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Spridgets on Film

The red "Midget" appears just at the beginning and at the end, but the rest is a good watch for Mr. Bean fans:


Rowan Atkinson, aka "Mr Bean", is a great car enthusiast and regularly competes in historic racing. Here he is at Goodwood with the bean Mini:


And here's his McClaren F1 after a road accident in the UK:

f302Rowan-Atkinson.jpg
 
Further testament to Atkinson being a true enthusiast, he had the McLaren completely restored at great expense by the factory.
 
Sure wish the hood on my Sprite would open up as high as the one on Holly Robinson's TR3. (I think it's a TR3? Maybe an MGA?). Also, wouldn't the carbs be on the opposite side from where Johnny Depp stuck his hand?

Dustin Nyugen went on to appear in "V.I.P." with Pamela Anderson. Peter DeLuise made a cameo appearance in that series and he did that "Don't I know you from somewhere?" routine.

My favorite "other series" reference was on St. Elsewhere when the character that played Salami on "The White Shadow" sees the character that played Coolidge on the same show. He runs after him "Coolidge, Coolidge, it's me, Salami..." and Coolidge is like "You have me mixed up with someone else".

The "other series reference" that never happened, but I sure wish it did! It would have been hilarious if on the TV show "ER" when Anthony Edwards was in the series if they had some crazy guy come in on a stretcher saying "Talk to me Goose...talk to me Goose", and then when seeing Edwards, would say "Goose! You made it... I thought you died in the ejection!"
 
Carbs are on the right side on a Triumph. The real question is how you unstick an SU carb float by lifting the carb piston?

As seems true about all of the films you have found with Healeys or Spridgets, one needs to suspend one's disbelief to make it all work!
 
Carbs are on the right side on a Triumph. The real question is how you unstick an SU carb float by lifting the carb piston?

...and does a Triumph's hood open that wide? Trying to work under the Sprite's hood is an exercise in contortionism. When I did the cylinder head work, I just took the hood off with as much time as I was going to be spending in the engine compartment.
 
What's been interesting about this thread is while the Bugeye is considered the iconic British sports car, we're seeing that the majority of the clips have Square Sprites or Midgets in them. Obviously, the Spridgets were the contemporary cars at the time these films & tv episodes were shot. While there are a couple of contemporary Bugeye ones, a lot of the "retro" type films utilize the BE versus the Spridget.
 
Just from that short trailer, and even without translation, that looks like one of the worst movies ever made! :p

That's a pretty lofty title, considering we already have three contenders in this thread:

: Eegah (also known as Eegah: The Name Written in Blood) is a 1962 film starring Arch Hall, Jr., Arch Hall, Sr., Marilyn Manning and Richard Kiel in the titular role where teenagers stumble across a prehistoric caveman, who goes on a rampage. The film's notoriety was enhanced as a result of being featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and was said by many to be an all time worst film and one of the films listed in Michael Medved's book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.

There is a move The Van. It is so bad it is funny. It is a little racy. It has two girls driving around in a Bugeye being pursued by a couple of guys in a van. One of the guys works at a car wash run by Danny Devito. I don't know how to do a link. It is on YouTube.

While Ă…sa-Nisse was always popular among movie-goers (Spawning 19 sequels is no small feat), the movies have always been panned by critics both then and now. Some even see it as a low point in Swedish cinema that works as a stark contrast to Ingmar Bergman's work of the same period

Frankly, except for the appearance of Spridgets, most of these movies seem to have no redeeming social value whatsoever.
 
That clip makes Eegah look like an Academy Award winner.

It does show to fairly good effect the size difference between a BE and a Miata, though.
 
Classic Avengers.
But just as breathtakingly bad as most of the movies Rick has found. At least in this one the scumbags drive an E-Type instead of a Big Healey like in many of the movies in Rick's Big Healey thread.
 
So what else do you have to do on a Saturday besides watch a Cuban zombie film?

WARNING - Graphic and totally gratuitous zombie violence included (Oh Goody!)

Juan de los muertos (Juan of the dead) - Juan is 40 years old, most of which he spent in Cuba doing absolutely nothing. It’s his way of life, and he’s prepare to defend it at any cost, along with his pal Lázaro, as lazy as Juan but twice as dumb. Juan’s only emotional tie is his daughter, Camila, a beautiful young girl that doesn’t want anything to do with her father because the only thing he’s good at is getting into trouble. Suddenly some strange things start to happen, people are turning violent attacking one to the other. Juan was first convinced it’s just another stage of the Revolution. Official media refer to the attacks as isolated incidents provoked by Cuban dissidents paid by the US government. Little by little Juan and his friends start to realize that the attackers are not normal human beings and that killing them is quite a difficult task. They’re not vampires, they’re not possesed, but they’re definitely not dissidents; a simple bite turns the victim into other violent killing machine and the only way to beat them is destroying their brains.
Juan decides that the best way of facing the situation is making some money out of it…..

“Juan of the Dead, we kill your beloved ones” becomes his slogan. Lázaro, along with his son Vladi, and Camila (who had no other choice but joining her father after he rescued her from grandma´s killing desires) are Juan´s army, and their mission is to help people get rid of the infected ones around… at a reasonable price.
But this plague of bloodthirsty attackers is out of control. The population is helpless. There comes a moment in which the only way out people found is throwing into the sea and try to run away from an island that became a real carnage, and Juan has no choice but to do what he avoided all his life: take some responsibility assuming a hero role, to guide his beloved ones with the hope of getting them safe out of the madness in which Havana, full of flesh eating zombies has turned.


As interesting as the zombies are, the film relies heavily on Cuba's cache of pre-revolutionary (theirs, not ours) cars. The scene containing the Bugeye in the parking garage is shot in dim light and the Sprite's details are hard to distinguish. As near as I can tell, the Sprite, through the magic of welding is turned into the Oldsmobile escape vehicle. Consider the import of that for a moment. The film was shot in Cuba .... which means there's a Bugeye in Havana yearning for freedom!

It's difficult to tell from the film, but the Bugeye may be this one (if not, there are at least two Bugeyes in Cuba).

austin-healey-gb-1960-sprite-mk1-hdc623-400.jpg


This beautiful car belogs to the painter and cultural promoter of Amigos de Fangio Association, Otto Alvarez Ferro. Unfortunately it is not original. Its engine and speed gearbox are of LADA (common russian car in Cuba).
 
But just as breathtakingly bad as most of the movies Rick has found. At least in this one the scumbags drive an E-Type instead of a Big Healey like in many of the movies in Rick's Big Healey thread.

Breathtakingly good in my opinion. Classic British TV from the 60/70's, fits right in there with The Saint, Danger Man, The Persuaders and of course the great American Classic Mission Impossible.
 
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