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DragonCon Independent Film Festival 2015

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This past weekend, I attended the massive nerd event DragonCon, which is now a cultural staple of Atlanta, GA. There is a lot to say about the conference as a whole, but I first want to spotlight the DragonCon Independent Film Festival, which I spent most of my conference time attending. Unfortunately, due to the crowds, it was impossible for me to see all of the films in the lineup. That said, here are the selections I did manage to catch, with my brief thoughts on each.

Younglings
Younglings is a Star Wars fan film that closed out the Fan Films block of the festival. It gives a snapshot of a distant future in which the series has branched out to multiple trilogies (unimaginable!), and the original fans are now well into their twilight years. It all takes place around a table in a diner, where a group of old friends come to blows regarding Star Wars fandom and the value of Boba Fett. It is worth checking out if you can get a hold of it.

Writer’s Cramp
I have a lot to say about Writer’s Cramp, one of the few feature-length entries in the festival. It has a solid enough concept behind it, but it is really only enough to fuel the content for a short film. The movie gets slow and repetitive quickly, as it relies almost exclusively on malapropisms and spoonerisms for humor, which gets hokey and tired very fast. Unfortunately for everyone, this movie clocks in at over 100 minutes. To make matters worse, there are unnecessary segments scattered throughout the run-time that really should have been cut, so the run time total was certainly not all essential viewing for the story. Most of the characters in the story lack any sense of realism or voice, particularly the child whose only characteristic is verbosity. That said, there is good costuming and style at times, and the acting is pretty solid given what they were working with.  Judging from the information offered by the director/writer/editor/producer/etc (?) at the festival, this appears to be a case where people were ousted from the production quicker than in a George R. R. Martin work. Apparently an editor quit, the initial director was dismissed, and the writer took on both roles rather than fill them in with someone else. The result is something that reeks of creative control without reasonable checks: a one-trick pony feature that runs far too long on a premise that would have suited a short film at best, and had a creative force behind it that was never forced to kill her darlings.

Victim
Victim takes place entirely in an interrogation room, where two cops are interviewing a woman who was found at the scene of a brutal and mysterious decapitation. Overall, it is an ok flick. It suffers from being a bit too predictable and having a really terrible anticlimax, thought (a cringe-y one-liner that doesn’t land).

A Tricky Treat
A Tricky Treat is simple, gory, and has just the right amount of humor involved to make it work. To say anything more about it would serve to spoil the twist (which is predictable, but worth seeing). I’ll just say that it makes for a classic Halloween tale.

SuperBob
SuperBob was one of the few feature-length entries in the festival, and the only one I saw that I liked. It is an interesting film that tackles the serious ethical implications of super-heroism while also staying a romantic comedy throughout. Catherine Tate is solid in her supporting role, and was far less grating and obnoxious than I was used to. There was also good casting for the lead role: a guy who at once strikes as a wholesome every-man, but is also nondescript enough to be your boring neighbor. He also deals with a wide range of emotions throughout the story, as it twists from serious drama to dark comedy to romance at the drop of a dime. Typically that would be an issue for me, but this flick manages to blend political satire, romance, and dry humor in a way that builds some really identifiable characters in the chaos of it all, and you see real growth in them as it moves along. The biggest flaw lies in the documentary perspective of the film, which goes in and out without consistency. However, it wasn’t extremely distracting for me. The movie is a long way from being Big Man Japan or Man Bites Dog, but it is more than worth giving a shot. If you want a more approachable fictional documentary along the lines of those two acclaimed movies with a welcome injection of dry British humor, then seek it out once it is released.

Tenspotting
Tenspotting is kind of an unbearable fan film, even for a Doctor Who fan. The plot in summary is that an obsessive and elitist fan is seeking out an equally dedicated loyalist at a Doctor Who convention, and has unwavering standards for knowledge of the franchise. She eventually learns that there is more to life than Doctor Who minutia, but the fact that was a necessary lesson for her should point out a pretty serious flaw: you simply can’t identify with her, let alone like her.

Sharkasaurus
Sharkasaurus feels like any given movie in The Asylum’s filmography, but boiled down as far as it could go. There is a bit of a culture war element to it between science and religion, but nobody wins in the end (except for the Sharkasaurus, of course).

Slut
Slut is a serial killer flick with a solid, identifiable heroine. She has a curious charm in her awkwardness, which reminded me a little of Carrie, though this short goes in a very different direction. There is definitely a message here about the skewed sexual ethics of horror movies which is pretty fantastic, and something that the genre deserves to be put to task for. The film holds on to an odd sense of humor throughout, despite the serious suspense and dark tone on the whole.

Prelude to Axanar
Holy cow, this was awesome. Apparently this movie is a pretty big deal, and raised over half a million dollars over the course of an IndieGoGo campaign. Word is that they are working on a full-length version of this short, which I am now eagerly awaiting. Essentially, this is a historical documentary about an event from the Star Trek universe that is entirely fictitious. The re-enactments are fantastic, the acting and cinematography of the interviews are stellar, and the whole film has an incredibly professional appearance. This one is available on YouTube, and is absolutely worth checking out.

Return of the Zombie Lawyer Commercials
Return of the Zombie Lawyer Commercials is exactly what it sounds like. It is what it is, and that isn’t a bad thing. It was clearly a back yard production, but the concept is really fun and there are some solid laughs to be had from it.

Postpartum
Creepy acting made this one stand out a lot for me. A woman loses her mind after a failed pregnancy, believing her child to be alive. This leads her to kill anyone who enters her home who would challenge her delusion, which makes for quite a creepy collection of skeletons in her closet after a while.

Kragos the Dishonored
I get what they were trying to do with this silent Star Trek fan film, but it just didn’t work at all if you ask me. The story is very poorly conveyed (even for a silent flick), and I don’t think the appeal extends much outside of Trek fandom. It stands in pretty sharp contrast next to the other Trek fan film in the fest (Axanar, which I mentioned previously).

Knock, Knock…
This is one of the few shorts in the festival that I had seen before. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about it, but it is certainly a good short, just perhaps not as memorable as some of the others in this particular lineup. I do recommend showing this to any young children that you want to terrify forever.

Invaders
Invaders is a funny flick with a lot of gore and some twistedly inspired cinematography. It is very brief, but manages to have some great banter and effects over its short run time. It is also one of the only flicks I recall from the festival that hilariously runs through its own credits.

I Dare You
I wish I had more positive things to say about this movie. The production design looked pretty ok? The zombie makeup is…adequate? At the end of the day, I Dare You looks and feels like a Hollywood-generic zombie movie, but shorter and without the money. Before I saw the movie, I attended a panel that featured the director of this film, which sent me some red flags before going into it. First off, he said that the most influential dystopian film on him and his work was Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil. That film isn’t totally without value, but that is hardly the future vision of Brazil, or Minority Report, or Children of Men, or Blade Runner, or A Clockwork Orange, or just about any other non-generic zombie movie in the entire genre of dystopian films. Even Repo: The Genetic Opera has a more interesting and well-fleshed vision of a dystopian future than Resident Evil. The second thing that he said on the panel that bugged me is that he specifically noted that he didn’t think about any social meaning for his work when he was creating it. Dystopian fiction, to be frank, requires some social criticism to even be watchable. The idea is to take a current social ill and exaggerate it over time to point out what it could ultimately do to society. For example, overreach of law enforcement in Minority Report, Corporatization in RoboCop, censorship and anti-intellectualism in Fahrenheit 451, and the unreasonable reign of bureaucracy in Brazil. Even I Dare You sort of says something about unethical scientific experimentation, though that seems to have been something of an accident. In any case, the twist is way too predictable in this movie, and it feels in totality like a collage of previous works that has been lightly reheated and labelled as something new, like a hot dog made from butcher scraps.

Grave Shivers
Grave Shivers is a short film that functions as a compilation of even shorter micro-films that are all pretty great. The highlight of the bunch is probably the Satanic Girl Scout troop, but all three of the shorts are entertaining. They are worth giving a watch, and the whole thing is available to check out on Vimeo.

Evercare
Evercare is a horror-comedy psuedo-documentary that is absolutely made by the performance of the lead character: a home care nurse who has adapted her skills to the world following a zombie apocalypse. As she explains in the introduction, the old folks weren’t able to make it through the incident (effectively eliminating her job), but that many families had loved ones who were turned into zombies. She discovered that the needs of zombies were similar to those of the elderly, and started a program for in-house zombie care. The setup is unique, the acting is great, and the jokes are consistently funny, making this a short that is more than worth checking out.

Dread
Dread has a good concept behind it (a child haunted by a mysterious spectre), but the style just didn’t work for me. It looked like a J-horror in many ways, which I have never really been on board with personally. Also, the title doesn’t really match with the content, and feels a bit tacked-on for dramatic effect.

El Mano vs. Japanese Zombie
Even seen the classic short Bambi vs. Godzilla? Same thing, but with an El Santo analog.

Downstairs
Downstairs is a rare horror-comedy where the comedy honestly takes a back seat to the horror elements, but the synthesis works great on the whole. The movie displays top notch timing for both the humor and the scares (which are hard things to balance). I did think it suffered from a bit of an anticlimax, but the ride was definitely fun.

Directors on Directing
Directors on Directing is as hilarious as it is simple. The movie exists to poke at self-aggrandizing film-makers in a spectacular, explosive, and gory fashion, and it nails that biting tone perfectly. The setup is that of a fake documentary featuring directors talking about “the power of film-making,” which seems clear enough at first, until it is revealed that the “power” is the ability to cause dramatic cranial explosions.

Devil Makes Work
This was a visually striking film for sure, but there isn’t a whole lot to say about Devil Makes Work when it comes down to it. The acting is solid and the images are creatively synthesized, but I had a hard time remembering anything about this short until I watched the trailer. It just failed to stick with me at all, which probably says something about the film as a whole. Apparently I’m not alone in regards to those feelings, so I’ll just post the following from MJ Simpson’s blog post on the film, which says everything I could and more:

[Devil Makes Work] is a great showcase for the director and, frankly, if I was looking for someone to direct a big budget music video, I’d be knocking on his door. We can see that Soulsby has a very strong visual sense, that he has a masterful camera eye, that he has a strong worth ethic and that he has the organisational skills to lead a team of a hundred people and craft something amazing.

A feature film is more than a succession of stylish images…There is certainly a trend in Hollywood to make awful, empty movies that are rammed to the gills with vast amounts of special effects: all style and no substance, all sizzle and no sausage. Films that jump from one set piece explosion or alien spaceship or car chase to the next without any concern for making sense or appealing to anything but the most visceral emotions…Films which cost obscene amounts of money and, let’s face it, sometimes make obscene amounts of money back. Maybe that’s the gig that Guy Soulsby is pitching for here.

But films – good films – are about stories. And characters. And relationships. Devil Makes Work is a beautifully shot and edited sequence of vignettes but it’s not a narrative piece.

Dead Hearts
Dead Hearts is a well-shot, cute, and excellently-narrated dark romantic comedy: one of the finest entries into that sub-genre that I have seen. I was also shocked at how good the fight sequences are, and how well the visual design of the whole production comes off. It genuinely looks and feels like a cracked storybook, which is impressive to say the least. This might have been my favorite of the whole festival, which is not something I expected going into it.

The Case Of Evil
The Case of Evil is a sort of follow-up on the classic Robert Johnson tale. The film has a traditional, Twilight Zone-esque tone and look to it, which I really appreciated. I’m a little surprised how rare it is to see that nowadays, as there is such a long history to horror shorts with that appearance. In any case, it is somewhat predictable, but builds tension pretty well none-the-less.

The Bloodline
There were certainly good things stylistically about The Bloodline, but the Sin City / graphic novel look has just been done too much at this point, and didn’t really work here. The story also proved a little too predictable for my taste, and the writing and acting left a lot to be desired out of this one.

Bad Guy #2
Bad Guy #2 is a gory skewering of an old action movie trope: the volatile hierarchy of fictitious criminal organizations. The eponymous character takes his place just below “The Kingpin” and “The Right Hand Man,” but just above “Bad Guy #3.” His newly appointed position, however, is famously the first to be killed off when things go awry. This flick is definitely fun and filled with impressive effects, and is one of the films I most want to watch again out of the shorts lineup.

The Amazing Rondini
The Amazing Rondini is an entertaining spin on a “deal with the devil” story. A failing magician is recruited by a man who appears to be the Devil to execute a number of wayward souls in exchange for otherworldly magical powers. To the demon’s surprise, the magician is totally down with the idea, and proves to be a pretty efficient killer after working the kinks out.

600$
600$ is fantastic, and was undoubtedly one of my favorites of the festival. It had a number of good twists as the truth behind the plot is slowly revealed through flashbacks, and is funny in a broken sort of way. The story follows a hitman who has to change professions after the market for hired assassins drops out. His new job proves to be similar to his old: he gets paid to usher people into the next world, but this time via well-plotted assisted suicides.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Theodore Rex

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Theodore Rex

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Today, I’m going back to my old stomping grounds of the IMDb Bottom 100 to cover a flick that has recently broken into its ranks: Theodore Rex.

Theodore Rex was written, directed, and produced by Jonathan Betuel, who was also behind the films My Science Project and The Last Starfighter.

The cinematography on Theodore Rex was provided by David Tattersall, who also shot the flicks Speed Racer, Next, The Green Mile, and Con Air, among many others.

Theodore Rex featured two primary editors:  Steve Mirkovich (Con Air, 16 Blocks, Big Trouble In Little China) and Rick Shaine (Pitch Black, A Nightmare On Elm Street).

The music for Theodore Rex was composed by Robert Folk, who also provided scores for movies like Lawnmower Man 2, Wicked Stepmother, and Police Academy.

The makeup effects work for Theodore Rex was done by the combination of Michael Burnett (Baby Geniuses, The Dentist), Jake Garber (Battlefield Earth, Ed), and Joseph Yuss Simon (Battlefield Earth, Escape From L.A.).

The Theodore Rex special effects team included Marilee Canaga (Silent Hill, Dr. Doolittle 2), Thomas Dickens (Carnosaur, Army of Darkness), Mike Edmonson (DeepStar Six, Wild Wild West), Steve Fink (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Men In Black), Patrick Gerrety (Red Planet, Con Air, Mortal Kombat), Doug Hudson (Happy Gilmore, White Chicks), Hans Metz (Mannequin, McBain), Darren Perks (Spawn, Leprechaun 4), William Stout (House, The Hitcher), and Joshua Pinney (Death Race, The Cell).

The visual effects for the film were provided by Jesse Silver (The Core, Super Mario Bros, Highlander II), Thomas Thill (Volcano, Blade), Jongwoo Heo (Daredevil, Swordfish, Red Planet, Mortal Kombat), Robert Habros (Suburban Commando, Leviathan, SpaceCamp), and Allen Blaisdell (Red Planet, Anaconda).

The cast for Theodore Rex is famously headlined by Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost, Sister Act, The Color Purple), and also includes Armin Mueller-Stahl (The Game), Juliet Landau (Ed Wood), George Newbern (Scandal), and Richard Roundtree (Shaft, Maniac Cop, Q).

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Theodore Rex takes place in an alternate universe where dinosaurs have been resurrected bu a team of scientists, and co-inhabit the Earth with humanity. After a dinosaur is mysteriously murdered (the first instance of such a crime), an investigation is launched that teams up a hard-nosed veteran cop with a rookie dinosaur new to the force.

Reportedly, Whoopi Goldberg desperately wanted out of her role in Theodore Rex almost as soon as the production began, but wound up forced to complete the movie after a nasty lawsuit. However, she was ultimately paid an extra $2 million on top of her initially agreed cost to do the film.

Theodore Rex was never released to theaters in the United States, as the distributors decided that the film wouldn’t be worth the cost of a theatrical release domestically. Because of this, it is widely regarded as the most expensive straight-to-video movie of all time.

Theodore Rex himself, along with the other dinosaurs in the film, were portrayed with complicated puppetry, often requiring at least two operators per creature.

Theodore Rex shockingly racked up only one Golden Raspberry nomination, specifically for Whoopi Goldberg as Worst Actress. However, it came out during a stacked year that also boasted the legendarily terrible movies The Island of Doctor Moreau and Striptease.

Theodore Rex unsurprisingly received miserable reviews, and is well-remembered as a massive failure. It currently holds a 2.4 rating on IMDb (landing it in the site’s Bottom 100 listing) and has a 21% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

One of the biggest issues with Theodore Rex is the Rex suit itself: it is distracting, the mouth movements are awful, and it has clear mobility issues that were clearly a hassle for all of the actors that had to work around it. At the same time, the cumbersome spectacle of the puppet suit may also be the only reason to actually watch this movie, or at least a few clips of it.

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As you could probably deduce from the lawsuit and her outspoken disdain for the film, Whoopi clearly didn’t give her all in Theodore Rex. Interestingly, her attitude about the film in real life mirrors her character’s disdain for dinosaurs in the story, giving her performance an almost method sense of genuine emotion at times. For most of the duration, however, she is just garbage.

The story of Theodore Rex contains a number of blatant parallels to real societal racial tensions that feel beyond unnecessary, particularly for a movie that is theoretically a family-oriented comedy. The entire movie becomes a little too dark as a result, which is further exacerbated by some of the noir-like aesthetics of the film.

If the acting and effects weren’t enough, Theodore Rex is also a very slow-moving movie that takes its time to get through the loose plot framework. It felt to me like there wasn’t quite enough written story to fill out the film, and that comedic asides had to be injected to pad out the length. The obvious downside of this is that the supposedly comedic moments bring the motion of the story to an absolute stop, making the film seem longer than it is.

I’m sure that this has been said before, but Theodore Rex looks and feels very much like Super Mario Bros. The dinosaur designs, the dark scenery and tone, and the weird juxtaposition of childlike antics with adult themes all pop up in very similar iterations in both productions. That is particularly astounding given that Super Mario Bros. released and very publicly failed just two years prior to Theodore Rex, begging the question of why the team chose to use such a similar aesthetic?

Overall, Theodore Rex is a dull movie that lacked focus all the way back to its inception. There might have been a nugget of a good idea in the premise somewhere, but it never came to fruition. As I stated earlier, the spectacle of the massive, unwieldy dinosaur puppet is the only reason to sit through this movie, and that can really be satisfied by watching a handful of clips. If you ask me, this is a movie that you can skip without any regrets.

UPDATE:

Right after I finished the initial writing of this post, a fantastic piece on Theodore Rex released on /Film, which features in-depth interviews with the major players involved with the production and release of the movie. If you are interested in delving further into the trivia surrounding this colossal flop, definitely check it out.

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Masters of the Universe

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Masters of the Universe

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Today’s feature is the much-maligned film adaptation of the Mattel franchise He-Man: Cannon Group’s Masters of the Universe.

Masters of the Universe was written by David Odell, who also penned such films as Supergirl, The Dark Crystal, and numerous episodes of The Muppet Show.

The director on Masters of the Universe was Gary Goddard, which is to date his only feature film directorial credit. However, he has produced and written a number of shorts and 3D/4D shows for theme parks over the years, if that counts for anything.

The cinematographer for Masters of the Universe was Hanania Baer, who has shot such movies as American Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, The Brotherhood of Justice, and Ernest Scared Stupid.

The editor on the film was Anne V. Coates, who has also cut movies such as Fifty Shades of Grey, Congo, Lawrence of Arabia, Striptease, Erin Brockovich, and The Golden Compass over her career.

The two primary producers of Masters of the Universe were Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the infamous duo behind the flurry of Cannon Group b-movies that dominated the 1980s (Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, American Ninja). The other producers included Elliot Schick (Total Recall), Edward Pressman (The Island of Dr. Moreau, Judge Dredd, Street Fighter), and Evzen Kolar (Surf Ninjas).

The makeup effects team for Masters of the Universe included Robin Beauchesne (Killer Workout, Iron Man 2, First Daughter, National Treasure), James Kagel (Stargate, Child’s Play, Big Trouble In Little China), Todd McIntosh (April Fool’s Day), Gerald Quist (Drive, Jonah Hex, Breakfast of Champions, Re-Animator), June Westmore (Sphere), and Michael Westmore (Raging Bull, Capricorn One).

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The Masters of the Universe special effects team was composed of Larry Roberts (Volcano, 3 Ninjas Kick Back), Karl G. Miller (Cat People, The Blues Brothers, Battlestar Galactica), Daniel Hutten (Die Hard, Solarbabies), R.J. Hohman (The Perfect Storm, Cyborg, Popeye, The Two Jakes), and Arthur Brewer (The Hitcher, Swamp Thing, Smokey and The Bandit).

The massive team of visual effects artists on Masters of the Universe included common elements with such productions as Ghostbusters, Volcano, Coneheads, Leonard Part 6, Fright Night, Donnie Darko, Battle Beyond The Stars, Mystery Men, Lawnmower Man 2, Ghost, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The music for Masters of the Universe was composed by Bill Conti, who is best known for his work on the Rocky movies, The Karate Kid, and The Right Stuff.

The cast of Masters of the Universe included Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV, Dark Angel, The Punisher, Red Scorpion), Frank Langella (The Twelve Chairs, Junior, Cutthroat Island, Small Soldiers, The Ninth Gate), Meg Foster (They Live, Leviathan, Blind Fury, The Lords of Salem), Billy Barty (Willow, Legend), Courteney Cox (Friends, Scream, Cougar Town), Chelsea Field (Death Spa, The Last Boy Scout, Flipper), and James Tolkan (Back To The Future).

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The plot of Masters of the Universe follows a group of resistance fighters from a faraway planet who are transported to Earth through the use of a mysterious scientific device. However, their enemies soon follow, in an effort to exterminate them and solidify their sinister rule. He-Man and his allies have to work with a handful of humans from Earth to defeat the evil Skeletor to save both Earth and the faraway planet of Eternia from the long reach of darkness.

In an interview, director Gary Goddard spoke about the stylistic influence of the works of Jack Kirby on Masters of the Universe, saying:

“the storyline was greatly inspired by the classic Fantastic Four/Doctor Doom epics, The New Gods and a bit of Thor thrown in here and there. I intended the film to be a “motion picture comic book,” though it was a tough proposition to sell to the studio at the time. ‘Comics are just for kids,’ they thought. They would not allow me to hire Jack Kirby who I desperately wanted to be the conceptual artist for the picture”

The costuming for the character of Evil-Lyn caused actor Meg Foster significant bruising in particularly inconvenient locations, and reportedly weighed well over 40 pounds in total. Interestingly, the eerie appearance of her eyes in the movie was completely natural, and required no enhancements or contact lenses.

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Frank Langella reportedly loved playing the character of Skeletor, and even wrote some of the more memorable lines in the movie himself. He initially took the role because of how much his son loved the franchise, a situation that echoes the similar casting of Raul Julia in the Street Fighter adaptation some years later.

Interestingly, Masters of the Universe is an adaptation specifically from the original line of toys, and not the immensely popular cartoon, which establishes very different backstories for the characters and the plot. This confused many fans of the franchise when the movie initially released, and almost certainly contributed to the negative reception it received.

The failure of Masters of the Universe, coupled with the disappointment of Superman IV, supposedly foiled plans by the Cannon Group to invest in a high budget film adaptation of Spider-Man in the late 1980s, which was to be funded by the profits of those two films.

A sequel to Masters of the Universe was cast and written, but was ultimately scrapped just as the Cannon Group was going under. Very little is known about the abandoned production, other than that it would have been directed by Albert Pyun (Captain America).

A reboot of Masters of the Universe is currently in the works (and has been for a few years), with the latest information that Thor: The Dark World screenwriter Christopher Yost has been attached to keep it moving along. No directors are currently attached to the project, and no clear timeline has been set for shooting or release.

Anthony De Longis, one of the actors in the film, was initially hired as a sword expert, and provided all of the fight choreography for the film. He even filled in as Skeletor in the fight sequences, and trained Dolph Lundgren on how to use a sword.

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Masters of the Universe proved to be a financial failure, bringing in only 17 million at the box office on a budget of 22 million. Likewise, the reviews of the movie were brutal, clocking in at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 41% from audiences, along with an IMDb rating of 5.3.

One of my biggest issues with the film’s plot is the fact that no bystanders are ever harmed, or even witness the events that take place on Earth. How do no people see an alien army marching through suburban streets, or small aircraft flying over a mid-sized town? At one point, the police finally do show up, but only after they are drug to the scene by another police officer. It is assumed that at no point over the duration of the plot did anyone report suspicious activity, let along openly panic at witnessing an alien invasion.

The story of Masters of the Universe seems to assume previous knowledge of the characters, their relationships, and the basic premise of the story, which is especially confusing given that the adaptation is taken directly from a series of action figures, which are not historically known for establishing plot. The beginning of the movie could even be seen as a follow-up from a previous film given how little backstory is provided.

One unnecessary addition to the cast of Masters of the Universe that particularly got on my nerves was the annoying troll character, Gwildor. While he is crucial to the plot during a handful of moments, his primary purpose is to provide comic relief, which never fails to fall flat. Also, the makeup on the dwarf-like creature is really odd and unsettling, as if he were left out in the sun for too long.

Dolph Lundgren is surprisingly solid enough in this movie, given that he still didn’t have a solid hold on the English language at this point. That said, this certainly wasn’t a dialogue-heavy role for him, which was certainly for the best.

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The most notable aspect of Masters of the Universe is that it feels like a patchwork of better known movies from the time, like Star Wars and Back to The Future. There is not much original to it when all is said and done, and the screenplay is about as basic and no-frills as it could possibly be.

overall, I can certainly see why this movie didn’t resonate with existing He-Man fans. That said, there is a fair amount of fun to be had with this admirably mindless entry into the filmography of the 1980s. Frank Langella absolutely hams it up as Skeletor, and the creature work is all very over the top. There are more lasers and goofy visual effects than you could possibly dream of, and the plot itself centers around a synthesizer with the ability to open dimensional portals.  What more could you possibly ask for?

The value of this movie definitely comes from a combined sense of nostalgia and how poorly the film has aged on the whole. It isn’t an elite good-bad movie for sure, but I think that it is more than worth checking out at least once for the novelty of it.

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Beeper

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Beeper

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Today’s flick is a mostly forgotten 2002 thriller that takes its name from an item that is now a technological relic: Beeper.

The writers for Beeper were Gregory Gieras, who has since written the monster movies Big Ass Spider and Centipede, and Michael Cordell, who has no other listed credits on IMDb.

The director for Beeper was Jack Sholder, who also directed such films as Arachnid, Wishmaster 2, Renegades, The Hidden, and A Nightmare On Elm Street 2.

The cinematographer for Beeper was Ajayan Vincent, who also shot Centipede, which was written and directed by Beeper co-writer Gregory Gieras.

Beeper‘s primary editor was Andy Horvitch, who also cut the Stuart Gordon movies Edmond, Stuck, The Pit and The Pendulum, and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, as well as flicks like Arena, American Ninja, Demonic Toys, and Trancers II.

The visual effects team for Beeper included Jim Stewart (Troll, Chopping Mall, School Spirit, Dr. Alien, The Dentist 2, King of the Ants), Brady Hallongren (Scorcher), Sean Hewitt (Alien Hunter, Poolhall Junkies), and Rita Schrag (The Dentist 2, Soccer Dog, King of the Ants).

The musical score for Beeper was composed by J. Peter Robinson, who has also provided music for such movies as Detroit Rock City, Vampire In Brooklyn, New Nightmare, The Wizard, and Blind Fury.

The cast of Beeper is headlined by Harvey Keitel (Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Bad Lieutenant), Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy), Ed Quinn (Starship Troopers 2, House of the Dead 2), and Gulshan Grover (Hera Pheri, I Am Kalam).

beeper2The plot of Beeper centers around the kidnapping of a prestigious doctor’s son while he is traveling in India. He is then given instructions by the child’s captors via an electronic pager, and has to to figure out a way to get his son back from the criminal organization that his holding him hostage.

Beeper was filmed in the city of Hyderabad in India, which features a good deal of photogenic architecture, which can be seen in the background of many shots.

The film was produced by a company called Shoreline Entertainment, which specializes in the production and distribution of b-movies like Ninja Cheerleaders, Parasite, and Voodoo Lagoon, just to name a few.

The reception for Beeper, at least from what I could find, was pretty negative: the film currently holds a 4.4 on IMDb, along with a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 17%.

First off, the lead character (played by Ed Quinn) in Beeper looks and sounds just enough like Christian Bale from American Psycho that throughout the movie I kept expecting him to eventually snap and start murdering people with an axe or a chainsaw. I think this is due to some mixture of his wardrobe, his hair style, and the cadence of his voice, but it was pretty amusingly distracting for me during less exciting moments of the film regardless.

beeper3The production was able to scout out some really inspiring locations for the movie, given the historic architecture throughout Hyderabad. I’m a little surprised more western productions don’t use Indian locations more often, given their impressive visuals and the fact that the country has a significant existing film infrastructure available.

As I kind of suspected, Harvey Keitel isn’t a major player in this movie, despite being highly billed on most of the promotional materials I have seen. He is far and away the biggest and most expensive name in the movie, and I imagine the production kept the amount of time they needed him on set to a minimum for financial reasons.

In general, the beeper itself provides a pretty interesting plot device to move things forward wile maintaining a sense of mystery and vagueness in the riddles and messages. While the plot mostly amounts to a high stakes scavenger hunt, there are certainly worse gimmicks out there.

Overall, Beeper isn’t awful as far as low-budget thrillers go, but it also isn’t particularly outstanding in any way. As much as there were a few things I liked about it, I mostly didn’t have strong feelings about the movie one way or another. I do wish Keitel got to shine a bit more, though I can certainly understand why he was in a limited role. He also was clearly phoning in his performance, as he has with many over the past few years.

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Mortal Kombat

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Mortal Kombat

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Today’s movie is one of the most famously successful video game film adaptations of all time: 1995’s Mortal Kombat.

The screenplay for Mortal Kombat was written by one Kevin Droney, who only had a few scattered credits writing for television shows like Highlander and Hunter at the time. Since Mortal Kombat, he only wrote one other feature: Wing Commander, also based on a successful video game.

Mortal Kombat was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who has also been behind such movies as Pompeii, Resident Evil, and Event Horizon.

The cinematographer for Mortal Kombat was John R. Leonetti, who also shot movies like The Conjuring, Insidious, I Know Who Killed Me, Joe Dirt, The Scorpion King, The Mask, and Child’s Play 3.

kombat1The editor for the film was Martin Hunter, who has cut such films as Event Horizon, The Chronicles of Riddick, and Full Metal Jacket.

The music for Mortal Kombat was composed by George S. Clinton, who has also worked on such films as The Love Guru, Beverly Hills Ninja, American Ninja 2, and American Ninja 3.

The makeup effects for Mortal Kombat were provided by a team that included Moni Mansano (Hook, Ninja III: The Domination, Revenge of the Ninja), Thomas Floutz (Face/Off, Critters, From Beyond), Eileen Kastner-Delago (Thor, Cliffhanger), and Raqueli Dahan (True Detective, Kingpin, The Usual Suspects).

The special effects team for the film was composed of Joanne Bloomfield (Tremors II, Galaxy Quest), Duncan Capp (Troy, The Brothers Grimm), Michael Dawson (A View to a Kill, Judge Dredd), Michel Gagne (Space Jam, Vampire in Brooklyn, Demolition Man), Patrick Gerrety (Red Planet, Con Air, Theodore Rex), Alec Gillis (Leviathan, Wolf), David Hoehn (Space Truckers, Wolf, Anaconda), Tom Woodruff, Jr. (Wolf, Leviathan), Patricia Villalobos (Leprechaun 3, Slither), Ron Trost (The Omega Code), Kirk Skodis (Small Soldiers, Prehysteria), and Alison Savitch (Simon Sez).

kombat4The Mortal Kombat visual effects team included common elements with such films as Life of Pi, Batman & Robin, Minority Report, Congo, Daredevil, Red Planet, Theodore Rex, Predator 2, Super Mario Bros, Captain America, Bordello of Blood, and TRON.

The team of producers for Mortal Kombat included Lawrence Kasanoff (Foodfight!, Class of 1999, Blood Diner, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud) and Robert Engelman (Mystery Men, Kazaam, Blade, Shocker, From Justin To Kelly).

The cast of Mortal Kombat includes Christopher Lambert (Highlander 2, Fortress, The Gaul), Robin Shou (Death Race, Beverly Hills Ninja), Linden Ashby (Teen Wolf, Melrose Place), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Vampires, License To Kill), Bridgette Wilson (Billy Madison), and Talisa Soto (License To Kill).

kombat5The plot of Mortal Kombat centers on an extreme, supernatural martial arts tournament, where the finest fighters from multiple dimensions fight to the death for the ultimate claim of glory.

The production of Mortal Kombat was plagued with casting difficulties from the onset. First,  Brandon Lee (Laser Mission) was selected to be Johnny Cage, but tragically died during the filming of The Crow. Then, Jean-Claude Van Damme turned down the role to star in a rival video game movie adaptation: Street Fighter. Rumors have also circulated that Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp were both approached for the role, but turned it down. Adding to the troubles, Cameron Diaz was apparently at one point set to play the part of Sonya Blade, but had to back out due to an injury before filming began.

The soundtrack to Mortal Kombat was particularly huge, going platinum in less than two weeks after its release. The music was a mix of techno and dance, integrating clips from the the original game audio, which proved to resonate with fans.

Steven Spielberg, a fan of the video game, was apparently supposed to appear in a cameo role during the introductory Johnny Cage scene, but scheduling conflicts ultimately prevented him from doing so.

Mortal Kombat was of course a massively controversial video game due to its violent and graphic fatalities, leading to significant public outcry against it. The film, on the other hand, is not particularly gory, and even received a PG-13 rating by the MPAA.

kombat2Not only did Mortal Kombat receive a sequel in Moral Kombat Annihilation, but a number of attempts have popped up over the years to reboot the franchise on film. Currently, James Wan (Saw, Furious 7) is reportedly attached to an upcoming adaptation by Warner Brothers, which is set tentatively set to release sometime in 2016. There is also an ongoing web series based on the game called Mortal Kombat Legacy, which was created after the positive reception to the short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth.

The reception to Mortal Kombat was generally pretty poor: it currently holds a 5.8 rating on IMDb, alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 33% (critics) and 58% (audiences). In spite of the negative reviews, the movie managed to rake in a whole lot of money: it grossed $122 million worldwide in theaters on a budget of $18 million.

Personally, I feel like Mortal Kombat is one of the more loyal video game movie adaptations out there, with the exception of the lack of gore (which is notable). However, the character designs and fighting arenas all look like they could be pulled straight out of the games, and the fighting sequences aren’t too shabby. While the lack of gore is a huge issue for this movie, I can’t imagine a more faithful adaptation under a PG-13 rating.

kombat3All of that said, just because a movie is accurate to the game doesn’t make it a good film. The game Mortal Kombat is more or less plotless, and doesn’t really connect one fight scene to the next. That means that the screenplay for the movie was on its own in regards to connective tissue to string the fights together, and it didn’t do a particularly good job of it. When a fight scene isn’t in progress, this movie is just…dull. The characters and plot, while fine and good for the purposes of a fighting game, are really boring when applied to a movie that requires progress and character development.

It is worth noting that the very idea of a PG-13 Mortal Kombat movie is a bit bizarre and soulless to start with. Clearly, the only reason to make the movie PG-13 was so that it could be marketed to a younger audience, and thus increase its potential at the box office. However, the game is intentionally violent and catered to an adult audience, so making the movie sanitized for the purpose of reaching out to early teens (and younger) is just kind of icky. I personally think an R-rated movie with more realistic and brutal violence is more appropriate than the cartoonish and bloodless affair in this film. Realistically, which one of those is setting a worse understanding of the consequence of violence at the end of the day? Also, and more importantly, an R-rated Mortal Kombat would be way more entertaining.

Overall, Mortal Kombat isn’t an absolutely awful movie, at least when put side-to-side with other video game adaptations (like its sequel, or the many Uwe Boll features). I do think most of its value at this point comes from nostalgia more than anything else, though I am always a big fan of Christopher Lambert hamming it up in a campy movie. I feel about the same way about this movie as I do about Super Mario Bros: I’ll watch it and enjoy it out of a sense of nostalgia, but there isn’t really any doubt that this qualifies as a bad movie. I think its reputation is worse than it deserves from fans due to the lack of gore, but it also isn’t deserving of any props.

If you are going on a 90s kick and are looking for a way to extend your nostalgia trip, pop in Mortal Kombat. It can serve that purpose well enough.

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Ghost Dad

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Ghost Dad

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Today’s feature is a 1990 Bill Cosby vehicle: Ghost Dad.

The team of writers for Ghost Dad included Brent Maddock (Heart and Souls, Short Circuit 2, Tremors 2), S.S. Wilson (Tremors, Wild Wild West, Short Circuit), and Chris Reese (The Chamber).

Ghost Dad was directed by famed actor Sidney Poitier, of films such as Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and The Jackal. To date, Ghost Dad has been his last directorial feature, but it wasn’t his first: he earlier worked with Bill Cosby on the features A Piece of the Action, Uptown Saturday Night, and Let’s Do It Again, and also directed the Gene Wilder comedies Stir Crazy and Hanky Panky.

The editor for Ghost Dad was Pembroke J. Herring, who also cut Groundhog Day, Johnny Dangerously, European Vacation, Tora! Tora! Tora!, and Out of Africa. The cinematographer for the film was Andrew Laszlo, who also cut Innerspace, First Blood, The Warriors, and Poltergeist II.

The musical score for Ghost Dad was composed by Henry Mancini, an Academy Award and Grammy-winning composer who was behind the scores for such movies as The Pink Panther and Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

The team of producers for Ghost Dad included Terence Nelson (Xanadu), David Wisnievitz (Training Day, A Civil Action), and Stan Robertson (Men of Honor).

The makeup effects on Ghost Dad were provided by Stephanie Cozart Burton, who has extensively worked on a number of television shows, and has credits on In Living Color and White Men Can’t Jump.

The special effects team included Eric Rylander (Gangster Squad, Battleship), Bruce Minkus (Van Helsing, Steel), Richard Helmer (Burlesque, Alligator, Men At Work), Richard Buckler (Blade), and Noel Butcher (Tremors).

ghostdad4The significant visual effects team behind Ghost Dad included common elements with films like Blade Runner, TRON, RoboCop, The Abyss, Last Action Hero, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, among many others.

The cast for Ghost Dad includes Bill Cosby (Leonard Part 6), Kimberly Russell (The Game, Precious), Denise Nicholas (Blacula, Capricorn One), Ian Bannen (Flight of the Phoenix), Christine Ebersole (The Wolf Of Wall Street), Arnold Stang (Hercules in New York), and Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure).

The plot of Ghost Dad centers on a middle-aged father who is apparently killed in a car accident, but continues living as a disembodied spirit. He slowly learns the quirks and rules of his new state of being, while trying to continue his daily life with his job and his family as if nothing had happened.

ghostdad2Reportedly, Steve Martin was originally set to star in Ghost Dad, when the picture was supposed to be directed by John Badham. Once those plans fell apart, the project fell to the team of Cosby and Poitier.

Interestingly, the Patrick Swayze hit Ghost released shortly after Ghost Dad in the same year, and was received much better by the general public.

Ghost Dad was the first movie for Bill Cosby since the disastrous Leonard Part 6, a film so bad that he publicly denounced it and allegedly bought the television rights specifically in order to bury it. That movie still holds a spot in the IMDb’s Bottom 100.

The reception to Ghost Dad was overwhelmingly poor: it currently has a  4.3 rating on IMDb, alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of  7% (critics) and 32% (audience).

The rules for the afterlife are bizarre, and aren’t fully explained or followed consistently. Even worse, the plot in general manages to sidestep the serious implications of death with a story twist revealing that Cosby’s character isn’t actually dead, which also negates the very title of the movie.

A lot of the gags throughout the movie are based more on Cosby’s conditional invisibility than his status as a ghost, which brings up a lot of questions as to how the writing process for this movie went. Given his death is negated, why not just make this an invisible dad movie? It allows for most of the same jokes, but avoids the immensely depressing undertones that sap all of the potential humor out of what is theoretically a family comedy.

GHOST DAD, Kimberly Russell, Bill Cosby, 1990, (c)UniversalThe failure of Ghost Dad was the coffin nail for the potential film career of Bill Cosby, which, given what has come to light about his behavior and character, is almost certainly for the best. It is hard to imagine how much bigger Cosby might have gotten if his movie career took off, and how difficult it would have been to expose him if he had even more power. So, I guess we can thank the failures of Ghost Dad and Leonard Part 6 for keeping the beast from growing too large to slay?

Personally, I think that this is a far worse movie than Leonard Part 6, though that film is almost certainly more loathed in the public consciousness of moviegoers. However, there is some weird charm to that flick that is totally absent in Ghost Dad, which is just wrong all the way down to its foundation and premise. That said, it is certainly a spectacle to sit through this confused mess of a movie, so I recommend giving it a shot if you happen to find it laying around somewhere. Also, there is something to be said for watching both Ghost Dad and Leonard Part 6 explicitly because Bill Cosby doesn’t want you to.

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How To Make A Monster

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How To Make A Monster

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Today’s feature is a television movie from 2001: How To Make A Monster.

How To Make A Monster was written and directed by George Huang, who is best known for Trojan War and the Kevin Spacey dark comedy Swimming With Sharks.

The cinematographer for How To Make A Monster was Steven Finestone, who also shot Swimming With Sharks for George Huang, and worked as a camera operator on films like The Philadelphia Experiment, Saturday the 14th, Battle Beyond The Stars, and Humanoids From The Deep.

The editors on How To Make A Monster were Daniel T. Cahn (The Young and The Restless, Darkman II) and Kristina Trirogoff, who was an assistant editor on Phone Booth, Collateral, Heat, McHale’s Navy, and Gone Fishin’.

The musical score for How To Make A Monster was composed by David Reynolds, who has worked in the music departments for such movies as Rounders, The Big Kahuna, Species, Entrapment, and Wanted.

The special effects on How To Make A Monster were provided by the Stan Winston Studios, and the creature design is credited to Stan Winston himself (Jurassic Park, Small Soldiers, Congo, Lake Placid, Predator 2, Leviathan, Terminator 2).

makeamonster1The cast of How To Make A Monster includes Clea DuVall (Argo, The Faculty, She’s All That, But I’m A Cheerleader), Steven Culp (Bosch, JAG), voice actor Jason Marsden, Tyler Mane (X-Men, Troy), Karim Prince (Power Rangers Zeo), and Danny Masterson (That ’70s Show).

The plot of How To Make A Monster centers on a video game development team who is hired to revamp a horror game that has been panned by test audiences. They are given four weeks to create a new monster and overhaul the game, with a $1 million bonus on the line for whoever makes the game the scariest. However, the monster AI they develop proves to be a little more effective than they had planned.

How To Make A Monster features a cameo by b-movie actress Julie Strain as herself, doing motion capture for the fictitious video game featured in the movie. She is best known for such movies as Heavy Metal 2000, Sorceress, and Out For Justice.

One of the monsters depicted in the game featured in the movie is clearly modeled after pikachu, the popular species of electric mouse from Pokemon. However, the adorable icon is re-imagined as a monster worth of Doom.

makeamonster4The reception to How To Make A Monster was pretty negative: it currently holds a 4.4 rating on IMDb, and a 30% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The monster itself in How To Make A Monster actually looks pretty cool, and becomes more of a gory patchwork of slain characters as the movie progresses.

As you would imagine, all of the sequences that take place “in game” have aged pretty poorly, given how quickly graphic technologies for video games have developed over the years. However, I think it is kind of charming, and feels like a sort of period piece as a result. For video game fans, there are certainly enough nods to the audience and ample nostalgia for them get a kick out of re-watching this movie now.

makeamonster3However, there are certainly some huge drawbacks to this movie. The characters are all very simple stereotypes that are far from flattering to the population of gamers, and people in the tech industry in general. Even worse, the resulting tone as a whole is at best bluntly misanthropic. The conclusion of the story dives that home even further, as it is very downbeat and depressing (and not nearly as clever as it thinks it is). Interestingly enough, it reminded me a lot of the mediocre ending of Swimming With Sharks, an earlier work by the same writer/director, which has the same sort of tone and resolution.

On the whole, I am pretty conflicted about How To Make A Monster. The creature is definitely the reason to watch, but the writing and characters that surround it can’t really be avoided, and they are all some combination of creepy, disgusting, or vile. The preachy message about greed and corporatism isn’t necessarily wrong by any means, but the way it is executed is far overblown. You’ll also probably figure out that the title of the film has a double meaning as the soon as all of the characters are established, or at least by the end of the first act.

If you really like Stan Winston effects or early horror PC games, I think this is worth checking out. For everyone else, I think it is a toss-up. The writing isn’t any worse than most slasher movies at the end of the day, and this is probably a tad better than Evolver when it comes to killer video game movies. However, Evolver is way more fun in my opinion, which is what this movie is missing most overall.

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Bargain Bin(ge): The Music Box (Pensacola, FL)

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Pensacola, FL is a top-notch beach-going destination for the southeastern United States, and is perhaps the gem of the Florida panhandle. Not only that, but it is also home to the acrobatic airplane team The Blue Angels! Unfortunately for the pasty and nerdy of us, that is about all there is to the city.

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This is pretty much all of Pensacola in one image. This is even from the city website.

Lucky for you fellow film geeks, there is some DVD hunting to be had in Pensacola! Specifically, there is a little record shop called The Music Box with a significant selection of eclectic films (interestingly set aside in a glass-cased room), as well as a ton of soundtracks on vinyl. I honestly lost count of how many rare flicks and IMDb Bottom 100 entries this place had copies of, because most of them were things I personally already own. That said, I still came out with a nice little haul to round out my collection.

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The DVD chamber

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Bad Taste

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For those who don’t know, Peter Jackson’s origins are a bit…strange. Bad Taste was his first feature back in New Zealand, and is true low-budget comedy gore in its purest form. It isn’t particularly easy to get a hold of at this point, so I was happy to find a copy here. If you haven’t seen it, it is an interesting forerunner for Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles, which both improve on various elements introduced in Bad Taste. Also, Jackson cuts a rubber alien in half with a chainsaw at one point, which is awesome.

Trick or Treat

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At this point, I think more people are familiar with the similarly titled 2007 cult classic Trick ‘r Treat than this earlier flick from the 1980s. However, Trick or Treat certainly has its following, particularly among classic rock and metal fans. As you might deduce from the box art, Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons both pop up in small roles, and have been used significantly to try to sell the movie in recent years. I’m curious to give it a watch, because the plot reminds me a bit of the lawsuit against Judas Priest that popped up a few years later, alleging that subliminal messages were put into their albums encouraging harmful behavior. Otherwise, I have heard mixed things in regards to its entertainment value, but I’m more than willing to give it a shot. Look forward to a review of this flick in October.

Showdown in Little Tokyo

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Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee is one hell of a duo. This is another one of those action movies that is clearly up my alley, but has managed to somehow evade me over the years. I’m looking forward to finally catching it, as I assume it is as magical and wonderful as it appears to be.

Warriors of the Wasteland

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Enzo Castellari is a name that deserves a lot more attention in the bad movie world. He is one of the masters of the Italian knock-off, with works like The Shark Hunter, The Last Shark, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, and Inglorious Bastards to his credit. Warriors of the Wasteland (aka The New Barbarians) is yet another one of his b-movies with a dedicated following, focusing on the aesthetic of post-apocalyptic flicks like Mad Max. I’ll be interested to see how it stacks up next to other Mad Max knockoffs like Hell Comes to Frogtown, which starred the late Roddy Piper. The involvement of Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem, 1990: The Bronx Warriors) here has me plenty excited to check this thing out as well.

Teen Wolf / Teen Wolf Too

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Teen Wolf is considered a classic of the 1980s, and I imagine that everyone has at least heard of the defining werewolf teen sports comedy of the age (though Full Moon High had its moments). The popular re-imagining on MTV has kept the idea in the public consciousness at the very least, even for those who don’t recall Michael J. Fox’s hairy basketball career.  Teen Wolf Too, on the other hand, goes among the rankings of the most maligned and unnecessary sequels in movie history. Jason Bateman (who was at the time just a recognizable child actor) has succeeded in his career as an adult in spite of the hiccup, but it still looms over him like a black cloud for people who are aware of the film.

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As I mentioned earlier, The Music Box also had an interesting selection of soundtracks. Of course, I picked up a couple of notables that I couldn’t turn down:

Xanadu

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Xanadu is a deeply polarizing movie, with die-hard fans and staunch detractors all carrying passionate opinions on its value. Whether you consider it a cult classic or a bad movie of the lowest order, nothing defined this flick quite like its soundtrack. Here, I managed to dig up a vinyl copy of the ELO-helmed album, which I’m happy to have in my collection. Again, this is a movie that I feel will make for an inevitable blog post, as it was a winner/loser in the very first Golden Raspberry awards, and made a significant impact on the public consciousness. Not only that, but it also released on one of the most infamous double bills of all time with the unarguably wretched pseudo-biopic of The Village People, Can’t Stop The Music.

Mannequin

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Not too long ago, I had a request to cover Mannequin, one of Cannon Group’s many odd contributions to the 1980s. If there is anything that has stuck with the public consciousness about this flick, it is the hit song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship. As opposed to being a full album, this one is just a single, but I figured it was still certainly worth picking up. I’m thinking it will go nicely on one of my walls, even if it never comes anywhere near my record player.

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The Punisher

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The Punisher

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Today’s movie is a lesser-known early Marvel comic book adaptation: 1989’s The Punisher.

The Punisher is a character who was initially created by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru, and John Romita, Sr. for Marvel, and he was debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man issue #129 in 1974. 1989’s The Punisher marked his first appearance in a film, though not his last: two other high profile movies were created with the character in 2004 (The Punisher) and 2008 (Punisher: War Zone), and an upcoming television series starring the character is currently in the works as part of the greater Marvel cinematic universe.

The writer for The Punisher was Boaz Yakin, who also penned From Dusk Til Dawn 2, The Rookie, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and also directed movies like Remember The Titans and Uptown Girls.

The Punisher was directed by Mark Goldblatt, who is best known as the proficient editor of such movies as Predator 2, Enter The Ninja, Humanoids From The Deep, Piranha, Super Mario Bros, The Howling, Commando, The Terminator, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The Punisher is one of only two feature-length directorial efforts by Goldblatt, the other being the buddy cop zombie flick Dead Heat.

The editor for The Punisher was Tim Wellburn, who also cut the Stuart Gordon flick Fortress and the BeastMaster television series. The cinematographer for the film was Ian Baker, who also shot such movies as Queen of the Damned, Evan Almighty, and Roxanne.

The musical score for The Punisher was composed by Dennis Dreith, who has worked as an orchestrator on movies like The Rock, Jurassic Park, and Misery.

The visual effects for The Punisher were done by one Roger Cowland, who has worked on such films as Babe, The Piano, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and The Howling III.

The Punisher special effects and makeup teams included common elements with movies like The Matrix, The Road Warrior, Street Fighter, Fortress, Crocodile Dundee II, Razorback, and Mad Max, among others.

One of the producers for The Punisher was Robert Mark Kamen, an accomplished action movie writer who penned screenplays for such movies as Taken, The Transporter, The Fifth Element, Lethal Weapon 3, and The Karate Kid.

The cast for The Punisher includes Dolph Lundgren (Masters of the Universe, Dark Angel, Rocky IV), Louis Gossett Jr. (Iron Eagle, Jaws 3-D), Jeroen Krabbé (The Fugitive, The Living Daylights), Barry Otto (The Great Gatsby, The Howling III), Nancy Everhard (DeepStar Six), and Kim Miyori (Metro).

THE PUNISHER, Louis Gossett, Jr., Dolph Lundgren 1989.The plot of The Punisher follows Frank Castle, an ex-cop turned vigilante who hunts down and executes members of the mafia and other criminal figures. After 5 years of his activities, the local criminal scene has weakened considerably, but the vacancy also attracts the interest of a foreign criminal power: the Yakuza. After the Yakuza attempts to seize the remaining operations of the mafia by kidnapping the surviving leadership’s children, Castle winds up making strange allies through his efforts to save the children and put the Yakuza down.

punisher4Reportedly, most of the fight choreography for the film was done with full contact, given professional martial artists were hired for the fighting roles instead of stuntmen. Dolph Lundgren did most of his own stunts for his role as well, given his martial arts background.

The Punisher is one of the best known “Ozploitation” action movies: meaning it was filmed in Australia, and done with extreme violence on an exploitation level.

A sequel to the movie was at one point planned, but the production company (New World Pictures) wound up going bankrupt before it could happen.

The Punisher interestingly did not theatrically release in the United States, due to the aforementioned bankruptcy of the production company. However, it managed to distribute to theaters internationally (at least, in places where it wasn’t outright banned), and popped up on home video shortly thereafter.

The beginning of The Punisher features a thinly-veiled version of John Gotti, one of the most well-known gangsters of the modern era. In 1989 (the year of this film’s release), he was still two years off from his ultimate conviction and incarceration, but was very much a public and recognizable figure as a crime boss. While the character isn’t explicitly named John Gotti in the movie, he is referred to as “The Dapper Don,” a well-known nick-name of Gotti’s.

The reception to The Punisher was generally negative: it currently holds Rotten Tomatoes scores of 28% (critics) and 32% (audience), along with an IMDb rating of 5.6. However, it has a dedicated cult following in spite of the bad reviews.

punisher3The Punisher has a great grimy look and feel to it, which is definitely a credit to this being an exploitation-style action movie. Honestly, I think this ambiance fits The Punisher as a character better than the other adaptations, though I don’t hate either of those films as much as some people do. As weird as Lundgren’s casting might seem at first glance, I think he nails the spirit of the character pretty well. Also, it is hard not to appreciate that this movie isn’t an origin story, and that the plot the screenwriter came up with is actually pretty cool, and deals with a realistic consequence of the presence of a Punisher-style vigilante.

punisher2I have never understood why so many people vocally hate this movie. The absence of the iconic skull image is certainly notable, but that actually strikes me as pretty minute on the grand scale of things. This movie is over-the-top violence and action, which is basically what the spirit of The Punisher is all about. Dolph even does a pretty good job with his lines, which is likely the result of him being given permission to rewrite them for his comfort level. I feel like it is a real shame that Goldblatt hasn’t directed any other movies, as both Dead Heat and The Punisher are entertaining flicks that have become cult classics.

I definitely recommend checking this movie out, as it is probably the best of the Marvel movies made before the modern era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony’s Spider-Man flicks, and Fox’s X-men franchise. I think b-movie and action fans in particular will enjoy this adaptation, perhaps more so than die-hard fans of the comics.

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Bargain Bin(ge): Replays Gameware (Tuscaloosa/Northport, AL)

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Tuscaloosa, AL isn’t a particularly big or interesting place. Unless you’re there for football, school, or the unimaginable combination of the two, there isn’t a whole lot to soak in. I would know, because I lived there for a while.

That said, there are a surprising number of used media stores in the area for how modest the population is. I’ve already covered the MovieStop chain quite a bit, which has a prominent location in Tuscaloosa. However, the real gems in the area are two sites of the small franchise Replays Gameware & DVDs, which you will seldom see outside of small towns and modest cities like Tuscaloosa.

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While the selection isn’t outstanding, these shops aren’t afraid to hold blowout sales to clear out their stock, particularly for their DVDs (as they are primarily vintage gaming shops).  If you catch them during one of those (as I did), the deals are very solid. There is also something to be said about the atmosphere at these shops: they are far less sterile than many of the larger buy/sell/trade chains, and hold on to the intimate and casual ambiance that a lot of people miss from the days of video rental. For people who are into that, Replays has never failed to deliver that for me.

Getting on to the actual haul, let’s start with the central Tuscaloosa location:

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Evolver

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Holy shit! It’s my favorite William H. Macy-voiced killer robot: Evolver! I covered this particular flick as part of Killer Robot Week, but this is actually the first time I had come across a DVD copy of it. Of course, I had to pick it up. Why wouldn’t I? If you want to know more, go check out my earlier review of it. Or, better yet, just dig it up on Netflix without any primer.

Action Jackson

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Action Jackson is a movie where Carl Weathers (Predator, Rocky, Arrested Development) plays a super-cop, which is all I need to know about it. Also, Vanity of Never Too Young To Die and The Last Dragon co-stars alongside him, in case I needed extra incentive to pick this up (I didn’t). This is another one of those movies that I have just never gotten around to, so when I spotted it on sale, I decided that it should come home with me. I have a feeling that if I throw that movie in my DVD player, I’ll have a mean stew going.

The Thing With Two Heads

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Gosh, where can I possibly start with this bizarre b-movie? It is about a racist white man whose (functioning) head is grafted onto a black guy, which results in a movie’s worth of hilarious, action-filled hi-jinks. Academy Award winner Ray Milland did this flick in 1972, the same year in which he featured prominently in the outlandish horror movie Frogs, which I covered here previously. I first heard about this flick when Stuart Gordon did a spotlight on it for Trailers From Hell, and it has been on my to-watch list ever since.  Keep your eyes peeled, because this sounds like a lock for me to cover at some point in the future.

While the Tuscaloosa location did yield me those three much-appreciated finds, the Northport location just outside of town really gave me some fuel for the bad movie fire:

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The Crippled Avengers

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Martial Arts films definitely aren’t my strong suit, and my knowledge base is admittedly pretty lacking in this department. However, this is a flick that I heard about recently via The Cinema Snob, and I was a little surprised to see it with a DVD release at all given how obscure most of his picks are. I hear that this is actually a pretty decent action flick, but I may just cover it anyway for its cult appeal.

Children of the Corn II / Children of the Corn III

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This is a franchise that I have no experience with outside of the original. However, I do know that people hate these two movies with a burning passion, and that I have never seen them. Thus, this was an obvious pickup for me.

The Substitute / The Substitute II / The Substitute III / The Substitute IV

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There are three sequels to The Substitute? And they all star the zombie-cop  Treat Williams? There is absolutely no way that these movies are good, and the fact that I had no idea they existed makes me absolutely giddy. I can’t wait to dig into these, and I hope they yield something worth covering here on the blog.

The original The Substitute was featured on the We Hate Movies podcast not too long ago, which made me give consideration to picking it up at some point. I vaguely remember seeing it as a kid, but it was really easy to get confused with The Principal, one of the finest films in the history of cinema. Regardless, I am baffled that this flick managed to spawn so many sequels, which has me deathly curious as to how the story continuity works between them.

Fright Night / Monster High / The Craft / Brainscan

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It is hard to resist the allure of a cheap compilation DVD. In this case, cult classics Fright Night and The Craft anchor a couple of lesser-known flicks that leech onto their sides like barnacles. The one that initially caught my eye was Brainscan, which was on my shortlist to cover back during Killer Robot Week. However, I have a hunch that Monster High is going to be the highlight of the bunch, because it sounds absolutely wretched, and holds an unenviable IMDB rating of 3.3.