The Spirit

[Andrew]

For this Sadistic Santa roundtable, Dr. Freex put a little something by Frank Miller under my tree.  It's not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that Freex is getting soft in his old age.  What I am saying is that I like my bad movies to be a lot better at being bad than this one.

Click here to go to the Review

[Leah]

I really HATE this movie!
I hate it when ever Octopus keeps bragging that he's got 8 of everything. Really, even 8 ex wives?
oh yeah, the way that silken Flossed is dressed in this movie- Does Frank Miller have any idea on how to male an evil lady NOT look like a friggen Prostitute?

[Deranged]

Does Frank Miller have any idea on how to male an evil lady NOT look like a friggen Prostitute?

By all accounts... no.

[Couchtr26]

Don't remind me.  I bought this for myself around Halloween and watched just two days ago.  I was beyond bored.  Couldn't we have at least added in some very clearly seen nudity and brought at least that into the game?

[Happenstance]

"It looks like somebody finally discovered a solution to the world's cat problem."

I was unaware there WAS a world cat problem. I should think there'd be greater problems without them.

I've seen the Sam Jones TV movie (never officially released to any media) which was not only closer in spirit (oh ha ha HA) to the Will Eisner comics, but seems a comparative masterwork despite being dumb as rocks. Having just seen the "sewage fight" and a couple of other clips from this version, I reworked the trailer's tag:

MY CITY POOPS
I AM ITS a***ole
FIGHTING IN s**t

[Trevor]

23 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A MORON!
31 mins - RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST THREE MORONS!
31 mins - Or is that a random act of violence against a moron, cloned thrice?
42 mins - Film, I am annoyed with you. Begone.

Believe it or not, I actually want to see this now. 

[Dave M]

Where are the garden hoses? Why, in The Lonely Lady, of course!

[Francis Darko]

There's a 1987 TV Pilot version of The Spirit that's nothing like the Frank Miller version... and it has Flash Gordon himself as the hero. Youtube or Google it and see how good/bad it is.

[Kevin Wickart]

>>23 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A MORON!<<

Okay, I gotta stop reading this site at work. fortunately, my boss is used to hearing me laughing for no discernable reason.

Superhero-type comics translated to film are my compulsion, as are really bad films. Fortunately for me, a huge majority of the former turn out to be the latter. I'm a happy guy. Unless I have to watch The Spirit again. Considering it was based on perhaps the iconic two-fisted pulp adventurer and one of the most revered comic series in history, directed by one of the best visual stylists in the business, and with an actor known for his ability to play crazy motherf@#*ers playing a crazy motherf@#*er of a villain...this film should have been so much more.

I have found a good use for this movie, though. Whenever my wife is trying to describe the expression on my face when I walked in and found our dog clinging to the ceiling fan, or when I experience just about anything our teenage daughter does, we just cue up the belly-dancing torture scene. After thirty seconds or so, my wife points to me and yells, "THAT's the expression!!"

[Flangepart]

Oh, yeah...not watching this thing, even after seeing the video you added.
Got too much love for Eisner's comic to swollow that pill. You know, the one where the prongs shoot out the sides when it hits your throat?...don't EVEN imagin the supository...
Lets just not imagin this film, kay?

[ShifterCat]

That peanut-butter-and-honey toast bit? Spot-on parody of a Frank Miller monologue.

[AndrewS]

He barely has time for a quick transfusion for his contusions before he has to stop Sand from giving the blood of Hercules to the Octopus in return for the Grecian Ares bling bling.

Shouldn't that be "Aries" not "Ares", as it is the hide of a ram, not the skin of the god of war?

[Neville]

I'm pretty sure the film tries to be a parody of super-hero movies. I mean, the clues are obvious if you look for them, like when The Spirit starts rambling endlessly about the city at the beginning of the movie. what I'm afraid is that it's one sick joke, one only Frank Miller may find amusing.

BTW, the actress who plays the French dancer with a sword is Paz Vega, a prominent Spanish actress that has been trying her luck at Hollywood for some time now. Watching her in stuff like this or "The Human Contract" makes me wonder if she has any talent at all.

[Torgo]

A friend of mine dumped the bluray of The Spirit on me recently and I hadn't watched it since suffering through it in the theater during it's original release. I re-watched it again recently and I didn't hate it quite as much as I first did. The movie is still a complete mess but I think that it's far from being an unwatchable mess. Not a great movie by any means but I've found that once you know what to expect from it tonewise, the movie gets a bit more tolerable.