Six Mistakes the New Captain America 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.

The Shadmock

Wonder not why your hair stiffly bristles,
just abandon all hope when the shadmock whistles.

Lately I've been reading and enjoying the hell out of The Mammoth Book of Monsters edited by Stephen Jones. It's roughly 500 pages of short horror stories from a variety of authors, with each tale containing some sort of monster. What's not to like? A nice little surprise was the inclusion of "The Shadmock" by late British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes. I knew the story from its adaptation as part of The Monster Club, a 1980 horror flick noteworthy for containing Vincent Price's only portrayal of a vampire and being the last gasp of a cycle of horror anthology films that included the likes of Tales From the Crypt and The House That Dripped Blood.

Both the film and short story explain that years of interbreeding by various creatures of the night has resulted in some new variations, including shaddies mocks, and maddies, and if a mock and a maddy marry their offspring will be a shadmock. To summarize, vampires sup, werewolves hunt, ghouls tear, shaddies lick, maddies yawn, mocks blow, shadmocks only whistle.

Interestingly, other than featuring a shadmock and making the reader or viewer wonder exactly what sort of devastation might be wrought if this guy were to forget himself and start whistling "Smoke on the Water," the story and film adaptation have practically nothing in common. In the film our shadmock is a wealthy pigeon loving recluse named Raven, with a young couple named George and Angela attempting to swindle him out of his fortune. Angela attempts to woo Raven, but when she loses her temper and tells him how his corpse-like visage disgusts her, he lets loose with a whistle that essentially liquifies much of her skin.

In the original story, our shadmock is a servant rather than a millionaire. Sheridan and Caroline, a married couple have purchased an estate in a remote area of the English countryside. The mansion comes with a family of servants who have lived there all their lives, and they include an elderly shaddy, a mock, a maddy as well as the offspring of the last two, a handsome young shadmock named Marvin. Caroline takes a fancy to Marvin who also has eyes for Caroline despite the fact that once they've removed Sheridan's soul and made him a creature of the night like them, they plan to drain Caroline of her bodily fluids and use her remains to fertilize Marvin's garden. Even Marvin's own family is careful not to upset him, as shadmock's have a tendency to whistle when angered, but in an attempt to save Caroline he turns his ability on his own family with devastating results.

The story is a great read, written in a reserved British style, and has more substance than the filmed version, though the movie is still worth seeing as well. All three of the film's stories are based on the works of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, with the story that features a Humghoul (another product of monstrous interbreeding) being the high point. Have a look at the trailer:

I Am Not Iron Man, But I Really Like His Movie

By now the web is riddled with reviews of Iron Man, the film that launches the 2008 Summer movie season, so rather than adding to the glut I'm just going to give some quick impressions. Movies like X-Men and Batman Begins have set the bar pretty high for big screen super hero adaptations while Daredevil and Ghost Rider have shown just how low the form can get. In a nutshell, Iron Man is pretty awesome. Robert Downey, Jr. is pitch perfect as the charismatic, booze swilling billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark who after seeing first hand the terrible things his company's products can do dedicates himself and his company to more people friendly pursuits. Stark builds a high tech but bulky suit of armor that allows him to escape from his terrorist captors, then devotes himself to perfecting the suit until he becomes one of the most badass superheroes the screen has ever seen. The effects are spectacular, characters are well-rounded, providing a satisfying plot to action ratio.

I first saw the character as part of The Marvel Superheroes animated TV show that debuted in 1966, a series that could be produced today by a brain damaged monkey with a passing understanding of Adobe Flash. Here's a glimpse at the Iron Man intro from that show:

I followed the character off and on over the years in his regular comic series and in Marvel's superhero knitting circle The Avengers. I was reading the comic when it was first established that Tony Stark was an alcoholic. Admittedly that was pretty groundbreaking stuff at the time, but the issue is oversimplified by having him get off the sauce after only an issue or two. A few years later when Stark began drinking again, the alcoholism went from oversimplified to ridiculously exaggerated with Stark living on the street as a wino.

Even if you haven't seen the film yet, I'm sure you've heard that you need to stay all the way through the closing credits for an important coda. Suffice it to say, this little reward for those who sit through all of the credits (and there are a lot of them) had this comic book geek grinning like an idiot.

FRISKY DINGODVD Review

When Cartoon Network's Adult Swim began producing shows to fit a fifteen minute time slot I chalked it up to the dwindling attention span of the internet generation. I've since revised that assessment after having seen and fallen in love with shows like Robot Chicken, Metalocalypse and (most importantly) Frisky Dingo. These shows are the animated equivalent of frozen concentrated orange juice, packing more laughs into a quarter hour of broadcast time (less without commercials) than should be allowed by law.

The first season of Frisky Dingo recently hit the DVD racks. The animation is simple, presumably produced in Adobe Flash, and reminiscent of the limited animation shows that populated Saturday morning TV back in the 70's (yes, I was there). The design work often includes photo backgrounds that have been Photoshopped to hell and back to look like drawings, and character designs that often look like they have been traced over photos of real people.

Our story opens as the nefarious Killface is recording a video which he hopes will strike terror into the heart of... well, pretty much everybody. He has built a doomsday device called The Annihilatrix that, when activated, will push the Earth directly into the sun. Why does he want to do this? Who the hell knows? Meanwhile, a superhero named Awesome X has rid the city (which is never named) of the last super villain, leaving his civilian alter ego multi-millionaire Xander Crews free to run the family company. Crews doesn't want to give up the superhero game, though, and he wants to focus the company's assetts on manufacturing Awesome X action figures. When it's pointed out that he'll need a villain to make the toy line cell, Crews sets out to get Killface to sign over his likeness rights.

To say the story meanders is an understatement on the same scale as saying "Hitler was naughty." Killface runs into financial troubles, there's a keyboard with an ant farm built into it, we discover why super heroes and villains alike should have medical insurance for their minions, and Xander Crews spends several episodes buck naked with a wig glued to his head. The show is magnificently weird, and one of the most consistently funny things on TV in recent years. The first season is on DVD, with Season 2 available through ITunes (as Killface helpfully reminds us at one point when he's too busy to summarize previous episodes). Here's hoping for a Season 3. You can watch full episodes of a Frisky Dingo and lots of other Adult Swim programming by going here, and you can check out and Ode to Killface below: