Today! Because long before the age of Reason/Evil waged unholy treason –
The Return of Captain Invincible (1983)
Directed by Philippe Mora
Starring Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, Kate Fitzpatrick, Michael Pate, Bill Hunter
Just your standard Australian musical superhero comedy, The Return of Captain Invincible is a pretty oddball production story that shouldn’t work as a movie as well as it does (which is debatable, too). While they managed to scrape together enough dough for effects and the likes of Arkin and Lee in the lead roles, the planned distribution company in America went bankrupt just before the movie’s release, resulting in it having virtually no all-time box office gross – figures have it around $55,000 worldwide. In Australia, the movie was tied up in litigation for a year – something having to do with tax credits and the producer re-cutting the film without the director’s input – before it got released. Thus, the whole thing managed to slip under the radar for a long time.
Or has it ever really emerged? I have no idea how popular this movie ever got. As of this writing, IMDB only shows 599 people having rated the movie – a few thousand being pretty standard for almost any film. This, despite our collective mania over superhero films in the last twenty years, and the world’s ever-long love affair with musicals? I’m not 100% sure when I first saw it – I want to say I acquired a VHS copy when some video store was going out of business when I was in college? Don’t know, but I’ve been squarely in the Captain Invincible fan club a long time. Continue reading
Knowingly Undersold 