B-7971 Movie sighting - "Starship Invasions" (1977)

[rwhi...@gmail.com]

Watched the Rifftrax version of "Starship Invasions" - 1977 turd of a movie.  You can find the original on Youtube  -  but if you're familiar with the Rifftrax treatment of movies you should check out their version instead which makes fun of it all.   B-7971 tubes all over the alien spaceships walls,  just displaying random segments and not much else...

   

 

[Robert G. Schaffrath]

I remember that movie LOL. Saw it on TV around 1979 IIRC. I had long forgotten the title but remembered seeing the B7971’s as I had several by that time. The only other thing I remembered was Robert Vaughn and wondering how he got himself into that mess of a movie LOL. 

I wonder where those tubes wound up. 

[martin martin]

I’ve always wondered what aliens look like. 

mcve...@gmail.com

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[Robert G. Schaffrath]

Now we know where all the Earth’s supply of B-7971’s went. They are being used in alien spacecraft. If they eventually set up their own manufacturing plants then perhaps someday, if we establish formal relations, we will have access to a huge supply like back in the 70’s 😂

[gregebert]

I watched the original last night; seems like a good chunk of the movie budget was spent on the nixies, most likely the PolyPaks bargain barrel (I think they were less than 5 USD per tube). Also, an honorable mention goes to the tomato that got squished at the supermarket. Anyone remember "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"  ?

[Robert G. Schaffrath]

By 1977 you could still get the complete boards with two tubes for around $6 IIRC. The hyperinflation that kicked in right around that time pushed used tubes without the board to $4/each from Meshna in 1979. The studio getting the complete boards would be necessary if they needed the sockets as well. My first board came from PolyPaks in 1976 for $5 IIRC.

The B-7971’s are probably the only thing notable in that movie. I found it on YouTube and I need to clear an hour and a half to watch it again. The quantity they used is impressive. I hope they are in someone’s collection somewhere. 

[Leroy Jones]

Last night I watched the entire movie.   Notable things I picked up were that

the images from the tubes look washed out white instead of neon orange.

Also noticed that they must have been using them in the original 2-tube

configuration as Lectrascan made them.  The is because the "underscore" segment

is at the top in many scenes.   Also very cool how they used some sort of a pattern generator

to get the weird symbols.

[Adrian Godwin]

It's pretty hard to get a good image of a light-emitting device. The average exposure over the device is low compared with the light-emitting part, and even if you expose manually, getting the correct exposure for the filament (or whatever) means the rest of the scene is dark. I have this problem with coloured LEDs too. 

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