Meditation on man and Superman, and Richard Pryor!

I just watched the one and only "Superman III." You know, the one starring Richard Pryor?

That's right -- Richard Pryor.

Bizarre. Terrible. Hilarious. It's like an acid-trip into Bizarro world, where the production interns get free range to recreate the Superman legacy in their own image because the director is drunk and tired. I dub it "The Slapstick Superman," because it plays for laughs and oddity.

At its strangest, a green Walking Man signal in a stop-light starts a fist-fight with a red Walking Man, and traffic is thrown into a Chaplain-esque back-and-forth motion. The evil industrialist's sister gets transmorgraphied into a bionic woman by rebel computer wires that, as Pryor puts it, "want to be alive." (I paraphrase). And Supes goes from superhero to unshaven mischief maker, blowing out the Olympic Torch and straightening out the Leaning Tower of Piazza.

Worth watching ... if you're impaired.

If I were a movie critic, this is how I would rank them:

Superman I -- The Epic Superman
Every true hero has an origin story, and this epic gets it right. SEE a planet explode, a baby hold a car above his head, a teen outrun a train! HEAR the Oscar-nominated score, Marlon Brando's timeless narration, Margot Kidder's screachy overbearing theatrics. FEEL for the aging farm family that can no longer keep their all-American boy safe in Smallville, and TREMBLE at the sight of ruthless industrialist Lex Luthor, played to perfect pitch by Gene Hackman. Nominated for three Oscars. And robbed of every one of them!

Superman II -- The Brutal S&M Superman.
Superman is one of the few series where the sequel is every bit on par with the original. In this case, we're talking about the original sequel, which came right after the original Superman, follow? It's a dark, action-oriented meditation on love and sex and the year 1980, where Superman tangles with three ruthless outlaws from Krypton. These guys are genuinely scary, and each looks and acts like a reject from an S&M society party. So where have they been hiding since Krypton's demise? In a flat prison universe known as the Negative Zone, a terrifying torture reality which bookends the film (and underscores the S&M theme). SEE Superman give up his powers for love (sex is implied), and then SEE him bleed copiously for it! (See? More S&M!)

Superman III -- The Slapstick Superman / AKA Acid Trip Superman
See above. Richard Pryor plays a bumbling computer whiz who is blackmailed into taking over an orbitting satellite and using its lasers to destroy the Columbian coffee trade. Engineering a scheme to acquire all the world's oil, an evil industrialist slips man-made Kryptonite to our hero, accidentally turning him from a super-do gooder to a super mischief-maker. Superman's unanticipated reaction includes growing a five o'clock shadow, drinking at bars, sleeping with loose women, straightening the leaning Tower of Piazza, and blowing out the Olympic torch. A final fight ensues between the Man of Steel and an unstoppable living computer that Pryor designs on scrap paper and a flattened cigarette box, stashed in his pocket. Kidder is mercifully absent until the movie's final moments, when she notices the hunky diamond on Lana Lang's finger, and gets all bitchy to Clark Kent about it. And no, I'm not making even a drop of this stuff up:
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/movies/movies.php?topic=m-movie3

FUN FACT: Superman's doe-eyed smalltown love interest, struggling single mom Lana Lang, is played by Annette O'Toole, who is now seen regularly on the small screen as Martha Kent, Superman's adopted mom, in the TV show "Smallville." In other words, Superman hits on his mother. And its kind of implied that he scores...

From Supermanhomepage.com, by Wallace Harrington (wwh27539@mindspring.com):
"To me, the character that stole the show was Annette O'Tooles' Lana Lang. Her Lana seemed to validate Superman as Clark Kent. Time after time, Lois would denigrate Clark while regaling Superman, but Lana could see the goodness in both. After viewing this, I came to wish that O'Toole would return in a future Superman movie rather than Margot Kidder. Unfortunately, that was not to happen."


Superman IV -- The Quest for Closure of a Dying Franchise.
Okay, okay, its actually called the "Quest for Peace." A worthless, low-budget rush job that tries to vaguely imitate films that try to capitalize on our vague Cold War fears about nuclear proliferation, which is another big word that you don't know. A single Superman hair is stolen from a museum and used to clone a Nuclear Man, a steroidal flying freak (with a doomed acting career, here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0683565/ ) who shoots electrical bolts from any available body part. He's mute, but constantly crackling with power. Who could be behind this modern menace? Can you say Lex Luthor? Reeve has gone on record saying that when he filmed this quack job, he was pretty much clinically depressed about it. Well, maybe those are my words, not his. But he wasn't happy about it! I swear, I swear! I read it in a magazine when I was like 12 or something! At this barber shop! I was waiting for a haircut, and... Oh, never mind.

Superman II -- The 2006 Gay Pride Hoax
Some Canadian-looking son of a bitch in tights flies around lusting after a manipulative, two-timing Lois Lane (no, not Margot Kidder, but someone equally opportunistic, and equally annoying). This Lois is the ultimate social climber, keeping the men in her life dangling on a string while using their assets to further her career. Her M.O. extends to Superman, who inadvertantly helped her net a Pulitzer for her essay on his worthlessness while he's away from planet Earth finding himself: "Does the world need a Superman?" He comes back, and she's got a son. But is the tot his, or her boyfriend's? Spoiler alert: It's his. To promote this crap, they put the Canadian Superman on the cover of the Advocate, a Gay Pride Magazine, before the film came out. At least, I think they did. It was some kind of gay magazine. Look, there's nothing wrong with that, but this wasn't a particularly Gay film, and Canada boy has since gone on record denying his gayness, probably because he's being shut out of film work. (And I really do think he's Canadian.)