Written by / 3/04/2022 / No comments / , , ,

GARY LOCKWOOD IN THE COLD-WAR SCIENCE'FICTION 'EARTH II'

Title: EARTH II Year: 1971 Rating: **1/2

EARTH II is not a sequel to EARTH, and despite Gary Lockwood being one of Gene Roddenberry's stock actors, having starred in THE LIEUTENANT from 1963 to 1964, and then as a villain who starts out as Captain Kirk's Academy friend on STAR TREK, this is not a Roddenberry production, who did create a handful of likewise 1970's pilots with similar beginning-of a-new-world themes including another co-starring Mariette Hartley, GENESIS II...

The disco era was to science-fiction what the previous year was to cold war spy flicks... And while taking its time, and full of political dialogue with hardly any action at all, EARTH II is a somewhat decent if filler TV-Movie-of-the-Week, basically a Detonate-the-bomb-before-t-blows slow-thriller, resembling what Lockwood is best known for — 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.... 

Gary Lockwood in EARTH II

Along with the slow panning camera, as men work inside and then float outside their capsules (as did Gary's Frank Poole) and every so often with a sudden jolting quick pan forward as chilling music strikes, this is director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke's hybrid brainchild watered-down and channeled for television by Tom Gries... 

Without any soap operatic melodrama or battles, the film is a meticulous anti-disaster anti-nukes film, relying more on stopping-what-could-be than dealing with a horrible aftermath — in this case, Red China's Nuclear Warhead Satellite, which wouldn't leave much to clean up...

Promotional ad for EARTH II

EARTH II is the name of a giant space station where people have gone to live... A second Earth, get it? After a while the precise, economical sequences get stale... But for a TV movie trying to be more realistic in showing the genuine work of Astronauts in outer space, dealing with a severe problem and without laserbeams, it's not bad... 

A little preachy, like the station's banal rule about not allowing kids to play with toy guns... Although Science-Fiction, especially having to do with a Near-Future and even going back to the 1950's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, is usually the platform for parenthetical politicizing... But in this case, anything with Gary Lockwood is, to us, usually interesting.

Opening of EARTH II

 

Share This Post :
Tags : , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

All Time Popular

Featured Post

ROBERT BEATTY WITH TERRY MOORE IN 'POSTMARK FOR DANGER'

Title: POSTMARK FOR DANGER Year: 1955 Rating: ** Twenty years before Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, involving a first-act wher...

WWW.CULTFILMFREAKS.COM

WWW.CULTFILMFREAKS.COM
Movie Reviews, Interviews, Articles and Pop Culture from White Heat to Blue City

RIP ACTOR KEN HUTCHISON

TOTAL HITS

Popular Trending

FOUNDED BY JAMES M. TATE

FOUNDED BY JAMES M. TATE
RANDOM QUOTE: "The Love Generation... Vicious little creeps!" Peter Strauss, Rich Man Poor Man

FILM NOIR & NEO NOIR CRIME

FAVORITES SHORTLIST

1)OTLEY 2)HELL IS A CITY 3)ROBBERY 4)THE FEARMAKERS 5)CANYON PASSAGE 6)VIOLENT SATURDAY 7)HOT CARS 8)JUNGLE STREET 9)THE CROWDED SKY 10)THE ROARING TWENTIES 11) ANATOMY OF A MURDER 12)SHARKS' TREASURE 13)SWEENEY TWO 14)RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA 15)HARDCORE 16)THE BREAK 17)WHITE HEAT 18)AL CAPONE 19)HIDDEN FEAR 20)FALLEN ANGEL 21)NIGHT CREATURES 22)THE ASPHALT JUNGLE 23)ASH WEDNESDAY 24)THE SYSTEM 25)AIR PATROL 26)THE STONE KILLER 27)EASY LIVING 28)WILLIAM CONRAD'S BRAINSTORM 29)FRENZY 30)THE MAN FROM LARAMIE 1)DANA ANDREWS 2)JAMES CAGNEY 3)STANLEY BAKER 4)MARLON BRANDO 5)CHARLES BRONSON1)VIRGINIA MAYO 2)SUE LYON 3)GENE TIERNEY 4)MERRY ANDERS 5)FAYE DUNAWAY DIRECTORS 1)JACQUES TOURNEUR 2)RICHARD FLEISCHER 3)VAL GUEST 4)STANLEY KUBRICK 5)OTTO PREMINGER 6)ORSON WELLES 7)JOHN GUILLERMAN 8)JOHN LANDIS 9)JOHN CARPENTER 10)MICHAEL WINNER

BRITISH NEW WAVE CINEMA

RARITIES AND EXPLOITATION

HAMMER HORROR & THRILLER

Popular This Month

CHARLES BRONSON CINEMA

CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

WESTERN GENRE REVIEWS

PEAKING INTO THE SIXTIES

KICKING IN THE EIGHTIES

TALES AND REFLECTIONS

REVVING THE SEVENTIES

FOR HORROR MOVIE REVIEWS

Most Popular Last Year

RETURN TO THE HOMEPAGE