June-ing the Cult: Trash Film Guru & Turkish Superman
Süpermen Dönüyor aka The Return of Superman 1979
Throughout the month of June I thought it would be a great time to catch up on some of the more obscure and cult superhero films out there. But instead of just randomly picking a few, I decided to reach out to some of my other blogger friends who blog on plenty of other cult films on their own and ask them for their recommendations. So starting off with this film today and over the next four weeks I’ll be tackling these cult superhero films. Some are older, all of them are foreign and it should be a lot of fun. And kicking it off out of the gate is Ryan C from Trash Film Guru with his choice best known as Turkish Superman.
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X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Apocalypse 2016
We are starting to get deep into the summer movie season as we kick into the latest comic book movie with superheroes fighting superheroes, but at least in this case every movie has been about mutants fighting mutants. And very similar to the last two theatrical releases this year, I enjoyed this movie as well, but thought that overall it had some notable issues with it. There were definitely moments where I had a nice fanboy grin plastered on my face, and there weren’t really any parts during the film where I thought it was dragging, but after it was all over and I started thinking about it a bit more thoroughly, there were just too many questions that kept dragging through my head. And as is often the case with theatrically released movies, there may be spoilers ahead so read on only if you’ve seen the film or don’t care about knowing what’s to come.
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Superhero Podcast Review: Hero Movie Podcast
This is the first in a series that I’ve been considering doing for a while now. I tend to listen to quite a few podcasts including several movie podcasts that specifically focus on superhero or comic book movies. You know, kind of like this site. I’ll be starting off with podcasts that I have listened to, and as I run out of those, I’ll be expanding to other new podcasts that I discover, or if anyone would like to submit a podcast for me to review – either from a listener or a podcaster, just leave a comment, tag me on Twitter or send me an e-mail at Bubbawheat@msn.com. I will be giving my thoughts based on my personal preference, but will also try to break down the podcast based on several different categories so that you may be able to determine if it is a podcast that you would be interested in as well.
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ABCs of Superheroes
ABCs of Superheroes aka League of Superheroes 2015
I really do love Twitter, something that I have stopped doing for a while is scouring the internet for possible superhero movie titles that I may have missed. Instead, until I run out of titles to review I merely sit back and keep an eye out for any that might cross my path, which just so happened with this film. I noticed a retweet from one of the producers by Lloyd Kaufman so I reached out to him to request a screener knowing literally nothing about the film aside from its title. After watching the film it made complete sense that Kaufman RT’d it for a couple reasons, one was that he made a cameo in the film, and second because it has a very Troma-esque feel to it. Blood and nudity abound alongside low budget effects, questionable acting skills, and a very tongue in cheek humor about itself. And just like the best Troma films, it all combined to make a very hilariously entertaining film.
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Filmwhys #70 Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Phantom
The Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Stefan Gagne webnovelist whose work can be found at StefanGagne.com who asks me why I hadn’t seen Pink Floyd’s The Wall, a trippy and experimental musical with non-linear storytelling, amazing music, and mind-blowing visuals. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen 1996’s The Phantom starring Billy Zane, the campy comic book movie that advertised how he would “Slam Evil!”
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Avenging Force: The Scarab
Avenging Force: The Scarab 2010
I’ve often said that the worst superhero movie that I’ve ever seen is an incredibly low budget and indie superhero movie based on a public domain comic book called Captain Battle. This falls right along the same lines, and even had one of the same distribution companies. It feels like it could have been a mockbuster, though it came out two years before the Avengers. It has many of the same issues as Captain Battle, though the filmmakers were technically much more competent, they were still a long ways away from being good. Everything about this film was poor from the story to the costume design all the way through the acting and directing. At least the actors pretended their guns had some recoil, so they have that going for it.
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Paper Man
Paper Man 2009
There are several reasons why I occasional stretch the boundaries of what I consider a “superhero movie”, sometimes it’s because I already decided to watch the film and didn’t want to feel like I had wasted my time on it, other times it gives me an excuse to watch something that’s very much unlike a typical superhero movie. This one falls very much in the latter category even though I knew next to nothing about this film before I put it on aside from the fact that it starred Jeff Daniels and it had Ryan Reynolds playing yet another superhero, albeit an imaginary one. As it started playing, I quickly fell in love with the cast and really enjoyed the rather quirky dramedy about this struggling writer developing a completely non-sexual relationship with a teenage girl played by the always lovely Emma Stone.
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Filmwhys Spotlight: Hulk
The first episode of Filmwhys Spotlight where I showcase an underappreciated superhero film and talk to the fans who enjoy it. Kicking off this series is 2003’s Hulk directed by Ang Lee which is generally unloved when compared to the more recent Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but has some redeemable moments in it.
Joining me in this episode are John Turman, one of the screenwriters of the film, Paul Hawkins from the Blokebusters Podcast, Hermano DeSilva from the First Time Watchers Podcast, and Nick Piers author of the Armadillo Mysteries who can be found at NickPiers.com.
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Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: Civil War 2016
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is back with its latest installment of their ongoing franchise. And even though I watched this movie on opening night, I feel like everyone and their mother has already voiced their adoration upon this film, probably just because it was released in many other countries a week early. As a whole, Marvel films have been pretty high on my radar starting off with Avengers as the first MCU that was released since starting this site and most of the Phase 2 sequels were much better than the originals until they hit a bit of a snag with Age of Ultron that felt like they were too focused on setting up future films to worry about focusing on the current one. On that front, I felt like Civil War was a success, while it greatly helped to have knowledge of past films, Civil War felt much more self-contained than Age of Ultron. It has the fun aspect that permeates all of the Marvel films as well as some incredible action and some thought provoking themes, but it just didn’t quite knock it out of the park for me this time. And fair warning since this has just opened in the US, there may be spoilers ahead.
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Danger Diabolik
Danger Diabolik 1968
There’s one genre of superhero movies that I don’t have very much experience in just yet and that is the 60’s era of Eurospy movies. There was a large number of these pseudo James Bond-esque spy movies that are all over the place. Some of them involve masked spies, some involved less heroic protagonists, some were based on European comics from the time, and then there’s this one that combines all three of those. Diobolik was an Italian comic created by Angela and Luciana Guissani in ’62 where it ran for several years before this film was optioned by noted producer Dino De Laurentiis (and many years afterwards). The film also has the recognition of being the last televised episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 excluding the recently Kickstartered reboot series. But knowing that, it was surprisingly much more entertaining and watchable than most movies featured on MST3K. It was incredibly bizarre at times, but the director Mario Bava had a great visual eye, and the film had a fun mix of comedy and innuendo befitting an Austin Powers movie without the overt winks to the audience.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 