– On Strange Kids Club I wax nostalgic about CBS’ Saturday Supercade. It was a block of cartoons back in 1983 based on popular video game characters like Donkey Kong, Q-bert and Frogger.
– I also talk about all the new DVD releases this week which include a trio of terrible Brad Pitt movies and Barb Wire starring Pam Anderson’s breasts.
Hope everyone had a great week. Check back next week, we have a big 20th movie anniversary on Monday. It’s not a movie you would expect to have a birthday on Valentine’s Day.
They will make cartoons based on anything at this point. Movies, TV shows, video games, dolls, stickers, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. If the suits think they can make money off it, they’ll do it.
There have been countless cartoons based on movies. Usually it’s a dumbed down kid friendly version of the movie with an added talking animal sidekick or something ridiculous like that. But it’s something special when an adult oriented, R rated movie is translated into a kid friendly cartoon. It’s literally amazing that this happens. Now, there have been several R rated movies turned into cartoons that are not actually meant for kids. I’m talking about Kevin Smith’s Clerks the Animated Series and Ice Cube’s Friday the Animated Series (seriously, check You Tube if you don’t believe me) when I say that. They were both created for adult fans of the movie an not meant for children, which is why I’m not including them on this list. Here, you’ll only see Saturday morning, kid-friendly cartoons in this list. And what a list it is.
Let’s get started…
Rambo: The Force of Freedom (1986) – Released the year after First Blood Part II. I can see where you’d want a psychologically damaged one-man killing machine as a role model for children on Saturday mornings. It just fits. It’s what the corporate suits call “synergy”. The cartoon had a nice cast of voice talent though. Neil Ross (Transformers, GI Joe, Galaxy High) was Rambo. James Avery (Capt Sisko from ST: Deep Space Nine) was Turbo. Colonel Trautman was voiced by Allen Oppenheimer from He-Man, Transformers and GI Joe fame and one of the villains, Sgt Havok, was voiced by the great Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime).
Toxic Crusaders (1991) – Based on Troma’s surprise B horror sensation, The Toxic Avenger. The movie featured wall-to-wall language, nudity and extremely graphic scenes of violence and sex. The movie actually showed a dude, while robbing a fast food joint, try to rape a blind girl. Also Toxie kills someone by crushing their head in a weight machine at the gym. And if I remember correctly, he either punches completely through someone’s face or takes their head off with a punch. I totally get why one would watch that movie and think, “Kids’ll love this!”
Robocop (1988) – Based on the Paul Verhoeven classic. I actually see this as a cool cartoon, but damn this movie was violent. Copious amounts of nudity and drug use also earned every ounce of the R it was rated. The cartoon had several nods to the movie including an appearance by Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker, despite the fact that character died in the movie.
Welcome to Day 16 of AWESOME-tober-fest. Today is the end of werewolf TV week. Yesterday I discussed one of my favorite cartoons, Fangface. Today, I’ll be discussing another personal favorite, The Cartoon Adventures of Teen Wolf.
The Teen Wolf cartoon was based on the characters in the 1985 Michael J Fox movie, Teen Wolf. Many of the movie characters show up in the cartoon. Obviously we see Scott Howard and his father Harold. Also showing up is Scott’s friend Stiles, Boof, Pamela Anderson and her neanderthal boyfriend Mick. However, only Harold Howard is voiced by the actor who portrayed him in the movie, James Hampton. A few other famous voice actors filled out the cast. Don Most (Ralph Malph) voiced Stiles and the legendary June Foray (The Flintstones’ Betty Rubble, Looney Tunes’ Granny/Witch Hazel, Rocky Squirrel/Natasha from Rocky & Bullwinkle) voiced Grandma Howard. So the cast was solid. Plus it had a kick ass theme song and a ridiculously ’80s opening with Teen Wolf listening to a Walkman.
I love this cartoon and that opening sequence so much that I use a still from it as my avatar/buddy icon on Twitter, Flickr and WordPress.
Obviously, being a big fan of werewolves, and also a big fan of the movie Teen Wolf, I was going to love this show. Not surprisingly, the cartoon changed a few details from the movie. It added Scott’s entire extended werewolf family (see below), gave Scott a younger sister (he’s an only child in the movie) and making the fact that Scott is a werewolf a secret again. I didn’t really have a problem with these changes because it added something to the show. Making the werewolf thing a secret added a bit of drama that would be lost if everyone knew what Scott was. I was able to go with it and still enjoy the cartoon.
The show aired from 1986 to 1987. This encompassed two seasons, 13 episodes in the first, 8 episodes in the second. The reason there are only 8 episodes in season 2 is due to a cartoon voice actor”s strike in late 1986 that halted production during the second season. There was technically a third season aired, but it consisted entirely of re-runs.
Two VHS collections were released in the US. The first was titled Wolf of My Dreams and the second was All-American Werewolf (see below).
In the UK there was a 3 volume set of Teen Wolf episodes with funky artwork showing Scott transforming into the wolf across the three covers.
In Australia, they actually released the entire series on DVD which makes me jealous and pissed off at the same time because the set is in the PAL format. However, I do have a DVD player that is region free and theoretically converts from PAL, but I don’t want to buy this set and then they release American versions very soon afterward. Plus, I haven’t technically tested my DVD player’s ability to convert from PAL to NTSC so I don’t know how well it works. The picture may look like crap. So I’m stuck staring at this DVD box art and seething with unchecked nerd rage and envy at the “Land Down Under”.
So, like I said, I wait. And watch the crappy conversions of Teen Wolf episodes you can find on YouTube. Yay.
Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
Today is Day 15 of AWESOME-tober-fest 2010. I am in the midst of werewolf TV show week. The shows I discussed earlier this week were very short lived and I never watched any of them. However today’s and tomorrow’s entries were two of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid. They both involved the misadventures of cartoon werewolves. Today, I’m looking at the cartoon, Fangface.
Fangface aired from 1978 to 1979. The format for Fangface was very similar to Scooby-Doo, which is not surprising since the show was produced by Ruby-Spears Productions who also produced Scooby’s adventures. A group of teens, Biff, Kim, Puggsy and Fangs (Sherman Fangsworth) drive around in their “Wolf Mobile” solving crimes. The hook is that Fangs is a werewolf. Here is the intro to the cartoon that spells out the story.
Per the narrator:
“Every 400 years, a baby werewolf is born into the Fangsworth family, and so when the moon shined on little Sherman Fangsworth, he changed into Fangface, a werewolf! Only the sun can change him back to normal. And so little Fangs grew up and teamed up with three daring teenagers: Kim, Biff and Puggsy, and together they find danger, excitement and adventure! Who can save the day? Who can wrong the rights and right the wrongs? None other than Fangface!”
The first season ran for 16 episodes. The great Frank Welker (Fred from Scooby-Doo and Megatron from Transformers) would voice Fangs and Fangface. While the show’s format was a copy of Scooby-Doo, it had a lot of it’s own fun, but goofy, character touches. Fangs would change into Fangface not only when he saw the moon, but even a picture of the moon would trigger the transformation. Likewise, either the real sun or a picture of the sun would change him back. Also, neither Fangface nor Fangs were aware of each other. When Fangface would show up he’d just start going crazy and kicking ass without wondering where the hell he was. Whenever he would transform back, Fangs would be disoriented and wonder where he was and what happened. Fangface also loved to try to eat Puggsy. Whenever food was mentioned, he would swallow Puggsy and not let him go until Kim would tickle his foot to relax him. This group just had lots of fun, quirky adventures.
Here we are, Day 14 of AWESOME-tober-fest. It’s Hump Day everyone and we came here to talk about werewolves in TV shows. The previous two shows were live action, but our next three entries will be cartoons. Two of these cartoons were absolute favorites of mine growing up in the 80s. Today’s cartoon, however, I didn’t really get a chance to watch on TV as it was only on for one season. But it had a great premise that I love, even today, and I would have watched religiously.
Today we will look at Gravedale High.
Gravedale High first aired in 1990. It was very similar to another of one of my favorite cartoons, Galaxy High. Just swap out aliens for monsters and change the perspective as the main character in Gravedale is a teacher, not a student. However, the “fish out of water in high school” theme is prevalent throughout both cartoons. Plus, it has Rick Moranis, who I love.
Here’s Gravedale’s intro.
The premise is, Rick Moranis voices Max Schneider, a human teacher who is hired at Gravedale High, a high school for the current generation of monsters. Among the student population are vampires, werewolves, centaurs, Medusas, mad scientists, Igors, Gillman, etc. It’s a great concept that I adore to this day. Imagine Drak Pack, but instead of solving crimes the monster teens are actually going to high school. And obviously there’s a lot of monster/human relationship humor in every episode. Here’s some of the main characters in a great pic from DeviantArt :
The show was voiced by a lot of very famous voice actors.The first student on the left is Reggie Moonshroud, the nerdy werewolf. He was voiced by Barry Gordon, best known as Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Nestle Quik rabbit. Rick Moranis’ Max is second from the left. Vinnie Stoker is the Fonzi-esque vampire and was voiced by Roger Rose whose been in Knight Rider and voiced characters on The Jetsons and Batman the Animated Series. To the right of Vinnie is Gill Waterman, the character based on Creature from the Black Lagoon. He’s voiced by none other than Jackie Earl Haley, he of the new Nightmare on Elm Street and Watchmen movies. Lastly on the right we have Frankentyke who is voiced by Frank Welker who famously voiced Fred from Scooby Doo as well as Megatron and Soundwave from Transformers. Other voices included Tim Curry as a mummy history teacher, Rikki Lake as a fat mummy named Cleofatra (subtle), Jonathan Winters as a zombie coach and Eileen Brennan (Mrs Peacock in Clue the Movie) as a teacher that looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.
As you can see, it was a strong cast. Unfortunately, it only lasted 13 episodes, and it’s unclear whether all of those episodes even aired. I don’t believe this was ever released on DVD. I thought it had been released in the UK or Canada, similar to Drak Pack, but I can’t seem to find it on Amazon UK. You can see a few episodes on YouTube.
So that was Gravedale High. The next two cartoon entries on Thursday and Friday are two cartoons I LOVED as a kid. While Gravedale High has a werewolf as part of the ensemble, the next two cartoons both star a werewolf. And one was based on a movie. Can you guess? Well, come back tomorrow and Friday to read about the final two werewolf TV shows for this week.
Aso, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
Cavalcade of Awesome 