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[DVD Review] ‘Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future’
It’s amazing that twenty-year-old marketing still works. I’m twenty-six, and I want an interlocker. My name is David, and I have just become a fan of Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future.
Gary Goddard – head of Landmark Entertainment at the time – had a strong rapport with Mattel during the mid-80’s after directing Masters Of The Universe. Realizing that soldiers were “in” as far as toy/cartoon properties went, as was evident by the success of He-Man (“old world” fantasy) and GI Joe (modern day warfare), he thought that using the same sort of formula in a futuristic setting might be the next big thing. Captain Power – a name everyone was astonished to learn was NOT copyrighted – was conceived as a live-action show where humans fought CGI villains, which was revolutionary in 1987 since children’s programming had primarily become cartoons in recent years and CGI was a brand-new thing. Mattel instantly fell in love with the concept, and called Goddard and his crew back a few days later to make the show even more ahead of its time by making the show interactive with a line of toys that would allow viewers to shoot “invisible lasers” at villains during certain sequences in each episode and rack up points (check out the commercial above to see what I’m talking about). He-Man was on the decline and the toy company’s profits were down, this was the perfect property to couple their new technology with to restore their market share.
Between the toys and the actual content of the series, I can say – without hesitation – that Captain Power is the most ambitious (read: risky) children’s show of all-time that really wasn’t a children’s show. The plot, which followed the Captain (Tim Dunigan) and his squad in a Terminator-esque landscape as he fought Lord Dread (David Hemblen), a half-man, half robot who wanted to place the consciousness of the human race in robot bodies to achieve his definition of perfection (this is after he eradicated most of mankind during the Metal Wars), wasn’t exactly uplifting. The show did teach lessons about teamwork, the importance of family, the preservation of life and so on (these same themes would show up in Goddard’s 90’s cartoon, Skeleton Warriors), but it was extremely dark, depressing, and violent, with the added bonus of having references to Nazism and quite a bit of sexual innuendo. In the episode entitled Wardogs, Hawk (Peter MacNeill) revisits a relationship with an old acquaintance after he’s mistakenly shot down by a renegade faction, and is practically shown taking her to bed – which, for what was supposedly a kid’s show, is pretty insane. And even odder than that is the fact that they kill a main character off at the end of the first season.
In true James Bond/Indiana Jones fashion, each episode starts with a big action set piece, complete with CGI globs that you can shoot with your Interlocker, XT-7, or Phantom Striker, and got to the “story” afterwards, all of which were expertly crafted by comic and cartoon story editors/writers, including J. Michael Straczynski (Thor, The Amazing Spider-Man comic, Babylon 5), Larry DiTillio (Babylon 5, Beast Wars, He-Man), and Michael Reeves (Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series). Hell, even Marv Wolfman, creator of Blade, wrote an episode. The deep and intricate storylines, which never attempted to dumb its ideas down for younger viewers, had higher viewership and better reviews than other sci-fi fare like Star Trek: The Next Generation, which copied Lord Dread’s design, ideology, and relationship with OverMind in their second season when they introduced the Borg. On the technical side, it features a tremendous amount of early CGI work and some of the earliest instances of actors playing off of entirely CG characters.
Captain Power had good ratings, despite being shuffled around on syndicated broadcast schedules and having that ridiculous name, and initially made Mattel’s stock go up after the toys made their premiere at Toy Fair. Parent-advocacy groups tried to argue that the show promoted violence by using “guns” to interact with the show – which is like saying Duck Hunt made children across the country take up hunting and teach their dogs to taunt them – but that went nowhere and created a greater awareness for Captain Power. Since it was Mattel that was funding the show, it was the declining toy sales that ultimately killed the show at the end of its first season. The finale episode is a bit of a cliffhanger, with Lord Dread not completely carrying out Project New Order, and hints at greater things to come. If only Goddard had gone with TriStar, which had a lot of interest and would’ve put their all into promoting and developing the show since it would be their first, we might’ve seen the eventual Captain Power/Lord Dread team-up.
Like Skeleton Warriors, VSC’s DVD release has a soft, hazy looking video transfer since the masters were put on tape, but the audio is strong and punchy. It comes jam-packed with bonus features (which I’ll get into later), but it doesn’t include the training videos that came with the interactive toys. Luckily, you can find them online, including the one below.
Special Features
Commentary – Six episodes throughout the set have commentary tracks, including Pariah (the pilot),and Retribution Pt. I and II (series finale). Guests include Goddard, Straczynski, Dunigan, DiTillio, actress Jessica Steen, and writer/developer Mark Scott Zicree. Unlike the Skeleton Warriors‘ tracks, these are insightful and entertaining. Clearly, Goddard favors this project much more (as do I).
The Legacy Begins (94:58) – A feature-length telefilm that was never aired in the US. The movie pulls material from several episodes, starting with the pilot which was the fifth adventure aired, and will give casual viewers the general gist as to what’s going on in the series. I don’t think it plays out as well as a movie as it does episodically, so if you plan on sitting down to watch the entire series, I’d recommend skipping it.
Out Of The Ashes: The Making Of Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future (94:47) – This is the best retrospective documentary I’ve seen since Never Sleep Again. It’s a combination of archival behind-the-scenes material, concept art, and interviews with Goddard, Straczynski, DiTillio, Dunigan and Steen, amongst others. The difficulty of writing a complex children’s show and the production is discussed, along with the hazards and benefits of working with Mattel, character arcs, and what would’ve happened if the show had gone on for sixty-five episodes, which was the original plan. Plus, they pull out all the toys. I wonder if they work with the DVD…
Season Two Declassified (8:01) –Straczynski and DiTillio talk about what would’ve happened if the show was renewed for a second season, including new characters such as a double agent robot woman who had a strong Metropolis influence and Captain Power’s mom, and Dread becoming fully robotic and realizing the error of his ways.
Toy Fair Trailer (05:19) – A promotional trailer for the show.
Score: 4/5
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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