Talk:Laserblast

Laserblast has been listed as one of the Media and drama good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 31, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 16, 2010.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the science fiction film Laserblast consistently ranks among the Internet Movie Database's bottom 100 films list, and was featured in the last episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 broadcast on Comedy Central?

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Unsourced trivia section

This page previously had an unsourced trivia list section, which is discouraged by WP:TRIVIA. While expanding this article, I found sources for most of them and worked them into the actual prose of the article itself. However, below were a few I was unable to find sources for, so I removed them. I've listed them below so that, in case anyone digs up a source for them, they can be readded:

The "East Coast, Southern California" town depicted in the final scene is actually a left over 1920's Chicago set. Note the "S.M.C. Cartage Co." building in the background after Billy gets vapour actioned to death. The infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage, Chicago.
An early promotional article on the film misspelled the title "Laser Blast", whereas the film's official title is spelled as one word.
Steve Neill, who was makeup artist on the film, also designed and created the alien ray gun and the pendant.
The design for the Alien creatures was based on drawings of prehistoric turtles that Dave Allen had seen as a boy in the Field Museum.
The Alien language was created by a playing a recording of a presidential speech backwards and twice the normal speed.

Thanks! — Hun ter Ka hn 05:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Laserblast/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: GamerPro64 (talk) 04:34, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When looking through the article, It looks mostly good. However, I saw a dab link in it. Also, I'm confused why there's a "Cast" section and a "Casting" section in the article. GamerPro64 (talk) 02:01, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking on the review! I've fixed the dab link. With regard to the two sections, the "Cast" is meant to simply list the Cast, whereas "Casting" is supposed to provide more specifics about the actors and their relationship to the film. However, if you feel the two are redundant, I could very easily drop the "Cast" section altogether. It's already a bit redundant because the actors names are listed in parentheses in the "Plot" section. Shall I? — Hun ter Ka hn 02:07, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- I think it should. It also bothers me with the "Cast" section having no references in it, anyway. GamerPro64 (talk) 16:25, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - It's done. — Hun ter Ka hn 16:48, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. After looking through the article, and watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode to make sure everything's legit, I believe that this article passed Good Article requirements. GamerPro64 (talk) 02:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

MST3K

How does a detailed overview of the format of MST3K together with specific jokes from an MST3K episode illuminate the reader as to the topic of the article exactly? I mean I'm still missing how knowing there was a show in the 90's about a guy and two robots in a satellite helps me understand a 70's movie. Ekwos (talk) 00:03, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A majority of people who have seen Laserblast are only familiar with it because of its appearance on MST3K. Appearing on that show is a major part of the story of Laserblast, so I think it's perfectly appropriate to have a section like this about it, as long as its properly sourced. Additionally, whereas other television episodes might have gotten their own article under WP:EPISODE, that's not really possible with MST3K episodes since each episode revolves around a film. Therefore, this article sort of serves a dual purpose of discussing not only the film, but also the its role in the MST3K episode. Further, this article went through a GAN review, and the MST3K section wasn't flagged there. But, all that being said, let me know if you still think the section is excessive and I can try to scale it back a bit. — Hun ter Ka hn 02:33, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think if you actually have to go so far as to explain the format of an entirely different show, then it is off-topic. If people know about it because of MST3K, then they don't need the explanation. If people are actually coming to the article having seen or heard about the film alone (like me, even though I know what MST3K is), then the information is irrelevant and off-topic. The best solution would be just to create an article for the MST3K episode (there are plenty of episode articles for other shows), and link to there. What really has happened is that an article for an MST3K episode has been inserted into an article for a movie. Ekwos (talk) 06:13, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't see how anybody could suggest it would be a good idea to create a separate article about an MST3K episode rather than including a relatively short subsection in the film article; that would require a lot of redundant recapping of the plot and information about the film. (I also don't think the fact that I explain what MST3K is necessarily means we're off-topic.) However, in the spirit of WP:Compromise, I've significantly scaled the section back. What do you think of the changes? — Hun ter Ka hn 07:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - You are basically saying it is bad to create a mst3k episode article and summarize the movie there, but good to have a movie article with an mst3k episode summarized within it. I don't see any structural difference between the two or why one makes more sense than the other structurally (they are both summarizing something within an article for a different thing). Logically one makes more sense than the other - you can understand the movie without having to know the mst3k episode exists, but you can't understand the episode of mst3k without knowing something about the movie. It still looks to me like a borderline case of coatracking where mst3k fans are using the movie article as a coatrack to write an mst3k article. Ekwos (talk) 20:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm simply saying that, given that the vast majority of people would have never seen this movie unless it was on MST3k, it makes sense to have a little subsection about it. In fact, given that such a select few movies appear on the show, it would be strange and incomplete for an article about the film not to mention it. I agree, however, that the length was a bit excessive before, which is why I've scaled back the section to include MST3K info only relevant directly to the film itself, rather than about the show in general or the non-movie episode segments. — Hun ter Ka hn 03:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Was Laserblast II actually made?

I came across a forum post with ad for Laserblast II that was published in Variety [1]. I don't know the date but the IMDb trivia page for Laserblast says "early nineties" [2]. It's not uncommon for films to be advertised before they are made, as Friday the 13th was advertised in Variety before a script was even finished (see Friday the 13th (1980 film)#Development). The Friday the 13th ad lists the producer/director and says "currently in production". The Laserblast II ad lists almost the entire film crew (writer, director of photography, special effects personnel, etc.), although does not list a director or cast. The listed writer, Robert Amante, redirects to Charles Band when typed in at the IMDb.

So this brings up a lot of questions:

~~Why does the Laserblast II writer's name redirect to Charles Band at the IMDb? Was this a pseudonym of Band's?~~
Why does the poster list an entire crew but no director? Or cast?
Was this ad released after Band's "remake" of Laserblast—Deadly Weapons (1988)? (assuming this ad was from the early 90s)
Is it possible that the film was made, then just never released after no one would fund it?
Did the film's production happen but halt before it was finished?
Or was the film really never made after all?

The Laserblast article says that it was scrapped, but since it's not cited directly, it's most likely just an assumption. I want to try and find out the issue of Variety in which this ad came from. Maybe that will lead me to some answers. Unfortunately, I cannot link to the forum page because the site is on MetaWiki's spam blacklist. I would really like to find an answer to these questions and solve this mystery. –Dream out loud (talk) 06:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the first question—yes, Robert Amante is a pseudonym of Band's. I guess I could have just read his IMDb page to find this out. He also produced the 1985 film Savage Island under this band. –Dream out loud (talk) 23:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removed E.T. info

I've recently removed information from this article about the film's connection to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, specifically that a company J.A.R. Sales had filed a lawsuit against MCA-Universal claiming the E.T. alien image was intellectual property infringement against J.A.R. Sales' rights they owned in Laserblast. This info was added in good faith and, in fact, the press release source that was used did state this was the case. However, I just had the chance to read the case on Lexis Nexis, and that press release source was incorrect. In fact, Laserblast isn't mentioned in that case at all. In the actual case, it was MCA-Universal that brought suit against J.A.R. Sales (not the other way around) because J.A.R. Sales was manufacturing E.T. merchandise even though MCA-Universal owned the rights. (The court found in MCA-Universal's favor.) The lawsuit was misrepresented in the press release, so I've removed it from here. — Hun ter Ka hn 14:37, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, for the record, part of what I removed came from an interview with Charles Band, in which he says the Laserblast image inspired the look of the alien in E.T. Since no other sources confirm this information, I think this can only be taken as Charles Band's opinion, and I'm not sure it belongs in this article. However, if somebody feels it should be readded, I suggest it be worded more like, "In an interview, Charles Band said he believes the aliens in Laserblast influenced the protagonist in E.T...." or something that makes clear within the article itself that this is Band's opinion. — Hun ter Ka hn 14:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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