They Call Me Jeeg

A movie doesn't have to be slickly produced to make me happy. And it doesn't have to make an awful lot of sense, and it certainly is not required that it have a big budget and a cast of superstars. All that I need for a good movie experience is an honest effort with a clever script , and fine performances.

Thus, with that in mind, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed the Italian superhero movie, "They Call Me Jeeg" ("Jeeg Robot" upon release in Italy).

Here we have the story of a loser schmuck who ends up getting doused in, apparently, a toxic soup of radioactive chemicals. Initially making him very sick, he eventually discovers that his bath in the concoction has given him two superhuman powers: amazing strength, and the ability to heal at an unbelievably accelerated rate.

Now, there is certainly nothing unique about the method by which the protagonist gets his powers of super-strength and hyper-healing. Chemicals and radioactivity combining to give a person god-like muscles and the ability to heal instantly are routine in comic books. What makes Jeeg different is the hero himself.

Before he becomes known as "Jeeg" he is Enzo Ceccotti (played by Claudio Santamaria) a common thug and purse-snatcher. We first encounter him as he is fleeing from the police on foot (he's far too poor to own either a car or a motorbike) over the theft of a nice wristwatch. The chase leads him to the river where he hides the watch on a barge and avoids the police by jumping into the river and using the hull of the barge to hide. The police leave and he climbs out, but not before puncturing a barrel of the radioactive brew that sickens him and later transforms him into a superman.

There really is not much to recommend the character of Enzo. He's just a big strong-arm thug with some muscles and a good pair of lungs for outrunning the cops. Even his intelligence is not so good and he can't even find a job with the lowest level of the local organized crime. Once he sells his goods to a fence he buys food and retires to his hovel to watch X-rated movies. There seems to be nothing there in the way of heroic substrate.

Eventually, though, after a while he discovers that his bath in the chemicals has given him super-strength so vast that he can punch through concrete and steel, bend metal bars, and that his body can heal from gunshot wounds within a few hours.

But Enzo has no intention of becoming a hero until bad fortune makes him into a reluctant guardian of a mentally deranged woman (Alessia, played by Ilenia Pastorelli) whose father was murdered in Enzo's presence. She thinks Enzo might somehow know what happened to her dad so she keeps at him like the little girl that she emotionally is until he accidentally displays his powers in front of her and she thinks that he is the human incarnation of her favorite cartoon character, Robot Jeeg.

Slowly, methodically, she convinces him to stop using his power to steal money (he initially rips an automatic teller machine out of a brick wall when he figures out that he can do it), and to instead use his power for good.

Into this mix we are introduced to a local low-level crime figure named Fabio Cannizzaro who is a total psychopath with a wealth of annoying personality and a vast streak of violence. Played brilliantly by Luca Marinelli I at first found the character so over the top that he was annoying, but soon realized that he was playing the character just about right for what eventually happens.

Fabio, obsessed with the news of the superman (no one knows who he is) eventually figures out that Jeeg is actually Enzo and he captures Alessia to make him give up the secret of his heightened strength. Without giving too much more away, the situation gets really complicated for both hero, villain, damsel, and everyone else involved with the trio.

Ultimately I found the script just clever enough to keep the project a couple of levels above even the most highly budgeted US superhero movie. The hero remains a big, powerful thug with a heart of gold and fists of steel. The villain ended up reminding me more than a little of Steve Ditko's The Creeper, and this added to the fun.

Another thing that I liked is that while the script does wrap things up in a tidy, logical bundle, it's not all happiness for all involved. In addition, the acting of the three main actors who portray Enzo, Fabio, and Allesia are excellent. The three do a great job and their performances held my attention. Hell---Luca Marinelli could probably make a career in the US, at least playing character roles.

I'd heard this was a good film, and few movies that I hear about this way pan out for me. "They Call Me Jeeg" did meet the hype. Heck...it might have exceeded it. A great, simple, clever, honestly created low-budget superhero movie.

Enzo, having discovered that he can bend steel with his bare hands.

Fabio, chewing the scenery in villainous style.

Allesia, the deranged, innocent, childlike damsel.

Searching for the Lightning

After Steve Ditko left Marvel for points elsewhere, it is obvious to anyone who has observed his career and his work that he was going to do his best to top what he had done with The Amazing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Both of those characters had been works of near-genius and he was out to prove to the world (and especially to Martin Goodman and Stanley Lieber) that he could do it again.

When you look at the power of the work he was creating for Warren Publications you can see that Ditko was spreading his creative wings and trying new things. When you see the art he was putting down on the page for Charlton it was obvious he was doing his damndest to duplicate the magic of Spider-Man within a different world and with similar characters.

But it was with the things he created at DC that one tosses aside any idea that he wasn't out for blood, so to speak. Ditko was going to prove to everyone that lightning does strike twice, and he was the man to cast that thunderbolt down.

Alas, it wasn't to be. With The Creeper, he was doing his best to recapture what he had done with Spider-Man. It ultimately failed, not just for reasons of content and not having the right voice, but due to Ditko's health problems at the time, which were apparently severe.

One project that held a lot of promise for both Ditko and his fans was THE HAWK and THE DOVE. This was a heavy-handed attempt at political commentary by Ditko. On philosophical and political lines it failed because Ditko held ideas and expressed philosophies that I can only describe as neo-Fascist. There's really no other way to term them. His intent was to try to give voice to both sides of the war/anti-war struggle then running through America's collective psyche. But because Ditko was such an adamant right wing extremist, he could not adequately do justice to what was otherwise a creative and honorable attempt. His readers, the base to whom he was aiming the book, were more than likely to be leftists, and Ditko's fascistic rants just rubbed them the wrong way.

And so, the book being a failure on so many other levels, it failed on the level that mattered most: the bottom freaking line. The book lingered for six issues, most of them under the draftsmanship of Gil Kane, but it was finally cancelled. And so, what had begun with so much fanfare and so much optimism--Ditko's move from Marvel to DC--ended up as a bit of a whimper.

Ironically, though, all of the characters that Ditko either created or reimagined for Charlton and DC have had extended lives for the corporation that ended up owning them. The Hawk and the Dove still flit through the pages at DC. The Creeper rises now and again to lay claim to the copyright and thrill the modern fans. Ditko's Blue Beetle has enjoyed many great runs under the authorship of other artists and scripters. And The Question reigns supreme of his post-Marvel creations. It not only has the Question enjoyed great status and sales on its own, but was copied by Alan Moore and became the most popular part of DC's THE WATCHMEN as the thinly veiled analog, Rorschach.

The lightning finally did strike again for Ditko. Unfortunately those thunderbolts landed decades later than intended and exposed gold for those other than the man for whom they were meant.

My copy of THE HAWK AND THE DOVE #2.