Superman is in the WW2 again…

The Nazis have a secret base in Africa (presumably) where the Baron Strucker-lookin’ boss is posing as a god to make the locals serve under them (and also they have gun turrets build into some statues, which I do have to respect). Naturally Lois Lane is flying over and gets shot down and captured by the Nazis, which brings Superman’s attention to the whole thing. Together, Lois and Superman stop the Nazis’ plan, get some U-boats imploded, and make Hitler sad.

It’s a decent showing for Lois here. I’ve said it before I’m sure, but she has a reputation for being a “damsel in distress” that I think is undeserved. Sure, she’s rescued by Superman, but she’s not just a woman kidnapped because she’s a princess to be held for ransom or anything. At every point she is an active participant in this battle against the Nazis, hiding the important documents, resisting torture, and disguising herself to sneak into the base and radio the Allies. Sure, Superman takes a few rounds of turret fire directly in the back, but Lois is no slouch.

Also: it feels like it’s almost too obvious to say, but say it one must: the depiction of the African tribe isn’t great. It’s very in keeping with the way the genre treated Africa at the time (with Superman’s comics in particular not being any exception) like superstitious primitives. While this cartoon was being made actual African armies, not beloinclothed spearmen, but actual modern armies were actually fighting in the war. I can dislike the way the cartoon depicts its Natives, but even these days Africa’s role in the war is downplayed in movies or videogames that would rather just keep retelling America storming Normandy over and over. Still, that annoying fact doesn’t make this cartoon’s depiction any better does it?

The year was The Early Nineties. The place was An Elementary School. I was a little boy, in grade four or five I think. I don’t know why we were watching a movie in class, maybe we had a substitute teacher who didn’t want to do real work or maybe it was the last day before March Break and they wanted us to just shut up for a while. Whatever the reason, another student had brought in the movie Hard To Kill on VHS and whatever adult was meant to be in charge put it on for us.

The movie did not shut us up. A short way into the movie there is a sex scene and the class went wild, hooting and hollering, the kid who brought in the movie shouting “They don’t show it! They don’t show it!” but the adult just opting to turn the movie off instead. The near-nudity occurs about 15 minutes in, so I had officially begun watching this thing when I was rudely interrupted. For decades I didn’t bother to finish watching it. I lived across the street from a video store for years, and the Internet made it easy to watch whatever I wanted, but even as a kid who loved action movies I never cared much for Steven Seagal, who lacks a single drop of the charisma of Sir Schwarzenegger, and there was no science fiction twist or anything to make it spark my imagination. But even though I didn’t feel compelled to seek out the movie, the thought did often occur to me that it was a movie that I had failed to finish.

What if I died suddenly and this was my unfinished business? Did I want to be a ghost left eternally wandering in the hopes that I might chance upon some television playing Hard To Kill? No, I said! I must prevent this fate! So anyway, I watched it before I went to sleep this morning.

It was about what I expected.

Seagal plays Mason Storm, a decent action guy name ruined by being attached to Seagal. He’s a cop, the kind of Cool Tough Cop who if he stumbles across a liquor store robbery in progress he will absolutely fail to save the life of the liquorstoreman, but then he will show how cool and tough he is by painfully dispatching the robbers while being a jerk about it. He’s a living embodiment of the dreams of those who want to cause pain to criminals while being a prick but not actually solve any problems.

But he’s also a Family Man. He has a young son and a wife who is so sexy that her naked back will drive an elementary school class insane. Tragedy comes when the baddies, corrupt cops working for a corrupt politician, try to kill Storm. The attack leaves Storm in a coma, his wife dead, and his son on the run from the criminal organization. Storm spends seven years as a John Doe in a hospital where a nurse named Andy falls in love with him because she likes looking at his dick (that is actually a thing she is shown doing in this movie).

It’s all pretty standard stuff after that. Storm wakes up and learns that the corrupt politician is now the senator (and he’s played by William Sadler, which is neat), so he has to bring him down. There’s a bit of “Oh How Times Have Changed” stuff as he watches television, and the training he needs after the coma actually takes more time than I would have guessed which is neat. Obviously he and the nurse hook up (though he does miss his wife). Anyway, he is reunited with his son and kills his way through waves of the Senator’s goons. Then, just to mix things up, he does NOT kill the Senator himself, just gets him arrested and makes a prison rape joke. And the nurse says “I love you, Storm” as they hug on the way to credits. It’s ridiculous stuff.

It’s important to note that the movie wants us to think Mason Storm is a cool guy. We’re supposed to be impressed not only with his badassery, but also how he speaks other languages and can do acupuncture on himself. What a man of the world, right? But we have to keep in mind that during his rampage on the Senator’s mansion he took the time to write the phrase “anticipation of death is worse than death itself” on the inside of a toilet seat so that when a bad guy opens it up to pee he will see the phrase written there on the toilet seat and be scared. Mason Storm is the kind of guy who does that. Mason Storm is a weirdo.

A pretty standard episode of The Invaders, with the new status quo of David Vincent having allies. It’s so standard that remember how last episode had one of his allies, named Bob, get killed in the line of duty? Well in this episode one of his allies, named Bob, gets killed in the line of duty. Related to that, in this episode Vincent says the group (I don’t know that they’re called The Believers, but that’s what they episode that introduced them was called) has seven members. This was also what they said last episode before First Bob died. Did they bring in Second Bob specifically to replace First Bob? Better crack out Third Bob, I guess.

Actually, if we’re not told otherwise, I could see the “Believers” being a larger group then seven people, but they’d have Scoville in charge and six “leaders” each representing a cell of sorts, to keep things simple.

Okay, the actual plot to this one: there’s a publishing company, Mace Publishing, that is supposed to be the best newsgathering organization in the world. Vincent and his allies are worried that the Invaders are trying to take over Mace Publishing and it turns out they’re correct. The owner of the company is killed and it comes under control of his nephew Jeremy. The Invaders control Jeremy by threatening the lives of his remaining loved ones, so they have essentially conquered the company. Good thing David Vincent and Second Bob (RIP) were around to help Jeremy cast off the shackles.

And boy do they ever cast them off. The episode climaxes with the leader of this alien scheme falling from a helicopter. That’s right, another episode with a helicopter! This show has helicopters! It’s cool.

So yeah, as I said, standard stuff. I did wonder why the Invaders didn’t use their hypnotism crystals on Jeremy. It got me wondering if maybe every time they use those they draw on a finite source of energy that they have to replenish with regular saucer deliveries. That’d be neat. They’d have to save the hypnotism for either short-term use or emergencies, but an attempt at long-term control like this would be more sensibly done other ways.