Published 2017 on Down Under Flix
Director: Phillipe Mora
Director: Phillipe Mora
Stars: Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, Michael Pate, Bill
Hunter, Kate Fitzpatrick
Last
year marked the end of my long infatuation with superhero films. For almost two
decades I regularly made the pilgrimage to the multiplex to see the latest
superhero joints, and while I retain some anthropological curiosity about the
genre, 2016’s unfortunate double whammy of X-Men: Apocalypse and Suicide Squad killed most
of my affection for and investment in it. Even so, as a former genre apologist
and a writer on Australian film, I’ve long had a hankering to see Phillipe
Mora’s 1983 film The Return
of Captain Invincible, one of Australia’s very few attempts at a
superhero movie, albeit a parody.
In
recent years films like The
Incredibles and Hancock (which
the cover for Captain
Invincible’s new Umbrella DVD namechecks as a reference point) have
mined superhero tropes to comedic effect in. Yet where those films riffed on an
active commercial genre, Captain
Invincible hails from a very different era; in 1983 there
weren’t five major superhero projects a year, but five in as many years between
the Christopher Reeve Superman films,
television’s Greatest
American Hero if you cheat, and Flash Gordon or Condorman if you squint.
Mora’s film revolves around its titular hero, played by Alan Arkin. After being
accused of anti-American activities during the McCarthy trials in the 1950s,
Captain Invincible flies to Australia and bums around for decades. In 1983 he’s
discovered and urged out of retirement by the American president (Michael Pate)
to defeat the nefarious plans of supervillain
Mr Midnight (Christopher Lee).
I
won’t mince words: Captain
Invincible is a tough sit. While I’ve struggled with some of
the other genre-minded, internationally-tailored fare of the 1980s previously
discussed on Down Under Flix, such as Sky Pirates and The Time Guardian, I at least got what those films were going for and who they
were made for. This one totally flummoxed me, and at times angered me. I get
the impulse of local filmmakers like Antony I. Ginnane and Richard Franklin who
strove to make genre films of broad international appeal in the 1980s, and a
number of their films are terrific, tremendous entertainments (I’ll go to bat
for Roadgames any
and every day of the week). But Captain
Invincible is a misfire and does more ill than good for the
cause. The closest film to it tonally that’s been covered on Down Under Flix
would be Les Patterson Saves the World, yet Captain
Invincible is not as successful as that largely (and somewhat
unfairly) maligned film. In its chintzy aspirations, pastiche inclinations, and
use of musical numbers to punctuate the plot, it wants to be The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
but ends up closer to its sequel-that-nobody-mentions Shock Treatment. On that note,
a number of the songs are by Rocky
Horror duo Richards O’Brien and Hartley and these sporadically
lift the film.
Behind
the scenes issues impacted the finished film, as they’re wont to do. According
to David Stratton in his book The Avocado
Plantation (p. 79), producer Andrew Gaty tinkered with the
film in post-production to tailor it more to the American market. It’s unclear
whether an alternative cut of the film would work, but I’d be curious. Director
Mora is a fascinating character with a storied career, whose Mad Dog Morgan is a shaggy
classic of sorts straddling the dividing line between Ozploitation and the
arthouse. Mora is subversively and satirically minded, but he also has a
schlock streak a mile wide, as displayed in his Howling sequels and Communion and here to a
degree. Whatever content stems from Mora and whatever from Gaty, the finished
product is not the sum of either creator’s intentions, and the combination of
Mora’s iconoclasm and Gaty’s commercialism results in a film that’s neither
fish nor fowl.
While
imported talent usually attracts the ire of local productions (the
aforementioned Roadgames being
a noteworthy example), they’re the least of Captain Invincible’s problems. Arkin and Lee –
working on a script co-authored by another overseas talent, Steven E. de Souza
of Ricochet fame
(well, at least on Down Under Flix) – are typically worth watching and are fine here. If one good
thing came from the production, it at least helped a posse of Australian
character actors pay their rent. Bill Hunter, David Argue, Max Cullen,
Arthur Dignam, Chris Haywood, Gus Mercurio, Max Phipps, Virginia Hey, Brice
Spence, Noel Ferrier, AND Graham Kennedy (as the Prime Minister) all make
appearances, which basically means that if an explosive device went off at the
wrap party there’d be no more character actors in Australian cinema in the 1980s.
Thankfully there was no bomb at the wrap party, but the box office was another
matter…
Ultimately,
despite the talent before and behind the camera, some okay songs, and a few
moments that click (see the image above), Captain Invincible is largely a misfire and
epitomizes many of the worst tendencies of its era, a period of Australian
cinema that bore some very fine fruit but also produced some fairly rotten
apples.
Ben Kooyman