Superbook E-Book

John Rain

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 466

Beschreibung

THIS IS THE GUIDE TO CLASSIC SUPERHERO MOVIES YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED. If you mention the word 'superhero' these days, the mind is immediately bombarded by visions from the MCU, DCU and all the numerous phases, extended TV series and animated side-specials that combine to make our eyes bleed with a barrage of different characters fighting each other. But before 1997 people would generally only think of a few things: Christopher Reeve smiling as his Superman kept a watchful eye over Earth's atmosphere, Michael Keaton's Batman running around Gotham dressed in moulded rubber, Nicholas Hammond's Spider-Man being hauled up a wall on a rope, Bill Bixby trying not to unleash his inner Hulk and Flash Gordon camply swashbuckling his way around another galaxy. It's time to don your cowl, cape, shredded jeans and Vultan leatherwear and join John Rain as he wades his way through twenty classic superhero films that stunned, amazed and baffled the world from 1978 to 1997. IS IT A BIRD? IS IT A PLANE? NO, IT'S Superbook! 'The perfect way to enjoy the best and worst films of your childhood' - Ed Byrne

Leseprobe

First published in 2023 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTDc/o Aberdein Considine2nd Floor, Elder HouseMultrees WalkEdinburghEH1 3DX

www.polarispublishing.com

Text copyright © John Rain, 2023

ISBN: 9781915359131eBook ISBN: 9781915359148

The right of John Rain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The views expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or policies of Polaris Publishing Ltd (Company No. SC401508) (Polaris), nor those of any persons, organisations or commercial partners connected with the same (Connected Persons). Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed by third parties are not those of Polaris or any Connected Persons but those of the third parties. For the avoidance of doubt, neither Polaris nor any Connected Persons assume any responsibility or duty of care whether contractual, delictual or on any other basis towards any person in respect of any such matter and accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by any such matter in this book.

This is an unofficial publication. All material contained within is for critical purposes.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, EdinburghPrinted in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For Alex, James, and Christopher Reeve

With special thanks to Hannah Winser, Clive Mantle, Peter Burns, Polaris, Alison Rae, Paul Litchfield, Dan Thomas, Dean Burnett, Stephen Graham, Neil Brooke, Tim Colman, Tom Neenan, Tom Crowley, B Mum, Dad, Chris, and the rest of my classic family. I couldn’t have done all this without you.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1: Superman: The Movie

2: Flash Gordon

3: Superman II

4: Condorman

5: Spider-Man: The Dragon’s Challenge

6: Swamp Thing

7: Superman III

8: Supergirl

9: Howard the Duck

10: Masters of the Universe

11: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

12: Batman

13: The Trial of The Incredible Hulk

14: Captain America

15: Batman Returns

16: The Shadow

17: Batman Forever

18: Judge Dredd

19: Spawn

20: Batman and Robin

Epilogue

Illustrations

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Superman: The Movie: The one that started it all, and set the bar so very high. Alamy

Superman II: Another boring editorial meeting at The Daily Planet. Alamy

Flash Gordon: On Mongo, hot pants are a sign of respect. Alamy

Spider-Man: The Dragon’s Challenge: Anyone need someone to kick someone up the arse and then run away? Alamy

Condorman races to show us the only bit worth watching. Alamy

Swamp Thing: “Photosynthesise this, bitch.” Alamy

Superman III: You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become trapped in a testicle. Alamy

Supergirl: Get witch or die tryin’. Alamy

Howard the Duck and the cinema showing they can both put their bills up their arse. Alamy

Superman IV: “Hands up who deeply regrets doing this film?” Alamy

Masters of the Universe: “I am not an animal, I am a He-Man being.” Alamy

Batman: “Clowns to the left of me, Joker to the right.” Alamy

The Trial of the Incredible Hulk: “I’m out of order?! You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order!” Alamy

Captain America: “I’m sorry I pretended to feel sick and then stole your car.” Alamy

Batman Returns: The gang dress up as Batman and the Penguin. Alamy

Judge Dredd: “You really should be wearing the helmet.” “I’m not wearing the helmet.” Alamy

The Shadow cabinet. Alamy

Batman Forever: “Chase me.” Alamy

Violator and Al get the Spawn. Alamy

Batman Forever: “I may have made a huge mistake.” Alamy

INTRODUCTION

THIS IS NO FANTASY, NO CARELESS PRODUCT OF WILD IMAGINATION

There are pyjamas, then there are pyjamas. Mine were the latter. It was 1982 (although it could have been ’81). I was five years old, with not a care in the world, as problems hadn’t been invented back then. Although my memories of childhood are extraordinarily hazy, I remember those pyjamas. A winsome work of pale blue, red-ringed collar, magical ‘S’ on the chest and, as a finishing garnish, buttons on the shoulder, ready for that deep red cape to be affixed.

As a child I was obsessed with the Christopher Reeve Superman films. I’d seen a house fly, I’d seen a dragonfly, but I’d never seen a man fly – until I was at Steven Savage’s birthday party. His dad worked for a toy company, and therefore he had all the Star Wars toys in a big box, even the rarest ones, which obviously caused chaos. To calm the storm, his parents put on Superman II, and the room fell silent. I distinctly remember stopping like a rabbit in headlights, hypnotised by the sight of Christopher Reeve ascending the Eiffel Tower and rescuing Lois. Soon afterwards, I got my magic pyjamas and spent most of my spare time around the house with that cape flapping around my shoulders, belting out the theme and feeling like I could sail out of the window and brush a ceiling of clouds in the night sky.

While – like every other kid at the time – I still had a very healthy interest in Star Wars action figures, my bedroom walls were a shrine to my love of the last son of Krypton. They were covered in Superman wallpaper, and above my bed was a poster I had taken from Look-in magazine of Clark transforming in the midst of a red and blue blur in an alley.

Jump forward to 1989, and a similar phenomenon had gripped me: ‘Batfever’. I had the toys, the Prince album, the Elfman album, the comic book of the film and all the T-shirts I could eat. The very idea of a serious Batman film just seemed like the most exciting and vital thing for a twelve-year-old who’d read the comics but was raised on repeats of the daft sixties TV show and movie. Batman really was everything I’d imagined and more. Its success opened the doors to more and more heroes and heroics, packing out cinemas. Sadly, the triumph was short-lived. The first big superhero boom that began with such a bang in 1978 died a poignant and painful death in 1997, but it was a life well lived, with many fun adventures along the way despite doddering vital signs.

So, come with me now, as we break through the bonds of earthly confinement and travel through time and space in the six known dimensions. We need to pick up twenty videos from Blockbusters to see if they stand up against the modern might of the superhero genre, or if they simply fall into ruin and disarray, like Superman being exposed to kryptonite – forever locked in the shadow of the bomb that is 21st-century Marvel.

ONE

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE

1978

YOU’LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY!

In 1974 Alexander Salkind, Ilya Salkind and Pierre Spengler (European uber-producers) bought the rights to Superman from DC comics. The Salkinds and Spengler’s approach to making movies was very much like Real Madrid or Manchester City’s approach to football: sign big names and the rest will fall into place. They started off by signing Mario Puzo (Oscar-winning writer of The Godfather) at a salary of $600,000 (which by today’s standards is an absolute fortune) to write the film.

Next, they signed up Marlon Brando at a cool $3.75 million (and 11.75% of the box office) with a contract stipulation that he would only work for twelve days (and at that probably only half-arsed), and then they bagged Gene Hackman for a snip at $2 million. Soon afterwards, Puzo delivered his script for Superman: over 500 pages long, in two parts and probably weighing ninety tonnes. Though the Salkinds were very happy with it, they were worried it was slightly too long (a bit of an understatement), so they hired husband-and-wife team David and Leslie Newman for rewrites. Their script came back leaner but with a camp tone that included a cameo appearance by Telly Savalas as Kojak, presumably waving his lollipop at the Son of Jor-El as he soared over his bald head.

Guy Hamilton, director of Bond films such as Live and Let Die, Diamonds Are Forever and Goldfinger, was hired to direct. At the time, Hamilton was living in Italy as a canny tax exile. Many British celebrities and high earners were living abroad during this time as tax in the UK was cripplingly high (as much as 75%). From his studio in Rome, Hamilton had shot test footage, and sets were being built at a combined cost of over $2 million. Production was racing ahead at the rate of a speeding bullet.

Meanwhile, countless actors were approached to play the Man of Steel himself. Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds, Patrick Wayne, James Caan, James Brolin, Christopher Walken, Nick Nolte, Kurt Russell, Jeff Bridges and David Soul all turned it down. How could you begin filming Superman without Superman? The producers were keen to start filming as soon as possible, otherwise they could risk losing Brando and Hackman, both of whom were in high demand.

So, in 1976 production moved to England, but Hamilton couldn’t come back to the UK without being hit with a huge tax bill, so he disappeared into the Phantom Zone and the director’s chair fell empty.

Things looked to be stalling once again until the producers happened to see the 1976 horror classic The Omen, directed by Richard Donner, and they loved what they saw. Donner was immediately hired for $1 million. Donner’s first directorial decision was to start from scratch and abandon all the previous work on the project. ‘They had prepared the picture for a year and not one bit was useful to me,’ he said later. Dissatisfied with the goofy script and irreverence to the subject matter’s comic-book origins, Donner brought on board the one man he knew who could improve on the length and tone of the script and give it real class: legendary screenwriter and script doctor Tom Mankiewicz (who had most recently worked on Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me).

When Donner called in 1976, Mankiewicz jumped at the chance to work on Superman. According to Mankiewicz on the Superman DVD documentary, ‘Not a word from the Puzo script was used. It was well-written, but still a ridiculous script. It was 550 pages. I said, “You can’t shoot this screenplay because you’ll be shooting for five years.”’ Mankiewicz went into creative overdrive, breaking down every aspect and rooting the script in reality as much as possible (even conceiving the idea of having each Kryptonian family wear a crest resembling a different letter, thus justifying the ‘S’ on Superman’s costume). Donner agreed, giving the production of this movie a byword it had to live by: ‘Verisimilitude’. It became the motto of the entire production, with Donner having a sign made of Superman saying as much in the production office. The audience had to believe a man could fly; without that the whole exercise was pointless.

Incidentally, the Writers Guild of America refused to credit Mankiewicz for his extensive rewrites, so Donner gave him a creative consultant credit, much to their annoyance.

As the curtains draw back, it’s more akin to a rollercoaster chuntering to the top of the climb: grinding through the gears before teetering on adventure, ready to release you into the hard dopamine hit of the opening credits, a work of art designed by R/Greenberg Associates, with streaking luminous crystal letters zooming through space from the depths of the cosmos.

Krypton, a vast branch of Iceland, is tucked away in the freezing depths of the universe. A trial is taking place. General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O’Halloran) are in the dock, and it seems to be sponsored by Hula-Hoops. Jor-El (Marlon Brando) submits his evidence to the jury of retired old British actors, who don’t seem to need much in the way of convincing. The trio are found guilty of treason and sedition, and their punishment is to be placed inside a flying mirror and fired into space for all eternity, which doesn’t sound too bad, given what’s happening on Earth at the moment.

In 1988 Terence Stamp appeared on a chat show (One to One) with British broadcaster Michael Parkinson. He was asked about his experience of working with his hero, Marlon Brando. ‘He really doesn’t learn the lines,’ revealed Stamp. ‘He has them written up big behind the lights. In the scene I did with him, I was waiting to do the scene, and I saw him. He had a little bit of paper. What he was trying to do, he was trying to learn the first line so that as he turned towards me, he could be speaking before he had it written down. He was trying to learn this one line, so it looked natural. I couldn’t believe it. So, I went up to him and I said, “Marlon?! What are you doing? How are you going to play Lear and Macbeth if you can’t learn a line?” He said, “I’ve learned them already.”’

Jor-El then heads to see the Krypton elders to tell them that it’s not really normal to have a giant sun slowly nudging its way towards your planet, but he’s told that it’s all fine; it’s merely their world pining for the fjords. He’s to say no more about it, or attempt to leave, as the last thing Krypton needs is to panic about what a giant sun is doing getting closer and closer with each waking day. If anyone asks why, just tell them it’s resting. Jor-El promises that he won’t attempt to leave or cause panic, and heads back to his flat to see his wife Lara (Susannah York), where they immediately set about sending their son Kal-El to Earth in a spaceship made of crystals that looks like something out of Footballers’ Wives. He tells her that they’re firing Kal-El into space as he’ll be better than everyone on Earth in every conceivable way and this will give him an advantage, which sort of speaks volumes about nepo babies in general.

As Krypton begins to crack, rattle and shake, Kal-El’s tiny spaceship rises and smashes through the first of his many earned glass ceilings. Jor-El and Lara attempt to flee, and you can be sure as shit he’s heading to the council chamber to show his arse and shout, ‘I told you! Eat this motherfuckers!’ But, sadly, before he can reach the room, the planet explodes.

Through the endless gulf of space, Kal-El hurtles in his spaceship, but he’s not alone. Luckily, his dad has packed a crystal with thousands of years’ worth of dictations for him to listen to, with stories of the history of Krypton, segments of Shakespeare, Einstein and his theory of relativity, and how Anna Ford has become the first female newsreader. Which all goes to show that despite their obvious scientific greatness, Krypton was seriously lacking on the culture front. Combined with their climate change denial and refusal to do anything about saving the environment, that makes Krypton pretty much a big fat Tory planet.

Down on Earth, farmer Jonathan Kent (Glenn Ford) and his wife Martha (Phyllis Thaxter) are out on a drive when they witness something crash-land in a field. When they go to investigate, they find Kal-El standing in the crater, completely billy bollocks naked. While they’re changing a blown tyre on their truck and discussing whether they should keep a naked-ass baby from space that they found in a field, the jack on the truck slips, sending it down on Jonathan’s legs – but it’s stopped just in time, held up by little Kal-El.

Richard Donner refers to Smallville as the Norman Rockwell section of the movie. Peppering it with an Americana of dirt roads, picket fences, long corn and shafts of glorious sunlight, with sweeping crane shots almost holding a microscope to the wide-open spaces of the Midwest of past picture postcards, cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (to whom the film is dedicated) uses beautiful soft tones and even softer lenses to bathe the vistas in a warm, glorious pastel glow.

Clark Kent (Jeff East, dubbed by Christoper Reeve) is racing home from a football practice where Brad, a horrible jock bully, has made his life harder. Clark isn’t allowed to play football as he would probably kill someone, so he’s a humble waterboy, forced to tidy jockstraps and helmets. He’s more powerful than a locomotive, though, and easily outruns one on the way home – but if we’re being honest, he clearly hasn’t quite got his super legs yet. He runs as if he’s being held up with wires and shot at half-speed.

Jeff East wasn’t entirely over the moon about having his voice replaced in such a prestigious movie. The Pumpkinhead actor later told the Superman Homepage in 2004: ‘I wasn’t happy about it because the producers never told me what they had in mind. It was done without my permission but it turned out to be OK. Chris did a good job, but it caused tension between us. We resolved our issues with each other years later.’

He poses smugly by a tractor as Brad passes, slightly freaked out that he’s got there before him, but at the end of the day he won, and his dad is essentially God, so fuck you, Brad. As Brad’s car speeds away, a watching Jonathan asks Clark if he’s showing off a bit, at which point Clark tells him he would love to murder Brad, but, annoyingly, he has to hide his powers. Jonathan tells him he needs to wind his neck in as the government will take him away if they find out about him. He gives him a stirring speech about how he was sent to Earth for a reason, and that it wasn’t to score touchdowns or murder jocks. This eases Clark’s mind, and as he heads back home, Jonathan stops, grabs his wrist (something he said he heard a friend of his did when he had a heart attack) and utters his final words, ‘Oh no,’ before collapsing into the dirt. Glenn Ford is only in the film for minutes, but his performance has such heft that when Jonathan dies he leaves the audience mourning a great man that they felt they knew well.

Martha is laying out the breakfast Cheerios (some honest product placement) when she notices that Clark is already awake and standing at the end of the field amongst the corn. He tells her he has to go, as a green crystal has talked to him and told him to go north, all of which sounds like code for meth. But she understands. She’s always known this moment would come, and as they embrace, John Williams’ score paints the gorgeous canvas with beautiful strokes of red, white and blue.

Clark arrives at the northest of north, and throws the green crystal into the ice, whereupon it creates the Fortress of Solitude, and I would like to know what he was expecting to happen. It’s a vast, crystal stately home, wrapped within fierce winds of snow and blankets of punishing ice, offering scenic views of polar bears and formless white. Home sweet home, I guess.

The late, great production designer John Barry (Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange) designed this colossus of a set, and it’s truly a sight to behold. Taking over the vast 007 stage at Pinewood, it uses every inch of the epic hangar, and its piercing white beams and shimmering crystals provide yet another wonderful example of this film weaving iconic magic in every frame. Sadly, Barry would pass away in 1979 while making The Empire Strikes Back, at the stupidly young age of forty-four. A truly visionary designer and master of illusion taken way before his time.

After monkeying with some crystals, Clark’s brought face to face with the giant fizzog of Marlon Brando’s Jor-El, which I assume was to scale. He once again takes him through the history of his home world, and they spend at least twenty years hanging out, with the conversation probably being as dry as shit. Just how do you stay interesting for twenty years? Even Bowie struggled to do that.

But at the end, it’s all worth it, as once the consultation period is over, we’re presented with Christopher Reeve as Superman, standing high on a pedestal of ice, wrapped in a bundle of red, white and blue. A beautiful living statue of a man of steel, built and moulded by David Prowse over many days and hours at his gymnasium. As he receives his theme and takes off, flying right by the camera with grace and style, the audience truly believes that a man can fly. Reeve nailed the wire work in this film; one of his many hobbies included hang-gliding, so he was able to adjust his body with fluid balance while being arrowed through the air.

‘I approached the role seriously,’ Reeve said in his autobiography Still Me. ‘I’ve always felt that an actor should never judge a character but should commit fully to the process of bringing him to life. In this respect, Superman and Henry James and Chekhov and a French farce are no different from the actor’s point of view. I always flatly refused any invitation to mock the Superman character or send him up.’

Metropolis. The Big Apricot. A bustling modern city filled with millions of people, fast cars running up and down the streets like hungry rats, and the tight air choking with fumes and smoke. It’s a world away from the serene peace of Smallville, but it’s here that Clark Kent now calls home. He gets a job immediately, of course (classic nepo baby), working for The Daily Planet, and its gruff editor Perry White (Jackie Cooper) lays down the law, underlining the great principles of reporting, before introducing Clark to the paper’s top reporter, Lois Lane, and her spelling mistakes. Margot Kidder’s Lois is an absolute joy: ruthless, streetwise and tough, forever chasing down stories and pinning them down expertly on her typewriter. She’s just broken a dynamite exposé on drug and orgy parties in a senior citizens’ home (a great gag), but her nose is slightly out of joint. Clark has been handed her city beat, due to the fact that although he seems like just a mild-mannered reporter, he treats his editor-in-chief with respect, has a snappy, punchy prose style and is the fastest typist seen in forty years. She’s not particularly enamoured with Clark and his Midwest ways: the cliché of sending half his salary to his silver-haired mother, saying words like ‘swell’ as if it’s 1939, and his genial demeanour.

‘I based the character of Clark Kent on the young Cary Grant,’ Reeve said in Still Me. ‘There’s a wonderful scene in Bringing Up Baby in which he plays a palaeontologist working on a dinosaur, and he’s up a ladder that’s rocking back and forth. He looks terribly awkward and afraid while Katherine Hepburn looks brash and fearless as she comes to his rescue. He has a shyness, vulnerability, and a certain goofiness that I thought would be perfect.’

As the two new colleagues walk out onto the street together, Clark is immediately met with the other side of Metropolis: not its wonderful areas of natural beauty, hot-dog stands or fresh fruit stalls, but a robbery at gunpoint. Clark suggests they do exactly what the man says as he has a gun in their face, but Lois has seen it all before and pulls the old ‘drop the purse and kick the man’ trick, much to Clark’s abject terror, especially when a bullet fires and he sinks to the floor. The robber flees empty-handed, and Lois tends to her new friend, fearing the worst. Clark is OK, though, telling her in the most pathetic way possible that he must have passed out. As she rolls her eyes and walks away, Clark beams a beautiful smile, his eyes shining behind his glasses, opening his palm to reveal that he caught the offending bullet and saved her life.

Otis (Ned Beatty), a rotund, bumbling sack of a man nestled under a straw boater, makes his way to his secret hideout, blissfully unaware that he’s being followed by police detectives trying to find out more about his mysterious boss. He meanders through the giant main station while under the playful spell of John Williams’ ‘March Of The Villains’, and slaloms through the train tracks, heading home via a secret door to meet his boss, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman).

As with Brando, when Gene Hackman was cast, the film gained another layer of authority and kudos. When Donner met with him for the first time, Hackman was sporting a fine seventies moustache. ‘I showed up for the first day of make-up tests for Superman with a fine Lex Luthor moustache I’d grown for the role,’ Hackman told the Hollywood Reporter. ‘Dick [Donner], wearing his own handsome moustache, told me mine had to go. He bargained to lose his if I did mine. True to his word, he celebrated my last razor stroke by gleefully pulling off the fake whiskers he’d acquired for the occasion.’ And from that moment on the two became dear friends for life. ‘Dick made it fun, and that’s why the films turned out that way, too.’

Otis bundles through the door only to be told he was followed (again), and poor Miss Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine) has to witness him murdering a police officer by forcing the poor man in front of an oncoming train with a moving wall.

Lex’s home is an abandoned underground railway station converted to a state-of-the-art villain’s lair, an eagle’s nest of flashing machines, fascist portraits, ornate decorations and a beautiful swimming pool. Lex, a towering intellect, a criminal mastermind, is brewing the crime of the century, and clues his two numbskull assistants in on it: an upcoming twin-missile test will enable him to commit the greatest real estate swindle of all time. ‘Son, stocks may rise and fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good, but they will always need land and they’ll pay through the nose to get it! Remember, my father said . . . land.’

Lois Lane has had better evenings. She’s all dressed up, clinging for dear life to a teetering helicopter, with nowhere to go. She was due to meet the President on Air Force One, but life is just something that happens while you’re busy making other plans, and instead of taking off with no problems, the helicopter has got itself stuck on the side of the giant Daily Planet building, with death being the inevitable next destination. As she screams for help, and her grasp becomes looser by the second, it’s not looking great.

Clark exits work for the evening and is immediately puzzled by the crowd of people outside looking up at the sky. He pauses to take a look before immediately turning on his heels and racing towards the screen, pulling open his shirt to reveal the ‘S’ logo and dashing into a set of revolving doors and emerging as Superman for the first time in the wild.

‘Say, Jim, that’s a bad outfit,’ announces an observer, as Superman pushes himself up and away into the sky and soars to the roof to save the day. The news cameras can scarcely believe what they are seeing as they capture the image of a man in blue flying through the air. ‘Don’t worry, miss, I’ve got you,’ Superman says with an air of perfect chivalry.

Reeve’s Superman carried a weight of iconic universality perfectly – and immediately. Armed not only with incredible charm and charisma, but also the most wondrous hero theme in cinema history, the music and imagery work in unison to send pulses racing, hair standing and smiles beaming. As easy as it is to accept that this machine works perfectly, it’s equally easy to imagine how it could all have gone horribly, instantly wrong, like a botched experiment in a petri dish. But there it is, purring away on the screen: sleek and beautiful, forever locked in amber. Perfect.

‘You’ve got me? Who’s got you?!’ Lois retorts in panic, as he carries her back to the roof to safety.

‘I certainly hope this little incident hasn’t put you off flying, miss,’ he replies, like a big boy scout with a beaming smile. ’Statistically speaking, of course, it’s still the safest way to travel.’ Lois asks who he is, and he tells her, ‘A friend,’ before flying off in an expertly delivered wire shot, leaving Lois to faint at the appropriate comic moment.

Superman’s first night on the job is a perfect sequence, beginning at once with a piece of sublime camera trickery from Donner, with the camera and Superman upside down from one another, at muddled ends in the sky, before taking a few loops and righting in perfect harmony.

‘As I was hoisted up, the crowd roared their approval,’ Reeve said in Still Me. ‘They didn’t care about the crane or the wires; they were willing to look past all of it. There was Superman flying up the side of a building. That’s when I knew the movie would work.’

With robberies foiled, cats rescued and Air Force One saved, Superman has made quite a name for himself on his first night, though he’s probably still wondering what the story is with that woman who slapped her daughter for lying about seeing a flying man. The news is flooded with reports of his acts of daring rescue, and asks the question: is he real or the result of some sort of mass hypnosis? Like that effect when Barbra Streisand married Nelson Mandela.

Perry White wants an exclusive. Every other newspaper has pictures, stories and headlines, but he wants the Daily Planet to own this story – after all, it did basically fall in their lap. As he roars questions in an attempt to inspire his writers – who is this flying man? What makes him tick? What football team does he like? – Lois finds a note among her things requesting a meeting at her place that evening at eight o’clock, sent from ‘a friend’. This is either from the new flying man who rescued her, or a Jehovah’s Witness, so it’s best to play it safe and not wear her special bra. Perry leaves the team with a final inspirational sentence: ‘I tell ya, boys and girls, whichever one of you gets it out of him is gonna wind up with the single most important interview since God talked to Moses.’

On the balcony of Lois’s frankly enormous apartment, she waits patiently for her new friend to arrive. She’s dressed in a powder-blue, wafty chiffon evening gown and has a table set for two, along with a trusty packet of cigarettes and a bottle of fizz, just in case he’s a proper lad. Just when she thinks he’s not going to arrive, he swoops on to her terrace and announces himself. The interview begins, and it’s more akin to Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence on the Big Breakfast bed than Frost/Nixon. She probes him for details, and he reveals some key facts:

1) He’s from a planet called Krypton.

2) He never lies.

3) He eats, has sex, pisses and shits.

4) He can’t see through lead.

5) He’s single.

6) He doesn’t feel pain.

7) He’s never timed how fast he can fly.

All of which reads like your average, common or garden sociopathic male Tinder profile.

To answer Lois’s question about flight, he asks her if she fancies a spin. She thinks he’s joking, but he’s not, and as she drops her notepad, he takes her into the sky for a graceful flight around the city, up into the clouds, to freedom and far from the cares of the world. A charming, delicate sequence, swaddled in love and affection, with the two leads holding hands as they drift through thick cloud and thin air. The altitude clearly gets to Lois at one point, as she begins to perform free-form poetry in her head that has sadly been picked up on her microphone. He brings her back with her head spinning and her heart racing. As he turns and says good night, floating away serenely, Lois utters, ‘What a super man,’ to herself, and after the clunking noise dissipates, the name is born. There’s a knock on Lois’s door, and it’s Clark ready to take her out on a dinner date, but he finds her bewildered and lost in thought. As she wanders away to fetch a coat, Clark is pleased with his work, and briefly decides to tell her the truth, removing his glasses, earnestly adjusting his face, softening his stiff hunch and gaining a couple of inches in height in the process. In a world before CGI, Christopher Reeve was his own ILM. ‘I remembered George Reeves on TV as Clark Kent in Superman. How could a thick pair of glasses substitute for a believable characterisation? Right away I saw great opportunity: I would attempt to create more of a contrast between the two characters. After all, Lois Lane shouldn’t have to be blind or dim-witted.’ As Lois returns, still dazed and confused, Clark has gone back to his bumbling self, and as he shows her out of the door, a huge smile shines across his face. The night had gone very well indeed.

There’s special interest in the following day’s edition of the Daily Planet. Lois’s article is an endearing piece detailing a perfect evening with a special person who can go to the toilet, and fly, though not at the same time. It’s all food for thought for Lex Luthor. He’s on the cusp of the crime of the century and could do without this ‘Superman’ getting in the way of it. So, he sets another plan in motion: if Krypton exploded thirty years ago, there must be pieces of it floating out there that would be radioactive to Superman, possibly kill him, or at the very least give him horrible cancer. Within moments he’s scoured his library and whipped a page out of a journal showing a green piece of meteor that recently crashed in Addis Ababa (before they won Eurovision). With that secured, the ‘Crime of the Century’ can begin, with Lex also having programmed the twin rockets to fall on altered targets.

Clark arrives at work to find that Lois has gone off to report on a story about some maniac who’s buying up worthless pieces of land for extortionate prices (it’s got to be Trump) and young Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) has gone with her on his first assignment. White is pleased he has Clark on his own, as he wants to give him a pep talk about how he should be more aggressive and confident. White didn’t get where he is today without that attitude, and he tells Clark that he’ll need to up his game if he wants to succeed. But his words soon fall away from Clark’s ears as an ultra-high-frequency message from Lex Luthor starts to play through the air. Lex tells Superman that he’s going to drop a poison gas pellet containing a propane-lithium compound through the air ducts of the city within five minutes. So, while White blathers on, Clark jumps out of the nearest window, which must have been deeply distressing for his Daily Planet colleague to witness, and is somehow able to transform from his business suit into the Superman suit via a short blurring motion before flying down into the belly of the city and tracking down the frequency. Within minutes he’s smashed down Lex’s door and is asking for the location of the deadly gas pellet.

‘Somewhere in the back of my mind, actually,’ Lex jokes, admitting he made the whole thing up and just wanted to meet him face to face. A joke Superman doesn’t particularly enjoy. There’s a brilliant energy during this scene, with Hackman riding the devilish quality of Luthor and Reeve standing stoic, unimpressed with anything he has to say. ‘Is that how a warped brain like yours gets its kicks? By planning the death of innocent people?’ asks Superman with moral authority. ‘No, by causing the death of innocent people,’ Lex retorts. He’s beginning to enjoy their duel, toying with him. He shows Superman a map of Southern California, in particular the San Andreas Fault, and explains that everything below the line is the most expensive real estate in the world and everything north of it is worthless desert, which just so happens to be owned by Lex Luthor Incorporated. It’s a barren wasteland, yet somehow already has a branch of Costa Coffee. It also just so happens that if a rocket were to drop on the right area, Southern California would collapse into the sea, sending millions into a watery, rubble-filled grave and giving Roland Emmerich a massive erection. Lex then produces a piece of acetate, detailing his new West Coast post-blast, with such brilliant names as Marina Del Lex, Luthorville, Lex Springs, Lexington and Teschmacher Peaks.

And in a perfect act of comedy, scrawled in a corner, in thick black pen: Otisburg. A little place for Lex’s assistant that Lex is very unhappy to accommodate. His girlfriend Miss Teschmacher seems to have a tit-themed place of her own, and presumably Lex has already secured the hookers and blackjack tables. Superman is unimpressed with the new utopia laid out before him, although he’ll probably visit the peaks. He calls Lex a dreamer and tells him his plan will never work. It’s a complicated operation, sure, and took a lot of work, but phase one is already complete. Miss Teschmacher updates the room on the progress and lets slip that its two missiles have launched, one to the Fault and one to Hackensack, New Jersey, which causes panic in the eyes of Superman, as there’s a really good IKEA there.

Lex claims that he can stop all this in one swift act. He has a hidden detonator, but won’t say where it is, so Superman gives the room a quick X-ray scan, looking in drawers, safes and cupboards, eventually concluding that it must be in the lead chest Lex is perched upon like a garden gnome.

Unfortunately, he’s wrong. Inside the chest, on the end of a thick chain, is a big lump of glowing, deadly kryptonite. He recoils but is too weak to escape and too weak to stop Lex putting it on him like a lethal medal before pushing him into the swimming pool. With Superman out of the way, Lex goes off to watch the Crime of the Century come to pass, stopping briefly to deliver a sublime piece of physical comedy when Miss Teschmacher informs Lex that her mum lives in Hackensack. Without missing a beat, Lex looks at his watch, then back up at her, and shakes his head.

‘Miss Teschmacher, please. You can’t just stand there,’ begs Superman, treading water in Lex’s pool and imploring her to free him and help save the millions of lives that are directly in danger. She considers his pleas and makes him promise he’ll save her mum first. If he promises to do that, she’ll help him escape. He agrees, but before she removes the chain, she plants a kiss on his lips, declaring that he wouldn’t have let her afterwards. Poor Miss Teschmacher always falls for the wrong men, though her relationship with Lex is definitely unclear and may well just be cover for when he goes full Deliverance on Otis.

The chain and kryptonite are thrown into a nearby drain, spilling down in a pleasing visual motion, and Superman launches himself through the ceiling (a stunt performed by Vic Armstrong that was done in reverse, essentially a headfirst plummet through a false floor) and away to stop the bombs. He catches up with the first one quickly, reaching into the flame and sending it upwards into space to harmlessly explode. However, the second hits the target, triggering a major earthquake. As devastation begins to hit everywhere, Superman charges around fixing what he can.

But amid the chaos, a red car is hit by a landslide, its door ripped off in one swift motion. The windshield is shattered, smoke billows from the engine, and inside lies Lois under piles of gravel, dirt and rocks. After all his conscientious work righting all the wrongs of the quake, fixing all the holes and blocking all the leaks, Superman missed Lois, and as he carefully removes her from the broken vehicle and places her on the ground, he considers what he can do next. The air is still, and only the sound of the wind can be heard. He gets to his feet in disbelief and, with a quick shake of the head, through a mist of mumbled words putting everything his father said about interfering with human history to one side, he roars into the sky to put things right once and for all.

Academics have opposing views on whether what follows is possible. Some say no, others say no, don’t be stupid, but Superman knows best, and he decides that he will make the entire world spin backwards in order to turn back time. Although some say this would actually lead to major ocean currents switching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, changing the planet’s climate drastically, in actual fact it works, so fuck you, science. Time does indeed go backwards, with dams rebuilding, fault lines repairing, babies going back up mothers and poo going back up bottoms, but most important of all, Lois is brought back to life.

He returns to the car to find her alive and well and moaning about how hard her day has been. He explains that he’s been kind of busy saving millions of lives and, not to humblebrag, but also bringing her back to life. She apologies eventually, but, you know, it’s all a bit ungrateful, and I’m sure he won’t forget that in a hurry.

After delivering Lex and Otis to prison, Superman rises to Earth’s orbit, smiling that smile, with that glint in his eye, reassuring the world below that he’s keeping a watchful eye on us all, and although he made babies go back inside mothers and probably ruined an entire series of You’ve Been Framed, he’ll always be there to fight for truth, justice and the American way.

Superman arrived in December 1978 and, thanks to Richard Donner, Tom Mankiewicz, John Williams, Christopher Reeve and their joint commitment to verisimilitude, it was a smash hit. We believed a man could fly, and it became the benchmark that all superhero films would follow from that day onwards. The son becomes the father, and the father, the son.

TWO

FLASH GORDON

1980

PATHETIC EARTHLINGS . . .WHO CAN SAVE YOU NOW?

In the wake of Star Wars’ box-office Poseidon, there was a gold rush of space adventures attempting to cash in on the exploits of Luke Skywalker. Legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was no different and had been wanting to get Flash Gordon made since he acquired the rights in the sixties. If only someone like, oh, I don’t know, George Lucas, had approached him about wanting to make it into a film? Imagine if that had happened and he was unable to get the rights from Dino De Laurentiis, so he made Star Wars instead? I’d imagine the person that held those Gordon rights would probably regret that . . . but what do I know?

Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) is bored. Proper bored. So bored he alerts General Klytus (Peter Wyngarde), a becloaked weirdo of unknown extraction who is wearing a gaudy gold mask like he’s off to the Met Ball. Emperor Ming asks for a new plaything – and this would be a totally different story if Klytus had brought out Boggle. However, Klytus points him towards an obscure body in the S-K system called ‘Earth’, and they decide to use a weather computer to cause climate-related mayhem (very Tory). They send bad winds, stock footage of bad winds and HOT HAIL – which sounds like a disco porn film from 1978. They then laugh, and probably high five, and then definitely return to an awkward, pregnant silence where they’re both wondering if they should go and make some Pot Noodles or have a wank.

Queen’s ‘Flash’ theme blasts out over lovely old Flash images from the comic books. Their involvement really underlines the dichotomy of the production. Dino wanted an earnest space adventure with sumptuous production design and a serious tone. Whereas Mike Hodges, the director, wanted it to be a tongue-in-cheek spoof of sorts, with classically trained actors romping with flamboyance. According to Brian May (in an Independent interview in 2015), when Queen played the theme to the production team, Hodges was hopping on the spot applauding while De Laurentiis sat stony-faced, rooted in his chair. ‘It’s very good,’ said De Laurentiis from behind a big cigar, ‘but it is not for my movie.’ He was, of course, very wrong, as there’s never been a theme that captures the spirit of a movie quite like ‘Flash’ does. It tells you all you need to know – and more.

On Earth a plane is being readied by Robbie Coltrane. Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones, a hulking, blond all-star football player and ex-Marine) boards along with travel agent Dale Arden (Melody Anderson), who is clearly scared of flying. Flash attempts to ease her nerves by telling her he has been watching her at the hotel and ‘I couldn’t believe a girl like you was alone’, which isn’t at all creepy and is sure to soothe her worried mind as they sit together among the stormy clouds.

Sam J. Jones constantly clashed with Dino De Laurentiis, and their relationship soured to the point that he refused to return for overdubs in post-production, so the decision was made to bring in actor Peter Marinker to replace most of his dialogue. Some of Sam still remains, and it’s to Marinker’s credit that the lines are so wonderfully blurred.

As Flash attempts to mansplain air pressure to Dale, the clouds turn bright red and Ming appears to grab the pilots, presumably just chucking them out into the sea or placing them in Klytus’s horrible sex dungeon.

Meanwhile, over at his secret Hammer lab, Doctor Hans Zarkov (Topol) is trying to convince his assistant Munson (William Hootkins) to go up into space with him in his newly built rocket. At gunpoint. This sort of feels like an argument they have nightly, and it may well be a role-playing thing. I’m not one to kink-shame. Zarkov says that the scientific community has dismissed his theories and no one takes him seriously, which makes me wonder if David Icke has a rocket as well. Before they can really get into it, Flash’s plane crashes on his house and Munson is killed in the impact. As Dale and Flash emerge from the wreckage, Zarkov tells them he has a phone in his rocket and, after a scuffle, they’re launched into space – and unconsciousness. It’s here that Queen introduce music that feels like it was written for a trippy sex orgy rocket ride – like someone pressed the wrong button. As our protagonists snuggle inside the rocket, they gently float through space, eventually dropping through a sensual black hole that looks like a yassified goatse.

They crash-land on the planet Mongo, which is basically a vast, barren wasteland with a grand luxury castle in the middle (think Center Parcs). A wonderful metaphor of class: the rich have it all, and the poor have nothing (again, think Center Parcs). They’re greeted by Ming’s gaudy-gold bastard-guards, who extend a giant golden handshake to Flash, but instead of a picture of a Spitfire or a carriage clock, he’s given electric shocks.

Emperor Ming walks a steady adagio out onto the stage of his grand palace. He’s warmly bathed in red and yellow, with a dirty synth theme burning its way out of the speakers as he reaches the summit. His subjects stand around in due reverence and hail him as their true leader. There’s the Hawkmen from the levitating city and their king, Vultan (played by a wonderfully 1,000% Brian Blessed), Prince Barin of Arboria (Timothy Dalton cosplaying as Errol Flynn) and Prince Thun of Ardentia (George Harris), to name just a few. They are there to present Ming with their tributes (not like that). Vultan of the Hawkmen offers a tribute of a giant ice jewel, presumably stolen from a giant G&T, but Prince Barin says it belongs to them. They’re about to have a fight when Klytus stops them, essentially telling them that they can’t fight here as it’s the war room.

In the documentary Life After Flash, Blessed reveals that von Sydow had no idea how to approach the part of Ming and asked Blessed for his advice a mere twenty minutes before filming his entrance. Brian advised him that Ming is a ‘magician. Very sexy, very erotic, and a master of sex.’ This apparently did the trick for the Swedish great and, according to Brian, he went off happily and filmed the scene. Excuse me for a second while I liberally sprinkle a vast pinch of salt on that story.

Ardentia brings a tribute of loyalty, which is only a few steps away from bringing charcoal from the garage on Christmas Day or sponsoring a donkey in his name. Klytus questions the size of his loyalty, and Thun reassures him that it is massive, so no worries there. Ming asks him to throw himself on his own sword: consider this bluff called. Thun takes a moment, and after declaring that this deed will be an example to all, then tries to kill Ming, which, while brave, leads to Ming killing him anyway. So, as gestures go, it’s as fruitless as a supermarket after Brexit (my name is Ben Elton, goodnight).

‘This Ming’s a psycho,’ Flash whispers to Dale (in an example of an undubbed Sam J. Jones), but a floating, Ming-sympathising droid tells on him, and as the room shoots a glance at Flash, Princess Aura (Ornella Muti) steps out of the crowd and basically has a Diet Coke break. Fun fact: she has a small person for a pet, named Fellini (Deep Roy), after the legendary Italian film director who was once attached to make this film but dropped out.

‘Pathetic Earthlings, hurling your bodies out into the void,’ Ming says, chastising our heroes, intimating that this is a local planet for local people, and there’s nothing for them here.

Ming points his ring at Dale (not like that) and shoots her with horny rays that make her dance around like she’s Donna Summer on late-night German telly. ‘Did you ever see such a response?’ Ming asks Klytus. ‘No, truly. She rivals even your own daughter.’

The spell wears off, and Dale regroups with her friends. ‘What happened to me?’ she asks Flash. ‘I don’t know, but it was pretty sensational,’ he replies from behind his erection.

Ming also likes what he sees and wants Dale to be prepared for his pleasure (ribbed?). Flash, though, tells Ming to forget it, and takes on his entire army in a rudimentary game of football, sending them tumbling and rolling around the room. Dale breaks out her mildly embarrassing cheerleading game, looking for the whole world like a soccer mom who’s just downed a full crate of beveraginos. However, the joy is fleeting as Flash is overpowered and sent for execution.

‘Bring in the emperor’s concubine,’ Klytus drools from behind his mask as Flash hangs in chains in a dungeon. Dale runs in, distressed at Flash’s beaten appearance, but looking absolutely resplendent in her red Danilo Donati costume.

Donati worked heavily in Italian cinema, and his influence throughout this film is titanic. Packed with lush colours and ornate magnificence, there are shades of Oz via Liberace, especially with Ming’s palace. There’s no doubt that without Donati (and Gilbert Taylor’s lush cinematography) this film would simply be filed under ‘just another space movie’, and not the camp classic it has become. Fun fact: Carole Hersee also worked on the costumes for this film, and you will know her better as the original test card girl, who clocked up 70,000 hours of television time – more than any other person in history.

R.I.P. Flash. Gassed to death in a chamber while Brian May noodled, his body placed in a giant black coffin that reads ‘Flash Gordon. Earthling. Executed by Ming’, you have to love the attention to detail from the coffin designers here. They’ve both observed the I.P. of Flash by incorporating his logo while also making the text as METAL as possible. The box lies peacefully in a darkened room, cared for by cloaked goblins. Princess Aura enters with Dr Howard Hughes from Ever Decreasing Circles (Stanley Lebor), who is playing a doctor. They quickly set about bringing Flash back to life. ‘I’m a fool for you, Aura,’ the horny doctor says as he injects Flash with come-back-to-life serum. As he delivers the life-bringing juice, he asks Aura if they can meet up again the following weekend, which seems a bit tragic, seeing as he’s just brought her new fancy man back to life. But you can’t blame him for trying. Flash slowly awakes as Aura gropes him all over and announces that they need to move fast before the lizard people come to bury him, which must be the weirdest possible thing you can hear when you come back from the dead.

Zarkov’s day isn’t going much better. He’s strapped to a table with a laser pointed at his head while Ming tells him that if he hadn’t come snooping, he wouldn’t have to destroy Earth, which just sums up humanity, doesn’t it? ‘I thought it might amuse you to know this before your mind is gone,’ Ming says, with all the loaded threat of a Michael McIntyre gig. They are going to empty his mind, in ‘the same way you empty your pockets’ (in a tray at the airport?), and as the laser burns a blue line into his head, we witness lots of Zarkov’s memories racing through the video monitor in fast motion, like Benny Hill’s This Is Your Life. These even depict the death of his wife in a swimming pool, but it’s played in such a way that suggests she died, came back to life and was then thrown in a swimming pool, which would definitely make me pause the process and ask what the fuck have I just watched. Klytus sees an image of Hitler and mentions that he showed promise, which makes one imagine a Mongo’s Got Talent contest where Hitler arrives on the back of a V-2 rocket and plays the spoons with banjo accompaniment.