“Planet of the Apes” (1968) is a half century old; today is the 50th anniversary of the film’s premiere at the Capitol Theater in Manhattan. (Thanks to Blog Correspondent Pete Harrison for pointing out the date for us.) The movie’s original trailer is below. I actually learned something new looking for it — Rod Serling co-wrote the screenplay. (I wasn’t aware of that, but it makes sense.)
I’ve already written at length about how the “Planet of the Apes” franchise was a part of my childhood. (No, I wasn’t alive in 1968, but these films were broadcast periodically on television in the late 70’s and early 80’s.) So I won’t blather on yet again about it.
But I will say that the iconic line of dialogue you see in the above headline made a pretty big impression on me as a kid. (And Charlton Heston’s delivery of it was unforgettable.) When I was in the second or third grade, I once growled that line at a girl at recess who kept poking me and smacking me on the head. She was really taken aback by it.
I had this poster for “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) when I was 11 or so. It was goddam gigantic. It took up nearly an entire wall in my room.
It wasn’t store bought; it came from a theater. My father used to do something that was pretty damned cool for any parent to do — he’d occasionally ask the manager of a movie theater to save their in-house advertising for my favorite movies. (I don’t know how things are done nowadays, but back then they’d just throw them out after using them.) Then my Dad would hand the guy $10 or $20 for one of these, or maybe the manager would just give it to him.
Sometimes that meant a truly industrial-size poster, like this one. Sometimes it meant one of those huge cardboard stand-up advertisments. (I could only have a couple of these at a time … I had a small room.)
I also had a cardboard stand-up for “Colors,” the 1988 film depicting Los Angeles gangs — but my older brother brought me that one. It had nearly life-size cutouts of Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, the movie’s police protagonists. I don’t know why the nerdiest kid in East Coast suburbia was so taken with a movie about inner-city West Coast gangs, but that movie meant a lot to me.
Come to think of it, a lot of people were talking about “Colors” back in the day. It was a big deal. It was considered pretty edgy at the time, the critics loved it, and I’m surprised I never heard about it again after the close of the decade. Its soundtrack had a damned good title track by Ice-T, too.
The poster below was my favorite, though. To this day, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is probably my favorite film of all time.
Omni in the 1980’s was an absolutely unique magazine dedicated to science fiction and science fact — it was always weird and occasionally wonderful. Its content was consistently a good deal trippier than anything you’d find in more mainstream contemporaries like Scientific American or Discover — futurism, the paranormal, and short stories that were pretty damned abstract. (I remember Patricia Highsmith’s “The Legless A” being a real head-scratcher for me.) And the covers to Omni were frequently awesome.
I had a subscription around 1989 or so — I believe I got a year’s subscription as either a Christmas or birthday present. I still remember it arriving in the mailbox. I think I had all of the issues you see below — except the third one. That issue is from January 1983, and I never had it. I’m including it here because it’s too interesting not to share.
Stephen King fans will recognize Don Brauitgam’s artwork for the cover of King’s classic 1978 short story collection, “Night Shift.” Brautigam apparently sold it to the magazine later. (Interesting, too, is the similarity of the artist’s name to a key character in King’s subsequent “Hearts in Atlantis” and his “The Dark Tower” series — the kindly psychic, Ted Brautigan.)
Anyway, if you were geeky enough to enjoy this back in the day, the entire run of Omni is currently available at Amazon for $3 a pop. It was available online for free for a while, and I think you can still find all of the short stories uploaded in pdf if you google them — I found a bunch, including Highsmith’s story. (I wonder if I’d get a better sense of it if I read it today.)
NBC’s “Knight Rider” might be the granddaddy of all 1980’s high-tech super-vehicle shows — if I had to guess which one was the most popular or most fondly remembered, this would be it. (I suppose the other leading contender would be “Airwolf,” which we talked about a couple of months ago — but that was aimed at an older audience.)
“Knight Rider” was cheesy. But most 80’s action shows were cheesy, and I still remember it as being decent enough. Lord knows I and Mikey Wagner, the kid on the next block, were fascinated by it.
As anyone who remembers this show can attest, there is a key character that isn’t even hinted at in the intro below. The car was sentient. His name was K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand), and he was an artificial intelligence who actually who had a hell of a lot of personality. K.I.T.T. was a super-intelligent, talking, futuristic, sleek, black sportscar, and he was an incongruous damned hero to us kids.
The other star was Davis Hasselhoff as Michael Knight. We looked up to him too. Hasselhoff, of course, is now better known for his subsequent starring role as a moronic lifeguard on the categorically awful “Baywatch” (1989 – 2001). I remember seeing snippets of “Baywatch” in the 1990’s — it was constantly playing in the newsroom at my first job as a cub reporter. (The guys there loved it.) I remember being disappointed that one of my childhood heroes had somehow morphed into a male bimbo on the most saccharine and brainless TV show I had ever seen. Hey, “Knight Rider” was a show for kids … but it was goddam “Masterpiece Theater” when compared with “Baywatch.”
Weird trivia — the voice actor for K.I.T.T. was none other than William Daniels, who also gave a stellar performance as John Adams in 1972’s film adaptation of Broadway’s “1776.” It’s so weird seeing that movie and hearing the voice of K.I.T.T. come out of Adams’ mouth.
This was one of the really weird holiday specials that Rankin/Bass Productions made after their success with 1964’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Yes, this is the one with dinosaurs.
And, whaddya know? Frank Gorshin (The Riddler from the 1960’s “Batman”) was in this.
Here’s another happy Christmas memory — the Find Your Fate Adventure books featuring Indiana Jones. I was happy indeed when Santa brought these. They were first published by Ballantine Books in 1984 and 1985, and they were basically Choose Your Own Adventure books in which you teamed up with Indy in the same type of archeological adventure you saw in the movies or in his comic book series.
Like most series of this type, they were penned by different authors and tended to vary in quality. The second book, “Indiana Jones and the Lost Treasure of Sheba,” was authored by Rose Estes, who wrote some terrific title in the Endless Quest series, TSR’s own excellent take on the format in the Dungeons & Dragons genre. There also were several written by R.L. Stine, they were reprinted in the 90’s following his popularity with his Goosebumps series.
I had the first four that you see below. I seem to remember one being kinda bad, but I’m not sure I remember which. It might have been Andrew Helfer’s “Indiana Jones and the Cup of the Vampire.” (It was whichever book portrayed the reader as Indiana Jones’ cousin, who he repeatedly addressed as “Cuz.”) The other books were damned great fun, though. I do remember Estes’ “Lost Treasure of Sheba” being quite good.
I never owned the fifth book you see below, and never read it. I can’t resist including it here, though, simply because of its title — “Indiana Jones and the Ape Slaves of Howling Island.” If that isn’t the most interesting title in the history of western literature, I don’t know what is. I’m 45 years old, and I would snap that up right off the bookstore shelf if I saw it. Somebody should have gotten a raise for that one.
I mentioned “Streethawk” (1985) a couple of weeks ago during that discussion of that 80’s fad where futuristic vehicles were the stars of TV shows. This ran for a single season and depicted the adventures of a police officer riding “an all-terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime.”
This was the very height of 1980’s cheese — or the very nadir, depending on how you look at it. (I was a pretty impressionable kid, though, and I loved “Streethawk.”) And star Rex Smith was not an ugly man, but always seemed to have dopey expression permanently plastered to his face.
Wasn’t there sort of special signature move that Smith’s character had, where he popped a wheelie and actually spun the bike like a dradle at the same time? So that the bullets or whatever it was firing would fly in every direction? (Because cops typically require indiscriminate suppressing fire in every direction in order to “fight urban crime.”) I could almost swear that was a recurring action sequence on this show.
As I explained last year, monster movies were simply a part of Thanksgiving if you lived in the Tri-State region around New York City between 1976 and 1985. This was due to WOR-9’s “Holiday Film Festival” broadcast, which actually also extended to the day following the holiday after the lineup’s first year. (People just called it the “Monster Movie Marathon.”)
As a kid, I was a hell of a lot more thrilled with the monster movies than anything being served for dinner. (Remember, video stores only began arriving the early 1980’s. Before that, you usually had to catch a movie on television if you wanted to see it at all. It’s why every house had a “TV Guide.”)
“King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1962) was one gem in the marathon. (Or, at least, it seemed like an amazing film to a gradeschool boy.) I was raised with the enduring myth that this Japanese film had two endings — an American version where King Kong prevailed, and a Japanese version where its native Godzilla was the victor.) My Dad told me that, and I remember being fascinated that a movie could have two different endings. I actually only learned just now, writing this blog entry, that it was a particularly widespread urban legend — stemming from an erroneous report in “Spacemen” magazine. The American version of the film had tons of alterations, but the outcome was essentially the same — King Kong won.
There were always a few more Godzilla movies on the day after Thanksgiving, too. “Son of Godzilla” (1967) was one of them; that was always hit with the kids. (I could swear at some point there was a cartoon adaptation in the early 80’s.) It was weird how 80’s kids apparently loved that ostensibly “cute” character; the adult in me today swears that “Son of Godzilla” looks like an upright, reptile-shaped poop. (Seriously, check out the second clip below.)
“Godzilla vs. Megalon” (1973) was another one I seem to remember being pretty thrilled with. I was even occasionally scared of the giant monsters in flicks like these. (Hey, I was a little kid.) Even as a first- or second-grader, though, I was smart enough to question why these movies were weirdly inconsistent. (Why was Godzilla a bad guy who destroyed Tokyo in one movie, but the “good monster” that the Japanese rooted for in another?)
I’m learning now that “Godzilla vs. Megalon” was the target of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. I’m going to have to hunt that one down.
“Airwolf” (1984 – 1987) and “Blue Thunder” (1984) were part of the decade’s fad of building TV shows around incredibly high-tech vehicles — sports cars, helicopters … even a preposterously conceived “attack motorcycle.” (Does anyone else remember 1985’s lamentable “Streethawk?”)
“Airwolf” was a decent techno-thriller produced by CBS. (It was revamped in its final year and relaunched on the USA Network.) It had great action sequences, a likable star (Jan-Michael Vincent) and seemed written to appeal to an older audience, with a fairly sophisticated and morally ambiguous overall story setup. And goddam if it didn’t have a kickass theme — even if it’s a bit of an earworm and leans heavily on the snythesizers. (It was an 80’s thing.) You can check it out in the first clip below.
“Blue Thunder” was ABC’s putative competitor, I suppose. It was an adaptation of what I remember to be a pretty respectable 1983 feature film with Roy Scheider, but the show only ran for a single season. I hardly remember it. (As you can see from the second clip below, though, it had a pretty interesting cast, including Dana Carvey, Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith.) I’ve never heard anyone bring up “Blue Thunder” nostalgically either. I do remember that my friend Keith was a fan — he and I got into a spirited debate once about which could defeat the other in an aerial battle.
If Hollywood wants to recycle everything from the 1980’s … how the hell did “Airwolf” escape its radar? (No pun intended.) I would love to hear Ki: Theory update that killer theme.
“Bigfoot and Wildboy” (1977 – 1979) is another obscure TV show that is perhaps best forgotten. It was a segment on something called “The Krofft Supershow” in 1977, I think, before the segments were re-edited into a half-hour program. I became a fan of it as second grader in the fall of 1979. (Or maybe I watched its reruns in third grade, in 1980 — to be honest, this was so long ago that I hardly remember.)
They don’t make TV shows like they used to. And that’s a good thing. “Bigfoot and Wildboy” seemed to rely heavily on three ingredients: an utra-cheesy 70’s score; truly terrible special effects (even for the time); and lots of shots of its two title characters either jumping, or running at the camera in slow motion. (I actually just watched a few minutes of the full episode you see posted below.)
I was pretty preoccupied with “Bigfoot and Wildboy” when I was very young. I remember having to make journal entries in the classroom, in which we could write and illustrate anything we wanted. (It was precisely the sort of open-ended journal writing exercise with little academic value to which I’d be subjected, occasionally, throughout my school career — even in my college poetry class.) But we were allowed to select our own topic in the second grade, and that was at least some fun for an imaginative kid. The nuns (it was a Catholic school) sometimes prodded us to write about real-world events; 1979’s Space Shuttle Columbia, for example, was high on their list of suggestions.
Given a blank slate, though, I tended to write almost exclusively about imaginary characters and monsters — peppered, perhaps, with intermittent entries about dogs. I distinctly remember drawing Bigfoot and Wildboy one day. (If memory serves, we wrote and drew in our journals after recess, maybe to get us refocused.) I drew them leaping over a fence and running toward the viewer. (Seriously, the show had a lot of shots like that. Check out the opening credits below.)
I remember a nun looking over my shoulder and inquiring delicately about the giant hairy humanoid and the half-naked boy … when I explained the characters to her, she suggested with (uncharacteristic) patience, “Tomorrow, let’s try to write about something from the real world.”
