I am wondering if anyone has seen or heard about either an official DVD release of this "time capsule" film or a site where it is being offered unofficially. Would sure appreciate hearing from anyone who has any info on release or availability of this film.
Never Metamorphosis I Didn't Like
I wish it would be released. Not only does there seem to be no prospect of a DVD anytime soon, this film hasn't even ever been shown on Fox Movie Channel (where you'd expect it to turn up sooner or later), let alone the now-dreadful AMC. It just seems to have fallen off the radar -- so obscure that I've never even seen it, and I've seen most films from that era. Our one hope is that Fox is pretty good about releasing its library, so they might get around to it -- some year or another. Sorry there's not better news.
shareFunny to find you here, hobnob. I was tooling around looking onto the X-15 (1961) page and this title came to mind. Now, I haven't seen this since the 60's but I watched it as often as I could when it was broadcast.
Rocket stuff in the 60's -- I had to watch them all. This one was very exciting and I remember Guy The Adventures of Kit Carson Madison looking to the stars from his vantage point and thinking how cool it all was.
I, too, would like to see this title again. I'll have to dig around.
Well -- how about on VHS? Something like 25 bones plus shipping (image quality is described as "poor")
http://www.robertsvideos.com/product.php3?invid=63206&ref=/browse.php3?All=&keywords=&NPAL=&MESECAM=&VHS=&DVD=&CDROM=&VHSEP=&VHSSP=&PAL=&SECAM=&MPAL=&alpha=O&catid=&page=7&incr=1
or robertsvideo.com
(see other entries)
shareThough I've never even seen this film, I don't think $25 for a VHS of poor quality sounds worth it. Does it include a complimentary ticket on the Hindenburg? Now that's a threshold.
We do turn up at the most out-of-the-way places, e-2!
See you in another week or so.
Perhaps you or other interested parties would like to find a copy of the book, The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space by Craig Ryan. Now, I have not read this book but it sounds like a ripping tale. New paperback editions go for around 14 clams. Used copies go for as little as 10.
Seems to me I've heard something of this book. Also there have been documentaries on this program. Some of the footage of these guys bailing out at 80,000 feet or more is astonishing.
shareI have few memories of this movie On the Threshold of Space, just a couple of key scenes because it fired my imagination back then.
The human spirit is a remarkable thing. I had not heard of that book and will snoop around to get a copy.
Talk about high adventure!
Having not seen it (and wanting to), my chief interest in OTTOS is that it was the last movie of actor John Hodiak, who died during filming (presumably late in the filming, as he wasn't replaced). I'm unsure whether his contract with his home studio of MGM had just ended and he was freelancing, or whther OTTOS was a loan-out. Hodiak's last completed movie was MGM's prestige picture of 1955, Trial, with Glenn Ford. I think that one was released a week before his sudden death.
I always thought that, given that circumstance, the title of this film acquired a certain poignancy: John Hodiak would live just long enough to see the dim beginnings of man's reach into space -- man on the threshold of space -- but would never see our actual journeys into that void itself.
One other thing you'd be able to enjoy, having seen OTTOS only on TV decades ago, is having it in widescreen. And in color, if you didn't see it on TV that way.
Leaving again shortly, but will catch up again early next week, when we resume our normal broadcast schedule.
'Ottos'???!! I guess, for a movie about the early U.S. space program, a beer-hall-vintage Germanic acronym is particularly fitting.
"Prost, Otto!""Und du, Otto!"
"Heute Raum -- morgen, die Welt!"
"Was?!"
Good song to clack steins to, hobnob.
Interesting observation, too, about Hodiak.
No, I watched it on the old Muntz -- space is black and white. Still exciting though. And, once again, you're only right -- I should like to see On the Threshold of Space in wide-screen in color as well (I like the letter-box editions). To tell you the truth, I never thought about it being in nothing but B/W.
If you haven't read Ron Brown's recollections of his time on the set of OTTOS you would certainly enjoy it and also William Donohoe's entry in the Viewer's Comments.
I hope you get to see it. It got some good rating on this page.
To the Bat-poles!
Hiya, e-2...as you came onto this site, did you catch my new thread?
OTTOS is back!!
Yep, just a couple of '50s flyboys knockin' back a few brewskies before jumpin' into the cockpit for another routine mission on the threshold of space.
Hey, one little beer! What could possibly go wrong? Um, unless you've seen First Man Into Space.
DVD copies are currently available on e-Bay in a triple feature that also includes Assignment Outer Space, aka, Space Men, (1960) and Space Master X-7 (1958).
I got lucky in 1988 when a local TV station aired a 16 mm print of this at 1AM. I have no qualms on 16 mm prints as I grew up on watching films in that format on TV. While some insist on digital restorations, for me as long as the print and sound are decent, it suits me fine. I'm sure my desires are in the minority here.
shareI can appreciate your viewpoint, fbm72751. Sure, it's nice when one can lay eyes on a superb print, mostly I'm happy just to view some long lost, seldom seen gem.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
I have no problem with any source as such, be it 16mm or whatever. I've always told people that the only important thing is to have the movie. (I know people who won't get a movie if the DVD doesn't have extras! Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.) If a DVD print is of less-than-sterling quality that in itself doesn't bother me as long as it's in decent shape.
That said, I won't accept just anything simply because it's otherwise difficult to get. Some prints are just too terrible to keep. And if, as in the case of OTTOS, it's a film I can get off the air myself in the exact same format as some bootlegger, then I'll spare myself the time and expense of buying a third-generation knock-off and make my own, better, recording.
Hi esc!!! ¡Felíz Navidad! Not to mention, Mele Kalikimaka!
Hello, HOB, it's good to hear from you.
Some titles are very difficult to find, as you know, and so I pore over rows and rows of VHS tapes in thrift store and yard sales with the faint hope that some rare edition might be among the many copies of Star wars: The Phantom Menace and Titanic. It happens.
Sometimes such a search turns up a release I always wanted to see, such as The Crater Lake Monster (1977) that I found at a Goodwill Store. OK, not much of a movie there (pretty humorous actually but featured some nice Stop-motion Animation by David Allen) but at least I was able to sate my curiosity for a mere $1.67. And then there is another handy source, the web. Through e-Bay I acquired a copy (VHS), also on the cheap, of The Bamboo Saucer (1968) (a little number you and I had discussed -- or should that be "discus"? -- about a year ago, HOB) and while the Dan Duryea swan song has it's problems it was interesting enough to make me come to the IMDb and the inter-net in general for answers to a few questions I had after unspooling it (I found none).
I'm a bit of a sucker for movies of all stripe and can't afford to be a snob about it. I like "Extras", sometimes even more fun than the movie itself and can certainly add to the experience but I am with you on that. I can live with disappointment if a disc (or even a tape) doesn't have them. they're gravy.
Thanks for the greetings, my friend. Stay well.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
And, just to stay on topic, I caught On the Threshold of Space on cable some time back. While viewing it I recalled your comment about the cheap SPFX and you were right but enjoyed the story anyway. A good story can cover a multitude of shortcomings.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
The thing about VHS is that in most cases those were legitimate releases usually of decent quality. I still have films on VHS that have never shown up in DVD.
Back then most VHSes (?) were full-screen and so you'd miss out with a widescreen movie, but they were for so long the only game in town that it came down to a choice of the perfect becoming the enemy of the good -- in other words, better to have an imperfect print than none at all. You actually still run into this dilemma even on DVD.
On the other hand, in the mid-80s I ordered a copy of a movie I had hardly ever seen, Satellite in the Sky (also 1956), from Movies Unlimited, which used to make their own tapes of rare titles. The source print was by far the worst I'd ever seen in a supposedly mainstream release: ragged and almost inaudible sound, heavily marked and damaged visually, pan & scan of course, but also in black & white, though the film was in color. I sent it back (one of the few times I've done such a thing) because its quality was just too poor to even watch. A movie has to be in really bad condition for me to do that. I remember also sending back another MU tape, of The Quatermass Xperiment, because while an okay print it lacked the music in the final scene. Both films have long since come out in excellent DVDs, and TQX on VHS long before that.
I think really the only FX issue with OTTOS were the final sequences of the descent of the capsule, where a model was employed. Though it was clear it was a model, I didn't think it was so bad, and worked well enough. The rest of the film used shots of real equipment so there were no effects issues elsewhere anyway.
Curious that this film, as well as Riders to the Stars, have never shown up on home video of any kind. Both deal with early experiments in training human beings for high altitude and later space flight, and most of the training sequences are real, using actual equipment. OTTOS is of course the more grounded, if you will, film, concerning actual experimentation for planned flights, while RTTS veers into sci-fi about capturing a meteor in orbit so we can find out why they don't disintegrate in space even though they're being bombarded by cosmic rays. (Junk science all the way, since cosmic rays don't disintegrate objects in space or on Earth, but they needed some excuse to get them up there.) Each in its own way is a forerunner of The Right Stuff in showing the actual training of fliers back then, and the actual apparatus used in it. But in these films' cases, this was all contemporary and revolutionary.
When I first watched many of the titles I have fond memories for, it was on an old Black & White TV with several commercial interruptions using what would be graded as a scratchy "C" print and I didn't know about wide-screen and pan & scan. "Ignorance is ______."
With this instant title I didn't even know was a color production for years until I saw it again in recent time.
Now I can see how the images had been manipulated and pretty much have learned to deal with it. Sort of like having to sit sideways in a theater seat because some tall guy took the only remaining seat in front of me. Irksome, yes, but can live with it.
Junk science we can spot now because we are sophisticated. Back then, space travel was all speculation and some of the concepts, some were hair-brained, kind of went off half-cocked onto the screen. Nobody could really say, "That's not true!" because nobody knew anything with certainty. It was all pretty much one person's opinion versus another.
We laugh at those notions now and, yes, most were silly, but they broached subjects that were worth exploring.
It seems as if these days no one wants to raise their hand in class to make a comment for fear of being laughed at.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
Well, we both grew up under conditions where there was only commercial TV and the movies we saw were interrupted by ads, cut, panned & scanned, credits deleted, and sometimes broadcast (let alone seen) in b&w even when they were color films. Because we had never had anything else this seemed the natural, or at least inescapable, order of things. And we never thought it'd ever be any different.
When I went to grad school in mid-Missouri in the mid-70s we had only three channels (the three nets) and virtually no movies -- basically one a week late Saturday night. But I remember being astounded when they ran those films without commercials. I guess they figured too few people were watching at that hour and since they had the movies they might as well just show them. The one I still recall seeing "uncut and uninterrupted" for the first time ever was Laura.
Though nothing was comparable to finally seeing widescreen movies I'd been watching for decades in p&s formats letterboxed on TV in the early 90s. That was a revelation -- mainly for the clarity of the picture, even more than seeing the full image.
Of course, we're all much savvier about what lurks behind the movies we see now than years ago. We can spot studio back lot shots much more readily than we once did, for example. In a film like Riders to the Stars I'm sure few people thought about the lack of scientific accuracy in it, although even at the time the science given in the movie was known to be inaccurate. (Very unusual for Ivan Tors to be so completely mistaken in one of his films, which always stressed science.)
My main memory of that movie is that I grew up seeing it in b&w, even on a color TV, never realizing it had been shot in color. This was one of those movies for which only black & white 16mm prints were struck for television. The first time I saw this in color (while in college in Washington, DC -- as you can see my higher education choices were carefully selected) I was knocked back -- I hadn't known the film was even in color. (In New York they used to cut out the opening credits, so there was no indication I saw that it was shot in color.) Later I learned that there was some belief by the late 60s that there were no color prints left of Riders, or of Tors's other 1954 film, Gog. I never saw that one in color until the late 80s...by which time I was enrolled in the school of real life. Which is why I was watching Gog on TBS at 2 in the morning.
As to On the Threshold of Space, I never saw it once growing up. For years it was a film I very much wanted to see but which just never turned up anywhere. I was so glad when suddenly it materialized and I could finally see and record it. Even in its imperfect p&s form, it was past time to add it to my collection, and hope for better things.
Speaking of film discoveries, have you heard that they found an original two-color Technicolor print of the 1929 MGM movie The Mysterious Island? Although the film is still very much around and is run on TCM every once in a while, all that was believed left were b&w prints made for TV in the 50s. Only one reel in color was known to exist, carefully preserved in the UCLA Film & Television Archives. But a while back they discovered a complete print in color in the Czech Film Archives, of all places. A restoration expert from the George Eastman House in Rochester viewed it and was blown away. They've begun restoration work on it, so hopefully we'll have the original version back with us in a couple of years. Have you ever seen it? Very loosely based on the Jules Verne book -- unlike the 1961 film, which was faithful to Verne -- it's mostly a silent, with a couple of sound sequences, and just very weird -- and cool, with an undersea civilization of weird little people, models of sunken Roman galleys with tiny skeletons chained to the oars, a dragon that attacks the underwater city, and so on. Starring Lionel Barrymore, of all people. If it's ever on TCM, or if and when the color version surfaces, it's worth a look at least.
I saw The Mysterious Island you speak of, I don't recall how I got my mitts on it. Sometimes my brother sends me stuff like that or it might have been our friend, James, that copied it for me on VHS from a TCM presentation. Anyway, yes, I saw it. Amazing what was accomplished back then. Very ambitious production. I must have it somewhere on the shelf.
Even today, people do not understand how dangerous space travel can be. People have been signing up for a one way trip to the planet Mars since the 50's. I suppose the thinking must be it would be like a trip to the Mojave Desert.
One of the recent movies, Red Planet (2000), touches on the dangers of visiting and settling on Mars (never mind the runaway robots although that may someday be a very real problem). Perhaps the collective consciousness is still stuck on Flash Gordon style flights.
TV commercials were like ants at a picnic. You had to expect them and deal with them. Dealing with commercial interruptions became automatic and so not too much of a bother. We always knew when they were coming up. The old prints used were from theaters and they had the projectionist marks appearing on the upper right corners of the frames and that heralded the advent of an ad.
Nowadays, commercials can barge in mid-sentence. AMC had no regard for movies or its audience and would wreck a scene by doing so. And I'm one of those weird-o viewers that likes reading the end credits and hearing the musical overtures. Those usually get shrunken and further insulted by a voice-over crowing about some other production.
I saw Satellite in the Sky on KHJ Channel 9's Million Dollar Movie. I've told you before, I always liked the sound of the title, lovely, poetic (A similar one is from the Rocky Jones compilation, Silver Needle in the Sky from 1954). I do not remember much about it now and highly unlikely I'll find an old VHS copy of it anywhere. I think I've seen on sale on-line. I'll have to break down and order a copy.
Insofar as this title, On the Threshold of Space, I first saw it on a Saturday morning back in the late 50's or maybe very early 60's. Anyway, I liked it. I commandeered one of my sister's rubber jacks balls and inserted some of my Mom's straight pins and made little legs for it and attached it to a parachute made from string and a square cut plastic tortilla bag. I drew a little porthole on the surface of the ball with a ballpoint and I was off and running pretending I was making that courageous assent and hair-raising return to Earth.
Of course, I saw it in Black & White as I mentioned but that was my whole viewing experience anyway.
I suppose you and I took that same wayward path and here we are now.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
esc, you must move into DVD. Players are dirt cheap and it's far more versatile than VHS. I'm hardly a technophile and usually stop moving onto new developments at some point, but even I got into disc over a decade ago and it's a more versatile medium with wider choices. And of course it doesn't mean jettisoning VHS (though many do, I do not), but rather just augments it.
That way you get to see Satellite in the Sky in color and widescreen, which I guarantee you it won't be on an old VHS. In fact, there's a great set from Warner, one of those TCM Classics things, of four sci-fi films from the 50s: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them!, World Without End and SITS. Actually it's two discs from two previous two-film sets, one with the first two and the other with the second pair, but that's fine. The set supposedly retails for something like $27.99 but you can always find it cheaper -- the prices in that line fluctuate all over the place. I think you can get this one for around $15 or so at this time (Amazon). Just something to keep an eye out for.
I like the title Satellite in the Sky too -- it is poetic. Although as some cynics ask: where else would you find a satellite? (Well, actually, you wouldn't find it in the sky -- you'd find it in space! But you might see it in the sky.) I always liked the title Sky Full of Moon too, although I believe that's a rodeo movie!
Glad you've seen The Mysterious Island. I always noticed a cut in the opening credits on the b&w print and now assume that was the credit for Color by Technicolor. I really hope they can make this film available in color on DVD before too many years pass! Usually these things do take a while.
I don't really agree that they used to cut away for ads when the projectionist marks came up on the movie prints. I think they just cut when they thought the scene was right for an interruption. Those projection marks most often come up in the middle of a scene. Funny, I always noticed those even as a little kid, and pretty soon figured out what they meant. I was always surprised that so many people never even noticed them, let alone understood what they meant.
We've discussed the abomination AMC has become before. I hardly see it anymore. To think this was the channel that 20 years ago blazed the way for widescreen broadcasts, film restoration and the rest, all uncut, uninterrupted and with no ads anywhere. Remember Bob Dorian and Nick Clooney? The good old days.
By the way, you're not one of those "weirdo" viewers who likes seeing the credits and hearing the music at the end instead of having it squeezed to one-fifth size on the side of the screen or scrunched down to a flat line at the bottom, not to mention sped up to an illegible rush like some cartoon and the music obliterated by some program promo. I hate that practice too, and AMC of course isn't the only station that does that. Okay, you'd say, I'm just another weirdo movie purist, what do you expect? But to my surprise I've found a lot of people hate it too, even people who aren't such intense movie buffs like you and me.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, HOB.
Yes, I've seen that 4-Pack along with that other fond memory of mine (and one of your faves), World Without End. I have also seen the two title disk and after I wrote to you this morning I looked around for a copy and have my eyes set on a copy now, so maybe in a few days I'll pony up the price.
I do have a DVD player and a collection of disks. In recent time I picked up copies of Twixt (2012), Tetro (2009), The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) and even a WS copy of 2002 version of Solaris, a film I already had on VHS.
Unfortunately I do not always have a lot of time to see a movie without interruption so they pile up even as my reading material is doing.
I suppose it is right to expect and want the full movie experience and for me waiting for the house to come up and the curtain slowly close before getting out of the way of the surly usher with his dustpan since I paid to see the movie. ALL of it.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
You know, I thought you were also on DVD but your earlier post made me wonder. Good. Getting those four great movies in one pack is a great bargain.
I'm overloaded with DVDs, watched and unwatched. I have little enough time to do the things I want. But it's a comfort to know they're there when I need them!
My wife and I haven't been to see a movie in a theater for several years! We keep intending to go but never get to it somehow. She's a big Godzilla fan (probably one reason I married her) and we were going to go to the movies last spring to see the new version but of course never got to it. So I recently bought the DVD -- which we haven't gotten to yet either. However, this July for my summer classic film series I mustered my courage and showed them the original 1954 Gojira, my first-ever subtitled film, which I ran for various reasons, including the new film and for its 60th anniversary. To my mild shock no one walked out and they all liked it better than they expected.
I sometimes mull potential introductions for films I hope to show one day. One is On the Threshold of Space, which I can't do until and unless it comes out on DVD (and then only if it's widescreen). All this is unlikely, but I like to think about what I could say about the picture. Obviously one of my main topics would be that it's the final film of John Hodiak. I really hope Fox Cinema Archives gets around to releasing this one day. I can't see it coming from anywhere else!
Well, now Godzilla -- King of the Monsters is one of my favorite monster-on-the-loose films. About a year or so ago I finally got to see Gojira and very much enjoyed it as well. I always liked the music among other wonderful aspects. Funny that your wife is a fan (She's a keeper!). Did she also like Gorgo (1961)? (as an aside, I have always considered The Lost World: Jurassic Park from 1997 nothing more than a re-make of Gorgo)
The wife and I have also wanted to go to the movies, but, like you, just never get the chance to do so. Few movies really warrant my attention, that is, movies that should be seen on the Big Screen.
Tell me about your Summer series.
You know, a good primer on manned high altitude balloon experiments is the very fine and exiting The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space by Craig Ryan (I'm almost certain I had mentioned that to you previously). It doesn't mention this movie in the text, however Joe Kittinger, who, back then set a world record for the longest skydive from a height greater than 19 miles, does mention it in his book, co-written with Ryan, Come Up and Get Me, but apparently he was not terribly impressed by it and, if I recall correctly, pretty much dismisses it in a very brief sentence.
Still, the background of experiments like Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior would give you plenty of good information for a discussion or presentation on this movie.
Speaking of movies, a few years ago there was talk, even a page on the IMDb about a movie version of The Pre-Astronauts to be directed by my old pal Barry Levinson. I haven't heard anything about it in a long time.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.
Oh yes, she likes Gorgo! (I asked her to make sure!)
Did you ever hear of a short film (about 15-20 minutes) called Waiting for Gorgo? I found it listed on Amazon a couple of years ago when I was looking up Gorgo.
It involves a young woman working in some ministry of the British government who's been tasked to locate some obscure office staffed by two elderly men somewhere in the forgotten depths of a huge government building. She's supposed to find out what it is they've been doing for fifty years, apparently with an eye to curtail government spending. The two old gentlemen inform her they work for an agency set up back in the early 60s to find ways of preventing and if necessary combating another attack on London by Gorgo, while this girl tries to convince them they're talking about a movie. Anyway, it's quite charming and very funny and I would highly recommend you get a copy. It's priced like most DVDs despite its short length (there's nothing else on it), but you'll love it. Trust me!
I just wrote a long discourse on my summer movie program but have decided it's more suitable to a PM...which I shall send presently.
Thanks for that. A take off on Waiting for Godot then? I looked it up and it seems that there is a Full Version http://vimeo.com/13525226 available as well as a short version with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8fjM6xrFCA. I'll eyeball them both.
But I'll first look for the PM, HOB.
Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors.