Danger Island

 Hail and well met! I offer a Toast And Salute for your timely return!

So, I was trying to track down an old Matinee serial from 1931 called "Danger Island".  Couldn't find it.  Turns out it is considered one of several "lost" serial talkies who have at least one chapter's reel of sound or audio deteriorated beyond salvage.  This is sad, but not really the subject of our little discussion today.

You see, during my research I found another "Danger Island", a live-action cliffhanger serial produced by--now get this--Hanna-Barbera!

You read that correctly!  Back in, like, 1968 I think it was, Hanna-Barbera produced "The Banana Splitz Adventure Hour", hosted by live action costume versions of their cartoon bubblegum rock band, the Banana Splitz!  

I used to watch reruns of this show way back in my misspent youth, but I can't really remember much about the show.  Ok, I don't really remember anything about the show.  I remember the Banana Splitz, they were kinda like sport mascots or Disneyland characters.  And I remember about two lines from their theme song, "The Tra-La-La Song".  

Apparently they hosted different cartoons and performed little sketches on the show.  From what I've been reading online, it was intended as a "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" style show, with lots of short clips edited together, but directed at small children.  But I have to take their word on this, cuz I don't really don't remember.

Anyway, one of the regular features was a cliffhanger serial called "Danger Island"!  It was shown in five minute episodes over about 35 episodes of the Banana Splitz.  And some stalwart fellow on YouTube has edited all these episodes together into a movie that's two hours and twenty minutes long!

Well, of course I watched it!

This thing is totally a Hanna-Barbera adventure cartoon done in live action!  It's VERY Johnny Quest-esque, with some moments of frivolous cartoon slapstick for the kids.  Hoo-boy!

So, there's Dr. Irwin Hayden, out on a boat looking for relics to help prove his theory that the Egyptians and the Phoenicians were somehow connected to the Aztecs.  He is on a boat "somewhere in the South Pacific" with his teenage daughter, Lesley, and his young assistant, Link.  By the way, this guy Link is played by a young fellow named Micheal Vincent, who would go on to become Jan-Micheal Vincent, probably best known from the TV show "Airwolf"!  Of course, he was also in the movie "Damnation Alley".  ...He is also the ONLY actor I recognized in the whole show!

Dr. Hayden's brother disappeared somewhere in this area of the Pacific, just a few short years ago.  He was searching for the Lost City of Tabana, to prove the whole ancient civilization theory.  

Unfortunately, our heroes are beset by a rather inept group of pirates, who believe they are hiding treasure and can lead them to even more.  Shenanigans ensue and our hapless heroes get stranded on an island where they are befriended by Morgan and Chongo, who have been castaways here ever since they were betrayed by the same pirates over a year prior.  They all team up.

Hot on the trail of Dr. Hayden's missing brother, they find a map that should lead them to the Lost City!  However, they are chased by pirates, three different tribes of natives, lions, leopards, and crocodiles, oh my!  

Overall, the story wasn't bad, but you can tell that it was written to entertain very small children.  The concept may have been inspired by things like Johnny Quest, but our three main characters together are not as competent of Johnny's dog, Bandit!  In fact, if they hadn't hooked up with Morgan, they would never have made it!  Chongo is the weird/comic relief character, he cannot speak and communicates solely through bird calls, animal sounds, and other assorted noises, like many cartoon characters before him.  I'm not gonna lie, it quickly got kinda annoying.

I didn't actually look it up, but I have NO trouble believing that this was cooked up by the same writers who worked on things like Johnny Quest and Scooby-Doo.  Even the music was stock stuff that I recognized from Johnny Quest and the Herculoids.  I was surprised to see that it was directed by none other than Richard Donner!  Yes, the SAME Richard Donner who directed Christopher Reeve in "Superman"!  The same Richard Donner who directed "The Goonies", "Ladyhawke", "Maverick", and the "Lethal Weapon" series!  Hey, he hadn't done any of those yet and ya gotta start someplace!

I know I sound really negative, but I don't mean to.  I realize that I no longer fit into the demographic that was the intended audience.  And again, the story wasn't BAD, just...juvenile.

Again, I know I used to watch the Banana Splits when I was a kid, and I don't remember this at all.  Now I've watched the whole thing, and I still don't remember seeing it before!  ...I don't know, maybe I was better off!

If you are interested in seeing it, all the individual five-minutes episodes appear to be on YouTube.  And, as I said, some brave soul edited them all together into a single feature nearly two-and-a-half hours long (I watched in two installments...I just had to!).  A simple search will find it.  I don't know of anywhere to watch entire episodes of the Banana Splitz, sorry!

I'll try to find something I like better to talk about next time!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Post-Apoc-A-Rama!

Hello and Welcome Back!

In our last exciting episode we were talking about bad post-apocalyptic movies from the 80's.  So that's where we start now.


I think the first movie I ever saw that could count as post-apoc would have to be The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price.
Of course, this isn't an 80's movie, and isn't at all akin to the sort of cheesy flick I wanna talk about.  But it's still the first one I ever saw.

The next one must have been Damnation Alley starring George Peppard an Jan-Micheal Vincent.  This movie was cool!  First off there was the Ultimate RV, a twelve-wheeled monster of an all-terrain vehicle designed to go anywhere in a ruined world.  There were giant scorpions and man-eating cockroaches.  This was sort of a slightly more realistic future than Thundarr presented:  no magic, no super-tech.  Somehow, though, there was enough gas to run the Super Rv and a motorcycle.

The next one that really stands out in my head is the Ralph Bakshi movie, Wizards.  This movie is just haunting and disturbing, but not really in a bad way.  The narration and the still-picture slide show in the beginning I find particularly haunting.  Then there's the weird animation style.  It's cartoony, as opposed to trying to render the weird creatures and characters realistically.  Then there's the weird rotoscoping and the subject matter itself.  Weird but cool.  

There was a movie called She, it starred Sandahl Bergman (she was Conan's girlfriend Valeria in Conan the Barbarian).  It was supposedly "based" on the H.R.Haggard story She, but the only resemblance I could see were in the title.  

In a post-apoc world survivors trade goods with one another until these raiders show up and cause a ruckus for no good reason.  They kidnap this girl, so her brother and her boyfriend go to rescue her, knowing full well they'll probably die.  But instead, they hook up with She, a powerful warrior-woman and she-who-cannot-die (thanks to her "magic" sauna in a cave in her village).  Through an episodic series of weird misadventures, including an incident with a werewolf commune, a mutant bridge guard who multiplies every time you hit him, and that standard stand-by a gladiatorial arena; our heroes find the bad guys and (spoiler alert!) rescue the girl.  It was weird stuff, seemed to have a definite Gamma World vibe to me.

Like I said, Terrible And Silly!


There were a bunch of other flicks, too.  After a while they kind of blend together.  But movies like The New Barbarians, and Land of Doom show us that people wear way too much leather in the post-apocalyptic desert.

  
Battletruck and Wheels of Fire show us that there will still be plenty of gas and bullets (and yet food and water will be scarce), and that all the vehicles will get pimped up with spikes. 

 Meanwhile, films like She-Wolves of the Wasteland and Stryker show us that there will be a great abundance of hot chicks, and a few cool guys...but apparently not enough clothes to go around (at least if you're adverse to the above-mentioned black leather).  

Are you ready for the punchline?  I've NEVER seen a single Mad Max movie.  Bits and pieces, but not the whole film.  But I've seen all of these flicks, and each one has left its indelible mark on the world I've created...or ended(?)...for the stories I'm writing.

And there were a few others, too.  But my point is this:  My post-apocalyptic world is not just drab and gray.  And there are more dangers lurking about than just zombies.  

When my world suffered its great calamity, there was advanced science.  AIs, robots, weird chemical medicines, advanced tech for daily appliances, experimental prototypes.  These things still exist and are half-understood (at best) by people trying to use them and repair the damage.  Weird chemicals and radiation have cause innumerable mutant sub-races and new hybrid species.  

Wanna know more?  Of course ya do!  So come on back next time, and I'll share some more about my upcoming science fantasy post-apocalyptic adventure series:  Mutant World!  Until then, I wish you...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell