TV adaptation of the campy 1960s Broadway musical concerning a mad scientist who enlists a rival reporter and a group of gangsters to push the Man of Steel into a mental breakdown.TV adaptation of the campy 1960s Broadway musical concerning a mad scientist who enlists a rival reporter and a group of gangsters to push the Man of Steel into a mental breakdown.TV adaptation of the campy 1960s Broadway musical concerning a mad scientist who enlists a rival reporter and a group of gangsters to push the Man of Steel into a mental breakdown.
Lesley Ann Warren
- Lois Lane
- (as Lesley Warren)
David Patrick Wilson
- Superman
- (as David Wilson)
- …
Stuart Goetz
- Jerry Siegel
- (as Stuart Getz)
Gary Owens
- Narrator
- (voice)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis show was based on the 1966 musical of the same name which was considered the biggest Broadway flop of its time, closing after 3 1/2 months and costing $600K (equaling over $5 million in 2022). Although the play was praised by critics and audiences, it wasn't well promoted and found itself in direct competition with ABC's unexpected hit Batman (1966), which had just begun airing on TV twice a week. As a matter of fact, Superman's debut was intended to be heralded on the cover of Life Magazine, but it was ultimately reduced to a small sidebar in a flashy cover story about Batman. This heavily reworked TV special was an attempt to recoup some of the show's financial losses and to boost interest in licensing it for high school and regional theatre productions, but ABC buried it on their late-night schedule for both broadcasts.
- GoofsDr. Sedgwick's dates on the Nobel Prize winners are inaccurate. Richard T. Zsigmondy was awarded it in 1925, not 1938, and Sir Chandra V. Raman got his in 1930, not 1949. Also, although he didn't cite a date, Harold Urey received his award in 1934, so he would not have been in direct competition with Sedgwick, who didn't earn his P.H.D. until 1938.
- Crazy creditsEach cast member is shown in a brief clip that accompanies their name in the end credits sequence, and then - unusually - many of the crew members are similarly credited with an on-set photo.
- Alternate versionsThe heavily bootlegged version is just titled "Superman." The original broadcast version featured the complete name and included an additional card in the end credits with copyright information.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman (2006)
- SoundtracksWe Need Him
Music by Charles Strouse
Lyrics by Lee Adams
Sung by David Patrick Wilson, Nita Talbot, Joanna Kerns, Ronnie Claire Edwards, Udana Power, and Chorus
Featured review
This movie could have been awesome, but it misses the mark. It's a Superman Musical, based on a Broadway flop, and aired at 11:30 at night; you know it's not going to be Oscar material. But the fun comes in that the movie knows it's bad, and revels in it. It bears its cheese like a badge of honour, and as such actually comes close to being pretty good. It's cheesy, low-budget, and self-referential: three of my favourite things. Plus, it's narrated by Gary Owens, which makes it hard to go wrong.
But there's two problems: 1. It goes on way too long. There's only maybe 20 minutes of plot, tops, stretched into an hour and a half. This is due largely to 2. The songs. There's a whole lot of them, and they're not very well written. In fact, when you get down to it, some of them are really badly written. The rhyme schemes are haphazard and lackluster, the tunes are decent but nothing special, and in general, they all end up being pretty forgettable.
The songs also tend to repeat themselves a lot, stretching a single point into five or six verses... Then repeating several of those five or six verses over for emphasis. It gets boring very quickly. And since a large portion of the movie is devoted to the songs, the movie also gets old pretty quickly.
Still... For all of its flaws, it ends up being a fairly enjoyable movie. And as bad as it is... It's still not nearly as bad as The Adventures of Superpup.
But there's two problems: 1. It goes on way too long. There's only maybe 20 minutes of plot, tops, stretched into an hour and a half. This is due largely to 2. The songs. There's a whole lot of them, and they're not very well written. In fact, when you get down to it, some of them are really badly written. The rhyme schemes are haphazard and lackluster, the tunes are decent but nothing special, and in general, they all end up being pretty forgettable.
The songs also tend to repeat themselves a lot, stretching a single point into five or six verses... Then repeating several of those five or six verses over for emphasis. It gets boring very quickly. And since a large portion of the movie is devoted to the songs, the movie also gets old pretty quickly.
Still... For all of its flaws, it ends up being a fairly enjoyable movie. And as bad as it is... It's still not nearly as bad as The Adventures of Superpup.
- Movie-Man-Bob
- Mar 16, 2010
- Permalink
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What is the Spanish language plot outline for It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! (1975)?
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