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77 Sunset Strip: The Down Under Caper (1962)
Not quite as bad as contemporary reviews suggested...
When this episode premiered in Australia, the critical response was unfavourable, to say the least - to the point where Smith apologised for the episode.
Having watched it, it's not as bad as many other "set in Australia" US and UK series. Smith reportedly shot the establishing shots of Sydney's Kingsford-Smith Airport himself while on holiday in the country, and managed to get right a few little detail pieces that most miss - the cars were right-hand drive, for example, and the vehicle license plates were a good facsimilie of the NSW plates of the period.
Yes, the plot's neither great nor original, but the performances are generally OK - and it gets bonus points for having genuine Aussies Shaw, Pate, and St. Clair, rather than the usual stock actors bunging on dreadful faux-Cockney accents to try and sound "Aussie".
Adventures of Superman: The Face and the Voice (1953)
One of the best!
Of all the "Superman" episodes, this and "Panic In The Sky" are two that stand out for me.
And Reeves's performance in this one is a delight - effectively playing four roles (Superman, Kent, Boulder, and Boulder as Superman), he's given the chance to deliver some nice comedy bits as Boulder during the elocution lesson scenes (his reciting of "I-look-like-Superman, why-don't-I-sound-like-Superman" is a classic), and even breaks the "fourth wall" by delivering a line directly to the camera (in a nicely pained fashion).
While Reeves certainly had the acting chops to pull off Superman and a manly Clark Kent (far more appealing to me than Chris Reeve's bumbling milk-sop), he also appeared to have a nice feel for comedy. And from a character point, the scenes where a troubled Kent consults a psychiatrist show a vulnerable, uncertain side of the normally lantern-jawed hero.
For those who haven't yet seen this episode, this is a must!
The Adventurers (1968)
Just another IMDb series which didn't actually happen...
"The Adventurers" was proposed as a 1968 series - a pilot episode was produced (episode title: "Once Upon A Map"), and a press release was issued claiming overseas sales and a 39 episode production run.
It was listed as a series (based, it seems, solely upon the 1968 press release) in a book on Australian television in the mid-90's, and has become accepted as fact.
Despite that, there's no record of the "series" ever proceeding past the pilot - no production stills (other than those from the pilot), no episode titles, no air-dates, no listings in TV guides of the time, no contemporary press reviews of the series, and no footage (other than from the pilot).
The basic concept finally surfaced a year later as "The Rovers".
Der Rote Baron (2008)
Just plain dreadful...
Closer to a work of fiction than a depiction of Von Richtofen's career, which had more than enough of interest to ensure a riveting film, rather than this limp offering.
Where to begin? Even allowing for dramatic license, it's historically inaccurate in more instances than can be documented here.
Technically, it's horrible. Tellingly, for a film with an aviator as its lead character, the only actual aircraft in this film are static - seen at rest on the ground, never in motion. Virtually all footage of the aircraft in flight are very obvious CGI, with the now-familiar disregard for pesky concepts such as gravity and aeronautics - aircraft in flight don't turn on a dime, people...
To see what an air-to-air sequence should look like, try "Battle Of Britain", or "The Great Waldo Pepper". The air combat sequences in this film are every bit as bad as those in "Pearl Harbor".
Prime example of the silliness was a shot of a German pilot clambering from the cockpit of his burning aircraft as it dives toward the ground, crawling up the fuselage toward the tail, and waving goodbye to his fellow pilots.
As to the non-flying sequences, they're actually worse - clichéd at best, outright fiction at worst. There's little, if anything, here that actually took place in Von Richtofen's life.
As the highest-scoring fighter pilot of the First World War, Von Richtofen is deserving of a quality motion picture.
This wasn't it...