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By Todd Garbarini
If the title Killdozer is familiar to you, you may have seen it before. Originally a novella by Theodore Sturgeon published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, a Marvel Comics book in April 1974, and later appearing in The Mammoth Book of Golden Age: Ten Classic Stories from the Birth of Modern Science Fiction Writing (1989), Killdozer was adapted into a made-for-tv movie which aired on Saturday, February 2, 1974. Sporting the tagline “Six men…playing a deadly game of cat and mouse…With a machine that wants to kill them,” and billed as A World Premiere ABC Saturday Suspense Movie, there is little suspense in this overly silly tale of a Caterpillar D9 that is enlisted by a team of construction workers who have been assigned to build a landing strip for an oil drilling company on an island near Africa.
By Todd Garbarini
If the title Killdozer is familiar to you, you may have seen it before. Originally a novella by Theodore Sturgeon published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, a Marvel Comics book in April 1974, and later appearing in The Mammoth Book of Golden Age: Ten Classic Stories from the Birth of Modern Science Fiction Writing (1989), Killdozer was adapted into a made-for-tv movie which aired on Saturday, February 2, 1974. Sporting the tagline “Six men…playing a deadly game of cat and mouse…With a machine that wants to kill them,” and billed as A World Premiere ABC Saturday Suspense Movie, there is little suspense in this overly silly tale of a Caterpillar D9 that is enlisted by a team of construction workers who have been assigned to build a landing strip for an oil drilling company on an island near Africa.
- 3/6/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Us screenwriter whose life was often wilder than his own scripts
William Norton, who has died aged 85, was a screenwriter whose pre- and post-Hollywood adventures surpassed anything he imagined for the screen. The exploits of the virile stars Burt Lancaster, Burt Reynolds, John Wayne and Gene Hackman, tracking down villains in his screenplays, pale in comparison to Norton's time as a gunrunner in Latin America and Ireland.
Norton was born in Ogden, Utah, where his parents (Irish Catholics) were ranchers who lost their land in the Depression. They moved to California, where Norton excelled at high school, until he was expelled because he had a child by a fellow student, Betty Conklin. The 18-year-olds married, just before he joined the army, serving in France and Germany during the second world war.
On his return from the war, Norton worked as a builder, writing short stories in his spare time. His...
William Norton, who has died aged 85, was a screenwriter whose pre- and post-Hollywood adventures surpassed anything he imagined for the screen. The exploits of the virile stars Burt Lancaster, Burt Reynolds, John Wayne and Gene Hackman, tracking down villains in his screenplays, pale in comparison to Norton's time as a gunrunner in Latin America and Ireland.
Norton was born in Ogden, Utah, where his parents (Irish Catholics) were ranchers who lost their land in the Depression. They moved to California, where Norton excelled at high school, until he was expelled because he had a child by a fellow student, Betty Conklin. The 18-year-olds married, just before he joined the army, serving in France and Germany during the second world war.
On his return from the war, Norton worked as a builder, writing short stories in his spare time. His...
- 11/9/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The life of screenwriter William W. Norton, who died of a heart aneurysm on Oct. 2 in Santa Barbara at the age of 85, could be the basis for a good screenplay. Norton was born Sept. 24, 1925, in Ogden, Utah, to a family of Mormon pioneers. After getting kicked out of school for fathering a child out of wedlock, dabbling in journalism, and working as a park ranger, he wrote screenplays for a number of action movies, most notably Sydney Pollack's Western The Scalphunters (1968), starring Burt Lancaster. Other major credits (often shared with other writers) include the Burt Reynolds vehicles Sam Whiskey (1969), White Lightning (1973) and Gator (1976); the box-office flop Trader Horn (1973), with Rod Taylor; the John Wayne fish-out-of-water cop drama Brannigan (1975); and the cult flick Big Bad Mama (1974), with Angie Dickinson and William Shatner, and a tag line that read "Men, money and moonshine: [...]...
- 10/9/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Producer-director behind a raft of 20th-century TV classics
It is no exaggeration to declare that the name of the film and television producer-director Arnold Laven, who has died aged 87, has been seen by millions of people all over the world, even if it might not have registered. Think of all those viewers of the TV series The Rifleman (1959-63) and The Big Valley (1965-69), made by Laven's company, Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions, many episodes of which he directed.
Laven was also credited as director on scores of episodes of such archetypal 1970s series as Marcus Welby MD, Gunsmoke, Mannix, Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files and Fantasy Island. In the 1980s he directed, among others, several episodes of Hill Street Blues and The A-Team. In addition, Laven directed 11 feature films from 1952 to 1969, some for companies other than his own.
In the late 1930s, the Chicago-born Laven moved with his family to Los Angeles,...
It is no exaggeration to declare that the name of the film and television producer-director Arnold Laven, who has died aged 87, has been seen by millions of people all over the world, even if it might not have registered. Think of all those viewers of the TV series The Rifleman (1959-63) and The Big Valley (1965-69), made by Laven's company, Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions, many episodes of which he directed.
Laven was also credited as director on scores of episodes of such archetypal 1970s series as Marcus Welby MD, Gunsmoke, Mannix, Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files and Fantasy Island. In the 1980s he directed, among others, several episodes of Hill Street Blues and The A-Team. In addition, Laven directed 11 feature films from 1952 to 1969, some for companies other than his own.
In the late 1930s, the Chicago-born Laven moved with his family to Los Angeles,...
- 11/25/2009
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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