I’ve been collecting various action figures, Halloween decorations, and pieces of memorabilia related to science fiction, fantasy, and horror films for a number of years. But two television programs stirred an interest in doing some part-time toy hunting and selling. Last year’s program Comic Book Men on AMC, and the new series Toy Hunter on The Travel Channel, have given me a love for the hunt of possibility, that although it will take a lot of effort, at any given garage sale, flea market, thrift store, or antique store, there may be a fantastic or horrific treasure waiting for me to find it and make it available to a fan to add to her or his collection.
This weekend my wife and I went out to a local thrift store on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and to our great surprise we found something of interest in the Halloween decoration section. It was a Telco Creature from the Black Lagoon motion-ette figure. This was part of a collection of monster figures licensed in partnership with Universal Studios in 1992 and released through various outlets like Wal-Mart. Some of these figures fetch a hefty price, and they are part of a more extensive motion-ette collection of animated monsters that come in both plug-in and battery-operated forms.
This Creature from the Black Lagoon moves its arms and head when the batteries are in, and if it is turned to sound mode is shrieks like Godzilla, unfortunately not like the Creature from the classic 1950s film. Regardless, it is a great find, and part of a modern Halloween decoration line of products that I am making available through an eBay listing, and if that is unsuccessful I will list it on Amazon. You can learn more about the Telco Creature on eBay at my page listing here.
And for those interested in something a little different, I also found and listed the Alien Autopsy Game. This was produced by DaMert Company in 1997 due to the influence of things like The X-Files and the alleged video of an alien autopsy that was show on Fox. This game borrows from the old Operation game, where kids roll the dice and follow the instructions on game cards to use their probes while conducting the autopsy and carefully removing alien body parts. One body part is missing, but the rest of the game is intact, and the alien lets out a howl if game players touch the metal edges around the organs. Fans of UFO and alien mythology, as well as the paranormal, might find this game an interesting addition to their collection. You can read more about the game and see pictures from the box and game playing surface at the eBay listing here.
I am going to order a few books on monster toy and action figure collecting to add to my abilities as I continue my search. In the meantime, look for future entries on toy hunting here at TheoFantastique in the future.
What do you get when you mix monster kid nostalgia with an appreciation for 1980s horror, an understanding of being an ostracized kid, and the use of stop-motion animation artistry? The answer: ParaNorman, a wonderful film that opened this weekend and which, in this reviewer’s estimation, lives up to the many positive reviews it has thus far received.
ParaNorman tells the story of Norman, a young boy living in Blithe Hollow in Massachusetts, a town that bears a close resemblance to Salem in that it has the stigma of a witch’s execution. As local legend has it, the town is subject to a witch’s curse, the result of a group of town leaders who, hundreds of years previously, found a little girl guilty and worthy of death because of her ability to communicate with the dead. It just so happens that this is the same gift that Norman has, and he finds himself surrounded by skeptics and bullies, within his family as well as in school. As a result, he is largely a loner who takes refuge in his love for zombie movies and horror, and the relationships he forms with the talkative undead trapped in this realm do to sudden tragic death or a death complicated by unfinished business. Norman comes to learn that it is up to him to save his town from the curse, but its nature is not what it seems. Norman rises to his personal challenge, and in so doing gains the respect of his family and townspeople along the way.
ParaNorman is an ambitious technical work. For those unfamiliar with the stop-motion animation process, it involves the use of jointed figures that are moved by fractions of an inch at at time so that when the film plays back at 24 frames per second, the illusion of life and emotion takes place on screen. This film was produced by those who previously brought us Coraline, and the animation work in this is far more extensive, both in terms of the number of figures and effects that are brought to life. According to production information available on the Internet, one scene alone, the rising of the old town judges from their graves, took a year to animate. The animator’s devotion to their craft, and to this amazing art form, play out in the fluid motion onscreen.
Like Coraline, ParaNorman is a dark fantasy horror film. Hotel Transylvania, a computer animated film, and Frankenweenie, another stop-motion animation work, are due out later this year in September and October respectively, but they look to be lighter fare with more comedic elements than ParaNorman offers. Instead, this film focuses more on what it means to be a kid who is different, and as a result suffers from those around him, even in those places where differences should fade in significance, in the confines of the family. Norman is constantly harassed by a bully at school, but the bullying continues at the hands of his less-than-understanding father and sister who refuse to consider the possibility that his claims to see the deceased may be true. In this there are lessons for adults and children in our culture where bullying has become something of a national issue with the suicides of kids and teens.
Beyond this ParaNorman also has lessons in regards to other areas of marginalization as well. At one point near the end of the film Norman’s mother tries to persuade his father to be more open to his son’s claims. She says, “Not believing in the afterlife is like not believing in astrology.” The comment is humorous, and on the one hand the audience might be tempted to casually dismiss both concepts as the product of continued superstition, and yet survey data indicates that a sizable number of Americans believe in life after death, as well as various forms of paranormal belief. In the case of Norman, he claims to be able to see and converse with the dead, and this brings to mind any number of adults as well as children in the real world who also lay claim to this ability. ParaNorman is a piece of fiction, but one which overlaps with the real world in its concerns over the possibility of postmortem communication and psychic ability.
Finally, although ParaNorman presents a story that invokes fairytale and horror conceptions of witchcraft and related persecution, nevertheless this too overlaps with the real world as the unfortunate murder of a young girl accused of witchcraft in Blithe Hollow parallels unfortunate events in Salem. There the infamous Salem Witch Trials in 1692 resulted in the prosecution and execution of innocent people, and American history continues its misunderstanding and misrepresentation of real witches and other pagans. In our time where they and others, whether Muslims or Sikhs, are the victims of harassment and violence as a result of being different from the mainstream, ParaNorman has an important message.
Along with his contemporaries, Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane, Joe Kubert entered the comic book field in the 1940s as a teenager drawing for DC Comics, then went on to become one of the giants of the medium, an artist whose style is unmistakable – and unforgettable, the most expressive pen-and-brush comic book artist of his generation.
Kubert’s name and style became synonymous with war comics during the Silver Age because of years of service drawing World War II’s heroic American Sgt. Rock, and then later, the offbeat antihero, World War I German flyer Enemy Ace. Both became signature characters; Kubert’s gritty pen line and bold brushwork perfectly suited writer and editor Bob Kanigher’s emotionally wrenching writing. “Some people have asked me if the war stuff was material I especially liked doing,” Kubert said, “and my answer has been no, it wasn’t. Bob had an opening, he needed war stories, and he asked me if I could do it. I said sure, give me any subject matter and I’ll draw it. It wasn’t because I had any particular feeling for it — I put as much effort into doing it as I would in any kind of story.”
Even superhero stories: in the early ‘60s, Kubert maintained continuity with his ‘40s roots by returning to Hawkman, a character rendered by many artists since, but given his most definitive treatment by Kubert, despite a brief run of only six issues. What accounts for Kubert’s lasting popularity and legend-in-his-own-time status? “I happen to love to draw,” he said in 2003. “And I happen to love to draw comic books. I enjoy it as much now, probably more, than I did before.”
Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace and Hawkman are just three of the characters whom Kubert was, and always will be, the definitive artist of. And, of course, no offense to the legacies of the great Hal Foster and Burne Hogarth, who illustrated Tarzan during the Golden Age of The Comic Strip, but Kubert will forever be Tarzan’s greatest, most definitive artist; never before has the exact style of an artist–the savage brush strokes and organic, sinewy pen lines that only Kubert has ever made–been so perfectly, beautifully matched to the exact character and that character’s milieu.
Even in this simple illustration, Kubert was to Tarzan as Sean Connery was to James Bond!
How many covers hath the great Kubert drawn? Along with Jack “King” Kirby (1513) and Curt (Superman family) Swan (1004), Kubert drew as many (1256) as those two titans–and as many, if not more, incredibly beautiful covers, like my twin favorites here, separated by almost a decade (Enemy Ace 1968, Ragman 1976)!
As we look back 500 years ago on the Renaissance masters of the human figure like Michelangelo and Raphael, so too will future art historians 500 years from now look back on an artistic giant who walked the earth in our time, a graphic stylist nonpareil who made pen and brush marks like no one on earth before or after him: the one, the only…Joe Kubert! We shall not see the likes of him for generations.
“…from his pen came the sound and the fury, the loneliness, the silence, the exhaustion, the pity and the pitiless, the poetry and the mud. Black and white more eloquent than erupting blood. It was a miracle – called Joe Kubert.”
–Robert Kanigher, Kubert’s soulmate/writer/ partner on Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace & Ragman
You can read more of the fine work of Arlen Schumer on comics and the Twilight Zone on his website, The Art and Writing of Arlen Schumer.
Ray Harryhausen – Master of the Majicks, Vol. 1 is now available for pre-order. If I could afford it, these volumes would be in my library, and should be in those of every serious Harryhausen, stop-motion animation, and fantasy fan.
Ray Harryhausen – Master of the Majicks
Volume 1: Beginnings and Endings
by Mike Hankin
Written and produced over the past 10 years with Ray Harryhausen’s cooperation and support, the complete 3-volume definitive 295,000-word career/biography features interviews with Ray and his colleagues and is profusely illustrated with several hundred rare photographs, artwork, and illustrations (many of which have never been previously published).
We published Volume 2 (The American Films) first, then Volume 3 (The British Films), and are now wrapping up the set with Volume 1: Beginnings and Endings.
Chapters in Volume 1 extensively cover:
Ray’s Early 16mm Experiments, The Influence of Willis O’Brien and King Kong, George Pal’s Puppetoons®, Ray’s Film Work During World War II, The Fairy Tale Short Subjects, Ray’s Retirement Years (including tributes, awards, convention appearances, colorizing his films, unfinished projects, The KING KONG 50th Anniversary celebration at Graumann’s Chinese Theater in 1983, Ray’s cameo appearances in other films, Ray’s Lifetime Achievement Oscar® from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Ray’s “Star” on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and much more).
As a special adjunct to the Willis O’Brien chapter, we’re including the complete first draft of the King Kong screenplay by British mystery writer Edgar Wallace.
A special supplement that we’re calling “How To Make a Monster” will take you step-by-step through the process of constructing a stop motion model using photos from numerous stop motion films (Caveman, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Willis O’Brien films, and more) — from blueprint to armature to clay sculpture to plaster mold to final foam rubber animation model. (Now you’ll know the answer when someone asks, “How did they DO that…?”)
Interview subjects/contributors to Volume 1 include: Forrest J Ackerman, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, Darlyne O’Brien, Bessie Love, Beveley Cross, Kenneth Kolb, John Landis, Arnold Kunert, Randall William Cook, and many others, some of whom have since passed away. You will get more info at millsriversdaschool .
Stills and other visual material come from numerous private collections, including considerable material that has never been seen in print before (including in Ray Harryhausen’s own books).
PLUS—
*Ray Harryhausen’s Los Angeles: A map of key locations connected to Ray and his films
*Reproductions of advertising art & posters from different countries
*Compilation of reviews and story synopses
*Filmographies of key cast and crew
*A selection of Harryhausen collectibles pertaining to the films in this volume 370 pages, 125,000 word text (chapters, filmographies, reviews, and more)
*Approximately 2,000 images—photos, artwork, posters, technical diagrams and other illustrations, in Spectacular Color and “Glorious Black-and-White”
Hardcover: dark brown imitation leather with title stamped in gold foil
Full color dust jacket
Heavy 70 pound semi-gloss paper stock
Overall dimensions 9″ x 11-1/2″ (22.86cm x 29.21cm)
Weight: 5 pounds (2.75kg)
Pre-order your copy at Archive Editions.
Dungeons and Dragons is one of the most influential, and controversial games of the 20th century. A forthcoming film aims to tell the story in Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary, produced by Andrew Pascal, Anthony Savini, and James Sprattley. See the story on the film and some background on D&D in an essay in WIRED by Ethan Gilsdorf.
Related posts:
“Darkon: Documentary on Fantasy Role Playing Game”
“Review and Commentary: Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks”
Call for Papers: Special issue of Horror Studies
“Paranormal TV”
Helen Wheatley, in Gothic Television, argues that beginning in the early 1990s, gothic texts became particularly visible in television; like the gothic, paranormal-themed television became especially prevalent beginning in the 1990s and, again like the gothic, paranormal television has cut across genres, with particular visibility in paranormal reality television (starting with UK programs such as Most Haunted and then becoming popular in the United States with Ghost Hunters and similar fare), along with the procedural and the recently cancelled Medium and The Ghost Whisperer as well as family melodrama (American Horror Story, Supernatural).
While a great number of scholars have produced important work on horror and television, my proposed issue of Horror Studies represents the first collection of scholarship concerning itself solely with paranormal horror in the medium of television. Taking both a contemporary and historical approach, articles appearing in this issue will present rigorous yet lively explorations of paranormal-themed television programs as generic hybrids drawing upon established genres, while also potentially examining questions of production, paratexts, reception, etc.
Although I am particularly interested in television dealing with ghosts, I also welcome scholarship on texts featuring demons, aliens, witches, vampires, werewolves, and assorted “things that go bump in the night,” demonstrating the diversity of paranormal television and its study. Horror Studies is an interdisciplinary journal, and I am accepting submissions from a wide range of disciplines and theoretical perspectives.
The proposed issue will consist of approximately six articles, including a short editorial introduction, along with 2-3 reviews of recent works pertinent to the study of horror, particularly paranormal horror.
Articles will be 5,000-8,000 words and make use of Harvard reference style. Contributors should send a 500-700 word abstract for their article, with a title, to guest editor Drew Beard at abeard3@uoregon.edu. The deadline for submitting abstracts is September 15, 2012.
Book reviews will be 1,000-2,000 words in length. Queries can be sent to abeard3@uoregon.edu.
Horror Studies is a journal devoted to the study of horror. This journal will publish in all fields of the humanities, provided the scholarship deals centrally with a work or works generally connected to horror. While we anticipate that fields traditionally concerned with horror such as film studies and literary studies will inform the bulk of the journal’s articles, we also intend to solicit and cultivate study in allied fields such as art history, musicology, theatre history, and dance history. The goal of the journal will be to promote excellence in the scholarly study of horror in expressive culture, and interaction between scholars interested in the study of horror from diverse disciplines.
Call for Papers for Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Annual Conference, 2013 (Chicago)
Paranormal Media
Annette Hill, in Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture, observes that in recent years, paranormal beliefs have entered the mainstream. Although the paranormal had a presence in popular culture and various media forms for centuries, the past decade has reflected a proliferation across media, from paranormal romance fiction (in the form of the Twilight series and its many imitators) to a resurgence in the paranormal horror film, witnessed in the success of such films as Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007) and Insidious (James Wan, 2011). Television has also proved a beneficial medium for paranormal narratives, particularly (but not limited to) dramas (True Blood, American Horror Story, Supernatural, The Walking Dead) and reality television (Ghost Hunters, Paranormal State). As a panel, “Paranormal Media” investigates the unique relationship between the paranormal and media, including its connections to the horror genre and the possibilities it offers in film, television, and new media.
Panel papers may examine questions of genre, production, paratexts, reception, etc. Although we are particularly interested in media dealing with ghosts, we also welcome scholarship on texts featuring demons, aliens, witches, vampires, werewolves, and assorted “things that go bump in the night,” demonstrating the diversity of paranormal media and its study.
* Generic hybridity
* Representations of gender and sexuality
* Representations of social class and race, including whiteness
* Convergences between the horror genre, reality TV, and “found footage”
* Reception/audience studies
* Relationship between the paranormal and issues of medium/apparatus
* Historical approaches (previous manifestations of the paranormal in media)
Abstracts should be approximately 500 words in length, and accompanied by a brief bibliography (five items maximum) and a short biography of the author. Please email your abstract as a .doc file to Drew Beard (abeard3@uoregon.edu) by August 25, 2012. All will be notified as to the status of their proposal by August 28, 2012.
Related post:
“Annette Hill: Paranormal Media”
Already the hint of Autumn and Halloween are in the air, and with that comes the opportunity to enjoy the artistic and the macabre. A perfect way to do this comes in a new t-shirt line, the Disney Artist Collection, one of which features The Skeleton Dance animated short film from 1929. This was one of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, and it features the wonderful character design and animation of Ub Iwerks. This film is one of the great classics of Disney’s early black and white works, and as the Wikipedia entry notes, it remains influential by way of reference and inspiration in contemporary pop culture. The Skeleton Dance design t-shirt is in short supply, but can be found at your local Target stores.
I am currently reading and enjoying Kendall R. Phillips’ book Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture (Praeger, 2005). The book is similar to David Skal’s The Monster Show in that it connects horror films to their context in American culture. Phillips’ book is a little different in that it selects certain films which the author feels specially represent the time period in which they appeared above all others in horror. One of the films Phillips selects is The Thing From Another World (1951), and in his view this film represents a return to Gothic horror, whereas The Day the Earth Stood Still exemplifies 1950s science fiction.
The Thing has long been one of my favorite 1950s horror/science fiction films, and today I watched it again, only this time with an eye toward consideration of it as incorporating Gothic horror within the science fiction framework. This idea has a lot of merit, and one scene was especially striking in illustrating Phillips’ thesis. As the story goes a group of Antarctic scientists and military men bring a block of ice back to their research station which contains the body of an alien that was found near a flying saucer also buried in the arctic wilderness. The decision is made to leave the creature in the ice for possible analysis pending approval by military authorities. The creature inadvertently thaws out and surprises one of the military men selected to keep watch on it.
The setting of the scene, and the reaction of the military man parallels a scene in a classic Gothic horror film The Mummy (1932). In The Mummy an archaeologist is left along in a room with the coffin containing the mummy with his back to the sarcophagus. As he reads a scroll the mummy returns to life, reaches for the scroll on the table (see photo from scene accompanying this post, and comes up behind him causing great fright and hysteria. In The Thing the scene is set up similarly in the way in which the soldier is sitting, and he likewise leaves the room in hysteria after seeing the alien creature, brought back to normalcy only after someone throws a cup of water in his face. Unfortunately, while I was able to find an image from The Mummy from the scene under discussion, no such image was available from the scene in The Thing. Interested readers will need to do some comparative video viewing to test this idea.
This is a minor observation, but one that indicates that Phillips has some worthwhile considerations for those interested in exploring key horror films in more depth in their cultural context.
This last weekend saw the debut of Total Recall, the “remake” or revisioning of the 1990 film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone. Both films are loosely based upon the short story “We Can Remember it for you Wholesale?” by Philip K. Dick. But whereas the 1990 film involves a significant portion of the story taking place on the planet Mars, the 2012 film, directed by Len Wiseman, takes place completely within an earthly setting.
The new film finds Douglas Quaid (played by Colin Farrell) living in a future dystopia where chemical warfare in the past has rendered much of the globe uninhabitable. There are now only two places that can sustain human life, and on opposite sides of the planet, including a new form of Great Britain where corporations, the wealthy, and jobs are located, and the former Australia now known as The Colony, a crowded, low income area that resembles a dirty form of Hong Kong more than anything else. Those who live in The Colony are the workers who commute each day via The Fall, a huge mechanism that literally goes into an immense tunnel through the earth. Quaid is experiencing recurring nightmares of a much more adventurous form of life that also involves a beautiful woman, Melina (played by Jessica Biel), and yet when he awakes the reality is that he works a robotic assembly line producing synethetic police officers and is married to Lori (Kate Beckensale). One day he gives into his desire to visit Rekall that implants fantasy memories of your choice, and after selecting a secret agent scenario, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous situation that causes him to question his identity and understanding of reality. Has Quaid “blown his memory cap” to uncover his real identity as a wanted double agent, or has he begun to experience his false memories implanted by Rekall?
With the exception of the shift of the totality of the storyline to earth rather than including a major segment on Mars, the 2012 version follows the general thrust of the 1990 film. It also includes various forms of homage to the original film, although a major opportunity was missed at the conclusion of the film with the (spoiler alert) shooting and death of Quaid’s “wife” (played by Kate Beckensale, where the line “Consider that a divorce!” would have made for a final fitting tribute to the original, and more in keeping with the flow of the narrative than the inclusion of the three-breasted woman based upon a mutant from the first film.
The 2012 version of Total Recall is far darker thank the 1990 outing reflecting the pessimism of our time and resulting in the dystopian conception of the future. Here our present concerns over environmental degradation, international warfare, and economic inequalities are especially evident. On the latter, one can read our present political and economic climate into the depiction of the film with the Great Britain landmass symbolizing “evil” corporations and big business, corrupt political leaders, and concentrations of wealth. The Colony may be symbolic of “the 99%,” which goes through the motions in a form of economic slavery. This is evidenced not only by the actions of those who live in the squalor of The Colony, but also through some of Quaid’s dialogue as he boards The Fall with a co-worker and prepares for yet another installment in the daily grind. Quaid wonders why no one questions the routine and yearns for something different, and just prior to this discussion we see signs on the walls questioning the status quo and claiming that “the Fall leads to slavery.” On a theological side note, it is interesting that read from the perspective of the Christian myth the same could be said but with alternative meaning: the failure of human beings to live up to their connection to the divine, the fall of a different kind, has plunged the race into slavery resulting in lives lived in less than ideal fashion.
One of the central aspects of both the 1990 and 2012 versions is the question of identity, and epistemological questions of what is real and how one tells the difference between reality and illusion. This is explored more deeply in this film with some of the more significant explorations coming near the film’s end with an exchange between Quaid and Matthias, the leader of the rebellion (played by Bill Nighy). The thrust of Matthias’ advice to Quaid is that while he may want to remember his past so as to know who he is in the present, what is really important is who one chooses to be in the now. I found this advice curious in that while self-identity is a fluid concept that can be created and recreated due to the choice and perceptions of the individual, nevertheless, this is intimately connected to one’s past and future actions as well. The film also fails to address the overriding question of how one separates fact from fiction in the experience of “reality,” a trait it shares in common with The Matrix.
The critical commentary on this film has been mixed, with some of the positive reviews arguing that the film should be seen for the impressive visuals if nothing else, and the negative reviews arguing that the 2012 attempt fails to live up to the quality of the 1990 version and adds nothing new to the cinematic experience. I was troubled by the negative reviews, but after watching the film I was pleasantly surprised. In my view the 1990 film, while entertaining, was certainly no in-depth or classical piece of science fiction, and the script, along with Schwarzenegger’s performance, came across as traditional action film fare with a little camp. By contrast, although action is still center stage in the 2012 version, this film seems to take itself a little more seriously, and to incorporate some of the cultural influences surrounding it, including those mentioned above, as well as cinematic influences from Blade Runner to I, Robot. Although Total Recall failed to shake The Dark Knight Rises from the number one spot in the box office last weekend, nevertheless in the opinion of this reviewer it is a science fiction film worth watching.
And for those interested in something a little different, I also found and listed the Alien Autopsy Game. This was produced by DaMert Company in 1997 due to the influence of things like The X-Files and the alleged video of an alien autopsy that was show on Fox. This game borrows from the old Operation game, where kids roll the dice and follow the instructions on game cards to use their probes while conducting the autopsy and carefully removing alien body parts. One body part is missing, but the rest of the game is intact, and the alien lets out a howl if game players touch the metal edges around the organs. Fans of UFO and alien mythology, as well as the paranormal, might find this game an interesting addition to their collection. You can read more about the game and see pictures from the box and game playing surface at the eBay listing here.
