Mr. Payback: An Interactive Movie

I was working for United Artists Theatre Circuit in Denver in 1995 and was responsible for marketing and promoting this film in 3 of our locations across the U.S. We outfitted 3 small theaters with the joysticks that allowed voting and the laser disc technology that would adjust the narrative based on choices the audience made as certain points throughout the picture.

It turned out very few people cared about this format and the film bombed on every screen across the country. We attributed it to the fact that people go to a movie to be told a story, not to create one. In addition, these films were shown on laser disc and the familiar and comforting "click" of the movie projector was missing.

The fact that the film was remarkably pointless didn't help either.

There were a series of pictures planned and we had actually booked a 2nd film for later in 1995, but it's release was scrapped after the 1st picture bombed.

This movie was sort of cool because you got to decide what would happen. The theater was equipped with little joysticks in the armrests. You could choose 1 of 4 choices as to what would happen. There were maybe 6 times in the movie where they would stop and ask for the theater goers to vote on what the star would do. You were encouraged to press the buttons as many times as you could and the votes would appear on the screen. Unfortunately, the story wasn't that good, but the idea was pretty cool. Besides, Eddie Deezen was in it.

This was the first and last of a major motion picture that was interactive with the audience. A kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure film if you will. It took lots of bad rap and because of that killed the potential market for these types of films that are interactive with the audience. Too bad. Half of the fun was everyone shouting at the screen how to vote when it came up, and using joystick fingers to machine-gun press the buttons to vote for your choice. It only gave you a couple of seconds to vote for your favorites, and it would tally the votes in real time on the screen. The theatres playing it (I saw it Burbank, California at a pretty swanky cinema) were outfitted with special laserdisc projectors, thus the picture and sound quality were very high. The voting buttons were built into the armrest. About the film: it was a pretty decent light comedy about a guy who would get payback for misdeeds of others in unique ways. Being able to control the movie kept the audience interested, and they even let us see it again after it was done because there are two initial scenarios to choose from. I wonder if it is still possible to get the original laserdiscs these were on and use them on your laserdisc player? Because laserdiscs were built interactive like that. They could also release it on CD-I which is the equivalent (originally introduced by Phillips) and that format would play on your DVD player. I don't know. But they did the same sort of thing back in the day with the arcade game Dragon's Lair.. it was also on a laserdisc and it was also interactive, yet it was considered a video game and was a cartoon. Nevertheless, this was interesting stuff and I hope they resurrect the format one of these days...

I experienced this movie at a test screening probably 8 years ago. I don't think it really ever went farther than that, I sure never heard about it again. Seeing as I was only a kid at the time, I thought it was relatively funny, but it went right through me and was forgotten, ultimately. It didn't help that you'd often be sent to the "wrong choice" by people in the crowd who thought that choice sounded kinky or something like that. I remember the "bad choice" during one part involved audio surveillance of 3 apartments. Two of them sounded like a crime was being committed, but one consisted of a woman gasping for air and yelling "oh yeah! take Petey out!"

So the immature crowd obviously goes for that one, and we're treated to an obese couple taking their cat "Petey" out of a box. This happened all the time, and ultimately we "lost" the little point contest the movie had. I'm sure this happened every time, and people left feeling gypped. So it goes

An interactive movie. Basically each theatre had to be specially equipped with different video monitors and such. Each seat had a sort of device where you could pick an option. Like when someone is being tortured--you have three options to pick from on HOW he was to be tortured. The one that most people "vote" for is shown. Sounds interesting...but it wore thin fast.

Basically each movie is the same--just the various options are slight detours that end up going back to the main story. I did see it once and was mildly amused but had completely forgotten about it the next day.

From what I remember it was a pretty stupid movie full of crude humor with lousy acting. Billy Warlock was the only one that gave a halfway decent performance. He was also easy on the eyes which helped:) Still, this was supposed to usher in a new era of interactive movies. Considering this was the only one made and it's been 10 years since we've seen another one, chances are it's not gonna happen again.

Worth a look maybe for curiosity's sake--but it's totally pointless to see without the options. Skip it.