Two oddities from the past appeared on Warner Archive last week: Steel, starring Shaquille O'Neal and The Amazing Captain Nemo. They popped up along with a pile of Irwin Allen work (long-requested by fans) like Cave-in!, Flood!, Fire!, and others. In short, last week saw the release of every 70's schlock disaster movie you were wondering about and Shaq's finest hour. Below you'll find some choice screengrabs with commentary from Steel and The Amazing Captain Nemo. The price of nostalgia is $19.95 as usual.
One of the most...interesting... comic adaptations in film history found Shaq playing an urban vigilante version of Iron Man (sort of) with no reference to Superman saving his life (as in the comic).
The Amazing Captain Nemo was supposed to be a pilot for an ongoing series that never happened. It starred Jose Ferrer as Nemo and Burgess Meredith as a mad scientist. It came out the year after Star Wars, and the influence is quite obvious.
Shaq/Steel was pitted against one of his former military colleagues (Judd Nelson) who had a fiendish plan, blahblah.
Richard Roundtree deserves a medal for making me believe, upon re-watching this, that Steel was in fact a stealth blaxploitation movie with a mainstream blockbuster budget and a PG-13 for "Some Superhero Action Violence". I got terribly bored until he appeared, and then I looked at the glacial pacing as an asset rather than a detriment!
They explained their way into the story by sending a couple of US Navy officers to revive Captain Nemo from suspended animation, because only he could help them, it seems. I've not watched the whole three-part movie, so most of my thoughts on this one are from the first half hour and the trailer.
Back to the Star Wars crack I made? There are shots like this one from the trailer that rip off Lucas' movie down to the framing.
Burgess Meredith, the mad scientist in a cardigan, has a very Darth Vader-like henchman, down to the helmet, style of movement, and cadence of voice. I think the best uninformed praise I can give this is that they set a pseudo-Star Wars ripoff underwater and without anything like The Force, and it manages to be appealing in a cheap TV scifi movie. The external submarine sequences are a hoot. I'm sure someone out there dearly loves this and will defend it with nostalgia blinders on, but it's pretty atrocious in concept and execution. In spite of that, I would have easily kept watching had I not had a gigantic pile of other backdated titles to consume and cover, because it's compulsively-watchable-bad.
I featured Steel and Nemo because they're the ones that were sent, but frankly I'm much more interested in the other titles released last week. Among them are the restored and remastered Mammy starring Al Jolson (not kidding), the 5-disc (9-movie) Torchy Blane collection, and the 5 Joan Crawford flicks (Above Suspicion, No More Ladies, Paid, Susan And God, and especially This Modern Age). There's some Norma Shearer stuff in the bunch too.
I'll periodically write a piece like this that highlights recent additions to the expanding-like-The-Blob Warner Archive selection. I haven't been promised anything special in return, I just like the program and what it stands for. Here's hoping for a second volume of Dogville shorts.