| Author | Message | ||
     Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.242.34 |
I've just ordered the Complete Ray Bradbury Television Theatre off the interwebz for £17 including postage - 65 episodes.... Is that a good choice? I can only remember ever seeing one of these - I sing the Body Electric - which was a rather good version... Are the other 64 as good? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
I used to watch them and recall them being solid enough. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Solid enough, but let down uninspired direction. I remember The Crowd had William Shatner in it! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.19.25 |
Just finished watching Disc 1 from this set. Strangely it's not season 1 but a sprinkling of episodes from across all seasons. William Shatner was actually in The Playground. The Crowd didn't have any faces I recognised in. Quick runddown of this disc. The Crowd - As much as I love the short story, this didn't work for me. It felt flat and lifeless and had no real atmosphere. Marionettes Inc. - This was a belter of an episode. Lesley Nielsen could be really creepy when he wanted to be - and he certainly was here as the head of the eponymous company. Banshee - I think I actually actively disliked this episode despite Peter O'Toole and the other actor putting in sterling performances. the problem is the story feels like some kind of revenge fantasy of Bradbury's because John Huston said some nasty things to him. The Playground - William Shatner actually acted... this had some significant changes from the original short story but foor the better. A distinctly creepy little offering where we could never quite be certain if the Playground really was the haunt of strange demonic kids or if Shatner was going mad. A really nice touch with the child vanishing on the circular slide as well. The boy playing Shatners son was just irritating though. The Screaming Woman - with a 9 year old Drew Barrymore. This episode suffered because of a sily introduction where Bradbury is given a dowsing rod by some old git and gets an idea for the story. I've got a feeling that one of the other discs will be infested with a slew of these silly intros. The story itself was ok but flat direction again. The Town Where no one got off - a long time favourite story of mine. Unfortunately this also had a silly intro with Bradbury trying to act. Guest star once the story started was Jeff Goldblum, who was chatting on a train with George C Scott in an uncredited role. There was too much padding at the start of this story before it got to the real meat of the original, at which point it got a nice tense atmosphere going. The Coffin - Possibly the best on the disc with Denholm Elliot in fine form as inventor Dan o'herlihy's unlikable brother. A fine tale of revenge from beyond the grave. (I have to admit to loving Bradbury's more EC style horrors) Gotcha - an odd one that made little sense. It starts off as Bradbury's story The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair before morphing into the Gotcha story itself (I think this episode may have been the origin of the L&HLA). Well acted but weird. The Emissary - another of my all time favourite short stories and my real intro to Bradbury himself. Sadly it doesn't work on screen even a tenth as well. Nicely acted but it didn't work. Maybe it should have stayed in the bedroom and not followed the dog out of the house (or indeed taken the boy downstairs) The Man upstairs - This has to be the strangest vampire story ever written - and apart from the hokey sfx was reasonably well done. The lad playing young Doug Spaulding was the best of the child actors on the entire disc. This one really does work best if you don't lok at the mentality of young doug that makes him do what he does to the man upstairs. The Small assasin - a nicely done version again of another of my all time favourites. SPOILER It did make me wonder at the end though, the doctor gets his scalpel out - this is still only a 4 week old child even if it has just killed both its parents... isn't the death penalty with a sharp implement a little excessive? On the Orient North - I couldn't remember this story at all and was quite impressed with the TV version. A nice adaptation of one of his lesser tales. The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl - another story you can imagine in EC comics and therefore another one I really enjoyed quite a lot. Robert Vaughn and Mike Ironside should maybe have swapped roles though. A good faithful interpretation of a great great story. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.31.30.158 |
These are available on YouTube. We watched a few over Xmas. Skeleton was a bad letdown, but we enjoyed The Crowd and The Emissary. That end of Small Assassin - does he intend to kill the kid? Or castrate him? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.150.135.246 |
The doctor with the weird name in The Skeleton was pretty badly acted but the young Eugene levy was pretty good got most of it. I was actually impressed by the blob at the end - quite a nightmarish image considering when it was made and the budget. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.150.135.246 |
I think I have a definite favourite of the entire series so far. Check out Boys, raise giant mushrooms in your cellar. I love that we never know if it's panoia or if anything is actually happening... Shades of Bodysnatchers and Bradbury's other short - Fever Dream - but with an ambiguity that really raised the bar for me. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.209.21 |
I'm not sure that The Wind was the best episode to watch tonight. A storm blowing outside is unnerving accompaniment to that particular tale. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.150.135.246 |
Well I've just watched the first 4 episodes of disc 3 and they're all very very good if not excellent episodes. the quality seems to be improving disc on disc. The Wind - lovely creeepy version of yet another of my favourite Bradbury stories (How many faourites can I have?) A sound of Thunder - One of the greatest sci fi short stories ever and this is a great version of it. OK so the T-rex was a bit ropy but everything else was spot on. The Wonderful death of Dudley stone - I couldn't remember this story at all till I saw this episode. Really well played by both leads and a pretty good story to boot. Hail and fairwell - Of all of Bradbury's stories this one needed a good child star at the centre of it. My heart dropped when I saw Josh Saviano's (Fred savages geeky pal from the Wonder Years) name in the opening credits. Happily he surpassed all my expectations and turned in a really natural and quite touching performance in this tale of a 40 year old pre-teen who moves from family to family helping them get over bereavements. If the rest of this disc is the same sort of quality then the set will have been worth it just for this one. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.21.6 |
Well I just watched the last 7 episodes of the final disc tonight. Tombstone - nicely done, creepy version of the story. Tomorrow's child - one of the most delightfully odd things Bradbury ever wrote - the original story (in I Sing the Body electric) begins with the line "He didn't want to be the father of a small blue pyramid" which pretty much sets the tone for this episode. Not as good as the short story but very nicely done. Silent towns - I couldn't remember this story before watching the episode. It's a Martian tale where the last man on Mars manages to somehow contact the last woman on Mars and drives 900 miles to meet her. In some of the episodes the comedy has been badly overplayed and just not funny. This one, though, gets it just right. There were real belly laughs in this. Some Live Like Lazarus - I can't remember the original story very well, but this is a lovely and dark love story where a couple can only be together if his mother dies. Well played all round. Sun and Shadow - a piece of wimsy set in Mexico. Nothing stunning but amusing in places. Great Wide World over there - a touching and moving little tale which left me welling up a bit at the end. |Whether it would have done that on another night I can't really say. The handler - I was surprised to see this on the disc as I seem to recall hearing that Bradbury once disowned this story for being too gruesome. I'm glad he didn't though. I wasn't keen on Mr Benedict at first but he certainly grew on me and I realised it was actually a nigh on perfect performance. Just the right side of a completely pathetic little man who can only feel superior to people when they're on his embalming slab. I will post more about the other discs soon - but overall this was indeed a rather good buy for the money and well recommended. One or two duffers on there - The Anthem Sprinters was particularly weak IMHO but there's enough very good to excellent stuff in there that the average is definitely well worth watching. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
There's a rather touching irony in this thread's title now. |