Review: 'Frankenstein Alive, Alive!: The Complete Collection'

In 2012, writer Steve Niles (30 Days of Night; Batman: Gotham County Line) and artist Bernie Wrightson (Swamp Thing) began publishing a four-issue sequel to Wrightson’s 1983 comic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. While the new story was somewhat slight, and gave the resurrected monster little to do besides ponder his newfound humanity and commit one decisive, redemptive act, Wrightson’s artwork is absolutely extraordinary. The level of detail is remarkable—you could spend hours exploring a mad doctor’s roomful of freakish curios—while the black and white work recalled both E.C. Comics’ and Universal Horror’s best. The monster, himself, was an original creation without Jack Pierce’s trademark flattop and “bolts,” representing the more human-like creature Shelley described while still delivering something truly monstrous looking.

That is where the monstrousness of Niles’s creature ends. He is thoroughly benign in the Frankenstein Alive, Alive! series, leaving the most monstrous deeds to a Dr. Ingles (an clear homage to “Ghastly” Graham Ingles, E.C.’s greatest renderer of oozing grue and a major influence on Wrightson). Dr. Ingles’s warped attempts to restore life to his dying wife provide the true horror of Frankenstein Alive, Alive! and infuse the plot with its meatiest moments. However, the real star of this sideshow—as Niles acknowledges in his introduction to a IDW’s new hardcover collection of all four issues—is Wrightson.

Sadly, the artist died of brain cancer before he was able to complete the fourth and final installment of Frankenstein Alive, Alive!, so at his personal request, Kelley Jones (Swamp Thing; Batman) was brought on to finish the final issue with illustrations based on Wrightson’s sketches. As we can see from those sketches included as valuable bonus pages in Frankenstein Alive, Alive!: The Complete Collection, Wrightson’s fine detailing was still in full force for the final chapter, though Jones curiously mutes those details despite the relative faithfulness of his reproductions of Wrightson’s sketches. Some artists truly are irreplaceable.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 162

The Date: March 10

The Movie: Swamp Thing (1982)

What Is It?: Wes Craven’s goofy adaptation of a comic book about a monstrous professor haunting the swamps of Louisiana was an afternoon HBO staple when I was a kid. Yes, it’s dumb. Yes, Adrienne Barbeau’s potentially interesting character is sacrificed to the creature’s need for a damsel to constantly rescue. Still, it isn’t boring and the creature has a definite Frankenstein-Monster charm.

Why Today?: On this day in 1804, the two-day ceremony in honor of  the U.S.’s purchase of Louisiana from France begins.

Review: 'Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers!'

In 1940, Theodore Sturgeon published an atmospheric, highly unsettling story about a murderous mass of swamp vegetation called “It” in Unknown magazine. Sturgeon’s career would continue to blossom, adding such achievements as the script for the classic “Star Trek” episode “Amok Time” and inspiring Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout to his résumé. The swamp creature would go on to have an even more flourishing life. Shortly after the publication of “It”, The Heap oozed across patriotic Airboy comics. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties, muck monsters like the Lurker in the Swamp, Bog Beast, Marvin the Dead-Thing, Man-Thing, a revived Heap, and especially, Swamp Thing were sprouting up in every comic brand worth its salt.

Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers!, the sixth installment of The Comic Book Creator series, doesn’t get too deeply into why swamp monsters caught on the way they did (I think it has to do with both our fear of primordial swamp environments and the way such isolated places serve as pathways to exploring our own feelings of isolation), but it doesn’t skimp on anything else about these unique creatures. This text-thick, completely illustrated edition features a detailed and critical timeline of muck monsters in the comics, full-color pin-ups, the full text of Sturgeon’s “It”, biographies of the half-dozen-or-so major muckers, and a series of very in-depth interviews with monster makers such as Len Wein, Alan Moore, and Bernie Wrightson (Swamp Thing), Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik (The Man-Thing). Rather than being mere page-filler, these interviews are consistently fascinating, whether Wein offers his brief but thought-provoking take on the appeal of swamp monsters, Wrightson gets into his Monster Kid childhood, or Moore waxes philosophical about his Swamp Thing contributions and handles some no-punches-pulled questions graciously (although it is off topic, I was hoping he’d discuss The Killing Joke a bit too, but he doesn’t). While Swampmen doesn’t hesitate to take its bizarre topic seriously, there is almost always a sense of fun purveying this colorful, informative, artful, and intelligent volume.

Diary of the Dead 2011: Week 1

Welcome to this year’s installment of Psychobabble’s Diary of the Dead. I’ll be logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini reviews every Friday in October (this year I’ll only be discussing movies I haven’t reviewed elsewhere on this site). I write it. You read it. No one needs to get hurt.



It begins again…

October 1st

Queen of Blood (1966- dir. Curtis Harrington) ***½

It is the year 1990, an age of mind-blowing technological advances, an age when astronauts can zoom off to Mars in rockets and commune with the sexy, blood-sucking troll doll they meet there. Queen of Blood gets a lot of juice from its cult-crazy cast: Basil “Sherlock Holmes” Rathbone, John “Enter the Dragon” Saxon, Forrest “Famous Monsters of Filmland” Ackerman, Dennis “Dennis Hopper” Hopper. It also looks amazing, with its vivid, primary palette and images straight out of a Weird Science comic book. The aesthetic is so strong and the cast is such a blast that the script’s mediocrity barely matters. Writer/director Curtis Harrington should have introduced his monster much earlier. Bava’s Planet of the Vampires remains the preferable alternative, but Queen of Blood is definitely worth a gander for sci-fi/horror junkies.

October 2nd

Tales That Witness Madness (1973- dir. Freddie Francis) ***½

This British portmanteau is an Amicus production in everything but name. You’d have to be mental not to recognize the similarities between this film’s mental institution wraparound and that of Roy Ward Baker’s Asylum, an actual Amicus film released the previous year. But Francis is the portmanteau master, and his film is a lot better. Despite the redundant wraparound, the episodes are uncommonly weird. A possessed photo forces a guy to time travel on an old timey bike. A tree-lady branches out into a jealous rage. Kim Novak unwittingly eats her own daughter at a voodoo luau. The special effects are laughable, but that’s part of the charm.

October 4th

Swamp Thing (1982- dir. Wes Craven) ***

Wes Craven’s goofy comic book adaptation was an afternoon HBO staple when I was a kid. It’s been decades since I’ve seen Swamp Thing, but since I haven’t really grown up during that time, I was still able to enjoy it on a certain level. Yes, it’s dumb. Yes, Adrienne Barbeau’s potentially interesting character is sacrificed to the creature’s need for a damsel to constantly rescue. Yes, the rubber suit he wears looks like a rubber suit. With all the cheesy monsters and explosions and gratuitous boobs you’d think a 12-year old made this movie. Of course, if those are your complaints about a movie called Swamp Thing, you probably shouldn’t be watching a movie called Swamp Thing. It isn’t boring and the creature has a definite Frankenstein-Monster charm.

The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970- dir. Roddy McDowall) **½

“The Ballad of Tam Lin” is an old Scottish folk song that tells the tale of a young man caught in the thrall of an evil fairy queen. In Roddy McDowall’s sole directorial effort, the queen is a sort of a hippie den mother embodied by Ava Gardner. Stephanie Beecham is the outsider who upsets her control by falling in love with skinny, young Ian McShane. The queen then turns vengeful. McDowall’s tasteful restraint keeps the The Ballad of Tam Lin from generating heat until its final twenty minutes, which over compensate with psychedelic silliness. As a romance, it’s somewhat effective. As a horror movie, it is decidedly unhorrific. Pentangle handles the title ballad, but Fairport Convention’s rocking version is the definitive one.

October 5th

Requiem for a Vampire (1973- dir. Jean Rollin) *½

A pair of robbers dressed as circus clowns take refuge in a castle overrun with depraved vampires. The minimal use of dialogue is interesting, and the photography is quite beautiful. The nonstop images of rape and torture it captures are ugly. There’s a pretty suspenseful scene in which one of the robbers is accidentally buried alive, but that isn’t enough to make this boring trash worth watching.

October 6th

Invaders from Mars (1953- dir. William Cameron Menzies) ****

I watched Invaders from Mars on the recommendation of a regular Psychobabble commenter known as The Baron. I’m glad I did. The plot is basically a precursor to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which the alien replicas are really, really mean and a little boy fills the Kevin McCarthy role. Invaders from Mars has its intense moments, but its artificiality makes it a lot less scary than Body Snatchers. The blatantly phony sets and richer-than-reality Cinecolor still make for delectable eye candy. An endless pseudo-science lesson sequence causes the center to sag, but the film manages to get back in orbit with a war-of-the-worlds finale masterminded by a mutant squid-man who lives in a snow globe. Raoul Kraushaar’s score, which appropriates bits of Holst’s The Planets, is phenomenal. Look out for a fleeting cameo by June Cleaver!