The Martian Chronicles

Tyrr For Fear

The Martian Chronicles
Airdate: 27 January – 29 January 1980
Final Cut Entertainment Region B Blu Ray 
Three Episodes

Warning: Spoilers wistfully lapping at the edges of your consciousness

There was a bit of a delay before the TV mini series based on the great Ray Bradbury ‘novel’ of the same name aired (although there was a bizarre, truncated cinema release of it released in French cinemas the year before). It was held back for around about a year because, at a press conference for the show, which was adapted by the great Richard Matheson in terms of the writing, in close collaboration with Bradbury himself, Mr. Bradbury saw fit to tell the people of the press how ‘boring’ this production was.

It’s funny though... I remembered viewing the series in a far better light when I was a kid on that first airing and without it I probably wouldn’t have rushed out and purchased the novel that same week it hit our screens. I remember when I read it thinking how right the show had got the atmosphere of the book... not much action, wistful, philosophical, poetic, slowly paced... everything I associated with Bradbury so, as far as I was concerned, it was a great adaptation and I revisited it back near the start of the DVD era and, I still liked it. Well, now it’s on a UK Blu Ray release and, what can I say? I still love it and, when I rewatched it with the family, the four and a half hours of it went down very well. 

To be fair, I do remember it not being popular with too many of the other kids in the school playground back in the 80s but, well, if you were into sci fi even a little bit in those days, you were always going to be an outcast at school. 

I say it’s based on a novel by Bradbury but, well, if the mini series, which was broadcast in three episodes titled The Expeditions, The Settlers and The Martians, seems like a patchwork quilt of episodic short stories with a bit of an overall arc, that’s because the source was. The ‘novel’ The Martian Chronicles was published in 1950 but most of the stories comprising the narrative had been published in magazines before. At the request of his publisher, Bradbury reworked the stories, such as ‘The Silver Locusts’ and added lots of ‘story glue’ to make it work as a single tome. And it’s fine like it is (I should read it again) and, as far as I’m concerned, so is the mini series. 

It was star studded too... just some of the names who appeared in it were the male lead (part of the glue in the overall arc) played by Rock Hudson, joined by the likes of Gayle Hunnicutt, Bernie Casey, Darren (Kolchack) McGavin, Barry Morse, Nicholas (Spider-Man) Hammond, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Weaver, Maria Schell, Bernadette Peters and even a cameo by Jon Finch (playing a manifestation of Jesus Christ... who has the same initials as his great role of Jerry Cornelius, of course). 

The show is basically an exploration of ideas of the way humanity (as seen as Americans) manage to accidentally wipe out the ancient race of martians by accidentally bringing chicken pox, before colonising the planet. However, most of them leave Mars (or Tyrr, as it is in the Martian tongue) again because there is a war on Earth... the few who stay witness the Earth’s destruction by nuclear war and, though they survived by staying on Mars, it would be true that the few who stayed don’t necessarily think of themselves as the lucky ones. 

And everyone is fabulous in it. And, yes, it is slow and perhaps the times in a post-Star Wars movie era were such that people weren’t expecting what was delivered but, I think it’s stood the test of time. It’s essentially like watching episodes of The Twilight Zone, with stories such as the wonderful encounter by the man and woman who think they’re the last two people left on Mars, the man who builds androids of his late wife and daughter to stop the loneliness, the man who accidentally kills a martian because he thinks he is intending him harm rather than the act of kindness his fellow martians are doing for him... and the priest who meets balls of light but then accidentally manifests a martian as a crucified Christ. 

And it’s a great show, I throroughly enjoyed it. I stood by it back when it first aired and I stand by it now. If you’re expecting sci-fi action and spectacle then maybe you won’t find what you want here but, if you want a show to haunt you with thoughts about the way mankind chooses to live its life, then maybe you should give this one a go. Oh, and the music by Stanley Myers is really great... the CD usually gets a spin or two every year. 

So, if you want a slice of thoughtful and poetic science fiction to balance out all the other stuff, then this recent(ish) Blu Ray edition of The Martian Chronicles is a good way to get acquainted with it, for sure. 

Asylum

Taking Over

Asylum
UK 1972 
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Amicus/Second Sight  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers in this one. 

Asylum is the next movie in my watch of the old Amicus portmanteau horror films. Dating from 1972 this has four main story segments which include, if you go by the end credits of the print itself, Frozen Fear, The Weird Taylor, Lucy Comes To Stay and Mannikins Of Horror. All of these are written by Robert Bloch (although it’s suspected the first segment may have been more than inspired by a Clark Ashton Smith story) and the spelling of the Mannikins of the last story seems wrong. Modern sources tell me the last story is actually Mannequins Of Horror but, looking at the different spelling uses and the slightly different meanings attributed to each spelling, I think it’s much more likely that the fourth story is actually called Manikins Of Horror. This is not to say that no mannequins appear in the movie, as you’ll see as you read further but, specifically in the fourth segment, they seem to be manikins rather than mannequins.

Indeed, the idea of some kind of reanimated figure seems to be predominant in three of the four shorts in this one. The linking material in this one is of a young psychiatrist, played by Robert Powell, who drives to an old manor house acting as an Asylum, seeking a position there. His car ride over the opening credits is scored with a booming version of Mussorgsky’s Night On Bare Mountain. The current assistant, Dr. Rutherford, as played by Patrick Magee, tasks him with finding the identity of the former head of the place, one Dr. Star, who has gone mad and is, we are told, one of the four patients Rutherford wants Powell’s Dr. Martin to interview. If he can pick out from the four personalities just which one is a blind for the former head of the facility, he can have the job. 

So off Martin goes with the orderly, played by Catweazel himself, yup, Geoffrey Bayldon, to listen to the little horror and thriller stories so he can work out which is the real doctor. It’s at this point that I suspect, even before we meet any of the unlikely candidates, that most people will see the obvious twist ending of the piece coming so, yeah, I won’t say anything further but I thought it was pretty self-evident.

So the first segment, Frozen Fear, is told through the recollections of Bonnie, played by Barbara Parkins. She is having an affair with a character played by Richard Todd, who decides to take his wife, played by Sylvia Sims, permanently out of the equation. So he orders a new freezer for the cellar, bashes her in the head and disposes of the body by slicing her up into six segments (head, arms, legs, torso) and, curiously, wrapping each body part up in brown paper and string before disposing of it all in the new freezer. However, when the brown paper head escapes the freezer and starts rolling around on its own... you know something’s up. When Bonnie arrives on the scene, she finds Todd’s body in the freezer, from where one brown paper covered, severed arm has strangled him... and then she is attacked in the cellar by various bits of his wifes scattered body. It’s silly but hugely entertaining and the brown peper covered limbs give an unusual feel to this kind of material, for sure. 

The next segment, The Weird Tailor, is about a tailor played by Barry Morse, who is threatened with being thrown out of his shop for late payment of the rent by his landlord. Then, however, he gets a customer in the form of Peter Cushing, who wants the tailor to make a special suit for him, to the tune of £200. The conditions are that it has to be made of a certain, special material brought by Cushing’s character and the suit must only be worked on between midnight and 5am each day. Now, we know there’s something up with the material when Morse pricks his finger and it magically absorbs his blood but, he continues working on it and, when he delivers it to Cushing, finds that it’s a special suit to bring life back to Cushing’s long dead son. A special spell suit the client has learned to make from an arcane book of black magic which, given writer Robert Bloch’s long standing friendships in his life, is an obvious homage to H. P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, I’m pretty sure. Cushing has no money, it turns out and, in a struggle, Morse accidentally kills him. He returns home and tells his wife to burn the suit but, instead, she dresses up their store mannequin with it. And, yes, as you’d expect, the store mannequin comes to life and tries to strangle Morse, who is now obviously driven insane. 

The third segment, Lucy Comes To Stay, stars young Charlotte Rampling as Lucy, who has returned home from a ‘special’ hospital and is being more or less imprisoned by her brother in her house as a form of recovery. It’s not long, however, before Lucy’s friend, played by Britt Ekland, comes to spring her from her house and lures away the nurse on an elabourate ruse. Murderous shenanigans ensue but I think most people would have figured out the real identity of Lucy’s friend when she first enters the narrative so, alas, no surprises here.

The fourth and final segment, the incorrectly spelled Mannikins Of Horror, is more a quick prelude and stars Herbert Lom as a former doctor who has made various miniature, robot like manekins of former colleagues and one of himself. This leads directly into the bookends with Dr. Martin who is about to return to London, no longer wanting the job, when the last manekin, made to resemble Lom himself and with his own brain willed inside the tiny brain inside the model*, gets into the office downstairs and stabs Magee’s character dead with a scalpel to the back of the brain. Dr. Martin crushes the manekin, it’s tiny internal organs leaking onto the floor and, this has the effect of also crushing Herbert Lom’s character in the upstairs room. Then the real Dr. Star is revealed, another murder is committed and the film ends as a cycle with another doctor arriving for an interview to join the asylum.

And it’s a nicely done, mostly fun but unsurprising set of small horror and thriller yarns. Director Baker livens things up with some nice shot set ups (such as when a taxi cab pulls up and is viewed from the other side of a big arch in the street) and some nice camera movement ideas. One is where, instead of just following the action down, for instance, when Charlotte Rampling goes to look for something in a drawer, he pans down and zooms simultaneously to take us right into the drawer from looking at her in the shot. 

He moves the camera quite a lot actually, and there are some nice moments where he uses it to highest effect. For example, when Morse and Cushing are locked in a struggle, the camera movements, while still smooth, are short twisty turning movements resembling something similar to a hand-held camera shot and throwing the chaos of movement into the scene to depict the feeling of the fight. And when Robert Powell slowly drifts upstairs to meet the patients, he stops to look at a fair few black and white engravings depicting scenes of mental illness through the ages... something which is enhanced by Baker’s continually roving camera panning up and around and sometimes spinning 360 degrees around in the frame as it takes in the content of the black and white engravings... or they might be etchings, come to think of it.

All in all, Asylum is nicely acted, written with a certain tongue in cheek feeling and has some nice music by Douglas Gamley, although there seems to be more ‘classical’ needle drop in this one than there is original composition, it has to be said. And, yeah, there are absolutely no surprises in this one and it can hardly be called all that scary, either but, the stories have a certain charm of their own... it’s well shot and I had fun with it. Not the best of the horror anthologies I’ve seen put out by Amicus but... it’s certainly not the worst of them either. A decent watch and Second Sight’s Blu Ray transfer is excellent, accompanied by some extras worth having although, I have to say, like a lot of this label’s releases, the price is a bit steep for what it is. I would have liked to have seen Indicator tackle the Amicus portmanteau horror movies in a more price friendly boxed collection, it has to be said. 

*Since watching and writing this, the great Severin Films have also relelased their own edition of the movie and, although I was tempted, I didn't double dip in this case. I did, however, buy their new pin badge based on the film which is a wonderfully crafted likeness of the Charles Gray manikin with a little front door which actually opens on the badge itself, revealing the grim, brainy matter inside the chest cavity. The height of fashion accessories for sure. 

Space 1999

Orbit-uaries

Space 1999
UK/Italy Aired 1975-1977 (differing from region to region)
Two Series Network Blu Ray Zone B

I used to like Space 1999 as a kid but I’d not seen anything near to even half the episodes. Partially this was because the scheduling was absolutely bonkers (the second series was split between two years with a big hiatus in the middle) and partially because it often clashed with the latest episode of Doctor Who. I wasn’t what you would call a ‘follower’ of the show but, although I never had any of the Mego action figures, I did have the smaller, cheaper of the two toy versions of the unique ray guns they used in the series and I also had one of the die cast Dinky Eagle spacecraft. For those who are interested and remember these, I had the green one with the passenger pod as opposed to the blue one with the cargo pod. I could never figure out why they were those colours however, when all the ones in the show were so clearly just white. I also had some of the British branded bubble gum cards but, like other British produced confectionary cards of the time, these were far inferior to the American made Topps cards being much smaller, not very well designed and having an absolutely terrible tasting piece of bubble gum with them. I remember, on occasion, biting into a Space 1999 ice lolly with great delight though.

However, with Network doing a nice Blu Ray combination set of both series on Blu Ray, I thought it was finally time to sit down and look at these things properly. It was certainly an interesting watch...

The show was definitely a show of two halves with famed TV producer and Supermarionation guru Gerry Anderson firing and then divorcing his wife and co-show runner Sylvia at the end of the first season. When Fred Frieberger was brought in to replace her... well, I don’t want to say he totally managed to ruin the show but there was certainly a lot of change in the look and feel of the series and, for the most part, not change for the better. That being said, I can totally understand why some of those changes were made... after all, they were trying to be more popular and capture the American market too... but I certainly don’t agree with most of them.

So the plot is very simple. It was set in the 'far future' of 1999 and the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha are mortified when an accident with a nuclear explosion blasts the moon out of orbit and sends it hurtling through space like an out of control starship, so the characters could encounter new threats every week, the deeper they got into space... and explore nearby planets when they came into range to see if they could evacuate and colonise a nice looking one. So, yeah, it was a bit like Star Trek but with a moon base and the accompanying Eagle rocket ships housed within, instead.

The main leads, Commander John Koenig and Dr. Helena Russell were played by (then) husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. They were supplemented by a crew of around 300, mostly nameless and unseen, characters populating the base which included such Series One regulars as Barry Morse (playing Professor Victor Bergman), Prentis Hancock (playing Paul), Nick Tate (playing Eagle commander Alan Carter) and Zienia Merton (playing Sandra). Now I always liked Barry Morse as the old professor in this but this shows up one of the possible problems of the series... not for the audience but for the producers... in that the top three characters were all in their 40s or 50s... which was unusual for the time. This wasn’t a young show although you did have Nick Tate’s Carter... who seemed to get knocked unconscious more or less every week... and the gorgeous Zienia Merton, who I fancied quite a bit.

But I certainly never noticed the age thing or saw it as a minus. The show was quite off beat though, particularly the first season... it never really got dull in that first fling. There wasn’t a heck of a lot of action in the first series as the shows writers dealt with more philosophical problems and dilemmas which, of course, is what science fiction is all about. There are often unasked questions at the end of the stories and a real cue for the audience to think things over for themselves. It’s also quite bleak and dramatic for the first season and this is not to its detriment at all.

I also like that, for the first season at least, the main hero figure of Commander Koenig can often be seen to falter, change his mind or make wrong decisions. It sometimes leaves a lot to be desired in a lead character but, at the same time, it lends a touch of realism and depth to the performance which is worth the trade off, I reckon. Although, like a lot of TV shows made before the 1980s, it seems to take delight in sending out the most important and irreplaceable characters, such as the base commander, on the most lethal missions. Seriously guys, when a dangerous and probably hostile alien is in the neighbourhood, why would you send the guy in charge, the most irreplaceable person on the base, in to deal with it? I can never understand this.

Depending on who is working on the show there’s also some nice cinematography and shot designs to be found. Some of the special effects are quite good and... some of it quite ropy. I love all the ‘miniatures work’ but 90% of the time you see any of the crew journeying across the lunar surface in a moon buggy, for example, it is obvious they are just tiny, static models. It’s almost as telling as some of the faces on the so-called ‘stunt doubles’ at times.

Actually, some of the worst but highly entertaining moments are when various characters are having a fist fight on the moon and they don’t notice that the visor on their space helmet has just popped up. But, what the heck, they just keep on breathing and hurling fists anyway so, what the heck? I guess they must also notice some of the space backgrounds have creases in the canvass too.

It’s generally nice to look at though and it has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, most of that changed with Series Two.

The first thing you notice here is that half the regular cast are missing. Either fired or walked away while the walking was good. And there’s never any reference made as to why either. Victor Bergman, my favourite character, is nowhere to be seen. Ditto for the back up guy who was always left in charge when Koenig went exploring... Paul is just gone, even though he was Sandra’s potential love interest. Sandra is kinda in it, then not, then back in it again and then... hmm... you never know if Sandra’s going to be around or not but in most of the episodes that she isn’t in for the second season, she is replaced by an actress called Yasuko Nagazumi... who I also fancied.

There were also some new kids on the block. As rival to Nick Tate for ‘young action guy to get beaten up, become an alien host or run about a lot’ you had Tony Anholt as Tony Verdeschi. He was okay although his off and on flirtations with another new character get a bit tiring and hollow after a while.

And you also get the one really good thing about the second season... screen actress Catherine Schell turns up as a new regular called Maya, an alien they pick up in the first episode of Series Two who can morph in to any animal, alien species or person at will, thus becoming the key person to get everyone out of trouble, more or less every week. Schell actually turned up as a different character for one episode in the prior series so she obviously got on well with the cast and crew, I’m guessing. The character was so popular with audiences, in fact, that the producers were going to do a spin off show just about her before the main show was unexpectedly cancelled at the end of the second season.

This second series is much more action oriented than the first and it’s like Commander Koenig has had a personality transplant, suddenly becoming the confident, unflappable hero you would expect him to have been in the first series but, losing some of the edge of the character in the process. Out goes the philosophical and more thoughtful questions posed by the stories in the first series and in comes the fist fights, air battles and dodgy aliens to emphasise a show more about action than anything else. Some of this second series is quite dull because of this attitude and rather than leaving viewers with questions about the story mechanics and moral dilemmas of what they had just seen, the second season was more likely to leave them contemplating the loose ends in the plot and wondering what the heck just happened.

If anything, the second ‘year’ is even more like watching an episode of Star Trek... one of the not very well made ones. As well as the deluge of boring action sequences, we have Doctor Helena Russell updating us at the start of each week in a kind of ‘voice over’ log entry... although the dating of this is completely inconsistent and nonsensical, it has to be said. And as far as the episode called The Rules Of Luton goes, it’s literally another remake of the Star Trek episode Arena, based on the much used short story by Fredric Brown.

The music pays a huge part in the reception of both series too, I believe. The first season was scored by Gerry Anderson’s regular musical collaborator Barry Gray and... it’s nice stuff. The opening music is cool and, though a lot of it is retracked in for later episodes quite often, much of the score quotes the main theme in different guises. Derek Wadsworth scored the ‘dynamic’ second season and, though it makes for a really great stand alone listen, in the context of the show it mostly sounds like a mid-1970s porn film and really does nothing to enhance the action... quite the opposite in fact. Which is a shame because the CDs of both these series are pretty great on their own. As is the Ennio Morricone score CD for the Italian dub of the show... would like to hear that in context with the actual visuals sometime.

Still, this Blu Ray set is actually pretty good, despite the inadequacies of the second season and, although possibly a little light on good extras, the show itself more than makes up for it in terms of the amount of guest stars throughout the run of the show. From established ones like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Joan Collins, Shane Rimmer, Brian Blessed, Patrick Troughton, Patrick Mower, Peter Bowles and Julian Glover to some of those who are much more a name now than they were then... such as Ian McShane, for example. There’s even an episode in the second series where a photographic still of young model and actress Caroline Munro is pictured on the view screen in two shots in the last minute of the story. I wonder if she even knows her photo was once used in Space 1999? If there’s an opportunity in a post-Covid 19 world, I shall have to ask her at a signing.

So there you go... Space 1999 was definitely ‘of its time’ but, if you are of a certain age and were growing up with this kind of show in the 1970s, then you’re onto a winner with the Network Blu Ray set. Especially in terms of the first year.