Night Man! One of TVs forgotten sons of the 90s. A smooth playing jazz musician by night and a....umm superhero by night also... Find out how this saxophone player gained his powers and how ridiculous they were..What crossover happened that no one asked for?! Let me know if you remember this one...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slash_vision_/?hl=en
Email: Slashvisionpodcast@yahoo.com
Night Man! One of TVs forgotten sons of the 90s. A smooth playing jazz musician by night and a....umm superhero by night also... Find out how this saxophone player gained his powers and how ridiculous they were..What crossover happened that no one asked for?! Let me know if you remember this one...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slash_vision_/?hl=en
Email: Slashvisionpodcast@yahoo.com
In the nineties, we didn't have the superhero fatigue. You know, nowadays everything's about superheroes, whether it's DC or Marvel. You know, back then we had what? Lois and Clark, we had some Batman movies, spider-Man, the animated series, the Almighty X-Men cartoon. But in 1997, we got one of the most, I'm not gonna say underrated, nor am I gonna say overrated. I'm gonna say the non-rated, non overnight sensation. That is night Man,
Speaker 2:A freak accident or one man's destiny. Johnny Domino is blessed. I felt what he was thinking. Some say Christ, I have voices with extraordinary powers and the will to use them evil's worst nightmare is about to begin the world. Premier of Nightmare. Tonight
Speaker 1:At eight on the WB 11 Night Man debuted on September 15th, 1997 in a two-part TV event. Now, I think they tried to make this larger than life, and it really wasn't. And judging by the theme that you hear in this, I'm gonna let this ride for just two seconds After listening to that. And if you didn't know what I was gonna talk about today, you'd probably think I'm, I'm gonna discuss a Cinemax movie or like, we all used to call it the SkyMAX, but that's not it. A lot of overnight TV shows had that kind of music playing, whether it be silk stockings or, uh, what was the other John Acapulco Heat, if you guys remember that, if we're old enough to all remember that show, or if you had a non-paid for cable like I did, I'm not gonna sit here and give you the I word, but it was non-paid for cable, not by my family, but it was paid for by the neighbors, thank you to the non-existent Paragon cable company that used to be around here in San Antonio. But we used to have Showtime because of them, and they used to play, uh, what was it, red Shoe Diaries. Jesus Christ, if that show didn't make me grow facial hair. But anyways, when you heard things like that, you already knew it was gonna be a nighttime show. It was gonna be more adult than it was going to be family. So when I first saw this show, I immediately thought, oh crap, there's gonna be a whole bunch of nudity on here. I, it was 1997, I was 13. So as my adolescent mind was thinking, man, I, I'm gonna see some stuff in this, but boy, was I wrong. Uh, I don't know if it was maybe the bad CGI or the horrible acting, but I was hooked and watching it as a, as an adult, I'm still hooked. It's, it's horrible enough for me to just love it. And I know a lot of people are out there gonna say, well, this really isn't a Marvel show, even though it does claim to be a Marvel character. This is actually the creation of Glen Larson and Malibu comics. But Malibu comics was bought out by Marvel. So this is technically a Marvel show by default,
Speaker 3:Mike, mad, good and Evil, evenly matched. I know what you're gonna do before you do it. Hey, won, help You, Mike Mad Sunday Night at 10 30 on w
Speaker 1:G n in this two part debut of Night Men. We learn about his origin, his, his, uh, his alter ego, his, uh, real identity as Johnny Domino, an overnight jazz player who plays at clubs and for some reason, he is well off enough to buy a Plymouth Prowler. When those things were cool, and I'm not gonna lie, I would actually still drive one if I had money, but I don't. So anyways, he, he's still able to afford one of those. He's able to buy a nice humongous studio apartment, and he's pretty comfortable up until the day that he's playing saxophone on a trolley. Now, this thing is full of people, nobody asks him to play, but he's playing with such conviction that they're all just standing there not listening to him. Some storm clouds show up, you don't see any lightning strike. He just starts glowing. And, uh, apparently he's got, he's been struck by lightning, and after this, he now has these superpowers that trump, Superman, that are better than Spider-Man or Dr. Strange, or any of those other guys. He now has the powers to read evil thoughts, and he also has the power to never sleep. This isn't a BS type of thing. And I'm not being, uh, as, uh, as sarcastic as I was about this other superhero I compared him to, but he can't sleep and he can hear bad thoughts. I'm gonna let that digest a bit. While all this is going on, the government had created a super suit, and there's only one prototype of it. It kind of makes you wonder who's gonna be wearing that later on, right? This super suit is being marketed on the black market. Everybody's trying to buy it. So they got this group of, of I guess, foreigners who are trying to sell this stuff under the table. But Secretary of Defense, who is played by James Karen, who, if you remember watching Return of Living Dead, he was the, uh, the manager, the guy who cremated himself and kissed his ring, put on top of the cremator of whatever that machine is called. But anyways, I was hoping for him to be the villain. It'd be something of a departure than what I'm used to seeing him as, but he dies a little early. And during his assassination, Johnny Domino had witnessed the entire thing because he heard the murderer's evil thoughts. Wow. Uh, Johnny had teamed up with a psychiatrist who's claimed to have been looking for a superpower like his for the past 40 years. I will mention a name, and the name is Katrina. Now she is the woman facilitating the sale of this super suit prototype. She is the one that puts the hit out on Johnny. Now Johnny does meet up with a scientist who created this suit and said, Hey, man, with powers like yours, this suit's gonna be, it's just for you. So they go to this abandoned warehouse. Now, we all loved abandoned warehouses back in any day of the nineties or the eighties or the seventies, anytime, do you know that there was an abandoned warehouse? Some stuff was about to go down. It always happens there. I don't know why this scientist gives him the suit and tells him, Hey man, this is going to have, uh, some superpowers on it that nobody's ever seen before. And I don't think anybody's ready for this. And they're, everybody's after it. So he gives him a belt, kind of looks like Batman's utility belt mixed with, uh, blank man's belt. Uh, a little weird though, but this is supposed to give him the ability to fly. It's supposed to be anti-gravity belt. So now he can just go up and down. For some reason, anytime that they showed some test footage of it, all he can do is go up and down. But the rest of the show, he's flying in different angles. Who cares? He's bulletproof. He can project holograms and, and he's got a cape that will make him invisible. Why would the government be creating soldier outfits with the Cape? Oh, well, only God knows, right?<laugh>. Anyways, he also has a mask that's got a red laser, which gives him thermal vision and night vision. Not really super. He, everything's pretty generic. I'm not gonna sit here and lie. Everything's pretty generic. And the thing that bothers me about his belt, it is forever running out of battery. It's got the same battery life as my Samsung watch. Like you charge it in like it's done within like a couple of hours. Reminds me of those old Tyco RC cars where you charge'em up for like six hours and if you throttle it too much, you're done with it within 30 minutes, because this battery on this suit does die quite a bit. Now the first thing you're gonna notice within the first 30 seconds of part one is the fact that none of the background is legit. Now, sure, you, again, 25% of the show, the background is legit. Like it's, it's a real background, but the rest of it is all green screen. And it's not even trying to blend it, but it does it's best job. Now, if I were to watch this on some sort of blueray quality or anything higher than vhs or the really bad DVD quality that I have it in, it's passable. You can still tell that it's a green screen, but it's not as noticeable. Jesus, like everything like the, the people don't even, how do I put this? You ever seen those TV shows where they're driving in a car and the background is just way too big and he just keeps moving around? You already know like, wow, this guy's been talking for 30 minutes and has not seen one stop light, but he's in the middle of downtown. It's one of those you never saw him break or nothing. They never even stopped. They just kept on going, what a great day that dude must be having to catch every green light. And also when Night Man First flew him and the scientists, they decided that they were gonna get out of this warehouse that the F B I and the government were looking for them in. And it looked like they were on like, some sort of forklift something just raised them up. It wasn't strings, but something raised them up. They were on a green screen and something raised them up. And the sad part is, is he told, he tells the scientists, Hey man, hold on tight. And when they were flying, they looked like they were about to take a prom picture. That's how bad the CGI was. The explosions looked like they were just stock footage that you can buy on any, any type of computer program. They didn't even, there was no effort put into this. I think a lot of the effort was put into the music and the outfit. Uh, even at one point they had a laser gun and this gun was supposed to disintegrate you, not your clothes, your clothes stay intact. Nothing, not, not a not a rip on them, but this laser gun, you get shot with it, you light up real quick and you disappear. Kind of like Maurice on Little Monsters when the light hit him. If you ever seen little monsters every time the light they turned on the, the lights anywhere, these monsters would just disappear into a pile of clothes. That's exactly what this laser did. And it looked horrible. All of it did. Driving scenes, talking scenes, these scenes on a bridge, it's like y'all could not have gone anywhere and filmed on a bridge. It's weird how this show lasted Two seasons, a little over 40 episodes, that's 20 something more episodes, more than the Flash series that had John Wesley ship, and that was a cool series, the original Flash. Man, you couldn't stop me from watching that either, but I feel like if there was gonna be any show to compare this to, it would probably be Team Night Rider. Now, if you all remember the original Night Writer show, which is just one of the greatest things ever, when with, uh, Michael Knight, David Hassel Hoff, and, and William Daniels who played Kit, just that whole show was great. And then they decided, well, let's buy a whole bunch of Ford vehicles and try to promote the F-150 and the Mustang and bring out Team Night Rider. I think these two shows could have crossed over and it would've been cool, it would've made both of them a little bit more enjoyable. But we did get it crossover that nobody saw coming in Season two, we saw Night Man Team Up with 1980 threes Manal, no one even asked for it. And, uh, his show only lasted really eight episodes and it was about a man named Jonathan Chase who can transform into any animal, hence the name. It was a little bit before Animorphs that that book came out way before. But anyways, they're trying to catch Jack the Ripper, who is now in possession of a crystal who can take him through time. Now, going back to the CGI that was talking about a little bit earlier, when he would transform him to these animals in the Night Man show they were, the screen would flash a couple times and he would be a panther or some sort of bird. But in 1983 it was all practical effects and it looked way better. And I wish they would've done this, at least with the scenery. Uh, you didn't need a green screen background to show the nighttime. I don't know what type of budget they were doing, but as I said a little while ago, I think that they spent it all and they spent more of their energy on Night Man's outfit itself. It's
Speaker 4:Nightmare versus Night Man. Time
Speaker 5:To stop playing around. I agree.
Speaker 4:Or is it ha ha
Speaker 6:Saturday at four on WB 17
Speaker 1:To circle back around the night. Ready? Real quick. David Hasselhoff does make an appearance and it is a blink or you'll miss it style thing. As the time went on on this episode and things kind of dragged just a bit, we saw Night Man in his full outfit. And when they finally showed him, you know, uh, on top of the building, like he's some sort like he's Batman, they did have a Batman style intro for his outfit. And I'm talking about the Val Kilmer and George Clooney styled intro where they're showing his legs, then his butt, and then his chest, and then his arm, you know, then his face, that style thing. Good thing he didn't have nipples on his outfit just like Batman did. But it's the same style intro nonetheless. And the last 25 minutes, 30 minutes, part two, we finally got to see Night Man Showcase himself after that Batman style introduction that he got, he got to show off all his superpowers. He got to fly. He used Bulletproof, he used his eye, uh, that one red eye. He used his, uh, his invisibility cape, everything but the hologram. And when he finally did use the hologram, what do you think he used it on? And what you're thinking is not the right answer. He used it to project himself playing the saxophone at the club to throw off everybody while he can fight crime so that they can say, wow, Johnny's not night man, even though how much we think he is, he's not him. The government was at the club. He decided to throw off, uh, his trail by projecting himself on the stage playing the saxophone. He basically played for three hours, no break. He didn't even take a breath, didn't say thank you, nothing. His whole time after rewatching it, I'm thinking, are they even gonna question it? And sure enough, the club owner did. She was like, Hey, uh, you played the same song twice. And he's like, oh, it's an encore. Jesus. You know, the the corny things that we got away with in the nineties would've been completely crucified if they were done today, honestly, they would've. Now, normally I would laugh at something like this and I would be like, man, I cannot believe I watched this. But you know what? It's still fun to watch. It's still something that maybe I do have nostalgia goggles on for now. If you all remember a little earlier I spoke about a woman named Katrina, and she was the one who put out the hit on Johnny. Well, at the end, when Johnny saves a day, he somehow goes back to the club, turns off the hologram, gets a bottle of wine, and is informed that his old flame is waiting for him in his room. So guess what he's gonna do? He grabs the wine, runs off from his friends, and proceeds to go to this room. He goes to the, he opens a door, tells whoever it is, because he can't see them cuz they're behind a wall. He's like, Hey, I'm almost done here. Let me uh, open up this bottle of wine. And I guess his powers somehow failed him because Katrina was on the other side of that wall with a gun. Yeah, I guess he didn't hear her evil thoughts after all. Well, a spider comes out of a lockbox and she's now dead. He goes on the other side and finds out, holy, this, this woman's dead. She's gone. Whoa. His old flame, his ex-girlfriend, the ex love of his life, walks through the door and she's like, whoa, I didn't know you had company, the same old trope we always get dealt with on, on these type of shows. And he's like, no, she's dead. And what is it? What did they think about doing? Oh, well, you know what? Let's go sing a duet down at the club. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. You would've think that, oh man, you know, what are we gonna do with this body? Are we gonna call the cops? Nothing? They just looked at each other. Some sexy music went on. It was a little lighthearted, sexy music. It wasn't the whole, we're gonna get down and dirty style stuff. They were just kinda like, Hey, you know, I still love you. And then two seconds later, there's, you know, he, he's playing saxophone and she's out there singing, what a way to end the show. Now, I urge all of you to go back and watch this, please. Night Man is something that I feel like could be revived today in a little bit better of a way. Honestly, I, I can see something like, and I know this name is gonna probably be called Overrated, but I think James Gunn, if he had a hold of night, man, I think he can do some things with him because as a music center superhero, and judging by how James Gunn does his, uh, series or his movies, it, it would fit hand in hand. It would be a made marriage. It'd be something that, you know, wouldn't be too bad. Especially knowing that Night Man tried to make itself really serious when it really wasn't. It, I, I could see a reboot of this being in the same vein as a peacemaker.
Speaker 2:My next night, man, a sexy secret agent gets an offer she can't refuse. They wish for me to kill again night, maybe kill me. Our impossible mission will challenge the powers on night coming up next.
Speaker 1:Normally I would provide links for you all so that you know, you guys can go back and watch this stuff. And I can't this time, because if you look for a night man on YouTube, all of his episodes are broken up into pieces. The first episode isn't even on YouTube. But if you want to take that extra step and you want to find him on Amazon Prime or the home streaming app, voodoo, by all means, go for it. As usual, my contact information is going to be in the description of this show, and I'll see you guys next time.