Clint steals Russian plane! Plane plugs into Clint’s brain! Plane looks extremely unconvincing in flight. But note how many British actors are roped in to play Soviets – Warren ‘Dim’ Clarke, Ronald ‘baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells’ Lacey, Nigel ‘Appleby’ Hawthorne, Clive ‘revamped Tomorrow People’ Merrison and Hugh ‘Edge of Darkness’ Fraser all don the sub-Khrushchev growl.
Applemask
July 25, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Obligatory web browser joke.
Richard Davies
December 1, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Same for Grandstand table top LCD game.
Sidney Balmoral James
December 13, 2021 at 7:44 pm
This seems to be a very regular fixture on telly these days, although not perhaps yet attaining the lunatic number of re-showings the Mummy films seem to get (or the Scorpion king) – actually, that’s a thought, what film has been shown most on terrestrial television? Would love to know. Anyway, Firefox is one out of the very mixed bag directed by Mr. Eastwood, and as if to atone for the shockingly bad Eiger Sanction, this one is just about as dour and depressing as you can get. I suspect a lot of people went to see this expecting badass plane scenes, and found themselves having to sit through over an hour of dimly lit espionage, with familiar faces from British telly pretending to be dissidents or KGB. Perhaps the film in which Clint’s expression changes the least.
THX 1139
December 13, 2021 at 10:54 pm
I’d say probably Ice Station Zebra is the film most shown on TV, it must be playing somewhere in the world right this instant. Its producer Howard Hughes used to phone up his TV station and demand it be shown as much as possible for his own entertainment, so there’s a few hundred broadcasts right there, albeit in the USA.
Richardpd
December 14, 2021 at 11:07 am
The Great Escape used to have a reputation for being shown on TV loads of times, along with Get Carter & The Italian job.
For some reason BBC1 seemed to show Star Man anytime they had a couple of hours free on a Saturday night in the 1990s.
Madagascar & Mamma Mia! seem to currently be favourites for bank holidays on the ITV channels.
I think Howard Hughes eventually bought a print of Ice Station Zebra so he could watch it projected in is hotel suite hideaways any time he wanted.
Richardpd
December 13, 2021 at 10:40 pm
A runner up for the oddest cast ensemble involving Nigel ‘Don’t Wait Up’ Havers, the winner is probably Bridge Of Time with Susan ‘Partridge Family’ ‘LA Law’ Dey & Josette ‘Dayna’ Simon! Like Firefox, I’ve never seen it but noticed it in a TV listings magazine a few years ago & snipped it out because of the oddball casting.
Droogie
December 14, 2021 at 1:09 am
I vividly remember the Mad Magazine parody of Poltergeist. The last panel showed the scene in the swimming pool with the undead corpses creating havoc. But this being Mad Magazine , the corpses are caricatures of actors in flop movies of 1982 that Poltergeist arse-kicked in the cinemas. Clint in Firefox and Woody Allen in A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy feature , but amazingly Kurt Russell in The Thing and Harrison Ford in Blade Runner do too. Gobsmacking how both of those flop movies are now classics and have aged way better than Poltergeist has .
THX 1139
December 14, 2021 at 10:39 am
Woah, disagree on Poltergeist ageing badly, that’s a great popcorn movie.
Richardpd
December 14, 2021 at 10:56 am
The original Blade Runner release suffered from being too downbeat for what was a feel good season, as well as being a studio butchered edit where Harrsion Ford had to reluctantly narrate for it to make any sense at all.
Since then Ridley Scott has re-edited & tweaked it many times, with at least 5 different cuts which were at one time all available in a box set for the very dedicated. I’ve just stuck with the standard Blu-Ray which seems to be complete enough to make sense.
If TVC is short of things to do, a feature on films (& maybe other things) that flopped when they came out but are now regarded as classics would be welcome.