Wednesday, June 29, 2011

THE HOVER---JET?!

by Rick Green
Hoverboy Historian

They say 'birds of a feather, flock together, so perhaps it's not surprising that Vigilance Pictures, who made many Hoverboy movies and serials, would be draw a flock of Hollywood wannabes with visions of being part of movie magic. Or maybe it was the films were so bad, audience members were inclined to think, "Heck, I could make something better than this." For whatever reason, Vigilance Pictures became a haven for what in the good old days were known as 'eccentrics and characters,' and today would be clearly labelled as Borderline Personality Disorder.

But rather than turn these people away Vigilance put them to work. The introverts became crew members. The extroverts found themselves as actors. The difficult or foolish were turned into stunt performers, a job that had a higher casualty rate than the 101st Airborne in World War II. 

In fact, one of the members of that illustrious unit approached Vigilance Pictures with an offer to have his brand new, self-designed and self-built aircraft become 'The Hover Plane!'  It would be, "Like Batman's Batmobile. Only inventor Burl Buckowski couldn't get it through his head that as exciting as his plane was to watch, Hoverboy already had the power to fly. Well, to hover. Burl continued to pester the head of Vigilance Pictures to use his home-built plane in Hoverboy movies, "You get a great looking machine for your hero and I get a ton of free advertising. If even one out of ten Hoverboy Fans decides to buy one of these planes, I could sell dozens of them." 

Finally he convinced the movie crew to include his plane in a film. On the first take of the first shot of the first scene, Burt flew his plane into the side of a factory.