Showing posts with label opening credits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opening credits. Show all posts
Friday, July 03, 2009
McCloud: 'Ain't That Just The Way' (1975)
McCloud: 'Park Avenue Pirates' opening credits (1975)
Barbi Benton: 'Ain't That Just The Way' (1976)
McCloud was an American TV show that lasted from 1970 to 1977, starring Dennis Weaver (who many remember from Steven Spielberg's 1971 debut, Duel) as a country marshal transferred to the crime-infested New York City; the basic premises of the series taken from Clint Eastwood's 1968 Coogan's Bluff. 'Ain't That Just The Way' by Barbi Benton (Hugh Hefner's former girlfriend) was heard in the 1975 episode 'Park Avenue Pirates'. Sheriffi McCloud being a popular show in Finland too, Benton's performance in the episode caught the attention of some local music biz people; with the subsequent translation version 'Näinkö meille täällä aina käy' by Virve Rosti becoming a big domestic hit in 1976.
Monday, May 04, 2009
1990 & The Omega Factor
1990 (1977)
The Omega Factor (1979)
Continuing with our irregular series of TV and movie opening credits. If it has trippy/psychedelic/spooky imagery and/or old analogue electronic music, it is definitely going to be pHinnWeb's thing. These ones are courtesy of MaverickMediaUpload, who also features other mindblowing sci-fi/horror/mystery TV intros from the 1960s and 70s worth checking out. What were these people on?
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Michael Crichton (1942 - 2008)
The Andromeda Strain opening credits (1971)
Michael Crichton, a prolific American bestseller novelist, film director and TV producer has died. The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park were among his best-known books, the cult sci-fi movie Westworld [trailer] (1973) one of the films he directed.
Monday, June 02, 2008
The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco opening credits
More Streets of San Francisco clips @ YouTube
It's pHinnWeb's Couch Potato Time again! Nelonen, Finland's channel 4, has now shown almost the entire run of The Streets of San Francisco, an American cop show made from 1972 to 1977, based on the characters in Carolyn Weston's detective novel Poor, Poor Ophelia. Starring the old potato-nose Karl Malden as a no-nonsense, hard-driving but humane old-school cop called Mike Stone, and then-a-newcomer Michael Douglas as his youthful, more hip and educated partner and apprentice Steve Keller, this generation-joining combination was a sure-fire hit for TV ratings, and only flopped when Douglas, who wanted to concentrate on his career as a movie producer and film actor, was replaced in the last season by Richard Hatch (best known these days from Battlestar Galactica).
A lot of the series' charm lies in nostalgia, of course, from the rapid-fire-edit opening credits with its groovy blaxploitation wah-wah guitar-laden jazzy theme music and the pompous voiceovers (an emphatically masculine narrator announcing "A Quinn Martin Production!" and presenting the dramatis personæ and tonight's guest stars) you just don't hear any more these days; to the Zeitgeist and styles of the post-hippie Bay Area when even the "squares" had decided to let their hair down a bit: bushy haircuts, thick sideburns, flared trousers, wide ties and tight shirts, afros, belated hippie chicks, garish colours and naturally some unforgettable ocean liner-size pre-oil crisis Yankee cars. Not to mention the memorable San Fran scenery with its steep hills (ideal for car chase scenes, as we already learned from Steve McQueen's Bullitt in 1968) and Victorian architecture.
Part of the fun was spotting in the show many familiar faces of silver screen and TV, both past or future: Leslie "The Naked Gun" Nielsen, James Woods, Nick Nolte, Mark "Star Wars" Hamill, Sam Jaffe, Stefanie Powers, Martin Sheen, Tom "Happy Days" Bosley, Tom "Magnum P.I." Selleck, Larry "Dallas" Hagman, Paul Michael "Starsky & Hutch" Glaser, Joe Spano and James B. Sikking (both Hill Street Blues), Bill "Hulk" Bixby, Meg Foster... even pre-fame Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Though the years passed might have added some unintentional humor as to the show's looks, the tone of the series was far from camp. The detective pair Stone & Keller of Patrol Car 81 solved week after week crime cases involving the whole gamut of social scene: from the derelict areas of winos, youth gangs, prostitutes, runaway kids and drug dealers to the secluded world of the well-to-do, the rich, the celebrities and your usual bunch of greedy businessmen getting rid of their rivals by way of murder. Social agenda was high on the list when several storylines (many of them quite well-written in comparison to the more fluffy cop show fare) concentrated on the hapless murderers who ended up killing not by their innate evil but by some unfortunate circumstances caused by poverty and other social injustices.
Rather than being simply happy blowing the bad guy away in the climax, Stone and Keller always understood they had to deal with far more complicated causes and effects inevitably leading to tragedy; even though in most epilogues (adding to the series' charming old-fashioned style, each episode was divided into four "acts" and an epilogue) they left for home cracking ham-fisted jokes after having solved the case; Stone probably heading afterwards for a well-deserved snack of junk food and Keller to a football match with another foxy girlfriend of his. Vintage!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
John Whitney, A Pioneer of Computer Animation
John Whitney: "Catalog" (1961)
John Whitney: "Arabesque" (1975)
John Whitney (1917-1995) was an American pioneer of computer animation, who created his 1960s works (surprisingly looking a lot like 1990s rave videos -- nihil novum sub sole?) with a mechanical analogue computer, adapting a WWII M-5 Antiaircraft Gun Director and combined with multiple-axis rotating cameras. By the 1970s Whitney had already switched to digital processes. (Whitney was also responsible for the animated title sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 Vertigo, after the design of Saul Bass.)
[via Feuilleton]
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Space: 1999 Season One -- This Episode
Space: 1999: Season One -- This Episode
Space: 1999 ("Avaruusasema Alfa" here in Finland) was the most lavish British science fiction TV show in the 70s, produced in between 1973 and 1976. Starring Martin Landau (later also an Academy Award winner) and Barbara Bain, both known from TV's original Mission: Impossible series, the show featured also such guest stars as Christopher Lee (known from countless horror movies and also Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises), Joan Collins (of Dynasty) and Ian McShane (of Lovejoy and Deadwood). The producer was Gerry Anderson with his wife at the time, Sylvia Anderson: the Andersons had already been responsible for the popular 60s sci-fi puppet shows such as Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet and others. Space: 1999 was preceded by another sci-fi live action series, U.F.O. (1970).
Each Space: 1999 episode had in its opening credits a rapidly edited intro sequence of all key events. Now a fan called Trekkiedane has edited all the intro sequences of the series' Season One into one clip of 7:37, which you can see by clicking here.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Opening Credits: Rod Serling's Night Gallery
Rod Serling's Night Gallery
Rod Serling's Night Gallery: "The Return of the Sorcerer"
Night Gallery search results @ YouTube
In another pHinnWeb Blog's ongoing but irregular series: some great yesteryear movie and TV opening credits -- this time with Rod Serling's Night Gallery. This series was shown in Finland in the 70s and early 80s as Yöjuttu.
Serling was best known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone (in Finland Hämärän rajamailla) and also as the co-writer of 1968's original Planet of the Apes film.
[Previously: Saul Bass]
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Out of the Unknown
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Out of the Unknown was a sci-fi/horror anthology series on BBC 2 between 1965 and 1971. The "Saul Bass on acid" title design (above) was by Bernard Lodge (who also did a design for Dr Who).
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