Trump has seen the preview and has proclaimed: “There are good animals on both sides.”
7
What is next Mr. Rogers staring in Halloween 80 or Kermit as a psychopath in The Muppets Take Out Manhattan. Maybe funny but yeah -no.
5
Geez folks, cool your jets! Passing judgment without even seeing it. It may be very creative and original. I saw the show as a kid, and while I’m not a fan of the endless stream of reboots and sequels, this might be a cool twist on that. You know what might be even cooler, a reboot of Kujo as the gentle, loyal companion of group of kids.
3
The same company that owns CNN. Need I say more?
May not be in the realm of 'bad' Santa movies but will surely get some people all bent out of shape. If this is you, don't watch and do try something important to worry about.
3
I love quirky twists on ol' ideas but for some reason this one makes me feel queasy. I might need to go home and shower.
2
Formula:
1. Find some old TV show that baby boomers and Gen-Xers dimly remember.
2. Come up with a minimal "concept" that tweaks it in a banal, cheeky way.
3. Get funding to make a movie that hardly anyone will see.
4. Make terrible movie.
5. Be forgotten.
7
Ugh. You can add murder to anything and people will watch it. Let's see them create a joyful show--seems almost impossible in these dark times.
2
@Todd
Are you aware of the "first line" game? Find the first line of a novel or other book, and then add "and then the murders began."
example: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And then the murders began."
or: "In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth. And then the murders began."
3
Hope it gets slaughtered. So easy to take something like this and make it a horror. No real imagination. High school kids are killing each other. This has the same imagination.
5
I always knew they were evil :)
3
I'm looking forward to this. When plushies go bad...
1
Completely an idea taken from Five Nights at Freddy's. Why no mention of it in the article? It's not an obscure game. You can buy FNAF t-shirts at Kohl's!
3
One banana, two banana, three banana, four
Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more
Over hill and highway the banana buggies go
Coming on to bring you the Banana Splits show
Tra la la, la la la la, tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la, tra la la, la la la la
Four banana, three banana, two bananas, one
All bananas playing in the bright warm sun
Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and, Snork
Making up a mess of fun, Making up a mess of fun
Lots of fun for everyone
Two Banana, four banana, one banana, three
Swinging like a bunch of monkeys hanging from a tree
Hey there everybody won't you come along and see
How much like Banana Splits everyone can be
Tra la la, la la la la, tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la, tra la la, la la la la
Tra la la, la la la la, tra la la, la la la la
9
Absolutely disgusting. Stoop to any level to make a buck. Exploit an innocent children’s show, are you kidding me? What’s next, a Brady Bunch movie with a Manson family spin?
4
@Bob Hawthorne
At least that would make sense.
Every time I think that Hollywood can't stoop any lower, it manages to do it again. : ^(
5
What kind of sick jerks would take stuffed animals and sweet childhood memories and turn them into horror?
6
another childhood memory murdered.
"Tra-la-la, la la la la"
These old TV shows gave us kids in those days (1960's and 1970's) a common culture. Today that's pretty much gone.
The modern web is all about awareness, brand, and engagement.
A straight line can be drawn from the 'Banana Splits' TV show, to Cambridge Analytica and the Russian hacking of the 2016 US Presidential election, BREXIT, etc.
Where 5,000 data points on every US voter, can help pin point 'persuadable voters' who can be force fed their own private, emotionally triggering diet of media, we no longer have the possibility of true social consensus through mass culture.
Getting a free ride on the familiarity of older characters is a no-brainer from the business side - especially if the intellectual property is owned 'in-house', which given the consolidation in media to 3 or 4 major players, seems all but inevitable.
The new Hollywood is just like the old Hollywood. 'Discoverability' remains the coin of the realm.
4
I think I was in the Banana Splits fan club when I was a kid. I loved the show. A few months back I pulled up a few episodes online. The writers must have been on acid or something.
5
This is so weird, a couple days ago I just downloaded the theme song to my playlist and started thinking about the show which I loved when I was a kid.
3
@Kevin check out Liz Phair's cover version of the theme song, it rocks
The Dickies version isn't bad either :-)
seems like an all time bad idea thought up by people who can't have nice things. Always loved the Banana Splits as a kid and teenager in the mid-80s those reruns had a lot of goofy charm.
just shows that creative bankruptcy leads to certain kind of cultural malevolence. The worst part is this isn't even the first in the puppet murder horror genre. Sad that whoever took over Hanna Barbera is so craven to allow a fond memory to be exploited for dubious reasons at best.
19
The horror in this Movie lies in having made it.
4
Brilliant! As a child I loved them, but let’s face it: they were creepy.
4
I'll join you but let's watch the mystery island segment first.
4
@Dave Danger Island.
Bizarre television show characters with weird hair famous for their antics in funny looking suits turn out to be deranged killers?
Does everything have to be about Trump?
24
Conspicuously absent from this article is the horrifically bad "Land of the Lost" movie from a few years ago. This couldn't possibly be worse than that.
6
@Jilian never say never
This is incorrect --
"cartoons like “The Jetsons” and “Scooby-Doo” helped establish the Saturday morning cartoon."
Saturday morning cartoons were around for a LONG time before The Jetsons and Scooby-Doo. Those two shows may have differed by having one narrative story line through the half hour rather than several non-connected shorter cartoons -- but cartoon Saturday mornings (often showing older cartoons from the 1930s and '40s) were the norm when these latecomers appeared on the scene.
8
I was a fan of the original as a child, and not just because the opening was filmed at my beloved Six Flags Over Texas. Hey, why not the Six Flags Over Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
9
Is nothing sacred anymore?
2
@GW If people wearing animal costumes and singing aren't the very definition of "sacred," I don't know what is.
/sarcasm
1
@GW when the banana splits a wild hair idea based on the monkees falls in the category of sacred, it is time to 'revisit' the creaky old shows while fingering the rosary
As if the present-day wasn't horrible enough, some cynical. profit-seeking clown has taken something that gave me great joy in my childhood and turned it into a bloody nightmare. I'm sure the day will come when someone decides to put a "fun spin" on mass shootings and immigrant camps to make a buck - it's the American way.
That Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera "would have hated it" doesn't matter - they're dead.
5
@jessegaron: Fortunately, there was no violence in Hanna-Barbera's Tom and Jerry cartoons.
2
@Alan Dean Foster We both know there was "violence" in the old theatrical cartoons. It was slapstick, though, of the Three Stooges variety, albeit animated. As far as I know, no one ever died a bloody death in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but I could be wrong. Live long and prosper.
Sigh. I always hear the older generations talking about how unoriginal everything is for my generation and now I see it everywhere. This is little more than someone's theatric spin on the Five Night at Freddy's game where animatronics try to kill the player, except they couldn't even come up with original characters. They are using ones they think us youngins don't know about.
4
@Sissy ...except the Banana Splits were not animatronics. They were suppose to be live creatures. Still, I’m sure the creators of this movie are taking the game’s popularity into consideration.
1
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S is a popular video game series about murderous animatronics at a pizza parlor. This movie is cashing-in on an older IP, to ride the coat-tails of a current trend. Weird that the article didn't mention that.
7
What a shame. I loved this show when I was a kid. It's sad to see things i valued treated like garbage.
7
When previews came out months ago, people considered it a knockoff of Five Nights at Freddy's.
3
Certainly "Laugh-in" had a big influence on this show as well, from the short clips to features like the Joke Wall, which one of the accompanying pictures clearly shows. But while the look may have been inspired by the bright pop colors of the era, the decision to film the original Banana Splits show rather than capture it on tape resulted in decidedly dull-looking colors on the TV screen. I'll be surprised if the movie's palette is as washed-out and yellow. Sounds like there'll be some eye-popping red, at least!
2
So sad that the movie studios of today can’t leave the older, beloved children’s characters alone. Go think up new characters for your nightmarish movies and leave our vintage tv, trailblazer characters alone.
25
@Kathy Haer I could not agree more. It takes a considerable amount of courage to put together something fun, innocent and original these days. No one wants to step up for that. It's all pirating the past and making it "adult".
I'm fed up with remakes, reboots, and messing with things that were fine the first time around.
Don't get me wrong, I like horror movies, but don't take something nice and sweet from our childhoods and corrupt it for a snarky, ugly kind of film that ruins whatever came before.
8
@Kathy Haer -- Exactly.
Our Myths are Not to be triffled with.
And why mess with History, as well?
(Looking at YOU, Howard Zinn (A People's Hstory of the United States].)
Why must 'life' be so Complicated?!
2
@Thuban77 -- "... a snarky, ugly kind of film that ruins whatever came before."
Knowing a film might ruin one's appreciation for its precursor, why on Earth might one watch it?
It's like gay marriage -- how does it hurt someone if someone else gets married to someone else?
1
It will ring in my ears all day long...
"One banana, two banana, three banana, four..."
I might even get up and dance to it, just like in the old days!
29
@John
"Four bananas sitting in the white warm Sun
Flipping like a pancake
Popping like a corn
Bingo, Fleegle, Drooper and Snork"
1