Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was a 1983 television movie. It was produced by Canada’s RSL Productions in Toronto. Financing was provided by WNET/PBS New Jersey, which had hoped to create an entire science fiction series adapting famous works, but due to lack of funding this was the last of three such productions, the other two being The Lathe of Heaven and Between Time and Timbuktu.
The script was based on a 1976 John Varley short story. The prod...
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Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was a 1983 television movie. It was produced by Canada’s RSL Productions in Toronto. Financing was provided by WNET/PBS New Jersey, which had hoped to create an entire science fiction series adapting famous works, but due to lack of funding this was the last of three such productions, the other two being The Lathe of Heaven and Between Time and Timbuktu.
The script was based on a 1976 John Varley short story. The production was not a critical success and was satirized by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) in 1997, complete with a spoof of a public television pledge drive.
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was not shot on film, but rather was videotaped, with extensive use of chroma key and blue screen special effects. Pixelation artifacts are clearly visible in many of the effects.
In a future dystopia, Aram Fingal (Raul Julia) is a lowly programmer working for Novicorp. Arts are prohibited and he is caught watching the classic film Casablanca (“scrolling up...
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