Disclosure Daze… Toomorrow (1970), BFI Blu-ray out now!

 

I was very taken with Livy [Olivia], I thought she had everything going for her in this fresh bubbly way; she was worried about filming, but she got into it pretty soon.

Director, Val Guest

Within a decade Olivia Newton John would not only be telling John Travolta that he was the one she wanted but singing her way to Xanadu… but in the late 1960s the idea of her starring in a fantasy musical based on a hippy dippy plot was just a twinkle in someone’s eye.

This film wouldn’t last five seconds in the UFC of modern film criticism whether it was staged on the White House lawn or in a carpark in east London and yet… and yet we owe it to ourselves to try harder. Steven Spielberg recently had a go about reinstalling the “wonder” into the business of first contact but this film starts from the point of view that this is a given. The irony is that this was seen as a post-Monkees pre-fab four by, Don Kirshner, one of the men who pulled that disparate group of actually very talented musicians together (and Davey Jones who could dance and act…) and who’s co-creator, Bob Rafelson (plus his screenwriting and acting buddy Jack Nicholson) had released the cinematic suicide note that was the on-the-nose polemical anarchy of Head (1969) which is as knowingly cynical as this film is sweetly optimistic.

 “… we’re just too much, we’re TOO-morrow!”

Toomorrow sits somewhere between the Cliff Richard movies of the early 60s, those featuring Joe Brown, Marti Wilde and the Dave Clarke Five and the children’s TV of the early 70s… The Tomorrow People, Double Deckers and HR Puff ’n stuff. It doesn’t have the star power of finesse of A Hard Day’s Night or a Help! But it does have Olivia Newton John who by the time it was eventually released was on her way to solo success with early hits such as I Honestly Love You. Give Me Love and Take Me Home. She also has undeniable screen presence here and has more star power than her other three bandmates combined – that not to damn them just a mark of her presence.

James Bond film producer Harry Saltzman had entered into a three-picture deal with Kirshner and this was the first product of that with a script from David Benedictus which was re-written so much they never told director Val Guest. The latter did his best but, having not got paid, he launched an injunction shortly after the film was premiered and that was pretty much that. It has until this release languished on YouTube in a very low grade copy but, seriously. It’s a delight to see it restored for home media and given the attention it deserved as a period piece, a snapshot of the times and feelings and the cinematic birth of Livy.

It's not a question of being so bad it’s good, there are some genuinely impressive things not least the production quality, special effects and designs that under pin the science fiction aspects so well and a lively cast who you side with no matter how arcane their dialogue and the feeling of zero chemistry as a group. Film as history, history as film – it matters as much for the 1960s as for the silent era and this film, being just 40-odd years after The Jazz Singer is far closer to Jolson than Jackson, or Taylor’s The Era Tour… there’s a modern-day Olivia Newton John for you?

Now for the groovy precis and it’s tinged with the weary cynicism of an alien Alphoid called John Williams (I know how many more “coincidences can there be?!) played by the great Roy Dotrice, who has been watching Earth for three thousand years and frankly got a little bit bored of so little happening. But something has happened and it’s his colleagues on an orbiting spaceship who have picked it up, the first signs of something infusing the music of this world that actually makes them feel. Now, if this wasn’t so close to Stephen Spielberg’s empathy point I wouldn’t be so shocked… but whatever goes around comes around in All Toomorrow’s Parties from Close Encounters…, Xanadu to the present day we’re searching for the lost chord that will bring peace on Earth and to all alien cultures.

Galactic Control, who can only produce soulless electronica only without coherent beat, themes and, soul... are interested in a new sound being produced by Olivia and her pop band "Toomorrow", from sonic vibrations emitted by their special amplifier, a "tonaliser" - a processor attached to a Hammond organ that the Floyd would have killed for! Mind you, they had better songs! John Williams offers to help the group rehearse and record their ground-breaking sounds and we see them rehearsing in his Victorian pile in which he has transmuted various objects into a Revox 8-Track recorder and a more than makeshift studio.

The aliens kidnap the band and to get them to restore the loving feeling to their otherwise soulless space music try to take them home with them – they’d love to take them home – but whilst the band sympathises with this intergalactic lonely-hearts club, they have plans on their own planet. Everything will come to a head at a new bands night in Chalk Farm at the Roundhouse but will that be enough to restore harmony or will the guys have to be cool with living in space and never shopping in Granny Takes a Trip every again?

You’ll need to watch it to find out!

“If this antiseptic crew had really dared to set foot on the stage of the Round House during a pop festival, dressed up like canaries and singing their cute songs of love and tears, they would have been booed, quite deservedly, off it again."

The Monthly Film Bulletin 

Whatever the circumstances it is genuinely a thrill to see the Roundhouse as it was in the late 60s even if it’s not Syd’s Floyd, Soft Machine or The Pretty Things playing there. It’s more corporate these days… ticket offices and toilets… safer too! But the above reviewer is right in suggesting the disconnect between the location of counter-cultural grooves and this bubble gum pop. ONJ is a proper musician but she never stood in with Hendrix, the Incredible String Band or Steve Howe’s Tomorrow on that stage.

Groovy space-age features!!

Restored in 4K from the original camera negative and presented in High Definition

Audio commentary by pop music historian Andrew Sandoval

Tomorrow Night in London (1969, 5 mins): London swings – but gently – in this patchouli-permeated promo film for the world’s coolest capital

The Nose Has It! (1942, 8 mins): silly little Arthur Askey mucks about with hankies in this wartime winner from Val Guest - worth the price of admission on its own Playmates!!

The Guardian Interview: Val Guest (1998, 62 mins): Guest revisits his career in this onstage retrospective interview

The British Entertainment History Project: Val Guest (1988, 10 mins): candid reflections upon Toomorrow’s troubled genesis, accompanied by rare promotional images from the BFI National Archive

If I Could Turn You On (1969, 13 mins): US troupe Living Theatre rouse London hipsters at The Roundhouse with a provocative interactive performance

Chimp-Mates: Alice Goes Pop! (1975, 17 mins): Public Funk Chimpanzee No. 1 Alice picks up her sticks and kicks out the jams for a Children’s Film Foundation extravaganza

(2026, 12 mins): extra-terrestrial encounters of the groovy kind via this video essay by Celeste de la Cabra

FIRST PRESSING ONLY Illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Matthew Hild, on Val Guest by the BFI’s Dr Josephine Botting and an essay by Jay Rathbone on manufactured pop groups, plus notes on the special features and film credits

Order direct from the BFI now man!!

Ant musing… Empire of the Ants (1977), Eureka Blu-ray out 22nd June

 

Don't tread on an ant He's done nothing to you
There might come a time when he's treading on you…

Adam Ant, Antmusic (1980)

This film has a lowly 5% on Rotten Tomatoes and whilst I had no idea that the ratings could go so low, I don’t think that’s in anyway a fair reflection of its merits. Empire of the Ants is the third and last film released in American International Pictures's H.G. Wells film series, after The Food of the Gods (1976) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) the first two of which were directed by the remarkable Bert I. Gordon. Gordon also co-wrote an managed the whole process in the manner of a true auteur as Kim Newman says in his career overview in the extras. “Mr B.I.G.” as he was known and naturally initialled, was a master of every part of film making from editing, cinematography to the special effects upon which so many relied.

His work in the science fiction/horror exploitation genre went back to the early 1950s and his last credit was in 2015’s Secrets of a Psychopath, made when he was 93 and still full of the passion and energy that would see him beyond his 100^th birthday. It’s fine for some to lump him in with Ed Wood and other low budget dreamers but he was clearly a master of his craft and, on the evidence of this film you can see that despite the limitations of budget. As Chris Cooke says in his introduction, Gordon proved that size does indeed matter and his track record is indeed a large one when it comes to thrillers involving relative dimensions directing such hits as The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), it’s follow-up, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Village of the Giants (1965) and King Dinosaur (1954) not to mention the other Wells film featuring gigantic rats and hens.

Joan Collins in sales mode for Dreamland Shores

His mastery of double exposure often looks better on the cinema screen as its only preparing film for the small screen that has made the elements of the technique more visible with, as here, the odd ant crawling apparently on thin air although the remastering here is as impeccable as Gordon himself when preparing filmic elements for projection in the pre-digital age. Here the mix of photo-enlarged real ants and larger scale rubber replicants, works well if you suspend disbelief and go with the flow – for those of us born before CGI this is not so hard. As with so many eco-horrors of the seventies “disaster movie” craze, physical props had to be used and the actors had to do their best to make their threat real in the deadliest moments of which there are quite a few.

In terms of the source material, HG Wells short story from 1907 was more about the threat of organised ants of regular size and in the opening section we see ants organising their culture using pheromones and a collective intelligence that is remarkable for any of the 15,000 different species on Earth. Wells just went with that but Gordan has a nuclear spillage following illegal dumping, irradiating the creatures and making them grow to giant size. This was a familiar trope as Newman points out with the same thing happening to Colossal Beast in 1958 and from there to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Incredible Hulk in the Marvel comic starting in 1962.

Having established the threat it’s time to turn to the real monsters of the piece; the people and especially ruthless real estate developer Marilyn Fryser (a marvellously bossy Joan Collins) who is busy lining up a group of punters for a trip to view the potential of her new integrated community at Dreamland Shores, miles from anywhere, on polluted land and with only the pretence of the groundwork having been done. There's a hilarious sign point to the "Future Gold Course", "Future Marina"and "Future Pool Area" and essentially this is a money grabbing exercise for which Marilyn's head of sales, Charlie (Edward Power) admits only a third of the day trippers will invest in, the rest are just there for the free ride. Sadly for them, today there's a huge price to pay...

The group on the boat to nowhere are the usual mix for this period of cowardly sexist husband with a wandering eye, Robert Pine (Larry Graham) and his long-suffering wife Christine (Brooke Palance) who has to face the indignity of his staring at the winsome singleton Coreen (Pamela Shoop) although she doesn’t see his attempt to sexually assault her shortly into the day – she knees him where it hurts much to the cheers of my watching crowd.

There’s a guy on the down, divorced and drinking Joe Morrison (John David Carson) who we hope can be redeemed as well as the disappointed middle-aged Margaret (Jacqueline Scott) who starts to warm up the weathered and worn down boat owner Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing) who takes Marilyn’s money even though he dislikes her and the whole phoney project. There are two pairs of older couples too, one a pair of professional freeloaders and the others too curious for their own good although it’s hardly their fault when they become the first to be killed by the giant ants.

As with all such creature features, there’s an initial period in which the party doesn’t understand the danger the audience knows full well they are in but soon the ants are everywhere and it’s a race into the everglades to find escape after the clever insects have removed the boat, their only means of escape. As the group runs through the dense woods, Gordon capture the action really well and even throws in some horrible jump scares as man proves no match for mandible as heroes arise, cowards are found out and everyday worries are put into sharp relief by the life and death struggle.

The narrative builds as the survivors realise they are being herded and that there’s more to these ants than meets the mind, with the opening segment, voiced by Marvin Miller, explains the remarkable capacity of ant communities to act collectively and intelligently… That was Wells warning, that we might be outsmarted by a seemingly humble but organised creature and it was also a call for humanity to think harder.

That much is implicit in Gordon’s film but very much secondary to the entertaining personal journeys and the fight to live!

 

Pamela Shoop, John David Carson and Jacqueline Scott

Special effects, giant ants and, of course, there are some massive Special Features: 

Limited Edition of 2,000 copies featuring O-card slipcase with original poster artwork and booklet featuring new writing on Empire of the Ants and ecological horror by genre film expert Liam Hathaway

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray

New introduction to Empire of the Ants by Chris Cooke, filmmaker and co-director of Mayhem Film Festival

The B.I.G. Picture – interview with film historian Kim Newman focused on the life and career of cult filmmaker Bert I. Gordon

Audio commentary by writer, director and producer Bert I. Gordon himself!

Audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle with film historian and filmmaker Michael Varrati

 

It’s the very definition of pulp and B.I.G. should be far from notorious for his skills in making such an enjoyable piece of nonsense on a budget and on location! You can pre-order direct from the Eureka website and watch out for those six-legged insects at this time of year, they’ll do anything for sugar…

This is a guest post from Paul Joyce of IThankYou 

 

Joan Collins has said that the reason she made films based on her sister's books was to avoid having to make any more films getting muddy in disaster movies... She's great value here, it's a very decent cast!

Invaders from Mars (1953), BFI UHD and Blu-ray out 11th May

This is a guest post from Paul Joyce of IThankYou 

Well, this is a blast in more ways than one and if there’s one thing I should stay from the get-go, please do not be mislead by the 73-year-old cover art, this is a sci-fi film with more than a twist or two and it is also a masterful mix of direction and design from William Cameron Menzies. Those of us with the silent film bug – it’s just a film bug really – know his work from early epic sets for blockbusters like Robin Hood (1922) as well as The Thief of Bagdad (1924), which allowed Douglas Fairbanks, to run, jump and climb over almost the entire screen. Menzies helped establish the very language as well as the look of film and was the man with his mind inside the movie camera, meeting the demands of briefs that wee unimaginable to most.

Menzies was the man for whom the phrase "Production designer" was coined specifically for by David O. Selznick when he was working on Gone with the Wind (1939) although this might be apocryphal. Menzies certainly contributed more than mere design and was the director of the burning of Atlanta sequence in that film. Ironically Menzies did not win the Oscar for GWTW – that was Lyle Wheeler, Art Director, although had grabbed the first Academy Awards for Best Art Direction in 1928 (and for two films, The Dove with Norma Talmadge plus The Tempest with John Barrymore). 

Menzies had put HG Wells’ Things to Come (1936) on screen as director and the Yale/Edinburgh alumnus, returned to the genre with Invaders from Mars although this film is more science fantasy than the more scientific projections of Wells and those like Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov who were to follow. The chances of anyone coming from Mars being a million to one, or so they say, it’s not hard to see the film as another expression of American paranoia in the line of so many others. That said, there’s a sense of wonder and childish thrills about the production that makes for a tense and gripping ride.

The film begins with a dark and stormy night and the feverish imagination of young amateur astronomer David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) who witnesses a flying saucer emerging from the storm to land just over a hill in a nearby film. His father George (Leif Erickson) goes to investigate climbing this hill – a studio set that will feature in so much of the film it feels like a throwback to Weimar cinema. George sees nothing but suddenly the sand beneath his feet swirls and swallows him as he drops down to who knows what.

So much happens on this little hill built on the set...

When he doesn’t return David’s mother Mary calls the police who send two officers to investigate, both of whom suffer the same fate. In the morning George returns home but he is a changed man, cold and distant and, as his son observes, carrying a strange wound on his neck. More and more fall through the sand and re-emerge strangely changed - Janine Perreau is especially weird as Kathy Wilson, David’s young neighbour who goes from being a carefree pre-teen to burning her family’s house down.

David goes to the police station for help and Menzies’ depth of field as the youngster looks up at the front desk with an oppressive long corridor behind him, perfectly encapsulates his emerging nightmare. How can he convince people that someone or something is taking over their friends and neighbours. It rings so many bells with the McCarthy era, The Red Menace right up to the woke mind virus that those lost to deranged Trumpism project… and all this three years before Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Menzies' forced perspective adds a dream-like oppressiveness

But there are good people, something about the boy’s clear minded description persuades the desk officer to call in a child psychiatrist Doctor Pat Blake (Helena Carter) to believe him and, when his father and mother – now also “changed” arrive to collect him she refuses saying that she will have to investigate his “condition” further. Thus begins a race against time to confirm his story in time to help save his parents and everyone else. The army mobilises just as fast as many are taken over and Menzies’ limited budget sees various stock footage inserted to add to the set pieces. He certainly doesn’t disappoint when we finally get to go underground and meet the aliens… 

By the end you can exactly see just why the likes of Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese along with so many other directors value Menzies’ film. Given the budget and the time at his disposal he manages to create a fully convincing fantasy from the point of view of the child at the heart of the story. There’s probably an argument for the director being an auteur with this film as so much was under his control in terms of the visuals, that he was able to get the necessary performances from his players – especially the children – marks him as a skilled people player too!

Martian angles accentuate the minimal design

For this first pressing only there is an excellent illustrated booklet featuring new writing on the film by Dr Deborah Allison and Barry Forshaw, a short piece from Monthly Film Bulletin, November 1954, notes on the special features and film credits 

The film has been restored in 4K from the original camera negative and master positives and looks so crisp and clear and this is the case for both the UHD and Blu-ray presentations. 

There are also many exciting special science fiction features!!

The interview with the grown-up lead in Jimmy Hunt Saves the Planet (2022, 11 mins) is especially interesting as he recalls how being in the fantasy of the film itself was such a formative experience for a 13-year-old.

• Newly recorded audio commentary by Kim Newman (of course!) and Barry Forshaw
• European ending (1953, 3 mins) and European observatory sequence (1953, 9 mins) – clearly the Europeans could handle the hard stuff better than American audiences… This is the ending I prefer! 
• Not Just a Dream: Designing Hope in Invaders from Mars (2026, 16 mins): filmmaker Nic Wassell explores how legendary production designer and director William Cameron Menzies infuses the paranoia of atomic age science fiction with hope for the future
• William Cameron Menzies: Architect of Dreams (2022, 16 mins): Menzies’ biographer James Curtis interviews the director’s granddaughter Pamela Lauesen
• Terror From Above (2022, 22 mins): filmmakers John Landis and Joe Dante, editor Mark Goldblatt, visual effects artist Robert Skotak and preservationist Scott MacQueen discuss the film  
• Restoring the Invasion (2022, 7 mins): before and after clips of the restoration
• TCM Festival Introduction (2022, 7 mins): by John Sayles
• Ernest Dickerson on Invaders from Mars (2022, 5 mins): the award-winning cinematographer introduces a new trailer
• Original 1953 trailer plus 2022 trailer
• Extensive image gallery including posters, press book pages and publicity materials, plus previously unseen images from the BFI National Archive

Invaders from Mars is out on 11^th May and you can – and must – pre-order from the BFI and other reputable retailers.

It’s a highly influential film and it has not looked this good in over 70 years!

Mister, you've just gotta believe me...