Schlock legend Charles Band is making his own Barbenheimer mash-up movie
The Puppet Master co-creator is daring to ask: What if living dolls had a nuke?
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Somehow arriving perfectly in between the numerous months when “Barbenheimer” was all that anybody wanted to talk about on the internet, and Oscars season, which will inevitably revive the conversation surrounding the accidental double feature—really landing in a sort of perfect lacuna of interest—B-movie master Charles Band has announced that he’s making an actual Barbenheimer movie of his own. The Puppet Master co-creator—who has now made nearly 400 films, most of them some flavor of terrible, and almost all of them some flavor of cheap—publicized the upcoming mash-up idea at the American Film Market this weekend.
The movie, unsurprisingly, will focus on living dolls, who go out into the real world, find out how we treat our playthings, and decide to invent their own nukes to exact retribution. And if you want to gauge the level of comedy at play here, please contemplate the tagline “D-Cup, A-Bomb,” and the fact that the main characters will be “Dr. Bambi J Barbenheimer” and her boyfriend, “Twink Dollman.” Truly, Charles Band has become death, destroyer of subtext.
Ironically, the most charming thing about the whole endeavor is how shameless Band himself is about what he’s up to, telling THR that “It’s 100 percent true,” that he’s trying to capitalize over this summer’s obsession with Barbie and Oppenheimer.“But it’s also,” he adds, “An opportunity to have fun with the bizarre coupling of these two movies and the combination of Barbie’s vibe and the darkness of Oppenheimer. You mix that together and you have such an opportunity for dark humor.” (He’s also putting up what is, for Charles Band, an enormous amount of money for the production, with a budget expected to get close to the million-dollar mark.)
Barbenheimer will apparently release some time in 2024.
14 Comments
What’s your favorite pair of opposite movies? Mine’s probably Dr. Strangelove and 2001. Yeah, I know they’re both ‘60s Kubrick movies, but I think that just makes it all the more impressive that he was able to pull of such different movies.
I think that’s what’s so impressive about Kubrick in general — you can pick pretty much any two of his movies and they will be very different. The guy could make a movie with any genre, tone, character… and the results would invariably be amazing.
Working with great writers and amazing source material helps
Score by Richard Band, too, hopefully.
He’s gettin’ the Bands back together!
most underrated film composer in history
He’s written some terrific stuff, I like his work.
Bring it on, Charles! I’m hungry for some of that sweet sweet direct to market cinema that only you can bring!And I’m sure it’ll make for a great Rifftrax three months later.
I love when Rifftrax gets a Full Moon film in their hands almost as much as a bad 70’s film with Chuck Connors in it.
Can’t wait to watch the first fifteen minutes of this on Tubi before getting bored and switching to wasp nest removal videos on YouTube.
Regular reminder that there are indeed good films under the Charles Band exploitative hand (all the Stuart Gordon ones for example), that, again, Richard Band is one of the greatest alive composers and it shows when he has the budget (House on Sorority Row, a great spin on Smetana) and that there are genuinely good Puppetmaster entries (the third one!)
I like to compare him to Roger Corman or Lloyd Kaufmann. The cheap-and-fast philosophy does often deliver more misses than hits, but the fact that they are willing to take chances on relatively unproven talent means you occasionally get something great (or at least that director gets experience and a launching pad for their career).
Charles Band was a guest of honor at Joe Bob Briggs’ 3rd Annual Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas earlier this year, and he took the opportunity to shoot footage for a new movie Barbie & Kendra Save the Drive-In. When I read this article, I had to take an internet dive to find out if the two movies were related.
It turns out that Band’s Full Moon Features already has a Barbie & Kendra trilogy: Corona Zombies, Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King, and Barbie & Kendra Storm Area 51. All of these appear to have been shot during the lockdown combining some new footage with green screen and old footage repurposed What’s Up, Tiger Lily? style. They must have been popular enough that Band is carrying on the Barbie & Kendra saga even after the pandemic.
But it seems that Barbenheimer, with Dr. Barbenheimer and Twink Dollman, is separate from the Barbie & Kendra universe, so you will not need to have seen the other films to follow it. Marvel Studios, take notes!
Shut up and take my money.gif