Sean Connery Week: Meteor

Howdy all and welcome to Day 3 of Sean Connery Week.  Clearly we have not had any Sci-fi and that needs to be corrected.  It would have been at this time I would have introduced you to Outland and how it follows the book rather well but...  I have already reviewed it so egg is all over my face figuratively.  So how about a nice Sci-fi themed disaster film instead?  It will be in Technicolor so a hint of nostagia for those of us that grew up on such.  With a cast consisting of Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith as a Russian and Henry Fonda as the President of the United States, how can we lose?   This is Meteor.

Sail Awaaaaay...!

Dr. Paul Bradley: Why don't you stick a broom up my spoiler?  I can sweep the carpet on the way out.





A comet of unknown origin has passed through Orion's belt and impacted Orpheus, the largest of asteroids in the belt causing a five-mile chunk of it to a collision course hurdling towards our humble planet.  Make no mistake, people this one is a planet cooker and Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck are not available to assist in its destruction.  With the U.S. government playing Operation: Cover Thine Ass as smaller fragments have hit the planet,  NASA contacts Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery of You Only Live Twice, The Name of the Rose, Memories of Me, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Rock and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) a former NASA engineer and weapons platform designer to deal with the problem.  Director of NASA Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden of A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, Patton and The Streets of San Francisco) yanks Bradley from an ongoing yacht race and to Washington toot sweet to apprise him of the threat looming over the world.

Jeez, pretty boy at the controls again.  I WANT A TURN TOO!

Project: HERCULES is a nuclear missile platform in space poised specifically to contend with impeding asteroid strikes gets demoted from planet saver to hovering over the U.S.S.R. as a deterrent for nuclear war, one of the reasons Bradley left, may not be enough firepower to eliminate the asteroid.  Through the typical digging around Russian couriers, messages and codes the U.S. discovers that the Soviets also have a weapons satellite in orbit.

The President (Henry Fonda of The Tin Star, The Deputy, How the West Was Won, Once Upon a Time in the West and On Golden Pond) reveals to the world the existence of Hercules and how the collective eggheads at NASA says our armament may not be enough and pleads to Russia to offer whatever aid they can in this time of need.  Bradley suggests Dr. Dubov  (Brian Keith of The Yakuza, The Wild and the Lion, Centennial, Hooper and Sharky's Machine) a noted physicist in Russia to combat the problem at hand.  Dubov arrives with his interpreter Tatiana (Natalie Wood of Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, West Side Story and Splendor in the Grass) to offer aid and hypothesize about an existing platform Russia "may" have built.
With the collective efforts be enough?  Can Earth be saved?  Will humanity be spared The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?

Just a few interesting notes about the film at this time.  Both Brian Keith and Natalie Wood could speak fluent Russian in real life.  Wood's parents were Russian immigrants and Keith was stationed overseas.
Given the language and violence of the film it would now fall under R Rating, prior to MPAA's stringent restructuring it was still deemed PG and would remain so until Christian Moralition influenced the MPAA in 1985.
Brian Keith was cast in the role at the last minute when Donald Pleasence dropped out of the role.  The spaceship Traveler II was actually modeled after NASA's first manned space station "Skylab".

Say, you guys aren't whispering about me, are you?