THE PUNISHER: UNRATED (1989, YOUTUBE) THE PUNISHER (2004, DVD) PUNISHER: WARZONE (2008, BLU-RAY)
The ideal movie version of Gerry Conway's comic book creation doesn't exist. You'd have to cherry-pick from the three existing film adaptations to Frankenstein a perfect "Punisher," and no two fans would agree on everything. My personal cinematic mixtape: Thomas Jane as he looked in his '04 version inserted into (and replacing) Dolph Lundgren in the latter's '89 movie, but with the colorful cinematography (by Steve Gainer) from '08's "Warzone." Alas, we now have Jon Bernthal's Netflix/Disney+ streaming TV adaptation as consolation prize for no "Punisher" film to date living up to its comic book potential.
"Punisher '89" is my favorite current adaptation despite Lundgren's decent-at-best acting and passable English. The uncensored version currently streaming on YouTube (by CHunKo MuNko) has snippets of VHS-quality graphic violence re-inserted into the cut I've seen for 36 years; interesting stuff, but not as impactful as I wanted it to be. :-( Dennis Dreith's military-type theme song/music rules, director Mark Goldblatt stages some decent violent spectacle for the limited (Australian) budget, the villains (Kim Miyori/Jeroen Krabbé) behave despicable enough and the sidekicks (Louis Gossett Jr./Barry Otto) are amusing. So what if Dolph doesn't wear the skull logo t-shirt? Man's too busy keeping his dangling [visible] sack off the floor while meditating buck naked in the sewers to care. :-D 3.85 BONE-PIERCING DIAMOND EARRINGS (out of five).
"Punisher '04" (directed and co-written by "Armageddon"/"The Saint" screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh) has the best on-screen representation of the character, even better than Bernthal's (my opinion). Outside of Thomas Jane's presence and the first act massacre of his entire family (including patriarch Roy Scheider in one of his final roles) very little else works. Tone fluctuates wildly between silly/goofy (fight with Kevin Nash's Russian, three goofy neighbors, the whole Harry Heck singing/driving, CG tombstones in the golf course, etc.) and deathly serious (the lengthy revenge set-up of Castle pitting his enemies against one another, the final siege at the nightclub, tentative romance with Rebecca Romijn's Joan, etc.) with an awful lot of mediocrity in-between (any scene with John Travolta's Howard Saint). A handful of actors (Will Patton, Ben Foster) walk away from this disaster unscathed, but it's easy to see why the Lionsgate suits didn't want to sequel off of it. Thomas Jane deserved better. 2 MISSING CANDELARIA TRAINING MONTAGE SEQUENCES (out of five).
Helmed by German director Lexi Alexander as if trying to prove women can be as gory/ruthless as the boys, "Punisher: Warzone" embraces the over-the-top graphic violence from the Garth Ennis era of the comic book and matches it with colorful composition/cinematography populated by larger-than-life villains. Recast with "Rome's" Ray Stevenson as Frank Castle (a decent-enough lead but his predecessors were far more memorable) and set in the big city (not Australia or freaking Tampa, Florida), "Warzone" reminds me of '90's era "Batman" movies in that the bad guys overshadow the [anti-]hero. Dominic West and Dough Hutchinson steal every scene they're in as vain mobster Billy Russoti and unhinged brother Loony Bin Jim, respectively. You can't wait to see these two die a horrible death, yet you don't mind the trail of death and sorrow they leave behind until Punisher eventually catches up with them. Supporting cast ranges from decent (Wayne Knight, brunette Julie Benz, Colin Salmon) to 'meh' (Dash Mihok, Romano Orzari's Nicky, etc.) and Alexander makes sure the $35 million budget is all on the screen. Squeamish viewers should steer clear of the cinematic carnage on display, and everyone else should do likewise because there are better Lionsgate action movies to watch (most of them starring Gerard Butler). 2.45 PARKOUR CRIMINALS BLOWN MIDAIR BY ROCKETS (out of five).
How do you take an exploitation story and not make it exploitation? Hollywood 90028 is a good example of that. The plot revolves around a cameraman surviving by working on p-o-r-n shoots in Los Angeles. There is also the matter of him strangling women. What Christina Hornisher did in her lone feature film is create a drama about the lonely life of the killer. The presentation of the story, moreover, is in an artistic style. Amid his dreary life, the protagonist meets a woman on one of his shoots and strikes up a strong connection with her. Will the hope he starts to feel being with her last? Well, it's the 1970s.
Hollywood 90028 is a film that has emerged from obscurity to get a release from Grindhouse Releasing last year.
does anyone know what this thumbnail is from!?! is there a low rent dtv Kill Bill rip off out there that i was unaware of!?! INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
Sploitation(s): Martial Arts, Gunplay, Scott Adkins, Terminatoresque, Revenge, Lets-copy-Han-from-Enter-the-Dragon-hand-gimick.
Glad to have a Free Space to fit in the new Adkins flick!! Especially as this one sees him go toe-to-toe and hand-to-metal-hand with Marko Zaror. This one is a pretty bare bones plot of an estranged father reconnecting with a daughter who's been raised by a powerful gangster. But the action..which is why we are here...is really well done with multiple great fight scenes and a solid bar shoot out. One of the better Adkins fight flicks in a while...the guy is almost 50 but is in amazing shape and an incredible martial artist.
Director Robert Michael Ingria directed one movie.
You’re reading about it.
Manny Diaz worked as a dialogue coach on and wrote The Seven Minutes, was an assistant on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and wrote the 1989 AIDS movie The Victims.
Somehow, they made a pro wrestling movie.
Hammerhead Jones is the champion of the American Council of Professional Wrestling, based in Miami, the literal heart of all wrestling in this real world. Kayfabe isn’t even a thing because all of the violence really happens to people.
Numbers Cooper (Anthony Albarino) has inherited the promotion from his kindly father. You know, like that kid in New York. He gets the idea to make all of his fights death matches where people fight with no referee until someone can’t move. Hammerhead retires instead of fighting in matches like that and supports an orphanage until his friend Mark Coleman (Joe Mascaro, the wrestling consultant; he’s also in Invasion U.S.A. and Dutch Treat, two Cannon movies) is put in a wheelchair. And now he has to fight. You’ve seen underground fight ring movies before, right?
The problem is that there aren’t many known wrestlers in this. Hammerhead is built like a car dealer who used to box when he was young because, well, that’s who he really is. But there are some real workers:
Rusty Brooks is in this. He had his own wrestling school and did enhancement matches for the WWF as well as wrestling as Super Duper Mario. Despite being born in Denton, Texas, the home of World Class Championship Wrestling, he was trained by “Gentleman” Jim Isler and Boris Malenko, spending most of his career in Florida.
Ricky Hunter is Butcher Block Barnes, a masked wrestler who wrestled under that name and as The Gladiator (I wonder if he gave that name to Florida wrestler Michael Lee Alfonoso, who wrestled as Mike Awesome in the U.S. and The Gladiator in Japan).
Joe Mirto was a lineman for the University of Miami Hurricanes, lettering from 1965 to 1967, and was a pro wrestler mainly known for doing jobs on WWF TV. He’s a tag team wrestler in this, along with Jim Young, who also appeared on WWF TV in a similar role. Crusher O’Brian is CWF wrestler Big Jim Haley; Joe ‘The Undertaker’ Markowitz is Bryan Carreiro, a former Mr. Jr. Florida who wrestled as The Terminator and The Thing.
Yet final boss Zarek is a very famous wrestler. It’s “Uncle Fred,” Fred Ottman, who wrestled as Tugboat and Typhoon in the WWF before leaving for WCW to become The Shockmaster. He fell face-first during the interview that introduced him, ruining everything. He also wrestled as Sigfried the Giant, Big Bubba and Big Steel Man. Today, he’s a WWE Hall of Famer along with Earthquake, his tag team partner as the Natural Disasters.
What amazes me most — look, I know you take any job — but this was edited by Angelo Ross, whose entertainment career started in the 30s as the dance partner of Rita Hayworth before he became an editor. Beyond this movie, he also worked as the music editor on The Hustler and edited Who Killed Teddy Bear, The Cross and the Switchblade, Smokey and the Bandit (he was Academy Award nominated for this!), Mr. No Legs, Jaguar Lives!, Masterblaster and King Frat.
Hammerhead Jones loves orphans and is prayed for by nuns, but if he wants to be seen as a man, he’s going to have to do a death match. Kids show up at these death matches — the credit “child at death match” is incredible — and this is the most carny wrestling movie ever, made by guys who would never make the big time, so they’re creating their own. A film where Rusty Brooks has better promos than the hero and little kids love him so much that they buy bald caps at the merchandise table so they can look like him. I bet Hammerhead is making all of that money and if he’s old school enough, he’s sharing a bit with the heel who puts him over strong.
Only two things about this are noteworthy. 1. It was It was one of two films to first feature Santo. 2. It was one of two Santo films filmed in Cuba right before the Castro Revolution. Those two details are more interesting than what happens in the movie, unfortunately.
This and "Vs The Evil Brain" both poorly use Santo but "Vs Infernal Men" really goes long stretches without the Man in the Silver Mask. At least "Evil Brain" has a sci-fi/horror element to keep your attention while the biggest (sloppiest) fight scene in "Infernal Men" doesn't even feature him.
There are Santo movies that are more shoddily made and nonsensical that I would rewatch over "Infernal Men" any day.
I recently acquired the Predator 4k 4-pack boxset, and I've been slowly watching it over the last few days:
Predator (1987): Still a masterpiece, go watch Patrick Willems video essay on why it's a masterpiece
https://youtu.be/InyKZ0F-fVU?feature=shared
Predator 2 (1990): The main reason why I bought this set. The first movie can easily be found in a single release, but this sequel doesn't seem to exist outside of boxsets (there was a 3-pack available at some point). Anyway, it's not a masterpiece, but I like the gonzo energy of it. The subway fight is particularly cool.
Predators (2010): The first time I saw it, I wasn't thrilled, the movie basically stop midway through when they meet Lawrence Fishburn, and never quite recover. But after viewing it a few times, I started to enjoy it, even with that Fishburn part.
The Predator (2018): Kept the worst for last, I actually watched it this morning, just to be able to talk about the set on Free Day (sorry for cheating). Damn this movie is boring. What happened guys, they showed you where to go in the previous movie. And you added a kid to the mix! What's wrong with you? It's Predator, the thing that makes Shwarzy look like a girl. Sorry Shane Black, I know you had a hand in the writing of the first movie (on-set rewrites mostly), and you're usually a good writer and decent director, but this franchise is apparently not your thing. They also try to plant a sequel at the end, which is always foolish if you're not Marvel.
I should've continued with Prey (2022), which is a great movie, but I stopped there. Dan Trachenberg did Prey, Predator Killer of Killers (also great movie) and because of those I have very high hopes for Badlands at the end of this year. I believe in you Dan.
I was going to watch this for last free space day but I took my kids camping instead.
So, Harry Hamlin and Dennis Hopper dramatize the real life rivalry between Mullholland Drive drag racers Chris Banning and Crazy Charlie Woit. But not really.
I used to drive my Miata (it actually can go fast and handles sharp turns really well, I swear) unnecessarily fast down Mullholland, late at night, before I had kids and was living on the Westside of LA. So I felt primed to love this movie.
It’s not great. Instead of day for night shooting they do a lot of night shooting and it’s a lot of headlights dancing in the dark. They finally figured it out and did the last race right before dawn.
It’s got an unhinged Hopper performance and a side story about Hamlin’s talented songwriter friend getting reamed by a sleazy music producer (Seymour Cassel) fills in the gaps between racing scenes. It kinda wastes Deborah Van Valkenburgh who had just done The Warriors.
It’s a good LA as itself movie and really does capture an era. I tool my kid on a (safe) drive down Mullholland a month ago and they’ve got speed bumps on sections of the road now, and so it really is a time capsule of something that will never happen again.
THREE FRANK CASTLES ENTER, ONLY ONE LIVES!
ReplyDeleteTHE PUNISHER: UNRATED (1989, YOUTUBE)
THE PUNISHER (2004, DVD)
PUNISHER: WARZONE (2008, BLU-RAY)
The ideal movie version of Gerry Conway's comic book creation doesn't exist. You'd have to cherry-pick from the three existing film adaptations to Frankenstein a perfect "Punisher," and no two fans would agree on everything. My personal cinematic mixtape: Thomas Jane as he looked in his '04 version inserted into (and replacing) Dolph Lundgren in the latter's '89 movie, but with the colorful cinematography (by Steve Gainer) from '08's "Warzone." Alas, we now have Jon Bernthal's Netflix/Disney+ streaming TV adaptation as consolation prize for no "Punisher" film to date living up to its comic book potential.
"Punisher '89" is my favorite current adaptation despite Lundgren's decent-at-best acting and passable English. The uncensored version currently streaming on YouTube (by CHunKo MuNko) has snippets of VHS-quality graphic violence re-inserted into the cut I've seen for 36 years; interesting stuff, but not as impactful as I wanted it to be. :-( Dennis Dreith's military-type theme song/music rules, director Mark Goldblatt stages some decent violent spectacle for the limited (Australian) budget, the villains (Kim Miyori/Jeroen Krabbé) behave despicable enough and the sidekicks (Louis Gossett Jr./Barry Otto) are amusing. So what if Dolph doesn't wear the skull logo t-shirt? Man's too busy keeping his dangling [visible] sack off the floor while meditating buck naked in the sewers to care. :-D 3.85 BONE-PIERCING DIAMOND EARRINGS (out of five).
"Punisher '04" (directed and co-written by "Armageddon"/"The Saint" screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh) has the best on-screen representation of the character, even better than Bernthal's (my opinion). Outside of Thomas Jane's presence and the first act massacre of his entire family (including patriarch Roy Scheider in one of his final roles) very little else works. Tone fluctuates wildly between silly/goofy (fight with Kevin Nash's Russian, three goofy neighbors, the whole Harry Heck singing/driving, CG tombstones in the golf course, etc.) and deathly serious (the lengthy revenge set-up of Castle pitting his enemies against one another, the final siege at the nightclub, tentative romance with Rebecca Romijn's Joan, etc.) with an awful lot of mediocrity in-between (any scene with John Travolta's Howard Saint). A handful of actors (Will Patton, Ben Foster) walk away from this disaster unscathed, but it's easy to see why the Lionsgate suits didn't want to sequel off of it. Thomas Jane deserved better. 2 MISSING CANDELARIA TRAINING MONTAGE SEQUENCES (out of five).
Helmed by German director Lexi Alexander as if trying to prove women can be as gory/ruthless as the boys, "Punisher: Warzone" embraces the over-the-top graphic violence from the Garth Ennis era of the comic book and matches it with colorful composition/cinematography populated by larger-than-life villains. Recast with "Rome's" Ray Stevenson as Frank Castle (a decent-enough lead but his predecessors were far more memorable) and set in the big city (not Australia or freaking Tampa, Florida), "Warzone" reminds me of '90's era "Batman" movies in that the bad guys overshadow the [anti-]hero. Dominic West and Dough Hutchinson steal every scene they're in as vain mobster Billy Russoti and unhinged brother Loony Bin Jim, respectively. You can't wait to see these two die a horrible death, yet you don't mind the trail of death and sorrow they leave behind until Punisher eventually catches up with them. Supporting cast ranges from decent (Wayne Knight, brunette Julie Benz, Colin Salmon) to 'meh' (Dash Mihok, Romano Orzari's Nicky, etc.) and Alexander makes sure the $35 million budget is all on the screen. Squeamish viewers should steer clear of the cinematic carnage on display, and everyone else should do likewise because there are better Lionsgate action movies to watch (most of them starring Gerard Butler). 2.45 PARKOUR CRIMINALS BLOWN MIDAIR BY ROCKETS (out of five).
HOLLYWOOD 90028 (1973, dir. Christina Hornisher)
ReplyDeleteHow do you take an exploitation story and not make it exploitation? Hollywood 90028 is a good example of that. The plot revolves around a cameraman surviving by working on p-o-r-n shoots in Los Angeles. There is also the matter of him strangling women. What Christina Hornisher did in her lone feature film is create a drama about the lonely life of the killer. The presentation of the story, moreover, is in an artistic style. Amid his dreary life, the protagonist meets a woman on one of his shoots and strikes up a strong connection with her. Will the hope he starts to feel being with her last? Well, it's the 1970s.
Hollywood 90028 is a film that has emerged from obscurity to get a release from Grindhouse Releasing last year.
I really liked this film.
Deletedoes anyone know what this thumbnail is from!?! is there a low rent dtv Kill Bill rip off out there that i was unaware of!?! INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
ReplyDeleteINQUIRING MINDS GET AN ANSWER: MULVA 2: KILL TEEN APE! https://watch.plex.tv/movie/mulva-2-kill-teen-ape
Deletebwahahaahaha...another reference to that flick!? i may actually have to watch it! "be afraid...be very afraid"
DeleteDiablo (2025 digital rental)
ReplyDeleteSploitation(s): Martial Arts, Gunplay, Scott Adkins, Terminatoresque, Revenge, Lets-copy-Han-from-Enter-the-Dragon-hand-gimick.
Glad to have a Free Space to fit in the new Adkins flick!! Especially as this one sees him go toe-to-toe and hand-to-metal-hand with Marko Zaror. This one is a pretty bare bones plot of an estranged father reconnecting with a daughter who's been raised by a powerful gangster. But the action..which is why we are here...is really well done with multiple great fight scenes and a solid bar shoot out. One of the better Adkins fight flicks in a while...the guy is almost 50 but is in amazing shape and an incredible martial artist.
I'm looking forward to this one!
DeleteHammerhead Jones (1987)
ReplyDeleteDirector Robert Michael Ingria directed one movie.
You’re reading about it.
Manny Diaz worked as a dialogue coach on and wrote The Seven Minutes, was an assistant on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and wrote the 1989 AIDS movie The Victims.
Somehow, they made a pro wrestling movie.
Hammerhead Jones is the champion of the American Council of Professional Wrestling, based in Miami, the literal heart of all wrestling in this real world. Kayfabe isn’t even a thing because all of the violence really happens to people.
Numbers Cooper (Anthony Albarino) has inherited the promotion from his kindly father. You know, like that kid in New York. He gets the idea to make all of his fights death matches where people fight with no referee until someone can’t move. Hammerhead retires instead of fighting in matches like that and supports an orphanage until his friend Mark Coleman (Joe Mascaro, the wrestling consultant; he’s also in Invasion U.S.A. and Dutch Treat, two Cannon movies) is put in a wheelchair. And now he has to fight. You’ve seen underground fight ring movies before, right?
The problem is that there aren’t many known wrestlers in this. Hammerhead is built like a car dealer who used to box when he was young because, well, that’s who he really is. But there are some real workers:
Rusty Brooks is in this. He had his own wrestling school and did enhancement matches for the WWF as well as wrestling as Super Duper Mario. Despite being born in Denton, Texas, the home of World Class Championship Wrestling, he was trained by “Gentleman” Jim Isler and Boris Malenko, spending most of his career in Florida.
Ricky Hunter is Butcher Block Barnes, a masked wrestler who wrestled under that name and as The Gladiator (I wonder if he gave that name to Florida wrestler Michael Lee Alfonoso, who wrestled as Mike Awesome in the U.S. and The Gladiator in Japan).
Joe Mirto was a lineman for the University of Miami Hurricanes, lettering from 1965 to 1967, and was a pro wrestler mainly known for doing jobs on WWF TV. He’s a tag team wrestler in this, along with Jim Young, who also appeared on WWF TV in a similar role. Crusher O’Brian is CWF wrestler Big Jim Haley; Joe ‘The Undertaker’ Markowitz is Bryan Carreiro, a former Mr. Jr. Florida who wrestled as The Terminator and The Thing.
Yet final boss Zarek is a very famous wrestler. It’s “Uncle Fred,” Fred Ottman, who wrestled as Tugboat and Typhoon in the WWF before leaving for WCW to become The Shockmaster. He fell face-first during the interview that introduced him, ruining everything. He also wrestled as Sigfried the Giant, Big Bubba and Big Steel Man. Today, he’s a WWE Hall of Famer along with Earthquake, his tag team partner as the Natural Disasters.
What amazes me most — look, I know you take any job — but this was edited by Angelo Ross, whose entertainment career started in the 30s as the dance partner of Rita Hayworth before he became an editor. Beyond this movie, he also worked as the music editor on The Hustler and edited Who Killed Teddy Bear, The Cross and the Switchblade, Smokey and the Bandit (he was Academy Award nominated for this!), Mr. No Legs, Jaguar Lives!, Masterblaster and King Frat.
Hammerhead Jones loves orphans and is prayed for by nuns, but if he wants to be seen as a man, he’s going to have to do a death match. Kids show up at these death matches — the credit “child at death match” is incredible — and this is the most carny wrestling movie ever, made by guys who would never make the big time, so they’re creating their own. A film where Rusty Brooks has better promos than the hero and little kids love him so much that they buy bald caps at the merchandise table so they can look like him. I bet Hammerhead is making all of that money and if he’s old school enough, he’s sharing a bit with the heel who puts him over strong.
Santo vs Infernal Men (1961)
ReplyDeleteDir. Joselito Rodriguez and Enrique Zambrano
Only two things about this are noteworthy. 1. It was It was one of two films to first feature Santo. 2. It was one of two Santo films filmed in Cuba right before the Castro Revolution. Those two details are more interesting than what happens in the movie, unfortunately.
This and "Vs The Evil Brain" both poorly use Santo but "Vs Infernal Men" really goes long stretches without the Man in the Silver Mask. At least "Evil Brain" has a sci-fi/horror element to keep your attention while the biggest (sloppiest) fight scene in "Infernal Men" doesn't even feature him.
There are Santo movies that are more shoddily made and nonsensical that I would rewatch over "Infernal Men" any day.
I recently acquired the Predator 4k 4-pack boxset, and I've been slowly watching it over the last few days:
ReplyDeletePredator (1987): Still a masterpiece, go watch Patrick Willems video essay on why it's a masterpiece
https://youtu.be/InyKZ0F-fVU?feature=shared
Predator 2 (1990): The main reason why I bought this set. The first movie can easily be found in a single release, but this sequel doesn't seem to exist outside of boxsets (there was a 3-pack available at some point). Anyway, it's not a masterpiece, but I like the gonzo energy of it. The subway fight is particularly cool.
Predators (2010): The first time I saw it, I wasn't thrilled, the movie basically stop midway through when they meet Lawrence Fishburn, and never quite recover. But after viewing it a few times, I started to enjoy it, even with that Fishburn part.
The Predator (2018): Kept the worst for last, I actually watched it this morning, just to be able to talk about the set on Free Day (sorry for cheating). Damn this movie is boring. What happened guys, they showed you where to go in the previous movie. And you added a kid to the mix! What's wrong with you? It's Predator, the thing that makes Shwarzy look like a girl. Sorry Shane Black, I know you had a hand in the writing of the first movie (on-set rewrites mostly), and you're usually a good writer and decent director, but this franchise is apparently not your thing. They also try to plant a sequel at the end, which is always foolish if you're not Marvel.
I should've continued with Prey (2022), which is a great movie, but I stopped there. Dan Trachenberg did Prey, Predator Killer of Killers (also great movie) and because of those I have very high hopes for Badlands at the end of this year. I believe in you Dan.
KING OF THE MOUNTAIN - 1981
ReplyDeletedir. Noel Nosseck
I was going to watch this for last free space day but I took my kids camping instead.
So, Harry Hamlin and Dennis Hopper dramatize the real life rivalry between Mullholland Drive drag racers Chris Banning and Crazy Charlie Woit. But not really.
I used to drive my Miata (it actually can go fast and handles sharp turns really well, I swear) unnecessarily fast down Mullholland, late at night, before I had kids and was living on the Westside of LA. So I felt primed to love this movie.
It’s not great. Instead of day for night shooting they do a lot of night shooting and it’s a lot of headlights dancing in the dark. They finally figured it out and did the last race right before dawn.
It’s got an unhinged Hopper performance and a side story about Hamlin’s talented songwriter friend getting reamed by a sleazy music producer (Seymour Cassel) fills in the gaps between racing scenes. It kinda wastes Deborah Van Valkenburgh who had just done The Warriors.
It’s a good LA as itself movie and really does capture an era. I tool my kid on a (safe) drive down Mullholland a month ago and they’ve got speed bumps on sections of the road now, and so it really is a time capsule of something that will never happen again.