Some Other Cult TV VHS Rental Tapes...

Switching back to the Super Space Theater post from day or so back, I failed to mention that the feature compilations of Gerry Anderson's show were also released for rental by Precision Video. Precision seemed to have complete access to the ITC back catalogue and their releases included many of the studio's motion pictures as well as television titles. The TV ones included ready-made 'movies' of 'The Persuaders!' and 'The Prisoner' produced by ITC back in the early 70s for foreign and syndication markets. The Super Space Theater productions were an ideal fit for them and I recall eagerly renting 'Invasion:UFO' from a local store to get my first taste of 'UFO' in nearly a decade. I also managed to acquire 'London Conspiracy' - a feature film of 'The Persuaders!' culled from the episodes 'Greensleeves' and 'A Home of One's Own'. I still have the tape - contained within its unique plastic cassette box which mirrored the design of a music cassette box but larger... obviously.

As well as their odd boxes, Precision also had a light house style to its cover designs - again similar to that used by music cassette producers. I've managed to replicate that design template and applied to a couple of unreleased titles for a bit of fun. One of them is 'Legend of the Champions' (based on 'The Champions' obviously!) - the only Super Space Theater title that wasn't part of the Gerry Anderson oeuvre.

I've also re-created the design style for another VHS rental company, Guild Home Video. I seem to recall they had a few TV titles in their library including an early release of the HTV children's drama, 'Children of the Stones'. I've applied that template to a made up 'Department S' feature. (Actually the artwork for that ended up looking like it should've been on the cover of a World Distributors annual or colouring book... Not that that is a bad thing. I might knock that up when I get some free time.)

Finally, I also mocked up the Channel 5 video design and for a bit of fun took the mickey out of Gerry Anderson's failed pilot 'The Investigator'. I'm a rotter...

(If you want to read the text, the images can be clicked on to enlarge.)

Textless artwork

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Quatermass... but for kids!

To say that the 1979 production of 'Quatermass' hit TV screens with very little fanfare is a bit of an understatement. ITV had been off the air for eleven weeks giving 'Doctor Who' some of its highest ever ratings (16.1m for an episode of 'City of Death'). Suddenly it was back and 'Quatermass' was there on its first night along side Ted Rogers, the Muppets, 'Coronation Street' and 'George & Mildred'. As such, there was very little trailing for the new four-part drama. No build up. No warning. It was just suddenly there.

In the years to come, I'd wonder if its sudden appearance seriously affected its lack of success. Had the strike not occurred, would it have been different. Would the anticipation have resulted in more curiosity  - especially from the Star Wars generation of kids craving further sci-fi hits... There'd probably be a bit disappointed with the new Quatermass' lack of laser swords and space battles anyway.

But it's that magic word 'sci-fi' that would draw them in... And toy manufacturers would no doubt believe this and would want to cash-in on the new potentially successful TV drama. After all, they were on good terms with Thames Television and Euston films since they'd licences toys and games from their recent hit 'The Sweeney' - broadcast in a similar time slot to the new 'Quatermass'. Why not do the same again? Cops and robbers are so last year... it's sci-fi this time! 

Anyway, in the roundabout way this brings me to the point of this post... What if there WERE toys based on the 1979 Euston Films production of 'Quatermass'? (I knew I'd get there in the end.)

Of course, there would be the inevitable 'unofficial' stuff as well...

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'Nineteen Eighty-Four' Blu-ray and DVD cover

It's 2021 and this year (this month in fact) marks the end of copyright for much of George Orwell's original works. This includes his novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and the control that his estate has over any dramatic productions of said novel. Thus the BBC is now free to exploit their 1954 adaptation of the novel and release it to the public in whatever form BBC policy dictates - be that DVD, Blu-ray, streaming, broadcast, talking book, read-a-long vinyl LP, etc...

Last year I did some Blu-ray covers for the BBC's 1981'The Day of the Triffids' (I didn't like the official cover) and Nigel Kneale's 'The Creature' (which is lost to the ether anyway). I also did one for the BBC's production of 'Nineteen Eighty-four' but for some reason didn't upload it here. You may have caught a fleeting glimpse of it on the Twitter. He it is in all its 'boot on the face of a man' glory. 

As a bonus, there's also a full size DVD cover that you use to wrap your VHS transferred copy in to keep it warm until the BBC releases the fully restored version later this year.*

* May not be this year. This is the BBC after all.

Click for larger. Right-click to save. Any problems, tweet me.

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Some Quatermass Annuals 4 Da Kids...

I'll admit that with these, I started off doing 50s period 'annual' style book covers. Spent a bit of time and couldn't get the look right to be honest. I'll return to them later...

Instead I took the colourised full length figures of each of the Quatermasses (Reginald Tate, John Robinson and Andre Morrel) and applied them to some of the modern Doctor Who annual templates I'd created a few months earlier... with mixed results. 

That set me thinking again... why not do some pages for these annuals? They'd look pretty cool and there'd be plenty of opportunities for obscure gags and period juxtaposition. 

A day or so later, I forgot about this splendid idea until now. This time I'll make a note and put it with the other "good ideas" for when I'm staring at a blank page again.

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Thunderbirds - The Motion Pictures!

As you can tell from an earlier post, I spent a lot of the first few weeks of lockdown creating cinema posters for the Doctor Who episodes that had been picked out for the mass tweet-a-longs. Haven't check the exact number but I did quite a few - including some classic series ones.

During that time, I felt I needed a break from Doctor Who. Yes, the creative juices were still flowing but I just needed to do something a bit different.

I'd just acquired the blu-ray of the original Thunderbirds TV series and was cherry-picking my favourite episodes. One of the many comments levelled at the show was how much like mini-movies each of fifty minute productions were. Indeed, there are some that even have very similar plots to later movies. So I started doing period film posters for some of them. 

Here they are:

Trapped in the Sky

The poster is based on one for Airport 1975 - the second film in the Airport series. The Fireflash that replaces the jumbo jet of the original is actually some cut-out and flipped artwork from an old Japanese model kit box. I had to 'reverse' the lettering on the side of the fuselage. It wasn't until I'd posted it on Twitter that I realised that the Fireflash lettering wasn't actually on the original aircraft. 

Operation Crashdive

This one is based on the poster for Airport 1977 - the third film in the increasingly desperate Airport series. In that film, a jumbo jet crash-lands in the sea (in the Bermuda Triangle of all places) and sinks to the bottom. The crew and passengers survive as the plane remains airtight. It's almost the same scenario as the episode 'Operation Crashdive'. So the choice of film/poster was a no-brainer. The artwork on the original is iconic and I had fun recreating it in photoshop. In this case, finding an image of Fireflash that was the same angle as the original sunken aircraft was difficult. There are very few promo images of it from the original series and I couldn't screengrab an image of it from the blu-ray as I didn't own a blu-ray drive. Instead I found a photo of the original Japanese Fireflash model kit. A few tweaks here and there and it looked okay - especially darkened and tinted blue/green. I think this is probably my favourite of the four posters.


City of Fire

This one was another obvious choice. No prizes for spotting the iconic poster for The Towering Inferno. I needed an image of the burning Thompson Towers (no relation). Again there were no suitable production stills so I had to create it in Photoshop. Luckily, the building is a simple skyscraper and building it in PS was comparatively straightforward. I distorted it and surrounded it with plenty of fire and smoke. It surprised me that it looked pretty authentic looking if a little stylised. The head shots of the family are simple pics taken off the telly and filtered to look more like artwork. I had a bit of fun with the words on this one. I can't help doing that. Please forgive me! 




The Perils of Penelope

I couldn't get the idea of doing a very sixties one for this Lady Penelope-centric episode. Barbarella was a no-no so I went for the much-maligned 1966 movie Modesty Blaise - a European film based on a British newspaper comic strip about a freelance lady spy. The poster is very sixties and is an art-based collage of images of Blaise - so it was a straight-forward task to create a similar design using Lady P - made all the more easier thanks to the fact she wore so many colourful dresses and that there are a lot more production stills of her than there are of Fireflash. I like the look of this one. Very sixties. And it's set off by having an off-white background instead of just plain white. 




Here's some of the textless artwork from the above designs.

And here are the originals:

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Just Some Timeslip Merchandise...

Despite my love of the early 70s sci-fi serial Timeslip, I've done very few designs based on the show... 'til now. 

This is a selection of stuff I did over a week when I needed a distraction from reality.

 

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Totally Line of Duty Adventures

Well, the fifth series of Line of Duty is finally over and now's the time to release start releasing that tidal wave of merchandise in time for Christmas.

Let's start with this...

Something for all the younger viewers eager for puzzles and morse code breaking challenges.










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Some more Star Trek Pike stuffs...

Apparently my earlier faux Star Trek novel cover - based on the original James Blish novelisation - featuring Anson Mount and Ethan Peck as Captain Pike and Lt. Spock was quite popular. So popular that I'm sure that Anson Mount is getting a little fed up with his Twitter feed being cluttered with retweets of it from his adoring fans. Thank you for that.

Here's a few more early Star Trek variants featuring the new old cast of the spin-off that whilst it's so obvious that it should be produced, won't be knowing the complicated legalities of the Star Trek franchise at CBS. 

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Juliet Bravo on Blu ray at last!

Following the huge phenomenal popular success of putting old Doctor Who episodes on to the Blu ray disc format, the BBC have decided to extend the idea to other cult TV shows in its back catalogue. 

Following an analysis of social media (and in particular a select group of Twitter movers and shakers), they have chosen Juliet Bravo - the hit 80s police series - as their next project. 

The series was hugely popular in the 1980s for many years and was a permanent fixture of Saturday night viewing until Casualty turned up and spoilt it all. Questions were often asked in the Houses of Parliament, not about the series but none-the-less, they were asked. And schoolboys everywhere filled their playgrounds with the sounds of "I-Am-Juliet-Bravo!!, I-Am-Juliet-Bravo!!". There was even talk of a movie (by two old ladies in a Swindon cafe over a five-item breakfast.). 

It was THAT huge! 

Anyway, here's the covers for the first two releases -available in exclusive steelbook editions - which should hit stores when they are thrown at them from a short distance. 

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DVD covers for cult TV stuff not released on DVD yet...

Here's a couple of full covers for cult TV stuff not yet released on DVD for various reasons...  

Counterstrike was a short-lived science fiction thriller series produced in the late sixties by the BBC. It starred Jon Finch as Simon King - a man from another galaxy who attempted to thwart an invasion of Earth by his own people. Only four episodes (the first four) exist. One episode of the original run was never shown and is amongst the missing ones. 

The first series of ITV's Freewheelers does exist in its entirety but is very poor quality. Only the sixth series has been released officially. It's also been rerun on Talking Pictures TV. The later colour series - although available in fan circles - only exist as VHS dupes. 

If you have any suggestions for other rarieties that 'need' liberating with DVD covers (whether the episodes exist or not), let me know on the Twitter feed.

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The Three Lives of Countdown and TV Action...

This week has seen the publication of a new (one-off?) issue of Doctor Who Adventures - the popular comic for 7-11 year olds based on the popular BBCtv series that adults adore and argue about. 

Older readers of this blog will no doubt recall a time when children's comic cravings were satiated by the likes of Countdown and TV Action with "All Your TV Favourites" and Cannon. 

Here's a taste of what things would've been like had Countdown and TV Action been published today...

 

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