This reminds me that recently I was surprised to find the 1980 Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb on HBO a few weekends ago. I hadn't seen it since then, but I was recently curious to see it again, and it's not on video that I know of. Thanks HBO!
It was not awful. There were some good jokes in it, and a bunch of ones that fell slightly flat, but it had a good villain. It surprised me that it was basically a straightforward Bond movie parody, following the exact formula of one of those pictures. Except for the middle bit, which was a 20 minute long advertisement for Universal Studios and its tour. Kind of a time capsule of what it was like at the time, but yeah, they manage to go through the entire tour as the backdrop for chasing bad guys. Makes me suspicious that this was how they managed to get a greenlight for the movie, which otherwise wouldn't have been made.
I also remembered my annoyance at the time that they changed CONTROL to something else, I think it was P.I.T.S. or something else that wasn't particularly funny.
I also appreciated that Don Adams looked pretty good throwing a punch. And not a funny punch, but a real punch. Sometimes there were moments when 86 seemed like a real secret agent instead of a bumbler.
Oh, and I still laugh to remember that the day Empire Strikes Back was released (May 21, 1980, burned into my memory), my brother and I went to see it, but one of my brother's friends got there too late and found it was sold out, so he had to see the other thing that was showing, which was The Nude Bomb. HA-ha.
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dancing_serpent
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Date: 2007-09-06 01:04 am (UTC)It was not awful. There were some good jokes in it, and a bunch of ones that fell slightly flat, but it had a good villain. It surprised me that it was basically a straightforward Bond movie parody, following the exact formula of one of those pictures. Except for the middle bit, which was a 20 minute long advertisement for Universal Studios and its tour. Kind of a time capsule of what it was like at the time, but yeah, they manage to go through the entire tour as the backdrop for chasing bad guys. Makes me suspicious that this was how they managed to get a greenlight for the movie, which otherwise wouldn't have been made.
I also remembered my annoyance at the time that they changed CONTROL to something else, I think it was P.I.T.S. or something else that wasn't particularly funny.
I also appreciated that Don Adams looked pretty good throwing a punch. And not a funny punch, but a real punch. Sometimes there were moments when 86 seemed like a real secret agent instead of a bumbler.
Oh, and I still laugh to remember that the day Empire Strikes Back was released (May 21, 1980, burned into my memory), my brother and I went to see it, but one of my brother's friends got there too late and found it was sold out, so he had to see the other thing that was showing, which was The Nude Bomb. HA-ha.