Ease on down to Film.com for this week’s edition of Eric’s Bad Movies, featuring “The Wiz,” a terrible screen adaptation of what was apparently a fine Broadway musical. The movie exemplifies Hollywood logic: “This worked really well on stage! So when we make the movie, let’s change everything about it!”
Michael Jackson appears in this film, and I think I am to be commended for writing about it without making a single joke about child molestation. This is especially remarkable when you consider how funny child molestation is.
The clues I gave last week were that the film was the oldest I’d covered so far in Eric’s Bad Movies (i.e., older than 1981), and that “some of its actors were Grammy-winning singers. The film was a remake.” The three major guesses were “The Wiz,” “A Star Is Born,” and “The Jazz Singer.” (Well, someone said “Cannonball Run,” too, but I don’t know what they thought that was a remake of.) “The Jazz Singer” wouldn’t have qualified because only one of its actors (not “some”) was a Grammy winner. “A Star Is Born,” with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, was a reasonable guess, though. In “The Wiz,” Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Lena Horne are all Grammy winners (and Richard Pryor, too, though for a comedy album, not singing).
There is some uncertainty over what next week’s movie will be, but I believe it will be this one: a horror film from the 1990s starring someone who would go on to star in a popular, long-running TV show.
Leprechaun!
Leprechaun, starring Jennifer Aniston
I guessed from the clues that it would be an actor who later starred on “Friends,” but before I could go hit up IMDB it looks like FHL and Moffio beat me to the punch. I third the motion that it’s “Leprechaun.”
You really, really like using the phrased “whizzed it right down the ol’ pant leg,” don’t you? At least here it served as a pun.
As horror-movie titles go, Leprechaun is pretty lame. “He’s short! And he wears green! Run for your life!”
“Leprechaun!” Oh, wait.. someone beat me to it? Darn! One of these days…
Gotta be Leprechaun.
I couldn’t figure out the clues myself, but the minute someone said “Leprehcaun” I was all “Yeah, that’s it…”
Between “The Wiz” and “Phantom of the Opera” I move that Joel Schumacher never be allowed near a musical ever again.
What about “I Know What You Did Last Summer?” Sarah Michelle Geller became Buffy for millions of fans. Except I really enjoyed “Last Summer”, unlike its poorly conceived and poorly titled sequel, “I STILL Know What You Did Last Summer”.
Scott, I actually thought of that one before I thought of Leprechaun, but I checked the dates of their respective releases. According to IMDB, I Know What You Did Last Summer premiered a few months after Buffy’s debut, which violates a condition in Eric’s clues.
Dee Snider’s Strangeland? Linda Cardellini eventually went on to star in ER…
Maybe the people who guessed “Cannonball Run” thought it was a remake of “The Gumball Rally,” which it supposedly kind of is, in a half-assed way. Or not.