Growing up in the 1980s, you couldn’t help but have an appreciation for the type of action film from that decade, especially the buddy action film. They would never be high art, but there was an art to making them. It would kind of like building a Lego house built from time tested tropes. There would be about twenty to thirty reoccurring themes and trademarks that you’d find in these kinds of films. Not every film would have all of these tropes at the same time–the screaming police captain might be in the same film as the cop that doesn’t play by the rules, but not always. He might be in the film with the cop who goes too far in search of revenge.

Bullet to the Head is a call back to that era of action film, and has a lot of the same trademarks. It has a villainous plot that doesn’t seem really call for all that killing but has it anyway. It has charismatic villains with no sense of loyalty to each other. It has a woman with a emotional connection to the lead who eventually becomes a hostage. And it has a mismatched pair of heroes who can’t stand each other yet eventually gain a respect for each other as the bullets and snarky put-downs fly. It’s that last one where Bullet to the Head falters.

Sylvester Stallone portrays James Bonomo, a New Orleans contract killer with his own set rules that form a twisted morality (He only kills men that deserve it, Action movie trope #567). His latest hit goes off without a hitch. Well, that is until he and his partner try to get paid for it. That ends up with his partner getting killed and Bonomo angrily seeking revenge.

Enter Washington, DC police detective Taylor Kwan (Sung Kang). The man Bonomo killed was his ex-partner, a dirty cop who brought a file down to The Big Easy in order to blackmail certain individuals in town. Kwan’s quest to track down his wayward partner becomes instead an investigation to solve his death, none to the liking of the local police force.

Kwan’s investigation leads him to Bonomo and the pair team up to get to the bottom of the mystery (If you’re asking what was the sense in them teaming up, then action movies aren’t for you. These kinds of action films work best if you don’t ask these kinds questions). What they find is a conspiracy that rises up to the most powerful people in New Orleans. As they delve deeper and deeper into the deception, the question is who will win out: the by-the-book cop and his sense of justice, or the cold-blooded killer and his quest for revenge?

The film is true to its cheesy action film roots, with tweaks here and there to make it fresh. For instance, when Bonomo takes Kwan to a sultry tattoo artist named Lisa (Sarah Shahi), the woman isn’t Bonomo’s too-young-for-him girlfriend, but rather, his daughter.   And the narrative is updated for the multimedia world of today, as whenever a character’s filed is pulled, the computer files flash up on the screen at us. This provided a special kind of entertainment for me, because the photos in these files were more often than not actual publicity photos of the actors playing the characters. Well, except for Stallone’s, because his mug shot from First Blood also sneaks into this film’s character’s criminal record.

And any action film is either enhanced or hindered by its bad guys. The three here are basically stereotypes of villains from every other action films, but brought to life by some pretty good acting. The main villain is Morel, a rich business man who will go to any lengths to get richer. Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje plays his matter of fact evil with gusto. Ordering people killed is just part of his business, and he loves doing business. The man carrying out this business is Keegan, the ruthless mercenary with his own even more twisted sense of sense of honor (he believes negotiation is weak, killing is strong). Played by the charismatic Jason Momoa, Keegan is a classic henchman, a menacing badass who you want to see get his but hope it doesn’t come for a long time. And there is the sycophantic toady Marcus played by Christian Slater, channelling his Jack Nicholson impersonation to show what might have happened if J.D.Dean actually grew up. It was good to see Slater on the big screen again, and he is great in his limited role. Too bad it wasn’t in a better movie.

Because the film has one major flaw, and it’s a fatal one–Sung Kang. Kang’s role was originally Thomas Jane’s, but Jane was replaced when Walter Hill and Joel Silver came on board (Hill replaced the original director, Wayne Kramer) and wanted an actor with more of an international appeal. This was a mistake. It’s not that Kang is a bad actor. It’s that he’s awful for this role. There is absolutely no chemistry between Stallone and Kang (or Kang and Shahi for that matter. When Lisa flirts with Taylor, you get the idea she’d have better luck flirting with a turnip). And if you are going to have a “buddy” element in the film, you need to see it on screen. There’s none here. When the insults and the putdowns between Kang and Stallone start coming, they have little effect because there is little connection visible between the characters. Oh, they express their dislike for each other, but Kang never shows it.

And this derails the film. With these kinds of films, you have to forgive a lot to experience ninety minutes of popcorn fun. But having the buddy part of a buddy action film not work is deadly. You really can’t ignore that. Which is a shame because the film had so much potential. I mean, the climactic battle between Stallone and Momoa is an ax fight in an abandoned warehouse! It takes a lot to have that in an action film and for you to still come out bored. Thomas Jane might not have been much better, but he wouldn’t have been any worse.

Walter Hill has found financing for his remake of the Joan Crawford/Betty Davis classic Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? in the form of Lakeshore Entertainment.

Hill announced his intention to write and direct a remake of the classic film earlier in the summer.

The original film, directed by Robert Aldrich and adapted from Henry Farrell’s novel by Lukas Heller, centered on two sisters, one (Davis) whose celebrity as a child star diminished while the other’s grew as an adult star (Crawford). With both of their stars having faded, the two now live together in a crumbling Hollywood mansion with their hatred for each other barely kept below the surface. Hill has stated that he will keep the film’s 1960s setting as it is needed to keep the character’s Golden Age of Hollywood background intact.

Thanks to the casting of Davis and Crawford in the film was a bit of a masterstroke, as the two had feuded privately and publicly for years and that carried over into their performances and, unfortunately for Aldrich and the rest of the folks working on the film, on-set behavior. But however unprofessional their antics towards each other during production, the result was a classic. While Hill is a great director, I have to wonder if he will be able to find two actresses who will be able to create a similar chemistry that Crawford and Davis shared.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

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’ll continue our look at EC Comics with a number of films the company inspired in the 1980s and 1990s.

If EC Comics helped redefine horror for the 1950s (and beyond), then you can make the argument that George Romero did the same for the 1960s (and beyond) and Stephen King did it for the 1970s (and beyond).

Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, revolutionized the world of film horror, creating a still existing zombie craze but also showing, like the EC books, that you can slip social satire and commentary into a film about cannibalistic ghouls. The prolific King changed the way the world looked at print horror with works such as Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, amongst others, much of which was adapted for both the big and small screen.

Naturally, both men would be influenced by the EC books, and they showed their love for the company’s offerings when they collaborated on the 1982 film, Creepshow.

While Creepshow was not directly adapted from any particular EC comic, the tone and style of the film has EC written all over it. The film has a similar structure as the Amicus Productions adaptations from the 70s, with five independent stories joined together by a framing sequence (with a “Creepshow” comic book serving as an instigator for each of the segments). The segments themselves, all directed by Romero, were either adapted from King’s short stories or written specifically for the screen by King himself.

But those stories were essentially love letters to the EC Comics that were published three decades before. They consisted of many of the staples that made EC Comics great— gallows humor, the wronged dead coming back to life to exact vengeance, and plenty of O’Henry-esque twists.

The pair reunited five years later for Creepshow 2, with Romero stepping down as director and instead acting as a screenwriter who adapted King’s stories for the film:

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There are only three stories this time instead of five, but the “Creepshow” comic book plays a role once again in the framing sequence.

There was a Creepshow III made in 2007…

but this film was a sequel in name only. Neither King nor Romero had anything to do with it, the comic book framing sequence was removed, and replaced by an interwoven narrative connecting the various segments, ala Pulp Fiction. Tom Savini, friend and frequent collaborator to George Romero, has stated that 1990’s Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, was the ipso facto sequel to Creepshow 2.

Stephen King and George Romero do reunite for the film, which was a big screen adaptation of the syndicated TV series of the same time, but only on one of the three segments (“Cat From Hell”) and only as writers (the film was directed not by Romero, but by John Harrison). The film does feature a similar framing sequence to the first two Creepshow films, but without the comic book framing sequence.

In 1985, another story from an EC book was adapted for the big screen, although it is a bit hard to make the connection. The film?  Weird Science.

Wait! That's not the way Wyatt and Gary did it!

The film, written and directed by John Hughes, loosely adapts “Made of the Future” from Weird Science #5 (1951). Very loosely.

The original story is about a man, just jilted by his fiancée, who inadvertently bumps into a tour group from the future. On a lark, he returns to the future with the tourists and finds that men of the future are able to buy kits to construct their own wives. He brings a kit back home and, well, creates his own wife.

The film centers on a pair of unpopular teenagers named Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell Smith) and Gary (Anthony Michael Hall). Their answer to improve their social standing involved a computer, data concerning their ideal woman, hacking a Government computer for more power, and a Barbie doll. These elements combine to form Lisa (Kelly LeBrock), an incredibly attractive woman who exhibited super powers and existed, literally, only to serve Wyatt and Gary.

The two stories were so different that I, for many years, wasn’t able to put two and two together and realize that they were connected. But connected they are, apparently.

In the 1990s, HBO created a TV series based on the EC books called Tales from the Crypt. Every episode of the series, which ran from 1989 to 1996, was adapted from an EC book. The series was produced by an all-star lineup of Hollywood heavyweights, including Richard Donner, Walter Hill, Joel Silver, David Geffen and Robert Zemeckis and many Hollywood stars appeared in the series, either in front of the camera (Demi Moore, Joe Pesci, Whoopi Goldberg, Brad Pitt) or behind the camera, as director (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks).

Due to the popularity of the TV series, the Tales from the Crypt brand was brought to the big screen in a planned trilogy of feature films. These films acted essentially as longer episode of the TV series, with each film being introduced by the show’s host, the Crypt Keeper, yet none were directly adapted from an EC comic book. The first film in the series was 1995’s Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight.

The script for Demon Knight was bouncing around Hollywood for years before the Tales from the Crypt name was attached to it. The plot involved a supernatural and long-lived guardian (William Sadler) who exists only to kill demons, and a stand-off between the guardian and a high level demon (Billy Zane) in a small New Mexico town. The follow-up was 1996’s Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood.

This installment was originally planned to be a zombie film set in New Orleans called “Dead Easy,” but that film morphed into a vampire flick where an acerbic private eye (Dennis Miller) takes a case of a woman (Erika Eleniak) who is searching for her missing brother (Corey Feldman). The trail leads to a bordello housing a legion of vampire prostitutes led by the “mother of all vampires” (Angie Everhart). The most memorable part of the movie, for me, was Miller’s character going into battle against the vampires with a Super Soaker loaded with Holy Water. I thought that was inventive.

Bordello of Blood was a box office failure. The third film of the trilogy, named Ritual, was never released in the U.S. and was only released overseas with all mentions of Tales from the Crypt removed from it (they were replaced for the U.S. DVD release). The film centered on a voodoo cult and zombies and starred Tim Curry, Jennifer Grey and Craig Sheffer. A company by the name of EMO Films had picked up the rights to the EC Comics line in 2009, so perhaps we’ll see more adaptations in the future.

Next time, we’ll cover some underground comix entering the world of underground film.

It’s not unusual for a successful film to be adapted into comic book form. But these adaptations usually happen while the movie is still in the theaters, not decades after.

But that is what is happening this week as thirty years to the month it first hit theaters, The Warriors are getting a comic book adaptation. The first issue of the five-issue miniseries adapting the cult 1979 film arrives in comic book stores today.

The film centers on members of a Coney Island gang by the name of the Warriors. They join representatives of of New York City gangs in the Bronx to listen to a plan for unity from a rival gang warlord named Cyrus. During this meeting, Cyrus is killed and the Warriors are framed for the murder. The majority of the film focuses on the Warriors trying to return to their Brroklyn home base through all of Manhattan, all the while trying to avoid other gangs looking to collect on the bounty placed on their heads.

This film almost screams to be adapted for comics. Each gang has its own costume and trademark modus operandi (One of the most memorable are the Baseball Furies,  wear baseball uniforms, wield baseball bats, and employ face paint.). This lends to the whole “larger than life” aspect that makes a good comic book.

The comic book feel is not a coincidence. In a 2005 interview with Fader magazine to correspond with the release of the “Ultimate Director’s Cut” DVD of the film, director Walter Hill explains that the comic book look was deliberate:

I don’t think you can understand the movie without understanding my infatuation with the American comic book. It was the height of my creative interest in that art form. I wanted to divide the movie into chapters and then have each chapter come to life starting with a splash panel. It was a low budget movie and there was very little time for post-production because we had a fixed release date that we agreed upon.

The film opened on February 9, 1979 and was a modest box office success. But it legend grew over the years, as its airings on cable and on home video made it a cult classic.

The Warriors Official Movie Adaptation is brought to us by Dabel Brothers Publishing.  The series is written by David Atchinson and features art by Chris DiBari. Each issue cost $3.99 and the first issue has at least two variant covers, which are shown above.