Beneath the extinct volcanoes that surround Auckland, giant slug like creatures from another galaxy are waking from a spellbound sleep that has lasted thousands of years. When they are released they start to devour the earth, turning the planet into mud.
Twins, Rachel and Theo, are saved from death by a kindly and mystical stranger and eight years later when they visit Auckland, find they have been choose for a momentous task against the forces of evil - they must save the world from the terror under the mountain.
Gee, best known for his award-winning novel Plumb, wrote Under the Mountain partly because he had promised his children to write something for them. I wanted it to be something in the fantasy line but I wasn't quite sure of the subject, and then one morning as I was walking to work I saw Mt Eden loom up from behind a row of houses as I walked up the street visually quite a frightening thing and the story really took off from there. I thought perhaps I could have something underneath the mountain..
Main cast and crew
Rachel Matheson - Kirsty Wilkinson
Theo Matheson - Lance Warren
Mr Jones - Roy Leywood
Mr Wilberforce - Bill Johnson
Ricky - Bill Ewena
Aunt Noeline - Glynis McNicholl
Uncle Clarry - Noel Trevarthen
Screenplay - Ken Catran, from the novel by Maurice Gee
Producer - Tom Finlayson
Director - Chris Bailey
Television New Zealand
Episodes
1) Maar (6/1/1981)
Infant twins, Rachel and Theo Matheson, are saved from death by a kindly and mystical stranger. The twins have a special destiny and Mr Jones has a curious past. Eight years later, when the twins visit Auckland, it seems that they have been chosen for some momentous task against the forces of evil.
Mr Matheson - Laurie Dee
Mrs Matheson - Annie Whittle
Country Policeman - Jonathan Hardy
Waitress - Paula Jones
Young Rachel - Rachel Constantine
Young Theo - Phillip Constantine
Jones's neighbour - Gay Dean
Searchers - Norman Forsey, Sean Duffy, Fred James
2) Volcano of the Bleeding Skies (13/1/1981)
A sight-seeing trip to Auckland's dormant vol-canoes brings further evidence that Rachel and Theo Matheson have a dangerous mission. Mr Jones seems able to speak in their minds, but is his guardianship enough to protect them from the sinister Mr Wilberforce and the slimy creatures which lurk in the lake and the harbour?
Librarian - Maggie Maxwell
3) Red Force, Blue Force (20/1/1981)
A sudden "shark" attack embroils the twins in the life-or-death struggle between Mr Jones and the enemy. At last Mr Jones meets his young allies, and confides some of the mystery.
Traffic Officer - Billy T. James
4) The Alien World Below (27/1/1981)
Rachel's sleep is disturbed by a telepathic cry for help. Mr Jones's voice seems to drift through the fog from the weird old Wilberforce house, and the twins steal through the dark night to his rescue.
5) Weapons of the Mind (3/11/1981)
Now that they know about the aliens' secret labyrinth, Rachel and Theo Matheson are in even graver danger. Mr Jones is forced to tell them all, and the story of the Wilberforces is fearful indeed.
Delivery Man - Ray Woolf
Wilberforce Family - Roy Billing, Paul Owen-Lowe, David Weatherly, Richard von Sturmer, Timothy C. Leo, Robert Bruce, Rodney Newmmen
6) Any Shape, Any Form (10/11/1981)
Aware of the fate that awaits Earth, the twins learn from Mr Jones the fearsome strategy they must employ if their planet is to be saved. In their bond of twinship is strength. But that night, alone in the house, the twins discover the awful truth of Mr Jones's warning.
Johan and Lenart - Gerald Klyn
7) Assault: (17/11/1981)
The Wilberforces seem foiled Mr Jones and the twins strike out for Rangitoto, armed with their magic weapons. But Rachel's hair ribbon is still in the hands of the aliens and Theo is having trouble with his stone.
Undertakers - John Atha, John Cronin
Wilberforce Family - Roy Billing, Paul Owen-Lowe, David Weatherley, Richard Von Sturmer, Timothy C. Lee, Robert Bruce
8) The Gift of Oblivion (25/11/1981)
Time is running out. Rangitoto is ablaze with crimson. Ricky is left as a decoy as the heroic trio struggle towards their final goal. But Mr Jones and the twins do not realise just how ruthless the aliens are.
Wilberforce Family - Roy Billing, Paul Owen-Lowe, David Weatherley, Richard Von Sturmer, Rodney Newman, Timothy C. Lee, Robert Bruce
Neither side escapes unscathed from the conflict; producer Tom Finlayson describes the ending as "fairly gruelling" and suggests that parents watch this episode with their children.
Under the Mountain - Full Series @NZOnScreen
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~z/Under_The_Mountain.html
Behind the scenes
When author Maurice Gee wrote of the Wilberforce family in his book Under the Mountain (1979) he could not have realised the problems he would later be presenting Television New Zealand's designers.
For the serial production designer Rob Gillies was required to create a number of three-dimensional monsters from Gee's original book ideas.
Gillies found one of the biggest challenges the biological and functional logic of the monsters. I felt that when I started to get into specifics, that there were logical problems in the book. The reader can find some resolution to gaps in logic but on screen we had to find a connection."
One area, for example, where the screen version of the slugs and their environment differs from the book is that the screen slugs look wet, whereas the print slugs are dry. It was felt that dry-looking creatures would not be able to convey the stench of the monsters. Since this stench was an important characteristic of the monsters, they were given a "wet look".
The next problem was creating a murky, dank atmosphere. Gillies opted for an old favourite fog. Even though fog is perhaps cliched, the created atmosphere had to be transitory It appeared only when the creatures were about.
But there were problems, admits Gillies. The fog generator can be time consuming. It makes it harder for lighting, for example, since it can give away the light positions. But we committed ourselves to it early in the shoot and from then on had to stick to it. Sometimes when the crew was standing around at three o'clock in the morning bathed in fog, it got pretty tire-some.
Another of Gillies's problems was the small studio at TVNZ's Shortland Street base in Auckland. As a 18m x 9m studio, It is critically small for drama productions. Apart from the sheer restriction on practical movement areas within each set, the main problem was to create a feeling of scale for the underground caverns described in Gee's script as being bigger than a school assembly hall
. Gillies's approach was to use a combination of infinity "blacks" and forced perspective in the set pieces. Critically scaled and positioned foreground rock and receding crevasses combined to give an awesome sense of vastness.
Sound for the series was also a challenge. Fifty percent of the audience impact is made by music and sound,
says director Chris Bailey. Composer Bernie Allen wrote an original score which was recorded with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Then there was the problem of what noises the monsters should make. Bailey spent a whole afternoon closeted in a dubbing suite making gurgly noises with his lips close to the microphone and playing it back at half speed. He also experimented for hours with slurpy noises, trying to decide whether they would suitably convey anger on the part of the slimy monsters.
One way or another, the Wilberforce family is a force to be reckoned with.
Fun and hard work playing ‘with the kids’
Bill Johnson, genial and crinkly haired, found it “hard work” playing the No. 1 baddie, Mr Wilberforce, in the children’s science fiction series, “Under the Mountain,” One, Tuesdays. Roy Leywood describes the Mr Jones character he plays as "fun to play though I don’t think he had any sense of humour whatsoever in actual fact. But he was fun to play — dashing around with these kids.”
Johnson found that the worst part of all was the torture before the filming of the television series even started; He had to have a “death 'mask” made in Takapuna prosthetics laboratory. His hair and head were covered with cardboard and hairnets, pink “rubber stuff and finally plaster of Paris. It took 20 minutes to half an hour for the plaster coated Johnson to set. “I was lowered to the floor and they pushed a couple of drinking straws up my noise,” he recalls.
“I felt a little bit desperate when everything went dark and the hearing went as well. I thought: All that someone has to do is put their fingers over those drinking straws.”
That wasn’t the end of Bill Johnson’s, facial misadventures.
Then the make-up department got hold of the archvillain to give him “a sort of bestial look.”
“That make-up took about one and a half hours to do,” he said.
Despite the emphasis on horror, Johnson is convinced that children won’t find the science fiction series too scarey. “It’s too far into fantasy. They all say these Wilberforces are terrifying, but I don’t think the kids will find them so.”
Led by Johnson the creatures evolved after hours of discussion, How could the production team portray these weird animals in the flesh that Gee had conjured up in words?
“We talked for hours about these creatures,” says Finlayson. “Because their environment would depend on their anatomy. How did they breath,? And how did they move? The creatures and their housing had .to be designed closely together. We were building a totally foreign ecosystem.”
In reading the words and translating them into pictures, the team was very conscious of trying to portray faithfully both Gee’s novel and Ken Catran’s screenplay.
Leywood describes "Under the Mountain” as “absolutely delightful.” "The writing is so good first of all. I’m a great admirer of Maurice Gee’s. And also it’s using Auckland in such a good way,” he says.
New Zealand writers are close to Leywood’s heart and he’s glad that over 90 per cent of the drama done on the national programme is written by New Zealanders. Locally written and produced drama has become “as good as anywhere else in the world,” he says.
The show was released on DVD (All Zones. Released: 2008. TV Standard: PAL. Rated: PG)
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