The Return of Captain Invincible: Everything is going to be just great again!...

While doing the Robocop post I came across some old clips from The Return of Captain Invincible, which seems to be overlooked in the current Superhero movie broohaha. It comes from an Interesting pedigree Australian director Philippe Mora, the great Alan Arkin and an amazing turn from Christopher Lee with songs from Richard O'Brien, which does give a Rocky Horror Picture Show feel to the songs. (oh and let's not forget Shock Treatment)



I remember watching it on BBC1 late at night and never forgot the pie fight scene and am surprised it hasn't had a big region 2 release, it's out on region 1 but really expensive. As a huge horror fan growing up, it was interesting to see Lee in this and Gremlins 2: The New Batch , it seemed like his camp retirement years, who'd a thought Lee would be at the forefront of nearly every major fantasy franchise of the late 20th and early 21st century, some great clips of Lee discussing The Wickerman remake (the bees! etc) he has a great air of demanding knowledge from a fan audience before they open their yaps with some question, even dispelling some myths Mark Kermode had about the film on the DVD extras...'I think you're wrong there my boy'.

What's great about The Return of Captain Invincible, similar in a way to Superfolks, Alan Moore's proposed Twilight of the Superheroes is that we see superheroes in decline but we only get small snippets of imformation of the 'glory years' that, you know, you have to fill in with 'your imagination'..remember that in movies? The Incredibles would probably the closest in recent times to The Return of Captain Invincible, especially the black and white flashbacks of Captain Invincible being charged with 'flying without a licencse' and 'wearing his underwear in public'.

It's a tough call with both superhero parodies and original superhero-created-specifically-for-film alike, something like Hancock starts to create the atmosphere of a 'world with superheroes' but doesn't go into the specifics of how or even why it happens.

The great Mister Midnight 'choose your poison' song with some added psychobabble:


More Evil Mr. Midnight stuff, I love the way the youtube posters are so surprised Lee can sing when he was a great singer. It's interesting how the mis-en-scene of this film with Lee's wee alien hench men and light and metal is very close to Star Wars and lets not forget the 'long before the crack of doom line'...

So next time you see The Return of Captain Invincible tucked away on some tv schedule you should check it out or whatever...