On April 2nd, “Titans Will Clash!” Which is perhaps the worst tag-line I’ve seen since “The Story That Won’t Go Away” for JFK. I wonder why the tag-line on director Louis Lettier’s previous film wasn’t “This Summer, The Hulk Is Incredible!”

And the Titans will also clash in 3D. But not real 3D; this is a post-production fix designed to cash-in on the success of another 3D movie. Clash ‘10 wasn’t shot with the extra dimension in mind, so don’t expect me to shell out extra cash for the polarized goggles.

I would feel a bit easier about the upcoming re-make of Clash of the Titans if it weren’t for the attitude of some online movie sites and critics who seem to take pleasure in putting down the 1981 original in their anticipation of the new film. I should feel nothing but excitement; who am I to object to Greek myth and big beasts on the silver screen? But I have this discomfort with those critics who normally object to re-makes but somehow feel that the Ray Harryhausen classic is going to get improved in a re-do because the original is only “cheesy nostalgia.”

No. It’s. Not.

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The Wolfman (2010)
Directed by Joe Johnston. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self from the Screenplay by Curt Siodmak. Starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving.

The re-make of the 1941 Universal horror classic The Wolf Man had a hellaciously crazy time getting to you this weekend. Original director Mark Romanek was removed from the film right before shooting commenced, giving replacement director Joe Johnston only two weeks of prep time. The studio rejected Danny Elfman’s classically-toned orchestral music and hired Pauls Haslinger from Tangerine Dream to re-score the picture . . . only to reject his music a month before the release date and put Elfman’s music back in. The movie, shot in the summer of 2008, was pushed back repeatedly, with new editors brought on in what seemed like a flurry of desperation to save a troubled, messy film.

All this caused considerable concern among old school horror fans like myself, for whom the George Waggner/Lon Chaney Jr. The Wolf Man is a primary text. (Read my thoughts on the original here.) Maybe the movie was in serious trouble; or perhaps Universal wanted to get it just right. We all wanted this film to work; we feared it would not.

I can now confidently report, as a Universal-and-Hammer Horror geek, that the compound word 2010 The Wolfman most definitely does work. It shows evidence of breaks and tears and furious hammering to cover construction difficulties. It has pacing trouble (for once, a movie that goes too fast), character and plot loose ends, and a female lead who doesn’t bring much to the film. It’s flawed, when you come down to silver tacks (not brass tacks; this is a werewolf film). But The Wolfman is also bloody furious fun of a kind that contemporary horror films just haven’t given to somebody with my tastes in a long time. Terence Fisher fans, James Whale fans, Jack Pierce fans, Lon Chaney Jr. Fans, werewolf fans, Victorian London fans, steampunk fans, go see this movie . . . warts and bare patches and all, this is your film.

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SOARING ON THE WINGS OF MYTH:
James Cameron’s AVATAR revels in the grand traditions of fantasy

 The other day I slipped on a pair of 3-D glasses and was transported to a primordial world of alien beauty and high adventure. I was watching James Cameron’s new film AVATAR, which has become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. Much has been made of the film’s absolute perfection of special effects because Cameron creates a fantasy world that is truly believable. Thanks to his breakthroughs in computer-generated imagery and sheer breadth of imagination, AVATAR is more than a mere film… it’s an EXPERIENCE.

SKULLS starts right here at blackgate.com on Jan. 6

Comparisons to other blockbuster fantasy/sci-fi films are inevitable. Everything George Lucas attempted to do in his three STAR WARS prequels, Cameron actually succeeds at, i.e. building a fully realized and eminently believable fantasy world that is breathtaking in scope and packed with sheer wonder. But that perfection of simulated reality, that ability to make the fantastical seem genuine was NOT what I enjoyed most about this movie.

All the visual flair would be meaningless if the film didn’t draw upon the classic power and inspiration of the great fantasy tales. AVATAR is a fantasy fan’s ultimate cinematic experience. The fact that this fantasy is wrapped in the guise of science fiction only makes it more appealing and marktable to the average moviegoing audience. Both sci-fi and fantasy fans will be enraptured by the AVATAR experience.

Cameron’s inspirations for AVATAR span the gamut of everything from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ BARSOOM (John Carter of Mars) stories to Lucas’ STAR WARS (which were inspired by FLASH GORDON comic strips, among others), to the deep myths of the Old West, stone-age adventures, Jungle Tales comics, American Indian mythology, and wraps it all in a lush visual style worthy of the master Frank Frazetta himself.

One of the tropes Cameron plays with in this story–to great visual and emotional effect–is the riding of winged creatures by the Na’vi alien warriors.

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I was working in the lab, late one night…

Ah, October. My favorite month. No other time is so ideal for exploring dark fantasy, the Gothic, the classic ghost story… and of course, Universal horror films. The monsters of Universal’s 1930s and ‘40s films have given the Halloween season its mascots, creatures that are as closely identified with the holiday as Santa Claus is with Christmas. And so there’s no better Halloween party flick than the wall-to-wall monster epic that was the original “The Monster Mash”…

House of Frankenstein (1944)
Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Starring Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, J. Carrol Naish, Glenn Strange, Anne Gwynne, Elena Verdugo, George Zucco, Lionel Atwill.

In seventy-one minutes, House of Frankenstein brings you:

• Dracula
• The Wolf Man
• Frankenstein’s Monster
• A mad scientist
• A hunchback
• A torch-wielding mob of angry villagers
• A laboratory full of Kenneth Strickfaden-influenced sizzling equipment
• Brain transplants!

All this, plus the hat trick of Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., and John Carradine in the same film; roles for classic supporting actors Lionel Atwill and George Zucco; and sexy Anne Gwynne. Now how much would you pay?

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The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)
Directed by Gordon Hessler. Starring John Philip Law, Tom Baker, Caroline Munro, Douglas Wilmer, Martin Shaw, Kurt Christian, Grégoire Aslan, Takis Emmanuel.

“Every voyage has its own flavor.”

Recently on this blog, I wrote about one of the more ignored of Ray Harryhausen’s films, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver. This inspired me to review two other films of his that don’t get enough attention—the underwhelming H. G. Wells adaptation The First Men in the Moon (1964), and the wonderful but financially unsuccessful The Valley of Gwangi (1969)—on my own blog. Now I think I owe the legendary effects animator and fantasy film producer some time with one of his most popular films.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is not only one of Harryhausen’s most financially successful movies, but is also, in my Harryhausen-loving fan-obsessed opinion, the greatest piece the special effects maven ever worked on. I think that it’s not only Harryhausen’s best movie, but also one of the finest heroic fantasy films ever made.

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Directed by Andrew Leman; starring Matt Foyer, Chad Fifer, Noah Wagner, Ramon Allen Jr., and Ralph Lucas.

I cannot say I’ve ever been impressed with any film I’ve seen purporting to be based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, as they have all tended to stray pretty far from what makes Lovecraft’s stories interesting in the first place. And they generally show the limits of their budget as well as being both poorly shot and acted. But then I heard about this little gem, distributed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, that adapts Lovecraft’s foundational short ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ in as loyal and accurate a way as possible. Not only that — and here’s the really interesting bit — the movie itself is a black and white silent film, as if it had been filmed at the time of the story’s publication in the 1920s.

The choice to make this a silent film was a smart one. Firstly, it does help evoke the period of Lovecraft in a way no film before it ever has (all of the ones I’ve ever seen where contemporary pieces, for a start), and also makes it feel like a world apart from our own. In leaving some things unseen and unsaid, and in creating an at times stylized environment, this film activates the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks — and speeches or effects which would seem silly or dreadful when laid bare in a modern film are instead left in the shadows. In surmounting the very limited budget for this project, the choice could not have been better.

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The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
Directed by Jack Sher. Starring Kerwin Mathews, June Thorburn, Grégoire Aslan, Basil Sydney, Jo Morrow, Sherri Alberoni, Peter Bull.

First there was the Dynamation spectacle of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Then there was Mysterious Island. Then the miracle of Jason and the Argonauts, and . . . wait, I seem to have skipped one. Oh yes, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, made right after Sinbad. Now how did that one slip away?

Among the “Core Ten” Harryhausen films, the ten color fantasy and period science-fiction pictures he made between 1958 and his retirement in 1981 (all but one produced with Charles H. Schneer), The 3 Worlds of Gulliver gets the least amount of love now. For most of the 1980s, it was probably the unfortunate The Valley of Gwangi that suffered the most neglect, but that was because of its unavailability on video. (The weird name wasn’t helping it either; it certainly wasn’t the filmmakers’ first choice for the title.) Today, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver has turned into something of “the other movie” in the list of Harryhausen classics, even though it came out in 1960 fresh after the smash global success of The 7th Voyage Sinbad and featured that movie’s star, Kerwin Mathews, and its composer, Bernard Herrmann. In fact, Herrmann’s score is well-loved and appreciated among music fans through multiple re-recordings, but those same music lovers often haven’t watched the movie that inspired the music.

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Hercules (1983)
Directed by Luigi Cozzi (as Lewis Coates). Starring Lou Ferrigno, Sybil Danning, William Berger, Brad Harris, Ingrid Anderson.

Last week I reviewed a silly Conan pastiche novel. Today, I offer a sequel of sorts: a review of a very silly Hercules movie. The 1983 Hercules, sporting former mean, green, grunting machine Lou “Hulk” Ferrigno and the best special effects the Italian film industry can sort of buy, is one of the grandly awful pieces of entertaining oddness ever to come from a Roman studio. And Rome has given us some odd stuff. Aside from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, of course.

I encountered this Hercules when I was eleven years old. I adored Greek mythology since I was in second grade and was well-read in the topic, for which I can thank Clash of the Titans for the initial push. One Friday night, a friend and I watched Hercules when it premiered on cable. It sounded like a sure-winner for kids still not old enough to go out on weekend nights: Greek mythology, monsters, and that guy who played the Hulk. (Plus girls in skimpy outfits, but at eleven we weren’t willing to admit that was already a motivation.)

I’m not certain what I expected from Hercules back then, but it certainly wasn’t what I ended up getting. I had this strange illusion, which only an eleven-year-old can sustain, that a mystical law forced filmmakers to adhere to their source material as closely as they could. When I saw this oddball Hercules film on television, my young boy’s illusions died forever. Which is safer for my sanity, although I still feel the pains from the American Godzilla and Jan de Bont’s 1999 demolishing of The Haunting [of Hill House]. The 1983 Hercules has only the most tenuous connection to Greek mythology, and appears like a mishmash of tiny bits and pieces of Hellenic legendary in a goopy stew of trendy science-fiction clichés from the SF-explosion of the late-‘70s. Welcome to Battlestar Hercules. Or perhaps Krull is the most appropriate comparison.

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Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Directed by Will Meugniot. Featuring the Voices of Keifer Sutherland, Lucy Lawless, Michael Rosenbaum, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jason Marsden, Rino Romano.

During one of the classic episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, while Mike and the ‘Bots are watching the conclusion of the delightfully weird and wretched 1960’s Coleman Francis masterpiece The Skydivers, Mike abruptly remarks: “I don’t know guys. I still like this movie better than Top Gun. A lot better.”

So I will say this about the recent animated film adaptation of Dragons of Autumn Twilight: “I still like this movie better than the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie. A lot better.”

Be warned: these will be the last friendly words you are likely to hear in this review.

If Wizards of the Coast, the current owners of the Dungeons & Dragons media franchise, had serious intentions of starting a successful line of direct-to-video animated films based on the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels, they couldn’t have done a finer job of slicing themselves off at the knees with a broadsword than this disaster of a movie. The DVD came out in January, and the reason you probably haven’t heard much about it until now is because so many people are trying to abide by “If you can’t say anything nice…” Or else the film immediately slipped their memory after seeing it. Both concepts make sense.

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I just watched about 25 hours of what I consider the best Sword and Sorcery I’ve seen in about the same number of years.

I’m speaking about HBO’s Rome, of course, the very expensive historical fiction epic that ran for two seasons 2005-2007. I’m sure many of you have seen it, but it was new to me (we don’t have cable). Apart from a few quibbles about some of the portrayals, specifically Cato the Younger and Octavian in the second season, I found it a fascinating peek into another age.

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