That was just one of a set of cheapo monster movies remade as even cheaper TV movies at about the same time, all of them directed by Larry Buchanan. Besides Zontar (a remake of It Conquered the World) you had Creature of Destruction (a remake of The She Creature) and Invasion of The The Eye Creatures (sic) (a remake of Invasion of the Saucermen)
Exactly why this was done I do not know. At least Zontar gave the creature a cool name.
I didn’t get that far but it sounds exactly like what the writers would have done.
Hehe, Freejack. My friends and I saw it in the theater. To this day, anytime I’m playing a video game and I somehow launch a car into an overpass, we refer to it as getting freejacked. I don’t remember one damn thing else about that movie though.
The only Sheckley I ever read were the “Victim” novels back in high school, and while I liked them, the fact that they didn’t really share a continuity sort of bothered me at the time. I do remember that the same Douglas Adams blurb was on all three covers, something like “I didn’t know the competition was so fierce” or something like that. So they were definitely in his orbit.
I’ve maintained it also borrows heavily from Varley’s Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (IMO, more than the film actually based on the same story did! Casablanca? Really?)
I liked it enough to buy it in DVD, but to be fair, I’ve never watched my copy! I hope I still like it whenever I get around to watching it again.
Adams admitted to being a Sheckley fan – it shows – but swears that he wasn’t consciously copying Dimension of Miracles.
Only I’m not the only one who sees the similarities. In both cases you have an Earthman who gets taken from the Earth by decidedly non-technical means and spends the entire series going from planet to planet in the company of an alien guide who can navigate the bureaucracies. Along the way they encounter a company that builds planets and meet the Guy who Built the Earth. They also encounter extreme poets.
I love Douglas Adams, but his veracity…
He swore that the old urban legend about the old man eating his cookies was a true story and it happened to him.
Ah yes, the Old Man Who Ate the Cookies; how often I dream of him and that amusing Urban Legend.
(What are you talking about?)
If it’s the one I’m thinking of it involves buying a meal, including fries or cookies, at a crowded fast food place and sitting at a table and starting to read/do something distracting. A young/old man sits opposite with his meal and takes one of the story-teller’s goodies. ST glares at him and takes one while looking at him aggressively. YOM looks surprised but takes another. This goes back and forth for a while before YOM leaves in a huff and ST discovers their own goodies were hidden by the newspaper or whatever.
Sorry for the vagueness but there are different stories out there.
Thanks Miller for that link.
I finally watched Blues Brothers 2000 after much hesitation, and I wound up liking it on the whole. Not as much as the original, of course. I thought I would hate the kid, but I found him appealing enough with good dance moves. John Goodman acquitted himself well. The music was fantastic as expected.
The only thing I didn’t like was Elwood’s exaggerated Superfans’ accent. Dan Aykroyd didn’t use that accent in the original, and it would’ve fit John Goodman’s character better.
NPR’s occasional commentator, poet and retired large-animal veterinarian Baxter Black got into a little trouble awhile back for telling the Douglas Adams cookie story as if it had really happened to him, too, as I recall.
One movie that i wanted to se for a long time was Merian C. Cooper’s She. I’d read about it and seen stills from it, but the actual movie never seemed to show up on TV or, later, on VHS. Finally, a couple of years ago I came across a used DVD of it (I never saw a DVD of it when it was new). It was fortuitous --not only was it a restored version, but it had been colorized. Some colorization is blasphemous, but in this case the film was originally supposed to be filmed in color, but they pulled the plug on that at the last minute. Not only that, but the colorization was overseen by Ray Harryhausen. He not only condemned the colorization of King Kong, but he heartily endorsed this case. And you know he loved the movie – he lifted scenes from it for two of his own movies.
I’d already read H. Rider Haggard’s book more than once. Cooper (who had made King Kong the previous year) brought over a lot of the same production crew, and re-used the giant wall with its enormous imposing Gate from Kong (newly dressed up, though). The story of explorers finding a Lost Civilization had been told in numerous cheap serials, but this showed what it could look like with a Big Budget (albeit not big enough for color). The climax, with its special effects, was pretty impressive, especially with color added.
Sensibilities have definitely changed. You couldn’t make the film today, for lots of reasons (although they were saved from one big problem when they decided to change the locale from Africa (where the novel was set) to the Himalayas (where Haggard’s sequel was set), apparently because they wanted to distance themselves from the jungle setting of Kong. The idea of a Cruel White Queen ruling a black kingdom really wouldn’t fly today.(Disney, though, pretty clearly stole the look of Ayesha as the Cruel Queen and adapted it for the Evil Queen in their Snow White a few years later)
The Neptune Factor (1973). I remember seeing the print ads for it and thinking that it must be pretty cool, but at that age, anything with a submarine was cool to me.
Saw it recently for the first time. I suspect it was inspired by the previous year’s ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ based on the name similarities, but maybe not. In this movie, it’s an undersea lab that has suffered an incident due to earthquakes. The ‘Poseidon’ is the submersible (not a full-blown sub) sent to rescue them.
Not really much to talk about. Pretty formulaic. You know that most of the people are going to be rescued, but there will be at least one casualty and/or selfless act of sacrifice. It does have an ‘Deepstar Six/Leviathan’ feel to it later in the movie, as the Poseidon has to avoid some of the giant sized fish that want to eat it. And not exactly a landmark in the special effects department.
Oddly, the writer’s bread and butter for almost all of his career was writing westerns.
Little funny contribution. I used to see clips of the Friday the 13th movies on TV as a kid, but never actually saw them(we were not allowed this kind of movie in my house). It’s been kind of fun to see movies I only ever caught edited-for-tv moments of growing up. My thoughts have been:
Friday the 13th 1-5 - total trash, not one redeemable moment
Friday the 13th VI - fun, surprising to see something pretty enjoyable after all the other crappy ones
That’s all I’ve seen so far.
When I was a kid (i.e. teenager), most people I know only went to see it stoned. I saw it sober, and it was boooooring.
Over the years, I would occasionally see references to Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, starring Robert Ryan and Chuck Connors. Not long ago, AMC or TCM showed it.
Well . . . It’s not bad, but . . .
Although it is set in the Victorian era, it is very much a product of the 1960s. Its attempts to be avant-garde have not aged well.
The movie Arizona is out on DVD from Amazon.
I disagree. “Spock’s Brain,” while far from being the brightest star in the Galaxy, has never put me to sleep the way “Plato’s Stepchildren” does. The highlight of that episode isn’t the “interracial kiss,” which was a huge disappointment. It’s Kirk and Spock prancing to the tune of “Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum.” 
Back on topic, I finally saw The Year of Living Dangerously on TCM recently, which was another of S&E’s underappreciated movies. I liked it very much, especially because of the great cast. (Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt)
Another of the movies they said deserved a second chance is Sorcerer with Roy Scheider. I’ve always wanted to see it but have never had the chance. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter introduced me to an old cinema on the west side of Toronto that shows it sometimes, so I might finally get to see it before I die.
I was not near a television when Nixon resigned but heard his speech on the
radio. For decades I wondered how he looked as he was giving his resignation speech.
A couple of years ago a realized that this was probably on youtube after a quick search
was able to view it. I was a bit surprised how he was able to control his emotions while
he was being filmed. I had expected him to appear angry or sad.
Link to Nixon resignation speech.
Late one night back in the 80s I couldn’t sleep and turned on the TV. I caught the end
of a Czechoslovakian movie titled The Fabulous World of Jules Verne and was
intrigued by how the film combined live actors with Victorian era style engravings. I wasn’t
until just a few years ago I found an undubbed version on youtube and I was able to
watch the whole movie. About a year after that I was able to view an English language
version. The movie is good but a bit slow at times. The unique style of the film was
really what made the film worth watching.
Also in the 80’s I was working in downtown Los Angeles and watch a film crew shooting
a scene for a movie. It wasn’t until about 30 years later that I found the movie online
and was able to view the part of the movie that I saw being filmed. I still have have not
watched the whole movie which is called “Action Jackson” so I can’t comment on whether
it’s good or bad.