CineSavant Column
Hello!
Two worthwhile Michael McQuarrie links today. He first steers us to G.W. Thomas’s Darkworlds Quarterly website, which on May 28 floated a quick article offering a stack of links for adaptions of novels and stories by author John Wyndham.
That includes several BBC TV shows and radio shows we’d never heard of. The links go most to trailer and TV blurbs, but the lineup starts with episode 1 of a 1957 radio adaptation of The Day of the Triffids by Giles Cooper. We love the 1981 Triffids BBC miniseries, and Thomas links to a vintage on-air promo.
It’s hard to believe that John Wyndham goes in and out of print. Triffids was one of the first books I remember reading, at age 12. In 1972 when I was keen to read The Midwich Cuckoos a bookstore in Westwood imported a little hardbound edition from London for me. It was a top Wyndham experience.
The link round-up includes a 7-minute BBC TV clip from 1960, a brief interview with Wyndham. He comes off as a very proper fellow who warms up as he talks. The chat isn’t deep but we get a nice glimpse at his personality.
We agree with Thomas that the Wyndham stories are neglected. We still need a definitive Triffids adaptation, and The Midwich Cuckoos could use a creative remake or re-think too.
Thomas’s home page helps promote his own fantasy novels.
And here’s a link to a decent web encoding of a German Science fiction show that was once a mystery … clips from it ended up edited into odd documentaries. We remember getting a first glimpse of it on L.A. TV’s Engineer Bill kiddie show, re purposed as stock footage for a syndicated science series called The Space Explorers.
The original movie is Weltraumschiff 1 Startet from 1940. The 23-minute film was once obscure because it was produced by the Nazi film industry. The translation is ‘Spaceship 1 Launches.’ The director was Anton Kutter.
The film emphasizes that the Third Reich prioritized rockets and promoted the idea that a victorious Germany would use its avowed technical superiority to conquer the heavens as well. At the SFE website we learn that Weltraumschiff became a short film after two feature space adventure projects were cancelled. The Nazis dropped them because the resources for the elaborate special effects were needed for the war effort.
The visual effects are not bad, especially the hangar reveal and the launch up an inclined ramp, the ‘roller coaster to heaven’ idea favored by Soviets, Americans and Englishmen.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson