dave13-1

Variety shows were a TV staple from the beginning. By the early 80s, they had all but disappeared. Some event right around 1980 changed everything. In all honesty, that event was likely the advent of MTV. No longer did audiences need to wait for a musical guest to appear on a prime time show to get to hear their latest hit. It was in heavy rotation on MTV all week.

But the failure of Pink Lady (and Jeff) had to be some kind of harbinger of doom. The variety show format was simple and robust. Get a popular entertainer, a singer or comedian usually, schedule performances by musical guests, fill the time between songs with corny (often awkward) scripted stage banter with the guests, and add some sketches built around the stars and an ensemble of regulars and comedy veterans like Chuck McCann and Avery Schreiber. The formula lasted forever because it worked with just about anyone. Flip Wilson. Andy Williams. Sonny and Cher.

Then came Pink Lady to expose the cracks in the foundation. The silly stage patter that audiences had tolerated for years was now being read off cue cards in phonetic Japanese by two women who spoke almost no English. The comedy sketches came off as cruel and humiliating, as the barbs of guest comics were met with what looked like genuine shame and confusion by Mie and Kei. And North American audiences were not ready for J-pop. Pink Lady musical performances, which had generated near-Beatlemania level excitement in the Tokyo Dome, baffled the studio audience, which nonetheless applauded politely. Words like bizarre, surreal and cringe-inducing fall far short of capturing the atmosphere surrounding this melange of culture clash weirdness.

It must be understood that the failure of the show was not due to lack of effort. Young Jeff Altman tried hard to keep things together and moving forward as MC, and the slate of guests was impressive, from Cheap Trick to Jerry Lewis. The show runners tried to rope in every possible demographic, even booking Hugh Hefner and the Playmates. Nothing worked. In the short six hours the show ran, literally NOTHING clicked as entertainment. And then Pink Lady was gone, back to Japan. Within a short time the musical variety show format had disappeared as well. Looking back, the two elements may simply have been disconnected in time. Pink Lady might have worked years later as regular guests on some off the wall show like Pee Wee's Playhouse. Maybe they were just ahead of their time. And the variety show was past its day.

Goldfinger came out in the summer of 1964 and created a world-wide sensation. For the next five years, movie goers got wannabe 007s from all over the globe, as every cheapjack knock-off house tried to cash in on the trend. A few of these hand me downs found their niche, but most failed. Super Dragon falls into the majority. Spy movies by their nature are highly contrived and artificial, requiring tight plotting and clever legerdemain by the writers to hide the story gimmicks - double-crossing double agents, conveniently timed plot twists, etc. This is a monumental task for masters of the genre, and far beyond the talents of the C- level hacks who scripted the imitators. Super Dragon is one of the worst offenders I can ever recall seeing, less coherent even than that death ray abomination with Gordon Scott that had about eleven different titles outside of Italy. Stuff happens of course, agents go missing and the protagonist agent shows up and starts asking questions. (How often has the set up for Dr. No been ripped off? I wonder.) People start getting dead soon, so he knows he must be onto something, but nothing that happens actually leads anywhere. It's just stuff. A collection of unrelated happenings is not a narrative. Just stuff. Calling Super Dragon hard to follow presumes that it can be followed, which seems optimistic. It does not help that Ray Danton, who made a soft living playing oily villains in TV westerns and crime dramas, was chosen as the hero. Murders go on around him while leaving him unfazed to a degree that feels sociopathic. Contrast that with Margaret Lee and Marisa Mell, who overplay trying to be coy so hard it comes off as just bad acting. Danton wanders around Amsterdam like a tourist, which I suppose fulfills the exciting location quota, but it all looks cheap and hackneyed. Don't be fooled by cheap imitations. Watch From Russia with Love one more time and enjoy the authentic Bond experience.

Would you like to watch the cast of the 1959 Jack Benny parody an early 80s space opera like Flash Gordon or the Star Wars series? With Jack throwing in a few of his trademark catch phrases such as 'Well' or I'm thinking'?

It's a fun idea. Unfortunately, only a dozen or so gags land and this sort of exercise needs a high laugh count to avoid becoming tedious. The bargain basement production values are a distraction too, since an 80s audience was used to better. The result is an unsatisfying answer to a what if question. Better writing might have made the cheap look more forgivable, and alternatively a more polished production might have gotten away with this few chuckles. The cast try hard but there is not a lot of acting business to be done on this low a budget. The fight staging is also distractingly bad, and worse it reminds us that bad action scenes are worse than none. Could the Zucker brothers, fresh off a hit with Top Secret, have been able to pull this idea off? I wish we got a chance to find out.