Super Movie Monday – Equinox

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Probably my best Christmas ever was the year I got a super 8mm camera and projector. I never did make the ambitious stop-motion movie projects I had planned, but I made good use of the projector, anyway.

First, I ordered some color excerpts from Harryhausen’s films from the back of Famous Monsters of Filmland–selected sequences from Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, silent with subtitles–which enabled me for the first time to study Harryhausen’s animation frame-by-frame. And then, at our local Montgomery Wards (I think), I discovered a rack of Ken Films. Unlike the deluxe color 200′ reels I’d mail ordered, these were black-and-white silent reels from films like Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster and I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

And then there was this one film I’d never heard of, but which looked intriguing, titled Equinox. I watched that 200′ reel over and over again, grooving on the stop-motion creatures and split-screen effects, as well as hints at a creepy story. And now, it’s available as part of the Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus, so I finally got to watch the whole thing.

The film opens with credits over close-ups of working clocks and clock movements. I’ll tell you up front that clocks play absolutely no part in the story. There is a prophecy involving a certain amount of time passing, but we don’t hear of it until almost the very end, so I’m not sure what the clocks are supposed to be doing, other than distracting us from some interesting names in the credits, like assistant cameraman Ed Begley Jr. (who has gone on to become a reasonably famous actor and prominent environmentalist).

The film opens with an explosion and a young man running through the woods, away from something we can’t see. And right up front, two things are apparent: number one, these guys have no budget to speak of. And number two, they’re really trying hard. Unlike Dracula vs. Frankenstein (discussed the last two weeks), Equinox actually has a visual vocabulary, doing interesting things with angles and camera movement and even doing a tracking shot alongside our running protagonist (who, BTW, is a really awkward runner–don’t know if he’s unathletic, or just trying to act really scared).

On the other hand, the music is really awful, this kind of almost-comedic tootling that creates no real mood, but just fills up space on the soundtrack. Throughout the film, the music bears only the slightest relation to the emotional content of the scene.

As the man is crossing a bridge, along comes a car without a driver and runs him over. It must be the Devil’s Volkswagen!

A year later, a reporter visits a mental hospital where Our Hero (whose name is David) is staying. All he does is sit silently, staring at his cross. When the reporter tries to ask him about what happened a year ago, he gets no response, until he shows David a photo of a missing geology professor. Then David attacks him, losing his cross in the process.

And at this point in the film, it seems apparent that the movie was filmed MOS (without synced sound) and dubbed in later, but the dubbing is pretty good. Not surprising given that “director” Jack Woods has spent most of his career in movies as a sound editor.

I use the term “director” in quotes because Woods only directed a portion of the movie. The film actually started as a sort of fan film by some enthusiastic kids who wanted to go into special effects. The stop-motion animation was done by Dave Allen, who went on to a long career in Hollywood, doing animation in TV commercials and feature films. The director who also worked on the effects went on to work on dozens of the biggest special effects films in history, winning 6 Oscars and becoming the first special effects man to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His name is Dennis Muren.

So that it’s not a completely wasted trip, the doctor in charge of the case plays the reporter a tape of the David’s testimony the day after he was found on the highway. And check out that antique reel-to-reel recorder, Dad!

He was summoned to visit his favorite professor, Dr. Waterman, at his cabin in the woods, but the expedition somehow got turned into a picnic with his best friend Jim, his best friend’s girlfriend Vicki, and a blind date named Susan. And look who’s playing the best friend.

Although he’s credited as Frank Boers Jr., he would be known to 1970’s sitcom viewers as Herb Tarlek, sales director for WKRP in Cincinnati. And although he’s smarmy, he’s also the only person in the cast who actually sounds natural when reading his lines.

So the gang ends up parking at the edge of a forest and hiking up to the professor’s cabin, which has been destroyed.  And moments later, they run into kindly park ranger Asmodeus, who tells them he hasn’t seen Dr. Waterman around.

Hmmm, strange. Stranger still, Jim’s girlfriend Vicki, who has somehow become separated from the rest of the group, has stumbled across a castle in the middle of the California forest.

The rest of the group finds her, and they decide to visit the castle to see if anyone there knows about Dr. Waterman. But on the way up, they hear maniacal laughter coming from a mysterious cave, so of course, they investigate. In the cave, Vicki becomes separated again (what is her problem, seriously?) and finds a human skeleton, while the rest of the group receives a mysterious book from a strange mad hermit.

And I have to tell you, when I first saw this scene, I immediately said to myself that that was the director’s grandfather or something, because he is stiff and even more non-actorly than the rest of the cast. And sure enough, this article about the making of the film describes the old man as being Muren’s grandfather.

After they leave the cave, they decide to have their picnic lunch and examine the book. And there’s a funny moment (perhaps unintentional) where Jim states he has brought them fresh, pristine mountain spring water, then plops down a jug so cloudy, it looks like lemonade. More disgusting than the water, though, is the book, which stinks like sulfur when Dave opens it after Jim picks the lock. Inside, it’s full of illustrations of strange beasts and magical symbols and text in unknown languages.

Suddenly, a man lunges out from the forest, grabs the book, and runs away with it. It’s Dr. Waterman! David chases him down and catches him, but the doctor falls down dead.

And remember up top when I mentioned there were some interesting names in the opening credits? One of them was this guy: Fritz Leiber, famed fantasy author, creator of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Interesting bit of trivia: his dad, Fritz Leiber Sr., was also an actor, and the two of them appeared together in two films in the 1930’s.

David freaks out at Waterman’s death, and even more so when Waterman’s body disappears. Meanwhile, Vicki takes off to find the boys, leaving Susan alone, where she is discovered by kindly park ranger Asmodeus, who is suddenly not so kindly anymore. He puts on a weird hypno ring and then starts making out with her, giving her drooly, drooly kisses with his twisted mouth.

But he is forced to flee when, in the course of pulling off her blue velour top, he finds her cross. By the time the boys and Vicki return, Susan can no longer remember what happened. They take another look at the book and discover a page of notes written by Dr. Waterman. He has been not only trying to decipher the book, but also experimenting with it, seeing if he can summon creatures from beyond.

Oops. Turns out, this creature, summoned by mistake, is what destroyed Waterman’s cabin. We see it in a flashback that for some reason reminds me of a Family Guy blackout. “This reminds me of that time we summoned the Great Old Ones with that fake Necronomicon.”

Anyway, the gang decides to make themselves some holy symbols from the book (Jim makes them from willow twigs, and seriously, it’s like he’s the only one with any kind of real-world skills–photography, lock-picking, twig-weaving, you name it). And next thing you know, the castle is gone and not-so-kindly park ranger Asmodeus is summoning a giant ogre-like monster to retrieve the book.

Jim cuts down a sapling and whittles it into a spear, which David uses to kill the beast. The scene is badly animated and staged so that it lacks tension, but don’t judge Dave Allen’s entire career from his very first home-grown film.

Jim decides to retrieve his dropped camera and take a picture of the monster while the rest head for their picnic site to gather their stuff and leave. But Jim gets distracted by a beer can (the old thick-walled kind with pull-off tabs) floating by in the creek. He is entirely too sober for this, so he follows the creek upstream till he finds an abandoned campsite. And kindly park ranger Asmodeus, who promises Jim his heart’s desire if he gives Asmodeus the book.

When Jim tells the gang about Asmodeus, David finally, FINALLY remembers that Asmodeus is another name for the devil. The group decides to go home for real, when they are attacked by a giant green caveman or something.

And although this scene to the untrained eye might look cheapo–that monster suit is kind of ludicrous–for someone who knows effects, this is really impressive. Because there are no matte lines, no obvious screen splits, no loss of quality or enlarged grain from optical effects, no faded background elements from rear projection. This is actually a meticulously designed forced-perspective shot, made more impressive with a camera movement thrown in, which you would almost never see with a process shot.

Jim flees from the monster through the invisible barrier hiding the missing castle. David sends the girls to the car and enters the alternate dimension to retrieve Jim. Which he does, except that it’s not really Jim and it destroys the holy symbol under his shirt. Jim is abandoned in the alternate universe. Oops.

Not-kindly-at-all park ranger Asmodeus decides to stop the kids from leaving with the book. So he abandons his Jim disguise and instead transforms into (his true form?) a winged demon from Hell.

Vicki and Susan are killed, but David survives, only to see a giant apparition which tells him he will die in a year and a day. David flees the forest and up onto the bridge where he is hit by the Devil’s Volkswagen.

Back in the present, the reporter leaves, disappointed, as David screams for his cross. The reporter had hoped for more to the story. As he’s leaving the place, he barely registers the pretty blonde headed the other way, toward the hospital entrance. But we do–she’s Susan, smiling creepily as she heads for the entrance exactly a year and a day since the prophecy was given. THE END ?

So on the one hand, the film is cheap crap, full of bad acting and bad writing. But on the other hand, Muren’s film, which forms the core of this one, was made for around $6,500 dollars (no, rest assured, I didn’t miss any zeroes), and contains some impressive effects shots in that pre-Star Wars age. It’s an interesting introduction to what would be some incredibly influential careers.

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Out of the Vault – Megaton Man

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Tony Frazier

One of the reasons I write about 80’s comics so much is that it was a time of fundamental change in the comics industry, changing the way they were produced, printed, marketed and distributed.

In the late 70’s, people had been talking about the imminent demise of comic books; the industry had shrunk to two big companies and a couple of tiny competitors hanging onto their dying niches.  Marvel and DC were circling the drain, creatively and financially, doing the same stuff over and over again to a smaller and smaller audience while Carter-era stagflation drove their production and distribution costs through the roof.

But the 80’s changed all that. By 1985, we were seeing a new boom, with the direct market producing comics for older, (slightly) more sophisticated readers, new production techniques producing gorgeously colored comics on brilliant white paper instead of cheap pulp, and a slew of independent publishers and exciting young artists and writers taking risks and doing new things. And they were so successful that the moribund Big Two had to start updating their own product, as well, lest they be left in the dust.

Which is not to say that everything the independents did was new and original. In fact much of it was produced in direct reaction to DC and Marvel. Take, for example, Megaton Man from Kitchen Sink Press.

Written and drawn by Don Simpson, Megaton Man was a straight-up parody of both DC and Marvel. I missed the first issue, so I never knew his origin, but the rest of the set-up was fairly straightforward. Megaton Man patrolled the city of Megatropolis, fighting crime and whatever, while working as a reporter for a daily newspaper under the name Trent Phloog.

The comic followed the parallel stories of Megaton Man and fellow reporter Pamela Jointly (whom Megaton Man loved from afar) who quit her job as columnist for The Manhattan Project to move to a small college town and start her life over, accompanied by Stella Starlight, a.k.a. The See-Thru Girl of the Megatropolis Quartet.

Simpson wrote and drew the Megaton Man scenes in a style that crossed Harvey Kurtzman’s early Mad stories with Lee/Kirby bombast, with some pointed satirical jabs at the pop culture of the times, like when Megaton Man tries to take Stella’s place in the Megatropolis Quartet, leading them to design him a new costume.

That second panel is a sharp elbow thrown at the black Spider-Man suit. On the other hand, the Pamela Jointly scenes were written from a slightly more realistic perspective, contrasting her “normal” life with the mad hijinks  of Megaton Man’s adventures. And in between, the comic lived up to its publisher’s name by throwing in a hodgepodge of parodies of different comics, from Doonesbury to Jim Steranko’s famous take on Nick Fury, Agent of Shield.

Here’s super-spy Sergeant Sterankovitch from Megaton Man #4…

And here’s the sequence he’s parodying, from Nick Fury, Agent of Shield #1, June 1968.

As the series progressed, it was evident that Simpson had more ambition than simple parody, good as he was at it. He would switch from parody to drama and back seamlessly and without warning, such as the flashback scene where Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl go on patrol together.  He nervously resists her advances until she gives a hilarious speech about their tight costumes being the equivalent of nudity. “I can certainly see everything you’ve got! And it’s driving me crazy!”

And then suddenly…

In later issues, Simpson began to indulge his greater ambition with a back-up feature titled Border Worlds, a straight science fiction adventure. And after the initial run of Megaton Man ended with issue #10, Border Worlds was spun off into its own 7-issue series, which I’ll cover maybe next week.

But it’s Megaton Man who provided Simpson’s greatest success and was the well he kept going back to. There was a Return of Megaton Man limited series a couple of years after the original ended, and in the 90’s, Simpson formed his own company to publish new Megaton Man adventures before moving over to Image Comics.

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Super Movie Monday – Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Part 2

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Tony Frazier


Back for our completely superfluous second week of recap for 1971’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein. As you may remember, Judith Fontaine, Vegas lounge singer, had headed to Malibu Beach in search of her missing sister, Joan. She is aided in her search by aging hipster Mike and teen hippies Strange and Samantha, who is in trouble with a local biker gang.

Joan was a victim of the mad scientist Dr. Duryea (J. Carroll Naish), who is using the blood of pretty teen girls to make a serum which he hopes will do, um, something. He is aided by his imbecilic, puppy-and-axe-loving assistant Groton, played by Lon Chaney Jr.

Meanwhile, Duryea has also been informed by Count Dracula that he is the last of the Frankensteins, and so he helps the Count revive the Monster that his ancestor created.

If it sounds like the story is kind of random and all over the place, there’s a reason. Welcome to the world of low-budget exploitation filmmaking.

See, Al Adamson originally wanted to make a sequel to his film Satan’s Sadists. So he brought back star Russ Tamblyn as the biker gang leader. But somewhere along the way, he changed his mind and decided to do a straight horror picture about the mad doctor collecting blood for the serum, to be titled Blood Seekers. So the biker angle was almost completely lost.

At some point, it became evident that the movie just wasn’t working, so Adamson brought back Naish and Regina Carroll (his wife at the time, who was starring as Judith) to shoot new scenes with Dracula and the monster.

So back to the story. As Mike and Judith screw on the beach, Dr. Duryea is back in his lab, giving another incomprehensible monologue to Groton, although we do learn that the serum is intended to enable Duryea to walk again, as well as cure Groton of something. As Duryea talks, Groton goes through the transformation he normally experiences when Duryea gives him his shots (although he prudently puts the puppy back in its cage before turning into a homicidal maniac). Duryea scolds him for transforming prematurely, then gives him a shot of serum.

Back on the beach, Mike and Judith smoke in fully-clothed, but seemingly post-coital bliss. Mike suspects there’s something going on with Duryea (and Judith mentions something about a parchment that has never been mentioned before–apparently something from Blood Seekers that was cut out). Meanwhile, the Monster kills a couple of teenagers necking in a car as well as a couple of passing cops for no other reason than that nothing interesting has happened in a while. The actor playing the Monster is wearing these glovelike rubber monster hands that don’t quite go up his sleeve.

Mike and Judith explore underneath the pier that night.They find a trapdoor that might lead up into the Creature Emporium, but Judith is frightened so they  retreat a ways to have a conversation on the beach.Meanwhile, Samantha is eating fried chicken on the beach when Rico and his gang show up. They chase her under the pier (terror makes her shirt come unbuttoned) and are getting ready to rape her when Groton kills them all with his axe. Mike and Judith hear a noise and come back to find Groton already gone up through the trapdoor. But they find Samantha’s locket.

They race up to the front entrance, push past the creepy dwarf and into the Creature Emporium. Once inside, they make their way down to the basement lab (yes, the basement of the building on the pier with the trapdoor that leads down to the beach below–and it has stone walls), where they find the doctor and Groton with his latest catch.

 

Yes, even though this film is the equivalent of a modern PG, they show a boob in it. Apparently, it was okay as long as the boob in question wasn’t being shown in a sexual context, like on a dead body.

Duryea tells Mike and Judith that Samantha’s shock at her death caused a cellular reaction that’s necessary for his serum. And he plans to kill them next, in front of each other, to make more serum, enough to cure himself, Groton and the creepy dwarf. Which leads us to the extremely silly climax, as the dwarf accidentally falls through the trapdoor and impales his head on Groton’s axe, and then Duryea gets lost in his own exhibit and manages to accidentally behead himself with his guillotine.

Groton has pursued Judith outside and onto the roof of the Creature Emporium. But noble Sergeant Martin arrives with Strange (who’s rocking the wacky poncho). Martin strikes a heroic pose as he shoots Groton on sight.

Groton falls off the roof, and Martin and Strange fall out of the picture.

Judith runs into Dracula, who plans to use her blood to make Duryea’s serum so he can be invincible or something. Mike arrives and fights off the Monster with a road flare. The Monster, blinded, then attacks Dracula as Mike frees Judith and they escape. But before they get too far, Dracula fends off the Creature and shoots his magic ring lightning.

Yeah, notice how his make-up has changed? See the black squares around his eyes? That means one thing: a reshot ending, with a new actor playing the monster, or I should say, the Creature. Mike bursts into flames, and Judith faints.

When she comes to, she’s all tied up in an abandoned church out in the woods. I’m struck by how pulp-coverish the bondage pose is.

The Creature is struck by the sight of her cleavage and decides he doesn’t want to kill her. And BTW, not only has Dracula’s make-up changed drastically, but instead of the wrinkly hands with the dirty split nails that the Monster had in the scene with the teenagers, the Creature now sports huge black claws sprouting from the ends of his fingers.

And so now, Dracula and Frankenstein finally have their final bout, which is a little more satisfying than the wrestling match they had on the roof earlier.

They fight their way out of the church and into the woods for a finale that’s hard to make out in the darkness. But it seems that the Monty Python guys might have watched this before making Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because it’s literally the Black Knight scene without the witty dialogue or decent lighting. Dracula rips off the Creature’s arms one at a time, and when the Creature keeps coming, Dracula pulls off its head and tosses it away.

But Dracula hasn’t actually won, because as they’ve been fighting, the sun has come up, so that Dracula gets caught in the sunlight before he can make it back inside the church. And we get a long close-up of his ridiculous make-up. Seriously, it’s like he’s a member of the KISS army before the group even formed.

Through a series of dissolves, Dracula ages and burns away. Vorkov tries to contort his face into the aging expression Christopher Lee used in Captain America II, but without any talent or training (and with the shot held for too long, so it looks silly rather than scary). And as he gets more burned, it looks like they’ve just dumped dirt and cigarette ashes on his face. Judith finally fights her way free of the ropes and goes outside to find the Count’s empty clothes and his ashen remains (which seriously looks like dried grass clippings or something).

And that’s the end. And you might seriously be wondering why I spent a second week covering this thing in such detail. Well, there are a few reasons. First, the film is such a trove of fan love, with its classic actors, classic mad scientist equipment, even classic music (the final parts of the film use the soundtrack from Creature From the Black Lagoon). Second, it’s fascinating that  the layers of discarded scripts and approaches are still visible in the final film, like palimpsests. It’s so instructive of how low-budget movies are made.

And third, as inept as it is, there are tiny moments in the film, flashes of ambition that give you an idea of the film Al Adamson saw in his head as he was making this. Like this shot from early on, in Judith’s Vegas dressing room.

And I realize that there’s cleavage in the shot, but try to tear your eyes away for just a moment to take in the wig head on the right. Judith is reading a telegram about her missing sister, whom we saw beheaded just a couple of minutes before, and now here’s a wig head with a red line circling its neck. It’s a moment of subtle symbolism that seems to indicate a filmmaker who’s attempting to do more than just walk people past the front of the camera.

It’s fascinating to see that and think that Adamson was actually trying to make something good, trying so hard that he took the film through three iterations and a reshot ending before finally releasing the thing. And that the finished film is so utterly bad must have been heartbreaking on some level.

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Out of the Vault – The Mighty Mites #1

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Tony Frazier

And we’re back to my favorite year in comics, 1986, the year of Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. In the aftermath of the amazingly successful debut two years previously of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles–an independent black-and-white parody of X-Men and Frank Miller comics–the market was flooded with independent black-and-white comics, including an inordinate number of parodies of TMNT, like Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters and Naive Interdimensional Commando Koalas. Among the parodies that did not mimic TMNT‘s four-fold title pattern was The Mighty Mites from Eternity Comics.

Notice that the cover art is in a cutesy, bigfoot style, the closest American equivalent to what used to be called “super deformed” and is now called “chibi.” You might be tempted to dismiss the comic based on the art alone, since it’s not anyone’s definition of dark or serious.

If so, you’d miss out of the wickedest parody of X-Men I think I’ve ever seen. Witness the opening splash page.

The second page shows each character conducting an inner monologue via thought balloon that is worded almost identically to the splash page captions. And as the characters go through their training in the “Lookout Room,” they continue to each reflect on their own personal issues.

And yes, it’s really repetitive and gets pretty tiresome by the sixth page (where the second set of panels comes from), but if you’d been reading Claremont’s X-Men for the past eight years or so, it would also be riotously funny. To wit:

The panels above are from The Uncanny X-Men #145 from 1981 and The Uncanny X-Men Annual #6 from 1982, and illustrate both the “His/Her name is…” caption and Claremont’s patented tortured inner monologue (which to be fair is not a great departure from Stan Lee’s tortured inner monologues from the days when the Marvel Age first dawned).

The Mighty Mites first six pages are a brutally funny, almost surgical dismantling of the Claremont ouvre, obviously written by fans who had been following the book for years. Unfortunately, by page 7, the book then decides to introduce the title characters, the Mighty Mites, a more generic adventure squad: part Challengers of the Unknown, part A-Team.

The Mighty Mites are contacted by the President to battle the interplanetary menace of X-Laxtus, but they’re busy watching TV, and so subcontract the job to the X-Mites, who screw up the job while still indulging in tortured inner monologues. Finally, the Mighty Mites step in to save the day, but while attempting to save the X-Mites in the bowels of the Great Big Comic Company of New York, they stumble into a secret room.

And suddenly the parody turns ever so slightly preachy. If you’re not familiar with the situation, the most basic version: Marvel in the 80’s decided to start returning artwork to artists, but something went wrong in Jack Kirby’s case. Not only was he asked to sign a more complex release than the other artists, but Marvel said that they could only return 88 pages out of thousands that they ostensibly had. It became a scandal within the industry.

So in the end, I liked The Mighty Mites, but mostly on the strength of the first six pages. The rest of the book–the bland lead characters, X-Laxtus and the lame ending where they beat him with a Twinkie (inspired by those ubiquitous Hostess ads from the 70’s)–was not as compelling.

Two more issues were published, but I never picked them up . To be honest, I can’t remember seeing them on the racks. I’m not sure just how good Eternity’s distribution was.

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Super Movie Monday – Dracula vs. Frankenstein

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Tony Frazier


So for the next couple of weeks, something a little different. The late 60’s and early 70’s were a tumultuous time for the nation, but a great time to be a kid. On Saturdays, you could watch shows like Space Ghost and Jonny Quest, and during the week, you could come straight home from school and turn on Dark Shadows, the only soap opera with vampires and ghosts. And during the commercial breaks, they’d show commercials for all sorts of movies that sounded totally awesome, if only you were old enough to watch them.

Well, now I am old enough, and thanks to Hulu in particular, I’m able to see some of the obscure movies I could only imagine from their commercials decades ago. First up: Dracula vs. Frankenstein, from 1971.

I actually saw a bit of this in college, enough to know that it was decidedly not awesome. But until now, I had never watched the entire thing. So let’s experience the joy and agony (mostly agony) together, shall we?

First things first. Look back up at that title card above. See the rating? When the MPAA first adopted their movie rating system on my sixth birthday  (replacing the Hays code which acted as a censor until 1968), the four ratings were G, M, R, and X. But that M for “Mature” apparently confused people, because within a couple of years, the rating changed to GP to reflect its nature as the first step up from G.

A couple of years after that, in 1972, the MPAA apparently decided that “Guidance of Parents” was too convoluted, so they changed the rating once more to PG, which had a more memorable mnemonic (“Parental Guidance”) and was also more easily distinguished from G. Third time was the charm; PG stuck.

The only thing I really remember from the commercials I saw as a boy is a shot of Dracula with no irises, only white eyeballs, and blood dripping from his mouth. That shot occurs in the very first scene, as we see Dracula open the grave of the Frankenstein monster and then attack a night watchman.

The scene then shifts to a beach at night, where we see a pretty girl duck under a pier into total blackness. Which in the next shot is super-freaking-bright. Seriously, not only are they pumping serious footcandles on that under-pier set, but they’ve got the place filled with fog, so she’s literally walking through a wall of white. Which is when Lon Chaney Jr. shows up and kills her with an axe.

Vegas, baby! We see this blonde with big hooters doing this silly musical number about overpacking when she travels because, women, right?

It seems like they’re doing the number in this big empty theater, but we keep cutting to reaction shots from 4 or 5 people seated in the very back. The actress here can’t really dance or sing or act, but if you’re thinking she only got the part because of her big boobs, you’d be wrong, although if you’re thinking she got the part because she was sleeping with the director, you’d be right. Her name is Regina Carrol, and she was director Al Adamson’s wife.

Her character’s name is Judith Fontaine, and her sister Joan has disappeared. Hope she’s not the girl under the pier, although come on, what are the odds? Right?

Judith goes to see a police detective named Sgt. Martin, played by a gruff Jim Davis, better known nowadays as gruff partriach Jock Ewing from Dallas.

Sgt. Martin tells Judith that Joan used to hang out with a lot of hippies down on Venice Beach, at an amusement park there. He warns her not to get mixed up with that crowd, and suggests she just sit at home and wait for her phone to ring.

Meanwhile, a couple of hippies are at the amusement park. The guy is weird, dressed in this bright red buccaneer shirt and striped bell bottoms, like if Gilligan had been a pirate. His girlfriend Samantha spots some menacing bikers and steers them into the nearby house of horrors, run by a creepy dwarf.

Angelo Rossito is the actor here, and he was a familiar face, appearing in over 70 films. He was apparently the guy you hired if you couldn’t afford Billy Barty or Michael Dunn. One of his last roles was Master of Master/Blaster in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. To impress the rubes here, he pretends to eat their dollar before showing them inside.

The house of horrors showcases some really bad animatronics (played by live actors, since this is a low-budget movie), and then mad Doctor Duryea appears in his wheelchair to talk philosophy to the hippies.

Duryea is played by J. Carrol Naish in his last film role. Naish played tons of roles over his long career, but to me, he will forever after be first and foremost Prince-Doctor Tito Daka, Japanese saboteur and master villain of the original Batman serial.

After the hippies leave, Duryea travels down a secret elevator to his underground laboratory, where he has sewn Joan’s head back on and brought her back to life (although it’s a catatonic kind of life; she just lies there and stares). He gives a long monologue to his mute assistant Groton, played by a very ill Lon Chaney Jr.

Duryea tells how the blood produces an enzyme or something in a moment of extreme shock (like having your head cut off) that he needs for a serum. The monologue is hard to follow, containing not even a semblance of real science, and to make matters worse, he’s obviously reading everything off of cue cards. Thing is, Naish had a glass eye, so one eye is tracking back and forth constantly while the other stays fixed straight ahead, It’s distracting.

At the end of all this, Duryea gives Groton an injection to turn him into a homicidal maniac so that he can procure more bodies with more shocked blood for Duryea’s serum.

And just as you’re wondering what all of this has to do with Dracula or Frankenstein, the Count appears to Duryea and informs him that he is the last remaining heir of the line of Frankenstein. Dracula is played by an accountant with a white man ‘fro who adopted the exotic name of Zandor Vorkov to play this role. He has no trace of an accent, but his voice is dubbed in all echoey to make him sound spooky and powerful.

The Count wants Duryea to bring the creature back to life as the Count’s servant and promises Duryea revenge on those who’ve wronged him.

Later, Judith visits a hippie club and asks the waiter about Joan. The waiter runs to tell the bikers, and the head of the gang (who looks very familiar) tells him to drug her drink. Judith drinks her coffee and begins tripping, stumbling around while we see quick cuts of her writhing on a circular bed and running down a beach. Damn, even her hallucinations are boring.

She finally passes out, and the two hippies from the amusement park drag her out.

Now it’s time to bring the Monster back to life (or the Creature, if you prefer–the credits list two actors in the role, one as the Monster and one as the Creature)! And here’s an interesting bit of trivia: aside from Lon Chaney Jr. and J. Carrol Naish (who had a major role in House of Frankenstein), there’s a third veteran from the old Universal monster pictures present: Kenneth Strickfaden, who designed the buzzing, zapping equipment for Frankenstein’s lab. He brings back some of the old favorites to decorate Duryea’s basement.

The Monster is brought back to life, although it’s hard to tell at first. The make-up is this big puffy mask that’s so misshapen, it’s almost hard to tell it’s a human face. But Duryea is excited, because at last he can have his revenge on Dr. Beaumont, the man who ruined his promising medical career. Doesn’t look good for Dr. Beaumont, whoever he is.

Oh and look who it is! Forrest Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland and the world’s biggest sci-fi/horror fan!

What the hell is going on with his mustache? Seriously. The Count appears in Beaumont’s car and taunts him for a while, and then the Monster appears and hugs him to death. Bye-bye, Forrie.

Next morning, Judith awakes in the beach home of aging hippie Mike Howard. But the scene starts off with a curious close-up.

Those are two things you never see anymore. That slogan on the bottle, “It’ll tickle yore innards,” means it’s a bottle of Mountain Dew. People born after the 1970’s may not know that Mountain Dew, which got its name from slang for moonshine, was originally branded as a kind of hillbilly drink. All that “Do the Dew,” extreme sports stuff was a much later rebranding.

The bottle itself is also interesting. Back when glass soda bottles were more common, you would see those stretched-out soda bottles offered as prizes at fairs and carnivals. I’m guessing their presence here is supposed to make the audience think about the amusement park nearby or something.

Mike knew Joanie and tells Judith about her fascination with grotesquerie and that “creature emporium” down on the pier. Judith decides she needs to ask Dr. Duryea about Joanie. They are accompanied by the hippies, Samantha and Strange. Strange asks Mike to protect him from Duryea, so Samantha asks what about her?

“You know how to go invisible,” Strange explains.

“Only from the waist down,” Samantha replies, which, what the hell does that even mean? Is that supposed to be a double entendre, or just to show how messed-up on drugs these two are?

Anyway, they visit the exhibit, and once again, Duryea shows up. Judith shows Duryea Joanie’s photo, but though he claims never to have seen her, Naish’s performance is so over-the-top, his eyes might as well have stretched out of his head while an old car horn went “A-OOGAH!”

Once they leave the exhibit, they run into the bikers (the ones Samantha was avoiding, and the ones who drugged Judith). And look who the gang leader is.

It’s Russ Tamblyn, who started out as a child actor, then graduated into musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story, before sliding down into exploitation roles like War of the Gargantuas and Satan’s Sadists.

Things look grim for Samantha and Strange and Russ Tamblyn’s career until Sgt. Martin shows up and chases the bikers away. He warns Judith again to stop investigating, and especially to stay away from the beach, since there’s a homicidal maniac killing people there.

So of course, Judith and Mike go for a stroll on the beach and make out for a while. And while the waves roll in, let’s pause until next week for the big finale. Yes, I know, this movie is SO not worth spending two weeks on, but I’ve got a ton more screencaps to go, so let’s just grit our teeth and get through it.

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Out of the Vault – Shatter

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Apple’s Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, was a fascinating machine. Underpowered, but easy to learn and use, it only lacked one thing to enable it to take off: some practical use.

That came the next year, when Apple introduced the Laser Writer and the world was introduced to the concept of desktop publishing. And one of the first demonstrations of the potential of desktop publishing was First Comics’ Shatter, which debuted in mid-1985.

A collaboration between writer Peter Gillis and artist Mike Saenz, Shatter was a cyberpunk noir story about Sadr Al-Din Morales, a contract cop in future Chicago who stumbles across an elaborate plot that would take him all around the world in subsequent stories. In the first storyline, published in the U.S. as Shatter Special #1, Shatter is drawn into an ambush involving some very unusual bombs.

These panels show the distinctive visual style Saenz developed for Shatter, taking advantage of the Mac’s cut-and-paste and lettering capabilities, while using his own artistic abilities to make sure the art has a flow and an emotional component.

Almost as soon as Shatter gets home, he finds out something very important to him is being sold for $75,000, and as Providence would have it, he almost immediately is recruited to apprehend a dangerous criminal. The reward? $75,000. Serendipity, or something more sinister?

The criminal is a woman who killed 15 people in a board meeting of Simon Schuster Jovanovich. Shatter tracks the dame to a club, where they have a flirty conversation.

Later, he learns her name is Cyan Dalriada and tracks her down at home to find her playing the piano, where we learn the big McGuffin for this story: Simon Schuster Jovanovich has developed a technology for transferring skills, encoded in RNA, from one person to another. Problem is, the process kills the person they’re transferring skills from. Cyan’s lover was an expert pianist, and SSJ took his brain to steal his skills. She has stolen them back so she can play his music for a year. The explanation is interrupted by another bounty hunter. Cyan escapes as Shatter is killing his competition.

All in all, the Shatter special was a cool package. The art was crude, but had a grungy cyberpunk feel that accentuated the story nicely. The plot and scripting had a nicely Gibsonish mix of pulpy action and satire, and Shatter was smart, yet world-weary.

First brought Shatter back as a back-up feature in Jon Sable, Freelance for a while, and then gave him his own book. I missed the Sable back-ups, but when the regular series started, I bought it eagerly, only to find that the McGuffin from the special was actually the heart of the series.

Turned out that there was an entire underground made up of people stealing skills via RNA, and Shatter had joined them (as Cyan’s lover? It wasn’t clear). Shatter was special, though, in that he didn’t lose the transferred skills over time the way everyone else did, making Shatter’s brain a coveted commodity.

By issue three, Gillis and Saenz were gone. Steven Grant took over the scripting, while Steve Erwin and Bob Dienethal took over the art (actually drawing the art normally on paper, which was then scanned into the Mac to make it look jagged and pixelated). Grant’s script was wacky, killing off practically every supporting character while turning up the satire-o-meter to 11. Issue 4 ended with the entire RNA transfer process revealed as a hoax.

Gillis returned with issue 5 and immediately unhoaxed the RNA McGuffin, sending Shatter to the Third World to fight alongside a woman named Worker Ravanant, who’s using RNA transfer to train an army of monkeys to fight for her.

The book just got sillier from there, with Shatter leading a revolution against the corporate behemoths vying for the RNA transfer secrets in his head. Shatter’s mom shows up at one point as a corporate bigwig, and Shatter ends up pregnant, carrying the fetus of his own clone so they can gain the secrets of his permanent RNA transfer without killing him. Cyan shows up again as a recurring villain, or at least, her head does, kept alive in a jar with new mental powers.

New computer artist Charlie Athanas brought back the unique Mac feel starting with issue 8, but his work was a shadow of Saenz’s and couldn’t overcome the increasingly unbelievable plots. The series ran for 14 issues, but I gave up after 12. I don’t regret missing the ending.

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Super Movie Monday – First Man Into Space

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Tony Frazier

I apparently didn’t choose wisely for Halloween, spending my time with relatively high-quality fare like The Valley of Gwangi and Mighty Joe Young. I realized I never had time to indulge in the really guilty pleasure of watching absolutely awful horror films, and that’s an itch that really needs to be scratched. So in the coming weeks, I’ll be featuring some rally awful stuff, mainly themed around movies I saw commercials for as a kid, but never had the opportunity to see.

But not this time. For today’s Vault, I picked something almost at random off of Hulu, something I’d never seen before, and found something interesting.

First Man Into Space was released in 1959,  during that period after the development of rockets and satellites, but before manned spaceflight. The film opens with stock footage of a Bell X-1 rocket plane which segues into special effects of the plane climbing into the upper atmosphere.

Back in proto-Mission Control, led by Commander Chuck Prescott, they deliver lots of nonsensical sciency jargon as they monitor the flight of what we’re told is the Y-12.

Prescott’s younger brother, Dan, is the test pilot, and as he approaches the limits of his test flight, something strange happens. He is overcome by a kind of euphoria (or should I say, “space euphoria”) and ignores instructions to turn the plane around and return to Earth.

He wants to continue out into space, but loses control of the craft, which goes into a spin and begins to fall back to Earth. His craft disappears from radar.

Some time later, the space plane is found, crashed in New Mexico not far from where it took off, and we learn two things. Number one, the filmmakers have never been to New Mexico, because the plane is found in a forest, and number two, Dan is alive and unhurt. At least he’s well enough to ditch the state cops who were taking him to the hospital, and goes instead to visit his girlfriend for a little physical therapy. Chuck shows up and berates him for not following orders.

But the doctor in charge of Aviation Medicine convinces Chuck to let Dan pilot the next mission on the Y-13. Dan promises he’ll follow orders this time.

But as soon as he hits the same altitude, he is overcome by the same euphoria and decides to be the first man in space. He hits his emergency boosters and climbs to an altitude of 250 miles, where he encounters an odd storm of meteor dust. He ejects his emergency pod as the cockpit canopy disintegrates.

Much later, the emergency pod is found empty (again, not all that far from the base–apparently the earth doesn’t rotate at all)  and coated with a rocky crust.

Dan is nowhere to be found and is obviously dead this time. While Chuck is examining the wreckage, one of the state cops mentions that several cattle have been slaughtered on a nearby farm. Chuck begins to get suspicious as reports of mysterious murders mount, even more so when glittering dust like that meteoric crust is found at the crime scenes. His fears are confirmed when he finds Dan’s oxygen mask near one of the dead cows, crusted with that same dust.

The doctor speculates that the indestructible meteor dust coating somehow kept Dan alive through a storm of cosmic rays (which destroyed the uncrusted portions of the Y-13), but his metabolism changed so that he’s not getting enough oxygen, hence the blood drinking. Or something. It’s hard to follow. Point is, he’s now an immensely strong monster who appears to be made of crusty rock.

Eventually he returns to the base, where Chuck manages to lure him into a pressurized chamber that can simulate high altitudes.

Able to breathe once more, Dan becomes more coherent and is able to describe what happened to him. He also manages a reconciliation with his girlfriend before dying.

Look, as shoe-string budget, sci-fi monster movies go, it’s not horrible. The science is ridiculous, the dialogue is bad and the acting is worse. But there are some nice moments, and the effects are pretty good for a low-budget picture like this.

But the thing that stands out to me about this picture is this: it’s about a test pilot taking the first flight into space, encountering a mysterious storm, and returning to Earth as a monstrously strong creature with rocky skin. You know who would appear two years later who fits that same description?

Ben Grimm, the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing! I’m not saying this crappy low-budget film actually inspired the creation of Ben, but you never know.

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Out of the Vault – Hero Sandwich

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Tony Frazier

The mid- to late-1980’s saw a huge boom in independent comics, most of which fell into two camps: stuff that wasn’t very good (if at all) and stuff that was rough, but showed promise. Even the best or most successful of the independents, like Nexus or Mage or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, had their growing pains. But very rarely, you got a first issue that was simply dazzling right out of the gate.

Case in point: Hero Sandwich, which debuted in February 1987 from Slave Labor Graphics. Written by Dan Vado (who would later write The Griffin) with art by Chuck Beckum (who had just left brief gigs on Alan Moore’s Miracleman and Mike Baron’s Badger), the first issue seemed almost like an action film come to life.

The issue opens with a man sitting in a filthy apartment–mattress on the floor, cardboard box for a table– looking at himself in a hand mirror while he brushes his teeth. Except that he’s not exactly brushing…

He has filed his teeth down to points, so that he smiles like a shark. And he uses those newly filed teeth to stalk a pretty coed out exercising with her Walkman.

Meanwhile, at the Hotel Reinhold (a shout-out to Badger artist Bill Reinhold, with whom Beckum had recently worked), there’s a meeting going down between a pair of drug dealer-types who bear a resemblance to Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice, and these two really weird guys.

The guy in the hat is Silver Scorpion, although he’s neither silver nor a scorpion. The stretchy guy is Richard. Scorpion runs into an old nemesis named Irving outside the room and stays to delay him while Richard takes off with the formula. Irving radios his teammates with Richard’s description before he and Scorpion throw down. Richard has the devil’s own time eluding the pursuit, with a little help from Scorpion after he has defeated Irving.

Little does Scorpion know that Richard has stolen the clothes (and briefcase, and shoes) from a short, dumpy businessman in the men’s room. He meets up with teammate Rachel outside to make his getaway, when they run into the businessman’s wife, who has followed her husband here, thinking he’s having an affair.

Irving’s teammates run outside to catch Richard, so he decides to take off. However, the girls are fighting in the front seat, so he has to improvise.

The bad guys give chase, and moments later, Scorpion shows up with the rest of the team, Allison and Lee. Scorpion tells Richard to block the road with Lee’s car, since they obviously can’t use Scorpion’s classic Corvette. Lee begs to differ.

They finally make it back to their office, with money and formula for their client, Mrs. Rolling, when they discover someone waiting in their office: a vampire, who has drained the blood of Mrs. Rolling’s representative.

Meanwhile, the guy with the filed teeth goes to confession, but rather than confess his sins, he kills the priest, just to prove he can.

To say I was psyched after reading the first issue is an understatement. The story moved at a perfect pace, introducing a formidable villain on the one hand, while introducing a quirky team of heroes on the other. There was action and humor in perfect balance, and Beckum’s art was brilliant.

On Miracleman, Beckum’s art had seemed stiff and forced, but in this book, he had managed to find a personal style that combined the kineticism of manga (check out all those manga-style speed lines) with absolutely American character design that seemed to combine the best of superhero and Archie comics. The layout and pacing were perfect, the action precisely rendered without seeming stiff. It wasn’t just amazing, but it seemed effortless, which is the real trick.

Meanwhile, Vado’s script had humor and drama and some wonderfully creepy atmosphere in the bad guy’s narration. We were left with no idea who all these main characters were, but damn, it was a fun ride, and surely once we learned the backstory, it could only get better.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. The initial storyline went by too quickly, and like Vado’s other major book, The Griffin, it moved in weird fits and starts, with lots of exposition followed by brief action, followed by more exposition. The initial storyline ended in issue four, with most of the mystery explained in dialogue by the vampire instead of being uncovered clue by clue, with half the team off somewhere else. And we never did learn much about the characters,

Issue 5 was a fill-in issue, written by the artist who, starting with issue 2, had changed his last name from Beckum to Austen (yes, that Chuck Austen). The story featured Richard, who was obviously Austen’s favorite character. We never did learn how Richard got his stretchy powers, but in issue three, we did learn that he had been a pop star by the name of Plasteeq (in a scene which not only foreshadowed Austen’s later porn work, but also featured shout-outs to fellow artists Mike Grell and Bill Willingham).

By the time issue #6 came out, in February 1989 (three years after issue #1), it was obvious that whatever potential Hero Sandwich had demonstrated in that first issue was not going to be realized. Not only had it never been able to maintain a schedule, but every issue had looked different, as Austen leaned more and more on art assistants (mainly Norman Felchle, who graduated to lead artist on The Griffin), and with issue 6, Austen was gone, replaced by Pete Krause.

Krause has since gone on to do big things at DC, but in 1989, his stiffly-rendered figures couldn’t hold a candle to the kinetic appeal of Austen’s work. Nor could he maintain a schedule any better than Austen (although, to be fair, I have no proof that it wasn’t Slave Labor that was at fault for the schedule–some of those independent publishers had pretty shaky finances).

Worst of all, the mix of humor and action was gone–in the two issues I have of Krause’s run, Richard doesn’t stretch once, and Allison–the female combat monster who played a decisive role in the first storyline’s climax–is a nonentity. Most of the emphasis is on team leader Rachel and Silver Scorpion.

Whatever the reason, Hero Sandwich limped through four more issues after Austen left before giving up the ghost. By that time, I’d stopped caring about it.

But damn, that first issue was freaking brilliant!

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Halloween Podcast 2012 – The Final Broadcast

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Once again, it’s time for the annual Halloween podcast, sliding in just under the midnight wire. This year’s tale of terror is “The Final Broadcast.”

Halloween Podcast 2012

Click the link to play in your browser or right-click to save to your computer. This year’s program runs just under 18 minutes. The file size is around 34 MB. I’m not thrilled with the way this year’s production turned out, but I promised to have something, so here it is.

I owe a big Thank You to the friends who helped me out by lending their time and voices to the project, even though they don’t necessarily share my love of the medium.

Randy Farran
Paul Batteiger of Adventurotica (warning-link is NSFW)
Eilis O’Neal, author of The False Princess

Also big props to Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech, Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0″ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/” There’s a vast array of fine free-to-use music on his site. If you can throw some love his way, please do.

If you’re interested in technical details, the program was assembled in Audacity, a wonderful freeware sound editor. These things are a lot of work, so I probably won’t be doing these more than once a year, but if you enjoy it, please tell your friends. If there is enough interest, I may do more.

The story is copyright 2012 by Tony Frazier. Recording can be distributed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0″ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/”

ETA: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There’s been no trace of it on the front page, but I’ve also been running a quiet little experimental story every day this month. You can go here to start it, and then just keep hitting “next…”

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30+1

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Ouch…

1 previous…

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