CBS's "Psycho" Trend

Has anybody noticed CBS's penchant last week for referring to Alfred Hitchock's Psycho film?

On Wednesday night's Criminal Minds, that was the whole plot twist of the episode.  Robert Knepper is kidnaping, mutilating, and murdering girls to try and recaptured the beauty of his mother, faded film star May, played by Sally Kirkland.  There is a lot of give-and-take dialogue between Knepper's character, named "Rhett," and May.

When the police show up, Rhett and May surrender to the FBI and squad cars outside.  The sequence is shot from many alternating points-of-view.  One of these POVs is Rhett and May descending the front steps of their brownstone, like Gloria Swanson ready for her close-up.

It's only in one of these POVs that we get the clue that Mummy is -- er, a mummy.  Yep, May has been a silent partner all along while Rhett committed the murders.

Shrieking violins, anyone?

Now, on Friday, November 12, we saw a CSI:New York epsiode called "Scared Stiff."  A death in Central Park leads the investigators on a merrie chase which leads them to a closed-down funeral parlor.  As they wander through the basement where the processing rooms are, Detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) makes a comment like, "If we find a little-old-lady body in a black dress in a rocking chair, it's every man for himself."

Do you suppose this is a simple coincidence?   If, on  Sunday night's CSI:Miami, Horatio visits "Norman's Baits Shop," it's every man for himself!

Awkward Phrasing 101

Here we have a book by Michel Flynn, In the Country of the Blind, about conspiracy theories and secret societies and attempts to influence history by identifying key events and giving them a little nudge to provide the desired outcome.

Unfortunately, this interesting idea is handled competently, and no more.  At least in my opinion.

There are a few instances when the style of writing simply reaches out of the book and slaps you in the chops, really ruining the story experience.  A novel like this wants to involve you in its tale and characters.  It's a real detriment when something criminally clumsy reminds you that this is all a book that you can put down at any time.

Here is a very laughable, and truly pathetic example.  Here we have the situation of a creepy fellow who is being held at gunpoint by an equally creepy lady.  She is his superior in one of the several secret string-pulling conspiracies featured in this book.  She is also (like the guy) twisted in a sexual manner, too.  Having caught the guy betraying the company, she holds him at gunpoint and orders him to sexually service her.

Here is the deathless prose in its context on page 330:

Just when you figure out that Kennison has an erection, and that his female boss desires to avail herself of it, we find out that he "stiffened" when she points a gun at him.  I thought he was already stiff  ?!?

And the next sentence takes you from humor to sheer disgusted mourning for the sheer dopiness.  "She UNCOCKED the gun."

Well, now that I have given you a reason not to buy this book on Amazon for a penny, I'll leave you until Monday, when we will meet "The Two Ghosts of Superman!"

Soon I Will Be Invincible

This is a delightful read.

It's told in two first-person POVs.  The first is the tale of the greatest criminal genius of all time, whose first name was once Jonathan, but whose official moniker is Doctor Impossible.

The good Doctor gives us a fine insight into how obsession can become commonplace, how dedication to a certain idea can seem mad.  But it's only such madness that can lead to the power.  The power to move the Earth.  The power to build an island hideaway from which to laugh at the Earth's heroes.  The power to sneak into the Supers' own hideout, and laugh at them therefrom.

Ha ha, to LAUGH at them!

...Ahem.  The second POV is the tale told by Fatale, a robo-Bionic Woman kind of character, who honestly doesn't remember who she was before she woke up with -- er, augmentations -- after a terrible traffic accident.

Fatale's story and thoughts give us the other half of a world where Supers and their Nemeses are real.  We have the attempted government co-option of heroes, the effect of Magic on Heroes, the history and future of the world, invasions from space -- AND THOSE ARE JUST PART OF THE BACKSTORY,

Excessive capitalization aside, this is a fun book that will appeal to folks who like Watchmen or Mayer's Super-Folks, or who have just seen Megamind.

And, you've got to love the chapter titles, too.

Vulcan Doomed -- Film at Eleven

OKLAHOMA CITY (Disassociated Press) -- Once a fine polystyrene character from Ben Cooper, a once-proud Mr Spock mask disappeared into the garbage with bruised dignity this past Halloween 2010.

Once a proud celebrant of diversity and jigsaw-puzzle belt buckles, Spock mask took his final retirement with dignity and resignation.

"It is regrettable that my owner did not perform sufficient preservatory skills," were the final telepathic thoughts from the mask as it disappeared down the street in the garbage truck.

Still, we will always have this memory of the masks's final moments:

The Essential Superman Encyclopedia

This is a fine book with some rough edges.

It’s modeled on Michael Fleischer’s The Great Superman Book, first published in 1978. Here we have a cavalcade of entries, from J Wilbur Wolfingham and X-Plam to Adoria and Bizarro.

While in the introductions, authors Greenberger and Pasko apologize for not being 100% inclusive of EVERY super-fact, believe me this tome is exhaustive enough for most purposes.

The authors delight in giving references for every listing of things like suburbs of Metropolis or banks in Smallville, and other brain-bending facts. Of course, that’s the way we like it!

My main negative observation about the book is simply an inelegant writing style in some entries. Dozens of times – and I do mean DOZENS of times -- the phrase “wound up” is used to, er, “wind up” a description of a character. My most un-favorite example is somebody who “wound up shot.” That’s all; they just “wound up shot.”

I only came across one FACTUAL error. There may be more, but the only one this fanboy noticed is that the entry for Streaky the Supercat gets HIS gender wrong.

I don’t know if it is a case of not reading the sources or what, but as you can read and see, the book calls Streaky both “her” and “him” in the same entry. As you can further see from this comic panel (that I just scanned) from Action 261, Streaky is a tomcat, not a Thomasina.

The book has plenty of B&W illustrations and two color insert sections. My opinion on the color sections is simply that more of the art should have been from the first 30 or 40 years of Superman’s existence. And why does he look like a girly man on the cover?

The artists should have been credited, within the text, whenever possible. A simple numeric code or initials would have been great. Instead, there is simply a listing of the name of every artist whose work appears in the book.

Of course, there is neither any listing of the WRITERS of any of the stories that make up “the texts” or “the accounts” that the entries are based on. You wouldn’t really expect such a thing either, I suppose.

But – I was thrilled – indeed, laughed with joy, when I read the entry for Kurtiswana! I had forgotten this one. Other writers and artists may have been memorialized in the Superman canon by having streets or businesses named for them, but only my favorite Super-Artist, Curt Swan, had a COUNTRY named after him!

One sad attribute of this book is how hard it was for Greenberger & Pasko to even try to “tell the story” of some of these characters, given so many retro-continuity tangles and hand-wavings and ignoring of characters’ attributes in earlier appearances that have happened in comic books.

The authors have done a fine job, given the scrambled histories of characters such as Power Girl, and things like Pocket Universes, and the like.

So, if you care about the Man of Steel, get this book. Of course, I don’t know how many of you would simply sit down and read it, cover-to-cover, as I did. But it belongs on any Super-bookshelf.

After you’ve bought and read Fleischer’s book FIRST.

Happy 150th, Frankenstein - Readers Respond

Thanks for sharing Blog-o-Ween!

Happy Halloween from Frankenstein, Boris, and Me!

Bigfoot in Oklahoma Again

When I was a kid there was an area a few blocks west of a friend's house that was overgrown, muddy, and full of twisting trails made by the big kids who snuck around after dark to smoke or drink.

We called it "the Flats."  The whole area was maybe only a half-mile across at its widest point, but to us 11-year-olds, it seemed like an immense jungle.

Whenever I hear about a Bigfoot sighting in Oklahoma, I think of the critter crashing around in "the Flats," and I'm glad I didn't meet him there.

Strange Things Happen in This World . . .

Here's an article from 1996 about one of the later wrinkles in the story about "The Philadelphia Experiment."

The New Twilight Zone

I think that Twilight Zone '86 was a worthy successor to the original series.  In our slavish good-ole-days sense of nostalgia, let's not forget that Rod himself was capapble of turning out a few clinkers.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

This is a great book, and an "--ehhhh" film.

Here are some of the promotional items related to the movie.

Newspaper Monsters from 1990

Don't forget that headline!  "Horror plays role in social education."  It sure did for me!  From ages seven to about age 54, one of my dependable social contacts was with monster-lovers!

 We'd either talk about watching The Crawling Eye on Saturday Night Late Movies, or swap our tattered-but-memorized copies of Famous Monsters, or wonder about flying saucers -- why are they here? what do they want?

Musical Monday: Songs Our Mummy Taught Us

Here is a silly item from the 1960s, more monster novelty music.

Here's the link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=E69WFE21

Rumor has it that the "dor" listed as one of the artists is the so-called poet, Rod McKuen.  If so, then he has finally produced something I respect!

Lon Chaney as Dracula - Book Review

This is another script in the series started at MagicImage Press but now continued by BearManor Media, from editor Philip J Riley.


Having published all the classic Universal Monster movie scripts and others, Riley has continued his poking around in the crypts of Universal Studios’ history.

Many monster aficionados know that Lon Chaney was first in line to play Dracula, IN A TALKIE, for Universal when the studio acquired the rights to Bram Stoker’s novel from Mrs Stoker. However, sadly enough for us, throat cancer and death intervened. That’s part of why the role went to the actor who had been touring America in the stage play – Bela Blasco, aka Lugosi.

In this book Riley collects two scripts prepared for a Chaney portrayal – the second script cut short at the time of Chaney’s death.

One of the main changes in these early drafts from the finished Lugosi film is in the character of Dracula – no surprise here. The Dracula we meet in Transylvania is as described by Stoker – old, white-haired, slender, mustachioed, and hairy-palmed. The Dracula character presented in England is, just as described in the novel, a rejuvenated version, with black hair. He also travels under the nom de plume “Count De Ville,” not under his own name as in the final movie.

Also included in the book are the title cards text for the silent-film version of Dracula (for those theatres not yet converted to sound), and a script for FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, the unauthorized German Dracula film.

This latest series of script books by Riley is a sort of “What If?” thought exercise. There are myriads of scripts and treatments for movies that were never made for various reasons. The complete title of this book is, for instance, DRACULA Starring Lon Chaney: An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters. I have one earlier volume in this series, Wolfman vs Dracula.

If you’re curious at all about the book, then it’s for you!

There are a couple of negatives in my opinion of the book, but only minor ones. First off, Riley needs a proofreader for his introductory sections. It’s perfectly understandable to see, in a mimeoed script from the 1930s, a misspelling here or there.

But in Riley's Introduction -- a text piece generated and “typeset” by a computer -- THERE IS NO EXCUSE for saying that Lon Chaney was to play a “duel” role in a film. This happens twice, while alongside the text is a reproduction of a document from the 1920s/1930s that uses the word correctly!

Another rather jarring thing is to be reading along in the scripts and come across “the little box” – that tiny rectangle you see when you’re using a text character in a font that does not contain a certain letter or character. Instead, you get “the little box.”

This makes me wonder if the typewritten script pages have ALSO been “word-processed” into a typewriter font.

The more I think about it, the crazier I get. So, simply, get the book if you want to learn more about movie monsters, and the 1931 Dracula film in particular.

A Halloween Mixup

Here's a halloween mixup story from the October 1964 Jack and Jill Magazine.

Bigfoot in Oklahoma !?!?

Say What?

Well, twenty years ago, it seemed like a distinct possibility ...

Stephen King's Silver Bullet

In 1985, when the film Silver Bullet was released, dear Mr King was cranking out scary stuff left and right.

This is the theatrical handout for that movie.

Party Treats with a Missing Head !

Unfortunately, I have no idea why I cut out the head of this boy.  There are some things I DON'T remember, believe it or not.

Werewolves Are Misunderstood

From 1985, we learn about Porphyria, which has also been called "Vampire's Disease," and also featured into the plot of an episode of CSI just a couple of weeks ago.

Musical Monday - The Munsters: The Newest Teen-Age Singing Group

Even though the cast of TV's The Munsters are featured on the cover of the album, this is actually the music of a manufactured teen rock'n'roll group made to capitalize on the Munster craze.

Here is the track list:

1) Munster Creep

2) Frankenstein Had a Hot Rod Car
3) $1.98 King-Size Voodoo Kit
4) Vampire Vamp
5) Herman’s Place
6) (Here Comes the) Munster Koach
7) TV Monster Show
8) Eerie Beach
9) Make It Go Away
10) You Created a Monster
11) Ride the Midnight Special
12) Down in the Basement

Besides the CD art, I have also included an article from Variety  about the group.  Evidently they would play concerts wearing Munster character masks!

That sure sounds like a sweaty endeavor.

Here is the link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0NZWCJMK

Enjoy some silly, creepilicious 1960s music.