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Our
little piece of 1970s kitsch opens with
Gary Owens introducing our merry band of
do-gooders: Captain Marvel, Flash, Green
Lantern, Huntress, Hawk Man (and
his bizarre war hoop), Black
Canary, and Batman and Robin. He also
announces that tonight is special because
the heroes are to be the guests of honor
at a celebrity roast
-- so if there’s a global emergency look
elsewhere, we’re busy. (Hey!
Where’s Foster Brooks?)
Ed
McMahon, our master of ceremonies, begins
the evening with a fairly funny speech. He
talks about how some superheroes got their
powers by falling into a vat of chemicals,
and says he once fell into a vat of
Budweiser but nothing happened. (I
knew he couldn’t be sober for this.)
The
first guest is the Flash’s arch-nemesis;
the Weather Wizard. His jokes about
weather disasters left me shaking my head,
hoping that things would get better. He
whips up a maelstrom of bad jokes until
the Flash dispatches him. Things
recover a bit with a visit from
Hawkman’s mom. After a few bad bird
jokes, she sticks in a couple of good ones,
chiding her son for not being a homing
pigeon, as he never visits, but if he does
to warn her, so she can change the paper
on his bed. (What
can I say, I’m an easy target for
laughs.) Dating itself horribly
with the next guest, Ghetto-Man starts off
strong but quickly degenerates into Idi
Amin jokes.
Dr.
Sivana, an old enemy of Captain Marvel, is
next. An M.D. (Mad
Doctor, get it?!?), he wants to
examine everyone, especially the Black
Canary and the Huntress. (Who can
blame him, the dirty old fart.) I
used to have a huge compendium of old Captain
Marvel
comics, and all I can say is, Dr. Sivana
is one of the greatest comic book villains
of all time. (I
like Howard Morris but I didn’t like him
here.) Fifty-five
groans in, they cart out the geriatric
Retired Man, a/k/a the Scarlet Cyclone. He
is so old -- How old is he? -- and
decrepit, he hurts himself while trying to
strike the superhero poses, and nods off
while trying to tell stories. (William
Schallert has a ball with this character.)
Next
comes superhero celebrity gossip
columnist, Rhoda Rooter (get
it?!?) Her big scoop is that the
Atom is going to marry the gargantuan
Giganta. (They met through a
computer dating service that obviously is
no longer in business.) Things get
a little dicey when Rhoda asks how they
intend to consummate their marriage. (Luckily
we cut to a commercial before it gets too
graphic.) When we
come back, Robin is confessing to Captain
Marvel that he wrecked the Batmobile while
trying to park it. ("Holy
up the creek, Batman.") Word
comes that Gotham City is under attack,
and in the program’s funniest segment,
the boy wonder fesses up to totaling the
car. Batman warns him to wait until they
get back to the Bat-Cave...
Paging
Dr. Wertham! Dr. Frederic Wertham!
Please report to the Bat-Cave. Stat.
Solomon
Grundy makes his way in by crashing
through the wall. Every time Ed would
mention his swampy origins, Grundy would
get mad and bop him. No matter where the
conversation went, it always circled
around back to the swamp and Ed would wind
up on the floor. (Sober
or not, I have to give Ed a little credit;
he does a good job with this.) Auntie
Minerva comes out next. (She’s
an obscure Captain Marvel villain, a black
widow in search of her sixth husband.)
Sizing up the men folk, the old bat
chooses the Big Red Cheese. She kisses him
and says "Shazam!" Lightning
flashes, and when the smoke clears, Auntie
Minerva has been transformed into a femme
fatale who dumps Marvel on the spot.
The
episode concludes with a dueling ring
battle between Green Lantern and Sinestro,
and a wild musical number from the
mystical Mordu. I’d
like to go into greater detail, but my
brain is currently leaking out my left ear
and I’ve got a whole other episode to
get through. Ed thanks everyone for coming,
wishes all a good night, and flies off. (I
guess the Budweiser finally kicked in.
Alas, no cameo appearance from the Taste
Buds. Now who remembers those?)
The
next episode, "The Challenge"
begins in the villain’s lair as they
plot to take over the world. (And
we notice that Frank Gorshin is back as
the Riddler.) Mordu appears to be
in charge and has The Riddler, acting
secretary, call the role, and he barely
survives (all the bad guys
demonstrate their powers on him.) Before
they go any further, the Riddler demands
that they elect new officers.
Dr.
Sivana reveals his doomsday device that
will detonate in one hour, destroying
everyone Earth -- including their dreaded
enemies, the Superheroes. To prevent the
good guys from finding them, or the bomb,
they have the Riddler devise a series of
clues and puzzles as delaying tactics.
Meanwhile,
at the Hall of Heroes, the Scarlet
Cyclone’s retirement party is
interrupted when the Villains send a
message, saying the world will end in one
hour by way of Sivana’s bomb. (Here’s
a novel idea. Why not instead of delaying
tactics, they just not tell them about the
bomb until after it goes off?) The
heroes decide to split up to try and find
the bomb. If they find anything, they’re
to leave a message at the local gas
station (I
don’t know, it’s the '70s go with it.)
Outside the Hall, Sinestro sabotages the
Batmobile. Hearing them coming out, he
hides and watches them disperse. It
isn’t long before the Batmobile breaks
down and they limp to the gas station, but
the attendant is none other than Solomon
Grundy in disguise. (Mordu
gave him a magic hat that disguises him
but Grundy accidentally keeps taking it
off.)
Unmasked, Batman and Grundy fight and the
brutish Grundy wipes the floor with him.
Batman and Robin strategically withdraw to
look for the bomb.
In
a phone booth, taking this all in, a very
thin Marsha Warfield gives her friend on
the other end of the line the play by play
of the action. The
Green Lantern is suckered in by a
fortuneteller to try and find out where
the bomb is (and
either it's the ugliest fortuneteller of
all time, or it's Sinestro in drag.)
After getting his palm read and his
handwriting analyzed, Lantern finally
unmasks Sinestro and blasts him.
Meanwhile,
the Weather Wizard poses as a used car
salesman and tries to sell the Dynamic Duo
a new set of wheels. He sells them a booby
trapped motorcycle and sidecar. After they
roar off, the cycle appears to have a mind
of it's own and splits in two. Hawkman
spies the Batmobile at the gas station and
investigates. He’s captured by Grundy
and chained to the top of the car-lift in
the shop.
Meanwhile,
some poor people trying to have a picnic
are run over by the Flash, the Huntress,
and the runaway Bat-Cycle. The
Black Canary also spots the Batmobile at
the gas station, but is captured, too, and
chained up beside Hawkman. (Warfield
is still on the phone taking this all in.)
Captain
Marvel is next to fall into a trap. (Boy
these guys are dumb.)
The Riddler’s clue, disguised as a
Bermashave ad, tells him to look into his
mind for the answer. Marvel figures the
location of the bomb lies in his
subconscious.
As
luck would have it, the Riddler is nearby
disguised as a psychiatrist with a couch
ready and waiting. He diagnoses Marvel as
having an identity crisis compounded by a
split personality. The villain's word
association game backfires, though, as HIS
subconscious
accidentally reveals that the bomb is
located in a lake. (How? Because
Marvel is such and idiot and is terrible
at word association.) He disappears
before Marvel can find out which lake,
though. Returning to the gas station,
Marvel
tricks Grundy into leaving and frees the
others. He tells them the bomb is in a
lake, and Warfield tells them it’s at a
lake with an island. (She
overheard Grundy talking to Mordu.)
Hawkman says it has to he Hidden Island
Lake, the only lake with an island. (Hidden
Island Lake? Who's writing this crap?)
The Black Canary uses her sonic cry to
tell the others to head to the island.
In
a last ditch attempt to stop them, Sivana
takes his liquid anti-power formula and
disguises himself as a little boy running
a lemon-aid stand. He gets Marvel and
Green Lantern to drink some, rendering
them powerless. But the others bypass him,
so Mordu jumps on a Jet Ski (!) and leads
them on a wild goose chase as the timer on
the bomb counts down. With less than a few
minutes remaining, all the villains
congregate in their lair. They drink a
toast to the impending victory but drink
Sivana’s anti-power solution by
accident.
The
heroes break in, mayhem ensues, and the
bomb is stopped, using Dr. Sivana's head
as a battering ram with (all
together now)
one second left to spare. The heroes cart
all the villains off to jail.
The
End
Whew!
I made it!
Back
in the late '70s, the heroes of DC Comics
were going through a massive surge in
popularity. With the forthcoming feature
film for the Man of Steel, the mod
television version of Wonder Woman, and of
course, the Saturday morning staple, The
Super-Friends,
these guys and gals in spandex hadn’t
had it this good since the original Batman
TV series was on the air in the late '60s.
I
remember back in '75, my folks piled the
entire Beerman clan -- all seven of us --
into the old wood-paneled family station
wagon and headed to Florida for one of
those hell vacations that we’ve all been
through.
Most of those old station wagons
had the last seat facing the rear, so I
rode all the way from Nebraska to Florida
-- and back again -- backwards. (I
was also the kid that got carsick and
threw up every mile.) One
of our destinations was Sea World, and aside
from seeing Shamoo and the sharks (along
with superheroes, the nation was also
gripped in Jawsmania),
we took in a water park show, starring
none other than a bunch of poor souls
dressed up as the same DC comic book
characters. (My older sister,
Chris, was plucked from the audience and
allowed to participate.)
Oddly
enough, even Aquaman seemed out of his
element. It was so bizarre. I’ve got the
program, a large treasury edition comic,
and pictures of that travesty floating
around in one of those boxes at my mom’s
house that I pray she hasn’t chucked out
yet.
A
couple of years later, Hanna-Barbera took
an idea from Sheldon Moldoff and turned it
into a live-action comedy show based on
the DC characters called The
Legends of the Superheroes.
They put Adam West and Burt Ward back in
their Bat-jammies, but the rest of the
heroes are unknowns. To play the villains,
they recruited some better known comedians
of the day like Callas, Morris and Buzzie.
One
episode was a roast, based I’m sure, on
the immense popularity of the Dean
Martin Celebrity Roasts.
The second was more of a homage to the old
Batman
TV series: Bad jokes, bad puns, silly
action with goofy villains, concluding
with a slam-bang fight scene. Mercifully,
it only lasted two episodes. (The
concept was running out of gas already, so
this is good thing.)
Some
DC staples seem suspiciously absent. I
assume the license for Superman was tied
up in the movie, Wonder Woman with the TV
show, and Aquaman was -- hey, where was
Aquaman?
They
only could have gotten away with this crap
in the '70s, but on the flip side, it also
makes it very dated. Unless you were
around, all the energy crisis, Drive 55,
and women’s lib jokes won’t make much
sense. But
let’s give some credit where credit is
due (I
say trying not to laugh.) The
production seems rushed but it’s solid
enough. The pyrotechnics are adequate but
the rest of the f/x are strictly
chroma-key. The costuming job is really
quite good, especially Solomon Grundy, and
all the actors seemed to be having fun and
sell it with all they got.
I
remember watching this thing when it first
aired, but for some reason, the only thing
I really remembered about it was the *sigh*
Huntress and the *double sigh*
Black Canary, which is strange because I
was a huge fan of the Flash. (You
figure it out.)
Twenty
years later, while browsing a local comic
book shop, I found a stash of rare videos
for sale. Having enough money for only two
videos, I bought this and Roger Corman's
aborted The
Fantastic Four. It was a toss up
between those and the Star
Wars Holiday Special,
but I just can’t quite bring myself to
watch that again. Of course these were
bootlegs, and as crappy as the print of The
Fantastic Four was, the print for this
was remarkably good. It
appears to be dubbed off the direct
satellite feed, because when it went to
commercial, there were several minutes of
dead air. (And I’ll say it now,
as a rule, I don’t make dubs. Root
around your local comic shops, I’m sure
you can find your own copy.)
I'll
admit if it didn’t have Hanna-Barbera
listed in the credits, I’d swear this
whole thing was another Sid & Marty
Kroft pipe dream.
If I was a mean sort of guy I could have
ripped this program savagely, but since
I'm not I'll leave you with this:
The
Legends of the Superheroes
is cheesy, and corny as all hell, but I
laughed my butt off.
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