I'll admit upfront that I have a soft spot for the work of late B-movie director Albert Pyun. Having had a couple of interactions with him in my previous blogging life, he came across as a lovely, genuine person.
Following on from my reviews of the last couple of days, it thus felt like time to revisit Albert's 1990 extravaganza: Captain America, featuring Matt Salinger - son of author JD Salinger - in the titular role.
Despite what you may have heard over the years, this adaptation of one of Marvel Comic's core characters isn't actually too bad. Salinger does a pretty decent job as Steve Rogers and Captain America, the costume doesn't look too silly and the production values give it the feel of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman.
There are some odd changes to Cap's established mythology, with the most bizarre being the transformation of his legendary Nazi nemesis The Red Skull (Scott Paulin) from a German to an Italian (hand-picked as a youth by Mussolini to take part in the Nazi 'super soldier' programme).
The scientist in charge of the experiment, Dr Maria Vaselli (Carla Cassola), clearly hadn't been reading the memos and is horrified to discover that the first test subject is a young boy and so flees the country.
Seven years later, at the height of the Second World War, Vaselli is working for the American Government on its own super-soldier programme with polio victim Steve Rogers selected as the first candidate.
There's flashing lights and sparking machinery - clearly borrowed from Dr Frankenstein - before a Nazi agent kills the professor.
This is quite familiar territory for Cap fans, with him soon finding himself strapped to a Nazi superbomb heading towards the White House (which he manages to redirect at the last moment, of course) that, instead, crash lands in Alaska.
He is discovered 50 years later and refuses, at first, to believe it's now the '90s - until he meets up again with his hometown sweetheart, Bernice, and - after her death - attaches himself to her daughter, Sharon (Kim Gillingham plays both mother and daughter), who he then proceeds to drag into all kinds of danger.
The President of The United States (Ronny Cox) is kidnapped by a cartel of evil industrialists - led by The Red Skull - who opposes his pro-Green stance (they intend to stick a mind-controlling implant in him!) and Cap heads off to Italy to rescue the President from The Red Skull's castle.
There are some nice touches: such as President Kimball having been a little kid who saw Cap save The White House and was inspired by him, and the fact that The Red Skull (whose accent swings from Mafia Don to Count Dracula) mocks Cap as "his brother" (as they were both created by the same experimental science).
The main flaws with Captain America come from the fact that it looks really dated and while there are some stunts and effects they are nothing spectacular. And the same can be said of the script, by Stephen Tolkin. It's very pedestrian and despite the odd moment of inspiration it really isn't much better than a cheap, Saturday afternoon television movie, peppered - for the most part - with clunky, corny dialogue and enormous plotholes.
It even introduces us to The Red Skull's daughter, but she's a total drip compared to Sin, from the Captain America comics, which was a major disappointment as well.
However, Captain America is only 97-minutes long and while great chunks of logic and believability are sacrificed to keep the pace up, it races through the story like a steam train and carries you along quickly to its blissfully cheesy ending.
When international terrorist group HYDRA steal the cryogenically-frozen body of their dead leader, Baron Von Strucker (Campbell Lane) from a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, it's time to bring grizzled Cold War veteran Nick Fury (David Hasselhoff) out of retirement.
HYDRA wants to use the "Death's Head" virus in Strucker's body to hold Manhattan to ransom, but Fury and his team are determined to shut them down.
Unfortunately, Fury falls foul of a trap set by Strucker's daughter, Andrea (Sandra Hess) aka Viper, and now only has 48 hours to save the world before the deadly toxin in his system claims his life.
Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a TV movie from 1998 (the same year that Blade was released, the first comic book superhero film that 'got it right' in my opinion, and still several years ahead of the mainstream acceptance of superheroes as valid movie fodder with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man in 2002) that has finally been released on DVD over here - albeit a cheap-and-cheerful, vanilla, no-frills release.
Written by comic book fanatic David S Goyer, who also wrote the Blade trilogy and TV series, Dark City, the Dark Knight trilogy, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, Man of Steel, Da Vinci's Demons etc, the plot is solid TV fare - and clearly setting itself up as a possible pilot for a series - although the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, lurching from arch and melodramatic to cheesy and clichéd.
This telemovie has taken a lot of flak over the years, but it needs to be a considered as a artefact of its time.
It stays pretty faithful to the comic book origins of Fury and S.H.I.E.LD., featuring a lot of recognisable character names as well as an impressive rendition of the helicarrier (more industrial than the current incarnation in the big budget movies, more like a flying battleship, but at least it doesn't keep falling out of the sky) as well as Life Model Decoys and smaller bits of spy-fi kit that add nice detail to this 90-minute action-adventure.
Not sure why the HYDRA goons looked like the Observers from Fringe, but it's a striking and memorable look, so why not?
Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is also clearly a kid-friendly movie, designed for watching over a family meal around the television, so everything is very heightened and larger than life (Andrea Von Strucker is basically a pantomime villain with an outrageous accent and a propensity for over-the-top 'evil laughter').
While it takes itself seriously, it isn't a film to be taken seriously.
The Hoff is great as Nick Fury, a towering presence and wholly convincing, tough, deadpan, one-eyed and cigar-chewing like he was in the comics I read growing up.
Personally I wouldn't have been disappointed if this had spawned a TV show back at the turn of the century - it's a hell of a lot better than the Spider-Man series with Nicholas Hammond, and even the Incredible Hulk (which usually skates by on rose-tinted nostalgia) from the late '70s.
There wasn't any other real live-action, superhero material on TV when Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. was released originally and, for its time, I still rate this as a success.
It should come as no surprise to anyone watching Full Moon's Doctor Mordrid to learn that it was originally developed as Dr Strange project, but when the rights were lost for the Marvel Comics character it was reworked as its own entity.
Lovecraftian legend and regular Star Trek guest star Jeffrey Combs stars as the titular Doctor Anton Mordrid, an ageless entity living among mortals in human form, protecting us from demonic entities, such as Kabal (regular villain Brian Thompson), an evil sorcerer he imprisoned 150 years ago.
Guided by a mystical entity he refers to as Monitor, Mordrid is alerted to Kabal's escape from a fifth-dimensional prison and he sets out to prevent 'The Death's Head' from using alchemical skills to take control of The Philosopher's Stone... and then the world.
Mordrid's life, however, becomes a bit more complicated when he attracts the attention of his new neighbour, large-haired police consultant Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar), who then seeks his assistance on a 'Satanic' murder case she's working on.
This, naturally, leads to all sorts of trouble when her colleague, no-nonsense cop Tony Gaudio (Jay Acovone) collars Mordrid for the murder.
Coming in at 74-minutes, Doctor Mordrid feels like a TV movie or a pilot for a great '90s cop show (there's some strong language and a scene of random female nudity, but all involve supporting characters that could easily be trimmed for a more family-friendly edit) rather than a blockbuster movie.
Sadly, while it has its moments, there's nothing actually in the film to rival the multi-dimensional, cosmic psychedelia suggested by the DVD's cover.
I have to be honest and admit I was hoping for a bit more "duelling wizards" material, the mid-section of the film instead feels as though it gets rather bogged down in police procedural.
Mordrid's Castle
The final showdown between Mordrid and Kabal - although boasting some decent Harryhausen-esque stop-motion animation - is surprisingly brief, especially when compared to effects heavy final acts in similar films today.
Amidst the flashy sorcerous combat, we get a teasing glimpse of the demonic forces that Kabal is releasing, then wallop, Mordrid slams the door in their stop-motion faces (which is a bit of s shame as they looked quite cool).
As is often the way with these low-budget outings, there are some great ideas at work here with the potential to spark some fantastic, tangential creativity and there's definitely an unavoidable feeling that Full Moon Features were hoping to milk this franchise for at least another film, maybe more.
Mordrid's extra-dimensional castle - where Kabal is imprisoned - is too good a visual alone not to want to revisit the world of Doctor Mordrid.
Iconic TARDIS travellers Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill (aka Amy Pond and Rory Williams) are reuniting for a new podcast, looking back at their adventures with The Eleventh Doctor (as played by Matt Smith).
Former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat has already been revealed as a guest on the upcoming Pondcast, although all other details - including the launch date - remain a closely-guarded secret.
Meanwhile, Big Finish - masterful purveyors of official Doctor Who audio adventures - has announced a new range of full-cast audio Eleventh Doctor plays, beginning March next year, with Miles Taylor supplying The Doctor's vocals.
He will be joined by a new companion, Eleanor Fong, played by Jasmine Bayes (who appeared on the TV show as UNIT's Corporal Alice Sullivan in The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death).
Although officially licensed from Marvel, Toei's 1970's live-action Spiderman (not Spider-Man) show, aka Supaidâman, is way more Power Rangers than modern Marvel Spider-Man movies; his powers come with their own transforming robot (Leopardon) and flying car... because Japan!
Beyond his hyperagility, the majority of Spiderman's powers also seem to originate from his alien suit, the Spider Protector (Venom-much?), and include "spider sense", which acts more like a radar, and a variety of vintage powers such as "spring string" (rope-likeprojectile webbing) and "spider netting" (for capturing bad guys in).
For a Westerner it's weird, earnest, fun, mixing a character we know so well with the established tropes of Japanese super sentai sci-fi to create a truly unique and wonderful show.
And there's something deliciously camp about the way Spiderman likes to bust a move and strike a pose at every opportunity - even when it serves absolutely no purpose.
Each episode is less than 24 minutes long, including a trail for the next instalment, and tears along with the speed and careless abandon for logic that makes certain old children's shows so enjoyable.
Occasional bursts of dialogue border on the nonsensical, but this could simply be a mistranslation in the subtitles, and there's certainly never any doubt what's going on in the very simple storylines.
Beyond the costume, and the odd refrain from the classic Spider-Man theme music, there's very little of Peter Parker's DNA in this iteration of the character.
Even his supporting characters are wildly different. Although, in his secret identity, the protagonist is a bit of a waster and coward, he's also the "man of the house", looking after his younger sister, Shinko (Izumi Oyama), and little brother, Takuji (Yoshiharu Yabuki).
I'm guessing their late parents had good life insurance as no-one in this family appears to have a steady job, yet putting food on the table doesn't appear to be an issue.
These first four episodes establish a simplistic formula and stick to it, while still drip-feeding the audience with more and more information about Spiderman's backstory and powers.
But in the meantime, here's my summary of these episodes...
EPISODE ONE: The Time Of Revenge Has Come! Attack The Iron Cross Army! The origin story - it's soooo different to that of Peter Parker's Spider-Man.
Shinji Tôdô stars as Takuya, the motorcycle-racing son of space archaeologist Dr Hiroshi Yamashiro, who receives a psychic summons from a stranded alien Garia (sometimes called Galia).
Garia has been on Earth for 400 years, having chased Professor Monster (Mitsuo Andô) and his duck-billed Iron Cross Army here after their conquest of Planet Spider.
Professor Monster
Garia is seeking revenge for the devastation of his homeworld, but has been trapped underground by Professor Monster until Takuya came along.
Not sure what Professor Monster was doing for those four centuries if his plan, as stated, is to conquer the Earth? Perhaps he was waiting for humanity to just wipe itself out?
In a very Yoda-like move, Garia passes on the power of Spiderman to Takuya then appears to die, instantly reincarnating as a spider that spouts motivational commentary to Takuya.
Takuya's father is killed by Professor Monster's forces when Takuya's family are investigating a crashed UFO, which is actually Garia's ship, the Marveller (see what they did there?) and so now he has two reasons to seek revenge on Professor Monster.
EPISODE TWO: My Serious World! The Man Who Lives According To His Destiny: Professor Monster has started to derail trains, using a giant flying brain creature, for reasons...
Takuya wanders into a church and recounts his origin story to a statue of Christ (bit odd), giving us some more information about Garia and Professor Monster's feud and how they both ended up on Earth.
There's a suggestion that after Garia and Professor Monster fought in the samurai era, leaving Garia trapped underground, Professor Monster went into hibernation until recently.
Back in the 1970s, the arachnid Yoda, Garia, decides he's done enough, curls up into a spidery ball and dies - for real.
After this things start to slot into a formula: Spiderman fights some of the duck-billed Iron Cross Army ninjas, the creature-of-the-week appears, the creature grows to kaiju size, Spiderman hops into his flying car and summons Leopardon.
The giant robot and the kaiju fight, then Leopardon throws its sword at the monster - which explodes.
The end.
EPISODE THREE: Phantom Thief 001 vs The Spider: In a plot eerily reminiscent of the 2018 season of Daredevil, Professor Monster uses one of his creatures - a large insect that projects powerful light beams from its bug eyes - to bust Phantom Thief 001 from police custody, then brainwash him into thinking he's Spiderman.
The notorious thief then goes round tagging all his burglaries with Spiderman's name, and ruining our hero's reputation.
This is all a cunning plan to lure the real Spiderman out and, when he confronts the hypnotised Phantom Thief 001, he is ambushed by Iron Cross Army ninjas and the insect creature.
There's a nice touch where the real Spiderman saves the impostor, after the Iron Cross Army decide they have no further need for him, but then the story segues into its formulaic final act.
Ninja fight. Kaiju. Flying car. Giant robot. Power sword. Explosion. The end.
EPISODE FOUR: The Terrifying Merman! Silver String That Brings A Miracle: Takuya Yamashiro wakes from a prophetic nightmare that Professor Monster has written a computer program which has divined - after studying all the available film footage of his fights - the ultimate way to kill Spiderman.
Then, Takuya sees a death announcement for Spiderman in the newspaper, complete with funeral arrangements set for a couple of days' time.
The Spider Bracelet
This is, of course, part of another plan by Professor Monster to lure Spiderman into a trap.
The Professor has created a wicked Merman to attack innocents, and chasing this creature Spiderman falls into a cage... and has his first face-to-face meeting with Professor Monster!
After being severely wounded in his cage fight with the Merman, Spiderman escapes, but is later lured into another trap when the Merman and the Iron Cross Army kidnap freelance photographer Hitomi Sakuma (Rika Miura), Takuya's younger sister's best friend and the closest this Spiderman gets to having his own Mary Jane... but without any overt romance.
In this episode we learn a bit more about Spiderman's powers: with his suit he can see in the dark, but the alien injection that made him Spiderman has also granted him superhearing and a rapid healing ability.
I'm not sure if the prophetic dreams are a new power or simply a plot device for this episode as they're never explained.
It's also amusingly bizarre that Takuya wears a huge bracelet (with Spiderman written on it) - which contains the Spider Protector and has other gadgety uses - on his wrist, but no-one ever notices this!
After rescuing Hitomi, Spiderman heads into the final act and you should know the score by now:
Ninja fight. Kaiju. Flying car. Giant robot. Power sword. Explosion. The end.
The Marveller transforms into Leopardon, which has a spectacular array of anti-kaiju weaponry
Gruff action star and hardman Liam Neeson stars in Sam Raimi's Darkman as Peyton Westlake, an up-and-coming scientist on the verge of creating 3D printable replacement skin.
Unfortunately, Peyton's lab - with him in it - gets trashed and torched by a gang of mobsters looking for an incriminating memorandum that his attorney girlfriend, Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand), has acquired.
Presumed dead, Peyton's body is fished out the river and given an experimental treatment, administered by - of all people - a surprise, and uncredited, cameo appearance by the lovely Jenny Agutter.
This grants the disfigured scientist increased strength and makes him immune to pain, but also means he's prone to fits of berserk anger.
Waking up, Peyton breaks free and returns to the ruins of his lab, where he somehow salvages enough equipment to resume his experiments in replacement skin growth.
With his new abilities, he begins to exact his revenge on the mobsters, who are led by the iconic figure of the late Larry Drake as Robert G Durant.
Durant happens to work for Julie's boss, Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels), a corrupt property developer looking to transform the city into his own vision of the 'city of tomorrow'.
Peyton's lab-made skin can only last 99 minutes in sunlight, but he realises that as well as helping to rebuild his own face, he can now impersonate anyone he chooses... as long as he has enough photographs of them to build up a 3D image in his computer.
Before he plunged headfirst into the world of superhero movies with his classic Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s, Sam Raimi tested the waters in 1990 with Darkman, his inspired horror spin on the pulp antihero, The Shadow.
However, Darkman also blends in elements of classic, tragic creations from the black-and-white era of creature features, such as The Invisible Man, The Phantom of The Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Frankenstein's monster.
There's even sprinklings of The Incredible Hulk in the mix, with the stylised sequences of the scientist's raging anger and then his sad farewell to Julie at the end when he finally adopts the moniker of Darkman, merging into the crowd wearing the face of Bruce Campbell (another great cameo in a film loaded with them).
Based on Raimi's own story, with a script he helped co-write with Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi (Sam's brother), Daniel Goldin, and Joshua Goldin, director Sam Raimi created a visually-striking 'superhero' in Darkman, who operates intelligently from the shadows, resorting only to violence in the action-packed grand finale of the 96-minute movie.
While not quite as inventive - or gonzo - as his game-changing Evil Dead movies, Darkman still manages to capture Raimi's delightfully twisted sense of humour.
The "experimental treatment" Peyton receives as a near-dead John Doe is a bit random and never really explained (or revisited), but then again once you accept the weird science of Peyton's DIY replacement skin you know you're in for a wild, pulpy ride where things don't have to make 100 per cent sense to be fun and entertaining.
Two direct-to-video sequels came out in the mid-90s - Darkman II: The Return of Durant and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die - although it will surprise no one that Neeson didn't return as the titular hero, being replaced by The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo, and Sam Raimi took a producing role, leaving the directing to TV director Bradford May.
I will, of course, now be tracking them down (there's a Blu-Ray box set on Amazon with the full trilogy).
With the official Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration of Doctor Strange now well established and part of the general public's consciousness (thanks, in large part, to casting Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Sorcerer Supreme), I thought it was time to set the Wayback Machine to the 1970s and fall under the spell of the original Dr. Strange movie.
As ever, this 1978 TV movie needs to be considered on its own merits, taking into account the budgetary and technological restrictions of its time.
The Ditko-verse
Five hundred-year-old sorceress Morgan LeFey (Jessica Walter) is tasked by her nameless, demonic master (a giant, mist-enshrouded puppet, voiced by David Hooks) to slay Earth's current sorcerer supreme, Thomas Lindmer (John Mills... yes, THE John Mills) within an arbitrary timeframe of three days. I suspect he's supposed to be Dormammu.
The legendary Arthurian villianness has been hanging around the "higher levels of the Astral plane", a set clearly influenced by the iconic artwork of Dr. Strange comic book artist Steve Ditko. This opening sequence gave me hope that the film would be treating its source material with some respect.
Morgan's scheme involves mind-controlling beautiful student Clea Lake (Eddie Benton aka Anne-Marie Martin) to push Lindmer off a bridge.
Lindmer survives, but Clea is traumatised by the event and ends up in hospital under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), who wears his father's ring that bears the same symbol as seen on Lindmer's window and on a painting in his Sanctum Sanctorum.
Strange finds himself drawn to Clea and Lindmer offers to help out in her treatment, convincing Strange to come to his home where he sends the doctor off on an astral voyage to save Clea's soul.
Astral Tripping
This 2001-style, kaleidoscopic light-show - complete with a phantom horseman in the form of the demon Balzaroth (voiced by The Addams Family's Ted Cassidy) - is the visual highlight of the film, being surprisingly imaginative and trippy despite the limitations of '70s TV special effects.
After this, Strange declares he doesn't want anything more to do with Lindmer's magic, but Morgan isn't listening and after bitch-slapping Lindmer's chum Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) and then seemingly doing the same to the old man, she turns her attention to Stephen Strange.
It turns out that Morgan has a bit of a cougar-thing going and wants to use her womanly wiles (which apparently haven't seen much action during her centuries in The Dark Dimension) to seduce the good doctor. He, of course, is having none of this - as his eyes are focussed on Clea.
Dr. Strange is quite a dialogue-heavy piece, but still manages to break this up with some flashy light shows and demonic summonings, so that even in the many hospital scenes the pace never sags too badly.
However, things go bizarrely off the rails in the film's denouement - presumably these were meant as plot hooks if this pilot spawned a TV show - when Clea and Strange repeat (almost verbatim) a conversation they had earlier in the film, but neither notice, and then neither seem that perturbed by Morgan popping up on TV as a self-help guru!
There are a lot of changes from the source material in Dr. Strange, most of which I can understand for the sake of brevity, such as stripping out Strange's adventures in Tibet and making him a psychiatrist rather than a surgeon to tie him in to Clea's sub-plot.
What were they thinking?
It's a bit of a shame that in removing the Eastern aspects of Strange's backstory (thus explaining why Lindmer becomes Strange's mentor, rather than The Ancient One - who, confusingly, makes a vocal appearance during Strange's transformation sequence) they also decided to Westernise Wong and change Clea to a normal human being.
But I guess they didn't want to overload a mainstream audience with too much extraneous weirdness in a 90-minute television show about dimension-hopping sorcerers battling demons for the fate of humanity.
The worst change though is the inexplicable reworking of the classic Dr Strange look into a kitsch superhero costume with a bizarre starburst on the front.
Thankfully this only appears briefly towards the end of the film, after Morgan has magically dressed him in robes that do a far better job of emulating his comic book look.
Overall, Dr. Strange - as you would expect - is a product of its time. A bit slow in parts and very cheesy, but with some great touches along the way that suggest the people behind it had ambitious plans should it have been picked up to run as a series.
It was clearly going to be a very different superhero show to The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America that were making similar, difficult, transitions from the comic book page to the television screen at that time.
My pop culture Odyssey: a slice of super-powered geek life with heavy emphasis on pulp adventure, horror, comic books, westerns, superheroes, sci-fi, giant monsters, zombies etc
