Knight Rider 2000
It’s been about a decade and change since Michael Knight and his super-car KITT (which stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand) battled crime on the mean streets of Southern California. Knight, apparently, has some insanely convoluted backstory involving a past-life as a police officer and ex-Green Beret named Michael Long, who had a plate put into his head after a stint in Vietnam. That came in handy when he was shot in the head and was reborn as Michael Knight, heir to the throne of Wilton Knight, a dying billionaire philanthropist who just happened to own a crime fighting organization called the Foundation of Law and Government or FLAG for short. The goal? To give aid to the powerless. And apparently the most efficient way to do this was to give Michael an indestructible car equipped with artificial intelligence.
Mike, I bet you remember exactly zilch of that backstory. Because really, all anyone remembers are cool car stunts and the voice of KITT breaking Hasselhoff’s balls at every turn. And that voice, William Daniels, an Emmy-award winning actor who described his lifetime lending voice to a car as “My duties on Knight Rider are very simple. I do it in about an hour and a half. I’ve never met the cast. I haven’t even met the producer.” Hilarious.
So what of Knight Rider 2000? This soft reboot/pilot does almost everything wrong. It mixes politics into the proceedings by making the story about a weak-sauce version of the year 2000 where cops are forced to enforce the law without guns and capital punishment is outlawed. So criminals are cryogenically frozen to presumably be dealt with… later? All of this sets a backdrop for crooked police looking to get their guns back, so “Demolition Man” style, they unfreeze a criminal who then assassinates the mayor but then somehow that criminal is promoted to ringleader to get rid of anyone who might get away from their plan to get their guns back. Meanwhile, a gone-fishing Michael Knight is called upon by his old mentor Devon Miles to get the band back together, but the new head of the Knight Foundation – an asshole named Maddock – had junked KITT. They manage to scrounge up enough parts to place KITT’s AI into Michael’s hobby car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. But… they’re missing a key chip from KITT and, by coincidence, it has been implanted in the head of a female police office named Shawn McCormick who was nearly killed by the bad cops looking for their guns back and led by a de-thawed criminal named Thomas Watts. And somehow the writers expected us to embrace this lady cop and the new asshole in charge of the Knight Foundation as the new lead characters for a Knight Rider reboot. Nope.
Essentially, you get the following:
1.) No cool-as-shit car doing crazy car stunts
2.) An even-more-pointless Michael Knight than on the original show
3.) More focus on bland-as-Hell characters
4.) A completely arbitrary death of the much-loved Devon Miles, Michael’s father figure from the show
5.) A M.A.S.K. like ending that has everybody laughing even though nothing is funny and everything for the past hour-and-a-half was total bullshit.
And wow, does this movie SUUUUUUCK.
- The acting in general is on par with most high school productions.
- Jan Hammer sounds like he fell asleep on his keyboard. This is the guy who did Miami Vice! It’s a bunch of single notes held dreamily for hours.
- Sonic guns! Prisoners in cryogenic sleep chambers! Unisex locker rooms! OH THE FUTURE.
- I mean, the acting. HOLY SHIT. The police commissioner rolling her eyes at the new “Knight Foundation” plans. Redonk.
- Neat. Devon’s still around. Wonder what he’s been doing.
- Interesting that the new head of the Knight Foundation, Maddock, has the same idea as the villains – ARM THE COPS.
- This is dealing with some particularly thorny subject matter some twenty years AFTER the move is set and thirty years after it was made. Police being de-armed? Hmm.
- I have no idea what Devon saw in Michael. I just have zero clue.
- So much middle-distance staring from Hasselhoff.
- The fact that this was a pilot, and that the handoff from Michael Knight to Susan Norma’s Shawn McCormick was intended to kick off a whole new series is bonkers. NO ONE wanted to see Knight Rider again, but if they did, they didn’t want some alarmingly bland new lead character.
- THIS MUSIC IS TRYING DESPERATELY TO PUT ME ASLEEP while also sounding like caffeine.
- Almost surprised when Pileggi shoots Norman, but then I remembered I DON’T CARE.
- The implant a chip into McCormick’s brain because OF COURSE THEY DO.
- Police commish is all about the bottom line rather than saving a Cop’s life. Dang it!
- How did Pileggi’s Thomas Watts get to be in charge of anything? Did I miss something? Like who the fuck invited Watts to this goddamn crooked cop party? Nevermind, who made him king shit?
- President Quayle. Oh Christ.
- The worst fucking cameo of all time. My God. They done Scotty so wrong.
- I don’t think I have ever seen anything that SCREAMS TV Movie louder than this.
- Everything from the acting to the story to the music to the shooting screams low budget fodder for commercial breaks. My God.
- I love how McCormick TALKS like KITT after she has the chip put into her head. I also like the idea that, in some other timeline, this was a good movie that made hay with the idea of KITT and McCormick always competing with one another because she has his chip. They hint at it in one scene when she’s trying to start the classic car KITT has been put into, but clearly things got too big-brain for the producers to keep up the momentum.
- Basically, this is Knight Rider without car stunts, action and a sad, low-energy Hasselhoff. What in the actual fuck were these people thinking?
- Kind of love that this was shot in San Antonio. Loved seeing the Tower of Americas and the River Walk. So cool. But I’d rather watch Cloak and Dagger with Dabney Coleman and Henry Thomas which was also shot there.
- All I can say about Hasselhoff is that he is tall.
- JOHN WILSON!
Actors: What happened?
- In fact, most of the actors here seem like they are giving a game effort. Reprising his long-standing role as Devon Miles from the television show, Edward Mulhare seems to bring a world of charming gravitas to material that in no way deserves it. The way he is done in here is so dismissive, it actually seems disrespectful to fans of the original show.
- Mitch Pileggi had a long, very successful run as Skinner on The X-Files, but was also Horace Pinker in the hilariously bad Wes Craven movie “Shocker” and played a host of bad guys in movies as varied as “Three O’Clock High” and “Vampire in Brooklyn,” which was also directed by Craven.
- Hasselhoff we don’t need to talk about. Like, really. He’s half-icon, half-punchline – a second study to the meta-career of self-mockery that William Shatner is best known for.
- Carmen Argenziano, who played the total a-hole Maddock that took over the Knight Foundation, had a super long and successful career on TV and film, with bit parts in big movies like “The Godfather II” and “Broken Arrow,” and larger roles on shows like “Stargate” and “Melrose Place” before his death in 2019.
- Similarly, Euguene Clark – who plays the double-crossing cop-with-a-conscience that was Shawn McComick’s partner – is a veteran actor with over a hundred credits largely on the small screen, including William Shatner’s mid-90’s “Tek War” series.
- But Susan Norman, she who was supposed to get behind the wheel of the rebooted Knight Rider? Nope… after this movie, she did a stint on the TV version of Parenthood in the early 90’s, then played in a supporting role in the much-lauded Todd Hayne’s picture “Safe.” Then… NOTHING. A sparse website touts some voice-acting reels, but that’s all she wrote and I have to believe that Knight Rider 2000 was the reason, which is kind of sad because you can see how hard Norman is trying to make something – anything – happen with this.
- But man.. fuck David Hasselhoff. I cannot believe this dude got paid to do the lac of work he does here. This guy… if he gave a shit, there is zero evidence of him doing so. It’s not entirely his fault though – THERE IS NOTHING FOR THIS CHARACTER TO DO HERE. Why is Michael Knight even a thing? He has zero in the way of special skills. THE CAR DRIVES ITSELF.
This past week I turned on the latest “Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers” reboot on a Disney+ and at the beginning, Chip shows up in his elementary school cafeteria in 1882 with a Knight Rider metal lunchbox.
That’s all the makers of this purposeless reboot cared about. Not the fans, certainly not the characters, not the story, not even the politics. This was a shot at selling lunchboxes again, but rather than giving anyone anything marginally enjoyable, you got this boring, turgidly-paced drek.
In the 80’s, Knight Rider was a phenomenon, but by the time 1991 rolled around, it had been off the air for five years and Hasselhoff had arrived at the distant shores of Baywatch, trading in the fast action of KITT for slow motion shots of Pamela Anderson and Erika Eleniak. He seems stuck in slow motion here himself, completely fine with picking up an easy paycheck for what feels like two days of work sulking and staring off into the middle distance at a play for gravitas. This movie is trash, the worst kind of play for a nostalgic cash-in, made on the cheap and banking on a fandom eager for more spins behind the wheel that instead left the car in park.
Apparently they tried to reboot the whole thing again and again with other TV movies and even a new series. One was even set in some kind of Mad Max like setting! That’s fine, because at least there was a budget and some new ideas at play that might spark fandom into overdrive, rather than doing what happened here and leaving everyone watching stuck in a miserable ditch.
Bottom Five Cars:
5.) Die Another Day – 2002
dir. Lee Tamohori – “Invisible” Aston Martin V12 Vanquish
Roger Moore, who played Bond in earlier films, said: “I thought it just went too far – and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!”
I don’t think you can sum up this final outing for Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond any better. While “The World is Not Enough” is arguably the worst of Brosnan’s movies as 007, it was Die Another Day that stretched any and all credibility with – yup – an invisible car. This thing basically looked like a Predator in car form with some hilariously glitchy looking technology that I guess is supposed to portray the digital nature of its cloaking. Man, Star Trek did cloaking way cooler with its wavy color ripples and simple fades. This thing looks like a scratched DVD.
Even more ridiculous was the fact that the car’s advantage was rendered useless rather quickly in the most potent action scene of the film which pitted Bond against a villain in a Jaguar XKR equipped with thermal sensors that could “see” the Aston Martin. After shooting the Hell out of it with insane-looking gatling guns that popped out of the hood of the Jaguar, the no-longer-invisible Aston Martin became just your typical sportscar carrying more weaponry than an F15. All of it is absurd, which is nothing new for this series, but this one stretched any and all credibility with that idiotic car tech as well as with Madonna in a small role as a Fencing Instructor, a stint that somehow won her a Razzie for her effort. Faring better, in my opinion, is her song for the film, but most lists rank it among the worst in the franchise, so what the Hell do I know?
4.) National Lampoon’s Vacation – 1983
dir. Harold Ramis – The Wagon Queen Family Truckster (a modified Ford LTD Country Squire)
The wood paneling. The “metallic pea” color he did not select but had to accept when his old car was crushed at trade-in. The eight headlights. None of this prepares Clark W. Griswold for the horrors of driving cross-country to Wally World with his family in the classic comedy penned by John Hughes and directed by Harold Raimis. Probably the worst thing about this car is when dear old Aunt Edna dies while riding in the backseat between the Griswold children Rusty and Audrey, but a close runner-up would be when Clark forgets to untie Edna’s dog, Dinky, from the bumper and drives across several states before a cop pulls him over. Of course, neither of those are so much the car’s fault so much as things that happen around it. But when good ol’ Eugene Levy, playing the sleaziest of car salesmen proclaims “If you think you hate it now, wait until you drive it!” you do start to wonder if maybe all of this bad luck might have been somehow brought on by the Family Truckster.
3.) Speed – 1994
dir. Jan DeBont – The Bus that cannot go under 50 miles an hour
Technically not a car, yeah, but this one had to make my list because for me, Speed to busses is like Jaws is to beaches for most people: I don’t want to step onto one for fear that, somehow, a wise-cracking psychopath with a penchant for pop-quizzes might have rigged it with a bomb that’ll detonate unless the bus stays above 50 miles per hour. Sure, the movie is super-fun and Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are cast perfectly as protagonists with plenty of chemistry, but oh, the idea of being on a speeding bus that cannot slow down? Never mind demolishing everything on the highway that might get in your way, just the motion sickness and heat of it all. Ugh. Everyone on this bus looks like they’ve been making Aeropostale rompers in Sri Lanka. And it’s a city bus, so there’s no toilet? You’re going to be on this thing for hours, scared out of your gourd with breakfast playing the bongos in your lower intestines and no sign of relief in site? Even the hostages in AirForce One had bathrooms. It’s just one of the most frightening AND uncomfortable situations in cinema history.
2.) The Car – 1977
dir. Elliot Silverstein – 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III
Any vehicle that’s the title character in a movie that begins with a quote from the Church of Satan found Anton LaVey has got to make it high on this list. “Oh great brothers of the night who rideth upon the hot winds of hell, who dwelleth in the Devil’s lair; move and appear” writes LaVey, who was also credited as a Technical Advisor on this killer-car flick from 1977 starring a pre-Amityville James Brolin and a pre-Robocop Ronny Cox. The Car probably seems like an unlikely choice as there are better “Killer Vehicle” movies such as 1971’s “Duel” and 1983’s “Christine.” But if you’re talking about a bottom five cars list, how can you not include one that slams a right turn so hard that it jack-knifes itself into several pursuing cop cars? Or one that crashes through a high school marching band practice? Or one where, as revenge for being taunted, crashes full-speed through the front of a house and takes out the hero’s lady-friend! The Car is an awkwardly paced, idiotically plotted and poorly acted mess of a movie with some lousy special effects, but it’s got a few things going for it – Brolin’s magnificent beard, Cox’s magnificent hair and some pretty fun car stunts. Still, when you see the vehicle go up in a ball of demonic flame, it only makes sense that it somehow winds up cruising the mean streets of late 70’s Los Angeles looking for fresh victims. Fun facts: Guillermo del Toro is such a genuine fan of the movie that he owns a replica of the car and 42 years later, in 2019, a sequel was released called “The Car: Road to Revenge” that actually has Ronny Cox reprising his role from the original.
1.) Cujo – 1983
dir. Lewis Teague – Ford Pinto
Immediately when it was decided we were doing Bottom Five Cars, I knew my number one: the yellow Ford Pinto in which a mother and her young son spend most of a movie trapped in by a rabid dog named Cujo. Fucking terrifying. I don’t know if there’s ever been a scenario more horrible and upsetting that the one cooked-up by Stephen King for this story. But having a snarling, bloody, frothing St. Bernard maniacally looking to sink its teeth into two cowering souls in a rusty, broken-down, sweltering, airless and tiny shitbox that seems barely built well-enough to sustain a slight breeze? Pure nightmare fuel. I think this is one of the books King claims he doesn’t remember writing due to his struggles with alcoholism in the early 80’s, but damn… is it ever effective. Claustrophobic and extremely suspenseful, with fantastic performances by Dee Wallace Stone and Danny Pintauro as the mom and son, Lewis Teague’s adaptation is unrelenting for much of its run-time, but pulls back at the very end from King’s full-on merciless original ending in which the son dies.
Ugh. Worst. Car. In. Anything. Ever.
Jan de Bont was the DP on this movie, so he technically has two movies on this list. Were I to have included something from Twister or Speed 2, we could have had a de Bont hat-trick!
Staff Pick – Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – Dir. Sam Raimi
A wonderful return-to-form from the director of the Evil Dead series, this movies seems to act not only as a sequel to the deeply-inferior Dr. Strange, but also as sequels to the surprisingly moving Marvel TV show “Wandavision” (which I cannot recommend enough) and Raimi’s “Army of Darkness” – or, perhaps even more so, “Evil Dead 2.”
Bonkers “Raimi-cam” shots – the snap-zooms, the comically wacky POV shots, laughing furniture and even “stretch-o-vision.”
Some of the same visual tricks as were employed in The Daniels’ “Everywhere, Everything, All at Once.”
Even Danny Elfman – the films score guru and ex-New Waver who is experiencing a weird resurgence after a much-lauded appearance at Coachella this year – seemed to get some of his movie-scoring mojo back, employing some nifty instrumentation including a wailing 80’s hair metal guitar!
Mike’s next movie – Larger Than Life – 1996
What do you get when you put Bill Murray, Matthew McConaughey, and Janeane Garofalo as leads with an excellent cast of supporting actors including Keith David, Pat Hingle and Jeremy Piven? Is it the latest Wes Anderson film? Am I finally exploiting your frustration with that director’s wee preciousness and overly meticulous set design on this show? No! In fact, this movie has even more fascinating pedigree than any of Anderson’s flicks, as its story was by, Roy Blunt Jr., the screenwriter of Jonathan Demme’s much-loved Married to the Mob and directed by Howard Franklin, one of the screenwriters of the critically-praised Umberto Eco adaptation, “In the Name of the Rose” starring Sean Connery. And with the director of photography from Soderbergh’s Out of Site collaborator Elliot Davis? Have I forgotten what podcast this is??? No. Because this movie is a fucking horrid relic from the mid-90’s career that Murray no doubt wants to forget.
Mike, for our next episode you’ll be watching 1996’s Larger Than Life, which I’ll just describe as… “Midnight Run,” but with Dumbo replacing Charles Grodin.
And the only way to honor that synopsis is by partnering your review with our bottom five sidekicks.