The Crusaders #357: Experiment in Evil!

I am not familiar with The Crusaders, but I do like Superhero comics and movies. This one has entertainment potential and I look forward to the next installment.

With some adjustments it will be even more fun and campy.

The comic book panel inserts are interesting and could be used and developed even more! There are some good performances happening here that could be framed or isolated with some close-ups, bust shots, establishing shots. More sexy shots of the cute girls. The villain is really good casting and performance. More!

Cool Beans! Nice job, Mr. Wolford

If you're looking for a 200 million dollar budget with state of the art special effects then you'll probably want to give this low budget wonder a pass. I liked it though. I liked it a lot. It started out a bit weak in my opinion with a big comic book super fight. Right off the bat they make the film look like a living comic and that's a great idea. Too bad the special effects don't back it up. That said, once we got in to the story it was really interesting. Without going in to spoilers, the leader of the superheroes is a Batman/Question type who looks like he might be slipping over to the dark side. I thought it was a really interesting story and there are some pretty cool performances in it.

You know how comic books used to be written for children and then those kids grew up. They grew up and became adults who still liked superhero stories so the stories grew up with them That's what this movie is like. It starts off all light and innocent. As the story goes on, it becomes gradually darker and more adult. There are tones of little Easter eggs for comics fans. They even have an editor's note caption in one scene referring to past issues! A definite MUST SEE!!!

I think it would be fair to say that this film is genuinely unique. I have never seen anything quite like it and I mean that in the best way possible. If at times, the amount of characters and plot points seems overwhelming, it is all part of the feel that this story has been going on for a long time and if you'd only read those other 356 issues, you'd know EXACTLY who everyone was and how they inter-related to each other. I found this to be a lot of the fun - keeping up with the, at times, breakneck comic book pace, even when I didn't fully understand what each character's powers were or how they were using them on each other. You kind of figure that out as you go. You get the feeling that these characters were around long before you got here and that, despite the fact that this would be a pivotal issue in the storyline of at least one major character, they will still be around for many issues to come after the film ends!

The use of framing devices and literal comic book frames to set the comic book tone works amazingly well. The sense that we are watching a comic book come to life is almost flawless. I am also impressed with some of the daring tone of the storyline. While much of the tone of the film is geared for kids (including old Batman television show-like Bams and Pows) and while we even see what appears to be a fairly young boy reading the comic, many of the themes are decidedly adult. While some issues such as domestic violence sit a bit uneasily, the overall theme which questions how acceptable it is to use evil to accomplish good is both powerful and ominously prescient for our times.

The Crusaders is a comic book film that seems to have been way ahead of the curve in terms of giving heroes & villains an actual grounded persona. It's low budg, but it has a LOT of fun & innovative special effects that shows the filmmaker is obviously a true comic fan. After watching it two, three times, I realized there are a BUNCH of Easter eggs, so keep your eyes open. Super fun details are ALL over this film. I think it's a sleeper that's gonna catch a cult following!