“Star Wars’ Own Website Admits That Lucas ‘Stole’ From A WWII Movie”

6 Iconic Movies And Shows That Were Outright Ripoffs

One of the examples they give is The Ghost Busters, a low-brow Saturday morning kiddie show from the 70s. In a short-lived mid-70s phenomenon, several live-action shows competed with the cartoons on Saturday morning. They frequently involved sci-fi premises or comic book heroes of some kind, but usually handled the story lines in a jokey way, ala the TV version of Batman. Some of the mid-70s entries, like The Ghost Busters series featured in this link, were less than memorable, while others attained some measure of popularity and endured in reruns on networks like Nickelodeon.

Because it featured a beautiful woman, horndogs like me remember The Secrets of Isis, which was created by Filmation, the same company which produced The Ghost Busters. A competing group in this era, Sid and Marty Krofft, produced another live-action show with beautiful female stars, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. So at least some of us dads were entertained while we watched with the kids.

The popularity of these shows seemed to come crashing down after 1976, and none of them really seemed to create original episodes very long. There are only 15 episodes of The Ghost Busters, 16 of Electra Woman, 22 of Isis. The grandfather of the genre, Shazam!, which was based on the original Captain Marvel from the 30s and 40s, lasted a bit longer (28 shows over three seasons). Isis was actually a spinoff of Shazam!. They were aired as a combo offering called The Shazam/Isis Hour, and the two shows occasionally did crossover episodes.

While some of the shows occasionally got serious and/or incorporated some kind of moral lesson into the storylines, The Ghost Busters was pure slapstick. It starred the two main stars of F-Troop, Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, plus a guy in a homemade gorilla suit, as the original ghost-busting threesome. Their names were Spencer, Tracy and Kong, with the twist that the gorilla was actually Tracy, not Kong. Pretty wacky, eh?

I wouldn’t call the Ghostbusters movie a “ripoff,” any more than Marvel movies are a ripoff of Marvel comics. The original series wasn’t exactly a big-time success. It lasted only 15 very cheesy weeks in 1975, and was already forgotten a decade later, but Columbia Pictures forked over a half a million dollars for the rights to the name and concept, which was probably about $499,000 more than those rights were worth.

UPDATE from the comments:

Sad aside about Dyna Girl: the woman who played her (Judy Strangis) attracted a stalker who drove her out of the public eye, and her career afterward was mainly offscreen voice acting.

Fun aside about Dyna Girl: her uncle was Spike Jones.

2 thoughts on ““Star Wars’ Own Website Admits That Lucas ‘Stole’ From A WWII Movie”

  1. Sad aside about Dyna Girl: the woman who played her (Judy Strangis) attracted a stalker who drove her out of the public eye, and her career afterward was mainly offscreen voice acting.

    Fun aside about Dyna Girl: her uncle was Spike Jones.

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