Flash Back

In light of the sad letdown of Green Lantern, I thought I'd look back on a much more successful adaptation of a DC Comics mainstay - the live-action TV series based on the exploits of The Fastest Man Alive, aka The Flash. Of course, calling The Flash "successful" refers solely to its artistic merits as the show died a quick death after one season following its debut on CBS in 1990. The Flash was an expensive venture for CBS, but a seemingly good bet in the wake of Tim Burton's Batman (1989). Ironically, though, The Flash just didn't find its audience fast enough.

Starring John Wesley Shipp as forensic scientist for Central City PD, Barry Allen, The Flash stuck to the Scarlet Speedster's Silver Age roots. Even though the character of Barry Allen had been dead in the comics for several years since the multi-verse altering events of the DC Comics miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths and the mantle of The Flash had been taken up by Barry's young nephew, Wally West, it was Barry that took center stage in the TV show. Likely this decision was based largely on the fact that Barry's job on the police force was an ideal facilitator for story opportunities. As in the comics, a bolt of lightning strikes Barry as he works with chemicals inside his lab, with the resulting explosion giving him the miraculous gift of super-speed.

In an effort to cope with his new found powers, Barry turns to S.T.A.R. Labs scientist Tina McGee (Amanda Pays) who outfits Barry with a suit initially conceived for deep sea diving that serves to resist the incredible friction that occurs when Barry runs at top speeds. Looking for revenge after the death of his cop brother (Tim Thomerson) at the hands of gang members, Barry goes into action and swiftly develops a taste for crime fighting.

Developed by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo (the duo who also scripted 1991's The Rocketeer), The Flash was clearly indebted to Burton's Batman. The noir-ish design of The Flash's stomping grounds of Central City owed its inspiration to Anton Furst's production design on Batman, the molded Flash suit with its sculpted musculature aped the style of the Batman suit that Michael Keaton had worn (it was designed by the same creator, Robert Short), and even Batman composer Danny Elfman contributed The Flash's theme music (with Shirley Walker, who would go on to handle the musical chores on Batman: The Animated Series, handling the regular score). But despite owing so much creatively to Burton's film, The Flash had its own charm and personality.

Barry Allen, like many of DC Comics' heroes, was never a particularly interesting character but Shipp made for an ingratiating lead. As his Girl Friday, Amanda Pays was an attractive and believably brainy presence and the ongoing romantic tension between Tina and Barry simmered nicely on a low burner throughout the season - even as Barry found himself getting involved with a number of other women, such as Joyce Hyser as tough female P.I. Megan Lockhart. The Flash also had a winning supporting cast, including Alex Desert as Barry's dreadlocked lab mate, Julio Mendez, and Biff Manard and Vito D'Ambrosio as frequently bickering street cops Murphy and Bellows.

Famous - and soon-to-be-famous - guest stars abounded, including Jeffrey Combs, Ken Foree, Dick Miller, Richard Belzer, David Cassidy, and Angela Bassett. Perhaps the most memorable guest star, though, was Mark Hamill as The Trickster. The most garish foe the TV Flash fought, Hamill's performance owed a debt to Frank Gorshin's manic, giggling Riddler and he gave The Flash a run for his money not once but twice, being introduced midway through the season and then encoring in the season finale "The Trial of the Trickster."

For a show that CBS spent so much money on, the network not only did surprisingly little to promote it but, with frequent schedule changes, seemed out to make it impossible for any one to find. During its year-long run, The Flash suffered in competition against the likes of The Cosby Show and The Simpsons and saw several of its episodes preempted by coverage of the Gulf War. By the end of its first season, it was disappointing - if not especially shocking - to learn that CBS felt The Flash had run its course. On the upside, at least CBS footed the bill for a full season and on top of that the show was really friggin' good.

Ironically, in interviews back then the show's producers and stars touted the fact that this was a darker, more adult show than some might expect from a series based on a gaudy superhero. But what passed for mildly dark superheroics in 1990 - basically anything that didn't reflect the camp sensibility of the '60s Batman series fit that bill - simply looks like a sturdy action show now. The show had heart, a love of pulp adventure (two of the series' best episodes - "Ghost in the Machine" and "Deadly Nightshade" - featured the character of Nightshade, a hero in the mold of The Green Hornet and the Golden Age version of The Sandman, who predated The Flash as Central City's masked protector), and the best production values that CBS could afford.

Although The Flash didn't find an audience in its day, it has in the years since as an ever-growing number of fans have continued to acclaim it, giving the show and its creators a delayed victory. In that sense, The Flash was perhaps more tortoise than hare but sometimes the race isn't won by speed but by perseverance.

Leviathan

Cynics often claim that people can be sold on anything but the truth is, you can't force a trend on the American public - not even when it's for their own damn good. In 1989, despite the best efforts of directors Sean Cunningham (Deep Star Six), James Cameron (The Abyss), and George Cosmatos (Leviathan), the much-ballyhooed age of the underwater alien film never quite came to pass, causing many dreams to die with it. Even Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) tried his luck on this front years later in 1998 with Deep Rising but he fared no better. American movie-goers have collectively decided that, except for the original Cocoon (1985), aliens and water don't mix. And as with most stubbornly-held positions, logic doesn't seem to apply. Of all the things to reject, why this, after saying yes to so much else?

This is a question that may never be answered to anyone's satisfaction. Of course, some might suggest that the movies in question just weren't that good. Admittedly, there's some truth to that but honestly, was there any movies that were so much better to see in 1989 than Leviathan? Not so much, no. And keep in mind that Leviathan was out months before Tim Burton's Batman so there was plenty of space between these two potential blockbusters. And yet Leviathan's opening weekend competition was Fletch Lives and it still came in second - what the hell is wrong with people?

Sure, Leviathan may just be Alien set under the ocean rather than in space but as Alien was just a big budget gloss on 1958's It! The Terror From Beyond Space, let's not be too hard on Leviathan. What's really worthwhile about Leviathan isn't its storyline but its cast. It's not everyday that you get to see an ensemble like this save themselves from a mutant fish. You've got Peter Weller, Ernie Hudson, Daniel Stern, Hector Elizondo, Amanda Pays, and Richard Crenna as the crew of the underwater mining operation - plus there's Meg Foster as an ice-cold corporate bitch comfortably ensconced out of harm's way above the surface of the ocean. In the annals of aquatic agony, that's a rocking cast. Hard to believe audiences turned their noses up at a line-up like that, but then again it's hard to figure out what people want sometimes.

Telling the tale of a mining crew stationed on the ocean floor who encounter more than they bargained for when they recover items from a wrecked Russian ship named Leviathan, this is standard monster movie boilerplate. One of the items found on the sunken ship is a innocuous-seeming flask of Vodka that is later discovered to have been spiked with metagens used by the Russian government to experiment on the Leviathan's crew. When Daniel Stern's slovenly character of Six Pack carelessly ingests the Vodka and shares it with another crew member (Lisa Eilbacher, as 'Bowman'), they invite the same catastrophe that doomed the Leviathan as both are genetically altered and mutually absorbed into the shared body of a giant fish creature. Worse yet is the fact that this creature possesses all the memories and intelligence of the people it assimilates. Once this monstrosity is up and running and everyone knows what kind of shit they're in, it then falls on Weller as Beck - the reluctant head of operations, derisively called "Becky" by Six Pack - to get his remaining crew back to the surface.

Director George Cosmatos - responsible for the '80s favorites Of Unknown Origin, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Cobra - doesn't quite do a stellar job here but he keeps it together. Contributions from other quarters of the productions, in fact, are a little less than what you'd expect from the people involved. Screenwriters David Peoples (Blade Runner, Unforgiven) and Jeb Stuart (Die Hard, The Fugitive) were capable of better and Stan Winston's effects are atypically unimpressive here with the film's creature lacking the kind of visual impact that Winston brought to his work on The Terminator, Aliens, and Predator. But production designer Ron Cobb (Conan The Barbarian) and composer Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen, Poltergeist), along with the film's cast, are much more on their game.

Even though it occasionally flounders, Leviathan remains my underwater alien film of choice. I watched it twice on the big screen in 1989 from high in the balcony of the Mohawk Theater, a local landmark of my college town of North Adams, MA - a single-screen movie house with art deco design that originally opened in 1938 and closed in 1991 with a planned restoration still pending. Due to money issues, the Mohawk only operated sporadically and Leviathan was one of the few movies I was able to see there during my time in North Adams. In its run-down condition, the Mohawk was a sunken ship of its own, a ruined relic in need of salvaging. Whenever I watch Leviathan today, memories of seeing it unfold on that giant screen wash over me and I can't help but think of all the water that's passed too quickly under the bridge since then.