Classic Ross Amico

Tag: George Pal

When Worlds Collide Sci-Fi Disaster Movie Review

“The day may arrive when money won’t mean anything. Not to you… nor anyone.”

No, I’m not talking about the impending real-life collapse of society, but rather quoting a dour scientist in George Pal’s “When Worlds Collide” (1951), a film which, I must say, offers some remarkably prescient insights into mob mentality and demonstrates that selfish robber barons never change. Indeed, its most remarkable aspect is that everyone works together to prepare for the inevitable as well as they do – until, of course, it all falls apart.

This week on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, with so many planets visible in the sky and the tumblers falling into place for Armageddon on earth, it will be easy for us to put ourselves in the grim mindset of this obvious precursor of the big-budget sci-fi disaster flicks of the 1990s, by Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay, and others.

The character-actor cast is populated by recognizable faces from future small-screen hits “Mr. Ed,” “Green Acres,” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” and any number of daytime soaps. The film itself runs a lean 83 minutes, and you just know that son-of-a-bitch industrialist is going to get his.

We’ve jettisoned all the water to make room for Guinness on the space ark. Bring your beverage of choice to the comments section, as Roy and I discuss George Pal’s “When Worlds Collide” on the next “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” It won’t be the G-forces that will have us blacking out, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!

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January 30, 2025
Brothers Grimm Movie Nostalgia with Roy’s Tie-Dye

For those of us of a certain age, family movies were an essential part of the holidays, as the networks kept kids entertained so that adults could catch-up after the meal. In past years, we’ve reflected on “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

On the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, we’ll take a nostalgic look back at George Pal’s “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” (1962). The narrative, as you would imagine, incorporates a number of familiar Grimm’s fairy tales, while also dealing with the brothers’ real-life struggles. The all-star cast includes Laurence Harvey, Russ Tamblyn, Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden, Jim Backus, Beulah Bondi, Walter Slezak, Yvette Mimieux, Buddy Hackett, and Terry-Thomas, among others.

Pal is certainly no stranger to the show, as we’ve discussed a number of his features in the past, including “The War of the Worlds,” “The Time Machine,” “Destination Moon,” “7 Faces of Dr. Lao,” and “Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze.”

There’s a certain amount of regret in having to view “Grimm,” originally shown in Cinerama, on a home screen, but it’s still an at times vertiginous experience. It’s easy to imagine what it must have been like to see it in the theater, with Tamblyn dodging branches on a wild ride atop a speeding coach, or gazing between his legs into a ravine as boards crack and tumble from a dilapidated bridge. The film also incorporates the producer-director’s trademark stop motion effects. Pal first achieved fame through his Academy Award nominated Puppetoons, which introduced subjects like “Tubby the Tuba.”

The music is by Leigh Harline. Harline was an integral part of the Disney team that scored an earlier fairy tale adaptation, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” He won two Academy Awards for his work on “Pinocchio,” including one for Best Original Song, for “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

Our conversation was originally scheduled to take place on Thanksgiving weekend, but had to be postponed, as Roy and I continued to metabolize our Thanksgiving tryptophan. However, since one of the film’s chapters, the Puppetoon-laden “The Cobbler and the Elves,” is a Christmas segment, the delay will do nothing to diminish the timely nature of the discussion.

We hope you’ll join us for a Grimm chat, as we remember George Pal’s “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.” Pal around grimly in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!

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December 14, 2023
Destination Moon Patriotic Space Travel

Damn the bureaucracy of government oversight – space travel is the patriotic duty of America’s entrepreneurs!

Sure, George Pal’s “Destination Moon” (1950) is astonishing for revealing just how much was actually known or conjectured about space at that time. Really, it’s a remarkable film, in terms of scientific accuracy and educated guesswork as to what it would be like to actually travel to the moon. What a long way from Georges Méliès’ vision of being launched out of a cannon in 1902!

But now the film is even more prescient than most of us ever realized, with the conquest of space having fallen to the tycoons and robber barons. Somehow, I think the creators of “Destination Moon” (including Robert A. Heinlein, upon whose story it is based) imagined more altruistic motives. They certainly held a more optimistic vision of humanity. Hence the pronouncement at the end of the film: “This is the end of the beginning!” How wonderful it must have been to live with such hope.

This week on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, we travel back to the future to talk about this genre classic, actually suggested to us by Roy’s dad, who will pop in to share some of his recollections of seeing the film as an impressionable boy. Hang around in the comments section (zero-G, of course) for a discussion of “Destination Moon,” when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:30 EST!

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January 19, 2023
Doc Savage Untold Hero of Pulp and Film

From his arctic Fortress of Solitude (yes, before Superman) to his headquarters on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, Doc Savage burns through shirts like a squirrel through a bag of peanuts.

Before Steve Zissou, before Buckaroo Banzai, before Jonny Quest, Doc and his brain trust, the “Fabulous Five,” kept the world safe from megalomaniacs and cryptozoological terrors, through a combination of moral righteousness, forward-looking technology, and good old-fashioned fisticuffs. And superheroes weren’t even a thing yet. Furthermore, James Bond and Indiana Jones owe a thing or two to Doc. Would that his sole motion picture, “Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze” (1975), would have been a patch on “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

TV’s Tarzan, Ron Ely, plays Doc with an animated glint in his eye, in George Pal’s final feature. Pal, you’ll recall, was responsible for the enduring classics “The War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine.” And director Michael Anderson gave us “The Dam Busters,” “Around the World in 80 Days,” and “Logan’s Run.”

Alas, a compromised budget, a camp tone, and maybe even just plain old bad timing doomed “Doc Savage” to failure. (“Doc” shot out of the gate ahead of “Superman” and “Raiders.”) For all his forthrightness and valor, his movie, sadly, lacks the courage of his convictions.

Nonetheless, it’s a fun Fourth of July flick, what with Frank De Vol’s score adapted from Sousa marches (the composer credited as “John Philip SoUSA” – with the “USA” in red, white, and blue). Heck, the first thing we see is the American Flag, unfurled above Doc’s snowmobile, as our hero makes his entrance. If it was ever your desire to put lyrics to Sousa’s “The Thunderer,” then this is the movie for you!

Doc on horseback, silhouetted against the setting sun, or leaping in slow-motion, feet-first toward the camera, is as good as it gets. Just don’t expect the whole movie to be on that level.

TV’s Tarzan, Ron Ely, plays Doc with blond hair and an animated glint in his eye. Over the decades, there have been rumblings of other attempts to revive one of the pulps’ greatest heroes, with Chuck Connors, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Dwayne Johnson (The Rock as Doc?) as the lead, but so far, the 1975 version is all we’ve got. Maybe Doc is just too clean-cut for the jaded sensibilities of 2022? If so, more’s the pity!

I hope you’ll join us, as Roy and I flex our muscles, even as we make inroads into rocket science, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Bring your sheet music to the comments section. We’ll bellow the lyrics to Doc’s march, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!

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June 30, 2022
Dr Lao & A Beard’s Farewell: Roy’s Sci-Fi Corner

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

Watch for an eighth face by the end of our discussion of “7 Faces of Dr. Lao” (1964), on tonight’s Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. To mark my one-year anniversary as Roy’s regular cohost, I’ll be releasing my beard into the wild.

Satisfy your voyeuristic tendencies, and maybe see me get nicked into the bargain, as we discuss George Pal’s hallucinatory classic, featuring Tony Randall as the presumed Eastern impresario of an itinerant Western circus AND each of its allegorical attractions.

There will be more tears shed than at the end of “E.T.” Join us in bidding farewell to my best friend in all this world. The big shave will be livestreamed on Facebook. Leave your aloe in the comments section, alongside your razor-sharp insights, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT.

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Thanks to Colin Curless for this bit of “fan art” – now actually a few months out of date!

June 4, 2021

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