In the right context, even the silliest characters seem normal. A man in tights can have a fistfight with a scarecrow or a space alien can become best friends with a little boy, and it all makes a kind of sense within their worlds. But when you take them out of those worlds ... that's when things start to get weird.
For the most dramatic (that is, terrifying) examples, you need only to look at these utterly cringeworthy promotional appearances that someone signed off on:
#7. The Star Wars Musical Crossover With Donny & Marie
ABC
If you think the Star Wars prequels ruined your childhood, check again -- Star Wars was trying to ruin that childhood almost immediately. Back in 1977, the Donny & Marie show did a Star Wars musical segment featuring the actual C-3PO, Anthony Daniels.
ABC
It also featured Daniels' intense sadness over his career trajectory.
He and R2D2 came on and performed what we refuse to describe in any other way than this: a Death-Star-like effort to destroy music itself:
In the extended segment, the Droids team up with Luke and Leia, who, in an accidental case of foreshadowing, are played by the original brother-and-sister team with awkward sexual chemistry: Donny and Marie Osmond. The bit opens with Donny and Marie launching into a disco song about how they're in trouble. To give you an idea of how true they were to the source material, Donny starts off, "Princess Leia, our goose is cooked unless we lift off of this star!"
ABC
"Which means we don't know what a star iiiiiiis!"
A Donny and Marie Star Wars has more squareness-per-second than a Mormon scrapbooking convention. It's almost like an educational scare film about whites. At least until Chewbacca comes out with Kris Kristofferson playing Han Solo.
ABC
ABC
"Man this decade just doesn't give a fuck! YEAAAHHH!"
Darth Vader even shows up to disapprovingly wag his finger at people, which is the Donny & Marie version of choking a man to death with The Force. They live in a world where violence becomes dance. To them, pure evil is a song in G minor.
ABC
"SHAME, SHAME COMMANDER. PRAY I DO NOT SHAME YOU FURTHER."
Of course the whole thing wouldn't be quite so awkward if it wasn't for the fact that these are all the real props and costumes. It's space madness set to disco, and it all seems to have the approved-by-Star-Wars stamp on it. It's obviously not an official military operation when the Stormtroopers strut in and perform The Temptations' "Get Ready," but the Empire seems okay with them doing it in their uniforms.
ABC
ABC
ABC
"Rebel scum! Behold our pulsating plastic dick baskets!"
It shouldn't have been possible, but R2D2 looks genuinely embarrassed.
ABC
ABC
"BWEEEP! FWOOO!!! FWO-- OK, that's enough! Stop! I did not suffer through a childhood of achondroplasia to sit in
a garbage can while sexless wood sprites twirl around me! R2D2 is not going to sit through another second of this BULLSHIT!"
#6. Gene Roddenberry Talks To Spock's Dad About Vulcan Sex
Paramount Television
In 1976, after the show was cancelled, Gene Roddenberry produced a behind-the-scenes LP about Star Trek. It was a collection of interviews with cast members, mainly about making the show. In most ways, it's exactly what you'd expect from a record called Inside Star Trek, especially if you thought about what it'd be like to have Star Trek all up inside you.
Columbia Records
"You know, the Battlestar Galactica was telling me how great it can feel in the sensor array.
You want to try that tonight, NCC-1701?"
The highlight of the album, maybe of any album, is when Spock's dad, actor Mark Lenard, sits down with Gene Roddenberry. The interview is done entirely in character. Gene greets him as a space ambassador, then immediately -- immediately -- asks how he managed to have sex with a human woman. And it's as if Ambassador Sarek had been waiting his whole Vulcan life to hear the question. Find yourself some privacy and enjoy some of the finest erotica the stars have to offer:
If you're lucky, you already know this, but during a Vulcan sexual cycle, they undergo something called Pon Farr. It's a lustful blood frenzy where they need to mate or die. There's a loophole involving ritual combat, but we'll be here all day if we start sharing tips on getting into a Vulcan's pants. The point is that two guys had a theatrical discussion about space fucking 40 years ago, put it on a record, and it's hilarious.
Paramount Television
Real quote: "And since it is known that we pay for our sexual repressions during these years with an almost
animal madness, this has aroused a prurient curiosity among humans."
Imagine a casual fan of the show buying this record to enjoy some Walter Koenig anecdotes about prop design and suddenly hearing an actor explain in a stilted Shakespearean accent that an Earth woman could not enjoy Vulcan lovemaking during Pon Farr, and "if she survived" she'd be "severely" injured, both physically and emotionally. Who could be prepared for such a boner?
And the sex interview keeps going. Just when you think that they may move on to a different topic, Sarek goes on to describe how human sex and Vulcan sex are similar, though "physical contour, mass, energy, and duration" vary. It's as if he deliberately chose the least descriptive words he could, yet you somehow feel like you're there, being physically and emotionally torn apart by his Pon Farr passions. This record should have come with a warning that Sarek's words will Pon Farr your fragile Earth uterus until it spills with half-Vulcan babies.
Paramount Television
"My semen has been pressurizing for several of your planet's cycles. You must mate with me or ritually battle me. Ladies."
#5. Batman Asks Children To Help Fund The Vietnam War
Warner Bros. Television Distribution
For the young people: War bonds are how America crowdsourced its wars before we started borrowing money from China. War bonds are like a Zack Braff movie Kickstarter, only more humane. And in 1966, when they were asking kids to invest in a war as ridiculous as the one in Vietnam, they found the perfect spokesman in Adam West's Batman.
Note: Robin wasn't anywhere to be found, presumably because he was already drafted and halfway to Saigon.
National Archives
"Communists aren't afraid of bats, but they are terrified of your money, kids. Send it to me!"
In the tightest, most conspicuously rubber-like corner of the Batcave, Batman acts as the middleman for President Lyndon Johnson, awkwardly reciting from a cue card as if Scarecrow hit him with fear-of-reading gas. To Batman's credit, anyone reading a sentence asking children to fund the Vietnam war has to deal with their own brain screaming, "What are you readi- OHMYGOD stop! Stop doing this!"
National Archives
"With a donation of $20 or more, we'll piss your name into the burning remains of their- hrk! Got to fight ... Mad Hatter's vile hypnosis!"
The biggest problem with the ad, aside from its very concept, is that the 1966-era Batman was so drenched in satire that it made the whole thing seem like anti-war propaganda. And even if you bought it and didn't think it was crazy for Batman to need your help, isn't he a billionaire with a weapons factory? How about you send Vietnam a bunch of your boomerangs and we leave the third graders' lunch money out of it, Batman?
#4. Doc Brown Travels To Argentina, Things Get Weird
In 2011, an Argentinian electronics store created a series of truly bizarre ads with Christopher Lloyd in character as Doc Brown:
They begin with the DeLorean crashing into a Garbarino, the Radio Shack of Argentina, where Doc emerges to awkwardly pause over the course of what seems like 20 minutes. Apparently, attention spans and commercials last forever in South America, because Doc delivers his lines with the same urgency he'd use to digest a peanut.
Garbarino
"Great ... Scott!
... What were we doing again?
... Who are you?"
The commercials continue with clumsy short films where Doc does things like hold a press conference for future reporters:
They not only seem unimpressed with the concept of time travel, they seem to know him from the film Back To The Future, since they ask about his dog Einstein. The laws of science were shattered in front of these people's eyes, and they're asking the man responsible if he found a dog sitter? And wait, does that mean these stories technically take place in a world where time travel and these movies are real?
Garbarino
"Oh. Then I guess that means I also killed all those cartoons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
But no, it doesn't mean Bigfoot is real. You're thinking of John Lithgow. Next question."
The press conference is full of awkward pauses where Spanish-to-English translation and Lloyd's shaky understanding of what the hell is supposed to be happening create a word salad experience no one in any country can enjoy.
In one press conference, a reporter spends several minutes fanboying out, reciting half-remembered lines with worse-remembered English, and Lloyd is forced to stay in character through this abuse like a teenage girl in a Chuck E. Cheese costume or that teenage girl later at the strip club. At one point, he asks Doc to go back in time and tell his 13-year-old self that he won't lose his virginity until he's 20.
Garbarino
"You're speaking to a 73-year-old working actor reprising a legendary film role for a chain of retail stores.
Way to make this about you, dick."
There's no rhyme or reason to anything. It's as if Garbarino, which Christopher Lloyd always pronounces like someone trying out a racist impression for the first time, came up with the idea "SOMETHING WITH BACK TO THE FUTURE" and Christopher Lloyd agreed to everything, under any circumstances. He did one that was a Mother's-Day-themed ad, in which he showed up in the DeLorean with himself as a little kid in the passenger's seat.
You might be asking what the fuck is happening here. Well, Doc says he's bringing back his childhood self to make it the "best Mother's Day ever." Oh, that didn't answer your question? Well, he drops off his kid self with his mother, in the past, but possibly the future for the kid. She gives him a big hug and future Doc says "Isn't it beautiful?"
Garbarino
Garbarino
"Mr. Lloyd, before you take that dementia medicine, we'd like you to sign off on a few scripts."
It's not clear if he's talking about himself as a child, or the bag of electronics he is carrying. Then Doc looks at the camera and says "Very special ... very special ..." It really makes you wonder if senility and a time machine are the best combination.
Garbarino
"Here's a sack of future technology and a second version of your kid! Enjoy the quantum paradox!
Wait, why is another me pulling up? And another? Mom? Why are you me? What have you done, Garbarino!?"
If you think your brain and the spacetime continuum can take it, you can watch all the commercials smashed together below:
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