"I'm due of town. Now go, Funky Rat, go!" - Benita Bizarre (Martha Raye) to her chauffeur
The Bugaloos: The Complete Series DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
What do you get when you mix the cool Britannia charm of the Beatles, the pre-fab musical stylings of The Monkees, a handful of hallucinogens, and one of those Raid commercials with the animated bugs? It's The Bugaloos, another live action children's show from the wild, wacky world of Sid & Marty Krofft.
Premiering on NBC September 12, 1970 the series follows the adventures of the Bugaloos, a pop group made up of four musically inclined insects who speak with British accents. Beautiful butterfly Joy (Caroline Ellis) is the group's lead singer. Bumblebee Harmony (Wayne Laryea) plays keyboards. I.Q. (John McIndoe) is a guitar-playing grasshopper. The band's drummer is Courage (John Philpott), a ladybug. The quartet befriends Sparky (Billy Barty), a nervous firefly who is both afraid of the dark and afraid to fly. Together, the group loves to surf the clouds on leaf "surfboards," play dreamy pop music, and raise money for charity. What they really like, however, is to simply enjoy the peace and quiet of their home, Tranquility Forest.
There is, however, a fly in the ointment.namely Benita Bizarre (Martha Raye), a loud, obnoxious character with a cheese grater voice who is terribly jealous of the Bugaloos. They look better than she does, they sing better than she does, they are happier than she is, and they can fly. Benita would love to win a beauty contest, have her latest single played on KOOK by disc jockey Peter Platter, and fly about the forest without a care in the world. In short, the Bugaloos are everything she wants to be. From her home inside a giant jukebox, Benita plots to steal their wings, their voices, and even Tranquility Forest itself. Helping her with these dastardly plans are her chauffeur Funky Rat (Sharon Baird) and oddballs Woofer (Joy Campbell) and Tweeter (Van Snowden).
In a typical episode, Benita causes havoc in Tranquility Forest, forcing the Bugaloos and their friends to restore order. She uses her Audio Dynamic Voice Switcher to swap voices with Joy ("I'm as Happy as Can Be"). When Courage is stricken with amnesia, she convinces him that he is her nephew ("Courage, Come Home"). She fills Tranquility Forest with smog to ruin the Bugaloos' charity concert in favor of her own for-profit event ("On a Clear Day"). She kidnaps Peter Platter and takes over as D.J. in an attempt to get her music on the radio ("Benita's Double Trouble"). She even manages to gain possession of the deed to Tranquility Forest and evicts the Bugaloos ("The Good Old Days"). Through it all, the Bugaloos remain positive and upbeat, singing a perky pop tune before foiling Benita's plans.
In their previous hit series (H.R. Pufnstuf) and in several shows to come (including Lidsville and Sigmund & the Sea Monsters), the Kroffts' often center the action around a well-known teen actor. Here they take a different approach, casting four unknown British actors. This actually works in The Bugaloos' favor. Instead of watching Eddie Munster go through his awkward teen years while interacting with anamorphic hats, we can view the individual Bugaloos with no preconceived notions.
The Kroffts did, however, continue their tradition of casting a larger than life performer as the show's main villain. Martha Raye, whose career began in the 1930s as part of her parents' vaudeville act and eventually included gigs with Bob Hope, gives a wonderfully loony performance as Benita. Krofft aficionados who haven't seen The Bugaloos in a while might be surprised by how terrific she is, turning in a broad yet subtle performance that trumps such fan favorites as Pufnstuf's Witchiepoo and Lidsville's Hoo Doo.
The show's costume designs are extremely imaginative. The four Bugaloos wear heightened versions of human clothing that subtly suggests their insect personas. Harmony, for example, is clad in a fuzzy shirt that features brown and yellow stripes which suggest a bumblebee while deftly avoiding becoming too literal. Sparky, Funky Rat, Woofer, Tweeter, and Peter Platter are portrayed by actors in full body costumes and voiced by Joan Gerber and Walker Edmiston. Several of these secondary characters are quite strange-looking. Woofer and Tweeter appear to be made up of spare parts snatched from a radio. Peter Platter has audiotape in the place of hair and 45s as eyes. Creepiest, though, is Funky Rat, who wears what appears to be a Nazi SS uniform and speaks with a German accent.
As for Benita, she tends to favor feathers, sporting feathered headdresses, boas, and dresses. It's hard to tell exactly what Benita is. With her predilection for feathers and her beak-like nose, it at first seems as if she could be some kind of bird. But she can't fly - she doesn't have wings, after all - and can't sing. Then again, maybe that's why she's so cranky - because she's a frustrated bird.
As usual, the Kroffts have created a physical world that will leave many viewers with the urge to climb into the screen. Soaring stalks of plastic grass, giant flower buds, and a grapevine that presents the Bugaloos with local gossip are just a few of the sights to be seen in Tranquility Forest. Benita's home is also quite impressive.she even has to deposit a quarter to open the peacock-guarded front door of her jukebox home.
Each episode features one or two inoffensive, almost instantly forgettable syrupy pop tunes. These songs were written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, who also wrote the theme songs to many TV shows, including Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days.
The seventeen episodes that make up The Bugaloos: The Complete Series are divided onto three discs. Each disc is adorned with a drawing of a butterfly. The discs are housed in a colorful foldout case decorated with publicity photos and production stills. The three discs attach to two panels - one of the panels holds two discs, one on top of the other, in a figure eight pattern. Another panel of the foldout case lists the episode titles and plot synopses for each disc. The case slides into a cardboard sleeve.
The full motion CGI DVD menus are both eye-catching and easy to navigate. Viewers can play all episodes or choose them individually. There are no chapter stops.
