Banned movies

[warshipadmin]

At school we were told we were not to see Rollerball or Clockwork Orange.

Hilariously "If..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If.... was not mentioned, which given the sort of school it was, was funny. It was shown on BBC2, from memory.

Anybody else's school tried laying down the law?

[Craiglxviii]

Threads…

[MikeKozlowski]

Threads…

Never actually seen that one. I think the only nuclear war movies I've watched were Fail Safe, The Day After, and By Dawn's Early Light.

Mike

[Craiglxviii]

Threads…

Never actually seen that one. I think the only nuclear war movies I've watched were Fail Safe, The Day After, and By Dawn's Early Light.

Mike

In that case, my friend, clear two hours from your diary, get a bottle of Jack ready and your therapist on speed dial. Shit’s about to get dark.

https://archive.org/details/threads_201712

[jemhouston]

You never saw Damnation Alley? This was 20th Century-Fox's big-budget science-fiction project in 1976. It was over shadowed by a project the studio had little faith in call Star Wars.

[Craiglxviii]

You never saw Damnation Alley? This was 20th Century-Fox's big-budget science-fiction project in 1976. It was over shadowed by a project the studio had little faith in call Star Wars.

The best damn APC in the world!

[MikeKozlowski]

You never saw Damnation Alley? This was 20th Century-Fox's big-budget science-fiction project in 1976. It was over shadowed by a project the studio had little faith in call Star Wars.

The best damn APC in the world!

Craig,

The Landmaster is still with us at a California custom shop:


And the story of how the movie went south would be funny if it hadn't messed with so many people's careers. The biggest mess was the script; author Roger Zelazny saw the original approved script and was very impressed...and as the budget issues began to mount Fox brass had a new one written that wasn't quite so effects heavy.

Which Mr. Zelazny never knew about till he saw the movie on screen.

The decision to go with the awful back-projected scorpions and fake bugs was actually made after Fox president Alan Ladd got a look at the first cuts of Star Wars and began to realize what they had on their hands (there's a wonderful interview with Sir Alec Guinness where he tells the story about how at this time, Fox began strongly hinting that he should take a percentage rather than a straight fee for portraying Obi-Wan, and for the life of him he couldn't quite figure out why but eventually went for the percentage.). And with this in mind, Ladd - knowing that Star Wars was having some budgeting issues - pulled 25% of Damnation Alley's remaining budget and transferred it to Star Wars.

And by all accounts didn't tell the director until he noticed that available cash was running low.

Mike

[Craiglxviii]

You never saw Damnation Alley? This was 20th Century-Fox's big-budget science-fiction project in 1976. It was over shadowed by a project the studio had little faith in call Star Wars.

The best damn APC in the world!

Craig,

The Landmaster is still with us at a California custom shop:


And the story of how the movie went south would be funny if it hadn't messed with so many people's careers. The biggest mess was the script; author Roger Zelazny saw the original approved script and was very impressed...and as the budget issues began to mount Fox brass had a new one written that wasn't quite so effects heavy.

Which Mr. Zelazny never knew about till he saw the movie on screen.

The decision to go with the awful back-projected scorpions and fake bugs was actually made after Fox president Alan Ladd got a look at the first cuts of Star Wars and began to realize what they had on their hands (there's a wonderful interview with Sir Alec Guinness where he tells the story about how at this time, Fox began strongly hinting that he should take a percentage rather than a straight fee for portraying Obi-Wan, and for the life of him he couldn't quite figure out why but eventually went for the percentage.). And with this in mind, Ladd - knowing that Star Wars was having some budgeting issues - pulled 25% of Damnation Alley's remaining budget and transferred it to Star Wars.

And by all accounts didn't tell the director until he noticed that available cash was running low.

Mike

Oh it still survives? That’s marvellous. I may need to watch this tonight now. Always had a soft spot for the film. I’d heard it had production issues but never realised they were quite so bad! Wasn’t George Peppard problematical too?

[MikeKozlowski]

The best damn APC in the world!

Craig,

The Landmaster is still with us at a California custom shop:


And the story of how the movie went south would be funny if it hadn't messed with so many people's careers. The biggest mess was the script; author Roger Zelazny saw the original approved script and was very impressed...and as the budget issues began to mount Fox brass had a new one written that wasn't quite so effects heavy.

Which Mr. Zelazny never knew about till he saw the movie on screen.

The decision to go with the awful back-projected scorpions and fake bugs was actually made after Fox president Alan Ladd got a look at the first cuts of Star Wars and began to realize what they had on their hands (there's a wonderful interview with Sir Alec Guinness where he tells the story about how at this time, Fox began strongly hinting that he should take a percentage rather than a straight fee for portraying Obi-Wan, and for the life of him he couldn't quite figure out why but eventually went for the percentage.). And with this in mind, Ladd - knowing that Star Wars was having some budgeting issues - pulled 25% of Damnation Alley's remaining budget and transferred it to Star Wars.

And by all accounts didn't tell the director until he noticed that available cash was running low.

Mike

Oh it still survives? That’s marvellous. I may need to watch this tonight now. Always had a soft spot for the film. I’d heard it had production issues but never realised they were quite so bad! Wasn’t George Peppard problematical too?

Craig,

Sadly, yes. He always turned in a solid performance, but he always considered himself an actor first, and a movie star later, which didn't always endear him to his costars and producers. When he hit a rough streak in in the early 70s, that came back to bite him in the ass - he had a hard time getting the kind of parts he wanted, and it turned into kind of a cycle aggravated by booze and a three pack a day habit.

If you can find it, look up a show he did in the early 70s called Banacek, where he played a high-end Polish-American insurance investigator who worked out of Boston on 'impossible' cases. They were all pretty entertaining, but the best one involved a railway car that gets stolen...while it was underway.

Mike

[jemhouston]

You left out in Banacek, he was always dropping Polish wisdom. I always thought that was his best TV work.

[JBG]

My mother had a thing for George Peppard so we all had to watch Banacek. She could even stomach The A-Team!

Jonathan

[MikeKozlowski]

You left out in Banacek, he was always dropping Polish wisdom. I always thought that was his best TV work.

Jem,

I had forgotten about those! Found these:

But hey, as Bancek once said, “If you’re not sure that it’s potato borscht, there could be orphans working in the mines.”

Other gems include:

“A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.”
“Read the whole library, my son, but the cheese will still smell after four days.”
“Twelve good horses and silver candlesticks won’t stop the snow from falling in Bialystock.”
“It’s harder for the spider to catch the fly, than for the fly to catch the horse.”
“Only someone with nothing to be sorry about smiles at the rear of an elephant.”
“Even though a man anoints himself with fragrant oils, he can still wind up with a broken face.”
“When the wolf is chasing your sleigh, toss him a raisin cookie but don’t stop to see if he eats it.”
“Only the centipede can hear all the footsteps of his uncle.”
“If the butterfly has teeth like the tiger, he’d never make it out of the hangar.”
“A wolf that takes a peasant to supper probably won’t need any breakfast.”
“Just because a dress is red satin doesn’t mean it comes off easily.”
“A wise man never tries to warm himself in front of a painting of a fire”.
“Though the hippopotamus has no stinger in his tail, the wise man would rather be sat on by the bee.”
“When an owl comes to a mouse picnic, it’s not there for the sack races.”
“No matter how warm the smile on the face of the sun, the cat still has her kittens under the porch.”
“The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to go to the Steamfitter’s Picnic.”
“A duck with three wings and a loaf of bread is brother to the turkey.”
“Even a thousand szloty note can’t tapdance.”
“If your socks are not in your shoes, don’t look for them in Heaven.”

Mike

[Bernard Woolley]

At school we were told we were not to see Rollerball or Clockwork Orange.

The latter was withdrawn from British cinemas by Kubrick himself. So, it was hard to see until 1999.
I don’t ever remember my school telling us what we could and couldn’t watch. I’m not sure how a school would think it could enforce such a ban. I remember kids at my primary school claiming they had seen some of the ‘video nasties’ that were out in the ‘80s.

Threads…

Got it on DVD. First time I saw it, however, was on BBC4 in a double bill with The War Game.

[warshipadmin]

It was on release in the UK for about a year, but that was obviously a folk memory since I would have been in Kent that year. Rollerball was 1975 so my year would have been able to see it, probably without any problem -we certainly had no problem getting served in pubs. A couple of my friends saw it.