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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Filmwhys #25 Napoleon Dynamite and Defendor
Episode 25 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast with guest Simon Connolly, writer and director of the upcoming independent film The Last Superheroes and short film writer/director. You can see his short films and a couple previews for The Last Superheroes on Vimeo. He asks me why I haven’t seen a low budget independent film that went on to great success called Napoleon Dynamite about the life of an odd teenager in a small town seemingly stuck in the 80’s and his odd friends and family. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen Defendor, a low budget superhero movie starring Woody Harrelson as a mentally handicapped person who believes he is a superhero like Batman, but stumbles on an actual crime ring that he is determined to take down by himself.
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Tank Girl
Tank Girl 1995
It’s really hard to know where to start with this movie. I was originally going to do a month of female superhero movies back during the first year of this site, that is until I realized that there’s only like 5 of them, I had already reviewed 2, and they are all horrible movies except for this one. Kinda. This is also much more of a sci-fi movie than a superhero movie, except for the fact that it’s impossible not to realize that this was based on a comic book as there are comic book images and animation thrown at you at almost every scene change. The plot of this movie is all over the place and so is the tone, there’s even a musical sequence in the middle of the movie that comes out of nowhere. Really the only thing that holds this entire movie is the performance of Lori Petty as Rebecca, the Tank Girl herself, which was enough for me and my wife to enjoy this movie, but only just.
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Mount Rushmore of Independent Superhero Movies
When I saw the blogathon going on over at Two Dollar Cinema called the Mount Rushmore of Movies, I thought it was something that could be fun to join in on. I’ve posted my top 10 superhero movies so I didn’t really want to go that route, nor did I want to do something like choosing the Mount Rushmore of Marvel or DC. But since I recently watched Defendor, I thought I would honor a certain type of movies that I really enjoy and they all seem to fit together quite nicely. While I am calling this the “Mount Rushmore of Independent Superhero Movies”, as the most expensive out of the four movies was a moderately budgeted $30 million while the other three clock in at a much lower budget. They also all share the fact that none of the heroes actually have super powers, and they all have some type of mental or social disability. They are also all black comedies involving some dark subject matter while still trying to inject some humor or at least some levity to the entire situation. And on top of it all, I greatly enjoy all four of these movies and would like more people to see them, as only one of them were a commercial success.
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Defendor
Defendor 2009
This is the last of a small group of similarly themed independent superhero movies that I’ve come around to watching. Alongside Special, Super, and to a lesser extent Kick-Ass, this is definitely the one with the least amount of humor in it, but I think it’s coming to be the one that I like the most. It’s not exactly a big movie but it does have a nice cast consisting of Woody Harrelson as Arthur Poppington/Defendor, Elias Koteas as Officer Dooney, Kat Dennings as Angel/Kat Debrofkowitz, and Sandra Oh as the psychiatric evaluator. The way I like to describe the tone of the movie is if Forrest Gump was Batman. There is some humor in it, but the movie rarely uses Arthur’s mental disability as a source of humor, instead it uses it much more as a source of empathy. And instead of stumbling his way through significant moments in history, he stumbles his way through a local drug lord’s activities. It has moments of lightness, but also becomes a bit of a crime drama mixed with a bit of social commentary. If you can find it anywhere out there, it’s worth your time to check it out.
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Filmwhys Raw #4 The Bad Samaritan Must Die interview
Welcome to another episode of Filmwhys Raw, this time around I was able to talk with a couple filmmakers responsible for the superhero movie The Bad Samaritan Must Die which I reviewed recently. Click here to listen to us talk about the film, some of their earlier short films, their plans to make a sequel/prequel to The Bad Samaritan Must Die called Dawn of the Bad Samaritan, and some other tangents.
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Superhero Shorts: Forrest Fire Films
Welcome back once again to another edition of Superhero Shorts where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few brief questions with the filmmaker. Today I’m talking with Forrest Whaley from Forrest Fire Films who is probably best known for his many stop motion Lego animated videos featuring several different superheroes with a Robot Chicken level of violence, language, and humor, and he has also done the animated viral video the Duck Song and its various sequels. As usual, you can watch one of his films below, or you can visit his YouTube channel to see many more videos from him.
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Dark Vengeance Fan Art Contest
I don’t do too many contests here, but when I get the chance to partner with someone else running a contest, I’m usually up for the task, especially if there’s some connection to this site. While the connection might be thin in this case, I’m a fan of art and wanted to share this opportunity with you to create a piece of fan art for Steven Seagal’s new movie coming to Redbox at the end of this month called Dark Vengeance. You can view the trailer below and you can click here for details on how to enter the contest.
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Robocop
Robocop 2014
So I once again managed to make it out to theaters to catch a new release this year which brings my total up to 3, and while I didn’t make any official goal this year, it’s bringing me well on my way of reaching last year’s goal of 10 theatrical viewings which I only made it about halfway. I had a few reservations about seeing it, it is a reboot and these kinds of reboots of 80’s movies have had a pretty hit and miss track record. The early reviews coming in were mixed, so I had some hope there. And when I watched it, I quite liked what I saw. But when I discussed it for an upcoming Lambcast episode, it didn’t hold up very well to dissection. There is a great cast here, there are some updates that work quite well, from the drones angle to the conservative news show host, and even some nice little callbacks to the original movie. But there are also quite a few missteps in the movie, like the fact that while the satire is on a different topic and scale than the original, it also carries much less of an impact, and the final act doesn’t carry any of the same punches as the original. There’s nothing wrong with the movie by any means, but it’s not much of an improvement and like most remakes, it wasn’t really needed in the long run.
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Filmwhys #24 Saving Private Ryan and Constantine
I’m still truckin’ with these podcasts and still havin’ a lot of fun with them. This time around on the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast my guest is Ryan McNeil from The Matinee who asks me why I haven’t seen Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielburg’s epic World War II movie about a group of soldiers trekking across war-torn Europe to find a single soldier and bring him home. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen Constantine, with Keanu Reeves playing John Constantine who has the ability to see angels and demons who are all around us and is stuck on Earth fighting the demons to try and win his way back into Heaven when his life runs out.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 