BijouBob8mm

In the pre-home video days of 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm, many studios offered tiny reels of highlights from some of their more popular features. (I still have a ton of these.) This particular title is a sequence from one of Abbott & Costello's classic comedies, HERE COME THE CO-EDS, and might be more appropriately listed in the "alternate version" section of that film's entry. Most of these 3 - 7 minute digests tend to be listed under the appropriate film's "alternate versions" area, which is one of the reasons for that option. But, occasionally, a handful of these shorts end up getting listed on their own instead, creating an inconsistency in format on the IMDB and scattering information in several locations when it could be presented in a more concise fashion.

ROCKETSHIP is frequently confused with a second (and very similar) film cut from the original 1936 FLASH GORDON serial, the 1966 TV movie SPACESHIP TO THE UNKNOWN. (While SPACESHIP contains most of the material found in ROCKETSHIP, that second film has a longer running time.) As with MARS ATTACKS THE EARTH (a feature made from the 1938 chapter-play FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS that hit theaters soon after Orson Welles' infamous WAR OF THE WORLDS panic broadcast), ROCKETSHIP was playing the big screens before the small screens become a household staple.

Curiously the third/final Flash Gordon serial, FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE, did not result in a theatrical feature from Universal. When the decision was made to make new features from the old serials in the mid-Sixties, CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE yielded no less than two instant TV movies, THE PURPLE DEATH FROM OUTER SPACE and THE PERIL FROM PLANET MONGO. (The new film made from FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS was called THE DEADLY RAY FROM MARS.)

The Stephen King story "Word Processor of the Gods," which forms the basis for this episode of TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE, seems to have borrowed its basic premise from an old episode of the 1950s/1960s TWILIGHT ZONE, and given it a face-lift to make it more in keeping with current technology. (The TWILIGHT ZONE episode in question is Richard Matheson's "A World of His Own," featuring Keenan Wynn.) The TWILIGHT ZONE tale is about a writer who dictates material into a tape recorder, only to find that his recorded words become reality. The TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE outing substitutes the more modern computer for the dictaphone, and tells the tale of a writer who finds that the descriptions he enters into the word processor become reality.