How appropriate for Frank Miller’s The Spirit to open with the image of a flatlining heart monitor, as his film is dead on arrival — an utterly lifeless, hollow shell. If Miller wanted to endear a whole new generation to Will Eisner’s comic creation, this $60 million feature was not the way to do it. Instead, this all but assures those unfamiliar with the source material that they will remain that way, that the original comics shall never touch their hands.

Too bad, because the virtually unknown Gabriel Macht (Behind Enemy Lines) is not a bad choice to fill the role and red tie of The Spirit, the masked-and-suited crimefighter formerly known as slain cop Denny Colt. He has the right look, the right attitude; he’s just in the wrong movie.

Tonally, The Spirit is an absolute misfire. Eisner’s comics had a slight streak of goofiness running through them, often with a sense of humor as sharp as the overall material often was dark, but never on the level of Three Stooges slapstick comedy, complete with cartoon sound effects lathered on with a dozen too many punches of the button. Miller even includes the dreaded “scratched record” effect, as if demonstrating in one misbegotten move how out-of-touch he is for such material.

The inert narrative involves the retrieval of a vase of the blood of Hercules, which supposedly will grant immortality to whomever partakes of its drops. Archenemy The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson, Marvel’s The Avengers) wants it; diamond thief Sand Serif (a stunningly sexy Eva Mendes, The Other Guys) has it. The Spirit chases both, while he also chases skirts. Nothing ever really happens to advance a plot, as if the entire thing were a MacGuffin; characters are abruptly introduced and given little to do beyond blighting the résumés of their actors. Macht is the only one who doesn’t embarrass himself (or us), whereas Jackson’s entire performance hinges on yelling and talking about how much he hates eggs.

You know what The Spirit needs? Well, a frickin’ grocery list of items, but color would have been nice. Eisner’s world popped with blues and reds and greens; Miller’s largely exists in shades of gray. Did Miller’s divorce from a colorist make him detest primary swatches? More or less co-opting the black-and-white-with-a-smidge-of-red palette from his own Sin City was not a wise decision. For one thing, this ain’t Sin City. For another, it makes Miller look like a one-trick pony, and one who’s already three hooves over the threshold of the glue factory at that.

As The Spirit not-so-memorably informs us in his opening monologue, his city screams. And boy, did I scream right along with it, in cinematic pain. —Rod Lott

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Hong Kong King Kong! This Shaw Brothers take on the giant-monkey-gone-ape story is so unintentionally hysterical that even joking about it in print doesn’t do it justice.

In a remote jungle, an earthquake — simulated via unbelievably bad rear-screen projection — unleashes a giant gorilla from the mountain. If you’re fishing for an explanation as to why, how or what a giant gorilla was doing in the mountain in the first place, forget about it. Just know that he doesn’t care much for being out of the mountain, so he steps on a lot of screaming villagers and destroys a lot of obviously miniature miniatures.

The Mighty Peking Man (I’m not sure how he got that name, either, but I’ll just call him “Peking” for short) befriends Samantha, a little girl whose parents’ plane crashes in the jungle (or rather, lands pretty gently for a toy model). Thanks to Peking’s unparalleled parenting skills, she grows up to be quite the sexpot. Played by Evelyne Kraft (The French Sex Murders), she looks like Farrah Fawcett crossed with a Barbie doll, which I admit is kinda redundant. Samantha wears nothing but an all-too-skimpy loincloth and (inexplicably) makeup. She communicates only through primitive words and grunts, but since she’s not shy at showing her ass, the guys who meet her don’t mind her language limitations.

Specifically, I speak of Johnnie (Danny Lee, City on Fire), the helmet-haired man sent by some organization to find this Peking man, reputed to be mighty. Johnnie succeeds — and then some, as he mates with Samantha in no time, making Peking jealous when he catches them mid-coitus. (Do you really want to be copulating with a woman who’s lived in the jungle all her life and, therefore, doesn’t have access to all the fine hygiene products we take for granted?) The lovebirds celebrate their coupling by taking part in a syrupy, slow-motion montage, in which they twirl tigers draped across their backs and run across sun-bathed fields, so that Kraft’s nipples can slip in and out of her costume and preserved for historical posterity.

Then they chain Peking to a large boat and take him to Hong Kong, where they will reap riches by showcasing him in a variety of games in a stadium setting, like a monster truck pull — literally a monster truck pull, as what is Peking but a monster, and he is shown yanking on several trucks chained to him. Combined with all the prodding with sticks, this pisses Peking off to the point where he escapes and goes loco in downtown Hong Kong, ultimately climbing atop a tall building so that — having seen any King Kong movie — the viewer knows exactly what will happen.

And it does, but in such a laughably cheap and shoddy technique, in order to stay within the context of this incredibly goofy, incredibly fun film, known in some circles as Goliathon. —Rod Lott

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After an American rocket is blown to smithereens shortly after launch, an IBM computer so big that it fills a room suggests the “most capable” persons to call upon in this time of government crisis would be … The Doll Squad!

Leading that bevy of big-haired, big-breasted beauties is redhead dynamo Sabrina Kincaid (Francine York, The Centerfold Girls). The president of the United States gives the sexy six exactly two weeks to track down the man behind the deadly sabotage: Eamon O’Reilly (Michael Ansara, It’s Alive), an impotent madman who lords over an island compound. With the help of many rats and agents with skull-implanted silver disks, he’s plotting to take over the world via bubonic plague.

Because Sabrina and her fellow Dolls (including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!‘s Tura Satana, The Thirsty Dead‘s Judy McConnell and The Corpse Grinders‘ Sherri Vernon) do the snoop-and-shake thing, writer/director/producer/editor Ted V. Mikels long has claimed that his Doll Squad was ripped off by ABC’s Charlie’s Angels. I fail to see concrete evidence of theft, but The Doll Squad already feels like a TV series of its own, given the presentation of its credit sequences, the bargain-bin effects and dialogue that calls back to previous (nonexistent) episodes, i.e. “Sabrina! I haven’t seen you since the blasted U-2 affair!” Then there’s Nicholas Carras’ brassy, blaring theme song that paints the illusion of more action than actually exists.

Mikels wrings production value out of two major elements: blood and boobs. The former carries the color and consistency of Campbell’s tomato soup; the latter is accentuated by having Sabrina appear in a different outfit every couple of minutes, most of which are cleavage-driven. This changes for the island siege, for which the Dolls don matching green jumpsuits (the uniform idea fits since only Sabrina was given a personality); victory is celebrated with bikinis, as it should be.

Keep in mind we’re talking Mikels here, but those things combine to make the flick his most accessible. It certainly goes down easier than his other stab at portraying the adventures of a girl group, 1982’s 10 Violent Women. —Rod Lott

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Tom Sizemore and Steven Seagal: together at last! In Ticker, a straight-to-video action movie resembling at least five action movies that did play in theaters, Sizemore (Heat) is Ray Nettles, an unshaven San Francisco detective on the hunt for a mad bomber, while Seagal (in his first multiplex-skipping starrer, sandwiched between his theatrical swan songs of Exit Wounds and Half Past Dead) is Frank Glass, a member of the bomb squad adept at snipping wires.

It should come as no surprise that Dennis Hopper essays the role of mad bomber, but don’t think for a second that he’s merely repeating what he did in 1994’s Speed! Heavens, no! This is completely different because he:
a) has a beard,
b) sometimes speaks in an Irish accent, and
c) is always singing AT&T’s old “Reach out and touch someone” jingle. Hopper’s character keeps blowing up buildings and killing innocent people because the cops won’t release his girlfriend (Jaime Pressly, Torque), because, you know, she’s kinda cute to have around to look at.

Sizemore isn’t too bad, because he plays his character like he had everything else up to then. A meatloaf-cheeked Seagal does the same, yet that makes him bad. I prayed for him to make a quick exit as he did in Executive Decision, but no dice, Chicago. Ticker comes courtesy of director Albert Pyun (1990’s Captain America), while gangsta rapper Nas plays a guy named Fuzzy, which couldn’t have been good for his street cred. —Rod Lott

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With Guns Girls & Gambling, writer/director Michael Winnick is a good 15 years too late to the Quentin Tarantino rip-off party. Aw, man, you remember who was there, right? Let’s see, there was Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, Albino Alligator, Suicide Kings, that ridiculous Boondoggle one that all the frat boys like — lotsa others. At least he’s fashionably late.

After participating unsuccessfully at an Indian gaming casino’s Elvis impersonator contest, broke loser John Smith (Christian Slater, donning The King’s duds again after not learning his lesson in 3000 Miles to Graceland) is accused of stealing a million-dollar ancient Apache warrior mask from the venue. With that kind of price tag, everyone comes out of the woodwork looking — and willing to kill — for it, including a cowboy named Cowboy (Lawnmower Man Jeff Fahey) and a dead-sexy assassin in form-fitting black tights (Helena Mattsson, Species: The Awakening) who quotes Poe to her targets prior to pulling the trigger, just because.

Also just because: a gay Elvis, an Asian Elvis, a little-person Elvis, a Gary Oldman Elvis. Further crowding the “yeah, what the hell” column, two sheriffs figure into the story, one of whom is played by “comedian” Dane Cook. Like him, Guns is not as funny as it thinks; unlike him, Guns does rise to the level of mild escapism. Don’t ask much of it and you might find yourself enjoying its expired quirks.

Because the film was direct-to-DVD, several strikes against it come built-in: poor green-screen work, computer-animated blood, the Comic Sans font, stock footage, Chris Kattan. On the plus side, the pic feels more like a Smokin’ Aces sequel than the actual one, Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassins’ Ball. —Rod Lott

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