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Peplum Populist: Hercules, Samson & Ulysses

Peplum Populist: Hercules, Samson & Ulysses

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hercules-samson-ulysses-posterThe “versus film” has been with us for decades, even if “vs.” didn’t show up in early movie titles like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Audiences crave watching cinematic legends smash into each other in duels to the death — or duels to the mutual understanding. Alien vs. Predator, Freddy vs. Jason, Batman v[s]. Superman, King Kong vs. Godzilla (soon ready for a rematch), Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (this really happened), Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper (a number of occasions), and Dollman vs. The Demonic Toys. Bring up anything involving the SyFy Channel and sharks and you get hurt.

Italian sword-and-sandal (peplum) films couldn’t resist putting titans of the ancient world into the ring together, and there’s no finer example than 1963’s Hercules, Samson & Ulysses. The Italian title translates as “Hercules Challenges Samson,” in case you needed to know who goes up against whom and who is hanging around as the sidekick.

When it comes to peplum-as-pulp, Hercules, Samson & Ulysses is the real deal. Appearing at the point in the genre’s evolution when sword-and-sandal films either went stale or went silly, HS&U falls solidly on the positive silly side. It’s an outrageous actioner that knows exactly what its audience wants to see and delivers 100% on the promise of watching two legendary supermen batter each other in muscular absurdity. It may not be the best sword-and-sandal film, but it’s one of the most entertaining. This is the peplum film to watch if most of the genre’s other offerings don’t grab you.

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A Cybernetic Detective in a Futuristic Japan: Ghost in the Shell

A Cybernetic Detective in a Futuristic Japan: Ghost in the Shell

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I prepared myself before going to see Ghost in the Shell, expecting an overly simplistic story full of action that vaguely resembled the 1995 anime release of the same title. Fortunately, my expectations were wrong.

Just to set some background: the franchise began with a manga titled The Ghost in the Shell, written in 1989 by Masamune Shirow (a pen name for Masanori Ota). It was later adapted as 1995 film with the same name (directed by Mamoru Oshii) and a subsequent anime series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, one of my all-time favorite anime series).

The 1995 film is a really intriguing story, taking a closer look at humanity and robotics in a gritty, futuristic Japan. It took me a couple of viewings to understand everything; the story comes fast, as do the fantastic action sequences. It inspired the Wachowskis with The Matrix film series, and you can see some direct correlations between certain scenes.

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Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster: The Godzilla Movie to Rise Again in 2019

Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster: The Godzilla Movie to Rise Again in 2019

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It’s been a month since Kong: Skull Island came out and grossed over half a billion dollars globally, so I feel safe in 1) discussing the post-credits stinger without a spoiler freak-out, and 2) predicting we’ll indeed see Legendary Picture’s planned Godzilla vs. King Kong film in a few years. Warner Bros. isn’t leaving franchise money on the table, especially with their DC pictures in a shaky place.

But the movie arriving before the Radioactive Terror and the Eighth Wonder smash heads is promised in Skull Island’s post-credits stinger. Godzilla: King of the Monsters, to be directed by Michael Dougherty and slated for release in March 2019, is the third installment in the Legendary Pictures Kaijuverse. Kong: Skull Island contains numerous references that it occurs in the same universe as the 2014 Godzilla, such as the presence of the monster-researching Monarch Organization and mention of the Pacific atomic test originally targeted at killing Godzilla.

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Goth Chick News: Netflix Gives Hill House Yet Another Life (Yay!)

Goth Chick News: Netflix Gives Hill House Yet Another Life (Yay!)

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I discovered Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, considered one of the best ghost stories of the 20th century, in fourth grade. Not because it was on the approved reading list for nine-year-olds – on the contrary, I didn’t run into it academically until high school – but because I came across it during a summer reading program at my public library. Thankfully, librarians then were far less politically correct than they apparently are today, and they didn’t discourage browsing of selections that were not strictly “age appropriate.”

Since I fell in love with all things Shirley, I discovered Hill House had two theatrical adaptations, both call The Haunting; one in 1963 by Robert Wise, and one in 1999 (my guilty pleasure) directed by Jan de Bont and starring Liam Neeson, Owen Wilson, Cathrine Zeta-Jones, and The Conjuring‘s Lili Taylor. Both telling the tale of a group of people spending a summer in a mansion rich in haunted history and tales of the paranormal, who soon realize the stories are not just old wives tales as they begin to experience the supernatural and malevolent phenomena for themselves.

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There’s Something Magic About a House: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

There’s Something Magic About a House: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

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There is something magic about a house, or there should be. There are hints of this in James Stoddard’s The High House, in which the house is a universe unto itself, or in the Professor’s home in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in which the house is a gateway to universes. We realize in some way that every house holds secrets, that every house is in some sense a castle, and that the portals of every house open either into a wider world without or an inner world within.

This ineffable something about houses motivates Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, which despite the title isn’t really about a castle but rather a house and the family that gets collected inside it. My kids and I are big fans of Studio Ghibli, so the 2004 animated film adaptation by Hayao Miyazaki was our first exposure to the work. Before seeing the film, I had not heard of the late British fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones. Howl’s Moving Castle remains the only work by her I’ve read, though she wrote at least two other novels in which these characters also appear.

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Goth Chick News: IT Floats Into the Record Books (Even Before Its Release)

Goth Chick News: IT Floats Into the Record Books (Even Before Its Release)

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Black Gate IT

Clowns are creepy.

You know it. I know it. And Stephen King really knows it because he’s about to make bank on it… again.

After months of anticipation, the first trailer for director Andy Muschetti’s upcoming theatrical re-adaptation of King’s classic novel IT hit the net last week; and to say the response was positive would be a serious understatement. In fact, even though I’ve now watched it about a dozen times, I must say I was freaked out all over again when I attached it to this article.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure yet, check it out below…

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Future Treasures: Aliens: Bug Hunt edited by Jonathan Maberry

Future Treasures: Aliens: Bug Hunt edited by Jonathan Maberry

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Aliens Bug Hunt-smallWith a brand new Alien film on the horizon (Alien: Covenant, arriving May 19; see the trailer here), what better time for a Alien anthology, featuring Colonial Marines in bloody conflict with the deadly Aliens in deep space, on alien worlds, and in derelict space settlements and lethal nests?

Aliens: Bug Hunt featuring original short stories set in the Aliens universe by Dan Abnett, Tim Lebbon, David Farland, James A. Moore, Brian Keene, Christopher Golden, Matt Forbeck, Yvonne Navarro, and many others. I read Navarro’s 1996 Aliens novel Music of the Spears; Dan Abnett, Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, James A. Moore have previously written in the Aliens universe as well. Aliens: Bug Hunt arrives in hardcover and trade paperback from Titan in two weeks.

When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it’s what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt — kill or be killed. Here are fifteen all-new stories of such “close encounters,” written by many of today’s most extraordinary authors.

Set during the events of all four Alien films, sending the Marines to alien worlds, to derelict space settlements, and into the nests of the universe’s most dangerous monsters, these adventures are guaranteed to send the blood racing—

One way or another.

Aliens: Bug Hunt will be published by Titan Books on April 18, 2017. It is 368 pages, priced at $22.95 in hardcover, $16.95 in trade paperback, and $7.99 for the digital edition.

Liam Neeson Attached to Play Philip Marlowe … But Not in a Raymond Chandler Adaptation for Some Reason

Liam Neeson Attached to Play Philip Marlowe … But Not in a Raymond Chandler Adaptation for Some Reason

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Irish actor and dadbro buttkicker extraordinaire Liam Neeson (known around these parts as Liam Neesons) has upped his righteous tough guy game to play the most righteous — and possibly greatest — tough guy of all: Philip Marlowe. The hardboiled detective. This news comes from Variety, which reports Neeson is attached to the new Marlowe project to be produced by Gary Levinson for Nickel City Pictures from a script by William Monahan (The Departed).

This is inspired casting. Neeson is a brilliant actor who can portray the world-weary but upstanding Los Angeles detective, although Neeson will need a director to ensure he doesn’t slip into the more action-leaning characters he’s played recently. But any return of Philip Marlowe to the big screen is a monstrous, tarantula-on-a-slice-of-angel-food-cake deal. The last Philip Marlowe big-screen film was in 1978!

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The Complete Carpenter: The Fog (1980)

The Complete Carpenter: The Fog (1980)

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the-fog-blu-ray-coverIn my John Carpenter career retrospective, I’ve now crossed the Rubicon: moving past the director’s most famous and successful film and entering the 1980s, a decade his movies helped define and often looked far beyond … frequently to their initial box office detriment.

The decade opens with Mr. Carpenter in a slight quandary: when you just made the most profitable independent movie of all time (a record unbeaten until The Blair Witch Project more than twenty years later), there’s going to be a bit of pressure for the follow-up. Carpenter stuck with the horror genre for his next film, although a much different type than the realistic slasher of Halloween. Taking inspiration from classic ghost stories, the vengeful corpses of EC Comics, and a trip to Stonehenge, Carpenter and producer Debra Hill came up one of the best low-budget horror elevator pitches: magical fog brings pirate leper ghosts to unleash their wrath on a small seaside town. Yep, pirate leper ghosts.

The Story

Antonio Bay, a sleepy coastal Northern California town where nothing happens, is preparing to celebrate its hundredth anniversary of being a sleepy coastal town where nothing happens. Then everything starts to happen at once when the ghosts aboard the Elizabeth Dane, a leper colony ship that sank near Spivey Point a century ago (timing!), slosh ashore in a shroud of thick, luminescent fog. It turns out Antonio Bay was founded on a double-cross that tricked the leper colony out of their gold and lured their ship with false beacons into wrecking on the shoals. The murderous specters and their pointy fishing tools make a mess out of the lives of folks in Antonio Bay, including lighthouse keeper and radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), the anniversary event organizer Mrs. Williams (Janet Leigh), a hitchhiking artist (Jamie Lee Curtis), and a priest who’s discovered the dreadful truth about the town’s history (Hal Holbrook).

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The Valley of Gwangi Finally Reaches Blu-ray Because I Mistakenly Said It Never Would

The Valley of Gwangi Finally Reaches Blu-ray Because I Mistakenly Said It Never Would

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valley-of-gwangi-frank-mccarthy-posterDuring my years of writing for Black Gate, I’ve repeatedly pointed out certain films aren’t available on Blu-ray or DVD … only to discover after I post the article that said films are already scheduled for a release. This happened again three weeks ago when I mentioned that the only Ray Harryhausen film still unreleased on the Hi-Def format was The Valley of Gwangi. I dug myself in deeper by predicting we wouldn’t see one for years because of how slowly Warner Bros. moves with its catalogue titles.

Yet here I am in possession of a Blu-ray from Warner Archive of The Valley of Gwangi and writing about it. Maybe I should start making gloomy declarations about the Blu-ray chances of other favorite movies, just to invoke the intervention of the muse who controls home video releases. (Melpomene, I believe.)

Everyone who loves movies probably has a specific film that seems as if it were made just for them. A Ray Harryhausen stop-motion giant monster in a Western? That’s what I call Ryan Harvey Niche Marketing. The only way The Valley of Gwangi could be more targeted to me is if 1) the monster was Godzilla, 2) Peter Cushing was one of the stars, and 3) Sergio Leone directed it. However, if such an event actually occurred, the shockwaves would’ve knocked Earth from its axial tilt and annihilated civilization. Perhaps it’s for the best we stopped at “Ray Harryhausen giant monster Western.”

Although The Valley of Gwangi has some of the flaws found in other Ray Harryhausen-Charles H. Schneer films (workmanlike direction, some stilted performances), it’s still one of the greatest dinosaur movies ever made, in the same league as One Million Years B.C. and Jurassic Park. Is Jurassic Park overall a superior movie? Yes, but in terms of creative dinosaur action, The Valley of Gwangi competes. The only dinosaur movie that ranks higher than these is the original King Kong.

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