The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989, Bill Bixby)

Spoiler: there’s no trial in Trial of the Incredible Hulk. Except maybe the viewer’s difficulty getting through the TV movie. Or producer, director, and star Bixby doing a special effects heavy (but not for Hulk Lou Ferrigno) backdoor pilot for a “Daredevil” TV show starring very special guest star Rex Smith. Ferrigno’s so shoe-horned into the production he doesn’t even get to Hulk out in the third act.

Things are off from the start, which has Bixby working on a ranch—run by familiar-looking TV guest star Meredith Bain Woodward—only to leave when he’s being bullied too much. Don’t want to waste one of the three Ferrigno scenes on a ranch fight. Woodward warns Bixby if he heads to the city, it’ll suck his soul out. Now, the city never gets mentioned by name—it’s Vancouver—but when henchman Nicholas Hormann lists the various crime lords’ home bases, New York is left off the list and Daredevil’s traditionally New York.

And Trial’s New York City being in a quick hitchhike from the Canadian North Shore mountains or whatever… well, it sums up the production fairly well.

Most of the episode is about Smith trying to rescue third-billed Marta DuBois from John Rhys-Davies. Rhys-Davies is playing evil businessman Wilson Fisk (aka the Kingpin, though not in Trial), who wears his sunglasses both indoors and at night, and watches everything on video. The opening jewelry store heist sequence has the robbers setting up cameras so Rhys-Davies can see what they’re doing and instruct them. There are a few times throughout the movie where it’s clear someone did a lot of work getting all that video to show right in the final production. Shame Gerald Di Pego’s script doesn’t have similar levels of care.

Let me see if I can quickly summarize the contrivances. DuBois is on the same subway train as Bixby after the jewelry heist. Bad guys John Novak and Dwight Koss are also on the train, giddy after their successful robbery. Novak decides he’s going to rape DuBois. Koss seems iffy on it, but then agrees. After initially staying out of it, Bixby finally Hulks out, and it’s Ferrigno to the rescue.

Except after the cops arrest Bixby (post-Hulk out), DuBois tells them he was the one who assaulted her. It just doesn’t make sense to poor Bixby, who thinks he’s still in the more wholesome, early eighties era of primetime. Smith offers his services to Bixby—who goes from a jail cell to a prison cell without so much as a hearing (about halfway through Trial he has a scene about not being able into the courtroom because he’d let Ferrigno deal with it)—and Bixby reluctantly agrees. Basically because Smith is blind. DuBois is also nicer to Smith once she realizes he’s blind. It’d have been a wild “Daredevil” show; so many plot twists based on Smith being blind and people not realizing he’s got sonar vision.

After DuBois tells Smith what really happened, Rhys-Davies realizes there’s still another forty-five minutes, so he tells consigliere Hormann to kidnap her and use her as bait for Daredevil. No one in Vancouver New York has heard of the Incredible Hulk so it’s not really a team-up movie, at least not in terms of action set pieces. Hormann falls in love with DuBois, potentially complicating matters.

Can Bixby and Smith bond over their respective radioactive secrets and save her in time?

There’s very little for Bixby to do in Trial. Eventually, he plays big brother to Smith, who gets a whole “Daredevil Forever” arc in his first appearance, as Rhys-Davies is able to hit him in the ego. But until then, he’s got to stay busy in scenes with no plot arc for himself. Lots of small talk.

Smith’s got his whole potential series crew with him—love interest and law partner Nancy Everhard, Black guy who works at the office Richard Cummings Jr., Commissioner Gordon Joseph Mascolo, and then Hormann. Rhys-Davies clearly wasn’t showing up for every episode of “Daredevil,” and Hormann could be the stand-in. Apparently, the show would then feature the damsel-in-distress (so DuBois here) having to do multiple scenes being terrorized before Smith would rescue her.

DuBois gets a whole bunch to do. Multiple monologues about how shitty everyone is being to her even though she was the one who was almost raped. She gives one basically every fifteen minutes.

While DuBois is just okay—there’s nothing she can do with the part—she easily puts in the best work in the movie. Smith wants that series gig and tries hard, but no matter how game his performance, he’s bad. He’s sympathetic; he’s trying to make hash out of this terrible movie; still bad.

Trial is an arduous watch, except for counting Vancouver locations and plot holes. It’s not even fun for catching shots of Ferrigno in his Hulk booties. He’s always wearing them.

The morbidly curious might be interested in watching Bixby’s attempts at playing Fiege, but otherwise… beware.

Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978, Kenneth Johnson)

Bride of the Incredible Hulk is just the season two two-part opener, “Married,” as a theatrical release (for overseas). But it’s also a remarkably self-contained outing for Bill Bixby (and even more so for series costar Jack Colvin, who gets a single scene). The movie opens with Bixby arriving in Hawaii to consult with preeminent psychologist Mariette Hartley. Hartley’s developed new applications for hypnosis to combat physical ailments, and Bixby thinks he can use it to keep Lou Ferrigno at bay.

Unfortunately, just as Bixby gets to Hartley’s office (some lovely California location shooting filling in for Hawaii), she’s headed onto permanent sabbatical. She’s got a fatal illness, which the audience knows about because the episode opens with the teaser, and it gives away Hartley’s condition, messing up the first act. It’s a shame the Bride version doesn’t have a release, so at least there aren’t spoilers from the “Next On.”

Bixby eventually convinces Hartley to help him, revealing his secret identity—he’s using “Benton” as his last name in this episode, but once Hartley finds out he’s David Banner, she can’t stop saying his name loudly in public. Even though Colvin’s around looking for the Hulk after he shows up, though—wisely—Colvin’s story goes entirely untold. Because Bride’s staying very busy with Hartley. The movie’s mostly her ruminating on her condition, which is similar to ALS, but director Johnson didn’t want to come up with a whole fake name for the disease. Not when Hartley is mooning over Bixby using big medical words to describe stubbed toes and so on.

If she agrees to help him with the big green guy, he’ll try to help her cure her own mitochondrial-based disease in the six to eight weeks she has left to live. She starts mooning over him after a couple of days. He reciprocates after she proves she can handle herself with his Ferrigno outbursts, including Ferrigno breaking up a luau. An incredibly problematic luau on at least two fronts. First, the cultural one—though Bride’s entirely unaware; it’s frequently racist, with one of Bixby and Hartley’s couple bits being mocking Japanese people. Then there’s third lead Meeno Peluce. He’s the little boy who lives nearby and shares a beach with Hartley. When Ferrigno breaks up the luau, everyone abandons Peluce to watch in awe. He’ll go on to emulate Ferrigno’s outbursts, which Bixby thinks is adorable and seemingly doesn’t connect the behaviors.

Given how strange it is to watch Bixby in therapy sessions with Hartley and realize he’s just got garden variety anger management issues. He tells Hartley so many flashbacks, Lara Parker should’ve gotten credit for her pilot movie footage (regardless of her not having any lines). Poor Susan Sullivan (the actual love interest from the pilot movie) is forgotten or maybe even retconned. Bixby leaves her contributions to his work out entirely when recapping the show premise for Hartley.

It’s a pretty good episode for Bixby. The racist stuff hurts his demeanor, and his pressuring Hartley to put a ring on it is very strange (and entirely unexplored). But they do have great chemistry. His stuff with trying to control Ferrigno goes completely unresolved, even in terms of episode arcs, and Johnson’s too worried about getting the thing done on budget to tie the final action sequence to Bixby mediating his way into the desert of his mind, population two: him and Ferrigno. Those “dream” sequences are visually striking. They’re somewhat inert, narratively, but they’re cool looking. Bixby gets it really bad at the end when he’s got to have a heart-to-heart with Peluce about the morale of the story, and Peluce is godawful, and Bixby just can’t make it work.

But Hartley—and her processing of her impending death—is the star. She’s fantastic. And she’s the star of Bride (and “Married,” which is a weird way to do a season opener, but it was the seventies). Even when she’s got weaker material—not just her being a racist shit but also when she daydreams Peluce is she and Bixby’s kid, instead of them both giving their lives to science and denying the only fulfilling human experience, raising a child actor.

Johnson does well with a lot of the direction. John McPherson’s photography is nice. Doesn’t match all the stock footage, but it’s nice.

Bride has problems, but it’s a damn good TV melodrama with superhero action accouterment.

The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988, Nicholas Corea)

The Incredible Hulk Returns is severely lacking. It’s severely lacking pretty much everything. Despite being set in and filmed in Los Angeles, the movie looks generic and constrained–director Corea has a truly exceptional aversion to establishing shots. The interior shots often have a different visual feel. More like video (Returns was shot on film, but edited on video). The video feel makes everything seem more immediate. But the last thing Returns has is immediacy. It lacks an immediacy, even though it’s incredibly dramatic.

No pun.

The movie’s set an indeterminate time since the TV series ended, but two years since Bill Bixby has turned into Lou Ferrigno. He’s in L.A. making a gamma ray to cure himself and romancing fellow scientist Lee Purcell. Despite a not too big thirteen year age difference, Bixby and Purcell lack chemistry. They’re not bad together, they just don’t seem into one another. The script tries too hard to make them cute and they’re not. The dialogue’s real bad on their romance too. There’s a lack of affection, even implied.

It doesn’t really matter because Purcell’s not important. She even gets kidnapped at one point and manages not to be important. The movie willfully ignores her. Because after the first act, it becomes a pilot for a “Thor” TV show and not really a Hulk TV movie.

Bixby’s about to cure himself when annoying rogue nerdy but late eighties nerdy cool doctor (medical doctor… sure, why not) Steve Levitt shows up. Seems Levitt’s gone and found himself an ancient Viking war hammer and become bound to giant, buff, blond Viking warrior god Eric Allan Kramer. Pretty soon Kramer is fighting Ferrigno and they break the lab, causing a big problem for Bixby.

Except not because they just fix up the lab, much to the chagrin of Bixby’s boss’s little brother, Jay Baker. Baker works his ass off in The Incredible Hulk Returns. He takes this movie really, really seriously. More seriously than anyone else, including Charles Napier playing a Cajun mercenary without a Cajun accent but TV Cajun speech patterns. It’s painful. Anyway. Baker. He tries. He’s also a corrupt little shit who hates his older brother John Gabriel. Baker doesn’t like Bixby much either. Or Levitt. They work too hard. Not really a subplot, but it comes up a couple times and it’s a lot of character development for Returns. Baker goes wild with it.

The movie utterly fails him, of course, but he does try. No one else really tries. Tim Thomerson doesn’t try as the villain. He’s also a Cajun but he’s ashamed of it. Or so Napier implies. Because Corea’s script for Returns puts more effort into the back story on the industrial mercenaries than on its lead female actor. Oh, wait. It’s only female actor. Purcell manages to weather Returns with dignity. Maybe having less to do helps.

Bixby’s completely flat throughout. He’s default likable, but never anything more. He’s not bored or condescending to the material or anything. He’s just completely flat. He’s supposed to have figured out some zen thing to control the Hulk but still. A lot of it is probably the script. Or Correa’s direction. Neither succeed at all.

Regarding Baker and his valiant efforts in his role–he’s not auditioning for a series. Levitt and Kramer would be the leads on the “Thor” show and, although Kramer does try, he doesn’t try as hard. And Levitt is exceptionally bland. Again, some of it’s the script. Some isn’t.

Kramer at least has fun. But his character is supposed to enjoy having fun. No one else in the movie enjoys anything. Not even Ferringo enjoys breaking things. Then again Correa kind of gives Ferringo the worst stuff in the movie. Not just the script or how Correa directs him–though I guess Ferrigno does get a couple spotlight action sequences–but also the make-up. When Ferrigno needs to do “Hulk sad,” he can do it. Shame Correa only has him emote twice in the movie.

Jack Colvin (from the “Hulk” TV show) comes back too. He’s barely got a part and spends a lot of his screen time talking on phones. He’s not good but he’s not terrible.

The music from Lance Rubin needs to be heard to be believed. At least for the first thirty or so minutes. Then there’s less or different music, but Rubin’s action sequence music? It’s loud, fast, layed, and terrible. There’s one good bit of music–when not using the show theme–and it’s a shock, because it suggests Rubin can do different approaches. He actually can’t. The good bit was anomalous.

The Chuck Colwell photography is bad. But is it because Colwell’s work is bad or because Correa doesn’t really do the whole shot composition thing. Either way, the result is bad. The movie never looks right. Or good. Unlike some things, the bad photography is quite bad. It isn’t just not good. It’s bad.

I suppose at the very least, The Incredible Hulk Returns is never boring. It’s just never good. And it’s often bad. Correa does a rather poor job, both at the directing and the writing.

The Return of the Incredible Hulk (1977, Alan J. Levi)

The Return of the Incredible Hulk is the second pilot movie for the subsequent “Incredible Hulk” TV series. It aired three weeks after the first pilot, which featured the origin of the Hulk–scientist Bruce Bixby turns himself into green-skinned musclebound grotesque Lou Ferrigno thanks to gamma rays–and his pursuer, annoying, uninformed tabloid reporter Jack Colvin. Luckily Colvin doesn’t come into Return until over a half hour in so there’s limited Colvin, which is just fine. Return has enough acting… issues without Colvin mucking up too many scenes.

It’s not all Colvin’s fault; the details of his scenes are idiotic television shorthand. But it’s not like he makes the scenes work, which an actor could with some enthusiasm. The cast of Return of the Incredible Hulk is usually at least enthusiastic–all the guest stars act like they’re auditioning for a regular CBS show, which they are–but not Colvin. He’s just an unenthusiastic jackass, which isn’t a good kind of jackass.

And Colvin isn’t the one who drags Return down. The Return of the Incredible Hulk is a perfectly adequate, lower mediocre, late seventies television pilot. The one impressive shot in it doesn’t even involve the Hulk and it’s only technically impressive. Director Levi does show some interest occasionally, but he also shoots some really mediocre scenes. He’s got no interest in the soap opera aspects of the story, which is sort of a Gothic about a troubled young woman (Laurie Prange), who lost her father and her ability to walk, now getting sicker and sicker, in the care of stepmother Dorothy Tristan and special doctor William Daniels. Although an heiress, her true love is Gerald McRaney. He disappears after the first third, which is too bad. He’s rather enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Prange ends up getting the spotlight, befriending both Bixby and Ferrigno–separately. She calms Ferrigno’s beast and Bixby is trying to save her from those conspiring against her. Though there’s not much mystery in who’s conspiring against her. Kenneth Johnson’s teleplay is nothing if not efficient. The moment after Bixby reveals he knows Daniels’s doing something slimy, Daniels’s conspirator confronts Daniels about it. So all of a sudden Return’s got specific villains who have specific henchmen for Ferrigno to fight.

All the action takes place on Prange’s orange orchard in Northern California. At the opening, before it’s been made clear what a low bar Return is going for, it almost seems like there’s going to be a Bill Bixby as Tom Joad thing. There isn’t.

There is a Lou Ferrigno is Boris Karloff with the old man, which would be a lot more amusing if the old man didn’t stick around the rest of the movie. John McLiam plays the old man, a loner who has cut himself off from the world because of tragedy. He’s a veteran. He’s also a drunken Northern California hillbilly living in a surprisingly well-lighted shack. Oh, and his introduction is taunting the chicken he’s cooking about how he’s going to eat it.

And McLiam plays it all straight, which is just the wrong way to play it.

Everyone in Return, with the exception of Colvin and McLiam, tries. Daniels has some good nerdy creep moments. Tristan has some good moments. Some bad ones too, but at least there’s some energy to her performance. Though muted… as it appears in Charles W. Short’s thoroughly competent and boring lighting.

Prange tries. And she is frequently bad. But when the script’s at its best and the melodrama is toned down, Prange has a really good moment or two. There’s a sweetness between she and Ferrigno and it’s entirely from the actors. Johnson makes the time in the movie for it, but–as producer–he doesn’t make Levi enable it. Instead they rely on Joseph Harnell to do a terrible theme for Prange, separate from the “Incredible Hulk” theme, which gets a disco-ish remix early on in Return. And they use that theme for Prange ad nauseam. It ruins scenes, it ruins momentum.

Because Return finally gets some momentum in the second half, when Bixby, Prange, and McLiam are on the run. Through the Northern California orange country swamp, chased by men with dogs and a guy in a helicopter. And there are snakes.

And bears. And Ferrigno fights a bear. It’s not a bad fight. Like, for a TV pilot movie? With the “Hulk”’s demographic target audience? It’s a decent bear fight. Much cooler than the rest of the Ferrigno action. There’s too much slow motion, not enough choreography. When there’s choreography–even a little bit–it works better. There’s also the breaking stuff factor. Ferrigno breaks things (it’s the reason Bixby can’t stay in one place too long, Ferrigno might break something–not kill someone, break something). They’re big things, sure, but the set pieces are often tedious in Return. And sometimes Levi will all of a sudden decent to get serious during a fight scene and totally change the tempo.

But the bear fight is cool.

The snake not so much.

There’s also a quicksand sequence, because it’s a TV pilot movie from the late seventies. The quicksand is a disappointment.

I forgot McRaney (just the like the movie; though maybe he was busy shooting other things). He’s not good, but he’s likable. You can tell he’s got the TV star thing down. And when he’s in the movie, there’s at least a chance for it to go someplace surprising, story-wise.

It’s when he disappears Return becomes a race to the half hour chase scene.

And the half hour chase scene makes up for the rest. Enough for a late seventies TV pilot movie. The whole thing is an audition tape for Bill Bixby and the various things he’ll be able to do on the subsequent series. There’s just enough with Ferrigno to show off the action possibilities. Prange has just the right amount of tragedies to show off the sentimental possibilities. Bixby’s likability, especially opposite Prange, makes up for a lot throughout. Johnson does a fine job advertising a series.

While still adequately plotting out the ninety minutes. Return is well-produced, it’s just unimaginatively executed and rather underacted.

The Incredible Hulk (1977, Kenneth Johnson)

The Incredible Hulk opens with a montage of lead Bill Bixby’s martial bliss. It goes on for quite a while, just Bixby and (an uncredited) Lara Parker being a happy married couple. Then tragedy strikes. Like most tragedies in The Incredible Hulk, it involves a car tire blowing out. There are three such instances in the movie. The first two are fine. The third one’s contrived, but effective. Director and writer and producer Johnson doesn’t let anyone acknowledge how unlikely the third instance seems; Hulk takes itself way too seriously for that sort of thing.

And Hulk taking itself seriously works. Sure, Hulk Lou Ferrigno has a terrible wig but who knows what would happen to hair after a person metamorphoses into a… well, an incredible hulk. But the rest of the seriousness? It works.

Even the manipulative opening montage.

It’s almost a year after the tragedy. Bixby has thrown himself into his work; he and research partner Susan Sullivan are trying to figure what gives people superhuman strength in cases of crisis. It’s not clear whether they’ve been working on the project since before the tragedy, as it ties directly into Bixby and Parker’s experiences.

The first act of Hulk is this phenomenally plotted science and research story. Sullivan does great selling all the scientific stuff (for a while at least, Hulk sounds pretty scientificy–the science variation of truthy). Sullivan does a great job with everything. Bixby might get top-billing, but Sullivan makes the movie. She and Bixby have this gentle relationship; when Johnson adds their backstory in exposition towards the end of the second act, it all works because Sullivan has been so good.

As the movie begins, Bixby’s not doing well at work. He walks out on an interview with mom Susan Batson who found super-strength to save son Eric Deon. Sullivan, playing the responsible one, has to get Bixby focused. Turns out she gets him too focused and he starts experimenting on himself. Resulting in the third blowout and the first appearance of Ferrigno.

Ferrigno’s “first day” out as the Hulk is Johnson doing something of a Frankenstein homage. The electronically amplified Hulk growls don’t work–and the wig is terrible–but Ferringo works hard in his scenes. He gets to over-emote since he’s a seven foot tall musclebound green grotesque, but the over-emoting is what the part needs. Johnson knows it too. He gives Ferringo more emotional scenes than Bixby by the end of it. Bixby’s sad, but Ferrigno’s tragic. Sullivan’s great with both of them.

Did I already mention she makes the Hulk? Not literally, of course, because she’s a responsible scientist, unlike Bixby.

Unfortunately, once Ferrigno shows up, the movie takes a turn. It’s been expansive until that point–introducing new characters, having Bixby and Sullivan’s research go somewhere–but once it’s about figuring out the Hulk, the movie starts folding in on itself. It’s just Bixby and Sullivan trying to figure things out. And dodge tabloid reporter Jack Colvin, who is very dedicated to his job, but very bad at it. Colvin’s performance also isn’t up to Sullivan or Bixby’s level, which certainly doesn’t help the already narratively troubled third act.

The movie’s technically accomplished, with Johnson getting a lot of good work out of his TV movie crew. Howard Schwartz’s photography is excellent for the daytime stuff and interior night stuff, okay for the exterior night stuff. Johnson’s direction is rather good. Surprisingly good in spots. The editing is fantastic–Alan C. Marks and Jack W. Schoengarth cut the heck out of the first act setup. Okay, they can’t make the remembered dialogue playing as voiceover work but who can? And the script needs the voiceovers for introspective purposes. Johnson likes introspective; he gets the tragedy out of it.

He’s good at the introspective stuff too. Bixby’s great at being sad. Sullivan’s great at everything, which I think I mentioned. She really holds the movie together. Anyway, Johnson’s not great at some of the action stuff. He’s fine with scaling up to big set pieces, but he’s not so great at little stuff. Like his Frankenstein homage. It’s well-directed, but the actors? Johnson doesn’t pay any attention to their performances, just how they’re moving through the action sequence. Their performances need a lot of attention, especially given the action sequence. Johnson doesn’t direct much from character point of view (if ever). Sometimes that point of view would help things.

I can’t forget–Batson’s great. She’s only in it for a bit but it suggests Johnson’s going to keep bringing in excellent performances in small parts. Doesn’t work out that way, though. Instead we get Colvin’s performance rolling gradually downhill from mediocre.

Joseph Harnell’s music has one good theme and then the rest of it is hot and cold. He runs out of ideas for the action scenes pretty quick. And the dramatic stuff only really works when he’s playing with that one good theme.

The Incredible Hulk could be better–another half hour to play with might have given Johnson some ideas for subplots–but it’s still pretty good.