I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!

I saw this over on boingboing.com and I'm fascinated. I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets is an anthology of World War II era comics by an obscure artist named Fletcher Hanks. "These strips were beyond terrible," according to the Boing Boing post, "filled with a kind of idiotic energy. Each panel tops the previous panel for freakish goofiness, each strip surpasses the previous strip for mind-croggling ham-fistedness." Hanks wrote and drew the adventures of Fantomah: Mystery Woman of the Jungle and Stardust the Super Wizard, the latter obviously being from a time when the concept of a superhero was so new that some people obviously didn't get it.

The samples of Hanks' work that I've found online are fascinatingly surreal and remind me a bit of Basil Wolverton's work, particularly in his rendering of neanderthalish villains. Stardust actually bears a resemblance to the British comic book character Marvelman (changed to Miracleman when he came stateside in the 80s), though Marvelman didn't appear until 1954. Since Marvelman was a blatant knock off of Captain Marvel I suppose it's conceivable that the character's look might have been cribbed from Stardust.

Anyway, if you go to the listing for I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets on Amazon you can check out a few pages of Hanks' work by using the "Search Inside" function. You can also read a couple full length stories at lambiek.net's Fletcher Hanks page.

DON'T Trailer

The reason for the financial failure of Grindhouse at the U.S. box office is going to be debated for some time to come. Some say it was just too long, some believe the average filmgoer didn't understand what the film was trying to do, and others think The Weinstein company didn't market the film properly. While I think the length was at least a partial issue, I don't have a definitive answer, but ultimately I don't think it will matter. This movie will find it's audience on DVD, and eventually settle into the role of cult classic.

The fake trailers were an absolute hoot, so here's the trailer for the non-existant film Don't, directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead fame. It looks, quite intentionally, like a European film from the 70s, capturing the feel of the era quite nicely.

Retromedia's Blood Flood Recalled

I've been looking forward to the triple feature Blood Flood from Retromedia. Three bonafide trash classics from the grindhouse/drive-in era including Andy Milligan's Guru the Mad Monk, a Mexican flick from late in Boris Karloff's career called House of Evil, and most importantly Grave of the Vampire, which I reviewed here on Omega Channel some time ago. What's not to love? Grave of the Vampire has long been a favorite, and as I pointed out in my review the film is long overdue for a quality DVD release. The Alpha Video DVD is atrocious looking, but until now it was the only game in town. Considering the number of hits my review has been getting lately from the link at IMDB, I assume there must be a fair amount of interest in this new release. As soon as the disk arrived from Netflix I put it on and was dismayed to learn that while this version of Grave of the Vampire is visually superior to the Alpha Video version by leaps and bounds, the audio is unfortunately out of synch by several seconds. I went to Retromedia's website to email them about this, but as you can see on the Retromedia home page, they are well aware of the problem. The disk is being recalled and will hopefully be reissued before long. If you've purchased the disk, check the Retromedia page for instructions on what to do.

Muppet Faces of Death

This is just wrong on so many levels. I'd probably be offended if I weren't laughing so hard.

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN: DVD Review

To get a good idea how much science fiction cinema changed in 1977, take a look at the genre films that came out in the decade prior to Star Wars. I believe Logan's Run was the last big budget sci-fi flick to come out of Hollywood before George Lucas, for good or ill, changed the rules. Psychedelic science fiction was common then, with John Boorman's Zardoz being a perfect example. 1969's The Illustrated Man is plenty trippy too, and a film that has really stayed in my head in the few days since seeing it.

Based on a book by Ray Bradbury, which was essentially a short story anthology with the title character binding everything together, the film stars Rod Steiger as Carl, a drifter wandering the rural countryside somewhere in depression era America. He crosses paths with a young man named Willie (Robert Drivas) who is making his way on foot to California. The two men share a campfire and eventually Carl explains that he's looking for a very specific house in which resides a woman he plans to kill. This woman is responsible for the skin illustrations (Carl bursts into a rage when Willie calls them tattoos) that cover nearly every inch of his body from the neck down. The illustrations are alive, or so Carl claims, and they offer glimpses into the future.

The narrative leaps back and forth between Carl's flashback of how an enigmatic and beautiful woman named Felicia (Claire Bloom who I remember best from Robert Wise's The Haunting) came to give him the tattoos... sorry, illustrations to begin with, the story of Carl and Willie around the campfire, and three tales of the future. These stories deal with a futuristic family whose children have developed an unnatural obsession with their holographic playroom, a crew of astronauts who have crashed on an alien world and are seeking shelter, and a man and a woman dealing with the fact that the world will end in less than a day.

Oddly enough, I find it both compelling and infuriating that some things are just never explained. Carl and Felicia appear in all three future stories with no explanation as to why. Are these reincarnations, or perhaps since the stories are coming through pictures on Carl's body they're being filtered through his mind somehow? Why does Felicia give Carl the illlustrations? Like I said, it's trippy. There are some charmingly outdated visions of the future here, like the single color uniform style clothing, and a very simple looking crashed spaceship that I would bet is a recycled prop from the previous year's Planet of the Apes. The film uses a more leisurely pace than most modern films, but rather than boring the audience, director Jack Smight uses the time to deepen characterization. They definitely don't make them like this anymore, but I sure wish they did.

More on the Plane Dead Trailer

When I posted about the Plane Dead trailer a few days ago, I mentioned that the version on Youtube wasn't providing the embedding code for whatever reason. Now there is another version up which you can view below. Be advised that the version viewable from the official site is much clearer, but if you can't bear to pull yourself away from this site (and who could blame you) click on the "play" button below.

MONDO MOVIE PODCASTPodcast Recommendation

If you're not listening to the Mondo Movie Podcast, let me ask you this:

WHY THE F**K NOT?!

Ben Howard and Dan Auty are a pair of British gents who know cinema inside and out and discuss movies that cross all genres, covering classics, current releases, and the seamy underbelly of exploitation cinema. They have a distinct advantage in that a British accent always make you sound smart. Combine that with the fact that they genuinely know what they're talking about, and you've got one of the best movie podcasts out there.

Ben and Dan podcast more or less weekly. In the current episode posted on Friday, January 26, they discuss Mel Gibson's Apocolypto, Robert Altman's A Wedding (as part 2 of their Altman Film Festival), as well as some interesting chatter about HD and Blue Ray DVD formats.

PLANE DEADTrailer

I posted about this movie on Cinematical awhile back, but having recently seen Snakes on a Plane, I got to thinking about it again. Lots of people are swearing that Plane Dead was in production before Snakes, but, I remain skeptical. Regardless of which came first, Imageworks Entertainment isn't shying away from the comparison, as they are highlighting a quote from Dreadcentral.com that proclaims "Plane Dead tops Snakes on a Plane." In any case, it looks like a cool idea: Snakes on a Plane with zombies. I can see the potential. The trailer is up on Youtube, but the code usually provided to embed a video has been removed at the copyright owner's request. Not sure why someone would turn down free publicity, but you can link to the trailer on the movie's official website. No news yet on a distribution

SNAKES ON A PLANE DVD Review

A searing indictment of man's inhumanity to man displayed amidst the turmoil of the age-old conflict of man against nature. No, wait. My bad. It's about motherf***ing snakes on a motherf***ing plane. The sheer simplicity of the film's concept is its greatest strength. Snakes On A Plane is its own built in excuse; whenever something preposterous happens, the viewer just shrugs and says, "Hey, it's Snakes On A Plane. If I wanted gritty realism I'd have rented Mean Girls." Historically, the film recalls not just the airline disaster movies of the seventies, but the nature gone amok genre from the same period, represented by Frogs, Fer de Lance (snakes on a submarine, if you will), and a seemingly forgotten tale of bats going bats in a subterranean complex called Chosen Survivors, to name but a few.

Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips ) witnesses a mob hit on Daniel Hayes, a prominent prosecuting attorney from Los Angeles. Hayes has been laboring to put mobster Edward Kim behind bars, but for his troubles Hayes is beaten to death with a baseball bat. Sean is taken into protective custody by FBI Agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson ), and arrangements are made for Sean to fly to California under FBI protection to testify against Kim. Why exactly he needs to fly to California to testify about a murder that occurred in Hawaii is not mentioned, but hey, it's Snakes On A Plane, if I wanted a lecture on legal jurisdiction I'd rent High Noon. The FBI sets up a decoy private jet, while actually transporting Sean on a commercial 747. All the other passengers are forced to travel coach as Flynn has commandeered the first class section for his passenger. Kim's goons are not fooled, though, and they manage to get a large container filled with poisonous snakes from all over the world stowed in the luggage section. The flowered leis the passengers are given have been treated with snake pheromones, making those slithery bastards all the more aggressive.

Screen time is split between the live snakes and they're more energetic but far less convincing digital stand-ins. Once the vipers are loose the plot rarely takes a second to breathe, with snakes putting the hurt on the passengers at a breakneck pace. Even the heartiest of souls will cringe when they see the "snake on snake violence" as some poor schmuck just tries to take a leak. These cold-blooded belly-crawlers present not only an immediate threat to the passengers and crew, but they play hell with wiring and ventilation. Sean is relatively safe in the first class compartment, but he doesn't need to be bitten if the snakes can bring the entire plane down into the Pacific. One might ask why Kim would go to all this trouble. Surely a small but powerful explosive could do the job more efficiently. True, the plan is as convoluted as anything the worst James Bond villain could concoct, but hey, it's Snakes On a Plane, if I wanted realistic plotting I'd rent Capote.

The film's simplicity carries over into its use of characterization. Everyone in the movie has a personality that can be summed up in a few words: arrogant rap artist, bubbleheaded socialite, snotty British guy, etc. Even our hero Agent Flynn is a career cop with a failed marriage, and flight attendant Claire Miller (Julianna Margulies) is making her last flight before leaving the job. Introducing the characters as they board the plane is also a convenient shortcut which will seem familiar to anyone who has ever seen The Love Boat.

In the months prior to Snakes' theatrical release, there was buzz on this flick all over the internet. Not since The Blair Witch Project has a film's online promotion campaign so threatened to outshine the film itself. A catchy no BS title, a fast paced script, and the involvement of Samuel L. Jackson, and you've got one good time at the movies. The film also performs the difficult task of being predictable without being boring, and of being preposterous without insulting the viewer's intelligence.

Kaiju Love

This is both disturbing and hilarious. Here is a series of love-themed paintings featuring kaiju (giant Japanese monsters). Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing this out. All I can think is that the artist's sexual awakening happened in an instant, and he was watching Ultraman at the time. These probably aren't safe for work, so proceed with caution.