ALF Tales
ALF Tales is a 30-minute Saturday morning animated series that aired on NBC from September 10, 1988, to December 9, 1989.[1] The show is a spin-off of ALF: The Animated Series which featured characters from that series playing various characters from fairy tales.[2] The fairy tale parody was usually altered for comedic effect in a manner akin to Jay Ward's "Fractured Fairy Tales".[3]
| ALF Tales | |
|---|---|
| Created by | |
| Starring |
|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 21 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes per episode |
| Production companies | |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Original release | September 10, 1988 – December 9, 1989 |
The episodes were performed in the style of a resident theater company or ensemble cast where Gordon and Rhonda would take the leading male and female roles, and the other characters were cast according to their characteristics.
Many stories spoof a film genre, such as the "Cinderella" episode which is presented like an Elvis Presley film. Some episodes featured a "fourth wall" effect where Gordon is backstage preparing for the episode, and Rob Cowan would appear drawn as a TV executive (who introduced himself as "Roger Cowan, network executive") who tries to brief Gordon on how to improve this episode. For instance Cowan once told Gordon who was readying for a medieval themed episode that "less than 2% of our audience lives in the Dark Ages".
Cast
- Paul Fusco – ALF (Gordon Shumway)/Rick Fusterman
- Tabitha St. Germain (as Paulina Gillis[4]) – Augie/Rhonda
- Peggy Mahon – Flo
- Thick Wilson – Larson Petty/Bob
- Dan Hennessey – Sloop
- Rob Cowan – Skip
- Ellen-Ray Hennessy – Stella the Waitress
- Noam Zylberman – Curtis (1988)
- Michael Fantini – Curtis (1989)
Episodes
Season 1 (1988–89)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | "Robin Hood" | September 10, 1988 | |
| Gordon plays Robin Hood, the noble outlaw of Sherwood forest with his jazz band "Ye Merry Men" who oppose the Sheriff of Nottingham who is levying unfair taxes, collecting gold and household appliances from the struggling peasants. Robin Hood and his band infiltrate Nottingham Castle to save Maid Marian and use their jazz music to neutralize the guards who turn out to be hep cats. King Richard returns and sentences Prince John and the Sheriff to ten years of watching the Home Shopping Network. | ||||
| 2 | 2 | "Sleeping Beauty" | September 17, 1988 | |
| In this episode, Gordon plays Sleeping Beauty a prince who falls asleep on his sixteenth birthday following a paper cut after an evil sorceress cast a spell on him at birth. He can only be awakened from the spell by the kiss of true love, but before a princess can kiss him, he wakes up to the alarm of clock radio. Incensed at missing out on a kiss, she repeatedly puts him back to sleep and then kisses him awake. Features references to The Lord of the Rings. | ||||
| 3 | 3 | "Cinderella" | September 24, 1988 | |
| Set in 1962, "Gordo Shumway" plays an Elvis-like rock star who is looking for love. When Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters get tickets to the concert where he will choose his bride, Cinderella is dejected, but her fairy godmother appears and grants her a wish "which he can't refuse." At the concert, Gordo sings his hit song and Cinderella impresses him when she sings an impromptu duet with him, ending with a high note that shatters all the glass in the auditorium. He then searches house to house for the woman who can shatter a glass slipper, and finally finds Cinderella. Caricature of Marlon Brando as the godmother. | ||||
| 4 | 4 | "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" | October 1, 1988 | |
| Gordon portrays the character of Ichabod Crane who applies for a job as a photographer at the Daily Hemisphere in the big city of Sleepy Hollow. He meets the gorgeous Katrina, secretary and daughter of the publisher Baultus Van Tassel. Ichabod is assigned to photograph the Headless Horseman, but when he meets Katrina for a date, he is chased by the horseman who warns him to leave. As the full moon rises, Ichabod commandeers a horse, and chases a number of headless horseman who are revealed to be people posing as the ghost for various personal reasons. Finally, Ichabod takes off with Katrina on his horse, but then is chased by a very realistic headless horseman. | ||||
| 5 | 5 | "Jack and the Beanstalk" | October 8, 1988 | |
| Jack Bates (son of Norman) is played by Gordon who has to sell the family's cow, because his mother's Motel is going badly. Jack encounters a strange man who trades him three magic beans for his cow which his mother then throws out the window. Overnight, the beans grow into a giant beanstalk stretching to the clouds. Jack climbs up and sees a giant named J. Mason who has a hen that lays golden eggs. Jack steals the hen and uses the gold to remodel the hotel. A gorgeous woman named Pippi Lee Sing books into the motel, but then two men grab Jack and the hen and take him back up to the giant who decides to get rid of Jack. Jimmy, the lookout at the rear window saves him, then reveals that he is Pippi in disguise who is a secret agent trying to recover the stolen hen. Pippi and Jack escape with the hen. He cuts down the beanstalk, and the giant falls to his death. Jack and Pippi get married and leave by train, with the hen. Parody of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and includes many references to Alfred Hitchcock movies, particularly Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window. Includes a caricature of James Mason as the giant. | ||||
| 6 | 6 | "The Aladdin Brothers and Their Lamp" | October 15, 1988 | |
| In this "Road to ..."-style adaptation of Book of One Thousand and One Nights, Gordon and Skip play Ziggy and Roy Aladdin, a down-on-their-luck song-and-dance act. Their lives change when they find a magic lamp containing a genie who takes them to the Arab city of to Sheboygan, where they are imprisoned after gazing on the princess. They manage to retrieve the lamp and earn the gratitude of the king for revealing a plot by the royal magician to usurp the throne. It results in a double wedding with the brothers and the princess plus Clarissa, Skip's girlfriend who was promised a part in the show. Includes a caricature of Johnny Carson as the genie. | ||||
| 7 | 7 | "Rapunzel" | October 29, 1988 | |
| The Wicked Witch owns all the country's media, providing "rap-free radio playing 101hrs of 101 Strings" and sponsored programming on Witch TV, the only channel. Rhonda plays Rapunzel whose family compete on the Witch's rigged TV Quiz Show and lose, so the Witch imprisons Rapunzel and cuts off her hair to promote her Witches Brew Shampoo. Prince Gordon goes to her rescue with his rap buddies, but Rapunzel has been banished to the forest. He finds her and when they return, they convince his father the king to limit media ownership and set up a Federal Commission into broadcasting so that no-one has a monopoly. Caricature of Ronald Reagan as the king. | ||||
| 8 | 8 | "Rumplestilskin" | November 12, 1988 | |
| Presented like a Dashiell Hammett novel, Gordon plays Sam Shovel Private Eye. A poor girl makes a deal with a dwarf magician to spin straw into gold to impress the king. However, unless she discovers the dwarf's name in 24 hours he will claim her first born child. She hires Sam Shovel to find his name, Rumplestilskin, and he does so in the nick of time. Caricature of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Shovel. NOTE: Last episode with a mailbag segment. | ||||
| 9 | 9 | "The Princess and the Pea" | November 19, 1988 | |
| Prince Gordy would rather be a stand-up comic on the David Letterock Show than a prince but the Queen chooses a short, overweight, precocious princess for him to marry. Meanwhile, Gordy misses his chance to perform before Letterock, but he impresses Avery Fisher-Hall, the waitress in the comedy café who is really a princess. Gordy tells the Queen that he wants to marry Avery so she demands that Avery must pass the mattress test to prove she is a princess before she can marry the prince - and she does. Caricature of David Letterman. | ||||
| 10 | 10 | "John Henry" | December 3, 1988 | |
| Gordon play John Henry, a master chef with his TV show, Eatie Gourmet who focusses on hand preparation of his meals. His competitor, the evil Art Cuisine, invents the K-Art mechanical food processor as part of his plot to take over the world. John Henry loses out in a competition to serve food at the White House but when the President demands Henry's hand cut tomato roses, Petty activates his food processors to transform into killer robots. Henry manages to stop them and is returned to his position as White House chef. Parody of the H. G. Wells book, The War of the Worlds and features a Caricature of Bob Dylan as a folk singer. | ||||
| 11 | 11 | "The Three Little Pigs" | December 10, 1988 | |
| Rick, Skip, and Alf play the respective trio (Ernie, Chip, and Robbie) in this take on the classic story. The beginning and ending scenes parody The Twilight Zone. Also, the straw is switched to soup cans. | ||||
| 12 | 12 | "Alice in Wonderland" | December 17, 1988 | |
| Alf doesn't want to do this story, but everyone else does. As he begins to ready, he falls asleep and a humanoid rabbit named Blanche du Lapine steals his birthday present for Rhonda. Alf follows her down an elevator shaft and through a cat door to a Wonderland featuring obnoxious flowers, a Pee-wee Herman version of Humpty Dumpty, a Wooster-Chester cat, a saxophone-playing caterpillar (possibly played by Skip), the Tweedle Sisters (Dee is changed to Blonde), Rick and Larson as The Mad Catter and The March Hare, and a very awful Queen. In the end, Blanche reveals herself to be Rhonda and the whole thing was an un-birthday surprise for Alf, and the whole thing was a dream. | ||||
| 13 | 13 | "Peter Pan" | January 7, 1989 | |
| Peter Pan (Gordon) and Tinkerbell (Neep) take Wendy (Rhonda) and her siblings off to Never-Never land. Meanwhile, Captain Hook is a stand-up pirate comedian who see Peter Pan as a rival. Wendy fancies Peter, but becomes frustrated when she is treated like a maid by Peter and the Lost Boys, and tells them all to "grow up". To find Peter's secret location, Hook captures Tinkerbell who resents Wendy's arrival. Hook then kidnaps, Wendy and the others, but Tinkerbell escapes and warns Peter who comes to their rescue. Peter decides to "grow up" and after returning to England with Wendy and the others, he opens a burger joint with Hook. Features a caricature of Michael "Crocodile" Dundee as the crocodile. | ||||
Season 2 (1989)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 1 | "Hansel & Gretel" | September 16, 1989 | |
| Gordon plays a plump Bavarian boy with a large appetite, Hansel and Rhonda plays his sister Gretel. They get lost in the forest and end up at Camp Eat-a-Kid. The resident witch Fattens up Hansel while Gretel is thrown in a cell with Simon and Theodore – Alvin has disappeared. They get free but are recaptured so they put Hansel through a rigorous fitness program to lose weight. This time they escape and the witch is arrested. Parody of Alvin and the Chipmunks and caricatures of Mr. T as Mr. Tree and The Monkees as The New Donkees. | ||||
| 15 | 2 | "The Wizard of Oz" | September 23, 1989 | |
| Set in East Velcro back in the era of Black and White TV, Gordon is selling encyclopedias door-to-door when a tornado lifts up the family farmhouse and he lands in the colorful 60s along the Mellow Brick Road. He lands on a witch and her magical ruby high-top sneakers attaches themselves to his feet. He heads along the road to find the Wizard of Oz to remove them, meanwhile the Wicked Witch casts faulty spells in an effort to retrieve them. He encounters a trio, Tin, Straw and Fur who join him and the travel to the Cubic Zirconia City where they are caught by the Witch. Gordon challenges her to a game of basketball and when she gets covered in milk during the game she melts away and he returns home, to live with the Good Witch and star in his own sitcom. Parody of counterculture of the 1960s, caricature of Bill Cosby as the Wizard of Oz. | ||||
| 16 | 3 | "The Elves and the Shoemaker" | September 30, 1989 | |
| In the village of Birkenstock, Melmac's lower east side, two elves from "Elves-R-Us" are sent to help the struggling shoe store of Donald Tramp played by Larson Petty and his wife Imelda played by Sloop. The elves make a pair of shoes which Tramp sells for a high price, and each night they do the same until the store becomes very successful. He expands his business to become the richest man in the land, however the elves feel exploited and go on strike. Special agent of the Impartial Mediators Federation (IMF), Gordon Shumway, is assigned to resolve the situation and he approaches Tramp but has no success. Meanwhile the new automated production line malfunctions and faulty shoes threaten to overwhelm the factory. Shumway finds a solution where Tramp is arrested and Imelda takes over the production and she leaves Tramp for Shumway. Parody of Mission Impossible and caricature of Donald and Melania Trump. | ||||
| 17 | 4 | "The Emperor's New Clothes" | October 14, 1989 | |
| The emperor demands some new clothes for an upcoming the Label Day parade, and clothes designer, Beneton Espirit played by Gordon, joins Coco Klein's fashion house where he meets the beautiful model played by Rhonda. However his casual sportswear look is soundly rejected by the emperor. He tries again under the name of Guess Who but when he appears to have no pants, Guess says his pants are made of invisible Schmatex. The Emperor demands that his mew outfit be made of Schmatex and when he walks through the streets the ruse is revealed along with his nakedness. Parody of the fashion industry and haute couture. | ||||
| 18 | 5 | "Goldilocks & the Three Bears" | October 28, 1989 | |
| Mayor Bear and his family have to go away on business, so they contract Rhonda's house-sitting service to look after their Malizoo beach house while they're away, including their special possessions, their canine Studs and very special vibrating beds. However, Rhonda gets a better offer and asks Goldilocks, played by Gordon, to do the job. Gordon and his friends decide to turn the place into an amusement park to earn some extra money, but they are busted by the corrupt police who confiscate the house's contents. Desperate, Goldilocks uses his profits to buy the furniture back from the police, but when the Bears return, they detect that someone has been using their furniture and beds. Eventually everything is resolved, although the Bears contemplate starting a folk band called the Moma and the Poppa. Parody of Southern California youth culture and their social dialect. | ||||
| 19 | 6 | "Little Red Riding Hood" | November 11, 1989 | |
| Gordon plays a Courier called Red who has to deliver a package to scientist Grandma to complete her shrinking and enlarging device, however the Wolf gets there first and shrinks then swallows grandma. Red arrives, and the Wolf shrinks and swallows him too. However, Grandma and Red end up in the McStomach start a food fight which gives the Wolf a stomach ache and he burps them up. They get free and complete the assembly of Grandma's device, shrinking the Wolf and returning themselves to normal size. Parody of Honey I Shrunk the Kids. | ||||
| 20 | 7 | "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" | December 2, 1989 | |
| The story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is presented as an episode of Unsolved Mysteries by Gordon as Robert Stuck. Snow White, a keen skier, disappears after winning a ski competition and beating the Wicked Queen. The Queen used to ask ski instructor Mario de la Wall "who is the fairest skier", and after he answered "Snow White" she disappeared. She was abducted by a thug for hire and left in "The middle of Nowhere" where she finds a condo rented by seven dwarf ski bums, but bites a poisonous apple left by the Queen and goes into a deep sleep. The dwarfs enter her in the "Date Connection Show" and when Robert Stuck kisses her she awakes and they live happily ever after. Parody of dating game shows and caricature of Robert Stack in Unsolved Mysteries. | ||||
| 21 | 8 | "King Midas" | December 9, 1989 | |
| Oklahoma Jones (Gordon) goes in search of King Midas but he is captured by the evil Professor Bouquet who steals his map. It appears that Midas made a fortune franchising camel mufflers and a grateful client granted him the power to turn everything he touched into gold. Jones travels to Midas Land and finds King Midas and decides to help remove the spell by finding a magic coffee mug. Parody of Indiana Jones and Midas automotive service centers. | ||||
Home media
The first seven episodes were released on DVD on May 30, 2006, in Region 1 from Lionsgate Home Entertainment in a single-disc release entitled ALF and The Beanstalk and Other Classic Fairy Tales.
References
- Hyatt, Wesley (1997). The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television. Watson-Guptill Publications. p. 4. ISBN 978-0823083152.
- Erickson, Hal (2005). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. p. 72. ISBN 978-1476665993.
- Perlmutter, David (2018). The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-1538103739.
- Damian Inwood. "Pi Theatre, Independent Vancouver Theatre >> The Baroness and the Pig". Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Retrieved October 30, 2011.
That's what Vancouver actresses Diane Brown and Tabitha St. Germain do with the delightful black comedy, The Baroness and the Pig. (...) St. Germain – better known to Vancouver audiences as Paulina Gillis – plays the Baroness as a naïve gentlewoman, full of prissy mannerisms and twittering, bird-like movements.
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