Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Super Task Force One
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Super Task Force One
Released by: Central Keystone Productions
Released on: September 23rd, 2013.
Director: Steve Rudzinski
Cast: Steve Rudzinski, David J. Fielding, Seth Gontkovic, Aleen Isley, Bill Murphy
Year: 2013
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Made possible by an $1145.00 Indiegogo campaign and a few hundred dollars on top of that, Steve Rudzinski's Super Task Force One is a micro-budgeted love letter to Japanese superhero shows like Ultraman and more specifically, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. While Rudzinski's film wears its influences plainly on its sleeve, it does a good job of capturing the inspired lunacy that makes those imports and shows like it so much fun to watch. Monsters, robots, mechs, superheroes, diabolical villains and ridiculously chaste heroes - it's all here and Super Task Force One turns out to be a lot of goofy dime store fun.
The movie introduces us to Jason Oliver (Steve Rudzinski), a nice enough guy who gets bullied a bit but hey, he's got a foxy girlfriend to complain to about it, life could be worse for him. On a day just like any other, he finds himself walking through his local park where out of nowhere a big guy clad in a strange red outfit approaches him. He's obviously injured and looks to have been in some sort of fight but before Jason can really do much about it, the stranger hands him a device that turns him into a green suited superhero just in time for him to do battle with a monster that appears out of nowhere wielding a fire-sword!
It turns out that there's a backstory to all of this, of course. Fifteen years ago the sinister Emperor Zagel (Bill Murphy) shut down the superhero squad known as Super Task Force Six and swiped their transponder devices which he then hoped to use to re-animate a giant robot that would give him absolute power over the universe. Our stranger in the park managed to get one of those transponders to Jason and now it's up to Jason to embrace is new identity and keep the transponder away from Zagel long enough to stop him from carrying out his evil plan.
If the idea of seeing something like Power Rangers or Super Inframan done with a small cast and crew using Halloween masks and crazy computer effects sounds appealing to you (and it should) then definitely give Super Task Force One some thought. With that said, let's get one thing straight - the effects are pretty hit or miss but again, the low budget comes into play here. The movie looks like it was shot in a neighborhood park and/or on a few abandoned lots, with the interiors handled in someone's basement. Don't go into this expecting it to look like a high gloss production.
Rudzinski obviously loves this type of stuff and while his script and concept work won't win any awards for originality, he's obviously someone who 'gets it' in terms of relaying that enthusiasm and love for genre to the screen. The fact that all of this is played completely straight helps to make this more enjoyable and even endearing, had this been done tongue in cheek or as more of a parody there's no way it would have turned out to be as enjoyable as it is.
Rudzinski plays the lead well. His character has a likeable naiveté to him that works well in the context of the unlikely hero he's playing. As such, we want him to succeed and to save the day as he does all this the way the best heroes do - with truly noble intentions. Of course, he has to rise to the occasions first, but once he gets there and puts on that goofy green suit, it's game on. Bill Murphy as the ridiculous Emperor Zagel is also fun to watch. He hams it up to be sure but it never feels out of touch with the tone of the story being told.
Video/Audio/Extras:
This MOD Blu-ray release presents the movie framed at 1.78.1 in AVC encoded 1080p high definition and it looks about as good as something made on consumer grade HD can look. Clarity and detail vary from scene to scene with the sequences that take place outside in daylight looking better than those taking place in a dimly lit basement. Colors are nicely reproduced and black levels are good. Considering how ridiculously low budget this is, the movie looks surprisingly good on Blu-ray.
The English language audio mix is also of pretty decent quality. Dialogue stays clean, levels are well balanced and the over the top sound effects have pretty decent presence. This won't envelope you the way a big budget Hollywood mix might and there are a few spots where outside wind hits the microphone used to record the sound which results in some wind noise, but all in all, it sounds just fine.
The main extra on the disc is the cast and crew commentary track which features Rudzinski, actress Aleen Isley and actor Seth Gontkovic. It's a pretty active track with Rudzinski leading the charge, noting that this literally is his love letter to shows like Power Rangers before going on and talking about who did what on the movie and how they did it. He talks about his motives behind making the movie, establishing 'the world' early on, where certain ideas for certain scenes came from and the difficulties of some of the wordier lines of dialogue that were written for the movie. The talk about the use of humor in the movie, how the news report clips were shot and edited into the picture, how they changed a few things here and there to keep the movie more or less kid friendly, locations, staging the fight scenes and more. It pretty much covers everything you could want to know about the movie, but on the off chance that it doesn't…
… we also get a featurettes called Suit Up! which is an interview with Steve Rudzinski that clocks in at nineteen minutes. Here Rudzinski goes into more detail as to his love of Power Rangers and how that lead into his interest in Super Sentai and how this eventually led to him making this movie after working on a few earlier projects. From there he goes into detail about the movie making process, how he gathered together some of his collaborators and from there he shows off the suit used in the movie and some of the other costumes and props before finishing up by talking about the CGI scene used in the movie.
We also get a piece called Shake The Heavens which has a commentary from Dustin Wayde Mills. This is the four and a half minute CGI scene from the movie and Mills talks about how it was put together, points out some of the details you might not have necessarily noticed (Hey look! Mount Fuji!) and what went into the 3-D modeling.
Aside from that, we also get an official trailer for the feature, an alternate forty second Show Opening clip (basically an alternate trailer), menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
Super Task Force One is no budget filmmaking to be sure, so you have to go into this one expecting all the pitfalls that entails, but where it succeeds is with some wild creativity and a good understanding of the fun that the sources the movie pulls from were able to provide their respective audiences. The Blu-ray looks and sounds about as good as you can realistically expect and it's got a surprisingly array of bonus features to accompany the movie itself. If you dig independently made nuttiness and/or Japanese superhero shows, you'll probably appreciate what Rudzinski and company have created here.
Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (271)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4140)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2512)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (385)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (295)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (496)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Severin Films
Released on: April 30th, 2024.
Director: Lee Frost
Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
Year: 1969
Purchase From Amazon
Hot Spur – Movie Review:
Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but...-
Channel: Movies
03-22-2024, 11:53 AM -
-
Released by: Mondo Macabro
Released on: April 9th, 2024.
Director: Max Pecas
Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
Year: 1985
Purchase From Amazon
Death Squad – Movie Review:
Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual...-
Channel: Movies
03-22-2024, 11:46 AM -
-
Released by: Quality X
Released on: February 28th, 2024.
Director: Chuck Vincent
Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
Year: 1982
Purchase From Amazon
Roommates – Movie Review:
Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),...-
Channel: Movies
03-15-2024, 01:10 PM -
-
Released by: Blue Underground
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
Year: 1970
Purchase From Amazon
Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:
Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it...-
Channel: Movies
03-15-2024, 01:07 PM -
-
Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Saul Bass
Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Phase IV – Movie Review:
Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and...-
Channel: Movies
03-15-2024, 01:02 PM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
Year: 1969-1972
Purchase From Amazon
The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:
Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this...-
Channel: Movies
03-13-2024, 11:30 AM -