Film Journal Podcast
George (Film Journal) and Ryan (Cinecrisis) dig through film history one oddball pick at a time—hopping from cult horror to forgotten blockbusters, art house to trash fire (sometimes in the same episode). Whether it’s dissecting Hammer Horror, roasting the latest Studio Flop, or revisiting 70's exploration fare- they bring sharp takes, deep trivia, and the kind of banter only good pals can pull off!
No film school snobbery. No hot take clickbait. Just smart, funny conversations for people who like movies and think they actually matter.
Film Journal Podcast
The Forgotten Superheroes: Exploring TV's 70s and 80s Masked Crusaders
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Introduction to Retro Superheroes
Speaker 1I'm doing really well. Thank you, this is gonna be a fun episode. Thanks everyone, uh, for tuning in or watching afterwards. Uh, we have a show that I think is kind of unique, which is a topic I've wanted to talk about for a long time. Um, we're gonna be talking about retro superheroes of the 70s and 80s, but just first, uh, let's get you know a little house, uh, house cleaning out of the way. Uh, how you doing what's new?
Speaker 2not much. Um, I've been working through a lot of movies lately. Nothing going on, all too crazy.
Speaker 1Have you watched the Manitou yet?
Speaker 2I just got it in the mail today. I didn't expect it.
Speaker 1I didn't know you were going to shell out the cash for the Blu-ray. I apologize.
Speaker 2Of course it looks amazing In advance yeah. I saw Tony Curtis, michael Ansara, and then I didn't even realize Burgess Meredith was in it too, Michael Ansara, and then I didn't even realize.
Speaker 1Burgess Meredith was in it too. It's like oh, oh yeah, he was kind of an unspoken all-star of 70s horror, like he was in the sentinel, he's in burnt offerings, he's in that. Anything else you can think of?
Speaker 2uh, no, I mean, I largely remember him, obviously for the Rocky movies, but yeah, as the penguin uh.
Speaker 1So today we're gonna be talking about um sort of the nascent stages of what we've been living through for the past 20 years, which is like a superhero craze. You see that, what was that? We both scratched our heads at the same time. Oh, like in unison, I noticed that, sorry, a superhero craze which has been, it's just been pervasive. It might be on the downturn now. It might be coming to an end, but this is sort of the place where it all started, which was in television. So today we'll be talking about four sort of television properties tv movies, amalgamations of the of the four, um wonder woman, the warner brothers television series.
Speaker 1Uh, from 76 to 78 it ran 79 believe so three years and then we'll be talking about the Incredible Hulk, the famous Bill Dixby show, and then we'll be talking about two sort of unloved ugly ducklings, which are the Spider-Man 1977 television series and the Captain America duology of television films. I think we decided to start with Wonder Woman, but can I ask you, ryan, what's your overall idea of why we even did this? Like, why bother you know? What do you overall? What are people in for here with the show?
Speaker 2television, which is that mid to late 70s into the early 80s. That's like a definitely a peak of a TV. Especially the TV movie was really hitting it big at that time and all of these do qualify as TV movies. The idea of the pilot the 90 minute, two hour pilot was a big thing back then for getting your TV show off the ground. And a lot of times things would start as a TV movie. They'd test the waters. How does it respond with the audience? Does it get a good rating? Does it mesh well? And then that would go on to bigger and better success or it would nip it in the bud, as we've seen. And these are all examples of both going both ways here, with great success for a show that went on for many years you had mild success and then you had total failure. So we'll see the entire spectrum represented here.
Speaker 2But I think you know the worldwide fascination with superheroes I mean goes back to the dawn of the. You know medium's existence and media adaptation of comic book superheroes has been around as long as the comic book superhero has been around more or less. I mean you go back to the 1940s. You can find Republic and Columbia serials that were made for Superman, batmanman, captain america, and more so the you know the other comic strip characters, but I see, yeah, dick tracy the phantom, uh, flash gordon, um, and those are.
Speaker 2You know, I consider those along the same lines with the comic book characters. Like they're they're the proto superheroes, a lot of them. They're sometimes they're not super powered, but they have the same general characteristics and were definitely inspiration for some of the later comic book characters. I mean the shadow you can trace the influence of Batman into that, among many other characters. But there was definitely a boom at this time of superhero content on tv, and it all seemed very directed at one network in particular. Cbs was like the superhero network. It was the cw of the 1970s here. Um, and so much to the point where they they felt they were getting stigmatized and they had to get rid of some of these shows. So it's just fascinating that they tried. They realized they did not have the capabilities to do these shows properly. They tried, though they gave it their best shot, and sometimes they blew their entire budget with one facet or the other and the rest was left in shambles.
Speaker 1Well, they were ahead of their time in a way that they understood that there was magic to be made out of these superhero comic books. Um, you're right, they weren't able to always do them properly, unless they found the right angle to approach it from. Rather than just doing a straight-up adaption, which I think you'll see in wonder woman and the incredible hulk, the two series that were actually successful, I just think we decided to talk about Wonder Woman first, and that was the one that I had sort of dragged my feet on watching. Of course, I knew what the Wonder Woman show was. I'd never been super interested in it because I've never been a big DC guy, but I watched the pilot, which was a TV movie.
Speaker 1And also the TV movie gives you as a studio, as a television network and out to say it wasn't a flop. We had a great movie. You know now, it's just a movie, that's all it was. You know we didn't intend for it to go to series, right, you get a little sort of a backdoor out, um, if something is a failure. But, um, wonder Woman, uh, was excellent. I thought the Wonder Woman pilot was really good. Is the rest of the show on par with the quality. Uh, you see in the pilot.
Speaker 2At least the first two years. Yes, the third year is very different because it switches to modern times and, as most shows do, as they drag on, it loses a lot of that luster and wonder. But the first year is pretty spectacular, and the second year is, like you know, pretty on par with that. The pilot, though, is stands out as a, like a gem of these.
Speaker 1This is definitely, absolutely. This was my favorite one.
Speaker 2This was my favorite of the lot we're going to be talking about tonight you're so right, it is the best like.
Speaker 1Clearly, without a doubt, it actually has um cinematography, which I think some of these lack. There's wonderful lighting and shadow in all of the sets. There's great little lighting tricks, like when they think Steve Trevor is dead and they take a toast drink to his legacy and they turn to his empty desk chair and like a little like halo-ish light comes around it. The movie, the Wonder Woman show, is incredibly aware of itself. The only thing I could compare it to, I think, is maybe Barbie, which is a movie that's also hyper aware of what it is and what it's doing and what the character means in the culture and how to approach it. You know what I'm saying. Or it's hyper aware of like okay, we're doing the Wonder Woman show, let's ham it up. The intro is spectacular. That's sort of like roy lichtenstein comic book pop art. It was really fun how the show just embraced the comic book roots to kind of give you an idea of like hey, we're in on it, but they don't.
Speaker 1Wonder woman is never a joke, right it's. Uh, everyone around her is funny and goofy and it's a. It's a comedy, right? There's a great joke I remember in there with the Nazis, where they say you know, oh, the plan didn't work out. We interrogated everybody, they all confessed. I mean just little fun bits there, I mean it really was. How about?
Speaker 2the Nazi grandma who goes to a shooter.
Speaker 1Yeah Exhibition there. The nazi grandma who goes to uh shoot a gun at the yes exhibition there and that, by the way, special effects, fight scenes almost leaps and bounds ahead of anything else we're going to talk about tonight. Uh, yes, very much the, the bullet training. I also really I couldn't believe the the money that they spent on what is amazon island or what do they call it, paradise paradise, okay, paradise island the traditional name uh up until I don't know when, but probably I would say the mid-80s, when they did the george perez uh revamp after crisis.
Speaker 2That's probably when it changed. I could be wrong, someone could cite me wrong, but that's when they changed it to them iskira right, I remember that from the wonder woman the movie.
Speaker 1But, to be totally honest, the movie we got in 2013 or whenever is basically just a remake of this pilot episode. Yeah, to some extent, I mean, they really stick close to the comics and they they're able to be a sort of feminist show while also being humorous about it yes, and then we get sort of like double standard behavior and cattiness and a little bit of bitchiness from like her mom on like the female island.
Speaker 1Right, it's very tongue-in-cheek. I love that. I thought it was spectacular and look beautiful. I don't know if that's just because it's been remastered on hbo max. I don't know if you remastered spider-man 77, if it would look good too. I doubt it.
Speaker 2Um cap hasn't been remastered at all either. Oh, god.
Speaker 1No, that's a vhs garbage transfer dvd. It's. It's terrible. But, like, I think about that shot that I was watching when I was watching the return of the incredible hulk, and there's a scene where there's two guys playing racquetball and they're just in a. They're in a racquetball courtroom which is, like you know, white room. Uh, they filmed a scene in a in a similar location to the movie outland. They happen to make it 10 times more interesting. They just film these two guys talking to each other, shot reverse shot in a white background. Yeah, I'm like what are you thinking? This is terrible, right? Wonder woman looks sumptuous. It's spectacular.
Speaker 2I really enjoyed it I like this a lot and, uh, I haven't watched this show in a while. I watched almost the entire run of it several, several years back and it was really a lot of fun to revisit this. I will say why it works. Besides all the things you mentioned, which is spot on, accuracy to the source material is a huge um boon to this, to this movie, um, not just um representing the origin accurately, which it does, and it's the more classical origin which has been thrown out in recent years, like, yes, it's the more or less the same in that steve trevor uh crash lands on paradise island, he's rescued by the am, the amazons and and Diana escorts him back to man's world. But a lot of the in-between has been changed and altered in kind of ways that I don't really see why They've totally gotten rid of the contest, which is, I think, a really fun and interesting aspect to it which is where Demonstrate her powers.
Speaker 2Yeah, but it's also, you know, hippolyta. Diana's mother tells her you are not to participate in the contest because you're my daughter. I do not want you to embark on this dangerous journey. I would rather we're going to get the best Amazon to send him back. And yeah, you probably are the best Amazon, but I know that's why I don't want you to participate. She goes against her mother's wishes, she disguises herself, she proves herself to be the best among the entire population, without any hint of, you know, favoritism or nepotism. It's, she earns that, and in the new one, if I recall correctly and this is what it's been in the comics, I believe so also is that she just steals the equipment and says you know, to hell with this. I'm going to take the equipment and take him back to man's world.
Speaker 1Oh, she doesn't need approval from anybody, you know she doesn't earn it she doesn't win it.
Speaker 2She just says I'm going, I'm the best, and it's like, but like. This is to show you are.
Speaker 1It reminded me a lot of Barbie in that you are able to say something about the sexes. When you show a specific strange science fiction world in which women are cloistered away and then you see the entrance of a man, it's almost like how they the ken barbie relationship within, like the magical world of barbie in that barbie film. Have you seen that yet?
Speaker 1I have not seen the barbie movie okay, that was just my thinking, like it's. It's a great way to use science fiction and fantasy to comment on the sexes, right, because she makes that comment about how well I just. I felt things I never have before when I first saw steve trevor, the very attractive. Now who's the actor? You probably know who lyle wagoner. What is he? What's his deal?
Speaker 2um his I liked him filmography. I don't recall what else he's been in all I remember from the rest of him. Is he? Either he or his family formed the company that does like the trailers or wagons that actors use. They call them like star wagons. I remember seeing those, is that?
Speaker 1right.
Speaker 2Yeah, and they're like why are they called star wagons? Not just because it's a wagon, but it's Waggoner.
Speaker 1No way, he's fun, he, he's a good sport.
Wonder Woman: The Golden Standard
Speaker 2Yes For being basically the damsel in distress, totally.
Speaker 1And yes for being basically the damsel in distress, totally yes, and it's, it's totally fun, it's, yeah, it's a great recipe, you know and then you have linda carter, who obviously is, um, incredibly, incredibly beautiful, right, yes, but I I wasn't prepared for how fun she was going to be and likable, um. You get all those great moments with the superhero, which is something that a show like Spider-Man should have been able to do, but totally fell on its face to where you have her interacting with the police or with the shopkeeper and she's totally a fish out of water and everyone's reacting to her. It all works like crazy. You could have just ported that script over to the, the new film, and it would have worked totally fine and they did some of that.
Speaker 2They did some of that in the the new movie definitely. Yeah, they did walking around london, but it's it's more fun here for whatever reason incredibly fun, although I have to say gal gadot is a very, very good wonder woman. I'm a very I'm a big fan of her work on the character, but there's something very special about linda carter and her portrayal here.
Speaker 2There's a, there's an like, a sort of like a naivete, a little bit of an innocence there, but like a very strong, strong woman but not afraid to let know her sensitive side show either.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I don't want to. She has almost like a. You know there's been a lot of discussion about I can't remember what exactly what's called. There's some sort of fat that certain women have in their faces that like sort of a cherubic like look, and a lot of women actresses in Hollywood are getting this removed so they can have like an incredibly sharp like, um, cheekbones. Yeah, she doesn't do that. It's very appealing and cute. Courtney says uh oh uh, that wagoner guested a lot on the carol burnett show. Did you know that?
Speaker 1oh, I did not know that along with art, carney and uh, who else would it be? Arthur and all those other guys he probably was on every every.
Speaker 2You know a lot of many other.
Speaker 1Hollywood squares Right. But no, she's very beautiful, she's, she's incredibly enjoyable, likable presence. What was the legacy of the show? I mean, after we watched the pilot, you know this. This show was important.
Speaker 2Well it was, but like many other things, it kind of fizzled out by the end of the series run and wonder woman was never seen again in live action until batman v superman, which is kind of fascinating.
Speaker 2Um, it kind of just went away. It was a, it was kind of like a fad that died out pretty fast. I mean, obviously she was in prominent in animation for all the time in between. Super Friends was around and then Justice League, but she never really got her due again until she came back in the movies. I do think it's interesting to note that there was before this. We almost didn't get this version of the Wonder Woman story. We almost got a very different movie. One year before this movie premiered on ABC, there was another Wonder Woman TV pilot that came and went and was a total flop and that starred tennis star Kathy Lee Crosby, and what this was was the exact opposite. Oh, I think we lost George, but what this Kathy Lee Crosby Wonder Woman pilot movie was was the exact opposite of the Linda Carter show. What it's, what this means, is that in the late 1960s are you back? Yeah, sorry. So it's okay, you're still using the wifi.
Speaker 1I know you can do it. No, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2So it's okay, you're still using the Wi-Fi. I knew you could do it. No, I got a new modem today too.
Speaker 1They're just absolutely pounding me. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2So I was saying there was a TV movie in 1974 with Kathy Lee Crosby that was inspired by the late 60s comic book version of Wonder Woman. Are you familiar with that? No-transcript. That's what they called it the I Ching. Is that what they referred to? The outfit as I Ching, I believe, was one of the characters in the book. If I recall, it was like her mentor, her martial arts mentor. I could be wrong. I could be misremembering this.
Speaker 1The I Ching is like a Chinese game of chance. It's almost like tarot cards for Chinese people. It's in the man in the High Castle book.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1I believe that was the name of her mentor, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 2I haven't read those in a long time because they're horrible.
Speaker 1But I know she had that like sort of like mod squad. I don't need to wear that sexist unitard you know swimsuit anymore, I've got my.
Speaker 2She wore like a pantsuit, yeah, like a white pants suit. The costume in the movie is a little bit different. It kind of reminds me of the first Captain America outfit in his movie, sort of in that style. But anyway, that was a flop.
Speaker 2Surprisingly, they said let's try again and let's do something totally different. Let's stay true to the source material, let's make it a little tongue in cheek. So that's what I really appreciate is the tone here, and I'm usually you know, if you ever hear my commentary about modern superhero movies I'm very against like the jokiness and the comedic aspect of a lot of these things. But I think you can find the right balance, which is if you're being kind of campy, tongue in cheek, but you're not making fun of the material, you're kind of just expressing about how kind of silly and and bizarre all of this is, which it is. You know there's no, there's no way to get around that. But if you treat the main character and the actual story seriously and kind of have silly events happen around it and certain characters who are allowed to act silly, it really works and that's that's what we're, that's what we see here.
Speaker 1Well, we have modern superhero films that aspire to be like dramas, or they at least present themselves that way that they want you to. There are moments where they want you to be sad or feel like there are stakes, but then they undercut their own world building with these little goofy jokes. There's no reason for a show to call attention to itself as a comic book anymore. Everyone's so used to the idea of comic books being so much so that I mean guardians of the galaxy was sold on just the fact that it had a Marvel logo over it. Nobody knows the guardians of the galaxy comic book, but no, this is. I was surprised to in reading about the history that they gave it a second shot. That was surprising to me that they knew that they had something there, but that the overtly Ms Magazine sort of Wonder Woman was not going to cut it. No Right, that was cool.
Speaker 2So and it's got everything. I mean, even the invisible jet is in here, which is crazy when you think about it. Did they even do that in? I know they didn't do it in the first movie, but was that in the Wonder Woman 1984? I can, they didn't do it in the first movie, but was that in the wonder woman 1984?
Speaker 1I?
Speaker 2can't even remember that one. I don't think it was, but I, I I'm a little lost on that uh, I remember really enjoying the wonder woman film, though with uh gail godot I like the first one. Yeah, yeah, I did, I really did yeah, I didn't see the second one. You really didn't see winter one 1984. No, I you know the word on, it was so bad and I just, I just didn't, I just didn't see the second one you really didn't see, winter one 1984.
Speaker 1No, I you know the word on. It was so bad and I just I just didn't, I just didn't see it.
Speaker 2I'm sorry it's not that bad but it's not that great either, which is surprising that Jeff Johns co-wrote the screenplay for that, since he's like the DC, like guru, but that's another story story guy. That is cool. He's like one of the best comic book writers of the modern era. In my opinion. Like got it. Um, I was gonna say also the pilot. This this movie was written by this guy named stanley ralph ross. This guy wrote a lot of the 1960s adam west batman show. So if you notice a stylistic connection, there you go absolutely there.
Speaker 1There is, but it's, it's, it's, uh. And you know what those old batmans to hear everyone talk shit about that is just crazy, because they're great, they are, they're great and they are.
Speaker 2They are an accurate representation of batman comics of that era absolutely there's no denying that you can't get around that. If you don't like it, that's your problem.
Speaker 1I mean, it's just the reality of the situation hold on just one second before we move on here, right? I uh, meant to grab a prop. Did you ever read, uh, this book?
Speaker 2oh, yes, I have that book.
Speaker 1Yep, yeah, yeah this is a really intriguing book. I think anyone that is enjoying this show would like it. It's the Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore and it talks a lot about William Moulton Markton, who purportedly invented the lie detector test. Yes, though that can be a little apocryphal, it's sort of like film to, where there were like many adventures at once but he had sort of like a weird home life, right.
Speaker 2Oh, that's putting it mildly.
Speaker 1Yeah, can you speak to this?
Speaker 2Well, I was going to say that book was interesting, but it's a little much. It's a little much in the weeds, I think. If you want to get a more concise view of this, there's a movie actually. It's called Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. It came out around the same time as the Wonder Woman movie and that kind of gives him a biographical film. And, yeah, his home life, when you speak of it, was a little complicated. He basically lived in a threesome for most of his life. He had a wife and a mistress.
Speaker 1He was the original. What do they call that now?
Speaker 2Bigamist.
Speaker 1No, there's like a cool silicon valley word for it now, because that guy uh who ripped everybody off uh oh sam, whatever angman freed, yeah yes, he, he was living in one of these things too.
Speaker 2They called it like a uh polyamorous or polyamorous group or something like that.
Speaker 1Um this guy was way ahead of the curve on that. He had like a wife and then he had like two sort of like a cousin or something like that. Um, this guy was way ahead of the curve on that. He had like a wife and then he had like two sort of like a cousin or something that lived with them and uh, it was a weird, it was a weird situation all around. But but he did have the girls that, uh, they wore metal bracelets akin to wonderland around all the time, right and um, well, there's been a lot of speculation.
Speaker 2Yeah, he was into.
Speaker 1Yeah there's been a lot of speculation on his sex life, because it is shocking to go back through some of those old Wonder Woman comic books and see how many times she's tied up with her own lasso Right, obviously, lasso of truth. This is a guy who is is very interested in that, having been the inventor of the lie detector test. Does everybody know this already? Is this old hat stuff, but it was interesting to read.
Speaker 1You know, um, it was cool and it was also sort of an interesting you know, what a sort of proto-feminist he was um, which is, yeah, very interesting very much yeah, the that old hat stuff about how all of the women ran everything, there'd be no war and everything would be great. Yeah, yeah, good owner says thruple there you go.
Speaker 2I really. That's why I really do like dc more than marvel and it's not the popular opinion, but part of the reason is that all the characters feel kind of incongruent together because they're all created by very different people at very different times. The marvel universe does feel like a cohesive, cohesive whole more so the characters were all created relatively around the same time by the same small group of people. I think it lends itself more to kind of having these weird dynamics when you have characters like wonder woman interacting with Superman and Batman that are don't belong in the same world together.
Speaker 1They really don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2To me that just kind of leads it into more interesting possibilities, but that's my opinion Marvel has the X-Men, who really don't belong.
Speaker 3Yes, in my opinion.
Speaker 1I mean they should be their own thing probably.
Speaker 2But it's more interesting for me at least when they throw the X-Men into these situations with all the other characters because they don't belong, and Secret Wars is a good example of that, where they kind of section themselves off but they're still involved.
Speaker 1My issue with the X-Men I think just from a thousandth of a few perspective is that they're not congruous with the world, because the major thrust of the idea of the X-Men is that everyone is racist towards them because they're mutants. But why do they only hate the X-Men? Just because they're born with their powers? They love everybody else Except Spider-Man.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's one of the big problems. That's never been really elucidated as to why people are totally okay with people that were mutated in horrible experiments, versus you're just born with that power.
Speaker 1Yeah, then you're the worst. Yeah, yeah, that you're, then you're the worst.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't that. That never made sense to me. It always made sense for me for the X-Men to be cloistered in kind of their own universe, where that was the case.
Speaker 2But that's my, my Captain America mug here you know dude sipping.
Speaker 1We're going to get to Captain America later. I think we're going to hop into you. Everything else to say about Wonder Woman Big ups for me, very positive. Watching this last I was like wow.
Speaker 2Some of the interesting guest star choices. Oh sure, as Hippolyta Diana's mom. Kind of weird to see her in a dramatic performance. Usually think of her in straight up comedy, as as uh um, mary tyler moore show as the uh nosy landlord. Uh, phyllis phyllis lindstrom right right and uh, let's see who else.
Speaker 2Oh uh, was it red buttons like red buttons, yeah like totally weird that he's in this the show as this kind of shyster, uh nazi that uh tries to get rid of wonder woman in like a very capitalistic way, which is like let's sign her up for the circus and take her on the road and have her perform all over the country, and then she won't. She won't be in our way and let's make money.
Speaker 1They packed a lot of entertainment there at about an hour, didn't they? Oh yeah yeah, it's a great. It's a great show and it looks spectacular and the sets are great and the costumes are great. Everyone looks beautiful. Uh, I don't think you can say the same for spider-man 1977. This is a cheap, cheap deal.
Speaker 2I don't think it is cheap, I think it's actually really I think they they spent a lot of money on spider-man. From what I've read, is that correct?
Spider-Man: The Missed Opportunity
Speaker 1well, I can see how they did with this. Okay, so I I don't want to be totally down spider-man right out of the gate.
Speaker 2Um oh, oh, wait, wait before, uh, we're gonna do I wanted to do like a grading thing as we went along like, oh sure, we talked about like how to grade these like two different ways. One would be as a film, as a work of television entertainment. How do you rate it? Uh, you could I don't know if you want to do like A through F or what and then I would do like how does it correspond to like the comic book source material? So for Wonder Woman, I would actually give an A and an A for both of those.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think you're exactly correct, and if someone were to ask you give me an example of a superhero television, you would offer this one up.
Speaker 2Yes, this and I would Hulk. Hulk is a different animal and we'll get there very much.
Speaker 1So, um so, spider-man, this was a show. No, what, from what I understand, um cbs, which, uh, columbia was the feeder for cbs, correct? Were they the ones that produced all the shows? For how did that work? How did all that work with television? Did every, did every studio make shows and then just channels bid on them, or what was that?
Speaker 2yeah, usually that's that was the case is that, uh, each different studio would make their own programs and then they would shop them to the networks and, uh, so, universal wonder brothers, columbia, uh, and independent studios would all shop these around.
Speaker 1So there, was no like, not like it is today where?
Speaker 2because nowadays the networks are owned by the major studios, so they want to show their network, their shows on their network, to kind of like maximize profits that's why star wars is always on ESPN, because it's a Disney thing. Star Wars on ESPN.
Speaker 1Always, they always are playing the Imperial March. They license it to the colleges, they have Chewbacca at the NBA game and they go oh, chewbacca's here, don't forget to go see Last Rise of Skywalker, jedi Right. I was going to say, though, about Spider-Man, from what I heard from Kenny Johnson. I listened to a lot of interviews with Kenny Johnson, who was the producer of the Incredible Hulk show, and he talked about how Columbia was able to buy I think it was about seven or eight properties from Marvel for 12,000 bucks. They bought Spider-Man, doctor Strange, iron man, the Hulk, captain America and a few others, human torch, some of the things that they never produced and they sort of um offered him around to him as a grab bag. Now, spider-man beat the hulk by a few months, correct?
Speaker 2yes, spider-man was on september 14 1977 and Hulk was. I have the date listed here November 4th 1977.
Speaker 1And what a what a difference in what we got now with the Spider-Man I was. I found myself smiling at certain moments that I thought were had some fealty to the comics when he takes pictures of himself as Spider-Man. To give the J Jonah Jameson, I really enjoyed that. His costume I didn't think was terrible, I was, I mean, like there's some wonkiness with the mask.
Speaker 2but I was surprised, to be honest, yeah, yeah, it looks fine and I like that.
Speaker 1They kept fealty to the um design of the comics. They could have gone a totally different direction right and I appreciated from what I saw now. I think that shot awkwardly sometimes where he just get Spider-Man like running around, like he'll just be like running and it looks bad. But it looked to me like Nicholas Hammond was in the costume as much as possible because he was bringing some of that energy that he had as Peter Parker to that role. If I could compare him to any of our modern superheroes, he's the most like Andrew Garfield. He has this, would you agree?
Speaker 2Hmm, um, he has this, would you agree? Hmm, that's an interesting. You would disagree, okay? I just think, oh, you continue, and then I'll say what I how I view him, as he doesn't.
Speaker 1He doesn't play spider-man as like a mopey guy or someone who's always down his luck. He's just sort of like this lovable goofball. I have a clip here that I'm going to play of an example of uh, oh, I guess I don't um, I thought I did. Sorry, but I had. I had what I thought was a was a clip, um of of peter parker, uh, talking, because he has this very sort of like manic delivery, I feel, and he has almost like um, how would you describe him?
Speaker 2go for it, please my main criticism of his performance and maybe it's not really his performance, it's the way the character is written is that he's very uninteresting, disconnected, kind of like. He's kind of a bore. He doesn't really do much or contribute much to his own kind of personality. He kind of lacks a personality in my opinion kind of personality. He kind of lacks a personality in my opinion.
Speaker 2Um, visually, when you were saying I don't know if you meant this, if you meant this in a visual um way, that if he resembled or felt like andrew garfield, but I felt that he resembled more of what I considered like that, that late 70s john ramita, bronze age, spider-man kind of a little bit more, a little bit more developed. I certainly, certainly with being older um, it's not quite toby mcguire, but toby mcguire filled that same kind of um notion of what the character stood for at that time period. Um, but if you look at like the um early 80s spider-man cartoons as well, they kind of have the same vibe going on about how the character looks. He kind of looks like him, like nicholas hammond in the show in my opinion he's not a total total, like like you could buy that he's cool.
Speaker 1He's cool like yeah, yeah, he's like, he's a cool spider-man like he's.
Speaker 2A cool peter parker like he's not like a like you know, like he's, he's dressed well. He's not a nerd, he's not, like you know, uh uh, tripping over himself, but he's, you know, he's like a cool guy, you know yeah, exactly I.
Speaker 1I think that's correct. He's like a cool nerd. He would have been like a 70s hipster maybe, uh, but uh, no, I I enjoyed it. Sorry, I'm trying. I wish I had these video clips. It's telling me they can't play them on here. That's really a bummer, because these were fun. I wanted to show an example of the special effects of the television show which you could, which go ahead.
Speaker 2No, the special effects and I think this is where the money aspect comes in is that they blew most of their money. I think, doing these stunts which they had no other way to do but to do practical stunts. And uh, you know, there's, for all intents and purposes of what we're talking about, which is a television film from 1977, the wall crawling up the building, the jumping between the buildings. It's pretty passable. It's not great, um, it's certainly not good by what we consider standards today.
Speaker 1But for this it's, it looks okay I mean you can tell a guy is like miming climbing, even though they're like pulling him up on a rope. They're like get up here and he's like oh, you know.
Speaker 2I guess the argument is is like should you even have done the show at all? But you know they're, they're given at the good shot.
Speaker 1Um yeah, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm experimenting with this and I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2The web aspect is totally strange. He shoots out a web and a net comes out, which is, which they do very sparingly.
Speaker 1I mean, he makes kind of a rope, but it's like is he shooting a rope? It's like you know deal.
Speaker 2I think he made a rope on the flagpole which they reuse. That shot At least.
Speaker 1I was actually because the other show is they spider-man needs to. First of all, the thing I didn't like about the show is that we talked about the trailer, about the uh pilot. Um, they layer on too much stuff for one man to take in the first episode, which is, uh, something the incredible hulk really stayed away from doing, which is that on the Incredible Hulk show they knew that the idea of a guy turning into a green monster was already a lot to accept, so they wouldn't layer that on with there being an alien bad guy, whereas in the first Spider-Man show the plot is that there's somebody hypnotizing people to rob banks and then crash their cars into a wall, and then there's this whole subplot of people being hypnotized by radiation or something, and then the lead bad guy, who's like this sort of cult dude, has three kung fu guys as his like henchmen. They're not related to anything, he just has like three guys like they're like hey, what's cool? Kung fu is cool.
Speaker 2Bring in these guys from shaw brother studio to come fight spider-man and they're hypnotized too, because at the end they're he's like, hey, and let's take a selfie. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're right, he does do that.
Speaker 2He does. He takes a selfie with them at the end.
Speaker 1Absolutely. He sells it for big bucks to Darren's boss from the Witch.
Speaker 2Yes, I was going to say oh good, catch, you noticed that, huh.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2There you go.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2But yeah, they have a fight scene. Where Did you buy him as Jameson, though? Sure, he's such a nice guy.
Speaker 1I just thought those scenes were kind of boring. I mean there's multiple times where he goes to that same office and has the same argument and then he goes back. He goes to the villain's lair twice and fights the Kung Fu guys again on top of the building. But you can tell they filmed it all in one go because he swings across the roof and I said that's a pretty cool little stunt. I'm surprised I didn't get a second angle of that. But then he does it exactly again and then we do see the second angle and I go oh, I see yeah, yeah, and I think it's in multiple more episodes which I mean that's a badass stunt to swing a guy from one building to another.
Speaker 1That's really cool when he's climbing on the walls, I'm like that's neat.
Speaker 2Yeah, I agree. I think it's worth noting a couple of things. The origin story which is depicted here as well. For the most part it'll kind of trick you into thinking it's pretty faithful. So you know, peter Parker is a college student. He lives with his Aunt, may, who's seen here. He works in the lab. He is trying to make extra money by being a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle, which we do see, which is run by J Jonah Jameson and I was shocked that Robbie was also there which was very interesting as well, because it's not a character that you, it's a character that often gets forgotten or thrown away, and he was thrown out
Speaker 2after this movie after this movie they threw out Robbie, but he gets bitten by a radioactive spider in the lab and becomes Spider-Man. Now they're left out one very, very important thing, one you could say key aspect to Spider-Man's origin that is conveniently left out of this movie. Did you notice what it was?
Speaker 1No, uncle Ben.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, uncle Ben, and no, with great power comes great responsibility, which is, like, the most important thing about the origin of Spider-Man.
Speaker 1Which just would have been like if you told me that I'm like, well, that's compelling television, let's just do that Right, so that they left it out like I don't know why. He just decides to be spider-man, because I think he decides to be spider-man because he needs to make money the money pictures. And then he wants to, like, help his new girlfriend out because her dad got and stared into the uh, hypnotism trap. Yeah, his new girlfriend, by the way yeah, I was gonna say there's no real love interest?
Speaker 2I didn't. I don't know. Did you really consider that it'd be a romantic relationship or budding?
Speaker 1I just kind of know, because, like I was gonna say about hammond's performance is that I'm get, I get, I got like a lot of like, almost like gay vibes off. Is that wrong? Like he has this sort of like upspeak like hello, I'm peter berger, how are you doing? Like you could have put his voice in a c3po?
Speaker 1I did not, I did not notice that yeah, and so, like I, I didn't buy that he was going to make it with that gal who, by the way, was also in beverly hills cop, oh really. But yeah, she was in beverly hills cop, uh, she was lead in that film. But uh, uh, lisa eilbacher, um, and she was actually, uh, a sa Saudi Arabian actress with oil money she was like the daughter of an oil baron in Saudi Arabia became an actress, very pretty. Yeah, she has a totally different look in the 80s with like big, big blonde, you know hair, sprayed up hair, so it looks different than now. But no, I didn't buy that Spider-Man had any sort of like sexual drive or urge at all.
Speaker 2He just seemed like a very like blank slate guy I think that goes to the point that the character has no drive at all. No, you're right, he is a blank slate um, he's like what's the difference between him and his lab buddy?
Speaker 1like the same character, like they could have delivered the same lines, like they're just goofy, like humor guys.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't see any difference, and a lot of the other characters are useless. Aunt May doesn't do anything. Not that Aunt May needs to be a big part of the show, but there should be some reason to have her, and the same with the Daily Bugle people. They play a little bit more integral role, but then it's obsessed with this new character that they create Captain Barbera, who's like the overbearing New.
Speaker 1York cop detective.
Speaker 2And why not use Captain Stacy, that's exactly what I thought too.
Speaker 1It's like, not that I need fan service all the time, but the idea that that wouldn't occur to them to just call him Captain Stacy I didn't like. Why not you already have a police character? Stan Lee served as a consultant, for whatever that means.
Speaker 2Maybe he did absolutely nothing, maybe he never was called once. But you think, hey, stan, we've got a detective character we want. Did you have anybody? Not that we're even going to bother to look, but I'm going to ask this guy who wrote most of the stories Do you have a detective character who was involved with Spider-Man? Oh yeah, there was a guy named George Stacy and Spider who was involved with Spider-Man. Oh yeah, there was a guy named George Stacy and Spider-Man also dated his daughter and he died fighting one of the supervillains and all that.
Speaker 1You know, that's exactly. You have everything you need for a television show in that 70s run of Spider-Man. You have a lively office culture for him to be in, you have love triangles with him and his friend and Gwen and Mary Jane, and the fact that you would just throw all that out doesn't make any sense. It's all laid up for you on a platter. That's what I, you know.
Speaker 2yeah well, they still, but we're still going through the same. You can ask these questions about a lot of the same shows and movies that are made today, not that they do it a little bit less, but they, they'll use the names and they'll change the entire characterizations around and and motivations and and and um, I don't know ideas. And you wonder, well, why didn't they just do that? Why didn't they just adapt the source material? Why are you coming up with this nonsense instead?
Speaker 1yeah, exactly like, why bother you have it all there laid out for you. So yeah, and that way it was disappointing, um, and I just thought that overall it was just kind of repetitive and a little bit boring.
Speaker 2I haven't watched any of the other episodes of you no, I've actively avoided this show for a long, long time yeah, I, I found it to be pretty, you know, and I like, I guess I like nicholas hammond.
Speaker 1I always feel bad for these actors, you know. It seems like they gave it their all. You know, I'm glad nicholas hammond actually got a role in once upon a time in hollywood, the tarantino film oh, I didn't know that yeah, he plays the director, sam wanamaker, who, like uh, pep talks leo in his trailer. Um, so I don't know if, like you know, tarantino is a fan of this, because after he did this show, he didn't really do anything else anything, really right, it seems like he hates superhero content in general.
Captain America: Budget Patriotism
Speaker 1I don't think he does. I think he used to, because he, like you know, in um true romance he makes the lead character a big comic fan who works at a comic book store, right? So I don't think he, I don't know if he does, but I, I, I, I think maybe he's turned off by the movies. I don't think that's his bag, you know. So, boy, I had a. I had a really great clip of Spider-Man If I can figure out how to make it work of Spider-Man climbing around. That I thought was pretty, pretty fun, because in addition to just like the sheer stunts, we also get these sort of Nicholas Hammond walking on a green screen and then he just kind of is like floating over a house, right? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2I will say. The only other thing I really want to say is that the problem with this, the entire concept of this show, is that, yes, you can make Spider-man somewhat convincing, you can sort of do as much as you can, but then you're going to be stuck with lousy, lousy, generic villains for the entire run of the show's existence. You are never going to ever muster up the either uh ability to create any kind of super villain like the green goblin or dr octopus or the scorpion or the lizard. There's no way, it's impossible.
Speaker 2You're not gonna do it yeah, so you're just gonna have, and the hypnotist gurus, you know I mean, what other villains did they have on the show?
Speaker 1I imagine it was probably just bank robbers and like corrupt politicians or something. Now the hulk was used that to its advantage on that show, right.
Speaker 2Um, you could have had a little, you could have done some monster type things. But let me look up, I think they're all really weird gangster type Um. Uh, yeah, look that up.
Speaker 1Show here. While you do that I'm going to add, I'm going to show everyone kind of an example of first of all, of an example of, first of all, the hip soundtrack.
Speaker 1This of this, the hips, hip score. Oh, it's really, it is good, it's not bad. I, I like this unironically, this little song here, but we'll see, uh, we'll see an example of this. Uh, not the stuntman, but um, the special effects. Here we go. This is him learning he can walk on the walls. Hell, yeah, yeah, let's go. I mean, that looks like. Okay, the lighting is just off.
Speaker 2I mean it's not bad for the time. It's not bad for the time, the thing about it people are watching these on very small TVs.
Speaker 1You're right, it would have been on a very small. That doesn't. I don't. That doesn't look quite right. No, I'm not buying some of those. Something looks off there. Yeah, Nicholas Hammond was one of the Von Tramp children in Sound of Music. Really handsome actor a lot of energy Go ahead.
Speaker 2The next episode is called the Deadly Dust, which was also released as a two-part film, or a film, as the two-part episodes so upset that the professor has bought a small amount of plutonium onto campus in order to give a class demonstration. Three university students decide to steal the plutonium and build a bomb in order to illustrate the dangers of nuclear power. So there's one the Curse of Rava. Members of a religious cult, led by the telekinetic Mandak, plan to steal a rava religious icon from a museum and in the process, frame mr jameson for attempted murder. Okay, it's all scientists, mad scientists. There's night of the clones. A controversial american scientist has figured out a way to clone human beings and he creates an evil clone spider-man.
Speaker 2Oh, there you go oh, okay, well, there you go at least I don't know, uh, when this ties into uh the clone, uh original clone saga. Obviously the the big one was in the 90s, but there's the the jackal clone saga.
Speaker 1That was the precursor, yeah, yeah, so uh.
Speaker 2And then the final episode of the first year was escort to danger. While visiting new york city, the daughter of a recently elected pro democracy latin american president is kidnapped by those seeking return of a fascist dictatorship. All right, cool.
Speaker 1That almost sounds like a Stanley kind of story, though.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess like you could have done like craving the Hunter perhaps. Yeah, you could have done that but they don't care because people making the show did not care.
Speaker 1They didn't care because people making the show did not care. They didn't care. Yeah, yeah, and I understand that the show underwent a few changes, like they. They changed leadership on it, tried to go a different direction, like mid-season. It didn't work. Um, it just doesn't. It doesn't appeal to kids, who are the um, the lead, you know the audience. I don't think. I think there's too much, it's too, it's too boring for kids, but then it doesn't have enough for adults either. If you had the love triangle, if you had the Norman Osborn as the father of your best friend, all that stuff is just great. It would work excellently as a television show. That whole run of Spider-Man from the late 60s to when Gwen Stacy died it's an excellent television show.
Speaker 2Yeah. Right an excellent television show, yeah, right, um. Well, I've always thought that spider-man would be one of the best, uh, serialized television shows if they, if they did it in the style that um dc made their green arrow and flash shows on that kind of budget, you could really make it work I always thought daredevil would be the best.
Speaker 1Just because he's a low budget as far as powers go, his costume is pretty safe. He's a lawyer, which is already a tried and true genre in, you know, television um but what you would have, you know I know.
Speaker 1But what you would have to do with a daredevil which they kind of did with she-ho, to be honest, but I always wanted them to do a daredevil was you can't make the season of the show one 15 hour long movie with the same three lines of the plot. You know what I mean. You break it up like two episode arcs. Maybe it all builds up to the end. But like throw in some different villains, like throw in some different plot lines. You know, let them live and be. Um, you know you can watch them in chunks like law and order, you know that.
Speaker 2That's why I like the cw shows, at least. Uh, initially, is that that's what they did? Is that they had the villain of the week, but there was an overarching narrative for the entire season where one major villain was plotting something big, and every once in a while you would go back to that story.
Speaker 2But in the interim other things are happening in people's lives, so other villains are going to come and go, other problems are going to arise, so it keeps things going, and especially when you had to make 20 something episodes, that's that's, you know but, now we're obsessed.
Speaker 2our, our entertainment culture is obsessed with the season being one movie that goes on for seven episodes, 10 episodes, 12 episodes, and you get episodes where zero happens and it's just filler because we're getting 100%, that's the problem just with television in general, though, these days Spider-Man, not our fave. Let's see, is there anything else?
Speaker 1The director of the pilot was the director of the pilot was the director of the pilot of law and order.
Speaker 2By the way, he's a guy with an absolute million credits interesting and we'll see that same trend with, I think, the captain america director the biggest issue with a lot of these you are not the hulk, but definitely captain america, and definitely this um and after watching wonder, it's even more embarrassing.
Speaker 1Just like there's almost no production design. You know what I mean Like Bland and blah Very bland white rooms. You know, it's just.
Speaker 2They blew their budget on the special effects.
Speaker 1to be honest with you, yeah, they probably did, which is too bad, but you could have had a lot going on here and instead there's nothing at all. So I think that the show does. You have a captivating, energetic young performer playing Spider-Man, which helps a lot, but you don't give him anything to play off. You don't give him anything to do and no real motivation to be Spider-Man.
Speaker 2No, and I liked the. I liked the hypnotist guru guy. He had some flavor to him, he had some charisma. That's the guy Thayer David who I know from. He was on the TV show dark shadows. He played. Oh, is that right? Yeah, he was on there.
Speaker 1Many characters. He has kind of this like fat pudgy, like wet mouth and he just seemed, you know right, you don't trust him. Yeah, but the only moments I thought of actual sort of filmmaking involved him. Like there's that moment with Peter and his girlfriend walk into the room. I'm like, okay, great, thank you for moving the camera. Um, you know when, when he's hypnotizing those people in the room and we get that sort of, it almost looks like the 1984, uh, ridley scott ad where it's like moving past their faces and they're being lit up by light. I'm like, okay, thank you for giving me something. Because when people are robbing a bank flat angle of the side, they walk out of the bank and into a car and they have like this cool purple smoke and I go, you guys couldn't have just moved the camera and seen those doors bust open with some smoke and then, you know, then we cut to them walking to the car. It just had to be. Okay, got it, we're good, let's go next yep.
Speaker 2The other thing is like there's nothing distinctively spider-man about this story. That's also that you can cut and paste.
Speaker 2You could put captain america in this movie cut paste you could put any other character you want, just put them in there. Wonder woman you could. The wonder woman movie you could not cut and paste spider-man and put him in there. You could not cut and paste the hulk or captain america and put him in there. But this movie you could put, cut and paste Spider-Man and put him in there. You could not cut and paste the Hulk or Captain America and put him in there. But this movie you could put any character you want in here and they would be able to do it.
Speaker 1Run of the mill. It was really unfortunate because you could have had a great Spider-Man show in the seventies if you really wanted to.
Speaker 2So my grades for these? I would give the movie as a whole, I'd give it a, c and I'd give the connection to the. Is that being generous?
Speaker 1You're so generous. I was looking at your letter boxes and you gave everything three stars.
Speaker 2I was like did not get everything three stars.
Speaker 1I did not get three stars. I usually do and I was giving out a lot of ones. You're very harsh.
Speaker 2Your ratings were.
Speaker 1I was surprised your ratings were like very harsh and I was like I didn't hate any of these movies, but there's just a lot of them. There's just no. They're there, man. I mean it's like there's not much going on.
Speaker 2What is a C in terms of star ratings for you? Is that? Is that a two or is that a?
Speaker 1I give everything three stars, Like I said, like I don't think I've ever given anything. I give out fives very, very rarely yeah.
Speaker 2I not a, five, but um. This is a, c for me, um and for connection to the source material. I would actually give it like a, b minus. I think everything is there except for the, the uncle ben and which is again a huge part of it. But like, come on, most of the other um, surface dress or window dressing is there for the character in terms of the way he looks, uh, the supporting characters, the environment, the origin story. It's all pretty much there, except for that integral key component.
Speaker 1I almost wish that we would have maybe watched a few more of the other episodes if I had. But the problem too with this show is that, for whatever reason, it's tied up in some sort of legal hell where you can't watch it right.
Speaker 2There's no official release.
Speaker 1There's no official release, which is shocking, because you would think they would have put some kind of DVD out when Spider-Man the movie came out in 2002 or something, but they didn't even bother with that. Right, I mean, I'm looking here, go ahead.
Speaker 2I wonder who owns it. I mean, Columbia must have some Right, but then it's probably tied up with the Marvel. Whatever Marvel Disney stuff is out there now.
Speaker 1But that they haven't thrown it onto Disney Plus just to have something going on. So I see this little publicity photo here. We don't see any of these characters in the pilot. No, this looks like Gloria Grant on the black gown. It's not? It's not it's not Betty Brandt. No Well, Gloria.
Speaker 2Grant is the African-American secretary at the Bugle, so that would be a good guess, but her name is Rita Conway.
Speaker 1I almost feel like that was somebody that I've read about in a comic. She was in the spectacular Spider read about in a comic, like she was in the amazing the spectacular Spider-Man run, or something.
Speaker 2I don't know. When you click on her name on Wikipedia it goes to the glory grant page, but I don't recall her ever being named that is the old guy, the recast Jameson, then. Yeah, that's the recast Jameson and then the Ellen Bride. The other girl is, uh, somebody named julie masters who came on in season two according to this. Oh, there was there I remember from seen elsewhere, but, uh, I don't know what her character's original character created yeah, this is a saturday morning tv show, but boring, so yeah, I mean it probably would have been.
Speaker 2It could have made it a little bit better for saturday morning audience, but I mean, but this is a cartoon show, plot, right? I mean it's oh, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure, for sure, it's not nothing more sophisticated than the. Actually, I think you could probably say that the plots on the shazam uh saturday morning tv show with real people were probably more complicated than than this this is am I so sour?
Speaker 1which we didn't talk about. I know that, I know here's. Here's the weird thing that I thought that's a decent show.
Speaker 1It's, it's, it's a watchable show we're going to talk about the Hulk here. Remember, when the Hulk came out? Obviously it was more popular, but to accompany the popularity, marvel put out like a black and white magazine to sort of capitalize on the adult fans of the Hulk show. I remember remember seeing on the Stripe headline or, you know, on some Marvel comics in the late seventies, like don't forget to watch the incredible Hulk on TV.
Speaker 2Marvel's TV sensation.
Speaker 1Marvel's TV sensation, the incredible Hulk, exactly. Um, I wish we I had more like a concurrent fan reaction at the time, like would they have just been slopping this up as like at least they got something, or did ever have just been slopping this up as like at least they got something or did ever? I mean, was it just muted for everyone? You?
Speaker 2know where the fans like wow, cool reading articles and stuff. It sounds like it was very mixed and, uh, like I don't think people were satisfied. I don't think people, I don't think I don't think loyal comic book readers were satisfied with what they got here. Um, yeah, I know it's always like you'll take whatever you can get, but if it's so bad and it's so divorced from the source material, then what's the point? You know?
Speaker 1what's the point? That's how I beat up.
Speaker 2That's how I feel, now At least, about what's coming up.
Speaker 1Like what a waste of opportunity. We beat up on Spider-Man.
Speaker 2What would you rate this then? You didn't. You thought I was too generous then d I don't know.
Speaker 1Let me just yeah, I didn't, I didn't that's harsh. It's watchable oh god, I guess I mean like the meteorology channel is watchable. I don't know.
Speaker 2Like you know, I don't know some of the other ones on this, some of the other movies we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 1I don't know if they're so watchable so okay, uh, have we beat up on spider-man enough. Can we beat up on somebody else called captain america?
Speaker 2okay you want to do cap next?
Speaker 1let me just show everyone a clip before we start talking, just to get everybody, like, just get their mind right about what we're, uh, what we're talking about here. So to preface this clip, the the plot of captain America, the television movie yes, which I guess was popular enough to spawn a sequel.
Speaker 2It was very popular. It was very good in the ratings.
Speaker 1It was very good in the ratings. Yes, that is okay, I'm interested. Okay, it's got Red Brown, who was a former USC football player turned actor, playing Captain America. He's very bad, uh, would you agree? Very wooden to the max, I mean, and mike pence has more charisma more, more pizzazz, more riz.
Speaker 1Yeah, this is tough. Uh, he he's not great. Um, the, the co-stars of the show are help me out here, like he he's. First of all, the plot is that captain america is a guy who is like driving around in a van, which vans at the time were super hot and real cool. Right, oh God, am I wrong? Like no, you're not wrong, but just I'm not wrong. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 2It's just embarrassing hearing about this, this movie, again.
Speaker 1Vans were the shit, and so he's like rolling into town and I can't.
Speaker 2I'm sorry, man, I can't.
Speaker 1Vans and motorcycles, you have to vans and motorcycles, which this film has both. And uh, you know, brother, I gotta tell you like I barely remember anything about either of these films. I'm trying to piece this together.
Speaker 2I watched them like two weeks ago okay, I am very glad to hear that, because I also could not remember anything about what happened in either one of these movies. So I actually you're going to call me crazy but I actually did rewatch them. I watched them twice.
Speaker 1What Okay?
Speaker 2I couldn't remember anything that happened. It was so bad?
Speaker 1This show is supposed to be a low effort thing, man.
Speaker 2I had them on in the background and just osmotically absorbed them.
Speaker 1I came home from a dinner party one time and I'm like my wife's like it's time for bed. I'm like captain america, 2 death too soon. I'm like I'm just going downstairs in america.
Speaker 22 death too soon is like 20 billion times better than captain america.
Speaker 11 okay, yeah, it's better than a fork in the eye. It's like going from like captain america.
Speaker 21 is like I described it like when you're in high school and you put no efforts like you, just you just took a dump on the floor and on your paper and handed that in as your test OK hold on here.
Speaker 1OK. No, it's just a bad and bad ingredients, a shitty script, ok. So the plot is that, like Captain America rides around a van, somebody gets an ex-marine.
Speaker 2He's an ex-marine so when he gets murdered.
Speaker 1He knows. He knows the daughter of the guy who got murdered or something no, no, I don't think he does why is he involved in the murder?
Speaker 2then, the guy, the guy the scientist guy called him and said I need to talk to you. Meet me at my house, house Nine o'clock tonight.
Speaker 1I can't talk to the scientist guy the scientist guy who I oddly kind of liked, even though he's just like which scientist guy are we talking about?
Speaker 2Not Len Len Berman. That's not the shield, Not the shield guy.
Speaker 1Len Berman. I don't think anybody after the seventies has ever been named Len Berman again. He'll meet many Len Bermans around anymore.
Speaker 2Len is such a cool name, Come on man.
Speaker 1Len Berman.
Speaker 2But yeah, the guy who was his scientist, buddy his co he was a friend of his dad, I guess.
Speaker 1Which I didn't understand what the hell was going on with that. They're like your dad invented a. This is Red Brown's acting. They bring him into the science lab for some reason they go hey, yeah, the other guy got murdered. By the way, here I'm a scientist, I'm turning rats really strong, or something.
Speaker 2He left out the best part, which is he had just been in a near fatal car crash. He had just been in a near fatal car crash where his van went off the freaking mountain. Okay, and rolled over after an oil, after an oil truck dropped the oil on the road to cause a slick so that his van would be run off the road. And he gets out and he goes to the next appointment and he's like, hey, what's up?
Speaker 1Hey, I don't know why he's friends with this scientist guy. The scientist guy knew his dad or something and he's like this guy knew his dad.
Speaker 2He was this scientist guy. The scientist guy knew his dad or something and he's like this guy knew his dad, he was he was a good friend of his dad and his dad.
Speaker 1We learned. We learned that steve's dad was the original captain america, who was like steve is just like wow, that's cool.
Speaker 2He's like not like what are you talking about? I didn't. I didn't know he was uh, yeah, I didn't know. That's exactly America, I didn't know. That's exactly right. He just never mentioned it. Oh, and my favorite thing is like I work for or no, he's like oh, there was something. It wasn't the flag. It wasn't the flag serum.
Speaker 1It was something else, it would turn off. It was Operation Cyclone.
Speaker 2It was like Operation Cyclone or whatever, and he's like what was so and dr so and so working on operation cyclone? It's like, oh, I've never heard of it. It's like it's a top secret government, like why would you have heard about it?
Speaker 1like nothing, you know it's like yeah, I know about the top secret uh, experiment, you know, but yeah, like the ducks, the scientist he's like working on this serum where you know it makes everyone super strong. It makes, uh, this rat is lifting 10 times its ability and red brown just goes wow, that's cool. He's like they're not interested at all, but it's killing it's killing, so I have this clip.
Speaker 1I have this clip of red browns. Is it not that he's like just a horrible actor, but he's just um, he's just really boring, like this is. This is the scene here where he's like super serious, like buddy is talking to him on the beach.
Speaker 4All right, here we go oh god, the beach life on the line for it, time and time again. American ideal. It's a little tough to find these days, isn't it not, if you know where to look? Right on, it was the spoilers of that ideal. Right on what, captain America? They meant it as a mockery, of course, but in a way it fit red brown's face is like whoa, that's cool, and so they make it oh sorry, okay, okay, can we just talk about a couple things, okay?
Speaker 2well, first of all, let's this this let's at least get the historical information out of the way. January 19, 1979, on CBS. Okay, yep, what? Let's see. We have a character who is becoming Captain America.
Speaker 2So I guess what is one of the core attributes of what makes Captain America such an iconic or inspirational figure is that this is a character who, at the height of World War Two, is a person who desperately wants to enlist in the US Army to go fight for his country, but he is not able to because he is physically unable to, is physically, you know, not not acceptable. Unable to, he's physically not acceptable. So he will do whatever it takes to join the fight, even subjecting himself to an experimental science experiment to gain strength in order to do that. And he does. And that's a very inspirational story altruistic, self-sacrificial, etc. Cetera.
Speaker 2What do we get here? We get this kind of nonchalant, bland character who gets roped up into an adventure, not through anything of his own doing, but by circumstantial connections. Uh is in a near fatal accident, a second near fatal accident. I don't know why this one was so much more deadly than the accident. I don't know why this one was so much more deadly than the van crash from before. But he is uh, given the serum against his will. And when they say why don't you become captain america, he's like okay, sure, why not?
Speaker 1you're right. I forget that. He's just like dying and they go shoot him up with this thing yeah, it's like I'll take full responsibility well then, the worst part is he's talking to the guy, his buddy, the doctor, so and so, and he's like uh, you got a name for me, len brown, len, you know whatever his name was len berman, and he's like len, I'm feeling new things, you know and he's like. He's like, uh, he's like I'm so strong that if I hold this pencil too hard, oh god I could break it.
Speaker 1It's like, wow, that's, that's a real demonstration of power there, cap. Yeah, it's uh, it's brutal. I mean it's um the thing I liked about it. It's like, wow, that's, that's a real demonstration of power there, cap. Yeah, it's uh, it's brutal. I mean, it's um the thing I liked about it. You know what I liked about it? It reminded me of aip movies like um van nuysville boulevard, the pom-pom girls, because it was all filmed in like a fucking desert, right, you know talking about. So I like that element of it. I like that there were no other people in the movie. It was just like there were like seven people in the movie. There's like no crowd scenes.
Speaker 2He's just in a lab or he's like um warehouse warehouse a meat locker, you know, a meat locker which was, oh my god, horrible yeah when he's like hiding in the meat locker and he's like pushing meat at people.
Speaker 1There's just no good way to demonstrate his super strength. They don't, they don't do it.
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Speaker 2They don't demonstrate that he's really strong, right um it's uh, come on, he has flag, he has full latent ability gain is that what they say? I sure to write that down, because I was like oh, full-blown. Did Stanley write that this sounds?
Speaker 1like a LMD life model decoy, or like a strategic homeland, you know interior defense.
Speaker 2Just so you know, flag was derived from mr rogers senior I don't know if he was also steve or he was somebody else but mr rogers senior's own adrenal glands. He took a sample of his adrenal glands and synthesized this super steroid from them, and that's why it can only be injected into steve junior, because there is a risk of rejection, cellular rejection yeah, and steve junior has no relationship with his father.
Speaker 1Like we could have gotten something about how? Like maybe they had a tough relationship together and he's like I know you and your father didn't get along, but this is your chance to reconcile your relationship and you know nothing, nothing. He doesn't talk about his dad. The other guy talks about his dad and he's just like your dad was. Uh, they called him captain america because he shook the tree on like what did he do?
Speaker 2was he? He shook down the big movers and shakers Come on.
Speaker 1He took down the big guys. It's like what did he do? Did he wear a Captain America suit too? He did Okay he did.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, yes, because at the end of the movie he goes I want to wear the suit my dad wore.
Speaker 1Right, which didn't make any sense on his first super adventure in like a SWAT team costume or something, and then he was like I want to wear the real suit and they make him the captain america suit, but he wears a fucking goofball spangly outfit from the get and then he goes. I want to wear what my dad wore and it's just like a slight moderation to the like.
Speaker 2I don't know it's like, if you're gonna abandon the traditional costume, just do it, or just wear the traditional costume all the. I think the traditional costume at the end looks pretty decent. In my it looks better.
Speaker 1It looks like the comics, but like if you weren't a comic book fan and didn't know that's what captain america was supposed to look like, you would probably say what's the difference between that and the other one? Right, like his outfit in captain america at the beginning. When he has this cool like bicentennial outfit or whatever the fuck he's wearing, it's terrible. Right, it looks ridiculous Like when he runs into that room and he saves that lady and he's like all right, get out now. And like the bad guy actress to pretend to be like frightened of him.
Speaker 2You would have laughed your ass off if you saw that when he hands files and he's like I think you'll find these interesting.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Take these files which? What was in the file I don't have?
Speaker 1I don't know. The file was um information that the evil oil executive was evil, I think. Well then, I had another video for you, which is the climactic, uh, spectacular ending in which, like captain america, he gets on a car, which is kind of cool, like he's on top of a van. There's a stunt guy on top of a moving truck. Okay, I'm great, I'm getting a curve.
Speaker 2That's cool action scene at the end is pretty good, and this is another one. I feel like they blew all their budget. They were like we got a helicopter for this movie we're gonna use it.
Speaker 1Oh, they got all the time they got a motorcycle too, brother. I mean they, that was just non-stop motorcycle montage driving around from an aerial view but what's interesting?
Speaker 2I thought I I was actually curious because I was like how much was like eagle knievel mania, like uh, inspiring this or not? But then I I was reading a lot of the um America comics from before this, like early 70s it's probably 73 or so around the Secret Empire time, and he's riding a motorcycle all the time. So that was nothing new for him. So he was Some. Evel Knievel, but that was probably like we got to have it in the movie because of that.
Speaker 1Motorcycles are cool.
Speaker 2Evil can, evil is cool but like cap did ride a motorcycle for long.
Speaker 1The guy there there's a, the stuntman in there is on a motorcycle and then jumps off of it and hops on a truck, which is really cool. Yeah, the only problem is that, like when they get like steve rogers, uh, he, he goes. Here's my plan, because the bad guys have a giant bomb, which, by the way, what that is, do you know what that is?
Speaker 2Oh, a neutron bomb. It actually is a real thing. I looked it up, yeah.
Speaker 1Okay, hold on.
Speaker 2Does it look like that? I probably got on a watch list from being on Wikipedia?
Speaker 1Does it look like a big tube? I?
Speaker 2don't know.
Speaker 1No, because you know what that is. It's a distiller for making tequila.
Speaker 2Oh, really Okay.
Speaker 1Yes, I've seen one before at a distillery. I went to a distillery and they were like here's where we make our tequila. It's got to get filtered down in this tube.
Speaker 2You don't expect them to get a real neutron bomb, do you Come on? No.
Speaker 1I don't, but can I ask a silly question here?
Speaker 2okay, go for it. Yeah, um, so the plot of the movie is that the evil oil company is trying to build a neutron bomb okay or, and they need the secret blueprints or the secret camera negative to complete the whatever kill switch or whatever, yes, in order to rob a gold repository oh, is that what they wanted to do? Yes, why, why, why are we doing this? What, what? Do we not make enough money? Are we not making enough money on the like?
Speaker 3on the oil.
Speaker 2Why do we need the gold exactly? We need the gold too, I know and when does the ceo of the oil company go and ride shotgun with the neutron bomb in the truck?
Speaker 1and he's just sitting at the back. He's like he's like reading the book back here in the truck, like they didn't give him a chair. He's just like hanging out back there. They're like what is going on here? That is some bullshit, man. I mean it is, uh, it is, uh, it's, it's a tough watch. And then and then, first of all, it's he's like an elderly man. And so our amazing like, our amazing climax to the movie is just that like he gets knocked down. He has to resuscitate an old man who's coughing?
Speaker 2Yes, because this is old man, the oil evil oil executive guy has breathed in carbon monoxide gas and he is connected and it's like who cares right, but he is connected to the dead man he has a dead man switch connected to his heart, so if he dies, neutron bomb goes off and everyone dies.
Speaker 1Couldn't have had less suspense at this moment and the idea of seeing him in this outfit. His job is to hold a fucking thing for him, and he doesn't even connect the seal properly too, so it's not doing anything.
Speaker 2That insert is it, I'm doing it. It has to be below the chin. I don't know, maybe it's different back then, but you have to put it below the chin and make a tight seal.
Speaker 1He's like there I am holding.
Speaker 2Yeah, it just escapes.
Speaker 1I have to watch Captain America hold a fucking.
Speaker 2You know what I'm saying? A valve bag.
Speaker 1It's brutal. Yeah, I like when he calls someone the helicopter and he's like his lips are blue.
Speaker 2He's unresponsive. He's like oh, that doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1We've got our guy here. Was this guy actually driving the helicopter? It looked like he was. Yeah, he was. I was like is that actor driving the helicopter To look at this guy in this ridiculous Captain America costume? His ending is that he gets to hold a fucking oxygen thing over an old man. I was like that's your ending to your Captain America movie. That sucks.
Speaker 2I would say also, besides all the things we already touched upon about why this is such a horrible, horrendous movie, it has zero appeal of what makes Captain America Captain America and I touched on this about the origin and the motivations of the character and all of that but even afterwards, so if you talk about Captain America during the war, he's obviously has a mission, he has a purpose.
Speaker 2He's fighting for our country to end the war and stop the Nazis. To end the war and stop the Nazis. But when they brought the character back afterwards, when he was frozen in ice and brought back into the modern world in the 1960s, 1970s, he had a totally different purpose and a totally different existential crisis that he went through as a character is that I am a man out of time. I do not belong in the current world, which is so vastly different than the one that I left. The one I left, which was the 1940s, during the war, things were very black and white, things were very simple, and now we live, especially the ones I was just reading which is like the post Watergate era, where we're dealing with the secret empire and, you know, other terrorist groups that are trying to infiltrate America and other terrorist groups that are trying to infiltrate America.
Speaker 2There's a very interesting story all about the Serpent Society embarks on this negative ad campaign against Captain America to turn public sentiment against him. They create a total frame job on him, framing him for murder. They turn everybody against him. So he's dealing with this. Is that where does my place in the world? This movie does nothing with any of that. Uh, there's no, he's just. He's just action guy action guy.
Speaker 1Uh, do you have anything to say about captain America? To death too soon.
Speaker 2Oh I actually, I I thought captain America too. Oh, I actually I thought Captain America 2. Oh well, okay, so let's grade Captain.
Speaker 3America 1.
Speaker 2Captain America 1, I'd give the movie a, d and because I mean it was like D minus.
Speaker 1Okay, I want to check my poll that I put out on my YouTube channel, which was which I said hey, out of all these four shows or TV movies, which would you rather be on the set of right? I'm going to check the results. Um, it's an easy answer. We have four percent of people saying captain america, 13 saying spider-man, 30 saying hulk, 52 saying a wonder woman, which is the correct answer. Maybe you could have gotten a date with linda carter. That would be the. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2You know I'm saying also it's more colorful, it's more interesting, there's, there's be, like a real movie. I think it would be interesting, though, to be on the spider-man set to see kind of how that's what's going, what's going on there. I think that would be kind of you're right to see like what's just a little interesting. But yeah, wonder woman for sure. But anyway I would give this. I would give this a D and the source material adaptation an F.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2I mean it's tough.
Speaker 1I'm with you. It's really bad.
Speaker 2I can watch it Like. I can watch it, but like.
Speaker 1No, I watched it and I was watching it and I was like I liked it.
Speaker 2But you also could not remember what happened. Which?
Speaker 1What was like that? What's that? You know? They get a big aerial shot of him driving his van down like the pacific coast highway or whatever. I'm like that's cool. I like to see the pacific coast highway in the 70s. And like deserts.
Speaker 2I like deserts in california um, it's very boring, it's very.
Speaker 1I will say in captain america 2 death too soon. Um, I thought red brown, captain America 2, death Too Soon. I thought this would be a more livelier movie.
Speaker 1It's a way better directed movie. Red Brown is better. There's even some better filmmaking. I noticed there's a scene where Len Dalrymple or whatever the hell his name is Len Berman. Len Berman is walking down a hallway with some guy and he's like what happened to the science lab and it's like filmed like a low angle on like a dolly and it's like moving really fast and it's like a low angle that it like whips into the and I'm like, okay, that's cool, we get a little filmmaking there. We didn't get a single thing like that in the first one. Um, christopher lee is obviously a better villain, though I think they had it for probably what?
Speaker 2two days yes, I think so, I think so. It was very rushed.
Speaker 1He's in an office for most of it, and then he plays.
Speaker 3Miguel, miguel.
Speaker 1Miguel, the master terrorist right.
Speaker 2Some say that he's the son of a Dutch baron and some people say he's the long-lost, something from France, and it's like why is he named Miguel?
Speaker 1Why is he named Miguel? Why is he named Miguel and Red Brown just goes Miguel, wow, we gotta get him. Wow, miguel, yeah, christopher Lee gets turned. The plot of it is that Christopher Lee is he's ransoming Portland and he turns everybody old with like a gold finger, ask, flying your plane over and smoke coming out of your plane. And then turns everybody old with something like a goldfinger-esque flying your plane over and smoke coming out of your plane. And then everyone turns old. Yes, and so it's something. Yeah, it's better than the.
Speaker 2Than neutron bombs with steel gold that we don't need. No, yeah.
Speaker 1I've got steel and gold.
Speaker 2I mean, this is like during the energy crisis right, I mean like during the energy crisis. Right, I mean like, don't they have another thing like breaking it in?
Speaker 1wouldn't you guys rather just like take over iran or something like? What do you get?
Speaker 2steal gold, you know, but um my favorite thing about captain America 2 I think I know besides the cat um I think I can guess. Okay, guess.
Speaker 1The opening scene.
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 1The ending.
Speaker 2actually, I was like, if you're going to do this aging gas, then you better. You better have the villain die at the end by getting overdosed on this thing and turning into a freaking skeleton. You better do it. And they do. And I was like, oh, thank you, You're right. Thank you that you did not cop out on this that was good, um, that they did that.
Speaker 1I thought you were gonna see the opening scene, because there was something going on in that opening scene where there's an old lady and steve rogers is hanging out with an old lady and she goes everyone's stealing my welfare check my social security check and he goes in these parts, like on venice beach, where it's
Speaker 1like never and so captain america goes, let me uh put, get you in a sting operation here. And so he like uh, he goes, get your social security check from the bodega or whatever. Walk down the street, get attacked, possibly knifed, by a, you know, a hooligan, but I will be in my van, ready to change into my costume and I will explode out the back of my van and my Captain America motorcycle. But didn't you like all the hijinks of like? There's a guy in a dune buggy and he's like throw me the purge.
Speaker 2And then it looks like speed buggy.
Speaker 1The cartoon yeah Like that sputtering, yeah, doing talking dune buggy that, yeah, I look like a like that sputtering yeah, uh, dune talking dude like that's what I thought of. And then you have to work against the bad guy and he goes. I want you to tell me the name of everyone in your gang. Oh yeah, he goes. Okay, like he's gonna. Like it wouldn't be like spit on him and say, like you know, uh, you got us. We're stealing old 80s social security checks, um, but at least there was something happening there, oh yeah at least things happen in this movie.
Speaker 2There's an actual plot um, there's more action, there's more action things, uh, are exciting. It still has nothing to do with captain america. It has no like statement about what this character is or what you know he means. Um, did you notice that the girl was different? Because I did not, yeah, the first time I watched it.
Speaker 1I was like I look all these people up, man, I look them up.
Speaker 2Oh, I didn't notice until after and I was like, oh, it's a different girl.
Speaker 1I was like I want to see what happened to him, but yeah, it's a different girl. I was like I want to see what happened to him, but yeah, it's a different girl. I think I remember from the first one. If I'm not wrong, the girl went on to do something.
Speaker 2Her name was Heather Menzies.
Speaker 1Heather Menzies. Yeah, she was on the Logan's Run television show as the Jenny Augerter character for that show, which I looked into a little bit when I did a Logan's run review for my channel, but I didn't really, I didn't watch. Um, she was replaced by a woman named Connie Celica. What did Connie Celica do?
Speaker 2Got me Come on. Uh, she won, or she was nominated for a golden globe for Best Actress for something called.
Speaker 1She was in the Greatest American Hero.
Speaker 2She was in the Greatest American Hero, but she also was in this thing, I don't know. Hotel.
Speaker 1She's married to John Tesh.
Speaker 2Yeah, so I guess this is a better indicator of what a Captain America TV show would have been like. Compared to the first movie, which I don't know, it wouldn't have been so bad comparatively. It would have been just junk like junk.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2Watchable, like watchable garbage, but it's not good, I mean, if I don't think if, but it's not good. I mean, if I don't think if, okay. So if Christopher Lee was not in this movie, I wouldn't. I wouldn't even like bat an eye. But like he's in it he's kind of charming, as usual, he can do no wrong. It goes to show you that like an actor like that doesn't need, doesn't need direction, he can do, he just just he's like he can do he just reads?
Speaker 2the script. He's like just I'll do whatever I want and it'll be great. Reb needs a lot of hand-holding and direction, and you can tell this guy who directed this movie was probably a little bit more involved and he probably told him hey, reb, you're talking like you're a freaking android automaton. Why don't you say it with a little bit more emotion? And he's like oh okay.
Speaker 1But that first movie is like yeah, you did great good job, let's go. Thanks in the helicopter. Yeah, yeah, we'll be in the helicopter rep.
Speaker 2Uh, because I wanted to bring up the director of that first movie. His name is rod holcomb. This guy has directed like pretty much every tv show you'll ever find and he's still working he directed the pilot and finale of er, but he also directed stuff criminal minds beyond borders as of like 2017.
Speaker 1Oh, really, yeah, that's cool. I bet you Reb looks like one of those guys. I've known guys like this. They're so fun, super big personality, and then when you put them on camera, they just die.
Speaker 2They like freeze up.
Speaker 1Just freeze, he looks like a cool guy.
Speaker 2I mean I'm sure he was fun.
Speaker 1He was a blast to hang with.
Speaker 2He looks the part.
Speaker 1The feathered weird feathered hair.
Speaker 2No, it's the 70s man, come on.
Speaker 1That's just not right. He could have Robert Redford style hair.
Speaker 2Should have just had the old show about Len Berman as Simon Mills.
Speaker 1I would love that. I kind of liked him. I don't know what it was. He has personality to him.
Speaker 2He's got a weird look. He's got kind of a cool voice. Yes, he's in charge. He's got some misterioso going on.
Speaker 1He's really the only guy doing anything. He's just telling Red what to do.
Speaker 2Exactly, it feels more comic book-y. I would say, if that's a word, death too soon, you've got the aging gas, you've got the supervillain who's? Holed up in a secret lair, which is a federal penitentiary.
Speaker 1I was going to say zoo, but I'm like that's not right.
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Speaker 2No, no, penitentiary, yeah, penitentiary, yeah, yeah, which, like I mean, nowadays you could never get away with that, because they're like getting away with it, because no one knows what he looks like or nobody knows what the real warden is supposed to look like that was a stretch and it's a stretch even for them, but like come on yeah, yeah, everyone.
Speaker 1No one will know that the warden is actually the top secret miguel. And he's like shut up, you fool.
Speaker 2And then they're all calling him miguel, and the one guy does it like everyone's calling him Miguel. And then the one guy does it and they're like silence, you fool, that one will cost us everything.
Speaker 1And it's like Chris Derby's whole party. He's like sitting there while the guy's on like a phone and he has some like a gadget. I don't know what it was. I'm like there was some kind of 70s gadget where I go. Does that make it be a speakerphone? I'm like, what does that do? Yeah, I don't know because he kept like hanging it up and like picking it up and I'm like what the fuck is he doing with that? But I don't, yeah, never mind.
Speaker 2I um, I really like the. Uh, that steve had a cat and was just going around with the cat in that small town like well, I heard, I heard that uh, steve having a cat in that small town.
Speaker 1Well, I heard that Steve having a cat, oh, that's right, because there was all that stuff with animals getting old. That's why I was thinking zoo, I don't see, my brain was all.
Speaker 2And the little boy with the lamb.
Speaker 3He's like that's my lamb.
Speaker 2It's like no honey, stop, you're going to get us all killed.
Speaker 1They made Steve Rogers be an artist in this yeah, which, by the way, they didn't have him they made retroactively. The comics were like oh, that's a good idea. So they made him an artist after this show. That's cool.
Speaker 2He was in something.
Speaker 1To do? Because he draws a guy a picture in the first one and the guy's like, far out, man, what a great picture. It's like a terrible drawing.
Speaker 2Is that the beach boy at the beach house at the?
Speaker 1beginning yeah, he's Beach Boy. He's Beach Boy, he's Beach Friend.
Speaker 2The other guy that's like looks like he's stoned out surfer.
Speaker 1Right, yeah, captain America, were you glad that you've watched these so far All the Spider-Man? Captain America, were you glad you finally sat down to watch this stuff that you've heard about and seen pictures of?
Speaker 2Yeah, I've seen. I've seen the Captain America ones. A long time ago I had them on video actually. Oh really, yeah, I had these on VHS.
Speaker 1Spider-Man I never saw. Okay, okay, yeah, I never. I never saw. I remember, though, being a kid like 13, and I found out they existed and I was like I really want to watch these yeah.
Speaker 2But to find stuff like that back then, yeah, I had to. It was same, probably around the same time period, but there was a uh, there was another like video store online.
Speaker 2That was uh sort of like amazon, but it went under soon after and I you could find a lot of these like more obscure titles on there, so I had the, the, I think, like the captain america one. It's the one. You see what it'll. The vhs jacket has, like the yellow uh one where yeah the thing. Andhs jacket it has the yellow one where it's the thing and the number two is the blue one. But I don't know if I've finished them or watched them more than once or turned them off in between, but I had them on video.
Speaker 1And those are kind of cool VHS covers to be totally real. Yeah, they're cool.
Speaker 2Oh, they sell it, but the content is crap.
Speaker 1They really do sell it, especially number two, where they add the other, like they make it look cool because, yeah, I forget, he had a hang glider there for like two seconds. Oh god, got a hang glider hang glider.
Speaker 2Does that make any sense? How is that bike hanging on?
Speaker 1it's. It's called cool, it's called being cool it is, it's cool, but like um, are you upset that we didn't did, we didn't watch doctor strange no, I I can't remember if I've watched that or not.
Speaker 2I know that one I had to buy hmm, I know, but I don't know if I've watched it.
Speaker 1I can't remember I just see pictures and I go how could this really have almost anything to do with the comic? To where it would be even recognizable as Dr Strange and not just magic guy from the 70s.
Speaker 2I don't know That'll be the next one. Next one, we can do the Punisher. Dr Strange, the Superboy 80s.
Speaker 1Oh, my God that's dreadful, that is dreadful oh, brother, I used to watch those when I was on night shift one time. Oh my god really yeah, oh boy, okay, do you mind if we take a little break?
Speaker 2yeah, I'm going to be playing a little uh, oh, can we uh grade captain america to death too soon we can, if you'd like. I would give this one a C as opposed to the D for part one. That's very nice of you, it's still an F with the source material.
Speaker 1It is more entertaining. It's not as bad. I'll give you that it's not.
Speaker 2It's like on par with Spider-Man for me, like in terms of watchability.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, I guess I just found him a little more appealing than um spider-man. They just spider-man just seemed like almost incredibly visually ugly to me, do you know?
Speaker 2I mean, I thought it was really bad because the quality of the print we're watching is such garbage it's just so, so bad it makes an impact, and Captain America is the same way. Those, those things are incredibly like washed out and and ugly.
Speaker 1It's not. It's not as bad. It's nice to at least have it on DVD. It's not like blurred. You know, I watched a supposed remaster on YouTube of Spider-Man. Oh really. I claim to be a remastered YouTube of Spider-Man.
Speaker 2Oh really, they claim to be a remastered version of it, but I just wonder if anyone? I'm surprised they haven't. There's got to be a decent VHS rip of that, because those were released on commercial VHS. I remember seeing those on the website to buy years ago and I just never. I didn't even understand what it was. I remember kept seeing Spider-Man Night of the Clones clones and I'm like what the hell is this?
Speaker 1what? What is the uh relationship to this? In the japanese show did they use footage from the none at all, because they look kind of similar. If you see photos of them like they look kind of similar. No, I didn't know if maybe they took, you know, spider-man footage a la power rangers from that not at all.
Speaker 2Um, and I think the costume is different in that he wears that special like armband in the japanese one that does his like transformation stuff right into a megazord no, he transforms him and I think his costume comes out of it, or something like that oh, he didn't turn into a robot he can call the megazord or whatever with that, I think too, but he doesn't transform into a megazord. He goes and he pilots it, I think he gets into it.
Speaker 1Okay, yeah, but he can it. He can call forth the Megazord from underground.
Speaker 2He can call forth it with that special wristwatch thing.
Speaker 1That would be cool. It's cool to have spider powers and also have a gigantic robot Like a robot fighting machine. Yeah.
Speaker 2Giant brain floating, Giant floating brain and other things. I mean the Spider-Man shows much more entertaining than this crappy one here in.
Speaker 1America? I guarantee it would be. I have a little interim show. I'm going to take a little quick break here. We'll be right back in two minutes. But if that's okay with you, I'll be quick. But I have a little if we don't get pulled down for copyright. I have a little interim and we'll explain it afterwards. But I'll play it now and we'll be right back everybody.
Speaker 3Would somebody call me Peter Parker before I go insane? You see, this other guy that I've been lately forgot he had a name.
Speaker 3I find super strength and fame ain't all that they're cracked up to be Cause the only one that they don't help is me. And the spiders went through the air and it landed on Peter Parker, who didn't even know it was there, peter Parker, who didn't even know that he was there as Spider-Man. I learned about those tangled webs we weave. As Peter, I want to live my life and it's either him or me. So Peter says, and the Spider-Man goes. But the spider is only human. Peter says it's not, it's been aware of his own.
Speaker 1It's like fighting both sides of a mirror.
Speaker 3But this crazy war's got me weary and I can't fight anymore. Would somebody call me Peter Parker before I go insane? See this other guy that I've been lately forgot. He had an aide Playing like a child with new toys. I began to love my game, but the rules all disappeared and they didn't change and the spiders went, flew through the air and they landed on Peter Parker, who didn't even know I was there as a spider man. I set my trap in hopes to catch a fly. As Peter, I've been caught through my own web and that's a crime. So Peter stays and the spider goes. But the spider is only human. Peter says it's time to swing a little bit his arm. It's like fighting through both sides of the mirror. Well, this crazy war is coming really, and I can't fight anymore. It's like fighting through both sides of the mirror. Well, this crazy war is coming really, and I can't mean to hurt, but this crazy war is getting weird and I can't stand it anymore.
Speaker 1Okay, Okay, that was from the album Rock Reflections of a Superhero, which was produced in the late in the mid seventies as a Spider-Man rock opera album. You ever listened to this right?
Speaker 2I have not listened to that, but that sounds vaguely familiar. I've read about that, but that was actually yeah.
Speaker 1Hmm, interesting Become a meme. Like recently, I'll send the album cover here. So yeah, it's. Uh. What did you think of that song? Did you enjoy it?
Speaker 1I did leave the room for a few minutes oh, I see, okay, so yeah, that's fine, but uh, uh, it's, it's. It's a very interesting thing. You can find it on like apple music and spotify, but it was like, um, I don't know really what they were going for. I think stanley would have just like he, anytime anyone wanted to do anything with cross-media, with Marvel, he was just like, yeah, absolutely it was the money.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was like an album with decent music, kind of like the Transformers the movie album or something. That album is spectacular.
Speaker 2You know what You're right album or something. That album is spectacular.
Speaker 1You know what You're right it is.
Speaker 2It's that album is exquisite Okay, the touch the touch there and the transformers theme and um there to be stupid instruments of destruction.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was a that. You're right. I don't mean to talk shit. That was just my first sort of uh. That was just my first sort of uh, but the touch is actually a legitimately good song. Sorry, haters dare as well, yeah, there's good too. Yeah, that's a good, uh, boogie nights reference this is.
Speaker 2This is akin to the oh, I've seen that.
Speaker 1I've seen that yeah, it's a meme now. Or people like, cut the spider-man out and they'll just put you know whoever they want. You know what I'm saying, right, um, which is kind of funny, and it's thinking about the man I want to be. It'll be like you know, fucking jeffrey epstein or something right and uh. But I saw that and I'm like that is the spider-man rock album from the 70s that they're using. Is that meme? That's, that's wild. But yeah, there's some decent tracks on that record for sure better.
Speaker 2I'm sure it's better than the spider-man.
Speaker 1Turn off the dark soundtrack you know, I never listened to that. Was that, uh bad?
Speaker 2I saw. I saw the play on broadway.
Speaker 1It was oh you did see it oh yeah, the one that was did anybody die or fall or anything?
Speaker 2no, thankfully not, but uh, it was trash. I mean, it was total, total trash. So think about how bad all of these movies that we've talked about are, and then amplify that like a million or like two million about how bad that spider-man musical was, not because of the content of the songs, which were kind of atrocious and tedious of themselves, but like how much they just denigrated the source material and change it into just nonsense. Rip, I have the, uh, the, the playbook or the what's the, the souvenir book I bought that from that's cool.
Speaker 2Yeah, I I had experience with worth going to see, you know, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1You can say you saw it right yeah.
Speaker 2You know I'd always get dragged to Broadway musicals so I was like we're going to see the Spider-Man one.
Speaker 1You know, Can you say that you've seen the Hulk, because I know Jack McGee is always on the hunt for the Hulk Police reporter Jack McGee. By this, the idea that the Hulk would be a conspiracy theory, after how many times he is in public turning into the Hulk with tons of witnesses, is but the Incredible Hulk show. What do you think?
Speaker 2Oh, I love it. I've been a fan of this show for a long time.
Speaker 2This is one of those ones that I'd always hear about from my mom or people that are older and they'd say like, oh, did you know there was an incredible Hulk TV show. And then it's like oh, okay. And then, right around the time of the Hulk movie 2003 movie, the Eric Banner one that was when the show like, I started watching it because I was more widely available at that time. I don't know if it came back into syndication or rerun on TV, but I definitely bought the DVD around that time and I think the first one that came out was like a compilation Greatest Hits DVD, oh sure. So I slowly got into it more and more and you know, I guess the teenager version of myself was like I can appreciate this, but it's so radically different than what I'm expecting from the incredible hulk as a comic book fan, um, that I was a little taken aback by it as well. I think it's. I think it ages quite well for what it is.
Speaker 2um, I think it's good television in and of itself and looking back as an adult, I think I understand why they had to do what they did.
Speaker 1I think they could have been a little bit more, I think they're going to push the boundaries a little bit more on some science fiction sort of villains. Yes, my reaction as a kid was basically the same as yours, where I was like I like to watch things from the seventies, I appreciate this, I like it. The from the 70s I appreciate this, I like it. The Hulk parts are cool, but I didn't really get it. In re-watching it I enjoyed it. I mean, this is something I could turn on every night and just kind of fall asleep to.
Speaker 1Bill Bixby is so appealing as a lead he is really, I guess as a kid I thought he was maybe kind of boring, but now I'm like dude, this guy is like really awesome, you really like him. He's incredibly like um, he's charismatic in a very understated way, right, um, I started even watching the the A and E biography they did of him. Oh, really, when the Hulk movie came out, when there was sort of like a revision, revival of appreciation for the Hulk. But this was a big popular hit show and that was really driven home to me through researching the return of the incredible Hulk, and what a hit it was, how excited people were to watch it again.
Speaker 1Right, lou Frigno is a little hokey, I think by today's standards there's sometimes where it looks really good the initial transformation of Bixby in the in the pilot episode, which I didn't get to rewatch this go around but I have seen probably twice so I know. But that transformation in the rain that we see in the intro, the theme song, is excellent and I like how in the early episodes they did transitory makeup on Bixby's face to where it wasn't just that he went white eyes and then disappeared and then came up, right, it was that you saw his face kind of like transition into the Hulk. They kind of got away from that. I imagine Bixby was probably like no more of that shit, I don't want to do makeup anymore, right, but I really enjoy the show. You rewatched the pilot, correct.
Speaker 2I did and it had been quite a while since I'd seen this. You know that pilot episode it's. It still holds up. It's among the best. I wouldn't say it's as good as the Wonder Woman pilot, but it's very close.
Speaker 2I like the Wonder Woman, one more because it is very comic accurate. This is. I mean, this is interesting because it is sort of sort of comic accurate, like it takes the general idea of the hulk and hulk's origin and it's like, well, we're not going to do that, but we're going to do something that's sort of like that and take the general thematic idea, which I can respect, um, and maybe it makes sense for a different time period in which this is set versus when the original comic book came out. So the original comic book, bruce banner, and he's now called david banner we'll get to that in a second but sure, bruce banner, uh, is working for the military, I believe, and he is. Uh, they're making a gamma bomb and they're about to test it. And as they're about to test it, he notices that there's a teenager who has driven his motorcycle out into the testing area unwittingly. And this teenager, rick Jones, is going to be killed in the explosion if he remains there. So he's on his own, goes out there to rescue him, pushes him aside, but in doing so he gets caught in the gamma radiation explosion and becomes the Hulk explosion and becomes the whole. So it's done as a again like we talked about Steve Rogers is a altruistic origin, that is, he is the victim of circumstances, the victim of fate by saving someone else and is cursed as a result.
Speaker 2Here it's different. He is trying to unlock the secret of what makes certain individuals capable of, you know, experiencing great strength at moments of great stress or tragedy. So we get a tacked on backstory about his wife's was in a car accident. She was trapped, he was unable to rescue her by, you know, removing debris or whatever else, and she died. So he is constantly looking for people who are in similar situations, who were able to do these.
Speaker 2You know he was here about the news extraordinary individuals gained superhuman strength to save their loved ones, save their baby, save whatever, and so why did that not happen to me? And he finds out that all the people who there's some genetic component to it as well that he finds out and he has that. But at the time when he was experiencing his tragedy, there was a low nadir of gamma radiation in the atmosphere and the environment and all the other people had high levels of gamma radiation exposed to them at that time and that was the key. So he decides well, I'm gonna unlock my own potential, I'm gonna crank the gamma radiation up to the max on my gamma machine that I have here. It's a freaking cool machine that he straps himself in the chin strap and the head strap super cool and, uh, he exposes himself.
Speaker 2Yeah, like visually. It's exceptionally well done incredible for how to do this on a tv you can.
Speaker 1You can recite the theme song, can't you dr? David banner physician scientist looking for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have when an accidental dose of gamma radiation alters his body chemistry. Now, when dr bender becomes angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs, right, I mean, come on, it's like so good. And the guy who does the intro on the theme song is the, also the voice of the hulk going that's ted gassidy, ted gassidy lurch from the adams family. Oh, oh really, oh wonderful, His voice is spectacular.
Speaker 2Oh, he's great. He's all over Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the 70s.
Speaker 1The creature is driven by rage.
Speaker 2Black Manta and maybe Bizarro, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1Oh, is that right.
Speaker 2Definitely Black Manta, augmented by the voice box.
Speaker 1Awesome.
Speaker 2Yeah, the creature is pursued by an investigative reporter.
Speaker 1Mr McGee, you don't make me angry.
Speaker 2Yeah, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry, and then we'll see that it's like uh, dr.
Speaker 1Benner was believed to be dead, and he must make the world believe that he is dead before he controls the raging spirit that dwells within him Dun dun dun, dun, dun, it's a great intro. Have you seen the?
Speaker 2family guy parody. No, I'm not sorry. Oh it's, it's beautiful it's. I'll look at that you have to with stewie griffin as as david banner, and then, instead of the part where they're, where he's changing the, where he's changing the tire he's like, oh, my god I got so worked up changing this tire.
Speaker 1I'll have to check it out. I, but no, I always I just. Bill Bixby is great. I've had more appreciation for him watching these television films, which is primarily what our concern. We watched the return and the trial of the incredible Hulk, the 88 and 89, respectively television continuations of the show which was canceled in 82.
Speaker 2Right, I wasn't able to rewatch the pilot before, before we, before we do that, um, of course, yeah, did you watch death in the?
Speaker 1family, or I did. I watched the two-parter so I wasn't able to watch the pilot. For whatever reason, I bought the season on amazon, as I don't have the, you know. I looked up the blu-ray it's like fucking 100 bucks. I was like damn that's it.
Speaker 2I think I got it on sale, but okay I got it.
Speaker 1It was kind of expensive. I was like oh, fuck, okay, but like I bought the first season on amazon, it didn't give me the pilot. It said on the video I saw. It's unavailable I don't know what the deal with that is, yeah, why, I don't know, but so I watched the death in the family, part one and two, which is like the second tv movie of the hulk before it went to series, correct?
Speaker 2yeah, and man what?
Speaker 1no, here's the thing.
Speaker 2I thought it was kind of good I mean it's good, but it's like does this need to be a 90 minute movie?
Speaker 1no, it'd be a good 40 minute, 45 minute episode but the old, the old man is a little much the old, because there's like two frankenstein kind of things going on there where it's like him and a little girl and then the old man right, so I get what they're trying to go for, um, however, it's not as effective. And then the. You know, I watched the documentary which is on youtube. They did a documentary of the incredible hulk tv series, which is pretty good, and they interviewed kenny johnson, who was the creator of the show, extensively, who also went on to create the show V, which I will watch one of these days and he did Bionic Woman.
Speaker 2I don't think he created Six Million Dollar man, but he worked on it and he created Bionic Woman.
Speaker 1Yep, and he does a lot of interviews and he's a pretty interesting interviewer. He can just kind of recall all sorts of fun information and he talks about the Hulk as he's's like oh, we did a high brow show. I didn't want to do any comic book, you know. Blah, blah, blah, I'm too good for that. I'm like okay, dude, like when you get the hulk fighting a bear like it's a little, and tossing a cart like a stuffed bear across a lake, I'm like okay, but um, did they talk in that interview?
Speaker 2I slept at the bear. I read in another article about how Stanley was like yeah, that's a great scene, but can we make it a robot bear?
Speaker 1Yeah, and he's like no, no, no, no, can't be a robot bear but the central plot and idea. That's the most captivating part of that episode, where actually my wife was watching it with me she didn't know what it was but where they were poisoning the heiress so this evil stepmother can take the money. And and um, bill bixby is like, um, hey, uh, they're poisoning this girl. Watch the. You know. My wife is like, oh, this is what is this? And they transforms into lou ferregano and she was like, how is this comic book? And I'm like, yeah, I tricked you, right?
Speaker 1But uh, actually Normie viewers in man you know, normie viewer, but we talked about, uh, how the David Banner to Bruce. Oh, yeah, right, stan Lee always said that it was because it was it was gay or something.
Speaker 2Yeah, like what the hell they? Apparently that's what Stan Lee is quoted in many articles as saying is that the name Bruce was considered too gay.
Speaker 1Now Kenny Johnson says that's not true and the reason he changed it from Bruce Banner to David Banner was because he didn't like the alliterative comic book names. He liked Clark Kent, Peter Parker, Bruce Banner banner, so he thought david banner was a stronger name which his son's name was david, apparently as well, which he got it.
Speaker 1I think david banner is kind of a strong name and his middle name is bruce, as we see on his headstone. Um, but you know, that was interesting. I read an article in um back issues magazine where they interviewed oh, excellent did you read this too? Yes, yes, and they said so. You thought that Bruce Banner was too goofy, and they go. Did you ever think about the fact that your lead star's name was Bill Bixby? And he goes? Oh shit, I never thought about that, right, but there you go.
Speaker 2That's a great magazine. I was actually going to send you that article.
Speaker 1It's like I know I looked up, I know you can find like previews of a lot of the issues. I should buy some of them because they're really they do great work of like really in-depth you know.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, the back back issues is great because that's all um bronze age, like 70s, early 80s, comic book stuff, um. And then alter ego, which that same publisher puts out, is all like silver, golden age, golden and silver age stuff. It gets really, really in the weeds like comic book, insider baseball stuff. Sometimes it's like way too much, even for me, um, but it's, it's still interesting. It's a good way to learn about a lot of stuff, um. And then the retro I think it's retro fan is the other one they put out which is like more media oriented so they put out a lot of really good publications got it, uh, but the incredible hulk tv show is really good.
Speaker 1My experience with watching it as a kid was that it would be rerun on on sci-fi yep. So when I was sick at from school, if I was really lucky, it was either a battle star galactica all day rerun day, or it was a h day, and sometimes I would fake sick to be like, oh, I'm going to watch Hulk all day which I would and sometimes I was like whatever and I'd kind of fall asleep until Hulk showed up. But no, I rewatched Death in the Family. I watched that and I thought it was really good. I'm going to continue to watch the series. Actually for this episode.
Speaker 2The best thing in death of the family for me was William Daniels. I love him. I can watch him in anything.
Speaker 1He was the bad doctor.
Speaker 2He was the bad doctor.
Speaker 1Yeah, he was good.
Speaker 2I mean, maybe you'll know him as the voice of kit from Knight Rider. But for me, he is. Yep For me. My personal favorite role is he is Dr Mark Craig on St. Favorite role is he is dr mark craig on saint. Elsewhere he is the attending surgeon of record. Uh who?
Speaker 1is like the bane of everyone's existence on that show so got it, michael. Listen to him speak all day long that's cool, a lot of guys with great voices back in those old days, man, yes, old shows, um, but yeah, but bruce, uh, bill bixby is just a. He's a a. He's a great actor. He has a great presence. He had a kind of tragic life.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was doing some research on him. He died young relatively.
Speaker 1Relatively young, like late 50s, of colon cancer. His wife.
Speaker 2Prostate cancer I believe Prostate cancer.
Speaker 1Yeah, his wife I'm trying to remember her name, but she was in Walking Tall with Joe Don Baker and she's like Walking Tall with Jodan Baker. She's beautiful In that movie. She's sort of a hanger-on at the local bar who becomes sort of his ally in his quest to rid the city of crime. If you haven't seen Walking Tall, you should check it out and watch my video review of it. But yeah, he married her and they got a divorce very acrimonious and she got custody of their child. And he was complaining to Bill that he was sick and not feeling very good but she said, well, I want to go skiing and he's going to come, he's fine. And Bixby said, don't, don't take him, he needs to go to the doctor. Rest took him skiing. He died of um, some kind of bizarre respiratory disease.
Speaker 2Um she disease. Um, she felt so bad about this that she actually killed herself.
Speaker 1Um, like halfway through, this is brenda bennett. Brenda benet, yeah, his wife, yeah, yeah, killed herself. And so that was halfway through the show and a lot of people will talk about. You know bill's attitude. You know they said he got kind of goofy towards the end of the show because his son died is, even though he was divorced, he still very much loved his ex-wife and was real broken up about it. He got married like three more times. Like just he married like a waitress at a restaurant. You know they. They were married for like eight months and just like kind of goofy stuff as he got older.
Speaker 2But, um, and the last one right before he died.
Speaker 1Then yeah, he had like three more marriages or two more before he died. But kenny said he was hitting the cocaine a little hard for a while and then he had to like beat it. But so that, yeah, he had kind of a tragic life.
Speaker 2But everyone says and attests that he was like the nicest guy on set, super encouraging, really nice guy he had probably I mean one of it's a very impressive television career, though, to have that many series under your belt, to go from, you know, one show to the next, to the next, and this was his um longest running show and probably the most successful out of all of them. But I mean, they're ones that at least uh, you know I'm not a huge fan of my favorite martian, it's it's okay, but it's my least favorite. Um, what do you call them? The magical sitcoms of the 60s? They're like the ones with the, uh, like bewitched, I dream a genie. My favorite martian, that's like you put. You put three of them, three of a kind, together.
Speaker 2It's probably my least favorite, but it's, it's okay uh, and then a courtship of eddie's father is the other show that he was the star of, and, and then he did a show just before the Hulk, called the magician.
Speaker 1that did not last, um to transition more into the, the television films that we watched. Not that I if you have something else to say, I don't want, I'm always a smooth transition guy but as an actor I always kind of had this perception of him, whether it was warranted or not, that he was maybe drawn to the hulk because he thought, well, this is a comic book presence, but it's got a real human element to it. Right, every episode of the incredible hulk was always I mean, there's a famous one where he fights an abusive father. You know, um, it's all. It was almost very socially conscious, almost. He was always encountering people in his travels that needed his help and the hulk figured into that. And, uh, he left them off better than they were before.
Speaker 1Right, yes, sort of like a traveling cane, right, yeah, but um, in kung fu. But, uh, I always thought that maybe he the idea of him co-starring with thor or daredevil, that maybe he would. I know he wasn't in the exact height of his career at the time when he did these return films, but it sounds like he was all for it. Um, he wanted to do a nicholas ham and spider-man hulk crossover, like during the hulk series. He wanted to do that. He kind of liked that idea of, like you know, introducing more superheroes to the, to the overall hulk pantheon, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2Um is the return of the incredible hulk cool uh, it's like okay um, I guess it's hard to describe these movies, these reunion films, because it's like they're. You have to approach them from different angles. So what are they? Are they? Is it a reunion film? Yes, is it also a backdoor pilot for another show? Yes. So you're balancing and juggling two separate like intentions in one and you can successfully do that and merge them together. I don't think it accomplishes that at all. I do. I will say that I think, even though I like trial more than return, I think that this movie, the return, does a better job of making it a hulk movie first and a guest starring thor second, as opposed to the second movie, which is a daredevil film, first and foremost, with Hulk as a guest star.
Speaker 2That's my opinion as to this movie. This is one of just like Captain America, I'm struggling to remember what was the actual plot, other than he's working for a company that's building a gamma transponder or something like that company that's building a gamma transponder or something like that, and there's like some kind of corporate shenanigans going on where inter-company fighting is gonna make people steal it, and thor is there but like yeah, you, you got it like what's the point?
Speaker 1it was like it's like banner is he's trying to like, uh, go through this transition to turn himself not into the hook because he has, like a long-term steady girlfriend. He's trying to like, uh, go through this transition to turn himself, not into the hulk because he has, like, a long-term steady girlfriend. He's been, he's been off the hulk juice for two years, right, and then, um, don blake, who I guess is his former, like a former student or something, shows up and turns it off for whatever reason. Yeah, and I thought that he was going to have some information about like, oh, this is actually going to kill you, or don't do this, and I learned about it. But not at all. He just turns it off and he goes hey, I want to talk to you. It's like, give the guy two fucking minutes. Man like the don blake character is very aggravating. He's played by this sort of like um, uh, ducky style nerd of the 80s.
The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
Speaker 1Right, john, very john cryer vibes I was gonna say yeah, and he's like oh hey, you gotta hear me out. Uh, I I went on a health expedition to the and this is the part that I thought I actually liked it where uh don blake is in the arctic and he goes into the cave and there's this skeleton and the lights glow, his eyes glow and he finds the hammer of thor and he gets turned and then it's not that he transforms into Thor like in the comics, he just is able to summon Thor, right.
Speaker 2He's like a magic genie, like Aladdin, that's the closest explanation I can give to what this is. And it's bizarre. It's bizarre. What were?
Speaker 1they thinking I think they were thinking that these two opposite guys would be a fun pairing, but then it just makes don look like an asshole. It's like why would he put him back in the hammer? Like, why would he just let him be a regular guy all the time? The other thing that pissed me off too, just right off the bat, was that he goes he's telling bruce banner this story and he goes. I just that sounds so crazy. I don, I don't believe you. And he goes, oh yeah, reach into my bag. And he just pulls up this tiny little hammer that weighs like one pound and I'm like what? If he was like, hey, see this hammer that I'm holding. He puts it on the table and goes try to pick it up. And if Bruce couldn't pick it up, he'd be like whoa, this is crazy.
Speaker 2He goes yeah, they do that because they never read a thor comic book. Got it okay, yep that's right because he's not even.
Speaker 2He's not even a god, as far as I can tell from this, and he's not as he's not as guardian either. It's just vaguely kind of connected to norse mythology. Thor was kind of like a um, like a um selfish guy, a selfish guy, and he was denied access to Valhalla, and that's kind of what they, what they, they turn it into and they don't call the hammer Mjolnir. It doesn't have any lightning powers or any kind of electrical powers. It's just there as like his, like his cage.
Speaker 2Yeah, his lamp is it's really his lamp, it's his lamp.
Speaker 1Yeah, his lamp is. It's really his lamp. It's his lamp, yeah.
Speaker 2I mean, that's what this is. This is Aladdin Um. I'm calling on the genie for help.
Speaker 1Why are they thought to go with Thor first, Like daredevil makes a little bit of sense. It's a little grounded in reality, Kind of like the whole show was. I don't know.
Speaker 2Trial is better but, it's like or why wouldn't you try Iron man or something it's. I know you that's more expensive with technology or whatever, but like you could have done it on a cheap too. It would have made more sense than than this. Um, especially, you're going from a show that did not want to do anything fantastical at all Other than the Hulk, and this is because Kenneth Johnson was no longer affiliated with these reading intros at all.
Speaker 1Why that happened, I don't know.
Speaker 2He says they never called him. So apparently New World Pictures bought Marvel in the interim and somehow gained the rights to the show and spearheaded these wanted to produce new potential spinoff shows with a catalog of characters. So that's what how this apparently came about. Um, and I think bill bixby's kind of eagerness to do this seems like he was interested in getting behind the camera too.
Speaker 1He didn't want any more on him.
Speaker 2The second one yeah, so he directed trial, and then he also directed the final film, which is the death of the incredible hulk, which I did not watch, but um he apparently, maybe ghost, directed. Incredible Hulk returns apparently, according to some some records. So I think he wanted to get involved behind the camera, and so this was a good opportunity for him to do that.
Speaker 1I watched an old eighties like video where they go oh, we have bill Bixby and Lou Frigno here. Bill, what he'd been up to and he goes well. I've been directing a lot more. Now it's fun to be back in front of the camera. So, yeah, he wanted to be a director. I think you saw that's the transition his career would take. I think he did a good job directing Trial. I think Trial has a lot more going on than this movie. This movie is boring. It's like you're in a lab, they're in his apartment, a lot which just doesn't look, just looks bad. Like the other thing too I didn't like about this is it just gives me this like uncomfortable, shitty feeling of watching something that was like filmed on video yeah, it does not look good it just looks bad and cheap and I don't know it just um poor jack colvin.
Speaker 1I mean, this guy does not get anything to do in this movie he's like it felt like they were obligated to have him back and at least do something with him like and with thor and hulk, it's like it's easy with the hulk on the old show yeah, he's not lifting up a tank, right, but he would like throw guys around on homecoming. I thought they did a pretty good job of him. Like he just destroys a whole staircase, he smashes through beams and collapses a house. Like he beats up a bear and throws a bear. It's like, okay, the hulk is strong, right? Whereas in this, the this fight between hulk and thor is horrible. They just throw each other into computers the whole time. And then, when there's the helicopter scene, um, hulk and thor jump on a helicopter and like can't bring it down and it just looks stupid. So, yeah, they two of them together can't bring down a helicopter. I'm like like luther, he knows like kicking his legs and it just looks terrible, right, um I found it kind of interesting that the way thor was played for laughs was kind of the same way they
Speaker 2went for it in the 2011 movie and beyond the shadow water, Like it's the same it's the same thing. I'm the fish out of water guy over and over again like hearing him at the biker bar drinking, yeah, and the thing where he's naked with the towel and he assaults Jack McGee in the apartment.
Speaker 1That guy is just not. Yeah, hello, thor Both.
Speaker 2Blake and Thor are extremely irritating. They are not likable at all and it makes you like I do not want to see a TV show with them.
Speaker 1No, and what would they fight?
Speaker 2what are they going to do for that? Who knows? I don't know.
Speaker 1You threw out all the asgardian mythology, like oh they're gonna do fight generic bank robbers too and then we had to have all that, that, those scenes of like bill bixby being like have you ever asked how thor feels? And he's like, oh, I guess not. And then he like brings thor out and he goes, let's go to a bar or something like it was just, you get like the terrible, like roadhouse blues music about the big guy being in town and shit, it was bad. Uh, thor is totally unlikable. It's a, he's a really raw actor. I mean just like you can tell he's like a sunny california beach guy playing like you know this norse god, and he's, he's just, he's just very bad maybe he would have gone along well with reb, but uh very much.
Speaker 1I mean definitely better than reb, but uh, but but only because you could tell he like cares and is going for it, but not because he's good, you know I was gonna say the thor.
Speaker 2The whole thing about thor has it's so radically changed like since then, the way the characters portrayed and perceived and stuff, like they've abandoned the donald blake thing entirely at this point, like that's which I don't think was a bad idea for the movie no, I don't think it's a bad idea it's, I mean it's historically accurate to the character, the way the character was conceived and constructed.
Speaker 2I don't know why that was so it's been like so taboo that we have to throw that out, that there's no like earthly conduit to Thor. Like, yeah, like Donald Blake would find the hammer and he would strike it on the ground and he would turn into Thor and he was a lame doctor, he a cripple, and that was like his cover and there there's nothing, there's like nothing of any of that here.
Speaker 2So I don't know. Just again, takes away, not that not that these movies have to be so slavishly devoted to the source material. It's just that the source material at least gives you some kind of like characterization, some kind of emotional connection, some kind of motivation for the character, and here they're just, they're just generic, generic, generic.
Speaker 1It's like and the bad guys too, like the corporate espionage 80s bad guys, oh god, uh. And remember that scene where, um, the main bad guy goes, uh, you dumb cajun, bastard, bastard. And he's like, hey, you're Cajun too, man, I'm like what the fuck is this?
Speaker 2Charles Napier, one of the best bad guys you'll ever find.
Speaker 1But he was doing this voice where he's like we're going in there now to get that whole group. I'm like what the fuck? And he's like we're both Cajun. I'm like what does that have to do with anything?
Speaker 2Oh my God, yeah, why are you?
Speaker 1Cajun yeah.
Speaker 2I guess I gave this a good star rating on letterbox but like you're like three stars.
Speaker 1I was like holy shit.
Speaker 2Well, I guess I enjoyed it at the time, but it's it's, it's junk. I mean, I guess maybe 20 years from now and people were talking about, you know, the early 2000s superhero movies and people were talking about fantastic four or ghost rider, and then these movies are crap and it's like, yeah, they are, they're crap, but like they're kind of fun and they're kind of enjoyable and you can watch them but, like they're crap like yeah, it's like I would get fantastic four. 2005 would probably get that three stars. You know it's.
Speaker 1Bixby just seems out of place here. You know what I mean. He's just like kind of along for the ride and we have to keep coming back to this Thor shit, which is just bad. I don't think, not as much. My nose will snip you out.
Speaker 2At least the focal point of the movie is his story and his. He needs to get the gamma transponder and he has to sacrifice it at the end to save his, his girlfriend. So at least it is his, his story that is the like, the center of it all, as opposed to the next movie, which is all about daredevil and he is really along for the ride.
Speaker 1Here I mean like so much to the point that they feel shoehorned in it didn't bother me, though you could tell big speed directed it because he goes. I want to have a beard this time right, which was kind of a good look to be, you know what I mean. Like it was kind of cool, like it made him seem a little more like on the road. Yeah, um, I thought it had a little, a lot more grit to it. It didn't seem like so um, fleeting and goofy, right. Um, I thought that the guy that got to play daredevil, um, rex, uh, rex smith, I didn't know anything about him. I learned he was a teen heartthrob in the 70s. I did not you know that. Oh, yeah, he had a hit song, a number one hit song, really, rex smith, yeah, he did. Yeah, he was quite the guy. He was on teen beat, tiger beat and all that shit all the time. Uh, he was really big. Um, his his song.
Speaker 1Um, I had no idea yeah let's make it yeah, sooner or later his album. Yeah, he was. Look him up in the 70s. He was quite the sean cassidy style like oh, yeah, he was 16 using tiger.
Speaker 2He had a gold top 10 single.
Speaker 1You take my breath away yeah, so he and he was, uh, he made his start on broadway in greece, um, he had like six albums, so he was quite the uh, quite the um guy. I think he was maybe still around in the 80s, but not to the same extent, right, um, so they were planning on doing a daredevil show with him. I did what. Did you think of him as daredevil?
Speaker 2no, I liked him. I thought this was, yeah, this was the best, like, uh, additional character that was added. Uh, as opposed to everything else, like I don't mind I actually kind of think the the ninja outfit is is like a good fit for this, if you want to do it in a bad I don't know. Come on, man, this is like no, horns you're gonna get this is the best you're gonna get. Okay, and they even paid homage to this uh, daredevil outfit, didn't they? In the netflix show in season one.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, frank miller put him in the black suit. Yeah, for his like origin, his like retrospect. You know his um, but his retcon origin I, I, I liked him.
Speaker 2Um, I thought he was very appealing. He had a, a humanity to him, a warmth to him, his origin, as he describes it is actually pretty accurate. Um, they don't like skimp on the, the fact that there was mutagenic waste that blinded him and gave him yeah. Sensory powers. So they're not saying that. He's just, like you know, heightened from training. He has a like a super science fiction aspect to him.
Speaker 1Yeah, I was surprised they went all the way with his origin, like that.
Speaker 2Yeah, I thought they were going to like skimp out on that.
Speaker 1I think Bixby really liked the character of Daredevil. When he's making a movie and he goes, I want to do a movie about him. I think that's what it was.
Speaker 2And it's like how hard is it to just include a line about it, Like you know, that's all it is is that they just say he's explaining his origin to Banner and he's talking about that. That's what happened. And the same thing. They talk about his dad and, it's interesting, they even point out that's the only photograph on his wall. It's like, why do you even have this up here? And it's like, well, this is my dad, who was very important to me, and they don't talk about how, like the dad was, you know, involved with the criminal stuff.
Speaker 2I guess they sort of allude to it, but you know how times were tough. But yeah, he's Um, but yeah he's, he's very good. He's good as both Murdoch and as daredevil. I do find it odd as, as they did all of this very accurately, would it have been so hard to make the rest of the supporting cast?
Speaker 1Why aren't they Karen and foggy in the law firm?
Speaker 2Exactly why.
Speaker 1Why not just go?
Speaker 2on that. Yeah, like it's a woman and a guy Call up Stanley and be like hey, daredevil's a lawyer, right, he has a law firm. What's the name of it? Oh, nelson and murdoch okay, cool. Um, he has a partner. What's his name? Okay, he has a secretary okay, cool, we'll put them in yeah, you could just call him franklin nelson.
Speaker 1If you think foggy is cringe or whatever, right, yeah. But why? Why do that? Why have the exact same dynamic, but the they changed their name. Why bother?
Speaker 2You know I don't clearly got a romantic thing going on with the uh, the secretary, or the yes.
Speaker 1Yes, so that was literally out of the comics. Like the entire first run of Stanley is like him being hurt or weird or gone Cause he's daredevil and her being like, oh, he's such a he's proud, you know. Like that, oh, he's proud, that was right out of Stan Lee. Oh, he doesn't want to ask for help, that's so the maternal girlfriend who's always pining over the superhero. I just was pissed that his goofy-ass mask comes to a point on top of his head like a sock and he doesn't have horns. Just give him fucking horns, why not?
Speaker 2I know, but what are you going to do? They got more than we usually do.
Speaker 1How about your Wilson Fisk and then his henchman? Wilson Fisk is not called Wesley, which is his henchman guy? Yeah, but they did have Turk, which was a Frank Miller creation.
Speaker 2I always think of my personal favorite Kingpin assistant as Smythe, but that's more like Spider-Man.
Speaker 1You're right.
Speaker 2You know Spider-Man affiliated. But anyway, I was going to say we finally get, for the first time ever, a real comic book villain.
Speaker 3Yes, I mean, we've never seen any to this point, none.
Speaker 1I like John Rhys-Davies with his like his sunglasses. I'm like why is this not a meme? You know what I mean. Like why is this not a meme?
Speaker 2because no one probably remembers this I'm gonna bring it back. Did you did you get kind of like trumpish vibes off him.
Speaker 1I don't know yeah, sure, I mean, trump was a guy back then too.
Speaker 2He's like I'm at the top of the tower here, I'm the coolest guy especially with that, that tower and the uh, the marble like everywhere, I don't know.
Speaker 1I just kind of got the cool set, the ending, the climax was weak and I was shocked that he didn't turn into the hulk at the end oh yeah, did he even turn into the hulk?
Speaker 2yeah, he did at one point, because he feels daredevil, feels the um his face as he transforms back.
Speaker 1He turns into the Hulk one time at the beginning, when he is in the subway.
Speaker 2Yes, when he attacks the muggers.
Speaker 1In a dream sequence where he's in his truck.
Speaker 2What was the whole deal there?
Speaker 1I don't know.
Speaker 2Those guys were just acting like freaking maniacs and creeps and they wanted to assault that lady and that's like the catalyst for the entire movie, which is just random.
Speaker 1It's not part of the plot. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 3But why, is she having the entire plot?
Speaker 1I don't, I don't know, like because then daredevil's like oh, I need to, I can get to the kingpin from these guys like how, because?
Speaker 1they're like that were fucking around. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't either, um, but I actually thought that the monologue from the woman was actually kind of effective when she's like I have my own dreams, I don't want to be a kingpin pawn and I was like, okay, this is kind of good, like you know, like the acting was good. I mean, it just seemed like it was. Uh, the cinematography was better. It was way better with Bixby at the helm. It was not just some cheap shitty. Here we are in the apartment. The score was better. It was this kind of synth score which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2What about the courtroom scene? Whatever.
Speaker 1They had to get the Hulk in there somewhere, right he?
Speaker 2had a dream sequence. Did it have to be a dream sequence when the movie is called the trial of the incredible hulk?
Speaker 1that's why they that's what they they attribute the, uh, the fall in the ratings to like it wasn't as big as return, probably because return was so bad. Everyone was like fuck that maybe.
Speaker 2I think that's more likely to do with it. And of course we have our first ever Stan Lee cameo.
Speaker 1Yes, we do.
Speaker 2In this movie as a juror.
Speaker 1But you know, stan Lee was, he was the narrator of Spider-Man and his amazing friends, right, and he was out there.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, this is 89. So yeah, he was been out there. Yes, spider-man and his amazing friends was like 81 or something like that is stanley in blade I don't think so, but he shouldn't be because he didn't create blade, yeah, but he was in. Oh my god, I hate that so much like he shouldn't be in guardians of the galaxy. I mean, yes, I guess he created groot, but like, like he shouldn't be.
Speaker 1Oh wow, he created groot. Yeah, like in the golden age, you know some artist drew a big tree monster and he goes, uh groot and he's like, he's like jack, let's have a tree, yeah what if a tree was a monster jack? I'll take care of it just put some driving to work and I I saw a tree. What if a tree was a monster?
Speaker 2okay, stan I got it like, yeah, like come on, like I don't need like stanley in my wolverine movie. Like. Come on, like I don't need like.
Speaker 1Stanley in my Wolverine movie.
Speaker 2Like. Come on Like if you didn't create the character or had anything to do with it, like come on, but anyway, what were we saying? Yeah, so the trial scene? Yeah, that's kind of a letdown, but I don't know. Overall, the movie is pretty good. It's better than the other one.
Speaker 1What did you think about the end when the kingpin got into a building that turned into a flying car? Then daredevil goes, fisk, I'll get you. And it was like a horrible, like flying car.
Speaker 2It's just a heli.
Speaker 1It's like a helicopter dish kind of thing it was like a flying car, oh yeah, and he was like fisk, yeah, you won't get away with this right never be captured.
Speaker 1Come on you know well, and then at the end is uh foggy and karen are like what? I thought there was something on top of that building and then, like dave goes well, looks can be deceiving, or what does he say? He says something stupid, like I don't know. Things are different. Sometimes it's like whoa, okay, wow, um, it was okay. I mean, I didn't watch death of the incredible hulk, I don't you know I've never seen that one.
Speaker 2I've never seen that one, to be honest he dies in it no kidding yeah, but they were gonna. They were gonna bring it back, though, and and um, they're gonna do a fourth one, but bill bixby died interesting thing, um, I've heard rumors that she hulk was supposed to be in death of the incredible hulk, but that didn't materialize you know what's crazy they?
Speaker 1they filmed half of a she hulk pilot where bill bixby returns, and then they scrapped it before they were done and it just lost the time.
Speaker 2Really, when was this? During the run of the show, or?
Speaker 11990. Then he died in like 91 or two.
Speaker 3I've heard a story about the entire creation of She-Hulk and I don't know if you've read this too, is that the reason She-Hulk was created was because the Incredible Hulk TV show was so successful.
Speaker 2She was created was because the the incredible hulk tv show was so successful. They were very, very worried at marvel that kenneth johnson was going to do what he did to the six million dollar man and create the bionic. When he created the bionic woman that they were going to create, she hulk on the show and not be the rights holder to that character. So they were like I can 100, so let's just trademark it, copyright it.
Speaker 1And also make sure Stanley writes the first issue and then didn't write the second or third. Yeah, he didn't need it, I just yeah, I'm totally with you. I have that kind of tinfoil idea too. We're up Cause she was in came out in like 79.
Speaker 2Yeah, during the show. During the show. Yeah, during the show.
Speaker 1He's probably like let's yeah, let's make a she-hulk. I think that'd be a good idea. I hadn't heard that angle, that it was that they didn't want to not be the rights holder, but I I thought that maybe they were like oh, bionic woman, you know, bionic man, hulk, she-hulk.
Speaker 2Let's do it right I feel I've read that they wanted to make sure that there was no dispute over who created the character and there's no legality that I'll come back to.
Speaker 1Makes sense. Spider-woman. I always liked old 70s Spider-Woman comics.
Speaker 2Spider-Woman is very, very, very cool.
Speaker 1Very cool, great costume. They didn't ape the Spider-Man costume, they went different.
Speaker 2Have you ever seen the Spider-Woman cartoon from the 70s?
Speaker 1No, I know it exists. Is it really I know it exists? Is it really I know it's? On Disney+. I always liked her costume. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, I believe so. I don't have that anymore, but I remember it was on there.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's made by the same company that made that 70s Fantastic Four cartoon. It's called the Patty Freeling Enterprises.
Speaker 1Where they didn't have human torch and they had a robot instead her be the robot, yeah because I think human torch was one of those that got sold to yes, uh, columbia or universal, and so they didn't have the rights yeah, not that, not the urban legend that they were concerned kids were going to light themselves on fire yeah, right, but wasn't her be the robot? Wasn't that a pre? Wasn't he in the comics before the?
Speaker 2I don't think so I think they added him later.
Speaker 1He he has appeared since then I think he, but they brought him into the comics yeah yeah that's a garbage show too, is it really?
Speaker 2oh yeah, it's bad. That one was on. I don't know why they. They released a bunch of those on video when I was a kid and I I used to watch that. Um, it was on like a like a sampler pack. It was like a marvel marvel sampler video and it had Spider-Man 80s, spider-man with Dr Octopus, it had the Fantastic Four. I think it was like the Olympics of Doom or the Olympics of Space or something like that. And I think Pride of the X-Men was on. There too was the third thing, which is really good. Pride of the X-Men is awesome.
Speaker 1If you've never seen that I've never seen that either. Yeah, you know, I know that there was. They were they were going to do a daredevil cartoon show as well. Oh really, the only evidence that exists of yeah, the only evidence that exists is a really low res image. There's like one image of a drawing that Romita did as a proof of concept for the cartoon and they were going to give daredevil a seeing eye dog lightning a proof of concept for the cartoon and they were going to give daredevil a seeing eye dog lightning the super dog that would be like his.
Speaker 2That actually makes sense to me. He's blind seeing eye dog dog is also a super.
Speaker 1That's that makes sense like secret identity, secret identity stage, not like while he's going and fighting that comes with on all the adventures that actually makes sense to me sorry, I mean like as far as like shoehorning animals and pets into a cartoon show, like that actually like makes sense, because like, oh, he's blind, when he was like a magic seeing eye dog that fights with him. Like that makes sense, oh man uh this has been a record low viewership stream. We haven't had anyone they tuned in and why it's been such a good.
Speaker 2This was a good. This has been a.
Speaker 1I think this has been a good one too. Um yeah, nobody cares, we'll see what the views are on this yeah, I don't think I.
Speaker 2I'm sure no one's watching on my uh, if you're watching, you know give us a shout zero viewers. Yeah, yeah, I got one and we had we had some good interaction last time with people we really did.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think maybe um maybe the content is too obscure I think possibly that might be part of it, and I was like I thought this one would be do, do really well I did too.
Speaker 1Actually, I thought people would be. But you know what? This maybe doesn't surprise me my audience, they're just not into superheroes or star wars. Okay, you know I I've asked them before in polls. I go hey, uh, what do you feel about star Wars content? Resounding no. And I go okay, and they go old, 70, shit only. But I thought this was fun. Yeah, I mean we, I, I. What do you want to do next?
Speaker 2Do you want to do a hammer? Yeah, I'm down for hammer you recommended, so I bought that. I found a nice used copy that was a lot cheaper.
Speaker 1That's what I got too. It's a good book. It's a good guide.
Speaker 2I found another one that looked interesting. It was called the Horror Guys Guide or something. This person wrote a bunch of different horror books with different eras. I bought the Hammer one. I bought the Silent Arrow one from these people, oh great.
Speaker 1That will be a fun show. I bought the silent arrow one from these people, so that will be a fun show, yeah, and I bought the hammer blu-ray.
Speaker 2It's like a Sony uh compilation of like 20 films or something like that, and I don't have most of them. Yeah, um, it was interesting. I think it's out of print, but I bought it like secondhand.
Speaker 1I have a lot of the shout factory ones.
Speaker 2Oh see, those are so good I they re. Most of those are on the universal Blu-ray and DVD set. That, um, there's like a red um.
Final Thoughts & Conclusions
Speaker 1So I've got the hammer horror collection here, pulled up on Amazon. Eight film collection what do? We got in there? Brides of Dracula, curse the werewolf I've got that. Night creatures we got in there. Brides of Dracula, curse of the Werewolf I've got that. Night Creatures. Phantom of the Opera, paranoiac, the Kiss of the Vampire. Nightmare of Evil of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2That's the red case, right yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2That's the one universe. Those are all the ones Universal owns the rights to.
Speaker 1Okay, oh, I'm seeing this Hammer Film, 20 film set.
Speaker 2Ultimate Collection out of print. Yeah, that's the one I just bought today Hammer Films Ultimate Collection. It's got 20 movies.
Speaker 1What would?
Speaker 2you want to oh, I don't know, whatever I was thinking for at least the first one do the major classics of the four main monsters and then start diverting into the more obscure stuff like Horror of Dracula, curse of Frankenstein, the Mummy and Curse of the Werewolf.
Speaker 1We gotta branch out to. We gotta get like Devil Rides Out. Captain Kronos, vampire Hunter, mummy Shroud, rasputin the Mad Monk. Quatermass. I have not seen Quatermass. I know I should definitely see that. Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde uh, you know, a Sherlock Holmes, one Doctor, what?
Speaker 2you don't know what I'm talking about what's it called Sister Hyde.
Speaker 1Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde is it like a black thing?
Speaker 2no, it's like he changes genders. Oh he does.
Speaker 1Yeah, oh it looks kind of cool. No, it's like he changes genders. Oh he does. Yeah, oh, it looks kind of cool. They look the same. I was watching the Devils last night. Have you ever seen the Devils?
Speaker 2No, that's one of theirs.
Speaker 1Dude.
Speaker 2What's up? One of what.
Speaker 1That's one of Hammers, no, no, uh, it's a ken russell movie, that with oliver reed oh, it's incredible, one of the best horror films ever seen.
Speaker 2It's so good better than the manitow yeah, the manitow. We might have to do a separate show on the manitow I mean, I didn't even know what it was when I bought it um it's a, it's a. It's an exorcist ripoff when I read the description on the back when I got it I was like oh what surgeons thought to be a tumor growing on the neck of a patient is actually a fetus growing at an abnormally accelerated rate.
Speaker 2But when karen reaches out to former lover and phony psychic harry erskine, played by tony curtis, she discovers that she is possessed by the reincarnation of a 400 year old native american demon see, now you spoil it, because when they started throwing all the native american demon shit out I was like what you know?
Speaker 1and uh it starts in one place and it ends in another place, and you'll be. You'll be, uh, wow, I can't believe tony curtis had to.
Speaker 2You know I think this late stage career, you know same director as grizzly it's? Um reminds me of that. Um james wan movie that just came out like two years ago um can't remember the name of it where the it's like the evil siamese twin was conjoined on the back of the head. Um oh really, oh man, I can't remember the name of it it was on. I watched it when it was on hbo max. Uh, let me see malignant.
Speaker 1Malignant, that's it I didn't see that. I heard it was good though oh no, that's trash oh, it is yeah, it's like um, he's all over the place yeah, it's like um the same tone as megan megan he did he come back for aquaman too?
Speaker 2oh, he did, yeah yeah, that's gonna be a disaster is it, though?
Speaker 1ben affleck is in it. What, oh is he? No, come on, really. It doesn't say it on wikipedia, but he came up on google. That's's part of the cast.
Speaker 2I have to say Blue Beetle was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I didn't particularly like it. My friend absolutely loved it. He loved this movie. I just I was like it's, if this was 2009, 2010,. This probably would have been the best superhero movie of all time, but now I'm like this was pretty standard fare seen too many origins and then, um, you like this movie, I three into two, won't go what okay, three into two won't go.
Speaker 1I was reading that I was like what's so? Complicated still here. That's our one fan watching what's so complicated?
Speaker 2it's three into two won't go courtney's still here.
Speaker 1Courtney, what did you think? Are you gonna watch any of these uh superhero tv movies after our uh reviews here? Are you interested in captain america? I actually I gotta tell you I probably had the most. I enjoyed my captain captain America one and two viewing experiences the most. I don't know what it is. I don't, I can't explain it, I can't move my finger on it.
Speaker 2They're so bad, they're good. They're so bad, they're good.
Speaker 1I would. Just both times I watched them I was like, okay, so I get up early I can like like run and stuff, treadmill and just watch some of this shit. Like spider-man, right, but with captain america I was like hanging out just having a few beers, like on friday night. I'm like, okay, you know, just just you know. I'm like, okay, I'm here, you know, I get it like, uh, I like the, um, the, the window into the 70s, yeah, but wonder woman by far is the best.
Speaker 2It was excellent yeah, I wouldn't recommend captain america one or two to anyone outside of like you really want to obey no, I mean like if you're, if you like, if you like 70s tv movies and you like this kind of stuff and you want to watch it by all means, like there's worse probably, but uh, I wouldn't recommend it. Like telling someone that you're gonna watch a really good movie, I would say watch the Wonder Woman pilot, watch the Incredible Hulk yeah, don't watch Spider-Man, don't watch Captain America.
Speaker 1Yeah, watch an episode of the Incredible Hulk. It's just nice. It's a comfort blanket, it's a good little show, it's cool.
Speaker 2Wonder Woman, though I actually might watch more of that because I really enjoyed the pilot. It was like, yeah, the first exciting, well-made, dynamic fun. Um, yeah, they do.
Speaker 1Uh, it's like wonder woman, wonder woman versus baroness paula van gunther.
Speaker 2See, that sounds better than like hypnotists and like a student one after it's like faustia the nazi wonder woman amazing, yeah, exactly, it's a very I mean, I just found it very fun.
Speaker 1It's like not, no, it's too seriously. But it's lush, it's well made, it's funny, it's got like some sex appeal to it. It's like you know it's, it's got. It's got something going on a lead actress that you can, what, what? Rev Brown. Wow, Cool your dad. He shook up all the big shakers and movers. They called him, captain America.
Speaker 3I never heard that Wow.
Speaker 2Oh, wow I don't know, man.
Speaker 1That's a pretty good impression of Rev Brown.
Speaker 2I was going to say have you ever seen, or? Heard of this movie Hardcore.
Speaker 1Got it on Blu-ray, love it.
Speaker 2Oh, you do. Okay, I figured, I figured.
Speaker 1It's a great movie.
Speaker 2It looks really really good. George C Scott and Pretty Baby.
Speaker 1Will 70's Paul Schrader Okay, no, Hardcore is excellent and along with like it's like a great triple feature with like Blue Collar and Rolling Thunder. I love that late 70s Paul Schrader stuff. It's excellent. George C Scott it's a great movie. It's awesome. Yeah, You'll like it. Pretty Baby, what is that? Oh, let's see.
Speaker 2Pretty Baby. What is that? Oh, let's see. Keith Carradine is a photographer in 1917, obsessed with the prostitutes in New Orleans' Red Light District. Brooke Shields' subtlety and depth are astonishing. According to Roger Ebert, His violet, a 12-year-old girl who bewitches him with her curiosity and naive coquettishness. Interesting.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1I think so.
Speaker 2Let's see the level headed treatment of this controversial theme. Sumptuous cinematography and exceptional performances by the entire cast, especially Susan Sarandon as Violet's mother, make Pretty Baby a must-see for all serious film fans. So it has something to do with photography and prostitution in 1917.
Speaker 1Okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 2I saw it in the catalog that I get, which is this I need to get that catalog.
Speaker 1What I need to get that catalog. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Go on their website and sign up for the thing. They get it every month and there's just weird stuff in there that you would never Movies Unlimited. Movies Unlimited yeah.
Speaker 1For movie buffs since 1978.
Speaker 2And there's coupons too and they send you good deals Like some of the. If you buy them on their website they're a little bit more expensive than buying on Amazon, so you have to pick and choose whether or not it's worth it, like if you might find something that's like way more expensive than just like forget it, but sometimes there are discounted or with the deal they give you you'll get a better deal. But at least to like find stuff or look for stuff like you get good ideas like a stuff, the, the, the like, um, the new releases and stuff is pretty good I'm on their website.
Speaker 1I'm seeing a dvd called the sexual story of. Oh, what the hell is that?
Speaker 2I don't know that was that severin films, that was that film, that um picture I sent you from the catalog of the. Uh, the there's like the nazi exploitation genre hell, yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah it's like why does this stuff even exist and why?
Speaker 1is it of the ss? I've seen that which one it's like ilsa she will. This is like way more extreme.
Speaker 2This is like way more oh okay, okay.
Speaker 1You ever go on like severin films, like don't they do all the porn stuff I think that's them.
Speaker 2I think that's them yeah that was the uh I don't know, it's like sometimes it's like what's in this catalog? It's like there's all this like borderline erotica stuff and I'm like what the hell?
Speaker 1yeah, I'm looking at. Yeah, severin films has a ton of that stuff Like Let my Puppets Come. You ever heard of that?
Speaker 2Like what the hell no 1976.
Speaker 1It's on, yeah.
Speaker 2This always reminds me of when Roger Ebert was on Conan's show back in the day. And he's like so you used to review porno films, right, did he really? And he's like so you used to review porno films right really, and he's like well technically, because in the 70s like there were mainstream porno films that were released in theaters, you know and it's like talking about these types of movies, you know there were.
Speaker 1yeah, like I'm thinking of vinegar syndrome which, like they will have, like they're mostly old seventies, like porno movies is what they sell. Yeah, there's an entire section. I gotta get on the mailing list. Yeah, ha ha ha, but they had one. There's a weird stuff here Private.
Speaker 2private house of the SS.
Speaker 1The pro of the private house.
Speaker 2Suspecting traitors lurk in their midst. Higher-ups in the Nazi party recruit some fetching fems and train them as prostitutes in the service of the Reich.
Speaker 1Brilliant. I mean I don't know. All right, brother, I got to wrap it up, it's been fun.
Speaker 2Okay, yeah, so this was a good one, and we'll do Hammer next time. Okay, um, yeah, so this was, this was a good one. Um and uh, we'll do hammer next time.
Speaker 1I agree, we'll work out some episodes and we'll do some hammer.
Speaker 2Hopefully we'll get some uh, get some viewers next time.
Speaker 1I think we will. That'll be bigger than nobody gives a fuck about captain America 1977.
Speaker 2Captain America.
Speaker 1They're missing out.
Speaker 2It's the last time we'll ever be talked about All right, have a good one.
Speaker 1All right, brother, I'll see you around. Thanks a lot. Whenever it's free.
