The Avengers: Never, Never Say Die, Compared with Night of the Big Heat
Something a little different today, because for some time I have been pondering similarities between the Avengers episode Never, Never Say Die ( Production finished 14th February 1967 and first broadcast 17th March 1967) and the film Night of the Big Heat (released May 26th 1967 in the UK and in 1971 in the USA as Island of the Burning Damned), so I’m going to lay out what I’m thinking in this blog post and you can all tell yourselves how wrong I am.
In fact the similarities are largely incidental because the plots of the two broadcasts are quite different. Never, Never Say Die is more science fiction and Night of the Big Heat is more horror.
Never, Never Say Die is about people being copied with robots who are indestructible but have problems with radio and television waves.
Night of the Big Heat features a couple running an inn on an island: he is a novelist and manages to hire a woman with whom he has already had an affair as his secretary. For some reason the island is experiencing a massive heat wave, and a scientist checks in to the inn to do experiments on the island. There are unexplained things happening to people and animals, and lots of unexplained interference with electrical appliances. The reason for the strange happenings is that the island has been invaded by aliens, who are banished by an unexpected thunderstorm.
I am going to lay out the things which strike me as similarities about the two.
In both shows we see banks of electronic equipment in shots which at least look like each other.
Both shows feature disturbance on communication equipment: televisions and/or radio.
In Never, Never Say Die, Christopher Lee’s character repeatedly gets run over, always just standing in the road before this happens. In Night of the Big Heat a character nearly gets run over because he’s just standing in the road.
Both shows feature similar-looking fantasy cottagey interiors: Night of the Big Heat is very definitely set in the fantasy world of The Avengers.
Peter Cushing’s character in Night of the Big Heat is called Dr Stone and there is also a Professor Stone in Never, Never Say Die, played by Christopher Lee.
Night of the Big Heat has a full house of 1960s regulars who had appeared at various times in The Avengers, which is another way it looks very much like the ITC TV of the 1960s: Christopher Lee, Patrick Allen, Peter Cushing, Sarah Lawson, Thomas Heathcote and William Lucas. Kenneth Cope needs no introduction to the readers of this blog, of course.
I badly want there to be a connection between this Avengers episode and this film, but haven’t been able to find one. At the very leaast there are similarities and if you like The Avengers I think you would definitely like Night of the Big Heat as being set in the same fantasy world. In fact there was an earlier television adaptation of the novel of Night of the Big Heat in 1960, so it’s possible that was an influence on The Avengers first, and then the Avengersy elements in the 1960s zeitgeist also affected the production of the film so they ended up looking like each other. Unfortunately the 1960 TV adaptation is missing believed wiped.
Something I find hilarious about the film is that they’ve slathered the entire male cast in glycerin to make them look sweaty in the heat (and I mean absolutely covered) but they’ve only done this on the cleavage of the secretary and not on the other female actress. Obviously she’s a lady and just glows. Speaking of the secretary, who is best candidate to be what my late mother would have called a sexy piece, I do have one criticism, which is that Night of the Big Heat is actually quite sexy because everyone is glistening, but I honestly think it could have been so much more sexy in horror film tradition. The secretary is basically the only sex object but there are way too many clothes being worn for the situation to my mind, and they’ve missed an opportunity.
Nonetheless an Avengers episode and film which bear a passing resemblance to each other, and if you like the Avengers I would definitely say you will like the film.
Meanwhile in Clacton the record-length postal ballots have started arriving and as you can see this one went to a patriot who voted Binface.
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