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Reviews
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)
If Mars was just a little bigger....
I remember seeing this film as a kid and loved it. It really fired the imagination. It is really too bad that Mars isn't more like half or two thirds the size of Earth instead of its small size. Just not enough gravity to hold on to a breathable atmosphere, even a marginal one like in the film. Sorry but when we really visit Mars we'll have to wear something like the Apollo Moon Suits. I really liked the suspense that starts right in the beginning with mistaking the money's tail for some alien tentacle. The scenes of the asteroid with the decaying orbit were very good for the pre-computer animation days as was the asteroid impact that buried everything in ash. One thing of interest though. Aren't those alien space ships the same models as used in "War of the Worlds" with Gene Barry? They certainly look identical except for the color, silver instead of green.
Meteor (1979)
More enjoyable than "Armageddon"
Really, there was nothing wrong with this film other then some basic scientific flaws, such as the over crowded asteroid belt and the appallingly bad Russian spoken by Wood and Keith. (My Ukrainain wife burst out laughing at their lines when we watched the DVD.) It is very interesting to me that the film was made prior to 1981 and the discovery of the Chixilub meteor crater in the Gulf of Mexico. This was the dinosaur killer that hit 65 million years ago. The science was right on about another Ice Age as well, even before the 1982 studies that predicted "nuclear winter" and were cited as the reason for the great die off in the late Cretaceous period. But the feel of the film as well as the acting and the believability was far better then "Armageddon", 20 years later. If "Meteor" had been blessed with the advanced special effects of the late 1990s, it would have been truly spectacular. Now a few problems: Those missiles were supposed to carry 100 megaton warheads. The largest nuclear weapon ever set off was 50 megatons and that was the size of a Greyhound bus. Also, the missiles had a distinct plastic model look right down to the seam where it looked as if the two halves had been glued together. Still, this should not detract form a very good action film as well as a warning as this really could happen and did at least 65 million years ago.
Fail Safe (1964)
The nightmare that those born after Reaan will never have to live
I remember as a boy of 11 seeing this film in a theater with my parents. I certainly remember the white knuckles and sweat while watching this film. It certainly confirmed my fears as a child that lasted well into the 1980s that we were all living on borrowed time. The generation of pre-20 year olds today will never have that nagging thought in the back of their minds that at any moment the sky will be filled with a blinding light and a mushroom cloud will rise like a pall above a vaporized city. As a youngster in school we drill practiced that stupid duck an cover drill. I remember being about 9 of 10 and asking my teacher what good would this possibly do as the fire ball from a hydrogen bomb was five miles across and over a million digress and we lived about 20 miles from New York City. I recall my teacher was at a loss for words. This chilling tale of what might have been nearly became a reality in September of 1983 with a computer glitch ironically in the USSR showed a first strike launch by the United States. With Reagan in the White House is must have been pretty believable to everyone except a Ukrainain General in charge of the USSR rocket forces. He suspected an error and refused to launch on warning as he was ordered to do by Yuri Andorpov. As it turned out it was a computer simulation program that was left in operating mode by mistake. Most of the American population almost died that September day in 1983.
When we see the film now I at least can nervously laugh it off like one would a bad nightmare in the warm light of day. While you were dreaming it however, it consumed you with fear. This is a film I will show our daughter, Sabrina-Tatiana, when she is old enough to appreciate it. It is her history too as I met her mother, Larisa in the former Soviet Union and we have been married for almost six years. Our beautiful daughter Russian-Ukrainian-American is in some ways a miracle when one considers the "Evil Empire" goading speeches of the 1980s. She is a positive sign of hope that we can really all get along if we can put politics aside and see each other as human beings.
Watch the film and enjoy it but also try and put yourself in the time between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Reagan- USSR standoff in the 1980s. It will give you a new perspective on this great film.
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Small error sighted in this film
First of all, this is a great film, one of my favorites. I watched this twice now with my wife of almost two years who I met in Ukraine. She had never seen this film during the time of the USSR (of course since it did not portray the Revolution, in the kind of positive manner that official Soviet History did.) Nor did she see it after Independence in 1992. For her it was very interesting, but sad, she said. Anyway, she spotted an error in some of the sets that are supposed to be in Moscow. The Cyrillic letters on some of the signs were in Ukrainian as opposed to Russian. Instead of using the "Backwards N" in Russian, many signs used the Ukrainian letter which looks like the English letter "I" with two dots over it.
Anyway, I thought some of you may find this bit of information of interest.