Pop Culture Nonsense: Five Superhero Movies So Stupid (They Must Be Seen Part 1)

Five Superhero Films So Bad They Must Be Seen

Being a comuc book fanboy, and a weirdo completist, I tend to watch EVERYTHING that's ever been committed to film that has a comic book source material basis.....and for every THE DARK KNIGHT and CAPTAIN AMERICA : CIVIL WAR,  there's two dozen terrible fucking superhero movies.  And, even amongst the bad, there's a few "gems" that shine despite their ineptitude....the pure unintentional humor value outweighs anything they lack in talent or budget...

CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990, 21ST CENTURY PICTURES)

One the casualties of the collapse of 1980s schlock merchants Cannon Films, CAPTAIN AMERICA is a victim of limited budget and a butchered hatchet job of an edit.

At one point in time, Cannon was looking to cast Dolph Lundgren in the role, but finally settled on Matt Salinger as Steve Rogers aka Captain America (most interesting thing about Salinger: his father was J.D. Salinger, infamously reclusive author of CATCHER IN THE RYE).

  Portraying his arch nemesis is Scott Paulin as an Italian (?!?) Red Skull, who has reconstructive surgery after the war and decides to kidnap the President of the United States (played by Ronnie Cox) 45 years later and has the most unimpressive nuclear bomb in film history as part of his arsenal.

 Also, look for Bill Mumy (Will Robinson of LOST IN SPACE fame, all growed up) and Darren McGavin portraying the same role 45 years apart and Ned Beatty as the President's goofy childhood friend turned reporter.

 Going directly to home video in 1992, the video cassette release of this film went out if print as soon as it hit rental store shelves, and everyone involved pretty much wanted to disown it,  It's scarce nature, as well as the stories of it's complete and utter terribleness garnered CAPTAIN AMERICA a small cult following amongst comic book fanboys.  In 2012, director Albert Pyun offered a director's cut of the film via Sony's burn on demand specialty DV-R service, but the verdict is still out as to whether the nearly hour and a half of cut footage reinserted into the film improves it.

BARB WIRE (1995 Universal Pictures)

Hey, kids!  Titties!

 I don't know whose brilliant idea  it was to take one of Dark Horse Comics'  early 1990s attempts at creating a shared superhero universe (as well as an attempt to cash in on the then current "Bad Girl" character craze....Lady Death, anyone?) and decided to do a dystopian sci fi remake of CASABLANCA (no....really.  I can't make this shit up), cast Pamela Anderson in the Bogart role (and the dude who played Jango Fett in ATTACK OF THE CLONES in the "Ilsa" role)....and then decided to sell the whole mess on the merits of T&A provided by Anderson,......but....I'd like the chance to shake their hand.  It's a spectacular trainwreck of a movie.

Ms. Wire's first comuc book appearance from 1993, and below a more current incarnatiin of the comic

I can't tell if I enjoy Anderson's inability to act (which is epic, trust me) or a genuinely talented ensemble cast of veteran genre picture actors slumming it up in character roles that I enjoy more about this film.  I'd watch Udo Kier read from the phone book, but he does a stellar job of  chewing scenery here.

Jesus Christ.....there's more gaffer's tape holding up her tits than rigging up the lighting in this flick.

Stupid Heroes: 10-4, Good Fanboy! The Ballad of U.S. 1

I grew up in the rural farmlands in the Ohio River Valley in a nurturing environment that resembled the folkiness of Mayberry....if inhabited by rejects from a casting call for extras for THE DUKES OF HAZZARD.

It was during a period of the late 1970s in which a trend of, what I've come to call,  "hillbilly"  or "redneck chic" seemed to be the theme making waves in popular culture.  In music, it was a generation of "Outlaw Country" performers (comprised of artists such as Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams Jr., etc.,...) and a wave of "Southern Rock " and Graham Parsons- driven progressive Alt Country flooding the radio waves.  On television, shows like THE WALTONS, the aforementioned DUKES, B.J. & THE BEAR, and HEE-HAW in syndication proving that stories and songs about good natured yokels had struck a nerve with the public's fickle interests.  Theater screens were full of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and as many possible variations of structuring a plot around the lyrics of C.W. McCall's "Convoy" one can imagine.

So, it's no great stretch of the imagination that I'd dig the comic book exploits of superhero trucker....

One of the vintage U.S.1 racetracks I own.  I am obsessive about the things I'm passionate about, if anything.

U.S. 1 was a 1982 Marvel Comics series which lasted 12 issues,  and featured just exactly that: a truck driver, who after a tragic trucking accident that seemingly leaves his brother dead and himself hospitalized,  who is then put under the knife for lifesaving cybernetic surgery involving putting a remote control for his high tech rig in his head, as well as a C.B. receiver.

No, really.   This shit is priceless, and I cannot make it up.

The result of Marvel licensing the then new Tyco trucking themed racetrack, U.S. 1 didn't exactly set sales figures on fire, nor was a sleeper success, but it has attained an odd little cult following amongst comics fandom, generally because of how ridiculously stupid the premise is....

From Wikipedia:

 "In 1981 Tyco Toys began selling HO scale, or 1/87 scale slot trucks. Similar to HO Scale racing sets, it had two lane track with various lengths and shapes available, and, unlike its racing counterparts, the vehicles traveled in the normal fashion employed on American roads. As to suit the driving style, the controllers were not hand-held, but were intended to resemble the dashboard of a truck, with a steering wheel (to control the speed) and a shifter mounted to the side (to control the direction). Some trucks pulled trailers, some (like the dump truck) did not. The line was unique because of the ability to pick up and deliver the loads, doing so with help from various accessories including a pipe loader, and a gravel loader, all without intervention from the operator.

There were various loading and unloading docks and a range of three plastic construction kits: a gas station, diner and freight depot.

The track was the same type as the Tyco Quick Clik series, but moulded in gray. There were two types of junctions made for the range. All sets came with 9" radius 90 degree curves. The least common track pieces are the Railroad Grade Crossing and the 12" radius curves.

The US-1 Trucking series was produced until 1986.

Despite having a short life, the range is avidly collected and replacement tires and pick up shoes are available from traders online."

I'm also a sucker for cheap knock offs in popular culture.   Sure, as a kid I loved Hasbro's G.I.JOE or THE TRANSFORMERS, but also found hours of joy from Remco's THE CORPS (anybody remember seeing those pegwarmers hanging out in K-Mart toy aisles for what seemed like decades?) and generic "Truck-O-Bots"....so, anything connected merchandising-wise to an also-ran toy line is of interest to me.

It seems this taste for the second, third, and forty-fifth tier on the popular culture ladder is cross platform for me....I love B movies, short lived cult TV, oddball novelty music....and bad comic books.  The nuttier or goofier the premise.... and that can reach amazingly weird places in a genre that caters to characters that are basically Jesus from outer space (Superman) and obsessive millionaires that dress up like nocturnal animals (Batman)....the more I seem to love it.  Plus, It doesn't seem to help matters much that my tastes seem to always lay left of center from the mainstream when choosing funnybooks to collect and follow on a monthly basis. For example: in the early 1980s, fans seemed to divide and fall into two separate camps when deciding what angst driven teenage superheroes they wanted to read...you either went the Marvel route and were a fan of Claremont's UNCANNY X-MEN, or you were a D.C. Comics devotee and read Wolfman and Perez's NEW TEEN TITANS.

Me?   I was the weird kid in the corner reading Levitz and Giffen's run on LEGION OF SUPERHEROES.  Oh, I read those two other books (I've always been bipartisan in my reading, neither a Marvel Zombie nor a devout supporter of the "Distinct Competition "), but....c'mon.    "The Great Darkness Saga" is pretty fuckin' epic.

But, needless to say, even though U.S. 1 contains nowhere near the 30th century cosmic grandeur that was the battle against the Apokalipian God of Evil Darkseid, the Marvel Comics promotional tie-in with a Tyco tractor trailer racing set is not without it's own charms....

1.)  It's dumb as shit, and the writing immediately dates itself.   Terribly,  I might add.  You got a head full wiring that allows you to telepathically remote control your big rig and receive citizens band signals, Big Daddy....plus you got a truck that's basically "Goliath" from KNIGHT RIDER...and the thing you're impressed about is the cassette player?  

I shouldn't tease....I had one, too, in the first car I ever owned for about six months when I was 16....a 1979 Ford Fairmont that was about 10 years old at the time.   But, I got laid in the back seat and the tape player was about the only fucking thing that worked.

Hey, Bo Duke...why dontcha say hello to the Fonz while yer hanging out in 1978....

My '79 Fairmont, circa 1991ish.  Or, as I liked to call it, "The Green Spanish Fly".

2.)  The premise and plots were batshit insane.  I had a few relatives and friends who went into the interstate trucking trade, but none of them ever told me tales of brothers who were secretly evil vampires who got their rocks off causing traffic accidents, megalomaniacal wannabe dictators riding in zeppelins, or motorcycle riding chicks in leather cosplay gear hassling them. 

Which, by the way, sounds awesome. ..

Trimpe's cover for the first appearance of Wolverine

3.) While the writing and ongoing plotlines were laughable at best, and the central characters the most goofy cliched examples of such, the majority of the interior artwork was provided by Herb Trimpe, who was responsible for a celebrated run in the 1970s on Marvel's THE INCREDIBLE HULK (Trimpe is the artist of note on the first comic book appearance of a little cottage industry Marvel likes to call "Wolverine"...you may have heard of him) and will always have a soft spot in my heart for providing the artwork on the 70s Marvel GODZILLA title.

But, the real selling point on this book is a series of absolutely gorgeous painted covers by a favorite artist of mine, Michael Golden (MICRONAUTS, THE 'NAM, BUCKY O'HARE). I've always found it ironic that some of my favorite work by Golden graced the front of what might quite possibly be the worst of Marvel's ideas published during the 1980s.  But, nevertheless,  I still covet these books because of the covers, and would literally give my eyeteeth for the original pieces.

The main characters of U.S. 1 have turned up from time to time in the contemporary Marvel Universe, most notably in a story arc in John Byrne's SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK in the late 1980s and another in a GHOST RIDER storyline in the 90s.  The character was used for comedic effect in last decade's CIVIL WAR storyline, attempting to register as a superhero with the government.

It's kinda comforting to know that somewhere out there in a universe full of Asgardian gods,  megalomaniacs from outer space,  Gamma powered rage beasts,  and evil Latverian tyrants....there's still just a trucker trying to get Eastbound and down.....

Pop Culture Nonsense: Sweet Christmas! A Look at LUKE CAGE

There was a good intentioned effort within the mainstream comics industry at some point in the 1970s to create ethnically, culturally,  and gender diverse heroes in their books that came off like a contradictory cross between a genuine movement towards change and,....well, grindhouse exploitation filmmaking.

The most popular of these characters, it seems, turned out to be Marvel's LUKE CAGE a.k.a. POWER MAN. The product of a fairly decent funnybook anti-hero origin story and the best antics of a Blaxploitation movie, Luke Cage pretty much was the superheroic equivalent of John Shaft.

Cage's debut issue from 1972

 Over course of the character's publication history, he's had his peaks and lows in popularity.   He starred in his own solo title for a little over 6 years, whose fiftieth issue was rebranded as POWER MAN AND IRON FIST in 1978, when he began sharing his book with another product of Marvel's attempts at cashing in on a 70s B-movie craze, this time in the form of Bruceploitation/ the chop-socky kung fu martial arts film fad, Danny Rand's alter ego Iron Fist.  This pairing lasted another 75 issues until cancellation in 1985.

The character then went into relative obscurity for about a half decade, popping up again in his own title, that not only was part of the early 1990s attempt by Marvel during the collectors speculation boom of that decade to oversaturate the market with product (a phenomenon similar to what had happened to the sports card collecting market a few years earlier....everyone became of the opinion that the product had inflated monetary value, which led to a spike in production numbers, and ultimately,  a ton of unsold merchandise) and, hilariously,  had spun out of one of the most fucked up PUNISHER storylines in the history of the character....

No....really.  The Punisher becomes a black guy.

Seriously.  It's one of those stories that needs to be read to be believed.

There was another attempt in the mid-to-late 90s to relaunch HEROES FOR HIRE in it's own title, which while met with critical praise, found itself a victim of the industry level bankruptcy of sales numbers that were the aftermath during  the following few years after the aforementioned speculation "boom" amongst collectors.   So, back into the limbo of obscurity Luke Cage went.

The 1997 attempted relaunch

That is, until about a decade later, when in the midway part of the first decade of this century, superstar comics writer (and self proclaimed massive Luke Cage fan) Brian Michael Bendis began utilizing Cage as a supporting character in his Marvel mature readers title ALIAS, featuring super powered private detective Jessica Jones.   You may have heard of her.... she was the focus of last year's Marvel Netflix critical darling TV show entitled (naturally) JESSICA JONES, in which we were first treated to Mike Colter as Luke Cage in a supporting role. 

Bendis' critically acclaimed ALIAS, starring Jessica Jones

 Around the time that ALIAS was popping big on comic store shelves, writer Bendis was also then handed the keys to Marvel's flagship superhero team title, THE AVENGERS,  and began featuring Cage as a member of their roster,  boosting the character's popularity into heights he hadn't seen since the heyday of his 1970s solo title.

Luke during his Avengers heyday

LUKE CAGE, the Netflix series, is good.  Allow me to repeat that:  it's really good.  Marvel seems to be knocking it out of the park with these Netflix efforts,  offering a grittier, slightly more mature themed alternative to the glitzy CGI filled big screen extravaganzas such as THE AVENGERS, THOR, and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY,  while doing it in a way that feels as if they take place in the same universe (which they do....there's tons of references to the events of the New York alien invasion depicted in AVENGERS as well as other nice nods to Marvel properties).

What really shines is the superb casting, that presents us with an ensemble of well rounded characters that are incredibly touching and cringe inducing (in the case of the bad guys) that makes you want to continue watching their stories.

Mike Colter is great as Cage, the no nonsense, damaged yet noble, hero of the piece. He's exactly what you'd imagine and want Luke Cage to be.   Plus, the effortless fight scenes between a bulletproof man with incredible strength don't come off as boring, because you literally want to see how he lays waste to the next round of bad guys.

  Plus,  there are moments of subtle humor, such as his interaction with the character of Pop (portrayed by Frankie Faison) which is heart warming.  Be on the lookout for one moment,  in episode 4, for Cage's reaction his classic 1970 yellow shirt and tiara look that's a short but priceless nod to Marvel Comics canon and fanboys alike.

Alfre Woodard and Mahershala Ali are the villainous duo of Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes and his cousin, city councilwoman "Black Mariah" Dillard, who both as characters pleasantly possess more depth than expected, almost to the point where one sympathizes with their motivations.

Also, a shout out to two actors who I'm personally a fan of: Frank Whaley, who shows up as police detective Rafael Scarfe and Ron Cephas Jones as chess playing friend of Cage, Bobby Fish.  Those two dudes have matured into excellent character actors, IMO.

LUKE CAGE is yet another stellar television effort out of Marvel Studios,  on par in terms of quality with their past efforts (DAREDEVIL Seasons 1 & 2 and JESSICA JONES) which makes me excited to see their upcoming stuff (IRON FIST, apparently third and second seasons for DAREDEVIL and JONES, respectively. ...and the upcoming crossover miniseries,  THE DEFENDERS).  Highly recommended.

HOWARD THE DUCK (1986) Blu-Ray

 HOWARD THE DUCK (1986, UNIVERSAL PICTURES, BLURAY)

Alien lifeform Howard T. Duck, who resembles an anthropomorphic Earth waterfowl, finds himself transported to and stranded on an strange new world, known by the natives as "Cleveland, Ohio".

While there, he makes the acquaintance of Beverly (Leah Thompson), an aspiring musician and her lab assistant friend (Tim Robbins), who both begin assisting Howard in making his stay here on Earth more tolerable while seeking for a means to transport him back home (to "Duckworld", naturally).

Things start going "afowl" ....ha! see what I did there?  It's called "deft wordplay".....or, possibly daft wordplay, because the level of humor I presented there pretty much matches the level on display in the film...

Holy shit, that looks painful.

 Anyways, things start getting nutty when the scientists who inadvertently brought Howard to Earth try to replicate the experiment, accidentally bringing something darker and evil to our plane of existence,  prompting Howard and his pals into heroism as they try and stop the sinister force from taking over the world.

Our heroes, folks.

 Oh....and there's a pretty bad-ass stop motion monster in the climax.

See?  Told ya.

Okay.....admittedly,  HOWARD THE DUCK is a trainwreck of a movie.  But it's one of those entertaining, watchable types of trainwreck that makes you kinda sit back in awe, astonished by the mere fact that it was made.  Had it been made using some of the original concepts bandied about during it's development phase....animated duck being one of the primary ideas they should have went with....it might be viewed as brilliant today.

But there's a charm to the 1986 film that's inescapable. It's one of those films that you either totally get....or you hate....and it's likely that whatever camp you fall into, it's ironically for the same reasons.

The first issue of the original 1970s series

Marvel Comics fanboys and Lucasfilm aficionados (like myself) tend to be more forgiving of the film.  Hey, it's not the best example of a comic book property being adapted,  nor is it the worst (ask me sometime on my opinions on that....ahem....1990's CAPTAIN AMERICA....ahem), and in the draught of the 1980s concerning superhero films between SUPERMAN 2 and 1989's BATMAN...we took what we could get and liked it.

Prior to seeing it theatrically in 1986, I was already a Howard supporter, being a fan of the character's 1970s comic book exploits. 

Howard's current comic book exploits

And, surprisingly,  the Duck ain't dead.  He's been starring in a few contemporary Marvel books dedicated to his misadventures (which are pretty hilarious) and if you stuck around for the end credits tease in 2013's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, you'd have seen a recognizable feather there, so here's hoping we get further fowl influenced films coming in the future from Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe....

Howard's appearance in the end credits sting of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY