MovieChat Forums > World Without End (1956) Discussion > Realistic Mars shots

Realistic Mars shots

posted 16 years ago by hobnob53
37 replies | jump to latest

For a film with modest special effects, I'm very impressed with the three background shots of Mars seen at the beginning of WORLD WITHOUT END. Instead of depicting the planet simply as a smooth, round orb, with painted-on detail but nothing more, the filmmakers conjured a 3-D Mars, with mountains, valleys, ridges, uneven surfaces and a decidedly irregular, rippled profile. Plus credible shadows and slight coloring, nothing overdone, just enough to make the planet look completely natural. Really good job, the best I've seen in any "Mars movie" (such as ROCKETSHIP X-M, FLIGHT TO MARS, RED PLANET MARS, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, CONQUEST OF SPACE, THE ANGRY RED PLANET or ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, to name a bunch).

[–] gary_overman 16 years ago

They reminded me in a way of the images in those view finders that we used to have when we were kids--the ones that appeared to be in 3D.

[–] babettegillette 12 years ago

And no vocanic activity, which dominates Robinson Crusoe On Mars. Interesting how some movies were more accurate than others before exploration by satellites became a reality. Perhaps an accident due to the low budget, but maybe an actual scientist was consulted.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Probably Dr. Galbraith.

[–] babettegillette 11 years ago

He's awesome! WWE is one of my faves! Obviously one of yours as well with all of the postings.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

But of course. I was very glad when this film came out on DVD in widescreen. At one time there was a concern a complete w/s print no longer existed.

Like Booth Colman, I first became aware of Nelson Leigh (Dr. Galbraith) in this movie. Since then it's been interesting to run across him in many other films, in both credited and uncredited roles.

Glad as always to be in your company once again, babette/gillette!

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

http://galeon.com/mattepainters/Block.html

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

I recalled two stories about Irving Block's work on The Giant Behemoth/Behemoth the Sea Monster, from Bill Warren's book "Keep Watching the Skies".

One was that he allegedly fiddled so violently with the controls for the behemoth head constructed for the ferry sinking scene and a few others that he broke them, leaving the animators with only an immobile puppet head that couldn't make any of its intended movements.

The other was that the tight budget didn't have money to build a model gasoline storage tank, so Block hurriedly stacked some empty 35mm film tins, doused them in gasoline and set them afire. For the completed film, they superimposed a real gas tank over this "model", and the effect worked well enough. A man named Phil Kellison, who built most of the models used in the film, told an interviewer, "It annoyed the hell out of me because I didn't get a chance to build the miniature, but I had to admire Blocky's chutzpah for doing something like that."

It's also Block's arm around which the one-eyed creature piloting the underwater flying saucer in The Atomic Submarine was built. That film's producer, Alex Gordon, hated it because he had to do it so cheaply, but it works pretty well. I think that was Irving Block's only on-camera appearance in any of his films.

How did we get onto the subject of Irving Block? Who's next? Jack Rabin?

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Block worked on this title as well as many others even as you point out, HOB.

I was wodnering why those often-times cheap special effects so capture my imagination while the more sophisticated Computer Generated effects leave me cold. No kick, no wonder, no juice.

May be it is that "chutzpah", yes, that audacity of those SFX pioneers to try to do something big on a ten cent budget. Maybe it is pure nostalgia. Maybe because it made me believe that "I could do that!" and how much fun it would be to try.

The real space program and the real terrain seen on Mars, for example, have been a bit disappointing as well.

The real thing is like the opening of Al Capone's vault. It's like finding out that Area 51 is really only a test bed and the riches of the imaginations of many were so much more facinating.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

You're exactly right as always, esc. CGI guys are skilled, but it's a whole different thing when you're manufacturing images inside a computer, usually with all the time and money you can use.

Compare this to having to manufacture physical objects that have to create an realistic illusion...then compound that problem with working with a tiny budget on a tight deadline.

CGI artists can let their imaginations run wild because they can create virtually anything -- a "virtual" thing -- in their computers. The old physical FX guys had to take their imaginations one giant step further, using them not only to create what they could but to find ways to bring these creations into being.

Imagination required for dual purposes: as a prerequisite for creation, as well as for conceptualization.

If sometimes the effects didn't look so great, it made little difference. It was still fun -- not a word I hear in connection with CGI images. And since the effects served the plot (in contrast to most such films today, where the effects drive the plot), they weren't as crucial to the film's enjoyability.

The results might not be as seemless as today's CGI, but they are definitely more interesting and certainly required more thought, care and physical skills. You knew somebody sat down and did a lot of hard work to bring these images to life, often for only a few seconds of screen time. These effects furthered the story and were integral to it. CGI has become little more than monotonous eye-candy, much of it put there simply because it can be put there.

Yes, reality has been a bit disappointing in certain ways. Remember the closing lines in 1958's From the Earth to the Moon (talk about poor effects!):

Jules Verne: "The trouble with scientists, Mister von Metz, is that they only deal with facts."

Von Metz: "Oh! And what do you deal with, Mister Jules Verne?"

Verne: "Something much more real than facts. Imagination, Mister von Metz."

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

I appreciate your thinking, HOB and I also happen to agree (and the quote is wonderful).

But we're a couple of old guys, everybody laughs at our war stories. I remember how my children, my own flesh and blood, were hooting at a one of the very titles you mentioned in your previous post, a movie that scared the tar out of me when I was a lad -- The Atomic Submarine.

They are of the Star Wars (1977) generation and for all the flaws tha tmovie has going for it in the SFX department, let's face it Irving's hand puppet lost hands down to it (yes, I know it was not CGI, but it marked a leap forward and away from piano wire and trussed up manniquins).

So, the war cry we'll hear will be from our own herald:

...admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone...

"...Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'..."

The old saw "you can't un-ring a bell applies. The genie is out of the lamp.

I don't know who today would dare go back to the Lydecker Brothers brand of movie magic, the splintered tripods, the rubber chicken thrown against the wall.

But all that CGI stuff all just looks like a cartoon.

Spoken like a bona-fide old coot.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

The movies won't die with us, esc, but true appreciation and love for them probably will. Alas. The suckers who follow us will never understand what they've missed, and of course won't miss what they can't understand.

Although...you never can tell. A lot of people felt the same way about silents back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, yet they've been rescued from oblivion. I suppose as long as a few people hold aloft the light of remembrance, these films will attract a small but dedicated following keeping their memory fondly alive.

But just to be on the safe side, I'm arranging to have all my movies buried with me.

Slightly off topic, remember a conversation we had on the Invaders From Mars site a couple of years back, in connection with the broadcast print used by AMC? You mentioned how the elements in the front of some scenes seemed to be bouncing or jiggling around, even while the backgrounds remained steady and the foreground should do likewise. I've since noticed this often in many movies, and I think it's an unwanted by-product of digital remastering, somehow "separating" the various visual elements and remixing them in a most unsatisfactory and fake manner. Just an educated guess.

The "miracle" of computer-generated imagery. The old way did it better.

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

"The suckers who follow us will never understand what they've missed, and of course won't miss what they can't understand....

True. If people like the CGI stuff, fine, it is their day. I suppose we are not merely "old" but maybe snobs. Some people prefer the boards to making movies, others prefer motion pictures over working on TV. Some actors wouldn't dream of doing a TV comemrcial. I know I oculd pick apart some of the old foam and plaster SFX from those movies you declare you'll be buried with (I saw The Brain from Planet Arous --1957 -- last night on TV, a title I had not seen since the 60's. Holy cow! --- even as a lad it was obvious to me that "The Brain was just a big balloon, bouncing around like a beach ball when it started getting clobbered with the axe!)

But the old "seat of the pants" filmmaking was very exciting to me as a youngster and I still get the charge out of it even though I know it was as fake as the Computer Generated stuff.

The jumping around of that AMC print may have been from ripped sprocket holes as I've seen that inother movies when on TV and those stations were apparently using an old print either on a film chain or transferred to video.

But the other elements we made note of make no sense to me.

By the way, I referenced "a rubber chicken thrown against the wall" in my previous post. That was said by none other than James Cameronafter the making of Aliens (1986). At the time he said he did not care how an visual effect was achieved as long as it worked up on the screen.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

(HOB -- the GO-Man wrote a few words in response to this exchange -- Below -- but also has a few things directed at you specifcally so please do not miss them)

And I know it is off the subject inq uestion here, but may I say that the best use of CGI, in the opinion of yours truly, has been in District 9 (2009). Very effective, unobtrusive, highly detailed, well conceived images.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

I never saw District 9 except for a part of it, but what I saw was good. Most CGI looks great, although things like debris, dust, water, smoke, stuff like that, often look phony. Plus CGI is so soulless.

Still, for the fun and personal crafstmanship, I prefer George Pal, Ray Harryhausen, Willis O'Brien, or for that matter the guy who made the flying saucer pie plates for Ed Wood.

Plan 9 over District 9...any time!

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

My apologies to World Without End, but I must say, that district 9 works on a few levels, the CGI being one of them.

See here's my beef with Computer Generated Image work -- they tend to merely show off. They upstage everything, often at the expense of drama and, often it is as if a thin story is left to hold up the movie being told and the filmmakers believe that "It's going to be bad!and go ahead with the flimsy plot and once the movie is made try to dazzle potential audiences with trailers featuring all the fancy visual effects.

Remember the movie The Prestige (2009), we're told:

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts.

"The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't.

"The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary.

"Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back.

"That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

Most CGI movies have no "third act", only what is described here as "the Turn".

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Now that is a great quote. I liked The Prestige all right, and I'm not dissing District 9. But you're exactly right when you say that much CGI is there for itself -- technicians just saying, "Look what we can do!" It's a substitute for plot, characters, dialogue...for anything of real meaning or interest.

Yesterday I was watching Inception, which has an original concept but gets overly convoluted in parts. Much of the overlap between dreams and reality was fascinating. But a lot of it was just an explosion of CGI across the screen for its own sake -- even within the bizarre context of the film it was often illogical, or not realistic (in the sense of dream experiences, not special effects). Much of it was simply there for its own sake. But at least the narrative of that film was intentionally confused and claustrophobic, with the effects integrated into the story, if overdone. Most movies today use effects to dazzle and distract, not to advance the story. The audience is inundated with visual images, but at the end, it's like eyewash -- thin and insubstantial.

The old effects were more difficult and expensive to construct, so they were used more sparingly and, consequently, to greater effect [sic]. Most importantly, they augmented the plot, were integral to it -- not thrown in for their own sake.

The effects in WWE were rather limited -- the ship in space, then crashing, the pillow spiders -- but they served their purpose. To go back to the original thread title, the Mars shots were very realistic. Going through the time barrier was much less so, but the effect served its purpose. The spiders? Well, Naga and his mutates made up for them! But the rest was drama, and well done.

(And I figure you've caught on to the present thread re-title!)

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

And that is a fair argument. Consider -- here once again I dance on the grave of World Without End without shame -- Things to Come (1939) or Jaws (1975), the effective use of mechanical and visual effects with the other important filmmaking elements on the forefront.

(a tip o' the hat to World Without End, but didn't it cop some model work from Flight to Mars -1951- and I am going by an entry in the TRIVIA section here. I have not seen WWE since the 60's and hadn't seen FTM until recently)

District 9, in my opinion, did it right, making it character motivated. Though some of the characters were hackneyed and the story drive well worn, it nevertheless used those 2-dimiensional characters and storyline to bring about a well-crafted tale.

Onward.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

WWE did not cop any footage from FTM...but it's claimed that it re-used the earlier film's spaceship. (Shades of the Shuttle?) It looked different to me, but what do I know? However, the interior of the FTM ship was the same one used in Rocketship X-M, while the Martians' spacesuits were recycled from Destination Moon. Meanwhile, the FTM model was re-used in It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958).

There is a quiz on this stuff at the end.

However, footage from WWE was copped by another Ed Bernds-directed documentary, Queen of Outer Space (also 1958) -- specifically, shots of the ship blasting through space (augmented in QOOS by ray beams aimed at the ship), then rocking through the flame-torn space, then crash-landing on the snow cap. However, the model was never used for any original footage in QOOS -- it's only in the borrowed scenes. Oh, QOOS also used the pillow spider shots, and if memory serves they may have briefly re-used a single spider himself.

Not the kind of stuff that happens much today.

You should get the TCM Collection DVD that has four terrific 50s sci-fi films on it: WWE, Satellite in the Sky, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them!. Two discs, each copped from two earlier double-feature single-disc sets. I guess the films taught TCM the value of recycling!

District 9 is on late tomorrow afternoon here on some weird cable channel, so maybe I'll be able to catch it.

"The chief is dead; long live the chief."

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Stanley Kubrick ordered all the spaceship models and spacesuits and props destroyed after making 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) so his stuff wouldn't turn up in some low-budget pot-boiler or possibly the return of The Twilight Zone the way props for Destination Moon and Forbidden Planet and the others you mention were recycled.

(as probably you know, everything had to be recreated for 2010: The Year We Make Contact-1984)

Well, I would be interested in reading your opinions of District 9 once you have seen the whole thing.

(on a more personal note, am I right in believing the Hobster has celebrated yet another birthday in recent time? If so, let me wish you a Happy New Year. If not, belay the last!)

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

I'd forgotten that about Kubrick. I wonder what the chances of his models getting loaned out to another film really were. Did MGM own them? Couldn't he have just kept them in his basement? I mean, if it was good enough for Mrs. Kubrick....

Funny they never reused any props -- the underground city, bazookas, the women's miniskirts -- from World Without End in any other movie. I never even heard of the music being recycled as stock, the way Destination Moon's was, in The Phantom Planet, for one. [Upon reflection, I'm not sure that's right. I'm getting age-related flashbacks that portions of WWE's music score certainly did show up elsewhere, but the name(s) of the larcenous titles escape me.]

(On that personal note, yes, you have a good memory, and I don't even remember how you knew -- last month, same date as Clark Gable and John Ford. Let's just say me and another film with a score by Leith Stevens, The War of the Worlds, along with such notables as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Invaders From Mars, Project Moonbase, The Magnetic Monster, It Came From Outer Space, Cat-Women of the Moon and best of all, Robot Monster, share the same anniversary this year...and, indeed, every year. But thank you, my friend!!)

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Music gets recycled quite a bit. I saw a movie last year -- an old movie and I made an entry in the TRIVIA section for the movie in question, that used some from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Also, music from the James Bond flick Diamonds Are Forever(1971) washed up again on Disney's The Black Hole (1979).

Insofar as wardrobe, those other-worldly mini-skirts probably started their lives as costumes from some gangster epic, gracing the curvy figures of down-to-Earth cigarette girls.

(You know, a lot of people on the IMDb hate your opinions. Yes, you make their miserable little lives interesting! Many happy returns of the day, HOB.)

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Wow. A lot of people on IMDb hate me? Okay, I'm taking the hint and will pipe down. If you want me I'll be under Nancy Gates's miniskirt. We share the same birthday!

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Speak on, my friend. Speak on. A person's character is revealed by the cut of his enemies. You make some good arguments and some people whither under the logic and go away murmuring. Let them. You bring to light new facets that possibly would have gone on unnoticed if it were not for people like you.

And you've said it yourself more than once, that the opinions expressed are yours and they have the right to disagree just as you have the right to make them in the first place. Fair enough.

And on the topic of re-use, I believe some of the music from It! -- The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) turned up in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994).

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Okay, we'll see where things lead us....

I don't believe any music from It! turned up in Ed Wood. As far as I can remember all the music in EW was either original (meaning the vast majority of the soundtrack, by Howard Shore) or had the soundtracks from Wood's actual films in it, part of those films themselves when they're shown in the movie. Shore did integrate some bits of the stock music Ed used in his films into small portions of his score for the 1994 film, but nothing from ITTFBS was there. That wasn't stock music but was a score written by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, so the producers of Ed Wood would have had to pay a fee to stick it into that film. Plus that music wouldn't have served any purpose anyway, since it bore no connection to Wood or his movies.

However, Sawtell and Shefter themselves recycled their main title theme from Kronos (1957) for It! in 1958...although the balance of the latter's score was original. That same title music was recycled yet again in 1959, when Warner Bros. released the film then known as Gigantis, the Fire Monster -- the dubbed version of the second Godzilla movie -- and replaced much of the Japanese score with stock music.

(The original Japanese title of that film was Gojira no gyakutsu -- "Godzilla's Counter-Attack" -- but the American distributor got it into his head that changing the name of the monster was somehow a good box-office idea. It wasn't, as he himself admitted years later; it just puzzled movie audiences, who even then recognized Godzilla. Sometime in the 70s the movie was retitled Godzilla Raids Again, close to the original title...but the only difference was in the changed title card; throughout the film there was the same dubbing, with the actors calling the monster "Gigantis"! The DVD containing the superior original plus the Americanized version has at least rectified that lapse.)

The World Without End DVD has French subtitles, which are fun. But a dubbed version would have been neater. Imagine translating Naga's proto-Spanish into proto-French?!

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Once again we have infiltrated a Message Board and hi-jacked it. Oh, well, that's the way the mop flops.

I'll have to heat up the old VCR and throw on Crash Corrigan in his greatest role. I believe it is the sequence where they are trying to trick It! by climbing out of the ship and enter into a lower deck.

There I was and suddenly, I'm thinking, "Hey! Wait aminute! I've heered this afore!" Yes, Red, I can Name That Tune in one note!

These old earbones are pretty good at picking up on music cues.

But the operative word in that last sentence is "old" and the old brain stem isn't what it used to be!

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Don't worry too much about hijacking the thread. It tried to hijack the Earthbound Mars ship, and the Council of Mars planned to do the same to the FTM vessel, but no one besides the flyboys tried to grab the XRM (wonder how Ed Bernds thought up that name?).

In fact, though the guys in WWE want to return to and repair their ship, we never do see them getting back to it. I wonder if they ever did fix the thing and blast off in search of further adventures around the mutate-laden world. And whether they were lucky enough to get back? But that's a plot for the sequel, "Naga's Revenge: The World Ends After All".

Anyway, if it makes you feel better I've reinstated the original thread title, so the illusion of continuity has been reclaimed. But let's hear about the music. I'm sure there are no ITTFBS - EW crossover hits.

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

As "Bela" says in Ed Wood, "I beg to differ!

Not too far along, while Marshall Thompson and Dabbs Greer are enjoying a game of chess, crew member Joe Kienholz (Thom Carney) hears something below decks and in what has become an old dark house cliché (or maybe it already was when this movie was made), he turns off the lights and goes down to investigate.

And here's the musical cue I was looking for -- as the hapless Kienholz starts down the first ladder there is a bit of suspensful incidental music that consists of two notes, almost like an eerie door bell.

Wheeeee--woooooo! Wheee---wooo!

The exact notes that Howard Shore uses in the opening credits and other parts of Ed Wood, except he overlaid some jungle tom-toms over the them.

I was foolish enough not to take note of the time when the movie began and the sequence I bring into evidence appears.

I think you will be able to pick it out easily at the juncture I pointed out.

And I was wrong about those notes being used for the end run outside of the ship.

I still have the movie running and the notes have not since been repeated. (Wait, there is the entire sequence of music as in Ed Wood when the scene opens with a close-up the bottle of plasma being tubed into the third crew member injured by the Monster while he was inside the duct talking to Chino. The older flight attendant is looking after him. The notes turn up again when the remaining crew members make their way down to where the guy is holding off the Monster with a blow torch)

Anyway, it makes sense that Shore should reach back for source material.

Let me know if you agree, HOB.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

It may take me a while before I can cue up the pics, esc, but I suspect that Shore just came up with his two notes himself, as opposed to actually copping them from It!. On the other hand, you could be right, that he consciously swiped them. But it seems a reach to have taken just a couple of notes, especially from an extraneous flick. I do remember the EW notes but can't from memory associate them with the scene in ITTFBS.

However, your ear, and your memory, are plainly excellent, that's for sure!

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

By the way, I had mentioned that the music for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)turned up in another movie and that would be Nicholas Roeg's On Dangerous Ground (1952). Both scored by Bernard Herrmann.

According to the TRIVIA On Dangerous Ground was actually made before The Day the Earth Stood Still but release was held up for two years. So, I had it wrong, The Day the Earth Stood Still copped the music, not the other way around.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Nicholas Ray, esc -- not Roeg! One demerit from my previous compliment to your memory, above!

On Dangerous Ground was reputedly Herrmann's favorite of all his scores. I have the CD of the soundtrack and it's good. Not only can you detect pieces heard in TDTESS, there are also cues Herrmann used in some of his other films, notably North by Northwest, seven years later. No wonder it was his favorite score -- it's made up mostly of passages he stole or reused from himself!

Don't feel too bad about that Roeg mistake. I know of a Steven Segal fan who thought he loved this movie...until he saw it and realized the ground in this one was "Dangerous", not "Deadly".

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Merely one of those curious things. I suppose we can rack it up as the advantage of having spent a more than a few Summers here on ye old Terra Firma. "Nothing new under the sun!. Nothing new to those who know.

Watching new movies now, they all have echoes of movies of years gone by. I remember watching Alien (1979) with a friend the night it opened and afterwards he told me he liked it very much and all the while I was thinking, though it was well done with many good points, it was a lot like a duded up version of It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Later I read articles saying the same thing.

Steven Spielberg's movies get the old reference Rolodex of the mind spinning, too. I think he does it on purpose and I admit that it is fun for me to place his sources.

Being "old" has its disadvantages, too. Like an over ambitious "Spell Check", this old brain replaces Ray with Roeg.

Thanks for the Checks and Balances, HOB.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

When I saw Alien in the theater I thought the same thing -- just ITTFBS with more money and effects. Even the ending was essentially identical.

On the other hand, I never thought about the similarities between World Without End and The Time Machine. It never occurred to me to compare the two, even with the time-travel theme and Rod Taylor. I knew these things, obviously, but never took them to the next level. Curious how the mind works, or fails to.

[–] escalera-2 11 years ago

Both The Time Machine (1960) and World Without End have their own merits and are enjoyable. Consider that it had something to do with creative talent that makes them so and not great big bags o'money.

Other versions of The Time Machine have hit the Big and Small Screens, some having the same financial disadvantages as George Pal's little opus (I presume) and others with a greater advantage as the recent version, even with adjusting for inflation, surely had a greater budget, but it failed in my eyes.

Well, nuff said.

"Please use elevator, stairs stuck between floors."

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Both time-travel films are very good, of course, as are some others such as The Time Travelers (1964) and even Bob Clarke's micro-budget Beyond the Time Barrier (1960). Later on, the bigger-budgeted Time After Time (1979) was quite clever and well done, if lacking that all-important sense of apocalyptic doom.

Still, my heart belongs to World Without End. No contest, nothing more to consider.

With that, I offer the thread back for someone to restore its original title.

[–] gary_overman 11 years ago

Since this thread has drifted so much, I thought a little more wouldn't hurt. The actress Yvette Mimieux (Weena of The Time Machine) was in an episode of the series One Step Beyond, as a young wife who was murdered by her jealous husband for flirting with a deaf-mute clown. The husband was played by none other than Christopher Dark, Henry Jaffe of WWE.

If you guys didn't know that, I thought you might find it interesting.

Yvette Mimieux was a very pretty lady, I thought. This was the third role I recall seeing her in. The other was the dancing princess in the 1962 film, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

As I write this, TCM is broadcasting the 1954 film Suddenly, in which Christopher Dark plays one of three men hired to assassinate the President when he gets off his train at Suddenly, California.

The other two are Frank Sinatra and Paul Frees, the "man of a thousand voices" who dubbed many actors in both US and foreign films, was the voice of the "talking rings" in The Time Machine, narrated other sci-fi films (Atlantis the Lost Continent), and appeared on screen as one of the professors in The Thing From Another World and as the reporter making tape recordings about the imminent A-bomb drop on the Martians in The War of the Worlds.

And the house they take over to get a shot at the President in Suddenly is owned by a widowed mother played by none other than Garnet herself, Nancy Gates.

Before getting her role in The Time Machine, Yvette Mimieux tried out for the role of another girl of the future in Robert Clarke's Beyond the Time Barrier.

Time, it seems, is one, big, swirling vortex of casting calls in which the same atoms continually collide.

[–] gary_overman 11 years ago

<But we're a couple of old guys, everybody laughs at our war stories.>

That is probably most of it right there. We were small kids (and in a very non-tech age at that) when these films came out, and so they were novelties back then. Today, as was said earlier, kids are used to very realistic-looking CGI, and the old way of doing things has no more charm.

OT, but I just just came out of a five day period after a minor blizzard with no power. I had to eat all of my meals out and the last night with no power, I slept with my clothes and even a heavy coat on and two blankets, and I was still cold. Not a fun situation.

On the plus side, I used the time well, finishing the proofreading for my novel and now all I have to do is put the corrections in the memory stick, put it in proper MS form, and start looking for a literary agent.

Any suggestions in that regard, Hob? I would prefer a paid agent, that is, one who will charge a reading fee. That way, I have a better assurance that the MS will get read.

If you want, you can either PM or email me with any ides that you have. Thanks.