Reel Deep Dive

Generally speaking, vintage comedy fans consider the golden era of The Three Stooges to be the shorts made between 1934-1946 with Curly Howard as the third player. However, all things must pass and the group was forced to soldier on after Curly suffered a massive stroke and was rendered unable to perform. His brother Shemp Howard, who was part of the act in its earliest days, was brought in as a temporary pinch hitter and was persuaded to stay when it became clear that Curly was not going to recover. Shemp contributed to dozens of shorts until he died a little under ten years he rejoined the troupe.

Based upon Winsor McKay's pioneering comic strip and animated short, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland was a joint production between Japanese and American animation studios that went through almost fifteen years of development hell before it was released to dismissive reviews and indifferent ticket sales in 1989. The roll call of those who worked on the film in some capacity can feel like a list of people who guided children's film for the next thirty years; notable names include Brad Bird, Jerry W. Rees, Brian Froud, Chris Columbus, Osamu Dezaki, Hayao Miyazaki, Andy Gaskill, Roger Allers, Isao Takahata, and many others. While the movie was a flop, it did attract a modest cult audience on home video (a decent pair of video games for the arcade and the NES console didn't hurt either).

Envisioned as an unofficial sequel to the completely unrelated 1986 horror comedy Troll, this infamous turkey was shot in Utah by an Italian schlock factory and was cast with locals with no acting experience. Troll 2 suffered from a variety of technical issues over the course of its production, including (but not limited to) cheap props, little attention paid to continuity, and a crew that didn't speak English and refused to let the actors correct the multitude of grammar and syntax errors in the script. The resulting film was quickly consigned to the dregs of late night cable broadcasts where it was assumed that it'd be quickly forgotten, but Troll 2's bizarre aesthetics and campy performances began to attract a fervent cult audience in the early 2000's. It has since become a staple of ironic midnight screenings alongside other trash cinema "classics" such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and The Room (2003). In 2009, former child actor Michael Stephenson directed Best Worst Movie, a documentary about his experiences on the set of Troll 2.

A remake of the 1925 film that was first greenlit after the success of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Universal's second adaptation of the Gaston Leroux potboiler tries to mix the gothic horror of its monster franchises with the pomp and opulence of a Hollywood musical. While financially and critically successful in its day (it's the only classic-era Universal horror movie to get any Oscar attention), movie nerds often consider this film to be one of the lesser cinematic renditions of the story; common complaints include tonal inconsistency, a lack of spookiness, an overemphasis on the musical set pieces, and a muddled screenplay that doesn't quite understand what its priorities are. Infamously, early versions of the story had the Phantom (Claude Rains) be the estranged father of Christine (Susanna Foster), but this plotline was dropped without any writers fleshing out another reason for the Phantom to be so fixated on this one random chorus girl.

Spinning off from the TV show of the same name (itself a spin-off of the 1982 film Creepshow), Tales From The Darkside: The Movie is a horror anthology movie produced by George Romero, directed by John Harrison, and featuring performances by Steve Buscemi, Christian Slater, Deborah Harry, William Hickey, David Johansen, Rae Dawn Chong, James Remar, and (in her movie debut) Julianne Moore. Moderately successful at the box office, Tales From The Darkside: The Movie enjoyed a lengthy afterlife as a perennial on basic cable broadcasts and, alongside the TV program, has attracted a decently-sized fanbase among horror movie nerds.

Following the success of the Incredible Hulk television show that began airing in 1977, American networks tried to find another Marvel superhero who could captivate the viewers at home. Among their selected candidates was Doctor Strange, a heroic wizard whose comics had attracted a cult audience of children, fantasy nerds, and collegiate stoners ever since he was created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee in 1963. CBS commissioned Philip DeGuere to direct a film that would serve as a pilot for a potential series; exploitation film regular Peter Hooten was cast as Doctor Strange while Jessica Walter, who'd later attain wider fame for her performances in Arrested Development and Archer, played the vampy antagonist. Alas, the TV movie was greeted with nasty reviews and miserable ratings (it was set up against the miniseries Roots, which did not help its chances).

A heavily-rotoscoped sword and sorcery adventure film produced by iconoclastic animator Ralph Bakshi and beloved fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, Fire and Ice's crew featured such notables as Peter Chung (Æon Flux), James Gurney (Dinotopia), Maggie Roswell (The Simpsons), Roy Thomas (Conan), Gerry Conway (Spider-Man), and Thomas Kinkade (a bunch of ugly paintings at your local Hallmark dealer). Greenlit because of the recent success of Conan The Barbarian (1982) and The Beastmaster (1982), Fire and Ice was quickly churned out under a miniscule budget. It was greeted with miserable reviews and underwhelming ticket sales, but it gradually grew a modest cult audience on home video and there are occasional threats from Hollywood to do a remake.

A virtual band descended from the precedents set by the likes of Alvin & The Chipmunks and The Archies, Jem & The Holograms were launched in 1985 by the toy company Hasbro. Hoping to capitalize upon the smash success of the music video format popularized by MTV, Jem would lace pop songs alongside a formula set by syndicated animated programs like He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe, Transformers, My Little Pony, and GI Joe: A Real American hero. Like those cartoons, Jem exploited the deregulated programming standards of the Reagan era to essentially become a extended commercial for a line of dolls, each packaged with a cassette tape containing one of the cartoon's musical numbers.   

This recording is the third in a series that breaks down The Twilight Zone through its writing staff. If you'd like to visit (or revisit) the prior installments centering upon Jerry Sohl and Charles Beaumont, feel free to scroll down. You will not, however, miss out on any important context if you just dive in here.

Osamu Tezuka's popular manga Dororo got adapted into two beloved anime series, once in 1969 and again in 2019. We're not talking about either of those here. The subject for today's episode is the 2007 live action Dororo film; it was intended to launch a trilogy, but that plan was scrapped after indifferent box office returns. Despite the film's disappointing gross, its connection to Tezuka's legacy and its weird imagery did endear it to a modest cult audience, particularly in the United States.