Pop Art: Isis (DC TV Edition)

Action Figure of the Week: Isis (Mego Edition)

Theme Song of the Week: The Secrets of Isis (1976)

Advert Art: CBS Isis and Shazam Edition

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Year of the Dragon" (October 16, 1976)

A top chemistry student, Julie Chen (Jeanne Jo) is embarrassed by her Chinese heritage, and her Chinese father (Victor Sen Young) who lives in Chinatown and conforms to the traditions of his homeland.

When Chen wins a top chemistry honor, and is to be given an award at a high school assembly, she takes steps to prevent her proud father from attending.  Mr. Chen learns that his daughter is ashamed of him, making matters worse.  Rennie tries to convince her that she is doing both her father and her friends a disservice, but Julie will hear none of it.

But when Julie falls down a well, her father comes to her rescue.

And when he falls down a well, Isis comes to his rescue….

The Secrets of Isis (1975 – 1976) presents another weird episode here. In “Year of the Dragon,” we meet the extremely touchy Julie Chen, who gets offended every time a student or teacher asks her anything about Chinese culture.  She says she is tired of being expected to know everything about the Chinese people from “Charlie Chan movies” to “chop suey.” 

The only problem is that no character in the program treats her this way at all.  So Julie just comes off looking extremely sensitive and touchy.  Week after week, we have seen Mrs. Thomas and her students treat all people with high levels of empathy and compassion, so Chen's anger and resentment is weird.  It basically comes off as her problem, which may or may not have been the episode's point.

Julie also has a lot of bad luck.  She runs away from those who want to be her friend, fearing they will mention her Chinese traditions.  The first time she runs away, Julie lands in an auto junkyard and nearly gets crushed in a junked car.  The second time she runs away, Julie falls down a well and is trapped.

Then, the episode ends in cloyingly cheesy fashion as Mr. and Mrs. Chen make stereotyped “Pidgen English” jokes about Mr. Mason’s inability to use chopsticks correctly.  This moment is legitimately off-putting.

Now that no one’s trapped in a well, it’s easy to make fun of your own culture (and others’ perceptions of it), I suppose.  This ending kind of misses the point.  The whole story wasn't about how it is okay to mock your own culture if you feel others are doing it.  The point was to show how you can balance your own cultural traditions and still embrace American culture too.

Still, it’s a good thing Isis is around this week, and she uses her powers of stop-motion animation to lower a ladder down to Mr. Chen in a well.  She offers this incantation: “Oh broken ladder with rungs too few, restore thyself as good as new!

Only two episodes of Isis left. Next week: “Now You See It…”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Scuba Duba" (December 6, 1975)

In “Scuba Duba,” a high school student, Steve (Brian Byers) is demonstrating impulsive, careless and even reckless behavior.  

First, he repels down a mountainside precipice at Rocky’s Point to photograph an eagle’s nest.

Then, he ignores all of instructor Rick Mason’s advice and goes scuba diving alone, without his partner Nancy (Eileen Chesis) at his side.  

On his swim, Steve gets caught between two rocks underwater, his air is low, and things look grim.

Fortunately, Isis (Joanna Cameron) has been keeping an eye on him.  She sees Steve’s struggle in the gem of her magical amulet, and races to the rescue…

Another wayward young student learns a valuable life lesson in this episode of Isis (1975 – 1976).  

The show’s consistent and repetitive modus operandi? Learn from your mistakes!  

In most stories of this Filmation Saturday morning series, a student commits a grievous (and life threatening) error, and then does it a second time.

That second time is the charm, however, and it scares the student straight. In both cases, Isis is around to prevent death, and pave the way for a moral reckoning.  Here, we get the message: “Thanks to Isis, Stevv is still with us.”

“Scuba Duba” is unique primarily in terms of the venue it selects.  This is the first episode in which we see the superhero operating underwater.  Ingeniously (though not invisibly...) some shots consist of stock footage.  We see Isis flying, but a blue filter and bubbles have been superimposed over the footage to suggest she is cruising deep beneath the waves.

And yes, this is also the episode in which we see Joanna Cameron…wet.

Isis’s powers continue to be a bit inconsistent, episode-to-episode. Sometimes her magical Egyptian amulet can reveal problems in the future. Sometimes it can rewind to the past.  Here, it reveals Fred trapped underwater concurrently, and Isis arrives in time to rescue him. 

Basically, this amulet can do anything that Isis -- or series writers -- require of it.

Also in this episode, Isis summons “Sister, Goddess of the Wind” to return a broken rope to her position during the mountain climbing interlude. 

Once the rope obliges, Isis asks “strands of rope which were undone, come together now as one.”  The rope automatically fits back together!

Next week: "Dreams of Flight."

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Funny Gal" (November 22, 1975)

In “Funny Gal” an episode of The Secrets of Isis (1975 - 1976), an overweight young woman, Carrie Anson (Sandra Vacey), hides behind humor to cloak her feelings of insecurity.  

A friend of hers attempts to launch a campaign to make her student council president, but Carrie messes it up with her self-deprecating, silly sense of humor.

In one last ditch attempt to win, Carrie makes a scene. She steels Rick’s boat, the Star Tracker, and heads out to sea, just as a deadly storm moves in.  Quickly, Carrie becomes stranded....

Realizing that she can’t both stop the storm and recover the boat at the same time, Isis (Joanna Cameron) seeks the assistance of a superhero friend: Captain Marvel (John Davey).

It’s a cross-over episode of Isis!  

Here, our remarkable Andrea Thomas, secretly an Egyptian Goddess, summons Captain Marvel of the sibling Filmation series, Shazam!, to help out in a pinch.  It’s undeniably fun to see the two superheroes join up, even for a time, though the excuse is pretty lame.  Isis has handled tougher situations than this alone before, for certain.

But still, any excuse to get Captain Marvel and Isis together is fine with me.  As a child, I remember watching this episode, and loving the team-up, despite the general lameness of the affair.  Here, Tut --the crow -- goes, on Isis’s orders, to find the good captain.

Our message of the week here in "Funny Gal" is that you can’t love others until you really learn to yourself, and it proverb is applied to a girl named Carrie at high school (no, not that Carrie!). Isis reminds Carrie that she is worthy of being love for many reasons, including her mind and her sense of humor.

Also interesting here is the conclusion of the episode, which finds Rick “comparing” meek Mrs. Thomas to mighty Isis, and finding her wanting.  Andrea shoots back that maybe she should compare Rick to Captain Marvel, and see how he likes it. Zing!

That’s an exceedingly good point and it gets at, in a humorous fashion, the way that our culture is particularly hard on women for their looks, and not nearly so tough on men.  

Alas, it's a shame the episode doesn't get at another key point.  Carrie isn't fat, or even overweight at all.  It would be nice if someone stated that fact flat out.

Next week, the atrociously-titled "Girl Driver."

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "No Drums, No Trumpets" (November 15, 1975)

In “No Drums, No Trumpets,” a ham radio operator, Fred (Mark Lambert) is irritated that he loses a science fair to a friend, Dorothy.  At a crucial moment, his radio malfunctions, and he gets angry.

Fred speeds away from the scene in his car, and promptly drives it over a cliff.  

Isis (Joanna Cameron) arrives just in time to save him, summoning the wind to blow the vehicle back to the road.

Later, Mrs. Thomas, Fred and Dorothy visit a nearby ghost-town, where local thieves are hiding out. 

Mrs. Thomas loses her Isis amulet during a staircase collapse, meaning she can’t stop the thugs, or save the teens. 

Instead, Fred must use his twitchy ham radio to contact the authorities.

“No Drums, No Trumpets” is slightly more than the run-of-the-mill Secrets of Isis episode.  There’s still the Filmation standard here of the “lesson of the week” (in this case: sometimes you learn more by losing than by winning), but the danger is ratcheted up to a higher degree.

Specifically, Isis/Andrea loses her amulet in the middle of the story, which means she is unable to transform into the Goddess and save the day.  Instead, she must rely on a temperamental teen, and on a different skill-set too, to deal with the menacing criminals hiding out in the ghost town.

It may not sound like much, but this formula deviation is enough to make “No Drums, No Trumpets” stand-out from the pack  So many episodes of Isis drone on and repeat the exact same chronology and order of events that it is an actual relief to see something different happen for a change.

Also, the scene with the teen in a car – teetering on the verge of death -- is surprisingly well-vetted here.

Next week, Isis and Captain Marvel team up in "Funny Gal!"

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "The Outsider"

In “The Outsider,” Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) is worried about a bright new student, Wayne Moss (Mitch Vogel), who the other students bully and call a “hillbilly.”

Wayne spends most of his time away from school, exploring old Wilson’s Pond, and learning more about the wild life there.  He says he hates city life and the “pavement, concrete, and smog” of urban living.  Meanwhile, two bullies decide to steal the raccoon mascot of a competing sports team, and blame the theft on Wayne.

When Wayne learns that a land developer plans to dynamite and drain Wilson’s pond, he steals a bull-dozer, but soon loses control of it.

It’s Isis to the rescue!

“The Outsider” is a charming but totally fantasy-land installment of Isis.

In this episode, an “outsider” boy attempts to stop contractors and land developers from destroying a beautiful and precious natural habitat. 

Andrea gets a great (but odd idea) to help: “Let’s file an environmental impact report!” 

But, alas, it’s too late for the grinding wheels of bureaucracy to slow the project down.

Desperate, Rick Cutler goes to Mr. Winstead (Harry Hickox), the land developer -- while he is playing golf, no less -- and tells him about the white owl and other wild-life that will be destroyed by his actions. 

Horrified, Winstead calls off his multi-million, environment-destroying project right then and there. 

The dynamite fuses are already lit, but fortunately Isis can help.

If only life were really like this episode of Filmation's Secrets of Isis.

There is no land developer in the world, I fear, who would change course -- even if it is the right thing to do -- on the cusp of creating a multi-million dollar project (a new suburb). 

Indeed, this idea, of a millionaire businessman actually caring about the environment, is the most “fantastic” or fantasy element of the episode.  I would sooner believe in Isis, a near Goddess superhero, frankly. 

Still, this 1970s idealism is quite a wonderful, if innocent thing.  Too bad more children didn’t learn the lesson of Filmation’s “The Outsider,” that when we destroy the environment, we contribute to our own destruction. 

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "The Show-Off"

In “The Show-Off,” an episode of Isis originally aired November 1, 1975, a high-school kid named Steve (Harry Gold) nearly falls off the school roof after climbing a ladder while trying to hang a banner. 

Isis (Joanna Cameron) rescues him, but Harry is embarrassed.  He feels the need to show off, in part, he says, because he is short.

Later, on a school camping trip, Cindy Lee (Joanna Pang) gets her foot stuck in a bear trap and Steve tries to impress her by saving her himself, instead of asking for help.

This time Andrea comes to the rescue, and tells him that there is no shame in needing help, and that he should concentrate on doing well the things he loves.  To that end, Steve is an ornithologist.  

“Know thyself,” Isis recommends, stressing the importance of Steve being himself.

After over-coming his need to show off, Steve and Rick (Brian Cutler) get trapped in a mountain cave with Rofu, an angry, runaway gorilla. 

Of course, this necessitates another rescue from Mighty Isis…

“The Show Off” alters the standard Isis formula a bit.  Usually, the story finds Isis trying to help a kid who has done something bad.  She shows up just in time to help him realize how wrong-headed he’s been about something (like bragging, or handling a dangerous gun). 

But this week, Isis and Steve resolve Steve’s problem -- showing off -- and the third act involves an unrelated (and odd…) matter: an out-of-control, runaway gorilla.

And what a gorilla it is.  Rofu is a man in a suit, and this just may be the worst gorilla costume you’ll find on seventies television.  But I wonder who came up with the idea of making a runaway gorilla the threat of the week, especially in an episode about showing-off.

Whatever. It was the seventies, right?

In terms of her ever increasing stable of powers, Isis demonstrates in “The Show Off” her ability to control animals, and bend them to her will.  “I have a way with animals,” she note simply, and then observes that she and Rofu will now be “lifelong friends.”  A few episodes back, Isis tangled with an angry bear, but instead of communicating with it peacefully, as she does with Rofu, she trapped it and startled it by surrounding it with a ring of fire.

Next week: “The Outsider.”