ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941) ***

People are all gaga for superhero cinema nowadays, but can you imagine a time when there were no superhero movies?  To find the first one, you have to go all the way back to 1941 with this twelve-chapter Republic Pictures serial.  The producers originally wanted to make a Superman serial, but when DC wanted too much money, they went to Fawcett Comics instead and secured the rights to Captain Marvel.  Naturally, DC later sued and bought up the rights to Captain Marvel before dropping the name and calling the character by his catchphrase, “Shazam!”  Then, Marvel came out with their own Captain Marvel and made her a woman, so you wouldn’t be confused that there were two Captain Marvels running around.  Got all that?

Anyway, Tom (The Mummy’s Hand) Tyler stars as Captain Marvel.  The young Billy Batson (Frank Coghlan, Jr.) accompanies an expedition to Siam to investigate a tomb.  When he refuses to raid the treasure, he is rewarded with the powers of Captain Marvel by the wizard Shazam.  All Billy has to do is say the word, “Shazam!” and he becomes Captain Marvel.  Meanwhile, the scientists from the expedition are targeted by the evil Scorpion who wants to build a death ray using artifacts found in the tomb.  

The flying scenes must’ve been really something for the time and remain OK by today’s standards.  In fact, many of the flying techniques pioneered here (a mix of rear screen projection and a dummy zipping around on a wire) would be used for decades after.  Also, Shazam’s powers (flying, deflecting bullets, and feats of strength) were most certainly the blueprint for the future screen versions of Superman.  What makes Shazam different from Superman is that when the chips are down, he will grab a machine gun and mow down a bunch of henchmen.  Rambo eat your heart out.  He also throws henchmen to their death (or at least their dummies anyway).  I know Batman has a “no killing” rule, but thankfully for the audience, Captain Marvel does not abide by it.  I mean this is the ‘40s we’re talking about here.  The Captain doesn’t have to follow all that Comics Code crap.  He can gleefully kill a bunch of henchmen, and all is right with the world.  

As is the case with most serials, it’s a bit tough to watch the entire thing in one sitting as it clocks in at over three and a half hours.  At least the cliffhangers have some variety to them, which makes Adventures of Captain Marvel a little better than your average serial.  The cliffhangers include exploding bridges, a cool motion-activated guillotine, exploding planes, runaway cars, and molten lava (a scene that was later repurposed in Radar Men from the Moon).

Tyler (who later went on to play another superhero, The Phantom three years later) is pitch perfect as Captain Marvel.  Although you just know he will escape each week’s episode unscathed, you still root like Hell for him.  It also helps that he only appears whenever Billy says “Shazam!”, which means he doesn’t wear out his welcome.  Coghlan, Jr. also does a good job as Billy Batson.  He has the right blend of “aw, shucks” wholesomeness but can still hold his own in a fight.  Sometimes, he doesn’t resort to transforming into Captain Marvel to save people, which is a nice touch.  It was also fun to see Ed Wood regular Kenne Duncan as The Scorpion’s right-hand man.  

THE MEATEATER (1979) **

Mitford (Peter Spitzer) is a family man who retires from his swell paying gig selling shoes to open a rundown old movie theater with his family.  Opening night does not go well.  The projectionist is electrocuted, and a dead body is found hanging behind the screen.  Despite that little hiccup, our hero is still determined to keep the theater open.  Unfortunately, there is a crazy old man (Arch Joboulian) who’s obsessed with Jean Harlow lurking about the premises.  He starts offing more people and eventually sets his sights on Mitford’s daughter (who is a dead ringer for Harlow) as his next victim.

Let’s get this out of the way.  I don’t know why the heck this is called The Meateater.  I mean the old guy chows down on a rat in the opening scene, but that’s about it.  So, if you go into this one thinking it’s going to be about cannibalism or something, you’re going to be massively disappointed.  

Sure, there are some long, dull stretches, but The Meateater has a weird energy only a late ‘70s homegrown horror production can offer.  There are a couple of fun bits (like the electrocution scene) and Z movie touches (the detective’s mustache disappears midway through) to ensure it’s not a total waste.  I especially dug the fact that the family books a nature documentary about a jungle safari as their first feature.  They advertise it as a “wholesome movie”, but it contains a scene of animals humping.  

These moments only crop up sporadically, so I can’t quite recommend it.  However, this is one of those movies that’s more fun to think about in retrospect.  I was kind of restless while watching it, but I found myself smiling a lot while writing the review.  The pacing is erratic, and the finale is weak, which didn’t help.  At least there’s some decent gore in the final minutes.  

The dialogue is good for some chuckles too.  I liked it when the detective gets his inept partner to cut the corpse down from the rafters.  When its head pops off, he yells, “Be careful!  That used to be a human being!”  Mitford’s wife gets the best line of the movie while cleaning up the theater:  “There’s pigeon B.M. everywhere!”

AKA:  Blood Theater.

MOTORCYCLE GANG (1957) ** ½

Anne (Jailhouse Rock) Neyland turns in a great performance as the tough and feisty motorcycle-riding Terry.  It’s easy to see why the leader of the local motorcycle gang Randy (Steven Terrell) falls head over heels for her.  Trouble brews though when the gang’s former leader, Nick (John Ashley) gets out of prison looking for a fight.  Things get increasingly tense between the pair when Terry begins dating them both at the same time.  

Directed by Edward L. Cahn for AIP, Motorcycle Gang was obviously meant to cash in on The Wild One.  However, the dramatics are a lot closer to Frankie Avalon than Marlon Brando.  Overall, it’s an interesting near-miss.  It came out a good decade before the biker movie craze of the ‘60s, so there wasn’t quite a blueprint for this sort of thing yet.  Even though it hits a few bumps in the road, it makes for a good ride.

The film is at its best when the so-called gang are racing their bikes.  The ending where Ashley (playing yet another Juvenile Delinquent hothead) and his gang terrorize a small town feels like it came out of another movie, and love triangle stuff between the three leads is a bit ho-hum, but Neyland is always fun to watch.  The fact that the teenage characters speak in an unending stream of hip ‘50s jive talk helps keep what could’ve been boring dialogue scenes engaging.  

The supporting cast is interesting too.  This was the next to last film for Carl Switzer, better known as Alfalfa from The Little Rascals who plays Terrell’s buddy, Speed.  He would sadly die two years later, shot in the dick.  The film also boasts a rare non-monster role for special effects man Paul Blaisdell, and ‘90s action fans will also enjoy seeing Aki Aleong making his motion picture debut as the owner of the local hamburger stand/juke joint.

The movie really belongs to Neyland though.  Her character’s opinionated, liberated, and bigger than life, something of a rarity in these films.  Her performance alone (OK, her constant use of hilarious slang helps too) makes Motorcycle Gang stand out from similar movies from the era.  It may not be the leader of the pack, but it’s far from bringing up the rear. 

HELL’S HIGHWAY (2002) ***

A foursome of college students travels through the desert on their way to Los Angeles.  Along the way, they pick up a sexy/scary hitchhiker (Phoebe Dollar from Goth), and it doesn’t take long for her to show her psycho true colors.  Thus begins a game of cat and mouse as she doggedly pursues the quartet of friends through the desert.

Even though Hell’s Highway (Dollar calls the road, “The Devil’s Highway”, but I guess the alliterative “Hell’s Highway” had a better ring to it) was made on an obviously low budget, it gets off to a surprisingly strong start.  The opening sequence where Dollar is picked up by a guy who looks to be a serial killer finishes off with a nice little twist.  

The following sequence had me worried for a second since it features the requisite stereotypical horror movie character who films everything with his camera, which leads to a lot of shaky-cam nonsense.  Usually, that’s a debit in a flick like this.  Luckily for us, it gives Skinamax siren Beverly Lynne an opportunity to gleefully flash her boobs for the camera every chance she gets.  Lynne, it must be said, is excellent in this.  They say the sign of a great actor is that they listen to their fellow actors speak instead of waiting for their turn to talk.  There is one scene where she doesn’t have any dialogue but is held in rapt attention to what the other characters are saying.  Not many actresses can steal a scene without saying anything at all, but Lynne is definitely one of them.  

Dollar is equally good as the psycho hitcher.  I admit, even though I’d be 99% sure she was gonna gut me like a fish, I’d still probably give her a lift.  She also gets to do a great Leatherface-style chainsaw dance and has lots of good lines like, “I’m not gonna kill you in cold blood.  I’m gonna warm you up first!”  There’s also a funny bit by Ron Jeremy as a motorist who gets his dick cut off.  

Sure, there are a couple of “Found Footage” sequences, but they work a lot better than most movies of the subgenre.  That’s because they are used sparingly and don’t have a lot of sequences that are needlessly dragged out.  The filmmakers also seem to be of the mind that these sequences are only here because Found Footage was hot at the time, which explains why a character gripes, “Next time, we bring a fucking tripod!”  That line alone is enough to make it the best Found Footage movie of all time, even if the Found Footage only accounts for about 15% of the running time.

Hell’s Highway is only sixty-nine minutes, so it doesn’t fuck around like many of its contemporaries.  It also boasts some surprisingly strong gore and splatter effects.  (There’s a gut ripping scene that has to break some sort of record.)  Director Jeff (Charlie’s Death Wish) Leroy lends the film some unexpected stylistic touches too, like the scene where the characters wait for a cellphone to ring.  It’s only in the final ten minutes does it stumble and stumble badly as the “twist” ending just doesn’t work at all.  That’s okay though, because there’s still enough fun, gore, and skin to be had in the first hour or so to make Hell’s Highway a winner.

KEKKO KAMEN (1991) **

The Kekko Kamen anime series was such a big hit that this live-action version soon followed.  The show was about the titular superheroine who wore a red mask and nothing else while fighting crime.  While the show was a lot of fun, inevitably, something gets lost in translation when you try to take such a wild cartoon and try to make her into flesh and blood.

An evil guy in a court jester costume assumes control of an all-girl school.  When a pervert teacher (who seems loosely inspired by Dennis Hopper’s character in Blue Velvet) attempts to shave a pussy (as in, cat) as part of his lesson, one of his students tries to prevent the act of animal cruelty.  He then ties her up for her insolence and just as he’s about to torture her, the sexy crimefighter Kekko Kamen arrives on the scene to stop him.  Kekko next socks it to a karate teacher who likes to get handsy with his female students.  Finally, when the headmaster holds an assembly where a student is publicly whipped, Kekko drops in to give him a taste of his own medicine.    

As fun as the idea of having a nude crimefighter is (she hides her face and exposes her body), the execution leaves something to be desired.  One of the problems is that the production values are really shoddy.  It was shot on video, and suffers from a low budget, and some poor acting.  Not that any of those things are necessarily a dealbreaker when you are making a movie about a nude crimefighter.  However, those nude crimefighting scenes are few and far between, and when they finally do arrive, they aren’t particularly well-executed, funny, or even sexy.  I mean, the part where she kills a guy by shooting light out of her vagina is kinda amusing, but it’s a long time… uh… coming.  Besides, all the hammy acting and unfunny comic relief during the fully clothed stretches has a tendency to wear on the nerves.  Still, it clocks in at well under an hour, so at least it’s short.  

SATAN’S STORYBOOK (1989) * ½

Satan’s Storybook looks like one of those deals where the director had two or three unfinished/abandoned/unreleased movies, cobbled them together, and passed them off as an “anthology” horror film.  I’m not saying it’s totally without merit.  I mean, any time you start a flick with Ginger Lynn Allen dressed as a Ninja, you’re doing something right.  However, things go downhill from there awful fast.  

Allen stars in the “Wraparound” (**) segments as a warrior woman sworn to bring her Satanic Queen sister (Leslie Deutsch) to justice.  Her boyfriend just so happens to be Satan (Ray Robert, a beefy guy with a skull face who probably inspired Mortal Kombat’s Shao Kahn), and he sends his minions out to find her.  While waiting for his Queen’s return, he asks his jester (Michael Daevid) to tell him some scary stories.  

The first tale is about a serial killer named “The Demon of Death” (* ½) who likes to pick his victims at random out of the phonebook.  The killer (co-writer Steven K. Arthur) murders a young woman’s parents and is arrested before he can kill her too.  Six years pass, and the killer still hasn’t been executed.  The woman (Leesa Rowland from The Class of Nuke ‘Em High 2, 3, and 4) then turns to black magic to make sure he gets what’s coming to him.  Naturally, things don’t go as planned.

Even though this story starts off well enough, it quickly goes down the tubes once the killer is arrested.  From then on, it just twiddles its thumbs way too much and the twist ending, when it finally does come, is rushed and unsatisfying.  While the wraparound sequences look slightly more polished than your typical SOV horror flick, The Demon of Death is just about what you would expect from the genre.  The lighting is crappy, the cinematography is cruddy, and some of the actors are visibly reading from their scripts.  It also doesn’t help that the so-called Demon of Death just looks and acts like your typical ‘80s metalhead dude, which is to say he isn’t very intimidating.  

The second story is called “Death Among Clowns” (*).  It stars the author of The Howling, Gary Brandner as an alcoholic clown that commits suicide in his dressing room.  A demonic clown (writer/director Michael Rider), sporting a silly looking tail) then arrives to drag him to Hell.  

Sure, it’s funny to see Brandner in his only acting role (a Howling 4 poster is briefly glimpsed in the first story as well), but it’s painfully obvious that he is not an actor.  It doesn’t help that he spends nearly all his screen time in a shoddy looking clown get-up.  As bad as he is, Rider is twice as annoying, and their unending banter makes this story feel like it lasts an eternity.  Another debit is the fact that it’s a straightforward story and no attempt whatsoever is made to give it a twist ending, something that’s a virtual perquisite for an anthology horror movie.

While shot on video, the wraparound sequences of Satan’s Storybook look better than many of its ‘80s SOV contemporaries.  The use of red lights in the opening works rather well, and the throne room scenes are more inventive than many horror flicks that were shot in somebody’s backyard.  That said, once it switches over to the stories, it looks and feels more like your typical SOV crap.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that the wraparound ends with a cliffhanger to a sequel that never happened.  (Thank God.)

I’m sure Ginger worked on pornos that had ten times the budget this one had.  Fortunately, her performance is the best thing about the movie, which helps make it go down smoother than expected.  She looks terrific (I especially liked the scene where Ginger magically transforms from her Ninja get-up to a more sword and sorcery-inspired wardrobe), and even manages not to embarrass herself during her longwinded monologues.  If she can emerge from something like this relatively unscathed, it proves that she has better acting chops than most give her credit for.  

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017) ****

When the police fail to find her daughter’s killer, a mother (Frances McDormand) puts up three billboards in her hometown asking why nothing has been done.  The sheriff (Woody Harrelson) is incensed because his name is on the billboard, and he feels he’s being personally attacked.  Her shrewdness eventually spurns him into action, even though the consequences of putting up the billboards makes her a target for the pro-cop community.  

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a triumph through and through.  Written and directed by Martin (In Bruges) McDonagh, it’s a powerful, sad, angry, and wickedly funny movie.  You might be surprised that a movie about rape, murder, cancer, and racism can be so funny, but I assure you, I laughed a lot during the film.  The humor comes out of the characters’ plight and the fact that they don’t act like your ordinary movie characters, but regular human beings.  They are all deeply flawed, wounded, and suffering individuals whose pain and anger propels them to do what they do, so of course, they have to have a sense of humor.  

There are some dark moments to be sure.  And some incredibly sad ones.  I’m not too proud to say that even I got a little choked up on this one, thanks to the strong writing and powerful performances.  

McDormand and Rockwell both deservedly won Oscars for their performances.  McDormand is just as good here if not better than she was in Fargo, which is a crazy high bar.  Likewise, Rockwell is as good as he’s ever been, making what in lesser hands could’ve been a buffoonish and ugly character into something a little sadder and more human.  His racist, drunken, and violent outbursts seem to come less from learned hatred and more from a callow self-loathing.  Harrelson is equally fine as the sheriff who despite outward appearances is carrying his own sense of pain and failure around with him.  The supporting cast is ridiculously stacked with heavy hitters as well, all of whom do fine work.