1967 - IRONSIDE, the TV movie pilot for the series.

The careers of some actors can take an interesting turn, case in point Raymond Burr.  Burr had entered into the movie business in the 1940's and carved out a career playing bad guys.  Probably his most notable role was as Lars Thorwald the wife killer in Rear Window.  Hitchcock with his usual perverse sense of humor had Burr made up to look like his first producer David Selznick who Hitchcock frequently clashed with while making Rebecca, Spellbound and The Paradine Case.  It should also be mentioned that Burr was cast as reporter Steve Martin in the American reedit of Godzilla.  This version of Godzilla was the film responsible for the popularity of the Godzilla character.

 In 1956 Burr moved to television where he was cast as Perry Mason in the long running legal series.  As with all TV series Perry Mason finally ended it's run in 1966.  Burr was now a popular television star which lead him to his next series Ironside the wheelchair bound detective.   The TV movie pilot showed up on Amazon Prime so I thought I would give it a look.  Ironside had Burr playing the chief of detectives of San Francisco who gets shot while on vacation.  Ironside survives the shooting but is left paralyzed. This doesn't stop him from getting back in the crime solving business. His first case being who shot him.  Ironside has a trio of helpers to assist him in solving crimes.  A by the book cop, a beautiful blonde policewoman and in a rather tasteless piece of casting a black guy who's job it is to push him around in a wheelchair.  The Ironside character is basically a reworking of Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock were stuck in a wheelchair.

 

Truth to tell when I watched this series in my very younger days the mysteries on the show were nothing special.  Then again there wasn't a whole lot of choice on what to watch on television in the 1960's since there were only three networks.   Raymond Burr had a great booming voice but he really hams it up as the tough detective who isn't going to let a little thing like the loss of his legs keep him from solving crimes every week.

Ironside the TV movie pilot is a typical Universal Studios pilot from the 1960's.  It was filmed mostly on the back lot, it's loaded with lots of B-movie and TV actors and overall is kind of a cheap looking production.  The mystery isn't really much of a mystery.  Viewing this movie was probably more an exercise in nostalgia if anything it's really kind of a mediocre movie.

The writers were Collier Young and Don Mankiewicz, the running time is 98 minutes. 

1959 - THE SCARFACE MOB, pilot for The Untouchables TV series

Desi Arnez of I Love Lucy fame was also a television producer besides being a band leader and the husband of Lucille Ball.  Arnez bought the rights to Elliot Ness's book The Untouchables and decided to make a two part television show about Ness's attempts to put away mob boss Al Capone in the 1930's.  Arnez hired Robert Stack to play Ness and character actor Neville Brand to play Capone

For a TV show from the 1950's Arnez didn't scrimp on the production values, the film has a fairly decent noir look.  Arnez hired Phil Karlson to direct.  Karlson was good at staging action and violence on relatively low budgets since he had been brought up in the world of B movie filmmaking.   The end result was a tense and violent television film which was considered fairly tough stuff for the 1950's TV audience.

 

Arnez hired Robert Stack to play tough guy federal agent Elliott Ness.  Stack adapted a monotone delivery that made him seem like he was going to blow at any moment.  In real life Elliott Ness after busting up many of Capone's bootlegging operations finally got Capone sent to prison on tax evasion  instead of running booze.

Not to overpraise this film but it's an entertaining gangster story.  You can see where it probably was an influence on the entertaining Brian DePalma remake.  Kevin Costner's performance certainly seems influenced by Robert Stack.  It's also fun to see character actor Keenan Wynn in a film

The film was written by Paul Monash, the running time is 99 minutes.

1974 - KILLDOZER!, the possessed bulldozer classic

 Deliriously goofy made for TV movie from the mid 1970's. The ABC network had something on their schedule called "The Movie of the Week."  Essentially they were low budget films that fit a 90 minute time slot on Tuesday nights.  The stories skewed heavily towards low rent science fiction and/or horror genre plots.  Killdozer! managed to cover both of these genres.

In brief, an alien entity comes down to earth and happens to crash on an island where a construction crew is building a landing strip.  The entity possesses a bulldozer which proceeds to kill the construction crew one at a time.  This film was clearly trolling in the same waters as Duel the made for TV classic that put Steven Spielberg on the map as a director to watch.  I would even venture to say that Stephen King in his B-movie classic Maximum Overdrive took a good long look at this film before he created that classic.

The movie has a to die for cast of television actors, Clint Walker uttering the immortal line "come and get me dozer," Carl Betz, Neville Brand and James Wainwright as the leads.  The film also includes two supporting players, a young Robert Urich, future star of the film Ice Pirates and James A Watson Jr, the only black guy in the cast so you know he's gonna get it right away.

 

The film lists Theodore Sturgeon a noted science fiction author as one of the screenwriters. Sturgeon had seen better assignments writing for the original Star Trek television series.  The director Jerry London was basically a TV guy who graduated to high class assignments like the miniseries Shogun, The Scarlet and the Black and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman to name just a few.  You have to give Jerry London credit, he manages to stage the death scenes for most of the cast in creative ways. The killer bulldozer moves at such an incredibly slow pace, it makes you wonder how nobody could stay out of it's way. 

 

Killdozer! was written by Ed MacKillop and Theodore Sturgeon, the running time is 76 minutes, 45 minutes of it are spent setting up this ridiculous but entertaining situation.  Killdozer! is on YouTube in a fairly decent copy.

1972 - PURSUIT, author Michael Crichton directs his first film

 Michael Crichton the doctor turned author was primarily known for the techno thrillers.  Kind of a mix of science fiction and the espionage genres.  Crichton had a successful career as a writer.  Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain were very popular.  He created the long running TV series  E.R.  At some point Crichton got it in his head that he wanted to direct.  Pursuit, based on one of his early novels called Binary was a modest made for TV film that was first time behind the camera.

Pursuit has a clever plot which is about a government agent tracking a rich right wing industrialist who appears to be planning a terrorist act during the Republican convention in San Diego. Crichton or whoever his casting director was put together a good cast.  Ben Gazzzara is the government agent, E. G. Marshall casting against type is the industrialist, Martin Sheen shows up in a small part and  "Dr No" himself, Joseph Wiseman is one of those scientist types who are basically around to clear up plot points for the audience.

 

Pursuit maintains interest basically by focusing on Crichton's narrative as the government starts to piece together Marshall's plan.  For a first effort behind the camera Crichton does okay.  As a film director he was always a little on the mediocre side.  Basically he was a point and shot kind of filmmaker. He lined up the actors and got the scenes filmed.  In fact Crichton's career behind the camera is really noting special from a visual standpoint, but there was no question he was good with clever stories, witness films like Westworld, Coma, Looker and The Great Train Robbery.  Although Runaway his out of control robot film is kind of stupid. 

 

Pursuit is a good story and has good actors pulling the film across the finish line in spite of indifferent direction. 

The screenplay was by Robert Dozier, the running time was 74 minutes.  The film has the usual breaks in the narrative where advertising was inserted during the network showing.

1990 - THE FLASH, pilot for the earlier TV series

With the release of the expensive 2023 superhero film called The Flash it's time to take a quick look at the TV pilot for a series that ran for 22 episodes in the early 1990's.  For a TV pilot and especially a TV pilot made almost 20 years ago,  this show had a fairly decent budget.  The creators of the series Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo were basically writers and producers of "B" movies such as the Trancers series, and Zone Troopers.  They had also worked in the video game and comic book industries so they brought a comic book sensibility to the series. Their one big credit was for Disney's film of The Rocketeer.

This pilot had an above average cast for a TV show,  Tim Thomerson, Richard Belzer, Mark Hamill and M. Emmet Walsh.  The lead role of The Flash was played by John Wesley Shipp who had spent a lot of time in the daytime soap opera world. Amanda Pays is his scientist/girlfriend partner who is there to support his superhero abilities,  a typically standard and thankless character for these kinds of shows.

 

The TV pilot is decent enough.   It's your standard superhero origin story. Scientist Barry Allen gets struck by lighting and gets weird chemicals dumped on him which turns him into the fastest man alive, blah blah blah. The pilot episode has The Flash learning about his new powers and taking on an evil motorcycle gang,  blah blah blah.  Frankly the story is nothing special but the speed running special effects and actions scenes are well done and hold up well.

 The Flash TV series probably hit at the wrong time, the superhero craze didn't really take off until around 2008 with the Marvel movies. 

 

Running time, 94 minutes, written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo.

1977 - SPECTRE, failed Gene Roddenberry pilot

This is a failed pilot from Gene Roddenbery the creator of Star Trek.  After the cancellation of Star Trek Roddenberry struggled with getting another TV series launched.  One of his ideas was to do a supernatural series with two protagonists taking on devils and demons and whatever each week.  This show was basically an update of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character with Robert Culp playing a paranormal investigator modeled on Holmes and Gig Young in the Dr. Watson part.

The TV pilot is generally diverting stuff mostly due to the cast and the director Clive Donner doing their best to move things along.  Anyway the plot is about the heir to a British family being menaced by some kind of demon who looks a lot like one of Star Trek's aliens aka kind of phony.  

 

There is an extended sequence with Gig Young being hit on by a group of sexy women which seems like a hold over from Roddenberry's film Pretty Maids All in a Row which probably could have been cut out of the script as it is not sexy or funny.

 Well anyway the film ends with one of those sacrifice the innocent victims on the alter of evil conventionally located under neath the British family's estate.  

 

I watched the European cut of this film which includes female nudity towards the end of the film.  Never ones to miss a buck, Hollywood studios would frequently release their TV films as actual films and insert some salacious stuff in them for the European audiences.

The running time is 98 minutes.

1984 - WET GOLD, is a young Brooke Shields in a swimming suit.

You know you're in trouble when it takes two nights to finish a film like this. Anyway, a 19 year old Brooke Shields probably at the peak of her beauty stars in what is basically a remake of The Treasure of Sierra Madre set in the Bahamas.  Brooke is a waitress with a fabulous wardrobe, particularly an assortment of swimming suits which she wears throughout the film. 

The film features Burgess Meredith in the Walter Huston role as the old guy who knows where there is a sunken boat full of gold bars.  Brooke and Burgess along with Brooke's no good boyfriend and a scuba diver head off to find the loot.  Naturally tension arises with Brooke dumping her boyfriend and falling for the scuba diver and as greed takes over the group violence arises.

 

But lets get this straight this is basically a girl watching film.  Brooke Shields looks fabulous but was always a very acting challenged young woman especially in her early career.  For the life of me I don't understand how Burgess Meredith got mixed up in this film.  I can only assume the chance to take a free trip to the Bahamas where the film was shot must have been the reason.

 I would honestly have to say this film is so inane and full of stock situations that it became somewhat of a chore to sit through. Even as a "girl watching" movie it leaves a lot to be desired.  Sure Brooke Shields looks great but every time she opens her mouth her lack of basic acting skills is more than apparent.  She's at her best when she is just laying on the boat sun tanning.

 

The film was written by David Sherwin who was associated with Lindsay Anderson of all people and Otis Jones.  The running time is 91 long minutes.

1989 - PETER GUNN, at first you don't suceed try again.

This is the pilot for a revival of the old Peter Gunn TV series from the late 1950's.  The writer/director Blake Edwards had gone to this well once before with a movie version of his old series called Gunn, with very mixed results.  Here Edwards plan was to revive the series for a 1980's audience

Peter Strauss takes up the role of Peter Gunn, Barbara Williams is his girlfriend/mistress Edie Hart.  Peter Jurasik is Peter Gunn's friend Lt. Jacoby who is basically in the story to provide Gunn with information that will move the plot along.  Edwards also cast his daughter Jennifer Edwards as Peter Gunn's ditsy secretary in a lot of pointless and rather tiresome attempts at humor.

If Edwards had cribbed a lot of his plot for the Gunn movie from his TV series, in this version he actually uses scenes from the Gunn movie in this TV pilot, this is getting a little confusing.

 

Peter Strauss is actually pretty good as Peter Gunn, Barbara Williams does the smoldering girlfriend part about as well as can be expected.  The plot is the old corrupt cops story line with Peter Gunn sorting out who is killing who. 

 I'll give Edwards credit in this version of Peter Gunn he went back to the original series's 1950's setting.  He also loaded enough action to keep the viewer watching.  However ABC decided not to pick up the pilot for a TV series.  There have been no more versions of Peter Gunn since.

The running time for this film is 90 minutes.

1966 - THE TIME TUNNEL, RENDEZVOUS WITH YESTERDAY, pilot episode for the series

 One of the greatest "12 year old boy" TV shows of the mid 1960's The Time Tunnel was a series created by producer Irwin Allen, which had a couple of scientists traveling through time meeting various historical personalities and having lots of improbable adventures.  The pilot for the series Rendezvous With Yesterday has all of the good and bad traits of an Irwin Allen production.

To begin with the actual set of The Time Tunnel, the tunnel itself is very cool.  The models and miniature work for the secret base called "Operation Tic Toc," in the pilot were up to a very high standard.  Irwin Allen also cast the show with lots of character actors such as Whit Bissell, Robert Colbert, James Darren and Lee Meriwether because there always has to be a woman in a TV series.  Allen also didn't skimp on the guest stars for the pilot episode, Gary Merrill, Michael Rennie and Susan Hampshire appear.  The pilot has the two scientists traveling back to the Titanic before it sank and trying to persuade the captain to avoid the infamous iceberg that the ship hit.  It's a decent enough story for the initial episode.

 

The conceit of this series was that Irwin Allen was able to use stock footage from the 20th Century studios vault as the scientists traveled through different times.  In this way he was able to give the series a rather epic look while not spending a whole lot of money.  In the case of Rendezvous With Yesterday, it's clear Allen was using stock footage from the 1953 film Titanic.

However the real star of this series was always the Time Tunnel set itself.  Sitting in front of their control panels the cast playing scientists rattles off lots of ridiculous science talk jargon involving the "image area, radiation baths," and other silly time travel mumble jumbo.  All of this is highly entertaining.

 

As the series went on Irwin Allen's propensity to start incorporating cheaper production values and lazy storytelling finally started to catch up with the series. Some of the later episodes are truely awful.  The series only lasted one season but amazingly filmed 30 episodes.

Harold Jack Bloom wrote the script for the pilot episode and the running time is about 53 minutes.

1968 -HAWAII FIVE-O - Original series, season one

 Of all the TV cop shows from the 1960's this is one of the few that stands out as being rather good.

Created by Leonard Freeman and starring Jack Lord.  The show had the advantage of being filmed entirely in the state of Hawaii.  This was no small accomplishment as the entertainment industry in Hawaii at the time was rather lacking for production facilities. In addition, virtually no one in the film crew had production experience, it was a build from the ground up television production.

In a way this worked to the advantage of the series.  Most of the episodes were shot on locations throughout Hawaii which gave the show the dual advantages of realism and a location that had not been really exploited to death by Hollywood. A lot of the actors in supporting and featured roles were actually natives.  

 

The show starred Jack Lord played the head of the elite police unit, Steve McGarrett.  This was an actor who was completely immersed in his part and dominated every scene that he was in.  James MacArthur a Disney film alumni took the part of Danny Williams, who was essentially Steve McGarrett's sidekick.  MacArthur was smart enough to know who was in charge and lasted 11 seasons.  After the producer Leonard Freeman died during season five, Lord essentially took over running the show.  Apparently he was a pretty demanding guy but he kept the series production standards  high for the entire 12 season run.

 

Story episode wise the demands of shooting 24 episodes resulted in the usual mix of good, indifferent and bad episodes.  Still many of the show's episodes hold up pretty well and as I stated before the Hawaiian locations are still a major asset for this series.

2001 - THE TICK, very funny superhero spoof

Ben Edlund's goofball superhero series is very funny and very weird.  Unfortunately it was just to weird for the television viewing audience.

This version of The Tick lasted only nine episodes but they are nine very funny episodes.  Edlund has such a warped vision of comic book superheros that once you watch the big blue avenger's clueless fight against evil and mostly past their prime super villains, it's hard to take another Marvel movie seriously.

The Tick and his crime fighting partner Arthur (dressed as either a bunny or a moth or something) are ably assisted by the Wonder Woman like Captain Liberty and the hilarious send up of the Batman character,  Batmanuel.

Edlund doesn't seem to have much luck finding a way for The Tick to get mainstream acceptance on TV.  However.  the character continues to bounce back so far in an animated series and another 2016 live action series that also failed with the public. I'm sure The Tick will turn up again.

The running time for this series is 198 minutes, Ben Edlund, primary writer for the series.

2013 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 9, the final season

The last season of HIMYM, is sort of a last hurrah for the cast and guest stars.  Almost everyone who appeared in the series takes a sort of bow. All of Ted's old girlfriends appear and almost every goofball, (The Captain, Robin Scherbatsky, Sr.,The Bartender etc.). among others make a final appearance.

The writers tried something different in this season.  The episodes were set over the 3 day period of Barney and Robin's wedding.  In theory this was sort of clever, in reality kind of unwieldy.  

 

The plan was to finally bring Ted and Robin together after her divorce from Barney.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the last episode. The actress they hired to play Ted's unseen wife, Cristin Milioti was so likable that fans of the series resented killing her off to make way for Robin.

 

The DVD release offered 2 versions of the final show, one where the mother is alive and married to Ted and one where the mother is dead and Ted finally ends up with Robin. My vote is he should have stuck with girlfriend Victoria from season 1

Well that's showbiz.

24 episodes, 516 minutes.

2012 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 8

They probably should have called it a day after season 7 but incredibly CBS squeezed two more seasons out of this series.

The cast and the writers seem completely on autopilot by this time. Frankly the relationship and engagement of Robin and Barney always seemed very contrived to me.  Clearly the plan was to pair Robin up with Ted.  But as we shall see in season 9, a funny thing happened on the way to the end of the last episode.

 

The  cast really has to carry the load because the producers/writers sure couldn't seem to get the season jelling.

517 minutes, 23 episodes.

JESUS OF NAZARETH, TV miniseries is very long

The 3 year public life and preaching of Jesus as presented in this miniseries.  Jesus is a white guy with deep piercing blue eyes. The large cast is made up of a bunch of Hollywood and English movie stars.  The miniseries is very long. All of the above points were major criticisms of George Steven's The Greatest Story Ever Told.  However this film got good reviews, go figure.

Robert Powell plays Jesus with a lot of soft spoken sincerity but at times kind of comes off as a creepy cult leader.  He speaks in the usual biblical platitudes probably more a fault of everyone having to hear the same New Testament stories over and over in Sunday school

The director Franco Zeffirelli moves along from one biblical event to the next. We get the feeding of the crowd with the loafs and fishes, casting out the money changers from the temple, the last supper etc.

Jesus of Nazareth is not without of it's good points but it's a long slow crawl to get to the resurrection. Frankly this miniseries is pretty boring.

Besides Zeffirelli the writers included Anthony Burgess and Suso Cecchi d'Amico,  The film comes in at a whopping 374 minutes.

1986 - ON WINGS OF EAGLES, clunky retelling of a true story

The supposed true story of businessman Ross Perot and his efforts to free some of his executives detained in Iran just as the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power.  Perot was the president of EDS (Electronic Data Systems) which had a contract with Iran to set up data processing systems.  Two of his executives were detained by the Iranian government in a contract dispute with EDS. 

Burt Lancaster plays the ex military officer, Bull Simmons who Perot hires to lead a team of company executives who travel to Iran to plan an escape.  Simmons was a legendary special forces operative who knew Perot.  The miniseries revolves around the efforts of Perot and Simmons to escape from Iran and travel cross country into Turkey and safety.

 

The miniseries was filmed in Mexico and also features Richard Crenna hilariously miscast as Ross Perot and the usual bunch of TV actors that rotated from one series to another.  Andrew V McLaglen directed and for him the film has a little more pace and verve then usual.  Lancaster was 73 years old and was definitely in the the twilight of his career.  Television was kind of a last stop for aging Hollywood superstar actors.

 

Ken Folliet the author of the book and Sam Rolfe adapted the book into a screenplay and the story seems a little clunky and frankly kind of unbelievable.  The miniseries runs 241 minutes.

1998: THE WARLORD BATTLE FOR THE GALAXY aka THE OSIRIS CHRONICLES

A bad science fiction film that Joe Dante directed.  This was a pilot for a science fiction series about a crew of rebels flying around space attempting to reestablish a galactic republic.  

With the exception of Rod Taylor the acting is extremely poor.  The cast doesn't seem to be able to put over the plot with a spec of enthusiasm.  The extremely poor and very derivative script doesn't help since it is a mismash of elements from Star Trek and in particular Star Wars.  The film was obviously trying for a wide appeal with the appearance of busty women and teenagers in primary parts.  Our so called hero is a very poor man's Han Solo.

The production is extremely cheesy looking the cardboard looking sets look like they are about to topple down around the actors throughout the film.  The special effects aren't particularly well done with the usual computer image assistance of spaceships flying around shooting laser beams at each other.  

Clearly Joe Dante brought no passion to this project the film doesn't even contain any of his typical movie references or in-jokes.  A very depressing film.

97 minutes, written by Caleb Carr (huh).

1988 - THE BOURNE IDENTITY, the first version

No this is not the Matt Damon version but a TV mini series which actually follows the plot of the Robert Ludum novel, something the Damon version never bothered with.

The film stars Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith.  Chamberlain had an OK film career but he was really big stuff on TV staring in such mini series as Shogun, The Thorn Birds and Centennial.
These were all big budget TV shows from the early 1980's.  The Bourne Identity is Chamberlain a little past his time, but an acting professional is an acting professional and he does pretty good playing the amnesiac spy.

Chamberlain's co-star is Jaclyn Smith who is chiefly remembered as one of the original Charlie's Angels from the campy old TV show.  She was never much of an actor but she looked great and was able to say her lines without bumping into the furniture when she was on set.  

The Bourne Identity is a film for people who prefer the Jason Bourne character with a plot and without all the spastic camera movement that the film series with Damon brought to the cinema.  The mini-series isn't bad but it definitely has that TV vibe to it.

185 minutes

2015 - A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS, not amused

20 minutes into this smarmy Christmas Special I pretty much had my fill of this supposed "cool" holiday show.  Bill Murray can't sing and to listen to him sing song after song was pure torture.

I get that the makers of this special are trying to have it both ways, deconstruct a typical Christmas Special like something Andy Williams or Perry Como would do, but the joke wore itself out after a while.  This show also attempts to trade on the cool guy persona of Bill Murray as he brings in a bunch of his Hollywood cronies to worship at the feet of cool guy Murray.

You know a musical comedy show is pretty bad when you are actually looking fotward to Miley Cyrus showing up during a dream sequence.  Maya Rudolph supposedly can sing but you would never know it from the piss poor sound recording of her Christmas performance.

Frankly the Bill Murray "coolest guy in the room" persona is getting a little tired and let's face it Murray's looking a little old to doing it.

 56 minutes.

1975 - THE DEADLY TOWER, a TV movie based on the Charles Whitman shooting spree

This is one of those TV movies that were popular during the 1970's.  These movies would take real life events and dramatize or fictionalize them for the viewing public.  Some of them were OK occasionally they were actually good most of them were terrible.  The Deadly Tower is probably one of the better ones.  This is a dramatization of the Charles Whitman shooting from the Austin University tower in 1966 given the usual fact mixed with fiction treatment as if the actual events weren't dramatic enough.

Kurt Russell who at the time was transitioning from Disney kid actor into more "adult" roles played Whitman.  Back in the good old days of Hollywood, if you wanted to show you weren't typecast as a Disney actor you had to make a 180 degree turn and play either a crazed killer or a sexed up bimbo.  Obviously Russell decided on the killer route.  For a 1970's movie the 2nd lead is a Hispanic actor named Richard Yniguez who was one of the the cops that climbed up into the tower and finally stopped Whitman.  The rest of the cast is a couple of TV perennials, John Forsythe, & Pernell Roberts.  New York actor Clifton James again plays a redneck law enforcement officer and this appears to be an early role for Ned Beatty.

Just the actual situation itself is dramatic enough and this is probably the best part of the film.  Where things run a little off course is in the hokey dramatic events that the story veers down.  The Hispanic cop is passed over for promotion at the police department.  His wife wants him to quit his job and take something less dangerous etc.  This was the kind of stuff they would cram into these films.

This is probably one of the few films to take an anti-gun position.  At one point Forsythe yells at the gun store owner who sold all the guns and ammo to Russell without questioning what he was going to do with it.  Try getting that in a film today.  If there is one thing I am sure of, everyone in Texas probably owns a gun. 

100 minutes

1982 - STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, paired up with 1967 - SPACE SEED

Double feature night at the local neighborhood theater which can't make up it's mind whether it wants to show independent films or old classic films.  Anyway we zipped over to watch Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan and much too my surprise they showed the original episode Space Seed which the film was based on. 

Well, Space Seed is from Season One of the original cast when the series was very fresh.  It looks like a television show, a lot of light on the sets everywhere to put it mildly.  Forgot how sexist the show was when it came to women, those Star Fleet uniforms sure are short and tight.  Ricardo Montalban is as over the top and hammy as he was in The Wrath of Kahn, he is a good villain for Kirk to go up against. Actually a pretty fun episode of the series which had had a lot of crappy shows particularly in the third season.

However all hail Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the first real Star Trek film.  The troublesome Gene Roddenberry was pushed out of the film after making a mess out of Star Trek The Motion Picture.  His replacement Harv Bennett television producer of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman was brought in to put together another Star Trek film.  It was Bennett who realized Space Seed could be a jumping off point for another Star Trek film.  When you get right down to it Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn is really just another episode of the old television series. 

After cutting the necessary deals with the cast, Bennett hired Nicholas Meyer and inexperienced director to shoot the film.  Meyer did an uncredited rewrite of the script and actually managed to get the old feeling of the show in the film something Roddenberry completely failed to do.

 A very enjoyable big screen version of the television series.

Space Seed 50 minutes.

Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Kahn  113 minutes.