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My dad was a SFX tech on LOTG(also, Voyage, Lost in Dpace, Time Tunnel). As a ten yr old in 1967, I'd go into work with him, and the Giants set was somewhat my playground. I'd sit at the helm of the Spindrift, lift rocks as nig as I was over my head, and swoon( as much as a ten yr old could) over Deanna Lund. I ended up in the industry (Lighting) for 42 years, nut mever jad as much fun as my summers w/with dad on the 20th Century Fox lot. Great content, Dan. Thanks for all you do?
I met Kurt Kasznar when I joined the Broadway cast of "The Sound Of Music" in 1960. I was one of the two boys playing "Kurt Von Trapp" and Kurt was playing "Max Detwiler". We developed an Uncle-Nephew kind of relationship that continued to his death in 1979. Along with several other adult actors in the cast, Kurt was one of my earliest acting teachers. Being originally from Vienna, Austria, Kurt used to tutor me when I started learning the German language in high school and later visited me in German when I was stationed there in the U.S. Army, He was a wonderful man and a good friend.
My cousin was on that show. His name is Stefan Arngrim. He played the kid. His sister, Allison Arngrim , also my cousin *(funny how that works)* played Nellie Oleson in “Little House on the Prairie”.
@@Three_Random_Words Yes he does. I can’t imagine being that much of a scumbag. I actually did think twice before posting my comment because he’s actually not the kind of person anyone would be proud to be related to.
@@BanazirGalpsi1968 That’s right. Their mother was my grandmother’s first cousin which I guess makes them my first cousins twice removed or third cousins or something like that. I’m not sure how that works. Their grandfather and my great grandfather were brothers.
I read in the long defunct Starlog magazine years ago that Gary Conway (Steve Burton) had tried to get a revival of the show to be made in Australia where it was hugely popular in the 1980s. He failed but years later Don Marshall (Dan Erikson) wrote a script called "Escape From A Giant World", intended to be a finale the show never got. The surviving cast was apparently excited about doing it but again, it didn't happen. I met all of the cast, except for Kurt Kaznar (Alexander Fitzhugh), who had died in 1979, at a couple different convention events in the 2000s and had seen Stefan Arngrim (Barry Lockridge) at a few events since. All nice people to talk to at the time. Heather Young (Betty Hamilton) was particularly nice to me, calling me 'sweetheart' a few times during our conversation. Sadly, a few of them have passed away since then with only Gary, Heather and Stefan left from the 7 member main cast. I LOVE this show, as I do ALL things Irwin Allen and feel privileged I was able to see all of Irwin's shows in first run in the 1960s. I'm nearly 69 years old and am actually 6 months older than Stefan! Dan, thanks for this glowing tribute to the show, you really brought back some nice memories! By the way, thanks also for mentioning Jonathan Harris in "Pay The Piper"! Although many fans think this episode was TOO ridiculous, I loved it! Jonathan was pitch perfect as the Piper and his classic blend of Ham really worked in it! In addition, the badger attack on the Spindrift in that show was one of the most exciting sequences filmed, similar to the giant cat attack in the pilot. Looking forward to your future follow-up on the Spindrift miniature restoration! 👍
This was the darkest show of the four produced by Irwin Allen and that is why I like it so much. Very little humor in it. Fitzhugh wasn't clownish like Dr. Smith and the landing party faced danger at every turn. Great show!!!
I met Don Marshal and Gary Conway at a Chiller Theater convention in New Jersey about 2011. I was surprised when Marshal said that he had written a new screenplay about what happened to the Spinthrift people on the Giant World years later. The Earth people agree to help the giants overthrow their repressive government in exchange to be helped by them to repair their ship and return home. But this was like ten years ago and it looks like a Land of the Giants movie sequel is not going to happen.
Land of the Giants airs on MeTV every Sunday morning at 3 am here in the East coast, it's bookended by three Irwin Allen shows, Lost in Space at 1 am, Voyage to the Bottom of the sea at 2 am and The Time Tunnel at 4 am
I was a kid in the 1960's & I saw "Land Of The Giants" in 1968 & I loved it instantly. I saw "Lost In Space" in prime time & I enjoyed that show I never missed an episode. The 60's had the best TV shows & was the best time to be a kid. I saw "Batman" when it was new & I had a Munsters lunchbox in 1964.
As a very young man, I went to the Universal Studios with my grandfather and climbed onto a table used to film Land of the Giants. There was a giant salt shaker on the table that was bigger than me and a giant fork, knife, and spoon I may have tried lifting. I was thrilled at the creativity and impressed with the engineers for the pre-CGI methods at achieving the verisimilitude of achieving housecat-level smallness.
When I was a kid I had every model kit of all the sci-fi TV shows ships back then. Even the Saturn 5 Apollo rocket with the lem in it. And I had the Batmobile and the Black Beauty. I was so into those model kits.
Speaking of Batman. I was born in early 1968 and my mom always told this story about my first word being not mama or dadda but Batman! She used to tell it like it was a bad thing, He didn't even say mama or dadda just Batman! lol I have always been proud my first word on this world was BATMAN!
I heard that they built a raft and decided to leave the dumb dinosaurs and people And decided to take their chances on a new river They were never heard from Again 😢rip 🙏 🪦 😌 ☹️
The special effects were actually pretty good for TV and the time era. This was one of my favorite shows and similar to Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea.
Unlike Lost in Space, Land of the Giants never fully fell into the campy silliness. It was a very dark show, and the episode "On a Clear Night You Can See the Earth", the Spindrift's people must contemplate killing a giant scientist who has invented a pair of infrared binoculars that can see the Earth. Another episode had a kindly old man offer to allow the little people to live in a model village scaled to their size, but his granddaughter becomes hateful of them and tries to kill them. So, in a way, this was Lost in Space if it'd stayed more on track as a serious show.
let's not forget that the Spindrift had landed in a *totalitarian police state* on the giants' planet, and we had no idea whether or not that it was like that in all the other nations on that planet or what.
Land of the Giants was among my favorite TV shows back in the 1960s when I was a little kid. Others were Lost in Space, The Invaders, Night Gallery, Ironside, Mannix, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, et al...
Dark Shadows came on in the late afternoon as one of the last Soaps of the programming day. Land of the Giants came on sometime after the 5 o.'clock evening news.
The giants also had trouble seeing in the dark which made it seem ridiculous when they ran around town in broad daylight. Don’t forget they also had a dog on the show named Chipper.
Deanna Lund’s _Valerie in Giant Land_ takes place after the show, but doesn’t have them returning their Earth and time. They’ve adapted to their circumstances.
As I recall (being an eleven year old at the time), Tunnel and Giants ran back to back on Friday nights on ABC. I couldn't wait for them to come on. I was into building models at the time but I can't understand how I missed the Spindrift from Aurora.
The Giants show aired ABC Sunday nights around 7pm Eastern/Pacific from 1968 to 1970. Taking over the time slot after the Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea show was cancelled after 4 seasons.
One episode used the Mayberry town set. I think the town was called Midberry. It was always surreal to see Mayberry in Star Trek, Batman and other shows.
I met Stefan Arngrim (Barry) and his wife at Chiller Theatre on Saturday (4/27/24) and we watched this video together! Another guy sharing a table with Stefan brought a huge Spindrift model and he saw us watching the video. He said "I know Dan" and showed us a B9 robot he built. They were all very nice people and we had a great time. Thanks for this video!
Very nice overview of the show. I think the series did get cancelled due to the cost, but apparently it became the biggest selling series to the international market the studio ever had, which led the execs to regret axing it. The show had a big surge in popularity in the UK in the 1980s when it was rerun. And yes, we loved it here in Australia, along with the rest of Irwin Allen’s shows. Lost in Space was Australia’s most repeated series.
When Land of the Giants was in production, my parents took our family to Universal Studios and we got to see some of the sets (and the sets for H. R. Puffenstuff). The lunch area had some of the giant props to play with. One of my great memories.
Yes. I remember the spool, phone and needle. Universal Studios hold much more impressionable memories for me when I went as a kid back in the early 70's.
I have a 'Land of the Giants' memory that has been burnt into my brain since I was a child. I was at a relative's house and went into the living room to watch the television while the grown-ups talked in the dining area, well 'Land of the Giants' was on and I was watching it when midway through the show my uncle Johnny came in the room and changes the channel to a football game. My heart just sank, I believe it was the episode with that guy with the goatee and glasses and I was mesmerized by the show's production design and its effects. From that day I thought my uncle Johnny was a jerk and also from that day I disliked sports. The funny thing is about ten years ago I was at someone's home, and I really didn't know too many people there so I went into the living room where the television was on showing some cartoon, there was a group of kids in the room and they were in the corner playing with their backs turned away from the T.V., I thought they weren't watching it so I changed the channel. And just at that moment they all turned their little heads in unison and stared at me exactly like the children from the film "' The Village of the Damned', having personally identified with that situation I turned the channel back and they turned away from the T.V. and resumed playing. I felt that it could have been a Larry David moment if "Land of the Giants" was airing a rerun on the other channel when I changed it and then back again. It just goes to show you how much times have changed.
Oh wow!!! This absolutely shaped my love of science fiction as a child. I would run home from school and watch this - it had to be sometime in the late 70’s here in New Zealand 🇳🇿
I always liked this show, I remember watching it as a kid along with lost in space and batman. I used to have the spindrift model but it got lost over the years. I still have my original batmobile, bat boat & yellow submarine from corgi.
Remember seeing this in reruns. Some station ran it and lost in space back to back. Found it creepy as a kid, so would just watch Lost in space, after the first couple episodes. May have to track it down and give it another chance. That Deanna Lund is quite the babe.
Excellent video...thanks for posting it. The one thing I was surprised you didn't mention was that it took place in the futuristic year of 1983 and everyone is wearing 1960's fashion. I heard Don Marshall had a re-union script that never got produced while most of them were still alive. Too bad it would have been good to get a conclusion.
In the US there's an over the air channel MEtv. Every Saturday night they air Batman, Star Trek, Kolchak the Nightstalker, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel, The Invaders and Thunderbirds.
Loved the show. I got to meet the cast at their first renion 20 odd years ago at the Chiller Convention, held in Meadowland in NJ. The props were pretty cool for the time
There were so many great scifi shows on TV when I was a young boy growing up in South-East England. We got not only all the American shows like the Irwin Allen classics, but also homegrown stuff like Thunderbirds, Doctor Who, Timeslip.... I could always find some great scifi show to watch. I still happily watch them at the age of 61.
The late Don Marshall wanted to revive Land of the Giants in a more kind of Lost direction where two warring sides are coming close to mutual destruction, and the passengers, who there are loads more, some align with the giants, some do not, but all one goal, to get off the planet before it destroys itself. The time line is 2051 for Earth, and for the Giant's planet, late 60s to early 70s. The Giants get wind of the advance technology of the little people, and this is their motivation to capture them in the hope to apply the advanced technology to win decisively over the other civilization on the other side of the planet. It would have been an exciting approach.
Dan I remember watching the show in it's original airing on tv back in the 60s. I thought it was the coolest show. I also loved Time Tunnel. I actually loved all of Irwin Allen's shows. Lost In Space became too cheesy for me though. I liked the seriousness in the show. That's the way I wish it would have stayed.
Another great episode...thanks Dan...but then all your uploads are really nostalgic and exciting...thanks for all the trivia and knowledge you bring to us every time of the wonderful shows we grew up with. ❤
I have always believed that the Spindrift full size mock-up spaceship was originally meant to be the flying sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in its final season. Irwin allen, and Irwin Allen Productions, was well known for reusing props onto new television shows.
As a serious ship and model car builder, I could NEVER resist buying all those Aurora TV sci-fi models. Good clean fun from a bygone (and better) era. I miss those pre-video game and smart phone/social media days !
This is when TV was great with only 6 channels to watch. Not like today with 1 billion channels, streaming services with 8 shows to count for a season, and nothing to watch on either.
Thanks for this video and the research involved to give us so many details that I did not know before. I'm 66, so I saw all of the Irwin Allen shows as a kid, and loved them all. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was my favorite (I had the Aurora Seaview model and the functional yellow (why yellow?) Seaview for the swimming pool). Anyway, in 1968, when Land of the Giants debuted, I was not aware that Voyage had been cancelled. I kept checking the Sunday night schedule and then, I believe in the same time slot as Voyage, Land of the Giants appeared. It still took me a few months to come to the realization that Voyage was never coming back, and at first I didn't care for Land of the Giants because, to me, it was replacing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. As an 11 year-old, I wondered why did this happen? But, I came around, and started loving Land of the Giants until it, too, disappeared in the Spring of 1970. As an aside, by 1968 when Land of the Giants first appeared, shows were no longer done in black & white, so Land of the Giants was filmed only in color, which, of course, was great. My parents got a color tv in early 1966 (during Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea's second season when it was first broadcast in color), and I can tell you, watching this show in color on our new color TV was absolutely mindblowing! By the time Land of the Giants arrived, we were already taking it for granted that TV shows were now in color, but, for those of us who remember that switch to color, it was as fantastic a development as there could ever be. Thank you again for your detailed research into these cherished Irwin Allen shows of my childhood.
Great Dan! I remember seeing the show during original broadcast, the one thing I couldn’t understand why they just didn’t just go with a concept of just going through the storm just made them smaller, instead of pretending they were on an alien planet
Land of the Giants, Lost in Space, Voyage, Time Tunnel I can watch these over n over n over again. Even back then we were aware of the inconsistencies and a stretch of the imagination Still beats anything on today! Of course I have a prejudiced connection as I was around back then so I have the nostalgic memory thing going.
As a young boy growing up in California my parents took me to Universal Studios in the early70s. They had several props from Land of the giants one being a giant phone which I climbed on. I was about 7yrs old.
I can remember watching this show in it's prime time slot as a very young kid. I loved, loved this show as a small kid you empathized with the crew in the show as all the adults around you looked like the Giants they had to deal with. The part that intrigued me was the Giant world was ruled by an totalitarian government and the little people would help the resistance like it was a WW2 movie. After the show ended I felt bad they were stuck there forever with no escape.
I loved this show! A big favourite here in Australia. I lived in with my mother at a private nursing home, she was deputy matron there, and the lady who was matron had two kids. Us three terrors would play at being in Land of The Giants. They renovated part of the building and we’d play among the wooden boards and so on, everywhere we were forbidden to go, and it was just bloody marvellous❤️
Dan, of all of Irwin Allen's properties, the one that intrigued me the most was the TV movie City Beneath the Sea. It was corny and a big pile-up of crisis upon crisis, but I appreciated its optimistic outlook on the year 2054. Will we ever touch on that? When I think of Giants, I think of an era when TV movies, or possible TV show pilots, seemed to be contemplating parallel Earths which were somehow nearby yet never detected before. One pilot, called The Stranger, had Glenn Corbett on an Earth with three moons, run by a dictatorship. A British movie, Doppelganger, known here in the States as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, from the same people who brought us UFO and Space: 1999, was about a "mirror image" Earth. Would that it was so simple! Anyhow, I will always remember City (if only because of Susana Miranda), so if you can ever find anything on it, I will appreciate it. Thanks.
That's the only bad part of Erwin Allen. He never finished a series like leaving the Robinsons lost in space someplace. He never got the crews to their final destinations.
Was born in 68 so I had no clue this series (also Time Tunnel, VTTBOTS and The Invaders) ever existed till a few years ago on Me TV. What great historical shows! Can't wait for part two with some character background and other info. Great work Dan and keep Invaders in mind !!!
Hi Dan, this show looks so interesting. I guess syndication (reruns) are very region-specific at different points in time. You and I are about the same age. After school in the 1970s, I was saturated with reruns of Lost in Space (as well as I Dream of Jeanie, Hogan's Heroes, Andy Griffith, Gilligan's Island, F Troop, etc). However I never heard of ANY of these other Irwin Allen sci fi TV shows - nothing other than Lost in Space - until I was an adult enthusiast. Like you, I was not around for the original broadcasts, but these non-LIS Irwin Allen shows just never got syndication in my area during my formative years. Thanks for the great video essay.
Like almost all of Irwin Allen's shows,they started off right,with intriguing concepts,good to excellent effects,but somehow got mired in repetitiveness or ridiculousness as time went on.I bought the box set of this series,but could only watch a select few episodes,that meant anything.
As a new subscriber, I really appreciate the amount of research that goes into these videos. Considering the quality of the content, it's amazing how frequently a new vid is released. Much respect.
Thanks, Dan for another wonderful video… I’m rather late getting into Land of the Giants, even though I was old enough to watch it during its first run on tv… I now watch it every Saturday late night… Fun show to watch I appreciate your deep dive into this classic Erwin Allen show…. Thanks!
Probably figured that they're all stand alone episodes so just didn't care that there might be a correct order. Most network execs didn't care about Sci-Fi anyway, because they didn't understand it. They usually found it silly or absurd. They still do.
The series starts off cool...then the suits roll in the screw it all up. Rinse and repeat. Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Firefly... Another nice episode Dan. Thanks.
Great information about these classics! I don't remember watching them back when they were new, but I have been watching them every Saturday night on MeTV. I was in Vietnam in '66-'67 so that might be why I didn't see them. The whole line up of shows is on MeTv every Saturday starting with Lost in Space and going through to Invaders. Dr Smith was the most despicable character I have ever seen. Keep doing what you do. Really great to see the actors and their stories.
When I was little, I loved star treck, lost in space, Jhonny Socco, looneytoons, Iron sides, perry Mason, major Astro and his cartoon network. Andy griffith,Batman, later Jim Neighbors playing Gomer Pile U.S.M.C.!
Love these videos thanks for posting them so good I loved these shows when I was a kid. Please do what ever happened to The Invaders and the show UFO. Thanks.
Fun fact, the seats in the Spindrift were lifted from the set of the Icarus, the ship in Planet of the Apes! I have always wondered why LotG never got a big budget movie like Lost in Space. AMAZING VID!
Dan, just wanted to let you know that I just love your program. Just love it! Draws me in every time, you have a great presence on the screen as narrator to take the viewer behind the scenes of the great sci-fi shows of yesteryear as well as props music ... and monsters. Now as the ship Spindrift or what some folks on the set called the Spend thrift : one of the set models I believe is being displayed at the science fiction museum here in Seattle, just a little info I thought I would share.
Fun Fact: Barbara Eden was pregnant for the entire first season of "I Dream of Jeannie". They rushed the shooting to get as many episodes in the can before it got too difficult to hide her expanding belly!
I remember watching voyage to the bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants, lost in space a s a small kid, i remember acting these characters out in the backyard with my buddies!! 😂😎
Loved this video on LOTG Dan,another show I would run home after school to catch the reruns, I really cant wait for the video on the BATMAN tv show!! im stoked! keep up the great work on these childhood shows! thanks Dan!
Thanks Dan, this was great! IMHO this was Irwin's most consistent show, except maybe towards the end of the second season. I was lucky enough to get an original Aurora Spindrift from the 70s re-issue back in the early 90s. Moebius Models should be releasing an all new and larger kit sometime this year!👍👍
