Movies

A Deadly Invention (1958) I've got your "steampunk" for you, right here. Known as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne in the US, Karl Zeman's masterpiece, a superlative blend of live action and animation, presented in the style of steel engraved illustration. No other film until the advent of computer image processing combines animation and live action film so intensively in each scene. As is so often the case I saw part of this as a child, perhaps aged seven or eight, and I could hardly comprehend what I was seeing. I just knew I had never seen anything like it, or anything as bizarre and amazing. Today with my wider knowledge I feel the same. Based on Verne's motifs and ideas, it tells the story of a megalomaniac who finances his mechanistic plans for world domination by sending forth an attack submarine from his volcano stronghold, and I see now what an inspiration it has been to me all my life, how it seeded my mind with a fantastical worldview which determined my path in life and my interests and endeavors for years to come. I might say to Zeman as an acquaintance once said to Timothy Leary, "If it weren't for you I'd be a doctor now."

10/10