Diarrhea of the Dead

In honor of the DVD release of George A. Romero's latest zombie opus Diary of the Dead, here's an early version of the film's poster. Evidently focus groups didn't care for this scatological approach to the walking dead, so the final film took a different approach.

TRAILER: The Strangers

The Strangers opens on May 30, and I'm really hoping the movie is as balls to the wall creepy as the trailer is. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a couple who are the target of a horrifying home invasion by several people wearing masks. Come, partake of the terror...

Six Mistakes the New Captain American Movie Should Avoid

Yes, box offices across the world are growing fat with Iron Man cash. Ol' Shell Head was the number one movie for two weeks in a row, and I bet the folks over at Marvel are pretty darn proud of themselves. Of course this means that we'll be seeing more super hero movies in the not too distant future, and I say bring it on. One such film currently in the early stages is The First Avenger: Captain America, featuring one of Marvel's oldest creations. I've enjoyed the character in the comics, particularly John Byrne's run on the book, and The Invaders series which told of the wartime adventures of Cap, his sidekick Bucky, The Submariner, The Human Torch and Toro.

For the sake of perspective, though, I'd like to remind everyone that Marvel has been associated with some seriously crappy films in the past, and four of those crappy films have starred Marvel's super soldier Captain America. I'm not saying this new film version is cursed, but it certainly has a lot to live down.

The most recent of these star-spangled atrocities is the steaming dog turd (the mushy kind with the swirly on top like soft-serve ice cream) that is the 1990 film Captain America which starred Matt Salinger. Reb Brown played Cap in two made for TV films in 1979 (Captain America and Captain America II: Death Too Soon) that thankfully never got picked up as a series. Fourthly, the Captain's first big screen appearance happened in 1944 when he was the subject of a 15 chapter serial (again titled Captain America but rereleased as The Return of Captain America), that took far more liberties with the character than should be allowed.

So what can the makers of this new Captain America flick learn from these previous versions?

1. Fake rubber ears are a bad idea. Seriously. Look closely. Captain America has traditionally been drawn with his ears poking out the side of his cowl. To replicate this look for the 1990 film, fake ears were applied to the outside of the mask, and they look pretty awful in closeup. Ironically, adding ears to the headpiece probably rendered actor Matt Salinger deaf as a post.
   
   
2. Try not to be embarrassed that your main character is wearing long johns. Cap disappears in the middle of the movie, and we only see his civilian guise of Steve Rogers for a long stretch. Salinger actually looked fairly convincing in the red, white, and blue tights, but the costume gets relatively little screen time. If you're embarrassed to have your main character running around in a super hero costume, maybe you should be making romantic comedies.
   
   
3. Just the teensiest bit of logic would be appreciated. As the missile to which Captain America is strapped is about to launch our hero grabs the villainous Red Skull and threatens to take him along for the ride. The Skull will have none of that and produces a large knife which he uses to cut off... HIS OWN HAND????? WTF?
   
   
4. Cap's shield was made by government scientists, not the R&D division of Wham-O. In short, it ain't a Frisbee, people. The shield Reb Brown carried in the two made-for-TV Captain America movies was made of transparent plastic. Unless he's fighting nazis at a beach party, this just doesn't work for me.
   
   
5. Shouldn't he at least LOOK like Captain America? No film adaptation is ever going to be 100% faithful to the source material, but the liberties taken with Captain America's costume for the first of the made-for-TV flicks made our hero look more like Eval Kneival than a super hero. For the second film Brown was sporting a more traditional version of the costume, but jeez, that helmet...
   
   
6. Shouldn't he at least to some degree BE Captain America? For the 1944 serial, the costume was more or less accurate, it's just every single other aspect of the character that was changed. Rather than being a G.I. named Steve Rogers, our hero is a crusading District Attorney named Grant Gardner (played by Dick Purcell, who died of a heart attack the same year this serial was released), he doesn't carry a shield but he does pack a gun. Essentially, this is a generic Saturday afternoon action serial using Captain America's name and likeness, but nothing else. Interestingly, I think the look of the recently rebooted Captain in the comics owes a debt to this take on the character.

Anybody else got any advice we can offer to the folks at Marvel Productions?

The Wonderful World of Wolverton

The always entertaining Datajunkie blog has just posted a handful of Basil Wolverton cover illustrations. Wolverton was a truly unique comic book illustrator in the 1950s, whose horror and science fiction art has long been a favorite of mine. I'm not clear on the significance of "Weirdass Tales of the Future" as this is obviously not an actual comic book title, but any chance to pass some Wolverton art onto the public is worth taking.

Actor John Phillip Law Dies

As has been reported in several places including the LA Times and Tim Lucas's Video Watchblog, actor John Phillip Law died Tuesday May 13, 2008 at the age of 70 of pancreatic cancer. He was an American born actor with -- according to IMDB -- 81 acting credits. I believe I first became aware of Law when he starred opposite several of Ray Harryhausen's magnificent stop motion creations in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), but I will remember him best as the master criminal Diabolik (pictured above) in Mario Bava's fantastic and trippy Danger: Diabolik (1968). Tim Lucas worked with Law on the audio commentary for Danger: Diabolik, and Lucas has recently posted several informative and heartfelt remembrances.

One of the strangest films in Law's resume is Night Train to Terror (1985), an omnibus horror film that condenses footage from an uncompleted John Phillip Law movie and uses it as one of the film's three segments. The resulting story makes little sense, but it's so fast paced and chock full of gore and nudity it's hard not to love it. Footage from this same unfinished movie was also combined with newer footage to make Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1992).

While Law has credits as recent as 2008, the last film I saw him in was Roman Coppola's wonderful CQ in 2001, which made Law's participation even more memorable by including several nods to Danger: Diabolik. Notably, it has been just under a year since we lost another Harryhausen Sinbad actor, Kerwin Matthews, star of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, who passed away on July 5, 2007.

Here is the original theatrical trailer for Danger: Diabolik:

LOL Omega

Just so you don't think the whole LOL cat phenomenon has escaped me:

BLOGS THAT ROCK Pulp of the Day

Pulp of the Day is a simple no nonsense blog that shows a different cover scan from a classic pulp magazine every day. There's a caption contest, but for me the art is the main attraction. They don't play favorites with genres here, so detective, action, science fiction, western and war mags are all represented. You'll want to subscribe to the RSS feed as the main page only displays the current day's cover image.

BLOGS THAT ROCK The Horrors of it All

I used to regularly purchase Overstreet's Comic Book Price Guide and drool over all those golden age and silver age comics that were just too ridiculously expensive to buy. The horror comics were of particular interest, especially since the ones published before the advent of the Comics Code Authority were far darker and more daring than the code approved comics that were the only game in town when I was a kid.

Well, now I need drool no longer. The Horrors of it All, which is put together and frequently updated by a blogger calling himself Karswell, features scans of entire stories from pre-code horror comics. If this is your sort of thing, this site will keep you busy for awhile. He's got 358 postings for 2007 and 291 so far for 2008.

BLOGS THAT ROCK Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog

Of all the classic monsters, Frankenstein's undying creature was always my favorite, whether it be the box-headed bolt-knecked beastie from the classic Universal series, the somewhat gorier creatures from the Hammer period, or the nose- up- between- the- eyes of Dick Briefer's pre-code comic book version. I've recently come across a blog that shares my affection for Mary Shelley's patchwork creation called Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog which is the brainchild of blogger Pierre Fournier.

Recent posts have included a look at Frankenstein on postage stamps, a look back at the character Jonathan Brewster from the stage play and film Arsenic and Old Lace (a stitch-faced character, played many times by Boris Karloff), a discussion of the original lost pilot for The Munsters, and postings about Valerie Hobson and Hazel Court, two of the best remembered actresses to play the often doomed (depending on which version you're watching) Elizabeth Frankenstein. If you think the subject too limiting I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the wealth of material Fournier and his guest bloggers have assembled.