Reel Deep Dive

Following the smash success of Double Dare, children's cable network Nickelodeon produced a flurry of game shows over the course of the next decade and a half. Legends of the Hidden Temple, like most of these programs, imitated Double Dare's blend of trivia questions and obstacle course challenges. However, as one would likely infer based on the title of the program, Legends of the Hidden Temple framed itself in the aesthetic of "lost world" adventure romances like King Solomon's Mines, The Man Who Would Be King, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Included among the show's elaborate set pieces were a complex temple maze, terrifying hidden guards, and a lovable talking stone head named Olmec.

Shortly after his ascent to pop superstardom and teen idol status, Elvis Presley ventured into filmmaking with Love Me Tender (1956). The strong profits of that feature led to lightweight musical comedies becoming the central focus of Presley's career. He appeared in over 30 movies between 1956 and 1969, most of which are forgettable trash made to promote mediocre, hastily-written songs that Presley was openly disinterested in performing. Elvis' movies are frequently blamed for the career decline that Presley endured in the 1960's, but just about every film turned a profit and some of them are presently embraced as campy pleasures.

Spinning off from Beavis and Butthead, Daria is a coming-of-age animated sitcom centered upon its titular protagonist, an intelligent, disaffected, and cynical teenage girl making her way through a school and home environment that doesn't understand her. One of the more popular and well-reviewed programs of its particular era on MTV, the show has had a lasting impact on an audience of American millennials who entered their young adulthood while watching it.

While releasing the long-delayed final season of Samurai Jack, animator Genndy Tartakovsky was surprised by how much viewers loved the lengthy stretches that presented action and/or contemplation without any dialogue. This energized him to dust off an old idea and refurbish it as Primal, an adult animated fantasy series centering upon the unlikely partnership between a Neanderthal and a Tyrannosaurus. The duo (named Spear and Fang in the show's scripts) were united by mutual loss and most of their stories hinge upon a desperate bid to survive in a deeply hostile world.

Slaxx, a 2020 Canadian horror comedy, is about a clothing outlet being terrorized by a pair of jeans possessed by the vengeful ghost of a slain sweatshop worker. As that brief description implies, Slaxx is both deeply absurd and highly didactic. It crams a lot of indictments of fast fashion, the retail mindset, and capitalism into its lean 77 minute running time, but also tosses in plenty of slapstick murder gags and broadly awful caricatures getting what's coming to them.

Felix the Cat has taken quite a few strange turns since the character's debut in 1919, but the absolute oddest take is arguably the feature film co-produced by a Hungarian and American partnership. Development dragged from 1985 to 1987 and the resulting movie, which inexplicably dropped the character into a high fantasy setting reminiscent of He-Man or Heavy Metal, was released to critical dismissal and tepid box office several years later. This effort was part of an unsuccessful campaign to turn Felix into a heavily-merchandised multimedia sensation like Garfield, Alf, My Little Pony, The Smurfs, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Loosely adapted from John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella by Howard Hawks' production company, The Thing From Another World was a moderately profitable sci-fi thriller with a surprisingly lengthy reach across pop culture. Its plot points quickly became common tropes in genre filmmaking, its most memorable scenes were widely imitated, and it has gotten several remakes over the course of the past seven decades.

Adapted from the French comics series by Jean-Claude Forest and produced by Italian film kingpin Dino De Laurentiis, Barbarella shared cast and crew with Danger: Diabolik and went through a slew of writers (including Terry Southern) before reaching its final form. It's odd to remember that Jane Fonda was far from the first choice for the starring role when one considers how strongly the part looms over her public persona, but even a cursory glance at her vivid, dizzying, salacious, and humorous performance will provide ample evidence as to how Barbarella became an enduring camp classic.

Developed during the troubled production of The Black Cauldron (1985) and released when Disney was at a very low period, The Great Mouse Detective was a modest success that convinced new CEO Michael Eisner and new chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg that animated features were still a relevant facet of Disney's business strategy. Based upon Eve Titus and Paul Galdone's Basil of Baker Street, The Great Mouse Detective marked the the first major contributions of many figures who'd become instrumental to the Disney Renaissance, not the least of whom would be directors John Musker and Ron Clements; they would pitch The Little Mermaid to Katzenberg shortly after The Great Mouse Detective turned a profit.

Judy Garland suffered a significant blow to her reputation when, plagued by addiction problems, she was fired from 1950's Annie Get Your Gun and then spent three months in a Boston rehab facility. Summer Stock was conceived by MGM as a comeback vehicle for Garland since it harkened back to the backyard musicals that served as reliable moneymakers for the star throughout the 1940's. Director Charles Walters and romantic lead Gene Kelly considered the goofy and simplistic story to be beneath their ambitious talents, but they both signed on since they admired Garland and wished to help her get her career back on track. MGM's pressure to get Garland to lose weight and jump back into filmmaking so soon after her rehab stint contributed to a nasty relapse, which caused both delays and logistical problems in the making of Summer Stock. The resulting movie was still a modest earner, but Garland was unable to make a commitment to 1951's Royal Wedding and her contract with MGM was soon cancelled.