Tue 21 May 2019
Hello Steve. Your blog is great!
I’m on a mission, and it occurred to me that you and your blog followers might be able to assist me. I’m helping someone identify a film they watched on TV many years ago. My efforts so far have failed to find a match, despite the fact that they can recall quite a bit of detail about what they saw. Here is their description:
A sci-fi film (or possibly a TV episode), from the 1970s-1980s.
A woman reporter is recruited into a secret spy organization. The agency is accessed by an elevator where you insert a key and the control panel flips over to a second one.
At the end of the movie/episode, the lead male character bumps into the woman just as the clock strikes the hour, and she suddenly forgets everything that has happened (like ‘Men In Black’, but this was decades before that movie).
The ‘Agency’ is organized by color-coded sections, and I think the black one had the power to make anyone forget their experiences with them.
Seen on Canadian TV (Ontario). Possibly a TV pilot movie, or from a TV series (I believe it’s American), and was definitely live-action. Set in locations that were summer-weather like.
[description ends]
Steve, it sounds like something I would probably enjoy watching myself, so I’m kind of hooked! I’ve been digging pretty deep trying to unearth it, and I feel my best hope now is finding that one human out there who recognizes this – whatever ‘this’ is.
Thank you,
Harry
May 22nd, 2019 at 7:14 am
Wish I could help; this sounds interesting.
May 22nd, 2019 at 11:19 am
I’m back from some time at YouTube and IMDb.
My guess is that you’re mixing details from several different low-budget SF pix from the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Most of your details seem to come from Cyborg 2087 from 1966; this was a bargain-basement Sci-Fi that was aimed at the drive-ins (remember those?), with a semi-name cast headed by Michael Rennie.
A quick scan shows that the memory gimmick is there, but the secret agency and the lady reporter aren’t.
I had a couple of other candidates, but I’ll spare you those frustrations.
Suffice to say that this time frame saw the last gasp of “classic” B-moviemaking; pictures like Cyborg 2087 were churned out quickly to keep matinees and drive-ins going, and not long afterwards were sold off to TV syndicators for that expanding marketplace.
For the youngish viewer (as I was back then), seeing many of these flix in quick succession in late-night slots could produce a memory mash-up such as I’m suggesting here.
Summarizing: you’re likely looking for more than one movie here, with Cyborg 2087 being one ingredient of the mix.
In any case, best of luck to you all.
May 22nd, 2019 at 11:55 am
Yeoman work, Mike. Thank you.
My first reaction to CYBORG 2087 was that the time frame was off, but I almost immediately realized that a movie made in 1966 could easily have been seen on TV in the 1970s and eve into the 80s.
The plot summary on IMDb is awfully short:
“Earth’s civilization of the future sends a cyborg back to the 1960s to change the future.”
Wikipedia’s is longer:
“Garth A7 (Michael Rennie), a cyborg from the future world of 2087, travels back in time to 1966 to prevent Professor Sigmund Marx (Eduard Franz) from revealing his new discovery, an idea that will make mind control possible and create a tyranny in Garth’s time. He is pursued by two “Tracers” (also cyborgs) out to stop him.
“Garth enlists the help of Dr. Sharon Mason (Karen Steele), Marx’s assistant. He gets her to summon her friend, medical doctor Zeller (Warren Stevens) to operate on him to remove a homing device used by the Tracers to track him. The local sheriff (Wendell Corey) also becomes involved.
“Garth defeats the Tracers and convinces Professor Marx to keep his discovery secret. Then, with his future wiped out as a result, Garth ceases to exist; the people who helped him do not even remember him.”
Even if is not the movie Harry’s friend is thinking of, it does does interesting.
May 22nd, 2019 at 12:34 pm
Yes, it is on YouTube. It is in nine parts. Here is the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qO5USD1Qfo
May 22nd, 2019 at 3:25 pm
Cyborg 2087 was produced by Harold Goldman on a relatively low budget made possible by a pre-sale to the CBS owned and operated stations. I know a little about that process because Associated Film Artists had a multiple film deal for the same kind of product. I would not describe either Michael Rennie or Wendell Corey as semi-names despite the fact neither was at the top of his game. Harry Carey, Jr., yes.
May 22nd, 2019 at 6:49 pm
Hi folks. Thank you for your feedback.
Yes, I know only too well the tricks the mind can play on a person (especially with the passage of time), and it certainly could be the case that my friend is merging memories from different sources. If that is the case here, ‘Cyborg 2087’ might indeed be part of such a mix.
That said, I don’t think I will have closure on this until the day I see on my screen, with my own two eyes, somebody using an elevator that features a key activated ‘flip top’ control panel (damn it!).
Incidentally, check out the artwork for the Cyborg 2087 movie poster – I think it’s a grand sight:
https://assets.bigcartel.com/product_images/234222629/IMG_2290.jpg
May 22nd, 2019 at 7:04 pm
To save everyone even the small effort of clicking on a link, here it is: