With Disney seemingly determined to own every intellectual property in the world, it is only a matter of time before they acquire the rights to some of our favorite MST3K films. So our discussion is “How would Disney remake a movie featured on MST3K?”
I foresee an animated musical of “Robot Monster” with Ro-Man belting out show stoppers like “To LIIIIIIIIVE like the hu-maaaaan! To BEEEEEEEEE the hu-maaaaan!” and “I MUUUST! But I CANNOOOOOOT!” It all has a happy ending, with Ro-man and the humans living in peace after the Great Guidance is destroyed in typical Disney fashion by falling off a cliff.
I see a Disney Channel series on Batwoman. It’ll run five seasons.
Your choice?
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“King Dinosaur” where Joey the Lemurjou is a wisecracking anthropomorphic sidekick.
“The Magic Sword” is already rather Disney-ish, it just needs half a dozen or so musical numbers.
Kitten With a Whip starring Hannah Montana singing the new hit song “Achy Breaky Twirk”!
Racket Princesses.
(Introducing Princess Olga of Ukrainia.)
It was supposed to come back out in ’96, for the 50th anniversary–back when Disney had to theatrically re-release all their video releases to cash in on a creative-accounting loophole–and Disney was all ready to bend over backwards with a “Black history” intro and the “John Henry” short (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuNckYmnkC0 )
But Disney board member Sidney Poitier, and Maya Angelou showing off what great personal buddy-pals she was with the Clintons, put a nice, responsible, thoroughly Woke stop to that.
Nowadays, seems like Iger’s one of the last old folk still around who think Uncle Remus was a “slave”, not a sharecropper, and that the movie took place before the Reconstruction.
And Growler could pull off a Mission: Impossible mask and reveal himself to have been Rowlf all along.
Odd that we should be talking about “Song of the South”, when yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of James Baskett, who played Uncle Remus in the movie. For his performance, he was the first African-American to receive an Academy Award, a fact that has been largely forgotten by the film community.
Back on topic, how about a Disneyfied version of “The Brute Man”? Re-titled, “Helen and Brute”, Hal Moffett is a mysterious figure called the Brute. He’s still disfigured, but in a more presentable, even more cute, fashion. He doesn’t kill anybody, but he angrily resists the company of people. Helen is still blind, but is now a young teen who’s comfortable with her condition and has no desire for sight. She and Hal befriend each other, and there are Oscar-nominated songs on unconditional acceptance and “beauty you cannot see”. The cops are still inept, and prejudiced, to boot. Hal’s “friends”, who caused his disfigurement, are the villains of the piece. The angry shopkeeper is the comic relief. And there’s an animal sidekick of some kind. Helen doesn’t fink on Hal, and he survives to live quietly and peacefully.
Followed by a direct-to-video crossover with whatever Disney franchise is hottest at the time.
Two animal sidekicks. Both protagonists each have their own animal sidekick. However, one of them could be a non-animal — a magical, talking something-or-other.
“Sharecropper”? Well, we really old folk remember that Joel Chandler Harris gathered 100% of the source material for the Uncle Remus stories from slaves. I know it must seem to you young folk that it was clever for him to reframe the stories in the post-Civil War South, but they were entirely stories told to him by slaves on plantations, without exception.
Perhaps those slaves had magic African powers, to see into the future and speak knowingly about the lives of post-Civil War sharecroppers.
In any case, granted, maybe Disney hasn’t made enough money off the story. Maybe Disney deserves to make even more money off stories about slaves–oh, wait, Chandler Control-H’ed “slaves” with “sharecroppers.” OK then.
Also would love to have a source for the comment, “But Disney board member Sidney Poitier, and Maya Angelou showing off what great personal buddy-pals she was with the Clintons….” That kind of insider knowledge is PRICELESS, and needs to be shared with the masses.
And then Walt took the “slavery” out of it, since he knew he wasn’t David O. Selznick.
(Have you even SEEN it, btw? If you can dig up DAP’s of the KTMA episodes, it’s no problem to dig up a gray-market print of Song on any of the usual suspects–Think Archive.org’s got a half dozen copies.)
Ah, to us old Eisner-era Disney fans, there was no richer source of insider knowledge than Jim Hill, before he went blogger-loopy…Oh, darn, he cleaned out half of his old 00’s posts, including the Poitier/Angelou one. Okay, wipe that smug look off your face.
All Jim had left was the one of a supposed ’06 release, also killed by You-Know-Who: http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2005/02/22/545.aspx
(At which point, Eisner’s company was still trying to stonewall fans with “Eh, you wouldn’t like it anyway…It’s mostly the boring live-action stuff with the kid! Sure we could release it, but you’ll be sor-ree!” This, from the company that STILL tries to sell us “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” on Blu-ray.)
Point being, DVD-fan Southies have been waging this war and carrying this grudge for twenty-three years. As the saying goes, theirs are rhubarbs not to rub.
I’ve never NOT owned a copy of “Song of the South” since I began collecting movies almost forty years ago, after having watched the animated portions on Disney in the Fifties. It’s been available in every format from laser disc to legal German VHS to bootlegged DVD-R to Pirate Bay, which currently lists two dozen torrents of at least ten different variations.
The animated segments are brilliant, and contain two of the most valuable tropes in western culture, “Please doan th’ow me in the briar patch” and “Embracing the tar baby.” The live-action segments are far more disturbing than any of the many blackface routines in my collection. “Song of the South” is to Jolson’s “Goin’ to Heaven On A Mule” in “Wonder Bar” as “Triumph of the Will” is to “Inglourious Basterds.”
It sits in the same folder as “Cannibal Holocaust,” “Begotten,” and “Alien Private Eye,” the one labeled, “Repeat to Yourself It’s Just A Show.”
When it wouldn’t surprise the vast majority of people that a particular person would derail a thread by defending a minstrel show, maybe it’s time for that person to stop posting
…mmm…it’s an ongoing aspect of getting involved with old movies, though (AND what happens when WTD’s are topicked away from just what’s in the actual MST’d movies,BTW). Finding some workable perspective on the content of some of the MST’d movies is all part of the act, innit? Putting Colonel Briteis over his lap and spanking her, that dickweed animal abuser with the Seminole sidekick, the obese couple in Ring of Terror…
I mean, is there any reason The Guys couldn’t Rifftrax “Song of the South”?
While we tend to associate Disney with light and fluffy, some of the earlier works had their dark and creepy moments. Think of Snow White fleeing into the forest, or the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia.
Thank God that never happens with WDT itself.
Lady and the Tramp-
It’s an MST mixup with the Brain That Wouldn’t Die’s sophisticated Jan-In-The-Pan being paired up with the scruffy head of Gideon Drew from The Thing That Couldn’t Die. The spaghetti eating scene alone would be worth the price of admission and think of the merchandising opportunities. The bobble heads would make a mint!
From Beast of Yucca Flats we might get Night on Butt Mountain.
Beauty and the Beast of Yucca Flats
The Suite Life of Troy & Mikey
Hercules Rides again, Hercules Goes to Monte Carlo and Hercules Goes Bananas
The Mickey The Gardner Club
…and when in Orlando visit Coleman Francis Mountain – The Ride! at Film Ventures International’s Walt Disney’s Satellite of Love World.
Oh, well, we’ve already had THAT one: https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/352183701430_/Unicorn-Video-Betamax-NOT-VHS-Hercules-Goes-Bananas.jpg
Okay, now we have a Kickstarter goal for Season 13: getting the rights to this movie. Highly riffable!
Back on subject, the Disney version of “Project Moon Base”.
Col. Breiteis is now a highly-competent, but still very attractive, astronaut. Maj. Moore is a good astronaut, but is also a broad-shouldered, square-jawed, self-centered jerk (not too different from the original, actually). Gen. Greene is still a condescending sexist. The fake Dr. Wernher now works for an evil corporation out to strip mine the Moon for resources. But, Breiteis won’t allow that after she finds some cute, friendly Lunites who help our heroes after they accidentally land on the Moon. Wernher is tripped up when Breiteis asks him about the Nets, whom he thinks are still in New Jersey. It all ends happily when Breiteis, Maj. Chunkhead and the Lunites expose the bad guys’ plans, and the Moon is declared an independent territory. Breiteis and Chunkhead seem to fall for each other, even after Breiteis is promoted and now outranks Gen. Greene. And there are songs about space and pushing your boundaries and respect for those who are different. And there’s a talking cat, I guess.
Lunite and talking cat toys coming soon, exclusively at Target.
Brave Little Toaster is full of non-family friendly stuff as well, like dismembering anthropomorphic appliances as the titular appliance and his friends watch. Anthropomorphic cars singing about their lives and now they’re “Worthless” before being crushed to death in a junkyard, one even committing suicide by driving onto the conveyor belt to be crushed. Or the owner of the Toaster nearly being crushed in the junkyard and the Toaster throws himself into the gears, being graphically torn apart to save his owner.
Danger! Death Ray would be a fun one to do as a Disney CGI film, with anthropomorphic animals as the titular characters trying to save a peaceful Death Ray.
…and then there’s the “Dark Age” of 1979-1985 (The Black Hole, The Watcher in the Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Return to Oz).
As for given certain films the Disney treatment:
* The Russio-Finnish films (especially Jack Frost) will be given the CGI treatment.
* The Pumaman will feature a couple of post-credits scenes (one after the main closing credits, the other at the very end) that will set the stage for a second Pumaman film and a spin-off film for Vadinho.
* Hobgoblins would be your typical Disney Channel original movie.
* Expect a biopic under the Fox label about either Coleman Francis or the making of Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Don’t forget to throw in the topless harpy bed from The Loves of Hercules.
Oh, God, I almost died reading the spaghetti comment . . . Here’s a question, though: what would the bobble heads bobble on? They could market them as paperweights (already suggested for Jan in a riff, btw); or better yet, Christmas tree ornaments; or, how about this, bowling balls? (Throw pillows . . . ? Mr. Potato Head kits . . . ?)
Already late, I see. Tsk.
I don’t know how relevant, if at all, this might be but, allegedly, people were condemning “Song of the South” as racist even back when it was originally released in 1946. It goes without saying (and yet…) that there was no political correctness back then.
Whether one agrees with the assessment or not, it can’t be blamed on “modern” viewpoints alone.
When I watched it as a child, I barely paid attention to the live-action sequences, I just patiently waited for the next cartoon sequence. THAT’s what *I* wanted to watch. What did I care about the travails of a pair of little white kids (who, in case anyone’s forgotten, were the actual protagonists)? I *WAS* a little white kid and knew several others. We were BORING. ;-)
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“According to page 93 of James Snead’s book, “White Screens/Black images”, “At the film’s New York premiere in Times Square, dozens of black and white pickets chanted, ‘We fought for Uncle Sam, not Uncle Tom,’ while the NAACP called for a total boycott of the film, and the National Negro Congress called on black people to ‘run the picture out of the area.'””
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038969/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2
It’s Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in The Death Trap
Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in “The Milling Zone”…
Uh…Tables, perhaps? Tables with PANS on them…?
;-)
Actually, that quote you posted touched on one of the heaviest issues involved, one that the Disney boys should have expected. Black men had just come back from bearing arms in WWII, and there was a HUGE shift in what they would now put up with in terms of the acceptance of blackface and shufflin’ darkies in the movies.
Also, re: political correctness, there had been a battle for decades by activists for some sort of more respectful terms for black people, starting with decades of lobbying simply to get “negro” capitalized. That’s been going on FOREVER.
Anyway, the Disney people should have known there was going to be trouble, and persisted in carrying forward pre-war attitudes into the postwar world. Dummies.
Hayley Mills and Janet Munro, both digitally captured at age fifteen (JM in Darby O’Gill), as a pair of mystery-solving teens who take time out for FUN.
Lordy, did I have a crush on Hayley Mills back in the day. (she’s a few months older than me). Also the foreign-accented girl in The Shaggy Dog.
The movie changed a few details from the source material. Movies do that. Quite often.
Although, really, did the “framing device” in original Uncle Remus stories, with him telling the stories to children, have a specific chronological setting to begin with? I Do Not Know.
You mean this?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rifftrax/rifftrax-live-2019-three-great-movies-riffed-live?utm_source=RiffTrax+Mail&utm_campaign=5cfaa0cc64-Kickstarter2019Announcement&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4a5519af23-5cfaa0cc64-36689330&mc_cid=5cfaa0cc64&mc_eid=77466a59af
(an ORANGE Octaman? the hell…?)
That’s actually why I came in here today to begin with, to peruse the reactions (aside from that one that I could easily predict, of course), but I see that that the forum hasn’t gotten to that yet.
Anyway, MST3K…Disney…”I had to clean up a Flubber spill [in Deep 13] once! It’s incredibly radioactive!”
The Amazing Colossal Fred MacMurray…vs. Hugh Beaumont and His Flying House!
While still a skeleton? I could see that.
“What’s this? What’s this? There’s sparkle everywhere!
What’s this? What’s this? That doggie has no hair!”
Wait, would a toy which, although a reproduction of a talking cat character, could not “talk” in itself nevertheless qualify as a talking cat toy?
Does just any random toy for cats qualify as a talking cat toy so long as the toy can “talk”?
How about toys that are marketed exclusively to talking cats?
So many questions…so many questions…
“Song of the South” wasn’t a minstrel show. No one in “Song of the South” wore blackface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show
For some reason I zeroed in on the name and my first thought was something to the effect of “A Disney version of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror?”
(’cause, y’know, Wilbur Whateley an’ all…)
“He’s rough! He’s tough! He’s the onion that makes bad guys cry “Enough!””
But wouldn’t that just raise the “Song of the South” spectre all over again?
Isn’t she like grandma-old by now, though?
I’d like (I’d like? I’d like a trip to Europe…) to think we’ve moved past the point where someone would be instantly disliked on the basis of being physically impaired and having a speech disorder.
Similarly, shouldn’t we have gotten past ridiculing other races’ for their looks by now?
Would that movie really have been THAT MUCH BETTER with more expensive costumes?
I just don’t get some people. And not necessarily because they’re the wind, baby.
Hey, Jim Henson’s Wind-Babies.
;-)
“Jerry, I got it, I got this script you’re gonna love. It’s the story of an idealistic young vet, always wanted to be an artist, gets caught up in rebuilding his country after the horrors of war. He struggles, he survives, and we finish with him starting to make his way, y’know, and getting the inspiration for the big book that’s gonna make him famous.
Only thing, I’m thinkin’ we probably need to be reset this from just after World War I to just after World War II. Nah, nobody’s even notice….”
???Am I having acid flashbacks, or did I just irretrievably lose the EDIT function for my last post???
Well, sure, but think about how long ago it was that Ebert said that…
Danger, Death, and Ray? That may merit from a second draft…
More like an typographical variation of Tourette’s Syndrome, methinks.
What’s supposed to be so particularly bad about “Alien Private Eye”? From what I’ve read, it’s just another “bad movie” from the eighties.
The hatred of humanity is strong in this one…
Yes, that would probably be the better course since, unlike “Rocky Jones” and “Space Mutiny,” Starcrash wasn’t specifically set in the future.
;-)
I know we’re playing a “it’s not the same movie” sort of game but let’s not kid ourselves, no one caused Hal’s disfigurement but Hal himself. Sure, Cliff gave him the wrong answers and as a result Dr. Cushman held him after class but no one FORCED him to throw the explosion-causing flask to the floor (and Joan didn’t do anything). Only his own temper was to blame and of course, being human and all, he was unable to accept that — no one wants to admit that it’s their own fault that their life sucks — and so projected his anger onto other people.
Besides, after spending his post-college years simmering in rage, he’d clearly gone outright pants-crapping insane toward the end; I mean, I’m sorry, but I just keep coming back to it…“I’ll pay you tomorrow”?!
Wait, is that a harpy-occupied bed without a top or … ?
That is a remarkably long list of quote boxes in the above post and remarkably optimistic of the average attention span nowadays. But, of course, these are MSTies.
Remember when Mr. Cranky had to add a new category to his rating system, a GIF of an A-Bomb explosion labelled, “Proof the Jesus died in vain”?
The only comparison I can make is to “Blood Freak,” if “Blood Freak” were made in L.A. with a bunch of crazy kids with stars in their eyes who wanted to be in the movies worse than anything else in the whole world.
There is a fuzzy copy up on YouTube. Within the first three minutes, you will have…The Answer.
touches no one’s life, then leaves:
The toy would, indeed, talk. Push a button on the collar, and the cat would say one of its familiar catchphrases from the movie, or sings a line or two from the Oscar-nominated songs.
And First Mate Dixieland Jazz would be more in the pattern of Rochester from “The Jack Benny Program”. He’s more down-to-Earth than Capt. James Best, and can get away with some snarky comments every once in a while. Yes, he’s technically of a lower rank, but they’re still pals and more equal than you might think.
Oh, and “Assignment: Venezuela” could be re-done as part of a sequel to “Saludos Amigos” and “The Three Caballeros”. It isn’t Pee-Wee Lansky who arrives at Maricaibo, it’s Donald Duck! He meets up with Joe Carioca and Panchito, and then learns about Venezuela, back before the recent troubles.
But just think how annoying it would’ve been to have one separate post after another after another after another after…
;-)
Endoplasmic Reticulum:
Manos, the Hands of Fate, Disneyfied, 1994 version. Margaret […] played by Jamie Lee Curtis.
But in ’94 she was 36.
Some version of “Ring of Terror” (in which something happens and there’s a plot and so on; maybe give Puma a starring role: “That Darned Spring-Loaded Cat!”) featuring both young AND “older” college students co-existing, since it seems to bug some viewers so much to see only college students significantly older than their early 20s.
The Original EricJ: Oh, well, we’ve already had THAT one:https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/352183701430_/Unicorn-Video-Betamax-NOT-VHS-Hercules-Goes-Bananas.jpg
On the contrary, the “new” MST3K has already riffed a Hercules movie. They need to branching out into genres they HAVEN’T covered yet.
On the other hand, if you mean for Rifftrax, well, okay, sure.
And then Eric will know that a movie got Rifftraxed because *HE* called it to our attention!
:-)
A revamped Teen-Age Crime Wave: Terry* and Jane ditch Mike and go all Thelma and Louise except with a happy ending.
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*yes, Terry, so very, with her androgynous first name and short hairstyle…
Having an androgynous first name is also a sign that one is a visiting scientist in a low-budget SF film: “YOU’RE Dr. Terry Marsh?! B…b…but you’re a GIRL!”
Followed by “Well – you’re the PRETTIEST paleontologist I’ve ever seen!”
MSTies or not, I am reminded of the thought that just because one can answer every single post here, doesn’t mean one should.
I didn’t answer every single post. So there.
:-)