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Goth Chick News: I’ll Be Happy to Look for The Lost Boys…

Goth Chick News: I’ll Be Happy to Look for The Lost Boys…

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The Lost Boys poster-small

Though every period since the birth of celluloid entertainment can boast its share of vampire films, the 1980’s saw a definitely change in how our favorite movie monster was portrayed. The “decade of excess” also heralded the reign of the excessively sexy vamp.

Not that Dracula in all his iterations wasn’t alluringly sexual – this was the “naughty” angle to his story from the Victorian era. But the 80’s saw a new batch of vamps who not only blended in and lived among humans, but at whom we humans could not stop gaping. From Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in The Hunger, to Chris Sarandon in Fright Night and Lauren Hutton in Once Bitten, vampires replaced capes with haute couture and picked us up in nightclubs rather than (or before) sneaking through our windows.

And what group of undead epitomized the 80’s better than The Lost Boys?

Correct. None at all.

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Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

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As a TOS fan who came to the other Star Trek series relatively recently, I have to admit that The Next Generation, although entertaining, didn’t grab me as much as its predecessor. Nor did the first entry in the TNG run of movies — Generations.

Fortunately, First Contact fares quite a bit better than that installment.

Part of the appeal this time around, in this the eighth of the Star Trek movies, is that it centers on the Borg. Who were the most effective of all Star Trek villains, in my opinion. They first appeared in Star Trek: Next Generation and then in each of the TV series after that. They turned up very frequently in Voyager, which featured Seven of Nine, a “recovering” Borg/human, as a regular member of the cast.

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Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton

Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton

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oie_8192953ghlqmqv0-1In 921 AD, Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rāšid ibn Ḥammād was sent from Baghdad as ambassador to the Volga Bulgars (who lived in the boundaries of modern Russia) to help establish Islamic law for the newly converted nation. The short journal he kept of his travels is famous for its descriptions of the Volga Vikings, in particular the death rites of one of their chietains.

In Eaters of the Dead (1976), the fourth novel published under his own name (he’d previously released ten under pseudonyms), Michael Crichton asked two important questions: What if ibn Fadlan, during his sojourn among the Vikings, met a certain hero named Buliwyf? And what if there was a historical basis for the legend of Beowulf? His answer is a fun mix of travelogue and bloody adventure tale. Years later, it went on to serve as the basis for the The 13th Warrior, starring Antonio Banderas.

The first three chapters of Eaters of the Dead are mostly lifted straight from ibn Fadlan’s manuscript. Instead of a trusted and willing diplomat, though, Crichton recasts ibn Fadlan as reluctant traveler, forced to join the mission as punishment for his dalliance with the wife of a merchant friendly with the Caliph.

The greatest change to ibn Fadlan’s story is, of course, his fateful meeting with Buliwyf. In Crichton’s story, the Geatish Viking is present at the funeral for the chieftain. Before he can reach the Bulgars, ibn Fadlan is forced to join Buliwyf and his band. King Rothgar’s realm has been attacked by an ancient horror and he has sent one of his sons to ask the great hero for aid. Terror has come out of the mist — something so evil that the name can’t be mentioned lest it be summoned up. Later, ibn Fadlan learns they are called the wendol.

At this the old man said that I was a foreigner, and he would consent to enlighten me, and he told me this: the name of “wendol,” or “windon,” is a very ancient name, as old as any of the peoples of the North country, and it means “the black mist.” To the Northmen, this means a mist that brings, under cover of night, black fiends who murder and kill and eat the flesh of human beings.* The fiends are hairy and loathsome to touch and smell; they are fierce and cunning; they speak no language of any man and yet converse among themselves; they come with the night fog, and disappear by day — to where, no man durst follow.

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Silent Screen Swashbucklers, Part 1 of 2: Zorro Makes his Mark!

Silent Screen Swashbucklers, Part 1 of 2: Zorro Makes his Mark!

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The Mark of Zorro (1920)

The swashbuckler tradition was born out of legends like those of the Knights of the Round Table and of Robin Hood, revived in the early 19th century by Romantic movement authors such as Sir Walter Scott. The genre really caught hold with the publication of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers in 1844, and for the next century it was arguably the world’s leading form of adventure fiction, challenged only by the American Western.

The action and visual flair of the swashbucklers were perfect for the movie screen, and Hollywood brought them to life with brio and panache, starting most successfully with lavish productions of The Mark of Zorro (1920) and The Three Musketeers (1921), both starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. The 1920s through 1950s were the heyday of the Hollywood swashbuckler, but they continue to find favor with moviegoers right up to the present, notably in the recent Pirates of the Caribbean series. So it’s worth going back to see how those visual tropes around the hero-with-a-sword were first established during the silent film era, because much of what you see on the screen today had its roots almost a hundred years ago with those early cinematic pioneers.

I had a good time surveying these early swashbucklers, and I hope you’ll enjoy this overview. With luck, it’ll even inspire you to dip into this rich source of adventure film tradition yourself.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock is Back With “The Six Thatchers”

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock is Back With “The Six Thatchers”

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thatchers_babySeason three of BBC’s Sherlock was an absolute train wreck, destroying what had been a great show. Then The Abominable Bride took the long-awaited Victorian-Era Cumberbatch/Freeman episode and turned it into some stupid psychological modern day shlock involving the dead, giggling Moriarty.

So, season four finally arrived, just shy of three years since season three ended. And you know what? The Six Thatchers wasn’t a disaster. It wasn’t up to the standards of the first two seasons, but it was better than season three.

In a recent interview, Steven Moffat said, “Mark Gatiss and I do not have the delusion that we know better than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That’s how the show works and always will. We reset to the most traditional and famous version of the format.”

And it was exactly when those two thought they knew better than Doyle: when they wrote episodes that alternately pandered to new generation fans and saying ‘look at how smart and clever we are’ (I’m talking about you, season three) that a great show turned to crap. Season three was all about the creators patting themselves on the back and showing how much they didn’t need Doyle to make a Sherlock show. And they lost a huge part of the original fan base in doing so.

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The Complete Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

The Complete Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

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Assault on Precinct 13 Mondo PosterWelcome back to this eighteen-part series examining the theatrical movies of one John Carpenter, master genre auteur and gift to movie lovers everywhere. Today we bear witness to the director’s first foray into professional filmmaking, shooting on a schedule and a budget. It’s called Assault on Precinct 13, and I don’t mean to spoil this up front for you, but it is a-ma-zing.

The Story

Precinct 9 (not actually 13) in the fictional South Central L.A. neighborhood of Anderson is due to shut down as its operations relocate. Newly promoted Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) receives the assignment of babysitting the meager staff staying overnight in the building for the final bits of housekeeping.

What should be a quiet evening detail goes bloodily wrong when the precinct turns into an epicenter of urban warfare. Heavily-armed multicultural gang Street Thunder targets civilians for death, but after they splatter-kill a little girl (Kim Richards), her enraged father Lawson (Martin West) shoots one of the gang warlords in retaliation. Fleeing Street Thunder’s fury, Lawson takes shelter in the precinct — unaware there isn’t much help available there. The gang descends on the building with the intent to massacre everyone inside. As Street Thunder’s legions crash in waves against the precinct, Lt. Bishop joins forces with two criminals in the holding cells, Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) and Wells (Tony Burton), and station secretary Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) to attempt to survive the night until relief arrives.

The Positives

John Carpenter has a handful of cinematic masterpieces to his credit, and on only his second outing — his first professional production — he bags one. Although Dark Star has charm and shows an emerging talent, nothing in it prepares for the assurance and mastery on display in Assault on Precinct 13. John Carpenter directed the hell out of this movie, taking a laughable budget of $100,000 and a few weeks of shooting to create something glorious and perennial. It’s one of the finest movies of the director’s long career, and as smashing an action-thriller as anybody could make. Each time watching it is a jolt of how effective the art of cinema can be.

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So, What Time Is It?

So, What Time Is It?

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timelessIt’s not often that we in the Fantasy and SF community get two time-travel related productions – the movie Arrival, and the TV series Timeless – at once. Even better, we’re being served two different theories of time, and time travel. (There might be some spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen either film or TV show, so watch out.)

I’ve talked about time as a literary device before, and I’ve looked at time travel specifically as well. In the earlier piece I mentioned the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), in which he suggests that humans don’t experience time (or any other abstraction) directly. What we experience is actually a sequence of events, which he calls “duration.” One thing follows another, in one direction, which give us the idea that time is linear.

Aside, Fun Experiment: ask someone to point at yesterday. As a general rule, they’ll do one of two things. They’ll point behind them, or they’ll point to the left (or maybe to the right, if their culture reads that way)

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Goth Chick News: Game Over Man, Game Over

Goth Chick News: Game Over Man, Game Over

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Having been exceptionally good this year, relatively speaking, Santa brought me the second-most-wished-for item on my list.  I sort of understand why it really wasn’t in Santa’s power to bring my most-wished-for “Men of Black Gate” calendar, but the second item was almost as awesome – a Virtual Reality (VR) headset.

If you’ve had the pleasure of experiencing one of these such as the Oculus Rift, then you know how next-level-amazing it is for total immersion into movies and gaming; so much so that the units come riddled with all manner of warnings about motion sickness and disorientation.

Now, imagine the possibilities when considering using it within the horror genre.

Specifically something like the Aliens franchise.

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Pellucidar on Screen: At the Earth’s Core … The Movie

Pellucidar on Screen: At the Earth’s Core … The Movie

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at-the-earths-core-1976-001-posterFew of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s books offer as much promise to modern filmmakers as At the Earth’s Core. The inner world of Pellucidar is vast and strange, and the potential to craft astonishing vistas from this concave land with a sun that never moves is immense. Plus, the tyrannical Mahars are ideally suited for realization as complex creatures using mo-cap.

However, nobody appears to be working on an At the Earth’s Core movie at the moment. For shame. We have to settle for a movie made in the last glory days of low-budget SF spectacle, before the advent of Star Wars. That shining era when rubber monsters, matte paintings, and Doug McClure ruled fantasy cinema.

The 1976 At the Earth’s Core isn’t a bad way to settle. For those who grew up with it, the movie still holds a special charm because of its colorful spectacle and practical effects. It had to sacrifice some of the fascinating parts of the setting of Pellucidar because of budget limitations, but it’s an accurate rendition of Burroughs’s plot.

At the Earth’s Core is second of a trio of mid-‘70s ERB adaptations from the team of producer John Dark and director Kevin Connor for Amicus Productions and American-International Pictures. The first and third films are a split adaptation of the novel The Land That Time Forgot, The Land That Time Forgot (1975) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). Dark and Connor produced two more fantasy films afterward, the ERB-esque Warlords of Atlantis (1978), made after they realized it was too expensive to mount a John Carter movie; and the mostly forgotten Arabian Adventure (1979).

Although I’m about to say many admiring things about At the Earth’s Core, it’s my least favorite of the Amicus-AIP Burroughs movies. The director shares my opinion: Kevin Connor has called the movie “clunky” compared to the other two, and it’s easy to see what he means in the studio-bound confines and the more awkward pacing and plotting. But it’s by no means a bad film, and when I place it a notch below The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot, that isn’t a harsh slam. The special appeal of this vanished era of imaginative filmmaking is hard to resist.

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Goth Chick News: Ralphie and His Red Rider BB Gun vs Zombies – Game Over

Goth Chick News: Ralphie and His Red Rider BB Gun vs Zombies – Game Over

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Much like bacon, we here at Goth Chick News think everything is better with zombies. Pride and Prejudice was better. Brad Pitt was way better. And even Romeo and Juliette was a bit better, in a dead-guy-falls-for-living-girl kind of way.

But honestly, even we were skeptical that zombies could improve upon what may be the best holiday movie ever: Bob Clark’s classic A Christmas Story.

Thanks to Buzzfeed’s Jesse McLaren, those of us who have fantasized about Ralphie turning his Red Ryder against the undead have received this 30-second gift via YouTube last week.

Stand aside Daryl Dixon, because Dead Eye Ralphie makes this look good…

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