“Together, we’re part of the roughest, toughest, biggest, kindest, fairest, bestest darn gang in the whole world!”

Justin’s rating: I want to see the movie where we get the backstory behind all of Mr. Midnight’s colorful minions

Justin’s review: The general perception is, Batman and Superman aside, the ’80s simply didn’t do comic book or superhero movies. As big-budget summer spectacles, that’s largely true, but if you look past that, there was plenty of weirdness peeking out of the cult quarter. Flicks like Swamp Thing, Howard the Duck, Buckaroo Bonzai, Remo Williams, The Toxic Avenger, The Punisher, The Incredible Hulk, Supergirl, Masters of the Universe, Pumaman, and others did their best with the limited interest and technology to keep the spirit of the caped crusader flying.

Today I’m going to add to that list a rather oddball entry with The Return of Captain Invincible. And no, there wasn’t a previous movie, so don’t go pounding on the door of your local closed Blockbuster Video demanding to see Captain Invincible Origins.

Coming to prominence in World War II where he beat up German planes, the Golden Age superhero Captain Invincible (Alan Arkin) was drummed out of service during the McCarthy witch hunt of the ’50s. Thus, the “Legend in Leotards” — who boasts baffling talons on his shoulder — flees into a disgraceful exile in Australia to become a pathetic drunk.

It’s only when his old nemesis, Mr. Midnight (Christopher Lee), steals a powerful hypno-ray to sell real estate is the Captain needed once more. But is the good Captain able to overcome decades of lax living and endless pulls from the bottle? And how will his old country take him when he returns?

This isn’t the kind of movie you’d expect to see before the superhero genre took off in earnest but rather something that might’ve come a decade or two after to provide some tongue-in-cheek satire of the concept. I was kind of amazed to see such confidence to do this in 1983. Here we’ve got a washed-up hero, disillusioned by the country that he served and rejected him in turn, and well past his prime. That’s really daring stuff that wasn’t present in contemporary films (maybe Rambo?).

But perhaps they went a little too far by adding musical numbers.

That’s right, The Return of Captain Invincible is also bafflingly a musical, with songs written by the same guy who did Rocky Horror Picture Show. Early on, a band is wheeled into the war room of the US President so that they can all sing about the hero for a while. It’s a pretty terrible musical number, but its abnormal setup is singularly arresting. And so it goes for the rest of this movie.

In between the songs, we see the Captain rediscover his powers (flight, magnetics, “super computer brain,” strength, and — of course — invincibility) while Mr. Midnight feeds his toad, plays with a giant submarine, and hangs out with his green goblin minion. There are also escapes from a flamethrower Volkswagen, struggles with a shop full of homicidal vacuum cleaners, and a food fight to end all food fights (just watch out for the machine gun tuna).

Here’s something even more surprising than its post-modern attitude and musical numbers: The Return of Captain Invincible is pretty awesome. It leans hard into its themes and general weirdness but does it all as well as could be asked for a small Austrialian studio in the early ’80s. Arkin and Lee are fantastic leads, lending their considerable talents to these goofy roles and being willing to dish out puns at the expense of their dignity.

Deneb’s rating: Two and three-quarters out of four capes flapping in the wind.

Deneb’s review: Nostalgia can be a powerful thing. Heck, a large chunk of the ‘net simply wouldn’t exist if not for nostalgia – there are uncountable websites devoted almost entirely to the subject (including, arguably, this one). For all that society worships the new and shiny, there is a part of most of us – sometimes a large part – that can’t help but sigh wistfully and yearn for the good old days, whenever those may have been. (Oddly enough, I often have the opposite problem – I discover some gem of yesteryear, and think “man, I wish I’d seen/read this back when I was tiny; it would have been the BEST THING EVER!” But I digress.)

The problem with all this, of course, is that “the good old days” are inherently part of the past, and living in them for too long causes problems. One must inevitably surface to face present realities, and the contrast can be… well, somewhat jarring, to say the least.

Ideally, one finds a sort of in-between territory, enjoying the past while dealing with the present. It’s in said territory that The Return of Captain Invincible stakes its claim.

As the film opens, the titular Captain (Alan Arkin), the world’s foremost (and possibly only) superhero, is right in the thick of his glory days. From fighting gangsters to battling the Nazis to signing autographs for boy scouts, he’s happy being the champion of good ol’ fashioned justice. People cheer when he flies overhead, and it seems that there’s nothing he can’t handle.

Well, nothing except the blacklist, anyway. As the era of McCarthyism dawns, he gets hauled in front of the Senate, who rake him over the coals for everything from his cape (it’s RED, you know) to his “prematurely anti-fascist” actions during the war. Angered and disheartened by this show of ingratitude, Invincible vanishes, seemingly for good.

Cut to a few decades later, as the President of the United States (Michael Pate) is facing a problem. Seems that a top-secret ‘hypno-ray’ has been stolen from a government installation. Horrors! They’ve got to track it down before it’s too late – and as far as the prez is concerned, there’s only one man for the job. Yep, you guessed it – they need Captain Invincible.

Unfortunately, the good Captain is currently a drunken bum staggering around Sydney, Australia. Thoroughly disillusioned with the world, he wants nothing more than to be left alone to drown himself in booze. But heck, he’s still a hero at heart, and with a little persuasion, he’s finally coaxed back into the old tights again.

The thing is, though, he’s been out of action for a long time, and he’s got to re-learn the basics before he can fight the good fight once more. While he’s struggling to get his powers working again, his old arch-enemy, Mr. Midnight (Christopher Lee), is also back in action, and is none too pleased to hear of his old nemesis’ return. Can Invincible get his heroing up to snuff before Midnight carries out his evil scheme? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

OK, let’s start with the basic facts – The Return of Captain Invincible is a weird damn movie. The basic plot (has-been hero returns to action and saves the day) is pretty old-hat, but that aside, this is one highly eccentric little flick. It’s not as compulsively bizarre as, say, your average David Lynch film, but it is, to say the least, quite odd.

(Oh, and it’s a musical. Did I mention that? Well, it is. A fairly sparse one, by most standards, but a musical nonetheless.)

So that being said, is it worth seeing? As always, you’ll have to judge for yourself, but my vote would be yes. It’s no masterpiece, but watchable it is.

First off, there’s all that weirdness. This, I imagine, will be the main draw for most people. Whether it’s the Captain’s powers going amusingly wonky, Midnight’s little Fu Manchu Yoda-monkey sidekick prancing around in the background, or the terrors of (gasp!) the vacuum cleaner repair store, there is always something interesting going on. Whatever else you feel about this movie, you will not be bored.

It has deeper levels to it than that, though. While it pays lip-service to the usual superhero parody stuff (wearing underwear on the outside, etc.), what it’s really about is disillusionment, and how to get past it. Captain Invincible is a genuine old-schooler – he believes in good VS. evil and doing what’s right, and he’s honestly hurt that the world doesn’t seem to agree with him anymore. He spends most of the story split between doing what’s right, and telling all those cynical bastards to go save their own damn selves. It’s not so much that he’s stuck in the past, it’s that he doesn’t really click with the present – he comes from a world where the hero saves the day and everybody cheers, and he wants nothing more than to get back to it, but of course, he can’t. (Or rather, he can, but it’s a different one from the one that he came from. ‘Cause it’s… uh… screw it. You know what I mean.)

Alan Arkin was a good choice for the role – he has a minimalist style of acting that works well for the character. Christopher Lee is as good as ever as Midnight – he’s one more old-school villain in a long line of old-school villains, so the guy knows what he’s doing, even if his master plan comes direct from Evil Nazi Surplus. (Of course it helps that he surrounds himself with a variety of crazy henchmen, and the aforementioned Yoda-monkey thing. That tends to make a character more memorable.)

Really, though, the thing that draws me, personally, to this movie? This flick’s got soul. It may be a comedy, it may have surreal set-pieces and bad puns and Christopher Lee singing a song about alcohol while back-up dancers cavort in the background – and yes, I’m dead serious – but it believes in what it’s saying, however bizarre the set-dressing. It may poke fun at itself, but in its own way, it is absolutely sincere. And if you’re someone like me, who occasionally gets choked up when the good guys win, you might just respond to that sincerity. Fight and win, Captain Invincible. Fight and win.

Intermission!

• Captain reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar on the nose of a German bomber
• Some of the charges against him: flying without a license and wearing underwear in public
• The director REALLY loves swooping fly-bys during the opening credit
• You’re not a punk until you have a half-mohawk
• Wait, what is Mr. Midnight’s lackey? Is that a goblin?
• “How effective is the hypno-ray?”
• Mr. Midnight has the coolest sunglasses
• That’s the most utterances of “B.S.” I’ve ever heard in a scene
• Does that general have a robotic hand?
• RANDOM FLAMETHROWER CAR
• “Stop choking me! I am your President!”
• The Mystic Mark — the bond that can never be broken
• How they teach Captain Invincible how to fly again
• The Captain’s magnetic powers activating and drawing every bit of metal in the room onto his person is hilarious
• The little person in a bright red cape and hood isn’t exactly inconspicuous
• “Australia? That’s where I’ve been all these years?”
• Captain Invincible got his powers by peeping tom aliens?
• When vacuum cleaners attack (and why is there a skull in that shop?)
• She can’t breathe… but she can talk?
• “No wonder nature abhors a vacuum!”
• Mr. Midnight loves him some Dutch angles
• Wait, Mr. Midnight cooked and ate the vulture he was feeding three scenes ago?
• MACHINE GUN TUNA and GATLING GUN SAUSAGE
• The super-fast talking butler minion who gets paid in magic tricks
• What’s scarier, an alligator pit or a peach pit? “Well, that was really the pits.”
• The huge bathtub model of the submarine attack