Biggles Media Archive: Biggles Air Adventures: Biggles in the Blue

The Biggles books gained such popularity in Australia that a radio serial, The Air Adventures of Biggles, was produced post-WWII. Here is a segment from "Biggles in the Blue". Enjoy!

Biggles Media Archives: "Biggles: Adventures In Time" Trailer

*Warning: clip contains some strong language and adult humor.

Known in Biggles circles simply as “that film”, Biggles: Adventures in Time is not perhaps among the list of successful “book to film” movies. Using time travel as a plot device to link the past and the present seems to have been a popular idea at the time (the very first Back to the Future film had just come out a year earlier).

----------FILM SPOILER ALERT----------

An American from the 1970s, Jim Ferguson, aka Biggles’ “time twin”, keeps falling through a hole in time and going back to 1917, because the universe thinks that he should be there to get Biggles out of moments of dire peril, despite the fact that a) Jim Ferguson can’t fly, b) he’s a salesman for TV dinners, and c) he has no idea what’s going on and spends most of his time getting hauled around by Biggles and co. like a sack of flour. Yes, the universe runs on irony. As if we didn’t already know.

Biggles’ love life plays a predominant role throughout the film—one imagines a group of researchers desperately burrowing through Biggles book after Biggles book, trying to find a female character to use as Biggles’ girlfriend—despite the fact that the original books were written for young boys and so, if anything, tended to gloss over all interaction with females.

Equally in line with the books are the appearances of Ginger and Bertie in the trenches of 1917. Ginger, in particular, had not even been born when WWI was raging…although I suppose there is a possibility that he too fell through some hole in time as Algy’s time twin, only everyone was too polite to mention it.

As if that wasn’t enough, we have Erich Von Stalhein flying around in some sort of iron mask (I know, what?), blue flashes of lightning zapping around whenever someone’s about to go time traveling (which is, like, every five minutes), Colonel Raymond walking around trying to explain everything (like he ever knew anything in the first place), WWII planes flying around in WWI….the list just goes on and on.

But you know what? It is possible to forgive all of that. Or it would be possible to forgive all of that…if not for the appalling movie soundtrack, music that even Biggles would cringe at. Who was it that made the decision to play “Do You Wanna Be A Hero” during the scene where Von Stalhein is trying his best to shoot Biggles down? (Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad song, just a bad Biggles song.)

----------FILM SPOILERS END----------

You may be surprised to learn that the novelization of the film was the first ever “Biggles” book I ever read (I was eight at the time. The book had stills from the film in the middle. Can you blame me?), and that it was the book that introduced me to Biggles. I thought it was a fantastic book…until a few years later when I found a DVD of the film in a store and bought it.

I did try to like the movie. I did. I tried very hard.

Really, I blame the soundtrack.

To be fair, it’s not a bad film in its own right. In fact, if not for the word “Biggles” in the title, it might actually be all right. A group of friends rushing around to save Britain from a secret weapon in WWII (yes, WWII. Seriously, if you’re going to use planes and stuff that were invented after WWI, don’t set your movie in WWI) with a weird American on the side falling through time to provide some comic relief in moments of high stress. Okay, so it won’t win many Oscars, but it will at least be a film that most Biggles fans would be able to sit through without feeling the urgent need to comment or run away every five minutes or so.

Find it on Amazon: Biggles - Adventures In Time [1985] [DVD]