Beware the Batman: Shadows of Gotham, Season 1 Part 1

beware the batman

Batman is probably my favorite superhero. I love that he doesn’t have superpowers. He can’t fly, he doesn’t have super strength. He can’t shoot rays out of his eyes, etc. He is very strong and well-trained, but he’s still very much a regular human. There have been lots of reiterations of him on the big screen and the small, not to mention all the different comics.

Beware the Batman was a short-lived television series that aired on the Cartoon Network. I reviewed it back in 2014 and now you can read it here.

Anna May Wong Collection Is the Pick of the Week

anna may wong box set

For several years I wrote a column over at Cinema Sentries where I would peruse all of the new Blu-ray/DVD releases coming out in a given week and then pick one as my…well, pick. Then I’d give a brief mention to all the other releases that sounded interesting to me.

Somewhere in the middle of Covid I got a little overwhelmed and stressed out at my life and I stopped writing it. Someone else picked it up and that someone is now getting a little tired of writing it. So, I decided to start writing it again. As of right now the plan is for me to write one this week and then the other person will write it next week and we’ll rotate back and forth.

I always enjoyed writing the article as it helps me keep up with what’s coming out each week. And now you can, too. Here‘s my article for this week.

The Movie Journal: April 2023

the king of comed poster

I watched 40 movies in April. Thirty-Five of them were new to me. Only four of them were made before I was born. That’s because my theme for this month was the Awesome ’80s in April. I watched 31 movies from that decade and reviewed most of them.

That’s really good for me. It turns out that watching movies from one particular decade (especially a popular one) is rather easy. I mostly didn’t get bored either (as I often do when I’ve chosen a genre for the month’s theme) because the 1980s hold all kinds of different movies. I watched action films, and horror films, comedies, thrillers, and dramas.

I will say here towards the end I got a little tired of it. I missed watching classic movies, and modern ones too. The month didn’t turn out quite as I expected. I really thought I’d wind up watching a bunch of movies from Spielberg or starring Schwarzenneger and the like. I thought I’d watch more of the big blockbusters that I grew up watching as a kid.

But I wasn’t really in the mood for those. Or rather what I really wanted to watch were films from the 1980s that I’d never seen before. And that’s mostly what I did. They weren’t all great, but I’m really glad I got to fill in some gaps.

I haven’t quite decided yet what my theme for May is going to be. I was originally going to go with Erotic Thrillers but that would keep me in the 1980s and 1990s and I suspect I’ll really get to itching for some classic movies if I go with a relatively modern set of films again. Right now I’m thinking about Pre-Code movies (films made from about 1927 to 1934) but I also suspect I’ll get a little bored with those after a bit.

Maybe I’ll split the month up and do both.

Stats for 2023:

Number of Movies Watched: 171
Number of New To Me Watched: 143
Star of the Year: James Coburn, 6 films watched
Director of the Year: Sam Peckinpah, 6 films watched.

Here’s the complete list.

Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
Color of Night (1994)
The Sunday Woman (1975)
Hôtel du Nord (1938)
Bound (1996)
A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)
Tag (2018)
The Suspect (1944)
The Big Red One (1980)
The King of Comedy (1982)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive (1989)
Tightrope (1984)
Stage Fright (1987)
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Street Smart (1987)
The Final Countdown (1980)
Night Game (1989)
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Pale Rider (1985)
Yes, Madam! (1985)
The Bedroom Window (1987)
Call Me (1988)
Silver Bullet (1985)
Evils of the Night (1985)
Dune (1984)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Purple Rain (1984)
Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
2010 (1984)
Chopping Mall (1986)
Monkey Shines (1988)
The Presidio (1988)
Flash Gordon (1980)
Mad Max 2 (1981)
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Dead Calm (1989)
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Firestarter (1984)

Happy 90th Birthday, Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson is, in part, responsible for The Midnight Cafe. At least the name I chose for this blog. In college, me and some friends used to hang out in my buddy Matt’s dorm room late at night. We’d stay up late listening to music, playing poker, eating terrible and cheap food, and talking.

Matt was always the joker. He was one of those guys who thought it was funny to answer the phone with a dumb gag. One night we were having some sandwiches and chips and the like and the phone rang. “Welcome to the Midnight Cafe” he answered, “what can I get you?” The name stuck and that group of friends from then on became The Midnight Cafe. When I was deciding on a name for this blog it only seemed natural to call it The Midnight Cafe. And here we are.

Willie was in regular rotation at the Cafe, and on some nights, when most of our friends had called it a night, Matt would light some candles and put on “Stardust.” We’d sit up into the wee hours talking about life, God, and girls. Mostly girls. Mostly girls who had recently broken our hearts.

Though we’ve gone our own ways, and somewhat drifted apart, I’m still friends with those guys. And Willie Nelson will always have a special place in my heart.

So happy birthday, Willie. Here’s to 90 more years of life and music and friends.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)

a return to salmes lot poster

‘Salem’s Lot was one of the first Stephen King novels I ever read. It remains one of my favorites. Tobe Hooper made a pretty good TV mini-series out of it in 1979. Apparently, Larry Cohen had originally been slotted to adapt the book, but the executives hated his screenplay and gave Hooper the job instead.

Years later Warner Brothers approached Cohen to direct a low-budget horror film for them and he pitched the idea of a sequel. Interestingly, the sequel was intended as a theatrical film and in fact, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and saw a limited American release. But the reviews were terrible and the box office a dud and so it pretty quickly went straight to the VHS shelves.

Outside of a few gorey effects, a couple of naked breasts, and a lot of children swearing, the film feels very much like a made-for-TV movie. The budget was clearly small, the acting amateurish, and it is edited within an inch of its life.

It follows Joe Webber (Michael Moriarty), an anthropologist who is called away from studying a native tribe in the South American jungle to take care of his young, troubled son Jeremy (Ricky Addison). He takes him to a run-down house he’s inherited in the small New England town of Jerusalem’s Lot (or Salem’s Lot as it is sometimes called).

Pretty quickly he realizes the town’s inhabitants are either vampires or their human slaves. Actually, they pretty much straight-up tell them who they are because they want him to write a book about them. To convince him to do this they kidnap the boy and get a young vampire girl to sweet-talk him into becoming a vampire as well.

Joe figures this is a good time to hook up with his childhood sweetheart and do a little remodeling of his old homestead. Seriously, the film makes some really odd choices.

Soon enough a Van Helsing-like vampire hunter shows up (played by director Samuel Fuller in a rare acting role) and eventually our heroes get to some actual vampire slaying.

A Return to Salem’s Lot feels like it should have been a mini-series. There are a lot of ideas floating around in it, but few of them get explored. A lot of scenes feel like they were cut short, as if maybe a lot of footage was shot but due to time constraints they had to be cut. Or maybe they just didn’t have the budget to shoot everything in the script.

As it is it feels very disjointed, and unrealized. There are some interesting ideas. The original story is basically ‘what if Dracula showed up in a small American town’ and this one takes that concept and has the vampires take over the entire town. Yet here they are also a persecuted minority. They fled Europe with the Pilgrims for the safety of the new world. They are good Americans. They don’t even kill humans (well, most of the time) but breed cows for their blood needs – and it is quite a scene watching some elderly actors pretend to suck the blood out of cows lying in a pasture.

All of this creates some light satire of American consumer culture, but again it is pretty disjointed and cut to shreds.

Despite all of this I still rather enjoyed it. Cohen knows his way around a low-budget picture and he gives it enough oomph to make it not terrible. Fuller is having a blast playing the crotchety old hunter.

Not a great movie by any means, but a fun one to watch.

Watch Wet Leg Perform “Ur Mum” at Coachella, 2023

Generally speaking, I hate algorithms on Youtube and music sites and the like. They tend to rotate in the exact same things over and over sending you into a insipid spiral of conformity. But every now and again they will produce something wonderful.

I’d never heard of Wet Leg before today. I turned on Youtube looking for something fun to post and randomly clicked on this video of them performing at Coachella. I was instantly mesmerized. This band has something special. I’ve since listened to several more songs and am really digging them.

Check it out.

Awesome ’80s in April: The Big Red One (1980)

the big red one poster

I’ve talked a little in this series about memory and the movies. Or rather, how this series continually brings up memories of both me watching certain movies or just knowing about their existence in various ways. That probably isn’t interesting to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating, and this is my blog so I’m gonna keep talking about it 🙂

My first memory of The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller’s movie loosely based on his experiences in World War II, is of the DVD cover. I was in Walmart many years ago looking through their movie selection and came across a copy of The Big Red One. It was an evocative cover that was mostly black with a big white outline of a rifle and the title was all in white except for the word “red.” Well, you can see what I mean up above.

I immediately wanted it. I read the back cover and it promised to be a full restoration of Fuller’s lost film. It had lots of extra footage. It was a masterpiece. That sounded great.

I put the film back. I’ve been burned before. The film sounded interesting but I wasn’t ready for another blind buy.

I haven’t really thought about the film since. Oh, every now and again it would pop up on a streaming service or whatever and I’d think about watching it. Then I’d find something else. And now, I’ve finally seen it.

It is pretty good. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention and I watched the original, non-director’s cut which is missing something like 45 minutes of footage. I might go back and watch that version someday. But not anytime soon.

The film follows a man only known as Sergeant (Lee Marvin) as he leads a squad of infantrymen from the 1st Infantry Division (who were known as The Big Red One due to the patch on their shirts.)

It reminded me quite a bit of the HBO series Band of Brothers as it follows this squad From North Africa to D-Day, the liberation of France to a concentration camp. They deal with battles and injuries, death, and replacements. In its own way, it is just as episodic as that series.

It was made on a low budget and unfortunately, it shows. The battle sequences aren’t particularly exciting. There are quite a few characters, but none of them are all that memorable. Mark Hamill is second billed but he gets very few lines of dialogue. His performance is mostly reaction shots. Most of the other characters are indistinguishable. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you any of their names or what they did. Marvin is great and he gets almost all of the screen time. He’s a hard-worn war veteran (in an early scene we see him as a private in World War I), but he’s kind to his men.

There are some really wonderful scenes. One inside a mental institution stands out. And the D-Day landing involves the Sergeant sending his men, one by one, across the beach to try and blow up a barbed wire fence keeping everyone from advancing. One guy goes, gets shot and he sends another. Then another. And another. He calls them out by number, not by name. It is harrowing to watch. These men are literal cannon fodder. More meat for the grinder.

It very much feels like an incomplete film. I’d like to see the longer cut (which was put together from surviving footage based on Fuller’s notes, he was dead when it was done). Forty minutes is a lot of time for these characters to be better filled out and their lives explored.

This version isn’t enough for me to be begging to see even more of this film, and the reviews of the extended cut don’t call it a masterpiece, so I expect it will be a few years before I decide to go back. But it is an interesting film, and I’d be interested to see if any of my readers have seen the longer version.