The theatrical release forfeited footage included here to get a PG rating, so this restoration helps one to better appreciate its steps forward. At the same time, it is very much a conscious step back- ward to Rouben Mamoulian’s 1932 version and even earlier filmings, the nostalgia of its play- like stagings tacitly admitted with an antique “The End” card. Also included is a 1m 8s group of “de- leted scenes” from a (presumably 16mm) 1.33:1 open aperture print that is sadly not included in its entirety, as the open framing is far more ideally composed. These deleted scenes depict moments of appallingly fake-looking decapita- tions and autopsies that have no dramatic power seen like this, de- prived of their context—but at least we have them.
Television
THE ANDROMEDA ANTHOLOGY
1961, 1962, 2/Entertain, £39.99, DVD-2
A COME ANDROMEDA 1972, RAI, approx. 310m, €12.86, DVD-2
A FOR ANDROMEDA 2006, DD Home Entertainment, 85m 23s, £8.23, DVD-2 By Kim Newman
The success of Nigel Kneale’s
Quatermass serials in the 1950s encouraged UK television chan- nels (both of them) to commis- sion more science fiction, often following Kneale’s lead in combin- ing SF concepts with Gothic Hor- ror and British boffinry. THE TROLLENBERG TERROR and THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X
followed the Quatermass serials from TV to the movies, but— oddly—there was no big screen
70
Julie Christie first skyrocketed to British stardom as the artificial intelligence of the BBC’s post-Quatermass, pre-Doctor Who serial A FOR ANDROMEDA.
adaptation of the BBC’s most sig- nificant post-QUATERMASS, pre- DOCTOR WHO science fiction franchise.
Scripted by astronomer-nov- elist Fred Hoyle (THE BLACK CLOUD) and TV writer-producer- director John Elliot, A FOR AN- DROMEDA was a considerable success on its broadcast in seven episodes in 1961. 20-year-old Julie Christie, cast in a pre-FAHREN- HEIT 451 dual role, was propelled to stardom by the serial, dominat- ing its later stages as the unearthly Andromeda. Hoyle and Elliot’s script, which they later turned into a successful novel, has proved influential. SPECIES (1995), for instance, also has a signal from deep space instruct scientists to create a human-alien hybrid which looks like a stunning blonde woman and who might pose a threat to all life on Earth. A FOR
ANDROMEDA also features one of the first evil corporations (as op- posed to evil tycoons) in drama; Hoyle and Elliot’s ruthless multi- national Intel is a model for many subsequent concerns (eg: the Parallax Corporation of THE PARALLAX VIEW, ConSec of SCANNERS, Omni Consumer
Products of ROBOCOP, et al). Sadly, A FOR ANDROMEDA is lost but for one full episode (Epi- sode Six: “The Face of the Ti- ger”), snippets from earlier shows, still photographs taken off air (“telesnape”) and the 15m cli- max of the final episode, “The Last Mystery.” However, three separate European DVD releases almost compensate for the loss by show- casing what’s left of the serial and three pendant productions. THE ANDROMEDA ANTHOLOGY ap- proximates A FOR ANDROMEDA by presenting all of the surviving
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