RAND
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by Marc Shapiro
Okay, you've seen Batman and you've seen Star Trek V and
you're feeling like some skate exercise, a romp with the opposite
sex and some plain fresh air. Well, hold the phone, 'cause the big
boys at the movie studios aren't finished picking your pocket yet.
They plan on feeding your celluloid jones till that school bell rings
in September. Here's a quick rundown on the remaining pile of
big budget summer releases.
Upper Right: Young Einstein
invents the guitar and you
thought Gwar was gnarly.
Left: You've been naughty,
you must be punished.
Lower Right: Mel sports
his lethal weapon.
Young Einstein
The Aussies are about to launch their
latest assault in the guise of reworking history
with Young Einstein. Einstein, in a totally.
comedic turn by this cat named Yahoo
Serious, invents relativity, the first surfboard,
the electric guitar and, subsequently, rock
and roll, in a series of comic misadventures
that is being heralded as a cross between
Bill and Ted and a Bugs Bunny cartoon. You
can be the judge when it hits town some time
in August.
The Punisher
Comic book heroes don't usually fare too
well in the leap from the printed page to the
big screen. But doing right by comicdom's
most alienated killing machine is not a ma-
jor concern of the folks who will shortly bring
The Punisher to your neighborhood.
"The movie is the essence of the comic
book character" relates producer Robert
Kamen "It starts with an explosion and
has a violent or action sequence just
about every four minutes. When The
Punisher is in a scene with another
person, he kills them. When he's
around cars or buildings he blows
them up. The only time The
Punisher appears is when violence
is about to happen."
The Punisher, Dolph Lundgren,
is always on the rag because his
family was wiped out by the mob
and now, when he's not hiding out
in the sewers of New York in his rat-
ty black leather leisure suit, he's on
a self-ordained crusade to punish evil.
Evil, in this flick, is the aforementioned
Mafia and their Japanese cohorts, the
Yakuza. When you're fighting it out with so
many bad dudes, rearranging anatomies and
just about anything that's standing,
there's really not much time to get laid.
"There are no love scenes for The
Punisher in this film," says director Mark
Goldblatt. "The only thing The Punisher
in love with is his artillery."
is
The Last of the Ghostbusters
Dana (Sigourney Weaver's character) has
had a baby since the original Ghostbusters,
but a spirit hidden in an old painting has
returned to the material world and kidnap
ped the tyke. So who you gonna call? You
got it.
The Last of the Ghostbusters, once again
features Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney
Weaver, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and
director Ivan Reitman. The marshmallow
man is gone, but something equally big and
hulking has taken his place Slimer's back
as are Industrial Light and Magic creatures
and visual effects. A sequel to everybody's
favorite spook show has been the hottest.
rumor in Hollywood. Everybody had gotten
rich and famous since Ghostbusters and
didn't really need this sequel noise.
"I really didn't want to do it," claims
Murray. "In fact I was the last hold-out. But
they finally just waved too much money in
my face, so I gave in."
Lethal Weapon 2
Not content to waste just half of Los
Angeles in their last outing, those good
buddy cops Riggs (Mel Gibson) and
Murtaugh (Danny Glover) are back to off the
other half in Lethal Weapon 2.
Directed by Richard Donner from a Jeffrey
Boam script, Lethal Weapon 2 takes up three
years after the conclusion of Lethal Weapon.
This time around everybody's favorite
demolishers have been assigned to babysit
a money laundering accountant. As these
things often do, this seemingly boring siti
around in a hotel room scenario turns into
mega action, mega violence, a mega love in-
terest for Riggs and just about every other
mega you've come to expect from the Lethal
Weapon world.
"The gritty nature of the films has a lot to
do with why Lethal Weapon works," says.
Mel Gibson, who admits to being typecast
as a macho action star. "But these films are
totally unbelievable and I think it's important
to take a tongue-in-cheek approach to
making them. People would freak out if we
played these movies for real."
Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade
What is shaping up to be the third and last
Indiana Jones cliffhanging, swashbuckling
adventure is like almost every summer
release movie, shrouded in mystery.
What we do know is that Harrison Ford is
back as Indy, Sean Connery turns up as
Indy's father and River Phoenix plays
teenage Indy in a flashback sequence. As
with previous Indiana Jones adventures, we
get a lot of high adventure. Unlike previous
Indiana Jones films, we're going to find out
a lot more about the character than before.
"With this film we find out just about
everything there is to know about Indiana
Jones," claims The Last Crusade screen-
writer Jeffrey Boam (who also wrote Lethal
Weapon 2, presumably in his spare time).
"We learn the origin of the bullwhip, the
leather jacket and his hat. We learn where
the name Indiana came from, what his
parents were like and why he's afraid of
snakes. By the time this film is over, Indiana
Jones won't have too many secrets left."
Comic Book Confidential
by Janet Flemer
"One day i came home in the fourth grade
and found that my parents had burned my
entire collection of comic books. When I
asked them what had happened to my
comics, they replied, 'What comic books?"
At that moment I decided to become a
cartoonist." Paul Mavrides. Comic Book
Confidential.
Ron Mann's masterpiece, "Comic Book
Confidential is a must for anyone interested
in the history of comics. The film covers.
everyone from Will Eisner, the creator of The
Spirit in the 40's, to Art Spiegelman of ultra-
hip RAW magazine.
We get the real lowdown on the comic
world through interviews with crazed.
VIDEO CHOPPING LIST
Scarecrows (Forum)
Crooks with guns battle possessed
scarecrows with garden tools in this better
than average splatter outing. Norman.
Cabrera's gore effects are appropriately
squishy and Bill Wesley shows a solid
directorial hand in his debut effort. There
are two versions of this nasty in your video
store, one is rated R and the other is
unrateable-eek!
Redneck Zombies (TWE)
We've got a real trash classic in the
making here, folks. Hillbillies drink
radioactive hooch, turn into zombie can-
nibals and eat yuppies. Once again we're
dealing with two versions. The unrated
version contains even more stupid
backwoods yucks.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (New World)
I know. I praised this to the skies before
its theatrical release. Maybe you were
suckered in and now you want to know
where all the extreme violence and gross
out I described was. Well, here's the
skinny: five minutes were cut to get this
puppy an R rating. The R rated version.
is now on the racks, but so's the unrated
version, which contains that missing five
minutes. Check it out, and you'll see what
I mean.
Dance of the Damned (Virgin)
Vampire locks horns with a suicidal
stripper. And the winner is?
scribblers like Spain Rodriguez, Jaime.
Hernandez of "Love and Rockets," Frank
Miller, R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Mad
Magazine's William M. Gaines and Harvey
Kurtzman,modern satirists Lynda Barry and
Bill "Zippy the Pinhead" Griffith, and
Charles Burns, father of "Big Baby"
But that's not all. We also get to view
footage of 1950's senate sub-committee
hearings which prosecuted the creators of
horror comics and clips of propaganda films
showing kids reading the horror comics, get-
ting tweaked, stabbing trees and bashing
each other's heads in with rocks. These clips
alone are worth the price of admission.
Comic Book Confidential probably won't
be playing at your local U.A. octoplex, but
it is around. Seek it out.
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