Here we are on Day 4 of Dracula TV week. Today we are looking at one of my favorite Halloween cartoon specials. Today we are looking at the special, The Flintstones Meet Rockula & Frankenstone.
The special was produced in 1979 but aired for the first time in Oct 1980. It featured the voices of Henry Corden as Fred, Mel Blanc as Barney, Ted Cassidy (Lurch from Adams Family) as Frankenstone and John Stephenson as Count Rockula.
The special starts with the Flintstones and Rubbles visiting the game show Make a Deal or Don’t. They win a trip to Rocksylvania to stay the weekend in Castle Rockula.
The ancient Castle Rockula has been turned in to a fancy hotel. The Flintstones and Rubbles attend a Halloween party dressed as Rockula and Frankenstone. They accidentally discover a trap door into a secret laboratory underneath the castle. While in this laboratory, a random bolt of lightning awakens the real Frankenstone monster. The real monster goes into another secret passage and awakens the real Count Rockula who has been asleep for the last 500 years.
Count Rockula immediately orders everyone out of the castle. While herding everyone out the doors, he meets Wilma, mistakes her for his bride, then, when he realizes his error, he decides to take her as his bride anyway even if it means killing Fred.
The first and only GoBots movie, GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords, turns 25 years old today. It opened on March 21, 1986.
The movie featured voice talent such as Roddy McDowell (Nuggit), Telly Savalas (Magmar) and Margot Kidder (Solitaire). The movie also featured popular voice over talent like Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Michael Bell and Arthur Burghardt. The rest of the voice cast was populated by the actors who voiced the regular TV show, Challenge of the GoBots.
The GoBots movie reached theaters two months before Transformers: The Movie (Aug 8). However Transformers had been in production for the previous two years.
The GoBots, like Transformers, were first released in Japan. They were imported by Tonka into America after the popularity of Transformers skyrocketed.
– 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.
Cavalcade of Awesome 