Electric Movie Preview: John Carter of Mars (2012)

From the preview trailer...

 HELIUM VESSEL AND A THARK.

Looking good. Impressed with the pulp hardware design and the tone of the trailer. Thark a little cartoony maybe? We'll see. Overall impression is positive and John Carter is still a must see for me in 2012.

Electric Pix in Space: Sunrise on Mars.

THE FAR ALIEN HORIZON

Some day there will be a human being in that photo. I really was born a couple of millenia to early.

Retro Toys: Clackers.

THE DEVILS TOY

Of bruised wrists and cracked knuckles, here was a 70's toy that left more kids in pain than any I can remember. Think of a clock face: hold the gizmo by the plastic tab with the two glass balls hanging at the six. Flick the wrist up and down to swing the balls in opposite directions up to 12 and back again to the 6 - and again - only this time faster and keep that rhythmn up for as long as you can. Impossible to describe, but it had that "this is going to hurt like hell but I'm going to beat my time if it's the last thing I do." something which kept you coming back for one more try. I think my record was about 35 seconds before the devil decided I'd had enough and had me running around my backyard, rubbing my knuckles and yelping in pain. A simple idea and a black and blue classic retro toy.

Cult Icons: the Pearl and Dean Intro.

BAH BAAAA BADABAHHHHH BAH !!

Everyone hates adverts at the movies. They're usually the signal to go stock up on mars bars, a can of tizer and a packet of crisps before the main movie. What's worse is they seem to go on forever and forever. There's only so many times you can sit through that Cinzano advert no matter how hot the babes are. But, as with all things timeless, nostaglic and retro, you remember things and realise you miss them like hell. One of those things was the intro to those adverts by a company called Pearl and Dean. 

My cinematic age was the late 60's, through the 70's to the early 80's, and one of the things I recall the most was this intro and especially the music to it. This always makes me smile whenever I hear it and takes me back to my outback home town and the Wallaw Cinema with its rusty red velvet chairs and sticky linoleum whilst watching Jason and the Argonauts on the big screen...

Electric Cinematic: "Abbot and Costello go to Mars" 1953.

EVEN SPACE PRINCESSES LOVE A LOSER.

I remember when Mars looked like Venus and space women were hotter and more exotic than anything I'd seen in my local neighbourhood. Maybe it was the lack of clothes and visible belly button that did it. Bud and Lou defined Saturday mornings during my childhood. Regular as clockwork, there they were in all their black and white glory having cool adventures. Keeping me in fits and giggles until fish and chips for dinner. I loved when they met Frankenstein, got chased by a mummy and discussed bad hair days with a werewolf. But I loved them most when they went to Mars and got the girl. Every loser has their day...

Retro Toys: Chad Valley Bat-Projector.

"HOLY RETRO KIDDY STUFF BATMAN!"

I'm four and three quarters. I'm in my parents bedroom. Curtains closed and lying on their bed looking up at the lightshow playing on the whitewashed ceiling. Batman and Robin are kicking the crap out of Penguin and the Joker. POW KAPOW ZAP!!! Gotham City is safe once more. All is right with the world. I miss being four...

Lenscap: In the Shadows of the City.

SILENT ART - technicolour in the dark.

Retro Future: The Long Journey Home 2897.

 SAILING THE OCEAN OF SPACE.

United Space Freighter "Telos 14g" - a heavy load sub speed class cargo ship, sits patiently in a holding pattern waiting for permission to approach and unload its shipment at Spaceport 48 West Side dry dock after a two year deep space round trip to the outer rim planets of galaxy M23.

copyright/art by the superb chriss foss

Cult Icons: The Child Catcher.

"HELLO CHILDREN - WOULD YOU LIKE A LOLLIPOP?"

The stuff of many a childhood nightmare.  Including mine, the bastard.

Robert Helpmann in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

Retro Comics: Dracula Lives #1 1974

MARVEL UK's DRACULA LIVES - A COMIC WITH BITE.

I was always a huge fan of horror comics growing up and this one is probably my favourite of the many I collected during the 1970's. Marvel UK A4 comics back then used to feature two or three different characters in the same comic which made them much more interesting to read than their USA A5 counterparts. Werewolf by Night, Ghost Rider and Man-Thing were also serialised during its print run which lasted 87 issues where it merged with another Marvel publication (POTApes). 

An interesting point about Dracula Lives #1 is that it came out on the same day as the totally excellent Planet of the Apes #1 comic as a Marvel double premiere.

Cult Icons: Monty Python.

THE PEOPLES FRONT OF SKEGNESS ON SEA

"Alright, who forgot to bring the donkey?"

Retro Comics: Close Encounters of the Third Kind Collectors Edition 1978

HIGHWAY TO THE STARS

In a previous post I said that Close Encounters was my favourite all time movie and was one of the reasons I became such a sci-fi geek. After seeing it for the first time in 1978, I remember going to the most popular bookshop in the big city and purchasing Spielberg's novel of the movie. This Marvel special came free with it. From what I gather it was quite rare and hard to find here in the UK. A real collectors edition. Wish I still had it.

Electric Pix in Space: Saluting the Flying Brick.

08-07-2011 THE END OF THE SHUTTLE ERA.

Remembering the achievements, the imagination, the tragedies, the heartbreak and the desire to explore.

Retro Comics: COR!! 1970.

CRIKEY - it's COR!!!

British comics were a strange lot when I was growing up. On the one hand, you had UK Marvel publishing various superhero comics and on the other, the traditional "funnies" comics from publishers like IPC, Fleetway and DC Thomson & Co. Stuff like the Beano, Dandy, Whizzer and Chips, Monster Fun and so on. I used to buy them all. My pocket money went on everything I could get my hands on.

On reflection, I think my absolute favourite was COR!! The first issue is shown above and it came with a free sachet of goo to make a fizzy drink. Tasted crap from memory. But being a kid you didn't care. COR!! ran for 210 issues before it merged with Buster in the shrinking UK market for kids comics. I loved it. Saturday mornings meant nipping down to Wilsons the newsagents at the bottom of my street and getting all the latest issues. Great memories of really fun times sitting reading them in the back yard whilst eating a curlywurly.

Lenscap: The Ultimate Space Babe.

THE GIRL WITH STARS IN HER EYES

Some images just take your breath away. And this is one of them. No idea of who she is, where this is from, what she is doing and why she is wearing an astronaut suit. But there is just so much awe in this photo. I just had to post it because it's fantastic.

Retro Videogaming: Binatone TV Master Mk6.

THIS VIDEOGAMING LIFE: The day after the day before.

Life is about event moments. Moments that change your life from what it was before to what it will be after. Christmas 1977 was a pretty big one for me. The event happened about 7am on Christmas morning. A wrapped present unwrapped and after the revelation that it let you play games on your television (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and the world pretty much turned on its head. My life in videogames had begun, and it was all due to the Binatone TV Master Mk6 and a game called Pong.

I remember it came with a light gun where in one game you had to shoot white blocks criss crossing the screen in various devious paths - up, down, left and right. This was amazing. I think me and my mates wore this thing out. I still have it up in the loft. It probably still works I guess. Will never get rid of it. It's funny how a lot of my life revolved around the geek stuff I was bought or bought myself. But this was the defining moment. The before and after. It wasn't until 1982, when I bought the ZX Spectrum, did things get really insane...

Cult Icons: Hook Jaw.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK INTO THE WATER AGAIN.

Probably the most popular story in the great ACTION comic from 1976 was the tale of a killer shark who had a fisherman's spear protruding from its lower jaw and who was hell bent on revenge. It was also one of the most controversial and gory serials ever and was partly responsible for the comic being withdrawn from sale for a number of weeks. I loved it. Think a psychotic version of Spielbergs shark and you're about half way there. This thing was mean. For those of us who collected comics during the 70's, Hook Jaw definitely was a cult icon.

As an aside, the above image is of a free transfer that came with an early issue of the comic and I remember I had it steamed onto a t-shirt which was really cool back then when Jaws was absolutely huge and everyone was obsessed with sharks.

Electric Cinematic: "Planet of Storms" 1962.

BLASTERS RUSSIAN STYLE in PLANET OF THE STORMS

Now this is old school retro sci-fi and brings back memories of watching this on BBC2 on a wet sunday night when they used to have movie seasons based on various themes. Even though it was dubbed, I can still remember it because of its cool designs and hardware. Think the Russian version of Gerry Anderson and you get the idea.

The movie begins with a shot of three immaculate Soviet spacecraft nearing Venus – one of which is immediately atomised by a just happened to be passing meteor.The surviving cosmonauts decide to press on to Venus at great risk. We then embark on a surprisingly madcap story of interplanetary exploration. There are giant carnivorous plants, man-size dinosaurs and octopus things. The cute robot fells trees and plays big band music. And in its final minutes, Planet of Storms takes an amazing turn. It turns out there is intelligent life on Venus after all, which is revealed in a clever and surprising way. I shall not spoil the secret, but it's worth the wait.

Planet of Storms had an unfortunate subsequent history. It was bought for US distribution by Roger Corman, who proceeded to cut it up and use the pieces for two other films, an act of cinematic cannibalism that gave us Curtis Harrington's Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Peter Bogdanovich's equally classic Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.Planet of the Storms is one of those bonkers movies you see as a kid and never forget.

Retro Future: Sunset 2349.

Watching rush hour whilst waiting for your retro wheels to be serviced.

Electric Cinematic: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." 1977

"TOYZ!!"

Close Encounters is my all time favourite movie. I saw it one dank November day in late '77 and the sheer magnificence of it has stayed with me till this very day. Other than what I read in the old UK sci-fi magazine Starburst, I had no idea what to expect. Back in those days there was none of the media blitz that most movies receive today upon release so I came to this one unspoiled - other than knowing it was about flying saucers. It was a Saturday, and to see it meant a trip to the big city to an old art deco cinema called the Empire. We arrived early, did the burger thing, and planned our attack because also showing was Star Wars which had been released to huge success a couple of months earlier and was still showing at the nearby Odeon picture house. The plan was to see CE3K first, then run for the late showing of Star Wars. No problemo.

So we arrived at the Empire and stood in a huge line to see what the guy who frightened the crap out of us in Jaws had come up with next. A couple of hours later I came out of the cinema in a daze. I was an emotional wreck inside. My mind was a whirlpool of moments, recollections and impressions which I was trying to get my 16 year old head around all at once. Sometimes in life something comes along which knocks you sideways and leaves you there with a sense that something wonderful had happened and the world is a better place for having experienced that something. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was that something for me. I wanted to be Roy Neary. 

Whilst the whole movie up to the last 20 minutes or so is a wonderful collection of inspired moments, it's those last 20 minutes which lift this from a great movie to an unmatched classic. Watching those last 20 minutes I remember feeling a deep sense of peace inside and awe at what I was living through onscreen. Even 34 years later I can still feel that sense of peace when I watch this movie. The moment Neary takes that first step into the Mothership is the moment I truly began to look up and beyond my own small world.

As planned we saw the late showing of Star Wars. I'd already seen it a couple of times and loved it, but this time was different. All I could think of as the Millenium Falcon blasted out of Mos Eisley spaceport was to wonder what Roy Neary would be doing right now..