These are copyright 1992 from Joy Insignia, Inc. and Troll Company (although the graphics show 1991). I picked them up from eBay a while back, when eBay was still an enjoyable place to find interesting monster collectibles.
Not quite as stylish and colorful as the Mani-Yak iron-on transfers, but still worth adorning your t-shirt to strut around a horror convention or two. Click each one for a larger image.
If Prince of Darkness married The Exorcist and they conceived a bouncing bundle of terror while watching Bava’s Demons, its name would be [REC] 2.
Zombos Says: Very Good
[Rec] 2 picks up immediately where [REC] left us, only this time we are with a 4-man SWAT team waiting to escort another Ministry of Health official, Dr. Owen (Jonathan Mellor), into the locked-down building. Only he knows more than they do.
With one skittish hand-held camera and three helmet minicams worn by the heavily armed police, directors Balaguero and Plaza criss-cross the action across apartments and up and down the stairwell with reckless abandon, informing us and terrifying us with what we fully see, partially see, and don’t see.
Under Dr. Owen’s insistence they head to the attic, stepping over pools of blood as they climb the staircase, guns poised. When they reach the attic, he tells them to record everything, including the newspaper clippings taped to the walls. A frightened voice played from a reel to reel tape recorder hints at an experiment gone out of control. Distant screams prompt an argument when the police want to investigate and Dr. Owen tells them not to. Over the doctor’s protests and warnings, Martos heads down the staircase and enters one of the apartments. We see what he sees as his helmet minicam switches on. What he sees in the dim light rushes towards him with ill-intent, leaving his helmet on the floor and him fighting for his life. They rush to his aid but it’s too late–“He was fine a couple of minutes ago. What kind of a virus does that?”–He’s now infected and attacks them. Dr. Owen stops the attack in an unexpected way and they lock Martos in another room.
How the doctor did it leads to an explanation for what is going on, who lived in the attic apartment, and why they must return there to find a potential cure. The police officers are incredulous and fraying at the seems by the minute. The infected tenants want to pry those seems apart even more. Patient Zero, hinted at in the last minutes of [REC], is also in the attic. Only they need to figure out how to find her…And she’s not alone…And the old reliable gimmick of using an air duct big enough for an elephant to fit through is used for a scare. At least it’s grimy like it should be and the scare is worth it.
[REC] 2 is an old school horror show dressed up with enough exuberantly creative point of view camerawork to keep you dizzy and jumpy at the same time. Unlike its Americanized version, Quarantine, which resorts to a more “plausible” terrorist-weapon plot line to explain the source of contagion, [REC] 2 unabashedly returns to the roots of cinematic horror to overwhelm the apartment building’s tenants with a supernatural malevolence that will not be stopped. By kicking old school for their modus operandi, while playing with our perspective to the point of disorientation, [REC] 2 maintains a freshness and exhilaration that many American horror movie sequels fail to do.
Better keep the popcorn and soda safely cradled while you watch this movie and your seatbelt fastened at all times. It’s a bumpy-in-the-night ride, the ending of which leaves [REC] 3 a strong possibility. And if that happens I’m definitely taking Dramamine before I see it.
This is part of what makes it hard to get food now. All of the slow, unarmed survivors have already been eaten.
Zombos Says: Good
Fred Perry's plucky undead kid in The Littlest Zombie (from Antarctic Press) is beset by life's–rather, I should say–undead's challenges of finding food in a world with no Stop and Shops but lots of bigger-sized, and often unsatisfied, consumers competing for scraps of fresh brains and sinewy limbs still flailing.
Issue 1 brings frantically struggling paramilitary survivors and patiently struggling zombies together, and the little fellow smack dab in the middle looking for a leg up, or just about any other body part he can sink his rotting teeth in to. His main challenge this time around is one very large zombie that illustrates the when-he-sits-around-the-house joke quite well. The squabbling living folk use him for a door stopper to keep the horde of onlookers away while they fight among themselves. The living's social disorder is hinted at when mention is made of slavers and marauders, and the final decision to sell out others in order to stay off the menu. Perry only gives us hints of how the living are making do with scant resources, but this may indicate he has a grander scheme in mind for future stories. Perry's art is light-hearted but detailed enough to play off the usual tropes of zombiedom's nastier habits. It's a shame he only has black and white to work with, although he makes more than adequate use of it. Color and zombies make a better match graphically. Nothing says putrescence like green and ochre.
Perry's morality play approach makes his little fellow appealing, and deceptively less threatening then his adult brethren, but also keeps him feisty and hungry enough to stay zombie cute enough for a plush toy.
Zombos Says: Good (in spite of poor page layout)
If you've ever read a Classics Illustrated comic you're familiar with how the artwork is accompanied by large blocks of narrative and copious balloons of dialog in each panel. By today's standards those comics appear too wordy, but these are literary classics that were transferred to a medium their authors didn't normally worry about. To compensate, the panel layouts were carefully designed to accommodate art and text so neither overpowered the other.
Image Comics' Turf issue 1 is like reading a Classics Illustrated story, but without that careful planning of art and text layout. This gives the impression the artwork was done first, then narrative and dialog text were slapped on top, creating an awkward, crowded, and often contentious marriage of both within panels too small to cleanly hold them. Some pages stretch to ten panels, which are then crammed with text, some of which is either unnecessary or could have been better accommodated by choosing a different page layout or approach. How Alan Moore's penchant for verbosity is craftily handled in comics comes to mind. So my question is why didn't Ross and Edwards do a better job of planning their graphic story layout? Jonathan Ross' story is ambitious and well written–for a novel–and Tommy Lee Edwards artwork captures the grit and flap of the roaring 1929 social scene with detailed precision–when you can see it.
Suzie, the society columnist for the Gotham Herald realizes her dream of becoming a bona fide news reporter when European vampires (their progenitor, shown in one panel, looks like Bela Lugosi's Dracula), led by Stefani Dragonmir, move to eliminate the city's gangs and take control of organized crime. Along with her reluctant photographer Dale (why do sidekicks always seem reluctant?) she's heading knee deep into the belly of the beast. If that's not enough for you, there's also alien cargo runners locked in a space battle above the city, soon to crash the party in issue 2. Vampires, gangsters, and aliens: sounds like a B-movie extravaganza, not to mention a mysterious Old One the vampires are looking to revive to start their war on humanity.
Given panels sized and arranged to fit everything snugly but adequately, issue 1 would be almost exhilarating in its pace and setups. However, as written, the only size to properly make it all harmonize would be a coffee table book format. Without a doubt, for the cover price, this is one issue where you get more than your money's worth.
Zombos Says: Very Good
You'd be surprised, but sometimes it seems like there's more dead people above the ground than below it in any given cemetery.
For issue 2, iZombie gets a new-look title and picks up momentum with its art and story. Roberson brings us closer to Gwen's ghostly girlfriend Ellie, introduces Scott's pocket-protector inclined IT pals at work, and the vampire girls running the local Blood Sports Paintball attraction have a 'business' meeting. Mister Mummy, Fred's murderer, puts in a brief appearance, although what he's up to or what he might be after is not disclosed. His pet cheetah likes to eat juicy steaks on the couch, though, while watching television.
This issue doesn't add much to Gwen's investigation of Fred's death beyond her meeting his wife and son, awkwardly, in the cemetery, but it embellishes the people we met in the first issue. The two mysterious monster hunters are back, and they're on the trail of a rogue vampire. For a small town it certainly has an unusually high amount of supernatural citizens, much like Buffy's Sunnydale.
The simple, smooth lines of the characters are not effusive or overly energetic, but with a variety of page layouts for them to converse and act in, there's a Dylan Dog-ish quirkiness just itching to scratch through. Eye-candy pastel colors and zip-a-tone keep the story's tone light, but don't overshadow Gwen's moodiness. The difficult balance between art and word is just about perfect, making this series a pleasure to read as much as look at.
This issue was provided by Vertigo for review.
Zombos Says: Fair
Survival of the Dead is a silly zombie movie when it shouldn’t be and a terrible zombie movie when it should be terrifying. Revisiting threadbare plot themes, George Romero’s once fearsome and unstoppable horde have become as bothersome as pesky mosquitoes in need of swatting when they get too close, and his always quarrelsome living survivors, not surprisingly, are still quarreling.
Only this time he’s put them all on Plum Island and split the survivors into two feuding Irish homesteads headed by Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) and Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Walsh). Seamus wants to keep the deadheads tethered or herded like cattle until a cure can be found. Patrick wants to shoot the rotters and be done with it. Almost everyone dresses, rides horses, and shoots guns like this is a Western; but it isn’t, although an Old West zombie story might have been more engaging. A zombie riding horseback is even lassoed by a cowboy. I halfheartedly wanted to see the cowpoke heat up a Melody Ranch branding iron and tag the zombie. It would not have made much sense but neither does much of this movie.
Eschewing the grittier and more grotesque Tom Savini-styled makeup effects that made zombies and their habits more revolting and terrifying back in the day (although this storyline does take place a few days after the plague starts), Romero instead enhances the de rigueur skull-splitting with assorted CGI-flavored dispatches including the cranium plop, the flare gun incendiary noggin’ (which reminded me of Jim Carrey’s Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooge), and the Looney Tune pop-eyed popper (I was disappointed no accompanying awhooozah! horn sounded when those pupils popped).
Romero’s zombies don’t look much the worse for being undead here. They continue to shuffle about everywhere, on land and in the water, but he directs Survival like he’s planing a piece of wood when he should be gouging deep splintery notches in it instead. Survival’s zombies lack bite: Romero prefers to make them loved ones gone bad instead of ravenous fiends looking to tear chunks of flesh from living bodies and play slinky with intestines. This may serve his story but turns his ubiquitous monsters, the same ones he fostered into popular culture, into slow moving hazards his characters avoid on the road to survival, but not too hurriedly. Survival’s deadheads would fit comfortably into the undead and not very scary crowd at the Monroeville Mall Zombie Walk.
Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) and his small band of soldiers turned mercenaries, last seen in Diary of the Dead, provide most of the action. One soldier on guard duty watches a late night show poking fun at zombies on his laptop. Another one, Tomboy (Athena Karkanis) masturbates to kill time. They come across a group of hunters who have put CGI zombie heads on spikes for fun. Irritated by that, Sarge kills all of them except for Boy (Kevin Bostick), who shows them a YouTube video with Patrick O’Flynn extolling the fresh air and safety of Plum Island. I wonder if he has a Facebook page? They decide to go there and travel to the docks in an armored truck. After finding a million dollars locked away in the truck, they agree it’s worthless given the current situation (the zombie plague, not the recession); but Boy still manages to keep the key.
It’s a lucky coincidence the banished Patrick and his small band of followers are at the docks when Sarge pulls up. Over bullets and zombies, and occasional flashes of Romero’s wit for dry humor–one man fishing keeps catching zombies, and a stick of lighted dynamite is fortuitously dropped into a zombie’s grasping fingers–Patrick and the soldiers make their way to a ferry and sweep it clean of infestation. They power up the engines and head to Plum Island.
The tension does not pick up with this shift in fire power. Romero doggedly undermines it with his feuding patriarchs squaring off on the dietary habits of the deadheads, another you-were-infected-weren’t-you? zombie in the making, an inconsequential twist, and a banal approach to showing it all. A few scenes of flesh and organ eating are for perfunctory consumption only. Zombies placed in the barn’s stalls like cattle provides a whimsical touch, but Romero’s unique ability to balance his story’s importance between living and undead falters here. In Survival of the Dead the living are caricatures of people and the deadheads are imitation zombies.
This is a wonderful set of 50 cards, ‘an educational guide for viewers,’ from Funfax, copyright 1994. This series ‘examines the best sci-fi and horror programs from that decade’ [1960 to 1970]. Click to enlarge. You will find the information on the back of each card nostalgic and interesting, and a very good selection of unforgettable episodes.
Zombos Says: Sublime
MARTIN
(nods, slowly)
I see that now. But I don't understand. Why not?
ROBERT
(softly)
I guess because we only get one chance.
(a crooked smile)
Maybe there's only one summer to a customer.
The fifth scripted episode of the Twilight Zone, Walking Distance, written by Rod Serling, aired on October 30th, 1959. It concerns one Martin Sloan (Gig Young), age thirty-six, burned-out, fed up, and racing his expensive sports car into the distance where neither the direction nor time it will take is something he's sure of. He just wants out. What he wants out from is back there in New York City, the place he's racing away from. What he hopes to find is somewhere ahead of him, but it's still quite a distance away. How close he comes to finding it will be a little side trip; a brief moment of respite, bittersweet and soft to touch, but it will remain a little side trip nonetheless, because he still has quite a ways to go.
Call it the Golden Age, nostalgia, the uncluttered simplicity of childhood memories filled with cold ice cream eaten on hot summer days, endless bike rides, and sparse responsibilities making abundant time uniquely your own. We each have our own special slice of Golden Age pie gulped down deeply within us. Some may get a bigger piece, and for some it may not be as sweet, but it's there to be savored, especially during those grown-up times of inner turmoil and uncertainty when we long to go back for another taste.
For Martin Sloan, his unforgettable slice of pie is Homewood, the place where he grew up, filling his childhood days with shooting marbles, playing ball, and riding the merry-go-round. For me it would be Brooklyn, for you, who knows, it could be anyplace. He's driven back there by the 1950's Rat Race of mundane routine, his days now filled with endless meetings and warding off fierce competition to his successful status qou, driving him to seek his own personal status quo ante. He gets his chance when his car needs a few hours servicing. Homewood's only a mile and a half away from the gas station, walking distance for someone who's got some time on his hands. Strange that he doesn't recognize how close he is to the town where he grew up. Maybe it has been that long.
The time machine he steps into, cleverly designed as a drugstore complete with soda fountain, has him reminiscing over his love for three-chocolate-scoop sodas, only a dime each. The suddenly familiar counter-clerk makes him one. It still costs a dime. He steps out of the time machine and into Homewood; his Homewood. The one he remembers and can't forget. The one where you can down three-chocolate-scoop sodas and not worry about gaining weight. Ever.
What Serling wrote about in 1959, the longing we all succumb to when age bends us a little lower, and time twists us a lot tighter, remains as true today as it did then. Call it timeless. Only today you may be tempted to replace those ice cream sodas with something else that starts with an i, or maybe ends with an ii. But the sentiment is the same. Martin's sturm und drang is ours, today, tomorrow, always.
When Martin realizes he's fallen backward in time he desperately tries to stay. Wouldn't you? But his younger self is still growing older and riding the merry-go-round and gulping down all those dime sodas. There isn't room enough for the two of them. Martin realizes this eventually. Reluctantly. But his dad (Frank Overton) convinces Martin he must leave and let his younger and happier self enjoy the best time of his life. It's his summer now, only he doesn't know that because he's just a kid. How could he? Martin tries to make his younger self understand this, but winds up hurting both of them. Would that 'one summer to a customer' be as carefree and happy for you if you knew it wouldn't last?
For every idyll-personified summer there usually follows a winter of discontent. Serling tackles this inevitable seasonal change of sentiment again in A Stop at Willoughby, The Incredible World of Horrace Ford, and Kick the Can. But it is here in Homewood he's at his persuasive best in conveying the emptiness that leads to desperation that leads to a desire to return to the child grown over by the adult and those wonderful days of summer that grow regrettably shorter into the Fall.
NARRATOR'S VOICE
…And perhaps across his mind they'll flit a little errant wish…that a man might not have to become old…never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth.
(a pause)
And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish. Some wisp of memory not too important really. Some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind…that are a part of the Twilight Zone.
24 July.–There seems some doom over this ship. Already a hand short, and entering the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last night another man lost, disappeared. Like the first, he came off his watch and was not seen again. Men all in a panic of fear, sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. Mate angry. Fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do some violence. (from the Captain's log, Dracula by Bram Stoker)
ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good
The doomed voyage of the Russian schooner Demeter, in Bram Stoker's Dracula, is one of the more horrific passages in the novel. Imagine being trapped aboard a ship with the blood-thirsty devil: there's nowhere to hide that's safe; no one strong enough to save you; no one living to hear you scream. Budgetary necessity forced the removal of this terror by night from Bela Lugosi's Dracula, and there's been no movie to date–although The Last Voyage of the Demeter has been in production limbo for years–that has chronicled the ship's encounter with the undead nobleman. Bram Stoker himself only provides a few tantalizing glimpses into the terrible fate of the crew through the Captain's log entries.
Now writer Gary Gerani and artist Stuart Sayger take over the ship's wheel to navigate those days of dread and death. There's a formidable challenge inherent in describing the Demeter's last days: we know how it ends. It's hard to build suspense when you know nobody survives. Or will they here?
Sayger's artwork takes much of it's power from the non-glossy paper, providing a rough, muted canvas for his water-colored hues that bring life to his inked lines. He has a knack for capturing the salt in the sea air, the splinter's in the mast's wood, and the terror stalking the deck. Gerani's characters are hardened men of the sea, a spirited captain, and one very young sailor still enamored by the wonders of the sky and the water when seen from the crow's nest. Then there's Anatole, a savage brute of a seaman who revels in his manliness. How will he handle the intruder onboard, one savage pitted against another?
This first issue's 22-pages bring the crewmen, the mysterious boxes of earth, and Dracula together for the last voyage of the Demeter in a promisingly dramatic way. Even though we know what should happen, Gerani and Sayger give us flesh and blood people to be concerned over–except, maybe, for Anatole–and Sayger's splash illustration for the vampire during one of his attack's, rendered murkily, as if seen through mist, indicates the white gloves are off. If the momentum begun in this issue continues, the power of Dracula over the living and the elements will provide a vivid and suspenseful confrontation; the one Bram Stoker alludes to in his novel.
Far too many years ago than I can fully recall, there was this little store wedged into a cramped side street in New York City. I'd visit it every so often in the company of my dad, as I was too young to travel or carry much money back then, of course.
I have one somewhat flickery memory of the store's proprietor standing behind a counter stacked with photographs; real photographs, not the digitally rendered or stored ones so ubiquitous today, but the developed-in-stinky-and-toxic-solution ones: thousands of them. They teetered, tottered, and sprawled across the counter top, and spilled out in reluctantly tidy alphabetical order into wooden bins, dozens of them, which filled the small floor space, creating cramped isles to browse from.
The photographs or stills were of actors and scenes from movies. I remember one visit in particular when I discovered Flash Gordon stills. My dad argued on the price–I forget how much–so I had to choose a few from the handful I held. Buster Crabbe was a certainty. Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) and King Vultan (Jack 'Tiny' Lipson) were keepers. Dr.Zarkov (Frank Shannon) and Prince Barin (Richard Alexander) had to go. I held tightly onto Princess Aura (Priscilla Lawson), but my dad wasn't too keen on her because of her wonderfully skimpy outfit. He tried pushing Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) on me, instead, but she just didn't have the same appeal for me. Dale was too darn wholesome. I held my ground and wound up leaving with the princess, the dashing hero, the merciless villain, and the second banana bird-man.
Shoot ahead too many years to forget. I don't attend horror conventions often, but when I do, the most enjoyable experience for me is meeting the people of my nightmares and getting their autographed photos. These actors and creative folk are responsible for much of my misspent childhood, some of my awkward teenage years, and most of my definitely questionable, but enjoyable, dotage. Here's a rogue's gallery of some of the ones I've met so far. (click to enlarge)
…
This 9-card subset from the The Simpson's Mania card set from Inkworks (copyright 2001) provides a taste of Treehouse of Horror Halloween fun from the television series. The picture on the back shows a ghostly surprise when held under black light.
Zombos Says: Poor
Roxy joined the conversation. "We need to work this out," she said firmly. "We've got to find a way to feed ourselves on extended tours without leaving a trail of carcasses behind us. I heard they found the ones in Detroit and Miami. Sooner or later some junior detective is going to stick some pins in a map and make the connection. Dumping these things in a harbor or a vacant lot is not going to work. Even if they happen to find one, we've got to make sure that there is nothing linking the carcasses to us."
Reading Thomas Hauck's novel Lucas Manson is like sitting in one of those taxing corporate meetings that should have died at the sixty-minute mark but still lingers on well past it; and you need to take a bio-break badly; and there's no more coffee; and somebody needs to say something that brings closure and quickly. I'm exaggerating somewhat, but I've read very few novels that force me to skim pages because of their lengthy 'corporate meeting' styled discussions blowing off the action with 'tell me' instead of more preferable 'show me' exposition; leaving me with feeling the payoff–the all important underpinning that justifies a story's events and characters–doesn't add up. There is not enough suspense written in to make it a thriller; not enough horror described to make it frightening; and worse, not much excitement to be garnered from the characters and their actions. Lucas Manson's structure is more draft-stage than print-ready.
…