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Land of the Giants - The Full Series
Irwin Allen started out making nature documentaries in the 1950's, but by the end of that decade he turned to science fiction. The feature film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which Allen wrote and directed, did well at the box office but it really made an impact when Irwin transferred it to the small screen as a weekly TV series. The program lasted four seasons (1964-68), longer that the original Star Trek which was on the air at the time, and encouraged Allen to create more SF show for TV. Next was Lost in Space (1965-68), followed by Time Tunnel (1966-1967). His final TV series was The Land of the Giants, which ran for two seasons starting in 1968. While not as well remembered today as Lost in Space or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants is an entertaining show that has all of the characteristics that made Irwin Allen productions so popular. It has large scale (no pun intended) problems, better than average special effects, fantastic story elements and is basically just a lot of fun.
Set in the far-off year of 1983, a group of passengers is flying from LA to London on the sub-orbital craft The Spindrift. Just before they reenter the atmosphere the ship encounters a bizarre space cloud that it flies through. When they get closer to the ground they discover that something is very wrong. Captain Steve Burton (Gary Conway) somehow manages to crash-land the Spindrift and the passengers and crew soon discover that they aren't on Earth any longer. They have traveled through a 'dimensional lock' to some other, strange world where everything is 12 times normal size.
The ship has been damaged, but it is safely hidden in a forest area near a city. Now the passengers, headstong and arrogant Mark Wilson (Don Matheson), Miss Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund) a pampered rich girl, the cowardly Commander Fitzhugh (Kurt Kasznar), and Barry Lockridge (Stefan Angrim), an orphan who brought his dog Chipper along and the crew, stewardess Betty Hamilton (Heather Young), and co-pilot Dan Erickson (Don Marshall) have to work with Captain Burton to repair the Spindrift. Not only that, but they have to survive; find food and supplies and evade the planets inhabitants, "giants" as the stranded people call them, giants who are all to willing to capture and imprison them.
From the opening credits it's easy to see that Allen has patterned this show after Lost in Space. They dynamics are similar; a group of people trapped in a strange place, and the personalities are even the same. Heck, even the opening is nearly identical to Lost in Space. The most striking resemblance is between Fizhugh and Barry, who are nearly clones of Dr. Smith and Will Robinson from the earlier show. Fizhugh is cowardly, conniving and always trying to avoid work and find some way to get more food. He's constantly attempting to pull the wool over Barry's eyes and get the boy to aid him in his plans. The good thing is that Allen learned from Lost in Space and toned down the relationship a great deal. Fizhugh isn't as over-the-top as Dr. Smith, and plays it a bit more realistically. He even steps up and saves the crew once or twice, showing that deep down he's a good guy.
While the show does have some humorous moments it doesn't come across like total camp the way Lost in Space did in its later seasons. That show got too silly and stupid by the end (anyone remember The Great Vegetable Rebellion?) but this one never gets that absurd. By this time Allen knew what viewers wanted, action, suspense, and just a bit of comedy, and gave it to them in the right mixture.
While this program didn't have the varied menaces that Voyage had, or the different scenarios that Time Tunnel was able to come up with, it still managed to be intriguing. One of the most interesting aspects of this show is the world that the travelers find themselves stranded on. Not the fact that there are giants there, but how it is run and what it's like. The show does a great job of sprinkling clues and hints through the episodes as to what the world is like. Early on it is revealed that there is a reward for finding any 'little people' and turning them over to the government. In another episode it is mentioned that it's against the law to keep little people, though you can obtain a government license that will allow you to keep one. Of course that means that the Spindrift isn't the first vessel from Earth to land on the planet of giants.
So why would the government want to capture the stranded Earthlings? For their technology it turns out. The Earth is 20 or 30 years ahead of the giant's world as far as scientific knowledge, and the powers that be, not to mention some individual scientists, will do anything, including using torture, to understand Earth technology.1
The giants, or at least the ones in the country where the Spindrift landed, are ruled by a totalitarian, fascist-like government. This is an interesting twist, and parts of the series can be seen as a commentary on life in Russia or Eastern Europe, though I doubt the producers actively encouraged that. In one episode the little people help a counter-revolutionary. They risk their lives to destroy some captured documents that list all of the members of the local underground. This comes out more in the second season, which contains some episodes that have an almost paranoid and slightly claustrophobic feel to them.
That leads to one minor complaint about the plots; Captain Burton didn't really seem to want to get home. Time and time again he places the welfare of giants above the welfare of his passengers and crew. He often trades, destroys, or ruins the one vital part that the Spindrift needs in order to safe or repay a giant. At one point Burton nearly blows up the Spindrift and does drain it's power supply so that he can save a giant who is an escaped convict. Now I'll grant you that this was done to prolong the show... there wouldn't have been much to see if they all got home safe and sound, but it gets a bit aggravating after a while.
That aside, one of the reasons that this series works so well are the special effects. They did an excellent job at making the actors appear six inches tall. Placing the camera on the floor and filming at unusual angles matched with some good editing gave the feel that the crew really was menaced by giants. They also used a lot of matte shots and double exposures to have giants appear in the same frame as little people, and made sure that the props the little people had matched the same items when giants were using them. Even today its impressive how well they were able to get the different scales to mesh almost seamlessly.
Like all of Irwin Allen's TV shows, this one starts off really strong and goes downhill as the seasons progress. The first 12 episodes were filmed in 1967 as a midseason replacement. They weren't needed by the network, so the debut was pushed back from January of '68 to September of that year. These first twelve shows were easily the best of the lot. They include, along with the excellent origin story The Crash, the great episode Ghost Town. When the castaways find themselves in a regular sized town, they think they are home, but they start to worry when they can't find anyone. It turns out they have stumbled upon an old man's doll town. He's built it especially for the little people, with his granddaughter's help. The old man is really excited to have the people finally inhabiting his town so he puts a force field around it and promises the new inhabitants a comfortable and full life. His grandchild doesn't feel the same way however. She's jealous that the little people are taking he grandfather's time away from her, so she decides to torture them while he's not looking.
An eerie and scary story, this worked really well. The girl was played by Amber Flower, and it was her last role. That's a shame because she was wonderful in the part, playing sweet and innocent while her grandfather was around but turning truly evil when he wasn't. The episode was directed by Nathan Juran (20 Million Miles to Earth, 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and he knew how to pace the show to build up tension and suspense.
As the first season progresses the show loses some of its luster, but they are all fun in one way or another. It is in the second season that things really start to go downhill. The budget was considerably less for the second set of shows and Heather Young (Betty) became pregnant and is missing from several shows (and only puts in brief appearances in others) but that doesn't explain some of the bad scripts. While there were still some very solid shows, including Doomsday where a doctor plans to blow up the giant city and The Clones which is one of the best episodes of the series, the overall quality declines. First of all a periscope and 'laser drill' have somehow magically appeared for the little people to use. They sure would have been handy in the first season. The shows started getting a little more campy too. Shows like Pay the Piper, which guest stars Lost in Space's Jonathan Harris as in intergalactic Pied Piper of Hamlin are just plain bad. In this episode a space traveling piper plays music that puts some of the Earthlings in a trance. He then tries to sell the little people to a Senator, and when that fails tries to steal the Senator's son. Luckly Dan comes up with a plan: record the Piper's music and play it backwards! The ingenious idea works and while the backwards music is playing the Piper is helpless. Egads. What nonsense.
Criticism of the show: While I was doing research for this review, I came across several critiques that didn't complain about individual episodes, but the lack of scientific rigor in the show. These people are right; if a man were enlarged to 72 feet, his mass would increase to such an extent that his bones, as large as they are, wouldn't be able to hold him. (This is because as you increase something's size as the size is squared, the mass is cubed. That's why elephants have thick legs and ants have skinny ones. The more mass the more support you need.) The problem is they totally miss the point. This show isn't about being scientifically accurate, it's about having fun. Irwin Allen wasn't about creating hard SF; he was about making exciting spectacular shows. His programs, this show especially, have a sort of innocence to them. They revel in that feeling of wonder children have, and try to make adults remember that feeling. As far as that goes, he succeeds wonderfully.
A word about the price: Okay, there's no two ways about it: This is an expensive set. With a $230 MSRP this is one of the most costly mainstream sets available. It isn't quite as bad as you might think at first glance however. This set does cost more than other Irwin Allen shows, (Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea are being released in split season sets which will run you $160 for two seasons) but on a per-episode basis Land of the Giants ($4.42/episode) falls in line with some of the other pricey HBO series. The Wire retails for $60 for 12 episodes, ($5/episode), and $100 will buy only 12 episodes of The Sopranos Season Six Part 1($8.33 per episode). Heck, the various Star Trek series sets were street priced at $100/each when they were first released (and I gladly paid it) and this two season set can currently be easily obtained for $200. This set also comes with some really cool deluxe packaging. Other regions seemed to have faired better on getting nifty DVD cases, the Alien head and Godzilla mega-set come to mind. That stuff costs money however, and it's nice to see some innovative packaging here in region one, even if it is expensive.
Finally, this may have been the only way to get the series released. I know that the first season of Lost in Space didn't sell nearly as well as the studio was hoping, prompting them to split the other seasons into two parts. Land of the Giants is arguably the least well known of the four Irwin Allen SF shows, and it was probably thought that these seasons would be even weaker sellers, especially since Columbia House had a mail-order only release of the first season on DVD. If it was a choice between releasing this series in a deluxe (i.e. expensive) set or not at all, I'm glad they made the decision that they did. This way the die-hard fans can get these in an attractive package and those who aren't that interested can pass it by.
The DVD:
All 51 episodes of Land of the Giants plus the unaired pilot are contained in this limited edition set. The shows are on 9 double sided DVD-14 discs with two discs sharing each slimline case. The five cases come comes in a very nice wooden box that is shaped like a cage that was used to hold the little people in an episode, complete with a 3D metal image of the cast. Inside the box, in addition to the discs, are some fun extras. There's a reprint of a Land of the Giants comic book, a foam rubber Spindrift keychain, a set of four postcards, a booklet of cast interviews (which unfortunately are excepts from the interviews on the discs,) and a cloth Spindrift crew patch. All in all a fantastic set of bonus items.
Audio:
Viewers have the choice of either the original English soundtrack or a Spanish dub, both in two channel mono. The audio has been restored and sounds very good. The dialog is clear and there is a fair amount of range, more than I would have thought for a show from the late 60's. There isn't any hum or background hiss, something that's pretty standard for a show of this age. There are a few bits of distortion scattered across the 51 episodes, but these are fairly rare and mainly occur when someone is yelling or during explosions. One odd thing is that there is no music or audio over the menus. There are optional English subtitles.
Video:
These episodes are all in color and presented with their original full frame aspect ratio. This set looks good. Really good. Fox did a great job on the restoration. The colors are bright and vivid, the contrast is excellent and the blacks are solid and strong. There is an above average amount of detail in the picture too. You can see the sweat on the cast's brow under the hot studio lights (it looks like they were sweating most of the time) and the stubble on Fizhugh's chin. Digitally the show looks just as good. There is no blocking even in the frequent fog and the reddish/orange hull of the Spindrift never exhibits any color bleeding. Aliasing and other common compression artifacts are also nonexistent.
The only real problem with the image is that some of the colors look a little over-processed. They look a bit to bright and solid to be totally real, but that's a minor concern. There's also a bit of mosquito noise in some parts, especially large patches of color, but it's rather minor.
One warning about the show: When you press the chapter skip button to advance past the opening credits the episode goes to a spot about 30 seconds into the show, past the spot where the episode title and director credits have past. A poor choice, but not a grievous flaw.
Extras:
The flip side of disc nine contains nearly all of the bonus features. There are interviews with all of the surviving cast members (Kurt Kasznar died in 1979) with the sole exception of Heather Young. That's too bad that she declined to be interviewed, the fans of the show would have enjoyed hearing what she had to say. They are varying lengths, Don Marshall's was very short, only 2½-minutes, but most of the others were between 7 and 15-minutes long. These were interesting and fun and contained a lot of neat behind the scenes information. Stefan Angrim, for example, discusses how the Spindrift got its name, and Denna talks about what the cast did between takes.
There's also a presentation reel, a 9-minute short used to sell advertisers on the show. It gives a recap of Allen's career and then proceeds to tell the story of the first episode through artists painting and footage from other Allen TV shows. This was quite different from the final filmed episode. It was great to see what the original idea was for the series. Following that is a one minute reel of raw special effects shots, several galleries of Land of the Giants promotional merchandise, publicity shots, a Mad Magazine parody, and some Denna Lund photos.
At the end of the first side of disc nine there's also the original unaired pilot. There weren't a lot of changes between the first episode and the pilot, mainly some minor dialog and scene changes and they recycled Lost in Space incidental music instead of the John Williams score that the first episdoes was graced with, but it was still nice to see.
Final Thoughts:
Land of the Giants, while it isn't the Sopranos of 60's TV, is a fun and enjoyable show. Especially in the first season, the show had an infectious innocence to it where you didn't mind the slight absurdities. This limited edition boxed collection of both season, while pretty pricey, is a wonderful set. The audio and video are outstanding and the packaging is fantastic and looks great on a shelf. Fans of the show will be overjoyed to get this, even if they have to save up a bit for it. While I wish that it was more reasonably priced, the set is still highly recommended.
1) You gotta wonder about this though. The giants seem to be leaps and bounds ahead of Earth technology in some episodes. They create a pill that will shrink a man to six inches in size and have the ability to create an nearly indestructible robot, that's some pretty good science there.
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