Mexican Lobby Card: El Vampiro Sangriento
Here's the Azteca lobby card version of El Vampiro Sangriento
Mexican Lobby Card:
Los Automatas De La Muerte
Here's the Azteca lobby card version of Los Automatas De La Muerte.
Mexican Lobby Card: Misterios De Ultratumba
Here's the Azteca lobby card version of Misterios De Ultratumba.
Movie Herald: Tarzan, the Ape Man (Denny Miller)
Courtesy of Tony Rivers comes this giveaway herald for Tarzan, the Ape Man starring Denny Miller.
DVD Review: Black Butler Anime Seasons 1 and 2
Zombos Says: Very Good
Tana Yoboso’s dark Victorian fantasy manga, Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji), makes an elegant transition to mature anime directed by Toshiya Shinohara that mixes hand-drawn and computer-animated elements, different scene angles, and manga’s expressive exaggeration to create a strong mood for its colorful–and morose–characters.
Young Ciel Phantomhive seals a Faustian pact with the demon Sebastion, who, in his human form, becomes Ciel’s ever attentive and sartorially splendid butler. Sebastion is bound by the pact to help Ciel find the people responsible for killing the boy’s parents, kidnapping and torturing him, and destroying the Phantomhive manor house, a large estate outside of London. What Sebastion gets in return is the boy’s soul, swallowed whole, when the contract is fulfilled. Their relationship becomes more and more complicated as time goes on, but each remains true to his nature. Or do they?
Seasons 1 and 2 of A-1 Pictures animated series liberally follow the manga stories. In the first episode, His Butler, Able (Sono Shitsuji, Yūnō), Damian, an Italian business man, tries to scam Ciel over Phantomhive’s Funtom Company (toy and confection) business that Ciel now heads, leading to a gruesome comeuppance capped by having Damian cooked in an oven. While not as horrific as it sounds–Damian was bewitched into experiencing his losing moves played on a boardgame–we find out how nasty Ciel and Sebastion can be. We’re also introduced to the other important servants in the Phantomhive manor house who provide the comic relief: Bardroy the cook, Finnian the gardener, and Mey-Rin, the clumsy maid. There’s also Tanaka, former head butler to the Phantomhives, who often appears super deformed (as a really small man holding a green mug of tea). I don’t know what the significance of him being super deformed is so feel free to enlighten me, but it is funny. In later episodes, Pluto ( a large demon hound) joins the household and Tanaka is seen as a normal adult.
Ciel wears an eye-patch over his right eye to hide the pentagram seal that binds him to Sebastion, and Sebastion must obey every command Ciel gives him. Unless a cat is nearby; Sebastion is enfatuated with cats . Curiouser characters appear like the Undertaker, a former Grim Reaper (reapers decide if a soul lives on or dies) who craves a good joke, and Angela and Ash, an hermaphrodite angel with two personalities. The Undertaker assists Ciel in his duties as Queen Victoria’s watchdog. The Queen herself is portrayed as alarmingly unhinged: she has a puppet of King Albert to whom she talks to whenever she is troubled. I’m not sure of the cultural nuances of that, either.
As the Queen’s watchdog, Ciel is obligated to protect her’s and the state’s interests and deal with the more shady denizens of London. A drug dealer and his gang fall to flashy silverware slay of hand by Sebastion as he rescues Ciel, and they tear one up with Jack the Ripper, leading to a surprise revelation for Ciel.
Victorian charm is well captured in the animation as well as the darker side of Sebastion. Lots of strong tea brewing and odd closeups of scrumptious deserts provide for lighter moments. You may find yourself snacking heartily during each episode. Bon appetit!
Graphic Book Review: Freaks of the Heartland
Excellent Shadows, Needs More Light
Zombos Says: Fair
Steve Niles perfunctory story is surpassed by Greg Ruth's beautifully atmospheric panels in Dark Horse'sFreaks of the Heartland, providing the only reason to pick up this 9 x 12 inch formatted hardcover edition.
Without Ruth selling the emotional interplay between characters and setting visually, this story amounts to only an exercise in the writing of a stock situation–they're not like us so we're scared of them–of which we've seen much too much already in movies and fiction to be enamored simply because it's used. Again.
Freakish big brother with nasty eating habits chained in barn? Check. The rest of this rural community beset by freakish siblings also chained in barns or locked in storm cellars? Check. Non-freakish siblings disturbed by all this mistreatment of their brothers and sisters? Check. They ignore adults and go on the lam? Of course. The adults squabble among each other as to how to deal with the situation thereby making it worse? Check and double check.
Adding fire-breathing to the mix doesn't tally to originality either, and ending this weakly plotted story abruptly (a major problem with many comic book driven stories), eclipses the plotline backstory–what caused all these freakish births and why?–that Niles ignores.
Instead, he rests on his laurels by using the villagers-lighting-torches and the children-will-save-them action scenes. Is he good at using them? Yes. But good writers abound in digital and print and many of them actually have new stories with fresh ideas to tell. There's nothing in Freaks of the Heartland, beyond Niles' name attached to it and Ruth's stellar ink and watercolor storyboard, that warrants our admiration, or being optioned off for animation or a live-action movie adaptation. Unless they go with animation; they could follow Ruth's lead and captivate us with illustration. But whoever adapts the story will have a lot to fill in. Freaks of the Heartland is only a chapter when it should be a novel.
And yes, I find that galling.
So many talented writers are out there struggling while Niles knocks off safe horror pablum for the fanboys who swoon at his feet. Enough swooning already. Get off your butt Niles and work for that paycheck.
Manga Review: Octopus Girl
Any Otaku worth his or her geeky cognomen knows about Toru Yamazaki's horror manga, Octopus Girl, the cute little girl who's head is bigger than her eight dainty tentacles. Know a horror fan who's a budding Otaku? Then this manga would make a perfect gift to give for any holiday occasion.
Taunted and abused by her classmates, and after having an octopus stuffed into her mouth–with her being allergic to octopi, and probably shell fish, too–Takako wakes up one morning to find she's turned into a little cephalopod. Of course, at first she's horrified and wreaks bloody vengeance on her tormentors, but after a swim in the ocean, she calms down, just a bit, to pursue her new life in a series of wild vignettes that will make you wonder how much drinking Yamazaki does before noon and after midnight.
Be that as it may, the explicit artwork (for gory illustration of entrails and dislocated eyeballs mostly) is a delightful journey of crass craziness with copious bodily fluids vomited as Octopus Girl alternates between playful and sadistic and homicidal. Pairing up with another unfortunate girl, Sakai, who had turned into an eel, and who, by the way, wants one or maybe two of Tako's tentacles to nibble on–hey, they grow back, right?–granny vampires, unrequited love with face-eating now and then, wicked sea witches, and other nasties keep these two bottom feeders quite happy, or insane depending on the time of day.
At one point Yamazaki has to put his big foot down and kick some sense into Tako, which he actually does in the comic. Yamazaki's quirky wit abuses the cultural and personal as Tako takes on contestants in Idol and teenage romance and monsters. What's sublimely offending to any sensitive soul is the lack of remorse, regret, or any moral compass whatsoever within Tako's world. Lovecraftian to the tee? Perhaps; most of horror manga is. It doesn't get any weirder than this (well, maybe it does, but I figured I'd end on a positive note because you can't go wrong with Octopus Girl anyway.
But be warned: Yamazaki embraces the brutal and the heartless in his Grand Guignol artwork. Laughing one day and dying horribly the next sums it up quite tidily I'd say.
Mexican Lobby Card:
Caperucita Y Pulgarcito Contra Los Monstruos
This Mexican lobby card for Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood creeps me out as much as that movie. I have vague memories of watching it on television when too young to find any fairy tale within all that nightmarish costuming; and, yes, that pinhead guy on the far left really spooked me the most, although the skunk guy in the inset scene comes in a close second.
Mexican Lobby Card: Savage!
Not quite a horror movie, but colorful as hell, this Mexican lobby card for Savage! shows a lot of action.
Mexican Lobby Card: El Vampiro (Or Not)
Here's a thoroughly mesmerizing yet utterly confusing Mexican lobby card for a horror movie; I'm just not sure which one. El Vampiro did not star Melvyn Douglas and Lionel Atwill (I'm assuming the horribly mangled "Leonel Alwel" is actually Lionel Atwill since I can't find any reference to an Alwel.) They did star together in The Vampire Bat, but that doesn't explain their names here, except for the vampire theme in both movies. German Robles and Abel Salazar star in El Vampiro, and, according to Wikipedia, it's the first vampire movie to show some tooth, which corresponds to the sinister illustration. The inset still–and my memory's vague here so don't stake me if I'm wrong–is from El Vampiro. I wonder if patrons expecting to see El Vampiro were actually duped into seeing The Vampire Bat? Then again, if this lobby card is truly for El Vampiro, why sell the movie with two American actors when German Robles and Abel Salazar were top name draws themselves? I love a mystery!