Happy Thanksgiving!

Before I head into the kitchen to make some kick-ass sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, I just want to give a shout out to the things I'm thankful for.

There's this:

This:

And, of course, this:

And, lest I forget, all of my friends, family, and readers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dr. K Reviews: Petey & Pussy!

John Kerschbaum's Petey & Pussy, recently published by Fantagraphics, is just vile and wrong, and it had me laughing so hard at times that tears were streaming down my face. There is much to be said for the fundamental appeal of a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed cat and dog duo, both with balding human heads.

This book is so vile and wrong, however, that I have serious worries about even owning it. I have tried to lead a decent life and cultivate the image that I am a good person. I imagine, after I die, people--including a potential biographer or two--going through my house and cataloging my belongings, Charles Foster Kane-style. They move into the library, commenting on the exemplary intellectual life I led, and on the fact that $25,000 is a lot to pay for a dame without a head. Then, one of them pulls Petey & Pussy off the shelf, pages through it, covers his mouth when he gets to the part about the "Twat-wurst," and blurts out, "What sick, twisted degenerate would own such a thing? We must leave at once and burn this place to the ground."

Meanwhile, though, I'm going to be laughing about the "Twat-wurst" every single day for the rest of my life.

Dr. K Reviews Heroes, Volume 2

After the Halloween Countdown marathon, I decided to take a couple of days off from the blog to recover, get ahead of some work, and enjoy Election Day. In the meantime, however, pal Kevin Church sent me his review copy of the second volume of collected comics stories from the Heroes TV series. As you can see, though, before sending it, Kevin used the book as a coaster for one of his giant alcoholic drinks that he always seems to have in his hands, and it left a huge ringed stain on the book. Thanks a lot, Kevin.

The book collects the comics stories published online at NBC's website, mainly during the strike-shortened season 2 of the show. The webcomics serve primarily to reinforce the show's base fans by giving them additional supplementary content to the series, much like Lost's alternate-reality games have done for that show.

The book, therefore, is not designed as an entrance point for new fans who might be curious about the show; instead, it's more like a series of easter eggs for the hardcore fan. I watched all of seasons 1 and 2 (I have since bailed on season 3), yet I had a hard time figuring out who some of the more obscure characters were or remembering when in the season a particular story fit (this confusion is not helped by the fact that some of the art is dramatically off model, and even recurring characters like Peter Petrelli are unrecognizable without context clues). And some of the shorter 4-6 page stories seem little more than deleted scenes from a specific episode, like the 6 pages of Molly's dream that she has while in a coma, or the 4 pages on a boy who witnesses one of Maya's mass killings. These are so slight that it's difficult to call them actual "stories."

The few longer stories that open the collection are the best, and they tend to emphasize what a missed opportunity the collection is. For all its failings, Heroes has created a rich world and mythology with enormous potential for interesting stories. Joe Kelly's origin story for the Haitian, which opens the collection, is a fascinating exploration of a character who serves mostly as a plot device on the series, used to temporarily depower a character or conveniently wipe someone's memory. Here, Kelly tells the story of how his powers manifested at the worst possible moment. Another origin story, this time for Candice, Linderman's shape-shifting assistant, also works well. Clearly, the collection works best when the stories explore origins and other tangents that the series doesn't deal with on the show, but which can exist independently from the show as well. However, other stories fail to live up to their potential. For example, the series could get a lot of mileage out of telling stories about Adam Munroe's immortal existence after Hiro leaves him in feudal Japan, yet the ones here are bland and underdeveloped. Similarly, a story that tries to establish Ben Franklin as an early hero is just dull and unnecessary, when it could be a lot of fun.

In the end, I have to wonder what purpose such a collection serves. Too many of the chapters are temporally connected to a particular episode in the series, requiring the reader to read them in conjunction with the episodes in question, preferably at the time the episode originally aired. That purpose may serve the webcomic well, but it doesn't serve a print collection that should be able to exist on its own and have a life beyond the cancellation of the series (which may be on the horizon as we speak). I am not, I should say, one to completely hate on Heroes. I liked the first season a lot, and I wasn't completely disappointed in the second season. Much of what kept me coming back, however, what the show's potential--the series was weaving an intricate, multigenerational history that, I thought, could be sustained through multiple seasons and ancillary projects like these comics. And there is potential here to develop complete, independent stories around the many characters in the series, or to create new characters that are exclusive to the comics and hover around the fringes of the show. The TV series itself is sorely lacking in consistency or sustained character development in its repetitive focus on big, cataclysmic stories, so the comic could be used to fill that gap, as Joe Kelly's Haitian story does particularly well.

This review is of an advanced copy received by the author. The book will be released on November 25.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Happy Halloween!

This brings us to the end of another Halloween Countdown! Thanks to everyone who stopped by, including the new readers to the blog. I'll have some more horror movie reviews and commentary coming up, along with the usual comics stuff and other shenanigans.

Now I have to go and refresh our supply of Halloween candy, as much of it has mysteriously disappeared over the last few days. Perhaps...it was a ghost!

(If it was, the ghost did a pretty good job of selectively removing all the Almond Joys out of the variety assortment bag, and it left all the Milk Duds.)

Have a Happy Halloween!

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: War of the Worlds!

Halloween is now just a couple of days away, but it should be noted that tomorrow is an important date in Halloween history as well: it's the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre's famous War of the Worlds broadcast.

As part of a celebration of this anniversary, I'm participating in a live recreation of the broadcast tomorrow night at the university. I happen to have scored the plum role of "Prof. Pierson," the same role that Welles played in the original broadcast, and the last character standing at the end of the play. I originally toyed with the idea of playing the part as Welles in his drunken wine-shill phase, but let's just say that I was encouraged not to do that.

One of my favorite comic stories as a kid was this one, originally published in Superman 62, but reprinted in the Superman from the 30's to the 70's collection, where Superman teams up with Orson Welles to fight off a Martian invasion:
Even as a kid, though, I had to ask my parents, "Is this really the fat guy who sells wine on TV?"

My Endless Shame

Ask Dr. K!

I'm going to veer off the Halloween Countdown for a moment to share with you a very special and important email I got today. You see, because I'm a doctor, with a Ph.D., and therefore have garnered considerable respect for my authority in several fields, I often get emails asking me questions that relate to my areas of expertise. As always with such matters, I'm glad to be of service when called upon.

So, today I received the following message:

Dear Dr. K,

My four-year-old son has some questions about superheroes about whom I know little or nothing. Would you please provide answers for the following:

1. What does Spiderman like to eat?
2. Who are Spiderman's parents?
3. Is Spiderman a nice guy? Is Superman a nice guy? A real nice guy?
4. What does Superman like? Does he like Rugrats? Elmo?
5. What does Superman like to eat?
6. Does Spiderman go to school? Why not?
7. Does Superman go to school? Why not?

Thank you in advance for your time,
A concerned parent

To share with all of you, here are my responses to the questions:

Dear Concerned Parent:

I’m very glad you asked me these questions, as the correct answers to them are essential for your child’s proper growth and development as a valuable member of society.

1. What does Spiderman like to eat?

Spider-Man (please note the hyphen) likes to eat most normal foods, like hot dogs, pizza, Hostess Fruit Pies, and coffee. Despite the fact that he has the powers of a spider, he does not have the same appetite as one, so he doesn't eat flies and other insects. But I know that's what you were thinking.

2. Who are Spiderman's parents?

This is a very good question. Spider-Man's parents died when he was very young. They may have been spies or secret agents or something like that, but if that is the case, then it's stupid and I choose to ignore it. Seriously, the less you ask about this, the better. He was raised by his loving Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Soon after Spider-Man got his powers, he had the chance to stop a robber, but he chose not to because there was no profit in it for him. Then the robber killed his Uncle Ben, and ever since then, Spider-Man has been motivated by the guilt over his inaction that caused his uncle's death. Guilt is a thing that motivates many adults to do things they wouldn't otherwise do, like visit their parents when they get older, despite the fact that their parents aren't very nice people.

3. Is Spiderman a nice guy? Is Superman a nice guy? A real nice guy?

Both Spider-Man and Superman are nice guys, but if I had to pick one, I would say that Superman is the nicest. Spider-Man often makes a lot of selfish decisions that he comes to regret, like making a deal with Satan so that his marriage to his wife Mary Jane never happened and he can be "single" again and then start playing around with other women, while Superman always does the best thing for everyone. Superman is probably the nicest guy in the world.

4. What does Superman like? Does he like Rugrats? Elmo?

Superman probably would like Rugrats and Elmo if he had time to watch such shows. However, he's usually busy saving the world and beating up bad guys, so all that makes it difficult for him to keep up with stuff like Rugrats and Elmo. He does, however, have a girlfriend or wife named Lois Lane, and he likes her a lot.

Sometimes, if he's fighting a bad guy who isn't putting up much of a challenge, he will use his telescopic vision and superhearing to catch up on some TV during the fight. But then, he usually doesn't pick Rugrats or Elmo; instead, he tries to watch Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, because that Gary Busey is nuts!

5. What does Superman like to eat?

Because of his Kryptonian physiology, Superman can eat pretty much anything. He can eat rocks, nuclear waste, hot lava, solid steel, the sun, and anything else you can imagine that is not made of Kryptonite, which will kill him. However, he mostly likes to eat the same things that normal people eat, like hot dogs, pizza, Hostess Fruit Pies (non-Kryptonite flavored), and coffee.

6. Does Spiderman go to school? Why not?

Yes, Spider-Man does go to school. It is part of the essential conflict of the character that he is a normal teenage boy who uses his powers to fight crime while also trying to keep up with the normal things that a teenager has to do, like go to school. He later goes on to college and gets a degree in physics. He now works as a photographer for a newspaper, which doesn't require a college degree at all. So, that was a waste of his time.

7. Does Superman go to school? Why not?

Superman went to school also. Because his super powers did not manifest themselves until later on in his teenage years, he was able to have a relatively normal childhood. Though when his powers started to emerge, his life became very complicated, and he had to hide the powers in order to keep people from being afraid of him or resenting him. As you get older, you will learn that if you are really good at something, you should hide it because otherwise people will fear and resent you.

Superman also got his college degree in journalism and went to work for a newspaper called the Daily Planet. So, college wasn't a waste of time for Superman.

I hope this helps answer your child's questions. If you need any further assistance, please feel free to ask.

Sincerely,

Dr. K


And I would like to reiterate that I would be glad to help out any readers with any of their questions that I can answer.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Solomon Grundy's Rampage!

Here's the Solomon Grundy costume, which I think turned out pretty well.
As the host of the party, a noted Golden Age enthusiast and well-known comics writer, commented: "Looks kinda like Mike Sekowsky's Grundy, inked by Sid Greene." I took that as a compliment.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Halloween Party Tonight!

So, I'm going to a Halloween Party tonight. I haven't worn a costume for Halloween in years, so this is going to be a bit of a test of my costume making skills. Due to the nature of the party (more on that later) and my own preferences, I've decided to go with a comic book character that could also be versatile and pass for something else if people at the party are not familiar. I also wanted to pick something which I could reasonably pull off in terms of available wardrobe and my own physical qualities. Therefore, I'm going with this:
Solomon Grundy!

I'm even using that cover as a model.

Pictures to come.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Tales from the Crypt (1972)

The 1972 Tales from the Crypt movie, made by Hammer competitor Amicus, should not be confused with the HBO series and its skeletal host, the Cryptkeeper, though both share a source in the EC Comics series of the same name. There is a Cryptkeeper in this film, but this one is played by Sir Ralph Richardson, and he has a little more to do here than just introduce a series of short horror stories.

In this film, a group of tourists follow a tour guide through an old abbey, when several of them are briefly held up and get disconnected from the main group. This smaller group then follows several passages until they are led through a secret door, and there they find the Cryptkeeper, who welcomes them to their chamber. The Cryptkeeper asks each person to explain what he or she plans to do once they all leave, and this provides the frame for the film's anthology structure.

The short stories in this film are a mixed bag, though all are stylishly directed by Hammer veteran and one of the greatest cinematographers in the history of film, Freddie Francis. All were also adapted directly from the EC series of the same title, as well as from Vault of Horror.

The first story, "And All Through the House," stars Joan Collins as a wife who murders her husband on Christmas Eve while the radio announces that a mad killer is on the loose in a Santa costume. This film features very little dialogue, as Collins tries to dispose of her husband's body, cover up her crime, keep her anxious daughter in bed, and protect herself from the killer Santa who inevitably shows up. This is a fun, darkly comic story up until the very end, when it's undermined by a really dissatisfying and unimaginative climax. You can check the whole thing out here:

"Reflection of Death," starring Ian Hendry, is a waste of the star's talent. Hendry, who had a promising career beginning with his role as Steed's first partner on The Avengers, was notoriously difficult to work with due to his alcoholism, and by this time, his career was virtually in the toilet. This particular story is probably the least successful of the entire film.

The third film has Peter Cushing in a very uncharacteristic role, playing an old junk man who is beset upon and tortured by his wealthy neighbors, who hope to drive him out of his home and then buy the property for cheap. Cushing's character, Grimsdyke, communicates with his dead wife through a ouija board, and she sends him warnings that danger is afoot. In real life, Cushing was devastated by the loss of his own wife only a year earlier, and it's easy to speculate that his performance as this emotionally fragile man was influenced by that recent experience. This story is titled "Poetic Justice," and while that title turns out to be quite literal in the end, this particular story seems the most consistently in line with its EC source.

Of the five stories, the last two are probably the most effective, and certainly worth checking this film out for. "Wish You Were Here" is a fairly simple variation on W. W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw," so it's largely predictable, but the ironic results of the couple's wishes still manages to be darkly comic and gruesome.

Finally, "Blind Alleys" is the best of the lot, with an autocratic director of a home for the blind getting his comeuppance from the residents. The blind residents' revenge builds slowly and creepily, and it may, for better or for worse, anticipate the Saw movies.

Following the final bit, the frame narrative wraps itself up, and we learn why all these people were brought together, though this ending is easily predictable.

There is one thing, however, that I'm curious about regarding this film, as well as its successor, The Vault of Horror, and other British horror anthology films that were popular in the 70s. Though the stories used in this film date back to the 50s, and this type of frame narrative goes back to The Decameron and earlier, I wonder if British horror comics writers like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, and others were strongly influenced by these films in the similar work they did for DC and later its Vertigo imprint. Gaiman especially used such a device repeatedly in Sandman, and this movie would have been popular during an impressionable time in his youth. At the very least, while I was watching the movie, I got a real Vertigo vibe from it, moreso even than the sense of connection to its original EC source material.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: The Earth Dies Screaming!

I'm a sucker for end-of-the-world scenarios and last-man-on-earth stories, whether it's alien invasions, zombie attacks, disease outbreaks, climate change, or any other possible disaster that could bring about a huge, sudden drop in world-wide population. I especially enjoy the basic elements that all these stories share as far as the survivors are concerned. What supplies are absolutely necessary? What skills will prove valuable? Will certain basic social structures survive, or will anarchy ensue? What happens to conventional morality when such a disaster occurs and basic survival becomes the most prominent goal?

I say all this, of course, knowing full well that whatever thought-experiments might arise from such stories, I would probably be one of the least likeliest to survive if such a disaster occurred. And if I did, I would have very little to contribute to the new society. A literature and film scholar would be of little use, and I lack most of the other skills necessary for survival. I would have difficulty living without most of the basic modern conveniences, like a microwave or the internet, and once the coffee was gone, I would be of absolutely no use to anyone.

All this is prelude to the fact that I really like former Hammer staple Terence Fisher's 1965 sci-fi film, The Earth Dies Screaming (not to be confused with the Psycho-Rama classic, My World Dies Screaming, which I covered the other day, or with this or this.).

(Nor should it be confused with The Earth Dies Creaming, my epic-length, apocalyptic porn script that has yet to be produced.)

The Earth Dies Screaming chimes in at a lean 64 minutes, and much of the film is dialogue-free, as the main characters explore a world in which nearly everyone has died.

The film opens in the moments just as people suddenly start dropping dead: a train conductor dies, causing the train to derail; commuters die on the railroad platform waiting on their train; a pilot dies and crashes his plane behind a hill. The way people die, however, the film should be more aptly titled "The Earth Dies Sleeping."

Driving into a small, Northern England village comes Jeff, a retired American astronaut who has somehow survived whatever caused everyone else to die. Jeff systematically searches the village, looking for weapons, supplies, and survivors. He settles down in the local hotel, helping himself to the well-stocked bar, which is exactly what I would do in this circumstance.

The first 8 1/2 minutes of the film are completely dialogue-free, until a few more survivors start to show up at the inn. All have different stories about how they survived, but their stories share one thing in common: all the survivors were in some kind of environment where the air was either filtered or came through it's own oxygen supply.

Much of the film focuses on the personal dynamics of the survivors. None seem to be going through a denial phase, thinking that the current situation is anything but permanent. Some, in fact, start philosophizing on what the new world order will be like. One young newlywed comes across a bunch of money, and he makes an interesting commentary on just how useless it all now is, when, just a few days before, he would have done anything for it.

Most of the last survivors of the human race, it turns out, are complete bastards, especially the character Taggert, played by George Sanders stand-in Dennis Price. Taggert is clearly only out for himself, and he even tries to take a female companion along with him at gunpoint.

Some alien robot creatures eventually show up, but they merely lumber through town with unclear motivation, only attacking when they are attacked. The film, to its credit, gives us precious little information about what has happened. We know it's an alien invasion, but we don't know how the aliens killed everyone, and we don't know why they aren't bothering to eradicate the survivors. The robots, however, look awesome:
(The still comes from Tim Lucas's Video Watchdog blog.)

In the final twenty minutes of the film, all the dead people suddenly come back to life, but now with opaque white eyeballs. Suddenly, The Earth Dies Screaming becomes a zombie movie. Jeff quickly determines a way to stop the robots and zombies, at least temporarily, and the film comes to a hasty, and not entirely complete, resolution. I appreciate the fact that everything is not suddenly fixed at the end.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: More Sugar and Spike!

Here's another great Halloween cover from Sheldon Mayer's Sugar and Spike, this one from issue 67:


More Sugar and Spike covers can be found at Cover Browser.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Doomwatch!

The 1972 film Doomwatch is not a particularly exciting horror movie, and some might even debate its categorization as such. Nonetheless, I find the movie notable for a variety of reasons, and not simply because it stars Judy Geeson.

Doomwatch comes from a British TV series of the same name, which was currently in its final season when the film version was made. In both the series and the film, "Doomwatch" is the name of a British government organization charged with investigating environmental problems. I really wish our own government agencies took on such dramatic names. The Environmental Protection Agency would probably get a lot more funding if it found a similar name.

In the film, a scientist named Del Shaw (Ian Bannen) goes to the remote island of Belf to investigate the effects of a recent oil spill on local wildlife. While there, Shaw discovers that many islanders are suffering from a bizarre outbreak of acromegaly. However, his investigation of the outbreak is met with resistance by the locals who don't take kindly to outsiders.

At the beginning, Belf is highly reminiscent of Summerisle, the mysterious, isolated island community in the classic The Wicker Man, which was actually produced the following year after Doomwatch. Shaw keeps meeting villagers who quickly and rudely close their doors on him, and he has difficulty even finding a place to stay for the night. He finally gets to room at a house where he meets the new local schoolmistress, played by Judy Geeson, who happens to be the only other outsider on the island.

As Shaw discovers the extent of the acromegaly outbreak, he also notes that the villagers are treating it as the inevitable outcome of generations of inbreeding. However, when Shaw investigates a navy dumping ground on the island's opposite shore, he comes across some industrial containers that don't belong there. After a run in with a Royal Navy Admiral (played by a clearly bored George Sanders in his final role), Shaw finds out that the containers come from a chemical company that was experimenting with pituitary growth hormone, and that hormone has made its way into the local fish population, which in turn has caused the acromegaly.

What's notable here is that Shaw faces little resistance to his investigation. Sure, he has to overcome local superstitions on the island, but that's about it. When he confronts the chairman of the chemical company and later employees of the private disposal company that's responsible for the dumping, they all just give up their information readily. Even on the island, most islanders come to agree with Shaw's scientific explanation for the acromegaly, and though some threaten violent resistence to outside interference, they all quickly give in. By the end, the movie feels like the X-Files if that show never had a Mulder--that is, Scully could just solve every mystery with her scientific expertise, and everyone would agree that she's right. Ultimately, everyon on Belf agrees with Shaw and submits to radiation treatment on the mainland. Science wins!

The film does try to create some tension, mainly through Ian Bannen's performance. Bannen, best known today as one of the old guys in Waking Ned Divine, is miscast in the movie, as he often flips the switch to righteous indignancy without much provocation. His character, Del Shaw, is new to the film, but the other characters working at Doomwatch headquarters, including Drs. Spencer Quist and John Ridge, all come from the TV series.

The TV series, which ran from 1970-1972, is much better, though only about half of the episodes survive. It does suffer from the low production values of 70s BBC series, but the plots were interesting and surprisingly prescient. Here's a clip from a slightly less prescient episode involving an infestation of giant rats. This is a long clip, but it highlights some of the key qualities of the series, which include some really fine acting by stars John Paul and Simon Oates. Doomwatch and Dr. Quist are feared by other government agencies because of their diligence and tenacity, often drawing comparisons to Nazis. That tension, unfortunately, is all but missing from the film. I also like the cold open of this episode, with the kid thinking that the giant rat is a pussycat. Also, the title sequence and theme music are pretty awesome as well.

Intrepid readers will find whole episodes of this great series floating around the internet, and they are well worth checking out. It would especially be nice if a DVD collection were made of the surviving episodes. In 1999, the BBC launched a pilot to revive this series, but it never panned out. The time certainly seems ripe for a revival of this series.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: They Saved Hitler's Brain!

In the history of bad movies, very few movies seem so overtly to eschew quality as They Saved Hitler's Brain.I've often wondered if the creators came up with the awesome title, and then just decided to coast from there. If that's the case, I totally understand that impulse, as that is exactly what has happened with my own creation, Dr. Sir Isaac Darrow: Science Lawyer.

But despite its awfulness, They Saved Hitler's Brain remains one of the more fascinating bad movies ever made, and one that frequently gets referenced in pop culture.

What makes the movie fascinating is the fact that most of it is actually another movie, titled Madmen of Mandoras, originally released in 1963. Mandoras had also been produced under a couple of different titles, including Maniac and The Return of Mr. H ("Mr. H" is the name used for Hitler in a flashback sequence that explains how the head of the Nazi leader survived WWII). The film involves a CID agent, Phil Day, and his wife, who also happens to be the daughter of a famous scientist, traveling to the South American island of Mandoras to investigate the disappearance of her sister and father, Professor Coleman, who happens to have developed the only antidote to something called "G-Gas," a kind of deadly nerve gas weapon. On the island, Phil discovers a surviving band of Nazis with a plan to take over the world using G-Gas. The Nazis are led by the head of Adolph Hitler, which has been preserved in a jar and barks orders like "Mach Schnell!"

(As you can see, the poster misses the film's key selling point--nowhere at all does it mention that the film features Hitler's head in a jar!)

The 1963 film runs about 74 minutes--a good, short length for a B-picture fixed to a double bill. However, in the late 60s and early 70s, the film's production company, Crown International Pictures, was looking to gain more revenue from its film library by selling off the television rights, probably for "The Late Show" or for the 3:00 Movies I remember so fondly from WPIX in New York when I was a kid. It turned out, though, that the lengths of these movies were problematic, as TV stations wanted films that fit a two-hour time slot with commercials. So, Crown proceeded to pad out Mandoras by twenty minutes, and thus They Saved Hitler's Brain was born.

But the twenty minutes added to the film are just ridiculous.

A subplot was created and tacked on to the beginning of the film featuring two bickering CID agents, Vic and Toni, who are assigned to protect Professor Coleman before he has been kidnapped by the Nazis. The footage was clearly shot by amateur filmmakers with nonactors some time in the early 70s (no sources that I found can identify when this footage was shot, and the film's copyright date is listed as 1963. The film first appeared on TV under its new title in 1976.). Nothing was done to make it mesh with the look and style of the earlier film. Vic is a Steve Perry lookalike who never wears a suit. Toni is shot by the kidnappers, but she manages to survive long enough to get a warning to Vic before he's ambushed by a double agent. Then, a daytime car chase ensues, and Vic is killed in a nighttime collision, in which the filmmakers used footage from Thunder Road. The film even cuts back and forth between the nighttime accident and the pursuers watching it in a scene shot during the day.

While the first twenty minutes or so looks like a bad home movie, the Madmen footage was actually shot by cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who also shot such films as The Magnificent Ambersons and Night of the Hunter, so the contrast in styles is jarring.

For those whose prime interest in this film is Hitler's head in a jar, they are doomed to disappointment. We don't get to see the head until very late in the movie (and then, it appears beneath a giant swastika that happened to be drawn backwards. Man, quality control in the post-Third Reich Nazis dropped off sharply.) And even when he shows up, Hitler doesn't get much to do, except shout "Mach Schnell!" a couple of times and then look scowly. There is a nice scene late in the movie, however, when Hitler's head is being transported in the back seat of a car in order to escape the G-Gas detonation. One of Hitler's commanders if forced to kill an ally who has gotten cold feet, and Hitler's eyes glow and a smirk crosses his lips as he witnesses the shooting.

I have to say that the plot of Madmen of Mandoras, either separately or as part of They Saved Hitler's Brain, does not make much sense to me. At first, I thought the editors of the latter film had just butchered the original, but upon watching Madmen itself recently, I realized that that wasn't the case--as far as I can tell, Crown just tacked on the new footage to the beginning of the older movie. And while Madmen is measurably a better movie than Hitler's Brain--at least ore consistent in terms of filmmaking and acting--the latter is still an entertainingly bad movie. However, it doesn't hold a candle to the greatest of all movies featuring surviving severed heads: The Brain that Wouldn't Die!

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Sugar and Spike!

Sheldon Mayer's classic series Sugar and Spike regularly featured seasonal covers, including one for Halloween nearly every year of its long publication. As the Halloween Countdown progresses, I'll be posting some of my favorites regularly. Here's the one from issue 49:


(Cover scan from Cover Browser.)

When I was a kid, I used to love hitting the houses that handed out money for trick or treat. I remember one year going home several times to get a new mask so that I could hit another time a house giving out baggies full of pennies.

As regular readers of the blog know, my love for Sugar and Spike has caused me to take some extreme measures in order to convince DC Comics that publishing a Showcase Presents volume of Sugar and Spike reprints would be the equivalent of printing money.

Also, check out Sugar and Spike's Twitter feed!

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: What Does Talbert Talcott Want?

Famed Hollywood producer Talbert Talcott seems to want something, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.









I hate it when people just won't come out and say what it is they want.

From the 4 1/2 page story, "Realer than Real," originally published in House of Secrets 82, reprinted in the glorious Showcase Presents: House of Secrets Vol. 1. Writer unknown, art by Werner Roth and Vince Colletta.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Psycho-Rama!

As I discussed in last year's post on William Castle's The Tingler, I'm a fan of the gimmicks used by filmmakers in the 1950s to enhance the horror movie experience. And for every successful technique like 3-D (which may be the only successful one, come to think of it), there were many failures.

Which brings us to tonight's film, Terror in the Haunted House, aka My World Dies Screaming from 1958 (Both titles, by the way, are fundamentally inaccurate. First, the house in the film is not haunted; second, nobody's world dies--despite an enormous amount of screaming.). Terror in the Haunted House was filmed with a technique called "Psycho-Rama," which used "subliminal communication" to heighten the horror. Basically, as a supposedly scary scene was approaching, an image of a devil, a skull, a snake, or some bug-eyed guy would quickly flash on the screen. Sometimes, words would appear, like "Scream Bloody Murder" and "Get Ready to Scream."

The subliminals are, in fact, ludicrous, but they are also, unfortunately, the only reason to watch this otherwise terrible movie. They do have an interesting effect, though: much like an over-the-top score, the subliminals create a sense of anticipation. After all, the film tells us when the female lead is going to start screaming moments before she does.

In the film, Shiela (Cathy O'Donnell) is seeing a psychiatrist in Switzerland to help her with some traumatic dreams she is having. These dreams involve a house owned by a family named "Tierney." Shiela tries to walk up to the attic of the house, but something stops her before she gets to the stairs, and she starts to scream. The psychiatrist then spews some bullshit about the subconscious and repressed memories that he must have read in Psychoanalysis for Dummies.

Shiela is also newlywed to Philip (Gerald Mohr--perhaps best known to comics fans as the voice of Mr. Fantastic in the late 60s Fantastic Four cartoon), a suave, older man who wears a suit and tie for even the most casual occasion and who also constantly swaggers, Dino-style. Philip takes Shiela back to the States for their honeymoon, and he just happens to bring her to a house in Florida that is exactly like the one in her dream.

From here on, things become both predictable and frustrating. We know that Philip's choice of honeymoon location is no accident, but instead of telling Shiela straight up what he's trying to do, he lies, sneaks around, and sabotages the car in order to trap them at the house. All this only serves the purpose of setting up Philip as the obvious red herring. Shiela, also, should be able to figure out Philip's obvious plan, but instead she just swoons around her bedroom and occasionally screams.

Shiela soon learns from Jonah, the caretaker of the house (John Qualen), that the Tierney family was known as "The Mad Tierneys," because the grandfather of the family killed his two grandsons so as not to pass on the hereditary taint of madness to future generations. However, the grandfather failed to kill a third grandson, who turns out to be Philip, and who may or may not have inherited the family's particular strain of madness. In fact, Philip and Shiela were actually childhood sweethearts, though Shiela has no memory of this, and the rest of the film just gets more and more ridiculous. The climax of the film even requires about 10 minutes of exposition to explain what happened, and even then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Psycho-Rama was later used in the film A Date with Death (1959), which also starred Gerald Mohr (and shared the same writer and director). By 1961, however, the US government made subliminal advertising illegal, and Psycho-Rama became a casualty as well, which is for the better.

DWRAYGER DUNGEON has some information about the movie's soundtrack, along with some cool stills from the movie that show off some of the subliminal images.

The film is available on Hulu, and I've embedded the entire thing below. If you want to see how Psycho-Rama works, you can just check out the first five minutes or so to get a sense of what the subliminals are like throughout the movie. Otherwise, the film is only 76 minutes long, and it's worth checking out for fans of bad movies.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Day 13!

To celebrate the 13th day of the Halloween Countdown, here's the "Room 13" page by Sergio Aragones from House of Mystery 186, reprinted in Showcase Presents: House of Mystery Vol.1:

Yes, credit cards are pretty scary.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Hammer Week: The End!

To wrap up Hammer Week in this year's Halloween Countdown, I wanted to share my single favorite scene from a Hammer movie.

This clip features the first ten minutes of Kiss of the Vampire (1963), but it's really just the first four minutes or so that interest me here.



This scene encapsulates the effectively creepy gothic mileau of most Hammer films, and I just love how the guy walks up in the middle of the funeral and throws the shovel through the casket. There's also a slow building of suspense here that's measured well. Unfortunately, the rest of this movie doesn't hold up to the quality of its opening scene, and it's especially marred by some really awful special effects in the ending.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Hammer Week: Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter!

I'm realizing in my selection for Hammer films this week, I haven't picked any that fit the typical Hammer formula, like their more popular Dracula and Frankenstein movies. It's not that I don't like these movies--it's just that they tend to blur together in my head and often remain indistinguishable from one another. So, the ones that stand out for me here are the movies that do something different and move beyond the formula.

It also seems like I'm picking films from late in the Hammer horror cycle, which ended in the late 70s just before new executives launched the Hammer House of Horror TV series in the 80s. By the late 60s, the Hammer formula had been pretty well worn after ten years, and audiences were looking for newer, more sophisticated horror movies after the success of Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead. Hammer executive Michael Carreras tried a variety of approaches to bring new life to his company. For one, he tried to add even more sex and graphic violence into the company's films, with decidedly mixed results. Other attempts were made to revise the tired horror genre by mixing in elements from other genres, and these had much more interesting results, though not much box office success.

One of these revisionist horror movies happens also to be my favorite Hammer movie: Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974).
Though it takes place in 18th century Europe, Captain Kronos blends elements of Westerns and samurai movies with some basic horror conventions, though writer/director Brian Clemens (probably best known for his work on The Avengers) has a good time playing with horror conventions as well.

Kronos (played by German actor Horst Janson, whose voice is dubbed throughout the movie) has a past that remains a mystery. He has a military background, and upon his return home from war, he found his mother and sister had been turned into vampires. He killed them, but not before they bit him on the neck and he had to do something to survive the bite, though what that is is not explained. He has a massive scar that runs halfway around his torso, which seems to have happened during a military campaign. Kronos's partner is Professor Grost, who does most of the basic work of making weapons and so on while Kronos remains in a constant state of readiness for a fight with vampires (Kronos also trains, smokes pot, and meditates during his downtime).

And Kronos is a total badass, cut from the same cloth as Clint Eastwood and Toshiro Mifune (Clemens even admits to the Western and Kurosawa influence in the DVD commentary). In one of my favorite scenes, Kronos and Grost visit the local tavern and have to face down three thugs who have been hired by the villain to kill the heroes. The thugs, led by Ian Hendry in a fabulous cameo, try to antagonize Kronos by insulting his hunchbacked colleague. Rather than take their bait, Kronos explains that it's rude to call attention to another's physical misfortunes, as they each have characteristics that would open them up to ridicule as well. Here, we get the quick-draw scene, but instead of guns, they all have swords, and Kronos dispatches the thugs with two quick swings of his sword. The action happens so fast, however, that we don't really see anything: Kronos reaches for his sword, we hear two quick slicing motions in the air, and then the sword is back in its scabbard. It happens so fast, in fact, that the thugs require several seconds before they realize they're dead. It's a great scene, with editing taken right out of Leone. (In a later awesome badass scene, Kronos uses two swords to disarm--but not kill--a group of attacking villagers in a cemetary.)

Kronos and Grost are first introduced in the movie traveling through the forest, when the come across a young gypsy woman in stocks and covered with tomatoes. Kronos asks her what she has done, and she responds, "I danced on a Sunday." Kronos reaches for his blade, and we're not quite sure what he's going to do with it, nor is the girl. He cuts open the lock on the stocks, and sets her free. The girl, Carla (Caroline Munro--one of the great stars of horror and sci-fi), decides to travel with the duo, though she doesn't yet know what they do for a living.

Both Janson and Munro have considerable chemistry, as scenes between Kronos and Carla are erotically charged, though the two say almost nothing to each other. Clemens makes some interesting creative choices in filming their love scenes. In the key example, Clemens uses lighting and shadows to frame each character as they approach each other to embrace. It's a great scene, and especially surprising in its subtlety considering how other Hammer films of the same period were engaging in more graphic depictions of sexuality. It also reveals something important about the characters--neither speaks much in the film, but we get the sense that Kronos especially lives his life as if he could get killed by a vampire at any time, and Carla, with her mysterious past, finds this life attractive as well.

A friend from their past, Dr. Marcus, has called on Kronos and Grost to help his village out with a strange epidemic of vampire attacks. These attacks, however, don't follow typical vampire conventions: they take place during the day time, the victims (all young women) look prematurely aged but are not drained of blood, and they have blood stains on their mouths. Grost seems to have an idea what is going on, and he launches in to an explanation that establishes a key trope of the film--many different species of vampires exist, and all require different methods of destruction. While this does give Clemens the opportunity to play fast and loose with vampire lore, it also solves a big problem that a lot of vampire films have. Rather than establishing unique rules for killing vampires that don't exist in any other vampire story, Clemens basically concedes that every rule from every vampire story works in this world.

This trope also prepares us for one of the film's key set pieces. In a surprise twist, Dr. Marcus gets turned into a vampire, so Kronos and Grost tie him up and try to find out how to kill him in order to determine exactly what kind of vampire they're dealing with. This is a pretty effective horror scene: they try stabbing him with a wooden stake, hanging, and burning before stumbling on to the correct method.

Grost also has some unique methods for tracking down and identifying vampires. One, which becomes a funny gag that runs through much of the movie, involves placing a dead toad in the path of a suspected vampire. This comes, he explains, from an old folk rhyme:

“If a vampire should bestrode
Close to the grave of a dead toad
Then the vampire life shall give
And suddenly, the toad shall live.”

In other words, a vampire passing near the grave of a dead toad will cause the toad to return to life. Though this has the diction and rhyme scheme of Lord Byron's 1813 vampire poem "The Giaour," I think the rhyme is a creation of Brian Clemens. Whatever the case, it does set up one of the funniest lines in the movie. Grost and Carla have set about burying dead toads throughout the woods in order to track the vampire's movements. Grost seals the toad corpse in a wooden box, drops it in a freshly dug grave, and announces, "Toad in the hole." I don't know exactly why that line's funny, but it makes me laugh every time I see the film.

The film ends with an exciting sword fight, made especially realistic by the fact that Horst Janson is a trained fencer, as is the actor playing his opponent. Therefore, Clemens did not need to double either actor, and he had much more freedom to choreograph and film this scene.

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter is clearly meant to set up a franchise that unfortunately never happened. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the fact that Captain Kronos didn't become a huge multimedia franchise is one of my biggest pop culture disappointments. In the DVD commentary, Brian Clemens, who also owns the rights to the character, discusses attempts he has made to revive the character as a TV series or in further movies, none of which have come to fruition. There were a few unauthorized comic stories that ran in the Hammer House of Horror magazine, but that's it, as far as I can tell. However, what seemed inventive and original in this movie has been borrowed so frequently by the likes of Buffy, Blade, and Anita Blake that I fear any new Captain Kronos work would seem derivative. Also, I think we have all the vampire hunters and slayers that we need right now, though none are quite as cool as Captain Kronos.

Here's a link to the trailer, which highlights some of the more awesome parts of the film, including Kronos's costume, the swordfighting, and Caroline Munro. I also like the stylized "K" that serves as Kronos's logo and could function very well for this blog, too.