Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018) – A supposedly lost movie from the ’70s about a brother and sister digging a hole to Hell is sandwiched between documentary segments explaining its reputation, that showing or viewing the movie consistently leads to madness or death.
It’s not the first time that gimmick has been used — there are no new gimmicks, really — but that isn’t really a mark against it. The “lost” feature itself is picture-perfect, recreating flawlessly its supposed decade of creation, complete with slightly faded stock, scratches that are sometimes more than scratches, and single-frame snippets of other disturbing footage. The story it tells is also believably surreal for the time period, and what’s more, the whole thing hinges on the performance of a pre-pubescent actor, on screen for at least 95% of the running time… and it works.
Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) – Marvel’s strength in recent decades is its attempt to make its cinematic output part of a cohesive universe, just like in the comics. DC’s strength is the opposite: unrelated remix takes on the base legends. (There’s a reason why most truly memorable DC comics in recent years have been from their “Elseworlds” label.) The current offering, based on a graphic novel, takes place at the closing of the Korean War, when paranoia has started to undermine American freedoms to the point that heroes either sign “loyalty oaths” (like Superman did) or become outlaws (like Batman did). To make matters worse, a pre-biological entity deep in the earth called The Centre is marshalling its energies to wipe out the human race out of fear and self-preservation, causing even further paranoia and cultist cells. Against this backdrop, we have the origin stories of two later JLA members: Hal Jordan, the test pilot who becomes the Green Lantern, and the Martian Manhunter, accidentally stranded on earth and trying to escape notice through his shapeshifting abilities.
You gotta love the little throwaways for the full-on comics nerds, things like atomic scientist Ray Palmer who has a semi-perfected process for shrinking solid matter (apparently before he donned his own shrinking tights as The Atom), or Adam Strange and the entire Blackhawk squad showing up but never being name-checked.
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023) – Sometimes they just try too hard, though. Mixing the Batman universe with Lovecraft is a great concept, and it should be safe in the hands of Mike Mignola (who wrote the original graphic novel), and once you’ve decided to play in that playground it’s a natural to pair Oswald Cobblepot with the mutated penguins from At The Mountains of Madness… but it just tries too hard to find a Lovecraftian excuse for EVERY supporting Batman character: Mr. Freeze and Man-Bat and Ra’s al-Ghul and Talia and Oliver Queen and Poison Ivy and Killer Croc and Etrigan and the Oracle and Harvey Dent and… (No, the Joker is particularly missed.) Add to that a bunch of “change the premise” revelations in the last 20 minutes, and it just comes off as unsatisfying.
Abandoned movies:
The Man With the Screaming Brain (2005) – I love me some Bruce Campbell, but this just took too long to even get to the plot.
Enemies Closer (2013) – Jean-Claude Van Damme makes a terrible Hans Gruber, and he wasn’t just using a stunt double, he was using a full-on fighting double. I shut it off before I could see him going full Steven Seagal.
Creature of Destruction (1968) – Fifteen minutes in, I said, “I didn’t even like The She-Creature (1956), so why am I forcing myself to sit through a cheaper and stupider remake?”
UFO: Target Earth (1974) – The fake documentary footage was at least amusing (“Like an elevator without an elevator, knowwhatImean?”), but when they got to the parts that were supposed to be from an actual screenplay, it was sub-Ed Wood.