Fantasia 2021, Part I: Introduction and Preview

Fantasia 2021, Part I: Introduction and Preview

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Summer’s come around again, and with it another installment of the Fantasia International Film Festival, the Montreal-based genre festival it’s been my pleasure and privilege to cover for Black Gate since 2014. Fantasia’s back up to a full three weeks after last year’s two-week version, starting today and running until August 25; here’s the full schedule. COVID-19’s still out there, though, so this year like last most of the films are streaming rather than shown in a threatre. Some are at scheduled times, others are available on demand over the course of the festival, and all movies are geo-locked to Canada though panels and discussions will be available worldwide through Zoom or YouTube.

But a few films have in-person screenings at Montreal’s venerable Imperial Theatre. This briefly caused me to ponder: doubly vaccinated as I am, am I comfortable going to a movie theatre? I never came to a conclusion because at the start of July I felt a pain in my foot, and when I finally bothered to have a doctor look at it two weeks later, found out it was a stress fracture. I now have a boot cast to wear through the end of August, and while it lets me get around it’s probably still a good idea to avoid needless strain on the foot. So I’ll be taking in the festival from the comfort of my couch.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Lone Wolf and Cub, Part 1

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Lone Wolf and Cub, Part 1

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Lone Wolf and Cub 1: Sword of Vengeance (Japan, 1972)

Lone Wolf and Cub, the celebrated samurai manga series by writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima, began in 1970 and, wildly popular, eventually ran to many thousands of pages and was adapted to both film and television. However, it was virtually unknown in America and Europe until 1980 when the compilation Shogun Assassin was released, drawing on the first two motion pictures. But Shogun Assassin emphasized the series’ brutal violence and was regarded by most in the west as trash cinema, a reputation that was unchanged until 1987 when the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series was finally republished in the US and UK by First Comics. With covers and endorsements by then-fan-favorite Frank Miller, the comics were widely acclaimed, and the movies finally found release in the United States and Europe in their original forms.

This week we’re taking a look at the first three Lone Wolf movies from 1972-73. Despite their level of gore and carnage, which was considered extreme at the time, these are serious films, adapted from the manga by Kazuo Koike himself. Their success is all the more remarkable because star Tomisaburo Wakayama, middle-aged and heavy, looks so little like a samurai matinee idol. But Wakayama had been a dedicated martial artist before he became an actor, and his surprising athleticism adds depth and credibility to the role.

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Explore the Beautiful Darkness: Worlds Beyond Worlds by John R. Fultz

Explore the Beautiful Darkness: Worlds Beyond Worlds by John R. Fultz

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Worlds Beyond Worlds by John R. Fultz
DMR Books (182 pages, $12.99 in trade paperback, April 3, 2021)
Cover by Brian LeBlanc

Volume I: Transcending the Illusions of Modernity and Reason.: The first thing you must understand is that the One True World is not a figment of your imagination, and it does not lie in some faraway dimension. To help you understand the relationship between the True World and the False, you must envision the True World lying beneath the False, as a man can lay hidden beneath a blanket, or a woman’s true face can be hidden by an exquisite mask.

(Fultz, “The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria” )

You Want A Piece of Me?

The Brian LeBlanc cover of Worlds Beyond Worlds: The Short Fiction of John R. Fultz shows the revenant Chivaine displaying the trophy head of his enemy. As a reader, do you want to accept his challenge? You are invited to explore the beautiful darkness. The tile and cover set up expectations well, so get ready to explore planetary landscapes, witches, twisted creatures, and villainous heroes. Worlds Beyond Worlds is exactly what it says, a collection that takes the reader/protagonists into other worlds which are beyond even stranger ones.

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Co-op Adventuring in Dungeons & Dragons

Co-op Adventuring in Dungeons & Dragons

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When I started playing RPGs all the way back in the early 1980s, I did not have a group of players at my age to play games with (well, at least none that I ever found). Hence, I subjected my brother to Traveller and Star Frontiers — and eventually Marvel Super Heroes, Twilight: 2000, and others. RPGs had always presumed that the game would have a game master (GM) — sometimes called Dungeon Master, referee, storyteller, keeper, and others — and the players.

The GM is largely responsible for crafting the story, running all the non-player characters (NPCs), adjudicating the rules, and responding to player decisions by adjusting the story as necessary. Hence, I acted as the GM and my brother played the characters in the story. Typically, far more players are looking for GMs to run games than GMs hanging around without players. This is, of course, highly dependent on the games being run, location, and so on. With online gaming, it is usually more challenging to coordinate time zones.

That said, GMs may have trouble finding players to play anything but the giant of all RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons. However, D&D often serves as a gateway to other RPGs, and the incredible success of Cyberpunk Red and Aliens shows that as more players enter the hobby, a fair number are willing to expand beyond the D&D horizon.

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Unearthing the Scattered Memories: Detectorists

Unearthing the Scattered Memories: Detectorists

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I don’t really know what to say about detectorists (lower case intentional), which I finished watching this morning. It’s not much of a binge, since there are only nineteen half-hour episodes.

Except to say that this is the sort of thing I want to watch at this stage of my life. Quietly amusing rather than uproariously funny; gently engaging rather than gut-wrenchingly dramatic. It is almost completely devoid of sitcom clichés. No handsome leads — Andy (Mackenzie Crook) looks exactly like a dastardly pirate (he actually was in one or more of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), and Lance (Toby Jones) looks like a garden gnome. And yet, you grow to like them so much that they become almost handsome. They’re bog-standard middle aged guys who lead mundane lives — but, crucially, they’re not losers. They’re everymen in whom hope springs eternal.

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Vintage Treasures: The Pangaea Series by Lisa Mason

Vintage Treasures: The Pangaea Series by Lisa Mason

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The Pangaea volumes: Imperium Without End and Imperium Afire
(Bantam Spectra, 1999 and 2000). Covers by Sanjulian

Lisa Mason began her career in the late 80s; her first novel was the cyberpunk Arachne (1990), set in an earthquake-devastated San Francisco. Her most popular title, Summer of Love (1994), about a time traveler from 2467 who visits the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco, was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award and spawned one sequel, The Golden Nineties (1995).

We’re concerned today with perhaps her most ambitious series, the two-volume Pangaea cycle set on a distant world (which — spoiler — turns out to be an alternate history version of San Francisco) where people live and work in a rigid society strictly segregated by genetic purity. Here’s John Clute’s summary from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

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The Storyteller’s Voice: Arch Oboler’s Drop Dead! or Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Chicken Heart that Devoured the World but Were Afraid to Ask

The Storyteller’s Voice: Arch Oboler’s Drop Dead! or Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Chicken Heart that Devoured the World but Were Afraid to Ask

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Drop Dead! front cover

As anyone who reads old comic books can tell you, the cheesy ads in the back pages are often more fun than the actual stories. Warren magazines like Creepy and Eerie were especially good in this regard, aimed as they were at a slightly more adult audience than comics like The Flash or Sub-Mariner were – or if Warren readers weren’t that much more mature, they probably at least had a little more money in their pockets than their slightly younger, allowance-dependent brethren did.

For instance, the last fifteen pages of my copy of Creepy #59 (January, 1974) consist of nothing but ads for such treasures as Planet of the Apes Hobby Kits (“TEN MILLION FANS ASKED FOR IT!”), Vinyl Movie Monster Masks (“NEW! FROM HOLLYWOOD!”), 8MM reels of stop-motion action scenes from Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (“A FEAST OF FEARFUL IMAGINATION!”), EC Comics reprints, and pages and pages of paperback books and “Monsterific LP Record Albums!” The latter were mostly a mixed bag of ancient radio shows, “spoken word” renditions of Poe and Bierce stories, movie soundtracks, and those compilations of haunted house sounds that the copywriters assured us would be “great fun for parties!”

The album that always caught my eye (and that’s all it caught – $5.98 wasn’t easy for me to come by in those days) was called Drop Dead!

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New Treasures: The Coward by Stephen Aryan

New Treasures: The Coward by Stephen Aryan

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The Coward (Angry Robot, June 2021). Cover by Kieryn Tyler

I found Stephen Aryan’s new novel The Coward on one of my recent expeditions to Barnes & Noble, and it followed me home.

Loath as I am to admit it, I think a big part of the reason was that when I picked up the book it fell open to the map, which reminded me instantly of the exciting solo RPG gamebooks of my youth. Have a look and see if you agree.

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Feathers or Stones

Feathers or Stones

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Once, long ago, there was a poor writer who lived in the depths of a forest with his wife. He would spend his evenings putting words to page while his wife rested by the fire. As she did so she would read those stories which were complete, and yet not yet ready for market. Using a special red pencil, she would note occasional errors and put to him questions the writing had left unresolved, in order that his next version of the story might be improved.

During the day she would walk out into the forest and spend her time hewing mighty trees, for she was a woodcutter by trade. He, meanwhile, would tend to the small garden, and every few days journey into the nearby town, riding down the river on a mighty raft formed of entire tree trunks she had stripped, all lashed together, and he would walk back home before sundown. Thus they had a modest supply of silver, and the wife was content they be together every evening.

But the writer was not content.

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Masters of the Universe: Revelation Celebrates the Origins of He-Man

Masters of the Universe: Revelation Celebrates the Origins of He-Man

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This article contains minor spoilers for Masters of the Universe: Revelation.

Our mighty Eternian hero and his celebrated motley crew of bouncing and shooting heroes did not originate as the beloved moral wielding Filmation show (aka marketing campaign) of the 80s. His origins are much more concrete than animation cells, mired in plastic and slime. Before he uttered the words “By the Power of Grayskull” on TV to throngs of enthused children, he first held up a plastic Power Sword in his molded toy hand.

Well, half a Power Sword.

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