From: jack.bohn64@gmail.com   
      
   In 1923, the Cohn Brothers and their partner changed the name of their studio   
   from Cohn-Brandt-Cohn to Columbia Pictures and began a push to make it more of   
   a major player in the industry.  Counting that -- and ignoring any other   
   changes along the way --    
   Columbia is 100 years old.  Turner Classic Movies is celebrating that this   
   month.  Alas, not like last April's wall-to-wall Warner Brothers, but on every   
   Wednesday, starting in prime time and running into the wee hours of the   
   morning.  So, the question    
   is: what sci-fi and fantasy movies do we get, and what could we have gotten?    
   Only two that I can count: part of the one-two punch of 1977 sci-fi that was   
   the inflection point of the genre: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and   
   the wuxia blockbuster,    
   "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," (and we could sidestream in "The China   
   Syndrome").  From this sample we can conclude that Columbia's identity in the   
   fantastic was for long titles beginning with the letter C.  Well, half a day   
   each week is only 1/14th    
   the examples we could be getting; what else have they done?   
      
   Starting with shorts, Columbia's main claim to fame is The Three Stooges.  The   
   shorts pulled inspiration from the zeitgeist of the time, from '30s horror to   
   '50s flying saucers.  (When they finally went to features, two were about   
   space travel, and one    
   about time travel!)  For cartoons, they distributed Disney's Mickey Mouse and   
   Silly Symphonies from 1930 to '32, picking them up from an even smaller   
   distributor, and losing them to United Artist just in time to miss out on   
   "Flowers and Trees," the first    
   Technicolor cartoon, and the one Uncle Oscar invented the Best Animated Short   
   category for in order to give it a statue.  Columbia created their own   
   animation department: Screen Gems.  (You may remember the brand name was later   
   re-used for their TV    
   output.)  Remember their stars, The Fox and the Crow?  They ended up   
   shuttering the department and distributing for UPA, who gave them the breakout   
   star Mr. Magoo, and Gerald McBoing-Boing, the boy who talked in sound   
   effects.  Gerald McBoing-Boing went    
   to the Planet Moo, and UPA also made what may be the most faithful adaptation   
   of Poe: "The Tell-Tale Heart," abstract animation set to James Mason reading   
   the first-person narration.  Like fellow "minor-major" Universal, Columbia was   
   not too proud to    
   make serials.  Universal had Flash Gordon, Columbia had his "Defenders of the   
   Earth" companions, Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom, and his newspaper   
   competitor, Brick Bradford.  Also The Shadow and The Spider, the first   
   small-screen-to-big-screen    
   transition with an adaptation of Captain Video, and, most important, Batman   
   and Superman.   
      
   As to features, let's see... in the horror boom of the '30 and '40s they hired   
   Boris Karloff to star in "The Black Room," a period story of a royal curse.    
   They brought him back five more times, playing mad scientists of some kind in   
   more modern tales.     
   These have a minor place in horror.  I've only seen the last, a horror-comedy   
   "The Boogey Man Will Get You" with Peter Lorre.   
      
   In the '50s and into the '60s, we meet the persons who gave Columbia whatever   
   sf personality it had.  Sam Katzman, William Castle, Charles Schneer + Ray   
   Harryhausen.  Katzman was the tightfisted producer of the B movie division,   
   Schneer worked under him    
   and became a producer himself, Castle came in as a director (in genre, several   
   movies in "The Whistler" series, based on a radio program which often brushed   
   the edges of the unknown) and went on to be producer for his own production   
   company (Columbia    
   distributed his "The Tingler" and "Thirteen Ghosts").  In addition to those   
   and Dynamation, we have "The Werewolf," "The Creature with the Atom Brain,"   
   and a number of Arabian Nights fantasies (at some point I may want to look   
   into comparing these to    
   Harryhausen's Sinbad movies: I've always thought the older Hercules in his   
   "Jason and the Argonauts" was a response to the Italian Hercules imports) .   
   Then there are a few more somber movies -- I don't want to say "serious,"   
   because I'm not sure the    
   science in them is any better, or that the character's behavior deeper than to   
   produce the effect wanted: in the B movies, excitement, in these, worry.    
   "Five," "Invasion: USA," and "The 27th Day" are examples.  Mention should be   
   made of 1956's "1984,"     
   produced in England and distributed in the US by Columbia.  Reading a few   
   online articles, I haven't found out if Columbia contributed pre-production   
   money or influenced the production -- the articles were more interested in   
   another company's investment    
   in it.   
      
   As the '50s fade into the '60s I could mention two special cases of imports:   
   films from Hammer and Toho.  Those two studios have a reputation among fans   
   and Columbia (like Universal before it) released the films they hold   
   distribution rights to in a box    
   set for each.   
      
   I'm told Columbia passed on distributing the Bond series, and had to try to   
   create their own superspy series on the books about Matt Helm.  And we end the   
   '60s with the contemporary/near future "Marooned."   
      
   The '70s[*] still had the exciting movies (two of Harryhausen's Sinbads,) but   
   the major attention was going to the more somber extrapolations of the present   
   into future dystopia.  "The Stepford Wives" was Columbia's entry here.   
      
   The Eighties had a few attempts at catching another Star Wars: "Krull," "Space   
   Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone," and the imported "Yor: Hunter of   
   the Future" but also the freer spending of money on fantastical ideas: "Heavy   
   Metal," "Ghostbusters,   
   " "Starman."   
      
   Nineties: I happened to see "Flatliners" in the theater, so I'll always think   
   of it as a "Major Motion Picture."  With that lineup of stars, that's what   
   they were trying for, anyway.  That and "Gattaca" and "The Thirteenth Floor"   
   from the other end of    
   the decade represent one type of sf flim, while "Men in Black" and "Godzilla"   
   represent the big, loud films.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)