THE SPACE CHILDREN (1958) - rare Jack Arnold sci-fi now on Blu

THE SPACE CHILDREN

(1958, USA)

Love me, love my blob...

At a top secret military missile project, some of the worker's children spot a light from the sky that adults can't see. Following it down, they discover a glowing brain in a cave by the sea. Telepathically, it begins to communicate with them, bringing them into conflict with their parents.

After It Came From Outer Space, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Tarantula, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Space Children is probably the least well known of director Jack Arnold's films, in a magnificent run of iconic fifties sci-fi for producer William Alland.

While this is less elaborate than the previous films, it's rich in ideas and tougher on 'message'. Radiation hazards and damaged ecology figured in the background of the earlier films, but here the danger is spelled out. There are also children battling their parents, at a time when movie teenagers were only just attempting freedom from their families. Like The Day the Earth Stood Still, this is about extra-terrestrials (and scriptwriters) who aren't very happy with nuclear proliferation.

The telepathic abilities of the children aren't as creepy as in Village of the Damned, but the story elements were certainly similar. John Wyndham's book 'The Midwich Cuckoos' had only been published the year before... Hmm. There's even a throwaway reference that other groups of children are acting the same way in other parts of the world. Standing shoulder to shoulder against their parents, and the Army (!), I was strongly reminded of Children of the Damned.

But of course, an invisible alien is no good to 1950s' American sci-fi, they wanted visible aliens! A theme that continued throughout The Outer Limits. Sci-fi couldn't be sci-fi without a monster of the week! And what better fifties' alien could there be than a giant, pulsing glowing brain. Previous movies had featured bodiless brains, sitting in fish tanks, causing telepathic mayhem. They even glowed, purely for cinematic effect rather than any logical reason. This one glows very brightly because it's from outer space (I guess). It glows and grows, resembling a rival to The Blob, born the same year. This creature is less agile, but not without a few surprises up its sleeve...

Among the space children, Sandy Descher had already had a memorable sci-fi role as the little girl who staggers out of the desert screaming "Them!" (in Them!). Also fun to see Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) with hair, well some hair.

This is a small, atomic age sci-fi, gently hard-hitting (somewhere between anti-military and child-beating) but presumably much more anti-establishment at the time. Strange that this should beat Arnold's far more famous classics to Blu-ray (though Creature from the Black Lagoon is about to hit and in its original 3D). But The Space Children never hit DVD, and for years has only been seen on the receiving end of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 drubbing. Depending on mood, I can enjoy many of the MST3K targets in either their original form, or I can enjoy them being ripped.

The Space Children is presented on Blu-ray as 16:9, occasionally looking tight at the top and bottom of frame, but not a problem though. There are no extras, but it's not an expensive release either. I'm just happy to see it again, non-MST3K.

Olive Films have also released the lumbering but ultimately touching The Colossus of New York and William Castle's semi-animated, sci-fi oddity Project X from the same era, both also on Blu-ray.

BLADE RUNNER - thirty years later, to the day

BLADE RUNNER

(1982, USA)

"You're talking about memories..."

Wednesday, August 15th, marked the thirtieth anniversary of my first experience of Blade Runner. Thanks to Starburst magazine, readers were invited to a special preview screening three weeks before it premiered in London on September 8th.

Cutting out a coupon from this issue of Starburst got you preview tickets to see an advance screening at 11am on August 15th 1982 - in the West Gate Road Cinema in Newcastle, the Bristol Road Cinema in Birmingham and the ABC Shaftesbury Avenue in London, where I saw it.

Blade Runner had had a mixed critical reaction (Films and Filming magazine gave it one star out of five!) and a poor box office opening in the US, so it was a reasonable idea to aim the UK release at sci-fi fans. The London screening was certainly packed out, with the audience respectfully quiet during the film. I was stunned by it, from the very first shot.

To me it was a realistic vision of the future, with flying cars and new technology, but in a world blighted by pollution, acid rain and the near-extinction of animals. Also, the most likely chance I'd get to see the future. The production design looked totally functional, the dense cinematography appeared to show the air around the characters, the special effects depicted a city as far as the eye could see, the music was incredible... The complex emotional ride of the story, with the replicated characters, supposedly the villains, all fighting for their lives made just as much impact as the technical achievements.

It's one of those rare movies that I stumbled out of (I had a similar experience with Brazil at the same cinema), feeling like I'd just been hit, somewhere inside my head. I've studied Blade Runner extensively ever since and it's still my favourite ever movie. Despite the sad state of that future world, I'd even like to live in it.

Scott Weller (@koolaficionado on Twitter) pointed out that not everyone got in to see the London preview that day. I was lucky, but also completely unaware that my future husband was also present in the audience, though I didn't actually meet him for another eight years. This makes our watching it again together, thirty years later to the day, special.

It was also an opportunity to watch the original version again. The UK initially got the International Cut, otherwise referred to as the European Cut. These first releases of Blade Runner had the 'happy' ending and Deckard's voiceover in several scenes throughout the story. But the International Cut was also more violent than the one seen in the US.

For ten years, this was the version of Blade Runner I remembered and enjoyed, seeing it again in the cinema, on TV and on VHS. The initial impact it had on me was from this particular 'cut'. In 1992, the 'Director's Cut' was released in cinemas - the voiceover was removed, as was the ending. The unicorn was the only additional shot. Shorter than the original versions, it was basically an amended version of the censored US release, with the two most violent scenes toned down. It was good to see it in the cinema again, but it definitely wasn't the same film I'd fallen in love with.

The Director's Cut heralded the start of fifteen years when the International Cut disappeared from home video (apart from the Criterion laserdisc), eventually resurfacing in the 2007 Box Set. The specially made 'Final Cut' takes elements from all the versions, restored the film for for High Definition, and also fairly subtly uses CGI to update the unavoidable special effects and continuity errors, like a stuntwoman's face being clearly visible, and the cables supporting the full-size on-set flying police cars. It was interesting to see all these faults again by watching the original. I spotted some of these problems at the time, but they didn't spoil the film.

I'll continue to watch the different cuts, but the original is still the best.

The 30th Anniversary Collector's Edition is almost upon us, but I can't detect any video content additional to what was in the 25th Anniversary collector's set, but it does include a tempting new heavily-illustrated book .

ALIEN merchandise and publicity from 1979

Spoiler-free publicity for the original release of Alien

When Alien was first released in 1979, the way to get movie-fans excited was through print. You'd also maybe get a five-minute review on a TV show, ads on TV and radio, and maybe you'd catch a trailer in the cinema, but most publicity work was down in magazines and newspapers.

Like Star Wars, which inspired Ridley Scott to abandon his vision of Tristan and Isolde and direct science-fiction instead, Alien was an early movie where you could study the production design before seeing the film, and learn about the special visual effects soon after. But only in books and magazines. Luckily I've hung on to my magazines and many of the books available at the time of the original cinema release. They reminded me of how little was shown of the Alien creatures before the film hit cinemas.

Before the movie was released, standard practice was to get everyone reading the book first. Alien wasn't based on a book, so the script was novelised by Alan Dean Foster who always does his best to add the science back into science-fiction. The 8 pages of colour photographs don't include any of the creatures, consistent with the pre-release publicity photos and lobby cards. The novel adaption contains the 'cocooning' sequence which was cut from the film.

The radio ads told me very little except that I wanted Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack. Listen to two original radio ads for the London release with Patrick Allen's scary voiceover... 

Again, the album art for the vinyl has that egg on it and no photos on the back. The names of the tracks contained no spoilers (unlike The Black Hole soundtrack album from the same year). I didn't read the book beforehand, but I did listen to the music.

The teaser trailer that I'd seen in cinemas was simply that egg splitting open and letting out a burst of white light. The later trailer, made up of glimpses from the film, was big on panic but again short on spoilers (and I never caught that in a cinema). The clips shown on BBC TV review show Film '79 had Kane in the egg chamber right up till the egg opening, and one brief glimpse of a man-sized something (at the end of the scene where Dallas goes into the ventilation shafts). 

Back of the first Alien poster mag

The movie could first be seen in just one cinema in Central London, the Odeon Leicester Square, blown up to a 70mm print with Dolby stereo audio (when many local cinemas were still stuck with mono). It opened to the public on Thursday, September 6th, but I had to wait till the weekend to see it. Having avoided any reviews of the film, some idiot queueing for tickets in front of me described the chestburster sequence to his girlfriend. Spoilt!

A brochure was always for sale at London cinemas for big, first-run presentations. Alien had a large, but thin, 20-page brochure, the same one that had been sold in the US  (pictured at top). Filled with photos mostly of the huge sets, and only one tightly-cropped picture of a xenomorph. There's a nice photo of Ridley Scott behind the camera, which he sometimes liked to operate himself (something he couldn't do when shooting in America).

After a few weeks (?), Alien moved into local cinemas across the country, vying with Scum, Quadrophenia, John Carpenter's Elvis - The Movie, Woody Allen's Manhattan, The China Syndrome, and Airport 80 - The Concorde. More Alien magazines then hit local newsagents. 

These two covers of Alien Poster Magazines show an increase in 'hard sell' - the first was a foldout of the space jockey, the second a great full-length shot of the xenomorph (see below) which graced my study bedroom at University).

'The Book of Alien' was a behind-the-scenes large-format paperback, full of exciting pre-production art from artists like Chris Foss, Ron Cobb, Jean Giraud, and of course H.R. Giger. This was the first chance to see the many unused designs of spaceships and creatures. 

The artwork of the pyramid (the original home of the egg chamber) weren't used in the film, but coincidentally turned up in Roger Corman's Alien homage Galaxy of Terror.  ('The Book of Alien' has been reprinted several times and is currently still available.)

Also published in 1979 (presumably after the initial release) was this impressive, shot-by-shot photo-novel. Foto-novel paperbacks were all the rage at the time, filled with frame blow-ups that told the story like a comic book, with balloons for dialogue (Battlestar Galactica - The Movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers...). Earlier, Richard Anobile had published a series of large format books both for study purposes and because screenings were then rare. But this was his first venture in colour, and for a brand new film. The 'Alien Movie Novel' had over 1,000 frame blow-ups, with dialogue shown as text (just as he'd done for his Frankenstein and Psycho adaptions). This was a unique presentation of the film, all the more popular because home video hadn't landed yet.

A trip to London's sci-fi and movie emporium Forbidden Planet revealed rarer and imported items, like this large-format paperback graphic novel, 'Alien The Illustrated Story'. This and the poster magazines seemed aimed at younger audiences despite the film not being certificated for anyone under eighteen. 
(You can see selected pages from this adaption over on Space 1970.)

'Giger's Alien' is a large, square, glossy artbook of H. R. Giger's pre-production paintings and photos of his sculptures in progress, including him actually working on the full-scale space jockey set. At the time it was hugely expensive and I've still never bought one, despite it being re-released in paperback (it's still in print). Nice to see a photo of stuntman Eddie Powell in an Alien suit (with the head off) - he was called in for the more strenuous action scenes, especially the wirework.

Forbidden Planet also stocked a wide selection of movie magazines. With so much talent behind the scenes, there were plenty of people to interview about the film. 

This 'Alien Collector's Edition' magazine was from Warren, the publishers of Famous Monsters of Filmland. It had a spectacular spoiler cover and the first details and photos of the missing scenes, like Dallas trapped in a cocoon. It proved to be a very long wait before this footage appeared in the deleted scenes extras on the Alien laserdisc boxset. The footage has since been included in an alternate version of the film on DVD and Blu-ray. All photos inside are in black-and-white, printed on the same pulpy paper as Famous Monsters used to be.

Cinefantastique had a spectacular centrefold of the Giger painting that first inspired the look of the xenomorph. It predicts the torso and head of the creature (but note that the hands are quite human) and was spectacularly sexual, with a giant transparent phallus enshrouding a skeleton. 

Inside are interviews that include Scott, Walter Hill, producer David Giler, the first Alien suit actor Bolaji Badejo, facehugger and chestburster builder Roger Dicken and of course HR Giger. There are reprints of Carlo Rambaldi's sketches for the functional Alien head and photos of the prop without the transparent shell.

The very first issue of Cinefex (which is still publishing) arrived in the nick of time to unveil far more visual effects secrets than 'The Book of Alien'. It complements and expands on the production stories of the Cinefantastique issue. The first half of Cinefex issue 1 and the cover belong to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but the entire second half (36 pages) is all about Alien. Spectacular and revealing set photos, and a rare shot of Roger Dicken manipulating the chestburster, which he built and helped design (as well as the facehugger). Super shots of the xenomorph on wires for Brett's demise and the finale.

The many other magazines that had sprung up for the Star Wars sci-fi movie boom obviously heralded the release of Alien. But the following also had some particularly in-depth articles...

Fantastic Films - spent several issues previewing and analysing Alien... Their July 1979 issue (above) kicked off with an extensive interview with Ron Cobb about his art and previous work on Dark Star.

Fantastic Films (UK issue 1, September 1979) interviews Dan O'Bannon about his version of the script, and there's a further two-page colour spread of paintings by Ron Cobb.
(You can read the interview over on The Weyland-Yutani Archives blog).

Issue 2 (October, 1979) interviews Scott about the early days of designing the project, the sets, and prints 60 of his storyboard frames, which include sketches of the dropped Dallas and Ripley love scene and the reappearance of Kane's corpse! More sensibly, the auto-doc opens Kane's helmet. There are pages of designs for Scott's aborted "Tristan and Iseult".

The second Alien poster mag unfolded into this image

In the UK it was an 'X'-rated horror movie. So no toys were made available in the UK. Wheras in the USA...

Here we see an American advert touting iron-on t-shirt transfers and some children's target games. The US also had a board game, a model kit and a great action-figure from Kenner. Plaid Stallions has some pictures... 

Whoops, nearly forgot the Alien bubblegum cards. Didn't catch them all...

Of course, the subsequent deluge of Alien memorabilia hasn't stopped since, the choicest of which I've tried to pick up. But I thought these earliest examples might be of interest. Recently Ian Nathan's awesome Alien Vault hardback has collected into one volume most of the best photos and artwork mentioned above.

Hoarding can be fun...

Peter Cushing as DOCTOR WHO for Amicus Films

From Dr. Terror to Dr. Who...
With talk of an impending Doctor Who movie, it's worth remembering that two feature films have already spun off this BBC TV series that first appeared in 1963. Two stories from the William Hartnell era (the very first doctor) were each made into 2.35 widescreen colour movies, when TV was still shaped 4:3 and in black and white.

'The Daleks' was the second ever Doctor Who story and ran seven episodes starting at the end of 1963. 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' ran six episodes and transmitted at the end of 1964. These TV scripts were then adapted into two brisk storylines for the cinema.

The films have always played on British TV, but would perhaps be better known to cult movie fans if they were explicitly credited as Amicus productions, one of Hammer Films main rivals in creepy horror. But the 'AARU' production credit hides this, because producers Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky didn't want to confuse audiences that they were getting horror.

 

DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS
(UK, 1965) 

In Dr Who And The Daleks, one of the Doctor's granddaughters brings her boyfriend home to the Tardis, a police phonebox. Inside he finds himself in the time machine of Dr Who. By accident, they're whisked far into the future to a distant planet that's been decimated by nuclear war. The time travellers befriend the peace-loving, shiny-haired Thals but soon encounter a huge metal fortress inhabited by the fearsome and hostile Daleks...

Peter Cushing and Roy Castle starred in Dr Who and the Daleks the same year they appeared together in Amicus Films' Dr Terror's House of Horrors (also written and produced by Milton Subotsky). But of course both actors tune their performances for an audience of young children, the main fans of the Daleks on TV. Cushing does a great 'kindly old grandfather' turn, similar to his Grimsdyke in Tales From The Crypt, and a forerunner to the more scatty Dr Perry, in At The Earth's Core (1976).

Roy Castle had mainly been a musical entertainer (hence his trumpet-playing in Dr Terror), but soon demonstrated an empathy with younger audiences in the long-running children's TV programme Record Breakers. His accomplished gifts for dancing, acting and physical comedy made him a natural choice for light entertainment but strangely not many more film roles.

Roberta Tovey plays the Doctor's younger granddaughter - none of the actors in the TV version appear in the film adaptions. She later cropped up in bit parts in Beast in the Cellar and Blood on Satan's Claw (with another early Dr Who companion, Wendy Padbury).

Jennie Linden as elder granddaughter (a change from the TV character), was drafted in as a romantic foil for Roy Castle, but was usually in far more adult material, as the star of Hammer's psycho-thriller Nightmare (1964) and later starring in Ken Russell's controversial Women In Love (1969) opposite Alan Bates, Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson.

In this concentrated form as a single short film, the story betrays its debt to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. The peaceful Thals, like the Eloi, are exploited by the ruling Daleks who, like the Morlocks, live locked away from post-war radiation in a windowless stronghold.

The movie version breaks a cardinal rule by referring to the title character as "Dr. Who", when on TV he's called "The Doctor". Aside from this, Subotsky abbreviates six episodes into a snappy adventure, with one of the best-looking Amicus films dominated by the giant Dalek city sets that contain a host of surprises, including lava lamps.

 

There aren't many dated special effects other than a few matte paintings, but unintentional laughs may arise from the Thal men wearing silvery wigs and a lot of make-up. The young might find the Daleks as scary as ever. Or funny. Find some children who've seen it and ask them.

 

Composer Malcolm Lockyer provides the air of menace for this inhospitable planet, later scoring two more Peter Cushing horror films Island of Terror (1966) and Night of the Big Heat (1967). For this and Island of Terror, Lockyer also used Barry Gray to supply electronic sound effects, even though Gray was an accomplished musician himself (composing for most of Gerry Anderson's series and movies). Both Dalek movie soundtracks have recently been released on CD (above), providing a close substitute for the Island of Terror score which I'd still like to have. 

 

This adaption by David Whitaker of the TV story 'The Daleks' was re-released in 1965 to double as a tie-in for the films, hence the obscuring of the Doctor's face. The first Doctor Who paperback, it includes a number of black and white illustrations. It was several years later that novelisations of other stories began to regularly appear.

Doctor Who was originally aimed at children, shown between the Saturday afternoon sports programme, and the evening's adult entertainment. The response from young fans was huge, Daleks soon appearing in children's comics and toyshops. The tone of the first film is of a slightly scary fairy tale, while the second film is more bitter and adult-oriented.

DALEKS INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D.

(UK, 1966)

This second Doctor Who movie quickly followed, aimed more at adults and teenagers. There's more action, young trendy rebellious Ray Brooks, lots of fighting, explosions and an unsubtle World War II motif - a dark fantasy of England if the Nazis had won.

Again the movie begins in England, present day. This time a hapless police constable stumbles into the Doctor's police box and the gang are whisked forwards in time to a post-apocalyptic London. Among the ruins, they find a resistance movement against the Dalek invasion. If anyone is captured, they'll be robotised into remote control zombies. But while the resistance is being kept under control, the Daleks' actual mission on Earth is far more deadly...

While I've always thought that this scenario is more exciting than the first film, and I'd never pass up the chance to see inside a Dalek spaceship, the story attempts to summarise all seven episodes of the TV series, rattling through all manner of subplots and minor characters, often not involving the Doctor or the Daleks. On reflection, the first has a tighter storyline with the best characters driving the action. Set in outer space, it feels more futuristic than the many building sites and quarry locations of the second. I confuse the ending with the Bond film, A View To A Kill...

 

The cast keep it watchable, with angry rebel Andrew Keir stalking London's rubble ahead of similar scenes in Quatermass and the Pit (1967). To his credit, this is a markedly different character, reckless, impulsive and downright rude! A great contrast to his portrayal of the professor.

Andrew Keir and Roberta Tovey

Again, Peter Cushing plays the Doctor, Roberta Tovey plays his granddaughter. But Jennie Linden's young female second fiddle is now played by Jill Curzon, and Roy Castle's comedy relief provided by another popular children's entertainer, Bernard Cribbins (below left). Cushing and Cribbins had just appeared together in Hammer Film's remake of She. Cribbins continues to appear in the present TV incarnation of Doctor Who.

 

The cast is further bolstered by Ray Brooks (Pete Walker's The Flesh and Blood Show), the late Philip Madoc, and Sheila Steafel (who also popped up in Quatermass and the Pit). Christopher Lee's regular stuntman Eddie Powell performs a nasty fall early in the film, a stunt in which he broke his ankle. There was one take and it's in the movie! Powell later performed many difficult scenes as the creature in Alien (1979).

Strangely, considering the huge popularity of Daleks and Doctor Who at the time, this didn't do financially as well and a third film was scrapped. I think I remember seeing the first film in the cinema, but definitely not the second. Did parents think it looked too violent for kids?
While Amicus Films initially shunned the idea of confusing children's films with their house style of adult horror, the two Dr Who movies led to them making a successful run of family-friendly adventure films throughout the 1970s, including three based on Edgar Rice Burroughs novels - The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot and At The Earth's Core.

The Dalek Pocketbook was a fun Dalek tie-in. Also published in 1965, it was written by Dalek creator Terry Nation and while it features the movie Daleks on the cover, mostly delves into the fantasy world he elaborated on in comics, of the Daleks on their futuristic home planet of Skaro. It makes an apt companion for the 2002 Dalek Survival Guide.

 

The two Dr Who/Dalek movies have been re-issued several times in the UK and Australia, always in good-looking 2.35 widescreen transfers and often as a 2-DVD double-bill pack. The Anchor Bay DVD releases for the USA are long out of print though.

 

More Dalek movie posters here at Wrong side of the Art.