Well here’s a bit of 1970s kitsch I had never heard of in my life: Supertrain.
This was a short-lived flop on NBC back in 1979. From what I can tell, the pitch meeting went something like this:
“So you know what a smash hit Love Boat is, right?? So what we’ll do is the same thing, except we’ll change the method of transportation. We’ll put it on a train!”
And that’s precisely what they did. Here is the introduction. Brace yourself for character actors that are massively overdoing it for the camera. It looks absolutely dreadful.
I did manage to watch the first four minutes of the first episode, and it’s quite a study. The scene is a board room with about sixteen men – – all of them white, elderly, and smoking cigars – – with an especially old man standing at the head of the table and declaring that their organization is going to build a coast-to-coast train that can traverse the United States in 36 hours. To gasps and murmurs of his audience, the old man then yanks a cloth off a artist’s concept as he says, “Gentlemen, I give unto you – Supertrain!!”
For me, the funniest part is the next scene shows the completed train, ready for its first journey, and the caption says “22 Months Later”. Here is California, there is a $105 billion money pit called the High Speed Rail which has been in the works for 14 goddamn years, and they’ve barely laid down the first track. I suspect after they waste a quarter trillion dollars on it, they’ll give up, and it’ll never carry a single person. 22 months, my ass.
Anyway, here’s a promo spot for the show………shield your eyes, Frank:
I am convinced the 1970s had no more than 25 actors in television, because it’s always the same assortment. As shown above, we have………
- Joyce Dewitt
- Isabel Sanford
- Bernie Kopell (from Love Boat!!)
- Jamie Farr
- Vic Tayback
So if you ever hear someone younger than 40 years old bitching about how there’s nothing good to watch, smack them on the back of the head and tell them at least they didn’t have a mere three channels of shit to choose from, including the likes of……………Supertrain.
