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Rose-Tinted Spectacles Every so often a film or TV series comes along that you have extremely good memories of, fond memories of, and can't wait to see them again, so you watch them full of anticipation, only to find at that point your illusions are shattered and that your memory has cheated you. This is a list of some of the times I can remember that happening to me... I point out that even though I was initially disappointed with watching these programmes again, one or two are now among my all-time favourite programmes, I just watch them without any rose-tinted spectacles on and in a new light. |
- These are presented in the order I remembered them - |
| Title | Then (circa 60's/70's) | Later (circa 80's/90's) |
| Film: City Under The Sea | As a kid, what looked to be a boring film about smugglers suddenly turned into an exciting film in which hordes of monsters appeared and kidnapped humans to take them back to their underwater city. Ruled by Vincent Price, they plan to attack all humans. | What looks to be a promising film about smugglers turns into an unexciting film about two men, a woman and a chicken in danger from 2 men in rubber suits. There's also Vincent Price and his human hordes: Price keeps promising to kill everybody even though everybody is about to be killed by a volcano anyway. That's just rubbing it in really. |
| TV: Star Trek | In the '70s I thought that, unlike most American series, Star Trek didn't repeat establishing shots over and over again and everything was always filmed especially for the episode being watched. | When watching again in the 80's...There's that damn planet again. It's changed colour this week, it's been orange for the past four weeks, but there it is again, now it's green. |
| TV: The Champions | Three people with superpowers do battle in many different countries. | Three people with
superpowers battle in studio whilst failing to combat the immense use of stock footage. Anyhoo, I enjoy this series once more, I love the stock footage. |
| TV: Thunderbirds | They made 100s of these, it was on every school holiday, you never saw the same one twice. | They only made 32 and have endlessly repeated them, you saw them more times than Trumpton. |
| TV: Lost In Space | An exciting series in which a space family battles loads of monsters. | A very camp series
that they're not taking seriously and didn't I see that furry monster under a different
name a few weeks back? Oh, the pain! Anyhoo, I enjoy this series once more. |
| TV: Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea | Fast-paced action series with a lot of tension. | Wooden-acted series with the same recurring 'plots'. Oh no, the sub's stuck at the bottom of the sea again. |
| TV: The Avengers | Sci-fi series that had lots of stories about robots and time travel. | Camp adventure series comprising 161 episodes that feature just two with robots and one episode featuring a fake time-travel scam. |
| TV: The New Avengers | Very violent, kung-fu fighting series that had me riveted to my seat even more than 'The Avengers'. | Very tame, fisticuffs series that then had me riveted to other TV channels. I like it again now though. |
| Film: If | Kids run riot and shoot their teachers dead. Very shocking. | Pretentious clap trap. Often mis-hailed as a classic, it's surrealism bores the living daylights out of me. Very shocking. |
| TV: Fireball XL5 | As a kid it was the Best puppet series of them all, about a spaceship piloted by an alien and a robot. | Seen
again years later, it's got a robot that
repeats his few lines over and over again, and I can't believe the alien's called Zoonie
and looks stupid. Who the heck's this Steve Zodiac guy and why's he keep piloting the
ship? I adore this series once more (and anybody who doesn't is a tootie). |
| TV: The Fantastic Journey | As a kid...Great sci-fi series about people caught in the Bermuda Triangle having lots of exciting adventures with strange peoples/races. They should have made more. | In later years...Cheap sci-fi series with Dusty from Dallas struggling to retain any credibility as one by one other cast members start deserting the sinking ship. They only made ten episodes and that was too many for some of the cast members (and the audience, who'd already deserted). |
| TV: Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe version) | As a kid it was an epic sci-fi adventure with a very realistic villain. | In later years...That's not how the episode ended last week! Oh no, not the same shot of that ship landing yet again! Uh oh, here comes another flashback scene. Why doesn't Ming just kill him??? etc, etc. No wonder it's an epic. |
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