From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido covered nearly every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He has been revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year, as well as a few he missed the first time through. Last week we tackled Barbarella and Vampirella, and we continue this week with 2013’s Sparks.
The Greatest American Hero was a delightful TV show about a teacher named Ralph Hinkley who is granted superpowers by an alien suit, and who struggles mightily to control his newfound powers. The show ran from 1981-1983 and has remained a cult favorite. Hinkley was played by William Katt, who has since not only continued to act, but also done some work in the comics biz, creating a comics company in 2008 called Catastrophic Comics, whose first title was a six-issue miniseries called Sparks.
Katt co-created Sparks with Christopher Folino, who provided the script, with art by JM Ringuet. The story takes place primarily in the 1940s, and is a noir-style adventure about costumed adventurers, mainly from the POV of Ian Sparks, whose attempts to be a hero wind up failing horribly, and lead him into a life of depravity.
Folino, who had previously written and directed the 2006 movie Gamers, also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation, and he directed it with Todd Burrows. Katt also co-stars in the movie as the main bad guy, Matanza, a serial killer. The title role is played by Chase Williamson, with Ashley Bell and Jake Busey as two other heroes, Lady Heavenly and Sledge, as well as Marina Squerciati as Dawn, Clint Howard as a newspaper editor, and the great Clancy Brown as Archer.
The movie premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival, and had a limited theatrical release.
“I want to report my murder”
Sparks
Written by Christopher Folino
Directed by Christopher Folino & Todd Burrows
Produced by Christopher Folino, Todd Burrows, James Sutton, Tyler Endicott, Mike Smith
Original release date: March 1, 2013
In 1920 (though later dialogue says it happened in 1917) Rochester, we see a kid standing outside his house. A woman comes by, and the kid says that “he’s at it again.” The woman sends the boy away, then she knocks on the door. But before anything can happen, a meteor strikes nearby. We soon learn that a meteor struck Rochester, killing hundreds, with only thirteen who survived past the next year.
Twenty-eight years later, the battered and bruised costumed hero Sparks goes to a newspaper wanting to tell his story. He talks into a tape recorder and tells his life story, starting with when he was a little boy. He and his parents were in a car waiting for a train to go by when a police car chasing some bad guys approached, crashed into his parents’ car and sent it careening into the train. Sparks’ parents were killed, but he survived. Raised by his grandmother, he grew up to become a costumed hero, first in the suburbs, then moving to the big city.
That proves more difficult, as the thugs in the city are tougher than the ones in the ’burbs. At one point, his life is saved by Lady Heavenly, sometime partner to another costumed hero, Sledge. Sparks hits on her awkwardly, and she inexplicably thinks that’s adorable, and they wind up becoming a couple, both personally and professionally, fighting crime and dating.
He proposes to her after they’ve been together a year, following a romantic rooftop dinner date, but it’s interrupted by a call to fight Matanza, a serial killer. They find his lair and are ambushed by the killer. Sparks blacks out, and when he wakes up, he finds out that Matanza tortured Heavenly. Sledge says that he’s killed Matanza, and Heavenly can’t bear to look at Sparks anymore.
Guilty over blacking out when his lover needed him most, he’s even more devastated to learn that his grandmother has been killed by bad guys he put away out for revenge. Heavenly is now back together with Sledge. Sparks tries to hang himself, but his landlord finds him and he winds up surviving it somehow.
He’s approached by Archer, who was one of the cops chasing the bad guys whose crash killed Sparks’ parents. He kept an eye on Sparks during the early days of his career, and now he’s on his own. He trains Sparks in how to fight more effectively through a particularly boring training montage (which mostly involves him making Sparks stand perfectly straight and extending his arms which is, um, not the best way to do a fistfight…).
Archer then introduces Sparks to two colleagues: Cain, who can create fireballs, and Dawn, who can change her shape into that of anyone she’s touched. The four of them are going to get revenge on the person who murdered Sparks’ parents and also Archer’s partner.
We find out more about the crash. The bad guys Archer and his partner were chasing worked for James Driver, who was one of the Rochester 13 who survived the meteors—and who also got superpowers. Archer and his partner were going after them, and the crash happened, killing Archer’s partner and Sparks’ parents.
Dawn and Sparks flirt a bit, and she later comes to his bed, shapechanging into Heavenly, which is disturbing on so many levels. After their night of passion, Archer takes them out to go after Driver, who is staying in a hotel. Dawn disguises herself as the desk manager, and they verify that Driver is in his room—as are his children. Cain then blows up a truck full of dynamite, which destroys the hotel and most of the people in it. Sparks and Archer both fall from a great height but survive.
Sparks is livid. He didn’t sign on for mass murder, and then he finds out that Archer and his partner weren’t there to stop Driver’s thugs, but to steal from them, and it all went horribly wrong. We also see that both Archer and Sparks were covered in some kind of red liquid that spilled out of the train when the car crashed into it.
Creating a fake identity, Sparks gets a job as an advertising copy writer. His employer soon finds out, and is all set to fire him—unless he does him a favor, and gives him a night with Lady Heavenly (one of the firm’s clients, and whom the head of the agency has a hard-on for). Sparks tracks down Dawn, who only seduced Sparks on Archer’s orders, and who works as a prostitute—she can literally be anyone you want her to be, after all. He pays her to pretend to be Heavenly with his boss.
The real Heavenly finds out about this when the exec makes reference to their night of passion to her, and Heavenly confronts Sparks—who initially thinks she’s Dawn still in disguise—and makes it clear that that better not happen ever again.
Later, Sparks is approached by a mysterious man who works for Sledge. Apparently the real Heavenly has been unable to consummate her relationship with Sledge due to trauma from her torture at Matanza’s hands. The mystery man wants to hire Dawn to sleep with Sledge as Heavenly. Sparks agrees and brings Dawn to a hotel.
But it’s a setup. Dawn is shot in the head, and two people who look just like Sledge attack him, one of them strangling Sparks, while the other shoots him.
As he lays bleeding, we get yet another flashback to the car crash, this time learning that Sparks’ mother was pregnant with his sibling when she was killed.
Sparks wakes up to find the police looking for him. He leaves the hotel and stumbles upon the same lair where Matanza tortured Heavenly. He has film of all his victims, and there’s one of Heavenly. Putting it into the projector, Sparks gets two surprises. One is that Matanza shot Sparks in the head, which should have killed him. He didn’t black out, as he believed, he was dead, and somehow came back. (How he missed that he could regenerate and not die prior to this—when he unsuccessfully hung himself, when he recovered from lots of fatal trauma and healed completely from it—is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
The other revelation is that Sledge was working with Matanza. And Matanza isn’t dead.
Matanza has the same powers as Dawn, and he was the mystery man “working” for Sledge—who’s actually his son.
Sparks delivers the film to Heavenly, who is devastated to realize that Sparks didn’t black out, he was out-and-out killed, which is a much better excuse for not stopping her from getting tortured, and that she’s currently dating the son of the guy who tortured her (who apparently pleaded with his Dad not to kill this one). Sparks left a note with the film to meet Sparks on the docks.
Sparks sees Heavenly, and then embraces her—and she stabs him. Turns out it was Matanza, and after stowing the body, he disguises himself as Sparks for when Heavenly shows up and shoots her. Sledge then attacks his father, livid that he killed his girl. Matanza kills his own son, and then discovers that Sparks is still alive.
We catch up to the present at this point: Sparks went from there to the newspaper, and Matanza followed, killing the security guard who tipped him off to Sparks being at the paper and the editor. Sparks blows up a car, killing both him and Matanza, but Sparks, at least, gets better.
Driver has found Archer and kidnapped him, with help from Sparks. Sparks shows up to let Archer know that he now knows the whole truth: that there was an experimental drug called Red G that was being transported on the train that Sparks’ parents’ car crashed into. Both Archer and Sparks were drenched in it, giving them spectacular healing powers. Sparks tells Archer that he’s going to enjoy the notion of Driver torturing him forever.
Sparks invites Heavenly—who survived her gunshot wound—back up to the same rooftop where he proposed to her, and they kiss.
“What does it take to kill you, Mr. Sparks?”
This movie tries really hard to be a mashup of Philip Marlowe-style noir with superheroes, and they get an A for effort, but an F for execution.
The cheapness of the film actually is one of the things that works in its favor. Having the story primarily take place in the 1940s makes the cheap sets and the primitive CGI a lot easier to take. Still, it doesn’t go quite far enough. There’s a fine line between cheap and chintzy, and between stylized and primitive, and this movie crosses both. (At one point when Sledge throws his father into a brick wall, the wall vibrates, betraying its true form as a sheet of posterboard or whatever.)
The dialogue is atrocious, feeling not so much like a noir movie as a badly written parody of a noir movie. The costumes are goofy, though appropriate for the time period, truly, as every “super” looks like they stepped out of an issue of Adventure Comics or the like. However, not a single character has an era-appropriate haircut or fashion sense in their civilian garb. The fight choreography is dreadful, from the Archer-Sparks training montage that is quite possibly the worst example of the breed to the introduction of Lady Heavenly. Sparks’ voiceover declares that she has “power, beauty, and one helluva back kick.” And to demonstrate that, Ashley Bell then delivers a really mediocre back kick on a bad guy.
The overall plot is generally fine, but the details are head-scratching to say the least. Probably the most confusing aspect of the whole thing is the spectacular inability of the title character to figure out that he has regenerative powers until he sees film of himself getting shot in the head. This is a guy who’s already survived hanging himself (he was in the noose for ages before his landlord found him), falling from great heights, and what look like at least second-degree burns all over his body, and he still doesn’t realize that he can’t die? And that’s just the biggest of the many plot holes, from the lengths gone to set up firebombing the hotel when they can just, y’know, firebomb the hotel, to there being absolutely no payoff for the revelation that Sparks’ mother was pregnant when she died, to the utterly unconvincing full recovery of Heavenly from being shot.
Finally, the acting is truly awful, with the very notable and obvious exception of Mr. Clancy Motherfucking Brown, who is magnificent as Archer. It honestly doesn’t feel like Brown is even in the same space-time continuum as the rest of the movie, he does such an amazing job of acting everyone around him off the screen. Chase Williamson is particularly horrendous in the title role, doing nothing to sell Sparks’ redemption, not aided by a script that insists on his being redeemed without doing any of the work to get the character to it. He descends into becoming a pimp and a murderer, and he never really pays for those crimes.
I’m glad I included this movie for completeness’ sake—I really want this feature to be a complete look at all the live-action movies that adapted superhero comics—but I’m also fine with never having seen it before now and with never seeing it again…
Next week, we start on more recent movies with Thor: Love and Thunder.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also rewatching Star Trek: Enterprise every Monday on this site. He’s currently near the end of the second season, with “First Flight” having gone up earlier this week.
Never heard of the film or the comic. Doesn’t sound like I missed much.
I’ve been meaning to rewatch The Greatest American Hero sometime — they have it streaming free on Tubi. I never thought it was a great show, but it was my introduction to the amazing Robert Culp, and it had an earworm of a theme song. It always kinda bugged me that they never gave Ralph a superhero name. I’ve often wondered what it would’ve been.
Interesting — one of the things I liked about TGAH was that he didn’t have a dopey codename…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
William Katts did a cameo on THE FLASH as the minister who was supposed to marry Barry and Iris, but the Nazis from Earth X showed up, and he was the first casualty. It was the first episode of the giant crossover, “Crisis on Earth-X.” Despite Katts’ demise, it’s one of the most unintentionally funny scenes in the crossover. All the heroes from the ARROWVERSE were in the church, and they had weapons stashed everywhere because why not?
RALPH!!!!!
I have very fond memories of Robert Culp ranting about “the green guys” who gave Ralph his super suit (but forgot to button the pocket that had the users guide in it).
Confession time…when I suggested this movie…I only knew of it’s existence NOT the details of it, who was behind it etc! I had never actually seen it.
William Katt of TGAH did that? I’m disappointed to the max!
Coming to the recent movies already? You were given a lot of older movie suggestions last time out. Oh well.
Are you going to finish out the year with WEREWOLF BY NIGHT & THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY HOLIDAY SPECIAL? I know they are short, but it can be sort of a special entry.
EP: no, Werewolf… and the GOTG special are TV, not movies.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Younger viewers looking up The Greatest American Hero today might wonder why Ralph’s last name suddenly changes from Hinkley to Hanley part way through the show’s run.
@7/wizard clip: The “Hanley” change only happened in two episodes of season 1. Episode 4 aired two days after John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt on President Reagan, so they hastily redubbed the name, and for the rest of the 9-episode first season, they just called him “Ralph” or “Mister H,” except for a “Ralph Hanley” name plaque appearing the first-season finale. They changed it back to Hinkley at the start of season 2.
It’s kind of eerie, though, that the series premiere involved Ralph Hinkley stopping a plot to assassinate the president, and then just 12 days later, John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate the president.
Correcting myself now that I’ve rewatched the show (which I’m currently reviewing on my Patreon): In episode 4 (or 3 if you count the 2-hour pilot as one), “Here’s Looking at You, Kid,” there’s one place where “Mr. Hinkley” is dubbed over as “Mr. H,” and another where June Lockhart saying Ralph’s full name is muted and dubbed over with jet engine noise. It’s two weeks later in “Reseda Rose” that “Hinkley” is frequently dubbed over as “Hanley,” and otherwise his surname is just avoided until the “Ralph Hanley” plaque appears in the finale.
Indeed, given that he was Hinkley for only the first two distinct stories before they dropped/changed it, I’m surprised they didn’t just make the change to Hanley permanent. But the second-season premiere (where Ralph briefly became a baseball star) had characters say “Hinkley” so many dozens of times that it’s like they were making a point of reasserting it.
Turning into a great conversation…about The Greatest American Hero! LOL It’s a shame that wasn’t a comic first, we could talk about the pilot!
I *just* watched this movie—-well, about half of it—-precisely because of your review. Specifically, I read a tiny bit. You communicated how unimpressed you were right up front, after all. But I thought “A superhero movie I’ve never heard of, with William Katt wearing several hats (insert Doctor Seuss joke here)! I’ve gotta watch that. How bad could it be???”
Bad enough, apparently. In my misspent youth i could watch boring, shitty movies until someone else’s cows came home, take a brief bio-break and come back raring for more. At 62, though, my powers fail me. I got as far as Archer paying off Cain when I realized I was only still watching out of a morbid desire to see how this mishegoss would finally wrap up. Suddenly I remembered this review, and realized that reading it could save me from seeing the rest of the movie.
Thank you, Keith.
Oh, and my assumption about Sparks’s mother being pregnant at the time of the accident (read about but not seen) is that it was a set-up for a potential sequel (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!), given that it went nowhere in the film itself. But what do I know? I was warned about this movie and watched it anyway.
Also, since this thread *has* largely turned into a discussion of TGAH, I’m veering into the skid, because I used to watch the show religiously. I dug it the most, even though it, like Ralph himself, almost always had better intentions than execution.
The challenges Our Heroes faced often seemed shopworn and unambitious, but there was some legit gold in there. Two of my favorite episodes were the one where the aliens use fragments of pop songs on the radio to warn Ralph of an impending nuclear disaster (for fuck’s sake, just TELL him already!), and a third-season story in which The Gang is duped into believing that they now officially work for the US government. I liked the characters and their interplay very much, and Connie Selecca was a delight, so the show was a must-see for me, despite the often-pedestrian superheroics. Interesting characters with entertaining dialogue was a hallmark of the show’s producer, Stephen J. Cannell, who also brought us THE ROCKFORD FILES.
In fact, ROCKFORD was kind of a spiritual godfather to TGAH. Two of Jim’s recurring PI colleagues were Verne Sinclair, a “shoot-first-and-don’t-bother-to-ask-questions” sorta guy, and Richie Brockelman, a bright young man whose compassion and enthusiasm outstripped his competence. I would bet my own kneecaps that when these two characters appeared together in an episode of ROCKFORD, the seeds were sown for THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO.
I would LOVE to see a reboot of TGAH mounted by people who actually read comic books! The episode that featured Joseph Wiseman as Ralph’s predecessor was pretty entertaining, but wouldn’t it have been cool to see a *flashback* to his youth, to contrast the two Hermes’s approaches and adventures? Other planets must have meant other guys with suits, who might occasionally have needed to visit Earth and/or call on Ralph for backup. It’s kinda funny, actually: THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO was largely a crime show in which a bulletproof flying man would fall from the sky and beat everybody up in the final act. Which also describes the first season of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN. My point? It’s 2:30 AM and I don’t have one. Good night, Gracie.
@11/James Fry: “Hermes?” Was that their superhero name? Was that mentioned in the show?
That’s a pretty kickass superhero codename, NGL
Or a Superspy’s
Reading it again, I think it was just an autocorrect fail for “heroes.”
Wow, I can’t believe this was all stuffed into a single movie. The plot description reads like a mini-series in today’s “decompressed” story telling style.
Thanks krad for watching these so that we don’t have to :)
@13/vinsentient: Yeah, I had a similar reaction. The plot summary just kept going on and on and on…
Also, why are there two unrelated sources of superpowers? There’s the “meteor” that gave powers to the original 13 people (that should be a meteorite), and there’s the substance on the train that made the protagonist immortal. One more layer of overcomplication.
I searched for this movie, based on the theory that nothing can be that bad.
I found it on Amazon’s Video service with the following description “In the critically praised superhero noir thriller…” I wonder what movie they think it is.
I’m reasonably sure that any proper definition of “character actor” must hinge on that miraculous ability to bring character even to the most colourless examples of cinema: the late Roger Ebert’s description of Mr Nicholas Cage as “a good actor in good movies and an almost indispensable actor in bad ones” might usefully be applied to every character actor ever born (despite Mr Cage himself not really fitting the definition as I understand it, since he’s too often the lead & a key selling point of his own features).
@16/ED: It’s not unknown for a character actor to be a lead actor. Columbo is a prime example, as was classic Doctor Who (though the modern series tends to go more for lead-actor types, Peter Capaldi being the main exception).
1. I really liked The Greatest American Hero (especially Robert Culp, whom I’d loved all the way back from the often-magnificent ‘I Spy’), but I figuratively threw the show against the wall when they lost the suit’s instruction manual for the *second* time.
2. I don’t think it as unlikely as you do, krad, that Sparks wouldn’t notice that he kept coming back from being dead. It just doesn’t strike me as a concept that would *occur* to somebody unless (a) they were aware of a precedent for it in their world, which doesn’t seem to be the case, or (b) their face was really rubbed into it, as finally did happen here.
Wm. Starr: he was hanging from a noose all night and survived. That was the point where my suspension of disbelief (ahem) was shattered.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido