What is this, "Jeopardy"?! Enough with the questions already!

Sandy Collora's been involved in the special effects and conceptual design for a good number of flicks over the years. At age 17 he worked at Stan Winston studies, honing his craft and later working alongside FX big names like Rob Bottin and my hometown hero Rick Baker (Binghamton represent!... or something) and contributing to flicks like Little Monsters, Predator 2, The Crow, Men In Black and Dogman... huh? Oh, I mean, "and Dogma". Like everybody else in Hollywood, Mr. Collora (as in "Cholera"?!) wasn't content with just working on the creature designs and special effects work so he got a few friends together, borrowed the keys to Stan Winston Studios for a weekend and made a little student film of one of the biggest names in comicbooks (and one of the more infamous celluloid tragedies after the perversions of Joel Schumacher got to him): Batman. This brings us to his 8 minutes live-action comicbook resume: Batman: Dead End.

Looks like the clown prince o' crime (played by Andy "the guy who played Boner in 'Growing Pains'!" Koenig) has broken out of Arkham Asylum yet again and I'll give you one guess as to who's hitting the streets to bring him back. And your guess is... Aquaman?! What the fuck is that! Aside from the Joker's occasional passion for giving fish his trademark Smilex™ makeover, why in the name of the darkest chasms of the San Andreas Fault would Aquaman be after the Joker?!...

Oh, I get it, mister and madame Smart-Ass are screwing with uncle Anubis. Very funny. In fact, it's so funny I'd like to gouge out your eye, take a cue from R. Lee Ermey, and skull fuck you till you think you've got a head full of tapioca... too much? I thought so. Sorry. Kind of funny though, slipping a Full Metal Jacket gag into a review for a Batman short film involving the Joker... you know, cuz Matthew Modine's character in FMJ was nicknamed Joker and all... haha.... hah...... ha......... Nevermind.

Anyway, Bruce Wayne's gone for the night and it's Batman's time to go to work. With no effort at all, the caped crusader finds his arch-nemesis fleeing through one of Gotham City's countless dark alleyways, barefoot and still wearing his straight jacket. The two trade blows and banters, with Jokey's jabs stinging a little more under the support of a pair of brass knucks. Joker accuses Bats of creating him and neglecting him like some illegitimate child, Bats accuses Joker and the criminal element of making him dress in tights and brutalize the system. A typical exchange that's bound to end with the vigilante mammal taking the renegade playing card back to Arkham, correct? Looks that way... until an Alien decends from the rooftops and drags Laughing Boy into the darkness!

I'll give ya a minute to reel your jaw back up from your lap.

Yes, that's right, this short doesn't just infringe on the copyrights of DC Comics, but on the properties of Dark Horse Comics as well! The Alien's not the only Dark Horse character dragged into Collora's fanboy fantasy film though, as we see when the bug's about to lay the ol' double jaw chew down on the caped crusader only to have it's phallic shaped coconut go *splut* thanks to a familiar trio of glowing red dots. Yep, Batman's occasional enemies the Predators are here too! With the Alien no longer moving beyond the death twitch phase, Bats picks a fight with this new party-goer, first destroying the monster's shoulder mounted laser canon (ruined by a stainless steel boomerang? Hardly hi-tech). With his long range arms out of commision, the Pred takes the initiative to claim his trophy the old fashioned way, mano-a-mano. Bats fends the creature off with a conveniently placed lead pipe (vacant alleyways are full of them after all), until his enemy from the stars pops out his Wolverine style talons. Always prepared, our hero tosses the pipe, dropping blugeoning as his attack of choice in favor of whipping out a Bat-Blade hand weapon and *CLANG*ing sharp things with the extraterrestrial big game hunter. Machismo you say? Oozing from every pore.

Lucky for the good guy that they're not big on kung-fu in a galaxy far far away, as a few quick reveral moves leave the brute wide open and vulnerable for the Batman's killing blow. This special delivery of pain by the spandex clad Mr. McFeely of the night is interrupted though, when a trio of the Predator's similarly motivated amigos pop up behind the Dark Knight. Is the doomed billionaire their target, or would that title belong to the swarming Alien brood materializing from the darkness behind the world's greatest detective? Either way, it's pretty much a definite that Sandy Collora's just spelled the hero's fate C-O-M-P-L-E-T-E-L-Y F-U-C-K-E-D.

And so ends possibly the hardest of the hardcore for Batman's list of live-action adventures... and the 8 greatest minutes in my fanboy life since the dessert rampage of The Hulk.

Kids, I think daddy just crapped his pants. Would you mind going to his dresser and grabbing him another pair? And bring a wash cloth with you too.

Sadly it's no doubt that we'll never see a project like this grow up into a full, feature length geek orgasm. Not only would it be a pain-in-the-proverbial-ass task to get the rights to all the characters (though with the upcoming Alien Vs. Predator, it might not be a totally intangible fantasy), but thanks to Tim Burton's Batman, the caped crusader's film continuity would be utterly fucked... then again, it'd be easier to explain the Joker's defeat of death after falling 15 stories from the roof of a church than it would to explain how Mr. Mom morphed into Iceman and then into that guy from "E.R."...

Collora's proven with this brief glimpse into his directorial mind that the man's more than ready to make the jump into the big chair. Great shots left and right, illustrated best by the scene of Batman rising to his feet from the alleyway floor (check out my Easter Egg for this review by clicking on the rolling head graphic at the bottom of the screen and see what I mean) and the closing shot of Batman about to face the brawl of a superhero lifetime. Poetry in motion folks.

There were moments in Dead End that I questioned Collora's choice to go with the fanboy friendly spandex costume for the Dark Knight, but the cut figure of Clark Bartram made sure there would be no embarassing Adam West moments for this short film! At least there aren't any Bat nipples on this outfit...

The other costumes are dead on (thanks again to Mr. Director's connections to Stan Winston Studios) and the Joker looks a lot like his beloved Jim Lee incarnation from the recent Batman: Hush saga. Very twisted and goblin like, just the way he should be. On the down side though, the acting is bad... very bad... ugly bad... Though he looks the part, Bartram's no actor. Am I surprised his only previous work was on a workout show? No. And Boner? Again, he looks great in the makeup, but Koenig missed the acting boat after his days sidekicking to Kirk Cameron. As for fanboy nitpicks, the opening radio report refers to the psychiatrist at Arkham as being "Dr. Harley Quinn" when Harley's actual name is "Harleen Quinzel". Also, the Predator's trademark visual is that of a heat sensory scanner, NOT that of somebody spilling Rainbow Brite's love juice all over an image, as illustrated by one of the below screen shots. Is it really so hard to get the technology to shoot the scene in a "heat sensor" mode that they had to resort to this?!

Other than this though, I find little wrong in these 8 minutes of magic... then again acting is a big part of movie-making, so let's just say that Collora's the star of this show and I urge any studios looking for directors for their superhero projects to contact this man and get a copy of his "resume". To those who think the inclusion of the Aliens and Predators into the film is "stupid" or "cheesy", let it be noted that Batman's taken on both species of creature in his comicbook incarnation (the Predators several times in fact) and considering that the Aliens are probably the Preds' greatest "natural" enemy, it's really not hard to believe that they'd follow a group of them to Gotham. And for the one or two fanboys who have yet to taste this forbidden fruit? Well, it's been pretty much outlawed thanks to it's blatant ignoring of US copyright laws, but if you surf person-to-person download groups like Kazaa or Morpheus you should be able to dig up a copy. As for me? Uhm, I no longer have a copy of it, I swear! Entrapment! ENTRAPMENT!