
Jun 17, 2013
Trailer 905 of 905
"They're he-eere!" Director Tobe Hooper's fifth feature was his biggest to date, produced on a grand scale by co-writer Steven Spielberg the same year he made ET. Its critical and boxoffice success was undercut by persistent rumors that Spielberg had co-opted the film much like Howard Hawks did with Christian Nyby (on The Thing) and shadow-directed, a claim both filmmakers denied. The untimely deaths of several people connected with the production gave rise in some quarters to the claim the franchise was somehow "cursed". Followed by Poltergest II: The Other Side and Poltergeist III, neither of which involved Spielberg or Hooper.
Oddly enough, Brando didn't marry the female star of this movie--but instead Movita Castaneda, the female star of the 1935 MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY..
Watching this week's TFH ode to blaxploitation makes me want to grow an Afro!.
It's enjoyable, and Racquel's presence makes it memorable (that poster of her in her loins is an icon), but, this is far from the best of Harryhausen..
Thanks for the shout out, David. I look back at this trailer with great fondness...
It played a couple of years back on TCM underground, and "bizarre" does kind of nail it; it doesn't really make a lick of sense, but it's quite entertaining, and I still find myself humming "What You See is What You Get" frequently. The concept of cloning black leaders to undermine the black community's leadership was a precursor to the "Undercover Brother" film years later (though that was mind control drugs, not cloning exactly).
The people of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (where they still make boats) are still proud of their achievement in recreating the Bounty for this film, no matter what the reaction to the film might have been (I watched it a few years back and also enjoyed it quite a bit, I guess all the bad press at the time really coloured judgement to a degree). It was a sad day in this part of the world when the Bounty met its fate by sinking in Hurricane Sandy...
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