Distractions

It has been a unique feeling for me, in the days since I finished the first draft, for me to have no interest in the manuscript whatsoever. The books I've finished before, I was on such a high after finishing that I couldn't wait to go back and start reading from the beginning, experience the whole thing in one big panorama.

I haven't done that this time. I actually started divorcing myself from the manuscript even before I finished it. After 32 or 33 days, I was sick of pushing myself, especially at the end when I could feel the failure pressing in on me. So I did the GIMP-shop that serves as my new profile photo. Then I made myself finish the manuscript, and instead of rereading it from the beginning as I formerly have, I didn't even think about it.

Instead, I started up another GIMP project. It was originally supposed to be a quick and dirty test of a concept for photoshopping a picture of a person into a superhero (and yes, I just used "photoshop" as a generic verb--if Adobe wants to sue me, they are welcome to learn just how broke I am). No, the character is not anyone you would have heard of. I just made her up as I went along, obviously ripping off the outfit from Mr. Incredible/the Flash, and going on from there.


As you can see, it eventually grew into something bigger, and is now the wallpaper on my desktop (this is a scaled-down version for web display).It's not perfect, but it's better than I expected it to turn out. If I were trying to sell this (I can't, because I have no rights to the model image I used), I'd spend a lot more time on details like making the boots and belt and bracers more realistic and improving the graphics spelling out Neutrina's name down the side.

On the other hand, the logo symbol I tossed off for the character looks pretty good, and the background, which was assembled as an afterthought, isn't horrible either. I learned some valuable lessons putting this together, and added some techniques to my toolbox, like layer modes. If I had the patience and inclination to do this all the time, I almost start to think I could make a living at it. Of course, you could say the same thing about writing, probably. Alas, I don't have the patience or inclination to become good enough at any one thing to make a living at it.

That would appear to be my doom.

Big Video Wednesday - Ghost Writer

Yes, still with the 50's TV. "Ghost Writer" is from later in the series, and I noticed that the credits no longer mention the Science Fiction League of America, which may be a reason why the writing on this episode is so bad. The episode stars Leslie Nielsen, three years before his star turn on "Forbidden Planet." Actually, Nielsen was apparently a favorite of the show. He appeared in six episodes.

In "Ghost Writer," Nielsen plays Bert, a former ad agency man who has given up corporate life to try to be a writer. He's in the middle of a big novel that he is beginning to despair about ever finishing or whether it will be any good when he does (been there). He's worried about going broke while chasing his dream. His wife Joan tries to cheer him up, but there's a whiny quality to her voice that makes her sound insincere even when she means it. But then, she may be repressing. Maybe she's got her hands in her pockets to keep herself from strangling her husband.


Also, a fashion note: Joan has this weird (to me) thing she does with her pearls. Instead of wearing them like a normal necklace, she ties the string around her neck. She wants a pearl necktie!


Bert has answered an ad seeking a writer and gets a reply from one Lee Morton, an author who's seeking a collaborator. Joan doesn't think Bert should dilute his talent by working with someone else. She makes him promise not to work with Morton, then heads back to her job. Before she leaves, she gives him some money so he can buy something nice for himself. Bert, frustrated at being just a trophy husband, decides to visit Morton and make his own money.

When we see Lee Morton's home, the Ominous Mobile of Doom signals us that all is not well in Chez Morton.


Morton himself is even more ominous. You can tell he's up to no good, because he's got the Crazy Eyes.



The rest of the story is some nonsense where Morton turns out to be the Devil or Death or something. He pays Bert $500 per story to end stories for him. Bert does two stories and giddily shows his wife the $1000 he earned. She's upset that he went to Morton when he said he wouldn't and insists he give the money back. Because she's apparently making so much money at her job, which is hard to figure out. Nielsen says something about her working behind a cigar counter, but when we see the place, it looks more like a newsstand. Except that they also sell shirts. On the plus side, every shirt gets its own titty rub.


Seriously, if Dillard's had women doing this to every shirt they sell in Men's Clothing, they wouldn't be having to close so many stores. Especially if the women looked like, say, Sherilyn Fenn. Men would never shop anywhere else.


So anyway, blah-blah-blah, the stories Bert writes gruesome endings to come true in real life, Joan makes him promise to return the money, but Morton convinces him to do just one more, Joan finds out Bert has reneged on his promise and decides to go home to her parents in a cab which crashes, thereby making Bert's newest ending about a distraught wife dying in a car crash come true. Irony!

The story was pretty bad and made no sense in about twenty different ways. In fact, the most interesting thing about it, for me, was this.


That's a picture of big band leader Paul Whiteman, in a promo for his Saturday night show, TV Teen Club. But what's with the eagle?

Turns out that was ABC's logo at the time.


I'm guessing the eagle was to put the American in American Broadcasting Company. But I think it's kind of creepy and martial for a corporate logo, especially for the network that would someday give us Happy Days and Donny & Marie.

Here's the whole episode, if you want to watch.

Pounding It Out, Day 36

Success!

Finally.

53,000 words, give or take. It sucks, but it's done.

And maybe, once I've gotten some distance from it, I'll find out it doesn't suck as much as I think it does right now. Maybe it'll be worth fixing up and submitting to Hard Case Crime. That was my ultimate goal when I started this, and until I'm sure the book is hopeless, it's still my goal.

I'm still broke as hell, but I have some cigars left from back when I was solvent. I think I'll light one up tonight after I get back from seeing my daughter. I may even splurge on a cheap little champagne split or something. I haven't had anything worth celebrating in my life for a long time, so I want to make the most of this moment.

Corinne Bohrer wants to congratulate me in a very special way. If only.

Movie Monday - The Magic Sword

Saw that a friend of mine had this on his shelf and had to cover it. "The Magic Sword" was one of those movies that I caught halfway through on television as a little kid and never learned the name of until years later. It was produced and directed by Bert I. Gordon, who also did the special effects.

Like Harryhausen, Gordon was one of those guys who made movie after movie simply as showcases for his effects work, which mainly consisted of using miniature sets and optical compositing to make tiny things appear big, from "The Beginning of the End" (giant grasshoppers) to "The Amazing Colossal Man" to "Food of the Gods" (giant rats and chickens) to the cult classic with Joan Collins, "Empire of the Ants." Unlike Harryhausen, there aren't legions of fans praising Gordon's body of work.

In 1962, Gordon made "The Magic Sword," a fantasy film starring Basil Rathbone as the villainous Lodac, along with Estelle Winwood and Gary Lockwood (known to Star Trek TOS fans as the dude with the creepy silver eyes in the second pilot).

The film opens with Estelle Winwood as the goofy sorceress Sybil fretting over her wayward son, George, with a little exposition about how he's been mooning about lately. Her two-headed assistant says that George has been spending all his time at the magic pool watching the princess he loves.

Sure enough, George is there right now. He asks the magic pool to see if Princess Helene (played by Anne Helm) is in the throne room of her father's castle. He only sees a belly dancer entertaining the king as he plays with his scepter (seriously). Next, he asks to see the princess's pool, and sure enough, she's skinny-dipping while George secretly watches (although it can't be comfortable to watch everything all cockeyed like that).

It should be mentioned at this point that Helene has some tig ol' bitties.

George likes them a lot.

But suddenly, a mysterious spectral woman appears (played by Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira)...


but then the pool loses reception. George runs to his mother's underground lair, where she decides to consult her magic mirror to see what's going on. Apparently, it's a really long distance from the magic pool to the lair, because exactly 50 seconds of screen time after the princess was abducted, we see Sir Branton telling the king that they have searched the entire palace grounds and the princess is nowhere to be found.

Then Basil Rathbone, playing the sorcerer Lodac, strides into the throne room and channels his inner Maleficent as he proclaims that the princess will be devoured by a dragon in seven days' time. Sir Branton says he will rescue the princess, but Lodac places seven curses on the road to his palace. Then he departs by turning into a raven and then teleporting! Show-off...

George wants to rush off and save the princess, but overprotective Sybil will have none of it. George is only a mortal, adopted by Sybil as an infant after his royal parents died, and she wants no harm to come to him. To cheer him up, she tries turning into a panther (or what looks like a cougar painted black), but it doesn't help. So she shows him the presents she's saving for his 21st birthday: a magic horse, magic armor and shield, and a magic sword.


George tricks Sybil into a trap, then takes the magic items, along with 6 knights newly restored from petrification, to save the princess.

So George horns in on Sir Branton's quest. The first curse is a giant crippled ogre, who kills two of George's knights before George slays him. Meanwhile, Helene watches two other princesses get fed to the dragon (Lodac does this a lot, apparently) before being menaced by two dwarves who threaten to tickle her severely. Then Lodac shows her Sir George in a magic vision, and she, too, learns the joys of remote stalking.

Next the knights encounter Dry Ice Swamp, where George almost falls victim to treachery by Sir Branton. The bubbling pool reduces one of his knights to a skeleton (oogy)...

but George manages to get out with his sword's help.

Meanwhile back at home, Sybil breaks free, then dithers about the house, wondering what to do about George. She tries to watch him in her magic mirror, but Lodac interrupts to berate her about her inferior magic-fu, then cuts off her cable, so her magic mirror dissolves into static (really).

We next learn that Sir Branton is actually in league with Lodac. He and Lodac have set this entire charade up. Branton has a magical ring that Lodac "stupidly lost," which he has offered to trade in exchange for getting to "rescue" the princess and marry her, thus inheriting the kingdom.

Meanwhile, the suspicious French knight has followed Sir Branton, but got sidetracked by a passing French decolletage (actually one of Lodac's twisted followers). George saves the Frenchman from his own libido with his magic shield. They rejoin Sir Branton and continue on their way.

Back at home, Sybil decides to mix up a wacky potion to double George's magical powers, only to have it backfire and take away all his magic. That Sybil!

Unfortunately, George has just encountered the next curse, a blinding wave of heat that turns two more of his knights into blistered monstrosities before dissolving them altogether. George, Sir Branton and the last remaining knight ride madly for the shelter of a cave. Sir Branton then informs the others that this is a trap, and he leaves them sealed up in the cave. And George's now-non-magic sword won't save them. And then they're attacked by squeaky banshees! Doom!

But the last knight, as he is possessed by a banshee, manages to open the entrance to the cave in his dying moments and George is free. George proceeds to the palace, where he encounters zero resistance in finding his way to Helene's cell, guided by the magic of the sixth curse, according to Lodac.

Okay, so the ogre was first, and the swamp was second, and the heat makes three. But does the French hag count as a curse, seeing as how she was just there to throw off the Frenchman? And the banshee cave wasn't on the path to the castle, but was a trap that Branton led them into. But they have to be counted to get to five curses.

Oh well, it's not a movie about math, is it? George and Helene try to escape, but are trapped by Lodac's army of coneheads and mutants. Sir Branton gives Lodac the ring in exchange for Helene and is promptly betrayed and killed and his head mounted on the wall. Helene is scheduled to be eaten again, and George is thrown in the dungeon.

Wacky Sybil decides she needs to go to Lodac's castle to save George, while trying to remember the words to that spell she messed up. She turns into a dove, but doesn't teleport away. Amateur.

George is freed from the dungeon by some escaped mini-men and rides to Helene's rescue just in time to confront the two-headed, fire-breathing dragon. And not the worst dragon I've seen in a pre-ILM movie, I must say.


Sybil arrives to help, but Lodac casually ignores her. Sybil finally remembers the words to her spell and restores George's magic in time for him to slay the dragon.

Lodac is pissed. He then goes all Maleficent again, declaring that he is the seventh and final curse, and that he will destroy George with the power of his incredible ring!

The ring that wacky Sybil stole off his finger just now, that is.

Lodac's all "Wha?"

But he decides he doesn't need the ring, and starts to pronounce the curse to end all curses on George when wacky ol' Sybil decides she's bored, so she does that turning-into-a-panther trick again and KILLS THE FUCK OUT OF LODAC! Where the hell did that come from?

Poor Basil Rathbone. He was a dignified guy, a brilliant heavy and an excellent fencer. But by 1962, his career had fallen far. He had gone from leading man as Sherlock Holmes to a heavy in his climactic duel with Tyrone Power in "The Mark of Zorro" (one of the best swordfights on film) to being out-fenced by Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester" to being killed off by the comic relief old lady in this film. It might have been a relief for him when the fangs finally pierced his throat. Alas, his career ultimately ended on an even lower note in 1967, in "Hillbillys in a Haunted House."

So George is happy to marry Helene, and Helene is happy to marry George, and the six dead knights have been brought back by the power of the ring, which Sybil now wears, and am I the only one that thinks she's kind of scary now?

As kid's fantasy movies go, it's not the worst one out there. Far too many "fantasy" movies had miniscule effects budgets and held back on the magic and monsters. "The Magic Sword," for all its cheapness and stiff acting, has magical effects in abundance (including make-up by Academy Award nominee Dan Striepeke) , cheesecake for the dads, and gore for the teens. A film the entire family can love! It's no "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad," but it's only 80 minutes long, and it's in the public domain, so you can watch it free.

See it here at Internet Archive.

Pounding It Out, Day 34

Well, I passed the 50,000 word mark yesterday, but the draft's not done yet. I'm in the climactic scene, though, so it should only be a day or two now. The big problem that has been slowing me down: I did a little research that convinced me my final scene was completely improbable, location-wise. So I'm completely replotting it on the fly, which is going very slowly.

My other big problem: I had decided to write a book with a main character who was a remorseless killing machine. However, I find I'm having trouble making him be that. And I'm having second thoughts about the ending I'm heading toward. I don't know if it will be satisfying, to readers or to me. And as often happens in my writing, I've engaged in some self-sabotage, writing scenes that are disturbing. Which is weird, because I know lots of people who write similar stuff that's worse and seem to have great success, yet when I try it, it always seems to misfire.

But the questions will only last at most for a couple more thousand words and then I'll be done. For the nonce.

Out of the Vault- Firestorm, the Nuclear Man #1

In the 70's, DC Comics was trying desperately to recover lost market share from Marvel. The company lurched from one stunt to another, from the rash of characters losing their powers and costumes (which I want to cover, but most of my example issues are still in the Vault), to hiring Jack Kirby away from Marvel, to the Dollar Comic experiment, to a flood of new titles published in the mid- to late-70's.

And in 1978, about a year after A Man Called Nova debuted from Marvel, DC introduced its own new teenage superhero in a strange little book titled Firestorm, the Nuclear Man, which illustrates much of what was wrong with the company at the time.

Firestorm was created by Gerry Conway and Al Milgrom. Conway had written lots of comics for both Marvel and DC by that time, including the run of Spider-man that culminated in the deaths of Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin (the storyline that inspired the plot of the first "Spider-man" movie). Milgrom had been an artist at Marvel for a couple of years, working on Captain Marvel and Marvel Presents. The first issue of Firestorm, cover-dated March, 1978, shows just how much influence Marvel was having over its old rival.

The story in the first issue, titled "Make Way For Firestorm," opens with Firestorm flying over New York City. Yes, New York City--not Gotham, not Metropolis, not Central City, nor Star City, nor any of the other fictional burgs where DC's comics usually took place. Stan Lee had made it a point since the first issue of Fantastic Four to have his comics take place in the same real world the readers lived in, and that influence worked its way into DC's titles eventually.

Firestorm saves a man from being hit by a cab by turning said cab into two tons of water--Firestorm possesses the power to alter atoms, you see--and flies through a news helicopter before he is interrupted by some sort of telepathic message from a mysterious "Professor" who instructs him to stop wasting time. Hmmm, teenage hero instructed by mysterious telepathic professor? No Marvel influence here. Moving on...

Firestorm, whose name is Raymond, turns west toward New Jersey to stop some "first-class jerk named Eddie Earhart," who is attempting to blow up a nuclear power plant. This issue of Firestorm is brimming with alliterative names, another Marvel influence, as we'll see when Firestorm flashes back to his origin.

Turns out "Ronald" was Ronnie Raymond, a talented high school athlete who had just transferred to a new school. In a twist on the Spider-man/Nova formula, Ronnie is a good-hearted insecure jock who is bullied by a mean smart kid, Clifford Carmichael. You can tell he's smart, apparently, by the way he insults Raymond with a desperately unfunny "wisecrack":


Ronnie would just wipe up the floor with Cliff, but he wants to impress pretty Doreen Day (who doesn't need impressing, since she latched onto Ronnie as soon as he caught a touchdown pass in a game of playground football) and has been traumatized by a life of wandering around the world as a military brat. Ah, the trials of being tall and athletic and handsome...

Meanwhile, Professor Martin Stein is getting ready to bring his new "fully automated, fail-safe nuclear generating plant" on-line. There is a crowd of protesters outside that is powerless to stop the plant's operations, but then in comes former assistant Danton Black, along with two cops to formally keep the plant from going on-line. Black had been fired by Stein for stealing equipment, but has retaliated by suing Stein for intellectual theft; Black claims that the designs for the plant are his. However, these being the most inept cops ever in the history of inept comic book cops, they don't make Stein leave and lock down the building, so Stein decides to take the plant on-line anyway.

As this is going on, Ronnie is at home watching the news, where a familiar-looking reporter is interviewing Eddie Earhart, leader of the Coalition to Resist Atomic Power (a very rare touch of subtlety in a book that is subtle in no other way--Conway never gets around to pointing out that the group's acronym is C.R.A.P.).


This was over a year before "The China Syndrome" and the Three Mile Island disaster, so you could get away with calling nuclear protesters names back then.

Ronnie decides the way to impress Doreen is not to continue doing the same things that got her attention in the first place, e.g. feats of athletic prowess, but to demonstrate his social awareness by joining the protest at the nuclear plant. Not that he gives a C.R.A.P. about nuclear energy or pollution, but chicks dig activists or something.

So Earhart and his cronies drag Ronnie along as they break into Professor Stein's nuclear plant (and it's not mentioned, but I wonder if Earhart's thugs aren't actually union personnel, since Stein's "fully-automated" plant will eliminate a lot of jobs if it works as advertised). Earhart plans to blow up the plant and make Ronnie the fall guy. So he knocks out Ronnie and the Professor, leaving them both in a room with about fifty sticks of dynamite (unsure here how Earhart plans to make Raymond the fall guy for anything by blowing him into a fine paste, but it's a comic book, right? It gets dumber). Earhart takes off, bragging that they're headed to blow up another power plant in Jersey.

Ronnie wakes up in time to hear this boast, as Danton Black is sneaking into the supposedly deserted plant to steal Stein's computer designs. Ronnie tries to stop the bomb, but fails.


And I'm sorry to interrupt this climactic moment, because I understand comic book science is purposely stupid. Gamma radiation doesn't turn people green and super-strong, and a high-school kid can't manufacture artificial spider-silk in his bedroom. But usually, comics make an effort. The hero's powers are caused by some mysterious confluence of events--a one-in-a-trillion lightning strike on a rack full of chemicals, for instance.

But dynamite? The captions tells us that this has something to do with the radiation from the nuclear plant, but Ronnie is clearly shown just twenty feet or so from a big-ass pile of dynamite when it goes off. There wouldn't have been enough left of him for the radiation to affect.

Oh well, whatever. The mysterious radioactive blast causes Ronnie and the professor to fuse into one being--Firestorm. In issue two, Danton Black (caught in the same blast) will also demonstrate atomic powers, by splitting into two superpowered beings known collectively as Multiplex, the Duplicate Villain. Get it? Firestorm is a result of nuclear fusion, while Multiplex is the result of nuclear fission. Who says comic book science is stupid?*

Firestorm can see and change the atomic structure of anything. So he reseals the nuclear pile by changing air into lead or something, then makes himself a garish costume and flies away to stop Earhart's gang. He also discovers that, while his conscious identity is that of Ronnie Raymond, Professor Stein is lurking in his subconscious and can communicate with him.

So now we're back from the flashback as Firestorm confronts the forces of C.R.A.P. He makes short work of the thugs, but Earhart manages to set off the dynamite (turns out Earhart has an inferiority complex, and is willing to commit suicide if it means he'll get noticed or something). Unluckily for him, Firestorm absorbs the blast and all the attention.

As a character and as a comic, Firestorm was mediocre. On the one hand, his flaming hair made him one of the most visually distinctive heroes out there, and his powers were cool, if not very visual (most fights involved Firestorm gesturing at the ground or something while describing what he was changing the atoms into). Conway's writing and Milgrom's art were nothing to write home about: functional, but not exciting.

Issue two featured a Superman cameo, in which Superman investigates Firestorm to see if he's Justice League material. Superman follows Firestorm around as he battles Multiplex, but doesn't lift one finger to help, because Superman is a dick.

Firestorm hung on for five issues, then was cancelled in the great DC implosion. However, the character didn't disappear, because Conway was writing Justice League at the time, so Firestorm joined the League. Four years later, he got his own book again.

The character is still around, although apparently Ronnie Raymond is now not only dead, but resurrected as a Black Lantern (don't ask).

*Me, still.

Random TV Roundup

So Heroes is back and The Office is back. I've stopped having any hopes for Heroes; it goes in too many inconsistent directions. This season doesn't seem as bold as last season's Villains arc, but that also means it isn't as weird and stupid as last season's Villains arc. The Office is hitting that point in a show's lifespan where it feels like it has said everything new it was going to say, and now it's just continuing because people are still making a salary and they don't want to be unemployed. I mean, I like the characters, and I still laugh, but it feels sort of tired and obligatory so far this season.

I'm watching a few new shows as well. Glee is fun, although I have trouble suspending disbelief on this show a lot. I understand that the musical numbers are supposed to be communicating "emotional reality" rather than "real reality," so that's not so much my problem. It's more stuff like the extreme disconnect between the cartoonish aspects of the comedy followed by an attempt to make you feel some real emotion for the characters. The comedy is so extreme that it undercuts the drama, I think. Or maybe it's just me getting old. But the music and singing are good.

Of course, my bigger problem is with the basic premise of the show. Glee takes place in a high school where Glee Club singers are looked down upon as the lowest of social pariahs. And I understand that social stratification in high school may not make a whole lot of sense. But seriously, in a world where American Idol draws tens of thousands of hopeful applicants a season and huge ratings, is there anybody who buys the idea of a school where singing is basically despised by all but a few freaks and talented singers are shunned as pariahs? Really?

I finally got around to watching Flashforward last night. If you don't know, the premise is that everyone in the world blacks out at the exact same time for 2 minutes, 17 seconds. And during that time, they experience a vision of life six months in the future. Joseph Fiennes stars as an FBI agent whose vision was of himself investigating the cause of the flashforward, leading to his being hunted down by mysterious assassins in masks. So of course, he starts up the investigation.

It was an intriguing premise well handled. But one weird little detail jumped out at me from out of nowhere. Fiennes's wife is played by Sonya Walger, who plays Penelope Widmore on Lost. In Walger's flashforward, she saw herself cheating on her husband with another man, who is revealed to be Jack Davenport, who played Norrington in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.

But here's the thing that jumped out at me. Before Davenport played Norrington, he played a character named Steve Taylor on a British sitcom titled Coupling. And before Walger played Penelope, she played a character named Sally Harper on the American version of Coupling. Now the two of them are going to do a little coupling of their own on a new show. Easter egg.

There's a new sitcom on NBC titled Community, about an oddball group of students at a community college who initially come together to study Spanish. The show is pretty good, but still trying to find its footing. However, this bit from the end credits of the second episode is gold. These guys are partners who were supposed to come up with a simple conversation using sample phrases in Spanish, such as "Donde esta la bibliotheca." People get loopy while studying. Click and enjoy.

Pounding It Out, Day 31

Failure!

And yet not.

I did not make my arbitrary deadline of 30 days. But I did not end up far off either. At midnight, I was at 47,500 and heading into the final confrontation. So on the one hand, yes, I failed. But on the other hand, I am very close and almost assured of finishing a first draft very soon. The first half drags, and the second half lurches and the climax is probably going to be entirely too short and vague, but it will be something I can build on and fix.

So "encouraging failure," like "good rejection," is not something to be sneezed at in this business.

Big Video Wednesday - Frankenstein

Continuing to revisit 50's live sci-fi TV. But before that, I have been planning for quite some time to do the old Batman serials for Movie Monday, only to find out today that damn Lileks beat me to it. Oh well, I'll do my own version in more depth later.

So today's Tales of Tomorrow episode is "Frankenstein," yet another twist on the classic tale starring Lon Chaney Jr. and John Newland (no idea if he is related to Marv Newland), and another illustration of the perils of live TV.

The story opens in Frankenstein's castle, or I should say, the castle Frankenstein is using for his experiments. He apparently doesn't have an ancestral castle of his own, so he's using a summer rental or something. The set isn't bad, and makes good use of the soundstage space, although it's obvious that the stone textures are painted on, especially the flagstones that are only drawn in outlines on the floor. There's one corridor that looks pretty impressive on first sight, but that's mainly due to a forced perspective mural that doesn't look nearly as good when they shoot it later from the wrong angle.

Frankenstein is having dinner with fiancee Elizabeth and her father, as well as his young "cousin" William. Frankenstein talks about how the man of the future will be gigantic and strong and blah-blah-blah-mad-scientist-cakes. Meanwhile, young William has constructed his own monstrosity from the fruit bowl.

Ooh, foreshadowing! And also maybe symbolism (what would a fruity man signify in the 50's?)! High school English FTW!

So Elizabeth and her father leave, and Frankenstein heads down to his lab where he has already built a monster. He turns on his machinery and brings the creature to life. Yow, it's Larry Talbot!

It's not a bad make-up, and for some reason, his eyes gleam really strangely at his initial appearance. The creature freaks out, but Frankenstein calms him down and straps him to the table again. But the moment he leaves, the creature breaks free and roams the castle.

The old butler and maid speculate about Frankenstein's experiments, then flirt and giggle when suddenly the creature appears. The butler tries to fend him off with a chair, but the monster takes it away from him.

In fact, this episode has a legendary behind the scenes story. Apparently, Chaney was an alcoholic and had gotten pretty sauced before the episode was performed. In fact, so the story goes, he was so out of it that he didn't realize they were live and thought they were only in another dress rehearsal. So for instance, in this scene, his blocking is rather tentative and he mugs the camera a couple of times. When the butler comes at him with a chair, Chaney takes it from him, then sets it down on the floor while looking at the camera and muttering something (which may be a reminder to himself to break the chair when they shoot the "actual episode").

The monster stumbles through the halls until he runs across little William's room. William is riding his rocking horse while playing with a wooden sword. The kid playing William, alone among the cast, has a really thick New York accent. "Up an' at 'em and show 'em no quatta!"

The monster wants to play at first, but William, like all young Frankensteins since the book was written, is a little asshole and says, "Let go, yer dumb an' ugly! Yeah, that's what ya are, yer ugly!" The monster looks in the mirror and realizes the kid was right in an orgy of emoting. Then he runs away.

The maid is happily dusting, apparently having forgotten her encounter with the monster all of three minutes ago, when the monster reappears. And once again, Chaney didn't know they were live. He picks up the chair...

sets it down...

mimes picking it up...

then mimes smashing it.

The maid has no idea how to react to this shit on live TV.

The monster kills her before she can blab to anyone how he fucked up this scene.

Cutaway to commercial, during which somebody apparently tells Chaney they're live, because he doesn't do this crap in the second half of the episode (the mid-show commercial segment has apparently been cut out of the Hulu version).

When we return, Frankenstein and the butler kneel over the corpse of the dead maid. In a bit of unconscious expression, Frankenstein absentmindedly points his rifle at his own head. Probably wishing he could kill himself so he could get off this damn show.

Frankenstein vows to kill the monster, but before he can hunt the monster down, it attacks. Frankenstein holds the monster off with a scrap of burning paper and exhorts the butler to shoot the monster "in the chest." Shots ring out, but we never see who fires them. Then the monster rips the bars off a large window to use for a weapon, but it's too late.

Umm, that's not his chest, dude. The monster cries out in humiliation at having his balls shot off and falls through the window. But even though the dialogue refers to a 200-foot fall to the water below, we clearly see Chaney hit a curtain just outside the window, then fall to the floor, where his feet kick up.

But he's not dead. No, it's far from over. Elizabeth and her father have returned, and Victor confesses all to her. But their discussion is interrupted by the screams of the creature returning. Frankenstein figures out that the only thing that can kill the monster is the electricity that brought him to life. So he concocts a brilliant plan.

The plan is this: women and children first. First to meet the monster, that is. He sends Elizabeth and William to lure the monster to the lab, while he and the other men beat feet to safety.

Very brave, guys.

So the monster is electrocuted and all is well.

Okay, not all. Because when the camera cuts away to the announcer, we see the director's hand in the shot for a moment, then hear random bashing and crashing off-camera. But finally it's over.

If you want to see the whole thing for yourself, here it is.

Movie Monday - God Told Me To

So Saturday night, I was visiting friends, and we had a bad movie night. Watched "Night of the Lepus," the only horror movie ever made (as far as I know) that featured giant carnivorous rabbits as the Monster Du Jour. And when we were discussing bad movies to watch on a future night, I remembered "God Told Me To." Nobody else had heard of it, nor were they very enthusiastic, so I decided to inflict it on you here, instead. I would warn you that it's spoileriffic, but the movie is over thirty years old. It's already spoiled.

"God Told Me To" was made in 1975 by Larry Cohen, the...unique auteur behind such films as "Q" (featuring a giant pterodactyl-type monster terrorizing a city) "The Stuff" (featuring killer yogurt), and "It's Alive" (featuring a killer baby).

The opening credits make you think this is a TV movie, with their low-budget graphics, plus crediting Deborah Raffin as "Guest Star." I mean, I understand the concept of Guest Star in a TV show, where you have the regular cast and some celebrity who gets pulled in for one episode is a "guest," but in a theatrical feature, what does Guest Star even mean, other than "this person wanted special billing and we couldn't figure out anything better?" So later on when it becomes really obvious that this was not made for TV, it's a bit of a shock.

The movie opens with a sniper perched on a water tower atop a building in downtown Manhattan. As he shoots, we see several people engaged in the Bullet Ballet...

Heroic Cop Tony Lo Bianco climbs up the tower to try to talk the sniper down. He asks why the guy shot all those people, and the guy says, "God told me to" before jumping off the tower and falling to his death.

This is very disturbing to Our Hero, because he's a very devout Catholic. I mean, devout enough to go to Mass every day and devout enough to refuse to divorce his wife (played by freakshow Sandy Dennis, who shows her affection by checking the temperature of his chin), but not devout enough to keep from shacking up with Guest Star Deborah Raffin.

Lo Bianco takes a moment to pray at the Church of the Almighty Dollar--okay, it's not exactly a dollar sign, but it looks close enough to one that it made me do a double take--then heads off to interview other people who have committed random murders. They all tell him that God told them to, right before they die.

And then, the police station receives an anonymous tip that there will be a random shooting during the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and that the shooter will be a cop. "He has willed it," says the tipster.

Then starts the parade, and guess who's in it?

That's right, Andy Kaufman in his first screen appearance. Notice the cop on the left mugging the camera. Apparently Cohen and his crew crashed the real parade for some guerrilla filmmaking. You see lots of mugging during this scene, and ironically, it's the cops doing it.

Lo Bianco runs to the parade route to try to stop the shooting, even though there are, you know, hundreds of cops there already. Unfortunately, his big wall of hair creates so much wind resistance, he can't get there in time. So it's left to one of LoBianco's co-stars to do what so many of us wished we could do later, during the girl wrestling days--shoot Andy Kaufman.

As Lo Bianco continues to investigate, it turns out that each of the murderers was seen with a mysterious someone, a blond hippie with no face (that is, no one can remember his face). At least, I think that's what's going on. There are several scenes where the music drowns out the conversations between characters, so it's hard to follow at times. Lo Bianco tracks the hippie down, but is attacked by woman with a knife. Turns out, she's the hippie's mother. And she was a virgin when she gave birth. Because she claims she became pregnant after being abducted by aliens (wha?). At least, that's what Doctor Atom Man says.

Mason Adams was the voice of the Atom Man in the Superman radio episodes I posted previously. And now the city starts going a little crazy. People are demonstrating in the streets. A pimp murders a dirty cop and writes "God" on the wall in his blood to throw off the investigation. And a mysterious Jedi Council holds a meeting; they are apparently disciples of the Hippie With No Face. They decide something must be done about Lo Bianco.

And here we have another shot of street life. This jumped out at me for a few reasons. Number one, down in the lower left, the green letters are the sign for a place called Weinerwald. I ate at the chain's restaurants in Europe in the summer of 1980. I'd never known they had opened any in the U.S., but they were apparently here briefly in the late '70s to early '80s. Lower center is an ad for Bulova Accutron watches. My dad sold those; they were electric watches which used a tuning fork to keep time; this was before the prevalence of quartz watches. At the bottom is a Flagg Bros. shoe store.

Up top, drink a refreshing Champale sparkling malt liquor. Or as this ad that came out at about the same time as the film says (see more Champale ads here)...

Mm-mmm.

Lo Bianco finally meets the mysterious God-Hippie, who seems to think he's Jesus, what with the way he was born of a virgin and glows and has disciples and long hair and everything. But Lo Bianco meets him in a furnace room underground, which makes it seem as if the God-Hippie comes from a different place altogether.

And yes, just when you think it can't get weirder, it does. Lo Bianco tracks down his birth mother (he was adopted as a kid), and she turns out to be Sylvia Sidney, although she doesn't smoke through her throat in this movie.

Mom tells Lo Bianco how she was abducted by a spaceship that took her to the moon (just before it was blown out of orbit) where she was impregnated by a golden light. Okay, she doesn't say the bit about the moon; it's just that the movie uses footage from Space 1999 for the UFO.

And now the movie becomes a solid wall of discomfort as Mommy curses Lo Bianco for ever being born, and then the wife and mistress get together for a chat, and then Lo Bianco uses his newfound God-Hippie powers to make a pimp kill himself, culminating in a visit to the Slum of God for a final confrontation with the God-Hippie himself, who lifts his shirt to reveal his WHAT THE FUCK???!!!

Something happened after that, where Lo Bianco or his stuntman does this spastic crazy-leg wiggle down a hallway to simulate an earthquake or something, but who cares after that image?

And no, I won't tell you what it is.

It's not a good movie, necessarily, but it's certainly an unforgettable one, in some ways at least. It's memorably weird.

There is a special edition DVD out there with commentaries and stuff, but the movie is in public domain, so you should be able to find it pretty cheap or even free, if you're interested.