Blinky500 feature: Punisher '79

  I've decided that I'd re-feature Chris Notarile's Punisher series individually as we lead up to something.  What is that something?  Well in a few weeks you'll know.  First let's get caught up by looking at the Punisher series as individual features.

  Punisher '79 opens with some vintage scenes of New York in that era.  I can't tell if the stock footage is precisely from 1979 but it looks like other scenes from other films I've seen in that era.  It's edited together pretty well to the music of The Beatles, more specifically, "Come Together".  Followed is a great opening read from Franks War Journal before he gets ambushed by Jigsaw.  What follows is a great interaction between Shawn Parr's Frank Castle and Thomas Daniel's Jigsaw which includes both Shakespeare and Sid Vicious.

  As usual you can point to the soundtrack as being one of the short's major strengths.  When edited together with the vintage stock footage and into the scenes it makes the whole thing pop.  The dialog is strong with one small line where Frank tells Jigsaw to make friends with breath mints that fell a little flat with me but other than that Frank comes off as a total hardass in his fearless banter with Jigsaw and his cronies.  A pretty strong showing and worth the 9 or so minutes it would take someone to watch it.

Punisher '79-'82 IMDB

Blinky Productions

A word from Chris (stolen from his You Tube page) after the jump

A WORD FROM CHRIS

  Punisher'79 was shot in one day in a club located in the Bronx. The reason why I chose to set the film in 1979 was because I felt that was probably the only era where the Punisher and his actions of "kill em all and let God sort the rest out" were most acceptable. Frank Castle will never be as tough if he's not a Vietnam vet. That was where he was created. That is the world he loves- war. The Punisher is basically Marvel's Rambo, in my opinion at least. And he is only happy when he is fighting a war as I think he feels that's really the only thing he's good for.

  That being said, I wanted to do something different and original with the Punisher. I didn't want to make a fan film where he was morning yet again over his dead family, I didn't want to do Punisher Begins and I certainly didn't want to do a movie where he is just a mindless trigger happy brute killing thugs left and right with no signs of humanity. Sure, the Punisher is a killing machine, but he isn't Crying Freeman, I think he takes pleasure from time to time in what he does and in a twisted way doesn't want to have to stop. He's almost looking for an excuse to kill. And in my film, I wanted to put the Punisher in a scene where he basically treated himself to a body count as well as to show fans that Punisher is also a real dick when he wants to be. He's rude, insulting and a general wise ass when he wants to be. And it's those charming characteristics that were the driving force behind this film. I hope you liked it.