Baker's Log

In Print!

2012-02-25T16:50:00.000-08:00

I'm still amazed that anyone would print my work, but it always helps if you've been inked by a master like Jeff Austin! Here are some panels we've done together:

Femforce 158

Ditto

First Betsy the Bookwriter, Presents no. 1

Same

And again

Betsy's nemesis, The Whipette!

Sadie Six-Shot, another western gal

Cover for Jim Main

Movies I'd Like to See, Vol 1

2012-02-25T16:49:00.000-08:00


I wonder how similar this would			be	to Corman's pretty		nifty THE GUNSLINGER

Look at that cast!


Simple, yet wonderful idea....	I see it stars Miss Kitty from *Gunsmoke*!


Actually, I did see this one as a little kid. I want	very much to see it again!

Is that a great poster or what?!

Can "Wild" Bill Elliott tame Beverly Garland?

Video Cheese no. 1 - DAMAGED LIVES (1933/37)

2012-02-20T13:33:00.001-08:00

This is part of a series of reviews I've written for Mr. Ken Begg of www.jabootu.net as part of a series called Video Cheese. Now, for whatever reason, I am unable to provide a link to the original review! Therefore, I am presenting this edited version of that earlier review here, with the permission of Mr. Begg. Thanks, Ken! Enjoy!

DAMAGED LIVES (1933-37)

"An idiot catches VD, gives it to his wife, then finds out about it."

While I take no pleasure in the suffering of others, it is also true that I don't have overmuch sympathy for people who contract venereal diseases. Of all the horrible things in our world that can really mess us up, VD is one of the easiest to avoid. Nor am I quick to poke fun at a social warning picture as most of them, at their core, are trying to do some good. I can't find fault with pictures that are trying to warn potential victims away from narcotics or sexual diseases, at least not their base goals. True, some are so over the top as to be downright comical, such as the quite dreary Marijuana, or the so-stupid-nobody-will-buy-it Glen, or Glenda? or the insultingly offensive Child Bride. Hard for me to take a position against The Burning Question, however. 1949's Wild Weed is actually quite good, cinematically speaking, and then we can open the group to include such spiffy titles as High School Confidential, The Cool and The Crazy, and Maryjane.

Sadly, education leads to cynicism more often than not, societally speaking. With the rebellion of the 60's was a trip we never quite came back from. An embracement of all things counter to the older generations led to acceptance of previously evil and much battled objects and concepts. Today, M is considered harmless by just about everyone. Long-lasting attempts to get cannabis legalized are finding a firm standing in the new century, while cigarettes are practically outlawed in some cities. Because of this situation, one often only allows himself to take Warning films at face value in the privacy of his own home. The ability to view a picture irony-free is quite a gift this day and age, and seldom is this trait (openly) shared by groups when it comes to certain kinds of movies.

Of course, Warning films give their mockers plenty of ammunition. In an attempt to leave an impression on the viewer, they spin tales of incredible, inescapable tragedy. Since most are independent productions, this means poor technical results as well. For every slick studio production like Wild Weed, is a few dozen shoestring efforts like Test Tube Babies. The acting is often either atrocious or wildly over the top, the sets are either shockingly minimalist or filmed in real houses, and the camera work is usually static (that's what hurts most of them in my opinion). To make matters worse is the attempt to spice things up a bit, no doubt to make the experience stick more firmly in the minds of the audience (or, being uncharitable, taking advantage of the format to film some 'dirty' stuff and get a pass). As educational films, Warning pictures were able to skirt around the Hayes Code, useful when discussing reproductive matters. This lead to flashes of nudity and often shockingly frank discussions about sex.

It didn't always connect to the story either. In Test Tube Babies, we examine how the personal lives of a married couple deteriorate because they are unable to have children. To fill the void in their lives, they throw wild parties, until they get out of hand. So this film about artificial insemination includes a lengthy cat-fight between two drunken women that involves much ripping of clothing. We also get a scene of our attractive leading lady changing into her bed-clothes for no real reason. For what its worth, the final fifteen minutes of lecture which actually revolved around the film's main theme DID manage to sell me on the moral acceptance of artificial insemination.

Damaged Lives was shot in 1933, but for some reason went unreleased until 1937. It was the first talkie by director Edgar G. Ulmer, and was released by Weldon Pictures, a subsidiary of Columbia (which actually produced the picture, but the studio wanted to distance itself from the subject matter, according to the IMDB). Our subject of discussion is a monstrous ailment known as syphilis. Thankfully, this particular disease is quite treatable, and is practically a non-issue in today's culture.

Being an actual studio film, Damaged Lives shows a bit more polish than we usually see with these things. They also don't feel the need to spice things up with an unmotivated nude scene. Sadly, that doesn't keep it from dragging, even as the film clocks in under 54 minutes. (According to Leonard Maltin's video guide, the film should run 61 minutes, although this Sinister Cinema print is in superior shape for this kind of film. I don't recall a single splice, in fact.) Reportedly, showings of the film were originally followed by a half-hour lecture about VD.

The plot is very simple. There's this couple that have been engaged for a long time. One night on business the man, Donald (Lyman Williams, who was only credited four times in the nine films he made back in the 30s) takes a tipsy girl home when his client deserts her to make eyes with another woman. (I believe this is the character named Elise, played by Charlotte Merriam, who was quite a busy actress in the 20's and 30's.) Donald says goodnight to Elise and prepares to leave, but Elise lures him into the bedroom instead. Ashamed of his actions, he confesses to his fiancee, Joan. (Joan is played by Diane Sinclair, who died just a few months ago at the age of 98, after a brief turn as an actress in the 30s.) Joan believes this incident is mostly the fault of their long engagement, and the wedding date is moved up. They marry and begin a comparatively happy life, then Donald gets a call from Elise. Without really coming out and saying the words, she lets him know that she has VD, and that she gave it to him, and he has since given it to Joan. Donald refuses to believe it.

As Donald is walking out, Elise shoots herself in shame. (It's actually kinda weird, in this day and age of politicians who send pictures of their body parts to staffers, to think of someone being so overcome with shame that they'd take their own lives. While we've progressed quite a way, in another sense we've devolved just as far, maybe more than I'm willing to admit.) Joan wants to have children, but that's not happening for a while. She and Donald both have syphilis and tour a hospital ward to see actual victims of the crippling disease. Their lives fallen apart, Joan turns on the gas and lies next to Donald to hold his hand. Fortunately, he wakes and opens the big balcony window (they have a really nice place, even if you wouldn't want to sit down when you visit). He and Joan talk things over and they discover they still have some hope. (When treated early enough, syphilis is easily conquerable.) Our couple still in love, they embrace and prepare to move forward with their lives. The end.

I must note that Donald's doctor friend is played by Jason Robards (Sr), who was a VERY busy actor with a whopping 228 IMDB credits! Though often uncredited, we can spot him such titles as Zombies on Broadway, Isle of the Dead, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, multiple Dick Tracy movies, and countless matinee westerns.

The box cover for Damaged Lives describes it as being over the top campy. It isn't. Those expecting something surreal like Sex Madness will instead find a fairly typical programmer of the 30s (if not for the subject matter). I don't know, some folk just expect them all to be that wacky, I suppose. One last trivia bit, a similarly-themed VD pic titled Damaged Goods (one of a dozen films to use that title) was released a week later!

Roundup of Recent Pinup Sketches

2012-02-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

Will Meugniot's Fighting Yank Jr.


Inked and colored by Jeff Austin						for Dan Burke

Action at AC!

2012-02-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

I have some scans from some of my AC work, including some panels from an episode of DINOSAUR GIRL, my own original strip (the first such ever published!) Inks are by Jeff Austin!

Ali Bastur...

-and her 40 Feet

True love, Black Phantom and The Shade

Oddball Film Report: PROM NIGHT (1980)

2012-02-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

   I've been examining a lot of 60's movies for the Oddball Film Report lately. While that decade and its films may inspire me more than any other period, I felt I needed to offer readers some variety. No, I haven't had complaints, but then I haven't had a lot of readers to my knowledge. At any rate, I wanted to break decade for a while so I'll be examining this weirdly popular flick from the 80's Slasher cycle.

   The Slasher genre was born of a melding of earlier genres. First and foremost (excluding the who-done-it features which have been with us since the beginning of film) would be the Psycho-Thriller genre of the 60's inspired by the grosses of Alfred Hitchcock's immortal PSYCHO. Incubation continued through the 70's, with micro-budget thrillers composed of frank sexuality and madmen on a rampage. The gore films of both decades also helped form the template. Credited for being the "first" slasher (although that is a dubious distinction) was John Carpenter's independent stalker-in-the-neighborhood epic, HALLOWEEN. The die was finally set with FRIDAY THE 13TH, thus creating a template that could be constantly re-used with minimal alteration. The slashers were the dream-come-true of penny-pinching producers, and the nightmare-come-alive for horror movie fans.

   The slashers were easy to make, for one thing. Find a secluded locale, a bunch of aspiring but inexperienced (and thus cheap) actors, women willing to take their clothes off, maybe a make-up man hoping to break into the business, and a minimalist script, and you've got the makings of a big hit. Unrestrained violence was still fairly novel in the early 80's (it wouldn't be by the end of the decade). This form of menace edged the traditional horror film almost over the edge of the cliff. Why spend valuable time and money on make-up for werewolves and vampires when you can just cover a guy's face and have him chase 'teenagers' through the woods?

   What really defines the slasher genre is that the films are so base. Basically, they're pornos with a body count and less nudity. The set-ups usually involve a group of (mostly female) characters who find themselves in secluded areas for carnal activities. These films often revolve around occupations like camp councilors, student nurses, babysitters, teachers and students, etc, etc. The titles could often be switched with skin flicks (APRIL FOOLS DAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, THE BURNING, PROM NIGHT, etc). The major difference, plot-wise, being that someone was stalking and killing the over-sexed idiots.

   Against the odds, though, there would be the occasional gem even in this sorry genre. HALLOWEEN is considered a certified classic. MY BLOODY VALENTINE manged to actually be a good movie by virtue of a decent script, good acting, and likable characters (a real rarity in this genre)! The film is also limited on the sort of gore these films usually put forth as their bread and butter (although that was the distributor's doing, and a more recent edition of the film has restored these scenes). Again beating the odds, the film spawned an actually decent remake, MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D! Wes Craven, meanwhile, gave us A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, which presented a cerebral take on the kill-a-bunch-of-kids formula.

   The majority of them though, are almost universally written off as trash cinema at its worst. So why does the genre continue to survive? Why does fandom exist for such depraved "entertainment" as can be found in this lifeless, and definitely soul-less, genre? You got me. In my mind, the worst of these films belong in a dumpster with drug comedies. I can see the occasional viewing of a slasher as a 'horror' film, after all there were thousands of these things, but I have yet to understand the cultish fanaticism some audience members have.

   Oh well, such a topic can be discussed at length elsewhere. On with my report....

   This film, like many in the genre, was made in Canada. SCTV it ain't.

   PROM NIGHT opens with some kids, maybe eleven or so, playing a perverse version of "hide and seek" in an abandoned building. In this version of the game, they pretend to stalk and kill one another. Is this common? Did they invent this for the movie, or do Canadian children really think so morbidly?At any rate, a little girl is "it" and the others surround her near a large window. She ends up falling to her death, and this whole sequence sums up my main problem with the film. This should take only a minute or two to establish, yet it gets drug out well beyond the time required. The moment when the kids begin to circle their target and she falls lasts beyond long enough that one of the kids should have noticed "hey, she's too close to the window, we'd better back off!" At any rate, we open with the accidental death of a little girl.

   The other kids, scared of going to jail, swear each other to secrecy. Okay, I know these kids are scared and everything (although the child actors aren't good enough to convey this and they all come off looking pretty cold), but there are some major problems with this set up. First, you have a half dozen children who are more than likely to spill the beans before the night is over, yet they all apparently are able to keep this secret into adulthood. It just doesn't seem possible, at the least you'd expect one of them to crack over time and confess. Then you get this 'jail' business. Now, again, I understand these are children, but they must not have watched enough television. Children don't go to jail, they go to reform school if they go anywhere at all. What happened here was clearly an accident, and the court is most likely to decide that the kids having to live with this incident is punishment enough. (Granted, things may work a little differently in the Great White North.)

   The police figure the scene to be the work of a murderous pervert, and they have a suspect in mind. Said suspect ends up being injured in a car chase and confined to a hospital bed for years. Meaning the kids get off scot-free and the parents have closure. One of the parents is top-billed Leslie Nielson, who is way too good for this type of thing. What's he doing here? Well, Canadian film production is handled a little differently than it is in the States. Film productions get a tax break if they hire native talent (in some cases the government even makes grants of taxpayer monies to fund locally-shot product!) which leads to the appearance of name talent in cruddy movies like this. None other than Glenn Ford (!) was roped into one of these things, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. Nielson has very little to do here, and is given about four short scenes, although they remind us that the man had much more talent than his later films would have us realize. I figured I'd be making Police Squad! jokes to myself whenever he was on screen, but his introduction scene shows him grieving over the death of his daughter and it makes such an impact I was taken aback. It's the kind of thing that reminds me why I'm such a fan of Mr. Nielson.

   Also too good for the material is Jamie Lee Curtis, although she was known as Miss Slasher at the time for her starring role in HALLOWEEN, a part she would reprise in the sequel. While talented, and possessing a screen presence the other performers here lack, I remain puzzled by the film having characters note how pretty she's supposed to be. Personally, I've never found her features attractive (she's actually improved with age), placing her somewhere below Karen Black in this respect. This is not to sound disrespectful, you understand, I just don't understand it. When her date for the prom tells her how beautiful she is, the effect is a bit surreal. Making this even more bizarre is that her parents were famed actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh! The pair could be considered the pinnacle of Handsome and Beautiful, so you'd expect their offspring to look more like Barbara Eden than Jamie Lee Curtis. Okay, I'll drop it now, I feel I've already been too hard on her. Jamie, if you ever read this, I'd be proud to buy you lunch. You're a wonderful actress and I've never been disappointed by one of your performances.

   SIX YEARS LATER we catch up to our now teen-age band of friends, who all look to be 30 or above. The youngest gal here might be 26 or 27. These 'kids' are making preparations for the prom, as a shadowy figure with a raspy voice is making harassing phone calls. One of the girls suspects this caller to be Lou, the school jerk/bully/creep/perv. He's another element that makes this exercise farcical in the extreme. He looks like a parody of the type of character he's supposed to be, with his shaggy hair, buck teeth, and Frankenstein monster build.

   Well, no reason to drag this out like the movie does. The kids eventually go to the prom and then find themselves stalked by a masked stranger whenever they break away from the group to have sex. True to form, we're served up a number of suspects who could be the killer. The nutcase from six years ago has escaped from his ward and returns to town to kill his nurse in the same dilapidated building where the kid was killed. The school handyman could be the killer, since he's kinda simple and the girls are nervous around him. It could be one of the grieved parents seeking some belate justice. It might be one of the gang, killing the other kids out of guilt. Don't worry, I won't tell.

   This was before slasher characters went in for iconic (or hopefully iconic) looks like Jason Vorhees and his hockey mask. Our killer wears black slacks, a matching sweater, and a ski mask, so he looks less like a monster than he does a mugger. The film is also terribly under-lit (or else the print I saw was too dark), so there are many scenes where you can't even see the guy. In one ambitious sequence, he menaces the driver of a van at night. Through this whole scene, the driver looks like he's being attacked by an invisible phantom. To be fair, there's a scene where the guy cuts through a power cable and has a realistically confused and frightened reaction to this (it may be the film's best moment, and I wonder if maybe there isn't as much acting in the scene as there is reacting).

   Weirdly, there's not that much violence or nudity on display. The one real nude scene occurs when one of the girls moons the handyman (although they never explain why she'd bait the guy she thinks has a screw loose). The attack scenes tend to be done minus the gore-effect close shots that define the genre, almost like a TV print. One attack, in fact, seems to have been zoomed in on (the face of the victim, we see no blood) and slowed down in post-production. It looks exactly like an edit made for a network showing. Add to this the fact that everything is so dark, and you almost have a TV-style who-done-it of the same period.

   Believe it or not, PROM NIGHT was quite a success. And really, that doesn't make much sense. As slashers go, this one is pretty dull. Half the movie is over before the murder spree begins, and even that is fairly tame. I'm not making a personal complaint about this, but I can't figure why slasher fans would be so keen on this picture. Sporadically, a few sequels got made, and the recent wave of slasher remakes included an update of today's subject (which bore little resemblance to it's parent).

Based on Real People...

2012-02-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

Christy Marie

Gina Elise

Leigh James

Shawna Collien

GODZILLA VS MEGALON, the comic book!

2012-02-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Fabled among American Godzilla fans was a four-page comic book given out at theaters in 1976 in advance of Cinema Shares releasing GODZILLA VS MEGALON to US theaters. I recently uncovered scans of this rare artifact, and now present them here for my fellow movie fans.

Interestingly, while almost universally hailed as the worst Godzilla film of the 20th Century, GODZILLA VS MEGALON remains one of the most successful films of the franchise! The film played to big box office on both sides of the Pacific, and in multiple cuts here in the States. The film was an even bigger success when it debuted on American television (famously MC'd by John Belushi wearing a Godzilla suit -and having the run time trimmed way down to fit an hour slot)! It managed to slip into public domain afterward, making it one of the most visible Godzilla films by being released on VHS under multiple labels.

International One Sheet

I remember well a time when you were sure to run across two Godzilla adventures at the video store, no matter where you were in the country. You could count on finding a few copies of GODZILLA 1985 and GODZILLA VS MEGALON. The film later ran on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and was briefly released to DVD in this form. However, Toho managed to recover the American rights to the film and the MST release had to be pulled. The few copies that are still floating around are high dollar items now. Toho subsequently offered a TV package which included a pristine widescope print of this film which would periodically turn up on The Sci-Fi Channel back when it was worth watching.

Godzilla wouldn't break into American comics with a regular title until 1977, a year which saw Toho going crazy with licensing deals to make American Godzilla products. Thus, two years after his film career had ended (in Japan, the later films would be imported throughout the 70's) for the first time, Godzilla began a regular series with the Marvel Comics Group. These four pages, though, may be the Big Blue Dinosaur's American comic book debut! (I'm allowing that there may have been similar products in Japan, but they would have been unseen by American eyes. This would have been a truly special thing to have!)

ROBOT MONSTER, the commission!

2012-01-30T12:34:00.000-08:00

From time to time I get a real blessing and receive a commission. Here's the latest.

Here's the first version with no background. I like how clean and neat it is....

And after a background was added per the customer's request...

AVALON HIGH

2012-01-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

Friends, a couple of years ago I was burning whatever inflammable yet valueless material I could dig up. I happened across some less-than-perfect yearbooks from the late 70's/early 80's. Naturally, I went through first and collected whatever unspoiled reference pictures I could of cheerleaders and the like (these were college year books, for the record) before I burned them. I got hit with the idea of doing a female-oriented teen comedy comic of the Tippy Teen variety. I'd focus on 1960's high schoolers, and the series would be called Avalon High. I only got as far as these two character sheets. You can see I was experimenting with styles. I was never sure if I should try to develop Avalon High as a comic book or a cartoon series, since a peppy theme song popped into my head while I was sketching these. Well, maybe I can sell the idea to the Japanese....

MOVIE NEWS: Obey the Lost Skeleton! Again!

2012-01-24T13:25:00.000-08:00

Great news, Skeleton fans! Larry Blamire is setting things in motion for the third chapter in the bony anti-hero's big screen adventures, THE LOST SKELETON WALKS AMONG US! The Lost Skeleton also walks IN us if this preview of Larry's poster art is any hint! Mr. Blamire posted this detail frame on Facebook, firing the imaginations of his fans with ideas of what Dr. Paul Armstrong and the gang are in for this time! How long until the film is in the can? (More importantly for those of us in rural locations, how long until it hits disk?) I don't know about you, but I can hardly wait!

Oddball Film Report: FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1965)

2012-01-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

    The legend of Dr. Frankenstein has been one of the most enduring tales in the world's collective pop culture. It was a massive best-seller in print, a success on the stage, and was one of the earliest horror stories adapted to the screen. A year seldom goes by since Universal's definitive 1931 release that a new Frankenstein film doesn't get made or released. The Frankenstein Monster is as much a part of American halloween decoration as Santa Claus is to Christmas festivities. And like Santa Claus, Frankenstein and his monster get endlessly updated, altered, and tinkered with as each new story tries to be at least somewhat novel compared to the countless versions that came before.

   Picking a single candidate for Weirdest Frankenstein Film is just asking for trouble. Among others, some obvious candidates include JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN 1970, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, BLACKENSTEIN, FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN, FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (in 3D yet!), FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER, a version starring Mr. Magoo (!), and numerous 'adult' takes on the material.

   Still, you could make a strong case for FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD. After all, only the Japanese would depict the Frankenstein monster as a giant caveman that can grow back missing limbs and fights a fire-spitting dinosaur!

   The story goes that Toho Pictures in Japan was looking for another project for Godzilla to star in. They also wanted to do their own version of the Frankenstein characters. Reportedly, Toho planned to sequel their 1962 hit THE HUMAN VAPOR with a story in which the titular vapor-man goes to Dr. Frankenstein for help in reviving his dead lover! That same year, Toho had bought the story for "King Kong vs Frankenstein" from John Beck (who more or less stole the the idea from Willis O' Brien, who had been trying to get the picture made since the 30's). Thinking the project a good chance to bring Godzilla back, Toho substituted the Big Blue Dinosaur for the Frankenstein monster. Supposedly, it was dropping Frankenstein from one picture that made them eager to use the character in another film.

   Following the success of GODZILLA VS THE THING in 1964, plans were made to team Frankenstein's monster with Toho's top star. "Godzilla vs Frankenstein" was a bare-bones treatment that eventually evolved into our current subject. This time, though, on the way to the screen, Godzilla found himself replaced by a new monster! Assuming Toho had the same casting in mind, Godzilla still got a chance to work with American actor Nick (The Rebel) Adams in 1965's MONSTER ZERO (which, for some reason went unseen in the States until 1970, when it played double bill with THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS -another Toho production starring an American actor, Russ Tamblyn). The substitute monster, Baragon, meanwhile, became the workhorse of the effects department as the suit was durable enough to withstand constant use and redress for multiple television series. When the suit was called for use in another Godzilla movie in 1968, it had finally been beaten up enough to warrant construction of a whole new costume. Said costume, though, wasn't ready in time and Baragon had to be substituted with another beast (Gorosaurus from KING KONG ESCAPES, 1967). The new Baragon suit can only be briefly glimpsed in the final film, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS.

   FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD is typical Toho of the period. Outlandish, breathlessly paced, yet fun and entertaining, the film remains much, much better than one would expect from any plot synopsis. The cast is packed with familiar faces, and the technical crew is mostly the same team that has been in place since GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. Akira Ifukube offers one of his most stirring scores, for example, although he actually starts us off with an impressively somber track as we open our story toward the end of Word War 2....

   For some reason, about the time of Germany's surrender, the Nazis had the still-beating heart of the Frankenstein monster turned over to the Japanese. The object eventually reached a medical center in Hiroshima. Either the trip took months, or we jump ahead at this point, because suddenly the Enola Gay is flying overhead and the city is quickly vaporized. (It might be worth noting, too, that the A-bomb being dropped didn't come as the surprise indicated here. The Allies gave much advanced notice in order to limit the number of lives lost in the attack, although there was just as much doubt from the Imperial Japanese that the bomb would actually BE dropped. The result was one of the most devastating attacks on an enemy in any war, and the event changed warfare itself. Another thing worth noting that is often overlooked, is that the A-bomb actually saved countless thousands of lives. The predicted outcome of an expected land assault would have spelled disaster for both sides. Weirdly, the ultimate outcome of the Hiroshima bombing was a positive one, as it brought about a swift end to the war and American occupation over the next decade shaped Japan into one of the most powerful economic entities in history. Lest I be unfairly attacked for this statement, that is in no way meant to diminish the horror of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. For the record, though, the aftermath of those bombings has been greatly exaggerated.)

   Jump ahead to 1965. The city now houses a center devoted to radiological research. The chief of staff of this institute is Dr. James Bowen (Nick Adams). Bowen and scientist lady-friend Sueko (the delectable Kumi Mizuno) discover a wild boy running around the city and eating small animals. One older character makes note of the fact that there were children like this after the War, who would eat anything they could get their hands on. The basic premise here is one which is the subject of much debate, and there is little evidence to support either theory. This child is our new incarnation of the Frankenstein monster.

   Now, where did this boy come from? There are two schools of thought on this, and neither explanation is specifically mentioned in the movie. Either the heart of Frankenstein regenerated into a new creature, or the wild boy found and ate Frankenstein's heart and the organ took over the entire body. Either possibility opens the doors to numerous questions. Let's say we go with the "wild boy eating the heart" idea. Okay, how was the heart not vaporized in the blast? How did the boy find it before the authorities? It would seem eating the heart counteracted the radioactivity the boy's body was subjected to, but where has he been in the 20 years since the end of the War? Why has he not aged in that time? Why would the full mutation wait until 20 years to begin?

   Onto the other theory which I support, though not without reservations. We are told that the heart requires a steady supply of protein to keep it beating. Say it did survive the bomb, and the fallout caused the object to grow into a new being. What was the heart converting into the mass required to make a whole body? How was it able to do this without protein? Why did this process take 20 years? Where was this organism hiding for two decades before it emerged a ravenous child with a taste for small animals? Let's say the bomb triggered the heart to go into a state of suspended animation until far more recently, what sudden rush of protein caused the quick growth? Where has the heart been all this time?

   And let us step back and examine the simple thesis here. Dr. Frankenstein sewed together parts of dead bodies and charged the new body with electricity. This resulted in a monster that we are told could re-grow severed limbs! "Frankenstein was actually killed many times over" we are told, "but the creature always returned to life!" First, how did the monster become reduced to a living heart? How does a human heart super-charged with electricity make for a creature that can regenerate itself like a starfish? And then how does exposure to the A-bomb cause the same creature to increase in overall size?

   At any rate, Bowen and his staff capture the child and take him to the center for study. Now getting a steady diet of food, the boy begins to grow into a man, and beyond! In short order, Frankenstein grows into a 20 foot giant who must be kept caged in the institute's basement. At his continuing pace, however, no cage will be able to hold him and plans are made to move him to a sanctuary for further study. Bowen's right hand man, Dr. Kowaji (Tadao Takashima), meanwhile, has traveled to Germany to speak with an old scientist who has an idea as to the boy's origin (we opened the movie seeing this same scientist being forced to turn over Frankenstein's heart to the Nazis).

   The scientist tells Kowaji that the only way to know if the boy is really "Frankenstein" is to cut off his arms or legs. If they grow back, its Frankenstein! [Was this regeneration subplot cooked up to justify why the Monster was always escaping death in his many movie appearances? It was an odd choice, given that the monster always survives intact. For instance, the Monster falls into a sulfur pit at the end of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. When we meet up with him again in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, Ygor finds the Monster in the dried up beds, exposed by an earthquake. In HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, the Monster wanders into quicksand, and emerges from the mud in HOUSE OF DRACULA, each time intact! (Although the location of his demise/discovery often fails to match up, as was also a habit with Kharis the Mummy.) In fact, I can't recall that the Monster was ever dismembered prior to 1970's DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN, so I'm not sure where the writers got this idea. The Monster was always indestructible, but he never lost any limbs.]

   Kowaji becomes obsessed with the Frankenstein idea and plans to amputate one of Frankenstein's limbs, much to the displeasure of Sueko, who has developed a bond of sympathy with the giant. Kowaji readies his experiment after hours, but is interrupted by a newsreel crew come to film Frankenstein. Kowaji objects when the stage lights make Frankenstein outraged, but you know reporters and caged/chained monsters! Frankenstein escapes, and destroys a couple of squad cars in the process.

   Frankenstein manages to melt into the wilderness and avoid recapture. Meanwhile, a giant dinosaur that burrows through the earth has appeared, and it has quite the appetite! With the body-count rising, the military is convinced Frankenstein is doing all the eating. Bowen and his crew know better, though Frankenstein does require untold amounts of protein, so things aren't looking good for our heroes! (In a side-plot, Frankenstein lost one of his hands in the escape by yanking the shackle off his wrist, which was already too small for him. The hand is later discovered and kept alive in a protein solution, until it escapes and dies. Kowaji wants to reclaim Frankenstein even more after the loss of this specimen, while Bowen and Sueko are trying to make a way for Frankenstein to live alone in the mountains.)

   I won't go into any more plot detail than that, except to say you can expect what may be Toho's most savage and exciting monster duel!

   Nick Adams and Kumi Mizuno remain one of the most popular romantic leading couples in all of Toho's stable. The pair are also seen in MONSTER ZERO, and the sadly obscure spy film THE KILLING BOTTLE (which, word has it, was dubbed for US release TWICE but never made it into theaters). Adams, known for self-destructive behavior (though blessed with a charm and likability few actors can claim), fell for Mizuno and tried to start an affair with her. Mizuno said "no" but Adams ruined his own marriage to actress Carol Nugent. He later died of a drug overdose in 1968, but the incident is the cause of much controversy. Many believe he was murdered, others believe it was suicide, while still others believe it to have been a tragic accident. He remains best known for playing Johnny Yuma on the teleseries The Rebel.

   A "sequel" of sorts was produced, and released state-side as THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS (where any connection to "Frankenstein" was dropped). Kumi Mizuno was back, although the American actor enlisted for this epic was former child star Russ Tamblyn, playing Dr. Paul Stewart. In that film, the scientists in question had a baby "gargantua" in captivity for a short time, which later escaped. When a voracious flesh-eating giant appears, the authorities believe it to be the same creature Stewart's team had examined, while Stewart and his friends fight to prove that their Gargantua isn't responsible. The Gargantuas also regenerate lost flesh (although the cells of these creatures never die, meaning that any sizable chunk of them can grow into a whole new monster, just like REPTILICUS). Thematically, a very similar picture.

   FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, meanwhile, remains a curious picture. Very good, but very strange, the film didn't spawn a series of Japanese Frankenstein films (although more or less every Toho film that got released in Germany had the title changed to reference Frankenstein! GODZILLA VERSUS THE SEA MONSTER for example, saw German release as FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM THE SEA!). Given Frankenstein's ability to survive anything, and a character noting we are sure to hear from the giant again some day, it seems weird that a more official follow-ups didn't occur.

   I should, of course, mention that the film once ended with Frankenstein doing battle with a giant octopus! Perhaps realizing how bizarre this element seemed (even for THIS movie), the entire segment was dropped prior to release. The footage was restored to the Japanese print for a 1980's Japanese laserdisc release. It has since become standard to include this version in Japanese studies. The AIP release, meanwhile, despite being a staple on American television in the 70's, 80's, and early 90's, has become rather hard to obtain. I find this situation irksome, and await remedy.

   The only official release on the young medium of DVD largely uses footage from the Japanese print with the US dub laid over it. This results in some missing footage, as Toho actually filmed some scenes differently for the US release! (The scenes are included in cropped format as extras, a very disappointing release.) ----For GODZILLA VS THE THING, by the way, American audiences actually got an entire scene featuring The Big Blue Dinosaur that wasn't included in the Japanese version!

    In the end, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD does a really good job of holding the viewer despite some wildly wacky plot threads. Let's be extremely generous and say that the Frankenstein monster can grow into a giant cave-man. Okay, but really, a dinosaur?

   You've gotta love this movie.

Welcome to My World!

2012-01-20T18:14:00.000-08:00

A world of colorful adventure and beautiful girls! I ran across these images and felt the need to share. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Thanks to Mr. Ken Begg for alerting me to this one!

The Preymates

2012-01-20T12:23:00.000-08:00

The idea was to do a series of Dan DeCarlo style horror-themed pinup cartoons. Jeff Austin and I have thus far completed these examples:

(The crude title on the book was my doing.)

Revenge of Ro-Man!

2012-01-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

I wake up one morning and an idea hits me of remaking ROBOT MONSTER as a good movie! I got to thinking about it, and there could be a fun project in there somewhere....

    Let's go all-out. Color, scope, 3D. A sequel set around 1963. Johnny, the lad from the first film, is now a young man with a loving wife. He is starting to have recurring nightmares, the same "Ro-Man" nightmare he experienced as a child. The dream is reoccurring with such frequency that John is starting to wonder about his mind. Moreover, details of the dream include national security, as John has a job at a missile base where the top secret "space platform"is being constructed.

   Once in orbit, the platform will act as an early warning device for atomic attack from other nations, as well as any incoming threats from space. John has been having this dream since childhood, long before he became involved with the actual platform (which was destroyed by Ro-Man in the dream). The base psychiatrist finds nothing mentally wrong with John, although his superiors are amazed to find that the dream contains information John couldn't know.

   Meanwhile, an object falls in the hills, and a survey team is sent to investigate. To their shock, they do not find a crater, but find a cave (the familiar Bronson Canyon locale of the first film, and hundreds of others). Moreover, their communication equipment isn't working due to peculiar bubble-like objects that are issuing from the cave. The men investigate, but are attacked and killed by Ro-Man, who has set up shop in the cave!

   John's wife Pamela tries to make him relax, and see if he can't learn something from his dream. Maybe he's been missing something in the dream which is the key to ending it. John dreams again, but the visions are different, and include the violent demise of the survey team. Ro-Man even speaks to John in his dream, explaining that they share a psychic link. Ro-Man is here to start invasion proceedings which will ultimately make it possible for his race to capture earth women to act as breeding stock! Step one involves capturing some sample earth-women and making it possible for the first invasion ships to arrive before the platform can be completed. John awakes, but believes his visions to still be fantasy.

   The radar station which tracked Ro-Man's landing dispatches another team to find the survey team. Finding nothing, they make a check of local bases. In the infirmary, John (leaving the doctor's office) is asked if he has seen the men being sought. Shown a picture, and knowing the faces from his nightmare, John isn't sure how to respond.

   Ro-Man, meanwhile, is abducting women from the Beverly Hills area. Among the women to go missing is an actress. Another nightmare shows John the women being held prisoner in Ro-Man's cave. He later sees the paper and recognizes the actress from his dream. This doesn't convince Pam that anything is afoot, as John could have seen the woman's face in magazines, movies, or television. When John looks deeper into the paper and also recognizes the other missing women, Pam starts to think there might be something larger happening.

   Knowing he must do something, but unsure what he could do, John and Pam go over the details of the new dreams to find a clue. If he could destroy the radar/communications shield (the bubble-machine), the authorities would know of Ro-Man's location and move in. John, knowing the location, heads out with an explosive device. Pam doesn't like it, but John makes her promise to stay put because he knows how powerful Ro-Man is and he doesn't want her hurt. Reluctantly, she agrees. Still nervous about John's plan, Pam goes to John's superiors and tells them to follow him out to the cave (telling them that John has suffered a breakdown, knowing they'll know otherwise when they see Ro-Man). The brass have no reason to doubt Pam's concern for her missing husband and a jeep is sent to find him.

   John finds the cave and heads in. Back at the base, Pam is getting antsy and realizes John might need more help than the two men already sent. She steps out "for air" and eyes the main gate. In a desperate move, Pam steals the General's car and crashes the gate, thus forcing the MPs to give chase. The jeep arrives at the cave but the men see nothing (John parked away from the cave and camouflaged it from Ro-Man), and they find their radios don't work. Ro-Man attacks and kills them before sensing John's presence and following him into the cave.

   John has found the women and set them free, and they stick close to him as he finds the bubble machine and sets the explosive in place. The women find their way blocked from escape when Ro-Man appears and attacks. John opens fire, and Ro-Man responds with his Calcinator Beam, which in reality doesn't kill humans, but does confuse and irritate them. Not wanting to fire for fear he'll hit one of the girls in the confusion, John rushes Ro-Man, and manages to hurt Ro-Man when they smash into a stand of equipment.

   The women manage to escape and pour out of the cave as the authorities show up. Ro-Man regains his feet and sees John unconscious from the battle before turning to reclaim the escaped women. The soldiers are trying to understand what the women are saying, but can't really follow until Ro-Man emerges from the cave and starts to attack. Bullets have no effect on him. John comes to during all this and rushes out behind Ro-Man, who tosses around soldiers like dolls.

   John finds Pam, now being targeted by Ro-Man, and moves to shield her from harm. The bomb goes off and Ro-Man runs back to the cave. Grenades are thrown, causing the cave to cave in just as the monster reaches the opening. After a ton of rubble falls and obscures the scene, John no longer feels the connection to Ro-Man. The nightmare over, John and Pam embrace.

   An added plus, since the original film was scored by none other than Elmer Bernstein (!), there are some rich stock musical cues that can be worked into the soundtrack.

   The only problem is, how would you advertise it? Anyone familiar with the original film would be expecting a spoof of some sort (and the flick was so wacky, who wouldn't expect a follow-up to be comical?), while audiences not familiar with the first film would have no frame of reference. You advertise the follow-up as a comedy and people would be expecting something other than what they'd pay their hard-earned money to see. Advertise it as a straight science fiction piece and you'd be laughed off the screen before the trailer has time to unspool!

Watch the Birdie!

2012-01-18T12:47:00.000-08:00

(Sorry about the rough nature of this scan, it can't really be helped with this machine I'm using.)

Oddball Film Report: INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES (1962)

2012-01-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

   Boy, what a misfire.

   INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES began as a sort of inside joke about American International Pictures and the people who worked at the studio. The film was envisioned as a satiric play on the studio's bread-and-butter drive-in monster pictures, and a treatment was written as "The Monsters of Nicholson Mesa." Nicholson, of course, was in reference to James H. Nicholson, who co-founded AIP with Samuel Z. Arkoff. I once read a Filmfax interview with Johnathan Haze (who scripted the film to star himself and AIP regular Dick Miller as the hapless G.I.'s who meet the monsters) where the troubled pre-production history was discussed, although the years have faded the details in my memory. One thing is for sure, the final film should have been a lot more amusing than it is.

   Take another look at that poster. Nothing to imply audiences were marching into a comedy (on double bill with THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, no less!), or anything different from AIP's popular space operas being cranked out during the period. Strike one against INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES is the bait-and-switch nature of the ad campaign. Strike two being that the comedy isn't very funny.

   That part has always sort of bugged me, since the stuff going on here SHOULD be funny. The military big brass all having decoder rings from a space club, and club membership is shared with a tribe of Indians who stumble through these shenanigans. One character, a vague Leo Gorcey-type occasionally breaks into celebrity impressions. Army guys finding beautiful seven-foot amazons from another planet who grow vegetable-based foot soldiers. The Army's most incompetent two men thwarting hostile invasion plans, and the space-babes being forced to marry them and stay on earth. All that should be pretty amusing. I can see myself writing that script.

   The trouble is, everything seems so labored and stretched out. It's like they were working from a script for a half-hour television comedy and had to stretch it to fill a feature-length running time. Also hindering things is that while Haze and Miller would have been amusing as a comedy team, we're served up Robert Ball and Frankie Ray, who aren't the greatest comedians to ever grace the screen (though in fairness, nor are they the worst). Ball seems to've spent his entire career doing guest bit parts on nearly every major teleseries of the 60's and 70's. He can also be seen in the earlier THE BRAIN EATERS. Ray did even less. In fact, most of the familiar faces we'd expect to see in an AIP film are absent from this exercise. That doesn't help warm us to the project either.

In short, the plot is as follows: An underground atomic test has caused a crater to form which reveals a cave the brass wants explored. A squad is assembled that includes the camp's two daydreaming losers, Privates Penn and Philbrick. Penn and Philbrick get separated from their unit while exploring the cave and stumble onto the field HQ of an invasion force from another planet, manned by two comely seven-foot-tall babes in spacey bathing suits. The invaders are growing "veggi-men" to aid them in their conquest of Bronson Canyon. Our heroes escape and try to find help, but find themselves back with the space-gals. They manage to sabotage the operation, and strand the two women on earth. The women have no choice but marry the two men and make them the luckiest guys in the Army. Happily, the running time is kept to 70 minutes. Weirdly, even that amount of time seems labored when it should be fun.

I don't wish to imply that the film is a total waste of time or anything. Should you be extremely forgiving, there are some amusing moments here and there. There is also some novelty in the film being played for laughs when most genre fare of contemporary vintage was done straight. [There were some comedic Mexican movies of a similar vein to our current subject, -space-babes, monsters, and all- but none of them ever made it across the border for some reason.] Even INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, one of the first science fiction/horror/comedies not built around an existing comedy star or team, had its moments of genuine suspense. Then again, that may be part of the problem. Conceivably, the film would have played better if the monster stuff was played for menace. While the Veggi-men are indeed powerful, they look like exactly what they are: men wearing tights and burlap sacks with plastic vegetables attached. Larry Blamire's Mutant from THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA seems to be inspired mostly by these lacking specimens.

Timing is everything in comedy. The material here might have worked with tighter editing and a quicker pace. The flick could certainly benefit from the sort of madcap frenzy that one finds among the works of The Three Stooges or The Marx Brothers. It certainly SHOULD be funny, but that's one of the worst things you can say about a comedy. The film is sort of interesting as a failed experiment. At least the film isn't a total loss for fans of cheesecake, as the leggy star-women spend a lot of time on screen. (Granted, it seems like an eternity before they show up!)

An Auction For Our Fighting Men

2012-01-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Gang, I have had the honor of donating my pencil to an auction to help raise money for our veterans. I drew a picture of Miss Gina Elise of Pin-Ups For Vets.

Here is the piece auctioned off:

And here is the photo that inspired me (obviously, I like IT better than my version!):

I am pleased to announce that we raised $200 for Gina's Veterans project! And I look forward to doing this kind of thing again!

Jeff Austin on Inks!

2012-01-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

I have a nice back-log of images inked by Jeff Austin, considered by many to be the greatest inker in the game. I'm in no position to dispute that, just look at what he's done with my pencil scratches......

Cover image for Dan Burke.

For Dan Burke.

Betsy the Bookwriter, for Jim Main.

For AC Comics, from Femforce 155.


New character, Sadie Six-Shot, for Jim Main.

Jeff can color too!

Cover for Jim Main, SHEESH!

Oddball Film Report: BIGFOOT (1969/72)

2012-01-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

    Back in November, I celebrated my birthday (I have walked this earth a scant 30 years so far) by watching what has to be my favorite guilty pleasure, an obscure drive-in flick known as BIGFOOT. I'm not sure why, exactly, this film has such a grip on my heart. It's charming, entertaining if you're game, but there's no one on this planet (not even me) who will call it a "good" movie. So let me state right up front, while I may discuss some of the better elements on display here (like some nicely scripted moments or the odd nice camera move), BIGFOOT is, in nearly every technical manner possible, a very bad movie. The sets, for example, must be seen to be believed. The best of them looks like the most artificial set ever constructed for I Dream of Jeannie. Yet, the exterior shots feature some incredible scenery and expert use of existing locations (much of the wilderness exteriors claimed to have been filmed in locations where actual Bigfoot sightings took place). The editing, lighting, much of the acting, etc. ranges from terrible to uninspired. And yet, I love this movie. If for no other reason, maybe it's because BIGFOOT isn't nasty and cynical like much of the fare shot on a shoestring in 1969. In fact, if you didn't know better, you might think it had been shot in 1965 or 66 instead.

   First thing's first, a little back-story on the subject of today's feature. "Bigfoot" was invented in 1958 (59?), when the name was given to a "creature" which left huge footprints outside a logging camp in or near Washington state. The tracks have since been exposed to be the work of a practical joker.

   Earlier in the decade, much hoopla had been made in the States of a discovery in the Himalayan mountains of large footprints. The locals claimed the prints belonged to the 'Yeti' of legend, a sort of furry man-like ape that occasionally wandered near civilization and abducted human women. The press sensationalized the find and dubbed the unseen creature "The Abominable Snowman." At once, the movies tried to cash in and we saw the likes of THE SNOW CREATURE, MAN-BEAST, HALF HUMAN, and Hammer's THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN OF THE HIMALAYANS on theater screens throughout the 1950's. The 'Yeti' tracks were eventually determined to be those of a bear.

   In 1967 or 68, a hunter/documentary film-maker named Patterson and his friend managed to get a shot of a simian biped walking across an isolated bit of wilderness ('ironically', while scouting locations for a documentary he was preparing about the monster). Anyone with eyes could tell the beast captured on film was a guy walking along in a (shockingly ratty) ape suit that had been constructed for the occasion. Not long after, a man named Ivan Marx would make a career (and a feature film titled THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT) of shooting badly-made ape suits and claiming the footage to be of actual monsters.

   Bigfoot first became a movie star around 1963, when an amateur film (about teenagers unearthing a clay mummy that turns out to be a bloodthirsty missing link) was shot, called CURSE OF BIGFOOT. Now, I can't confirm that the film was actually put into release after it was shot, but a 30-minute chunk of footage (actually about Bigfoot) was tacked on and the film became a staple on late-night television in 1976. The "CURSE" title has been attributed to the '76 version of the film. I'm not sold on that, however. The popularly-claimed title of the '63 version is said to be "Teenagers vs The Thing." That title just doesn't have the right sound for the era. (It sounds like the sort of cheesy title that would have been added to an 80's video release, and there just happens to have been an 80's video release of the original hour-long version under that title....) I suspect the CURSE OF BIGFOOT title was dreamed up in the 60's along with the movie. Despite the film being more of a mummy movie than anything else, "Bigfoot" was recent news and had the public attention. It would make perfect sense to work the name into the title of a new horror picture. (I'm quite fond of this 60's version of the film, despite it's many flaws.)

   Though Bigfoot would become a minor movie star in the 1970's through films like CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE, SASQUATCH : THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT, and numerous other films, often of VERY poor quality (making the odd gem like CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE the black sheep of the genre), the first real Bigfoot movie was today's subject. That distinction would be robbed from the film, however, as it was held back from release until 1972 (the year of death for our leading lady, the beauteous Joi Lansing, sadly and darkly ironically from breast cancer).

   1972 was a good year for Bigfoot, seeing also the release of the genuine hit THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, a fake documentary* filmed by Charles B. Pierce of Arkansas. Pierce also helmed, among other films, the classic THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, and wasn't amused when his Bigfoot movie was sequelled by another production company. Decades later, Pierce would produce an official (if lame) sequel to his earlier masterpiece.

   (*The fake documentary was an economical way to make Bigfoot movies, and multiple films were done this way. Few were as outright fraudulent as Ivan Marx's THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, which claims to show actual Bigfoot creatures. The best I've seen has to be SASQUATCH, THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT [not to be confused with the Marx film], which shows the fictional journey of an expedition searching the Canadian wilderness for the elusive monster. Breathtaking scenery is on display, as well as a better-than-expected script, decent acting, and sharp editing in what feels like a cross between a Mutual of Omaha special, a Dinsey nature film, and a horror-themed adventure flick. Not bad.)


Yes, if nothing else, the film has nice color.

   Not much is known about BIGFOOT in terms of production history, because no one ever seems to've asked. The film is so obscure, in fact, that about the only way to see the film is to track down the VHS release, which is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. The film screams out for a widescreen release, though that seems unlikely in the extreme. I have hopes, though, that Wade Williams or Image will dig up a pristine print and offer a nice letterboxed DVD one of these days (which, though unlikely, is possible, since I finally got those widescreen releases of DINOSAURUS!, BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH, and THE GREEN SLIME that I'd waited so long for).

   Given the general mood of the movie, it seems the film was cobbled together for chump change for an excuse to have a bunch of friends work together. There's a real feeling of fun here, and everyone seems to be taking the chance to camp it up and just have a good time. There are also scenes that seem to have been ad-libbed. The credit list is a veritable who's who of talent made up of fading stars, rising talent, and regulars toiling in the field of low-budget genre fare in the late 60's. The list is simply incredible. The seasoned movie nut will be in awe at the parade of familiar faces and the recognizable names in the production credits. The cast offers up John Carradine, Joi Lansing, Ken Maynard, John Mitchum, Christopher Mitchum, Judy Jordan, James Craig, Lindsay Crosby, Dorothy Keller, Doodles Weaver, Nobel 'Kid' Chissel, Nick Raymond, Sonny West, Ray Cantrell, Lois Red Elk, Jennifer Bishop, Haji, Eric Tomlin, seldom has a list of names presented such an across the board selection! (Making one wonder, where in the world is Gary Kent?)

   Behind the camera can be found such familiar (to fans of exploitation pictures, at least) names as Anthony Cardoza (producer and bit part actor), James Gordon White (screenplay), Richard Podolor (score, though he remains better known for his pop tunes), Hugo Grimaldi (who acted as editor here), Bud Hoffman (co-editor), John Elliott (make-up, his first film work!), Louis Lane (also on make-up), Arthur Gilbert (unit manager), Christopher Mitchum pulls double duty as an assistant director, Harry Woolman (effects), and so on. Most interesting may be this: Merci Montello, the really cute naked chick from SPACE-THING! and a hand full of other films, the December 1972 centerfold Playmate (as Mercy Rooney), and an early model for Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens, provided the Bigfoot costumes! What a business!

   Much of the rest of the cast and crew also worked on the better-than-average biker film THE HELLCATS, and/or the Coleman Francis disaster THE SKYDIVERS, and little else.

   The story is pretty simple, played a bit as a rural take on KING KONG. Bigfoot itself is even referred to as "the eight wonder of the world" in dialog and in a special credit for monster-portrayer James Stellar! We're served up a number of characters, and the focus shifts between them (in truth, the script isn't much of a problem. While there are some problems in story-structure, the character development isn't bad at all. With a bit bigger budget -and a shooting-style that opted for doing more than one take of everything- the film might have been pretty decent, but probably even more obscure than it already is). Mostly, we'll focus on Jasper B. Hawks and his long-suffering partner Elmer Briggs. Hawks owns and operates one of the last traveling stores out of his beat-up old station wagon, but he's always got his eye out for another attraction that can get him back into an arena where he can display his showmanship. Elmer is also a former carny so he sticks by Hawks as he wanders about the Nation, even if he'll complain about it the whole way.

   Again, the character development is pretty good, and since this pair is being played by John Carradine (as Hawks) and John Mitchum, you can't fault the casting. The weird thing, though, is how stiff everyone seems. If anything, the lesser actors come off more natural than the big stars here. Take Joi Lansing, for example, who has proven she can act (and sing and dance and do comedy) on many other projects (including a regular part on The Beverly Hillbillies). Here, she's so awkward, you'd think they just cast a model who had never been near a movie camera before (even odder is her sloppily applied pancake make-up that's all too obvious in close-ups).

   Even former cowboy star Ken Maynard (his first film since 1944, I believe) seems to be just saying his lines rather than acting. The major exception here is John Carradine, who still manages to deliver a typically flawless performance (even if he takes the chance to camp things up a bit more than usual). I'd guess the whole thing was shot in single takes and without rehearsals, showing again just how much of a talent Carradine was (sad, that he would continually allow himself to be cast in downright garbage like 1973's SUPERCHICK. BIGFOOT was, even more sadly, probably the last really good lead part the man ever had).

   There are some bikers passing through town as well, when Rick and his gal Chris break off from their group to frolic in the woods (and Judy Jordan will do us the favor of spending almost the entire film clad only in a tiny green bikini). While Rick is checking his bike, Chris stumbles onto a weird graveyard. This is the burial site for Bigfoot (Bigfeet?) and Rick uncovers a particularly phony rubber ape mask. Hilariously, we cut to a living Bigfoot as it spies on them and we learn the dead Bigfoot is far more life-like! Rick is knocked out and Chris carried into the woods.

   Our film actually opened with Joi Lansing (supposedly playing a character named Joi Landis, but her character's name never comes up) driving onto a tarmac and climbing into one of the planes. She takes off (and her plane changes into a completely different make), filmed in such a way as to never let us forget that she's sitting in a stationary plane. Engine trouble occurs and she's forced to bail out as the plane crashes to earth well out of camera range (although a piece of stock footage from the planes POV showing the ground rush up while spinning out of control isn't a bad trick). Having landed safely (and instantly!), Joi strips out of her blue jumpsuit to show a peach-colored go-go dress (?) on underneath. Kept mostly off screen, one of the ratty-looking Bigfoot monsters attacks.

Joi Lansing ends her career on a
high note.

   Joi and Chris will talk things over when we rejoin them in the Bigfoot camp, where both girls are tied to stakes. (It's never stated, but Joi seems to be a scientist of sorts -one of the prettiest ever seen!) Joi figures the sasquatch have been abducting women to act as breeding stock, as their race (which can mark graves but not talk or write) is dying out. Joi hasn't been touched since they brought her in, and she has the feeling they're saving her for something special. So Joi is our Ann Darrow stand-in, as Jasper will be our Carl Denham analog.

   Rick comes to and makes his way back to town. He tries to get the Police to help him track down Chris, but without success. Jasper and Elmer overhear this, though, and offer their services to find the monster (and the girl, too, if possible). The men are eventually captured as well, but nothing can remove the dollar signs dancing in front of Jasper's eyes. Rick's gang comes back into town to find him, and team up with a local named Hardrock (I assume his poker buddies are Cocoa and Joe) to rescue the men from the Bigfoot camp (which is suddenly much easier to find).

   Joi has been dragged off by the sasquatch and tied to a pair of trees (its here we fully enter KING KONG territory) as the even larger "Bigfoot" himself approaches (and boy is Bigfoot a mess, complete with obvious gloves and fur that looks like a bath-mat).

   Back at the sasquatch lair, everybody else has been set free and the gang starts to head out. Jasper still wants to go after Bigfoot. Hardrock, his arm torn off in a previous encounter with the monster, is game to help Jasper if it'll settle and old score. (How is it Hardrock, a known local, can have his arm ripped off and the townsfolk not know about the monster? I guess Hardrock is supposed to be too colorful for folk to really take seriously, cheating at cards and living in a shack in the woods with his squaw wife, but you'd think people might have listened to his account of the monster when he stumbled into town with only one arm! Even if this happened 50 years ago, it must have been news at the time!) The kids aren't hep to go tracking down the big monster, until Jasper mentions money to those who'll help. Rick and Chris, having had their fill of the sasquatch decline and head back to town (why Chris isn't begging the others to go help Joi is a mystery, unless she feels threatened by the platinum blonde beauty with the amazing legs. Still, you'd think she'd say something).

   Elmer has had his fill too, taking the chance to part company with Jasper. The others head off to find Bigfoot. Meanwhile, Joi is still tied to the trees as Bigfoot shambles closer. As Kong fought off a dinosaur that was trying to eat Ann, Bigfoot must wrestle with a bear that pops up to menace Joi. She manages to escape in the scuffle (which ends complete with Bigfoot beating his chest in about the most naked copy of Kong imaginable) and Bigfoot gives chase across some remarkable scenery. Joi's spectacular gams are highlighted as she runs barefoot across the wilderness. She was certainly a game trooper.

   In this sequence, a simple, yet effective camera trick fosters the illusion that Bigfoot is actually about twice the size of his quarry (just about the only effective visual bit the film offers that doesn't involve the leading ladies themselves). Joi runs through the scene and darts off toward the horizon a few seconds before Bigfoot can enter the shot, thus keeping the illusion of size. Another trick is to film Joi's legs as she runs along, and then mirroring the action with Bigfoot, only with the camera pulled closer. It's simple, but it works. If only the rest of the movie followed suit.

   Eventually, Bigfoot grabs Joi and carries her to his cave where the others arrive before she can come to harm. Putting his captive down (and flashing her undies in the process), Bigfoot is assaulted with small arms fire despite Jasper's screams that he wants the beast taken alive. Bigfoot flees into his cave, one guy tosses some dynamite, and the horror is over. Jasper is left right back where he started. Hardock and his pal congratulate themselves on killing the monster, only to be rebuked by Jasper as he intones Carl Denham's infamous last line from KING KONG, only as might be read by Buddy Ebsen. "Was beauty done 'im in!" (And no, that really doesn't apply in this situation. It's not like Bigfoot had a chance to escape that he forsook because he was captivated by his beauteous captive.)

   As the others clear out, Joi wanders over to the sulking Jasper and wonders if its really all over. Jasper notices the aesthetic values of his new friend and begins making plans to showcase Joi in a road show where she'll tell her story of being a Bigfoot captive to spellbound audiences. This bit always brings a smile to my face, despite the fact that it runs counter to what has been established. Previously, Joi was a scientist/aviator (although we're never told what she actually does, so I assume the plane trip was for fun rather than business) with her brains in place. Now, she's an awed child who has fallen under the spell of Jasper's dreams of fame and fortune. Also, we finish with the pair walking away from the caved-in lair of King Bigfoot. You'd think a sharp trigger like Jasper B. Hawks would make sure to mark the area and return for the body, as well as the body (bodies, really) from the sasquatch graveyard. When all is said and done, Jasper actually has quite an attraction on his hands (and it's not like he'd be unhappy settling for a dead Bigfoot rather than a live one, as he'd earlier tried to make off with one of the sasquatch children when the larger ones got away).

    Also, you'd think Joi might be a little upset that nobody came to rescue her until after Jasper mentioned paying for help in getting his attraction.

   Some interesting things about BIGFOOT include the detail of the apes giving off a musky oder, as has been recorded in the modern myth, as well as the sasquatch being able to hide in the brush no matter how close you might be. (Bigfoot himself makes a bit of a racket, though.) One detail that shatters the senses, but is barely explored, is that "they bury their own dead!" This implies a structured society of quasi-humans instead of a lost breed of ape. Joi notes that the species is starting to die off, thus requiring breeding stock from the human race (and this has happened for a while now according to the dialog from the townsfolk). One also notes that Jasper and the others see a sasquatch only from a distance, and this leads to an ambush. The creatures are fairly intelligent, although their society has always been primitive. They've developed symbols, but not an alphabet, and they do their fallen kin the honor of a burial (even if they only cover them in about an inch of dirt). They don't do much with this, but they raise some interesting ideas.

   Still, they never look like anything other than guys running around in ill-fitting gorilla suits. One creature we see in close-up features bulging, blood-shot eyes with exposed veins running over his rubbery face. The child sasquatch is also afforded a close-up, much to the effect's detriment, as it looks like a kid with his face painted for halloween (and the rest of his costume consists of a huge wig of long frizzy hair and a baggy fur body suit). This creature is supposed to be a human/sasquatch hybrid. In the end, the monsters here make you appreciate how effective those giant cavemen were in the "Galileo 7" episode of Star Trek.

   As noted, the sets here tend to be depressingly bad. Even the sets used to portray the interiors of Bennett's Store or the Police department's main office look less like real locations than they do the studio sets you might see on The Red Skelton Show or The Jack Benny Program over a decade earlier. The sets for various exteriors are even worse. Early on, Elmer goes to scoop a pail of water from a stream near the road, and it looks less realistic than the time Jeannie created a babbling brook in Tony's living room. You can actually see the walls of the set! (Also fun is the fact that after making the first couple of Bigfoot footprints, they seem to have accidentally broken one of the feet, as all the following prints are the same -I think right- footprint laid out in a normal, alternating pattern!)

   The set for the outside of Hardrock's cabin is probably the best, although you don't have to study it very hard to know its a fake. The worst is probably a set meant to depict a forest ranger station interior with a view to the outside (this for a gag where a ranger talks on the telephone to note they've never seen any such creature wandering around, as one slinks by the window behind him). As noted before, all this is countered by some breathtaking natural location work! I've seen few films this schizophrenic!

   One thing I'm real keen on here is the music, although I'm not sure why. While it sounds like library music, I'd actually lay you odds it was recorded for this film in particular. The score isn't really all that memorable, being fairly generic in about the lightest possible way. It sounds like a cross between the opening theme of a late-60's Sunday morning religious program on your local UHF TV station and the hunting show that would come on in the afternoon on the same channel. Yet, the music isn't terrible or anything. The 'adventure' theme here sounds like a cue you'd here on Land of the Lost, provided it were used for a comical scene where Holly was teaching Dopey how to pull a plow. The title theme tries for a somber, mysterious tone, yet always seems a note away from erupting into a song for that night's barn dance. Really weird stuff. Not bad, though, to my ears. I'll be humming the theme for a few days after I've watched the movie.

   Ultimately, when discussing BIGFOOT, words can't describe it. That makes my job here a bit more difficult than it needs to be. Terrible production, but I love it just the same. Maybe it's the setting, maybe the stars, maybe I just have a soft spot for Bigfoot movies and this is the only one to really capture the flavor of the areas where these stories emerge from. I just don't know. Maybe its that opening moment where we see Jasper and Elmer driving along in the woods and there's a bouncy tune on the radio, and Elmer is bobbing his head back and forth to the music and drawing a look of pity from Jasper. This embarrasses Elmer into stopping. Then we cut back a few seconds later and both men are bobbing their heads to the music.

    In the end, I think I've always been taken with the film by the reaction I had during my first viewing. It wasn't what I expected at all, but it was charming. Nothing nihilistic here. No comments about society. Just the story of a man trying to capture a monster by one of the back roads of our country. It's cute, for a monster movie, and we could all use a dash of cute from time to time (said the man whose job it is to draw cheesecake cartoons, and thus should be water-logged on cute).

   I can only pray Image Entertainment releases a nice, widescreen version before my next birthday.

Joi, Jasper, and Hardrock.

James Best does KILLER SHREWS sequel!

2011-12-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

   By chance, I turn on the radio and I hear talk show host Rusty Humphreys about to interview James Best (who, for good or ill, remains best known these days from his Dukes of Hazzard years). One of the first things Best mentioned is a recently-shot sequel to his 1959 Drive-in classic THE KILLER SHREWS!

   THE KILLER SHREWS tells the story of a small group of people who become stranded on an island during a fierce storm and must remain in the sole house on the island. The scientific team on the island has been experimenting with growth hormones and have created a pack of dog-sized shrews which have escaped. Shrews are deceptively vicious little rat-like creatures that must consume something like three times their body weight each day or starve to death. With every other animal on the island having been eaten, the shrews turn their attention on the humans. Our heroes try desperately to survive and keep the shrews out, as the monsters try desperately to get inside and eat the only flesh left on the island.

   With its moody natural locations, an aura of cold isolation, and growing sense of terror, THE KILLER SHREWS is classic drama. Similar set-ups have fueled countless films ranging from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD to ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. THE KILLER SHREWS is a nice example of high drama on a limited budget, and was a box-office hit as it toured the country on double bill with THE GIANT GILA MONSTER. Whatever strengths THE KILLER SHREWS brings to the table, though, have been largely ignored over the last 60 years.

   Constant gripe is lobbed at the film for its use of dogs wearing shaggy fur and make-up as the mutated shrews (with a hand puppet shrew head used for close-ups). (Decades later, dogs would again be dressed as rats for THE DEADLY EYES, only that film used squat dachshunds rather than the grayhounds seen here.) The way people harp on that, you'd think they expected to see cows dressed as shrews instead, and felt cheated by the dogs. The choice always seemed logical to me, since the shrews are mutants, and are now forced to hunt in packs.

   James Best plays the hero, Thorn Sherman, a rugged sailor who delivers supplies to the island and uses his wits to survive. Best plays Sherman again for the sequel. Best didn't have much good to say about the 50's film, however, and he even made mention of the film as a spoof of sorts. Possibly, he confused his words, since the sequel is going to be a comedy (or he's trying to cover himself and give his earlier film and excuse not to live up to expectations?). At any rate, a sequel has been filmed, and it does star James Best! Comedy or no, it sounds like fun!

   The title? THE RETURN OF THE KILLER SHREWS. Sadly, they've opted for cartoon shrews instead of more dogs (what gives?). On a promising note, the IMDB lists it as a horror film rather than a comedy! And a friend tells me the trailer plays more to scary than funny, so hopes up. One the other hand, the shrews ARE cartoons and it looks like it'll be yet another 'found video footage' movie. Low expectations. Could still turn out to be fun, though, we'll see.

   I think its about time I dug my tape out and gave THE KILLER SHREWS another viewing....

The Rock Baker Christmas Special

2011-12-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Christmas special! We've got some nice guests coming up, I hope you enjoy the show!

(PLACE COMMERCIAL HERE)

First up, a little Christmas present for the gang from Bantam Street. It's Christmas, Larry Blamire style!

Up next, we have a present for Ken Begg and the Jabootu gang....

Be sure to visit www.jabootu.net

(PLACE COMMERCIAL HERE)

And now, through special arrangement with Main Enterprises, we present this lovely Christmas scene with Betsy the Bookwriter! Inks courtesy of Mr. Jeff Austin!

Mr. Austin returns with this DeCarlo-inspired piece...

Jeff Austin out-does himself now, providing both inks and color for this back cover for Jim Main....

(PLACE COMMERCIAL HERE)

And here, ladies and gentlemen, my present for you all this year....

I'd like to thank my guests and our sponsor, and I hope to see you all here again next year.

Merry Christmas, Gang! Everybody have a great New Year! Good night and God bless!

Inks by Jeff Austin.

This has been presented by the American Tobacco Company, the nation's leading manufacturer of cigarettes. Jack Benny will be back in two weeks! Be sure to tune in next week for Ann Southern in PRIVATE SECRETARY! Coming up next on most of these stations: Ed Sullivan on TOAST OF THE TOWN, followed by THE NAME'S THE SAME in most localities. This is Don Wilson speaking for CBS, saying, Be Happy, Go Lucky! Goodnight, and Merry Christmas!

In all honesty, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. I'd like to thank all those who put up with me over the last year, and my sincere wishes that they all have a great new year. God bless and Merry Christmas.

Oddball Film Report: SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964)

2011-12-12T17:17:00.000-08:00

   Santa Claus is a bit of an oddball character. He lives at the North Pole (probably to avoid paying his income taxes), has flying reindeer, elves, and makes a yearly journey across the globe to hand out presents to children, delivering them by crawling down the chimney (billions of such structures in a single night). So any three-dimensional media adaptation of the character is going to be a bit strange when compared to the more run of the mill fare like westerns and police dramas. Being a seasonal figure, Santa is also subject to constant revision and updates as new movies or shows are prepared about him on an annual basis.

   For me, Mickey Rooney is Santa Claus, as the former Andy Hardy was perfectly cast to voice the Jolly One in at least two of the charming Rankin/Bass Christmas specials featuring all those stop-motion puppets. 1970's SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN relates Santa's origin, and how he befriended a lost penguin and set the evil Winter Warlock on the road to being the gentle old man Winter (it was he, we learn, who made the flying reindeer with some magic feed corn so Santa and his gang could break out of jail!). As told by Fred Astaire, the film remains one of the most endearing of the Rankin/Bass specials. Rooney returned for 1974's THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS, detailing how Old Saint Nick decided to take a year off, and Mrs. Claus had to scare up some Christmas cheer by making an arrangement with Mother Nature!

   In 1987, Santa had to retire because his magic was running out, so he went to Florida to hire his replacement with the help of Jim Varney's infamous TV pitch-man turned movie star in ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS. Together, Santa and your old buddy Ernest P. Worrell managed to pass the Christmas torch to a new Mr. Claus, and turn a teen runaway onto the right path in their spare time. Although many would argue in favor of ERNEST GOES TO JAIL, I'd actually swing my support for this Christmas episode as being the best film of the Ernest series (which is pretty impressive as it's only the second Ernest movie and it followed the largely lackluster ERNEST GOES TO CAMP). I wouldn't let the season go by without giving it a viewing.

   Undoubtedly the weirdest Santa Claus movie has to be the 1959 Mexican epic SANTA CLAUS. I'd review this wacky adventure of Santa Claus fighting the demon Pitch for the souls of Mexican children during the yuletide, but I couldn't possibly do a better job than Mr. Ken Begg of www.jabootu.net. Check out the review here: http://www.jabootu.com/acolytes/brandiweed/santa.htm (not sure why the link isn't working, but you can copy and paste it into the search bar), but be sure you're not drinking when you read it. I depart from Mr. Begg in assessing SANTA CLAUS as a "bad" movie, however. I actually thought the film pretty good (not great or anything, but pretty good), just bizarre! The Mexicans made the most psychotically weird kiddie flicks on the planet, SANTA CLAUS being a prime example (or you could try LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD, or PUSS N BOOTS if you don't mind nightmares). But in the end, it's not really a bad film. It certainly carries it's own berserk charm.

   The most famous oddball Santa flick has to be our current subject, if only because the title is so quotable (and the trivia factoid that Pia Zadora first appeared in this film as a little girl, years before she was unleashed on the world as "a new Bardot" in the monstrous turkey BUTTERFLY).

   SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS is a film that, despite all its goofy cheapness, remains an fun little kiddie flick. Shot in New York and using sets worthy of a slightly-better-than-average grade school play, the film exudes a charm worthy of it's main character. Who knows, with a larger budget and familiar actors (say, Vincent Price as the heavy? James Cagney as Santa?), the film might be held in much better regard today. Or maybe not, since we're still talking about a film depicting a Martian plot to kidnap Santa Claus.

    Despite what you might think, the film is a straight (if dirt cheap) science fiction epic. The question posed to writer must have been an earnest "what would it be like if Martians kidnapped Santa Claus?" I think that's one reason I enjoy the film so much, is that I admire the fact they didn't just play it as a comedy (although one wonders what Bob Hope or Jack Benny would have done with the material). The children's world of the 50's and early 60's can possibly be best summed up by two matinee flicks from 1964, SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS and PINOCCHIO IN OUTER SPACE. Both are straight science fiction pieces (Pinocchio's adventure even playing up the realism of it's science regarding space travel) about storybook characters going to Mars.


Santa makes fun of Martian food pills, but Kimar, leader of Mars, doesn't get the joke

   Our story begins on Mars. The children of that planet have become listless and/or downright rebellious (for a controlled society like Mars, anyway). Their only interest is in watching "those silly earth programs" and conditions are getting worse. Kimar, the leader of Mars, gathers his council and seeks advice from the ancient wise man Chochem. "Chochem is over 800 years old. You can't dismiss the wisdom of centuries." "I can!" blurts Voldar, who will oppose Kimar at nearly every move. Voldar's main concern being that Mars has lost its combative edge, and that the actions taken by Kimar as the film progresses will only lead to the further collapse of Martian greatness in the galaxy.

   Chochem indeed knows what the problem is. The children of Mars are not children anymore. From the moment they are born, devices are attached to their brains and they are fed information in a constant stream. "And by the time they can walk," Chochem warbles, "they are adults!" In terms of the rebellion against this scientific programming, Chochem also notes, "I've seen this coming for centuries!" The answer is to again make it possible for the children to have actual childhoods full of play and laughter and wonder. When Kimar asks what can be done to save the children of Mars, Chochem notes the time of year. On Earth, it is early December, the time of "the Christmas" will soon be upon the Green Planet. "That explains it" Chochem notes, as apparently the spirit of Christmas is so powerful that it can be sensed by the children of alien worlds.

   For the children of Earth, Christmas has the added bonus of Santa's yearly visit. As the spokesman for the Christmas spirit (odd, that Chochem the Wise never mentions God or Jesus or Mary), only Santa Claus can get the Martian children out of their funk. Having said his piece, Chochem makes his exit (via a blast of smoke and a film splice). Kimar takes Chochem at his words. "Earth has had Santa Claus long enough!" An expedition leaves for earth. Voldar, for his part, is less than thrilled with the notion of kids running underfoot and being noisy.

   As previously established via a special broadcast from Santa's workshop at the north pole (on station KID TV, whose remote reporter Andy Henderson is a pretty authentic example of the sort of reporter who does his job but pads his remotes with jokes that nobody else is laughing at), is Mr. Claus himself. He and his elves are working day and night to be ready for Christmas, which always sneaks up on you no matter how well you prepare for it. In this version of the story, Santa's workshop doesn't appear to be any larger than a small house, and he only employs a small handful of elves ("Winky is in charge of our space department" Santa tells Andy as the pair examine a toy rocket* that "runs on real rocket fuel!"). Santa Claus works away, unaware that strange forces from across the gulf of space are moving against him.....

(* Just as in pretty much every movie about Santa Claus, the elves are seen building a number of wooden trains and such, as would have been popular items around 1900. Winky's table houses the plastic rocket Santa picks up, as well as a doll that Winky made depicting "his idea of a Martian" which is 100% accurate to Kimar -said doll looks like a Mego action figure from the 70's. Otherwise, though, there are none of the sort of toys I'd think kids from 1964 would actually be expecting. We later see some wind-up tin toys, but I'd think the big season for those would be a decade earlier. Where are all the Barbie dolls and Marx Army Men? The dinosaurs? The Mickey Mouse collectibles? Did a lot of kids in 1964 dream about a wooden train when Lionel had accurate streamliners and the like, including massive sets featuring military cargo trains with launching rockets, ICBMs, space probes, and aircraft?)

   As Kimar and his crew (the council of Mars itself! If this expedition crashes, Mars is out its entire political structure) reach earth and find our world typically "primitive" as they spy New York City on the viewscreen. (Across this universe, few things let aliens know how infantile out culture is as quickly as the sight of above-ground buildings -see also PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES.) Voldar notes how easy it would be to conquer the earth, claiming that "one blast from our Q-Ray" would level the city. Kimar insists conquest is not their goal, he intends to slip in and grab Santa Claus and get out before anybody knows what has happened. Using the cameras to search for Santa Claus (and Voldar notes how impossible the task of finding one man among billions would be), the Martians spot multiple Salvation Army Santas. "Why, there are hundreds of Santa Clauses down there" Kimar gasps, "and with so many, the earth people won't miss one."

   About this time, SAC radar has spotted the Martian craft and defenses are made ready. Pilots scramble and missiles are moved into position, because it allows for some really cool stock footage from the Air Force! (This same bit was used to more comedic effect in ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS, as Ernest took up Santa's sleigh found himself nearing Cape Canaveral airspace!) We'll cut back to footage like this a few times as a news broadcaster details our side of the invasion. Some might find mid-air refueling footage a tad boring, but it hit pretty close to home, even for the kiddies, so soon after the missile crisis. Myself, I just find 20th century aircraft to be a fascinating subject, so I'm happy as a clam.

   Aware that we've finally spotted them on radar ("it took them long enough" Voldar sneers, but he sneers everything he says, so I don't take it too personally), Kimar orders the radar shield activated. There's something wrong with radar box, though, when comic relief Martian Droppo (something like Kimar's butler, as established earlier) is found sleeping inside. Droppo explains that he came to the launch pad to say goodbye, then stowed away because he'd never been to earth before. "We may leave you there in place of Santa Claus!" Kimar threatens before sending Droppo below decks. The "slight case of Droppo" that was screwing with the radar shield also sends the ship off coarse when Droppo accidentally grabs the landing gear controls on his way out of the bridge. They must land to make repairs.

   Two typical earth-children, Billy and Betty Foster, are listening to the UFO reports on a transistor radio. Betty asks a trying-to-nap Billy about Martians before Kimar and his men walk up behind the two tykes. Kimar insists he means them no harm before asking about Santa Claus. Billy explains that the city-sighted Santa's are only helpers of the "real" Santa, who lives at the north pole. With the information they need gathered, the Martians ready to depart. Voldar grabs for the kids, much to Kimar's dislike. Voldar (wasn't that they guy from The Space Giants? Oh, no, I guess that was Goldar) explains his actions as a means to guard against any discovery of their mission (lest the Foster children contact the authorities). Faced with this reality (and what Kimar's planning to do with Santa would indeed be an act of war), he allows Billy and Betty to be taken hostage. Then it's off to the north pole!

   Droppo becomes the keeper for the children. Being the most childlike of Martians, excluding the bully Voldar, they probably felt Droppo could handle the job. I have my doubts, though, that anyone expected Droppo to give the kids a tour of the control deck. This allows Billy to sabotage the radar screen and escape with Betty to warn Santa Claus after the Martians touch down near the workshop.

   Kimar activates a lame robot called Torg to help capture Santa. When I say lame, I mean Torg has to be the cheapest robot costume ever filmed that wasn't supposed to be a kid's halloween costume. The arms are dryer hoses, the body is obviously made from a cardboard box, and the head looks as if it were manufactured from a paint can. However, it must be noted that Torg's eyes are really cool. They look like amber glass lenses that go all the way back into Torg's head, creating a very neat light shift as he turns his head. That's probably the only time you'll hear someone say something nice about Torg, by the way.

   Meanwhile Voldar discovers the kids have taken it on the lam. Before they can capture our man Santa, the Martians must first track down the kids so they can't warn the Claus ahead of time. After the kids evade a polar bear (the worst bear suit in movie history? It looks like a guy pulled the stuffing out of plush toy and crawled inside. It's easily the most embarrassing element on display here, which is a pretty impressive achievement when you take into account that the Martian helmets include attachments made of upside-down pilots' goggles, and even more obviously, flex-hoses for gas furnaces!), Torg finds the kids and grabs them. Voldar orders Torg to kill the children, but Torg won't comply. Kimar, worried about Voldar's behavior, has set Torg's controls to obey only his own voice. Kimar insists there be no violence, prompting another tantrum from Voldar ("What ever happened to the great warriors of Mars? Mars used to be the Planet of War!") The children reclaimed, Kimar orders the siege of Santa's workshop!

   Torg is sent in first, smashing down the door to the workshop as Santa and the elves turn to see the invader, which Santa assumes to be a toy. ("You're the biggest toy I've ever seen!") Torg becomes a toy upon exposure to Santa Claus, and the robot is no longer under the control of Kimar. I'm not sure how this all works, but it forces the Martians to handle the abduction personally.

   Voldar's earlier proclamation that Martians are fierce warriors is soon demonstrated, as they'd HAVE to be great warriors to keep their enemies from laughing at them, since they're carrying Marx air-pump guns. I'm not sure what the names of these devices were, but they were spacey-looking black plastic numbers that you'd cock by slapping a lever up and down, and then you'd get a 'thump' sound when you pulled the trigger. (There is a credit in the titles to Louis Marx and Co. for 'special toys' but seeing them used as the awesome weapons of the Martian invaders is more than a little rich.) Making the problem worse is that nobody thought to dub in a more menacing sound as these guns release their invisible paralysis rays, so it sounds like a pop-gun being used to freeze people.

   This attack must be after hours, as all but two elves have gone home for the night. Winky is on hand, though, and he identifies the culprits as Martians before he and his coworker get shot. Santa is saddened by this, until Kimar explains that the effects of the ray are only temporary. "Oh," Santa regains his jolly tone, "why didn't you say so?" About here, Mrs. Claus barges in and starts chewing everybody out for standing around while there's work to be done. Mrs. Claus, as established earlier when Santa was being interviewed by Andy, is a bit of a loud-mouth who never shuts up. This annoys the Martians as much as anybody else so they zap Mrs. C.

   With everyone else frozen in place, Santa has little choice but go with the Martains. Kimar orders Torg to grab Santa, but the robot is but a toy (still not sure what that means) and no longer responds to orders. Kimar must leave Torg behind.*

(* Now, remember earlier when Voldar convinced Kimar that they had to be covert and take the Foster children with, lest the authorities know who had taken Santa Claus? Here, not only do they leave witnesses behind (once that paralysis ray wears off, anyway), but Torg as well. Torg is a piece of alien machinery, and could be reverse engineered and.... Then again, I doubt earth presents much of a threat if we have a bunch of Torgs running around, despite the robot's function as a soldier unit. Unless we send armies of robots to Mars twenty years later, there isn't much to worry about. And if we do send ships loaded with killer robots to another planet decades down the road, surely the Martians would have much newer and more powerful models to outclass our robots. So I guess there's minimal threat in leaving Torg behind, but it's awful sloppy. Shouldn't Kimar have some means of vaporizing Torg, just in case he gets lost in the field? A self-destruct button or something?)

   As the Martians rush back to Mars, with the Foster kids and Santa Claus in the brig (and why not leave the kids at Santa's workshop with Mrs. C and Winky? Is Kimar worried the kids will be able to tell the military important technical information about their ship?), the world reaction is reported on the news. "Mrs. Claus has positively identified the kidnappers as Martians..." the newscaster reads with all the urgency and gravity of the recent missile crisis. (Actually, I think it was Winky who spelled this out, as Mrs. Claus was too busy jabbering to even notice that she had visitors from out of town, unless she was still aware of what was going on around her when frozen -when Santa noted that he'd never seen her "so silent, for so long.")

   "The lights in the United Nations building will burn until dawn..." we're told, as the world's leaders have come together in unprecedented unanimity to find a way to get Santa back. The Air Force has rushed their Star-Shot program into the final phase, ignoring the required six months testing and training for the men, who are itching to blast off and reclaim Santa Claus from the invaders. This part is explained to us by leading rocket expert Warner Von Breen, in charge of the Star-Shot project. This gag, a play on real-life rocket expert Warner Von Braun (who helped develop the V2 during World War 2 and was placed in charge of Air Force rocket development after the war), might be lost on younger viewers today but in 1964 the gag would have made perfect sense to the space-obsessed youngsters in the audience. (Mr. Von Braun can even be seen on Dinsey's science specials for TV, which would have been repeated often in the heyday of the Space Race.)

   "Kimar," second-in-command Rignar reports, "that blip on the radar screen isn't an asteroid. It's a ship, and it's gaining on us!" Kimar is awed, wondering if the earth men have some kind of device that can penetrate their radar sheild. Discovering Billy's sabotage, Voldar is angered even more that Kimar won't listen to him. "They have a secret weapon," Voldar continues to sneer, "and his name is Billy Foster!" Voldar leaves the bridge, implying fully that he intends harm to the captives, but Kimar fails to act on this. Looking at the radar box, Kimar is impressed with the lad's ingenuity.

   In the brig, Santa tries to cheer up the kids with a story about his climbing down a huge chimney in a heavy fog, only to find himself in a smokestack on the Queen Elizabeth, but the kids are still in a funk. Droppo drops by with dinner (food pills, because they're from Mars and are all futuristic and such, you know), be even he can't snap the kids out of their mood, despite Santa's prediction to the contrary. The kids perk up, oddly enough, when Voldar offers to take the earth trio on a tour of the ship (maybe Martian policy dictates the showing off of one's vehicle to POWs?). Though the kids don't trust Voldar ("the mean one" they call him at one point. "He's not like Kimar and the others"), Santa is game and the tour is on.

   The tour ends up in the airlock, where Billy provides a little exposition on how an airlock works (for the benefit of the one or two space-happy little kids in the audience who might not already know how an airlock works). Voldar is impressed ("Smart lad!") and Betty explains that Billy plans to be a spaceman when he grows up. Voldar, near the door, and with all the subtly of Snidely Whiplash, replies to Betty "Maybe sooner than that!" Before you can say "Martian" Voldar is out the door and in the bridge with the airlock controls.* The air going fast, our heroes look for a way to escape. Santa asks Billy where the air duct leads, a port which looks like it could be plugged with an orange.

(* Really, shouldn't there be back-up/manual controls in the airlock chamber itself? Then again, that didn't work out very well in THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE.....)

   In the bridge, Kimar enters just as Voldar has opened the airlock doors. Voldar claims to have killed Santa Claus and Kimar engages him in a very awkwardly staged fight scene (although slightly increasing the speed of the film might have made the fight play much smoother and help camoflage the pulled punches and karate chops). Just as Kimar is about choke Voldar to death, Santa and the kids enter the bridge. "Merry Christmas!" The Martians are confused, and Kimar asks how they escaped. Santa explains that they used the air duct. The small size of the duct prompts further confusion from Kimar, who asks how escape was possible. "You're talking to Santa Claus, Son!" The Jolly One explains that he doesn't want to give away his secrets (thus glossing over one of the biggest "how does he do" questions in the Santa Claus mythos -another thing brought up but unanswered when Santa met Mr. Worrell, although your old buddy Ernest had his theories on the matter). Voldar faints as the others enjoy a hearty laugh. "Poor man," Santa notes, "he looks like he's seen a ghost!" And there was much laughing.

   When the ship arrives on Mars, it is discovered that Voldar has escaped and taken refuge in the tunnels under the infamous canals of the Red Planet. Santa is introduced to Kimar's children Bomar and Girmar, and he instantly snaps the kids out of their scientifically induced trances. Kimar and his wife Momar are thrilled, and plans are made to build Santa the greatest toy factory of all time. Santa is set to get to work (which makes sense after he's helped Bomar and Girmar, as Santa's calling is to bring happiness to children, no matter what planet he's on) in hopes to have things ready in time for him to return to Earth before Christmas. Then Kimar breaks the news to the Right Jolly Old Elf, he's not there to be an advisor. He belongs to Mars now. Meanwhile, the renegade Voldar plans revenge on Santa Claus.....

   For the benefit of anyone who might want to see the film for themselves, I'll leave off there.

   One thing that strikes me is that the writer may have created a more complex Martian society than he'd planned (or so I'd think, as I doubt anyone besides myself has put so much thought into the following). Chiefly, the names of the first family of Mars were simple combinations of words that stink of laziness, Kimar (KIng of MARs), Momar (MOther MARtian), Bomar (BOy of MARs), and Girmar (GIRl of MARs). But this actually makes sense for a computer-like society like the one shown here, where everyone wears numbers along with their names (Momar, for example, wears a tag on her chest reading M-02 -although the numbering on their costumes seems to correspond with how important each player is to the script, with Kimar numbered 01, Momar 02, and on down the line). Assuming the family names of Mars are the latter half of the given name (Mar, Dar, Chem, Po, Nas, Mas, etc) and the first half of each name connects to a person's position in society, you begin to see a pattern. Kimar is so named because he's the King of Mars, signifying his authority by being the only one who wears a cape. 'Mar' may be his family name due to his being from a lineage that built the current order for Mars. His name was likely Bomar as a child, then he became a man named Mamar, until he took Momar as his wife (we have no clue what her maiden name was).

   Let's say the couple at that point was named Humar and Wimar ('husband' and 'wife', or maybe Brimar for 'bride'). Upon having children, their names would be changed to Famar (father) and Momar (mother). Granted, I have no idea at what point Kimar took authority and had to change his name again, but he seems youngish. But what then could be the meaning of names like Rignas, Voldar, Chochem, Lomas, and Shim?

   Another clue we're given to the development of their society is that Chochem is the only one we see without a helmet, meaning the cranial attachments were developed within the last 800 years, and that they were voluntary at one time. These devices, in fact, might be a major reason Chochem lives off by himself in Thunder Forrest. Then again, I seem to be putting WAY too much thought into a kiddie flick about Santa Claus being taken to Mars.

   John Call as Santa Claus comes off best, managing to display pretty much the exact persona you'd expect Santa Claus to have. He's good natured, never has anything bad to say about others no matter how bad they treat him, and jumps at the chance to make others happy. He's perfectly cast, even getting a special "and John Call as Santa Claus" credit, although he was known mostly from the stage. He popped up in several movies over the years, often in tiny, un-billed parts.

   Leonard Hicks, playing Kimar, comes off pretty good, having exactly the sort of grounded, serious tone needed to hold the wacky material together. Not that he gives the most natural performance, but he reads his line with enough conviction that you buy him as leader of the Martians. Overacting Vincent Beck (Voldar) would go onto a fruitful career in television, getting guest spots on more or less every major show from Bonanza to Mannix (he was one of the Russian cosmonauts -Igor- who landed on Gilligan's Island in the second season, for example). Bill McCutcheon is more irritating than lovable as Droppo, our official comic relief, but he's not terrible or anything. I'm sure the kids found him lovable, but adult eyes just see a guy trying to be Bobby Van, and failing. You could easily picture him as a regular on a local kiddie show, though, and probably would have made a decent Bozo (actually, he'd make a perfect Oliver O. Oliver).

    Pia Zadora plays Girmar, for those curious. She would go on to a fairly fruitful career, but she's never had much respect tossed her way. She offended a lot of people when she bought the Pickfair mansion in the late 80's and then destroyed it.

Most everyone here was from the stage, and their acting reflects that. They haven't yet figured out the subtleties of acting for the camera, but they can speak their lines clearly. They win a certain amount of grace from the fact that they're making a kiddie flick, and you certainly can't nitpick some folks who got together to make a movie that would entertain the children. Underfunded as the production looks, you can tell they still tried pretty hard to keep the kids entertained.

   Still, that polar bear and the Torg costume are kinda painful to watch no matter how limited the budget may be. And check out the supply closet we see on Mars, which contains, among other things, a water ski!

Oh, there's also Milton Delugg's catchy title tune "Hooray for Santa Claus!" which has been the subject of much hatred in the internet age. I don't know, I actually found it a not bad pop song composed for a kiddie flick. (Oh, it's no Ballad of Davy Crockett, but I don't think anyone expects it to be either.) To each their own, as they say.

   Having fallen into the public domain, SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS has been released by multiple independent labels. Here's a link (again requiring copy and paste, sorry) to the version sold by Something Weird Video: http://www.somethingweird.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=29016&substring=santa+claus+conquers

Bomar, Santa, Billy, Girmar,
and Betty

Merry Christmas, Everybody!!!

Neat Link

2011-11-15T16:46:00.000-08:00

http://doowackadoodles.blogspot.com/2011/11/many-pin-ups-of-animala-from-rock-baker.html

Here, my Animala pieces are reproduced on the fantastic blog of Belle Dee. This is part of a special tribute to THE LOST SKELETON OF CADARVA, with art by multiple artists. I can't tell you how proud I am to have been part of the celebration!

A Man Has To Dream, Doesn't He?

2011-10-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

There are certain things men expect from the opposite sex. Certain men expect certain things, be they intelligence, innocence, loyalty, or what have you. In each male brain is also the image of an ideal woman, the girl we subconsciously, or consciously, keep our eyes peeled for as the ultimate expression of pulchritude. That one perfect female meant to be our mate for life. More and more, I'm finding my ideal is a girl who looks like she just stepped out of 1961. Unrealistic? Well, that's what makes finding the perfect mate a miracle! (And considering I, myself, already look like a citizen of the early 60's, it's not like I'm advertising for something different than that anyway.)

Oddball Film Report: THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966)

2011-10-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

The fad for beach-themed teen comedies following the success of 1963's BEACH PARTY was intense, but short lived. While American International Pictures was making a fortune on the 'Beach' series, it was also quite evident that these good natured cornball musicals wouldn't continue to bring in the kind of money they were making in an era of increasing cynicism and rougher drive-in fare. The same year that Nancy Sinatra made today's subject, she also made THE WILD ANGELS for the same studio, and it was the biker flick that made the most money. Overnight, THE WILD ANGELS did to AIP and the teen exploitation market what BEACH PARTY had done earlier. The Beach films quickly fell out of date, yet for many, those films defined the 1960's with their innocence and sheer fun. A stray Beach movie would occasionally pop up again before the decade finally gasped its last. There were plenty of Beach movies to pick from, made by various studios (BEACH BALL, IT'S A BIKINI WORLD, THE FAT SPY, my personal favorite probably being THE GIRLS ON THE BEACH), though the AIP films remained the yardstick by which the others were measured.

   AIP was really coming into its own by 1963. No more black and white quickie double features. The studio had entered the big time with its color Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Edgar Allen Poe films. That slate of films would help define the studio as much as their playful teen Beach movies (both were spoofed in AIP's comical spy epic DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE). With these horror films, AIP developed a reputation for lavish spectacle and major stars (even if they tended to be, with all due respect, a tad past their prime, or on their way up to bigger and better things). Yes, by the mid 1960's, AIP had become one of the majors. While still thrifty in the extreme, AIP was spending a fair chunk of change to make their movies more lavish. Just look at the cast for BEACH PARTY: Bob Cummings, Dorothy Malone, Morey Amsterdam, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Harvey Lembeck, John Ashley, Jody McCrea, etc. The following films in the series would include such noted performers as Mickey Rooney, Paul Lynde, Keenen Wynn, Donna Loren, Buster Keaton, Jesse White, Don Rickles, Peter Lorre, Brain Donlevy, Earl Wilson, Buddy Hackett, Linda Evans, and more!

While always considered cartoonish camp, the films still have a very earnest appeal. While continually badmouthed by critics, the fact remains that people love the Beach movies. Calling Avalon and Funicello America's sweetheart couple of the 60's isn't much of an exaggeration. The bulk of the Beach movies would follow their "teenage" romance through various trials and tribulations, often in the form of some groovy chick who set her sights on Frankie at about the same time that he and Annette had had a tiff, or vise versa. (Aside from returning characters, the films really had little connection to each other, for the most part.)

   By 1966, though, the relationship of Frankie and DeeDee (Avalon and Funicello) had been milked for about all it was going to give. Not that there hadn't been some experimentation within the series. The first three films in the cycle (BEACH PARTY, MUSCLE BEACH PARTY, and BIKINI BEACH) form a nice trilogy that connect to each other quite nicely, in theme and in continuity. The remaining films in the series would continue to recall these films, forming a loose connection. The fourth film of the set, PAJAMA PARTY, took things in a new direction. Rather than focus on Frankie and Annette, we meet a whole new cast of characters. Funicello now plays Connie, and her steady is Big Lunk (Jody McCrea, "Deadhead" of the other films) until she meets George, a Martian played by Tommy Kirk. While one of the best films in the series, audiences must not have been too thrilled with this new direction, for the very next film, BEACH BLANKET BINGO returns things to normal with Frankie and DeeDee and the gang. BEACH BLANKET BINGO is the one everybody remembers, the one with the mermaid that falls in love with Jody McCrea, and is in many ways the ultimate Beach Party movie. (Interestingly, THE FAT SPY, made the same year, also features a subplot involving that film's Jody McCrea analog falling in love with a mermaid. I'd be interested to see which script was written first.)

   Somewhere along the line, money concerns or contract disputes lead to trouble (as the story goes), forcing Avalon and Annette to seek greener pastures. And it seems they took most everybody else important to the series with them. Most of the familiar faces of the previous films are absent from GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI, although we're still served up a fine cast. Despite a nice effort, the film ultimately suffers from a lack of Avalon, Funicello, McCrea, Donna Loren, or John Ashley. Also missing is series director William Asher, replaced by Don Weis, the director of the earlier PAJAMA PARTY. It seems that, if Asher had his stock characters, Weis had his too. The characters here are either returning from PAJAMA PARTY, or bear a strong resemblance to them. Thus, a little recap of PAJAMA PARTY is called for.

   As mentioned earlier, Connie was dating Big Lunk, the numskull nephew of Aunt Wendy (Elsa Lanchester!). Big Lunk had the previous year dated Vickie (singing sensation Donna Loren, who played 'Donna' in the other films, where she didn't do a lot of acting but would belt out some incredible tunes). Wendy had a fortune hidden somewhere in her house, and it was being sought by notorious conman J. Sinister Hunk (Jesse White) -subtlety was out of the question, obviously- and his cronies that included Chief Rotten Eagle (Buster Keaton!) and a Swede bombshell named Bobbi (Bobbi Shaw, who will probably be forever remembered as the blonde in the fur-lined bikini who could only enthusiastically exclaim "Ya! Ya!").

   Weirdly, Harvey Lembeck's Eric Von Zipper and his motorcycle gang, the Rats, are in both continuities. Even stranger is that the Rats and Mice are the only characters in the series to have a continuity that remains the same in all the films! Through Von Zipper and his gang, mention of the earlier trilogy is carried over into PAJAMA PARTY. Likewise, they carry references from PAJAMA PARTY back into the regular continuity! (For instance, at one point in GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI, Von Zipper is asked if he plans to give another character "the Finger." This is a running gag going all the way back to BEACH PARTY, where a professor played by Bob Cummings demonstrates Himalayan Time Suspension by pressing his finger against Von Zipper's temple. This would freeze Von Zipper like a statue. Forever afterwards, Von Zipper would threaten to place people into "Himalayan Suspenders" if they crossed him. Unfortunately for him, Von Zipper would often inadvertently demonstrate on himself and be out of action for a while. The various ways Von Zipper would give himself "the Finger" became a running gag of the series.)

   Here, we have eccentric Aunt Millie (Patsy Kelly) and her numskull nephew GooGoo (Aron Kincaid), who is dating another Vickie (Nancy Sinatra!). J. Sinister Hulk is back (still played by Jesse White) as is Cheif Chicken Feather (the name exposed to be the true moniker of Cheif Rotten Eagle in the earlier film), no longer played by Buster Keaton, but by Benny Rubin. You undoubtedly remember Rubin from his patented Chinaman routine which he did on nearly every sitcom and variety series of the early 60's (he's the owner of the Chinese laundry who gives Herman Munster a job, for instance). Bobbi Shaw is also back (yay!) only this time they've decided to let her speak fluent English. This obviously isn't the same character as before (who had fallen in love with Big Lunk), as she's now Princess, a ruthless cutthroat dressed as a harem girl, and owner of a huge gorilla named Monstro (George Barrows!). She and Chicken Feather apparently work in a traveling carnival these days. The most glaring change is the replacing of series leads Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello with Tommy Kirk and Deborah Walley. The pair had earlier played the leads in an Allied Artists' attempt to copy the beach films, IT'S A BIKINI WORLD. Both were vets of the series (Kirk in PAJAMA PARTY, Walley in BEACH BLANKET BINGO), and both are fine here. You can just tell the parts were written for Avalon and Funicello, though, and you keep imagining the earlier actors in the parts.

   We open with a send up of the popular Poe films AIP was famous for (the studio was never slow to poke fun at itself) with a spooky title sequence seen over a field of shifting fog before we open on a cloaked figure walking through a foggy cemetery during an electrical storm. The figure enters the crypt and reveals itself to be a beautiful platinum blonde (Susan Hart! Another carry over from PAJAMA PARTY), a ghost of a circus performer who had died in an accident 30 years earlier. She was an acrobat, famous as The Girl in the Invisible Bikini*, and died in a fall during her performance. This is Ceciley, and she's come to call on the recently deceased Hiram Stokley (Boris Karloff!). Hiram is a bit disappointed to find he's no longer among the living, but Ceciley tells him he still has a shot at the pearly gates if he can arrange a good deed within a set number of hours.

   (*From what we learn here, Ceciley died in 1936, already famous as "the Girl in the Invisible Bikini." It probably seems silly to raise issue here, but the term "bikini" didn't enter the lexicon until 1946, when a new, skimpier cut of two-piece bathing suit was named after the atomic bomb test on the Bikini atoll. So, this makes no sense, given there's no indication that all this is supposed to be happening 30 years into the future.)

   Hiram can't leave the crypt, so Ceciley will have to do the field work. The two will keep in touch with a crystal ball. Hiram's good deed will be to make sure his fortune goes to his rightful heirs (children of fellow carnies that Stokely had bilked out of their fortunes) and not his crooked attorney, Reginald Ripper (Basil Raithbone!). Ripper has contracted Hulk and his associates to bump off the other heirs, which include Aunt Millie, Chuck Phillips (Kirk), and.... That's funny, I can't remember the name of Deborah Walley's character! And I've seen this flick several times!

   Anyway, the parties start arriving and Millie suggests a seance (wouldn't want to skip a haunted house cliche, would we?). During this, Hulk fakes a few scars, including a knife that shoots into the back of Walley's chair. Ceciley watches all this from the chandelier, which breaks under her weight and crashes to the table. This thoroughly convinces Walley to leave, until Kirk reminds her that she'll be forfitting her share of the money. About then, GooGoo arrives with a literal busload of teenagers who quickly set up out by the pool and shimmy and twist as Nancy Sinatra offers a tune titled "Geronimo!" (Interestingly, the 1959 film GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW, which could be considered a sort of dry run for the Beach formula, also features a song titled "Geronimo!" Both films have been packaged on a double feature DVD my Metro Goldwyn Mayor.)

   With all the noise, Millie states there's no use in further trying to communicate with the departed Hiram Stokely. The will to be read at midnight, Ripper sets in motion another scheme to cut down on the number of potential heirs by sicking his daughter Sinestra (Quinn O' Hara!) on GooGoo. O' Hara quite nearly steals the whole show as the seductive, and quite murderous, femme fatal of the piece. Meanwhile, Von Zipper and his gang* have spotted Princess and Chicken Feather driving out to the Stokley place. Upon seeing her, Von Zipper falls in love with Princess and follows her to the mansion. There, the gang sees Princess and the other villains pass through a secret passage in the garden wall. The film's best laugh probably comes from Von Zipper eyeing Ripper and noting "that one guy looks like Sherlock Holmes."

   (* Eric Von Zipper goes through an interesting evolution over the series. The first couple of times we see him, he's a rotten thug and proud of it. By the time we get to BEACH BLANKET BINGO, however, Von Zipper sees himself as a social crusader, and believes that "them beach bums" are the true stain on society. This idea emerges in Von Zipper's second appearance in BIKINI BEACH (the character is absent from MUSCLE BEACH PARTY, making it the odd duck of the series -although it is one of the best entries, despite that fact), but by BEACH BLANKET BINGO the character sees himself as heroic. He starts the song "Follow Your Leader" with the line "If there's a battle to fought, then to the battle go we ought!" By this film, there's still some talk of him as being rotten when we're introduced to the gang "bustin' up billboards" out in the countryside. Despite this vandalous "game" however, Von Zipper notes how safe it is. He also attempts to save what he thinks is a girl in trouble twice. First, he attempts to save Princess from drowning, although he can't swim and she ends up saving him. Later, he sees a mechanical depiction of a girl being tortured and he steps in to save her. By now, he's more of a Lou Costello-type. He's just a kid who doesn't know he isn't smart.)

   After Sinestra tries to kill GooGoo a couple more times (but fails due to Ceciley's intervention and Sinestra's own nearsightedness) midnight arrives and its time to read the will. To let you know how much times have changes, Stokley's fortune is $1 Million, not including the house and grounds. Now, its true that a million bucks was some major wampum in 1966. In an era where a film like this would cost upwards of $70 million, though, this bit has lost a lot of its punch. At any rate, the money is hidden somewhere on the grounds. Von Zipper overhears Princess and the other killers discussing how they will steal all the money for themselves. This cools Von Zipper's affections for Princess, and he decides the thing to do is to find the money first and keep it, that'll show those crooks. Hulk and his crew try to scare the others out by dressing as monsters (including a costume renovated from THE EYE CREATURES), while Monstro breaks loose during the storm and roams the halls of the house. Monstro makes off with Walley, the others give chase, and everyone converges in Hiram Stokley's basement mechanized chamber of horrors (doesn't every carny have one?), complete with working buzzsaw!

   While THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI is certainly entertaining (I wouldn't let October go by without a viewing), it also remains true that this is the low point of the Beach series. This, as noted, is due almost entirely to the lack of the regular players. Things tend to pick up when Von Zipper is on the screen, but its due to his presence that the film really fails to stand on its own. Rather than a playful spoof of AIP's Poe series, the film feels like a tacked on entry to a series that can't really accept it into the fold. Terrific fun, yes, but it almost feels forced at times.

   Frankie and Annette would return to the genre with BACK TO THE BEACH, which tried to bring the formula into the 80's. The lack of further sequels would seem to indicate the time hadn't come. (Some have speculated though, that Disney's "High School Musical" franchise is the modern equivalent, and the Mouse seems to be cleaning up with those, last I heard.)

HORROR!!!

2011-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

While the old Warren adult-themed horror comics don't do much for me, I must admit some of the funnest work I've done involved drawing Warren-style, adult-themed horror stories for BLOKE'S TERRIBLE TOMB OF TERROR. I think the excuse to cut loose and draw some period cheesecake mixed with some old-fashioned horror plots has made the assignments incredible fun. Here are a few pages of art I drew pencils for.

"Love Hurts" was inked and toned by Mr. Jeff Austin. It was a voodoo tale written by Mr. Jason Crawley. Once again, we learn cheating on your spouse is very, very bad.

In the upcoming issue 3, I return with "Green Fingers." The inking duties have been taken over by Mr. Mike Hoffman, giving this story even more the style of a 70's Warren. Here's a tiny little preview. Neglecting one's spouse isn't much better than cheating on them......

These images have been reproduced through the permission of Mr. Jason Crawley. To see the full "Love Hurts" check out issue no.1 of BLOKE'S TERRIBLE TOMB OF TERROR (which is probably the slickest title I've had the good blessing to appear in). "Green Fingers" will be seen in issue no. 3, release date pending. You can buy issue no. 1 here: http://indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5622

In COLOR by Kevin Thompson!

2011-10-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

Kevin Thompson and Massie Munroe have been my biggest supporters. Kevin has colored a number of my pieces posted on Facebook, and I thought you might enjoy seeing some of his work......

This piece, inked by Jeff Austin, was used in
a music video

It was Massie Munroe who made me realize that I hadn't yet drawn any cheerleader-themed pinup pics. In answer to that, I did this piece....

That lead to a number of pieces that Kevin subsequently colored and edited. Massie had earlier encouraged me to draw pieces of an unnamed lady artist that I later named "Masterpiece Massie" in her honor. Kevin took my cheerleader drawings and made them spin-off pieces of the same character, who acts as a Bakersfield cheerleader in her spare time.....

Later we tried a pink color scheme....

And then a version to appeal to my taste in platinum
blondes

This one is a color version of my Dolly Read
pinup.....

-which remains one of my favorite drawings I've
done.

The work of Kevin Thompson will be seen here again!

Oddball Film Report: BUMMER! (1973)

2011-10-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

Look at that tagline. Was this flick aimed
at rapists?

   This is one report that won't take up too much space.

   Calling your movie "Bummer!" would seem to be a bad omen, wouldn't it? Hollywood is notorious for its superstitions, like never having a question mark in the title (thus, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT was a statement rather than a question). I guess those superstitions never crossed over into predictive titles like "Bomb" or "Drag." The most obvious thing about the title BUMMER! is that it leaves the door open for the predictable assessment "BUMMER! is a bummer!" Granted, there's nothing in the movie to counter the chosen title. I wound up with a copy because I wanted to see JOHNNY FIRECLOUD, and Something Weird Video had included BUMMER! as the co-feature (presumably because there was no other way to pawn it off on even their eclectic customer base).

   It's a good thing I enjoyed JOHNNY FIRECLOUD, because BUMMER! is exactly the sort of meandering, plotless (until the last two reels, which pick up considerably) 'hippie' flick one usually avoids. BUMMER! was one of David Friedman's 'legit' pictures made for the mass market, and thus only made for an R rating. Of Friedman's other 'mainstream' movies that I've seen (TWO THOUSAND MANIACS, JOHNNY FIRECLOUD, SHE FREAK), I've been fairly impressed. Even the 'dirty' movie of his that I saw (SPACE-THING!) had enough clever or dumb bits to be entertaining. BUMMER! had me wishing it were one of Friedman's sex films, since at least something interesting would be going on (actually, the film features quite a bit of nudity, but I had forgotten most of this until I went back and watched the trailer again).

   BUMMER! is what I guess you could call a "slice of life" epic about the lives of the members of a struggling band imaginatively named "The Group" and their three groupie chicks. No one here is really likable, but some of the characters are slightly less unlikable than the others. The designated loser of the bunch is the obese Butz, who can't get a girl, even a groupie, because he's a perverted jerk of a fat slob. He's also holding back The Group, but the others can't leave him because he owns a van. (It's That 70's Show, only it makes you want to kill yourself!) Mostly, we'll spend an hour watching these people interact, and steadily grow to hate them.

   Within the final stretch, we actually move into a real plot! This involves Butz trying to rape one of the groupies and killing her in the process, after which the entire gang is pulled over and arrested because Butz has a warrant on him for an earlier rape charge involving a groupie. At the station, it becomes clear this will end only in bloodshed and gunfire. This last bit isn't bad, technically speaking, but getting there is a chore. (And for the sake of anyone who might want to track down a copy of the film, it would be remiss of me to blow anything else.) The music isn't even much of a draw, but I admit this isn't my kind of music, so others might enjoy it more than I. Maybe you will enjoy "A far-out trip through a hard rock tunnel" more than I did. Being fluent in 70's slang will help you. Seeing this flick, I discovered that it really is a different language, and fortunately (?) I could rap this jive lingo, Turkey! (Not that I ever would speak that way in public, but I've seen enough films from the era to dig what these cats are talkin' 'bout.

   Happily, JOHNNY FIRECLOUD (a sort of BILLY JACK with more substance and less hippie preachifying) proved to have a lot more meat to it than I expected. But, it was BUMMER!'s one-sheet that I found, so it became the subject of this report.

   As is the custom with Something Weird Video, the DVD is packed with goodies. In this instance, though, there's not a lot of fun in the supplements. Firstly, there are the trailers for the two main features. BUMMER!'s trailer gives the impression that the film has a lot more plot/sex/action than it actually serves up. The trailer for JOHNNY FIRECLOUD on the other hand, may be Friedman's best work of all time (he wrote the trailers for most or all of his releases). Not only does the film have some impressive visuals and production values, and a top notch cast including Ralph Meeker, Frank DeKova, and David Canary, but the trailer announcer offers some of the best taglines I've ever heard ("It was now! Redskins no longer bit the dust, they just ate dirt!" "They pushed and shoved, squeezed and leaned, and leaned harder, until they bought themselves an all-American one-man Indian massacre!" "JOHNNY FIRECLOUD! A HATE story!"). That right there was worth the price of the disk. The other trailers here are for assorted 70's films that don't seem to fit into regular genres, including some 'wacky' looking comedies and a skin flick being pushed as an actual dramatic feature. It has to be the only SWV disc I've ever bought with trailers that I don't intend to watch again. Ever.

   The other extras are more interesting. Best is a neat little short about blind bidding, the practice of selling films to theater owners before they can see what kind of films they're buying. Then there's a girlie loop (from the 40s, maybe?) showing a striptease by a gal dressed as an Indian. Since BUMMER! features a detour to a strip club, this short manages to play into the themes of both films.

   The other thing on the disc is a commentary track over JOHNNY FIRECLOUD with David F. Friedman himself. Unfortunately, he doesn't spend a lot of time actually talking about what may be the best film his name was ever attached to. (Per usual, though, the late Mr. Friedman offers a colorful and entertaining commentary as he discusses various stages of his career in the exploitation/sexploitation industries.) Sadly, he doesn't perform similar duties for BUMMER!, which could have used a nice distracting commentary track.

   Those interested can purchase the double feature DVD direct from Something Weird Video here: http://www.somethingweird.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=19123&substring=johnny+firecloud

Godzilla, chick magnet!

2011-10-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

My brother ran across these shots on the internet, and they brought a smile to my face. Any day you can combine giant monsters and beautiful women, life is good. I thought I'd share.

Godzilla and his first leading lady, Momoko Kochi,
got along much better off screen, as you can see in
this behind the scenes shot from GODZILLA, KING
OF THE MONSTERS

Godzilla's singing career never went very far, despite
his putting together this musical comedy act with his
co-stars from GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS,
Momoko Kochi and Akira Takarada

Actress Yukiko Kobayashi didn't have a very
long career in films, but she quickly caught the
eye of Japan's biggest movie star. Here they are
together on the set of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS

What I assume is a press party for 1968's DESTROY ALL
MONSTERS, to show off some of the spiffy new monster
suits built for the picture. But really, who was looking at the
monsters? Oh, I guess the girls might have been.

Baragon and pals from the same photoshoot

EV

2011-10-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

Very early in my career as a pencil jockey, I tried to sell a newspaper strip to King Features. EV was the only strip to get as far as submission, although I developed a couple of others. As you can see, my work on this project was very crude (and obviously I didn't sell this or any other strip). I didn't yet have a handle on the human form, it was my first attempt at inking (on the wrong kind of paper, which is why the images are weirdly textured in spots), and I was never meant to be a letterer. But for the sake of entertainment, I thought you might like to see this early work of mine (actually, I think it was only about five or six years ago. I really haven't been at this very long, but even I can see quite a bit of improvement over these few years).

I've thought about resurrecting the EV character, possibly for a regular comic book. Or maybe I should get a real inker and redraw the whole thing and make another try at landing a newspaper strip, since it looks like the newspaper industry might recover before the comic book industry does.

Oddball Film Report: THE SIDEHACKERS (1969)

2011-10-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

Despite what you see on the one sheet,
I don't recall a chick wearing a red bikini
anywhere in the picture.

   So I guess the logical first question one has going into THE SIDEHACKERS is: what in the world is sidehacking? I'm not sure how popular the sport ever became, but the film credits technical information to a legitimate sidehacking club. As explained in the movie, a sidehack is a narrow, wheeled platform bolted onto the side of a motorbike (like an open sidecar). Two man teams then race over an obstacle coarse, with one man driving the bike, and the other standing on the sidehack and shifting his weight back and forth to keep the bike level on hard turns. Doesn't sound very practical to me, nor does it look very practical in action. Aside from today's feature, I don't recall ever seeing another sidehack.

   It would seem the producers understood that sidehacking is hardly involved enough to sustain a feature film, so the sport pretty much vanishes from the film after the first 20 or so minutes. The rest of the film plays out like a mock THE BORN LOSERS. Things open like a documentary about sidehacking, though, and one doesn't really expect the direction the film takes at the mid-point. The opening is pretty cool too, showing close-ups of the men making ready their bikes as framed through a small rectangle in the center of the screen. When the credits pick up as the race begins (the camera tracking a bike moving toward the audience), the screen suddenly opens up as the frame pulls back to full FANTASCOPE proportions. This must have looked simply stunning on theater screens. Sadly, this print of the film (from Mill Creek's "Savage Cinema" collection) is cropped to regular aspect ratio. This becomes increasingly annoying as it's rather obvious that the blocking and cinematography have been formulated to take full advantage of the wide-screen format. If there's a scope version of this movie floating around out there, do let me know.

   The plot here is pretty simple (a common trait with "biker" flicks). Rommel is a sidehacker who is about to marry the girl of his dreams (and I can't remember her name for some reason, so I'll call her Peggy), and he's half owner-operator of a motorcycle repair shop (I can't remember his best friend's name either, so I'll call him Andy). One day, the leader of a group of exposition riders drops off his bike. This is the psychopathic J.C. Included in the group is his girl Paisley (see, I remember the weird names), who takes an instant shine to Rommel. J.C. notices the sidehack on Rommel's bike and asks about it. Rommel invites J.C. and his gang out to the track to see how it works.

   J.C. is quite a bit more impressed with sidehacking than you'd expect and he talks Rommel into teaching him how to sidehack. J.C. invites Rommel and Peggy to go on the road and do some sidehacking for county fairs. J.C. is a psycho, though, and its starting to show through now that he's got a few drinks in him, so Rommel turns him down. Paisley later makes an advance on Rommel, who refuses her (he's got Peggy and everything, remember? They started the film with a downright farcical 'frolic in the meadows' montage). Upset at being turned down, and knowing that J.C. will slaughter anyone else who touches his girl, Paisley claims Rommel raped her. J.C. then breaks in on Rommel and Peggy. Cut to later and Rommel wakes to find Peggy has been murdered and hung from the rafters of his cabin. Rommel spends the second half of the movie getting together some muscle so he can track J.C. down and go all Billy Jack on him (Rommel even starts wearing denim jeans and jacket over a dark shirt!).

   Rather famously, THE SIDEHACKERS is the film that changed the selection process for choosing movies to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. At the time, one of the crew would watch about 15 minutes of a film and put it on the pile if it looked promising. They started watching this film, and were shocked to find a rather violent rape scene half way through. Ever since, SOP involved watching an ENTIRE movie before picking it. And indeed, the rape scene is pretty shocking. The way the film cuts from J.C. breaking in, to a badly beaten Rommel waking up the next day and finding Peggy strung up, I started to wonder if the scene had been removed from this print. No, it wasn't.

   The sequence is actually quite effective. Rommel runs to Andy's house, and Andy tries to administer aid to his friend. Rommel hears Andy's kids playing and sees the little boy and girl innocently roughhousing in the floor, the boy pinning down the girl. This triggers flashbacks to Rommel being forced to watch as Peggy was gang-raped and killed. The scene is horrific and staggeringly realistic, and its being counterpointed by the similar but wholesome actions of the children is actually quite effective. The scene is repulsive and uncomfortable, yet it works perfectly within the context of the story. The increasingly quick cuts between the attack and Rommel's pained expression before he screams and runs out of the house is an amazing trick of editing. The bulk of the film fails to match the intensity of this sequence, both artistically and emotionally, but the scene alone leaves quite an impact. (Something one might not expect is that the sequence features no nudity. In fact, the only exposed flesh in the whole film is a quick shot of Peggy's duff as Rommel grabs at her hanging body and the remains of her skirt shift to the side. Well, there is a conversation taking place in front of a wall plastered with photos pulled out of various 60's girlie mags.)

   In the end, a better than average biker movie, mostly because it has a plot and there isn't much biking involved. Truly a product of its time, the late 60's, as it features a fairly workable storyline and decent production values countered by plenty of harsh language and frank discussion of intimate matters. Not great, but not bad either.

Why, yes, I have drawn Jessica Rabbit

2011-10-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

As Catwoman, 40's style

RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE LOST

2011-10-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Today's subject: Movies I'd Like to Make - Return to the Land of the Lost.

    Many a viewer felt the Will Farrell comedy based on the classic 70's Saturday morning adventure series Land of the Lost was designed to offend those who loved the show, seen as ripping the throat out of their childhoods. Because of the title, its pretty difficult to look beyond the "screwing with a beloved classic" and taking the film on its own terms. Honestly, I don't know what Sid and Marty were thinking, as LAND OF THE LOST could have been one of the greatest science fiction adventure movies of all time. Having recently gone through the entire series, I have decided one of the Movies I'd Like to Make when I get the chance will be RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE LOST.

The plot:

     Two couples are out yachting. Mark Randall and his wife, Joan, and Cliff Hart and his wife, Sylvia. Mark and Cliff have just gone in together to buy the yacht currently being sailed, and girls are enjoying the voyage. Having lashed down the sail for the night, the men decide to play a little poker before turning in. The girls go topside to enjoy the sunset, but report that a strange fog is moving in. Mark and Cliff reach the deck and see a dense cloud moving across the surface of the water. "Doesn't look like any fog I've ever seen, looks more like a smoke screen." The fog drifts toward them. A waterfall is heard. The girls suddenly get dizzy and faint. The men shortly get dizzy too, lasting a little longer because they came on deck after the women. Cliff drops to the deck as Mark reaches for the flare gun. He tries to aim it, but falls to the deck before he can take any action.

   They are sucked into the Land of the Lost, which is this time built like the strange wonderland seen on the teleseries.

   The crew awakes in the swamp. They have no idea where they are or how they got there, but they're seeing living dinosaurs on the shore. LuLu, the two-headed sea serpent from the third season appears and attacks the boat. The men manage to fight it back long enough for Sylvia to turn the boat toward shore and beach the craft. Grabbing all the supplies they can think of, they leave the boat before LuLu can attack again. They must find shelter that can easily be defended. They are chased through the jungle by Grumpy, and the gang takes refuge in an open pylon. There, they discover Enik (and fortunately he speaks quickly enough that they don't shoot him), who gives them a little exposition ("You are not the first humans to enter the Land of the Lost, nor, I fear, will you be the last.") before taking them to the temple used as base camp in the third season of the show. Joan is confused, having heard the phrase "land of the lost" sometime in her childhood.

In the ruins, Enik presents a large collection of notes prepared by the Marshalls before they left the Land of the Lost, a collection of notes prepared to bring the next stranded party up to speed. The Marshalls had been in the Land of the Lost five years before the "Pylon Express" took them home (at one point, Rick Marshall had found a way back into the express and eventually met up with Uncle Jack and the kids before the group managed to go home when the moons were in the right order once again. Since no one would believe him on the outside, thinking Rick had broken down after the kids were lost on the river, he had to read up on dimensional anomalies and find a way back himself, keeping the pylon express in mind the whole time). The notes lay out everything the Marshalls were able to learn about the Land of the Lost and the creatures that inhabit it, as well as a diorama of the explored areas to show how the land is formed.

Once returned to the real world, Holly Marshall became a successful writer of children's books all about the Land of the Lost, which is why Joan remembers a few things, including Enik. Enik failed to return to his time on the express due to an anomaly he couldn't solve in time, but he may have found a way of forcing the express open sooner than due if he can find the proper sequence of crystals. On his own time board in his cave, Enik has reasoned the opening on the express into his time is blocked by a cataclysm, the one which possibly created the Land of the Lost. With the proper crystals, Enik may be able to control the passage of time and dimensional flux and return to his world early enough to prevent the disaster. He can also return his new friends to their proper time and close all the openings to the Land of the Lost.

Cliff's radium dial watch turns out to be the missing component in Enik's locator, and Enik discovers the locations of the assorted crystals needed to operate the flux controller. The party then splits up and searches the indicated areas of the Land of the Lost, looking for the crystals (including the snowy lair of the yeti creature and that dark foggy area where Marvin Milner's ship was destroyed). Chaka, who has taken a vow to help all humans, also joins up (Jack had helped Chaka build a bridge across the ravine that cut him off from the other Pakuni). Meanwhile, the Sleestack learn of Enik's plan and try to prevent it, knowing that they would cease to exist if Enik's plan works.

Toss in the desired amount of stop-motion dinosaur action and you're good to go. And yes, since they were on a sailing vessel, Joan and Sylvia spend the entire film in their bikinis. Its the film that's fun for everyone! Now, where can I get my hands on about 17 million dollars.......

Published by Main Enterprises

2011-10-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

I had been drawing for AC Comics for a while when my regular inker, Jeff Austin, helped me branch out. That first step was to draw for Main Enterprises (mostly to salvage some pencil sheets I had drawn for an abruptly cancelled project). Jim Main has helped me keep busy ever since, and he even published the first book for which I was seen cover to cover, the mini-comic SAY CHEESECAKE! Here are some things I've had published by Mr. Main.......

This image was used on the cover of Jim
Main's PRESENTS no. 4, featuring the
'super spy' episode of Betsy the Bookwriter.
Inks by Jeff Austin, colors by Marc Haines.

This was quite a thrill for me, as I had the
honor of being profiled in THE GALLERY,
a showcase title from Jim Main. Again, inks
by Jeff Austin, colors by Marc Haines.

This was a gag pinup I drew, and Jim Main
liked it enough to have Jeff Austin ink it for
the cover of his comedy title SHEESH!

Here's the original pencil version, by the way, which I
drew so I would have something to post on my then
brand new Facebook page. I've tried to post a new
pinup every working day since that time.

Here's a preview of an upcoming character
to be published by Jim Main, Sadie Six-Gun.
Inks by Jeff Austin. This strip to be in full
COLOR!

Finished art from the very first page of the very
first adventure of Betsy the Bookwriter. Talk
about a fun strip to draw! Inks by the Jeff Austin.

Here's a finished and lettered page from
Betsy the Bookwriter's spy story from
PRESENTS no. 4. Inks by Jeff Austin.

No Jeff Austin this time. This drawing for
THE GALLERY was printed as is!

10 Questions with Tim Ferrante

2011-10-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

My latest interview for http://www.jabootu.net/, with Mr. Tim Ferrante: http://jabootu.net/?p=5483

20 Questions with Larry Blamire

2011-09-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

My Jabootu.net interview with THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA creator/writer/director/star, Larry Blamire, who chats about his amazing career and his infamous send ups TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD, THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN, and DARK AND STORMY NIGHT!

http://jabootu.net/?p=4862

20 Questions with Robert Deveau

2011-09-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

My interview for Jabotu.net with actor of stage and screen Robert Deveau, star of RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD and featured player in THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA: http://jabootu.net/?p=5146

Oddball Film Report: FLASH GORDON (1980)

2011-09-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

Popular comic strip character Flash Gordon, a football star who found himself engaged in endless cosmic adventures, first came to the screen in a 1930's serial. Universal doesn't have much of a reputation among serial fans, with the exception of the studio's three Flash Gordon serials, which are counted as among the very best cliffhangers ever assembled. FLASH GORDON, FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS, and FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE tell the interplanetary saga of how Flash, his gal Dale Arden, and eccentric genius Dr. Zarkoff blasted into outer space to do battle with monstrous despot Ming the Merciless of the planet Mongo. The combatants were vividly brought to life by the perfectly cast actors who portrayed them. "Blond giant" Buster Crabbe (who also played comic strip characters Tarzan, Buck Rogers, and the King of the Congo) is perfectly cast as the dashing football hero turned adventurer, while Charles Middleton remains the definitive Emperor Ming. Despite the spare change budget, the serials also have a polish and grandeur even the best Republic actioner couldn't hope to match.

Later, the serials were edited into features that could be shown at kiddie matinees and the new medium of television. Flash's origin adventure was condensed into a film titled ROCKETSHIP, which managed to tell the entire story of the serial in one breathlessly paced film (where most films of this time would slice the serial into two parts and release two separate movies)! When space heroes became all the rage on television, a Flash Gordon series was produced that bore little resemblance to the original character. This time, Flash, Dale, and Zarkoff were citizens of a future world, and they battled an assortment of generic mad scientists as they moved about the planets. (The show also featured some rather shockingly leftist politics, considering the period. Maybe this was due to the show actually being filmed in -I understand- Germany instead of the States!)

   In 1974 came the porno spoof film FLESH GORDON, which beats the odds by actually being a pretty entertaining film. The flick remains rather infamous for its knockout special effects provided by the likes of David Allen, Jim Danforth, and Rick Baker, among many others. At least part of the show's enjoyment is that these guys provided a cavalcade of impossibly wonderful effects. The sequence in which Flesh fights a "beetle man" on a stairwell remains one of the most impressive stop motion sequences I've ever seen. While a spoof of the Flash Gordon origin story, this is one of those rare films that manages to have its cake and eat it too by producing a genuinely exciting adventure yarn with some comedy that's actually funny. I'd probably watch more pornos if I could count on them to be as entertaining as FLESH GORDON. (For completion's sake, there was a sequel produced a couple decades later. But what little I saw of that really didn't stand up to the first film.)

   In 1977, the release of STAR WARS created a public appetite for any larger-than-life space adventure that could be rushed onto screens. Among the earliest cash-ins were the rather loopy Italian vehicle STARCRASH and the magnificent BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, which was both a feature film and a short-lived teleseries (the idea being to produce a weekly movie experience, and the million dollar an episode budget kept it from being a returning series -although the rather less satisfying Galactica 1980 attempted to bring the series back for a very short time before the unrelated new series of the same name managed to last multiple seasons). Later, we were treated to big-budget movies like STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY and it's super-fun teleseries (at least that first season, which is terrific stuff), and Disney's under-rated epic THE BLACK HOLE. Sooner or later, Flash Gordon was going to make his presence known.... (Actually, Buster Crabbe has a cameo in and episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as an aged fighter pilot, Captain Gordon. In a memorable scene, Buck congratulates Gordon on his skills in combat, asking where he picked up those moves. Gordon responds "That's from before your time, son.")

   FLASH GORDON (1980) is an odd duck. It can't seem to decide if it wants to be STAR WARS type earnest adventure, or BATMAN style camp. The production values are good, and the design mirrors the comic strip rather nicely. The cast is good, yet the music is inappropriate in the extreme (the hit soundtrack was performed by the rock band QUEEN, giving the whole affair a rock opera feel that fails to mesh with the subject matter. Annoying no end are the occasional injections of riffs from the main theme song. "Flash! Ah-ahhhhhhhhh!"). All in all, it isn't bad entertainment, if not for some really weird flourishes from time to time (like the score). Still, you never forget you're watching a film made after STAR WARS. While not quite as outrageous as THE ICE PIRATES, you get the same sense of the crew not knowing how serious to take the material. Had they gone in a gee-whiz direction, like the Indiana Jones films, they could have really had something (ironically, the 70's porno version better captured the spirit of innocence in the material). But, then again, we are talking about an Italian film here, offered up by the man who nearly killed King Kong, Dino De Laurentiis.

   We follow the same basic story as had been told earlier. Ming targets earth for destruction, and the only man who knows why earth is under siege is Dr. Zarkoff. After Flash and Dale meet on an airplane, they encounter trouble caused by Ming and make a crash landing near Zarkoff's isolated lab. Zarkoff then forces them to help him launch his rocket into space. They arrive on Mongo, are captured, and are brought before Ming the Merciless. Ming's daughter falls for the handsome and courageous Flash Gordon and saves him from certain death. Flash then convinces the oppressed people of the various sub-kingdoms of Mongo to join forces and rise up against Ming. Meanwhile, Ming has selected Dale to be his new bride.....

   One thing has me at a disadvantage, and that's the fact that the version I'm reviewing is a cropped tape. About half the picture is missing, making some of the impressive vista offered up by the film a bit less awesome than they no doubt were in the theater. Even so, the overall effect is pretty fun, if not for the constant jump back and forth between camp and high adventure. The casting is also a mixed lot. Sam Jones plays Flash, and doesn't seem quite right for the part although he has his moments. He has the looks and the good natured attitude, but he suggests Reb Brown more than Buster Crabbe. (Not to be unfair by comparing Jones to Crabbe, but its hard to get around it. Jones seems to be trying too hard at times.) On the other hand is Max Von Sydow as a nicely ruthless Ming (again though, they sure tried to make him look like Charles Middleton). The oddest casting choice is that of Timothy Dalton as Prince Barron, the rightful leader of Mongo. Dalton has always been a 'serious' actor (although his occasional comedy turns show a very genial guy) and his casting would seem to negate the whole 'camp' approach. On the other hand, he's an Errol Flynn type (thus his spot-on perfect casting in THE ROCKETEER) and Prince Barron wears Robin Hood-style garb. You can see Dalton trying to make a real character out of his part, yet the film sort of plays against this. The result is that, rather than it being a fine performance that adds depth to the affair, Dalton just sticks out like he doesn't belong. Imagine if THE THIRD MAN had a character wearing a chicken suit for no apparent reason, and his wearing of said suit is never addressed by the other characters. That's how weirdly out of place Timothy Dalton seems in FLASH GORDON.

   In the end, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY (another Universal release, and the VHS boxes look almost identical from the sides) much better mixed high adventure and light-hearted humor. On the plus side, there were plenty of other post-STAR WARS science fiction movies to pick from during this period. Serial fans, meanwhile, will be amused that even after the multi-millions of dollars De Laurentiis spent on his version of the story, the cheap and crude Buster Crabbe version remains the definitive take on the material.

Models are Neat!

2011-09-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

It always helps to have a photo to work from, but I rarely try for an exact likeness. The pose is most important in these cases. The wardrobe designs are usually all mine. Here are some examples of work I've done when I had some visual reference to help me out......

Based on a shot of Betty Page

Based on a pic of Betty Grable

Based on a pic of Dolly Read

Based on a shot of Shawna Valdivia

Based on a pose by Mala Mastroberte

Jessica Steele Allen modeled this shot

This one, as posted earlier, is based on Christy Marie's Ariel
costume, and Christy Marie herself, obviously. This is the one
I'm most proud of.

With help from friends....

2011-09-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

My take on Wonder Woman,
inks by Scott Shriver.

This one was a coloring book page for an
all-kids title put out by Jim Main. Inks are
by Scott Shriver.

My pencils colored by Kevin Thompson.

One of my biggest challenges was to draw a
pinup of Erin Esurance. Inks by Jeff Austin.

AC Comic's Kitten, inked by Scott Shriver, and colored by
Marc Haines.

Another shot where Kevin Thompson took two of my pieces
and created this work around them.

Scott Shriver strikes again!

And he can color too! Synn of AC Comic's
Femforce title, the first book I got to draw for!

Oddball Film Report: ALIEN TRESPASS (2009)

2011-09-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

When ALIEN TRESPASS had its very brief and limited theatrical release across the country, I had mixed feelings. It was sure to be yet another spoof of 50's science fiction movies. While I love the films of Larry Blamire as much as the next guy, it also saddens me to see that none of the various supposed 'tributes' are played straight enough to stand on their own. As someone who enjoys his 50's genre fare irony-free, I want nothing so much as to see a genuine attempt to make one of these wonderful films. In a way, ALIEN TRESPASS actually delivered what I had hoped to see ever since MATINEE. While things start off rather tongue in cheek (with purposefully stiff acting and awkward dialog), the film settles into a (more than less) straight science fiction period piece once things get moving. They've served up some laughs to get us going, then they let the strength of the story take over and we're treated to an actual monster movie. Moreover, a monster movie that actually delivers the goods.

Not to say ALIEN TRESPASS is perfect. The tone isn't quite right (although closer than I'd expected) and there are some lines here that would never be heard in a 50's movie. It actually plays more like an 80's monster movie inspired by 50's monster movies. True to the period, though, they keep things optimistic and don't try to make fun of 1950's America. That there were no shots at the period's innocence as somehow being misguided was quite a relief, as was the absence of the typical Hollywood white-washing of communism. Even more charming, they didn't dirty things up too much and we actually get a movie with a PG rating (actually, the tag on the film itself claims a PG-13 rating! The reasons given include science fiction-type suspense and -I kid you not- "historical smoking!" I'd heard that smoking was going to be factored into the ratings system, but I never really believed it because the notion was so ridiculous. Just when you think modern Hollywood can't get any more insane, they pull something like this. Is there any wonder the older films are so much more fun to watch?).

The plot is largely a mixture of IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, and there are plenty of visual homages to films like FIEND WITHOUT A FACE and THE BLOB, yet the picture manages to retain its own identity. The film it tries to copy most is THE BLOB, and in fact the 1958 release is seen playing in a theater at one point, no doubt in hoping some of the classic's luster might rub off onto our subject. (Odd, though, is that a film released in 1958 is shown to be playing during the summer of 1957, the very period during which the film was being shot, in fact!) The color is gorgeous, trying for a Technicolor look, reminding us that films used to really take advantage of color photography, and how bland most everything today looks. While the color undoubtedly made the film more marketable, there are times when black and white might actually have been a better choice. Still, this isn't an exact recreation or anything, as we're treated to some computer imagery to portray the flying saucer in flight. It's a period film made for modern audiences, not a duplicate of the older films. Not a bad choice, and I wouldn't mind seeing more films of this nature. Happily, the monster effects are done with practical props. While the monster's design isn't all that stunning, it manages to be dangerous enough to provide some genuine suspense during the climax.

Our plot concerns a small desert town where a flying saucer crashes during a meteor storm. This is witnessed by a scientist and his impossibly sexy wife (man, do I miss the glamor look). When he investigates the crash scene, his body is taken over by a benevolent intergalactic cop who needs an earth body to hunt down the dreaded Ghota, an evil (and intelligent) creature that reduces all organic matter to its liquid base. Aiding our hero(es) in his mission is a beatnik waitress (don't worry, she isn't as annoying as she could have been). Once things get going and the actors are allowed to give actual performances, ALIEN TRESPASS picks up quite a bit. One thing though, the title is all wrong. The word "alien" as pertaining to extraterrestrial life really wasn't thrown around that much in the 50's. Had there actually been a movie made in the 50's called ALIEN TRESPASS, it would have been about spies sneaking into the country. "TRESPASS FROM OUTER SPACE" or "TRESPASS OF MARS" would have been more logical choices.

The music is a nice original score evocative of the Universal cues we all know and love. Heavy use of the theremin is a plus. The acting is pretty good in general, and most everyone looks the part, although the performances can be uneven since the tone of the film isn't always committed to what it wants to be. Best might be Eric McCormack in the dual role of Dr. Ted Lewis and Dr. Lewis as possessed by Urp, the Martian "federal Marshall." McCormack manages to play both parts well enough that you can actually believe they are different personalities. Urp displays a child-like sense of bewilderment upon surveying his new earthy surroundings, yet his determination in hunting down his quarry conveys the urgency of the situation rather well. McCormack undoubtedly enjoyed the fact that so much of Urp's story must be told through subtle facial expression and just enough exposition to get the story across without turning into a gab-fest. It looks like the kind of part any serious actor might jump at, and he handles it very well. Also good here is Dan Lauria as the local Police chief, who manages to convey exactly the sort of older character actor persona the part calls for. Robert Patrick, meanwhile, suggests someone used to doing westerns who just passed through this horror flick because the job offered a paycheck (some mock Ed Murrow-style interview segments confirm 'period actor Robert' to be a veteran of serial horse operas). Director R. W. Goodwin, for the most part, does a good job creating period visuals. The rather obvious set used for the crash scene of the flying saucer only adds to the film, rather than detract from it.

As a hook, the picture was advertised as if it were a real, unreleased 1950's science fiction film that had recently been discovered and finally released in 2009. The actors in the film even did promo reels claiming that their similarly-named Grandfathers and Uncles had made ALIEN TRESPASS back in 1957! It all adds up to a fun experience, making it even sadder that the film was barely released, and then to poor box office. It has since, at least according to the film's director in a new interview included on the DVD release, become a bit of a cult film. One can only hope more movies like this get the green light. Maybe next time they'll have some consistency in the tone.

Cheesecake Review

2011-09-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

So Close....

2011-09-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

I drew, Jeff Austin inked and lettered, and Kevin Thompson colored this DVD cover sleeve for the upcoming Alpha New Cinema release of Joshua Kennedy's ATTACK OF THE OCTOPUS PEOPLE. Note the endorsement quotes from Larry Blamire and Bob Burns! Sadly, we were delayed and couldn't get this image to Alpha in time for them to make their sleeves, so they had a house-produced cover standing by. Release is next week. Quite a blow, as I've been wanting to get in on cover art production for a long time. Oh well, it isn't so bad for me, really. I just feel bad about all the hard work Jeff and Kevin put into it.

Oddball Film Report: GODZILLA VERSUS THE SEA MONSTER (1966)

2011-09-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

    Japan's Toho film studio had been enjoying a huge popularity in the late 50's and early 60's as the premier factory for science-fiction thrillers. They were, in effect, the Hammer Films of Japan. Riding high on the continued success of the Godzilla films, and producing a high number of quality special effects-filled adventure movies, Toho had little to fear in terms of competition. Such films were expensive productions, and Toho had such an advantage in sheer size that the smaller studios couldn't hope to make similar films. The few that were made tended to be TV-level kiddie fare, like the Starman movies, PRINCE OF SPACE, and INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN. The occasional WARNING FROM SPACE seemed more a lark than anything else. Toho was safe until the 60's turned middle aged. Two things happened.

   First, Toho's special effects workhorse Eiji Tsuburya took his talents to television. There he produced the moody horror series Ultra Q, a sort of The Outer Limits with a weekly giant monster. This success would soon be followed by Ultraman, and the rest is history. It was much like when television began airing original product in the 1950's, when the movie studios had huge animation departments and made cartoons for theatrical showings. Early TV cartoons were predicted to be a flop due to the constraints of a TV budget on animation. Then the truth hit executives right between the eyes, the quality of the animation wasn't important as long as the cartoons were well-written and funny. Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, and several other stars eventually left the movies to find work in the new medium of television, joined by countless new personalities like Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, and Clutch Cargo. So what happened in Japan when it became clear that a weekly series could duplicate the formula of the Godzilla feature films? Crude imitations sprung up like ragweed, on the big screen and the small. GAMMERA THE INVINCIBLE, THE X FROM OUTER SPACE, MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET, THE MAGIC SERPENT, MAJIN, MONSTER OF TERROR and several others began to crowd their way into theaters, while TV screens suddenly saw shows like Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, The Space Giants, and Ultraseven across the dial. While the fad for feature films died out in the 70's, the TV product flourished and continues to operate today.

   Second, and partly the byproduct of Item One, Toho began to reduce their budgets in order to keep their films profitable. KING KONG VS GODZILLA, GODZILLA VS THE THING, and GHIDRAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER had been lavish affairs increasing ticket sales by giving audiences multiple giant monsters in each film. Starting with 1965's MONSTER ZERO, the budgets were cut back to accommodate rising costs. Thus, the film features the first heavy use of stock footage in a Godzilla film. All in all though, the film is still an impressive display of Tsuburya's craftsmanship, and also benefits from having one of the best scripts in the series. Still, those model buildings don't come cheap. The studio needed a more economical way to make Godzilla movies. The solution was pretty simple, make stories that don't involve cities. So Godzilla got an extended working vacation to produce what are called the Island Pictures.

   It's much easier and cheaper to toss together a miniature jungle than a miniature city, so Godzilla's adventures for the next couple of films took place on tiny islands in the South Seas. Also, the films were turned over to a new director and composer. Gone were Ishiro Honda's brooding darkness and Akira Ifukube's pounding scores. Instead, the lighter hand of helmer Jun Fukuda gave these adventures a real 'pop' feel, and the music provided by Masuro Sato had an ear toward light adventure and occasional comedy. Rather than damage the series, though, GODZILLA VERSUS THE SEA MONSTER and SON OF GODZILLA remain two of the most entertaining entries in the entire run of films.

   Unfortunately, they feel more suited to TV, and that's just where they landed here in the States. While the other films in the series had been, and would continue to be released theatrically in the United States (although the previous film, MONSTER ZERO, wouldn't see US release until 1970!), GODZILLA VERSUS THE SEA MONSTER and SON OF GODZILLA were released straight to television. This means that those seeking an English language version of these films must choose between the US TV prints (which are cropped, but have decent dubbing) or the 'International' prints which saw theatrical issue in England (which are scope and uncut, but feature horrible dub tracks recorded in China on the demand of the Japanese studios). For me, personally, SON OF GODZILLA's US dub track makes it a no-contest decision. On the other hand, there's GODZILLA VERSUS THE SEA MONSTER. The American dub is much, much better, with more natural sounding voices for the characters (the comic relief guy has a deeper voice than the others, while in the International version he is given a grating, high-pitched voice, like a mutant Jerry Lewis or something). Oddly, though, the dialog tends to be better in the International print. That version, by the way, is actually titled EBIRAH, HORROR OF THE DEEP. I have both versions, and count them as two different movies. In a perfect world, though, I could lay the American dub and title over the International print and have the best picture and sound possible. In fact, had I more money and the equipment to do so, I would make custom versions of the films. I'm that fanatic about it, and one day hope to arrange a deal with Toho to theatrically issue my 'ultimate' versions across America on a fantastic double bill. It's nice to have dreams.

    While the budget for effects have been scaled back, there's no skimping on the actors in either Island film. Here, we get the Cary Grant of Japan himself, Akira Takarada in the lead role. The Girl, meanwhile, is played by Kumi Mizuno, who may be the most famous Japanese actress in the world, since there are actually a fair number of Americans and Canadians who actually know her face and name. She remains quite popular in her home country, and has appeared in a liberal number of fantasy films in her career (thus her American visibility). She remains most famous among Godzilla fans as the seductive Miss Namikawa in MONSTER ZERO. Her exotic (even by Japanese standards) beauty and natural screen presence make her a welcome addition to any movie. Also on hand, among others, is Akihiko Hirata. Like Takarada, Hirata had starred in the original GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS. There, he played the tragic tortured scientist Dr. Serizawa who ultimately destroyed the first Godzilla and took his own life to keep the secret of his terrible weapon. In other words, he was the guy with the eye patch. He's wearing another eye patch in this movie, as the cruel Captain of the Guard of a renegade army operating a heavy water plant. Those wondering what a crossover between Godzilla and James Bond would be like need look no further than this film, and the next year's KING KONG ESCAPES*.

   *It was originally King Kong, not Godzilla who was supposed to face off against the Sea Monster! Toho had the project all planned out, but had to substitute their own famous giant at the last minute when rights issues to Kong became tangled. Happily, the problem would be fixed and the next year saw screens graced by KING KONG ESCAPES, which was actually based on a Saturday morning King Kong cartoon series!

   Some editing has been done to start things off with a bang, as a sequence from the middle of the film showing The Sea Monster sinking a sailboat has been lifted and tacked on just after the title card. The only credit we get here is the title (the only title in the franchise to spell out the word 'versus'), while the International print featured a full credit sequence. Said sequence occurs over a piece of music rather more soft and melodic than the American distributor, Walter Reade-Sterling, may have wanted to open with. (Then there's the opening to SON OF GODZILLA, -which cuts a whole opening scene with Godzilla- removing all of the credit plates, yet keeping the sequence intact!) While this move makes sure the kiddies in the audience will be hooked enough to sit out the ensuing human drama until the monster surfaces again, the move also serves to diminish the monster's first appearance later in the film (not that the title doesn't let us know ahead of time that we'll be seeing a sea monster). This move makes it even weirder that the pre-credit monster scene in SON OF GODZILLA got trimmed. Another issue raised by this re-edit is that you can see the crew of the sailboat that gets clawed, and its the same group of people who run across the Sea Monster "three months later....."

   There has been a disaster at sea (which as we can see in our version of the film is a future projection of attack by a giant claw that rises from the waves and crushes a tiny sailboat), and some fishermen have gone missing. The superstitious mother of one of the men has consulted a mystic of some kind, and the report is that the son is still alive. The younger son (who I'll call Ed, because despite all the times I've seen this film I can't recall any of the character names) also believes his brother to be alive, and sets out to find him. (In the International print, there's a short scene where Ed goes to the police to seek help, but they can't really do anything when the only lead is a mystic's confirmation that the fella isn't dead. Seeing an ad for a dance contest that awards a sailboat first prize, Ed takes his leave of the police station.) Back in the American print, Ed shows up at the dance contest, which is in its third day. There's a number of twisting couples who look tired, but frankly they don't look like they've been twisting for three days straight (can you imagine how badly the place would stink? Surely they've been getting rest breaks, and more if the perfect makeup and hairdo's of the female contestants is any clue)! This contest of endurance has taken its toll on two wheezing figures, I'll call them Bob and Bing, who collapse and crawl to the sidelines where Ed is standing. Ed asks if there's any chance for him to enter the contest, but he's told he's three days late. Still, Ed really needs a boat. With nothing better to do, apparently, Bob and Bing drive the lad down to the pier to look at all the boats.

   On the dock, the gang spots a luxurious sailing yacht, the YAHLEN, and decide to poke around a bit. Like Goldilocks, the guys wander in and snoop around. When one of the gang wonders aloud what the owner looks like, they find dashing gent, er, Dean (Akira Takarada) aiming a rifle at them. Explaining they meant no harm, the guys manage to talk Dean into letting them stay the night (although Dean does chastise them for being too loud). The next morning, Dean finds his rifle gone. Ed has dismantled it ("I thought it was a toy") and this riles Dean, who orders the men off the boat. (Later, it is confirmed, however passingly, that the rifle was indeed a toy. Dean is a professional thief, you see, having recently swiped a huge amount and is currently hiding out on the YAHLEN. The toy rifle shows that, while Dean might be a thief, he's not looking to hurt anyone. His hobby is picking locks, a skill employed quite a bit later in the picture, and Takarada gives a great performance as he nearly salivates every time he sees a new kind of lock, a new challenge for a master craftsman. Upon opening one door, one of the others asks if safe cracking is really so easy. Confirming how seriously Dean takes his work, he counters with "Only amatuers think that.")

   On deck, it is discovered that the boat is far out at sea. Ed has set out in the night to search for his brother, believing the boat to be a gift from "the gods" and that it would be disrespectful not to take advantage of it. Bing and Bob wonder if they and Dean can take the boat back to Japan. Dean gets uneasy and decides there's no harm in humoring the kid (apparently Bing and Bob don't have jobs to get back to). (This is another moment handled slightly better in the International dub, where it's a bit more obvious that what makes Dean so nervous is talking to the authorities upon return to shore. In the US dub, it isn't quite as obvious he's nervous about the cops. He just seems to get bugged in the middle of a conversation.)

   On the voyage, Dean's identity is betrayed by the radio announcer who notes the thief has made off with a yacht belonging to an American film producer (given the name of "Walter Riener" in the International dub). With Bob and Bing seasick, they really aren't in a position to apprehend this criminal, so they hang out together for a few more days at sea.

   With the food supply beginning to run low, the men are talking about taking the boat away from Ed and heading home. Ed suddenly needs their help, though, when storm clouds start moving in. The YAHLEN gets swept into a raging storm. One of the men spots a huge claw rising from the sea (complete with spy-movie guitar riff theme). Since we saw the boat attacked at the start of the movie, here we just fade out (which could have been a nice effect, actually, if it weren't so obvious the scene had simply been relocated). Fading in, we find the gang has washed up on the beach of an island somewhere. Dean's stolen money has been claimed by Davy Jones. Keeping perspective, Dean bitterly notes the loot won't help them now. The logical first step is to climb to the highest point of the island and look around. On the climb up, Bob (the comic relief guy) finds an ivory-handled sword. At least they have a weapon now, and proof someone else is, or has been, on the island.

   From the cliff, the men see a ship coming in. They run down to the jungle to get a better look, as Dean smells something fishy. Indeed, the ship is hauling human cargo to work as slave labor for a bunch of soldiers wearing white uniforms. Among the slaves is Diao (HER name I remember! Kumi Mizuno makes a delectable native girl), who manages to sneak away when some of the slaves make a break in the other direction. Though a couple of the slaves make it to a boat (and what was a native boat doing just sitting on the beach of THIS island?), they are eaten when the Sea Monster, a "mammoth lobster" surfaces. The ship the soldiers use sprays a yellow liquid all around when entering or leaving the harbor, this chemical repels the monster (Ebirah in the International version, though unnamed here) which stalks the waters surrounding the island. No one else can enter or leave the island. The Captain of the Guard, aided by this demonstration of the monster's ferocity, let's the slaves know there is no escape before herding them off. The Captain's CO, via television monitor, lets him know the girl has escaped, and he saw this action on camera (why he waited so long to let his Captain of the Guard know this isn't clear, but presumably it's to let the guy know he should stay on his toes. This doesn't strike me as the kind of organization that would tolerate much incompetence). A detail is sent out to find her.

   About this sea monster issue. At no time are we told if Ebirah was somehow created by the soldiers, maybe as a byproduct of their heavy water experiments, or if the monster was already living near the island when the soldiers moved in and they simply took advantage of an impressive natural resource. The monster's existence is known of on another island, but with no indication of how long anyone has known about it. Even more puzzling is a giant condor which shows up later, literally out of the blue. We're given no clue as to if this bird is a natural inhabitant of the island or or he's been contracted by the soldiers to attack Godzilla. If it is the second story, where did the soldiers get a giant bird? (One item, Godzilla is already on the island, sleeping within a giant cave. Yet, the monsters don't seem to have run into him before he's revived this time around. So.... maybe the soldiers imported the giant lobster and bird from somewhere else....?)

   Diao, running through the woods, runs across our heroes and forms a quick alliance with them. Spotted by a balloon-mounted camera (and interesting, if theoretically problematic method of spying on the island's goings on), the group flees. They manage to evade the pursuing soldiers by taking refuge in a cave beneath a cliff, creating the impression that they have fallen into the sea. We now learn that Diao's people have been abducted from Infant Island, home of the mighty Mothra! (This is Mothra's third showing in a Godzilla movie, having first confronted the big blue dinosaur in what is widely considered the best film of the series, GODZILLA VS THE THING. It was Mothra who set Godzilla on the side of right when the bug talked Godzilla and Rodan into joining forces to protect the earth from GHIDRAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER. Mothra seems to be a supernatural creature of sorts, with a strong mental link to a pair of foot-high twin girls. These "fairies" speak in unison and keep peace on the island by acting as a go-between for the natives and their weird deity. Of note, this is the last film of the original series to feature the Fairies, or the natives of Infant Island. With their passing (?), Mothra reverts to a far less supernatural giant insect for the remainder of the series.)

  (The Fairies are for the first time not being played by The Peanuts, a novelty twin singing group quite popular in the early 60's. Here, the parts have been turned over to the Pair Bambi, who actually have a more exotic 'islander' look than the oh-so-Japanese Peanuts. I guess the Pair Bambi didn't have much of an impact, though, for this is the last we see of them, or the Fairies. On a personal note, I think the Bambi twins are actually a bit cuter than the Peanuts. I wonder how many a geek war I've started with that sentence......)

    We'll occasionally cut to the island to see the natives doing a big dance number in the hopes of waking the snoozing Mothra. On the upshot, Infant Island is much more lush than when we last saw, meaning I guess that Mothra's monstrous appetite has been curbed since the creature's very existence in Japan spelled doom in fear the bug would start eating once hatched from its egg (such was the concern of the Fairies in having Mothra's lost egg, having washed up on a Japanese beach in GODZILLA VS THE THING). (Another issue the island faced in earlier chapters was lingering sickness from radioactive fallout, although the natives themselves were immune thanks to a berry juice they drank which counteracted radioactivity. By GHIDRAH, THE THREE HEADED MONSTER, this was no longer an issue. Which only makes sense, as bomb testing near the island would have been halted once it was discovered a civilization existed there, and unlike the natives of Bikini, there'd be a colossal, indestructible insect to reckon with if the islanders are relocated. Also, unlike you see in much popular culture, fallout doesn't do permanent damage to an area, so it makes sense that life on the island would be returning to normal. But what happened to the natives after this adventure? For the next time we see Mothra, in DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, the giant bug has been relocated to Monsterland on Ogasawara Island.) At any rate, Mothra hasn't been able to keep the soldiers from raiding the island periodically to steal slave labor. (In the International dub, the unnamed soldiers are said to be the Red Bamboo. Possibly this detail was dropped from the US version to make the enemy more mysterious?)

   Diao lets Ed know his brother is alive and has washed up on Infant Island, so one plot thread is starting to tie off. Another item for our party is that the cave they've taken refuge in also houses Godzilla, sprawled out in the cavern far below. It also turns out, he's still alive! (Actually, I'm not sure why hearing his heartbeat echo through the rocks would be so shocking. It's not like Godzilla has been out of action for very long. Excluding GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS, where he actually did get destroyed, Godzilla has been buried alive twice, and dumped into the ocean with a silk bag over his head. MONSTER ZERO breaks continuity by taking place sometime in the future, despite making direct reference to the previous chapter, but that climax also found Godzilla supposedly buried alive under the sea. Starting with our subject today, the big blue dinosaur would be allowed to conclusively live out the end of each picture.) After sneaking into, and escaping from, the enemy command center, the gang decides they can get the pursuing soldiers off their hands by waking Godzilla (although there is some concern over Godzilla's causing more damage in the long run than the soldiers and their A-bombs). During the escape, by the way, Ed gets tangled in a spy balloon and floats away, and Bob is captured and tossed into a dungeon where the Infant natives are kept busy making the yellow liquid that repels the sea monster (add your own drawn butter joke here). Ed meanwhile is carried to Infant Island (!) where he just happens to find his brother, eh, Tom, I'll call him.

   Tom is a restless crusader who cringes upon seeing human oppression (one wonders how he felt living so close to Red China) and he intends to set out to to rescue the slave natives, single handed if need be. He and Ed are given a small boat and supplies to return to the other island, Letchi, I think they say (this is the first time I've had a chance to listen to the American dub in years, as the US version has yet to be issued on DVD, at least officially. I had to track down an old Video Treasures VHS to see this gem again). The Fairies make sure to include some of the yellow liquid to use against the sea monster (so the Infant Islanders have already been making the stuff for a while now, and seems to be the only reason the soldiers abducted so many of their number. Again, where did the giant lobster come from? How long has it been around? Did the soldiers go to the island where it lived or did they have it imported to the island they took over?).

   Back to Dean and the others. How to wake Godzilla? Shock treatment. Diao had earlier taken a loop of copper wire from the enemy supply room to wear as a necklace. Using the sword Bob had collected -a weapon which belonged to one of Diao's people, making one wonder why the soldiers allowed a native to keep his sword when they abducted him- as a lightning rod, Dean and Bing uncoil the copper wire and lay it out so it makes contact with Godzilla. The idea is to jump-start the dinosaur with lightning. And thus we have another major step in Godzilla's evolution. While the first Godzilla was immune to electric shock, high tension wires DID work against the second Godzilla! This allowed the JSDF to direct the big blue dinosaur away from populated areas. Unfortunately, King Kong was made stronger by electric current and he destroyed these structures, sucking the juice out of them. In the climax, Kong's life is saved when lightning strikes him and he is able to overcome Godzilla. The ape is so charged with energy that his hands issue sparks whenever he makes contact with Godzilla, and this action seems to cause Godzilla pain. In the next film, the JSDF use artificial lightning against the beast. While Godzilla isn't as repelled as much as before, the operation does work. Huge metal nets are dropped on the monster and electric towers blast away at him with Tesla-like bolts of energy. Godzilla comes very near to defeat in this sequence, but the generators overload and the power dies long enough for Godzilla to regain his feet and make short work of the towers. Here, he's revived by lightning. In a later film, he will draw strength and vitality from an electrical storm, just as Kong had done earlier. In fact, he'll store this energy and later transform himself into a giant electro-magnet to defeat Mecha-Godzilla! (When Toho restarted the series with GODZILLA 1985, the monster again drew power from lightning, souped up by radioactivity from an exploded nuclear missile in the upper atmosphere!) Over the series we see Godzilla develop an immunity to electric discharges, and eventually incorporate the power into his system. Talk about adapt and overcome!

   So Ed and Tom are returning to the island when a storm hits. Their supplies washed overboard, they have no protection when the sea monster surfaces (they'll make it to shore, though, or else the movie would be over). Right on cue, the makeshift lightning rod system works and Godzilla is awake! Breaking out of the mountain, he and the sea monster size each other up before round one. No need in spoiling it for those who haven't seen the film yet, so I'll stop there with the detailed plot examination.

   One sequence I must mention is when Godzilla is attacked by a squadron of MIGs. Although hampered by the cropped image of the TV print, this scene features some of my favorite footage of the entire series. One shot in particular that always impresses me is a shot tracking a jet as it closes in on Godzilla's legs, only to be swiped from the air by his tail. The shot is simply hypnotic. The scene in general is great stuff, if not for the formatting for television.

   After this South Seas adventure, Godzilla and Ebirah would work together again (sort of) in GODZILLA'S REVENGE. That film was mostly about a child with an overactive imagination who gets abducted by bank robbers. All the monster stuff is seen in dream sequences! If this takes place in 'our' world, or the world where the other films are set, though, remains a mystery. Basically, the kid leans lessons in self-defence from Godzilla's son, Minya, while to pair watch a number of stock footage battles from earlier films. (An actual, original, shot-for-this-film battle does occur, though, as Godzilla and Minya must face off against Gabera, a sort of cat-faced ogre.) GODZILLA'S REVENGE has to be the weirdest film of the series. For some reason, UPA brought the film to US theater screens, where American audiences could at least see the fight scenes (including the sequence with the MIGs) from GODZILLA VERSUS THE SEA MONSTER and SON OF GODZILLA in their glorious wide scope. Godzilla, of course, would go on to many more adventures. Ebirah would return (briefly, like all the other monsters) in GODZILLA: FINAL WARS, the last Godzilla movie to date. (I doubt that status will last long, however.)

Inks by Jeff Austin!

2011-09-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

The best inker in the game is Jeff Austin, see below for numerous examples that support this notion........

Hello Nurse, the blonde bombshell of Saturday morning cartoons

Part of a DeCarlo inspired pinup set based on
famous fairytale characters

From the upcoming Domino Lady vs The Mummy, for Moonstone.

Queen Ty' Ra' Nee of Mars

I wanted to do this as a one-shot comic,
no dice yet.

From Main Enterprises' The Gallery

Another Preymate

Interview for Moonstone project

2011-09-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

And I quote:

All Pulp interviews Domino Lady vs. the Mummy penciller Rock Baker.

This Halloween, Moonstone heads back to their monstrous roots with the Return of the Monsters Comic Book Event. Return of the Monsters features four stand-alone tales of pulp’s mightiest heroes facing off against some classic monsters. One of those titles is Domino Lady vs. the Mummy by co-writers Nancy Holder and Bobby Nash with art by Rock Baker and Jeff Austin.

All Pulp sat down with the penciller Rock Baker to talk about this upcoming book. You can read the full interview at http://allpulp.blogspot.com.

Direct link:

http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2011/09/all-pulp-interviews-moonstones-return_16.html

Quite a feather in my cap, as you might imagine! Here are some preview shots.........

Now you didn't think I'd show you the mummy, did you? First rule of movie monsters: keep 'em off screen until the right time for the reveal. Same thing for comic book fiends.

Oddball Film Report: TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST (1976)

2011-09-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

     Motion Pictures have always been divided into two classes, the studio productions and the independents. Mostly, this means films produced under the studio operation tend to be much slicker and more expensive fare, while independents are films made by individuals or small companies outside the major production houses in Hollywood (and come in varying degrees of quality). Today, 'idependent' films are usually assumed to be pretentious, artsy pictures designed to appeal to the intelligentsia, who salivate over anything that 'the masses' don't 'understand.' That's a fairly modern concept, however, as independent films are the very kind of cheap genre fare produced for the mass market, the junk that shows up on late-night television. Before video, in the glory days of actual film movies, there was a period in which it became economical enough to make movies that independent businessmen and regional talents started trying their hands at film production. The 1960's were the decade that saw the regional film really take off, as countless exploitation movies were ground out in states like Texas and, most visibly, Florida. By the 1970's, it seemed that just about everybody was trying to make a movie.

    Naturally, genre fare was what got peddled most. They could be made on the cheap and would have a built in audience. Monster movies were a seemingly can't-miss market (and a bit more reputable than the even more base sexploitation field, which also flourished in this period). Thus, the early to mid 70's saw the period which gave us what I call The Regional Horror Flick. It seems that during this period, most every State in the Union tried to get a monster movie on the market. (Some States even had regional producers who made multiple films, such as Bill Rebane in Wisconsin and Charles Pierce in Arkansas, to say nothing of the continued output of independent producers in California, Florida, and Texas, like David Friedman, Doris Wishman, and Larry Buchanan, respectively.) Oregon gave us SASQUATCH, THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, Idaho got to the party late with THE BEING, and New Mexico offered THE TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST.

     TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST was filmed in 1972, my sources say, but not released until 1976. The cast is filled with unknowns who never did anything else (although the cast isn't bad here, let me point that out. While none of them give the most natural performance, they do say their lines with a believable conviction), and the crewmen's names aren't likely to excite many movie nuts. The one name really of note, to a particular crowd, is that of Joe Blasco, who provided the effects make-up and even played the titular beast. Blasco provided some pretty good make-up jobs for assorted genre projects like THE CLONUS HORROR, THE TOUCH OF SATAN, and JOHNNY FIRECLOUD before going into television. He also headed up his own makeup school. His creature here isn't bad, what we can see of it anyway, coming across like a blackish cross between a gorn and a sleestak. The film itself is more or less a 70's version of a 50's monster movie (I'd wager the producers saw the film's future as being in television broadcasts, though I have no idea how much play, if any, it got), and a nicely professional -if budget conscious- production. (It was one of countless obscurities to be saved by the early video boom of the 80's.)

     We open in the desert, where mineralogist Paul Carlson is digging around near an Indian reservation. In a rather limp bit, Paul hears some screaming echoing across the canyon and sees a rather goofy ceremonial mask. (Did the American Indians make a lot of stuff out of foil-covered paper?*) This is actually a prank being pulled by Paul's former Professor, Johnny "Longbow" Selinas and a couple of students entertaining a lady photographer, Cathy Nolan. She took a shot of Paul's reaction, which amounted to a blank gaze, but promises not to use the photo. Our romantic leads in place, Paul and Cathy begin to show interest in each other. Longbow sets things in motion by inviting Paul to join everybody at dinner.

      (* I assume the mask is supposed to be silver, which many tribes actually did make wide use of. Well into the 20th Century, and probably today, many a tribe supported itself by selling silver trinkets to tourists. This mask really doesn't suggest an origin with the American Indians, though. If you really stretch your imagination, it looks more Mayan or Aztec.)

     Meanwhile, a meteor has struck the moon and debris from the impact is headed toward earth. Scientists predict the majority of the particles should burn off in the atmosphere, and provide nothing more that a harmless free fireworks display. Yeah, right. Our picture is called TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST, remember? In pretty short order, Paul and Cathy run off alone. They find themselves on a crest overlooking the city as the meteor shower begins. One of the stray rocks hits Paul in the temple, but as is later explained, Paul feels no pain due to the "great speed" of the object. Even if you accept this, the object moves across the screen at a much slower pace than a bullet, which has been known to cause great pain when it enters a human body. Cathy notices the scratch on Paul's forehead and tries to doctor it with a tissue, despite his claims of feeling fine. Still, Cathy is worried and Paul takes her back to his place where she can dress the wound. Before they leave the area, though, Paul finds the larger chunk of moon rock that grazed him and takes it with. As they go, however, they fail to notice the discarded tissue is now subject to a pulsating glow! For an extra bit of foreshadowing, a lizard has come to rest on the now irradiated paper. (I had hopes this meant a giant lizard would be roaming around, and a monster fight could break out in the last reel, but it was not to be.)

     Since this is pretty much a science-fiction version of a werewolf story, we move in that fashion. Paul starts feeling woozy when he's out with Cathy and Longbow at a rock concert (the director's son's band, maybe? They have an entire song featured here) and his friends drive him home and put him to bed. Later that night, a monster kills a guy outside his house. Paul also wakes up to find his pet monitor lizard missing from his cage, which now sports a huge hole in the side. (Okay, we already know that Paul is a part-time monster. So, did he eat the monitor lizard? No trace of the animal is seen again. But I find it difficult to believe that a man-sized monster would be hungry enough to attack a guy after finishing off a whole monitor lizard. Plus, Monster-Paul's attacks are a bit messy, and there's no trace of blood anywhere near the lizard's cage. Did the lizard flee upon Paul's first transformation? Animals are always monster-sensitive, after all. But that doesn't work either, because there's no way a monitor lizard could inflict the kind of damage we see done to the cage. So what gives? This could have been a bit more dramatic if the lizard had died of shock during the night, something to keep in mind if there's ever a -yeah, sure- remake.)

      While out with Cathy, Paul blacks out when a camera flash causes a spark to jump off a moon rock on display at the museum. The spark hits Paul in the spot where the fragment is. Longbow will later figure out that the pieces of moon rock react to each other with an electric charge when close enough together. This has something to do with why Paul changes into a monster when the full moon rises. (Just accept it, this is a monster movie.) Why does it turn him into a half-human reptile? You got me. At least when everyone figures out what's going on, Paul confines himself to a hospital for treatment. Other man-monsters like THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON or John Agar's character in HAND OF DEATH tend to avoid hospital care under the theory that the staff doctors would waste too much time learning what the monster-ized scientist already knows. This usually leads to trouble, as you might expect. Having Paul be a scientist who doesn't know everything already (as most movie scientists do, no matter what their field) is a nice touch.

      I'll avoid much else, should you wish to see the film yourself.

     One bit I must comment on, however, concerns how Longbow figures out what's going on. This involves a series of slides showing a dear hide painting, one I think said to be 400 years old, showing how a similar monster ran amok and terrorized the Indians. So not only has a meteor hit the moon and sent a particle of moon matter flying at the earth which survived passing through the atmosphere and lodged itself in a man's brain twice in recorded history, but this also happened IN THE SAME GENERAL AREA OF THE UNITED STATES!!!! Think of the cosmic odds Paul beat to become the second lizard-man to stalk New Mexico! I'd want this guy buying lottery tickets for me!

       Despite some silly twists like the one described above, TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST isn't really that bad. It moves at a healthy clip, doesn't run too long, and is fairly professional in its production values. It compares favorably with any number of modest drive-in movies produced around the same time. It's just too bad we don't see more of the monster since, being a Moon Beast, the black suit is only seen in the dark. The film also formed the base of a particularly humorous episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

A Few Pieces of Cheesecake

2011-09-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

I don't often try for likenesses, its not my strong point. Mostly, I'll use a photo I like for reference but not try too hard to capture the face exactly. Every now and then, though, I'll try. This first photo is an all too rare example of getting it right....

Christy Marie in her Little Mermaid costume.
Probably my best piece.

"Oh! I see we're all up for the same part!"

No model here, just my imagination at work. Although,
I really wished I had a model when I did this one because
it took forever to get it to look this good, and I'm still not
happy with it!

Based on a shot of Mala Mastroberte

This one was based on a photo of Victoria Principal,
but it looks more like Marilyn Monroe since I made
the hair platinum instead of brunette.

And this one is based on a shot of Dolly Read

Girls for Geeks

2011-09-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

Some of my science fiction-based pinups. To keep busy, I'll often entertain a wacky whim. Here are some of them.

Inks by Jeff Austin

Inks and colors by Jeff Austin

First in a series of DeCarlo-style themed pinups. This one is from our 'preymates' collection.
Inks by Jeff Austin.

In a similar vein, Jeff and I came up with this for the cover of a Frankenstein-themed fanzine.

Remember the Towers!

2011-09-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

I don't know what I can say that hasn't been said already. We all know the day, and what happened ten years ago. A cowardly, vile, and cruel attack was carried out by an enemy that wished to declare war, not only on a nation, a country, but the very people whom they had never seen before. Men, women, children, anyone who believe different than they do. America was attacked because, despite the tarnish of recent decades, it stands as a symbol of freedom around the world. Freedom from tyranny and oppression. Freedom to worship, to learn, to grow. That's a big responsibility, and one not taken lightly. God bless America. God bless America because it stands as a shining light of hope to those who need it. This great republic will always be despised by some, for it is graced by God. For we have freedom, true freedom, that most precious of gifts, which can be so easily lost if we abuse it. In the United States, there is the freedom of the vote, and our leaders are held in check by laws that govern them, not just the people. People aren't thrown into jails for owning a radio, or sharing subversive literature, like the Bible. Women are every bit the equal of their men in America, they're not hidden away or mutilated at the whim of their husbands. In America, women are honored and protected, free to vote, to learn, to preach. Yes, we have much to be thankful for, much to be despised for. We're not perfect, we never claimed to be. But God bless America. Keep and protect us from those who would kill us for daring to believe in you, or in nothing at all. Amen.

IT Conquered The World, an under-rated classic

2011-09-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

   Last night I watched ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS. As rabid monster movie fans probably know, the film is a remake of an earlier film, in this case IT CONQUERED THE WORLD. In the 1960s, Texas exploitation movie director Larry Buchanan was commissioned by American International Pictures to make a slate of films that could be sold to television. AIP was enjoying great success with the new medium, as any color monster movie was a big seller (hence the AIP-TV releases of things like THE X FROM OUTER SPACE, MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET, VOYAGE INTO SPACE, WAR OF THE MONSTERS, THE RETURN OF THE GIANT MONSTERS, etc, etc). I don't know if the idea was Buchanan's or AIP's, but the bulk of Larry's movies were remakes of earlier AIP films (so much so that there were only minor changes in the scripts). Thus, VOODOO WOMAN became CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN sired THE EYE CREATURES, THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED mutated into IN THE YEAR 2889, and so on.

   (While most of Buchanan's monster movies were remakes, he did find time to film a couple of original stories. MARS NEEDS WOMEN is a cheap but effective opus about invasion from space. "IT'S ALIVE!" meanwhile is a minimalist production about motorists being held hostage in a cave under an isolated farmhouse, and a dinosaur -of sorts, being the same cheap gill-man suit used in CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION, Larry's remake of THE SHE CREATURE- is lurking down there with them. Amid the cheap monster antics, Buchanan even found time to cobble together a war movie starring John Agar, HELL RAIDERS, which until recent years was considered a lost film. Legend has it the first person to view the film was Agar's friend John Wayne, at the stars home before the print was even dry!)

   Buchanan's movies are almost interesting, if not for the "we've seen this all before" nature of viewing them. Working with minuscule budgets (even by AIP standards) and sparse resources, Buchanan's TV movies are like watching really ambitious home movies a gang of friends decided to make with their neighbor's 16mm camera. Yet each is in color (making sure the films continued to air for decades on late-night blocks on countless UHF stations) and features a name actor like John Agar, John Ashley, and Tommy Kirk (say what you will, for a cheap TV movie, featuring even such faded personalities was quite an achievement). Agar is the star of ZONTAR, taking over the role played in 1956 by Peter Graves. One of the most obvious signs you're watching one of Buchanan's remakes is that you hear every line and say to yourself "the original guy did it better." Indeed, nothing demonstrates how natural the line readings were in the 50's AIPs than seeing them said again by someone with all the conviction of a ten year old in a school play about nutrition. Few cases are quite as stark as IT/ZONTAR.*

   (*The one quasi-exception to this formula is CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION, which stars Les Tremayne in a part once played by Chester Morris when the movie was called THE SHE CREATURE. Both films feature casts who handle their material pretty well. THE SHE CREATURE is still a superior movie, but Buchanan's movie for once doesn't constantly remind you of that fact.)

   IT CONQUERED THE WORLD was one of the cheapies rushed out by Roger Corman in the early days of AIP, when the outfit was producing ready-made double bills for the drive-in market (IT's co-feature was THE SHE CREATURE, AIP's first really big hit). I doubt the budget was much north of $30,000, and was probably much less. Yet the film has such a slick professional sheen that you'd never know it. It also proves that, while speed and cost were Corman's main concern, he was a good director. Aided by an intelligent script and fine actors, Corman gives his little flick a real depth and watchability many might not expect. Compare everything here to the flat interpretation of Larry Buchanan and you can see what I mean. IT is practically JAWS when compared to ZONTAR, and yet they share the same script. (Some of Ronald Stein's music cues from IT, as well as SAUCER MEN, and a couple of Les Baxter cues from the Beach cycle, are heard in ZONTAR as well. Zontar's 'voice' is even the exact same sound effect from the earlier film. As well, Agar at one point calls Zontar "It" in jest. At least Buchanan wasn't hiding it, all he was offering was a color version of the same film!)

   Part of it is the cast. (While Agar isn't bad in his version, he suffers a bit because the work was fresher when it was done the first time.) Peter Graves is our star, passing through on his way to TV immortality as the star of Mission: Impossible, and later long-time host of A&E's Biography. "I'd have to take a long, hard look at anything that was going to change the world, and me, so completely." His wife is played by Sally Fraser (also seen in THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN), who is just an absolute doll. She gets one of the most disturbing/upsetting/shocking scenes, and that's all I'll say. His best friend/rival Tom is played by future spaghetti western mainstay Lee Van Cleef. Van Cleef offers some of the film's most passionate and memorable passages, only outdone by Bevery Garland as his wife, Clair. She gets a pair of absolutely stirring moments where she can no longer hold back her hatred for the monster that has brainwashed her husband and caused mass panic in the town of Beachwood. When an intimidated-by-IT Tom leaves to greet Paul (Graves), whom IT has ordered Tom to kill, Clair rushes over to the radio set that Tom has been using to communicate with IT. Angrily flipping the switch to on, she lets the beast have it with both barrels, so to speak. "I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can you listen and you listen good! I hate your living guts for what you've done to my husband and my world! Tom may be afraid of you but I'm not, and I'm going to kill you! Do you hear me? I'm going to kill you!"

   Beverly hits this speech with full force, in a rushed anger that has been building for a long time. In the remake, the actress instead reads the line slowly, breaking up with occasional tears she must beat back. Both reactions work, but when Garland recites these lines, she makes a pretty good impression that she'll actually do what she says and kill the monster. That makes the invader's revealed power in the climax all the more impressive. The actress in the remake comes across like a lamb heading to the slaughter. Garland gives you the impression that even if the monster kills her, she'll make it a challenge for the critter. When she confronts the monster, she offers what may be the most famous line (aside from the stirring end speech from Peter Graves): "So that's what you look like! You're ugly! Horrible! Go ahead! Use your intellect on me! You think you're going to make a slave of the world? I'll see you in Hell first!" Following which she unloads a shotgun into the creature's face. (But I've said too much already about the climax of the picture.)

   The film is sort of a parable about communism. Tom is a brilliant scientist stymied by the powers that be, until he makes contact with a creature from Venus who offers to release mankind from the stupidity that has plagued it throughout history. The answer is cold intellect, removing man's emotions and giving him a single power to follow. Paul, meanwhile, has built a powerful new satellite which suddenly vanishes from all scopes. (A sign of changing times: Here, the project cost nine million dollars, in the remake, the cost has ballooned to twenty million.) But Tom knows what's going on. He's arranged for IT to board the satellite and ride it back to earth. Once here, IT destroys all power (even a hand-crank fails to work on a generator), and the world comes to a stand still. Only Tom still has power. His car is the only one on earth that still runs. And Clair discovers that her husband is not harmlessly insane.

   In a typically good scene, Tom is explaining how IT has taken control of all power. "All power is stopped at it source. Electricity, steam, water." Clair is skeptical and turns on the water hose. "I thought you said the water wouldn't work." She's convinced Tom is wrong about the invader. "Of course that works," Tom counters, "it belongs to me." Here, Clair knows something is wrong. For the first time, she must face the notion that Tom and his crazy ideas are cold hard reality. (In the ZONTAR version, she just sort of shrugs this off. Here, the seriousness of the situation is conveyed by Beverly's expression. There really is trouble, and its managed to sneak in under her nose, despite her being closest to IT through Tom's relationship. It's amazing how much more complex and intelligent one version of a story can be when the same script is used twice.)

   To control victims from a distance, IT uses living control devices that fly to the victims like birds. There's a great scene where Graves battles one of these while driving a jeep. Later, he must fight one of these things off in his spookilly-lit living room. (The film has some nicely fluid camera work throughout. Buchanan's best camera move is a tracking shot while a couple is walking through the woods.) The control devices are incredibly life-like, fluttering around like bats. (These same props found themselves pushed into service as flying alter-egos for a witch and her imp sidekick in Corman's THE UNDEAD.) ZONTAR's control devices are dubbed "Enjecto-pods" and look like stiff, winged lobsters bobbing about on a string (the original control devices also bobbed about on strings, obviously, but they did so with much greater realism). A sort of middle ground creature was used in homage to these movies when winged lobster creatures did the bidding of 1989's LOBSTER MAN FROM MARS.

   Paul Blaisdell's monster has gotten some hard knocks over the years, but I've always loved the thing. A sort of vegetable-based crustacean, IT had a big impact on my childhood. Really, I always thought it looked pretty cool, so I never really understood why people kept calling the design "goofy." I still figure a creature from space isn't locked into our laws of what looks proper, so a space monster can get away with goofy. Who's to say what goofy is? Surely standards of goofy would be different on, say, Jupiter than they are here, right?

   I could go on, obviously, but I think you get what I'm saying. IT CONQUERED THE WORLD is a great little movie that's sadly overlooked these days.

And Sally Fraser was the sexiest woman who ever lived.

Paul Blaisdell (left) and his creation, IT (center), with friend Bob Burns (right) on hand.

IT in Paul Blaisdell's workshop

Paul Blaisdell clowns around with IT

Animala on my mind.

2011-09-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you remember Jennifer Blaire's captivating performance as Animala (aka Pammy) in Larry Blamire's LOST SKELETON movies.

Well, I couldn't help doing some sketches of the character myself: (Note: Likenesses aren't my strong point, so I used a Dan DeCarlo-like style for these pieces.)

My first Animala pic, inks by Jeff Austin!

The infamous 'Rock Dance' scene.

This one I did as a Birthday present for Jennifer.

This was also a Birthday present, following the birth of the latest Blamire, Griffin. Inks by Jeff Austin.

20 Questions with Sam Sherman

2011-09-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

My interview for http://www.jabootu.net/ with prolific drive-in movie producer Sam Sherman, who gave us such gems as DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN, BRAIN OF BLOOD, and RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD!

http://jabootu.net/?p=5338

Baker's Log, First Entry

2011-09-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

Slowly, but surely, I'm entering the 21st Century....