Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights: Blade II

 

Guillermo del Toro mixes vampire ninjas, zombie-like hordes, and family betrayal into a slick techno-thriller with creatively choreographed fight sequences.  A stylistically improvement over the prior film as one would expect from GDT.  Snipes and Kristopherson are still awesome, and a pre Daryl Dixon Norman Reedus adds a little sleeze. The “Blood Pack” team of vamps are pretty forgettable except for Ron Perlman being the scrappy, cocky jerk he has mastered playing.  The design of the Reapers is clearly seen in del Toro’s later series The Strain. In the hands of the maestro, Blade II is a solid follow-up to the first film.

Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights: Blade

 

The late 90’s was a time for peak dark comic characters with Blade, The Crow, and Spawn. Pre MCU R-rated Marvel was something to see. Wesley Snipes embodied the day walker with a quiet unflappable confidence without coming off as overly brooding (“There's only been one Blade. There's only ever gonna be one Blade.”) Kris Kristofferson chews up any scene he is in as a supportive figure for Blade without sentimentality. While the late 20th Century techno soundtrack and cg blood effects have aged like milk, the fight and sword scenes still measure up with anything out today. The first ten minutes are iconic and earn five stars on their own. One star lost on Stephen Dorff and company falling flat as baddies. The whole concept of vampires taking over the world has been a worn out and unreasonable cliche. Looking back it’s incredible that this little vampire flick was the first salvo of a genre that would dominate cinema for the next two decades.

Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights: Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell.

Kid stuff and 30 minutes too long. “Hulk talk like regular guy” threw me. If I had a dime for every time Dr. Strange said “I summon (insert fake mystical power)” I’d have a dollar. The animation is fine and the Paranormal Containment Unit of monsters including Warwolf and Man-Thing is comic accurate. I doubt that kids ten years ago would’ve had the attention span to sit through this. A background Halloween option.

Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights: Werewolf By Night

This my second watch of composer, now director Michael Giacchino’s Werewolf By Night: Marvel’s first serious foray into its own Monsterverse. The first being 2005’s Man-Thing which was hardly a touchstone.  Initially presented as a Marvel Television Special around Halloween 2022 in black and white, Werewolf By Night was rereleased in color the following year. While the black and white version wonderfully mimicked the classic Universal monster films of yore, the color version was much more enjoyable to watch without the schtick. The kills were more graphic (although the blood was toned down for the Disney Plus audience) and the color brought out the creatures’ features vividly. The aforementioned Man-Thing design gorgeously represented the original comic book version, all green and mossy with those red glowing eyes, although much more sympathetic than the abomination of the 2006 film. In addition to directing, Gianchinno composed the outstanding score that mixed classic monster movie scores with a modern sensibility. He still remains one of my favorite composers of this century. The sets are exquisite and the acting was solid, if not entirely memorable. The only disappointment was that the parts you mostly watch a werewolf movie for, namely the transformation and rampage, were done mainly in shadow and silhouette. Rick Baker’s masterpiece work in the American Werewolf in London transformation still reigns supreme (fight me!)

Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights: Ultimate Spider-Man: Blade and the Howling Commandos

 

For our Hallloween series Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights, I watched the two episode Halloween special from the animated Ultimate Spider-Man series. These episodes highlight Spider-Man and his teen team facing off with Dracula (you read that right) and his army of shadow vampires. The team are joined by a reluctant day walker, Blade, and Nick Fury’s supernatural team of monsters. Known as The Howling Commandos, the team consists of Marvel’s version of classic Universal Monsters: Werewolf By Night, The Monster of Frankenstein, The Living Mummy, and The Man-Thing. While made for kids, the dialogue is crisp and funny and it is great seeing the Marvel Monsters getting together to kick vampires butt. A fun Halloween watch to enjoy with the kids!

Streaming now on Disney+

Thirteen Nights of Marvel Frights: Man-Thing

To kick off our Halloween series exploring Marvel monsters and horror coded films I chose to start at the bottom (of the swamp.) Back in 2005 before the MCU, Marvel film projects were spread across a wide range of studios. Lion’s Gate, responsible for the maligned Punisher films, attempted to bring one of Stan Lee’s most iconic monsters to the screen with Man-Thing. In the original comics, Dr. Ted Sallis injects himself with a prototype super soldier serum at his lab in a magical Florida swamp and gets trapped in the muck thus merging is body with the swamp creating a nearly mindless creature made of man and vegetation. The character goes on to team up with Marvel heroes to do good. The major flaw in this film is that Director Brett Leonard retcons the Man-Thing as a Seminole spirit rampaging against an oil company drilling in the sacred dark water bog. For an avenging spirit he pretty much kills indiscriminately both the good guys and bad, loosing any semblance of heroism.  Instead he just shoves branches up and into anything that walks (seriously, that’s how he kills.) 

Originally slated for the big screen, the production was smartly dumped onto the SYFY channel. There was a limited international theatrical release where it promptly bombed. It’s no wonder due to the low budget effects, poor creature design, and wooden acting. While the campiness of DC’s Swamp Thing propelled it to 80’s monster gold, there is hardly any humor in this film which takes itself too seriously. Most surprising is that both Stan Lee and Kevin Feige’s involved as Executive Producers did nothing to save it. The score by Roger Mason is serviceable and helps to elevate a few scenes. The swamp location is sufficiently creepy although curiously devoid of any alligators or snakes. A cacophony of swamp animal noises attempts to fill in for the real things. I guess animal handlers weren’t in the budget. Honestly not a lot was, and the result is a half hearted effort to bring one of my favorite Marvel monsters to the screen. Good thing he cameos in Werewolf by Night years later as the lovable pile of muck we all know. 

Real Steel Review

 I watched Real Steel to try and get a feel for Shawn Levy’s directorial style before Starfighter comes out. Also I’ve had this one on my personal watchlist for a while. Throughout the over two hour runtime, I never felt like the film dragged.  Adapting a Richard Matheson story to the screen isn’t always easy (see What Dreams May Come and I Am Legend) but screenwriter John Gatins infuses the action with enough heart to keep things moving. While the story owes much to 1979’s The Champ, the relationship between Hugh Jackman’s washed up boxer/roboboxer and his estranged son genuinely moved me. 

With both Spielberg and Zemekis as executive producers and backed up by the combined powerhouses of Amblin and Disney, I’m surprised that this film didn’t do better.  I vaguely remember that the marketing wasn’t especially memorable. Certainly not enough to get butts in theater seats. The robot effects are on par with Bay’s Transformers and coming out around the same time as the third installment, this film might have suffered from robot fatigue. While the film doesn’t set itself up for a sequel, it would’ve been cool to see a Rocky II style rematch between the two main robots.