MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE MIGHTY MORPHIN' POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE

Be happy you're getting a fresh Foyeurism this month. Between playing GRAND THEFT AUTO IV, which I just completed prior to going to press, and just feeling a bit burned out writing-wise, I almost opted to go with rerun (of sorts) this month. Luckily, I had another article almost finished and put the finishing touches on it.

Actually, I haven't been all that inactive this past month. I have done some choice reviews in the past 30 days, such as the dreadful Paris Hilton comedy THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE (link), the long-anticipated man vs. monster flick REPTILICANT (link), the Sci-Fi Channel stinker HEATSTROKE (link), and the first fresh installment of my "From Here To Obscurity" series over at Dread Central focusing on a hard-to-find, late-Seventies, possessed car flick called CRASH! made by a young pre-puppet fetish Charles Band (link).

Though I have yet to record a new installment of the Foycast, I have recorded a 37-minute piece of audio for the Foywonder.com audio player. Working with a half-written review of Jessica Alba's THE EYE remake, a few written notes on the alleged comedy OVER HER DEAD BODY, and completely winging a review of the atrocious remake of SHUTTER, I go ghostbustin' on three recently released ghostly stinkers. You can listen to that whatever-you-want-to-call-it audio by CLICKING HERE and selecting the right show. Before anyone asks, we are working on making these audio shows available for download. I really need to come up with a name for this audio broadcast.

Now that I think about it, man, I was more productive the last 31 days than I thought I was.

 

PILOT ERROR 2: EXO-MAN & INFILTRATOR

 

I promised back in March's Foyeurism PILOT ERROR that there would be another Foyeurism devoted to failed television pilots. With IRON MAN a hit in theaters I figured what better time than now to do another installment of pilot error; this time featuring two cybernetic crimefighters that rightfully failed to get picked up by the networks.

Have you seen IRON MAN? Really good movie. Assuming you've seen it, remember the trial & error scenes showing Tony Stark building and perfecting his suit of armor? Remember how those scenes were brief, witty, and often interrupted by other story elements? It all flowed so well and was entertaining. The failed 1977 TV-movie pilot EXO-MAN has its share off trial & error scenes, but these scenes are the exact opposite in terms of entertainment value. Arduous, at times painstakingly detailed, devoid of any humor or even a Mr. Wizard level of educational interest - and they go on forever. The amount of screen time devoted to the hero experimenting to create his suit dwarfs the amount of time of him wearing it.

Every superhero movie has a romantic subplot crammed into it somewhere. It is the law. Usually the romantic subplot is the worst aspect of a superhero movie. That's not the case here if only because of #1. These two are total wet drips whenever they get together and you can actually hear the film grind to a halt whenever their soap opera melodramatics kick in. Her character is almost completely detached from the events of the story aside from being the hero's girlfriend.

I realize that movie-length pilots were the norm at the time but there was no reason for this pilot to have been 90-minutes. This should have been an hour long pilot (with commercials), tops. The actual exo-suit - the reason we're watching this dreck - doesn't come make an appearance until around the one-hour mark and it's total on-screen time is probably about five minutes, maybe a little more if you count the scene where it breaks down and our hero is trapped inside struggling to get free.

As slow as the movie moves it's nothing compared to how slow Exo-Man moves. Our hero may go from paraplegic to walking armored crimefighter but that doesn't mean he can outrun a guy in a wheelchair. What I wouldn't give to have seen a foot race between Exo-Man and Frankenstein's Monster. There's nothing at all exciting about a superhero that bad guys can easily run away from; Exo-Man has to rely on criminals either cornering themselves or doing something really dumb so that he can catch up and capture them. Though, admittedly, there's something pretty damn funny about watching bad guys flee from the world's slowest superhero.

Those were four of the reasons EXO-MAN failed to become a weekly series. The fifth, and most likely reason EXO-MAN suffered a more egregious case of pilot error, have a look at the show's titular armored crimefighter.

Dr. Who's most feared nemesis: The Rubbermaid Men

So, uh, chain mail for the arms and legs... Upper torso and head resembles a garbage receptacle droid some kid built in his garage for Halloween circa 1963. I showed a few clips of Exo-Man in action to my niece and nephew and you should have seen the looks on their faces. They got this look of "What the hell is that stupid looking thing?" upon first getting a gander at it. That was quickly followed by robust laughter are they watched it waddle along as speeds so slow it makes C3P0 looks like Jesse Owens.

The exo-suit looks so stupid it's actually a million shades of awesomeness. They seemed to be going for something of a retro 1940's sci-fi serial sort of way, but for a late 1970's TV pilot that's supposed to be taken seriously this exo-suit is nothing short of an embarrassment - of riches! Had this show gone to series this is what criminals would be living in fear of? A crippled guy in a suit of cybernetic armor so silly looking it would make even Commander Cody bust a gut laughing at it.

Even before college professor Nicholas Conrad (David Ackroyd, no relation to Dan) becomes the super-armored crimefighter Exo-Man he was already a super swell guy. Highly athletic, a brilliant scientist, a romantic, a teacher so dedicated that when one of his star students keeps getting caught sleeping in class he'll offer to co-sign a loan so the student can quit his night job and concentrate on his studies. Isn't he the ginchiest? Professor Conrad also drives a swanky Sixties-style European Porsche that looks like it came straight out of Diabolik's garage. Just how much money does this teaching position pay?

Even before Nick Conrad gets transformed into the superheroic Exo-Man he was already fighting the forces of felonious fiends. A trio of the most inept bank robbers in bad 70's TV cop show history - we're talking panty-hose over the heads types - make the mistake of trying to hold up the bank where Nick is co-signing the loan for his student. The criminals are so terrible at their job that the bank guard actually manages to gun down two of them even before Professor-Man springs into action. How often in programming like this do bank guards during a robbery get the drop on the robbers? I mean, really now?

The third crook that looks like a dimestore Burt Reynolds makes a run for it. For reasons only known to Nicolas Conrad, he and he alone must give chase; a foot chase ensues that's like a 1970's cop show obstacle course complete with cars that randomly back out seemingly on cue. Conrad apprehends the incompetent thief, who lets Professor-Man know there will be serious repercussions for his citizen's arrest.

Enter the true villain: Kermit, not the frog. Looking one top hat away from being the Monopoly guy, Jose Ferrer is Kermit, a local crime boss who owes a favor to another (never seen, never heard) crime boss whose son was the mustachioed bank robber Professor-Man caught. The favor: deal with this do-gooder so he won't be able to testify. And what a plan he's come up with.

STEP 1: They rig his Porsche to explode upon being started. Alas, they only succeed in killing one of the Conrad's lab students who he sent out for pizza. Yeah, as if a guy who owned a Porsche like that would ever loan it to a student just to make a fast food run.

Why should Professor Conrad let a little thing like being targeted for death by the mob get in the way of his daily jog, and while he's at it, what better time to show off how fast he is by leaving his police protection in the dust? Brilliant professor, huh?

STEP 2: A hired thug with a lead pipe attacks the professor in the laundry room of his apartment building. This seems like a major step down from planting car bombs if you ask me. Yet it still proves slightly more successful in that a single blow to the back is all it takes to break the professor's spine, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down - but not silenced. This run-by piping takes the concept of getting whacked by the mob to dizzying new heights.

I found myself wondering why the bad guys didn't just go the most obvious route and threaten to kill Conrad's girlfriend if he testified. Wouldn't that be a much easier method of shutting him up without having to plant explosive devices or have Colonel Mustard send Professor Plum to the laundromat to commit an attempted murder with a lead pipe? No sooner did I find myself thinking this...

STEP 3: Call the professor in the hospital right as the police are questioning him about his attack and tell him if he testifies against anyone they'll kill his girlfriend. This works. See; I told you. The professor tells the cops he can't remember anything because he's developed amnesia. Getting smacked across the back really hard will do that to you.

The once active professor is released from the hospital and begins a life of bitterness and seclusion. Finally prodded into leaving his apartment by future soap opera hunk A Martinez, Conrad practically moves into his campus lab where he'll toil away night and day experimenting with electromagnetic waves to move metallic matter. It is here that the dullness truly sets in.

Professor Conrad's inital idea of building a superpowered Mickey Mouse costume was a failure

EXO-MAN contains as much unspoken scientific hypothesizing and trial & error experimentation that one could ever ask for in a program such as this. The network insisted on a movie-length pilot and that means there's plenty of time to fill and, by god, they're going to fill it with whatever they damn well please. So if they want us to watch the professor silently experiment with his metal-magnets-whateverathingy techno-babble, at no time cluing those of us watching in on what exactly he's trying to accomplish until he's finally accomplished it, then that's what we're going to watch and watch and watch. Don't forget he's also got a girlfriend and their relationship has been strained since his accident. That means when he's not experimenting, he's moping, whining, or getting all melodramatic with his lady. Gee, I can't imagine why this never got picked up for series.

After enough experimentation segments to make even Mr. Wizard change channels, Professor Conrad has a breakthrough. Brace yourselves: he figures out you can make metal move with magnets!

A trip to his girlfriend's art gallery inspires him to build a suit of armor. Cue more lengthy vague experimentation scenes that show him using metal and magnetic waves to walk. He'll then purchases a beige delivery van outfitted for paraplegic drivers and heads to the home of the thug who broke his back to tell the guy that he's going to the cops tomorrow to rat on him and his boss. This leads to the thug, retiring his pipe in favor of a more efficient firearm, being sent that evening to Conrad's new "bat cave" of sorts in the downtown district. Barely prepared for the confrontation he instigated, Nick Conrad crawls inside this tanning booth-like contraption in the back of his truck that lowers a lid molding him into his exo-suit, freshness sealing him in the ridiculous looking attire.

The life-size Exo-Man Playdough Fun Factory could've been one of the top Christmas gifts of 1977

Now to give you another reason why this show never made it to series allow me describe Conrad's first go as the absurd-looking Exo-Man. Moving ridiculously slow, he's lucky his suit is bulletproof - almost bulletproof. The shooting couldn't penetrate the armor but did cause a power failure. His gun having no effect and cornered in an alley by a walking waste receptacle, the terrified thug tries to escape. By escape I mean he starts climbing a drain pipe up the side of the building only to get 2-3 stories up and fall to his death.

Meanwhile, the power failure causes Exo-Man to stagger like Fred Sanford faking a heart attack. Finally collapsing in a pile of garbage, an incapacitated Conrad starts suffocating because the thing is airtight, oxygen supply is cutoff, and he can't reach any of his wrist or thigh buttons. This was, undoubtedly, the most harrowing near suffocation to occur on network television until that very special PUNKY BREWSTER episode "that no parent should have miss" where Punky's best friend got herself locked inside a discarded refrigerator and had to be revived afterward with CPR. Truly riveting stuff.

Thankfully, Exo-Man will be rescued by a Dickensian street urchin who happens upon our fallen, suffocating hero, while foraging for scraps in a nearby garbage can. In a TV pilot in which a crippled guy seals himself up inside a self-made battlesuit that looks like a sight gag from THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, I suppose questioning the decision to portray a vagrant child in 1970's Southern California as looking like a Victorian Era chimney sweep just doesn't seem all that unheard of.

The Sci-Fi Channel original movie: OLIVER TWIST VS. EXO-MAN

So to recap the Crippled Avenger's first outing as the super-armored crimefighter Exo-Man: he barely did anything and then keeled over, the bad guy would have escaped had he not done something incredibly stupid and even then he'd have gotten away had it not been for sheer bad luck, and then the good guy would have died had Tiny Tim not come along to help save him by pressing a button on his costume our hero couldn't reach. Is it any wonder EXO-MAN never made it to series?

Later, Conrad tearfully tells his girlfriend the truth and is especially sad because he didn't intend to kill the guy and doesn't want to be responsible for anyone's death. So a hired goon who crippled him for life and attempted to shoot him to death stupidly tried climbing up a building and fell to his death because a brick came loose and our hero cries because he feels guilty? Again I say, is there any wonder EXO-MAN didn't become a weekly series?

I should also make mention that Harry Morgan of DRAGNET fame shows up a couple of times as a special agent for what sounds from his description like a black ops, state-run, anti-crime group - only in California, folks, who fills paralyzed professor Conrad in on details of who had what done to him. It's apparent if the show had been picked-up Morgan would have served as the guy who Exo-Man would have performed freelance crimefighting work for.

Guilt or no guilt, malfunctioning body suit or not, Conrad still decides to finish the job. He drives his van to Kermit's estate and suits up. He'll rip through the electrified fence. It seems the suit somehow has super strength - we didn't see that experiment. The first round of henchmen try to ram him with a jeep, but Exo-Man doesn't budge and they hit with such impact that they get thrown from the jeep. Exo-Man then turns Kool-Aid Man as he smashes through the wall of Kermit's study.

KOOL-AID EXO-MAN: OH, YEAH!!!

And the exciting conclusion... Exo-Man slowly stalks Kermit through his house. Oh, the suspense! The old man probably could have gotten away too had he not gone and backed himself in a vault with nowhere to run. Exo-Man rips through the door and finally confronts the man responsible for serving as the middleman to people he doesn't seem to care about who were the ones that actually ordered the hit on him. Face-to-visor with Kermit, Exo-Man reaches out and... and... snatches a ledger from the crime boss' hands as the scene abruptly ends.

"Pardon me, but have you any Grey Poupon?"

Yep, that's it. The best part of the entire movie pilot and still it ends in the most anti-climactic manner possible. Go to YouTube, type in "Exo-Man", and you should find some clips of this finale. It'll save you the time of ever seeking out and or watching the movie itself.

The final scene reveals Kermit has been arrested after someone anonymously left the incriminating ledger in Harry Morgan's trash bin. Everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

I'll ask one last time, is it any wonder EXO-MAN never got picked up for series?

M.A.N.T.I.S., I knew Exo-Man. Exo-Man was a friend of mine. M.A.N.T.I.S., you were no Exo-Man!

Is there any one actor more closely associated with concept of human teleportation than Scott Bakula? James Doohan, maybe. But Scott Bakula has to be a close second. QUANTUM LEAP was based entirely around the concept of a scientist who stepped into a transporter device that sent him leaping in and out of the bodies of others throughout time and as Captain Archer on STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE Bakula sometimes had to work with a transporter that beamed people up. Bakula's love affair with teleportation would begin in 1987 with a failed pilot that cast him as a scientist who invents a teleporter. Scott Bakula starring in a new version of THE FLY seems inevitable at this point. When scientists finally do invent a matter transporter they ought to just name it "The Bakula".

"Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Automan stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished ...."

As for this particular rejected series, INFILTRATOR is a primo example of a completely workable idea that somewhere along the way got transformed into a completely unworkable pilot. Combining elements of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, THE FLY, and KNIGHT RIDER, a scientist's teleportation experiment fusing him on a molecular level with an experimental space probe resulting in his ability to transform into a superpowered robot whenever he feels threatened is not a bad idea for a TV show. However, the pilot for INFILTRATOR is nothing short of disastrous. Bad writing. Bad acting. Pretty much bad everything. There's really no excuse for this pilot falling flat on its face the way it does except for crummy writing.

Hamming it up to a grating degree, Scott Bakula stars as Dr. Sanderson, an annoying man-child of a scientist who invents teleportation. More infantile than intelligent, Dr. Sanderson is like Val Kilmer's character from REAL GENIUS as played by Adam Sandler. Running straight into the camera and yelling "Yabba dabba doo!” Sanderson’s introductory scene sets the stage for the immaturity to come. You got major problems right away when the hero of your show is this obnoxious. Once he began singing a Doo Wop version of THE JETSONS theme I came to realize I truly detested him. Dr. Sam Beckett, this most definitely is not.

Dr. Sanderson has the hots for the pretty Dr. Langdon (actress Deborah Farantino in one her first roles.) He's smitten with her to the point of obsession. Most women would get a restraining order if continuously hounded by a guy who behaved like this. His behavior borders on stalking, or, at the very least, sexual harassment. His reaction to her spurning his advances includes getting down on his knees, hugging her legs, and begging in a (supposedly) comical manner for her to come to his pigsty of a lab to see how he successfully teleported a pencil. Dr. Langdon (rightfully) thinks he's an immature creep, only willing tolerate him because they both work for the same high tech research corporation owned by the perpetually yachting gazillionaire, John J. Stewart.

Sanderson comes up with a brilliant idea that he's convinced will help prove to her that he has invented teleportation and win her heart in the process: teleport himself directly into her lab. Oh, sure, he's only just reached the point of being able to teleport something as tiny and artificial like a pencil (and even that ended up half burnt in the process), but so obsessed is he with this leggy lady scientist that he's willing to risk death by using himself as a test subject in a juvenile attempt to impress a girl. This is clearly not the actions of a true genius or a person who has ever seen THE FLY for that matter. The good news for him is that he teleported into her lab successfully. The bad news is that he teleported right onto the pillar where sat the $200 million deep space probe called "Infiltrator" Dr. Langdon had been working on. Robo-Fly, anyone?

Dr. Langdon is not only mortified to find this horny, immature lunatic in her lab yet again, when the smoke settles and she realizes Infiltrator is gone, she immediately thinks him a thief too. Call the cops? No. She'll just go pay John J. Stewart a personal visit on his luxury yacht to brief him on the situation. The fact that one of his scientists has invented teleportation doesn't even register with him - all he wants is his $200 million space probe back. Priorities, people.

A run-in with one of Stewart's henchmen causes Sanderson to undergo his first transformation. To be specific, his entire arm morphs into the most bitchin' Nintendo Power Glove you've ever seen. He and Langdon realize that his teleportation caused him to fuse with the Infiltrator probe on a cellular level - the last time Sanderson's invention of teleportation is ever mentioned. Shouldn't inventing teleportation still be a much bigger deal even considering the unfortunate circumstances?

Captain Archer's Borg assimilation wasn't nearly as thrilling a season-ending cliffhanger as when Star Trek: The Next Generation did it

Now instead of just instantly hulking up when angered like Bruce Banner, Dr. Sanderson's Infiltrator transformation is a three stage process based on the amount of physical and emotional duress he's enduring at the time. The Infiltrator probe had been programmed with survival skills so it can determine on its own whenever it should kick into action based on how threatened it/Sanderson feels; Sanderson has virtually no control over any of its actions once the metamorphosis begins. On the plus side, being genetically fused with a satellite seemed to grow him up quite a bit personality-wise.

STAGE ONE: When Sanderson's tense he develops infra-red robo vision and super hearing. He can hear your heart beat, zoom in on things miles away, spot invisible footprints on the floor, and topographically map terrain. He can even spot a cavity in someone's tooth from several feet away - a power that no doubt would have come in quite handy when battling the forces of evil had INFILTRATOR gone to series.

STAGE TWO: Upon suffering extreme emotional duress and/or physical pain he'll develop that robotic hand that can even shoot a dinky laser beam from its index finger. Actually, any injured part of his body will go robotic during this phase. We'll get to see him walking around in what looks like cybernetic moon boots later on. Gene Simmons would have killed for a pair of those.

STAGE THREE: In mortal danger he undergoes a full robotic transformation. When those survival skills kick in full blast Infiltrator will fully override Dr. Sanderson's mind and morph him into a fully robotic being that looked to me like HAL 9000 and Robocop had a baby. This invulnerable robotic form possesses superhuman strength and is decorated with enough glowing bling to make the average raver jealous. Sanderson will have no memory of anything that goes on during the full transformation.

A battery of stress tests Sanderson undergoes won't be able to set it off because he knows they're just harmless tests, but traveling on the Los Angeles freeway with Langdon, who drives like a mad woman, that's enough make his hand transform and blast the hood off a honking vehicle with a finger laser. Just because no one makes actually cracks a joke about giving the finger to another car in LA traffic doesn't make the joke any less funny or this scene any dopier. The writing here constantly shoots itself in the foot, which would then, most likely, turn robotic.

The whole second half of the hour-long pilot has the two doctors searching for a means by which to undo the fusion. This cannot even be contemplated without using the Infiltrator blueprints. Problem is those blueprints have been stolen by a disgruntled scientist that used to work for Stewart's research firm and that now mad scientist resides on a heavily booby-trapped island like a villain from an old 1940's sci-fi serial from where he sets about trying to blackmail John J. Stewart. Loopy as that sounds, it might have still worked if the show had any imagination or the budget to bring that imagination to life. DANGER ISLAND from THE BANANA SPLITS show will prove more treacherous than anything the two doctors will encounter on this island.

Here in lies the biggest problem with the already poorly written INFILTRATOR pilot: Infiltrator has nothing to do. There is a foil but this foil isn't really an enemy in the typically villainous sense and the means by which they go about dealing with this sort of bad guy is, well, quite lame. By the time they're yachting off to the island it was easy to tell the makers of INFILTRATOR never seemed to have a firm grasp on the concept of their own show. The story feels geared solely at little kids yet the writing isn't kiddy enough to appeal that target demographic and for adults INFILTRATOR feels like an extraordinarily dumb introductory episode for a primetime superhero series that offers little by way of superheroics. When Bill Bixby transformed into a painted green Lou Ferrigno it typically resulted in The Incredible Hulk either using his rage-fueled might to rescue someone or thrash the hell out of some bad guys. The pilot's one big transformation sequence results in our hero vandalizing some computer equipment and trashing a lab to such a degree he inadvertently kills a scientist, albeit a mad scientist, in a manner that occurs off-camera. Infiltrator nearly abandons the woman in peril to boot. Some hero.

If they mated: The Guyver and an outdoor air conditioning unit

Some villain too... Heavily-guarded, you say? The island's high-tech defenses include heat-seeking torpedoes (admittedly dangerous), surveillance equipment galore (not terribly dangerous), and the most state-of-the-art defense of all: doors hidden behind shrubbery. Once inside the facility Sanderson will face such dangers as sliding doors, random air vents, a single easily-defeated wall laser, and, most treacherous of all, a mad scientist so diabolical he dares tie a woman to a chair. I guess there were no railroads on the island to tie her too instead. And to think John J. Stewart will tell them beforehand that every attempt he's made to send in commandos to infiltrate the island has met with failure. Yeah, right.

Sanderson politely asks for a copy of the Infiltrator blueprints. Mad scientist says no. Langdon then tries asking nicely. Mad scientist starts screaming about them being Stewart's henchmen. Mad scientist then reveals that the Infiltrator blueprints exist only in his head and then he turns on what I think was supposed to be the slowest acting poison gas in existence. This causes Sanderson to fully transform into Infiltrator for the very first time on-camera - a previous transformation was only hinted at.

The anti-climactic climax has Infiltrator destroying numerous Commodore 64's, the mad scientist somehow ending up dead, Langdon somehow ending up rescued, and when Bakula awakens afterwards in shredded clothing like he'd been caught in a Looney Tunes bomb blast, John J. Stuart informs him he's going to fund their research to get the probe out of him, but in the meantime Stuart plans to use him for "solving problems" ala KNIGHT RIDER. Lame.

Worst of all, by show's end we're supposed to believe that Dr. Langdon is starting to fall for Dr. Sanderson. I'll buy into the notion of a mad scientist on an island and a guy who can transform into a walking Death Star before I'll ever believe this woman would be attracted to a guy who makes Rob Schneider seem less obnoxious. Not only that, she even says she blames herself for all that has happened to Sanderson because she didn't take the time to look at his teleporter. Yeah, if only she'd taken time out of her busy life to play with her stalker none of this would have happened - just like with Rebecca Schaeffer.

"I'm a scientist, not the Incredible Hulk." - Dr. Sanderson

"Dude, you're not even Super Force." - The Foywonder

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE CYBORG