Sorry if this lacksadaisical slackness offends you, but BOOJUM! is not the place to be if you value a tidy mind above all else. Oh no.
Now, my reference in the title is to that Harlan Ellison work so-named, because my theme here is actually colours, but sounds are close enough to sight to not worry about it. So, I would say the title could have been "All The Colours Of Death" except that doesn't come with built-in recognition.
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| I've absolutely no idea what this is, but it sure looks impressive, don't it now? |
"I say, Vulnavia, I wonder what the old rapscallion is banging on about now?" I hear you mutter. Yes I can hear you, this ear trumpet is electronically amplified.
Bombs, of course. Nuclear bombs, perhaps inevitably.
Back to "Thunderball", because yes, I haven't even finished watching it and it's been a very productive film in terms of what content it's generated, especially the Extras.
Lights! Cameras! Whiffling!
"Thunderball"
Still released in 1965, which is reassuring. You don't want your films to become free-floating in time.
As mentioned in the "Trivia" section for this film on IMDB, the bombs that SPECTRE steal from the submerged Vulcan have stencilled upon them "HANDLE LIKE EGGS".
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| - or you'll get scrambled |
Whilst not a whimsy, it is good practice to treat your nuclear weapons with tender, loving, affectionate cotton-wrapped care - dropping them at speed into the briny deeps is not realllllly in the spirit of things. As noted in the script, the fuses for the said nukes are stored separately so they are unlikely to go off accidentally due to impact, but it really is EXTREMELY unwise to test this.
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| The fusebox, so to speak |
I cannot over-emphasise this, so please bear in mind when you get your hands on a nuclear device. Do not fold, spindle, drop from height or beat with a stick.
Oh, for your information, the first South Canadian hydrogen bombs would have gone off if dropped. The prospects of the world ending and the last thing you ever hear is "Oops!" concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Now, About Those Colours -
Conrad hopes he further asserts his Britishness - you are here to wallow in Perfidious Albion are you not? - with reference to more nuclear weapons. These are not exactly cuddly artefacts that give one a warm fuzzy feeling, yet our odd island race has almost managed this in the past. We liked to colour code our nuclear arsenal, because we are British and eccentricity comes naturally.
Take the Yellow Sun, for example.
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| A Yellow Sun. I know, I know, it's all black and green. Don't make trouble |
This name actually applied to the bomb casing; the warhead itself was either a "Green Grass" or a "Green Bamboo". Then you had the Red Snow, the Blue Danube, the Brown Bunny and my personal favourite, the Violet Club.
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| Violet Club |
As I have been known to call nuclear weapons The World's Biggest Stick, one might put a case for the Violet Club being a Violent Club.
Then we have the chicken-powered nuclear land mine ...
A tail for another day, I feel.
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| Violent Club! |
Top 10 John Carpenter Documentaries films
Okay, John arrived on the film scene in California thanks to a student film he made, one which cannot be seen as a documentary in any way - "Dark Star". It's about a spaceship that travels the known galaxy and destroys planets which will in future become unstable and spiral into their home sun.
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| There you go |
They use "Thermostellar" weapons, which one supposes is a step up from Thermonuclear ones - a nuclear bomb fuses and heats lithium deuteride creating a thermonuclear explosion which fuses and heats Helium Hydride in a thermostellar explosion? The idea is that humans can safely settle the remaining planets.
| This technical presentation IS NOT PROOF THAT IT'S REAL! |
It was made for $60,000, which is practically nothing in Hollywood terms and proved that JC could squeeze a dollar out of a dime*, and thus made studios sit up and pay attention.
Of course there are some conspiranoid nutters out there who insist that this really is a documentary, one that gets behind the NASA cover-up and exposes the truth, etcetera etcetera, which is where today's second mention of lithium comes in, as these folk have clearly forgotten to take their meds.
| Dark Star prepares to thermostellar the bejaysus out of a planet |
* For those not South Canadian, he was a thriftily efficient film-maker.
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