Remo Williams: The Prophecy

I've never seen this. TO the best of my knowledge, it never actually got shown, and I've never been able to track down anyone who has seen it, let alone anyone who might have a copy.

Why would this be? I can tell you. I was in high school, and had read many of the Destroyer books, and seen the Remo Williams movie (incidentally, the other review in here is about THAT version, not this one, since I'm pretty sure Wilfrid Brimley was not in both), which was fun, so I was DYING to see what they'd done with this semi-pilot for a TV series.

I was poised with my finger on the button to tape the show and WHAM BANG PRESTO - it was pre-empted for a Ronald Reagan speech.

And never shown.

And I'm STILL WAITING!!!!

I saw this one, and I'm not quite sure how--it aired once and then disappeared without a trace. As an avid Destroyer book reader, I felt the concept of a television series based on the books was a can't-miss prospect. Then I saw this. When it comes to re-creating the books, the movie may have missed the boat, but this series missed the water entirely. The biggest problem is the lead actor. The grinning, poofed-hair goofball they brought in to play Remo almost certainly never read any of the books. He missed the dark, brooding persona that even Fred Ward managed to capture in the movie.

The next problem is similar to that of the movie--it tries to create a new plot line instead of just using one of the 120+ available in the books. This deteriorates quickly into some nonsense about a hit man trying to kill Remo to take his place and some kind of a fight with a photon-torpedo shooting robot guarding a chemical weapons plant (I'm not making this up). The Sinanju training and Chiun's hilarious antics were kept inexplicably in the background for the whole episode.

Surprisingly, the supporting cast isn't too bad. McDowell does an admirable job as Chiun, although he doesn't quite lose himself in the role the way Grey did. It's hard to imagine anyone being more Harold W. Smith than Wilfred Brimley, but the seasoned vet they brought in for this role did a fairly nice job (a little more gruff than he needed to be, but not bad). There were also a few funny lines like "There has never been a Master of Sinanju named Big Mac" (okay, I thought it was funny). All in all, a bad series based on the Destroyer is better than most good series based on other subject matter, but this one comes nowhere near the potential of the concept. It's not quite "The droppings of a diahrettic duck" as Chiun would say, but not really good, either.

i have seen this pilot and have a poor copy videotaped off the t.v.i am hoping it will eventually be released, as i would like to own a better copy for my martial arts library i think Roddy Mcdowell did a good job as Chiun i believe Dick Clark had something to do with the project.Jeffrey Meek, who played Remo, went on to star in raven another martial arts t.v. show. i think the t.v. version was better than the theatrical one Meek did a better job than Ward as Remo.i think the biggest problem with both versions is that they didn't bother to include Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, their advice would have improved the quality of either project, but then again that would have made sense and Hollywood usually can't figure that out. thanks

I never knew this existed! But I do know that the cover pic is from the movie, not the TV show.

I have read many of the books and seen the original movie. I was surprised that they had to get another WHITE GUY to play a Korean - what's the matter? Not enough Asians to play Asian roles? Mako would have been perfect. I love Roddy McDowell, but I do think that you should get a good Asian actor for the part of Chiun - there are so many and there were so many even then.

This should hopefully show up on one of the Action channels or maybe as a bootleg.

I'm a longtime fan of The Destroyer series. I started reading the books when they first came out and have collected most of them and re-read them often.

The movie "The Adventure Begins" was a worthy effort considering that Hollywood can't leave any successful characters as they are and has to try and make everything P.C. and squeaky clean but this piece is entirely another matter.

Roddy McDowall was an excellent choice for Chiun and did his usual excellent performance. Smith was also done very well. The rest of it makes me wonder if the writers ever even bothered to look at the covers, let alone read any of the series of books this is supposed to be based on. Granted someone did glance through "The Day Remo Died" for the story line.

This is another example of the kind of lifeless writing and lack of imagination that is permeating most of television programming today. It's no wonder that "reality" shows are so common. They take no writing skill.