Today, the NEW Green Hornet movie starring Seth Rogan and Jay Chou opens!
To celebrate (and contrast), we're offering a special treat...the FIRST Green Hornet feature film, complete and uncut!
Actually, it's a compilation of four tv series episodes, with additional fight footage tossed in, released shortly after the death of Bruce Lee, as you can tell by the promo posters!
The adapted episodes are "Hunters and the Hunted", "Preying Mantis", and the two-part "Invasion from Outer Space", all of which we've covered in previous Video Friday installments.
There was also a second compilation film, called Fury of the Dragon, but we were unable to find it online.
Enjoy this 90-minute slice of history, and if you go see the new flick, let us know what you think!
With the new movie opening next week (and a special movie/tv entry planned for next Friday), we're winding up our look at The Green Hornet tv series with the two-part finale.
If you're going out, go out with a bang. And there's no bang bigger than an atomic explosion!
Mad scientist Dr Mabuse has created a citywide panic by faking a flying saucer crash and appearance by "stranded aliens".
Invading Britt Reid's townhouse (and zapping Kato), the spacesuited fiend demands the publisher help him and his fellow "aliens" get out of town without police interference so their mothership can send a rescue craft to pick them up in a remote area...the same "remote area" a secret military convoy transporting atomic weapons is due to pass through!
Though skeptical, Reid complies and Mabuse leaves, taking Lenore Case as a hostage.
Mabuse intercepts the convoy and hijacks an atomic bomb!
Rescue Casey from a leering lunatic and save the city from atomic Armageddon! It's a far cry from the gangsters and thieves the Hornet and Kato usually handle!
With a new producer and a totally-different approach, this ep seems like a last-gasp attempt to boost the ratings by going with a much more sci-fi/ fantasy-oriented storyline.
Thankfully, they didn't go to the campy level of Batman. It's still played straight.
Every last cent in the series budget was thrown in for location shooting and optical fx, including lots of highway stunt driving along with the show's best stunt-piece; The Green Hornet leaping from the back of Black Beauty to Mabuse's truck while both are barreling down a curving highway at 60+ mph.
Side notes:
The villain's last name, Mabuse, is taken from a famous German pulp supervillain. The GH character is not related to the German character, except in his revenge-crazed desire to blow things up. Larry D Mann plays him with all the scenery-chewing panache of a James Bond foe.
Linda Gaye Scott who played the villain's "shocking" sidekick Vama, appeared on numerous '60s genre shows including Batman, Lost in Space, and Man from U.N.C.L.E., usually in a skintight ensemble!
These are the only episodes without an appearance by reporter and (Hornet's nemesis) Mike Axford, but another red-headed reporter named "Bill" does appear!
And, it's the only episode where Kato is actually knocked unconscious (albeit by electric shock)!
NOTE: the clip provider, HornetNest1000, left out the end credits of ep 1 and opening credits of ep 2, to "flow" the two-parter better. The original source, Encore Action, had omitted the "next week" teaser and "last week" recap when they aired the eps, so HornetNest100's choice makes sense.
Here's the series finale of The Green Hornet (and hint of how the show might have proceeded if they had done a second season)...
Since it's New Year's Eve, an episode about "ringing out the old/ringing in the new" seems apropos...
When a local wax museum updates it's displays to include The Green Hornet and Kato, the wax figure of the previous "star" exhibit, The Scarf, apparently comes to life and resumes his murderous ways!
One of the weirder shows in the series, heavy on mood, no fight scenes, and no appearance of The Black Beauty!
Legendary horror film star John Carradine as museum researcher (with an ominous secret) James Rancourt was the only famous guest-star on the series. Unlike Batman, where famous performers from Tallulah Bankhead to Liberace were given villain roles written especially for them, Green Hornet used dependable, but little-known, character actors as villains. Side Notes:
John Carradine had been considered for the role of The Joker on Batman, but his poor health precluded his doing the role.
SPOILER (sorta): The Scarf's statue really should have shown a younger version of Carradine. Since it looks just like the elderly James Rancourt (albeit with a Van Dyke beard) played by Carradine, it's obvious who The Scarfreally is from the very beginning!
The music score written specifically for this episode was never reused! (Most of the music on the series was reedited and reused in at several other episodes besides the ones they were originally written for.)
Background info on a number of the unnamed city's villains from the early 1900s up to the late 1940s, when The Scarf disappeared, is presented during a tour of the museum, but there's no mention of an earlier Green Hornet. So, the mention of gangster Glen Connors framing Britt Reid's father in "Frog is a Deadly Weapon"doesn't refer to Reid Sr being the 1940s Hornet. What the elder Reid had been blamed for is never explained.
Here's the 23rd filmed and aired episode..."Alias the Scarf".
