Adding "Bidi Bidi Bidi" to my list of movie watching drinking games with this delightfully sardonic update of the Buster Crabbe series of serials from the 1930's. This is a delightful comic science fiction adventure that will have you laughing and cheering for the lead character as he takes on both a very humorless futuristic colonel (Erin Gray) and an alluring space queen (Pamela Hensley) who intends to take over the earth to add to her collection of planets.
In watching Gray, you realize very quickly that while she seems aggravated by Rogers on the surface, she is actually quite amused by him and finds him to be a challenge that she enjoys as compared to the yes men around her. He's a visitor from modern times, ending up 6000 years in the future, missing his hometown of Chicago and discovering very quickly that it has been nuked out (although the Sears tower seems to be still standing) and that the United States is now a long gone country barely remembered from history books.
With lines like "I'm freezing my ball bearings off" (spouted by Mel Blanc as the voice of Twiki) and "I never forget a knuckle" (said by Gerard when he meets the Queen who claims to not remember him), you know that the writers were sitting with their pen and laughing as they came up with these gems. A costume ball sequence seems to be utilizing a variety of fashions from various eras, past and future, and has Gerard breaking down in a late 70's style of dance to show these future creatures of all worlds how it is done.
The plot is complex but not complicated, and unlike some science fiction films, you do not have to be a huge fan of the genre to get into it. With its slight feminist view of the future (where the women seem to like the challenge of a man who talks back to them), although it is apparent that some of the more sinister men are slyly plotting a takeover. Joseph Wiseman, as Hensley's father, looks like Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu but is barely on screen for long.
This is a unique view of a future society that just needs one good person of each gender to lead in partnership with wisdom and humor, and a good Twiki beside them. Certainly the temptation to compare this to "Star Wars" seems easy, but this is unique on its own and in some senses, a lot more fun. It's easy to see why this feature film ended up becoming a TV series within a year after the film's release. Buster Crabbe's serial past would get another update with a big screen version of "Flash Gordon".
In watching Gray, you realize very quickly that while she seems aggravated by Rogers on the surface, she is actually quite amused by him and finds him to be a challenge that she enjoys as compared to the yes men around her. He's a visitor from modern times, ending up 6000 years in the future, missing his hometown of Chicago and discovering very quickly that it has been nuked out (although the Sears tower seems to be still standing) and that the United States is now a long gone country barely remembered from history books.
With lines like "I'm freezing my ball bearings off" (spouted by Mel Blanc as the voice of Twiki) and "I never forget a knuckle" (said by Gerard when he meets the Queen who claims to not remember him), you know that the writers were sitting with their pen and laughing as they came up with these gems. A costume ball sequence seems to be utilizing a variety of fashions from various eras, past and future, and has Gerard breaking down in a late 70's style of dance to show these future creatures of all worlds how it is done.
The plot is complex but not complicated, and unlike some science fiction films, you do not have to be a huge fan of the genre to get into it. With its slight feminist view of the future (where the women seem to like the challenge of a man who talks back to them), although it is apparent that some of the more sinister men are slyly plotting a takeover. Joseph Wiseman, as Hensley's father, looks like Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu but is barely on screen for long.
This is a unique view of a future society that just needs one good person of each gender to lead in partnership with wisdom and humor, and a good Twiki beside them. Certainly the temptation to compare this to "Star Wars" seems easy, but this is unique on its own and in some senses, a lot more fun. It's easy to see why this feature film ended up becoming a TV series within a year after the film's release. Buster Crabbe's serial past would get another update with a big screen version of "Flash Gordon".