The Official 'I Still Love The Hulk TV Show' Thread

[Obi-Ron]

Well this is definitely an influence on the new movie, and guess what? Not everyone on the Hype hates this show.

[YT]TujifzRVETA[/YT]

Testify!

 

[Kirmit]

I did like the show, bixby was an amazing actor , really making you feel for banner, it along with the cartoons is what got me onto the comics. I always hated the hulk though, not his actions just his look, think it was the hair that put me off .

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Thought the title of my thread had been changed for a minute then, lol!

 

[Obi-Ron]

I'm crafty like that.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Ha ha, i dont believe that for a second O-B

 

[Bubonic]

It was great, the acting was on key, and with what they had, they did wonders.
It just doesn't hold up to what I want from a Hulk live action experience nowadays.

 

[Golgo-13]

Great thread. Long overdue.

The only reason so many ppl on the Hype don't like this show, is because most are too young to have grown up with it. Those of us in our 30's who absolutely worshipped this thing back when it originally aired, appreciate how risky it was for tv to air a show about a giant green man, and have a caliber actor like Bixby become part of what made it great. Sure Ferrigno running around in slippers is kinda corny ( i admit, i didn't notice those as a kid), but there's no denying the stories, music and acting that this tv is famous for.

 

[Bubonic]

I'm young to have seen it, 23, but I was lucky enough to be introduced to it when I was a preteen, so it still had an awe factor.
But if I'd of gotten to grow up with it, wow, it sure beats the bad place out of that superman soap opera they have nowadays.

 

[Obi-Ron]

The only reason so many ppl on the Hype don't like this show, is because most are too young to have grown up with it.

Damn kids! (waves fist) Get off my lawn!

The Incredible Hulk was so popular even Mr. Rogers visited the set on an episode of his show.

 

[wobbly]

I will always hold a fondness for the show, being a kid when it first came out...but it was very much a product of it's time. As dated now as something like the George Reeves Superman was when the Donner movie rolled round.

Bixby remains a great Banner though, however utterly lame Ferrigno's Hulk is to our eyes now.

Oh, and my dad hated the show, which he saw as being a rather obvious rip off on "the Fugitive", just with a big green plot device showing up twice an episode.

 

[FrostBite]

I am too young (18) to remember growing up on it... my memories were always of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," (my first word was even 'Cowabunga' I kid you not.) "The Amazing Spider-man," "Batman Animated Series" and "X-men" cartoons of the 90's.

But... I do occasionally watch the show whenever it hits the Sci-Fi channel. Though Lou will always be a lame Hulk in my eyes... the show is still great. I love Bixby as Banner.

 

[Bubonic]

I remember people being upset that they weren't making the Ang film using the same concept of bodybuilder painted green.

 

[Gamma Ra]

I'll always love the television show for many reasons. To me the show has the best portrayal of Banner. I don't feel that Banner has to be the geeky introvert that he was portrayed early in the comics. Seeing the first commercial for the pilot is what got me seriously into reading comics, so I could never knock the show. I loved that the show was a serious take on the character as well as all the serious issues that Banner came across on his lonely travel and dealt with. The shows surreal psychedelic music scoring was excellent. I still watch the shows today and get a kick out of them especially the way Bixby would seriously beg someone to stop kicking his a$$ because he knew what was coming.

 

[namtaB]

I thought the show was 100% better than Hulk 2003. I hope this film emulates the show.

 

[co2]

Was my favorite show as a kid. In fact, I remember the night of of November 4th, 1977 (I actually just found out the date last year as it was the 30th anniversary). I was 5 years old, and my parents told me that if I ate all of my dinner I could watch The Incredible Hulk which was coming on TV. I didn't really know what the Hulk was, but they knew. I remember being riveted to that little TV that night. It was off to the races after that. I remember whenever we were on road trips and hit a gas station, the first comics I would pick up would be Hulk and I collected the bubblegum cards from the TV show. I loved the show up until it bowed 5 years later.
Hulk left Friday nights and the '82 cartoon immediately took it's place Saturday mornings before Spidey and his amazing friends (still think that is the best written Hulk cartoon, despite the fact that his clothes grew back). I remember being confused...who is this Rick Jones and Betty..and why is David called Bruce?! I finally started reading the comics regularly and I found that the TV show was the altered version.
The show is dated now, and some of the episodes were cheesy, yes...but I still contend that up until perhaps Blade came along 20 years later, it was the best live action thing done of a Marvel property. Like Norton said, it really didn't talk down to the idea. It took it seriously. And Bixby's performance in it was terrific. I agree that he has been the best Banner so far. I used to empathize with him so much. And I think Ferrigno was great too. The best way to realize the Hulk at the time. I've met him a few times and that was quite something for me. The music for the show was good too. That show had a lot of good ingredients to pull it off.
That show had quite an impact on me I think. It initiated me getting into comics, getting into bodybuilding in later years...I think I can trace it all back to that show.

But ya know what is funny?...After all of those years, it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that in the opening credit sequence, you see the word "ANGER" become "DANGER" on that flashing red warning light. That never dawned on me. Kenneth Johnsons was a great creator and that was a nice little touch.

 

[Obi-Ron]

Hulk followed by the Dukes of Hazzard every Friday. Good times.

 

[co2]

Hulk followed by the Dukes of Hazzard every Friday. Good times.

I also seem to remember before the Dukes of Hazard started, there was a night that was Hulk and Wonder Woman both on CBS.

You are right...great times. I really long for those days.

 

[ArtTeacher]

First of all, great thread, Obi-Ron!

If it wasn't for the TV show, the Hulk would not be one of Marvel's top icons today. Period.

It was the first Sci-Fi show to win an Emmy.
It is one of the longest running sci-fi shows.
It got great ratings.
It was tied as the most expensive show to film on television at the time (about a million dollars an episode).

And if the show HAD been true to the comic, right around the epidode where Bill Bixby had to fight off the Terrible Toad Men, the show would have gotten canceled faster than the original Hulk comic.

In closing, no thread about The Incredible Hulk television series can be complete without these two posts from our very own Dirty Harry:

Granted, this show has some pretty laughable special effects - but only by today's standards. However, taken in the context of when they were made, these shows were damn good and on-par with any other effects-heavy series made during that era. Younger fans (under 30) who can't take anything that isn't CGI'd to the Nth degree, and the hardcore CB-purests who always piss & moan about how the show "sucks" and is "crap" need to lighten up and think for a minute before opening their big mouths to complain or take cheap shots at the show. Just remember you crybabies, no matter how much you feel that the TV show (or parts of it) stinks, it could always have been much, much worse. When you get right down to it, there was only one other cost-effective special effects option for a TV series to depict Hulk-type feats of strength.

Picture if you will - The Incredible Hulk TV series with the same level of F/X sophistication as the average episode of 'ISIS' - for instance. Certainly producer Kenneth Johnson could have opted for video-to-film effects compositing in an attempt to do multiple feats of strength for the same price as a single shot done on film, in an attempt to please CB fanboys and portray the Hulk more like his comic book incarnation. But honestly, think about that for just a minute. How absolutely putrid and downright laughable (even back at that time) would THAT stuff have looked?

Imagine Lou Ferrigno standing in front of blue screen with a fan blowing his wig and pretending to jump up and down while the video camera operator tilts the camera up & down and zooms in - and then that video effects footage gets superimposed onto the film stock to portray the Hulk leaping. Or perhaps picture Lou battling a bunch of zipper-backed Sleestak-wannabees!?! Would you really have preferred that just so you could get it truer to the comic book? My sphincter twitches just thinking about it! Ack!

I am just so tired of snotty young punks and the hypocritical, hypercritical dismissive purist types who it seems can never be satisfied with anything that isn't 110% CB-based. (Christ, even then they bicker & whine about which CB version is the 'real' Hulk). There's just no pleasing these whiny snots. I have no problem when criticism is constructive. These folks though just blubber and screech for the pure joy of hearing themselves making noise. More to the point, even constructive criticism is a moot point regarding this show, since it's over & done with - and has been for 30 years!! I'd like to take a baseball bat and brain idiots who make ignorant A-hole-ish "green-painted muscle man"-type comments. God that irritates me; which is the exact response these troll-ish sorts are jonesing to achieve, I suppose.

What other manner of portraying a huge, heavily-muscled superhuman do they think would have worked back in 1977?!? Ummmmm... NOTHING! So shut the bad place up! We (whiners & CB fanboys included) should thank our lucky stars that we were fortunate enough to get the likes of a serious-minded producer like Kenneth Johnson. No, he admittedly didn't care for (or really 'get') the source material, but at least he chose to do it straight and not camp it up and go for laughs, which is the route many would have chosen if they didn't understand the stuff or couldn't figure out how to re-work it to a TV budget and the restrictions that imposes. For heaven's sake, the man even stopped production well into the pilot movie and re-cast the Hulk role because it didn't look right. Otherwise we'd all have been subjected to Richard 'Jaws' Kiel as the Green Goliath. Ick.

And bless Lou's Hulk. Give him a break, folks. He didn't ask to be mute. That was Kenny's decision; because he felt that prime time TV audiences would have laughed at Ferrigno running around bellowing "Hulk smash!" And honestly, I feel he was right. The only viewers who might have loved it would have been kids / younger CB fans, but that's not the demographics crowd that keeps a show in production and on the air. Mainstream viewers back then simply were not as accepting. We are that audience nowadays, but the ones watching the Hulk in the late 70's were our parents (and grandparents), and they didn't know and love this character like we do. Sticking true-to-source might well have turned this show into another Adam West "BOFF!" fest.

Regardless of person opinions, I think it's a safe to say that Bill Bixby was the best thing to happen to TIH since the character was created in '62. At least that's one area where even lovers & haters seem to agree. Another actor could easily have wrecked what Johnson intended, so let's be thankful that Bix took it seriously and played it that way.

I think we'd all love to have seen more CB-based Hulk powers. Problem is how to portray them in a manner that looks good and doesn't cost a zillion dollars a shot? The TIH crew did the best work they could under the constrictive F/X budget they were given and the rather limited options available to them in that day and age. Remember, these were pre-CGI days, and many F/X people of the time were schooled on the Universal monster movies of the 30's & 40's, and techniques really hadn't changed all that much since way back then either. It was only in the late 80's when advanced make-ups like Rick Baker's became cost-effective for a TV budget, and the computer didn't became a tool for turning imagination into celluloid reality until the mid-90's, and the successful effectiveness of that is often heavily debated even today!

Okay, I'm hopping down off my soapbox now. Think I'll go watch "Death in the Family." Stuffed grizzly bear and all, it's still one of my favorite TIH episodes. Peace all!

 

[Phantom Bear]

Bill Bixby made that show 100%. The anticipation of the Hulk out used to be built to breaking point and Bixby really portrayed that he didn't want it to happen. I'm the proud owner of Series 1 and 2 on DVD. I'll always stick an episode on if I've got an hour to kill.

 

[webhead731]

I'm 16, I have the first two seasons on DVD and love the show.
First thing I saw of this show was Death of Incredible Hulk back in 2000. Been hooked ever since. Even if Hulk did die. Then I found the first pilot episode on VHS at a store in 2001. That was even better.

 

[SpaghettiHULK]

I'm 16, I have the first two seasons on DVD and love the show.
First thing I saw of this show was Death of Incredible Hulk back in 2000. Been hooked ever since. Even if Hulk did die. Then I found the first pilot episode on VHS at a store in 2001. That was even better.

Actually, The Hulk shouldn't have died for real... was already planned an "Incredible Hulk's Resurrection", and a "Son of the Incredible Hulk", but then, how everybody sadly knows, Bill Bixby passed away...

 

[Ahura Mazda]

It was a good show and I remeber watching it every Friday night along with Six Million dollar man.

I started comics around the same time given I was about the same age as CO2. I was a fan of the show but realised through reading the comic this Hulk was seriously underpowerred and always felt he should take out his opponents easier.

It is however, not what I would like to see on film today. I think the comic book has enough stories that you do not need to take one from the TV.

 

[Obi-Ron]

I look at it this way: What was the TV show missing: Big budget effects? Betty and Thunderbolt Ross? Supervillains like the Abomination?

Well, guess what?

 

[ArtTeacher]

It is however, not what I would like to see on film today. I think the comic book has enough stories that you do not need to take one from the TV.

Oh, yeah, I agree. And I don't think they'll actually pull a story from the TV series (let's face it, we'd probably all be disappointed if Banner goes and investigates a wax museum that appears haunted), I just think they'll insert a couple of the things that really worked on the show (from an earlier post of mine):

If they only keep two elements of the TV show, let it be:
1) The absolute pathos that Bixby brought to Banner (you REALLY felt for Banner and wanted to see him find happiness...yet never hated the Hulk for cursing him. You rooted for Banner AND the Hulk) and
2) The Point of No Return Eyes!!!!!!! YES!!!!

The close-up shot of Banner's eyes coupled with that startling chime/music made everybody watching be like, "OH CRAP, IT'S ON, NOW!"
When you saw the eyes, you knew it was Go-Time.
Justice was about to be served (to some low-life creep that was bullying people around, usually).
There was such anticipation while Banner was slowly getting angry.
Then you saw the eyes and it was Game Over.
PLEASE KEEP THIS IN THE NEW MOVIE!

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Great thread. Long overdue.

The only reason so many ppl on the Hype don't like this show, is because most are too young to have grown up with it. Those of us in our 30's who absolutely worshipped this thing back when it originally aired, appreciate how risky it was for tv to air a show about a giant green man, and have a caliber actor like Bixby become part of what made it great. Sure Ferrigno running around in slippers is kinda corny ( i admit, i didn't notice those as a kid), but there's no denying the stories, music and acting that this tv is famous for.

Though i am 25, i actually DID grow up with it, it was the first thing that got me into the Hulk, but now, i find it unwatchable.