Mystery Monday: Tonka Play People giant scale boat!

 

It's another Monday, and I'm back after a bit of a break. This time around, I don't really have anything new, but another installment in an investigation that's been going on for about as long as this blog. We're back to Sidekick Carl and the Tonka Play People, with one new acquisition, a boat made for Carl's sweetheart, the giant Tonka lady aka Dana the Nine-Foot Woman! To start off, here's a few pics

As previously recounted, the giant lady was one of two sculpts Tonka made nominally for their Play People line but in a 5-inch scale. My best guess for the reason was that this was the nominal scale of their original Mighty Tonka vehicles, some of which came with doll-style figures. I have neither confirmed nor ruled out whether the large Play People were included with later releases of these vehicles, except for a phone repair truck that included the guy figure. Where the lady came in was a Backcountry Explorer set, an apparently original vehicle packaged with two figures, a motorcycle and the pictured canoe. I had looked on and off at acquiring either the jeep, which is affordable apart from a hit on shipping. or one of the secondary vehicles. I was most interested in the bike, but it was tricky to tell apart from smaller Tonka bikes and often in poor condition. I was also skeptical whether the 9 Foot Woman could actually ride the thing, which otherwise looked suspiciously like a decoration. I finally settled for the boat, evidently a canoe sort of thing. By a typical fluke of online listings, the best deal pound for pound was the boat together with another lady figure. Somehow, as always, it turned out even bigger than it looked. Here it is with Carl.

Of course, the twist was the new figure. I had previously identified a variant of the lady with a blue jumpsuit, but I have never found it for a good price and have come to believe that it was sold mainly or exclusively in Europe. What I got instead was a duplicate of the one I had, definitely in better condition. Here's a few pics.

"Yeah, I'm in the doghouse no matter who I pick..."

Yeah, I could say they're twins, but there can only be one 8 fout 3 woman...

The differences in condition are pronounced enough that I had no trouble at all telling the new arrival apart from the one I already had (always on the left). While the condition is better, there are things that are just a bit off. The new girl is a bit grimy. She also looks somehow less shiny, somethint that might not be nearly as obvious in the pics. On handling, she feels a bit rough, either from the noted grime or just general roughing up. One more thing that made me suspicious is that there's a paint error on the face, which looked like someone had touched up the figure (admittedly something I had considered with the one I had). On examination, however, I found that the paint doesn't line up at a number of points on both figures, as well as a fracture or so on the previously purchased figure that I didn't already know about. Ultimately, this is surely simply an indicator of how little the manufacturer was invested in these things. Here's a couple closeup pics of the new and "old" figures

And here's something just odd on the new girl. The same wear pattern is on the instep of both feet. I'm genuinely baffled where it came from. Maybe from actually being on the bike???

And here's an extra pic of the boat. It looks disgusting; as far as I can tell, it's all discoloration and maybe some spot stains. 

And here they all are in the boat. I told you it's bigger than it looks. Row, row, row you're... wait a minute, that's not right.

You'd think the problem is that there's no oars. Actually, it's that their hands don't hold anything.

And in case this doesn't feel mysterious enough, here's a few more leads from the online listings. First, a variation of the canoe; those bikes definitely don't belong with the figures.

And, a repaint of the jeep, have seen it sold with and without figures.

This is a little stranger. The wheels we've seen are removeable, but this seems to be a substitution with the usual wheels I've seen on my dump truck and forklift. The odd part is, some of these are listed as from 1978, before the Play People were released. Is this an error, or did this come first? Just try to find someone who cares...

And then there's this. It's clearly a version of the set with the bike left out. But... who the hell is that guy? Is this even a 5-inch figure? And if it's not, why is it here? Were they just trying to clear out as many as possible? Nothing about this line makes sense. Funghhh...

And with that, I'm wrapping this up before I get annoyed. For every mystery solved, there's always another, even if it's just a loose end, and usually, that/s a good thing. That's all for now, more to come!

The Rerun Review: The first one with a killer bulldozer

 

Title: Killdozer

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Knockoff/ Evil Twin

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

As I write this, I’m up to my repeatedly announced 200^th review, and I have been going through a lot of material just to decide what to review. I finally decided that it was time to do another TV movie review. It just happened I had one very promising lead, unearthed while I was at one of the local used shops. I didn’t buy it, but I quickly confirmed it was available to view in gray-area online videos. So, at the last possible moment, I watched the damn thing, and the easy punchline that I got my money’s worth definitely applies. Here is Killdozer, an adaptation of a classic story of possessed construction machinery that somehow managed to make that boring.

Our story begins with a meteor falling to Earth. We then jump forward an uncertain amount of time to an island where a construction crew is at work. When one of the workmen runs into the meteorite with a bulldozer, he falls ill and dies from a mysterious blue radiation. Soon after, the foreman narrowly survives an apparent malfunction of the bulldozer. He promptly disables the machine, but another workman takes it back online. The dozer begins to move seemingly of its own volition, throwing and crushing its operator (of course the black guy) and destroying the only radio equipment. The remaining crew are stalked by the slow-moving but unstoppable machine. Their only hope is to meet the killdozer in a duel with their remaining vehicle. But can they destroy the being that is animating the machine.

Killdozer was a 1974 made-for-TV movie originally aired by ABC. The film was based on a 1944 novella of the same name by Theodore Sturgeon, who shared credit for the script with one Ed MacKillop.  The film starred Clint Walker of The Dirty Dozen and Robert Urich of Magnum Force. A soundtrack was provided by Gil Melle, a jazz performer and composer who had previously worked on The Andromeda Strain. The movie received negative reviews from both contemporary and later critics. The film was released on DVD and Blu Ray by Kino Lorber in 2020. The term “Killdozer” has been used for an improvised armored vehicle used in a 2004 incident in Granby, Colorado. It is unclear if those using the label were aware of either the film or the story.

For my experiences, I read the original story early in my binge on “Golden Age” pulp sci fi. Along with “It” (see… Swamp Thing?), it contributed to my early and very high opinion of Sturgeon, and contributed to the somewhat misleading impression that the author simply wrote monster/ alien stories. I am sure I heard of the movie at an early date, but never heard of it being available until a chance sighting of the DVD. That was motivation enough to take a look at the movie for this review. I will not mince any words: This is bad. Very bad. Even more inexplicably and unforgivably, it’s just plain dull.

Moving forward to the movie, the first and foremost thing to be said is that it’s disarming on first impressions. If you know made-for-TV movies (see The Time Machine), this wobbles between tolerable and moderately impressive. The acting is good, the dialogue competent and frequently thoughtful, and the music almost distractingly well-done. The better moments get packed in early with an innovative meteor sequence (compare to The Green Slime only 6 years earlier), followed by the meaningful death and subsequent mourning of one of the crew. In the process, there’s some amusing references to the wartime setting of the original story, complete with the discovery of a photo of Veronica Lake. What quickly becomes apparent, however, is how little happens. The whole damn movie is barely over 70 minutes, and the murder machine doesn’t get its first victim until the half-hour mark. That wonky scene demonstrates a couple more things that will continue to weigh the movie down. First, this is very toned down, even compared to the pulps. Second, the bulldozer is really slow, to the point that the cast have to go out of their way to get themselves killed.

Meanwhile, the suspicion that quickly grew in my mind, which I had never seriously considered reading about the film in cold blood, is that this is a ripoff of Duel. Now, this doesn’t mean that this film owes its existence to that earlier and far superior TV movie. What gets suspicious very is the attempt to develop the machine as an actual villain, especially through frequent closeups. The unaccountable failure here is not simply that the killdozer isn’t threatening; it’s that it fails almost entirely at manifesting any sense of personality. This is all the more odd as Duel clearly succeeded at capturing malevolent personality in a non-anthropomorphic machine. Even Maximum Overdrive got this right a good part of the time, and it was a collaboration between Stephen King and narcotics. (Actually, illegal substances wouldn’t have been a bad backup plan…) The obvious difference is that those movies showed old, beat-up vehicles that looked like they had lived a life all their own, whether they were animated by an unseen sentience or just an extension of a human operator’s malign will. Here, on the other hand, the killdozer and indeed all the machines look so pristine this could just as well be a commercial. That goes a long way to account for the further anticlimax of the duel between the dozer and a far larger machine, which is so awkward that Dinosaurus would laugh at it. (Wait a minute, I haven’t reviewed Dinosaurus???)

Now, I’m already up to the “one scene”. About 15 minutes in, the foreman starts the bulldozer for no obvious reason in the middle of the night. The camerawork gives a better than usual sense of the machine inside and out. Within bare seconds, the machine is clearly out of control. The veteran character actor sells the scene with obvious confusion and growing alarm as he literally struggles with the controls. (In the story, the hero is physically battered in the process.) He finally cuts a hose, triggering a spray of steam or smoke. He finally either bails or gets knocked off. That’s when the machine backs up for a turn, its blade raised. There’s no mistaking the purposeful intent as it begins to advance… except, it’s too early to doubt what’s going to happen. It’s a good sequence that proves the movie was made by people who knew what they were doing, and that more than usual makes the final product even more disappointing.

In closing, the main thing I have to say is that this is the shortest review I’ve done in a long time. As for the rating, it may seem like a surprise that I haven’t given this movie the lowest rating, something I specifically revived my Space 1979 scale to keep for this feature. As usual, the driving consideration isn’t how “bad” the movie is, but how much I actively hate it. In those terms, this movie is just too harmless to provoke me. If it comes to that, it has the upside of being a very quick watch and a pretty fast review. With that, I’m ready to finish, with one more milestone in the rear view mirror. Punch it, Bishop!

Image credit Horror Patch.

Movie Mania: Top 10/ 20 best movies reviewed!

 

As I write this, I’m just about to his 200 movie reviews, without doing anything to monetize my work, and I decided to do something different, that is, what everybody else who does what I do does sooner or later: Assemble a list of the best movies I’ve reviewed.  This might seem either Herculean or moot, given the quality of the movies I usually review. In fact, a good part of the list that’s been emerging in my mind are ones I knew would be here as soon as I reviewed them, usually because I normally wouldn’t have reviewed them. The rest have tended to follow naturally by reputation as much as quality, though parts of this are still fuzzy. So, here comes the top 10 list, not necessarily in order but definitely by tier.

 

1.     They Live- A movie so good and successful I reviewed it on the technicality that there was a comic book. Two guys discover that aliens have secretly conquered the world and fight back. It’s a bona fide cult classic that’s become a mainstream success. Top of the line.

2.     Galaxy Quest- Another cult movie that went mainstream. The washed-up cast of a science fiction show are recruited for a real war by aliens who think their adventures are history. High-level snark turns into an effective tribute to Trek and the serials and B-movies that influenced it. Good fun, with lots of laughs and real heart.

3.     Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger- An old personal favorite, the swansong of the great Ray Harryhausen. The titular sailor goes on a voyage to a polar lost world to cure a prince transformed into a baboon. It’s Harryhausen at the top of his game with the baboon prince, a troglodyte and an assortment of monsters. A good and beautiful thing.

4.     Deep Rising- Really tied for three, another all-time favorite of mine. Mercenaries hired by a mysterious employer must fight their way out of a cruise ship infested by swarms of man-eating tentacle-worms. It’s a perfect blend of monster movie, action and comedy, with ILM-assisted CGI monsters and a Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack so awesome it got its own review first.

5.     Flash Gordon- My only top 5 substitution, one of the movies that got me doing this in the first place. Flash Gordon must save the Earth and Dale Arden from the over-the-top villainy of Ming the Merciless… actually, everything is over the top, including the theme song by Queen. It’s a genuinely clever tribute/ send-up and the most egregiously ‘70s thing on this list, though it happened to come out in 1980. “Flash…”

6.     Sole Survivor- One more favorite, a criminally neglected zombie movie from the director of Night of the Comet. The only survivor of a plane crash is stalked by undead assassins so stealthy only a nosey coroner notices them. It’s a polarizing movie among those who have seen it at all, worth a look wherever you can get it.

7.     The Hidden- Another bona fide cult movie. A mind-controlling alien goes on a crime spree in a series of hosts, just ahead of a cop and a federal agent with his own secret. It’s half sci fi, half police procedural, all action, with a surprising satirical bite.

8.     Krull- One more “favorite” that I spent years finding. When world of swords and sorcery is invaded by the sentient fortress of the Beast and his biomechanoid warriors, a prince leads a motley band on a quest to rescue his bride. It’s a fine piece of 1980s fantasy, with another awesome soundtrack.

9.     Terrorvision- My only other substitution on this list, a classic from the Band Crew. A kid fights an alien that climbed out of a satellite TV box, while his parents are more concerned with their swinger party. It’s dumb but fun with an edge, greatly improved by a very creepy monster, tongue-in-cheek performances from Mary Woronov and Gerrit Graham, and a bonkers theme song. Whoop, whoop…

10.  The Last Starfighter- Maybe the most iconic movie I’ve reviewed. A teenage guy discovers that his favorite video game is really a test for an interstellar Federation analog, and ends up flying their prototype fighter in the counterattack. It’s the definitive ‘80s movie, spiced up by Daniel O’Herlihy and Robert Preston.

 

An immediate word in order on this list is that there are certain movies I’ve excluded. First, I’ve chosen to look only at live-action theatrical films, so there’s no animation and no TV movies. Second, I haven’t adjusted the list for my most recent reviews, so I passed over Dragonslayer and a few others. Third, I set aside several films that I reviewed under very special circumstances, several of which I declined to give a rating. With all these adjustments, it still came out with the lineup I would have expected. 

 

The depressing lesson from this list is that my first and most extensive feature, Space 1979, barely got into the top 5, though I had no trouble filling out the rest of the list with these entries. There also aren’t any movies that are that obscure. What intrigued me more was that there weren’t that many that I gave the highest rating, either 4 or 5 depending on the feature. I suppose this is because I’m more critical of higher-profile of movies. It also reflects that these are movies that took more real risks, which in turn meant flaws in both concept and execution. The lesson is that ambition matters.

 

Now, because I really don’t know when to quit, here’s more to make this a top 20 list.

 

11.  Hancock- Possibly the only movie that I made a feature for. A disgruntled superhero prone to doing more damage than the bad guys saves a PR agent who teaches him to relate to ordinary humanity. It’s an underrated satire that still came out ahead of much of the modern superhero movie wave.

12.  Highway To Hell- The most egregious cult movie to come on my radar. A pizza deliveryman must rescue his fiancée from the devil in a post-apocalyptic Hellscape. It’s a surrealist fantasy that didn’t have an audience in its own time, very cool and it knows it.

13.  Duel- Narrowly removed for the top 10, the greatest TV movie ever. An unseen trucker chases everyman David Mann in the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg. It’s pure adrenaline with a side of social commentary, and that’s all it needs to be.

14.  Night of the Creeps- Classic 1980s zombie movie. Brain slugs reanimate the dead to wreak havoc on a college campus. Another action/ sci fi/ police procedural mashup, with Tom Atkins taking charge and stomping scenery.

15.  Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)- Absolutely serious. A shipwrecked UN negotiator discovers an island where animals have been uplifted into intelligent humanoids. It’s the best adaptation of a classic science fiction novel, with superb effects from Stan Winston and the embarrassingly high entertainment value of Val Kilmer being a jerk, i.e. by all indications Val Kilmer.

16.  Two Evil Eyes- Another zombie entry, the most actually obscure movie I’ve reviewed. A trophy wife and her lover hypnotize her husband to change his will and then hide his body in the freezer, but he still talks to them; followed by another tale of madness and murder allegedly based on Edgar Allen Poe. It’s included as a stand-in for several otherwise worthier works of the late, great George Romero, which is more than fair given its inexplicably overlooked status.

17.  The Wild, Wild Planet- A substitution for a well-known mainstream film, included as a twofer for films before 1970 and Italian movies. An international lawman and sexist idiot  faces a madder-than-usual scientist whose plan to perfect the human race includes fusing himself with a feisty damsel. It’s a very, very odd film I was definitely too hard on the first time around, entertaining enough for “so bad it’s good” viewing with moments that are surreal or completely unsettling.

18.  Splinter- Another very good zombie movie, and best non-animated entry from the current millennium. Carjackers and their victims are trapped in a gas station by a parasitic lifeform that reanimates humans, animals and pieces thereof. It’s body horror at its most brutal, with top-notch effects and a good cast.

19.  The Dungeonmaster- Another representative offense from the Band crew, barely bumped for Terrorvision. A hotshot computer programmer is challenged by a sorcerer, leading to a series of barely connected episodes that span time, space and genres. It’s one big pile of random from seven different directors, yet better than the sum of its parts.

20.  The Phantom Tollbooth- One from the animation category. A boy travels through a fantasy land divided between the kingdoms of numbers and words, on a quest to save the princesses of Rhyme and Reason from the demons of ignorance. It’s egregious psychedelic Sixties animation allegedly for kids, and the final effort from MGM animation.

 

With that, I’m wrapping this up. I haven’t gotten in everything I hoped, and I’m already pleading with myself to get in just one more really significant film, but I know if I keep at this, the list is going to be 200. So, I’m going to wrap this up, call it a night, and figure out what I’m going to do for my actual 200^th review. That’s all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one that was supposed to be the worst Disney movie

 

Title: Chicken Little

What Year?: 2005

Classification: Mashup

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As I write this, I’m closing on my 200^th movie review, and I reminded myself that I not only haven’t done an installment of this feature in almost 2 months (see, dear Logos, Lord of the Rings) but still haven’t cracked double digits. The latter fact is in part because the load has been split between this and my “worst” movies feature, and I’ve already had some doozies on both sides. In the process, I’ve ended up with some loose ends and paths I declined over others. With this review, I’m coming back to the biggest of these, a notorious film that didn’t interest me as much as others that were entirely obscure. While I have never questioned the resulting decisions, I knew a rematch was do sooner or later. Once I did get a look at the material in question, I never doubted a review was in order. With that, I present Chicken Little, the one people say is the worst Disney movie ever.

Our story begins with a town full of anthropomorphic animals where our title character causes a panic when he insists that an object he can’t locate fell from the sky. The townsfolk laugh it off, even though they reacted more disproportionately than the kid ever does, and he goes back to being bullied by his classmates. Things take a positive turn as he gets closer to his friends, then wins the approval of his borderline-neglectful father and his peers by winning a baseball game. But then he gets clonked by another mysterious artifact from the sky, a piece of superscience material that can turn invisible. The band of friends soon realize that a cloaked alien ship is overhead, and get followed by a small little alien. However, Chicken Little is unable to convince the townspeople, despite being backed up by his friends, until the aliens begin an attack. It turns out that the commander is trying to find his own son, and ready to obliterate the town in retaliation. Can Chicken Little save the day, or is our hero deep fried?

Chicken Little was a 2005 CGI animated film by Disney, the first such feature created without the involvement of Pixar. The film had the same title as a World War 2 propaganda short film, which was unrelated except for a shared folk tale source. Development was reportedly prolonged by repeated rewrites, including a change of the main character’s gender. The film starred Zach Braff as Chicken Little and Joan Cusack as friend/ love interest Abby, with Garry Marshall as the father Buck. A high-profile supporting cast included Patrick Stewart, Adam West (see Batman), and Don Knotts in his final role as mayor Turkey Lurky. The film was a commercial success, earning a worldwide gross of $314 million against an estimated $150M budget. However, it received negative contemporary reviews and acquired a further reputation as a “worst” Disney movie in online lists and reviews. It remains available on Disney Plus.

For my usual experiences, I really only considered watching this film as part of my project to find a representative “worst” Disney movie, which led to my reviews of The Black Cauldron here and The Wild under Very Bad Movies. What I dragged to the table was the certain knowledge that the actual “worsts” weren’t really on the radar. Any seasoned animation scholar or fan could tell you that the most objectively and genuinely awful things Disney ever made were from long, long ago, when much of their output still amounted to shorts. (I have a certain entry in mind, but I can wait till I am very prepared.) For inexcusable low quality in the feature-length category, it’s quite fair to start a lot closer to home, and the mid-2000s movies, especially those made “in-house”, are definitely a perfect storm. It was a transitional period of full of throwbacks, experiments, and direct-to-video sequels and other quickies that weren’t intended to compete on the general market. The end result was a few immediate hits, a handful of eventually accepted “classics” that struggled or failed in their own time, and a bumper crop of entries that would be either notorious or forgotten. Even sight unseen, it’s hard to take it as anything but blind bad luck that Chicken Little became the most maligned of them all.

Moving forward, the central reality of the film is that it feels made for kids first, with very little of the usual “Disney Renaissance” nudging toward teens and adults. If this is taken as an honest choice rather than suicide by focus group, many of its arguable flaws become excusable or at least understandable. The story is episodic and simple. The animated characters (especially the aliens and the Fish Out Of Water) are boldly rendered and vaguely stylized. Multiple scenes focus on preteen nightmares and wish fulfillment, complete with dodgeball and missing pants. (Must… suppress… Donald Duck rant…) The adult authority figures, to some extent including Buck, are exaggerated or caricatured, with little if any further explanation of their reasoning and motivations. Finally, the resolution is brought about by non-violent negotiation that happens to coincide with the main characters’ reconciliation. All of which is to say that this isn’t great, but realistic enough to stay within its limitations.

On a deeper level, what the film has going for it are a genuinely likable main character and a quite strong story. The real problem is that the film repeatedly squanders its potential, to the point that even its good moments become frustrating long before the end. The obvious recurring problem is that Chicken Little’s dilemmas depend consistently on others being irrational and/ or actively mean, which by all means works for the bullies at his school, but not for the adults. Unless what we see is distorted by the protagonist’s viewpoint (the kind of ambiguity a typical Disney Afternoon episode would have set up), the adults are entirely to blame at almost every turn. They know he’s a kid; they clearly believe he is overimaginative; so there’s absolutely no reason for them to charge about in a mob based only on what he says. The deeper and especially irritating difficulty is that Chicken Little is really no better in comparison. When he finds obviously advanced alien technology, he doesn’t mention it to an adult until after he loses it. He doesn’t appeal to his friends to confirm his story until the adults are already suspicious. And in the finale, when the townsfolk are by all appearances being massacred in front of him, he could literally wave his little alien friend in front of any of the combat mechs at any time. Instead, he rushes around a literal battlefield to get the fuzzball to a completely arbitrary point. The fundamental problem isn’t that this is entirely unbelievable; it’s that nobody except Buck ever admits a mistake, much less learns from it.

That leaves the “one scene”, and the one that stood out to me is the baseball game. As Chicken Little takes the plate, there’s a familiar, perhaps jarring voice from the very adult announcer. That would be Harry Shearer of The Simpsons using the voice of Kent Brockman, in a pleasant touch if you can adjust to it. There’s an intended comical moment as our protagonist tries to raise a bat literally bigger than he does, which really emphasizes how little of this assumed world makes any sense, internally or otherwise. If this was a properly worked out multispecies society, there would be some kind of handicapping system here, or else the other team would be switching out their pitcher for one closer to the batter’s size. As it is, it’s obvious that Chicken Little can get a walk just by standing there, something that others loudly and repeatedly say to him. The announcer narrates as he swings nevertheless, and gets completely undeserved credit for what follows.

In closing, what I find myself coming back to is who on Earth the usually savvy Disney marketing engine thought they were making this movie for. In objective quality, it isn’t nearly as bad as The Wild (except Disney can’t deny technically making it), nor is it quite as muddled and willfully mediocre as The Black Cauldron was. The fact remains that Disney clearly miscalculated, far more badly and fundamentally than they did with immediate box office failures and disappointments like Treasure Planet and Meet The Robinsons (I’m thinking, I’m thinking…). In the proverbial light of day, this was a movie that tried to be “middle of the road” on a 5-lane freeway, too dumb for adults, too scary and cynical for kids, and too strange for any part of the mainstream. If there was a “right” move for Disney, it was to cut their losses and turn this one out to pasture on the direct-to-video market, where the shell-shocked parents and animation fans would probably have been grateful for anything that reached a high standard of mediocrity. But that, of course, would have meant putting their reputation ahead of making actual money. So, touche, Mouse. And with that, I am done.

Futures Past: Fisher Price sci fi franchise?

 

In the course of this blog, I've created quite a few "features". The common denominator is that usually, I have decided at the outset whether a feature will be a regular thing or just a few installments. This feature has been a major exception, in no small part because I had never decided just where it would go. I started it fora post on World's Fair architecture, and got in one more for a terrible 1980s comic. But most of the other things I might have considered ended up in other new and old features, most recently the Anthology Anthology. What has brought me back is an acquisition that would have been easy to cover in a toy blog. However, I felt that this time, I had something more, and this was the place to cover it. To get things going, here's the figure that started everything.

The backstory is that this is a figure from the famous/ notorious Fisher Price Adventure People line, previously sighted way back in my Dropped Pilots post. This figure was evidently made and released specifically for a vehicle called Alpha Probe, Fisher Price's 1980 Star Wars cash-in. I personally can't say for sure if I ever even saw this damn thing, but it's easy to see why many people remember it fondly. At face value, it's a space shuttle with a little more flare than average. On a deeper level, however, it has a quite unique aesthetic, especially for the knockoff-heavy environment, in many ways closer to The Black Hole than anything else. Here's links for posts on the ship at This Old Toy, Flashbak and Plaid Stallions. Also, here's a vintage ad from Flashbak.

Needless to say, I ordered this figure as an alternative to getting the ship. From my research, the ship was consistently sold with a man and a woman astronaut, in itself an intriguing dynamic for vintage action figures (see the No Girls post). The woman is known in two variants, one blonde and the other usually described as brown-haired, I would say reddish. What very quickly stood out was that this is far below my expectations. The detailing is low, and several points are strange, particularly the lower legs and the collar piece. Presumably, they were cutting corners to get the ship to the market, yet there are clearly far better FP figures from the same time. Here's the lady with Husky and the Adventure People diver, note especially the detail on the diver.

And here's Sidekick Carl while we're at it!

One more detail that only clicked after I ordered the figure is that the helmet has to be a copy of what I call the tank helmet, common to the Marx "Space Guys". It's a very odd "retro" touch that I suspect was intended to appeal to adult nostalgia. Here's a lineup to show what I mean.

Inevitably, the success of Alpha Probe led to more space toys, and things soon went downhill. The next in line were Alpha Star 1 and Alpha Recon, a sort of mini rig fighter and moon buggy that fit in with the retro-hard sci fi look established by the ship. Things stayed in the gray area with the Alpha Star buggy set (see here for one of the better posts I've found on the whole subline), despite the addition of an alien dino creature and a clunky robot. The one I can't figure out is the Alpha Interceptor, which looks like the chassis of a construction crane with the mini rig fuselage bolted on. In the process, we also got the previously sighted "second wave" astronaut figures, which I got one more of in the bargain with the lady astronauts. Here's a pic of the pair.

The very odd thing about this is the design, which looks less like a suit than a miniature space capsule. The latter interpretation would make a fair amount of sense, especially if any of the hardware in back is taken as a propulsion system. The annoying part is that these are things I would have thought of as a kid, but the designers clearly weren't looking that far ahead. Something else I quickly realized is that the figure I had featured in Dropped Pilots is in immaculate condition, a point that got driven home when I accidentally scratched one of the useless shapes in the back. Here's a detail shot.

And here's an unnecessary-detail shot...

Something I'm going back just to add is the implied dynamics for the space exploration set. The easy, fan fic-style solution is that this is a husband-and-wife team. We know even better now that this would really create at least as many problems as it would solve. But if this is a long-haul expedition, lasting years or even decades, how else would you deal with the psychological and biological stresses and needs of the crew? It's a random train of thought, yet it's the kind of question precocious kids would ask that adults still struggle to answer.

Meanwhile, things really got weird when FP tried turning out individually sold figures. These are egregiously Eighties, either psychedelic or nightmare fuel. I won't really be going far into these, because they're well-covered elsewhere. Here's some card art to give you a feel for the tone.

Then there's a couple I can't resist. First, there's Clawtron. I've joked about the origin of Sidekick Carl, whom I decided would be an unkillable cyborg because I had no other way to resolve the real hero's plight. That made me all the more amused to see this, an undisputed recolor of a biker figure with some extra robot parts slapped on. Sure, I was incredibly lazy... but Fisher Price did it first. Here's the pic, credit to the page at This Old Toy already linked to.

Second is the X-ray woman, supposedly an android. They came as both male and female, and the lady is even more freaky. It hasn't exactly been confirmed, but I'm convinced their heads are recycled from the astronauts. (Edit: From further research, it looks like both were based on a sculpt from an earlier figure, probably a common denominator with the space figures.) Here's a pic from Battlegrip.

With that to give you nightmares, I'm ready to wrap this up. In hindsight, this little line is an egregious example of a property caught in the middle, on one hand drawing on the Star Wars boom and on the other trying to revive the older toys and media that undoubtedly laid the way for it. The predictable result was an especially strange evolutionary dead end, only really comparable to Galaxy Laser Team. The darker flipside is that it marked the final slide of a groundbreaking manufacturer, from making innovative products that provided the groundwork of an industry to throwing out knockoffs of a toy line that had copied its own success. It was a sad end, but probably an inevitable one. Now, I'm calling it a day. That's all for now, more to come!

Super Movies! The first one with Batman

 

Title: Batman

What Year?: 1966

Classification: Prototype

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

Back when I started movie reviews, something I acknowledged up front is that my pop culture experience as an Eighties kid had little to do with the 1980s. I didn’t have a TV until the end of the decade, I didn’t go to the movies often, and what I did get exposure to tended to be older media the adults weren’t paying attention to. The end result was that my bedrock for TV in particular became the 1960s: The Twilight Zone, Get Smart, and for that matter the original Star Trek. Despite this footprint, I have only made a few forays into the period as a reviewer, and then usually into things I knew little or nothing about at the time. With this review, I am coming back to the period, for what was possibly my most meaningful ‘60s experience after Trek, and it’s all the more fitting that I’m doing it for my longest-running and least prolific feature. I present Batman, the original, and it is… odd.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to our heroes, Batman and Robin, and incarnations of four somewhat randomized villains, the Joker, the Penguin, Cat Woman and the Riddler. Our villains have teemed up, with the Penguin as the leader if only because he commands a submarine that serves as their hideout. They proceed with a series of loosely connected schemes, including a trap or two for Batman and the Boy Wonder. But the plot gets in gear as Cat Woman romances Bruce Wayne under the guise of a Russian reporter. When the villains use the romance to blackmail the billionaire, our hero must choose between his dual identities. And in case this is sounding philosophical, there’s also a rubber shark, a gaggle of dehydrated UN representatives, and a marching band that doesn’t notice a guy with a bomb!

Batman was a 1966 superhero film by director Leslie H. Martinson, distributed by 20^th Century Fox. The film became the first feature-length DC superhero movie, and the first live-action Batman adaptation since 1940s serials. While it was remembered as a cinematic adaptation of the contemporary TV series, the film was developed and filmed during the first season of the show, before the success of either was certain. The film starred Adam West and Burt Ward in their roles as Batman and Robin, with Burgess Meredith (see... The Manitou?) as the Penguin. Cesar Romero and Frank Gorshin also reprised their TV roles as the Joker and the Riddler, while Lee Meriwether appeared as Cat Woman in place of Julie Newmar. The film was judged a moderate box office success, earning $3.9 million against a budget of up to $1.5M. The series continued until 1968, after which it continued to air in syndication. The movie was first released on home video in 1985 and remains available in digital formats. Adam West died in 2016, shortly before the release of his final film, the direct-to-video animated film Batman Vs. Two Face.

For my experiences, I can remember growing up aware of Batman and Superman, mainly through story books and other media at witsome remove from the source material. Of course, that all changed with the release of the Tim Burton movie, which seemed to coincide with a local revival of the ‘60s show. I can recall seeing it shortly after it would have come out, but it was the show that had the greatest impact, up to the 1990s animated series. What stands out in hindsight is that the show offered the most balanced portrayal of the mythos. There was a good rotation in the major villains, with Burgess Meredith being the most impressive. Then there were very good portrayals of the (then) relatively obscure villains, including what must have been Otto Preminger’s incarnation of Mr. Freeze. Unfortunately, I could see even as a kid that there were things that badly dated the series, particularly a wildly sexist plot I might have doubted existed if I wasn't me. (See here and here, or better yet, don't.) As I matured, the show quickly became a good memory better left in the past. I was even less interested in the movie, which even series fans are critical of. The viewing that led to this review finally came because a friend wanted to see it. Once I saw it, I knew I had to cover it, simply because I couldn’t see coming back to it anytime soon.

What really stands out watching the movie is that it is quite different from the show, though it’s subtle enough to make things hard to pin down. The most obvious departure is that there’s no close counterpart to the usual death trap/ execution machine sequences that always set up the cliffhangers. It could also seem disorienting to have the Joker treated as a supporting character, which is really an indicator of how much the mythos has evolved. The shift further reflects the levels of talent involved. Merriwether is superb as Cat Woman, while Meredith is simply the best actor the show ever had, at least after George Sanders’ one-time appearance as Freeze. There’s also a bit more “edge”, not just innuendo but genuinely dark moments, plus a political note; this comes out most blatantly with the useless UN delegates, who keep arguing even as the Joker picks them off one by one. An extra surreal bit is a shark attack a full decade before Jaws, all the more jarring for the comically bad effects which feel like they should be in a parody.

The most interesting aspects of the movie are the surprising moments of emotional depth. This is most obvious in the romance of Wayne and Cat Woman, which pushes the much-ridiculed West to surprising heights. Of course, the credibility gets stretched by the hero’s failure to recognize her identity, though Cat Woman is equally at fault unless she is holding out on her cohorts. What’s even more intriguing are Batman’s lectures to Robin, which get as far as emphasizing the value of human life after several of the Penguin’s goons possibly die in a science experiment gone amok. It’s an early preview of the character’s increasingly strict “no kill” policy. It also establishes a clearly and convincingly paternal relationship with Robin, notwithstanding the jokes that were brewing even then. There’s a point, however, where this becomes yet another case of “too much and not enough”. You can have Batman colorful and campy or dark and moody, but there was never going to be much room for middle ground. One extra bit of annoyance is that the movie all but inverts the vigilante angle, at one point explicitly announcing that Batman is a deputized agent for the police. All this simply dissipates any antiauthoritarian subtexts carried over from the source material, at least until the end, which almost anticipates Superman IV.

That leaves the “one scene”, and this time it’s one that I was genuinely unprepared for. Batman discovers a bomb in a room above a tavern on a wharf, and promptly goes into overdrive. It is truly a comic-book bomb, complete with a sizzling fuse. The amusing part is that he does everything reasonable within moments, warning the patrons to flee the establishment. It’s more than enough to prevent civilian casualties, unless that thing’s a Davy Crockett nuke. (And it’s clearly not his fault two idiots keep eating…) Rather than leave well enough alone and run for it, however, he grabs the bomb and rushes out onto the improbably crowded pier. A completely surreal sequence follows as he encounters one heartrending innocent after another, like a baby carriage, a marching band that seems to be everywhere at once, nuns, young lovers in a rowboat, and even a flotilla of ducks. He finally says, “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” And then… then… the damn thing goes off.

In closing, this is one time I don’t feel like I need to justify my rating. This is a movie that makes no excuses for itself, and to that extent, it lives up to the series. Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s dated. Yes, it hovers between campy and outright bad. But the superhero genre and the franchise had to start somewhere, and this certainly isn’t the worst outing for Batman or DC in general. It also shows that what is “dark” in the franchise and genre was always there, and you don’t have to ramp up gritty for its own sake to 100 on a scale of 10 to do it justice. It was a good start, which should be good enough to remember, if not always to dig up again. And with that, I’m once more calling it a day.

Image credit The Bat Channel.