DC Saturdays #3 - Wonder Woman (1974)

Okay, this is where things get a bit confusing on DC Saturdays. In 1974, Warners decided to try and bring a third DC character to the small screen following the success of Batman and Superman and put a Wonder Woman TV series into development. "Ah yes," I hear you thinking, "I remember that - it was quite successful and ran for a few years, right?"

Wrong. That would be the Wonder Woman series that started in 1975. The TV movie we're reviewing today was a slightly earlier effort starring Cathy Lee Crosby rather than Lynda Carter and follows a decidedly different storyline from both the comics and the subsequent series. It was run as a one-off special with the aim of launching a regular series but a combination of lukewarm viewing figures and reviews gave WB cold feet and the whole thing was nixed and subsequently rebooted the following year. So...lost classic or deserved obscurity? Well, there's only one way to find out...

The story begins with Diana leaving her home of Paradise Island (which basically looks like a shed with some pot plants and background drawings where they've smeared the camera lens with vaseline) to start her new life and her mother, the Queen, explains that there is a prophecy for one Amazon to go forth into this world and carry the mantle of Wonder Woman.

We cut forward an unspecified amount of time to see Diana now working as the secretary for CIA agent Steve Trevor. Apparently a number of codebooks have been stolen in recent days (which we see in the intro of the film) containing the names and identities of all of the CIA's secret agents and these now need to be recovered before something bad happens. We know that the man behind the operation was a double agent called George who we see taking the books off his operatives before promptly shooting them when they go to the bar for a drink afterwards.

Although it isn't explicitly stated, it appears that in this version, Steve knows that Diana is Wonder Woman as after a coded conversation, she jets off to France to follow on a lead. Sure enough she soon runs into George who we see arguing with his boss Mr Smith. George wants to off Wonder Woman before she can interfere with the operation but Smith just wants to take her hostage. To this end, George ends up asking Diana out for a date in the restaurant where he appears to have taken his fashion tips from early '70s Jim Bowen. I mean, I know this actually was the early '70s but...

Diana understandably turns down George's advances and goes outside to ring Steve only for a car to drive straight at the phone box which she avoids by backflipping up on to a shop canopy! The villains subsequently try to capture her by luring her into Smith's mansion and locking the gates which she promptly uses her bracelets to blow the electricity and unlock and then try to attack her in her hotel room which leads to George and his two goons being beaten up with about one punch each. Hmm, somebody needs to work on being a more effective villain...

Wonder Woman returns to New York only for George to sabotage her flat by putting a snake in a box under her sofa. Again, Diana manages to foil his plot by getting one of the janitors to put a saucer of milk out for the snake which gets it off her leg. George and Mr Smith make her an offer to join their operation but she refuses and heads back to Washington. En route, she runs into another of the Amazons who is on the mainland undercover and warns her that one of her old sparring partners, Angela, has gone rogue and come to the mainland.

Back in Steve Trevor's office, it turns out that Smith has sent him a donkey! He's under instructions to put the ransom money for the books in its saddlebags and take it to a deserted village in Nevada before releasing it. To make sure the bureau can keep a track of it, he puts a transmitter on each of its hooves.

Diana finally shows up as Wonder Woman after Steve and his deputy release the donkey - however, she looks more like a female version of the Reb Brown version of Captain America rather than the outfit she's better known for wearing. She tails the donkey to a house in the town only for it to be sealed in a chamber and a machine to deactivate the hooves - when the lights come on again, the donkey is gone! Diana wanders into the room herself and only just escapes the old Bond favourite "being crushed by a wall" death.

Smith has sent George and his newest recruit Angela (the rogue Amazon referred to earlier) to pick up the donkey but when it turns up, Wonder Woman is riding it! Angela attempts to spear her off the beast with her javelin but Diana plucks the spear out of the air and throws it back at her! The two Amazons duly have a fight during which George escapes with the donkey. We learn that Diana and Angela both came up through warrior school together and that Diana saved Angela's life once. However, Diana managed to get the Wonder Woman job ahead of Angela which has led to the latter going rogue through jealousy and now being out to kill Diana. However, Diana wins the duel and spares Angela's life after she tells her the location of Smith's base. Angela warns Diana afterwards that her debt is now repaid and that if they run into each other again then Diana won't be so lucky. Presumably that part of the plot would have been picked up in the series but obviously the series never happened...

Diana arrives at the base just in time to witness an argument between Smith and George. We also find out that Smith is played by the late Ricardo Montalban! (Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, Fantasy Island). It turns out he's taken a shine to Diana and shows her around his base including the helipad while explaining his evil plan in true wannabe Bond villain style. However, while his back's turned Diana uses her bracelet to blow up the helipad and escape with the books and the money. Unfortunately she then takes a wrong turn into a dead end allowing Smith to seal her in with a portcullis and make off with the money.

The gang quickly turn on each other with George shooting his two goons then turning the gun on Smith as he attempts to escape via dinghy down an underground river. However, Smith sprays him with gas causing him to fall in the river and drown before making off with the loot.

Having climbed over the portcullis using her escape rope, Wonder Woman manages to find a motorbike and takes off after Smith on it. She intercepts him midway down the river, dives in, climbs onto his boat and apprehends him without a struggle. The word "anticlimax" springs to mind. The film ends with Diana reporting back in to work with Steve the following Monday.

Sorry to say but it's a bit obvious from watching this why the original pitch for a Wonder Woman series was never picked up and why DC subsequently decided to go back to the drawing board on it the following year. This version is unfortunately very similar to the '70s Marvel TV movies we covered a few months ago - slow (especially with the almost total lack of action sequences), wooden acting (Crosby and Montalban do their best but the other characters are instantly forgettable), thin script and lots of padding. Add on the decidedly anticlimactic ending to the film and unfortunately this one well and truly goes to the bottom of the league so far as it's way below average even by '70s standards (however, I think it's safe to say that we'll almost certainly encounter worse before this whole thing is through). Cathy Lee Crosby would actually go on to forge a fairly successful career as a television actress in subsequent years but none of the other actors here (apart from the obvious exception of Montalban) would do anything of much note after this and it's not exactly hard to understand why. As mentioned earlier though, DC would give the series a rapid reboot the following year with decidedly more successful results and we'll see how all that panned out next week...

FINAL RATING: 🌟🌟🌟 (3/10)

DC LEAGUE TABLE

1. Batman (1966) (8/10)
2. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
3. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)

NEXT WEEK: Maybe the quickest reboot in comic book crossover history? We look at the '70s version of Wonder Woman that everybody's more familiar with...

Marvel Mondays #23: Blade 2 (2001)

Unlike its predecessor, I didn't see Blade 2 first time around. I'm not sure why to be honest - I'm guessing that while I thought the first film was decent enough, the prospect of a sequel just wasn't that high up on my to-watch list. As with a few other films though, this blog has given me an excuse to check out a film I overlooked first time round. Let's see if it's any good, shall we?...

Released four years after the original "Blade", the sequel sees Wesley Snipes returning as the titular Daywalker and Kris Kristofferson back as his sidekick Whistler. "But hang on," I hear you say, "didn't Whistler die in the first film?"

Which I guess is as good a place to get started - we find out in the opening sequence that even though Whistler killed himself with a shotgun, it wasn't enough to prevent him subsequently rising and turning into a vampire. Blade has been hunting him down in the intervening years and finally tracks him down - it turns out that the vampire gang who kidnapped Whistler have been holding him hostage to continually drain his blood. Blade offs them, rescues Whistler and injects him with a serum which reverts him back to his old self. Okay, plot hole alert - if it's that simple to reverse being vampirised then why has Blade never tried this on himself? Weird...

We also find out that Blade has recruited a new sidekick in Whistler's absence called Scud (Norman Reedus a good decade or so before he found fame in "The Walking Dead") but it turns out he's a bit cack-handed at security as the hideout gets invaded by two vampires named Asad (Danny John-Jules aka Cat from Red Dwarf!) and Nyssa. However, they aren't here to pick a fight with Blade but have come in peace with a request for help.

Blade is taken to the vampires' leader Damaskinos (Nyssa's dad) who explains that a disease called the Reaper Virus has been spreading through the vampire community. The Reapers are a new more powerful breed of vampire led by Jared Nomak (Luke Goss from '80s teenie pop band Bros!) who feed on normal vampires. Unlike normal vampires they're immune to silver, holy water and garlic with sunlight being their only weakness. They also have a cage of bone around their hearts which makes staking them incredibly difficult.

Blade reluctantly agrees to help Damaskinos out and is placed with a group of vampires known as the Bloodpack led by grizzled veteran Reinhardt (Ron Perlman pre-"Sons of Anarchy") and also including Japanese swordsman Snowman, Scottish brawler Priest, street thug Chupa, Samoan giant Lighthammer and his girlfriend Verlaine. Inevitably, it's something of an uneasy alliance with Reinhardt and Chupa in particular appearing to detest being forced to team up with Blade and Whistler.

The team's adventures see them start off by going undercover at a nightclub in Prague before heading off to find the main Reaper nest. Of course, en route there's plenty of death, blood, gore, backstabbing and scheming but I'm not going to give any spoilers here - you'll just have to give the film a spin and watch it yourself. It's certainly decent enough to warrant you doing so and like its predecessor, it shouldn't cost you too much to locate a second hand copy somewhere.

To be honest, you could probably copy and paste about 90% of the stuff I wrote about the first Blade film here to get a summary of my thoughts on Blade 2 - however, I will admit it's slightly the better of the two. The plot feels a bit meatier with more of a storyline to (pardon the pun) get your teeth into. It does suffer from arguably being a bit too long and rambling for its own good and, like the first film, the fight sequences look a bit dated sixteen years later but if a simple no-brainer gorefest is what you want then this should satisfy you nicely. It's also quite interesting to see the likes of Reedus and Perlman in the days before they were household names.

Wesley Snipes would return for a third and final Blade film in 2005 but as we'll see when we come to review it, by that point the wheels were well and truly falling off the franchise with Snipes allegedly having fallen out with the director and only doing the film because he was contractually obligated to do so. We'll see what the results of that were in a few weeks' time but I wouldn't get your hopes up if I was you...

FINAL SCORE: 👹👹👹👹👹👹👹 (7/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
2. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
3. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
4. Blade (1998) (7/10)
5. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
6. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
7. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
8. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
9. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
10. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
11. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
12. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
13. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
14. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
15. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
16. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
17. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
18. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
19. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
20. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
21. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
22. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
23. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: A second visit from the Men In Black which unfortunately sees the scriptwriters phoning it in somewhat...

DC Saturdays #2: Batman (1966)

Ah yes, the '60s Batman series. probably one of the most divisive in DC history. But, for myself and I suspect a lot of kids my age, the Adam West incarnation was probably the first Batman we ever knew and I used to watch it religiously during the school holidays as a youngster in the '80s meaning it was arguably my first encounter with any superhero either Marvel or DC. So it's safe to say I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it for being my gateway into that whole genre.

However, lest we forget this film is now 52 years old (it came out after the success of the first series of the TV show) and I'd say it's probably at least 25 years since I last saw any of the '60s Batman TV series. Part of me has always kind of wanted to revisit it but at the same time there's a part of me that's always been scared it was going to look horribly naff compared to the big hitter superhero movies like...well, Dark Knight for a starters but also stuff like Iron Man and the Avengers which pretty much ushered in the era of really good superhero movies. However, thanks to this blog, it now looks as if I'm about to find out. Gulp...

In all fairness though, the opening 15 minutes or so of this film pretty much involves everything that made '60s Batman so great. Batman and Robin receive an emergency call that someone is about to attack a yacht bringing a top secret invention from Britain to the States off Gotham harbour. They promptly floor it out to the docks in the batmobile...

...where the BATCOPTER is waiting for them! Cue shots of ordinary Gotham citizens including a group of girls in bikinis waving to our caped crusaders.

After a quick flight out to sea, the duo see the yacht just off the coast. Batman prepares to board using the BAT-LADDER! (labelled just in case anyone forgets what it is)

...only for the yacht to disappear and Batman to emerge from the waves with a (less than convincing) shark attacking his leg! Robin quickly grabs the Bat Shark-Repellent! (handily stored in a cabinet with other similar items)

...allowing Batman to spray the shark which promptly explodes once it hits the ocean!

Back in Gotham, the Dynamic Duo are giving a press conference where a Russian journalist, Miss Kitka, asks if they could remove their masks. The pair understandably refuse and promptly go into a meeting with Commissioner Gordon. Bringing up a computer report of current Batman villains not in captivity, it's revealed that the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin and Catwoman are all currently at large.

...and as it turns out, the whole operation is a four-way joint effort between them! Also, it turns out that Miss Kitka was in fact Catwoman in disguise, spying to see whether Batman and Robin had figured the villains' plot out. The commodore of the yacht has in fact been kidnapped by the villains and thinks he's still stranded somewhere off the coast in the fog.

Batman and Robin quickly figure out that the illusion they came across earlier must have been the work of a buoy in the sea near where they encountered the shark. Cue the BATBOAT! Unfortunately it turns out that Joker, Riddler and Penguin are tailing them using a PENGUIN SUBMARINE! The buoy has a giant magnet inside it which promptly pins the Dynamic Duo to it using their utility belts and Joker fires three missiles at them. Batman manages to use a sonar wave to detonate the first two before they reach the buoy but the third one gets through. Cue the villains celebrating...

...we then cut to Batman and Robin driving safely away with Batman explaining that a suicidal porpoise threw itself in front of the missile thus saving them. Again, if you were in any doubt that this story was taking itself seriously, this should prove that it very much isn't. And that's why we love it/hate it (delete according to preference).

The Fearsome Foursome of villains decide to revert to Plan C with Catwoman disguising herself as Miss Kitka in order to honeytrap Bruce Wayne who they intend to kidnap (not realising Batman and Bruce are one and the same). Sure enough, she persuades him that she's being tailed by the Riddler and the two of them go out on a date so that Bruce can keep an eye on her. Robin and Alfred tail them in the Batmobile but decide to (understandably) turn off the bug transmitter when they get to Kitka's flat.

Sure enough, the other three villains and their henchmen promptly turn up on GIANT FLYING UMBRELLAS and overpower Bruce. However, Bruce being Batman he promptly escapes (albeit still not realising that Kitka is Catwoman) by beating up the baddies with one of the henchmen being sprung through a window and blown up by an exploding octopus (sadly off camera).

Batman and Robin promptly return to the docks but the villains have long since done a runner and vacated the lair leaving behind a giant bomb for Batman to find. There then follows a sequence which is much funnier than it really has any right to be with Batman looking for a place to dispose of the bomb only to be thwarted by the inexplicable appearance of a Salvation Army band, some kids, some nuns and a family in a rowboat among others! "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!" must surely be the line of the film so far...

Having finally got rid of the bomb in the water, the duo are surprised when Penguin turns up disguised unconvincingly as the commodore (wait, so Batman and Robin can figure this out but couldn't work out that Miss Kitka was Catwoman despite them having the same face?). The pair see through his disguise and take him back to the Batcave for questioning. However, it was all a trap by Penguin who's nicked the real Commodore's rehydrator device and used it to turn five of his goons into piles of powder. As soon as he gets the chance, he quickly rehydrates them but unfortunately he does so using the heavy water from the Batcave's atomic pile and the thugs dematerialise as soon as Batman and Robin punch them!

The pair drive Penguin back to the docks in the Batmobile but accidentally-on-purpose leave him in it alone allowing him to steal it. However, this was part of a cunning plan by Batman who promptly grabs the BAT BIKE and uses it to transport him and Robin to the airport to the Batcopter so they can find out where Penguin is headed. However, en route they end up getting accidentally shot down by one of the Riddler's missiles but luckily end up being saved by falling on to a giant pile of rubber foam in a clearance warehouse!

The villains, now with Penguin back in the fold, have meanwhile headed to a meeting of the United World Organisations Security Council (whose members seem to be consistently arguing) where they dehydrate everyone and do a runner with the members trapped in test tubes! Batman attempts to stop them but Catwoman warns that Kitka will be killed if he tries anything (for someone so clever, Batman isn't half daft when it comes to spotting female double agents)

The villains escape to the penguin submarine with Batman and Robin giving chase in the Batboat. They lure the vessel to the surface using depth charges and engage the crew in a fight - cue the neon signs...

Eventually, Batman and Robin win the fight by tying Joker, Riddler, Penguin and their goons to the side of the sub using a tow rope. Catwoman attempts to escape into the sub but trips over and is caught by Batman. Her mask falls off and Batman finally (!) works out who she is. They manage to retrieve the test tubes but unfortunately the commodore comes blundering in, trips into Batman and sends the test tubes crashing to the floor where they break and the powder gets intermixed.

After a long night working with the machinery in the Batcave, Batman and Robin manage to separate the dust and take it back to the UWOSC building for rehydration. The council members are brought back successfully but seem to have all taken on each others' characteristics (so the American guy is speaking Russian, the British guy has become Japanese, the Israeli guy has become French etc). They decide to leave them to it and quietly make an exit out of a side window using the bat ropes to continue their fight against crime...

Okay, safe to say straight away that this is very much not the Dark Knight trilogy. But, in it's own way, it's a great film. Unashamedly silly, with in-jokes by the score and performances which are brilliantly OTT without getting too grating, it still has some tremendously fun action sequences (compare it to the '70s Marvel films which it well and truly leaves in the dust and you'll see what I mean). I think the key with this film is just to not take it too seriously, appreciate it on its own merits and enjoy it for what it is. Once you do, you'll see why it's one of the best early comic-based films and well worth a watch.

The Batman TV series would run for another two years after this film. Unfortunately, after being one of the top viewed TV shows during its first two series, viewing figures tailed off in series 3 and it was cancelled in 1968 before another film could be made which is a shame really - one thing's for certain, after watching this film I'm definitely making it a mission to revisit the old TV episodes I grew up with when I get a chance. As for this blog though, we won't be encountering Batman again until 1989 when things will be very different...

FINAL SCORE: 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇 (8/10)

DC LEAGUE

1. Batman (1966) (8/10)
2. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)

NEXT WEEK: The first Wonder Woman film and a look into how the TV series might have turned out...