Fate Halloween Trial Run AAR

So, a late After Action Report on my test run with Fate Core. I ran a one-shot adventure that I found on-line, a convention scenario that said it could be run in three hours, including the choosing of characters. It was titled "Spirit of the Tentacle," and was a Cthulhu-themed adventure using the Spirit of the Century rules, built on an earlier iteration of Fate.

Prepping the adventure took a lot more work than expected. Fate Core defaults to much simpler characters than Spirit of the Century, with fewer aspects and skills. This appealed to me, not only because I've read complaints about Spirit of the Century that the vast number of aspects and skills made characters too hard to challenge, but also because my players, being unfamiliar with the game, would probably have an easier time with simpler, more focused characters. At the same time, the characters created for the adventure were more  like parodies of pulp characters, goofier than I expected in a Cthulhu-style adventure.

So I spent some time rewriting origins and stripping down skills and aspects and bringing in some of the iconic characters from Spirit of the Century to replace guys like the Mexican masked midget wrestler.

Then there was the scenario itself, which had its own problems. There was what seemed like a neat action opening, except that--after I'd already declared I was running this scenario--I discovered it was a classic railroad, designed to funnel down to only one outcome, no matter what the players did, which I HATE. But I did what I could to make it interesting.

The adventure was supposed to run in four acts: the action opening, an investigative phase, a party where they meet the guy who gives them the MacGuffin to beat the monster, the big action finale. As it turned out, we spent more time discussing the rules than I expected at the beginning, and then the big action opening went WAY longer than I'd planned.

Part of it was players being unfamiliar with the game system. But a large part of it fell on me. I was simultaneously 1) unfamiliar with the rules myself, 2) being very lenient about what I was having the opposition do, because I didn't want to discourage the players, and 3) being even more extra-lenient because I felt bad about the railroading and didn't want the players to feel like they'd had their time wasted.

By the time we finished the opening scene, we had gone over two hours into a 2 1/2 window for playing the adventure (after the discussion of rules and character sheets was done). There was no way to finish the rest in our remaining time, and really, no one--including me--was very invested in finishing the story anyway. Not having had a hand in creating the characters, the players weren't very invested in them, either, and unable to play their aspects to the hilt because they didn't always know what they meant (one of my biggest problems with Fate, actually--aspects are not always written in a way that immediately tell you what they mean or how they should be played).

Looking back now, given the spooky nature of the game, I could have and should have played the opposition much harder (yes, sargon, you were absolutely right about this, and I wish I had taken your hints) and kept things moving. But we were all learning.

But this was all being done as preparation for starting my own game, one I've been wanting to run for almost four years now (looking at some of the documents I've put together for the game, I see that one of them was created in February of 2010). I'm really excited about the campaign background I've put together, but that's because it's set around a lot of things I love, that my friends may not be as enthusiastic about. I've finally sent out some background information to let people see a little of what I'm shooting for, but I haven't gotten any feedback yet.

If the game does come together, I'm hoping that the Fate Core system will work out well for me. If not, I can switch back to one of the other systems I've debated using, like Open d6 or Champions (I actually have character write-ups done for several of the NPC's in Champions 4th edition terms). But Fate has been especially good for me in terms of spurring my creativity and getting me to fill in the blanks on the campaign world in a way the other systems weren't. I'm hoping that will translate into a fun game at the table.

Oh Yeah, Before I Forget

A final Halloween Extra has been posted on herogohome.com. It's a special audio presentation of the first Digger story I wrote (though it was the third published). You can find it here.

In Too Deep

First off, I have a car, and a job interview scheduled for Monday morning, so things are looking up. But then there's this.

I am deep in the weeds of trying to get this special Halloween surprise ready, and it is seriously kicking my ass. I'm at that point where I'm completely losing confidence in it. My writing sucks and my execution of the concept sucks.

I'm not saying it will suck when I'm done, necessarily. It won't be great, but at least parts of it will probably work pretty well. But right now, I'm far from being finished, so all I see are the rough edges. It gets disheartening, especially considering how much work I still have to go on it.

Lots of creative people go through stages like this. What matters is how you learn to push through them, I guess. Sometimes it's hard to tell, though. Akiva Goldsman wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay to "A Beautiful Mind." If he ever hit that point where he hated everything about his script, obviously he found the right solution to push through and trust his instincts. On the other hand, he also wrote the screenplay to the George Clooney/Arnold Schwarzenegger opus "Batman and Robin." And in that case, I really wish he would have listened to that inner voice telling him it sucked, because it was right.

And that's a real dilemma, to try to push through and persevere against that inner voice of self-doubt, knowing that it really could be right. But you might not know until you're finished, and the only way to finish is to assume the voice is wrong, even if it's not. So hard sometimes.

Nevertheless, I am not quitting. There will be a special Halloween surprise on Sunday. Absolutely. Even if it sucks. Just consider this an exercise in lowering expectations.

Universal Universe

One of the coolest Halloween surprises of the past few years was Lileks' special Halloween Diner episode in 2006, in which he paid his first visit to the Haunted Diner (you can download the mp3 here). It was an extravaganza of humor, haunted sound effects, and silly old monster novelty songs, and of course, it opens with a nightmarish dream sequence featuring Jack Webb and Speedy Alka-Seltzer.

He followed it up the next year with another big production that wasn't as new, but still fun, featuring alternate dimensions and a roomful of zombie Allen Ginsbergs. The next two years were kind of perfunctory, as Lileks professed to be tired of Halloween now that it had become a month-long extravaganza and had pretty much lost his zest for the Diner as well. He says he's working up a big one for this year. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

But one thing that he repeats every Halloween is how ridiculous it is that all these novelty songs from the 60's seem to adopt the attitude that the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, the Wolfman, and all the other monsters know each other and hang out. How silly to take all these monsters from separate stories and assume they coexist!

Except that it's not. Of course, all these songs take their cue from the classic Universal monsters, which were being exposed to new audiences starting in the late 50's, thanks to a resurgence of interest in the classic monsters due to the stylish Hammer remakes and the older films being rerun on television.

And the thing about the Universal stable of monsters that people who haven't watched all the films might not realize is that Universal had basically created the movie version of the Marvel Universe, starting with "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" in 1943. The Frankenstein monster had by that time already been featured in four films, but the Universal Universe really got its start when the Wolf Man was brought into the storyline. The next film, "House of Frankenstein," brought Count Dracula into the mix as well.

One thing that's funny about the series is how much role-switching took place. Nowadays, we associate the Monster with Karloff, Dracula with Lugosi, and the Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, Jr.

But pretty much everybody got a turn playing the Monster. After Karloff took three turns in the role, it was passed on to Chaney, then Lugosi, and then taken over by Glenn Strange for the final two films, "Son of Dracula" and "Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein." It was apparently assumed that audiences wouldn't much care who was under the make-up. On the other hand, nobody other than Chaney ever played the Wolf Man. Dracula was stuck in the middle, with both Lugosi and John Carradine taking two turns each in the role.

The point is, after four films in which the major monsters were shown to exist in the same world and interact, it was only natural for the song writers to assume the same thing. And given that Universal had also made a series of five Mummy films and had given the Invisible Man a brief cameo at the end of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," it wasn't a stretch to toss them in the mix as well, by which time, you've basically created a monster version of the DC/Marvel Universe, in which there is a huge parallel subculture of monsters who all seem to know each other.

Man, I wish those old movies weren't so boring, because I'd really like to rewatch them in order now. Maybe next Halloween, because every day between now and then is totally booked.

Monster Mags of My Youth

So one of the pleasant surprises of this Halloween season has been rediscovering some of the lost pleasures of my youth, or seeing those old items in a new context, whether it be old Dr. Demento songs about Martians or spooky magazine ads.

For instance, I've mentioned several times that I read Famous Monsters of Filmland as a kid. And as with any Warren magazine, you would always get several pages of ads in the back. And tucked in among the ads would occasionally be an offering of a collector's edition magazine featuring "Fantasy Fandom's Famous Femme" Heidi Saha, who was (according to the ad copy) well-known on the sci-fi convention circuit for her amazing costumes. Or you could buy a poster, if you were so inclined.

Now I'd never heard of Heidi Saha, but in the issue of Famous Monsters pictured above, there was this picture of Heidi in a really good Vampirella costume. I thought she was pretty hot, but I still didn't see any reason to order the magazine. What I didn't know at the time was that she was only 14 1/2 in the picture, that there had been a small controversy surrounding the costume, or that the Heidi Saha magazine was... disturbing. You can find more details here and here, if you care.

For all the issues of FM that I have, I wasn't the hugest fan of the magazine. Forry's tendency toward awful puns sometimes struck me as puerile, and while he would sometimes reprint some amazingly rare behind-the-scenes pics, often the articles were total fluff.

Better was Castle of Frankenstein, which would print some nicely detailed articles. Each issue also had a ton of capsule reviews covering an amazing range of movies. For instance, the issue pictured here, with the awesome "Golden Voyage of Sinbad" wraparound cover, featured capsule reviews of movies as widely varied as the hard-core porn classic "The Devil in Miss Jones" starring Georgina Spelvin and the Disney comedy "$1,000,000 Duck" starring Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan.

The two main problems with CoF were that it got poor distribution (at least in OKC--there was only one convenience store I could find it in) and that it often featured tits, in the same occasional and random manner that Time magazine also did at the time. As a Pentecostal teen, I often felt vaguely guilty reading it.

I much preferred Monsters of the Movies, published by Curtis Magazines, which was the magazine arm of Marvel Comics. Marvel writers and editors Marv Wolfman and Roy Thomas edited the mag, which unfortunately only ran 10 issues. It ran more in-depth articles thanFamous Monsters, but was more family-friendly than Castle of Frankenstein. I'm not sure why it didn't last.

One interesting artifact from the issue pictured here is this ad headline. Stephen King argued in Danse Macabre that horror is one way society has of working out the things it's really scared of. So for instance, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in the 50's was an expression of Cold War paranoia, the giant bug movies of the same period were post-nuclear terror, and "The Amityville Horror" in the 70's was an expression of economic angst. And here, in a monster magazine from the mid-70's there's this ad, which is just as relevant today, although you'd need to jack up the numbers by a fuck-ton.

One other curiosity from the Vault is this obscure monster mag I picked up at a convention somewhere. Modern Monster was one of the flood of Famous Monsters imitators that sprung up in the mid-60's and disappeared quickly. It only lasted 4 issues (changing title to Modern Monsters with the second issue), but it was pretty well done. It featured the usual range of feature articles, but the first issue also had the first chapter of a haunted house fiction serial, as well as a color fold-out poster of King Kong in the center (my issue does not have the centerfold--I think I took it out myself--I have never been very good at the "preserve in mint condition" part of collecting).

One interesting thing that jumped out at me in this issue was the back cover...

I wonder what was happening in the business at the time that prompted such an impassioned defense of the "corner news dealer." I know that one of the things that prompted the infamous "DC Implosion" a decade later was major changes in the business of printing and distribution, but this one strikes me as strange. Especially given how many magazines try to get you to bypass the newsstand by buying subscriptions. I don't know how many magazines really make a lot of money from subscriptions, but it seems such a basic part of the business model that it really jumps out at me when it's not there.

Movie Monday - Van Helsing

So I was planning to recap another crappy public domain film, when I remembered that I had some screencaps sitting around from this crappy big-budget film, just waiting for Halloween. So here you go.

"Van Helsing" was one of those movies so bad that people groaned at its trailer. For an action movie, which usually hypes its best stuff in the trailer, it's the kiss of death when someone watches the trailer and says, "Ew."

And that was the reaction that most of my friends gave the "Van Helsing" trailer. But I was actually kind of excited by it, perhaps because when I saw its depiction of super-aggressive CG werewolf and vampire and Frankenstein's monster, I was thinking of this...


And this...


The top picture is a Ron Cobb painting of Frankenstein versus the Wolf Man, used as the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland issue 42. The lower one is an awesome Frazetta cover for Creepy, issue 7. And see, when I was growing up, I would read about these great classic Universal monsters, and see back issue listings with dynamic, action-packed cover images like these, and then when I would see the actual movie, I would think, "What a disappointment."

And its obvious that Stephen Sommers was thinking the same thing, because "Van Helsing" is nothing so much as an attempt to bring images like these to life. Classic monsters reimagined as brawling comic-book heroes.

Unfortunately, though the monsters themselves are nicely imagined, the human protagonists (and Van Helsing, whatever he is) kill the movie with stupidity.

The story: Dracula has employed Dr. Frankenstein to build a monster from pieces of the dead. Unfortunately, Frankenstein discovers that Dracula actually has a nefarious hidden agenda, so he rebels after the creature is "born." Meanwhile, the townspeople forms a screaming mob that storms the castle and attacks. Both the monster and Frankenstein apparently die in a burning windmill, leaving Dracula and his three wives unable to complete their nefarious scheme.

Enter Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman), a monster-hunting secret agent for the Vatican. We see him battle Mister Hyde in the Notre Dame in Paris, after which he is sent to Transylvania with a gadget-obsessed monk (David Wenham) who acts as his own personal Q. Van Helsing has been sent to work with Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), last descendant of a noble line which stands in opposition to Count Dracula.

Van Helsing battles Dracula's evil, yet beautiful wives...


and a rather energetic CG werewolf (who happens to be Anna's brother)...


to keep Dracula from laying hands on Frankenstein's monster (who survived the mill burning).

You see, Dracula's three wives want babies. Their un-biological clocks are ticking. Unfortunately, they can't have babies, since they're undead. Which is to say, they can lay millions of monster eggs, but the eggs can never hatch (a concept which makes no sense so many levels that it actually pushes below zero to become a kind of awesome anti-sense). So Dracula plans to use Frankenstein's monster to process the life-giving lightning energy so that the babies can live. He's like a monstrous Culligan filter or something (yes, it actually makes less sense as it goes along).

It's up to Van Helsing to stop Dracula from unleashing a plague of millions of bat-babies to overrun the world. Which he can do, because it's hinted that he's like the archangel Gabriel or something, except that he's human, but immortal, but can be killed, or something.

You know what, who cares? This is not a movie to be watched and enjoyed in the traditional sense, as a coherent story. This is pure eye-candy, noise and motion with plenty of cleavage...


which is perhaps the purpose of the anti-sense plot: to force you let go of your conscious self and just groove on the images, man. It helps if you drink.

A lot.

Because as you can see from the stills above, the effects and images, while obviously CG, are dynamic and exciting. I don't know that I've ever seen a movie that had so much tension between stupid and cool. That tension can tear you apart if you're not ready for it. Once again, drinking helps.

One weirdly brilliant bit is Kate Beckinsale's costume. She's wearing this white blouse with red embroidery in strategic places, which keep suggesting that you're seeing nipple when she's actually completely covered. It's an ingenious way to subliminally skirt the PG-13 rating.


Which just illustrates my point, that although this film is one of the stupidest big-budget productions ever made, it is also freaking brilliant on other levels.

Especially if you're drunk.*

[Please note that, although drinking may be necessary for a complete appreciation of "Van Helsing" (and "The Cannonball Run" while I'm at it, although it's not a Halloween film, so never mind), this is in no way a blanket endorsement of alcohol consumption. Also please don't operate a motor vehicle immediately after viewing "Van Helsing." Thank you]

Monster Music

I grew up after the big faddish bubble of monster-surf music, which is to say, I may have been alive, but I was not aware. I didn't really start to pay attention to popular music until (what a coincidence) Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash" was rereleased in 1973. I can remember listening intently to the radio, hoping to hear "Monster Mash" played again, and having to sit through interminable repeats of Paul Simon's "Loves Me Like a Rock" while waiting.

I don't know if my birthday's timing had anything to do with it, but I always loved Halloween and was fascinated with monsters. But as I said, the big monster fad had passed me by. This October has been especially fascinating, because I've been discovering retro blogs which have allowed me to revisit stuff from my youth that I had forgotten, as well as discover a lot of stuff I missed.

For instance, Retrospace posted this album by a guy named Wade Denning. I had this album when I was a kid. It struck me as basically a ripoff of (in my mind at the time) the far superior Disney album, "Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House," with a crappy cover of "Monster Mash" stuck on as the first track. Listening to it now after all these years, it still sounds derivative, with its canned screams and hokey narration. But there's some disturbing stuff in there, and my older self is able to recognize it in ways my younger, more ignorant self just overlooked. It was real kick to hear this again.

Retrospace also posted a Halloween music mix, featuring a lot of monster music that I hadn't heard before (and some I had), which then led me to Rev. Frost, who puts together some really kick-ass mixes. He has 16 in all from the past several years. Here's the latest one, with links to the earlier ones as well. There are sound clips from movies and commercials mixed in with movie soundtrack music, surf music from the 60's and today, as well as other random bits. They're a lot of fun.

I love the internet.

Big Bleg Wednesday

Okay, so I'm putting out a general call for assistance. I've got a very special something planned for Halloween, and I need help. Here's what I need:

Voice actors: I need two male and one female. Details and script will be provided upon contact. Record your sides as audio files and email them to me. there shouldn't be more than four or five minutes of material, so the file size shouldn't be too large.

Music: I have two different ideas for theme music, but I have no way to play and record it. If you have a piano and a way to record it, I can put together sheet music. It's very simple--a slow somber tune.

If I can get the recording done by a week from Friday, I can do the editing on Saturday and get everything up on Halloween itself.

This will be fun, I hope.

Movie Monday - Revolt of the Zombies

Four years after "White Zombie," the Halperin brothers (producer Edward and director Victor) returned to the subject with "Revolt of the Zombies" in 1936. Unlike its creepier and better predecessor, "Revolt of the Zombies" is almost universally considered to be awful, and yet it is one of the most interesting bad films I've ever seen--a film that fails on almost every level, but shows the potential to have been not just good, but ahead of its time in a lot of ways.

It opens with a simple title card and inappropriately cheery music (the film is in the public domain, so if you're curious, you can jump to the Internet Archive here to watch the film, or at least the opening credits). Due to its low budget as an independent production, it does not appear to have had its own score, but used library music to its detriment. We then get a brief text description telling us that we are to learn one of the great untold stories of the Great War, and the strange and gruesome events that occurred after a group of French Cambodian soldiers joined the French lines on the Franco-Prussian border.

Immediately, we meet Armand Louque (Dean Jagger), a French soldier acting as interpreter for a Khmer priest named Thiang. The priest possesses the secret of zombies and is offering to use its power to help the French win the war. "Winning" being a foreign concept to the French army, General Duval refuses. He also claims that the entire idea is nonsense.

Armand then meets with an American friend, Cliff Grayson (Robert Noland, who has all the acting chops of a zombie himself), who encourages Armand to have the self-confidence to pursue what he wants and not let anything stand in his way. So Armand and Thiang (who tends to stare off into space as if he were a zombie himself) arrange for a demonstration.

Next thing you know, a group of zombie Cambodians attack the German lines, under the influence of... Hey!

Lugosi eyes! The same ones that appeared in "White Zombie..."

Yeah, that's right, this is sort of a sequel in spirit to "White Zombie," although the only on-screen nod to that fact is the use of Lugosi's eyes superimposed on top of all the zombie sequences. Anyway, the Allied generals are horrified at the fact that the zombies actually worked as advertised, ignoring the bullets riddling their bodies as they massacred the Huns. Only Louque and a certain Colonel Mazovia (who wears an odd black uniform and a sinister mustache, so you know he's evil, like a French Darth Vader) do not object to the use of the zombies.

One officer even goes on to state that if allowed to go unchecked, the zombies could spell the end of the white race. Priest Thiang is imprisoned, where he is promptly killed by Darth Frenchy for a scrap of tapestry revealing part of the zombie-making rite. Then the assembled officers--once again led by the allergic-to-winning French General Duval--resolve to travel to Cambodia to hunt down the ancient zombie secret so that they can destroy it.

Once in Angkor, along with a multinational archaeological expedition led by Duval, Louque is getting along well with Duval's daughter, the lovely Claire. He tells her the story of an ancient priest-king who gave up his power to prove his love to a woman. We can see that Louque is attracted to Claire. But as is immediately apparent, Claire only has eyes for Cliff Grayson. And so, we see that "Revolt of the Zombies" is not only related to "White Zombie" in terms of its title monster, but also thematically, in that it revolves around a love triangle, and the monsters are basically just tools of courting. This is odd, but also potentially powerful storytelling.

However, next thing we know, Claire is getting engaged to Louque. But at their engagement dinner (which features a really sloppy native dancer), Cliff appears to be none too happy about the situation, and Claire seems pleased at his discomfort. A while later, the rope holding a scaffold breaks and Claire dodges right into Cliff's arms, a fact which Cliff enjoys a little too much.


And just like that, Claire and Louque are no longer engaged. Turns out, Claire was just using Louque to make Cliff jealous, ruthlessly pursuing her objective to get what she wanted the way Cliff once advised Louque to do. Louque tries to play it off as if it doesn't matter. Cliff is his friend, and he still loves Claire and wants her to be happy. So he wishes her well. He is what the pick-up artist would call an AFC, your Average Fucking Chump, who lets a woman walk all over him in the pathetic hopes that she'll eventually come to realize just how much he cares (FYI: I've been trying that for over twenty years; it hasn't worked yet).

And this could be really powerful if we had a little bit more to go on, a few scenes to actually show the relationships building. As it is, watching this movie is like reading the outline of a novel--this happens, then that happens, then immediately this other thing happens. The emotions sort of make sense, but the pacing is too fast, the scenes barely sketched, the dialogue stiff and the acting inadequate.

There is an interesting scene coming up, though. The expedition has had to return to Phnom Penh because their native laborers refused to work another day in Angkor (work-stoppage arranged by Darth Frenchy, who wants the zombie recipe for himself). Louque watches Cliff and Claire bill and coo on the dance floor, then sees them walk outside to neck in the moonlight. He then goes back to his lab, where in his anguish, he goes through this really creepy bit of laughing while he cries (or vice-versa).


And though Dean Jagger is pretty stiff as Louque for most of the movie, this bit of madness works pretty well. And perhaps it's because of this temporary madness, as in so many horror stories, that he finally makes his breakthrough. He grabs a bit of text brought back from Angkor that makes reference to a strange ritual, and then he remembers a photo of a stone tablet. He looks at the photo, and the bas-relief on the tablet matches the bit of tapestry that Darth Frenchy liberated from Preist Thiang. He realizes this is the key to the secret, so he returns alone to Angkor that night (secretly followed by Darth).

He falls through a hole in the floor of a temple into a corridor when some priests wander by, conveniently stopping where he can see them to pose with the very tablet he seeks.


He follows the one priest down a secluded stream to another small temple, where the stone tablet is placed before a statue of Shiva. And in that temple, Louque discovers a secret panel which contains instructions for making zombie incense.

When he returns from Angkor, his furious boss fires him before he can announce his discovery. So he makes the zombie incense in secret. He tests it out on his manservant first (while rather idiotically narrating to the man exactly what he's doing--note to real evil sorcerers: don't tell your assistant you're using him for zombie experiments until after they've succeeded--this public service announcement brought to you by Frazier's Brain with the help of Evil Masterminds Like You).

And then it's off to the races. He has his manservant kill Darth Frenchy, who tries to take the zombie secret from him. He then mind-controls General Duval to send Cliff away so he can't marry Claire. Then he controls almost everyone in and around the expedition's compound--Brits, Frenchmen, and Cambodian soldiers alike, except for his Scottish friend MacDonald and Claire. Cliff returns (having been summoned by Claire in a dream, the same way Madeleine summoned Neil in "White Zombie," only without the cool visual effect), but he also falls under Louque's power, because Louque has taken to heart Cliff's admonition that he must pursue what he wants ruthlessly until he gets it, no matter who is hurt.

But Louque refuses to dominate Claire in the same way, and in a final desperate act of Average-Fucking-Chumpdom, he decides to re-enact the legend he described to Claire when they were first getting acquainted. He renounces his power to prove himself worthy of her love (at this point, if you were watching it in a theater, you would hear three hundred simultaneous demonstrations of the answer to an ancient Zen koan--Q: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" A: facepalm). The zombies come to their senses, and the Cambodians immediately go on a rampage, led by his manservant. They break into the compound and murder Louque. Cliff and Claire end up in each other arms.

And this final bit of the story is as rushed and barely sketched-in as the earlier romantic part. I notice that the running time is only about an hour. I don't know if it was bad scripting, a lack of production funds, post-release editing, or maybe just bookers not allowing more than an hour for the B-picture, but an hour is just too short to do this story justice. With a few more scenes, some less cliched dialogue and slightly better acting, this could have been a classic, if not in the 30's then certainly later.

Because in a lot of ways, the plot feels really modern. The focus on the romantic relationship as the motivation for all the supernatural goings-on, the use of foreshadowing and the ways the themes are repeatedly pounded in dialogue, presented each time in a slightly different context--these feel more like Cronenberg's "The Fly" than James Whale's "Frankenstein," if you know what I mean.

My friend John Wooley once put out a comic book of Ed Wood's "Plan Nine From Outer Space," with the intention of showing how, stripped of the crappy production values, it was actually a pretty chilling story. Unfortunately, he used the same plot and dialogue as Wood, so the experiment ended up basically proving that Ed Wood was as bad a writer as he was a director.

But I think the idea would hold more true here. Rewritten slightly to give the story more room to breathe and update the dialogue (and maybe making the discovery of the secret a little less coincidental), this is a film that could be made today without the need for much in the way of replotting. Conceptually, I think the story would work as a modern film.

Which makes this one of the most fascinating failures I've ever watched. It's bad on almost every level: pacing, dialogue, music, acting. It doesn't even have the cool visual flourishes that "White Zombie" did. But it's a bad movie that has a good movie inside it, screaming to get out, which sets it apart from a lot of bad movies.

Movie Monday - White Zombie

So let's get the Halloween horrors rolling. In 1932, a movie came out starring Bela Lugosi and a bunch of other people Vampira had never heard of that eventually inspired these guys to put a band together...


And also inspired the villain in the comic book, The Prowler.

The movie was, of course, "White Zombie," and the reaction to it has been as weird and varied as the movie itself. It apparently made a lot of money on its initial release, but the critics of the time hated it. Nowadays, though, it's considered one of the classics of early horror films. One thing immediately sets it apart from the other classic horror films of the 30's, though--it's an independent production, so the opening lacks the iconic Universal globe or the RKO radio tower that my youthful self found synonymous with 30's horror movies.

Also, the opening is fairly creepy, in that it lacks the standard opening theme music, and instead features bare drums and howling vocals over the chilling image of a group of Haitians burying a body in a dirt road. Soon enough, along comes a carriage bearing young lovers Neil and Madeleine, on their way to be married. But they are being watched by evil eyes...



And right in these opening moments, we see everything that's right and wrong with the movie. The acting and glacially slow timing of the opening, where the young lovers question their carriage driver about the burial, are amateurish (understandable given the relatively recent introduction of sound to movies--stars Madge Bellamy and Robert Frazer were actors who had done most of their work in silents). In fact, Madge Bellamy, with her heavy mascara, kewpie doll lips and flapper bob, seems to have stepped right out of a silent film and stumbled into a talkie by accident.


On the other hand, the tracking shot that superimposes the eyes on the figure of their owner, Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi), is an inspired bit of creep that hearkens back to the best horror films of the silent era.

Murder is taken with Madeleine and snatches away her scarf as the carriage driver is fleeing from a group of zombies coming down a hill. I thought this guy was pretty funny.


He is described in a later scene as the witch doctor who taught Murder the secrets of zombie-making, but those Sorcerer's Apprentice robes are a little silly.

Soon the coach arrives at the mansion of Charles Beaumont, where the couple are to be married. A man emerges from the woods, pulls out a pipe and asks, "Have you got a match?" He is kindly Doctor Bruner, a missionary who is here to perform the ceremony. As the three wait for Beaumont to put in an appearance, Madeleine explains how she got to know Beaumont on the boat over from New York, how Beaumont insisted they get married at his mansion in the country, and how he had offered to send Neil to America as his agent for a substantial increase in pay. Hmmm, offering to put the pretty young bride up in your house while you send her husband out of the country? Nothing suspicious about that.

So before the wedding, Beaumont sneaks out of the house and climbs into a carriage that's waiting for him--a carriage driven by a zombie. He is taken to a mill that processes sugar cane, also completely staffed by zombies. One unfortunate individual falls into the threshing blades. He does not utter a sound, nor do the zombies turning the big drive wheel falter in their slow pace. Seriously creepy.

Murder Legendre appears, and we learn the reason for the visit. Beaumont wants Legendre to kidnap Madeleine for him; he feels that if he can get to know her for a while without her husband around, say a month, then she'll fall in love with him. Legendre tells him in no uncertain terms what a stupid plan that is and proposes a counter-plan. We don't hear the words he whispers in Beaumont's ear, but we know what he proposes. He gives Beaumont a vial of zombie-making powder. A tiny amount is all that's needed, sprinkled on a flower, perhaps, or in a glass of wine. Beaumont takes the powder with him, but swears he will never use it.

After a tiny bit of Depression-era fan service in which we learn that Britney Spears did not invent the bare-midriff look...


We find out that Beaumont's resolve lasted just long enough to get back home, because as he's walking Madeleine to the room where she will be married, he offers her a flower. She holds it to her nose and inhales deeply, then goes in to the ceremony.

Meanwhile, Murder Legendre is outside, carving a voodoo doll from a candle wrapped in her scarf.And I've gotta say, this is one of the better parts I've seen Lugosi play. Aside from the wacky facial hair--the pointed eyebrows and Ra's al Ghul whiskers--he's got a wicked sense of humor. He doesn't just do evil things, he really seems to enjoy them.


Madeleine dies in Neil's arms. Neil is heartbroken. After she is interred, he goes out drinking, where he hallucinates her face in his table, and in the shadows on the wall, another visually creative moment.


Meanwhile, Murder and Beaumont steal Madeleine's body from her crypt; zombies carry it back to Legendre's castle on a seaside cliff (depicted in a wonderfully moody matte painting).


Neil discovers Madeleine's body is missing and goes to Doctor Bruner, who speculates that she was never dead, but merely drugged to create the appearance of death. He suggests they start a search to learn the truth. The scene is odd, because on the one hand, it seems carefully planned, opening with a camera move from the shadow of Neil's back as he leans on Bruner's desk, and ending with the actors in the same positions as the camera performs the same move only in reverse. On the other hand, the actors obviously have trouble with their lines during the long takes, and even seem to be ad-libbing some of it.


Next we discover that Beaumont is miserable. Zombie love is not as romantic as he'd hoped. Madeleine just lays there, staring off into space. Okay, she's actually playing the piano, but you know the same thing happened in the bedroom, and it was only fun the first time. Anyway, Beaumont asks Legendre to change her back, but Legendre refuses. He wants Madeleine for himself and slips Beaumont a little zombie-powder mickey (he also mentions that he's taken a shine to Beaumont as well, although I don't think he meant it as gay as it sounds).

Bruner and Neil approach Legendre's castle, but Neil is suffering from exhaustion or something, a kind of lovelorn lassitude (blue balls maybe?) that leaves him unable to continue. Bruner tells him to rest while he goes off to scout the castle by himself. But moments later, Neil forges some kind of psychic bond with Madeleine (in a really impressive split-screen effect) and takes off for the castle himself.


Which leads to the climactic confrontation. Legendre is cruelly taunting Beaumont (who has not been completely zombified, but seems to be suffering from an advanced neurological disease) when Neil staggers into the room. It's hard to tell if Legendre psychically attacks Neil or Neil just conveniently passes out, but Legendre summons Madeleine to finish him off. Because having your enemy helpless at your feet is good, but having your enemy killed by his own mind-controlled wife who still loves him deeply is priceless.

But Bruner grabs her hand before she can strike, and she drops the knife. She suddenly seems to break through the control and flees outside, where she appears to consider throwing herself off the cliff onto the rocks below (where we discover that Neil dodged a bullet by missing his wedding night--she seems to be hiding some sort of tentacles under her dress).


But Neil stops her from jumping. Legendre sends his zombies to kill Neil, but Bruner bashes Legendre over the head, and uncontrolled, the zombies stumble off the cliff.

Legendre recovers and breaks a vial of zombie powder at the feet of the two intruders and seems about to dominate them and add them to his zombie pool, when Beaumont staggers up behind him and pushes him off the cliff before stumbling and falling to his own death as well. All ends well as Neil embraces Madeleine and Bruner asks, "Have you got a match?"

So, the good: tons of atmosphere, creative camera and optical work, a good script that not only includes some seriously creepy stuff, but also works in believable, complex and adult character motivations. There's also some neat structural stuff in there, like Bruner delivering the same line as both the first and last things he says. In a lot of ways, this movie was ahead of its time, not the least of which is that it was apparently the first feature-length zombie movie.

Then again, it's also a throwback to an earlier era in the sloppy execution of some of its great ideas and the poor performances and sound quality. It's not a great film, but it is a fascinating one.

The movie is in the public domain and can be watched for free at the Internet Archive, here. Oh, and there's a sequel, sort of. Next week...

Special Super Halloween Bonus!

Yes, that's right. Once again, I have taken up The World's Cheapest Microphone to bring you another episode of They Stole Frazier's Brain! Since I'm no longer on box.net, there's no embedded player, but you can download the MP3 here.

And yes, there are clues to the theme of this episode in today's Out of the Vault.

Theme music is by Partners in Rhyme.

Additional music: "Destination Venus" by Man or Astroman?

Out of the Vault- Batman/Superman Halloween Special

Okay, since I missed the Vault a couple of times this month, this here will be a special Halloween double-feature with the two biggest heroes in comics history--Batman and Superman--squaring off against scary monsters.

First up, a spooky two-parter from 1939, originally published in Detective Comics #31, reprinted in the Batman Super Spectacular in February 1973. The story has no actual title beyond Batman, interestingly enough. Gardner Fox is credited with the story. If you're familiar with Batman, you know that no one except Bob Kane received credit on any Batman story for the first twenty years of his existence. But the credit was added to the story in the reprint.

The story opens with this bit of narrative description:

The Batman--weird menace to all crime--at last meets an opponent worthy of his mettle. A strange creature, cowled like a monk, but possessing the powers of a Satan! A man whose powers are uncanny, whose brain is the product of years of intense study and seclusion!

No idea if that last sentence refers to the Batman or to the Monk. And that level of clarity will hold true throughout the story, sadly.

Batman rescues a man from a strange woman claiming to have been sent by the Master Monk. Batman pulls the guy up onto a telephone pole to keep him safe and says, "Remain until I give you leave to go."

Then he goes down to discover that the woman is his own fiancee, Julie Madison (Julie was his recurring love interest in those early pre-Robin days)! She awakes as if from a dream, and Batman takes her home (the guy up on the phone pole is forgotten and never heard from again--he may still be up there).

The next day, Bruce Wayne takes Julie to her doctor, who gets a strange intense look in his eye as he recommends Julie take an ocean voyage for her health "to Paris..and perhaps later, to Hungary-the land of history and werewolves." Ominous. Bruce buys Julie a ticket on a Lunar Lines steamship, but doesn't offer to go along.

Instead the Batman goes to his secret hangar (the Batcave not having been invented yet, but you'll have to read Movie Monday for that story) where he unveils two new weapons for use in his fight against crime--the Batgyro (precursor to the Batplane) and the Batarang!


Bruce jumps in the Batgyro and chases after Julie's ship, causing widespread panic among the people of Gotham as he flies overhead.


He looks like he's enjoying the panic below, doesn't he? Robin may have had the name, but Batman was the real dick.

Batman pays Julie a visit on the deck of the ocean liner, but the Monk suddenly appears and tries to hypnotize him. So Batman throws his Batarang at the Monk's head, breaking his concentration, and Batman leaps for the ladder to the Batgyro and gets away.

In Paris, Batman terrorizes the populace, searching for Julie, until he stumbles upon her bedroom one night. As he enters, though, he is attacked by a gorilla! Leaping out of the ape's way, Batman falls through a secret door into a net hanging over a huge dungeon! The Monk gloats and pulls a lever, lowering Batman into a pit of poison snakes!

Batarang to the rescue! Batman throws the Batarang, which not only turns off the lever, but also breaks the glass light fixture before returning to the Batman's hand. The Batman also catches a piece of falling glass. The Monk flips the switch again and Batman continues his descent, but is able to use the glass to cut through the ropes and escape the snakes.

Batman chases the Monk, but a cage drops over him and the gorilla is lowered into it by a rope. Batman, who 33 years later would kill a great white shark with his bare hands, bravely runs away.


He races to the waiting Batgyro and follows a car speeding "towards Hungary." He manages to stop the car and save Julie, the car's only occupant. "Poor kid!" says Batman.

In part 2, published in Detective #32, Batman is in Hungary and a stops a horse-drawn carriage which contains a female passenger named Dala. He takes her to his hotel and leaves her in Julie's room for the night. Later in the night, Dala exits the room, seemingly in a trance, with blood on her lips. Then she knocks Batman senseless and runs away.

Batman discovers Julie with bite marks on her neck, then chases through the woods after Dala. Batman catches her and accuses her of being an accomplice of the Monk, as well as a vampire. Dala offers to help Batman catch the Monk, but only if he promises to kill the mad hypnotist. "I'll be the judge of that," Batman says.

He takes off with Dala in the Batgyro toward the Lost Mountains of Cathala, but suddenly, a silver net drags the Batgyro down! The Monk appears, and Batman is hypnotized. Help! The Monk decides to take Batman back to his castle and toss him into the werewolf den (and what is it with the Monk's lack of imagination? Snake pit, ape cage, werewolf den: is there an animal he won't use for a death trap?) Dala insists that Julie witness the execution as well, so the Monk hynotically summons her, and we get a flash of nightgown cheesecake.

The Monk transforms into a wolf and summons a pack of seemingly normal wolves, then throws Batman into a pit with them. But as he's falling, the trance is broken and Batman can act freely once again. He gasses the wolves with a pellet from his utility belt, then tries to escape by lassoing something above the pit. He fails until he ties the rope to the batarang, which allows him to climb out easily. The Monk, having inexplicably decided not to watch the execution, is sleeping off the daylight in his coffin. So Batman melts down a silver statue into bullets and...


Well, that was a little anti-climactic. And you know, we never did find out what was up with that guy at the very beginning, or why some vampire in Hungary would be so obsessed with some random American chick anyway. Wow, Golden Age comics made absolutely no sense at all. Let's see if Superman's monster battle goes any better.

"Meet the Metropolis Monster" was published in Action Comics #415 in August 1972, written by Cary Bates and drawn by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson. The story opens with a strange green-skinned man climbing up the side of the WGBS building, where Clark Kent is preparing for his nightly newscast.

The monster enters through the window and attacks Clark, ripping open his shirt to reveal his Superman costume and slamming him down onto his desk. So Superman responds in an appropriately heroic way: he kicks the monster out the window.


Fortunately, neither monster nor bystanders are hurt, and the monster takes off. Superman lets him go, so as not to cause greater destruction in a super-battle. Soon the monster is the subject of headlines, as well as visual comparisons to a certain famous movie monster with green skin and a flat head. The monster is spotted later with a blonde hostage. When Superman hunts for the monster, he finds instead a man in a futuristic jumpsuit who claims to be the scientist who created the monster. He's dying of a mysterious disease, and implores Superman to revive him after he is dead, so that he may stop his creation. Then he dies.

So Superman takes him to the Fortress of Solitude, where he builds a Kryptonian Revitalizer and, with much zapping, reanimates the corpse! When the hell did Superman learn to do that? Suddenly the monster bursts in and calls Superman a gullible idiot (that's not actually what he says, but he should). It can talk!

The monster is actually from another dimension, "the last survivor of a dying race of giants..." He discovers the chemical secret of life and decides to try it out by making a couple of people, a man and a woman. But because they apparently have neither the Twilight Zone nor ABC Afterschool Specials in his dimension...


Didn't anyone ever pull him aside and tell him such self-loathing is unbecoming of such an advanced race?

Anyway, it turns out the "scientist" Superman revived is actually one of the synthetic beings the alien created. And he's infected with the Protoplasmic Plague, a side-effect of the cell-creating chemical the alien used to make him. He sloughs off millions of giant cells a second, which all respond to his mental commands. Superman tries to stop him...


In the end, Superman wins easily by burying the humanoid under snow that he then freezes solid with his freeze breath. The alien scientist then takes off through the dimensional window with his blonde babe to make a new boyfriend for her before he dies.

So in the end, there was a real monster, even scarier than the seven-foot-tall, green-skinned red herring that created him. But I must say, that was anticlimactic as well. I mean, a monster story that turns into a science-fiction story about aliens! How Halloweeny is that?

Well, stay tuned, and I hope I have an answer for you later.

GIMPing Again

Sorry for the missed Big Video Wednesday. The new job has me exhausted and without the free time I had to pursue the old shows like I had. In the meantime, while I was off-line, I played with GIMP some more and came up with this holiday greeting.


The original model was from Met-Art (Nina B, NSFW!) which does some incredible nude photography. I'm using a (slightly) more explicit version for my desktop wallpaper (1024x768) and will send it it upon request.

Halloween With Benny

For four years, Jack Benny's radio show featured an annual depiction of Jack's Halloween party. The shows haven't aged entirely well. Some of the gags are hokey, the musical numbers are dated and creaky, and there are several uncomfortable gags featuring Rochester, Benny's black butler.

But some of the gags still shine, and there's an entertaining weirdness to some of them--Jack's pet polar bear and Don dressed as a kangaroo, with Dennis riding in his pouch, for instance.

So here are four years' worth of Jack Benny Halloween parties. Enjoy.

Halloween Lovecraft

Suspense was one of the long-running die-hards of radio, high-budget and high-profile. Most episodes (I hesitate to say all, since I haven't listened to them all) featured stars of stage and screen. Music cues were played by a small orchestra, rather than a simple organ like Dark Fantasy. Many episodes were based on popular stories of the day.

Most of the episodes I've listened to were simple mysteries or suspense stories. Even when it seems there's something uncanny going on, it usually turns out to be a plot or a hoax, much like Inner Sanctum Mysteries. But this Halloween episode from Nov. 1, 1945 is different. It's an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror."

All the Lovecraft elements are here--Miskatonic University, ancient copies of the Necronomicon, evil monsters from beyond (in this case, Yog Sothoth).

So enjoy Ronald Colman in the 1945 Suspense production of Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror."

More Halloween Radio

It's always dangerous to generalize based on the very best examples of a genre. For instance, many so-called anime "fans" judge Japanese animation as far superior in general to American animation, when they've only seen the very best Japanese shows make it to these shores. The vast majority of anything is crap. Anime fans don't see the crap, though, because it doesn't survive long enough to make it over here.

We see the same thing in nostalgia for the higher literary standards of earlier ages, or the supposed "golden age" of television and radio. We generally only see the good stuff, the enduring stuff that floated to the surface of the sea of crap and was preserved for posterity. But for every Lights Out or Inner Sanctum Mysteries, there were a ton of shows like Dark Fantasy.

Dark Fantasy was a series of stories of the supernatural, carried on the NBC radio network in 1941 and 1942. The stories were written by a guy named Scott Bishop, and although they were carried nationwide, they originated from WKY in Oklahoma City (my hometown). Trivia: WKY radio shared call letters with an OKC TV station, where Mary Hart, co-host of Entertainment Tonight, got her start as co-host of Danny's Day, a local talk show.

So here's "The Thing from the Sea,"an episode of Dark Fantasy from 1941. From the opening announcer, who sounds as if he can barely stay awake, to the final strains of melodramatic organ music, it's crap. But the remarkable thing is that this crazy adventure on the high seas, featuring ancient sorcery and exploding islands, was produced in a small city in the middle of flyover country for national broadcast. No immense special effects budgets needed. Radio was democratic that way.