The Crusaders #357: Experiment in Evil!

The Crusaders is a comic book film that seems to have been way ahead of the curve in terms of giving heroes & villains an actual grounded persona. It's low budg, but it has a LOT of fun & innovative special effects that shows the filmmaker is obviously a true comic fan. After watching it two, three times, I realized there are a BUNCH of Easter eggs, so keep your eyes open. Super fun details are ALL over this film. I think it's a sleeper that's gonna catch a cult following!

If you're looking for a 200 million dollar budget with state of the art special effects then you'll probably want to give this low budget wonder a pass. I liked it though. I liked it a lot. It started out a bit weak in my opinion with a big comic book super fight. Right off the bat they make the film look like a living comic and that's a great idea. Too bad the special effects don't back it up. That said, once we got in to the story it was really interesting. Without going in to spoilers, the leader of the superheroes is a Batman/Question type who looks like he might be slipping over to the dark side. I thought it was a really interesting story and there are some pretty cool performances in it.

I saw this film so many years ago at San Diego Comic Con. I loved it! It starts out campy and then gradually becomes more dramatic. It literally looks like a comic book! If I remember correctly it even had ads for sea monkeys. There were differently a lot of old fashioned comic ads posted throughout the movie.

As I said before, it's really funny in parts but then becomes very dramatic. I don't want to give anything away but two of the five main heroes have some serious darkness going on in their lives. A real unique movie and I wish that somebody would release this so I can see it again.

Its a comic book that comes to life It's a lot like the old Batman and Robin TV series I loved the story line of good and evil I really loved how the violence is in pop and pow like the old Batman TV series, this way the kids can enjoy it as much as I did. It is something I would love to see more of. I think it would make a good TV series for todays families. What I did not like about it was each part not long enough I could not wait for the next part I need more I thing each part was to be a page in the book but I would like to see a part to be as much as 1/2 of a book or so. I just left me wanting more and I could not see any thing pass part 13, so I feel like I did not get the hole story will be waiting for more to come out.

Would love to see it go to the Movies or a TV series, as for the action the part with Ace when the is fighting with the cards that was not real enough the cards should have been able to cut his throat or something like that.

I think it would be fair to say that this film is genuinely unique. I have never seen anything quite like it and I mean that in the best way possible. If at times, the amount of characters and plot points seems overwhelming, it is all part of the feel that this story has been going on for a long time and if you'd only read those other 356 issues, you'd know EXACTLY who everyone was and how they inter-related to each other. I found this to be a lot of the fun - keeping up with the, at times, breakneck comic book pace, even when I didn't fully understand what each character's powers were or how they were using them on each other. You kind of figure that out as you go. You get the feeling that these characters were around long before you got here and that, despite the fact that this would be a pivotal issue in the storyline of at least one major character, they will still be around for many issues to come after the film ends!

The use of framing devices and literal comic book frames to set the comic book tone works amazingly well. The sense that we are watching a comic book come to life is almost flawless. I am also impressed with some of the daring tone of the storyline. While much of the tone of the film is geared for kids (including old Batman television show-like Bams and Pows) and while we even see what appears to be a fairly young boy reading the comic, many of the themes are decidedly adult. While some issues such as domestic violence sit a bit uneasily, the overall theme which questions how acceptable it is to use evil to accomplish good is both powerful and ominously prescient for our times.