Drunk Irish Riddles

 

Mr. T in Freaked (1993)

 

If you haven't seen "Freaked," I doubt I can adequatly describe it to you. It's a bizarre, surrealist, wacky comedy from the early 90s. It stars, and was made by, Bill S. Preston, Esquire and features cameos by "Ted" Theodore Logan AND the Grim Reaper. For a better understanding of the film, see the Freaked re:View.

The thing to note, for the purposes of this post, is that "Freaked" features Mr. T and, though I haven't seen them all yet (so I can't be sure), it's probably the weirdest Mr. T role ever.

In the movie, a man has created a collection of freaks - his own Freak Show - and is holding them all captive. Mr. T plays the Bearded Lady.

He wears dresses, he wears jewelry (I guess that's technically normal for him), he wears makeup. According to Alex Winters, Mr. T got fed up with cross-dressing and left the set three days before filming was complete.

And that's about it. So that's Mr. T in "Freaked."

Mr. T in Goldy 3: The Search for the Golden Bear (1988)

When was the last time you put a VHS tape into the VCR and watched a movie? At some point in your past, you watched a VHS movie for the last time and nobody knew it. 

In 1988, Mr. T appeared in the movie "Goldy 3: The Search for the Golden Bear" and it's perhaps so bad that it's not available to watch anywhere - even bootlegged. So I spent actual money to buy an actual VHS copy on actual eBay... actually paid to have it sent through the physical mail for days and actually sat down and watched it.

It should be noted that Mr. T's imdb filmography lists "Goldy 3: The Search for the Golden Bear" as coming out in 1988 and "The Magic of the Golden Bear: Goldy III" as coming out in 1994. You'd assume they were the same movie - the information is 90% the same - but they each list different leads. I have to assume they're the same and imdb is just inaccurate.

So this is a "frontier times" kids' movie where a female Tom Sawyer-type (Jessie) has a bear for a pet. Full disclosure: I did not watch "Goldy 1" and "Goldy 2" in preparation for this "review."

Mr. T plays a Native American who lives in the wilderness, communes with nature and specifically talks to the animals. Periodically the animals visit him and give him updates on what's happening to Jessie. Watching Mr. T talk to animals in Native American garb is a trip. Though... Here's one for the record books... This may be the only role Mr. T has ever played (other than himself) where his mohawk is completely appropriate for the character.

Cheech Marin is also in this movie and he plays a terrible magician whose show is failing. In desperation, he looks into a crystal ball, sees the town where Goldy lives, sees Goldy and is shown that Goldy is the key to making a great show. He sets out to obtain her. The main thing I want to point out here is that, in the reality of the movie, Marin is a completely inept magician and also possesses real magical powers.

So Cheech tries to buy the bear from Jessie's family and when they refuse, he uses tricks and magic to try to steal Goldy. The plot gets somewhat convoluted from there... in fact at one point I realized I had spaced out partway through and didn't know what was happening anymore and had to rewind it and re-watch a sizable chunk of "Goldy 3." That was a hard pill. I sum up: Jessie and Goldy run away into the woods, Goldy appears to be shot, turns out to be ok, they meet Mr. T, Cheech Marin regrets being evil and everything works out. Also in the end, they all agree to hypnotize Goldy to make her go back to living in the wild. So there will definitely be no "Goldy IV." Bear hypnotism!

The movie has a "Fall" look and feel and an "Ashokan Farewell"-esque soundtrack. It's a great world. But that's it for the positives. The plot is boring made-for-kids oatmeal and the acting is amazingly horrendous. There are a few kid-acting moments that are so bad, it occurred to me they would be wonderful memes for the Information Superhighway. After all, this movie doesn't exist on the internet, I could be the first to release them. But I just can't work up the energy to figure out the VHS-to-GIF conversion. Plus, it's Saturday night and I'm watching a children's movie alone - I'm not sure I get to laugh at anyone.

Mr. T in Alice Through the Looking Glass (1987)

 

Now there are some opening credits that you don't often see.

In 1987 an animated adaptation of "Through the Looking-Glass" was made and they cast Mr. T as the voice of the Jabberwock.

I waited over an hour to hear Mr. T say, "I'm tired of this jibber-jabberwock" or some reasonable variant of the same... but it never came.

Old Man Eats Watermelon

 

This video has over 4 million views and it shows the current state of the viewing public and of movies, even. Apparently to get over 4 million views you need cutting-edge special effects, Hollywood star power and flashy editing.

Mr. T in Wrestlemania II

So I started watching Wrestlemania II, taking notes (as one does) but eventually realized that it was all vanity and grasping for the wind. So I stopped. I stopped because there was no way to make note of everything going on here. There is way too much of everything. WikiPedia notes that Wrestlemania II has been criticized as being "excessive." Yeah, it is. If you ever want to watch something that's "excessive" check out Wrestlemania II. I will try to focus on a few things.

In Wrestlemania II, I theorize that the WWF made a marketing decision to try to bring more female fans in by including more women into the event. Joining Vince McMahon on color commentary duties is actress Susan Saint James of "Kate & Allie" fame...

Other women included were Joan Rivers, Elvira, Cathy Lee Crosby and Clare Peller. "Who's Clare Peller?", you ask? She's the "where's the beef?" lady. Oh, yeah. And that's in addition to the women wrestlers.

I figured this was worth mentioning because it affects the Mr. T match, which was my focus. Not that it affects the outcome but the experience of watching it. Having Kate (or Allie) doing commentary gives the entire event a strange and unnatural chemistry.  I'll put it this way: when you think "professional wrestling commentary", the phrase "cute as a button" is probably not the first thing that comes to mind.

On to T...

After Wrestlemania I, the WWF got the idea to have Mr. T be a "WWF Boxer" and to have a rivalry with Roddy Piper, who you might remember wrestled against him in said Wrestlemania. So Wrestlemania II features a Mr. T v. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper boxing match.

Going into it, I was surely intrigued. I really couldn't figure out what I thought they would do: would they script a fake boxing match or just say boxing is simple enough, let's give everyone the real thing. Even more perplexing was what happened next. Watching the match, it really looked real to me - I couldn't be sure about what I was seeing. Either it's really easy to fake boxing or they let them really box within a scripted framework because it just looked like boxing for the first few rounds.

It wasn't until Round 4 that the situation became crystal clear to me and everyone else. In Round 4, Piper and Mr. T drop their arms to their side and trade haymakers back and forth like it's a "Rocky" parody. With the sheen of realism completely gone, Piper loses his temper, bodyslams Mr. T and it devolves into a sort of street fight. The referee stops the match and Mr. T wins as Piper is disqualified. 

Overall, I found it pretty impressive. I have to say I was really fooled for a while there and it was pretty entertaining. Though the concept was a failure and the WWF never tried boxing again.