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	AvengerNews Archive Special Event

National Film Theatre honors Peter Cushing
February 2000

Reported by John Hayton

The recent Peter Cushing season at London's National Film Theatre featured a back-to-back showing of his two Avengers episodes: "Return of the Cybernauts" from Season 5B, and "The Eagle's Nest," the premiere episode of The New Avengers.

The print of "Return of the Cybernauts" that was used appeared to be a repeat one for US television: there was no tag and some of the scenes appeared to be rather jumpily edited. Picture quality was reasonable throughout, though nowhere near as good as the digital copy available on video. So what was it like to see the original show on the big screen? Well, mostly it stood up okay. Cushing made an absolutely terrific bad guy, and his coming between Steed and Emma was wonderful—even if his "charm" was slightly too smarmy. However on the down side, the Cybernaut was far less threatening than he appears on the small screen (and the attack in the car park was far less atmospheric and terrifying). The scene immediately before that where he rips through a high fence looks false and caused some unintentional laughter. However, most unintentional laughter was saved for Steed's double whose completely different appearance from Patrick Macnee was revealed on quite a number of occasions. This is not to say that it didn't work. In fact, for a film made for the small screen its pace and audacity kept it going. I was there with a non-fan friend who thought it was the best of the two, despite these failings, because of the confidence and coolness of the leads (including Cushing) and the production.

"The Eagle's Nest" was great fun, too. My memory is failing slightly but I think it had the live-action titles with Steed, Purdey and Gambit in the blue circle. This was a far better print than the previous episode and it even came with original British ad break caption cards (a drawing based on the photo with Gambit in a judo outfit, Purdey in a leotard and Steed as, well, Steed) and a next week trailer announcement at the end that went something like:

"Next week, Purdey is tied up and used for target practice."

...don't know which episode this refers to, though. Also, Laurie Johnson's score sounded slightly different from the way it does on video. And it seemed that the scenes were being played just slightly faster than usual. I remember reading somewhere that Laurie Johnson scored it for the American market, which plays TV at a slightly different frame rate and that he was unhappy about the way it was shown in Britain because it meant his music was played very slightly off. Maybe I heard it being played right... maybe it was my imagination. Probably the latter.

Of the two shows, the former stood out over the latter. Despite the slicker production, it wasn't as enjoyable. Purdey looked rather anorexic in most of her early scenes, and by the end you'd forgotten they'd ever introduced Gambit. Also, the fact that our heroes never seemed to work out what was going on was more blatantly obvious: if Purdey and Steed had decided to open one of the other doors, then the baddies would have revived Hitler! There was just no competition with the utter cool of Mrs Peel and Steed. However, it was nice to see Cushing playing against type as a good German—though why he was still experimenting on frogs when Brigadier Brett had been deep-freezing people as early as 1967 in "Invasion of the Earthmen" wasn't explained. [Indeed, they were freezing humans as early as 1961 in "Dead of Winter." — DKS]

An aside regarding the NFT Oddities event: In the US, in Tara's introductory trailer (which did only contain scenes from her early shows), you can hear the original soundtrack from "The Curious Case of the Countless Clues" where she was re-dubbed for sounding slightly orgasmic during the fight scene. Shades of Xenia Onatopp?