Wonder Woman (1974): The Television Movie

WONDER WOMAN: THE TELEVISION MOVIE

Film and television adaptations of Wonder Woman have been hit-and-miss. The 2017 film was successful critically and commercially. The 2020 sequel, however, was neither. On television, the 1975-1979 Lynda Carter series and its theme are still fondly remembered. The 2011 attempted reboot on the other hand was such a disaster that not only was it not picked up for series, but the pilot was also never aired. In the various attempted and realized adaptations, people forget that the year before Carter donned her satin tights, another Wonder Woman television series was planned. Wonder Woman is such a bizarre project that one should watch it only to marvel at how anyone in front or behind the camera thought that any of it was good. 

A television movie meant as a test pilot, Wonder Woman stars Cathy Lee Crosby as Diana Prince. She is an Amazonian who has made the great sacrifice to leave Paradise Island to go to the world of men, where there is evil at work. A notorious master criminal named Abner Smith has uncovered the identity of thirty-nine covert agents and will sell them to the highest bidder, putting all of them at risk. He will give the names back to the U.S. for $15 million, with them having three days to meet his ransom. While head spook Steve Trevor (Kaz Garas) has various men working on the case, he needs his secretary Diana Prince to go to France for a "dental appointment".

Once there, everyone knows that she is super-spy Wonder Woman. That includes Abner Smith's chief henchman George (Andrew Prine), who has both murderous and erotic designs on our heroine. She thwarts these assassination attempts with surprising agility and intelligence. No number of hired assassins or snakes sent to her various hotel rooms will stop Diana from pursuing Abner Smith. 

The ransom is agreed to be paid, as time is running short. It is an attempted trap to get Abner Smith to finally reveal himself, which he gladly does so when he captures Wonder Woman. The notorious Abner Smith (Ricardo Montalban) is charming and elegant. He also does not want Diana killed. George, already bitter that he has been rebuffed, chafes at the directive. However, George has an ace up his sleeve: renegade Amazonian Anhjayla (Anitra Ford), who has joined forces with George. Has Wonder Woman met her match? Will Abner Smith get away? 

The curious thing about Wonder Woman is, that apart from her origins on Paradise Island, there is absolutely nothing special or powerful about Diana Prince. Screenwriter John D.F. Black and director Vincent McEveety failed on every level to make Wonder Woman interesting. They decided that Diana had no great powers. Instead, she was in many ways almost ordinary. Moreover, a lot of Wonder Woman makes no sense.

Everyone working for Abner Smith knows who WW is, yet no one at the agency did. The various efforts to assassinate Diana range from bizarre to downright laughable. A group of men in one scene enter a moving elevator from above, and she is able to defeat them so easily that one thinks the scene is pretty pointless. Another time, a snake is sent to her hotel room. I will not diminish the threat of a potentially venomous snake. I will, however, question why Wonder Woman would open a box sent to her room so casually. I also have doubts on whether or not you can remove this threat by having Room Service send over a dish of milk.

I will also question why Abner Smith did not simply kill her when she goes into an obvious trap at a rented mansion. Is it even worth bothering at this point to wonder why "Abner Smith" seems such a ludicrous name for a master criminal? I wonder if George ever called him "Lil' Abner" behind his back.

Perhaps I can begrudgingly say that there is one semi-good moment of wit. When George and Diana are having dinner, George openly says, "Let me make love to you". Diana asks why. After pointing out his own virtues, Diana replies, "You misunderstood me. I didn't mean why should you want to. I meant why should I?". 

However, in all other respects Wonder Woman is oddball. Apparently, Abner Smith's plan was to kill Wonder Woman by trapping her in a sealed room and sending multicolored lava to smother her. This is after she has to follow a burro to find Abner Smith's hideout. A burro that Abner Smith sent Steve Trevor. A burro who is released with the ransom money by using the words, "Corras rapido, por favor", which translates from Spanish as, "Run fast, please". 

We never get an explanation as to who Anhjayla is, or how she managed to hook up with George (interpret that any way that you wish). She and Diana have a battle of javelins that essentially ends in a draw. "You know as well as I do that we will face each other again", Anhjayla tells her frenemy. I figure that was a tease for the hoped-for television series. We will never see this promised confrontation.

All the better, as Wonder Woman has some woeful acting. For most of Wonder Woman, Ricardo Montalban is deliberately kept off screen, with only his hands and voice to appear on camera. He's hamming it up for all its worth, delighting in the chance to be cartoonish. He was, I think, fully aware that Wonder Woman was not a pilot for a series but camp, silly and illogical. Pity that no one else got the memo. 

Former tennis pro Cathy Lee Crosby, I think, did the best that she could with the material. However, there was very little to show that she could have carried a full series. She as at times blank and wooden as Diana Prince. Fortunately for her, she recovered from this error when she later cohosted the television docuseries That's Incredible! but here she could not communicate much. Again, to be fair, Black's script and McEveety's directing were not helpful. 

Everyone else save Montalban gave a bad performance. Garas' Steve had little to do. Jordan Rhodes, who played the smitten agent Bob, was in one scene and added nothing to even a tease for a future romance or at least comic flirtation. Andrew Prine as George was done in not just by his overall bad performance. George is also a rather repulsive man. I get that as a male chauvinist pig he was meant as the opposite of Diana's enlightened woman. However, he was lousy no matter whom he interacted with. Anitra Ford's Anhjayla, like Crosby, I think tried to make this seem interesting. 

I think Wonder Woman, if seen at all, will be as a curiosity, a reflection of its time with "women's lib" becoming more dominant. This is not a good version of the superheroine, and it is good that they opted against a series which would have flopped. You've come a long way, baby, but when it comes to Wonder Woman, you had a little more way to go.

2/10