"The Edwardian Scientific Romances of Amicus Productions " Topic

"The concurrent dawn of the Atomic Age and the Space Age created a fertile environment for the adaptation of works by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells into feature film. Long since considered outdated, these Victorian authors had new life breathed into them by American and British filmmakers who saw in such stories as War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, First Men in the Moon and Master of the World the potential to address the anxieties and optimism of the Fifties and Sixties from a comfortable distance. As the Sixties drew to a close, however, those anxieties shifted. Interest in outer space effectively dropped off after the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, and attention turned to Nixon's withdrawal of troops of Vietnam. Civil Rights, Second-Wave Feminism, Stonewall, the Sexual Revolution, and Woodstock were the new frontiers. Science Fiction itself changed with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and those dusty Victorian stories were put back on the shelf.

As the Sixties gave way to the Seventies, a few vain attempts were made to reinvigorate the genre. A dour, vulgar, overlong, and frankly boring adaptation of Verne's Lighthouse at the End of the World was made in 1971 with Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner. The 1972 British horror film The Asphyx attempted to trap death with its Victorian equipments. Omar Sharif took a turn as Captain Nemo in 1973's critically under-performing The Mysterious Island. Disney made a go with 1974's Island at the Top of the World, based on a modern Canadian Arctic adventure story by Ian Cameron. Though the novel was set in its year of publication, 1961, Disney deliberately backdated it to the Edwardian Era in the hopes of recreating the success of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was almost single-handedly responsible for that explosion of Scientific Romances two decades before. They were so hopeful that Disney's Imagineers were ready to roll with plans for an entirely new area of Disneyland based on Island at the Top of the World and 20,000 Leagues, to be called "Discovery Bay." This hope was dashed against the incongruous pencil-pushing that cut its budget, reducing its visions of grandeur to something less ambitious and substantially less profitable. While it would have been wonderful to see everything they had planned, the reality is that the fiscal hammer might not have been unfounded. Though possessing its own charms, Island at the Top of the World suffered most for not tapping into the zeitgeist the way 20,000 Leagues did. There are a lot of things going on, but none of it really means anything… A recurring theme for Scientific Romances from this time.

There was one name that had not been touched yet, however. He was one of the great authors of Edwardian Pulp fiction whose work was never very deep or literary to begin with but could keep a very punchy, action-filled pace: Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was to the creator of Tarzan and John Carter that the British company Amicus Productions turned when they gave the genre their shot…"
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Amicalement
Armand

A dour, vulgar, overlong, and frankly boring adaptation of Verne's Lighthouse at the End of the World was made in 1971 with Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner.

I saw Lighthouse at the End of the World in the theater when it was released.

The author is being *way* too kind.

@JPattern2: ouch!!!!