Blog Archives
June-ing the Cult: Silver Emulsion and 3 Dev Adam
3 Dev Adam aka 3 Giant Men 1973
We’re halfway through this trip across a handful of cult superhero movies thanks to several of my cult blogging friends. Throughout the month of June, I’ve asked several bloggers that I know who often tackle their own fair share of obscure and cult films and asked them to each choose a superhero movie for me to check out and review. Thanks to Will from Silver Emulsion for picking today’s movie, if you go visit his site make sure to check out his thoughts on every Superman movie made, including many foreign knock-offs, including Turkish Superman.
Justice League of America
Justice League of America 1997
While I’ve delved through the entire depths of the Marvel film catalogue including their awful TV movie roots, I have yet to do the same for DC. I have seen nearly all of their films, but there are a handful of early animated movies from the 90’s and a couple TV movies including this one that was initially intended to be the pilot of a new TV series coming hot off the heels of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. But they also took a page out of the popularity of MTV’s the Real World which would have been on season 4 or 5 when this went into production and also would be near the height of the show’s popularity. So this show combines the superheroics with the daily life of the heroes alongside several “confessional” segments where the heroes talk directly to the TV audience. It’s bizarre how this managed to even make it to the pilot movie stage, the costumes and effects were lackluster, the characters were unlikable and barely resembled their comic book counterparts, and overall it feels roughly five years behind even 1997.
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The Spirit
The Spirit 1987
To go along with the other cult movies that other bloggers have picked out for me, I thought I’d follow along with some cult films of my own choosing. I have no idea whether or not this really counts as much of a cult film, though I have heard from at least two people who have seen this and thought it was much better than the theatrical Frank Miller version. This was made in the mid-Eighties with Sam J. Jones as the lead, better known as Flash Gordon himself. It also had Nana Visitor as his love interest who I was familiar with as Major Kira on Star Trek: Deep Space 9. But most of all, this pilot movie was extremely 80’s. From the music to the cheap sets to the power suits and cassette walkmen, it was very much steeped in the 80’s and for that reason alone, I had a lot of fun watching this. Most of it is even set up to have much more of a comedy feel than an action/detective vibe. It was as close to Adam West’s Batman with a bit more 80’s sensibilities than you could ever get.
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Superhero Podcast Review: Meanwhile…
Round three of my current project of superhero podcast reviews where I’m taking a closer look at some of the many superhero and comic book movie podcasts out there and seeing how they align with my own tastes. I’m still going with my regular listens though this time it’s a much more recent show having debuted within this past year. I generally listen to a lot of different podcasts, mainly indie movie podcasts, but I’m always looking to grow my subscription list so if you have or know of a superhero-focused podcast, primarily on the movie side of things, give me a shout in the comments or on Twitter so I can make it a future review.
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June-ing the Cult: Tars Tarkas and the Golden Bat
Ôgon Batto aka The Golden Bat 1966
Throughout the month of June, I’m taking a look at some of the more obscure and foreign cult superhero films with the help of some of my favorite bloggers who have seen plenty of cult films of their own. I’m a day late but still here for this week’s June-ing the cult where I’m taking a look at one of the first Japanese superhero movies from a blogger who has seen quite a few older superhero films himself. And so here’s Tars Tarkas who chose the Golden Bat.
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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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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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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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 