The Flash Gordon Trilogy on DVD

Howdy friends and neighbors. How’s it going? Been kinda wrapped up with writing projects to post much here. But also since this is a blog that comments on subjects far and wide, it’s been hard to find something to comment on that wasn’t depressing. The news has been filled with stories of bombings, mass shootings, tornadoes ripping people’s homes apart, government spying on its own citizens, drone attacks. Times are weird.

Yes times are weird and strange. But at least there isn’t a rogue planet about to crash into the earth. At least there isn’t a death ray sucking the nitrogen out of our atmosphere. At least the Purple Death isn’t causing world wide chaos. At least not yet. But if any of those things were happening, if the world was coming apart for one reason or another, I have to believe that once again a hero would arise from the masses to save the universe, just as he did back in 1936 when the planet Mongo was driving its way into Earth’s orbit. And again in 1938 when Ming the Merciless’s Death Ray collected all the nitrogen from the Earths stratosphere. And again in 1940 when Ming’s space ships salted our beloved planet’s atmosphere with the Death Dust that created the Plague of the Purple Death.

Yes, my friends, of course I am referring to that renowned interplanetary traveler, the former champion polo player, son of one of earth’s leading scientists, (bring up the music, let’s hear it! Franz Liszt’s Les Preludes) none other than FLAAAAASH  GOOOORRDONNN!

Created for William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper by artist Alex Raymond in 1934, Flash Gordon is the quintessential good guy hero. Not a superhero, not a masked crusader or any of that jazz, just a good guy who rose to the occasion more than once. He even came back reincarnated as a New York Jet quarterback in the 1980s to stop the apparently immortal Ming.

I’ve written about Flash before, and I bring him up now because I just happen to be wandering around in the local Target Store when my eye spotted a new set of Flash Gordon DVDs on the shelf. I have to admit I must have five or six different video versions of all three Flash Gordon serials made by Universal, everything from VHS tape, to laser disc (remember those) to DVD. It’s kind of a sickness really. Like an alcoholic who can’t pass by the wine rack in Safeway without hooking a bottle of Thunderbird. So I really didn’t need to buy yet one more iteration of the sacred serials. But how could I resist. Image Madacy Entertainment lured me in.

They’ve repackaged all three of the serials (Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (1936), Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938), and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) in a fantastic looking three part fold out with a cool looking cover featuring a collage of images of Flash, Dale Arden, Dr. Zarkov, and Ming. But what made me put my money down was the fact that they included a 24 page booklet with some of Alex Raymond’s original artwork for the Sunday comic strips.  There’s also some text about the Golden Age of Comics and how Hearst wanted a strip to compete with Buck Rogers, and some background info on the characters that appear in the comics and in the serials. It’s really not anything new for old time fans. But it is a nice introduction for anyone new to this fabulous space opera.

And maybe there is a new audience for Flash. The kid at the cash register actually knew who Flash Gordon is! He had seen “Ted” the wacky comedy with Mark Wahberg, who plays a grown up guy who owned a talking teddy bear that he grew up with in the 80′s. Their big hero, the guy they idolized as kids, was the reincarnated Flash played by Sam Jones. Flash– Savior of the Universe! I quickly clued the kid in that he wasn’t the real Flash Gordon. The real Flash Gordon was played by Buster Crabbe in these–the sacred serials made by Universal in the thirties. “Compared to these original serials, kid,” I said, “the remake is just greasy kid stuff.” He looked at me strangely for a moment, and handed me my change. “Well,” he said somewhat nervously, “Enjoy them.”

And enjoy them I will. The video and sound quality of the Image Madacy Entertainment DVDs is good. Not great. There’s been no effort to restore the seventy year old film stock, so there are lots of scratches and dust, but for the most part the serials are very watchable. If you have never seen these chapter plays, as they were called back in the day, the fold out set with the Alex Raymond artwork is a great introduction. If you’re an old fan and don’t have the trilogy it’s a good way to get the whole set at a bargain price. You can buy them on the Internet for around 10 or 11 bucks. And if you are one of those poor wretches like me who lurk in the dark corners of the dwindling number of DVD outlets, trying not to let anyone see the monkey on his back, it’s essential.

 

 

Oblivion

Been off the Internet awhile due to working on various projects which I will be announcing in the near future. Some interesting developments and some exciting news.

But right now I’d like to direct your attention to the Amazing Stories Magazine, where I have posted a new blog about Oblivion, the science fiction film serving as the latest starring vehicle for Tom Cruise. I also comment on the IMAX film experience I had while watching it.

Stan Freberg once cut a comedy record featuring a Beatnik who kept using the catch phrase, “Piercing, man. Piercing,” when the music got too loud. That about sums up the problem with IMAX.

Anyway, you can check out here at Amazing Stories.

Emby Press

 

Good news. Miles Boothe, editor of the Monster Hunter anthologies published by Pill Hill Press, has created Emby Press, a new small press dedicated primarily to monster hunting fiction, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural.

Emby Press fills a gap created by the shutting down of Pill Hill Press last year. This is good news because volume three of the Monster Hunter series, Use Enough Gun, was edited and ready to go and suddenly found itself in limbo. when PHP closed its doors. I have a story in that book, “The Shape of a Cage,” which is a very special tale featuring Mordecai Slate, a monster hunter who plied his trade all over North America during the last half of the nineteenth century. I think it’s the best of the Slate stories so far, and I’m very happy that it will be published.

The alternative would have been to self-publish, and while it’s becoming a trend to put out books that way, I still prefer to have a publisher and an editor. It’s so easy to convince yourself that you’re a writer and the story you’ve written is a masterpiece (mom said so)  and foist it on the world. But having a publisher and editor is, if nothing else, a reality check and validation that you’ve really got something to offer.

Miles has a lot of plans for Emby Press, including more Monster Hunter anthologies. If you’re a writer looking for a new market, Emby Press is currently open to submissions.

You can find out more about Emby Press and how to submit your stories on the Emby Press Website.

 

Mars Babylon

Today I have a new article up on the Amazing Stories blog page. It’s a review of a fascinating book, “John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood,” by Michael D. Sellers. It tells the inside story of how a highly anticipated live-action sci-fi flick based on Edgar Rice Burroughs 100 year old novel,  A Princess of Mars, turned into one of the worst box office disasters in movie history.

Sellers’ account shows how incompetency and mismanagement on the part of all involved in making and promoting the film, along with Disney executives who had bigger fish to fry, led to Disney writing off the film as a $200 million dollar loss only 10 days after it was released.

Check it out here.

Buz Said: “Go, Just Go, Man”

The 1960s were an interesting time in America. There were giants walking on the land, as rocker Neil Young testfies in his latest CD, Psychedelic Pill. American culture hadn’t yet started to slide into the dumbed-down, tone-deaf, myopic mess it is now. In films Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa and Goddard were creating masterpieces, on radio Jean Shepherd talked his nightly installments of the Great American novel, in literature, J.D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams, John Updike and many more wrote deep, meaningful explorations of the human heart. And even on television, although the golden age of live drama had ended, a giant still practiced his art.

Stirling Silliphant, the poet laureate of the open road and the free soul, co-created a one of a kind television series called route 66, a show about two young guys in a Corvette searching the American highways for a place, a feeling, a sense of belonging somewhere. Silliphant wrote 73 stories, full one-hour scripts for the show during its four year run. And in most of those tales he expressed ideas, thoughts, and feelings about what it is to be human on planet earth—the fight to keep your humanity, enduring cruelty and intolerance, fighting indifference, and searching for love—all expressed in some of the most poetic dialog ever written for TV.

This isn’t a blog about route 66, though. That’s a topic I’ve never fully discussed here—what that show meant to a college boy hearing for the first time about existentialism, Pirandello, Zen, and jazz musicians named Sticky Mack and Gabe Johnson. Someday I’ll tackle route 66 but not yet.

The thing is, though, even though the show aired fifty years ago, its influence is still being felt, and in some surprising places. One of the latest and best, is a new CD entitled appropriately Go Where the Road Leads. The album features saxophonist Kenny Blake and vocalist Maria Shaheen, both from Pittsburgh. The CD was produced and arranged by a fellow by the name of Peter Morley, who also wrote the title tune and several others on the disc, and played some percussion and keyboards as well.

I happen to know that Pete is a route 66 fan. He has expressed his admiration for the show and for Silliphant many times on a Yahoo forum dedicated to the program, which is where I made his acquaintance. His love for the series and its influence on his song writing are well evident in this wonderful new disc. But while the CD captures the feeling that the route 66 program inspired (that sense that there is something worth searching for on the open road), to say that Go Where the Road Leads is a tribute to the past would be inaccurate. It’s more accurate to say the music here shows there are still people out there who dig what Tod and Buz, the two guys in the ’Vette, were trying to do. There are those who still get Buz’s message.  Buz said: ” Go, just go, man.” And this album goes.

Kenny Blake is a saxophonist in the tradition of Cannonball Adderly, and on this CD he’s playing in a full-toned lyrical style reminiscent of Art Pepper. But these comparisons don’t really do him justice, because Blake has a distinctive sound of his own, whether he’s on soprano, alto or tenor.

Maria Shaheen’s voice has a haunting quality to it that grabs you from the first note she sings on the opening tune, “Tu Sais L’amour,” one that she wrote the melody for. Blake accompanies her with a very warm sound on tenor. The middle section of the song has Shaheen improvising melodic variations on the three French words in the title, while Blake weaves a hip, and beautiful tapestry around the main line. Very nice.

Next up is the title song, and here Morley’s lyrics express the essence of route 66— that  when life gets stagnant there’s always the possibility of getting in your car and “doing something totally insane.” The song is fast-paced with Blake playing a boppish alto solo, and Shaheen inviting us to bypass our usual exit on the freeway, to ‘spin the compass, point me into the sun and let’s run where the road leads.”

No sooner do the last notes of the open road fade away when electric keyboard chords set the hard-to-define mood of the next song, “The Waters of March.” This Antonio Carlos Jobim tune is a killer. It never fails to raise goosebumps, and the arrangement that Morley has provided here is so good you can hardly listen without wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.  “A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road .. .”

“Begin the Beguine” is next with a very relaxed mood and an exquisite piano solo by Jeff Lashway, as well as Blake’s inventive improvisations on soprano sax.

“To William” begins with an actual quote from one of Silliphant’s route 66 scripts. “He’s the wind from a place I’ve never been before,” a line spoken by Diane Baker, playing one of the many crazy mixed up girls that the route 66 guys kept running into. Here Shaheen’s vocal asks, “when I wake in the morning will I find all that’s left are these line to William?”

“Soul Serenade” provides a gritty workout for Blake on alto while Shaheen provides a background chorus through multi-tracking, while drummer Brian Edwards keeps hip, grooving time.

“Tangerine Wine” and “Private Devils” are both Morley originals. Wine is about the choice between being a nine-to-fiver “wasting my youth on time-clock time,” or finding “a kind of truth in the thunder wine, the tangerine wine”—a  metaphor for those who prefer a more bohemian lifestyle. This cut features a solo by bassist Mike Houlis that tells a truth all its own.

“Devils” tells about a hipster’s struggle to keep “a private code,” while trying to juggle “all these many levels of meaning.” Lyrics to think about.

The album ends with an instrumental bossa that features Blake with a quartet and gives him a chance to stretch out.

It’s hard to sum up an album that has “so many levels of meaning” in it. Morley’s lyrics reach for something difficult to express. Sometimes they’re oblique and mysterious. It’s the sounds that accompany them that get the real meaning across. It’s more something you feel than hear. There was a route 66 story in which the heroes try to explain a very complicated situation to a little boy, and when they ask if he understands, he says: “Not all the words. But the sound of it.”

All you truth seekers out there, you travelers on the endless highway, pick up this CD. It’s background music you need for The Journey.

Available at Amazon.com.

Resident Evil: A Critical Re-evaluation

Today you’ll find my latest blog over at Amazing Stories. This time I take a look at the Resident Evil movies. The critics hate them, but the fans love them. Is there more to this film series than meets the eye? Maybe. Maybe not. You be the judge as I make the argument that rather than being simple sci-fi/horror/action films, they are really art films on the level of the works of Fellini, Bergman and Cocteau. Click here to read it.

 

 

 

The Winter of Our Discontent

“Now is the winter of our discontent.”

So said King Richard III in Shakespeare’s play of the same name. I wonder how discontent Richard would be to know that more then 500 years after he was killed in battle, archaeologists found his skeletal remains in a grave under a parking lot in Leicester, England?

Richard, who is also quoted saying, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse,” was the infamous hunchbacked king who killed a slew of relatives to gain possession of the crown of England. The last Plantagenet king is supposed to have even had his two young nephews killed in the tower of London. His villainous deeds made him one of the most famous figures in the history of British royalty. Lawrence Olivier played him in the screen version, complete with artificial hump.

The archaeologists, according to the New York Times, have proved to their satisfaction that the remains they found is Richard, by comparing the skeleton’s DNA to the DNA of living descendants of the king. The skull shows fractures consistent with the types of wounds Richard is said to have suffered during the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. And according to the scientists, Richard received more wounds after he was dead, from his enemies who paraded his body around naked on horseback afterwards.

The grave was found by radar detection equipment under a church that was buried beneath the parking lot. That’s the weird thing about archaeology. It shows you how each period of time is slowly buried not only in the past, but under new layers of dirt. Makes you wonder where they’ll find your remains 500 years from now, doesn’t it? You could could end up centuries from now buried under some future version of a McDonald’s or a Walmart.

That is, if they even bothered to look. As the great American humorist Jean Shepherd once said, “Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you’re not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It’s not just a possibility. It’s a certainty.”

 

Farewell My Publisher

Things have been slow around here since I started blogging for Amazing Stories. But there have been new developments to report and here they are.

The first is the news of the demise of Pill Hill Press. After a long period of inactivity, the publisher of  my first novel, Jack Brand, decided to close its doors. It wasn’t that it wasn’t successful. Founder, editor, formatter, chief cook and bottle washer, Jessy Roberts decided to call it quits so she could raise the twin babies she gave birth to during the summer. A tough decision to be sure.

In addition to the Brand book, Pill Hill published half a dozen of my short stories in various anthologies, including one of my Tragon of Ramura sword and sorcery stories in an antho called Shadows & Light Vol II, and, most notably three tales featuring monster hunter Mordecai Slate.

Which brings me to the second new development. Caught in the Pill Hill shutdown was an anthology containing a new Mordecai Slate tale, “The Shape of a Cage.” Editor Miles Boothe has taken the bull by the horns and is developing a new small press that will publish the anthology, which is entitled Use More Gun. The new press is being called Emby Press and the debut of a website and announcement of future plans will be forthcoming. Stay tuned for that.

Ready When You Are, JJ

J J Abrams

A couple of weeks ago I ranted about George Lucas selling his Star Wars franchise to the Disney Studios (Empire 1-Rebels 0). I basically called it not only a sellout, but also a total victory for the Empire. The rebellion represented by Lucas’s temporary success in remaining independent of the big studios had been crushed.

Some fans thought it could be a good thing. At least there would be more Star Wars movies in the future. But the question was what kind of movies would they be? Yesterday we got a  clue about what’s coming from the Big Mouse. The news came out that Disney has selected J. J. Abrams to direct the first of the new Star Wars movies.

Check out my blog over at Amazing Stories for my take on this selection, and what it means for the much beloved, long cherished Star Wars franchise.

AMAZING STORIES GOES LIVE!

Amazing Stories Magazine returns today! The science fiction magazine begun in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback is back and live on the Internet. It’s probably sheer coincidence that it happens on Inauguration Day. But since the word inauguration means “a formal beginning” I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Jan. 21, 2013, is the day that may be remembered as the formal beginning of a new phase in the history of the world’s foremost science fiction, fantasy and horror magazine.

For the past several weeks Experimenter Publishing has been conducting a test run of the publication off line. Nearly sixty authors, artists, editors, fans and bloggers have been producing articles on science fiction, horror, and fantasy in films, books, TV, poetry, games, comics and more.

I’ve personally been involved by contributing two new articles, one of which is going live today. With these articles I continue my exploration of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which began in the second pre-launch issue with a piece on Tarzan and the Golden Lion. The article going up today is a review of a new book that came out a few months ago, Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration by Scott Tracy Griffin. Check out the review here.

The third ERB article is a piece focusing on a little known, but thought-provoking novel that Burroughs wrote early in his career called “The Monster Men.“ I know what you’re thinking. Edgar Rice Burroughs thought provoking? Well, read my article and see if I can back up that claim. That piece was posted during the test run and you can find it in the archives here.

Amazing Stories publisher Steve Davidson invites all fans to join the fun, become a member, and help support Amazing Stories.  Membership is free, and entitles members to participate in the discussion, share information and engage in many other familiar social networking activities.

So, check it out at http://amazingstoriesmag.com. There’s already plenty to read and soon the publication will move from this social networking stage to publishing fiction. There’s excitement in the air.