Every four years I order the basic Cable TV suite from my local provider to that my presidential election party can have a full array of talking heads, but other than that I don’t have cable T.V., or conventional television for that matter.
All of my video watching need are met either by my library of discs, or by the streaming services I subscribe engage. (Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu-plus) With these services I have found I miss cable television almost not at all. It’s wonderful being able to browse a selection, find something that fits my mood at the moment, and just start watching.
This week I watched in bits and pieces, because OT is sucking up a lot of my time, a film I have not seen since I was 13 or 14, The Hindenburg.
For those of you too young to remember the 70’s was the era of the disaster movie and I have always enjoyed that odd genre. It’s one reason I adore Mars Attacks, it a perfect blend of the 50’s SF invasion film and the 70’s disaster movie. In 1975 Universal Studios gave us the disaster movie based on an actual disaster, The Hindenburg, about the German zeppelin that exploded over Lakehurst New Jersey, does anything good every happen in New Jersey? The fictional account is about a German air force officer tasked with ferreting out the bomber and his bomb who plans to destroy the Nazi symbol of technological triumph. George C. Scott stars as the conflicted officer, torn between duty and his disgust for the new regime. The ship is of course filled with interesting characters, diamond smugglers, spies, shady businessmen, entertainers, and aristocrats. What the film is a little short on is suspense.
It is a given that he fails in stopping the bomb, because well as we all know the airship did explode. I think it would have rather original if he had succeeded, but the cause of the disaster was something other than the bomb. Think of it as a statement on the futility of our fight against death. We can beat one thing, but in the end we always lose.
Anyway, it was fun watching the film again and the special effects amazingly stood up rather well over time. If you have Netflix you might want to give it a go.
Bob,
Don’t you ever update this thing anymore?
Since we know it was not a bomb, the film would have been vastly better if he had succeeded in stopping the bomber and the zeppelin exploded anyway. Exploding is one o f the things Hydrogen gas is very good at. It would have been awesome and true to life! You should write it!! It has obviously not been done correctly.