Killers from Space

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Killers from Space

Directed by	W. Lee Wilder
Produced by	W. Lee Wilder
Written by	William Raynor and Myles Wilder
Starring	Peter Graves Barbara Bestar James Seay William Gerstle
Music by	Manuel Compinsky
Cinematography	William H. Clothier
Editing by	William Faris
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures
Release date(s)	January 23, 1954, re-released 1956
Language	English

Killers from Space is a 1954 American black and white science fiction feature film, produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder(brother of Billy Wilder) from an original, commissioned screenplay by his son Myles Wilder and their regular collaborator William Raynor, and starring Peter Graves andBarbara Bestar. Lee Wilder's independent production company, Planet Filmplays Inc., usually producing on a financing-for-distribution basis for United Artists, made this film for RKO Radio Pictures distribution.

[hide]

[edit]Plot summary

Dr. Douglas Martin is a scientist working onatomic bomb tests. While collecting aerial data on an Air Force atomic blast at Soledad Flats, his plane crashes. He survives the crash unhurt, except for a strange scar on his chest.

At the base hospital, he does not remember what happened. He acts so strangely that the authorities bring in the FBI, thinking he may be an impostor. He is cleared, but told to take some time off. He protests at being excluded from his project.

An atomic test is set off without his knowledge, so Martin steals the data, then goes back to Soledad Flats and puts the papers under a stone. The FBI agent has followed him, but he escapes until he crashes his car. Back at the hospital, he is given truth serum. He tells a story about being captured by space aliens from Astron Delta and held in their underground base. (The aliens have big eyes like ping-pong balls.)

The aliens plan to exterminate all humans with giant insects and reptiles, grown with radiation absorbed from the bomb tests. Martin intuits that the aliens use stolen electric power to control their powerful apparatus, and they need the bomb data to predict the energy to be released and balanced. The aliens had blanked his memory and hypnotized him into getting the data for them.

The FBI agent and the base commander are skeptical of such an incredible story, and keep him confined at the hospital.

With some calculations on a slide rule, Dr. Martin determines that if he shuts off the power to Soledad Flats for just ten seconds, it will create an overload in the aliens' equipment. So he escapes the hospital and goes to the nearby electrical power plant, where he forces a technician to turn off the power. The alien base is destroyed in a massive explosion, saving the Earth from conquest.

[edit]Cast

Peter Graves as Dr. Douglas Martin
Frank Gerstle as Dr. Curt Kruger
James Seay as Col. Banks
Steve Pendleton as FBI Agent Briggs
Barbara Bestar as Ellen Martin
Shepard Menken as Major Clift, M.D.
John Frederick as Denab and The Tala
Jack Daly as Powerhouse Supervisor
Ron Kennedy as Sentry Sergeant
Ben Welden as Tar Baby 2 Pilot
Burt Wenland as Unspecified Sergeant
Lester Dorr as Gas Station Attendant
Robert Roark as Unspecified Guard
Ruth Bennett as Miss Vincent
Mark Scott as Narrator

[edit]Trivia

At the beginning of the 2006 video game Prey, the player may turn on the TV which has two channels, one of which is a clip from Killers from Space. The other is a clip from the civil defense educational film Duck and Cover.

The film was released on DVD with a commentary track by The Film Crew

She was naughty - naughtier than everyone knew.

Betty Boop

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Serbian girl group, see Betty Boop (band).

Betty Boop
A title card of one of the earliest Betty Boop cartoons
First appearance	Dizzy Dishes (1930)
Last appearance	TV advertisement Dan-e {2010}
Created by	Max Fleischer
Voiced by	Margie Hines (1930–1932, 1938–1939) Ann Rothschild (1931–1933) Mae Questel (1931–1938, 1988) Kate Wright (1932, 1938) Bonnie Poe (1933–1934, 1938) Victoria D'orazi (1980) Bernadette Peters (1981, 1993) Desiree Goyette (1985) Melissa Fahn (1989, 2004–2008) Sue Raney (1993) Cheryl Chase (2002) Tara Strong (commercials) Cindy Robinson (official)

Betty Boop is an animated cartoon charactercreated by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]She originally appeared in the Talkartoon andBetty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released byParamount Pictures. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising. Despite having been toned down in the mid-1930s to appear more demure, she became one of the most well-known and popular cartoon characters in the world.

[edit]Origins

Helen Kane – the original

Betty Boop and Bimbo in Minnie the Moocher (1932)

Betty Boop in Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle (1932)

Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, 1930, in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes;^[5] the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Although Clara Bow is often given as being the model for Boop,^[7] she actually began as a caricature of singer Helen Kane. The character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle.^[8]

Max Fleischer finalized Betty Boop as a human character in 1932, in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose. Betty Boop appeared as a supporting character in 10 cartoons as a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons, she was called "Nancy Lee" or "Nan McGrew" – derived from the 1930Helen Kane film Dangerous Nan McGrew – usually serving as a girlfriend to studio star, Bimbo.

Betty's voice was first performed by Margie Hines, and was later performed by several different voice actresses, including Kate Wright, Bonnie Poe, Ann Rothschild (aka Little Ann Little), and most notably,Mae Questel. Questel, who began voicing Betty Boop in 1931, continued with the role until her death in 1998. Today, Betty is voiced by Tress MacNeilleand Tara Strong in commercials.

Although it has been assumed that Betty's first name was established in the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon,Betty Co-ed, this "Betty" is an entirely different character. Even though the song may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any reference to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle is incorrect although the official Betty Boop website describes the titular character as a "prototype" of Betty. There are at least 12 Screen Songs cartoons that featured Betty Boop or a similar character. Betty appeared in the first "Color Classic" cartoonPoor Cinderella, her only theatrical color appearance in 1934. In the film, she was depicted with red hair as opposed to her typical black hair. Betty also made a cameo appearance in the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), in which she appeared in her traditional black and white and was voiced by Mae Questel.

Betty Boop was the star of the Talkartoons by 1932 and was given her own series that same year, beginning with Stopping the Show. From that point on, she was crowned "The Queen of the Animated Screen." The series was popular throughout the 1930s, lasting until 1939.

[edit]As a sex symbol

Betty Boop is regarded as one of the first and most famous sex symbols on the animated screen;^[9]^[10] she is a symbol of the Depression era, and a reminder of the more carefree days of Jazz Age flappers. Her popularity was drawn largely from adult audiences, and the cartoons, while seemingly surreal, contained many sexual and psychological elements, particularly in the "Talkartoon," Minnie the Moocher, featuring Cab Calloway and his orchestra.

Minnie the Moocher defined Betty's character as a teenager of a modern era, at odds with the old world ways of her parents. In the cartoon, after a disagreement with her parents, Betty runs away from home, accompanied by her boyfriend Bimbo, only to get lost in a haunted cave. A ghostly walrus (rotoscoped from live-action footage of Calloway), sings Calloway's famous song "Minnie the Moocher", accompanied by several other ghosts and skeletons. This haunting performance sends the frightened Betty and Bimbo back to the safety of home. "Minnie the Moocher" served as a promotion for Calloway's subsequent stage appearances and also established Betty Boop as a cartoon star. The eight Talkartoons that followed all starred Betty, leading her into her own series beginning in 1932. With the release of Stopping the Show (August 1932), the Talkartoons were replaced by the Betty Boopseries, which continued for the next seven years.^[11]

Betty's signature "Pen and Ink" song theme (nine-second clip)

Betty Boop was unique among female cartoon characters because she represented a sexualized woman. Other female cartoon characters of the same period, such asMinnie Mouse, displayed their underwear orbloomers regularly, in the style of childish or comical characters, not a fully defined woman's form. Many other female cartoons were merely clones of their male co-stars, with alterations in costume, the addition of eyelashes, and a female voice. Betty Boop wore short dresses, high heels, a garter, and her breasts were highlighted with a low, contoured bodice that showed cleavage. In her cartoons, male characters frequently try to sneak peeks at her while she's changing or simply going about her business. In Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle, she does the hula wearing nothing but a lei, strategically placed to cover her breasts, and a grass skirt. This was repeated in her first cameo appearance in Popeye the Sailor (1933). There was, however, a certain girlish quality to the character. She was drawn with a head more similar to a baby's than an adult's in proportion to her body. This suggested the combination of girlishness and maturity that many people saw in the flapper type, which Betty represented.

While the character was kept pure and girl-like onscreen, compromises to her virtue were a challenge. The studio's 1931 Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer. Also in 1931, the Talkartoons The Bum Bandit and Dizzy Red Riding Hoodwere given distinctly "impure" endings. Officially, Betty was only 16 years old, according to a 1932 interview with Fleischer (although in The Bum Bandit, she's portrayed as a married woman with many children, and also has an adult woman's voice, rather than the standard "boop-boop-a-doop" voice).

Attempts to compromise her virginity were reflected in Chess-Nuts (1932) and most importantly in Boop-Oop-a-Doop (1932). In Chess-Nuts, the Black King goes into the house where Betty is and ties her up. When she rejects him, he pulls her out of the ropes, drags her off to the bedroom and says, "I will have you." The bed, however, runs away and Betty calls for help through the window. Bimbo comes to her rescue, and she is saved before anything happens. In Boop-Oop-a-Doop, Betty is a high-wire performer in a circus. The villainous ringmaster lusts for Betty as he watches her from below, singing "Do Something," a song previously performed by Helen Kane. As Betty returns to her tent, the ringmaster follows her inside and sensually massages her legs, surrounds her, and threatens her job if she doesn't submit. This is perhaps one of the earliest portrayals of sexual harassment on the animated screen, and was very daring at a time when such subject matter was considered taboo. Betty pleads with the ringmaster to cease his advances, as she sings "Don't Take My Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away." Koko the Clown is practicing his juggling outside the tent, and overhears the struggle inside. He leaps in to save Betty, struggling with the ringmaster, who loads him into a cannon and fires it. Koko, who remained hiding inside the cannon, knocks the ringmaster out cold with a mallet, and inquires about Betty's welfare, to which she answers in song, "No, he couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away"

Loco Loquito

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Tuesday, July 3, 2012