From Zombos Closet

Professor Kinema Remembers Ray Bradbury

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ray bradbury
In the 1970s I wrote a letter to Ray Bradbury inquiring about what would be involved in adapting some of his stories for a TV series. Basically it was for information on my part, since there was no potential for a TV series existing…for me, that is. He promptly wrote back informing me that all of his stories belonged to him, personally and completely. He then mentioned what the price of the film rights would be for each of the stories I mentioned. Needless to say, it was way out of my class. He concluded the letter with a word of encouragement. ‘Why not write something original?’ Most other authors (at least those who would bother to answer) would simply say something like, ‘Buzz off kid, not interested…unless you could come up with the extraordinary fee for what I’ve written.’

Mr. Bradbury encouraged one to write.

In the early 1990s at Unkka Forry’s birthday weekend I had the pleasure to actually meet him in the Ackermansion. He kindly autographed several items for me and posed for an informal picture. These inscribed items not only contained his signature, but the date of the inscription. This serves as a fond memory of the day I encountered the ‘Dean of Science Fiction Writers.’ He had been labeled a science fiction author, but in articles I’ve read about him he prefered to be considered a Fantasist.

We chatted briefly. I didn’t bring up the letter I wrote to him. No doubt hundreds have been written to him. He wouldn’t have an immediate recollection of mine. At the birthday event he got up and related a few fond thoughts about his boyhood and lifelong friend, Forry. One comment he made about what he shared with the Ackermonster was “We both grew old…but we never grew up. ”

A great epitaph for not only Forry Ackerman and Ray Bradbury, but for all of us who love living in the realm of the Fantasist.

Professor Kinema (Jim Knusch)

 

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

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ScreenHunter_52 Jun. 04 11.33

Zombos Says: Good

In Disney’s  groundbreaking 1937 animated version of the Snow White fairy tale, the wonderfully wicked and least kid-friendly moments take place in the Dark Forest, when the witch-queen is spellcasting, and when she plummets to her death after being chased by the rosy-cheeked dwarves. In Snow White and the Huntsman, Charlize Theron as the monomania-driven Ravenna provides splendidly wicked moments throughout, returning this Brothers Grimm story to its darker meaning of sorcery, depravity, vanity, and the lust for power. The few glimmers of romance seen flashing between Snow White (Kristen Stewart), the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) who saves her, and her childhood friend William (Sam Claflin) who blames himself for abandoning her, pale against Theron’s mordsdurst for eternal beauty. If Mirror, Mirror left you with a Pop Rocks candy aftertaste, here’s your chance to replace it with the bite of a mature licorice liqueur.

Ravenna seduces then kills Snow White’s father, King Magnus (Noah Huntley), and imprisons her in the castle’s North Tower. As Snow White grows into a fair young lady, Ravenna ravages the countryside, draining the beauty and youth from attractive female villagers to remain the fairest of all; until Snow White becomes of age that is, and the Magic Mirror warns the Queen that to remain the fairest and gain eternal beauty, she must eat Snow White’s heart.

Ravenna sends her white-haired, Moe haircut-styled, brother (Sam Spruell) to fetch Snow White. He fails and Snow White takes a powder to the Dark Forest. Ominous black shrouded figures, gnarled, black shriveled trees, and creepy big black bugs galore play on her mind and she swoons, luckily landing on the one dry spot of ground in an otherwise murky nightmare of marshes and muck.  Ravenna sends Eric the Huntsman to bring her back with the promise of bringing his wife back from the dead. She lies, so Eric sides with Snow White and takes her out of the Dark Forest, where they meet a small group of women who have disfigured themselves so Ravenna will leave them alone. Her brother doesn’t, and Eric must quickly return to protect Snow White.

Ms. White not only enchants the Huntsman into helping her, but also the sourpuss dwarves (Mini-Me versions of Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Johnny Harris, Nick Frost, and Brian Gleeson) who capture her and Eric. She also beguiles a bridge-watching troll, some fairies, many cute woodland creatures, adorable one-eyed mushrooms, and a majestically rendered white stag, in CGI animated scenes that harken back to Disney’s hand-animated ones.

At Ravenna’s “mirror, mirror, on the wall…” this Magic Mirror flows golden across the floor and forms into a tall, shrouded figure with a male voice to reassure her she’s still the fairest or to give direction on how to stay the fairest. A telling moment comes when Ravenna is speaking with the golden figure as her brother watches unnoticed. He doesn’t see the figure standing in front of his sister and he doesn’t hear it speaking to her. I suddenly thought it’s all in her mind! The mirror isn’t magic. The male figure is her solace and her guilt personified.

The battle between good and evil in Snow White and the Huntsman reminded me of Ridley Scott’s Legend.  Although the stakes are somewhat different, Ravenna is as evil and purposeful as Legend‘s Lord of Darkness, and Snow White is as determined as Jack in stopping her and restoring the balance of goodness to the land. Unlike previous versions of the Snow White story, romance and housekeeping are not the priorities here, but beauty is.

Ravenna’s beauty runs only as deep as her skin; Snow White’s beauty runs to her soul.

Book Review: Nocturnal by Scott Sigler

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GroomsWalk
Zombos Says: Very Good

Bryan Clauser and Pookie Chang, two San Franciso Homicide Detectives, step into it badly when a department conspiracy turns into a monstrous nigthmare for them and the rest of the city. The monstrous part comes from a cult of monsters. A big cult of them, living underground and coming out only at night. Their prey is the homeless, the vagrants, and the unnoticed. Keeping them at bay is the Saviour, an arrow-shooting, cloaked avenger with unusual abilities and weapons. When Bryan and Pookie muck up the Saviour's aim with their good intentions, the monsters, who have been around for a century or so and just itching to hunt freely and without fear, quickly grab the opportunity in this escalating horror thriller by Scott Sigler. Combining police procedural with mind-numbing genetics  gyrations to make it all plausible between the covers, Nocturnal's 500 plus pages accelerate faster and faster until the blow-out payoff grudge match.

Along the way there's character growth, some stunting, and enough lively banter between Bryan and Pookie to define their natures so much you care what happens to them. Pookie dreams of bringing his cop opus, Blue Balls, to television; Bryan can't quite get his hands around the concept, or his ex-girlfriend Robin, either, as she suddenly finds herself running the City Morgue and soon involved in a knee-deep police coverup. Pookie is overweight and wears suits a size too small. He also drives like he owns the road. Bryan's the one with the deadly aim, cool exterior, and odd history that churns up disquieting things from a dark sediment he'd rather have left alone.

If you've read Clive Barker's Cabal or saw that novel's movie version, Nightbreed, you will have a slight familiarity with Sigler's bizarre creatures. If you've seen Slither, there's one particularly unpleasant scene early in that movie you will vividly recall when you read about Mother and how she gives birth to all those nasty monstrosities with cute names. The monsters' underground home reminded me of the Goonies (ancient ships figure in both), but I'll leave it up to you to see if it does the same. 

I bounced between very good and excellent rating this novel; I felt a few less pages here and there would have moved the action faster for me, especially in Book 2: Monsters, the part of the story where everything starts going to hell more quickly than in Book 1: People. And that's only because I kept fighting the urge to skip past paragraphs as I became increasingly ansy to find out what would happen next. 

The writing style is more movie-ish than literary–cheeky dip dialog, straightforward, visually concise action descriptions, and people with just enough needs, foibles, and dirty nails to make them interesting in a nutshell–so the pages turn quickly as plotlines converge. Sigler's habit of sizing chapters to measure the pace even more may leave you as breathless as Bryan and Pookie when push comes to shove.

One important note for zombie and romantic blood-sucker aficionados: although these monsters enjoy chewing on humans, there are no zombies among them. Or romantic vampires. The only things Nocturnal's monsters love to do is hunt and kill.

Strangely enough, Bryan enjoys those activities, too.

A courtesy copy of Nocturnal was provided for this review.

Around the World Under the Sea (1966)
Movie Herald

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What caught my eye here is the illustration and the clever use of the tagline. I also like David McCallum and Lloyd Bridges. Keenan Wynn's kind of fun to watch, too. And how can you pass up Marshall Thompson (It! The Terror from Beyond Space)?

I briefly met David McCallum in the 1980s, when I was shlubbing the shelves at B. Dalton's Software Etc. store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. He was close to my height (okay, yes, short!), so we could see eye to eye. I liked that. I forget what computer program he was looking for, though. 

around the world under the sea movie herald
around the world under the sea movie herald

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
Short a Few Entries

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Chernobyl Diaries
Zombos Says: Good

The cleverest moments in Chernobyl Diaries come early: scenes of young American tourists enjoying the sites of London, France, and eventually Russia as seen through the digital camera recording them. But director Bradley Parker and scripter Oren Peli are just teasing us. This isn’t, thankfully, a through-the-lens or found footage movie, although more professionally handled handheld cameras do follow the six Americans as they head to Prypiat, the ghost city near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Their tour guide is Uri, a beefy entrepenuer with special forces training,  offering “extreme” tours through the abandoned, desolate buildings and less radioactive areas of ground. The cleverness stops somewhere between their boarding of Uri’s rundown van and a little after its breakdown as night approaches, leaving them stranded in Prypiat.

Given this real and eerie environment, suspense builds for us while concerns mount for Uri and the six adventurers. Their this-is-cool mood, filled with playful banter and a few false-start scares that leave them acting giddy, filled with the sense of doing something special and naughty–like American youth traveling abroad, in horror movies anyway,  are supposed to act–changes to recriminations, fears, and blame-gaming. The change is on a dime, so it surprises me; where do all these pent-up feelings come from?  Not from the script: it doesn’t pinch harder than necessary to line up the usual suspects for this phase of the movie, shifting everyone into last-one-standing mode.

Uri pulls a handy gun from the glove compartment as stray sounds and vicious, starving, dogs frazzle nerves. I would have put my money on Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) to bring this story up a few notches. He looks tough, acts tough, and is built like a brick wall. Perhaps it was too much to expect that the story would break out of the mold for parts unknown, but Uri, the biggest and baddest of the group is still written out early, leaving six bickering, frightened, American numbnuts to go find him or, at least, his gun while they figure out what to do next.

It’s the figuring part that wears this movie like yesterday’s fashion (which admittedly, for the majority of the horror movie industry,  is worn everyday);   shaky-blur “found footage” of an attack on the van; darkened interiors punctuated by flashlights to disorient us and tease at possible terrors lurking outside the light; phantom assailants we never see clearly, and a lot of screaming, shouting, and running away from them, leading deeper into ever tighter passageways, a maze of claustrophic, bunker-like rooms, and the Chernobyl Power Plant, still hot with radiactivity. If you’ve ever screamed through a haunt attraction with your friends (or a bunch of strangers), the overall effect is similar to watching Chris (Jesse McCartney), Michael (Nathan Phillips), Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), Zoe (Ingrid Berdol), Amanda (Devin Kelley), and Natalie (Olivia Dudley) be terrorized, although more usually happens in the haunt attraction.

Chernobyl Diaries is well acted, atmospheric, loaded with promise, but leaves a bland taste. Some people will find some scares (or recognize them from the trailer), but seasoned horror fans will find a well-worn roadmap to boredom with too few interesting stops along the way.

Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood (Part 2)

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Here are the press luncheon invitation, action accessories, catchlines, and more promotional gimmickry for this very appetizing double bill pressbook. And to think, today we only have the Internet to do all this. Bummer. And remember, There’s gold in them thar Chills!

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

…

Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood (Part 2)Read More »

Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood Part 1

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This pressbook is in my top ten favorites. Black and white, 12 inch x 17 inch format, perfect tagline, werewolf-making kit theater giveaway, suitably atmospheric press luncheon, and excellent publicity articles–what more of Nervo-Rama can you ask for? (Click to enlarge pages. And don’t try this on your mobile phone: these are BIG pages.)

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

werewolf in a girl's dormitory pressbook

…

Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood Part 1Read More »