On the Nightstand

Today, I thought I'd talk a bit about a few books I've read lately that I enjoyed for very different reasons.

The first was a birthday gift that I requested after seeing a review in the New York Times.

 

James Purdy (1914-2009) spent his life quietly turning out short stories and novels which have generated a small but devoted literary cult while remaining virtually unknown to the public at large.  Purdy, born in Ohio, has been compared with Flannery O'Connor in terms of the odd, lovingly misanthropic nature of his fiction, as well as his penchant for reclusiveness and disinterest in promoting his work or connecting with his fans.  

These stories (so far) are short, very self-contained character sketches and I've been following John Waters' advice (he provides the introduction for the volume) and reading one before bed at night, so this should take a while.  Purdy definitely has a predilection for showing us characters who probably didn't graduate at the top of their high school class attempting to deal with the desperate emotional dilemmas that crop up in everyone's life from time to time.  Unlike other literary authors who like to write about intelligently introspective people who puzzle over their problems before arriving at some sort of personal epiphany, Purdy bring us characters who don't quite understand why they feel the way they do or have any idea what they might do to solve their problems.  Quite often, they're not even sure what those problems are.  Two women, friends for years, have both lost sons in different ways.  Yet they have no idea how to sympathize with or support each other.  Instead of depicting their progress toward understanding one another, Purdy chooses to explore the tension and vague resentment which underlies a typical visit.  And that's it.  Nothing is better at the end of the story.  In another piece, a thirty-something woman has fallen out of love with her husband and has become increasingly sexually frustrated, though she is unworldly enough to not quite realize this.  When an elderly shopkeeper makes inappropriate, almost coercive sexual advances, she is repulsed, flattered, turned on and ashamed.  She pushes him away and stumbles out of the store, even more upset and confused.  The End.  

Purdy manages to depict his characters with equal measures of sympathy and condescension.  You can't help thinking that if these people were just a little bit brighter or more conversant with the ways of the world, they could at least make some sort of peace with their feelings, but Purdy never allows them that.  Each story is a small bubble of lovingly rendered frustration and anxiety which will remain suspended that way forever in time.  Yeah, one at a time every couple of days is plenty. 

And now for something completely different.

I have a huge to-read slushpile of old used paperbacks I've picked up and I decided recently to make an effort to dig deep into the stacks, especially the items that qualify as what I'd call "comfort food reading."  So with no further ado, I offer:

I always liked movie and TV novelizations as a kid.  In the days before home video, they allowed you to take a movie home with you, in a way, and often expanded upon the associated film with a lot of extra detail and explanation.  Many popular television series in the 60s and 70s spawned tie-in novels that provided extra "episodes" for fans to enjoy.  You still see film novelizations, especially with scifi and adventure movies, and a few TV shows with dedicated fanbases still get tie-in books, but the practice is not nearly as widespread as the days when you could find WELCOME BACK, KOTTER and GET SMART novels at your local bookstore.

In the typical procedure for producing the novelization of a feature film, the studio would provide the contracted writer with a script for the film and the writer would flesh it into a novel long before the film was completed.  Novelizations (and comics adaptations) were usually released slightly ahead of the film to drum up interest.  Because of this advance preparation, scenes and dialogue that didn't make into a film's final cut can often be found in the novelization.  It can be interesting to discover "deleted scenes" this way.

Today's featured novelization, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES has been one of my favorite films since I first watched it on television with my babysitter.  So bleak and hopeless.  So violent and nihilistic for a film franchise which would soon be marketed to young children with coloring books and dolls.  Watching movie good guys get machine-gunned to death by relentless hordes of brutal apes struck quite a chord in an 8 year old.  And that ending!...but no more spoilers.


It's probably been decades since I've read a film novelization and while I know I read this one, I remembered nothing about its style and quality.  The author is Michael Avallone, a prolific writer who hammered out almost 300 novels and assorted short stories under 15 or 20 pseudonyms.  In addition to film novelizations, he did a lot of TV show tie-ins, including things like THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., MANNIX and THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.  He also wrote some NICK CARTER novels and plenty of original stuff too.  

Well, I didn't know what I was expecting, but Avallone's style here is....interesting.  The most positive spin I can put on it is that it frequently reminds me of the overwrought narration found in the more "cosmic" Marvel comics of the early 70s, like Steve Gerber's MAN-THING (that's gotta be a future column) or Jim Starlin's CAPTAIN MARVEL and WARLOCK (ditto).

A couple of samples:

"The search became a trek. A wearying, parching, searing exodus across a land that might have sprung whole from the pages of the Old Testament. Never had Brent known so much desert, so much sun, so much dry, sandy, barren nothingness....Brent could only let the horse plod along in a forward direction and hope for the best.  The girl clinging to his dampened body was like some lovely homunculus growing out of his very back."

Hell, now THAT'S interesting.  In the movie, we get a couple of shots of them galloping along sand dunes while the sun flares the camera lens.


"Brent and Taylor went at each other still more viciously.....Snarling, snapping, biting, digging at one another as if the universe depended on this one, single encounter to give anything of life meaning, sense....The stunning waves of traumatic hypnosis held Brent and Taylor in a dazzling, relentless hold which would not loosen until the Negro opened his eyes."

I suppose it's not good objectively; maybe he was stacking adjectives to improve his word count. But it did keep my interest up throughout a story which has worn a smooth groove in my consciousness.  Since I knew precisely what would happen next in the plot, right down to the dialogue, the pleasure in reading this became a matter of wondering what the hell kind of verbal interstate pile-up the author would come up with next and being delighted each time he managed to surpass himself.  A less...flamboyant..style might have lost me.  If I see another Michael Avallone paperback, I'm going to pick it up.





Now a few comments on something I've just started.

Yes, this is actually a TV show tie-in novel, albeit a brand new tie-in to an old series.  THUNDERBIRDS, of course, was the 60s series about International Rescue, a team of adventurers who rescued people from precarious situations every week with their supercool, near-future scifi vehicles and gadgets.  Oh, and the show was presented using cleverly designed marionettes and exquisitely detailed miniature props and sets. Seriously, imagine a colorful, Mad Men-era office or living room with sharply designed furniture and detailed decor, down to the ashtrays, paintings and potted plants.  Now add a subtle touch of James Bond gadgetry.  Finally, remember that you're building the whole thing from scratch to scale for 18-inch high puppets and you have to design and build several new ones for every episode, every week. That's a big part of the pleasure of this show, for me at least.  There are also the jets, boats, cave-ins, explosions and underwater rescues, all created in convincing miniature detail by masters of a very specialized craft.

Anthony Taylor's ARCTIC ADVENTURE is an official THUNDERBIRDS tie-in, part of a series which includes a few others.  I'm just a couple of chapters in, but already I can recommend it to anyone who's a fan of the show.  The book does what TV tie-ins do best by providing the reader with extra insight into the thoughts and motivations of the characters and plenty of background information to flesh out the plot.  In the first few chapters, Taylor gives us a compelling backstory for the show's tech genius character Brains and practical details about the origins of International Rescue never really addressed on the show.  Also, Taylor knows his aero-tech pretty damn well.  It never occurred to me that writing a THUNDERBIRDS novel would require more than a thorough knowledge of the show plus writing skills.  Part of the show's appeal, however, has always been its plausible, detailed technology.  If you want to write about starships, you can toss around terms like "hyperdrive" and "anti-matter dampeners" all day long.  If you want to write about advanced stealth aircraft, you better know what you're talking about or the readers will realize that you're spinning out nonsense pretty quickly, regardless of how much they know about it themselves.

The novel is off to a fine start, as solid as any episode of the show, and I can't wait to find out what happens next.  I can already recommend it to any THUNDERBIRDS fan.


That's all for now.  I should be back soon with an update about Video Watchdog #175 which features one of my reviews.  More of my peculiar obsessions to come.  Thanks for reading.

The Dark Shadows Guy

Looks like I may be developing a reputation as a DARK SHADOWS specialist.


A little over a year ago, I had the pleasure of participating in a lively roundtable discussion of the history and impact of this landmark series with some other DS aficionados that was published in Video Watchdog #169.  The article was well-received by the genre film community and the issue as a whole was honored with a Rondo award for "Best Themed Issue" of a magazine.  You can find the issue, along with most other Video Watchdog issues right here.

Soon I'll have another DARK SHADOWS piece to add to my portfolio, as the upcoming Video Watchdog #175 will include my review of the current comic book series from Dynamite Entertainment.  When the issue becomes available, I'll post a link here for anyone interested.

I thought I'd use today's post to talk a bit about DARK SHADOWS and its appeal, particularly for those aren't all that familiar with the show or who perhaps retain vague memories of the days when it was a genuine pop culture phenomenon.


DARK SHADOWS was essentially a soap opera which ran on ABC in the late afternoon, Monday through Friday, beginning in 1966 and finishing up in 1971.  The afternoon time slot may have been a key to the show's success as school kids were often able to make it home in time to catch the day's episode. In fact,  "I ran home from the bus stop every day to watch DARK SHADOWS," has become a ubiquitous part of every fan discussion of the program.  It's hard to dispute that as the show began to feature more and more monsters--vampires, witches, werewolves--its appeal to younger viewers skyrocketed, to the point that its stars, including Jonathan Frid and David Selby, became regular fixtures in the teen magazines of the day.

The show began as a more or less realistic soap with a very Gothic atmosphere.  The story of young Victoria Winters, hired as a governess by the mysterious Collins family, included most of the familiar tropes.  A spooky old mansion, mysterious footsteps, characters burdened by decades-old secrets--all trappings as familiar to viewers then as they are to us now--lent the show's opening months a mood very different from the standard suburban angst soaps surrounding it on the schedule grid.  As the months went by, the writers (guided by producer Dan Curtis) took bolder steps into the unknown.  The characters began to see ghosts.  And eventually, the ghosts became pivotal characters in the series' story lines.

In April 1967, the show crossed a bold line by introducing an actual monster, the vampire Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid), as a new villain.  Originally intended to serve as the focus for an extended story arc before finally being destroyed, Barnabas quickly became popular with the show's audience and generated quite a bit of buzz.  Suddenly, instead of being that spooky soap opera, DARK SHADOWS became that show about the adventures of an actual vampire.  As the ratings rose and Barnabas gathered more and more media attention, the show's creators decided that the vampire wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Over the ensuing years, Barnabas was joined by several werewolves, witches and demons, a Frankenstein-like creation, a Jekyll and Hyde knock-off and several other supernatural creatures.  Beyond the addition of monsters, the writers hit upon the innovation of time-travel and alternate dimension story lines.  Viewers were treated to extended (months long!) trips into the past to explore the history of the Collins family in the 18th and 19th century.  While these excursions were compelling and among the series' most lauded accomplishments, all the time-travel and journeys into the lives of alternate universe versions of the family may have contributed to the show's cancellation as viewers began to lose track of exactly which version of the Collinses they were watching.  Despite some fine moments, the show's final year must have proven baffling to casual viewers as it jumped back and forth between the "real" 1970 Collinwood mansion, the 19th century Collinwood, an alternate universe 1970 Collinwood and a possible 1990s future, before finishing up in an alternate universe 19th century Collinwood with all the regular cast members playing different characters in each time period.  If that's confusing to read, imagine trying to keep track of it watching a few episodes a week or coming back to the show after missing a few weeks or months.

So what is the enduring appeal of this interesting television experiment?  Beyond the nostalgia of those who liked the show as kids and the appeal to fans of classic horror in general, the show continues to retain a fan base because, quite frankly, there has never been anything like it before or since in television.  One factor is the five-episodes-a-week format, a schedule traditionally limited to mainstream serials with broader appeal.  Having hundreds of hours to fill gave show plenty of time to stretch out its storylines and the imaginations of its writers.  Another reason it endures is probably the camp factor.  The show IS a 1960s soap opera, after all, with all that that implies.  Melodramatic dialogue and acting, cheap sets and the rough edges that come with having to put on a new production, live-to-tape (meaning no second takes) every day of the week in a tiny New York studio, all lend the show something of a quaint air at times.  Even the die-hard fans find things which make them chuckle sympathetically from time to time.  But DARK SHADOWS is in no way a so-bad-it's-good kind of deal.  It's the product of a lot of fine creators and actors doing their damndest to put together something worthwhile and original under the most demanding of circumstances.

So there you go.  If you're a fan of today's extended storyline original series and you can get into old-timey horror stories and you can hold the snarky laughter and dismissiveness at bay when the dialogue gets a little overblown or a special effect looks cheesy, then DARK SHADOWS may be for you.  The entire 1225 episodes are available in one handsome box set for a few hundred bucks but I wouldn't exactly recommend  that kind of plunge for the casual dabbler.  There seem to be quite a few numbered episodes available on Youtube if you want to patch together a viewing experience that way.  But the best bet for most folks is probably the big chunk of the series offered on Netflix streaming.  This block of shows begins with Barnabas' debut episode which is actually where most interested parties should probably start.  If you really get into the series, you can go seek out the earliest episodes later.  That's what we did.  Oh and the show was in black and white until maybe 75 or a hundred episodes after Barnabas shows up, so don't be put off by that.

At the top of this entry you'll find what I think is a pretty solid DARK SHADOWS scene.  This particular clip takes place in 1795 after young Barnabas Collins has become a vampire under the curse of the witch Angelique.  Here, freshly gorged on the blood of the innocent, he confesses his shameful secret to family servant Ben Stokes.  Other than Gloria Holden in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936), Barnabas was very likely the first reluctant, guilt-ridden vampire.  I think this scene gives a nice sense of that.  Direct link here.

When the Ripoff is More Enjoyable than the Original

I've been having some fun lately with THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977).  Trailer link here.

Produced amidst all the hoopla surrounding the 1976 remake of KING KONG, the film was an attempt by Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio to expand their international box appeal beyond the kung fu flicks that had made them famous.  They had already had some luck with INFRAMAN (1975), another giant monster epic that deserves its own post.  TMPM combines the monster-suit-vs-miniature-buildings approach with a nearly point by point lifting of the King Kong plot.  Note that the title of the post calls this ripoff "more enjoyable"  not "better."  I'm talking strict subjectivity here, folks. It's simply more enjoyable to me than the '76 Kong.  KING KONG (1933), by the way, doesn't belong in the same discussion with either of these films.  Kong '76 has its defenders, but I would watch PEKING MAN 3 times before I'd watch 76 even one more time.

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN is delirious, campy but not too campy, and just a tad more "adult" than you'd expect.  It features no small amount of blood and belongs on the very short list of giant monster films that contain nudity.   Another plus is the incredibly detailed miniature Hong Kong that gets torn to shreds by the fur-suited menace.  The picture careens from one WTF scenario to another and ends with a wild final battle (yes, on top of a building) that is more exciting than one would expect.  The last shot of the film is genuinely excellent, capping off the previous 90 minutes of insanity with an iconic image that John Ford might have been happy with had he made a giant gorilla movie.

I don't know if THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN performed as expected or not. It doesn't seem to have made much of a splash in the U.S.  I've been into monster movies since I was a kid and went to see INFRAMAN at the Ross Cinema when I was about 9, but I'd never heard of this picture until Quentin Tarantino acquired the rights and released it on his Rolling Thunder video label in the 90s.  It's still available from Rolling Thunder on a very affordable 3 film set which also includes DETROIT 9000 (1973) and SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975) both of which are worth your while.  And if you're cheap or shady or both, I think the whole film is available on Youtube, whether it's supposed to be or not.

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN would make an excellent party movie and should be enjoyable for anyone who enjoys old school monster movies or is just in the mood for something jaw-dropping.

Thanks for reading.  I leave you with the Love Theme from THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN.  Don't try this while pitching woo at home.  Direct link here.