January 4th, 2008
The Angel Made Me Do It
I was wondering where the angel on one shoulder, devil on the other shoulder thing started. Vague guess: Cartoons?
beachbum13372
noelmurray090970 responds:
Actually, it comes from Islam. According to the Koran, the "Kiramin Kitabin" sit on the shoulders of every human being and keep track of our good deeds and our bad deeds, and report back to God. Some also believe that these "recording angels" guard against demons and subtly influence behavior, and that you should never spit to the right, lest you hit your "good" angel. You're correct that cartoons helped codify this concept into the iconic image of the angel on one shoulder arguing with the devil on the other, though the image appeared initially in print, before showing up in animation.
The Mutant Mash
First off, big fan. You guys never fail to impress, and ever since the first time I read this feature a long time ago, I've had a question in mind for you all. Here goes: In the early to mid-'90s, I'd guess, I remember watching a movie one night with my younger sister and cousin on Cinemax. Details are sparse, but what I do remember is, it's in the vein of the "kids get lost, end up at a mad scientist's lab, and the next thing you know, one by one, they're being turned into mutants of different sorts" kinda movie, only it wasn't scary at all. Quite the opposite. My little sister was very young, and even she was laughing throughout. Other odd details I remember are that it had some sort of late-'80s, early-'90s B-list heartthrob in it as the main character/hero, and there was a character named "Stewart" or "Stewie" who was a big nerd with glasses, red hair, and buck teeth. He gets pushed out of an airplane in the beginning (this scene was a reference point for my sister and I for years) and ends up mutating into a Hulk-ish version of himself at the mad scientist's lab, becoming one of the final villains. In the end, I'm pretty sure the police show up and restore order, as per usual. Certainly lacking on the details here, but I'm sure others out there must have seen it. Please help. My sister and I have been trying to find this movie ever since it first aired that one night. Thanks in advance! Keep up the splendid work!
Everett Bacon
Sean O'Neal is happy to stay splendid:
You're talking about the underrated Freaked (1993), a Troma-esque spoof starring Alex "Bill S. Preston, Esq." Winter. (Did Winter count as a heartthrob? Probably for somebody.) Winter also co-wrote and co-directed the film along with Tom Stern—who went on to do Saul Of The Mole Men, That's My Bush!, and The Andy Milonakis Show—and Tim Burns. Winter plays a smug actor in the Jason Priestley/Luke Perry vein who agrees to be the spokesperson for a toxic chemical company. After he accidentally gets sprayed with the company's product, he ends up as a mutant freak trapped on a farm run by Randy Quaid, along with his best friend Ernie (a.k.a. Blossom's other brother) and activist/love interest Julie, played by '90s heartthrob (for a nanosecond) Megan Ward. Some of the other freaks are played by Mr. T, Bobcat Goldthwait (in voiceover), and the Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes. Even Winter's old partner Keanu Reeves shows up uncredited as "Ortiz The Dog Boy." (Brooke Shields and Morgan Fairchild also make cameos.) The character you're remembering, "Stewie," is an obnoxious kid who follows Winter around begging for an autograph at the most inopportune time—although his transformation into a mutant actually [spoiler alert!] ends up saving the day. All in all, it isn't as bad as it sounds: There are lots of decent throwaway lines and sight gags (better than anything Troma has put out lately, anyway), and the whole thing has a sort of reckless punk energy that keeps it from dragging. It was recently reissued in a surprisingly reverent DVD edition with lots of deleted scenes. Check it out.
Stop Dragon My Heart Around
I was a big watcher of Cartoon Network in elementary school (in the early '90s), and next to The Pirates Of Dark Water, my favorite thing was when they showed movies, which they tended to do ad nauseam during certain seasons (especially Christmas). There are two movies in particular I must have watched a million times in bits and pieces from first to third grade—and my parents remember this —but a million Google searches have turned up nothing, and I've never found anyone outside my immediate family who remembers them. Any ideas?
Movie A was a fantasy that somehow centered around a wizard, his beautiful daughter, and an awkward young man from the real world who was somehow sucked into a board game (which was the world in which said wizard and daughter lived) and turned into a dragon, because why the hell not? The dragon/man went on a quest to defeat evil—at one point near the end I think he actually dies and is reborn, which is how he becomes a human again, but there might have been another, older dragon that actually died. In the last scene, our hero returns to the real world and the wizard's daughter (who was in love with him) leaves the board game to be with him. I remember the animation being very dark and kind of sketchy, in a pretty way that stuck in my mind—reminded me a little of the animated Lord Of The Rings, which I saw around the same time. They showed this movie ALL THE TIME.
Movie B was only on around Christmas, and was about a little goblin prince (part of a clan of goblins that lived in a cave in the mountains) who really hated his nasty, evil family and wanted to be good. The goblin ran away from the mountains, met a little girl with blond braids (the entire thing was very Scandinavian) and a pair of gnomes, husband and wife with tall pointy hats—and (long story short) eventually converts to Christianity and becomes a gnome through the love of Jesus. (His ears either became pointy or lost their pointiness, which showed that he wasn't an evil goblin any more.) The entire story was narrated by the former goblin/current gnome, who lived in a mouse hole in the house of the blond girl he met earlier. Young as I was, the thing that stuck with me about this one was its overt Christian message and its similarity in design to David The Gnome—I've even done searches for David The Gnome Christmas Special, thinking maybe they were one in the same. No luck.
If you can find either or both of these movies, I'll send The A.V. Club cookies.
Elizabeth
You owe Tasha Robinson half a cookie:
Well, Elizabeth, the first one's a slam-dunk. You're thinking of the 1982 Rankin-Bass animated movie Flight Of Dragons, a feature adapted in part from Gordon Dickson's novel The Dragon And The George (which supplied the plot about a man summoned to a magical realm and into the body of a dragon) and in part from Peter Dickinson's Flight Of Dragons, a faux-natural history book explaining, among other things, how dragons get their massive bodies into the air. (They're essentially living hot-air balloons.) It has all the plot points you mention: Yes, there's an older dragon who teaches the dragon/man the dragon ropes, and later sacrifices his life to fight evil. There's a princess love interest who's the head wizard's foster daughter. And the dragon/man is summoned to the magical realm through a board game. I didn't remember that last part, but since the whole thing is available on YouTube, it was pretty easy to check:
As to the animation, I wonder if when you said Lord Of The Rings you were thinking of either The Hobbit or Return Of The King, both animated by Rankin-Bass in a very similar style. Flight Of Dragons doesn't actually look all that much like Ralph Bakshi's Lord Of The Rings, though it is considerably darker, visually speaking, than I remember it. It's also considerably cheesier. Dig those voice credits: John Ritter as the scientist summoned into the magical realm, and M*A*S*H's Harry Morgan as the wizard who summons him. That might explain why the disturbingly flat soundtrack sounds more like something out of an '80s sitcom than out of a high-fantasy movie. At least the inevitable James Earl Jones as the inevitable evil wizard is kinda fun.
As to the goblin movie, it didn't ring any bells with any of us here at the Club. So clearly, it's time to revive an Ask The A.V. Club tradition…
STUMPED!
The A.V. Club has no answers for the questions below, and we haven't heard of Elizabeth's Scandinavian Christian gnome goblin movie, either. Can you identify any of these things? If so, clue us in at the e-mail address at the bottom of this column.
I have asked every nerd I know about this movie, and no one has any idea what I'm talking about. I saw it when I was a kid, about 15ish years ago, and it was sort of in the genre of "Bizarre Kids Movies," like Labyrinth, etc. I saw it on TV, so it might not have been in theatres. It was about these little puppet people from another dimension who came to earth and stayed hidden with this girl in her house in the suburbs, where she was hiding them from her parents. The puppets looked kind of like Cabbage Patch Kids. The only parts that I can remember are: 1) at one point, one of the puppet people gets put in a dryer, 2) there's an evil witch with some kind of magical fruit, and 3) at some point, the fruit is surrounded by a gate that is lowered. That is all I can remember. What is this friggin movie, for the love of God?
Kirby
Hey, everybody: I remember reading in a secondary Star Wars book (as in, not penned by George Lucas) that Boba Fett slept without an alarm clock, his ninja-like abilities allowing him to rise from sleep on command. Ever since I initially read it (early '90s), I've always found this detail absurd and wonderful, and I often use it either whenever a friend complains about a malfunctioning alarm clock, or in discussions regarding Boba Fett's awesomeness. Anyway, I was wondering if any of you remember which book(s) that fact was from. I'm pretty sure it wasn't in the Timothy Zahn books… Thanks!
Benjamin
I remember catching the tail end of a science-fiction movie (possibly a short piece) featuring a man playing a futuristic game of chess on a glass board with stylized chrome geometric laser-firing tank-like pieces. He was playing said game against a kind of apelike alien who, when beaten, screamed horribly, and the bearded human protagonist was beamed outside of some kind of pyramid. It was that weird. Naturally, I need to know what on earth it was.
Chris
Next week: A kwestion of speling and a Muppety dance song, among other things. Send your questions to asktheavclub@theonion.com.
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