skygiants | (no subject)

As many of you are no doubt aware, James "Biggles" Bigglesworth is a fictional WWI fighter pilot from a extremely long series of midcentury Adventure Novels, in which he does things like hunt treasure and get stranded on desert islands and foil plots against Britain and have homoerotic tension with enemy fighter pilots. Unlike much of my DW reading list at this juncture, I have never read a Biggles book. However, a.)

osprey_archer and

genarti have both read and enjoyed several Biggles books, and b.) the Biggles movie is a notorious mess and I enjoy mess! so when

osprey_archer was staying with us a few weeks ago we were all in accord that the Biggles movie had to go on the docket.

This movie is properly titled Biggles: Adventures In Time and it is about Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, foiling an evil German plot to develop a sonic super weapon that will give Germany a decisive advantage in the war!

Sorry. Let me amend. About 35% of the movie is about Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, foiling an evil German plot to develop a sonic super weapon. The rest of the movie is about Jim Ferguson, TV Dinner Sales Executive and Marty McFly Lookalike, who is simply trying to keep his TV dinner company afloat but keeps accidentally finding himself zapped to the past to help foil a sonic super weapon plot, because Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, is his Time Twin!

What is a Time Twin? GREAT question. We don't know either. The only person who knows: Peter Cushing, who keeps popping up to tell Jim Ferguson, TV Dinner Sales Executive, that he must temporarily abandon his TV dinner career because he has an important Biggles-related destiny that he cannot ignore!

This movie was released a year after Back to the Future and it cannot be a coincidence. Everyone in the WW1 era is doing their level best to really enthusiastically and affectionately embody an iconic archetype from a series of much-beloved adventure novels, and meanwhile every modern actor wanders dazedly through the plot like they have no idea why they are there or what they are doing*, which you might think is method acting for the experience of being transported unexpectedly into WWI, except they also do that in scenes where they are, for ex., pitching a new kind of fancy TV dinner to a big TV dinner buyer at the local TV dinner expo.

*except Peter Cushing. Peter Cushing always knows where he is and what he is doing and even why he is doing it [to get that paycheck] and will carry it off with supreme confidence and panache regardless of how objectively stupid it is.

Anyway, our working theory is that the Biggles cast were in fact hired to do a straightforward pulp adventure and then halfway through filming some executive somewhere saw an early cut of that year's Big Hit Time Travel Film and was immediately struck with a Brilliant Notion.

Particularly notable moments in Biggles: Adventures In Time:

- Jim Ferguson gets zapped into the past directly from the shower (nude) into a nunnery (full of nuns and Germans)!
- Jim Ferguson's Overly Concerned Comic Relief Business Colleague follows him to England and then concernedly calls the cops on him, who then proceed to pursue him through the entire rest of the film !
- Jim Ferguson's girlfriend accidentally travels back in time with him and promptly has the only body horror experience in the entire movie! (she is fine but she does somehow manage to stick her hands right into the face of a corpse which immediately collapses around her)
- Jim Ferguson brings Biggles forward in time to the 80s, where they hide out among a group of punks and then steal a helicopter! (this sequence is genuinely great; this film would be vastly better if it was in fact Biggles having the Adventures in Time and not mostly his gormless and bewildered Time Twin)
- in the last three minutes of the film, Jim Ferguson gets married and then time travels to another Biggles adventure in the middle of his wedding! To add insult to injury, it's an extremely racist one!

If you are interested, you, too, can experience this full experience on YouTube for free! We had a great time but I would not advise paying money for it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

landingtree

Before clicking on the spoiler tag I talked about this movie with a flatmate, who had a clear memory of the time travel mechanism being creamed corn, and we theorised that finding creamed corn during rationing might have made travelling back again difficult. This seems not to have been true, but I'm still happy about it.

From:

philomytha

Creamed corn as the time travel mechanism would make EXACTLY as much sense as everything else in the film!

From:

rachelmanija

This is one of the single funniest comments I've ever read.

From:

skygiants

There IS a significant creamed corn scene in the movie (the TV dinner salesman attempts to convince a Major Player at TV Dinner Expo that creamed corn is in fact delicious) and it DOES conclude in the TV dinner salesman being flung backwards in time so tbh this is a totally reasonable assumption! It would in fact make more sense for three minutes to be devoted to a discussion of creamed corn if it had been a time travel mechanism!

From:

plinythemammaler

I have read every Biggles book but I DID NOT KNOW THIS EXISTED. I am experiencing radical freedom about whether to click that link...

From:

skygiants

"I would like more Biggles content" wish gone wildly awry .... that said I can guarantee an unforgettable experience!

From:

zyrya

I've read every Biggles book - I even wrote a paper about early, earnest war trauma Biggles v. later, dashing war hero Biggles - but have NEVER HEARD of this movie!

Your youtube link doesn't work for me, but this one does at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Gt-UqwZaI

From:

skygiants

Oh, I wonder if the link I put up is region-locked? Thank you for providing an alternate version, I TRULY hope this inspires a second Biggles paper from you as I would love to hear the Thematic Analysis :D

From:

philomytha

It is such an Experience, this film! I had so much fun with it. And Peter Cushing really was great in it, even though he'd obviously wandered in from some totally different film - and his raven was great too.

The Back to the Future thing was definitely not a coincidence, they were trying to ride on its coattails only, well.

Personally my favourite moments were the bit where Jim uses his electric razor as a grenade and all the German soldiers lie on the ground and pretend to be dead for, subjectively, at least ten minutes without apparently noticing that the razor is not a grenade. And the air ballet, the air ballet show with von Stalhein in his aeroplane and Biggles in the helicopter was tremendous. The only thing the film did get right, amazingly, was the UST between them :-D

From:

osprey_archer

The "I WANT IT" look on Biggles' face when he sees the helicopter is almost worth all the Time Twin nonsense. And the scene where Biggles and von Stalhein flirt in the nunnery! The Biggles actor was evidently a Biggles fan and he is having an AMAZING time and it's truly just sad that they tried to jump on the Back to the Future bandwagon, because there's a decent Biggles movie in there which is just strangled by all the screentime devoted to Jim the Traveling TV Dinner Salesman.

From:

rachelmanija

The "I WANT IT" look on Biggles' face when he sees the helicopter is almost worth all the Time Twin nonsense. And the scene where Biggles and von Stalhein flirt in the nunnery!

Dammit, you are making me want to see this movie just for those scenes.

Someone should do a supercut with just Biggles. And maybe Peter Cushing.

From:

osprey_archer

The Biggles & von Stalhein nunnery flirtation is available as a clip on youtube here.

And this vid (set to the movie's theme song) gives you most of the experience of watching the movie (including some helicopter footage and a shot of Peter Cushing with his crow!) without, you know, having to devote an entire hour and a half of your life to it.

From:

skygiants

I FORGOT TO MENTION HIS RAVEN. In my defense there was a lot going on.

Von Stalheim was on screen with his actual face for maybe three minutes and we spent all three of them absolutely riveted to the screen! He was dedicated! He was committing! He should have been the deuteragonist of the film and we all knew it!!

From:

graycardinal

One almost has to assume that Peter Cushing knows what he's doing because the movies he has wandered in from are the two Doctor Who features in which he had previously appeared. (Equally clearly, the actual Doctor Who franchise should have demanded licensing fees for having transposed Cushing as the Doctor into the Bigglesverse....)

From:

skygiants

This is absolutely the most plausible explanation.

From:

themis1

I have, oddly, read almost all the Biggles books, although it was a long time ago. I was living at my future in-laws before getting married (respectably, in the lounge, not in the bedroom with my fiance). I had some kind of flu and was stuck in bed and my brother-in-law to be had ALL the Biggles novels, and kept supplying them to me for something to do. I was rather disappointed when I got to WWII and the plots from WWI were recycled!!

I have also seen the movie, but again, a long time ago, and although I recall enjoying it, I don't remember the time travel aspect at all ... weird!

From:

skygiants

They do seem like perfect stuck-in-bed-with-the-flu books!

genarti has been reading them right before bed and I think they also serve a similar purpose there ...

This doesn't surprise me at all tbh, the time travel aspect is simultaneously extremely memorable and extremely forgettable somehow!

From:

used_songs

That sounds amazing!

From:

skygiants

IT IS FOR SURE AN EXPERIENCE

From:

osprey_archer

YES this movie was SUCH AN EXPERIENCE and I'm so glad we watched it. Was it an enjoyable experience? Perhaps not exactly at the time. But is it enjoyable to remember? YES.

It's really too bad that it didn't occur to the filmmakers that Biggles could be the one having adventures in time, because that would have preserved all the time travel elements that are actually fun (basically Peter Cushing and the helicopter; also Biggles could be the one to throw some weird future gadget and yell "GRENADE!") while cutting out the gormless TV dinner company cast completely.

Truly the difference in acting talent between the Biggles crew and the TV dinner sales company is astounding. Every single member of the Biggles cast is having a great time embodying a Boys Own War Hero (or War Villain in Von Stalhein's case) and every single member of Team TV Dinner seems painfully confused to have found themselves on a movie set.

From:

skygiants

Perhaps if they had made the sequel they clearly hoped and dreamed of Biggles would have gotten to do more time traveling? Alas that they could not have foreseen that audiences would not appreciate their inspiring vision as they hoped!