21 Essays: Nigel Kneale

Showing posts with label Nigel Kneale. Show all posts

Friday, May 15, 2015

First Men in the Moon: History Repeats

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Selenite-blogging,
essay 3 of 5 blog entries

Part One: Titanic Similarities

A drawing is discovered in a safe deep below the ocean in Titanic (1997).

A team of scientific explorers discover a surprising artifact. Who did it belong to? Could the owner possibly still be alive? “But (s)he’d be at least 90 years old now!” However, the owner is alive. And the owner has a tale to share. Now listen closely. “Once upon a time…”

Arnold Bedford examines the
British flag found on the moon
in First Men in the Moon (1964).

In First Men in the Moon (1964), explorers discover a British flag on the moon, along with a note claiming the moon in the name of Queen Victoria. Old Arnold Bedford is discovered in a nursing home and he relates his tale of adventure and romance.

In Titanic (1997), explorers discover a drawing of a nude woman locked inside a safe inside the submerged wreck of the Titanic. An elderly woman comes forward claiming that the picture is of her. She relates her tale of adventure and romance.

Coincidence? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that writer-director James Cameron cribbed from established science fiction authors… or from Ray Harryhausen movies, for that matter. Maybe I should let Cameron confess:

“The creations in my movies are really Ray’s illegitimate grandchildren. The Terminator owes its roots to the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts, which I saw when I was seven years old. It blew my mind and I wanted to do that, whatever ‘that’ was.”

James Cameron

Testimonial from the book jacket of

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life

If Cameron was six for Jason, he would have been seven for First Men in the Moon and my guess is that he was already furiously scribbling notes for future screenplays.

In all fairness, Nigel Kneale’s flashback plot structure for First Men in the Moon IS ingenious and Cameron deserves credit for borrowing from the best. The plot device works very well in Titanic. And Cameron’s stripped-down Terminator T-800 Model 101 was a nice twist on Harryhausen’s fighting skeletons, too.

As the famous paraphrase of Isaac Newton states:

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Old Bedford in First Men in the Moon and old Rose in Titanic
examine their documents.

Part Two: The Unintended Metaphor

Bedford on the attack, swinging his gun, in First Men in the Moon.

I could play off James Cameron with this next observation, too, by suggesting that the plot of Cameron’s Avatar (2009) expands on a central metaphor in First Men in the Moon. But I really don’t think that’s the case, not even subconsciously.

In fact, I don’t think the particular metaphor that I'd like to discuss was ever intentionally placed into First Men in the Moon. It was just an unplanned accident of plot. But once you see it, it’s hard to ignore.

Kate Calender (Martha Hyer) brings
a gun to the moon despite Cavor's
dismissal of the idea: "Madam,
the chances of bagging an elephant
on the moon are remote." But the
gun is ultimately used by both Kate
and Arnold Beckford (Edward Judd)
as they threaten and shoot at
the moon's native inhabitants.

The movie First Men in the Moon functions as a frighteningly plausible metaphor for the European settlement of the Americas. Arnold Bedford, well played by Edward Judd, represents the European explorer/soldier. His ethics are highly suspect, he’s prone to violence, and his primary incentive to explore is the promise of gold. Cavor, magnificently played by Lionel Jeffries, is the scientist/technician who unwittingly makes the invasion possible.

But there’s only one Bedford against a whole civilization of Selenites. How can a single Bedford possibly win in this battle for empire? Unfortunately, the answer is simple on both sides of the metaphor. Carried from a distant land, disease wipes out the civilization. The Europeans can now move in with relative ease, planting their flag of conquest.

The disease angle was not in the original H. G. Wells novel, and I seriously doubt that screenwriter Nigel Kneale considered the potential historic parallels when he borrowed the idea from Wells’ The War of the Worlds. But it unexpectedly hooked into the existing imperialist satire that really was lying dormant in Wells’ novel The First Men in the Moon, accidentally creating a scenario that is eerily resonant.

Wells’ novel is surprisingly complex and nuanced. As in the movie, the character of Bedford (who provides first-hand narration for most of the book) is presented as the typical adventure hero. His acknowledged faults of avarice and violent temper are minimized and/or justified. But then, in a very surprising twist late in the book, Cavor’s communications from the moon are presented intact and they paint a very different picture of Bedford:

“On the moon his (Bedford’s) character seemed to deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome…

“We came to a difficult passage with them (the Selenites), and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of theirs… gave way to a panic violence. He ran amuck, killed three, and perforce I had to flee with him after the outrage.”

Apparently, Bedford has been an unreliable narrator all along, suggesting that Wells’ novel was never intended as a simple science romance for boys. We’ve received the heroic adventure story from the viewpoint of the villain.

Cavor's cry of despair as he realizes that Bedford
is indiscriminately killing Selenites in
First Men in the Moon.

The screenplay—sometimes jarringly—retains the nastier elements of Bedford’s personality. Under the veneer of Victorian charm, we see Cavor’s ever-increasing distress at Bedford’s actions, with Cavor finally screaming in despair that Bedford is ruining everything. Personally, I think the resulting dissonance between the promise of a light-hearted space romp and Cavor’s heartfelt pain may have been behind the movie’s financial failure. Ultimately, First Men in the Moon doesn’t deliver on the feel-good vibe that’s promised.

When Wells’ theme of European imperialism collides with the disease subplot, the resulting implications are depressingly familiar. The Selenites are the Native Americans. Just sixty years after the first ship arrives, their world is in ruins. As Bedford says at the close of the movie, “Poor Cavor! He did have such a terrible cold.” The flag has been planted and the moon will now belong to the Earth. The aliens have invaded.

The British flag on the moon in First Men in the Moon.

Reference Sources
Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Selenites and Skeletons

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Selenite-blogging,
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Part One: Insectoids Everywhere!

“The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill…”

The First Men in the Moon

By H. G. Wells

In his 1901 science fiction novel The First Men in the Moon, H. G. Wells repeatedly describes the moon’s Selenite inhabitants as insect-like:

“He (the Selenite) presented himself, therefore, as a compact, bristling creature, having much the quality of a complicated insect…”

For his 1964 movie of First Men in the Moon, visual effects master Ray Harryhausen designed remarkable models of insect-like Selenites to bring to life through his inimitable stop motion animation. While departing from Wells in some particulars, they retain the weird half-human/half-arthropod weirdness in Wells’ descriptions:

“The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost like the short joints in the leg of a crab.”

A Selenite Gallery: Profile, rear (with termite wings), and full frontal.

Inspecting the insectoid
alien remains from
Quatermass and the Pit.

Both Ray Harryhausen and screenwriter Nigel Kneale were fans of the science fiction novels of H. G. Wells. The concept of upright insectoids in The First Men in the Moon appears to have particularly appealed to them. Several years before First Men in the Moon, Kneale placed an eerie insectoid alien invasion at the center of the plot of his TV series classic Quatermass and the Pit, first broadcast in 1958.

Near the end of his career, Harryhausen cribbed from his Selenite design to create a trio of insectoid ghouls, complete with little horns reminiscent of the demon insects of Quatermass and the Pit. Designed for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), the ghouls are skeletal rather than segmented, but the faces possess a familiar creepy insect-like impassivity, like animated mantises.

The insectoid ghouls from Harryhausen's
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Intelligent alien insects remain a popular subject in science fiction, turning up everywhere from Star Trek to Starship Troopers. H. G. Wells basically invented the trope, as he also appears to have been the first to play with an alien hive concept, where intelligence is centralized in a highly ordered society. This probably relates in some way to the socialism that Wells later advocated, but as of 1901, it’s easier to see the lunar society as a satire of political ideas rather than either a utopia or a dystopia. The scientist Cavor is content to live in the moon’s great ant-hill but the prospect appears to have much less appeal to the other two humans along for the trip.

Cavor (Lionel Jeffries) surrounded by Selenites in First Men in the Moon.

Part Two: The Resurrected Skeleton

Here’s Martha Hyer as Kate Callender receiving a full body scan from Lunar Homeland Security.

Martha Hyer gets x-rayed in First Men in the Moon.

Martha Hyer.

For this First Men in the Moon scene, Hyer’s body double was a warrior skeleton model left over from Jason and the Argonauts, pulled off the shelf by master animator Ray Harryhausen. The shot opens with Hyer fully exposed in naked skeleton mode, making demands to her interrogators as they study her bones. Then she leaves the scanner area and emerges screen left with her skin and clothes neatly in place.

Whoever would have guessed that Martha Hyer had the frame of a Greek warrior?

And… retroactively applying logic… wouldn’t this suggest that we can see Hyer—that ever-dependable chameleon of an actress—among the skeleton defenders of the Golden Fleece?

Why, I’d recognize that skeleton anywhere!

I think that's Hyer's skeletal frame second from left.

Hyer gracefully parries a sword thrust.

She's a little more graceful than the other skeletons, don't you think?
Personally, I'm rooting for Hyer.

This is how Greek tragedy inevitably ends.

It just goes to show that we’re all the same under the skin.

Enjoy the video!

Reference Sources

Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

First Men in the Moon: Cavor in Quarantine

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May 13-17, 2015

LET'S RAISE SOME MONEY!!!

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Selenite-blogging,
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Part One: A Person Can Develop a Cold

Cullen Landis on left in
Cupid in Quarantine (1918).

Because Cupid in Quarantine (1918) is a comedy based on turn-of-the-century scientific ideas concerning disease, the For the Love of Film leaders (Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark) have adopted a science fiction theme for this blogathon.

And my choice for blogging subject is First Men in the Moon (1964), a delightful science fiction film from 1964 that cleverly incorporates a disease subplot. In the film, the brilliant scientist Joseph Cavor is plagued by a cold and—as any War of the Worlds fan can tell you—aliens are very sensitive to Earth viruses.

As the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds explained:

“After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this earth.”

An alien succumbs to Earth viruses in The War of the Worlds (1953).

Absent from the original H. G. Wells science fiction novel, the viral subplot in First Men in the Moon was added by the script’s co-author Nigel Kneale (1922-2006). Kneale was one of the most intelligent screenwriters to ever contribute to the cinema of the fantastic. As President John F. Kennedy had vowed that America would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade, Kneale decided that he needed a Wells-ian plot twist to wipe out the moon’s alien civilization before the official astronauts arrived. He borrowed the virus from The War of the World and released it on the moon.

In addition to the disease angle, I also liked that First Men in the Moon was a period movie, taking place in England in 1899, a mere 19 years before Cupid in Quarantine was filmed in Hollywood. Movies were still in their infancy in 1899—there’s a good chance that the two male protagonists of First Men in the Moon, Arnold Bedford and Joseph Cavor, have never even seen a movie. But Bedford lives to see the world’s first moon landing and so in his lifetime he would have witnessed the development of movies from early single reelers (like Cupid in Quarantine!) to the age of cinemascope, color, and Dynamation!

The monster kids who work at Pixar
paid homage to Ray Harryhausen in
Monsters, Inc. (2001).

Dynamation was the term coined for the animation work of brilliant special effects technician Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), who brought dinosaurs and mythical creatures to life in movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and One Million Years B.C. In addition to leading the visual effects team on First Men in the Moon, Harryhausen served as Associate Producer. Ray Harryhausen is revered by monster kids like me who grew up in the 1960s. It’s an honor to pay tribute to one of his best movies.

Part Two: The Lost Films of Nigel Kneale

Nigel Kneale's credit on The Quatermass Experiment (1953).

Every lost film is a reminder of the fragility of our film culture.

As with early film, the vast majority of the shows produced in television’s first years have been lost. Nigel Kneale, co-screenwriter of First Men in the Moon, was an enormously important and influential writer in the new medium of dramatic television in the 1950s. Unfortunately, much of his work has not survived.

A giant phantasmagoric alien demon looms over
London in the climax of the film version of
Quatermass and the Pit (1967).

Perhaps most famous for his Quatermass science fiction series (the third of which was the remarkable Quatermass and the Pit), Nigel Kneale joined BBC Television in 1951, becoming one of the station’s first writers.

When the BBC faced a shortage of new material in summer 1953, Kneale offered to write a science fiction serial. The result, The Quatermass Experiment, galvanized England and racked up extremely impressive ratings. Neale became pegged as a master of the offbeat and macabre. For the following thirty years, he moved back and forth between TV and the movies, venturing into numerous genres while always remaining true to his own quirky interests and obsessions.

But even nationwide acclaim was not enough to guarantee that his work would be saved for posterity in those early throw-away days of television. Here are just a few of the many lost works of Nigel Kneale.

Arrow to the Heart (1951): Kneale’s first dramatic adaptation for the BBC, it was broadcast live and never recorded.

Curtain Down (1953): Years before launching his successful film direction career, Tony Richardson spent an unhappy apprenticeship directing TV shows for the BBC. The one person he did like and respect at the studio was Kneale. They collaborated on this now-lost adaptation of an Anton Chekhov story. Later Richardson would pull Kneale away from his TV work to write the scripts for Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960).

The Quatermass Experiment (1953): The first two episodes of Kneale’s influential TV science fiction hit were recorded, but the network declined to preserve the subsequent four episodes.

Orwell's famous slogan of the future
from Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954).

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954): Starring a young Peter Cushing, Kneale’s 1954 adaptation of the George Orwell novel divided the critics but riveted the nation. The live performance was repeated later in the same week, and the second broadcast was recorded and saved. But, according to contemporary accounts, the first performance was the better of the two and it wasn’t preserved.

The Creature (1955): Later remade by Hammer Films as The Abominable Snowman (1957), the original TV broadcast of this thoughtful drama of gentle, telepathic Yeti in the Himalayas was presented live and never recorded for posterity.

The Road (1963): Acclaimed at its broadcast for its innovative mixing of science fiction and the paranormal, The Road appears to be a lost film.

The psychedelic visuals of The Year of the
Sex Olympics (1968) cry out for color.

The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968): A black-and-white recording of this science fiction serial exists, but it’s considered to be a pale shadow of the original color version (which—granted—would have mainly played on black-and-white TV sets at the time).

The Chopper (1971): Kneale played with the idea of inanimate objects becoming possessed by spirits long before Stephen King drove the idea to mass popularity. In the now-lost The Chopper, a motorcycle harbors the ghost.

THIS IS SO DISCOURAGING! ENOUGH LOST FILMS!!!

Now grab this opportunity to save a film by contributing to our effort to restore Cupid in Quarantine (1918)!

Reference Sources
Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Doing Science in the Black Lagoon

Celebrating cultural highlights of 1954...
Creature-blogging, essay 3 on

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Quatermass 5: The Black Lagoon

A fossil Creature claw.

There always seem to be rumors of an impending Creature from the Black Lagoon remake. John Landis had one in development in 1982, John Carpenter in 1992, Ivan Reitman in 1996, and Guillermo del Toro in 2002. The John Landis production sounded particularly appealing, largely because Landis brought in the great Nigel Kneale to write the screenplay.

I first became obsessed with Nigel Kneale through the 1989 TV-movie The Woman in Black. Tremendously impressed with the movie, I rushed to read the Susan Hill novel only to find it a bit of a disappointment (note: I am aware this is a minority opinion). But it wasn’t entirely a loss because the experience tremendously increased my appreciation for the art of screen adaptation—how Nigel Kneale unerringly selected the very best parts of the book and developed them brilliantly. If I were ever to teach a course on screenwriting, I’d center the course on this novel and Kneale’s adaptation.

The Woman in Black (1979).

Much of Nigel Kneale’s screenwriting work was done for British television and is currently fairly inaccessible. The three Quatermass movies are full of good material, but the legendary TV mini-series that they were based upon are either lost or elusive. I love Kneale’s wrap-around story for the Ray Harryhausen First Men in the Moon (1964), which opens and closes with the first lunar landing. For a low-budget genre exercise, Kneale’s The Abominable Snowman (1957) is startlingly intelligent.

I’m confident that a Nigel Kneale-penned Creature from the Black Lagoon would have been smart… very smart. Someday maybe I’ll learn how smart. He did write and submit his screenplay, so it must be on file somewhere. In the meantime, I can always conjecture.

Here’s what I’d love to see in a Nigel Kneale Creature script:

Professor Quatermass in
Quatermass and the Pit (1967).

It’s written for TV in 30-minute episodes (the classic Nigel Kneale format)
Professor Quatermass is on the boat
Surprisingly plausible scientific explanations are offered for the Gill Man’s existence
Kay shares a telepathic connection with the Gill Man
Kay is overwhelmed by a vision where she explores a prehistoric past filled with Creatures
Instead of the tandem swim, the Gill Man suddenly appears hovering over Kay’s bed

And then the Gill Man swooped toward her...

Hollywood Science

I don’t mean to be overly critical of my beloved Creature from the Black Lagoon. For the most part, I find its cockeyed science completely charming. Like many 1950s science fiction thrillers, it somehow manages to be respectfully in awe of science while remaining completely ignorant of the most basic scientific principles. The Creature makes a hash of geology, paleontology, and biology, but it means well.

The missing link between fish
and human.

In the movie’s evolutionary theory, the Gill Man is presented as a missing link between fish and man. The scientists intimate that he evolved in the Devonian period (400 million years before the appearance of Homo sapiens). It appears that the Black Lagoon’s Creature is the last of its kind. An alternative explanation is suggested two sequels down the road in The Creature Walks Among Us. In that movie, a medical reconstruction of the Gill Man reveals human skin and lungs, implying that the Creature evolved from humans. Like whales evolving from an early hoofed mammal, the Creature’s human-like ancestors returned to the waters and re-adapted.

Note: Let’s be honest: In reality, the Gill Man is the swamp child of the dinosaurian Rhedosaurus in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a big Hollywood hit of 1953) and the Frankenstein-ian alien of The Thing from Another World (a big Hollywood hit of 1951). Mix and match their DNA, stir thoroughly and simmer on low, and you might spontaneously generate something vaguely Creature-ish in size and shape.

Whit Bissell, scientist.

Scientists are well represented on the expedition to the Black Lagoon, with either four or five scientists aboard the Rita. Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) is introduced popping a fossilized Creature hand from the rock beds. He appears to be a paleontologist and serves as one of the movie’s two benevolent father figures. Dueling alpha male scientists Dr. David Reed (Richard Denning) and Dr. Mark Williams (Richard Carlson) vie for top dog status throughout the movie, bickering about scientific strategies on the surface while subliminally competing for the lone woman on board. And last there’s gentle pipe-smoking Dr. Edwin Thompson, the film’s second father figure, played by 1950s stalwart Whit Bissell.

Does the beautiful Kay Lawrence count as a fifth doctor on the Rita? She appears to have some scientific training and Dr. Thompson implies that much of Dr. Reed’s success is owed to her. But you never hear anyone refer to Kay as Dr. Lawrence. She’s allowed an active part in their impromptu scientific conferences, and she contributes ideas that are no stupider than the statements of the identified scientists. But even if she really is Dr. Kay Lawrence, sharing a Ph.D. in Hollywood Science with her peers, I still have a sneaking suspicion that she’s the lowest-paid American on the boat.

Dr. Kay Lawrence, scientist.

Hollywood Does Evolution

Traditionally, Hollywood’s missing links tended to be extra-hairy humans rather than quasi-amphibians.

An animated ape man from The Dinosaur and the
Missing Link (1915) by Willis O'Brien.

Lon Chaney as a scientifically created
ape man in the lost silent film
A Blind Bargain (1922)

The missing link from The Lost World (1925).

Bela Lugosi lectures on evolution in
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932).

An ape/woman experiment gone awry: Acquanetta in
Captive Wild Woman (1943).

Evolution run amok in
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

Reference Sources

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Universal Studios Classic Monster Collection) DVD commentary by film historian Tom Weaver

Various discussions on The Classic Horror Film Board (in my opinion, the greatest and most civilized of all film discussion boards.)

Back to the Black Lagoon documentary with film historian David Skal

When processing Creature information, it all boils down to this: If Tom Weaver says it, I believe it.

Watch Creature from the Black Lagoon...

Purchase a Creature from the Black Lagoon DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Rent Creature from the Black Lagoon at Netflix or other rental service.