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The Incredible Hulk (1977)
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Perry is joined this week by comic fan and returning guest, D. Ashley Stockdale, to look back at the TV movie/backdoor pilot for The Incredible Hulk TV series! We discuss the changes made from the comics to make it more appealing to TV viewers and how good a job it did.
Want to tell us what you think? Have any questions or comments for Perry about superheroes in media or comics? Leave a voice message to play on the show. You can also apply to be a guest on the show.
Patrons get to listen to episodes before everyone else, no ads, and they also get access to my exclusive companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. If you want to join in, please consider supporting us through Patreon!
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Transcript
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Podcast Introduction and Guest Background
00:01:59
Speaker
Now there seems to be some malfunction in the EEG. Dr. Banner himself has... David? David, is that you?
00:02:23
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. And it's been a long time since we've had him on, but we're welcoming back returning guests, and that is Ashley Stockdale. Ashley, how you doing today? Good, Perry. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. So it's been a minute since you've been on the show, so why don't you give listeners a little reminder of who you are and what you do.
Pandemic Reflections and Transition Back to Normalcy
00:02:45
Speaker
Well, I am an English teacher over in Japan. I've been here for about 21 years now and I am kind of a longtime comic book fan and a big superhero movie fan. I was on the Black Widow episode and Punisher Warzone, I believe, which seemed to be about a year and a half ago. Time flies when you're in a pandemic.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's been a while a lot of episodes since then I was actually kind of surprised me when I looked back to see the last time you were on and just how much how much stuff has come out since then my Spotify scroll was going
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah. Fortunately, we've had no shortage of guests who wanted to come on the show. So it's been good. It's good to have you back on, especially now that we're officially now coming out of the pandemic here in Japan, which is how we know each other, because my university classes this semester are all going to be back in person. So they sprung that up to me at the last minute, and they sent me an email saying, oh, yeah, your classes will be remote. And the next day, they sent me another email saying, no, no, they're going to be in person. Wow, really? When did that happen? Like just a few days ago?
00:03:54
Speaker
This is just about a month ago now. They had set the full schedule of all the classes, saying, here are all the room assignments. And mine still said remote. And then the next day, they said all classes are going to be in class. So we'll see how it works. I have to go in today and see if I still know how to use the classrooms. Took a while to get used to all the equipment and stuff. And now it's like, ah, how do I open this? How do I turn this on? What's the Wi-Fi password?
Current Entertainment Interests
00:04:23
Speaker
Exactly, yeah. Well, before we jump into the movie discussion, what I do with guests lately is I'm asking them what kind of thing is grabbing your interest lately? It can be movies, comics, TV, video games, anything like that. What are you kind of interested in or fixated on these days? Well, what I decided to do, I kind of made myself a New Year's resolution to watch more movies.
00:04:49
Speaker
I figured that would be doable. So since January 1st, I've watched 100 films. Wow, nice. Yeah.
00:04:57
Speaker
I've been kind of going into little rabbit holes and kind of getting caught up on things that I missed. You know, a lot of things from the 60s and 70s that I was way too young for and then just never got around to. So catching up on, you know, old Jack Nicholson films. I finally watched Mash for the first time. Very problematic film nowadays. I noticed that the 1970s was pretty rapey.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of that going on in movies back then. Yeah. And then I watched the six or seven Takeshi Kitano movies in the last month or so. My 100th film yesterday was Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, which I have not seen yet. OK. So are you on letterboxed? I'm not on there, no. I go in once in a while, but yeah, I don't have time to say anything.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, but I use it to keep track of the movies I watch. So I don't often review stuff on there, but I just use it to keep track of stuff and go and watch. Oh, so I watched this last night and watched this. So that's a good way to keep track of my movie progress. Might be easier to share. I just have an Excel spreadsheet.
00:06:12
Speaker
I was thinking of trying to see which directors I've been favoring, what actors. I seem to have a lot of George Clooney on my list right now. Obviously a lot of Kitano. Lots of Brad Pitt somehow.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, but Letterboxd is great. Like I even started using it, you know, making a list of because, you know, every we've covered so many movies now on this show. And so people are always asked when they want to come on. They're like, I don't know what to pick. So I'm like, OK, we'll hear the movies I have that I haven't been on the show yet. So if you want to talk about one of these, then let's go with that. And that's been if you there's something else, just let me know. So that's been a good way to keep track of stuff.
00:06:50
Speaker
Um, yeah, and it's very helpful to, um, keep track of stuff that way. And, uh, so it shows me, so I can look back and see like all the movies I've watched, uh, this year. Doesn't have a running total though, unfortunately. So it just, but it just lists them all by date that I recorded them on. Um,
00:07:07
Speaker
But for me, last night, I had watched the first episode of the season three premiere of Superman and Lois. So I'm finally getting back into that. So I'm starting to get into season three now. And it was really good. I'm not sure if you've seen any of it yet, but I think I'm midway through season two. OK, yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
I'm kind of off and on with it, I get distracted by other things, and then I forget to go back. And for me, it's not really a show that I really feel like I need to concentrate on. So I often put it on in a corner of my screen when I'm doing something else.
00:07:42
Speaker
That's good, yeah. I really enjoyed it. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with this, especially because we're not sure if this is the last season or not. So they got a new actor playing Jonathan this season too. So that was a little bit jarring because at least in the first episode, he hasn't quite found his way into the role yet, but it's not a bad performance. But I do find myself missing the previous actor because I really enjoy him in it. That's the son that doesn't have powers.
00:08:11
Speaker
Right, yeah, yeah. Okay. And does the actor look quite similar or not? Not complete, not quite. Like they kind of in some scenes they look similar, but in other scenes he's got a very, he's got a different hairstyle as like the biggest thing that throws me off. Okay. Yeah, the original actor was having some mental health issues, was that right?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, something like that. I think he said he was struggling with depression or something along those lines. I had also heard something, I don't know if this is true or not, but there were some vaccine issues as well. But again, I'm not one, that was just something I heard through the internet, so who knows how true it is.
00:08:52
Speaker
Now who's broadcasting that show? I forget. Which network? Is that a CW show? Yeah, that's a CW show. So I've been using VPN and CWC to catch up on it. So that's how I get to watch it. Is the CW still going?
00:09:10
Speaker
It's still going, yeah, it got bought out and there's a lot of structural changes, but some shows are sticking around. Walker's pretty popular. Kung Fu, the new version of Kung Fu is pretty popular. The Winchester's, the supernatural spin-off, that's pretty popular too. Is that a prequel?
00:09:28
Speaker
I haven't seen it yet, but just from what I know of what people have told me, it's kind of a prequel, kind of a reboot, but it's supposed to be a prequel, but there are some things that don't quite fit in.
00:09:43
Speaker
Okay guys, sorry about the background noise in there. My daughter wanted a little bit of attention, so she's riding co-pilot with me right now. We'll see how long this lasts before she gets bored and wants to do something else. Or falls asleep, one of the two will usually happen. But anyway, today we are discussing The Incredible Hulk, not the Ed Norton movie, but instead we're talking about the pilot episode of the Bill Bixby television show.
Incredible Hulk TV Show Discussion
00:10:08
Speaker
which is actually a movie in itself. In fact, Netflix here in Japan does not have the show, but they've got that pilot as a movie in its own right. So this is obviously the pilot of the very famous show starring Bill Bixby as David Banner, which we'll talk about in a minute, and Lou Ferrigno plays the Hulk.
00:10:29
Speaker
Obviously, this was really big in the late 70s, early 80s. It was kind of like... Best way to describe the show is basically the fugitive, but if Richard Kimball turned into a green monster. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think it was... That seemed to be a standard of shows around that era. I would say the fugitive is similar to that kung fu is somewhat like that, even highway to heaven.
00:10:56
Speaker
You know, the Michael Landon show where he's a traveling angel helping people out.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So has the pursuing thing with the reporter. But yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I say the fugitive because that's like the most closest comparison. But yeah, you're right. Kung Fu definitely had that whole idea of like the wandering hero type of thing, right? You know, have gun will travel was another one like that, too. Oh, yeah. Which was we had the littlest. Are you familiar with the littlest hobo from Canada?
00:11:26
Speaker
Oh, I've heard of that. It sounds familiar, but we're seeing a traveling dog. It's a like a, I think a Husky mix. And he just goes from town to town helping people in need. Sometimes it's, you know, a kid who can't get their homework done on time. Sometimes it's a Russian ballerina defecting from the mob and the KGB are from Russia and the KGB is on her tail. So.
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, but there's also, you know, the equalizer, which was, you know, I don't think he moved around from place to place, but it was the still basic same idea of like, you know, this hero who's going around helping people. Quantum Leap even had that to an extent, too, right? It was he was instead of traveling from town to town, it was time period to time period. Yeah, it lends itself very well to episodic storytelling, because you can do basically anything you want.
00:12:12
Speaker
Right. I mean, that was the that was also the, you know, we were mentioning supernatural earlier that was they kind of brought that back for those early seasons. That's what it was. It was them going from town to town solving these different monster related supernatural related situations that would come up. So yeah, it's a very good format to use for for TV shows. And and obviously this really introduced the work the world to the Hulk.
00:12:36
Speaker
Now, I've only seen a handful of episodes of the TV show, right? It was, you know, I was born in 83. So it obviously ended before I was even born. And then it was, you know, it wasn't really in syndication everywhere. Every now and then, like, when I was growing up, my parents didn't have cable, my grandparents did. So never I'd stay over at their place, you know, sometimes they'd have it pop up on one of the
00:13:00
Speaker
the cable networks, there'd be an episode here, an episode there. So I don't have the same kind of affinity or familiarity with it that most people have, but what is your history with the Hulk TV show? Well, I was born in 1970, so I would have to say that probably this was my first introduction to the Hulk and possibly even superheroes in general. When did Superman come out? Same year?
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, 78, I believe. OK, so this was a little bit just before Superman came out. I mean, this was before right, because this pilot came out in 77 and the TV show started in 78. And of course, Wonder Woman. I think Wonder Woman started in 75. That was I think that was also 77. OK. I've made a note here. I believe that was 77.
00:13:55
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, at that time, it was kind of a bit of a heyday for superheroes on TV. There was kind of crappy Spider Man show as well.
00:14:06
Speaker
Right. Yeah, this was a this is a period when Marvel was really trying to get a lot of stuff out in media like back in the in the late in the 70s Stan Lee had actually that was actually when he had moved out to California and he was he was working really hard to try to bring Marvel stuff to to TV and movies So, you know, you got the Incredible Hulk TV show the Nicholas Hammond spider-man also the Japanese spider-man came out in the 70s as well and
00:14:33
Speaker
And in addition to that, there was also the Dr. Strange pilot for a TV show, which we had covered way early on and was surprisingly a lot better than I expected it to be. And it actually came out in 77, I believe.
00:14:49
Speaker
The Hulk made it, I think, quite a big success because I think it is actually the longest running of those superhero TV shows from the era. Yeah, five seasons, 80 episodes and five movies, I think. Three movies.
00:15:08
Speaker
They've got the, they consider the pilot to be a movie. Yeah, if you count the pilot, then it's four movies. But yeah, the three that came after it was, there were three that came after the show ended. There was The Return of the Incredible Hulk, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and The Death of the Incredible Hulk. And then there was a fourth, or there was a fifth one planned called The Revenge of the Incredible Hulk. But Bill Bixby had been diagnosed with cancer and then that had put it off. And then he had, he passed away. So then they scrapped it completely.
00:15:38
Speaker
But yeah, I also heard the ratings for death of Incredible Hulk were a little disappointing That was another thing too, right? It was it wasn't the ratings weren't that good because when they did death of the Incredible Hulk They were actually planning revenge of the Incredible Hulk to bring him back afterwards But then the ratings weren't that good and then Bill Bixby's cancers then they they just scrapped the whole thing entirely
00:15:59
Speaker
And they actually thought about, well, because those movies, Return of the Incredible Hulk introduced Thor, which was supposed to be a backdoor pilot, and then also Trial of the Incredible Hulk introduced Daredevil and Kingpin. Again, it's supposed to be a backdoor pilot.
00:16:15
Speaker
And early drafts of Death, one was supposed to include She-Hulk, and then later they were planning to do Iron Man. Neither one of them actually made it into the finished product. But those were initially the idea, like, well, let's see if we can introduce these other characters, too. Who played Kingpin, do you know?
00:16:35
Speaker
It was, oh, what was his name? He's Sala from the Indiana Jones movies and Gimli and Lord of the Rings. I'm blanking on his name. Oh yeah, John Rhys Davies. John Rhys Davies, yeah, that was it. Really? Wow, I have to take a look at that. Yeah, I've never seen any of those movies. From what I understand, the Daredevil one is a little bit better, like as far as, but the, at least from what people have said, and the Thor one's just kind of goofy.
00:17:01
Speaker
Well, see, I looked at the some of the I haven't seen it, but I looked at some of the, you know, images on the Internet and stuff of the Daredevil one. And it looks like he's wearing almost the same costume from the first season of the Netflix show. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The black and the black bandana around the top of his head.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Very similar, very similar to that. And that was, I'm not sure if the Man Without Fear miniseries had come out at that time or not, but that was where they were sitting in the Netflix show, I remember. Now, what about the Hulk in the comic books? Are you a big Hulk fan in the comics?
00:17:42
Speaker
I wouldn't say I'm a big Hulk fan. I mean I like the character but I can't honestly think of any like you know back especially back in the 80s when I first started collecting comic books. I can't really think of any big runs that I was interested in particularly. I don't know if I mentioned to you before but around I think 1983 was when Secret Wars came out.
00:18:05
Speaker
the gym shooter secret wars. I think it may have been eighty five eighty six but again I'm not one hundred percent certain.
00:18:12
Speaker
So yeah, I was in junior high school anyway. And so my friends and I just kind of stumbled across the first issue of Secret Wars. And when I opened that splash page where all the heroes are standing in their ship waiting to go down to the Beyonder planet or whatever, and I just saw that big spread of all the heroes and all the villains, I just got sucked right in. And I had been familiar with the big, I would say in the 70s, maybe the big five,
00:18:40
Speaker
would have been Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk, and possibly Wonder Woman, with a little bit of interest in Flash and the other Justice League members. But other than that, not really a lot of mainstream attention.
00:18:55
Speaker
So that kind of really sucked me in. And then just following on from there, we, uh, one of the girls in my class said, Oh, you guys like comic books? I have some comic books. Come and get them. So we went to her house and she literally gave us a thousand comic books. Holy crap. And we took them back to my house and spread them out in the basement by, you know, uh,
00:19:20
Speaker
title. And then we took turns picking titles and agreed to kind of try to collect those titles. And then every several months, we would swap our collections and all get to read the next run. So I started out with mostly the X books and the mutants. Yeah. Awesome. That's that's that's I wish someone to give me 1000 comics when I was I did definitely
00:19:47
Speaker
While you were talking, I did double check, and it was 1984. That Secret Wars came out. Okay. So you were right on that. Me, I was never a big Hulk reader in the comic books. My first real big exposure to him solo was probably the Bruce Jones run from the early
00:20:07
Speaker
the
00:20:25
Speaker
Mark Wade did a run to, and Jason Aaron. The most recent stuff, The Immortal Hulk, that Al Ewing did, which was amazing. That was definitely really good. But yeah, it's a- I would say, actually, my very first Hulk comic, I don't know if you've ever read this, was a DC Marvel crossover of Batman versus The Hulk. Oh, no. I didn't even know about that. I know there had been, like- I believe it's DC Super Special Number 27. OK.
00:20:56
Speaker
And from my recollection, it takes place in a prison. And it's basically just a long fight between the Hulk and Batman. So it's basically like they fight and then they're friends and then they go their separate ways.
00:21:13
Speaker
And I just we had a giant sized kind of issue, you know, like an A3 size paper issue like that. I believe there was another one I could be totally Mandela affecting. But I think there was a Spiderman Superman one as well.
00:21:29
Speaker
There was a Spider-Man Superman one. That I do, definitely. I've never read it, but I do remember it existing. I think, I'm not sure. I know that Superman and the Hulk fought in Marvel versus DC, but I don't remember if there was also a, I've got a, this also may be a Mandela effect thing, but I've got a memory of like a Superman-Hulk crossover comic as well. But again, I might just be mixing things up and my memory, my mind just might be Mandela effecting as well. Yeah, I think they were little friendlier, the two companies at that point.
00:22:00
Speaker
Well, yeah, back then they were, cause all the, you know, the offices were like down the street from each other. So like all the creators, all the freelancers, they would, you know,
00:22:08
Speaker
They'd work together, you know, some of them were roommates together. They would, you know, all, they'd all be like going out for drinks together and they would do different things. Like, you know, the squadron Supreme was based or the squadron sinister originally was based on the justice league. They had done like a version of the Avengers facing off against the, against the justice league to over at DC. So there's a lot of stuff like that going on back at the time. Teen Titans X-Men jokes. Teen Titans X-Men was a crossover as well. Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, did you read the amalgam? Did you read those amalgam books? I remember those. Yeah, I remember those fondly. Those that was a those are fun. That was like the best thing to come out like the Marvel versus DC crossover wasn't that great. But those those amalgam books were a lot of fun. I wish that Marvel and DC could come to an agreement and republish those collections or even do like another one because that was a that was a fun idea. Yeah, for sure.
00:23:02
Speaker
But anyway, uh, yeah, I know Peter David's obviously the the classic for Hulk runs. I have those books I have them on my Kindle got like all the epic collections I just have not started reading them yet, but I am hoping to get to them at some point before I die as well as like the other like 400 It's all about time Perry if we could make another day in the week where we can just shut down time and just consume content and
Kenneth Johnson's Hulk Adaptation
00:23:29
Speaker
I'd be a very happy man. And if I could have a babysitter too for that time, because that's the other thing. Every time I pull out my Kindle when I'm trying to read, my daughter gets very interested. And she's like, what are you doing? She comes over and she keeps, she wants to touch the screen. So, so I have to wait until she's asleep before I can start reading anything. Perfect. But anyway, so this was my first time watching this movie. And let's talk a little bit about some of the behind the scenes stuff with this because
00:23:59
Speaker
Do you know who wrote, directed, and produced this? Kenneth Johnson. Kenneth Johnson. Do you know what else he's done? I know that he did some work on the Bionic Man. He created the Bionic Woman and V, I believe, the Alien miniseries from the late 80s. Yes. Yes, he did all that. Also, he directed a very infamous superhero movie. OK. I don't know. I didn't check his filmography.
00:24:29
Speaker
He directed Steel. Oh, really? Okay. Yes. And I'm not sure if you remember, we did an episode on that and just tore it apart. And it is so bizarre to watch Steel and to then go watch this because this is such a somber, serious take on superheroes and Steel is just not at all.
00:24:52
Speaker
well it makes me wonder why he would do that because he's i watch several interviews with him and i actually thought like i found a director's commentary on this and he is very much adamant that he did not like superheroes and you know they offered him apparently cbs had the rights to five different heroes and they asked him which one do you want and he said none of them because he couldn't relate to any of that spandex stuff but steel seems very much
00:25:20
Speaker
in the crazy superhero mode. Yeah. I mean, it's just, I don't know what was going on with the production of Steel. We talked about that in that episode because it seems like, cause Quincy Jones was one of the producers on it. And we were saying, and with the budget that, cause they had a pretty decent sized budget too. So like we were saying, like we just feel like Quincy Jones just pocketed a lot of that money. Yeah.
00:25:45
Speaker
But with this one, yeah, it's fairly obvious from this pilot that Johnson is not very interested in the superhero side of things. And yeah, he didn't like, he was trying to, he made a lot of changes from the comics because he wanted to make it acceptable to a wide audience. He didn't like comics and he felt it best that it be as different as possible from the comics. So instead of- I heard that he took his real inspiration from Les Miserables.
00:26:14
Speaker
I would see that. I mean, there's obviously very, very heavy Frankenstein influences as well. Yeah, well, he said for him, Banner is Jean Valjean and Colvin is Javert, who's tracking him and chasing him. So yeah, apparently his wife had given him that.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah, and also they'd made Banner a physical a medical researcher in here trying to research You know adrenaline and all that and like how people show incredible strength during times of stress and I wondered about that because I remember very distinctly in the 70s there being a lot of television shows that focused on that kind of
00:26:59
Speaker
mom strength, I used to call it, where like a mother had a car accident and managed to lift the car off their child, you know, and it seemed to be on a lot of kind of variety type programs. There was a show called That's Incredible, that did kind of little segments of kind of fantastical things. And I seem to remember that being a real thing that people used to talk about. And I don't know which came first, was it the Incredible Hulk TV show, or the mom strength kind of idea?
00:27:29
Speaker
I think it must have been just based on what was coming out at the time. I think it was probably the mom strength idea and probably because stories like that were starting to be publicized. Medical science is very young, extremely young. We didn't know much about biology until after World War II and a lot of that came out.
00:27:53
Speaker
from the the experiments that the Nazis and the Japanese did and um because before that we just didn't know what the human body was capable of so a lot of that kind of comes out of that research but before that we didn't really know a whole lot about it like medical science before the the 1930s is just very medieval so it does make sense that that was probably when they started discovering this stuff yeah possibly
00:28:19
Speaker
So yeah, going back to the, I mean, the changes that he made and then kind of making it less super hurry. Apparently this, he was talking about the demographics in one of the interviews I saw and said that the top audience for the Incredible Hawk TV series was adult women, followed by adult men, followed by teenagers, followed by kids. Yeah. Stanley had mentioned something that like that as well. And, um,
00:28:46
Speaker
And there are a few, among the changes, right, besides David being a physician and a medical researcher. Another thing was the Hulk wasn't as strong or as invulnerable as he is in the comics or even now in the MCU movies. There's a scene in this movie, right, where he gets shot and, you know, he starts bleeding from it. And now I watch you.
00:29:14
Speaker
I watched a few other episodes just in the last couple of weeks that I've managed to track down and he tends to get injured in almost every one, somehow.
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, and there is there is a healing factor. So I mean, Banner get like it says here on Wikipedia that in one episode, Banner becomes a paraplegic. But after his next transformation, he's able to walk within minutes. And then his spine is completely restored by the end of the episode. So yeah, it seems like he in that episode, from what I read, he kind of uses the power in order to heal himself. Like it's a conscious decision to try out.
00:29:52
Speaker
I think the realism has to be done because of the era. You couldn't really do the strength stuff you can do now with CGI, of course. If you look at some of the scenes where they're smashing cars or whatever, it's obvious that the cars and things are made out of material that they weren't really made out of at that time.
00:30:13
Speaker
Window glass is a good example. The way that it breaks is very unrealistic. And also, I mean, I think it's because it's television, there's no punching. The Hulk never punches a person. He only throws them or pushes them. So that's a good point. Yeah, I remember seeing that in a few episodes as well. Don't you mention it? Also, the name change. So there are a few different stories about the name change.
00:30:42
Speaker
Johnson has said that he changed it because he didn't want it to be perceived as too comic booky.
The Hulk's Name and Color Controversies
00:30:48
Speaker
And one of the big trademarks of comics at the time was the alliterative name. So Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Clark Kent, all that kind of stuff.
00:30:56
Speaker
read Richard, Sue Storm. Yeah, all those. And which is a weird thing that you're going to focus on. It's all the crazy things like you've got a guy who turns green, but you think that the the the thing that's going to make it seem too comic booky as if his name is alliterative. So yeah, I definitely I lean to the other theory, which is that Bruce was too gay.
00:31:22
Speaker
That was another one. Yeah, that was something that Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno had said, that CBS thought the name Bruce sounded too gayish, which Ferrigno said was the most absurd, ridiculous thing he had ever heard. It was a thing in the 70s. I distinctly remember it when I was an elementary school student, that Bruce was the gay name, which was the weirdest thing. I mean, I was thinking about it, you know,
00:31:47
Speaker
Maybe it had something to do with Batman 66 because of how campy that show was and over the top, but I don't know. Yeah. Well, there was definitely that kind of the campiness and also the, you know, the Robin relationship. Some people were questioning a little bit. Apparently there was a Monty Python sketch that had a bunch of Australian guys who were all named Bruce. And then they were having some kind of a club and every second rule was no Pufters.
00:32:17
Speaker
which made it seem like they were closeted homosexuals. Some people say it's because the way that Bruce sounds, it just kind of goes off your tongue in a lisp. And then apparently there was also a sketch on The Tonight Show where Johnny Carson had a sketch where some man was being asked and he said, oh, I'll ask my wife, Bruce,
00:32:41
Speaker
And so that was kind of got into the culture somehow as Bruce being a gay name. Yeah. And also Johnson said on the commentary that it was a way to honor his son, David. So we've got all these different explanations flowing around about why they changed his name because they did keep it. They did keep the middle name. Right. Which yes. Which is interesting because the in the comic books, Bruce is also his middle name in the comic books. It's Robert Bruce Banner and OK.
00:33:10
Speaker
So I guess the alliterative thing does have a note of truth of it, too, because that would explain why he didn't use Robert. He didn't want to be called Bob Banner. So Johnson said in a commentary that he wanted the Hulk to be colored red instead of green.
00:33:29
Speaker
Um, because in a red hulk Yeah, which I I I imagine that was probably one of um, jeff lobes inspirations for uh For doing the very I'm not 100 sure but I but I assumed that would probably be accurate And he said because red is the color of rage and that red is a human color. Whereas green is not Uh, but stanley said that
00:33:52
Speaker
And Stanley said, you know, at the time he said, you know, non-negotiable. It has to be green because it's so iconic to the character. And yeah, well, it had been well established at that point.
00:34:03
Speaker
Although green wasn't the first choice, was it, for the Hulk, though? Oh, yeah. Well, it was. But the coloring process, I think, no, I can't remember exactly what it was. But it was gray in the first appearance. It was gray in the first appearance. And I think it was the coloring process was too difficult. So then they changed it to green in the second appearance on. Although later, when coloring became more advanced, they did obviously introduce the gray Hulk in Peter David's run. And so we've had different versions of that.
00:34:33
Speaker
watching this pilot, I think gray would have been a better choice for this show because the green, or at least a darker green or something, because the brighter green they use for the makeup,
00:34:46
Speaker
doesn't really fit too well, I felt in this. Well, I think they had all kinds of trouble with the makeup. I watched the second kind of like, maybe three weeks after they broadcast this first movie, they broadcast another movie called Death in the Family, which kind of served as another like a second pilot to the series to kind of establish how the series would go with Banner traveling from place to place and helping people out.
00:35:12
Speaker
And there's a scene where he fights a bear.
00:35:17
Speaker
in the water and as he's fighting the bear I think it's a real bear I'm not sure if it was actually Ferrigno but it was like Ferrigno wrestling the bear in the makeup and the bear starts to turn green because the makeup is just rubbing off all over the bear so it seemed a very yeah rough choice and apparently they had to get that makeup all the way from Germany and it took four hours to put it on every single day
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, and they had the prosthetics they use in in this part I think also in that pilot as well as what I'd read that They had toned it down in the regular series because it was it it was originally intended to make him look much more monstrous but it didn't it didn't work too well, and I think it was it was definitely the wise choice because looking at Ferrigno and the prosthetics in this like it when they do like the close when it when it's from a distance It's fine. But when they do the close-ups on his face, it really it really seems jarring and
00:36:13
Speaker
And talking about the makeup rubbing off. Yeah, it makes them look very goofy. Right. And talking about the makeup rubbing off, I noticed that in several shots of this, too. There are parts where the makeup has rubbed off on his hands or something like that, or parts of his brow. So yeah, the makeup was not very easy to stay on. So I think if they had used gray or a darker green, it would have been less noticeable when that happened.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah, possibly for sure. Also, the wig. Thankfully, they changed the wig as the series went on as well, because that first wig was a nightmare. I was going to say the same thing. That wig was very distracting. Yeah, I did not let that wig at all.
00:36:57
Speaker
I wonder if it was specially made or if they just went to a costume shop and just grabbed the first wig they found. That's a good question because that wig was very jarring. It was not good at all. It didn't seem to suit Ferrigno's head. Also, apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger had auditioned to be the Hulk too, but he was rejected because he was too short.
00:37:17
Speaker
Well, see, I would there was some discrepancy with that too, right? Because I was like I said, I listened to the director's commentary and Kenneth Johnson said Schwarzenegger is only five ten. That is not true. Schwarzenegger is six two and Fregno is six four. So there's not that much of a height difference.
00:37:36
Speaker
At the time, also Schwarzenegger was kind of getting to be into his movie career and he was doing Conan at the time as far as I know. And it was actually Schwarzenegger who recommended for Igno for the role because they had known each other from the documentary film that they did together and the bodybuilding circuit, of course. Have you ever seen Pumping Iron? No, but I mean, I've seen clips of it, I think, and Photo Story, but I've actually seen the show itself.
00:38:06
Speaker
I watched it this week as well just to get some more kind of background on the whole situation. And it's a very good documentary that really shows kind of the amazing things you can do with the human body. And Schwarzenegger is extremely charismatic and funny in it. And I can see how this launched his movie career.
00:38:26
Speaker
Richard Kiel was actually originally cast as the Hulk. He was Jaws in the Bond movies. But during filming, Johnson's son pointed out that even though Kiel is very tall, he's like seven feet or something like that, his physique was not developed enough for the Hulk. So then they replaced him with Lou Ferrigno.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yes, I think he's not very muscular at all. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. He has that one scene where he's looking up at the tree. I'm assuming because it was an overhead crane shot that it was far enough away. You couldn't really tell. And also they didn't want to reshoot it. So. Yeah. Now, what were some things that you were thinking as you were rewatching this pilot?
00:39:08
Speaker
Um, well, I think the cast is quite good. I think Bill Bixby is a very, very good choice for Bruce Banner and for a lead in a TV show. And I think he basically carried the whole show himself. He's obviously was a very well seasoned actor at the time.
00:39:28
Speaker
had had several series under his belt and at first maybe was reluctant to do something like this but then seemed to really really get on board and I mean it seemed to probably be the most successful thing he did in his career really in terms of recognition.
00:39:46
Speaker
Then they had, you know, Susan Sullivan was as Dr. Elena Marks, his kind of confidant and co-worker, his research partner, to give the feminine touch. She's very good actor as well. I knew her from Dharma and Greg later in the 90s or early 2000s. Oh, okay.
00:40:06
Speaker
And she's done a lot of TV, but there was a lot of kind of creepy stuff with her as well. One thing that really struck me right away is as soon as we see her, she gets sexually harassed by a lab assistant. Yeah.
00:40:21
Speaker
And then the next scene she mentions, you know, the woman that they're interviewing, there's a woman who they're doing part of their research who managed to turn over a car to rescue her son. And she mentions that she was 110 pounds at that time. And Elena has to say, Oh, I wish I could keep that weight. And then a few seconds later, she eats a donut and says, I'm going to get fat from eating these donuts.
00:40:45
Speaker
Later, she's in the shower for no reason at all. And in the DVE commentary, Kenneth Johnson says, she puts on a robe, much to the disappointment of the crew. And then in the lab scenes, he goes out of his way to mention her see-through shirt with its strategically placed pockets. So it seems to me that Susan Sullivan was cast strictly for
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, I noticed that, I noticed that shirt and I'm just like, why is she wearing that shirt in the lab? That's a weird choice. That jumped out to me as well.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, you know what- As I said, the 70s were pretty rapey. Yeah, very rapey. But one of the things that struck me about this is first off, it does kind of make me laugh when people talk about Ang Lee's Hulk film and they talk about how it's a Hulk movie, but there's no action in it. And I'm like, well, there is. And then you compare it to something like this, which was so beloved at the time, there is like no action in this at all. It's very slow moving.
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, I found it. You know, to me it wasn't that slow, but when you think about it after I finished watching it, there was very little in terms of kind of story beats and story development. If you look at a current kind of MCU movie and the amount of content that is jammed into those two and a half hours, I mean, it's kind of crazy how little happens in this movie.
00:42:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, even if you compare it to some other superhero TV shows, like you compare it to the Doctor Strange pilot, for example, to use something that was more contemporaneous, that had a lot more action in it than this did. Or even like, you know, some more modern stuff, like if you look like, and not even going to the more superhero-y stuff like Flash or Supergirl, but if you look at the more grounded like Arrow, like the premiere of Arrow had more action in that 40-minute runtime than this has in double the time. Yeah.
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's basically, there's basically three things, you know, they do the research, he gets the gamma, he does his first transformation, they go to the lab, he breaks the hyperbaric chamber, they go, Colvin, or Jack McGee breaks into the lab, he spills some chemicals, there's a fire, he hulks out again, Elena dies, end of story. Yeah, yeah, and that's it. And the only real, and yeah, there's not much
00:43:16
Speaker
Display of the Hulk's strength in this really like you don't get a very good sense They focus much more on the there's a lot on the medical research side of thing in this in this movie
00:43:27
Speaker
one is very very 1970s in terms of like let's talk and like let's give the exposition so much like and also talking there's a lot of talking out loud as people do stuff like hmm i guess i'll look in this window wow i can see that they've smacked like there's no inner monologues going on
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah, and it was an interesting choice I think it would have been especially given that they knew where the series was gonna go and they were gonna go in this more fugitive direction you think they do a little bit more with
00:44:02
Speaker
David being hunted down or the Hulk being, you know, something to happen earlier and to bring that more to the forefront to show why David has to start, you know, traveling around because it's because, you know, he fakes his death at the end. But, you know, it's just to get it seems like it's just to get McGee off his trail. But it would have been a lot more interesting, I think, to focus because they do have this whole subplot about, you know, the Hulk finds this little girl very taken straight out of Frankenstein. Right. You know, just like that. And
00:44:32
Speaker
And he tries to save her, he's trying to help her out, but the father misunderstand shoots him. The cops start looking for the Hulk. That's how McGee gets involved. But aside from McGee, that whole sequence just seems to serve for McGee to get deeper involved into it. But everybody else, like the police, the town, they just kind of forget about it after that.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's all set up. But I think, in fact, the second kind of pilot movie, the Death in the Family one, sets it up more. And there is more stuff where the Hulk is getting involved with other people. And there is a reason for people to fear him. He puts a few guys in the hospital in that one who are harassing him, of course. And then kind of sets up the whole trope of him helping somebody in need, kind of at the expense of his own seeking a cure.
00:45:23
Speaker
And there are several episodes of the TV show that kind of do a better job. This is very much just let's
Notable Hulk TV Episodes and Story Arcs
00:45:30
Speaker
see what we can do. Let's see how the makeup looks. Let's see how Farigno looks as the Hulk. Let's see what we can do to establish these two guys and the guy following him. And then we'll work on making better stories in the actual series.
00:45:47
Speaker
There was an episode in season two, I watched the first episode of season two, which is an episode called married, where he meets a woman, he goes to her to try to get hypnosis, to help contain the Hulk, and she's dying of an accelerated disease similar to ALS.
00:46:06
Speaker
And she kind of they tried to help each other and they end up getting married in that one. And there's some very good content in that one. Mariette Hartley, in fact, won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Guest Role for that, which I think is the Hulk's only Emmy win.
00:46:23
Speaker
And then there are some very nice cheesy fights with some douchey guys with open shirts and chains and mustaches, 70s style. And then I watched another episode too called The Snare, which is basically, what's that story? I can't remember the name of it suddenly. The Most Dangerous Game. Oh, right, right.
00:46:48
Speaker
where he meets a guy in an airport and the guy says, oh, come to my private island and play chess, and then I'll hunt you. So those episodes ended up being kind of fun. But yeah, as you say, this movie.
00:47:02
Speaker
I think it would have been better because now I haven't seen the death in the family, but I feel like just based on how much filler there was in this, they probably could have done a better job of combining those two together. It may be make it a little bit longer, but I think like they're
00:47:20
Speaker
There is a way to better execute this story and then to get the ball rolling on what would be the basic premise of the series as a whole. There is just a ton of filler in this and I did feel myself drifting off at times.
00:47:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a reflection of the era, really. It is, yeah. And when I watch 1970s television shows or even movies, I kind of have to put myself into the mindset of this is a different time and people were more patient. There is a lot of silence and a lot of kind of montage sequences in those TV shows and movies I've been watching recently.
00:48:02
Speaker
I watched Once Upon a Time in America a few weeks ago, and there are very many scenes of people just looking at each other for two minutes at a time and not saying anything. I'm like, what are you doing? I've had that in my Plex library for years, but I haven't had the time to sit down and actually watch it, because it's long. It's like three hours and changes, though, isn't it? I think it might be four. Four, yeah, yeah. Yes. It's a long one, yeah. But yeah, and another thing I was thinking about, too, is that
00:48:31
Speaker
You know, it's funny, when we think about other media taking a serious approach to superheroes, we mostly think about it, you know, there's this brief window where you had Batman 89 and Batman Returns and then nothing until really like the 2000 when we get into like X-Men and Blade and Spider-Man and all that kind of stuff. That was, and then obviously, you know, then with the Nolan trilogy and the MCU, but we think about it as like,
00:48:59
Speaker
Most of the time, for the most part, we think about it as like this from like 66 is when superheroes started coming into media with Batman. And then aside from this brief blip, this brief window in with Batman 89 and Batman Returns, we think of superheroes as just mainly being, you know, something to poke fun at in media until we get to the 2000s. But then you look at this.
00:49:23
Speaker
you know, Superman, the movie as well. It's got some campy elements, but it mostly cues towards the serious. But you look at this and then again, the Doctor Strange TV movie, even to a lesser extent, the Green Hornet TV show from the, that was also coming out in the sixties, although it only lasted one season. And then, you know, I haven't seen it in years, but the Flash TV show from the early nineties was also, from what I understand, fairly serious as well.
00:49:50
Speaker
And it is interesting that we didn't have more of a serious approach to superheroes that lasted longer, given all these things that were coming out. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Dr. Strange had gone to series with a, and that had a much more serious approach too.
00:50:07
Speaker
How did that series, I mean, how did that pilot or movie track, did it get not good ratings? This Doctor Strange one. I don't think it got good ratings because it was airing simultaneously with Roots. So it was definitely over. What are they doing? Yeah. They thought that would be competition for like one of the most famous miniseries in the history of television. I have no idea what they were thinking.
00:50:34
Speaker
It's worth tracking down. Like I said, it's actually fairly good. There are some wonky effects, but it mostly mostly together pretty well. Plus, it's got just a strange Peter who's Dr. Peter Hooten. Okay. Yeah. And he does a pretty good job. He's got like the kind of like, in fact, he feels a little bit more comic book Tony Stark than Dr. Strange, but he does fit the role pretty well.
00:50:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, even the Incredible Hulk, you know, series, from what I was reading about this, it was kind of canceled for no reason after five seasons because it was still doing well in the ratings, but it seemed like it was just some new guy had come into management and was just kind of making a power play or his own decision to CBS doesn't want to be the superhero network. So we're going to just cancel this one and, you know, go in a different direction.
00:51:25
Speaker
That happened with Angel on the CW or still the WB at that point. But it was like the highest rated show on the network, but the new head of the network hated the show. And so he got rid of it and that was it. So it was just like, it was just studio politics.
00:51:43
Speaker
Seems like personal vendettas. There's stuff like that. There's also something like I don't know, but I remember Blade, the series that was on Spike TV was did very well in the
TV Production Challenges with the Hulk Series
00:51:53
Speaker
ratings. But the reason that got canceled was it was just too expensive.
00:51:57
Speaker
So I wonder. Yeah, well, there was expensive things about the Hulk as well. I was saying I watched a there was a documentary I found on YouTube about the Hulk. I haven't quite finished it, but it talks to some of the writers and there's a lot of Kenneth Johnson footage. And he said at one point CBS brought in some British guy to cut costs and that guy or that guy told them he could cut costs.
00:52:23
Speaker
And he came in and said, you need to make your Hulk episodes only for what you've budgeted for in the contract and like just for the fee that you've paid, the licensing fee or whatever that you've paid to Marvel for this. And he said, well, okay, can we just have one Hulk out per episode then? And the guy was like, no, no, no, you still have to have two Hulk outs per episode. And then he said, well, I can't do it. So I guess we're just going to have to cancel the show. And then the British guy disappeared and never came back.
00:52:54
Speaker
Okay, but there are yeah, apparently two Hulk outs in every episode So I was gonna I was gonna ask so I guess that was the formula that is have two all counts every episode Yeah, well the Hulk us themselves. What do you think about the transformation itself?
00:53:09
Speaker
I thought it was, again, we're talking 1977, I thought it was pretty effective for the technology they had at the time. It's not nothing like we see even on She-Hulk or anything like that, but it works for what they had access to.
00:53:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think turning into the Hulk works very well. They have this kind of maybe four basic shots that they do for that sequence. They have Banner with his white contacts. Then they have Banner with a slight brow and a little bit green. Then they usually go to the back of Ferrigno with a shirt tear, and then they're back to the full Hulk. But when they come back to Banner, very often what they do is they just put a green glow around his face that looks really horrible.
00:53:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The de-hulking was not as impressive. But the hulking out, I thought, like the contacts on Bixby and everything, that was very effective, I thought. Yeah. Well, in the episode, the snare, they actually managed to get a shoe ripping, which was nice. Oh, OK. I was looking out for that, kind of bursting through the seams of the shoe.
00:54:15
Speaker
One of the things that surprised me too is that, and I guess it's probably because Johnson wasn't a big comic book guy to begin with, but I would have thought that this would have been an opportunity to include some mention from the comics.
Hulk's Origins in Films vs Comics
00:54:27
Speaker
Like if you had made Elena Betty Ross or something like that would have been a nice nod to the comics at least.
00:54:34
Speaker
Instead, but we don't even his even his wife who dies in the in the opening credits like that would again That would have been something to to tie it closer to the comics instead of naming her Laura I think it was but instead of named her Betty has he ever been married in the comics? I mean him and Betty were married for a very long time. I believe yeah
00:54:54
Speaker
Yeah, I know him and Betty were well, I think I mean it's just getting away from that whole origin so and I was curious I don't honestly remember Ang Lee's Hulk and then the the Edward Norton version What are the origins of the Hulk in those versions? So in the the Ang Lee's Hulk, it's they're working on a
00:55:17
Speaker
They're both tied to the military. In Anglies Hulk, they're working on a healing type of thing, like with nanomachines to try and repair damage.
00:55:25
Speaker
And also there's this whole thing that with his father, who's named David in Nick Nolte's character, who's named David Banner as a nod to the TV show. He was working for the military and he was a medical scientist or a research scientist for the military. And he had injected Bruce with some sort of, he had tested some stuff on Bruce as a child. And that stuff that was in his DNA from his father's tests combined with the nanomachines and the accident, the lab, that turned him into the Hulk.
00:55:55
Speaker
Uh, okay. And then they've never done a gamma bomb, not a gamma bomb, but it was with using gamma radiation. And then in the 2000 in the, and they had Norton one, they had done, uh, they kind of combined aspects of this TV show with the origin from the ultimate comics. Cause in the ultimate comics banner was working on, uh, he was trying to recreate the superhero, the super soldiers serum, and he had used,
00:56:23
Speaker
He was using gamma to try and unlock the secret of this to try and recreate super soldier serum He tested it on himself and that turned him into the Hulk they used that in In the incredible Hulk in the Ed Norton one where he's he's trying to recreate the super soldier serum Although he doesn't really he doesn't quite know it at the time I think was the implication like it was he was involved He was working for the military, but he didn't completely know what he was working on okay, and
00:56:53
Speaker
And the opening credits of the movie, they have him sitting in a machine very similar to the one that Bill Bixby uses in this ride too. So that was a lot of callbacks. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of callbacks in the Ed Norton version to the TV show, I think. Oh yeah. And I wonder if that was.
00:57:14
Speaker
I mean, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry line. That's reference to that. He says it in Portuguese, but he says you wouldn't like me when I'm hungry instead.
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's a very, I mean, that's something that was very much a legacy of the Incredible Hulk series. I'm quite curious. I tried to look it up to see if he ever says it again, except for in the pilot movie, because it was in the opening credits every week, which is why it kind of took a foothold. And basically every elementary school kid in North America said that to their friends at one point. You know, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
00:57:51
Speaker
They also had a callback to it in the in the Yang Li film. What in one scene, Eric, he doesn't say the full line, but in one scene, Eric Bonya's banner, he's saying to Talbot, he says, Talbot, you're making me angry. And then he just starts to transform. So he doesn't say the full line. It's also referenced in Dogma, complete with McGee, because in Dogma, they've got this one officer who's named Officer McGee goes up to Ben Affleck's character, Bartleby.
00:58:19
Speaker
And Ben Affleck says, Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. And then he breaks his back. Oh, really? You have to watch that again. So essentially then, we have never had a comic book accurate origin in live action for The Hulk, where he's built a gamma bomb, and then he's saving somebody else. And that's how he ends up getting irradiated and becoming The Hulk. It's always an experiment on himself.
00:58:48
Speaker
Well, no, no, no. Ang Lee's Hulk, it was, he had a, it was, it was a mix of his father's experiments, but then he gets exposed to the gamma because he's trying to save a lab assistant who gets trapped. So yeah, there is that. I see, so that one's closer. Yeah, yeah. Ed Norton's one, they don't have him, have him saving anyone. It's just all, again, it's just all established in that very quick, like five minute credit sequence.
00:59:14
Speaker
And it's just no dialogue. It's just you just see the images of him in the chair testing on self, the transformation and then him running away. And that's all we really see in that movie. So we never get the whole trying to save someone in that. And then the comics, they've played around with it with the because the gamma bomb obviously made sense in the 60s. But when they did Heroes Reborn in the 90s, gamma bomb didn't make as much sense anymore because it's after the Cold War. So instead, it was a gamma reactor.
00:59:44
Speaker
that he gets stuck in. So they've updated it that way. Have we ever seen Rick Jones in live action? Except just references on paper or Easter eggs. I know his name appears in one of them, but.
00:59:59
Speaker
Yeah, his name appears, I think, in Incredible Hulk. I think he's listed as one of the known associates or something like that. Yeah. But yeah, he doesn't appear at all in any other, in any live action, even in the Ultimate stuff. I don't think he appears in the Ultimate stuff at all either.
01:00:16
Speaker
He was in the I know I was thinking that too, especially the the Ang Lee version because they've got that lab assistant who gets stuck in it. They don't call his name is not Rick Jones. I think that would have been a good opportunity for a nod to the comics is to call him Rick Jones, but they didn't. Yeah. Another. Currently alive in the comics, is he still alive? I believe so. I'm not 100 percent sure, but I believe so. The last thing I remember is that he also became a Hulk.
01:00:45
Speaker
I think he died for a time too. But then he came back. He was in the he was in the immortal Hulk series. I remember that. Okay. He was also in. He was also a hacker. He'd become a hacker and he was involved in the Sam Wilson Captain America run as well. Okay, texting information to him and stuff like that. Was he a cosmic entity at some point as well?
01:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, that was in the um, that was dirt. That was the way back. That was during the the avengers kree scroll war thing And then of course he became um, he was paired with captain marvel Uh, uh captain marvel's son jennis and the night Yeah, it was late 90s early 2000 series. Uh, and he was like the human counterpart to captain marvel Quite a life for somebody who's never appeared in the live action
01:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's surprising. They never did. And I'm not sure why. It's always been a question why they never found some way to work him in. But I don't know. We'll see. Because we're getting a bunch of Hulk characters in the upcoming Captain America movie. We're getting Betty. We're getting Thunderbolt Ross. We're getting the leader. So maybe they'll find a way for Rick Jones,
Key Characters and Performances in the Hulk Series
01:01:53
Speaker
too. We'll see. Do you think we're going to see a grumpy Harrison Ford red Hulk?
01:02:00
Speaker
don't know i mean that's the rumor um i think if anything i believe he's going to be in thunderbolt so i believe they'd probably use that for thunderbolts maybe save it for like a a post-credit sequence but but we'll see what happens um anyway uh any final things to mention about uh this pilot uh well i mean just i think jack coleman was quite good as miggy like he's a good uh
01:02:28
Speaker
What do you call it? Like he's just something to push the story forward. He always shows up in one or two scenes in every episode just, I heard there's a hulking creature around here. And then the voice, Ted Cassidy as the narrator and the voice of the Hulk, he played Lurch on the Addams family in the 60s.
01:02:50
Speaker
and then he was also Bigfoot in the Bionic Woman series. Oh, okay. I'm kind of curious why they didn't give Ferrigno a try to make that voice, but... Yeah, I was wondering that as well. Although he did get a chance eventually because he did the voice in the Incredible Hulk movie, the Norton. Yes.
01:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if they just felt it was a problem because Ferrigno obviously has a profound hearing loss, which kind of leads to, you know, he has a bit of a, what's not an accent, what do you call it? The way he talks is sounds like a deaf person. Yeah, call that a speech impediment or what? It's changed a lot over the years. He sounds a lot like he's practiced a lot more in recent interviews.
01:03:36
Speaker
Well, I remember seeing him in, I think part of thing is because his voice seems unnaturally high for a guy of his physique. Because if you've ever seen, I Love You Man, he had a bit part in that. And yeah, his voice does not strike you as a voice that would probably fit a guy who looks like that.
01:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, well, because he learned it from reading other people's lips. So he never adjusted it. Right. So I think that's probably part of the reason they just felt like his voice probably wouldn't have fit the Hulk. And then when they did it for the Incredible Hulk, they were able to alter it.
01:04:11
Speaker
Right. And then Kenneth Johnson did say that they did have a few times on set where their, uh, Ferrigno's deafness did cause a little bit of a safety issue. Oh, okay. Because you, you couldn't warn him about something dangerous that was kind of going to fall on him as he was smashing stuff or whatever. So they always had to have stuntmen positioned all around the scene to help him out if he did get into any trouble. So.
01:04:35
Speaker
Although one of the things that surprised me about Frigno, because we see him in, because he has cameos in both the Ang Lee Hulk and in the Incredible Hulk.
01:04:45
Speaker
Looks like he got more jacked as he got older actually. Well I think so because they talk about him in this, like I watched that documentary and they mentioned that he was 6'4 and about 250 pounds. But on Wikipedia he's listed as 6'4 and 315 pounds. So I think he did get a lot bigger. And even in the later episodes of the Hulk series he looks more kind of jacked.
01:05:09
Speaker
Oh, okay. I don't know if maybe the steroids got better at that time. Yeah, he does have an amazing physique. If you look at, you know, pumping iron, like I mentioned earlier, the physiques are kind of unbelievable. And I really wonder what Schwarzenegger would have looked like in the Hulk makeup, because I think he has a very different style of physique. I think Farigno's physique is much better suited to it. He's a lot thicker.
01:05:39
Speaker
For me, the Hulk should be kind of rectangular in shape or square even. Very thick and boxy. I don't like the slender Hulk. No, no, definitely not. Okay, Ashley, I think final words on this. I mean, it was nice
Reflections on the Hulk Series' Legacy
01:05:59
Speaker
to watch this finally because it had been sitting in my Netflix queue for a long time.
01:06:05
Speaker
It's not a it's not bad by any stretch the imagination. It's it's a bit slow for my taste but it is It's pretty good for what they have at the time and it's fairly it takes itself very seriously There's no camping. There's not an ounce of campiness and the whole thing. Mm-hmm
01:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, well, I would say, you know, it's definitely worth a watch. And, you know, if you can keep in mind that this was in the late 1970s and kind of take it with that kind of lens, I think that it's worth watching. And so is a lot of the series, if you can track it down. There are a lot of very fun episodes, much more serious ones and a lot more fun ones as well. Plenty of clips on YouTube.
01:06:45
Speaker
of the Incredible Hulk doing silly things like fighting a swarm of bees or doing kung fu or going to a rock gig. That did surprise me that it wasn't they didn't have the series. They just at first I thought it was the series, but it's just the pilot episode. So I am wondering if it is if it's a rights issue or what and why they don't have it streaming anywhere as far as I think the series might be on Apple TV, but I'm not entirely sure. OK, OK.
01:07:15
Speaker
There are places you can track it down if you're a good enough hunter. Yeah, there's that, too. There's that aspect. All right, Ashley, thanks so much for coming on again. Do you have anything you wanted to promote, anything you wanted to send people? I don't promote anything. I'm a consumer, pure consumer. No time to produce content.
01:07:36
Speaker
Well, that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles, then. You can find us at SuperheroCinephiles.com, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And if you subscribe to the Patreon, you get these episodes a week in advance, plus you get access to the Book Club Patreon show, where we talk about comics and graphic novels. We record these episodes way in advance, so it'll, it might be, you might've already heard this, but Ashley's gonna be coming on soon, recording-wise, to do Spider-Man Life Story.
01:08:04
Speaker
If you're subscribed already, you may have you've already heard that episode. If you're not subscribed, subscribe for a dollar a month and you can go back and listen to that and all the other comments we've talked about. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
01:08:17
Speaker
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01:08:37
Speaker
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01:09:20
Speaker
Thank you for listening, and as always, good night, good evening, God bless.