Category: Sci-Fi

Netflix Instant Watching

I wasn’t among the very first to be able to watch online movies from Netflix, but I’ve been checking almost every day, and this morning the feature is enabled. The selection of movies is very limited, and playback requires Internet Explorer 6 or 7 with the Silverlight plugin. Firefox isn’t supported, and movies can’t be downloaded.

So what did I pick as my first choice? The Angry Red Planet, from 1960. Why? Because it was directed by Ib Melchior, who wrote the story that became Robinson Crusoe on Mars. The movie is full of profound human insight. For example, the relative merits of girls over radiation risks.

The video transfer of this movie appears to be, at best, 400×300 pixels blown up to 640×480. In other words, it’s lousy. There’s a full screen option, but the resolution doesn’t justify doing that. Because of the way the video is done I can’t get a screen capture without great difficulty, so I took a picture of it with the camera.

How red can an angry planet be, anyway?? For Robinson Crusoe on Mars, instead of Melchior’s simple red filter, Byron Haskin cleverly used the blue of the desert sky as if it were a blue screen, to easily and cheaply insert a red sky.

Netflix is off to a rather tentative start with their “Watch Now” feature. But I’m not going to knock it because it isn’t costing me extra, and it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars – 3

Yikes! It’s been over two months since I posted part 2 of this movie. In part 3 it’s apparent where the look of the sets in Star Trek came from. Director Byron Haskin recycled the spaceships and sound effects from his earlier film, War of the Worlds.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/RCOM/RCOM3.flv 400 175]

Earthlings Prepared for Outer Space!

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/NOV06/ThisIslandEarth.flv 400 300]

My twinster Jean mentions here a bad 50’s sci-fi movie called “Queen of Outer Space.” Being the age that I am, I love 50’s sci-fi movies. A memorable screening I recall of one such movie, “This Island Earth,” from 1955, was in 1980, at a science fiction festival at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The scene I’ve posted here got big laughs out of the audience.

In April, 1986 I bought my first Laserdisc player, and “This Island Earth” was one of the first discs I owned. Today, I use that same player for capturing video on the computer. I pushed up the bit rate on this video to show that a 20-year-old disc on a 20-year-old player looks not too bad.

The technology was introduced in the U.S. in 1980 by Philips of Holland, which later sold the format to Pioneer in Japan. I had written a paper in the 11th grade about the development of video discs, and I was really taken with the superiority of LD over VHS. LD never caught on with the public at large, but Philips was able to apply its optical expertise to the creation of CD, with Sony handling the digital side of the format.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars — 2

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/RCOM/RCOM2.flv 400 175]

Part 1 of the fondly remembered, but rarely seen, movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars is at this link. Here is part 2. It’s 30 minutes long.

This is my favorite part of the movie, after Mona the monkey is found and before Friday is introduced. Animal characters are usually a turn-off for me, but Mona’s contribution to Draper’s survival makes her an integral part of the story.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars – 1

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/RCOM/rcom1.flv 400 175]

A movie I remember well from childhood is Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). My brother Jeff and I were so taken with it that we created our own audio version on my tape recorder.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars was directed by Byron Haskin, who had directed War of the Worlds for George Pal ten years before that. Crusoe was sort of a test-run for the Paramount Studios special effects and production team that would soon begin work on the original Star Trek TV series.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars is not currently in official release. Many people remember it, but most haven’t seen it in decades, so I’m posting it here, probably in four parts. The image is very small, but it should be adequate.