Legendary Weapons of China ( a.k.a.
Legendary Weapons of Kung Fu ) ( 1982 ) This was the film Ric Meyers once called the greatest martial arts movie ever made. I never really agreed with that assessment, but it is among Liu Chia Liang's masterpieces. A cult is teaching it's members Kung Fu that is suppose to make them invulnerable to bullets. But after several of the cults members are killed by Westerners guns, one of the cult leaders disbands his chapter so no more of his students will die. The other cult leaders deem him a traitor and vow to hunt him down. The highlight of the film is the final duel where all of the 18 Weapons of Wushu are used. The film could have done away with the mid section where Alexander Fu Sheng's con artist character shows up, and it suddenly becomes a comedy until his character leaves. But it is one of the best martial arts films of the late Old School era.
DOUBLE FEATUREThis week I am watching not one, but two Wonder Woman movies. Why? Because
Saturday Night Live is still on it's Christmas break. Because if the stuff I had ordered from Amazon on Cyber Monday finally arrived then I would have another WC Fields film to watch this weekend, but the order still hasn't been processed or shipped. And because it turns out the two Wonder Woman pilot movies from the 70s we're pretty short, so I may as well get rid of both on the same night.
Yes, two pilot movies. ABC was so desperate for a Wonder Woman series that after the first pilot tanked, they found a different producer and completely rebooted. The second Wonder Woman pilot did well enough in the ratings that the series was picked up. I had always assumed that the pilot film with Cathy Lee Crosby was the pilot for the Linda Carter series. Okay, so it had a different cast, setting and WW costume. But that happened a lot with pilots and their eventual series. And the Crosby movie and Carter series were less than a year apart. As for the Linda Carter pilot movie, I never realized it existed because once the series was picked up the pilot was split into two episodes for every rerun and syndicated version of the show. And the Carter pilot film is not listed on Amazon's superhero movie list. ( A lot of pilot movies aren't. ) But the Crosby film is. I found out there was a second pilot when I checked to see if the Crosby pilot was an extra on the series set. ( It wasn't, despite both pilots being owned by Warner Bros. Television. )
Wonder Woman ( 1974 )So here is what ABC wanted. They were very interested in doing a series based on Wonder Woman. But they wanted the character updated as a modern 70s woman. It was the height of the Woman's Liberation movement. Helen Reddy's
I Am Woman had just reached #1 on the charts. Billie Jean King had beaten Bobby Riggs in the
Battle of the Sexes. The voice of the movement came from Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Gloria Steinem's magazine
Ms., and Wonder Woman was on the cover of the first issue. Which was why ABC wanted to make a Wonder Woman television series. But wanted her updated for the Women's Lib era. Their reinvented version of Wonder Woman would be a spy who wears civilian clothing during missions. Instead of super strength she uses judo. Instead of bracelets that repel bullets and a magic rope that forces people to tell the truth, her bracelets and rope are standard 007 style spy equipment. She does say she has an invisible plane, but most likely as a joke as it is never seen. Her iconic costume is gone, and when she does finally wear a Wonder Woman costume, it is this...
The plot? Someone has stolen code books that when combined reveal the names and identifies of every top agent in Europe. The head of the agency Steve Trevor decides to send agents out to find the culprit who stole the books. He has narrowed down the suspects to three crime bosses, one of which is so mysterious that no one has ever photographed him. Eavesdropping on the meeting is his secretary Diana Prince. After his agents are dispatched, Diana announces that she will be absent for a few days so she can have dental surgery, although it is made clear that Steve knows she is really Wonder Woman. Deciding that the mysterious Mr Smith must be the culprit, Diana checks in as a guest at a hotel he is alleged to own. Within seconds one of his henchmen calls in to say that Wonder Woman is checking in to the hotel. For the next hour it is Diana escaping one spy trap after another. Mr Smith wants to sell the Agency back the code books for $15 million. For the transfer he has sent the Agency a mule in a crate, giving Steve Trevor instructions to take it to a ghost town, put the ransom in a sack on the mule's back and slap it on it's rear so it delivers the ransom to Smith. Steve puts tracking devices on the mule, but it had been trained to walk through a building with a machine that deactivates the devices. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman shows up, finally in her costume, and tracks the mule herself. But she runs into Ahnjayla, another woman from Paradise Island who earlier in the film Diana was warned had left the island in persuit of a criminal career. Ahnjayla had been hired by Smith to protect him from Wonder Woman, and the two get into a very lame pole fight. Ahnjayla loses the fight and tells Wonder Woman where Smith's secret base is. Wonder Woman infiltrates Smith's base, blows up his escape helicopter with her spy bracelet which is really a bomb, then when he tries to escape by rowboat, jumps into the river and catches him. Diana then returns to the agency to tell Steve that her dental surgery was a success.
Despite this film having almost nothing to do with Wonder Woman, it wasn't really that bad. Or at least i wasn't board while waiting for Diana to finally put on her Wonder Woman costume, which doesn't happen until the final 20 minutes of the movie, although since she has no powers and is acting as Wonder Woman when she wears civilian clothing, there was not really any point in waiting. The dumb thing about this film is how the Mr Smith character is either written or cast or both. Basically it is one of those films where you do not see the villians face for most of the film, shooting him from the back, from the neck down, or at an angle where his head is blocked by something. you hear his voice, see his hands a lot, but never see his face. Finally in the last act of the film when Wonder Woman infiltrates Mr Smith's base, he swivels around in his chair and his face is revealed. Except that Mr Smith was played by Ricardo Montalban who has one of the most recognizable voices in show business, so you know what the mysterious Mr. Smith's face looks like long before he reveals it. It seems so stupid for them to spend the entire film hiding it.
The New Original Wonder Woman ( 1975 )The day after the ratings came in for the Wonder Woman pilot, here is probably how the meeting at ABC went...
"God damn it! We started out strong in the first quarter, then the ratings tanked! Viewers were tuning out! What went wrong?!"
"I'll tell you what went wrong! My grand kid was watching that show! The whole time he kept saying `Grampa, where's Wonder Woman?` Who's idea was it not to have Goddamn Wonder Woman in a Goddamn Wonder Woman show?!"
" That was Jenkins!"
"Screw you! You were all on board with the idea! This was suppose to be a modern Wonder Woman for the 70s.!"
"We weren't all on board! I warned you Jinkins! I said that DC had already tried that shit back in the late 60s and it failed!"
"That does it! Jinkins! your fired! I want your desk cleared and you out of showbusiness by the end of the day! The rest of you, I want a Wonder Woman show that is exactly like the Comic Book! Exactly! Do I make myself clear?!"
So ABC went with a second production company and came up with a Wonder Woman series that was so identical to the original comic book that it even took place during the Second World War. This pilot film follows almost exactly the plots from
All Star Comics #8 and
Sensation Comics #1, only leaving out the part that Wonder Woman runs into a nurse named Diana Prince who wants to go to South America to be with her fiance, and pays her the money she needs in trade of keeping her identity. I am guessing that for a brief period ABC toyed with turning Wonder Woman into a camp comedy series identical to what was done with Batman in the 60s. Most of the cast were veteran comedians. For example, Lyle Waggoner had just left
The Carol Burnett Show after 7 seasons of sketch comedy to play Steve Trevor. The guest cast was full of notable comedians including Redd Buttons, Kenneth Mars and Stella Stevens as Nazi spies, Henrey Gibson as a counter agent, and Cloris Leachman as Diana's mother. It even had Anne Ramsey in a bit part as a cab driver. But somewhere after casting the pilot with comedians, the network decided to produce the movie as a dramatic action adventure.
I honestly can't remember if
Wonder Woman the series was any good, having not seen it since I was a kid. I guess I will find out soon since the only way to get the second pilot movie was to buy the series. What I do remember about the series was how annoying that theme song was ( and still is. ) Although now that I am older, I realize how inappropriate a Funk theme song is on a show that is suppose to take place during the early 1940s. Of course another thing I remembered from the series was how in the second season it suddenly switched to the 1970s with no explanation, or any characters aging. This pilot works a lot better than the first pilot specifically because it is very faithful to the comic book. But it is a victim to the ridiculously low budgets of 70s television.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1536479 times)
