A new month, a new Celluloid Heroes update, this time taking us to the summer of 1979 and the Canadian theatrical release of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. This movie would of course spawn two seasons of the cult Sci-Fi tv series, Introduce a generation of 70s and 80s kids to Gil Gerard, Twiki, Dr. Theopolis, New Chicago, and my first ever TV crush, the luminous – and I mean it – Erin Gray as Wilma Deering.

Like Battlestar Galactica the year previous, the edited TV pilot of Buck Rogers played a brief run in Canadian Cinemas in the spring of 1979, and proved to be enormously profitable for NBC Universal, so much so Buck the TV show was already a hit before ever airing its first of two seasons worth of episodes.

The late 1970s were a strange time for cinema. Case in point: the pre-show short film. Sometimes we got some great National Film Board of Canada short cartoons like The Log-Driver’s Waltz:

And Ernie Fosselius’ classic spoof Hardware Wars which played before the main feature screening of Buck Rogers that I attended:

And this was also one of the last times you’d ever have to see Disney’s infamous and still very controversial Song of the South in cinemas:

So please me on a journey into the 46-years past world of 1979, and a leap forward into the 25th Century, with Celluloid Heroes Episode Four:

Play us off, Twiki: