We Kill for Love (2023)

It's the weekend after Christmas, and continuing a tradition I've done since I've come back from hiatus in 2019, we're doing another documentary, this time one that Jon Cross from the PM Entertainment Podcast and the After Movie Diner recommended to us. He and I have been doing a series of Erotic Thrillers on the podcast for the past year or so too, so you can check those out as well over in our podcast archives.

We Kill for Love is a documentary that looks at the rise, reign, and fall of the Erotic Thriller during the 80s and 90s. It examines the mix of genres and inspirations that the films draw from, and the unique cultural environment that gave them birth. We also get some great interviews from people like Fred Olen Ray, Monique Parent, and Andrew Stevens. As time goes on though, the forces that gave us this unique cinematic moment serve to be its undoing, and as the 90s become the 2000s, the market starts to dry up. As our documentarians sift through the VHS detritus of what once was, they and their subjects try to make sense of it all. But is there a sense of it all to make? Does a femme fatale with a handgun in her stocking-top ever go out of style?

Overall I enjoyed this, but it does clock in at two hours and 45 minutes, so you're in for long ride. I'm okay with that though. Yes, it's long for a documentary, but too short for a mini-series, so probably from a streaming algorithm standpoint--and maybe a modern attention span standpoint too, it doesn't quite fit, but I almost feel like that makes it all the better, like the subject matter it's covering, it's not of this time either. The biggest thing is the director, Anthony Penta, pulls footage from so many of these movies, that you feel like you're in the 90s discovering them on cable all over again. And then the interviews are fantastic, with all the actors, directors, producers, and film scholars and film writers telling us how these were made, what they were about, and what kinds of messages were below the surface. As someone who was born in 1979, and grew up in the 90s, there wasn't a sense for me that there was a world before these films, they just always existed, but now 25-30 years later, to see the birth, growth, and unfortunately death and postmortem of something that had such a huge impact on my love of film, especially direct-to-video movies, was a lot of fun, and I think worth checking out--one of the few times I'll recommend something with such a long runtime!

When we started the site, I expected to do more Erotic Thrillers, and while the site moved more toward action movies because those films got the most engagement, that was in comparison to horror, comedy, and sci-fi. Erotic Thrillers on the other hand were the only genre that got the hits on the site that action did, the problem was, in the late 2000s, those movies were harder to find. A lot of them didn't make it to DVD, which was where I got most of the movies we reviewed in those early days; but many weren't even on home VHS release, they were only sold to video rental stores and cable movie outlets. Even on YouTube it was hard to get them, because the adult content would cause them to get taken down. It looks like some of them are making it to Tubi and other free streamers, but with those it's dicey because they can get taken down just as quick. So it's still an uphill battle, but there are ways to get these, so I'm going to do my best to get more of them up on the site, because as this film documents, they're a large part of the DTV legacy.

As I mentioned above, the interviews were great. One of my favorites was Monique Parent talking about how much she was working in the 90s, and how all the movies ran together for her. She gives us an unabashed slice of what that world was like in a way that puts you back there in it. From a Hall of Famer standpoint, we had Fred Olen Ray, who ran the gamut on movies he made in the 90s, but Erotic Thrillers were a big part of that. Between him and Jim Wynorski, they talked about why they needed to use aliases, because distributors were like "we already have enough of their movies!", and Wynorski joked that people on IMDb have found most of his films made under an alias, but there are still a few out there that people haven't found yet. Another big name that was interviewed was Andrew Stevens, and not only did he discuss the Night Eyes series, but also how he moved from actor to producer, and the part Night Eyes played in that. I've finally tagged him for all his producer credits on the site, and this makes film 33, so we'll be putting him in the Hall of Fame next October. Finally, speaking of tags, my rule for documentaries has been if someone was interviewed I'll tag them, but not if it's just footage of one of their films. I'm making an exception to that here for Julie Strain, who gets her own tribute segment in the middle of the movie, which was really nice to see. Here's to you Ms. Strain, you were one of the best to ever do it, you've truly been missed.

We've talked a lot both on the site and the podcast about Blockbuster's role in running the Mom and Pop video stores out of business, and then themselves dying off when Netflix came on the scene, because they had no brand loyalty. This movie gets into some other ways Blockbuster had a negative effect on the DTV industry as the 90s went into the 2000s, but also some other ways that their business model led to their own undoing. The first thing they mentioned was how in the early days of Blockbuster, DTV distributors loved them because they could negotiate big one-off deals of like 20,000 copies, as opposed to getting thousands of individual Mom and Pops to order the movie on their own out of a catalog. It meant in one purchase order from Blockbuster they could get their budget back and then some. The problem was, when the major studios got in on the home video market, both for DTV films and their major releases, the indie distributors got frozen out. This led to something though that I didn't consider. Part of the Mom and Pop business model was only having a couple copies of a new release, that way you'd rent something else if you came in and found the one you wanted wasn't there. With Blockbuster having dozens of a new release, it meant everyone got the movie they wanted, which meant they weren't renting as many movies overall as they did during the Mom and Pop era. The other thing was the cheap DVD market that comes in the early 2000s. Suddenly movies you could only get on VHS, or worse, by taping off cable, were now available for $5 in the bargain bin at Walmart; or those low-budget 10 movies for $10 sets, my friends and I would get one of those and watch three or four over a weekend, and got a better deal out of it than renting that many movies. All of these things led to the collapse of the video market, and took Erotic Thrillers down with them. They tried to pivot in the early 2000s to a more soft-core porn approach, but by the mid-2000s porn was so available for free on the internet that it no longer had any market either.

Finally, speaking of porn, this tackles the subject of exactly what is porn, what that means if an actor is working in porn, and do Erotic Thrillers count. I think the first thing is the double-standard between women working in front of the camera, versus directors working behind the camera. Fred Olen Ray can make two or three Erotic Thrillers a year in the 90s with all kinds of sex in them, and still be able to make Hallmark Christmas movies today, while an actor who took their top off in dozens of sexually charged thrillers may not be afforded that same luxury. And I think there's some of that under the surface when some of the actors who were interviewed insist "I never did porn" the way a guy in the 90s would've said "I'm not gay," as if there's anything wrong with either. I think for my age cohort though, which was 10-20 years younger than the actors in these films, we grew up with them, and as such, we might have been the first mini-generation to look at this stuff differently, and not immediately think someone working in the adult film industry should be shunned, let alone if someone got naked in an Erotic Thriller. From there you get younger Millennials and Gen Z who say you shouldn't judge a sex worker, full stop. In the 80s and 90s there was this Conservative brand of feminism that was anti sex work, which this movie labels as left wing politically, but younger Millennial or Gen Z feminism would say isn't feminism at all, and I think for them, hearing the actors in this trying to distance themselves from the porn industry would be off-putting. In that sense, I hope more of these movies become available on streamers so younger Millennials and Gen Z can consume them, because I think they're a missing part of the story of how we get to the sex positivity of the 2010s. Another thread in the film is this idea that you couldn't make these films today in the world of sex positivity, but I disagree. These movies have a lot of strong women with a lot of sexual agency, if anything they were ahead of their time, and could fit in nicely in the modern environment.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As you can see from my long post, this movie packs a lot in, and I've only scratched the surface of it. While it's free to stream on Tubi you should check it out. The Erotic Thriller was a moment in cinematic time, and if you lived it, the nostalgia factor alone is worth it; but if you're younger and curious about this, this is a great starting place.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10404002

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Duran Duran: Unstaged (2011)

We lost one of the best to ever do it this past week, David Lynch, and I wanted to make a post in his honor, so I checked his IMDb bio to see if he had a possible DTV film. By my rules, Inland Empire would've counted, but this gem that I didn't even realize existed actually had the "video" designation, and since I love Duran Duran too, I figured it was a no-brainer.

Duran Duran: Unstaged is a concert film sponsored by American Express and directed by David Lynch. Initially it was streamed live over the internet, but then was subsequently released on home media too. It's from a concert they had in LA to promote a new album for the band at that time, All You Need Is Now, which was produced by Mark Ronson and featured guest performances by Kelis, who both also performed on-stage for a couple songs at the concert. Through the film, Lynch layered other footage, animation, and effects over the performers to enhance the experience in a way only he could.

This was an interesting experience, but I really enjoyed it. Initially it was disruptive to have Lynch's imagery fading in and out over the band, because my experience with concert movies to that point was that the band was front and center, and seeing them was paramount; but as it went on, my brain adjusted and I got into it. We also had the guest performers, which, beyond Kelis and Mark Ronson, included Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance, and Beth Ditto from Gossip (a band and singer I'd never heard of), who were great as well, especially Kelis's inclusion in "Come Undone" and Mark Ronson's arrangement for "View to a Kill," both of which were during the encore. Speaking of "Come Undone," that might have been the most Lynchian of them all, where we had layered over the performance images of someone at a charcoal grill full of hot dogs rhythmically smacking a spatula on it, and small hand puppets of mice and dogs appearing as Kelis sang. Why Lynch thought that went with that song is beyond me, but it worked in a way I wouldn't have expected, and maybe that's something I can say about this concert film overall, it worked in ways I wouldn't have expected.

This might come as a surprise, but I actually haven't seen many of David Lynch's films. Blue Velvet was one, Lost Highway another, and then if I'd seen Wild at Heart it was so long ago I barely remember it. Then of course there's The Elephant Man, which was on The Movie Loft on TV38 in Boston when I was a kid, and my dad thought it would be good for me to watch it with him. It wasn't. And maybe because that's stuck with me all these years that that paltry list plus a few Twin Peaks episodes is all I'd seen of Lynch's work to this point, but I've always appreciated who he is and what he's meant to film. He hasn't directed a feature-length film since this--unless you count him repurposing footage that had been edited out of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me into Twin Peak: The Missing Pieces in 2014, which Wikipedia not only doesn't count, but they don't count this either, saying his last feature film was Inland Empire, only his tenth feature film overall, so he doesn't leave behind a huge filmography from a numbers standpoint, but from a legacy and influence standpoint, it's massive. Truly one of the greatest to ever do it, Mr. Lynch, saying you will be missed is an understatement. At the end of the film, Simon Le Bon calls Lynch on stage, but he doesn't appear, so Le Bon says "he's teleported to a parallel universe, much better than ours." Let's hope Mr. Lynch is in that parallel universe making more beautiful films for the people there.

Duran Duran is one of my favorite bands as well, but I hadn't really followed them much since 2004's Astronaut, so a lot of this music was new to me. My sense of them as a kid was that they were always the coolest people in the room, especially Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and John Taylor, and watching them here in their late 40s/early 50s still be the coolest people in the room was fantastic. Yes, a lot of the set list were songs off the new album, which I could've done with less of and more classics, but they did hit enough of the classics--and played them right, which is always important--that I enjoyed it. The other thing is, I don't know how many other bands would've embraced what Lynch was doing here. This was sponsored by American Express, and I do have vague memories of them advertising it as some kind of special night, so to have imagery like a person slapping a grill full of hot dogs with a spatula layered over Simon Le Bon singing probably wasn't the easiest sell--and maybe that's why this isn't as widely known as I think it should be, maybe American Express looked at the result and were like "what is this?" Or maybe not, maybe they embraced it too, but by 2011 we were at a point that Duran Duran's audience, like myself, weren't as interested as we should've been in a new concert movie from them. Hopefully, also like me, they'll discover this gem now.

I should point out here that I'm not much of a concert person, which also kind of doesn't make sense to me, because some of my greatest experiences were at concerts, like when I saw Iggy Pop at the Avalon in Boston in the early 2000s. Live sporting events are more my thing, especially now that I live in Philadelphia, a city that not only has all four major US sports of its own, but is also only a 100-minute train ride from New York City all the teams in their area, and a two-hour train ride from the Washington, DC/Baltimore area and all the teams they have, something I've really taken advantage of over the last few years. I have a friend who's a bigger Duran Duran fan than me who attends concerts the way I got to sporting events. When I go to game, part of the calculus is, am I seeing teams I've never seen before? Players? Venues? I never considered that you could do the same thing with concerts, but I remember he saw Duran Duran play in Boston when they were touring on their original line-up, but Andy Taylor was injured in a car accident and couldn't perform, so he drove to Connecticut to see him play with the band a few nights later just to have that experience. The closest equivalent to this with movies is being able to see a film in the theater, but unlike live music or pro sports, where the people involved eventually retire, or worse, pass away, removing your chance of ever experiencing them live, with movies, the hope is we always have an indie theater that will play films like Lynch's, even after he's passed, so people can say "yeah, I saw that in the theater!" when someone mentions one of his movies.

Finally, as I was preparing for this review, it did strike me as odd that I hadn't seen more of Lynch's work, so I tried to get a sense of why that was, and I had to come to terms with a certain reality about myself: I'm a Jim Jarmusch Man. You know the binaries from films like Pulp Fiction--for example, are you a Beatles Man or an Elvis Man? And even though I love a lot of Beatles songs, I'm an Elvis Man. I never considered it before, but maybe the binary with Lynch is Jarmusch. Though Jarmusch is six years younger, their first feature films are only a few years apart, and they have roughly the same number of them over the past 45 years or so. Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise are definitely more my speed than Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, even if I'm not sure Jarmusch has done anything as good as Robert Loggia in Lost Highway beating up a guy who cut him off in traffic while yelling at him to read a driving manual. I think what this film tells me is I need to get outside my comfort zone a bit and take in more of Lynch's stuff, even if I'm a Jarmusch Man.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. Maybe not at the top of your viewing list when you're honoring Lynch this long weekend, but considering it's a free streamer, it's worth checking out, especially if you've seen all of his other films--or if you're like me and looking for a way to honor him on your site about direct-to-video movies.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2133214

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Chris Claremont's X-Men (2018)

It's almost Christmas, and you know what that means? Our annual unofficial Christmas documentary post. Since I came back from hiatus in 2019, I've done a documentary at this time every year except for two: 2020, where I was late and did the He-Man documentary in January of 2021, and in 2022, when I did the Dolph flick Pups Alone instead. Anyway, in addition to us, RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this as well.

Chris Claremont's X-Men is about Chris Claremont's run on one of Marvel's greatest franchises, and how it wasn't one of Marvel's greatest franchises until he was given the book, and did amazing things with it. The documentary looks at his rise at a young age in Marvel, how he was kind of given X-Men because it wasn't doing well, his work with John Byrne, Louise Simonson, and Ann Nocenti that gave us so many classic X-Men storylines, and then Marvel's push to make more money, saturation in the market, and the rise of youngsters like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld that led to Claremont's exit. Overall, the legacy he left is massive, and comics wouldn't be the same without him.

This was a fantastic documentary, but my biggest complaint--and one that Freddie Young at Full Moon Reviews shared when he was on podcast episode 189 with me--is that it could've been longer! You can probably count on one hand how many times I've wanted a movie to be longer, but at 71 minutes this film could've used another 20 minutes of background. What it gives you though is the genesis of how the modern X-Men came to be, and how it cemented itself with Spider-Man as the number one properties Marvel had in the 80s going into the 90s. One area that they didn't get into was the post Claremont period, especially in the 2010s when Disney bought Marvel, but Fox still had the rights to the X-Men, so Disney had Marvel diminish the X-Men in the comics in favor of the Avengers so younger audiences would be less inclined to see the X-Men movies. Because this came out in 2018, it couldn't have foreseen the Disney purchase of Fox and how that dynamic may be changing now, but I think Disney trying to diminish his legacy was an important element they left out. They also left out, as far as I remember, that Claremont came back to Marvel to work on new X books. Beyond that though, this is what you want from a movie like this, especially if you grew up reading the X-Men comics like I did.

I started collecting comics in earnest around the time Claremont was being forced out by Marvel's heads, which is something I had no idea about, but I knew the name Chris Claremont. All the back issues, all the great storylines he conceived, like Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past, and all the great characters he had a part in creating, or like Wolverine, developed after they were created by someone else. X-Men as a property wouldn't have been worth Fox buying the rights to in the first place if it wasn't for Claremont's work, and even with Disney trying to diminish it, after a lackluster 2023, it's now those same X-Men characters that they're hoping will help right the ship. Another way to think of it though, the fact that the MCU was able to be as successful as it had been without the X-Men, and without Spider-Man to start, is a testament to their ingenuity, but also testament to the legacy and shadow cast by Claremont; but also I think too, the fact that the Fox adaptations of his stories and characters wasn't as successful shows that you can't just recreate someone else's work. I saw he did get a thank you credit for 2019's Dark Phoenix, but I wonder if he couldn't help the other Fox productions because he was under contract with Marvel? Another area this film missed.

What they didn't miss was Claremont's focus on female characters. He said in the film that when he created a character, he asked himself "could this character be a woman?" The volume of female characters he created was immense, and really filled a gap in Marvel's universe, one that was really apparent when the MCU started and we didn't get a female-helmed film until Captain Marvel. The thing is though, with Fox having the rights to Storm, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, etc., it wasn't like they were jumping to make any female-helmed films either. It was a massive missed opportunity I think, but now that Disney and Marvel Studios no longer have the excuse that a lot of their best female characters are with Fox, let's see what they put together in the coming years. The other legacy of Claremont's work, is the large amount of young women who grew up comic book fans. Hopefully Marvel Studios will lean into that legacy more.

In my review on the Image Revolution documentary, I talked about how much I loved Jim Lee and Rob Liefield in the early 90s, but this film paints a different picture of their role. A big part of it was the higher-ups were more interested in making the X-Men property bigger than just The Uncanny X-Men, but with each new book, Claremont was spread that much thinner, until it was all taken away from him and split up. Would the bubble have burst if the Marvel execs hadn't been so keen on maximizing dollars? Sure, I wouldn't have had that iconic X-Men #1 five cover set, and maybe we don't get Deadpool or Cable from Liefeld, but the two of them left to form Image anyway, which hastened the bursting of the bubble that we eventually got. If instead of four Spider-Man books, and five or six X books, we had one of each that we as fans could focus on--and only one cover of each issue, and not an overly expensive milestone issue--maybe us kids would've stuck with it. We have this idea that businessmen, especially billionaires, are really good at business, but more often than not, they're just really rich from generational wealth, and just want to make as much money as possible on one thing, then move onto the next, not worrying about who might be left in the wake. Someone running Marvel properly in the early 90s might've handled that all differently, and maybe we don't get the bubble burst.

Finally, mixed in with the images of comic book panels and people giving interviews, the movie had cosplayers dressed as some of the most well-known X-Men. Cosplaying is an art I've always appreciated, to just take characters and make them your own like that is great. It's like visual fan fic, or like me in my novels, where I create my own ideas inspired by other things I've seen and heard. In Philly it's particularly interesting, because the convention center is located across the street from the Trader Joe's where I often go on Saturdays to get some groceries. It's common when we have cosplay conventions for people to pop in to get stuff while in their full outfit. And it makes sense too, because I know for me, wherever I travel, if there's a Trader Joe's, I can get stuff cheap--for example, if you're ever in San Francisco, that Trader Joe's and Target are both Godsends compared to how expensive the rest of the city is. And Philly's no different. If you're here for a cosplay convention, and you need a cheap snack and a drink, you're much better off hitting the Trader Joe's, than overspending at Reading Terminal Market. As an aside, if you're in Philly and want to get a cheesesteak, don't get it from the Market, they're all mediocre at best. Let me know if you're in town, and I'll point you to the best spots.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi, Prime, and other major streamers. If you're a comic book fan, this is a must, but I also think for non-comic fans, to see the origin of some of these stories and to get a better sense of how the business worked in the 70s and 80s, it is really interesting.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7929156

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

This is one that I had been meaning to do on here for a while, and when I mentioned on the podcast that it was available, Sean Malloy from I Must Break This Podcast asked if he could guest on the pod to discuss it, which I thought was a great idea. It was a great conversation, and you can catch that in our archives, episode 166. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films is a documentary by Mark Hartley, he of the great Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! and Machete Maidens Unleashed! He attacks this topic with the same love and attention, giving us the origins of Cannon through their famed production duo Golan and Globus, their rise in the market with actioners led by Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris, and then their downfall. We also get great interviews from names involved, like Albert Pyun, Dolph, Dudikoff, and Sam Firstenberg, who give us interesting insight into how these rebel producers flew too close to the sun, and ultimately fell into the sea.

This is fantastic, Sean and I were in agreement on that. The only complaint we had was we could've used more--like maybe three parts that are each the length this one was. It's one of those rare films where I don't check the slider bar to see how much is left, and when we get to the end, I'm disappointed and want more. It's great seeing and hearing from the big names, like the ones I mentioned above, but then you have people who worked for Cannon at the time, like David Del Valle--who has a great Instagram account, delvallearchives, with a lot of old Hollywood genre content and things from his collection--who gives us insight into things like how Cannon chose films when he was a script reader for them--"I had one pile for Bronson films, and one Norris films." We also get these great stories, like when Golan and Globus worked with Jean-Luc Godard for his King Lear, which is a movie I enjoyed, but hearing the issues behind it made it even better. If you love the movies we love here on the site, this documentary is for you.

This is now the 73rd tag for Dolph, his 72nd film, and his second appearance in a documentary, the other being Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which we reviewed a few years back. It would've been nice to have more of him here, but it kind of makes sense that we don't, because he only did one film for Cannon--which was a big one for sure, but still only one. There was a sense in hearing him discuss it, that he was disappointed with how it turned out, and wasn't comfortable with the production as it was happening. He was riding high from Rocky IV, this was as big as he was going to get, and this felt like the next role to take; but it came out after the toys had fallen out of favor, and while it looked nice for a Cannon film, it was still a Cannon film made on the cheap, and ultimately it was a bust that didn't make its budget back. It starts Dolph down a path that leads to DTV-dom, which was our gain, but unfortunate for him--though he's bounced back somewhat now, getting his redemption while riding a seahorse in Aquaman.

We last saw Michael Dudikoff in 2022 with Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece, so it's been a bit, and probably will be a bit before we see him again. At one time he actually had more tags than Dolph, and he was one of the first that we had the complete DTV filmography of on the site, but he hasn't done much since 2002 so we don't see him as often anymore. Unlike Dolph, who only did the one Cannon film, Dudikoff has a bunch, including the American Ninja series, one of the greatest DTV action franchises ever, and that means he's in this much more. Also unlike Dolph, whose career started downward after his stint with Cannon, for Dudikoff it opened up the world of DTV action that we know him from now. And what a career it was, especially between the first American Ninja and 2002's Stranded, for me it's a top ten DTV action career, and I don't know with the state of DTV action today if anyone will bump him out of the top ten, even if he doesn't do more films. What we get here is the down-to-earth guy we thought he was, which was fun to see, and fun to hear him give us his experience. Truly one of the greats to ever do it.

Albert Pyun was great as well, talking about Cannon and Golan-Globus in general, but also some specific films he worked on with them like Cyborg and Journey to the Center of the Earth--neither great experiences for him. It was a bit melancholy knowing he's no longer with us, but also a reminder that his insights on film were fantastic and always worth hearing--and he was so generous with them in giving us backstory on some of the films we reviewed. This brings us back to the possibility of getting him into the 50 Club, as this is one more in that direction so he's now at 46 films--47 tags because he asked us to review Mean Guns a second time. There are two more films available that he's directed, Cool Air, which I can rent, and The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper, which I've had trouble finding. Those two would get us to 48, and then he was credited as a producer on Final Examination, making 49. So close. There's also Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire, which doesn't seem to be available. If it ever were, that would do it.

Finally, with a film like this, there's a question of who to tag and who not to tag. After reviewing Randall Scandal, I made the decision that file footage of an actor in a documentary isn't enough, but if they give an interview filmed specially for the documentary, that counts. The other thing is, are they the subject of the documentary? That's why Golan-Globus are tagged, despite not being interviewed. But that's also why Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson aren't tagged. Had one of the clips of the films had a McDonald's in it, would I have tagged "McDonald's?" I don't know, but I doubt it. For genres like "Ninjas," even though this had clips from ninja films, it wasn't a ninja film per se, so it didn't get that tag. Had someone done an interview in full ninja gear, would I have tagged this "ninjas," or had someone interviewed a shark would I have tagged this "sharks?" Maybe, but I'd have to see it happen first before I could say either way.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States. YouTube also has a great version if you don't get Tubi in your area. This does a great job handling a subject that's near and dear to our hearts, and worth checking out. Also worth checking out is the podcast episode we did with Sean from I Must Break This Podcast, number 166 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125501

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump (2023)

Continuing a tradition I started back in December of 2019 when I covered the documentary on Roger Corman's Fantastic Four film, I'm doing a documentary review for Christmas. This one piqued my interest because of how many films Randall Emmett has produced that we've reviewed on the site, in addition to all the ones Ty and I have been covering on the podcast. It almost felt like I couldn't not do it.

The Randall Scandal is a documentary that accompanied an LA Times report by journalists Amy Kaufman and Meg James on producer Randall Emmett. The film documents his start as Mark Wahlberg's personal assistant, his connection to production partner George Furla, and how he made millions working on "the margins of Hollywood"--or in other words, the space we inhabit on this site--making cheaper direct-to-video action flicks with guys like Seagal, Willis, and De Niro that he could sell abroad. From there, we learn about how horribly abusive he was with his assistants and the people he worked with, in addition to his time on Vanderpump Rules, relationship with Lala Kent, and eventual break-up.

This was an important watch for me, and definitely eye opening. We know many of the people we review here on the site aren't great humans, and in some cases are outright horrible. With that in mind, that Randall Emmett turned out to be this horrible isn't surprising--in fact I think we kind of already knew it, this just put it out there in a way that was so powerful no one could ignore it. What struck me most though was how when I watched his movies, other than the two Scorsese pictures he produced (of which I still haven't seen Silence), the sense I had in watching them was that he had no respect for his audience or the art of filmmaking, and that was every bit confirmed in this film. On top of that though, we get this sense of a guy who is totally abusive and narcissistic that hides behind this idea that "you gotta be tough to make it in Hollywood," which yes, we don't want to let him off the hook for being this horrible, but also Hollywood itself has created this machine that allows for creatures like him to thrive there. Many of his assistants put up with the horrible abuse from him because they expected Emmett to invite them into his world, when all he did was stand on their heads to continue to prop himself up. For all of us who enjoy these movies that exist "in the margins of the industry" as it was termed in the film, this is a must watch, if only to give us a better perspective on what happens behind the scenes.

If we tagged Emmett as a producer, he'd have 26 films on the site, plus countless more that we've done on the podcast, which, once they were reviewed would put him easily in the 30 Club, verging on the 40 Club. Usually for a producer to get a tag, they need to be really influential, like Golan and Globus or Roger Corman; or they need to be known for other things, like Albert Pyun and Isaac Florentine who mostly have director credits, but also have a couple producer ones as well--Daniel Zirilli is one who falls into that category too. Even Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin have their producer tags connected to PM Entertainment, and they only get tags for the films they've directed. Randall Emmett on the other hand can be credited with doing more to hurt the DTV action industry than anyone else. His assembly line, stuff as many names who have barely any scenes on the tin, just get it out there approach is a massive departure from the Cannons, PMs, Full Moons, and Concorde/New Horizons--hell, you can make a case even The Asylum, who, say what you want, there's still a sense of "we're trying to make a fun movie here." Randall Emmett could care less if his "geezer teasers," as they were termed in the film, were good or bad, as long as they made money. Even Godfrey Ho was employing some level of art when he spliced his new footage with the old films he bought. And what we saw in this documentary was, for the artists involved in making the movie, Emmett didn't care. He'd scream at people, force the crew to sleep on the floor to cut costs, and in some cases not even pay them, which led to the WGA to put out a do not work order against him. I think the fact that he seemed to have this disdain for the kinds of movies we all love despite the fact he was producing them is what keeps me from tagging him for his films.

Back when Sean Malloy of "I Must Break this Podcast" and I were about to do our episode on Precious Cargo, an EFO film where we discussed what Randall Emmett was doing to the DTV film world, he saw the trailer for Midnight in the Switchgrass and wondered if there was an Ed Wood propping up Bela Lugosi thing going on with Emmett and Bruce Willis. As we find out in this documentary, it was much worse, but no one really knew at that time what was happening with Willis as far as his health. It was really more like, Emmett had this idea that a director was someone who yelled and swore at people, and when Willis started to struggle, Emmett freaked out, causing the rest of the crew to scramble to help Willis out to get him over the goal line. This also gets back to my point about Emmett's disdain for these movies, even when he was the director, while that's happening, there is a whole crew that he's mistreating that take a lot of pride in their work who are putting in a lot of effort. It's possible that not many outside of Alicia Haverland, prop master on Midnight in the Switchgrass, and Teresa Huang, screenwriter on the never shot Arnold Schwarzenegger bio-series Pumped, were the only ones who felt comfortable coming forward, but I would've liked more stories like theirs as opposed to the amount of time they spent on the Lala Kent Vanderpump Rules aspect of the story.

As far as the reality show, because that was a piece of things I wasn't as familiar with, it was harder for me to make the kinds of judgements on it that I could the depictions of what Emmett was like to work with. One of the biggest things was we only had Lala Kent's mother, brother, and some reality podcasters that were fans of hers to describe what happened, while with something like how he treated his assistants, we had three separate assistants giving similar but unique enough stories that it was hard to question their veracity. One thing that did make sense though was how the reality show ultimately ended up being his downfall, but that he craved the attention he could get from being on the show. If he wasn't on the reality show, would anyone have recognized him with other women in Nashville? Like one of the podcasters said, he'd have had no idea who Emmett was if he hadn't done Vanderpump Rules. I read an article recently that said how reality TV attracts narcissists like Randall Emmett, and that's why you see a lot of fraud, crimes, and lawsuits surrounding them. In fact, he had already tried to push his own reality show documenting his life, The Mogul, which didn't end up getting picked up, but gives us a great view into the kind of "boss" he saw himself as. In a way, he was made for reality TV the same way he was made for reality TV to ultimately bring him down.

Finally, we had images and file footage of all kinds of people that we have tagged on here, including the big fella Steve Seagal. I made the decision that, because they didn't actually participate in the documentary the way Dolph did in the He-Man one, I wouldn't tag them. If I had, this would've been Seagal's entry into the 40 Club. It's an interesting thing, because Seagal is a DTVC Hall of Famer and someone I have in the top 10 all time for DTV action stars, but the way I was saying Randall Emmett did damage to the DTV film industry, you could make the case that Seagal has had that same disdain. Taking roles where he never stands, never does his reverse shots, has doubling for any action, yet he wanted to pump as many films out as he could and bring in the paychecks. I was trying to come up with a good reason for why I treat him differently than Randal Emmett, but I think the reality is just that when I started the site, Seagal was still putting out some decent stuff, the movies were fun enough, and when they weren't, there was a goofiness we could celebrate. As he got into the 2010s though, I think what we saw as quirks became worse, but by that point he was already well-established here on the site. Either way, established as he is, he'll still have to sit on 39 tags.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can find this on Hulu, but as far as I can tell, you need to search for it on there, it won't pop up if you browse around. As fans of the kinds of movies Emmett made, and made a lot of money off of making, it's a must watch.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27761408

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Mail Order Murder: The Story Of W.A.V.E. Productions (2020)

Back in July I had Mitch from the Video Vacuum on the podcast to discuss this film, plus one of W.A.V.E. Production's films, Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge. As someone who has worked in the low-budget space myself for a long time, shot on video was not an area I'd covered much, so I was excited for the opportunity. You can check out that episode, number 129 in the archives, it was a great conversation. Also, Mitch has reviewed this one on his site too.

Mail Order Murder: The Story Of W.A.V.E. Productions is a documentary about Gary Whitman's W.A.V.E. Productions, and the phenomenon around it. It looks at the history of the shot on video (SOV) movie industry, where Gary comes in, and then how he revolutionized it by creating his paid request model, where fans could pay to have Gary and his team act out the movie they wanted. These were often fetish films, that involved bondage, violence against women, etc., but it turned out there was a market for them beyond the individual fan requests. The film then interviews the women and men who made W.A.V.E. Productions happen, like Debbie D, Tina Krause, and Pamela Sutch, to give us a full sense of what it was like making films for W.A.V.E.

I really enjoyed this. It was one of the rare films where the 97-minute runtime felt too short, like I could have listened to them talk about W.A.V.E. productions for another hour. The way it captured a moment in time, and movie history--can I call it "film history" if the films aren't shot on film?--but then took it further to show how Gary Whitman and his production company became even more successful. We were seeing the first crowdsourcing model, where people at home were essentially the producers and the money behind the film. But we also see that these films wouldn't have been a success if it wasn't for the no-nonsense women from South Jersey and areas nearby like Philly who were up for anything. "Tie me up and pretend to strangle me for ten minutes? Let's do it." "Cover me in fake blood while I'm lying naked on a table, and pretend to have people eat my organs, so I have to smell old animal organs going bad in the heat? Why not." It was a great film, and my only complaint, which might be a first here on the DTVC, is that it wasn't longer.

American society loves to give Millennials a hard time, and while I'm not here to pile on them--plus depending on the date range an authority gives, I may actually be one!--one interesting thing that's happened is their sheer size compared to Gen X, or ones on the cusp like me, has allowed them to change certain narratives, one of the biggest being around Blockbuster Video. Many of them were too young to remember the mom and pop video stores that proliferated in towns like mine in the 80s and early 90s, they remember after when Blockbuster ran them all out of business, and as such, they have more of a fondness for Blockbuster that people my age and older don't have, which explains the Blockbuster nostalgia we see online. What I'm getting at though is it was through those mom and pops that SOV films were able to gain a foothold in the market. With a major chain like Blockbuster, they wouldn't want anything to do with something like that, they were looking to put dozens of new releases on their shelves--in fact, the only rare stuff they had was stuff they grabbed from the mom and pops they ran out of business. But the mom and pops needed stuff, and if a type of horror film sold, and they saw a catalog offering similar titles, it didn't matter if it was SOV, they put them on the shelves and hoped they sold too. And they did sometimes. Kids like myself might get them home and watch them during a sleepover with friends and think "this is ridiculous! Where can I find another?"--or even adults for that matter. I guess YouTube allows for something similar, but it's not quite the same as it was then, and this documentary really captures that unique moment in time.

The fan-funded element that allowed W.A.V.E. films to take off feels like a precursor to the crowdfunding approach to filmmaking we see now, but I think that too doesn't have an exact equivalent. Crowdfunding involves the filmmakers offering perks to people who donate to the funding of the movie, but ultimately the filmmakers are putting their own vision on the screen, not that of the people donating. What Gary Whitman was doing was saying give us the money, and we'll make your movie, but then beyond giving you a copy, we may also sell it so other people can see it too. And it turned out there was enough of a market. As two guys who were familiar with a lot W.A.V.E. Productions said in the documentary, it's like you get to see what other people fetishize, and it makes the films all the more fascinating. I've had a chance to watch a few of them myself, and they're something outside the normal bounds of what we consider "film," which means some of the usual value judgements we use to understand movies have to be tossed aside. And while that's not for everyone, what this documentary showed was that it was for enough people that W.A.V.E. Productions became successful. (And it should be noted, this documentary was finished with a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.)

None of this happens without the women starring in the films being game for whatever comes up, and this documentary did a great job of spotlighting their efforts. It started with Clancey McCauley, and she has the ultimate "let's just go for it" attitude. She said she appreciated turning the tables on the baddies, but she had to be up for what the baddies would do to her first, and she was, which set the stage for what W.A.V.E. would be. One of my favorite stories was Laura Giglio's. She said when she auditioned, she was still living at home with her parents, and her mother wouldn't let her do a lot of the things she would've been asked to do at W.A.V.E., like nudity. When she was older and had moved out, she thought, "now that I'm no longer living at home, I can make my own decisions on these kinds of things." So she contacted Gary, and he put her in a movie right away where she ended up getting eaten. Then we have someone like a Tina Krause who has had a horror career outside of W.A.V.E. Productions, but got her start there. That these shot on video productions would be such a phenomenon that the stars would get parts in other films is a testament to how much fun they were and how much there was an audience for them; and it's also a testament to the women who starred in them that they would be that much in demand afterward.

Finally, we always leave this last paragraph as something tangentially related to the film, and this one won't be an exception. Since W.A.V.E. Productions started in the late 80s, we've had a stylistic change in English that's gotten away from periods after every letter in a multi-letter abbreviation, which makes sense, because putting the periods after every letter in "W.A.V.E." is a pain. You'll notice on my site, we say "NFL" not "N.F.L.," or "USA" and "UK" instead of "U.S.A." and "U.K." I would say this shift started when I was in college. I remember proper formatting for Anthropology papers did away with the periods between letters back then. The thing is though, W.A.V.E. Productions started in 1987, when we still did the periods, and they haven't changed--they may not be able to due to copyright issues--so I had to get used to adding the periods in again, even if it's just this one time.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can find this on Tubi here in the States, and it's well worth it. It documents a true independent spirit, something we love at the DTVC, but an independent spirit that comes with a sense of danger, which we also love.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8714166

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The Image Revolution (2014)

Continuing our Christmas tradition of looking at a documentary, I found this promising one on Tubi. As a huge comic book fan at the time all of this was happening, I had a good feeling about it. In addition to us, our friend at RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema, and our friend Francis Rizzo III at DVD Talk (host of the KilmerKast podcast), have looked at this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

The Image Revolution looks at the founding of Image Comics in the early 90s. What was the comic book landscape at that time, and what caused the industry's biggest talents to jump ship from Marvel and create something on their own. From there, once it was founded, how did these guys who now had complete control over their output manage? There were breakout successes, bumps in the road, conflicts between the members, but ultimately these seven founders did something to change the comic book industry that still endures, as one of their newer talents, Robert Kirkman, proved in creating the hugely successful Walking Dead comic books.

 

This was pretty fantastic. It captures a moment in time when these guys were rock stars. As a comic book collector at that time, I was in it, but that was also 30 years ago, so I didn't remember it all, and also was too young to understand the ramifications of everything that was happening. The film also had the perspective of time, as these guys who were mostly in their late 20s/early 30s--and Liefeld was only 25--are now in their 50s; and we get a sense of everyone's distinct personalities, as opposed to seeing them all as one collective, which I think is important too. McFarlane never went back to the big guns like DC and Marvel, maintaining his independent roots throughout; while Jim Lee is now the Publisher and Chief Creative Officer at DC. With the current ecosystem where Marvel and DC rule with their movies, the reminder that it wasn't always that way, and that Image put a big hurt on them at one time, is a good one for us, especially as both Marvel and DC have only become more corporate since then.

I was 12 in 1991, and I used to blow my allowance every Sunday at the local flea market, haggling with guys in their 30s and 40s to try and make my $10 go as far as it could. I remembered when Todd McFarlane's Spider-man book first came out; then when Rob Liefeld's X-Force--which I had to buy five copies of to make sure I got one with each card--plus an extra so I could open it and read it; and then when Jim Lee's X-Men with its five covers that I had to buy all of, it was like these guys couldn't make anything bad. And then I started noticing they weren't drawing their books anymore. What happened? Were they off for a month? Extended hiatus? This was before the internet was widespread, and my parents didn't have the money for a computer back then, so it took some time before I found out in a Wizard magazine what had happened. What's interesting is, as I got older and into high school, I grew out of both the Marvel and DC books I'd read, and the Image ones I picked up, but I did remember before then that Image had the publication schedule problems they described here--when am I going to get the next Youngblood or Brigade? But then also there were other publishers out there like Valiant that were putting out great stuff. My $10 was stretched too thin, so I started spending my allowance on Taco Bell and Mortal Kombat on Friday night trips to the mall. What was cool about this documentary, was I could go back in my mind and see where I stepped off the train, but also follow where it went after I got off and get the rest of the story.

 

Other than Liefeld who was born in '67, and Jim Valentino who was born in '52, the rest of the Image guys were born between the late '50s and early '60s. I guess like the way I'm on the cusp of Gen-X and Millennial--an Xennial--these guys are also cuspers, Generation Jones, and when I look at it, this cohort is responsible for a lot of the cultural and entrepreneurial innovations I grew up with in the 90s. From a music standpoint, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna all fall in this group; Quentin Tarantino does as well, which was a huge influence on how we view movies; and then you have these guys shaking up the comic book industry. I think this film did a great job in tapping into that creative energy. Before they formed Image, they were already blowing up all the standard comic book conventions that came before them. They were racier, more in your face, and as a kid at that time, I was eating it all up. I'd dig through old back issues from earlier times at the flea market, and while I liked a lot of what I saw, it wasn't punching me in the mouth the way Liefeld, Lee, McFarlane, et al were (and I name those three, because I read their stuff the most at that time. Marc Silvestri and Erik Larsen were a couple others I was big on.) The film makes the creation of Image almost an inevitability, as these guys were selling tons of books, yet getting no recognition from Marvel for it, so something had to give. 

Out of all of them, Rob Liefeld was the one I read the most, and even though when he left Marvel Fabian Nicieza continued on writing for X-Force, it wasn't the same without Liefeld's illustrations. The documentary shows Liefeld's Levi's 501 jeans commercial, and I remembered that when it aired, saying "hey I know him!" I also wondered why he wasn't drawing Cable and Deadpool, not knowing how all of that worked with rights and licensing. The thing about Deadpool now, is he's on the level of a Spider-man, and for me it's cool to know that I saw when he first appeared and watched him grow to this stature. That's one thing I remembered about Liefeld's Image books, they were really good, but he had no one on the level of Cable or Deadpool in them. He said in a different interview that Marvel was guarded on how much they let other books have Spider-man and Wolverine in their issues, so he decided to just make his own in Cable and Deadpool. At the time I thought the problem was he couldn't create a new Cable and Deadpool for his Image books, but what this documentary shows is, Liefeld, at 25, was stretched too thin in trying to run his new company and get three books out at the same time--but there was also an underlying sense in his interviews for the documentary that he had a youthful impetuousness that made him think at that time that making another Cable and Deadpool would be a piece of cake, that he could make tons of them, when that ultimately wasn't the case. Still, like Jim Morrison after The Ed Sullivan Show said they couldn't go on again after he said "get much higher," and he said "yeah but we've already done The Ed Sullivan Show," Liefeld can say "I've already made Cable and Deadpool" too.

 

Going back to Liefeld, one of the best moments of the documentary is when he says "we killed Superman! We broke Batman's back!" referring to a desperate DC, having fallen behind Image in the early 90s, taking extreme measures to make themselves relevant again. They also talked about how speculators had moved from baseball cards to comics around that time, and I remember people who never collected comics buying that Death of Superman issue thinking they'd be rich in 20 years. I was 13 then, and not long for the comics book world--I was already so disillusioned with it that I didn't even bother with that Death of Superman thing. It seemed any possible milestone was a three hologram cover set at $5 a piece. Whether the bubble was going to burst with comic speculation or not, I was priced out before it happened, and never really came back--except for a blip in the early 2000s when I bought up some of the Deadpool comics. At the time, as only a 13-year-old, I didn't put two-and-two together and see that Image was forcing DC to kill Superman; but also, I think as a 13-year-old I didn't get how much Image influenced my understanding of the ownership of my creations years later. I remember a panel in an early Spawn issue where McFarlane depicts the arms of the major DC and Marvel characters reaching through prison bars, while his Spawn was completely free. When I wrote A Girl and a Gun, with the plot that my main character Justin was adapting comic books for TV, I decided to create my own comic book company, Aries Comics, and my own characters to go with it. I didn't realize where that impetus came from though until I watched this documentary, and saw that panel again. I think in a lot of ways my cusp Xennial cohort are the inheritors of the legacy of Generation Jones, and that's no more apparent than in the success of Robert Kirkland, who is about six months older than me--and like the founders of Image, it was only fitting that he was told by them that a comic book about zombies wouldn't work, only to prove them wrong.

Will from Exploding Helicopter often jokes that I tend to give MA theses when I'm breaking down films as a guest on his podcast, and this review is turning into one of those, so I probably should wrap this up. I think this film does a great job of capturing a moment in time and a movement toward independence, and whether you were there for the ride or not--or like me, got off the ride earlier on--this has a lot in it to enjoy. Right now you can get it on Tubi and Pluto, also Shout Factory on Prime. If you're watching it for free like that, it's definitely worth it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294916

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Behind the Mask: The Batman Dead End Story (2015)

I thought I'd extend my new Christmas tradition of doing a documentary to "Christmas in July," especially since I have a lot of documentaries, in particular this one, that I've seen that I thought would be worthy of review on the site here. In addition to us, our friend at RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought. Now, without any further ado.

Behind the Mask: The Batman Dead End Story is the story behind Sandy Collora's Batman Dead End short film that took the comic book world by storm in 2003. After directing some commercials, Collora decides to make a short film as a demonstration of his skills. His idea is a Batman movie where he fights the Joker and a Predator. At the same time, Collora's mother is dying of breast cancer, forcing him to split his time between shooting and visiting her at the hospital. When the film is released, it gets a screening at Comic Con, and the rest is history. From there Collora was the hottest property in Hollywood, but instead of taking some entry level films he doesn't like, he tries to strike out on his own, and while he doesn't get the success he expected, he has the sense that he's doing it his way.

 

I really enjoyed this movie. I hadn't heard about Batman Dead End before this, but seeing it now after, I get why there was the buzz. Collora made the Batman movie we as fans would have wanted, and had he had the chance to make a feature-length Batman, we can only imagine how that would have turned out. There's also an element of "pride goeth before the fall," that perhaps Collora was a bit too full of himself and hurt his career in the process; but the film handles that really well, giving us all angles of Collora's life, including the loss of his mother. When we see the video of him speaking before an audience at Comic Con, where even he's now embarrassed by how he came off at the time, there's a sense that he can be forgiven for any brash--maybe arrogant--behavior, considering the price the film took for him to make, and then seeing how successful it is, it had to be a massive flood of emotions. Beyond all of that, I think Collora exhibits the independent spirit we love from directors here at the DTVC, so it's fitting to spotlight this documentary on him.

One thing this documentary does really well, is it tells us not only who Collora is, but also spotlights the talent he had working with him. This wasn't just a fan film done by a bunch of amateur filmmakers who just really had a passion, Collora and his team were professionals, and some of the best at their crafts. The shame is, often for a lot of these guys to get work that pays enough, it has to be on big budget projects where the studios set the rules in an attempt to be as big tent as possible. What Collora shows us here is, if these guys ever got the keys to a major studio big budget picture, it would be better than we could imagine. Unfortunately it feels like the film industry has been going even further in the other direction from 2003, meaning we're even further from ever seeing something like this as a feature-length come to fruition.

 

The one name that came to mind when I watched Collora in his interviews, was Albert Pyun. The big difference between those two, was Pyun tried to make it in the studio system with Cannon, and got burned multiple times in seeing his vision taken away from him, which was what Collora fought against, ultimately hurting his chances of getting some of the bigger James Cameron-style productions he ultimately wanted. The other difference between the two, is Pyun got to make Captain America, and almost Spider-Man as well (Pyun said they didn't have the budget to make it look as good as they wanted, and it ran into the same issues with using wires that the Spider-Man Broadway encountered). In looking at the current comic book movie landscape, you have to feel like Collora belongs there, that the natural progression after Dead End would have led him to being one of the in-demand directors to tackle a half-a-billion dollar Marvel extravaganza--but at the same time, you also have to feel like Collora would have wanted nothing to do with that, because it was the sanitized Disney-fication Marvel that we're seeing on the screen, not the comics from the early 90s that inspired the Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity War sagas. Disney and Warner don't want Collora's visions of what these films should be, because they aren't big tent enough, they would want him to make their visions for them. By the same token, if Collora doesn't want Hollywood, maybe there is a Pyun-like DTV career out there for him where his vision can flourish on the screen for us. I'd love to see what he can do in more films.

For me though the biggest thing that makes Dead End short film work is the inclusion of the Predator, aka "Big Red." In the video of Collora addressing the fans at Comic Con, he shouts out "is that how Batman is supposed to be done?" and when the crowd only gives him a tepid response, he shouts "I can't hear you! Is that how Batman is supposed to be done?" and they cheer. When he saw that video all these years later he was embarrassed, but he also had a great point. That was how Batman was supposed to be done. Clark Bartram was a great choice, a stunt worker and body builder who looked the part and could do all the action scenes. I also liked that there was no origin story here. We all know who Batman is, just dump him in an alley and put him up against the Joker and a Predator. The fact that we don't have 90 minutes of this is a travesty. When you look at the time this was made, we'd just come off of Bat-Nipples in Batman and Robin, but at the same time, the comic book genre on the Marvel side was getting a resurgence. We wanted a Batman redux, and Collora gave us that much more than the Nolan/Bale trilogy we had coming after this, and I'm sure also better than the Robert Pattinson Batman we have coming next year. The reality is though, as long as those mediocre "yeah, but what if?..." Batman adaptations pack theaters, there will never be the impetus to give us a feature-length big budget Collora Batman, which is too bad.

 

Finally, I thought I would use this paragraph to describe what my perfect Batman movie would be. It's hard to say, because Batman has so many great villains, plus you throw in the Predator. Who do you choose from between the Joker, Penguin, Riddler, or Catwoman; plus baddies like Egg Head, Mr. Freeze, or King Tut; not to mention I loved the Joel Schumacher Two-Face played by Tommy Lee Jones, with the really colorful other half of his face, and his Poison Ivy played by Uma Thurman. Maybe what it would be is a Wacky Races kind of event, where Batman and Robin in the Bat-mobile have to race cross-country, with all the other villains and the Predator racing against him. Imagine the fun cars that each villain would have. Or maybe we just remake Predator 2 with Batman and the Predator trashing Gotham City, while all the villains sit and watch. My hunch is, now that Disney owns the Predator, a Batman movie is the furthest from their mind. They're probably going to jump-start the franchise so they can plug up the theaters with another film: add that to Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and their own Disney properties, and they can choke the life out of the competing studios by taking over all the screens. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can screen Behind the Mask: The Batman Dead End Story on Tubi. Not only is it a compelling watch, but it does remind me of a time before the Disney-fication I described above, when the film industry was more open and less bid tent-ish. Collora is a true independent spirit, and this film both celebrates that, and gives us a great account of what it took to make his great fan film.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3181178

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!