Movies Seen Recently: Iron Warrior, Batman: Caped Crusader, Jolt

Iron Warrior (1987) – This is the third movie of the loose “Ator” franchise, i.e., the third movie in which Miles O’Keeffe plays a barbarian warrior named “Ator,” even though there’s now even less connection to the earlier movies than there was between first first and second. (A few dozen more of these, and Ator could have been the sword-and-sorcery answer to Paul Naschy’s “Valdemar Daninsky!”) Also this is the first of the sorta-franchise not written and directed by Joe D’Amato; the directing and co-writing credit here goes to “Al Bradley,” aka Alfonso Brescia (with producer Ovidio G. Assonitis stepping in when Brescia got himself run over by a car during filming).

And boy, despite all of the bad press that Joe D’Amato got, you really miss his unexciting professionalism here. I rarely see a movie in which the “plot” has so little causal continuity. Instead it’s just:

“A happens, then B happens, then C happens –”
“Wait a sec. How did the events in B lead to C?”
“Shut up. Then D happens…”

It’s almost dreamlike in its utter disconnect.

A large portion of the miniscule budget must have gone to the shooting locations on Malta (including the fishing village set built for Popeye (1980)); it helps the production value a lot to be able to shoot your sword-and-sorcery adventure among interesting stone ruins and rocky cliffs.  The flipside is the impoverishment of literally everything else. The armored spaulders Ator wears (above his bare chest — they’re his only concession to defense) are obviously made from football pads, and he reuses Conan’s old sword from the Schwarzenegger movies.

What’s worse, Ator no longer has glorious Farah Fawcett locks; now he keeps his hair confined to a French braid. (And let’s not talk about the two fighting scenes in which Ator is obviously not O’Keeffe; the Pseud-O’Keeffe tries to disguise it with a scarf across his face for no reason, but we can tell.)

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Batman: Caped Crusader (2024) – Amazon Prime is running this ten-episode season of a new animated Batman series, very clearly taking its visual and storytelling cues from Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s (one of the best media presentations of the Batman, and if you don’t agree you’re wrong).  Heck, Bruce Timm, who created that earlier series, is one of the executive producers, along with J.J. Abrams and Ed Brubaker.

With that pedigree it’s a combination of the short, snappy stories of the 1990s with a background arc over all ten epis0des, which you can do if people are going to binge-watch it in order instead of see the reruns on TV after school.  Said arc is in two parts: (1) the introduction of Batman to Gotham’s criminals and cops (with considerable overlap), and (2) D.A. Harvey Dent’s run for mayor.

Some tweaks in familiar characters are for dramatic purposes (Dent is a former idealist who’s turned into a smarmy corner-cutter; Detective Bullock, once the ham-fisted goon of the Gotham P.D., is now completely dirty); some are simply woke box-checking (Commissioner and Barbara Gordon are African-American, Detective Montoya is lesbian, the Penguin is female), but at least none of them intrude on or spoil the dynamic, or lecture anyone about “doing better” (and thank heaven for not making the Penguin “sexy”).

The only weak point for me is the sixth episode, which (minor spoilers) concerns a for-real ghost — not just a villain using supernatural motifs — which has to be fought with voodoo.  Yes, I know, the full DC universe contains aliens and sorcerers and the gods of various pantheons, but the stylized world of Gotham shown here, with its 1930s cars and Art Deco buildings and mobster goons and lack of cellphones, doesn’t need to expand in that direction; it’s like John Wick fighting Bigfoot.

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Jolt (2021) – This Prime Original features Kate Beckinsale (trying to look like Billie Piper) as a woman with a violent impulse control problem that she can only keep under control with self-administered electric shocks — but when her almost-boyfriend is murdered, she uses that destructive ability to do what the cops can’t.

I’m not gonna lie: Looking back from the closing credits, you can see that the story really makes little sense. But where this movie shines is in production design.  Having a pink neon sign on the building outside your apartment windows would be as annoying as hell, but it sure makes for arresting visuals. Similarly, her shady psychiatrist’s (Stanley Tucci) office is “decorated” in peeling paint and empty diploma-sized frames; no one in their right mind would do that, but it looks awesome.

(All of that helps balance the exterior scenes, which are almost all shot in the standing Bulgarian backlot city street set that you’ve seen everywhere. It’s as familiar as the dear, departed “Hill Valley main square” set.)

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Abandoned movies:

Barbarian Queen (1985) – Not only is there abundant toplessness (mostly in the contexts of rape or attempted rape, making it icky), but it’s tortuous to watch actresses who’ve never held a sword before filming try to swordfight. Or to row without having previously held an oar.