The Hornet’s Everywhere
The Green Hornet seems to be gathering momentum this year. Not only is VCI announced they are releasing the original serials, The Green Hornet (1939) and The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1940), but Hollywood has announced yet once more that a new Green Hornet is in preproduction, this time scheduled for release in 2010 with Seth Rogen as Britt Reid (Seth Rogen? Seriously? Seth Rogen? The chubby comedic actor from Knocked Up? Yikes!) Anyway, I was cruising around the tv channel guide and came upon a channel listed as ALTVN, and saw they were showing the classic TV show late Friday night. I rushed home after work to see it and was amazed. I had always heard about the show but had never seen it. Though produced by William Dozier of Batman fame, the show is played completely straight (though there is some capiness in it, as there is with all live action superhero shows, the idea of a costumed crimefighter is automatically a little goofy when seen in live action). How good is it? Even my wife, who generally doesn’t care for superhereos was captivated by it. Why? Simple, Bruce Lee. Even on this little short lived TV show, his star power shines out and keeps you riveted on him regardless of anyone else in the shot with him. Even when he is nonchalantly lounging in the background of a scene you are wacthing him instead of the actors in the foreground. Two scenes impressed my wife and myself. One had Lee drag an unconscious hood twice his size to a car and toss him in, all in one long sustained take. He did it with little effort and wasn’t even breathing hard afterward. The other was during the climactic fight scene where he is beating the crap out of one villain when another tries to sneak up on him. Lee kicks sideways, hitting the guy full in the face without even looking at him (that is up there with Dave Sharpe’s backflip from Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941)). Watching this I can’t understand why the show wasn’t a big hit. Lee should have been a superstar from this show instead of having to return to Hong Kong to achieve world wide fame. My only idea has to be it wasn’t campy enough. Compared to other hit shows at the time; Batman, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., even The Wild, Wild West had true campiness to different degrees while The Green Hornet was, for the most part, a serious crime drama. So it was regulated to having a cult following like Kolchack: The Night Stalker and Firefly, instead becoming a TV legend. Such is the fate of too many good shows.
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