youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.

youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.

youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.

youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

Zorro,

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.

youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.

youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.

"The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem." [Summary at www.imdb.com/title/tt0052564/]

Actually, "The Angry Red Planet" is a silly movie with the cheapest of cheap effects. The so-called "Cinemagic" is where everything on Mars is seen through a red lens. It gives 50's sci-fi a bad name. Here's a brief look: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC_1JgXkiQI

The Benton Card Company began printing movie material in the 1930s. Bulk printing was right up their alley. They could make available a less expensive line by using limited colors on a cheaper card stock or paper for the smaller theaters that couldn’t afford the full color window cards and flyers that were supplied by the studios and the National Screen Service. Benton grew to producing regular weekly material for over 400 theaters. American International Pictures (AIP) approached them in 1955 to design and print window cards and flyers for their movie releases. AIP targeted low budget films for the younger market and Benton material was perfect.

3 radiohead tattoo's, and I'm not done yet either!

visit my facebook: www.facebook.com/pamnesiac

or my twitter: www.twitter.com/pamnesiac

:)

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

First Appearance - Batman #1 (Spring 1940)

Catwoman — then called "The Cat" — first appears in Batman #1 as a mysterious burglar and jewel thief, revealed at the end of the story to be socialite Selina Kyle. Although the story does not have her wearing her iconic catsuit, it establishes her core personality as a femme fatale who both antagonizes and attracts Batman.

Batman #62 revealed that Catwoman (after a blow to the head jogged her memory) is an amnesiac flight attendant, who had turned to crime after suffering a prior blow to the head during a plane crash she survived (although in the final issue of The Brave and the Bold, she admits that she made up the amnesia story because she wanted a way out of the past life of crime). She reforms for several years, helping out Batman in Batman #65 and #69, until she decides to return to a life of crime in Detective Comics #203. Selina appears again as a criminal in Batman #84 and Detective Comics #211, her final appearance until 1966.

In the 1970s comics, a series of stories taking place on Earth-Two (the parallel Earth that was retroactively declared as the home of DC's Golden Age characters) reveal that on that world, Selina reformed in the 1950s (after the events of Batman #69) and had married Bruce Wayne; soon afterwards, she gave birth to the couple's only child, Helena Wayne (the Huntress). The Brave and the Bold #197 elaborates upon the Golden Age origin of Catwoman given in Batman #62, after Selina reveals that she never actually had amnesia. It is revealed that Selina Kyle had been in an abusive marriage, and eventually decides to leave her husband. However, her husband keeps her jewelry in his private vault, and she has to break into it to retrieve it. Selina enjoys this experience so much she decides to become a professional costumed cat burglar, and thus begins a career that repeatedly leads to her encountering Batman.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

FLEX– The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival– presents Spacey Space, a selection of some of their favorite entries from past festivals. The selection of these particular works was inspired by the theme of one of the festivals most popular programs of the 2009 competitive festival. While capturing the broad scope of work submitted each year to the festival, the individual works contained in this program all manage to share a common interest in exploring the notion of space–both inner and outer.

While some of these works implore us to pull from the void in order to recognize and remember that which appears lost–be it forgotten people, memories, ideas, yet others reveal what is already there, and unseen to the naked eye– electrons, devices of control and isolation, and ghosts. By exploring the expanses of inner and outer space, the phantom zones existing beside us and within us, these pieces demand of us a closer inspection of the unseen, the in between, and the forgotten.

Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch

(Germany, 2007, 6 minutes, DVD)

From a more technical point of view, the TV/video screen comes alive by a controlled beam of electron in the cathode ray tube. For Energie! and uncontrolled high voltage discharge of approximately 30,000 volts exposes photographic paper which is then arranged in time to create new visual systems of electron organization.

Thorsten Fleisch’s experimentation of materials in his work results in a heightened state of awareness of unseen elements and captured ephemera. He began experimenting with super 8 film in high school. He went on to study with Peter Kubelka at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt where he began working with 16mm film.

Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) by Andres Arocha

(USA, 2009, 5 minutes, 16mm)

Enter a space. A one hundred feet deep hole dwarfs invaders with visions of immeasurably tall trees in an almost pristine natural setting. How do you see it? Inspired by the grandeur of nature, Day/Night (Devil’s Millhopper) limits itself to this setting and explores it through different eyes.

Spaceghost by Laurie Jo Reynolds

(USA, 2007, 26 minutes, DVD)

Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved ones.

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, educator, and activist. In addition to being an advocate for prisoners’ rights, she is also involved with creative collaborative projects for prisoners and ex-offenders. She teaches at Columbia College and Loyola University in Chicago

Rosewell by Bill Brown

(USA, 1994, 23 minutes, 16mm)

A space kid borrows dad’s UFO for a joyride, but winds up crashing near Roswell, New Mexico. An amnesiac filmmaker goes looking for answers.

Bill Brown makes movies about ghosts that masquerade as movies about landscapes– or maybe it’s the other way around. He studied filmmaking at Harvard University, and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson

(USa, 2008, 4 minutes, DVD)

A charred visitation with an icy language of control; there is no room for love.

Since the year 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of film, video and photography work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience. Originally from upstate NY, he holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Phantogram by Kerry Laitala

(USA, 2008, 6 minutes, 16mm)

A communication between the maker, pure light, and the shadow?graphic spirits of cinema. A telegram from the dead using the medium of film. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of the viewers.

Kerry Laitala is an experimental filmmaker from San Francisco whose handcrafted films are masterful, tactile, manipulations of celluloid. She studied film and photography at Massachusetts College of Art, and has a masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institution.

It Will Die Out in the Mind by Deborah Stratman

(USA, 2006, 4 minutes, DVD)

A short meditation on the possibility of spiritual existence and the paranormal in our information age. Texts are lifted from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker in which Stalker’s daughter redeems his otherwise doomed spiritual journey. She offers him something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit.

The title is taken from a passage about the time from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed:

Stavrogin: …in the Apocalypse the angel swears that there’ll be no more time.

Kirillov: I know. It’s quite true, it’s said very clearly ad exactly. When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won’t be any time, because it won’t be needed. It’s perfectly true.

Stavrogin: Where will they put it then?

Kirillov: They won’t put it anywhere. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an idea. It’ll die out in the mind.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based filmmaker who leaves town a lot. Her films blur the lines between experimental and documentary genres, and she frequently works in other media including photography, sound, drawing and architectural intervention. Deborah teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Cal Arts.

FLEX–the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival–has sought to provide a year-round home for the exhibition of experimental cinema from around the world since 2004. Our hope is that this annual event can serve as an important venue for artists to share their work, while also allowing local audiences a unique opportunity to see significant works that do not have a regular home elsewhere in the State.

Started by experimental filmmaker and University of Florida professor Roger Beebe in Gainesville, Florida, FLEX has earned itself a reputation for quality programing and events. In addition to the alternating festivals, one competitive and the other invitational, FLEX regularly presents film-centric events. These other events, like gong shows featuring industrial and educational films, Cinema Under the Stars- 16mm movie classics screened outside, and Silent Films, Loud Music- local musicians score music to silent films, all serve to promote the communal experience of film viewing.

Between splitting her time mining the internet for the most gruesome pics for her psychology lab job and working at Gainesville’s finest independent video store, Alisson Bittiker, once the FLEX chair wrangler, is now the Managing Director of FLEX. Dreams, of constant stress, work, and no pay, really do come true. She studied photography and video at the University of Florida.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

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Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

i waited for you but you never came

please keep moving

better keep moving.

View On Black

Starring Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen, Paul Hahn, J. Edward McKinley, Tom Daly, Don Lamond, Arline Hunter. Directed by Ib Melchior.

The first spaceship to Mars, presumed lost, is found in space and brought back to Earth by remote control. Only two from an initial crew of four are still alive, but one is unconscious due to an attached alien growth, while the other is traumatized, blocking out all memory of what happened. In hopes to save the unconscious crewman, the amnesiac is interrogated back into remembering. Those in charge thereby learn of the terrible dangers awaiting anyone venturing into the spooky, ruddy stillness of the very alien Martian ecosystem. Written by statmanjeff

www.dailymotion.com/video/xmsqw5_the-angry-red-planet_sho...

One of my earliest memories of THE ANGRY RED PLANET was seeing it through a five year-old's eyes on WPIX's (a local New York station for anyone reading this who is not from the New York area) SCIENCE FICTION THEATER on Saturday afternoons at 12:00 P.M. I can remember staring in wonder at the weird color designs of the Martian landscape plus being in absolute awe of the bizarre rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Well 27 years later, I am STILL in awe of the Martian landscape and the rat-bat-spider-crab creation. Yes friends, Sidney Pink's THE ANGRY RED PLANET has made its debut on DVD as part of MGM's "Midnight Movies" series and EVERY true fan of American International Pictures' science fiction films should have this under the Christmas tree for this upcoming holiday!!!

The plot is easy enough to follow. The first spaceship to Mars returns to Earth with two of the original four astronauts as survivors. The survivors in question are Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) and her boyfriend/ship's captain Colonel Tom O'Banion (Gerald Mohr). The other hapless astronauts who perish before they can get back to Earth include Professor Theodore Gettel (Les Tremayne) and Dr. Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen).

Upon her return, Dr. Ryan is hospitalized with a severe case of shock. It seems that her conscious mind has blocked out much of the frightening journey and, to add to the trouble, an unknown blob-like substance has attached itself to Colonel O'Banion's arm and is slowing eating away at the tissues of the comatose astronaut. In order to save O'Banion, Professor Weiner (J. Edward McKinley) and other doctors decide that Dr. Ryan must remember the frightening events of her journey if they are to find out what this substance is, how O'Banion came in contact with it, and most importantly, how to destroy it.

Through mind-altering drugs, the doctors are able to glimpse into Dr. Ryan's memory and what they hear is a bizarre tale that features a month long space flight, the strange shadows and reddish hue of the planet's surface with a still atmosphere which lacks wind. In addition, there are various giant monsters (including the aforementioned rat-bat-spider-crab beast or as Dr. Jacobs puts it... "King Kong's older brother.") like the huge protoplasm-like beast with a rotating eyeball, a vicious man/woman eating plant, and a huge being (which looks like a twisted gingerbread man out of a reddish nightmare) which seems to be the dominant species and whose "people" make it very clear to the astronauts that they are intruders and are NOT welcome on the red planet. What happens to Colonel O'Banion? How do Gettel and Jacobs meet their unfortunate deaths? What warning is given to Earth from Mars? All these plus many more questions will be answered when you get to your local video/DVD store and get this crazy, but fun little science fiction flick in your collection today!!!!

THE ANGRY RED PLANET was released by American International Pictures in 1959 and like all AlP films, this one had a very small budget and was shot (according to the notes in the back of the DVD cover) in ten days. When one takes all this into account, one can not help being amazed that the film looks as good as it does (remember that we are talking about a time BEFORE computer generated special effects). The four lead actors are known mostly for character roles in films ranging from A-list directors to Z-grade hacks. For example, Les Tremayne appeared earlier that same year in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST and would later work for Billy Wilder in 1966's THE FORTUNE COOKIE. However, he would also go on to appear in Larry Buchanan's laughable remake of THE SHE-CREATURE entitled CREATURES OF DESTRUCTION in 1967. Jack Kruschen was an always dependable character actor who worked with Tremayne earlier in George Pal's 1953 Martian epic, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount. One year after THE ANGRY RED PLANET, Kruschen did a memorable character role as Jack Lemmon's nosy doctor/neighbor in Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT. Gerald Mohr worked in the cheap 1959 film TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and in 1968 worked with the legendary William Wyler in the Barbra Streisand musical, FUNNY GIRL. Only Nora Hayden seemed to lack major acting experience and it does show in her delivery of some of the lines, but she is a VERY likable person on screen, so many of her scenes are fairly decent.

"Cinemagic" was in fact a typical 1950s "invention" which was really nothing, but film producers needed to lure people away from their television sets somehow. In this film, it DOES help disguise some of the budgetary limitations. For example, the design of the Martian landscape is in fact a series of paintings and the rat-bat-spider-crab monster is indeed a marionette. The bright red colors though do help conceal some of this (but NOT all of it). Paul Dunlap's eerie electronic score also helps create the mood of the "Cinemagic" sequences as well. Also, the fact that the story is being told through the drugged memory of a shocked astronaut helps explain the "unreal" world, which we see on screen (almost like some of the "expressionistic" designs of silent horror films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI).

The DVD itself is a full screen transfer and for a film MORE than 40 years old and from an independent, low budget studio, it survives on DVD remarkably well. The color (especially the "Cinemagic" Mars sequences) is excellent and vibrant. The film is also free of major scratches and cuts. In fact, the DVD is so clear that you can now see the wires of the monster marionette where in older prints, there was just enough static to somewhat obscure them. The Dolby Digital sound is available in English only while the subtitles are available in French and Spanish. The only other special feature is the original 1959 theatrical trailer in which the narrator raves about "Cinemagic."

All in all, THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a charming and fun-filled 82 minutes. Watching it reminds one of the 1950s comic books about journeys to Mars and other planets. It is a story told with such sincerity and innocence that one falls right back into an easier time of drive-ins, double features, AlP, etc.

you're trying to get yourself away.

find yourself another end

go on and get some rest

it's such a beautiful day.

View On Black

1. Alien 3 - Soundtrack

2. Billy Idol - 11 of the best

3. Björk - Greatest hits

4. Björk - Volta

5. Björk - Debut

6. Blade - Soundtrack

7. Café Tacvba - Vale callampa

8. Coldplay - A rush of blood to the head

9. Coldplay - X&Y

10. Coldplay - Parachutes

11. Creed - Human clay

12. Cruel Intentions - Soundtrack

13. Daft punk - Homework

14. Depeche Mode - Violator

15. Depeche Mode - Sounds of the universe

16. Depeche Mode - Exciter

17. Depeche Mode - The singles 86 - 98

18. Dido - No angel

19. Electronic Euphoria - Past-Present-Future

20. End of days - Soundtrack

21. Enigma - Love Sensuality Devotion

22. Enigma - Voyageur

23. Enigma - The screen behind the mirror

24. Enigma - 3

25. Enigma - The cross of changes

26. Enigma - MCMXC A.D.

27. Enya - Paint the sky with stars

28. Erotic Lounge - Erotic Lounge

29. Evanescence - Fallen

30. Ferry Corsten - Transnation 1

31. Ferry Corsten - Transnation 3

32. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

33. Garbage - Beautiful Garbage

34. Garbage - Garbage

35. Garbage - Bleed like me

36. Garbage - Version 2.0

37. Gladiator - Soundtrack

38. Gladiator - Soundtrack, more music from

39. Godzilla - Soundtrack

40. Gregorian - Master of chant

41. Heroes del Silencio - 84-96

42. Hocico - Odio bajo el alma

43. Hole - Celebrity skin

44. Incubus - Morning view

45. Jamiroquai - Synkronized

46. Kashmir - Zitilities

47. Korn - Follow the leader

48. Lenny Kravits - Greatest hits

49. Leonard Cohen - The future

50. Madredeus - Faluas do trejo

51. Marilyn Manson - The best of

52. Massive Attack - Mezzanine

53. Massive Attack - 100th window

54. Mauro Picotto - The double album

55. Men of the worl - Vol. 1

56. Moby - Play

57. Moby - 18

58. Morcheeba - The platinum collection

59. Nirvana - Black

60. Nirvana - Unplugged in New York

61. No doubt - The singles

62. No doubt - Rock steady

63. Norah Jones - Come away with me

64. Now - 4

65. Orff - Carmina Burana

66. Pearl Jam - Riot act

67. Petshop boys - Discography

68. Piano Classic - Masterpieces

69. Placebo - Once more with feeling

70. Placebo - Sleeping with ghosts

71. Placebo - Meds

72. Portishead - Third

73. Portishead - Portishead

74. Portishead - Dummy

75. Portishead - Glory times

76. Quake II - Soundtrack

77. Radioactivo - Lo mejor de clasificación R

78. Radiohead - Amnesiac

79. Radiohead - OK computer

80. Rammstein - Herzeleid

81. Rammstein - Mutter

82. Rammstein - Live us Berlin

83. Rammstein - Sehnsucht

84. Red hot chili peppers - Californication

85. Rock en tu idioma - Vol. 2

86. Sarah Brightman - Classics

87. Sarah McLachlan - Rarities, B Sides

88. Sarah McLachlan - Remixed

89. Sarah McLachlan - Mirrorball

90. System of a down - Toxicity

91. t.A.T.u - 200 km/h in the wrong lane

92. Texas - The greatest hits

93. The Alan Parson Project - The best of

94. The Breeders - Last splash

95. The Cardigans - Gran Turismo

96. The Doors - The best of

97. The Matrix - Soundtrack

98. The Prodigy - The fat of the land

99. Timo Mass - Loud

100. Travis - Singles

101. Trios - Vol. 2

102. U2 - The best of 1980-1990

The Postcard

A Valchrome Series postcard published by Valentine & Sons Ltd. of Dundee and London.

The card was posted in Douglas on Monday the 28th. June 1954 to:

Mrs. Cross,

35, Palm Street,

Droylsden,

Manchester.

The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

"Dear Aunty,

We are having a good

time here and the weather

is lovely.

Kind regards,

Win & family".

Douglas

Douglas (Manx: Doolish) is the capital and largest town of the Isle of Man, with a population of 27,938 (2011). It is located at the mouth of the River Douglas, and is on a sweeping bay of two miles. The River Douglas forms part of the town's harbour and main commercial port.

Douglas was a small settlement until it grew rapidly as a result of links with the English port of Liverpool in the 18th. century. Further population growth came in the following century, resulting during the 1860's in a staged transfer of the High Courts, the Lieutenant Governor's residence, and finally the seat of the legislature, Tynwald, to Douglas from the ancient capital, Castletown.

Douglas is the Island's main hub for business, finance, legal services, shipping, transport, shopping, and entertainment. The annual Isle of Man TT motorcycle races start and finish in Douglas.

A. A. Gill

So what else happened on the day that Win posted the card?

Well, on the 28th. June 1954, Adrian Anthony Gill was born. He was a British writer and critic, best known for food and travel writing. He was The Sunday Times's restaurant reviewer as well as a television critic. He also wrote for Vanity Fair, GQ and Esquire, and published numerous books.

Known for his sharp wit and often controversial style, Gill was widely read, and won numerous awards for his writing. His articles were the subject of numerous complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.

Gill began his writing career in his thirties, writing "Art reviews for little magazines". His first piece for the Tatler, in 1991, was an account of being in a detox clinic. In 1993 he moved to The Sunday Times where, according to Lynn Barber, "He quickly established himself as their shiniest star".

He continued to write for the Sunday Times until shortly before his death. Gill was also a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and GQ. He also wrote for Esquire, where he served as an agony uncle, 'Uncle Dysfunctional'.

He also wrote two novels which were generally poorly reviewed – Sap Rising (1996) and Starcrossed (1999). Sap Rising was given the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction award. He wrote books studying England – The Angry Island (2005) – and the United States – The Golden Door (2012).

In 2014 he won the 'Hatchet Job of the Year Award' for his scathing review of Morrisey's Autobiography. In 2015 he published a memoir, Pour Me.

In 1998, in The Sunday Times, Gill described the Welsh as:

"Loquacious, dissemblers, immoral

liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly,

pugnacious little trolls".

Gill's feud with the Isle of Man began in 2006 with a review of Ciappelli's restaurant in Douglas. Gill wrote that the island:

"Managed to slip through a crack in

the space-time continuum […] fallen

off the back of the history lorry to lie

amnesiac in the road to progress […]

Its main industry is money (laundering,

pressing, altering and mending) […]

Everyone you actually see is Benny

from Crossroads or Benny in drag….

The weather's foul, the food's medieval,

it's covered in suicidal motorists and

folk who believe in fairies".

The review was attacked in the Tynwald, the Manx parliament, with David Cannan demanding an apology for the "Unacceptable and scurrilous attack".

Gill made further comments regarding the Isle of Man in his Sunday Times column on the 23rd. May 2010, when he described its citizens as falling into two types:

"Hopeless, inbred mouth-breathers

known as Bennies and retired, small

arms dealers and accountants who

deal in rainforest futures".

His comments were made in the aftermath of Mick Jagger's suggestion that drugs should be legalised in the Isle of Man.Gill added that:

"If they become a hopelessly addicted,

criminal cesspit, who'd care? Indeed,

who could tell the difference?"

In February 2011, Gill described the county of Norfolk as:

"The hernia on the end of England".

In December 2013, his column just before New Year's Eve was the result of a night on the beat in Grimsby and Cleethorpes and was heavily critical of both towns where Grimsby is "On the road to nowhere" and Cleethorpes is full of "Hunched and grubby semi-detached homes".

Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Grove described Gill as:

"A tweed-suited, Mayfair-based

writer, whose only experience of

the North of England was his visit

to Cleethorpes and his regular trips

salmon fishing in Scotland".

Gill's younger brother Nick, a Michelin-starred chef, disappeared in 1998, telling Gill: "I’m going away now . . . I’m not coming back." Gill spoke of his sadness at not knowing what happened to Nick, and wrote that he looked for him whenever he visited a new city.

On the 20th. November 2016, Gill disclosed in his Sunday Times column that he was suffering from "The full English" of cancer.

In his final article in the Sunday Times Magazine, published posthumously on the 11th. December 2016, he disclosed that he had a primary lung tumour with metastases to his neck and pancreas.

He also detailed the medical treatment that he was receiving, with a commentary on his experiences as a terminal cancer patient in the National Health Service.

Gill died in London on the morning of the 10th. December 2016, at the age of 62.

On his death The Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens described Gill as "The heart and soul of the paper" and "A giant among journalists".

Inspired by the St. Vincent song:

Laughing with a mouth of blood

Just like an amnesiac

Trying to get my senses back

(Oh, where did they go?)

Laughing with a mouth of blood

From a little spill I took

(Oh, what are you laughing at?)

See I trade in my plot of land

For a plane to anywhere

(Oh, where do you go?)

And I can’t see the future

But I know its got big plans for me

(Oh what does it see?)

All of my old friends aren’t so friendly

All of my old haunts are now all haunting me

Holed up at the motel

With the televangelist (Oh what did he say?)

At the bottom of the swimming pool

With all the water out of it

(How’d you get in there?)

If it’s any consolation prize

It’s to my next of kin

I can’t see the future

But I know it’s watching me

All of my old friends aren’t so friendly

All of my old haunts are now all haunting me

Tell my sister that I miss her

Tell my brother that it gets much easier

Tell my sister that I miss her

Tell my brother that it gets much easier

All of my old friends aren’t so friendly

And all of my old haunts are now all haunting me

All of my old friends aren’t so friendly

And all of my old haunts are now all haunting me

Thorndon, Essex | April 2011

Polaroid SX-70 [Tan] | Polaroid 600

[Losing Focus] | [Twitter]

[All photographs © Toby Marsh. Please do not re-use without permission.]

SX70Tan_600_06-04-2011_06_edit_web

Radiohead - Hunting Bears | Amnesiac | 2001

Another shot from the Radiohead concert in Tampa.

Title inspired by a misheard lyric from Radiohead's song “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box,” from their brilliant 2001 album Amnesiac—which album is superior in every way to their better known and more acclaimed Kid A, but I digress.

The lyric I've always heard is “Oh well he's no man / Get off my case.” In reality it's “I'm a reasonable man / Get off my case.” My own Lonely Planet.