Dolph Is An Army Of One

You can expect the directorial debut of the man who performed movie stunts for Han Solo, James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Superman to be heavy on action, and that’s what this crackerjack action vehicle for Dolph Lundgren delivers.

Lundgren worked with Vic Armstrong on his previous film, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, on which Armstrong was stunt coordinator. Armstrong was either a stunt performer or stunt coordinator on some of the greatest action pictures of all time, including RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, STAR WARS, TOTAL RECALL, SUPERMAN, and BLADE RUNNER. When he got the opportunity to direct a feature for the first time, he picked Lundgren to be his star. The result is JOSHUA TREE, which came out this week on a beautiful new Blu-ray/DVD combo pack from Shout Factory.

JOSHUA TREE unfortunately never played theatrically in the United States, though it's good enough to (it was a theatrical hit overseas, where Lundgren was a bigger box office draw). Its title was changed to the more commercial ARMY OF ONE when it was released directly to home video and later when Artisan put it out on a subpar full-frame DVD. So when JOSHUA TREE was first seen on VHS in the spring of 1993, it never got its just due as an above-average actioner. Hopefully, it will now.

The screenplay by Steven Pressfield (FREEJACK) is short on plot, but the central relationship between escaped convict Wellman Santee (Lundgren) and his hostage (played by DAYS OF OUR LIVES star Kristian Alfonso) is well-rounded and even generates a bit of steam. However, Armstrong (whose career as a second-unit director extends to THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and beyond) is more interested in the chases, shootouts, explosions, and other setpieces, and when they’re as exciting as they are in JOSHUA TREE, he should be.

Santee, on his way to prison on a trumped-up charge of killing a cop, escapes from guards paid to kill him. He snatches a four-wheel-drive truck and Alfonso’s Rita Marrick, a deputy sheriff (it may be an in-joke that nobody in the film believes the fetching Alfonso is really a police officer, just like we in the audience don’t), and takes off into the desert with corrupt detective Severence (a slumming George Segal, having a good time) in pursuit. No prize for guessing that Severence is the movie’s real bad guy, who goes so far as to put a bounty on Rita to prevent her from telling what she knows.

Armstrong assembles a strong supporting cast and provides them with roles right in their wheelhouses (Beau Starr as a bad detective, Bert Remsen as crusty desert rat, Al Leong as henchman who gets blasted to death), so he doesn’t have to spend valuable screen time fleshing them out—time better spent blowing stuff up. Highlight is a spectacular shootout in a chop shop full of paint, fire, expensive sports cars, and bad guys loaded with chunky squibs. The Shout Factory Blu-ray appears to contain an uncut version of this sequence that never could have received an R rating, and it's worth owning the disc just to see this bravura action scene filmed without faking it with shaky-cam and CGI.

Just A Fight To Survive

From time to time, I plan to use this space to repurpose film reviews I wrote for several local independent newspapers during the previous decade:

THE OCTOPUS: 1999-2000
CU CITYVIEW: 2002
THE PAPER: 2003-2004
THE HUB: 2005-2006

During my tenure as a professional (re: paid) film critic, I wrote about both new releases and cult classics. The date provided below is the date the newspaper issue containing the review hit the streets.

This review has been slightly edited from the original published piece.

BILLY JACK (1971)
Rated PG
Running Time 1:54
Directed by Tom Laughlin
Stars Tom Laughlin, Delores Taylor
Originally published May 12, 2006

BILLY JACK is nothing less than one of the most popular motion pictures ever produced. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that few movies released this decade, if any, will be as profitable or be seen by more people than BILLY JACK was in its theatrical releases. The story of a half-Indian and ex-Green Beret who protects a schoolful of teenaged hippies from bigots, BILLY JACK is a testament to the tenacity and confidence of Tom Laughlin, who produced, wrote, directed, and starred in the film as Billy Jack.

Although BILLY JACK was a tremendous hit in the early 1970s, it can be something of a chore to watch today. Much of it has dated terribly—for instance, the drug humor of the improvisational group The Committee (including a long-haired Howard Hesseman) and the folk music performed by the flower children characters—but BILLY JACK’s stances against individualism, non-violence, and racial intolerance are as relevant now (or more so, as Washington extremists strive to plaster Red and Blue labels over us) as ever.

The story behind BILLY JACK is a fascinating one. The leading character portrayed by Laughlin had already appeared in a biker movie, THE BORN LOSERS, which American International released in 1967. Laughlin, who produced and directed that picture too, held on to the rights to Billy Jack, and after THE BORN LOSERS became a hit, he landed financing from Warner Brothers to do a bigger-budgeted sequel called BILLY JACK, which first came out in 1971.

Warners, in Laughlin’s view, buried the film on the bottom of double bills in dirty, disreputable theaters, so he sued the studio and received the right to release the movie his way. The Laughlin method was to travel around the country “four-walling” theaters—renting the auditoriums himself, playing BILLY JACK in them, keeping all the box office receipts, and giving the theaters the concession profits. Laughlin and his family (who also appeared in the movie) made personal appearances to support the release, and relied on massive regional television advertising to get the word out. BILLY JACK, which was already something of a hit in 1971, was a veritable smash upon its 1973 re-release, breaking box office records across the country and turning its karate-kicking anti-hero into a household name.

BILLY JACK is nothing if not ambitious. It preaches about so many subjects—gun control, education, racism, the generation gap—that the film often falls into tedium. The script is by Laughlin and his wife Delores Taylor, who plays Jean, the teacher at the Freedom School, where troubled teens go to escape their uncaring families or recover from bouts with drugs or other dangerous lifestyles. One is 15-year-old Barbara (Julie Webb), who escaped her abusive father Mike (Kenneth Tobey), ran off to Haight-Ashbury, got pregnant, came home to a beating from her father, and found shelter at Jean’s school, where she begins a loving relationship with an Indian boy. Their mixed-race relationship is a burr under Mike’s saddle, spurring him to create trouble around their small Arizona town for the students, who are also harassed by weak Bernard (David Roya), the son of venal town boss Posner (Bert Freed).

Luckily for Jean and the kids, they have a protector in Billy Jack, one of Hollywood’s few liberal action heroes. Laughlin’s clenched though charismatic performance makes Billy Jack an interesting character. He learned to kill in Vietnam, where he saw so much senseless bloodshed that he makes a strong effort to return to his Native American roots and avoid the violence of the White Man’s world, even though mankind’s inhumanity to his fellow man forces him to seek justice using the skills taught to him by the government, namely hapkido karate.

If you’re patient enough to endure BILLY JACK’s pitfalls, there’s much to admire. Yes, when the Laughlins’ daughter Teresa begins caterwauling her way through a self-penned folk ballad about her dead brother, you’ll want to strangle her. However, Laughlin does an okay job staging his action scenes, which attempt to preach non-violence, while simultaneously stimulating us with shots of Billy Jack kicking bad guys in the face. Few cinematic moments are more moving than the opening title sequence involving an illegal roundup of wild mustangs, beautifully shot by cinematographer Fred Koenekamp and set to Coven’s affecting Top 40 hit “One Tin Soldier.” The acting is variable with hardy character actors like Tobey (THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD) and Clark Howat (as the sympathetic sheriff) doing nice work and amateurs such as Taylor barely able to recite dialogue with a vestige of emotion. But what the lesser actors lack in technique, they make up for in honesty and earnestness.

This cinematic ode to tolerance and peace also has one classic moment that’s the stuff of Hollywood legend. Bernard and his posse harass the children in an ice cream parlor by pouring flour over the head of a cute little girl. Billy Jack waltzes in and gives a long speech about beautiful young angels mistreated by idiotic savages. Then, he “...just...goes...BERSERK,” freaks out, and kicks the crap out of the hoods. Irony or Laughlin’s commercial instincts kicking in?

The Ultimate Terror Has Taken Form

From time to time, I plan to use this space to repurpose film reviews I wrote for several local independent newspapers during the previous decade:

THE OCTOPUS: 1999-2000
CU CITYVIEW: 2002
THE PAPER: 2003-2004
THE HUB: 2005-2006

During my tenure as a professional (re: paid) film critic, I wrote about both new releases and cult classics. The date provided below is the date the newspaper issue containing the review hit the streets.

This review has been slightly edited from the original published piece.

THE BEING (1983)
Rated R
Running Time 1:22
Directed by Jackie Kong
Stars Bill Osco, Martin Landau, Marianne Gordon, Jose Ferrer, Ruth Buzzi, Dorothy Malone
Originally published October 14, 2005

Anyone who's had the misfortune to sit through any of Jackie Kong's other features, such as the witless BLOOD DINER or the painful NIGHT PATROL, won't be surprised to learn this Idaho-filmed monster movie that she wrote and directed is pretty awful. On the other hand, in the right setting with a few friends and the proper blood-alcohol level, THE BEING is good for some hearty guffaws.

My favorite example of Kong's incompetence is a scene in which three local yokels break into an empty building with the intention of burning it down. One says, "Let's see if we can find anything around here to burn," while clearly standing in front of a high stack of cardboard boxes. Time means nothing to Kong either. She follows one night scene with a day scene, and then she cuts back to night, where one character states the time as being "11:45 pm," when a musical recital takes place. On a Sunday night. Don't any of these people have to work on Monday? You can have a good time playing Spot the Continuity Errors with this movie.

THE BEING opens with a portentous, deep-voiced narrator telling us "strange and unexplained events are occurring" in Pottsville, Idaho, which a country music DJ tells us is the "potato capital of the world." Right away, we know we're in big trouble—has there ever been a good horror movie that began with useless narration?

However, we do learn that people have been disappearing ever since a young boy named Michael vanished near the town's new nuclear waste dump. Some townspeople are worried that the presence of so much radiation will be hazardous to their health, but Dr. Garson Jones (Martin Landau, an Oscar winner for ED WOOD) tries to assuage their fears by pointing a Geiger counter at his wristwatch and a glass of water. Whew! That makes me feel better, Marty!

More hazardous to their health is the "being" of the title—a slimy, red mutated creature with tentacles and large teeth that randomly chomps down on the Pottsville populace. Investigating is local cop Mortimer Lutz (producer Bill Osco, Jackie Kong’s husband, billed as both “Rexx Coltrane” and “Johnny Commander”), who has the odd habit of talking to himself ("Now why did he leave his flashlight lying the middle of the street?") and sorta has a crush on cute waitress Laurie (HEE HAW honey Marianne Gordon, married to Kenny Rogers at the time).

The silly character names seem to indicate Kong and Osco were making a comedy, but since there's little in THE BEING approaching intentional humor, it's hard to be sure. Nothing is funnier than the monster, which has one eye that wobbles around like a bobble-head doll. Since we only see it from mid-torso up, it’s probably being pushed around in a wheelchair. It also has the ability to appear anywhere at anytime. Even if it was just seen vanishing into a hole underground, it can still pop up seconds later inside an automobile.

Obviously, if the filmmakers fail to set any ground rules or limitations regarding the creature's abilities, it's hard to generate much suspense. Kong's main preparation must have been watching ALIEN a few times. There's even a scene where two characters wander around a large building searching (for no real reason) for a cat!

Since Osco's earlier producing efforts had been of the softcore porn variety, including FLESH GORDON, a few jabs are taken at fanatics who picket a massage parlor. Inexplicably, even the Landau character, who isn't a local and would seem to have little interest in Pottsville politics, grabs a sign. Despite their billing, none of the above-the-title stars, including LAUGH-IN’s Ruth Buzzi and Oscar winners Jose Ferrer (CYRANO DE BERGERAC) and Dorothy Malone (WRITTEN ON THE WIND), have much to do, except Landau, who actually gives a decent performance, considering what he's working with. Osco Coltrane Commander Kong may have been going for a deadpan style of acting, but he comes off somnambulant instead.

THE BEING was filmed in 1980 as EASTER SUNDAY (the film's setting, which actually is irrelevant), but not released until 1983. It closes with picture credits, which are always fun (although they were probably used to stretch the film to 82 minutes), and AMERICAN GRAFFITI-style "where-are-they-now" cards, which aren't.

The Super-Reality of Sensurround!

From time to time, I plan to use this space to repurpose film reviews I wrote for several local independent newspapers during the previous decade:

THE OCTOPUS: 1999-2000
CU CITYVIEW: 2002
THE PAPER: 2003-2004
THE HUB: 2005-2006

During my tenure as a professional (re: paid) film critic, I wrote about both new releases and cult classics. The date provided below is the date the newspaper issue containing the review hit the streets.

This review has been slightly edited from the original published piece.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (1978)
Running Time 2:19
Rated PG
Directed by Richard A. Colla and Alan J. Levi
Stars Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Jane Seymour
Originally published June 9, 2006

Okay, so who remembers Sensurround? Anyone who saw Universal’s star-studded action epics of the 1970s undoubtedly recalls his heart racing and his ears bleeding from the Sensurround process, which the studio introduced with the release of the disaster film EARTHQUAKE in 1974.

Basically, the Sensurround gimmick consisted of several additional subwoofers, including two very large ones in the rear, installed in the theater that emitted powerful low-frequency vibrations that caused the audience to rumble in their seats during Earthquake’s massive destruction sequences. Although EARTHQUAKE was a big moneymaker, Universal only used Sensurround on a handful of later films, probably because of the extra expense to the theater owners who had to buy and install the special speakers. Among the other Sensurround spectaculars were ROLLERCOASTER, MIDWAY, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

But wait…wasn’t BATTLESTAR GALACTICA a television series? Well, yes, it was, but the 1978 pilot episode was so pricey (the most expensive ever filmed to that date) that Universal sought to quickly recoup some of the cost by releasing it theatrically. It played in Canada before the pilot’s American telecast on September 17, 1978, but not in U.S. theaters until May 1979—after the series’ final ABC airing. Since Universal was asking audiences to buy a ticket for something they had already seen for free on TV, the Sensurround gimmick was added to spice up the presentation, providing the many spaceship battles and explosions with a visceral oomph a small TV speaker couldn’t.

The theatrical film was released in a 125-minute version that was cut down and featured additional footage not seen in the 148-minute TV pilot, which ABC aired in a three-hour Sunday-night timeslot. Neither is the version I’m reviewing, which is included in Universal’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: THE COMPLETE EPIC SERIES DVD set. This 139-minute cut includes even more previously unseen scenes, particularly one played by actress Maren Jensen (DEADLY BLESSING) mostly in the nude that certainly would have spiced up the PG theatrical release.

Executive producer Glen A. Larson’s script is thematically ambitious, if somewhat light in details and occasionally in logic. A sneak attack by an army of sleek robot warriors called Cylons destroys virtually all of mankind living on the Twelve Colonies. What few humans survive pack into whatever spacefaring vehicles can be cobbled together and head into the universe in search of a mythical 13th colony, known in legends as the planet Earth. Leading the “ragtag fugitive fleet” is the last remaining battlestar, an enormous military spaceship called the Galactica, which is led by the authoritative Commander Adama (BONANZA patriarch Lorne Greene).

In order to stock up on fuel and supplies for the humans’ long trek across the galaxy, the Galactica sends three of its best combat pilots—serious Apollo (Richard Hatch, just off THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO), Adama’s son; wisecracking, cigar-smoking Starbuck (Dirk Benedict, previously on the shortlived CHOPPER ONE); and trusty Boomer (Herbert Jefferson, Jr.)—to scout a planet called Carillon, which is said to be rich in food and water. It’s also inhabited by a reptilian species called Ovions, which have, unbeknownst to the Galactica, entered into an agreement with the Cylons, which lie patiently in wait.

Larson also introduces several more characters who would become important to the Galactica mythos, including journalist Serina (Jane Seymour, later DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN), who became Apollo’s love interest; her young son Boxey (Noah Hathaway); traitor Baltar (the delicious John Colicos); Adama’s exotically gorgeous daughter Athena (Jensen); prostitute Cassiopeia (Laurette Spang); Adama’s dignified second-in-command Tigh (Terry Carter); corrupt councilman Uri (Ray Milland); and, as much as we’d like to forget it, Boxey’s robot pet, a “daggit” named Muffit.

Before BATTLESTAR GALACTICA could be released, Universal battled a lawsuit initiated by 20th Century-Fox, which claimed that the property was a ripoff of Star Wars. Which it was. However, it was hardly the only film project to be highly influenced by George Lucas’ blockbuster, and the suit was settled out of court. (Universal was really wearing down lawyers in those days, getting the Italian production GREAT WHITE barred from U.S. theaters as a ripoff of JAWS.)

In some ways, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA equals its illegitimate parent. John Dykstra, who orchestrated STAR WARS’ Oscar-winning visual effects, did such a wonderful job creating BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’s elaborate models, dogfights, and matte work on a TV-sized palette that he earned a producer credit. Stu Phillips’ marvelous score, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, provides a sense of majesty that few other television shows have matched. And Richard A. Colla, who receives sole directorial credit, is a far better director than Lucas.

ABC fired Colla (ZIG ZAG) midway through the expansive 69-day shoot and replaced him with episodic TV journeyman Alan J. Levi (BLOOD SONG). The network feared Colla’s approach was too cinematic, shooting too few close-ups for ABC’s tastes and spending too much time setting up elaborate camera moves and lighting effects. Of course, it is precisely Colla’s attention to detail and quality that sets the pilot apart from the disappointing and childish TV series that followed. The style Colla set was ignored by series directors and ABC, which thought of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA as a mere kiddie show—which is exactly what they got, unfortunately.

Awash in affecting dramatic scenes of tragedy, terrorism, and mass destruction, but still propelled by a grand sense of optimism, hope, and humanity, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is as relevant now as it was in 1978.

Terror On The Docks

Richard Deming was a prolific mystery writer who turned to the quick-buck market of television tie-in novels during the 1970s. Under the pseudonym Max Franklin, Deming wrote novelizations, including five CHARLIE'S ANGELSes, a VEGA$, and eight STARSKY & HUTCHes. Since the STARSKYs, at least, were based on episodes, all Deming had to do was follow the script and add a few scenes to stretch the story to 150 pages or so. I don't intend for the above to come across as demeaning, as it does involve some measure of skill to adapt schlock in a readable fashion, but I don't believe Deming put as much sweat and tears into this paperback as he did his originals. I presume Ballantine intended this 1977 novel for kids, as the plot unfolds neatly and without surprise, and the dialogue is puerile. Then again, you could say the same about the actual STARSKY & HUTCH episodes.

Deming/Franklin's fifth STARSKY & HUTCH novel is titled TERROR ON THE DOCKS, though that appears nowhere on the outside of the book, and is based on a first-season episode written by Fred Freiberger (notorious for producing STAR TREK's third season and sinking that show with juvenile plots) and directed by Randal Kleiser, who moved on from television to do GREASE and THE BLUE LAGOON.

Blame Freiberger for the story's dumbest turn, which has detectives David Starsky and Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson (played in the series by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, respectively) accidentally bumping into Nancy Blake (Sheila Larken, Scully's mother on THE X-FILES), a childhood friend of Hutch's. Even though they haven't seen one another in many years, she reveals she's getting married in a few days and asks Hutch to give her away. And since she appears to have no other friends, she invites Hutch and Starsky to come over to the house where she lives with her widowed mother for home cooking nearly every evening.

Meanwhile, Starsky and Hutch are working a case where masked crooks knocked over a warehouse and killed an undercover cop. Well, of course, the gang's ringleader and the guy who actually pulled the trigger on the cop is Billy Desmond (Stephen McHattie, PONTYPOOL), Nancy's groom-to-be. What a coincidence.

Desmond's reveal is no surprise in either Freiberger's teleplay or Deming's book, though even if it were intended to be, it wouldn't. STARSKY & HUTCH wasn't a great show, but there was pleasure to be found in its action scenes and the breezy byplay between Glaser and Soul. Naturally, neither is adequately reproduced in the book, making it not worthwhile for the hour or so it takes to read it. You may as well invest fifty minutes in watching the TV show.

No One Is Safe

Pro wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin takes above-the-title billing in 2011's RECOIL, a meat-and-potatoes action flick that plays like a Brian Bosworth picture of the 1990s. Filmed in Canada on a low budget, RECOIL eschews big setpieces and visual effects in favor of old-fashioned punch-ups.

As former Dallas cop Ryan Varrett, Austin invades the small Washington town of Hope(less) looking for a rapist and killer named Rex Salgado (Noel Gugliemi). After checking in at the local fleabag owned by weary-beyond-her-years widow Darcy (Serinda Swan), Varrett kills Rex in an explosion, which puts the ex-lawman at odds with Rex’s biker gang, the leader of which is Rex’s badass brother Drayke (Danny Trejo, who brings extra depth to his heavy), who also runs Hope. Turns out Ryan has been cruising the country, taking out bad guys who escaped punishment in the courts. On his tail is FBI agent Sutton (Locklyn Munro), whose goal is taking down the vigilante.

RECOIL hasn’t an original bone in its body—the coroner eats a sandwich in the morgue, Austin walks away from an explosion in slow motion, the self-loathing sheriff is on Drayke’s payroll—but it isn’t bad either. Outside of Austin, who is wooden and dull, the performances are decent, particularly Adam Greydon Reid as an unlikely looking deputy who wants to do the right thing and Patrick Gilmore as a nice-guy gas pump jockey. Swan, a good-looking brunette, isn’t quite “tough chick” material, though she’s generally appealing and believable. Terry Miles’ directorial skills are uneven, but he generally knows where to put the camera and doesn’t spoil the action scenes with an overuse of CGI.

Assignment...To Disaster

Edward S. Aarons penned more than eighty novels during his lifetime, which ended prematurely of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 58. Of his novels, 42 of them featured the adventures of a tough-guy Cajun spy named Sam Durell.

ASSIGNMENT TO DISASTER, first published by Fawcett in 1955, was the first.
Durell's first case is an interesting mix of Cold War intrigue and over-the-top end-of-the-world shenanigans that we would come to see regularly in the James Bond movies. Durell is assigned to track down an eccentric scientist named Calvin Padgett, who has been out west working on a top-secret nuke. It's suspected Calvin may be a traitor, and Sam's best bet to find him is Calvin's sister, Deirdre.

Of course, nothing is as it seems, and the stress level is high for all the characters, including Durell's D.C. bosses. Sam, who comes to realize the missile's launch could mean the end of life on Earth, becomes a treason suspect himself, and he and Deirdre find themselves on the run from government spies.

ASSIGNMENT TO DISASTER is a pretty great adventure, told in third person, even though everything we see is Durell's point of view. I've been reading Aarons' Durell novels for years, and give them a high recommendation. If you're into Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series, I think you'll like the Durells too.

Mission Of Justice

Low-budget leading man Jeff Wincott turned four seasons on NIGHT HEAT into a good career as a direct-to-video action star in the 1990s. He always looked believable punching and kicking, and unlike much of his competition during that era, he’s a decent actor too (and sustained his career into the 2010s doing guest shots on shows like THE GOOD WIFE and SONS OF ANARCHY). The script he and director Steve Barnett (MINDWARP) are working with in 1992's MISSION OF JUSTICE is routine stuff that checks the “cop movie” boxes, but it’s played with energy and excitement.

Kurt Harris (Wincott), tired of the bureaucratic b.s. clogging up the justice system, quits his job as a street cop (his partner Lynn is played by karate star Karen Sheperd, who memorably fought Cynthia Rothrock in ABOVE THE LAW) and joins a band of street vigilantes called the Peacemakers. His interest isn’t altogether altruistic, however. He’s investigating the murder of his friend Cedric (Tony Burton from the ROCKY movies) and believes mayoral candidate Rachel Larkin (COBRA damsel Brigitte Nielsen), who trains the Peacemakers at her “mission of justice,” had something to do with it.

What makes MISSION OF JUSTICE stand out from typical DTV drivel are its fight scenes. Barnett’s pacing throughout is good with plenty of well-staged action, but he, Wincott, and stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) deserve extra credit for a couple of cool setpieces. In one, Wincott takes on a gauntlet of about twenty stickfighters to get initiated into Nielsen’s group, and later he and his Peacemaker colleagues get into a wild fight in an auto chop shop.

Some of it is silly, perhaps intentionally so, as many of the best action movies are. Burton’s character is a former heavyweight boxer, and after Larkin’s henchman (Matthias Hues) kills him, he steals Burton’s title belt. Later, during the climax when Hues and Wincott are fighting to the death, Hues tears open his jacket to reveal…he’s wearing the belt! Like he’s just been walking around with it ever since Burton’s murder just for the hell of it. MISSION is definitely something of a sleeper and one of Wincott’s best pictures.

Raw Panic

One of the coolest robots of the 1950s takes center stage in TARGET EARTH, a talky sci-fi movie produced by Herman Cohen, who would go on to I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, KONGA, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, and TROG, among many other genre favorites. Paul Fairman’s 1953 story “Deadly City,” published in IF: WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION, is the inspiration for Cohen’s film, which marks the directorial debut of journeyman editor Sherman A. Rose. Four strangers roam a large city empty of people. Electricity is out, and abandoned automobiles won’t start. They figure they must have been left behind after a government evacuation, but why did everyone go?

The survivors’ first clue is a big, white, clunky robot that shoots an awesome death ray out of its “face.” It’s obvious Cohen had only enough money to build one suit, so it had to represent an entire Venusian invasion force by itself. Some of the dialogue (screenplay credit goes to KILLERS FROM SPACE’s William Raynor, ROBOT MONSTER’s Wyott Ordung, and James Nicholson, the co-founder of American International Pictures) is hilarious. Richard Denning (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) as survivor Frank Brooks is much calmer in the face of invaders from outer space than most people would be. He immediately figures out the enemy must be Venusian, because “as far as I know, it’s the only planet that might be capable of supporting human life.” He learned that in “college” from his roommate who read science fiction.

Shot in seven days on a $85,000 budget, TARGET EARTH works in spurts. Rose’s opening shot, a slow pan across a lonely apartment to reveal Kathleen Crowley’s Nora zonked out on sleeping pills, provides a brooding atmosphere, and scenes of Crowley running around empty streets (shot in Los Angeles early on Sunday mornings) are eerie. However, TARGET EARTH bogs down in uninteresting (aside from the humorous dialogue) conversations between robot attacks, which don’t happen often enough, and the senseless third-act arrival of a crazed gunman (Robert Roark) proves the writers were running out of ideas.

War. What Is It Good For?

Here's a television rarity available on DVD and well worth your time. THE ANDERSONVILLE TRIAL may be about the Civil War, but its themes remain relevant today. Although it's nearly two-and-a-half hours of middle-aged white men talking in a room, the great performances, thought-provoking teleplay, and socially relevant themes of war and humanity (My Lai was fresh in the public's mind when THE ANDERSONVILLE TRIAL first aired on PBS in May 1970) make this a deeply affecting drama not to be missed.

George C. Scott played the role of the prosecuting Judge Advocate in the 1959 Broadway presentation of Saul Levitt's play. Eleven years later, he directed it for PBS with an all-star cast of imposing television actors at the height of their game.

Swiss-born Henry Wirz (Richard Basehart) is on trial in 1865 for atrocities that occurred while he was the ruling commandant of the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia. More than 40,000 Union prisoners were crowded into an area meant to hold less than half that, and were not provided adequate food, water, shelter or medical care. Prisoners were forced to drink from the same swampy stream that their bodily waste was emptied into. They slept year round on bare ground without a roof over their heads. Food was so scarce that some of the men resorted to cannibalism.

William Shatner, one year after STAR TREK left the air, has the plum role of Lt. Col. Chipman, the prosecutor obsessed with making Wirz pay for his alleged abuse. Jack Cassidy, who was nominated for an Emmy (ANDERSONVILLE won three, including Levitt's teleplay and for Outstanding Single Program), is equally good as Wirz' defense attorney, who alleges that his client was merely following the orders of his superiors and cannot be held responsible for the thousands of deaths that occurred as a result of them.

While much of the dialogue is taken directly from the transcripts of the real Wirz' trial, Levitt takes a few dramatic liberties, putting Wirz on the stand to tell his story and adding an extra theme of moral responsibility into the mix. More specifically, should Wirz have done the "right" thing and disobeyed his orders at the risk of a possible court martial and even death?

At nearly 140 minutes, Scott takes his time telling his story and gives his marvelous cast plenty of opportunity to wrap themselves around their meaty roles. Like Scott, none of the cast is known for being particularly subtle (Cameron Mitchell, taking a welcome respite from exploitation movies, portrays General Wallace, the presiding judge), but their theatrical backgrounds are entirely appropriate for this talky drama set entirely within the courtroom. Those who consider Shatner a "bad" actor because of his flair for the dramatic may be surprised to learn how good he can be under the right circumstances, as his unique performing style is perfectly massaged by director Scott to carry the show.

THE ANDERSONVILLE TRIAL was produced on videotape under PBS' HOLLYWOOD TELEVISION THEATRE banner. The wonderful supporting cast includes Buddy Ebsen as the Andersonville camp's country doctor, Albert Salmi, John Anderson, Whit Bissell, Martin Sheen, Harry Townes, Lou Frizzell (who acted with Scott in the original Broadway production) and Michael Burns. Many of the actors appear only in wordless cameos, but manage to give the production some extra dramatic weight: Ford Rainey, Kenneth Tobey, Bert Freed, Alan Hale, Ian Wolfe, Woodrow Parfrey, and Dick Miller. Mundell Lowe provides the sparse musical score.

Battle Beneath The Earth

The last film by veteran British-based director Montgomery Tully, who was in his sixties when he directed this absurd poke of pulp science fiction. It played MGM double bills with films like DAY OF THE EVIL GUN and THE YOUNG RUNAWAYS when rolled out around the U.S. in 1968. Right from the first scene, with a Las Vegas patrol cop speaking with an English accent and faulty rear projection featuring backwards lettering on the signs, you know BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH is going to be laughable fun.

Naval Commander Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews, previously the star of THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD) investigates when his good friend Arnold Kramer (Peter Arne) is institutionalized after being found crawling the streets of Las Vegas and ranting about people moving about underground like ants. Shaw follows his nose to an Oregon mine, where he discovers fresh, smooth tunnels stretching hundreds of miles. Turns out Communist Chinese led by fanatical warlord Chan Lu (a hilariously miscast Martin Benson), who keeps a pet falcon in his underground lair, dug the tunnels all the way from China and are using them to transport atomic bombs intended for America’s destruction.

Yep, it’s a basic Nick Carter plot, combining science fiction and Cold War espionage, presented by Tully (THE TERRORNAUTS) and writer Charles Vetter (FIRST MAN INTO SPACE) in colorful fashion with lots of imaginative if barely plausible ideas. BATTLE doesn’t take itself too seriously (the Vegas-based mental hospital has slot machines for the patients) and suggests a Bond influence. Its low budget is obvious from the MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. whip pans and Ken Jones’ aggressively jazzy score, but the bright colors and rat-a-tat action sequences provide giddy fun. Viviane Ventura (CARRY ON JACK) joins the story in Act Three as a sexy geologist who doesn’t know what lava is.

346 Movies

346. That's the number of movies I watched in 2012. That’s well below my all-time record of 588 in 2004, and quite a bit below last year’s total of 474. I don’t have any explanation for the decrease.

Of the 346 movies I saw, I watched 192 of them for the first time. Here are my rules. As far as the count goes, only feature films count, no matter whether I saw them in a theater, DVD, VHS, Netflix, or on TV. For the first time, I watched complete features on YouTube and as AVI files on my computer, using the Xbox 360’s Windows Media Center app to stream from my desktop to my TV.

• TV shows don't count, unless they were presented in a format resembling a feature film (for instance, the pilot episodes of MAN FROM ATLANTIS, which aired as full-length made-for-TV movies)

• Made-for-TV movies count

• Documentaries count

• I didn't count short subjects or feature-length making-of documentaries included as DVD extras

• Movie serials and TV miniseries count as one long feature

• Multiple viewings each count as a separate movie

These are my rules. Your mileage may vary.

AVI: 4

DVD: 190

HDTV: 62

Theater: 24

TV: 8

Blu-ray: 32

VHS: 2

Netflix Instant Streaming: 15

YouTube: 9

First film of 2012: INTRUDER (1989)

Last film of 2012: THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK

From the 1930s: 4 (DRACULA’S DAUGHTER, SH! THE OCTOPUS, THE PATIENT IN ROOM 18, MYSTERY HOUSE)

1940s: 22

1950s: 24

1960s: 42

1970s: 89

1980s: 67

1990s: 56

2000–2011: 22

2012: 20

Genres:

Action/Adventure: 116

Comedy: 47

Crime Drama: 23

Documentary: 5

Drama: 20

Horror: 40

Mystery: 23

Science Fiction: 35

Thriller: 26

Western: 11

Countries of origin:

Canada: 4

Great Britain: 11

Hong Kong: 8

Indonesia: 2

Italy: 7

Japan: 5

Philippines: 2

South Africa: 2

Spain: 2

Turkey: 1

United States of America: 302

Even though I stopped going to theaters regularly years ago, I still managed to see 20 2012 releases, mostly on cable or on Blu-ray. I saw only a handful of them theatrically: HAYWIRE, THE RAID: REDEMPTION, THE AVENGERS, PROMETHEUS, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

Also seen theatrically:

Double bill of THE FISTS OF THE WHITE LOTUS and MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE at the Portage Theater in Chicago on worn but beautiful 35mm prints

BLACK CHRISTMAS at the New Art in Champaign, Illinois in 35mm

Most in one month:

January: 44

Least in one month:

October: 9

Films I saw more than once in 2012:

THE CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS

THE GREEN SLIME

ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE

The most films in any one 24-hour period:

15, when I attended Northwestern University's annual B-Fest January 27–28

The Best Films I Saw for the First Time in 2012:

THE EXPENDABLES 2

YESTERDAY’S ENEMY

DEADLY PREY

MONEYBALL

THE HUNTED (1995)

DEATH IN SMALL DOSES

THE HYPNOTIC EYE

THE RAID: REDEMPTION

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL

THE FISTS OF THE WHITE LOTUS

CONTAMINATION

CALL NORTHSIDE 777

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Some sequels:

AMERICAN NINJA 4: THE ANNHILATION

BEST OF THE BEST 3: NO TURNING BACK

CRITTERS, CRITTERS 2, CRITTERS 3, and CRITTERS 4

CYBERTRACKER and CYBERTRACKER 2

THE DELTA FORCE and DELTA FORCE 2: THE COLOMBIAN CONNECTION (in hi-def)

THE EXPENDABLES 2

FINAL DESTINATION 5

PREDATOR 2

PSYCHO III

PUPPET MASTER II

ROBOCOP 2 and ROBOCOP 3

SILK 2

A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS

5 Stars:

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN

ABOVE THE LAW

CADDYSHACK

THE CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS

DEADLY PREY

EUROTRIP

THE EXPENDABLES 2

FORTRESS

THE MARCUS-NELSON MURDERS

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE

RITUALS

ROAD HOUSE

SAMURAI COP

SH! THE OCTOPUS

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT

THE STABILIZER

STUNT ROCK

UNDER SIEGE

YESTERDAY’S ENEMY

1 Star:

THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE

THE BEAUTIFUL, THE BLOODY, AND THE BARE

FUTURE KICK

LASER MOON

MURDER AT THE WORLD SERIES

THE NIGHT OF THE CAT

NOBODY’S PERFEKT

PUPPETMASTER

RACQUET

ROAD OF DEATH

SIDESHOW

SPY SQUAD

STEEL SHARKS

STREET OF SHADOWS

TIFFANY JONES

TIM AND ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE

TO CATCH A YETI

Recent Direct-to-Video or Barely Released Films You Haven’t Heard Of, But You Should See:

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

THE RAID: REDEMPTION

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

ABOMINABLE

Beach Party movies:

BEACH PARTY

MUSCLE BEACH PARTY

BIKINI BEACH

BEACH BLANKET BINGO

SKI PARTY

PAJAMA PARTY

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE

THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI

Most Films by Director:

William Asher: 5

Andrew Davis: 4

Cirio H. Santiago: 4

Andrew L. Stone: 3

Fred Olen Ray: 3

Joseph Sargent: 3

Lew Landers: 3

Reginald Le Borg: 3

Sam Newfield: 3

Most Films by Star:

Frankie Avalon: 6

Annette Funicello: 6

Lon Chaney Jr.: 6

Arnold Schwarzenegger: 5

Chuck Norris: 5

Andy Griffith: 4

David Janssen: 4

Lloyd Bridges: 4

Robert Forster: 4

Steven Seagal: 4

Cameron Mitchell: 3

Christopher George: 3

Don “The Dragon” Wilson: 3

Jean-Claude Van Damme: 3

Leo Fong: 3

Nicholas Hammond: 3

Robert Culp: 3

Bowery Boys movies:

GHOST CHASERS

HOLD THAT LINE

Tarzan movies:

TARZAN AND THE LOST SAFARI

TARZAN’S HIDDEN JUNGLE

They Exist, and I Watched Them:

ANGEL OF H.E.A.T.

THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES

B.A.D. CATS

THE BEAUTIFUL, THE BLOODY, AND THE CARE

CALLING DR. DEATH

CHILDREN OF THE LOTUS EATERS

CODE 7 VICTIM 5!

DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS

THE DRAGON VS. NEEDLES OF DEATH

THE GONG SHOW MOVIE

THE SECRET SEX LIVES OF ROMEO AND JULIET

SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA

THERE’S A NOOSE WAITING FOR YOU…TRINITY!

TRUCKIN’ BUDDY MCCOY

WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS’ DORMITORY

WOLFGUY: ENRAGED WOLFMAN

ZAPPERS BLADE OF VENGEANCE

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU

My Top Five of 2012:

THE EXPENDABLES 2

THE RAID: REDEMPTION

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

HAYWIRE

THE AVENGERS

My Bottom Five of 2012:

TIM AND ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE

NATURE CALLS

GONE

MAN ON A LEDGE

JOHN CARTER

How many movies did you watch this year?

112 Books

I have been keeping a movie-watching log for several years, but 2012 is the first time I thought to keep a record of the books I read during the year. My total: 112, which is probably about average for me.

First book of 2012: TOM BROWNING’S TALES FROM THE REDS DUGOUT by Tom Browning & Dann Stupp

Last book of 2012: REASONABLE DOUBT by Philip Friedman

Of the 112, only six of them were re-reads:

NIGHTMARE USA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE EXPLOITATION INDEPENDENTS by Stephen Thrower

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS by Mike Wallace (I re-read his autobiography after his death)

I SPY: A HISTORY AND EPISODE GUIDE TO THE GROUNDBREAKING TELEVISION SERIES by Marc Cushman & Linda J. LaRosa

ROD SERLING’S NIGHT GALLERY: AN AFTER-HOURS TOUR by Scott Skelton & Jim Benson

LIVE FROM NEW YORK: AN UNCENSORED HISTORY OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE by Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller

REASONABLE DOUBT by Philip Friedman

Hardcover: 32

Paperback: 67

Trade paperback: 13

I read no book electronically in 2012.

Counting by genre:

Fiction: 78

Action/Adventure (mainly men’s adventure novels of the 1970s): 16

Crime Drama: 10

Mystery/Thriller: 43

Science Fiction: 5

Western: 6 (the first westerns I have read in my life)

Non-Fiction: 32

Biography: 2 (James Garner and Mike Wallace)

Comic Books: 11

Film: 7

Sports: 2

Television: 10

From the 1930s: 4

1940s: 2

1950s: 5

1960s: 15

1970s: 25

1980s: 6

1990s: 7

2000–2011: 43

2012: 5

Ace Double paperbacks: 15

Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child: 15

Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly: 2

Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald: 2

Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout: 1

Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner: 3

Other authors read more than once:

David Ellis: 5

Edward S. Aarons: 3

John Callahan: 2

Lionel White: 2

Louis Trimble: 2

Ralph Hayes: 2

Tom Weaver: 2

Ten recommendations:

THE DEATH OF THE FUHRER by Roland Puccetti

THE DOOMSTERS by Ross Macdonald

GOD SAVE THE FAN by Will Leitch

I WANT MY MTV: THE UNCENSORED STORY OF THE MUSIC VIDEO REVOLUTION by Craig Marks & Rob Tannenbaum

MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY by Sean Howe

NIGHTMARE USA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE EXPLOITATION INDEPENDENTS by Stephen Thrower

REQUIEM FOR A SCHOOLGIRL by Robert Rossner (as Ivan T. Ross)

THE SIMON & KIRBY SUPERHEROES by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby

THE SUICIDE PLAGUE by Ed Naha

THE TOWER by Richard Martin Stern

How many books did you read this year?

Random TV Title: Most Wanted

Popular tough guy Robert Stack’s third television series (five years after THE NAME OF THE GAME) was not much different in concept from his first, THE UNTOUCHABLES. In the 1976 pilot movie for MOST WANTED, Stack again played a righteous cop leading a team of younger detectives against crime in the big city. Of course, being the 1970s, one of his new team was a woman, and the criminals were nastier and sleazier.

Los Angeles is being ravaged by a series of rapes and murders of nuns. It’s a cinch Eliott Ness never handled a case so lurid. The mayor (Percy Rodrigues in a role clearly based on L.A.'s real mayor then, Tom Bradley) taps Captain Linc Evers (Stack) to run a special unit dedicated to solving high-profile crimes. Evers’ hand-picked staff: streetsmart undercover narc Charlie Benson (Shelly Novack, who had been on the final season of ABC's THE F.B.I.), empathetic psych Lee Herrick (Leslie Charleson), and computer whiz Tom Roybo (Tom Selleck).

Created by MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE producer Laurence Heath, who wrote some of that series’ best episodes, the Quinn Martin production suffers from Heath’s script, which spins its wheels sending the Most Wanted team after a cultist, even though the audience is already aware of the killer’s identity. There is novel interest in the rough technology used by Roybo to solve the case, and most of the performances, particularly the actor playing the killer, are quite good.

Selleck, who appears awkward, and Charleson didn’t make the leap to series (some QM personnel had misgivings over Selleck’s voice), and the ABC show starred Stack, Novack, Jo Ann Harris (RAPE SQUAD), and Hari Rhodes (THE BOLD ONES) as the Mayor. Director Walter Grauman, an old hand (he directed the STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO pilot for Martin), handles the crime drama well, and the film’s ratings were strong enough to give MOST WANTED a Saturday night slot. The strong supporting cast includes Jack Kehoe, Marj Dusay, Kitty Winn (THE EXORCIST), Robert Doyle, Sheree North, Fred Sadoff, Joyce Dewitt (THREE’S COMPANY), Richard Lawson, and Roger Perry.

Patrick Williams composed the pilot's score, but when the MOST WANTED series premiered in September 1976, it had a new theme written by Lalo Schifrin:

A Savage World Without Mercy

BLOOD OATH is the second of Leisure Books' surprisingly long-running series of men's adventure novels about Mafia-killing madman Johnny Rock aka the Sharpshooter. Published in October 1973, it's also one of the sloppiest, and that's saying a helluva lot for one of literature's all-time sloppiest series.

Peter McCurtin wrote the initial book, THE KILLING MACHINE, under Leisure's "Bruno Rossi" house name. When Russell Smith came in to pen the sequel, he jettisoned all the established facts and open storylines McCurtin had created. John Rocetti is now named John Roccoletti (subsequent books would go back to Rocetti), and Iris Toscano is gone and replaced by a new character named Jane (more on her in a moment).

As with other books in the Sharpshooter series, BLOOD OATH is plagued with editorial mistakes due to having been intended as an entry in Belmont Tower's Marksman series. Rock is occasionally called "Magellan" (the name of the Marksman), and Jane is introduced twice as Terri White, the Marksman's romantic interest. Honestly, these characters exist only to be abused and raped, which happens to Jane near the end of BLOOD OATH and to Terri in HEADHUNTER.

It's pretty clear that Smith was just making shit up as he goes along. He has Rock kidnap a policeman and two journalists, strip them, photograph them, and bound in an attic, which is where they still are at the end of BLOOD OATH with no indication of what Rock plans to do with the photos. Smith builds up to a big violent climax, which takes place mainly off-page with the nastiest villain being dispatched in a throwaway sentence on the last of 156 pages.

Plot finds the Sharpshooter renting a country home near the small town of Xenia, New York, where he discovers Mafioso Attilio Fanzago has set up an estate. As mobsters go, Fanzago ain't bad. He deals only in merchandise like electric typewriters and eschews dope and prostitution. Still, he's Mobbed up, so Rock hates him and has to destroy him. Which he does in the most hamfisted and juvenile prose possible.

Did I enjoy BLOOD OATH? Well, yeah.

Random Comic Book Splash Page: Tim Trench

Tim Trench is an obscure footnote in the legacy of DC Comics. Denny O’Neil, best known for his groundbreaking work as a writer on GREEN LANTERN and a writer and editor on BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS, introduced Trench in a 1968 issue of WONDER WOMAN--#179, to be exact, which also premiered the book’s new logo.

Trench was just a shadowy figure in #179, but took a major supporting role in #180, when the St. Louis private eye teamed up with Wonder Woman and her elderly Chinese companion I Ching to battle the sinister Doctor Cyber. The four-part series, which was penciled by Mike Sekowsky and inked by Dick Giordano, ended in #182 with Cyber making a slick getaway and Trench revealed as a traitor. He was last seen flying off in a helicopter (on page 1!) with a booty of gems, leaving Wonder Woman and I Ching to face Cyber’s wrath.

Undoubtedly, this was the decision of Sekowsky, who took over WONDER WOMAN’s editing duties on #182 and installed himself as the book’s writer too. Either he had a different concept of the storyline’s conclusion or just hated the Trench character, but Sekowsky ditched Trench as quickly as he could.

Leap ahead seven years to DETECTIVE COMICS #460, cover-dated June 1976. With the main story—Batman taking on Captain Stingaree—taking up a mere eleven (!) pages, editor Julius Schwartz turned to O’Neil for a six-page backup. Reaching into his memory bank, O’Neil penned “The Cold-Fire Caper!” as Tim Trench’s first solo story.

“Cold-Fire Caper” makes no mention of Trench’s betrayal of Wonder Woman or the stolen gems, and readers could be forgiven for assuming he was a new character. Working out of an office above a repertory theater in St. Louis that runs old Bogart movies, Trench tumbles into a succinct mystery involving a ruby, a femme fatale, a mobster named Lippy Louie, and a couple of punchups and gun battles.

O’Neil brought back Trench one issue later. In DETECTIVE COMICS #461’s “The Moneybag Caper!”, Trench found more or less the same type of trouble, this time agreeing to bodyguard a mobster named Big Willy Cline. As with “Cold-Fire Caper,” the art was handled by penciler Pablo Marcos and inker Al Milgrom, neither of which turn in their best work.

Maybe Schwartz or the readers didn’t like Tim Trench, because when DETECTIVE COMICS #462 came out, the private eye was gone, and the Elongated Man was solving mysteries in his place (the Batman lead story was still only eleven pages). It could also have been that DETECTIVE COMICS already had a private detective, Jason Bard, appearing occasionally, and why did it need another one? 

And that, to date, has pretty much been it for Tim Trench. Two six-page adventures and a four-issue (really three) supporting role in WONDER WOMAN. He did get his own entry in WHO’S WHO: THE DEFINITIVE DIRECTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE #24, where he was nicely drawn by Sandy Plunkett and P. Craig Russell (of Marvel’s amazing Killraven series in AMAZING ADVENTURES). He showed up as something of a joke in a 1996 SWAMP THING and was killed off in Week 18’s issue of 52 in 2006.

Jumper!

If you enjoyed Ed Naha's 1980 science fiction mystery THE PARADISE PLOT, you will probably also like the sequel, which Bantam published in 1982. In the first book, shambling reporter Harry Porter went into space to investigate a murder and a cover-up aboard Island One, a mining colony on a space station orbiting the Earth.

In THE SUICIDE PLAGUE, Porter, a perpetually broke and hungover individualist quick with a wisecrack but slow to cultivate close relationships, is back home in futuristic New York City, a dirty, crowded, cynical, and expensive place. Life doesn't seem to be worth a lot in this time period (seemingly the early 21st century, but never quite pinned down by Naha), but a series of teenage suicides are still unusual enough to catch Porter's interest.

The star reporter of the city's lone newspaper (Naha was prescient in predicting the death of print and news--or what passes for it--being force-fed to the populace electronically) becomes involved when he tries to stop one of the teens from leaping off a rooftop and nearly takes a fatal tumble himself.

With the help of a doctor friend, Andrew Cade, and a seedy "peeper" (someone with psychic powers, which are not uncommon in the future) named Marion Saint-Crispen, Porter finds himself getting drawn deeper into the mystery, which expands to involve a charismatic cult leader, a revolutionary new plastic skin that allows its wearer to seamlessly assume another identity, the kidnapping of Harry's attractive neighbor, and even a plot to kill the President of the United States (a thinly veiled slap of Ronald Reagan).

For more on Ed Naha, a name familiar to many fans of science fiction and horror, see my review of THE PARADISE PLOT. He does a nice job with THE SUICIDE PLAGUE, which he apparently penned while moonlighting from his day job writing and editing FANGORIA and STARLOG magazines--essential publications in every genre fan's library of the 1970s and 1980s. At 279 pages, it's just the right length, and Naha excels at spinning several intriguing plotlines, which left me wondering how he could possibly bring them together in an exciting and logical fashion. He does.

Surprisingly (I think this of a lot of really cool old novels I've read), no one has made either Harry Porter adventure into a movie, even though both THE PARADISE PLOT and THE SUICIDE PLAGUE read as though Naha had films in mind. SUICIDE's third act takes place in a tried-and-true villainous stronghold, where--in Bondian fashion--the charming heavy escorts Porter to show off his magnificent and malevolent plan. Strangely, it doesn't blow up at the end.

Another reason to like Naha. He dedicates the novel to one David Harold Meyer, which fans of classic television will recognize as the birth name of the great actor David Janssen.

Great TV Episodes: The Day The Sky Fell In

THE TIME TUNNEL

“The Day the Sky Fell In”

September 30, 1966

ABC

Writer: Ellis St. Joseph

Director: William Hale

THE TIME TUNNEL was the third of four science fiction series Irwin Allen produced for network television in the 1960s. After exploring beneath the ocean’s surface in VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and beyond the Earth’s solar system in LOST IN SPACE, Allen decided his next show should traverse the flow of time. Allen, who became a household name in the 1970s as the “Master of Disaster” producer of blockbuster “disaster movies” like THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, and THE SWARM, was never accused of thinking small.

James Darren, a handsome young actor and pop singer who had been seen on the big screen in THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and GIDGET, and former Warner Brothers contract player Robert Colbert, who briefly replaced James Garner on MAVERICK, were signed to play the leading roles in Allen’s THE TIME TUNNEL. Scientists Tony Newman (Darren) and Doug Phillips (Colbert) were the two men in charge of Operation Tic-Toc, a major government experiment in time travel taking place at a top-secret underground facility.

Rushed to show results by an impatient senator or have their funds cut off, Tony jumped into the untested Time Tunnel in the pilot episode and became trapped aboard the U.S.S. Titanic on its fateful voyage. Donning period clothing and carrying a newspaper with the next day’s headline, Doug leaped into the tunnel to save his friend’s life, just as the massive ship smashed into the iceberg that would sink it later that evening.

Working feverishly back at the laboratory, Time Tunnel technicians Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether), Ray Swain (John Zaremba), and General Haywood Kirk (Whit Bissell) managed to tune in to Doug and Tony, but instead of pulling them back to the present of 1968, only sent them spinning through time to land in a different place and period every week. It could be Little Big Horn during the time of General Custer or a rocketship on a mission to Mars. Neither the time travelers nor the harried staff back at the Time Tunnel knew where Tony and Doug would end up next.

The fourth episode telecast, “The Day the Sky Fell In,” was certainly one of the series’ finest, if not the best. It certainly offered more dramatic chops than Allen’s shows were known for, as VOYAGE and LOST IN SPACE were generally more concerned with colorful monsters, blinking lights, and over-the-top spectacle than characterization. Tony and Doug drop into Honolulu on the evening of December 6, 1941, where an eight-year-old Tony lived with his father, Tony Sr. (Linden Chiles), a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. Lt. Comm. Newman was declared missing in action and assumed killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Tony and Doug rush to warn his father of the attack in hopes of saving his life.

Primarily an action show, Ellis St. Joseph’s script gives equal weight to the pursuit of Tony and Doug by Japanese spies, who are flummoxed by their knowledge of the sneak attack and try to kill them before they can make anyone believe their warnings. But the best parts of the episode are Tony’s scenes with his father, who, of course, refuses to believe the strangers’ paranoid warnings of an attack that could never happen on American soil without the Navy knowing about it.

The first time they meet, it’s at a dinner party Tony remembers attending with his father. As the time travelers attempt to convince Tony Sr. of their story, the young Tony Jr. enters the room, and the tickled look on Colbert’s face as he watches his friend confront himself as a boy may be the most human moment in the entire TIME TUNNEL series.

After being captured and interrogated by Japanese spies, culminating in an exciting fistfight and escape deftly staged by director William Hale, Tony and Doug fail to prevent the attack, of course, but they do manage to get to Tony’s dad on the base and help him use the radio to warn the U.S.S. Enterprise away from Pearl. Chiles and particularly Darren turn in stellar work, as Tony Sr. dies in his son’s arms, content that his son will survive to become an adult.

I Think It's The Girl From Ipanema

DEEP RISING is one of the best monster movies you've never seen. Mill Creek Entertainment just released it on Blu-ray along with THE PUPPET MASTERS, a decent but flawed film adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein novel. Currently available at Amazon for less than nine bucks, this disc would be worth it for DEEP RISING alone. Consider the Heinlein film a glorified extra. Both films look sharp in 1080p, though PUPPET MASTERS' audio is lacking.

But let's talk more about DEEP RISING, an exciting and often hilarious man-against-monster flick set on the high seas. Made with energy, wit, and tongue-in-cheek style, Hollywood Pictures and distributor Buena Vista did it a real disservice, saddling it with a confusing title (what’s a Deep Rising?) and giving it a post-Christmas January 1998 release with the rest of the flotsam studios don’t think they can sell. Stephen Sommers, DEEP RISING’s writer and director, who went on to A-list action features like VAN HELSING and G.I. JOE, effectively mixes humor and horror, and leading man Treat Williams, who hammed up the villain role in THE PHANTOM, portrays his devil-may-care hero with tongue pushed deftly into cheek.

John Finnegan (Williams) is an adventurer who rents his boat to anyone willing to pay cash—“If the cash is there, we do not care.” He and his crew, including sexy spitfire Leila (Una Damon) and bumbling mechanic Pantucci (Sommers regular Kevin J. O’Connor), transport sinister Hanover (Wes Studi) and his gang of terrorists to the middle of nowhere, where the bad guys plan to hijack a luxurious floating casino. However, when they arrive, the cruise ship has been trashed, blood is splashed everywhere, but no bodies are found.

A few survivors finally appear, including a gorgeous jewel thief named Trillian St. James (Famke Janssen, who had just starred as Bond girl Xenia Onatopp in GOLDENEYE). It quickly becomes clear that the passengers and crew were consumed by slithering sea monsters (designed by THE THING’s Rob Bottin) with long tentacles with mouths and big teeth at the end of them that “drink their victims alive and excrete the skeletal remains.”

Sommers takes time to set up the geography of the cruise ship and the relationships among the characters (maybe a little too much time), and then jumps into the action with guns literally a-blazing. The obligatory scientific explanation of the monsters’ origin is quickly dispensed with in a winking tone (‘cause who really cares), and the CGI creature effects manage to be genuinely unsettling and gory. The cast is careful not to go over the top, and the deft comic moments never overwhelm the scares nor dilute the monsters’ sense of menace.

DEEP RISING was no hit, opening at number eight while TITANIC was still topping the box office charts, so we never got the sequel promised by the clever final shot. Jerry Goldsmith’s energetic score adds heft to the action and thrills, and Williams and Janssen look as though they’re having a ball. Anthony Heald (BOSTON PUBLIC), Trevor Goddard (MORTAL KOMBAT), Jason Flemyng (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS), Cliff Curtis (COLOMBIANA), Djimon Hounsou (BLOOD DIAMOND), and Derrick O’Connor (DAREDEVIL) co-star.

They Saved Hitler's Brain

THE DEATH OF THE FUHRER is one of the greatest adventure novels ever written. It's probably the only book in which the hero fucks Adolf Hitler and later performs brain surgery on himself.

According to the original hardcover edition, which was published by St. Martins in 1972, author Roland Puccetti was born in Oak Park, Illinois--one-time home of Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Ernest Hemingway--and "read philosophy at Illinois University." There is no such place as Illinois University. Perhaps the leaf meant the University of Illinois, from whose library I checked out this amazing work of fiction. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if everything about Puccetti, who also "went to live in Tahiti as a kind of intellectual vagabond" and translated the poems of Garcia Lorca while taking a doctorate in philosophy at the Sorbonne, is bullshit.

Whomever Puccetti is, he has one whale of an imagination. Our hero is Karl Gisevius, a physician who by chance hears the dying words of a Russian doctor who was part of the team that invaded Hitler's bunker at the end of World War II. The man claims Hitler's brain was missing. Gisevius miraculously believes the guy and convinces his editor (he's the science editor of a Paris newspaper) to send him to Berlin to check it out.

Gisevius miraculously (I could use that word a lot when describing events in THE DEATH OF THE FUHRER) enters the bunker by slithering down an old air vent and stumbles upon clues that not only back up the dead man's story, but indicate the surgery may have been performed by none other than Willi Tranger, an old school rival of Gisevius'--fencing rivals who gave each other facial scars during a particularly nasty match.

Tranger, a sadistic SS doctor during the war, is holed up with a bunch of former Nazis in an old Spanish castle. Gisevius miraculously (never mind) infiltrates the group by jumping his motorcycle over the stone wall and claiming his throttle was busted! Tranger believes him and introduces him to the group, including a gorgeous blonde Baroness who's the only woman living in the castle.

Let me just get straight to it. The Baroness eventually seduces Gisevius, and while they're wildly making love in her room, right at the point of orgasm, she screams, "Ich bin Der Fuhrer!" Realizing in a split second that Tranger has transplanted Hitler's brain into the Baroness, he pulls out of her and plunges a knife into her chest, killing her.

That's page 123 of a 223-page book. The plot gets even stranger, if you can believe it. Tranger eventually captures Gisevius and implants a metal box in his brain that the evil doctor can control remotely. He can make him happy or sad in an instant, hungry, even horny enough to screw a couch!

Gisevius escapes the trap and makes his way to the doctor's office, WHERE HE CUTS OPEN HIS SKULL, TAKES THE BOX OUT, DECAPITATES A GUARD WITH A SURGICAL SAW WHILE THE TOP OF HIS BRAIN IS EXPOSED ("If I so much as leaned forward, the cerebrospinal fluid encasing my brain would spill out; I could imagine the sticky liquid dripping over into my face and blinding me), AND SEWS HIS HEAD BACK TOGETHER AGAIN.

Needless to say, Hitler's brain is still friggin' alive, there's a castle deathtrap, a climactic fencing duel, characters carrying around the brain like a football, a massive Bondian exploding compound, and a but-did-it-really-happen ending. Holy shit.

There are no words to explain the wonderfulness of THE DEATH OF THE FUHRER.