Shameful Shockumentary Turns Tragedy to Titillation
While movie reviews are usually left to the good people on the arts page, the latest effort from documentarian Lester Moore (of "Secret Identity" and "Life of Crime" 'fame'), "The Kinky Kapers", deserves-nay, demands comment.
The film tells the story of the 2005 incidents, so named by this paper's headline writers. Actually, it begins almost a year earlier, with footage from the only battle between the Depilator and GoGodiva of the Hairdo Heroes in which the latter was successfully blasted full-on, leaving her completely exposed and allowing the villain to escape. The film's narration suggests, without evidence, that this incident may have somehow inspired Wilhelm Von Winter. One suspects that it was included simply to increase the already-burgeoning count of unclothed superhumans in the film, with this theory offered as an afterthought.
The film then, using narration and ambush interviews combined with clips from the news, security camera, and footage from the city's army of citizen paparazzi, details the crime spree that Von Winter's robotic henchmen embarked upon. Von Winter had invented a tuned entropy-focus weapon that, when activated, caused the special fabrics used in nearly all superhero (and -villain) costumes to essentially disintegrate in a matter of seconds. The device had a range of nearly a city block, and its initial uses allowed the Wintermechs to successfully complete their crimes. After a small number of these crimes, the Fearless Friends of Freedom successfully tacked Von Winter to ground and placed that evil genius under arrest.
This was not the end of the story, though: a few months later, Von Winter's device was recreated, and soon dozens of supervillains had one of their own. Some were able to modify their own costumes to be immune to the effect, while others simply abandoned any pretense of modesty, they used the device to incapacitate their opposition. The tactic had diminishing returns as the superheroes eventually simply focused on the matter at hand, apprehending the criminals while providing the many hours of softcore hero-fetish pornography from which the film was pieced together. (Lester indulges his penchant for conspiracy theory, as well, floating the idea that this entire wave was engineered as a cover for some of the prelimnary breakins and other crimes that set the stage for the Palka Heist)
Near the end of the crime-wave, just before Jack "King" Coleman developed a reliable countermeasure against Von Winter's device, tragedy struck. Johnny Sonic, having just activated his Hypersonic Bowtie, was englufed by the device's field, which disintegrated his costume, including those parts which served to brace him against the recoil from that powerful device. As a result, his neck snapped and he died almost instantly. The film has the unmitigated gall to play this tragic moment for laughs, an act of monumental bad taste made even worse by that fact that, on the day of its release, Johnny Sonic's adopted daughter and heroic successor lies in a hospital bed poised on the brink of life and death.
It is unfortunate that, in this world, controversy and calls to boycott celluloid trash of this kind only tend to bring greater publicity and viewership, but if the people of Cosmopolis have any sense of decency they will stay home rather that watching Lester Moore's "The Kinky Kapers."
-Editorial by Frank Cooper
See Also:
Depilator
Fearless Friends of Freedom
Hairdo Heroes
Palka Heist
Wilhelm Von Winter
This is a JKL entry in the Cosmopolis Lexicon