Badmovies.org Forum

OK, after many delays, I finally dubbed those Zebra Killers this weekend ... and I also found my copy of Fantastic Four (sigh ... with JAY UNDERWOOD, my autistic love God).

So where is the Canadian fellow who was looking for it?

Catch up with me soon, because I'm itching to hook my spare VCR back up to my computer. And once its hooked up, it'll be a month before I unhook it again.

I'd prefer a trade, but the titles I'm looking for aren't exactly blockbuster material. More than any other flick, I'm looking for a movie called Ship of Monsters ... a Mexican cowboy/monster musical. Cinefear has it, but if I can trade for it, I'd be happier.

Hey Abby.

That canadian fellow be right here. Go ahead and fire up your VCR and make me a copy.

Unfortunately, I don't have Ship of Monsters to trade ya for it. I really don't have anything to trade. Sorry.

OK ... I'll stop by the post office on Monday and find out how much shipping up your way costs.

I recently remembered how I obtained my copy of Fantastic Four. I used to write comic books and (ugh -- the horror) attended entirely too many conventions. A friend of a friend gave me some dough to pick up a copy at a show, which is easy to do because they're everywhere.

Anyway, he was a real big fan of the comic book. He watched half of the movie ... and then gave me the tape back. He said if I didn't want it, he was going to throw it out. It depressed him so.

This gent doesn't have a keen taste for the beautifully bad, of course. And sadly, he never made it to the best parts.

You know, at its worst, I still think Fantastic Four is a better flick than Batman and Robin.

What's this? The Fantastic Four, you say?

Why, I happen to have a review of the film in question right here:

http://www.stomptokyo.com/otf/Fant-Four/Fant-Four.htm

And where did I get my copy of this cinematic "gem?"

http://www.blackestheart.com/blackestEFG.htm

"Shameless" Joe Bannerman

What did you write for comics?  Anything anybody's actually read?

I have a short story in the current Best of Crypt of Dawn  trade paperback from Sirius. It's not something I consider MY best. The book has lots of lushly-illustrated big-chested honeys, though, so it might be enjoyed by those who dig that sort of thing:) Most of my stuff is out of print, but something shows up every few weeks on E-bay. The market got really about two years ago, and I sort of got sucked in by the Internet around the same time.

Here:

A COMIC

By the by, that's my very first webpage (aw, kinda like that flat-chested MY FIRST BARBIE) ... done under the name 'Abby.' That's actually where the original Girdler content appeared ... that's how it started. And that story itself was printed in a Sirius book a couple of years ago.

I'll check out your Fan4 review ... that movie has won a spot in my heart. I don't know if you saw my board rant here a few weeks ago about Jay Underwood, but oh ... how that man gives me the shivers. I love how Dr. Doom's voice is muffled from the mask toward the end ... like they forgot to redub his voice or something. And Alex "Your Hair is So" White's "let's get 'em, guys" performance is classic.

Okay, we all know most of the later "Superman" and "Batman" movies blew major chunkage--even if you liked the first ones--but there's a plethora of unsung superheroes on video out there...

If you poke into http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/3148/Lounge.htm you can witness pieces of the hideous glory of the unaired "Justice League of America" pilot, featuring an unemployed Flash, the live-action version of the most unpopular Green Lantern ever, flash-in-the-pan nobodies Fire and Ice (Guess their powers! Think hard!), and chunky-style versions of the Atom and the Martian Manhunter (David Odgen Stiers, the grosso-obeso from "M*A*S*H"). When a hurricane threatens to destroy an entire city, Atom rushes into action and retrieves a cat. Ahem.

I would love to see, someday, the unaired (that word keeps popping up for some reason!) ABC pilot for "The Spirit," based on the Will Eisner classic comic. Three words: Sam. J. Jones. Uh-huh. Go, Flash, go! Go straight to hell! Probably came complete with Gary Coleman as Ebony White. "Whatchu talkin' 'bout Mistah Spirit?" Yaaaaaaaaaa.

Fans of Cameron Mitchell (as seen in "Space Mutiny," and assorted other disasters) would love watching "Supersonic Man," a European rip-off of 1978's "Superman." Mitchell is the, uh, supervillian. The movie is excrutiating, something like what I imagine passing large shards of glass through your colon would feel like.

The Pumaman.
The Pumaman.
The Pumaman.

Any I've forgotten at the moment?

The Captain America they made in the early 90's is very similar to Fantastic Four in form and (lack of) style. I also picked that one up for a friend at a comic book show, but I don't own a copy myself. It has Ned Beatty and a few other washed up actors. It was pretty wretched as I recall ... a tragedy in light of the Burton Batmen flicks, which were still big at the time.

There is also a HORRIBLE Vampirella movie floating around.

Can I also say that Supergirl ranks with The Skateboard Kid as one of the most useless pieces of crap I've ever seen?

Ugh ... Supergirl played in 24-hour-a-day cable TV rotation in the 80's, and it's just a terrible film. Long as hell, too. I'd sit through Captain America a hundred more times before you'd see me watch Supergirl again.

And wait ... there's the Wonderwoman movie with a very blonde Cathy Crosby (from the TV show That's Incredible).

And Tank Girl ... with Ice-T as a kangaroo. Oh lordie, was that ever a terrible movie. I know some people liked it, but I've always wanted to know what drugs they took at the time they viewed it.

And the made-for TV teen X-Men with that chick from General Hospital.

I'll shut up now.

Abby (and all concerned),

Please don't trade tapes via the message board.  All things considered, it makes me a little nervous - especially with the latest Napster judgements.

Now, if the rights to the film are expired (or whatever the case) and it is public domain then you are in the clear.  It's just that researching that is usually a pain in the rear.

Good thread on bad superhero films though.  I keep looking at my LD of "The Incredible Hulk Returns" with thoughts of a review.  Also, a gent emailed me and said that Titus Moede passed away.  Guess we will not have his commentary when Rat Pfink a Boo Boo comes to DVD.

Andrew

No, no, you brought back lots of fond memories, though I was looking for recent stuff that no more than five or six people on the street have seen in the continental US..."Captain America" was indeed awful (He had rubber ears! Hee hee hee!), but you can go buy the damned thing if you hate yourself badly enough; all I have of "The Spirit" is a TV Guide shot of Sam J. Jones (retch) wearing a blue mask...

"Supergirl"! Holy cow, look at the cast of that mess! Helen Slater, Peter O'Toole, Faye Dunaway, Brenda Vaccaro, Simon Ward?!? With all the ham, you'd think the movie was made specifically for Eric Cartman!...Poor Helen, though; she tried, and she was good in "Ruthless People." Nice score by Jerry Goldsmith; the worse the movie, the better his music ("The Omen," "First Blood," "Deep Rising," and on and on and on). The director gave us "Jaws 2" and "Bug!," what did the studio expect from him?

Trivia: when George Reeves died, the makers of the old "Superman" TV show scrambled to find a quick Super-replacement. They tried making a "Superboy" pilot which was pretty funny, but not as funny as "SuperPup"--midgets wearing immobile papier-mache dog heads blowing each other up. It's a great thing to watch while sniffing glue or just sitting around cracking your kneecap with a hammer. The unaired pilots for both "Boy" and "Pup" were put out on tape in 1997 by an independent company (Video Rareties), if you can find it, I highly recommend it.

Naturally, AFTER I post, I research. Pop "Superpup" into Google.com and you'll get a taste. Here's one site: http://members.tripod.com/~davidschutz/superpup.htm

I can't find anything for "Video Rareties." They used to be a great source of old, now-forbidden TV animation (cigarette-smoking "8th-Man," for example) and forgotten crud like "SuperPup." Maybe they're still around, but they don't seen to have a direct outlet.

http://www.fortress.am/BookShop/vids.html

...and it helps the Christopher Reeve Foundation. Buyer Beware, of course.

Okay, now I'LL shut up.

It shouldn't cost to much to send it up here. Probably 4 bucks.

I myself have had a hand in writing comic books too. Mostly underground stuff, really hard to find.

I'm gonna email you my address ok?

Don't worry man.

We'll be doing it over email now

Speaking of which, what the hell ever happened to Helen Slater?  I thought she was very pretty AND she could act.
Anyone know what became of Helen?

Superpup ... hot damn I forgot all about it. I have a comp "party" tape with all sorts of badness, super pup clips included.

See, I think its harder to make a good superhero flick than it is to make a mediocre or even outright bad superhero flick. There are so many places you can go wrong: the stiff need for justice, the tights, the overblown badguys. Consequently, bad superhero material outnumbers the good 10 to 1. I mean, even Raimi can make a lame super hero flick. That says something.

Even the few "good" comic book adapations, like The Crow for instance, degenerate into really awful sequels. Flicks like Blade and MIB were based on thinly published properties that were optioned purely to make a movie.

Which is why I consider most big screen "super hero" parodies to be utterly useless. Why parody something that's already a joke by default?

Andrew: Fan Four is one of the rarities that, as far as I know, doesn't have any legal issues associated with its rights. It's never EVER been distributed by a "real" company, and I've heard that Marvel itself sold prints/prereleases to a handful of vendors a few years ago when it declared bankruptcy and needed cash any way it could get it.

I WISH someone would come after me for dubbing Zebra Killer. Girdler's old associates want to buy the rights back and they don't know who (if anyone)  still owns them. Even the so-called official Australian videos are really just bootlegs.

Anyone remember the TV show M.A.N.T.I.S.? And whatever happened to the proposed Madman flick? Holy hole in a doughnut!

Also, IMDB says Albert Pyun is the man responsible fot the 1992 Captain America ... that explains EVERYTHING!

A friend of mine who deals in . . . shall we say "unplanned live concert albums" . . . discovered that Australian law has an unusual provision for copyright holders.  If a person selling copyrighted material cannot find the person who holds the copyright they can set aside a certain percentage of sales to pay the copyright holder when they show themselves.

This way distribution of material where the copyright holder cannot be located is still possible.  To the best of my knowledge, they are the only country to do this.  That may be why the "official" bootlegs come from there.

He discovered this when a song called "Michael Ferucci" was "discovered" and they couldn't find the original author to get her permission to sell this underground classic (if she ever showed herself she would probably make more money than if she had won the contest it was entered into).  The whole story is at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/8692/badsong.html though pretty much irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Actually, I just spun-off the bootleg issue into a thread of its own, but you've offered me a good deal of insight. I looked up Zebra Killer among the British and Australian film boards' records, and they didn't list any copyright holder, which I thought strange considering the movie was released to Aussie video in 1986.

"And the made-for TV teen X-Men with that chick from General Hospital."

That would be the Generation X movie based on the comic of the same name. I haven't seen, but I've heard it was quite bad. So of course I wanna see it.

Oy, that was bad.

I did tape it , but I taped over it with Meet The Feebles.

It also had Matt Ferrer(SP?) He played Job in Lawnmower Man 2

Matt Frewer, I think ... Max Headrom.

I only saw it once, but I know that Marvel sunk more of their very own money into that TV project than they spent on any other movie up to that point. And it was a washout.

Aw, hell, I forgot poor "M.A.N.T.I.S." Unlike Raimi's "Darkman" and its sequels, I thought the pilot was a blast and the casting was pretty much flawless. I can just see the execs at Fox now:

"It needs to be funnier. Wackier. Oh, yeah, and more white people. Maybe a street-smart bike-messenger sidekick. Lose all that Negro hostility, it's too, I dunno, UPN."

I was mortified when I finally saw the last episode on the Sci-Fi Channel; the only worse way I could see him going out was by falling down in the bathroom and drowning in the toilet while one of the white guys stands outside asking if he's okay. The finale of "Blake's Seven" was relatively Shakespearean. Someone deserves to go to Hell for that...

IMBd.com, dude.

She's still working, but right now she's well off the A (or even B) List. I was shocked to find she participated in the animated "Batman" series, even with its star-studded cast (everyone from Mark Hamill to Richard Moll) as "Talia."

Oh gee ... what's the very VERY recent syndicated super hero thing ... the inner-city uppity blond guy in red who stomps out alien drug dealers ... I've seen like eight episodes, and yet I still can't remember the name ... "Nightman?" Something like that. It used to play before the stupid but fun Highlander/Raven show. Whatever the super hero thing is, it's awful. Makes Mantis look like Schindler's List.

Mantis did start off as very entertaining ... but if I recall, they changed the british dude after an episode or two.

Oh yeah, "Nightman." He protects his secret identity by leaving a hologram of himself behind, playing (Sax? I fergit an' it ain't like I watched the thing for a full episode, it hurts too much) at a nightclub. Arf. Comes with invisibility/flight cape and over-padded suit.

Squishy,
 You state that The Spirit was unaired but I actually remember seeing this broadcast on TV back in the mid to late 80's. I really can't remember any particulars of the show but I do remember seeing it. I was pretty young at the time though.
 Speaking of SuperHero/Comic Book based shows does anybody remember Sable. I remember watching a few episodes of this as well. Rene Russo was on the show if I remember correctly. Also there was a pretty crappy show called Captain Hero(?), Basically it was about a comic superhero who is transported into the real world and as a result loses his superpowers.An unsuper superhero...how exciting can that be???  And does anybody remember Automan,he sorta looked like Tron but I don't remember what his powers were
though...

Btw Puma Man rules!!!