Lists & Articles

Podcast #219: Phase IV (1974) & Creepy Crawlies

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Welcome to Episode #219 of The Swampflix Podcast. For this episode, Hanna, James, Britnee and Brandon discuss a grab bag of horror movies about bugs & slugs, starting with Saul Bass’s psychedelic killer-ants freakout Phase IV (1974).

00:00 Welcome

01:29 When the Wind Blows (1986)
07:09 Set It Off (1996)
13:16 True Crime (1995)
16:17 Television
20:50 Blonde Ambition (1981)

27:47 Bugs
36:19 Phase IV (1974)
52:34 Slugs (1988)
1:09:00 The Nest (1988)
1:15:28 Mimic (1997)

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

– The Podcast Crew

The Not-So-New 52: Reign of the Supermen (2019)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

Following on the heels of The Death of Superman, this film picks up six months later. Despite the appearance of four heirs apparent to the mantle of the Man of Steel, crime in Metropolis is on the rise. Who are these mystery men? There’s the youthful “Metropolis Kid” (who insists he is the new Superman but is nicknamed “Superboy”), a teen with Superman’s powers; there’s the more “energy projection” less “physical punching” Last Son of Krypton (who is later dubbed “The Eradicator” because of his catchphrase that “[X] must be eradicated”), who practices a less nuanced view of morality and justice than the Superman we knew and loved; there’s a new Man of Steel as embodied by super-scientist John Henry Irons in a mech suit (you know him as “Steel”); and finally, claiming to be the real Superman reanimated and undergoing ongoing repair by Kryptonian technology, there’s a half-mechanical Man of Tomorrow, a “Cyborg Superman,” if you will. In the midst of all of this, Lois and the Kents are forced to veil their grief, as “Clark” is simply “missing,” while they alone know that Superman and Clark were buried in the same coffin, although that resting place has been disturbed and the body of the late Kryptonian is missing . . .

I was surprised how much I ended up enjoying this one. The last film was little more than set-up for this one, and to be honest, there was more foreshadowing in that one that paid off here than even I realized. For instance, I did mention that there was a tour that Lois took of the lab where Kal-El’s ship was being stored and that there were holograms that were part of that ship’s records, but I didn’t imagine at the time that this was laying the groundwork for one of the false heirs, Eradicator, to actually be a hologram from the ship, one that we got to see in the first film. It had also been a while since we saw Kal-El and Diana dating, so the reminder in Death that they had a past not only contributed to the reality of their close friendship in that film, but also laid groundwork for some really nice interaction between Diana and Lois. That’s a level of detail I didn’t expect to see, and was pleasantly surprised by. These movies usually run half the length of their MCU “counterparts,” so there’s a lot less of the casual hanging out that characterizes those films and which were such an important component in that series becoming as popular as it did at its height. They run leaner and sparser, but the decision to split this overarching story into two films serves both but does this one a lot of good (that this one is 87 minutes, one of the longer of these animated features, also helps). There’s room to breathe, and there came a moment in the film where I thought to myself “Wow, a lot sure has happened in this one,” which is not something that often crosses my mind during these screenings. 

There are a lot of touches here that I really like. Superboy is initially pretty obnoxious, but the revelation that he picks up his cringeworthy slang from nineties sitcoms makes it a little more tolerable, and there’s an unusually subtle animation choice that works as a nice piece of foreshadowing; the supposed clone of Superman does not share the hero’s blue eyes, and his eyes are instead grey, like Luthor’s, which makes sense when we later learn that Lex’s DNA was added to the mix. That’s an uncommon level of attention to detail for these movies, and it did not go unnoticed in this household. The misdirect regarding the Fortress of Solitude caretaker robots referring to “Kal-El” absorbing energy while the camera pans past Eradicator is a nice one too; although we in the audience know that he’s not the real Superman, it still creates an air of mystery as to why his robots would think that Eradicator was, until it’s revealed that this was the audience’s confusion, not theirs. The scenes between Lois and Irons are also a lot of fun as she, a woman infamous for not seeing through the thinnest of disguises, says that his civilian cover isn’t very good. As the most straightforwardly heroic of the potential new Supermen, he feels like a good addition to this universe, alongside Superboy, who is a lot more fun once the narrative stops making him such a horndog. 

Within the narrative, there’s a really nice escalation of stakes when a visit from the president (who bears a marked resemblance to Hillary Clinton, which, um) to the site of the launch of the Justice League’s new Watchtower satellite. The Cyborg Superman, who has just spent some time trying to convince Lois that he’s the real Supes—just with really extensive prosthetics and some memory loss—mostly stands by when a boom tube portal opens and several of Darkseid’s minions, called “parademons,” exit and start to attack the site. Although the combined forces of the League and the Supermen are enough to fight off the parademons, the portal through which they arrived “falls” to the earth and appears to kill the League, leaving only a crater. From there, it’s revealed that the Cyborg Superman is none other than Hank Henshaw, the presumed dead astronaut from part one, who was “rescued” by Darkseid so that he could be an emissary. He begins to hand out devices that give normal people superpowers, although this is a feint intended to use the newly empowered individuals to help bring Darkseid’s forces to earth. And, of course, the real Superman, who has been slowly recovering inside of his pod, emerges just in time to resume the fight, although he’s initially too weak to do much fighting, until the Watchtower is launched and the sun rises, and … well, the rest is history. 

Everyone gets a moment to shine here, which is nice. I was surprised by how emotionally invested I had become by the time of this film’s climax, and the moment when Steel and Superboy team up to distract the assimilated Darkseid army was surprisingly potent; I didn’t pump my fist in the air, but I did get a big smile on my face, despite the fact that the fight scenes in these movies are rarely that exciting to me. Lois gets to have her face-off with the man who claimed to be her dead lover, and even Lex gets a rare moment of heroism when he manages to activate a portal that allows the Justice League to return from the purgatory dimension they were stuck in and act as the cavalry in the final battle. The fight scenes themselves are some of the best that these movies have had to offer, too, with more fluid and dynamic motion than these films have mustered, giving a slightly anime-esque feel that I appreciated. I was ultimately pretty taken aback at just how well this one worked, both as a film unto itself and as a part of this subfranchise, and it really stands out. If I had to make a complaint, it’s that there’s an extratextual piece of information that makes this feel somewhat abortive. There are only three of these “DCAMU” films left, one of which is a Batman feature (of course), one of which is a Wonder Woman movie (the first since 2009’s Wonder Woman, ten years and thirty-three films prior), and a Justice League Dark sequel to serve as the finale. It doesn’t really feel like there’s going to be another chance to check in on Superboy and Steel, which is a bit of a bummer, as they really helped with the feeling that this franchise still had a lot of room to grow and expand, and they were fun characters with the potential for some really fascinating storytelling. Of course, if there’s anything about DC that’s proven to be true over the years, it’s that they will squeeze every last drop out of their IP and then grind the dust to make break if they can, so it’s possible that these last three won’t be the last three, but I won’t be holding my breath. This is a high note for one of the last few installments, and I’d give it a chance, especially if you can combine it as a double feature with its predecessor. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Lagniappe Podcast: Eyes Without a Face (1960)

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For this lagniappe episode of The Swampflix Podcast, Boomer, Brandon, and Alli discuss Georges Franju’s surgical horror classic Eyes Without a Face (1960).

00:00 Welcome

03:50 Abigail (2024)
13:00 Twisters (2024)
22:04 Happy Together (1997)
26:01 The Swimmer (1968)
29:27 The Red Shoes (1948)
36:35 She is Conann (2024)
43:34 Kim’s Video (2024)
53:08 Wicked Little Letters (2024)
57:07 Kneecap (2024)

1:00:11 Eyes Without a Face (1960)

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

– The Lagniappe Podcast Crew

Am I OK? (2024)

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Guys, I think I just really like Dakota Johnson. Whatever it is that she’s doing, her charm just completely works on me. I sang the praises of Madame Web both upon release and again months later when I forced Brandon and Alli to watch it so we could talk about it. I love her performance in the Suspiria remake and I am among those who thoroughly enjoyed Bad Times at the El Royale. Those last two show that she has range, but I find myself still thoroughly enjoying when she plays a character that is either (a) just like she is in real life, or (b) the “Dakota Johnson” character that she performs when she’s called upon to be “herself.” I first heard about this movie when a friend—whom I had drafted into watching Madame Web with me on my May rewatch—came back from vacation having seen it, and recommended it to me directly because of my fondness for MW and DJ. And he was right! 

Am I OK? tells the story of thirty-two-year-old Lucy (Johnson), a painter who no longer paints and instead earns a living as a receptionist at a spa. Her best friend, Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), has a more professional career and is settled with her boyfriend Danny (Jermaine Fowler), until her boss (Sean Hayes) offers her an opportunity for a promotion, albeit one that would require Jane to relocate to London. The night that she learns of this, Jane takes Lucy and Danny out to celebrate; once they’re all good and drunk, Jane admits to having kissed another girl in high school, causing Lucy to spiral and admit to herself for the first time that she’s not attracted to men. With six months before she must move to the other side of the Atlantic, Jane sets out to help Lucy find a girlfriend. The biggest stumbling block is Lucy’s awkwardness and a shyness that verges on being antisocial, and her feelings of anxiety about Jane’s upcoming move only grow when she learns that Jane will be accompanied by her outgoing colleague Kat (Molly Gordon), an eccentric and fairly self-absorbed woman with whom Jane is friendly but whom Lucy can’t stand. When a new masseuse at Lucy’s work, Brittany (Kiersey Clemons), seems very flirtatious, Lucy attempts to respond but has to overcome her extreme, ingrained tendency to resist change. 

This movie takes precisely one risk, which is that it demands that you be smitten with Dakota Johnson (or “Dakota Johnson”) and enjoy watching her do her thing. (Luckily, I am and I do.) The script is very funny, and the performances are quite engaging, but this is a movie that is all about pushing Lucy out of her comfort zone while never doing the same with the viewer. And, hey, maybe that’s all that a comedy like this one needs. There were many scenes that reminded me of a friend’s recent complaint after seeing Hit Man, which was that half of the movie looked like it had been shot in an AirBnB; this movie has a very similar visual … blandness. I’ve heard Brandon bring this up in many episodes of the podcast—that a lot of movies now have a very even, clean, TV-camera friendly, CW lighting—and although that’s something that I don’t often notice (perhaps because the CW was one of the many straws that broke the camel’s back of my mind a long time ago now) this movie made it almost impossible to miss. It’s probably not something that most people would notice or care about, but I’ve never experienced this phenomenon so clearly. I really don’t want to insult the people who made this movie; I quite liked it, and I love Tig Notaro (who, alongside Stephanie Allynne, is credited as director), but there’s no camera, lighting, or blocking choice in this movie that one could describe as imaginative, thoughtful, or stylish. 

Looking at the list of other works that the film’s cinematographer Cristina Dunlap worked on, it’s a lot of shorts, TV work, and music videos, which strikes me as odd. The static nature of a lot of TV photography is present in the movie, which is, as noted, shot so conventionally that it’s almost an apotheosis of inoffensiveness; but there’s a lot of life in some of the music videos (and tour footage) that she’s shot, which doesn’t appear here at all. One of the few times that the film does something dynamic instead of rotating through the same sets (yoga studio, spa, Jane’s office, Lucy’s apartment, the diner where Lucy always orders the same thing) is when Jane and Lucy go on an exercise outing together, and it’s the scene from which the poster image of Lucy crying is taken. Jane and Lucy are going up and down a set of outdoor stairs, and the setting felt like an homage to that scene in You’ve Got Mail that shows Tom Hanks and Dave Chappelle at the gym. It’s the only time that the film ever really breaks out of its shot/reverse-shot TV rhythm and its antiseptic interiors, but that this is the only time it does so (other than a short sequence near the end at a “hammock retreat”) means that there’s a lot of this movie that relies solely on the wittiness of the dialogue and the charm of the characters. Luckily, there’s more than enough of that to go around. 

I will admit that I was hoping I could play The Madame Web Game while watching this one (that’s where you point at the screen and shout “It’s a web!” every time something vaguely weblike appears), and while I have to give it a zero out of ten for web sightings, it’s a solid seven out of ten spiders for comedy. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Not-So-New 52: The Death of Superman (2018)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

When I first heard that DC animated had released a film titled The Death of Superman, I wasn’t that surprised. I had, at the time, only recently attempted to watch Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay and had, as I noted in the review of that film, found the opening to be rather tasteless. As a result, when hearing that a new adaptation of Superman’s death was about to be released, I thought, “Didn’t they already do that?” and then thought, “Oh, I guess they’re really just out of ideas.” Now that I’ve watched all of these (so far) in order, I have to say that it was more that this was where an adaptation of that story best slotted into this sub-franchise of the DCAMU, the eleventh of these films overall. It’s a little thin, all things considered, but that’s really because it’s more about setting up the next film than it is about the actual narrative that this adaptation covers. A little comic history: back in the nineties, DC was getting ready to marry Lois and Clark/Superman. However, at the time, the ABC series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, was currently airing, and they wanted to marry the two characters to one another, but not for at least another season. So, ABC called in a favor and DC came up with a plan to delay the comic marriage of Clark and Lois until it was time for it to happen in the show as well, for synergy. As a result, they came up with the idea to “kill” Superman temporarily and then have a yearlong series of stories in which various characters attempt to fill the void that his death created, before the real deal triumphantly returns to reassume his place. That one little decision on behalf of a mostly forgotten Superman-adjacent primetime TV show is why we’re here today. 

Despite their previous appearances together showing them enjoying one another’s company on a few dates, Superman (Jerry O’Connell) and Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson) are now merely good friends and colleagues, and Superman has taken up dating his beloved Lois Lane (Rebecca Romijn) in his civilian identity as Clark Kent, although he has not yet come out to her as being Superman. Wonder Woman encourages him to do so, and his need to make a decision sooner than later is exacerbated when a meeting of the Justice League reveals that The Flash (Christopher Gorham) is getting married soon, and when Kal-El asks Barry if Iris “knows,” Barry tells him that he revealed his identity to her “ages ago.” Shortly after Superman gives Lois a tour of S.T.A.R. Labs, which houses the spacepod that brought him to earth and which contains holographic records that include an image of his parents, his other family, the Kents, arrive in town and want to meet Lois. Over the course of their dinner, Lois comes to realize that she actually knows almost nothing about her beau, for the first time recognizing how guarded he is around her and wondering what the cause is. She leaves him for the night, and he has a heart to heart with his mother wherein she admits that, at her age, it doesn’t seem like keeping secrets is really all that important anymore. 

On the less domestic, more superheroic side of things, we learn that Lex Luthor (Rainn Wilson) has found a way to circumvent his house arrest and is still up to nefarious doings, including attempting to create a clone version of Superman which he can control as well as merging earth and Apokoliptian technology to sell to criminals. Seemingly coincidentally, a “boom tube” wormhole opens not far from the earth, spitting out a misshapen asteroid that starts to fall toward the planet, crashing into the ocean. Several of Aquaman (Matt Lanter)’s guards converge on the undersea crash site at the same time as a Lexcorp submersible. All are slain by a monster that emerges from the wreckage, who then makes his way to land and toward Metropolis, killing every living thing in his path. In the meantime, Clark reveals his secret to Lois, only to be called away to deal with the monster after it takes out the entire rest of the Justice League, although Wonder Woman goes down last and hardest. Clark leaves a note for Lois with his last secret (“I love you”) and then heads out to defeat the monster, while also having to deal with interference from Luthor, who gets involved both because of his ego and because he believes that the monster’s genetics will help him to stabilize the unstable makeup of all the deformed clones he’s hiding in the basement of Lexcorp. 

While 2007’s Superman: Doomsday served to condense both the “Death of Superman” and the “Reign of the Supermen” comic arcs into a single movie, this one covers only the former and gives that original narrative some breathing room. I’m torn about the ongoing expansion of the Justice League as it seems to continue to happen largely offscreen and/or in the background. Justice League: Dark showed Hawkman and Martian Manhunter hanging around the League’s headquarters in non-speaking roles, and while Manhunter gets a line this film (voiced by Nyambi Nyambi), it’s strange that we don’t get a sense of camaraderie between the characters in the way that the earliest of these movies did. The relationship between Clark and Diana is strong, but the fact that Superman didn’t even know that the Flash was getting married makes it seem like, although this team is growing in number between movies when we’re not getting to see it, they’re not growing in friendship, and that’s the only reason that anyone would have to remain emotionally invested in this series as it advances. At least this one, since Batman is really and truly powerless against an unstoppable killing machine with no weak points, he gets out of the way and lets Superman take center stage here, although Wonder Woman is no slouch either. That inclusion of the whole League, however, allows for a consistent heightening of the stakes that appropriately ratchets the tension, even if we already know Superman is headed for his death because, you know, the title is at the beginning. 

Of course, there are the seeds of the Supermen to come in this one. We see a young super clone being grown in a vat like a Venture brother; we meet Dr. John Henry Irons, who will eventually become Steel; we even get to see a hopeful astronaut named Hank Henshaw remain optimistic that Superman will save his crew even as their ship is pelted by debris from the asteroid’s incursion, killing his wife and their other companions, and even if you don’t know where that’s going, it’s successful as foreshadowing. Those are fun little seeds being planted. As for other things I really like, having O’Connell’s real life spouse voice Lois is a cute little treat, and their great natural chemistry comes through in the performance. Romijn is an underappreciated star, in my opinion, but she’s not given the same potency of material here that Anne Heche had on her plate in Doomsday. The best parts of that movie come after the fight with Doomsday that take up only Act I of that film (and which serves as the final climax of this one), wherein Lois grieves in secret because while the whole world mourns Superman she’s mourning Clark, struggles with her conflicting feelings about seeking comfort with the Kents, who are (as in this one) strangers to her, is initially delighted that Superman seems to have been resurrected only to be devastated by his reserved treatment of her. Romijn’s Lois isn’t given as much to do; the story focuses more on Clark’s internal struggle with whether to tell her his secret than it does on her learning the truth and puzzling out all the implications. When she thinks Clark is going to break up with her, she tells him that she’s absolutely not going to stop coming into the office, as if this eighties-ass Kate & Allie punchline is supposed to be empowering, when instead it besmirches the entire script. Hepburn and Tracy it ain’t. 
This one is fine. It’s not predictable that some fringe film critic is going to sit down and watch all of these movies week after week; it’s logical to assume that the decade plus between the release of Doomsday and this movie would mean that you probably forgot most of the story beats for this even before they changed up other plot elements, or that Doomsday came out when you were too young to notice these things and now you’re a sophomore or a junior and thus the primary audience for this. (We should never really be under any illusion about that, and recognize that these movies rise above mediocrity at any point is kind of a miracle, to be honest.) This one is above the average for this overall franchise, but it’s missing something special that would push it into a more memorable state. It’s a necessary step in this film series, and thus can’t really be skipped, but it’s one that there’s no real reason to recommend other than for that reason, so take from that what you will.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Not-So-New 52: Suicide Squad – Hell to Pay (2018) 

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

A few years back, [Erstwhile Roommate of Boomer] and I were browsing through the then-current version of the HBO app and stumbled upon the then-latest DC animated movie. We managed to barely get through the opening, which we found kind of distasteful and crass. That movie was Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, and I wasn’t really looking forward to this one on this watch-through, since my previous experience was negative. Upon watching the film in its entirety, however, I can report it’s actually pretty fun. Whereas the humor in Batman and Harley Quinn mostly missed the mark, this one manages to weave together an interesting narrative that plays to the strengths of the characters chosen for this outing, while also tapping into an irreverence that previous darker attempts at comedy failed to achieve. 

After a cold open in which an ill-conceived attempt by a couple of hotheads to get out of Suicide Squad duty leaves everyone but Deadshot (Christian Slater) dead, Amanda Waller (a perfectly cast Vanessa Williams) sends him into the field alongside the moralistic martial artist Bronze Tiger (Billy Brown), gimmicky sharpshooter Captain Boomerang, literal and figurative ice queen Killer Frost (Kristin Bauer van Straten), cybernetically enhanced Copperhead, and, of course, Harley Quinn (Tara Strong). Their mission: to retrieve a magical object, a literal “Get Out of Hell Free” card, which Waller secretly seeks for herself as she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and now that the truth is out that hell is quite real, she knows she’s got a better shot at cheating her way out of it than seeking redemption. Two other parties are after the object, however, as immortal (but as he points out, not invulnerable) mutant caveman Vandal Savage is after is in pursuit of the card, as is the Reverse Flash. This film ties itself back to Flashpoint Paradox by having C. Thomas Howell reprise this role, and his whole deal is that when he was shot in the head at the end of that film, he “froze” himself in the moments before death with his superspeed, but each time he uses it, he gets that much closer to dying from the wound. (You just kind of have to go with it.) 

The end of this one is a bit of a foregone conclusion. You don’t really introduce a member of this team whose imprisonment is the result of revenge killing the men who murdered his family, and who remains tortured by the loss of them despite being a vigilante who is willing to kill, and then also have a get out of hell free card, without the audience putting those two puzzle pieces together long before the finale. There are a lot of fun twists and turns along the way, though, and the comedy pretty much lands. Waller has to make this mission “off the books” (since it’s really her personal play to avoid damnation rather than a government sanctioned action), so the Squad heads out to the card’s last known location in a decrepit RV. This means that, of course we’re going to have a scene where Copperhead flashes his fangs at a child in the next car while they’re on their road trip to scare them, and of course we’re going to have a bus full of nuns show up at some point as a visual gag. A lot of it is pretty rote, but there’s some playfulness that makes this one a little more memorable. Of particular note is that the person that the group is initially sent to find, Steel Maxum, turns out to be both an exotic dancer and the unlikely former host of DC cosmic org chart bigwig Doctor Fate. Greg Grunberg has some fun with the role, playing up the guy’s himbo nature, which is so at odds with extreme stoicism of Doctor Fate that it makes for some good gags. Used to less comedic and more dramatic effect is the way that Vandal Savage’s plans are ultimately undone by his own inhuman morality; his daughter turns on him after Vandal allows her girlfriend to be killed in some crossfire, citing that she is “expendable.” He later says that he has had more children than he could ever count, and yet they always fail him because they think too small, when it seems like the real lesson he keeps failing over and over again is not to underestimate the power of love. 

With one that functions as well as this one does, there’s not much more to say without simply recapping more of the film’s comedic moments, and I think that this one is better enjoyed than it is retold. It’s pretty funny, so I say: go forth and enjoy. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Lagniappe Podcast: Planet of the Vampires (1965)

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For this lagniappe episode of The Swampflix Podcast, Boomer, Brandon, and Alli discuss Planet of the Vampires (1965), Mario Bava’s atmospheric Italo sci-fi precursor to Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979).

00:00 Sarah Squirm: Live + In the Flesh
05:40 Video rental stores

08:11 Fright Night (1985)
13:35 Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
20:07 Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)
22:49 Spirited Away (2001)
27:01 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
30:48 But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
33:48 Blade Runner (1982)
37:02 Am I Okay? (2024)
42:13 Longlegs (2024)
55:26 MaXXXine (2024)
1:00:00 A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
1:03:13 Twisters (2024)

1:06:36 Planet of the Vampires (1965)

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

– The Lagniappe Podcast Crew

Horror’s Summer Blockbuster Era

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The tongue-in-cheek superhero team-up Deadpool & Wolverine releases wide this week, and its box office performance is sure to attract a lot of scrutiny from online pundits who specialize in that kind of thing.  That’s because the once-dependable genre of live-action superhero blockbusters has largely retreated from suburban multiplexes to instead play it safe on streaming platforms like Disney+, leaving a massive void on movie theater marquees the past couple summers.  I’m sure much will be written about what the Deadpool sequel’s box office receipts indicate about the future of live-action superhero media in particular, as well as the future of theatrical exhibition for big-budget movies in general, but that’s not the story that’s got my attention right now.  What’s fascinated me in this summer’s superhero drought is the genre that’s swooped in to replace those traditional blockbusters with an entirely different kind of corporate IP: the horror franchise.  Instead of saving anticipated horror sequels for the Halloween pre-gaming of Fall, studios have found open space in the summer release calendar to position them as the big-ticket Movie of the Week, to easy financial success.  It helps that horror movies typically cost 1/100th of a superhero blockbuster budget, making them better suited to turn a profit with the current, shrunken moviegoing public, but it’s still an interesting shift.

There are two original, non-franchise horror movies of note in theaters right now that are easily the scariest I’ve seen all year: the Irish ghost story Oddity and the Satanic serial killer thriller Longlegs.  Those standalone creep-outs are not the kind of horror blockbuster I’m describing here.  When I recently had a couple days off work to spend at The Movies, most of what was accessible to me were IP-extenders for already-established horrors & thrillers, all released this summer.  I felt the same way watching that triple feature of MaXXXine (a sequel), A Quiet Place: Day One (a prequel), and Twisters (a rebootquel) that I usually feel watching sequels, prequels, and reboots to big-budget action movies this time of year: mild, momentary amusement that quickly faded from my memory the further away I got from the theater.  Longlegs & Oddity are designed to unnerve the audience by dragging us through previously unseen corners of Hell, guided by the Twisted Minds of their respective auteurs (Oz Perkins & Damian Mc Carthy).  The horror sequels & prequels they’re up against are too warmly familiar to unnerve anyone.  They were designed to remind us of movies we already like, providing a pleasantly violent atmosphere where we can purchase & consume popcorn.  They’re essentially the MCU for nerds in black t-shirts who already have definite Halloween plans months in advance.

In that context, this trio of movies were adequately entertaining.  Like X, MaXXXine is mostly a work of pastiche, updating the 70s Texas Porn Star Massacre grime of the original to the New Wave Hookers grime of the warped-VHS 1980s.  That 80s aesthetic may not be as novel for a modern slasher as the Old Hollywood melodrama of the X prequel Pearl, but it at least panders enough to my personal tastes to give the movie a pass.  For all of MaXXXine‘s vintage horror & porno references, though, the thing it reminded me of most was Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Red Riding Hood arc on the third season of The Deuce, which only places it about 5 years deep into the archives instead of the 40 it aimed for.  It’s fun, but it’s fluff.  Mia Goth is notably subdued as the porn-star-victim on the run after she got to play unhinged villain in the franchise’s last outing, which is something I could also say about director Michael Sarnoski’s presence in Day One, his prequel to A Quiet Place.  Sarnoski’s debut feature Pig was an emotionally devastating riff on the John Wick revenge pic, sending a wounded Nicolas Cage on a culinary warpath that established the director as a name to watch.  It’s a shame, then, that Sarnoski’s follow-up is just . . . another Quiet Place.  There’s a little novelty in the franchise’s move to an urban setting at the exact moment of alien invasion, but otherwise Day One is just more of the same – similar to MaXXXine‘s shift to an 80s horror-porno aesthetic only slightly shaking up the X status quo.

The most successful film of this trio is the decades-later rebootquel Twisters, which updates the storm-chasing hijinks of the 90s Jan De Bont blockbuster Twister with small touches of dramatic restraint from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung (joining Sarnoski in the one-for-them check cashing line at the bank).  Some might balk at the idea of labeling either Twister movie as Horror, but they’re both essentially monster-attack movies wherein the the monster happens to be bad weather.  Both films climax at small-town horror screenings (The Shining in Twister and Frankenstein in Twisters) where the tornado rips through the screen as a direct, literal replacement for horror icons being projected from the past.  The reason I’m pushing to include Twisters here is that it exemplifies what the future of horror blockbuster filmmaking might become.  I’m shocked to report that I enjoyed the tornado movie more than the apocalyptic monster movie or the retro porno-horror, likely because it’s the one that’s most honest about the familiar, unchallenging entertainment it aims to deliver.  Twisters is an emotionally satisfying pick-up truck commercial—complete with country-rock soundtrack—that occasionally takes breaks from promoting Dodge Ram products to indulge in thunderous kaiju horror action.  Chung asserts his tastefulness as a serious artist by cutting out two traditional summer blockbuster payoffs that would’ve mapped it directly to a 90s template: the movie’s Big Bad being sucked into a tornado and a Big Kiss being shared between the leads.  Otherwise, he’s making an anonymous, IP-driven action movie, and that shamelessness mostly works in his favor.  It’s the kind of summertime fun you want to eat mozzarella sticks to.

Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here.  It was cute & relatable for Lupita Nyong’o’s doomed hero in A Quiet Place: Day One to seek one last comfort before death at a neighborhood pizzeria, but the success of Twisters suggests a better way.  Maybe Sarnoski & company should have capitalized on the Blooming Onion facial design on the Quiet Place monsters and scored a tie-in promotional deal with Outback Steakhouse, sending Nyong’o to seek comfort there instead.  A24 certainly understands the value of that kind of old-school hucksterism, and you can currently purchase a commemorative MaXXXine thong from their online giftshop, among other X-branded wares.  All they need is some Universal Pictures-scale monetary backing to reach their full horror blockbuster potential.  Or maybe this is all just a fluke.  It’s possible that the lucrative return of Deadpool or The Joker or The Avengers will convince Hollywood to exclusively get back into the superhero movie business, putting this summer’s horror blockbuster era to a swift end.  Personally, I hope not.  I didn’t necessarily appreciate these horror sequels & prequels on any deeper level than I appreciate a Marvel or Star Wars or Fast & Furious picture, but I do prefer to spend my time in their stylistic milieu.  Any excuse to hide from the New Orleans heat in the darkened, air-conditioned rooms of my neighborhood theater is welcome, but the more monsters we can cram into those rooms the better.

-Brandon Ledet

The Not-So-New 52: Batman – Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

It had to happen eventually that one of these animated movies would emerge as an object lesson in adaptation that’s faithful in some ways and divergent in others, to ill effect in both realms. Batman: Gotham by Gaslight was a critically and commonly well-received 1989 Elseworlds comic that asked, What if Batman, but steampunk? and What if Batman fought Jack the Ripper?, which was the style at the time. This film adapts both of those questions directly, although it chooses a different culprit for who the Ripper turns out to be (it’s still an effective mystery, but who’s behind the Ripper’s blade in the comic is that story’s equivalent of The Joker, that comparison is absent here and the killer is someone else. Gotham by Gaslight transports the (apparently) eternally fertile narrative ground of a serial killer in the London Fog has been transported to the nearly identical (but explicitly American, even in this setting) city of Gotham, where the city streets are stalked by two different disguised men. The first, of course, is the Ripper, whose true identity forms the core mystery of the story. The other is a Victorian Batman, who is in fact the city’s recently returned prodigal son, the orphaned billionaire Bruce Wayne (Bruce Greenwood). 

As with a lot of What if [Character] but [Specific Era/Location]? stories, this one transports all of the accoutrement of the character to the time and place that the author (or, more commonly, fanfiction writer) has a fascination with. So, while “Catwoman” isn’t here, Selina Kyle (Jennifer Carpenter) is, as an actress and singer who grew up as the daughter of a lion tamer, hence a handiness with a whip and an affection for cats. Leslie Thompkins, the kindly child psychologist who helped mend the young Bruce’s psyche in the comics, is here Sister Leslie (Grey Griffin), who ran the orphanage in which Bruce was raised. There’s a district attorney Harvey Dent, a showgirl (and, lest we forget because this is a Ripper story, sex worker) Pamela Isley, a police Commissioner named Gordon, a Doctor Hugo Strange, and so on and so forth. It’s a conceit that I think can be fun and rewarding, but can also be kind of tired. In fact, the thing that I felt most weighed down that recent Matt Reeves Batman movie was the fact that it was a Batman movie, and thus in the middle of this high budget, grimy neo-noir featuring some interesting creative choices, decent editing, and occasionally great visuals, you also had to have Colin Farrell as the Penguin for some reason. This kind of “Batman skin on a Victorian period piece” integration of the whole rogues gallery usually works best when the narrative finds something interesting to do with it or a way to twist expectations, and it does do that here in one small way, as there is both a Two-Face and a Harvey Dent, but they are not the same person here. 

Visually, the most frustrating thing about this one is that it uses the general design aesthetics of the source material (simplified for animation) but none of the grain or grit that made that one’s overall look so memorable. In fact, although there have been other releases in this overall franchise that looked worse, the discrepancy between the mood and atmosphere of the original comic and this adaptation make this one feel cheaper than those others. For instance, take a look at this page of the original comic, which evokes both the yellowing of a newspaper and the sickly yellow light of the oil lamps in the district in which the scene takes place. It sets a tone that is lacking from this movie. That’s an overall issue with a lot, but not all, of these movies. When adapting from a well-liked source material, one can choose to try and imitate the original art as closely as possible while also “sanding off” some of the detail work that would be too difficult to animate (like New Frontier or All-Star Superman), or make something that looks completely different (like Doomsday’s use of a more Bruce Timm style, or Superman vs. The Elite’s Tartakovsky-esque crescent moon head shapes). This chooses to do some detail sanding in order to ape the art style of the original, but in doing so genericizes the overall feel of Mike Mignola’s pre-Hellboy artwork and the moodiness that made the graphic novel memorable enough to attempt to adapt nearly thirty years later in the first place. Paradoxically, this one is well-drawn but ultimately flat-looking, and not dynamic enough or visually arresting enough to really capture your attention. 

That said, if you’re going to watch this one, it’s going to be because you’re interested in seeing who the Ripper is, and I won’t spoil that for you here. It’s a novel (and welcome) choice to forego any Jokery completely, and the twist is satisfactorily executed, with the fact that the Ripper was driven mad by the inhumanity he witnessed during the Civil War being an interesting touch. Performance-wise, the return of Greenwood to the Batman role after previously voicing him in Under the Red Hood is a good one, and his performance helps inflate some of the limper elements of the story. When it comes to the casting, however, the standout here is Anthony “Giles from Buffy” Head as Alfred, although he is underutilized. Perhaps you, dear reader, have not seen so many of these that you need them to be visually dynamic in order to be appreciated, and a middle of the road Jack the Ripper story dressed up in cape and cowl will be more fun for you. At the same time, if that’s what you’re looking for, what you really want to get your hands on is the 1989 comic. Your library system probably has a copy! Why don’t you go look that up right now, actually? 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Podcast #217: Monkey Man (2024) & New Releases

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Welcome to Episode #217 of The Swampflix Podcast. For this episode, Hanna, James, Britnee and Brandon discuss a grab bag of new releases from the first half of 2024, starting with Dev Patel’s caste-system fight club revenger Monkey Man.

00:00 The best of 2024 (so far)

02:52 MaXXXine (2024)
05:03 Pretty Poison (1968)
07:29 Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (1963)
11:03 The Coffee Table (2024)
15:57 Kill (2024)
17:33 Deewaar (1975)

21:40 Monkey Man (2024)
38:17 Problemista (2024)
51:03 Sometimes I Think About Dying (2024)
1:08:06 Aishiteru! (Safe Word, 2024)

You can stay up to date with our podcast through SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, TuneIn, or by following the links on this page.

– The Podcast Crew