One of those films I had an odd relationship with. In several previous reviews, I’ve mentioned films that were watched on a particular local station in the evening, only they were partially viewed before going to bed. This was everything from D.C. Cab (!) (I don’t know either how they created a TV edit of such a vulgar movie!) and The Cat from Outer Space to Halloween III: Season of the Witch (!) (Mom wasn’t happy I was viewing a horror movie) and Condorman. All the others had been viewed as an adult yet it was just last night that this was finally tackled.

The movie’s print never advancing to the world of HD was a reason why. However, recently…

I loved it as a child ... but I should have kept it as a fond memory.

It's not all bad (but unfortunately a lot of it is):
What works best in the film is the aesthetics of the prototype, the guts, the creative chaos: "Condorman" loves to show the making of things: the design of the costumes, the vehicles and, above all, the glider.

In the early scenes in Los Angeles, comic book artist Woody Wilkins' workshop is staged as a creative playground: the setting is bright, open, full of sketches and models, a visual promise of unlimited imagination.
The original Condor suit is deliberately amateurish & clumsy, and that is also a strength: it symbolises the idea that anyone…

Cinematic Time Capsule
1981 Marathon - Film #22

”Condorman - vulture of the Western world.”

Have you ever loved a movie you’ve never seen?

As a boy, I picked up the novelization of this movie at a school book fair, and even though I had never seen the film, I must have read that book 5 or 6 times. It also contained cool pictures from the film, and my mind went to work visualizing the coolest, funniest movie ever.

Needless to say that years later when I finally saw the film it was nowhere near the one in my mind, but even watching it today I have total flashbacks to the pages of that book and how much wonderment it…

English Version below ...

Condorman (1981)

Disneys Spion im Himmel.

Action-Abenteuer-Romantikkomödie und Spionagegeschichte.

Condorman ist eine Disney-Actionkomödie aus dem Jahr 1981 mit Michael Crawford in der Hauptrolle.

Harry Oslo: Woody, du bist ein grossartiger Cartoonist und ein grossartiger Comicautor – aber du bist ein lausiger Vogel.

Woodrow Wilkins, ein amerikanischer Comiczeichner, widmet sich mit voller Hingabe seinen Superhelden, die in seinen Heften Millionen von Kindern verzücken. Seine Lieblingsfigur ist aber Condorman, ein Geheimagent, der mit den verrücktesten Fahrzeugen und Hilfsmitteln gegen das Böse kämpft. Woodys Anspruch besteht darin, dass Condorman ausschliesslich Abenteuer erleben soll, die auch in der realen Welt möglich wären...

Ein Comicszeichner wird zum fliegenden Superhelden, das war früher voll mein Ding. VHS Videohit der auf ein jüngeres…

1981 In Review - August
#2

A cartoonist (Michael Crawford) acting as a CIA courier becomes his comic-strip hero, Condorman, to help a KGB woman (Barbara Carrera) defect.

If this was Michael Crawford’s one and only crack at Hollywood then I feel sorry for him, he’s a great talent and is wonderful and really funny in Some Mother’s Do ‘Ave ‘Em, but this ‘comedy’ is just an awful mess. It’s trying to be too many things at once and succeeds at none of them. But for me it’s it’s handling of Crawford that is the most criminal, why oh why did they feel the need to make him use a terrible American accent, which it also feels like he overdubbed…

I was disappointed that they toned down the original John Le Carre novel upon which this is based, and left out all the more outlandish moments. What remains is a meditation on the emotional toll the international intelligence community takes on its agents and the collateral damage it leaves in its wake.
I'm joking, obviously.
I'm not going to deny that Condorman is a pretty infantile take on international espionage, but as it's aimed at kids, who the hell cares?
This was my favourite movie when I was six. I was obssessed with it, to the point of trying to convince my friends that we should start a crime fighting team where we all build flying wing suits like Condorman's.…

Comic book creator Michael Crawford is recruited by his CIA buddy, James Hampton in Paris to do a paperwork exchange with the Russians in Istanbul. Crawford meets smoking hot KGB agent Barbara Carrera and pretends he's a crack agent, codenamed Condorman, named after his newest superhero creation. Saving Carrera from Turkish agents through dumb luck, he impresses her enough for her to ask the Americans for his help to defect. The CIA is very keen to get her, agreeing to Crawford's expensive equipment demands. Soon he meets with Carrera in Yugoslavia and it looks plain sailing, but Carrera's boss and former lover, Oliver Reed, has other ideas, pursuing the pair across Europe.
For some reason this inoffensive Disney live action…

Community-Weekend: Kindheitserinnerungen

Heute sind Superhelden in aller Munde, doch damals hatten wir wenige bis gar keine. Und Disneys CONDORMAN ist eigentlich gar kein Superheld, sondern 'ne Agenten-Parodie.... ja Hauptdarsteller Woody ist nicht mal Agent; die Witzfigur gibt sich nur als einer aus und tritt fürs Erste von einem Fettnäpfchen ins nächste. Aber dessen Aufmachung (im fliegenden Federkleid) ließ mich beinahe glauben er wäre einer! Wenn also Sonntags nicht gerade die Flash-Serie auf RTL lief, die übrigens bis heute meinen DC-Lieblingshero festigte, nahm das Kleinkind was es an bunten Spektakel bekam: und CONDORMAN war in der Hinsicht... Comic!

Wegen der Technik-Spielereien saß ich mit offen Augen und heruntergelassener Kinnlade vorm Fernseher. Schon die fünf schwarzen Porsche (des KGB-Feindes) trieben mir Sternchen…

Disney was at its absolute weirdest in the early 1980s. The mostly live-action movies from that era now feel like they were made not just at a different studio, but on a different planet.

Horror movies (The Watcher in the Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes). Offbeat sci-fi (Tron, The Flight of the Navigator). The darkest G-rated holiday film ever (One Magic Christmas). The coming-of-age S.E. Hinton tale Tex. The college campus scavenger hunt comedy Midnight Madness. Even something that sounds broadly appealing and commercial on paper -- the sequel Return to Oz -- is truly anything but. On the slowed-down feature animation side, The Black Cauldron is as bleak and macabre as anything in the storied canon.

If any…

Extremely literalist comic creator Woody Wilkins (Michael Crawford) does a favor for a friend (James Hampton) and ends up meeting Russian agent Natalia "The Bear" Rambova (Barbara Carrera). When Rambova wants to defect, she requests Woody bring her in, believing him to be a professional (and competent) spy. The CIA makes a deal with Wilkins, bringing his bizarre comic book devices to life to help him extricate Rambova from the menacing grasp of her handler Krokov (Oliver Reed) and the Prognoviach, the KGB vehicular pursuit squad.

Which makes it a CAR movie. Perfect for today.

I'm not going to try to present a case for Condorman as a good movie. It's goofy, with an odd choice of leading man in…