FANTASIA OBSCURA: A Recycled Serial Made Rock ‘n’ Roll
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, there’s a lot to be said in favor of taking more than one joke over the line…
J-Men Forever (1979)
Distributed by: International Harmony
Directed by: Richard Patterson
And they say recycling is a wholesome activity…
It started with Patterson being granted access to the Republic Studios vault in 1975, where he made a super-cut Western out of 75 (!) of their films called Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, a love letter to the heroes on the range, featuring 25 of them going up against every desperado in the West.
Encouraged, Patterson considered doing something similar with Republic’s action serials, during which point Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman of Firesign Theater got involved. And with their input, the final product was… well, “a departure” probably covers it…
Note: There will be spoilers, though as you’ll see below, if this film is viewed as intended, you won’t remember any of this anyway…
We open with an assault against the pillars of society, as a warehouse full of polka records gets blown up. This is followed by death to those who possess little electric bug totems, among them record execs Lawrence Milk and Jive Davis and big band leader “Scream” Dorsey.
All the while as these crimes are committed, the mastermind behind them chortles and taunts off screen: the Lightning Bug (voiced by M. G. Kelly). From his base on the Moon, he declares a secret war on Earth, which he hopes to conquer through… pirate rock ‘n roll radio stations:
This declaration of war mobilizes the “J-Men,” an organization of dedicated scientists, agents, and men of action, to rise up and counter the insidious music that they barely understand, never having encountered it before…
It’s not all listening parties for the J-Men, however, as the Lightning Bug is willing to introduce other weapons, such as transistors for miniature radios to get the signal out to as many folk as possible…
And as action in the field gets more heated, the chief of the J-Men (Bergman) and his stooge right-hand man Agent Barton (Proctor) call upon their specialists, like Lone Star, Spy Swatter, and the Caped Madman, to bring to bear the best the US can muster, despite the wanton collateral damage they all do.
And yes, this is the titular lead from The Adventures of Captain Marvel himself. Not only does he cause catastrophic damage as we observed ourselves, but he comments with glee the whole time about what a rush it is being a living natural disaster.
And such a disaster this war turns into, with many casualties on both sides as J-Men and villains alike meet horrible ignoble deaths as the Chief and Barton just chalk it up, casually watching things go to hell like Nixon overseeing Vietnam.
Which is not an unfair comparison. In many ways, the J-Men (funhouse) mirror the attitudes and stated thinking of Nixon going to war, both against the North Vietnamese and (supposedly) on drugs themselves. The script Proctor and Bergman wrote is clearly a pointed response to Nixon and the times he engendered, and one feels the cathartic release they project as we watch them exchange blow-by-blow quips between law and order, and the other side that they have a lot more respect for.
And with the effective editing together of such films as Adventures of Captain Marvel, Captain America, Radar Men from the Moon, and Zombies of the Stratosphere, among others, there’s a strong visual element evoked from all these films overlaid with the comedic script. Keeping up a comedic tradition that dates back to at least What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, the film manages to keep the jokes coming fast enough that there’s little room for flagging on a dull spot.
While the J-Men ultimately succeed (despite the damage done) against the Lightning Bug, the film they were in did not succeed at first. Released theatrically in 1979, the movie did not gain much traction, and had trouble finding an audience. However, International Harmony’s head, Stuart Shapiro, was able to bring the film with him to USA Network in 1981, when he co-developed for them the overnight programming bloc Night Flight. The film found itself becoming a cult obsession as each subsequent airing drew bigger audiences each time.
And as the audiences found its film, they discovered something: That for all its crudities and snark, the one thing that came through Patterson and co.’s work was an underlying respect for the classics. While we watch and hear about the deaths of the J-Men called in to fight the Lightning Bug, at the end of the film, the Chief notes with admiration how resilient they all are, at which point we go back to the death scenes we’d seen earlier, but this time also get the scenes of their escape that would have been in the next segment of the serial.
Clearly, the creators of the mash-up’s admiration for their subjects was as high as their characters were after they lit up…
NEXT TIME: C’est la guerre! Or is it, if you just ignore it…?
