Omega Cop (1990)

A little while back Ty and Brett at Comeuppance asked if I wanted to guest on their pod to discuss Ron Marchini's films. I'd never actually seen one before, so this was a great opportunity to dive into his oeuvre, and with this one also having the great Adam West, why not get after it? In addition to me, they've also reviewed this one, so you can go to their site to see what they thought.

Omega Cop takes place 11 years ago in 1999, after global warming has destroyed the ozone layer to the point that we're hip-deep in the apocalypse. Post-apocalypse, Marchini works for a police force run by West from a bunker--which works well if you want him to have scenes by himself in one location. Anyway, on a mission to stop an unruly bunch who are holding a white slavery auction, all of Marchini's men are killed, leaving him alone with one of the women from the auction. West says they can't come back to the compound, so Marchini collects two more women along the way, and they have a final showdown with the head baddie who ran the auction. If we're only going to have one cop left, it might as well be Marchini.

This movie is a lot of fun. I mean, look at that gang there! After I captured this image, I read Ty and Brett's review, and they had the same one, and I considered getting something different, but it just captures the fun of this movie so well. Marchini is great in the lead, West is great in a role that allows him to stay in one room for all his scenes, and you've got baddies who look like this. What more do you want in a movie? Exactly.

This was the first of seven Marchini movies I watched for their podcast episode, and as we'll see as I eventually review all seven, they're all fun like this. Seven movies in a row without a dud is a feat no one in the DTV world has pulled off before as far as I know, which makes it that much more egregious that it took me over a thousand posts to finally get one of his movies up here. His martial arts are fantastic, and it looks like he produces all of his own movies--other than one AIP flick, he didn't work with any of the big names like Cannon and PM--which on the one hand makes me say "I wish he had done that," but on the other I think "seven good ones in a row, why mess with that." It's going to be a lot of fun as we go through the rest of Marchini's films.

This came out in 1990, which is only 9 years before the period when this takes place, meaning the world went down the toilet quick. It's always fun to see a movie set in the future that's now the past, but man, 1999 over 20 years ago, it's almost the Retro Channel past, that was once the future. I never really understood why things were set so close in the future. If this was 2040 and made in 1990, would it have made any difference? I mean there are parts where he's talking about things he remembered from when the world wasn't like it is now, and he's telling women who are at least in their 20s, which means they would have been at least 10, if not older at that time--if the world went to shit in 1990, if it went later, they would have been older. I just did a paragraph trying to hold the film accountable for it's timeline, when they had guys like the two in the first screen. I'm sorry, I'll move on.

Look at West there, he's slouching. How amazing is that? He can't even be bothered to sit up to do his lines. As I write this, there's another film incarnation of Batman on the horizon, this one starring Twilight's Robert Pattinson. We can add him to Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck. And West was the best of all of them for me. As a result, whenever I see him in anything, I love it. Funny, other than when I did the original Batman, I haven't done another West film as far as I know. We'll have to fix that.

Soapbox time. As far as I can tell, this is only available as a used DVD or VHS, or you can stream the Rifftrax version, and that's it. How do Marchini's films not have blu-ray releases? Crazy Six has a blu-ray, and no offense to Albert Pyun, but if Crazy Six has a blu-ray, so should this. We need a company like Arrow to release a box set of all seven Marchini films from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. I mean, Mankillers has a blu-ray, but this doesn't? And if Arrow or MVD wants to make these blu-rays, call me or the guys from Comeuppance, we'd love to record some commentary tracks.

Off the soapbox, and time to wrap this up. This, like most Marchini films, is available on YouTube. Until someone takes the initiative to make the blu-ray box set, that's the best that you can do--actually according to Christopher Cross, the best that you can do is fall in love--but at least the movies are available for everyone to see. And if you haven't been checking out Brett and Ty's Comeuppance Review Podcast, what are you doing? Subscribe and check out the episode I joined them with on Marchini, plus all their other great episodes.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100291

Batman (1966)

People often ask me what my favorite comic book movie of all time is, and when I say it's this film, they think I'm either kidding or being different for the sake of being different. I think a big part of it is that my generation has this idea that the 60s were either Andy Griffith or protests, and so to them a show like the Adam West Batman couldn't have been purposefully silly, but rather just a product of "awe-shucks" wholesome family entertainment. It's like watching The Match Game and focusing on them saying "Whoopee" for "sex", instead of celebrating how funny and sexually charged the show really was. If you think "Bam!" "Pow!" and "Zoink!" were serious, then of course you wouldn't get why I love this so much. 

Batman was originally supposed to be a feature film to sell the TV show, but when the TV show aired and was extremely successful, they waited on the movie, then shot it between the first two seasons. The film brings back all of the original cast, except for Julie Newmar, who was replaced by Lee Meriwether for the role of Catwoman. In addition to her, the memorable Adam West, Burt Ward, Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, and Burgess Meredith all take on the roles they made famous and iconic.

I just watched this again last night, and it's still as good today as it was when I first saw it on a Sunday afternoon on WBSK TV 38's Movie Loft with Dana Hersey when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. Sure, it's not for everyone, and I don't begrudge a person who goes in for the darker interpretations on-screen today, but to write this one off for being satirical and tongue-and-cheek is as bad as me writing off The Dark Knight for having a Saw villain (played amazingly by Heath Ledger, but a Saw villain no less) as its Joker. The 1966 Batman was not cheesy, it was funny, and it was funny on purpose. I'd say it's ahead of its time, but it was hugely popular when it was aired, so maybe, the correct statement is, us Gen Xers and Gen Yers could probably take page out of our Baby Boomer parents' playbook. If anything, Black Dynamite did. (As an aside, I was born in 1979, so I'm on the cusp of the Gen X Gen Y generations, but I think I'm more Gen X.)

One thing I really liked about this was all the colors. No, it was no Ran, but what is? It just seemed like every set, every outfit, every prop just popped off the screen. Again, a stark contrast to not only the new Batman films, but also even the comic and video games we see today. Tim Burton's Batman did so much to change the landscape, and even the new one that made so much money and is trying so hard to be its own thing is housed fully under Burton's shadow. The thing is, as far as I can tell, Batman is stuck between these two worlds. You can only either be the campy, satirical Adam West Batman of the 60s, or you can be the dark Tim Burton Batman of the 90s. Burton's Batman was such a backlash against the 60s version, but it was so good, the fear is any step back into light and color for Batman is a step back to the 60s version, and it's almost impossible to duplicate that and have it work, so people stay in the dark world. I'd like to see someone pull Batman back into the middle, but I don't see it happening.

I don't know which way the third in this new Batman series will go for a villain, but they have a lot to live up to with the previous versions, and I'm not sure they'll be lucky enough to have another Heath Ledger performance to save them if they do another ill conceived version of another one of our favorites. Let's be real here, all The Dark Knight's Joker did was give people Bloody Smiles. Ledger took that pedestrian material and turned it into an Oscar (though really, the Oscar he should've won was for Brokeback Mountain). Yes, I agree that the last thing The Dark Knight wanted was a Cesar Romero with his mustache still visible under the white paint, but if we're honest, Jack Nicholson's Joker was just as amazing, and was much better written. What made Romero and Nicholson's Jokers better was how they enhanced great material (on extreme opposite ends of the spectrum), while Ledger turned something unremarkable into a reason to go see a pretty blah blockbuster that we've all seen myriad times before. Ledger should get all the credit for that, but the writers of The Dark Knight should not be let off the hook, let alone applauded.

Adam West is the man. The only star I think of who fit his role better was Christopher Reeve as Superman. If you watch this DVD with his and Burt Ward's commentary, you can really see how he not only gets it, but he even adds his own touches to the silliness around him. He's not a Shatner, who probably isn't as in on the joke as he thinks he is; Adam West started the joke--it's his joke! But at the same time, he, more than any of the people associated with the show and movie, created an icon. While Nicholson, and then Ledger, may have stepped out from under the shadow of Cesar Romero, not one of the four men to play the Caped Crusader since West has been able to fill his shoes--er boots... and tights.

Finally, this one scene above has always stuck out for me as quintessential Catwoman. It's very sexy how she's lying with the heel of her boot resting on that post; but it's also very commandeering, especially how she doesn't move at all as the other villains come in and out, sometimes even going under her legs. It's so feminine, yet at the same time, it's not at all submissive: this is her space, she doesn't care if it's taking up your space, and she knows full well that no guy is going to ask her to give that space up. This is what I was talking about when I reviewed Catwoman and I was discussing how wrong that film's approach was. Lee Meriwether perfectly married the seductive and the deadly elements we expect from Catwoman, and no scene in this film encapsulates that better than this one here. She deserved that part on Barnaby Jones she got from doing so well here.

If you haven't seen this, or even worse, wrote off the old TV show, it's worth another look. Allow yourself to laugh with a foam shark attached to Batman as he punches it while waiting with bated breath for Robin to bring him the Bat Shark Repellent. It's not cheesy, it's comedy--no one was off camera or in the editing room after saying "how exciting will this scene be? I can't wait!" They were laughing their asses off, and so should you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060153/

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