Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare (1975)

Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare (1975)

Alice's masterpiece began life as a concept album. It deviated somewhat from the original idea, but, personally, I still regard it as one due to how well its individual parts complement each other, despite their obvious compositional differences. It's like a painting in musical form, layered with vibrant textures and blurred lines that when followed lead back upon themselves.

Not all songs flow into each other effortlessly, but the order in which they're arranged is so deeply ingrained in my mind after decades of listening and re-examination that to remove or shuffle one would ruin the unifying essence that makes each one work alongside its neighbour.

Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975)

Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975)

13 episodes, approx. 30 minutes each.

An animated TV Series that borrows characters from some of the previous Planet of the Apes live action productions but is nevertheless its own thing, requiring no prior franchise knowledge.

The ape-world is more technologically advanced than we'd seen before, with concrete buildings, televisions, and automobiles with internal combustion engines, putting it closer to Pierre Boulle's original 1963 novel than any of its film or TV predecessors had come.

The means by which the three human astronauts — 

Jeff Allen (Austin Stoker), Bill Hudson (Tom Williams), and Judy Franklin (Claudette Nevins) – get to the titular 'planet' is similar to how it was for Taylor and Brent in Films 01 and 02, respectively.

The relationship that the trio of astronauts have with chimpanzee scientists Cornelius (Edwin Mills) and Zira (Philippa Harris) is reminiscent of how it was with the human-sympathisers and Taylor, making it feel like some kind of parallel timeline.

Doctor Who: Classic Era Davros (1975-88)

Doctor Who: Classic Era Davros (1975-88)

NOTE: there are SPOILERS for a number of Classic Era Dr Who stories below this paragraph. It would be advisable not to read any further if you're not okay with that.

The Doctor had encountered the Daleks more than once before, as far back as his first onscreen incarnation (William Hartnell), during the second multipart story of the first series (1963-64), but he didn't come face-to-face with their tyrannical creator Davros until the fourth serial of the twelfth series (1975).

The duo met four more times over the next thirteen years, and you'll find thoughts on each of those meetings in the text below the cut. Once again, SPOILERS are present.

Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars (1975)

Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars (1975)

Dir. Paddy Russell | 4 episodes, approx 25 mins each

I mentioned that Pyramids of Mars was included as an extra on Series 04 of The Sarah Jane Adventures DVD + Blu-ray, which is a good enough reason for me to want to give a little more information on it.

Stargate is my favourite onscreen merger of sci-fi and Egyptian mythology, but it isn't the only Movie or TV Series to have connected the two things. Doctor Who did it almost two decades before. [1]

It's a Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) adventure in which Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) has a fairly significant role. It's a good example of how much she brought to the series, both as a fully-rounded character in her own right and as a foil for the Doctor.

She isn't his gofer, written in just to do the boring stuff, but is very much there because she wants to be. They joke with each other on equal terms, and she's not afraid to let him know if he's being insensitive or callous when dealing with humans; he's an alien and has an alien perspective.

Godzilla: Shōwa Era Films (1954-74)

01. Godzilla (1954) 

Dir. Ishirō Honda

NOTE: for simplicity's sake I've used English language titles for each of my Godzilla reviews, but it's always the original Japanese language versions of the films that I refer to.

The monstrous growl that's heard over the film's opening credits foreshadows what's to come, which can be summed up as the Japanese people facing a monstrous terror that the rest of the world has never seen. It begins at sea and then moves inland.

The creature responsible for the inhuman roar — the monarch of kaijū eiga — is a force to be reckoned with, for sure, and is more than just an excuse to have a guy in a rubber suit trash tiny models. You don't need to be a history scholar to pick out the many wartime parallels: nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, irradiated wells, air raid sirens, and footfalls that sound like distant bombs impacting and exploding are all highlighted.

Payback Time Triple Feature (2017)

Blind Fury (1989)

Dir. Phillip Noyce

Three movies on one Blu-ray disc. There's no special features, but PQ is decent, at least.

First up is Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury (1989), an American remake of Japanese director Kenji Misumi's Zatoichi Challenged (1967) that somehow isn't as bad as I'd feared it would be.
Rutger was a good choice to play the blind swordsman; his cheesy factor is balanced out by his strength of character and his ability to play it wryly comical when needed.

The plot has the sword-wielding Vietnam vet taking on the role of protector to a kid who's wanted by the one-note villains. It's part escort mission and part revenge drama that descends into something resembling an episode of The A-Team that, for me, worked in its favour because I love The A-Team.

Shivers (1975)

Shivers (1975)

aka: Frissons / The Parasite Murders / They Came from Within

Dir. David Cronenberg

Shivers is crude and suffers from some clunky pacing in the middle section, but the imagination and the sense of dread that it manages to exude help raise it up.

It's set in a modern high rise building that claims to be largely self-sufficient. It has shops, a public pool and even its own resident doctor and nurse. Being situated close to the city but still far enough away that it feels isolated is something that the story uses to its advantage.

By existing within a host building that's built for perfect human living and convenience, the residents create a perfect breeding ground for a new kind of life to thrive.