The lost continent

The Lost Continent was an old hammer horror from 1968 I saw on the UK horror channel this weekend.

I've never seen it before and enjoyed it a lot.

OK, by today's standards the special effects are all too rubbery and the monsters look like casts-offs from Robot Wars but it was a fair effort back then.

Essentially it's about a group of ship's passengers and crew stranded in a sort of prehistoric - medieval sea world. Think of Micheal Crichton having a bad dream about conquistadors and squids and you're nearly there.

There are many things to interest a film nerd like me in Continent.

There are solid actors in there like Eric Porter but there are also unusual ones.

One of the these is Hildegard Knef, whom Missus Moonbase has informed me was a big deal as a European singer back in the Sixties. Knef recorded songs in her native German and in English in a rich Nico-esque voice.

Acting and lots of singing are the trades of another actor in the film, a young Darryl Read. This lad has one of those TV faces you swear you've seen a million times growing up in the sixties but I can't think where.

Googling him revealed that he was a hard working musician on the fringes of stardom most of his life. He was also in a proto punk band called Crushed Butler, who, despite me never having heard of them I can appreciate the important role they and many other bands played in the build up to British punk rock in the mid to late Seventies, a role similar to that of The New York Dolls and The Stooges et al in the development of American punk and New Wave.

Having read quite a bit about Darryl Read he's the perfect candidate for a bio-pic in my opinion.

The Lost Continent also contains what you might call Victorian technology. Whether its steampunk I don't know but I'm referring to the inflatable shoulder balloons that are used to walk across the man-eating sea weed. It reminded me of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea in that sense.

Overall it falls into that group of films concerned with marooned ships, lost worlds and hostile inhabitants. Films like Warlords of Atlantis, Mysterious Island and a slew of Time Forgot flicks starring the late lamented Doug McClure.

Have you seen Lost Continent and can you think of other films like it readers?

Transhuman movies like lucy

Saw Scarlett Johansson in LUCY last night.

She becomes superhuman after ingesting a new drug. It's very Lawnmower Manesque, especially the final scene were she texts everyone to say 'I am everywhere'.

In fact at the end Lucy is not human anymore having gone beyond the black liquid stage and toured the universe very quickly, a bit like Ray Milland in the Man with The X Ray Eyes.

Lucy's alienness fits well with Scarlett's other film Under the Skin. In fact Skin could well make a good sequel to Lucy if watched one after the other. I bet if both films were spliced together it would feel like a single flick. I could simply be hallucinating though having fallen under Johansson's spell.

Having googled Lucy it would appear it falls into a sub-genre of film and literature called 'transhumanism'.

Limitless is another film like this as is Robocop and the Matrix trilogy, all dealing with humans going beyond being human. It reminds me of superhuman and in that sense the term super-powers. Does this make all superheroes transhuman?

I particularly like the idea of humans achieving omnipotence. Or is it omniscience. Dunno but my Dad always said he was both! Ha ha. Linking this peak of power with the world's computers and phones is an increasingly frequent trope in films and stories. It's one I like a lot.

I enjoyed Lucy and look forward to catching Scarlett's latest transhuman movie Ghost in the Shell this week at the flicks.

Do you like films like these readers?

OOPS!

new robocop

Just about to watch the reboot of Robocop with Michael Keaton.

I loved the 80's Verhoeven movie and its toys.

Is the new one any good?

Space Mining by kev d

As requested, here's my quick contribution to mining on another world!

Take care,

Kevin D

what did you do in spring as kids?

Did you do anything specail in Spring as a kid?

With the return of snowdrops, daffodils and sunlight did you do anything in particular after the dark arms of winter let you loose?

Maybe playing out again? Maybe biking again? Starting that new den? Getting certain toys out?

What did you do readers?

project sword: moon mining memorandum

It always fascinates me that one of the functions if the Project SWORD mission was to undertake mining.

Mining other planets.

Personally when I look at the SWORD fleet of toys I don't think of mining as a likely use. I suppose the Moon Prospector could locate seams of ores and minerals and the Moon Ranger could have been useful in bulldozing rock spoil but beyond that I'm not sure. A Moon Bus full of miners? Maybe SpaceX toys could add something?

Mining off-Earth has been a staple of Science Fiction for decades. The Sean Connery movie OUTLAND is a good example of how outer space and hard graft can make for a gritty stroryline. Indeed ALIEN is set on the flying ore refinery, The Nostromo.

Years ago I blogged this masthead which I loved. The Moon Miners Manifesto. I dunno, it just seemed like a Project SWORDesque letterhead to me at the time.

Back in 2010 I first posted a short extract about a Moon Prospector from the short story MASKS by Damon Knight. For some reason I have always associated this description with off-world mining beyond an unwelcome Earth. Rather like Project SWORD!

"The prospector was climbing a crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive."

Damon Knight 1922-2002

If you were describing off-Earth mining operations how would you put it readers?

Maybe a Project SWORD mining memo? A new letterhead? A short paragraph or even a drawing or photograph with some toys maybe!

Here's my starter for ten!

Your contributions welcomed!

Did you appear in the school talent show?

Were you ever in the school play or talent show?

The thought terrifies me now but I had two stints under the school limelights.

In primary school circa 1968 I was one of the three wise men in the Christmas nativity. I may have been Joseph come to think of it. I was holding a toy lamb dressed in nomadic robes. Me that is, not the lamb. My mum, who was in the audience, had advised me the night before not to wave at her. I ignored this counsel and waved my head off promptly dropping the lamb into the manger!

My second bash at school stardom was in the first year talent show in secondary school. I was 11 and it was 1972 at the height of Bowie mania. I adored David Bowie and went to see him live at Preston Guildhall during his Aladdin Sane phase.

I couldn't wait to emulate my idol on the school stage and in an uncharacteristic bout of showmanship I did just that. I was dressed in fairly normal street clothes but I did slick my hair back Bowie-style and had a large circle of red paint daubed on my forehead. With a cheap Telecaster copy round my neck I proceeded to mime my favourite bowie song. I'll give you a clue. Now Ziggy played guitar! I didn't win the talent show but I enjoyed the gig immensely.

It would be another seven years before I graced the stage again but this time I'd left school and was a late Seventies hippy appearing with my friend George in our duo called Alien Cage. It was 1979, we were 18 and we toured all the best busking sites in the nearby seaside town of Blackpool before plucking up enough courage to do a proper gig in a pub. We were ropey as hell, nervous as mice but we had our own instruments and our own songs! Our signature tune was Alien Cage is Coming!

We didn't leave it there either and with even better instruments we went in search of rock glory. But that's a story for another day!

Did you do a stint in the school play or show or maybe play in a band or appear in a film readers?