Category Archives: Pre-80’s movies
Abar: The First Black Superman
Abar: The First Black Superman 1977
The first year of running this site, I wanted to do something for Black History Month and so I covered all of the Black superhero movies that I could find, and there weren’t very many. After running this site for a couple more years, I have gotten a large enough list that there are a couple more obscure Black superhero movies that I can still cover. Unfortunately I hit a snag when I couldn’t find a ready copy of Up, Up, and Away, a Disney Channel original movie. But I was able to find one for this film, Abar: The First Black Superman. I didn’t know a whole lot about this film aside from the fact that it was a low budget, blaxploitation flick that had very little with the traditional Superman. It was a lot more preachy than I expected, and the superpowered elements of the story don’t show up until the last thirty minutes. But those thirty minutes made the movie worth it through its complete incredulity.
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Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro
Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro aka Samson vs. the Vampire Women 1962
It’s probably not too surprising that I occasionally bite off a little bit more than I can chew. And/or I am a very absent minded person and will easily forget things if I get distract- Squirrel! A few weeks ago, I agreed to take part in a blogathon hosted by Movies Silently called Accidentally Hilarious where bloggers would take a look at classic bad films that are so bad they are hilarious even though they were never intended to be comedies. There wasn’t a lot for me to choose from, and many of those early superhero films are hard to find, or are Batman which is an intentional comedy and also is just one year after the cutoff date of 1965. So I chose this film which is part of a long line of Santo films. This one is probably the most famous of them as it’s one of the only ones that got an English language dub and was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Santo is a Luchador superhero who may or may not actually have superhuman strength, but does occasionally battle supernatural forces of evil. I’m not sure if I’ll go back and check out other Santo movies, especially after watching this one. And while I did watch the English dub of this movie where he is constantly referred to as Samson, I will be referring to him as his original Spanish name, Santo.
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Graphic Horror: Alien
Graphic Horror: Alien 1979
This is something that I haven’t done very much since starting my Filmwhys podcast, and that is to go back and watch an essential movie that I hadn’t seen, only I didn’t do it to talk about during an episode of Filmwhys. (Instead I’m talking about it here in a review) Before now I had seen Aliens a few times, and somehow skipped ahead and watched AvP in theaters, but never went back to watch the original even though there’s always the debate over which is the better movie: Alien or Aliens. For my part, I don’t think I’ll ever like this one as much as Aliens, but it is still a great movie that I really enjoyed. And for the record, I did watch the 2003 Ridley Scott director’s cut of the movie instead of the theatrical release, although I didn’t go back and check to see what the differences between the two versions are.
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Graphic Horror: Vault of Horror
Vault of Horror 1973
Following up from the Tales From the Crypt adaptation the year before comes yet another adaptation of several of the EC Comics stories from their various horror comics like Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, and others. It follows basically the same format as Tales From the Crypt with a frame story about several people coming together and telling tales of their demises. The difference is that this time they are all taking an elevator that brings them to the sublevel instead of the ground floor, and they are talking about these vivid dreams they’ve been having, and also there is no curator inviting them to speak, instead they bring up speaking on their own, and there is no woman in this group. There’s also something about the stories in general that weren’t as interesting overall as several of the ones in the Tales From the Crypt anthology. I also found it interesting, even though I’m not a Doctor Who fan at all but I noticed that Tom Baker is one of the main characters in one of the stories.
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Graphic Horror: Tales From the Crypt
Graphic (Novel) Horror Blogathon: Tales From the Crypt 1972
Welcome to my first entry in the Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon, where I and other bloggers take a look at horror movies that could be, should be, or were graphic novels. I’m kicking it off by watching the movie that was made many years before one of my favorite TV shows that were both inspired by the pulp EC comics series including Tales From the Crypt, the Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, and several other titles. I had never seen this movie before today, but as this was an anthology inspired by the comics just like the television series, I was already familiar with the story of two of the shorts even though there were some minor differences, mainly in the length as the TV series was a full half hour while this includes five shorts and a wraparound story in about an hour and a half. The budget for this movie felt quite small with many cheap looking visual effects, but I think it still often captured the feeling that I got from the Tales From the Crypt television show with the macabre stories and occasional twist endings. While not as good as the TV show, it was still entertaining to watch.
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Super Inframan
Super Inframan 1975
Last month I decided to join in on a handful of blogathons and other projects. Some of them I got to in a reasonable amount of time, and this one was one of those that got pushed back a little bit too far. Over at Your Face, they have been doing a Shaw-gust blogathon during the month of August, reviewing films from the Shaw brothers, who are best known for their plethora of kung-fu flicks in the 70’s though they produced many movies outside of that range. These are the flicks known for their fight scenes and bad dubbing, almost any kung-fu parody from this era featured the badly out of synch lip movements and very rough translations, and that is how I watched my contribution for what ended up slipping into Shaw-tember, Super Inframan. And even though it predates them by many years, this movie totally feels like a handful of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episodes strung together. There’s a lot of guys in rubber monster costumes, a lot of kung-fu, and a whole lot of jumping around. It’s got plenty of fun moments, and just as many wtf moments.
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Superman and the Mole Men
Superman and the Mole Men 1951
Whenever I see lists of superhero or comic book movies, typically the first movie on that list is this one. Superman and the Mole Men is generally considered the first full length superhero movie even though there were serials for both Batman and Superman before this one. I knew practically nothing about this movie before I watched it other than it was in black and white, it starred George Reeves as Superman as it was essentially the pilot for the television series, and it had Mole Men in it. I was expecting a cheesy, old timey movie with bad fight scenes between Superman and some Mole Men. What I got instead was something a little closer to the Twilight Zone where the Mole Men aren’t actually the antagonists and there is a lot more morality issues going on than I would have first expected. It did have some goofy old timey qualities to it considering that I rarely watch a black and white movie. In fact I can count them on one hand. But it was a lot better movie than I expected it to be. It’s worth a watch if you’re a fan of Superman and you enjoy the occasional classic movie.
Batman: The Movie
Batman: The Movie 1966
I had been considering watching this movie sometime this month because Jena has been very much into Batman more than any other superhero, and while I wanted to save the two Nolan Batman movies for just before the Dark Knight Rises, I figured I could watch the others early. It was Saturday evening and Jena was going on about Batman while we were trying to figure out something to watch, so I looked this movie up. The Batman TV show was a bit before my time, so I had never seen any of it aside from a few YouTube clips, but I was familiar with how campy it would be. It still managed to go above and beyond my expectations and it was hilariously fun to watch.
Superman
Superman 1978
I assume that when many bloggers can’t decide on something they will use a poll to make the decision for them. And that’s exactly what I decided to do when I needed to decide which movie franchise I should start off the new year and this new site. And out of all of the choices, Superman won. Of course, I was already at the point where I was ready to start this project a couple weeks early, so when I was at the local video rental store and saw that they had all four of the original Christopher Reeve Superman movies in stock and ready to rent, I couldn’t resist and picked them all up to watch the week before Christmas. And I started working far enough ahead that I couldn’t wait until January first and decided to start posting these a week early.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 