Although the book world has chronicled the making of unmade movies for decades, only recently has cinema itself caught on. Now, documentaries of Films That Might Have Been include Lost in La Mancha, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau and, for the purposes of this review, The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?

After the Cannon Films-funded failure of 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, nearly 20 years passed before Warner Bros. and DC Comics were able to get another Man of Steel movie off the ground. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying! Since Tim Burton had ignited the cultural craze of the multiplex modern superhero craze at the multiplex with 1989’s Batman, producer Jon Peters enlisted him to shepherd DC’s other caped MVP back to the silver screen.

With a long-haired Nicolas Cage signed on to portray Krypton’s last son, Superman Lives began production in 1998 and was primed to be … well, who can say for certain? With a way-out concept heavy on the sci-fi and a mounting price tag heavy on the ninth number to the left of the decimal point, the project was killed by nervous studio heads in the wake of such Warner high-priced bombs as Tarzan and the Lost City, Sphere and Steel (the latter, ironically, a Superman spin-off). We have only the events of this tell-all documentary as a guide to gauge what Burton may have wrought.

And since writer/director Jon Schnepp (TV’s Metalocalypse) indeed has rounded up all but Cage to tell, their stories vary. Initial screenwriter Kevin Smith (Clerks) appears in his Kevin Smith costume to confirm that his script was essentially “fan fiction.” Long cast as a villain in tales of Lives’ unmaking, a project-passionate Peters actually emerges as sympathetic. Burton still seems a tad peeved about having his baby smothered in the crib, yet admits, “But I also wanted Sammy Davis Jr. for Beetlejuice.”

In the end, it’s hard to say where and how his vision for a reboot would have landed, if completed and released. Schnepp gives viewers absolute riches of concept art and test footage that exude positive vibes, yet also anecdotes of baffling corporate decisions that do the opposite, such as ideas that Superman should wear basketball shorts and fight ninjas. That we get a glimpse of both sides, however, is why The Death of “Superman Lives” succeeds as an informative and entertaining peek into the gears that grind Hollywood’s blockbuster machine. I only wish Schnepp and his untucked shirts didn’t appear onscreen for the interviews; it’s not like he’s a known quantity à la Michael Moore. With Schnepp nodding distractingly like a bobblehead throughout as his subjects speak, his creative choice to be part of the action is as questionable as Peters’ insistence upon a third-act giant spider. —Rod Lott

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However one pulls off a successful documentary about the making of a book, Kent Jones has done it with Hitchcock/Truffaut. Borrowing its title from the now-seminal film text published in 1966, the feature chronicles the unprecedented week of interviews between the two filmmaking giants (and their unheralded interpreter) and examines the volume’s unprecedented decades of influence ever since.

On one side of the table, we have Alfred Hitchcock, the undisputed “master of suspense” and arguably regarded today as cinema’s greatest director — thanks in part to the man at the other side of the table: Francois Truffaut. The French New Wave pioneer questions Hitch at great length about each of his pictures, which, of course, comes to extend to the broadest scope of cinema as a whole. At the time, Hitch had only a few films left in him, whereas Truffaut was just getting started; while at different points in their respective careers, they found equilibrium in their love of the movies, which Jones renders infectious.

Although film cameras ironically were not present for the men’s talks, an audio recorder was; Jones lucks into having their actual voices at his show-don’t-tell disposal, along with a smattering of behind-the-scenes photographs. Without these, the doc would lose what makes it special. He doesn’t rely solely on his subjects, either, opening the floor to such celebrity admirers as Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Wes Anderson, all avowed fans of the classic book, which has inspired and informed work of their own.

The middle stretch of Hitchcock/Truffaut ceases to be about the book per se and becomes about Hitchcock’s films and his style. That’s not a knock against the doc, as such exploration is on-topic. Naturally, a wealth of clips is employed — with a heavy emphasis on 1958’s Vertigo — so the audience can see exactly the points being discussed; the result is like a crash course in Introduction to Film Theory. (Hitch’s stated position on an “erect” James Stewart as Kim Novak emerges from the closet is priceless.)

All of these tools grant Hitchcock/Truffaut a significant coat of polish; the film exhibits more flair than the Hollywood documentary for which Jones (an ace critic for Film Comment and elsewhere) heretofore was best known: 2007’s Scorsese-produced and -narrated Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows. That said, there is something Hitchcock/Truffaut’s construction that gives it the feel of being made for cable or a Blu-ray box set vs. the big screen; however, that does not make the hour and a half any less absorbing or delicious. —Rod Lott

In conjunction with the mighty Something Weird Video, cult director Frank Henenlotter (Frankenhooker) takes moviegoers on an epic, yet whirlwind tour of a film genre as old as cinema itself. Ladies and gentlemen, That’s Sexploitation!

For assistance, Henenlotter calls upon someone who not only knows his sexploitation history inside and out (and in and out), but had a hand in directly steering it: the legendary producer and distributor David F. Friedman, who died in 2011; the finished film is rightfully, lovingly dedicated to him. While I would have preferred to see more than one talking head contributing to the documentary — especially one of such significant length, as it runs two hours and 15 minutes — Friedman was renowned for a colorful personality. It’s on full display and matched only by his wit as he takes viewers through sexploitation’s life cycle, from its demure birth to its death, when hardcore pornography took over and, as a result, says Friedman, “the fun stopped.”

But wasn’t it fun while it lasted? Henenlotter is out to prove that with an emphatic “hell, yes!” With a cup-runneth-over wealth of clips, the doc beckons you through the entire tits-a-twirlin’ timeline of subgenres: morality scares (Damaged Goods), “goona-goona”/jungle natives (Ingagi), peep-show loops, instructional/hygiene (USS VD: Ship of Shame), strip/burlesque (Teaserama), nudie cuties (The Immoral Mr. Teas), roughies (The Defilers), dopers (The Acid Eaters) and white-coaters (Man and Wife).

Among those whose work is featured are behind-the-camera trailblazers like Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Doris Wishman and Michael Findlay, and such in-front talents as Bettie Page, Blaze Starr, Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm. Henenlotter is nothing if not thorough, and while he obviously loves these films, he doesn’t pretend they are something they’re not; of one group in particular, he remarks, “They were called ‘nudie cuties.’ And they were the stupidest films on the face of the earth!” That much, we knew. But even to those well-versed in sexploitation, this documentary still has lessons to teach. It’s jarring, for example, to see an example of a silent hardcore, complete with an “I’m going to fuck you!” title card. —Rod Lott

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When I spied a copy of National Lampoon at my Uncle Bill’s house one evening in 1979, the bored, Mad magazine-loving, 8-year-old me snatched it up and started flipping through it. I’ll never forget the shock of seeing real women’s breasts staring back at me from the “Foto Funnies” page. I’ll never forget the comic strip of two boys making shadow puppets using not their hands, but their prepubescent genitals. I’ll certainly never forget, when I laughed aloud and bravely shared that strip’s crasser-than-crass “Abraham Leakin’” punch line, how fast my mom traversed the kitchen to confiscate the issue from my hands and far-too-young eyes.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction to the Lampoon. The story has a happy ending, because a mere four years later, in 1983, Mom took me to see my first R-rated movie in theaters: National Lampoon’s Vacation. For fellow children of the ’70s and ’80s, I suspect exposure to the Lampoon brand arrived far more through its films than the actual publication. I’ve never read a complete issue, yet am fully aware of its enormous and ever-continuing influence on modern comedy — dangerous, politically incorrect and sacred cow-punching — perhaps most notably with the birth of Saturday Night Live. Regardless, Douglas Tirola’s feature-length documentary, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, is not to be missed.

In its opening minutes alone, the documentary does what Ellin Stein’s 2013 book on the topic could not achieve in 464 pages: Capture the anarchic energy and unrestrained creativity of the mag at its mid-’70s’ peak. Its success was not immediate, and that it was successful at all is something of a right-place/right-time fluke. Outside of the magazine eventually sucking from the mid-’80s to its 1998 death, Tirola and his talking heads (Chevy Chase, Matty Simmons, Kevin Bacon, P.J. O’Rourke, John Landis and Tim Matheson among them) skip over the Lampoon’s many misfires beyond the stapled pages; Class Reunion and Movie Madness are completely MIA, while Disco Beaver from Outer Space gets a cursory mention without even explaining what it was (an HBO special). I would call this the only fault to be found in Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, but instead I choose to flip it into a positive and say I wish the doc had kept going to share even more.

Not all of the humor has aged well — far from it (especially the live Woodstock parody Lemmings, the appeal of which escapes me based upon the footage shown here) — yet that doesn’t make this retrospective any less fascinating, particularly with so many caustic, drug-fueled egos at play, more than one of whom met tragic ends. Even with those secondary routes into weightier matters, the movie zips by us with immeasurable verve, often so fast that my thumb happily leapt between the rewind and pause buttons so much to get a closer look at the art. In doing so, I inadvertently added nearly 45 minutes to the running time. (The last time I did that, I seem to recall Christie Brinkley stripping for a motel-pool skinny dip, just to bring this review full-circle.) —Rod Lott

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Slasher films are targets of scorn from critics and other high-minded pillars of the community, yet a nonstop source of fun for movie buffs. Adam Rockoff’s 2002 critical study, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986, stands as the definitive guide to this subgenre — extremely well-written and well-researched, with neither a dry spot nor scholarly leaning within its pages.

The same can be said for the resulting documentary, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, whose title drops the text’s range of years addressed.

In the book, Rockoff (more recently, author of The Horror of It All) is quick to defend his beloved slashers, making a good point about how tame they are violence-wise when compared to the body count of the 1980s’ testosterone-overdosed actioners like Commando and Rambo III.

Better yet, he’s honest; as willing as he is to call John Carpenter’s Halloween a classic (and it is), he’s just as willing to call a stinker a stinker (and there are more than a few). By interviewing some of the principals behind the screen’s seminal slashers — and even some comparatively fringe ones — Rockoff gives us a detailed and eye-opening all-access pass into some juicy, behind-the-scenes stories. And who knew there were any such tales to be told regarding Terror Train, Happy Birthday to Me or My Bloody Valentine?

The documentary seems practically lifted from the pages, with the added benefit of bloody footage from the films being discussed. (It’s one thing to read about Sleepaway Camp’s disturbing twist ending, but another thing altogether to see the damned thing.) In addition to the heavy-hitters, the B- and C-titles like those above are given equal time, making them appear even more watchable than they actually are in full. Although the filmmakers — that includes Rockoff, who scripted — deserve credit for seeking out so many on-camera participants, I only wish they wouldn’t have employed the annoyingly pretentious device of having them walk while talking to us viewers.

From the slashers’ early days of Psycho to its post-modern parody days of Scream and Scary Movie (and, in the doc, the then-current revival with the likes of Saw and Hostel), Rockoff has all the gory bases covered. If Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger are your idea of a good time, his book was written just for you. Oh, and ditto the doc. —Rod Lott

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