REEL RETRO CINEMA | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Jun14

1990’s DICK TRACY AT 35: Still Colorful, Still Flawed — But It Gets Better With Age

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jun 14, 2025

1990’s DICK TRACY AT 35: Still Colorful, Still Flawed — But It Gets Better With Age

REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks and their comics connections… By ROB KELLY After the cultural and box office explosion of 1989’s Batman, every movie studio worked feverishly to get their own potential superhero franchise onto the silver screen. Some had to start from scratch, but luckily for Disney, they already had the rights to a property they thought would fit the bill: Dick Tracy. Hollywood superstar Warren Beatty had ideas on making a Dick Tracy movie as far back as 1975. The rights changed hands a few times during the 1970s, getting close enough in 1980 for legendary Superman “Creative Consultant” (read: screenwriter) Tom Mankiewicz to put together an early treatment that features a real grabber of an opening: a dying man is describing to a police sketch artist who it was that shot him. The artist renders all the details except the face, and the man calls out, “That’s him!” — revealing the villain of the piece is the classic Dick Tracy foe the Blank. This eventually fell apart when Tracy creator Chester Gould exerted strict financial and creative controls over the project. It kept bouncing around though, from studio to studio, and people like Steven Spielberg, John Landis, and Walter Hill were all attached to direct at some point. Beatty drifted in and out but returned when the project landed at Disney. Gould had died in 1985, and his estate proved easier to work with. Beatty agreed to star, with producers hoping Martin Scorsese would direct (the mind reels). Finally, Beatty —w ho last directed the Oscar-winning 1981 epic Reds — agreed to do double duty. Leading up to Dick Tracy’s release on June 15, 1990, Disney pulled every trick out of its marketing hat that it had. It worked for Batman, after all: toys, merchandise, an original soundtrack by a music superstar, a contest sponsored by MTV. I saw Dick Tracy the day it was released, completely immersed in the hype. I had always loved the character, and the idea of this world being given a Batman-style big budget once-over was just so exciting. I sat down to watch the movie and walked out… a little confused. Dick Tracy is a mile wide and an inch deep. Beatty and his screenwriters try to infuse the film with some heart and emotional pull (Will...

May25

1981 Horror Flick THE HAND: That Time MICHAEL CAINE and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH Teamed Up – Sort Of

Posted by Dan Greenfield on May 25, 2025

1981 Horror Flick THE HAND: That Time MICHAEL CAINE and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH Teamed Up – Sort Of

A REEL RETRO CINEMA Birthday Salute: New looks at old flicks and their comic-book connections… — UPDATED 5/25/25: Barry Windsor-Smith turns 76! Perfect time to re-present this Rob Kelly piece from August 2018! Dig it. — Dan — By ROB KELLY The Hand is a 1981 horror film directed by Oliver Stone(!) starring Michael Caine (in what he himself described as “a money job”) as a writer/artist who produces a very successful adventure newspaper strip called Mandro, a Prince Valiant/Conan hybrid. Over the opening credits, we see Jon Lansdale (Caine) hard at work on the newest installment. Jon is married to Anne (Andrea Marcovicci), and they have a young daughter, but it doesn’t take long to see that they’re not happy. Anne wants to move to New York and get into some New Age-y stuff but Jon is content to stay in Vermont where his work, as he puts it, “pays the bills.” Indeed it does—Jon’s strip must have circulation equivalent to Peanuts or Doonesbury, given the size of the lakefront property that he and his family live on. While on a drive, a fight breaks out when Anne reveals that when—not if—she goes to New York, she’s not all that interested in having Jon come with her. Jon starts to yell and Anne, rattled by Jon’s fury and an impatient driver behind them, veers off into the opposite lane. Unfortunately, she does this just as a garbage truck is coming the other way! She tries to swerve, and mostly does, except Jon’s outstretched hand gets smashed by the truck, shooting blood in every direction! As you might imagine, this doesn’t make things better between them. Even worse, Jon has lost his drawing hand, which leads to his agent suggesting he partner up with another artist to continue Mandro. Jon goes to New York to meet the guy (played by Roger Rabbit himself, Charles Fleischer), but, in the midst of a deep depression, he’s so rude that the whole arrangement collapses and the agent fires him off his own strip. Right around this time, we see that Jon’s right hand, last seen in a field, has come alive and has started to move around on its own. It finds its way to New York (boy, that must have taken a while) where it kills a homeless man (played by...

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