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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.

Even when it came out in 1981, Clash of the Titans was already a “nostalgia” film. Visual effects processes were changing radically from the influx of science-fiction and fantasy films in the late-1970s. Harryhausen’s methods were still the same as when he worked on The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958, and he did most of the hands-on work himself. He had a few assistants on Clash of the Titans, such as skilled animator Jim Danforth, but it was still a small effects group compared to the enormous teams and VFX houses that have taken over the business. Harryhausen quietly retired after Clash of the Titans, knowing a new era had come. But none of this stopped people from seeing the film in droves and loving it.

And still loving it—because Clash of the Titans is a truly great film that doesn’t require any nostalgia to make it work. It lives on its own. I still thrill to it, not merely because I loved it as a child and that it is the only Harryhausen film that I was old enough to have seen first-run in a theater, but because it is made with such detail, love, and sincerity for its material. There are many films I love as a child that do nothing for me today except make me shrug and marvel at how tastes change. Clash of the Titans, however, only seems to get better each time I see it. It transports with its fantasy, doing what mythology and fantasy should do. If it doesn’t adhere to the letter of the Greek myths, it is still the best screen interpretation of the religion of the Hellenes; it looks the way the ancients must have imagined their own supernatural world.

Perhaps the critics should sit down and watch the original Clash of the Titans again before seeing the new one. I think the reason that they’re making their claims that it’s “just a piece of nostalgia” is that they really haven’t watched it recently. I promise them that a fresh viewing will change their minds.

Harryhausen and Charles H. Schneer, his producer since It Came from Beneath the Sea, had scored two major successes with Sinbad movies during the 1970s, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). The second one, however, was not one of their higher quality outings, something of which Harryhausen was well aware. The choice to move back to Greek mythology, which had worked so well with 1964’s Jason and the Argonauts, was now a natural one. Just as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad had repeated the magic of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, so would Clash of the Titans repeat the magic of Jason and the Argonauts.

The source material for Clash of the Titans is the myth of Perseus, which is one of the oldest traceable stories in the canon of Greek heroes. Harryhausen and screenwriter Beverly Cross made many changes to the story, although the core of Perseus questing to slice off the head of the Gorgon Medusa and his encounter with the Kraken remain. Perseus’s original reason for fetching Medusa’s petrifying head was because King Polydectes tricked him into making the vow so he could get rid of the boy and clear the path toward marrying Perseus’s mother, Danae. This is similar to Jason’s catalysy for going after the Golden Fleece in Jason and the Argonauts, and perhaps this is one reason that Clash of the Titans creates a new motivation, tying the quest of the Gorgon directly to the Kraken and Andromeda, which is a late episode in the myth that isn’t tied in with anything that occurs previously. The goddess Thetis is made into Perseus’s principle adversary (although not a villain, since that idea goes against the style of the Greek religion—no god is specifically “good” or “evil”), and Athena moves into the background. The script also gives the mount Pegasus to Perseus, even though Pegasus springs from the headless torso of Medusa in the myth, and it is Bellerophon who tames and rides the winged horse. However, there is a history in Renaissance art of depicting Perseus as Pegasus’s rider, so this has some genuine precedent.

Harryhausen also packed in more monsters to the story—they’re what we’re paying to see, right? He already had Pegasus, Medusa, and the Kraken. The awesome Kraken is one of the special-effect master’s most unusually designed creatures, taking characteristics of King Kong and the Ymir from Harryhausen’s earlier film, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and giving them an aquatic twist. The new creatures to the tale are a varied lot: the twisted humanoid Calibos becomes a major villain who does the dirty work for Thetis, and is a rare combination of live-action performance and stop-motion animation. The three-headed Hound of Hades Cerebus loses a head (too difficult to animate) and is retitled “Dioskilos.” A giant vulture serves Calibos for no reason except that a giant vulture looks magnificent swooping down from the night sky and fits Calibos’s funereal swap dwelling. Huge scorpions born of Medusa’s blood make life tough for the heroes even after the gorgon’s death. Oh, and a cute mechanical owl named Bubo entertains the kiddies. I genuinely like Bubo; his mechanical movements are beautifully executed, and the practical prop version meshes well with the animated one. Harryhausen designed Bubo before Star Wars came out, so despite claims to the contrary, the whirling mecha-owl isn’t a copycat of R2D2.

None of the SFX sequences disappoint. The roping of Pegasus and the final battle, which involves animating Pegasus, Bubo, the Kraken, Medusa’s head, and a miniature Perseus, are impressive work at the level of Harryhausen’s best. But it’s the Medusa encounter that tops them all—tops everything else in Harryhausen’s career. It’s his Sistine Chapel, in my opinion.

In a featurette for the new Clash of the Titans, the filmmakers seem proud that their Medusa is fast-moving instead of the slow one from the original. Uhm, I think that was the whole point. The Medusa scene isn’t a fight, it’s a suspense sequence, and the slow and tense winding movement of the snake-haired monster, punctuated with the hideous rattle of her tail, create an engrossing experience. Harryhausen not only crafted great animation in this scene, but superb atmosphere with the use of the claustrophobic temple set, shadows, and the flicker hell-lights of the torches. Everything about the sequence works towards tightening the tension until the unleash when Perseus whacks off the Gorgon’s head. The details in these final seconds—Medusa’s claws scraping white marks across the granite of a pillar, the writhing serpentine torso, the final “death-rattle”—are superlative special effects and movie magic. And the movie tops it off with Perseus staggering into the light to hold up Medusa’s severed head toward heavens, and Zeus cries out, “Find and fulfill your destiny.” This is one of my favorite of all movie moments.

Along with all the beasties, Harryhausen execute a fine non-animated effects scene near the opening when the Kraken creates a tidal waves to destroy the city of Argos. The miniature work here is about the same level as what most genre films were doing at the time, even considering the phenomenon of Star Wars. It can’t match the destruction of Krypton in Superman, but at least it doesn’t go on so blasted long.

The dramatis personae has the biggest names ever to appear in the Schneer-Harryhausen canon, boasting major international film and stage actors in the supporting cast. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad has a better overall set of performances, but you can’t help but feel impressed with Laurence Olivier (Zeus), Maggie Smith (Thetis), Siân Phillips (Cassiopeia), Flora Robson, Freda Jackson (Stygian Witches), and Ursula Andress (Aphrodite). Best of all is the stateside casting coup of the beloved Burgess Meredith, who gives the best turn of all as the wise old mentor character, Ammon the playwright.

As the lead, Harry Hamlin is adequate as Perseus and projects charisma even though his performance is a bit stiff. The female lead, Judith Bowker, is simply stunning as a girlish Andromeda with completely captivating eyes. She shows great strength in the role, and it seems a bit strange that at the end she has to turn into a standard damsel in distress.

Clash of the Titans has a few problems with its plot, some of which doesn’t make much sense in the “connect-the-dots” fashion that often plagues quest stories. Why the city of Joppa fears Calibos so much when he lives in a swamp commanding five guys armed with clubs, and what his “curse” entails, is never sufficiently explained. The way the gods meddle and then abruptly seem powerless to stop certain actions is a weakness inherent in Greek mythology, but it really feels strange on the screen. And why does it seem that the entrance to Hades and river Styx with Charon the Ferryman is merely a day’s ride from Joppa? No, make that a day’s walk, since Perseus manages to stumble the whole distance half-conscious just before the Longest Day and the sacrifice of Andromeda. It just seems an inconvenient place to build a city, that’s all. The film does occasionally reveal its lower-budget (although this was the most expensive of all Harryhausen’s films): the crowd scenes seem rather slight, for example.

That Laurence Rosenthal somehow didn’t turn into one of the foremost composers of the decade based on what he did in Clash of the Titans completely mystifies me. The Harryhausen-Schneer canon has an impressive history of major film composers: Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa, Jerome Moross, Laurie Johnston. Rosenthal is the “smallest” of all these names, with few other major films to his credit, but you sure wouldn’t know it from the epic music in the movie. It’s actually the biggest score for any of Harryhausen films, and if you don’t feel a surge of passion at the conclusion when Pegasus erupts from the ocean to alight triumphantly on the rocks while the heroic Main Theme explodes on the soundtrack, then you’re either deaf or dead.

To close my look at one my favorite movies (and I could go on a lot longer, believe me), I’ll confess that I get misty-eyed during Laurence Olivier’s final speech as Zeus over the field of constellations in the night sky. It sounds as if it is Ray Harryhausen’s farewell as Zeus predicts that the great stories shall never die because they live in the stars, and “the stars will never fade . . . never . . . they will burn until the end of time. . . .”

Returning to—(Wait, what year is it? Let me check the calendar)—2010 C.E. . . .

In spite of the annoying promotional materials and silly statements from critics who should know better, I am looking forward to new Clash of the Titans on April 2nd and will walk into the theater with as open a mind as a Harryhausen fanatic can. At the very least, no matter how it relates to the classic, it’s still epic fantasy of the sword-and-sandal genre loaded with tons of monsters. You can expect a review on the Tuesday after the film comes out. But not of the 3D version.

For those of you interested, I’ve also reviewed the novelization of the original movie.

     After a few more steps, I realized Rego was no longer behind me.
     From the corner of my eye, I could see him. He was not alone.
     “Lena…” His voice was thick with fear. “Should’ve gone ‘round.”
     Dripping dirt, dust, and strips of leathered flesh, four corpses had risen from the dirt to surround Rego. His mount’s back was arched, its tail puffed up and thick. The skeletal hands clattered as they beat ragged chests and yellowed ribcages, inching closer to Rego. They glowed with the same sickly light as the cauldron beast. Even as I watched, more corpses pulled themselves from their shallow, unmarked graves.

Michael Jasper has three novels in print, and his collection Gunning for the Buddha is now available from Prime.  Jay Lake is the award-winning author of over 250 short stories and ten novels, including Green and Escapement.

“Devil on the Wind” appears in Black Gate 14.  You can read a more complete excerpt here.

Note: this story contains some adult themes.

The complete Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek is available here.

Art by John Kaufmann.

How do you win? By sending a two-sentence summary of a recent Eberron product to eberron@blackgate.com. The best eight — as selected by a capricious panel of barely-literate judges — will be published here, and the authors will be awarded the prizes.

That’s it. No forms to fill out.  No skill-testing questions. No money down. No fine print.  OK, maybe a little fine print, so sue us. It’s a contest, no one’s gonna believe it’s legit until they see some fine print.

It’s a mighty fine book, too.  Yes, that’s Edward Scissorhand’s dad on the front cover.  And his dogs Zipper and Papercut.  They bring a whole new level of menace to “running with scissors.” Ouchie ouchie.

Come on, this is the easiest contest we’ve ever run.  Maybe the easiest contest in the whole history of civilization.  I could even make it even easier by pointing you to a complete list of Eberron modules and sourcebooks to get you started, but that would be spoon feeding you, wouldn’t it?  Yes it would.

Time is running out to claim one of these fine D&D books, and perhaps to introduce yourself to the very cool Eberron setting. E-mail us at eberron@blackgate.com now.  Operators are standing by.

The opening of any number of novels, classic in its prodigal simplicity, promising Faulknerian brambles with a dash of Wolf (Thomas that is) and a thread of O’Connor. The returning son of the local preacher, reconnecting, abrading old scabs, stirring nearly-dead ashes, the stuff of Americana along gothic lines. The changes, of course, mask how much everything has remained pretty much the same. After a time, one can even overlook those changes…

Not in Daryl Gregory’s second novel, The Devil’s Alphabet. The changes in this case cannot be ignored. By anyone.

Switchcreek has undergone a profound experience in the form of mutations which swept through the small population, transforming many residents into distinctly divergent species. The genetic instructions for these people have been rewritten by some unknown process, which did not strike all people. When the changes worked their way through, Switchcreek was home to populations of what became known as Argos, Betas, and Charlies, as well as the untouched population.

Pax’s own parents changed. His mother did not survive, but his father, Reverend Harlan Martin, did, becoming a Charlie, a massive, bulging block of a man, his weight pushing up toward five hundred pounds.

The betas are almost otter-like in appearance, though hairless, and as it emerges, all females, reproducing parthenogenetically.

The Argos are giants, hard-surfaced, immensely strong, distorted frames, the women larger and stronger than the men.

Pax’s two best friends, Deke and Jo Lynn, underwent the changes, Deke becoming an argo, Jo Lynn a beta. It is Jo Lynn’s funeral that brings Pax — who escaped the changes — back.

Pax himself, however, sometimes wonders if there is not a fourth vector, one that still maintains the appearance of a “normal” human, but inside is utterly different. He feels himself to be one of these, but he has no proof other than his sense of isolation, his inability to connect with other people, his indifference to the world around him. Returning to Switchcreek offers him a chance to find out.

Jo Lynn supposedly committed suicide. Deke is not so sure. Nor, frankly, is Pax, who has a hard time imagining Jo Lynn ever becoming so despairing that such an end might seem the only way. But Pax is no detective and Deke, while in many ways the town sheriff, has no official standing with state law enforcement. Nevertheless, there is a missing laptop, questions about fertility, and something that looks very much like drug trafficking going on in this community Pax once called home, and Pax’s own troubled relationship with his aging and ill father drag him into the mire of Switchcreek.

In some ways, the story is reminiscent of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos but Gregory has more of the tools at his disposal, both scientifically and philosophically, at work. The entire history of defining humans and races and what counts politically depending on which conclusions hovers in the background throughout the novel. He never quite brings these issues to center stage, and for that he is to be appreciated for his restraint. Polemic could easily overwhelm the story here and he has chosen to tell it through characters for whom such discourse would feel unnatural at best, a mask for authorial intrusion at worst. Instead, he drops a reference here and there and lets the impact of a sentence ripple through the text, allowing us to go on with the story or pause of our own accord to consider the implications, never himself stopping the flow of the narrative to tell us what we should be inferring at a given moment.

Because as much as this is a novel about a catastrophe and its impact on the people involved, it is more a novel about finding purpose, coming home, and doing right. For all the vast implications of what has happened in Switchcreek — and which may happen anywhere else at any time — and all the fascinating speculation about what that something is, The Devil’s Alphabet is a fine work of fiction because it is about these few people and their lives, their struggle to cope with the ambivalence of a universe which really does seem to play dice.

Gregory lays out a rather interesting theory of why this may have happened, based on quantum tunneling and a facet of the many-worlds model of the metaverse. It may not be what has happened, he doesn’t go there, it’s just a theory, one among several developed by people who don’t know and who still need an explanation. It’s the human urgency for something rational, no matter how far-fetched, that is important, not the one of several Sfnal conceits that he may favor. Why and how this happened is less important than the fact that it has happened, and these people must deal with it.

The central issue that transcends the specifics of the story, however, is one that is recurrent in science fiction, never answered, always vital — what does it mean to be human? The genre has perhaps grown comfortable, if not complacent, with that question posed in the form of extraterrestrials. In some sense, we’ve come of age through learning to cope with the idea of other sentient, sapient species in the universe. But the universe itself, in this instance, provides a comforting buffer, a distance. The question becomes more pointed when that Other Species is right here, living with us.

But that’s what stories of the prodigal are all about anyway. The son who goes away to strange lands, sees odd things, learns peculiar truths, and comes home changed. Comes home different. Not one of us anymore. Is he still “like us?” The welcome he gets, of course, says more about those who never left than it does about the returning child.

Given the company it keeps, you can expect Flurb to be a little quirky. Speaking of which, Small Beer Press has announced an upcoming edition of Lady Churchhill’s Rosebud Wristlet, though there’s nothing up yet on the website.

You know how it is with zines. They’re nothing if the first page isn’t an apology for being late. And, you know, we haven’t gotten that apology written yet, which is really holding things up.

What’s in that issue (number 25) of LCRW? Fiction and poetry and Advice from: Veronica Schanoes, Richard Parks, Dear Aunt Gwenda, Jeanine Hall Gailey, and more as well as not one but two translations. We may have more news on the translation front later this spring, keep an eye out. (Ouch.) The translations are from Edward Gauvin of French author Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s “A City of Museums” (which will be included in A Life on Paper, the first book by G.-O. C. in English which we will publish in May— galleys are going out now!) and a self-translation by award-winning Chinese author Haihong Zhao (which was brought to our attention by Michael Swanwick, yay!).

From The London Times, October 1, 1888

Between August 31st and November 9th, 1888, the first widely documented serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper” brutally murdered five prostitutes in the heinous poverty that was the Whitechapel area of London.

In 2010, a Google search on “Jack the Ripper” returns over 2 million entries, and Amazon lists 605 books and 64 movies, all focused on an unsolved mystery that is 122 years old and which frankly, by today’s standards would hold the headline spot on CNN for a week at most.

I had to literally ask myself why?

Meaning I’ve been right there fascinated along with everyone else.

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Jack and his bloody doings, but I do recall that taking the after dark “Jack the Ripper Tour” was high on my list of priorities when I packed off to London the first time. 

There on a perfectly damp and foggy evening I, along with a couple of dozen other tourists, followed a guide wearing a fairly cheesy black cape and top hat through some very fragrant Whitechapel alleyways.  And though this neighborhood is a mostly respectable industrialized area today, it doesn’t take much encouragement to imagine coming upon the mangled mess of Polly Nichols spread unceremoniously across the wet bricks.

OK, now that I’ve engaged your gag reflex and you’re thinking I should try going someplace nice like Vegas next time, I will tell you that at that moment I completely understood the term “morbid fascination.”

The Ten Bells Pub, Whitechapel

I took that tour many times in my subsequent pilgrimages to London, and dragging through those rank alleyways became almost an addiction.  The evenings even concluded with a visit to The Ten Bells pub, which is still in operation today due to its historic status. 

It was from the Ten Bells that Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s final victim, was last seen leaving in the company of a well-dressed gentleman wearing a cape and top hat.  Standing in that original building, on floor boards warped by nearly 200 years of spilt libations, you can almost see a shadow in a topper, sliding past the front window. 

Gentleman Jack would like to buy you a drink and discuss a little business outside, if you’ve got a moment.

I’ve seen all of the movies and own a fair number of those 605 titles Amazon lists as dedicated to this subject, and many of them rehash the same well-documented facts about the case.  More than a few dabble in mostly wild speculation on the killer’s identity, which runs the gambit from a mad Freemason to Queen Victoria’s drug-addled personal physician. 

However, as you have come to expect, I have a few favorites, which all manage to recreate that morbid and arguably unhealthy fascination I feel standing in Whitechapel at midnight.

First on the list, The Complete Jack the Ripper, came to my attention via the author himself, Donald Rumbelow. 

For over sixteen years Mr. Rumbelow has acted as a guide on certain nights for the London after-dark tour, and on my second go at chasing Gentleman Jack I was lucky enough to choose one of his evenings. 

When the tour concluded at The Ten Bells, I stayed behind to chat with Mr. Rumbelow about the case, learning that he had just published the definitive work on the murders, following a distinguished career as a London police officer and curator of The Police Crime Museum.  He proudly produced a copy from his bag and signed it for me.

It wasn’t until I got home that I discovered I had just shared a couple of pints with the world’s leading expert on the Ripper crimes.  Mr. Rumbelow has consulted on movies, documentaries, and a BBC series, and his book is a riveting account of the events in 1888 not just from a factual standpoint, but from a police investigators viewpoint.  It’s definitely the place to introduce yourself to Jack.

Donald Rumbelow

In this work you’ll read about the hundreds of taunting letters, supposedly from the killer, which were sent to the London police department.  Most of these are considered frauds, written either by hoaxers attempting to incite more panic or by newspaper reporters attempting to create something solid out of a profound mystery. 

However, several of these letters have come to be considered authentic.  In the letter known as “Dear Boss,” the author makes an eerily accurate prediction that as part of his next violent act, he “shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly.”

Three days later on September 30, the night the Ripper took two victims, one of the bodies was found to have had the earlobe removed though it never found its way into the post.  This is also the letter in which the author refers to himself as “Jack the Ripper;” a self-awarded moniker with definite staying power.

On October 16th George Lusk, the president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, received a three-inch-square cardboard box in his mail. Inside was half a human kidney preserved in wine, along with the following letter. Medical reports carried out by Dr. Openshaw found the kidney to be very similar to the one removed from Catherine Eddowes, the second victim from the night of September 30th. The letter read as follows:

From hell.
Mr Lusk,
Sir
I send you half the kidney I took from one woman and preserved it for you the other piece I fried and ate it was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer.

You can read about the case and the other letters here. 

103 years later Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell used the first words of this letter for their famous comic adaptation From Hell.

In 2001, Hollywood turned Moore and Campbell’s opus into From Hell starring Johnny Depp as a Scotland Yard inspector, and Heather Graham as the ill-fated Mary Kelly. The Ten Bells even makes a cameo.

It wasn’t exactly a blockbuster and Johnny Depp probably doesn’t want to discuss it these days, but it’s an interesting and rather novel approach to a series of events about which most people are at least somewhat familiar. 

I just watched it again to be sure I really remembered liking it for a reason other than Johnny Depp, and I did.

Finally, though there continues to be speculation to this day about the true identity of the killer, none of these theories mattered in 1993 when The Diary of Jack the Ripper was published. 

Supposedly it was discovered during a home restoration project and written by James Maybrick, a wealthy Victorian cotton merchant who was already famous for having been poisoned to death by his wife. 

The diary indicates that Maybrick was an addict whose deteriorating mental condition turned him into a delusionary murderer of prostitutes in Whitechapel.

Many of the facts put forth in the diary entries match amazingly well with those of the case, including several that were not widely known, and one in particular that had never been released to the public. 

A grisly crime-scene photo of the body of Mary Kelly shows the letters “FM” written in blood on the wall above the bed.  The diary explains this as the initials of Florence Maybrick, James Maybrick’s wife, about whom he was imagining as he carried out his violent deeds.

I found the diary fascinating and believed, along with many, that the mystery of Jack the Ripper had finally been solved. 

So it was with much disappointment that I read several years later that forensics, and a more careful analysis of the content, pointed to it being a very clever forgery. 

I still recommend it mainly because its authenticity has never been conclusively proven or disproven, and even if it is fake, the author does an amazingly detailed job explaining the brutalities of life in what is widely considered a romantic period in history.

On April 20 Dreamcatcher games will release Sherlock Holmes Vs. Jack the Ripper for the Xbox. 

Clearly “Gentleman Jack” is still haunting the 21st century, beckoning from the alleyway to meet him in the shadows for a little chat. 

But if you go, be warned, once you take him up on his invitation, you may never get him to go away.

For best viewing:

- Scroll to the right to see the entire comic page

- Hit your F11 key to maximize your viewing area

- Scroll down to read from page to page

To read earlier chapters:

- Type SKULLS into the search field at the left and the earlier chapters will pop up. Enjoy…

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I spent a large chunk of the evenings this weekend watching two films in 70 mm prints on the large screens of grand old Los Angeles cinemas. The timing was right for the prodigious L.A. revival screening community to drag out the mega-sized celluloid for enjoyment in Gargantua-Vision: it was Oscar weekend and everybody was talking and joking about Avatar, even if they knew Hurt Locker was going to win Best Picture. Which it did. (I think District 9 should have won, but didn’t delude myself for a moment that this would happen. But Jeff Bridges, huh? Pretty cool. Kevin Flynn has an Oscar.)

The term “game changer” was kicked around a lot regarding Avatar when it first premiered. Then a massive backlash set in even as the movie steamrollered box office records toward a $750 million domestic gross. Avatar most certainly is a game changer as far as 3D is concerned; we’re going to drown in the format for the next two years, and the huge opening of Alice in Wonderland, which was rigged for 3D in post-production, will only prolong this. But Avatar as a big-screen visceral experience is not so much the New Reality as it is a Throwback to the widescreen explosion of the 1950s that carried into the 1960s. Plenty of rotten films got spectacular treatment in Cinemascope, Vista Vision, Technirama, Todd-AO, Super Panavision 70, etc. Plenty of very good films as well. And handful of masterpieces that still define “pure cinema,” the art form of the enormous moving image.

I watched two of those ‘60s classics this weekend, both shot in Super Panavision 70, a competitor to the Todd-AO 70 mm process. The first movie was at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, and the second at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, two blocks from the Kodak Theater where the Oscars were to be held in less than twenty-four hours. (And let me tell you, parking and even crossing the street was insane, even for Hollywood and Highland.) Both theaters run under the aegis of the American Cinematheque, a non-profit organization promoting the art of film. I’d seen both movies before, and one previously in a 70 mm screening. But at a time when I was already a’weary of Oscar 2010 talk, I wanted to immerse myself in some awesome hugeness of the 1960s. I wanted to ride through the Arabian sads to attack Aqaba, and travel to Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.

You can probably guess now which movies I saw.

I’ll start with the second movie I saw first, since it’s not as personally important to me, although this was the first time I had watched it in a theater.

When people quip that “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” I’m certain they’re talking about Lawrence of Arabia. They can’t mean anything else. This film is the epitome of that old saw.

I had never seen Lawrence of Arabia in a theater before, which makes me wonder if I can say that I’d seen Lawrence of Arabia at all. I first watched it in the ‘80s, cropped on TV, and wondered why anybody thought it was a big deal. I saw a widescreen laserdisc of the 1989 restoration, and that improved my appraisal, but I still didn’t get why people like Martin Scorsese would seemingly throw themselves on a scimitar in the cause of this movie.

I get it now. Astonishing film. Television, even widescreen ones, simply murder this movie.

Swords and guns in the desert . . . even if Lawrence of Arabia was mere spectacle about the Arab revolt in World War I with no interesting characterization, great performances, or genius scripting, it would still grab at the imagination for its panorama of the desert and charging camels and horses. The long pan of the Arab tribes smashing into Aqaba, the slow rise of the sun over the knife edge of the sands, Omar Sharif gradually emerging from the waves of heat, the single-take destruction of the al-Hejaz railway—all visual marvels. But there were many other widescreen spectacles of the same scope that haven’t survived as well. Lawrence of Arabia has the “everything else” to go with looking great.

Lawrence of Arabia was a smash hit in 1962, and picked up the Oscar for Best Picture. But star Peter O’Toole was bizarrely snubbed in favor of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. I like Gregory Peck in that picture, but now that I’ve seen Lawrence in all its Super Panavision “oh wow” glory, I can’t understand how O’Toole got passed over.

That is what really struck me about seeing David Lean’s telling of T. E. Lawrence’s involvement in the revolt: the performance of Peter O’Toole. Given an enormous screen, the actor’s embodiment of this complex figure is spellbinding. The tics, the silences, the stares, the grandiose gestures, the body language. None of this came through to me before like it did when O’Toole loomed over me on a sixty-foot screen. When Lawrence announces “Nothing is written” as he rides back from the remarkable rescue of Gasim from the Anvil of the Sun, I felt a shudder like nothing the movie had ever given me before. When the broken Lawrence begs General Allenby “for a job any man can do,” I felt devastated to see this man who had shoved himself to godlike heights brought down to a quivering mess. O’Toole’s T. E. Lawrence finally spoke to me . . . the therefore, the film did as well.

Seeing Lawrence of Arabia at the Egyptian, a theater built in 1922 in full Middle Eastern chic, underneath a proscenium of scarabs and serpents and a sunburst of Ra, added an tangible extra dimension to the film that I could never get from 3D.

And the night before I saw Lawrence of Arabia. . . .

I don’t have an official “favorite movie.” I realized about a decade ago that trying to shoehorn a particular film into this spot wouldn’t achieve anything; there are too many that I love, on some days I love one more than another, and it constantly shifts depending on my mood. If I had to narrow down a short list to force a choice, 2001: A Space Odyssey would be one of the obvious and immediate candidate on it. In fact, it would be the earliest film from my life to enter this hypothetical list. I first saw the movie when I was eight years old when it showed on cable. Z Channel, I believe. I didn’t understand anything of what was happening, but I knew I loved it. And this was on a conventional-sized TV, in mono, and cropped. Think of how my opinion grew as I saw it in better formats and my mind matured.

I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in a theater for the first time in the late ‘90s. It was a 70 mm print shown at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, in the days when the dome stood alone in a parking lot on Sunset Blvd. like a great alien intelligence had dropped an enormous golf ball that imbedded itself halfway into the asphalt. Now the dome is part of a large complex called the Arclight, but at least it remains preserved (it was almost demolished—evil! evil!). That screening is still, to this day, my favorite experience in a movie theater. I already loved the film, but this was epiphany. This was, as the original posters proclaimed, “The Ultimate Trip.” And it required no illegal substances to make it, just the price of a ticket.

I’m not going to detour into my interpretation of 2001, which would require a separate blog post all on its own and would be primarily an exercise in self-entertainment as there is no one single way to interpret the film. I’ll step away from analysis of the film’s panorama of human history and its relationship to technology and simply say that no other film gives me the same immersive experience, the same feeling of complete cinema, as 2001: A Space Odyssey. In grosser terms: I love this film so goddamn much it’s far beyond rational thinking. Any time, anywhere, if you asked me, “Would you like to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey?” I would grab an animal bone and smash in your skull, which is my fannish way of saying, “Yes!”

People who love the movie as much as I do—and they surrounded me on Friday night—know exactly what I’m talking about: there’s a rhythm to this primarily visual film, a tonality, that is hypnotic. Even the spoken lines, which are often considered “bland” and “wooden,” are completely perfect for us. I think the dialogue is brilliant. It’s simple, ordinary, bureaucratic, and 100% the right material for the movie, and thus a joy to hear. And the cast is ideally suited to their lines. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood? Most believable astronauts in history. Douglas Rain? Nine hours in a recording studio and he became the most famous voiceover in history. Daniel Richter? No better ape, ever. William Sylvester? Now there’s a genuine space-age pencil pusher if I ever saw one.

But the visuals are the meat and the bones of the film, and the visual effects are still “how the hell did they do that?” awe-inspiring today. It isn’t merely that the effects were executed with such realistic precision so much as the way they are orchestrated on the screen into complete movements like sections of an opera, a ballet, or an abstract dance performance. On 70 mm, the Stargate sequence will turn your head inside out, even if you have no clue in the multiverse what is going on. My Dad is the proof of this. He loves this film, and when he first saw it with me on the big screen in the 1990s, he turned to me afterwards and said, “That was amazing.” I asked: “Do you understand it?” He smiled and said, “Not one bit.”

You’ve probably guessed that I enjoyed my second 70 mm viewing of the film. Even if the print had some scratches and damage on it.

But I loved 2001 long before I ever saw it in its proper format. I adored the film on VHS, and on a 16 mm projection in college. I can’t say the same about Lawrence of Arabia, which I didn’t truly grasp as a masterpiece until Saturday night. What is it about 2001 that transcends even an awful format that should eviscerate it? Is it the grandness of its non-verbal ideas that provoke thought even if the image is far from grand? Or is it that the film’s uniqueness and controversy (yes, some very intelligent folks really can’t stand the movie) make it stand out no matter how it is presented?

I think it comes down to this:

Lawrence of Arabia: “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

2001: A Space Odyssey: “Even when they made ‘em like this, this didn’t make ‘em like this.”

“Dave, this blog post can serve no purpose any more. Good bye.”

But the Vietnam connection wasn’t what initially attracted me to this novel. Instead, it was the inclusion of Juma, a Kushite who is a fellow recruit with Conan in the Turanian army.

It should be noted that Juma is not a Robert E. Howard-created character. The Kushite was the product of the imaginations of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter.  Juma first appeared in “The City of Skulls,” a de Camp-Carter story in Lancer Books’ Conan.  Conan and Juma bond because they are both outsiders: physically powerful barbarians at odds with, yet attracted to, the opulent civilization they serve with their swords.  Although Conan is a white man from the northern land of Cimmeria and Juma a black man from the tropics of Kush, that difference in background is of no consequence to their friendship.

Juma also appears in the de Camp-Carter novel Conan the Buccaneer.  After years of separation, the friends are reunited, with Conan now a pirate and Juma king of a burgeoning tribal nation.  Juma helps Conan in a quest for an artifact called the Cobra Crown.  But the Kushite’s reappearance is just one of many incidents in the novel.

In Conan the Hero, however, Juma is one of the main characters, as the action in the novel occurs during the two barbarians’ stint in the Turanian military.  They become enmeshed in multiple skeins of political and sorcerous intrigue,  with several sub-plots reflecting Carpenter’s Vietnam motif.

The stand-in country for Vietnam is a tropical land called Venjipur.  The distant empire of Turan seeks to impose its rule on the equivalent of Southeast Asia; the Venji are not amenable.  Under their leader, a wizard named Mojurna, a group of insurgents called the Hwong make life difficult for the occupying force.

Reviewer “raif10″ accuses Carpenter of loading Conan the Hero with “every Vietnam cliche in the book.”  Well, one reviewer’s “cliche” is another reviewer’s “trope.”  All I’ll say is that the Vietnam references are far from subtle, beginning with Venjipur’s endless acres of rice paddies.

The Red Garrottes are an unflattering analogue to the Green Berets.  Elephants take the place of tanks.  Like the Viet Cong, the Hwong blend seamlessly with the local peasant population.  The Americans called the Viet Cong “gooks”; the Turanians refer to the Hwong as “monkeys.”  A drug trade undermines the Turanian forces.  The Turanian House of Seers, a sorcerous counterpart to the Pentagon and Defense Department, devises elaborate spells that fail to function as planned.  Political intrigue abounds in the court of Emperor Yildiz in Aghrapur as an anti-war movement gains momentum …

Conan and Juma

So, where do Conan and Juma  fit in this maelstrom of machinations? It seems Yildiz has gotten the notion that he can boost public acceptance of the Venji War by extolling a heroic figure who would embody the valor of all Turanian troops fighting in a far-off land.  Even though Conan is a foreigner, and only 19 years old, Yildiz picks the young warrior because of his proven prowess on the jungle battleground.

But other Turanians, in both the capital and Venjipur, aren’t all that happy with the Emperor’s plan.  So Conan, with Juma watching his back, must beware not only the Hwong, but also some of his fellow troops, including certain officers who are more jealous than zealous.

The storyline alternates between Turan and Venjipur.  In one strange sequence, Conan, suffering from a serious leg wound, is trapped in the palace of Phang Loon, the Warlord of Venjipur.  In a drugged daze, Conan apparently sees Juma lying dead from torture; a Turanian friend named Babrak hopelessly addicted to the black lotus; and his Venji love interest Sariya held captive and crazed with abject fear.

With the aid of an elephant, Conan escapes Phang Loon’s grasp.  In the next chapter, we see that Juma, Babrak and Sariya are alive and well even as Conan recovers from the effects of his wound and the drugs, which must have been a Hyborian-age equivalent of LSD and magic mushrooms.

Therefore, what Conan saw in Phang Loon’s palace had to have been a series of hallucinations — the mother of bad trips.  But neither Conan nor his friends make any reference to his belief that they were dead and captured, and the reader is left to cling to unconfirmed assumptions.

Venjipur-nam rice paddy

Ultimately, Conan and Juma end up in Aghrapur, along with a mysterious gift from the Venji.  An attempted coup against Yildiz fails, thanks to Conan.  And the “gift” is not what it appears to be.

Shaken but still secure on his throne, the Emperor decides to stop the Venji War.  Conan and Juma are rewarded for their heroics, but the end of the story proves bittersweet for the Cimmerian.

The friendship between Conan and Juma comes across as realistic, unlike certain contrived “interracial-buddy” movies.  Conan is the more impetuous of the pair.  Although Juma enjoys carousing, he has a prudent streak that sometimes irks the Cimmerian.  Their ambience is similar to that between the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Hawk, minus the racial bantering.

Conan the Hero shows Carpenter’s strengths in writing action and detail.  But sometimes, the plot of the novel hangs by the slenderest of threads.  Were it not for the Conan-Juma element and the Vietnam allegory, this book would not stand out in the crowd of Conan pastiches.  As it is, it only rises about half-a-head above that crowd.