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Ikarie XB 1 (1963)
Icarus XB 1 / Voyage to the End of the Universe
A worthy Euro sci-fi epic with excellent sets and costumes. It's a 1963 Czech release bought by American International Pictures for TV with voice overs familiar to viewers of 60s European films. Only exteriors and miniatures suffer in the special effects category.
The film is nestled in time between two groundbreaking films, Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It tells compelling stories of segments of a large crew in a large interstellar ship in the year 2163. Each mini-story is reasonable for a long term crew in what it covers and the science it displays.
Ahead of its time in details, the crew was allowed 1 personal item; one chose a dog and another chose a large robot brought by a mathematician of all people. Not many sci-fi have a math guy on the crew.
Actors and actresses are older than US audiences prefer, but perform well without entering into stilted, over the top, soap opera-esque efforts of western European fare.
Sci-fi fans will appreciate plot twists and turns as the crew makes its way to the green planet of their objective. Another nice story from the author of Solaris just 3 years before the introduction of Star Trek on NBC.
Space Men (1960)
Grandfather of Italian Space Operas worthy of an MST3K Episode
This is typical Italian fare of an Anglo lead with all the melodrama of the Edge of Night meets telenovellas in a scifi format as opposed to Sword and Sandal epics of the day. We see are the original actors speaking English with the intent to dub after it was cut. A cast sprinkled with a generous group of native English speakers definitely helps the flow of the dialog as mediocre as it is.
To the film's credit it has one of the better exterior spaceship designs but horrible special effects used on it. Sadly, the helmets inside the ship are modern jet fighter helmets of the time. It's interesting that the crew has its military code names like IZ 41 or XY15 on their back like a football jersey, but call each other by their given names.
One cosmonaut is the black actor Archie Savage in a major role as the noble engineer who devises a strategy to stop the disaster. The reporter is Rick Van Nutter, who was one of Connery 007's Felix Leitners.
If clunky scifi is your thing, watch this flick, then Planet of the Vampires and finally Green Slime to see how production values get better, but the melodrama stays the same. That's why I call this the Grandfather of Italian Space Operas worthy of an MST3K episode.
Hmm ... I wonder if IZ 41 is the nephew or the uncle of THX 1138?
The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)
The Worst of the Worst
I remember the great disappointment when I bought a ticket to this turkey expecting something of the Batwoman from Batman comics, and this disaster came up. What a letdown for a jr high kid.
Greatest bad exploitation of bad exploitation films. Take AIP teenage dancing girls & 'hip' music & love at first sight, the early Batman craze, 3 stooges situations,a mad scientist, an Igor-like assistant. pairs of dual comedic characters, masked wrestling, seances, very bad backgrounds worthy of 3rd graders, Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth's Ratfink, cults, and other early 60s culture items.
A plot with no continuity where an evil entity trying to takeover the world is a target to be stopped by Batwoman and her Bat-girls. From start to finish there are more continuity twists and turns than a ball of yarn. Not even MST3K could make this interesting. Ironically, Batwoman, Katherine Vidor, went on to be come a continuity coordinator for many of the Disney channel cartoons of the 1990s: Buzz Lightyear, Hercules, Aladdin and Little Mermaid to name a few.
A rating of 1 came from the interesting costume of Batwoman. That interest faded in 15 minutes. You'll find the first tattoo of a bat below her collarbone as part of the costume.
Adventures of Superman: Crime Wave (1953)
Easily the Best Superman Episode Ever as Superman Invades the Crime World
For every kid who loved the Superman comic books, this episode was what we hoped every episode would be - lots of super-action with crook after crook being rounded up and personally tossed in jail by the Man of Steel.
Black and white is the perfect medium for this mini-film noir as Superman promises the city of Metropolis that he will fight the Crime Wave head on, and put the ringleader in jail. The 'Crook Capture Countdown' keeps the story moving as the Man of Tomorrow marks off crook after crook, moving one step closer to capturing "Mr. Big" with each update.
Here George Reeves delivers a Superman so intense, who would ever even think about crossing him? But of course in their greed, criminals still think they can outwit the Last Son of Krypton.
As he closes in on the crime boss, will Superman fall into a deadly super-trap that spells final doom for the Caped Avenger, or does he turn the tables the "Number 1 Man?" (I started crying when I thought it was curtains for my favorite hero.)
Although this is a clip show of season 1 and clips from Warner Bros movies and serials, it shows how even when budgets are tight, exciting TV can happen.
This episode also emphasizes that the original vision of the show was not to barely-out-of-diapers kids like me at the time. It was directed towards our parents and other grown up followers of the radio show, Fleischer animations, and movie serials of the 40s. Much of the violence found in this episode disappeared from the future 'kid-tamed', full color episodes of later years.