Welcome to episode 73 of the Nerd Lunch podcast. This week we are again joined by fellow Jacksonville-ian Robert Zerbe from To The Escape Hatch. And since we are again without Jeeg, we call on Jay from Sexy Armpit to fill in. This week we begin our drilldown of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.
We talk about the movies that we think worked. We talk about the movies that didn’t work. We discuss why we think they did or didn’t work. We talk about our favorite characters and scenes. We even ponder what we think would make a good fifth movie now that has been officially announced. It’s lots of good pirate-y fun.
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L Frank Baum’s fourteenth and final Oz book was published the year after his death in 1920. It was called Glinda of Oz.
It has been said that Baum only barely finished the manuscript for this book before his death. I’ve also read where he didn’t finish it and either an editor at Reilly & Lee or one of his daughters finished the book. It is unclear which is the truth. But the majority of the book was indeed written by Baum before he died. The very next book, The Royal Book of Oz, was actually originally credited solely to Baum with the publishers saying it was written from Baum’s final notes. However, this isn’t true, The Royal Book of Oz is entirely a story written by Ruth Plumly-Thompson and this book was Baum’s last.
In this story, illustrated again by John Neill, Ozma and Dorothy travel to some of the outlying lands of Oz to settle a dispute between two peoples, the Skeezers and the Flatheads. Both people are set to go to war and Ozma wishes to stop it before it gets to that point. However, Ozma and Dorothy are trapped by the Skeezer queen in her glass covered city which is magically submerged under the lake on which it previously sat. A group of Oz’s greatest citizens band together to figure out how to raise the city and save Ozma, Dorothy and the other trapped Skeezer people.
There are parts of this story that are pretty good, and there are parts that aren’t very good. One of the things that seemed completely ridiculous were the amount of people that traveled to help Ozma and Dorothy in the end. There were like 20 people traveling over land to try to raise the submerged city. The only people that absolutely needed to go were Glinda and The Wizard. That’s it. They are the only two people in Oz who can legally work magic and since the city is, you know, magically submerged, they are the most logical ones to go. Woggle Bug didn’t need to go. What the hell was he going to do? And Shaggy Man? Was he going to use the Love Magnet to make the city love him so much that it raises above the lake’s surface? Absurd. The whole of the Oz council went. Jack Pumkinhead was there for some reason. Why did all of these people need to go? They didn’t. Glinda and The Wizard wound up needing help from three other ancient wizards to fix the entire mess anyway. Just seemed a little excessive to me. Like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.
While I only kind of liked the book, it’s a bittersweet ending knowing that this is the final Baum Oz book. After this Ruth Plumly-Thompson writes like 19 or 20 books in a row. All illustrated by John Neill. So while this isn’t the best of the books, it’s still an okay read. I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed reading this entire series. I hate to see it end. But, it doesn’t have to end there. There are still some other Oz goodies I can read/watch/review. I may even start delving into Plumly-Thompson’s archive. I honestly would love to read John Neill’s three Oz books that he wrote and illustrated, but they are long out of print.
Below is my checklist of Oz books. I’ve crossed off all of the books. I was able to finish all 14 of the original L Frank Baum Oz books in 2012, which concludes the challenge I set for myself and started back in February 2012 with the very first Oz book.
The third and final TV movie starring Lee Majors as the Six Million Dollar Man was called The Solid Gold Kidnapping and aired on Nov 17, 1973.
Like Bond movies and the previous TV movie, this movie begins with Austin on an assignment. He’s in Mexico rescuing a US Ambassador from some revolutionaries in the mountains. After Austin successfully resuces the Ambassador, we meet the sinister group known as “The Company”. It’s an organization similar to Bond’s SPECTRE. They, unfortunately, would make no more appearances outside of this movie. The Company kidnaps international negotiator William Henry Cameron and demands $1 billion for his return. OSI and Oscar team up Steve Austin with Dr Erica Bergner to rescue him. Dr Bergner’s specialty is the brain and she’s developed a procedure to transplant brain cells from one patient to another with the result being that the transplantee gains the transplanter’s memories. So Bergner takes the brain cells from a captured henchman of The Company and transplants them into her brain. She uses this henchman’s memories to help Steve find their headquarters.
Silly? Yes, it is. But they treat it fairly good in that she can’t just pluck whatever information she wants from the new memories. Her brain needs time to adjust and process the new information. She is constantly having random memories that aren’t her own and has to make sense of them before they mean anything. I sort of liked that even if I thought the procedure was a bit hokey.
Overall, however, this final TV movie wasn’t the greatest. I’m surprised that with the upcoming release of the first episode of the series, that these last two movies still hadn’t really nailed the “look and feel” of the series yet. They really aren’t my favorites. I’m also surprised that neither of these two TV movies adapted the second book in Caidin’s Cyborg series. Well, I am and am not surprised because that second book is not very good. It would have had to have been re-written. But the third book, High Crystal, was excellent, however it wasn’t released until the following year in 1974. But Caidin should have had most of the story, they could have used that. Interestingly, the early Mexico scenes of The Solid Gold Kidnapping do actually echo the setting of that third Cyborg book.
But I honestly can’t recommend these movies to anyone but hardcore bionic fans. We still don’t get any of the signature bionic sounds, so watching Steve do these feats with no audio cue is still a little weird.
The Clubhouse is now open. For this installment of Cult Film Club we are discussing the awesomely phantasmagorical 1982 fantasy movie, The Beastmaster.
We all discuss our personal recollections of watching the movie, we talk about the things we love. We talk about the things that makes us cringe. We discuss the awesome glory that is Marc Singer all muscle-y and oiled up. We even attempt to simulate the “hawk cry” with varying degrees of success.
If you also loved this movie, download this episode from iTunes or listen to it online here.
So, this week’s topic for the League is “pirates”. Unfortunately, I’ve already extolled the virtues of one of my favorite pirate movies of all time, The Pirate Movie, during it’s 30 year anniversary last year. So, I can’t un-pop that cork. My next best option is to talk about Muppet Treasure Island. And more specifically, the soundtrack.
Muppet Treasure Island was released in 1996. It was the second of the Muppet movies, after Muppet Christmas Carol, to be made in partnership with Disney and after Jim Henson’s death. It starred Tim Curry as Long John Silver and Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins. The movie, financially, was a success earning a higher gross than the last three movies.
The movie itself is funny and clever. Curry is great as Silver. Bishop is, well, not awesome. His voice is really high, like a 6 year old girl. It’s really sort of annoying. Other than that I enjoy this movie as much as I enjoy Muppet Christmas Carol. In general, I see Muppet Christmas Carol as a better movie but Muppet Treasure Island has the better soundtrack.
Now, let’s take a look at that awesome soundtrack with a bunch of very catchy, totally Muppet-style songs that are all pirate themed.
This exists. And I own it.
Here are some of my favorite songs from the soundtrack.
Shiver My Timbers is the song that plays over the opening credits featuring pirates burying treasure on an island. Treasure Island. It’s very dark and is very chant-like. It’s probably my favorite song, and it’s totally pirate-y.
Cabin Fever is my second favorite song. It features the cast singing about having “cabin fever” while sailing out at sea. It’s absurd and over-the-top and completely bananas. That’s why I love it. It has a distinctly “islands” feel to it with the steel drums. My favorite lyric in the song:
“Cabin fever has grabbed us all aboard,
This once fine vessel has become a floating psycho ward.”
Cavalcade of Awesome 