Back in 1998, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing, the best Nick Fury could rate as a TV movie on the Fox Network. And playing the man who put together the Avengers? Oh, you know. David Hasselhoff.
Written by David S. Goyer, who also worked on the Blade and Dark Knight films, and directed by Rod Hardy (who also remade High Noon), this is a blast from Marvel’s past that they hope you don’t remember.
The film concerns Nick Fury coming out of retirement to battle Hydra and the daughter of Wolfgang Von Strucker (Sandra Hess, Sonya Blade from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation). Lisa Rinna shows up as Val, Fury’s one-time love and our hero also meets back up with old friends Dum-Dum Dugan and Gabriel Jones.
The actual Jim Steranko-written and drawn Nick Fury series takes the Eurospy genre and makes it even more cinematic and exciting on the comic book page. I’ve always had the dream that someday, someone would try and make something of these stories.
This would not be it.
That said, Hasselhoff is actually pretty good in this. The Agents of SHIELD almost had a Cannon film, but have done pretty well with their ABC series that ties into the movies. It just wasn’t the right time back in the mid-90’s.
Why did this movie run this week instead of our failure week? It made $6 million on a $25 million budget, was critically attacked to put it mildly and creators Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett disliked the final product.
That said — nearly every woman I know adores this movie and points to it as a classic. Just go to any convention and you’ll still see Tank Girl cosplay 25 years later. The comic never went away. And a reboot may be on the way.
Even for a movie that’s a total mess, with scenes missing and a studio that had no idea what they had, it’s more successful than anyone remembers.
Director Rachel Talalay’s stepdaughter gave her a Tank Girl comic to read while she was shooting her directorial debut, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Finding a studio ready to handle the sexual themes and violence of the film was difficult, but honestly, how anyone thought this would be a blockbuster still amazes me. Then again, people think of books as this vast universe of ideas and comic books as only being superheroes even now.
As if we don’t have enough troubles, in 2022, a comet is going to hit and cause a decade-long drought. The water that is left will belong to Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell) and the Water & Power Corporation.
Somewhere, somehow, Rebecca Buck will become the “Tank Girl.” Lori Petty owns this entire film, literally becoming the character for so many that didn’t even realize that she was a character from the Deadline comic magazine.
W&P troops attack the commune that Tank Girl lives in, kill her boyfriend and kidnap her young friend Sam. Instead of killing her, Tank Girl is enslaved and tortured. After meeting Jet Girl (Naomi Watts) and Sub Girl (Ann Cusack, who took over for Bjork), the antiheroine makes like a spaghetti western character who has been wronged and rights things by killing everyone in her way, then falling in love with a Ripper, which is a mutated human kangaroo. Ice-T is one of those kangaroos, too.
This is the kind of movie where punk rock girls destroy a strip club and force Ann Magnuson to sing Cole Porter songs at gunpoint.
More than an hour was chopped out of this film, with whole new scenes — like the ending — needing to be animated. But you know what? It still works. It’s goofy, it’s silly, it’s ridiculous and that’s what it aims to be. It’s the most fun end of the world movie I’ve seen not made in this country, at least.
Guy Madison somehow found himself in two of the oddest Eurospy films — this one and LSD Flesh of the Devil — movies that have only a tenuous connection to spying and instead devolve into pure strangeness. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This movie is much closer to an American movie serial than a spy movie. But hey — whatever it takes to get people into the theater, right?
Known as Devilman Story in Italy, this was the first of three pictures that director Paolo Bianchini (he also made Superargo and the Faceless Giants, whose poster was recycled for this, as is much of the cast) directed for producer Gabriele Crisanti. This movie helped recover the costs of the Guido Malatesta directed I Predoni del Sahara, reusing some of the footage from that epic.
Madison plays Mike Harway, a journalist who is helping his friend Christine (Luisa Baratto, Bloody Pit of Horror) find her missing father Professor Baker. Luciano Pigozzi — yes, Pag from Yor Hunter from the Future — shows up, as does Diana Lorys, who was in The Awful Dr. Orlof and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll.
They end up in Africa, where they meet Devilman, who dreams of the bran transplant that will make him perfect. That goal ends up being his downfall, as he crashes into a machine and dies. He totally had the best looking headquarters ever, all 60’s future and gleaming steel. Too bad his foolish dream of getting a new brain got in the way. I mean, it was a good plan. He was going to have the Professor do the surgery and use the guy’s daughter’s brain. You have to think that he went out doing what he loved.
Supposedly, Devilman is Giovanni Cianfriglia, or as we knew him in America Ken Wood, or as I know him, Superargo. That may or may not be true. As you can imagine, the only person that cares about the factual details of forgotten 1960’s Italian James Bond ripoffs is probably the one writing this right now. Me. That’s who.
Lavinia Kean is S*H*E*, a secret agent in the early 80’s. Director Robert Lewis did the film because it let him spend three months in Rome on someone’s else’s money. He also claimed that Anita Ekberg was difficult with and he fired her, but brought her back when she told him that she would behave. He also had issues with Omar Sharif and lead actress Cornelia Sharp.
I really wanted to love this — the poster is great — but it really drags. There’s a reason why some lost movies remain lost, I guess.
Writer Richard Maibaum was the screenwriter for so many Bond films, from 1962’s Dr. No to 1989’s Licence to Kill. Thirteen in all — he missed a few, like Moonraker, but you’d think that experience would make for a better film. Ah well — you gotta watch everything to see if you can find something.
Just when you thought we couldn’t all get along, the French, German and Italians all got together and made a James Bond ripoff. That should warm your heart.
Directed by Giorgio Ferroni (Mill of the Stone Women) — using the amazing fake name Calvin Jackson Padget — this Amsterdam-shot caper played double bills with another movie that brought together people of many countries — in this case Britain, Yugoslavia, Italy and the U.S. — The One Eyed Soldiers.
Secret Agent Super Dragon (Ray Danton, who played George Raft in The George Raft Story, was Sandokan in that series of movies, was married to Julie Adams and appeared in other spy movies like Code Name: Jaguar, the Jess Franco-directed Lucky, the Inscrutable and the Derek Flint TV pilot — whew!) is after the men who killed his partner and are now stuffing drugs into vases.
That’s pretty much it, but luckily, Marisa Mell shows up as Charity Farrel. Mell was typecast in her career as a femme fatale, but perhaps she earned that, what with her dating Pier Luigi Torri, a playboy who became one of the most wanted fugitives in the world and got her name all over the tabloids. She’s probably best known for being in Danger: Diabolik, which is a much better spy movie than this.
Speaking of spy girls, Margaret Lee is also in this. Beyond starring in twelve movies with Klaus Kinski and living to tell the story, Margaret was also in Our Agent Tiger, Agent 077: From the Orient with Fury, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die and Our Man in Marrakesh. The more depraved amongst my dear readers — like me — will recognize her from Slaughter Hotel and Venus In Furs. And yes, that’s Fräulein Greta from Deported Women of the SS Special Section (and Patrizia from Strip Nude for Your Killer), actress Solvi Stubing in this as well.
Originally called New York Chiama Superdrago (New York Calling Superdragon), you can watch this pretty ridiculous movie on Amazon Prime. You also have the option of watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version on Amazon Prime and Tubi.
Directed by Josh Greenbaum, who also made Behind the Mask for Hulu, this documentary is all about the left and times of the man who played Bond just one time, George Lazenby.
I love the set-up that they wrote for the film: “The stranger-than-fiction true story of George Lazenby, a poor Australian car mechanic who, through an unbelievable set of circumstances, landed the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, despite having never acted a day in his life. Then after being offered the next seven Bond films and a $1 million signing bonus, he turned it all down.”
An interview with Lazenby is intercut with Drunk History-style recreations, as the movie star recalls being a failure in high school who finally used what he learned in a “How To Win Friends and Influence People” class to improve his car selling job, got his heart broken by a girl and ended up becoming James Bond despite having no real acting experience outside of some commercials.
Lazenby discussed that becoming James Bond meant giving up too much and how walked away from fame and fortune. He went back to Australia, became a realtor and then married and raised a family. He neglects to mention all the movies that he appeared in after that, but when someone is so good at telling their story, why get in the way of it?
The actor also appears in another documentary, This Never Happened to the Other Fella, which is in post-production.
All things come to an end with Bond, as this is the last Pierce Brosnan movie. It’s packed with product placement — even more than many Bond films — and was nearly the pilot for a series of films with Halle Berry’s Jinx Johnson character. MGM wanted to move on to a new series, to the dismay of Eon. It would have been interesting.
This film starts with Bond enduring 14 months of torture in North Korea and stripped of his 00 status after MI6 believes that he gave up information under torture. This puts him on the case of Gustav Graves, a seller of conflict diamonds who ends up being the very same Colonel Moon who held him as a POW.
For all of the derision tossed the way of this film, the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish ice castle sequence is — for me — on par with the Lotus Espirit scene in The Spy Who Loved Me. Roger Moore disliked both these scene and the CGI in this film, calling it a franchise low. This is the man who made A View to a Kill, so just imagine that.
Piling on the scorn, Elton John claimed that the Madonna theme for this film was the “worst Bond tune ever.” Madonna also shows up in a brief cameo.
Director Lee Tamahori has an interesting resume, with everything from Once Were Warriors, xXX: State of the Union and Along Came a Spider on his IMDB list.
As this film was released on the fortieth anniversary of Dr. No, former Bond actors Moore, George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton joined Brosnan at the premiere. Connery was busy filming The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was originally posted on July 9, 2019. You have to love when a movie starts like The Prisoner and ends with Dennis Rodman, Mickey Rourke and a tiger menacing a baby.
If you think of directors from the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema, Tsui Hark has to be on the list thanks to directing movies like Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and the Once Upon a Time in China series, as well as producing The Killer, A Better Tomorrow and Black Mask amongst many others.
In the 1990’s, instead of continually stealing from Hong Kong movies, Hollywood decided to go directly to the source and work with its most well-known directors. Other than this film, Hark also made another Van Damme film, Knock Off, which co-starred Rob Schneider. Frustrated by the lack of creative control, hark would eventually return to Hong Kong.
Somehow, one of world cinema’s greatest action directors ended up working on a film with Dennis Rodman in it. The results? Three Razzie wins for worst new star, worst supporting actor and worst screen couple, all for Rodman with Van Dam helping on the latter. Still, Rodman has no less than six hair color and style changes in the film, continuity be damned.
Jean-Claude Van Dam is Jack Paul Quinn, an anti-terrorism expert brought out of retirement by his nemesis Stavros (Mickey Rourke, so for those of you like me who were always wondering, “Could JCDV beat up Mickey Rourke?” you’ll get your answer). That big bad blames our hero for the death of his son, so he kidnaps Jack Paul’s pregnant wife Kathryn.
Where can our hero turn? To one man: the arms dealer named Yaz (Rodman), who has weapons so new even he doesn’t know what they are.
What Stavros doesn’t know is that Jack Paul tried to stop the mission that killed his boy, but that doesn’t matter. His failure to stop the man led to him being placed in The Colony, which is just like the TV show The Prisoner, in that it’s used to keep agents too valuable to kill but too dangerous to set free. So they all work toward monitoring terrorist threats and are kept from the rest of the world and their families because, you know, spy business.
While Jack Paul is there, his handler is Alex Goldsmythe (Paul Freeman, Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark). When Stavros ends up kidnapping our hero’s wife, Yaz helps him find his enemy and battle him in the bomb-rigged Roman Coliseum (actually the Arles Amphitheater in Southern France).
Somehow, I didn’t ever think I’d see a movie where Van Damme and Rodman battled a tiger and Mickey Rourke while trying to save a baby in a basket. Yet here it is. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing things in my life the right way. I guess this is proof one way or the other.
There is an amazing scene where Van Damme uses an apartment to train to escape The Colony. Watch him do curls in his bare feet! Watch him light a cigarette to test how long he can hold his watch in a bathtub! Watch him do many, many splits! Also: every single time Van Damme and Rodman fist bump, I would collapse in total guffaws, as Hark decided to do a short Fulci zoom at times into their hands. Amazing.
That said, the fights are decent — perhaps because Sammo Hung was choreographing them. I wonder what the original film — The Colony — was like before JCVD’s lengthy rewrites. I’d assume Rodman was nowhere nearby, nor was there a scene where Van Damme dressed as a street punk.
Warren Beatty wanted to make this movie all the way back in 1975. In 1980, United Artists became interested in financing and distributing the movie, getting James Bond and Superman writer Tom Mankiewicz to start the script. However, the deal fell through when Chester Gould, creator of the comic strip, pushed for a heavy hand in financial and creative matters.
Spielberg and John Landis were considered to direct at one point at Universal, with Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Tom Selleck and Mel Gibson all considered for the starring role.
After the incident on the set of The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Landis left the project and Walter Hill came on with Joel Silver producing. They approached Beatty to be the star. Sets were even built, but Beatty had creative issues with Hill, who wanted a violent and realistic film. However, the star was a big fan of the comic strip and wanted a stylized version of a comic book, plus a $5 million dollar salary and 15% of the gross.
Beatty finally got a deal with Disney that enabled him to produce, direct and star in the film. Disney greenlit Dick Tracy in 1988 with the rules that Beatty — who was notorious for going overbudget — stay within a $25 million dollar budget.
That didn’t happen, as once filming started, costs went up to $46.5 million and an additional $48.1 million in advertising. The movie made back $162.7 million, so it did make back the investment.
This is one of the last American blockbusters to use no CGI. Instead, the design team of production designer Richard Sylbert, set decorator Rick Simpson, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, visual effects supervisors Michael Lloyd and Harrison Ellenshaw, prosthetic makeup designers John Caglione, Jr. and Doug Drexler, and costume designer Milena Canonero used a combination of matte paintings and incredibly detailed makeup. They also limited themselves to just seven colors and never move the camera. Everything is in frame, as if it’s a comic book panel. Plus, it features some of the most elaborate scene paintings ever made.
That said — it’s the first movie to use digital audio.
As for the film itself, it’s nearly a spot the actor game just as much as it is a story. Tracy (Beatty) is up against “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino), a crime boss who our hero has been after for years, as well as an army of all of Tracy’s bad guys from the strip.
Plus, there’s Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), who keeps coming between Tracy and his true love, the unironically named Tess Trueheart. Oh yeah — and then there’s The Kid, a child who no one wants and that Tracy starts taking care of.
If you love character actors, this movie is for you. There’ Seymour Cassel as Sam Catchem, Michael J. Pollard as Big Bailey, Charles Durning as the chief, Dick Van Dyke as the district attorney and even Kathy Bates as a court stenographer. Even Mary Woronov shows up as a child welfare agent!
The bad guys are Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles, William Forsythe as Flattop, Ed O’Ross as Itchy, Mandy Patinkin as 88 Keys, James Tolkan as Numbers, Henry Silva as Influence, Paul Sorvino as Lips Manlis, R.G. Armstrong as Pruneface, James Caan as Spud Spaldoni and there are quite literally so many other bad guys that I’ve forgotten over the years that Catherine O’Hara plays Texie Garcia.
There’s also The Blank, a mysterious villain who looks like something right out of Blood and Black Lace.
Disney had hoped that Dick Tracy would become a successful franchise, but its disappointing box office performance halted those plans. It made money — but not enough money for the effort.
As these things happen, lawsuits followed. Executive producers Art Linson and Floyd Mutrux sued Beatty shortly after the release of the film, as they claimed that they were owed profit participation.
Beatty was the person who had actually purchased the Dick Tracy film and television rights in 1985 from Tribune Media Services before taking the project to Disney. According to Beatty, in 2002, Tribune attempted to reclaim the rights and notified Disney. They just never told him or followed their agreement.
To lock up the rights even further, Beatty hired cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and film critic Leonard Maltin to make the 2008 Dick Tracy TV Special for Turner Classic Movies. This bonkers effort features Beatty as Tracy in a retrospective interview with Maltin. That’s right — Beatty is in character for the entire special. When asked if Beatty will make a sequel, Dick Tracy tells Maltin to ask him himself.
Even stranger, this special has only aired once, as if it were a legal announcement. Well, that’s because it was.
I love this movie. It’s completely unlike any other film ever made and just looks so strange as a result. Beatty is also crazy — this has been confirmed by many people who worked on this, like Danny Elfman — but the results are so good.
Charles Bind is back — from his last film, No. 1 of the Secret Service— even if Gareth Hunt from The New Avengers is playing him now. It’s time for a Lindsay Shonteff written and directed version of Bond.
You can also find this movie under the titles An Orchid for No. 1, The Man from S.E.X. and Undercover Lover.
This time out, Bind is called in to investigate the disappearance of Lord Dangerfield, which leads him to meet his daughter Carlotta Muff-Dangerfield (Fiona Curzon, Frightmare) who is called “Lotta Muff.”
Yes, that happens. There’s also an American Senator named Lucifer Orchid. Here you thought Bond movies were bad at names.
Genre fans will be happy to see Deep Roy (Fellini from Flash Gordon, Teeny Weeny from The NeverEnding Story), as well as cannibal star Me Me Lai (The Man from Deep River, Last Cannibal World, Eaten Alive!), Imogen Hassell (Toomorrow) and Toby Robins, who went on to play Melina Havelock’s mother in the For Your Eyes Only.
At this point, the Bond films were already a parody, so this movie just takes the ridiculousness even further.
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