THE DAY AFTER YESTERDAY

BABIES IN BOTTLES AND AN AIRSHIP IN EVERY GARAGE

            I began my writing career in science fiction, so have a soft spot for its oddities. Recently the BBC cited some examples of science fiction films that failed to predict the future. No point in explaining that this isn't what it sets out to do, any more than Ode to a Grecian Urn informs us on Attic potting techniques. As J.G. Ballard put it, "science fiction is technology's wet dream of itself," a Freudian exploration of science's wildest hopes and fears.

In Germany during the silent era, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Woman in the Moon and even lesser films such as F.P.1 Fails to Reply, about a platform in mid-Atlantic allowing planes to refuel (thus putting ocean liners out of business), looked seriously at the impact of technology.

            In Hollywood, however, science was an ingredient dragged in to enliven a film in some unrelated category. Horror films swapped brains and re-animated the dead. In a serial called The Phantom Empire, singing cowboy Gene Autry tooled around his Texas ranch, unaware that survivors from the lost continent of Mu have created a civilization under his feet, complete with lumbering tinman robots.  

Gene Autry and friend in PHANTOM EMPIRE.

There was even a science fiction musical. Just Imagine was the brainchild of Tin Pan Alley trio DeSylva, Brown and Henderson, who owned up without shame to having created its story, dialogue and music.  Like the leisurely road trips and scenic tours that used to space out the sex scenes in porn features, the futuristic elements of Just Imagine serve mainly to keep the songs apart. Another composer turned producer, Arthur Freed, did the same thing with considerably more panache in Singing’ in the Rain and Meet Me in St Louis. Posterity has been less kind to Just Imagine, for reasons evident from a typical number such as Never Swat a Fly, with its memorable lyric “Never spray a nit/With a great big can of Flit/He may think some nit has It/The way I do with you.”

Set in 1980, Just Imagine weaves a story from the more fanciful technological speculations of the day. Its sky-scraping New York owes a lot to Metropolis, but instead of driving, people travel in individual inflatable flying vehicles. Thanks to them, illicit lovers J-21 and LN-18 (numbers have replaced family names) can meet surreptitiously high above Manhattan.

High above Manhattan in their private airships. (That’s Maureen O’Sullivan, Mia Farrow’s mum.)

Using the same idea as Woody Allen in Sleeper, scientists revive comic El Brendel, who has been in suspended animation since 1930. J-21 and his friend RT-42 take him on a tour of the period’s bad guesses about future technology, including meals in pill form and babies supplied by vending machine. Among the inventions are a few that succeeded, such as videophones and the air-blowing hand dryer.

A pioneer trip to Mars occupies the last third of the film. Tribes of overweight showgirls inhabit the Red Planet, led by the lissome Joyzelle Joyner, who appears as both Loo Loo, queen of the Martians, and her evil twin Boo Boo (Don’t ask...) Her costumes were inspired by William van Alen’s iconic Chrysler Building, just completed.

Joyzelle Joyner as LooLoo…or maybe BooBoo….

Other topical references abound, not to mention bits of racist or sexist humour. Aside from jokes about Prohibition, shortly to be repealed but at the time regarded as a permanent social change, all cars and aircraft are produced by Jewish manufacturers, a gibe at the Antisemitism of Henry Ford. In one of the film’s more puzzling numbers, the crew of the dirigible Pegasus, patterned on the Graf Zeppelin, harmonise on what sounds and looks like a Nazi drinking song, complete with rhythmic stamping and table-pounding. Although the song’s in English, between verses a young man of Teutonic appearance shouts “Ach du lieber! Gott in himmel!”

In the seventies, when Just Imagine was all but forgotten, I screened it for the group that formed around prolific pulp magazine veteran Nelson Bond and known – false modesty was not one of Nelson’s faults – as The Nelson Bond Society. At the conclusion, Bond announced “Never has a film more richly deserved its obscurity.” On the whole, history agrees. But you can decide for yourself since the entire movie is available on YouTube.  

PS. Ironically, there is at least one case of a science fiction film, rather than following technology, influencing it. In 1929, Willy Ley, technical adviser on Woman in the Moon, was stuck for a way to build up tension for the rocket launch. As this was a silent film, the traditional count up from one to ten wouldn't work. Instead, he suggested a count down, to zero. German rocket scientists who grew up with the film brought the practice to America with them.   OK. Everyone ready? Tighten your seat belts…..