THE PUNISHER: DIRTY LAUNDRY

Has anything like this been done before? The star of 2004 Lionsgate feature film version of Marvel's The Punisher, Thomas Jane, reprises the role in a self-financed Punisher fan film. And... it's pretty damned good. Check it out (also starring Ron "Hellboy" Perlman!)

Buck Rogers Returns... Again

Well, I know absolutely nothing about this new, forthcoming comic book incarnation of Buck Rogers except that writer/artist Howard Chaykin is involved, and that this Chaykin-drawn poster made its debut at Comic-Con this past week.

From the outfits, it looks like the project is going to harken back more to the original 30s comic strip than the recent Dynamite Comics series did -- which is a good thing in my book. It's been a long time since I had much interest in any new comics (even ones based on favorite characters, like Buck), but I used to be quite the Chaykin fan, so.... color me intrigued.

I look forward to hearing/seeing more... hell, I even broke down and bought the first Dynamite Buck Rogers trade, eventually.

King Of The Jungle

The best thing about my birthday this Summer was that between the generosity of my wife and my mother-in-law (hey, Cathy!), I was able to finally get all of the Lex Barker and Gordon Scott Tarzan films for my collection. Since these particular titles were issued by Warner Archive as manufactured-on-demand product, the prices were somewhat steeper than your average DVD. There also weren't many options out there for buying them used (one way I manage to keep building my video library is by buying things second-hand and as cheap as possible, when possible). This meant that I hadn't been able to pick them up before. But now I have them!

Unlike the Barker films, most of which were new to me whole or in part, I'm more familiar with most of the Scott Ape Man movies. I taped many of them off of AMC back in the 90s, when that was still a "classic movie" channel. My favorites are the last two films that Scott starred in (and the first two produced by Sy Weintraub), 1959's Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (with Anthony Quayle & Sean Connery among the villains) and 1960's Tarzan The Magnificent (with Jock Mahoney and John Carradine as the bad guys). Unlike most of the Tarzan movies up to that point (specifically excluding MGM's first two films with Weismuller in the role), these last two Gordon Scott vehicles were written for adults and were shot, in large part, on location in Africa. Scott plays the Lord Of The Jungle role with intelligence and a no-nonsense, moral conviction/ badass attitude that works astoundingly well, and Cheetah is all but absent from both of these installments, so there's none of the usual pandering chimpanzee antics.

They're terrific, grown-up adventure films, and I'm grateful to have widescreen copies in my DVD collection at last. My only disappointment is that the bean counters at Warners didn't authorize digital restorations of the movies; they all looked pretty beat-up. I wish these short-sighted, short-term profit-motivated corporations realized the inherent artistic and historical value of these films (and genre movies, in general) and invested in prolonging the existence of these pop culture artifacts. The restorations would pay for themselves over time.

Anyway, I'm pretty much where I want to be now, as far as my Tarzan DVD collection goes. I still have a few titles to get (the last two Mike Henry films and a couple of the early silents, for example), but I'll pick them up eventually....

Harry O Returns

The David Janssen private eye series from 1974-76, Harry O, is now available (at least, the first season is) on Manufactured-On-Demand DVD from Warner Archive. Highly regarded as one of the best - and best-written - private eye shows of its era, Harry O was an unusually melancholy and realistic crime show, with Janssen's Harry Orwell pretty much defining the term, "weather-beaten detective."

I was too young to care much about it when it originally aired, but in the 80s, when I was really getting into P.I. fiction - especially authors like Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini, Robert J. Randisi, and Rob Kantner - I managed to catch the pilot film, Smile Jenny, You're Dead one afternoon on TBS and loved it. Somewhere around the same time one of the cable channels (maybe A&E) ran the series, and I watched it whenever I could. I like The Rockford Files better, but Harry O is probably the more sophisticated show.

The new DVDs from Warner Archive are admittedly pricey - as burned-to-order discs almost always are - but I'm going to try and find some way to add the set to my library eventually. According to the website, this first season set includes the first pilot film, Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On, which had some significant differences from the subsequent series. What's less clear is whether or not the set includes the second TV movie pilot, Smile Jenny, You're Dead - as Warner Archive has already released that title separately. I hope it's included; otherwise it'll cost another twenty-five bucks to complete the set....

Back For War

Love this new retro-styled poster for The Expendables 2. Only a month and half or so to wait....

Way Out There Blu-rays

I'm currently laid up with the gout, but I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll feel well enough to trek into Waterville and visit Bull Moose Music. One of my favorite Space Westerns, Peter Hyams' Outland, is available on Blu-ray this week, and they're supposed to have a copy of Roger Vadim's comic strip-inspired Barbarella waiting there for me, as well. I've been looking forward to visually-improved versions of both movies for a long time...

A Salute To The Original Patriotic Super-Hero!

After posting all of those patriotic super-hero comic covers here yesterday for the 4th of July, I remembered that, a few years ago, Archie Comics published a trade paperback collection of the earliest Golden Age adventures of their star-spangled sentinel, The Shield, from Pep Comics. Created by writer Harry Shorten and artist Irv Novick, The Shield predated Joe Simon & Jack Kirby's Captain America, making him the first "patriotic" costumed hero in funny books.

When the book came out, I made note of it, because the cover art was by my friends Mark & Stephanie Heike, but for wahtrever reasons, I didn't pick it up. (Most likely, those reasons were price and/or the fact that I was nowhere near a comic shop when it came out).

I've done some prowling around online, and it looks like I could probably snag a copy pretty cheaply, and I'd like to, but as I've never actually seen a copy, I'm wondering how the actual reproduction of the original comics looks. I don't know if the pages were scanned from old comics, or reproduced from original line-art with new coloring. With money as tight as it is these days - and thus, my comics buying more limited - I'd really like to know how it looks before I order it. If any of you out there have the book, maybe you could post a note in the comments and advise me. I'd appreciate it.

Wenesday Cover(s): Happy 4th!

Space: 1970 in GEEK Magazine

One of my other (and more popular) blogs, Space: 1970, has received a positive, brief write-up in the latest issue of GEEK magazine, a very slick publication on newsstands now.

I find it interesting that they refer to the "retro-hipness" of the site, when the material I cover over there certainly wasn't considered very "hip" or cool when it was new. I got called lots of unpleasant names ("geek" being among the least offensive) back in the 1970s for liking that stuff. I also got beat up on occasion and had lots of comic books, Star Trek paperbacks and Starlog magazines stolen from me and torn up in my face. More than a few adult authority figures berated me for my interest in science-fiction and other escapist entertainment, calling me stupid for wasting my time with it.

It's nice that I've lived to see a day when there is such a thing as "geek culture," when Star Wars and Star Trek are undisputed mass-market, mainstream entertainments and big-budget super-hero films have become Hollywood's most anticipated blockbusters. And it's way cool that my own silly little ramblings online are considered a notable (or foot-notable) part of that pop cultural shift.

Still, it would be nicer if I hadn't had to get beaten up so much back then....

Back To The Jungle!

My wonderful wife surprised me today with an early birthday present of the Lex Barker Tarzan Collection from Warner Archive. Barker was Johnny Weismuller's direct successor at RKO for producer Sol Lesser, and the films themselves are very much in the mold of the producer's earlier RKO entries. Still, the classically handsome, intelligent-looking Barker makes a very fine ape-man, and the movies continue to be great, old-fashioned, Saturday matinee material.

My favorite Tarzan films still tend to be the ones produced by Sy Weintraub in the late 50s/60s (specifically Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, Tarzan the Magnificent, Tarzan And The Valley Of Gold), but these are a lot of fun, too, and I'm thrilled to finally have them in my library.

Stuck In The 80s - Avenging Force

My wife recently bought us an inexpensive Phillips DVD player that will play multi-region discs. As movie buffs, it had frustrated us for some time that some of the films we wanted were available in other parts of the world, but not in the U.S.  Films like Solomon Kane, for example.Of course, while the Internet and a credit card makes ordering products from overseas a simple as a click of the mouse, we've already discovered a few small hazards of International purchases. On the plus side, so far we've found exceptionally reasonable prices for many of the DVDs we want. Even with shipping, they've been cheaper than I would expect to pay for a comparable domestic product. But, on the minus side, many online retailers (including giants like Amazon UK) are infuriatingly vague in regard to such details as what aspect ratio the films are are presented, what language they're in, and whether they've been enhanced for 16x9 widescreen displays.

Anyway, I digress. As may be obvious from my posts here of late, I've been in a mood for 80s-early 90s-stye action films. One that I've really been wanting to see again is the 1986 Cannon Films flick, Avenging Force, starring the guys from American Ninja (another favorite), Michael Dudikoff and the late, great Steve James. Unfortunately, the movie has never been released on DVD in U.S.  Fortunately, it was released in England, and an affordable copy was available for me to order through Amazon UK, and it showed up here in Maine today.  I was a little disappointed to discover that it isn't in widescreen (damn those vague product descriptions, anyway!), but what the hell. It's better than nothing - and certainly better than paying twice as much for an old, worn-out VHS tape.

Watched it this evening. It was the first time I'd seen Avenging Force since I caught it in the 80s on one of the Pay-cable television stations. It's fun - Dudikoff and James had good chemistry here and in the American Ninja flicks they did together, and the direction by Cannon mainstay Sam Firstenberg is competent and professional. It has some decent action scenes, and great, picturesque New Orleans/Louisiana bayou locations. The final sequences, set in a very scary swamp during a rainstorm, were very well staged, especially for a Firstenberg flick.

Coincidentally, the New Orleans locations and Most Dangerous Game story element of rich and powerful men hunting human beings for sport prefigure similar elements in John Woo's 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, Hard Target. At least, I assume it's coincidental.

Surprisingly, Avenging Force has a notably different tone from the other Cannon action films of the time, as the villains aren't foreign terrorists or Russkies, but a domestic right wing supremacist group. The ending is odd, too - quite blatantly leaving the door open for a sequel (or series).

Interestingly, Dudikoff's character has the same name ("Matt Hunter") as Chuck Norris' character in Invasion U.S.A., made by the same studio the year before - although he's quite differently written in Force than he was in Invasion. I wonder if Cannon was toying with creating another in-house franchise...?

Wednesday Cover: Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea

Brandon

Was thinking about the great Brandon Lee this evening. Still saddened and haunted by the knowledge that he passed away so young. Hard to believe he died almost twenty years ago now (March, '93). Man, I feel old.

He was terrific in The Crow - and clearly had the charisma and talent to be a mainstream star. But he also made a couple of highly-enjoyable B-action flicks. In fact, Rapid Fire and Showdown In Little Tokyo (with Dolph Lundgren) are among the best of the early 90s. I'd like to think he would have made a lot more, had he lived.

Weekend Double Feature: Hammer Horror

Two favorites, back-to-back!

Nowhere Fast

Awesome poster by Patrick Leger!

Seriously, why isn't Walter Hill's Streets Of Fire on Blu-ray? Universal released it on HD-DVD; would it be that hard to port it over to Blu?