Throwback Thursday: The Punisher ’89

It’s been a few years since Ghost Rider, Blade, and the Punisher’s rights reverted back to Marvel Studios. And while there is speculation of a Blade “reinvention” television series by Oscar winner James Ridley, Ghost Rider and Punisher are still left out in the cold. But with Daredevil as a bonafide sensation via Netflix, one would think that the characters would follow the Man Without Fear’s footsteps. Tom Hardy has recently expressed his desire to play the Punisher, but would he adjust to doing the Netflix-type of adaptation? Does the Punisher need another feature film after three attempts? The best way to determine that is by revisiting each Punisher movie, and determining what worked and what didn’t.

The first Punisher film is today’s topic. Starring Dolph Lundgren as Frank Castle, the skull logo-less, practically mute, interpretation of the character took more inspiration from the 1980s action hero archetype any of the comics. The film technically wasn’t even released in the States for a theatrical fun as New World Pictures went bankrupt.

The thing about this movie is that it was on the cusp of the first major comic book movie trend. Around the same time, Warner Bros. unleashed the fury of Bat-mania with Tim Burton’s Batman, which set the standard for comic book cinema for more than a decade (2000’s X-Men was the real big one with studios buying up properties left and right).

If you’ve never seen this Punisher film, much less heard of it, there’s a really good reason for that: It’s just plain bad. Not in the same way Roger Corman’s failed Fantastic Four launch was bad, but here’s the trailer to give you an idea.

Yeah. It was pretty much almost like a grindhouse action film with a character who just happens to share the name of a popular comic character starring He-Man himself, Dolph Lundgren as the titular Punisher and Oscar winner Louis Gossett, Jr as Jake Berkowitz, a cop who is about three days of getting too old for this crap. The story is aligned pretty well with the comic canon: Frank Castle is leading a one-man killing spree against the mob and criminal scum that killed his family. Also, he’s living in the sewer and his only friend is Shake, a former actor that can only speak in almost-Shakespearean rhymes for reasons never explained.

So, with Frank coming down hard on the mob, old bad boy Gianna Franco comes out of retirement and similar to the scene in the aforementioned Batman, tries to unite the families and gain the upperhand and try to stop Castle and his murder frenzy. Well here’s where it becomes a triple threat match. Noticing the families are the midst of forming an alliance, the freakin’ Yakuza show up and decide they’re going to take over the mob’s territories. Well the mob doesn’t really them as threat and shrug them off, that is until the Yakuza kidnaps the children of the mob leader heads and holds them captive as insurance. Now, originally, Frank thinks the children as a distraction from him running down the Yakuza since they’re in town, but is convinced by Shake that the children need to be saved first. How Helen Lovejoy of him.

With that, Frank goes ballistic on Yakuza-ran businesses, threatening he’ll keep coming back until the children are freed. Things don’t really go according to plan as Frank gets himself captured by the Yakuza which leads to some interesting and somewhat funny interactions between him and Yakuza boss lady, Lady Tanaka. The 80’s were ripe with bad guy torturing good guy moments with quips being thrown furiously back and forth, but this might be the only Marvel movie that directly has a DC namedrop (feel free to prove me otherwise). Tanaka is torturing Frank to surrender and all the while trying to get some information on our silent but violent anti-hero. When asked who sent him, Frank just slyly replies “Batman”. Though part of me thinks that Batman wouldn’t send somebody to kill 125 people in five years (which Frank calls “a work in progress” by the way). Frank eventually frees himself and manages to save the children, but the Yakuza still have Franco’s kid and is whisked away to Yakuza headquarters.

This is when Frank is captured by police and has a sitdown with Berkowitz with why he’s doing what he’s doing. Here’s that work in progress line, as well.

The thing is, Frank doesn’t isn’t in jail long before Franco actually sets Frank free and wants a truce so that he can get his son back. As you can probably guess, Frank and Franco go nuts on the Yakuza and finally kill Tanaka and even her daughter and rescue Franco’s son. Of course, Franco being a complete 80’s villain mobster cliche, he quickly turns on the Punisher and goes off on how he wants the crime syndicate under his rule and he’ll be the undisputed crime lord, etc and starts to beat the Christ out of Frank. Even Franco’s son, Tommy, tries to stop his dad from hurting his recent savior, but it doesn’t so well. Franco is shot in front of Tommy and soon dies during the struggle with Frank. Tommy picks up Frank’s gun and threatens him with a simple “I’m going to kill you.” Frank stares down the youngster. “Do it. Maybe if you get it over with now, you won’t grow up to be like him.” Tommy can’t go through with it and begins to sob and embraces Frank, all the while Berkowitz and his cop crew spread out in the Yakuza HQ looking for Frank.

The last bit of the movie is Frank telling Tommy to basically not become his father and “if not, I’ll be waiting”. Classy job threatening a ten year old, Frank. How adult of you. And with that, he leaves. Berkowitz and company never find him and Frank is off continuing his mission that he feels is God-given, even though he had to lose his family to be given it. Weird how that works.

The movie has garnered a cult following despite its poor reviews across the board. As stated, it never had a theatrical release in the US, but finally made its way straight to VHS in 1991, much like the Albert Pyun Captain America around the same time. So why did this movie fail? Well, it could be that Marvel only did a provisional license, which only granted the film-makers the Punisher name and alias. They couldn’t use any of Frank’s trademark cues, but the skulls are alluded to in his knives, so the visual cues aren’t really there to separate this from any other Death Wish wannabe. While things like that aren’t really pivotal to the story itself, it could have made it at least more visually interesting.

Could there have been anybody else in this time period to don the black leather and skull knives that could have improved the overall acting of the movie? Possibly, but I believe Lundgren, given his strong accent and limited dialog, makes the best out of this role that he could. He actually holds three Masters Degrees, one in chemistry, and two in chemical engineering, so it’s not like he’s some meathead stereotype that some people perceive him to be. This is well before Hollywood took notice of comics as serious material because after this you had the likes of such duds as Tank Girl, and a couple of Crow sequels as well as Kull the Conqueror and the ushering in of the Schumacher Batman era.

But what do you think of this Punisher film? Where does it rank among Marvel’s other efforts? Let us know in the comments below!