Still another guilty pleasure

Any list of the all-time worst movies based on comic book heroes will inevitably include the made-for-TV Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, first broadcast on Fox in 1998. Written by David S. Goyer and directed by Rod Hardy, the movie starred David Hasselhoff as Fury, Lisa Rinna as Val, and even had a guy playing a cryogenically suspended Baron Von Strucker. Visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) and you’ll see that the film has earned a 3.3 user rating (from a possible 10) and comments like “It couldn’t have sucked harder.” The movie definitely has a bad rep.

So here’s the deal: Best Buy now exclusively offers Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD on DVD. And I couldn’t be more pleased.

Granted, the movie’s not great. But after years of having kept my mouth shut, I’ve gotta finally come clean and confess that the Hasselhoff Nick Fury is a guilty pleasure of mine. Hasselhoff may not be today’s Fury (that’d be Samuel L. Jackson, of course), but he sure is the pre-Steranko Fury of 1965-66. Most of his lines sound like they were lifted straight out of the old Strange Tales stories. And Lisa Rinna isn’t much of an actress (although she’s been playing one for two decades), but she’s killer hot. Plus, even though the story’s pretty pedestrian (like most of those original stories from Strange Tales, incidentally), Hydra’s there, the SHIELD logo’s there, the latex jumpsuits are there, and the helicarrier’s there (and it looks damn good).

I watched Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD when it first aired ten years ago. I’ve seen it two or three times on cable since then. And I just picked up a DVD copy at Best Buy.

Guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow night, instead of watching election returns?