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Peplum Populist: Hercules in the Haunted World

Peplum Populist: Hercules in the Haunted World

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hercules-in-the-haunted-world-us-posterAmong the most popular articles I’ve written for Black Gate is a look at one the goofiest fantasy films of the ‘80s, the Lou Ferrigno Hercules. Two-and-a-half years later, I feel I should give the on-screen Hercules another shot with one of the better films to carry his name. Plus, I just pondered the news that a new Hercules film is on the way. Or maybe I’m just trying to repeat the search-engine magic of the name “Hercules.” So let’s leap back twenty-two years from the science-fiction cheesy glitz of Ferrigno’s film and take a kaleidoscopic trip to Hell on a shoestring budget with Mario Bava.

Among the many movies produced in the “sword-and-sandal” (peplum) deluge in Italy between 1958 and 1965, two stand out for movie fans: The Colossus of Rhodes (1960) and Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). Both were early efforts from directors who went on to re-shape other genres and subsequently turned into legends. Sergio Leone, director of The Colossus of Rhodes, created the style of the Italian Western with his three films with Clint Eastwood and the ultra classic Once Upon a Time in the West. Mario Bava, director of Hercules in the Haunted World, gave form to the Italian giallo film and Continental horror in general, starting with Black Sunday made the year before his one Hercules films.

The difference between The Colossus of Rhodes and Hercules in the Haunted World is that Bava was already in fine form and showing his signature style, while Leone displayed little of his famous “Leone-ness” in his first movie. The Colossus of Rhodes looks like something any competent director could have turned out. Nobody but Bava could have created the colorful fantasy eeriness of Hercules in the Haunted World.

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Orson Scott Card’s The Lost Gate

Orson Scott Card’s The Lost Gate

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lostgateThe Lost Gate (Amazon, B&N)
Mither Mages Book 1
Orson Scott Card (Tor, $7.99, Jan. 2011)

Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

As I mentioned in my recent review of the short story collection Keeper of Dreams, I’ve been a fan of Orson Scott Card since reading Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead as a teenager and have read most of his novels. In my experience, this is a very hit-and-miss proposition, especially when it comes to series.

The Lost Gate demonstrates some of the best and worst of Orson Scott Card’s writing at the same time, which makes me think that it’s a toss-up as to how the series as a whole will ultimately go. The setting and magical system – which Card’s been carrying around in his head since the late 70’s – contain a lot of potential, but the narrative seems to also go on pointlessly for many pages, getting bogged down in relative minutiae and plot threads which never go anywhere. Some of these might be setting the stage for future books, of course, but right now they just seemed out of place, distracting, and somewhat haphazard.

The story focuses on Danny North, a boy who has grown up among the remnants of ancient demigods, trapped on Earth centuries ago when the Norse god Loki destroyed all the gates linking this world to their home realm. While his various cousins have learned how to manipulate their basic magical energies, he has manifested no such talents … until he realizes that he has the rarest of gifts. He is a gate mage, possessing the ability to create portals from one location to another.

Unfortunately, after the devastation that Loki wrought, his family has vowed to destroy any gate mage that they find, including Danny. Forced to go on the run, Danny has to learn more about our modern world, his own powers, and how he wants to wield this power … in the service of himself or others. …

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Lords of Waterdeep: D&D’s Newest Board Game Is a Hit

Lords of Waterdeep: D&D’s Newest Board Game Is a Hit

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lordswaterdeepLords of Waterdeep (Amazon)
Wizards of the Coast ($49.99, March 2012)
2-5 players
Ages 12+
Approximate Play Time: 1 hour

Note: As I write this, Saturday March 17, there’s a 37% discount on the game’s pre-order over at Amazon.

Let’s get this out of the way: Of all of the fantasy board games I’ve ever forced my wife to play for review purposes (or any other purpose for that matter), this is by far her favorite. In her words, “I felt completely engaged throughout the whole game. Usually there’s some strategy here and there, but I had to plan out each and every move in this game.”

So, it’s a keeper!

With that spoiler out of the way, on to the review…

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David Soyka Reviews The Translated Man and Other Stores and Mr. Stitch

David Soyka Reviews The Translated Man and Other Stores and Mr. Stitch

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The Translated Man and Other Stories Threat Quality Press (224; 11.99 USD; softcover 2007)

Mr. Stitch Threat Quality Press (248; 11.99 USD; softcover 2010)

Chris Braak

Chris Braaks’s duology featuring Detective-Inpector Elijah Beckett demonstrates that you can tell a book by its cover.  These book jackets are dark, primitive and ugly; the novels are set in a steampunk Victorian metropolis called Trowth that is equally dark, primitive and ugly.

It was early morning and the strained watery light that flickered off the mountain of stormy architecture of Trowth did little to alleviate the cold, though it was actually one of the

warmest periods of the day — when warm air swept briefly in from the sea — and the late afternoon were the only times during Second Winter that pedestrians were common; a small, muted collection of passers-by and vendors had tentatively come out into the cold streets above St. Dunsany’s. The air was just barely

tolerable, and tasted faintly of salt and fish. Even the normally antisocial and solitary citizens of the city would take the time to wander about for a few hours, trying to catch a fleeting glimpse of the sun.

ps.52-53 (Mr. Stitch)

What we have here is a police procedural that mixes Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. I’m not much a fan of either (I know, how could I possibly be allowed on the BG staff, but mistakes happen). Nor do I much care for plotting littered with flaws in logic (a character can pick the lock of  a room to steal papers without ever thinking they  might be noticed missing, but apparently doesn’t think for a second to pick the lock of a suitcase she is forced to deliver to a train station to see if it contains anything potentially explosive, which, of course, it does) that hinges on fantastical mysteries with improbable coincidences (even if they take place in the context of an improbable reality) that seemingly have little point beyond giving the intrepid characters something to do so they can preserve civilization as they know it (though in this case, “civilization” is a questionable term).

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this short series, mainly because of  the characters. Beckett is dedicated to his career as a Coroner, an elite force with a license to kill at will heretics and the consequences of their heretical metaphysical experiments.  He also suffers from the “fades,” a disease contracted by factory work as a child that results in deteriorating flesh (he wears a scarf to hide the missing half of his face) and drug addiction to control the pain.  Of course, every detective needs a fearless sidekick to fight the forces of evil.  Beckett has two.  Valentine Vie-Gorgon, an absent-minded aristocrat dabbling as a police functionary, and Elizabeth Skinner, a blind “knocker” aetherically equipped with telekinetic abilities that serve as a sort of radar to detect unchartered passageways and conspirators in hiding.

But the most interesting character of all is the city of Trowth, a mess of overbuilt, over thought architecture that results in dangerous labyrinths that connect ghettos of unusual creatures pressed into subservience to the human overlords.

It was almost evening when Beckett emerged from the depths of the Arcadium. The sky has turned from a dull, dark, sooty gray to a duller, darker sootier gray, redeemed only by the fact that looking at it no longer caused migraines. The perpetual cloud of thick, puissant smoke, spewed out by factories that burned phlogiston and flux and coal, hung low over the stony war of parapets, crenulations, buttresses, towers and arches that composed Trowth’s skyline.

p. 7 (The Translated Man)

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The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, a Review

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, a Review

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the-heroes-joe-abercrombieThe Heroes
Joe Abercrombie
Orbit (559 pp., $14.99, trade paperback)
Reviewed by Brian Murphy

“Who cares who’s buried where?” muttered Craw, thinking about all the men he’d seen buried. “Once a man’s in the ground he’s just mud. Mud and stories. And the stories and the men don’t often have much in common.”

—Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

Although it’s classified as fantasy, don’t be fooled: Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes is every inch a war story, knee deep in mud and blood, with the term “heroes” used in a rather ironic fashion. You won’t find any heroes here, just a bunch of men trying to live through another day on the battlefield.

It’s also bloody good. While it’s not at the level of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Killer Angels, and perhaps doesn’t quite stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the same shieldwall as Steven Pressfield’s brilliant Gates of Fire, The Heroes is certainly one of the best books of its kind. Chock full of vivid combat and the incredible stress and strain of war, with a cast of memorable if not particularly deep characters and enough twists to keep you guessing to the end, it’s a terrific read for those who enjoy the sights and sounds of combat on the printed page.

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The Quantum Thief: A Review

The Quantum Thief: A Review

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The Quantum ThiefThe Quantum Thief
Hannu Rajaniemi
Tor Books (A Tom Doherty Associates Book; 330 pp, $24.99 USD, $28.99 CDN; hardcover 2010)
Reviewed by Matthew David Surridge

Centuries in the future, Jean le Flambeur is a master thief, imprisoned in a virtual-reality jail: every day he makes choices, and dies, and is reborn. Until he’s freed by a violent woman named Mieli from the edge of the solar system, and taken to Mars. There, he must regain old memories he locked away from all possible recovery when he was literally a far different person than he is now. A youthful detective, hi-tech superheroes, and posthuman intelligences are waiting to complicate his task, which seems to have ramifications on an interplanetary scale.

That’s a basic description of Hannu Rajaniemi’s novel The Quantum Thief, the first in a series following le Flambeur’s adventures (the second, The Fractal Prince, will be coming later this year). Uncertainty and possibility and identity are key themes in this book; appropriate, then, that its own identity is somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand it’s aggressively bleeding-edge, incorporating quantum theory and game theory and any number of up-to-the-nanosecond science-fictional ideas. But on the other it’s highly traditional, drawing from different lineages within the genre and outside it.

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John Carter [of Mars] Is a Perfect Edgar Rice Burroughs Movie

John Carter [of Mars] Is a Perfect Edgar Rice Burroughs Movie

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johncarterposter-with-apesJohn Carter (2012)
Directed by Andrew Stanton. Starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe, Mark Strong, Dominic West, Samantha Morton, Ciarán Hinds, Thomas Haden Church, James Purefoy, Darryl Sabara.

Update: Thank you to all Black Gate readers who have shown the love for John Carter and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and who boosted me with positive comments and emails regarding my long-term project of reviewing all the Martian novels. I’ve never felt so much support from the Internet in the eight years I’ve been an active blogger and reviewer, four of them at Black Gate.

Don’t expect the brackets in my post title John Carter [of Mars] to endure. People who have already seen John Carter will know what I mean: Walt Disney Pictures could not stop director Andrew Stanton from making John Carter of Mars the true title of his adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s century-old classic A Princess of Mars. Stanton, a fan of the Martian novels since he was a child, has given the perfect fan treatment to the material. If you’re a fan as well, then John Carter will carry you from the beginning until the end on a wave of childhood joy until you choke up at the final title cards.

If you’ve been reading my reviews of the Martian novels, then you already know my bias; I am also an Edgar Rice Burroughs fanatic from a young age. As with Captain America: The First Avenger, I am inclined to love this film more than most viewers. But, as with Captain America, I feel confident that the majority of viewers will enjoy this film, with a few caveats. Burroughs fans, however, may purchase with rock solid confidence.

In fact, the fan-service the film offers might end up a problem. If anything holds back John Carter from being a sizable hit — aside from some poor marketing choices — it will be that it is relentlessly “Burroughsian.” Never has an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs caught so closely his spirit and his style. But John Carter goes even farther than finding the tone of its source: it is steeped in the mythology of Barsoom — ERB’s fantasy version of Mars — crammed with its politics, its biology, its language, its technology. For general audiences who know little about The First Citizen of Tarzana, the film may confuse them. Director Andrew Stanton shows how much he loves his source material in the way he refuses to water down any of it. The intricacies of Martian politics and its array of races appear on screen without apology and without hand-holding the audience.

I applaud that in a movie that on the surface looks like nothing more than a standard science-fiction popcorn event offering big action thrills and beautiful people armed with swords and guns. But I wonder if this will turn off the casual viewer. I hope not, because John Carter far exceeds other recent films of its genre with strong characters and CGI that enhances the experience instead of turning it into Transformers 3-style noise. Perhaps the movie isn’t a classic, but I have a sense that if Andrew Stanton gets a shot at making the next movie in the series, The Gods of Mars, then classic-dom is within his grasp. And ours.

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Richard Carpenter and Robin of Sherwood

Richard Carpenter and Robin of Sherwood

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Robin of SherwoodI read some bad news earlier this week: Richard Carpenter died. Carpenter, 78 at the time of his death on February 26, was an actor and television writer. He created several shows; he’s probably best known for his children’s series Catweazle, the animated Dr. Snuggles, and the show that I want to talk about here, the ITV-broadcast series Robin of Sherwood. It’s easily my favourite interpretation of the Robin Hood story, and perhaps my favourite filmed piece of sword-and-sorcery.

Robin of Sherwood ran from 1984 to 1986. Carpenter reimagined the story of Robin Hood from top to bottom, infusing it with magic, myth, and the politicised anger of youth. He also created a show that unobtrusively captured the late twelfth century with remarkable fidelity, both in its visual aspects like props and costumes, and also in its social hierarchies and habits of thought. The series ran for three seasons before its production company ran into financial problems. Some plot threads were ended prematurely, without resolution or real development. Carpenter’s observed that the ending as it is works well enough, and I can see his point. Still, I can’t help but wish that the show had gone a bit further.

As it is, Robin of Sherwood’s one of the best examples I can think of in any medium of how to reinterpret a legend. The fact that the re-interpretation was specifically as a fantasy drew me when I first saw it as a teen, but I think the fantasy wouldn’t have mattered if it weren’t for the way Carpenter made the fantasy elements harmonise with themes and elements already present in the Robin Hood tales. Carpenter’s Robin is the spiritual son of Herne the Hunter; Herne’s a god of the ancient and fearsome forest of Sherwood incarnated in a hermit-like shaman. Robin bears a magic sword called Albion, one of the Seven Swords of Wayland. He and his Merry Men (never called that in the show) encounter Templars, Kabbalists, a cursed village populated by ghosts, Satanists, and, in the first episode, an evil wizard. The famous silver arrow is a symbol of Saxon rebellion, a magical item representing freedom.

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David Soyka Reviews Journal of a UFO Investigator

David Soyka Reviews Journal of a UFO Investigator

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76377593Journal of a UFO Investigator
David Halperin
Viking (304 pp, $25.95, Hardcover February 2012)
Reviewed by David Soyka

The premise here is we’re reading a diary account of the titular UFO investigator who also happens to be a troubled teenager (though, arguably, “troubled teenager” is redundant).  What starts out as a geeky outlet for outcast middle schoolers to pretend to be something other than outcast middle schoolers metastasizes into a fantastic escapade involving a self-selective group of super smart teenagers seemingly without parental supervision, one of whom is particularly sexy with amorous leanings towards our narrator, a concoction of conspiracy theories, a grueling ordeal in outer space and a love child between our hero and insect-like aliens aliens that has something to do with peace in the Middle East.  In other words, just the kind of grandiose cracked thought process that leads a kid either to a life of lonely megalomaniacal rantings on Facebook or to develop the next on-line role playing game that makes him a fortune so he’s finally interesting enough to get laid.

Amidst all the Ufology is some contrasting harsh reality:

It was Tuesday, but I wasn’t in school. A freak snowstorm the day before had forced the schools to close and put my father into an even nastier mood than usual.

He’s come into my room about eleven the night before, complaining about the racket I was making, typing up UFO sightings on file cards. I promised I’d do something else that didn’t make noise. But he sat down on my bed to talk, starting out calm, reasonable. The way his inquisitions usually do.

He just wanted to understand, he said. How was it a bright kid like me could piss  away my life on this UFO garbage?

You should be able to figure out where this is all heading even without reading the book blurb that gives it away.  While this shall be a spoiler-free review, suffice it to say the fun here isn’t the outcome, but the ride chock-full of allusions to just about every B-movie SF  trope and mystical imaginings about visitors from other worlds that take you there.

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Thomas M. MacKay Reviews The Enchantment Emporium

Thomas M. MacKay Reviews The Enchantment Emporium

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the-enchantment-emporium-coverThe Enchantment Emporium
Tanya Huff
DAW (473 pp, $7.99, June 2010)
Reviewed by Thomas M. MacKay

Canadian writer Tanya Huff has well-established credentials in the speculative fiction world, having written a number of respected novels, spanning the range from traditional epic fantasy, to contemporary fantasy, to full-on science fiction. Certain common themes tend to appear in her work, though handled gracefully and without detracting from the story. Ms. Huff’s work commonly challenges any cultural bias toward inequality – whether among races, genders, or for any other reason – and questions the validity of sexual inhibitions, while never denying the real and powerful impact that love imposes.

In the Gale family, “charming” preserves its original meaning, as the Gales still follow the old ways of the Goddess and the Wild God. Twenty-four year old Allie Gale grew up learning how to cast charms and mix potions, taking her place in the third circle among her many cousins, and trying to avoid crossing the Aunties – because Gale power grows as you age, and the oldest generation of women together possess the power to change the world. But magic still can’t give you purpose, and Allie is back home trying to figure out what to do with her heart and her life after losing her job as a research assistant at the Ontario Museum and still struggling to get over her gay ex-boyfriend. When Allie’s wild grandmother, the one Gale Auntie that lives apart from the family, doesn’t come home for the May Day ritual, Allie’s restlessness grows. The next day comes word that Allie’s Gran has died and left Allie an esoteric little store in Calgary. The Aunties don’t really believe their sister is dead, but they send Allie off anyway to figure out what her Gran is up to.

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