I survived the ALIEN WAR

ALIEN WAR

London Trocadero (1993-1996)

Fancy being chased through space corridors by a xenomorph?

Ridley Scott's phenomenal Prometheus has stirred up a host of Alien memories. Among these, a scary morning I had at the Alien War experience. This was a permanent attraction that sat in a huge chunk of the basement of London's Trocadero, Piccadilly Circus, in the mid 1990s.

I don't remember waiting long to get in and we might have booked tickets in advance. If we'd spent a little longer in the queue, we would have spoilt one of the surprises in store for us. Checking in our bags, we entered a holding area where we were shouted at by a Colonial Marine who made it quite clear that we should jump when he said jump. In a short time, we were scared grunts who'd do whatever the space army told us to!

The idea was that we were being evacuated from a collapsing complex. I don't remember too much of the next twenty minutes, but some of it was running through dark corridors, lit by flashing red lights with soldiers ahead of us and corralling us at the rear. We started seeing signs of the alien life cycle, like unhatched eggs and scuttling facehuggers. Finally fully grown xenomorphs started appearing where we weren't expecting them.

At one point we escaped into a lift but the door was closing too slowly. A xenomorph pounced into the lift and grabbed one of the civilians! Of course, we didn't know that is was a 'plant'. We though we were next! Of course the lift then malfunctioned and above we could see full sized alien climbing down the lift shaft towards us. Time to get the hell out of there. While all of this is familiar to the American experience of Halloween haunted house 'mazes', this type of  attraction was practically unknown in Britain.

With soldiers shouting at us keep moving, we run through an escape hatch that led straight outside and in front of the waiting queue! We had to rapidly regain our composure and reset our realities. Very sneaky. The idea was also to propel us into the gift shop opposite. But all I remember getting was a survivor badge.

Expensive fun, but fun all the same and a potential way to inspire fanboys and girls to take a little aerobic exercise. Chase them with aliens!

The Alien War attraction existed before and afterwards in Glasgow, and other British cities. The London version was only in place between 1993 and 1996, until a flood at the Trocadero wrecked the sets, prematurely ending its run. I only went once, but I'll never forget it.

Here's an interview with Sigourney Weaver about her officially opening the London attraction in 1993. Boosted by the recent release of Alien 3, other cast members also turned up at the launch.

There are also photos of the attraction here, with some more background...

Beware the videos on YouTube. Overly lit by TV crews, they fail to capture the atmosphere of running for your life in the dark!

WIPED! DOCTOR WHO'S MISSING EPISODES (2010)

Missing, presumed lost - over a hundred episodes of Doctor Who...

Some of my earliest TV memories are of being frightened by the many monsters of Doctor Who. Daleks, Cybermen and Yeti lived on in my nightmares, memories mingling with images I thought I'd seen on TV. I saw many Patrick Troughton stories and must have seen some William Hartnell episodes before that (I was only five when his reign as The Doctor ended in 1966). 

1973 magazine that listed every story to date -
before some of them were lost forever

Through the years, Doctor Who novelisations, photos and comic strips kept these early stories alive in my imagination and occasionally a clip or a repeat would appear on TV. Eventually, many years later with the coming of home video, there was the chance to see them again, measured against my childhood memories. The BBC also started transmitting archive shows on the cable channel UK Gold, and thankfully showed every complete Doctor Who story that they had at the time. 

This 1972 behind-the-scenes paperback also teased us
 with its catalogue of early adventures

But this revival was tempered for me by the awful news in the September 1986 issue of 'Time Screen', that the BBC simply didn't have many of the recordings any more. They'd been wiped, dumped or lost. After many years of piecemeal news and rumours, comes the complete story of how so many episodes survived.

"In the 1960s, the BBC screened 253 episodes of its cult science-fiction show Doctor Who, starring William Hartnell and then Patrick Troughton as the time travelling Doctor. Yet by 1975, the corporation had wiped every single one of these episodes. Of the 124 episodes starring Jon Pertwee shown between 1970 and 1974, the BBC destroyed over half of the original transmission tapes within two years of their original broadcast", Richard Molesworth's thoroughly researched book 'Wiped! Doctor Who's Missing Episodes' declares on its back cover.

The Evil of the Daleks - six out of seven episodes are missing

The book describes as fully as possible the history of these recordings, how the BBC worked through the decades and how so many shows could disappear. Even to non-Doctor Who enthusiasts, this is a thorough description of television production and recording techniques from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The original videotapes of all the Hartnell (1963-1966) and Troughton (1966-1969) stories were indeed wiped, because early videotape was so expensive, and the recordings were only really necessary for a single transmission. During the two years respite before the tape was reused, filmed copies were made for overseas sales. In most cases, these black and white 16mm prints returning from overseas are the only surviving versions of many episodes. They even account for some of the Jon Pertwee season (which was entirely filmed in colour), during which the automatic wiping of master tapes thankfully ceased, but not before 108 Hartnell and particularly Troughton episodes had been lost, perhaps forever.

'Wiped!' goes into incredible technical detail about the formats they were recorded on and precisely how every restoration has been achieved. There's also enough information for what detectives around the world should keep their eyes out for in film and video archives (as well as collectors' circles), including a checklist of missing episodes as of 2010.

BBC Home Video (now called 2Entertain) teamed up with Doctor Who fans to restore the quality of their remaining archives, including adding back the colour to many Pertwee episodes. Only 'The Mind of Evil' remains in black and white now. Without any surviving colour elements, only an expensive colourisation process could restore it. The book helps explain the variable quality of the surviving episodes in the ongoing programme to release every complete story on DVD.

The episodes that remain lost that hurt me the most are the two stories 'The Abominable Snowmen' and 'The Web of Fear', which I enjoyed being frightened by in the 1960s. The collective interest in all the lost stories have thrown up some remarkable retrievals and reconstructions. Besides ardent fans, the British Film Institute also joined in the hunt for lost footage, and interest is still high enough for new finds to quickly make money! But what if they're never ever found?

The earliest way of reliving the episodes were the novelisations of each story, which started publishing in the 1970s. Normally these would just be adapted from scripts, but the authors also tried to see the recordings again to refresh their memories, but even then some had already been lost.

Even better were the successful recovery of audio recordings of all the missing episodes, usually from fans recording off their TVs at home. These have now been released on CD, sometimes with linking narration to turn them into 'audiobooks'.

The many publicity photographs taken on set for Radio Times help fill in the gaps and some are better quality than the original transmissions anyway. 'Doctor Who: The Sixties' and '...The Seventies' are two glossy large-format books full of the best photos and behind-the-scenes stories.

More precise memory-joggers are the "tele-snaps" - photos taken off the television of every scene as they were being transmitted. Before home video was affordable, directors and actors would buy these as visual examples of their work. These surviving early 'screengrabs' are now available on the BBC website, and are of course complementary to the audio recordings. Above is a tele-snap from 'The Web of Fear' - Yeti in an abandoned London Underground...

More recently, the cyberman adventure 'Invasion', an eight-episode Troughton story had two missing chapters rebuilt with animation, using the tele-snaps as a visual guide. This was very expensive, but meant that it can now be enjoyed on DVD. (I reviewed it here.)

Individual episodes and fragments have also been released, particularly in the Lost In Time boxset, covering the Hartnell and Troughton series. This was the first and only opportunity I've had to see the two surviving Yeti episodes. This DVD boxset, also available in the US, includes orphaned episodes, clips and even censor cuts that have been recovered.

Poor organisation and a lack of money or foresight are all easy to pinpoint in retrospect, but this huge example of how lost programmes later became valuable can be applied to many other television archives then and now. Not to mention a warning of whether you'll remember anything you seen or hear on the Internet in a few decades time...

Do you want to know more?

Any further recoveries of lost British film and TV will appear here on the Wiped News website.

An interview with Richard Molesworth, the author of the book Wiped!

BBC website - Doctor Who tele-snap 'photonovel' reconstructions.

An example of a BBC CD - audio-only release of the lost story Evil of the Daleks, recovered from superior fan recording.

The 1970s Doctor Who novelisations are being reprinted and made available for Kindle.

FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1968) - the animated TV series is now on DVD

FANTASTIC VOYAGE

(1968, USA, TV)

Animated TV spin-offs are nothing new

The 1966 Oscar-winning sci-fi adventure Fantastic Voyage had huge full-scale sets and extensive modelwork portraying a futuristic submarine that's miniaturised for a mercy mission through a human body. The crew swim through veins, get attacked by antibodies, and steer their super-sub through the constricting valves of the heart. For the less scientific in the audience, there's Raquel Welch in a white wetsuit and a saboteur on board...

The plot-device of human miniaturisation was nothing new, even in 1968 (The Devil Doll, Dr Cyclops, The Incredible Shrinking Man), but Otto Clement and Jerome Bixby's story had realistic biological detail, and an unusual race against time. It also looked unique. I love the point-of-view shot of them hurtling down the inside of a hypodermic needle!

Two years later this span off as an animated series on TV, the same year as Irwin Allen's fairly similar Land of the Giants. However I don't remember seeing the animated Fantastic Voyage on British TV until the early 1970s.

While the applications of a Miniaturised Defence Force seem limited, the series had far more fantastical, less scientific storylines. Each episode the team investigates natural disasters which often turn out to be aliens, enemy spies or hostile governments.

One episode is very reminiscent of the Family Guy episode where Stewie duels with his evil self in miniaturised vehicles inside a human body.

The characters are also very different from the movie, introducing the very mystical Spock-like 'Guru', who uses magic more than the commander uses weaponry. The design of the sub was drastically overhauled so that it could now fly. A model kit of 'Voyager' was re-released in 2008.

The limited animation budget of all Filmation series was synonymous with numerous close-ups of motionless characters barely moving their lips. There'd be repeated shots and moving elements reused over different backgrounds. The music, the voice artists and the sound effects are either similar or identical!

The same company also produced the animated spin-off of Adam West's Batman (also 1968, when the live-action series became too costly to continue) and the animated Star Trek (in 1973). But their cost-cutting formula for producing weekly episodes ruled children's TV for many years with dozens of series.

What makes Fantastic Voyage enjoyable for me is the over-the-top soundtrack. It sounds much more exciting than it looks. The constant, uptempo music really holds the attention, right from the catchy (and loud) theme tune with the booming voiceover.

Added to this is extensive use of alternating red and blue flashing backgrounds in the titles and transformations, which is positively hypnotic. Precisely the same effect got a Pokemon episode into big trouble thirty years later for sparking epileptic seizures in hundreds of Japanese children. Personally, I enjoy the visual hit. This alarming but simple animation technique is also used in Filmation's Batman title sequence.

Noisy, fast-moving, patronisingly sexist, psychedelic and nostalgic, the whole Fantastic Voyage series is out in a 3-DVD set in the UK, PAL, region 2. It looks and sounds as good as new.

BLOOD-C (2011) - Saya returns in a bloody new anime

BLOOD-C

(2011, Japan, TV)

You want monsters and bloody mayhem?

(UPDATED - June 2013 - on DVD and blu-ray in the UK and USA)


A twelve-part anime series continues the saga of Saya, the vampire slayer, first seen in the extraordinary short film, Blood The Last Vampire (2000), set during WWII.

Animation house Production I.G eventually followed it up with an epic fifty-part anime series Blood+ in 2005. Then there was a disappointing 2009 live-action adaption of the original short, made in Hong Kong. But with Production I.G again on the case, I was keen for more...

Here, Saya is a girl leading a normal school-life by day, but fighting demons by night. Her father, a priest, has prepared her for daily battles against a ghastly evil that manifests itself as a series of incredible strong and vicious creatures. Young Saya appears to have superhuman strength and amazing sword skills, but still struggles to protect the innocents that the blood-thirsty monsters prey on. As the attacks increase, Saya punishes herself because she can't even protect those she loves...

Blood-C cleverly doesn't immediately reveal its links with the previous stories. Another spin is that the monsters aren't huge vampire bat demons any more. Instead there are an outrageously inventive menagerie of loathsome creatures, each with their own ghastly methods of attack.

The early episodes waste time with her bizarrely traditional and cute school life, with a cast of familiar characters. At school, Saya is indecisive, shy and accident-prone. A very uninteresting alter-ego compared to similar heroines of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Bleach. It's also mind-boggling how monolithically female anime characters are portrayed. Saya is a young schoolgirl, yet she has unfeasibly large breasts and is shown almost completely naked in the title sequence.

The nudity and bloody mayhem seem to demonstrate that the producers stepped up to new extremes, at odds with the simple set-up and childish humour. The amount of blood and gore is so excessive that TV stations have fogged out sections in a large number of scenes.

Thankfully, the story gets more serious and complex past the first few episodes and the creative blood-letting and imaginative monsters warrant seeing it through to the bloody end. 

The dynamic animation and artistic layouts are up to Production I.G's usual high standards. Like previous series, the music is lush and orchestral.

The entire series of Blood-C is now available on DVD and blu-ray in the UK, and as a combo blu-ray and DVD boxset in the US.

An animated movie has spun off the series and is just about to hit Japanese cinemas in June, Blood-C: the Last Dark.

 

Here's the movie trailer

THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH (1957)

THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH

(1957, UK)

Vintage light comedy with a current theme...

Rewatching this comedy that used to frequently run on British TV, it resonated rather loudly. Now that we're in danger of losing film as a projection medium, not to mention the gradual decline of cinema audiences.

The story is set when old converted cinemas were being wiped out by new purpose-built chains. It gives us an interesting flashback to the small rundown music-halls that converted from stage to screen at the start of the century. When the cramped stage would be blocked by an academy ratio screen. Live comedians were replaced with silent ones from Hollywood, accompanied by a member of the cinema staff on piano. When talkies came along in the early 1930s, a primitive sound system would have been added. I guess they'd have survived until the 1950s as long as movies stayed in the 1:1.37 or 1:1.66 aspect ratio.

The ramshackle cinema in the story is up against the giant widescreen threat of a cinema chain, itself upgrading to combat the new competitor, television. What's worse is that since 'The Bijou' of the story was built, a railway now runs directly past it, drowning out the sound of the movie. This reminds me of one of my own local cinemas - also an old converted music hall, with flat floors (not ramped towards the screen) and sat next to both a railway line and the local bus station!

The scene where a passing train makes the whole building shake, projector and all, during a performance is memorably the funniest scene.

A newly-wed couple, depending on the fortunes of a struggling writer, inherit a cinema in the Midlands. Arriving in town to visit the solicitor, they cruise by the only cinema in town, a massive new Odeon makes them think they've hit the jackpot. But on meeting his uncle's lawyer, Matt learns that the cinema he actually owns has closed down, with the staff wondering what's to become of them. Should he give up, fire them all, cash in what little it's worth and go home?

This is a light comedy that could easily be remade now along the lines of We Bought A Zoo. I encountered this decades before Cinema Paradiso and it 'works' for me much better. Ironically the threat of new over old is seen as TV and a competitor who wants a monopoly over the town, but it still resonates with today's threats of digital over film, home cinema over cinema. One particularly touching moment shows how the staff remember the heyday of silent movies.

Peter Sellers watching a desert movie

Besides the longevity of the subject matter, the cast is very special, most of them on the verge of international fame! The film is now sold on Peter Sellers, but this is an early, fairly small role for him, his first movie since The Ladykillers. This was an early version of a long line of  'old man' characters he's play, usually in an exaggerated form. Sadly, he plays a character older than the age he managed to reach himself.

Margaret Rutherford was slipping back into character parts away from earlier starring roles (like The Happiest Days of Your Life), but only a few years away from fame as the first big screen Miss Marple, in the popular series of four films. While she usually plays similar characters, she's always good in pathos and comedy.

As the young couple, Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna both already had their own movie careers, but married during this year, 1957. They went on to star together in the smash hits Born Free and Ring of Bright Water. McKenna is also known for her stoic war survivors (Carve Her Name With Pride), though here she's a carefree soul with a penchant for awful puns. Horror fans might have seen her brief but memorable role in Holocaust 2000 (1977). Bill Travers you'll know as the grumpy co-star of the awesome British monster movie Gorgo (1961).

Rounding out the cast are more familiar comedy faces, like Leslie Phillips in a fairly straight role, considering he later played posh ladies' men and lecherous doctors. Bernard Miles as 'Old Tom' gives a humble but touching performance, another in his long career in classic movies.

Director Basil Dearden was one of the directors of ghost stories Dead of Night (1945) and The Halfway House (1944), at the start of a long resume including The League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961) and Khartoum 1966). Director of Photography, Douglas Slocombe, was a veteran of Ealing comedies, but would eventually shoot the original Rollerball and the Raiders of the Lost Ark trilogy!

This Launder & Gilliat comedy is out of print on DVD in the UK, though it was available as a single disc and in a boxset, one of the many called 'The Peter Sellers Collection' (below). 

The US also have it in their equivalent 'Peter Sellers Collection' (reviewed here on DVD Beaver), pictured below.

Most of the above publicity photos are courtesy of Dusashenka and his wonderful Flickr account and are used here with his permission.

NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT (1973) - Cushing and Lee

NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT

(1973, UK)

A creepy dry run for The Wicker Man

The bloodthirsty horror fan in me had always been disappointed with this on late night TV. But another viewing, in order to consider the new Nightmare Theater DVD release, was rather enjoyable, now that my expectations of gore have been lowered.

That's not to say this isn't a violent story, but it's too tame for the times considering for instance that Witchfinder General, Straw Dogs and Vampire Circus had already appeared. This may be explained by their lack of a special effects budget: in Christopher Lee - An Authorised Screen History, author Jonathan Rigby talks of Lee, and Hammer producer Anthony Nelson Keys, attempting to start their own production company, Charlemagne. The idea being to cash in on their own success. But in trying to get a distribution deal, their budget was driven down, not that it shows. With a top cast, a wide variety of filming locations and director Peter Sasdy (Taste the Blood of Dracula, Hands of the Ripper, Doomwatch). Peter Cushing joined in on a countrywide series of personal appearances to promote the film but it, and the company, failed.

Nothing But the Night begins as a grisly mystery, with three murders that look like suicides, yet we see that a black-gloved figure was responsible. A crashing coach full of schoolchildren then swings all attention on an orphanage on a remote Scottish island. Interested parties include the police (Christopher Lee), two pathologists (Peter Cushing and Keith Barron), the press (Georgia Brown) and one of the children's mothers (Diana Dors)...

The story still packs some solid surprises and its bleakest moments leave a lasting impression. You'll have to watch it yourself to discover exactly which genre this belongs in. Needless to say, the police investigation of the remote location brings The Wicker Man to mind, which coincidentally was the next film Christopher Lee made. The two would make a very suitable double-bill.

Foremost, it's a pleasure to see Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee appear in so many scenes together and playing friends rather than deadly enemies. Even though their characters argue bitterly, Cushing still ends the scene cracking a smile. Lee must have chosen this part specifically without silly make-up or costumes - at the time he was trying to get more 'serious roles' as well as break into Hollywood. Here he was on the verge of success with The Three Musketeers and The Man With The Golden Gun.

The rest of the cast is impressive, Georgia Brown (Tales That Witness Madness) especially intriguing as a pushy reporter. Keith Barron (The Land That Time Forgot) proves that he should have escaped TV more often. Diana Dors (Theatre of Blood, From Beyond the Grave) is more menacing than her usual bully routine, playing a mass murderer with an 'up' hairdo, reminiscent of Myra Hindley's.

There are great actors in small roles too - a young Michael Gambon (Sleepy Hollow, Toys, The Beast Must Die), Fulton MacKay (Britannia Hospital, Porridge), Duncan Lamont (Quatermass and the Pit) nearly unrecognisable as he's sporting a beard, and Kathleen Byron (Black Narcissus, Twins of Evil). The only weak link is the key role of the young girl traumatised by the coach crash, who starts off well but lets down some pivotal scenes.

I watched this again on a cramped fullframe VHS, but Nothing But The Night has been released widescreen on DVD in the USA, as part of Katarina's Nightmare Theater series. I understand that it's widescreen and that Katarina's introduction is optional, which means that they'll get my money. I'm also glad that they didn't use the alternate US title, which ruins the story.

Speaking of spoilers, I'll also mention Hot Fuzz, but not why...

Walter Hill's THE DRIVER and Michael Mann's THIEF - prototypes for DRIVE

 

What would Drive look like, made in the 70s and 80s?

I loved Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) but am unconcerned how much of it is original or homage (or whatever). It's an exciting, beautifully crafted thriller which I'm already looking forward to seeing again. But in my mind, I can't keep it in total isolation from older films I've seen, and it's fun to explore what Drive echoes. Maybe even compare how different decades have treated similar stories and characters. Many others have already been cited as influences, but these two are leading the pack...

THE DRIVER

(1978, USA)

The Driver (Ryan O'Neal) waits for two masked men to rob a casino, then burns rubber to get them away from a squad of police cars. It doesn't go completely smoothly - a witness (Isabelle Adjani) catches a clear look at him and smells money. The Detective (Bruce Dern) can't make the case stick and hatches an elaborate plan to catch The Driver red-handed.

I thought Ryan Gosling's impossibly cool character was a fresh take, until I saw Ryan O'Neal behind the wheel of a car, clean-shaven, sandy-coloured hair, blank expression, a man of few words... O'Neal's character also has strict rules for every job he takes on, can't be taken lightly, and quietly enjoys music.

Whereas Drive concentrates on various players in the underworld, The Driver uses a more  traditional cat-and-mouse structure of police trying to crack his case. That isn't to say the story is at all straightforward and full of surprises. Walter Hill (scriptwriter as well as director) adds one of his regular 'strong women' as The Connection (Ronee Blakley of A Nightmare on Elm Street) in this the year before Alien landed (for which Hill was a writer and co-producer).

The location is Los Angeles and much of the action takes place at night, though watching this DVD it's hard to judge the quality of the cinematography. The Driver is far less image-conscious than Drive, but adds far more tyre-squealing car chases and police cars. More isn't necessarily better, and some of the action is spoilt by jump-cuts and random continuity.

When there isn't action, the pace often flatlines, with not even Bruce Dern bringing it to life. O'Neal is good at playing against type, but his serious stares are only a shade away from his 'slow burn' from What's Up Doc?.Besides style, The Driver also lacks a driving soundtrack. The fun is all in the unravelling story and it's tough attitude. It's a huge contrast to the car chase comedies that were all the rage at the time, like the freewheeling Smokey and the Bandit franchise.

Walter Hill would next direct The Warriors, beginning an impressive winning streak of cult thrillers including Southern Comfort, Streets of Fire and 48 Hours.


Trivia: note how the above UK quad poster refers to the films simply as "Driver".

I watched the UK DVD from Optimum. The grainy print and night-time scenes gave the image compression quite a few problems in some scenes. But this is a recent anamorphic-widescreen release and I very much doubt there's a better version out there.

THIEF
(1981, USA, original title: Violent Streets)

Frank (James Caan) is a specialist in high-tech safe-cracking. His price is high yet he doesn't work for just anyone who can pay. Fiercely independent, he doesn't work as part of any mobs and hasn't even any regular family life. All that's about to change and his next job will be the toughest of his career.

Thief isn't about a driver, and James Caan is far less calm and collected than Ryan Gosling, but the story structure and dilemmas of his character's independence have strong parallels.

Frank is a professional, one of the best in the business, allowing him to pick and choose his clients even if they can afford his asking price. His goals in life are simple and he'll do absolutely anything to achieve or protect them.

As in Drive, there's a contrasty 'look' and a synth-heavy soundtrack. Night-for-night shooting in Thief accents car headlights and streetlighting, though it all isn't as overly style-conscious as Mann's later 80s thrillers. This works in favour of Thief's realism, a look at how mobsters blend into society and how any safe can be dismantled with the right scientific application... The electronic soundtrack by Tangerine Dream is not what you'd expect from a film that co-stars Willie Nelson.

Like The Driver, this an impressive early work from the director, being Michael Mann's first feature. For his next film he "wanted to get away from the streets" and plunged into an effects-laden, supernatural, Nazi horror film... before returning to a life of crime stories.

Trivia-wise, this is also an early production credit for Jerry Bruckheimer.

I watched the Optimum DVD from the UK. It's rare to see Michael Mann not shooting in his beloved 2.35 widescreen - this is presented anamorphic 16:9. Optimum are usually the label that releases films that major studios don't think are going to make money any more. Likewise with The Driver. Their loss.


A longer case for the merits of Thief.


More Thief info at this Michael Mann fan website.

My look at the musical influences on Drive's soundtrack.