From: jack.bohn64@gmail.com   
      
   End of the World (1977)   
      
   I bought a 20 Sci-Fi movie DVD set because the description of this on the back   
   had me thinking it was Starship Invasions (1978) renamed, or maybe that EotW   
   was renamed.  Because how many cheap alien invasion/destroy the Earth movies   
   starring Christopher    
   Lee can they make in a two-year period?  (The answer to any such question   
   involving Christopher Lee turns out to invariably be: "More than you'd   
   expect.")   
      
   Anyway, this is the cheaper looking of the two such movies I [now] know about,   
   although they did get permission to film in a hanger containing Space Shuttle   
   mockups for part of the good guys' offices, the other part being a small set   
   with surplus    
   computer equipment.  For the aliens' lair they were left to their own devices,   
   using darkness, less obviously Earthly equipment, and a large, rotating,   
   internally-lit globe.  This last had a light gray triangle marked near Florida   
   and the Bermudas, that    
   intriguingly was never mentioned in dialog.   
      
   Two embarrassing mistakes with the globe.  First, it's rotating in the wrong   
   direction.  Second, and harder to describe: the axis is tilted, (I'll give   
   them full credit and assume it is at 23.44 degrees,) but the globe is not   
   rotating around that axis,    
   but around a vertical one.  I imagine it was sitting on a horizontal   
   turntable.  You can see the equator (marked on the globe) waving up and down,   
   and in a scene where a couple are huddling in despair near the base, the   
   "South Pole" sticking out of the    
   Antarctic is making small circles around the bottom.   
      
   Here's a disturbing insight into my mind, which doesn't seem to recognize   
   incompetence except in itself.  What could this globe *really* be?  What if it   
   weren't painted plastic turned by gears and pulleys, but an ever-changing data   
   display?  If it were    
   fed from an alien's (stealth) satellite above the Earth, an inclined orbit   
   would put the equator sometimes above the center of the display, and sometimes   
   below, and the satellite going from west-to-east might overtake the Earth's   
   west-to-east motion,    
   making it look like it is going backwards.  Of course, a satellite would take   
   at least 90 minutes for a complete circle of the Earth rather than the coupla   
   RPM we see, but this could be a sped up loop of the last circle of data.   
      
   What do you think, sirs?   
      
   Annoyingly, the urge to rewatch Starship Invasions stirred by this title   
   hasn't gone away.  It's even expanded to an idle wondering if the Star Wars   
   Expanded Universe had ever had Count Dooku associate with an organization that   
   uses the winged serpent    
   symbol.  Probably not.  Once you start referencing obscure Christopher Lee   
   films, when could you stop?   
      
   --    
   -Jack   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)