Pulping in the 90s: The Shadow and The Phantom!

Article theme: Original Sin - Taylor Dayne

When Alex Baldwin isn't fatally shooting crewmembers on set, he sometimes acts in movies.

Alec nooo

The Shadow

One such movie was the 1994 Shadow, in which Baldwin plays another asshole who shoots people, except, unlike in real life, a Tibetan monk known as the Tulku bullies him out of his asshole ways and into a life of 1930s proto-superheroism. Baldwin, hitherto an evil opium kingpin based somewhere around the Hindu Kush, insists he doesn't want redemption, but the Tulku tells him tough shit, and that's that, apparently.

Evil Baldwin's creepy Fu Manchu nails crack me up. It's like if he became an African warlord and wore a giant plate through his lip.

The Tulku has a magic flying dagger that makes faces at you in between trying to stab you. IDK if CGI this vintage is nostalgic yet, but look at it. It's so silly.

Though I'll spend much of the remaining runtime missing Evil Baldwin, Good Baldwin is a passable substitute, especially when they let him improv:

I kinda want to splice this into his Glengarry Glen Ross scene but I'm far too lazy, so just...picture it.

Now based in New York City at its art deco height, Good Baldwin has mastered the nebulous powers of the Shadow (1994), which is just as well, because an evil villain (John Lone) is about to wake up from an ornate sarcophagus, claiming to be the last descendent of Genghis Khan. This is an odd claim because it's widely believed ol' Genghis crushed so much puss that .5% of the entire Earth is descended from him, but maybe Lil' Khan believed his ancestor's claim that he was just playing naked Twister with four hundred ladies when he walked into the old man's yurt aged four wanting a glass of airag and a bedtime story.

Lil' Khan knows how to make an entrance.

Rather than make NYC the seat of his Lil'khanate, Lil' Khan plans to blow it to high Tengri with a magic-meets-science Frankenstein nuke. I have no idea what he intended to do next, but did the Mongols ever really think that far ahead? I'd love to crack wise about the lack of foresight that leads a world-spanning empire to fragment and be absorbed into Islam but, well, I'm British, so, uh...nevermind. Fortunately Lil' Khan is as entertaining a villain as he isn't practical, amusing himself doing things like mind-controlling the guy from the diner in Mulholland Drive to do a header off a skyscraper for bagging on his steppe chic ensemble.

Bet that homeless bum behind the Winkies doesn't seem so bad now, huh Winkies guy?

Sadly our hero puts a stop to his malarkey in flamboyant fashion. For some reason the Shadow wears a mask that only covers his mouth, but grows a longer nose so that his Baldwin form can't be identified by nose size. IDK how many trvely dedicated hardcore Shadow fans were frequenting the cinema in 1994, but I think they'd have gotten away with giving him a proper mask instead, because it's weird watching a movie wondering how the protagonist's Pinocchio powers work. Does he read CNN headlines every time he transforms?

Wearing my mask like this daily from 2020-22 to troll Fauci goblins. Not all heroes wear capes (but I do).

The Phantom

But The Shadow wasn't the only 1930s pulpkino to drop in the 90s, and NO, The Rocketeer isn't the other one. The Rocketeer is based on a pretender comic strip from the 80s and is boomer truth regime bootlicking ASS. The other one is 1996's purple-bodysuitkino The Phantom (1996).

Sadly, he doesn't yell "slam evil!" when he punches people. Missed opportunity, honestly.

Billy Zane (Twin Peaks) plays the titular hero who, despite his ominous-sounding name, is an entirely amiable bro void of the mandatory angst that makes most heroes such a bore. He lives in the jungles of Madeupistan but gets caught up in Treat Williams' (Deep Rising) evil scheme to unite three magical skulls that, when placed together, unlock the incredible power of welding:

"What a treat!" - Treat.

Even when trained on a person, this hilariously underwhelming superweapon is only about as useful as a handgun, maybe moreso if it doesn't require ammunition, but Treat Williams is so pleased with himself when he gets it, he reminds me of Béla Lugosi at the end of Chandu the Magician. Other villains include Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Showdown in Little Tokyo) as a pirate, Ritchie from The Sopranos as a gangster, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as the ambiguously gay nympho leader of an all-chick squad of pilots who turns face in the end, which sounds suspiciously like Pussy Galore from Goldfinger, but apparently she was a real character in the OG comic strips so IDK who ripped off whom. Kristy Swanson (The Chase) rounds out the cast as Zane's love interest, who is apparently unable to see through his proto-Clark-Kentian disguise:

"Hmmm...nope, could be anyone" - Kristy Swanson.

Just like The Shadow, The Phantom is a good-natured time-killer with fun setpieces and period detail, but apparently most of the scenes developing the Swanson/Zane romance were cut, and you can feel their absence. Swanson's bonding scenes with Charlie Sheen in The Chase were a charm showcase that would elevate the characters' dynamic here. Hilariously, more definition is lavished upon the dynamic between Swanson and Zeta-Jones:

The great debate!!!

So, which is better? The Shadow, but I prefer The Phantom. But whichever you prefer, it's nice to know there were such sovlful tributes to the old-school pulp heroes released within at least my lifetime. Have a great week and don't forget to lock the door before you slam your evil.

Hey now.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Red Turtle!

Article theme: Ocean Rain - Echo and the Bunnymen

*Record scratch* *freeze frame* Yep, that's me. I bet you're wondering how I ended up in this predicament...

The idea that silent movies are obsolete or can only be revived sporadically as a gimmick (remember The Artist?) can be thrown out after watching The Red Turtle, a 2016 animated gem without a line of intelligible dialogue. Wouldn't a talkie feel the need to expand on the protagonist's backstory and similar nonsense? But do dreams do that? No. Our protagonist is everyman. So are we all.

Womb symbolism or an actual cave? You decide!

Everyman washes up on a deserted island anywhere or nowhere. He sets out to build a raft in hopes of escape, but some unseen force keeps smashing each progressively larger iteration, driving him back to shore. I won't spoil anything that happens, but it's not a film of plot. Take in the moments, the textures, the quiet, contemplative days, the haunting soundtrack, the emotional journey from desperation to anger to despair to hope to you'll-see-what.

Even on a bog-standard DVD, the textures are transportive.

In the same spirit as our hero, I won't say much, and it's no demerit to this monument to beauty that I don't have much to say.

Watch The Red Turtle.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Thief of Bagdad!

Article theme: Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf

Ignore the 1940 Bri'ish talkie called The Thief of Baghdad; the 1924 silent epic is by far the greater film, even though it opens with the most boomerific platitude you could imagine:

This theme is actually developed pretty well in the movie, but literally spelling it out right from the jump is like opening your magnum opus with "don't forget to floss!".

A clear influence on Disney's Aladdin, Thief stars Douglas Fairbanks as the titular protagonist, who passes his days in the Arabian metropolis lifting purses from well-heeled merchants and food from some old Jew broad. Thankfully, it's a silent movie, so we don't have to listen to her kvetch.

Oh, you'll laugh at my "white girls fuck dogs" bit from my Die Another Day article, but for this you boo?

Much time is killed with Fairbanks and his old geezer sidekick (who completely disappears from the picture at some point; IDK) robbing marks and bouncing around like Mario before the plot kicks in. We're in no hurry, because the whole time we can look at sets like this:

Oh, big deal. That's probably a matte--

Uh...

Oh. Well damn.

Fairbanks disguises himself as a prince to compete for the princess's hand with three rivals, including our Fu Manchuesque villain (Sōjin Kamiyama):

LMFAO this is like if a Mongolian said "oh, there goes John Blon Flon of Muh Puh Guh".

Posing as a prince with a minimalistic cover story (he's from very far away), Fairbanks contrives to woo the princess (Julanne Johnston) in her chambers. I wouldn't mind a chance to slip into her chambers either.

Don't say it.

I'm not saying it.

But Fairbanks' ruse is exposed, cockteasing us with the prospect of a mauling by gorilla that never occurs:

Me leaving feedback on the Uber driver who sang along to Lady Ga Ga on his radio.

Instead, he's merely beaten with whips and tossed out of the palace, now feeling remorse for what he's done. The princess is distraught, fearing she now has to choose one of the other three suitors.

That's not the first time she's had a a string of pearls across her face. Alright, I said it, but you made me.

To stall their advances, she sets them a fetch quest:

Most reasonable wahman on Tinder.

CAN Douglas Fairbanks redeem himself and win the love of his princess?

WILL Cham Shang conquer Bagdad by force or deception?

IS this century-old movie better than anything you've ever seen, despite imagining yourself quite the kinosseur? Yes to all. The absurdly huge sets and orientalist maximalist design aesthetic mog the production standards of every talkie would-be adventure or epic combined. The effects don't merely hold up, but are altogether more impressive than more recent efforts because they were done without computers. There's action, romance, laughs, intrigue and spectacle for days. Watch The Thief of Bagdad, but don't show it to your kids too soon - you'll spoil them.

Ignore the little text in the bottom right of frame; the screenshots are from the most HD upload I could find in over eight seconds of searching.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Punisher!

Article theme: just listen to the soundtrack, man.

When the Berenstein timeline forked off from our own, its Marvel chose to eschew le ironic quips and be 500% unironic chudkino, releasing nothing but sequels to 2004's The Punisher. This sole gem in the capeshit coalheap commits whole-assedly to its edgy remit. Thomas Jane's Frank Castle cracks scarcely an expression the whole runtime, pulling off the kind of cool of which we mortals only dream when we don our Columbine cosplays.

Me staring down the Asda security guard, knowing full well I turned down a receipt for my two dozen Cadbury's Creme Eggs at the till.

You know the story: Frank is an FBI agent in the movies where the FBI takes on dangerous mobsters instead of railroading old grannies who amble through the Capitol, so he incurs the wrath of mob boss John Travolta (Broken Arrow) and his wife Laura Harring (Mulholland Dr.), who orders Frank's whole family whacked as revenge for their late son. Frank alone survives to edgily take down the Travolta crime family in reverse-revenge or, as he puts it, punishment.

Much as I love you all, if this all-time Would Hall-of-Famer asked me to have your family whacked, I doubt I'd even feel bad about it.

Not content just to kill all the mobsters (though he does that too), Frank engineers an hilariously convoluted plot straight out of Orson Welles' blackface comedy Othello to convince Travolta that Harring is cucking him with his Village-Peoplely mustachioed consigliere, just to be a dick. I don't know if the scenes in which he goes as far as planting fire hydrants in front of her car to get her ticketed were meant to be Looney-Tunes-logic hysterical, but that's sure how they played to me. I wouldn't altogether write the humour off as inadvertent though; scenes featuring what I assume are bad guys from the comics (never read a damn one) lean more blatantly into cartoon mode:

Imagine being Thomas Jane and putting more work into acquiring the perfect ripped male body than I've put into everything in my life combined (no homo), then this fucking beast shows up on set.

An underrated moment has Frank contemplate the sorry state of his fridge contents as the big dude slams his head in it.

The finely-balanced humour aside, it's mostly quite a low-key, elegaic story of a man with nothing left to live for, who becomes a symbol of elusive justice; a ghost of sorts, like Eastwood's Preacher in Pale Rider. Bereaved and bereft, Frank sits alone in his room in the dark, drinking himself to death, no reason to get up tomorrow but to punish the guilty. The Morricone pastiche theme music is sadder, wearier, not gormlessly triumphant like the interchangeable themes of every latterday Marvel hero. The spaghetti western has become mythologised by those who've never seen one; in reality, most are sub-Mad Max ripoff in their quality and care, but The Punisher ekes out the poetry found in the best fistful of examples (OK, really it's all Morricone's contributions that redeem the genre, but we'll be nice).

Sorry babe, I'm stone cold incel. I don't even make eye contact with a woman (too autistic). See ya around...kid...

It's not hard to see why they never followed this up in our Berenstain timeline: the R rating put a hard cap on the potential for profit, half the prospective audience would have found the idea of a vigilante who actually kills people too heckin icky, and at some point you'd have had to break with the all-white cast of criminals for Frank to kill, which would have had the Death Wish moral-panickers squealing histrionically all over the web even back then. I give this one a pass from the safe-edgy stamp of shame only on the assumption that it's pretty much a comics-accurate origin story. Regardless, though, one well-judged, excellently-scored western-tinged chudcore classic easily outclasses every smarmy Em Cee Uuuniverse entry and offers just a hint of what might once have been, and what could be again in better times.

Sic semper soyjaks.