I’d never heard of Biggles, but it’s apparently an extremely popular series of books in the UK based on an ace WWI (and eventually WWII) pilot and his team. The first book was released in 1936, putting it smack-dab in the pulp magazine era.
The idea of a movie had been bounced around for many decades, but finally they got the ball rolling in the 80’s. The script was complete, and it was about to begin filming when the first Back to The Future was released, and the executives decided they wanted to cash in on the time-travel shtick. They re-wrote the script to accommodate a time-travel aspect, instead of it being purely in the WWI.
Seems like that would result in a disaster of a film, but by god they pulled it off. The casting choices were excellent, the story is well executed, but the real star of the show are the stunts, practical effects, and the sets!
The movie had less than half the budget of Back to the Future, but it really doesn’t feel like it, except in one specific special effect. The sets at times make it feel like a higher budget movie than it is, with the WWI trench scenes in particular looking excellent.
There’s some crazily well shot action scenes in this, and you can tell the director was having an absolute blast with them, and the cast seemed to as well.
There aren’t really any other movies I can think of that combine WWI dogfights with 80’s synth-y rock (from Jon Anderson of Yes, no less!).
It’s campy, it’s pulpy, it’s funny, it’s great. If you like back to the future or pulp stories, give this one a shot!
Also, slightly sad fact, the music video for one of the songs used in the film by The Immortials features one of Peter Cushing’s last appearances on film before his death.
oh my gosh. I was starting to think this was something I made up. you totally made my day.
when I was a kid, we had Biggles taped from TV so we could play it (vcr) all the time. it was one of the movies we could all agree on, and it just had part of a label with something that I was pretty sure was Biggles scribbled on it. the time travel shtick is definitely why my mom taped it, and probably why we enjoyed it (not exactly war movie kids, but we’d watch anything vaguely science fiction).
but now no one else in my family remembers it, so I thought it might be a Mandela effect thing.
So where the hell was Biggles when you needed him last Saturday? And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you through? They’re all resting down in Cornwall - Writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition of the Boy Scout Manual.
Cool find! Thanks for the share.