William Williams: the Adventure Begins...

[Alan Smithee]

... and ends.

So-so variation on the James Bond schtick from the mid-80's. I would've loved to seen  where they've would've gone with this flop had it not been a flop. Not actually a bad movie, I guess. More cheesey than anything. Joel Grey was pretty good as the Chinese guy.

God, I admire these 1980's misfires (Krull, Last Starfighter, Buckaroo Banzai).

[Menard]

Uh...wasn't that REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS?

I found this film to be quite enjoyable. The odd dynamic between Remo and Chuin(sp) worked quite well. I wish they had made a sequel.

[Alan Smithee]

Remo Williams or William Williams, it's all the same to me.

[AndyC]

Just imagined a secret agent movie with John Candy as Sammy Maudlin's sidekick. William B. Williams: The Adventure Begins!

[odinn7]

It was no work of art but it was fairly entertaining. There were some good ideas in it that I would have liked to see taken further. Overall I enjoyed it.

[Mofo Rising]

REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS was only the movie version of a series that's been around a while called THE DESTROYER.  It's mostly books, although there was a comic series that I enjoyed reading.  So if you want more, that's your go-to place.

The funny thing about the movie is that they are so clearly pushing for it to be a continuing franchise.  In fact, most of the movie makes no sense unless there is going to be more movies.

Oh well.  I enjoyed it.

[Fearless Freep]

I liked this movie.  I liked the Korean guy and the training and the light-hearted silliness of it all..

[trekgeezer]

The Destroyer books have been around forever and new ones are still being published. The movie was produced by Dick Clark and  was meant to begin a franchise.

He also made a TV pilot starring Roddy McDowall as Chiun and a guy named Jeffrey Meek as Remo. It aired in 1988 on ABC, but I never saw it. From what I have read it was pretty bad. Apparently there was a rumor that someone was thinking of resurrecting it back 1999, but nothing happened.

I have always really liked this movie, especially the chemistry between Joel Grey and Fred Ward.

[Yaddo 42]

I liked the movie, and also wished they had made more, it was fun and nothing more but I thought that was all they were going for .

What struck me was that later I read one or two of the early books in The Destroyer series and was surprised how grim, graphically violent, and filled with bizarre sex scenes (I won't say kinky since they seemed more "nasty" than just "kinky") the books were. Although the "head in a paintmixer" scene in one of them sounded like it was prime material to be used in a movie somewhere.

Just seemed odd source material to turn into a movie that could almost be called a "romp". Then again the guys at Teleport City wrote about the original Matt Helm books once and said they were nothing like the films, in fact they sounded more like The Destroyer books or even the Mack Bolan series.

[kriegerg69]

.

[trekgeezer]

I read a few of those Mack Bolan books back in the 70's. They were also kinda ultraviolent. You don't really see that many 'pulp' books around anymore.

[Yaddo 42]

Those books aren't as popular as they were, but they still hang on. Between the various military/para-military series, violent action spy potboilers, and odd stuff like the old Casca series created by Barry Sadler someone was reading a lot of that stuff for a while. The security guards where I work seem to trade and pass around older stuff like the Longarm western/action/soft-core smut books between each other.

What's weird at the local big-box bookstore, they stock the Destroyer books and others  in with the regular mainstream/literary fiction instead of over in the seperate sections they have for other genres like mysteries, scifi/fantasy, romance, westerns, etc. Maybe there aren't enough of them to warrent their own small section anymore.