the social changes of the 1960s, though all the editorializing means they make too little of André. The saga’s most interest- ing character and creation some- times tends to get lost in all the earthly intrigue. Hoyle seems to have deliberately excluded the gothic or horrific elements Kneale deploys so effectively. A professional scientist, albeit one with an attraction to extreme theories, the astronomer was plainly concerned with realistic depiction of laboratory work (though those deadly exposed terminals seem unlikely, despite the warning signs). Shot mostly on tape, with ambitious-for-the- time filmed location scenes, THE ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH has to sketch in the global scope of the disasters and rely on actors talking to each other on studio sets. Hayes notes that the Hoyle-Elliot scripts are literate, but seldom con- cerned with sounding like real people talking—as Kneale’s usually are. The director may have moder- ated this stiffness a little in A FOR ANDROMEDA, but the follow-up, co- directed by Elliot and John Knight, seems to witter on more. Among the familiar faces popping up in minor roles in the serials are Noel Johnson (radio’s DICK BARTON— SPECIAL AGENT), Anthony Valen- tine (THE DAMNED), Frederick Treves (THE ELEPHANT MAN), Jack Gwillim (THE MONSTER SQUAD), Ken Colley (Jesus in THE LIFE OF BRIAN), Walter Gotell
(General Gogol in the Bond films), Earl Cameron (INCEPTION), Philip Latham (DRACULA—PRINCE OF DARKNESS), Anthony Sharp (HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN) and Bessie Love (whose genre career runs from the 1926 THE LOST WORLD to THE HUNGER). A FOR ANDROMEDA has been remade twice, as an Italian TV serial in 1972 and a British made-for-television feature in 2006 which draw on the novel
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Nicoletta Rizzi is Andromeda in Vittorio Cottafavi’s remake of the serial for Italian television.
Hoyle and Elliot wrote from their scripts. In both remakes, a ma- jor character who returns in THE ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH is struck down by a fatal alien plague that is stressed more heavily in the book than in the original TV serial. Though he gained a minor international cult reputation for imaginative pepla like Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide [US: HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN), writer-director Vittorio Cottafavi spent the bulk of his career work- ing on a range of quality drama projects in Italian television. In 1972, Cottafavi wrote and di- rected A COME ANDROMEDA, a five-part serial closely based on A FOR ANDROMEDA. Though the setting is now “England next year” (lots of raincoats, hats and umbrellas signify Britishness) and Bouldershaw Fell’s comput- ers are larger and more impres- sive than in the BBC production. A COME ANDROMEDA is also primarily a set-bound studio drama shot on tape with misty outdoor film scenes when action or added atmosphere is required.
Made in B&W, it’s a dream- like production—with an evoca- tive, eerie score from Mario Miguardi—and some tightening of the narrative. However, there is still too much espionage and lab-work to get through before brunette technician Christine (Nicoletta Rizzi) is reincarnated at the end of Episode Three as a Deneuve-look white-blonde Andromeda. Luigi Vannucchi, Tino Carraro (LEGEND OF THE WOLF WOMAN) and Gabriella Giacobbe (the witch in KEOMA) play macho-yet-sensitive Fleming, fatherly Reinhart and a somewhat dowdy (and slightly renamed) Danway, but the series is stolen by Paola Pitagora (who ironically appeared with Julie Christie in IN SEARCH OF GRE- GORY, 1970) as a mod-dressed, striking Judy Adamson. The un- dercover agent is a more substan- tial role than Andromeda, and Pitagora carries much of the drama—but it’s still strange that the human woman should seem so much more exotic than the alien being. Rizzi, who is fine as Andromeda (though she wears an odd curly wig in the final episode),
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