Blog Archives
Invisible Sue
Invisible Sue 2018
It’s been a little while again since I’ve been able to watch and review a superhero movie here, pretty much all of my free time is split between work, a newborn, and the podcasts which I’ve been sharing on this site. But I did find this movie on DVD at the dollar store a couple months back with absolutely no information about what the movie is outside of the name of the film and the fact that the cover has a girl in a superhero mask. Apparently it’s a German film, but similar to the Antboy release, the only available audio track on the DVD is the English dub. At least partially due to the fact that it’s more of a family friendly film. I would be curious to see this in the original German as I remember that it helped out my viewing of the Antboy sequels. As it is, it’s a pretty basic kids adventure movie with a little bit of super powers and gadgetry thrown in the mix. It doesn’t do anything badly, but it never really pushes the excitement level past the halfway point.
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Superman
Superman (India) 1980
This is not the first, nor will it be the last semi-official foreign knock-off Superman movie. The main reason why I call it semi-official is because as far as I know it had a legitimate foreign release in theaters despite it not having official clearance from DC Comics. As opposed to the small handful of full-length fan films that I don’t cover on this site, at least not yet. There was even another Superman knockoff movie from India that came out several years later and is often referred to as Indian Superman while this one is referred to as Telegu Superman, the language used. Other than the similarities in the outfit and his super strength and ability to fly nothing else about the movie or his origin has anything to do with the DC Comics version of Superman. And though it was released in 1980, the fashion is heavily steeped in the 70’s with polyester leisure suits, gold chains, exposed chests, and bellbottoms a-plenty. Not to mention the helmet shaped hair and perfectly trimmed mustaches that all the men sport. That along with the low budget special effects, bizarre story choices, and ridiculous villains, this was a hilariously enjoyable low budget superhero knockoff. And if you’re curious to watch this for yourself, it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime as well as YouTube.
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Valentine: The Dark Avenger
Valentine: The Dark Avenger 2019
I’m down to the last couple indie superhero movies of the year although I’m not sure if I’m going to get around to the last one on my list. This was an Indonesian film that came out a couple years ago in Indonesia, but was released in the US with an English dub from Shout Factory earlier this year. It was based on a comic book superhero from Skylar comics and it has an interesting overall concept that seemed to share a few ideas with Kick-Ass, at least as far as the social media aspect, but brought a lot more martial arts and a lot less blood. It’s not quite as action-y as a martial arts movie and it’s not quite as superhero-y as a superhero movie but it has its moments here and there and was put together pretty well for a lesser known superhero movie.
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Santo y Blue Demon contra Doctor Frankestein
Santo y Blue Demon contra Doctor Frankestein 1974
It’s time to finish out Hispanic Heritage Month with the last Santo movie from my local library. Now I only have like 49 more of these movies to go if I ever want to completely finish them. It’s been an interesting trek, none of them are really that great. I’ve fallen asleep (albeit watching late at night) twice out of the four movies. But each one is different enough from the other to keep things interesting. The fights were interesting to a point and I’m glad to be taking a long break from the movies but each one had something interesting about it to make it different from the rest of the movies while still having the same Santo charm.
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Santo vs la Hija de Frankestein
Santo vs la Hija de Frankestein 1972
I’m still going through the four different Santo movies that I’ve found at my local library to help celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. I’ve actually been quite surprised by the variations of the three titles I’ve watched so far despite the fact that I’m jumping around in chronology. Not that it matters as each movie is completely disconnected from the next as far as I can tell. There may be a connection to this one and the last Santo movie I have with him and Blue Demon vs Doctor Frankenstein, but I suppose I’ll have to wait to find out. This one was actually the most enjoyable of these movies so far with an interesting cast of villains and a nice little twist on the wrestling matches.
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Santo en la Venganza de la Momia
Santo en la Venganza de la Momia 1971
This is the third Santo movie that I’ve watched and the second one that I’m reviewing for Hispanic Heritage Month. They have been an interesting series of movies to showcase a popular Mexican luchador who transitioned to comics before starring in movies all while being popular for several decades. They all follow the same basic premise: Santo has a wrestling match and then he gets involved in some sort of mystery involving something supernatural. This one has a unique distinction of being more like Scooby Doo because of the ending, but it still follows the same overall structure. There’s more comic relief and a little bit of heart added to the narrative, but overall it was just more of the same.
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Rendel
Rendel: Dark Vengeance 2017
This post partially came about as voted by members of my Patreon. Each month, I offer four movies and it’s up to the patrons to help decide what I get to watch. If you would like in on this, all I ask is just $1 a month to help this site continue and to grow. This movie is hailed as Finland’s first superhero movie, and while I can’t verify that statistic myself, I do know that it’s the only one that I’m aware of. At least until the sequel comes out. It’s a lower budget film, but one that really uses the budget quite well. And while the popular opinion on it is fairly low to middling, I actually quite enjoyed this take on more or less the Punisher with a few other odds and ends thrown in as well as a couple nice expectation subversions. There were definitely some storytelling and pacing issues, but overall it was quite violent with a touch of very dark humor.
Chicken With Plums
Chicken With Plums 2011
It often happens that I chance upon a movie that I hadn’t heard of before that I feel like I really should have already known about. I was a fan of Marjane Satrapi’s first movie based on her comic of the same name Persepolis. But I didn’t realize that she made a second movie based on another of her graphic novels called Chicken With Plums a few years later in 2011 until very recently. Watching it, it reminded me quite a bit of a black comedy version of Amelie. There are plenty fantasy sequences and flights of fancy mixed into this relationship drama, but there’s a decided lack of whimsy in favor of a more darkly comedic tone.
SuperLopez
SuperLopez 2018
In topics few people reading this site really care about, I decided to switch from Netflix to Hulu as my streaming site of choice for a while. And as I have just under a month left of Netflix before my membership runs out, I decided it was time to try and watch some of the movies that have been sitting in my queue for months. But instead of that, I watched this film which I had just heard about coming onto Netflix a few days ago. It’s a Spanish superhero parody movie, but it’s actually quite similar to Mystery Men as it’s not just a movie parody of Superman, but the original comic was a comic strip parody of Superman and this is an adaptation of that comic. As for the actual movie itself, it was pretty slow, but it did have a few good laughs mixed in between a lot of nothing.
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Guardians
Zashchitniki aka Guardians 2017
This is only the second Russian superhero movie that I’ve reviewed here on this site after the bizarrely mediocre flying car Spider-Man rip off that has nothing to do with the current CW show Black Lightning. I remember seeing the previews for it a while back and the visuals looked kind of insane. Now that I’ve finally seen it, I still think the overall visuals look great, but it really suffered from a lack of interesting characters or an interesting plot. It’s a really generic government created superpowered experiments that goes wrong and creates a supervillain intent on ruling the world. It’s a weird mix of X-Men’s Weapon X program but it’s just not interesting once you look past the special effects.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 