Superhero Movies: Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

This movie was amazing but probably not in the way the film makers were hoping. If you watched the second season of Bay Watch Nights and enjoyed it, you'll likely love this. (If you have not watched the second season of Bay Watch Nights, you are missing out big time.)

Yes, that Batman Begins.

The plot unfolds something like this: Agent Nick Fury is a free agent, but not for much longer. He's been tapped to return to S.H.I.E.L.D. and help save Manhattan from a terrorist attack orchestrated by Hydra. Along the way, he'll rekindle an old flame, shoot an elevator to get it "working", complain about having to sign forms, and kick a fair amount of ass!

The best part of the movie IMHO.

Wait, he complains about signing forms?: Basically. Fury runs up against having to sign standard tax withholding documents and he "sticks it to the man" by ignoring the peons sent to collect his signature. His superior officer quips "things have changed Nick, bean counters have taken over the world" as if to lament the "glory days" of government agencies not having employees sign standard employment documents. What would be so glorious about those days? "Remember the good old days when we worked for the government and were never sure if we'd get paid or not? Man, times sure do change."

The jokes: There are so may "jokes" in this movie, and every single one is relentlessly blunt in it's delivery. For instance, Fury meets an agent who has ESP, she shakes Fury's hand and reads his mind, causing him alarm. She try to reassure him by letting him know her abilities have been enhanced with implants. This of course causes Fury to look directly at her boobs. She clarifies "neuro-implants" and points at her brain. Rimshot.


Other ridiculousness: At one point a cyborg that looks exactly like the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. walks into their headquarters and plays a prerecorded message, and promptly explodes. That's right, Hydra successfully sends an exact replica of the directer of S.H.I.E.L.D. into their headquarters, and all it does is play a recording and self destruct.

Not the only cyborg clone: (Very mild spoilers in this one.) Early on in this flick there's a scene where Fury runs into a skinless cyborg that's being outfitted to be his double. There's an ADR line that didn't register with me (but thankfully Tim heard it) that mentions that the cyborg gets really small for "easy transport". Fast forward to the end of this movie; the hero crew flies to Manhattan, hikes through the city and infiltrates the Hydra hideout where Fury eventually finds himself in an impossible-to-escape situation. But wait a second, that's not Fury, that's his cyborg replica!! You know, the one that was barely mentioned once at the beginning of the film and was never ever mentioned again? Thank goodness it was completely undetectable (and never once mentioned) during transport!

Is the cyborg inside his false eye?

Written by: David Goyer. Who's that? Click that link and prepare to be confused.

Characters in this film that pop-up later in the MCU: Arnim Zola and Baron von Strucker.

Legitimately impressive: Whoever was in charge of set design actually did pretty well despite their likely tiny budget. Everything looks like it came from a very comic book and nothing looks like it's recycled from another set. It was a pleasant surprise.

Biggest fail: The main Hydra villain was supposed to be... foreign I guess? Her accent shifted from word to word like nothing I've ever heard before. Was she trying for German? Russian? French? Korean? I don't think we'll ever know for sure.

But was it good: This one would be fun with a group, but there's a bit too much boring, clunky melodrama for us to recommend this one too enthusiastically. 

May's Mystery Move: First Clue

Clue #1: This month's movie is a wild, action packed 70s superhero movie!

Tape Freaks Presents: May's Mystery Movie at the Trylon Cinema, Wednesday, May 2nd @ 7:00pm, only $5!

****Purchase advance ticket here****

Made for TV Movies: Dr. Strange

Nothing says "strange" like a straight forward drama about a doctor and his comatose patient...

 I like this poster, but the photos to the right more accurately
reflect the majority of the scenes in this one.

The plot unfolds something like this: The world is in peril, but hardly a soul knows it. A shadowy-interdimensional-nameless overlord who's hell bent on taking over the world has given his flunky minion, Morgan Le Fay, one more chance to prove herself. He needs her to take down Earth's Sorcerer Supreme and turn his chosen successor to their side, or kill him as well. Sorcerer Supreme is suddenly forced to rush his new apprentice's training, but first he has to find him and let him know that he's the chosen one...

On paper, it sounds familiar: An interstellar being trying to destroy/subjugate the world for a shadowy figure sounds like a few of the modern Marvel movie plots, but all of those are more interesting than this dull flick. (I might watch the first Thor 20 times before I'd watch this one again.)

Problematic to boot: Nothing's really changed for women in Marvel movies in 40 years. In this movie, Le Fay is thwarted in her task to kill Strange because she finds him so irresistibly attractive. When the shadowy-interdimensional-nameless overlord finds out she's attracted to Strange, Le Fay is punished by being made to appear old and “ugly”. She begs for mercy (because apparently her only two interest are being evil and staying a hottie) and the overlord gives her one shot to turn Strange to their side and baring that, she must kill him, no matter how much she lusts for him.

The other woman in this movie: She only shows up when someone needs to be in peril. She's also the aforementioned coma patient and spends most of the first half of this flick in bed. Once she wakes up, she falls for Strange as well because of course she does.

First on screen Marvel villain: Morgan Le Fey is the first villain from the comics to appear on screen. All the other adaptations up to this point (that we could find) had generic criminals as villains, or featured villains that were created for the adaptation they appeared in. You'd think being the first on screen Marvel villain would earn Jessica Walter a cameo in the latest Dr Strange, but honestly, who's surprised she didn't get one?

I mean look at this guy, who wouldn't want to throw themselves at his feet?

Yup, that's: The lovely Jessica Walter, Oscar winner John Mills, and Clyde Kusatsu as Wong.

Could have been so much worse: In the comics, Wong is very problematic. But in this movie, he sports a three piece suits (rather than robes or religious garb), speaks with  Kusatu's native accent (he's American), works with the Sorcerer to get Strange ready to take over as Supreme Sorcerer (rather than spending any part of the movie jealous that Strange is "the chosen one"). It's pretty refreshing to watch a movie like this (especially from the time period) and see an Asian man just be a regular American-family man rather than a mystical guru who is begrudgingly compelled to bestow his wisdom on some white dude for reasons that don't exist. (Especially because people lean on these stereotypes as though they're not totally and blatantly racist.)

Speaking of "the chosen one": Strange in this movie reminds me of Danny Rand in the Netflix Iron Fist. Strange is so unlikeable and bland it's impossible to see why he's the one the Sorcerer chose to be his successor. But he (like the women in this movie) must make Stephen realize his true potential so he can take his rightful place as protector of the entire planet, I guess.

The effects: There are some interesting effects intermittently throughout this film, and at the time, they were so cutting edge that shooting them set back production considerably. Unfortunately those effects scenes aren't utilized enough to outweigh the boring straight-forward drama that is the rest of this dull movie.

Be warned: This movie would be nothing without Walter, Kusatsu, and the cheesy effects, so if you attempt to watch this one, drink some coffee first.

April's Mystery Movie: Third Clue

Clue #3: The director of photography for this month's movie also shot a TV movie that became one of our favorite Syfy channel episodes of MST3K!

Tape Freaks Presents: April's Mystery Movie at the Trylon Cinema, Wednesday, April 4th @ 7:00pm, only $5!

****Purchase advance ticket here****

Made for TV Movies: Nightmare on the 13th Floor

This movie terrified me as a kid. For years after seeing this I refused to ride in elevators in buildings with more than 12 floors. Re-watching this as an adult was something...

The plot unfolds something like this: Elaine Kalisher is staying at a high-end luxury hotel in order to write an in-depth review on the accommodations for her travel magazine. Hoping for a good review, the hotel staff gives her the run of the place, but her curiosity combined with boundless access to the hotel quickly lands her in trouble. During a strange power outage while riding a service elevator, Elaine gets stuck between floors. She manages to pry the elevator doors open enough to call for help, but instead of someone coming to her aid, she witnesses a murder. She reports the murder to the authorities but they see a problem with her story: the floor she witnessed the murder on, doesn't exist. She's determined to find the answers to her mounting questions, but the closer she gets to the truth, the closer she gets to death!

The twist: Satanists are trying to conjure Satan (I guess) by allowing an ageless murderer to kill 13 people on the 13th floor of the hotel.

Is that?...: James Brolin and Louise Fletcher.

Stand out moment: There's a long drawn out foot-chase scene where Elaine tries to flee the hotel by taking the stairs (because the elevators are controlled by the Satanists). The chase starts on the 13th floor and ends in the lobby, and as she runs through the hotel, occasionally switching from one stairwell to the next, and runs into the satanic hotel staff on every. single. landing. It starts out as comical but it goes on for so long it borders on absurdity. It's pretty great!

But, is actually scary?: Not even a tiny bit. There is something unnerving about a cabal of satanists obscuring an entire floor of a building from the public eye for more than a century, and then designing a secret mechanism for stopping the elevator on that hidden floor, and somehow also keeping the gaslights on that floor going for a hundred years. Actually, these things are more confusing than unnerving.

Childhood memories were better: Though I'm not totally surprised that 10 year old me was freaked out by this film, it is a wonder that I didn't get bored before anything scary happened. Sadly this is a snooze fest with just a couple fun and laughable moments.

Something about this movie reminds us of Botched...

April's Mystery Movie: Second Clue

Clue #2: The screenwriter responsible for April's movie wrote a few more made for TV horror movies, one was directed by a master of horror, and another happened to terrify Colette when it originally aired.

Tape Freaks Presents: April's Mystery Movie at the Trylon Cinema, Wednesday, April 4th @ 7:00pm, only $5!

****Purchase advance ticket here****

Made for TV Movies: Don't Go To Sleep

This movie was bad. It was also pretty entertaining in retrospect, and might have been funner with a larger group but, it's also so so so so so so bad. Though, while we were talking just after watching it, we might have talked ourselves into like it, but it's still sooooooo slow. But, it's also sooooo uniquely weird...

The plot unfolds something like this: A family of four is moving into their grandmother's mansion to in order to take care of her now that she's getting older. Unbeknownst to this family, the ghost of their eldest child has come along, and she is not here to play.

Oh, didn't we mention?: There are some seriously confusing scenes at the beginning of this movie, and it takes a good 20 mins before those scenes are (barely) addressed again. But it turns out those scenes were about the eldest child of this family dying in a car accident. When did she die? They never really get into that, but they do continue to cryptically bring up all the ways their family has been effected by her death in ways that hardly make anything clearer for the audience.


This is a family murder movie: The beginning of this flick (and the title) set this up as a straight forward haunted-house movie, but pretty quickly we discover this is a one-family-member-murders-the-rest-in-cold-blood movie.

By "pretty quickly", we mean really quickly: There's hardly enough scenes with the grandmother to establish her relationship with the family before she dies in front of all of them. Each day after that seems to lead to another family member's death.


The asinine amount of deaths occurring in the family is not lost on the family members, but it also kind of is: There's a long drawn out scene with the parents of this family arguing about who's done the brunt of the work that comes with a family member dying (who's packed all the dead family member's clothing for donation, arranged all the funerals, etc.). They literally argue about who's going to pack up the belongs of the latest dead family member, and resolve that conflict, but never mention how wild it is that so much of their family has dropped dead this week.

Foreshadowing?: During the move-in montage, the father of this family sets up a row of electric kitchen gadgets and turns each one of them on with increasing (and inexplicable) glee. Later on in his death scene, it's clear to the audience for at least 5 mins that he's going to be electrocuted in the bath. You have to wonder; was that the world's most awkward attempt at foreshadowing?

Ad libbing?: There's a gratuitous amount of what seems to be ad libbing in every scene where one adult talks to another. It plays like they needed to pad the run time, but it adds a level of confusion I didn't know could exists in a film.


Still, it's boring: We might be selling this one harder than it deserves, because although it's pretty asinine, it also feels really long and repetitive between the fun stuff.

Better with a group: If you have some bad movie loving friends, this would be a good movie to watch with that crowd. There's enough “did that just happen” scenes to make it fun, but it's just slow enough to be easy to talk over while not missing anything important.

Yup that's: Ruth Gordon and Valerie Harper.

Standout performance: The girl who plays the middle sister gives the best performance in this film hands down. She plays a wide range of emotions that shift from moment to moment, and she makes it seem effortless on her part. It's a shame she didn't appear in much else.