However, "Return of the Trickster", put together from the episodes "The Trickster" and "The Trickster's Revenge" is an interesting curio, featuring none other than Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill as the chief villain! Bear in mind that this was a good seven years or so after "Return of the Jedi" so I think it's safe to say that his career was very much flatlining at this point. Anyway, let's have a look, shall we?
The film begins with Barry Allen and Tina McGee (by now his sort of on-off love interest - his girlfriend from the pilot Iris was written out after the first episode with the storyline being that she'd left Barry to go and live in Los Angeles) settling in to watch a film one evening. However, they're interrupted when Barry gets an answerphone message from an ex of his, Megan Lockhart, to say that she's in danger in a city just up the coast. Lockhart had been introduced in episode 3 as a private investigator hired by a corrupt DA with mob ties to frame the Flash for a series of arsons so that he could pass a bill allowing his Mafia buddies to build casinos on the ruins of the burnt out buildings. She has a pang of conscience however and eventually helps Flash bring the bad guys to justice. Although she's 150 miles away, outside Barry's normal running ability range, he decides to go and help her to Tina's chagrin.
Megan has been kidnapped by a serial killer calles James Jesse who has some sort of deranged magician schtick going on and he's about to saw her in half using a chainsaw. It turns out that Megan has been working on the West Coast as a PI since her first run-in with the Flash and had been tailing Jesse across six states. Angry with her for continually disrupting his plans, he turned the tables and started stalking her, convincing himself that he actually loved her and wanted her for his own. Luckily the Flash intervenes and saves her before trapping Jesse in his own box and leaving him for the police to collect. As Barry is burnt out from having run so far, Megan offers to drive him back to Central City and in return he offers to put her up for a while until the whole thing has blown over. Again, safe to say that Tina understandably isn't very happy about this.
However, Jesse frees himself from the handcuffs in the back of his truck and offs the policemen who arrested him by bludgeoning one of them with his handcuffs and shooting the other. Commandeering the police car, he sets off back to Central City where he takes up residence in an abandoned toy warehouse and takes the alias of the Trickster, looking like some kind of cross between the Joker and the Riddler.
Realising that they still have feelings for each other, Barry and Megan begin to rekindle their romance which kind of makes it a bit hard for me to be sympathetic to his character - at the start of the film he's sort of settling in nicely with Tina but then drops her like hot bricks once a better offer comes along, not exactly hero-like behaviour. However, they find out that Jesse has been reported as being loose in Central City which spooks them both especially when he drives up to city park and unveils a giant statue of the Flash with a bomb on top of it which Barry has to act quickly to stop from blowing two kids up.
After being distracted by a firework-laden truck which he's planted with a dummy inside it before escaping by pouring ball bearings all over the road which the Flash slips up on, injuring his knee, Barry and Megan track Jesse back to his hideout after he holds up a toy store to ransack it for props including lynching one of the till workers! However, he disguises himself as an FBI agent then ambushes them by knocking them both out and forces Megan to become his sidekick Prank while dropping Barry headfirst into a water tank and leaving him to drown.
Barry escapes by moving around in the water so fast that he causes the glass on the tank to shatter and goes to Tina's flat to offer a shame-faced apology for his behaviour. The two of them concoct a scheme to lure the Trickster to the policemens' masked ball that night by putting notices from the Flash around challenging him to a duel as the Trickster doesn't like his ego being challenged.
The pair duly have their confrontation at the ball after the Trickster plants a bomb there hidden in a cake - however, the Flash defuses them and the pair have a fight outside which the Flash comes out on top of without too much trouble by surrounding the Trickster with flying candles in a sort of Indian clubs style juggling trick then knocking him out. Jesse is arrested but Megan decides to leave Barry and move back to California to resume her PI work there as the two of them attract so much trouble that staying together could only be bad for them.
Fast forward a couple of months (ie to the beginning of the part 2 episode) and the Trickster is due to stand trial at Central City court. Being led out of the police van, he swears vengeance on the city before being led inside where Barry, his lab partner Julio and Megan are all waiting for the case to commence. This is the first time Barry and Megan have seen each other in a few months and while he's still pretty much doing what he's always done, her career has skyrocketed to the point where she's handling cases left, right and centre and being offered book and film deals for her story. All of which makes for a bit of an awkward reunion...
Jesse actually disrupts the case so much on the first day that it's abandoned and he's taken off to the cells where he receives a sack full of love letters from a crazy fan who offers to break him out of imprisonment. Sure enough, at the start of the second attempt at a trial, he appears contrite for his actions until the court clerk suddenly unleashes a toy bear which sprays the courtroom with laughing gas allowing both Jesse and the clerk to escape wearing gas masks.
The pair reconvene at an abandoned toystore, Clarks' Toys. It turns out the girl's name is Zoey Clark and she's the heiress to a toy company. She's idolised the Trickster for years and has set her sights on becoming the new Prank. Although James initially wants to go back to being his old criminal self, Zoey persuades him to be the Trickster again and start off a new reign of terror.
The pair invade the Central City TV station, taking newsreader Joe Kline hostage with the Trickster impersonating him to call out the Flash. Barry and Megan head for the studio but the Trickster and Prank get the better of them by spraying them with knockout gas and escaping. The Flash runs after them but the pair cover the alleyway with gum stopping him dead in his tracks and allowing the Trickster to knock him out and kidnap him.
Back at their HQ, the Trickster and Prank use EST to brainwash the Flash and turn him into their henchman. Together, the three go on a crimewave across Central City including blowing up bridges, torching police cars and other such misdemeanours. However, Prank is getting jealous of playing second fiddle to the Flash when it comes to the Trickster's attentions with the result that he ties her up back at the toy store so that he and the Flash can continue with their wrongdoings uninterrupted.
Megan and Tina, now working together, trace Zoey to the store and force her to reveal the Trickster's whereabouts but after they set her free, she attacks them and escapes. It turns out that the Trickster and the Flash have kidnapped the judge and both lawyers from the Trickster's trial case and are planning on executing them as revenge for the indignity that he suffered.
The pair are holding a show trial of the three accused at the court when Megan and Tina burst in just as the Flash is about to lynch the judge. He initially tries to strangle Tina but she manages to help him regain his memory just in time. Angry, he sets off after the Trickster whose initial escape attempt has been foiled by Tina tampering with his motor scooter causing it to blow up when he tries to start it!
However, Prank turns up with a converted car transporter and the pair make their getaway...although the Trickster quickly kicks Prank out on to the hard shoulder for the police to arrest proving what a no-goodnik he really is. The Flash eventually catches him and after a struggle in the cabin, he arrests the Trickster before the bomb the latter had planted there can go off.
The Trickster ends up incarcerated in a high security mental asylum where he's seen swearing revenge on the Flash. Back at the lab, Megan is going back to San Francisco and offers Barry the chance to go with her but he opts to stay and continue the fight against crime in Central City.
Well to be honest, Flash 2 suffers from pretty much all of the same problems its predecessor did - dated special FX, terrible dialogue and a cast that's struggling with the poor script they've been given. However, I'm going to place it marginally above the first Flash film on one criteria - Mark Hamill's performance as the Trickster which is a big improvement on the generic biker gang who were Flash's enemies in the earlier effort. Similar Jim Carrey's version of the Riddler in Batman Forever, Hamill gives a performance that includes just the right level of hamming it up while staying on the right side of not going too far and turning into Adam Sandler or similar and to be honest he just to say keeps this thing on the right side of watchable...at least for those who are into gratuitously corny B-movies anyway...
We've got a third and final Flash TV film "Deadly Nightshade" to follow this and then we can finally get back to big budget territory and the Batman films. Hold on, we're almost there now...
FINAL RATING: ⚡⚡⚡⚡ (4/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Batman (1989) (8/10)
2. Superman (1978) (8/10)
3. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
4. Batman (1966) (8/10)
5. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
6. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
7. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
8. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
9. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
10. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
11. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
12. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
13. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
14. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: We finish off our Flash trilogy. However, in the interest of giving me a break from Flash overload, there may be a midweek instalment coming up on Wednesday - stay tuned...
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