The coordinates are set and the TIME TUNNEL is ready to take you back to the year when you believed a (super)man could fly, when Dungeons & Dragons took off and the cast of Fringe were born!

Film Focus

The ads claimed you would believe a man could fly, and it was the challenge of convincing audiences that Christopher Reeve was indeed flying that would make or break the iconic 1978 Superman movie.

In a pre-digital age, achieving the illusion of flight was not so easy. Nowadays, every Tom, Dick or Nathan can fly on television fairly convincingly, but back then it was a struggle. Various methods were tried (as itemised on the Superman DVD), including remote control dummies, animation, harnesses, trampolines and a kind of cannon. Finally, a more sophisticated form of green-screen photography, harnesses and platforms pulled off the trick amazingly well for the time.

The film was a huge risk for producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind — if the first film flopped the shot-back-to-back sequel would be worthless. There had a virtually unknown Christopher Reeve in the lead, a script by The Godfather’s Mario Puzo and a troubled shoot that saw director Richard Donner quit Superman II after shooting 75 per cent of the picture.

Despite all that, Superman remains the superhero origin story to beat. Although the following films offered little more than a series of diminishing returns, even a modern take like Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (2006) with Brandon Routh can’t eclipse the pull the original has on the true geek heart.


Other Movies

Amid the sequels that seemed to proliferate in 1978 (Jaws 2, Damien: Omen II) and the shameless Star Wars knock-offs (Starcrash) there were some gems of original filmmaking. John Carpenter made a splash with the low-budget, but hugely influential Halloween, while George Romero proved there was life in his zombies with Dawn of the Dead. Fantasy was well represented with the wonderful (if incomplete) animated Lord of the Rings from Ralph Bakshi, as well as the Hitler cloning movie The Boys from Brazil and the underrated Magic, which saw Anthony Hopkins being freaked out by his ventriloquist’s dummy.

Oddball Flick

Disney could not resist jumping on the Star Wars bandwagon (well, it seemed good enough for everyone else). The result combined space stuff with the studio’s obsession with cute animals to give the world The Cat From Outer Space. Long before E.T., this flick saw a super intelligent alien (in the shape of a cat) stranded on Earth and hunted by the sinister Government men-in-black. Fondly remembered by anyone who was around 10 in 1978…


Television

There is no escaping it, such was the seismic effect of Star Wars the previous year — the launch of Battlestar Galactica on TV was surely almost entirely down to George Lucas’s success story. A camp space opera, the original has little connection (other than character names and basic situation) with the gritty 21st Century reinvention.

Similarly feeding a hunger for all things space opera, Battle of the Planets (the recut, redubbed 1972 Japanese show Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) arrived on US TV. Supplying space-based laughs was the first season of alien-on-Earth sitcom Mork and Mindy that made a star of Robin Williams.

Things were a little more serious in the UK (relatively speaking) with the launch of Terry Nation’s gritty (well, it was then) series Blake’s 7 (now more remembered for its ending).

1978 saw the end of The Bionic Woman, Logan’s Run and The Six Million Dollar Man in the US. The big televisual event of the year, however, came in November when CBS broadcast The Star Wars Holiday Special, a desperate attempt to keep audiences happy while they waited for the next Star Wars movie. All but disowned by Lucasfilm, it remains unrepeated and unavailable except as poor quality bootlegs.

Games

Arcade games are considered to have entered a golden age in 1978 with the arrival of the iconic Space Invaders, followed by Asteroids the next year. Both games were fast-moving and colourful, a huge step forward from the likes of Pong.

With videogaming just coming into its own in arcades, board games still ruled at home and there was a new king of the fantasy game genre in 1978: Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Although launched in 1974, a simplification of the rules saw the role-playing game break through to mainstream popularity in the late-1970s.

Books

Science fiction, fantasy and horror novels published in 1978 included Poul Anderson’s The Avatar (no, not that one) in which aliens help humanity become space borne. Stephen King’s doorstop The Stand arrived, effectively mixing science fiction, horror and dark fantasy at epic length. Michael Moorcock won the fifth annual World Fantasy Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Victorian magical fantasy Gloriana. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings ‘prequel’ The Silmarillion was posthumously published, while John Varley’s The Persistence of Vision was hailed as one of the finest single-author short story collections ever to grace the genre.


Comics

Frank Miller’s Elektra — the world’s most lethal woman — made her first appearance in 1978 in Daredevil #168, as did the comic orange fat cat Garfield in the Jim Davis newspaper strip. Both have recently appeared in movie flops.

Another iconic female comic book character debuted in 1978: X-Men’s blue meanie Mystique. Once a mutant supervillain, Mystique became so central to the X-Men comic that she was one of the characters featured in the 2000 movie.

Notable 1978 Births

Born in 1978 were the new J.J. Abrams’ universe Uhura, Zoe Saldana, two of the stars of Roswell, Katherine Heigl and Shiri Appleby, and two of the stars of Fringe, Joshua Jackson and Anna Torv. Also born this year were James Franco (Spider-Man), Ian Somerhalder (Lost, The Vampire Diaries), Jensen Ackles (Supernatural), Erica Durance (Smallville’s Lois Lane), Callum Blue (Smallville’s Zod) and James Corden (Doctor Who).


Notable 1978 Deaths

Infamous grade-Z movie director Edward D. Wood Jr. called cut for the final time in 1978, while Hogan’s Heroes lead Bob Crane died in mysterious and still not adequately-resolved circumstances. Others who beamed up to the mothership in 1978 include Thayer David (Dark Shadows), Leigh Brackett (The Empire Strikes Back), Noble Johnson (King Kong), Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (architect of Portmeirion, as seen in The Prisoner) and Josette Day (Beauty and the Beast).

The Real World

Meanwhile, in the real world political unrest and the ‘winter of discontent’ were preparing the way for the Conservative victory of 1979, Louise Brown was the world’s first ‘test tube baby’, and the 1978 World Cup was won by host nation Argentina.

By Brian J. Robb