On paper, this must have looked like a brilliant idea. Take one of the most popular non-super-powered comic book characters of the era, use the core of their story to tell a standard vigilante cop story, and string together a bunch of fight sequences with an up-and-coming action star at the helm. It was the late 80’s and people were flocking to see that stuff, but for whatever reason, this Mark Goldblatt directed flick fell flat on its face.
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Before being corrupted by Hollywood, and forever tainted by the evil of production budgets, Peter Jackson had a highly respectable career in New Zealand cinema as the foremost auteur of splatter comedy. Bad Taste, with it’s exploding sheep was his breakthrough moment, and Braindead arguably the highlights of his filmography and unarguably the bloodiest film ever at that time. But it’s his adventure into the world of puppetry that is “Meet The Feebles” that got run through the Trash or Treasure grinder this time, because what we really need right now is a meanspirited laugh and a hippo with a machine gun.
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Once upon a time, mostly before they could get a steady supply of really good blood effects that would wash off of diaphanous nighties, Hammer Films did a lot of business with its Sci-Fi horrors including the renowned Quatermass series and the mostly forgotten X The Unknown and Spaceways. Unfortunately, they didn’t make Village of the Damned, so they released These Are The Damned as frightening children were in at the time. Directed by Joseph Losey, in exile from the USA for being a card-carrying communist, and reasonably based a book by H.L. Lawrence, it was applauded by The Times upon its release and has been recognised as a highpoint of British Sci-Fi cinema.
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When most people think of a 1930s Hollywood Horror, they think of some drawn-out gothic classic like Dracula, Frankenstein, or The Invisible Man. Well, beyond glitzy stages and novel reworks, filled with mortality-play tales of man’s inner struggle, the 1930s brought us the first works of exploitation cinema by plying its trade to a titillated audience (whilst also ushering in the Hayes Code). Tod Browning’s Freaks shocked audiences by showing disabled people, Erle C. Kenton blended sensuality with cruelty in the Island of Lost Souls, and Michael Curtiz gave us this technicolour body-horror nightmare with Doctor X – a film so ground-breaking and debauched that it got a name check in The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
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Because it’s always good to go outside of your normal world, for this trip into obscuria we’re having a watch of a Japanese romantic comedy-drama. Based on the 2015 comic series “BL Mangaka Desukedo Kekkon Shitemo Iidesuka” by Haruki Fujimoto, who is also credited at writing the screenplay, Wedding Bells For The Otaku is an hour-long made-for-TV special. Directed by Toshimitsu Chimura, who probably got the job due to working on other nerdy TV series, it’s the kind of show that Japanophiles will probably wax lyrically about for many moons. Well, I’m not writing for them and any of their apologist behaviour, so my advice is that if you ever find this in a bargain-bin you should leave it there. Unless you know a J-Drama obsessive you can up-sell it to.
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Life is perfect for Megan (Natasha Lyonne), All-American Cheerleader and girlfriend to the football champ, in mid-west, middle-class, middle-school. The only problem is that she’s gay as a maypole, even if she doesn’t know it. Good news! Her parents are sending her off to True Directions for a bit of corrective therapy. It’s a two-month program of five steps to Straightdom, led by Cathy Moriarty and the “Ex-Gay” RuPaul, and let’s just say that it doesn’t work as she soon ends up in a wonderful relationship with Clea DuVall. The whole thing is a fantastic send-up of the late 90s (and, probably, contemporary) fears of homosexuality, crack-pot theories as to what causes it, and how it can be cured. (It’s not as cruel and punishing as many of the real-world therapies/torture programs, because those just aren’t a laughing matter.)
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It feels good to go outside of your comfort zone, so as a straight punk-rocker I thought that it was about time I entered into a world that I’m not especially versed in and, to be honest, don’t always feel comfortable with: Rock Opera. And cause its LGBTQ+ History month, and I’ve been having the name pop up on my radar for as long as I can remember, I thought I’d give the film of the “Off-Broadway*” classic, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a try. Written, directed, and starring the co-writer and star of the theatrical version – John Cameron Mitchell – it was a box office bomb. This was almost certainly because it was released in 2001 and is about an East German “girly boy” who’s rocking their way through late 80s and early 90s America, to stalk their now-famous ex-boyfriend. Still, if it was a big success I wouldn’t get to enthuse about it here.
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WARNING: This is a SPOILER HEAVY article that freely discusses plot points about books written over a century ago.
The principle of an adaptation is simple; take a book that has a built-in fanbase, transcribe it into a script though the extensive use of CTRL-C and CTRL-V, and pop out a bit of hit TV. Most of the actually hard work of creation, coming up with plot, characters and dialogue, has already been done, so all the production team really have to do is get the actors, sets, and costumes together. Right?
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One of the often-touted advantages of services like Netflix is that, through its use of metrics, they can exactly what the viewers want to watch. This should be exciting, offering the chance to put money behind more niche films and deliver them directly to a waiting audience. However, if their recent roster of big banner release is to go by, what the audience wants isn’t excitement or innovation. If In The Shadow Of The Moon is any measure of what actually gets and keeps eyeballs, then what the bulk of viewers really want is something that’s non-threateningly almost-innovative and dull.
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Benny and Joon is a 1993 feelgood romantic comedy/promotional vehicle for the acting talents of the then rising star Johnny Depp, about the lighthearted and loving moments of living with nondescript and nonthreatening mental illness. No, don’t run away! It’s all very well intended and far to homely to cause outright offence; it’s simply “of its time” trying-to-be-considerate offensive and a lightweight take on a heavyweight issue. That makes it better, right??
Trash or Treasure 