The Eagle Story

Readers of Eagle Times magazine will be aware that in the Spring 2008 issue, we publicised the existence and availability on DVD of The Eagle Story, a short documentary film, made by Cheshire-based, nonprofessional filmmaker, Frank Baker. The film was more recently seen by members of the Eagle Society who attended Eagle's 60th Anniversary in Southport in April 2010. Since then Frank has kindly made a video copy available on YouTube - and so it can appear here!   Thanks, Frank.

In its ten minutes, The Eagle Story covers, briefly but effectively,  the history of Eagle and 'Dan Dare', from the beginnings in Southport and the setting up of the studio in Churchtown, through the move to Bayford Lodge in Epsom, the launch of Eagle's companion papers, 'Dan Dare' toys and merchandise, and the eventual unsympathetic take-over of Eagle by Odhams. Also covered are the later lives of Marcus Morris and Frank Hampson, including the latter's breakdown, and his later recognition as 'Prestigio Maestro' at Lucca. Some of the later commentary reflects the fact that this film was made a couple of years ago. For example, comments regarding the expected biography of 'Dan Dare' are somewhat dated - the book by Daniel Tatarsky is currently expected to be published by Orion Books in late October, 2010. 

On 10th April, 2008, The Eagle Story  took the top prize in the  Inter-Club Competition at Southport giving, as I understand it, Swan Movie Makers (Wirral) their eleventh win in the competition. Although the film was submitted with less success to the OSFAF International Film Festival in Skopje, Macedonia, another of Frank Baker's films Knot in Motion saw more success (taking second prize) there. The Eagle Story was also nominated for the fledgling Wirral International Film Festival in November 2008. Frank tells us that after its success in the Inter-Club Competition, The Eagle Story was selected for the North v South Competition, winning the Mermaid trophy. A bit of internet searching tells me that the North v South Competition is run annually by the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (IAC). The Mermaid Trophy is awarded to the IAC Region whose film receives the greatest number of audience votes.

Eagle Society at Southport - video

Thanks to Chris Phillips there is a four-part video record of the Eagle Society's three days in Southport, celebrating Eagle's 60th Anniversary.

Part 1 includes the cutting of the Eagle 60th Anniversary cake, Steve Winders' after dinner tribute to Eagle - a humorous rendition entitled 'The Lion and Eagle' (based on the well-known comedy piece, Marriott Edgar’s 'The Lion and Albert'), and Nigel McMurray's introduction over dinner on the first evening.

In Part 2 Jim Ryder and Adam James provide the evening's entertainment on the first night, in the spirit of Jeff Arnold and the Riders of the Range, with 'cowboy' and country and western songs.

Part 3, takes us, among other things, on the 'Eagle Trail' on 14th April, led by local author and artist Peter Dyer, and visiting the places in Southport associated with the creation of Eagle - including the famous 'Bakehouse Studio'.

Part 4 covers the events of the 15th April, including John Swan's review of Portuguese and other "Eagles", and a meeting with some of the Eagle Times editorial team.

Virgin's Dan Dare computer game

In 1986 Virgin Games Ltd produced a Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future game, developed by the "Gang Of Five" (Dave B. Chapman, Martin Wheeler). Somewhat different versions were created for three platforms: the Sinclair Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64. Rather than being based on the new incarnation of 'Dan Dare' then running in the "new" Eagle, the game (and particularly the packaging) owed more to the original 1950s Eagle character created by Frank Hampson, who had died a year earlier. The instructions included the following:

This game is dedicated to the memory of Frank Hampson, the creator of Dan Dare who sadly died on 8th July 1985. We hope he would have approved of our treatment of his characters.

This "speedrun" of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, recently posted by "tehvalli" on YouTube gives a flavour of the Spectrum version:

If that whetted your appetite, and you want to play the game, there are emulators that run under Windows and other operating systems, and you can download the games to run on them. (See The World of Spectrum). Here is a link to download a Spectrum emulator, called ZX Spin, that runs under Windows (from 95 to XP I understand - I've run it under XP): download ZX Spin. Just download and unzip the files into a folder of your choice. The emulator should run by clicking on the ZXSpin.exe application. There is a Help file in the application.

To download the Spectrum version of Dan Dare to run on the emulator, click on the appropriate link in this List of Spectrum Games beginning with D. (Sorry, creating direct links to the file doesn't work). The original instructions for Dan Dare are here. And if you need a map, view one here.

The game was very successful, and led to two further (somewhat less successful!) games being developed: Dan Dare II: The Mekon's Revenge and Dan Dare III: The Escape. You will find download links for those in the same list you found Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future.

NOTE: Sorry, Eagle Times cannot provide any more help with installing, configuring or running the emulator or the games on your particular computer, so please don't ask!

Dan Dare Mobil Advertisements

In 1987, the Lowe Howard-Spink Marschalk advertising agency created a campaign that included three television commercials for the Mobil Oil Company to promote the latter's fuel products. Long after the demise of the original 'Dan Dare' from Eagle, these affectionately parodied the Frank Hampson model, rather than later re-incarnations. The commercials were filmed at Shepperton Studios by production company Lewin and Watson. In this parody it is Digby who is the brains behind the team, extolling to a rather dim Dan Dare the virtues of Mobil’s synthetic oil, lead-free petrol and diesel.

Number 1: Rocket to Nowhere



Number 2: Passage to Dalmik



Number 3: Mekon Ahoy!

These videos were originally posted on Google Videos by Peter Inns who has three Dan Dare related sites at www.dandare.org, www.dandare.net and www.dandare.net.uk