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The Toxic Avenger
The Toxic Avenger 1984
A lot of B-movie fans, and especially horror B-movie fans likely know the name Troma. It’s a small company that’s churned out a whole lot of low budget films over the years with titles like Yeti: A Love Story, Surf Nazis Must Die!, and Killer Condom. But before doing horror movies, they mainly did sex comedies. The Toxic Avenger was more or less their first foray into horror, even though it’s not what anyone would call full blown horror, it has the death scenes and blood and gore which is a staple of these kinds of horror movies. And it was a success… eventually. It wasn’t quite the slow burn that the Rocky Horror Picture Show would become, but it found a foothold as a midnight movie and is considered a cult classic. Heck, there was even a children’s cartoon of it. As for my own experience with Troma films, I know I was familiar with the Toxic Avenger, but I can’t for the life of me remember exactly how. I think I watched at least one of the films when I was younger, and I know I caught some of the episodes of the cartoon. I also watched Tromeo and Juliet, which was directed by the James Gunn who would later go on to direct Super. But my knowledge of Toxie had mostly faded when he came back on screen in all his cheesy glory. This is a cult movie for a lot of the same reasons the Room is a cult movie. The acting is horrible, the effects are obviously cheap but brutal (for the time at least), but in the end, I had a blast.
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Filmwhys #6 12 Angry Men and Superman
Running a little bit behind on this episode, but I think it was worth the wait. In this episode of Filmwhys, the why haven’t you seen this film podcast, my guest is Jay Cluitt from Life vs. Film who asks me why I haven’t seen the classic Sidney Lumet film 12 Angry Men. And I ask him why he hasn’t seen the classic, original superhero movie Superman with Christopher Reeve.
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Superhero Movie Bingo
I had an idea pop into my head the other day, and I just had to see it through to fruition. There’s plenty of common things that happen in many superhero and comic book movies so I thought I’d liven up the viewing experience by making a little game out of it. Just a fair warning though, I won’t be held responsible for you getting kicked out of the theater for yelling “Bingo!” during the movie, and trust me, it won’t be too hard to get one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a movie or two out there that could fill up the entire card. Is there any squares I missed the boat on, or any that I should have added. Let me know. The one that I wanted to add but didn’t because I wanted to keep the images from the more recent movies is “walks away from an explosion”. If I get enough fresh ideas I may revisit this one. Or, I may just revisit this only with an eye towards the bad superhero movies. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
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Can a Kaiju be a Superhero?
It used to be that the only people that knew the term “Kaiju” were either the extreme Japanophiles or the extreme B-movie geeks that watched all the old classic monster movies. Now it feels like many more people know the term, either because of the shrinking of the world through the ease of communication, or because of the anticipation of Pacific Rim helping draw attention to the term. In case you don’t know, Kaiju is a term used for a giant monster used in a monster movie, the most iconic being Godzilla. Now, I have to admit that I have seen very few Kaiju movies, most of those have been the MST3K versions, especially the Gamera series. It’s hard to forget “Gamera is really neat, Gamera is full of meat, we believe in Ga-me-ra. And one of those has been the 1998 Americanized, or should I say the Emmeriched version. But one thing I do know, or at least am pretty sure of, is that often Godzilla is the “good” Kaiju battling the “bad” Kaiju. So, does that make Godzilla a superhero?
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Filmwhys #5 Run Lola Run and The Punisher
There’s never enough time to watch all the movies I want to, but now that Filmwhys is weekly, I’m working on it that much quicker. In this episode of Filmwhys, the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast, I’m joined by Dylan Fields of Man I Love Films who asks me why I haven’t seen Run Lola Run, the unique 1998 German film with a unique premise, pseudo-time travel, animation, and running. And I ask him why he hadn’t seen the 2004 Punisher film starring Thomas Jane.
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Superman & Batman Apocalypse
This movie was sort of billed as a sequel to the animated Superman/Batman Public Enemies, although it really is a stand-alone piece with only a brief callback to President Luthor’s impeachment to tie it to the previous movie. I hadn’t really heard much about this movie compared to some of the other DC animation so I really didn’t know what to expect, other than Darkseid considering the title of the movie is Apocalypse even though they went with the traditional spelling of the word rather than the typical comic book spelling of Apokolips. But even with the Superman & Batman title, this really could have been called Supergirl: Apokolips, as she is the main focus of the movie and Batman doesn’t get much screen time at all. But I am a big fan of Supergirl as a character so I really enjoyed this movie and it quickly rose as one of my favorite DC animations. From the great tone that’s set early on to the amazing action sequences towards the end, it’s really an all around great movie and one to check out if you haven’t seen it yet.
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Filmwhys #4: The Deer Hunter and Super
I’m back again on my journey to fill my large gaps in movie watching. In this episode of Filmwhys, or the why haven’t you seen this film podcast, my guest is Stefan Gagne, a web author who writes at StefanGagne.com who asks me why I haven’t seen one of Robert DeNiro’s early works The Deer Hunter. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen James Gunn’s Super.
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FTMN Spotlight – Building Better Superheroes Infographic
Just last week I shared a Superman infographic and shortly afterwards I received another e-mail from someone else who made a superhero-related infographic. Eddie takes a look at various superhero reboots along with a few bits of trivia and decides which one is better. I don’t think I agree with his estimations 100%, but it looks pretty sweet and I’m happy to share it with you. Click to view the original at his site. Enjoy!
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My top 5 Superman movies
I had been planning on writing this for a little while now, but I decided to wait until Man of Steel had come out in the chance that it would take one of the spots on the list. For a little while I considered adding television shows into the mix, but I’m a bit of a completist and it’s been too long since I’ve seen the animated series and I’ve never seen the classic George Reeves Superman series. But considering that I’ve seen all of the major animated releases, I will of course be adding some of them.
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How Much is a Movie Allowed to Change
aka when did “Canon” become a bad word?
Obviously, I just watched Man of Steel this weekend, along with a ton of other people, but not everyone was happy with the way Superman was represented on screen. Of course with 75 years of different writers, artists, comic books, TV series, and movies there’s bound to be some discrepancies, but when does it become too far removed that it no longer resembles what the original character is supposed to represent? Personally, I’m on the side that is much more forgiving of liberties with the character. In music, I’m a big fan of remixes and mash ups, and in a way I think this translates to some of these characters. I like both the Sam Raimi and Mark Webb Spider-Man movies for different reasons, just how I like both the original Christopher Reeve Superman as well as Dean Cain’s Lois and Clark, Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel, Tom Welling’s Smallville, and several of the various animated incarnations. They are all very different from each other even though they are essentially the same character.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 