Batman: Mask of the Phantasm 1993

This is one of the very few superhero movies left that I had not yet seen before that I really felt like I was missing out on an important and/or great movie. There’s still plenty out there for me to watch, but most of the rest of them are more obscure and/or pretty bad. When I ask the question “What’s your favorite superhero movie?” this movie has come up on more than one occasion so it’s got to be a pretty good movie, and it’s more or less a spin-off of the amazing 90’s Batman: The Animated Series which I watched and loved back when it was coming out with new episodes, and I’ve also seen and enjoyed every one of DC Animation’s home video Batman movies so I was looking forward to finally watching this one and I’m pleased to say that for the most part it didn’t disappoint. My only qualms come from the fact that I did watch this one out of chronological order and so many story elements that were used in this movie were done as well if not better in later movies that I was already familiar with. But aside from that, it was great to finally see this movie and the nostalgia from the animation and music style from the animated series.

One of the things that I noticed quite a bit about this movie is how several other movies and comic book arcs borrow from parts of the storyline. The main aspect of the plot revolves around a new vigilante known as the Phantasm who comes into Gotham delivering vigilante justice, but instead of incapacitating them and leaving them for the authorities like Batman does, he goes one step further and flat out kills them, something that seems to have popped up a few other times in the Batman mythology, most notably with the Red Hood. There’s also a part of the story which revolves around a woman in Bruce Wayne’s life that actually made him happy enough to consider giving up his role as Batman, though most of the relationship is told through flashbacks back when he was first translating his sense of justice into becoming the Batman. This popped up in my experience again with Kevin Smith’s Cacophony and the Widening Gyre. And yet another story element where Batman is being targeted as a criminal by the Gotham PD happens in The Dark Knight Returns. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Batman story without having the Joker involved in some way, shape, or form.

The voice acting is the usually high standard coming off of the animated series with Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman and Mark Hamill playing the Joker, and no other real names in the cast list outside of the voice acting community. The animation is also something that I quite enjoyed seeing the style from the classic series while still having moments of higher production values that come with a feature length movie. The Joker was given a bit of a new origin story even though it was mostly just hinted at through flashback in this story. This movie also takes a brief look at Batman’s own origin story as well as he remembers his time with Andrea Beaumont with flashbacks of him taking on criminals for the first time as well as his inspiration for the Batman costume and persona.

There’s also a bit of a twist in the plot concerning who the Phantasm actually is, though it’s not too hard to guess in my opinion. But it doesn’t really detract from the overall story. It still sets up a compelling mystery surrounding Andrea’s return to Gotham, her father and his dealings with the criminal underground, and the District Attorney who is vying for a more prominent position while still having ties to the same criminal underground as he used to work for Andrea’s father. And of course it all comes around to a big showdown with the Joker in an old, abandoned theme park of “the future” which is definitely one of the highlights of the movie especially when it comes to hearing Mark Hamill’s Joker. It ties all these elements together to create a well crafted story that’s on par, if not better, than any of the stories from the animated series and it holds up just as well to many of the DC Animation movies that have come out in recent years with darker storylines and similar budgets. I think it suffers a bit for me just because I have seen many of these story elements used in other Batman stories, but they still work together very well here. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Orgazmo 1997

This is one of the very few movies that I included in my 100 Essential Superhero Movies that I hadn’t seen before, but enough people voted for it in the poll that I included it sight unseen. It came from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creative types behind the juggernaut that is South Park which I was a fan of. I say was not because I no longer like it, but I just haven’t watched it in years. So with the recommendation of my readers and my enjoyment of South Park I went in expecting to really enjoy this movie. Unfortunately, most of the comedy did not make me laugh at all, and when you take the humor away from this movie, there’s not a whole lot left to grasp onto. Not to mention that it’s a somewhat of a movie about the porn industry without any female nudity aside from the occasional sideboob though I suppose that’s supposed to be part of the joke and I knew about that wrinkle going into the movie as well. And underlying the plot line about this clean cut Mormon entering into the seedy porn underworld is the side story about him actually becoming this crimefighter Orgazmo. It just never added up for me.

The funny thing is that this movie started out on a high note when it showed an establishing shot of Hollywood using the Hollywood sign which it then undercut with the text labeling it “Hollywood” which ended up being my favorite joke in the whole movie unfortunately. It then follows a couple Mormons, one played by Trey Parker who get accosted in various ways as they go door to door before winding up at the home of porn producer/director Maxx Orbison who is in the middle of filming what would now be referred to as a porn parody of a superhero film. What follows is essentially Parker’s descent into the seedy world of porn while still trying to cling onto his squeaky clean Mormon ideals and fiancee back in Utah. Meanwhile, he becomes friends with his on-set sidekick Choda Boy aka Ben who is also a PhD and accomplished inventor and martial artist. There’s also his favorite sushi restaurant run by an awkwardly jive-talking Asian calling himself G-Fresh which is getting muscled out by the dance club next door as an obvious hook to be followed up by the two porn superheroes. It’s no surprise to find out that Orbison is ultimately behind it all as Parker feels more and more trapped with his choice to do porn in the first place.

“Hollywood”

This movie feels like it’s caught between a few different ideas. It’s a parody of the porn industry, with the requisite bad acting when they’re reciting lines for the porn movie within the movie, the bubble-headed female porn stars and the brainless, testosterone fueled male porn stars, and Ron Jeremy. It’s a little surprising that there wasn’t any mentions of drug use alongside all the other stereotypes. But aside from the porn industry jokes, there’s also a superhero parody strung along with it, as Ben is also an accomplished inventor and creates the fake gadgets used in the porn movie for real at his home, including the Orgazmotron which is an arm-mounted laser which causes the victim to experience an immediate and powerful orgasm. And of course, both Ben and Parker are accomplished martial artists, though Ben hints early on in their relationship that he gave up his hamster style long ago in a most obvious set up ever.

One of my biggest problems with this movie is that most of the jokes come with an extremely obvious set up, like the hamster style joke, or the fact that Parker thinks that no one will see this Orgazmo movie and yet it becomes a crossover hit and becomes the third highest grossing film of all time next to Star Wars and E.T. which was something that is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it made me annoyed instead of making me laugh, especially since it wasn’t done in service of the comedy, but because it needed to happen to further the rest of the plot. The entire G-Fresh side story also bothered me because the majority of the joke was based around an Asian man badly adopting hip-hop culture while also creating another obvious set up as a catalyst for Parker to become his porn superhero in real life. There was also the completely unnecessary scene with the extremely obese porn star wearing practically nothing whose voice was dubbed over by Parker or Stone doing one of their South Park mocking voices. It wasn’t “hilariously outrageous” as it seemed to be intended, it was just mean-spirited. It also annoyed me that any time a porn scene would start, it would cue the overly generic porn music that was exactly the same music in every single cue. The one high point for me was Matt Stone who played Dave the Lighting Guy with a weird fro/mullet, a clueless expression plastered on his face, and unending optimism. But that character was also marred by a repeated and borderline mean-spirited joke of “I don’t want to sound queer but…” followed by statements that become more and more homosexual in nature.

On set with Orgazmo.

I feel like I’m often one who champions these low budget, campy superhero movies that have some obvious flaws, but are charming in their own ways, and this movie definitely fits that criteria. It also comes from filmmakers whose work I have enjoyed in the past with the early seasons of South Park, including the movie and Team America: World Police. And I can understand that many people have and will find the charm and humor in this movie, but it just didn’t work for me. I laughed in a couple places, I smiled in others, another favorite line of mine is when Parker is having an argument with his Mormon fiancee and as she’s leaving he yells “Don’t quote Dickens in my house!” I’m not about to go and remove this film from my 100 Essential Superhero Movies list, but I will admit that it just wasn’t for me. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

*poster art from a stage musical production of Orgazmo at Theater Jugend in Buffalo, NY.

The Iron Giant 1999

I don’t remember the first time I found out about the Iron Giant. I know it wasn’t in theaters, I wasn’t one of those lucky few that caught it during its brief and relatively unsuccessful theatrical run. I don’t remember if I went back to it after watching Brad Bird’s later feature the Incredibles or if I just happened across it on TV or a random video rental trip. I always thought it was an interesting look that called up the retro 50’s style and the film itself is actually set during that time as well. It was also a movie that I didn’t initially consider as a superhero movie, but when I did my final poll for the 100 Essential Superhero Movies I included it and it nabbed the second spot, which is likely more a testament to the quality of the movie than to its place as a superhero movie. There are definitely superhero elements; this is an origin story of sorts, the Iron Giant himself has more than enough super powers, and at the end of the day he uses Superman himself as inspiration to save an entire town. I will do my best for this to not just be a gush fest, but it will be tough as this is one of my favorite movies and it’s a shame that it has taken me this long to get around to reviewing it here.

The movie essentially follows the precocious Dennis the Menace type of kid named Hogarth Hughes. He’s got the requisite high pitched voice with a hint of a squeak to it, and he inadvertently causes trouble no matter how good his intentions are. This is obvious with the first introduction where he is trying to convince his single mother to let him keep what is obviously the latest in a long line of inappropriate “pets”. In this case, it’s a squirrel which turns into a moment of slapstick to also introduce Dean, voiced by Harry Connick Jr. Once Hogarth eventually finds and befriends the Iron Giant, he quite predictably starts to treat the giant like yet another one of his “pets”, including a great moment where he tries to convince the giant to stay while Hogarth goes home. Invariably, the giant either can’t understand or doesn’t wish to comply and instead continues to follow Hogarth home.

There are several of these motifs that are foreshadowed early on in the movie only to pay off in the third act. I quite enjoyed the comic books early on, especially since this is Warner Bros who own the rights to DC comics and so were able to actually show an Action Comics with Superman on the cover instead of some generic superhero. I don’t think the emotional impact at the end of the movie when the Iron Giant finally declares himself to be a hero would have been as great if he had called himself “Hero Guy” or something similar. It carries that weight and the emotional resonance because the viewer brings all that knowledge of Superman and what he represents, and when the Giant finally declares himself to be “Superman” as he goes on to sacrifice himself for the good of the town and especially Hogarth, it hits home hard. There’s also the great thread about how he was quite possibly intended as a weapon, but when he sees what guns do to living things through a scene involving a deer and a pair of hunters he learns that guns are bad. This comes up later as he is protecting Hogarth from the army that is attacking him, but he insists that he is “not a gun”.

It’s unclear what the Iron Giant’s origins are, or his motivations, his intentions, or anything for that matter. He is this unexplained entity from another planet and the only thing known about him is eventually that he can be used as a powerful weapon. Instead, when he is first exploring his surroundings, he gets tangled in some power lines which somehow cause a glitch in his programming to where he essentially loses any memory of his mission. But he is still able to learn and so he becomes this alien blank slate that learns from the innocent Hogarth as well as the free spirited Dean to a lesser extent. And while both of those character do use the giant for their own ends, they also think of him as an independent soul, bringing home one of the other great lines of the movie, which has also been used in many other places to great effect “You are who you choose to be”. Even though the giant may have been programmed to be this extraterrestrial weapon of mass destruction, circumstances have given him the ability of free will. This allows him the opportunity to go against what he was designed to do and become his own entity.

Of course, this wouldn’t be considered a superhero movie if there wasn’t a villain. And this movie has one of the more interesting villains out there. Agent Mansley feels like some type of mix between Agents Mulder and Scully. He’s a member of the paranormal research division of the government, but he doesn’t really take his job seriously and is ready to move onto the next job. But when he realizes that there really is something to be discovered on this job, he desperately wants to use it to further his own career. Not only that, but there’s also a heavy threat of the Red Scare which makes sense as this is set in the aftermath of World War II. While he thinks that he’s doing the right thing, he is doing it for extremely selfish reasons. At first, he feels like a very impotent villain that’s much more a source of comic relief rather than being a serious threat. That all changes as the movie leads up to the third act as Mansley finally gets proof in the form of a photograph of the giant taken unintentionally by Hogarth from the beginning of the movie. It is an excellent moment of Chekov’s gun which is used quite often and quite cleverly throughout the movie. Mansley interrogates Hogarth and gets the information out of him after using the threat of being taken away from his mother. He then proceeds to drug Hogarth and place him back in his bed to try and convince him that it was all a dream and never actually happened. His villainy continues to grow as he is initially thwarted when Dean and Hogarth make the giant look like one of Dean’s scrap art projects. In return, Mansley ignores the fact that the giant is protecting Hogarth and insists that the army destroy it by any means possible, culminating in him giving the final order to fire the nuclear strike on the giant as it remains in the center of town.

There is so much to enjoy about this movie I could go on for pages about this movie. While there are many serious and intelligent concepts presented throughout the movie, it is still a children’s movie at heart. From beginning to end there are many moments of great humor that the entire family can enjoy. The squirrel scene from the beginning gives the movie a great start, and it continues with the hilarious moments when the giant’s hand is exploring Hogarth’s house like one of his escaped pets. Dean’s reaction to the giant is also very funny, especially the moment when he goes back into his house followed by the title card “37 minutes later”. Even the one moment of bathroom humor is used to good effect, reminding viewers that Hogarth is still a child and is prone to do childish things like slipping Mansley some laxative chocolate. I love this movie, Jena loved this movie, my wife loved the movie. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and check it out regardless of your age. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

*Poster art by Felix Roos

Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood 1996

Even though I haven’t managed to catch as many horror movies this month as I would have liked to, since I am going through several seasons of the Tales From the Crypt television show I thought it was only fitting to finish out watching the final movie. Even though it’s actually the second movie that was released just a year after Demon Knight, it even features the return of a couple elements from Demon Knight including the key and William Sadler, though the latter returned covered in mummy wraps to talk with the Cryptkeeper. Out of the three movies, this one is definitely the most comedic as noted by fact that it stars Dennis Miller. It also has the most nudity of the three as there are several scenes that take place within the bordello even though they are all vampire women, they are often mostly naked vampire women. And even though I hadn’t seen this film probably since it first came out on home video/aired on cable I still remembered the final twist so that wasn’t a surprise.

The opening scene of this movie was a bit of a surprise. It doesn’t start out specifically with the Cryptkeeper, but instead it’s more of a cold open, setting up the vampire lore part of the movie right away with a touch of an Indiana Jones vibe to it. Phil Fondacaro plays the tomb raider when they find the desiccated corpse who we later find out to be Lilith, he then puts this heart back together and back in her body where we get the most impressive scene in the movie where she starts to become slightly less corpselike. Something that I had forgotten about with this movie is that after the cold open and the Cryptkeeper intro, it starts out with Corey Feldman playing a punk kid. Technically a young adult as he spends his time in a bar, but you get the idea. This gets to one of the first problems that Ritual also had, there are way too many openings before we get to the real heart of the movie. There’s Lilith’s intro, the Cryptkeeper’s intro, Feldman’s intro, before finally getting to Dennis Miller’s intro. And besides that, there’s also the weird side story involving the televangelist who is connected to the whole thing in way too many ways.

Aside from the typical vampire mythos, this movie does take a slightly different spin on it. Lilith creates only women vampires and feeds on only men, and when she feeds she doesn’t just drink their blood, but she literally eats their hearts. Aside from those changes, they also have the same typical weaknesses of sunlight, holy water, and crosses, and they can’t be seen in reflections or recordings. Though Lilith herself as the head vampire needs a little bit more than those to completely destroy her. Even though I haven’t seen it in ages, it does have a bit of a Dusk Till Dawn vibe to it, though this is much more tongue in cheek. There is also the matter of the key that for some reason holds control over Lilith in a way that they never really explain, nor do they explain how or why the televangelist is the one who is holding onto it aside from him mentioning that she is busy destroying the sinners.

Humor is what really drives this movie, there’s the dimwitted sheriff that’s too busy pointing out that Miller’s private detective license has expired to care about the dozens of missing persons reports in the town. There’s even a bit of meta humor when Miller realizes that they are dealing with vampires and not just a psycho killer and at one point he quips that “it feels like we’re in a Tales From the Crypt Episode”. The humor was hit or miss with me, it was also rather nostalgic to hear him refer to the supernatural nature of their situation as “Duchovnian” likely referring to the X-Files David Duchovny. There’s also something just a little silly when you get to see Dennis Miller: Vampire Hunter armed with a super soaker full of holy water. Also fun fact, this came out the same year as From Dusk Till Dawn which also had a scene where they attack vampires with a super soaker filled with holy water.

The biggest downfall of this movie is that there were too many characters that didn’t get enough development and too many subplots that weren’t given enough time. There were so many characters, and none of them worked as comic relief, nor did they really help further the plot for the most part. I never understood exactly what part the televangelist played. He wasn’t very funny, he controlled the key but it never made sense as to why he had it, and when he finally lost the key and turned against the vampires, he wasn’t much use. The one part that I did enjoy about the movie was the twist at the very end, even though as I mentioned it was one of the few things that I did actually remember from my first viewing of the movie way back when. There was one issue that I noticed, after Catherine was bitten, she showed up on the monitors at the televangelist’s recording stage, but if she had been turned into a vampire at that point, then she wouldn’t have a reflection or show up on recording devices. The argument could be made that she just hadn’t fully turned at that point, but there’s also the question of the typical lore that states when the head vampire is defeated, the others are defeated as well. Or if they aren’t full fledged vampires, they become cured. Either way, it’s a fun twist and also a nice epilogue with the Cryptkeeper and the mummy which I’d like to think is a callback to one of the television episodes, Cutting Cards from the second season. In the end, the movie was generally enjoyable, but there was nothing that stood out as being anything better than any episode of the television show. It’s not quite at the level of a cult movie to watch for its ridiculousness, but there are some fun moments to be had. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Guyver 1991

I was always a relatively big fan of anime. I watched a lot of the anime films shown on cable in the 90’s as well as the cartoons and shows inspired by anime and Japanese shows. This movie reminded me a lot of those types of kids shows with a mix of Ultraman, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and whatever else got in the mix. It also has a couple icons of TV and cinema, albeit for completely different reasons, as well as a small stable of horror regulars from both behind the camera and in front. The one thing this movie does well is a large number of creature effects including a small handful of amazing transformation. On the other hand, even though there are a few noted actors, there are plenty of amateurs and it definitely shows. There’s not a Troll 2 or the Room level of bad acting, but no one is winning any awards for their delivery here. There’s an overly complicated setup that makes very little sense when you get right down to it, and yet the whole thing is more or less supposed to be a comedy. While it did make me laugh out loud a small handful of times, it was often for the wrong reasons.

The general setup is one that should be pretty familiar. A teenager finds a mysterious object that turns him into a superhuman and put him in the middle of a plot to take over the world which he must now stop. This time around, it’s a “unit” that turns a human into the Guyver. And the villains are this corporation called Chronos which is run by a bunch of alien/human hybrids who are essentially were-creatures with a very generic “take over the world” plot. A “plot” which somehow involves the “unit” though there is no explanation outside of the initial text crawl at the beginning of the movie. It’s almost amazing how such a seemingly simple plot can end up making absolutely no sense in the end. I’m still not quite sure what the Zoanoids are. Are they part of an ancient alien race, or are they genetically altered humans using alien DNA, or are they something else completely? And the description of the Guyver “unit” makes no sense either, it’s described as being a shield when used by a Zoanoid, but when used by a human turns him into a superhero. And for some reason, none of the Zoanoids know how to activate the “unit” even though they apparently have had it for years and never tried hitting their head on it. Since that is apparently the only thing that the teenager does in order to have the “unit” attach itself to him and turn him into the Guyver.

It’s actually fairly difficult to review this movie with any accuracy. There is little to no depth to the plot or the characters, and the comedy is extremely corny. What this movie really feels like is an hour and a half showcase for creature makeup and special effects, especially owing to the fact that the directors are better known for their special effects work on other movies. There are about a dozen different Zoanoids which are all done with great detail as full body suits along with a few transformation scenes that are generally well done for the era. The Guyver suit is obviously the standout with all its moving parts, and it looks just like the manga come to life, at least from what little I’ve seen of it. There are also a couple great scenes of PG-13 gore, once when the Guyver essentially melts, and the other one where Mark Hamill has a very The Thing inspired death scene which looks absolutely amazing. Unfortunately the other Zoanoids don’t come off quite as well. The alien played by Jimmy Walker looks like a twisted cross between Jar Jar Binks and a Gremlin while the others look like fairly unspecific random alien creatures. One is lizardlike, one is fishlike, and another is more beastlike. And to top it all off, when the Zoalord finally reveals his alien form, it’s a giant, stop-motion animated creature that looks far worse than anything that had been shown previously.

It is somewhat surprising to find out that this movie is labelled as a comedy, and not just an unintentional comedy that comes from bad movies along this vein solely due to the poor acting. Most of the comedy comes from Jimmy Walker being typcast as his old sitcom personality, only as a jive talking zoanoid. Though he does manage to get the final line of the film, “dynomite”. There are some nice little background gags, like how the Zoanoids bring what they think is the case holding the “unit” to the Zoalord and it turns out to have been swapped for an old toaster. But then a couple scenes later when it cuts back to the Zoalord, the toaster is seen in the background setting a couple pieces of toast on fire. The rest of the humor basically boils down to bad acting and some just plain weird moments. Like when the flock of bullies descends upon Sean just before he activates the Guyver “unit” which includes his sparring partner from the martial arts class in the earlier scene. Overall, there’s not a whole lot to recommend in this movie aside from a few impressive special effects alongside dozens of mediocre ones, and Mark Hamill with a pedostash playing a streetwise detective, or at least a B-movie version of one. As far as bad movies go, I’ve seen a lot worse, and I’ve seen a lot more entertainingly bad ones. It just falls somewhere in the middle of the bad movie spectrum. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Guyver: Dark Hero 1994

After watching the first Guyver movie and seeing how campy it was, I was very curious to see how the follow up would be considering that it is one of the very rare cases where it goes from PG-13 to R instead of vice-versa and completely loses the comedy angle. Unfortunately, when you take out the comedy angle of the Guyver, what’s left is the same amount of poor acting but without nearly as much camp to make it as enjoyable as it was. There is still some laughs to be had at the cheesiness of it all, but it ends up being a lot more boring than the first one and the small handful of really interesting practical special effects have been replaced with really crappy looking first generation digital effects. It aims at being a more serious story, and yet it also tosses in a large number of cliched and soap opera-ish plotlines that don’t make it any more interesting. Which is disappointing, because there is the seed of a good story that could be told within all of this greater mythology, it’s just being presented in one of the poorest ways possible.

It’s been one year since the events in the first movie and in that time, every actor has changed. Well, technically both actors as the only two characters returning from the first movie are Sean and Mizky, and Sean leaves Mizki in no short order after the opening scene where he kills a group of the shapeshifting aliens called Zoanoids. Which is in complete contrast to what he says later in the movie when he says that he destroyed the Chronos corporation and is surprised that there are still Zoanoids around. Sean also seems to think that the Guyver has a mind of its own and is at least partly controlling his actions when fighting the Zoanoids, as he claims that the suit is the one killing the alien hybrids. And on top of that, he’s been having dreams and sketching on what looks like his 5th grade notebook based on the quality of the doodles. The sketches apparently have to do with a report he sees on TV which makes no sense because he is not only able to pause it complete with VCR static, but it seems to be the equivalent of a local news program several states away. There’s an archaeological dig which he makes his way into through a future love interest while she is buying a likely product placed case of Bud Dry which gets more screentime than Mizki did. And of course, the dig is uncovering Zoanoid bones on the way to finding a spaceship with Guyver connections.

He was asked to draw what he had seen…

There is a relationship of sorts between Sean and the female archaeologist Cori, but it was one of those relationships that just consisted of Sean bugging her to tag along over and over until she eventually gives in. She spends most of her time caring more about her work until the Zoanoids show their true forms and she spends most of the rest of the time running in fear. There’s plenty of other melodramatic relationships here, as everything is always connected. Cori’s father is the head of the dig, and she also eventually finds out that he is a Zoanoid. Which honestly brings up another question that is never exactly answered as to how these Zoanoids end up having perfectly human children, as both the Mizki and Cori are perfectly human who have Zoanoid fathers. I think Sean just has a subconscious desire for Zoanoid kids. There’s also a government agent working undercover at the dig who knows about the Chronos corporation which is apparently a worldwide phenomenon and not just localized to LA as Sean previously thought. And of course, the whole dig is being funded by another member of the Chronos corporation who wants to use the Guyver technology for himself.

The Guyver’s ship, and Cori filming it.

One thing that can be appreciated about the first movie are the special effects. The Zoanoid and Guyver suits were all varying degrees of impressive and the sequel is on a similar level. The head Zoanoid has a great look to him with a lot of detail and movement, and even the one female Zoanoid has a nice look with a much more simple makeup. Even some of the set designs like the alien spaceship look quite well done. The problem is that in the three years since the first Guyver there had already been some advancement in digital effects and so they were used here instead of the exclusively practical effects. And low budget digital effects from this era really stand out as looking completely out of place here. One of the better effects was the initial Guyver transformation, but when that is transferred to a digital effect here, it looks completely ridiculous. There’s also a really weird choice with the sound design during the fights. While it is fairly common to integrate animal noises into sound effects, they are usually done through layering so the individual sound is no longer recognizable. Instead, the route this movie takes is to use a short, recognizable animal sound like a cat yowl or an elephant toot and use that exact same sound in place of a punch. It makes it sound like someone is just watching the scene with a sound effects board and they keep hitting the cat key over and over again alongside the jet engine and reverse jet engine. There’s even quite possibly a light saber sound effect at one point. All of this turned what was supposed to be a serious fight scene into an annoyance. Which is a shame, because the actual fight choreography is quite good and could have been more interesting if it wasn’t so distracted by the odd noises everything made. It had a few interesting moments where it tried to delve into some of the deeper backstory between the Zoanoids and the Guyver technology, but it was presented in such an uninteresting way that it was too late. There’s very little to recommend with this movie, though it is an interesting bit of trivia that the lead actor who played Sean went on to be a screenwriter for the first two X-Men movies, Watchmen, and the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear franchise. Which is honestly the most interesting thing about this movie. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Men in Black 1997

I’m down to the last few films left on my 100 Essential Superhero Movies list and the perfect excuse came for me to revisit the Men in Black trilogy when I was offered to guest on the As You Watch Podcast. Or you could say, offered to make my triumphant return considering that I am one of the founding members of the podcast. But as for the movie, I initially questioned whether or not to even classify Men in Black as a superhero movie vs. a comic book movie, considering the fact that it is based on an indie comic book that was later published under the Marvel label before the movie was made. It does follow enough of my own qualifications for me to include it: It’s set in the modern day, the heroes have superhuman abilities via the alien technology, they also have a costume of sorts, they also have a secret identity of sorts considering that they lose their normal identity when joining, and they are fighting something that is superhuman. I’m certain that I had seen this in theaters back when it was released and the song is ubiquitous with the movie as well. It was a lot of fun revisiting this film even though there were a few moments that definitely felt a bit dated this time around.

Besides following several of my qualifications for being a superhero movie, it also pretty much follows the typical superhero origin story. As Will Smith’s J performs an extraordinary act of catching an alien disguised as a human, he is noticed by the mentor figure K, played by Tommy Lee Jones. He is then brought into this somewhat parallel society within New York City inhabited by all sorts of extra terrestrials and agents with highly advanced technology. There’s also a bit of Alice in Wonderland as he essentially goes down the rabbit hole into the Men in Black Headquarters. There’s a great scene where J gets tested along with several other top candidates, where he shows his aptitude for parallel thinking when he pulls the table over to his chair, and when he shoots little Cindy during target practice. And all throughout, it’s peppered with great little moments of physical comedy and Will Smith’s charming personality. By the end of the movie, he has learned enough to become the hero he was born to be, or at least the agent. It more or less follows a by-the-numbers plot, but everything just works so well that it’s barely noticed.

Really, what works the best in this film is the chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as agents J and K. Jones is perfect at playing the straight-faced, straight man to Smith’s fast talking rookie. By the end of the film it feels like they have been working together for years rather than days. It’s also nicely bookended with the conversation about looking at the stars, really looking at them. They’re quite beautiful you know. It started out with K’s old partner, and when I say old I don’t just mean his previous partner. Where Tommy Lee Jones was definitely showing his age when compared to Will Smith, his partner in the opening scene was rather ancient.

Another great aspect of this film is the villain played by Vincent D’Onofrio. He’s an insectiod alien wearing a human skin suit whose previous owner was a redneck named Edgar, or as his wife seems to call him, “Eggar”. His performance really holds up alongside Smith and Jones as a great reason to watch this film. He has such an odd vocalization combined with an amazing physical performance that makes it slightly more believable that it is actually an alien wearing a human skin with all of his twitching and flailing, really selling the fact that he isn’t comfortable in his own skin. It’s also helped by great makeup effects where as the film progresses, his skin becomes more and more pallid as if it is decaying right on his body. The only downside is when he does finally rip off his skin to reveal the giant cockroach-like being hidden underneath, it turns into the rather dated 90’s CGI, and he no longer has any spoken lines afterwards.

While the film overall is still a great piece of work, not quite everything stands the test of time. One aspect that was enjoyable on a first watch was the little bit of a twist surrounding the MacGuffin of the galaxy that they are searching for. While it may have worked on the initial viewing, the fact that the galaxy is actually something that is very small doesn’t hold up as an intelligent twist, instead it makes the Men in Black themselves appear less knowledgeable about the universe around them. It seems unlikely that they would have all of this information about these alien races, but not know about tiny galaxies which apparently are a popular source of energy according to the film’s own dialogue. Not to mention that J was valued for the fact that he thinks outside of the box and yet it took him a large amount of time before he even thought about the cat. There are also a handful of jokes throughout the film that really felt dated, like pointing out that Dennis Rodman was an alien and the joke is that it isn’t a very good disguise.

This is one of my favorite films and I’m surprised that it has taken me so long to revisit it. Aside from a handful of pop culture references and a twist that now makes me cringe, it was so enjoyable to see the origins of agents J and K again. While the early CGI peppered throughout the film doesn’t hold up too well, there’s enough of a mix between CGI and practical effects that it’s not too distracting, and most of the time the CGI is supposed to look alien and unreal which helps sell the effect. There’s nothing new about the duo of the comedian and the straight man, but Smith and Jones work together so well that it’s a sight to behold and well worth watching again. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Virus 1999

Moving my way down in quality for this year’s Graphic Horror before hitting the planned high point at the end comes this lovely gem that came out the same year as the Matrix but with a wholly different interpretation of special effects. It actually started its life as a movie script, but was considered to be too special effects intensive at the time and so it was first made into a comic book from Dark Horse. John Bruno was cutting his teeth working on special effects under James Cameron before getting this film as a director, and unfortunately it really shows that he was more of a special effects guy than a full director. There are many issues with this film, but the special effects work really is not one of them. While there are a couple name actors with Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland, they are definitely not bringing their A games. It’s a horror film with a small cast that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a slow burn thriller, a gore fest, or a survival action film, and the blending of these genres do not work very well at all. It has some fun moments here and there, but for the most part, it’s a rather boring slog-fest.

The basic concept of the film is more or less an excuse to showcase some gory robot effects that feel like a cross between Hellraiser, the Borg, and 9. There’s this alien life form based on electricity that hits the Mir space station and is transmitted to a giant research ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The life form decides that the humans are essentially a virus that needs to be eliminated, but can also be used for spare parts to create these bio-electronic extensions of itself that look like Erector Set spider robots with bits of human flesh here and there. Meanwhile, Donald Sutherland and his crew are caught in a Typhoon where he loses his barge filled with uninsured cargo. Once they hit the eye of the storm, they manage to find the giant research ship that’s apparently abandoned and will fetch a mighty haul if salvaged.

The soothing blue tones of a homicidal alien life form.

One of the biggest problems with this film is the pacing. There is way too much set up everywhere, with the Russians at the beginning, to meeting the entire crew of the tug boat. It’s literally 55 minutes into the film before it gets to the first on screen death. Now in some cases, that would be a well paced slow burn that slowly builds the tension before finally bursting out with an on screen kill. But this is not that kind of movie, instead it spends more time trying to build the relationships between the characters, and there’s a hint of exploration and discovery rather than foreboding and danger when they get to the ship. Not to mention that all of the acting is flat combined with really poor dialogue. Donald Sutherland is supposed to be a desperate captain that has lost everything and has nothing to lose, but just comes off as a greedy opportunist. Jamie Lee Curtis is completely oversold as the righteous Ripley analogue who just wants to do the right thing and will obviously come out alive at the end. The rest of the crew are pretty much forgettable, though the token black guy has some great moments of comedy once the action finally starts happening in the third act.

The first great effect of the film.

What this film does have going for it are the special effects, while the early part of the film has several different erector-set looking spider robots that are obviously just basically slightly more advanced versions of remote controlled toys you could buy at Radio Shack. The main difference is that they aren’t remote controlled, but instead they have a large wire connected to the back of them. A wire that is actually explained as a part of the story. But as the film goes along, the creatures get larger and more elaborate, including a couple that use many parts from a couple of the crew members themselves. When it gets to what’s referred to as the Goliath creature, not only is it huge, but it’s effect is achieved through a variety of effects. It’s not only a giant animatronic controlled through puppetry, but there are moments where it moves way too fast and fluidly for it to have been done on-set. And the transition between the practical robot and the CGI-enhanced creature effects are more or less seamless. Not only that, but the designs of all the creatures and robots besides some of the smaller ones really are something to behold. It’s very reminiscent of the Borg, only much less humanoid in places and very gruesome.

Seriously, just look at the design on this thing. Shame it’s not used in a better film.

The actions of the alien life form itself make very little sense overall, or half of the crew for that matter. During one of the few interactions, it’s shown looking up words in a computer dictionary to show them what it means, and yet it somehow picks up the metaphorical terminology of the chess terms check and checkmate. While it does have a brief moment that shows them playing chess long distance between someone on the boat and someone on the space station, there is no point where it shows them playing it via a computer. The Russian captain who has been hiding out on the ship for a week has thermite grenades, which the crew mentions could burn a hole through the hull. And yet, she never used them to do exactly that and burn a hole through the hull and sink it in the middle of the ocean.

A page from the original comic.

Where the film does finally have a little bit of fun is when things get crazy in the third act. The black guy flips his lid and goes completely mental, he takes an arsenal of weapons with him, talks to himself, and just has a grand ol’ time. The film finally becomes a bit of a survival horror reminiscent of Aliens without any of the snappy dialogue which carries it through to the climax. There isn’t a whole lot to recommend in this film outside of a few character designs, the first half is a complete slog, but there is some fun to be had in the final act, along with some impressive moments of gore. But overall it’s just too ridiculous to be taken seriously, even the actors barely see fit to give it their best. Just skip this one. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Dr. Giggles 1992

It’s tough for me to decide which of the two recent films I watched are better: Virus or Dr. Giggles. I think I would give the edge to Virus, only slightly due to some of the innovative special effects. Dr. Giggles is very much just a standard psychopath killer horror movie overloaded with as many doctor puns as they could fit in. The most entertaining part of the film was picking out actors that I recognized from their later work, like Larry Drake who went on to play Durant in Darkman, Holly Marie Combs who played the sister no one remembers from Charmed, Doug E. Doug from Cool Runnings, and Glenn Quinn from Angel. It’s filled with plenty of horror tropes, some weird doctor-like contraptions, and not really much else in the way of plot or scares. It was produced in part by Dark Horse Entertainment and also had a tie-in two part comic book that came out right around the same time as the film.

The film starts out quickly enough with some pretty poor early 90’s CG of the inner workings of a person’s circulatory system before showing off Dr. Giggles himself in the middle of “surgery” in the middle of an operating theater. It’s very quickly revealed via dialogue from a random actual doctor that he is in an insane asylum, is very intelligent, and extremely psychotic. Cut to the extremely 90’s dressed “teenagers” and they’re very cliche talk about some random party and teenage lingo. Meanwhile Dr. Giggles comes back to his hometown and breaks into what we find out is his father’s old house slash office which is the local “haunted” house. He grabs some of the implements and goes around town, spouting doctor quips as he begins killing people.

Aside from the doctor motif, the film covers almost every single horror movie trope out there. Aside from the people at the asylum in the cold open as it were, it’s the black couple that die first out of the teenagers. Holly Marie Combs plays the final girl who is the only one seemingly above all of the teenage shenanigans, partly due to her heart condition which means that she’s not supposed to drink alcohol. There’s also the police force which completely ignores the warnings about the killer, accusing the kids of yanking their chains, aside from the one single rookie that does believe them and comes to help. There’s also more than one moment where you think Dr. Giggles is finally dead, but it turns out he really isn’t.

Sanka, you dead mon? Ya man!

One aspect of the film that could have been an interesting through line is the fact that Dr. Giggles’s mother died from a weak heart when he was young. And when he learns of the Final Girl’s heart condition he becomes obsessed with giving her a replacement heart just like his father did many years earlier. It’s never entirely clear if he is actually trying to perform a successful operation on her rather than the much more violent acts of surgery that he performs on the other townspeople. It would have almost made him a more sympathetic character if he had been allowed to give her the heart transplant, and when that was finished he would then try to do something more horrific before he gets stopped.

There’s also the occasional flashbacks to his childhood, via his own memories as well as a moment where one of the police officers recounts the tale along with the local children’s rhyme to the rookie cop. The rhyme is ok, but it’s not anything nearly as memorable as Nightmare on Elm Street’s “One, two, Freddie’s coming for you…”. There is a single truly disturbing moment during that flashback, when Dr. Giggles’s father finally gets captured, there is no sign of the son. But that police officer is the only one on duty and discovers that the son was sewn into the corpse of his own mother as he cuts his way out from the inside. While it doesn’t make any logical sense that a child would be able to fit, much less survive several hours sewn inside a corpse, the visuals to pull off this moment are incredibly gruesome and effective. If only the rest of the film could have lived up to that single moment.

There’s nothing spectacularly bad about this film aside from the dozens of groan inducing doctor quotes, like “if you think that’s bad, wait ’till you get my bill”. The one moment that was rather surprisingly funny is when he goes after the horny teenage couple. After the boy spends a ridiculous amount of time doing slapstick comedy trying to get a condom out of the toilet, he comes back to bed expecting his girlfriend, and instead finds Dr. Giggles under the covers who says “I hope you brought protection”. The best aspect of Larry Drake’s performance is the titular giggle which is surprisingly effective, and unfortunately underutilized. There just wasn’t enough to grasp onto in this film with lackluster characters, and a villain whose gag wears thin after the second kill. Not to mention how nearly every scene was backlit so brightly that it looked like the aliens were coming any minute. Really a poor entry in Dark Horse’s filmography. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Death of the Incredible Hulk 1990

As is usually the case, life tends to get in the way of plans. And while I was planning on moving on into some comic book adaptations that weren’t superhero movies, I have yet to watch any of those. And instead, I ended up watching this made for TV pseudo series finale for the old Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno for the return of Filmwhys here in a week or two. This film falls in a really weird space in time. It came out the year after Tim Burton’s Batman, but since it was still tied into the television series it retained all of the 70’s and 80’s style of special effects which make it look a lot more dated than a 1990 movie should look. And even though I haven’t watched the original episodes of the show, it really felt like just an extended episode with a tacked on ending to give it some finality.

The film starts off with David pretending to be a mentally challenged janitor in a high security tech lab where he sneaks back into each night and corrects the scientist’s formulas like a pre-Good Will Hunting. Alongside this there is a group of Russian whatevers trying to get the data from this research that is very loosely tied to the possibility of creating super soldiers. The “whatevers” is because it’s really unclear as to what their motivation as a villain is, they don’t seem to be spies, terrorists, or the mafia. They are just generic Russian villains who are after this tech because of reasons. Not only that, but the main agent they have going after this tech is a bit of a reluctant agent who ends up getting on the bad side of the other agents, and on the good side of David Banner.

One of the biggest issues is that the film is stuck using special effect techniques from the late 70’s. While a CGI or even stop motion Hulk would be improbable to use, these low budget techniques of just having the contact lenses, cutting to close up shots of clothes ripping, then cutting to Lou Ferrigno in his green glory is a bit of a cop out. Even the Flash TV show that was the very same year had better special effects than pretty much anything in this movie, from the animated force field and electricity to the breakaway brick walls which was pretty much it as far as effects even went. Obviously it would have been impossible to stray too far from what had already been done since it would take away from what the series had been to that point, but there could have been some attempt to put a better sheen on things.

As far as the concept of being a finale to the television show, there were several moments where it could have brought that about. First off is the possibility for a cure to his entire Hulk problem that also has a chance of death. That combined with the introduction of a love interest who has seen his condition and what it can do could have brought things to a happier and more satisfying conclusion. But instead the cure is interrupted and things eventually escalate to a shootout at a little airfield. The Hulk climbs aboard a miniplane and while being shot at turns the gun away which causes the entire airplane to explode. The Hulk “falls” in what is clearly just him lying on a black background while the camera either zooms in or zooms out in slow motion before he lands on the runway. The film closes on the touching moment of the Hulk lying on the ground lit by a helicopter spotlight while the people he had just met these past few days crowd around his body. It’s a rather anticlimactic ending for such an iconic character. Not to mention that just earlier in this film Banner mentions that he has this extraordinary healing ability that can close up gunshots and other wounds in mere minutes. And yet this fall from what could only have been a few hundred feet was enough to kill the Hulk outright. It’s just ludicrous. Of course, the rumor is that there was work on a sequel to this film where the Hulk would return, but that was scrapped for financial reasons.

There were a few good moments in the film, while the sympathetic Russian agent Jasmine (pronounced as a very fake Russian Yasmeen) was not really a very strong female character she did have some fun moments throughout the film where she played the con artist. Even the relationship between her and Banner worked out fairly well for the most part even if David is ready to run away with her forever having only known her over the course of about two days. It was also a nice relationship between Banner and the scientist who he was working with, though it was very sill for them to refer to it explicitly as a father/son style relationship. At this point Bill Bixby was in his mid 50’s and shouldn’t have been thought of as anyone’s son. The only way that would have made sense was when David was playing the mentally challenged janitor for however many weeks or months, but that was all based on a lie. And nowadays it comes off as even a little bit offensive towards people with an actual disability. All in all, there just wasn’t a whole lot to latch onto with this film aside from any nostalgic connections to the original show which I just don’t have. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Model By Day 1993

Every once in a while I run across a movie that I don’t really know anything about aside from the title, the year it came out, and the fact that it’s related to superheroes or based on a comic book. That’s all I knew about this film, and after watching it, I suddenly wanted to know a lot more about it, but couldn’t find anything else. All I know is that it’s supposedly a TV movie and the only air date I could find was on the Fox channel March 21, 1994, as well as vague (USA) release date of October 11, 1993 via IMDB. But the kicker is that this is very much an R rated film with a not-insignificant amount of nudity, some swearing, and noted Cinemax queen Shannon Tweed in a minor role. This would lead me to believe that it originally aired on Cinemax or a similar station, but I can’t find confirmation of that anywhere. This film is also noteworthy as the lead is an early role for Famke Janssen who would later go on to play Jean Grey in the X-Men films. I went in expecting a pretty bad film, and it was actually a lot more enjoyable than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a cheezy, slightly sleazy, made-for-TV movie made in the 90’s, but I had a lot of fun watching it, and Famke Janssen had a lot of charisma even back then.

If you couldn’t tell by the title of the film and what site you’re reading this review on, the story is about a famous supermodel Lex played by Famke Janssen who decides to become a vigilante at night who earns the nickname Lady X. This is right after her best friend slash roommate J gets carjacked while borrowing Lex’s car and has an unspecific eye injury that requires her to wear an eye patch for the whole movie and could ruin her chances at a modeling career. Shortly after she busts a few common criminals, a copycat Lady X starts making her way through the Russian mafia starting with the club owner that wasn’t getting along very well with Lex. Lex then gets caught up with a police detective working the case and a freelance hitman working for the Russian mafia to try and find out who the killer Lady X really is.

Surprisingly, this was based on an actual comic from an indie publisher.

The odd thing about this film is that at many points during the film, it feels like it’s halfway to a Cinemax after dark film. It never goes all the way to a soft-core sex scene, but it doesn’t shy away from having models run around topless, and the killer Lady X gives her first victim a little bit of a tease before killing him. Of course, this makes sense because she ends up being Shannon Tweed’s character. The bad part about that reveal is that Shannon really only has a small role at the beginning of the film, then disappears until the final reveal. Meanwhile, Lex’s roommate J spends plenty of time acting suspicious in a misdirect that’s supposed to make the audience think that she’s the killer Lady X. But instead, she was just trying to get a picture of the vigilante.

There are plenty of fun moments throughout the film alongside some completely ridiculous moments. Famke Janssen does a great job in the lead role, even buried within this TV movie it’s hard to deny her screen presence. There’s also plenty of odd criminal characters, like an Asian guy who prepares to bust some martial arts moves on Lady X, but instead just waggles his foot in front of her face as if he’s just trying to get her to smell it. Before she even becomes Lady X, there’s a couple German beach goons who come in and disrupt a photo shoot involving a camel and it’s up to Lex to kick some sense into them. Johnny is also an interesting character, he’s Tommy’s bodyguard as well as a hitman working for the Russian mafia ordered to kill Lady X. But since the mafia doesn’t even really trust Johnny, he ends up teaming with Lex to find the real killer.

Tell me you don’t see the resemblance.

When all is said and done, it’s difficult to actually call this a good movie. There’s just so much going on here; Lex and her new career as Lady X, a killer copycat that shows up seemingly a few days after she does, a police detective that’s on her friend’s original case as well as the Lady X case who ends up falling for Lex, the whole Russian mob angle with Tommy and Johnny, and to top things off it spends plenty of time supposedly behind the scenes of Lex’s modelling career. The tone is hard to get a real grasp on, it alternates between trying to empower women while at the same time exploiting them. For every time we get to see a woman kick some ass, we get to see a woman’s ass, or breasts, or a group of women in their underwear. Not to mention that besides Lex and J, none of the other models get names, or even lines. And the soundtrack is another reason to think that this was just one soft-core sex scene away from being Emmanuelle. Even the Lady X costume looks pretty ridiculous, it’s a purple helmet, sunglasses, boots, and a bustier, essentially it’s the Racer X costume with more cleavage. Meanwhile, the killer Lady X costume is almost the same only instead of the helmet and sunglasses, she just basically has a nylon over her face. It’s silly, it’s ridiculous, it’s cheesy, but there were plenty of moments that I really enjoyed. If you’re a fan of Famke Janssen, there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

The Heroic Trio 1993

I’m continuing my journey through the superhero and comic book movies on Netflix that I have yet to review which are mostly foreign and kids films. This was one that I really knew nothing at all about aside from the fact that one of the stars was Michelle Yeoh, but it was highly recommended to me on Twitter when I was trying to decide what film to watch next so I gave it a go. I will say that it was a lot funnier than I expected, but at the same time it tends to hop around all over the place, narratively speaking. And even though I generally watch dubs over subtitles, the original Cantonese language option wasn’t available on Netflix. It’s one of those movies that feels like it has a lot of backstory to the characters, but we only get to see a snippet of what’s fully going on.

For the most part, this is an origin story. At least it is for the team of the Heroic Trio. Each of the three women have their own story and they end up coming together towards the climax. There’s Wonder Woman who is the wife of a hotshot young detective who doesn’t know that she is a superhero on the side. There’s Mercy which is short for Mercenary who is the most comedic of the three as she tends to get hired by the police on occasion and prefers to use guns and other lethal methods. And finally there’s the Invisible Woman who starts out working for the villain of the movie as she captures children who will be used in some ancient ritual to create the next emperor.

The actual genre of this film is a little hard to put my finger on. It definitely borrows quite a bit from superhero movies: Wonder Woman (though I don’t believe she’s ever actually called that in the movie, that’s what she’s credited as) wears a mask and comes in out of nowhere to fight crime wearing a mask, it takes place in the modern day, and all three of the women and the villains have superhuman abilities. But it also draws quite a bit from Wuxia style movies since most of their superhuman abilities come from mystical forces and martial arts training. There’s a bit of soap opera relationships thrown in the mix, as Invisible Woman is dating a scientist who has been developing the invisibility cloak that she has been using in secret. She is doing this under orders from the evil master and her orders are to kill him and steal the cloak once it has been perfected. Also Wonder Woman’s husband eventually finds out about her crimefighting secret identity, but is completely ok with it. And there are also flashbacks between two children who we eventually find out are Wonder Woman and Invisible Woman, though it’s not entirely clear until towards the end which was which. And if that wasn’t enough, Mercy also happened to work for the evil master at one point since she recognizes Invisible Woman as “Number 3” which is something that the evil master uses to name his minions.

What ends up being the most confusing is the fact that all of the characters are referred to by many different names. Wonder Woman’s civilian name is Tung, but she’s referred to by the villains as Silver Fox, and she’s never or possibly only once even referred to as Wonder Woman in the English dub. Mercy is short for Mercenary, and is also listed as Chat and Thief Catcher and also once worked for the evil master where she was referred to as a number. And Invisible Woman is also not ever referred to as Invisible Woman, her name is Ching, is referred to as Number 3, and also was friends with Wonder Woman when they were kids going through some intense training. The curious thing about the flashbacks is that it’s never entirely clear about anything. It’s eventually revealed to be Tung and Ching as children, but it’s unclear who is training them as Ching is the one who apparently failed but is also the one who still has some type of mentor. It’s just that her mentor happens to be evil.

What really helps tie the movie together are the action scenes as well as the overall humor. Most of it comes from the character of Mercy. She is the loose cannon of the group who’s generally in it for herself, but also has a code of ethics. She will kidnap a baby to try and make some cash for herself, but she doesn’t want to see any of the babies die. She also seems to be the least skilled of the three and has some great moments where things don’t entirely go her way. A great example is when the three of them finally come together, Wonder Woman and Invisible Woman leave on horses, but when Mercy tries to ride a horse she can’t get on the saddle and decides to continue riding her motorcycle instead. All of the fighting scenes are fun to watch as the three women show off their martial arts skills.

One of the weaker points of the movie are the special effects. There is plenty of wire work, and the wires aren’t always well hidden. But as far as the final moments of the evil master, it is pretty gruesome and impressive with hints of the Terminator’s exoskeleton moment, only instead of a metal skeleton, it’s a walking human skeleton with eyes and bloody carnage stuck to his body. But instead of being played for horror, it ends up being played for laughs to some extent as it wraps around Ching’s arms and legs and uses her to fight for him while it often cuts to the head as its eyes roll back in its head. It was generally a fun watch with some good fight scenes, good humor, but a ridiculous story that can be hard to follow. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Vampirella 1996

Continuing on into Graphic Horror March, I decided to go a little ways back and check out this 90’s B-movie based on a comic that I know very little about except for the very iconic-and-barely-there costume that the main character wears. This was a Roger Corman production two years after his only unreleased movie the Fantastic Four and directed by Jim Wynorski. The film is more or less what you might expect from a Roger Corman production, it was made on the cheap, the acting is passable, there’s a couple explosions, and there’s a couple moments of gratuitous nudity. For the most part the plot was nonsensical as was the costume design. It never devolved into the so-bad-it’s-good territory, but there wasn’t much in the film that was good enough to latch onto. It was a bizarre mix of a space movie, a revenge story, a vampire movie, and cop movie all rolled into one, but all of the elements of the film were just half-assed and unmemorable.

To start things off, Vampirella looks more like a low budget sci-fi film as it takes place in space. Actually, it’s quite a bit reminiscent of Superman’s origin with a handful of things switched around. Here Zod and his cronies are replaced by Vlad and his cronies. And to make things even more spectacular, Vlad is played by Roger Daltry. And while Zod-err Vlad is being arrested and ready to be sent into space vampire jail, he breaks free and kills the entire high council before hijacking a space ship and heading off to Earth. Vampirella is the step daughter of the council elder so she takes the logical step of following them to Earth to enact her revenge. But this is where things get a little weird and aren’t exactly explained until later in the film, she ends up getting stuck along the way on Mars and has to hibernate for three thousand years before hitchhiking back on a manned mission to Mars. There’s also a side plot where the son of Van Helsing is part of this high tech, militarized operation out to rid the world of vampires and a Queen of the Damned-esque bit where Daltry is moonlighting as a Las Vegas rock star. But at its heart this film is just a basic vampire hunter movie mixed with a bit of a revenge tale.

Daltry’s Vlad at his Vegas show. No idea why he’s made up like that.

One of the first noticeable things about this film is the awful choices in wardrobes. While on Drakulon, the fashions are ridiculously mismatched. Vlad is wearing a puffy pirate shirt with a leather vest, one of the elders is wearing a toga that looks like it was made out of some awful curtains while another one is wearing the equivalent of a high school production’s version of Merlin’s magic robes complete with the stitched on moon and stars. On top of all that, Vlad’s minions look like they’re dressed ready to go to an 80’s hair metal concert. And when Vampirella finally makes it to Earth, we get to see her in her “iconic” outfit that barely resembles how she’s represented in the comic. And while it’s entirely possible that recreating that outfit exactly would be completely impractical to move around in without popping out of it every few minutes, what they ended up with looked more like an orange vinyl cross between a bikini and suspenders with a cut that was very unflattering to Talisa Soto’s attractive body. And if that wasn’t enough, she refuses to wear anything else besides an overcoat for the entire rest of the movie. What’s even more bizarre is that there seem to be production stills with Talisa Soto wearing a much more comics-accurate costume that actually looks quite good, which is baffling why they went with the one that appears in the movie.

She seems as baffled by her costume as he is.

It doesn’t help that Vampirella doesn’t start off on a good foot when she gets to Earth. While she does very randomly rescue a nerd holding a very early 90’s computer for some reason and give him a thrill of a lifetime, it never makes sense that he figures out that she is a vampire and spells it out with constant Freudian slips before coming up with her comic book name after she leaves. Her name is Ella and she’s a vampire, therefore Vampirella. In fact, she basically never refers to herself by this name throughout the entire movie, but everyone else seems to come to this conclusion on their own. And when she discovers the first minion, he appears to be leading a very normal life as a schoolteacher and professor. He has a wife and kids and appears to be making an honest living when she doesn’t care and kills him anyway. It’s entirely plausible that he has been killing people to feed off of their blood since the film doesn’t present any other alternative, but it also doesn’t allow him to offer any alternative. The same situation happens when we meet the other supposed hero of the film, Adam Van Helsing and his team of operatives called Purge. He interrupts her first attempt at killing Vlad and captures her while two of his goons appear to be ready to rape her during transport. It’s not until later on when the two obviously fall for each other because of reasons.

Seriously, why couldn’t they have used the one on the left?

It’s fairly easy to pick this film apart, there’s even this extremely odd plan of Vlad’s where he is using Drakulon technology to harness these invisible satellites that he has somehow placed in orbit all across the globe. When activated, the satellites would shoot out these carbon particles to create nuclear winter, aka they will make the Earth go dark so that the vampires can roam free. There’s a few other mini-subplots like this that don’t really contribute to the film very much, like the officer of Purge who doesn’t trust Vampirella until the very end after she proves herself. Or the high tech sun gun that they spend an awful lot of time setting up but only use once for what basically amounts to a gag where the nerdy scientist bags a kill. And for a film where the main character is known for wearing next-to-nothing, there’s not very much nudity either. There are only a couple moments and they are fairly brief and not all that titillating. As with most of these types of films, the acting from everyone is extremely flat with very little emotion. The fight scenes are nothing to speak of, and while Talisa Soto looks great, it’s very difficult to look past that ridiculous outfit with the completely pointless white collar. Truly nothing to speak of. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Her first issue cover drawn by Conan legend Frank Frazetta

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie 1995

This is a film that I’m certain that I saw when I was younger, quite possibly in theaters. In fact as I was tweeting about this movie while watching it, my longtime friend reminded me that we actually watched it together back in ’95. I do remember watching those first few seasons of the Power Rangers, probably up until Amy Jo Johnson left as the Pink Ranger. But watching this movie again, on a DVD I rented from an actual video store no less, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. Not the villain aside from a few recent meme comparisons to the forthcoming Apocalypse, I didn’t even remember that three of the Rangers had been replaced. Heck, I didn’t even remember the name of the big red villain with the exposed brain and I’m pretty sure they never actually mentioned it during the entire course of the movie. It was essentially what I expected it to be: a bunch of cheesy one-liners with some 90’s teenage style and a little bit of good martial arts action mixed in.

If you’ve ever seen an episode of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the format is pretty similar: there’s a new monster, there’s fighting with the minions, then they have to morph into their costumes, then there’s a big monster, then they morph into their robots, then they combine into a big robot and defeat the big monster. Rinse, repeat. The big difference here is that in the show, most of the fighting when you don’t see the Ranger’s faces is actually pulled from many various Japanese TV shows, which is why they change costumes every couple seasons. But for their first theatrical movie, they actually filmed everything fresh, which helps explain why they do spend so little time in full costume this time around. One of the biggest issues is that this is directly tied into the TV show so there is very little explanation for what’s going on outside of an opening text crawl which sets up the concept of the Power Rangers in its barest form. The film expects that if you’re watching this film then you’re already familiar with all the characters and their dynamics, and since so much time is spent on moving the plot forward, there is precious little time for any character development outside of their battle one-liners.

The other big difference in this film is the set up for the new big bad who is only here for this single movie, Ivan Ooze played by Paul Freeman who is best known for his role as Belloq in Raider of the Lost Ark. While the other villains feel very much like their typical Japanese counterparts, Ooze is played much more with an American style of comedy. Specifically it seemed almost like he was doing a poor Bob Hope imitation, at least coming from someone who has only seen Bob Hope in parody form. His schtick felt extremely old fashioned and rather tame. When he’s “selling” his ooze to the kids he’s wearing an odd wizard outfit and making cheesy rhymes. His idea of fun is to make one of the brainwashed parents do half-hearted 70’s dances like the swim. He has an odd assortment of abilities as well, he’s basically a shapeshifter, but only does it a couple times, and the first time is just to mess with the Power Rangers. He can create minions out of nothing, but apparently needs to recruit all the adults of the town to dig up more of his ooze to pump into giant metal bug robots for some reason. Also, he’s able to break into the Rangers’ lair like it’s nothing and bust up the place right at the beginning of the movie. It’s just all over the place. Even they dynamic with the other villains from the show is weird, Rita Repulsa and Zedd are the ones that set Ooze free, but since Ooze doesn’t play second banana he shrinks them and traps them in a snow globe where they spend the rest of the movie.

Speaking of the beginning of the movie, it is steeped in 90’s X-treme culture. For no apparent reason, the Rangers are skydiving with Bulk and Skull before going roller blading. It’s seemingly just there to give the actors something fun to do before they start fighting baddies but it makes absolutely no sense and adds nothing to the film. It also goes to the trouble of setting up Bulk and Skull who then disappear until near the end of the third act. It doesn’t help that the Rangers are transported off to another world in order to gain some sort of power that can be used to re-power their base and stop Zordon from dying as he lays in his crystal bed in a weird looking snuggie. The best thing about the movie is the fight choreography, but even that is hampered by the need to keep it light so it’s littered with cartoon sound effects and awful pun-based one-liners at every possible moment. And when it finally comes to the end, instead of the costume based fighting that people are used to from the show, they switch over to some state-of-the-art mid-90’s CGI for both the bugs as well as a set of brand new animal based Zords who the Rangers are fully able to pilot despite having zero training with them.

The Rangers themselves end up going through this sub plot about them going to another world to meet this oddly primitive woman in a bikini who trains them in the art of “Ninjetti”. And by training, she means that they sit around a fire and get a new set of vaguely ninja looking outfits. At one point the Black Ranger asks why he has to be the frog, and she gives him a complete non-answer by saying that the frog is the one kissed by the princess. First, how would she know the very Earth-centric Princess and the Frog story, and second, how is that useful in a battle situation? There are just so many problems with this film that don’t make any sense whatsoever as an adult looking back on it. It would be almost impossible to make sense of it without every having seen an episode of the TV show, and even for someone who has watched it before, it doesn’t really add anything new aside from a new set of Zords who may or may not have even been a set up for the next season of the show. And there’s still the Turbo movie to come not long after this. Save me now. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie 1997

When I was watching the original Power Rangers movie I was coming at it from a place of half-remembered nostalgia. Even though I didn’t remember it, I still remembered a large portion of the cast. And even though Turbo follows the format of the show much more closely, it suffered from a severe lack of fight scenes and had it even worse with the lack of connection or explanation of the new villainess. It served as essentially the pilot episode of the new season of the show as they transitioned out some more of the cast and a new set of costumes and robots likely pulled from a completely different Japanese series. And yet, even though it mirrored the actual television episodes more closely, it was even less satisfying than the first movie as an actual film.

Just like the first movie, there’s a text crawl that attempts to explain what’s going on in a style that even more closely resembles the Star Wars crawl. The problem is that it’s filled with so many proper names that it’s nearly impossible to keep them all straight when it’s dumped on the audience like that. It doesn’t help to jump from the first movie to this one where half the cast has changed, and aside from Tommy the only other Rangers still on the team were the completely forgettable Rocky and Adam. But since the actor playing Rocky was leaving the show, he manages to injure himself while training for a martial arts tournament that will raise funds for a struggling orphanage. The worst part is that he doesn’t just injure himself while training, he just does a random backflip badly for no real apparent reason. In fact, not long after that yet another Ranger gets injured while searching for a weird & creepy hobbit-looking magician in the jungle. But luckily the hobbit-magician Larigot has the power of healing. Unlucky for poor Rocky, they never get Larigot to make the trip over to Rocky’s hospital bed.

The new villain of this movie is a space queen named Divatox who is trying to resurrect a lava demon to be her husband for some reason. In order to do this, she needs this Larigot wizard as well as two pure souls to use as a sacrifice. This is really just an excuse to cram in a few more characters, including Bulk and Skull who we also get to see in their day job at a baseball diamond as security. They’re given way too much set up time when they very quickly get brainwashed and spend the rest of the film as a mere punchline where they get to say a random line that doesn’t make any sense and isn’t supposed to. The other two characters are the original Pink and Red rangers who also don’t really get to do a whole lot in the film other than try to escape from this submarine and turn evil for a couple minutes in the finale. Which is a shame since Amy Jo Johnson felt like the best part of the movie, though that may still be some nostalgia talking.

What really doesn’t make sense about this film is the absolute lack of fighting. During the entire hour and a half run time, there are only about three actual fight scenes as well as a couple fight scenes for the martial arts tournament training at the beginning and the actual tournament at the end. And two of those fight scenes are resolved very quickly. There’s a fight on the ghost ship which takes place at night so there’s little to see anyway. There’s the final fight with the big lava monster in their brand new Turbo Zords which was nice to see the return to the costumed fighting after the awful CGI in the previous movie but it also was over in about five punches. And the one big fight was in the lava pit itself where all five Rangers got to fight to try and save the two ex-Rangers. It was also where those ex-Rangers turned evil so we got to have a little Ranger on Ranger action which wasn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. But for the rest of the movie, it was spent just setting things up for this fight and the series to come after it.

One of the most mind-boggling moments was the introduction of the new Blue Ranger. He happens to be one of the kids in the orphanage, or possibly some type of kid’s shelter since he talks about his mother as though she’s still alive. He goes to visit Rocky in the hospital but ends up hiding under the bed and overhearing the Rangers talk to Zordon. So just through pure luck he ends up being the new Blue Ranger despite being around 12. Not only that, but when he transforms- err morphs, he obviously turns into a fully grown adult that no one ever mentions. It was very bizarre to see the actor in the Blue Ranger costume prance around like a kid and speak with the voice of the same kid.

*shiver*

There’s really not much more to say about this movie. It really felt like essentially a two part episode that set up the next season of the show that spent a lot of unnecessary time in the jungle and with this weird looking small magician creature who spent the entire movie dying to try and save his even creepier looking wife and baby. Divatox was a far cry from the campy fun of Rita Repulsa, and none of the plot made any sense whatsoever. The one saving grace was that the lava monster did actually look pretty impressive, but he was only onscreen for a scant few minutes before being defeated by the Megazord. If anything, I’m just glad that I’m done with these Power Rangers movies until next year at least. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

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.

To kick things off, the Justice League of America or JLA consists of a team of misfits. Their heavy hitters are the Flash and Green Lantern, but Barry Allen is a muscle-headed meatball who can’t hold down a job and feels like his power is useless, and Green Lantern is the lesser known Guy Gardner who plays it up like a horn dog who has a resentful girlfriend while he constantly hits on the lone female member of the team any chance he gets. That female teammate is the relatively unknown hero with the simple name of Fire who can obviously create fire. And the final member of the team has become a little more well known due to his role in Legends of Tomorrow, Ray Palmer’s the Atom. Only here he’s a science teacher, played by voice of the Cryptkeeper John Kassier, who found some radioactive material that gives him the power to become small, rather than the cross between Ant-Man and Iron Man he has become in the Arrowverse. To wrap up the team, there’s the leader who is only hinted at for the first half of the film but eventually shows himself as the Martian Manhunter in the one costume that actually looks pretty decent aside from David Ogden Stiers’ potbelly.

One of the “confessional” moments with Guy, BB, and Barry.

The biggest problem with this team is how unlikable most of them are and how little they generally get along with each other. Especially how they treat poor Barry Allen who looks like he was rejected from the Jersey Shore auditions. He gets kicked out of his apartment and crashes with the rest of the team who apparently all live together in some random house. He tries to ingratiate himself by cooking a meal for the team, but ends up eating nearly all of it himself at super speed. Meanwhile Guy spends most of his time trying to win over the redhead from Clueless. Fire’s alter ego BB is a struggling actress who gains the attention of essentially a teenaged stalker, albeit a very friendly one played by David Krumholtz. Her arc is disappointing especially since she seems to revel in her past breakup with Guy while she happily strings along this teen who figures out her superhero identity by the earrings that he gives her. Not by the fact that she looks exactly the same plus a few coats of green eyeshadow, it’s the earrings. The two teammates that get off the easiest also kind of end up as a couple. Ray Palmer’s Atom is essentially the nice guy and voice of reason, though there’s also no shortage of jokes pointed towards his ability. Throughout the course of the film he: gets small to save a cat under a porch, gets small to fix the TV (and gets electrocuted), and gets small a couple other times with no real goal in mind. There’s also one member who I haven’t mentioned since the film is also a vehicle for her origin story and induction into the team as Tori gains the power of Ice. She also happens to be the mousy assistant to this scientist that eventually is revealed to be the villain of the story who can control weather and obviously goes by the name the Weatherman.

The basic story of the superhero section of the plot is fairly simple and could have easily been packed into a 30 minute episode (and I believe it quite possibly was, though I didn’t watch that version to note the differences). It’s the basic supervillain plot with just a few twists as the team momentarily think that Tori is the Weatherman, then they think that her suspicious co-worker is the Weatherman before finally realizing her boss is the villain who can create isolated weather events in the middle of Metro City, a coastal city that miraculously had never had a hurricane before. Surprisingly, even in the extended version of this pilot there’s an action scene that’s handled entirely offscreen and we only get to see the aftermath of Fire saving people from a mudslide by drying up all the moisture. The confessionals themselves are entirely bizarre, sometimes it’s a single member talking to camera, other times they’re in pairs or even three of them. They are dressed in their civilian clothes, but they’re talking about both their civilian lives as well as their superhero lives even though there’s a moment where Atom tells Ice that they can never reveal their identity to anyone they know. Yet, they’re telling the audience? There’s not any explanation for this setup, no documentary or TV show concept, it’s merely the concept for concept’s sake. It’s not something that seems to work even then, but now it feels especially dated. There are hints of what actually could have become something like Teen Titans Go, but there just wasn’t enough action, enough comedy, and none of the characters are worth watching, especially if you happened to be a fan of Green Lantern or the Flash already, since their powers get the short shrift. Green Lantern’s constructs consist of an umbrella, a chainsaw that he merely uses as an empty threat that also looks quite like a middle finger, and a lock pick that doesn’t work. All the Flash gets to do in any heroic sense is run a couple kids out of the way from an oncoming tidal wave before returning to see the whole class and just give up and wait for Ice to save the day. It’s just completely ridiculous from start to finish. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Batman and Mr. Freeze: SubZero 1998

We’re moving right along in this animation month and it’s time once again for one of the animated films for the younger folks. This was really the first straight to video project for DC Animation. Yes, technically Mask of the Phantasm came before this, but that also had a brief theatrical release so it’s not quite the same since it likely had a bit of a larger budget. I don’t think I had ever seen this one, and for whatever reasons it didn’t quite bring up the same memories from the show like Batman Beyond did, oddly enough. There were a few holes that I poked through the plot line here and there, but overall it was a decent movie. I think its biggest flaw is just that it pales in comparison to most of DC’s better work, and even though I hadn’t watched it in years, I felt like Freeze’s episodes in the Animated Series themselves packed a bigger punch than this film did.

One of the more jarring things going back to this early period of the animated Batman is seeing Dick Grayson as Robin. But it’s not just about seeing Dick Grayson, but seeing Robin in general as a nearly adult teenager. It feels like it’s been over a decade, and likely has since Robin has been that old. For the most part in anything animated, Robin has either been Tim Drake or Damian Wayne who are both much closer to 12 years old than they are to 18, and when Grayson does show up, he’s fully grown up as Nightwing. But it’s also not the same as it is to go all the way back to the more campy Robin where he’s saying Holy Something-or-other all the time. It also didn’t help that they changed the voice of Batgirl from Melissa Gilbert to Mary Kay Bergman. Bergman didn’t do a bad job at all, but it was just another thing that helped make this film feel off compared to the animated series.

There’s also a question as to the time period which has rarely been an issue with Batman. There’s always been this weird retro but also timeless quality about Gotham City where it doesn’t entirely feel like it’s in the present day, but it also doesn’t feel like it’s in the past. Here, there’s much more of a feeling that it really is set in the past as the dances are full of swingin’ jazz music and everything seems to have that art deco look to it. But there was also the beginning of some CGI graphics, notably the submarine that also didn’t quite mesh well with the usual style of the animated series.

It’s just weird seeing them as high school sweethearts.

But enough about the feel of the movie and how it was different than the series that came before it. What’s more important is how it handles its own characters and story, and as it mentions in the title, this is a Mr. Freeze story. What’s most interesting about this film is that it was released on the heels of Mr. Freeze in the theatrical Batman and Robin, the only difference is that this film does treat the character with much more respect than a pun spewing Austrian-American. He garners quite a bit of sympathy and actually has a rather peaceful introduction as he swims for fish with his pet polar bears, ignoring for a moment how him having pet polar bears doesn’t really make any sense outside of a comic book mentality. He also has his own young ward by way of an Inuit boy Koonak, and it was by random chance that this submarine happened to crash through the ice where Freeze had set up his mini lab, putting his frozen wife Nora in jeopardy, and sending Freeze back to his criminal ways at Gotham.

The other character that comes into play who doesn’t get nearly as much sympathy was Dr. Belson. He was someone Freeze had worked with in his previous life and just so happens to be deep in debt to where his house is about to be foreclosed upon. This makes him the perfect candidate with medical ability and access as well as the ethical ambiguity so that his morals can be loosened with the help of the promise of Arctic gold. And as these types of things always tend to happen this way, Nora has a rare blood type only matched by a handful of people including Barbara Gordon. So the rest of the movie is mostly about Barbara’s capture followed by her attempts to escape while Batman and Robin simultaneously try to find and rescue her. That combination actually did help make the film stand out from other similar stories. Since Barbara is actually Batgirl, she’s not exactly the damsel in distress and is quite capable of rescuing herself, until she realizes that they are on an abandoned oil rig five miles off the coast.

The action in general worked quite well, even though they were generally few and far between. The climactic scene of their escape from the oil rig as it becomes engulfed in flames is incredibly well paced and looks gorgeous. There are a few great moments near the end with Batman’s black silhouette against the bright orange flames, regardless of how little sense it made for an abandoned oil rig to still be full of valuable fuel. It also just had to force a happy ending for everyone involved as we get to see not only Freeze survive with a makeshift ice cast on his broken leg, but Nora Fries also survives, and is cured of her mysterious disease, and Freeze just happens to catch a TV newscast about it so that he knows she survived. It’s just a little too neatly wrapped up, though it is somewhat forgivable considering it’s intended audience. And again, this isn’t a bad film by any means, it’s just that when compared with some of the stories that DC has been able to tell through their animated movies in recent years, it just doesn’t hold a candle to them. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Robocop 3 1993

I’ve been feeling rather indecisive as to what direction I wanted to take next on this site. I still have a small handful of relatively good, or at least mediocre and well known comic book movies that I still need to get around to and a whole lot of dreck. So I decided to make a little Twitter poll with a couple good movies, a bad movie, and an oddity to see what won out. It shouldn’t have come to much surprise that this is the film that won. And despite the fact that I have yet to see Robocop 2, I was certain that it didn’t matter. It also helped that I had the DVD sitting in front of me from a clearance bin I picked up months ago. I am a big fan of the original Robocop, but I’ve never really given much thought to the sequels. I was a little surprised to see that this was rated PG-13, and even more surprised considering it still had a fair amount of blood and swearing, just toned down from the levels seen in the original. It had a scant few impressive moments, and notably more laughably bad moments. It really just lost sight of what made Robocop an interesting property in the first place in return for a failed attempt at marketing towards a younger audience. But one of the more interesting things about this film, especially coming from this site, is that comic book writer Frank Miller co-wrote this film (as well as the second).

One of the more surprising things about this film is the cast, there are a large number of notable character actors early in their careers. There’s CCH Pounder, Bradley Whitford, Rip Torn, Steven Root, and even Mako. But none of them are given anything interesting to do. There are several callbacks to the earlier movies, but they are treated more like a parody film than a typical sequel. Nancy Allen is once again back for the third installment, but the way she’s revealed is set up as if it were supposed to be a big surprise. There’s a restaurant full of cops that Lee Arenberg tries to rob, but his arrest is interrupted with a police call. They argue over whose turn it is before they mention that it’s Lewis’s turn. Cut to someone with a newspaper over their face who then slowly lowers it to reveal Nancy Allen. Likely a surprise to no one who had seen the trailer, cast list, or either of the previous movies.

Besides being PG-13, one of the other most obvious ploys to make this film aimed at younger audiences was the inclusion of a young girl as one of the main cast members. Nikko is a half-Asian, soon-to-be orphan who happens to be a genius level hacker and giant fan of OCP’s robotics division, as evidenced by her Robocop and ED-209 toys shown in the intro. She just so happens to be left behind when her parents and all the rest of the citizens are gathered up and falls in with a group of resistance fighters who she helps by disabling an active ED-209 and reprogramming it for their own purposes. With a bit of added humor by making him literally “loyal as a puppy”, though literally in this case means that he repeats the phrase “loyal as a puppy” rather than actually acting like a dog. Though that would make just as much sense as the pig noises they used in the original movie when he fell down the stairs.

The initial reveal of the Otomo before we find out it’s a robot.

The overall plot of this film doesn’t entirely make that much sense. OCP is still trying to clear out the slums in order to make way for their new Delta City, but this time around they’re doing it by forcibly ousting people from their homes so that they can demolish it. In the case of Nikko and her family, literally while they are still living there. There’s also this divide between the beat cops and the elite SS-like “Rehabilitation officers” who are dressed a bit like SWAT. There’s also a thread where OCP is being bought out by a Japanese corporation led by Mako who has their own ninja robots called Otomos who look entirely human but all look the same and only wield samurai swords. There are a couple great looking special effects moments with the Otomos, one is the first reveal that they are actually robots and not just human ninjas when a punk hits the Otomo in the face with a pipe. This hit merely knocks his jaw out of place and he shifts it back and forth before putting it back in place. The other moment comes at the end when Robocop has to face off against two Otomos on the top floor of the OCP building – in a pale imitation of the original movie’s ending. He shoots the first Otomo in the face which leaves him unfazed, but his face has a great shattered look to it. Even though it’s obvious that this was done so that a different actor could wear this shattered face prosthetic considering that all the Otomos look exactly the same, it still looked pretty great. The scene even ends with another nod to the original, which was a powerful moment when he finally reclaimed the name Murphy after essentially reclaiming his human personality, but here it’s just a lame joke where he essentially says the opposite, “my friends call me Murphy, you can call me Robocop”.

So this happened.

There’s so much that can be said about the faults of this film, especially the fact that it’s PG-13, and yet they’re still able to show Lewis get shot in the chest a dozen times as well as a couple other moments of death with blood, but no gore. And on top of that, they’re constantly saying some form of “shit” though they keep it clean enough by not uttering a single “fuck” so that’s apparently ok. The moments of comedy also tend to fall flat more often than not in their absurdity, like how Robocop ends up commandeering a pink and frilly pimpmobile that gets totally demolished during the chase, but continues to run before he’s finally stopped when the villain throws a fistful of cash next to a group of kids playing street hockey who block the road. The film also tries to call back the comedic TV breaks of the first film, but doesn’t do anything with it until 80 minutes into the film so that when it comes, it’s incredibly jarring to the pace of the film, even though the animated Johnny Rehab commercial is another high point in the movie. There are just so many wrong decisions throughout this film that it’s a wonder how it even made it to theaters and wasn’t just a straight-to-home-video cash grab. I haven’t even mentioned the awful jetpack scenes where Robocop flying above a shootout between the beat cops teamed up with the resistance fighting the Rehabs teamed up with the local punks that looks far worse than Superman: The Movie from over ten years earlier. It’s just ridiculous. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Doctor Mordrid 1992

In many ways, the early days of Marvel movies are quite fascinating with all the goings on when they were selling rights to characters to anyone who would give them a chunk of change it would seem. And Doctor Strange happened to be one of those properties. But where other companies would fight the deadline to go into production before losing the rights and win, this film fought the deadline and lost. But instead of scrapping all the work and whatever pre-production they had done, if any, they decided to simply retool a few names and plot elements and continue on with the completely “original” story that became Doctor Mordrid. While I still don’t know all that much about Doctor Strange as a whole, Doctor Mordrid is a very close approximation, in that he’s essentially an arrogant magician fighting demons in modern times with his cape and amulet. As for the quality of the film, it doesn’t rise too much higher than the 70’s TV film which is literally my least favorite Marvel movie, but there is some fun to be had with the performances and all of the glorious 90’s mullets.

The movie seems to take forever to get started as plenty of time is spent setting up the apartment building where Mordrid lives (and also owns as we find out later). He has a couple nosy neighbors and an attractive woman who works as a researcher for the police department, which is a perfect match for Mordrid’s cover story as someone who studies and speaks on criminology and its connection to the supernatural. There also happens to be something supernatural going on where the evil sorcerer Kabal has escaped and is planning a ritual to release demons into Earth’s dimension. But to make matters a bit more complicated, Kabal is actually Mordrid’s brother, and they’re both hundreds of years old. There’s other complications involving alchemy, a sorcerer’s stone, mind control, and some sacrifices, but it basically boils down to a wizard fight.

Kabal himself is just an odd character. When we are introduced to him, he has a blonde mullet, 90’s sunglasses, and is wearing a loose fitting white tunic with a new-age style fang necklace. And he’s played by perennial generic villain Brian Thompson. He eventually gets a couple 90’s metal minions until he kills the woman in a ritualistic, naked sacrifice. Her, not him. But despite her death, the guy minion is still willing to follow him to the ends of the Earth, while still maintaining his 90’s metal fanatic attitude that almost feels more like surfer dude. There’s also a subplot where Mordrid gets jailed for the naked woman’s death because he has the same symbol on his amulet which is also the source of his magical powers. But, he’s still able to escape from his handcuffs and hypnotize a backstory to his neighbor in the interrogation room to convince her to get the amulet back for him.

The special effects overall are nothing to speak of. When Mordrid does his magic tricks, they’re all generally just basic animated light effects. The big climactic scene comes when Kabal is about to summon the demons and Mordrid’s astral projection has to stop him so the two animate museum skeletons to fight each other. Kabal’s tyrannosaur vs Mordrid’s mammoth in a sequence that’s a far cry from anything that Harryhousen had done. There’s also surprisingly little blood or gore aside from one moment when Mordrid goes to check on Kabal’s astral prison and finds that the guard has had his eyes melted from their sockets, and later there’s a couple bullet wounds and a few minor explosions. But generally everything is grounded in the discussions of the mystical rather than any real magic spells or combat. Which also means that the film comes off as incredibly dull. Even the potential for romance between Mordrid and his neighbor falls pretty flat with a weak ending where they discuss her taking care of his pet raven and watching a movie.

There are a few fun moments here and there throughout the film. Most of them come in random, laughably bad moments, especially considering that you can tell if someone is a villain or not based on their hairstyle. Even though there’s really only two villains in the film, they both have mullets, and during the establishing shot of the police station, there’s an incredibly awkward looking mullet on a random criminal being dragged across the screen. The other awkward early 90’s fashions also come into play, especially several of Combs’s outfits when he’s not wearing the blue cape. Combs himself also just doesn’t really have much of a personality as Mordrid. He could be considered to be calm, cool, and collected no matter what’s going on, but when that’s put on screen, it ultimately becomes just generically boring. So when it all boils down, this is a wannabe Doctor Strange movie with no real fighting, no romance, plenty of exposition, yet you’re never entirely sure what exactly is going on at any point in time. It’s just a complete mess and difficult to really recommend. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.

Robocop 2 1990

It’s true that I don’t always go with the flow the way it was meant to be, though the last time I really remember doing this in terms of this site was way back during the first year when I watched the three Spider-Man films backwards so I could compare the original Spider-Man right against the reboot Amazing Spider-Man. This time is was mostly a case of laziness considering that I already owned Robocop 3 and it was sitting right in front of me even though I hadn’t seen Robocop 2 before. And I was completely right in thinking that it didn’t matter as the three movies have very little to do with each other in terms of continuity, they merely tell three different stories with several of the same characters. The original is important to have seen to set up the characters, but once you’ve got that, you’re gravy. This is also notable to have been directed by Ivan Kirshner who is most well known as the director of the Empire Strikes Back, widely considered to be the best Star Wars movie. The film itself falls somewhere between the ultra-violence and satire of the original and the pandering-to-the-audience comedy and low budget of the third.

This time around Robocop is fighting the war on drugs and public opinion as Detroit itself is going bankrupt and a new, highly addictive drug called Nuke is hitting the streets. Nuke itself is set up as a total non-entity, it hits all the markers: it’s highly addictive, illegal, and at the center of a highly lucrative crime ring. Though the movie is very unclear over the actual effects of the drug or the dangers. Everyone in the movie who is shown taking the drug doesn’t appear to get high, they mainly take it to negate the symptoms of withdrawal. There’s also not any reports of overdoses or negative side effects even though there are a handful of news reports interwoven throughout the first half of the film, then disappear entirely. The opposite of what they did with the third movie.

What this sequel did do was amp up the comedy without any of the social commentary. For the villains, we get a random cult-leader-esque head of the drug ring with a thirteen year old as his highest ranking lieutenant. And when the leader gets captured and forced into a robot body that they literally refer to as “Robocop 2”, the kid takes over as head of the criminal organization. Not only that, but he has the gall to offer a cash bailout to the Mayor of Detroit to pay off their multi-million dollar debt to OCP so that the corporation doesn’t foreclose on literally the entire city, even though that’s not quite how that would work. On top of that, Robocop gets damaged beyond the capabilities of the Detroit office to repair him and must be repaired by OCP who take that opportunity to adjust his directives via committee. So we’re treated to a series of scenes where Robocop is brainwashed to act like an after school special while he and his old partner get called out to take care of a highly violent little league team, has a different set of kids spraypaint “kik me” on his back, and finally electrocutes himself by grabbing hold of a massive transformer as his only resort to clear his programming. There’s also a moment where he falls prone in the middle of the street and a couple motorcyclists run over him, essentially ramping over his crotch. It’s a very different style of humor than was used in the first one, this humor is much more juvenile and if there’s any commentary to be made with it, the commentary is more likely about itself, especially in a prophetic way where Robocop eventually becomes more of a kid-friendly property than the almost X-rated film that the first two were.

But as much as the comedy of the film didn’t exactly hit where it could have, it was only a small amount of the overall film. The rest played out as a typical action film with a few of the subtexts from the original movie. We get moments of Robocop struggling between his identity as the remains of Alex Murphy versus a machine and the property of Omni Consumer Products. He has been stalking his widow lately before getting a mini-brainwash session to rid her from his life where he is reminded once again that he is no longer Alex Murphy, but Robocop. And just like in the first movie, he ultimately regains his independence as Alex Murphy. Another retread of the original film comes in the form of the Robocop 2. A larger, stronger model with more firepower, only this time it has the brain of a psychopath. Specifically the previous drug kingpin from the Nuke ring.

Even though there are a lot of missteps throughout this film, one of them is not the special effects. There is one moment where Robocop is dismantled and missing his visor and his parts are all convulsing which looks pretty spectacular considering its age. It does fall back onto the stop motion style of ED-209 for the villainous Robocop 2, but there are many more moving parts that look quite good. The only downside is the very 1990 era CGI face they use on a screen to show the personality of the villain within the robot body even though for some reason they decide to not let him ever speak. Possibly because they didn’t want to attempt to do a lip synch with their rudimentary CGI face. There was also a poor looking moment when the two robots were falling from the top of the OCP tower, though it didn’t look nearly as bad as the jetpack scene that would later show up in the third movie. All in all, it was a pretty big drop from the classic original, but it wasn’t nearly as big of a drop as it would be for the third entry in the series. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.