Blog Archives
The Crow: Salvation
The Crow: Salvation 2000
I’ve had my share of ups and downs with the Crow series, the first one is one of my all time favorite films and I never bothered with any of the sequels until starting this site. Not only that, but it’s taken four years before I finally got to the final entry in the franchise. Well final for me since it’s technically the third one released, it’s not like they’re interconnected at all, and there’s the ever present possibility of another film in the near future even if it’s been in development hell for years now. But back to the film itself, it was a bit of a pleasant surprise. For what it’s worth, this is definitely the second best film in the Crow franchise, unfortunately there’s still a pretty wide gap between this film and the first one.
Barbarella
Barbarella 1968
I had heard a little bit about this film and always had in the back of my mind that it was based on a comic book but for some reason it hadn’t made it to my master list before now. But this month I was granted a new free trial of Netflix and went through all of their superhero and comic book offerings and came up with a list of eight films to try and watch during this month. For whatever reason, this was the first film that I decided to check out from that list, I guess I was in the mood for a cheesy sci-fi movie, and while I knew it was going to be somewhat of a sex romp, I was still a little surprised at how much nudity and sexuality came through in this film even though much of it was edited out during some theatrical releases of the film in the US. Barbarella originally started out as a comic strip in a French magazine before being collected in a series of graphic novels and eventually translated into English. It even ran in Heavy Metal magazine. As for the movie, it’s generally notable as it stars Jane Fonda but is basically a B-movie sci-fi film with a mix of sex and adventure.
Alter Egos
Alter Egos 2012
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to watching a proper superhero movie to review here, I’ve been busy with Channel: Superhero as usual as well as work stuff. But I finally caught up with this film that I had heard of back when it got picked up by Kevin Smith for his new SModcast pictures presents which was quickly renamed to the Kevin Smith movie club where it ran for three years until 2013. I had no idea what the movie was actually about aside from the catch phrase “Alter Egos” and honestly thought it had more to do with the real life superheroes that these lower budget indie superhero flicks tend to move towards. But instead, it has built a world all its own and it only focuses on a small portion of that world. It has a fair amount of humor, and uses the minimal special effects to the film’s advantage to craft an all around entertaining movie. I really enjoyed this look at the struggles of a superhero’s persona with the hints of the larger world revolving around it.
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FTMN Quickie: Punisher Extended Cut
Punisher: Extended Cut 2004
Often there aren’t very many differences between an extended cut of a film and the theatrical edition. Often it’s just a scene or two, or a couple extra shots before or after certain scenes. And once in a while there’s a film that has some drastic differences between the theatrical cut and the director’s or extended cut like with Superman II or Daredevil. This falls somewhere inbetween those two. There is enough of a difference that I felt like I should comment on it, but there’s not enough of a difference to write a completely new review for the whole film, so instead I decided to just do a little quickie review of the Extended edition of the Thomas Jane Punisher film from 2004. If you would like to read my full thoughts on the theatrical version of the film, read here.
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Graphic Horror: From Hell
From Hell 2001
Next up on the chopping block is the first of many Alan Moore adaptations, though I have covered most of the later ones already here. This is a fictionalized account of the Jack the Ripper murders in the late 1800’s in London’s East End. I will say that one thing this film did do for me is renew my interest in the actual Jack the Ripper case, at least for a few hours of Wikipedia and Google video searching. I find it interesting that last year or so there was someone who claimed to have used DNA evidence to “solve” the murder, and yet none of that was enough to make it into the Wikipedia pages a year later. The film is more of a thriller mystery with Johnny Depp put center stage with his slightly eccentric character, though much more dialed back than most of his characters in recent years post Jack Sparrow. I had heard mixed things about this adaptation, and I fall on the line that I thought it was greatly dumbed down for audiences even though I have no experience with the comic, but I was intrigued by the mystery slightly. And since this is a mystery film I will give warning that I will be discussing the killer as presented in this film in case you would rather watch the film and be surprised.
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Graphic Horror: Creepshow
Creepshow 1982
One thing that I’ve been a big fan of for quite a while is the TV show Tales From the Crypt, and before that show existed it was a series of several different comic books from EC comics under titles like Shock Suspenstories, the Vault of Horror, and Weird Science. This film was made as an homage to those comics combined with the short stories of Stephen King. Last March during my first Graphic Horror Blogathon Jason Soto over at Your Face! reviewed this film and put it on my radar, but it’s taken me this long to finally get around to it. Another reason why I wanted to watch this is because Movie Reviews 101 and Movie Rob are holding a Stephen King-a-thon all this month so be sure and check out all of their Stephen King reviews while you’re at it. As far as the movie goes, it’s not quite on par with Tales From the Crypt for me, it’s much more on the comedic side of things than the horror side and that didn’t quite work for me though I could see the appeal of it.
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Graphic Horror: The Monster of Frankenstein
The Monster of Frankenstein aka Kyōfu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein 1981
Another day, another obscure Marvel anime released by Toei in the early 80’s. This was produced just one year after their Tomb of Dracula adaptation, this time they adapted yet another Marvel adaptation of a classic horror icon with Frankenstein. There were a couple things that I noticed very early on when comparing the two films, first is that many of the American dub voice actors would later go on to lend their voices to the iconic original dub of Akira. And second, that this was a much better film overall than Dracula. It’s still a long ways away from being a good movie, but it’s not the hilariously bad mess that Dracula was. This was a very serious and somber look at the tale of Frankenstein with a combination of some unique ideas as well as some of the standard ones. For the most part, I did enjoy it even if I knew how it was going to end up.
Graphic Horror: Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned
Yami no teiô kyuketsuki dorakyura aka Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned 1980
It’s October and I’m kicking it off with my first Graphic Horror post for the month. After Marvel had a string of failures in their TV movies in the late 70’s and their one success with the Incredible Hulk, they also sold the rights to some of their other comics including their Frankenstein series and the Tomb of Dracula which introduced Blade to Toei Animation. Toei is probably most well known for being the studio behind Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon, but before either of them came this cheaply animated made-for-TV film. It was later dubbed and released in the US in VHS and Beta but has since gone out of print and isn’t available on DVD, though copies have made their way online. I of course watched the English dub and found it hilariously awful. There is so much going on in this film and very little of it makes any sense that it’s amazing to watch. I found myself laughing uproariously through much of the run time even though I did have to split my viewing across two nights.
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Buckaroo Banzai
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension 1984
I don’t often spend a lot of time thinking about my criteria for what makes a superhero movie vs. some other category of film similar to a superhero movie. Like the difference between a superhero movie and a straight up sci-fi movie, or a cop vigilante film, or a martial arts film. I have thought about it in the past, enough to come up with a specific set of criteria that still allows for enough wiggle room for my personal preference to come into play. No matter what anyone tells me, I don’t think I’m ever going to be convinced that Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies is actually a superhero movie because there’s no way I’m going to actually watch it. Looking specifically at this film based on my criteria: it wasn’t based on a comic book but it did have a comic book published to tie in with the film’s release. He doesn’t have any superpowers, but he is a neurosurgeon, particle physicist, rock star, action hero, and gains the ability to see camouflaged aliens and shock Penny back to life. He doesn’t have a secret identity, but his name is Buckaroo Banzai for goodness sake. And when you look at his supervillain for lack of a better word, he is very much over the top and highly theatrical in nature, and his defeat does in fact, save the world.
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Gen 13
Gen13 2000
Most superhero movie fans are aware of the unreleased Fantastic Four movie made in the mid 90’s in order for the company to retain the rights to the characters for a few more years. That wasn’t the only unreleased comic book movie to exist, just likely one of the most well known. The Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie was also mostly unreleased as it never came out in theaters, but eventually had a home video release in the US. Gen 13 has never officially been released in the US to date for a very different reason. Gen13 was a comic book initially published by WildStorm comics which was a part of Image comics. The film was produced in part by Buena Vista Pictures, owned by Disney set for a 2000 release date on home video. By the time this film was nearly completed, WildStorm comics was struggling and was sold to DC comics which is owned by Warner Bros. As a result, this film was shelved in the US and only released in a handful of other countries through Paramount Pictures as the distribution company. Which is a bit of a shame because while I didn’t fall head over heels for this film, it’s something that could have had a niche audience and it deserves that at least. Since it was unreleased in the US, it wasn’t rated by the MPAA, but if it was I imagine it would have to have at least a couple minor cuts in order to get a PG-13 rating. There is a bit of non-sexual nudity along with plenty of blood but no gore. But as for the origin story it tells, it’s just above average.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 