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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
Arrow Video’s
upcoming 4K UHD boxed set of the original three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
films, a trilogy of live-action pictures based on Kevin Eastman and Peter
Laird’s multimedia comic book franchise, represents easily the hottest and most
coveted package yet to come out of the boutique releasing label this year. If nothing else, timing it for a December 16th
release makes it feel like the ultimate Christmas present for kids as well as
kids at heart like myself who grew up with the action figures, the animated
series, the video games and finally the movies (all of which I caught in the
theater as a preteen). Featuring a
quartet of anthropomorphic turtles trained in ninjitsu ranging from leader
Leonardo, teen genius Donatello, goofball Michelangelo and angry Raphael; all
of whom work under the tutelage of their ninja master, the anthropomorphic rat
named Splinter, battling against evil thriving in the heart of the Big Apple…
when they aren’t pounding down pizza like no tomorrow. The series began
initially as a comic book parody of the superhero subgenre, but following the
release of Tim Burton’s Batman with its gritty and violent imagining of
the caped crusader, the first film in the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles series moved away from the campier elements into something darker,
more palpable, and unveiled a tightly-budgeted visual-effects marvel.
Perhaps the pinnacle
penultimate film to ever come out of Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest empire,
responsible for launching the careers of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, the film’s
success is largely credited with effects by the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, masterful
direction by Steve Barron (also responsible for the Billie Jean and
Take on Me music videos, and the romantic comedy Electric Dreams),
and character actor Elias Koteas’ delightfully entertaining performance as
Casey Jones. The story is simple enough and
draws elements from the comic books as well as the animated series’ popularity
while jettisoning characters like Rocksteady, Bebop and Krang: a band of
teenage thieves training in ninjitsu under Master Shredder and his Foot Clan of
ninjas are waging war against New York City with numerous robberies. Local news reporter April O’Neil (Judith
Hoag) who is highly critical of the chief of police’s ineffectiveness in
curtailing the crime wave is on her way home from work one night when she is
attacked by thieves, only for a stealthy band of ninjas to come to her rescue,
much to the bafflement of law enforcement.
Turns out these are our titular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles making
their long-awaited delivery on the film’s sneaky marketing campaign with the
tagline ‘Lean, Green, and on the Screen’.
By now, ruminating
too much further on the plot points pretty much everyone knows of the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles films is futile. The picture opened against
mixed-to-negative critical reception, but with a meager $13.5 million budget
went on to become (up to that time) the highest grossing independent film ever,
raking in well over $202 million worldwide and establishing the Turtles as a
formidable moneymaking franchise. A taut
little masterwork of more-or-less Hong Kong cinema transposed into New York
City through an American comic-book/action figure/animated franchise, Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles emerged as something of an analogue to the Ghostbusters
franchise in terms of sales and merchandise tapping into the youth
market. A film that’s still better than
it has any right to be thanks to Barron’s fierce visual command, lensed by Muppet
Treasure Island cinematographer John Fenner, sharp editing co-opted by
future Quentin Tarantino editor Sally Menke, arresting production design by Roy
Forge Smith and a rousing electronic score by UHF composer John Du Prez,
it remains one of the finest comic book/animated series adaptations to film of
the 1990s, second only to Batman and Dick Tracy.
To try and express
the anticipation I felt as a child when I first saw the teaser of four turtle
shells floating to the surface of a pond as the title cards flew out at the
audience is hard to put into words.
Looking at it now without prior experience I might not have had the same
reaction to it. But growing up marinated
by the games, the animated series and the action figure line, youngsters like
myself were more than prepared to see the turtles cross over into the live
action universe. I vividly remember the
home video release by Family Home Entertainment, an indie logo at the time
specializing in kids tapes, on a green VHS tape and rewatching the film
upstairs on my CRT television. I
remember it being an unusual release that fluctuated between 1.33:1 fullscreen
and occasional subtle shifts into 1.66:1 widescreen almost like the tape
release of Ghostbusters II.
Unfortunately the sequels I never really rewatched on home video until
my dad picked up the laserdiscs for the second and third installments. Second to the Burger King Kids’ Club tapes of
the animated series, the FHE tape of the first film still holds a special place
in this film collector’s heart.
Some of the film’s
best moments come purely from Barron’s visual imagination, like when
Michelangelo rushes up the sewer manhole when he finds out April O’Neil has
leftover pizza, and the frame rate speeds up.
Flashback sequences told in campfire story form by Splinter are rendered
in gritty blurry grain-filled sequences that feel like 16mm home movies, a
technique he’d use again in Coneheads during the Kodachrome
montage. A shot of the camera encircling
Raphael as he cries out upon learning of his master’s abduction
that starts to go towards his mouth, then cuts to a grate and the sound of his
screams echoing out of the sewer. Then
there’s the use of lighting where the turtles cameo in Splinter’s stories like
they’re backlit for a poster shoot, or later when they meditate together and
the flames turn bright blue. Many number
of visual ideas, stemming purely from Barron, which under another director
might’ve been lost to the ether.
Performance-wise, the
casting of Judith Hoag as April O’Neil is solid, and to her credit,
she inherited a lot of knowledge from her Cadillac Man co-star Robin Williams who was an avowed Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles fan, though the role would be recast with Paige Turco
who took on the character for the second and third feature films. Elias Koteas who is one of the most
underrated and brilliant character actors working today, ranging from Terrence
Malick’s The Thin Red Line and David Cronenberg’s Crash.
He
has wily fun in creating the character of Casey Jones onscreen with a
charismatic and energetic performance akin to the energies of Raul Julia in the
role of Gomez Addams in The Addams Family. It is an electric show-stealing performance
that would return for another round in the third film, though the quality of
the series (and its effects) had declined considerably by then, which we’ll get
into later. Alamo Bay and McBain
actor Jay Patterson as April’s strained and ineffective boss mostly spars
with April while dealing with his delinquent son Danny (Michael Turney) and
fending off the vengeful griping of Chief Sterns (Raymond Serra). For those who are looking, Sam Rockwell plays
the head thug of the Foot Clan well before his career took off,
while Die Hard with a Vengeance actor James Saito lurks beneath the mask
and spiked shoulder blades of the Shredder.
And of course there’s
the combination of voice acting, puppeteering and in-suit acting with Brian
Tochi as Leonardo, Corey Feldman as Donatello, Josh Pais as Raphael, Robbie
Rist as Michelangelo, and Kevin Clash as Splinter. Brian Tochi initially started out in The
Omega Man, Revenge of the Nerds and two of the Police Academy sequels
before becoming a regular voice actor in Disney films. Everyone knows Corey Feldman’s ongoing career
path, and though he’s perhaps misdirected now, as the voice of Donatello you
can almost picture Feldman in the costume.
Meanwhile The Brady Bunch actor Robbie Rist best known for
playing Cousin Oliver did the comical jokey Michelangelo, who might be the most
complex and nuanced character among the turtles for being overtly silly but
secretly saddened by the possibility of his master being gone. Scream 3 and Synecdoche New York actor Josh Pais handled the voice of Raphael, another
instance of a character actor going on to appear in some pretty major
films. Kevin Clash is no stranger to the
Jim Henson workshop, having puppeteered Elmo on Sesame Street before
eventually taking on The Happytime Murders. Despite controversies surrounding the
puppeteer you can read about online, Clash remained active in the Jim Henson
workshop for decades and even reprised the voice of Splinter in the second
film.
One area worth
bearing mention in the first film is an entire subplot involving Michelangelo’s
reaction to Splinter’s abduction.
Initially when Splinter talks about how he’ll be gone one day,
Michelangelo is seen off to the side ordering pizza ignoring Splinter’s
speech. When Splinter is kidnapped, it
takes a toll on Michelangelo and originally he goes off on his own in an
intensive training montage which further explains why following meditation
Mikey is the only one of the turtles that is seen crying. In a montage where the turtles are training,
we see a couple of shots of Mikey punching a bag followed by a shot of him
crying out ‘Splinter’ which was promptly dubbed over with Raphael’s voice. Why it never made the final cut is anyone’s
guess but it would’ve fleshed out Michelangelo’s arc a lot more and remains a
mystical chapter of unreleased scenes from the first film.
A year later,
screenwriter Todd W. Langen from the first film, co-authored by Bobby Herbeck,
returned to the writing table picking up more or less where the first film left
off. However, Barron stepped down while Doctor Detroit director
Michael Pressman took up the reins while eventual Captain America: The First
Avenger cinematographer Shelly Johnson provided the film’s more overtly
poppy kid-oriented looking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of
the Ooze. Replacing Judith Hoag as
April with Paige Turco while Donatello’s stuntman in the first film, Ernie Reyes Jr., effectively comes out of his shell as a
supporting character named Keno leaving Leif Tilden to do the in-suit
performing, and recasting the Shredder with Rescue Dawn actor François Chau, the film’s biggest addition comes
in the form of David Warner’s Professor Jordan Perry, a chief scientist
in developing a canister of green ooze responsible for mutating the turtles and
rat into anthropomorphic creatures.
Adding in two new
mutant adversaries, Tokka (the snapping turtle) and Rahzar (a gray wolf), the
plot line involves the turtles and Splinter taking refuge in April’s apartment
following the defeat of the Shredder in the previous film. In a nearby junkyard where the remaining Foot
Clan members are foraging with Master Tatsu (Toshishiro Obata), a severely
disfigured Shredder reemerges vowing vengeance on the turtles by kidnapping the
Professor of Techno Global Research Industries (TGRI for short) and seeks to
foster mutants loyal to the Foot Clan who will bring
the turtles to their knees. Meanwhile
the Foot Clan is rebuilding its numbers. To try and infiltrate the clan, Keno,
a pizza delivery boy with some karate training, hatches the idea to enlist as a
trainee. Only a possible antidote which
has yet to be developed by the captured Professor Jordan Perry holds the key to
foiling the Shredder’s plan to destroy the turtles and further wreak havoc on
New York City.
Kind of the Ghostbusters
II of the series, featuring a more overtly comical environment and a weaker
plot line with fewer stakes, and more Vanilla Ice shoehorned into the narrative
to try and make him a thing with kids, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The
Secret of the Ooze is one of those movies that entertained as a kid but
feels closer to the kind of goofiness you’d see in a Hong Kong comedy than a
direct sequel to the still dark, gritty and plausible first entry. It favors fist fighting and silliness over
realistic weaponized violence while also swapping out Casey Jones with Keno and
Professor Perry; it feels like one step forward while another goes
backwards. There’s also more pronounced
use of cartoon sound effects than the first with many sounds of punches or
kicks giving off a Looney Tunes effect akin to the cacophonous affront
to the ears in films like Batman & Robin. In theory, as a film it is perhaps closer to
the sillier parody roots of the comics before veering into more serious areas,
but in practice it just feels safer. Though more polished and expensive
looking, it is nowhere near as visually dynamic or interesting as what Steve
Barron unleashed on audiences. Still,
fans of the wrestler Kevin Nash will enjoy his sneaky appearance as the briefly
glimpsed Super Shredder, though the performer later revealed the part was
originally intended for Predator actor Kevin Peter Hall. As for the voice actors, Brian Tochi, Robbie
Rist and Kevin Clash all returned while Donatello and Raphael were recast with
Adam Carl and Laurie Faso respectively.
Considerably more
expensive than the first, budgeted at $25 million including a massive subway
set which becomes the new hideout for the turtles, and the aforementioned
Vanilla Ice cameo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze opened
to mixed critical reception and a decidedly smaller profit margin at around $78
million. Critics (especially Roger
Ebert) took umbrage with the drastic tonal shift from the first film down to
its more bubbly, polished and bright-looking version of New York. Moreover the carefree kind of Home Alone cartoonish
violence seemed at odds with the tone while others felt the animatronic effects
and the overall look of the film had a strangely poppier aesthetic. Still, John Du Prez nevertheless won a BMI
Film Music Award for his compositional work while a new toy line, including a
mock-up canister of ooze, rolled out with action figures and later food
products, including a gelatin ooze dessert.
A couple of years
later, around the time the popularity and hype of the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles franchise seemed to be waning, writer-director Stuart Gillard, best
known for his Disney television work including Avonlea and later the
series Lonesome Dove, took the reins in what is generally regarded as
the bottom barrel-scraping nadir of the series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
III. Though it brings back Elias
Koteas and carries over Paige Turco as the new April O’Neill, it had a smaller
budget than the second film, and more or less does away with the Foot Clan and
other supporting characters from the franchise entirely in lieu of new
characters. Mostly it’s a time-travel
film involving an ancient Japanese scepter which sends April O’Neill and the
four turtles back into 1603 feudal Japan, and swaps them out with the son of a
warlord and four samurai on horseback engaged in warfare. Casey Jones is tasked with watching over the
five Japanese soldiers in the present timeline while the turtles race to rescue
April and the scepter. Getting caught up
with villagers fighting against Lord Norinaga, the film does something screwy
with the timeline with the arrival of Whit, a prisoner who also happens to be
played by Elias Koteas, with confusion about his lineage to Casey Jones played
up for effect that’s more confounding than anything.
Though John Du Prez
gives a heightened medieval sounding score to the proceedings, and some of the
vistas from the arm-wrestling flick Over the Top cinematographer David
Gurfinkel have a slick polish to them, there’s an overall feeling of cheapness
to this third entry, replete with some of the worst editing effects in the
whole series. Inexplicably also edited by
William D. Gordean who assisted editing on the first film, there are scenes
here like a character falling into water with terrible looking green screen
that looks hastily rendered. The most
overqualified actor in the piece might be Stuart Wilson as the nefarious
long-haired Walker, who is a cartoonish kind of pilgrim trying to influence
Lord Norinaga, played by Southland Tales actor Sab Shimono. Equally overqualified is still-active actress
Vivian Wu from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and later Peter
Greenaway’s The Pillow Book. Her
career path seems unaffected by the affiliation with this third Ninja
Turtles film, and for what its worth she makes the village rebel
fierce but also vulnerable. Among the
voice actors, everyone from the first film except Josh Pais and
Kevin Clash returned, and although Tim Kelleher’s take on Raphael’s voice is
serviceable, the look and voice of this third Splinter by James Murray looks
and sounds dreadful. Maybe the worst interpretation
of Splinter next to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their
Shells Tour.
Budgeted at $21
million and released in the spring of 1993, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time was met with
universally negative critical reception.
That it wasn’t screened for critics was a telling sign, one review
noted, while others found the film infantilized the franchise and reduced the
turtles to corny sight gags and tacked on cartoon sound effects. Audiences and dedicated fans didn’t seem too
keen on it either, with many taking umbrage with the absence of any of the
original comic book characters, introducing new villains that never existed, or
were approved by the creators, though Kevin Eastman would later go on to say he
thought the second film was the worst in the series. Raking in somewhere around $54 million,
making it a box office disappointment, plans for an impending fourth iteration
were ultimately cancelled. It would be
the last time audiences saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in
live-action practical physical form interacting with people. From here on, the series would be animated
and the closest thing to a live action film came in 2014 with the mixed but
profitable reboot by Jonathan Liebesman, but otherwise the turtles were CGI
rendered and not a complex physical creation.
Now that we’ve
reached the end of the trilogy, the question on everyone’s minds,
including those who already preordered it is: How do they look and sound? To start with, the first film restored in 4K
from the original camera negative under the supervision of Arrow Films and
director Steve Barron is an out-of-the-gate triumph. Crisp, filmic yet grainy with beautiful deep
shadows and rich colors, this is as close to the original theatrical release as
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has ever looked on any home video
medium. Sound wise they’ve gone above
and beyond by using the original theatrical stereo mix, an alternative
“warrior” mix taken from the South Korean version renamed Teenage Mutant
Hero Turtles, and a brand new Dolby Atmos mix which breathes
phantasmagorical new sonic life into John Du Prez’s still powerful score and a
still rich sound design, taking you fully into the world lived in by the
turtles. Meanwhile the second and third
films were scanned in 4K from the interpositive rather than the negative
without the supervision of the filmmakers, though directors Michael Pressman
and Stuart Gillard did do an audio commentary for them. Each of the sequels includes either original
theatrical stereo or DTS-HD 5.1 surround audio.
Most fascinatingly in
the extras are the alternate versions and footage from variant releases of the
first and third films, complying with censorship standards. For instance, the UK release versions remove
all references to nunchaku and for posterity Arrow Video have included the full
length UK cut on the disc scanned in 4K.
The Korean version removes the word Ninja entirely from the title and
from references throughout the film, and footage for Splinter’s flashback story
about the Shredder has been reshot.
There’s also an alternate ending which feels more like what would or
wouldn’t evolve into the animated series with the turtles peering in the window
behind April’s boss’ back rather than the Cowabunga ending we all know and
love. As with the first film, which
seemed to face the heaviest censorship depending on the territory, anything
nunchaku related in the third film hit the cutting room floor with the UK
release.
In terms of packaging
and extras for this tightly packaged Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles Trilogy box, Arrow Video went crazy, including housing the discs
in a perfect bound collector’s booklet in the style of Roy’s Pizza menu,
including essay writing by Simon Ward, John Torrani and John Walsh. Each case for the film includes reversible
sleeve art and a double-sided foldout poster for all three films. Eight trading cards have been reprinted along
with four character stickers and a Roy’s Pizza loyalty card. Of the films, the first clearly got the most
special treatment, including the full extensive participation of Steve Barron
who also recently oversaw the Kino Lorber 4K UHD of Coneheads, and he
provides a new commentary as well as a video interview. There’s a newly filmed interview with four of
the original turtles participants including Robbie Rist, Brian Tochi, Ernie
Reyes Jr. who was inside the suit of Donatello before taking on Keno in the
second installment, and Kenn Scott. Also
including new interviews with actress Judith Hoag, producer Simon Fields, and
second-unit director and puppeteer Brian Henson, and a featurette exploring the
film’s iconic New York and North Carolina locations, the first disc is so
stacked to the gills it practically oozes off the disc (no pun intended).
Discs two and three
by contrast have a lot less, though some of the interviews that might’ve been
on the first film carry over, like a complete interview with John Du Prez who
diligently scored all three pictures. Though
the films would change qualitatively over the sequels, Du Prez’s music remained
integral to the feel of the New York lived in by the turtles. There’s also an interview with Big Trouble
in Little China and Fire in the Sky editor Steve Mirkovich; looking
at his oeuvre the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film is something
of an outlier for the editor ordinarily working in horror. There’s an archival
1991 making-of featurette for the film as well.
Onto disc three, there are two newly filmed interviews with actors Sab
Shimono and Vivian Wu,
but of the films here it understandably has the fewest extras and attention
shown to it.
By now, you’ve
probably already preordered this set and are eagerly awaiting for it to drop on
December 16th. For what it’s
worth, I can say with confidence this is one of the best and most ambitious
undertakings from Arrow Video done in the same year they somehow managed to
unveil ShawScope Volumes 3 and 4.
A hotly anticipated gift genre fans, comic book fans and above all Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles fans will relish in, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy couldn’t have turned out better in
terms of packaging, extras, picture and sound quality. Yeah, it might’ve been nice to have the
second and third films scanned from the original camera negative, but we don’t
care nearly as much about those two as the first, which still stands the test
of time as one of the best independent superhero action-comedy films of the
1990s. A staple of my childhood which
has aged like fine wine, the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles Trilogy,
though
beset by weaker sequels, nevertheless is unquestionably one of the top disc
releases of 2025!
--Andrew Kotwicki
--Jesse G. Barnes
--Blake O. Kleiner
--Christopher S. Jordan
