The Scarab and The Puni…Black Terror.
Welcome back to 1 out of 5 – Would Recommend, where I’m preempting your regularly scheduled blog post because I’ve found buried treasure I’ve hunted for since 2012: Avenging Force: The Scarab!
What’s The Plot?
Canadian archaeologist Peter Ward is visited by his mentor, Professor Joab, who claims to have found evidence verifying his wacky alien-based theories about ancient Egypt. This draws Jack into a struggle between super-villain The Sphinx and N.E.D.O.R. agent The Woman in Red that will see him harness the ancient alien power of The Scarab to battle the forces of evil!
It will also lead NEDOR to put together The Avenging Force (Fighting Yank! The Scarab! Black Terror! The Woman in Red! Doubledare!) in an afterthought animated sequence.
The Woman in Red, removing extraneous costume pieces while thugs wait patiently.
Who Made This Beautiful Garbage?
Brett Kelly, a Canadian indie filmmaker who boasts of having made more than fifteen features (though if they’re all at this level, there’s something to be said for quality over quantity). This is not his only super hero movie, incidentally.
He gets extra props for (if the credits are to be believed) reaching out to Roy Thomas for permission to call the Golden Age Daredevil by the name Doubledare in his one and only costumed scene.
Five Reasons to See It
- The SHIELD-esque organization is the North-Eastern Defense Operation Reliance or NEDOR. Points awarded for using the name of the defunct comics company that created many of the characters in the flick.
- The Woman in Red’s actress has clearly never taken a martial arts lesson in her entire life. This wouldn’t be nearly as notable if the stuntpeople she’s up against weren’t clearly somewhat experienced – they’re not exactly Donnie Yen, but they can throw can a kick.
Doubledare. His morphsuit is clearly not zipped up.
- The costumes are on the level of decent cosplays at best and terrible Halloween costumes at worst. Highlights are The Woman in Red and The Scarab (the latter’s clearly not-connected cowl notwithstanding), lowlights are the Black Terror and Doubledare (the latter of which is in slightly modified morphsuit).
- The villains’ headquarter, the location of the big final battle, is a mattress warehouse. Watching hero and villain alike use mattresses for cover during a gun fight starts laughably silly, moves to staggeringly stupid, and circles back around to hilarious.
- NEDOR’s HQ is clearly a museum. Like, you can see an informational placard behind the Fighting Yank’s video screen.
The field team of the Avenging Force! Or some cosplayers running late for a panel.
Recommendation
This movie is cheesy and no budget, on par with movies that the recently embattled Channel Awesome would put out for their anniversaries or the average scripted show on GVTV (look for yours truly in the credits of The Game Game Show episodes “Russian Zoo The Musical”, “Think-A-Thon”, and maybe a couple others). Therefore, I LOVED IT. It’s all heart, a bunch of nerds trying to make something cool. I will take this flick over Avengers Grimm any day of the week (and twice on Wednesdays), and it can be found on YouTube – all you need invest is time.
Come Back Next Week for a Deadpool-centric installment of Strange Times & Places!
