Halloween Countdown: October 21 - Kirk versus the spiders

Hey, Dr. Robert "Rack" Hansen, you might want to be careful. Reliable sources tell me that the place is full of spiders.

You can't say I didn't warn you, pal.

1977's Kingdom of the Spiders is just one of the many "animal attack" films that graced screens both big and small during my childhood, but the towering presence of William Tiberius Shatner sets this otherwise by-the-numbers affair head, shoulders, and polyester slacks above the rest of the genre pack. I daresay it's the best project involving small, hairy nightmares that The Shat has ever starred in...unless you count his time spent on T.J. Hooker opposite Adrian Zmed.

Plus, the film's ending is still pretty creepy in a really obvious and cheap-looking kind of way. (If you're going to pass off acrylic landscape paintings as aerial shots, it helps if the painter understands the concept of two-point perspective.)

Halloween Countdown: October 19 - twelve more days 'til Halloween

The original Halloween film from 1978 is hailed as a horror classic, and rightly so. Along with Psycho, it is credited with providing the template for the slasher film genre, yet like Hitchcock's 1960 film, the horror is a matter of atmosphere, pacing, and soundtrack rather than the gory, high body count excess associated with substandard imitations.

The silliness and implausibility of Halloween's premise are masked by writer/director John Carpenter's skillful presentation, which manages to sustain a real sensation of dread throughout the proceedings -- hunter versus hunted, everyteen babysitter versus a monster, Jamie Lee Curtis versus a dude in coveralls and a Shatner mask -- made even more terrifying by the utter absence of scenery-chewing antics on the monster's part. It's no mean feat to pull off effectively, which is probably why the film continues to be held in high regard by folks (like Maura, for example) who consider slasher films to be low-grade exploitative garbage.

The problem with success, especially within the realm of genre material, is that there's an overwhelming temptation to return to the same well again and again until the box office revenue runs dry. "Sameness with a spin" is the operating principle, and Halloween's success meant that whatever charms the original possessed had to be recycled, laminated and built upon with copious amounts of ludicrous backstory over the course of a half-dozen slasher-by-numbers sequels, an unnecessary remake, and the head-scratcher that is 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

The third entry in the series is a sequel in name only, featuring none of the characters or plot points established in the original film. Instead it explores the timely issue of druidic fundamentalist terrorism, as it pertains to neolithic monuments, seasonal merchandise, and the use of advertising. Or, to put it simply, magical Halloween masks that make creepy crawlies burst out of people's heads when triggered by a subliminally-loaded TV commercial. There are killer robots involved in the mess somewhere, too.

The idea, according to the producers, was to expand the franchise into a anthology format, which translates into non-bullshit language as "a shameless bait-and-switch ploy that banks on name recognition." (Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill wanted to move past the franchise, but the moneymen had other ideas. From such behind-the-scenes wrangling such cinematic atrocities are born.)

Despite the film's messy genesis and numerous other warning signs, Fangoria was still willing to beat the drum of unwarranted optimism...

...though I suspect that the full page ads the magazine was running for masks based on the ones in the film may have had something to do with it. The film did make money, though not nearly as much as hoped for and racked up enough terrible reviews that the producers retreated to the comfort of familiar territory for the fourth film. The Wikipedia entry for Halloween III: Season of the Witch claims that it "has gained somewhat of a cult following among audiences," which signifies little except that the one fan of the movie knows how to edit a wiki page.

For me, the film is significant for being one of the first instances where the popcult coprophagia of childhood gave way to a more sophisticated assessment of "Wow, this film is total crap! Why am I wasting my time watching it?" (I consider myself lucky. Many geeks never reach that level of awareness in their lifetimes.)

While I'm not above dropping a reference to the Silver Shamrock jingle from the film, for today's musical selections I'm going with two gems featured in the original 1978 movie.

John Carpenter - Halloween Theme (from the Halloween 20th Anniversary Edition OST, 1998) - Yes, there is a boogeyman, and he really digs the piano.

Blue Öyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The Reaper (from Agents of Fortune, 1976) - First person to make a "more cowbell" joke gets a size 10 jungle boot to the ass.

Halloween Countdown: October 6 - deader than dead

Zombie Jen and Zombie Maura at yesterday's Zombie Walk in Salem.
No offense to the lovely ladies in the above photo, but zombies ain't what they used to be. Like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster before them, they've become quaint archetypes denuded of much of their shock value by media oversaturation. It has reached a point where even a fan of the zombie apocalypse subgenre such as myself has become jaded, and the shambling hordes of ravenous undead have become a shallow high concept plug-in (see also: monkeys, ninjas, and pirates) or simply locked into a predictable formula.

More so than the various slasher fiends that haunted the screen back in the day, zombies were the true archetype of horror for my generation, which came of age in the rubble of the Grand Consensus and the rise of Reagan. They were creatures born of miscalculation, failure, and/or hubris, a rotted reflection of contemporary society reduced to its basic impulses -- consume and assimilate.

They were an effective visualization of underlying anxieties -- ecological, biological, racial, economic -- reflecting the sense that society was poised to devour itself. It's a concept that can, and did, float a host of metaphorical conceits wrapped in a gut-munching package. And so it played out, with various levels of competence, across scores of low-budget domestic and European films that graced the drive-ins and video stores of my childhood and early teens.

As fringe entertainment, it was great fun, terrifying and amusing in equal measure. Once it came to the foreground of the popcult consciousness, however, things began to fall apart quickly. Blame the popularity of the Resident Evil games or the inherent decadence of the entertainment biz, but once the professional tastemakers turned their Eye of Sauron onto the zombie subgenre, it was a foregone conclusion that they wouldn't move on until it been completely strip-mined.

Sequels, remakes, spin-offs, tributes, parodies, cash-ins -- the whole arsenal of weapons of commercial destruction were employed toward this end. The dreaded "death of a thousand tweaks" tactic of making minor alterations to the established conventions was rolled out as an attempt to stress differences ("Hey, our zombies can RUN FAST!") while wallowing in sameness ("Otherwise, though it's a straight-up zombie flick!"). The gore 'n' metaphor formula, incidental or organic in the source material, became self-consciously codified to the point of absurdity. ("WE SURVIVORS ARE THE REAL LIVING DEAD!" Dude, that's, like, soooo deep. Yawn.)

Such is the way of all corpse flesh. At least we'll always have Louisville...because Return of the Living Dead, no matter how cheapjack it looks to me these days, is still the most depressing and disturbing horror film I've ever seen. Exploitation cinema has never been so unrelentingly Sophoclean.

he's out to get before he's got

He's one with Xenu now.
Isaac Hayes, the legendary Zen master of soul, funk, and cinematic bad-assitude, has passed away at the age of 65. He was the man who made "You shut yo' mouth!" a household expression, and therein lies the problem with eulogizing him.

The popcult resonance of Shaft and the film's Hayes-penned soundtrack has reached Pythoneseque levels of oversaturation in the past three-and-a-half decades. What ought to be appreciated as sublime aesthetic and historical achievements has been reduced to a facile macro employed by mayo-and-white bread fanboys and comedians looking to add a little funky flava into their clumsy attempts at humor. Does anyone want to guess how many times the theme to Shaft or "Chocolate Salty Balls" have been or are going to be spotlighted on the various music blogs in the recent past or immediate future?

Before South Park, before Shaft, before Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes and David Porter teamed up to write some of the finest tracks to come out of the Stax Records stable. Stax soul duo (and perennial AT faves) Sam & Dave were major beneficiaries of their talents, with Hayes and Porter penning such powerhouse hits as "Hold On, I'm Comin'," "I Thank You," and this gem, which has retained its luster even after years of rough handling and rougher reinterpretations...

Sam & Dave - Soul Man (from Soul Men, 1967) - Socially aware Memphis soul, written by masters, sung by the best, backed by both Booker T. & the MG's and the Mar-Keys, and served sizzling hot. If that isn't a recipe for pop music perfection, such a thing simply doesn't exist.

Adios, Truck. When you were hottest, you were the coolest.


When you were baddest, you were the best.

Issac Hayes - Main Title "Truck Turner" (from the Truck Turner OST, 1974) - Whether you're busting heads in a dive bar or busting moves on the dancefloor, you couldn't ask for a finer soundtrack than this.

I am my ideal

I had a drama professor back in college who was a bit of a rogue, but an outstanding instructor nonetheless. For some reason presumably tied to departmental politics, he was the person who usually got tasked with teaching the foundation courses in Traditions of Western Drama or whatever the prevailing uni-speak is for "reading a shitload of old plays and discussing why they matter."

These were the mandatory courses that every aspiring thespian or playwright had to suffer through before passing onward and upward to the sexier, hands-on parts of the curriculum, but this professor had a knack for making us care about the plays discussed in class. More importantly, instead of conducting the class as a watered-down English Lit course, he approached the material with an accent on technical aspects over critical theory. (Which is how it ought to be for a theater arts class, but in my experience often not the case.)

"Significance" meant less to him than entertainment value, and when the time came to discuss the dreary naturalism of Strindberg, Ibsen, and the like, he came right out and stated "These are historically important plays. They are important works of literature. You should all be familiar with them. That said, I would rather sit through a community theatre Starlight Express than suffer through a Broadway production of Enemy of the People with an all-star cast."

Hardly a divine revelation, but it's one of those moments that has stuck with me over the years even as other, arguably more important parts of my college education have slipped from conscious memory. The idea that a tenured professor of literature with an impressive resume could step outside the ivory tower and make case for entertainment value in and of itself made me realize that I wasn't just gaming the system and wasting my time at college, humoring the unfortunately high number of insular or clueless instructors that viewed appreciation as a gnostic process, removed from the vulgarity of the masses. (Seriously. I had one professor who was shocked, shocked, to discover that fans of romance novels were not a monolithic block of uneducated bon-bon munchers.)

Or I should have taken it as a clear warning that my lateral thinking processes and poor sense of self-discipline were fundamentally at odds with formal academia. Honestly, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have gone to trade school to be an auto mechanic and kept with the autodidactic route when it came to the the study of humanities.

In any case, the complicated relationship between entertainment and art is something I've addressed quite a few times already on Armagideon Time, usually in reference to the medium of comics or music. Despite recurring assertions to the contrary, quality is a relative concept when it comes to something a personal as "art," and while it is possible to establish a hierarchy of aesthetic value on a macro level, the boundaries tend to blur with closer examination. As always, keeping a sense of perspective is the best course of action, and that's something which is most easily achieved by observing the widest possible vista instead of limiting one's experiences to a single strata, be it lofty peaks of "high art" or the vulgar sumps of disposable entertainment.

Which brings us to AIP's series of Beach Party movies, director William (the real-life Mr. Samantha the Witch) Asher's sybaritic counterpart to Roger Corman's stygian Poe cycle of technicolor exploitation fare -- the Eros and Thanatos of early 1960's drive-in theaters.

Pal Dorian has dedicated this week to the antics of Frankie, Dee Dee and the gang, and his analysis of the series hits pretty much covers all the salient points I could possibly make about their enduring appeal.

The jokes are pure corn, the surfing scenes are almost avant-garde in their rear-projected fakery, the original musical numbers are embarrassingly dire, and the hokey bacchanalia of the privileged white "teenage" characters occurs in a world completely isolated from what was going down in America's inner cities or over in Southeast Asia at the time.

As terrible and cheapjack as the Beach Party films are, though, I can't help enjoying them nonetheless, and no summer vacation would be complete without a Sunday afternoon viewing of at least one the movies. (This year it was Muscle Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo.) Chalk it up to nostalgia -- nostalgia for a childhood when the films were staples of weekend afternoon UHF programming, for the lame-but-quaint tropes of vintage sitcom-style humor, and most importantly for the reassuring presence of various guest-stars drawn from the stable of character actors (Paul Lynde, Mickey Rooney, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, et cetera) familiar to every heavy TV-viewing kid of my generation.

I wouldn't make a case that the films occupy a loftier cinematic position than, say, The Godfather, but I do know what I'd rather sit down to watch on a lazy summer weekend. Coppola's epic may masterfully dissect the nature of the American capitalism, but it does it feature lip-synched performances of either of these musical gems?

Stevie Wonder - Happy Street (from The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 4, 2006) - A swingin' soul celebration, as featured in Muscle Beach Party (1964).

The Kingsmen - Give Her Lovin' (from The Kingsmen, Vol. 2, 1964) - Ginchy garage rock, as featured in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).

a hell of world

There will be no installment of B-Side Sundays this week, as the temperature in the attic is currently fluctuating between "blast furnace" and "stellar core" temperature levels. While there are circumstances where I would certainly risk spontaneous combustion for the sake of my beloved readers, said circumstances do not include "searching through the bins for that one Shakespears Sister twelve-incher I bought back in 1992."

So I'm just going to throw out this Simsean philosophical question...


...and this utterly-disposable-yet-endearing techno-rock musical annotation, instead:

Republica - Kung Fu Movies (from Speed Ballads, 1998)

too fowl for words

You know what contemporary superhero comics are sorely lacking in?

Duck-themed vengeance.

If the Spectre had been feeling especially vicious that day, he could have opted to inflict today's b-side offering upon his victims instead...

Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots - Disco Duck (Part II) (the b-side of 1976's "Disco Duck" 7") - Because an instrumental version of a novelty song predicated on a sub-par Donald Duck impersonation makes perfect sense. Then again, we are talking about the 1970's; I doubt anyone looked up from their gold-plated coke spoons or custom-made bongs long enough to notice the absurdity of it all.

...and because one waterfowl-related musical travesty deserves another, I might as well lob this rotten egg into the ring, too:

Thomas Dolby, George Clinton & Other Folks Who Really Should Have Known Better - Howard the Duck (from the Howard the Duck OST, 1986) - There are certain cinematic stinkers from the past -- Xanadu, for instance -- that have improved with the passage of time. Howard the Duck is not one of them.

that rises above

Actor John Phillip Law passed away last Tuesday at the age of 70.

In honor of his memory, let us pay homage to his unparalleled cinematic legacy, specifically the trio of 1968 films that cemented his place of high esteem within my personal retrological pantheon...

Danger: Diabolik
Ennio Morricone - Deep Down (from the Danger: Diabolik OST, 1968)

Barbarella
Bob Crewe and Charles Fox - The Angel Is Love (from the Barbarella OST, 1968)

...and Skidoo.
Harry Nilsson - I Will Take You There (from the Skidoo OST, 1968)

Farewell, Mr. Law, and thank you. May a flight of blind space angels sing thee to thy rest.

"It's not unlike ancient dental equipment on Earth - not that you'd know anything about that!" - John Phillip Law (as Kalgan) in Space Mutiny, 1988

he's the man of the hour

It is only natural, I suppose, when recovering from a prolonged physical ordeal that one's thoughts would take a pronounced turn toward the introspective. During my slow convalescence, I have frequently found myself pondering roads not taken. My meditations have centered on matters as small as my habitual negligence regarding flossing, as well as grander existential questions about my ultimate purpose in life.

It occurred to me that maybe my talents were not best served in my current dual occupation of paid techmonkey/unpaid internet commentator, and that I could obtain a greater sense of personal fulfillment through a career in the European supercriminal field. There is visceral sense of satisfaction to be obtained in wrecking the economies of several Continenal powers through an overly elaborate scheme involving disintegration rays and amphibious cars. It's certainly a superior experience than explaining to my coworkers (for the umpteenth time) why downloading spyware-laden clutterware onto the department server is a bad thing.

One of the problems for the aspiring Euro supercriminal is the shocking absence of any vocational training programs or graduate-level seminars from which to learn the tricks of the trade. Granted, there are MBA programs, but those skew toward the megalomaniacal world-destroyer career path, where I'm more interested in the anarcho-hedonist side of things. Not even the renowned University of Phoenix offers something as straightforward as an MFA in Creative Villainy. No wonder this country has lost its competitive edge.

Instead, I've had to content myself with reviewing the recorded careers of some of the past luminaries of the profession, and performing a comparative inventory of relevant assets to determine my potential prospects. Here's a brief annotated summary:

Vehicle: While a tan 1998 Chevy Lumina lacks the sex appeal of a 1962 Studebaker Avanti or 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, the sturdiness, the horsepower, and, most importantly, the aggressive unremarkableness of the mid-sized family sedan make it an ideal getaway car. A quick turn into a suburban subdivision during a frenetic chase would utterly perplex the local constabulary as they would be forced to deal with dozens of vehicular red herrings.

Nefarious Weapon: At hand.

Secret Lair: The house on the hill isn't so much "secret" as "relatively isolated," which gives it the benefit of "hiding in plain sight." Its interior is well stocked with electronic gadgets (including a Zune, a gaming PC, and an Xbox 360) and exotic pets (well, a couple of dogs, some cats, some rabbits, and a chinchilla). While there are no alligator pits or other sinister deathtraps per se, we do have a garage full of feral cats who can be quite peevish at times and there are some low pipes in the cellar capable of braining the unwary intruder.

Disguises: An essential skillset for a supercriminal to possess, and one that I have clearly mastered.

Female Assistant Partner: No problems there. Even better, she has a ruthlessness and facility for physical violence which I am altogether lacking.

Wardrobe: This one poses something of a problem. I lack the physique to properly fill out a skintight body suit. (Diabolik was able to carry off the look, but his svelte frame had definition and tone, while mine does not.) Masks, hoods, or dominoes are right out, too, as they wouldn't accessorize properly with my spectacles. (A monocle would be an ideal affectation -- especially if it incorporated integral sleep ray/x-ray vision functions -- but the need to constantly squint would play havoc with the depth perception.) Formal evening wear is classy, but too constricting, and lasting trauma from 70's childhood prevents me from ever donning another turtleneck pullover. The best option would be an all-black business casual ensemble with a collarless button-down shirt. It's stylish, breathable, and has enough flexibility should I need to leap from an overpass onto the top of a passing train.

Though it would appear that I am well-prepared for the switch in careers, there are still a few questions that I still need to resolve. For instance, how are the elaborate interconnected networks of victims, accomplices, foils, and dupes that every supercriminal needs to carry out his or her plan generated? Is it something expected to be in place prior to embarking on the career path? Does it organically emerge once one has begun? Or does it involve some pump priming on the part of the supercriminal to make sure that the rival mob bosses, spoiled countesses, and brilliant-yet-unlucky detectives assume their proper places within the grand scheme? (Not to mention the serendipitous extended relationships linking all the major players, like the countess's servant being the former girlfriend of the mob boss's son who is a colleague of the dedicated gendarme...)

Because, honestly, the whole high maintenance aspect seems suspiciously like work to me, and would dim the allure considerably should it be the case. Sleeping on a pile of ill-gotten banknotes doesn't feel the same if you're too knackered to properly enjoy it.

Finally, every sophisticated supercriminal worthy of the title needs to have some appropriate theme music. To this end, I have selected a ginchy double-bill of parochial punk and cosmopolitan cool to accompany my anticipated dastardly adventures.

Jerry's Kids - Spymaster (from Kill Kill Kill, 1989) - The best track on this late-in-the-decade offering by the local 80's hardcore legends, and it's a crunched-up cover of a La Peste song.

Georges Garvarentz - Le Temps Des Loups (from Shake Sauvage - French Soundtracks: 1968-1973, 2000) - The wolf is on the prowl, and he has brought a horn section and vibraphone to assist him in his predations.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must get back to attempting to shape my usual hissing chuckle into something better befitting my new vocation.

he is legend times two

In honor of the late Charlton Heston, here's what may very be the greatest scene ever committed to film, at least from a purely retrological standpoint.

Heston. Vincent Price. John Derek. Flagellation. A fight to the death. If the actual scripture hewed closer to what Cecil B. DeMille presented in The Ten Commandments, I might not have discarded my faith.

"His...powers...of hammy acting...are greater...than...my own...aarggh!!!!"
Rest in peace, Chuck. Fuck Conor Oberst, you'll always be the one true Bright Eyes in my book.

Jerry Goldsmith - Main Title (from The Planet of the Apes OST, 1968) - The disconcerting minimalism of Goldsmith's score sounds downright avant-garde after decades spent listening to John Williams's signature bombast and Danny Elfman's whimsical gothica.

(See also this post.)

go tell Chief Brody

Actor Roy Scheider has passed away at the age of 75.

He was of that rare breed of "regular guy" working actors (see also James Caan) that helped make 70's cinema the wonderfully unique beast that it was. Over the course of his film career, Scheider tangled with Marseillais drug smugglers, two killer sharks, a fugitive Nazi dentist, an alien monolith, and the introduction of hack sci-fi elements and the DeLuise brothers into the seaQuest DSV universe -- only to succumb to complications related to his recent struggle with myeloma.

It's a damn shame, really. You'd think that having survived a Jeannot Szwarc film and the machinations of Universal (by itself and with its tag team partner, NBC) executives, cancer of the blood plasma would have been small potatoes.

Adios, Roy. As the wife put it, "The Mayor of Shark City is dead? Summer is over."

Roy Scheider & Ben Vereen - Bye Bye Love (from the All That Jazz OST, 1979) - The coda to Bob Fosse's 1979 semi-autobiographical musical, which netted Scheider (in the role Fosse's fictionalized avatar) an Oscar for Best Actor. Using the song that launched the Everly Brothers as a springboard, the piece weaves together the complementary strains of self-indulgent excess associated with both the musical genre and the Me Decade. Clocking in at just under ten bombastic minutes, the track falls well outside the boundaries of casual listening material, but it serves as an excellent reminder (if you lived through the era) or perfect illustration (if you came of age afterward) of what set the 1970's apart from any decade before or since.

Arthur B. Rubinstein - Main Title/Crook Dusting (from the Blue Thunder OST, 1983) - I'd make a witty comment about how the paranoia-laden militarization of law enforcement theme of this 1983 Scheider/assault helicopter buddy flick seems oddly prescient, given the path American society has taken in the past quarter-century, but I'm too busy massaging my temples and trying to get my jaws to unclench.

that is I think I disagree

I was up until the wee hours of Saturday evening (or, more accurately, Sunday morning) dealing with my upteenth irritating head cold of the season. (A wiser man might be concerned about such a recurrence of illness, but I've never prided myself on matters of wisdom.) Having resigned myself to feverish and phlegmy wakefulness, I decided to finish rereading the final chapters of The Gun Seller, Hugh Laurie's quite entertaining novelistic mash-up of P.G. Wodehouse and Len Deighton, but ended up watching a late night showing of How I Won The War on one of the cable movie channels.

I've watched the film, a 1967 black comedy with an anti-war slant, at least half a dozen times over the years, but I'm still uncertain how I feel about the film. Directed by Richard Lester, it bridges the stylistic gap between the 1965 Beatle vehicle Help! and the surreal 1970 post-nuclear satire, The Bed-Sitting Room, in terms of Lester's appropriation of absurdist elements (which, I'd argue, reached an unintentional apotheosis in the Lester-helmed Superman II.)

How I Won the War follows the misadventures of the hopelessly inept Lt. Goodbody (played by Michael Crawford, who I'll forever associate with this, and especially this), who manages to stumble unharmed through the Second World War, though at the cost of the lives of those under his command. The events are presented as absurdist farce, making ample use of physical comedy, slapstick, documentary footage, and even elements of pantomime -- all wrapped up in a very 1960's, very self-conscious "avant-garde" veneer -- to bring its message home.

Despite all its creative ambitions and good intentions, however, the film never manages to equal the sum of its (frequently inspired) parts, and ends up falling into that oh-so-infuriating category of "interesting mess." Absurdity and war are hardly strange bedfellows, but what sets something like How I Won the War and better realized works like Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow or Heller's Catch-22 (the twin pillars of the literary subgenre) is that the absurdity in those novels is presented as a natural consequence of the bureaucratization of mass slaughter, in which irrationality has assumed its own merciless and horrifying logic. (Mike Nichols's flawed cinematic version of Heller's novel managed to grasp the concept, though it frequently stumbled in conveying it onscreen.) How I Won the War, on the other hand, too often treats the absurdity as a matter of aesthetic window-dressing, which has the effect of undercutting the intended anti-war message and reducing it to facile sloganeering or wit for wit's sake. Imagine Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco cranking out a WW2 version of Candide for some quick booze and cigarette money at the behest of MoveOn.org, and you'd have general idea. An IMBD.com commenter described the film as a "sheep in wolf's clothing," and despite the well-documented caveats regarding information gleaned from that source, it's a very apt description.

The movie isn't devoid of effective moments or elements, it's that they are swamped amidst the gimmicky cinematic clutter. The replacement of fallen members of Goodbody's outfit with silent, single-colored ghosts who continue to serve in death I found to be an effectively macabre touch, suggesting the utter inescapability of the mad situation. There is one scene in particular which I found to be extremely haunting: Goodbody, taken prisoner by the Germans, is sitting on a rail embankment as he awaits interrogation. He looks behind him at a closed boxcar stopped on the tracks, and the fingers of an emaciated hand poke out through a gap in the door as Goodbody is led away by his captors. It's a very simple, yet brutally effective moment which draws attention to an aspect of the war (mass-graves, gas chambers, crematoriums) ignored in the countless boiler-plate cinematic depictions of the war up to that time. It's a shame that the film as a whole couldn't sustain that level of insightfulness.

These days, How I Won the War is mostly remembered for featuring John Lennon (in his only non-Beatles-related cinematic appearance) as Musketeer Gripweed, Goodbody's batman (small "b," but we can dream) and a petty thief who "never found anything worth stealing." It's a smallish supporting role, though you'd never know that by looking at the VHS box. A little bait-and-switch never hurt anyone, right?

It was during the filming of How I Won the War that Lennon began composing what would become one of the greatest (if not the greatest) pop songs ever recorded, an oblique tribute to his childhood in Liverpool. There's no excuse for not having your own copy of the original (unless who happen to hate The Beatles, which is more of an explanation than excuse), so I'm posting an interesting, if inferior, cover version instead.

I'm referring to, of course:

Plastic Penny - Strawberry Fields Forever (from Two Sides of a Penny, 1968) - Known primarily for their one hit, 1968's "Everything I Am," the various members of this psych rock/proto-prog outfit later moved on to work with Elton John, UFO, and Procol Harum. Actually, this track sounds pretty close to what I imagine a Procol Harum cover of "Strawberry Fields Forever" would have sounded like.

friends, Romans, kung fu men

From BitterAndrew's Comprehensive Guide to Films That Don't Exist, But Should:

Chop-socky goes classical when a busboy at Rome's Gardenius Szechuanium restauant gets entangled in a plot to assassinate Julius Caesar. The chemistry between the two leads is remarkable, and their different styles of acting complement each other perfectly. Lee's martial arts expertise is on fine display, but even more surprising is the septugenarian Gielgud's ability to deliver a succession of roundhouse kicks without so much as rumpling his toga. It made me wish that he had taken a similar approach with the character of King Louis VII in Becket.

A recut version of the film ran in foreign markets under the title of Appian Way of the Open Palm. Keep your eyes open for a cameo appearance by Jim Kelly (playing the gladiator Blackus Beltus Jononicus). Three stars.

Jack Parnell & His Orchestra - Enter the Dragon (from The Sound Gallery Vol. 2, 1996) - I posted the Lalo Schifrin original version of the classic theme song last spring. Today we have Jack Parnell's no-holds-barred interpretation for those of you who don't mind mixing a little modness into their martial arts enjoyment.

Berto Pisano and Jacques Chaurmont - Kill Them All! (from Beat at Cinecitta Vol. 3, 1999) - This wonderfully-titled track originally appeared on the soundtrack to the exclamatory 1971 Euro-thriller, Kill! and it has that certain Mod Squad/"Gamesters of Triskelion" vibe suitable for all your retro fight and chase sequence needs.

better rev it up and put it to use

Today we have an excerpt from Andrew's Notes on the Grand Unified Theory of Pop Culture:

Even before production finished on 1982's Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphy cuss word vector, 48 Hrs., director Walter Hill, screenwriter Larry Gross, and producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver has already started work on their next project, a "rock and roll musical" intended as a big budget follow up on the cult success of Hill and Gordon's 1979 film, The Warriors.

The end result was Streets of Fire, an art-directed mess of a film and one of the the summer of 1984's bigger cinematic bombs, grossing a little more than half of its $14.5 million production costs during its initial run. Frequently evoked as a poster child of the style over substance ethos and as a cautionary example of adhering to an "MTV" aesthetic, the film has since gone on to be a modest cult favorite, spurred on by countless showings on basic cable during the late 1980's and early 1990's. Fans of the film tend toward rabidity, while the unconverted tend to just shake their heads sadly whenever the subject is brought up.

It's not bad for what it is, a minor action/romance timewaster set in a very 1980's reimagining of 1950's Chicago. Tough but tender mercenary Cody (played by tabula rasa Michael Paré) returns home to rescue his old flame, rock goddess Ellen Aim (played by the stunningly gorgeous Diane Lane)...

...from a pack of fiendish bikers led by the lean and fearsome Raven (played by Willem Dafoe, who rocks the "shirtless in pleather overalls" look like no one's business). The battle between good and evil culminates with a sledgehammer fight beneath the El tracks, which is how more movies ought to end. (I'm talking to you, P.S. I Love You.)

It's certainly not the worst way to spend ninety minutes, and there's plenty of fun to be had in spotting the supporting cast members, which include, among others, Robert Townsend (as a doo-wop singer), Rick Moranis (as Ellen Aim's manager), Fear frontman Lee Ving (as Raven's lieutenant), Elizabeth "E.G." Daily (as a groupie), and the always welcome Bill Paxton (as "Clyde the Bartender").

The film's soundtrack also encroaches (cheesily, but still) on excellence, which is kind of important for a quasi-musical -- sorry, a rock and roll fable (as opposed to an acid jazz parable or a jump blues syllogism.) The only track from the score that registered on the popular consciousness was Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" (lipsynched by a moonwalkin' doo-wop act in the film and music video) which made it into the Top 40 charts, making it a bigger success than the film itself. The Fixx and The Blasters also contributed songs, but the movie's signature sound (apart from Ry Cooder's distinctively twangy score) comes from the tracks "performed" by Ellen Aim and her band, The Attackers (played by Boston new wave outfit Face to Face), particularly the two bombastic rock tracks ("Nowhere Fast" and "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young") penned by Jim Steinman (the man who gave Meat Loaf his flavor) and performed by Fire, Inc., a front band featuring frequent Steinman collaborators Holly Sherwood and Rory Dodd.

Fire, Inc. - Nowhere Fast (from the Streets of Fire OST, 1984) - Judging it as a rock song, I'd have to say it makes a perfectly adequate show tune.

Ellen Aim's other overdubbed efforts featured vocal performances by Face to Face's Laurie Sargent and Maria (Lone Justice) McKee. Oh, and guitarist/Weird Al collaborator/pinball wizard Rick Derringer was also involved in some capacity.

(On a side note, the movie's title and ostensible inspiration were drawn from Bruce Springsteen's "Darkness at the Edge of Town," but The Boss balked over the proposal to have other performers rerecord the song for the film.)

As I mentioned before, the film tanked at the box office. "Tonight is what it means to be dead," remarked Joel Silver upon seeing the initial grosses, paraphrasing the movie's tagline. I can remember hanging out on the roof of a friend's garage with our neighborhood gang back in the summer of '84, arguing over what movie to see. We split along gender lines; the girls wanted to see Streets of Fire and the boys wanted to see (I swear, though the release dates don't line up) Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. The boys won, as much as sitting through a lousy Charles Band 3-D sci-fi flick can be viewed as "winning."

Though unappreciated upon its release, Streets of Fire went on to have a significant influence in Japan, where its hyper-stylized aesthetic dovetailed nicely with contemporary trends in anime. (You can't go wrong with bad boys and idol singers in that market.) The first installment of Megazone 23 features a scene where the principal characters attend a showing of the film, but the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA series took the homage a couple steps further with the character of Priss Asagiri...

...a rock singer-slash-cyberpunk avenger whose look and sound are directly patterned after Ellen Aim's.

Priss and The Replicants - Akuma to Tenchi no Kiss (from Bubblegum Crisis: Complete Vocal Collection, 2000) - A case of going one better than the source material, I'd argue. The band's name is a clever (well, I thought so) homage to another, equally art-directed 80's flick.

The trans-Pacific love for Streets of Fire wasn't limited to anime offerings, either. The lead designer of Capcom's Final Fight, the quintessential example of the co-op "beat 'em up" videogame genre, was very much smitten with the movie. That would explain why the game features a character named Cody, a scruffy street fightin' man with a more-than-passing resemblance to Michael Paré, punching and kicking through a city full of thugs in order to rescue his girlfriend. (He is assisted in his efforts by a ninja and a pro wrestler -- thus providing a wonderful capsule view of the late 80's zeitgeist. All that's missing is Fido Dido.) Personally, I lament the fact the game didn't feature a playable analogue for Amy Madigan's tough-as-nails mercenary character from the film.

After a nine-year abscence, Cody (now an escaped convict) went on to join the cast of Street Fighter Alpha 3 before appearing as a supporting character (and 'roided up monstrous adversary) in the excremental Final Fight: Streetwise. As of late, Michael Paré has been working with director (and I use that term in the loosest sense of the word) Uwe Boll in films such as BloodRayne (I and II), Far Cry, and Postal, which, I have to admit, is an even worse fate than the one suffered by his videogame counterpart.

...and that thing is not starring in horrible videogame-based movies made for tax write-off purposes...

12 Days of Christmas - Day 10: wake me when it's over

'Twas the night before the night before Christmas and all though metro northwest Boston not a creature was stirring....unless you count the hordes of last-minute shoppers clogging the surface roads and making the simple task of picking up a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper and some trashbags from Target a maddening ordeal.

At this point I'd be content to just flop down on the bed and snooze straight through to Boxing Day. ("But Americans don't celebrate Boxing Day," I hear some of you saying. My point exactly.)

John Baker - Christmas Commercial (from BBC Radiophonic Music, 2002) - An interesting rendition of "O, Come All Ye Faithful" that concisely and uncomfortably captures the contemporary essence of the holiday. It's a product of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a now-defunct branch of the government-funded broadcasting firm whose other pioneering work in the field of synth and electronic music included the legendary Dr. Who theme (a Ron Grainer composition "realized" by Delia Derbyshire).

Milton DeLugg - Horray for Santa Claus (from The Golden Turkey Album, 1985) - Some of you will recognise this as the theme to Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, the 1964 film that set the precedent for other cinematic holiday treats such as Santa Claus: The Movie, Jingle All the Way, and Fred Claus. Milton DeLugg, besides being the man responsible for this aggressively chirpy ditty, was an industry veteran who produced Buddy Holly's immortal classic, "Rave On" and served as the bandleader (and an occasional comedic foil) on The Gong Show.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 9: 20 minutes into the Christmas future

Today's installment of Armagideon Time's ill-conceived holiday countdown features a heartwarming piece of retro-futurism in the form of Max Headroom's 1986 single:

Max Headroom - Merry Christmas Santa Claus (You're A Lovely Guy)

Lovely, isn't it? It makes me want to twitch my head and weep virtual tears each time I listen to it. I'm no expert in audio issue troubleshooting for futuristic artificial intelligences, but it seems to me that Max's sysadmins could probably clear up that stuttering problem by uninstalling the sound card drivers, disabling the onboard sound from the BIOS menu, then getting the updated drivers from the manufacturer's website.

Despite the character having reached a toxic level of overexposure in his mid-eighties heyday, I still retain a certain fondness for Max. As a synthetic personality for a synthetic age, he not-quite-successfully tread a very thin line between satire and symptom of that era's style-over-substance ethos, making subversive wisecracks one moment and serving as a pitchman for New Coke the next.

Such ambiguity was to be expected, I suppose, from a faulty personality simulation based on an investigative reporter from a cyberpunkadelic future, especially one created (by the same people who did the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" and Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" videos) using a be-latexed Matt Frewer and 1980's video editing wizardry with the purpose of hosting a UK Channel 4 music video program. According to a 1985 interview with one of Max's creators, the original intent was to weave the sci-fi backstory in segments between the music videos, but the concept proved too unwieldy to manage and was spun off into a separate project.

As is usual with my retrologistic obsessions, my affection for Max Headroom is best kept at nostalgic arm's length. The specials and miscellaneous host appearances starring the character simply feel dated and only interesting as historical curiosities. My first exposure to the Circle Jerks came via a Cinemax showing of one of the specials, where the band's "Junk Mail" (or a lousy cover of it) was used as a bumper for a "letters to the host" segment. Max's Christmas Turkey special (which includes a performance of today's holiday track) features appearances by "Saint" Bob Geldof and a very Auntie Entitized Tina Turner, and mostly serves to remind me that, yes, 1986 really was that long ago.

The British TV movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, still holds up pretty well after all these years, and is a minor classic of the presciently quaint genre the kids call "cyberpunk." (One of my more fortuitous popcult finds was a copy of the oversized and photo-heavy "novelization" of the film, purchased at a dollar store in the early 1990's.) The film also featured a great synth-instrumental end theme courtesy of Ultravox's Midge Ure. I had planned to post the theme, but the extraction program I use keeps distorting the sound beyond use.

As a teen, I loved the American Max Headroom television series, which was based on the film but featured different actors (except for Frewer and the lovely Amanda Pays). Having watched it again when it played on Bravo a few years back, I found it to be rather flat and oddly preachy -- the kiss of death, given the cynical basis of the cyberpunk genre. (I could honestly live happily without seeing another attempt to directly reference Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in a quasi-serious work of sci-fi. The novel only really succeeds as a broad parable, where the threshold for suspension of disbelief isn't as high as it is for similar elements used as ongoing plot points in a less abstract piece.)

To be fair, it's a case of the series being of its era and excelling in that stratified context. Compared to then-contemporary fare like Small Wonder or Full House, the American Max Headroom series seems like high art, and Grand High Poobah of Cyberpunk William Gibson's praise for the show makes a lot more sense. Viewed today, isolated from 1987-88's topographical map of banality, it resembles nothing so much as Lou Grant if filmed by Ridley Scott.

Special bonus: Since I'm already on the subject of Max Headroom, and I doubt I'll ever do another post about it, I figured I might as well toss in Max's other bright shining musical moment:

Art of Noise - Paranoimia (from a 1986 12" single; collected on Best of Art of Noise, 1997)

moola moola moola

Today is Jim Backus Day here at Armagideon Time.

Why? Why not? The man was a legend, up there with Paul Lynde and Vincent Price in the class of actors whose voices and trademark mannerisms are immediately recognizable to folks in my age bracket. I wouldn't pigeonhole Backus as a character actor, per se, as he did excellent work (Rebel Without a Cause, Deadline U.S.A) outside the parameters usually associated with that label. It was his knack, however, for portraying old money patrician types that would bring him the most fame, specifically his role as the jovial yet shifty uber-capitalist, Thurston Howell III, in the syndicated juggernaut that is Gilligan's Island.

Backus's talents shone bright in that loathed and adored legendary sitcom, where he provided a rare source of wit amidst the stock gags and gimmicky slapstick (not that I'm opposed to that sort of humor, but it does get tiring after a while) that dominated the series' three-season run. "A Howell never runs in the face of danger...he walks very fast." Yeah, it's nothing that Oscar Wilde would have lost sleep over, but Backus's skill in delivery made even such comedic coal sparkle like diamonds. Plus, there are few things that can bring a smile to my face like Thurston Howell's faux native warchant -- "Moola moola moola!"

Backus's other claim to popcult immortality, as the man who provided the voice for the optically challenged Mr. Magoo, has largely faded from the public consciousness, partially (and justifiably) due to the cartoon's insensitive treatment of ethnic minorities and the visually impaired. (The irredeemably awful live-action movie starring Leslie Nielsen based on the property didn't help, either.) That said, I consider Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, which almost completely dispenses with the near-sightedness gags, to be the finest adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic ever made, and the best animated holiday special, too. (Angry fans of the Peanuts Christmas special, please form a line on the right. Angry Rankin-Bass cultists please from a line on the left. All complaints will be resolved via my steel-toed left boot.)

Toward the end of his career, Backus dwelled in the standard character actor ghetto of kiddie fare, voiceover work, and lesser roles in even lesser projects. He set the precedent for harassing (as a prospector in the Grand Canyon) vacationing Brady brats which Vincent Price would later follow (as an archeologist in Hawaii). He played a comically inept white separatist militia leader in Greydon Clark's T&A cash-in feature (and future MST3K fodder) Angels' Revenge. And most importantly, he served as the villainous foil to a robotic crimefighting dog in C.H.O.M.P.S., which I bring up because it was a frequently-played favorite of mine in those bizarre early days of basic cable. (I saw it again recently on one of the Encore channels, and wept openly over my younger self's poor sense of judgement. Great theme song, though.)

He was also in Crazy Mama and Friday Foster, so it wasn't all bad...

A talented man across many venues -- stage, screen (large and small), radio -- Backus also recorded a couple well-received novelty singles in the the late 1950's.

Delicious! (from Golden Age of American Rock'n'Roll: Special Novelty Edition, 2003) - A Dr. Demento favorite, this dipsomanical delight is credited to "Jim Backus and Friend." There's been much speculation over who the friend in question actually was, with Hermione Gingold's and Phyllis Diller's names being put forth (and rebutted) as possible candidates, and it's more than likely the real truth has been lost to the ages.

As wonderful as "Delicious!" is, it doesn't hold a candle to Backus's follow-up effort..

Cave Man (from a 1959 single) - This has made the music blog and bootleg compilation rounds already, but if you haven't heard it already, here's your chance. Backus grunts, quips, and puns (and I strongly suspect is mostly ad-libbing) his way through prehistory backed by some good ol' fashioned 50's pop music. Bizarre and highly entertaining in the way a good novelty record ought to be.

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I'd also like to mention that Progressive Ruin, "the swampiest comics blog since 1969," is celebrating its fourth anniversary today. "PR" or "ProgRu" or "that one blog by the guy who runs a comic shop, no, not THAT guy, the other one" is a consistently entertaining example of comics blogging done right, and Mikester is the closest thing the scene has to a Johnny Carson.

To extend that analogy:
Dorian Wright = Dick Cavett
Kevin Church = Steve Allen
Dave Campbell = David Letterman
Bully = Jack Paar
Chris Sims = Arsenio Hall
bitterandrew = Thinks he's Conan O'Brien, but is actually Chevy Chase

Anyhow, a big congrats to Mikester for hanging in there and keepin' on keepin' on when so many others have fallen by the wayside.

The Super Stocks - Ventura (from Surf Route 101, 1964) - Inspired by the So-Cal paradise where Mikester maintains his hidden lair.

when you're unwanted

One of the things I picked up on yesterday's trip to the comic shop was a copy of the July 1985 issue of Starburst, a UK sci-fi fan mag. The initial draws were the photo-heavy feature articles on Max Headroom and Robin of Sherwood (a pagan-slash-crusty 80's retelling of the legend). In typical fashion for these kind of purchases, however, it was the odds and ends material, written up in a breathy excited twenty-years-gone now, that ended up fascinating me the most.

Things like advance speculation on the "forthcoming" Pluto Nash film or the announcement that Tobe Hooper's next project will be the Spider-Man film (wrong horror film director, wrong decade), seem rather poignant and quaint when taken in from a present-day vantage point, not to mention the fact that the tone and tenor of these speculations and teasers haven't changed at all over the years, only the names of the individual franchises. ("Did you hear? Tobey Maguire has been linked to the 'forthcoming' Robotech movie!")

...and then there's the letter page, which offers the armchair pathologist ample material for their study of the fan subspecies. Here are a some choice excepts, featuring annotations compiled by yours truly:

Here we have an excellent example of the bottom-feeding connoisseur at work. While it is possible (and frequently rewarding) to clinically dissect trash culture artifacts in search of hidden meanings and evidence of historical trends, what sets the bottom-feeding connoisseur apart is an intrinsic inability to separate the forest from the trees, and are quick to expend hundreds or thousands of words expounding with a total lack of self-awareness on such matters as how many Daleks coud fit on the head of a sonic screwdriver in terms similar to those used in a doctoral dissertation, and yet utterly miss the point through their obsession with minutae.

In almost every case, their elaborate theses end with an unintentional punchline that serves to verify their status as bottom feeders. For example: "...and this is why I find Crisis on Infinite Earths to be a creative endeavor in all aspects inferior to Dragon Ball Z."

Above is a classic case of dysmorphic proportionality. My father once stated that "the most important thing that ever happened to you is the most important thing that ever happened to you," meaning that significance is subject to a personal frame of reference. Being the first human to set foot on the moon or enrolling at UMass Boston -- the actual scope of such actions for the individuals involved lies within each person, and in that aspect does not lend itself to quick objective comparisons.

That said, most people do have a sense (to varying degrees) of proportionality about such things, understanding that what they strongly value might not be what the next person does, be it pomegranates, cats, or Firefly. Those suffering from dysmorphic proportionality are unwilling or unable to acknowledge conflicting views regarding their own hobby-horses, and when confronted with dissenting opinions turn very nasty, very quickly. This is often because those suffering from the syndrome have chosen to structure their personal reality around the contested subject. Calling its validity into question is therefore seen as a personal attack on their core being, thus calling for a all-out response, ad hominem attacks and all.

When practiced in a casual environment, the act of fan-casting, matching actors to roles to an imaginary film based on some property or other, can be a highly entertaining and frequently amusing activity. (I'm rereading The Count of Monte Cristo currently, and I keep thinking "Armand Assante" in mental picture of Edmond Dantès for some reason.) The inveterate fan-caster, however, has overindulged in the process to a point where their palette of potential choices has narrowed so as as to only include current "hot" actors or operates on overly facile typecasting.

Having entered the terminal phase of the syndrome, the inveterate fan-caster finds his- or herself unable, even in the most ironic or comedic contexts, to proffer selections such as "Gary Coleman as B.A. Baracus in The A-Team movie," but will instead fill every role with either "Samuel L. Jackson" (tough guy), "Scarlet Johannson" (female lead), "Johnny Depp" (male lead),or "that guy who was in that one episode of Farscape who played an android because the character in the imaginary movie is an android."

Also, regarding the above letter: I've read it a dozen times, I have it in front of me printed out in black and white, but I am still having extreme difficulty accepting the fact that anyone, at anytime could have possibly written "I'll be looking forward to the film Santa Claus coming up."

Echo & The Bunnymen - People Are Strange (from The Lost Boys OST, 1987) - The only thing I actually liked about Joel Shumacher's extended vampiric remix of INXS's "Devil Inside" music video. (The wife thinks the film is pretty swell, but there are plenty of iffy patches in her usually unquestionable tastes.)

(Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident.)

Halloween Countdown: October 31 – though your music lingers on

All Hallows' Eve is upon us, dear readers, and with it, the final installment of this year's Halloween countdown. So which track has earned a place of honor at the top of the list?

In the 2006 countdown, I had a last minute change of heart and decided to go with UK Decay's ghoulishly trancendental "Unexpected Guest" over my original choice, Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead," because as much as I love that seminal piece of gothica, it seemed too darn obvious. This time around, I've settled on a selection that, while familiar to most, perfectly captures (for me, at least) the feel of this haunted time of year. That track is...

The Cure - A Forest (from Seventeen Seconds, 1980)

I posted the entertainingly absurd Creaming Jesus cover of the song during last year's countdown, but nothing, nothing captures the melodic minimalist desolation of the original. It's the musical equivalent of a late October frost; though arguably the perkiest track on Seventeen Seconds, there is a coldness to "A Forest" that can induce gooseflesh even on the most opressively humid dog day in August.

For those hoping for something a little more visually terrifying, here's a joyous little gem culled from the pages of Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #9 (January-February 1973):


It comes from "The Head of the House," a horrid little tale that combines racist and sexist overtones with hamfistedly telegraphed plot twists. The moral of the story is "if you are going to ask an indigenous tribe for their secret of eternal beauty, you probably shouldn't insult and/or murder the members of said tribe prior to the administration of the process." Oh, and "unattractive women who bully their husbands will end up with a shrunken head."

And so concludes this year's Halloween countdown. I hope you've all enjoyed it and will perhaps stick around when AT resumes its normally scheduled programming, starting tomorrow. I'd also like to extend a big thanks to all those who've made with the linkage and kind words over the past thirty-one days.

I guess all that's left before I go off to binge on Z-grade 80's horror films and fun size boxes of Milk Duds (because my dentist could use the extra work) is to draw the curtains, kill the lights, and cue the end theme music...

Paul Williams - The Hell of It (from the Phantom of the Paradise OST, 1974) - The superior 70's glam rock horror flick: Rocky Horror or Phantom of the Paradise? I'm going to go with Brian De Palma and Paul Williams over Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon, if only because Phantom of the Paradise lacks the stigma of an overly rabid fan base. I call that "evoking the Joss Whedon Principle."

Halloween Countdown: October 26 – I once saw one drinking a Pina Colada

Because there's a Hunter's Moon tonight, I thought it would be wise if I posted an excerpt from The Talbot Field Guide of Lycanthrope Variants (Illustrated Edition):

The Oliver Reed-Wolf
First appearance: The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Origin: Born under a curse
Likes: Frilly shirts, cattle mutilation, alcohol
Weaknesses: Silver bullets, church bells, alcohol

Nazi Aquatic Werewolf (a.k.a. "Sea Wolf")
First Appearance: The Young All-Stars #1 (June 1987)
Origin: Born of the fevered imagination of Roy Thomas
Likes: Book burnings, bratwurst, swimming, finding ways to work the word "sea" in casual conversation
Weaknesses: Native American teenagers wearing fur cloaks and speedos, war crimes trials

Teenage Werewolf (1950's "Landon" Version)
First Appearance: I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957)
Origin: Induced bestial regression through hypnosis
Likes: Pretty teenage gymnasts, rebelling against authority, mauling his classmates by the light of the full moon
Weaknesses: Lectures from Pa Cartwright, bedwetting


Teenage Werewolf (1980's "Fox" Version)
First Appearance: Teen Wolf (1985)
Origin: Hereditary curse
Likes: Playing basketball, partying, van-surfing
Weaknesses: Teen Wolf Too starring Jason Bateman


Yankee Tourist Werewolf
First Appearance: An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Origin: Failure to keep clear of the moors
Likes: Jenny Agutter, Dr. Pepper, rampaging through Piccadilly Circus
Weaknesses: small arms fire, the lingering stigma of Makin' It

Cap-Wolf
First Appearance: Captain America #405 (Late August 1992)
Origin: The fatigue that set in during the later half of Mark Gruenwald's run as writer on Captain America
Likes: Mom, baseball, apple pie, sniffing other lycanthropes' asses
Weaknesses: The indelible shame of it all