In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we begin our four week “vacation” overseas with the most notable one-off comic films Europe has to offer.

Comic books are a uniquely American art form, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t popular in other parts of the world. Europe and Asia have come to embrace the comic medium over the decades. As a matter of fact, they have been quicker to see the artistic merits of comic books than we here in the United States were. While Americans were considering comic books cheap entertainment for kids and emotionally stunted adults, people overseas were using the medium to expose on sexuality, politics and philosophy.

To cover every foreign comic book film would take up too many weeks in this here rundown, so we will be covering some of the films that have the most name value here in the States, either in their comic book form or in their film adaptation. This means that there will be a lot of great comic book films left out in these four weeks. And for that I apologize.

Our tour of Europe begins in Italy with one of the most influential Italian comic book heroes—Diabolik. Diabolik was created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani in the 1962 paperback graphic novel, Il Re del Terrore (“The King of Terror”). He is a highly-skilled thief who steals only from other criminals and is aided and abetted by his partner and lover Eva Kant. The character has influenced such comic writers as Mark Millar and Grant Morrison, who have created characters in their work influenced by Diabolik.

In 1968, Dino De Laurentiis brought Diabolik to the big screen in Danger: Diabolik.

Directed by Mario Brava and starring John Phillip Law in the lead, the film was a fairly faithful adaptation of the comic, with only the violence and adult themes toned down for the screen. The film detailed Diabolik going up against a crime boss who was upset about all the negative attention his organization was inadvertently getting from the police due to Diabolik’s actions.

Later that same year, De Laurentiis would bring another European comic book, this time a French one, to life on the big screen (with John Phillip Law along in a supporting role). The comic book was Barbarella.

Barbarella, like Diabolik, was created in 1962 by Jean-Claude Forest in a serialized form in the French periodical, V-Magazine and goes to show the difference in mentalities between American and French consumers.

That year saw the debut of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk in American comics, the white-bread Superman was topping the sales charts, and American comic books couldn’t have vampires or werewolves in fear of damaging vulnerable readers’ minds. Barbarella was a woman who travelled through space, getting herself into troubles where she had to use sex to get out or get into them. Nothing terribly graphic was shown, but when even the word “sex” would have gotten a comic book banned in the U.S., it shows you how far ahead of the curve Europe was.

The film was directed by Roger Vadim and starred his then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella. This is odd when you realize that the comic book Barbarella’s appearance was based on Vadim’s first wife, Brigitte Bardot. Dinners after a day’s filming must have been mighty interesting.

If nothing else, the campy film served as the inspiration for one of the best bands of the 1980s—Duran Duran. The band named itself after Durand Durand, a mad scientist played by Milo O’Shea in the film.

There have been several attempts to remake the film, including one by Vadim before he died with Sherilyn Fenn, then Drew Barrymore in the lead role. The most recent attempt was by director Robert Rodriguez, who was hoping the remake would be a star-vehicle for his then-girlfriend Rose McGowan. This version fell apart when Universal, the studio set to produce the film backed out over budget concerns and McGowan’s ability to carry the film. A German company was set to step in, but the thought of being away from his family made Rodriguez scrap the idea altogether. The pair would move on to another comic book adaptation, Red Sonja, with similar results.

Europe is also home to a large number of Muslim immigrants. Many of these immigrants escaped from Muslim countries when a new conservative religion-based regime takes over, but not all are welcomed fully in their new home countries, as they face the turmoil over whether to assimilate or stay true to their Muslim upbringing. One of these stories was Marjane Satrapi‘s, a story she related in the graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2.

Satrapi was a little girl around the time of the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, and she lived through the revolution that removed him from power and saw how that revolution had become co-opted by Muslim clerics. Eventually, at age 14, she is forced to leave Iran by her parents and relocate to Vienna, Austria. She finds a hard time adjusting to the Western world, struggling on what she should do—adapt to her new surroundings or stay true to her Iranian heritage. The graphic novels were made into a film in 2007 called Persepolis.

The film won a Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Film of 2007, losing out to Pixar’s Ratatouille. The film also garnered some controversy in Muslim countries, with Iran filing a formal grievance with the French government about the film’s inclusion in the Cannes festival.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is proof that Hollywood can also screw up adapting foreign comics as well as homegrown ones.

Based on the incredibly popular Italian comic book, Dylan Dog, the film stars Brandon Routh, Peter Stormare, and Sam Huntington (thus reuniting Superman and Jimmy Olsen from 2006’s Superman Returns), the 2011 film adaptation doesn’t quite get it. The comic book was an existential satire on the world through the lens of horror.  The film is a typical action/horror film loaded with snark and obvious humor in place of the original’s subtlety and wit. The film was hardly advertised and died a quick death at the box office, making just over $4 million worldwide against a $20 million dollar budget.

Next time, we’ll travel a little farther East as we check out some comic book films from Japan, before we cover film series from both areas.

Dino De Laurentiis, the flamboyant Italian producer with over – films to his credit, died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, CA. His filmography was a widely diverse one, with movies such as Federico Fellini’s two landmark films La Strada (1954) and Nights Of Cabiria (1957) to gritty 70s thrillers like Serpico (1973) and Three Days Of the Condor (1975) to more cult favorite fare like Flash Gordon (1980) and Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s breakthrough Conan The Barbarian (1982). He was 91.

Although he started his career prior to the outbreak of World War Two, De Laurentiis’s career began to take off in the post-War years. The two Fellini films he produced helped launch the Italian New Wave. He also was one of the first European producers to take advantage of the decline of the traditional Hollywood studio system to get his own films into American theaters. By using relatively cheaper local labor, De Laurentiis had enough money in any particular film’s budget to afford a big American star to play the lead, insuring a sale to the States-side market.

However, a changing political climate within the Italian Socialist government which saw many of the film-based tax subsidies disappearing among other contributing factors lead De Laurentiis to close his Rome-based production facility Dinocitta, and relocate to the United States.

From an office in New York City, De Laurentiis would produce a string of hits through the 1970s including Serpico, Death Wish (1974), Three Days Of The Condor, John Wayne’s last film The Shootist (1976) and the first remake of King Kong (1976). But for all his success, De laurentiis had some costly flops, including King Of The Gypsies (1978) and Hurricane (1979). Further financial strains such as an underutilized studio built in North Carolina caused further financial strain, leading the producer to sell off the rights to some of his older films in order to finance new ventures.

De Laurentiis cruised through the 1980s and early 90s on the strength of several adaptations of the works of horror novelist Stephen King. He also produced the the third installment of the Evil Dead franchise, Army Of Darkness (1992).

There are many films out there that have probably been unfairly lambasted by either critics or the passage of time. For me, one of those films is the 1980 Dino De Laurentiis produced comic-strip adaptation Flash Gordon. A garish collision of primary colors, art deco design and good old-fashioned cliffhanger adventure, Flash Gordon is a movie that never made any pretense at wanting to do anything more than give its audience two hours of light-hearted, escapist fun. And after recently catching the film again on one of the numerous Encore Cable channels, the film did just that- it entertained me in such a way that few films can.

Flash Gordon is one of those films I remember distinctly seeing as an 11-year old kid. It was early January at the Union Deposit Eric Twin outside of Harrisburg, PA (sadly long closed and recently bulldozed to make way for a shopping center expansion). It was, rightfully so, a Saturday matinee and it was cinematic love at first sight. And I’m not just talking about how Ornella Muti slinked her way through the picture as Ming’s daughter Princess Aura, either. The production design’s use of primary colors recalled the comic books my friends and I were devouring. I was already becoming familiar with the adventure serials of the 1930s and 40s through airings on a local public television station. Sure, some things, like the sadomasochistic side of the leather clad General Kala, flitted right over my barely-pubescent head. But the film’s joyful recreation of those serials captured my imagination.

The film has an amazing cast headed up by no less an actor than Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless, a role he clearly relished and played to the hilt. There’s also a pre-Bond Timothy Dalton bringing a Shakespearian tenor to Prince Barin that is counterbalanced by Brian Blessed’s complete haminess as Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen. These two performances have no right whatsoever to work side-by-side, but they do. Meanwhile, Topol’s Dr. Hans Zarkov exudes all the wide-eyed excitement of a school boy on a field trip to a planetarium.

I’ve never been a fan of camp, but Flash Gordon walks that fine line between camp and more straight-forward adventure, never letting either overtake the tone of the movie. Flash Gordon is a film that never forgets its roots in the adventure comic strips and action-packed pulp magazines of the 1930s and 40s, whether it has Flash facing the poisonous beast living inside the stump in the Arborian Temple or the perilous duel with whips between Flash and Barin where one false step could send them hurtling into the void. The film even becomes a pirate movie when Vultan’s Hawkmen swoop down on the War Rocket Ajax, which first fires its lasers in broadside barrages before its captain instructs his crew to “Repel boarders!” Sure the football bit in Ming’s throne room is goofy in the extreme, but it never gets goofy enough to be cringe-inducing. Instead, the scene strikes a fine balance that stands out in stark relief to the grimness of the dungeon and execution scenes that follow. And there’s something definitely creepy and not campy about the scene where Dr. Zarkov’s memories are supposedly drained out of his brain.

Of course, the film isn’t perfect. Jones’ Gordon and Melody Anderson’s Dale Arden are not particularly well-developed in the script, especially in relation to Flash’s fantastic surroundings, and at times they seems to be struggling to bring some depth to their characters. Additionally, it has always bugged me that even though Dr. Zarkov has forced them onto a rocketship at gunpoint and essentially kidnapped them to Mongo, they’re absolutely chummy with him for the rest of the film.

Flash Gordon’s recreation of Saturday matinee thrills predates the release of another film that owed much to the chaptered adventure serials- Raiders Of The Lost Ark. But why did critics only greet Flash lukewarmly at best but embrace the slightly more realistic and gritty atmosphere Spielberg imparted? (Coincidentally, both films shared character actor William Hootkins in small supporting roles.) Perhaps it was another space opera, George Lucas’ Star Wars (1976) with its breathtakingly real special effects technology, that spoiled critics for the simpler pleasures of some of Flash Gordon’s more primitively created visuals. While there was plenty of use of current optical compositing technology to create the fantastic worlds of Mongo, the movie also relied on shooting models on miniature sets in just the same method that the visuals were created for the original 1930s Flash Gordon serials. But for all the good visuals that optical printing could create, no amount of visual compositing could produce such an image as War Rocket Ajax moving through the psychedelic cloudscape of Mongo.

Recently, there has been talk of a new version of the comic strip being developed by none other than director Stephen Sommers. For me, this does not bode well, as I found his last film, the insufferable Van Helsing (2004), to be a hodgepodge of visual set-pieces with no story or logic to support them. To make matters worse, an issue of Weekly Variety appeared last month with a front cover ad announcing a television adaptation from RIH Entertainment, the same folks behind the recent Poseidon Adventure mini-series on NBC. With a backlit silhouette emerging from smoke, one could not be faulted for fearing that their take might be a little grittier than perhaps the material calls for.

Next month marks the 25th anniversary of Flash Gordon’s theatrical release. Currently the movie is unavailable on Region 1 DVD, though there is a rather nice Region 2 release available in England, complete with audio commentaries from director Hodges and actor Brian Blessed. When I had the chance to meet Sam J. Jones and Melody Anderson at a convention last year, they both confirmed that they had recorded a joint audio commentary for a new DVD release. Unfortunately, as DVD release dates are now being announced for January and February of next year, its beginning to look like Universal Studios has dropped the ball. That’s a shame, as there are undoubtedly many fans waiting to once again sit back on their couch and watch Flash save every one of us.