Badmovies.org Forum

During the 80's, I was briefly exposed to this movie and it caused me no small amount of trauma.  I believe that I was about thirteen and my niece was watching the cartoon on television one night.  Needless to say, Rainbow Brite is to a teenage male like kryptonite is to Superman.  I watched about five minutes before fleeing the room screaming.

Spring comes to Rainbowland with lots of singing, butterflies, and Rainbow Brite and her friends waking up (and singing).  The heroine then climbs aboard Starlite to spread her star sprinkles across the Earth and end winter.  However, this year something is wrong with the star sprinkles.

A huge robotic horse lands on the planet and seeks out Rainbow Brite.  She must go to Spectra, the center of the universe - where all light comes from, and save the magic diamond that is its heart.  Unless she does, spring will never come.  What Rainbow Brite finds on Spectra is that the glitterbots, huge robots that can spit out rope and hypnotize people, are enslaving all the sprites and making them cover the planet with drab brown netting.  Sprites?  Oh, those are the little fuzzy things that look like car washing mittens with eyes and limbs.

Rainbow Brite and Starlite spend a lot of time running away from glitterbots when they first get to Spectra.  Luckily, the robot horse saves them every time.  Actually, the robot horse saves the day so many times during the movie that you wonder why Rainbow Brite was needed in the first place.  Just put a particle cannon on that horse and the bad guys (actually, bad girl) would have been defeated right away.

The reason for Spectra's decline is an evil redhead princess who wears all black.  She has a magic jewel that makes people slow down and fall over.  Can Rainbow Brite find some way to defeat the princess and restore life to the universe?

Everything in this movie has a lot of colors.  Starlite's mane is made of colored bands, all of the characters have multiple colors, and Rainbow Brite's belt shoots out rainbows, most often for her horse to run on as cute music plays.  I imagine that making someone drop LSD and then watch this film would be a horrifying experience for the unfortunate soul.  A horse running on a rainbow!  Glittering star sprinkles!  Robots that hypnotize people (and sprites) into zombies that knit a net to cover the heart of the universe!  Spring will never come and the flowers will die!  The colors!

Check that, this movie is pure nightmare fuel, even without the LSD.

Na I'll have to pass on that one.

No Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, My little Pony,  or Care Bears for me.

I don't know what it says about me but I actually watched all those as a kid.  :buggedout:

Ah...so you're a Hello Kitty kind of guy, then?  :teddyr:

Menard, how did you get Shadowfyre's password?

My six year old daughter would LOVE this!  I am often exposed to Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Princesses at my house.  We eat a lot of popsicles and straight spoonfuls of sugar too.

Back in the mid 80's, my sister used to watch this movie over and over and over again.
I remember my brother and I taking the tape out of the VCR and hiding it from her and she freaked.

She used to have all kinds of Rainbow Brite dolls and toys.
It's funny because my brother cut the tail off of Rainbow Brite's horse with a pair of scissors and I got blamed for it!

Awful, awful movie.

This movie is $#@! awesome.  I especially love how the wise old dude gives the boy something that will make him a powerful warrior .... a GUN!  :bouncegiggle:

I have seen this movie too, and it is awful!!!

You forget that Rainbow Brite has to shoot rainbows into it first; then he can use it to blast enemies with laser beams (or whatever they are).

I had forgotten that.   :bouncegiggle: I must acquire this movie and refresh my memory immediately!

Oh my god I can't believe someone brought up this movie.My brother used to annoy the HELL! out of me watching this movie. He watched it almost every day for weeks, WEEKS. We got in to fights over this movie.

^Did your brother never hear of Transformers or He-man?

The thing I'm wondering Andrew is...
You seem pretty knowledgeable about this movie...like you actually sat down and watched it recently.

    I remember when my daughter watched all these programs and she wanted all the toys that go along with them. Her room smelled like strawberries for years, from the Strawberry Shortcake toys.  :smile:

  :bouncegiggle:

Does anyone remember when TNT or WTBS was running movies under the idea of MOVIES FOR GUYS WHO LIKE MOVIES? (ooppps wrong topic)

Anyway, I remember getting my daughter a large stuffed bunny rabbit one year that smelled like strawberry. We had it in the house for years. It was one of her favorites.

Ash, I watch a lot of movies that I find painful.  Heck, I already watched "Weasels Rip My Flesh" again so I could write the review.  (What I go through for you people.)  In the case of this one, I remembered it being horrible, picked up a copy for cheap, and watched it on Sunday.  Katie also found it painful.  And, yes, I will probably watch it again at some point to write a review.

Katie suggested I wait until Jenna was older and have her write the review.  My first problem with that:  I want my daughter to believe I am looking out for her welfare, not torturing her with stuff like this hideous monster of an animated film.

Andrew, I speak from bitter experience, if you show Jenna this at her age now, and she likes it, you will be forced to endure this thing for many painful months, if not years.  :buggedout:

  :hot: :bouncegiggle:

A quick glance at the website of the Rainbow Brite community (which apparently is thriving) shows that there were a couple of live action movies (Rainbow Brite at the San Diego Zoo). Perhaps Andrew could track these down?

I also thought I'd add some visuals:

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a316/AlexFC/tpredlala3.jpg)

Some people like Rainbow Brite A LOT

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a316/AlexFC/rainbowbrite.jpg)

Anything else you would like me to do?  Wrestle a bear?  Swim with sharks?  Yikes, man, just yikes.

I can't be the only person on this board in the world who likes Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, can I?  :bluesad:

Probably, yes.

But let's face it: back in the late 70s and early-to-mid 80s, everything was cooler.  Mainly because we didn't realize how utterly doped-up and craptastic it all was (for the most part).  Challenge of the Superfriends on to Transformers and G.I. Joe...Smurfs and Snorks...Monchichi and the Pac-Man cartoon.

But, lest we forget: the unholy triumvirate.  Rainbow Brite.  My Little Pony.  Care Bears.  As the oldest of three kids, I got to see a lot of this thanks to my younger brother and sister--and I was just old enough that I was going "What the hell is this crap?"

You can find all of your friends at www.rainbowbrite.net

 :bouncegiggle:

Akiratubo your apparently not alone.

The Care Bear Cousins are actually better than The Care Bears. To this day, I cannot dislike the megalomanical villain that is No-Heart and his often entertaining bumbling henchman Beastly. Must get around to covering "The Care Bear Cousins" in the TV Files one of these days...well maybe...

This is probably the single most frightening thing I have read in a long time.  Almost like seeing a page full of:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Worry not Andrew.

"We shall not enter the kingdom lest we become like one of these little ones"

Thankfully, all I really remember about the Care Bears these days is that my little brother and sister damn near wore out a VHS copy of The Care Bears Movie.

I suppose I can't talk, though--I actually liked Jem.

I think that the actual problem with this stuff, at least for those of us with kids, is not that the film, show, book, whatever is especially awful, just that it's intended for really young children and is not particularly good entertainment for adults. Also kids tend to like having reruns of the same thing over and over again, at one time it seemed I knew by heart, The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat comes back, Green Eggs and Ham, Whorton Hears a Who, Yeartle the Turtle, and The Rescuers, this tends to kill the enjoyment of these childhood favorites, at least it did for me. The great part about this is that right now my daughter thinks they're great, just like I did, and she will read them to her children when the time comes, and that will be sweet revenge. :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle:

Ahhh ... I bet that right there has a lot to do with it.  I don't have kids and never will.  When I watch things like Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, it is for my own enjoyment.  Having to play them again and again would really ruin it.

You are one sick puppy, Akira.   Sick.  Sick.
 
Some stuff was just derivative and irritating, like the Snorks, and the Scooby spin-offs.   But some of it was true brain-rot.  -3d10 SAN just for watching, once, kind of stuff.  Rainbow Brite is in that category. 

Challenge of the Superfriends had a great episode, IIRC, in which all of the superfriends die.  I was so stoked!  They were getting knocked off one by one, then it just turned out to be a ruse, they were all OK and they came back to trounce the Legion of Doom once again.
 
Jem!   Gawd!   How did you remember that.  Now I've got the annoying commercial song stuck in my head.   Thank You Very Much.  (Jem, Je-eeem, it's totally outrageous.  Jem, Je-eeem...)

The little ponies never go away, though.  My 4 year old daughter has several of them, and all the little combs to brush their manes, etc. 

Rainbow Brite's real father:  Cthulhu

All of this torment for us adults is a great example of the lengths we as parents go to to keep the kids happy, if you look at it that way, it's a real good thing, even though it's mind numbing and painful.  Rainbow Brite is not the daughter of Cthulhu, she's actually his younger sister.
(http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/DENNISDURWARDHAMMOND/neighbor-cthulhu.jpg)

Here's Robot Chicken's Rainbow Brite short.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pj3yd5oMtM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pj3yd5oMtM)

=> See 2:46

I am resurrecting this thread to say that a review is in the works.  Target date is during July.

This film is certified nightmare fuel for anything above the level of "8-year old, like OMG, Ponies!"