Object Z (1965), BFI Blu-ray and DVD (Dual Format Edition), out now!

 

“Object Z is unique among children’s programmes. It does not feature children, teenagers, puppets, pop groups, animals. It was in fact originally written for adults…”

Kenneth Eastaugh, Daily Mirror 11th  November 1965

This is an excellent release from the BFI of a series I wasn't even aware of and was clearly an attempt to match the BBC's Dr Who or Nigel Kneale’s more adult Quatermass, using a global threat posed by invading aliens as a means of showing the divided world of the time. Like all good sci-fi, it holds a mirror up to the science-present as much as possible perhaps too boldly as the above quote reveals with some contemporary reviewers concerned at the frightening concept and the message it sent about humanity’s petty doom spiral… It’s rather sadly as relevant today as 60 years ago.

As a small child of the sixties I was convinced that the War was still being fought, not in Europe but somewhere in Africa so ever present where the scenes of conflict on programmes like All Our Yesterdays that replayed the last big event over and over. The reality is, of course, that some war was always taking place and so it has continued until our present state in which more war is far from “unforeseeable”. Writer Christopher McMaster wanted to make a global point about the threat to our long-term viability and that he was able to do so via a “children’s show” says much for the prevailing sensibilities of a country in which most people lived through the Second World War, Korea and the Cuban missile crisis when the Cold War almost thawed.

Unseen since its first transmission on ITV in 1965, and now newly remastered, Object Z is available on home media for the first time and it feels like the discovery of a time capsule... from a time when we trusted scientists and experts more than we do now. I remember this optimism as it fuelled not only TV science fiction, Dr Who but also the Gerry Anderson series, cinema with 2001 and others. At the same time there were an increasing number of dystopian creations, The Prisoner, Planet of the Apes, 2001 (beware of AI), Silent Running and so on, the culture was wary about the speed of change but, heck we still went to the Moon didn’t we? There was a darker edge to Quatermass and environmental concerns with Doomwatch (very on the nose), The Changes and even The Tomorrow People and back to Dr Who.

Object Z is an outlier in this respect with a group of astronomers discovering a huge object heading in the Earth’s direction from deep space with impact almost certain and the best-case scenarios still offering little hope for civilised society. The media plays a major role in communicating the truth, reflecting the Fleet Street heroes of The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) with television producer Peter Barry (Trevor Bannister, later of Are You Being Served and superb here) and his assistant Diana Winters (Celia Bannerman) holding the narrative focus in the race to find answers.

Meanwhile, society begins to fray as panic spreads and extremist political opportunists attempt to take advantage of chaos led by the Oswald Mosely type figure of Keeler (played menacingly by Arthur White, so close to the real deal). The scientists and politicians must work together and internationally too in an attempt to save the World and the tension ramps up after an initial missile fails to even dent the object or alter its course in any way.

Some of the World might just survive in hastily assembled bunkers but there’s no doubt that the impact is coming… is this an allegory or a forecast? The last episode has two shocks with the latter making you wish that season two existed… food for thought and a fascinating document.

“The recording was done as-live with no cuts, vision mixing took place in real time with filmed inserts played in live; and included a 125-second pause for the scheduled ad break. Only a genuine emergency would have stopped the recording and line fluffs certainly did not count…” Film and TV writer Jon Dear in the booklet essay.

It’s so interesting to see how the budgeting and production constraints impact the finished project with Jon Dear’s booklet essay being especially informative inn this respect along with the excellent commentaries. The episodes were filmed in order with three days’ rehearsals between Wednesday and Friday before recording on a Monday and broadcast on Tuesday, fairly common practice at the time and something which now adds a freshness and immediacy with outweighs the cardboard sets and cheap special effects.

The super science special features are revelatory especially the illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Jon Dear, Dick Fiddy, Dr Elinor Groom and William Fowler, and credits. This is available with the first pressing only so please get in quick!

Also worth noting:

• Newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
• Audio commentary on Episode 1 by Jon Dear
• Audio commentary on Episode 2 by Dick Fiddy
• Audio commentary on Episode 3 by William Fowler and Vic Pratt
• Audio commentary on Episode 4 by Dr Elinor Groom
• Audio commentary on Episode 5 by Kevin Lyons
• Audio commentary on Episode 6 by Celia Bannerman and Toby Hadoke
• In Search of Sierra Nine (1963/2025, 7 mins): edited highlights from the sole remaining episode of the Rediffusion science fiction drama Sierra Nine accompany this investigation of a mostly missing television series
• Object Z Episode 1 shooting script
• Image gallery: rarities and curiosities relating to Object Z and its missing sequel series, Object Z Returns... if only this could be found!?

You can find Object Z in the BFI shop and also from all good online retailers, do not hesitate, you never know when something unexpected may appear in the stars...

Kind of Blue? Fade In (1968)

"Both pictures are either going to be great or be disaster areas. There will be no middle ground with either one."

Judd Bernard, Producer for Blue and Fade In

As previously mentioned, Fade In was filmed at the same time as Silvio Narizzano’s film Blue (1968) and it features the fictionalised story of two people involved in the making of that film. It’s a meta concept with Blue’s stars Joanna Pettet and Terence Stamp shown arriving and on their way to the Utah desert set with the latter even getting a speaking role as a garage attendant asks of the film will feature John Wayne. It’s an intriguing concept and whilst the ideal way to experience ethe two would have been to have them on the same bill, it took a number of years for Fade In to make it to the screen and this was as a TV movie in late 1973, after its star Burt Reynolds had made Deliverance and become one of the biggest names in Hollywood.

So, what happened and why was this charming if low energy film consigned to the darkness for so long? A clue can be found in the fact director Jud Taylor asked for his name to be taken off the picture as did the scriptwriter Mart Crowley… "I did write one film, Fade-In, with Barbara Loden and Burt Reynolds in starring roles. However, it was butchered by other writers. It was never released. I paid Paramount $1700 to take my name off the project."

The credited writer was Jerrold L Ludwig, one of Mr Crowley’s butchers, whilst director was “Allen Smithee” a made-up name devised to get around the requirement of the Directors Guild of America that each film was to have a named director. The studio didn’t like Taylor’s cut and he certainly didn’t like theirs and perhaps even they weren’t that keen…

 

Burt Reynolds and Barbara Loden make film...

The film starts in an intriguing enough way as massive trucks trundle through the desert as seen only in fictional form and a century earlier in Blue. Then its almost a shock to see Terry Stamp driving his e-type Jaguar – oh Tel, you were living the dream mate! – towards the location, reminding the viewer perhaps of David Hemmings in his open top Roller in Blow Up (1966). Stamp was so location-specific this makes his appearance in Blue even stranger.

Pretty soon though we’re seeing Burt Reynold’s as Rob, a local rancher looking to get some work as a driver on set, waiting as Joanna Pettet’s plane arrives – cue some appreciative comments form his pal Bud (the ever-reliable James Hampton) before Rob sets eyes on Jean (Barbara Loden), the film’s assistant editor, who he is to chauffer. The two hit it off and Rob proves to be a gentleman walking her home and protecting her from a couple of his drunken pals… he’s already BURT, handsome, pensive and a powerful presence.

Rob and Jean get to know each other and we also get some fascinating glimpses of Blue being made from the camera’s sweeping around the filming of the deadly meeting of Blue’s compadres and the Mexican soldiers to Jean demonstrating the art of editing and the Kuleshov effect, cutting the action to generate an emotional narrative for the audience. In his turn Rob show the city girl his world from acting the cowboy and skinny dipping – there’s a lot of Burt on show!

 

Their romantic journey continues even as Jean’s place-holder boyfriend Bill arrives from Los Angeles… she’s more interested in her new lover although she finds him struggling to accept this. It’s a tale of people from two completely different worlds, one perhaps more real than the other and you wonder what will happen when the play-acting ends and both have to return to reality?

Dusty Verdict:  Fade In has a terrible reputation but it’s likeable enough in its lightweight way. It certainly benefited from being seen directly after Blue and the two together make for an interesting time capsule of Hollywood ideology from this period. If Stamp was out of place in Blue Reynolds is perfectly cast in this world and there are more than enough hints of his star power and persona to come.

A rainy-day film for romantics… after being hard to find for decades both films are now on blu-ray along with a documentary on Silvio Narizzano, whose idea it all was! Details of the Australian version are here!

 

 

East End cowboy… Blue (1968)

 

Where’s he lookin’ off to?

South… Mexico I guess…

Well, I reckon he feels they’re more his people now.

He can’t go back now, he killed one of them, he’s nowhere to go…

Terence Stamp has passed away and it’s the end of an era with one of the faces of the sixties leaving us as well as one of our finest character actors. You could still see Terry in the streets of Soho and, whilst the last time I saw him he was looking his age, he was still so cool, still so handsome. I saw him introduce films at the BFI and he was as urbane and eloquent as you’d expect. His period post Zod was probably my favourite with films like The Hit, The Limey, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert but he was in some of the finest films of the ‘60s including Far from the Madding Crowd to Poor Cow. For this post I wanted to watch a film I hadn’t seen before and it turns out to be far from his finest although it does feature cattle… so some continuity with the Ken Loach work!

Some might say that the Stepney lad playing a cowboy is an odd choice in subject and tone with this film coming directly after Loach’s social-realist Poor Cow (1967) and, before that, Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) to be followed by two fine Italian arthouse efforts with Fellini’s superb Toby Dammit – easily the most successful of the segments of the Poe trilogy Spirits of the Dead (discussed elsewhere on here) – and Pasolini’s Teorema (1968). The great film reviewer Roger Ebert certainly thought so but he found many faults giving the film just one star, saying “Blue is not just a bad movie, but a painfully inept one.”

Joanna Pettet

The casting makes more sense when you understand that Canadian director, Silvio Narizzano, was based in the UK and had directed Georgy Girl one of the signature films of the Swinging London Terry was so much a part of. The aim with Blue was to create something like and arthouse western with Stamp’s great depth the anchor for the whole production. Now, circumspection and all-action tend to be an ill fit and the film does struggle to meld everything together into a satisfying whole with the action at the beginning and the end jarring with the more cerebral middle section in which Doc Morton (Karl Malden) and his daughter Joanne (Joanna Pettet) look after the badly injured Azul (Terence Stamp) who was part of a Mexican incursion across the border.

The film is set in 1880 and starts with Mexican bandit and revolutionary Ortega (Ricardo Montalbán, who is a charming as ever and certainly has the range for the brief in hand) who is raging against the Americans on principle as well as the restriction of his trade as a bandit. We see a troop of soldiers riding into a small Mexican town following, one affixing a poster on a wall offering a 2,000 Pesos reward for Ortega for “crimes political and civil against the Republic of Mexico”. A lone figure with piercing blue eyes, watches the soldier from under the brim of his hat as the others are greeted by the women working at the local bar.  

Ricardo Montalbán and friend

Once inside, the figure springs up onto his horse and summons Ortegas outlaws in to humiliate the soldiers. Ortega picks up one of the women and they ride off but not before Azul picks up the troops’ commander and kissing him full on the mouth shoots him leaving even the outlaws silenced by his brutality.

Obviously we have serious questions about this behaviour but before that from the outset you are left admiring the cinematography from DOC Stanley Cortez who makes the most of Panavision anamorphic – this film would look stunning in the cinema! There is a real feeling of place and Cortez captures the terrifying beauty of the Nevada deserts, flats and valleys where most of the film was made. A far cry from Carnaby Street for Narizzano.

The gang make their way back to Ortega’s lair and there’s a daft party atmosphere mixing free loving with the kidnapped prostitute and Ortega’s forgetfulness about which mother was which of his three sons – “who can remember?” He counts the blue-eyed gringo as his son although his other sons are less impressed and a fight breaks out between the American and Xavier (Carlos East). Ortega stops the fight and goes outside for a deep conversation with his right-hand man, Carlos (Joe De Santis) and resolves to take the fight to the rich Yankees across the river in Texas although his revolutionary aims are not so clear as his desire to rob and steal.

The next day Xavier and Azul lead the way as they compete once again to be the first across the wide river that separates the countries and we switch to the quite, civilized community they are on a course to meet. Here we find the good Doctor, an urbane and educated man and his daughter, strong-willed, modern and beautiful. Malden and Pettet are both very good in these roles, the formers natural authority and steadfast morality and the latter’s intensity and presence – she was such a feature of US 70s TV growing up – they both were – but she is always an impressive actor.

Joanne leaves the town gathering to collect something from home only just before the invaders arrive to disrupt, steal and, in one case kill the locals. She has her own nightmare waiting at home as she is ambushed by another of Ortega’s sons, Manuel (Stathis Giallelis) who chases her through her homestead before attempting to rape her. A shot rings out and Joanne looks up to see Azul… As the Americans get organised and fight back, another of Ortega’s sons is killed and Azul is badly wounded. He makes his way the Morton’s homestead and Joanne recognising him as her saviour, they decide to help him recover.

Karl Malden and Joanna Pettet

Now the film’s most philosophical and naturalistic section takes place as the Mortons try to fix the mute and aggressive Azul who only gradually is won over by the Doctor’s kindness and his daughter’s beauty and steadfast good nature. All three do well in these moments and we have to believe that Azul has been brought up too much of an outlaw and not so much “another kind of Mexican” – he’s loyal to his adopted father and is a trained killer who, as we saw at the start, relishes the kill.

There’s no love lost between the American setters and the Mexican ones and whilst Blue stays to help the Mortons on their farm, he is viewed with suspicion by parts of the local community. He’s challenged by one of the locals but holds himself in… he might feel that he doesn’t belong but soon his relationship with Joanne deepens and he reveals what happened to his family. They settled in Mexico when he was five and lived together peaceably until the war with USA and Mexico (after the former annexed Texas in 1895).

Soon Ortega discovers where his adopted Azul is and challenges him only for Blue to overcome him… now there’s a bigger confrontation promised as the bandit takes his men and vows to lay waste to the settlers. It’s time to take sides and prepare for the true test…

Dusty Verdict: Blue doesn’t quite make sense but it is a compelling watch having enough of the old western style to pull you in along with enough of the romance and brotherly love to make you believe that folk can just get on together in the end, despite all the history. As I’ve said it looks fabulous and the score from Manos Hatzidakis is stirring indeed. The film has scale, a cast of many hundreds especially during the film’s epic finale when a battle for the soul of the land and the main participants is joined and the river runs red.

Seeing Terry handling his horse far better than his accent it must be said, he is a convincing leading man and action hero in ways his very English subtleties might not always have suggested. One of the faces of our time and one of the finest actors too, he shall be missed.

 

There’s an interesting addendum as the production of Blue was used as background for the Film Fade In featuring Burt Reynolds and Barbara Loden, which is co-produced by Narizzano. The two films were shot consecutively although Fade In wasn’t released until 1973. It’s fascinating to see the scenes featuring the scenes behind as it were and the cast and crew make guest appearances with Joanna/Joanne all sixties hip stepping off a plane in bright miniskirt and boots.

Mr Stamp is seen in a sleek e-Type driving towards the location, he stops for some petrol and the pump assistant asks if John Wayne is going to be in the movie, “nah, not this one…” Terry replies and no, it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. This isn’t Duke’s kind of western.

Terry meets Joanna, down on the border and a dirty old river runs right through it.

Rio Grande Sunset

Terry and Jo

88 years later... Joanna steps off a plane

... and Terry gets his car filled with petrol.

Such a great looking film!