Tag Archives: sci-fi

Today I thought I would focus on the much-maligned made-for-TV-movie. For years dominated by WomJeps (that’s women-in-jeopardy movies to you and me) the TV movie is a misunderstood animal. At its worst it’s characterised by melodramatic stories, below-par acting and shoddy production values. But TV movies have also given us some classics. Here are some examples chosen to show you a broad cross-section and history of this overlooked art form.

No SFX required. Just great characters.

REQUIEM FOR A HEAVEYWEIGHT (1962)

Jack Palance chews up the scenery as only he could in this Rod Serling teleplay about a washed-up boxer. Yes, he of the Twilight Zone. Before he became forever associated with breaking the fourth wall in creepy tales, Serling was a heavywight himself in the world of playwrights. This is arguably one of his greatest efforts.

THE NIGHT STALKER (1972)

Darren McGaven shines as abrasive but likeable reporter Carl Kolchak in the first of the character’s outings. The second most popular telefilm of all time (the honour of being the first goes to The Love Boat), McGavin and his long-suffering editor track down a vampire in Las Vegas. Screenwriter Richard Matheson, one of the greatest fantasists of the 20th century, sets up many of the reworkings of the modern vampire story that have become staples of the genre today. The film was so successful it spawned a (pretty good) sequel, “The Night Strangler” and a television series that has special effects so poor it is best reserved for fans of McGavin . Features a particularly creepy ending.

DUEL (1972)

Yes, it’s directed by THAT Stephen Spielberg. From a script by Richard Matheson (again) and featuring popular TV actor Dennis Weaver, this is 70s TV personified. A nameless truck driver hunts a hapless motorists along the desert for no good reason. SPOLIER ALERT! Features Spielberg’s characteristic” roaring shark” sound when the trucker gets his comeuppance at the end.

SOMETHING EVIL (1972)

Spielberg was on a roll in 1972. This curiosity features Darren McGaven again as a man whose family is targeted by an unholy presence when they purchase a farm with “something evil” in the barn. Genuinely creepy, especially the two glowing eyes. Has that great blend of realism and the supernatural that characterizes 1970s horror.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (1973)

One of the great things about TV movies was that nobody really cared too much about getting things right. Lacking the immense budgets of today’s productions, they were enticements to audiences to stay home rather than go to the movies. The results were some genuine oddities, such as this little horror gem.Recently remade by Guillermo Del Torro, who is obviously one of the movie’s legions of fans. A tip, don’t watch it in the house alone.

THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET (1973)

A post-Star Trek Shatner stars alongside a cavalcade of 1970s TV royalty that includes Chuck Connors, Buddy Ebsen and Paul Winfield. A spooky tale of a ghost on an airplane. ’70s television had such a strong lineup of character actors that they could fill out an entire movie. In this made-for-TV shocker, the actors sell the not-so-special effects.

KILLDOZER (1974)

From the strange to the downright crazy. A bulldozer (yes, you heard right) is taken over by an alien lifeform. Construction workers wisely wait for it to run out of gas. But wait, they’re on an island and there’s no cover! Wickedly entertaining hokum from a story by sci-fi legend Theodore Sturgeon.

SNOWBEAST (1977)

When Spielberg and Lucas created the summer blockbuster, TV producers were quick to emulate them. This TV horror movie, for instance, is actually Jaws with Bigfoot. And for that, it works incredibly well. Just as we found out in Lucas’s reissue of The Empire Strikes Back “Special Edition”, seeing more is not always a good thing. It pays to hide your Bigfoot. During this fright-fest we barely glimpse more than a hairy arm or a snorting nostril, but the result is a growing atmospere of suspense and dread that’s hard to beat.

See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxgPgQT155Y

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978)

TV’s answer to Star Wars was also to create something similar. So here we have the Book of Mormon… in space! Managing to be both campy and portentous at the same time, this capitalized on the groundbreaking SFX that had made George Lucas an overnight success. Coupled with iconic costumes, ships, and sets, and some suitable gravitas from Lorne Greene, the movie paved the way for a TV series that has stood the test of time.

SIBYL (1976)

TV movies could also tread more psychological turf than movies, which were becoming increasingly gimmicky and SFX driven in the late 1970s. Here Sally Fields excells as a woman with multiple-personality disorder. The piece is not just a character study, it’s a study of many characters, and Fields shows off her acting chops in a varierty of personalities.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1978)

Another function of the TV movie was to test the waters for upcoming series. Shows such as Hawaii Five-O and the Six Million Dollar Man all had movie-length pilots. But few are so successful they go on to have a theatrical release. In 1978, the top TV show in the world was the Incredible Hulk. Bruce Banner was played with sensitivity and emotion by actor Bill Bixy, while his alter ego was played by bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno in green slippers.

THE DAY AFTER (1983)

Although not as gut-wrenchingly scary as the British 1984 TV movie “Threads” (see other post), this portrayal of nuclear armageddon is a contendor for one of the most watched TV movies ever. Told with realism, this grim tale gets ever grimmer as the true scale of a nuclear war is realized. People are either vaporized or survive to face all the horrors of radiation sickness and survival in the ruins of the old world. A good example of the kind of epic storytelling on a budget that TV can achieve.

The end of the world as we know it. But will you be feeling fine?

THE HAUNTED (1991)

The TV movie fell out of vogue in the 1980s. TV itself lapsed into sitcoms, rather than try to compete with the ever-balooning budgets of blockbuster movies. But every so often a low-budget gem emerged. One of these is The Haunted, a very scary tale about a family who buy a haunted duplex. Like every sensible family, they move out at the first sign of ghostly phenomenon. But in a clever twist, the ghost follows them. Based on a true story, for added creepiness.

The 2000s

That would have been the end of our tale. An increasing number of TV channels did not equate to an increase in quality. In the 90s and 2000s, TV instead chose to churn out poorly-made, poorly-scripted and poorly-acted creature features using the ultimate tool for the lazy filmmaker, CGI. Soon our screens were filled with unconvincing CGI mammoths, sabretooths and giant crocodiles. Meanwhile the dramatic TV movie became the womjep we know and revile today.

Sabretooths and crocodils and sharks.. oh, dear!

Sabretooths and crocodiles and sharks.. oh, dear!

However in recent years TV has taken an upswing. Maybe it’s the lack of movies as studios adopt an all-or-nothing mentality to blockbuster films. Maybe it’s that older actors (who tend to be better) head into TV land in their golden years. Or maybe it’s that TV has replaced the movies, which are increasingly losing their connction with audiences due to massive ticket prices, lackluster SFX-driven spectacles and grosss-out comedies. Because the TV movie is making a comeback…

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA (2013)

Who would have though that in in this day and age a movie made by HBO would become a popular and critical success at the box office? Espeically when you consider the source material. But this Liberace biopic is doing just that. So maybe the TV movie isn’t dead. We’ve had the Renaissance of TV drama. Perhaps now it’s time to resurrect this forgotten art form as well.

Confessions of a British Screenwriter – Recycled

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Today, I thought I would share a link to an embarassingly old and badly written article I did for Moviebytes.com when I had my first screenplay sale. So without further ado…

http://moviebytes.com/NewsStory.cfm?StoryID=3899

Guns, girls, and robots. What’s not to like?

My Name is ‘Err’: A Screenwriters Journey

By Eric Steele

It was a blisteringly hot day in Hollywood. My writing partner and I had been worn down by a punishing heatwave that pushed temperatures up to a hideous 120 degrees. As we both came from Manchester, England – a city renowned for precipitation in a country where summer just means that the rain gets warmer – for us this was the equivalent to walking on the planet Mercury. If Mercury had been filled with dangerous-looking winos and suicidal motorists.

We’d decided to visit an eatery in televisionland known as Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. The guide book assured us it was a good place to spot the stars. Taking our place in line, we sizzled on the sidewalk like a couple of English poached eggs. After an eternity of this torture, the Emcee asked us what our names were. “Err,” I began. But before I could use my best Hugh Grant impression, he disappeared back inside the tempting darkness of the doorway.

“Table for Mister Errrr…” he intoned.

Of course, I couldn’t correct him without opening up a whole new can of worms. I might as well have been speaking Portugese for all the good it did. Obviously a case of “You say tomayto, I say tomahto”.

We seated ourselves in a booth and soon learned why it was called “chicken and waffles.” As I dug into my plate of fried chicken at ten o’clock in the morning, I chose to reflect upon how much this reminded me of our whole screenwriting experience so far.

It seemed a far cry from how I had started out – tinkering away in my bedroom in Manchester, reading as many free articles as I could on a then-fledgling Internet, buying whatever books the local stores had in stock (not many), in my impossible quest to somehow get involved in this magical form of storytelling.

The trip to LA proved eye-opening in more ways than one. As we attended meetings without success, we both sank into a kind of delirious despair. Getting lost on foot in Downtown LA or being rear-ended by the daughter of a movie-star on Sunset Boulevard one Saturday night only added to the sense of unreality. Maybe we were just depressed from days spent foot-slogging through graveyards, staring at epitaphs of our long-departed screen idols.

Two years later, we had still to sell a script. Sure, there had been options, near misses. One producer kept us hanging on for over a year until we got an e-mail saying he had decided to work with Paris Hilton instead.

During this time my writing partner and I went our separate ways. He had a young family, and in the end, I guess he decided that “real life” was more important. I soldiered on, until one day I decided to throw caution to the winds, forget about the market, and write the kind of story I would like to see onscreen. The result was my first option with a big production company in LA.

Still nothing happened. I had listed the script with InkTip.com, and they helped me out with a press release. After a few months, I received a phone call from my soon-to-be agent, who had read several scripts and was sufficiently impressed to sign me up.

She told me she wanted to see more family-friendly stuff. I immediately scoured through what passed for my filing system until I found something that would fit the bill…

Among my various screenplays, I’d written a sci-fi television pilot called “Clonehunter”. On a whim, I’d entered it into Scriptapalooza. Although the script didn’t place, they were kind enough to provide me feedback. I scanned the feedback, read the script. Hmm, not exactly Orson Welles, but it was salvageable enough.

Over the next few months I rewrote the script, developing themes and characters, until I had an honest-to-goodness movie script. However, experience had taught me that what seems like Shakespeare to you can seem like Dr. Seuss to someone else, so I workshopped the script at zoetrope.com, where other writers could sling mud at it with impunity. Some of those reviews were gut-wrenching in their honesty, but the script came out a lot better for it. More importantly, it was free.

Some of the scenes I’d written would give James Cameron a headache. Pursuits on hoverbikes, floating casinos, talking gorillas – no sane individual would even think of tackling such a project without a studio budget. But it was just crazy enough to succeed. Besides, I loved the character – David Cain, an intergalactic bounty-hunter who would put Harrison Ford to shame. Not only was Cain’s work questionable, but the more we heard about him, the more we suspected that he might not be a very nice guy either. This was someone who had a history so long he kept secrets from everyone – including his attractive young cyborg partner. And he had an intelligent cat.

I wasn’t expecting anything, so I was truly surprised when I received an e-mail from director Andrew Bellware. He had seen my script on InkTip and wanted to shoot it, using his production company in New York. I was aghast – did he really think he could do it? Well, it might need a little tweaking. I would never see my floating casino (sob). However it would be an outright sale.

My agent hammered out the agreement and Drew then began the looooong process of filmmaking.

Drew kept me informed at every stage of the process. I was flattered that anyone would even care what I thought. Each week he would send me another video of the shoot. Nothing could have prepared me for the sensation of watching the script come alive onscreen. Sometimes I was surprised, sometimes I laughed out loud as an actor said a line in a way I had not expected and turned a boring piece of exposition into something dramatic or even comedic. Most of all, I was amazed that this was actually being pulled off. Even the hoverbike sequence was there! Eat your heart out, Lucas!

The whole experience reminded me that moviemaking is a team sport. Everybody has an input, no matter how small. I felt privileged to have given my contribution. Suddenly, all those years of slaving away over a hot keyboard in a cramped office seemed worthwhile, all those moments of self-doubt as I wondered whether I should be doing this at all dissipated.

Yet, afterwards, here I am again, sat in the same office typing away (admittedly I bought myself a new computer), churning out page after page and knowing that whatever I write will in no way by anything near as good as the movie unfolding in my head – the one nobody will ever see. In a way it’s like starting out all over again. And if it ever does get made, it will take a whole bunch of people to make it happen, not just the director and actors, but set decorators, editors, and everyone else down to whoever buys in the sandwiches.

So is it worth it? Of course. Because that’s the magic of motion pictures – that someone in a tiny suburb of Manchester, a couple of thousand miles away from New York and even further away from Los Angeles, could one day contribute to a movie. If I’ve learned one thing on my ragtag journey, it’s that you should try everything – every angle, every means at your disposal – to market your script. The Internet has revolutionized the world of media. Contests, feedback sites, listing sites – all of these are equally valid ways to get your script produced.

Who knows, we might be able to meet up one day for chicken and waffles!

Cancelled too soon! 10 TV series that should have lasted longer.

The demise of low budget horror…

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Strolling through the virtual aisles of my online video rental site (the real video store in my neighborhood was torn down years ago), I happened to notice something strange.

When I first started renting movies, in my teens, there were lots of videos that would never have seen the light of day but for the limited collection of obscure treats in the back of my local dodgy grocery store.

I’m talking about such cult releases as “The Stuff” (a black comedy about killer yoghurt), “Society” (a bizarre tale where a boy discovers his rich relations are all shape-shifting monsters), and “Re-Animator” (a hysterical horror comedy very loosely based on HP Lovecrafts serial). Sure, these films were cheap and cheerful. But they were also GOOD movies. Heck, some of them are now hailed as classics.

The Stuff – killer yoghurt on the rampage!

But looking at the new horror releases, I was depressed to see that so many look like the hybrid offspring of some poorly-conceived and executed SyFy channel monster /disaster mash-up. There are , for instance, innumerable takes on “Shark Night” (“Shark Week”), the woefully bad “Sharktopus” series (“Pirhanaconda”, anyone?) The poster to “Back From Hell” looks suspiciously similar to the “Cabin in the Woods”, while there are too many “Dawn of the Dead” and “Saw” rip-offs even to list.

Zombies – a lot more common nowadays.

I understand that sometimes distributors put pressure on small studios to come up with something that they can actually sell. But does the world really need another Shark/creature combination? What’s next,”Sharkgerbil 2″, “Sharkplatypus” (and if that gets made I want my share of the royalties)?

I know at least one microstudio that continues to put out highly original films as well as satisfying the distributors. So it can be done. Come on indie producers, give us the next generation of “Evil Dead” movies, give us our Jack Deths.

You can be that filmmaker who has adoring fans thirty years or more down the line. But to get there, you have to dare to be original.

Herbert West is about to get ahead in his medical studies.

ERIC IAN STEELE

(Confessions of a British writer)

Tag Archives: sci-fi

Why was He-Man so crap?

The lost art of the television movie?

Confessions of a British Screenwriter – Recycled

The demise of low budget horror…