TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1933) is a do-over movie in the Be Careful What You Wish For vein: druggist Lee Tracy meets an old friend and his wealthy wife (who could have been Tracy), then relives events to see what would have happened if he’d married her instead of sweet, sensible Mae Clarke. This starts off slow (the domestic drama isn’t very interesting) but picks up as Tracy tries to use his foreknowledge to help out the doughboys (setting up a $1 million fund veterans from his home town can draw on), fight WW I corruption and ineptitude (which gets him dismissed as a defeatist) and makes ridiculous predictions that the 1920s’ soaring stock market is just a bubble soon to burst. Even though it turns out to be all a dream, pretty good (and interesting to see what the big events worth changing were for someone of that generation). “That is probably the most important piece of news you have ever read in your entire life.”
PREMONITION (2004) is a Japanese horror film in which a man sees a newspaper page reporting his child’s death seconds before it happens, then discovers he’s not the only one who’s seen pages from the “Newspaper of Terror.” While I like the idea, they never really explain enough to pull the concept off. It does qualify for the appendix, however, as the ending has the hero going back in time and choosing to die in his daughter’s place. “If this was death, you’d be lucky.”
I suspect the creators of SUPER CAPERS (2008)know super-heroes mostly from TV as this includes Lois and Clark‘s Justin Whalin as the protagonist, plays the theme of Greatest American Hero over the end credits and has a cameo by Adam West as “Manbat” (they may not know there’s a real DC hero by that name) as well as several bits in the style of the West show. This was an unfunny parody in which Whalin’s community service is working with the eponymous third-rate super-team, all of which turns out to be an elaborate scheme by the mystery villain. I’m not sure if referencing “Luke—I am your father” as a Return of the Jedi scene indicates Whalin’s character is even dumber than he appears or that the filmmakers screwed up. Does qualify for the appendix though. “Relax, it’s not like I told you he murdered our parents.”
