Chadzilla ROARS!!!

Evil Dead (2013)

"You have to get me out of here."

A group of estranged friends and family gather together in an isolated cabin in the woods, so they might help drug addict Mia (Jane Levy) kick the habit.

Something is not quite right in this cabin in the woods, though, and a monstrous evil is soon unleashed and begins killing them, one by one.

Charting the trajectory of how my interest in watching and reviewing the new Evil Dead movie rose and fell, before the movie was even released, is far more interesting than the movie itself.

My original intention had been to do an Original Versus Remake review.  But, as the remake's release date drew closer and closer, I found that my interest in watching the original Evil Dead never got to a point where doing so did not feel like a chore.  Not a good sign, that.

Turns out that, if I were going to watch an Evil Dead film, I wanted to watch the original's far superior sequel, Evil Dead 2, and just ignore the original.  The problem with doing that being the 2013 version of Evil Dead is not a remake of Evil Dead 2.  So, there is no long form Original Versus Remake style review of the two films.  Sorry.  Short form Original Versus Remake review: the original film is the better movie, by far.

My inability to rouse any interest whatsoever in watching the original film (which I have not seen from beginning to end since, I don't know, the early nineties, maybe) led to my questioning whether or not I really wanted to see this more moneyed take on the subject matter.  This was also the point where the disappointing reviews started popping up.  The consensus seemed to be that the remake was gory, but not the slightest bit scary.  ("And neither was the original, for that matter," saith the genre's many apologists in response.)  After giving it some thought, I decided it would be for the best if I just skipped seeing the movie.  I no longer saw anything of interest there for me.

Then there came a time where I really needed to get out of the house and clear my head.  My Artistic Muse was cranky and not forthcoming with the Creative Inspiration.  My imagination felt about as capable of engaging in a flight of fancy as a chunk of concrete.  I needed something brainless and loud to lose myself in.  That is when I decided I might as well go see the new Evil Dead...

I will now point you to the opening paragraph of this review, so I can remind you that I think what I just told you is far more interesting than the film I watched.

Long before the title card gets blasted across the screen, I saw that this new Evil Dead was in serious trouble, story wise.  The film opens cold, with a blood caked teenaged girl stumbling through a fog draped wood.  (Not all that uncommon of a sight in a horror movie, true.)  Two hillbillies then pop up out of nowhere, capture the blood caked girl and knock her unconscious.  (Once more, not all that uncommon of an occurence in a horror movie.)  The girl awakens in cold, dark cellar.  She is surrounded by weird hillbillies and... her father!  Daddy claims that what is about to happen is meant to save her soul, for the girl has become possessed by some dark and evil force, that she has murdered her own mother.  The girl begs and pleads to be released, that such a thing could not be true, but to no avail.  The father prepares to set the girl on fire, while a witch woman reads from from the Illustrated Book of the Evil Dead.  As flames begin to eat away at the trapped girl, her pleading warps into demonic taunting.  Turns out she really was possessed, after all.  (Once more, with feeling, a turn of events that is not at all uncommon for the start of a horror movie.)  BAM!!!  Title.

Here's the problem with this opening: who all these people are, how they came to be there, and why the Witch Woman and Her Chorus of Inbred Hillbilly Mountain Folk are helping them, is NEVER EXPLAINED.  The entire scene could have been cut from the film and not a single person would have thought that something was missing, because NOT ONE of these people are mentioned or ever shown again.  The whole thing stinks of something shot to "punch up" the opening of the movie. 

The cannon fodder then comes out from behind the title card, to find their deceased mother's cabin in the woods has been broken into.  Blood is smeared all over the floor and they find a whole bunch of slaughtered animals strung up in the basement.  (By the way, where did all these animals come from?  They were not shown in the pre-title credit sequence.)  Their response to these disturbing discoveries is to just shrug them off as "kind of weird" and go on about their business.  Really?  Would it have killed the movie to have at least one scene where these characters alert the local police?  There's an abandoned car behind the cabin (fans will recognize the car as Sam Raimi's*) and no one asks about it.  Not even the one person new to the cabin asks, "Do you think this car might have something to do with this?"  No, they just use it as a bench.

In the original (hey, I am talking about it after all) there is a token degree of explanation as to how and why the Book of the Dead came to be in that cabin in the woods.  The characters discover that the prior tenant of the cabin in the woods had been a professor, who had been recording his translations of said Book of the Dead.  The characters play the translation recordings and unleash the horror.  It might not be the greatest of explanations, granted, but at least the film tried.  The new one doesn't.

Once these horrible horrors are unleashed, why do the characters stay in the cabin?  Why don't they get out of those dark, scary woods?  The original posited an almost Lovecraftian reason for the characters inability to leave.  They try to leave and can't, the Dark Force in the Woods has destroyed the only way out.  In the new version, Mia, the Final Possessed Girl, is trying to kick her drug habit cold turkey.  Her early acts of violence and changes in character are attributed to withdrawal.  But that only goes so far.  Eventually the Dark Force in the Woods has to wipe out the only road out, too.  Why?  It happened in the original, so it needs to happen in the remake, I guess.

Because one of the group (Lou Taylor Pucci) is fool enough to read from the crazy looking book they found in the blood soaked cellar, Mia begins to go haywire.  (See previous paragraph.)  She attempts to flee, but cannot (again, see previous paragraph) and is assaulted by the Dark Force in the Woods.  The inclusion of the Angry Molesting Tree is where I started noticing that there was something off about this new version of the Evil Dead.  In the original films, the Dark Force in the Woods was never glimpsed (in the first movie) and given a non-human form in the sequel.  So why is it a woman in this film?  Was it supposed to be the girl from the beginning of the film?  If so, why did she still have a head?  Why wasn't there something to establish or, I don't know, EXPLAIN that it was?  The womb like imagery of the tree rape sequence also bothered me.  (A tunnel sequence later in the film is even worse, as it smears vaginal and birthing imagery across the screen in the most blatant and odious of fashions.)

No one knows or realizes that Mia is possessed and, one by one, all the woman become blood oozing psychotics that torture the two male characters.  Here is where my memory of the first film becomes somewhat vague.  I do not recall it containing the amount of sexual panic that the remake does.  I was flabbergasted and offended at how the monsters were all self-mutilating women.  

When the big evil arrives, it just so happens to look like a woman.  I am certain that some defenders of the film will point out that the Big Evil seems kind of androgynous, but my response to that is a firm, "No!"  The feminine aspects are very clear to see.  This new version of Evil Dead equates women with evil.  The amount of misogyny on display in the film is just disgusting.

I went to see the new Evil Dead with very low expectations.  While the technical prowess that is on display exceeeded those expectations, I cannot overlook, nor am I able to forgive, that the film did not scare or impress me all that much.  I left the theater wanting to watch Evil Dead 2 again, just so I could clean the bad taste of the remake out of my mind.  I can only suggest that you skip seeing this movie and just go directly to Evil Dead 2.

One and a half star.

*Director Sam Raimi used his own car in the first Evil Dead.  That car has gone on to make a cameo appearance in every one of his movies.  (It's Uncle Ben's car in the first Spider-Man movie.)

Concordian Review: American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation - by Eric Rutkow

This review appeared in the April issue of the Concordian.

I doubt that I am alone in not giving all that much thought to trees.

When I was a child, trees were nothing more than just another set of monkey bars for me to climb in or swing from.  To this day the only types of tree that I can easily identify are the Douglas fir and the Noble fir, because those are the most often used trees at Christmas, and the majestic Redwoods of Northern California.

After I grew up and became a suburbanite, trees became picturesque white noise dotting the urban landscape.  The only time that I seemed to have a strong emotional reaction to trees of any kind was during the fall, when I had to rake my front and back lawns clear of dead leaves.

Like a great many urban Americans, I have no personal or cultural memory of when the United States was carpeted with a wide variety of trees.  For me trees are just oversized twigs used to line streets and fill parks. 

Eric Rutkow’s intriguing first book, American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, changed all that.  Now, whenever I look at a tree, I take a moment to wonder at what is and marvel at what once was.

The continent that greeted the European settlers was one that rivaled the Amazon rain forests in both size and scope.  Giant pine trees that were hundreds of years old choked the land.  Those trees, and the vast forests that surrounded the Great Lakes and covered the southern region, were what allowed the European settlers to spread across the continent with ease.  They are what fueled the early Industrial Age machines that helped turn the United States into an economic super power, during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Without these forests there would have been no ships, docks, or railroads.  No stockyards, wagons, barrels, or furniture.  There would be no newspapers or affordable books.  There would be no suburbia.

One could even make the argument that, without all of those trees, there would be no United States of America.  Not the nation that we know and take for granted today, at least.

All of those trees are gone now.  What remains is only a tiny fraction of what once was.  That depressing truth gives American Canopy somewhat of a downbeat ending.  But it does not make the journey from there to here any less fascinating.

New Comic Book Day (4/24/2013)

After taking a break from comic book shopping, I dropped by the comic book store and emptied out my save box: The Walking Dead #109, Night of the Living Dead: Aftermath #7, Crossed Badlands #27, and Godzilla #11.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Gauntlet of Infinity

Not a lot of blogging time this week, as I have real writing to do, so I thought I would share the ultimate Over-The-Top Star Wars sequel that never will be:

And the poster for it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some Star Wars Episode VII: The Gauntlet of Infinity fan art that looks like it could have skittered out of a nightmore induced from watching a double bill of Return of the Jedi and John Carpenter's The Thing:

Dawn of the Dead novelization cover

TV Stuff: In Search Of intro

The Week in Writing

While this week has been a rather eventful one in terms of real world events and tragedies, for my writing, not so much.

Saturday: 490 words.

Sunday: 0 words.

Monday: 0 words (spent the day watching the news, glues to coverage to the Boston Marathon bombing).

Tuesday: 1,242 words.

Wednesday: 1,050 words.

Thursday: 528 words.

Friday: 868 words (and back in front of the television, watching the situation in Watertown unfold in real time).

Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Bare Bones - by Joe Gentile & Dave Ulanski

As big (and forgiving) a fan of Moonstone's Kolchak: The Night Stalker comic book series as I am, Kolchak the Night Stalker: Bare Bones is not a collection that I would recommend reading.  I fear it will test the patience of even the most die hard of Kolchak's many fans.

The back cover of the edition I have claims that the book includes eleven scripts.  Three of those scripts are for early "stand alone" graphic novel adventures, another seven make up the entire run for the far too short lived (I think) comic book series, Kolchak: Tales Of The Night Stalker.  The eleventh script is supposed to be a brand new story, one that was written "specifically" for the book.

Three plus seven plus one equals eleven, right?  The table of contents even lists eleven scripts, so why does the book itself contain only ten?  Because a copy editor needs to be fired, that's why.  The script for Tales of the Night Stalker issue #6, Proximity: Part 2, appears twice.  Once in the chapter where the script for Proximity: Part 1 should be, and directly following it.  I do not know if that error was corrected in later editions, if any exist, but I can't say that I care all that much to find out.  I found reading the original comics far more entertaining than any of these "Bare Bones" scripts.

The selected "stand alone" graphic novel scripts, The Get Of Belial, Lambs To The Slaughter, or Eve of Terror, did not represent high water marks for the stand alone adventures.  I think Devil in the Details, Pain Most Human and its sequel, Pain Without Tears, are far better "stand alone" Kolchak adventures.

I loved the Tales of the Night Stalker series, though, and hated to see it end.  In a short afterward commentary, series writer Dave Ulsanki tells of how the comic book series tried to invoke the "shorter, faster paced, and sometimes goofy television show."  I think it succeeded admirably in doing just that.  The Tales series also featured two of my all time favorite expanded universe Kolchak: The Night Stalker adventures; the monster choked Creatures of Habbit and the exquisitely crafted ghost story titled Scratch.  The former is just one hilarious misadventure after another, while the latter manages to generate as many legitimate spooky chills as it does comedic laughs.

My edition of Bare Bones lists its publication date as 2006, which means it has taken me seven years to get around to reading it.  (While seven years is definitely a long time, it is by no means a record for just how long a book has sat on a shelf, collecting dust, before I finally got around to reading it.)  At some point after its original publication, the "brand-new script" written "specifically" for the book, One Foot in the Grave, was made into a comic book of its own.  I do not know when this happened, but I do remember reading it.  I also feel no strong inclination to dig through my long boxes and find out.  It's a cute story, but nothing more than that.

In addition to the scripts, there are some brief commentaries by the writers on the process of creating the comics.  While an interesting glimpse into the creation of both the graphic novels and comic book series, there just is not enough information of interest.  (I know rights and such are no doubt prohibitive, but it sure would have been nice to have gotten a look at the unfilmed Kolchak episode scripts, for Belial and Eve, that Gentile adpated into comic form.)  

Unless you are really curious about how a comic script is formated, I recommend skipping this anthology and just reading the stories in their finished forms.  

Second Shift

"Work, stupid magic!"

Three Boston University students, Shauna Brown, Mike Archer, and Katherine Rinson, are pulled into an alternate world of actual magic, ominous mystery, and dangerous adventure.

When I first sat down at my computer, my intention had been to review the graphic novel The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, the first story arc in Marvel's Dark Tower comic book series.  But that story arc turned out to be an adaptation of Wizard and Glass, the fourth book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and the only novel in the series that I found to be dull to the point of being difficult to finish.  The comic book version, being shorter and faster paced, was easier to read, but there was nothing about it that compelled me to write a review.  The book just sat there on my desk for several days, collecting dust while I sifted through my brain, searching for something to write about it that went beyond, "It was okay, but nothing special."

Didn't happen.

What did happen is I finished the last books in the Friday the 13th and Jason X tie-in series, as well as the "final" novel of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.  Doing so got me in the mood to try and finish off yet another series, before I started on a new one.  This is easier said than done, for me.  Being an admirer of regionalism in writing, meta-fiction, and serial storytelling, just about everything I read is either part of an ongoing series, a trilogy, or some kind of vast and interconnected storytelling franchise universe, so there are quite a few series for me to choose from, and I am woefully behind on all of them.  What I wanted was something that could be wrapped up quick, in only a few hours.

That time limit led me to chosing to finish Second Shift, a podcast serial I had started listening to way back in 2008.  I discovered the show via its commercial spots, played during Farpoint Media's Slice of Sci-Fi podcast.  The promised mixture of humor and tension appealed to me, so I subscribed to the show via iTunes and gave it a listen.  It did not take long before both my son and I were avid listeners. For a brief time, "Work, stupid magic!" and "Absolutely not!" were catchphrase in-jokes in our home.

2008 was also a time period when the show was still in active production, so new chapters were being downloaded into my iTunes account with a fair amount of regularity.  I can still remember how excited we both got when a new episode appeared in the feed.

That excitement slowly turned to frustration, though.  For the gaps between episodes were growing longer and longer.  Weeks became months and months stretched into well over a year.  Life got complicated and my attention was soon pulled elsewhere.  I stopped listening to Second Shift and it faded back into the dusty corners of my mind, where it refused to be forgotten.  

Which is why, almost two years after the final episode was released, I am compelled to prattle away about this Parsec Award nominated podcast.  You see, even though I had become so frustrated by the delays between episodes that I stopped listening, I never unsubscribed from the show.  I enjoyed the show and all of its characters far too much to let it go.  I held onto the hope that they would, some day, make it to the end of their tale.

You see, Shauna Brown, Mike Archer, and Katherine Rinson, and all the friends and enemies they made in the magical city of Laundi, were so fully fleshed out as characters, they had become real people to me.  Listening to them bicker and banter with each other was akin to eavesdropping on an actual conversation.  (Albeit an actual conversation that has been verbally stylized so it can also provide plenty of exposition and descriptive commentary for the eavesdropper.)  I felt that I not only understood and related to them, but, as the series progressed, and the unfolding events and unveiled mysteries darkened, the trio changed and grew in ways that felt true to their characters.

When I decided that I would finish the series, I thought it would be best to start over, at the very beginning.  After all, it had been three, perhaps even four, years since I had last listened to an episode.  Doing so also gave me a chance to pay close attention to the machinics of the storytelling in season one.  What I heard was impressive.  

My memories of season one had grown a tad blurry.  I remembered the chain of events as being far lighter and fluffier than the harrowing revelations and bitter betrayals that occur during season two.  Since I knew the darkness to come in season two, I paid closer attention to season one and found that Second Shift rewards such listening.   Each and every betrayal and dark revelation is properly foreshadowed during season one.  Our trio of bickering and bantering heroes are just too confused and far too distracted to either notice or pay attention to them.  It's all in there and, when looking back, quite easy to see and understand.  That is great storytelling.

Most impressive of all, however, is the emotional wallop in the story's final episode.  I thought I was ready to finish Second Shift and say good-bye to its characters.  But now that it is over, I find myself missing Shauna, Mike, and Katherine terribly.  It seems that I was not quite as ready to say good-bye as I had thought I was.

Crossed Annual (2013)

"Ah'm profoundly an' conspicuously mental."

Andrew Frazer Jackson, a Scottish man clinging (with psychotic fierceness) to the belief that his insanity is the result of a former lover poisoning him with a chemical weapon, tells captives (more on that in a moment) and reader alike the hows and whys of his blood thirsty search for revenge.

If there is one thing that the Crossed franchise has shown quite well, it is the harsh and bitter truth that humankind's insanity and its seemingly almost biologically driven streak of self-destructiveness are boundless fonts of inspiration.  No matter how sick, depraved, twisted, tragic, saddening, helpless, hopeless, or just plain wrong a Crossed story gets, there always seems to be a unique twist to that particular tale.  Something that, while the violence and atrocities committed in the story might bleed together into one massive splatter spread, makes each and every tale unique unto itself.

The reason for this is simple, yet delightfully complex.  While each and every Crossed story offers an unflinching look into the mind of a single, unique individual, they each do it differently.  Each and every story shows how one particular individual attempts to navigate and survive not only the carnage soaked landscape of this sick and brutal new world, but the carnage soaked ruins of his or her own mind.

When the primitive beast inside each person is unleashed by the raw and ruthless fight for survival, the results vary wildly.  Some rise to the occasion and manage to become something akin to heroes, although some of their behaviors are not that heroic.  Others fail miserably.  These unfortunates invariably fall victim to the Crossed and either suffer the torments of the damned, or they become Crossed.

But it is not all black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.  There is a great, grey expanse between those two points.  Where good and evil become confused.  In this amoral wasteland wander the likes of Harold Lorre (the psychopath) and Andrew Frazer Jackson, characters that were broken long before the world was shattered by the Crossed.  Lunatics that serve has a cold-hearted reminder that the Crossed were among us, inside of us, long before that distinctive rash spread across the faces of the infected and the entire world went mad.

The Annual 2013 story (a standalone one shot) does a splendid job of exploring that landscape.  Jackson breaks his tale into three distinct sections.  The "distant" past of his "sane" military life, before the Crossed outbreak, the "nearly now" of the immediate past, which charts his post outbreak life and journey to the place of his revenge, and the actual "now" of the immediate moment, which is where all of Jackson's unreliable narration is anchored.  

Because Jackson's memory and world view are corrupted by his insanity, both his memories and the story he tells are somewhat confused.  Both his story and his mental focus go in and out of focus.  Strange images and distortions frequently pile on top of and obscure a great many events.  Yet writer Simon Spurrier and artist Gabriel Andrade create a narrative through-line that allows the three different time lines to weave together in a manner that keeps the overall arc of the story coherent until its sad, bitter ending.

Bats Out Of Hell cover

TerrorVision (1986) trailer

The Week in Writing

I hit a crucial juncture in my outlining of a my writing project: the point where I knew it as time to stop planning the damned thing, and start writing it.

Tuesday: 207 words.

Wednesday: 674 words.

Thursday: 518 words.

Friday: 1,141 words.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future For You (Season 8, Volume 2)

"I'm the go-to girl for dirty deeds done dirt cheap, right?"

Giles recruits Faith to undertake the most dangerous and distasteful of missions, the assassination of a Rogue Slayer.

No Future For You is not just a Faith story, it is a great Faith story.  I will even go so far as to say that it is a classic Faith story.  Because it not only peels off the various layers of both good and evil that Faith has presented to the world, it also forces the one time Rogue Slayer to confront and battle her own demons in terms both figurative (via interior monologues that compare the current events and characters in the story to her own painful memories of past experiences and mistakes) and literal (in that she must do battle with a Slayer gone evil that is not all that different from herself).

As much as the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer got all misty eyed with bestowing (what seemed to be) countless potentials with the full powers of the Slayer, I don't think series creator Joss Whedon (who wrote and directed the final episode) ever "forgot" that Faith had gone over to the Dark Side and binged on all their cookies.  No clearer proof of his being very much aware that the creation a great many more Slayers would inevitably lead to the creation of a great many more Faiths is needed than No Future For You being the second story of season eight.  It is clear that the comic season's creative team could not wait to address some of the hows and whys of great power corrupting and destroying what should be a heroic force for good.  From panel one this story vibrates with angst laden energy.

Also included in this volume is a one shot titled Anywhere But Here.  Buffy and Willow journey into a place where reality is not what it used to be.  The past, present, and future get a trifle mixed up and, well, dark secrets are revealed and dark turns are foreshadowed.  

Lightening up these rather ominous proceedings is a fluffy B-plot involving Xander, Dawn, and a giant chest of clothes.  But even there it is not all snorts and giggles.  Dawn, who is still a giant, has a dark secret of her own that she has been hiding from Willow and Buffy.  The reasons for why she would choose to reveal it to Xander is a splendid thematic echo of why a bond would begin to form between Faith and the man once known as Ripper.

I hope this season continues to amaze and surprise me. 

Godzilla Legends #3 -5

Secrets (featuring Titanosaurus):

Tristan is a young man with an incredible, and incredibly powerful, psychic talent.  One that draws the attention of United Nations funded Institute located just outside of Gresham, Oregon.  While Tristan enjoys exploring and strengthening his ability, he also makes a connection with a strange creature.   A connection that might be the first step toward the end of the world as humanity knows it...

Smog of War (featuring Hedorah):

A novice Mechagodzilla piloting crew is sent to investigate the sudden, cataclysmic destruction of Linfen, China.  Although unverified, it is believed that Godzilla is responsible for the disaster.  What the Mechagodzilla crew find, however, is an all new creature.  A corrosive, shape-shifting giant that appears to be made out pollution...

From A Great Height (featuring Kumonga):

Former extreme adventurer Bryson Allworth is convinced to come out of retirement when he is asked to scale Godzilla and collect various tissues samples.  What he learns during his adventure is something that no one else seems to want to know...

This trio of one shots looks to be the end of the Godzilla Legends one shots, for now, at least.  There are still a handful of legendary monsters that have yet to make an appearance in this series.  Mothra, King Ghidorah, Gigan, Jet Jaguar, Megalon, King Caesar, Biollante, SpaceGodzilla, and Destroyah are still unaccounted for in the Godzilla Legends realm.  Granted, some of them might be appearing in the other IDW Godzilla titles, Godzilla and Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, but I am woefully behind on my Godzilla reading.  It is my hope that, by the end of April of this year, I will be completely caught up on my Godzilla comic book reading.

But I have digressed.  Let me return to the comics at hand.

Of the three, I found Secrets to be the most unsatisfying of the bunch.  Guest star monster Titanosaurus is not given a chance to do much of anything, because Tristan hogs the spotlight stage.  When Titanosaurus does arrive, he does little more than roar once or twice, bump into a building or two, and show that he has formed a psychic bond with Tristan.  

Then the two are whisked away by the story's villains and the curtain falls on a cliffhanger that demands a follow through chapter.  This is a story that did not read as a one, but as the first chapter in a longer story arc.  It is my hope that one will be forthcoming.  I like Tristan and my heart has a sizable warm spot for Titanosaurus.

While Smog of War also ends with a promise of much more mayhem to come, it is less a set up for a continuing story and more an illustration (pun unintended) of just how difficult it will be to get rid of Hedorah, the Smog Monster.

This time there is not a whole of plot getting in the way of story.  Smog of War is nothing more than a protracted threeway fist fight between Hedorah, MechaGodzilla, and Godzilla.  One that is rendered in loving and kinetic detail by artist E.J. Su and colorer Priscilla Tramontano.  If you love unrestrained monster mayhem, this issue is a must have issue.

Both Secrets and Smog of War echo a theme that is fully played out in From A Great Height.  Extreme adventurer Bryson Allworth's climb to the very top of Godzilla gives him a unique perspective on how humanity might best interact with these giant monsters.  Too bad that no one really wants to listen to what he has to say, especially when it contradicts with the established "destroy them all" mentality that everyone else seems to hold.

One thing I really liked about this talk filled tale was Allworth's description of what it felt like to ride Godzilla during a fierce battle with the giant spider known as Kumonga.  Allworth describes it as being like "...a boxing match...on a roller coaster.  During an earthquake."  Artist Dean Haspiel does a splendid job of capturing that descriptive energy visually.  He and writer Bobby Curnow also manage to to inject some very welcome humor into the tragic tale.  The sight of Godzilla ripping off one of Kumonga's legs and then beating the spider over the head with it is nothing short of priceless.  I loved it.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook - Edited by Joe Gentile, Garrett Anderson, and Lori Gentile

The indomitable and incorrigible Carl Kolchak, genre television's first paranormal investigator, returns in seventeen stories of the weird and the bizarre.

When it was first printed, some seven or eight years ago, the anthology Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook served two purposes.  The first, and most important, of the two purposes was to be an affectionate memorial to the late Darren McGavin, the journeyman actor that created Kolchak's lovably scruffy and comically unvarnished persona.  The introduction by Mark Dawidziak, the series official historian, is sure to put a lump in the throat of any emotionally sensitive fan of the actor and the character he made famous.  (I don't think you can be a fan of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and not be a fan of actor Darren McGavin.) 

The second, and far more ironic, purpose of the anthology seems to have been for it to serve as a kind of commentary (or investigative autopsy) of the hows and whys the maligned 2005 "reimagining" of the series was such a disaster, with both critics and fans.  There is no other way to read Mark Dawidziak's short story Cancellation, than as a meta-fiction satire and hardcore Kolchak fan's contemptuous smackdown of the failed attempt to turn The Night Stalker into yet another X-Files style anthology series.  While it is a cute enough story, and a fitting close for the anthology, it is neither the best nor the worst of the book's seventeen stories.

My picks for the best in show are Blues, Sex, and Bad, Hot Mojo, by Gary Philips, Brief Encounter, by Pierce Askegren, and Dave Ulanski's AND.  I found these three stories to be the most satisfying of the collection.

As for the unfortunate yarns I found to be the collection's least satisfying ones, that ignoble honor has to go to Richard Dean Starr's Bones of the Past and Gary Philips's Broken Willow.  Neither tale gets the story beats or character moments of a Kolchak yarn quite right.

The remaining six stories pretty much fall between those highs and lows.  Some (P.N. Elrod's Power Hungy and John Everson's The Strange Events at Vishnu Springs) are respectably close to the winner's circle, while unfortunate, and under performing, others (such as John Ostrander's Alternate Endings and Joe Gentile's Until Tomorrow) fall below the median for success.

Despite their widely varying degrees of quality, there is no denying that each and every tale contains a valiant and very well intentioned attempt to recapture (or bring back to life) the scruffy, unvarnished, incorrigible, indomitable, and unstoppable investigative force that was Carl Kolchak.  That simple fact alone makes it a worthwhile read for any Night Stalker fan. 

The Brood (1979) novelization cover

Zone Troopers (1986) video trailer

The House of Secrets #152 (Volume 21, June/July 1978)

"Somewhere there is a land beyond human understanding... a place we only glimpse in our darkest nightmares.  It is the world of the weird, and you can explore it... if you dare enter... The House of Secrets."

Abel, the caretaker of the house, guides you through two tales from the land of terror... (cue ominous music, thunder and lightning, and maybe a scream, or two...)

Story 1: Sister Witch:

Anthony Harker wants nothing more than to escape from the orphanage.  A place that has held him captive ever since his parents died in a tragic fire, many years ago.  A fire that he accidently started.

Anthony's dark and dismal looking future seems to brighten when a mysterious woman, claiming to be his long lost sister, comes to take him to her home.  But there is a secret she is keeping from him...

Story 2: Monkey See, Monkey Do:

Doctor Evan Price, an outstanding experimental surgeon, has concocted what he believes to be the perfect murder.  He has trained his pet ape, Satan, to attack and kill his wife.  The only problem is that Price's well meaning assistant, Paul Atkins, throws an unexpected monkey wrench into the mad scientist's diabolical plan...

I do not recall my doing any comic book reading during the summer of 1978, the time period that the copyright page for this particular issue gives as its publication date.  

No, my rapidly growing geek interests were (intently) focused elsewhere.  Most notably on the June release of Jaws 2, the first sequel to what I still consider to be the greatest movie of all time, and the mega-hyped July release of Irwin Allen's Production of The Swarm (a film Irwin Allen boldly claimed would be the most terrifying film of the year, it wasn't).  The only reading I can recall doing during the summer of 1978 with any clarity is my obsessive pawing through a movie tie-in edition of Arthur Herzog's novel The Swarm, upon which Irwin Allen's Production claimed to be based.

Then again, even if I was reading comic books during this period of time, I don't think I would have remembered either of the two stories in this issue of The House of Secrets.  Both are forgettable tales of the weird and unusual.

Sister Witch might have been memorable, if more attention had been paid to building an ominous mood and, even more important, the issue's cover had not spoiled the direction the tale would be taking.  But I do have to give writer Jack C. Harris points for coming up with an utterly insane double twist ending, though.

I can award no points to Jack Oleck's Monkey See, Monkey Do, though.  It is the silliest piece of mad scientist puff that I have read in ages.  A toss back to the creaky old mad scientist horror movies of the Golden Age, when every evil laboratory seemed to have a trained gorilla lumbering about inside of it.  I found the whole thing to be far too goofy to enjoy the EC comics style comeuppance that gets dealt out at the story's end.  So it goes.

R.I.P. Roger Ebert, 70

Roger Ebert, arguably the most famous film critic in the world, has passed away at the age of 70.

To say that he will be missed, that his absence will be forever felt, is an understatement akin to calling Mount Everest just another hill.

Concordian Review: JAWS: Memories from Martha's Vineyard - by Matt Taylor

This review appeared in the March 2013 issue of the Concordian.

Hard as it is to believe today, Jaws did not start off as a box office record-smashing juggernaut.  No, for Universal Studios the project was treated as just another cheap B-picture production.  A monster movie that, like most other monster movies, would be shot quickly and cheaply, screen at a fistful of smaller end theaters and drive-ins, and then fade away and be forgotten.

Matt Taylor’s excellent book, Jaws: Memories from Martha's Vineyard, tells how and why that did not happen.  But, unlike so many other books about the making of Jaws, Taylor’s is almost entirely from the viewpoint of the many islanders that had been hired to work in front of and behind the cameras.

Because producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, and then unknown director Steven Spielberg, wanted their fantastic film to have a very realistic look and feel to it.  They picked an actual New England island to play the part of the fictional New England island of Amity.  Spielberg also wanted plenty of local color in the film, so a great many locals were cast in key supporting roles.

It was also believed that the action filled shark hunt that takes place during the film’s second half would have a far more impressive visual scope to it if it were shot at sea, and not in some phony looking studio back lot water tank.

While a great idea, and a big reason the movie works as well as it does, no one involved with the production foresaw the costly delays that would result from a combination of bad weather and a mechanical shark that would sink far more often that it would swim.  The “quick and cheap” production wound up being shot slowly and expensively.

Shooting began in May and was supposed to end by mid-July, but it wound up dragging all the way into early September.  During all this time and chaos, the hired locals watched with amusement, amazement, and, in a few unfortunate cases, anger, as the shooting dragged on and on and on.

Everybody involved with the film, and a great many that were not, also took a great many candid photographs of the production, while they worked.  So not only does Taylor’s book offer a fascinating outsiders oral history of the day to day effort to get the film finished, every page is also overflowing with never before scene photographs.

This is a breathtaking must have for any and all Jaws fans.

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - by Stephen King

Picking up pretty much where The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah ended, albeit with some narrative switchbacks and loop the loops to smooth out the convoluted - and numerous alternate realities hopping - chain of events, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, the final book of Stephen King's epic meta-fantasy series, races toward an ending that is, at various points, surprising, shocking, satisfying, and downright infuriating.

At the end of my review of Song of Susannah, I said that it looked like Stephen King had maneuvered his characters into position for an apocalyptic battle against the forces of the Crimson King.  Well, it turns out that was more than accurate; The Dark Tower contains not one, not two, but three exciting battles against the forces of the ever looming apocalypse.

Battle number one is a three front engagement.  Roland and Eddie need to wrap things up in the when of the Keystone World of 1977.  Susannah, trapped in End World by the Crimson King's men, must find a way to free both herself and Mia, while they both give a simultaneous birth to Mia's beloved chap, Mordred.  Meanwhile, in the New York City of 1999, Jake and Pere Callahan storm the Dixie Pig, to find a door that will lead them to Susannah.

I did say that the chain of events at the start of The Dark Tower were a tad convoluted, remember?

But that is just the beginning.  Battle number two, which takes up almost a third of this 1,072 page book, is the longest and most traditional.  This is the battle that Roland's ka-tet must fight in order to "free" the Breakers and save one of the two remaining Beams.

Battle number three is more of a elongated and panicked race again time to save the life of writer Stephen King, the chronicler of Roland's quest.  If King dies when he is struck by a van on June 19, 1999, the second of the two remaining beams will not only be shattered, Roland's tale will forever remain unfinished.  The Dark Tower will forever be out of his reach.

You can no doubt tell that a lot happens in this book.  It is jam-packed with an unruly jumble of countless characters, events, and monsters.  Lots and lots of monsters.  The final Dark Tower book is so jam-packed, is such an unruly narrative jumble, that, by the time I reached the Author's Note at its very end, I felt as if I had read three wildly different novels simultaneously, rather than just a single tale.

Then again, King's In-World, Mid-World, and End-World, and all the other worlds that happen to be hanging off of the various Beams that run through the Dark Tower, is so vast, contains so many elements from so many seemingly disparate genres, and is so freaking huge, that there could have been no other way to end the series with anything less than a door stopper of a book.  Anything less than that would not have felt right.

Which is a statement that brings me to the novel's Coda.  I do not doubt that, when the final book was first conceived, and its first draft written, that its author knew he was going to get a veritable shit ton of flack for the way and manner in which his epic tale ends.  But I have to agree with King.  It is an ending that, as sad, frustrating, and downright terrifying as it is, it just feels right.  I do not think that there could have been any other ending than that.

And it is not like King did not warn us that ending was coming.  How many times during the course of the series was Ka (fate) referred to as a turning wheel?

New Comic Book Day (3/27/2013)

Small haul this week: Hack/Slash #25 and Crossed Badlands #26.

The Survivor book cover (U.S. edition)

TV Stuff: CBS Late Movie intro for The Medusa Touch