Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-04-09 (Wednesday)

On 4/10/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

What did you watch?

>
Hollywood Demons (HBOMax) - "Dark Side of the Power Rangers" - Episode 3
of this documentary series.  This episode is the reason I even took
notice of this series, it focused on "The Power Rangers."  I was a
little older when the show came out, but still enjoyed watching it as a
teenager.  I've only ever heard horror stories from the cast about
making this show, and this documentary was no different.  I had
forgotten they shot the pilot with a different "Yellow Ranger."  They
interviewed her about the pilot.  She said they were in the middle of
some dessert in heat when one of the stuntmen in a rubber swimsuit had
heat stroke.  She said the guy was on the ground flopping around and she
insisted they stop filming and get the guy an ambulance.  But the
producers refused to stop filming and offered $100 for anyone to take
off the costume and put it on so they could keep filming, and someone
took the $100, took the costume off the man, and left the guy there
still shaking, but now in the his socks and underwear, and they kept
filming.
>
And that's not even close to the most shocking story they told in the
documentary.  There were so many shady things happened on that show.
Giving them contracts to sign, but telling them they had to sing almost
immediately with no time to let an agent review it first.  The terms of
the contracts had the actors working for almost nothing while signing
away their likeness.  Keep in mind, Power Rangers is a mutlibillion
dollar franchise.  They were putting the actors faces on products,
selling the products, and not giving the actors any of the money.  It
was a non union show which had its' own list of horrors they put the
actors through.  One of the actors said Disney bought the show, then it
went union and suddenly they cared if they got hurt or not and they
brought in stuntmen to the dangerous scenes.
>
Then there were all the deaths, suicides, murder.  The murder they
talked about could be it's own documentary.  A lot of this fans of the
show will already know about, but it was still an interesting watch and
had several things I wasn't already aware of, in particular details
surrounding the suicide of Jason David Frank, who was the most popular
ranger.