEMBER, REMEMBER…

The comic: V For Vendetta (1982-1989), art by David

Lloyd (and Tony Weare). The film: V For Vendetta

(2006). Directed by James McTeigue, written by the

Wachowskis and starring Natalie Portman, Hugo

Weaving, Stephen Fry and the late John Hurt

amongst others.

In print: A chilling portrait of a futuristic Britain that

has succumbed to fascism after a limited nuclear war

has destroyed much of the rest of the world. The “hero”

(if hero, he be) is V, a mysterious masked Jacobean

vigilante prone to speaking in strange verse, playing

nasty practical jokes and setting up impressive

and time-consuming domino displays for his own

amusement. But who exactly is he? And can he save

young Evey Hammond from the dark forces which

threaten to engulf her?

On screen: One big problem with filming V For

Vendetta was the story’s obsession with the concept

of November 5th. Virtually everyone outside the UK

is unfamiliar with Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder

Plot and so a short sequence explaining the idea was

added for the benefit of our American cousins. The

nuclear war of the original is replaced by a backstory

involving a devastating epidemic, but generally the

film is surprisingly faithful to the original. This is, after

all, a film in which the hero is a terrorist who blows

up underground trains and it was released only a few

months after the July 2005 London bombings. In short,

some bits don’t work that well - V’s strange rhetoric

doesn’t always work on screen and the Benny Hill-like

sequences in the TV show seem a bit odd. Other

elements such as Stephen Rea’s performance as an

investigating officer and the near-perfect recreation of

the powerful ‘Valerie’ sequence from the comic,

work marvellously.

Moore’s view: Although artist David Lloyd enthu-

siastically endorsed the film, Moore disassociated

himself entirely from it, even going so far as getting

his name removed from the credits. He also expressed

anger (apparently still without having seen it) that the

Wachowskis had used his story to satirise Bush era

America, rather than maintaining the Thatcher-era

anti-fascist perspective of the original.

Verdict: Although not a cinematic triumph by any

means, V For Vendetta was reasonably well received

by audiences and critics. It’s certainly interesting

enough to make you wish Moore would lift up his own

self-imposed mask for a moment and take a sneaky

peek at it.

MANHATTAN TRANSFER

The comic: Watchman is Moore’s masterpiece,

completed with artist Dave Gibbons between 1986 and

1987. It is listed on Time Magazine’s list of ‘’The 100

greatest novels’’. The film of it was directed by Zach

Snyder in 2009 starred Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson,

Matthew Goode and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Summary: A brilliant and complex saga which

transformed the world of comics forever, Watchman

incorporates superheroes, pirates, nuclear apocalypse

and an all-powerful blue man who likes sitting around

in space.

The film: After a fan-pleasing, superbly made title

sequence in which we get to see such sights as Dr.

Manhattan meeting President Kennedy (before

The Comedian, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan

assassinates him), this does a largely faithful job of

translating Moore’s vision to the big screen. It’s not

perfect: Matthew Goode’s Ozymandias is a bit too

obviously villainous from the outset and many scenes

seem unnecessarily violent. But some sequences– the

creation of Dr. Manhattan, for example – are, like the

Valerie sequence in V For Vendetta,

Name of feature

44 INFINITY

transferred perfectly from the comic. Dean Morgan

is especially well cast as the ultra-conservative

Comedian, a man who, despite no obvious super

powers, successfully wins the Vietnam War for the US

and prevents the Watergate Scandal from happening.

The three-and-a-half-hour home video extended

version even incorporates animated Tales of the

Black Freighter sequences into the film, pirate stories

which overwhelmed the narrative of the original

comic. Some viewers might be left wondering if

deliberately unleashing a sudden massive unexplained

explosion would be the best way to defuse a Cold War

superpower stand-off. They might also ask if Richard

Nixon really looked like that or if Dr. Manhattan needed

to be so annoying. But these are mostly failings of the

comic, not the film.

Moore’s view: Terry Gilliam had originally planned

to direct Watchmen in the eighties with Arnold

Schwarzenegger tipped to play Dr. Manhattan, Robin

Williams the sinister Rorschach, Jamie Lee Curtis the

Silk Spectre and Richard Gere, Nite Owl. Gilliam was

ultimately unhappy with Sam Hamm’s script, which

saw Ozymandias travelling back in time to prevent Dr.

Manhattan’s creation, thus changing the course of the

Cold War and ultimately saving the world. The project

fell apart. Twenty years later, it was resurrected, by

which time Moore was dead against it.

Verdict: Probably the best film adapted from Moore’s

works. A shame he hasn’t seen it really. He’s not alone,

because although not an outright flop, Watchmen

disappointed at the box office.

FAITH NO MOORE

Watchmen did not mark the end of TV and movie

versions of Alan Moore’s comic stories. We haven’t

even mentioned Constantine (2005) starring Keanu

Reeves and future Oscar winners Rachel Weisz and

Tilda Swinton which was based on a character Moore

had created for DC. The well received film spawned

a short-lived TV series starring Matt Ryan and will

soon appear in animated TV form. There is also talk of

rebooting The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

and a TV series of Watchmen is in

development. And we mustn’t forget

The Killing Joke, an animated film

version of Moore’s celebrated

Batman story produced with

Brian Boland in 1988. This was

released in 2016. Reviews were

bad. Meanwhile, Moore now

continues to refuse official

credits and licensing fees for

any film adaptations of his works

on principle. The sole exception

has been the animated adaptation of his Superman

story, Justice League Unlimited: For the Man Who Has

Everything (2004), because the producers asked his

permission before production and he was pleased at

the reasonable changes done to the story.

Let’s leave the last word to the man himself. “The

main reason why comics can’t work as films is

largely because everybody who is ultimately

in control of the film industry is an accountant.

These people may be able to add up and balance the

books, but in every other area they are stupid and

incompetent and don’t have any talent. And this is

why a film is going to be a work that’s done by dozens

and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people.

They’re going to show it to the backers and

then they’re going to say, we want this

in it, and this in it... and where’s

the monster?

“To quote Raymond Chandler.

People said: ‘Raymond, don’t

you feel devastated by how

Hollywood has destroyed your

books?’ And he would take

them into his study, point to the

bookshelf and say, ‘There they

are. Look, they’re fine.’”

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05T H E M

A G A Z I N E B E Y O N D Y O U R I MA G I N A T I O N







DOUBLE-SIDED

POSTER INSIDE!

ALAN

MOORE

COMICS

TO MOVIES

FROM HELL!



THE TV SERIES

CAPTAIN

SCARLET

IS 50!JOIN THE

PARTY

INSIDE

PLUS:

THE INCREDIBLE HULK


COMIC HEROES

It’s time for Allan Bryce to recall the

adventures of Rip Hunter… Time Master, a

DC comics hero from their Golden Age!

46 INFINITY

A RIP IN TIME

“What do we want?”

“Time travel!”

“When do we want it?”

“Relatively speaking, now!”

I’ve always had a fascination for movies,

books and comics about time travel, which

I guess stems from when my mum took me

to see the George Pal film of HG Wells’ The

Time Machine when I was a tender lad of about

11. I loved the movie then and I still love it now,

and the whole concept of time travel as depicted

in that wonderful film really sparked my fertile

young imagination.

I also thought, back then, that I had solved

the way to create a time travel device. I said to

my mum, “If you go really fast from one place

to another, you can do it in ten seconds, so it

stands to reason if you go ten times as fast

you can get there before you left.” Over to you,

Stephen Hawkins, but I think I cracked it, mate.

Anyway, not long after I solved the riddle

of time travel I discovered Rip Hunter… Time

Master, an early and much undervalued DC

Comics hero who had the ability to travel in time

with the aid of his handy-dandy Time Sphere.

The day of revelation came in the summer of

1965 when I was on a monster mag hunt in the

long-gone Baldwins newsagents in West Street,

Dorking (“only two schoolchildren allowed in the

shop at any time and a guaranteed strip search

at the door”) and came across a cover in which

a long-dead wizard had changed hero Rip into a

toothy creature. ‘Beware,’ warned the cover line.

‘This may happen to YOU next.’ Ooh, yes please,

I thought. My mates at school wouldn’t half have

been impressed.

That one issue was all it took for me to get

into Rip’s time-hopping adventures. As I recall,

the wizard from the past, known as Kraklow,

turned Rip into a number of different monsters

in an effort to blackmail him into giving him

some weapons from the future, but Rip wasn’t

having any of it. Good for Rip, I say. He gave

him a right pasting at the end, an old-fashioned

uppercut being good enough to defeat even

the most talented of evil wizards. But Kraklow

managed to hide his magic for the inevitable

return match.

I loved that mag and read it many times, but

was disappointed it was issue 28, which meant I

had missed 27 issues of Rip’s adventures. If only

I had a time sphere I could have gone back in

time and picked them up. I still could, come to

think of it. I live in hope.

A bit about the Time Sphere. It was quite a

nifty little vehicle, though the see-through look

probably precluded the inclusion of an onboard

toilet, which was not a problem because Rip

and his companions could easily travel back in

time to before they needed a poo. There was no

onboard sat-nav, but an Encyclopedia of Time

was useful in steering our hero to events that

needed correcting. Rip was sensible enough to

create two Time Spheres just in case something

went wrong with the first. Because you can’t call

out Green Flag to the Middle Ages.

Now a bit about Rip himself. Created by

writer Jack Miller and artist Ruben Moreira, the

British-born character first appeared in DC’s

Showcase 20 in May 1959. The Showcase series

was basically a way of trying out new characters

to see if the public liked them. The most popular

of the Showcase startups was Barry Allen, aka

The Flash. Rip did okay too and after three more

Showcase appearances he was given his own

series that lasted 29 issues - so the one I bought

first was the penultimate Rip adventure.

The character was also seen in Challengers

of the Unknown, a quartet of science-fiction

adventures created in 1957 by the legendary

Jack Kirby, and Rip later helped out Swamp

Thing and Superman. But in his original

incarnation he was just an ordinary guy who

knocked up his Time Sphere in the garage or

something and then set off on his adventures in

company with his mate Jeff Smith, his girlfriend

Bonnie Baxter, and Bonnie’s thoroughly

annoying kid brother Corky. Any character

named Corky has a right to be a pain in the arse,

but Corky abused the privilege.

CONSTANT ADVERSARY

In his original incarnation, Rip battled dinosaurs

and had a constant adversary in the shape of

John Charles James, who was competing with

him for a research grant. Why Rip needed a grant

was beyond me. A time traveller would surely

just slip a day ahead, get the down-low on the

winning gee-gees and make William Hill suffer.

That was Golden Age Rip, and to be honest

it was the only time I bought his adventures.

He went to ancient Rome, visited Atlantis and

read the riot act to dinosaurs, giant spiders and

aliens. Historical accuracy was apparently not a

big deal to the DC writers.

Having been retired in the 60s, Rip returned

in the 1980s looking not a day older when he

aided Cleopatra in her dealings with Julius

Caesar (well she did have a lovely asp) and met

up with Adolf Hitler (though he never asked him

about that one ball rumour). But comic books of

the 80s didn’t appeal to me in general. I was out

of short trousers by then. Just.

Given Rip’s status as the DC Universe’s most

prominent time traveller, I reckon he should

definitely get a movie of his own soon, or even in

the past (because he has the capability). On telly

he gets a mention in the first season finale of The

Flash show, an episode entitled Fast Enough, and

he popped up in the animated series Batman:

INFINITY 47

The Brave and the Bold (2011). Nowadays he can

be seen in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, played by

British actor Arthur Darvill (seen above, right) as a

Time Master from the future who has come back to

assemble a team to oppose a powerful immortal.

Rip was written out of the superhero series after the

season two premiere, in a complicated plot involving

time travel and an atomic bomb. It seems that the

actor needed to be back in Blighty to film his role

as Rev. Paul Coates in the third and final series of

Broadchurch. If he had a real time machine he could

have done both parts at the same time.

But Rip is back in the new series of Legends of

Tomorrow, having formed his own Time Bureau

to protect the sanctity of history. And now he has

been transformed into a villain by the Legion of

Doom. To be perfectly honest I haven’t watched this

show, so a toss do I not give.

What really gets me is the modern age has a

habit of taking our old comic book heroes and

sucking all of the fun out of them. Why does

Batman have to be such a miserable bugger these

days? Is it just because Ben Affleck only has that

one particular look? History has been rewritten,

which would piss Rip off mightily, and he is now

a Time Master from the 22nd century, the son of

Booster Gold (don’t ask because I have no idea who

the feck he is) who is on a mission of revenge after

his wife and son were murdered by the villainous

Vandal Savage. Do I care? Nah. Mind you, if Corky

had been killed I’d have been having a few sherbert

dips in celebration.

Anyway, after his wife and son copped it, Rip

went rogue, apparently, which would have been

unthinkable in my day. He never even tried it on

with Bonnie Baxter, and she was the sort of bird I’d

have had a real crush on if I was a cartoon drawing.

The producer of Legends of Tomorrow says:

“We’ve got big plans for Rip for next year.” It seems

he will be heading up The Time Bureau, which may

bring him into conflict with the Legends. So our

boy may yet have his time in the sun. Good for him

then, but it’s not the Rip Hunter I first discovered on

a spinning rack in a long forgotten newsagents of

my childhood. If only it was still walking distance

I’d be back there like a shot. The same goes for a

great mate who is a member of my time travelling

club. We go back years.

48 INFINITY

CLASSIC

TELEVISIONAN ALIEN ANNIVERSARY

THEY’RE HERE!T

he Invaders irst landed on Earth just over 50 years ago. It had only been 20 years since

pilot Kenneth Arnold caused a sensation with his June 1947 claim to have seen ‘lying

saucers’ above the Paciic Northwest of the US. Now, every week on American television,

aliens from a dying world set out to make Earth their new home.

Only one man stood in their way: David Vincent, architect. It was up to him to convince

a disbelieving world not only that the aliens were already here, but that they had taken human

form and had begun to iniltrate society…

The ‘saga sell’ at the top of each episode of The Invaders set the scene perfectly, with an

ominous voice-over narrating images of Vincent’s late night irst encounter with the alien

saucer, followed by an eerie theme tune from Dominic Frontiere (The Outer Limits).

Each episode would see Vincent - played by Roy Thinnes - uncover the alien

presence on Earth, often at a military or research facility or other isolated

community, attempt to raise the alarm, and then face the prospect of tackling

the aliens alone, or with the help of that episode’s guest star, or battling

against human collaborators (in episodes like ‘Vikor’, ‘The Ivy Curtain’, and ‘The

Watchers’). So concerned was he with tackling the aliens, David Vincent did very

little architecting.

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS

The Invaders ran for two seasons across 1967 and 1968, and despite being almost as

formulaic as all other Quinn Martin productions that preceded it (The Fugitive, The

F.B.I.), there’s something eerie about this show that holds the viewer’s attention, even

to this day. The strange alien iniltrators - only recognizable thanks to a defect in

their pinkie ingers (where UK punk band Stiff Little Fingers got their name), and with

a tendency to vanish in a lare of red light when ‘killed’ - could be all around us at

any moment. The background to the aliens was deliberately left unstated, with their

planet or species unnamed, allowing the viewers’ imaginations to do the work.

Leading man Roy Thinnes (who was paid $7,500 per week) had been a frequent

American television guest star (on shows like The Untouchables, The Eleventh Hour,

and The Reporter, and as a two-year series regular on General Hospital), so was a

familiar face, but had never successfully led his own show before. ‘I was very cautious

about doing The Invaders,’ Thinnes said in the 1990s, ‘because I always felt that if science

iction wasn’t done well, it was embarrassing. (We had) good writers. I was never disappointed, and

that’s why the show holds up.’

SOLO QUEST

The Invaders was a replacement for the Quinn Martin-produced The Fugitive, which ended in August

1967 with a two-part inale that saw Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) unravel the mystery of the

one-armed man and the murder of his wife. Larry Cohen (later the director of the 1982 cult classic

Q: The Winged Serpent) created the series, drawing inspiration from ‘alien doppelganger’ movies

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Enemy From Space (1957, the American release title for

Quatermass 2, the Hammer movie based on the British 1950s’ TV serial). Cohen also referred to several

‘man on the run’ Alfred Hitchcock movies as being inspirations, among them The 39 Steps (1935),

Saboteur (1942), and North by Northwest (1959).

‘ABC invited me to come in and pitch some ideas,’ recalled Cohen in a book-length

interview with Michael Doyle. ‘In those movies, it was always dificult to distinguish

the humans from the aliens, and that was a scary idea.’

Cohen needed a justiication for his hero to move from town to town, never going

to the authorities, so he conceived of loner Vincent and his solo quest to thwart the

alien menace. ‘ABC went for the idea immediately,’ said Cohen. ‘The Invaders was

originally envisioned to be two half-hour shows a week (like the 1960s Adam West

Batman), a serial with dramatic cliffhangers. Instead, they decided on a regular

one hour show and brought in Quinn Martin’s company to produce it.’

Cohen supplied executive producer Quinn Martin with over a dozen possible

storylines for individual episodes of The Invaders, most used in 1967’s 17-episode

irst season, although he didn’t directly script any. Anthony Wilson wrote

‘Beachhead’ - the impressive pilot, that set the scene for the series - and The

Fugitive’s Alan A. Armer produced.

‘The major thing that the show had going for it,’ said Armer, ‘is the fact that

we are all a little bit paranoid. That’s what all real heroes are, if you look at the

great myths and legends. Frequently it is one person ighting society, ighting

the government, ighting (against) an invisible force... We all relate to that,

INFINITY 49

50 years on from its

debut, The Invaders still

packs a punch. Eerie

and ominous, the series

made a star of Roy

Thinnes and paved the

way for the likes of The

X-Files. Brian J. Robb

examines the creation

of a landmark science

fiction show.

RE!This image:

Roy Thinnes as

David Vincent,

tackling the

illegal alien

problem head on!

Opposite:

Roy in scenes

from The

Invaders episodes

‘Beachhead’

(above, with

Diane Baker) and

‘Counterattack’

(below with

Ahna Capri),

plus some tasty

merchandise that

we hope the aliens

got a cut of the

profits for

50 INFINITY

BRIAN J.ROBB

because his job and his goal are so difficult to

achieve. Conceptually, that’s what made the

show strong.’

Before The Invaders could, um, invade, they

needed a ship to arrive on Earth in. Designers

for the show drew upon a famous 1950s UFO

photograph for the iconic design of The Invaders

flying saucers. The notorious 1952 UFO photos

of an archetypal flying saucer by hoaxer George

Adamski provided the primary inspiration, while

a more contemporary 1965 case, when traffic

engineer Rex Heflin photographed a saucer

in Santa Ana, provided additional details. It

was this ship that Vincent would

witness landing

in the atmospheric opening episode. Kids across

America would later build their own Invaders

saucers from Aurora model kits, and eventually

got a closer look inside the ship in the early

second season episode, ‘The Saucer’.

‘Beachhead’ established Vincent and his

ongoing quest. Each episode would unfold across

four ‘acts’ (labelled on screen) and conclude with

an ‘epilogue’ wrapping things up.

Quinn Martin Productions was a television

factory, producing a high quality shot-on-

location product with little variation. Martin

was a control freak who oversaw every aspect

of production, but believed in firmly following

a formula. As a result of this, there was little

episode-to-episode continuity (as was the style

with most 1960s TV shows), although late in the

second season Vincent does attract a group of

‘believers’, led by industrialist Edgar Scoville

(played by Kent Smith), in one

of the series’ best

episodes (unsurpris-

ingly entitled ‘The

Believers’).

More often, though,

the series played

out like a formulaic

anthology show, with

Vincent and the aliens

as the only continuing

factors. Despite a

distinct lack of humour

(a frequent Quinn Martin

trait), The Invaders was a hit,

at least at first. The show was not

as weird as The Twilight Zone or The

Outer Limits, though it occasionally hinted at

elements of both, but neither was it as childish

as Irwin Allen shows like Lost in Space or Land of

the Giants tended to be. Both in production and

on screen, The Invaders was a serious business.

Guest stars across the two seasons included

such television or movie faces and soon-to-be-

stars as Susan Strasberg, Forbidden Planet’s Anne

Francis, Barbara Hershey (The Entity), Jack Lord

(Hawaii Five-0), Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible),

Roddy McDowall (Planet of the Apes), Ed Asner

(Lou Grant), Gene Hackman, Burgess Meredith, The

Day the Earth Stood Still’s Michael Rennie (as an

alien leader, in the episode ‘The Innocent’), and

Star Trek’s William Windom. Quinn Martin paid

over the odds for his episodic guest stars, and so

was able to attract some big names.

PARANOID POLITICS

Although the ‘red scare’ of the 1940s and 1950s

was in the past, its effects lingered on into the

1960s with some of those in Hollywood who’d

been blacklisted as suspected Communists

only beginning to get proper credit for work

completed under fake names (screenwriter

Dalton Trumbo was credited on 1960’s Spartacus

after being blacklisted for almost 15 years). It

was easy to see the paranoia of The Invaders -

the inability to superficially tell the difference

between the infiltrating aliens and humans

- as an analogy to the effects of the cold war

between the US and Russia.

Cohen’s movie inspirations had themselves

been disguised reactions to the McCarthy era,

and in a DVD audio commentary for the episode

‘The Innocent’, Cohen admitted to essentially

Top:

Barbara Luna,

Joseph Campanella,

Allen Emerson and

Carlos Romero in the

‘Storm’ episode

Above:

Roy Thinnes with

Carol Lynley in ‘The

Believers’

Above right: One of

The Invaders goes

‘poof’, and we mean

that in a politically

correct fashion

THE ANDRSON TAPES

replacing Communists with aliens. In

the second season episode ‘The Trial’, an alien

is even referred to as ‘a card-carrying member

from outer space’.

‘The Invaders was definitely a show of its

era,’ noted Cohen. ‘It related to the fraught

times we were living in and the paranoia about

Communist infiltration in America. It was this

atmosphere that made me want to write The

Invaders, (as) a way to explore the political

climate. I thought the subtext was obvious, but

to some people involved with the show it clearly

wasn’t. They didn’t understand any of that!’

The Invaders concluded at the end of the

extended 26-episode second season without a

proper wrap up, unlike Quinn Martin’s previous

show The Fugitive. In a kind of victory, the

final instalment, ‘Inquisition,’ does see Vincent

achieve one of his aims by persuading an

influential figure, an assistant to the Attorney

General, that the alien threat is real. The invaders

themselves are repulsed, temporarily at least,

and the closing narration on the final episode

suggests that when they return Vincent will no

longer be operating against them alone - he now

has powerful allies.

Unfortunately, there would be no third season

that would see the aliens face such an organised

counter-attack. The high ratings of the first

season had all but collapsed during year two,

so a disappointed ABC pulled the plug on The

Invaders after 43 variable episodes. Cohen,

having moved onto pastures new by then,

learned about the cancellation in the Hollywood

trade papers: ‘I was so removed from the show

at that point; I really had nothing to do with

it by the time it was cancelled. As the show

progressed I tried to give them some advice on

where I thought the show was going wrong, (but)

they weren’t interested. I wanted to make my

own movies; television was too difficult

and restricting…’

The open-ended nature of the conclusion

left the way clear for future follow-ups. A series

of nine pulp novels inspired by The Invaders

appeared between 1967 and 1969, with the

authors including acclaimed science fiction

novelist Keith Laumer (who also wrote a trio of

novelizations of classic British telefantasy series

The Avengers). Gold Key Comics (the first to

publish comics based upon Star Trek) also issued

a comic book version of the show.

That was it for The Invaders, apart from

occasional re-runs (BBC2 in the UK repeated the

series periodically from the mid-1980s through

to the early-1990s). The premise was revived

in 1995 for a disappointing two-part

television mini-series starring Scott Bakula

(Quantum Leap, Enterprise) as the new

investigator of the alien threat. At the

star of the second episode Roy Thinnes

appeared in a brief three-minute cameo

as David Vincent, effectively passing the torch

to Bakula’s Nolan Wood. Despite that, the new

mini-series featured little continuity with the

original show.

At its best, the original show had anticipated

the 1990s alien-battling series like The X-Files

and Dark Skies, while this mini-series was simply

a poor imitation. In an homage to the show, The

X-Files featured Thinnes in a pivotal role at the

end of the third season.

Looking back on the series, Larry Cohen

laments his lack of creative control - although

the show’s creator, he had not been involved in

its production. ‘I would have insisted there be

fewer invaders, that’s for sure,’ he says. ‘Every

other person on the show seemed to be an alien!

Roy Thinnes was knocking them off left and

right, (so) there was no real suspense or fear.

The invaders were so vulnerable to Vincent,

it negated the threat. They just went ‘poof’

and they were gone! The infiltration idea was

intended to generate paranoia and suspicion.

That was part of the fun. Ultimately, The Invaders

was executed with a lack of imagination.’

INFINITY 51

This page:

The lovely Monica

Vitti as Modesty

Blaise, seen with

co-stars Dirk

Bogarde and

Terence Stamp.

Above, Patrick

McGoohan as

John Drake, also

known as Danger

Man and Secret

Agent

FAN FAVOURITE EPISODES

The Invaders -the top ten episodes according

to the show’s fans!

1: Storm: David Vincent is contacted by a meterologist to

help investigate the suspicious nature of a hurricane along

the Eastern U.S. coast.

2: The Ivy Curtain: Vincent discovers that a school in New

Mexico is really a front for an alien indoctrination centre

with some otherworldly students.

3: Wall of Crystal: David’s brother, who also thinks he is

crazy, is kidnapped by the aliens who intend to destroy the

oxygen in our planet’s air.

4: The Innocent: An alien (Michael Rennie) captures

Vincent and convinces him he’ll be taken to a paradise as

proof of the invaders’ peaceful treatment. The invaders

conspire to destroy both of them.

5: Valley of the Shadow: After an alien is captured in a

small town, Vincent warns the townspeople, who assume

that their captive is a madman.

6: Dark Outpost: While investigating the invaders’

susceptibility to minor human ailments, David Vincent is

unknowingly taken aboard an alien spacecraft.

7: The Enemy: Despite Vincent’s warnings, a nurse tries to

help an injured alien survivor of a saucer crash.

8: The Watchers: A hysterical hotel manager tells Vincent

that he fears aliens are taking over his hotel.

9: The Saucer: Vincent battles, then destroys an alien

guard and captures one of their spacecraft.

10: The Organization: Vincent joins forces with the mob

when the aliens inadvertently take their illegal shipment

of drugs.

This image:

The classic image

of a flying saucer

was utilised for

the series, and

on the left David

Vincent (Roy

Thinnes) gets to

look inside one

52 INFINITY

Oscar-honoured effects wizard

Ken Ralston takes Infinity’s Calum

Waddell through his time organising the visual excess of

Captain Kirk and company...

This image:

The USS Enterprise

as seen in Star Trek

III: The Search For

Spock (1984) and

below two scenes of

it in action in Star

Trek II: The Wrath of

Khan (1982)

INFINITY 53

THE TREK EFFECT

pecial effects geniuses rarely get more

legendary than Ken Ralston, who can

boast about being a five-time Academy

Award winner, including nods for Return

of the Jedi (1983), Cocoon (1985), Who Framed

Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992)

and Forrest Gump (1994). A Hollywood legend in his

field, Ralston also worked concurrently on the first

three Star Wars films and the very best of the Star

Trek cinematic universe. It is the latter achievement

that Infinity explores in this candid interview which

takes in his time working alongside the late Leonard

Nimoy on 1984’s often undervalued space epic The

Search for Spock

You swapped Star Wars, on which you were an

assistant cameraman on the special effects unit

for both the 1977 movie and 1980’s The Empire

Strikes Back, for Star Trek in 1982 when you

signed on as the visual effects supervisor for

The Wrath of Khan. Then you were back with

Lucas for Return of the Jedi before supervising

the visual effects for Star Trek III: The Search

for Spock in 1984 and Star Trek IV: The Voyage

Home in 1986. That makes you quite an anomaly

- a fixture of sci-fi’s two biggest franchises

during their greatest cinematic outings. You

must be incredibly proud?

That is a good question but I am actually unsure

on how to answer it because I honestly do not even

know how it even happened (laughs). I was working

at ILM, and ILM was the place to be for visual effects

- there was no competition to speak of at that time. I

think that probably boils down to how much money

the Star Wars movies were making and how much

talent came out from that film and faced demands

on their time.

What I remember about getting Star Trek II: The

Wrath of Khan was that they wanted to make a

sequel but they were disappointed about how much

the first film made and the whole experience of it.

So the producers came in to ILM and just started

talking to us. It was general,

just a case of ‘What can we do

better and different this time?’

I think the director, Nicholas

Meyer, was also there at that

initial meeting, because we

hit it off and after that I was

hired. It was as simple as that, or at least that is how

simple it used to be (laughs). They shipped us off to

the Enterprise and off we went.

Unlike the first film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of

Khan was a critical success, fans loved it and, to

this day, it is rightly seen as a sci-fi classic. The

visual effects are obviously top notch and you

really helped to reinvent the franchise.

Well, yeah, it was a really rewarding film, and then

when we did The Search for Spock we had a lot more

money, and it showed on the screen.

We had all these different sets, very ambitious

sets too, and a lot of new spaceships had to be

designed and created for the film. That was a really

exciting project to make because there was so much

to be done.

Why do you think 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion

Picture didn’t work so well?

It was trying to be a big epic film, maybe a bit like

2001, and quite pretentious, but the fans wanted

Star Trek though a more cinematic version of it. With

The Wrath of Khan we gave them that.

Talk to me about some of the pressures you

faced on The Wrath of Khan given that this was

‘make or break’ time for the franchise...

It was a challenge and I had a great team of people

working with me on the visual effects, I had a lot

of model guys who would jump through hoops

for everything that I needed and I had a bunch of

people helping me with the lighting as well. I was

doing a lot of testing on a lot of the set-ups so I

needed a good, fast team of helpers.

There really was not a lot of time to mess around

on Star Trek II. I was shooting everything myself, if I

could, and I had a bunch of people helping me to do

that, including at night.

We had a lot of work to do at night, which was

obviously exhausting. Then I would go into the

optical department and check on the shots to see

how they were looking. I would go to the dailies,

look at them with everyone and comment on how

the ships were looking against the blue screen, we

wanted this to look as impressive as it could given it

was model work and this was in the days before CGI.

So getting the light right was vital - you had to make

S

sure the audience was not, for instance, going to

question the Enterprise and how fast it was moving.

Everything needed to look smooth. This was not Star

Trek for television, this was Star Trek in the same era

as Star Wars.

The Wrath of Khan also famously features the

monstrous Ceti eels, which are placed in the

ear of the luckless character of Chekov. It is a

nightmarish moment that few fans have ever

forgotten and it really sets the pace for the

film, indicating it is going to be a very different

experience from the more benign original

Trek movie. Did you get free reign to design

these creatures?

Nicholas took some of my suggestions on board. So,

yes, a lot of the stuff with the Ceti eel, I was left to

shoot that thing. Nicholas was very open to ideas

and happy that everything was looking good. After

that he just backed off and let us do what we wanted.

We did have storyboards of course, it was not as if I

was saying ‘hey, I am going to just make a bunch of

stuff from the top of my head.’ We ran everything by

him that we were planning to do.

Do you remember the Ceti eel scene fondly?

I recall that everyone was very accommodating

and was willing to do whatever it took for the shot.

So I was sticking these eels on Chekov’s face and

no one was complaining that we were going too far

or anything (laughs). The actors were just doing

what needed to be done. Every one of the cast knew

we were working hard to make our special effects

scenes look special so we probably had an audience

for that moment (laughs).

It has been rumoured that the sequence was

more gruesome originally but it was cut down.

Oh no, no, no, what could there possibly still be

to use? I think you have seen every last frame

54 INFINITY

Name of feature

of everything that we shot on The Wrath of

Khan. I mean, what else could we put in that

scene? It went as far as we possibly could.

Was the turnaround on completing The Wrath

of Khan quite demanding?

Yeah, it was a very compressed shoot. The shoot

in LA went very fast and then at ILM we had

to get a lot of work done very quickly, which

required a great deal of creativity. I think it was

all done in under a year. Again, Star Trek: The

Motion Picture had been a disappointment, so

they wanted Star Trek II to work, but that meant

they were still being cautious, it was only with

the third film that we got more budget.

Do you have a favourite of the Star Trek films

you worked on?

CALUM WADDELL

Above:

The Wrath of Khan

may be the Trek film

that is closest in spirit

to the original TV

show, but The Search

For Spock (below) is

also a fan favourite

and Ralston enjoyed

working on the movie

with its director

Leonard Nimoy

INFINITY 55

For me it is The Search for Spock.

I really like The Search for Spock too but the

general consensus is that The Wrath of Khan

is the better of the two.

The whole tone and intention of The Search for

Spock was different from not just the previous

film but everything we knew about Star Trek. I

grew up as a huge Star Trek fan, I really liked the

show, I had a lot of fun watching it and I never

dreamed that I would end up working on it. So

any chance to be involved was great but I always

pick that movie out as the one I had the most

fun on. What I really enjoyed about it was the

creative freedom - for instance, I loved working

on the Bird of Prey ship that you see in that film.

You mean on the visual effects and design?

Yeah, for instance one of my favourite creations

is the Klingon dog that you see in The Search for

Spock. I designed that, and it was great. I loved

creating that beast (laughs).

How was Leonard Nimoy as a director on The

Search for Spock?

I had a great time with Leonard, he was a really

good guy. He was just as nice on The Voyage

Home. A great man to collaborate with.

Did you sense any concern from him that he

was not going to be in this movie until a brief

appearance at the very end?

Some, but it was purely the call of what the

movie was going to be about. He was gone at the

end of The Wrath of Khan so he knew that his

hands were tied.

Can you talk about the design process for the

Star Trek movies?

I tend to sketch everything. Even if my sketches

are somewhat less than I want them to be, it just

puts my brain into a place where I can begin

looking for basic forms (laughs). So when I am

asked to design something I just start to sketch

because I have done it that way for my entire

life. I start to doodle and draw and if something

clicks I will try and explore that in a drawing

up to a certain point but, rather than show the

director a bunch of sketches, I prefer to assemble

a model because it gives them a better idea and

makes the thing a lot easier to sell.

So for the Klingon dog, I sculpted that for Star

Trek III rather than say ‘here is a sketch’, but I

showed them a handful of drawings of the ships

that we were designing for that movie. That is

also how we created the Cite eel in The Wrath of

Khan, I sketched them before I sculpted them.

It really just depends. Sometimes I want to see

something in three dimensions so I can tell

if it will work.

You mentioned that you were a fan of

Star Trek as a young person - was it

surreal to work with Leonard Nimoy as

a director?

It was hilarious just to walk on the set of

The Wrath of Khan and see all of those

guys who I had grown up watching on

television. It was good to get to know them

a little bunch. They were a pretty quirky

bunch and I really liked their company but,

yeah, being such a huge fan it was quite a

weird experience!

The new Star Trek films, of course, are

powered by CGI. How do you feel about the

new technology?

If CGI is in the hands of the right people and

used the right way then it is wonderful. You

see a lot of bad work and a lot of stuff that

relies on it too much.

It is still a problem, although it is getting

better all the time, but any kind of computer

graphic stuff is very difficult to composite,

light, and get it to the point where it looks

real without it becoming a nightmare. Some

people are certainly doing it well but it is very

difficult for most houses to accomplish this.

It is a hard thing to take you to a place where

you build a model, or have a real creature on

the set, you get all that for free.

The only thing you don’t get, and this is the

only issue with anything that is on a set – and

these stories are rampant – you build this

beautiful thing or not so beautiful puppet and

it just breaks.

If it is a large enough thing, the physics of

how you build puppets and things... there is

only so much you can do and you cannot cross

the line where you get into the subtleties and

nuances that you can get into with computer

animation. There is just no way. But each one

has its use and each one has its pros and cons,

practical or CGI. It comes down to the movie

and the design of it.

I am happy to use CGI but it just comes

down to what is best for the film. In the end I

have to say that Star Trek 2 most successfully

captured what the old show was – whether

good or bad (laughs).

Above:

Another view of

the Enterprise

from The Search

for Spock. Visual

effects supervisor

Ken Ralston and

his team were

involved in this

movie from the

planning stages

KEN RALSTON

56 INFINITY

T H E N O T- S O -

GREEN GIAN

‘DON’T MAKE ME ANGRY - YOU WOULDN’T LIKE ME WHEN I

CLASSIC

TELEVISION

INFINITY 57

40 years ago in November of 1977, long

before computer-generated FX,

television audiences were introduced

to a living, breathing Incredible Hulk

and loved him, starting a worldwide interest in Marvel

superheroes that continues to this day.

In an age when Marvel movies dominate the box office

and even the most obscure of their characters seem to

merit their own television shows - Daredevil, Iron Fist,

Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Agents Of Shield (which is

hitting 100 episodes), Legion (an X-Men spin off) and

even the cancelled Agent Carter, it’s hard to imagine a

time when there were no Marvel TV programmes at all.

The Marvel age truly began in 1977, the same year that

George Lucas’ Star Wars changed Hollywood and started

an audience thirst for all things fantasy. The two most

recognisable Marvel characters worldwide to this day are

The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, so it’s

only appropriate that they would be Marvel’s two original

live action adaptations.

What made Marvel Comics stand out is they gave

readers the opposite of the staid superheroes to be found

in DC Comics. Stan Lee and a battery of now-legendary

artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko created anti-heroes

who did right thing but still found their motives

questioned by a suspicious public and were hunted by

the police. Spidey was a nerdy teenager who would turn

sarcastic only when his mask was on. Bruce Banner was a

mild mannered scientist who was caught in the blast of

his own gamma bomb and miraculously survived, only

to find that in times of stress he would turn into a

seven-foot green monster full of incredible strength

and limitless rage.

BLAND DO-GOODER

The first TV movie out of the gate, The Amazing

Spider-Man, failed to capture Spider-Man’s flippant

personality, something so beloved by readers of the

comics. TV Spidey was a bland do-gooder who saved the

day because that’s what TV heroes did. He never started

out selfish and learned right from wrong after indirectly

causing the death of his Uncle Ben because there was

no Uncle Ben (unless he was selling rice during the

commercial break, Ed).

His comic book supporting cast didn’t fare much

better, particularly J. Jonah Jameson, his biggest critic,

who knows Spider-Man is really a good guy but beats him

up in editorials because it sells newspapers. On TV, the

irascible Jameson is an avuncular Perry White type who

just wants to meet Spider-Man.

“They put Spider-Man in situations that any TV

detective could handle,” grouses Spidey co-creator Stan

Lee. “I tried to tell them what they were doing was wrong,

but they just wouldn’t listen!”

Marvel’s second TV project, The Incredible Hulk, took a

vastly different approach. Its producer Kenneth Johnson

had just come off a long run on The Six Million Dollar

Man TV series and he had created the incredibly popular

spin-off character, The Bionic Woman, so he was a bit

tired of science fiction.

“Universal Studios had just bought the rights to

several Marvel Comics Superheroes, including Captain

America, The Human Torch, Ms. Marvel and the Hulk,”

Johnson remembers. “(Then head of Universal television)

Frank Price asked me which one I wanted to do and I

thought to myself, ‘Gee, Frank, none of them!’”

While trying to think of a polite way to pass on the

characters, “I was reading Les Miserables, a gift from my

wife Susie. I had Jean Valjean and The Fugitive TV series

in my head in the shower, as I was thinking of how I was

going to turn Frank down on the Marvel superheroes,

when I suddenly thought, ‘Maybe there’s a way to take

this ludicrous thing called The Incredible Hulk and turn

it into something with Victor Hugo and Robert Louis

Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll And Mister Hyde.’

“I read The Incredible Hulk comic and it has an

interesting concept at the core of it. I wanted to do that

as real as possible, wanted to take this man, who turns

into this large green creature, and translate it into the real

world. I wanted it as realistic as it could possibly be. My

Hulk would NEVER meet The Toad Men From Outer Space!”

HIDDEN STRENGTH

Johnson’s 1977 pilot was sombre and interesting.

Dr. David Banner is mourning the death of his wife Laura,

lost in a car accident that he failed to free her from.

BANNER BANTER

O - J O L L Y

GIANTThe Incredible

Hulk turns

40 this year,

well, his TV

incarnation

does, anyway.

Pat Jankiewicz

takes a look

back at the

small screen

origins of one of

Marvel’s most

memorable

characters…

N I’M ANGRY!’

58 INFINITY

on the tyre iron, an exasperated Banner suddenly

begins a monstrous transformation. His pupils

dilate, his skin takes on a greenish tinge as his

mass increases, ripping through his shirt, and

his feet explode from his shoes. He growls and

roars in guttural rage, as he demolishes his own

car and hurls it into a ravine and races off into

the night.

The next morning, the creature comes across

a little girl, who flees in terror in a canoe. She

starts drowning, so he knocks a tree over to

rescue her. Misunderstanding what’s happening,

her father shoots him in the shoulder. Bellowing

in rage, he smashes the man’s rifle and hurls

him into the water. Catching his reflection in the

water, the creature changes back into Banner.

Making his way back to The Culver Institute

(Culver is Kenneth Johnson’s middle name) he

tells Elaina everything and enlists her help for

a cure.

Being a scientist, Banner looks on his Hulking

alter ego as a disease like cancer, referring to it

clinically as his “condition”. The brilliant conceit

of the series is that its reluctant hero is trying to

bring it to an end by curing himself. “I want to be

Dr. Banner NOT Dr. Jekyll,” he pleads.

Reports of the creature have caught the

attention of seedy tabloid reporter Jack McGee

(Jack Colvin), who suspects the science centre

has something to do with the creature sighting.

McGee confronts Banner and Elaina with a

plaster cast of The creature’s footprint. McGee

says the footprint comes from a “Big Hulk, about

seven feet tall. Greenish tinge to the skin. Pretty

mean looking.”

“Jack McGee is the Inspector Javert character

from Les Miserables,” Kenneth Johnson explains.

“ I didn’t want to make McGee a cop like

Inspector Javert, because The Fugitive did that

with Inspector Gerard, so I made him a yellow

journalist from a tabloid rag. I didn’t want to do

The Incredible Hulk at all originally, but now I

was actually getting excited about it. McGee is

the one who names him ‘The Incredible Hulk’

in the pilot! If you read my original script, you

would notice that the word ‘Hulk’ never appears

outside of the title - only in Jack’s mouth. In our

scripts for the show, we always called The Hulk

‘the creature.’”

Attempts to cure Banner of his monstrous

condition lead to the accidental death of Elaina

Marks, which is blamed on the Hulk. Banner

lets the world believe he is also dead as McGee

pursues the Hulk for crimes he did not commit,

and Banner hits the road looking for a cure.

The pilot was impressive, a thoughtful, serious

look at the character that took his situation

seriously. Although Hulk co-creator Stan Lee

wasn’t thrilled with Johnson changing Bruce

Banner’s first name to David, he appreciated the

approach: “It wasn’t our Hulk, but it was a good

Hulk,” Lee declared.

AN ESTABLISHED STAR

The biggest change over previous comic book

adaptations like Superman and Batman is

that it wasn’t hokey or a parody, and all of it

was centred by a brilliant lead performance

from Bill Bixby. When Bixby agreed to do

the series, he was taking quite a chance. All

previous TV superheroes, George Reeves’

Superman, Adam West’s Batman and Lynda

Carter’s Wonder Woman were unknowns. Bixby

was an established star, and he was taking a

chance because he believed in the concept and

Johnson’s strong pilot script.

“I am terribly proud of that first movie, the

origin of The Hulk,” Bill Bixby prophetically told

Marvel’s Hulk Magazine in 1978. “I believe that

in the long run, the original movie itself will

become a classic - a television classic. I really

do believe that. The sensitivity of the Hulk is as

important as his strength. In fact, a great deal of

his strength may be the fact that he is sensitive

as well as strong.”

Johnson feels part of the show’s appeal is

that Bixby’s Banner “has problems; Banner’s

problem before anger, was obsession. With the

death of his wife in the pilot, I wanted to draw

the audience into his obsession. He could not

save his wife, so that fed his obsession to find

out why he couldn’t and why other people could

under similar circumstances. It’s very poignant,

sweet and human. I was trying to humanise The

Hulk and get him away from his comic-book

sensibilities and into the real world.”

FINDING THE PERFECT HULK

As important as casting Banner was, the success

of the show was even more dependent on casting

The Incredible Hulk himself. Could they find

Now Banner is at the Culver Institute, studying

“The hidden strength that all humans have” and

interviewing people who were able to save their

loved ones in similar situations. This concerns his

fellow Doctor, Elaina Marks, who feels his interest

borders on obsession. Banner believes gamma

radiation is the key to triggering that strength.

Alone one night, Banner gives himself what

he believes is an injection of 300,000 units of

gamma radiation. Instead, it’s over two million

units, sure to be fatal dose. He also notices his

strength hasn’t increased. His theory is a bust.

Driving home in the rain, Banner gets a flat

tyre. Trying to change it in a storm on a lonely

country road proves frustrating. Cutting his hand

“ Lou, a 6’4” muscleman, really had the ‘Hulk look.’ Lou

had never acted before, but did a really great job. Lou is

deaf, but he worked really hard. He never gave us any

trouble or bullshit getting the acting and makeup on. ”

Above:

How many Hulks

can you handle?

Lou Ferrigno

clowns on set with

two of his stunt

doubles

Top:

Bill Bixby about

to transform into

Lou Ferrigno

someone the audience would accept as a giant

green manifestation of Bill Bixby? “Finding the

perfect Hulk was also a challenge,” sighs Johnson.

“I actually cast Richard Kiel (Jaws in the James

Bond movies) as The Hulk for the pilot and we

shot a week with him. There’s a shot of him

looking down before he pushes the tree over to

save the little girl and that is the only shot of Dick

Kiel as The Hulk that remains in the pilot.”

While Richard Kiel is tall, he doesn’t resemble the

muscular Marvel Hulk. “I wanted an actor for the

part of The Hulk,” says Johnson. “We looked at

the dailies, and his Hulk wasn’t really giving us

the visual that we needed for the character. The

network and studio both wanted us to re-cast

Hulk and go with a muscleman.”

The late Richard Kiel was not enamoured with

the role. “I was The Hulk in part of the pilot that

we shot. I had a really difficult time with the

contact lenses that you had to wear as the Hulk.

When the first night of shooting was over, they

handed me a towel and a jar of paint remover

and said, ‘You’re on your own, baby.’ What you

really need after playing The Hulk is a little

Japanese woman with a scrub brush. The green

body makeup covered everything - legs, feet,

arms and face!”

Johnson “had already met with Arnold

Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno when I was

looking for The Hulk. Arnold’s 5’10”, but the

creature is much bigger. Lou, a 6’4” muscleman,

really had the ‘Hulk look.’ Lou had never acted

before, but did a really great job. Lou is deaf,

but he worked really hard. He never gave us

any trouble or bullshit, getting the acting and

makeup on.”

His disability was something the show had

to overcome, “particularly in the beginning,”

Johnson says. “During one action scene, Lou was

tiptoeing gingerly at a snail’s pace. I’m shouting

at him, ‘LOU, GO FASTER! FASTER, LOUIE!,’ and

it suddenly dawns on me, ‘He’s deaf!’ I realised

I didn’t need a megaphone when I worked with

him, but a magnifying glass, so he could read

my lips!”

Lou Ferrigno remembers his first time as

The Incredible Hulk. “The entire crew was

staring at me, because I had the contact

lenses, wig, green paint and everything on. I

was excited to get the part because I had been a

huge Hulk fan, I loved him, Spider-Man and The

Fantastic Four. When I was a kid, I used comics

to help me overcome things in my life. The key to

The Hulk is his sensitivity not his inner rage. Bill

and Kenny were nervous; they had to re-shoot

half the pilot and they really didn’t know if it was

gonna work or not.”

The Hulk’s green skin was provided by Kryolin

Makeup #512, which the company later dubbed

“Incredible Hulk Green.” For the ongoing series,

Banner would show up, working as a janitor,

gardener, handyman or chauffeur, staying

with a local family, become involved with their

problems and try to help them resolve them.

When the bad guys attacked him, he would Hulk

out twice an episode. “That’s basically all we

could afford,” the producer jokes.

On the show, Banner helped families dealing

with alcoholism, stress, rage, even child abuse.

Metaphorically, he was dealing with people who

had a Hulk of their own - a problem that was

impacting them from enjoying their own life.

Johnson had ground rules for the show. The

Hulk was less powerful than in the comics, his

strength was now more in line with a TV budget.

He felt The Hulk talked stupidly in the comics, so

on the show, he could only growl in inarticulate

rage. Those guttural sounds were provided by

Ted Cassidy, ‘Lurch’ on The Addams Family, who

also did the show’s opening narration. When

he passed away in the show’s second season,

character actor Charles Napier, the luckless cop

Dr Lecter murders and strings up in Silence Of

The Lambs did the honours through the run of

the series to the later TV movies.

The Hulk actually got to speak in a later

episode (sort of), when Banner, caught in mid

transformation in the Johnson written/directed

two parter “Prometheus”, speaks in a guttural,

rage filled voice, provided by Bill Bixby.

The Hulk could not hit anybody. (“It would be

totally unfair, with the size of his fists - which

made sense, David Banner was a doctor, not

a brawler so, in theory, The Hulk wouldn’t be

either. The Hulk was not bulletproof as he was

in the comics and occasionally bloodied by

bullets and meat cleavers. Hulk would grab and

throw opponents, who would land on a couch

or cardboard boxes (which were what stuntmen

used before airbags became popular).

Poor Hulk was also kept from his usual comic

book opponents, like aliens, robots and other

gamma-spawned creatures, although this rule

was relaxed by the fourth season two-parter

“The First”, where Banner battled an older Hulk

(played by a pre-Swamp Thing Dick Durock).

While most superhero shows like Batman,

Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and The Greatest

American Hero stalled out at three seasons or

less, The Incredible Hulk went an astounding five

seasons, the last one abbreviated by a Writers’

Guild strike.

TV MOVIE TRILOGY

The adventures of Dr. Banner proved so popular,

he was revived for three TV movies 10 years

after the series. Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno

hadn’t aged that noticeably when reprising their

greatest roles. In The Incredible Hulk Returns,

Banner teams up with a loosely adapted version

of Thor to battle gangsters (including Charles

Napier). There is a short but fun Hulk/Thor fight.

The second one, The Trial Of The Incredible

Hulk, pitted the Hulk and Daredevil against

a really crappy version of the Kingpin. In a

historical footnote, it featured the very first

cameo by Stan Lee, as jury foreman at the Hulk’s

trial. The finale, directed by Bixby himself, Death

Of The Incredible Hulk, killed off David Banner

and The Hulk. There were plans for a movie

reviving them, but they were never followed

up on. Rumour has it that Bixby’s battle with

pancreatic cancer may have started at this time,

when he decided to leave the Hulk for dead.

Bixby did reprise the character for a She-Hulk

TV movie, but the studio and network pulled the

plug on it early on.

Of course, The Incredible Hulk TV show’s

biggest contribution to pop culture may be the

phrase “Don’t Make Me Angry. You wouldn’t

like me when I’m angry”, made famous in the

show’s opening credits. The pilot introduces the

line where Banner cautions McGee to back off.

Banner snaps, “Mr. McGee, don’t make me angry.

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

“I do love that line,” says Kenneth Johnson.

“For take one, Bill Bixby played it angry, ‘DON’T

MAKE ME ANGRY - YOU WOULDN’T LIKE ME

WHEN I’M ANGRY!’ I said ‘Cut, cut, cut,’ then

went up to Bix and whispered. ‘Bill… it’s a joke.’

He said, ‘Oh, okay, got it!’ and he came

back and did it. Take Two is the one that is in

the pilot and is seen in the main title. Of course,

we the audience already know why you wouldn’t

like him when he’s angry - we saw what he did

to the car.”

INFINITY 59

Above:

Mean, green and

on your screen.

We loved him

when he was

angry and The

Incredible Hulk

became one of the

most popular and

longest-running

superhero shows

on TV!

MARIO’S MADCAP MASTERPIECE

Allan Bryce takes a

look at Mario Bava’s

swinging 60s spy-fi

classic, Danger:

Diabolik…

60 INFINITY

If you pick up the current issue of our sister magazine The

Dark Side you’ll be able to read all about the fascinating life

and career of Mario Bava, a Jack-of-all-trades of the Italian

film industry who worked in just about every genre going,

back in the day. Though Mario is most remembered for really

atmospheric, beautifully photographed horror movies like

Black Sunday, Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace, he also

worked on everything from Viking epics such as Erik The Conqueror

(out now on Blu-ray from Arrow) to spaghetti westerns like Roy Colt

and Winchester Jack and daft spy-fi movies like Dr. Goldfoot and

the Girl Bombs.

Also pretty daft, but a whole lot of breezy fun was Danger: Diabolik,

released in 1968 and based on the hugely successful Italian comic

strip character, ‘Diabolik’, a master criminal who fought evil with

evil, even resorting to murder if necessary. Diabolik was a jet-setting

superman sort of like the James Bond of crime, though he made his

own gadgets rather than relying on ‘Q’ branch.

AFTER BARBARELLA

A psychedelic pop art extravaganza with colours that sear your

eyeballs, Danger: Diabolik was a follow-up of sorts to the same year’s

Barbarella. Roger Vadim’s sexy sci-fi opus featuring Jane Fonda as

one of the sexiest space babes of the 41st century. Italian movie

mogul Dino De Laurentiis was behind both ventures, and the day that

Barbarella finished shooting, Danger: Diabolik took over many of its

elaborate sets for what was envisioned to be a whole series of comic

strip adventures.

But while filming on Barbarella had proceeded smoothly, Danger:

Diabolik was a troubled production from the start. French heartthrob

Jean Sorel (Belle de Jour) was originally cast as Diabolik, and

American actor George Raft had been given one of the bad guy roles

but became ill and was replaced by Gilbert Roland.

The film’s first director was British-born Seth Holt (The Nanny), a

man who reputedly loved a snifter or two to start the day. When Dino

saw early footage of the film he may have needed a stiff drink himself.

In fact he was so horrified that he stopped production immediately.

Dino wasn’t happy with Roland, nor with Elsa Martinelli who had

been cast in the role of Diabolik’s sexy accomplice, Eva. But mostly

he wasn’t happy with Seth Holt’s take on the movie and so he gave

Seth his marching orders, which is when Bava came on board.

By now the film’s original $3 million budget had been cut in

half, but it was still the most money that Bava had ever been

given to work with. Using his camera trickery skills, he actually

managed to bring the movie in for under half a million dollars,

which delighted Dino no end, but Bava later passed up on the

chance to film a sequel because he said the experience of

working for Dino was not a happy one.

Jean Sorel didn’t last long as Diabolik under the new

regime, and he left after a few days of filming, to be replaced

by handsome American actor John Phillip Law. Meanwhile,

Repulsion’s Catherine Deneuve had been given Elsa Martinelli’s

role as Eva, but she wasn’t happy with doing a nude scene that

called her to make love with Diabolik in a huge pile of lolly. No

distasteful ‘coming into money’ jokes, please. Unhappy with her

attitude, Bava insisted on hiring a new actress for the role, and

he chose a gorgeous one in the shape of Marisa Mell.

Born in Austria as Marlie Theresa Moitzi, Mell had appeared

in Ken Russell’s French Dressing (1964) and the 1965 thriller

Masquerade before earning her 60s spy-fi credentials as a

Bond-style babe named Charity in Secret Agent Superdragon

(1966). Yes, she did give it away there, as it happens.

It seems hard to believe but this incredibly beautiful

actress had suffered severe head and facial injuries in a

1963 car accident in France, which led to her undergoing a

series of plastic surgery procedures. Close-ups in Danger: Diabolik

THE JA

INFINITY 61

reveal a slight scar on her upper lip, but those plastic

surgeons obviously did a fantastic job.

Unlike Catherine Deneuve, Marisa had no problem

with onscreen nudity and in fact she posed for

Playboy in 1976. Sadly her career dwindled though,

and by the time she died of cancer at the ridiculously

young age of 53 she was virtually penniless.

Danger: Diabolik was to become Marisa’s signature

role, and she brings a breathtaking beauty to the role

of bad girl Eva Kant (don’t even go there). No wonder

her lucky boyfriend will do anything for her. Mind

you, John Phillip Law is not a bad looking lad himself,

and his Diabolik has charm to spare. He’s a Robin Hood type who

drives around in a black Jaguar and has a nice line in fetish gear to

please both ladies and gentlemen of a certain persuasion. He may

be a rogue but the people of Italy just love this guy because one of

his ‘crimes’ has been to destroy the country’s tax records!

Like any good super-criminal, Diabolik has a pretty snazzy

underground lair where he chills out with sexy blonde Marisa in

between capers. This place is packed with electronic gadgets, and

one might wonder (if this was the real world) how he managed to

get it built in complete secrecy. The local council surely would have

had some complaints. They are building a new bungalow round the

corner from us and we’ve never heard the end of it.

Those fetish outfits ain’t cheap so Diabolik specialises in crime on

a grand scale, which includes the theft of a valuable emerald necklace

belonging to a British minister’s wife, and he has his eyes on nicking a

20-ton gold ingot, which unfortunately happens to be radioactive.

Where there are robbers there must be cops and hot on his trail is

Chief Inspector Michel Piccoli, aided and abetted by comical finance

minister Terry-Thomas. Since Diabolik is basically a nice villain

we also get a nasty one in the shape of Thunderball’s Adolfo Celi,

another master criminal who is being blackmailed to turn Diabolik

over to the cops. In Thunderball Adolfo’s secret lair had a floor that

fell away to dump his victims in a shark tank, here he has a floor

that opens up to dump people out of his plane. At one point Celi and

Law fall out of the plane together, threatening each other all the

way down.

BRIGHT AND BREEZY

As you can tell, realism is not an issue in this bright

and breezy comic book yarn, which Bava films in

garish psychedelic hues that match the elaborate

sets - many of which are actually not sets at all, but

elaborate Bava miniatures painted on glass!

All of this is set to a background of groovy 60s

cocktail lounge music by the maestro himself, Ennio

Morricone. A crazy mix of jazz, funk and orchestral

drive, the score is packed solid with mad melodies,

none more so than the sultry title track, ‘Deep Down,’

warbled by Italian songstress Christy, who has a bit of

a Shirley Bassey vibe going on (she also did the amazing ‘Run, Man

Run’ on Morricone’s The Big Gundown soundtrack). As a pastiche of

a Bond song it works beautifully.

Sadly it was Morricone’s only collaboration with Bava and

remained unavailable to soundtrack collectors for years because

only a single was ever released and the master tapes were alleged

to have been destroyed in a fire. Luckily modern day technology has

made this masterpiece available to all and you can now download it

from Amazon as the soundtrack to your own criminal exploits.

Danger: Diabolik was not a big commercial or critical success

when first released in Italy on January 24th, 1968. Trade paper

Variety criticised its “bizarre sets, poor process work, static writing

and limp direction,” though the UK’s Monthly Film Bulletin were

more on target with their comments that: “Bava’s superb visual

sense stands him in good stead in this comic-strip adventure which

looks like a brilliant pastiche of the best of everything in anything

from James Bond to Matt Helm.”

I think that pretty much nails the appeal of this delirious spy

spoof, a film that could only have been made at the tail end of the

swinging 60s, when the wheels were coming off the Bond spoof

bandwagon, Danger: Diabolik may make Austin Powers look like

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but it is nevertheless enormous silly

fun and an endless treat for the eyes and ears. No wonder that,

deep down, it has become a huge cult success and favourite guilty

pleasure for many.

HE JAMES BOND OF CRIME

62 INFINITY

The N

“ The A-bomb

may have helped

America to win the

war, but it unleashed

a wave of paranoia at

home about its effects.

Hollywood reacted by

producing a string of giant

bug movies through the

1950s, where various animals

or insects were inlated to gigantic proportions by

‘atomic radiation’”

INFINITY 63

ert I.

Gordon’s

career as a

maverick filmmaker was launched by the

birthday gift of a cine camera from his aunt when

he turned 13. It was a present that would change his life.

Bert Ira Gordon was born in 1922 in Kenosha, the same

small Wisconsin town where a more accomplished filmmaker

named Orson Welles had been born just seven years earlier in

1915. Gordon would later sign up Orson to star in his 1972 film

Necromancy. Young Bert quickly used his gift to begin crafting

16mm home movies and making ‘special effect’ ghost movies

where the effect was little more than simple double exposures.

A movie fan from an early age, Gordon took in countless

matinees at local vaudeville and burlesque houses. However,

all this activity was laying the foundations for his future career

as the giant of monster movies.

The advent of the Second World War changed the direction

of the young would-be filmmaker’s life, and he dropped out

of college to sign up for the Army Air Corp. Coming out of the

Army, Gordon was certain of only one thing: ‘I decided that

filmmaking was what I wanted to do.’

Now married, he and his wife Flora set to work in the

new medium of television, making commercials for local

companies to air in the ad breaks. Gordon also got extra

experience of working with film when he was assigned the job

of editing bought-in British movies down to the 60-minute

mark to fit a pre-determined broadcast slot. These jobs kept

the budding auteur happy for a while, but by the mid-1950s,

Gordon was determined to make his own movies.

ATOMIC AGE TERRORS

The A-bomb may have helped America to win the war, but

it unleashed a wave of paranoia at home about its effects.

Hollywood reacted by producing a string of giant bug movies

through the 1950s, where various animals or insects were

inflated to gigantic proportions by ‘atomic radiation’. One of the

earliest was The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953, with classic

Ray Harryhausen stop-motion effects), in which a dinosaur is

woken from hibernation by atomic bomb tests and storms New

York - a year before Godzilla would do the same to Tokyo.

Gordon was

attempting to

get a job in Hollywood

at that time. ‘I had no

contacts, I was ringing doorbells

everywhere trying to get a job,’ he said in

2003. ‘Agents don’t want to talk to you. Nobody

wants to talk to you out in Hollywood. Unless you’ve got

some money, they’ll talk to you then…’ Aware of the monster

movie boom and recalling King Kong (1933, re-released in

1952), the would-be movie kingpin determined to get himself a

piece of the giant creature feature action.

The big screen was awash with ever-bigger creatures in

the mid-1950s, all of them mutated by radioactive fallout:

giant ants in Them! (1954), a huge reptile in Japanese sequel

Godzilla Raids Again (1955), and giant spiders in Tarantula

(1955). ‘I had been in Hollywood about a year,’ recalled Mr.

B.I.G. ‘I had been a production supervisor on the Racket Squad

TV show. I was approached by a man who had a little bit of

money and who was aware of my various skills. King Dinosaur

was the result.’

That man with the money was budget conscious producer Al

Zimbalist (Robot Monster, Cat-Women of the Moon) who had a

deal with Lippert Pictures and knew the cheapjack studio was

looking to cash in on the giant monster craze. If Gordon could pull

off the kind of cinematic tricks he promised, Zimbalist reckoned

they were both in with the chance of making some money: he

wrote the story and roped in Gordon to handle the camera.

King Dinosaur (1955) was notoriously shot in just one

weekend at a cost of just $18,000, and used a

photographically-enlarged iguana

to represent a giant

rampaging

MASSIVE 50s ATOMIC MUTATIONS

Above:

Bert with his

Cyclops mask,

worth keeping

an eye out for

on eBay along

with his amazing

autobiography

(right)

B-movie maestro Bert I. Gordon believed in one thing wholeheart-

edly: everything on a movie screen should be bigger than life. Brian

J. Robb examines the work of the auteur responsible for some of the most fondly remembered

American giant monster movies of the 1950s…

e Notorious B.I.G.

64 INFINITY

dinosaur. The patience and artistic skill of Ray

Harryhausen wasn’t for these guys.

When a new planet, imaginatively dubbed

‘Nova’, appears in the solar system, a band of

intrepid astronauts set out to explore it, only to

encounter the ‘king dinosaur’ of the title - which

they promptly destroy with the handy atom

bomb they’ve brought along. Gordon was able to

stretch this premise to 63 minutes, just barely

reaching what might charitably be considered

feature length. ‘It was a very, very cheap film,’ he

admitted, ‘prehistoric in a number of ways!’

King Dinosaur was hardly Bert I. Gordon’s

equivalent to his fellow Kinoshan Orson Welles’

1941 first feature, Citizen Kane. That didn’t

matter to Gordon, though - he’d achieved what

he’d set out to do, make a movie, even if much

of it was voiceover narration and stock footage.

Now he had a foothold in the industry he wasn’t

about to let go. He’d also discovered a formula

and had the technique required to pull it off:

giant creatures combined with matte shots, rear

projection and special effects photography. It

was to be a furrow he would plough for most of

his creative life.

Bert Gordon’s next movie was a whole three

minutes longer, but this one featured a couple

of ‘star’ (well, B-movie) names in Lon Chaney

Jr. (The Wolf Man) and Gloria Talbot (All That

Heaven Allows). While Talbot’s career was in

the ascendancy, Chaney’s was on a long, slow

slide as a result of his alcoholism. The Cyclops

(1957) featured former lifeguard Duncan Parkin

as the one-eyed giant of the title, discovered

by an expedition to Mexico (actually filmed on

the cheap in LA’s Bronson Canyon). While The

Cyclops featured more giant animals, it focused

on the 25-foot mutated title character, the

missing fiancé of Talbot’s character.

Gordon set about distinguishing himself from

all the other giant creature movies by featuring

giant humans - they were certainly easier

to control than iguanas or the grasshoppers

he’d use in his third movie, Beginning of

the End (1957). The stoic Peter Graves (TV’s

Mission: Impossible), the gorgeous Peggie

Castle (Invasion U.S.A.), and Morris Ankrum

(typecast as ever as an Army General) were the

respectable cast up against photographically

enlarged insects that crawl through a cardboard

model cityscape and up (and sometimes right

off) picture postcard images of tall buildings.

Nonetheless, it’s one of Gordon’s best movies.

COLOSSAL SUCCESS

Gordon’s success (each of his movies had

fabulous posters, far better than the actual films

they promoted) brought him to the attention of

American International Pictures (AIP), Samuel

Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson’s ultra-low

budget studio. Roger Corman had been AIP’s

go-to guy for low budget thrills for a couple of

years, so they recognized something similar in

Gordon’s larger-than-life movies. They agreed

to distribute his next pair of pictures: 1957’s The

Amazing Colossal Man and 1958’s War of the

Colossal Beast.

The year that director Jack Arnold released

The Incredible Shrinking Man, ever the

contrarian Bert Gordon went in the opposite

direction - his monstrous man would be both

‘amazing’ and ‘colossal’.

Again, a nuclear explosion was to blame for

the plight of Army colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn

Langan) who is caught up in a mistimed Nevada

plutonium bomb test - in a well-realised and

quite gruesome sequence. Healing unusually

rapidly from life-threatening burns, Manning

grows to over 16 feet in height (thanks to

absorbed radiation), much to the distress of his

fiancée Carol (Cathy Downs).

Unusually, for such a low budget effort that

relies on spectacle, The Amazing Colossal

Man does make some effort to deal with the

psychological realities of the unlikely physical

transformation that has taken place, both in

Mark Hanna’s script and Langan’s anguished

performance. Of course, B-movie tradition is

quickly re-established as the ever-growing

Manning begins to lose his mind and goes on

the rampage in nearby Las Vegas. A perfunctory

Gordon set about distinguishing himself from all

the other giant creature movies by featuring giant

humans - they were certainly easier to control

than iguanas or the grasshoppers he’d use in his

third movie, Beginning of the End (1957).

Brian J.Robb

INFINITY 65

ending sees the army attack their former

colonel, seemingly killing him as his body

tumbles from the Boulder Dam.

Playing in a double bill with Cat Girl, an

unofficial made-in-Britain remake of Cat People

(1942), the film was something of a hit, spawning

an instant sequel in the following year’s War of

the Colossal Beast, in which Manning’s sister

Joyce (Sally Fraser) comes to believe her giant

brother survived his fall.

Duncan Parkin returned from The Cyclops

(and appeared in similar disfigured facial

make-up), replacing Langan. Most notable about

this replay (aside from heavy reuse of material

from the first movie) was the use of colour at the

climax as Manning electrocutes himself on live

power lines by the Griffith Observatory in LA.

The sequel lacked the psychological depth of the

original, and even the special effects (nothing

too special to begin with) were below par.

FROM TALL TO SMALL

The next few years were busy for the Notorious

B.I.G. He finally properly aped The Incredible

Shrinking Man with 1958’s Attack of the Puppet

People and attempted to out-arachnid Tarantula

(1955) with the lower budget thrills of Earth vs.

the Spider (1958, AKA The Spider). John Hoyt

starred in Puppet People (which also featured

Bert’s actress daughter Susan) as a lonely

eccentric doll maker who figures out a way of

miniaturizing people, only to use it to kidnap

his assistant and secretary (who are leaving him

to get married) as well as several other unlucky

individuals, all because he wants some company.

The film was released by AIP on a double bill with

Gordon’s own War of the Colossal Beast.

In Earth vs. the Spider, Space Patrol television

star Ed Kemmer lead an undistinguished cast as

high schoolers battle a giant spider unearthed in

that favourite low budget LA location, Bronson

Canyon. Bert Gordon was a master of self-pub-

licity, ensuring that each of his films worked

as promotion for another, even if they weren’t

appearing on the same double bill. In Earth

vs. the Spider, one character works in a movie

theatre plastered with posters for The Amazing

Colossal Man, while the marque indicates the

venue is currently screening Attack of the Puppet

People. In turn, two characters in Puppet People

are shown watching The Amazing Colossal Man

during a visit to the drive-in. The later Village of

the Giants (1956) features War of the Colossal

Beast on a magazine cover. Not for nothing did

Famous Monsters of Filmland (the mag appeared

in Earth vs. the Spider) editor Forrest J. Ackerman

nickname Bert I. Gordon ‘Mr B.I.G.’.

IMITATING HITCHCOCK

Earth vs. the Spider was the final effects-driven

movie from Gordon in the 1950s, largely because

the entire ‘giant bug’ craze had run its course.

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker

Psycho and William Castle’s move into similar

psychological gimmicky thrillers, Gordon

attempted to follow suit with 1960’s Tormented

and 1966’s Picture Mommy Dead. Unfortunately,

here he was very much producing an imitation of

an imitation. Richard Carlson featured alongside

Susan Gordon in Tormented as a man haunted

(literally) by the ghost of his ex. Even stranger,

Picture Mommy Dead featured fellow Kenoshan

Don Ameche as a man whose wife dies in a fire and

whose daughter (Susan Gordon again) is caught up

in the search for her mother’s missing jewels.

In between those two ‘masterpieces’, Gordon

made two kids fantasy adventures - 1960’s The

Boy and the Pirate and 1962’s The Magic Sword -

and another of his ‘giant’ movies in 1965’s Village

of the Giants. No good beatniks and teenage

delinquents (including Tommy Kirk, Toni Basil,

Ron Howard, and Beau Bridges, all too old for

their roles) grow to giant size (surprise!) after

ingesting a new compound and terrorize a fearful

town. Village of the Giants was based loosely on

H.G. Wells’ 1904 novel Food of the Gods, and was

the first of a trio of attempts by Gordon to adapt

Wells’ work. He returned to the same source for

1976’s The Food of the Gods (featuring a series

of unconvincing giant animals), which Gordon

somehow managed to get Ida Lupino, Ralph

Meeker, and Pamela Franklin to appear in. Suffice

it to say, the Golden Turkey Award taken by the

film for ‘Worst Rodent Movie of All Time’ was

well earned (amazingly, it even beat 1972’s giant

rabbit movie, Night of the Lepus!).

Wells was again the source for 1977’s Empire

of the Ants, in which Joan Collins battled some

This spread:

All creatures great and small - a selection of images from

some of Bert’s most famous (and notorious) features.

He has the distinction, dubious though it may be, of

having the most movies shown on Mystery Science

Theater 3000 (1988), but you have to admit he came

up with some great poster images…

66 INFINITY

photographically-enlarged ants (who’d eaten

radioactive waste—as if it were still the 1950s)

in special effects that suggested Gordon had

not progressed further than 1957’s Beginning of

the End - remember, this was the year that Star

Wars hit cinemas! The 1970s simply confirmed

that Bert I.

Gordon was

effectively

stranded in

the atomic

‘big bug’

world of the

1950s when

he’d done his

best work.

Aside from

a couple of

sex comedies

and trashy

horror flicks,

there was

little from

here forward

of worth from

the Notorious

B.I.G.

He did pull off something of a coup, however,

with 1972’s Necromancy (AKA The Witching)

by signing up fellow Kenoshan Orson Welles to

star as the sinister Mr. Cato who has the power

to revive the dead. It was no Citizen Kane, but it

did allow the two Kenoshans to reconnect.

Although he made two more little seen

movies (1981’s Burned at the Stake and 1990’s

Satan’s Princess) Bert I. Gordon seemed to

disappear from view. He’s made something of

a public comeback in recent years, writing an

autobiography (‘The Amazing Colossal Worlds

of Mr. B.I.G.’), made personal appearances at

various conventions (including annual turns as

the Monster Bash event) where he introduces

screenings of this 1950s greats, and even

directed a new movie (at the age of 91) in 2014’s

Secrets of a Psychopath.

Truly a giant among 1950s monster

moviemakers, Bert I. Gordon, the Notorious

B.I.G., can lay unique claim to being the director

whose films have been featured the most on

Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Eight of his

titles (including The Amazing Colossal Man,

Beginning of the End, and Earth vs. the Spider

- probably his three best movies) have been

affectionately spoofed, while MST3K spin-off

RiffTrax tackled Attack of the Puppet People

for good measure. He may have been no Orson

Welles, but the films of the popular showman

that was the Notorious B.I.G. were probably

a lot more fun - imagine the possibilities in

a rebooted Bert I. Gordon shared universe!

Hollywood, are you listening?

z

For issue Number 6 of Infinity is was a bit of a no-brainer

to celebrate one of the greatest cult TV shows of all time,

namely Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. An allegorical

mixture of spy action and sci-fi, it was to be McGoohan’s

most personal project, and though it only ran to one series, what

a series it was!

We’ll also be rolling back the years to look at some of our

favourite animated childhood shows such as Hanna-Barbera’s

Super TV Heroes and the original Spider-Man, where he did

whatever a spider can, except eat flies. And if you are old enough

to remember Saturday matinees at your local cinema then you

are going to very much enjoy our fabulous feature on the sci-fi

movies made by the Children’s Film Foundation, which included

1956’s amazing Supersonic Saucer, a movie which predated E.T.

with a friendly alien that enjoys a bike ride! The effects weren’t

quite so realistic though.

Next, Ray Harryhausen fans are in for a treat with our look

back at the making of The Valley of Gwangi, and if you are into

Doctor Who we are sure you will love our suspense-packed look

at the show’s greatest ever cliffhangers. On the literary front we

will be remembering the works of two of the genre’s greatest

non-living authors, Brian W. Aldiss and Ian Banks, and we bring

you that promised feature on the history of 200AD. Yes I know I

said it would be in this issue, but I am the law around here, not

Judge Dredd. There’s a lot more of course, including a cracking

feature on unsold TV pilots and a journey through the Time

Tunnel. Just be sure that you tell your newsagent to reserve you

a copy of Infinity Number Six. And for those of you

saying, it is not just a number it is a free mag, I’m

afraid you are wrong. Mind you, £3.99 is still a

bargain. Be seeing you.

IT’S NUMBER-CRUNCHING TIME IN THE NEXT OUT-OF-THIS WORLD ISSUE OF

ISSUE 6 - LANDING 23.11.17

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CAPTAIN SCARLET IS 50! - magzDB

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