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Kidnapping, Murder, and Disrupting Traffic on Public Roadways: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Three: Time Bomb

Kidnapping, Murder, and Disrupting Traffic on Public Roadways: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Three: Time Bomb

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Adventures of Captain Marvel Part 3-smallToday, before the lights go down and our show begins, we have a brief public sevice message. No, it’s not about the YMCA car wash or the Friends of the Library book sale. It’s about where you can find The Adventures of Captain Marvel for your own viewing.

The serial was last released on DVD in 2003, but is now only available used — the Amazon marketplace has several copies available. They can be a bit pricey, however; the serial was ten dollars ten years ago, when I bought mine new, but now the cheapest copies on Amazon are twice that.

A true hero never despairs, though, and there’s good news for those who want to experience serial thrills first hand, instead of just hacking their way through my breathless prose descriptions. The Adventures of Captain Marvel is available to watch on YouTube, along with many other classic (and not so classic) serials. It’s a great place to get acquainted — or reacquainted — with this kind of storytelling.

If online serial watching whets your appetite for more Saturday matinee thrills, I enthusiastically direct you to the Serial Squadron, a great group of people who seek out and restore serials — many of them rare or even thought to be lost. You can visit them at www.serialsquadron.com. They make remastered copies (often with plenty of great extras) for sale on DVD and also make them available for free viewing on their own YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/serialsquadron.

Now, sit back and let the wizard Shazam transport you to a world of action and excitement where evil keeps things interesting but justice is bound to prevail!

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Doctor Strange Gets a Director

Doctor Strange Gets a Director

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Strange Tales 110 Doctor Strange-smallI’ve been getting cranky waiting for progress on Marvel’s Doctor Strange movie, and as the wait has stretched out, I’ve been getting progressively more pessimistic (see my March post, Hurry Up With That Doctor Strange Movie, Marvel.)

The property has enormous potential to be something completely original in the superhero genre — namely a faithful rendition of Steve Ditko’s playful (and totally bonkers) inter-dimensional setting, which is what first blew away so many readers of Doctor Strange in the 1960s. A hero whose adventures routinely took him to gorgeous, bizarre, imaginative, and frequently monster-filled realms where normal concepts of space and distance were useless was something totally new, and readers thrilled to it — and it took Ditko’s unique genius to really make it work.

However, Marvel Studios took a huge step forward this week, announcing that they had selected a director for the film: Scott Derrickson, writer/director of the terrific little horror film Sinister, perhaps the best horror flick of 2012. Derrickson has an impressive resume as a writer/director, including The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and the upcoming Deliver Us from Evil (July 2014). He was also the director of the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

If you’re getting a strong horror vibe off  Derrickson’s resume, you’re not alone. Matt D. Wilson at Comics Alliance did a fine job of articulating my own feelings on the announcement yesterday:

Seriously, though, that’s pretty interesting, considering that Doctor Strange has never been what I’d call a horror character, despite his many dealings with supernatural forces, demons, dark magic, and so forth. But his stories have always tended to be more fantastical, while other Marvel characters, such as Son of Satan, Werewolf By Night, and, you know, Dracula, have tended to be more horror-focused. The decision perhaps suggests a tone that won’t necessarily please Doctor Strange fans, but may be very palatable to general movie audiences, who made the low-budget Sinister a surprise hit back in 2012.

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Maleficent Fails in an Unexpected Way

Maleficent Fails in an Unexpected Way

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maleficent posterMaleficent (2014)
Directed by Robert Stromberg. Starring Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Ella Purnell.

Sometimes, we need the fictional villains in our life to just stay evil. Forget sympathy for the Devil: I don’t want sympathy for the Red Skull, the T-1000, Michael Myers, the Joker, Auric Goldfinger, the Dark Lord Sauron, or King Ghidorah.

I especially don’t want sympathy for the Mistress of All Evil, Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent. So few movie characters so relish evil for evil’s sake like she does. And Maleficent executes this vileness with such stylish vigor!

Maleficent is the unofficial ruler of Disney’s dark parallel to their Princess line, the Disney Villains. And hoo-boy, does Maleficent do a great job at the top of the wicked food chain. This is a creature so evil that getting a birthday party snub hurls her into a generational revenge plot that consumes a kingdom and all her free time. Her design (courtesy of legendary Disney artist Marc Davis) and voice (Eleanor Audley) emphasize the beautiful allure of evil to make the Middle Ages proud. As bonuses, she has a crafty raven sidekick and can transform through a mushroom cloud explosion into a black and purple dragon that blasts green flames. Give the dark lady a hand!

So what worse way to foul up Maleficent than to try to explain in a feature length film how she got so evil?

Amazingly, Disney found a worse way.

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Goth Chick News: Jurassic World: Hold On To Your Butts…

Goth Chick News: Jurassic World: Hold On To Your Butts…

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Jurassic World-smallWith Godzilla now in theaters and our appetites all juiced up for giant reptilian destruction, it seems like the perfect time to let loose with the latest rumors about the upcoming fourth installment in the Jurassic Park franchise: Jurassic World.

What we know up to this point is that Jurassic World is due to hit theaters June 12, 2015 and that relative new-comer Colin Trevorrow is at the directorial helm.  We also know it stars Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation), Bryce Dallas Howard (The Help) and Vincent D’Onofrio (Law and Order), as well as Omar Sy, Ty Simpkins, Irrfan Khan, Ty Simpkins, Judy Greer, and Nick Robinson.  And last, we know the plot centers around a fully functional JP theme park.

What we did not know is the direction Colin Trevorrow, who is also one of the writers, would be taking the story.

Much of what I’m about to tell you is rampant Internet rumor, substantiated by more than one source, so if you’re spoiler-averse when it comes to JP4, you may want leave now.

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One of the Best Serials Ever Made: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Two: The Guillotine

One of the Best Serials Ever Made: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Two: The Guillotine

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Captain Marvel Episode 2 Lobby card-smallHave you found your seats? Are you sufficiently equipped with licorice whips, popcorn, and Nehi Soda? Then let the lights dim and settle in for Republic Pictures’ 1941 serial, The Adventures of Captain Marvel. We opened last week with Curse of the Scorpion. Today, Chapter Two: “The Guillotine.”

Our chapter  opens with helpful title cards summarizing events for those who couldn’t scare up a dime last Saturday. “Rahman Bar – Attacks the camp of the Malcom Expedition in reprisal for the theft of the Golden Scorpion.” “Billy Batson – Radios for troops from Fort Mooltan.” “Malcolm – And the rest of the party try to escape with the lenses.” “Captain Marvel – Tries to warn them that the bridge across the gorge is mined.” There – all caught up. Now say the mystic word and be transformed!

We now get a quick two minutes from last week’s cliffhanger ending. We see Whitey and Betty stuck on the bridge as the dynamite explodes and the bridge collapses. The car tumbles into the river, taking the helpless occupants with it. Observing from a boulder where he has just landed, Captain Marvel executes a very nice high dive and, swimming to the not-quite-yet submerged station wagon, pulls the unconscious Whitey and Betty to the safety of the river bank.

By the way, as cliffhanger resolutions go, this is quite honest. All serials did some cheating in their cliffhangers (the looney Undersea Kingdom with Ray “Crash” Corrigan might be the worst offender in this regard), but The Adventures of Captain Marvel usually plays it fairly straight.

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The Weird of Oz Weighs In: Go Go Go Godzilla!

The Weird of Oz Weighs In: Go Go Go Godzilla!

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“History shows again and again / How nature points up the folly of man / Go go go Godzilla!” — Blue Oyster Cult

photo-9Our intrepid reporter on the kaiju beat, Ryan Harvey, has done a masterful five-part chronicle of Godzilla’s 60-year film history for Black Gate. Last week, he topped it off with his review of the American re-launch of the venerable franchise, which you can (and should) read HERE. I’m not going to retread what he has covered, but I think the return of the King of Monsters is big enough to warrant two commentaries! I find myself in virtual agreement with Harvey’s review, so I’ll just be adding a few random observations. Here are some of my thoughts after seeing the film . . .

First, take a look at the marquee I snapped a pic of while in line to buy my ticket. See the third film from the bottom? God’s Not Dead — no indeed, and just underneath you’ll see that he’s back in 3-D!

Okay, some may take that little joke as sacrilege, but you know I couldn’t pass up that juxtaposition. I also find it interesting that the first two films are Spider-Man 2 and Captain America 2. This week you can add the new X-Men film to the line-up — jeez, Marvel is ruling at the box office. Seems like they are the box office. So this is where it may be amusing to note that Godzilla, too, was once part of the Marvel world.

Marvel Comics licensed that other big green goliath from Toho back in the ‘70s, but they didn’t just do a spin-off comic like with many other independently-owned franchises (G.I. Joe; Star Wars): no, they worked him right into Marvel continuity! He battled the likes of the Fantastic Four. S.H.I.E.L.D. was on his trail as he rampaged across the United States. Spider-Man even had a brush with the atomic-powered lizard! A couple years back, Brian Michael Bendis (the guy who pens, like, half the Marvel comics in recent years) made the wry observation that, although Marvel no longer has the license to the character, they never wrote him out of continuity. In other words, Bendis noted, Godzilla exists in the Marvel Universe to this day. So up there on the marquee with all those Marvel superheroes, he is in familiar company.

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Event Report: The Last Unicorn Tour

Event Report: The Last Unicorn Tour

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The Last UnicornIn 1962, Peter S. Beagle began writing a fantasy novel he called The Last Unicorn. Published in 1968, the book was both serious and whimsical, a kind of extended fable about a unicorn who found she was the last of her kind and adventured through a medieval fantasyland, possibly Irish and possibly not, in search of the wicked king holding all other unicorns captive. The tone embraced both the comic (one of the major characters is an incompetent magician named Schmendrick) and the dreamlike (as in the terrifying Red Bull who emerges as a crucial antagonist). The book’s a tremendous accomplishment, a vivid working-out of classic fantasy themes.

In 1982, Rankin/Bass Productions released a film version of the book, with a screenplay by Beagle. The designs had a nice touch of art nouveau, the voice cast was strong (including Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, Jeff Bridges, and Christopher Lee) and the plot was remarkably faithful to the book. That approach had its strengths and weaknesses: the fable-like quality of the original story was lost. On the other hand, the literalness of the adaptation gave the film a quality of strangeness of its own — by maintaining the shape of the book, it created a shape unlike most other movies.

Beagle is currently touring with a digital 2K print of the Last Unicorn movie, presenting it at showings with a question-and-answer period and an opportunity to buy Beagle’s books and Last Unicorn-related merchandise. The tour will go on through April 2016 and will visit Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland, the UK, and Germany, as well as cities across North America. An extensive Canadian leg of the ongoing Last Unicorn tour has just wrapped up; I saw a showing of the film in Montreal, on Sunday, May 18, and took a few notes.

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Mothra vs. King Ghidorah: Which Toho Monster Will Appear in the Next U.S. Godzilla Movie?

Mothra vs. King Ghidorah: Which Toho Monster Will Appear in the Next U.S. Godzilla Movie?

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godzilla_vs_kingghidorah_91mothra vs GodzillaCaution: This article discusses some details about Godzilla ‘14 that viewers who have yet to see the film may consider spoilers. (Non-spoiler review here.) Viewers who haven’t seen the film should also go take care of that now.

Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. felt confident enough about the almost $200 million that the new Godzilla took in at the global box office during its opening weekend — the biggest International opening of 2014 at that point — to announce a few days later what everyone knew the moment the movie started pulling in heaps of cash: “Yep, we’re gonna make another one.”

We know little more at the moment. In the build up to Godzilla ‘14, all parties involved avoided sequel speculation. Director Gareth Edwards — whose association in a follow-up is uncertain at this time, especially since he signed on to direct the first Star Wars spin-off movie — made brief mention of doing something with the “Monster Island” concept introduced in Destroy All Monsters (1968), but nothing specific. Which means we can all speculate freely and wildly about what might happen in Godzilla Raids Again or whatever title “Godzilla II” has.

The big question about any Godzilla sequel: What other monster(s) will appear? Although it’s possible for Legendary Pictures to go with an original creature — and they did well with the MUTOs — it’s almost a guarantee they’ll negotiate with Toho Studios for the rights to one of the classic kaiju. Toho is reportedly through the roof with excitement over the new movie, so the negotiations won’t be aggressive.

There are many monster possibilities, but most online speculation has landed on two superstars: Mothra and King Ghidorah. Any Godzilla fan would place these kaiju at the top of a list of “must haves.”

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Hammer Hound

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Hammer Hound

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CushingHoundPoster1
There are several good posters for this film.

Last week, we looked at Tom Baker’s relatively unknown Hound of the Baskervilles. As this post is being published on May 26, which is the birthday of a classic Holmes, we’ll look his version of The Hound. For on this date in 1913, Peter Cushing was born in Surrey.

Basil Rathbone’s contract expired in 1946 and, feeling imprisoned in the role of Sherlock Holmes, he refused to renew it. So great was his shadow that it would be thirteen years before another studio even attempted to make a Sherlock Holmes movie. Hammer Films is legendary in England for their run of horror films, starting in the fifties.

Those old Universal classics from America had never caught on across the pond. Hammer, however, made a series of successful horror films, frequently co-starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

In 1959, Hammer broke new ground with the first colorized version of The Hound. Not surprisingly, they turned to Cushing and Lee to carry the movie.

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Godzilla (2014) Is a True Godzilla Film and a Unique Blockbuster

Godzilla (2014) Is a True Godzilla Film and a Unique Blockbuster

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IMAX-poster-for-Godzilla-smallNew to Godzilla? Read my 5-part history series.

To all of those who saw the new Godzilla this last weekend who have never before fully understood the obsession fans have for this monster … now you will get it. Welcome to our weird world!

Godzilla isn’t just a massive monster that stomps stuff, confronts the military, and grapples with other monsters. Any giant beast can do that without much thought put into it. Godzilla is a character and a legacy. Even when playing the straight-up villain in films like 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla, the Big G is beyond larger than life and something you cannot help but gape at in awe and then salute. What a piece of work is a giant radioactive reptile! In apprehension how like a god(zilla)!

Director Gareth Edwards’s 2014 take on Godzilla, only the second film from a U.S. studio featuring the monster (or, if you ask most fans, the first), is a genuine Godzilla movie. Edwards’s creature isn’t the greatest incarnation to grace the silver screen, something I’m sure he would admit, as nothing could re-capture the cultural magic and hands-on effects work of director Ishiro Honda and special effects creator Eiji Tsubaraya from the classic series. But the Edwards Godzilla is a legitimate and superb version that achieves the gravity of the 1954 orignal Godzilla and the thrilling monster-vs.-monster mayhem of the films that followed it through three eras and six decades. For Godzilla fans, this movie contains the sheer ecstasy of a dream realized that brings spontaneous cheers, gasps of admiration, and watery-eyed moments of recognition. I could not imagine a better way to craft a U.S.-made Godzilla film, and it is to the immense credit of Edwards and everyone involved that, until now, I could not have foreseen how such a feat was even possible.

Even for those with scant knowledge of the great monster except what comes from the pop culture mill, Godzilla ‘14 is as an unusual Hollywood blockbuster. Gareth Edwards and Co. crafted a movie that stands apart from the stateside summer thrill machines as much as the Japanese films of 1960s did from their U.S. counterparts. Godzilla plays at the slow build, purposely restraining the sprawling spectacle until unleashing the finale. During the first two thirds, the suspense centers around scenes where the monsters remain glimpsed, their masses emphasized to drive the action without making them the centerpieces. Godzilla doesn’t receive a full reveal until an hour in, and the movie immediately leaps away after the unveiling. Instead of signaling the opening of the mayhem, the moment switches into the next step of the gradual climb to the plateau. Where many blockbusters pummel audiences with as much noise and pixels as they can afford until viewers feel only numbness for the finale, Godzilla wants to make them breathless in anticipation for the climax so that when it arrives, it means something.

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