July 26, 1996
Today in Slam Evil Summer catch-up I have a double feature of films released on the same day, both about wayward youth traveling around having adventures, getting into trouble, and finding parental figures. The first of these youths is a wooden puppet voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas (THE LION KING).
I did see THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO at the time, and vaguely remembered it having a good puppet (by Jim Henson Creature Shop), an animated cricket, Udo Kier as the bad guy, and especially (since I was still cleaning theaters) two original Stevie Wonder songs on the end credits (“Kiss Lonely Good-Bye” and “Hold On To Your Dream,” and he also provided an instrumental called “Pinocchio’s Evolution”). I think I found it watchable enough. I always like animatronics and seeing different takes on Pinocchio, so I was down to watch it again.
It’s the fourth film from “Billie Jean” video director Steve Barron, following ELECTRIC DREAMS, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and CONEHEADS – a master of movies with elaborate special effects that make them seem sort of good without being very actually good. In my opinion. It makes sense that this is from New Line Cinema. It’s a pretty New Line Cinema movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990) is a martial arts fantasy produced by Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest (ENTER THE DRAGON), with excellent animatronic and puppet effects by Jim Henson, and impressively agile fight and stunt sequences involving people in full body rubber creature suits. It has early performances by Elias Koteas and Sam Rockwell, and stuntwork by Ernie Reyes Jr. One major problem, though: it’s about teenage mutant ninja turtles.
