You know, I really get a kick when hobbies that I enjoy come together; like when you’re watching a movie and you see real-world technology of the time appear in a scene. It’s even better when they’re actually using the tech the way it was intended to be used and not as just a prop.
We were watching the movie “Ground Zero” on Laserdisc not too long ago. This movie is from 1988 and is about a film journalist stumbling across a cover up by the Australian government regarding A-Bomb testing in the 1950s.
In the first few minutes of the movie, the main character enters his apartment and turns on a monitor to reveal a game of computer chess in progress. You can barely see the keyboard of the computer he’s typing on, but I thought it looked like a C64 bread bin. Sure enough, in a long shot of the apartment later on in the movie, there it was: a C64 bread bin, 1702 monitor and 1541 (or possibly a earlier 1540) floppy disk drive.
Now in most cases, old tech like this is used just as simple props – nothing is really plugged in or being used the way they were designed. But, in this case it appeared as though the C64 and it’s peripherals were actually hooked up and running the way a typical setup would. The movie was low budget, so I’m assuming there wasn’t much of money for special effects, so I guess they just used the C64 as it was. The chess game that was being played was either “Chess Master”, by FHD Software or Compute!’s “Chess”. At least these are the closest matches I could find, based on what I saw on the monitor screen in the movie. I found it very amusing to see a Commodore 64 actually being used as it was designed in a movie and not just as a prop.
In the 80s, Commodore computers appeared in several movies and television shows, used as props. One of my favorite programs at the time, “Airwolf”, used Commodore computer a few times during the first season. There are scenes with C64s and PETs sitting in the background, supposedly responsible for running the computer systems of “The Firm”.
In the very classic Canadian comedy movie, Strange Brew, Bob and Doug find their way into the villain’s lair. In the corner of the room sat a PET and dual floppy disk drive. The PET seems to be running a simple program that scrolls a bunch of repeating text on the screen. Doug pushes a few buttons, which results in a floppy disk being forcibly ejected out of the unit. Unbeknownst to him, the disk contains the plans of the villain to take over the world.
I remember another Canadian production, “Friday The 13th”, which was a television series from the 90s, using a similar setup for a scene shot in a science lab. I’ll have to go find that episode to get a screen capture of it. But I do recall there being a PET and a dual disk drive next to it.
In the movie “Deep Blue Sea”, made back in 1999, the lead scientist was using her computer to record her research. She then promptly loads up a Iomega Zip-Disk. Even though you don’t see Zip-Disks being used anymore, back in the day, they were pretty popular mass storage devices.
Just the other night, we were watching “Weekend At Bernie’s”, which we haven’t watched in quite a long time. Early in the movie, I was surprisingly amused to see a scene in which the main characters, Richard and Larry, are sitting at their desks surrounded by the typical office PCs of the day. It was great to see them all set up like that. I’m guessing they were perhaps i386s, maybe? Ah, I miss seeing those beige beauties on everyone’s desks.
These are just the most recent examples I remember seeing, keeping ourselves entertained as we’ve been sitting in front of the air conditioner, trying to stay cool. I find it very amusing the odd time when my hobbies of retro computing and movie watching come together like this. Here’s another reason why I much prefer the movies of the 80s and 90s to today’s offerings.
[tag]movies, history[/tag]