JUST IMAGINE
(seen at Nolacon II)
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is not a particularly good film. It is more of a curio of the science fiction film than a genuine entertainment experience. But visually it is very interesting and historically it is the forerunner of several bad science fiction films of the 1950s. Look for several familiar props like Flash Gordon's spaceship. Rating: 0.
I am to the point now where I have seen the vast majority of the good science fiction films. It has been a long time since I have seen a science fiction film I have never seen before that is more than eighteen months old, and that is a film to be really enthusiastic about. With that in mind, I did not have high expectations for JUST IMAGINE. I guess that explains why of a group of five of us who went to see the film as a group, I was the only one who really thought the film was worth defending.
JUST IMAGINE is a 1930 American comedy, apparently inspired in part by METROPOLIS. The film starts by showing how different 1930 was from 1880, then proceeds to tell a story set in a 1980 as far advanced from 1930 as 1930 was over 1880. Airplanes are as common in the skies over the city as cars used to be in the streets, but these planes have fans in the wings to allow them to travel slowly or even just hover while the passengers walk on the wings. Some changes were not far off the mark. Rather than towels, sinks come equipped with electric hand driers. To give the audience someone of their own time to identify with, we have a man revived from fifty years of suspended animation brought on by a lightning strike. The actor, and as I remember character, had been a sort of vaudeville comic. He became a device for explaining the sights we see, but the main character is a 1980 pilot who must, in a court of law, prove himself more worthy of the girl he loves than another man is. The court considers a newspaper publisher more worthy, so our hero agrees to pilot the first spaceship to Mars. And what is on Mars? Beautiful women. Yup, this is the forerunner of films such as CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS, MISSILE TO THE MOON, and QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE. I cannot claim to be that keen on the descendents of this film, but for a 1930 film, JUST IMAGINE is not too shabby. Rate it a flat 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. I am glad I finally saw it.
Mark R. Leeper
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leeper%mtgzz@att.arpa
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