Reviews

F-Troop is the kind of classic comedy show that should have been on for many years. It makes you want to kick the people that canceled it. I read that fans at the time wrote in letters to keep it alive,but unfortunately the foolish television executives canceled this fine show after only two seasons. Season one(B&W)went for 34 episodes and season two(color)of F-Troop went for 31 episodes for a total of 65 thirty minute episodes,and classic comedy episodes they are. Ken Berry(Captain Parmenter)used his dance training to fine effect in the many comedy stunts that he did. He also appeared in the Andy Griffith show and also had his own show after F-Troop finished. Ken then went and did a lot of Disney tele-movies and TV shows like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island,but F-Troop was his best show by far. I hope that this series gets to DVD as I will be first in line to by the two box sets.

It is easy to see why this inferior version of The Outer Limits ran for seven years as it was really just a soft core porn show with numerous nudity and sex scenes. Somewhere in all the sex scenes there was sometimes a plot. Occasionally there was a reasonable story,but that was rare. This new Outer Limits was a really negative doom and gloom show with most episodes ending with someone having a tragic fate. Never has a television show had the human race meeting their doom in so many different stories-atomic war,space wars,invasion,the sun failing,murders by aliens-so many alien invasions wiped out the Earth that it became a cliché. There are two DVDs of this show available-one of time travel stories and the other one called "sex and science fiction" with some of this show's soft core porn. Personally,I'd recommend the original version of The Outer Limits or the first two versions of The Twilight Zone(1959 and 1985 versions)of this-but not the awful 2002 TZ version as that was also made by the makers of this mostly terrible and negative show.

This 2002 version of The Twilight Zone has been advertised as "with today's hippest young stars". Well,that just about sums up this travesty because The Twilight Zone is not supposed to be MTV. This 2002 version starts off with a rock music theme and then goes downhill from there. I have not seen one good episode. The original and much better versions of The Twilight Zone made from 1959-1965(and also from 1985-1987)had scripts written by science fiction writers and had all sorts of stories. This dreadful 2002 version does not and just has doom and gloom stories that are not very well written or very well produced. I note that some of the people that were responsible for making the new version of the Outer Limits into a soft-core porn show were also involved in this awful 2002 version of the Twilight Zone. They have no idea of story at all. They should be kept away from classic TV shows before they ruin any more.

The "Hollywood" series is the best documentary on Hollywood that I have ever seen. It presents silent movies in their correct speed and this makes a huge difference. It reveals that silent movies were not silent and in fact had orchestras of up to 100 musicians. It shows how different these films were,visual poems of music and picture. Silent films often had surprisingly good special effects as good as today's special effects. This series also tells us about the pitfalls and dangers of silents film production with extras sometimes getting killed. It reveals forgotten movie stars of the past and tells us about their lives and what befell them. This wonderful series deserves a DVD release as it is quite unique. My only regret is that they should have done a second series on the sound movies of the 1930's,which was Hollywood's greatest era.

A eccellent two part mini-series starring David Soul,Brian Keith and Rock Hudson about the Soviets trying to take control of the Alaskin pipeline to try and blackmail the U.S. . They send troops in to try and secure the pipeline and the U.S. responds to the threat by sending it's troops in and so a powderkeg confrontation occures which could start World War III,hence the title. The snow scenes are well done. It reminds me a bit of Ice Station Zebra which was about another Soviet-US confrontation. It is nice to see Brian Keith and Rock Hudson again and I hope that one day it will be released to DVD.

Here's hoping that the 1985 and 1986 versions of The Twilight Zone will one day be released on DVD as it was an outstanding series with well written episodes. The beginning titles have a half-second animation of Rod Serling in them as a salute to the originator of the series. The episode "Nightcrawlers" was directed by William Freidkin and is brilliant. One episode called "Shatterday" features the TV debut of Bruce Willis. There is also a small budget third season which was made after cancellation to make up the numbers for syndication,but it's budget was small and apart from one good episode,where a man is possessed by what looks like Christ,it is a poor third season. But the first two seasons are brilliant.

Spock's half brother Sybok cures everyone's problems by giving them a big hug. If only it was that easy! In an absurd scene,Sybok takes over the Enterprise ridiculously easily with no opposition from it's crew and flies it to the centre of the Galaxy(how did they do that?)to meet God. It turns out that "God" is an alien that wants a lift and gets disposed of by a few phaser blasts. What a weak and silly plot. Bill Shatner deserves every brickbat that he gets for it.

Mysterious Island is a good family adventure movie with top notch special effects. Despite the quality of the effects,it did not receive an Oscar nomination for them which it should have.This often happened to movies made outside the US at the time(eg:Journey To The Centre Of The Earth,First Men In The Moon).

An action film that insults the audience's intelligence with a poor premise. They could have simply used trucks,cars etc to park along the airport runway and light it up.Bad film.

This movie wastes what was a great villain in Boba Fett,and Harrison Ford's Han Solo character is hardly used.In 'The Empire Strikes back',Han Solo was a captain and yet now he is suddenly a General(?)as is Billy Dee Williams character who wasn't even in the army.This is bad writing and makes the film look amateurish.Luke Skywalker's main strategy is to get captured and then fight his way out(pretty silly writing).And the teddy bears,with their spears and stones,defeat the villain's army which is armed with heavy weapons.This is a very disappointing finale,not well written and the characters are wasted.

In the 1970s,the Disney executives had a habit of interfering with their movies,and every time that they did(the Black Hole,Something Wicked This way Comes etc),the films flopped.An article in Starlog magazine shows the original 'good' robot.This great robot design was changed into a simple 'box' robot and we have the awful and ridiculous 'death scene' involving a 'box'robot with a Slim Pickens accent doing a death scene(truly terrible writing).The Disney Execs decided to do what they thought would be commercial and ruined the film.Only the ending retains the atmosphere of what the movie could have been,had they not interfered.