On March 30th, 1990, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie hit the big screen, opening strong at #1 in the box office. The film would go on to gross more than any other independent film to date: $135,265,915 domestically, or $201,965,915 counting worldwide ticket sales (link). Not bad for a movie that cost $13.5 million to make. It seemed that most every kid had displayed Turtle Power and went see the real Turtles that were brought to life by the visual masters at Jim Henson's Creature Shop (this was Mr. Henson's last film that he worked on before his death).

I first saw the Ninja Turtles movie in the unlikeliest of places: on a hotel room's television set. I remember it being around Easter when my folks and grandparents took me on vacation to Florida. Actually, I distinctly remember it being Easter because I was a loud and forward child, and would go up to complete strangers and start singing the “Hallelujah” chorus as if they were my adoring audience. Things didn’t turn so joyful when I found out you could order the new Ninja Turtles movie in the hotel room.

My parents stood at the front door, all dressed up to eat downstairs in the lobby, and promised to bring back a pepperoni pizza for my dinner if I behaved. Grand Mom and Grand Pop were next door if I needed anything.

"Please be good," they told me before placing the Do Not Disturb sign on the door outside. Famous last words.

I immediately ordered the movie on TV without permission, and it got me more amped up than I've ever been before or since. Around the point in the film when The Foot break into April's apartment, I hopped off the bed and ran into the bathroom, grabbed a white bath towel and rolled it up to put around my forehead. I reached for the rope from the hotel's white bathrobe and tied it around my waist. I had become the fifth Ninja Turtle.

I went for the two pens from the end table first, whirled my katanas high in the air and threw them straight into the ceiling. Then I got the Yellow Pages and the Holy Bible from the drawer and flung them across the room.

"What's going on in there?" my grandfather yelled from behind the door that connected our rooms.

"It's a movie I'm watched on TV," I lied.

Next, the ashtrays were my throwing stars. "Turtle Power!"

"Open this door up right now," he yelled.

"It's the TV," I yelled back louder.

Seen and not heard was the way of the ninja, I said to myself, letting go of the ice bucket lid and watching it slam into my grandparents' room door.

"Knock that off this instant!"

"It's the movie, Grand Pop! It's not me!"

The phone started ringing until I karate kicked the receiver to the ground.

Next, there I heard a loud banging at the other connecting room's door.

"The Foot Clan is here, guys! Cowabunga!"

I threw my sneakers, our traveling bags, everything I could find around me, and targeted both pounding doors until I had no energy left and settled back on my bed to watch the end of the movie, raising the volume so I didn't hear all of that loud knocking anymore.

When my parents returned with the promised pepperoni pizza, the joint had been wrecked. Maybe there was some truth in what the critics were saying about the Turtles being too violent? Or maybe I was just troubled?

Because of the immense success of the first film, work began on a sequel right away.

Screen Gems is a TV/film studio located in Wilmington, North Carolina, a city where many productions are filmed. Wilmington was where the dreaded Super Mario Bros. movie and the even more dreaded Dawson's Creek were made. All of the interior shots of the first two Ninja Turtles movies were actually filmed right inside Screen Gems (pictured above), while many of the exterior shots were taken in, of course, The Big Apple, with one of the exceptions being the farm scenes in the first movie, which were done in a wilderness near Wilmington.

I have a business card and several letterhead from the film's production office that list the following address of Screen Gems:

1223 North 23rd Street Wilmington, NC 28405

After speaking to a former EUE Screen Gems Studios executive assistant in the past, I found out that the Turtles sequel was being filmed as early as November of 1990. The Jim Henson crew and several of the original cast had returned, except for notables Judith Hoag, who played the first April O'Neil (she would be replaced by All My Children soap opera actress, Paige Turco, because of contractual disagreements), and Corey Feldman, who voiced Donatello for the first and third films (he was replaced by actor Adam Carl).

It could be said that despite all of the pizza jokes and turtle dancing, the first TMNT was quite dark—both in appearance and subject matter. The movie came under fire for having such grittiness which some argued made the film even more inappropriate for children audiences.

Perhaps to appease the critics and some outspoken parents, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze turned into a more colorful and funnier movie than the original, keeping more in common with the cartoon series than the first movie that seemed closer to the comic book material.

[The above Polaroid photograph comes from one of the Turtle Dressers (the crewmembers in the costume department who helped put on and take off the Turtle suits). This particular Polariod was used for continuity purposes.]

The Turtle suits received a much needed revamping for the sequel. In the first film, the wires to control the animatronic heads could actually be seen coming out of the suits in a few scenes.

[This purple fabric knot makes up part of Donatello’s bandana worn by Leif Tilden in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The knot was salvaged by one of the “turtle dressers” after filming wrapped. The eye mask part would have been glued onto the foam latex head. (That's a fact, Jack!)]

The new suits for Turtles II did not have that problem. The lighter tone of the movie can also be seen reflected in the new toony look of the Turtles.

[Original production-used 29.5” x 41.5” subway shaft plan dyeline blueprint from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. Dyeline blueprints such as this would have been handed out to the art department and set construction crew. The blueprint label reads as follows: “PRODUCTION DESIGNER: ROY FORGE SMITH / SET: SUBWAY SHAFT / LOCATION: STAGE 1 / DRAWING: SUBWAY SHAFT PLAN, ELEVATION, SECTION / DATE: 8-13-90 / SCALE: ½” = 1’0” / DRAWN BY: G.S.G. / SET: #17 / PAGE: #1701.” The blueprint shows detailed layouts of the interior of the subway shaft and the sidewalk vents where pedestrians would walk overhead.]

Despite the family-friendly movie that TMNT II would become, the early script plans showed TMNT II as gritty a film as the first. Early work on the screenplay shows a much darker, scarier version of the movie than the one released in theaters.

The sequel's plot revolves around the mysterious ooze that caused the Turtles to drastically transform from common household pets to lean, mean, green fighting machines. In the movie, a scientist, Professor Jordan Perry (David Warner), attempts to dispose of the remaining ooze in the TGRI facility, where it was originally developed, for the safety of all mankind. Unfortunately for him (and all of mankind), The Foot come and steal the last canister of ooze to create the monster mutants, Tokka and Rahzer, to use against the Turtles. Oh, and Shredder? He's back.

Fans will know that TCRI, not TGRI (as it appears in the sequel), is the original name of the research facility that made the ooze in the comic books.

[Production script of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze written by Todd W. Langen. Langen also co-wrote the first movie and several episodes of The Wonder Years. The final draft is dated July 26, 1990. The blue pages are from August 13, 1990, and the pink, from August 15.]

In an early version of the Turtles II script, the scientist who handles all of the ooze containers was secretly an utrom, a small alien contained in a body that looks human (think: Krang from the original cartoon and his android body). Reportedly, at the end of the movie, the utrom was to pop out of the scientist's body in a surprise, cliff-hanger ending.

[Director-approved storyboards of the mall and TGRI fights in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The storyboards are illustrated by Michael Davis. These are marked #1 and #2 of 4, meaning that they are the first two of the four major fight scenes in the film. In the mall fight scene, the Turtles have ordered pizza delivery and wind up fighting burglars in a mall. The violence was scaled back in the sequel and made more humorous and less scary for children audiences. A good example is during this fight sequence when Michelangelo picks up sausage and chooses it as a comical weapon over his nunchucks. // “The past returns, my son,” says Splinter on the rooftop above April’s apartment when he reveals the TGRI canister that transformed the Turtles. “It is time to seek our answers.” The Turtles then enter the TGRI research facility to find those answers regarding their origins, and discover that only one canister of mutagen ooze remains—and The Foot have it! In this fight scene, the Turtles play keep away from The Foot Soldiers with the last ooze canister.]

I know that would have freaked me out a little as a kid, so I understand why it was removed. But, then again, I've always been a chicken. It took me years to muster up enough courage to watch Warwick Davis in Leprechaun.

Instead of going this route, the "C" in TCRI (C for cosmic) was changed to "G" (G for global) to make TGRI an otherwise human corporation completely devoid of utroms and alien activity. Whew!

After many, many, many years of searching for an original ooze canister used in the sequel, I finally was able to obtain one from a private collector just recently. The property master on the film authenticated this canister as one of about 200 canisters used in the film, mostly as background props in the lab. The pictured canister has a provenance tracking all the way back to a Screen Gems Studios public auction held in the mid-nineties in Wilmington.

As you can see, it's not in the best of shape. The canister is missing the TGRI decal on the canister due to production use. Traces of the lettering still remain. Only one canister during filming contained any real "ooze" while the others were painted a bright green inside the tubes to simulate the ooze effect. Unfortunately, any hopes of re-animating Tokka are dashed because this is one such green-ooze-painted canister.

The canister's tube is made of acrylic, and the side plates and end caps are of a hard plastic. (Stunt canisters contained foam rubber end caps as a safety precaution.) The canister measures approximately 13.5". The canister will be buried with me when I die.

One of the most talked about parts in the sequel is the cameo appearance made at the end of the film by Vanilla Ice. The Turtles drop in at a night club where Ice just so happens to be performing live onstage, and as if by some divine Turtle intervention, he begins to freestyle lyrics about the heroes in green immediately upon seeing them.

Vanilla Ice's iconic "Ninja Rap," the hit single on the movie's soundtrack, became one of his most popular songs, second possibly only to "Ice Ice Baby". Vanilla Ice, though, was not the first choice to appear in this fun scene.

Before Vanilla replaced her, Belgian hip hop artist Ya Kid K was to perform at the club that the Turtles, Rahzar, and Tokka crash. She has contributed a track to all three live-action Turtle movies: "Spin That Wheel," "Awesome (You Are My Hero)," and "Rockin' Over the Beat". She is perhaps best known for her singing the 1989 song "Pump Up the Jam" (Get your booty on the floor tonight / Make my day... Come on, you remember that jam!).

Ya Kid K was most likely replaced by Vanilla because of the sudden surge in his popularity (To the Extreme had been dropped in record stores just seven months prior to the film's premiere). Turtles II marked Vanilla Ice's film debut on the big screen. Later in its year of release, the Ice Man would star in a film entirely of his own, Cool As Ice, where he would deliver such famous lines as "Drop that zero and get with the hero," "Yup-yup," and, of course, "Schling a schlong".

After several months of communication with a person who works in the film industry, I was finally able to obtain an original "Ninja Rap Is Born!" newspaper from the second film. The prop master on the film confirmed its authenticity, recognizing it as one of three set-ready stuffed versions. And "stuffed" this newspaper is! There are pages and pages of fake news stories, even a sports page on the back. The newspaper was printed in Wilmington at The Star News, a real local paper.

A newspaper with a similar style can be seen in the 1990 Saved by the Bell "Save the Max" episode.

The school's student newspaper, The Bayside Breeze, features the same sports page section title design on the back.

Another version of the newspaper can be seen in the Full House episode entitled "The King and I."

There are production stills of Splinter holding this same exact paper.

In the movie, Splinter holds up the newspaper and chastises the Turtles, making them do ten back flips as punishment for their very un-ninja-like behavior of posing for the front page of the Daily News after busting some radical dance moves with Vanilla Ice the previous night.

"Ten flips now!" commands Splinter. "And remember: Go, ninja! Go, ninja! Go! I made another funny! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

There was a third TMNT movie made without the assistance of Jim Henson's Creature Shop in 1993. The Turtles this time go back to 16th Century Feudal Japan and crack Addams Family jokes. Let us never speak of it again.