Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth

To appreciate this film, perhaps you have to have been born British, male and some time between the end of WW2 and the mid 1950's. And you HAVE to have been a childhood fan of The Eagle comic. The lead comic strip was "Dan Dare - pilot of the future", colourfully and idiosyncratically illustrated by Frank Hampson. The Dan Dare strip had a unique "look" which the director/cinematographer has perfectly captured; it's as if the original Eagle has come to something roughly like "life".

Despite the high quality of the artwork, the plots were as thin as most 1950's SciFi looks today,(absurdities which have also been painstakingly - and affectionately - reproduced!)

Spielberg attempted - successfully - to recreate the feel of the cliff-hanger serials from the days of his childhood (and later revived for "ABC Minors" children's Saturday morning cinema) with his "Indiana Jones" trilogy. Davison seems to have attempted to do something similar - but instead, with c.1960 Eagle "Annuals". Non-UK readers won't have a clue what an "annual" is - most English comic books released a hard-bound version every year in time for the Xmas market. (They still do, but the result is far less of a "cultural icon" than they used to be)

Comic book based films are all the rage... but they're normally based on populist American titles like Spiderman or Superman. One has to remember that Dan Dare started out not as a pilot but as a vicar, and evolved into an RAF chaplain and only THEN into "the pilot of the future". And "Eagle" was edited by a vicar and evolved from his parish magazine (called "the Anvil")

I DO fit the profile previously described - I'm a Brit, I'm male and I'm the right age. But I have doubts that anyone who doesn't fit the profile will see the point of the film.

OK. I think we're all willing to give a "B" movie a little wiggle room when it comes to quality. Quality of acting, quality sets, quality of writing, quality of sound, etc. Hence the B moniker. This movie sadly fulfills the promise of delivering epic crap; too epic for B, instead riding a firm C all the way into the ground. run, run away. there are better things to do with your life than watch this movie. Build a castle from toothpicks, write a short story...even better; a poem. Do something creative for creativity's sake as if it were a tangible good. Make a cake, dance the robot, joke around with that weird guy at work. Don't watch this, you'll be stuck forever, like me. Wondering where it all went wrong and thinking if i just had that 45minutes back, what incredible accomplishments could have unfolded before my eyes, what i would have done had i simply slept or even stared into the black abyss of my anti-glare TV screen instead of let this monstrosity rip, and rip it did. please, don't watch this. Your life may depend on it.