The Bizarre 1995 Super Bowl Halftime Show Proves Just How Much the Show Has Changed

There’s no telling what Bad Bunny has in store for sports fans when he takes the stage at the Super Bowl Halftime Show this weekend, but one thing is certain: It can’t possibly be as weird as what went down at halftime during Super Bowl XXIX in 1995. That show featured Patti LaBelle, Tony Bennett, and Indiana Jones on the hunt for the Vince Lombardi Trophy—all in the quest to promote a new amusement park ride. And it's proof that the Super Bowl Halftime Show has changed quite a lot in recent years.

The Evolution of Super Bowl Halftime Shows

For the first few years of the Super Bowl’s existence, the time was filled by marching bands. The first Super Bowl, held on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, featured the bands of University of Arizona and Grambling State. 

Hello, Dolly! star Carol Channing became the first celebrity to take the field during halftime when she performed “When the Saints Go Marching In” with Southern University’s marching band at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans in 1970. She appeared again two years later in a tribute to Louis Armstrong featuring Ella Fitzgerald. “I think I received more attention from my two halftime appearances at the Super Bowl on daytime TV than I did for my entire tour of Hello Dolly!,” she later said.

After that, Super Bowl halftime shows took on themes (to celebrate America’s bicentennial in 1976, for example, the theme was “200 Years and Just a Baby”). Celebrities began popping up regularly starting in 1991, when New Kids on the Block performed the finale of the “Small World Tribute to 25 Years of the Super Bowl.” The following year, “Winter Magic” showcased the skating talents of Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill and the singing talents of Gloria Estefan. 

But what is without a doubt the most bizarre halftime show in Super Bowl history came in 1995. The theme? “Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye.”

“I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This”

It began with a Disney marketing executive’s idea to promote a new dark ride that was opening at Disneyland a month after the big game. According toThe New York Times, constructing “Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye” had required revamping Disneyland itself, so the exec wanted to promote it in the biggest way possible.

The resulting halftime show is a masterclass in losing the plot. It begins with a video clip of a rolling boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indy’s famous quote: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Next, the camera cuts to a king wearing a crown of serpents. “Bring to me the trophy!” he demands.

Out come drummers dressed as snakes and people dancing on stilts. The king is handed the Vince Lombardi Trophy, hoisting it triumphantly over his head. Then, Patti LaBelle-as-temple-goddess appears and sings “Release Yourself.” Pyrotechnics flash. 

Suddenly, paragliders descend on the scene. It’s Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood (sadly, not Harrison Ford and Karen Allen). Using whip and fist and torch, they barrel through temple guards and the mighty king himself. “Snakes! Why does it always have to be snakes!” Indy says when encountering two characters holding 12-foot reptiles. (LaBelle agreed with him on this point: “I am petrified of snakes,” the singer told The New York Times in 2020, saying to the handlers before the show: “You all gotta do something different right now. You gotta move those snakes.”) A man is set ablaze. Indy grabs the trophy, and he and Marion make their way to a club, where Tony Bennett, the Miami Sound Machine, and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval perform. 

The show is not even half over—and it gets even weirder from there.

There’s dancing, smooching, and more fighting over the trophy. Indy gets it back, of course, and LaBelle performs again.  The whole thing wraps up with everyone coming together to sing … “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” written for The Lion King, released the previous year. You can watch the whole thing below.

Super Bowl halftime shows continued to have themes for years afterward. The last was “The Kings of Rock and Pop” in 2001, featuring Aerosmith alongside N’Sync, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, and Nelly. 

Today, of course, Super Bowl halftime shows are basically short but spectacular concerts, but they’re not cheap: It costs an estimated $10 million to produce the Super Bowl Halftime show (the NFL doesn’t pay the artists to perform, and sometimes, the performers kick in their own money to put on the show). It’s likely that more than 100 million people will tune in.

It may be LaBelle herself who best summed up the differences between halftime shows past and present:“It was like a Broadway play back in the day,” she told The Times. “Today you go out there, you have your three- or four-song set … and you go home.”