Captain Kremmen (voiced by Kenny Everett) is commonly described as The World's Most Fabulous Man, being as he is a renowned athlete, genius, Concorde pilot and space explorer. The time has come to recognise his undeniable greatness, and thus he is invited to the United Galaxy Awards, or UG Awards for short, to receive his due, accompanied by his close colleagues Carla and Dr Gitfinger (also voiced by Everett). As the crowds rejoice and applaud, Kremmen is given a brand new spaceship to command, one which is essentially a giant brain - this will come in very handy.
British DJ and television personality Kenny Everett brought his science fiction spoof Captain Kremmen to the airwaves in the seventies, where it became a parody of such radio serials as Journey into Space and hugely popular for its wacky sense of humour and plentiful double entendres. When he started his Video Show on Thames TV, it was an obvious choice to bring the character to life via the medium of animation. Fast-growing British studio Cosgrove Hall was pressed into service to do so, and the Kremmen segments became one of the most popular parts of the programme with kids and adults alike.
Obviously the adults got more of the jokes than the children did, but such was Everett's wide appeal that even when you knew he was being naughty, that irreverent humour won you over. The Kremmen character had been given his own single release and one-off comic book by this time, so it was fair enough that he should also be offered his big screen debut in 1980, though this proved to be the last time he would be seen, possibly because the quality was judged to be lacking compared to the radio and TV outings. It was scripted by Everett's usual small screen writing partners Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer, but oddly seeing as how they had more running time to work with, the end result felt half-arsed.
It wasn't Cosgrove Hall who were on animation duties now, but Leeds' Norwood Studios, which was judged by the fans to be a cheap alternative, though to be fair they were only as good as the material they were given which in this case was something of a shadow of Kremmen's classic heights, as if by this stage nobody's heart was really in it. So although it resembled the character's adventures, it had to be said the laughs were thin on the ground, with the twenty-five minutes it took to unfold not half as effective as when Kremmen was a five minute episode, a fact the writers appeared to be aware of considering the amount of self-deprecating gags which littered the dialogue.
That plot was apparently taken from the Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine, with a giant, planet eating creature the main foe our hero had to combat, although if you squinted you could see a resemblance between this and the previous year's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, complete with psychedelic light show halfway through. Kremmen is given the mission to find out what has been devouring parts of the galaxy, but the tone can be summed up by the way it's more important that he meet his contact, Q (not the one from James Bond), for an excuse to tell a bunch of camp screaming homosexual jokes. Concentrating on the ribticklers was all very well, but while this was colourful and fast-paced, most of it was groanworthy or blatant rehashes of previous Kremmen instalments, or indeed both. That said, there was the novelty of Everett's personality to carry it to some extent, and as memorabilia this wasn't without interest; it was harmless enough.
