In Space No One Can Hear You Wheeze

Introduction

If the landscape of the Old West was regarded as America’s last frontier while the starscape of space can be regarded - to borrow a log entry from Captain James Tiberius Kirk - as the "final frontier," then it shouldn’t be surprising that a number of space operas are actually astral horse operas. 1980’s "Battle Beyond the Stars," for one, put a quirky, futuristic spin on "The Magnificent Seven," right down to the appearance of Robert Vaughn in a clever reprise of his original role as a reluctant gunfighter.

It is here, then, in that final frontier, where we continue our mission to seek out signs of aging in the moviehouse.

In science-fact, John Glenn, who, in 1962, was the first American to orbit the earth, became the oldest person launched into space in 1998, age 77, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Glenn was in his fourth and final term as a U.S. Senator, prompting some cynics to criticize his participation as a publicity junket for a doddering politician. Others, including Glenn himself, maintained that the flight provided valuable research into the physiology of aging.

Based, at least, on the far-reaching imagination of inspired filmmakers, Senator Glenn was certainly not the first to go boldly where no old codger has gone before.


Geezers in Space

In 1956, 59-year-old Walter Pidgeon starred in one of the treasured gems of science-fiction, "Forbidden Planet," which cleverly combined 1950s fascination with space travel, robots, and Freud, with the plot of Shakespeare’s "The Tempest." The Bard’s last, and some say greatest, play revolves around Prospero, an exiled duke with magical powers who, along with his beautiful daughter, has been stranded for 12 years on a desert island.

Prospero, as played here by Pidgeon, is called Morbius, who is found in 2200 A.D. on the planet Altair IV, the abandoned site of a long-dead civilization of advanced beings. His virginal daughter is portrayed - in a variety of space-age miniskirts - by Anne Francis, famous for her "The Twilight Zone" appearance as a department store mannequin allowed a brief vacation among the living, and as the "private eyeful" star of TV’s "Honey West." In "The Tempest," Prospero holds supernatural power over a pair of fabulous servants, the ethereal Ariel and the monstrous Caliban. In the movie, Ariel becomes the seven-foot two-inch Robby the Robot, while Caliban is presented as the "Id Monster," a largely unseen creature spawned from Morbius’ subconscious. The rare glimpses of the horrific aberration were animated by a special effects artist on loan from Disney. Leslie Nielsen, in the exact kind of role he would lampoon later in his career, plays the stalwart commander of an earth ship forced to land on the planet, who later delivers the film’s choicest cut of dialogue: "We’re all part monsters in our subconscious, so we have law and religion."

By the age of 59, Walter Pidgeon, remarkable for his tall, imposingly handsome presence and resonating, baritone voice, had enjoyed a venerable career that included the Broadway stage, silent films, movie musicals, and a number of popular screen pairings with Greer Garson, resulting in a pair of Oscar nominations for Mr. Pidgeon, namely "Mrs. Miniver" (1943) and "Madame Curie" (1944). The actor was notorious for a bad memory for names, referring to countless souls as "Joe." On one particular birthday, cast and crew gave him a director’s chair inscribed "Joe Pidgeon."

Incidentally, Robby the Robot (not to be confused with the Robot on "Lost in Space") went on to become a star in his own right in movies and on TV, including "The Twilight Zone," "Gilligan’s Island," "Gremlins," and (in animated form) "The Simpsons." The director and producer of "Forbidden Planet" were planning a big-budget sequel titled "Robot Planet" when the producer died of a heart attack in 1958.

Two Hollywood old-timers, Joseph Cotten (age 53) and George Sanders (52), were paired in "From the Earth to the Moon" (1958), an embarrassingly cheap version of Jules Verne’s novel. Cotten’s acting career began with Orson Welles’ revolutionary Mercury Theatre Company in New York City, and he made his motion picture debut in Welles’ "Citizen Kane" (1941). Cotten’s collaboration with his mentor and friend Welles continued with roles in "The Magnificent Ambersons," "Journey into Fear," "The Third Man," and "Touch of Evil." He was, as well, eerily effective as a charming serial killer in Hitchcock’s "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), but by the 1950s his career had cooled down.

George Sanders was a "suave, urbane performer who oozed cynicism from every pore," in the words of critic Leonard Maltin, "equally successful at limning debonair leading men and ruthless cads." He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for a role some say he was born to play, as the acid-tongued theater critic in "All About Eve" (1950). Not surprisingly, he committed suicide, in 1972, leaving a note that began, "Dear world, I am leaving because I am bored."

"From the Earth to the Moon," produced the same year that a pre-NASA U.S. launched its first earth satellite, Explorer I, presents Cotten as a Civil War munitions industrialist who wants to launch the first manned rocket to the moon. Sanders portrays his arch-rival, who believes the newly invented fuel, Power X, is an abomination to God and attempts to sabotage the flight. Not only did the film rip off the memorable, electronic "tonalities" from "Forbidden Planet," but the budget butchery also eliminated any scenes taking plane on the moon. What’s especially disappointing is that director Byron Haskins had previously made the beloved sci-fi classice "The War of the Worlds" (1953).

Claude Rains made an unforgettable film debut in a starring role that kept him unseen by the audience until the final scene. It was his distinctively rich voice, not his lackluster screen test, that landed him the lead in "The Invisible Man" (1933). Subsequent, important roles included "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Wolf Man," and "Casablanca" (as Capt. Renault). In 1960, Anthony M. Dawson (real name Antonio Margheriti), a prolific director of spaghetti westerns and Italian sci-fi and horror flicks, cast 71-year-old Rains as Professor Benson, a cantankerous scientist who debunks the claims of colleagues that a rogue planet (called "The Outsider") is on a collision course with the earth. After the mysterious object stops and ejects flying saucers against our planet, Rains leads a mission to the UFO, which turns out to be occupied by giant skeletons of a dead race and piloted by an alien computer. Even after nuclear missiles are launched to destroy "The Outsider," Rains stays behind to study the extraterrestrial motherboard. He is later memorialized by a colleague: "Poor Benson. If they’d opened up his chest they would only find a formula where his heart should have been."

Italian moviemakers maintained their hold on cheesy sci-fi in the ‘60s with "Planet of the Vampires" (1965), made by Mario Bava, a leading cinematographer of the 1950s and ‘60s who graduated to directing a series of stylishly innovative horror movies. Disembodied denizens of Aura, a misty, volcanic, Transylvanian planet with two plastic rocks, well-placed mirrors, and a fog machine, cause the spaceships of astronaut Barry Sullivan (age 53) to crash-land in a plot to possess the earthlings’ bodies and leave the planet to conquer our world. According to Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia, Barry Sullivan "convincingly depicted a variety of hard-boiled, cynical characters - on both sides of the law." Counted among his better roles are as Tom Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby" (1949) and as the movie director in "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952).

The international cast of "Planet of the Vampires" (also known as "Demon Planet") delivered their dialogue in their native language, including English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, often not understanding what their co-stars were saying. Foreshadowing a striking sequence from "Alien," the spacemen discover the ruins of an alien ship manned by gigantic skeletons.

During the 1960s, American International Pictures, a company that thrived on the drive-in theater craze of the period, would cannibalize Russian science-fiction movies (most of which featured superior, big-budget special effects) by shooting additional footage of familiar Hollywood actors. Such was the case with "Queen of Blood" (1966), starring John Saxon, Dennis Hopper, and Judi Meredith (a regular on the 1950s "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" and onetime girlfriend of Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin) as astronauts in the futuristic year of 1990 who land on a dying planet and find a green-skinned woman, the sole survivor of (unbeknownst to the earthlings) an alien race of vampires. Also known as "Planet of Blood," the film features a cameo by Famous Monsters of Movieland magazine publisher Forrest J. Ackerman, while a visibly confused, 74-year-old Basil Rathbone appears in one of his final film roles as the mission commander. He played basically the same character for the same director in "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" (1966), yet another reworking of a Soviet film (called "Planet of Storms"). Two years later, that same Russian footage was used by director Peter Bogdanovich ("The Last Picture Show"), using a pseudonym, for "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women," starring ‘50s sex bomb Mamie Van Doren as the queen of alien amazons who wear clamshell bras. Rathbone, of course, was best known for his portrayals of Sherlock Holmes (a character he grew to detest), in 14 motion pictures from 1939 to 1946 and on several radio broadcasts. An accomplished fencer, he was equally memorable as a scene-stealing villain in the swashbucklers "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," and "The Mark of Zorro."

1970’s "Horror of the Blood Monsters" holds a cherished spot in the hearts of schlock-lovers not only for its variety of titles in a series of drive-in and video re-releases ("Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet," "Flesh Creatures of the Red Planet," "Horror Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet," "Space Mission to the Lost Planet," and "Vampire Men of the Lost Planet"), but also for the sheer audacity of its slapdash, paste-up plot from, among other sources, a black-and-white Filipino thriller with snake-men, bat-demons, and clawed crab-people, as well as the 1940 chestnut "One Million B.C." The Philippine footage also features elephants covered in crushed velvet to look like woolly mammoths and women of a vampire tribe dressed as cave babes in loincloth miniskirts. The black-and-white content was tinted with a bogus colorizing process advertised as "Spectrum X" and explained in the dialogue as "chromatic radiation" affecting the alien planet. The spaceship was a glue-together hobby model with a plastic pencil-caddy cemented on for an engine.

The most memorable bit of dialogue comes from narrator Brother Theodore Gottlieb, a monologist known for surly ramblings he called "stand-up tragedy" and for his role as Uncle Klopek in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy "The ‘burbs." In the introduction to "Horror of the Blood Monsters," he intones, in his inimitable, thick German accent, "I am the vampire! I have existed for centuries in legend, in fantasy, in men’s minds, and some say…in reality!"

Director Al Adamson, the then-reigning "King of Schlock," filmed new scenes featuring his stock company of low-budget players, including 64-year-old Hollywood veteran John Carradine as "the infamous Dr. Rynning," the leader of a team of stellar scientists investigating a vampire planet that plans to conquer earth.

According to The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction, "Although Adamson never graduated from the world of low-low-budget filmmaking to even the heights of the small budgets of the likes of Roger Corman, his films, especially when Vilmos Zsigmond (a future Oscar winner for ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’) was his cinematographer, are generally characterized by a commitment to narrative clarity that is unusual." Adamson, incidentally, is the only director who gave Colonel Sanders a part in a movie (1970’s "Hell’s Bloody Devils") in exchange for all the friend chicken the cast and crew could eat. Like a plot from one of his own sleazy horror flicks, Adamson’s murdered corpse was unearthed in the concrete of his newly remodeled bathroom in 1995, killed by a live-in contractor who was convicted of the homicide.

Shakespearean-schooled John Carradine claimed to have appeared in more than 450 movies. He undoubtedly did some of his best work in a number of films directed by John Ford, notably "Stagecoach" and "The Grapes of Wrath." In 1984, at the age of 78, he had a cameo in the tongue-in-cheek space saga "The Ice Pirates," starring Robert Urich.

There’s no denying that the presence of Alec Guinness (age 63) as the immortal Obi-Wan Kenobi lent "Star Wars: A New Hope" (1977) an aura of undeserved dignity. One of the lions of British acting royalty, he was also one of the few cast members who recognized the box-office potential of the film and negotiated a deal for 2% of the gross, which made him comfortably wealthy later in life. He asserted in an interview that it was his idea - not producer-director George Lucas’ - to kill his character. "I just couldn’t go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines," he said. "I’d had enough of the mumbo jumbo." His disdain for those who knew him only for the role reached the point where he would throw away any "Star Wars" fan mail without reading it.

On the other hand, 64-year-old Peter Cushing thoroughly enjoyed his role as the menacing Grand Moff Tarkin in "Star Wars: A New Hope." One of the original actors considered for the part of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Cushing recalled, "My criterion for accepting a role isn’t based on what I would like to do. I try to consider what the audience would like to see me do, and I thought kids would adore ‘Star Wars.’" Star-struck Carrie Fisher found it difficult to deliver her lines to him, seemingly petrified in the presence of such a charming, polished gentleman.

In 1957, Peter Cushing began an enduring (and endearing) career in British horror films, often appearing with his friend Christopher Lee, including "The Horror of Dracula," "The Curse of Frankenstein," and "The Mummy" (Lee once noted, "Peter and I have made so many horror films that people think we live in a cave together.") Not surprisingly, the second series of the "Star Wars" saga tapped the timeless talent of Christopher Lee, in his role as the Yoda-trained Jedi Master and Sith Lord, Count Dooku (so named to honor the actor’s most famous role as Count Dracula) in "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" (2002). At the age of 80, he claimed he did much of his own swordplay, although the more rigorous acrobatics required a stunt double and comptuer-generated special effects. He repeated his villainous role, at 83, in "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" (2005).

The 1978 TV series "Battlestar Gallactica" was a boldfaced rip-off of "Star Wars," but instead of a venerable British thespian, the show brought on small-screen veteran Lorne Greene (63), who ended up playing Ben Cartwright in outer space.

Disney’s response to "Star Wars," 1979’s "The Black Hole," reworked Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with Maximilian Schell as a futuristic Captain Nemo (circa 2130 A.D.) in charge of a crew of zombie cyborgs (this was Disney’s first PG-rated production). Maximilian’s imposing robot henchman, coincidentally called "Max," was based on drawings of the Devil from Disney’s "Fantasia." There are a pair of annoyingly cute ‘bots (voiced by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens), while the cluttered human cast includes Robert Forster ("Jackie Brown"), Anthony Perkins ("Psycho"), Yvette Mimieux ("The Time Machine"), Joseph Bottoms ("Holocaust"), and 63-year-old Ernest Borgnine as a space-traveling journalist.

The burly, gap-toothed Borgnine went from playing the brutally vicious Sgt. "Fatso" Judson in "From Here to Eternity" (1958) to the likably shy butcher in "Marty" (1955), a role which earned him an Oscar, but baby boomers fondly recall him as the roguish skipper in the ‘60s sitcom "McHale’s Navy." "The Black Hole" was made at a time in his career when he, if not curbed by a take-charge director, could ham it up shamelessly and chew the scenery like a rabid pit bull (see also "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Escape from New York"). He remains a busy actor in his 90s - God bless him! - recently on-screen in the 2008 comedy "Strange Wilderness."

In "Saturn 3" (1980), 64-year-old Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett maintain a hydroponic food factory on the titular planet’s third moon. Their edenic existence is threatened by the arrival of mad scientist Harvey Keitel and his eight-foot robot Hector, described as the first of the "Demigod" series of super-robots. (Hector’s design was based on a drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci.). The film was to be the directing debut of famed set and production designer John Barry ("Star Wars: A New Hope," "Superman"), but in the wake of "creative differences" with either Douglas or producer Stanley Donen, he departed to work on "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back," only to die suddenly during production. Donen, known more for his flair with movie musicals ("On the Town," "Singin’ in the Rain," "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"), completed the directing chores. According to one critic, Kirk Douglas, as the aging but macho defender of Ms. Fawcett against the menacing advances of the sex-crazed robot, had little to do but grin and grimace.

"Outland" (1981), written and directed by Peter Hyams ("Capricorn One"), was a straightforward relocation of "High Noon" from the Old West to outer space (Io, Jupiter’s third moon, to be exact), complete with swinging batwing doors in the lunar saloon and digital clocks counting down to the arrival of the hired killers. Sean Connery is the honest lawman (at 51, he was the same age as Gary Cooper in "High Noon") determined to stop bad guy Peter Boyle, as the mining boss who has been feeding his workers a super-amphetamine that increases productivity but induces suicidal urges.

In 1984’s "The Last Starfighter," referred to by one reviewer as a cheap and cheerful "Star Wars" clone, a young video game ace, played by Lance Guest ("Halloween II"), is recruited by 66-year-old Robert Preston’s humanoid alien to help defend the Star League of Planets fight off a fleet of enemy invaders. This was one of the first films to utilize extensive computer-generated special effects. It was, as well, the last film appearance of Mr. Preston, whose role was an affectionate tribute to the likable con man he played in "The Music Man."

Stuntman-turned-actor Richard Farnsworth (a Best Actor Oscar nominee for his role in 1999’s "The Straight Story") was 65 when he portrayed an aging ex-cop called "Colonel," forced to strap on his firearms one last time in "Space Rage" (1985). The sci-fi western set on a prison planet marked the directing debut of legendary stuntman-second unit director Conrad E. Palmisano, a four-term president of the Stuntman’s Association of Motion Pictures. Farnsworth, in great pain from terminal bone cancer, would end his life in 2000.

"Fewer spectacles will lower your jaw to your lap faster this summer," noted Rolling Stone magazine critic Peter Travers, "than the first oh-my-God glimpse of the aging crew members of the starship Enterprise reunited for ‘Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’ (1989)," the feature film directing bow for William Shatner, who also had a meaty hand in the screen story. Singularly, no other "Star Trek" movie was so delightfully ridiculed.

We defer to critic Peter Travers, who so eloquently crystallized what so many gaping onlookers witnessed. "The joke goes that there haven’t been so many wrinkles and wattles on parade since the California Raisins," Travers wrote. "But there’s nothing funny about the desperate way the old gang resists the fact that time goes by. What could have been a heartfelt valedictory to the troops in the September of their light-years becomes instead a losing battle to keep gray hairs, crow’s-feet and unsightly bulges at bay."

Travers continued, "William Shatner (58) and James Doohan (69) suck in their guts so often you fear they’ll hyperventilate. Leonard Nimoy (58) appears even less expressive than usual buried beneath pounds of pancake. De Forest Kelley is pushing 70; he should know better…Walter Koenig (53) and George Takei (52) (act) like bird-brained Boy Scouts, and, this floored me, Nichelle Nichols (57) (does) a striptease for horny space creatures."

Travers concluded, "There’s no telling how much of the film’s $32 million budget went to flattering lighting, slenderizing costumes or cosmetic surgery. But I haven’t seen an outlay of wigs, capped teeth and corsets to equal this since ‘La Cage aux Folles’…The rejuvenation attempt is ineffectual and deeply, irredeemably embarrassing."

1991’s "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," the last movie featuring the original TV cast, reclailmed a shred of dignity for those involved, perhaps because director Nicholas Meyer (working from a script co-written by Leonard Nimoy) had been responsible for one of the franchise’s most popular offerings, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

A pair of movies about errant asteroids threatening global disaster dueled at the box office in 1998. "Armageddon" featured 43-year-old Bruce Willis as a world-weary, self-sacrificing hard-case leading a desperate mission to thwart the collision course. In "Deep Impact," the self-sacrificing hard-case in charge of the desperate mission is played by 67-year-old Robert Duvall, as the last man to walk on the moon, with the tough-as-nails name Captain Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner.

The aptly titled "Space Cowboys" (2000) featured Clint Eastwood (70), Tommy Lee Jones (54), Donald Sutherland (65), and James Garner (70) as former test pilots who were denied the chance to be the first Americans in space over four decades earlier after the newly established civilian agency NASA replaced them with a chimpanzee. "When a Cold War-era Russian satellite threatens to enter earth’s atmosphere after an archaic, Eastwood-designed guidance system begins to fail," A.V. Club reviewer Keith Phipps recapped, "the four are called into action and begin training for active duty in space."

Eastwood, who also directed, called the film "something of a homage to those gentlemen" who "did all the pioneering in the 1950s…going to the frontier of space in planes they were not sure could make it." Notwithstanding such sincerity, the popular movie provided ample opportunity for geriatric barbs by the four "old farts." At one point, Eastwood comments on Jones’ "asymmetrical sagging ass-cheeks, love-handles the size of Nebraska and oh-so-ugly ingrown toenail," retorted by Jones’ summation of Eastwood as "this son-of-a-bitch with the chicken gizzard neck and the face that looks like 30 miles of Death Valley fire trail."

In a 2000 interview, when Eastwood was asked about getting older, he responded, "I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel. I’m about 12 and the rest of the guys are about 14. None of us sit and dwell on the age thing, and this particular film does deal with a sort of resurrection of some people…It does have that sort of appeal - people getting a second chance in life."

One of the most interesting old-timers in outer space (although his true age remains a mystery) has to be Jason Voorhees, the fictional, hulking teen-killer in the hockey goalie mask who has been insufferably destroyed and resurrected since 1981. In "Jason X" (2003), the tenth "Friday the 13th" film, through a plot point best left unexplained, a cryogenically preserved Jason is defrosted aboard a transport ship in deep space in the year 2455. Nathan Rabin, an insightful critic for the A.V. Club, noted, "At once a slasher sequel, an ‘Alien’ knock-off, and an irreverent spoof of slasher sequels and ‘Alien’ knock-offs, ‘Jason X’ feels like it was written as a fairly straight horror/sci-fi movie, then script-doctored by a comedy writer intent on satirizing the original script. As a result, the film’s intentional and unintentional laughs mingle so freely that it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two, especially as ‘Jason X’ ascends to surreal levels of silliness."

Amid the extravagantly creative carnage and astronomical body count, one sparkling diversion is provided by Lisa Ryder (well-known for her TV roles in "Forever Knight" and "Andromeda") as a wise-cracking android (dolled up in a sexy latex outfit that would make "The Matrix’s" Carrie-Anne Moss blush) who more than holds her own in a dismembering showdown with Jason. Improbably, an on-board "regenerator" revamps the old boy as "Uber-Jason," complete with futuristic body armor replacing the secondhand store rags and weathered hockey mask. At least, the android cutie survives by a hair of her head., and we mean head.

We’ve saved the best for last. In 1968, Charlton Heston, one of the last standard-bearers from the Golden Age of Hollywood who passed away on April 5, 2008, starred in "Planet of the Apes." If one considers that in ’68 Mr. Heston was 45, and the film throws the hibernating astronauts into the year 3978, then he would theoretically be 2055 years old. Now that’s a geezer!