Fox Reportedly “Bullish” on Rebooting The Greatest American Hero – For the Second Time

Greatest American HeroStop me if you’ve heard this before…

Oh. Yeah, you have heard this before. About a year ago, when Fox gave the green light to Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who wrote and directed THE LEGO MOVIE and also directed a big screen version of Stephen Cannell’s 21 JUMP STREET, to film a pilot for a new take on THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. We’ve heard nothing more since then about a script, or actors or anything.

Frankly, one might have figured the project died, but according Deadline Hollywood, it’s still very much alive and Fox is reported to be “bullish” on getting this one to American TV screens.

It’s been a year and apparently a change in writers, but a casting director has now been hired to scout out some talent. Nathan Fillion expressed some interest in playing the lead during a Q&A session at Chicago’s Wizard World Comic Con back in August, 2015.

GREATEST_AMERICAN_HERO_S2_D5-68It’s also unclear if the concept has changed. Originally, it sounded like Ralph, Pam and Bill were NOT going to be rebooted, that it would be all new original characters; an inner city teacher named Issac would be the recipient of the suit. Now, based on the recent Deadline Hollywood article, the script written by Rick Famuyiwa (DOPE), “is the story of what happens when great power is not met with great responsibility. An ordinary man, completely content with being average, wakes up with a superpower suit he never asked for and has to deal with the complications it brings his life.”

Given Hollywood’s penchant for lampooning and doing parody’s of original shows, it really doesn’t sound encouraging.

 

 

~Lisa Philbrick

TGAH: Here’s Looking at You, Kid

Here's Looking at You, Kid

Originally aired: April 1, 1981

Oh no, this was no April Fool’s joke. A military plane with a top secret gun sight is stolen in broad day light and the government is scrambling to find it and get it back before it ends up in enemy hands. But FBI Agent Bill Maxwell knows how to find it. All he needs is Ralph and the suit.

Except Ralph isn’t so willing to drop everything to go after some military hardware that, big deal, “can hit a beer can from five miles out.” After all, he’s got other plans. Pam’s parents are coming in for a visit, he’s supposed to meet Pam to pick them up at the airport, they’re going to dinner… We’re on the third episode of the show and this suit is damn inconvenient, Bill…

Convinced of the severity of the situation, Ralph goes with Bill. He calls Pam from Bill’s car phone (which after more than 35 years, it’s interesting that mobile reception hasn’t much improved since then) and then spends a couple of hours bouncing around the dessert looking for the plane. Bill’s hunch is the plane was brought down in the sand, as opposed to being dumped in the ocean. He turns out to be right, he and Ralph find the plane but the gun sight has long since been removed.

What was left behind, however, was the pilot’s helmet. Ralph gets a halograph image from it of the man that stole the plane and gun sight (although he doesn’t know necessarily it’s him) and the “soldiers of fortune” type operation this guy is part of.

Before they leave the dessert, Bill has an idea that Ralph –with the suit- can do telekinesis “moving things around with the old grey cells.” It would be a useful skill if Ralph can harness it and he wants Ralph to try it. Ralph’s a little hesitant. “Every time you have me do something new with the suit, I get into more trouble.”

That hardly phases Bill. He has Ralph try to stop him from physically approaching and push him back. Only Ralph pushes the wrong something and ends up disappearing.

 Ralph freaks out, of course, and can’t figure out how to reverse what he’s done. He and Bill head back to town, with Ralph whining the whole way about having to face the rest of his life being invisible. Bill, meanwhile, is trying very hard to find positives in the situation and not let Ralph get too discouraged. Despite his cheer leading efforts, he catches the attention of a motorcycle cop, who thinks the Fed is talking to himself.

Bill saves himself pretty smoothly this time, telling the cop that he has to give a speech a Whitney High for Government Day and that he was practicing.

Bill and Ralph continue on to the private vet’s club where McCready and his soldiers of fortune hang out. Bill’s scenario is simple. Since Ralph is invisible, he can just go in, take a poke around and find out what’s going on and where the gun sight is. Easy! Accept….now Ralph becomes visible again.

It doesn’t last long, however, and Ralph fades back out again. Not knowing how to control the visibility power of the suit, Ralph doesn’t chance going inside the house but manages to get a halograph of what’s going on. Bill fakes tinkering around under the hood of his car while Ralph tunes in on what’s going down. He learns that the gun sight is going to be auctioned off, at the consulate, later that night.

 While Bill and Ralph have been investigating all this international intrigue, Pam’s parents are visiting from Minnesota (Deer Lick Falls, Minnesota to be exact where Pam’s father is the mayor but having nothing to do with “The Mayor’s Committee from Deer Lick Falls” which was a Rockford Files episode. Let’s not confuse the issue). Ralph made reservations at a nice restaurant to take Pam and her folks for dinner. Which would be all well and good except he’s still invisible with the suit.

With this pending date, Ralph leaves Bill at the vet’s club and takes off to try to figure out how to get out of his predicament, but promises he’ll meet Bill at the consulate later that night. Ralph doesn’t have any better luck at the restaurant trying to explain things to Pam. He becomes visible again in the suit and, as luck would have it there’s no back door to sneak out of. Ralph has to run the gauntlet through a dining room full of people – including Pam’s parents.

At the very least, they don’t recognize him but poor Pam certainly suffers through enough in this episode.

Back at the consulate, Bill is setting up with his “Willy the Wrench” bit, popping the hood of his car. While tinkering with the radiator cap (which should have been REALLY HOT if the car had been running for anything length of time) Bill talks on his communicator with Ralph to see where he’s at.

And where’s Ralph? He’s on a bus! And at a time when he would love to be invisible, he’s not. The other riders on the bus think he’s a freak and all cower at the front of the bus.

Bill, meantime, gets caught by the bad guys and taken inside.

When Ralph arrives at the consulate, he figures out how to work the invisibility feature of the suit. He finds Bill’s abandoned car and gets a halograph, seeing Bill is being held captive. Remaining invisible, Ralph walks through the front gate of the consulate and heads inside.

He finds Bill, knocks out the man guarding Bill and Bill commandeers the man’s rifle. “Bill, you’re not going to use that gun are you?” Ralph asks. “Of course not,” Bill says, “I’m gonna pick my teeth with it…”

With Ralph invisible and in control of it, Bill figures for him to just go right in where they having the auction and take the gunsight. (I like where Culp looks directly at the camera, where us as the audience are the POV of Ralph for a moment).

 Ralph gets the gunsight and, naturally, pandemonium breaks out as all the bidders freak out when the gunsight magically floats through the air and out of the room. Ralph meets back with Bill again – just in time for his invisible cloak to click off. He and Bill make a run for it and Ralph flies himself and Bill out of the consulate, crashing landing on the ground outside the wall. The flight footage of the two is from the pilot, as Bill magically goes from a three piece suit to khaki’s and green aviator jacket then back to suit again upon landing.

When all is said and done, Bill shows up at the school a day or so later to let Ralph know that McCready and all had been caught and to thank him for his help. Ralph, of course, immediately thinks Bill is there for another scenario and carries on about how he’s taking Pam and her parents to lunch and that’s final. Kid, you are wound way too tight.

In fact, I think Ralph was wound so tight he made himself disappear again. And I’m not even sure if he had the suit on…

The fact that The Greatest American Hero lasted three seasons (never mind beyond three episodes) is truly a testament to the show itself. The show had great performers and good writing but had everything else against it. The lawsuit from WB for the supposed Superman similarities notwithstanding, ABC wasn’t exactly any help for a show that they originally asked for. The finest example of knee-jerk reaction from the network is evident in this episode, where Ralph’s last name is changed from Hinkley to…well, to nothing. All mentions of the last name are not so cleverly edited out (ie, Pam’s mom saying “Ralph (insert loud jet engine noise)” when Pam picks up her folks at the airport). Good thing the students referred to him as Mr. H often anyway, which saved at least some work for the sound editor.

Why was Ralph’s name “bleeped” out? Because two days before this episode aired, on March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated in front of the Hilton Hotel in Washington DC by John W. Hinckley Jr.

Can you imagine if his name had been John W. Maxwell Jr.?

The assassination attempt was upsetting enough, since Reagan had only been in office less than 70 days. When John Hinckley’s motive for shooting the President was revealed (in short, he was a deranged fan of Jody Foster and was trying to get her attention, having been inspired by the movie Taxi Driver) television and film entertainment thought twice about anything they had going on around that time that would be deemed inappropriate in the light of the events. NBC pushed back an episode of Walking Tall called “Hit Man.” Yet, ABC was left shaking simply over a name, that wasn’t even spelled the same way.

Commentator Paul Harvey thought it was absurd, writing in his syndicated column, “Because probably the sick boy accused of trying to kill the president was named John Hinckley Jr., these professional sin, sex and murder merchants self-righteously reverted to the scapegoat concept of blaming, crucifying and burying somebody else.

Harvey hoped programmers at the network would reconsider. It was largely reported in the press that in the remaining episodes of the Greatest American Hero‘s first season Ralph would have no last name at all, he would just be “Mr. H” and would have a new name the following season. However, by the last episode of season one (“The Best Desk Scenario”) Ralph would be christened “Hanley.”

When season two opened in the fall of 1981 with “Two-Hundred Mile Per Hour Fastball” Ralph would be reborn as Hinkley making the whole name change, really, a moot point.

Noted guest stars included…

Bob Hastings (McHale’s Navy, Green Acres) as Pam’s father and June Lockhart (Lassie, Lost in Space, Petticoat Junction) as Pam’s mom. Hastings would return in future episodes playing a sportscaster both times (“It’s All Downhill from Here,” “The Price is Right.”)

 

 

 

James Whitmore Jr. as the cool and steely McCready. He would return to be the not so cool Biron “the BB” Bigsby, IRS auditor in “There’s Just No Accounting” in season two, and as the nerdy creator of a Dungeons and Dragons knockoff in “Wizards and Warlocks” in season 3.

Red West as one of McCready’s security guards. Besides acting, West also is a songwriter and was part of Elvis Presley’s inner circle known as the “Memphis Mafia” as a body guard for the King.   West would also return in two more episodes of TGAH.

Despite the name haggling, The Greatest American Hero was enjoying a pretty strong run at this point, ranking around 13th in the ratings.

The Greatest American Hero – Season One is available at Amazon.com, either as a download or you can purchase the DVD set.  You can also download the episode itself through Amazon for about the price of a cup of coffee!

      

The Blue Lightning

The Blue Lightning

The Blue Lightning

CBS Movie of the Week

Originally broadcast May 7, 1986

**Contains spoilers**

Prior to watching the dreadful National Lampoon’s Movie Madness I had discovered that the TV movie The Blue Lightning from 1986 was given a proper DVD release earlier this year (2013). I had seen a few clips of Culp from this one on YouTube and, of course, loved the aviators, the Irish accent and the riding boots. I hoped to find the movie to see the whole thing some day.

I was very glad to find it on DVD and had watched it just before seeing the National Lampoon movie. To set things right in my world I figured to go back and wipe the memory of National Lampoon from my mind and take a look at The Blue Lightning again.

Besides, I needed to do some screen caps y’know…

The movie opens in Opal Ridge, Australia where Quinton McQueen is tied to a tree and is about to be left for dead by Lester McInally (Culp). (Lester’s last name, to note, is pronounced two different ways in this movie; the Australian pronunciation sounds like “McKinley” while the American way is like it’s spelled, Mac-In-Ally.)  Quinton pleads to not be left tied to the tree where the wild dogs would get to him and eat him alive. One of McInally’s thugs, Mr. Words, asks for McInally to show some mercy. After some thought, McInally agrees and as Mr. Words starts for the tree to untie McQueen, McInally pulls his gun and shoots McQueen, killing him. “There,” he says to Words, “we’ve saved him from the dingos…”

(Clip courtesy of FedKidCounselor)

Hell of an intro for Culp’s character! And he’s just as merciless through the rest of the movie.

Back in San Francisco, Harry Wingate (Sam Elliot), an adventurer, sailboat enthusaist umm…private investigator? I’m not sure exactly what Wingate’s profession is but he’s hired by Brutus Cathcart (Max Phipps) to do one of two things; retrieve a priceless opal or get back the $400,000 Brutus paid in attempt to buy the opal from McInally. McInally, a former IRA bomber who has been hiding from the British in Australia, runs a town called Opal Ridge and discovered the Blue Lightning opal himself. He initially put a price tag on it of $250,000 but kept upping the price on Cathcart, who, one might consider foolishly, kept paying.

Harry initially refuses the job unless he gets $100,000 plus expenses or 25% of the true value of the opal, whichever is greater but Cathcart only offers $80,000. Harry leaves Cathcart’s office but they must have worked something out because Wingate heads off to Australia, where he purchases a black market  .44 magnum upon arrival and then finds a rattlesnake in his hotel room.

Good thing he got the gun first because he uses it to cut the snake in half. He then dumps it outside his hotel room, just as a bride and groom are going by. (Hopefully that didn’t bode badly for their future together.)

Harry then meets with Kate McQueen (Rebecca Gilling), whose husband Quinton works for Brutus Cathcart and also had McInally as a client (tho’ I’m not sure at this point in the movie what exactly it is that Quinton did). Anyway, Harry talks Kate into going with him to Opal Ridge, more or less as insurance since he doesn’t know her or Quinton and thinks it’s possible she and her husband have the opal for themselves.

On the drive to Kate’s house, they pick up a tail. A couple of McInally’s boys try to run Harry off the road. Harry ends up running them off the road, but later at Kate’s house his car is rigged with a bomb. He discovers it in time before it blows up and he and Kate take off into the brush as the two hired guns come swooping in. Harry and Kate make their escape in a sky tram, exchanging gunfire with the baddies along the way.

On the other side of the valley they make their way to an airport to get a plane. The hired guns catch up and get themselves a plane too – and leave no witnesses.

The guns catch up in the air and manage to shoot a hole in Harry’s plane. Harry manages to get the plane down into some clouds to lose the guns and then down to the ground for a tough landing that busts the landing gear.

The hired guns keep looking to see where the plane went down. Harry and Kate catch their breath near a tree not far from the road they landed on. Unfortunately, a huge truck comes along and smashes their plane to pieces. The driver is horrified thinking he had killed someone. He finds Harry and Kate are fine just as the hired guns show up in their plane. Everybody jumps into the cab of the truck and they take off, with the plane chasing after them and shooting.

The movie is only about 30 minutes old at this point and it’s been all action. There’s little character development or even much background. We still know little to nothing about Harry Wingate and Kate McQueen apparently spent some time with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but in what capacity we do not know. This is one of the things about the movie that irritates me.

Also, one can only guess how McInally knew that Wingate was coming and sent his two “best men” after him. Not that it did any good. Harry manages to nail not only the pilot of the plane but the fuselage with his .44 from the speeding truck. Pretty good marksman. The plane goes down in a fireball.

They continue on to Opal Ridge without incident and the truck driver drops them off. He wishes them luck in their going up against McInally, who is hated with a passion apparently all over Australia (and the British government couldn’t find him?). Opal Ridge, one should note, is a town out in the middle of nowhere in the Australian Outback. Think of the old west towns, add a little more color, some cars along with horses and a video arcade. Yer there.

In town, Harry’s plan is simple. He’s just gonna walk right into McInally’s home base of operations and say howdy. (I like how the roof of McInally’s Casino – and that’s exactly what it’s called McInally’s Casino, very original  – has a huge FOSTER’S LAGER written across it. Don’t tell me I’m the only one who remembers the Foster’s tv ads back in the 80s… “Fawstahs, Awwstraylian for Beeah!”)

Inside the casino/bar, the bartender, Mr. Words, is throwing somebody out (a fellow hood perhaps? He apparently brought the wrong supplies to the bar. Idiot.). Harry goes up to the bar and orders a beer. Whatever’s on tap. (Ya reckon it’s Fosters? Can’t miss the Fosters signs on the wall. Oh, and CASH ONLY – no credit. You stiffs.)

Mr. Words draws up the beer and then slops it on the bar at Harry. There’s a brief exchange over the price of the beer considering most of it ends up on the bar which leads to a fisticuff.

Down in his underground lair, McInally is watching everything on his close circuit TVs. He applauds as Harry gets the upper hand.

Harry grabs Mr. Words and uses him to go down in the hole. McInally, knowing he has a visitor coming, prepares with a push of a button to summon his boys and have a gun at the ready.

Down in the lair, there’s the exchange of words between Harry and McInally. Listening to Culp do the Irish accent is worth the price of admission here. And it’s not so much the accent. It’s that he’s so damn deadly sounding with it. (“If you’re going to go on, with your rudeness, then I guess I’m going to have to do something about you…”)

Eventually McInally tries to take an upper hand and kill Harry but doesn’t quite succeed (but does plant a bullet in Harry’s lung). Chaos erupts outside the casino where McInally’s boys are waiting as Kate takes their Chevy El Camino-like car and runs them all over. Harry escapes the casino, jumps in the car and they take off. McInally comes out as they disappear in a cloud of dust, giving them a few parting shots as they go. He vows another day and then turns around to his trashed town and starts laughing like a maniac.

(Clip courtesy of FedKidCounselor)

McInally is very disappointed in his boys for letting Wingate get away. One poor sap gets his hand/fingers twisted behind his back. This same sap says something about Mrs. McQueen that gets cut off by McInally and suggests something about the kind of relationship they may have had. I’m not sure. Another piece of the puzzle that’s missing in this thing.

A hundred miles away, Kate drives Harry to a ranch, a mission, that was started by her husband when he was a priest (we find out around this time that he left the priesthood and became a private detective. That’s quite a career change!) At the ranch, Harry is treated by a doctor and spends some time re-cooperating. At the mission he comes to know some of the aboriginal people. Quinton McQueen is revered by the aborigines and Harry asks their help in going after McInally. At this point nobody knows if Quinton is dead or alive and initially, Harry is told no…until the aborigines find Quinton’s body still tied to the tree where McInally left him.

As they prepare for their raid, two of McInally’s men are watching. But they never get to report back to McInally because they end up caught – and killed by Harry and some of the aborigines.

A couple of days later, they launch their attack at dawn. Kate drives the truck she and Harry are in straight through the front window of McInally’s casino. Harry jumps out, Kate backs the truck out and Harry shoots the hell out of the bar. Seriously. The jukebox, the slot machines, the liquor, the pool table, the piano… and a couple of McInally’s men along the way.

The aborigines, meanwhile, smoke out the rest of McInally’s men, who are in various areas of the underground hideout (which is an old mine). Harry starts to make his way to McInally’s “main office.”

Down below, McInally gives an order to a few of his men that they’re going to go out via the back shaft. One man decides he’s just getting the hell out. McInally does not tolerate disobedience or disloyalty and promptly shoots the man in the back as he flees.

McInally grabs his gun, his aviators and his opal and makes his exit.

The climatic cat and mouse shootout between Wingate and McInally is pretty good. The use of the old abandoned mine platform is great, although I hope everyone got their tetanus shots updated considering all the rust they were around. My only disappointment was in McInally’s end. Seriously, for being so merciless and conniving and cold and what not, Culp’s McInally deserved a blaze of glory finish. His dangling of the opal over the catwalk as he died (and grabbed by Wingate) I think could have been better sequenced.

Overall, not a bad film but as I noted earlier it was fairly heavy on action and had little on character background or development. Actually, this could have made an interesting pilot for a series, which would have allowed for more character development but Culp’s McInally would have had to stick around to be the “Wofat” to Sam Elliot’s “Steve McGarrett.” Very good use of locations, of course, Australia is a beautiful place on Earth.

Reviews at the time were about the same, though one reviewer made it clear that they could not stand Sam Elliott. I’ll admit he did little for me in this film but Newsday felt Elliott was “the most boring, unappealing actor since the days of Mr. Ed, the talking horse. He speaks in a low, monotonous growl, always looking immensely pleased with himself. His mustache is thick and scruffy, his manners atrocious. In the final shootout, you may prefer to root for Robert Culp.”

The Chicago-Sun Times couldn’t get enough of poking fun at the fact that Wingate carries this big-ass gun and can’t hit much with it. “…poor Elliott’s aim with a gun is almost comical. No, it is comical. Time after time, he fires countless rounds of bullets from “the most powerful handgun blah, blah, blah . . .” and rarely manages to inflict much damage beyond building up a callus on his trigger finger.” (I think I hear Frank Bogg’s in the background…  “What’s the matter, Harry? Need a bigger gun? Can’t hit nothin’?“)

As for Culp, the Sun-Times described his role as “played to the hilt” and that “in a relatively modest role, Culp seems to have the time of his life playing the thug McInally.”

The New York Times also noted Culp’s performance: “…although he appears in only a few scenes, Robert Culp is positively menacing as the clearly psychotic McInally.”

I don’t know if he had “the time of his life” playing the part, but I think he certainly had some fun with it.

One user submitted review on IMDB notes: “Sadly, despite all the heat and dust, Sam Elliott doesn’t get to do a shower scene even though, at about age 42, he’d still look good walking around with just a towel knotted around his waist.”

Big deal. Robert Culp, meanwhile, at about age 55 sports the well-fitted khaki’s very nicely, thank you…

 

Cast highlights…

Despite being called “the most boring, unappealing actor since the days of Mr. Ed, the talking horse” Sam Elliott has had a long and varied career and has appeared in such films as Road HouseGettysburgTombstone and The Big Lebowski. His beefcake status was achieved with the 1976 film Lifeguard.

 

Jack Davis, the only other American cast member, plays the leader of the aborigines (Jahrgadu) and forges a bond with Wingate. Jack began his acting career as a child, appearing in several of the Our Gang short films in the early 1920s before being sent off to military school by his brother-in-law, Harold Loyd. He would eventually become a well respected physician in the Los Angeles area but still continued to appear in various films and tv shows from the 1940s until his death in 1990.

The cast featured several well known and recognized Australian actors, including…

Rebecca Gilling. In an interview with “TV EYE” from February of 1995 she was asked about the film and although she said she had fun doing it she didn’t consider it a critical highlight of her career. She went on to say, “It was the first time I had been offered a role sight unseen or without interview. Lee Philips, the director, had been an actor in Hollywood in the fifties and sixties, and knew exactly how to communicate with the cast. The conditions were challenging as we were mostly in Broken Hill in the middle of summer. Sam Elliot was a very nice man but very serious as an actor. Robert Culp seemed to be extremely bland and disconnected from everything. He could never remember my name and I became ‘the girl’. I think he thought he was only doing this movie as a diversion, a visit to the antipodes. The only unusual episode during filming was a dispute between Sam and Robert over whose character should have the biggest gun in the shoot-out!”

John Meilon is the doctor that patches up Harry at the ranch. The same year as this movie, Meilon would be seen as Crocodile Dundee’s friend and mentor in the original Crocodile Dundee.

 

 

 

McInally’s “best men” were played by Michael Carmen (blonde) and Ray Meagher. Both Carmen and Meagher are veteran Australian actors who have appeared in many films and tv shows in Australia.

 

 

 

Although he only had one scene, Max Phipps’s Brutus Cathcart was memorable enough. Phipps career spanned theatre, film and television in Australia. He played Dr. Frank-n-Furter in the Australian production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and played “The Toadie” in the second Mad Max film (The Road Warrior) where he loses a few digits trying to catch a particularly sharp boomerang.

 

The abandoned mine where the final shootout takes place is known as “Browne’s Shaft,” part of Junction Mine, located just outside of the city of Broken Hill in Australia. The buildings still stand today, including the shaft building and storage tanks that are seen in the film. The area is now a historic site and is open to visitors, however, I suspect one can not go into the mine shaft building anymore.  The mine did not produce opals, however, but instead produced silver and other such metals.


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The Blue Lightning is available on DVD through Amazon.com.

National Lampoon’s Movie Madness

NLMM_title

AKA National Lampoon Goes to the Movies

Originally released – straight to video – 1983

**Contains spoilers – You’ll thank me for this**

There’s a reason this movie, originally filmed in 1981, went straight to video in 1983.

It sucks.

Seriously. This thing is bad. And I mean real bad. You know how sometimes a movie can be so bad it’s good? No, no this is not even that. This is clearly what-the-hell-were-they-thinking-and-why-didn’t-they-burn-it BAD.

The premise of the movie is to spoof other typical movie genres. There’s three segments, although apparently the movie was originally supposed to have six. (My God were they kidding?!) The first segment spoofs the personal growth plot line, the second segment (with Culp) spoofs the rags to riches plot line and the third segment spoofs cop movies. I’m only going to tell you about the second segment that Culp was in and not bother with the other two because 1. Culp isn’t in the other segments, 2. I didn’t bother to watch the first segment at all and 3. I have no idea WHY I watched the third but there’s just nothing to say for that one.

The second segment is called “Success Wanters.” Ann Dusenberry plays Dominique Corsair, a recent college graduate who is trying to find a job. She’s not having much luck and must lower herself to taking a job as a burlesque dancer/stripper.

Her first gig is to do a show for a bunch of geezers at a dairy convention. Yes, a dairy convention a concept of which would be ripe for tons of double entendre and innuendo and the best thing the writers could come up with for this curdled milk of a movie? A butter bang.

Please don’t ask me what a butter bang is. The geezers butter bang Dominique leaving her innocence shattered and her completely humiliated. But Dominique isn’t the kind of girl to stay down, oh no. She decides she’s going to get her revenge against the butter bastards by switching to margarine.

She finds her way to the Everest Margarine Company, manages somehow to sneak into this bajillion floor office building and waits in the board room, in her trashed stripper costume, smoking a cigarette. Enter Paul Everest, owner and CEO of Everest Margarine Company played by Robert Culp.

Ok, I’m digging the GQ suit here and attaché. Very nice…

Dominique introduces herself and says she’s been waiting for him. Mr. Everest dismisses Joyce, his secretary (who’s no fool and knows exactly what’s going to happen next). After Joyce leaves, Dominique says she wants to know everything there is to know about margarine. He tells her that margarine is a ruthless industry and is no place for a woman. She tells him that he’s never met a woman like her and proceeds to demonstrate that fact by taking an ice cube from the ice bucket, tracing it seductively around her mouth, placing it in her mouth and then sliding under the table to crawl over to him.

Everest presses the button on his intercom to ask his secretary to hold all his calls. Gee, whatya think’s gonna happen next?! I dunno! Why are they playing “Jaws” like music?!

Everest, meanwhile, is all nonchalant for a guy who knows what he’s about to start his day off with. He continues with his paperwork until we hear *ziiip!* and with a deadpan expression he flicks his fancy pen across the room.

Ok, I chuckled at that. But, ya know, I would have had it that there wasn’t enough clearance and she bangs her head against the table…

You still reading? Really? Ok, well I’ll keep going then…

Next scene is in Hong Kong at an Everest Margarine production facility. Ms. Corsair is still in her trashed stripper costume but she has a nice trench coat. At least, at the outdoor scene here where they first arrive. She’s presented a lovely bouquet of flowers. No, I’m not really sure why.

Inside, she no longer has her trench coat, but still has her flowers. Her voice over (yes, this thing is narrated) says, “The excitement of my introduction to margarine was so thick, you could cut it with a knife…” I think I was supposed to laugh there. I’m sorry I forgot.

Actually, I’m distracted by Culp in that suit. Did I mention Culp looks super smashing in that suit?? Damn…

He extols the amazing story of how what was once a mere byproduct of the lowly ol’ soybean had become “a wholesome and nutritious foodstuff known all over the world. Ideal for all forms of cooking and baking, delicious in sandwiches, perfect for snacks and on toast!”

Damn, I’m sold! I’ll even take the stick he dropped on the floor there as he got all carried away…

He then tells Dominique how someday they’ll find a way to make a margarine that tastes better than butter. She, ever the cheerleader, believes they will. Awww!

On the plane back to Los Angeles, he dictates a memo, which she happily types up for him. He then is distracted by her soft and inviting backside. Woohoo…

He suggests they take a break since it’s been a long day (actually, the entire time span from when she showed up in his board room at about 7 am to this point is only two and half hours.) There’s a kiss and then a presentation of some jewelry. A huge, monstrous, red, blue and white necklace that weighs a ton and nearly causes her to fall out of her chair. (The jewelry is a running joke through the whole segment, as Dominique goes on to collect additional outlandish pieces). After, he calls the pilot with a change in flight plan. Off to St. Tropez…

In St. Tropez they enjoy a private tender loving satin sheeted moment that unfortunately gets spoiled when Everest suffers a massive heart attack. But! All is not lost, because he has papers in his attaché transferring power and presidency of Everest Margarine to Ms. Corsair (that he somehow found time to do up in the previous 3 hours). Before he finally is done in by the “heart attack, massive coronary and a cold” he makes the handover official with his notary seal, which Dominique has to smash his hand on the crimper to make it all legal.

News flash: You can’t notarize your own documents! And when she smacks his hand on the crimper seal – that had to hurt. For real! One of those “ow’s!” from Culp I think was legit.

Yes, that’s Culp under all those satin sheets. Considering how bad this thing is, I’d be hiding my head too.

Dominique goes on to take over the company, romances the son of one of the butter bastards from the start of the segment, encourages said son to kill his father, she turns him in, buys up all of the butter business, ends up marrying a Greek tycoon, gets some more jewelry, sleeps with his son, the Greek tycoon kills his own wife, he then ends up dead (I think he was executed for killing his wife, I can’t really remember) and Dominique inherits a bigger fortune. Then, a German scientist discovers a cure for cancer by having a stick of Dominique’s margarine “radiated” by a color television set. She wins the Nobel Prize. She then schmoozes with the President of the US, sleeps with him, he presents her with some outrageous gold over sized Presidential seal necklace, blah blah and ends up becoming the new First Lady after the current First Lady abdicates her title in favor of the woman she loves.

Ridiculous. But I’m gonna save you from ever having to pay to watch any of this. (I paid $5.24 for the DVD -with FREE shipping! – but it was about $5.24 too much. Seriously, I should have been paid to watch this.) You can watch Culp’s entire bit, beginning to end (all seven or so minutes of it) below.

Please. Don’t thank me.

I can only hope that Culp got a really nice big fat paycheck for what was probably two days’ work for him. Otherwise, I can not fathom why he would have taken this gig. Did he owe somebody a favor? Was he lied to? Blackmailed? I don’t know the answer but I do know that it was a good thing he had The Greatest American Hero to go back to after this!

I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that Culp’s talents were completely wasted here or the fact that Dr. John was equally wasted for the movie’s damn catchy theme song. I mean, seriously, whoever wrote this movie had to be driving that train, high on cocaine. It’s not like National Lampoon didn’t have a precedence. After the surprise success of “Animal House” in 1978, there was quite a bit of anticipation about a follow up film. Media reports noted early in 1981 that the folks at National Lampoon were up to no good again and it seemed the public had some sort of expectation about the end result. The end result, however, was crap. Or, as Shary Flenniken, one of the writers associated with the movie put it, it was “a cocaine fueled fiasco.”

So they were high on cocaine! That explains everything…

Not convinced this movie is as bad as it really is? The movie was tested with an audience in Rhode Island once it was completed. The audience was so appalled and disappointed by what they had seen, they tore up the seats in the theater.

There are a couple of interesting things to note about this movie, however. The director of the “Success Wanters” segment was Bob Giraldi who went on to direct more accolade worthy things like Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video.

And Everest’s secretary, Joyce? Is none other than Andy Warhol alum and “Cult Queen” Mary Woronov in what has to be the most non-oddball role she’s ever been cast in.

National Lampoon’s Movie Madness is available on DVD through places like Amazon and such. I’m not putting a link to it though because you don’t need to spend your hard earned money on it. Really. You don’t. The tagline on the DVD says it all: “The film that Hollywood doesn’t want you to see!”

Exactly. Heed the warning.