Film Journal Podcast
George (Film Journal) and Ryan (Cinecrisis) dig through film history one oddball pick at a time—hopping from cult horror to forgotten blockbusters, art house to trash fire (sometimes in the same episode). Whether it’s dissecting Hammer Horror, roasting the latest Studio Flop, or revisiting 70's exploration fare- they bring sharp takes, deep trivia, and the kind of banter only good pals can pull off!
No film school snobbery. No hot take clickbait. Just smart, funny conversations for people who like movies and think they actually matter.
Film Journal Podcast
Pulp Comics Go Hollywood!
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In order to capitalize on the blockbuster success of Tim Burton's Batman every studio in town dusted off any pulp magazine or comic strip hero they could find. A litany of lush period pieces with beautiful dames, handsome heroes and dastardly villains were produced throughout the 90's- all failing to match the success of Caped Crusader. Films like the Rocketeer, The Shadow, The Phantom & Dick Tracy have often found themselves the butt of jokes, a misguided cycle of movies that misdiagnosed Batman's appeal. Were these films right to be maligned, forgotten or ignored? Tune in to find out!
The Batman Effect on Comic Adaptations
Speaker 1so I think the common idea around these movies is that um, the joke anyway is oh, after batman was a success, the studios wanted to capitalize on it, so they decided the best route to go was to make a bunch of period piece pulp character movies. Nobody wanted that. They wanted Spider-Man and Superman and Wolverine and X-Men, right. What were they thinking? These movies are all flops, right. What do you think, ryan, would you agree? That's sort of a consensus meme around these cycle of movies.
Speaker 2I think with 2020 Hinsight, that makes a lot of sense. But I think if you look back at the period of time we were living in, at that period of time, the latter that you suggested would not have even been feasible to do Spider-Man and X-Men and the other Marvel superheroes in the early 1990s. That was more an unrealistic expectation or task. So the natural inclination was to do characters that had stood the test of time, were around and were relatively cheap or easy to produce on screen.
Speaker 1I think the other argument you could use against that kind of simple reading of these movies is a lot of them were in production or they were trying to get them made for many, many years before batman came out. It just so happened that batman was the catalyst for this kind of period piece. Um, I think batman is fondly remembered, really, for its set design. Um, you know this sort of like gothic atmosphere and it's period feeling. And so once that happened, all these movies got green right, and today everybody we're going to be talking about the films Dick Tracy, the Rocketeer, the Shadow and the Phantom, which are our title's a little misleading. They're not all exactly pulp comic characters. Some of them are comic strips, some are, you know, sort of literary written word pulps that then became comic books. But they've all been comic books at one time or another. Do you have any quibbles with that definition of these characters?
Speaker 2No, not at all. They've all existed in many different types of media that have existed Whatever was the popular mode at the time. They were popular. So, whether that's comic strips on a daily or Sunday basis, radio shows, A lot of them were feature films and serial movies before this, and they have all existed in comic books at various times in their existence. The Rocketeer is probably the odd one out amongst the four that we're talking about, in that that is the most modern of all the four. It does not have its origins in the 1930s itself, but instead serves to act as an homage to the characters that we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 1I would say but it is based off a comic book, if I'm not wrong, just one from the 80s.
Speaker 2Correct. It was created in the 80s, so a very different landscape and I have some thoughts on that when we talk about the movie. But I think, going back to the point about Batman, it thoughts on that when we talk about the movie. But I think, going back to the point about batman, it's. It's incredibly important to remember just how incredibly successful batman was when it came out and how many expectations it defied for kind of redefining that character in the in the eyes and the minds of modern audiences who were still hung up on the 1966, you know, batman adam west show and, and considering that that was what most people thought of the character. So doing that, you know, radical reinterpretation in film, which basically brought the character in line with what they were doing in the comics at the time, showed that you can have a successful, big budget, serious, superhero comic book movie that can appeal to kids but adults can see as well.
Speaker 2I think the problem to to also piggyback off what you said is that hollywood executives, being as they are, tend to take the most literal approach to replicating success and their thought process would not have been batman was a comic book superhero that did really well. What are other comic book superheroes like that from the dc pantheon or from the marvel pantheon. They literally said what is the exact same thing? And they didn't understand that success of batman did not come from him being a 1930s pulp-ish character. It came from you know the fact that it's a really good movie with so many other great assets to it and we're not going to talk about that movie particularly, but they're missing. You're missing the forest for the trees, I think, is probably the way to to explain it yeah, I think that's right, and I think batman, uh, is a good movie.
Speaker 1It's one I like. I've done a review for it on my channel, where I did a guest spot with detective wolfman where we talked about it together, and you can watch that on my channel, film journal.
Speaker 2But, um, yeah, I I wouldn't necessarily say, though, that this was the wrong takeaway and they did something terrible, but I think it's not that it's the wrong takeaway, it's just, it's a very literal mindset and I don't know how much appeal these characters really do have with modern audiences. That's, that's the problem there.
Speaker 1That's the other key success of Batman is everybody knows who Batman is and I don't care how many people in the chat want to tell me how fucking awesome the Phantom is. Nobody knows who the Phantom is, nobody, even hardcore comic people. It's still sort of on the outskirts of. I mean, you should be reverential to this character. You know, you know you should. You should appreciate. You should be reverential to this character. You know you, you know you should, you should appreciate, you should learn your history. But nobody knows who the Phantom is, right. So when he shows up wearing a purple costume, it's a little jarring, I think, for regular audiences. Go ahead.
Speaker 2You have to. You have to take into account the fact that when you say comic book, fans don't know about these characters. A lot of times comic book fans live in their very small microcosm world of characters that they read only when they were five years old and they persist in perpetuity obsessing over those, those characters they don't like to X.
Speaker 2I know I'm generalizing, I'll probably get some flack for that, but for the most part, people don't want to expand beyond what they knew only in their formative years. So I you know, I think we exist outside of that, that trend. I was. I did not grow up with the phantom by any means, but it's something that I was. I had heard about, seen on the periphery here and there, and it was intriguing, and as I was a teenager and older, it was certainly something that I wanted to get into and know more about.
Speaker 2You mentioned about relevancy and I think we both have. It's rather unfortunate and I don't want to use a term that I loathe and despise so much, but it's very appropriate here. It's the dead intellectual property debate that goes on and on. These are dead IP and I hate that terminology, but it's sad and true at the same time. So were they able to revive it by any means? I think it was a failure. On that term, we've been harping on this 1930s aesthetic and pulp mentality. Batman, for all that it is, is not a period piece.
What Makes These Characters Special
Speaker 2It is set basically in a, I would say a timeless era. The animated series extrapolate on this a little bit more. Um, there are modern technologies present, there are computers, there are modern cars, but we also exist in this art deco, 1930s, 40s inspired world, so it's like it's a kind of dream world that exists. The meshes the two together, so it's not exactly a period piece. So they also took the wrong idea from that, whereas all three oh, excuse me, all four of these movies are not only, they are all set in the 1930s, explicitly Okay.
Speaker 1Well, and then one last thing too. I don't think we should lay all these movies at the feet of Batman necessarily. I think as you watch through them you can see a lot of the fingerprints of Indiana Jones, which was another successful period piece action, adventure, romance package that I think you'll find to a certain degree all of these films are trying to emulate to some extent.
Speaker 2Absolutely, and remember that Indiana Jones itself is an homage to these types of characters to begin with. So, just as Star Wars basically took the you know the basic building blocks of all of the similar characters that existed in the sci-fi realm, for you know like you could call them the you know cousin characters of these, so Flash Gordon, buck Rogers, et cetera Star Wars took all the building blocks of those and made their own series. Indiana Jones essentially did the same thing with a lot of these characters, and so people then tend to gravitate towards what was created as a pseudo new concept rather than going back to the original, which is, which is rather interesting. Uh, you know progression.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, I guess should we jump into dick tracy, then into Dick Tracy, then I want Tracy back.
Speaker 5Tracy, let's go. Good luck. You have just said goodbye to oxygen, aren't you gonna frisk me, stupid cop? Tracy, tracy.
Speaker 2Warren Beatty is Dick Tracy I love this movie so much so this came out in 1990. Warren Beatty is Dick Tracy. I love this movie so much so this came out in 1990. The resemblance to Batman is really uncanny in this film and that is one of the most striking elements to it. That's evident in pretty much every stylistic choice the movie makes. Even the music is composed by Danny Elfman and the marketing campaign was a hugely mimicry of the Batman 89 campaign. But in terms of the actual movie, the way that it's able to take all of the core conceptsish beautifully constructed, eye-popping, bright, vivid color scenery it's eye candy non-stop, from start to finish. Basically a combination of real world sets with the fake matte background paintings where you actually look like you're in a comic book world as well. So that kind of symmetry between the two, the blending of the two, makes it really feel like we're entering the world of a comic strip.
Speaker 1Absolutely. I mean it's an astounding piece of work. Vittorio Storaro, famed cinematographer of Apocalypse, now lens the movie and it looks impeccable and, like you said, it's a very I don't even think the film is necessarily open for a sequel. It's a fairly open and shut case. I mean, you get everything you can possibly want out of a Dick Tracy movie here, and that's probably because this is a film that Warren Beatty had wanted to make since the 1970s. He'd been in a war to try to establish the rights of Dick Tracy and they were scattered to the winds.
Speaker 1Everybody had a piece of this character and he finally was able to cobble it together in the mid-80s and then basically he got Disney to produce produce it, which was an astounding coup. I mean, they did want their own batman. What they got was pretty different. I mean, this is I mean it's very much an auteurist piece, as much as it wants to be, this uh, four quadrant blockbuster film. Um, it really is like the work of an, of an auteur. There is like a single mind and hand behind it.
Speaker 1Now, the fun part and what I'm sure ryan is going to talk about is there are a lot of elements in this movie that I like that are about giving the audience a show. So we have, like this magnificent cast of all of warren beatty's buddies, everybody who was a luminary in the 1970s al pacino, dustin hoffman, etc. Here to play and to have fun, james khan also I mean it's just a litany of, like, great actors from the 1970s and all of warren beatty's pals here playing a part, and I think maybe if I had one fault with the movie it's beautiful I could beat that horse all day long. I think that jack nick, I mean, I think that that freudian slip, I think al pacino's insistence on trying to recreate a Joker-style vibe and grab that same kind of laudits that Nicholson got as Joker his scene stealing for me is the one part of the movie that falls flat. Your opinion.
Speaker 2I think it works. It's definitely not, as I would never have really put Big Boy as the primary villain of the movie from from my, you know, readings of the Tracy comics and all that, I think the characters that serve in a more subsidiary or, you know, subsidiary role. I don't know if that's the right word or not, but flat top, prune face.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're forced to have his flat top. He's like the best. He's so good.
Speaker 2I mean, those were the characters that always stood out as the more grotesque the better. And while Big Boy is a grotesque villain, the others that really bear the name of their moniker, you know their deformity are sometimes the more fascinating and the more interesting. So Prune Face Mumbles Lips. You know there's a lot of more interesting characters there than Big Boy, who is basically just serving in the Al Capone role here to amass power, eliminate the other gangs. And you mentioned about a sequel. Would a sequel have been made or not been made? Well, I don't know what they would have done for a sequel, because they literally kill every single character who is a Dick Tracy villain in this movie. They all get gunned down unceremoniously, so I don't know who they were going to use.
Speaker 1That's also a big problem here. It's a great scene.
Speaker 2Well, it's a great scene, yeah, but even those that survive the onslaught of that initial wave get killed at later points in the movie. Flat Top gets eliminated by the end. The Blank blank, who is the true mastermind, I guess, of the of the film, also meets um their demise.
Speaker 1We can use al pacino is like he's obviously a character that's not very big in the comic strip, so that they could give him a little makeup. But he wouldn't have to sit in the chair and get like incredibly arduous, you know, prostheses all over his face like everybody else, right. But one thing that struck me this time around it's it's interesting that you said he's the um, he's the al capone of the movie is that it is kind of an untouchables it's. There's a lot of untouchables in this movie, wouldn't you say, except all the team is just wrapped up into dick tracy. No face. Who's making moves to also frame Big Boy and wrap Dick Tracy up?
Speaker 2The blank. Oh sorry, Not the question. Not the question, not the chameleon.
Speaker 1Okay, Go ahead. I was going to say enough of the plot. I thought Warren Beatty is just magical in this movie. Everybody in the cast is tremendous.
Speaker 2He is good, except for the fact that he does and this has been brought up many times before he does not have the square jaw that is iconic in the Chester Gould comic strip for making the moniker of Dick Tracy. I mean, in fact, the fact that the silhouette, the profile silhouette of Dick Tracy, is the bat symbol, you know, for the high concept marketing for this movie, the fact that we do not have a lead actor who has the Well, who does, I don't know, john.
Dick Tracy: Warren Beatty's Masterpiece
Speaker 1Cena. Who do you want? I don't know. Warren Beatty sacrificed his blood, sweat and tears to get this semi-autobiographical film of himself, made as his favorite childhood hero, he clearly was a fan. Yeah, clearly he was after it for years.
Speaker 2And he still owns the rights. He still owns the rights, which is partially why there's never been a sequel or reboot, or remake or any other type of movie. That's been since this.
Speaker 1Which I think people have seen, the examples of this public display where Warren Beatty will occasionally wear a Dick Tracy costume and go on Turner Classic movies who are a willing participant in this copyright kidnapping, and he gets the rights then again for another 10 years if he shows that he's actively using the character correct and stealing it from Chester Gould's great grandchildren, I suppose.
Speaker 2Well, now would not be the time to try and bring it back. I think if we were going to do that, it would have been in throughout the 90s or the early 2000s. I think, like so many other great comic book and comic strip characters, tracy would be much better suited for tv than the movies. Um, I think, if yes, yes, come on, dude really beat around the bush here.
Speaker 2This movie is a masterpiece this movie is is really good. I think it does struggle in a few places. I think it does drag a little in the middle and I think focusing on a lot of the stuff with the kid drags the movie down.
Speaker 1Wrong.
Speaker 2The kid is terrific.
Speaker 1The kid is cute and sweet and I think, if there's any problem, the opening is kind of slow. It's slow to start and part of it is because oh no, I disagree.
Speaker 2I think the beginning of the movie is wonderful. I think that's some of the most engaging stuff, where, where we're seeing big boy kind of trying to consolidate power and knock off all the rival gangs.
Speaker 1I agree with you. It's just I think it gets bogged down a little bit. There's a moment there, for probably about a good seven to eight minutes of the film, where we have dick tracy back at the base after he's failed to nab big boy and we're cross-cutting back and forth from a madonna dance sequence and al pacino mugging for the camera, going do the dance sequence again. All right, one more time. One more time, do it again no no, that's wrong, that's off.
Speaker 3It's wrong, it doesn't work, it's not done. Boss, boss, what I'm sorry. I'm sorry, these girls are tired.
Speaker 6Yeah, we've been doing it all night. It's 2 am. It's 2 am. I'm about to turn this dump into the birthplace of a new era in entertainment. You're telling me it's 2 am.
Speaker 1Right, I'm cutting back. Is that early on?
Speaker 2I feel like that's what I'm talking about midway through on I feel like that's. I feel like that's what I'm talking about. Midway through, after he, after he, knocks off everybody else and he's now got breathless as his, as his mall he's telling her, instructing her how to dance and how to sing. And we have the steven sonheim songs, um, with various montages of newspaper headlines swirling towards the camera, which is which are great. They're great. I feel like that's a little bit of a drag at the midpoint of the movie.
Speaker 1There's two fantastic montage sequences in this film, and one of them is when Dick Tracy after they've got the bug in Big Boy's club Dick Tracy, goes around and they're catching all the crooks. I mean it's just incredible and it's set to that Sooner or Later song by Madonna and Stephen Sondheim. And then also when Dick Tracy's in jail and the villains are back on top. I mean it's just great cinema. I mean it's just so much fun.
Speaker 2And the montage climaxed with the shot of Dick Tracy emerging from the car with the background on fire, holding the Tommy gun and shooting it at unknown people in the foreground. So that's one of the best shots in the movie there 100.
Speaker 1It's a. It's a glorious movie. It's got something for everybody. It's got, you know, grizzly tommy, gun violence. It's got just just the sexiest romance between warren baity and his then girlfriend, madonna. I think every one of those scenes works like a charm every time don is on screen with warren baity I think lips manless is dead and I want you to tell me who killed him.
Speaker 6Or maybe you weren't on his side. Whose side are you on?
Speaker 5said I'm always on mine no grief for lips I'm wearing black underwear.
Speaker 6You know it's legal for me to take you down to the station and sweat it out of you under the lights.
Speaker 2I sweat a lot better in the dark aspect of the movie that's thrown in because of the real life romance between Beatty and Madonna takes away from kind of the the trueness of Dick Tracy as a, as a character that true, he loves, test true heart, he is a straight arrow kind of guy to have him tempted in this way. Now, granted, he never crosses the line and never falls victim of to the temptation, but I don't think that that would have been part of any other tracy movie had madonna not been in the movie and that they had not been dating at the time okay, I think it makes dick tracy a way more relatable character, because and you know this maybe this is post-modern, maybe this is like dick tracy's perfect or whatever, but I like that.
Speaker 1Look, I don't have this large sentimental attachment to the comic strip. I've read it before. I think it's cool, I like the art, but when you're making the Dick Tracy movie, he's got to have something going on in his life. And Warren Beatty, he goes. What's going on in my life? Well, I should probably settle down with some nice gal, but I really like having sex with lots of women, right? I really like having sex with lots of women, right, and they're all attractive and throwing themselves at me. And they wrote you're so vain about me and I'm the legendary Lothario of Hollywood, right? I read a quote by him where he said he loved playing Dick Tracy. It was the squarest character he ever played and he's so square, he comes around to being cool, but he's also cool because Warren Beatty is cool, right?
Speaker 2He's cool because Warren Beatty is cool. But he's also cool because Warren Beatty is cool. Right, he's cool because Warren Beatty is cool. He's also cool because the iconic yellow trench coat and hat are so cool in this movie Juxtaposed with all the other you know, the dark backgrounds all of the other gangsters have red, blue, green suits on it adds a level of hipness and coolness that you would have never seen in an older movie, an older Tracy movie, which all of them were in black and white but we had never had anything made in the color era before that. And I think it's a very bold choice to do all that, because if you're trying to be, quote, realistic, this is not very realistic and it works because it's not exactly, yeah, which is why I don't think that, like a, a Dick Tracy, this is not very realistic.
Speaker 1And it works because it's not Exactly yeah, which is why I don't think that, like a, a Dick Tracy TV show would necessarily work. I mean, what the hell would it be about Just recreating his comic strip adventures, like where he fights? No, I like this thing as this giant pastiche. It's like we got one shot for Dick Tracy, boom, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2There's so many great stories and there's so many great villains, you do a season-long arc where Flat Top is the villain, then you have some of the lesser-known villains be intermediary in between and then just keep going and it's an ongoing soap opera, just like the comic strip is.
Speaker 1Sure, but then I think you make it too complicated. I like its simplicity. I like the simplicity of the yeah but?
Speaker 2but you're arguing also. Then you know you shouldn't make a um. You know, when you make any other superhero into a film series, for instance like spider-man, you shouldn't have a uh, an individual villain per movie, because that's boring, because it's just one. You know the same, the same story over and over. You know it has to have an ongoing arc where the character you know really changes and develops. It's like, it's like. No, you know most of these characters don't. It's not even about them, it's about their ongoing existence and they fight a villain each and every week.
Speaker 2I'm sorry, maybe that's old fashioned, but that's how I like it.
Speaker 1Would you trade this like a tourist masterpiece for some sort of hypothetical Dick Tracy eight season long television show?
Speaker 2No, I wouldn't trade this for anything, but I'm saying, if we're going to continue the character's legacy and imprint in media moving forward, I think the next step would have been to do a TV show. I don't think that anyone else probably would have been able to replicate what this movie did, and so it would be kind of pointless.
Speaker 1Well, fortuitously, I was reading a book on the history of disney channel when eisner and katzenberg took it over in the mid-80s. Yeah, um, it's called disney war. It's actually really well written and and good and um, they talk about dick tracy a little bit and that it was a gamble. They took, uh, with touchstone. They didn't release it as a disney property, probably because there's too much gun fighting.
Speaker 2Yes, but and and madonna's like on all fours on the desk seducing tracy madonna, is that a?
Speaker 1disney movie. She's so hot in this movie, man, she's so hot in this movie, right, what is? She has so many great, memorable lines, like when she's talking to dick tracy and she says uh, you don't know where to, whether to hit me or kiss me. I get that a lot. Or or how about take you back to the, to the station and sweat it out under the lights. She goes, I sweat easier in the dark like how about um you're not in mourning?
Speaker 1oh, my underwear is black yeah, I mean just, she's just terrific and I love. I love that in the movie that that she's trying to seduce dick tracy and like the sexual tension is so real. It's just, it's. It's amazing. I can't believe people. I've never seen any other Madonna films. Apparently at the time she was not very well thought of as an actress and thought this might help her out. I think she's good in it and I think she looks terrific.
Speaker 2She's good in this. Yeah, absolutely, she nails this.
Speaker 1I mean there's a camp level to it, to all of this movie everything in this movie, and so I think she she, you know treads the line very well there. I was going to say to her, in this book on Disney they talk about, this film is sort of, um, it wasn't a disaster, right, but it wasn't the cash cow franchise, you know, igniter, they hope that it would be, and um, it prompted Jeffrey Katzenberg to issue sort of infamous memo to all the shareholders and everybody at Disney saying that they were putting way too much money into giant prestige pictures that were you know. You know, a star like Warren Beatty comes in, they can't control him. He does whatever he wants. He's banging everybody on the entire set, right, and this was sort of an infamous thing that we need to shift from these big passion project pictures and get back to the animated movies that are a success. So they kind of yeah sound, does it?
Speaker 2does that sound familiar? I mean, it's not like we're going through the same thing nowadays as as they were back then, right it's the same the same, the same cycles go, occur again and again and again.
Speaker 2In hollywood, we're living through this again, where we saw movies like Joker folia do, which costs oodles and oodles of money and was a passion project from the director and did not resonate with audiences, and we go back to square one, where maybe we need to make cheaper movies and not spend $300 million or whatever making John Carter of Mars. So, yeah, he's not wrong, but it sure didn't hurt in terms of marketing. They certainly marketed the hell out of this movie, um, and when you I mean, we weren't around when this came out, just be honest. But um, from what we've seen, you probably couldn't go two feet without running into something that was yellow and Dick Tracy inspired at the time, and I think you've got some clips to show.
Speaker 1I do have some clips I do have.
Speaker 2this one is from McDonald's when which went all in on Dick Tracy.
Speaker 1So let's see who wouldn't go all in on Dick Tracy, I am all in on Dick.
Speaker 2So do I, I'm so boomer here. Share screen.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think so, or maybe you know what, since I'm the controller.
Speaker 4Oh, you're the controller, that's why, I'm the controller.
Speaker 2It's the first one. It's clip one.
Speaker 6It's not just a game. It's a mystery, an adventure it's you against Bruneface Influence. An adventure it's you against pruneness, influence, itchy and a motley crew of criminals. In McDonald's Dick Tracy Crime Stopper Game Solve crimes, catch crooks, collect rewards like food or cash up to a million bucks. Dick Tracy the movie is in theaters. I'm on my way. The game is at McDonald's. Food, books and fun. Amazing, very cool movie is in theaters.
Speaker 1I'm on my way.
Speaker 2The game is at mcdonald's. Very cool, very. Mcdonald's apparently lost a lot of money with that scratch off game at the time because people were winning non-stop really was that the one that got scammed?
Speaker 2I don't, I don't know, but um, it was. It was a big deal, it was all over the place. So it's just, it's kind of sad that this didn't go anywhere and that we never got anything else after this. I mean, disney also went all in. Dick Tracy was present at the Disney MGM Studios theme park. They had a musical show. Yeah, at the place that now has the Star Wars world in Florida, they had a live dick tracy stage show, which was a musical and only lasted for like a year or so, and, um, you know, that was the legacy of dick tracy at disney world.
Speaker 1Um, well, I'll tell you what my wife my wife was the target audience at the time right, her older brothers probably and she had this movie on on vhs and loves it, loves this movie to this day, loves it. So she was the target audience kid at the time in the 90s thought it was great, doesn't know, didn't know who warren baity was. When she was like let's re-watch my favorite movie, I'm like, oh yeah, with warren baity she's like who's that? You know she hadn't seen shampoo or reds or you know. I mean this was a valiant attempt by incline buying clyde. Yeah, exactly, you have another clip here of madonna. You want me to throw that up? Yes, okay, let's see what madonna has to say team mania, and it seems to be spreading fast.
Speaker 4The movie version of the popular comic strip doesn't even open until friday, but it's already a blockbuster. In the store, as we're told, you can buy anything from dick tracy backpacks to coffee mugs and bedding, and it's not only for kids. All sorts of Dick Tracy fashions are available, even his trademark yellow raincoat. It can be yours for just $345.
Speaker 1And speaking of Warren Beatty's friend, it's Madonna.
Speaker 4Mania on Long Island, she's here. The material girl and co-star of the Dick Tracy movie brought her blonde ambition tour to the Nassau Coliseum. Channel 2's Carol Iovana is there. Live Carol.
Speaker 6Well, brian, the concert let out just a short time ago and, as a matter of fact, warren Beatty.
Speaker 1What a time to be around.
Speaker 2No, I did have those Dick Tracy bed sheets. I do remember those. I had those at the time From when I was a kid. But anyway, those I I had those at the time, you know, from when I was a kid. But anyway, um, talking about the comic strip a little bit, I think one of the easiest and best ways to digest the comic strip are in these reprints that came out from blackthorn publishing, I think, in the late 80s, early 90s. They're beautiful, um recreations of the daily comic and they're all in these different colored, you know covers and this is probably one of the best and easiest ways to read it because you can read like an entire issue in one sitting and you get most of a complete story. And as opposed to the more intimidating and challenging you know IDW or um hardcover books that came out where they look like a giant horizontal you know slab and you're like, why am I reading this?
Speaker 1it just, it just feels like yeah, it's hard, it's too much and it's, it's, it's overpowering right, okay, well, I am interested in reading more. I used to really enjoy the library when I was a kid. Used to have dick tracy, the big tabletop one, yeah, but I thought that was great as a kid. I have not um revisited the.
Speaker 2Uh, you know, this is also a really really good introductory book if people are interested the celebrated cases of dick tracy. It's probably out of print but you can still find it online and it um, it's a hard cover. You can see all of the rogues gallery of villains on the and it's a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water there.
Speaker 1Well, I think that Warren Beatty should be plotted for me, applauded for making this film. I know that you know the fact that he has he's not a one dimensional character ruins the movie. For you that he's got a little bit of turmoil.
Speaker 2And like it did not ruin movie for me. I'm just pointing it out as something that caught my eye and kind of takes away from as true a adaptation as this is of the comic strip. That part that they changed, kind of um, intrigued me the most as like what they were changing, and I feel like they did it precisely because of the badana connection well, I think they did it precisely because it was warren baity who was making it and he wanted dick tracy to be kind of like him yeah, right sure you know fair enough.
Speaker 1I'm just pointing it out as something that I think purists would take issue with, and absolutely okay, I like the romance element because, like you know, if you're a character in a movie who, like some hot chick, comes on to you and you're like, oh sorry, ma'am, I'm just just the facts, please, like I just that's hard to relate to, right? So I like that dick tracy has a little vulnerability to, to madonna and her, her sexy charms, but it does strike me as a little weird when he can't come up with the words to ask test true heart to marry him.
Speaker 1That's that seems very adolescent to me, you know, and like it doesn't seem like a very dick Tracy kind of a thing, right.
Speaker 2And by nature of having this kind of fling with breathless, it does diminish test true heart a little bit as a character and her importance to Dick Tracy's world and and the mythology there. Because does she really? Does she really do anything in the movie? Not particularly, she's just kind of there. And the fact that he falls back on her because you know he realizes he really shouldn't be with the, with the bad girl that's kind of a lame.
Speaker 2That's kind of a lame um way to enter into your marriage there well, I it's true, but I also think it's it's, it's real yeah it's real, it's realistic and and it's the kid, is the catalyst right, because he yeah, he goes if I needed to.
Speaker 1I want to take care of this child, and to do that I need to be a family man, and I've been dragging my feet on this for a long time. Uh, let me wrap up my big caper here and defeat my arch enemy, and then now I can settle down and be a family man, which is ultimately what warren did when he married in that benning and then then he stopped. The man-about-town-ness was over, right.
Speaker 2Do you have a particular favorite villain that is represented here in the movie?
Speaker 1I was going to say Flattop. I think he's the most sinister and he's really cool-looking. I think William Forsythe does a nice job. You know, maybe I'll take.
Speaker 1I was being a little harsh on Al Pacino right out of the gate but like that extended scene where he's coaching everyone to do the dance number, I was like, okay, I get it al pacino very funny. And then at the end, when he's like kidnapping tess, true heart, there's just a running monologue of 80 yard lines of him just saying things. You know what I mean random nonsense, random shit. He's like sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes I do nichi, you know. It's like what? Like they just brought him into the studio, just say things you know. Like to cut back to him because and what I thought would have been better is like why not have tess say something? You know back to him. But she really doesn't, right, and I like the tie-in with the no face being madonna, I think.
Speaker 1I think all of it's really terrific. I don't think this is particularly a movie like aimed at kids either. It's really aimed at like nerd film people, right? Yeah, like you think about some of this production design when they have dick tracy in the basement with the combustible steam machine or whatever that is that they rigged to blow. Yeah, it's magnificent. Looks like something out of a looney tunes cartoon from the 30s. I mean, it's just spectacular. The opening shots with the, the clock and the red background of the red circle or the acrylic circle around that clock, and then he puts on his watch and his hat. It's just, it's tremendous. The movie is impeccably. It's beautiful, one of the most beautiful films of all time.
Speaker 2The opening shot in the movie is that that's what you're talking about, where the radio is. The radio is playing, the old time radio is playing and we have the iconography of Dick Tracy all laid out and displayed for us to see in all of its glory. And we see a two way wrist radio, we see the yellow fedora and it's it's go time. I mean it that that sets the tone for the movie so well. It gets you amped up in. The Danny Elfman theme is playing and you're like let's go.
Speaker 1Absolutely no. I couldn't agree more. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 2Funny enough, Al Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Big Boy.
Speaker 1You've got to be kidding me. There's no way.
The Rocketeer: A Modern Homage
Speaker 2I'm not making this up. I had to check because I thought that was accurate and I was like before I say that. Let me verify that it's true. Yes.
Speaker 1Okay, you know what I love too, if we're talking about Dick Tracy mania. Dick Tracy mania that didn't actually materialize in the real world. I mean, this movie was not a flop, right, but it wasn't a hit, you know? But the Vogue album cover from Madonna with Dick Tracy on it.
Speaker 2Yep and it was incorporated. I believe it was incorporated into her concert acts at the time for that tour. You know there was, there were people dressed as dick tracy dancing with her on stage that's so cool yeah, it's incredible how, how much they tried to push this into the pop culture and people either just rejected it or were not interested at all and it it just fizzled out. You can't manufacture certain things. You can't. You can't manufacture interest, no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you market it.
Speaker 1Well, it's unjust, because this movie should have been.
Speaker 2It deserves it here. It's better than Batman.
Speaker 1It's better than Batman.
Speaker 2Better, in what way?
Speaker 1Better in that it's more entertaining, it's more enjoyable, really See.
Speaker 2I think I love this movie a lot, but I would take the Tim Burton Batman film. There's something about it that just I like that movie.
Speaker 1You can watch a video on my YouTube channel where I talk about how much I like it. But I think that this movie is a. It's a work of passion and art and creativity and using a lot of Disney's money to make something really astounding. That didn't hit at the time, but it's definitely worth watching and it's one of those great curiosity items of pop culture that is a real gem. It's a real gem, this movie.
Speaker 2Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1I don't think you're going to hear a whole lot of different out of me when we talk about basically all of these movies. I think they're all really, really good. Do you have anything else on dick tracy before we move on to our next? I?
Speaker 2want to say one of my uh shout outs to my one of my favorite villains. Mumbles is played by dustin hoffman in this movie, who provides a key piece of evidence at the end of the movie. That is, the payoff is so perfect because we've been listening to him just mumble, mumble, mumble for the. You know, every time he appears on screen and then Tracy gets the best of him. He's he's audio taped. Uh, mumbles confession. And mumbles is you know yucking it up that, uh, you got nothing on me. He slows down the tape and you can finally understand what he's saying. Big boy did it.
Speaker 1There's. I was just in watching this again I there is so much fun with the villains, but the good thing about it is they never outshine Dick Tracy. You give a shit about Dick Tracy. He's cool, he commands the screen, he looks awesome. But I mean, when they take Paul Servino and they dump him in concrete and then throw him down to the ocean, I was sort of shocked at the amount of sort of comical violence there is in the movie. But it wasn't made by a committee. I don't think a committee would tell you that Dick Tracy needs to shoot everybody with a Tom again at the end.
Speaker 2Right and Paul Sorvino's going to show up again in the Rocketeer.
Speaker 1He does, he does.
Speaker 2Paul Sorvino is everywhere.
Speaker 1When we talk about these films too, there's just a lot of recurring elements, yes, um as well, which I don't know if you could contribute to the zeitgeist or to to their fealty to the sort of stories of old. But, um, I suppose let's talk about disney's the rocketeer, another movie that should have been a hit. It's the blind man it's the rocketeer.
Speaker 3Hand over the rocket go get him, Go get him kid Should have been a hit, was not.
Speaker 2Again no sequels, no future plans after this. So this is the only character on our list that is, as mentioned before, not an original character from the 1930s. This was a character created by a guy named Dave Stevens for Independent Comics in 1982, and this is more of an homage to the 1930s pulp characters. You can see that on display here. This is a movie that has a real love and affection for everything that's about the 1930s and pulp characters. Me personally, I had no knowledge or prior experience with the character, or the movie for that matter, until I watched it for the purposes of this video. It's always something that I just I don't know I wasn't really interested in for a long period of time. It was always there. I know Joe Johnston had directed it and his filmography is pretty decent, and of course, he later did Captain America, the first Avenger, which takes a lot of cues from this as well. I think it's fine. I didn't particularly wow me or win me over on a first-time viewing and I'll get into that later, but what'd you think?
Speaker 1I really enjoyed the movie. I'd like to talk about Joe Johnston for a second, because this is a film that I also just put off watching for whatever reason. Seems like it should have all the elements of things that I would like, but it just never grabbed me. You know, I guess I always suspected as a youth that it would have a little bit of Disney schmaltz or family friendliness that kind of kept me away or maybe made it seem uncool. But Joe Johnston is also a filmmaker who's sort of uncool, you know, and that's that's not a knock on him, right, but you can't seem to get any love, right. I mean, the guy does have a really impressive filmography as a director, but I think even more impressive is just his contribution to late 20th century blockbuster movie cinema. This guy he designed the look of the Iron Giant of Boba Fett. He worked on all the Star Wars films. He was there on day one for Star Wars, right, and he continues to make mostly really good movies. He's got a great handle on tone and I think he has a good eye for leading men and a great sort of nostalgic way about his movies.
Speaker 1Have you ever seen October sky? That's one that I also would recommend. It's not going to not going to knock your socks off, but it's a. It's an aspirational film about 1950s teams who want to send a rocket to space. Right, it's, it's nice and this movie is nice. It's a beautiful little world. You've got a great cast. I think that the main guy, who's the main kid, billy, Cowell.
Speaker 1Yeah, poor guy. I mean, I looked him up because I thought you know, man, it's really too bad he didn't go on to have a career. He has such a square jaw, he has great hair. I think maybe either Josh Hartnett stepped on him or the fact that this movie didn't do well just killed him, but he did have. One consolation prize is that he did get to date his co-star, jennifer Connelly, for five years after the Rocketeers.
Speaker 2So you can't feel too bad for him.
Speaker 4That's a pretty good consol consolation prize you remember at the studio what I told you about the rocket we found. Well, the people that are looking for it murdered bigelow to get to me, and now they're after you. They have your picture, the one from the gb jenny, prepare yourself for a shock.
Speaker 2I'm the rocketeer one of the things that I think that I kept thinking about after watching this, and how it differs from a lot of the other movies and the characters, is kind of that modern sensibility that's that's brought into it, and a lot of that relates to the origin of the character and the motivation that drives them as a hero, and I feel like this movie has a much more kind of I don't want to use the word selfish, but it kind of is.
Speaker 2It's a selfish motivation or it's a personal driven motivation to I want to get the girl and I want to make lots of money. None of those are bad. Neither one of those are bad motivations. But compared to someone like Dick Tracy, who is basically serving as the ultimate public servant, protecting the citizens of the city, cleaning up crime and corruption, or when we get the, the shadow and the phantom, the phantom is driven by basically his lineage and his family obligation to serve as a protector. The shadow is looking for redemption. This is just kind of like me, me, me. At the end of the movie it morphs into kind of rah rah, let's go america, stop the Nazis as a motivation, which is, I think, better, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
Speaker 1I mean it didn't particularly strike me because I was sort of with him all the way. I liked the turbulence of his career and him wanting to impress his girlfriend, so no, that didn't necessarily bother me, but I could see where you're coming from on a level of how does this compare with other films? And yeah, that's why it is sort of the odd man out, because it's not this. Uh, lantern jawed, I am the hero and that's just you know my personality trait of those earlier not to knock that right um.
Speaker 2But it's much more.
Speaker 1It's much more of a marvel approach to a character as opposed to the dc approach, which is probably why the other three characters resonate with me personally a little bit more is that that's my personal taste and liking is the kind of stuffy stiff DC characters doesn't feel forced right and I think, because it was made in the 80s, um, as an homage, it sort of has a built-in defense mechanism against anything incongruous with a, uh, late 20th century movie. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1yes, so there's no weird purple suit, there's no big giant nose, there's no. You know what I mean. Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's very well built to succeed and you know, we know it didn't, but the costume looks great, the kid look. I mean I feel bad for him, sorry, you know he's a guest star and everything. But, like you know, he's okay, you like him enough. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's just sort of handsome and I think that johnston has sort of um, I remember when he cast captain america I was very skeptical because as a kid, captain america would be my favorite hero. I was like what, the guy that was human torch, that's gonna suck. But he just knows like how all american guys are gonna look with a nice haircut, you know, and I think he likes that look. You know what I mean. Um, which, which I appreciate.
Speaker 1But uh, the movie's a lot of fun. There's some great sequences, the flying is mostly good, you know, special effects wise, and it's a um, it's a good looking movie. You know we're going to say that about a lot of these, but uh, you know, dick tracy is obviously the magnum opus of looking great and amazing and transcendent. But we have a lot of great locations. They use the famous frank Lloyd Wright house in Los Angeles that was also in Blade Runner as Timothy Dalton's evil Hitchcockian James Mason style mansion. The Under the Sea Dance Club, or whatever it's called, is cool. It's nice to have the nostalgia of all this early flight grease and mechanics.
Speaker 1Howard Hughes and you get kind of a an almost only Angel has have wings style like crew of pilots that are, you know, coterie of allies to our hero. So there's lots of really good feel good, nostalgic things. Go ahead, I've been talking too long.
Speaker 2No, no, I agree with what you're saying. I like the movie.
Speaker 2I just it didn't blow me away or didn't hit me in the right way that I was expecting it to that that I did when I saw dick tracy or the phantom for the first time, or I was like really wowed and and taken aback, um what I what I did like was a lot of the old-time hollywood references that abound in this movie, so even little things like we talked about, you know, seeing howard hughes, who's a character in the movie, or when timothy dalton's uh character, neville sinclair, is basically like a d a Douglas Fairbanks type swashbuckler.
Speaker 2They show them on the set making. I don't know, it looks like a silent movie but it's obviously in the sound era Making something that looks like Adventures of Robin Hood. They meet WC Fields in the club and my personal favorite was the inclusion of a character who I looked him up in the the um rocketeer comics, but it's a character based off the real actor, rondo hatton, and I sent you the link that this guy's in the rocketeer and it's like a guy that died, like you know, 70 years ago.
Speaker 2Basically, rondo hatton was one of universal's big monster movie actors. He was famous. He was famously Universal's monster that required no makeup Whoa, because he had acromegaly and had this deformed gigantic face. He played a character called the Creeper in a couple different Universal Golden Age horror movies. So when the creator of the Rocketeer was making the comic, he made a character that looked exactly like Rondo Hatton and they recreate him in the movie and it's very jarring and I was shocked when I saw that.
Speaker 1So was I, but it has a basis in reality. Yeah, that was another thing too. We're going to have WC Fields. Nobody knew who WC Fields was. We know, but that was a very interesting reference, interesting choice yeah. Yeah, it really is. But yeah, the movie has a little bit. I would chalk it up maybe to the score too. I don't like the score very much. It's the weakest score of the bunch.
Speaker 2I mean you're talking about comparing it to the lengths of Danny Elfman and Jerry Goldsmith here. So it's not that great.
Speaker 1It's not great and it's got that great. It's not great and it's got that little like strum on the uh, whatever, that is, those bells that sounds like the tinkerbell thing you know that makes you feel extra good and warm inside, and very disneyish it's very earnest and very disneyish, yeah, and we have trembling colors in the chat saying also, betty in the comics is straight up betty page.
Speaker 1Yeah, I was actually looking up dave stevens, the artist, quite the prolific illustrator of pin-up ladies, and his art is tremendous and if I was him I'd be thrilled with this movie. I'm sure they dialed it back a little bit. I'm sure the comics are a little hornier than the movie, but I was surprised at the reference to Jennifer Connelly's bust.
Speaker 2Let's say by WC Fields, no less.
Speaker 1Yeah, oh, I'm double pleased to meet you, or whatever he says.
Speaker 3Double pleased, yes Wow.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, but she is really quite gorgeous in the film and I did appreciate that. They gave her a little bit of business to do where she woke up after being knocked out by you know. She gets to find the secret lair. She gets to trick Timothy Dalton and hand him over the head with a vase. That was all very fun and cute. More to do than Tess Trueheart for sure.
Speaker 2Tess Trueheart got the shaft in Dick Tracy. That was. That's a big problem there. We'll see the other leading ladies get a little bit more to do in all the other films. What did you think of Timothy Dalton as Neville Sinclair in the film?
Speaker 1I thought he was great. I thought he was a lot of fun. He was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2I wish they had just dialed him up a little bit more to be a little bit more ridiculous and a little more scenery chewing. He does it at the end when he puts on the fake German accent and he's really going to town. That's when I really.
Speaker 1But when he's at his slimiest he's the best in the movie well, he's got a lot of good lines too, like when he says I wasn't lying, it was acting.
Speaker 2Yes, right before he goes to his death, right, but uh and the moment where he's trying to seduce jennifer connelly by reciting all of the lines from different movies that he's memorized over the years. And she's just, you know like, oh, you said that one to garbo in this movie, you said this one to this person in this movie, and it's like and no, and no reaction from him at all. He's just like okay, move on to the next one. What else I got?
Speaker 1he kind of I would do. Would it be wrong to say he was sort of channeling like a, like a claude reigns? Almost not like, uh perhaps. Maybe it's just a mustache yeah kind of an invisible man.
Speaker 2Claude reigns, not so much notorious claude reigns, but the thing in in a movie like this is you need a really strong villain like that, and that's why I'm saying to have him dial up a little bit more is because the hero is as as are all the four heroes we're talking about in different degrees of blandness. Okay, so you really do need a colorful, strong villain and supporting cast to kind of bolster them and show the world around them is interesting. The, the, the protagonists and the heroes for a lot of these movies, uh, these properties, they're kind of not meant to be thrilling or compelling in themselves. They're meant to be kind of the springboard by which everyone else reacts off of them, especially dick tracy. Dick tracy has always been like that, where the, the colorful rogues gallery are what makes the strip so unique and so popular and so he's there as kind of the straight man reacting to all of the grotesquery around him.
Speaker 2I don't, I can't speak for the rocketeer, um, you know source material, but here I think that would have been a little bit better if, um, timothy dalton and alan alda and the other cast had been kind of more aggressive with kind of chewing the scenery okay, I guess I could see that just to balance out the kid who's kind of yeah, we see that even in captain america, the first avenger, where chris evans, who does a fine job in that movie, but we have hugo weaving and tommy lee jones and all the other supporting cat, yes, kind of bolstering the uh, the support there yeah, I think you're right, I think.
Speaker 1you know, I think if you had had a bigger actor and not that timothy dalton wasn't, but I mean he had just gotten off of what being fired by fired as james bond, you know, had a bigger actor and not that Timothy Dalton wasn't, but I mean he had just gotten off of being fired as James Bond, you know, maybe a bigger actor might have been a draw and he gets a little more scenes, but you know, I love Timothy Dalton and I thought he was tremendous and he's one of my favorite James Bonds, just based on the strength of Living Daylights Alone, which is one of my favorites. I like Life is, which is one of my favorites.
Speaker 2but um, I like a lot.
Speaker 1It's also very underrated film sanchez, that's like the bad guy in that one. Sanchez, that's the. Uh, yeah, yeah, he kills uh who's he kill, isn't he kill, felix lighter? No he kills felix lighter at the beginning or something.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah yeah, shark, shark attack, I think, if I recall yeah, Right, right right. One of the other great moments in this film is the climax where the Nazi agents board a Zeppelin that's hovering above the Griffith Observatory, which is a fantastic way to end the movie.
Speaker 1And we get a great shootout where the gangsters decide hey well, even though I'm a crook, I'm 100% American. I ain't going to be around with no Nazi douchebag, you know right. And then they are on the same side.
Speaker 2Yeah, they turn sides. Yeah, okay, then a battalion of German officers and troops just come out of nowhere, which is bizarre.
Speaker 1Right, when those guys would probably be real deal Mussolini heads like for real let's not joke around you. It's not joke around you know, but but no, I mean it was good, I was, I was, I was pleased, but yeah, you know what? I think that this movie, out of probably all of them, is maybe the one that has the most, the biggest Renaissance in terms of like millennial appreciation, online Right Would you say out of the four, that I wouldn't know. Maybe people in the chat can back me up, but I think that is.
The Shadow (1996)
Speaker 1I think there are other films we have yet to talk about that deserve more love than they do get right and I've read on wikipedia and I've been assured that films like the phantom have a cult following and have since been reappraised. But I don't see it as much and I'm going to be a I'm going to be a champion here for some of these movies. So do you have anything else to say about the Rocketeer? Can we move on to 1994's the Shadow?
Speaker 2I think we can move on to the Shadow.
Speaker 5I do what I do to fight back the evil inside me, but some part of it is still there, waiting Genghis.
Speaker 6Khan conquered half of the world in his lifetime. I intend to finish the job and, when the adventure begins, activate the bomb. Who knows?
Speaker 4where it will end. Alec Baldwin, john Lone.
Speaker 3Penelope Ann Miller and Tim Curry. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
Speaker 6The Shadow.
Speaker 1I was a little let down by the Shadow because I was expecting a little more out of Russell Mulcahy, my guy who did Highlander, which is one of the most visually stunning creative action films, of the most like visually stunning, you know, creative, uh, action films of the 80s, right and um, this movie is, is good. The one thing that stuck in my craw when you said that all these these heroes are bland is I don't think alec baldwin is particularly bland in this. I think out of all the leading men, he's the one that I could see carrying a franchise, the best I wouldn't use the word.
Speaker 2I wouldn't use the word, but there are plenty of other words. Uh like what. It's kind of laughable at certain times. I just I don't know if that's because of what he's become over the years that I can't take him seriously in this role but there's something about him from the moment he appears on screen, especially.
Speaker 2That is not the way to reveal the character at the beginning of the movie. He looks like we're in a saturday night live skit here, with the long hair and the dirty fingernails, and I thought is this like a? Is this a parody, a skit? Is he undercover? Um? So I had a most curious reaction while watching this, because I've seen this before, I think a couple times, and I remember liking it. When I watched it again the other night I was very shocked that it did not live up to what I remembered it at all. It was kind of slow, it's kind of boring, it's kind of laughable here and there. Don't get me wrong. I mean I still enjoyed it. I think it's. I think it's a worthy endeavor, but it's kind of the weaker of the lot we're talking about today.
Speaker 1I watched this one first and I was quite taken with it. After watching the rest, I sort of reappraised my thinking on it. There's a lot to like here and I really, really wanted to like this movie Now. I had the same reaction to Alec Baldwin as you. Alec Baldwin's career took a big comedy turn in the mid-2000s where he basically played a parody of not himself but of the kind of characters he should be playing. And unfortunately, john ham is going down this same route. Right, square jawed, handsome guys can't get leading man hero roles anymore, so they have to play jokes. Basically, right. Um, yeah, john ham would have had 10 times the career had he been around in 1960. Right, but, um, I I agree with you on the opening sequence. You already have to get people over to your idea of the shadow, which is a guy that, like you know, he can talk to people and stuff. It's very inconsistent.
Speaker 2It's very inconsistent and kind of confusing about what are the power set, because it actually, I mean from from I'm not I would not say I'm a shadow expert by any means I read a little bit here and there, but like it seems like it changes all the time as to what the power set are. Is there a mysticism aspect? Is there not? Is it just mentalism? We don't know. So this one plays up the mysticism and the yogi ism as we're going for the gold here I.
Speaker 1I think that christopher nolan likes this movie. I've got a lot of inspiration for batman begins because, yeah, the movie starts out if you don't remember or haven't seen it with alec baldwin as a mongolian warlord.
Speaker 1That's how the movie starts yes this is the opium trade, I believe right yeah, he's in the opium trade, so he lives in a big, you know, like I don't know castle or monastery yeah yeah, yeah, and he like, murders people and has them killed and he's got long hair and then, through a series of events, he becomes into contact with a kind of spiritual monk who has a knife that is like a cgi knife that has a mouth, and then he decides to go back and become the shadow, which don't start the movie out that way. Start it out with the introduction to the shadow on the bridge where he saves the guy from being, you know, getting the cement shoes right that scene is excellent.
Speaker 2yes, that is the best scene in the movie, the, the first time we see the shadow. The crooks are going to drop the guy in the river with the cement shoes and we hear the iconic laughter of the shadow that puts them off base and alarms them. And then he appears in that shot where you see him in full costume and he's got the guns blazing.
Speaker 5That's great, you will go to the 8th Lacingt House on 2nd Avenue and surrender yourself and you will do it now.
Speaker 3I got this. I got this. I'll do it, I'll do it.
Speaker 2I did not care for the invisible fight scenes that the movie puts on. That was a little off-putting as well, a little disappointing there. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1Yeah, was a little off-putting as well, a little disappointing there. What do you think about that? Um, yeah, it's a little. I mean, we've seen it kind of thing like oh, I dumped water out, now I can see your footprints where you are shadow. I like the idea that I listened to a bunch of old episodes of the radio play with orson wells, which are all great, by the way they're really very fun, very fun yeah the reason I'm I'm podcasting from this space and not my normal basement office is because my basement office is being completely destroyed and we're redoing things.
Speaker 1So I was doing some work on the ceiling and I was listening to it. It's tremendous. And in the radio play it's clear that the shadow's real power is just his ability to have mentalism. He has come.
Speaker 4I wasn't afraid who said that I did, captain so you're the one with your quick ghost talking magic. Eh, I'll make a shadow out of you soon enough not that way, captain, no yes, lock that door.
Speaker 3Next. It is locked, captain mullin, but but the portal.
Speaker 1No one can get through those, not even a shadow right, he is there in the room, but you can't see him because you've been hypnotized. And we also do learn. There's a lot of eastern mysticism that crops up in those old radio shows too, because the shadow talks about how he learned it from all the yogis and stuff, um. So that's true to the spirit of it, but don't start the movie out that way. People are already like hesitant with this idea of the shadow. They don't know who he is and you're going to throw him into this to start when you have an opportunity to revisit these scenes. And you're going to throw them into this to start when you have an opportunity to revisit these scenes when Penelope Ann Miller reads his mind and gets flashbacks of his sordid, evil past. Now, I don't think. I don't think the idea is bad.
Speaker 1David Koepp had the idea that the shadows should have an evil, villainous backstory and had since reformed, which would explain his ability to understand evil truly and also explain his kind of evil, sinister laugh, right, he's like a bad guy turned against bad guys, which is a good hook, right, and it works. But you know there are certain things that don't work about the film that you know you don't have to explain in the pages of a novel or in a radio play or in an illustration. But you know the idea to say say, well, alec baldwin needs to have a giant fake prosthetic nose. Um, you know, so he looks like the drawings. I mean, I don't know, it's a hard choice, right?
Speaker 2yeah, you make a great point there about the, the um, incorporation of the, the villainous backstory, because it really does help justify the moniker of the shadow, which is who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The shadow knows, or why does he know? Because he's. He's been there, done that too. He's had evil that lurks inside his own heart, so he knows. And now he's taking others to task for it. So that's a great, that's actually a great point. I didn others to task for it, so that's a great, that's actually a great point.
Speaker 1I didn't didn't think about that until now, but you know, that's just what I said and I didn't missed it. But the sentiment works, but it doesn't work as you're opening to this movie, right? No, it does not.
Speaker 2That would have been a good flashback later on, where she discovers it for the first time while they're they're getting to know each other and he has to tell her the hard truth about who he was before.
Speaker 1It would have been such a great flashback later on because it happened so early in the film. And then the movie becomes something totally different. You almost forget that you saw it. Yeah Right, it's so divorced from the proceedings.
Speaker 2I really appreciate that the movie does have kind of a self-awareness to it as well, and I think that's where Alec Baldwin really does shine, where he's kind of play, acting a little bit and they're, they're, they're amping up the camp. This is really evident in the taxi cab scene after he rescues the professor from the cement shoes, and they're reciting the back and forth passcode what should I say? What? How do I respond? You know, the sun is shining, but the ice is slippery, and they're like repeating it back and forth and they, they, but the ice is slippery, and they're like repeating it back and forth and they, they give that shot of him just like staring, not at the guy off to the side, and you can, his mouth's not moving Cause he's got the bandana around it and he's saying it in a very sly, coy way and it's just like it's funny, but it's meant to be cute and not making fun of, but laughing with.
Speaker 1Well, trembling colors has a great point. And he said I always had the feeling that Alec Baldwin said yes to the shadow because he thought Burton should have picked him as Batman after working with him in Beetlejuice, instead of Keaton. I can absolutely see that, right. But I think, baldwin, he's got another great line. When he's talking to con right, she won, con, she won. When he's talking to Khan right, shiwan.
Speaker 5Khan, shiwan Khan, where he goes. I'm on to your plan, khan.
Speaker 1You still don't have the beryllium sphere, and without it you can't complete the bomb Besides you know I'm going to stop you Right, like it's a really funny, like you know line, that sort of plays on the expectations of these invincible pulp heroes. But I liked him in the movie. He's invincible pulp heroes, but I liked him in the movie. He's a nice presence. First of all, he's got a great house, better than Tim Burton's Batman house. He's got a cool little library secret base. I like his network of spies, everyone who works for him.
Speaker 2Yes, that was cool.
Speaker 1The cabbie and the other people. Yeah, I was expecting a little more flair to the filmmaking, considering Russell Mulcahy was behind this and all the fabulous sword fights and visual flares of those films. I mean, I tried to demonstrate this on twitter when I posted a montage of all the great transition sequences in highlander where we see the flashbacks which he could have done with this movie, where highlander is also a character with a backstory in a very disparate past who now is living in our current daytime. Why not do that with Lamont Cranston to where he's flashing back to his past? There's a great sequence in Highlander where Connor McCloud looks up and then we transition to a mural of the Mona Lisa and then we pan down to him in modern day. There's so many things like that in Highlander the famous drop sunglasses in the parking lot, and there's just not a lot of that here in this movie.
Speaker 2not a lot of visual flair and the fight scenes are weak. That's like no good action in this film.
Speaker 2That's the ultimate yeah here is the action is weak, the fight scenes are weak, in fact. I mean, that's why I was saying the bridge scene is great, except for the fact that the action is invisible, yeah, and so it's worthless. And then, as we compare to the Phantom next, which I don't want to get ahead of ourselves the action and choreography in that movie is excellent and it makes it one of the most thrilling films of the lot we're talking about today.
Speaker 1All of these movies know that eventually you have to have a mano-a-mano with the main villain and that that's mostly about stakes and about reiterating the themes of the film and about tying it all up. It's not going to be a big spectacular action sequence. Right, we get that in Rocketeer, we get it in Dick Tracy and Phantom. But in all three of those films they know well enough to have a big, explosive gunfight before that happens. Gunfight, you know, before that happens. In this movie, shiwan khan sends out four sword-wielding pirate chinese guys after him and goes kill the shadow. And then what? The shadow fucks with tim curry and throws him out a window. And I'm like what happened to the other guys when shadow gonna take down these four dudes with his two badass pistols Didn't happen. And then we get a Highlander recreation scene where everyone fights with their mind, a la like Brian De Palma, and then all these windows blow up and mirrors explode, which is very cool, right, and just Volkehi doing the exact same thing he did in Highlander, but please.
Speaker 2No, I agree. The final confrontation with the Shadow and Shion Kahn is wholly unsatisfying compared to the three other movies, even the Rocketeer, which I had some issues with. The climax of that film is exquisite and the final confrontation between the Rocketeer and Sinclair on the Zeppelin has an ultimate payoff that is extremely satisfying. Where we didn't mention it. But Sinclair steals the rocket pack from the Rocketeer but the Rocketeer sabotages it beforehand and you know, ha-ha, I'm getting away. I've stolen the rocket pack and I take it back to the fatherland and it blows up in his face. And that's the perfect way to end a movie like that. Dick Tracy, the same way, the way he he stops big boy this. Honestly, I don't even remember how he stopped.
Speaker 1She won con, or he stabs him or whatever Each other, he overcomes them with his mind powers. Um, now there is a cool moment where, where the floor becomes uneven and the shadow slides around on the floor, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2Look, it's a beautiful scene. That stupid magical snake dagger, they're just obsessed with that, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it wasn't cool and it had no really thematic relevance. I thought that it was a good knife or I don't know what at the beginning, but yeah, whatever, what did you think of Penelope Ann Miller as our, as our, as our, uh, heroine?
Speaker 2good, but not very memorable or captivating.
Speaker 1Um baldwin is the best thing going for this movie. Another great line he has when penelope ann miller's staying the night at his house and she's doing this little sexy thing where she's recanting her dream and she goes. Oh, I was naked on a beach covered in sand and the sun was setting and he goes. I had a dream too I tore my face off when I was a different person underneath like that's a great line. And baldwin, like he kills it in this movie. He's so good I think he's great.
Speaker 2no, I agree, I didn't. So when I, when I, when we started this discussion and I was criticizing him, I meant specifically for the opening scene of the movie, which is ridiculous, where he is the Tibetan warlord, opium warlord OK, that is ridiculous. When he is the you know playboy socialite dressed in a tuxedo, you know going about town, he's, he's really good at that and he's really good at delivering these very ridiculous sarcastic lines as a comedian would. So in that, he's good. He looks good in the costume, yes, except for the nose which you mentioned.
Speaker 1It's not all bad, it's not terrible. No, no, no, no, it's a mixed bag.
Speaker 2What's also disappointing is that we have so many other really really good actors in this movie in supporting roles and they are not given anything to do. I mean, would you even recognize that that's Ian McKellen?
Speaker 1in this movie. They give him nothing. He doesn't even have a personality pre-hypnosis no, he's like obsessed with making a bomb and then he's hypnotized.
Speaker 2And Tim Curry. Okay, not to shoehorn him in to do one thing for his entire career, but like, come on, you gotta gotta have the voice, the tim curry voice, the uh, you know, the rocky horror voice there, come on no, and you have andre gregory too, and he's like the shadow.
Speaker 1That was a very cool visual moment where we see the shadows like interconnected tubes, infrastructure for getting messages, but andre gregory's in it doesn't do anything. Peter boyle is the cab driver yeah, I mean he's good, but you but just underutilized actors, especially Ian McKellen what a shame. And then also the action scenes. They contrive for the shadow. I don't want to see Tim Curry get the best of the shadow by locking him into a tube and then it's filled up with water. I'm like, come on, maybe do something a little better than that. Visually, the movie is cool. I mean it's a great looking movie and I think that the um, uh, the score is terrific. I love the score. Um, goldsmith does it and it's got a great orchestral thing. But there's also a nice eerie synthesizer beat that comes in at certain times, which is, uh, I think very cool.
Speaker 2So yeah, it's, it's okay. Um, it's just not I. I think it's one of the weaker of the bunch.
Speaker 1Yeah, I agree, not, not not a great demonstration of shadow powers. You know like he gets pinned to the wall with two arrows at one point and kind of like crawls out as a half shadow, half guy which is well.
Speaker 2We had to establish the fact that he can turn into a shadow, because he is called the shadow after all. So they had to do that one, and then it's never mentioned again or it's never demonstrated again but this is also a movie that had a giant marketing campaign um, it, did you read my mind? You must have used your powers of mental confusion to get that out of me there yes, you see, I'm gonna do my arson.
Speaker 1Wells, yes, I have powers. This is the part where you go. Oh yes, shadow, I was just about to do my evil plan no as orson wells you can't begin a sentence.
Speaker 2There's no way to start an english sentence in which you begin a sentence with in and emphasize it what is that from? Get me a jury. Show me how you can start an English sentence that begins with in July.
Speaker 1Okay, is that from some con press tour? He did, or something.
Speaker 2That's from the Peas, the Frozen Peas.
Speaker 1Oh, oh, oh Okay. Have you ever seen the film Me and Orson Welles? The Richard Linklater movie with Zac Efron?
Speaker 2I have not.
Speaker 1Check it out. Everybody watch that movie. It's very, very good. Go ahead.
Speaker 2Oh, I have the clip there if you want to show that first. Which Ebert, I thought that's where you're going.
Speaker 4I thought, that's what you were going for. Yeah, the Shadow action figure commercial.
Speaker 2Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 4Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Armed with Quickdraw 45s, the mysterious crime fighter faces the evil, shawan Khan. But Shadow's hypnotized cloud men's minds, you will obey. Khan hypnotize cloud men's minds. You will obey. Khan escapes on his serpent bike. After him, shadow khan fires first shadow cycle, pops a wheelie, launching a counter missile or is it who knows the shadow knows shadow night myth cycle.
Speaker 6Other figures and vehicles, each sold separately yeah.
Speaker 2So they went all out and toy in the toy department for the Shadow. I honestly don't remember ever seeing these toys in the store at the time. I mean that would have been the perfect audience for this at the time. So I have no recollection of these whatsoever.
Speaker 1I've never even seen them secondhand at a comic store or anything.
Speaker 2Yeah, I've rarely seen them either. And we were talking, so we talked about how we weren't really around when dick tracy or the rocketeer were um coming out, but the shadow and the phantom we were at least I was um and I have no recollection this movie ever coming out, um of hearing about it or seeing it until way later and it's that's. I don't know what that says about the marketing or the promotion for the movie or how well it was. It was uh handled, but it's part of the probably part of the marketing or the promotion for the movie or how well it was. It was uh handled, but it's part of the probably part of the reason why the movie flopped. I mean, they are obviously targeting it towards kids because they have a huge action figure line Um, and it just didn't didn't work out.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I guess, does that? Do you have anything else to say about the shadow? I mean there are cool elements. I like the idea that there was a hidden, secret hotel room.
Speaker 2I mean, I did not show off my shadow pulp that I have here.
Speaker 5Bad glare on the camera, but this is an original shadow pulp from December 15, 1939.
Speaker 2So 10 cents.
Speaker 1Now, who was the artist? I was looking him up, that's so you know. Responsible?
Speaker 2Oh, I don't remember my shadow reference book that I have here. This is a great book that I found at a comic book store one time. It's the shadow scrapbook. It's actually written by Walter B Gibson, who's the creator of the shadow, and this goes through like the entire history of the character you know through through the medium, through radio movies, and has character you know through through the medium through radio movies, um, and has you know a lot of, has a lot of reprints of the actual stories in here.
Speaker 1So a lot of good stuff well, if anybody else could be credited as a creator of the shadow would definitely be george rosen, the artist who's like he defined the shadow. His artwork is so beautiful. This guy's makes I mean this. His artwork is tremendous. If you're looking up beautiful pulp illustrations, it's just unmatched. The guy's phenomenal.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. So overall, you know, like kind of a mixed bag it's, it's definitely a movie that I would rewatch again. I think there's a lot of rewatch potential in here. There's a lot of good stuff in here, not, you know, not a great movie.
Speaker 1Yeah, I agree. I agree Could have been. You know, I don't know. Honestly, had there been more action, it would have been a big B-plus for me. Dick Tracy Toys. We're having some conversations in the chat.
Speaker 3I have seen these before. You've not seen these.
Speaker 1No, I have. I know that Retro Blasting did a good video on them.
Speaker 2So Playmates made those toys along with the Ninja Turtles. They're awesome. Well, are they awesome? They do kind of look like deformed trolls, those Dick Tracy characters.
Speaker 1They look great. The Dick Tracy, these are sweet.
Speaker 2They're a little strange. Yeah, I guess they're a little off-putting.
Speaker 1You know why would a kid want so many various, like you know, suited gangsters? You know that all I mean why not Well, Dick Tracy's the hero.
Speaker 2They all have their trademark deformity, though that makes them cool. So that's why. That's why you would want them, and they come in various neon-colored suits, three-piece suits, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah Well, how come the dick tracy toy didn't have a jacket? That's kind of a yeah, that is strange.
Speaker 2Well, that was also just the design of a lot of these playmates toys. Um, they used they didn't do it for tracy, but for other characters. A lot of times they used like cloth for some of the jackets and stuff, like famously for splinter in the ninja turtles. They gave him this like cloth outfit. It looks like horrible. And the Shredder the same thing, the Shredder toy. He looked like he was naked because people would lose the cloth so he'd be bare-chested and it was really creepy.
Speaker 1Bummer, I never had any Ninja Turtles when I was a kid.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, but Playmates, the best toy lane they did was Star Trek the Next Generation.
Speaker 1I doubt.
Speaker 2You doubt it, you doubt my assertion. How dare you?
Speaker 1Who the hell would want those toys. Who would?
Speaker 2want their Admiral McCoy as a 98-year-old action figure. What's wrong with you, your overweight Admiral Commander Scott figure I'm going to look that up now, which brings us to the Phantom.
Speaker 3There are some who say he is only a myth.
Speaker 6Soon they will discover the Phantom is real.
Speaker 1Which of all the movies I had the lowest expectations for and was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 2I had a blast with the Phantom, loved it. It's great, more so than I've ever enjoyed it before. When I've seen it I don't know why Just something about it blew me away this time.
Speaker 1It just had such an aura of badness on it. I remember a long time ago seeing a poster and I go oh god, this just doesn't look very good at all. Slam Evil. If you don't want to slam evil, log off this chat immediately. But yeah, the Phantom boy slam evil. I remember seeing it in old comic books and just thinking why would they want to dress up a guy like that? You know I had no reference for the comic at all, but do you know why, though do you know why the phantom is purple?
Speaker 2no, I don't, it was a mistake it was a mistake in the coloring process from what I've read. Yeah, so leafwalk did not design the phantom to be purple, that was, I think it was supposed to be kind of like a dark gray design, and someone at the coloring at King Features seemed to get made it purple. It's kind of like how the Hulk was green by accident, sure.
Speaker 1Well, I could see. You know, the Phantom works in a comic strip, right the one-piece stretchy deal, stretchy deal.
Speaker 2Now I think that the movie oh, the movie does the best they can with that outfit.
Speaker 1Yes, they really do and they commit to it so much that you're just kind of like okay, you know what I mean and they never really like reference it. I mean people looking badass in a Marvel movie and they're like nice costume, idiot, right as like a quip. They never do that once in Phantom.
Speaker 2No, thank God yeah.
Speaker 1He just does his thing and the movie's a lot of fun and I was really pleasantly surprised. Go please.
Speaker 2I really enjoyed this one for a lot of the things that you just said. It is so earnest and it is so true to what it wants to be in that it is a celebration of the comic strip character and everything that is great about it. They don't pull any, they don't. They're not taking any cheap shots, they're not making fun of it, they're they're going with it full throttle. So there's that. That. I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 2To the world and the environment, the phantom to me is the most interesting because it kind of is the best of both worlds in multiple ways in setting it combines the jungle environment with the big city environment so you can have a little bit of both here and there in terms of a kind of character and the kind of hero that he is. He also does, you know, blend the line between those earlier characters that came before him, like a tarzan or a zoro type of swashbuckler or jungle character, with the modern day superhero, like a superman or a batman or whatever. So you kind of have a great mix of all of those things. So you can turn the dial one way for this, one way for that, and it all works within the same pot of stew here so that I really like. I also thought in terms of I don't think the romance with Christy Swanson's Diana is that strong. I don't think the romance with Christy Swanson's Diana is that strong, but I did like the sort of triangle the pseudo triangle they do create with Catherine Zeta-Jones that makes the relationship that is going to occur between Phantom and Diana to be more powerful and more meaningful. Because the Phantom you do see as a character who might be more tempted and more open, because the Phantom you do see as a character who might be more tempted and more open to going with the bad girl, and so by him having a true love and affection for the good girl Makes that a little bit stronger than the Tess breathless comparison I made earlier.
The Phantom: Purple Suit, Pure Adventure
Speaker 2Oh, my last point would just be Then I'll shut up the origin of the character. I find very compelling and just really interesting that they actually went through the time to put it into the movie as the prologue backstory and not eschew it or not to, you know, make up something else. And it is, it's a devotion to your heritage, your lineage, that you have a family obligation to carry on this tradition and do this. And he doesn't need to do it. He has no personally, he has no stakes for staying in Africa and, to you know, serve the people of I believe it's Bengala right To serve as the phantom, but he feels obligated to do so and I love the stuff where he's talking to the ghost of his father, who's played by Patrick McGowan.
Speaker 1No, I thought this movie was effortlessly fun. I was kind of I didn't really know where it was going, necessarily, uh, until Catherine Zeta-Jones and her pirate crew uh, take over the plane. And then I was like, okay, I get it. The scene where the phantom comes in and he's I wouldn't want to say he's cracking jokes, because it's not like this in-your-face quippiness, but he's very sly.
Speaker 2He is extremely subtle.
Speaker 6The subtle irony that Billy Zane imbues the character with is the perfect tone there's an old jungle saying never point a gun at someone because it just might go off.
Speaker 3Ooh lost hands. I like that in a man.
Speaker 1He's very much like a true hero, but he's I wouldn't say tongue in cheek in the term of Alec Baldwin, where he's almost winking at the camera, but he really brings the movie together. I wouldn't say he's like a super strong character, but we have um treat Williams here playing the villain, who I thought he was just just fantastic. He's phenomenal.
Speaker 5I really wasn't in the market for a partner, but it seems to me that we have a mutually beneficial situation here. Think of it this way you represent the old guard of grizzled scallywags and pig-legged peats, while I stand for the new order of things, modern and up-to-date just the man to carry our cause into the 20th century.
Speaker 1Completely underrated actor. I recommend the movie Smooth Talk to anyone I talk to. Please watch it. Treat Williams is unbelievable in it. It's a fantastic film with laura dern. Um, no, this was uh. This was just just so much fun and I was, I was really. It made a lot of sense. It clicked when I read that jeffrey bohm, the guy who wrote last crusade coincidentally my favorite indiana jones movie wrote this as well. Uh, and he also wrote inner space for joe dante. We know joe dante was initially attached to direct this movie. Inner Space is also a film I just watched recently, completely great as well.
Speaker 1But it just moves such a great clip. We have so many fun sequences at the art museum where we have a heist. We have a fantastic stunt where people, where the Phantom and his leading lady, jump off of a pontoon boat onto a horse and then the plane crashes into a mountain. We have a truck going over a bridge, a law temple of doom and sorcerer, and it flips completely upside down and Phantom is hanging off of it. It's just fantastic stuff. They really pulled, didn't pull a single punch. The director Windsor journeyman director does a tremendous job. The movie moves in a constant clip and it's never dull, it's always fun.
Speaker 2I couldn't help but love it oh yeah, the the, the feel of this movie feels like we are accurately trying to recreate a true 1930s serial movie adventure. Okay, just like raiders of the lost ark did. This is what we are trying to replicate here, and we are succeeding, much more so than than the other films have. Um, so, yeah, billy zane he's great in the movie, very coy, very subtle. I loved his performance here. Uh, as uh, the 21st Phantom, what else? Yeah, so treat Williams that was the other part that I was going to comment on. That is what I'm talking about as a true maniacal scenery-chewing villain who is diabolical, has no remorse, but has some flair, has some style to him and is not above. Just, oh, you're out, you, uh, you want to quit?
Speaker 2okay we'll have a nice day and then, uh, throw a spear and impale them on the door and anyone else, let's go and james rebar is great too at this movie.
Speaker 1It's really. It really tells a really fine line between being a sort of parody but also being really true to like the spirit of reading these stories but also acknowledging somewhat that the audiences are more sophisticated. There's a great moment where treat williams is discovering the true power of all three combined fucking skulls or whatever and he accidentally like obliterates james rebar.
Speaker 2It's like great to him.
Speaker 1Yeah, and he's like oops oh yeah, it's like really funny. Um yeah, I don't know. By the end of it, though, the the phantom costume had turned me off for the longest time, and I thought to myself what? Who would ever decide that they wanted to dress up like this?
Speaker 2but at the end they don't care you gotta roll with it, you just gotta. You have to be willing to suspend your disbelief, and if that's for the costume, it's for the costume. I mean. What else can you do?
Speaker 1but if you want to recreate the thrill and fun of watching indiana jones, don't watch national treasure or something it's. It's all here, right it?
Speaker 2is. It is here in the truest form, because again we're going to where the heart of the action is. We're going to the jungle, we're going to the african jungle, and then I love the new york city scenes as well are phenomenal in this movie, especially what we talked about in Dick Tracy, especially the scenery, the backgrounds and all that. Well, I think the Phantom does take the cake, though, for the interior set design work that is present in this movie. The Drax office layer is one of the most gorgeous and beautifully constructed sets, perfectly encapsulating that 1930s art deco influence and style. I mean, it is oozing with just a style and sophistication. And also that's where he has the great moment, where he also kills the scientist by. Can you look into the microscope and tell me what you see? And you're like you're setting it up so badly too that that you're kind of like oh brother, you know he's going to stab him in the eye. It just pulls it off so well.
Speaker 1To give the Shadow credit. I thought it also had a lot of great art deco scenery. I think that Lamont Cranston Sort of the Rocketeer for its money for its credit.
Speaker 2But this was above and beyond. And then add in the jungle scenery too, especially the phantom's cave and layer, where then he goes into the catacombs and sees the crypt, the crypts of the previous phantoms who have fallen before him. And also there's a really the whole arc about him with james remar's character who is bragging the entire time that he's killed the Phantom before and they can't understand why he's still around, despite they don't. No one can figure out that. They're a lineage of people and it passes from father to son. So the whole idea of the Phantom now realizing that this is the guy that killed his father and has his father's belt, is carrying it like a trophy and having to get it back that also is a very satisfying, you know, conclusion to the movie I was gonna say too, there's a great, I think one of the biggest appeals of these turn of the century jungle adventure world traveling indiana jones, or even just reading the you know the old novels of, uh, you know king solomon's minds.
Speaker 1Who wrote that? You know, I'm sorry, h writer hagger, um is just that idea that back in the day it used to be possible to travel right via plane, but then you didn't have a phone, no one was going to screw with you, you were really somewhere different. Yeah, and the aesthetics of writing in a journal or the library of books in the skull cave, like this kind of stuff, you can't, you can't have that anymore. Right, the true exploration is like gone, it's over with. But here, for this fleeting moment in time, we had an opportunity to dress really awesome and go on an adventure. Right, have beautiful leather bound books, beautiful brass spy glasses and pocket watches, and you know, it was just a fantastic time.
Speaker 1And it's no wonder filmmakers want to recreate this feeling. And why people didn't come has a lot to do with I think they go. Why would I want to watch a guy jump around in a purple costume? It looks utterly ridiculous. Maybe the movie trailers didn't do a good enough job. I watch a trailer. They kind of hide the shadow and they really sell the movie as action. They should have sold it as fun and adventure and kind of a you know, uh, campy right, which is what it is um, the shadow or the phantom we're talking about?
Speaker 2oh yeah, yeah, this is the return of the great adventures, which is what indiana jones raiders of the lost ark promises as its tagline. This is this is, in my, for my money, the true spiritual successor to that, which is ironic because it's part of the source material that is based off of itself.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2Also, I think, by nature of the plot, this facilitates a much more rousing adventure film in that it's a treasure hunt plot, which you cannot go wrong with. That, as opposed to shaman con, as I'm gonna drop a neutron bomb in new york, for for whatever reason I can't remember, I kept having flashbacks to captain america 1979 with the neutron bomb.
Speaker 1Yeah sure yeah, so it's a big liquor distiller in the back of a truck yeah, and then, uh, the rocketeer.
Speaker 2The rocketeer was just like okay, um, german nazi infiltration. Well, you know, which is fine. But you know, whatever, dick tracy has the probably the second best plot plot device for my money, which is just like gangland war. Uh, the boss is trying to amass power so that that works really well for my opinion. And then this is like treasure hunt is always can't go wrong.
Speaker 1Well, I liked about Dick Tracy too is that there's also the secondary plot, or the third tier plot of Madonna, as, yes, you know the bad he was trying to try and do it one time in snare Dick Tracy and also kill big boy and become the crime boss, and then so she sets certain things in motion that you know are fun. But no, this Phantom movie, man, I had a blast with it. I thought it was just a lot of fun. I thought that Billy Zane, you know, here's another guy who had a strong start but has since sort of retreated from fame, and I think it's maybe a little bit of a butt of jokes, right? I mean when.
Speaker 1I look on Wikipedia and I see that you have credits in movies, comedy films as playing yourself. You know, it's a little bit of a hit time. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 2Hit rock bottom. Also, if you haven't read any of the Phantom comics, I would recommend them. There's a lot of good ones out there. The Gold Key Run is pretty good. That looks dope. You can find those and track those down, these beautifully painted covers here.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, beautifully painted covers here.
Speaker 2This one's really fun. It's with the Jungle Patrol that the Phantom is in charge of. There's also ones that King Comics put out themselves, because this was published by King Feature Syndicate. This is the Girl Phantom. Here's one where he's pulling the. He's like enslaved at one point and has to work like an ox. So there's a lot of really good stuff and you can see as they go throughout the years, you know there's different ones. Here's one where he's wrapped up in the American flag there. So a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I I was. I was intrigued. I want to read more Phantom material because, like you said, yeah, it's like perfect, it's a perfect.
Speaker 2Also, there's just a jungle action and the novels that I posted a picture on X when I was reading one of the novelizations for the Phantom that Lee Falk wrote, or they took his story and they wrote a novel around it. They're really good, they're really engaging and they're really fun. They're really easy to read.
Speaker 1So there's a paperback series of the Phantom novels which I would recommend. The only really extra studying I did for this was listening to probably six shadow radio shows.
Speaker 2And they're all really good. They're all really good, they're good. But, as we discussed on our own, listening to those radio shows is kind of like an out of body experience, especially if you're I'm I'm kind of used to it and um, cause, I listened to a lot of them. But like, if you take, if you stop paying attention for one iota, one microsecond, you're like what, what just happened?
Speaker 1it's over, uh yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, that happened to one of them. Then, all of a sudden, the villain was dead and I had to go back and figure out what the shadow did to trick this.
Speaker 2You know, and they come up with the most contrived explanations to wrap things up in a matter of 10 seconds. Uh, when? When you're like, shouldn't this have taken like another half an hour, so sure?
Speaker 1they're, they're great. I mean you have to be doing something like I was just doing, like chores yeah, and it was.
Speaker 2They're good to listen to in the car.
Speaker 1I'll tell you that, yeah, sure, well back in the day, your ass was in front of that fucking radio and you were. You were listening intently, right, oh yeah nowadays. Because I tried to listen to some of them while I was doing like some moderate busy work at work and I was kept losing focus on the yeah, no, no, you can't listen to if you're trying to do something.
Speaker 2You know um.
Speaker 1You're focusing on something, oh, can we unlike, unlike this show?
Speaker 2this show you could listen to and and you know just drown it out and just just give us the the watch time, you know just sounds, just noise exactly can we play the Siskel and Ebert review of the Phantom and react to that, because I think there's a lot of good points that they both make there.
Speaker 1And I read Ebert's review today and he kills it in his review.
Speaker 2He's got it exactly right. Ebert's the man. You better have a look.
Speaker 3Well, somebody say something.
Speaker 6You're all mixed up with the same brotherhood Diane, that's Billy Zane playing the title role in the Phantom, the new movie based on the popular comic strip that apparently has been going strong for 60 years. But on screen, the sight of a guy wearing a purple bodysuit in the middle of a jungle, or even on the outskirts of the jungle, does stretch credibility. And credibility isn't helped by Billy Zane's performance in Manor. Follow that car. Oh God, Take my money but don't hurt me. Al, take it easy. I'm a friend of Kid Walker's. I need your help.
Speaker 3No, hey, hey you Come back here. Hey, hey, you Come back here.
Speaker 6His assignment in the Phantom is to prevent an assortment of bad guys from collecting a set of three magical skulls one of silver, one of gold and one of jade and thereby harnessing power to rule the world. Phantom, let's get him no.
Speaker 6And here's another power-hungry bad guy, a guy named Drax, played very well by Treat Williams. In fact, the villains in the Phantom are far more enjoyable than the Phantom himself. Show me the power. Show me the power. Yes, the Phantom is another action picture I'm giving a mixed review to, and I've already outlined my split opinion Hated the Phantom, laughed at the Phantom. But I like Creed Williams in some of the action scenes.
Speaker 3The direction of my thumb is down because of the bottom line, I'm not interested in seeing the further adventures of the phantom. Oh, gene, I really love this movie and I like the way the phantom looks. The phantom in that it was created in 1936. He is the first of the comic book superheroes, right, and he? I think it was very brave of them to keep the look of that 1930 strip instead of trying to modernize like they did with batman I mean batman's uniform. It looks like he's living inside a tire. You know this. The whole klutziness of the fact that the phantom, when he lands on a truck, he really lands, he's not, doesn't have cat like grace, is part of the charm of this movie and the look of the film. I mean, I would recommend to people that if they want to completely forget everything about the plot and everything about the story which wouldn't be a bad idea this movie is worth seeing for the production design by Paul Peters. This is one of the greatest-looking movies I've ever seen. The colors, the interior.
Speaker 6The interior of the Skull Cave is very well done and what about?
Speaker 3Drax's office in New York that looks good it's a good-looking movie.
Speaker 6Did you find the Phantom, someone that you cared about? The?
Speaker 3least I found the Phantom very amusing. I liked what Billy Zane did with that, Instead of standing around like some kind of a stick to give the guy? Oh, I think he's very stiff no to give the guy a personality, a wry humor an edge.
Speaker 6Oh, I don't think he has a wry humor an edge a little quality of kidding himself a little bit. There's a lot going on there, I think he's quite stiff, Roger, and that's where my problem was Every time I saw him.
Speaker 3Okay, Gene, I just want to get the bottom line out. It's PG rated. I think it's terrific. They didn't load it up with a lot of extra violence. It's a great family picture and I just loved looking at it, yeah.
Speaker 1Couldn't agree more. I thought billy zane what did he?
Speaker 2what did he say? Uh, he's amusing. Yes, he is. There's a real charm to his um portrayal of the character you, this is a character that you want to like, that you're rooting for at the end of the day. So, yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, you know, the phantom.
Speaker 1What a cool, what a cool guy yeah, he's, he's just you like him, he's cool.
Speaker 2yeah, you know he wears a purple suit, you would feel comfortable if this was the guy that was coming in to save the day and you know he disarmed the situation to make you feel more comfortable, that you know everything's going to be okay, it's believable. Dick Tracy will, you know, control the situation by. You know his competency and his authority as an officer of the law. If the Rocketeer you'd probably be like, oh God, this guy's going to blow up everything. And the Shadow you'd be like, is this guy going to kill us all?
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm actually more excited to recommend it. I sent my brothers a picture from the movie and they were like what the fuck is this? I'm like you got to recommend it. And just, I sent my brothers a picture from the movie and they were like what the fuck is this? I'm like you gotta watch it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and they, they captured all of the supporting kind of um companions that the phantom has, which is this horse a beautiful white stallion, the wolf companion. I mean so cool. Yeah, it's great. I I loved it more than I have on previous viewings and got me reading, rereading, a lot of phantom stuff and I'm like I'm, you know, all in on the phantom now.
Speaker 1So you know what, though? I think that if we can agree on one thing about all these films, or if I could summarize them in one way, it's beautiful women, handsome men, high adventure, excitement, style, adventure, excitement, style, grace, fashion, passion, action. You know, this is the blueprint. Let's have some fun. Let's as Mr C a layman says, let's slam evil. Yeah, let's do it, let's do it. Any closing thoughts? I think a closing statement.
Speaker 2Or question would be why didn't these movies succeed? What was the problem?
Speaker 1And why did they keep making them after they kept failing? You know, dick Tracy fails, rocketeer fails Shadow, and then let's well, you gotta give it. You gotta give it the old college.
Speaker 2Try there. You know you gotta, you gotta keep going. And they gave it. They gave it a it's for these films. We're talking about 1990 to 96. For movies, um, you know they, there is overlap and you can say that that's part of it too is overlap with the emerging superhero comic book genre that was, you know, coming into its own at that time.
Speaker 2You look at the, the 90s, as a decade for for that it's a pretty weird experimentation with comic book adaptations beyond this, including very modern comics that were adapted and also were very much failures in and of themselves. I mean, you look at something like Spawn, which was a very hip and modern comic book that had come out just a few years earlier, in whatever, 91, 92, made into a movie, I believe in 97, 98, and a big failure as well. And Spawn was on top of the world for comics. You know everyone was into Spawn. You know even Mighty Morphin, power Rangers, which was a colossal powerhouse on TV. That movie was not successful. The Mask was hugely successful, but that's because Jim Carrey led that movie.
Speaker 2Men in Black, people don't remember that's a comic book adaptation, but again Will Smith. So it just depends. You have to have some kind of other hook beyond the comic book adaptation. At that time and I don't think having Alec Baldwin or Billy Zane or whatever was enough for these movies to overcome the obstacle People were also thinking, still, these were silly comic book movies and it's for kids or it's for now. It's like you have adults that are, you know, like including us, but you know we've kind of grown numb to to some of the current Marvel and DC adaptations, but you have people taking this like very deathly seriously.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, I think you're, I think you're right.
Speaker 2I yeah, yeah, I think you're. I think you're right, I think you're right. Yeah, funny, all this hd and uhd tech and the next generation doesn't know how to write or direct.
Speaker 1Well, yeah, it comes down to you get a load of me and my movie follow curious cuts. Hey, well, I'd just like to say before we wrap up, I was really glad we did this show. It's kind of one that was on my mind for a while to do and I'm glad to be committed to it. And, um, if you did this show, it's kind of one that was on my mind for a while to do and I'm glad to be committed to it. And if you enjoy this show, don't forget that you can listen to the audio versions on Spotify or iTunes. Don't forget to leave us a nice review or give us five stars.
Speaker 1And our next show is going to be an experiment. Normally we talk about a series of movies generally four that either stand out in a cycle of movies or in a genre or from a certain director or actor, but we're going to be doing a show called High and Low, and the featured star will be Tony Curtis. Every episode of High and Low it'll be on the same channel, same podcast feed, it'll feature a star or director and we'll talk about one really magnificent film in their catalog and one that is very, very bad or thought of as being bad. And so for our Tony Curtis episode we're going to be watching Some Like it Hot, a comedy masterpiece. And then, for the low, we will be discussing William Girdler, director of Grizzlies the Manitow, with Tony Curtis. So tune in for that, and then we have a good show. I think we have a pretty good one lined up for our next four-movie show. Curious Cat says the Vikings I'm thinking you're referring to the Vikings with Kirk Douglas, which is awesome Anyway.
Speaker 2I'm very excited to watch the Manitow again because it hasn't been soon enough.
Speaker 1It's been two years, hasn't it been two years, since we both last?
Speaker 2Probably been.
Speaker 1Yeah, I got the Blu-ray. I have the Blu-ray too. I'm so glad, I'm so glad.
Speaker 2I invested in it at the time.
Why These Films Failed and Final Thoughts
Speaker 1And it was. I got it was $30. I'm surprised it's not out of print by now. Is it a Shout Factory? It is, yeah. I think I got it on a secondary market, so it's probably going to shoot up to 70 here soon.
Speaker 2Speaking of Shout Factory, you have the Phantom Blu-ray from Shout Factory, correct?
Speaker 1No, no, I'm going to buy it, I'm going to.
Speaker 2Oh, which one did you get?
Speaker 1I just bought it on Amazon.
Speaker 2I rented it, I bought the yeah, I have the shadow one, which is no, the shadow one is just put up by universal. So all the reason I'm bringing this up is that all four of the movies that we've talked about today have some of the worst, um, you know, home media presentations in terms of special features and bonus content, which there's basically none for any of these movies, um, which is really disappointing, especially for dick tracy. I mean that that seems like that should be heavily available with bonus content. Now the reason I brought up.
Speaker 1The Phantom is that there's nothing.
Speaker 2Disney did not put anything on there. The Shadow nothing. No commentary tracks nothing. The Phantom that's why I was curious to see the Shout Factory Phantom disc, which is out of print, compared to the, the paramount one, which is bare bones. So just disappointing, because you can learn a lot by listening to the audio commentary track I know, and I wish that you know, they had a.
Speaker 1Um I I bought the special edition of the shadow and it's like a still gallery and like a 20 minute interview with you know, some of the cast members and stuff which was okay, but it wasn't made for, like hbo or you know, entertainment probably yeah, it wasn't worth the extra ten dollars, but I really wish the phantom had a, had a nice um. You know what does have a good looking blu-ray. I see on amazon is the disgusting freak sci-fi phantom update. Hip, cool kevlar vest bullshit. Phantom makes you want to throw up.
Speaker 2Looks disgusting that must have lasted, what like?
Speaker 112 episodes, 13 episodes oh my god, why even do it?
Speaker 2well, they were making that. They also made an abominable flash gordon show on sci-fi around that same time where they were going back and forth between mongo and earth, which was which was like heresy oh yeah, and he's just got like a jacket on, and then there's just some yeah, yeah, he's just like normal yeah, I think the days of the sci-fi original series is that. Is that over? I mean, are they still able to even afford to make?
Speaker 2those it's gotta be basic cable tv shows like that wasn't stargate their big hit, wasn't that the one that? Was such a big yeah yeah, it was, I believe, stargate sg. I mean I could be wrong, stargate sg1. Was that syndicated, I think, at first first-round syndication and then sci-fi made the uh, the sequel shows like atlantis and it ran for 10 years yeah, because you know, I've never seen anyone's pretty old, like from, I think, from the early or from the mid 90s 97 to 2007 it ran.
Speaker 1I never saw it. I never saw the stargate movie either.
Speaker 2I don't know if it's any good or not it's one of those intimidating shows to get into because there's so much now and it's like to have to start at square one. It's like, uh, it's like doctor who, as well, I wouldn't, I can't even, I can't even fathom. It's like and you, you don't even, uh, you and you're not even really into Star Trek, so that's another one for you that's probably super intimidating to get into.
Speaker 1I like the original series. I like the movies.
Speaker 2DS9, Voyager, all that I can't do it. See, that would be a good show. Talk about some of the movie episodes, like the two-parter episodes.
Speaker 1I really want to do a Star Trek movies show, split into two parts, three movies a show. I would love to do that.
Speaker 2Okay, I would be down to do at least a show with two, three and four the trilogy there. Yeah, absolutely Skip one because one's been. We could do one another time, but one's been done to death.
Speaker 1I know it has, but one's been done to death and I know it has. But, like here's, the thing about our show is that I I'm assuming people tune in because they like us. They want to hear what you have to say, right? I hope so. I think that's right. Chat, would you agree? I mean we could review fucking the phantom menace. I think people would still tune in.
Speaker 1You know what I mean but uh, actually I'm gonna say I'm gonna say, uh, I'll give people a little little hint. Our next big show after our Tony Curtis show is, I think we're going to do Roger Corman's Star Students. So we'll talk about Dementia 13, coppola's movie Piranha, joe Dante's movie, so just a lot of people who are alumnus of Roger Corman Studios Boxcar.
Speaker 2Bertha.
Speaker 1Boxcar Bertha Scorsese. Yeah yeah. So that should be kind of fun actually. And I have a brand new book of Roger Corman interviews I think I'm going to read. I've always kind of wanted to get into him. Our first episode we talked about targets, yeah you know, but this should be fun too.
Speaker 2All right, yeah, take a break from modern movies for a while. That that was it's. It's not very rewarding at a certain extent.
Speaker 1No, we were doing that for a while, and yeah yeah, whatever, but all right. Well, thanks for everyone to tuned in. Appreciate it. Hope you had fun.
Speaker 2Go watch the phantom yes, phantom and dick tracy. Highly recommend both of those absolutely for sure.
Speaker 1Thanks ryan, thanks george, see you next time. Highly recommend both of those Absolutely For sure.
Speaker 2Thanks, ryan, thanks George, see you next time.
Speaker 4Maybe it's time, so why waste it and chatter? Let's settle the matter. Baby, you're mine on a platter. I always get my man.
