Alvin and the Chimpmunks Live-Action Quadrilogy (2007-2015) and the Continuation of Franchises Involving Things I Loved as a Child

There were a few staples in my childhood movie watching diet. I would go back to a few movies time and time again. There were different reasons behind watching them. You know, availability, enjoyability, television programming… All that fun stuff. I was a kid. It’s not like I ever really thought about broadening my horizons at that point. I liked what I liked. I watched what was accessible. I had a good time with the movies at my disposal.

Some of those movies transitioned into things I enjoy as an adult, as well. Things like The Mighty Ducks, Twister, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are things that I still watch on occasion. They were movies that came out while I was growing up. They were movies I frequently watched while growing up. And they’re movies that I still turn on from time to time because I still enjoy them. I still enjoy watching Coach Bombay turn a group of rag-tag misfits into a formidable force on the ice. I still enjoy watching pizza eating turtles fight Shredder with their karate skills. I still enjoy Bill Paxton dropping dirt into the air to see which way the wind is blowing. I grew up with these movies and they helped shape me into the person I am.

It’s clear that some of these movies shaped other people, as well. In recent years, there has been an influx of reboots and remakes of movies that were a major part of my childhood. People who grew up around the time I grew up, or in the preceding ten years, have released new versions of many properties I grew up with. I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of the movies and television shows I watched as a kid and see what happened to them beyond the installments I was hooked on.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I’m going to get this one out of the way first. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a big part of my childhood. I used to watch the live-action movies (particularly the second film, Secret of the Ooze) all the time as a kid. I remember renting the movies from the local video rental shop and watching them on VHS. I think the first one might have even been a green plastic tape. I enjoyed the movies so much that I dressed up as a Ninja Turtle for Halloween at least once. I had a handheld portable Ninja Turtles game. I watched that Saban show from the 90s. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, at least the live-action trilogy, was a major part of my childhood.

This franchise continued to grow beyond the 1990s. In 2003, an animated series premiered on the Fox Kids programming block. I remember watching it and enjoying the first couple seasons before falling off. That happens when you get to your high school age, and then your college years age. Some of the extra time you had disappears as life catches up to you. The series lasted until 2009, which is a pretty good run for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. None of the other series have lasted that long.

In the middle of that series’ run, there was an unconnected animated theatrical movie released. It brought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the 3-D animated world. TMNT, as the movie was titled, saw the Ninja Turtles face off with a non-Shredder villain for the first time on the big screen. Audiences enjoyed it. Critics, not so much. It wasn’t a big enough hit to lead to sequels.

The big screen adaptations were rebooted again in 2014 by the Platinum Dunes production company with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Ninja Turtles were CGI creations living in a live-action world, updated to act like modern teenagers and not the late 80s, early 90s stereotypes of the earlier flicks. It was successful enough to spawn a sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. People seemed to enjoy how that second film felt more like the cartoon, and how it brought in fan-favourite villains like Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady. There hasn’t been a sequel since, however.

The final two ways that the franchise continued beyond the 90s were a rebooted comic book series and a rebooted animated series. The rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were sold to Nickelodeon in 2009. It didn’t take long for a new comic series to be in the works. The series began in 2011 and is still going today, making it the longest-running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic series. Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the animated series that Nickelodeon made. It began in 2018, lasted two seasons, and wrapped up. There may be a Netflix film follow-up in the works.

I didn’t watch too many of those later Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles projects. I saw the early seasons of the 2003 animated series, and I saw the three theatrical films. None of them connected to me in the same way as those early 90s live-action flicks. I still go back to them every so often because I still love them. They still bring me joy. Much like the next ones to come up.

The Mighty Ducks

Here’s a franchise that I frequently go back to because I love it so much. I’m a huge fan of rag-tag team movies where everyone has to come together for some reason and overcome their own underdog journey. Its fun to see those wacky characters band together and become a good team. So good that they either win it all or, in the case of The Bad News Bears, come close but not quite make it. I love to see it.

The Mighty Ducks and its two sequels were exactly that. The first film saw a lawyer get hit with a DUI charge. Rather than face jail time, he got sentenced to a bunch of hours of community service. He became the coach of the worst peewee hockey team in the Twin Cities, District-5, and tried to just coast to get through his hours. Over time, he realized he could help them become a good team, and they went on to eventually win the championship.

D2: The Mighty Ducks, my personal favourite of the trilogy (strange that I seem to always like the second, eh?), saw many of the District-5 Ducks become members of Team USA for the Junior Goodwill Games, while Coach Bombay became their coach once again. They were joined by six other teenagers from around the country. It was another rag-tag team movie as they had to adapt to international play, rather than the recreational local play of the peewee league.

Things took a step back for D3: The Mighty Ducks when the stakes got super-local. It was the freshman hockey team at Eden Hall Academy, consisting of most of the Team USA roster, versus the varsity team. Two teams from the same high school facing off. What made this once again become the rag-tag team kind of movie was that the Ducks now had to learn to play two-way hockey. They had to learn proper defensive techniques to go up against the bigger, stronger varsity team.

If there’s one sport I enjoy more than any others, it would be Slamball. Aside from that, it’s hockey, though. It’s easy to see why The Mighty Ducks and its sequels would make their way into my childhood rotation. The first film came out in 1992, so it was in my VHS rotation by the time I was four, in 1994. I can still remember popping it in (rewound, of course), and seeing advertisements for the soundtrack with Queen’s We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions. I always gravitated towards the second film, though. I think it was because the comedy always worked better for me. That, and the cover with the Trinidad and Tobago player facing off with the Ducks player. Yes, Iceland was the villain, not Trinidad and Tobago, but look up that jersey. It’s perfect.

A couple things happened quickly, following the success of The Mighty Ducks. A year after the release of the film, the NHL added The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim into the league. The team was founded by The Walt Disney Company, allowing for the name synergy. The team’s mascot, Wild Wing, has become one of the more popular NHL mascots. He was so popular that he was featured in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, a show that lasted 26 episodes. I never saw it.

I did, however, see a more recent series based on The Mighty Ducks. Much like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the other franchises I’ll bring up, The Mighty Ducks was rebooted for a new generation. The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers aired earlier this year. It was a soft reboot, in that it occured in the same continuity as the Mighty Ducks movies. Nearly thirty years after the first film, the Ducks were now a formidable force in peewee hockey, essentially taking the place of the Hawks from the first film. A new team was started with people who had either been rejected from better teams or had never played hockey. The new team, The Don’t Bothers, fought to find their place in the league and be taken seriously.

The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers was an interesting enough follow-up to the original movies. At times, it harkened back to the feel of those old movies. The way that everyone came together as a team. The strength of the friendships. Certain story beats like the best player from the rival team joining their team mid-season. However, it had some of the staples of modern children’s programming. It had the tone of something like a Cop and a Half: New Recruit, rather than the tone of the original movies. The characters felt like one-note caricatures. Sure, some of the characters in the original trilogy felt one-note. But they felt like people rather than characters meant to hit a certain archetype. Still, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers was a solid follow-up and I’m looking forward to the second season, whenever it comes out.

Boy Meets World

So far, I’ve only been talking about movies I watched as a kid. For a quick moment, I want to get into one of the television shows I’ve seen many times. It’s a television show I watched after school for a few years. I might have even considered it “my show” at one point because I would get home from school and turn on ABC Family to watch a couple episodes. I even bought it on DVD just to rewatch the entire series again. That show is Boy Meets World.

Boy Meets World began as a sedate sitcom about a kid named Cory going through life in middle school. As the boy grew, the show grew as well. He reached high school and it became a show about bigger issues than simple life lessons. Love, loss, and work became major parts of the show. It changed once again as the characters reached college, growing into a wackier comedy. Instead of the grounded stories of the first season, or the emotional stuff from the high school years, people started screaming about underpants or becoming squirrel guys. It was a progression of sitcom styles as the characters progressed in age.

My favourite era of the show was that final section where it became much more over-the-top in comedy. That style just clicks with me better than others, even if I can see that the high school years were the best of the show. Cory’s brother Eric being an off-the-rails personality, Cory becoming more neurotic, and the college setting just worked for me. I loved it. When I’m not rewatching the entire show, that’s the section that I always go back to.

A few years ago, there was a soft reboot of Boy Meets World on Disney Channel, titled Girl Meets World. It followed Cory’s daughter as she went through middle/high school. It had many of the elements that made Boy Meets World so good. It felt realistic, though heightened. The stories were relatable. And it brought back many of the cast members that older audiences loved from the original series. Girl Meets World was a sequel series done well, much in the way that The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers is a sequel series done well. It’s different, but it has things that both old and new fans can appreciate. I certainly appreciated it.

The Chipmunk Adventure

I could go through many of the animated films that I watched as a child and give updates on where those franchises went as the years passed. The Land Before Time kept churning out direct-to-video sequels. Toy Story has four sequels, a bunch of specials, and a Buzz Lightyear series. Disney movies got spin-offs. The one I want to discuss most, though, is a franchise that included a bunch of films I watched for this week’s post. I’ll get to those in a moment. First, I need to go back to before my childhood.

Alvin and the Chipmunks existed long before I was born. There were albums out in the 1960s, and I wasn’t born until 1990. So, yeah, they weren’t necessarily something from my generation. Their most famous thing, The Chipmunk Song, is even older. It was released in 1958. Absolutely not my generation. It was released before my parents were born. The 1980s saw a Christmas special released, as well as an animated series. However, one thing from that decade became something I’d watch throughout the 1990s.

The Chipmunk Adventure was a 1987 animated flick that involved the Chipmunks and Chipettes, two trios of singing chipmunks, competing in a hot air balloon race around the world. I can’t say I remember too much about the movie, beyond the fact that I enjoyed the movie as a child. I haven’t seen it in years. But it was my abundant watching of the movie that led to my enjoying so much of what the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise provided for my entertainment.

Throughout the 1990s, there were a bunch of other Alvin and the Chipmunks projects released to the public. There were the albums, which had been released on a regular basis since the 1960s. One that became a majorly played album in my house was Chipmunks in Low Places, a country album. Mostly, it was the Chipmunks version of Achy Breaky Heart that I heard a bunch. Outside the music, a couple movies came out with the Chipmunks facing off against Universal Monsters. They met Frankenstein and they met the Wolfman.

The 2010s brought new life to the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise when live-action movies started coming out. Over the four-movie franchise, David Seville (Jason Lee) met Alvin (Justin Long), Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler), and Theodore (Jesse McCartney). He took them in. He also took in the Chipettes, Brittany (Christina Applegate), Jeanette (Anna Faris), and Eleanor (Amy Poehler and Kaley Cuoco). Over the four movies, the Chipmunks became famous, went to high school, got stranded on an island, and road tripped across the southern United States. They went up against Ian Hawke (David Cross) and James Suggs (Tony Hale) as they caused their normal Chipmunk mischief.

The first live-action movie was very much a standard Alvin and the Chipmunks scenario. It was the origin story where they came into David Seville’s life, found fame, and sang songs. They were pushed a little too hard by their manager, Ian Hawke, and found that they actually needed the family of David more than the fame. Not that they couldn’t have both. The movie was all about the music, with a little bit of family love and care thrown in for good measure.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel started to shift things a little bit. There was more focus on a story for the Chipmunks characters, as well as an introduction to the Chipettes, their female counterparts. The Chipmunks were enrolled in high school and had to adapt to that new part of their lives. There was still a musical story to the movie with the characters participating in a competition to get money for their school’s arts department. But it became more about the characters and their relationships to one another.

Chipwrecked, the third installment, got rid of the musical stories altogether, instead becoming a character piece. The Chipmunks, Chipettes, David Seville, and Ian Hawke were stranded on an island. Alvin learned responsibility. Simon loosened up. Theodore got himself some bravery. Even Ian got some moments to grow as he became a person who cared, at least a little it, about the well-being of others. It was a movie that focused on the characters, rather than the money that could be made through the soundtrack. Or it cared about both, since songs were still there. Either way, it was an improvement over the two that came before.

Then there was The Road Chip. It didn’t have quite the same character work as Chipwrecked, but it was still a fun movie. The Chipmunks thought that Dave was going to Miami to propose to his girlfriend. They hated the girlfriend’s son and didn’t want to be step-siblings. The son agreed. They took a road trip to stop the proposal, where they bonded and learned everyone could be a big, happy family. There was music along the way, of course. It was a Chipmunks movie, after all.

Throughout the four movies, the Chipmunks went on wacky adventures. Were they ever as epic as the hot air balloon race around the world? Perhaps not. They were still entertaining. Well, some of them were. The first live-action movie was kind of a dud, beyond a few points. That David Seville original song that was basically just I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie will always be a great joke. The sequels were fun adventures, though, placing the Chipmunks into interesting new environments and allowing them to grow as characters. I don’t love them nearly as much as I loved The Chipmunk Adventure as a child, but they’re not as bad as they could have been.

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of television and movies. They were constantly on in my household. Some of them, I held dearly. I covered a few in this post. Others were favourites of my parents. Lethal Weapon, the James Bond movies, Every Which Way But Loose… There was never a time at home where the television wasn’t on and playing a movie that they loved, a movie that I loved, or a television show that any of us loved. That’s what turned me into the movie and television person that I am. I was brought up with movies and television around me, so I continue to keep it around me.

Other people grew up with movies and television as well. At this point, who doesn’t? Many of those people are adults now. Some of them work in the film and television business. They get to continue the stories they loved as kids. They get to reboot, remake, and give sequels to them. Michael Bay got to direct some Transformers movies and produce a bunch of slasher remakes and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot flicks. J.J. Abrams was given the helm for both the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. Kevin Smith just produced a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe reboot for Netflix. All the old things are coming back again as the people who grew up with them become adults and get the chance to continue what they loved. Everything has come full circle. Not just my childhood, but everyone’s.

Now for some notes:

• I brought up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies in this post. I have covered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (week 310), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (week 310).
• I also brought up Cop and a Half: New Recruit (week 340) in the post.
• Mike Mitchell directed Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. He also directed Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (week 20) and Surviving Christmas (week 367).
• Ross Bagdasarian Jr., Matthew Gray Gubler, Janice Karman, Jason Lee, Jesse McCartney, and Steve Vining each made their Sunday “Bad” Movies debuts this week by being featured in all four live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks flicks.
• David Cross was in the first three live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movies.
• Amy Poehler voiced Eleanor in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. She was also featured in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (week 20), Free Birds (week 209), and Southland Tales (week 428).
• Brittany was voiced by Christina Applegate in the final three live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. She was previously featured in View from the Top (week 83) and Surviving Christmas (week 367).
• Anna Faris was the voice of Jeanette through the final three Alvin and the Chipmunks live-action films. She was also in Movie 43 (week 243) and The Emoji Movie (week 373).
• The final actor joining the five-timers’ club was Justin Long. He voiced Alvin in all four live-action films, and had a role in Movie 43 (week 243).
• Michael P. Northey was featured in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. He was already seen in Alone in the Dark (week 152), Catwoman (week 174), and Russell Madness (week 382).
• Melanie Lewis has appeared in Gigli (week 225), From Justin to Kelly (week 325), and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Eric Bauza reappeared in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. He was in The Banana Splits Movie (week 371) and The Emoji Movie (week 373).
• Funny lady Jennifer Coolidge was in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. She was also in Date Movie (week 164) and The Emoji Movie (week 373).
• John Archer Lundgren was in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, Automaton Transfusion (week 236), and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (week 455).
• Tony Hale was also in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (week 455). His other Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance was in American Ultra (week 261).
• Nick Drago was in The Oogieloves in the Big BalloonAdventure (week 39) and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks saw the return of Cameron Richardson to Sunday “Bad” Movies after her first appearance in Dorm Daze (week 40).
• Brianna Womick appeared in both Alvin and the Chipmunks and Bratz (week 63).
• Axel Alba worked on Beverly Hills Chihuahua (week 70) and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Oliver Muirhead was in Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever (week 108) before Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Jayden Lund returned from Budz House (week 198) to make an appearance in Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Celestina was in Norbit (week 227) and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Sandy Wexler (week 231) featured Laura Edwards, who was in Alvin and the Chipmunks.
• Jem and the Holograms (week 238) and Alvin and the Chipmunks each featured Christopher Scott.
• Finishing off the first film in the series, Alvin and the Chipmunks featured Gregg Lee, who was in All About Steve (week 409).
• Bridgit Mendler had a role in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. She also had a role in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 (week 70).
• Sean Astin had a small voice role in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. He also voiced a character in The Hero of Color City (week 114).
• The last returning actor in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel was Bernard White, who was in The Scorpion King (week 380).
• We are onto Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, now. It featured Chad Krowchuk, who was in Stan Helsing (week 64).
• Finishing off Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked was Luisa d’Oliveira, an actor from Ice Twisters (week 239).
• Eddie Steeples returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip after first appearing in Torque (week 43).
• Zachary Vazquez was in both Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190) and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.
• Latiera Golliday made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. They were first seen in God’s Not Dead 2 (week 230).
• Two actors from Mother’s Day (week 233) were in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. They were Bricine Brown and Inder Kumar.
• Mark Jeffrey Miller is a name you might recognize. He was in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and Super Mario Bros. (week 248).
• Joshua Mikel was in Independence Day: Resurgence (week 449) and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.
• Finally, Richard Morava made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip after appearing in Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (week 455).
• Have you seen the Alvin and the Chipmunks live-action movies? What did you think? Are there any movies or television shows from the late 80s and throughout the 90s that I missed? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there are any suggestions that you have for movies I should be checking out as part of Sunday “Bad” Movies, drop them in the comments or hit me up on Twitter. I’m always open to suggestions of movies I may not have considered.
• Make sure to visit Instagram and check out what Sunday “Bad”Movies has going on there.
• Now it’s time to take a look ahead to another week. Mind you, looking ahead means looking back. Next week is the ninth anniversary of Sunday “Bad” Movies. As such, I’ll be revisiting a movie I covered during the past year of the blog. The votes are in. The people chose. I’ll be rewatching Southland Tales. I’m always down for rewatching Southland Tales. I’ll see you next week with another post.

Gambling with Souls (1936)

In the 1930s, there were numerous exploitation flicks positioned as cautionary tales. They were about one of the many issues of the times and how those issues could lead people down dangerous paths. Reefer Madness, also known as Tell Your Children, was about the problems with marijuana. The Cocaine Fiends was about, you guessed it, cocaine. There were many others that covered many other subjects, as well, such as this week’s movie, Gambling with Souls. It took on gambling as a major problem.

The need to inform the public about the problems with each topic wasn’t necessarily the reason for making the movies, however. They were exploitation flicks. They exploited the subjects to get an audience. It wasn’t enough that the filmmakers were warning people away from certain vices. They were warning people away from drugs and gambling. The filmmakers needed to do more than that. They needed to make the movies controversial by showing how bad each vice was. Things were heightened beyond realism.

Take Reefer Madness, for example. The opening was a series of title cards explaining what was about to unfold. Marijuana was such a bad substance that it would do terrible things to your mind. It would cause you to go into fits of anger, possibly leading to you becoming a murderer. That then played out on screen as people were lured into the world of recreational marijuana smoking. They ended up in fits of laughter. They ended up in fits of rage. Fights would break out that would eventually lead to murder by gun. All this because of the effect that marijuana had on the users.

Of course, we know now that this isn’t true. Marijuana doesn’t make people want to kill one another. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect. Most people become more chill, more mellow, after smoking marijuana. Sure, there are some bad trips in there. Usually it has a calming effect, though. It’s not going to turn someone into a rage monster out for the kill. It makes Reefer Madness look like a ridiculous dramatization of something that wouldn’t happen. Because it is a ridiculous dramatization of something that wouldn’t happen.

The same could be said for Gambling with Souls. Mae Miller (Martha Chapin) wasn’t satisfied with her financial situation. Her husband didn’t make enough money for her to spend freely. She took matters into her own hands. Mae began to gamble. At first, it seemed fine. She was winning. Then her luck turned. Lucky Wilder (Wheeler Oakman) rigged the games so that players would go into debt. To pay her debt to Lucky, Mae became a prostitute. Eventually, her guilt got to her, and she did the only thing she could think of to put an end to it. She took Lucky’s life.

Gambling with Souls fit right into the cautionary tale stories of the 1930s. It wasn’t about drugs, but it was about addiction. It was about gambling addiction. It took liberties with gambling addiction to tell a much more exploitative story. The people who run gambling houses and casinos are in the business to make money. If people lose at the slot machines or poker tables, they make money. The house always wins. That’s all there is to it. Simple as that. It doesn’t matter who is affected. The people spending their money on the games are just another paycheck. There’s nothing personal about it, even if lives are being destroyed.

That wasn’t the case in Gambling with Souls. The source of money became personal. Lucky was coercing women into becoming an entirely different source of income. He was personally pulling them into the gambling lifestyle so they would owe him money. That way, he could force them into prostitution to pay off their debts. He not only got their money when they gambled, but he got their money when they started participating in sex work. It was a 2-for-1 deal and he was all in.

I’m sure that some people get into sex work for similar reasons to this. They owe someone money, or they have to pay off some sort of debt. The one way they know how to is to cater to the horny people willing to pay. But there are many cases where sex workers do that work because they want to. They actively choose to do sex work and enjoy it. It’s supposed to be one of the world’s oldest professions, so that only makes sense. Yet there are the few that end up there because of their financial situation. Or others who are forced into it.

Gambling with Souls decided to connect gambling and prostitution, and look down upon both. It turned gambling addiction into something to be punished for, rather than something that people might need help overcoming. It turned gambling into a gateway for other, more nefarious business. That business was sex work, something that the movie posited nobody would ever want to be involved with. Unless you were an evil mobster sort of person. Gambling would lead to prostitution, which would lead to murder. That was the cautionary tale of Gambling with Souls.

The 1930s were a big time for cautionary tales. The only thing was that the cautionary tales were presented with a heavy heaping helpful of exploitation. They would be seen alongside something even more taboo to get people interested in the movies. There had to be some sort of added twist to get people interested in seeing the cautionary tale. Gambling with Souls couldn’t simply be about the troubles of gambling addiction. There had to be sex and murder thrown in. Reefer Madness wasn’t only about marijuana addiction. It was about murders that it could lead to. Everything was much more dire than it needed to be. It was sexier and more violent. It was exploitation under the guise of cautionary tale.

There are still some cautionary tale style films out there. The major ones, however, don’t play as much into the exploitative aspects as they did in the 1930s. Film techniques being crafted and honed have helped to make the language of the moving picture much more attention-grabbing. There are better visuals, better performances, and overall better quality in the cautionary tales now than there were in the 1930s.

The exploitative antics have kind of moved into the world of news, with sensationalized headlines taking cues from those early cautionary tale films. Instead of movies tying addiction into murder, there are headlines about the newest fad that could kill children. The level of exploitative cautionary tales has subsided in the film world, but it still continues to permeate through other means. Will we find this era as entertaining in years to come? Probably not.

Let’s get these notes in here and head out:

• Reefer Madness (week 339) and The Cocaine Fiends (week 424) were mentioned in this post.
• Gay Sheridan was in both Gambling with Souls and The Cocaine Fiends (week 424).
• Have you seen Gambling with Souls? Have you seen any of the 1930s cautionary tale movies? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can find me on Twitter or in the comments if you have any movies that you think would be good fits for Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’ve been compiling the next part of the schedule and I’ve already put a few suggestions in there. You could have one in there, too.
• Make sure to go to Instagram to see more Sunday “Bad” Movies stuff all week long.
• Next week is a big week. It’s a franchise week. That’s right, I’ll be tackling another franchise next week, and it’s a big one. Not so much in the infamous bad movies way, though they do sometimes come into the conversation. They’re big in as much as it’s a franchise that everyone knows and many people find annoying. I’ll be checking out the Alvin and the Chipmunks live-action flicks for next week’s post. If you want to see what I have to say, join me next week for another post. See you then!