Bill Shatner's evil toupeed twin...

Bill Shatner, "Mirror, Mirror"-style, touches the toupee of his evil bearded twin (who has darker "hair"!). Story here and here. Is he trying to tear the thing off his evil twin's head?

Land of No Return - a toupological analysis.

"I'm a land...IT man!"

Land of No Return (aka Challenge to Survive, Snowman or Survival Elements) is an obscure 1978 movie that was filmed in 1975 but not released/broadcast until three years later.


The movie stars musician Mel Tormé as an animal trainer who crashes his light airplane while flying over a snow-covered mountain wilderness in Utah. Also along for the ride are an eagle and a wolf (called Caesar and Romulus).


Bill Shatner, in a curious "guest starring" role, plays Curt Benell, Tormé's business partner, who, after the authorities have given up searching for the lost pilot, funds the rescue effort out of his own pocket.


That's the plot - as for the story, there really isn't one. The movie focuses on Zak O'Brien's (Mel Tormé) struggle to survive, battling against the elements, whilst waiting to be rescued.


To make matters even more pointless, Tormé's character breaks one of the basic rules of survival and leaves the crash site (which is soon located by rescuers) and spends the rest of the movie wandering around aimlessly, while slowly freezing to death.


Where to begin? This movie is appalling - from every conceivable angle, Land of No Return truly stinks. Tormé's voice is (badly) dubbed over throughout (seemingly by another actor) enabling the insertion of bucket-loads of additional and highly extraneous dialogue, concealing the lack of lip movement by means of landscape cutaways etc. Yet, not even such drastic post-production surgery could save this project.


Add to that, O'Brien, all alone, talks not to his animals, but to himself, strangely telegraphing every thought and every action: "That cave over there...if I can just make it...could provide shelter...yes...need shelter." - this completely undermines the believability of the character's struggle and leaves the audience with nothing to deduce, nothing to feel and nothing to hope for (a kind of Deanna Troi syndrome) apart for this movie's quick conclusion.

"Must eat! Food good...needed to survive...if don't get....may lose energy..."

The direction is hopeless and amateurish, the music score stunningly inappropriate and the dialogue couldn't be worse if you just let the actor's ad lib. And if this farce wasn't bad enough, there are also entire lengthy scenes (padding out the movie) focusing on animals, for example a wolf encountering a porcupine...


...or a sub-plot about a lynx cub being taken from its mother...


There's also a jarring flashback to a movie set...


...and then there are the scenes with Bill Shatner, whose character is completely incidental. He, like all the other actors, seems to have no idea what he is supposed to be doing in this movie.


Shats is only in a few scenes and then, bizarrely, is seen no more. The actor's final scene (about a third of the way in) is the most odd: a portentous, overwrought, expository monologue that includes a weird puppy story (which Bill Shatner seems to just be ad-libbing) and is strangely similar in style to the actor's legendary performance of Rocket Man several years later. Watch below - one of the weirdest Bill Shatner moments you're ever likely to see - and wonder what the hell is going on!:

"Have you got any milk?"

Let's move swiftly to the hair.

Interestingly, the toupee again debuts before the actor:


Bill Shatner dons a hairstyle common for this particular period, the nadir of his "Lost Years" period. We also class this particular appearance as a "high hairline" moment, as we see a little more forehead than is common.


There's also a "Real Hair Reflex" at one point:




And that's about it. It's possible that Bill Shatner wrapped up his commitment to this movie in one shooting day, as his role really is very small. The actor likely forgot that he ever made this film in even less time. A mind-numbingly dreary mess. Land of No Return, which will almost certainly never be released again commercially, is available on VHS - it is also up on our new YouTube page.

In fine toupological company.

-"Are they writing about your ears again, Leonard?"

-"Err...not this time, Bill!"

Inspired by our previous post, reader "vvatima" decided to undertake some additional toupological research and managed to unearth a June 19th 1967 story from the New York Times entitled "Modern Men Discover Fountain of Youth in a Hairpiece".

The article, which looks at toupee-usage by Hollywood's leading men, notes that:

"...an estimated 10 to 20 percent of male performers [wear toupees], including John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Rex Harrison, Fred MacMurray, Bing Crosby, Sean Connery, Fred Astaire, Pat O'Brien, Henry Fonda, Gene Kelly, Rick Jason, Mel Ferrer, William Shatner, Carl Reiner, Barry Sullivan and Jack Paar." (emphasis ours)


What's interesting here is that 1967 was a period when Bill Shatner was becoming increasingly sensitive about the toupee, not just as part of his on-screen actor's persona, but off-screen behind-the-scenes too. So, the question is: how did the NYT confirm this information? Via a source? Via Bill Shatner?

Perhaps of even greater significance is that the article places Bill Shatner in the company of some of the biggest leading-men in Hollywood history, including Burt Lancaster, John Wayne, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Surely the shock of having one's "makeup secrets" revealed to the world would have been mitigated by the delight of being listed with such acting giants!

Click below for the full article:

And click on our "press report" tag for more early toupee reports, including one from a decade earlier.

UPDATE:

Reader "RM" points to a June 13 1992 story from The Morning Call:

"William Shatner and his wife/first mate Marcy Lafferty have beamed down to The Logan Tavern in New Hope to give a press conference announcing their performance of "Love Letters" at Bucks County Playhouse through tomorrow ..."

The article continues:

"Even if the 60-year-old former starship captain carries a hint of a paunch, he looks 20 years younger than his age. And Shatner, who was once the object of ridicule in gossip columns for wearing a girdle and a tribble-like toupee during his 'T.J. Hooker' days, showed up without his infamous hairpiece. And, surprise, he's not bald -- just a little thin on top."

The suggestion is that Bill Shatner attended a press conference of all things without wearing his toupee. Since this was a press conference, there will likely be pictures somewhere out there. However, we are somewhat skeptical - this would appear to be highly out of character for the actor, still very sensitive in the 1990s about his baldness.

Shatner, toupees and Google.

Google (formerly Touple) was created by the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies in the mid-1990s in order to help our toupologists utilize the Internet in their crucial quest to find more information about William Shatner's toupee. The search-engine was later sold-off and now assists users all over the world with finding all kinds of information (much of which has very little to do with Bill Shatner's toupee). One feature of the current Google is called "suggest" - as one types, the search-engine prompts the user as to what they may potentially be searching for.

The "suggest" feature is based on the number of previous users that have searched for a particular set of terms. Interestingly, if one types "does Shatner..." - the number one suggest is "does Shatner wear a toupee?"

And if one types "is Shatner..." - the number one suggest comes up as "is Shatner bald?". This seemingly confirms our suspicions that there are far more amateur toupologists out there than official estimates suggest.


Despite Google now being entirely independent of the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies, our close co-operation continues. For example, the company has pledged to scan each and every book and magazine in the world, in an ongoing project, in the hope of locating all references and information that has ever been printed about William Shatner's toupee.

Thus, a search of Google's news archives can show the number of articles that have been published (and located) each year that contain the terms "Shatner" and "hairpiece" (above) and "Shatner" and "toupee" (below).


As to why certain dates show a peak in interest in Bill Shatner's toupees (for example 1991 - the year that Star Trek VI was released - and 1997), or what about those tantalizing early entries form the 1960s? (perhaps false positives, or perhaps not...) our toupologists are hard at work processing the data...

Incubus - a toupological analysis.

Incubus is a somewhat legendary 1965 feature-film starring Bill Shatner that is performed entirely in the Esperanto language.

Here's the plot: A village with a magical well that can heal those who are sick or have corrupted souls entices all manner of folks from afar.


However, succubi (female incubi) entice these wretches before they can be healed and murder them, the intention being to offer their souls to the forces of darkness.


But one of these succubi (Kia, played by Allyson Ames) grows bored with only capturing already tainted visitors, and deciding on a greater challenge, sets out to entice a pure soul instead. That pure soul is played by Bill Shatner, an injured and pious soldier Marc, who lives in a hut with his sister Arndis. Kia sets about seducing him, hoping to lure this good man to turn towards evil - but his goodness is so strong, will she fall in love with him instead? And what will her satanic brethren have to say about that?


The above plot may sound somewhat convoluted, but it actually plays out in a remarkably simple way.


The movie presents and explores numerous grand mythological themes: good, evil and the power of both (much like the classic Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within"), religion, purity and perceptions of man and woman. Indeed, there are a myriad of subtexts and quasi-religious ideas at play here that viewers can explore at their leisure. Naturally, the movie is most definitely of the "Arthouse" variety.


But the question that most of you that haven't seen this movie are probably asking is this: is the movie actually any good? "Shatner" and "Esperanto" carry certain preconceptions as to what one might expect. In this case, we too were cautious - and even apprehensive. Would Incubus just be a silly exercise; something to poke fun at? Was the movie more of a curiosity and less of a genuine dramatic experience? Was it pretentious? Surprisingly, for us the answer to all these questions was a decisive no. We thoroughly enjoyed Incubus, and found it genuinely engrossing and even quite moving.

Actress Ann Atmar as Arndis - Incubus often feels like a silent movie, only with sound.

There is a scene in which a solar eclipse plays out in real time that we thought was particularly original.


For any English-speaker who has watched a subtitled foreign movie, the point is surely that it doesn't matter if it is in Swedish, French or Japanese. What one cares about is the intonation of the voices one hears - with the meaning of the words conveyed through the subtitles. That being the case, the fact that Incubus is in Esperanto is entirely irrelevant.


One can question the decision to make the movie in a language that virtually guaranteed commercial failure (shockingly, Incubus was thought to have been essentially lost - the original print destroyed in a fire - until a copy with French subtitles was located decades later, see here), but that is a different matter entirely. Controversies over the artificiality of Esperanto accents can only possibly alienate the world's true Esperanto speakers - amusingly: "...because Shattner [sic] made his own pronunciation up, he believes that he may have influenced the way the language is now spoken worldwide." sourced here.

The movie feels particularly European, despite actually having been shot in California.


We must also single out and applaud the exquisite black & white cinematography by Conrad Hall. This, coupled with experimental direction by Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens and wonderfully theatrical performances by both Shatner and Ames, combines to create the kind of cinematic experience that underlines just how operatic movies can stimulate both our senses and our hearts, minds and souls.

Echoes of the styles of Ingmar Bergman (Incubus is in many ways remarkably similar to 1957's The Seventh Seal) or Orson Welles movies are inescapable.



Bill Shatner is heavily directed here - very few traces of the familiar Shatner-isms. With extra credit given to the fact that he is speaking in a language he doesn't understand, we thought that the actor's performance in this movie was very strong - perhaps the greatest "leading man" opportunity the actor has ever had. The final scenes of Incubus, in which (in true operatic style) the power of good defeats the forces of evil show a particularly dynamic performance by Bill Shatner.


This is the kind of art movie about which entire theses could be (and possibly have been) written, analyzing themes, exploring philosophical implications, breaking down editing choices etc. To think that this movie was almost lost forever...shocking.


Now, to the hair...

It's the frontal "swoosh" of Bill Shatner's "Jim Kirk lace" that is particularly noteworthy here, almost constantly flailing about in the wind.


And as we've noted before, there's a very slightly higher hairline for the lace here than was usual during this period.


Also briefly visible at the rear base of the head is a small patch of baldness which Bill Shatner has had (judging from this) for quite some time (we've analyzed it before here and here). Evidently, this was normally concealed with simple combing. This is likely not connected to pattern baldness, but rather a scar of some sort.


Incubus is available on a special edition DVD, with a commentary by Bill Shatner. The movie is also, at present, up on YouTube (albeit in an incorrectly uploaded aspect ratio).


We don't hesitate to recommend this movie to those who haven't seen it - watch it in as close to theater-like conditions as you can create - you may be very pleasantly surprised.