I didn’t create this image – it’s a promo for the epic 1977 Japanese horror film, House, but you get the idea. I’m sorry I don’t have better attribution for it, I found it on my desktop and all I remember is that it was sent to me by Janus Films when they re-released the movie on DVD.
On Memorial Day, SciFi ran a Land of the Lost marathon. I thought it would be amusing to Tivo them and watch them all. I thought there were probably only 6 or 7 episodes. 12 tops. Weren’t we surprised to discover that there were 43 episodes of the original show. 43. That just shouldn’t have been legal. This show had three actors and one of them doesn’t even appear in the last season, the producers just hired his brother and only shot him from the back or something. (That may not be factually accurate. After watching a dozen episodes of this show you wouldn’t be credible either. I could look it up, but I’m not going to. I believe it, so it must be true).
Since there’s a major motion picture remake about to land on us all, you surely know which show I’m talking about. Just in case you don’t, let me recap:
A ranger named Rick Marshall gets a Mike Brady perm, dresses his son Will and his daughter Holly in Garanimals and takes them on the most poorly conceived rafting adventure ever. They go over a giant waterfall that drops them into another dimension. From 1974 – 1976 they have many wacky adventures involving reptilian Sleestaks, an apelike creature named Chaka, and a bunch of rubber dinosaurs. This being a Sid and Marty Kroft show, every penny of the budget shows on screen. And how.
Sidenote: Will Ferrell played a character named Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
There was an awesome episode where Dad threw a rock into a pit and then said something like, “I don’t know where that goes.” Then he threw another rock in and stood there, waiting for an answer and then said, “I still don’t know where it goes.”
I’ve repressed the rest of the episode, but I think there was something hilariously ridiculous involving a rope and giant carrots. Or maybe a weed called “dinosaur nip.”
Nothing says SciFi-fantasy time travel futurism like banjo music.
I’m sorry. I forgot what I was saying. The future alien Sleestak, Enik, just explained something or another and…what? What the hell is happening in this episode?
All I know is, there’s a lot of Acting going on and it’s slightly distracting. Marshall, Will and Holly are all inexplicably acting like William Shatner. Upon closer inspection, I see that the ep was written by Walter Koenig. Coincidence? You can watch the full episode here at imdb.
Go ahead, I dare you.
I have more to say about all of this but it’ll have to wait. I just clicked on a Land of the Lost fan fiction website and I think I need to go bleach my eyeballs now. And my brain.
The Netflix Fairy brought us Alone in the Dark. I read the sleeve and couldn’t figure out what could possibly have compelled me to put this in our queue. Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff do make an appealing trifecta of uber-badness, but that couldn’t have been the reason. OK, there’s pop culture archaeology, too. That’s impressive, but not enough. Then, Husband remembered why we wanted to see it: it’s directed by Uwe Boll. And it’s widely regarded to be his worst movie of all time.
Uwe Boll’s worst movie of all time.
Uwe Boll. The man who brought us BloodRayne. Holy crap, is BloodRayne a bad movie. That’s the the movie that one critic regarded as “not as bad as getting your eyelid caught on a nail.” The movie that did this to me.
I can’t wait.
Last night we watched the pilot ep of the new Bionic Woman. A review I read (Tom Shales?) reminded me of what was missing – and by “missing” I mean “not there,” I certainly don’t mean “lacking.”
In the original series, Jaime Sommers had a bionic dog named Max.
I searched my archives because I was pretty sure I posted about bionic dogs a couple of years ago. I found the post, “In the future we will all have…robot dogs,” but notice I forgot (repressed?) Max.
70’s television writers always seemed to pull the robotic dog out of the Big Bag of Hackneyed Plot Devices when their show started to go to ground, didn’t they? I’d try to answer the question of which came first, a show’s implosion or the addition of a robotic dog, but it seems a rather “chicken or the egg” proposition. Plus, much like the last time, I’ve gotten distracted thinking about zombie dogs and already lost interest in the subject.