THE VIKINGS (1958)

From 2008.

WARNING: This film is so manly, your eyeballs may explode.

Hollywood from roughly 1949 through the early 1960's was for some reason overrun with historical/religious epics, grand-scale entertainments featuring casts of thousands running around with fake swords and whatnot, getting into all kinds of carnage and daring-do, and usually somehow sandwiching a romantic angle into the whole shebang. Among the most notable examples of this genre are SAMSON AND DELILAH (1949), the unintentionally hilarious THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), BEN-HUR (1959) and the film that some consider the manliest movie ever made, Stanley Kubrick's SPARTACUS (1960), each foaming at the mouth with lashings of sex and/or violence that could be gotten away with in such a repressive era by being presented in an "historical" context. All are very entertaining and all have carved out well-deserved places in cinema history, but there is one such movie that seems to have been glossed over in favor its more lavishly-appointed brethren. That film is Richard Fleischer's THE VIKINGS, and after years of hearing many glowing reviews I have finally seen it for myself. (Hey, it was only eight bucks on DVD thanks to the Virgin Megastore's "Virgin Sacrifice" sale, so I figured why the hell not?)

The funny thing is I thought I had seen this flick on TV during my growing up years, but I definitely had it confused with some other rape-and-pillage opus that wasn't even one fifth as fun (I think I had it confused with 1964's THE LONG SHIPS, which isn't bad and showcases an unforgettable torture scene featuring "the Mare of Steel"). Believe me, if I'd seen THE VIKINGS as a kid I would have remembered it vividly, because while other films in the historical epic genre may have featured sex and violence, none of them did it with the sheer zeal and love of mayhem displayed here. In fact if you try to think about it as a film being released today, THE VIKINGS would definitely get a strong PG-13 for content alone as is, and if made today the amount of fake blood would probably have been upped a tad, likely garnering the end result an R rating. No bullshit, for its time this is some pretty harsh stuff, and since the rating system did not yet exist, kids could pay their matinee money, sit down in the indoor twilight, and revel in the joyous brutality that unspooled. 

The story opens with an animated bit that swiftly explains the Viking raids on England — and looks to me like the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's illuminated manuscript cutout bits in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975) — and wastes no time on such irrelevance as credits, dropping us smack dab into a violent massacre of the English led by Viking king Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine). 

Ragnar's high school year book photo, ca. 837 AD. Voted "Most likely to rape, pillage and vandalize." 

As his men lay waste to dozens of innocent people, Ragnar stops off for a refreshing bit of rape, an act that, unbeknownst to him, sires a son. The woman he violated conveniently turns out to be the Queen of England, and since her union to the now tits-up king was famously fruitless, she births the baby in secret and sends him off to Italy where he'll never be discovered. In the meantime the throne is taken over by Aelle, a ruler-type common to stories such as this insomuch as he's a fey asshole with a bad hairdo who treats everybody like shit and has people executed for the slightest of infractions. Years later he discovers one of his advisors is the guy who's funneled the Vikings info on the easiest spots along the coast to ravage, and once discovered he hightails it to the north and moves in with Ragnar's rowdy band. We then meet Ragnar's over-the-top anti-hero of a son, Einar (Kirk Douglas in full-on testosterone mode), a violent, boozing rakehell who's so in love with his own beauty that he refuses to spoil his looks by growing a beard.

Kirk Douglas (and chin) as Einar.

  

Then Tony Curtis shows up as Eric, a much-put-upon slave who spends his time either looking wistful or glowering like he was about to turn into the Wolf Man. 

 

Tony Curtis as Eric, looking manly (for once).

In no time flat we realize Eric's actually the baby who was sent to Italy, but those wacky Vikings raided the ship he was on and instantly enslaved his ass. There's no love lost between Einar and Eric — especially after Eric orders his pet falcon to rip Einar's face off, resulting in scars and the loss of an eye — a situation made more poignant by them having no idea that they share a father. But what kind of Viking saga would this be if they concentrated on emotions and family dysfunction and stuff when they should rightly be dishing out heaping helpings of drunkenness, carnality, and (for the time) graphic violence? Thankfully we get lots of scenes taking place in Ragnar's mead hall, a place where it seems like the party is simply incapable of stopping, no matter how drunk and violent the revelers get. I mean, really, in what better setting could you plan out profitable raids and kidnap plots? 

The romance angle enters the story when King Asshole, er, Aelle arranges to marry the Welsh Princess Morgana (Janet Leigh, just one year away from the screen's most memorable death scene, namely the shower stabbing in PSYCHO) for political reasons, so Ragnar decides to abduct the girl just for shits and giggles. If you've ever seen an epic that has to do with ancient warriors and some chick, you can see the triangle in this one coming a mile away as Einar makes plain his desire to take Morgana as his queen and rape the living shit out of her (he likes it when his women put up a fight, particularly if it involves scratching). Eric stands around looking doe-eyed while treating her with kindness and helping her escape, and Morgana instantly falls in love with Eric, who's definitely a step up from that douchey king. Anyway, one thing leads to another as Morgana ends up back in Aelle's clutches, Eric loses his hand for pissing off the king, Ragnar gets torn apart by a pit full of starving wolves, and the Vikings sail down from Norway to kick some castle ass like you've never seen (Eric and Einar form a truce until they rescue Morgana). The final battle is totally badassed and must have knocked people out when it first showed up on the big screen. 

THE VIKINGS is a lot of fun and is definitely a good way to pass nearly two hours on a rainy weekend afternoon, so if you enjoy manliness, historical epics, and wish-fulfillment stories of endless heavy-metal partying, wenching, and engaging in exactly the opposite of the kind of behavior your parents would approve of, this is the flick for you. Oh, and director Richard Fleischer's also responsible for the big-screen adaptation of MANDINGO (1975), so make of that what you will. TRUST YER BUNCHE!!! 

The 1958 theatrical poster.All this balls-out machismo can be yours for a mere eight bucks at your local Virgin Megastore! Free chest hair with every purchase!

THE LONG SHIPS (1964)

Ever wanted to see a movie where a pack of horny Vikings unexpectedly find themselves on the loose in a Moorish harem? Well, here's the movie for you! Opening with a portentous back story about a gigantic bell — "The Mother of Voices" — being crafted from the melted-down solid gold spoils of the Crusades, THE LONG SHIPS is the rollicking tale of Rolfe (Richard Widmark, chewing the scenery like nobody's business), a Viking whose ship and crew were lost in a crash-landing near Byzantium, where he spent two years recovering in the care of some monks. 

Richard Widmark, in the midst of an all-scenery diet as Viking scallywag Rolfe. 

 Learning of the legend of the bell, Rolfe makes a meager living in the Muslim streets as a storyteller and makes the mistake of recounting said legend within earshot of some sword-wielding toughs in the employ of Sheik Aly Mansuh (Sidney Poiter, rockin' a James Brown "process"). In no time he's hauled off for torture in hope of extracting the bell's location since Mansuh wants to claim the bell in the name of the Muslim ancestors who got raped, pillaged and murdered to obtain all the gold that went into its manufacture, but the simple truth is that Mansuh's a greedy, sadistic fuck who just wants to add to his already-Croesus-like riches. Rolfe escapes and makes it back to his homeland, where he's not exactly greeted with open arms. The loss of his ship, coupled with some dirty dealing by the local king, has bankrupted his ship-builder dad, and Rolfe is revealed to be considered a lifelong and notoriously towering liar, so when he suggests trying to go after the bell he's greeted with derision. But the necessity to bail himself out — to say nothing of simple human avarice — convinces his dad to aid in the theft of the asshole king's newly-crafted death ship, so in no time at all Rolfe and his little brother, Orm (Russ Tamblyn, aka Riff in WEST SIDE STORY), have rounded up an equally-greedy crew and stolen the king's daughter, Gerda (Beba Loncar) as a hostage (and convenient love interest for Orm). Thus are the seeds for manly pillaging adventure sown.

Cue Yngwie Malmsteen: "I am a Vikiiiiiiiiiing...

 

 From that point on it's one scrape after another for Rolfe and the gang, and while the film feels a bit overlong it's still a lot of fun due to THE LONG SHIPS being a lot more intentionally humorous than just about any other swashbuckling/manly epic I can recall. Widmark looks to me like he understood just how hoary and cheesy his role is, so he performs Rolfe like a smarmy 20th century douchebag and the results are at times jaw-dropping, predating David Carradine's quite similar turn as the titular character in KILL BILL Vol. 2 (2004), only with laughs. Rolfe is impossible not to enjoy and in no time I found myself saying aloud, "This guy's a complete ass-munch!" as he lied without shame or fear of consequence and fucked-up nearly everything he set out to do (although he inevitably comes out on top of things, otherwise the film would have been over about ten minutes in). Other than the powerful motivating factor of sheer greed, there is no reason why any Viking in his right mind would follow him, something his crew (and the kidnapped princess) find out the hard way. 

 

Rolfe bravely (?) awaits his ride on "the Mare of Steel."

 

Also of note is Sidney Poitier's played-so-straight-it's-hilarious villainous role as Mansuh, a Moorish asshole with a mean streak as long as the wall around Byzantium. Nearly every interaction he has with other characters involves some form of torture or violence or the threat thereof, and that treatment even extends to the hot wife (Rosanna Schiaffino) he honestly loves (when she gets out of line he threatens her with a variety of nasty indignities, including being sold off as a slave). I can't recall ever seeing Poitier in a bad guy role, but he's fantastic here and is a joy to watch. Mansuh is one of that rare breed of villains that you totally root for just because you want to see what kind of douchey move he'll pull next, and in that respect he more than does his job. Case in point: after capturing Rolfe and his men for a second time — right after they've had a bit of fun with the ladies in the harem —Mansuh decides to kill Rolfe and enslave his men, ordering them to build him a sturdy Viking-style ship in which to navigate the dangerous seas in search of the Mother of Voices, and his method for Rolfe's execution is both inspired and unspeakably vile. Rolfe is sentenced to "ride the Mare of Steel," in other words he's to be sent on a crotch-first trip down an evil-looking thirty-foot, steeply-inclined razor's edge, which is demonstrated by a poor bastard from Mansuh's own troops who is volunteered for the purpose so Rolfe and company can witness how a true Muslim dies (this is after much bragging of Viking bravery by Rolfe and his men). 

 

The Mare of Steel. Kids, do not try this at home.

 

Too bad this came out in 1964, because that would have made for one hell of a gore effects showcase in the seventies or eighties! 

 

Other than its slight overlength and a theme tune that's repeated so often that it will annoy the shit out of you because of its ubiquity — however it gets played so often your annoyance with it will eventually be worn down to a state of amusement — , THE LONG SHIPS is a lot of fun that would make for an ultra-butch double-feature with 1958's THE VIKINGS. However I would warn women from partaking of that testosterone overload because they just might end up with beards and chest hair as a result of such a concentrated blast of manliness. 

 

The DVD edition: if it looks like Widmark's character just shit his pants, that assessment's not too far off the mark.

McBAIN (1991)

When the star looks like he wishes he were in a Golan-Globus movie instead.

Last night's lull-me-to-sleep movie was McBAIN (1991), featuring a zombified Christopher Walken as a Viet Nam vet who gets called in to honor a debt that requires him to lead ragtag revolutionaries in taking down a stereotypical Columbian dictator/drug trafficker. It was so by-the-numbers and stupid that I ended up watching the whole thing, marveling at a movie of its wannabe Golan-Globus ilk being released as late as 1991. It comes off exactly like a bunch of little boys (and the neighborhood's girl who got in on this sort of thing) playing soldier with toy weapons and a few pets thrown into the mix, only enacted by grownups, and the effect is unintentionally (?) hilarious.

The film opens in Viet Nam in 1973 on the day when the conflict is officially declared over, where we see our hero as a P.O.W. forced to fight to the death against a hulking enemy bruiser who's armed with a big-ass knife and low-budget martial arts skills. By comparison, Walken looks like a dried-up scarecrow and basically gets his ass mercilessly kicked. That is, until a bunch of hardcore U.S. soldiers show up in a Huey, blow the living shit out of the P.O.W. camp and liberate the prisoners, which is when McBain — whose first name is Bobby, so we get an action hero named Bobby — meets Santos, the Columbian-born U.S. soldier to whom he now owes a life debt. Eighteen years later,  Santos is killed during a botched coup attempt, so his sister (Maria Conchita Alonso — remember her?) rides out of her shot-in-the-Phillipines Columbian village on a donkey and somehow tracks McBain to NYC, where he works on the Brooklyn Bridge as an arc welder. McBain witnessed Santos' death on the news, so he's on board to help the man's sister but first he rounds up a group of U.S. vets to form an even cheesier variant on the A-Team and then we're off to endless firefights and shots of Columbian peasants screaming "Libertad!" while waving rifles in the air. 

Bobby McBain (Christopher Walken). Not since Sean Connery's 007 has a protagonist exuded such palpable alpha wolf energy.

Bear in mind that there was no prior setup whatsoever to lead us to believe McBain — excuse me..."Bobby" — was in any way a highly-skilled commando with the respect and unquestioning loyalty of equally-skilled former soldiers, one of whom (Michael Ironside) is now a multi-gazillionaire whose cash and apparent deep ties to the U.S. government are totally at Bobby's disposal, which is convenient since Bobby and his faux A-Team require a budget of $10 million for weapons and a light aircraft, plus air support from a U.S. fighter pilot acting as a military supply plane's escort in Columbia. (The guy basically ditches his own assignment because McBain mentions he knew the guy's father's division during 'Nam, and brings his fully-loaded fighter jet with him.) The relative ease with which this crew accomplishes the takeover is childlike in its narrative simplicity and grasp of the concept of "unsanctioned international incident" and it's a fucking hoot.

Much like the rest of the movie, the film's tag line of "It takes a killer to stop the killing" makes no sense whatsoever. When we meet him, Bobby's getting his ass handed to him by some Viet Cong thug and he requires the army to save his scrawny ass. Skip ahead by eighteen years and with no explanation whatsoever he's suddenly effortlessly badassed and connected. WAHAAAA??? Ludicrous, but very entertaining.

Oh, and according to the IMDB, the release of this movie led the writers of THE SIMPSONS to refer to their McBain character only as Rainier Wolfcastle for some time in order to avoid confusion with this film. When what they felt was enough time had passed, the name "McBain" returned.

Packaging image from the VHS release.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

I went to see the latest Batman movie, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES — oh, how I wish someone would call a moratorium on the use of any permutation of the word "rise" in movie titles — at Manhattan's Ziegfeld theater last night, and I was certain whatever merits the film may have possessed would be canceled out by a dire pall being cast over the whole thing in the tragic wake of what is now being rather crassly referred to in the media as "the Batman Massacre" or "the Dark Knight Massacre."

As reported all over the news yesterday (and on this blog), a 24-year-old madman by the name of James Holmes launched a senseless armed assault upon an audience that had settled in for the midnight screening of the film in a mall in Aurora, Colorado, and his attack resulted in the confirmed shooting deaths of at least twelve people (some reports state a count of fourteen) and the injuries of between thirty-to-fifty, some of which are critical. As a reaction/preemptive measure against possible copycat incidents, NYC police commissioner Ray Kelly order deployment of an augmented police presence at theaters running the film in the Five Boroughs (there were two cops in attendance at the show I saw), and as a result the audience entered the theater with the tragedy of the shooting reinforced. The atmosphere was an odd blend of enthusiasm over a new Batman film and foreboding due to the inevitability of considerable gun violence in the narrative, and there was even a fat, bespectacled geek — who, because of his pronounced girth, was referred to by my friend Suzi as "the pregnant guy" — with poor social skills and a borderline-Moe Howard haircut on line behind me who cringe-inducingly attempted to lighten the mood by telling those who were buying to tickets that they could now "get on the line to be shot." Those within earshot all turned to him in stunned silence, with facial expressions that quite clearly communicated, "SERIOUSLY, dude?!!?" (He shut his fucking mouth after that.) Anyway, the audience nonetheless remained enthusiastic as the lights dimmed.

This time around, it's eight years after the events of the previous installment and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse, semi-hobbled by his injuries and making his way around Wayne manor with the aid of a cane. After having defeated the Joker and allowing himself to falsely take the blame for the death of Harvey Dent, Wayne retired his Batman persona and his state of emotional limbo greatly troubles his ever-faithful butler, Alfred (Michael Caine). But Wayne is shaken out of his complacency when cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) ingeniously manages to break into the family safe and steal his mother's pearl necklace. That event ignites Wayne's curiosity as to why Kyle would be after the pearls, and what he discovers brings him into direct conflict with gravel-voiced mercenary/terrorist and extreme badass Bane (Tom Hardy), who engineers one of the most audacious and dire schemes this side of one found in one of the better James Bond movies. But exactly why is Bane doing what he's doing, and what the hell does any of this have to do with anything? I won't tell you any of the whys and wherefores, other than to say that by the time the credits roll, we get to see Bruce Wayne face his greatest challenge to date, one that it is extremely — and I do mean EXTREMELY — unlikely he will survive...

I'm a lifelong fan of the Batman character and his adventures in the comics and on television, but I never had any love for the live-action movies featuring him, largely because I felt they lacked the element of fun, felt far too overblown, and seemed cold in such a way that I didn't give a damn about any of the characters. The Tim Burton installments were super-hyped examples of his usual stylistic masturbation and the two that followed his films were justly lambasted, with the latter of the pair, the infamous BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997), frequently and deservedly cited as one of the worst major motion pictures ever made. Then came Christopher Nolan and his grittier, more "realistic" take on the Batman and his world, and critical acclaim, blockbuster box office success, and audience adoration followed. That said, I know I'm in the minority because I myself found Nolan's Batman films to be over-long and boring, plus once again cold and characterless (though I did like Heath Ledger's take on the Joker), so I approached THE DARK KNIGHT RISES with absolutely zero expectations, seeing it solely so I could join in the inevitable discourse on the film from an informed viewpoint. Thus it is that I'm quite shocked to have enjoyed the film rather a lot, and I proclaim it the only live-action Batman film that I genuinely like. To me, that is a minor miracle.

I would love to discuss the film in more detail but to do so would mean giving away several very major plot surprises, so I'll just have to ask you to trust me on this one. What I can say is that Bane's terroristic shenanigans had me actively wondering throughout the film just why he would give a shit about what he was doing, and after things looked like it was another case of lazy writing that expected us to simply say "Oh, he's just doing this because he's crazy" and just accept it as rote, the final act happens and everything falls perfectly, satisfyingly into place. At the moment when it all finally made sense, I swear it felt like something physically clicked in my head, and that realization made me smile from ear to ear. As a very finite end to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES succeeds quite admirably. I obviously recommend checking it out, but in closing, here are a few points worth noting:

• The script places a distinct emphasis on character and as a result the film engaged me from start to finish.
• Once again, everybody and their dog knows Bruce Wayne's secret, but this time around that knowledge is vital to the plot and is not at all annoying or idiotic.
• Anne Hathaway is terrific as Selina Kyle, who's better known to the world as Catwoman but never named as such here.

I like Hathaway in certain roles, but I had grave doubts about how she would handle playing a character who's sexy, seductive, and more than a bit of a badass in the butt-kicking department. I should not have worried, and I found her version of the character to be the most interesting femme fatale yet seen in a Batman film.

• The sequence where Bane and his heavily armed men pull off a cyber-crime with automatic weapons a-blazin' snapped the audience's thoughts right out of the movie and back to the shootings in that Colorado movie theater. The silence in the Ziegfeld during that sequence was as absolute as the vacuum of deep space, and it chilled me to the bone.
• Months ago, Bane's dialogue as heard in the film's trailers was found to be unintelligible by audiences, so his lines were re-recorded and supposedly fixed. Your mileage may vary, but I found his dialogue to be very hard to understand about half the time when he was in a scene. Fortunately his actions speak for themselves, and at least his line "I am Gotham's reckoning" no longer sounds like "I am Gotham's rectum."
• The film has some bone-crunching hand-to-hand violence, but it is in no way unsuitable for kids. However, it should be pointed out that the movie runs 164 minutes and that's excluding trailers, plus it's very much a plot and character-driven film, so I don't necessarily recommend it for the under-twelves who may expect non-stop action (though the film certainly does not skimp on visceral mayhem). Oh, and be sure to take a pee break before the movie starts. Believe me, you'll be glad you did.

And perhaps the most important point I would like to make is that THE DARK KNIGHT RISES is less of a straight-up Batman film than it's a cops-versus-terrorists summer blockbuster action movie that Batman pretty much incidentally happens to be in. You could eliminate every Batman-specific element from the script and change the hero's name to "Jack Action" and the end result would be the same and no less entertaining. Not exactly a gripe, but worth making note of.

Lastly, after this film there will inevitably have to be another reboot for the batman franchise, and I'm curious to see in which direction the series goes after the audience-pleasing tone set by the efforts of Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, et al. Just don't forget to keep the emphasis on character and keep things fun, Warner Brothers! Don't subject Batman to the cinematic fist-fucking that MAN OF STEEL looks like it's going to provide for Superman. (The trailer ran before THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and, brother, it looked like ass.)

JOHN CARTER (2012)

By now you may have heard about Disney’s JOHN CARTER movie and how it’s likely to be considered a massive $250,000,000 flop (the actual budgetary figure varies depending on the source). The pre-release buzz tarred the film as looking uninvolving and dull, and upon release it was largely savaged by critics who deemed it, among other pejoratives, “unoriginal” and “derivative” of flicks like STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES and AVATAR. Well lemme tell ya, Bunkie, it’s actually the other way around, so here’s a wee divergence for a short history lesson.

Where it all began.

The first of the John Carter pulp stories, originally issued as UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS and later re-titled A PRINCESS OF MARS when published in book form, appeared in the February 1912 issue of THE ALL-STORY pulp magazine and was the inaugural work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the man who less than a year later would earn great wealth, fame and literary/pop culture immortality as the creator of Tarzan of the Apes. Over the course of eleven pulp novels, Burroughs spun fanciful tales of John Carter, a former Confederate officer and master swordsman who through rather weird means finds himself terrestrially displaced to the planet Mars — known to its native inhabitants as Barsoom — where he encounters a number of warlike races, all manner of strange creatures and a cornucopia of advanced-yet-quaint ordnance and sci-fi vehicles. He also wins the hand of a local princess whose beauty is described as “unequaled,” and from there the adventures cover a hell of a lot of old school ground, pretty much inventing many of the tropes that are now part of the DNA of science-fiction/fantasy adventures. If one does even a cursory overview of such stories over the past century, many of the common elements of the genre that we now take for granted or find rote can be traced directly back to the Rosetta Stone of Burroughs imagination. For the most recent example of what I’m talking about, look no further than James Cameron’s “revolutionary” AVATAR (2009), the monster box office hit that I was not alone in considering it to owe a sizable debt to much of what Burroughs came up with in the John Carter tales. The exotic alien world and culture, multi-legged beasties, an Earthman hero who goes native in a big way and marries the locals’ princess… All found in AVATAR and all cribbed from the first John Carter story written a hundred years ago, so don’t come crying to me about JOHN CARTER the movie being “derivative.”

My boyhood wish finally comes true, some thirty-six years after I first encountered the John Carter books.

Disney’s JOHN CARTER is a film I’ve waited for since I first read the initial novel thirty-seven years ago, and though not without some flaws here and there, I enjoyed it very, very much. It’s got all the action, romance, intrigue, cool extra-terrestrials — the awesome Tharks are among my all-time favorite alien characters — and the far-flung exotic planetscape that made Burroughs’ stories irresistible to me when I was between the ages of ten and fourteen (though it was unfortunately inevitable that the novels’ depiction of Barsoom’s culture as that of a planetwide nudist colony would be sanitized for the screen, especially since it’s a Disney film) and it made me feel like I was a kid again, even for the briefest of periods. Simply put, it was exactly what I needed to take me out of my currently miserable and frustrating existence for just over two hours, and I enjoyed it enough to happily pay NYC 3-D movie price to see it twice within twenty-four hours. (NOTE: I admit that I likely enjoyed it as much as I did thanks to having been a lifelong John Carter fan, so your individual mileage may vary.)

John Carter among the Tharks.

The film chronicles John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, who’s not bad in the part but exudes nothing of the Southern gentleman quality found in the novels) having adventures on Mars/Barsoom that drop him into the middle of a conflict between the warring city states of Helium and Zodanga, while he must also navigate surviving among the equally warlike Tharks, towering green warrior tribesmen with four arms. During all of this mayhem, Carter befriends the Thark chief, Tars Tarkas (Willem Defoe), and much-abused female slave Sola (Samantha Morton), as well as meeting the spirited and smokin’ hot Heliumite princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), while political machinations from a number of different parties spur the narrative’s finer points.

Boy gets to know girl during a road trip fraught with discovery and ass-kickings

If all of that sounds complicated or convoluted, it isn’t, and it all moves quite briskly while doling out heaping helpings of old-fashioned fun that evokes the sci-fi/fantasy/space opera thrills of yore, which is only appropriate when one recalls that this is the seed from which an entire genre germinated. What we have here is, when boiled down to its simplest descriptor, an old-fashioned pulp adventure yarn brought to vivid, fun life, and that’s really all there is to it. If you’re looking for Dostoyevsky, I politely suggest you look elsewhere.

Among the film’s many fun points, the following elements are the standouts:

• The Tharks are everything I’d hoped they’d be (if depicted a good deal shorter than the average fifteen feet described in the books), especially Tars Tarkas (Willem Defoe, giving voice to an excellent CGI creation) and Sola (Samantha Morton, also voicing a CGI character).

The awesomeness of Tars Tarkas finally hits the screen.

Sola: a much put-upon warrior with a heart of gold.

Tarkas was the main reason I continued reading the books and when I was kid who devoured those works, I often imagined myself in his place in the adventures. He was just that cool. The one problem with Tars Tarkas and Sola in this film — which, let’s face it, is yet another origin story — is that they are not the focus of the narrative. Whenever they’re onscreen, they steal the movie, but John Carter himself is the true and obvious thrust of the tale, so Tars and Sola are understandably given less screen time. More’s the pity…

• Woola, Carter’s assigned guardian animal — a “calot” in the books, but never identified as such in the film — also steals the movie.

He’s a large-ish, dog-like critter that’s the film’s grossest example of “Disneyfication,” a not unexpected process that altered the beast from the source material’s much more fearsome-looking creature, but even knowing the more visually badassed Woola from the books, I adored the cinematic version. And you and your kids will too.

• Lynn Collins rocks as Princess Dejah Thoris, the film's best non-CGI character.

The casting of that character was a serious make-or-break element for the film, thanks to a century of her being burned into the pop culture DNA matrix as an impossibly beautiful, exotic woman who could easily and without hesitation dispatch her would-be assailants. Yeah, she was captured and rescued on a number of occasions in the books, but Dejah Thoris was a surprisingly capable heroine for her era and I would argue that she was the direct attitudinal progenitor to the likes of STAR WARS’ Princess Leia.

Lynn Collins, as seen when she's not being all Barsoomian.

Collins turns in a great performance and is very, very easy on the eyes, plus she wields a sword quite impressively. She’s the perfect fantasy female for guys like me, and I find it more than a little amusing to note that technically Dejah Thoris has joined the ranks of the Disney Princesses, what with having been brought to the screen and sanitized from the original iteration. (In her case, her 24/7 nudity obviously had to go).

The latest of the Disney Princesses.

• The all-too-brief appearances by James Purefoy as Heliumite royal soldier Kantos Kan are terrific and genuinely funny, and I wish we’d had the opportunity to see more of him.

So, there’s a lot to enjoy in JOHN CARTER but Disney did a spectacularly poor job of marketing the film, which I believe is the key element in the film doing shithouse box office domestically. The trailers bit the big one, the posters and logo were the polar opposite of interesting or attention-getting, the words “of mars” were removed from the title shortly before the film’s release (reportedly due to Disney now-fired marketing head determining that the earlier MARS NEEDS MOMS tanked and therefore the word “Mars” was automatic box office poison), thus granting the film the utterly generic title of JOHN CARTER (they may as well have called it JOE BUDIDOWITZ: THE MOVIE, for all that the title imparted about other-worldly adventure, aliens and a hot space-babe) and there was no mention whatsoever of the character being from the same guy who created Tarzan.

The most boring movie poster ever?

In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would swear that the studio was making a concerted effort to sabotage its own release. Most of the critics have also been merciless and I wonder if that’s because they just don’t like this kind of material or they’ve just joined the overwhelming culture of Internet hating on something for months before it even comes out, thus already bearing a head and heart full of vitriol as they enter the screening room.

Whatever the case, the damage has been done and theater attendance on opening weekend was dismal. I saw the film twice, first at a decent multiplex not far from where I live in Brooklyn, and again the following night at Manhattan’s legendary Ziegfeld theater, and I can scarce recall seeing a big-budget sci-fi/action/adventure movie in its first few days where the theaters were so barren that their aisles should have been littered with bison skulls and tumbleweeds. The 4pm show on Friday yielded a turnout of just over twenty people (including me), many of whom were fans of the John Carter novels (a fact gleaned from overhearing their conversations on the way out), and the 7pm show on Saturday night at the Ziegfeld — a showtime that’s virtually always guaranteed to be sold out, almost no matter what movie may be playing there — saw an audience of maybe sixty-five or seventy people, including myself and the four friends who joined me.

Actual shot of the Ziegfeld's auditorium, ten minutes before the lights went down on Saturday night. The crowd did not come anywhere near to filling the theater's capacity of just over 1100.

We all enjoyed it and the majority of folks who’ve written in to comment about it on my Facebook wall shared in the fun, so hopefully positive word of mouth will help turn JOHN CARTER into a “sleeper” hit. Anything can happen and I hope it does well enough to generate a sequel, and I hope the studio stands behind it if it comes to pass.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (2011)

Well, color me stunned. After a plethora of movies based on Marvel Comics heroes over the past decade-plus, they finally made one that's a completely solid winner from start to finish. I enjoyed THOR a hell of a lot and IRON MAN was great until its utterly rote final act, but CAPTAIN AMERICA is a note-perfect confection that gives the faithful exactly what they want while introducing the classic character to modern movie audiences in an engaging and compelling way.

The narrative gives us Cap's origin yet again, but tells it in a way that really lets us get to know and care about scrawny, 4F wannabe soldier Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) before he gets anywhere near his star-spangled battle togs. Cap's story takes us from the streets of Brooklyn to WWII's European theater of operations, paralleling his development as America's first super-soldier with the world-conquering machinations of Johan Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), aka the Red Skull, an insane and megalomaniacal Nazi super-soldier who was the first success of the super-soldier process' inventor, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci). The Skull has gotten his hands on an ancient Norse — read "Asgardian" — artifact of unexplained but vast power (comics fans know it's the Cosmic Cube) and it's only a matter of time until he harnesses its powers for use in taking over the world — first stop, New York City — and usurping Hitler's Third Reich with the super-scientific ordnance wielded by Hydra, an organization spun out of Nazi Germany's special scientific forces, so after a false start as a pitchman for war bonds, Cap takes the fight to the Red Skull. Over the course of the film, Cap proves his mettle as a warrior and hero, aided by the capable likes of old neighborhood pal Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), British special agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and the Howling Commandos, and his wartime exploits come to a climax that results in him literally becoming a man out of time.

I've left out the details so you can witness it all for yourself, but here are the points of note:

• Director Joe (THE ROCKETEER) Johnston crafts a retelling of Captain America's origin that will sit quite well with modern audiences while piling on the WWII period charm that lends the proceedings the feel of an old school adventure serial, only one of feature length as opposed to a thirteen-episode chapter play.
• A good deal of time is spent establishing Steve Rogers as a patriot who wants nothing more than to serve his country, and there's not an ounce of corniness found in how his sentiments are portrayed. This character development unfolds in considerable detail and I'd say it's at least a half hour into things before Rogers undergoes the process that turns him into America's first (and only) super-soldier, so don't go into this film expecting wall-to-wall, non-stop action and ass-kicking. Which is not to say that there's a boring moment in it before said ass-kicking starts.
• Chris Evans is simply perfect as Steve Rogers and his performance here is just as right for the character as he was wrong for the part when he was cast as the unbelievably douchey and assholish version of Johnny Storm as found in the two atrocious FANTASTIC FOUR movies. I look forward to seeing him reprise Cap in THE AVENGERS and the inevitable sequels to this film. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Evans as Cap is the most likable and decent hero to grace the screen since Christopher Reeve's debut as Superman, and that is not a compliment I hand out lightly.

• Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull is just as perfect as Chris Evans as Cap, and the makeup appliances that turn him into the character are without visible flaw.

• Hayley Atwell as British agent Peggy Carter is a memorable and welcome change from the female characters often found in WWII adventures in that she's just as professional and badassed as any of the military men surrounding her. When the inevitable sequel happens, I hope they set it in WWII so we can see more period derring do and more of Agent Carter. She's too good to leave as a one-shot.

Agent Carter takes the fight against Nazi scum to the streets.

• The film feels like a 1940's adventure film made today, and that's only a good thing. It does not concern itself with trying to make its fantastic elements fit into a "what if this stuff existed in reality" context, thus rendering it, as my buddy Big Black Paul so aptly pointed out, a true comic book movie, replete with retro hyper-technology and all that jazz. All of the other Marvel films have hit that particular pitfall, presumably in an attempt to make this stuff more appealing to those who neither read nor like comic books and superheroes, and each has been somewhat the worse for it, even the genuinely good ones.
• As previously stated, the film includes the Howling Commandos among its roster of heroes fighting the good fight, and I welcome their bigscreen debut wholeheartedly. I've loved those guys since I was a kid and I hope their appearance here proves popular enough to earn them their own movie. And for those in the know, we even get to witness Dum Dum Dugan letting fly with a signature "Wah-Hoo!"

The Howling Commandos, bigscreen style.

• Another supporting character of interest is Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), genius inventor and father of Tony Stark (better known to the masses as Iron Man). He supplies the tech side of the super-soldier process, as well as giving Cap a disc of pure Vibranium (look it up) that will come to serve as his combat shield (as opposed to the prop version used during his war bond spokesperson days). It's also cool that while the shield itself is basically indestructible, its paint job most definitely is not.

Cap receives his shield.

Bottom line: CAPTAIN AMERICA is a rousing bit of entertainment that looks to deservedly be a hit. I enjoyed it immensely and it is in my opinion the acme of what a superhero movie should be. This, folks, is the Marvel Comics movie against which all others should be measured.

ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN (1950)

One of the interesting side-effects of the encroaching extinction of video rental/sales shops in the wake of NetFlix and Amazon is that every now and then a store will pop up that sells of loads of brand new but unsold DVDs, presumably stuff that was gathering moss in warehouses someplace, for dirt-cheap prices. While perusing such a place the other day I picked up a boxed set of the old black-and-white Superman serials starring Kirk Alyn (the first live-action Superman on film), specifically SUPERMAN (1948) and ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN (1950), for the super-low price of $6.99. It's a four-disc set, two discs per serial, and though the 1948 serial is rather lackluster, even by the standards of its day, its followup is a marked improvement and very entertaining.

Kirk Alyn, the screen's first in-the-flesh Superman.

The original Superman serial relied on the thrill of seeing the Man of Steel in live-action for the first time rather than a solid script full of wonder and amazing feats that were worthy of the then ten-year-old hero, instead pitting him against the pistol-toting fedoraed gunsels common to the serial genre, led by a rather rote criminal mastermind known as the Spider-Lady (who admittedly looked great in a domino mask and slinky dress that fairly screamed "femme fatale," and she also had great taste in decor for her lair, what with its huge electrified spiderweb and all).

Noel Neill, the screen's first and (in my opinion) definitive live-action Lois Lane.

Other than Kirk Alyn — whose Superman/Clark Kent I rank at third place, following George Reeves and Christopher Reeve, who is simply impossible to beat in the roles of Clark or Superman — the 1948 serial is notable for the first live-action depiction of Superman's origin, 1950's ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN television series regular Noel Neill's debut as Lois Lane — for many, including myself, Neill was the definitive version of the character and a glorious pain in the ass while at it — former OUR GANG regular Tommy Bond as an inappropriately imposing-looking Jimmy Olsen, and the movie debut of Kryptonite, depicted as a huge chunk of glowing translucent rock that I bet would look like the world's largest sour apple Jolly Rancher if seen in color.

As previously stated, SUPERMAN was no great shakes, and the one most oft-cited major flaws that it possesses is its truly awful flying effects. To be fair, flying effects for Superman were rarely done convincingly until the ill-advised SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006), a film whose sole saving grace was its excellent special effects, but the filmmakers in the case of the serials would show Superman about to leap into the air, only to have him turn into a poorly and very obviously animated cartoon figure, a move that quite literally removes the viewer from their willing suspension of disbelief. THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941) predated SUPERMAN by seven years and features vastly superior flying effects involving a very convincing dummy standing in for the Big Red Cheese, and one would think that the technology would have been stepped up a few notches in the years separating the two serials. But perhaps that's an unfair comparison to make, because THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL is simply a better serial in every way and is deservedly hailed as one of the very best that the genre has to offer, an appraisal that the Superman serials only receive from Superman nostalgists. Anyway, now that you know all the pertinent info on the first one, let's get to ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN.

Another cinema first: Lyle Talbot as Lex Luthor.

Having had two years to presumably think over the numerous deficiencies of their first go at the Man of Steel, the filmmakers came back with a much better chapter play, bringing audiences the kind of briskly-paced adventure that Superman fans had every right to expect. While the crooks straight from central casting are still on hand, this time around they are in the employ of Superman's arch-enemy, evil scientific genius Lex Luthor (Lyle Talbot), aka the bucket-headed "Atom Man," and the bald baddie gives our hero much more of a challenge than Gene Hackman's version ever did. (NOTE: I hate Hackman's Luthor, but I blame the script for that and not his acting skills.) This early Luthor is coldly intelligent and does not come off at all as "mad" per se, but rather as a great mind who doesn't give a fuck about laws or common decency, and as such he's a bad guy I can totally get behind. In fact, it seemed to me like he was enjoying frustrating Superman instead of just robbing stuff and kidnapping people, which only added to the fun. Luthor brings to bear against our hero devices I did not expect to see in a Superman story of this relatively early vintage, among which can be counted a "space transporter" that allows him to teleport his henchmen to safe locations in the blink of an eye just after they've committed some nefarious act, synthetic Kryptonite, a flying saucer, and, most interestingly to fans of the comics, "the Empty Doom," a portal that transports unwilling victims to another dimension where they are rendered non-corporeal and out of Luthor's hair (or lack thereof) until electronically recalled. This concept is basically the same as the Phantom Zone, which later figures prominently in SUPERMAN (1978) and SUPERMAN II (1981), and predates its introduction in the comics by eleven years. The only real difference is the absence of a pack of fetish gear-wearing Kryptonian sociopaths residing within its extra-dimensional confines.

I had not seen ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN in around twenty-two years and my memories of it as the better of the Superman series proved sound. In fact, I enjoyed it even more this time around and I urge any who are curious about early/primitive big screen depictions of Superman and his exploits to check it out.

PREDATORS (2010)

Having witnessed the PREDATOR franchise since its inception in 1987, I have to admit that I never quite cottoned to it the way most people did, mostly because the films following the initial installment did not live up to the potential of the concept. I wasn't all that keen on the first one either, despite its classic status, for reasons I've already outlined elsewhere, so when yet another PREDATOR flick was announced I didn't really care. That is, not until I heard Robert (PLANET TERROR) Rodriguez was involved. I really like what the guy brings to the table in all of his films, so when I heard he was producing the new one after seriously examining what worked in PREDATOR and what did not work in the execrable subsequent movies, I was filled with hope. Though Rodriguez did not direct, PREDATORS was well-helmed by American-born director of Hungarian films Nimrod Antal, and it looked and felt to me like a story from the classic era of Britain's 2000 A.D. sci-fi comics weekly. Before I go any further, though, it's only fair to state that HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

The plot's pretty simple: a group of eight people, several of whom are heavily armed — a tough-as-nails seasoned mercenary (Adrian Brody), a Guatemalan sniper (Alice Braga), a huge Spetznatz operative (real-life bad motherfucker Oleg Taktarov), an African death squad member (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), a serial rapist who's scheduled for execution (Walter Goggins), a silent Yakuza soldier (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Mexican cartel enforcer (my man Danny Trejo) and a meek doctor (Topher Grace, shaking off the shame of SPIDER-MAN 3) — find themselves mysteriously transported to a dense jungle locale and soon come to realize they are on another planet (the three neighboring planets seen in the sky being the dead giveaway).

Bear Mountain it ain't.

In short order they figure out that they are in what amounts to an extra-terrestrial game preserve and that they are the game, there to be hunted by alien sportsmen who wield projectile and energy-based weapons, as well as tech that renders them pretty much invisible to human visual perception while allowing them to track their prey via their infra-red signatures. The aliens have also unleashed other vicious life forms, so the humans must do everything in their meager power to stay alive, and it sure as shit is not an easy task. And even if they did manage to survive, how the hell would they get back to the Earth?

The narrative is one long, briskly-paced hop from one insanely deadly situation to another, so here are the pertinent bits:

• The title refers to not only the aliens, but also the chosen humans.
• This time around there is less invisibility than previous, and that suits me just fine. The aliens already have a clear advantage with their size, strength, physical resilience and shitloads of very effective weaponry, so considering that they consider themselves sportsmen, the cloaking tech always seemed like cheating to me.
• All of the characters are interesting, something unusual for a piece of "action figure cinema."
• The events of the original PREDATOR are referenced, so this is less of a reboot than a continuation that wisely makes no mention of the sequels.
• The majority of the decisions made and the actions taken by the stranded humans make recognizable sense.
• As also mentioned in the original film, the aliens have been kidnapping Earthlings for sporting purposes for a long time. This is noted when the Yakuza soldier finds a katana that he states is very old.

Yakuza soldier Louis Ozawa Changchien engages one of the alien hunters in formal combat.

• The fact that the humans are not necessarily good people is an intriguing angle, and we root for them mostly because they're the hopelessly outmatched unwilling home team.

PREDATORS gets my vote as the first summer blockbuster of the season to fully deliver on everything the viewer goes into it expecting to get, and it actually has a lot more intelligence than something like this has any right to possess, although after the ALIENS VS. PREDATORS films that may not be much of a shock. PREDATORS is very much a "guy" movie, but it's solidly entertaining and has nothing in it that I would not allow kids ten and older to see; it's got cussing and some gore, but it's nothing they couldn't handle (personally, I could have done with a LOT more gore, but that's just me). RECOMMENDED.

PREDATOR (1987)

During the 1980’s I saw every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie as they came out, each one more overflowing with raw testosterone than the previous and offering heavily-accented, monosyllabic histrionics to be enjoyed by all comers, and nestled amid this rarefied niche in cinema is the action/sci-fi opus PREDATOR, which is considered by many to be one of the greatest action movies ever made. I even remember enjoying it very much when it was first released, but back in those days my perceptions were literally clouded by a perpetual haze of serious doobage so I gave many a lacking flick a pass if it amused me during my thoroughly baked state of existence. Well, I watched PREDATOR again for the first time in twenty-three years not too long ago and I have to say that I really don’t get what the big deal is.

The story, such as it is, deals with a bunch of commandos lead by an ambulatory slab of beef named Dutch (played, of course, by Ah-nuld) who are sent into some hellhole of a South American jungle to deal with some typical G.I. Joe shit but end up as the quarry of an invisible and heavily armed extraterrestrial hunter who collects human skulls as trophies. By the end of the film Ah-nuld is the only commando not skinned and de-skulled, and it’s a throw-down between him and his alien adversary. That setup would have been great if it didn’t take so goddamned long for the soldiers — a group virtually indistinguishable from a bunch of ‘70’s-era G.I. Joe dolls found in any suburban backyard battleground/sandbox — to catch the title monster’s attention and be drawn into ultra-violent set pieces, and much of what passes for character development between the soldiers, bits meant to communicate their combat-bonding, is weak even by the standards of eighties army-man movies. And don’t get me started on the scene where the soldiers blaze away with their weapons of full auto for what seems like five solid minutes while screaming “AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGH!!!” and hitting nothing but innocent foliage.

The one thing that PREDATOR really has going for it is its laughable and unintentional (?) homoerotic content. This flick sets out to be the manliest flick that it can be, and it succeeds in ways that would have put it right at the top of Tom of Finland’s list of the greatest films ever crafted. The heroes are mostly a bunch of uber-ripped and musclebound supermen who look just like one of Tom’s famous leatherboy drawings, only sadly minus the fully visible, ginormous and veiny three-foot cocks that are as thick around as a can of Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee, and there even seems to be an attempt to cause the audience to take sides in a “who’s more manly” debate involving Ah-nuld and former Apollo Creed Carl Weathers. I swear to God, when Ah-nuld and Apollo greet each other at the beginning of the film they lock hands in the “soul shake” and immediately launch into a bicep clench-off that was only the first of several moments between them where I wondered how soon it would be until they finally admitted they were in love with each other and moved to the West Village.

Honestly, a homosexual love/adventure story between those two would have been a hundred times more interesting and entertaining that the actual movie, and the not-blatantly-stated-but-plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face love between Bill Duke and Jesse “the Body” Ventura’s characters would have offered another he-man interracial pairing with which to contrast the Ah-nuld/Apollo thing. No bullshit, watch PREDATOR again and try to tell me that Duke and Ventura aren’t more than just friends and comrades. (Any “Friends of Dorothy” out there who read this blog could do far worse than to spend an evening with PREDATOR, a box of tissues, and some Astroglide.)

Carl and Ah-nuld: the look of love.

The only other soldier to make any kind of impression is my man Sonny Landham, best known to most film fans as the Indian from 48 HOURS (1982). Here he plays Billy, the fighting unit’s Injun tracker and both his look and demeanor remind me a hell of a lot of famed comic book hero Wolverine.

Sonny Landham: fuck Hugh Jackman, this guy is Wolverine!

Sadly Landham has little to do other than portray a modernized version of the stoic and stereotypical native tracker found in eleventy-jillion Westerns, and even his mano a mano against the alien hunter is a total letdown because even though he strips off his shirt, draws some of his own blood and howls out a challenge, we do not see even two seconds of the battle. Instead we get Ah-nuld duking it out with his invisible enemy, and while that was fun in a Conan-reminiscent way, it was too little too late and concludes with a stunningly idiotic finale in which Ah-nuld, having mortally injured the alien, more or less outruns a nuclear blast caused by a self-destruct sequence built into the critter’s armor. When a rescue chopper arrives to pick him up, Dutch is standing there, looking not too much worse for wear, the mud covering his ‘roided-out physique apparently providing protection against inferno-like heat and hard radiation.

Never before has scientific realism been so starkly conveyed on the big screen.

As for the Predator itself, we are told that he shows up every few years whenever that particular patch of South America reaches a certain heat level and then begins his recreational hunting in earnest. That’s fine by me for a scary monster, but I’d find him a lot more frightening if he didn’t rely entirely on high-tech alien gizmos to get the job done; he’s got a cloaking device, a super-destructive laser whatchamawhoozit, knives and who knows what else, so he’s the extraterrestrial equivalent of one of those assholes who “hunts” animals who are trapped in an enclosure with zero chance of escape from death by automatic weapons fire. I find that neither impressive nor scary and for me the film only truly comes to life when the alien’s invisibility field is on the fritz and he must take on Conan, er, Ah-nuld on a somewhat more even playing field, but as previously stated it’s far too little coming far too late into the proceedings.

So what I want to know is how the fuck did PREDATOR garner such a lofty place in the cult of action figure cinema? It takes forever to get to what it promises, it’s pretty much lacking in suspense and it has dated horribly, so what was the big deal? If any of you out there can offer an explanation, please feel free to write in.

The cast of PREDATOR: surprisingly not a '70's-era G.I. Joe ad.