What’s interesting about that film – besides the wonderfully weird animated executiion that made it look like 19th century engravings come to life – is that it’s an adaptation of one of the lesser-known Verne novels, Face au Drapeau (“Facing the Flag”), published in 1896. The novel features a “mad scientist” (not the first in Verne) and a Guided Missile with an explosive tip – pretty impressive extrapolation. It also features a submarine, Verne’s only novel to do so besides 20,000 Leagues and Mysterious Island, so those scenes in the film were entirely appropriate (although there’s no giant squid in the book) (Verne had used a submarine in a short story long before 20,000 Leagues, by the way)
I agree that the movie drags in places, but it’s visually impressive, with little pieces taken from other Verne novels (like Robur the Conqueror).
I saw that in the theater as a teen. I recall liking it despite the horrible reviews and there being only two or three other people there besides me and my friend.
Isn’t that the movie with the trucks going over the wobbly bridge scene? It was actually a kind of incredible movie, especially that scene, which generated butterflies in my stomach even though I saw it only a year or so ago.
The name of the movie: The Apple (1980) I finally saw it 20 years later on cable. Definitely an *oddball movie and I’ll have to rewatch to see exactly what they were trying to say, but it was not a movie where I kept thinking, “OK, I see what’s about to happen next.”
I recently watched RiffTrax have its way with The Apple. Probably the best way to watch it.
The First Nudie Musical (1976)
This was featured in one of Danny Peary’s Cult Movies books, and I had to wonder why. I’d never heard of it, and as it was described it didn’t seem very promising - a down-on-his-luck producer of salacious grindhouse fare gets one last shot to turn out a hit before his backers pull the plug, so his inspiration is to do a quickie with singing, dancing and lots of bare skin. Was there a cult for this?
It turned up on Freevee recently (maybe because Cindy Williams is a co-star - she keeps her clothes on), so I gave it a look. It actually starts out well enough, with Williams and leading man Stephen Nathan giving spirited turns as the producer and his office manager, and a bunch of old character actors as the financiers who are pretty amusing as they reluctantly agree to give the studio one more shot before they repossess. There are a few audition sequences where a parade of mostly hopeless talent gets to show their stuff to mild amusement - this is cribbed from The Producers, and probably a lot of show-biz musicals from the 30s. Also, one of the backers insists they use his nephew as director - “he’s a smart kid, he’ll learn”. This role should have been given to a proven comic actor, but instead writer/director Bruce Kimmell cast himself, and he’s not funny at all - once he shows up, whatever potential this idea had is flushed away.
So, plenty of nudity and some bad songs is what we end up with. I must say though, a lot of commenters on IMDb seem to remember it fondly.
Oh god, I think I saw that on a cable channel eons ago - HBO or Cinemax. I remember thinking ‘Cindy Williams? must be hard up for money.’ … I had all of Danny Peary’s softcover Cult Movie books, absolutely fascinating reading for us cinephiles.
Not just Cindy Williams – Ron HOward has a very brief cameo. If you blinked, you’d miss it (you must have blinked).
SEveral years later Kimmel return with a movie that went by several names – Starship, The Creature that Wasn’t Nice, The Naked Space, and others. It’s basically Alien done as a musical comedy. What’s incredible is that Kimmel could get some incredible talent in this – Cindy Williams (again), Leslie Nielsen, Patrick MacNee, and, of course, Kimmel again.
Say what you will about Kimmel – I’m impressed that he could write the script, write the songs, direct, star, and get some real Hollywood talent into his show, with reasonably good production values. That’s a helluva lot more than Ed Wood Jr. ever did. And, like Wood, even when his stuff is bad, it’s never boring. Give me A Kimmel movie (or an Ed Wood movie, for that matter) over Birdemic any day.
Same experience for me. I expected something controversial. I was disappointed. Never saw the sequel, nothing about the first one left me wanting to see more.
I saw “Action Jackson” not long after it came out. That’s where I learned the word ‘dis’ (or ‘diss’).
I saw “Mondo Video” by SNL writer Michael O’Donoghue many, many years after it had disappeared, but the only thing I remember from it was the competitive cat swimming.
This isn’t entirely in keeping with the subject of the thread, but it’s close, and not significant enough for me to create a separate thread.
When I was a kid, my dad used to sing a song that went “We’re all going down to Santa Fe town to join the big fiesta, we’re all going down to Santa Fe town to join the big fiesta! Perka deedle di do 1, 2, 3, Perka deedle di do 1, 2, 3.”
I asked him where that song came from and he said he had seen a cartoon as a kid where the song was sung. He said “There was an elephant and a gorilla and all kinds of animals in that darned thing.”
Dad died in 1980, but I still sing that song on occasion. I always wondered about the cartoon it came from, and I think I even asked here on the Dope if anyone could give me a clue, based on my recollection of his recollection. I had no luck.
Then youtube came along and you could watch any number of old cartoons. A few months ago I was looking at several old Fleischer “color classics”, cartoons without Fleischer’s characters of Betty Boop or Popeye. One of the cartoons was An Elephant Never Forgets from 1934. Lo and behold: the cartoon featured several different kinds of animals going to school, including an elephant and a gorilla. The “schoolkids” were singing a version of the song “We’re all going down to Santa Fe town”.
Suddenly finding that cartoon I had been seeking all those years was weird. I wasn’t even looking for it at the time!
I saw Hellzapoppin’ from Olsen and Johnson as a kid in the early '60s on NY TV.
My mother saw it on Broadway. 40 years later I found a VHS copy and requested it for Christmas. When I got it, I banned everyone from the living room since I was worried it would suck. It didn’t. I invited people i to watch the opening hell scene (“Finally a cabby who went where I told him to go”) and they stayed to watch the entire thing.
That might be the nicest thing I’ve ever seen anyone say about that episode. The lack of budget shows. And boring …
I think I’ve already mentioned it this somewhere, but that hell sequence was something that I saw as a little kid, and it really stuck in my memory. Had no idea what movie it was in, but I think it was you, @Voyager , who told me it was Hellzapoppin’. So, thanks, again!
That’s my opinion, too. I’ve always wondered about that song they sang just before the final devastating charge. It has a lot of minor notes in it and sounds depressing - and is, to see its effect on the English soldiers. I opine that it’s a death dirge - they know the charge is going to result in a lot of casualties on their side and they’re singing their death song.
For decades, I remembered something I saw on TV as a kid. During a football game, a player is tackled. When everyone gets up off the pile, he’s gone; just the ball and his helmet are left. At the end, it’s revealed how it was done. It was planned in advance, and all the players were in on it. Four players tackle the runner near the defenders’ sideline. They tear off his jersey, and he’s wearing the other team’s jersey underneath. When he gets up (without a helmet) he just merges in with the players standing on the sideline. That’s all I remembered.
I finally saw it again a couple years ago, an episode of Banacek. There’s a bit more to it. A star player was lured off the field during the game and kidnapped. An imposter replaces him and goes through the staged play on the field to make the disappearance seem impossible.
