| |
Glitterball, The
|
|
| Year: |
1977
|
|
Director: |
Harley Cokeliss
|
| Stars: |
Ben Buckton, Keith Jayne, Ron Pember, Marjorie Yates, Barry Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Derek Deadman
|
| Genre: |
Comedy, Science Fiction, Adventure |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 2 votes) |
| Review: |
At a Royal Air Force tracking station, a curious anomaly appears on the radar screens which the controllers believe to be a foreign object, so scramble the fighter jets to intercept it. However, as quickly as it appears it disappears, leaving the experts baffled - could it have been a bona fide unidentifed flying object? It could well have been, as it is in fact a spherical spacecraft that has been forced to land in a back garden shed while it tries to repair itself; the occupant is a small metal ball which is actually a living creature, and it rolls its way into the nearby house, looking for something to eat.
The Children's Film Foundation provides a lot of memories for adults of a certain age, and one of those near-elusive recollections is frequently of this little science fiction epic on a budget. In 1977, Star Wars was the big name in the genre, in the whole of cinema for that matter, so there were plenty of movies arriving to cash in on that success and quench the thirst for similar material. The Glitterball was specifically aimed at children, but was not really a George Lucas rip off: if anything this looked to some as being the inspiration for E.T. The Extrarrestrial which happened along five years later, what with its young hero making friends with a visitor from outer space.
And like E.T., the glitterball only wishes to get home, but unlike E.T., this effort stuck closely to the C.F.F. template of kids adventures that had served it so well for the past two decades or so. What this means is our hero, a boy called Max (Ben Buckton), gets involved not only with saving the alien but with foiling a crime as well, with his new best mate Pete (Keith Jayne, already a veteran of this type of thing). The target of their civic-minded duty is a petty thief called Filthy (Ron Pember), who they spot shoplifting until he advances on them and confronts them, stealing the glitterball in the process. But the little creature is having none of that, and heats up in his pocket so he has to let it go.
It's about this time that Max realises this is a sentient being, and also that it was not mice which were eating his family out of house and home, but the intelligent ball bearing. Through manipulating a radio, it tells him and Pete that he needs power to survive and fix his spaceship, and they agree to help, suggesting it heads over to the nearest pylon - but Filthy has spied on them through the window and means to capture the alien for his own wicked motives. The special effects to bring the ball to life range from rolling it across the floor to some surprisingly effective stop motion animation, most memorably in a supermarket where it feeds on dog food among other things, returning there for the grand finale.
The seventies were, like the nineties, an era when all things U.F.O. were grabbing the attention of the public from across the world, with a variety of stories capturing the imagination to go along with the Bigfoot, poltergeist and Loch Ness Monster type of tales, and The Glitterball evokes all that nicely. Not that there's anything especially scary about the film, as other than the baddie there's not much to alarm, certainly not in a supernatural manner, and it's that feeling of cosy safety that is very pleasing, undoubtedly nostalgic for those who recall watching this at an impressionable age. Director Harley Cokeliss, an American in the U.K. who also came up with the story, had a good sense of what the C.F.F. required, while still getting that finger on the pulse notion that sci-fi would be what ver kids would be wanting to watch from now on, and The Glitterball is succinct and efficient, if undeniably corny. Music by Harry Robertson.
|
| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
|
| |
|
|
Display comments