Arthur Dent is having a very bad day for three reasons. First, he has learned that his house is to be demolished to make way for a bypass. Second, he has learned that his best friend, who goes by the name ‘Ford Prefect’ is not, in fact, from Guildford but is an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of star of Betelgeuse. Thirdly, and most worryingly, he learns that the Earth itself is also out to be demolished by a small-minded poetry-loving alien race called the Vogons. In fact, Ford’s alien status proves very useful as he is able to help Arthur escape the Earth before it explodes. The duo thus begin a series of adventures which see them encounter such wonders as the Infinite Improbability Drive, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the two-headed galactic president, Zaphod Beeblebrox and the electronic book, Ford is a researcher for. This book has the same name as the overall story: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Douglas Adams’ tale was actually a radio series before it was a book, but while the radio show was a perfect vehicle for Adams’ clever ideas, the story (though rather meandering) does work very well in book form. Sentences like ‘The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t,’ “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so” and “Reality is frequently inaccurate,” really do benefit from being written down and appreciated. Adams wrote five books in the series between 1979 and 2002 while Eoin Colfer has since written a sixth one. You’ll either be very familiar with concepts such as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the computer Deep Thought and the resonance of the number ‘42’ or you won’t be. If you are not, why not give it a try? Life, the universe and, indeed, everything will seem better once you do.
With the first two novels already a huge success, the Hitchhiker’s Guide… arrived on TV as a six-part BBC series in 1981. The TV version is not without flaws: the story was then incomplete and so rather fizzles out in the final episode. The special effects now look dated while some, such as Zaphod’s second head never looked good in the first place. I will always love the series though, partly because it is the format in which I first encountered the story. And, also, I would argue because much of it genuinely is great. Even the theme music is brilliant. The casting is excellent, and the late Peter Jones did a brilliant job of narrating and providing the voice of the Book. The explanation concerning the existence of the Babel Fish is particularly marvellously realised with sublime visual effects accompanying the hilarious narrative.
Douglas Adams was a genius: years ahead of his time. Sadly, he died in 2001 before the film project he had worked towards for so long could be realised. It seems likely more input from him might have helped as the resulting 2005 film directed by Garth Jennings while not a complete disaster, certainly disappointed many. The cast was good although more star-studded than in 1981: Stephen Fry (in fact, one of Adams’ old friends) voiced the Book and Martin Freeman played the dressing gowned hero, Arthur Dent. But the whole thing felt a bit rushed: the ingenious concept of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was dispensed with in one throwaway line. And the issue of Zaphod’s extra head – actually only mentioned once in the radio series and a joke which has been taken a bit too seriously by adaptors – was again mishandled.
More recently, it has been revealed a new TV version of Adams’ saga is planned. This might well prove to be a better medium for Adams’ creation than cinema was.
The ten highest grossing films at the UK box office in 1991 were as listed below.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Silence of the Lambs
Three Men and a Little Lady
Dances With Wolves
Sleeping With The Enemy
The Naked Gun 21/2: The Smell of Fear
Home Alone
Kindergarten Cop
The Commitments
I only saw Robin Hood and T2 at the cinema at the time. I have seen all the other films since. What does the US top 10 look like?
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Beauty and the Beast
Silence of the Lambs
City Slickers
Hook
The Addams Family
Sleeping With The Enemy
Father of the Bride
The Naked Gun 21/2: The Smell of Fear
In addition to Robin Hood and T2, I saw Hook at the cinema. I didn’t enjoy it though! Spielberg is a genius, but I would today rank Hook alongside Jurassic Park: The Lost World as being amongst the great filmmaker’s very worst films. Even as a teenager, I disliked overly sentimental films. In fact, I think that bothered me more then that it does today.
The American and British lists are pretty different. Some of the variations can be explained simply by the fact many of the films were released later in the UK. Hook, Beauty and the Beast and The Addams Family were not released in the UK until 1992 and all performed well when they were released then. Similarly, Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop didn’t make the 1991 top ten in the US, but had already been big hits there in 1990.
But some of the differences do seem to be cultural. There does seem to be some evidence, British audiences prefer films set in their own country. This probably explains why Robin Hood edged out the all-American Terminator 2 to claim the top position at the UK box office. Kevin Costner’s film does demonstrate a famously terrible knowledge of British geography: at one point, our medieval heroes land at Dover and then travel to Nottingham, passing Hadrian’s Wall – a distinctive and ancient landmark situated around 200 miles to the north of Nottingham. But it is at least set in Blighty and features a number of British stars amongst the cast, notably the late, great Alan Rickman.
Personally, while I enjoyed both films at the time, I was much more excited by Terminator 2. Even today, it seems much better than the often quite ropey Robin Hood. Although still 14, I managed to get in to see the ’15’ rated film, the only time I’ve attempted this. My friend who was also 14, but crucially a few inches shorter than me was challenged about his age on going in. Despite this, we both managed to see the film that day. We had, of course, both already seen the original Terminator. It was rated ’18’ and was admittedly very violent. But it had been broadcast on TV where it could, of course, be viewed by anyone.
City Slickers? Father of the Bride? The first, at least, is a very enjoyable film, but neither seem to have appealed to Britons as much as to Americans. By far the most baffling variation is the bizarrely strong showing for the generally abysmal Three Men and a Baby sequel, Three Men and a Little Lady in the UK. I’ve watched it. It’s awful. However, much of the film is set in the UK. At a time when the actual British film industry was in the doldrums amidst an economic recession and twelve years of underfunding from an unsympathetic Tory government, this factor in itself was enough to make this rubbish a hit in the UK in 1991.
Although as I myself went to see King Ralph at the cinema in 1991, I’m not exactly in a strong position to feel too superior about this.
KING RALPH, John Goodman, 1991, (c)Universal Pictures
According to Wikipedia, the top 10 films released in 1990 by worldwide gross were as follows:
Ghost
Home Alone
Pretty Woman
Dances With Wolves
Total Recall
Back to the Future Part III
Die Hard 2
Presumed Innocent
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Kindergarten Cop
As a thirteen-year-old boy, I saw two of these films at the cinema. As of June 2023, I have seen nine of them.
The 1990s arrived and with them, my teenage years. Thirteen is an awkward age and for this reason, I think, after a very busy year in 1989, my cinema attendance tailed off. I felt too old to see childish things like Home Alone. I felt the same about the Mutant Turtles, even though, like me, they were also teenagers (I have never been a fan and have never seen any Turtles films even today). On the other hand, I remember being keen to see films like Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, Total Recall, Pretty Woman and Presumed Innocent, but being too young to see them. Part of the attraction of some of these films was, of course, attributable to my age. Actors like Julia Roberts and Greta Scacchi (who was in Presumed Innocent) were starting to appeal to me in new and intriguing ways. All of these films were rated ’15’ or ’18’ and were thus too old for me.
I nevertheless enjoyed taking advantage of the new ’12’ certificate to see slightly more mature films such as Gremlins 2: The New Batch and this year’s biggest movie, Ghost. I also generally liked submarine action thriller, The Hunt For Red October and Back to the Future Part III. I also went to see the overhyped Warren Beatty comic adaptation, Dick Tracy (a notorious flop) and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but didn’t really warm to either at the time.
Funnily enough, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas which I now consider my favourite film of all time was also released in 1990. At the time, I was only dimly aware of it and eventually saw it when it was on TV five years’ later.
According to Wikipedia, the top 10 films released in 1989 by worldwide gross were as follows:
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Batman
Back to the Future Part II
Look Who’s Talking
Dead Poets Society
The Little Mermaid
Lethal Weapon 2
Honey, I Shrunk The Kids
Ghostbusters II
Born on the Fourth of July
As a twelve year old, I saw six of these films at the cinema at the time. I have now seen all of them.
I went to the cinema a lot in 1989, perhaps more than all the previous years of my life combined. Conditions were almost perfect:
Although I would never have dreamed of going to the cinema on my own, I was now old enough to go without parental supervision.
My friend Leon arrived at my school this year and keenly encouraged me to see lots of films on a weekly basis.
I was getting more and more interested in cinema and watched Barry Norman on Film 89 regularly. However, I was not as snobby as I would get later (although I d
I was exactly the right age to see film such as Batman and Look Who’s Talking which were released under the brand new ’12’ certificate launched in 1989 (although I still couldn’t see ’15’ or ’18’ rated movies).
I lived within fifteen minutes’ walk of the city’s Odeon cinema.
The new Showcase was showing more films than ever.
This last point was a mixed blessing, however. The Showcase was out of town and seemed to have been designed to be as inaccessible to pedestrians as possible, being surrounded by a network of busy roads, tall hedges and unfriendly housing estates. I did not drive anywhere when I was twelve. I still don’t.
The Showcase also nudged the city’s Canon cinema out of business almost immediately. Within a few years, it would have done the same for the Odeon.
I’m pleased to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the top of the list (I’ve never liked Batman much). It is probably one of the most consistently entertaining and satisfying movie blockbusters that I have ever seen. I remember watching it with Leon and his friend who was visiting from Leeds. My Dad, who had given us a lift had also decided to watch it with my younger brother, but sat separately in the same room, so as not to cramp my style. At the same time, another group of kids we knew from school sat watching nearby. It is an odd memory.
Back To The Future II and Ghostbusters II were both okay, but definitely less satisfactory as sequels. I loved all the futuristic stuff in BTTF 2 – Jaws 17 and the hover boards, for example, but I’d already seen most of that in the clips on TV already. The film doesn’t really end properly and even has an actual trailer for the third film included within the film itself! Neither of the Back to the Future sequels are bad exactly, but both fall a long way short of the charm of the original. All the bits where Michael J. Fox plays anyone other than Marty are crap.
What else? I was interested in Dead Poets and Born on the Fourth, but was too young to see them. I wasn’t interested in Lethal Weapon II at all. I hadn’t seen the first one then anyway and am surprised it made it into the top ten. I was too old to see The Little Mermaid.
I was a little old to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids too, but saw it anyway (it was very overhyped). For some reason, we were taken to see it again by the school. For this reason alone it remains the only film I have ever seen at the cinema twice. It was not really a bad movie exactly though (inspiring the sequels, Honey, We Blew Up The Kid and Honey, We Blew Up Ourselves). In fact, with the exception of Look Who’s Talking (which I liked at the time anyway), it’s not a bad top ten.
Many of the films I saw in 1989 (such as Police Academy 6: City Under Siege and Erik the Viking) did not enjoy these levels of box office success. The Abyss? I did not even know what an abyss was when Leon first suggested seeing it, but was glad I did. I also thought Fletch Lives was called Flesh Lives at first which makes it sound like some sort of David Cronenberg horror. The cousin Ruprecht sequence in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was also enough in itself to make me a Steve Martin fan forever. “This is the happiest day of my life! I think my testicles are dropping!”
According to Wikipedia, the top 10 films released in 1988 by worldwide gross were as follows:
Rain Man
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Coming to America
Crocodile Dundee II
Twins
Rambo III
A Fish Called Wanda
Cocktail
Big
Die Hard
I saw two of these films at the cinema as an eleven-year-old. As of 2023, I have seen eight of them.
I wasn’t a big film buff as a child. Although never sporty or outdoorsy, I had lots of other things to do. I played. I rode my BMX around the park. I learned to swim. I drew cartoons and wrote stories. I read books: I first read Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books. I also still enjoyed comics like Buster and Oink! I played computer games: we got an Amiga around this time. I was not yet really into music (although did watch ITV’s The Chart Show) and was as yet untroubled by girls.
But films? Occasionally, I’d watch Police Academy films during sleepovers but that was about it.
In December, I went to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit to celebrate my twelfth birthday. This was quite a big deal, not only because of the film itself, but because it was our family’s first outing to Peterborough’s brand new Showcase multiplex cinema. A few well-behaved friends came along too.
In those days, the very idea of seeing live action characters and cartoons interacting on screen was still so novel that even seeing clips from Pete’s Dragon or even much older films like Anchors Aweigh (in which Jerry the mouse dances with Gene Kelly) or the politically incorrect, A Song of the South was still quite exciting. The prospect of an entire film where this occurred throughout was thus very thrilling indeed.
I thus enjoyed it. I even got a big poster of the film as an additional present too. But this was 35 years ago now and, I confess, I’ve not seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit again since, so have no real idea how it holds up today. I do know that my parents, who were then about the same age then, as I am now, did not enjoy the experience. Never big fans of cartoons in any form they fond both the film and the new cinema noisy and unpleasant.
As far as I can remember I saw only two other films at the cinema during 1988: the fantasy film, Willow, which was good but a flop and Crocodile Dundee II which was rubbish but a success.
I’ve never seen Rambo III and doubt I ever will now, although I enjoyed the first Rambo when I saw it years later. Twins has been on TV lots of times. I’ve seen bits of it but have never felt moved to watch it in full.
More than half of the films in the top ten would actually have been unsuitable for me to watch as an eleven-year-old. Two feature Tom Cruise. Rain Man features one of his best ever performances. Cocktail is one of his worst. I didn’t see Coming To America until a few years. It wasn’t worth the wait.
I did enjoy Big, however, which I saw fairly soon after it came out on video. I suppose I was a similar age to the boy in the film, although unlike him I was always tall for my age. It was a good film which I watched with my family. We already knew Tom Hanks from Splash! It’s an enjoyable film although a slight note of unease creeps in when the main character, still psychologically a child, has sex with an adult woman.
As I was already a Monty Python fan, I also saw A Fish Called Wanda on video as soon as I could. For me, the real revelations in the film were Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis, not Michael Palin or John Cleese. Although, to be fair, I was already very familiar with them.
All the films on the list pale in comparison to Die Hard, however. I finally saw it when I was fourteen or fifteen. I felt very grown up watching it at home one Saturday night with my older brother and his soon-to-be-wife. It’s a brilliant idea, beautifully executed. Bruce Wills isn’t always great in everything but was perfect for this. And has there ever been a better screen villain than Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber? I don’t think so.
The end of the 20th century was a fascinating time for American cinema. The directors, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, David Fincher, Bryan Singer, Todd Solondz, Paul Thomas Anderson, M. Night Shyamalan, Spike Jonze and Alexander Payne all emerged and began to make a serious impact as filmmakers in this period, alongside talented Britons such as Sam Mendes and Stephen Daldry. Quentin Tarantino and the Australian Baz Luhrmann had only made their feature debuts a few years’ earlier. Into this heady mix came Sofia Coppola with her adaptation of Jeffery Eugenides’ novel, The Virgin Suicides in 1998. Viewed from the perspective of a quarter of a century on, the film, a moderate indie hit at the time, now looks like one of the most assured directorial debuts ever made.
The Virgin Suicides is the story of the Lisbon girls, the five blonde, beautiful daughters of a strict Catholic family (their parents are played by Kathleen Turner and James Woods) living in the leafy, sunny suburbs of Grosse Point, Michigan. It is set in the 1970s, the decade of Sofia Coppola’s own childhood, a period roughly as distant from the year this was released, 1998, as the year 1998 is now from the present day. It is also the story of the local boys who watch the family’s unfolding tragedy from afar. We never get to know these boys well in the film. One of them, voiced by the actor, Giovanni Ribisi serves as the film’s narrator.
Of the Lisbon girls, the one we get to know best is, Lux: a girl with an oddly bohemian Christian name for someone from such an apparently conservative family. Lux is played by Kirsten Dunst, then still a few years’ away from her success opposite Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy although even then was, as she remains today, the most well-known of the actresses to play any of the Lisbon daughters. Lux embarks on a brief affair with local teenage stud, Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). This proves to be a mistake. We later meet the adult Trip (now played by Michael Paré) who, twenty years on, never seems to have got over the experience.
As we live in an age of trigger warnings, it seems only fair to point out that the title, The Virgin Suicides is almost entirely accurate in reflecting the film’s subject matter. Despite this, I have personally never found it to be especially gloomy or harrowing. It is beautifully filmed and has a nostalgic dream-like quality fuelled by its soundtrack provided by the then-fashionable French electronic music duo, Air.
Before 1998, Sofia Coppola was best-known not only for being the daughter of filmmaking legend, Francis Ford Coppola but also for her awkward acting performance as Mary Corleone in 1990’s The Godfather Part III, replacing Winona Ryder at the last minute in her father’s movie. Although her performance was uneven, critical anger over this apparent nepotism saw her unfairly pilloried with many using her as a scapegoat for a belated sequel that was disappointing anyway. Happily, since 1998, she has become the acclaimed director of a total of seven films. By far her biggest hit was her second movie, Lost in Translation (2002). The film transformed Bill Murray’s career and made Scarlett Johansson a star.
The Virgin Suicides
Studio Canal
Available on Blu-Ray, DVD and for the first time in the UK on 4K UHD & digital on 13 March 2023.
At some point after Stargate, but before the Star Wars prequels came Starship Troopers. The most underrated science fiction film of the 1990s made landfall across Earth in 1998. Would you like to know more? Join Chris Hallam as he goes on a bug hunt…
BASIC INSECT
A war correspondent in full futuristic military uniform reports straight to camera from a battle scene. His location is on one of the bug meteors in the Klendathu system, whose deadly inhabitants, the giant insectoid Arachnids have been launching a series of devastating attacks on the Earth.
“It is an ugly planet! A Bug Planet! A planet hostile to life…” he states before he is brutally attacked mid-rant by one of the Arachnids. He does not last long. As if personally insulted by his harsh words about its home world, the monster proceeds to tear him apart in full view of the camera.
“Keep moving! Get out of here NOW!” a passing mobile infantryman – in fact, our hero Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) warns the cameraman – and thus in true B-movie style, us. Soon afterwards, another soldier and the cameraman are also attacked by the same creature. So, begins 1997’s science fiction romp, Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven and based on Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same name.
MAN VS BROOD
It’s a familiar story. Boy meets girl. Boy joins the Federal Service, where despite the opposition of his wealthy parents, he becomes a ‘Roughneck’ i.e. an infantry man. The girl becomes an ace space pilot, but living an entirely separate life, soon breaks up with the boy.
Okay: admittedly this isn’t a familiar story. It doesn’t really matter. For this is just the beginning. Soon the lives of Johnny and Carmen (Denise Richards) are transformed by the devastating war which erupts between the humans and the Arachnids. The various entanglements between, say, Johnny and fellow Roughneck “Dizzy” (Dina Meyer) soon fade into insignificance as the film becomes increasingly focused on the devastating physical confrontations between man and alien.
Or perhaps we should say “person vs alien”? For despite being directed by Paul Verhoeven, the man who brought the world Basic Instinct and Showgirls, the society in Starship Troopers is refreshingly lacking in prejudice based on gender or, indeed, race. Only the fictional species of giant killer insectoid aliens are treated badly. And criminals. And cows.
This liberal attitude extends to a scene in which many of the cast (including Dina Meyer) stripped off in front of the camera, for a unisex shower scene. Somewhat apprehensive, the young cast reportedly only agreed to this, if director Paul Verhoeven agreed to get naked himself while filming. Verhoeven, then overweight and fast approaching sixty was happy to do so. Thankfully, no images recording Verhoeven’s gesture seem to exist.
Actress Denise Richards who played Johnny’s initial love interest Carmen was crucially absent from this scene: in fact, her character was elsewhere, and it would have made no sense for her to have been involved. This did not stop the film and others such as Wild Things (1998), Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) and the Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (1999) launching Richards’ career as a major film star and sex symbol of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Neil Patrick Harris – then, best known for his early Nineties teenage TV role as Doogie Hauser MD – plays Carl, the gang’s slightly geeky friend, who ultimately turns out to be psychic. Harris would achieve true stardom only later. Today, it is he and Richards not Van Dien, Meyer or even established characters like the late Rue ‘Blanche from Golden Girls’ McClanahan and Michael Ironside, who are easily the most famous people in the entire film.
Has Starship Troopers dated? “Hell! Yes Sir!” Some of the CGI inevitably looks less impressive now than it did at the time. And while fighting aliens in space is still very much the stuff of science fiction, a viewer today in the age of Zoom, would be forgiven for not noticing that Carmen’s electronic conversations with her long distance boyfriend, Johnny, were anything unusual when the film was made in the 1990s.
None of these things matter. For at the end of the day, watching Starship Troopers remains an enjoyable experience. The scenes of warriors doing battle as vast hordes of Arachnids can be seen teeming over the horizon remain exhilarating, exciting, gory and fun.
The film is also immeasurably boosted by the series of short, sombrely narrated state propaganda films supposedly created by the ruling regime which appear throughout. Presented in the style of Allied Second World War newsreels, while also attempting to deploy internet-type technology (the web was still young in 1997), these somehow manage to seem both old-fashioned and futuristic at the same time.
They are undeniably intentionally funny but also give us a taste of the kind of society, Johnny Rico and his friends have grown up in. It is a society which is comfortable with child soldiers and which (like the modern USA) is perhaps a little bit too relaxed about preventing its children from getting their hands on guns. It is a society in which criminals are flogged and executed not just publicly, but on live TV. It is a society in which children are urged to stamp on harmless domestic spiders by war-mad teachers driven into a frenzy by government propaganda. And as we learn early on in Johnny’s civics class, it is a society where citizenship and the right to vote are not awarded automatically, but have to be earned.
The human society in the film, Starship Troopers live in an Americanised fascist state.
The question is, is this what creator Robert A Heinlein would have wanted, either for a film based on one of his books or for human society itself?
THE STATE THEY’RE IN
One day, in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands of the early 1940s, one member of the occupying forces decided to play a cruel game to pass the time. He pointed his gun at a small boy. The boy was naturally terrified and had wet himself publicly before the Nazi stopped.
The boy was Paul Verhoeven. And he never forgot it.
More than fifty years later, he directed Starship Troopers, a film which seemed to confuse many reviewers. Some (for example, the late Jeff Vice) seemed to miss the fact that it was set in a fascist state completely. Others did recognise this, but assumed Verhoeven was endorsing fascism.
The celebrated critic Roger Ebert gave the film two out five. “Starship Troopers” is the most violent kiddie movie ever made. I call it a kiddie movie not to be insulting, but to be accurate,” he wrote, clearly deliberately insulting it. “(Verhoeven) wants to depict the world of the future as it might have been visualized in the mind of a kid reading Heinlein in 1956.” The book was actually first published in 1959. Scott Rosenberg, writing in Salon was disappointed for different reasons. It “lacks the courage of the book’s fascist conclusions.”
Let us be clear: there is no doubt whatsoever about Verhoeven’s anti-fascist intentions in the film. Nor is there any doubt that the society he and screenwriter Edward Neumeier conceived is sufficiently right-wing to be considered fascist. The military are completely dominant. There is little evidence of democracy. Corporal and capital punishment are in use. The characters’ uniforms sometimes look fascistic in design too. By the end of the film, Neil Patrick Harris practically looks like a member of the Gestapo.
The satirical elements in the film are intended to give the viewer pause for thought, drawing attention to similarities between the US and this ultra-right-wing state.
On the other hand, it is easy to see how some people might get confused regarding the film’s attitudes to fascism. For one thing, as mentioned, the very worst aspects of fascism: the extreme racism and persecution of minority groups do not seem to exist here. Unlike every other Far Right state everyone seems refreshingly progressive when it comes to gender and race. The girls and boys fight … and shower… side by side. Even though many of the girls suffer excruciating deaths as they are impaled by Arachnids at least, as they do so they can take comfort from the fact that they are doing so on equal terms with the chaps.
It also must be said that things do seem to function pretty well in the world of Starship Troopers. Everything seems to be almost perfectly set up to counter the Arachnid threat. The viewer is forced to ponder whether a more democratic, less military society would be so well prepared to combat an alien menace, particularly if they were more constrained by inhibitions over gender and race.
Actor Michael Ironside, played high school teacher turned Roughneck unit commander, Jean Rasczak recalls being puzzled by Verhoeven’s attitude.
“Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?” He asked. Verhoeven replied: “If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work, no one will listen to me.” He continued: “So, I’m going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it’s only good for killing fucking Bugs!”
HEINLEIN MANOUVRES
Many fans of the book had another objection to the film. They didn’t appreciate the implication that Heinlein was a fascist at all. It seems unlikely Heinlein, who had served in the US Navy, would have appreciated that label either, had he still been alive.
If the novel and film of Starship Troopers are very different, it is perhaps not surprising. The director hadn’t read the book.
“I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring,” Verhoeven admits. “It is really quiet a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn’t read the thing.”
Starship Troopers represented something of a turning point for Heinlein as he moved from juvenile to adult fiction. There are quite a few differences between the book and the film: there is a lot more technical detail about the troopers’ suits and Heinlein’s years of naval experience are clearly in evidence in the text. But there’s no getting away from politics: Heinlein was, in fact, motivated to write the novel after being inspired by his anger over the moderate Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to suspend nuclear testing in 1959. A leftist in his earlier days, by the 1950s, he was clearly firmly on the Right with many of his characters’ words clearly reflecting his own conservative outlook.
The words, “There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men,” seems like an early formulation of the National Rifle Association’s famously inane but resonant slogan, “guns don’t kill people: people do”. Heinlein is critical of the concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and clearly advocates the notion of citizenry and the right to vote are earned through service and combat. He clearly advocates flogging of juvenile delinquents, using a strange analogy about a puppy to illustrate his pointy. His character, Dubois says of the 20th century: “that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense…half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry.”
It is easy to forget he is writing in the relatively placid USA of the 1950s. Heinlein may not have literally been a fascist, but he certainly had tendencies in that direction. Had he lived to see it, he may not have liked the implication that the society in the film version was fascistic, but it seems unlikely he’d have disagreed with much about how the society functioned in the film.
On the plus side, the book shows few obvious signs of racism at all. This is reasonably unusual for an American book of the mid-20th century and very much to Robert A Heinlein’s credit.
THE RETURN OF RICO
The years rolled by. Robert Heinlein’s status as an author steadily increased. By the time of his death in 1988, the man behind Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was regularly ranked as one of the “Big Three” best English language science fiction authors alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. The year 1978, meanwhile, had seen a teenaged Sarah Brightman release the single, ‘I’m In Love With A Starship Trooper’ with Hot Gossip. The following year saw The VCs debut in British comic, 2000AD. Unlike the pop song and as he freely admitted, Gerry Finley-Day’s strip clearly owed a lot to Heinlein’s novel, Starship Troopers.
In the 1990s, a script entitled Bug Hunt At Outpost Nine began to circulate. The script was similar enough to Heinlein’s 1959 book that a decision was to buy the rights and adapt it directly. Paul Verhoeven, the man behind the original science-fiction blockbusters, Robocop and Total Recall was hired to direct.
TOTAL FREEFALL
Although not a flop, Starship Troopers underperformed at the box office. Had it been a success, it might well have become a major movie franchise. This may yet happen there is serious talk of a reboot and a script has been written. As it is, there are sequels (see below) but none made it to US cinema screens.
As it is, 25 years on the film looks better now than it did at the time. It’s true the acting is sometimes ropey – witness Denise Richards’ sudden dramatic recovery from apparent serious injury in the film’s closing scenes – but the film’s depiction of a militaristic American national security state anticipates the struggles of the next decade (the US not fighting Arachnids but Iraqis) and the arguably fascistic tendencies of the Trump Administration (2017-21).
As Paul Verhoeven says: “It’s a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, ‘Are these people crazy?’
BOX OUT: HEROES, MARAUDERS AND TRAITORS..
At last! All those spin-offs and sequels in full…
Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles (1998-1999): A 36-part CGI animated TV series. Paul Verhoeven was executive producer and featuring characters (although not the voices) from the film such as Johnny and Dizzy. Ended after being beset with bugs…er… I mean production problems.
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004). TV film sequel scripted by the original film’s screenwriter Edward Neumeier (who also wrote Robocop). Richard Burgi, later of Desperate Housewives, stars as Captain V.J Dax. Two-word review: it’s bad.
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) Casper Van Dien returns as Rico in this straight to DVD effort directed by Neumeier. Perhaps slightly better than Hero of the Federation, but not by much.
Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017) Japanese computer animated films. Surprisingly, Van Dien and Dina Meyer both reprise their roles from the 1997 film in the second of these, Traitors of Mars.
Stand down Margaret: The Princess (Lesley Manville) faces up to the truth
Did you know the Queen’s sister once very nearly married James Bond?
Well, okay, that didn’t exactly happen. But in this episode, the Queen’s younger sister, Princess Margaret (the brilliant Lesley Manville) meets up with her first love, retired equerry, Group Captain Peter Townsend. And he’s now played by Timothy Dalton, who once famously played 007. You see what I mean? Dalton was, in fact, still officially cast as James Bond in 1992 the very year this episode was set. For all that matters.
It’s all quite poignant. As depicted in The Crown: Season 1, the official refusal to allow the young Princess and the divorced Group Captain (then played by Vanessa Kirby and Coupling star Ben Miles: both seen here in flashback) effectively wrecked poor old Margaret’s life. He went on to marry someone else, happily and successfully. She married too: disastrously, leaving her bitter, boozy and resentful. However, here they get to meet one final time. This apparently did happen but not in quite the way it happens here. Margaret is left shaken not stirred as he woos the living daylights out of her (apologies).
There’s some more dramatic licence here: we see Townsend listening to Margaret being interviewed by Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs as if this occurred, like the rest of the episode in 1992. In fact, as all true BBC Radio 4 fans will know, that particular episode was broadcast in 1981. Plomley died in 1985, in fact, so it is rather surprising to see him still alive seven years’ later.
Anyway, it becomes clear there is still some lingering tension between the Queen (Imelda Staunton) and Margaret over the issue although this all seems to be resolved by the end of the episode. Lesley Manville is great as ever as Margaret. You have to wonder if she was ever considered as a possible option to play the Queen herself
Talking of which, the Queen has a lot on her plate this time. Royal divorces are like buses. You wait ages for one and then three come along at once. First, Anne (Claudia Harrison) wants to remarry after her divorce. This provokes anguished complaint from Margaret. If she can do it, why couldn’t I? In truth, the situations are not actually identical. Anne is the daughter of the Queen not her sister. Anne is also the divorced one in this instance, not her proposed husband. Margaret has also now been permitted to get divorced herself and could presumably remarry if she wished. Margaret also was given the option of marrying Townsend if she was prepared to relinquish all claims on the throne. That said, none of these points are brought up here and Margaret is certainly justified in feeling aggrieved. For the record, Anne’s second marriage to Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence has now lasted for thirty years. It is the most enduring of any of the six marriages entered into by the children of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Next up, the now disgraced Prince Andrew (James Murray) announces his marriage to the toe-sucking Fergie is over (no, not the football manager or the one from the Black Eyed Peas). Worst of all, the once and future king, Charles (Dominic West) confirms his marriage is over too. Then Windsor Castle burns down. If the 1990s was the worst decade of the Queen’s reign, then 1992 was the worst year. Perhaps of her entire life.
This prompts the famous Annus Horribilis speech in which the Queen admits that 1992’s been as Francis of Assisi might have put it “a complete and utter shitshow”. The Queen Mother (Marion Bailey) objects to the speech: in a touching scene Philip (Jonathan Pryce) and the Queen defend each other. None of the conversation apparently really happened. It doesn’t really matter: the speech undeniably marked a shift away from the stiff upper lipped attitudes of the past towards the “I feel your pain” approach of the post-Diana era.
It’s that man again: Di (Elizabeth Debicki) meets Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw)
One of the fun things about The Crown is that you never know when or where each episode is going to start from. You would sort of expect each show is going to start with a caption reading ‘Buckingham Palace, 1991’ or something predictable like that. But, in practice, it’s just as likely to read, ‘Berlin, 1940,’ ‘Amsterdam, 1664,’ or ‘The Planet Osios IV, Alpha Centauri, 8162.’ (I’m exaggerating a little here. Very few episodes of The Crown are actually set in Deep Space).
This time, we open in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1946. Where is this heading? Alex Jennings makes a welcome return cameo appearance as a visiting middle-aged Duke of Windsor before we realise this is The Crown’s introduction to the crazy world of the Al-Fayed family. We witness the birth of Dodi and as the years roll by, we witness his over-sexed father Mohamed’s attempts to establish himself in British society and the resistance he encounters due to a combination of genuine doubts about his character and the usual snobbery and racism. We see him (well played by Salim Daw) buying Harrods and his and Dodi’s (Khalid Abdalla) often overlooked successes within the British film industry. According to this, they actually watched the filming of the famous opening of Chariots of Fire, a sequence once memorably described by Roddy Doyle as “a bunch of tossers running across a beach.”
We also learn of Mohamed’s apparent obsession with the by then deceased ex-King Edward VIII. He employs Sydney Johnson (Jude Akuwudike) a former black valet to the onetime monarch and see him buy Edward and Wallis’s former home. All true enough apparently. In real life, Mohamed Al-Fayed is now 93. I wonder what he makes of all this?
Anyway, later he attempts to meet the Queen (Imelda Staunton) at a racecourse but is charmed by Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) instead. He likes to be called “Mou Mou.” Dodi meets her briefly for the first time too although it’s not quite the thunderbolt moment we might have expected. Dodi says little to her and Di doesn’t really seem to notice him. This is the only time they meet during this series of The Crown.
Di another day: The Princess (Elizabeth Debicki) spills the beans.
Bad news for fans of Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II: she’s barely in this episode at all, appearing only fairly briefly at the start and again towards the end. She is, for the most part, Queen Unseen. Queen but not heard.
Never mind: instead, we get lots about Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and old Phillip (Jonathan Pryce). Diana is hanging out a lot with her fried, Dr. James Colhurst (Oliver Chris) who acts as an intermediary between her and author, Andrew Morton (Andrew Steele) as she provides first hand material for his sensational warts-and-all biography of her, Diana: Her True Story.
The Duke of Edinburgh, meanwhile, is indulging his love of carriage-riding with family friend, Lady Penny Knatchbull (Truman Show actress, Natascha McElhone). Yes, you heard me: carriage riding. Apparently, this isn’t just something people in 1820 used to do, but a genuine hobby which rich people like to do today: restoring and then riding about in old carriages. Each to their own, I suppose.
But hang on a mo! Lady Penny is much younger than the old Duke and very attractive. Does the Queen not mind about this? Well, fear not, it all seems to be perfectly innocent. The two do achieve a genuine sense of intimacy, but not in a rude way. In a sudden burst of story, Penny does reveal to Philip what Di’s been up to. Philip is annoyed and arranges to meet with Diana and gives her a friendly warning. Don’t rock the boat, he says. And, for once, he doesn’t mean the Royal Yacht, Britannia.
But it’s too late to cancel the book now and anyway Diana doesn’t want to. This seems to mark the point where Diana goes rogue.
Live and let Di: The Prince and Princess (Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki) go on fighting the Cold War.
It’s 1991 and the political situation is very, very different from how it is today, in November 2022.
Hard as it is to imagine now but back in 1991, Britain had been under the same Conservative government for twelve long years. I know, right? With the economy slipping into economic recession, the Tories had forced out their unpopular woman leader and replaced her with the man who until recently had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. The new Prime Minister was the youngest one so far of the entire century. So, as you can see: nothing like the current state of affairs at all.
But never mind all that, where’s the Queen?
Well, the series opens with a supposed bit of newsreel footage showing the Queen attending a ceremony marking the commissioning of the Royal Yacht Britannia back in 1957. Older readers will remember that for the first decade of her reign, the young Queen was played by the actress Claire Foy and this is the case here. The flashback ends with Foy’s Queen staring, horrified into the middle distance as if she has foreseen the images which appear in the next scene where she has transformed into Imelda Staunton. We first see Staunton’s monarch enduring the banal necessities of a routine medical examination. We are now in the 1990s and like Staunton herself, the sovereign is now supposed to be in her mid-sixties.
Of course, we already know the real problem isn’t with the Queen herself (spoiler alert: she lives for another 31 years) but with her children, three of whom are about to divorce, almost simultaneously. A frisky Princess Anne (Claudia Harrison) is already eyeing up the local talent while Charles (Dominic West) is doing his best to preserve the public face of his desperately unhappy marriage to the much-loved Princess Diana. Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki does a great job of replacing the also excellent Emma Corrin in this challenging role, often displaying a remarkable physical resemblance to the late Princess of Wales. But by this point, the marriage is clearly already doomed, wrecked by Charles’s affair with Camilla and by the fact they obviously have absolutely nothing in common.
The onetime Trainspotting actor, Jonny Lee Miller plays Britain’s Prime Minister, John Major. Major mostly sits quietly while lots of people talk at him in this episode. It is not really made clear whether this is because he is supposed to be naturally inscrutable or because he is keeping quiet because he senses he is out of his depth. Prince Charles, in this, seems to be plotting to encourage the Queen to abdicate and waffles vaguely and attempting to draw vague parallels with the decision to replace the ageing sixty-something Thatcher with the male forty-something Major. Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) typically attempts to embarrass Major socially. Diana and the Queen are more polite to him. Sadly, there is no repeat of the scene in the Chris Morris comedy, The Day Today, in which the Queen and Major have a full-blown fight during their weekly audience together.
Happy birthday, Harrison Ford! The Hollywood legend is eighty years’ old as of July 13th 2022. Here are some ideas as to how he might have spent the day…
10am: Harrison wakes. Calista is already up and away. Ford resumes work on his draft script for Witness II: Back On The Wagon.
10.30am: Morning stroll. Ford spots Tom Selleck standing outside his house. For a laugh, he decides to shout: “Hey, mister! Were you Indiana Jones?” When Selleck turns round, looking confused, he says, “No! I didn’t think so!” and walks off chuckling to himself.
11.30am: Back at home, Ford is bored. He wonders about recreating the famous boulder scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. He pushes one of Calista’s exercise balls down the stairs experimentally and almost hits the cat.
12.30: After lunch, Ford decides to wind up Selleck again. “Magnum! MAGNUM!” He shouts. When Selleck responds, Ford waves a Magnum Ice Cream at him and says, “You should try one! They’re great!” Selleck shakes his fist at him.
1pm: On returning home, Ford is disappointed to find the Magnum has now melted so much, he can no longer eat it. This is a shame as it was a Double Caramel and they only have a Dark Chocolate left in the freezer, which he’s less keen on. He has one anyway.
1.30pm: Ford subjects the cat to a routine Voight-Kampff test to see if he’s a replicant or not.
2pm: Results! There is only a 17% chance the cat is a replicant but a 79% chance it is a lesbian. The cat also seems to be allergic to cats.
2.30pm: Ford calls Calista at the office and asks how Fish and the Biscuit are doing and if there are any cool cases happening today. Calista reminds him patiently that she is not a Boston lawyer but a professional stage and screen actress. Ford asks to speak to Lucy Liu instead. Calista hangs up.
7.30pm: Ford prank calls Selleck and pretends to be Steven Spielberg inviting him to take part in Indiana Jones V on a day he knows he isn’t actually available.
8pm: The doorbell rings. It is Selleck! And he looks angry. Ford panics, sneaks out the back and gets into his plane. We see the plane driving past the sunset along the ground at high speed as Selleck chases behind it on foot occasionally firing a gun at it until the plane crashes into the conservatory.
According to some accounts, the current release Jurassic World: Dominion might very well represent the final faltering step in the popular movie saga which began so strongly with the classic Jurassic Park back in 1993. In truth, ending the Jurassic series now might well prove to be the best decision, But, just in case, anyone does make the brave and perhaps foolhardy decision to resurrect this dormant movie franchise, here are some potential film titles which have not been used yet…
As yet another version of his 1957 classic, The Midwich Cuckoos arrives on Sky Max starring Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley, Chris Hallam takes a look at past attempts to adapt the work of science fiction author, John Wyndham (1903-69) to the screen…
ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN INFINITY MAGAZINE IN 2019
In the land of the blind…
It is one of the most dramatic openings to any novel of the 20th century.
We join the narrator, Bill Masen as he wakes up one morning in hospital following a routine eye operation. The operation has been a success, but soon after removing his protective bandages, Masen realises that something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. It quickly becomes clear that the staff and patients of the hospital have all, aside from him, been struck suddenly and simultaneously blind. Worse, as he slowly ventures outside, he comes to recognise an even more horrifying truth: London, Britain and indeed, it emerges, the entire planet has been similarly afflicted. The eyesight of almost the entire human race has been irreparably damaged, failing largely simultaneously only hours after witnessing a sudden spectacular unexpected astronomical display in the sky, the night before. Only a few exceptions, such as Bill whose eyes were safely bandaged (much to his frustration) during the display, are left with their eyesight intact. Humanity has been reduced to a grim, shuffling, sightless mass by the catastrophe. It soon becomes clear: mankind is doomed. Particularly, as a lethal man-made race of giant, walking plants lies in wait, ready to take its place as the dominant species on the Earth.
So, begins John Wyndham’s classic 1951 novel, The Day of the Triffids. The novel was a huge success both at the time and in the years since, for example, making it onto the BBC’s Big Read list of the nation’s most popular novels more than fifty years later.
Wyndham’s opening directly inspired novelist Alex Garland when he penned the screenplay to Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic 2002 film, 28 Days Later. The film’s early scenes are reminiscent of the earlier book with coma victim Jim (Cillian Murphy) waking up to discover an eerily abandoned city of London (Director Boyle created the “empty city” effect simply by filming early in the morning. His main problem was preventing wayward nightclubbers from wandering into shot). In 2010, Frank Darabont deployed similar tactics as wounded police officer, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) discovers a similar catastrophe after a hospital stay in the first episode of the long-running US TV series, The Waking Dead. The series was itself based on an earlier graphic novel.
Both of these 21st century stories dealt with a world overrun by zombies. In Wyndham’s book, the planet is stalked by a different foe, the Triffids: giant man-made, walking killer plants. Already in existence before the disaster having been conceived as a botched Cold War attempt to resolve post-war food shortages, the new world order provides the Triffids with the perfect opportunity to have their day in the sun. They are equipped with lethal stings which they now deploy to good effect on the suddenly very vulnerable, newly blind human population. Our hero, Bill, a biologist, was indeed temporarily blinded by just such a sting while working on a Triffid farm, giving him the eye-injury, which ironically ultimately spared him suffering a worse fate, alongside nearly everyone else.
Later it is strongly suggested the surprise “meteor shower” which blinded the world may in fact have been the result of a Cold War germ warfare experiment released by satellite (satellites still being a futuristic notion in 1951). The light display may have been unleashed accidentally by either side with calamitous results. With the blind majority either starving or being gradually picked off by Triffifds, Bill and the few other remaining sighted are left to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile, Triffid-filled world.
Wyndham’s world
Success came relatively late in life for John Benyon Harris.
The son of a barrister, he had been born in 1903 and had enjoyed a variety of careers including farming, law, advertising and the civil service. He had also been involved in the Normandy invasion in 1944. But despite this, it’s hard not to feel he was kept afloat by his family’s money, with his novelist brother seen as more of a success than he was himself.
Arthur C. Clarke felt Wyndham’s social background was something of a flaw, robbing him of the financial desperation which for many writers helps nurture inspiration.
“John was a very nice guy,” the 2001 author later wrote. “but unfortunately suffered from an almost fatal defect for a fiction writer: he had a private income. If he hadn’t, I’m sure he’d have written much more.”
This is probably unfair. Wyndham had numerous short stories and a few books published throughout his life from the 1920s onwards, some with titles as intriguing as Jizzle (1949), Tyrant and Slave-Girl on Planet Venus (1951), Spheres Of Hell (1933 ) and (ahem) The Third Vibrator (1933).
But it was only in his late forties writing as John Wyndham for the first time that he achieved his first major success, after deciding to fuse two story ideas into one. One story was about a world suddenly struck blind. The other was about a race of killer plants.
The release of The Day of the Triffids marked the beginning of a golden period for Wyndham.
The year 1953 saw the release of The Kraken Wakes, which saw the world again imperilled, this time by an alien force which establishes itself under the sea, having dropped into the ocean from space. This time humanity is threatened by the aliens’ decision to use the Earth’s environment against it, flooding the planet by melting the polar ice caps. The book had a slightly different ending in the US where it was called Out of the Deeps.
The late Brian Aldiss described Wyndham’s works as “cosy catastrophes”. In reality, there is little cosy about any of them. If anything, The Kraken Wakes has grown more resonant in the decades since as humanity has become aware of the growing threat to our way of life by the very real threat of man-made global warming.
Wyndham moved dramatically forward in time for The Chrysalids (1955) which saw a society in thrall to Christian fundamentalism, following what appears to have been a nuclear holocaust centuries before. This event has come to be known as the Tribulation. Conventional wisdom has it that God is likely to unleash further retribution on the populace, unless the occasional mutations occur within some people are not exposed and driven out. In reality, of course, the mutations are the consequence of the nuclear war, rather than the cause of it. When a group of children start developing such mutations – notably telepathic powers – they soon find themselves in a struggle for their lives.
Psychic children also play a vital role in Wyndham’s next novel, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) in which a race of all powerful hyper-intelligent children come to dominate a small, ordinary mid-20th century English village. The circumstances around the children’s conception are strange indeed. Every woman in Midwich simultaneously falling pregnant following a bizarre 24 hour incident when the entire village (and, indeed, anyone who tried to enter it) fell unconscious). The resulting children, all of whom seem remarkably similar and Aryan-looking, soon show signs of malevolent behaviour, further fuelling suspicions that they are the product of some alien breeding experiment in which the women of Midwich were deployed unwittingly as vessels.
The Outward Urge (1959) marked something of a departure for Wyndham, not least because according to the cover, it was produced with another author, Lucas Parkes. In truth, Parkes was just another name for John Wyndham himself: he had already used this pseudonym in the past. The use of the name here does reflect a change of course for Wyndham, in this book which details the “history” of the world between 1994 and 2194. The story is told from the perspective of the Troon family who witness the continued stand-off between the west and the Soviet union culminating in nuclear war in the mid-21st century, resulting in a new world order dominated by the new superpowers, Australia and Brazil. In reality, of course, the USSR collapsed peacefully in 1991, an event Wyndham would have done very well to predict even if he had written the book in 1984, let alone 1959. The book owes something to H.G Wells’ The Shape of Things To Come (1933). Wyndham was a big admirer of the earlier science fiction pioneer.
Wyndham grew less prolific in his final years. Trouble With Lichen (1960), though not especially strong story-wise raises many interesting questions about the implications of a discovery which stands to substantially increase the duration of the natural human life-span.
Chocky (1968), meanwhile, saw a family jeopardised over concerns that what initially appeared to be their teenaged son’s imaginary friend is in fact a hyper-intelligent alien life force which is communicating with him telepathically. The books Web and Plan for Chaos (the first written around the time of The Day of the Triffids), were both published posthumously.
By the time of his death in 1969, John Wyndham had grown used to seeing his works adapted for TV, radio and cinema. This process has continued, with mixed results. The Day of the Triffids has spawned one not especially fateful film, a surprisingly compelling early 1980s BBC series and a further not very distinguished mini-series, featuring Eddie Izzard, a decade ago. The Midwich Cuckoos, meanwhile, became the monochrome cinema classic, Village of the Damned. In the 1990s, the film received the distinction of a parody on The Simpsons. The same decade also witnessed a remake by Halloween director, John Carpenter. A generation of schoolchildren were also collectively traumatised when three series of the deeply disturbing Chocky appeared on Children’s ITV in the mid-eighties.
More is sure to come. Fifty years after his death, John Wyndham’s legacy extends far beyond the actual books and short stories he left behind. His overall influence on others is impossible to measure. He is a giant of 20th century British science fiction.
World of Wyndham: A Timeline
Intro: His life and times, on page and screen…
1903: John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris is born in Dorridge, Warwickshire
1928-1936: Writing either as John Benyon or John Harris, Wyndham pens numerous detective and sci-fi stories
1951: The Day of the Triffids is published to huge success. The name “John Wyndham” is used for the first time
1953: The Kraken Wakes, a similarly near-apocalyptic tale follows
1955: The Chrysalids
1956: The Seeds of Time, a short story collection by Wyndham appears
1957: The Midwich Cuckoos is published
1959: The Outward Urge is published
1960: Midwich Cuckoos is filmed as Village of the Damned by Wolf Rilla starring George Sanders and Barbara Shelley
The Trouble With Lichen published
1961: Another short story collection, Consider Her Ways and Other Stories is released
1963: Film version of Day of the Triffids. It is directed by Steve Sekely and stars Howard Keel
Children of the Damned, a film sequel to Village of the Damned is released directed by Anton M. Leader, starring Ian Hendry
1968: Chocky is released this year
1969: Wyndham dies in Petersfield, Hampshire. He is 65
1981: UK TV version of Day of the Triffids starring John Duttine
1984: TV version of Chocky. Followed by Chocky’s Children (1985) and Chocky’s Challenge (1986)
1995: John Carpenter remakes Village of the Damned. It stars Christopher Reeves, Kirstie Alley and Mark Hamill
2009: Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson and Eddie Izzard features in a new Day of the Triffids TV series
“Isn’t it funny that a series called the Carry On films has stopped?” jokes the comedian, Tim Vine. They in fact stopped a very long time ago now – in 1978 – but the public fascination with them has never ceased. From the gentle but jolly black-and-white National Service comedy, Carry On Sergeant in 1958 to the abysmal Carry On Emmannuelle twenty years later, a total of thirty Carry Ons films were produced. The early films such as the most second and most commercially successful release, Carry On Nurse (1958) were written by Norman Hudis and tended to poke gentle fun at national institutions, for example, the Army, hospitals, police force and schools. A big change came when Talbot Rothwell took over as screenwriter for the the 007 spoof, Carry On Spying (1964), a development which coincided with the arrival of Barbara Windsor on the cast and the move into colour. Carry On Spying in which Windsor played Daphne Honeybutt was the last one to appear in black-and-white.
From that point onwards, the films became less innocent and more smutty. Characters started having names like Dr. Tinkle and Gladstone Screwer and the films were crammed with all the sexual innuendoes (“Ooh! What a lovely pair!” “Once a week is enough for any man|!”) which they’ve become notorious for. On the plus side, they also became notably more ambitious, parodying everything from historical epics (Carry On Cleo, the most highly regarded of the series or Carry On Up The Khyber) to the Hammer Horror series (Carry On Screaming) with mostly enjoyable results, while always remaining cheap to produce.
As the 1970s began, however, things took a turn for the worse as the changing social mores of the ever more permissive society pushed the films into the gutter. Carry On Henry (1971) was good fun and the contemporary Carry On Camping (1969) – famous for the scene in which Barbara Windsor’s top bursts off during an exercise session – was one of the most successful of the whole lot. But by the mid-70s, the quality had declined to such an extent that most of the regular cast (Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw) had abandoned the whole enterprise. Those familiar faces were, of course, a key reason why the films had done so well. By 1992, with many of the originals either dead (Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Peter Butterworth, Charles Hawtrey) or unwilling to be in it (Windsor, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Bernard Bresslaw and others), the disastrous attempt to revive the franchise with Carry On Columbus with a new cast of rising stars such as Julian Cary, Tony Slattery and Martin Clunes was doomed from the start. Although it doesn’t gloss over the dark side of the series (the actors’ terrible pay, the miserable off-screen personal lives endured by Williams and Hawtrey), Caroline Frost’s book remains an affectionate portrait of a mostly fondly remembered national institution.
Book review: Carry On Regardless, by Caroline Frost. Published by: Pen and Sword. Available : now
This week saw Guillermo del Toro’s latest film, Nightmare Alley receive an Academy award nomination for Best Picture. An opportune moment then to reflect on the Mexican director’s quarter century or so as one of the most visually creative filmmakers around. British film writer Ian Nathan has focused on a number of the world’s most interesting movie men in these beautifully presented and intelligent coffee table books before for example,. Quentin Tarantino, the Coens and Tim Burton (all reviewed in the past on here). Now del Toro, the man behind Pan’s Labyrinth and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water gets similar treatment. Published late in 2021, there is only a little about Nightmare Alley and the forthcoming Pinocchio which del Toro has produced for Netf;ix here yet but his full body of work to date is otherwise covered thoroughly.
Del Toro’s career has thus far been characterised by an impressive fusion of fantasy and horror. Sometimes this results in commercial but usually interesting films like Blade II, the first two Hellboy films and science fiction beat ’em up, Pacific Rim. On other occasions, it has led to other intriguing offerings such as post-Spanish Civil War ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone and perhaps his two most famous films, Pan’s Labyrinth and aquatic monster movie, The Shape of Water. Although less obviously box office friendly on paper, these have captivated large audiences too.
Filled with visually arresting images from del Toro’s career, this is yet another fascinating insight from Ian Nathan into the life and work of one of the early 21st century’s most imaginative and innovative filmmakers.
Guillermo Del Toro – The Iconic Filmmaker and his Work, by Ian Nathan. Published by: White Lion Publishing. 2021.
The pandemic has turned many comedians into authors.
It’s perfectly understandable. With many of the usual avenues of expression closed off to them, the lockdowns have provided a golden opportunity for many comics with a story to tell to finally put their words on paper. For many, it was either that or start a podcast. Little wonder then that, the Christmas 2021 books market is overflowing with comedy biographies. Harry Hill’s new autobiography is a weightier tome than his previous literary works, Harry Hill’s Whopping Great Joke Book, Harry Hill’s Fun Book or Harry Hill’s Bumper Book of Bloopers. But Fight! is a great read and I’d actually rank it alongside Bob Mortimer’s …And Away! as one of the very best comedy-themed books of the year.
As Harry himself admits, however, he is not for everyone. Chris Tarrant and Keeley Hawes are amongst those famous names who Harry has encountered who have not taken to his unique sense of humour. I myself have often been amazed how even during the long reign of Harry Hill’s TV Burp as one of the most consistently funny shows on British TV of the 2000s, a surprising number of people, many of whom I would have otherwise said had a good sense of humour suddenly became insufferably snooty whenever Harry’s name was mentioned. If you are one of those people, chances are, neither this book or even this review will be for you. Kindly go elsewhere.
For the rest of us, this is a treat, often funny, particularly in its early stages and revealing. Harry, after all, has a story to tell.
Today, with his winged collar, NHS spectacles and distinctly eccentric appearance, Harry Hill’s comic persona although well-established is hard to define. He looks like a middle-aged Bash Street Kid. Back in the 1970s, he was Matthew Hall, a bright young teenager busily engaged in developing smoke bombs and other homemade explosives with his other bored, science-obsessed school friends in rural Kent. “My interest in science was largely a by-product of pyromania,” he admits now, but it led directly to a medical career, something he abandoned only in the early 1990s as his love for performing live comedy took over. As Harry himself might reflect, “what were the chances of that happening eh?”
His accounts of his medical career make fascinating reading. Although he does not seem to be one of those comedians with an obvious dark side, his experiences as a doctor (including an excruciating sequence in which he makes a hash of informing a young husband that his wife had died unexpectedly) along with the premature deaths of a number of his old friends have obviously given him an appreciation of the fact that life is short.
He has also clearly retained a treasure trove of memories and physical relics of his comedy career. It is interesting to learn that he often collaborated with the likes of Alastair McGowan and Stewart Lee in the 1990s: not names one would obviously associate with him now. By the end of the decade, he was a familiar face on Channel 4. Between 2001 and 2012, he enjoyed his biggest ever success with over 160 episodes of ITV’s Saturday evening “sideways look at the week’s television,” TV Burp. The build-up to the show’s commercial breaks during which a staged fight between two often very surreal rivals, incidentally, explains the book’s title. Such showdowns included; “the Archbishop of Canterbury versus the Footballers’ Wives,” “a paw versus a claw” and “who is the best vegetarian: Heather Mills or Hitler?” During the last of these skirmishes, Harry can be clearly heard shouting, “come on, Hitler!”
In the end, the strain of trawling through hours of often terrible TV to find a few nuggets of comedy gold proved too much for Harry and the other writers and the show ended. Nothing else he has done has ever proven quite as successful. Harry proves unafraid to mention his lesser successes, which include Alien Fun Capsule (essentially a less popular version of TV Burp), Harry Hill’s Tea Time (an enjoyable but little seen Sky One show) or the fun but not especially commercial 2013 Harry Hill Movie featuring Julie Walters, Sheridan Smith and pop rock band, The Magic Numbers.
He also does not shy away from mentioning his few outright failures either: these include his short-lived X-Factor-themed musical, I Can’t Sing and disastrous stints presenting Capital Radio, an attempt to revive Matthew Kelly’s Stars In Their Eyes or the filming of a never-aired pilot of an unpromising Beadle’s About style prank show. That said, his failure to mention anything about the character Professor Branestawm or his sixteen series narrating home video clips show, You’ve Been Framed! (as far as I noticed anyway) is more surprising, however, particularly as neither of these were obvious failures. He’s has a busy life: perhaps he just forgot to mention them?
Ultimately, it is a book and a career to be proud of. Now 57, what does the future hold for the onetime Doctor Matthew Hall?
Well, there’s only one way to find out…
Book review: Fight! – Thirty Years Not Quite At The Top, by Harry Hill. Published by: Hodder Studio. Available: now.
Having once been told (wrongly) that he would never walk again during a childhood bout of polio, as an adult he directed The Godfather, the ultimate family saga and one of the greatest films ever made. Following this up with two more 1970s classics, The Conversation and at time when movie sequels were still unusual, The Godfather Part II. His all-consuming ambition almost overwhelmed him while filming Apocalypse Now, however. Although ultimately a success, the production became almost as sprawling and chaotic as the Vietnam War itself, very nearly destroying both his marriage and his career in the process. Quieter and smaller films have followed since. The Outsiders. Rumblefish. The Rainmaker.
Then, there was the daughter, Sofia. Overcoming the widespread criticism which surrounded her acting performance (stepping in for Winona Ryder) in her father’s underwhelming Godfather Part III in 1990, Sofia blew discerning audiences away at the end of the decade with her impressive directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides. Soon after that she really made her mark with Lost in Translation, a film which remains one of the most acclaimed American films of the 21st century so far and made a star of the then still teenaged Scarlett Johansson. Since then, her record has been more mixed: Marie Antoinette completely divided audiences, The Bling Ring generally underwhelmed them, The Beguiled impressed the arthouse crowd while never attracting box office numbers.
This is mainly their story but it is also the tale of the other Coppolas. Talia Shire, Francis’s sister who played Connie in The Godfather films and Adrian, the love of boxer Rocky Balboa’s life, in the Rocky films. She is the mother of director and actor, Robert Schwartzman as well as the actor and musician, Jason Schwartzman, best known for his roles in Wes Anderson films notably Rushmore as well as in his cousin Sofia’s Marie Antoinette as well as Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and many other films and TV shows. Then there is rising star, Gia Coppola, the promising young director of Palo Alto. Her father, Gian-Carlo (the son of Francis and sister of Sofia) was tragically killed in a speedboat accident while Gia was still in the womb in 1987.
Not to forget, Nicolas Coppola, the son of Francis’s late brother, August, now known as the Oscar-winning actor, Nicolas Cage. Initially starting out in his uncle’s 1980s films Rumblefish and Peggy Sue Got Married, Cage (who took his adopted surname from the comic character, Luke Cage) is sometimes erratic (he has been married five times forging a familial link between the Coppolas, the Presleys and the Arquette acting dynasty) but has enjoyed enormous success working alongside the Coens, David Lynch and John Woo.
This is a fascinating account of a family whose own saga has become inextricably linked to the unfolding story of American cinema.
Book review: The Coppolas, by Ian Nathan. Published by: Palazzo Editions.
Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson: by Pat Cadigan; William Gibson. Published by: Titan Books.
There is quite a lot of backstory here. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…
To start with: this isn’t a screenplay. It is a novel. It is a novel written by Pat Cadigan based on a screenplay which was written but not used for the 1992 film, Alien 3. The original screenplay was written by the distinguished science fiction author, William Gibson who is best known for his Hugo award-winning 1984 cyberpunk novel,, Neuromancer. But his script for Aliens 3 bore no resemblance to one used for the finished film.
On this evidence, it seems a shame Gibson’s version was never put into action. For the actual Aliens 3 (despite being directed by a young David Fincher who later oversaw the two classics, Seven and Fight Club) was a disappointing failure. This is a shame because the first two Alien films, Ridley Scott’s chilling Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s action-packed Aliens (1986) remain two of the finest science fiction films ever made. But no good Alien films have been made in the years since. Perhaps you’ve only ever seen the first two movies? If so, take my advice and stop there.
Incidentally, this volume would sorely benefit from the inclusion of some sort of introduction explaining what exactly this is.
Unlike the aliens themselves, Alien 3 had a long gestation period. The Gibson screenplay was written early on, soon after Aliens (1986) had been released and proven to be a success. William Gibson’s story has a few strengths and weaknesses. On the plus side, it has a much better start than the actual Alien 3. This opened badly with the revelation that two of the survivors of the second film,, Newt and Corporal Hicks had been killed in an accident, a depressing and unsatisfactory outcome for viewers who had seen them live through and survive so much during James Cameron’s film. In this version, Hicks (portrayed by Michael Biehn in Aliens) and the android, Bishop (Lance Henriksen) both play a major role in the action. This is very welcome. More controversially, the franchise’s traditional heroine, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is very much pushed to the side lines here. Another weaker aspect, is the introduction of a futuristic version of the USSR, something which would already have seemed dated by the time the finished film came out in 1992, the USSR having collapsed the year before. It certainly looks dated now.
But overall, this remains an enjoyable mixture of science fiction and horror: Pat Cadigan, who wrote this prose version, is an accomplished and talented Hugo-award winning author herself. It would be easy to mock: “In space, no one can hear you yawn…” But, in truth, this a good novel in its own right and an intriguing footnote on the history of film, shedding light on a great cinematic What If…? which might so easily have been.
Chris Hallam's World View 