Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine (1977)

Genre

children's television series

Country

United States

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A computer programmer named Marlo Higgins secretly builds a talking movie machine in his basement. The machine shows short film clips while they exchange jokes and tips. The show mixes live action with these clips for a young audience.

quirkywhimsicalnostalgiclightheartedplayfuleducationalcharmingdated

What happens

Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine is a 1977-1980 children's television show originating from WFSB-TV in Hartford. The storyline involved Marlo Higgins (Laurie Faso) who is a mustachioed and frizzy-haired computer programming genius working for the L. Dullo computer company. He was banished to the "sub-sub-basement" by his boss, Leo Dullo. By day Marlo works for L. Dullo. At night he builds, programs, and interacts with his Magic Movie Machine (Mert Koplin, voice) built using L. Dullo hardware. The waveform from a real-time audio oscilloscope was displayed on the Magic Movie Machine's screen whenever it talked and it played short clips. The two (man and computer) traded tips and quips. Marlo sat at a console with a slight resemblance to master control consoles of the time. He would call up the various film clips featured on the show by entering codes using a numeric keypad with round, yellow number buttons and pressing an orange rectangular Start button to start the selected film. In earlier episodes, a split-flap display mounted on the console showed the code entered on the keypad. In later episodes, this was changed to an LED display, and the buttons were made to sound like the DTMF tones made by a touch-tone telephone as Marlo pressed them. Most of the time, Marlo used a small keypad consisting of two columns of buttons flanking a CRT, located in front of him when he was sitting at the console of the Magic Movie Machine. However, a similar but larger keypad located on the wall was sometimes used (see below). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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