It’s not exactly a secret that the history of superheroes at Disney doesn’t start with their acquisition of Marvel. This isn’t even just The Rocketeer, though goodness knows that’s the most classic example. I’d argue that Kurt Russell played a superhero for Disney several times in the ’70s, though we’ll go into detail on that another day. Still, inarguable but mostly forgotten, we have Condorman, which Siskel and Ebert declared one of the worst movies of 1981.
Michael Crawford may be the Phantom of the Opera to a generation of women who were musicians or theatre geeks in junior high, but here, he is cartoonist Woodrow Wilkins, creator of the pop culture sensation Condorman. He is also friends with CIA agent Harry Oslo (James Hampton). For reasons that don’t make sense, Harry recruits Woody to deliver papers to the mysterious Natalia (Barbara Carrera). She decides to defect and insists that only Woody can help her. So yeah, that’s a thing. Anyway, the sinister Krokov (Oliver Reed) doesn’t want to let her, and there are shenanigans across Europe getting Natalia to safety with the help of someone with no training.
Don’t get me wrong; the amateur who has to pretend to be an expert in the field wasn’t a new concept when Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray were fighting Nazi spies in the ’40s. But I refuse to believe that, even for love, someone like Natalia would go with the obvious amateur—and it’s pretty obvious from watching Woody stumble through that first mission—when her actual life was in danger. In most versions of the story, the amateur is in the place they are because circumstances won’t let them avoid it. I feel as though, in this version, it’s because the woman is made stupid by love.
I will say that Woody at least seems to be a competent artist. I’m not sure his work is in the style we would have expected from comic books in 1981, but I’ve definitely seen art like that in comics I’ve read over the years. I assume the stories are frankly dumb, because I don’t expect much better from movie portrayals of comic books, but at least the art seems to have been done by an actual talented artist. Though neither IMDb nor Wikipedia say who actually did the drawing.
Another thing I’m having trouble finding out is exactly what the Baskin-Robbins tie-in Condorman Crunch tasted like. I’ve found a Facebook post from a fan trying to get them to bring it back that suggests it was vanilla ice cream with a raspberry swirl and cashews. Which doesn’t have much to do with the movie, but so what? Since when has that mattered?
Basically, this movie has mostly been forgotten. Having seen it recently (never mind how), I can say that’s mostly because it’s forgettable. I would put it to you that it isn’t bad enough to be among the worst movies of 1981; it’s mediocre. Natalia is stupid, but not as offensively stupid as the mom from Million Dollar Duck. Woody is stupid, but again, it could be worse. The whole situation is ridiculously contrived. The gadgets are even more obviously plot devices than the ones in a James Bond movie, since Our Technical Hero doesn’t even seem to have the same reason to have them or the same exposition before he uses them. It’s more “Hmm, what does this button do? Oh, exactly what I need done!”
I remember this movie appearing on the Disney Channel now and again when I was a kid, but I don’t ever remember watching it. In retrospect, I am no longer sure this is because I didn’t.