Future astronauts, or nightclub waiter? Go HERE for the answer.
More words and info from Matt Novak’s always-nifty Paleofuture blog, HERE.
Pass it along, if you wish
22 Responses to Black and White World: Just Imagine
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if everybody has flying hovercraft with the rotors in the wingtips, then.. then… why do they have suspension bridges?
how bloody much does that parking space on the empire state building cost?
totally hokey. especially the hairdo not being mussed by propwash.
RT-42 was played by Frank Albertson, who was born in Fergus Falls. He’s the one who delivers the line about flying Rosenblatts, Pinkuses and Goldfarbs.
Lots of sumptuous Future-Deco eye candy here but I’m fearing the script/acting will be about as good as most H’wood 1929/30 fledgling talkies (ie. stinko). It’s been on my must-see list for awhile, along with “Terror of Tiny Town.” Thanks for the reminder! I will view it. Just waiting for the right (slightly masochistic) mood to hit me.
Okay, okay, I’m watching it right now … Hot dog! It’s like a cross between “Metropolis” and the parts of “The Cocoanuts” that didn’t feature the Marx Brothers.
So personal hovercars of the future are just flying inflatable pool toys? Wish it were true, 9/11 may never have happened!!
Say, why is the fellow in the screencap at the top of this post wearing my first grader pajamas from 1973?
I’m SO glad to see that in 1980, we’ll still have loud, shrill, peppy, slightly frumpy, over-aged flappers who say things like “Hey, you birds, aincha gonna wait for me?”
Okay, they muffed the future. But seriously (I mean “seriously” – because I’d guess when most repliers here say ‘but seriously,’ they don’t mean it…) What “future” movie has gotten any future world even close to correct? Or, perhaps more accurately, which future movie has muffed the future the least? I can’t think of any movie that was set in the bright shiny (or, for 70s movies, the dreary, dirty, post-apocalyptic) future?
2001? Yeah, Pan Am. Ma Bell. Huge bases on the moon. Soviets. Missions to Jupiter…. Sigh. Maybe there is some hidden gem of a movie in the 50s or 60s that when you see it you think… damn. They got the internets!
Soylent Green, maybe. The bastards at the local store were out of it AGAIN.
I do notice they got the Captain Kirl wrap front shirts right.
_@_v – the soylent corporation was bought out by hormel years ago…
This would make a great double-feature with Things to Come
On the disk of it they have for sale on eBay, that is how it comes.
I’ve seen that clip with the Henry Ford joke before; it’s still quite amusing.
You know, I take considerable comfort in how wrong predictions of the future have been, in the past. Because that means our predictions today are probably also wrong. And from here, the future looks pretty darn bleak. (I’ve even written books about it.) So here’s to being wrong!
It looks to me like the hover thingy moves way to slow to warrant the full body suit and goggles. Must be a fashion thing.
…which future movie has muffed the future the least?
“Destination Moon” (1950), hands down. Watching it from our post-Apollo viewpoint, it’s amazing how much they got right. OK, so the rocket was powered by a nuclear-fuelled steam kettle, but a lot of the rest of it was right on. But then Heinlein had a big hand in it.
@Philip Scott Thomas: Agree. It’s available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsisGSBlQqo
Love Dick Wesson as Joe Sweeney- “Is anyone else afraid that this thing might actually woik?” – his Brooklyn accent is classic, right out of central casting. They even get Woody Woodpecker to help explain things!
“The opening sequence shows two star-crossed lovers meeting in their hovercars over the city, and mooning about how they’d like to get government approval to be married.”
Oh! You mean they’re gay?
@browniejr
Thanks for that. I never thought to look on Youtube for it.
As for the Brooklyn accent – it’s a role I’d very much like to have been played by Oscar Levant. Wouldn’t that have been chaotic. LOL
Ahh, Nutz. Bear and Carrie – my two pitbull “companion animals” and I are just gonna watch “The Giant Gila Monster” tonight. (It’s one of Bear’s favorite movies. He loves the hotrods and the action – and who couldn’t love Shug Fisher? Then there’s “Steamroller Smith”…)
Was Jack Northrop a technical advisor? That flying wing in the second still looks almost exactly like the one at the Smithsonian.
Never mind! I just looked again and realized its similar, but backwards.