THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD (1974) - high adventure

THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD

(1974, USA)

A lost world adventure written by Joss Whedon's grandad!

A British adventurer (Donald Sinden) sets off in search of his son, lost on an Arctic expedition. He enlists the help of an American expert in ancient civilisations (David Hartman) and a French pilot (Jacques Marin) who can quickly take them over the frozen wasteland in a huge airship. They're expecting a dangerous trip, but not a lost civilisation living above the Arctic circle...

This is adapted from the novel 'The Lost Ones', written by Ian Cameron. Wikipedia reveals that this is a pen name for Donald G. Payne, who also wrote as James Vance Marshall. His novel 'The Children' was filmed by Nicolas Roeg as Walkabout (1971), starring Jenny Agutter. As Ian Cameron he also wrote a sequel to 'The Lost Ones' called 'The Mountains At The Bottom of the World'.

The script for Island at the Top of the World is credited to John Whedon. The name looked suspiciously familiar and, sure enough, it's Joss Whedon's grandad. Currently basking in the success of Cabin in the Woods and Avengers Assemble, I hadn't realised that Joss Whedon's dad and grandad were both screenwriters...

UK teaser art

As a child in the 1960s and a young teenager in the early 1970s, I soon decided that Walt Disney's animated films were too immature for me. I was already enjoying the violent, flashy adult fantasies of the Sean Connery James Bond movies by the age of ten. Back then, Disney's publicity was aimed squarely at young children with friendly, unthreatening, simplified poster art which severely undersold their classic animated re-releases.

I'd still go and see the live-action Disney films if it was a slow week, like The World's Greatest Athlete or The Love Bug, as long as the cast hadn't any annoying children in the cast (when's the last time you saw a children's film with only adult characters?). But when The Island at the Top of the World arrived, it was a must-see for me, promising spectacular adventure with some lengthy, action-packed clips on a couple of episodes of Disney Time.

UK quad poster

In the early 1970s, there was a continued enthusiasm for 'lost world' adventures, set around 100 years ago, where adventure was found in unlikely places around the world, or under its surface. Ray Harryhausen's films had dominated this genre with Sinbad's adventures, Mysterious Island and many others, but Britain's Amicus studios had started adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs novels with unconvincing men-in-rubber suit dinosaurs (which I still wanted to see!). But here, Disney threw a hefty budget and superior visual effects at this Jules Verne-inspired variant, which was less far-fetched than most, but more spectacular.

While I baulk at recommending The Land That Time Forgot (though I may yet attempt to), Island stands up far better today. Indeed it compares favourably to two other airship dramas of that decade - The Hindenburg (1975) and Zeppelin (1971), which offer little besides a trip in an inflammable balloon.

Some of the visual effects have obviously dated, particularly the blue-screen compositing of live-action with model work. But the large-scale miniatures, huge functional sets (extended by many beautiful matte paintings) stand up pretty well. The briefly-glimpsed full-size animatronic killer whales are still superb, (just) predating good old 'Bruce' from Jaws, who surfaced the following year. But these look more realistic because of the shiny skins of their real-life counterparts. I honestly thought they were real at the time I saw this on first release (in the UK in January 1975).

David Hartman, Donald Sinden and David Gwillim

Besides the engaging storyline, whose research into ancient societies and animal behaviour still stands up well today, the cast are just as much fun. There's all-purpose Asian Mako (the voice of Aku for Samurai Jack), a Japanese actor portraying an Eskimo. David Hartman, another likable American actor, is convincingly stoic and knowledgeable. I've not seen him in anything else but understand he was something on US television. Great voice! My favourite though is Donald Sinden, a well-known British actor, mainly known for his sitcom work, but here proving his worth as an eccentric adventurer, fearless, fallible and indignant that the rest of the world doesn't speak decent English. He's great fun throughout and I'm at a loss why he didn't get more leading roles, if only in Disney comedies.

I've loved the rich soundtrack ever since first hearing it, composed by no less than Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia). The recent debut of the score on CD (that I thought would never happen) prompted me to revisit the film. The music is quite superb with a variety of themes, some of which I'd forgotten. Until now, the only album release was on vinyl, with the music smothered by dialogue, sound effects and a 'storybook' narration. It's a gem, mixing in ancient instrumentation with a classic orchestral soundtrack.

I watched the UK DVD (above) which is presented in 1.85 widescreen anamorphic. It's good enough, but I'd still like to see a project of this scale treated with a Blu-ray.

Amazon list a few extras on the US DVD that aren't on the UK release.

 



The beautifully-designed airship 'Hyperion' from the film has actually been recreated in quite a large-scale as the centrepiece restaurant of Discoveryland in Disneyland Paris. I was surprised to see it when visiting the park when it first opened as EuroDisney in Easter, 1992, and I trust it's still there.

THE BLACK HOLE (1979) expanded soundtrack debuts on CD

Intrada are about to release a special edition of the late John Barry's soundtrack to the outer space adventure The Black Hole (1979). Remastered from the original master tapes, this also promises to be the entire score, adding an extra twenty minutes of unreleased music. This is also the score's official debut on CD, see Soundtrack Collector for details.

Music samples, more details and CD ordering information on Intrada's website here.

I only wrote about John Barry's music for outer space a few weeks ago, a recurring and favourite theme of mine in all his work. The score for The Black Hole is some of John Barry's best work, regardless of what you think of the movie. Personally, the music has helped transport me into the dark, futuristic adventure. It's fun to see Disney taking some risks, killing off characters (that aren't parents) and even getting metaphysical...

My full review of The Black Hole is here.

Hopefully someone will remaster the movie soon. It looks very poor on "Disney DVD"...

(The above Japanese poster was teleported from the supreme sci-fi nostalgists' blog... Space: 1970.)

TRON: LEGACY (2010) - a look back

Revisiting a place I've never been...

I'm continually fascinated with the way movies present us with places that never really existed, but we get to know so well it's as if we've been there. Many recognisable locations that appear in films can become enduring tourist spots, but some of our favourite places might only have existed for a few days.

Movies show us rooms that were only ever sets, and buildings that were only facades. Editing and visual effects weave them together into a convincing structure. But once filming is over, everything is destroyed or revamped. All that's left are the images that can live on in our imaginations and memories.

The Psycho films explored the Bates Mansion so thoroughly that I'm sure I could draw a good floorplan of the whole house. But it's not an actual house - the exterior has no recognisable interior.


Good production design can convince us that these places are real, even if they're in the future or the past. For example, the detailed sets in Blade Runner looked lived-in and totally functional. The same year I first saw that, I also saw Tron and kept going back to it through the years. In the story, Jeff Bridges' character has a home where he also works, Flynn's video arcade.

Watching Tron: Legacy, I was shaken by an unexpected return visit to this non-existent place. I got to see Flynn's again, 28 years later. The coin-op video game arcade (how I miss those early machines) was laid out the same way, but sadly covered in dustsheets.

Flynn's quarters overlooking the games room still had the same furniture in it. The sight of the corner couch actually hit me with a heavy pang of nostalgia. It was also under plastic sheets, but I was suddenly glad to see it again. The 3D experience in the cinema was similar to looking through a huge glassless window. A portal that had opened up again for a few minutes.

This attention to detail, and of course the casting of Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges as their original characters, is faithful to the continuity of the story, but also to those who remember the original Tron. It must be the longest gap there's been between a movie and a sequel. Long enough for producers to decide to scrub the past away and invent whole new characters for a sequel. It would also have been simpler to remake it. For an audience who were mostly new to the story it wouldn't matter.

But those of us who recognise the remainders of the original world of Tron, it was good to see it respected after all this time. After this early scene at Flynn's, knowing that Tron: Legacy hadn't discarded the original Tron, I was far more excited by it. More welcome. Without this new film, nobody would be talking about an old Disney movie that I thought had been forgotten. The characters, the designs, the concepts, the building. The old place has a new lease of life.

TREASURE ISLAND (1950) - it be pirate gold!

TREASURE ISLAND
(1950, USA)

This was a joy to watch because of the master of all pirate performances, Robert Newton as Long John Silver. Arrrrrr!

Why else am I recommending a 60-year old Disney film? Well, because it's action-packed fun, and... it's not very different from a classic Hammer film, honestly! Non-stop peril, death round every corner, insane characters, and menacing hand-to-hand combat. If you like the 'high adventure' Hammer films, like Captain Clegg and Pirates of Blood River (recently released on DVD), then this is practically the same in content and atmosphere!

For decades, pirate stories were a staple part of fantasy adventures for boys. Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island is the perfect example, a tight relentless story where a young boy is in the middle of pirates, treasure, villainy, mutiny and parrots on shoulders. Seeing this version in the cinema in the 1960s, I was transported to a faraway tropical island where pirates buried treasure. Watching it again, I now realise it was mostly filmed at Pinewood Studios, and in the same London park (with THAT lake) so familiar from many Hammer films. Another childhood dream smashed on the rocks!

Stevenson should be familiar to horror fans because his stories also spawned dozens of adaptions of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as Val Lewton's The Body Snatcher (1945).

Treasure Island was the start of a hugely successful pirate theme for Disney, long before Pirates of the Caribbean the ride, let alone the movies. It also predates the historical high sea adventure 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Captain Hook and his pirate crew in Peter Pan. It was Disney's first completely live-action film, made to compensate for the huge cost of making animated films. Director Byron Haskin (in the 1984 booklength DGA interview) also recalls that Disney saw it as a gangster picture, and called in Haskin for that reason.

Such a perfect adaption of the classic tale, it was still playing in cinemas when I saw it on a double-bill with Sleeping Beauty. Watching it again recently, I was amazed that I could remember so many scenes so vividly: Jim Hawkins getting into peril so often, the fear of his close scrapes must have imprinted themselves. We're not talking 'mild scenes of danger', but more like horror movie strength terror - as Jim gets repeatedly cornered by bloodthirsty pirates with guns, sabres and nasty-looking knives. People getting shot in the face, skewered with swords, spiked with daggers... It's astonishing this still sells under the lowest film classification in the UK!

Treasure Island looks spectacular, being filmed in three-strip Technicolor, when that was a hugely expensive process to use. Special optical effects help to recreate period towns and ships, mostly by using beautiful matte paintings. Byron Haskin had plenty of technical expertise with visual effects - three years later he made the original The War of the Worlds. There's a strange over-reliance on jarring back-projection. But if you want Black Park in the background, why not shoot in Black Park? It's right next to the studio!

The casting of the actors is painstakingly apt for every character - this production nails every single one... to the yard arm. Robert Newton was English, but found fame in America. Anyone who's ever imitated a pirate by going "arrrrrr" owes him a debt. This is THE movie pirate with the missing leg, the crutch, the green parrot on rhe shoukder ("pieces of eight") and THAT pirate accent. Definitive, hilarious and creatively used in the film. "Arrrrr-men!"


Bobby Driscoll as young Jim 'awkins was already child star for Disney, his most famous role would later be the voice of Peter Pan. He was also the child lead in Disney's first feature-length live-action movie The Song of the South (1946) which is currently 'out of circulation' while Disney decide whether the depiction of African-Americans can be unleashed on the public again. With it's pioneering mix of live-action and animation and positive portrayals of a largely black cast, especially the sensitive performance by star James Baskett, who won an Academy Award as Uncle Remus, there's no question it should be released on DVD.

Shot in England, the rest of the cast is made up of British character actors, many familiar from children's TV, such as Sam Kydd (Orlando, Island of Terror). John Laurie as Blind Pew has such an hilariously thick, Scottish(?) accent that he's almost completely unintelligible. Frightening though. (When did American audiences lose the willingness to understand regional British accents?) Laurie's long career spanned from early Alfred Hitchcock films to Hammer horror (The Reptile). Though he's most famous for the sitcom (and spin-off movie) Dad's Army.


Over a decade before he was the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton has a great scene as a fearsomely swashbuckling pirate. A serious character actor, he also appeared in Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts and Hammer's Scars of Dracula.


The incredible Geoffrey Wilkinson almost leaps off the screen as Ben Gunn, but only has one movie credit on IMDB (a mistake?). An incredibly lunatic performance, his voice, manner and obsession with treasure reminded us immediately of Andy Serkis as Gollum. He gets some priceless one-liners, "Many a night, I dreamed of cheese". Haskin mentions that they almost got Alec Guinness for the role! In honesty, I don't think he could have matched Wilkinson's level of manic insanity!

Screengrabs of all the characters can be seen at Aveley man.

The DVD (pictured as top) is presented 4:3 full-frame, which is how early 1950s films were usually framed. In Britain it has U certificate - the censors somehow allowed the pistol shots in the face...

In 1954, Newton appeared again in two non-Disney sequels, both called Long John Silver. One was also directed by Byron Haskin, and featured a completely unrecognisable Rod Taylor (The Birds, Inglourious Basterds) as a blinded wildman. While it picks up from the events of Treasure Island, it's very slow-going until the last half hour, when they eventually reach the island! The other was a B-movie starring Tab Hunter. Newton also starred in an Australian TV series, The Adventures of Long John Silver. Sadly this late career spurt ended with bankruptcy, and he was dead through alcoholism, aged 50. Dammit.

His definitive portrayal of the ultimate pirate lives on, anywhere there's fancy dress, a crutch and a parrot. Arrrrrrrr!

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939) - the pick of the hunch

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME(1939, USA)

I recently watched three movie versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and completely revised my opinions of all of them. The Lon Chaney (1923), Charles Laughton (1939) and Disney musical (1996) versions were the three most lavish and serious attempts at visualising the story. But which stands as the best?

The novel by Victor Hugo (who also wrote Les Miserables and The Man Who Laughs) centres on the clash between the gypsy population and the citizens of 15th century Paris. Violent unrest threatens the peace of the city when a young gypsy girl is framed and takes sanctuary in Notre Dame cathedral, protected by the deformed deaf-mute bell-ringer. They're all unaware that they're being manipulated in a bid to ridding the city of travellers...

The Disney version, which I enjoyed first time around in the cinema, updated the story with the feisty gypsy girl matching the chief of the police in both strength and wit. There was also an unusually adult portrayal of a predatory religious hypocrite, for Disney anyway. But seeing it again, the heavy use of modern, anachronistic puns and sight gags, together with too much unfunny slapstick, spoiled it for me considerably. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for a musical (rarely am). I don't think it's aged as well as many other recent Disney features.

Next I watched the version I'd assumed would be the best, with Lon Chaney in the silent movie epic. The versatile actor has had a considerable amount written about him in recent years, particularly three exhaustive and impressive books by Michael Blake. Chaney's films are amongst the most watchable and available silent movies on home video, certainly of interest for fans of early horror and the macabre. I really enjoy Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera (1925) the most of all the Phantoms. It's a must-see silent movie and horror film.

So I expected Chaney's previous portrayal of the Hunchback, Quasimodo, would be similarly impressive, but I found the film to be slow and too talky. Quite a feat for a silent movie. Chaney's portrayal of Quasimodo was also hard to take seriously because of the make-up. His mop of Scarecrow hair and unreal facial disfigurements were part of his most elaborate and extensive make-up, but not his most successful. Of course, it's impressive that he designed and applied the look of his spectacular characters. But I'd say that the 1939 version easily outshines his work here.


The Charles Laughton version, directed by Wiliam Dieterle, is a masterpiece. Even worth highlighting for your attention here. A movie that looks like it actually might have had a cast of thousands. The plot still holds surprises, including some a sublimated sexual undercurrent, as Esmeralda gets caught in a love quadrangle (she's that popular!). There's a superb cast, particularly the treacherous Frollo, exceptionally played by Cedric Hardwicke (The Ghost of Frankenstein, Rope).


Full honours have to go to the astounding performance by Charles Laughton (Night of the Hunter, The Old Dark House), in a flawless make-up. Laughton plays Quasimodo deaf and dumb, struggling to communicate with everyone around him. Impressively he still acts up a storm without the power of clear speech and under a ton of make-up. The actor is almost completely unrecognisable, in a role reminiscent of John Hurt as Joseph Merrick in David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980).


There's a misleading early scene with him acting like a typical Frankenstein sidekick, lurking in the shadows, chasing a helpless girl while doing his master's bidding. It's fun but feels out of character. A bigger minus for modern audiences could be the overly theatrical turn by a young Edmund O' Brien (Fantastic Voyage), who is overacting to the heavens, because he's playing a smitten theatrical type.

Hopefully the drawbacks are be outweighed by the spectacularly huge sets, beautiful black-and-white cinematography, gigantic crowds and action scenes, and a top-rate cast milking the intense drama that feels decades ahead of its time.

It was an RKO picture, so I shouldn't have been surprised that the late Robert Wise edited it, shortly before he also did Citizen Kane for the same studio.

All three versions of Hunchback are out on DVD in the US. But while the 1939 film used to play regularly on British TV, it isn't on DVD in the UK.

Finally here's the trailer for the 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame on YouTube.

New sounds from old movies - Pogo remixes ALICE IN WONDERLAND

When I'm not watching films, I'm always listening to music old and new. I was delighted to hear this artist who combines the old with the new. Pogo remixes and samples movie soundtracks to a modern chill-out vibe. It's a little off-topic, but most of his music is film-related and there are also tightly-edited, cut-up videos made from film clips.

Pogo's most popular work includes four tracks reworking Disney's psychedelic animated musical Alice In Wonderland (1951). Fans of the original can be reassured that this is an affectionate update rather than any sort of blasphemy. The familiar aural atmosphere is preserved but re-edited into a whole new song - the remaining lyrics of Alice (above) are now nonsensical, using only parts of words.

Other tracks are based on Harry Potter, Carry On films, Disney's The Sword in the Stone (1963), The King and I (1956) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). This week, I was listening to music on the train to work while reading a biography of the late Richard Harris (Hellraisers by Robert Sellers). I was a little spooked when I realised I was also listening to his voice, as Dumbledore in Pogo's Harry Potter track.

The young musician also wants to make movies, according to this interview. He's already made a short film Out With It, which shows incredible promise - also on YouTube.

All his music videos are also here on YouTube, under the band's original name of Faggottron. 15 tracks by Pogo can heard and legally downloaded for free from LastFM.

A huge thanks to Frankie F. for leading me to these.

THE BLACK HOLE (1979) - Disney's STAR WARS

THE BLACK HOLE

(1979, USA)

Atmospheric space adventure in need of restoration

It's about time I looked at the film that inspired the name of this blog! I keep revisiting this film, but it's getting harder to enjoy on DVD, because the picture noticeably needs remastering now.

When the first Star Wars was released in 1977, everyone else (and their dog) wanted to make a movie as successful. That meant outer space! Adventure! Robots! Laser gun battles!

The Walt Disney Studio made their own space epic, which looked as spectacular as Star Wars, but the camerawork and spaceships were not nearly as agile. Even though Disney Studios built their own recordable camera movement computer, ‘ACES’, needed for the complex visual FX. But they were mostly using the older traditional special effects techniques, trying to compete with John Dykstra's motion control system over at Industrial Light and Magic.

For instance ILM were using multiple passes (re-recording multiple visual elements on the same piece of film), while Disney used multiple optical composites (each time you composite two visual elements together, the film goes down a generation and softens). Some shots in The Black Hole have been composited so many times, that the picture is defocussed, almost ‘soft’ focus, and crawling with film grain. These shots are now really noticeable and will look no better on HD.

The only current DVD release, in standard-definition NTSC, still shows up the wires supporting the actors in 'zero-gravity', dodgy matte lines, and the excessive film grain. Even the edges of matte paintings, an effect previously perfected by Disney, are easily discernible.


I’m hoping that some sort of restoration can improve the look of the film. I'd also like to see some DVD extras, especially since this was Disney's most expensive film at the time. It still deserves attention. It has a unique story and a creepy atmosphere – a ghost ship perched on the edge of a black hole, crewed only by silver faced drones, sentry robots and a megalomaniac intent on probing the secrets of space.

It’s part mystery, part rollicking adventure. Despite some informative babble about black holes, science gets thrown out of the window by the end of the film! The climactic meteor rolling down the ship’s central corridor is hugely spectacular, doesn't really make sense, but still makes a huge visual impact.


It's also worth a look for the design work on the main spaceship, the Cygnus – an inside-out construction, latticed like an internally-lit Eiffel Tower.

The soundtrack is one of John Barry’s best, where he perfected his space march music, which also came in handy for other Star Wars wannabes, Moonraker and Starcrash.

It’s also interesting as Disney was trying to lose its 'kiddie' image at the time, in order to win back older family audiences. Slightly uncertain in tone, the film veers between an adult and a child audience. Disney were very worried about making their first PG-rated film - with an all adult cast, (light) swearing, onscreen deaths and more graphic scares than ever before. The ending was controversial too, it ends up as like 2001 - A Space Odyssey aimed at children.


The adult elements in The Black Hole sit uncomfortably with the robot sidekicks, who have huge, cute, stuck-on Disney eyes. Nowadays they remind me more of the eyes of South Park characters. Early production artwork also had flying robots, but looking more like The Ultimate Computer from TV's Star Trek, and definitely without any eyes. Besides being cute, Vincent the robot tests our patience by spouting more classical quotes than Jean-Luc Picard. But don't let me put you off.

Hopefully Disney are aiming for a better digital release for the film's 30th anniversary in 2 year's time.


Also in this period, Disney made some other interesting, 'more adult' movies...
- there was Watcher in the Woods - a creepy ghost tale (which needed an extensive reshoot to remove the leftfield, sci-fi twist ending)
- Dragonslayer which has the best movie dragon ever filmed, with more child-unfriendly plot twists and blood too
- Something Wicked This Way Comes, about a haunted fairground, which almost plays like a Stephen King story now
- and of course the hugely influential Tron, which tried to start the ball rolling a little too early on CG special effects.


Do you want to know more…?
The best guide to the pre-production and special effects of The Black Hole was in a magnificently illustrated double issue of the lamented movie magazine Cinefantastique (pictured) published in Spring 1980.

Finally on DVD - NIGHT CREATURES aka CAPTAIN CLEGG

Finally on DVD:
NIGHT CREATURES (1962)

Out of the blue, a previously unreleased Hammer film suddenly appears on DVD nestled away in a Region 1 Universal DVD Boxset (pictured). Made at the height of the studio’s powers, the only reason this one isn’t hailed as a classic alongside Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy and Curse of the Werewolf, is that no one has had much chance to see it before. I can’t remember it even being shown on British TV in the London region.

More popularly known as Captain Clegg, it was made at Bray Studios, and is the best example of Hammer’s ‘swashbuckler’ strand - slightly sadistic period adventure yarns, with a hint of supernatural horror (in this case, luminous skeletal horse-riding marsh phantoms, years before the Knights of the Blind Dead ever rode out).

The cast features many Hammer regulars, but mainly this is a perfect showcase for horror maestro Peter Cushing’s talents. To me he was a versatile and subtle actor who, like Boris Karloff, had the ability to make the supernatural believable. Even with some of the hastily written scripts that were thrown at him, he could still convince an audience that the outlandish events of the plot were actually happening… Here he enjoys playing a pirate captain hiding from the King’s soldiers by disguising himself as the village vicar!

There’s also a marvellous early performance from Oliver Reed, seen here reunited with his Curse of the Werewolf co-star Yvonne Romain.
Perhaps one of the reasons Night Creatures has had a rough ride over the years is because it was based on a story that was also being adapted as a movie by Disney, at the same time! Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow was a live action movie, starring Patrick McGoohan, and was aimed safely at a family audience.

Beside making a belated debut on home video, Night Creatures has been digitally mastered, it looks fantastic, and is presented in anamorphic widescreen (though the aspect ratio looks closer to 1.85 than the 2.0 stated on the packaging) – there’s a slight letterbox but it looks overmatted - some of the headroom is a tightly framed at the top edge. But the picture definition is sharp and the rich colour does justice to the sets and costumes, not to mention the countryside exteriors – altogether the film effortlessly recreates the 18th century setting.

The boxset features 7 other Hammer horrors from the early 1960’s, some of them making their widescreen debuts on DVD. I must warn you though that all 8 films have been crammed onto 2 double-sided double-layered DVDs, (known as ‘DVD-18’s), a format that is the most technically difficult to manufacture without playback problems. My set, I’m happy to report, plays perfectly.

Update, June 2014 - Captain Clegg is now on blu-ray in the UK!

ANTARCTICA (1983) Japanese movie review

ANTARCTICA (Japan, 1983)
CBS FOX release - U.S. NTSC VHS
Soundtrack by Vangelis

Well, having thought that the fantastic Vangelis album was a soundtrack to a documentary, I discovered that it was actually a Japanese feature film. It's a dramatisation of an actual incident - when a Japanese Antarctic expedition ran into trouble and were forced to leave a dog pack behind to fend for themselves. The incident seems to have hit the Japanese headlines at the time and had books written about it.

The film felt a little drawn out, but was countered by some truly spectacular location photography, rivalling scenes from MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, for instance. The music, composed by Vangelis at the top of his form, just after he had scored BLADE RUNNER, gives the film a haunting and unique feel.

I suspect more people have heard the album than have seen the film and it's certainly hard to find. I believe it is still available on DVD in Japan, but with no English subtitles. I found an old NTSC VHS of the U.S. version (dubbed into English), which is watchable enough, but I suspect the cinematography looks better widescreen on DVD, rather than fullscreen on tape. (UPDATE 21st JULY 2006 - HK DVD with English subs released - details here.)

Despite an onscreen disclaimer assuring that no dogs were hurt in the making of the film, they certainly look like they had a rough time in some of the scenes. The re-enactments of what may have happened to the original dogs are upsetting enough as it is. Animal lovers, you have been warned.

UPDATE 19th August 2008 - Just been told that Disney remade this true story as Eight Below (2006), starring Paul Walker.