Captain Nemo And The Underwater City

Nemonomicon

Captain Nemo And 
The Underwater City
UK 1969 
Directed by James Hill
MGM Blu Ray Zone B (German)

Warning: Some spoilers just below the surface.

There’s a place I know where we can go, it’s such a lot to see,
It’s the fun food, the fun food factory.
Theme song from The Fun Food Factory

Okay... I assume I saw Captain Nemo And The Underwater City on television when I was a kid but there’s not much I remember about it, apart from the music. I wanted to give this one a watch while I was catching up and revisiting stories adapted and inspired by Jules Verne and, in the case of this one, ‘inspired by’ is a polite way of calling this one out in terms of having anything to do with the original source. 

I mean, you’ve got a white actor playing Captain Nemo, Hollywood veteran Robert Ryan and, he has a big submarine called Nautilus. And that’s about it in terms of this film having anything to do with Jules Verne, it’s sad to say. Although it would have been an entertaining, fun romp back in the day and, if you can divorce yourself from the perception of how a modern sci-fi action film should play, you may still have a good time with it now.

While, indeed, Nemo saves a bunch of people from drowning when their ship sinks at the start... unlike the original, he did not cause that sinking himself, he just comes to their dubious rescue and there’s no mention of the original character’s intent on destroying ocean vessels in this. Instead, although those rescued are still his prisoners, he takes them to his big undersea city where they can live a good life, if they so desire. The various rescued even have a small child and his kitten with them so, yeah, we’re definitely in a very different world than that created by Verne.

The main survivors are played by Chuck Connors, Bill Fraser (of Bootsie and Snudge fame), Kenneth Connor (who you’ve probably seen in the odd Carry On film from time to time), Allan Cuthbertson (who is set up as the human villain of the piece but dies already, half way through the movie) and also... Nanette Newman. Now I’ve not seen her in much stuff, it has to be said but I remember her as the host of a really annoying children’s TV programme in the mid 1970s called The Fun Food Factory. It’s a TV show that the IMDB barely registers the existence of, dating it as 1976 but listing it as having zero episodes and... perhaps it’s best this show and its annoying title song has officially vanished from the those seeking the stats.. although at least one episode can be found on YouTube (watch it at your peril is what I say). But I used to tune into it on occasion because I liked Nanette Newman and so it’s nice seeing her in a movie such as this. She has a good presence as the mother of the aforementioned sprog and it’s strongly hinted she will be Nemo’s romantic interest after the story of this one, such as it is, has played out. Alas, although she has good presence in the film, she doesn’t really have much to do and could have done with a better written part, to be honest. 

The other big female role in this, playing one of the community living under the sea and also acting as a love interest for Chuck Connors’ character, is the lovely Luciana Paluzzi... who was, of course, the sultry, sexy SPECTRE assassin who tried to kill James Bond before later taking a shot in the back she intended for him in Thunderball (reviewed here). She has a bit more to do here but... yeah, the film is not really big on building decent characters, I would say. 

Now this was made on a shoestring budget but, even so, the scope of the sets and the design of the production is mostly rather good (there’s even some beautiful Bavaesque lighting at one point). However, the fact that everything is made out of gold in the film is a bit of a problem because, although everything is painted with some kind of gold paint to make it seem expensive, the effect is to just make everything look a bit like it’s made out of cheap plastic. Which is a shame because the shot compositions and colours are pretty good. 

Apart from Captain Nemo’s diving suit, that is. 

This is black with big, glittery patterns on it and looks nothing less like a 1930s - 50s American western, decorative cowboy outfit. In the scenes where Ryan wears this stuff, he does look quite ridiculous, it’s sad to say. And, as it happens, the underwater farm sequence where Nemo is showing his ‘guests’ around the parts of the ocean which provide them all with food, looks more than competent but, honestly, slows the film down in pace and is a bit dull. 

One very good thing, though, is the score by Walter Stott (who later became Angela Morley and is billed like that on the FSM CD release from a few decades ago). That being said... an I’m not suggesting anything underhanded here... but the main theme sounds quite like the love theme that Jerry Goldsmith wrote for the 1984 movie Supergirl and the resemblance is so striking that I wonder if parts of this score turned up on the temp track for that movie, when Jerry was given the job (I guess I’ll never know, now). 

Other things of note is that Paluzzi plays something which is both similar and not at all like a theremin in one scene and, another note, a couple of people who ‘leave’ the city at the end of the picture should surely have decompression sickness when they reach the ocean’s surface. They come up way too quick. And the last note I have on this from when I was watching the movie is that Chuck Connors’ hair here is one of the most scary things you’ll see in this tale. I’m assuming it was a wig but, whatever it is, you certainly wouldn’t miss him and his aggressive locks walking down the street. 

And that’s me done here... Captain Nemo And The Underwater City is a pleasant film with not too much going for it to make it stand out in its own right and certainly nothing to do with the source material. If you like Nemo and The Nautilus then you might give it a look but, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to anyone. Incidentally, I had to pick this one up on a German Blu Ray disc because the film is not available in the UK or US, alas. It’s completely English friendly and has the original UK language track on it but, if you are hard of hearing, know that it doesn’t have a subtitle track on it. 

K9 And Company: A Girl’s Best Friend

Dog to Who?


K9 And Company: A Girl’s Best Friend
UK Airdate: 28th December 1981
BBC Region 2

When I was 13 years old, the pilot episode of the proposed Doctor Who spin-off series K9 And Company, which would follow the further adventures of Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker companion Sarah Jane Smith (as played by the inimitable Elisabeth Sladen) and a brand new K9 Mark 3, played by the same prop as the previous incarnations of the character... was what my “Christmas 1981” was all about! I was in eager anticipation of the “television event” of the year, still in blissful ignorance that Tom Baker would soon be leaving the regular Doctor Who show just a few months after.

Conceived by uber-producer John Nathan Turner, the series was definitely pitched to run as a TV show if the ratings were good. I even heard that there was going to be a twist at the end of the first series when the audience finds out that the K9 Mark 3 sent to Sarah Jane in the pilot film (the Mark 1 K9 was left on Gallifrey with The Doctor’s companion Leela and the Mark 2 K9 was left in E-Space with the second incarnation of the timelord companion Romana) turned out not to have been sent by The Doctor, as it had first seemed, but by his arch enemy The Master. Interesting stuff.

Alas, the TV show never came to pass... but not for any critical reasons I might highlight in this review and certainly not for want of trying. My understanding is that the pilot certainly didn’t fail and that the ratings were quite high and on track for giving the show a regular time slot. But these were troubled times for the BBC... or at least for Doctor Who at the BBC. A new controller came in and I think this is probably when the bizarre agenda to clandestinely kill off Doctor Who, one of their most succesful TV shows, first started to raise its head and the lack of budget would finally take the show from our screens less than ten years later. We all know what happened after this and the woefully inadequate TV movie which aired between the demise of the show and the “sparklied up” (aka given an adequate budget) regenration of the show in 2005.

The K9 And Company show, however, never stood a chance in this kind of hostile, early 80s climate... although it certainly wouldn’t be the last we saw of Sarah Jane Smith, of course... nor her titular robot companion.

I have to say that, having watched this pilot show again the other week, that K9 And Company: A Girls Best Friend is... well... it’s just not very good. It doesn’t hold together at all well nowadays and I personally feel that both the script and the shooting schedule were to blame. Elisabeth Sladen said as much, if my memory circuits are not malfunctioning again, in her recent autobiography, published posthumously. To be honest though, you can kind of see all the problems right up there on the screen so easily. I’d have to say that, at the time of its original transmission, I certainly didn’t have any problems with it so perhaps the tolerance of the average 80s viewing public was a lot more robust and less sophisticated than the average viewer these days. I don’t think they could have gotten away with airing what’s in this episode on TV these days all that easily.

The dialogue in this one is really not so bad and Sladen, while possibly having a hard time with some of it (I don’t think there was time for rewrites) does a lot better than she subsequently gave herself credit for in managing to inject at least a little of the Sarah Jane Smith character into the written script. It’s not noticeably a vastly different Sarah Jane to the one we’d been so used to watching in the 70s... although I should probably point out that I haven’t been in a position to rewatch any of her 70s episodes in recent years. Maybe before the year is out.

The story, however, is an altogether different kettle of time travelling space fish. It... well... the set up is okay but nothing is ever that clearly established in the name of trying to preserve some sense of mystery over the 50 minute running time and it has to be said that... it kinda jumps around a bit. The transitions between time settings is bloody awful with the characters one minute running around in the scare laden darkness (well, not so scare laden actually) and the next scene you’re back in broad daylight before traipsing back into “night shoot” territory again. I’m not sure if it’s just bad transitioning between scenes that is to blame or slap dash editing or, more likely, a lack of getting all the necessary footage to make some of the scenes work next to each other and keep it down to the prescribed running time.

The acting from some of the cast is way over the top and pretty non-naturalistic, especially when it’s pitched in juxtaposition against some of the more noteworthy actors in the cast like veteran Bill Fraser and, of course, Elisabeth Sladen herself. Although, having said that, there is some really wooden work from Sladen in the title sequence, talking of which...

Wow. I remember that title sequence being really cutting edge and fantastic in the early 80s... unfortunately, it has to be said that the title sequence now looks very dated and reveals itself as a phenomenon contemporaneous to the good old days of the BBC Micro (I was a Spectrum kid myself but still). The “too long” held frozen expressions and other ridiculous shots of Sladen in this sequence look... well... lets just say they look the opposite of inspiring and it really buggers belief that re-shoots weren’t taken because I’m amazed anything this slap-dash was allowed to be broadcast outside of a non-terrestrial channel showing Topless Darts and The Spanish Archer. I believe Elisabeth Sladen's autobiography had a very good reason as to why she was looking so unenthused during these sequences but I can’t quite remember what they were (although I suspect she possibly thought she was doing test shots for focus etc at the time and didn’t realise the camera was running).

But... at least I still like the inane song with John Leeson’s familiar tones singing “K9” over the titles. A bit silly but it has a certain charm to it.

Although I personally didn’t have as good a time as I was expecting from rewatching this old episode, I am still dissapointed that the show was never allowed to get up to running speed with its own regular time slot. Of course, this would not be Sarah Jane Smith’s last appearances in Doctor Who related programming over the years (The Five Doctors is set sometime not long after K9 And Company by the looks of it) and when she returned, with K9s Mark 3 and 4 to make the first of a number of appearances in the regenerated Doctor Who show of recent years, her popularity ensured that she finally got to have her own regular TV series. A show which turned out to be a real corker at times, in fact.

I still miss coming home to see new episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures on TV in the void left by Elisabeth Sladen’s untimely death, but she will live on in peoples memories for generations to come and, clunky or not, it’s really nice to have this little piece of British television history preserved on DVD. I’ve just bought a copy for my firend’s daughter’s birthday as she loves The Sarah Jane Adventures. She’ll be a fair bit younger than I was when it was first aired and it’ll be interesting to see if she takes to this earlier version of the character as she does in her recent portrayals. I hope she likes it as much as I did when it first aired... and not through the cynical eyes of a more sophisticated viewership.