Worst of the Worst: Carl J. Sukenick's Alien Beasts

Oh boy- this is a bad one.  No need for the question mark in the Title here...

So here's what happened.  Bob reviewed this back in 2014- seen here- as part of Project Terrible.  The memory of this has lingered ever since.  So when I came up with this idea- mostly as a pretense to make it through one Film- he really wanted to see ME watch it.

Well, I did.

After a solid 60-90 seconds of THAT static shot, we suddenly see a bunch of people we don't know 'fighting' on the front lawn of a House.

It is awful, amateurish and nonsensical.

This is the best summation I can give you of the 'Plot' here to help you make sense of this...

Carl leads a team that fights bad guys.
He also knows that his team are all traitors.
He needs to repeat all of his instructions repeatedly.  Repeatedly.

This make sense?

This Film is totally topical in 2017!

Just kidding- it is stupid, random nonsense and the 'Iranian Agents' are just people in face-paint.

Abe is watching the monitors.
Abe is watching the monitors.

Get used to hearing that phrase.  A lot.

And yes, that Title Card did say 'Carl J. J. Sukenick's' on it.

Between all of the random repeats, creepy bits of someone seemingly-being-molested, repeats of the Fight Scenes (sometimes with Filters) and the abrupt Ending inspired by a Peter Gabriel part of your soul dies.

Oh well, I wasn't using it that much.

There is both so much and so little going on here.  The 'Plot' involves Foreign Agents, Mutants, Lasers and good Agents who seem to be on some sort of drugs.  Aside from some half-decent make-up (like above), there seems to be no Budget here.  The opening bit takes place on what must be Carl's front lawn.  The bulk of the Film seems to take place in and around the same location.  Nothing looks good.  Barely anything sounds good.  In the infamous bit I mentioned near the beginning, he rambles the Plot to an 'Agent' who stands there confused in close-up.  He tells her right after that to not freak out...and then says the same 'Plot' again, only more slurred and stupid.  This was all done in Post-Production- assuming there was much of one- and he still picked the worst takes- assuming that there were more.  That is the really messed up part: this Film had a bunch of Editing and work done on it after shooting was done.  He added stuff like Filters, Insert Shots and more.  This wasn't something he did over a weekend and just used the first take of everything.  This one required actual work done after the fact- even if it was probably done on a bender.  He had plenty of chances to either 'fix' this or just scrap it entirely.  When all is said and done, this is *technically* a Movie, but just barely.  It has a semi-Plot and it does sort-of wrap up.  It feels more like the coke-fueled ramblings of a mad man (which it likely was) and it is time that I can never get back.  Even free on the Internet, the price is too high for this one.  What is Carl up to these days?

Seriously, this is just as bad as The Time Machine- just in a crazy, random and ridiculous way.  It is one of the worst things that I have ever seen in my life.

Project Tremendously Irritating: Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion

Welcome back to Project Terrible! My final film this round comes from Maynard of Maynard's Horror Movie Diary.

Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion is a 2009 parody of superhero films. Holy crap, it kind of jumped the gun, didn't it? Just think how much more material it would've had to work with a few years later!

Okay, to be fair, there were already a lot of superhero films released before the current Marvel crop, and even Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were out the year before this, but...seriously, you have to kind of be kicking yourself when you decide to make a superhero parody and then in the next few years you get a whole slew of extra material you could've used.

Not that Super Capers would probably have used it well anyway, but whatever.

Okay, let's start from the beginning. Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion is a parody of superhero films which concerns Ed Gruberman, a wannabe superhero with no powers who runs into trouble with the law and gets assigned to the superhero training program, Super Capers, with other misfit heroes. They've got a telekinetic whose powers only work if he makes sound effects for them (except when the movie seems to forget that), a Superman-style character whose weakness is being called old or fat, a guy (played by the writer/director) whose only power is blowing up like a puffer fish when he's scared, a scientist who calls himself Q and only makes gadgets blatantly ripped off from movies, a robot whose voice is a horrid Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, and a girl who creates ice who...really doesn't seem to have any problems at all with her powers, so I'm not sure why the heck she's in the program. Together, they learn to use their...no, I'm kidding. They engage in poor comedy and end up confronting a spectacularly braindead conspiracy that only works at all because Ed is catastrophically stupid.

This is a very annoying movie. I'm not sure I can call it outright bad. It's just...annoying. Irritating. Okay, yeah...bad. But bad in a different way than a lot of other bad films I've watched. It's not incompetent--it was meant to be like this. They intentionally made the film this way. I think that's actually worse.

There's very little this film outright does well--I guess I can compliment it for at least getting basics right, and I can't really insult the actors, as for the most part they're clearly just doing as they're told and it's really kind of the point that the film's a cheesy and clumsy mess. So...I'm just going to leave that there, and move on to what the film's main problems are.

1. It isn't funny.

That right there? That's failure for a comedy. Oh, sure, there's one or two jokes here and there that got a chuckle out of me--it isn't a trainwreck on the order of Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace. But...it isn't funny. Jokes are entirely obvious and therefore dull, parodies that don't fit and therefore dull, chuckle-worthy but then overplayed and therefore dull, chuckle-worthy but then expressly pointed out and therefore dull, or just plain entirely stupid and pointless and therefore dull. Or some mix of the above. That bit about the film pointing out its own jokes? Yeah, that's the most annoying part. Ed has an inner monologue throughout a lot of the film, and sometimes it'll just outright ruin what might've on some level been at least a decent joke by pointing it out. Sometimes characters just go ahead and do that in the standard dialogue, too. But really...very little of the film's humor actually works, and what does is not nearly enough to carry the film.

2. It doesn't really do that much with superheroes.

This is far more on point than, say, The Starving Games and other "parodies" of that ilk, but it still doesn't really use the source material all that well. It's hard to really describe...there are superhero jokes in here, but there aren't really interesting superhero jokes in here. I mean, you've got the Superman character who ends up being useless at points, but...why is it "you're old" and "you're getting fat" jokes that are his weakness? And why is that pretty much the only joke with him? And why does it only actually work against him once or twice, but inspire him to absolutely demolish someone another time? If that's his kryptonite, effectively, it should always work--Superman doesn't get stronger sometimes when he encounters kryptonite, you know?

Okay, there's the different strange varieties of kryptonite. Shut up, Al. You know what I mean.

This guy's power is super-speed. His name is Captain Sludge. I have no idea why.

Otherwise...where are the jokes, really? I mean...is it that much of a joke that the telekinetic guy has perfectly decent powers but just has to make noises to feel right using them? The ice girl basically has no jokes about her. What is the joke about the puffer fish guy, other than that he's a scaredycat? There's a little parody of the old time 1940s serials or the 1960s Batman stuff, but...not much, really (by the way, Adam West puts in a little cameo in this, poor guy).

Also, when you're clearly parodying the 1960s Batman show at one point and you have Adam West in your film, why is he not playing that character? Why is he just a taxi driver in a car styled after the old Batmobile?

Anyway...the point is, this film just doesn't really use the source material near as much as you'd think. You could do a lot with superheroes who aren't that good at using their powers getting into trouble because of it. Instead, there's more jokes about the inventor's movie-based technology and how it might or might not work than there are about powers or...really any of the other elements of superhero movies. Back to the Future gets a lot of jokes directed at it, actually--the theme, or an approximation of it, gets played a few times, even! Probably because Sam Lloyd, who played the telekinetic, is Christopher Lloyd's nephew.

You'd think you would've made him the scientist, then, but then they couldn't parody Q from the James Bond franchise. Why they wanted to do that, I don't know.

Also, why is there a minotaur?

3. Laughing at its own jokes / sound effects

This goes back to "it's not funny" a bit, but it really does bear mentioning. Super Capers spends a lot of time kind of trying to convince you that it is really awesomely hilarious. It doesn't have a laugh track, but between Ed's comments, the character's sometimes-knowing reactions, and a wide collection of inappropriately-used sound effects, it pretty clearly thinks that it's the best thing to ever happen to comedy. It can't let a joke just lie--it has to point it out and yell "look at that! Isn't it the best joke ever?"

4. The title

Here's another look.

I actually have to call this out, because this is just so stupid. This is a parody of superhero movies, but its title is...well, look at this! Here's a list of superhero films I can think of off the top of my head, just using ones that would've been released before this film. Notice a pattern?

• Superman
• Superman II
• Superman III
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
• Batman
• Batman Returns
• Batman Forever
• Batman and Robin
• The Shadow
• The Phantom
• Spider-Man
• Spider-Man 2
• Spider-Man 3
• Iron Man
• Hulk
• The Incredible Hulk
• Batman Begins
• The Dark Knight
• X-Men
• X2: X-Men United
• X-Men: The Last Stand
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• Fantastic Four
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

So, let's compare: Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion.

That sounds nothing like the films I listed, does it?

The list above almost entirely consists of titles that are composed of the hero or team's name. Sequels are mostly just numbers. Sometimes they get an additional word or two, but not usually much. THe lone real outlier is Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which is a pretty lengthy title...but even then, it's really quite focused and compared to this film, brief. Meanwhile, this film's title is extremely long, tries to focus on three different things, and doesn't sound anything like the titles of the films that it is parodying.

Tiny Lister wishes he was back in The Dark Knight here...heck, he might even wish he was still back wrasslin' as Zeus!

Here's a collection of alternate parody titles that would be better:

• Gruberman
• Super Capers
• Super Capers Origins: Ed
• Super Capers: Rise of Gruberman
• Gruberman Begins

Of all of those, I'd go with Gruberman. It's kind of funny to title the movie like that's actually his superhero name, and that's actually used as a joke a couple times in the film. It's also simple and focused, and even though this is a team movie, Ed is clearly the focus of the film and gets by far the most screen time, so making the movie "his" pretty well works. Plus, it's the one that just kind of calls out superheroes in general rather than expressly sounding like it's parodying one particular hero film. So I think it's the best...but really, any of those would be better than the title they used.

I know, I know, a lengthy discussion for something pretty minor, but really...if you're doing a parody, your title should actually sound like a parody!

5. Fight scenes

I get that this is a parody, but the fight scenes are awful even by parody standards. Could you not teach people how to do some decent fighting or at least some fun slapstick fighting? Half the "fight scenes" in the movie consist of precisely zero combat moves! There's only one fairly lengthy fight in the film, near the end of it, and...not much happens. Heck, the Superman-parody character just stands over near the van and lets the bad guys come to him (or rather, kind of wander by and then he grabs them). It just feels like this isn't particularly choreographed at all--it's like they just kind of told people to move around and scuffle a bit and they'd film it, for the most part. This is really a huge squandered opportunity for a film like this. Chaotic fight scenes are exactly what a superhero parody film should be doing! There's no better opportunity for superheroic humor--mishaps with powers, terrible fight strategies, bizarre weaknesses, lots and lots of collateral damage that makes you wonder just who the bad guys are...throw all that in a blender and you can have a laugh riot. Instead, we just get kind of generic bits that barely have anyone using their abilities much at all.

Was it the effects budget? The budget for this actually seems...not great, but okay. Either way, look...if you don't have the budget to put even parody-level special effects in your film in more than a few places, do not make a superhero movie! At least not one with heroes with flashy powers. Parody Batman, or the Shadow...

...never mind. The Shadow's already been parodied...by his own movie.

6. The Overall Plot

The plot of this film is just plain stupid. I know this is a parody, but come on! There's this insanely convoluted plan that makes absolutely no sense. I'm not going to bother discussing it in any real detail, because that would have to involve spoilers and because I really don't want to hurt my brain thinking about the myriad ways the villain's plan just...doesn't work, but suffice to say that the villain of the film has a plan that only works because Ed is not only a complete and total moron, but he's a complete and total moron in some extremely specific ways. Additionally, said plan is entirely unnecessary--the villain could easily take alternate actions early in the film that would likely lead to precisely the result he wants.

Look...Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion is just plain irritating to watch. I've said it before and I'll say it again: bad comedies are the worst kind of bad movie, because the reason you might want to watch a bad film is that it'll be funny, but bad comedies are bad at being funny. The rule still applies here. Do not waste your time.

The guy on the right does a half-decent Agent Smith impersonation, except when he forgets, which is often. The guy on the left goes "Yeah" a lot and gets yelled at by the guy on the right. This is, apparently, funny.

Project Terrible: Thor: Hammer of the Gods

Welcome back to Project Terrible! Today's film comes to me from our new guy, Christian, of A Life in 24 FPS.

I love mythology, so of course I was excited horrified to see that his pick for me was:

Thor: Hammer of the Gods! I already long for Chris Hemsworth.

Holy crap.

Thor: Hammer of the Gods concerns a group of Vikings who may or may not be (but probably aren't, except maybe they are) the Norse gods, who land on an island called Midgard in a quest to find a new kingdom. There, they encounter danger, and one of them--the warrior Thor, played by Zachary Ty Bryan of Home Improvement fame--has visions suggesting that a powerful treasure and a great destiny awaits them. The island, though, is infested by werewolves, and if the wolves don't get them, their own infighting might.

So first off, I do have to note that as strange as it is to hear "Thor vs. Werewolves," werewolves are a thing in Norse mythology. So the movie is on pretty solid mythological ground there.

It...pretty much falls off a mythological cliff everywhere else, though. But I'll get to that.

This is not a complicated film. At heart, it's a horror/suspense movie with a touch of action, based around the tried-and-true principle of putting a bunch of characters into a closed environment (in this case, because their boat is stolen) and having a nasty threat pick them off one by one. That film type has worked for years upon years. In this case, there's a slight twist in that the victims are Vikings, and there are some overtones of Fate and Destiny and Reincarnation and such, but I've seen this film before. Several times.

Let's start with what this film does right, which is astonishingly a fair bit.

First, it bears noting that the opening sequence, with some cool, low-animation kind of medieval-looking artwork, is pretty darn nice. I thought that looked great! The still shot above doesn't do it justice, really.

The overall plot concept isn't all that bad. Take Viking warriors, strand them on an island, and have them face a particularly nasty threat that even they, as some of history's most feared warriors, are hard-pressed to battle. Give them a reason to make progress rather than just fortifying a location, and you have the makings of a decent enough film. It can work.

The characters, too...well, the main ones, anyway, are moderately interesting. There's some good interplay between Thor, Ulfrich, Baldur, and Freyja (yeah, the names...I'll get to it, promise), with a decent enough plot of Thor, Ulfrich, and Baldur being brothers, but Ulfrich doesn't like the other two and they don't like him. Fairly obvious where that goes, but for a while the film pretty nicely avoids it and kind of shows a few more noble sides to Ulfrich, so his inevitable...

I really don't have to issue a spoiler warning for this, do I? You know what happens when there's three noble brothers and one of them is an outsider.

...his inevitable betrayal means a little more. He's shown worrying for his kin, and wanting to die an honorable death in battle against the enemy, and even making some pretty good suggestions tactically. The downside is that plotwise his betrayal kind of comes out of nowhere and the villain doesn't feel particularly clever in making it happen, but I do appreciate the effort to make him more than just outright evil.

I rather liked Baldur, as well--he's portrayed as a leader whose chief concern is for his men, and he frequently nicely shows the inner conflict of dealing with Thor and Ulfrich's clashes and of weighing going into the unknown to save his men versus the risk of losing more of them in the process.

Most of the acting is...decent. There's not really anyone who goes too over the top, or does anything ridiculous...and no one really feels wooden, either. I felt Zachary Ty Bryan's performance as Thor was a bit off, but...it wasn't really bad, just...strangely subdued. Sue me, I'm used to Chris Hemsworth's raw unadulterated awesomeness. I can kind of complain about Hel and Freyja as well, on similar grounds--they just don't seem to pull out enough emotion, though they aren't just reciting lines, either. The biggest complaint I have is that half the characters in the movie, especially Bryan's Thor, are trying to do Chris Hemsworth's Thor voice, and not doing nearly as good a job. You know the voice I'm talking about--speak in a deep, full tone, pronounce things regally...that voice. Yeah, these guys can't do it any better than I could.

I need a real Thor break.



Okay, back to this crap.

I also have to note that this film is actually...pretty excellently shot, overall. Nice lighting, nice camerawork...it goes beyond "no real problems" and into "this is very good" territory, technically. They even pull off some great use of slow-mo to accentuate moves in combat (unfortunately, combat is very much not worthy of this honor, but I'll get to that). I'm quite impressed with the film from the visual standpoint--not an effects standpoint, but the basic visuals.

Now, what's not so good?

Everything else.

This is such a dull film. That's my biggest complaint. It seems to take forever to get going. A slow burn can work in a good epic film, but this is, again, just basically a Werewolves Hunting Vikings movie, mythological names aside. The first real fight scene--as in, the first fight scene where you actually see people fight--happens roughly 33 minutes into the movie. The film is about 1 hour and 20 minutes long. Several people die before that point, mind...but they die off-camera. You're lucky if you even get to see their corpses most of the time. Until the 33 minute mark, all violence is demonstrated by a few people posing in vaguely Vikingish manner with weapons, then a cut, and then you just hear them dying.

It gets worse, though, because at the 33 minute mark you see why most of the violence to that point was off camera. It's because nobody in the movie can convincingly swing a sword. At best--at best--these people look like they're very obviously cooperating with their opponents, aiming directly for the parrying weapon instead of trying to hit around the guard and all. That's as good as it gets. More commonly, they don't even manage to convincingly swing--I don't mean "in a fight," I mean "swing at all". I swear some of them just kind of vaguely wave their swords in the general direction of their foe, without any force or purpose behind them at all. Constantly. It's really, really bad.

Fortunately, Ulfrich, Baldur, and Thor are played by guys who can at least manage sword swings. They still clearly work together even if they're fighting each other, but their scenes work a little. What's very unfortunate about Ulfrich and Thor's fights, though, is that those are when the movie decides to go for dramatic combat slow motion...and it always seems to be at the moment when someone misses by a mile. They're going for that thing where the sword narrowly misses someone's face or someone gets knocked on the chin and the action slows for a just a moment and then speeds up again, but it always seems to highlight the worst-looking parts of the fight. This is a movie that has the technical skill to be a pretty nice action film, but lacks the fight choreography and trained swordsmen.

There are several lengthy fight scenes in the film once it decides to start, y'know, actually showing the action, and all of them range from middling to very poor. The closest to acceptable is probably a late-film Thor vs. Ulfrich fight, and even that has some very questionable moments in it (notably an ill-advised "superjump" shot with Thor that just looks outright stupid), though it has some pretty decent moves as well (a pretty nice dodge and slash from Thor at another point). Overall, the quality of the action hurts the film a great deal. This film needed better fights.

What else hurts the film? The werewolves, and the other monsters. No, not the idea of them--the way they look. They just don't look intimidating at all. I think it's the heads, mostly--they look too big for the body. It looks very much like a normal guy just wearing a wolf head mask, which is not the intent here. They look silly, and...look, if you can't do monster effects or costumes particularly well, maybe try just...making a film about Vikings fighting humans?

Okay, the lighting's a little poor sometimes too.

I mentioned before that this film just seems to take too long to get going--but it really just seems to take too long with just about everything. There's a lot of backtracking in the film's plot, with the characters returning multiple times to the village and even going all the way back to shore at one point. This would be a stronger film, I think, if the characters aimed for the mountain from near the very beginning of the movie, instead of waiting until they were near halfway through the film to decide to go there. It would give the film momentum. Instead, it feels like the film kind of...isn't sure which way it's going, and finally decides by the time most viewers would be well past checking out. Again, this would actually be fine if we were talking about a deep, epic plot where characters might have interesting options or where the characters deciding whether to go on the journey or not was a big conflict in itself, but...this is a Vikings vs. Werewolves movie. Hurry them along.

But aside from the pace of the film in general, the other huge complaint I have is the use of mythology. Nearly every character in this film has a mythological name. I guess the idea is that these maybe are the Norse gods, but reborn as mortals or something like that. But it's really strange. They know Odin is a god, and they know about Valhalla, and the Valkyries, and Fenrir / Fenris and Jormungandr (both of whom feature in the film). But none of them seem to recognize that any of the crew are named after gods, even though all of them are except possibly Ulfrich. I can't find a reference to that name in the pantheon, but I could be wrong. But every other character? Every single other character? Either a god or a monster. Thor. Baldur. Freyja. Sif. Heimdall. Hel. Garm. Hati. Skoll. Heck, they even pull in poor Hodr (or Hodur, or Hod), the blind god who killed Baldur in Norse mythology.

The problem?

Basically none of them save Thor and Freyja really have any ties to their mythological traits. Freyja has the ability to foretell things (kind of), Thor is a great warrior and has ties to the hammer Mjollnir that the characters end up pursuing...but the rest...they're just names, really. I guess you could call Baldur being a ruler a reference, except that Baldur, in mythology, is most famous for 1) being invulnerable and 2) getting killed anyway. Hodr, killer of Baldur...well, that would've been a nice reference to throw in there, but nope, he just gets offed unceremoniously at the camp. Heimdall? Watchman of the gods? Yeah, no, just another minor character. In something that is sure to annoy Al, since he played Vali in an RPG of mine, Vali shows up not as an avenging god of any kind but as an annoying crazy hermit whose only purpose in the film is to lead Thor to the cave the hammer is in and imply that he wants the hammer, but...nothing ever comes of it.

Here's the thing. You can't do this. You can't just use names from mythology and not actually tie them to anything. It's utterly ridiculous. If you're referencing something, reference it! Either tie in the old stories, or subvert them somehow. If you're doing a story about the gods being reborn as mortals--which I'm not clear if they actually were or not--do that story. Have all the gods matter to the tale, and show their traits or twists on them. What if instead of killing Baldur, Hodr gives his life to save him? What if Heimdall's watchfulness saves the group from an ambush, or he believes he's able to see everything but misses something critical? If you're going to use the names, really use them! Otherwise they might as well be named Joe, Dave, Steve, Eddie, Mark, Ben, Elizabeth, Marge, and Juniper!

If I looked like that I'd be mad as Hel too.

The other problem that arises from this? For most of the movie, Thor has these visions of a mighty warrior wielding a powerful hammer and the power of lightning, fighting a giant serpent. He thinks they're visions of Baldur's future, believing his brother is the only one great enough for such deeds. The trouble is that there is no way--no way--that this little "mystery" works in the context of this film. This is a movie referencing the god Thor, with a character named Thor, and the title is Thor: Hammer of the Gods. Thor is, and has been for decades at least, one of the most well-known mythological figures in the world. Even if I allow the slight credit of this film being made in 2009, two years before the Marvel Thor film came out, the symbolism of Thor and his mighty hammer wielding the power of lightning and thunder is very familiar (for one, the Marvel comics character first showed up in 1962, but the figure has been used in countless images, advertisements, and oh-by-the-way, Thursday means Thor's Day). So the concept of building a film around a mystery of which of the characters, Thor or Baldur, is actually the hammer-wielding, lightning-calling warrior in a dream? That's just flat-out doomed to failure. It might have worked if the "mortal forms" didn't have the mythological names, so it was, say, Fritjof and Gudmund, both warriors, who might be the hammer-wielding god, and then late in the film we find out which. Instead, it falls very flat.

Ohmygosh! Thor is Thor! I never would've guessed!

Seriously, it's like "Oh, who will wield Excalibur? Will it be Arthur or Percival?" Come on!

Overall...Thor: Hammer of the Gods is a pretty awful film. It's just...boring, overall, with some decent acting and good filming but a dull plot, horrid action, and a drastic misuse of mythology. It was a chore to sit through, especially with some pretty ridiculous focal points for the plot. You don't necessarily need to hold 100% to mythology...but if you're using it, you need to use it. Otherwise...you make a terrible film.

Watching this film is like taking a mythical hammer to the skull.

Project Nostalgic Awesomeness: The Trial of the Incredible Hulk

Welcome back to...oh, heck. I can't call it Project Terrible for this one, so I'm officially changing the title for today's article. Project Nostalgic Awesomeness. That's better.

Confession: I really, really loved the old Incredible Hulk TV show starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. So, Al's submission of The Trial of the Incredible Hulk for this round of our little project had me cautiously optimistic. As it turns out, my optimism was justified.

The Trial of the Incredible Hulk was one of a couple attempts that I know of to start up a spinoff show from the Hulk TV series centered around another Marvel superhero. The first was The Incredible Hulk Returns, which added Thor in an attempt to create a show based around him. This one...well, if you know comics, it's pretty obvious who this one involves. Trial?

She-Hulk? No. Okay, so, maybe not quite as obvious as I thought.

Nope, it's Daredevil, he who recently got his own show on Netflix, rendering this little review pretty timely. Daredevil, for the unfamiliar, is a blind crimefighter with enhanced senses akin to a particularly powerful sonar or radar, who also happens to be a defense attorney named Matt Murdock. He's actually one of the more interesting characters in comics, to me--I guess I've always kind of liked the crusading defense attorney shows...and video games. Daredevil / Phoenix Wright crossover, anyone?

...that needs to exist. Needs to.

Anyway, here's the general idea. David Banner (not Bruce, as in the comics, though as I recall he's actually called David Bruce Banner to keep the name in there...comics used Robert Bruce Banner, as I recall?) is a homeless drifter who used to be a scientist before an experiment with gamma radiation gave him a little anger management problem--now, whenever he gets too angry or stressed, he converts into a lumbering green monster with superhuman strength, the Hulk. During the TV show, he wandered from town to town, trying to avoid trouble, but always ending up in the midst of it despite his best efforts, just too good-natured to stay out of things when innocent people were in danger. It was kind of a superhero version of The Fugitive--a man who for his own good needs to leave well enough alone, but can't, because he's too good a man to do it. Between his brains and his alter ego's massive amount of brawn, he'd stop injustice and help the innocent, but always had to move on to avoid the monster within making a mess of things.

The Trial of the Incredible Hulk uses that same formula to an extent: After a brief intro, David finds a place in a city, and tries to lay low and just find a job to support himself. This city, though, is filled with corruption, and he gets involved when a couple thieves escaping the scene of a diamond heist decide to harass a woman on a train. Though David tries to avoid involving himself, he finally can't help it, and stands up to the thieves--whereupon they beat him up, whereupon the Hulk beats them up.

Unfortunately, in a city this corrupt, the truth is twisted. Threatened, the woman claims David was attacking her, and he's arrested and charged. Enter Matt Murdock, defense attorney, who thinks that the men David described in his statement (which didn't, of course, mention becoming a big green guy) sound like those he knows work for a Wilson Fisk--who he believes is in control of a criminal organization. Matt's goal is taking Fisk down, and he thinks David is his ticket to doing it.

From there, the film interweaves David and Matt's stories, at first separating them somewhat (with David in jail awaiting trial, and Matt investigating), but later bringing them together more solidly. It plays out like a superhero film mixed with a Law and Order episode, to an extent--Matt interviews the witness, tries to convince David to talk, and as his alter-ego Daredevil, interrogates street toughs and tries to find the truth.

You'll might perceive that a lot of this film focuses on Matt/Daredevil, and you'd be right about that. It's pretty clear watching this that the focus is on trying to create a new show, and the new main character eats up a lot of the spotlight time. I didn't feel it was a major problem, because the story is still quite good, but at the same time, it feels a little bad to see Bill and Lou relegated to side characters in a film that still bears the name of their show. That said...it's not like they just show up, intro the case, and then sit in prison the entire movie. They get pretty involved, and their inclusion feels valid--not just a cheap trick to try to get someone to watch a new show.

So...this is a good film. No qualifiers, full stop. This is a good film. What you have here is a great cast putting on a neat take on some of Marvel's characters--not quite keeping to the comics, but keeping close enough and doing well any time they divert anyway. Much like the TV show, this film just feels good--it carries on the show's themes very well, and sets up interesting situations for its new characters.

The acting is strong, with Bill Bixby still being the standout. I've always loved his David Banner, and this is no exception. He captures the troubled mind of a man who knows that he could at any moment become a powerful monster, and who can never be sure just what that monster will do. He shows the struggle between his urge to just be safe and live a quiet life, and his inability to stand aside while people suffer. And above all, he just seems like a good and gentle man, which provides a great contrast with what lurks within. Lou Ferrigno's Hulk, though honestly underused in the film to some extent, is always great to see too. Let's be honest here: how many people can you think of who could be painted green and go around dressed in ripped pants and honestly look intimidating as heck? Lou pulls that off, and does a great job bringing out the Hulk's bestial, instinctive sort of movement and fighting style. He doesn't move like he's just a strong man--he moves like an angry animal. It's not an easy portrayal. I always particularly love his slow "calming down" scenes, just before he transforms back. He really does those with a lot of subtle changes in emotion, and it's nice.

The new cast members are a lot of fun, as well. Rex Smith, our Matt Murdock / Daredevil, handily portrays a defense attorney on a mission, and handles both sides of the character quite well. He has to display quite a range of emotions here, with both his civilian and superhero identies having some real highs and lows in the tale, and he plays off of Bixby's David Banner nicely--the two taking turns giving each other some inspiration. I also have to say that I liked his portrayal of blindness in general. It's hard to put my finger on why--it just felt more legitimate than other performances I've seen. He never seems to forget that element of his character, which couldn't have been easy. The only critique I think I have on him is that sometimes he speaks in almost too stereotypically superheroic a manner. His voice just kind of takes on that tone--you know, the "fear not, citizen!" sort of tone, and takes you just a bit out of things. I think that would've been worked out during a series, though, and it's pretty minor.

Daredevil's supporting cast members don't get a lot of screen time, but seem interesting enough--he's got a partner and assistant at his law office who both seem like they'd be fun characters, and a good cop who enlists his help to fight corruption (sort of his Commissioner Gordon). The one who does get a lot of screen time is his villain, Wilson Fisk, played by John Rhys-Davies, which is completely and utterly awesome. Look, he may not quite look the part of the comic villain, but he has amazing screen presence, such a cool voice, and he is gloriously evil here. "The Mendez woman...is she still alive?" "Yes, sir." "Why?" He's not subtle, but somehow he avoids being too cartoony. He speaks slowly, rarely raises his voice, and seems utterly in control and totally confident--a powerful and dangerous man convinced of his victory, and quite a control freak and micromanager. I also liked his relationship with his second-in-command, who has more of a conscience but who, for whatever reason, is still valued by Fisk. I'm sure that would've been developed more in the show, but even what is in this film works well. There's some of the not-so-subtle warnings to avoid failure, but...there's also kind of a genial relationship, with Fisk recognizing the value of his employee and praising him. Very interesting.

The effects are good for the time--obviously they look somewhat dated now in certain ways, but there's a lot of good work here. The Hulk is great--like with the TV show, strategic slow motion is used to make his movements seem more weighty, and of course there's a few nice strength stunts thrown in. The green skin looks nice, too--of course, it had better by the time this movie was made! They had plenty of practice by then! Still--I've seen a lot of films fail miserably at convincingly painting someone's skin an unusual color, and it always surprises me how good the Hulk looks. Daredevil gets some fun effects too, including a decent bit of building-to-building travel with his grapple gadget.

The fighting is...okay. This is one area a Daredevil show would've needed a bit of work on, though to be fair, it's pretty acceptable. These aren't amazingly choreographed modern fight scenes, but they're a far cry from the old fakey chops and double axe handle blows of yore (Star Trek, I love you to death, but I'm looking at you!). The biggest complaints I have are that there's some use of the "make sure to attack him one at a time, it wouldn't be fair otherwise" kind of thing, and a couple points where it's not quite fully clear what hit took a bad guy out (one guy in particular during the ending gets kicked a couple times, then Daredevil raises his leg like he's going to knee him in the face, but it's really slow and clearly doesn't impact at all...and the guy collapses. So...was that supposed to hit, or was Daredevil stopping when he noted the guy was already out?). It's hardly bad, though. Hulk's fight scenes, meanwhile, are true to the TV series--guys try to do any damage whatsoever, only succeed in annoying the huge green guy, and he tosses them around or smacks them into next Thursday. I actually really love how some of it goes--there's a few spots where it looks like Hulk is putting next to no effort into hitting a guy, like just kind of gently shoving him away, and the guy still goes flying. It sells the massive power of the Hulk quite well. Overall, neither fight scene type is up to par with the modern superhero films, but they more than demonstrate the prowess of the characters, and they work well.

I do have to mention the Daredevil costume, which is...fine, if a little uninteresting. It looks like a reasonable street vigilante outfit--all black is pretty sensible, if not particularly interesting to look at--and does seem a little armored or at least padded, which is a nice touch. What bothered me was the way the little patch of cloth over his eyes looked. It seemed like it was just kind of thrown on there and oftentimes made it look like he was just wearing a hoodie that was too big or something. Maybe going more face-fitting like the comic costume might have been better. I like the cool little club gadget he has, though, with the ankle sheathe for it. That was neat.

One other major item bears mentioning. I touched on this a bit, but as the film goes on, it does become pretty clear that Daredevil is the real star of the film, with Hulk/Banner being secondary roles. Significant secondary roles, but secondary. The Hulk only shows up a few times (admittedly, as I recall he wasn't exactly bursting onto the screen in every other scene in the TV show, either), one of which is a dream sequence (the so-called "Trial" of the Incredible Hulk is rather...underrepresented in this film), and he doesn't factor into the film's ending sequence at all, leaving that to Daredevil and plain old David Banner. Admittedly, it's kind of cool to see David not have to go Hulk to get through a dangerous situation, but still, this is a Hulk movie, allegedly. That said...the few times the Hulk does appear are cool, and he's still very significant to the story.

I won't go into it too much more, other than to note a few minor oddities: Why does Hulk not have a beard when David Banner does early in the film? Why does Kingpin wear sunglasses all the dang time (those look pretty dumb, honestly)? What is with Fisk's weird jet-car-boat thing? And why--and I could be wrong about this, but I can't recall it--why does this film never use the "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry" bit?

Minor quibbles aside...this is a really, really fun film. You get a great Banner/Hulk portrayal, a very nice Daredevil portrayal that I think could've gone somewhere if they'd done a full series, and a surprisingly intricate plot that feels complete but still sets the scene well for a later show if it had been picked up. Most definitely not terrible--I loved it.

And that piano theme...goodness. Felt great hearing that again.

(Also notable: This film is the first cameo appearance by Stan Lee!)