Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension was released in 1984. It was a spectacular box-office flop. It’s not hard to see why. It’s uber-geeky in a way that gave it no appeal whatsoever to mainstream audiences. It tries so hard to be cool and hip and edgy and clever that it becomes embarrassing. 

It wasn’t based on a comic book but it tries very hard to look like it was.

It’s an example of a film that was clearly made without any thought as to what the target audience was going to be. The budget was $17 million which was ridiculous for a movie that was only ever going to appeal to a tiny cult audience.

Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is a kind of 80s Doc Savage - an all-round genius and superhero. He’s a top neurosurgeon and a brilliant particle physicist and he’s just incredibly good at everything.

The plot is complicated. Buckaroo Banzai has designed a jet car with which he wants to break the dimension barrier. He succeeds, after driving the car straight through a mountain.

There are space aliens from another planet or maybe they’re from another dimension. There are two warring factions among the aliens.

The saga really began in the 1930s, with an earlier attempt to break the dimension barrier. And with space aliens landing in New Jersey where they brainwashed Orson Welles.

There’s a mad scientist, Dr Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) locked up in a mental hospital but he escapes and is out for revenge and he also wants to break the dimension barrier.

All of the aliens are named John.

Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin) gets mixed up in all this when she catches Buckaroo’s nightclub act. Yes, he has a band as well. They’re musicians and also scientists and junior-grade super-heroes. Penny reminds Buckaroo of his late wife.

Penny ends up in lots of trouble with the aliens and of course she ends up being held captive. There’s lots of running around. There are fistfights and gunfights. The aliens look human unless you have a special device that allows you to see their true form. Buckaroo has of course invented such a device.

The plot spins more and more out of control.

That’s not necessarily a huge problem. This is trying to be madcap comic book-style science fiction adventure romp and it doesn’t need to make any actual sense.

This is a movie that really isn’t sure what it’s trying to do. Is it trying to be a spoof? Maybe a spoof of geek culture? In any case it isn’t the least bit funny.

A major weakness is the casting. Peter Weller simply does not have the necessary charisma. The supporting cast includes Jeff Goldblum who would have been a far better choice to play Buckaroo.

John Lithgow yells and babbles a lot. It becomes very tiresome very quickly.

Ellen Barkin is OK but her part is disastrously underwritten and she and Peter Weller have no chemistry at all.

The special effects are very crude but almost certainly deliberately so and deliberately meant to be jokey. This film is pushing very hard for a comic-strip feel and it does succeed in that aim. The visuals are crazy and goofy but fun and they’re what I like most.

Despite its egregious flaws I couldn’t bring myself to actively dislike it. It fails in an entertaining very 80s way. It’s an oddity but if you have copious quantities of beer and popcorn on hand you might enjoy it. Imagine Earth Girls Are Easy without the laughs.

It looks nice on Blu-Ray.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a 2017 space opera blockbuster written and directed by Luc Besson.

It is based on a French science fiction comic book series, Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières. The comic book series ran from 1967 to 2010. Besson was a huge fan in his youth.

Many centuries into the future Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are elite security operatives of the United Human Federation. Their latest mission will take them to Alpha, a giant city in space inhabited by thousands of species from different planets.

We have already found out in the opening sequences that Alpha had been a space station orbiting the Earth but due to its growing size it was blasted into space.

And we also know that in the recent past the planet Mül was destroyed. It was home to a peaceful humanoid species. We know about Mül because of Valerian’s dream. Which might have been more than a dream.

Mül was also home a strange little animal with remarkable properties. We know this animal is important and we know the pearl is important but we don’t know why they’re important.

There is is something wrong on Alpha. An inexplicable radioactive dead zone is slowly expanding and threatens the city’s existence. Security personnel have sent to investigate. None have come back alive. That’s why Valérian and Laureline were sent there.

Aliens have attacked Alpha and taken its commander prisoner. Valérian and Laureline have to retrieve him. This will involve a great deal of action and excitement and danger, and also mystery. Part of the mystery is hidden in the files that nobody but the commander can access.

This film suffers from some of the same flaws as Besson’s earlier science fiction extravaganza, The Fifth Element. The plot loses direction as Besson focuses too much on visual coolness, and he just offers us too much visual coolness. He just keeps throwing too many new cool visual ideas at us.

The lengthy subplot involving pop diva Rihanna as a shape-shifting stripper is an unnecessary distraction should have been cut. She can’t act, it’s too silly and it slows things down. The movie ends up being half an hour too long.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets suffered from the same problem as Disney’s John Carter a few years earlier. Both movies did quite well at the box office but they were both so expensive that they still ended up losing a lot of money. It’s a broken financial model, that makes it too risky to make blockbusters that are in any way original.

I did like the two leads. They’re likeable and we care about them. I like that Valérian is allowed to be a brave masculine hero rather than inept male who needs a Strong Competent Woman to rescue him. I like the fact that for most part Laureline is an old-fashioned Feisty Heroine rather than a girlboss. Valérian is her commander and she doesn’t constantly undermine him. Laureline is also allowed at times to behave like a woman. She doesn’t come across as a female character who could just as easily have been written as a male character.

I liked their relationship. He wants to marry her. She isn’t sure. It’s increasingly obvious that she loves him but she needs to be convinced that he’s ready for marriage. Marriage is something she takes seriously.

This is a much more successful film than The Fifth Element, partly because Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker are not in it. It isn’t ruined by incredibly annoying characters.

The best thing about it is that it has no connection to Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel comics.

While it needed to be trimmed just a little Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed some of the Valérian and Laureline comics - Valerian The Complete Collection vol 1. In the comics they travel through time a lot but for a standalone movie I think Besson made a wise decision in dropping that angle. The comics are fun!

And I've reviewed Besson's two great early movies, Léon: The Professional (1994) and La Femme Nikita (1990).

Darkman (1990)

Darkman, released in 1990, was one of a number of comic book or comic book-inspired action movies made in the early to mid 90s. Other notable examples being Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Shadow and The Phantom. All were expected to launch franchises but for various reasons this didn’t happen (although there were a couple of direct-to-video Darkman movies). Darkman was in fact commercially very successful.

Sam Raimi directed and co-wrote the script.

Genius scientist Dr Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is working on a new type of synthetic skin. His girlfriend Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand) is a lawyer but despite this she’s one of the good guys. She has tumbled upon a corruption scandal involving property developer Louis Strack (Colin Friels). She has an incriminating memo. A bunch of goons led by the sinister Robert Durant (Larry Drake) break into Peyton’s laboratory and then blow it up. Peyton is assumed to have perished but he survived, horribly disfigured. His new synthetic skin invention won’t help because it’s unstable. It disintegrates after a short period of time.

The skin however can be useful as a temporary measure and Peyton uses it it to get his revenge.

An enormous amount of mayhem ensues.

This movie was not based on an actual comic book. It was an original story by Sam Raimi. Comic books were a very obvious influence, along with 1930s pulp novels such as The Shadow, 1930/40s movie serials and the Universal gothic horror movies of the 30s. Darkman certainly achieves an extraordinary comic-book vibe. And since it’s an original story there were no pesky rights issues to worry about.

It was also clearly an attempt to ride on the coat-tails of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman mega-hit. Darkman has some traces of the urban gothic feel of Batman but it has a flavour of its own. It has an aesthetic perfectly suited to a comic-book movie.

Liam Neeson is an actor I’ve never thought about one way or the other. He’s fine here and does the brooding tragic thing well.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Frances McDormand’s performance but it’s too bland for a movie such as this which demands larger-than-life performances.

This movie is dominated by its villains. Colin Friels is deliciously oily and slimy. Larry Drake as Durant is properly menacing and sadistic.

What distinguishes Darkman from the other comic book style movies of the 90s is that Raimi was coming from a horror background so it has more overt horror moments, and the Darkman makeup effects are genuinely gruesome.

What makes it fun is that the horror is combined with so much goofiness and so many hyperactive action scenes.

You’re not meant to take his movie even a tiny bit seriously. There’s a lot of black comedy. It’s all very tongue-in-cheek.

Some of the action scenes are amazingly silly and totally unbelievable but it doesn’t matter. This is the world of comic books. The crazier the action scenes the better, as long as they’re done with energy. And this movie has immense amounts of energy. The suspended-from-a-helicopter scenes are ludicrously over-the-top and implausible but comic book heroes can do those sorts of things.

Raimi had a modest budget to work with. Some of the special effects are a bit iffy but Raimi figured that if they were done at sufficiently breakneck pace it wouldn’t matter, and he was right.

The production design, given the limited budget, is impressive. This is a cool dark fantasy world.

Don’t bother giving any thought to the plot. It’s a standard revenge plot and it’s full of holes but if you have plenty of beer and popcorn on hand you won’t care. There is an attempt to add a tragic aspect to the story and that works quite well.

Darkman is just pure hyperkinetic crazy fun. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Highly recommended.

Darkman looks pretty good on Blu-Ray.

The Shadow (1994)

The Shadow, released in 1994, was one of several 1990s attempts to kickstart superhero franchises. Other notable attempts were The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy and The Phantom. All these attempts failed which is a pity because they’re pretty good movies.

The Shadow began as a pulp magazine hero was was featured in several movies in the late 1930s.

The 1994 movie wisely adopts for a period setting although it looks more 1940s than 1930s.

The movie gives us a backstory. Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) is a very nasty American bandit operating somewhere in central Asia. He ends up as a prisoner in a monastery where he learns to deal with his inner demons. 

He returns to America to become a force for good as a masked crime-fighter.

He has one super-power. He can cloud men’s minds. This gives him virtual invisibility - others are hypnotised into not seeing him.

Now he’s up against Shiwan Khan (John Lone), a descendant of Genghis Khan who has some similar hypnotic powers. Shiwan aims at world conquest. He plans to get hold of an atomic bomb. Such things do not yet exist (we assume the setting is the United States just before the Second World War) but Shiwan knows of a couple of eccentric genius scientists who may be able to invent one.

Lamont Cranston has one possibly useful ally. Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) is the daughter of one of the crazy scientists but she appears to have telepathic powers. Or at least she has the ability to make telepathic contact with Lamont Cranston.

I have a few reservations about this movie but they’re more matters of personal taste than actual criticisms.

Alec Baldwin is seriously lacking in charisma and charm. But given that it was decided to make Lamont Cranston a very dark tortured character constantly battling the darkness within him his casting works reasonably well. He does the tragic brooding ominous thing very well and overall his casting works.

I’m not sure that Penelope Ann Miller has the necessary star power. Margo Lane is more than just the hero’s love interest. She becomes his active ally. This movie needs a really strong female lead, especially with such a taciturn leading man. Compared to Jennifer Connelly in The Rocketeer, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Phantom or even Madonna in Dick Tracy she’s a little bland. I can’t help thinking of several other major female stars of the period who might have injected bit more life into the character. Nicole Kidman perhaps. Or Sharon Stone (who had demonstrated in King Solomon’s Mines that she could be a delightful adventure heroine). On the other hand Penelope Ann Miller is pretty, she’s likeable, she looks very good in period costumes and hairstyles and there’s nothing actually wrong about her performance.

At times the visuals are just slightly too reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Batman, but I must admit that The Shadow does the 1940s urban gothic thing very effectively.

Viewers unaware of The Shadow’s long pop culture history were likely to dismiss this movie as a mere Batman rip-off. In fact The Shadow as a character pre-dates Batman by a decade.

The biggest problem with these 90s attempts to launch new franchises was that these movies were horrendously expensive. It was not enough for them to do well at the box office. To justify a franchise they needed to be gigantic hits, which they weren’t.

Australian-born Russell Mulcahy was a solid choice to direct. One of this movie’s great strengths is that it doesn’t suffer from the problems that afflict so many movies of recent decades - bloat and poor pacing. It keeps powering along and there’s always something happening.

The Shadow is heavy on the urban gothic noir vibe but with moments influenced by old Hollywood musicals and even (as Penelope Ann Miller quite correctly points out in her interview) some nice screwball comedy touches. The dynamics of the Lamont Cranston-Margo Lane relationship are structured in a very screwball comedy way.

It’s very special effects-heavy but they are done extremely well. There’s some CGI (CIG was around but still in its infancy) but Mulcahy preferred practical effects and that’s mostly what we get. It really is a great-looking movie.

The Shadow delivers dazzling visuals, thrills and adventure. That’s more than enough to keep me happy. Highly recommended.

Dick Tracy (1990)

I have to start my review of Warren Beatty’s 1990 Dick Tracy movie with a disclaimer. I’ve seen several of the 1940s Dick Tracy B-movies and a couple of the 1930s serials but I have no familiarity at all with Chester Gould’s comic strip. I therefore can’t way how close this movie goes to capturing the spirit of the comic strip. It certainly tries very hard for a comic-strip feel but whether it’s consistent with that particular comic strip I can’t say.

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) is of course a square-jawed tough guy police detective in an imaginary American city. Tracy is a popular hero in the city.

There’s plenty of organised crime in the city and now Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) is trying to create a unified crime operation that will more or less run the whole town. His first step is to take over Lips Manlis’s night-club/gambling club. That means he also takes over Manlis’s girlfriend, sexy blonde canary Breathless Mahoney (Madonna).

Now it’s going to be all-out war between Dick Tracy and Big Boy. Much mayhem will ensue.

The mayhem is done with energy and style. There are quite a few explosions but in 1990 there was no way you were going to get away with an action movie without explosions. Millions of rounds of small arms ammunition are expended, resulting in very little actual bloodshed. Dick Tracy’s submachine gun seems to be fitted with a 10,000 round magazine. It all adds to the comic-book style fun.

Tracy has a girlfriend, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly). Tess is pure and virtuous.

Needless to say at some stage Tess is going to get herself kidnapped by the bad guys.

Dick Tracy will also have to choose between the virtuous Good Girl and the sexy Bad Girl. Breathless Mahoney is the femme fatale and she’s definitely a bad girl but she might have genuinely fallen in love with Tracy.

There’s a complication. It’s not just a war between Dick Tracy and Big Boy. There’s a third party, a man with no face, and he seems intent on destroying both Tracy and Big Boy.

The plot feels like a comic-strip plot, which is a good thing. It does have a major romance sub-plot, a romantic triangle between Tracy, Tess and Breathless Mahoney, but in 1990 a romance sub-plot would have been commercially essential.

Glenne Headly has what is in some ways the toughest role. Not only is Tess Trueheart the pure virtuous Good Girl, she’s the least flamboyant character in the movie and of course she’s inevitably going to be totally overshadowed by Madonna in full-on Wicked Sex Kitten mode. Glenne Headly does at least manage to make Tess likeable.

Full marks for Charlie Korsmo for making Kid one of the less obnoxious and irritating child characters in movies. Junior (as he later becomes known) can be incredibly annoying in the 1930s serial but here he’s actually quite likeable.

This is the first time I have ever enjoyed an Al Pacino performance. Pacino goes wildly over-the-top (as he always does) but here it works.

I hate to say this but I really liked Madonna in this movie. She nails her part pretty well. She makes Breathless Mahoney ambiguous enough to be interesting (she might stick with the bad guys or throw in her lot with the good guys). And she convinces us that Breathless really is confused about her feelings for Dick Tracy.

I like Warren Beatty a lot here. Dick Tracy is not supposed to be a real person. He’s a square-jawed Comic Strip Hero. He’s not supposed to emote. That’s now Beatty plays him and it works.

The best thing about this movie is the visual style. Given that he’s the star, the producer and the director I’m guessing that Warren Beatty had a great deal of creative control and that the visual style is exactly what he wanted. If so then his instincts were correct. All the colours are impossibly bright and vivid. Everything looks totally and wildly and deliberately artificial. It looks like a comic-strip come to life, and the impressive makeup effects make the characters look like comic-strip characters come to life. That’s as it should be. Beatty makes zero concessions to realism, and that is again as it should be.

What I love most is that this movie looks nothing at all like Tim Burton’s Batman. It has its own visual style.

Stephen Sondheim’s songs work well. A soundtrack of modern pop songs would have dated the movie very quickly and would have felt wrong. Even though the songs are sung by Madonna they feel more like standards than current chart-toppers, and Madonna sings then well.

I enjoyed Dick Tracy very much indeed. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three of the very good RKO movies - Dick Tracy (1945), Dick Tracy vs Cueball (1946) and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947) and I’ve reviewed the hugely entertaining 1937 Dick Tracy serial.

The Bat Woman (1968)

The Bat Woman (La mujer murcielago) is a 1968 Mexican wresting woman action/spy romp.

Gloria (Maura Monti) is a rich beautiful socialite. She is also a very successful lady wrestler. And as well as that she is the Bat Woman, a masked crime-fighter. She manages to keep her real identity a secret. This is necessary since she has a lot of enemies in the underworld.

Someone has been kidnapping wrestlers. Male wrestlers. They are found dead after having had their pineal glands removed. The killer must be insane but he must also be a skilled surgeon. In fact we know right from the start that the man behind these murders is neurosurgeon Dr Eric Williams (Roberto Cañedo).

He definitely falls into the mad scientist category. He plans to create a race of fish-men. That’s why he needs those pineal glands.

The police are relieved that the Bat Woman has agreed to assist them in solving the case.

Dr Williams has created his first fish-man hybrid. The fish-man isn’t too bright but he follows orders.

Dr Williams has a rather cool-looking mad scientist laboratory on board his yacht, the Reptilicus. The Bat Woman has to find a way to get aboard this yacht, preferably without being captured by the bad guys.

Of course we know she will be captured by the bad guys. More than once. Capturing the Bat Woman is one thing. Holding on to her is another. She’s clever and resourceful and she doesn’t give up, and she has a few tricks up her sleeve (although were she hides her gadgets in a costume that is really just a bikini is another matter).

Dr Williams has other evilness planned. He needs a mate for his fish-man. He intends to create a fish-woman. As you might guess the Bat Woman figures in this dastardly plan.

Enjoying some movies has a lot to do with how you approach them. This is a movie that should definitely not be approached as a “so bad it’s good” movie. It’s an excellent well-made movie. It should also not be approached as a “camp classic” - it is not camp. And certainly not camp in the way the Batman TV series was. It’s a lighthearted adventure ro,p but that doesn’t make it camp.

René Cardona directed an immense number of movies and all the ones I’ve seen have been fun. Alfredo Salazar wrote the screenplay. He scripted a lot of very enjoyable movies including luchadora (lady wrestler) and Aztec Mummy movies.

This is a movie made by seasoned professionals. These guys knew what they were doing. This movie is not in any way amateurish and it does not look cheap. It’s a lot more polished than most American low-budget movies of that era. It compares quite favourably with the Hammer movies of the same vintage.

Maura Monti is an Italian actress who had a brief but prolific career in Mexican cinema. This is not a role that requires great acting but in fact she’s perfectly competent in that department. What was needed was an actress who could be beautiful, sexy and glamorous. Miss Monti is well qualified in those areas. She also looks like a fit healthy active young woman and she looks quite convincing in her action scenes (and it’s obvious that she did most of these scenes herself). She also had to look great in her Bat Woman costume. It’s a rather cool costume and it’s quite revealing. Miss Monti, who is rather well developed in the bust department, fills it out very nicely. She’s also lively and likeable with charisma. She makes a fine action heroine.

The fish-man is a guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster but he’s a cool monster and I happen to love guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters.

The most important thing of all in a movie of this type is pacing. You have to keep the action moving along. This movie certainly does that.

The Bat Woman is stylish good-natured fun. Highly recommended.

While the Bond movies may have been an influence this movie has stronger affinities with the comic book-inspired pop cinema of the 60s, movies like Modesty Blaise (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), Satanik (1968), Umberto Lenzi’s Kriminal (1966) and Deadlier Than the Male (1967). And maybe even Jess Franco’s The Devil Came from Akasava (1971), Kiss Me, Monster (1969) and Two Undercover Angels (1969).

Indicator’s Blu-Ray release looks terrific. It’s loaded with extras but honestly a barebones release at a more reasonable price would have been preferable.

The Phantom (1996)

The Phantom was released in 1996. It was an Australian-U.S. co-production.

The movies of the 90s pretty much passed me by at the time. To some extent that was true of the 80s as well. For me movie history began just before the First World War and ended at the close of the 1970s. Recently I’m been filling in these gaps in my movie-watching experience and I’ve been particularly surprised by just how many good (and fun) movies were made in the 90s.

I love comics but for me that means mostly European comics, with the only exceptions being Modesty Blaise and Vampirella. In general I have zero interest in American superhero comics and consequently zero interest in modern Hollywood superhero comic-book heroes. I do however have very dim memories of reading a few Phantom comics as a kid and the Ghost Who Walks does have some appeal to me as a character.

The 1996 Phantom movie failed to kick off a franchise. It’s possible that the timing was not quite right.

The backstory is disposed of very quickly right at the start with a voiceover narration. That means we can get on with the story. It is of course set in the jungle, possibly a jungle island. The Phantom’s home is the mythical island of Bengalla so I assume that’s the setting.

The Phantom, the mysterious Ghost Who Walks (played by Billy Zane), has made a serious error. He has allowed a magical skull to fall into the hands of the dreaded Seng Brotherhood. If these arch-fiends get their hands on all three skulls they will have access to unlimited destructive power. The Phantom has to retrieve that skull.

Meanwhile in America a crusading newspaper publisher, Dave Palmer, is set to to lift the lid on the nefarious activities of businessman-gangster Xander Drax (Treat Williams). Of course we figure right away that he is the sort of villain who might well have an interest in those magical skulls.

Palmer’s daughter Diana (Kristy Swanson) sets off on a Pan Am Clipper flying boat to further Palmer’s investigation. Diana is of course a Feisty Heroine and as such she is quite capable of punching out muscle-bound guys who outweigh her by a hundred pounds or more, because girlpower! Yes, sadly, there is a certain amount of tedious Girlpower kickass action heroine stuff in this movie.

Diana is kidnapped on the way by sexy lady pirates. Now this is more like it. I very much approve of sexy lady pirates. Their leader Sala (Catherine Zeta Jones) is not just a sexy bad girl, she has a cruel sadistic streak as well. At this point I’m really liking this movie.

There are several different groups of bad guys after those skulls. Which leads to plenty of action.

My biggest issue with this movie is with one of the character arcs which develops disappointingly and unconvincingly.

A minor problem is that the Phantom comic books were aimed at kids and the Phantom is a goody-goody hero who never kills people (or at least very rarely kills). This makes him a less interesting hero since he is never faced with awkward moral dilemmas. The movie also has very much the feel of being aimed at kids. But that’s OK. This is intended as a lighthearted fun movie.

Billy Zane is OK, but his Phantom is just a bit too sensitive 90s guy. The part needed a bit more gravitas and definitely needed more of a hint of the ruthless crusader.

Diana is slightly irritating but at least she’s cute.

Performance-wise the film’s saving grace is Catherine Zeta Jones as Sala - she oozes wickedness. I like that in a girl. And Treat Williams makes a pretty decent super-villain.

I like the way Diana and Sala instantly hate each other. Sala assumes that no man can resist her charms, but apparently the Phantom can. That naturally pisses her off. Sala and Diana both think the Phantom is rather hot so they’re not likely to become best friends.

Despite my minor reservations about a few aspects of the film there is a great deal to like here.

I love the visuals. This movie aims to look gorgeous and it succeeds. It’s bright and colourful and it captures the right comic-book feel. I do like the 1930s setting. The fact that considerable parts of the movie take place in New York is utilised effectively - this was a time when men dressed with style and women wore slinky glamorous dresses. And the contrasts between New York and the jungle work well.

The production and costume designs are excellent, the cinematography is top-notch. The effects work and the stunts are very well executed. This movie is very very stylish.

This movie was directed by Australian director Simon Wincer, also responsible for a couple of bona fide ozploitation classics - Snapshot and Harlequin. The pacing is brisk Wincer resists the temptation to make an overlong movie. There’s always something happening.

The fact that it failed to ignite the box office is one of those depressing difficult-to-explain things. Maybe it just didn’t take itself seriously enough. The emphasis is on fun. It’s an old-fashioned feelgood adventure movie and I have no problems with that.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray looks terrific.

Vampirella (1996)

Vampirella is a legendary comic-book character created around 1969 by science fiction super-fan Forest J. Ackerman. She’s a sexy vampire from outer space. The most surprising thing about Vampirella is that she has never been the subject of a movie franchise. Maybe because she’s too sexy and that scares big studios off. They prefer their superheroes to be bland and safe. We do however have this 1996 movie, directed by Roger Corman protege and ultra low budget movie legend Jim Wynorski (with Corman acting as executive producer). It has an IMDb rating of 3.3, which is promising (with genre movies generally speaking the the lower the IMDb rating the better the movie).

The movie is an origin story of sorts, and while it retains a few elements of the comics it adds a lot of other elements. Gary Gerani wrote the script.

As in the comic Vampirella is from the planet Drakulon. The inhabitants of Drakulon are vampires but they don’t go around biting people. By a happy coincidence Drakulon has rivers of blood. Actual rivers, of actual blood. So these vampires are not killers. They’re not predators.

Well, mostly not predators. There are a few bad vampires who want to go back to the good old days when vampires really were killers. The leader of this faction is Vlad (Roger Daltrey).

Vlad’s followers carry out a bloodbath and the wise ruler of Drakulon is one of the victims. Vlad’s followers set off to find a planet where they can express their true vampire natures, by killing people.

All this happened centuries ago. Now we’re in Los Angeles in the 1990s. There are vampires but nobody knows about them. They are plotting away in secret. There’s also a paramilitary force of vampire hunters. The paramilitary outfit is codenamed Purge and it’s run by Adam Van Helsing, the last descendant of the Van Helsings.

Vlad and his followers have another more deadly threat to deal with. The daughter of the ruler of Drakulon who was killed by Vlad has arrived on Earth. She wants to destroy Vlad and his followers. She is Vampirella (Talisa Soto).

Vlad is now a rock star, a useful cover. People expect rock stars to be weird and decadent.

Vlad has some very big very sinister plans.

Adam Van Helsing trusts Vampirella but his colleague Walsh doesn’t. Van Helsing thinks that Vampirella could be the key to defeating Vlad.

Vampirella is clearly attracted to Van Helsing but he’s too uptight to do anything about.

I’ve only read some of the very early Vampirella comics but to me the movie doesn’t really capture the flavour of the comics. It’s a bit too much of a 90s action movie. But in commercial terms that may have been a sound move. There isn’t quite enough fun and sparkle, and (despite a few bare breasts) there’s not quite enough sexiness.

Vampirella’s costume is disappointingly tame compared to the comic-strip version. Talisa Soto was apparently concerned that the original much sexier costume designed for her would be a problem in the action scenes because certain parts of her anatomy would undoubtedly pop out during such scenes. She was probably right but the final costume is just very unexciting.

Talisa Soto is OK as Vampirella. She’s certainly beautiful. Her problem is that Roger Daltrey is in full-bore scenery-chewing mode and tends to dominate the movie. That’s not Daltrey’s fault - he gives exactly the right performance. The movie probably needed an actress with a bit more zing, and she needed to ramp up the sexiness in order to avoid being overshadowed. She also needed to be more amusing and more fun. Hammer had planned to do a Vampirella movie back in the 70s and they had Caroline Munro in mind. She would certainly have made a much better Vampirella.

The movie does have its strengths. The high-tech anti-vampire weapons are rather fun. The western ghost town near Las Vegas used as Vlad’s hideout is a great location.

This origin story here really has no connection at all with the origin story in the comic, and the version in the comic would have been preferable.

The bat transformations are so crude that it would have been better to dispense with them completely.

The paramilitary anti-vampire organisation was later shamelessly ripped-off by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Vampirella isn’t as bad as it reputation would suggest. It’s moderately entertaining. The Vampirella in the movie isn’t really Vampirella. The movie is not sexy enough, it’s not enough fun, it doesn’t have enough energy, it doesn’t have the cheerful tongue-in-cheek vibe it needed. If you’re a hardcore Vampirella fan you’ll want to see it out of curiosity but it is a disappointment.

The German DVD which I own not only includes the original English-language version, it also includes Jim Wynorski’s commentary track (in English of course). Wynorski always does great commentary tracks.

Modesty Blaise (1966) revisited

When I first saw Joseph Losey’s 1966 Modesty Blaise movie fifteen years ago I had never read a Modesty Blaise novel and had never set eyes on a Modesty Blaise comic-strip. I was of course vaguely aware of her as a comic-strip character but I had no feelings whatsoever one way or the other about the character. Since then I have read several of the novels and quite a few of the comic-strip adventures and I am now a confirmed Modesty Blaise fan. Which means that my reactions to the movie might now be quite different.

The first thing to say is that the comic-strip character Modesty Blaise, as created by Peter O’Donnell in 1963, is most emphatically not a female James Bond. She bears no resemblance whatsoever to Bond. She is not British, she is not a professional spy, she is not in any way shape or form part of the British Establishment. She is a retired super-criminal. She feels no remorse for her very successful criminal career. She does not take orders from anybody. She does jobs for Scotland Yard and for the British intelligence services but she is strictly a freelancer.

She is in fact much closer to being a female Simon Templar. She belongs to the literary tradition of the lone wolf rogue hero. It’s also worth mentioning that the novels and comic-strips are fairly serious spy/crime adventures. They are not spoofs.

It should also be pointed out that Modesty is not English. She is a British subject by marriage but her ethnicity is a mystery, even to herself. She has blocked out all memories of her nightmarish childhood. Given what we learn about her background and give the way she looks in the comic strip we might hazard a guess that she is either Slavic or southern European. Casting an Italian actress in the role was in fact quite appropriate, and Monica Vitti’s accent is not inappropriate either. There are major problems with Miss Vitti’s casting, but her nationality is not one of them.

The plot is wildly incoherent. Losey threw away Peter O’Donnell’s screenplay. O’Donnell had the last laugh - he turned his screenplay into the first Modesty Blaise novel and had a huge success with it while Losey’s movie bombed. Having thrown away the original screenplay Losey then made constant alterations to the new version. It’s possible that Losey thought that having a script that made no sense would be inherently funny.

Such as it is, the plot involves 50 million pounds’ worth of diamonds which have to be delivered as a bribe from the British Government to an Arab oil sheikh. Someone is trying to steal the diamonds. The British intelligence services have achieved nothing save for getting their top agent killed and in desperation they turn to Modesty Blaise and her partner Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp).

The man trying to steal the diamonds is super-villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), with whom Modesty has tangled before. Gabriel makes various attempts to get the diamonds while British Intelligence suspects that Modesty might try to steal them herself. That’s it for the plot.

Of course in 1966 when the movie was made Bond Fever was at its height and there was obviously going to be enormous pressure to transform Modesty into a female James Bond and to make the movie as much like a Bond film as possible.

Director Joseph Losey had other ideas. What exactly his ideas were is difficult to say. He clearly had no understanding of the spy genre or the Bond films or the eurospy movies that had started to appear around this time. It’s also obvious that he had zero interest in making a movie that had any genuine connection at all with the Modesty Blaise comic-strip. It’s as if he decided to satirise the Bond films without actually having seen any of them, and to satirise the comic-strip without ever having read it. To spoof something successfully you need to understand it, and preferably you need to love it.

The movie turned out to be a trainwreck, but it’s a morbidly fascinating trainwreck. Losey was going for a surreal Pop Art confection and his total unsuitability for this directing job perversely makes it more surreal and psychedelic. You don’t know what’s going to happen next because Losey had no idea what was going to happen next either.

There are some wonderful Op Art visuals. The sets manage to look groovy and psychedelic. Modesty’s clothes, hairstyle and even hair colour change without any explanation in the middle of scenes. Losey presumably thought this was incredibly funny and clever. It isn’t. It’s just weird. But the weird elements injected into the movie for no reason at all add to the movie’s perverse fascination.

Monica Vitti lacks the athleticism and energy that the role required but maybe that’s why Losey wanted her - to make the movie an anti-Modesty Blaise movie rather than a Modesty Blaise movie. Terence Stamp is equally miscast as Willie Garvin.

There are compensations. Dirk Bogarde’s outrageously arch and camp performance is delicious. Harry Andrews is excellent as Tarrant, the British Intelligence chief. Clive Revill is very funny as Gabriel’s miserly Scottish accountant McWhirter. Rossella Falk is both amusing and slightly unsettling as Gabriel’s sadistic henchwoman (as possibly lover) Mrs. Fothergill.

The action scenes are not particularly exciting.

On the plus side this is a visually stunning and outrageous movie in a delirious Swinging 60s way. It’s worth seeing just for the visual delights.

Despite its flaws this movie is very much worth seeing. There’s no other movie quite like it. A movie from an era when studios would take risks on wildly unconventional totally crazy movies, and Modesty Blaise captures so much of the craziness of the 60s, a craziness that was so much more fun than the craziness of today. It’s not a Modesty Blaise movie and it’s a deeply flawed movie but it’s flaws are what makes it weirdly fascinating. With those thoughts in mind it’s recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, Last Day In Limbo and I, Lucifer. They’re very much worth reading. And I've reviewed the early Modesty Blaise comics (in the collection The Gabriel Set-Up) which are also excellent

Swamp Thing (1982)

Swamp Thing is Wes Craven’s 1982 adaptation of the popular DC comic.

I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in reviewing this movie since I have never set eyes on a Swamp Thing comic. In fact my knowledge of American comics is close to zero and I have never ever read a superhero comic. I therefore have absolutely no idea how close this movie is to the spirit of the comic.

Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) is a scientist who has just arrived at a research station deep in the swamplands somewhere or other. She also seems to be an agent for one of those sinister Washington intelligence agencies. 

Idealistic if slightly creepy genius scientist Dr Alec Holland (Ray Wise) is working on some hush-hush project involving plants. Washington is taking a keen interest in the project, and that’s always a worry.

Alec is working on a special formula with his sister, Dr Linda Holland (Nannette Brown). He thinks he can create plant-animal hybrids.

There’s a vague uneasy kind of attraction between Alice Cable and Alec Holland. She’s not entirely sure about him but she is fascinated.

There are bad guys with guns and they want Dr Holland’s secrets.

That formula is explosive, literally. And the explosion does something unexpected. It turns Alec Holland into a monstrous plant-animal hybrid. He becomes Swamp Thing.

The bad guys are in the pay of a megalomaniacal criminal mastermind, Arcane (Louis Jourdan). Arcane doesn’t just want the formula, he wants Swamp Thing captured as well. But how do you capture an invulnerable monster?

At this stage nobody knows that Swamp Thing is actually Alec Holland.

The bad guys are after Alice Cable as well. They think she has a vital notebook in her possession. Swamp Thing keeps saving her but it takes her a while to figure out that he’s a good monster rather than an evil monster, and it also takes her a while to realise that he is Dr Holland.

Of course a Beauty and the Beast style emotional bond develops between Alice and Swamp Thing.

There’s lots of action and narrow escapes as Arcane figures out that the only way to capture Swamp Thing is by using Alice as bait. And Alice and Swamp Thing have to prevent Arcane from using that formula.

Given that the comic originated in the 1970s it’s not surprising that there’s a certain amount of characteristic 70s paranoia in this movie.

Given that I’m unfamiliar with the comic I might be on shaky ground here but I suspect that many of the movie’s problems were inherent in the source material. Invulnerable monsters and heroes are not that interesting. An invulnerable hero with superpowers doesn’t have to figure out clever ways of escaping from chains or taking on a dozen armed bad guys. He just uses his invulnerability and unstoppability, which is a bit boring. His invulnerability also means that we never really feel that Swamp Thing and Alice are in real danger, so there’s a lack of suspense and dramatic tension.

There’s a bit too much reliance on what is really out-and-out magic (such as Swamp Thing’s healing powers) which means that several potentially poignant scenes lose any genuine impact. And Swamp Thing is just a bit too brave and noble.

Adrienne Barbeau is very good. She makes Alice a likeable heroine. She’s a Strong Female Character without being strident and without being perfect. She makes a few mistakes (she should have been a lot less trusting early on). By this stage of his career Louis Jourdan was playing villains quite often and it’s something he did very well. His smooth charm and sophistication made his villains extra scary. He made a very good Dracula in the BBC’s Count Dracula and he was a memorable Bond villain in Octopussy (one of my favourite Bond movies).

I love the swamp settings and Craven uses them very well. The effects are fairly good. Swamp Thing is of course a guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster, but I love guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters.

Swamp Thing doesn’t quite come off but it’s reasonable entertainment. Recommended, with a few reservations. It looks nice on Blu-Ray and the disc includes an audio commentary by Wes Craven (who is quite realistic about the fact that the film was not a complete success).