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messages from beyond
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Left: The puppet master himself, Gerry Anderson, and below ahighly collectable Dinky Toy of Shado 2 from the 1970s 20_27_ UFO.indd 21 18/12/2017 09:28
UFO is perhaps not the first series to spring to mind when exploring the magnificence that is the Gerry
Anderson back-catalogue, but Richard Molesworth thinks it acquits itself admirably when examined afresh…
Dear Allan,
I’ve just finished reading issue 59 and enjoyed it very much. I liked the article on the Dragon’s Lair video game and remember seeing one of those machines around 1984/85 at an arcade on a seaside pier during the school summer holidays. I was amazed at how sophisticated it appeared, but I never played it as I had no idea what to do. That Don Bluth was involved in the animation really shouldn’t surprise me as it is very much his style. However, what I wanted to really say was that after reading the articles about the 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi, and the one celebrating the TV series The Young Ones, I was immediately reminded of a tenuous connection between them.
That loose connection lies just a couple of miles down the road from Infinity HQ, or more precisely the old two-screen ABC Rembrandt cinema alongside the A240 in Ewell, Surrey. For this was the setting of an episode of The Comic Strip Presents... Dirty Movie, originally shown by Channel 4 in January 1984 (see attached still from episode).
The plot surrounds that of a fruity cinema manager (played by the much-missed Rik Mayall) who gets his hands on a film print of a cheesy blue movie (consisting of Dawn French doing a striptease). Wanting to watch it alone in the luxury of the cinema he runs whilst trying to get rid of everyone, especially his wife (Jennifer Saunders, who is also the box office cashier and addicted to eating Maltesers from the confectionery counter) as well as a pesky Postman (Adrian Edmondson) who, whilst passing sees the cinema is advertising a showing of The Sound of Muzak (his favourite film) and wants to go in, even though its a smokescreen created by Mayall’s character to have the cinema to himself for the day.