Comments on: The Hellstrom Chronicle

The Hellstrom Chronicle

dhruva — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:38:47 -0800

The Hellstrom Chronicle "The film posits a theory any science fiction buff would glom onto in a second—that dominion over the world will come down to a battle between two classes of Kingdom Animalia, Man and insects, and that insects will win." Watch on youtube, 11 parts.

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:05:03 -0800

OMG! My science teacher in highschool showed us this for some inexplicable reason. I have long wondered if it was just some weird hallucination -- it's nice to see, all these years later, that it was real.

By: codswallop

codswallop — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:13:08 -0800

C'mere. Wanna read something cool? Something more lucid than this acid trip? Check out MeFi's own cstross's Missile Gap, online and free. It's worth the ride.

By: SPrintF

SPrintF — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:14:00 -0800

Of course, you've already read Frank Herbert's Hellstrom's Hive.

By: Joe Beese

Joe Beese — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:25:39 -0800

I for one welcome...

By: fleetmouse

fleetmouse — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:28:03 -0800

Nnnno! Must... not... click! *click* Attention... riveted! Productivity... annihilated. :-(

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:37:50 -0800

a battle between two classes of Kingdom Animalia, Man and insects "Man" - humans - alone do not make up a "class," we are part of the class of Mammals /pedant

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:40:44 -0800

When I saw this on TV as a child, I was most bothered by the ants. shudder.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:44:42 -0800

Honestly, at first I thought this WAS a film ersion of Herbert's "Hellstrom's Hive". Now I wonder if this "documentary" is where Herbert got the name of his evil scientist.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:45:53 -0800

Does "The Brightly Shining" mean anything to any of you?

By: binturong

binturong — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:48:24 -0800

"Man" - humans - alone do not make up a "class," we are part of the class of Mammals /pedant And Insects are not a class. They are an Order of the Phylum Athropoda. /see your pedant and raise you one.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:49:02 -0800

My money's on the fungi.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:52:01 -0800

It is a great crime that I have not seen, bought, and lent out this film.

By: the bricabrac man

the bricabrac man — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:14:23 -0800

holy crap...fantastic lalo schifrin soundtrack to this thing! With the narration, this is actually pretty interesting/crazy background music for working at the pc. Maybe I'll watch it, too, eventually.

By: es_de_bah

es_de_bah — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:21:19 -0800

so this is really cool so far. i just want to note that the lava sound effects in the beginning sond a whole lot like a guy with a microphone totally going, "WHOOOSHHH!!!!! CSSHHHAWWW!!!! BOOOSCHHHH!!! WIHSHASHAHSHAHSHSHSHSHS!!!!"

By: cashman

cashman — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:40:59 -0800

OM GLOM GLOM.

By: binturong

binturong — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:42:20 -0800

The film posits a theory any science fiction buff would glom onto in a second— With the emphasis on fiction. Jeez, this comes across as an anthropomorphic paranoid bad trip. A real entomologist would laugh (or cry).

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:45:16 -0800

My first thought was despair that someone made a movie out of one of Frank Herbert's least enjoyable novels. Then I thought, To Have and Have Not came out of a bet that Howard Hawks could turn one of Hemingway's worst stories into a good movie, so it could happen. And then I realized that this movie predates Herbert's ecological snuff story by a good two years. So perhaps this is the grand opposite of Hawks' effort, a brilliant cult film that became a bad pulp novel.

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:52:11 -0800

What do you mean by "will" win, twofoot?

By: dhruva

dhruva — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:01:39 -0800

> A real entomologist would laugh I'm an arachnologist, and I thought it was hilarious, and somewhat liberating to hear rampant anthropomorphism in a 'nature' documentary. Plus, the footage was impeccable: there were sequences that blew my mind; like the termites rolling up their queen into the earth for safety; or the twitching of the decapitated ants.

By: binturong

binturong — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:03:29 -0800

Damn taxonomy and my quick fingers. Insects are indeed a class that contains many orders. Mea culpa for wrong information. My pedant status is now sub-zero.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:01:23 -0800

omg dhruva! I always wanted to watch this and somehow never did. Way cool find! Thanks.

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:11:52 -0800

And Insects are not a class. They are an Order of the Phylum Athropoda. /see your pedant and raise you one. Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species. Amazing how some things stay with you for ever. I learnt that when I was about 11. Although this has probably changed by now. Some busybody has probably added Hemi-Phylum or something. Or decided that computer viruses need to be included somewhere above Kingdom. /you bastard! //strawman

By: voltairemodern

voltairemodern — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:26:51 -0800

Kinky People Climax On Fairly Good Sex (Awesome post, awesome thread.)

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:15:17 -0800

This is so huge. I love the interimnets. Like ph00dz said: weird hallucination??? I had to get the KPCOFGS off my chest before I clicked on the Youtube link. After scanning the comments so far I had a 90% suspicion I knew what this would be. I saw this about when I was 12... or even younger. I think during a rain delay in the cricket or something. When they used to chuck on any old crap. I Love Lucy, James at 15, You Asked for it. Etc etc. I specifically remember thinking "this guy is seriously nuts." And back then I believed EVERYTHING I saw on the tee vee, so that's really saying something. Wouldn't it be funny if he was correct, eh? The joke would be on me, eh?

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:24:13 -0800

Check out MeFi's own cstross's Missile Gap, online and free. It's worth the ride. "Charles Stross" on a work is a pretty solid sign of excellence. The man invented the Death Knight, ffs.

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:30:34 -0800

My name is Nels Hellstrom. If that name rings a bell at all it's probably in connection with the words fanatic, lunatic, heretic... Notice how he almost walks into the tree branch after that, at 5:13? Although Peter McDermott would probably disagree. :)

By: voltairemodern

voltairemodern — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:38:46 -0800

"Charles Stross" on a work is a pretty solid sign of excellence. The man invented the Death Knight, ffs. Did not know that! That's really neat, makes me curious what he thinks of the various incarnations of the concept in later iterations of D&D (not to mention WoW). (Awesome thread keeps getting more awesome.)

By: thedaniel

thedaniel — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:40:35 -0800

The man invented the Death Knight, ffs. My first reaction to this was "pish tosh, DKs have been in DnD since the 70s i bet! I must right the mistake of this fanboy of MFOCS!" ...then I wiki'd. In the 1970s and 1980s, Stross published some role-playing game articles for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the White Dwarf magazine. Some of his creatures, such as the death knight, githyanki (borrowed from George R. R. Martin's book, Dying of the Light), githzerai, and slaad (a chaotic race notable for their rigid caste system) were later published in the Fiend Folio monster compendium. Nothing to see here.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:54:48 -0800

Your wish is my command, voltairemodern! Here's an excerpt from an old interview with Stross: 15) Not to forget the Death Knights, they've mostly become a trademark monster of the DragonLance setting, and have almost never been used outside of it since. Any comments on them? [Stross] I'd forgotten all about them!

By: Dysk

Dysk — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:08:28 -0800

Human Slaves! In an insect nation! Aaaaaaaaaaah.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:01:37 -0800

My first reaction to this was "pish tosh the first of many mistakes, which we can discuss as needed. all the civilized among us know that the phrase is "pish posh."

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:05:52 -0800

PHASE IV

By: maurice

maurice — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:28:31 -0800

I remember seeing that movie in the theater when I was a kid. I thought it was awesome then and I've been waiting for years for a videotape or DVD version with which to creep out my kids.

By: cstross

cstross — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:05:33 -0800

happyroach is correct, sort-of: as I understand it, they were making the film and commissioned Frank Herbert to write a novelization, or at least a novel-with-the-same-name-somewhere-inside-it. And he had this weird eusocial human underground culture novel in progress, so he just stuck Hellstrom's name on top of it. (This is going by memory of what someone in the editorial trade told me over a pint of beer a couple of years ago, so I may have gotten the wrong end of the stick.) I'd read Herbert's novel and seen the film long before I wrote "Missile Gap". And I'm not the only guy who's done a remix on some of those ideas; Steve Baxter got a whole trilogy out of them (Coalescent et al).

By: asfuller

asfuller — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:01:37 -0800

Hadn't heard of this one, and the mention immediately made me recall Phase IV (which I just learned was Saul Bass' only directoral feature). If you were to pitch this movie now, perhaps you would say, "It's like Faces of Death vs. Microcosmos."