COMIC CON EXCLUSIVE:
VERN HAS SEEN THE WATCHMEN DVD
(that came out last week)
My fellow Watchmaniacs: People like me and you, being huge comics book “geeks” and true fans for life, we could tell each other exactly where we were the first time we saw those historic Watchman comic strips in 1986, when they exploded onto the scene just like the explosion that happens at the end that Doctor Manhattan was blamed for or whatever it was that happened at the end. I remember LA Law had just debuted on TV, and Pinochet had escaped assassination in Chile. CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD was capturing the national consciousness. I was wearing an anti-Khadafi novelty t-shirt, listening to Falco on my Walkman tape and solving a Rubik’s cube when my eyes first fell upon its graphic novel cover at the graphic novel stand. And remember you were there too and we looked at each other like “uh huh” and we nodded because after seeing all those adventures that the Watchmen were having and everything, you knew this was history, this was the motherfuckin Hindenburg exploding into the moon on top of JFK’s motorcade. (read the rest of this shit…)
After seeing the surprisingly-good-although-probaly-still-shouldn’t-have-been-made remake of IT’S ALIVE, I got to thinking that I’d never seen the sequels to the original. And I was wondering about this ISLAND OF THE ALIVE concept in part 3, so I figured I better get part 2 out of the way first. I wasn’t really sure how you make an exciting sequel to a movie about a killer baby, it’s probaly just gonna be more of the same for the first sequel. Even the title, IT LIVES AGAIN, seems to indicate it’s gonna be a rehash. 
Remember that movie BLACK DYNAMITE that I liked so much? Writer/director Scott Sanders dropped a line to let us know that he and Mr. UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING himself Michael Jai White will be over there at the comic strip festival in San Diego playing “a new never-before-seen clip” at some of the panels:
Although THE CROW is what most people remember Brandon Lee for, it was this 1992 urban martial arts picture, his next to last starring role, that made the most serious attempt to turn him into an action icon. It positions him to continue his father’s legacy but in the context of American action of the early ’90s. John Woo and Jackie Chan movies were catching on huge here at that time, and this movie took plenty of influence from the shootouts and choreographed fights that excited us from those.
MEN OF WAR is a Dolph Lundgren mercenaries-on-a-mission movie. In the surprisingly atmospheric opening Lundgren’s ex-Special Forces character Gunar is hanging out on the streets of Chicago, wearing a hat he could wear if the movie was set during the Depression, his breath showing in the cold air. Some tough guy rudely tells him to talk to somebody, gesturing to a limo. “In the back seat?” Gunar asks and when the answer is yes he bashes the guy’s head through the backseat window and leans in to talk to the passenger. So you don’t have to wait too long for the movie’s declaration of badass intent. 
Robert Rodriguez is apparently supposed to start shooting (well, continue shooting since he shot a bunch of it as the trailer) MACHETE in a couple weeks and rumors are flying about who is in talks to be in the movie. I didn’t expect or necessarily want an all-star cast, but somebody called 
Man, it’s so sad to think about all these artists who get real good and then die in their twenties. How interesting would it be to hear old Jimi Hendrix recount the recording of Electric Ladyland, to see James Dean playing a father, or a grandfather, or Heath Ledger playing a character like Ennis at the end of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, but without aging makeup? That guy would’ve grown up to be rugged, but he didn’t have enough time. There’s such a long list of these guys who died after a period of fierce innovation, or seemingly on the verge of greatness. 
In my review of BLACK DYNAMITE I talked about how happy I was for its star, Michael Jai White, and I mentioned that one of the obstacles he overcame was that his first big starring role after TYSON was “one of the worst comic book movies ever.” (Weirdly he’s also in DARK KNIGHT, one of the best comic book movies ever.)
Man, anybody notice they do alot of remakes these days? Seems like it anyway. I’d have to research it a little more to be sure. This is the remake of Larry Cohen’s 1974 killer baby picture. I thought it was supposed to play in theaters, but that’s because I didn’t know it was from the DTV kings at Millennium Pictures and Josef Rusnak, director of ART OF WAR II: BETRAYAL and THE CONTRACTOR. This one unfortunately doesn’t star Wesley Snipes, but instead Bijou Phillips as the mother of the killer baby.In this version she’s a graduate student under some pressure to not have the baby so that she doesn’t screw up her education and throw away a career she’s been working toward. But she makes the decision to leave school to give birth and live with her boyfriend and the disabled younger brother he’s raising. The baby grows unusually fast so she has to have a forced birth. 
I always liked THE HOWLING but since the sequels are made by different people and have a reputation for poor quality I never thought to watch them. Then I watched NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, that documentary about Australian exploitation movies, and saw the clips from THE HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS by Australian director Phillipe Mora. It looked like a crazy fever dream full of low-budget-but-really-cool werewolf transformations, some of them looking straight-up cartoonish. Plus they showed how the werewolves have pouches in this one, and gave away the most memorable scene – I’ll get to that later. I figured just from what I saw there was no way this wasn’t worth watching. And I figured right. 
