# Unintentionally funny scenes in old movies due to "cutting edge" technology **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 14, 2004, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025 "2004-04-14T20:02:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/21 "2004-04-15T01:33:38Z")
I remember an episode of Columbo (early 70s?) where the whole plot revolved around a murderer’s creating an alibi for himself by using that incredibly high-tech device, the telephone answering machine. Imagine, remotely triggering a pre-recorded telephone call! Star Trek TOS: Their main computer is not as good at voice synthesis as a Commodore 64. ( **all com pu tors and ro bots must speak in a high ly ar ti fi cial man ner** ) Also, not a movie but I guffaw at all the old science fiction stories where centuries in the future spaceships get the calculations for their hyperspace jumps from gigantic vacuum tube computers. (In fact I could start a whole thread on quaintly anachronistic SF) ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/22 "2004-04-15T02:37:09Z")
> [@Dooku](#): > > Also one of my favorite SNL skits, shot in black and white and starring Phil Hartman as the Doctor: > > “You’d better have a cigarette for this - it’s not looking good…I’m afraid your husband suffers from…‘Lung Fever.’” 😃 I don’t recall that one, but I DO recall Alec Baldwin as a doctor, and he has a tendency to misprounounce medical terms. “I’m afraid it might be…Canker” (instead of cancer) ---
**Author:** ![dogbutler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dogbutler/32/428_2.png) [@dogbutler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogbutler)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/23 "2004-04-15T03:04:40Z")
> [@snorlax](#): > > …monitors with green spinning triangles and helixes on a black background. Screensaver,maybe? ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/24 "2004-04-15T03:11:55Z")
Not funny because the tech is now outdated, but because the writer’s seem to have no clue regarding of how fast the tech of their own time becomes outdated. A mediocre movie from the 80’s called _Future Past_ involves a young geek whose big experiment needs more computer power. He gets visited by his future self who gives him a chip that lets him do his experiment. Anyway, one of the quotes from future-geek that cracked me up was: “This chip is from 20 years in the future. It’s four times faster than anything available today.” ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/25 "2004-04-15T03:17:52Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > This reminds me of the unintentionally funny scene in \*The Exorcist \* where the mother is talking to the doctor in his office. As he’s discussing Regan’s diagnosis (he suggests she try Ritalin; I’m sure a lot of parents of ADHD kids empathized with her), he’s smoking. His office fills with smoke as he gestures and waves the cigarette around. The mother never seems to notice it. When I was a kid in the 1970s you could still smoke on commercial airplanes. But I agree, I remember thinking it was weird when Columbo lit up in a place in which today I’d be floored if I saw someone smoking. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/26 "2004-04-15T03:32:51Z")
To continue whipping a dead horse as though it were Jesus in that _Passion_ film… Two looks at how _ **Star Trek** _ actually _influenced_ technology: [Communications](http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/4912.html) [Medical science](http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/4914.html) Sorry guys, being the Ultimate Trekker™ is a tasking job, I’ll tell you whut! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/27 "2004-04-15T04:10:47Z")
Bashing _Wrath of Khan_ might be amusing (the novelization refers to a massive computer game that takes up - gasp - fifty megs!) but the Genesis simulation animation still looks pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/28 "2004-04-15T04:14:19Z")
So, if I’m making a contemporary movie, should I avoid showing any state-of-the art consumer electronics, because twenty years in the future some smartass will laugh at it? ---
**Author:** ![seriousart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@seriousart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seriousart)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/29 "2004-04-15T04:39:45Z")
I’m surprised noone’s mentioned , **Weird Science** yet. These kids made a woman on a computer that probably wasn’t powerful enough to send email. Funny stuff. ---
**Author:** ![seriousart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@seriousart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seriousart)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/30 "2004-04-15T04:45:51Z")
Just thought of a 50s B-movie worth mentioning, though I regret I don’t remember the name. Something like “Mission to the Moon”. Anyway, at one point after our brave explorers land on the moon in horribly inadequate space suits, they split up and send part of the group off to “look for oxygen”. If that isn’t a F-you mission, I don’t know what is. Although, if my memory serves, they _did_ find some. Can anybody ID this movie? ---
**Author:** ![Pixiesnix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/898d66/32.png) [@Pixiesnix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixiesnix)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/31 "2004-04-15T05:19:35Z")
This thread brings back the vivid memory of watching an episode of _Dr. Who_ from the early seventies at my grandmother’s house. (it was mid-90s when I saw it) The Doctor is on a planet colonized by humans far in the future, and some rebel faction or other breaks into the colonists’ main stronghold. And of course, the stronghold is state-of-the art, filled with reel-to-reel computers and **filing cabinets**. Apparently humankind had conquered the seemingly impossible challenges of space travel, but they just couldn’t get the hang of data processing. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/32 "2004-04-15T05:20:28Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Also, not a movie but I guffaw at all the old science fiction stories where centuries in the future spaceships get the calculations for their hyperspace jumps from gigantic vacuum tube computers. Yes – and my favorite example of this is the short story “Superiority,” written by, of all people, Arthur C. Clarke. A mighty galaxy-spanning empire is caught up in a terrible interstellar war that has raged for years. Even their miraculous invention of a torpedo that could annihilate all matter in a 5 kilometer radius hasn’t been enough to save them from the ever-advancing enemy. But there is yet hope. They had one ace up their sleeve the enemy wasn’t counting on. As their fantastic new top-secret invention to turn the tide of war, they build … the Battle Analyzer. It’s a **computer** … on a **space ship!** Imagine that! Its only problem is that it has about a million vacuum tubes, and requires a small army of field techs to replace all the tubes that keep burning out. ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/33 "2004-04-15T05:30:08Z")
All the bad SciFi movies on MST3K, but especially the ones with the SUPER ALIEN TECHNOLOGY spaceships, which consist of switches and dials and gauges, which were pretty standard Earth technology at the time. Whoa! Man! Crazy futuristic! ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/34 "2004-04-15T05:42:46Z")
> [@Manduck](#): > > In no less a movie than **2001: A Space Oddysey** , the digital displays used the glowing filament technology that was completely obsolete about 3-4 years after the movie came out. You mean [Nixie Tubes?](http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/gpsii1.jpg) I’ve got one…remember the movie _Aliens_? Remember the part where Ripley is comforting Newt, telling her that the lab they’re staying in is safe, and she points out the security camera in the corner of the room? The camera (which is B&W, judging by the monitor display) is about as big as her head. Probably mid-sized, by 80s standards…but the movie is set in, what, 2179? (I could go on about how said interstellar civilization has had androids with GRAPE SIZED CAMERAS FOR EYES for at least 60 years, and probably longer…but I don’t think I will. 😉 ) I guess _Firefly_ had it right…they really _do_ send all the low-tech crap to the people on the off-world colonies. ---
**Author:** ![dangergene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@dangergene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangergene)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/35 "2004-04-15T05:46:42Z")
I could be a smart-arse and mention the original silent version of _From the Earth to the Moon_ where the astronauts climb into a giant shell and are shot at the moon. Oh the inanity! Actually, I don’t have a problem with big cell-phones or clunky technology in films that are made with their contemporary world in mind, it’s the films that predict the future with such wild abandon for any real speculation. (minor aside, a friend of mine hated the American Psycho film, because she said it was ‘so old! They all had big mobile phone and dressed funny!’- she completely missed that the film was a period piece to a time within living memory). Although it’s a book, not a film, Bruce Sterling wrote a thing called, ‘Islands in the Net’ set in the future, the clunker being that the high-speed data transfer system was Fax, yes, that thing you feed paper into!!! I didn’t read a lot of the book, because it keep getting hung up on describing mundane un-future technology, but insisting it was THE FUTURE (in big, glaring, future-neon signage). And it was boring… ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/36 "2004-04-15T05:51:32Z")
> [@Art Vandelay](#): > > **The Omega Man** : Filmed in 1971, and taking place in the “near future” (say, the end of the 1970s - but after a sudden disaster has wiped out most of humanity.) At one point, while lounging around in his ultra-modern (for 1971) pad, Charlton Heston plugs in an eight-track tape. If it’s set in the late 1970s, why would an 8-track tape be out of place? The '70s were the heyday of the 8-track. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/37 "2004-04-15T07:14:35Z")
In [Sabrina](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047437/combined) (the delightful original with Bogart, Hepburn, and Holden; not the plodding remake with Ford, Ormond, and Kinnear), Linus displays his astonishing wealth by talking on a telephone _in the backseat of a limo_! ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/38 "2004-04-15T07:36:19Z")
> [@pilot141](#): > > One thing that amazes me is that almost everyone completely missed the evolution of flat-screen technology. Cathode-ray tubes? Yeah, those will be what we’ll be putting on starships two hundred years from now! I’m surprised by how many old sci-fi movies failed to predict any kind of screen at all! They’ve often got computers with perfect speech recognition and the ability to speak themselves, but there’s no visual display at all! If there is, it usually can’t show anything more than lines of a single color (green, white, or amber, take your pick) on a black background. **snorlax** already mentioned _Westworld_, and IIRC even HAL in _2001_ didn’t have anything more impressive than a small, primitive black-and-white screen. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to predict that in the future we’d have “TV computers”. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/39 "2004-04-15T08:08:33Z")
**Lamia** : Well, it would have been expensive to make color screens just for those shots, feed them color images (which, at the time, meant taking pictures of something with a color TV camera), and make the end result look like something good on screen. Secondly, I suppose in _2001_ you could view the computer displays as being as coldly utilitarian as the humans who used them. Who needs multiple colors when a numeric readout can do the job with fewer cycles? ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2004, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025/40 "2004-04-15T08:25:59Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > You mean [Nixie Tubes?](http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/gpsii1.jpg) Yeah that’s it! Thanks, I had no idea what they were called. When I went to University waaaay back in the mid-seventies, the physics lab had a tabletop calculator with a nixie tube display. I don’t think anybody used it, but we all played with it a bit and oohed and aahed at the antique (in 1976!) technology. At the start of the term, we were all issued a pamphlet that explained how to use it, though even back then everybody had a pocket calculator with an LED display. But I guess a few short years before that it was the pride of the physics department. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unintentionally-funny-scenes-in-old-movies-due-to-cutting-edge-technology/240025.md?page=3)