My room would be fuzzed with that vague purple that comes
right before the sunrise. I’d be exhausted, because it was 6 AM and little kids
need their rest, and because I’d been toiling away in school all week long, probably
learning to print or gluing elbow macaroni to paper plates or whatever else it
is you do in school when you’re five or six. I don’t remember how old I was exactly,
because I can’t find any information about when “Groovie Goolies” aired at 6:30
AM (or was it 6:00 AM?) on Saturday Mornings in the late-seventies/early
eighties, but man, do I remember that sickly feeling of trying to fight myself
awake every Saturday morning so I could creep downstairs to the still-dark den
to take in those cornball Burbank-by-way-of-Transylvania jokes and groove
along to those bubble gum pop songs as sugary as the Frankenberry cereal I’d
scarf after the closing credits.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Diary of the Dead 2014
Every year I log my
Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini reviews at the end of every week
in October in a fiendish feature I call Diary
of the Dead. This year I altered the scheme slightly for a single, season-ending
post.
I wrote it. You
read it. No one needs to get hurt.
Oct. 1
Rodan (1956- dir. Ishirō
Honda) **
One of the most iconic giant Japanese monsters first
appeared in a pretty boring movie. Miners discover a baby pterodactyl that
looks and moves like a kite. It terrorizes Japan without a smidgen of the
moodiness of its forefather, Gojira. Amazing that Ishirō Honda followed that masterpiece with such a lazy picture. Rodan
would only become fun when paired with Gojira, as we shall soon see.
We Are What We Are (2013- dir. Jim Mickie) ***
I haven’t seen the Mexican film upon which this cannibal
family flick was based, so I can’t make any unfavorable comparisons. Taken on
its own merits, the American We Are What
We Are is refreshingly atmospheric. It’s also deliberately paced, which I
usually like, but this one’s a little too deliberate, bordering on tedious. It’s
also a bit empty aside from its fairly subtle critique of the patriarchy. On
the plus side, it has Michael Parks, which is worth at least half a star.
Oct. 3
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964- Ishirō Honda) ***½
This is more like it. Since Honda didn’t seem interested
in/capable of recapturing the grimness of Gojira
he took his kaiju franchise to its logical camp conclusion. Rodan is back and
less turgid in mood if not motion. So is Gojira and giant bug Mothra. The old
rampaging monsters experience a change of heart when faced with three-headed
dragon Ghidorah. They actually have a conversation about whether or not they
should assist humanity by offing the new menace! Plus there are those wacky
fairy twins, who appear on a crazy TV talk show. Perhaps not great fun, but
certainly good fun.
Oct. 4
Monday, October 27, 2014
Track by Track: 'Spook Along with Zacherley'
In this ongoing
feature on Psychobabble, I’ve been taking a close look at albums of the
classic, underrated, and flawed variety, and assessing them Track by Track.
Like most American families, mine spent Christmas with the
usual choir of vinyl carolers: Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole, and since my
dad loved Rock & Roll as much as I do, Phil Spector’s stable of stars. Most
American homes, however, had no annual carols for my favorite holiday. Mine did
though. As soon as my mom had affixed the final cardboard jack-o-lantern to the
living room windows, I was begging my dad to take his yearly trip down to the
basement and brush the cobwebs off an old record called Spook Along with Zacherley.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Review: 'The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy'
The Creature from the
Black Lagoon was made long enough ago that it is considered the final chapter
of Universal’s monster movie golden age (by some folks, at least), but recently
enough that most of its principal players were still alive for the Monster Kid age
that continues to this day and hopefully will last well into the future. So
unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon spawned a wealth of
documentation about its making, as did its sequels Revenge of the Creature and The
Creature Walks Among Us.
One of the highest-profile Monster Kids, Tom Weaver,
conducted a heap of his own research to put together the lagoon-clogging The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black
Lagoon Trilogy. His (and a clutch of guest contributors') gargantuan heap of cast-and-crew interviews, archive
diving, and close attention to the films, themselves, makes this the definitive
Gill Man document by an astoundingly long shot. Everything you’ve ever wondered
about our beloved man-fish and his three movies—and probably a shitload of
things that never even crossed your mind—are covered between its nearly 400
over-sized, hardbound, photo-splattered pages. Do you want to know the
warts-and-all backgrounds of everyone involved in these films, including
lecherous director Jack Arnold, beastly leading man John Agar, and Gill Man
portrayer/right-wing nut job Tom Hennesy? They’re in here. Do you want to know
who allegedly played the creature along with everyone officially identified?
That’s here too. The weird promo campaign suggestions; the failed early story
drafts; the daily production mishaps and triumphs; critical analyses; the
long-teased but never produced remakes to which such names as John Landis,
Peter Jackson, and Robert Rodriguez have been attached; and a really long
introduction by Lagoon star Julie
Adams are all here too. The only thing I thought was a bit underserved in The Creature Chronicles is the 3-D
process, but in all honesty, I didn’t actually care that much about it. It’s
just that this book is so exhaustive that when one of the films’ significant
aspects isn’t explored from every possible angle, it sticks out a bit.
Weaver makes all the minutia readable with his smirking
prose, and all of the films were produced under weird enough circumstances by
wild enough crews that the whole damn thing will hold your attention regardless
of your interest in Revenge and Walks (and if you’re not interested in
them, shame on you). Really, this is both a book about particular movies and
about the filmmaking process in general, so cinema professors may want to think
about assigning The Creature Chronicles
after boring their students with the usual Bordwell and Thompson textbooks.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Review: Nelson Riddle's 'Batman: Exclusive Original Television Soundtrack Album'
Can't wait until November 11 for the landmark home video release of the classic "Batman" TV series? Well, Bat Fan, you can whet your Bat-ppetite further with Mercury/UMe's reissue of the show's Exclusive Original Television Soundtrack Album. Originally released by 20th Century Fox records in 1966, the year the series debuted, this record was both of its time and seemingly ahead of it, much like the series it advertised. Nelson Riddle's mix of lounge jazz, light Rock & Roll, and surf was very sixties soundtracky, while the presentation was much more forward thinking. The way the record folds dialogue from the series in with the music sounds like sampling twenty years ahead of schedule, especially the litany of Burt Ward's "Holy-This!" and "Holy-That!" littered through "Holy-Hole-in-the-Doughnut -or- (Robin, You've Done It Again)". There's also guest gabbing from Special Guest Villains Anne Baxter (as Zelda), Frank Gorshin (as The Riddler), Burgess Meredith (as The Penguin), and George Sanders (as Mr. Freeze).
That major baddies like The Joker and Cat Woman are absent is probably down to the fact that the Batman: Exclusive Original Television Soundtrack Album was released so early in the show's run, before viewers had a chance to really identify their favorite villains (Julie Newmar wouldn't regularly appear as Cat Woman until season two). This also means that a couple of favorite themes are absent, such as the Batgirl theme and the awesomely fuzzed-out variation on the main theme that played during fight scene's in the series' final season. Also, one should be warned that the "Batman Theme" on this album is not composer Neal Hefti's recording that kicked off the show but a remake by Riddle that works in a surprise lounge-jazz interlude. But, hey, that's how the album came out five decades ago. The re-release is available on both CD and vinyl, which is what I received to review. If you really want to recreate that Bat feeling of '66, the vinyl is the only way to go.
That major baddies like The Joker and Cat Woman are absent is probably down to the fact that the Batman: Exclusive Original Television Soundtrack Album was released so early in the show's run, before viewers had a chance to really identify their favorite villains (Julie Newmar wouldn't regularly appear as Cat Woman until season two). This also means that a couple of favorite themes are absent, such as the Batgirl theme and the awesomely fuzzed-out variation on the main theme that played during fight scene's in the series' final season. Also, one should be warned that the "Batman Theme" on this album is not composer Neal Hefti's recording that kicked off the show but a remake by Riddle that works in a surprise lounge-jazz interlude. But, hey, that's how the album came out five decades ago. The re-release is available on both CD and vinyl, which is what I received to review. If you really want to recreate that Bat feeling of '66, the vinyl is the only way to go.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Psychobabble’s Ten Most Terrifying Tales from the Crypt Comics!
Heh, heh… good evening, Kiddies! I see it’s time for me to
give you another spine-tingling post
here on Psychobabble, and today’s chiller
is no less than ten of the most horrid hunks of horror to appear in
Entertaining Comics’ Tales from the Crypt magazine! And
when I say Tales from the Crypt, I
mean Tales from the Crypt, and not The Haunt of Fear or The Vault of Horror, because…well… I
haven’t read all of those comics yet! So while favorites like “…And All Through
the House…” and “A Grim Fairy Tale!” may be missing from this list, I’m sure
you’ll agree the following stories earn the terrible title… Psychobabble’s
Ten Most Terrifying Tales from the Crypt
Comics!
1. The Living Corpse
(Tales from the Crypt #18; artist:
Wally Wood)
Its first tale to really nail both story and art reared its
hideous head in just the second issue of Tales
from the Crypt (never mind the kooky numbering system…issue 18 is really
issue 2). Despite its unimaginative title, “The Living Corpse” establishes a
strong mystery (why do these damn corpses keep coming to life and sprinting
from the local morgue?) and resolves it with a clever series of twists. Though
“The Living Corpse” isn’t a supernatural tale in the end, Wally Wood’s
hallucinatory depictions of the morgue attendant’s fears are as nightmarish as
anything in any zombie story.
2. Reflection of
Death! (Tales from the Crypt #23;
artist: Al Feldstein)
E.C.’s crypt keepers loved to pull the gimmick of placing
you in the story with second-person narration. This gimmick was never used to
more purposeful effect than in “Reflection of Death!”, in which you walk away from a car crash only to
have everyone who sees you completely freak out? Why? Well, let’s just say that
the Return of the Living Dead makeup
crew must have drawn a lot of inspiration from Al Feldstein’s artwork when
creating the Tar Man. Plus, the title panel monster mash illustration is fab!
3. Drawn and
Quartered! (Tales from the Crypt
#26; artist: Jack Davis)
A dose of voodoo causes everything that happens to an
artist’s paintings to happen to the things his paintings depict. A horrible and
classically ironic revenge plot ensues as the artist works overtime painting
everyone who’s ever wronged him. What may be the cleverest of all E.C. horror
stories is matched with Jack Davis’s signature goopy artwork.
4. The
Ventriloquist’s Dummy! (Tales from
the Crypt #28; artist: Graham Ingles)
Although the evil dummy trope has been done to death by now,
it had only really been tackled once in the British portmanteau film Dead of Night before “The Ventriloquist’s
Dummy!” Maybe that’s why this story so avoids the clichés of this type of
story. Instead of the usual “dummy become outlet for ventriloquist’s madness”
tale, we get a crazy conjoined twin one. The classic “Tales from the Crypt”
episode this comic inspired diluted the horror with comedy. The comic is all
horrific, and “Ghastly” Graham Ingles’s art makes good on his nickname.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Can't Wait Until 2016 for More "Twin Peaks"? Well, There's This...
"Twin Peaks" Freaks have a long wait until David Lynch and Mark Frost bring back their series for a nine-episode, "see you in 25 years" revival on Showtime in 2016. But they are not cruel men. They know a year and half or so is a long wait, so Mr. Frost will toss us a bone next year with The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks. Frost's novel, to be published by Macmillan's Flatiron Books, will get us all caught up on what's been happening in that dreamy town between 1990 and 2015.
This will not be Frost's literary foray. He has written a number of novels that reflect his fascination with murder, mystery, and the occult, including The List of Seven, The Six Messiahs, and the on-going young readers trilogy The Paladin Prophecy. "Twin Peaks" is no stranger to the page either, inspiring three excellent tie-in books by Frost's brother Scott (The Autobiography of Special Agent Cooper), Lynch's daughter Jennifer (The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer), and David, Mark, and Richard Saul Wurman (Welcome to Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town). Hopefully, The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks will continue that tradition of "Twin Peaks" literary excellence and whet our appetites for the televised event of the twenty-first century. See in one year...
This will not be Frost's literary foray. He has written a number of novels that reflect his fascination with murder, mystery, and the occult, including The List of Seven, The Six Messiahs, and the on-going young readers trilogy The Paladin Prophecy. "Twin Peaks" is no stranger to the page either, inspiring three excellent tie-in books by Frost's brother Scott (The Autobiography of Special Agent Cooper), Lynch's daughter Jennifer (The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer), and David, Mark, and Richard Saul Wurman (Welcome to Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town). Hopefully, The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks will continue that tradition of "Twin Peaks" literary excellence and whet our appetites for the televised event of the twenty-first century. See in one year...
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
No Tricks! Just Ten Treat Performances in Classic Horror Movies!
A good horror movie can be a grueling experience. All of
that hacking, cracking, and killing can really wear you down if there isn’t
some relief. Fortunately smart filmmakers know this to be true and tuck moments
of levity, and even sheer delight, into their films to give us viewers a
well-earned break. Often this pleasure may come directly from a single
character played by a most singular actor or actress. I think of these as
“treat” performances. These performances deliver waves of delight amidst the
horror, whether the character is a beacon of sweetness in a sea of bitterness
or is simply a lot of fun to watch despite being really, really evil.
Still not sure what I mean? Well, then kick off your hobnail
boots and peruse the following Ten Treat
Performances in Classic Horror Movies!
(spoilers ahead)
1. Dwight Frye as
Renfield in Dracula (1931)
2. Bela Lugosi as
Ygor in Son of Frankenstein
(1939)
Monday, October 13, 2014
The Monkees Meet the Monsters
Demonic deals. Cursed, severed animal parts. Reanimated
corpses. Unholy séances. Unwanted brain transplants. These things have long
plagued humankind. Four particular young men were unlucky enough to have to
deal with all of them. Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter may have been too busy
singing to put anybody down (well, unless we’re talking about Don Kirshner, Bob
Rafelson, LBJ, each other…aww hell, The Monkees loved putting people down). That didn’t stop an assortment of
creeps, spooks, and kooks from putting them
down.
In keeping with its postmodern take on entertainment, “The
Monkees” often spoofed well-worn genres: spy pictures (“The Spy Who Came in
From the Cool”, “Monkee Chow Mein”, “The Card Carrying Red Shoes”), heist pictures
(“Monkees in a Ghost Town”, “The Picture Frame”), gangster pictures (“Monkees à
la Carte”, “Alias Micky Dolenz”), sports pictures (“Monkees in the Ring”),
beach movies (“Monkees at the Movies”), motorcycle movies (“The Wild Monkees”),
pirate movies (“Hitting the High Seas”), westerns (“It’s a Nice Place to
Visit”, “Monkees in Texas”), sci-fi (“The Monkees Watch Their Feet”,
“Mijacogeo”), even documentaries (“Monkees on Tour”, ”Monkees in Paris”). However,
“The Monkees” trampled no genre as regularly as horror. Thursday, October 9, 2014
Review: 'Star Wars Posters'
Cinema has given us some unforgettable still images to introduce its moving ones. Posters for Psycho, Jaws, Chinatown, Eraserhead, Alien, E.T., Ghostbusters, and Pulp Fiction are as memorable as the films they advertise. My personal favorite movie poster is the one Roger Kastel created for The Empire Strikes Back. Inspired by one of George Lucas's favorite posters, Howard Terning's painting for the 1967-rerelease of Gone with the Wind, Kastel's work depicts Han and Leia in a Scarlett/Rhett clutch, Luke front and center on his tauntaun, and the masked eyes of Darth Vader looming in the background. That the kiddie faves Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 are shrunk and bunched to the side implies the relative adult-nature of Irvin Kershner's movie. The blue-palette perfectly reflects it's snow/sky/swamp aesthetic. Romantic, moody, a touch scary, and instantly evocative of my childhood, Kastel's is a piece of art that gets under my skin like no Mona Lisa or Waterlilies ever could... and I know I'm not alone on that matter.
If you're with me, then you're going to want to grab Abrams Publishing's new book Star Wars Posters. For such a blah title, this is one thrilling book. Kastel's iconic poster is just one of many and varied pieces in the book. The variety of styles that represent these films dazzles: from Kastel's pulp romance to comic book to circus poster to impressionism. The size of the book allows these often intricate works their due space, and select details are blown up further over luxurious two-page spreads.
There's also a healthy helping of preliminary sketches and concepts that didn't go beyond the board room. These are some of the most fascinating pieces in Star Wars Posters, particularly when they get the films' details wrong. A sketch John Solie did for the first movie portrays Chewbacca as a pipe-wielding gorilla. Several proposals for Empire posters show Princess Leia with her cinnamon-buns hairdo (and one even shows her in unseasonably scanty dress riding sidesaddle behind Luke on his tauntaun!). Ralph McQuarrie's early renderings are the most famous to not reflect the characters accurately, and a few of those are in here too, as are pieces presenting Empire's bounty hunters and Yoda in a fantastical Dagobah more vivid and alive than the film's swamp planet. These are two of the most stunning pieces in the book.
I'm sure you'll be happy to know that although Lucas "curated" this book, the focus remains with the three original movies. A restrained 15 pages of this 180-page book are wasted with the prequel trilogy. There are also pieces devoted to such intergalactic side roads as the 1978 "Star Wars in Concert" event, the Ewok TV movies, the "Clone Wars" and "Rebels" animated series, and various Star Wars video games. Much cooler are the oddball fan-made pieces that finish the book with Empire enlistment posters, ads for faux-pulp horror flicks called Revenge of the Sandpeople and Lair of the Rancor, a psychedelic Max Rebo concert poster, and Sandcrawler, Star Destoyer, and Millenium Falcon travel posters. These pieces are all done in the spirit of fun that is the key to the original trilogy and are as eclectic and expertly rendered as everything else collected in this superb art book.
If you're with me, then you're going to want to grab Abrams Publishing's new book Star Wars Posters. For such a blah title, this is one thrilling book. Kastel's iconic poster is just one of many and varied pieces in the book. The variety of styles that represent these films dazzles: from Kastel's pulp romance to comic book to circus poster to impressionism. The size of the book allows these often intricate works their due space, and select details are blown up further over luxurious two-page spreads.
There's also a healthy helping of preliminary sketches and concepts that didn't go beyond the board room. These are some of the most fascinating pieces in Star Wars Posters, particularly when they get the films' details wrong. A sketch John Solie did for the first movie portrays Chewbacca as a pipe-wielding gorilla. Several proposals for Empire posters show Princess Leia with her cinnamon-buns hairdo (and one even shows her in unseasonably scanty dress riding sidesaddle behind Luke on his tauntaun!). Ralph McQuarrie's early renderings are the most famous to not reflect the characters accurately, and a few of those are in here too, as are pieces presenting Empire's bounty hunters and Yoda in a fantastical Dagobah more vivid and alive than the film's swamp planet. These are two of the most stunning pieces in the book.
I'm sure you'll be happy to know that although Lucas "curated" this book, the focus remains with the three original movies. A restrained 15 pages of this 180-page book are wasted with the prequel trilogy. There are also pieces devoted to such intergalactic side roads as the 1978 "Star Wars in Concert" event, the Ewok TV movies, the "Clone Wars" and "Rebels" animated series, and various Star Wars video games. Much cooler are the oddball fan-made pieces that finish the book with Empire enlistment posters, ads for faux-pulp horror flicks called Revenge of the Sandpeople and Lair of the Rancor, a psychedelic Max Rebo concert poster, and Sandcrawler, Star Destoyer, and Millenium Falcon travel posters. These pieces are all done in the spirit of fun that is the key to the original trilogy and are as eclectic and expertly rendered as everything else collected in this superb art book.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Review: 'The Beatles Through Headphones'
Only The Beatles could inspire a book like The Beatles Through Headphones, and not
just because their name is right there in the title. They’re the only band that
has been scrutinized at such a minute level over thousands of books, articles,
and posts. Ted Montgomery’s book gets downright microscopic, noting hundreds of
little squeaks, clicks, mumbled and shouted asides, gaffes, flaws, and guffaws
that can only be detected by listening to their music (in stereo and in mono!) with strict attention
through a good set of headphones.
The Beatles Through
Headphones really earns its existence when Montgomery challenges common
assumptions based on his close listens. He has convinced me that only Paul’s
voice can be heard on “Eleanor Rigby”, that George is the sole singer of “You
Like Me Too Much”, and Ringo the one voice of “Act Naturally” (all in multiple
overdubs, of course). He is not always completely convincing, as when he
matter-of-factly declares the fuzz bass on “Think for Yourself” “a regular bass
played through a blown amp” when other theories are much more persistent
(Paul’s playing his Epiphone Casino, not his bass; he’s running his
Rickenbacker bass through a fuzz pedal) and there’s really no way to reach that
conclusion from a mere headphone listen. More surprisingly, Montgomery misses some
things that have been extensively detailed elsewhere, like the bits of feedback
and instrumental drop outs on “I’m Looking Through You” and the fact that the
mono mix of “Love You To” is noticeably longer than the stereo one. He says he
cannot discern a bass in “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, apparently not realizing Lennon
was playing a six-string bass with a more trebly tone than McCartney’s usual
Hofner and Rickenbacker. And I’ve often read that Lennon mumbles something
naughty on “Good Day Sunshine”, but have never encountered a writer willing to
reveal just what he says. I was expecting Montgomery to be that writer, but he
isn’t.
Montgomery ‘s swift, no-frills writing keeps the book moving
(each album is allotted about six or seven pages), which is important because
there occasionally isn’t much to say about these songs other than where the
voices and instruments are placed in the stereo mixes. Smartly he augments his
minutia with mostly astute critiques of their music, but a lot of those little
details he points out can go in one eye and out the other when consuming the
book cover to cover. So the best way to approach it is as a reference guide:
read one of his brief entries; then listen to song it discusses. That way
you’ll make the most of its unique purpose.
I’ve really been binging on The Beatles since the recent
release of their Mono box set and have been planning on taking a bit of a
break. Alas, The Beatles Through
Headphones makes me want to listen to those albums all over again.
Monday, October 6, 2014
I May Be Dreaming, But Don't Pinch Me..."Twin Peaks" Is Coming Back!!!! (for real this time)
Remember how everyone thought Andrew Packard was dead, but he wasn't really dead, then he came back, and then Josie went into that wooden pull knob? Well, Andrew may have been a minor "Twin Peaks" character, but it now seems he was actually a metaphor for the entire show, because it is coming back in 2016!
Rumors that David Lynch would be returning to that town both wonderful and strange have been rampant for the past few years, but when he made a really short film featuring the mostly deceased Palmer family for the recent "Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery" blu-ray set, the mystery of all Lynch's chat about TP being an ongoing story seemed to be solved in unspectacular fashion. Then everyone went cuckoo a few days ago when Lynch and "Peaks" co-creator Mark Frost simultaneously tweetled "That gum you like is going to come back in style". The rap was that "Twin Peaks" would be returning to TV, and additional clues indicated it might be coming to Showtime.
I'm rarely seduced by rumors, so I decided to wait and see before reporting anything. Naturally, I'm now at the back of the line in announcing that "Twin Peaks" will indeed be coming back with all-new episodes, and Showtime will indeed be the network to show it.
The show will pick up with nine episodes to film in 2015 and air the following year, 25 years after Coop's unfortunate visit to the john in his room at the Great Northern Hotel. That means we'll probably finally find out how Annie is.
Lynch will be directing all nine episodes, which is major news in itself since he hasn't directed anything but commercials and music videos since INLAND EMPIRE in 2006.
The only major problem is the deaths of some key Twin Peaks citizens. Though I will certainly miss Jack Nance as Pete Martell and Don Davis as Major Briggs, they are not quite as integral to what happens next as Frank Silva, who embodied the terrifying Killer BOB. As much as I usually loathe CGI, and think it's downright odious when departed people are digitally inserted into films, commercials, and the like, I think it may be necessary in this case. Even if Silva had not died two decades ago, it may have been necessary anyway since I doubt BOB ages.
Although these kinds of reunion deals don't always work out ideally (I wasn't an "Arrested Development" watcher, but apparently a lot of its hardcore fans were disappointed by its Netflix revival), I actually have faith in the return of "Twin Peaks". David Lynch is our greatest living artist. He has rarely made a piece of art that hasn't thrilled me on some level. And the fact that Mark Frost is involved makes the entire thing utterly legitimate and ensures that the project will be on track and true to that very specific style the classic series forged. I only hope no one pinches me and wakes me before this wonderful, wonderful dream come true.
Rumors that David Lynch would be returning to that town both wonderful and strange have been rampant for the past few years, but when he made a really short film featuring the mostly deceased Palmer family for the recent "Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery" blu-ray set, the mystery of all Lynch's chat about TP being an ongoing story seemed to be solved in unspectacular fashion. Then everyone went cuckoo a few days ago when Lynch and "Peaks" co-creator Mark Frost simultaneously tweetled "That gum you like is going to come back in style". The rap was that "Twin Peaks" would be returning to TV, and additional clues indicated it might be coming to Showtime.
I'm rarely seduced by rumors, so I decided to wait and see before reporting anything. Naturally, I'm now at the back of the line in announcing that "Twin Peaks" will indeed be coming back with all-new episodes, and Showtime will indeed be the network to show it.
The show will pick up with nine episodes to film in 2015 and air the following year, 25 years after Coop's unfortunate visit to the john in his room at the Great Northern Hotel. That means we'll probably finally find out how Annie is.
Lynch will be directing all nine episodes, which is major news in itself since he hasn't directed anything but commercials and music videos since INLAND EMPIRE in 2006.
The only major problem is the deaths of some key Twin Peaks citizens. Though I will certainly miss Jack Nance as Pete Martell and Don Davis as Major Briggs, they are not quite as integral to what happens next as Frank Silva, who embodied the terrifying Killer BOB. As much as I usually loathe CGI, and think it's downright odious when departed people are digitally inserted into films, commercials, and the like, I think it may be necessary in this case. Even if Silva had not died two decades ago, it may have been necessary anyway since I doubt BOB ages.
Although these kinds of reunion deals don't always work out ideally (I wasn't an "Arrested Development" watcher, but apparently a lot of its hardcore fans were disappointed by its Netflix revival), I actually have faith in the return of "Twin Peaks". David Lynch is our greatest living artist. He has rarely made a piece of art that hasn't thrilled me on some level. And the fact that Mark Frost is involved makes the entire thing utterly legitimate and ensures that the project will be on track and true to that very specific style the classic series forged. I only hope no one pinches me and wakes me before this wonderful, wonderful dream come true.
Monsterology: The Headless
In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble,
we’ve been looking at the history of Horror’s archetypal monsters.
Dracula. The Wolf Man. The Frankenstein Monster. If there’s
one thing that all of these fellows have in common, it’s that they all have
heads. Dracula and The Wolf Man use the mouths embedded in their heads to bite
you. The Frankenstein Monster’s head is what houses the abby-normal brain that
sends him on murderous rampages. Without their heads, these guys are much less threatening.
They probably couldn’t do much of anything at all.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Thursday, October 2, 2014
20 Things You May Not Have Known About Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
A Halloween season without Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein is like a Christmas without A Christmas Carol or a Thanksgiving
without that movie about Thanksgiving. So this year before you sit down to
munch a bowl of brains and laugh yourself stupid while watching Bud, Lou, Drac,
Frankie, and Wolfie’s antics, shove this information into your brain hole, a
tasty heap of tidbits I call 20 Things
You May Not Have Known About Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein!
1. As The Brain of Frankenstein could have easily been the title of any of Universal’s more serious monster movies, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s meeting with the Frankenstein Monster was wisely retitled.
2. As they
themselves trumpet, the opening credits sequence of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was animated by Walter Lantz,
who is most famous for bringing Woody Woodpecker to life. Coincidentally,
animation designer Nino Carbe, who also worked on Woody, illustrated
Illustrated Editions’ 1932 “De Luxe Edition” of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel.
4. While Glenn
Strange played the Frankenstein Monster as many times as Boris Karloff (three
times), he spent a lot less time in his gear. For Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Strange’s latex and foam
mask took a mere hour to apply. By Karloff’s account, that is some five hours
fewer than it took Jack P. Pierce to apply his cotton and collodion makeup
(though a 1932 issue Picturegoer
reported that Pierce’s makeup job took a more reasonable three and a half
hours).
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