Post by Shonokin on Jun 21, 2007 9:16:10 GMT -8
I've been watching some episodes of this series from 1962. It uses the "synchro-vox" method made famous in Clutch Cargo of holding a still frame and superimposing an actual human mouth for all the talking scenes. The animation is about as limited as it can get without being called glorified storyboards.
As a description, these elements sound very negative, but watching this show was actually pretty incredible. This is real 1930's-40's pot-boiler scifi pulp brought to the TV screen, and with Alex Toth's (Jonny Quest, Herculoids, etc) character and mech designs it winds up being a seriously entertaining show.
I'd heard of SPACE ANGEL for a while and because of the synchro-vox and limited animation I always stayed away. But since getting into scifi pulps I thought I'd look it up and have been blown away. This show cooks with all burners on high, IMHO of course.
It has been repeatedly described as "camp" but I feel that is a rather ignorant (as in lacking a true knowledge) statement, devoid of knowledge of the source material and target demographic.
Probably for "kids these days" it IS totally camp and goofy, but as a kid growing up in the early 70s with scifi and space books on the library shelves that still had the classic style rocket ship paintings and bulbous space suits, etc... I really feel this is all that stuff, come to ( a limited ) life.
I've only ever found one episode online. But there are some DVDs of some episodes out there, and it looks like VCI will be trying to put the complete series out on DVD sometime soon.
gallery of Alex Toth's designs for SPACE ANGEL.
As a description, these elements sound very negative, but watching this show was actually pretty incredible. This is real 1930's-40's pot-boiler scifi pulp brought to the TV screen, and with Alex Toth's (Jonny Quest, Herculoids, etc) character and mech designs it winds up being a seriously entertaining show.
I'd heard of SPACE ANGEL for a while and because of the synchro-vox and limited animation I always stayed away. But since getting into scifi pulps I thought I'd look it up and have been blown away. This show cooks with all burners on high, IMHO of course.
It has been repeatedly described as "camp" but I feel that is a rather ignorant (as in lacking a true knowledge) statement, devoid of knowledge of the source material and target demographic.
Probably for "kids these days" it IS totally camp and goofy, but as a kid growing up in the early 70s with scifi and space books on the library shelves that still had the classic style rocket ship paintings and bulbous space suits, etc... I really feel this is all that stuff, come to ( a limited ) life.
I've only ever found one episode online. But there are some DVDs of some episodes out there, and it looks like VCI will be trying to put the complete series out on DVD sometime soon.
gallery of Alex Toth's designs for SPACE ANGEL.
