The Last Exorcism - Movie Review

Directed by Daniel Stamm

Written by Huck Botko & Andrew Gurland

The Last Exorcism begins as a story about a faithless preacher, Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian; Big Love). He was bred since childhood to be a preacher, handling his first sermon at the age of ten years old. Then, somewhere along the way Cotton began forgetting about what it meant to have faith and instead concentrated on whatever means required to pay the mortgage on the house and to pay for the medical care that his prematurely born son needs.

As he decided to quit preaching Cotton wanted to do one more deed for the world. He wanted to unveil the secret of exorcisms – they are not real. Cotton is convinced that the exorcisms he performed during his tenure as a priest – and he performed over one-hundred – were just psychological therapy for someone with a guilty conscience; someone hiding a secret from their loved ones because they are too ashamed to tell the truth.

Cotton decides to make a reality show. He randomly picks letters sent to him by dozens of people convinced that they or someone they know is possessed by a demon. His first case takes him and the two eager filmmakers deep into Louisiana where the recently widowed Louis Sweetzer believes that his daughter, Nell, is possessed, and what starts as a typical hustling job by Cotton, with his slide of hand tricks and string-pulled props soon turns into a battle against pure evil and a returning conflict with his faith in God.

The movie did a good job of capturing the aura of Louisiana with the beautiful scenery, the shoot-strangers-before-you-look-at-them attitude of its citizens, and the endless lingering essence of something supernatural; and while I am not a fan of reality-filmed movies or television, I don’t think the special effects and fright scenes would have looked as good as they did thus they would not have been as effective as they were. However, the downside to filming realistically is that the audience encounters a lot of dead air in between scenes which stricken any momentum gained by a good scare. If I wanted to watch actual recorded reality I would set up a camera at the park and record birds pooping on peoples’ cars all day.

Then, there is the ending. I didn’t hate it like the majority of the movie-going public did, but it wasn’t good enough to warrant much praising either. I didn’t mind it because it felt like an ending that would have happened back in the 1950’s or 1960’s, particularly in a Hammer film, but once the final act is over you realize that what could have been an epic or simply an awesome climax just became leftover fish sticks from two days ago.

The Killer Inside Me (2010) - Movie Review

The Killer Inside Me – the title says it all. The movie is based on the Jim Thompson novel of the same name. Jim Thompson also wrote The Grifters, which was also turned into a feature film.

The Killer Inside Me is about a West Texas deputy sheriff named Lou Ford (Casey Affleck). Most of the people that know Lou respect him and find him to be one of the kindest souls that ever walked their sidewalks, while other folks in the law game suspect that there is something more to Lou than just a badge and a nice smile.

In fact, Lou Ford is a sadistic murderer. When Lou was a young boy he was introduced to sadism, but being so youthful he didn’t know that what his father’s girlfriend was wanting him to do to her had any kind of wrong in it. But Lou grew up, suppressing those urges until opportunity presented a window towards unleashing these sick, pent up desires in the form of Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), a prostitute that, during a moment of tested aggression, Lou falls in love with and Joyce reciprocates those feelings despite Lou already being committing his intimate ways to Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson). Both women are aware of Lou’s dark pleasures, and both accept him for it only to wind up as violent escapes for Lou’s personal gains.

This film is heavy with dialogue and unapologetic with its violence. The brutality is uncensored and could make some people squirm but seemed relevant to the compressed tone of the film. The cast also involves cult-favorite Elias Kotas (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Prophecy) as Joe Rothman – a detective that refuses to see the boy-faced gentleman that everyone else sees in Lou Ford. Simon Baker (The Mentalist) plays Howard Hendricks, the district attorney that suspects Lou Ford of committing murder, and Bill Pullman shortly appears as Billy Boy Walker – an attorney that wants to hear Lou Ford’s story.

Casey Affleck does well enough as the morally confused Lou Ford. The only way he knows if someone is worth knowing is if they’re worth killing. The individual sex scenes with Affleck and Hudson and Alba were well done. The love and passion that these characters thought they felt for each other was projected with every succulent kiss and spiritually kinetic pelvic thrust.

The Killer Inside Me has already been made into a film back in 1976, starring Stacey Keach as Lou Ford. I can guarantee that the previous version does not compare in terms of showing the carnage that an individual can physically produce.

I did read other reviews comparing this film to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but that is only in theme - experiencing the life and thoughts of a conscientious murderer and not gore. The Killer Inside Me doesn’t even come close, but it can turn a few stomachs.

I felt like this was the type of movie I needed to be in the mood for and while it was disturbing it wasn’t disturbing enough for my tastes, but then again I’ve been desensitized by my own dysfunctional family and two decades’ worth’s of horror films. While I did enjoy The Killer Inside Me, it did not come without some areas that simply dragged and very questionable Texas accents from everyone involved, but it’s always interesting to see a film from a mentally twisted perspective because they act and seem so normal, like true serial killers, you can’t help but be shocked or amazed or both.

Chasing Oddities

Running through a marshy backdrop with any night-birthed light interrupted by fog, I’m headed for home. I’m a torpedoing through the mist aiming for my house-lit backdoor because I know who’s chasing me. We’d never met, but I knew his name and I knew he was a ghastly behemoth that wanted to sever my body from itself.


Why was I leading him home, then? And that would’ve been much more difficult if the slug-paced zombies were nearer, but they had just begun crossing the stretched out driveway.

I flung open the screen door, nearly broke the door down, and pounced to a halt inside the house.

The storage space was hot. The place looked clean enough, but that could’ve been just generous lighting. Everything had a dim tone.

I walked into the hollow kitchen with peeling plastic floor tile. The emptiness of the kitchen made the house look bigger than it really was, and it was still hot. I smelled stale, funky sex. A petite brunette was dressing herself, buttoning her shirt. Had I not been so concerned about being hacked to pieces, I still doubt I would have freaked out that she had only one leg, but the clown sitting on the stool, shabbily dressed with a questionably puke-like stain smothered over his white wife beater is what truly stunned me. His cigar smelled good and his white suspenders were clipped to baggy, sketchy checkered orange and red pants. The black floppy shoes had been displaced in the corner behind the clown and if that was smothered puke on his shirt I wasn’t going to consider even looking anywhere near his feet.

The chainsaw howled. The big guy was near.

I quickly abandoned the strange couple that became less strange the more I thought about the idea of them as an actual couple. I noticed the steel twin doors that blocked the entrance to the one room I had never been allowed into. The right door was slightly ajar and considering the circumstances I wasn’t about to wait for an invitation.

I stepped through, entering the one room I had never been allowed to enter.

The Expendables - Movie Review and Ode to the Action Genre (No Capes or Tights Allowed)

The Expendables is Sylvester Stallone’s attempt to revive the action-hero franchise that he personally feels has been in limbo for many years. If you haven’t had a chance to check out John Rambo, the fourth installment into the Rambo movie franchise, then The Expendables is a great place to start; or rather restart.

An action film is hardly ever driven by the plot, it’s usually character driven; in The Expendables we have so many characters to deal with it pays knowing a thing or two about schizophrenia, which I do; but that is for another blog at another time.

Sylvester Stallone is Barney Ross, the obvious leader of a band of close-knit mercenaries. A private handler asks them to overthrow the dictator of a South American island – Vilena, but after a visit to the island with his closest merc-partner Lee Christmas (Jason Statham; Transporter, London), they both feel that the job is far too cost-heavy to pull off, but after a bout with his conscience and an eye-opening lecture from his closest confidante, AND finding out that the real fiend depriving the island of positive resources is an ex-CIA agent – James Munroe (Eric Roberts; Dark Knight, Best of the Best), Barney knows what he must do. However, it’s not easy being Barney’s friend and the rest of The Expendables decide to tag along.

Action movies are expected to be plot-simple: good guy goes after bad guy, but with the evolution of multi-media and not necessarily human intelligence, movie-goers have come to realize that most of the time the line between right and wrong is not so straight and a little blurry. That’s the picture Stallone provides with The Expendables. Christmas provides a nice secondary plot because he’s the nice guy with a great but impatient love interest, and love and kill-efficiency is what Christmas and Barney keep barking at each other about, but even after that there is a statement about brotherhood, honor, and honesty; which is tested by the rest of the crew in regards to the size of their cut come payday, like Yin Yang (Jet Li) and simply by the team’s trust in one member to do their job correctly, like the team trusts in Gunner (Dolph Lundgren; Rocky IV, Masters of the Universe) – a soldier addicted to drugs.

To me (danger, danger), The Expendables is the evolution of the action film. Just like Harold Ramis and his party crew wanted to put heart into low brow comedy with Caddy Shack which Judd Appatow and his crew modified for today’s audiences, Sylvester Stallone continues to evolve the action film genre.

When Bruce Willis’ Die Hard premiered, no one took his simple-man-physique, blue collar attitude seriously as an action hero compared to the likes of Schwarzenegger's Dillon in Predator or Stallone's Cobra, but Die Hard became a success. From then on action heroes were no longer off-limits to being evaluated as human beings. The Expendables looks at each and every mercenary as being human. Human beings have faults, they have secrets that they don’t want to share with loved ones; they have fetishes that they feel would be considered disgraceful if anyone emotionally-close knew about it. As a co-writer and director, Sylvester Stallone does an excellent job of presenting these kinks about tough guys to the public. As a director, he falls short on the actual action sequences.

Stallone chooses to go with the close-up, shaky-cam effect that annoys and nauseates most of the movie going public, which is a gigantic disappointment for me, personally. I had two dream-matches occur during this movie: Dolph Lundgren vs. Jet Li and Steve Austin vs. Randy Couture, and even a surprise dream match; Steve Austin vs. Sylvester Stallone – but during every action sequence throughout the film, Stallone went with a close-up, shaky-camera effect which deteriorated the action. I want to know who is punching whom, whom is kicking, flipping, cracking the bones of whom, and with the shaky-cam technique I couldn’t decipher the antagonist from the protagonist.

I am glad to say that this discrepancy is my only complaint against The Expendables. It brought back that feeling of the common man succeeding against uncommon odds; it brought to the silver screen some of my most respected fighters, and most of all it made these modern day barbarians relatable.

The Expendables doesn’t pretend to be anything it was advertised to be. There’s action, there’s A LOT of blood (sadly, it’s mostly CGI blood), there’s plenty of carnage, tons of explosions, but you’re never left without the feeling that these men are not human beings; that they don’t have feelings, families, or something just worth fighting for, and during these internet-spawned, self-righteous, ignorant, foolish, selfish times – I’m glad to know that there are people who still believe in respect and honor. I know it’s only a movie, but that goes to show the power of cinema; it can give you hope.

Inception - Movie Review

Inception tells the tale about sophisticated, mercenary neuro-criminals that raid a person’s subconscious during their dream-state in order to extract information. The team is led by Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who

is the extractor – he tricks the mark into giving up the information. Accompanying him is Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt; 500 Days of Summer, Brick) the research analyst – he gathers and organizes history on the mark. They find themselves in need of a new architect – the person who designs the dream’s landscape which functions as a maze. Cobb finds young Ariadne (Ellen Paige; Juno, Smart People) to fill that role.

After a successful demonstration in Japan for a corporate guru – Saito (Ken Watanabe; Batman Begins, Shanghai), Cobb is offered a chance of a lifetime; an opportunity to return to the United States, and back to his children. Cobb had been accused of murdering his wife. He professed his innocence but the evidence against him was too strong, so Cobb has not allowed himself to even try returning home. Saito guarantees a safe homecoming if he and his team complete one last job, only it’s not an extraction, it’s an implant.

A rival corporation is on the verge of monopolizing Japan’s entire energy resource. The chairman is on his deathbed with complete control of the company ready to be transferred to his son Robert (Cilian Murphy; Red Eye, Cuckoo) but their relationship is fragile bordering on dysfunctional. Saito wants Cobb to implant an idea inside Robert’s subconscious – to separate the company into different corporate entities so that Saito’s businesses will be the dominant organization throughout Japan. Cobb hastily agrees, but there is a chance that his own subconscious might be usurping more control over his life than he thinks.

By no large means am I fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s a fifty-year-old man trapped in a twelve-year-old….man’s body and I personally find it difficult to take him seriously the majority of the time. That’s not to say that I’m not a fan of some of the movies he’s been in, such as Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries, and especially This Boy’s Life. So, I was surprised at how much I really liked him in Inception. He can command a scene and control a movie, but the typical reasons why I tend to brush him off were not evident in this film. I enjoyed his performance, it helped that he had a great character to play, and this may be my second favorite film with DiCaprio in it, just behind This Boy’s Life.

The other actors did splendidly even though I can’t stomach Ellen Paige most of the time, but here she was tolerable. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has always been a mature actor and now he’s finally being offered mature roles. If you haven’t seen his performance in Brick, it is astounding and allowed him to step up to the big leagues. Michael Caine has a small but important role; Tom Hardy showed great range as Eames who is the con-artist and all around grunt of the team, and it was nice to see Cilian Murphy acting on the big screen again as I feel he is an underrated and even underappreciated actor. And, Ken Watanabe once again turns in some powerful, dynamic work.

Christopher Nolan spreads his charm and skills all over this film as both writer and director. When you look at certain profile shots and establishing shots, you immediately sense that this is a Christopher Nolan film, so the magic happens when the dream worlds start to implode and chaos runs amok in the subconscious, but I found myself preferring the story about Cobb and the relationship between he and his wife more than the actual implant job. To me, that plot was more bizarre and heart racing.

Inception seems to run long at a near two-and-a-half hour mark but in order for the ideas behind inception, extraction, and the roles of everyone involved to be clear to the audience that time is needed and is well spent. Once all of the explanations and examples are displayed, the ball really starts to roll. Some people have claimed to need multiple viewings to understand and appreciate the complexity of Inception, but I disagree. If you can stay awake, you can soak it all in easily enough.

2000 Maniacs (1964) - A Small Retrospect on the "Splatter Film"

If you are a fan of Rob Zombie or if you know someone who is, then you have probably heard one of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ movies mentioned as a song title or at the very least within the lyrics of one of Rob Zombie’s songs. Herschell Gordon Lewis is considered to North American horror what Lucio Fulci was considered to Italian horror – the “Godfather of Gore.” Lewis is credited for creating the horror sub-genre “splatter film” where the violence in the movie is propelled to profound extremes.

2000 Maniacs is one of the earliest “splatter films” written and directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis in 1964. Six people; some strangers, some couples travelling knee deep in southern territory are lured to a town called Pleasant Valley. When they arrive, it seems like the entire town is there to meet and greet these Yankees. There is even an evening banquet that is set to be held that very night recognizing these folks as the guests of honor. The problem is that the town of Pleasant Valley was destroyed during the Civil War and the citizens of Pleasant Valley, led by Mayor Buckman, did not take too kindly to that action, therefore their spirits rise every one-hundred years for the centennial celebration of Pleasant Valley’s existence, and every centennial the citizens take out their vengeance on wandering northern folk.

2000 Maniacs is well known for it’s over the top characters, b-movie style production, and intentional focusing on gore. In the film there is a woman who has all of her limbs ripped from her body by wild horses, a boulder is dropped upon an unsuspecting young man; the exploitation of brutality knows no bounds in Herschell Gordon Lewis’ movies. The modern day splatter films such as the Saw series and Final Destination pick up the reigns where movies like 2000 Maniacs and Blood Feast prospered and became popular among the drive-in crowds for their bad acting and relentless, mutilating visuals, which is a tradition that is easily followed but uneasily mastered. Just because a horror movie is violent doesn’t meant it’s good. There needs to be that positive intangible that Lewis’ films possessed – that glorified respect that comes with being a filmmaker and 2000 Maniacs has it in spades.

Recently, the film was remade by writer/director Tim Sullivan as 2001 Maniacs with Robert Englund donning the role of Mayor Buckman, and has been followed by a sequel 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams, and while these films honor the ideals of a splatter film, the look of the characters bodes more to a circus-type atmosphere where as Lewis’ original killers looked more like your next door neighbor, and in my opinion, made the movie much more frightening. 2000 Maniacs is an unsung classic among horror movies, and for those like myself who care more for the story rather than the gore, 2000 Maniacs is a welcomed exception to the standards because it reminds us that there have always been people drawn to the macabre and the bizarre, and in their arms that is where we feel free to be ourselves.

Aenigma - Movie Review

Aenigma is a 1987 effort by one of Italy’s best known horror directors, Lucio Fulci. In this grizzly tale of revenge and romance, in that order, the ugly duckling of St. Mary’s College – Kathy – has been set up by her fellow classmates into thinking that the fitness instructor Fred Vernon is attracted to her. Their entire evening is broadcast to Kathy’s classmates through a microphone Fred stashed in his car, and Kathy’s desperation for love and affection is overheard by the majority of her classmates who have been following the couple in their cars all night long. Finally, the joke is sprung on Kathy. She flees from the scene but the ruthless students chase her down in their cars. Kathy runs into a busy street and is hit by a truck. She winds up in a coma, and eventually goes brain dead but her voice carries on through the world.

Suddenly, one of St. Mary’s’ former students – Eva Gordon – returns from a sabbatical taken because of a nervous breakdown she had suffered, and there are no assumptions for the audience to make; Eva is shown to be possessed by Kathy, and one by one through mysterious powers Kathy through Eva begins seeking revenge on the individuals that wronged her causing her victims to experience horrifying hallucinations that become real and deadly. And somehow, Kathy’s mother – the university’s maid – has a hand in all of it.

Every time Kathy gains vengeance on someone, her brain dead body at the hospital begins to show signs of life, even healing. Then, Eva suffers an anxiety attack and the neurologist that is watching over Kathy – Dr. Robert Anderson – is called to the university to check on Eva. Kathy uses Eva to try getting the doctor to love her, but the doctor soon has eyes for the only person that showed Kathy any kindness, her roommate Jennifer. That does not sit well with the malicious, revenge-minded Kathy.

Lucio Fulci is a legend in Italian horror cinema. He was a suspenseful director, but his claim to fame was the detail in his killings with the gore he was willing to exploit for a movie. He had directed some giallo films, but he was always at his best with straight forward horror. In Aenigma, he is allowed to let his imagination run wild; there are deaths by smothering snails, animated statues, and even someone’s doppelganger. There are no computer effects in this movie, all of the fright scenes are genuinely handmade crafts, including some love-making cannibalism.

The rest of the movie is a bit harder to digest. The film supposedly takes place in Boston, Massachusetts but none of the actors look like they resided anywhere other than Central Europe for their entire lives, plus their English appears so physically broken it looks as though their dialogue had to be overdubbed by voice over artists in post-production. There are some plot-holes to deal with but the center piece of the story, Kathy’s longings to be loved by a man and to be accepted in her social scene are very clear. There is hardly any suspense in the movie and the story is hard to follow at times, but if you’re a fan of gore and disturbing images Aenigma and Lucio Fulci will not steer you wrong.

H20 (Halloween: 20 Years Later) - Movie Review

H20 which stands for Halloween: 20 Years Later was another attempt at jumpstarting the horror franchise as the audience and fans were asked to dismiss Halloweens 4, 5, and 6 and to think of this film as the official continuation of the story.


Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis; True Lies, Halloween) has moved away from Haddonfield, Illinois to a small city in Northern California and has changed her name to Keri Tate. She is now the headmistress of a prominent private school and suffers from post traumatic stress disorder caused by the tragic events from two decades ago. She still sees Michael around every corner, in every window reflection.

With her at the school is her seventeen-year old rebellious son, John (Josh Hartnett; The Faculty, 30 Days of Night). John knows all about his uncle Michael, and what he did to his mother and their family.

It is Halloween night in California, and the students of the school are being transported to a party being held at Yosemite that evening. Laurie is looking forward to a romantic evening alone with her love interest and school staff member Will Brennan (Adam Arkin; Sons of Anarchy). That night she tells Will her secret, and in doing so is stricken with a gruesome epiphany. John is seventeen-years-old, the same age she was when Michael escaped the asylum and hunted her, killing her friends. Laurie feels the chill within her bones once again and needs to walk the school grounds herself, armed with a revolver. While inspecting the school she discovers that John, his girlfriend, and some of their friends ditched the trip to Yosemite so they could have the school to themselves. They picked the wrong night to stay in. Michael Myers has found them, and he still wants Laurie dead.

H20 provides a few decent scares but nothing to jump out of the chair for. Most of the fright tactics used are intentionally overblown and provide no real mystery or suspense, not until Myers starts stalking his prey in the school’s hallways. The story was conceived by Kevin Williamson of Scream fame and his underling Robert Zappia, and was written by Williamson’s underlings Zappia and Matt Greenberg. They injected Scream-flavored, 90’s teeny bopper lacquer all over the movie and I really couldn’t wait until the killings started. Teenagers are such intolerable menaces and Michael had the right idea. Steve Miner (Lake Placid) directed it; he’s another one of Kevin Williamson’s go to directors, mostly for television.

The beginning was a nice treat. It brought back Nancy Stephens as Nurse Chambers from the original Halloween, and there is also a cameo by Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother – Janet Leigh whom people know best from the infamous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. H20 is actually the second film that the two have appeared briefly together in. They also appeared in one of John Carpenter’s other creations – The Fog.

Chris Durand, a professional stuntman, has the honor of playing Michael Myers in this version. He seemed stiff, his movements were overly mechanical; no fluidity at all, and in the quiet moments – those parts when the mere blink of an eye can mean as much as a shout, or a head nod can be as creepy as a slithering hand, Durand overdoes it, particularly when Michael and Laurie meet eye to eye for the first time in the movie, but further along into the action he seems to settle into the role. He even seemed tiny, which was interesting because it did make Myers seem more human in a way, but Durand’s congealed movements didn’t help the situation.

The largest piece missing was Donald Pleasance as Dr. Loomis. Sadly, he had passed away before the movie began to get off the ground. The character is acknowledged in a voiceover by Tom Kane, unfortunately it is a lousy impersonation of Pleasance.

With the original Halloween and the other horror films she frequently made in the 80’s, Jamie Lee Curtis became the original Scream Queen, but in H20 the Scream Queen was more like a warrior and I enjoyed seeing her go toe to toe with her psychotic brother. H20 is worth at least one watch. Depending on how die-hard of a Halloween fan someone is, I think most of them will enjoy it more than I did while others can probably live without it all together. There was too much bubble gum in this version for me, Michael Myers didn’t feel threatening, but it made Laurie’s character relevant again and that’s really why I still bother with it. Besides, there are worse things out there – there’s still Halloween: Resurrection.

Marty - Movie Review

Marty stars Ernest Borgnine as a butcher in New York City. He’s thirty-fiver years old and lies with his mother. He sees himself as someone that was never meant for love and as chosen to live his life that way. He goes out with his friends, has drinks, but at the end of the night or early in the morning his friends have either wives to get home to or a wound up with a lady friend, leaving Marty alone and bound for home.


His mother loves him and treats him like the grownup child he seems to be at times; being a Polish immigrant and bearing six children, she doesn’t know what it is like not to be a mother. But still, she encourages Marty to live the night and find a nice girl, but Marty just feels worse because he thinks he knows that he’s never going to walk someone home at night or have that special call to make.

And then he meets Clara (Betsy Blair); things start to change, and so do a few people and their attitudes.

Marty is a simple story about a simple man with a great heart. He’s not the best looking guy around but what he lacks in looks he rebounds in virtue and class. He even makes sure to walk a lady down the sidewalk with his body on the street’s side, allowing the woman to have protection next to the buildings in case a car veered off the road. That was something my grandparents taught me when I was young, and it stuck, because they’d bash me over the head if I ever forgot.

Borgnine was born to play a role like this and he makes the most of it. He has a natural boyish charm that was perfect for Marty, and when it’s time to for seriousness or a case calls for an intellectual analysis – it’s greatly displayed. Marty might be a feel-good movie for some people, and really we all know someone exactly like Marty, so it’s nice to see these folks find some kind of happiness, whether it be in love, business, life in general; it’s good to see that kindness is indeed rewarded.

The Punisher (1989) - An Ode to the Underrated

In 1989, the movie industry embarked on a new phase of comic book adaptations not seen since the late 70's. The king of all cinematic costumed crime fighters that year and several years to come was Tim Burton’s Batman. Not since Richard Donner’s Superman starring Christopher Reeves had a comic book film sent so many geeks into a state of nerd nirvana (nerd-vana, if you would), and while it was by no means a perfect Batman film, it was the best thing the modern fanboy had seen film-wise in regards to the Dark Knight. I myself loved it but am also partial to the 1960’s version of Batman with all of its campiness topped with layer upon layer of cheese.


1989 quietly saw another another comic book come to life, but this one went straight to video; much like all of the Marvel movies made during the 1980’s and early 90’s, and there were some horrible films. Captain America (1990) was an utter disaster that spent two years on the shelf before being released directly to VHS, and Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four never even saw the light of day after it finished filming; but there was one shining light hidden beneath all of that cinematic squalor – The Punisher, starring Dolph Lundgren.

To me, this is still the standard when it comes to Punisher films. It took a simple crime story (written by Boaz Yakin) that was set in New York (unlike the 2004 reboot) and planted all the necessary elements to involve The Punisher. Frank Castle was forced to team up with the mafia in order to save the lives of mafia-leaders’ children from a ruthless yakuza boss. Meanwhile, Frank’s ex-police partner Jake Berkowitz (Louis Gossett, Jr.) still hunting him down, trying to help him, because if he doesn't catch him first, other police officers won't treat Frank with as much amenity as Jake is barely willing to allow Frank because of Frank's homicidal joyride.

This movie treated Frank Castle the way some comic book creators and fans see The Punisher – as a serial killer; a mass murderer. He lived in the sewers, rode around on an awesome motorcycle with intimidating, post-apocalyptic-type biker boots, and brandished an arsenal that would make the American Military jealous, and he killed every guilty gangster in sight. The movie was heavy on the action, had just the right amount of drama. It also turned out one of my personal favorite movie endings, but most appreciative – and this is what I feel is wrong with most of the superhero films of today – it was not an origin film. People wanted The Punisher, we got The Punisher right off the get go. No waiting for that tragic even that twists his conscience and mental stability. All of that is taken care of in a quick, detailed flashback sequence and then it’s back to The Punisher’s story.

Like Donner's Superman, Burton's Batman, and even Raimi's Spiderman – yet another character getting yet another reboot, we understand who and what The Punisher is and what he wants. This movie hit the ground running and didn’t stop, and I was thankful for that.

After I got to discuss this movie with other people that had seen it, the biggest complaint was that there was no skull on his shirt, and people allowed that single detail to deter them from all the good things offered by the film. After Batman Returns, neither Schumacher’s or Nolan’s costumes had the yellow oval which acts only as a target rather than a symbol. Standing in the shadows, that yellow oval would give Batman away instantly, much like Punisher’s large white skull. Batman is the symbol. Frank Castle is punishment.

This is still, in my opinion, the best Punisher movie out there; it had all the elements of a Punisher story and employed a great conflict that forced Frank Castle to team up with the thing he hated the most, which made for a great and greatly overlooked action movie.