FANTASIA OBSCURA: Don Kirshner Tries to Replicate the Success of the Monkees with… Olivia Newton-John?
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, it may not be what you expected, but on very rare occasions, it may be better than hoped…
Toomorrow (1970)
Distributed by: Rank Films (UK)
Directed by: Val Guest
You’ve heard this one before, probably. The one about the known talent coming together for something that looks good on paper, but by the end of the affair is a complete disaster.
But sometimes, it’s not that bad…
We watch while the credits roll as a spaceship floats above Tranquility Base on its way to Earth. Soon, the ship is over London, with a beam emanating from it to the front door of a house.
The occupant (Roy Doltrice), whose name we discover later is John Williams (no, not that one), wakes up, goes to the front door, and nonchalantly gestures to them to give him a minute. He then proceeds into the beam, which brings him up to the craft, where he gets out of his human suit…
Williams is actually an observer of this planet for the Alphans, who sent the ship. The captain of the craft (Roy Marsden) asks Williams for a report, and he gives them the same report he’s filed for 3000 years: Earth’s boring, we’re primitive, and we’re as dreary as Venus. The captain disagrees, however, as the Alphans have traced a harmonic vibration to our galaxy, which Williams somehow didn’t notice before now.
Ends up the vibration is produced by what’s called a “tonaliser.” It’s a unique instrument created by Vic Cooper (his only known credit), a combination synthesizer and amplifier. He’s the brains of his group, Toomorrow, playing alongside guitarist Benny Thomas (his last listed credit), drummer Karl Chambers (his only known film credit, concentrating instead on a long music career afterwards), and backup singer Olivia Newton-John.
Yes, they used their real names as the characters they played. Yes, there’s a good reason for that, which we’ll get to…
We find these four sharing a townhouse in London’s Chelsea, where they crash between gigs, romances, and attending classes at the fictitious London School of Arts, when they’re not trying to shut it down with a sit-in. Each of them is falling in and out of love with other people, such as Vic’s romance with the hard-to-please ballet student Amy (Imogen Hassall) and Benny’s romance with a professor in the music department (Tracey Crisp), which are only mild speedbumps in the way of getting their band to get recognized.
This makes them susceptible to Williams’ charms. He flatters them, offers them a place to rehearse, and gets their guard down before the Alphans beam them aboard their ship.
It’s explained to the group by their kidnappers that they are needed on their planet to provide new sounds to help rejuvenate their race. Their musical development has stagnated, ever since they allowed computers to take over most of the music making for them, and they need something to move them along from this dead end, one that forces them to extremes to overcome.
(Insert “Auto-Tune” joke here…)
Not wanting to become music teachers, Toomorrow’s members make a run for it, at one point ejecting from the ship via the escape pod:
From there, it’s a jumble of romantic misunderstandings, complicated when the Alphans send one of their own disguised as an inept seductress (Margaret Nolan) to try and get the band’s members to make sure they get to the gig at the Roundhouse. Will they make it..?
Hey, whada ya think? The whole “get the band to the gig” trope’s as at least as old as Rock Around the Clock, and have you ever known it not to lead to the big musical number at the end…?
And yes, there’s a reason they’re using their real names, as long as were talking derivatives: One of the producers of the film, Don Kirshner, was hoping to replicate the success he had on American television a few years ago with another “pre-fab” group of actors/musicians. Teaming with Harry Saltzman, who co-produced the James Bond films of the 1960s and early 1970s, Kirshner hoped to give to cinemas what he gave to NBC, complete with fresh talent and established songwriters feeding them hits, in this case Mark Barkin and Ritchie Adams, who wrote the songs the band sings in the film that would appear on the soundtrack album.
The main problem with this plan, however, was the behind-the-scenes production drama: Kirshner and Saltzman reportedly hated each other. And with each production delay, necessary re-write, and cash flow issues thanks to Saltzman’s poor investments, the likelihood that the film was going to lead to a franchise died pretty quickly.
In fact, according to one source, the film was received so badly at its premiere in London, the movie was pulled after only one week. After that, it saw only sporadic one-off appearances here and there. Supposedly, Kirshner vowed never to release the film so long as he was alive; the movie only saw light again in home video in 2012, a year after his death.
But was it really that bad? Yes, the plot leaves a lot to be desired, and the aliens in the film tend to upstage the band. That said, it ambitiously tries to give the audience a good time, and if you’re willing to not take any of this seriously, it can work at points. The score by Hugo Montenegro is more listenable than the songs by the group, but the four of them when they banter with each other have some moments that work.
So why did something this innocuous disappear for over 30 years? There was probably a lot of pride endangered and fears of this being a black mark on the career of anyone involved with the film, not to mention lots of crew and talent supposedly never having been paid for their work. But in hindsight, it’s breezy manner gives the movie’s attempts to recall an episode of The Monkees some cachet among people who can accept it for what it was: a failed effort at a bigger project that couldn’t take itself that seriously. You give it a little slack, and try to admire its earnestness, and you’ll get rewarded with something that starts to make you root for this doomed project despite yourself.
Maybe its rep as a horrible disaster is a bit overblown. And compare this with, say, Xanadu, or Two of a Kind, and you start to wonder what harmonic vibrations the movie’s detractors were attuned to…
NEXT TIME: Vincent Price takes on this film, where his hour is one of darkness, and adversity and peril…
