The Banana Splits are back... but this time they're EVIL

OK, this is one of the weirder "reboot" ideas I've come across recently.

Children of the '70s will likely remember "The Banana Splits," one of Sid & Marty Krofft's many bizarre Saturday morning shows which starred a quartet of costumed creatures who sang songs, did comedy sketches, romped around amusement parks, etc.

Well, somebody has decided to update the Splits for the 21st century... with a horror twist.
(Not for nothin' but the gorilla-like "Split" with the big grinning teeth always creeped me out when I was a kid, so this idea totally makes sense to me.)

The trailer hit YouTube yesterday:



...I'm not the only one who's noticed that this looks like a bite (pun not intended) off of the "Five Nights At Freddy's" video game franchise, which also features berserk killer animatronic kiddie characters. My video game crazed 11 year old has informed me that there's a "Five Nights" film in the works too, so I guess the Splits have beaten them to the punch.

The flick will be released direct-to-video this summer and then air on SyFy later this year, presumably around Halloween.

Ugh. How dare they sully the good name of the Banana Splits! I have no desire to see this but I'll probably end up catching it just out of morbid curiosity.

And there was always something catchy about the original themes:

007 wrote:

Ugh. How dare they sully the good name of the Banana Splits!

I think they probably figured it was OK because nobody had done anything with those characters in a loooooonng time, and anyone who did remember them is too old to care.  

...although now that I think about it, a year or two ago DC Comics published a one-shot special where the Splits became the new Suicide Squad!

That's the first I've ever seen that.

007 wrote:

  That's the first I've ever seen that.

I bought it out of curiosity during my now-11-year-old's brief flirtation with comic book collecting, but I don't think I ever actually read it. Haha

That is so hysterical yet oddly alluring to me.

I'll watch it and I hope there is some back story dialogue from the creators as to the method to their madness.

And for nothing those Splits were always creepy AF but I couldn't stop watching...

Does anyone remember this cd?


And in particular this cover?

^^ Yeah, I remember that disc, I bought a copy at a Goodwill a couple of years ago, but it was a scratched-to-hell, skipping clusterf*** so I had to toss it.

(Homer Simpson voice) Mmmmm....Liz Phair tho.

I like this version of the Banana Splits theme.  


Of course it's The Dickies who also gave us the theme to "Gigantor" and "Killer Klowns From Outer Space"

Yeah, I remember that Dickies version. Didn't know Liz covered it. She's still pretty smokin' hot... Her and Juliana Hatfield.

No interest in the movie tho.

They were always pretty creepy. But I'm not sure who this would appeal to now.

WTF this is my kind of jazz!

nevermore wrote:

I'm not sure who this would appeal to now.

Apparently, just me and corplhicks

Fat Freddy wrote:

nevermore wrote:

I'm not sure who this would appeal to now.

Apparently, just me and corplhicks

LOL surely* there are more around here that have an appreciation for all things offensively absurd and absurdly offensive?

Thing is, growing up, I always would daydream and sometimes even write out "PG-13 gritty reboot" versions of children's entertainment. Donald Duck as an amoral space smuggler! The last surviving Care Bears after Share-A-Lot Land's (that's...not what it was called was it) was decimated by the growing cruelty of mankind! The Smurfs waging FUCKING WAR ON GILGAMESH WITH BLADED WEAPONS YO! And don't get me started on Darkwing Duck. Anyway I may have never been a fan of Banana Splits (don't even know if I've ever seen it!) but I know enough about it to embrace a hostile reimagining with glee.





*don't call me Shirley.

corplhicks wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

nevermore wrote:

I'm not sure who this would appeal to now.

Apparently, just me and corplhicks

LOL surely* there are more around here that have an appreciation for all things offensively absurd and absurdly offensive?

Thing is, growing up, I always would daydream and sometimes even write out "PG-13 gritty reboot" versions of children's entertainment. Donald Duck as an amoral space smuggler! The last surviving Care Bears after Share-A-Lot Land's (that's...not what it was called was it) was decimated by the growing cruelty of mankind! The Smurfs waging FUCKING WAR ON GILGAMESH WITH BLADED WEAPONS YO! And don't get me started on Darkwing Duck. Anyway I may have never been a fan of Banana Splits (don't even know if I've ever seen it!) but I know enough about it to embrace a hostile reimagining with glee.





*don't call me Shirley.

Oh c'mon, I'm this board's biggest proponent of "Meet The Feebles" (ask scottmitchell) so you know this appeals to me.

Oh I have no problem with offensive humor. This just looks to me like it will be downright awful and ,ultimately, forgettable.

Did you ever watch the original show?  I think that's why this appeals to me.  This is just taking a show that was inherently creepy to begin with to the next level. 

I really want to see this!

Yeah I watched it as a kid. I don't think I ever found it creepy, I remember it more for the different shows they had on it (Three Musketeers and Danger Island especially). And I really wanted one of those banana buggies!

Your childhood self was never creeped out by those larger than life leering costumes?  What is wrong with you????  

  I always thought Drooper was cool.

BTW, I thought Freddy's original time frame was off and I was right.  This wasn't something "children of the 70s" saw, at least not first run.  The show ran from 1968 to 1970 so if I was 8-10 years old when the originals aired you guys were either in diapers or not even born yet. 

If I had to guess I'd say the versions you saw were probably "toned down" from the acid-era versions I saw.

To quote one commenter on Bloodydisgusting:

Quote :

You have to give them credit for the characters they are using though, that was actually creative given that those things were always creepy as f**k

^^^ Good point. I caught those in syndication after I got home from school. Now you make me wonder what,if any, the differences were.

I was born in '70, but the Splits definitely lived on in reruns for a while. I have vague memories of seeing them on weekday afternoons after school, with syndicated reruns of the Adam West "Batman" series and the usual assortment of out-of-date cartoons that local stations always carried (i.e. Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, etc.).

I had forgotten about them until the early/mid '00s when my kids were small and the Splits started turning up on Cartoon Network's "Boomerang" channel. My kids thought they were creepy, too.

I showed the movie trailer to my younger son last night (he'll be 12 next month) and he didn't remember the Splits till he heard the snippet of the "Tra-La-La Song" playing in the background and he went, "Ohhh yeaaaaahhhh!"

My son is a video game freak so he was the one who pointed out the similarity between the Splits movie's plot and the "Five Nights at Freddy's" games, which I was unfamiliar with.

Fun fact: early in his career, director Richard Donner of future "Superman: The Movie" and "Lethal Weapon" fame worked on the Danger Island segments for the Banana Splits Adventure Hour.

FYI, this movie will be released to digital platforms on Aug. 13, then DVD/Blu Ray on Aug. 27th.

They haven't announced the air date on SyFy yet but if I had to take a wild guess, it will probably premiere in October as part of their annual "31 Days of Halloween" festivities.

I wanted to share an old commercial and I searched and searched but couldn't rustle it up.

Anyway it was very much like the Splits where a little boy is in the woods littering and these life size menacing puppet animals say "Let's Get Him!" and start chasing him through the woods! Scared the tar out of me when I was little and is emblazoned on my psyche to this day.

I'm tellin' ya, the Splits were scary back in the day. 

Which of course only makes me want to see a new horror film exploiting that trait all the more.

You know what it is?  This was the Krofft's first foray into children's programming I think and they just threw on the screen whatever character designs their drug-addled brains came up with.  Eventually they learned to tone down the expressions of their characters and we got creatures like those on HR PuffnStuff, Sigmund the Sea Monster and Lidsville; "toned down" version of the wild crap in those guys' brains.  But good grief, in the late 60s they unleashed The Banana Splits on an unsuspecting public and the rest is history - for better or worse. 

So basically a Banana Splits horror movie works like a charm for me and the gorier the better.