God help us all...
But
it wasn’t always so, and some brave, poor soul must go through this waste bin
of history and rank - once and for all - the best of the Marvel movies before Blade’s historic release (more on that
tomorrow, when we rank the post-Blade
films). Any time you feel compelled to complain about this wealth of superhero
movies we get nowadays (you know, all four of them per year), take a moment to
look up clips of these relics and realize just how good we have it; on any
other list, many of these would rank at the very bottom, but there are some
little-known films worthy of rediscovery, or not deserving of the scorn they’ve
received since their initial release. Of course, there are just as many that
are unparalleled pieces of shit, and ranking them only denotes that some stink
just a little bit less than others.
Why do I do this?
Because I love you… and also might be touched in the head.
12. Captain
America/Captain America II: Death Too
Soon
In the first of many cheats throughout this list, I’m lumping these two together, because there’s not much here to differentiate the two. This pair of Reb Brown vehicles have pretty much nothing to do with the classic character, taking more inspiration from Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, siphoned through the filter of Evel Knieval and The Six Million Dollar Man for the ultimate in seventies cheese. Brown isn’t Steve Rogers, but rather his son, a van-driving vagabond who would much rather paint portraits of elderly ladies than fight crime. This could have been enjoyable, had the films shown the least amount of goofy charm, but when the climax of your first film features your hero standing by idly while someone else gives CPR to the main villain… well, that pretty much speaks for itself. The second one fares a little better, as it features Christopher Lee to class up the joint as the heavy, but it’s still so, so stupid. It all might have worked had the films found the right actor for the lead, a la Adam West in Batman, but Reb Brown is as blank as the tiny, clear shield he tosses around like a Frisbee. I suppose it deserves a certain amount of pop culture credit for giving us a humorous bevy of Youtube clips, but that’s about all I’m willing to give it.
11. Spider-Man
A
trademark “funky” soundtrack and endlessly-wide lapels instantly date this one,
the pilot movie for the eventual series in which everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood
hero is pulled up the side of a building by a wire in an attempt to make it
look like he’s climbing. Nicolas Hammond has the right sort of “Aw, shucks!” charm
needed for Peter Parker, but more often than not gives off a Norman Bates, “I’m
much more interested in dissecting you than carrying on a conversation” vibe. He
dons a pair of unflattering tights to do battle with the Guru, a self-help
sleeze-ball who utilizes mind-control to get his one would assume wealthy constituents
to rob banks and the like for him, instead of, you know, just handing over
their stock options or something simple like that. I don’t know why these
movies didn’t draw from the comics for their villains, but I guess that would
just be too silly, huh? Better to have Nick Hammond in a one-piece do battle
with money launderers and racketeers. Arbitrary changes from the source
material abound in these early movies, but what they replace them with adds a
whole lot of nothing to the proceedings; resulting in projects so removed from
their source you wonder why the filmmakers were even bothered to make it in the
first place.
10. Fantastic
Four (1994)
Here’s
the thing about Corman’s Fantastic Four
(a movie made for the sole purpose of holding on to the film rights so another,
better film could be put together at a later date): had it featured a better
cast of actors and bit more money, it wouldn’t be half-bad. The costumes and
the script are comic-accurate, and the film strikes the right tone needed for
these space-age, Kennedy-era heroes. But as it stands, with the cast and the
budget we got, Corman’s Fantastic Four
is a pretty dreadful piece of entertainment - one so bad it has yet to still
see an official release. It’s hard to imagine the level of disappointment comic
convention-goers of the nineties must have felt after paying top dollar for a
bootleg VHS of this debacle, with its turd-shaped Thing and Reed waving at the
sunset towards the end with a plastic hand on a stick, but it remains a
fascinating footnote in the history of Marvel’s big-screen outings.
9. Howard the
Duck
Contrary
to popular belief, Howard the Duck is
not the worst movie ever made. It is, however, still quite bad, taking a
revolutionary series of satirical comics from the seventies and turning them
into some sort of sub-music video showcase for ILM. And it is quite a showcase,
as HTD features impressive visuals
like the Dark Overlord, but the film’s dismal attempts at being a comedy hold
it back at nearly every turn. Gone is the sublime, existential nature of the
comics, instead replaced by cheap humor and boring chase scenes. Audiences
everywhere agreed, making Howard the Duck
one of the most notorious bombs in box office history, and the first real
financial failure for George Lucas since American
Grafitti.
8. Captain
America (1990)
Just
about the only interesting thing this movie does is cast JD Salinger’s son as
Captain America. It’s the second in the failed New World series of Marvel
theatrical releases (none of which saw release in an American theatre), and
took several years before it was even made available to the public. At least
following the outline of the comics by having Steve Rogers be the WWII
superhero man-out-of-time, the film is markedly better than the Reb Brown
efforts from the decade previous, but still cheapness plagues the film. It does
have acting bonafides in Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, and director Albert Pyun was
a master at turning out cheap B-movies, but Captain
America is a chore to sit through at times. The Red Skull goes from being
the quintessential Nazi fascist supervillain into some kind of Italian
whiny-boy, and no one involved here seems to think they have a serious contender
for the next superhero blockbuster. It’s moderately entertaining in fits and
starts, but the 1990 Captain America
is still a total snooze.
7. Generation
X
It
didn’t get much hotter than the X-Men
in the 90’s, and considering the title’s long-ingrained soap operatics, it
seemed a perfect fit to bring that universe to life on the small screen every
week. Thus Generation X was born, an
also-ran of the X-Men line that brought back the core concept of super-powered
outsider teens for the Gen-X crowd. Considering what was on at the time, this
pilot movie is perfectly passable, and I could even see it working as a
proposed series, but everyone in this movie is trying way too hard. The actors
never met a line they couldn’t shout in dramatically drawn out syllables, and
the director never saw a close-up he couldn’t zoom in on whilst turning the
camera ninety degrees in the process. Even the usually reliable Matt Frewer
goes too far, starting the modulation of his performance at Gorshin Riddler
levels and turning it up so far he pushes past the Paul Reubens Pee Wee setting.
As such, it makes for an exhausting viewing experience, and not in a good way.
I feel like the X-Men franchise is one far more suited for television, but this
wasn’t it.
6. The
Incredible Hulk Returns/The Trial of
the Incredible Hulk/The Death of the
Incredible Hulk
The Bill Bixby show had been off the air for some time when these TV movies finally rolled around, all of which acted as both an attempt to revive interest in a new Hulk show while also providing a springboard for other Marvel characters to get their own continuing adventures. The original show creator Kenneth Johnson had nothing to do with these further attempts, and with him went the show’s adamant grounded, “realistic” take that saw no other supernatural or outlandish concepts invade the reality of a guy who turns into a green-skinned Lou Ferrigno in a bad wig when he gets angry. Thus, we have the very first live-action Marvel Team-Up, as the Hulk joins forces with Thor and Daredevil - in Returns and Trial, respectively. But as exciting as it is to see the budgeted-for-TV versions of these characters share the screen, that’s about all that’s remarkable that happens therein, as the rest of the movies are nothing more than forgettable TV fluff.
Bixby remains a
defining presence throughout (even going so far as to step behind the camera to
act as director for roughly two-and-a-half of them), but with attentions split
between the guest stars and an ever-dwindling budget, there’s not much that even
Bixby can do to hold the audience’s wandering attentions. They follow the
series’ general outline of David Banner wandering from town to town, learning
lessons and righting wrongs, but since Banner essentially drifts into these
people’s lives with which he has no attachment to whatsoever, the audience
never has a chance to become attached, either. It’s a fine format for a
television series, but for standalone movies, it’s generally a good idea to
have the main character actively involved in the story. This is fixed somewhat
by the time Death rolls around, but
considering the only thing to truly happen to Banner in the film is that he
dies, it’s not much of an improvement.
5. The
Incredible Hulk/Return of the
Incredible Hulk
When
Marvel approached Kenneth Johnson to develop the Hulk for TV, the producer felt
the concept was far too silly, and thus removed nearly everything that may have
remotely seemed too comic book-y… except for, you know, the giant green rage
monster, which is really just a six-foot-tall Italian in green body paint. I’m
of the general opinion that the more “serious” you try to make something as
inherently (and wondrously) silly as superheroes, the more you generally tend
to make things even more silly. Thus, the melodrama is laid on nice and thick
here in this pilot movie, but one thing that makes the old show bearable is
Bixby himself, who manages to get us invested in his David Banner, even though
he frequently does nutty, questionable things. And I may give him a hard time,
but Ferrigno cuts an impressive figure as the Hulk, with that first
transformation in the rain being especially iconic.
The first movie plays
out like a horror film, with allusions to the classic Universal Frankenstein series, and is interesting
to see just how little happens over the course of its run-time. The film tries
to set up an antagonist in Jack McGee, but he’s little more than a nuisance than
a true threat. It ends with Banner believed dead and hitting the road, and it’s
with Return where we see the
direction the eventual series would go in: Banner wanders into some nameless
town, gets involved with other troubled souls and Hulks out to help. It’s
another rather eventless affair as Banner takes a job working for the ranch of
a wealthy family and uncovers a plot to kill the young heiress to the fortune.
It proved to be a formula for success, however, as that’s exactly what David
Banner did for five seasons and a handful of TV movies. They weren’t always
great, but with the capable Bixby steering the ship week in and week out, it’s
easy to see why the show became a hit.
4. The
Punisher (1989)
“The
guilty… must be pah-nished.” So says Dolph Lundgren in this okay effort -
perhaps on the higher side of the Lundgren spectrum of quality, but still not
much to write home about, otherwise. The character of The Punisher seemed
tailor-made for the Reagan-era, “Just Say No” gun-porn of the day, and the
spinning wheel of heavily-accented, muscle-bound meatheads must have landed on
ol’ Dolph when it came time to bring the skull-chested avatar of bullet-ridden
vengeance to the big screen. Of course, one of the major sticking points with
fans on the movie is that Dolph never actually wears the skull, but other than
that, the film is pretty faithful to the Punisher comics of the day. Lundgren
himself isn’t too bad in the title role, his square jaw and general build
making him look like a real-life superhero, and the film tells a light, fun (if
not completely stupid) story of Yakuza gangsters, kidnapped mob children and
Frank leading his drunk thespian sidekick on a breadcrumb trail with booze via
a remote-controlled car. Also worthy of note: it was written by future
Hollywood big-time director Boaz Yakin.
3. Captain
America (1944)
I’m
cheating a bit by including this one, a thirteen-chapter serial, but the
majority of this list is so dire, it needs a little boost. Not that the
original Captain America serial is a
hidden gem worthy of rediscovery, but there is a lot to like here, if you
approach it with the right mindset. Sure, much has been made of its arbitrary
changes to the character - the Captain America here is not the
ninety-eight-pound-weakling-turned-super-soldier Steve Rogers, but rather the portly
DA Grant Gardner, who wears a mostly-accurate costume, aside from trading his
trademark shield in for a pistol. It’s pretty standard as far as the old-time
serials go, but it has a few things working in its favor. One, it was produced
by Republic Pictures, who churned out the very best of the old cliffhangers,
relying on a worthy stable of directors like William Witney, Spencer Bennett
and John English (who co-directs here) to achieve heightened levels of
excitement despite the limitations of budget and time. These filmmakers turned
out weekly entertainments with the precision of a fine-tuned clock, basically
inventing what would become the backbone of the motion picture fistfight, and Captain America is a solid example of
the form. Of course, silliness abounds throughout (one of the threats Cap must
face off against is dubbed - I shit you not - the “Dynamic Vibrator”), so if you’re not
predisposed to like these older forms of entertainment, then there’s probably
not much in these 228 minutes that’ll sway your opinion otherwise. But it’s not
nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest, and it gets points for being the
very first Marvel property adapted into another medium.
2. Dr. Strange
Now,
this was a pleasant surprise. Intended to set up Stephen Strange for a
continuing series, this pilot movie stands head and shoulders above the rest of
Marvel’s live-action outings of the day by delivering something stylish, creepy
and downright weird. It’s still cheap and riotously hokey, but also kind of
awesome; the filmmakers take the character into the realm of horror and
exploitation movies, with a dizzying array of demons, monsters and other
dimensions (via some rather trippy, shameless steals of 2001’s “Beyond the Infinite” scenes) to result in a movie that was
quite unlike anything else on TV at the time. Peter Wooten plays the titular
hero, about whom the only remarkable thing is his impressive perm and moustache
combo, until the very end, where he gets a swanky purple jumpsuit and the
ability to make his hands glow and shoot cartoon beams at the villainous
Jessica Walter’s cleavage. Throw in the synth-heavy soundtrack that sounds like
the bastard love-child of The Exorcist and
Suspiria, and you have a movie just
begging for a Shout/Scream Factory Bluray release.
1. Nick Fury:
Agent of SHIELD
Long
before Samuel L. worked his one-eyed way into our hearts, none other than David
Hasselhoff brought Nick Fury to cigar-chomping life. Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD may not be much to look at when compared
to our current crop of Marvel entertainment, but for a made-for-TV effort, it’s
hard to ask for anything more fun than this. David Goyer penned this one the
same year he helped to revolutionize comic book movies with Blade, and peppers the project with all
the SHIELD favorites: Dugan, the Contessa, Alexander Pierce, Gabe Jones and the
rest, all here to do battle with HYDRA, (led by a sultry Sandra Hess, doing her
best to outdo Famke Jansen in Goldeneye)
in a spy-fi battle of Life Model Decoys, psychic agents and the very first
on-screen Helicarrier. The bulk of the cast hopelessly overacts while the ‘Hoff
mugs for the camera, but with some surprisingly-good effects and solid
production design (for TV), the film is a goofball bit of camp fun from
beginning to end. Truth be told: I would have been totally down for a
Hasselhoff-led Nick Fury series.
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