The Day the Fish Came Out

This isn't a great movie, and not even really a good movie, but it is...well, something. It seems to be the wacky, 1960s, Greek bastard/child of "Dr. Strangelove" and "The Russians Are Coming". It popped up recently on the Fox Movie Channel. Tom Courtenay was playing very serious in "Doctor Zhivago" a couple of years earlier. Here he is trying for laughs and mostly in his underwear. In fact there are lots of pretty people wearing very little, and when they are wearing something it's often designed by the director/writer/producer himself, and it's beyond the valley of mod. In fact, the movie could use more mod and more Grecian scenery. Recommended if you like movies from the late 60s.

Where can I get a copy of this film? It was shown in late '67 in London and after very bad reviews was closed after 2 weeks and never seen again. The British Film Institute, when I asked over 10 years ago, only had some storyboards but no copy.

Having read the comments about the confused nature and baffling plot of the film, I can only support these from the point of view of someone who was an extra in the film. Yes we had to wear cheaply made primary coloured cotton clothes (and in my case some wrap-round 'shades' that made sweat run into your eyes.) I was travelling in an old VW van with fellow students, and we were recruited in Athens, and paid 10 shillings a day each with a cold chicken meal thrown in. Filming seemed chaotic and often appeared to made up on the spot (a bunch of bikers were filmed at one point), and at night most takes were stopped when the arc lamps burnt out. The dead fish in the harbour mostly sank. The third assistant director had great fun trying to get us to act as a crowd. The local cops prowled about looking for some longhairs to beat up (not us though as we had wheels).

The wonderful Sam Wanamaker looked stately on set, Candice Bergen looked very nice from where I stood in the background on a night shoot, Tom Courtney looked lonely off set. Colin Blakeley became a favourite actor of mine when I spotted him as I walked down the harbour towards the house used as the wardrobe, lurking in costume rags. The Wardrobe Mistress - a formidable women - passed by and told him in forthright terms to clear off as we were on the set (the whole harbour). With a grunt he shambled off in the character of a tramp. Minutes later he was on camera scoffing food at a table! Priceless! Where can I get a copy of this film?

This unusual, way-out, black comedy about the destruction of humanity via nuclear weapons is like a surreal, gay dream. Filmed in 1967, it takes place in the near future of 1972. Courtenay and Blakley are flying a plane containing two nuclear bombs and an additional radioactive weapon that's contained in an impenetrable box. When the plane begins to crash, they offload the weapons, per their orders, and abandon the plane themselves. They wash ashore on a partially uninhabited Greek island in (inexplicably) just their underwear and have trouble coming up with a reasonable excuse they can give the villagers. Meanwhile, Wanamaker already believes them dead and amasses a team of soldiers to descend on the island and retrieve the lost weaponry. In order to keep suspicion down, they arrive in sportswear and present themselves as hotel builders. However, the sportswear is so hilariously fruity and since there are no women in their party, Courtenay and Blakley assume that they're a band of homosexuals! Adding to the confusion are a goatherd and his wife who have taken the boxed weapon to their hut and are trying every means they can think of to open it, believing it to have gold inside. Eventually, with all the interest on the part of the "hoteliers", swarms of tourists swoop down on the island and practically take it over. Then, when relics are discovered, archaeologists head there, too! It is here that Bergen makes her long-awaited appearance. She sets her sights on one of the disguised soldiers (Ogilvy) and complicates matters even more with her excavation equipment. The whole film is a comedy of errors as characters continuously misinterpret one another and nearly miss connecting with each other. The ending is abrupt, to say the least. but at last the title makes sense. Courtenay and Blakley make a truly odd duck pair and their Mutt 'n Jeff routine is only sporadically amusing, if at all. Fans of theirs owe it to themselves to see this, though, as they parade around for most of the film in the flimsiest of white briefs, especially Courtenay's almost thong-like undies! Wanamaker is forceful and displays quite a fit body of his own. His team of men wears the most bizarre and hallucinatory clothing imaginable. Nearly all of them are drop-dead gorgeous and their clothes are built to show off their assets as much as possible (trunks and clamdiggers with pieces cut out, impossibly snug crotches, shirts with mesh fronts, et al...) Bergen has a surprisingly brief role, but she does impress with her stunning looks. Never more tan or blonde, her clothes make the most of her youthful body as well and she gives the film a lift with her energy (even if her acting hadn't fully taken root yet.) Though the film is rather patchy and confusing at times (the cast wasn't even allowed to know the plot!), there is a story at work here and some thought given to the evils of greed, dominance, militarism, materialism, etc... It just isn't as coherent as one might like. The primary appeal is the chance to see Bergen at her loveliest, the frenetic dancing of the tourists, the wacky costumes of virtually everyone and the fleet of healthy men in various stages of undress.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed and Screenplay by Michael Cacoyannis; Produced by Cacoyannis for 20th Century-Fox. Photography by Walter Lassally; Edited by Vasilis Syropoulos; Music by Mikis Theodorakis; Casting by George P. Cosmatos; Titles by Maurice Binder. Starring Tom Courtenay, Sam Wanamaker, Colin Blakely, Candice Bergen, Ian Ogilvy, William Berger.

Fascinating, funny sci-fi film which stresses extrapolative changes in sociology rather than the usual hardware in posing the cultural shock of tourists infesting a little Greek island when A-bombs and doomsday weapons are dropped there. Great combo of beefcake, homosexual jokes, wild costumes, music and photography plus solid offbeat cast.

It was the dancing scene that did me in. Everybody was dancing in sandals, Leather Roman type with one strap around the big toe types. The dance, the beat to the music, it seemed so futuristic. Who can I contact to set the wheels in motion to get this motion picture? I'll even take 8 mm.