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. 

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Full Fathom Thrive

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
USA 1953 Directed by Eugène Lourié
Warner Brothers/HMV UK Exclusive
Blu Ray Zone B

I think I must have been four or five when I last watched The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms... which would have been a TV broadcast in the early 1970s. So it’s good to finally revisit this classic film on a nice Blu Ray edition because, frankly, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. At the time I first saw it, I certainly wouldn’t have been that aware of the pedigree of the movie. I may have associated the spectacular stop motion animation with the great Ray Harryhausen as something similar to what I might have seen in a Sinbad movie. This was only the second feature length film on which he’d worked, after his uncredited contributions to the great Mighty Joe Young. I’d certainly not yet quite heard of (I suspect) his friend on whose short story the film was cribbed as a starting point, the great writer Ray Bradbury. But I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed it at the time, although I might well have gotten it mixed up with Gorgo in my head, to some extent... which I’ve just myself found out was directed by the same guy.

Okay, so the plot is simple... a giant dinosaur is awakened from hibernation due to a test nuclear explosion overseen by some scientists in the arctic. Two of the people who go out onto the snow to bring back some post explosion readings, see the dinosaur but, one is killed and the other injured. That other being the film’s main male protagonist, Professor Tom Nesbitt, played by Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid. Everyone thinks he’s crazy... even his friend Col. Jack Evans, played by Kenneth Tobey, the star of 1951’s sci-fi/horror classic, The Thing From Another World (reviewed by me here). However, after meeting a paleontologist played by Cecil Kellaway (who you may remember from The Mummy’s Hand, reviewed by me here) and his gorgeous assistant Lee Hunter, he finds the dinosaur in some sketches and gets corroboration from a witness who has also seen the ‘sea serpent’. Hunter is played by Paula Raymond, who eventually ended up in Al Adamson’s movies Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (reviewed here) and Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here)... not to mention playing Margot Lane in an unsuccessful 1954 TV pilot of The Shadow.

Eventually, the creature makes its way to New York but the army have trouble dealing with it because, in a detail which is not usual with these kinds of movies (at least it seems that way to me), exposure to the blood and general vicinity of the monster leads to catching a debilitating virus. Luckily, Nesbitt is a nuclear physicist and suggests shooting the creature with a radioactive isotope into an open wound caused by a bazooka earlier in the film. I’m not very scientific myself but I can only assume this is a good cure for destroying both the creature and the virus... which is what they eventually do, killing the creature as it demolishes a rollercoaster in Long Island, standing in for Coney Island.

So yeah, simple plot but an entertaining film... if not one you have to keep your brain turned on for. Other actors of note in the film are the wonderful King Vidor from such movies as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (reviewed here) and Singin’ In The Rain (turning up as the psychiatrist asked to diagnose Nesbitt after his crazy dinosaur sighting) and the youngish, unknown actor portraying the army sharpshooter who is none other than the legendary Lee Van Cleef, who would go on to ‘appear’ in such westerns as High Noon (reviewed here) before finding his star in a variety of classic spaghetti westerns (For A Few Dollars More, The Big Gundown, Days Of Anger and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly... among many such oaters) and, of course, in his wonderful turn in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

And while the film is simple, it does have some nice touches to it, such as a wonderful shot of a whirlpool on which the title card is superimposed and, some pretty good and thoughtful animation by Harryhausen of the titular beast, it has to be said. Okay, so maybe on occasion the lines where the live action footage is matched up to the stop motion animation footage can be a little blurry at times but, it’s mostly pretty good stuff with a lot of attention to detail, I would say. I mentioned the inclusion of Kenneth Tobey from The Thing From Another World in the cast but, it’s interesting to note that when they first bring in Nesbitt to the arctic camp infirmary, they are reusing a set from that film. 

And like I said, the movie has a few things which you wouldn’t expect from a relatively formulaic monster movie, such as the inclusion of a virus subplot... not explored in detail but it’s certainly there and relevant to the plot mechanics, for sure. But another unusual thing it does is keep up the bluff of people not believing various eye witness reports (including that of Nesbitt) for a good deal of the way through the movie, focussing on the professor going to great lengths to get people to believe him, with odd punctuations of the dinosaur attacking more people who won’t be believed until the dinosaur finally pitches up in New York city.

One last thing though. If you are a lover of 1930s Hollywood Screwball comedies (and frankly, why wouldn’t you be?), you might want to take note that the big fake, prop dinosaur skeleton seen in Cecil Kellaway’s work area is actually the same model used in the truly great 1938 Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie Bringing Up Baby. So, yeah, now you know... a good prop not wasted.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was made in response to the massive success of a re-release of the 1933 version of King Kong (reviewed here) from the year before (that must have been the slightly censored version of the film) and this movie was also a runaway success at the box office. So much so that Toho studios in Japan turned their gaze westward to come up with their own beast, which would of course materialise the very next year in the form of Godzilla (which I reviewed here). That being said, although the film is vastly entertaining and probably better written than many of the other 1950s behemoth movies, this isn’t up near the top of them for me. I prefer a whole host of others before I get to this one but, regardless, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes their giant monster movies and it would certainly be a great one to include in a marathon viewing session of such creature features for sure. Worth having a look at if you’ve not seen this one before.