He Spies! He Flies! He Death-Defies!
In this month’s Single Serving Selection, we take to the skies above Monte Carlo with Greg Hatcher of the Atomic Junk Shop blog to swoop into Disney’s superhero/spy film that sank at the box office, only to rise again as a cult favorite: 1981’s Condorman!
When bumbling comic book artist Woody Wilkins is chosen for a simple courier mission for the CIA, he makes an impression on a beautiful KGB agent who wants to defect. Now the only man she trusts to escort her to the West is Woody, who she believes to be a highly skilled secret operative. Woody agrees to the mission, but only if the CIA will use its resources to turn him into the high-flying superhero from his own comic book: Condorman!
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RE: “Is it worth your time?” F***, yeah it is!
Obviously, I’m totally with Mike on this one, in that I just love this movie. Unlike Mike, for me there’s no nostalgia factor involved in my affection for this movie, as I only first saw it as a middle-aged adult.
On the question of who to cast in the title role in a modern remake, nobody of the right age (i.e., early to mid-30-ish) comes to mind immediately. If it had been done in the late ’90s or early ’00s, though, I can think of no one better than Bryan Cranston – he would have killed it!
By the way, since Greg mentioned the genre of spy movies involving a protagonist who’s out of his depth and possibly not even knowing what’s going on, I immediately thought of The Man Who Knew Too Little (starring Bill Murray) – another delightfully funny movie.
Anyway, thanks for a great show, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Enjoyed the show guys, thanks. That Oliver Reed helicopter anecdote is wild.
Good to hear Greg’s voice…he has the same giggle that he had when we were in high school about four thousand years ago, which is rather endearing. I don’t know (speaking of Oliver Reed) if Greg remembers this, but we used to hang out at a place called “Lenny’s Nosh Bar,” where the proprietor (“Lenny”) had pictures of himself with Oliver Reed up on the wall.
It turns out that Lenny had moved to London during the 1950s, and his next door neighbor (in South Wimbledon) was Oliver Reed. They soon became great friends, and whenever “Ollie” would be making a movie somewhere, Lenny would tag along to cook for him and to help with all of the torrential drinking that needed to occur. He had some wonderful stories, one of which involved waking up in a strange house (Peter O’Toole’s), with absolutely no memory of how he got there, or what he had done the previous evening. The good old days…. 🙂 I think that one of Lenny’s ex-wives published a book about all of this, and now I need to find a copy.
listening to this almost 3 years later and after Greg’s passing. I didn’t discover this as a kid. I was in high school when it came out; but, as a comic fan, I did pick up a Whitman 3-pack, with the comic adaptation and the third issue, with a new story. All things considered, the basic plot, on the page, wasn’t bad. Frank Bolle did the art, in typical Western/Gold Key/Whitman fashion; but, there was a sense of fun to things. Flash forward to around 1989/90 and I rented the film, from a video store, out of curiosity. I didn’t fall in love, but it had moments. I watched it again, later, on a cable showing and had fun with it; so much so, that I got a copy for myself. It’s a decent spy spoof, with some good stunt work, done by Remy Julienne, who did the car stunts in the original Italian Job, as well as For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill. To me, it fits in with Clouseau and also the Italian Bond spoofs, James Tont (there were two of those), as well as the Jean Dujardin pair of OSS 117 spoofs (both spy spoofs and spoofs of the original OSS 117 spy series).