Marvel comics – Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers

Captain America, 1990

Welcome back to another edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! J. Blake and Dion Baia are kicking the Spring season off with a cult classic -a film largely forgotten by many- or gets a raw deal by those who do. But with the new Avengers: Infinite Wars coming out, the boys thought it was about time to cover this important installment in Marvel history. This week it’s they’re talking all things Captain America, from 1990.

Captain America 1990 Movie Poster

Dion and Blake chat about growing up being avid comic book fans and how popular the medium was at the time, while reminiscing about the various comic book stores they frequented in that glorious era of their youth. They segue and discuss the history of Captain America and particularly how it related to what was really happening in the world at the time, before they get to the 1990 film. They explore the epic cast assembled and the pitfalls of trying to do a faithful adaptation of a classic character without having the budget to do so. It’s all going down on this epic, all-new episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

EXTRAS!

Here’s the entire film in spectacular quality, courtesy of YouTube!

Check out the original trailer for Captain America!

Take a look at director Albert Pyun discussing the casting the roll of Captain America for his 1990 film.

Have a look at VH1’s FLIX 1989 behind-the-scenes featurette of the making of Captain America.

And here is a rarely seen 1986 Cannon Films promo for the upcoming Captain America film, being billed then as helmed by Death Wish franchise director Michael Winner!

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Category: Action, Adventure, Childrens, Classic, Comic Books, Crime, Fantasy, History, Marvel, Television | 2 Comments

January 26

G.I. Joe : “Arise, Serpentor, Arise!”, -1986

Welcome back to another brand new episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! Dion Baia and J. Blake are taking a trip down memory lane, covering an epic story from a monumental television series from our collective youth. The boys are revisiting the animated classic G.I. Joe, and the 5-parter storyline that premiered Season 2 and reset the series, called “Arise, Serpentor, Arise! “, from 1986.

Blake and Dion analyze the origins and history of G.I. Joe as a toyline from Hasbro, and how with its reinvention in 1982 (with the help of Marvel Comics), became one of the biggest and most popular toy lines in history. In typical SNMS fashion, they discuss the Serpentor storyline and utilize as a cross reference, the differences in the comic book‘s story arc, to unpack how ahead of its time this and other core stories were in G.I. Joe, and how the Season 2 reset launched an entire new line of toys for us to buy. So come on and have a listen as the boys revisit a classic, on an all new edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

*The 1945 Robert Mitchum/Burgess Meredith film is titled The Story of G.I. Joe, not just G.I. Joe.

*Dion misspoke and said Lifeline when he meant Lift-Ticket, who piloted the Tomahawk helicopter.

Extras!

As discussed in the podcast, Blake & Dion attended Hascon in September of 2017. Here are some photos they took of the G.I. Joe display (We apologize for the reflections in some of the pictures- we just couldn’t eliminate those pesky things; and for the framing of other pics- we were moving as quickly as we could to see all the displays! ):

Check out some original 12inch Joes from the 1960s-70s Here, here, here and here;
Some amazing original character sketches and designs from Series One, Here here, here, here, here, here, here, and here;
Here is some beautiful original paintings and artwork done for G.I. Joe in the 1980s by legendary artist Hector Garrido here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here!
The original designs and prototypes from characters that appear in 1987‘s G.I. Joe: The Movie : here, here, here, and here!
Post 1987 movie designs and prototypes for characters, here (note the size of prototypes), here, here, here, here, and here!

For more extras, click more!

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Category: Action, Adventure, Animation, Childrens, Classic, Comic Books, Marvel, toys | 4 Comments

September 22

5 Rentals for $5 – 1990s Superhero Movies

As a quick preface to this post (and future posts), my local video store growing up, Captain Video in Cohoes NY, used to have a sweet deal where you could rent five old releases for five dollars for five days. Great deal right? Well as you can imagine, this deal came in handy for many a sleepover growing up…where you’d fire up the VCR and watch movies until your eyes just couldn’t stay open any longer. So “5 Rentals for $5” will be a recurring feature where we here at Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers will provide lists of five movies that would make for an awesome themed sleepover.

On with the show….

punisherposter Though Mark Goldblatt’s The Punisher was originally released internationally in 1989, alongside Tim Burton’s mega-blockbuster Batman, it didn’t find its way to the USA until 1991; making it an ideal sleepover rental for the (then) tweens of Dion’s and my generation. Because we are currently thought of as being in the midst of the “era” of the superhero film, it is easy to forget that the success of 1989’s Batman ushered in an entire decade of films focusing on masked heroes, mutant turtles and Power Rangers. So for those of you longing to get a little nostalgic or simply just looking to do a anthropological study about what primitive man watched during the Silver Age of home video, here’s a list of just five of the superhero films that the 90s had to offer that may be worth a revisit.
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September 20

“The Punisher ” 1989

In the inaugural edition of J. Blake and Dion Baia‘s new podcast Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers, the boys fittingly pick the forgotten, some may even call lost and dark Marvel Comics classic, Mark Goldblatt’s The Punisher from 1989, starring Dolph Lundrgen and Lou Gossett Jr.

punisherposter

They go in depth about the film, discuss the era and climate it came out in, and perhaps why it was so quickly pushed to the wayside (for the right or wrong reasons) and if it truly deserved its inescapable fate. Was it as bad as we all remember? Did it do the character Frank Castle the justice he deserved? Is it actually a good film that has shades of newer movies that we now deem ‘classics’? Will we ever see such a politically incorrect film quite like this ever be produced from Marvel again? Well… come on down and have a listen and find out! (And check out some great scenes that didn’t get passed the cutting room floor.)

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Category: Action, Comic Books, Martial Arts, Marvel | 1 Comment