Yeah, that's nice.
I meant the guy in the ice-filled box. Wasn't that Lovecraft? "Cool Air?" I'll have to research that, I guess.
Which is a treat. I'll have to see if that one's on YouTube.
All quintessential Monkees.
The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread
- Thread starter The Old Mixer
- Start date
Someone has unearthed a long-lost 1967 British PSA on traffic safety hosted by Adam West's Batman:
https://www.cbr.com/adam-west-batman-lost-footage/
I can totally believe that, in-universe, Batman would have taken the time to film this PSA during his visit to Londinium.
("Kerb," of course, is the British spelling of "curb." Or "curb" is the American spelling of "kerb," if you prefer.)
https://www.cbr.com/adam-west-batman-lost-footage/
I can totally believe that, in-universe, Batman would have taken the time to film this PSA during his visit to Londinium.
("Kerb," of course, is the British spelling of "curb." Or "curb" is the American spelling of "kerb," if you prefer.)
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50th Anniversary Cinematic Special
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Planet of the Apes
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, and Linda Harrison
Released April 3, 1968
It's a bit of a stretch that we'd have such an advanced spacecraft by 1972. The Apollo Program was still playing out at that point. The astronauts also take it for granted that they'd find an alien planet that's so much like Earth without considering that they might be back on Earth. There's a lot of contrivance in service to keeping that iconic twist ending a surprise...e.g., not being able to see the stars at night, when the sky looks perfectly normal during the day.
I'd forgotten that it was a female astronaut who died on the ship. That was perhaps a wasted opportunity, not having her experience some of the bondagey barbarism. I guess it was indignity enough that she was only on the mission to be a baby machine wherever the crew ended up. I'd also forgotten that Taylor's a Hoosier!
Taylor is specific that the ship's instruments showed they were 320 light years from Earth and somewhere in the Orion constellation. A quick bit of research reveals that only one star in the constellation, Bellatrix, is roughly in that ballpark, at 250 light years. Betelgeuse, which is specifically named as a possibility, is 643 ly away.
I love the hunting horn thing that plays when we first see the apes:
The makeup really is impressive; and they chose good actors to express themselves through it. McDowall in particular seems to be going out of his way to act via expressions through the makeup. Yet we also get the ol' sci fi cliche of everyone in the future wearing the same outfit...in this case, subdivided by type of simian.
There's definitely some commentary in the story about religious fundamentalism vs. science; and also some sign o' the times touches from Zira's nephew.
Alongside the twist, it's also a nice touch that Zaius was in the know all along.
I read that the ending is one thing that they kept from Serling's otherwise heavily rewritten script. I don't care how the statue got to Malibu, it's still a great moment in cinematic history.
Of course, in Trek of the era, finding a Statue of Liberty wouldn't necessarily rule it out as being an alien planet....
Well that was a pretty good film...maybe they'll do a sequel.
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50th Anniversary Cinematic Special
_______
Planet of the Apes
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, and Linda Harrison
Released April 3, 1968
Xfinity said:
It's a bit of a stretch that we'd have such an advanced spacecraft by 1972. The Apollo Program was still playing out at that point. The astronauts also take it for granted that they'd find an alien planet that's so much like Earth without considering that they might be back on Earth. There's a lot of contrivance in service to keeping that iconic twist ending a surprise...e.g., not being able to see the stars at night, when the sky looks perfectly normal during the day.
I'd forgotten that it was a female astronaut who died on the ship. That was perhaps a wasted opportunity, not having her experience some of the bondagey barbarism. I guess it was indignity enough that she was only on the mission to be a baby machine wherever the crew ended up. I'd also forgotten that Taylor's a Hoosier!
Taylor is specific that the ship's instruments showed they were 320 light years from Earth and somewhere in the Orion constellation. A quick bit of research reveals that only one star in the constellation, Bellatrix, is roughly in that ballpark, at 250 light years. Betelgeuse, which is specifically named as a possibility, is 643 ly away.
I love the hunting horn thing that plays when we first see the apes:
The makeup really is impressive; and they chose good actors to express themselves through it. McDowall in particular seems to be going out of his way to act via expressions through the makeup. Yet we also get the ol' sci fi cliche of everyone in the future wearing the same outfit...in this case, subdivided by type of simian.
There's definitely some commentary in the story about religious fundamentalism vs. science; and also some sign o' the times touches from Zira's nephew.
Alongside the twist, it's also a nice touch that Zaius was in the know all along.
I read that the ending is one thing that they kept from Serling's otherwise heavily rewritten script. I don't care how the statue got to Malibu, it's still a great moment in cinematic history.
Of course, in Trek of the era, finding a Statue of Liberty wouldn't necessarily rule it out as being an alien planet....
Well that was a pretty good film...maybe they'll do a sequel.
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Even the fact that the apes speak English doesn't tip Taylor off...
Oh yeah, I'd meant to include that! 
The story relies on trained interstellar astronauts falling for the same sci fi cliches as general movie audiences.
The story relies on trained interstellar astronauts falling for the same sci fi cliches as general movie audiences.
Oh yeah, I'd meant to include that!
Well, it's more a work of allegory anyway. It doesn't hold up to literal analysis, but it's not really supposed to. Even with the rewrite of Serling's script, Planet of the Apes basically feels like a 2-hour Twilight Zone episode.
One thing about PotA that really hasn't aged well is its depiction of great ape behaviors. It basically got all three species exactly backward, since it was written before modern primate science had improved our understanding of their behavior, and was rooted in a lot of stereotypes that have since been debunked (but that still linger in popular culture). Chimpanzees were the pacifists, when in real life they're the most aggressive and vicious great apes (except maybe humans). Gorillas were the warrior brutes, when they're really placid herbivores that are only violent when provoked. And orangutans were the political and social leaders, when in real life they're the least social, most solitary great ape species. One of the many good things about the reboot movies is that they're far more accurate with primate behavior.
Definitely.
Somewhere on the Internet, there is (or used to be, since I can't find it right now), a 30-minute fan cut of POTA in black and white, with opening and closing narration by Serling.
True. A lot of that could have been fixed by making everything farther in the future, but I can live with it.
Not to mention the swimming hole. I was always bummed out about that when I was a kid.
As Science Fiction goes, POTA is pretty light on science and heavy on fiction.
Oh, yeah. When the truth is inconvenient, you cover it up and manufacture a better truth. This has been the norm throughout history-- plus the fact that the apes felt themselves to be superior to humans, yet were repeating the same patterns exactly.
In the POTA universe, there was no Science Fiction movies-- just like there were no Zombie movies in the Zombie Apocalypse universe.Oh yeah, I'd meant to include that!
Our next 50th Anniversary Cinematic Special should be making up for that.
True. And that got touched upon some more in the sequels, IIRC.
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Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for 55 years ago this week:
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12 O'Clock High
"Angel Babe"
Originally aired February 28, 1966
Um, guys, the name of the plane is right there in the title....Xfinity said:
Anyway, speaking of talking chimps:
Can't say that I was impressed with his attempt at...well, I think it was supposed to be a southern accent.
"12 O'Clock High...it's about time, right?"
When the titular bomber, which is scheduled to be retired after its 50th mission, starts to suffer a series of mysterious malfunctions, McDowalls's character, a sergeant who has an outspoken attachment to the craft, is briefly suspected of sabotage. Aletter plays a photographer who's part of a PR team that's trying to cover the final mission, as the bomber is due to go back to the States to help boost public morale and sell war bonds.
Attempting to dispel the superstition that builds up around Angel Babe, Gallagher pilots her on her final mission, and while her flightworthiness continues to deteriorate, she ultimately gets her crew home. But as soon as they've all disembarked...
Did somebody mention Rod Serling...?
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I think Roddy McDowall could only do the Roddy McDowall accent. But he was always wonderful.
I think they went one step beyond with this one.
Sigh right back you, as authors such as Bruce Eder have pointed out about The Weavers--
"setting the stage" for Dylan means influence--creating a creative environment others would take cues from in their own musical direction. The Byrds being influenced by Dylan, and Dylan himself influenced by the evolving folk music of the late 50s is the spark I'm talking about. It does not matter when someone creates a term to stick to a sub-genre of music; its about said sub-genre not happening in a vacuum tied to one act.
It's "The Monkees at the Movies".
The only time this popular song was used in the series. Some rerun packages added the song to early season one episodes (e.g. "Monkee See, Monkee Die"), but the first run song selections were restored in the Colex syndication package of the mid 1980s, returning "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" back to its one episode distinction.
The final appearance of the performance piece--and song in the series. Note the backdrop is lit
Post Monkees, Sherman was not finished with Screen Gems musical sitcoms: in March of 1971, he guest stared in "A Knight in Shining Armor"--The Partridge Family's 1st season finale, which served as the pilot for Getting Together (ABC, 1971-72). In that short-lived series, Sherman starred as struggling songwriter Bobby Conway, and allowed Sherman to showcase a number of his songs..
Filmed sci-fi is always a stretch. Land of the Giants had the Spindrift, a suborbital passenger craft being routine by 1983. Space: 1999 not only had an entire moonbase with generators producing earth-equivalent gravity, but advanced nuclear fusion spaceships in use by 1999. Then, there's the Discovery One and Pan Am spaceplane from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is far beyond any real world capability from the same year....
All things considered, the POTA ship's capabilities goes with the territory in regards to other sci-fi film/TV creations giving their fictional worlds a big jump in technology.
...yeah, if it was a pulp novel from 1940, perhaps! .
...er...that was not Lt. Stewart's purpose on
Which was always amusing, as it was the product of science (nuclear weapons) not religion--which ravaged the world, and hurled mankind into a regressive state. That message is hammered with finality in the way the sequel ends.
His warning to Taylor--
--was chilling from the first time ever watching the film. You just knew something dark was in the air, but what would be mystery...at least for another 5 minutes.
One of the greatest, hands down. Regarding the script, Serling's contributions were re-written, but the template for the negativity in the lead human character (Thomas, not Taylor in the early drafts) was there--vital to the conflict of the overall piece, and the slap in the face he receives for abandoning his disgust with man to defend them (against Zauis), only to have his original beliefs justified in the climax.
I'm surprised you missed the Apes connection: McDowall would reunite with Frank Aletter in "Up Above the World So High" (December 6, 1974), the last episode of the Planet of the Apes TV series.
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50th Anniversary Viewing
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 1, episode 12
Originally aired April 15, 1968
Byner does more Bobby Kennedy. Kaye Ballard as a psychic predicts that Bobby will have triplets in 1972....
The subject of Mod, Mod World is law and justice
Following up on a related bit of business, I read up and found that the "Here comes the judge" thing was originally part of Pigmeat Markham's comedy routine. Sammy Davis Jr. brought attention to it when he riffed on it in his Laugh-In appearance this season. That in turn led to hit singles being put out by Shorty Long and Pigmeat himself. Both singles will be coming up in June.
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"The Drunkard"
Originally aired April 18, 1968
Teri Garr returns, uncredited as a fellow actress in the teaser. (Those are her legs on the left in the title screencap.)
Sign o' the prudish times: Ann stays next door while Mr. Nickels sleeps it off on her couch. He remembers nothing the next morning and, in true idiot premise fashion, everything Ann says to him is an accidental double entendre. Then he comes back over drunk and sleeps on the couch again. Each time he wakes up, the first thing he does is call a lawyer. It happens a third time, but by then his controlling mother has come over and learns the truth behind his sleepovers.
Ann mistakes Mrs. Nickels for his wife, and she's more on the mark than casting is...Audrey Christie was only 10 years older than Sid Caesar.
"Oh, Donald" count: 1
"Oh, Mr. Nickels" count: 5
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50th Anniversary Viewing
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Season 1, episode 12
Originally aired April 15, 1968
The Wiki list of guest appearances said:
Byner does more Bobby Kennedy. Kaye Ballard as a psychic predicts that Bobby will have triplets in 1972....
Shelley Berman said:
The subject of Mod, Mod World is law and justice
Following up on a related bit of business, I read up and found that the "Here comes the judge" thing was originally part of Pigmeat Markham's comedy routine. Sammy Davis Jr. brought attention to it when he riffed on it in his Laugh-In appearance this season. That in turn led to hit singles being put out by Shorty Long and Pigmeat himself. Both singles will be coming up in June.
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"The Drunkard"
Originally aired April 18, 1968
Wiki said:
Teri Garr returns, uncredited as a fellow actress in the teaser. (Those are her legs on the left in the title screencap.)
Sign o' the prudish times: Ann stays next door while Mr. Nickels sleeps it off on her couch. He remembers nothing the next morning and, in true idiot premise fashion, everything Ann says to him is an accidental double entendre. Then he comes back over drunk and sleeps on the couch again. Each time he wakes up, the first thing he does is call a lawyer. It happens a third time, but by then his controlling mother has come over and learns the truth behind his sleepovers.
Ann mistakes Mrs. Nickels for his wife, and she's more on the mark than casting is...Audrey Christie was only 10 years older than Sid Caesar.
"Oh, Donald" count: 1
"Oh, Mr. Nickels" count: 5
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That folk influenced folk rock is obvious...it's right there in the subgenre name. Influencing something is not the same as establishing it.
But all of those examples put the futuristic space technology decades in the future. POTA only put it four years in the future. That makes it harder to suspend disbelief even within the context of the time when the film was released.
They said as much right there in the film. Twice, IIRC.
Not surprising when I haven't watched the series.
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50 Years Ago This Week
Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:
Leaving the chart:
New on the chart:
"The Happy Song (Dum-Dum)," Otis Redding
(#25 US; #10 R&B; #24 UK)
"If I Were a Carpenter," Four Tops
(#20 US; #17 R&B; #7 UK; originally a #8 hit for Bobby Darin in 1966)
"Mrs. Robinson," Simon & Garfunkel
(#1 US the weeks of June 1 through 15, 1968; #4 AC; #4 UK; 1969 Grammy Award for Record of the Year)
New on the album chart, Mr. Fantasy by Traffic, which includes:
"Dear Mr. Fantasy"
And new on the boob tube:
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50 Years Ago This Week
Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week:
Leaving the chart:
- "I Thank You," Sam & Dave
New on the chart:
"The Happy Song (Dum-Dum)," Otis Redding
(#25 US; #10 R&B; #24 UK)
"If I Were a Carpenter," Four Tops
(#20 US; #17 R&B; #7 UK; originally a #8 hit for Bobby Darin in 1966)
"Mrs. Robinson," Simon & Garfunkel
(#1 US the weeks of June 1 through 15, 1968; #4 AC; #4 UK; 1969 Grammy Award for Record of the Year)
New on the album chart, Mr. Fantasy by Traffic, which includes:
"Dear Mr. Fantasy"
And new on the boob tube:
- The Ed Sullivan Show, Season 20, episode 32, featuring Tom Jones, the Muppets, Patty Duke, Mr. Pastry, and Totie Fields
- Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Season 1, episode 13
- The Avengers, "Get-a-Way!"
- That Girl, "Old Man's Darling" (season finale)
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Land of the Giants and Space: 1999 were more Fantasy than Science Fiction, but, in defense of 2001, everything in that movie was possible thirty-three years in the future from 1968, had things gone differently (i.e., continued as they were ).
We'd have to posit a secret government project or something to justify that kind of technology in just four years-- which a future Apes sequel in the original continuity could certainly do. That might have been a nice plot seed for that Apes anthology that came out recently.
More like the 20s or 30s. Things had grown a bit more conservative by the 40s.
Nobody really comes off very well in the Apes movies.
Ouch.
Mr. Nickels is like a bad penny.
Sounds like a very odd episode.
Off the top of my head, I remember a line about three Adams and no Eve. Which makes our alternate POTA scenario even kinkier than bondage.
It has the distinction of being the first series I bought on DVD. It's an enjoyable adventure series with a good cast. Probably on about the same level as Tarzan.
I think I've probably heard this before. Listenable.
This is a really nice song. I don't think I've heard this particular version before, but it's good.
Simon & Garfunkel. 'nuff said. Although it's certainly got the oddest mix of lyrics of their work.
Due to the evolution of my listening habits, I associate this more with the early 80s.
I thought the suborbital ship from Land of the Giants was the most plausible vehicle of all mentioned, since it was not some massive, nuclear-powered ship (Discovery One) reaching Jupiter in 18 months, when the next real world phase of space craft development would be the shuttle program, and the long term investment into said program did not suggest a natural evolution to anything similar to the Discovery One, or even the Pan Am space plane (both self-propelled ships). At least with LOTG, one might find it believable that in the era of planes like the Concorde and its Mach 2.04 speed (flights starting in 1976), that the next technological jump could have produced a Spindrift. Even it was not, I can accept the marvels seen in POTA as much as I can buy that the Botany Bay launched from earth in 1997 with its advanced form of suspended animation chambers.
See, that's the thing about POTA; the ANSA organization seems to be as public as NASA, only they represent the end invested in deep space exploration using one-of-a-kind technology. That probably explains why less than a handful of ships of that kind were ever launched in that original continuity (Taylor / Brent / TV's Virdon & Burke and the reference to other astronauts who landed years before their arrival), instead of being more "commonplace" like the NASA program of the 60s and 70s.
Plausible in concept, maybe, but certainly not in design. The Spindrift is supposed to be a sub-orbital shuttle, but it has no wings, nothing resembling an airfoil or lifting-body shape, no point where it could piggyback onto a booster or launch vehicle, and no apparent landing gear. It does have a superfluous bubble dome, a silly-looking antenna, inexplicable flashing lights in what ought to be engine air intakes, and a cavernous interior with just six passenger seats!
I liked how the second-last episode of Land of the Giants (meant to be the finale) retroactively explained why the Spindrift was such a small craft. The pilots found a way to go back in time to the day of the launch and tried to prevent it, but it was a fixed time loop and everything they did just led to the original state of affairs, since their attempt to sabotage the flight just led to most of the passengers getting rescheduled and the remaining four being assigned to the small Spindrift instead of the original, larger aircraft. It would've been a perfect closed-loop story if the writers hadn't inexplicably changed the date of the launch.
Indeed, all very scientifically plausible using principles that exist in the real world...quite the contrast to the POTA space tech, which has ships capable of making interstellar voyages at roughly 1/3 light speed that are also equipped with the magical convenience of artificial gravity generated through unknown means...and all contemporaneous with the Apollo Program, not even projected a few decades into the future.
It took me a couple reads, but I see what you did there.
But with a main cast evidently less comfortable with running around in loincloths than Ron Ely or Charlton Heston.
Apparently a riff on an earlier song of his, "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)," from his 1966 album Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul:
(Charted Oct. 1, 1966; #29 US; #12 R&B; #23 UK)
The song in general is a bit of a snoozer for me, and I have two versions of it, this one and the Bobby Darin single.
I recall an anecdote...related by Paul Simon himself on some program or another, IIRC...about how Joe DiMaggio was upset about the reference to him and needed it explained to him that he was being referred to metaphorically.
One of those "Wait, this wasn't even a single?" songs.
I've done the first part of my 50th anniversary viewing of 2001, up to to the intermission. I'm planning to cover that half of the film separately, before proceeding with viewing the second half, but may not get around to it until tomorrow, when I'm fresh and can turn my rough notes into something worthwhile.
Thirty-three years is a long time, and we've seen in our own recent history how a particular technology base can reach critical mass and take on a life of its own. It's easy to see how regular moon flights and the development of a space station and lunar base could create an infrastructure that commercial developers could latch onto. Of course, you'd also have to imagine that the Vietnam War ended much earlier (or did not exist in that timeline).
That's true enough. Suborbital flights could have existed by 1982 if things had gone a certain way.
Star Trek uses much more fantastic (in the sense of fantasy) technology than 2001. 2001 is very much Hard Science Fiction-- at least the part dealing directly with Humanity-- with reasonable technology that could have been developed within that time frame. Different levels of suspension of disbelief.Even it was not, I can accept the marvels seen in POTA as much as I can buy that the Botany Bay launched from earth in 1997 with its advanced form of suspended animation chambers.
I forgot about ANSA. I would say that we're looking at a timeline that diverged from ours several decades back and employs as much fantasy science as Star Trek-- not only the deep space technology, but the talking apes and mutants (not to mention two-way time travel).
That's for sure. But it's very cool looking.
I suspect they didn't even think about the gravity.
Yes, they were much more modest for prime time. No women in the main cast, either.
Not bad. Seems a bit catchier.
Aw, poor Joe. "What do you mean, where have I gone? I'm still here!"
To me it's a late-night WBCN song.
Yeah. Projections like those in 2001 and Space: 1999 (or Hammer Films' Moon Zero Two, made in 1969 and set in 2021) were plausible at the time, based on the assumption that the advancement of space travel and colonization would proceed at the same rapid pace at which it was moving at the time. People didn't yet realize that that pace was artificially accelerated by Cold War competition and couldn't really be sustained in the long term -- or rather, the political will to sustain it wasn't there once the propaganda goal of beating the other side to the Moon (and the military goal of developing powerful launch vehicles that could be repurposed for nuclear missiles) had been achieved and more practical economic considerations came into play. If you look at history, the expansion into new frontiers doesn't generally take off until a government finds a private partner that's willing to absorb the financial risk needed to develop the frontier commercially and bring back a return on the investment, e.g. the various East India Companies or the fur trappers in North America. It's only now that we're seeing private enterprise seriously pursuing commercial development in space, so it's only now that we may finally be on the verge of the kind of serious space travel and colonization that people 50 years ago assumed would be the immediate next step after Apollo.