DC And Warner have at their hands one of the most iconic Batman narratives of all time, a narrative that asks the question if the Joker is truly someone too weak to endure a really awful life, or if he can submit someone to so much pain they can become exactly like him. All it takes is one bad day, he insists. “The Killing Joke” is surprisingly only seventy six minutes in length and still manages to feel way too long. For an iconic story with such a meaty premise, DC and Warner obviously have absolutely no idea how to put it to screen, and manage to botch this adaptation big time. With “The Killing Joke” we have to endure what is one long winded and dull prologue that leads literally to nowhere, just to allow the viewer to connect to heroine Batgirl.
Tag Archives: Romance
The Toxic Avenger (1984) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
The character that helped build Troma in to the company we know and love it as today, is still a wonderful and fun anti-hero who finds himself dropped in to fate’s door after a mean prank pulled on him one day. In Tromaville New Jersey, Melvin is a young janitor for a local health club dominated by a pair of muscle bound bullies. By day, the bullies roam around the club taunting Melvin and hanging around with their busty girlfriends, but by night they’re vicious hit and run murderers that take joy in killing children and helpless animals. After Melvin accidentally runs afoul one of the bullies, his girlfriend invites Melvin to a private rendezvous on the condition he wear a pink tutu.
After realizing he’s been the victim of a prank, Melvin crashes through a window and falls in to a drum of toxic ooze. Disfigured and transformed in to the muscle bound Toxic Avenger, he roams the streets of Tromaville murdering criminals and rapists, and laying down the law with his handy mop. Despite the very low budget, “The Toxic Avenger” works as a simultaneous superhero action tale and monster movie. A lot like “Robocop,” Troma’s superhero gets the job done in the most violent manner possible.
Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman are never above being as splatterific as possible, showing off a ton of gruesome moments including Toxie taking off a thug’s nose, and tearing another’s arm clean off. Of course a lot of the movie doesn’t reserve the grue for the bad guys, eliciting genuine cringe inducing moment when Melvin is turned in to the Toxic Avenger. Even for an indie film in 1984, the sight of Melvin’s skin pulsing and bulging from the toxic waste is grotesque and you hate to see such a goofy protagonist be reduced to this monster. Toxie is kept in the dark for most of his introduction, as he begins feeling his way around his strengths and weaknesses, and realizing his mutation allows him a chance to fight evil.
He begins to take on the bigger nemesis when he realizes the local police force is run by a corrupt chief and his sergeant whose attitude is very Nazi like. Herz and Kaufman give Toxie some time to even fall in love with a beautiful blond girl, and do battle with the villains from the gym. “The Toxic Avenger” is still a fun and off the wall action horror movie with its own twist on the superhero sub-genre. Leave it to Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz to take typical superhero tropes and twist in to something wonderfully gruesome and absurd.
Howard the Duck (1986)
Long before Marvel Cinematic Universes and James Gunn, there was the bastard child of the Marvel Universe “Howard the Duck.” Adapted from the comics during the decade of “ET” and other assorted attempts at cuddly cinematic creatures, “Howard the Duck” takes a dive at some of the good old “ET” buck, while also presenting itself as the anti-“ET” of a sort. “Howard the Duck” is a childhood favorite of mine; it’s one I watched over and over whenever it aired in all of its edited form on network television. There was just something about “Howard the Duck” that I loved. Whether it was the surreal nature, the actual talking duck from another planet, or Lea Thompson being devilishly sexy once again in a fantasy film, I loved “Howard the Duck.”
Sentinel (2015)
NOW SEEKING FUNDING ON KICKSTARTER – Jason Turner’s “Sentinel” reminds me a lot of the Harry Canyon segment from “Heavy Metal” except so much more of a neo-noir cyberpunk love letter than the former. Presented as a motion comic, Jason Turner plays Ex-Cop Alex Calibourne, a man with enhanced body augmentations that lives in a crime ridden albeit futuristic city named Iron City. Calibourne lives and breathes by his robotic enhancements, and uses his artificial intelligence J.E.S.S., a sassy female AI, to guide him through his adventures in the underworld.
On the Beach (1959)
“On the Beach” is not so much about the end of the world, as it is about a large group of people who have to come to terms with the fact that they will die very soon. As most of the world has been destroyed by nuclear radiation, survivors have huddled in a small town in Australia far away from the fallout. But they soon learn it’s headed their way thanks to wind currents, and there’s no stopping it. We then view the requiem of mankind, as government officials continue to struggle to find a way to solve the problem, and then face that there’s simply no solution.
From there on, we follow a small group or characters that have managed to find a temporary safe haven from the radiation and rather than submit to panic and terror, they use their last days of sealing old scars, confronting old conflicts, and saying goodbye to the ones they love dear. Among a brilliant cast of performers like Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson, and more, Kramer visits various ideas about life’s regrets and unfulfilled potential we never reach thanks to death.
Most tragic of the dilemmas involves Peter Holmes who has a beautiful newborn daughter, and knows that she won’t be able to see it through a year. He and his wife Mary are constantly embroiled in the lingering reminder of apparent death, while Mary is in pure denial and is certain all is not lost, especially when a crew journeys into the city in a submarine to answer the Morse code SOS from an apparent survivor. The most interesting element of “On the Beach” is the idea of the inevitability of death, and how one must accept it as a phase of life whether it approaches sooner or later.
“On the Beach” is one of the few thrillers that never attempts to sugar coat what is inescapable, and Stanley Kramer further induces that theme as he features desolate cityscapes of the highly radiated San Diego void of any human life or corpses, as well as droves of people lining up at hospitals to receive their cyanide pills. Even moments of happiness like fishing and romance are blanketed with sheer dread. Director Kramer’s drama is a bleak and heart wrenching tale of the end of the world, and a beautiful masterpiece about humanity’s last days for better and for worse.
Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
Richard Linklater is of the philosophy that life isn’t planned out or a sequence of fates colliding, and bad luck giving us misery. For him, life is a series of random events, major and minute that result in pure happiness or pure sadness. “Everybody Wants Some!!” is every bit the drama and comedy masterpiece that its predecessor “Dazed and Confused” was. Not only is it an amazing companion piece to his nineties comedy, but it’s also an examination at the turbulence of youth and how being young has a lot of surprising structure and pressures behind it that can often be so much worse than adults.
Its 1980, Texas, and three days before college. Freshman Jake arrives in his new dorm, preparing to share a house with a group of very rowdy guys. Like them, Jake is a baseball player intent on proving himself on the team. Before the school year begins, and daily practices start in an effort to mold the school’s only winning sports team, Jake is taken along with his team on a three day journey of parties, drinking, and beautiful women. Linklater, much like he did in “Dazed and Confused” follows around a group of young people as they navigate through life and use music and humor to connect with one another and find kindred spirits. Music is the life blood of Linklater’s movies.
If there is such a thing as a soul, music is as close as it gets to Linklater conveying what a soul is, and how crucial music can be to igniting it. Rather than focus on a group of teens at the beginning of the summer, Linklater now follows a group of young adults in their final days of the summer, before they have to accept adult responsibility and give up the carefree days of their teens. The future isn’t as bleak as it was in the finale of “Dazed of Confused,” but the film does act as a requiem to immaturity and just being young, before it all fades away in to careers, obligations, and old age. “Everybody Wants Some!!” is a subtle look at enjoying youth and bidding it a fond farewell, all set to a very random and chaotic comedy that unfolds in to one excellent piece of cinema.
Linklater doesn’t commit to plot twists, cheap deaths, goofy romance, or melodrama, and instead zeroes in on drawing a slew of truly engaging characters, all of whom are blind to race and class, and find a means of bonding three days before school. Like everyone in a Linklater film, they use music to keep each other at eye level, and Linklater celebrates the magic of music. Not only does the film have an incredible soundtrack, but the characters live and breath through whatever music is on in the background, from singing along to “Rapper’s Delight” in a crowded car (a scene that rivals the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene in “Wayne’s World,” easily), to the group of baseball players seducing young women at a local club with disco music and pop.
Though many will argue that “Everybody Wants Some!!” has no narrative, Linklater’s wizardry is in the seemingly random events that devise bits and chunks of plot, narrative and themes about male bonding, competition, and the thrills summer can offer to anyone open to a new adventure. Like Linklater’s previous films, “Everybody Wants Some!!” is simple, and down to Earth in scope and vision, but brings with it an incredible series of rich and complex characters, wonderful conflict, and yet another bang up soundtrack. I really hope Linklater offers up another follow up to “Dazed and Confused,” completing an unofficial trilogy. Linklater is a mastermind of storytelling who understands youth, nostalgia, as well as seeing the world through a filter where music is the universal language.
You Have to See This! Hardbodies (1984)
Since the sixties were in vogue in the eighties, you could probably build an entire sub-genre of films based on and around beaches. There were so many films revolving around guys trying to get laid in and around beaches, or living in beach houses, that it’s surprising almost every studio thought they’d cash in on this concept. There was even the silly “Back to the Beach,” an all star eighties ode to the classic Frankie and Annette beach blanket bingo comedies. Talk about childhood favorites.
This time around, “Hardbodies” is set during the best beach in the world, where apparently almost every hot woman in America go to, to either roller skate, or scamper around with their friends. The beach is filled with gorgeous women otherwise known as “hardbodies” to the local men, and main character Scotty is apparently the head of the game which involves hunting for women and getting them in bed as often as he possibly can. Scotty, despite being sex hungry, is the hero of the film that transforms from sex comedy, to dramatic romance, to sex comedy again and again you’ll likely feel confused toward the finale.
Scotty is a slacker and ladies man who roams the beach with his best friend Rag looking to score with gorgeous women. They’re called “Hardbodies,” and he’s more than successful in bedding his fair share of beach bunnies. After being kicked out of his apartment by his ruthless landlord, Scotty luckily meets three middle aged men who hire him to get them in to hot parties and hook them up with as many gorgeous women as he can. All seems to be going well, but when Scotty begins falling for sexual conquest Kristi, he’s torn between endless one night stands, or being in his first real committed relationship.
Scotty is your typical smooth talking slacker from the eighties, who spends most of his time running around the beach and trying to talk women in to bed with him, along with his best friend. He is also a part of the beach’s patrol, so he’s in charge of throwing out riff raff and helping other people have a good time. He even craftily throws out a group of perverted losers by siccing a biker gang on hem.
Partying of course doesn’t do much for his lifestyle, as Scotty is about to be kicked out by a merciless landlord that is more than happy to kick him out on his butt. Just Scotty’s luck a trio of middle aged businessmen has moved in to a local beach house and wants to have a good time and are willing to hire Scotty for the chance at tail. Scotty begrudgingly agrees and spends a good portion of the movie trying his best to hook the trio of men up with gorgeous women, all of whom have some sort of motive for the swingers.
This involves a ton of montages of the men hitting on beach bunnies and often bungling in their attempts, and throwing a wild party that involves a large amount of topless shots and sexual innuendo that is quite entertaining. At one point Scotty invites a tall gorgeous aspiring model to meet an agent at the party, and despite her anger at his lie, he convinces her to go to his room and take pictures anyway. Soon enough a crowd of women are in Scotty’s room competing for photo ops, apparently for the chance to be featured in the dictionary next to the word “Gullible.”
You could sum up the movie in one simple sentence, but “Hardbodies” has a lot of plot to it, and a ton of sub-plots that the writers work hard to resolve with enough believability. Along with Scotty working with the trio of men to get them laid, he’s also committing to Kristi, an intended one night stand he begins falling in love with. He also tricks a female rock band in to playing his party and falls in to success when the band garners interest from a professional promoter.
There’s also a large amount of focus on one of the older men Ashby, who begins a raunchy affair with kinky Michelle (as played by the obscenely sexy Kristi Somers), that transforms in to a romance. Their sub-plot contributes to a lot of the better moments of “Hardbodies,” including her bouncing on him while he’s half asleep, and a very heavily implied oral sex scene.
One of the banner scenes involves Michelle challenging Ashby to keep playing his guitar while she commits to her “act,” resulting in a rather hilarious reaction from him as he struggles to finish his guitar melody. If that’s not enough there’s another fun sub-plot with Courtney Gains, who plays Scotty’s loyal best friend Rag. Rag is your typical eighties goofball best friend who spends most of the movie also trying to get laid, and eventually manages to win the heart of a woman.
“Hardbodies” goes off the rails mid-way in favor of Scotty’s fight to keep his relationship with new girlfriend Kristi. After constantly striking out and harassing a girl to the point of sexual assault, the leader of the middle aged trio Hunter, gets in to a fight with Scotty and makes a play for Kristi. Soon enough, Hunter and Scotty are at war with one another for Kristi’s heart, and Scotty begins striking back at the player with a series of carefully orchestrated pranks that do him in.
While the endless sub-plots set up do make “Hardbodies” needlessly crowded with story, it revels in its simple premise based around getting women naked as often as possible, and featuring a lot of “hardbodies” walking around for the camera. We also get some past storylines showing up in the goofy climax, involving the skuzz bag beach crashers from the first half of the movie. We even get an obligatory old woman fainting at the sight of her naked middle aged son posing for the women in the party.
As an added bonus there’s the liberal use of the original “Partytime” by 45 Grave.
There was apparently a “Hardbodies” sequel set in Greece, but since it was IMDB Bottom 100 fodder at one time, I doubt I’ll get to it any time soon. For pure 1980’s raunchy beach blanket nonsense, though, there’s at least 1984’s “Hardbodies.” You’d be a fool not to respect the film’s trademark hot rod water bed.