Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz!
I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Pizza” with a minor in “Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!
From March 2013, it’s the speech for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze!
When we last saw our radical heroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Leo, Donny, Mikey, and Raph, they had just defeated the evil Shredder by dropping him off a rooftop into a garbage truck compactor. When our story begins the turtles are crashing at the house of their reporter friend April O’Neil, while they look for a new home, afraid that the remainder of Shredder’s deadly clan of foot ninjas, The Foot, will attack them if they return to the New York Sewers. Meanwhile, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the Shredder returns, and, after discovering the secret behind the Turtle’s mutation, leads his evil cadre of mutants, minions, and morons to exact revenge on the Turtles and their mutant rat sensei, Master Splinter!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was first released as an American comic book in 1984 using money from a tax refund and a loan from co-creator Kevin Eastman’s uncle. The single-issue, self published comic was inteded to parody four of the most popular comics of the early 80’s Marvels’ Daredevil and New Mutants, Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and Frank Miller’s Ronin. Since then the Turtles have branched out into action figures, children’s cartoons, live-action television, video games, and feature films, food tie-ins, more comic books, and even a concert tour with such hits as “Pizza Power”, “April Ballad”, and “Coming Out of Our Shells!” Before there were Power Rangers, Dragon Ball Z, or Pokemon, there was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze is the second in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action trilogy starting with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of Ooze in ’91, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Sacred Scroll of Death in ’93 in which the turtles are transported back in time to feudal Japan. Each has a progressively lower Rotten Tomatoes Score. I personally want to put in a request to see Scroll of Death at a future supercult simply because of its tagline: “Without a map. Without a clue. Without a pizza.” It sounds horrifically awesome.
Only a few of the voice cast or stunt actors from the first Turtles movie returned for this one. The voice of Leonardo (Brian Tochi) and the voice of Michelangelo (Robbie Rist) are the only actors who appeared in all 3 live action Turtles movies. Several of the performers who wore the turtle suits also had extra side roles in the movie, so if anyone is interested in seeing what the actors look like under the turtle suits, Leo also plays the man in the news room who tells April that Donatello is calling her, Donatello also plays one of the foot soldiers, and Michaelangelo also plays the soho man who talks to April before she enters her apartment.
Other trivia for TMNT 2 Include:
- Due to backlash from parents over the darker and more violent tone of the first movie, the producers decided to not allow the Turtles to use their weapons for the entirety of this film.
- The building used for the entrance to April’s apartment is the office to the New York location of Jim Henson’s Creature shop. The movie is also dedicated to the Memory of Jim Henson.
- The fight double for Donatello, Steven Ho, kept the Donatello head, became a stand-up comedian, and uses the head in his act.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention…Vanilla Ice is in this movie. There’s a fight scene in a dance hall and he raps…
It’s a Ninja Rap…
When Vanilla Ice first arrived on the movie set, Michelan Sisti (the actor in the Michaelangelo suit) went up to Vanilla Ice to give him a hug and welcome him aboard on the movie. However, Ice’s overweight bodyguard stiff armed him – even with the full Turtle suit on – and nearly eighteen of the actors and stunt men stepped forward to pounce and defend Sisti. The film’s stunt coordinator immediately stepped in and stopped them from fighting. Dan Pesina, one of Shredder’s foot ninja in the movie who would later play the characters Johnny Cage, Scorpion, and Subzero in the first 2 Mortal Kombat video games, later told the incident in an on-line interview saying, “[Vanilla Ice’s] bodyguards almost got their butt kicked.”
The original live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie has a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, and from a budget of $13 ½ million grossed over ten times that in the US alone while Secret of the Ooze on the other hand has a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, and with an increased budget of $25 million grossed just over 3 times that in the US. Worse, but not bad for a movie that stars a bunch of stunt men in turtle costumes and animatronic turtle heads with their voices dubbed over.
Shout Cowabunga and have a slice on us fellow Supercultists! The Supercult show is proud to present, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze!!!
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