SUMMER OF ACTION! -- For Those Who Came In Late

When I was growing up, one of my favorite daily activities was the time I spent reading the newspaper comic strip adventures of Lee Falk's iconic action hero The Phantom. Though this activity took all of about 30 seconds I can still recall the thrill that came with flipping to the comic section and drinking in the panels that made up his latest exploits.

Also known as "The Ghost Who Walks", The Phantom was a masked, seemingly-immortal jungle protector who lived in a skull-shaped cave in the country of Bengalla, had a trained wolf named Devil and even found time to romance the beautiful Diana Palmer while he was fighting poachers, criminals and modern-day pirates. How cool is that?

As it turned out, The Phantom wasn't immortal at all but the latest in a long line of masked heroes descended from Christopher Walker, a young boy whose father had been killed in 1536 by pirates during an attack on the high seas. The stories I read as a kid focused on Kit Walker, the 21st Phantom, and were still written by Falk, who worked on the strip up until his death in 1999.

Though my local daily doesn't carry the strip – nor do I get the paper on a daily basis – I was happy to see that the strip still runs in some papers. Unfortunately, I doubt there's a ten-year-old out there who is chowing down on bowls of King Vitaman while he reads and re-reads The Phantom as I was doing at that age. (I can't remember 99% of what I "learned" in college but can still recall the 1978 wedding of Diana and The Phantom – attended by Falk creation Mandrake the Magician! – and the birth of twins Kit and Heloise about a year later.)

Along with the Adam West version of Batman, Falk's creation was my first real exposure to the world of "superheroes". And while neither character has any super powers, the two masked crimefighters kicked as much ass as any son of Krypton.

So you can imagine my excitement when the 1990s brought news that Hollywood was bringing the purple-clad hero's exploits to the big screen. It didn't take long for me to discover that the project was likely doomed before it began – attempts to talk the project up with co-workers were largely met with with blank stares, a disinterested "who?" or the mistaken (and somewhat embarrassing) notion that I was super excited about a Phantom of the Opera movie.

Sigh.

In the rush to plunder the vaults for ready-made heroes, Hollywood had set their sites on the 1930s and 40s. And why not? There was plenty of material to draw inspiration from – including art deco sets, eye-catching cars, snappy clothes and villains simply dripping with WWII-era evil.

Warren Beatty's ill-advised DICK TRACY (1990) had started the ball rolling and though the square-jawed cop was another of my boyhood faves, even I was embarrassed by the end result. As well as the t-shirt I had to wear as my ticket to the midnight premiere.

A year later THE ROCKETEER gave it a shot. In the process, the filmmakers reinvented Hollywood, scrubbed Dave Stevens' comic clean, and turned Timothy Dalton into the lamest villain since Snidely Whiplash. Hey, at least we got to look at Jennifer Connolly. Oh, I mean Jennifer Connolly's boobs.

1994's THE SHADOW was another depressing strike for pulp/comic genre cinema, offering up a miscast Alec Baldwin, the shrieking Penelope Anne Miller and a hopelessly hammy Tim Curry (these days far better cast as voice talent in direct-to-video Scooby-Doo animated movies).

By 1996 THE PHANTOM was ready for his closeup – and while it fares slightly better than the aforementioned efforts I might just feel that way because I genuinely love the character.

Though it seems to be aimed at kids and families (yet is laced with more swear words than I'd be comfortable with my 4-year-old daughter hearing), THE PHANTOM is like an inbred retread of the Indiana Jones saga. In other words, there are lots of jungle chases, jungle natives, evil pillagers, power-hungry madmen and escapes from "certain death" that are supposed to remind us of cliffhanger serials. Unfortunately, I'm probably the last generation that has any concept of the serial adventure.

Watching the film again last night – and desperately hoping that I had somehow misjudged it all those years ago – sorta made me mad at what a blown opportunity the film is. Billy Zane is perfectly cast as the titular hero and to his credit had bulked up to play a jungle avenger in a skintight purple costume. While we have yet to see a Dark Knight who could truly wear the Batman costume, Zane is ripped and his dedication to playing the character shows. (Stories at the time of production had Bruce Campbell in consideration for the role but Zane, a fan of the comic, not only won the producers over but largely nails the character. Frankly, I think he would have made a great Batman.)

Unfortunately, the creators of the cinematic version of THE PHANTOM forgot a couple of key ingredients from both the character's comic roots and the Indiana Jones recipe. (Ironically, the flick was the last written by INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE scribe Jeffrey Boam.) Namely, a hero (and villains) that we have some interest in... and would it kill you to have a good storyline while you're at it?

Zane may be charming and heroic but Kristy Swanson is a bland, forgettable Diana Palmer and James Remar should be thankful that Treat Williams is aboard to wrestle the Shameless Overactor of 1996 crown away from him thanks to his mustache-twisting turn as evil industrialist Xander Drax (yaaaawwwwnnnn). Attempts to shove in too many storylines from the Falk archives make the whole thing feel crowded and the likes of a pre-stardom Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Pussy Galore-esque bi-sexual (?) leader of an all-girl squadron of pilots feel grafted on despite its roots in the source material.

I would love to love THE PHANTOM. Hell, I'd love to like THE PHANTOM. But the whole thing feels like little more than some film version of a live action stunt show or a ride at a Florida amusement park. I want to see The Ghost Who Walks get the proper treatment as much as any genre character and if SyFy's recent attempt to relaunch the character with some emo kid in a hoodie who wears a suit that makes him faster and stronger is any indication, I may be waiting a long, long time.

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- The Iceman Cometh

"In the end, everybody gets beaten. The most you can hope for is that you stay on top a while. Be the best."

Ving Rhames (PULP FICTION, Vanessa Williams' Radio Shack commercial hubbie) stars in UNDISPUTED (Buy at Amazon) as James "The Iceman" Chambers, an undefeated heavyweight boxing champ serving time for rape. Sound familiar?

Wesley Snipes (BLADE, ART OF WAR) is Monroe Hutchens, serving a life sentence for a murder committed in the heat of passion (naturally). A highly-regarded fighter while on the outside, Hutchens has taken advantage of the prison's boxing program and hasn't lost a fight in the decade that he's been in the joint.

Sent to the same prison where Hutchens reigns supreme, The Iceman quickly tries to establish his dominance through violence and intimidation. When the wheels of the system get set in motion, a battle between Hutchens and The Iceman is inevitable. And to Hill's credit, the inevitable winner isn't a forgone conclusion.

It's too bad that they couldn't have cast The Iceman role with somebody more athletic or believable than Rhames. While he's certainly an imposing presence, he comes off as big and lumbering, not an athlete who dominates his sport on the outside. (This was corrected in the highly entertaining sequel UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING in which Michael Jai White replaces Rhames.) Snipes, on the other hand, is in marvelous shape (big surprise) and gives his character more humanity, poise and depth than was probably needed.

Unfortunately, writer/director Walter Hill's prison/boxing hybrid was in and out of theaters in a flash and got lost in the 2002 event flick shuffle. Not that it's anything great like Hill's EXTREME PREJUDICE, but it certainly wasn't deserving of this fate.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the low-budget franchise continued with 2006's UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING and the highly regarded UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION (2010), both directed by Isaac Florentine. Look for coverage of both sequels coming up during ER's Summer of ACTION!

Summer of ACTION! -- The Chameleon is Mad as Hell!

Like You, He's Mad As Hell And Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

SERIES: The Chameleon
VOLUME/TITLE: #1/The Wrath of Garde
AUTHOR: Jerry LaPlante
PUBLISHER: Zebra
YEAR: 1979
OPENING LINES: The rock passage was closing in. Off to the left, it tapered into a thin vanishing crack. My fingertips reached no more than a foot from my prone body before they wedged into solid mountain.
CLOSING LINES: "Balls." I bent over, holding mine in agony.

When I was a kid I'd usually accompany my Mom when she would go grocery shopping or make a trip to the Moorestown Mall (at that time the bastard stepchild of area malls). Since it was the late 1970s/early 1980s and nobody seemed really aware of things like child abduction and milk carton "missing" pics she'd usually drop me off in the book and magazine section while she went off to double- and triple-coupon the store into the red.

When we went to K-Mart or Pathmark I frequently found myself thumbing through the tie-ins for horror flicks like THE OMEN or AUDREY ROSE – stuff I wasn't allowed to see but could piece together in my mind thanks to "16 pages of black and white photos!". For any of you kids reading out there, trust me, the movie you make in your mind is probably gonna be waaaayyy better than whatever the filmmakers dish out.

But my favorite place was the little independent bookstore that sat at the end of a sad little branch of the Moorestown Mall. It might have been called Moorestown Books, though I can't be sure. What I do remember was that they had row upon row upon row of the men's adventure novels of the day... from hair-raising spy sagas featuring Nick Carter, Mack Bolan and Remo Williams to "sexy" adult westerns featuring Longarm. (I also seem to remember that there was a Roy Rogers across from it.)

These books were like forbidden fruit. For some reason my folks would never let me buy them, even though I'd burned through pretty much every James Bond book two or three times. I suppose the frequently lurid covers didn't help (not to mention double entendre-packed names like "Longarm"!) and, unlike the 007 novels, didn't come with my brother-in-law's stamp of approval.

And so, I'd stand there flipping through the latest from Killmaster, Executioner or Destroyer, always on the alert for my Mom. She'd already installed household bans on KISS and PLANET OF THE APES and I didn't want to queer the deal on my bookstore dalliances.

These days, venturing out to a used book sale is like being that 12-year-old kid again – except this time I get to buy whatever the hell I want! Like CHAMELEON #1: The Wrath of Garde (Buy at Amazon), which I grabbed immediately upon spotting it on a table littered with more popular examples of mass market literature.

Were James Bond to head up Q division the resulting hero might be something like Vance Garde, a "mild-mannered, scientific engineering genius" who uses his brains and the resources of his firm to, well, not so much fight crime as exact revenge against those who he feels have wronged him and/or his family.

Garde leaps into action when his young stepsister Sharon dies of a drug overdose thanks to a low-rent dealer nicknamed "The Oregano Kid". Spurred on to "don't get mad... get even", Garde creates a division known as VIBES (Vindication against Injustice, Bureaucracy and Ensconced Stupidity) and enlists the help of the beautiful Ballou Annis to ferret out the upper rungs of the drug pushing ladder that killed Sharon. Along the way he uncovers clues to the identity of his father's murderer, experiences multiple bouts of blue balls with Ms. Annis, and dispenses with more than one villain in colorful fashion that would make James Bond blush.

Little more than "Bond Lite" with more graphic sex and rougher violence, The Wrath of Garde is a breezy read thanks to Zebra's typically easy on the eyes font size and the check-your-brain-at-the-door plotline. You'll figure out most of the twists and turns long before the "brilliant" Garde but you won't hate yourself for going along for the ride.

The cover copy and art might actually be more entertaining than the book itself. The artist's rendition of Garde (resplendent in white jacket and burgundy turtleneck!) appears to clearly be based on a young Tony Curtis, though my wife suggested that there might be a little MANNIX-era Mike "Touch" Connors in there as well. As for the sheet-covered Ms. Annis? Sure looks like Elizabeth Taylor to me.

More challenging than figuring out the reference art is deciphering the cornucopia of pop culture references used to sell the reader on the book, not to mention the most perplexing of all questions: Why the hell is this series called The Chameleon?!

Both The Incredible Hulk (?!) and James Bond get name checked on the back cover copy while there's even a reference to NETWORK's Howard Beale ("Like You, He's Mad As Hell And Not Gonna Take It Anymore!") that appears atop all three books in the series. The colorful "Chameleon" logo is prominently displayed all over the covers despite the fact that – as Marty McKee keenly points out at his blog Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot – "[he] isn't a master of disguise or a cat burglar or anything like that".

Alas, the adventures of Vance Garde and Annis Ballou never really caught on and the series ended after two more books – In Garde We Trust (Buy at Amazon) and Garde Save The World (Buy at Amazon).

Welcome to ER's Summer of ACTION!

It's official! Summer 2011 is finally here and with it comes The Exploitation Retrospect Summer of ACTION!

"Why action?", you may be asking yourself. (I know my wife was.)

The simple answer is that I like focus. I like tasks. I like themes. I like direction. Every morning I make a "To Do" list. It gives me a sense of purpose for my day and a feeling of accomplishment when I look back and see that I was able to scratch out things like "Safeway?" and "Thank You Notes". It only gets a little sad when I write down things after I've done them just so I can scratch them out.

Okay, that's a lot sad. But you get the idea.

So as the winter turned to spring and I found myself emerging from my annual work cocoon, I looked around and started thinking about what kind of project I could embrace for the long, hot summer months ahead.

Friends like the staff at RIGOR MORTIS had their zombies while WP Tandy was knee deep in Hon-troversy and all things Baltimore. David Zuzelo could be found juggling everything from life in the Pyuniverse and B-Side Barbarians to Casual (Un)Dress Fridays and Joe D'Amato's excursions into porn. Even Bruce Holecheck – who I've been trying to pry a review of AMERICAN PUNKS from for about five years – has been a veritable blogging machine of late, detailing the VHS offerings from labels like Mogul and IVC.

And while I usually devote the month of October to all things horror (under our 31 Days of Fright banner), I wanted something less challenging and more check-your-brain-at-the-door for days when I'm sitting on the beach, the hot sun pounding on my melon as I pass the hours till I can crack a cold brew and slake the mighty thirst that's been building.

Frankly, it didn't take long for the Summer of ACTION! to take shape. In early spring I found myself browsing the tables at a local used book sale. After becoming indignant at the insane prices being charged for the graphic novels and ephemera the sale staff now deemed "collectible" I wandered to the mass market paperbacks relegated to the rows of tables pushed against the back wall. Where last year's table featured what must have been someone's mighty mystery collection, this year saw pockets of men's adventure peeking out between the ubiquitous volumes of King, Ellroy and Clancy.

Without even trying I found my bag overflowing with characters both familiar (The Executioner, The Destroyer) and unknown (Chameleon, Swag) as well as one-shots featuring everything from vigilantes to a 3-year-old girl wired to explode if the right team doesn't win Game 7 of The World Series. (I suppose that's one way to make baseball interesting!)

Not long after that I took an April trip to North Carolina for an awesome weekend of ass-kickery, bounty hunters, samurai and fire walks at ActionFest and it became apparent that the junk culture gods were trying to tell me something – action was my future.

Which is how we got here. From now till Friday, September 23rd ER will be celebrating all things ACTION! – from television shows and comics to books and movies. From exploding huts and Eurospys to loner cops, costumed heroes and the men (and women) they pushed... too far.

We're always happy to hear from readers and fellow bloggers... we welcome your feedback and comments. And if you've got an idea for a guest post don't hesitate to e-mail me!

Lucio Fulci's NEW YORK RIPPER (1982)

I hadn't watched Lucio Fulci's NEW YORK RIPPER in about 25 years. (Which pains me to write not just because that's too damn long between viewings but also because it reminds me how old I'm getting!) But after a recent discussion with some pals about favorite Fulci flicks and giallos I realized I was long overdue for a reappraisal and – thanks to Netflix's instant streaming service – could watch the widescreen print in the cozy confines of my office. Do we live in a great world or what?

RIPPER opens in memorable fashion with a man and his dog walking along the New York riverbank – playing a game of "fetch" that's just waiting to turn ugly in the Spaghetti Splatter maestro's hands. Sure enough it's not long before the pooch has retrieved a grotesque, moldy, decaying hand from the underbrush and brought it to his master's attention.

And "FREEZE!" as Fulci displays the credits over the rotting piece of human garbage dangling from the canine's mouth. It's a directorial and editing flourish that seems particularly fitting since RIPPER paints a grimy and gross portrait of New York City in its pre-Disneyfication days of the early 1980s. Neon lights pulsate as they hawk sex shows and the last gasp of grindhouse horror, action and exploitation as Lt. Fred Williams (Jack Hedley) deals with the bodies that are piling up thanks to the duck-voiced "Ripper" who is slashing and mutilating the bodies of beautiful women and leaving them strewn about the city like garbage.

With few leads at his disposal and pressure coming from the Chief (director Fulci in a pleasant cameo) the police turn to Dr. Paul Davis (HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY's Paolo Malco) in the hope that he can help profile the killer and narrow the search. When Olympic hopeful (?!) Fay Majors (Almanta Keller) survives an attack by the killer she puts cops on the trail of a deformed Times Square gigolo named Mickey Scellenda (Howard Ross) who has been seen with more than one of the Ripper's intended victims.

Experienced giallo watchers will be quick to figure out that Scellenda – while a perfect suspect thanks to his predator's eyes and rough manner – isn't Williams' man, which puts the cops and the viewer back at square one. Despite having watched the film 20+ years ago I still found myself second, third and fourth guessing my choice of killer, not unlike my first viewing back when RIPPER came out on VHS via Vidmark all those years ago.

Though I initially left RIPPER off my list of Top 5 Fulci Flicks, my recent viewing is causing me to seriously reassess my choices. Quite frankly, while I love GATES OF HELL for its "Fulci Highlight Reel" feel and THE BEYOND never fails to creep me out while it entertains, NEW YORK RIPPER represents the best of both worlds of the Splatter Maestro.

Visually, it's Fulci at his most restrained, keeping the trademark Fulci Zoom largely in check and using the colorful New York City locations to full effect. Storywise, the tale of the quacking Ripper is a giallo classic, as we're served up a rich stew of suspects, clues and red herrings... all of which kept me guessing right till the end. And, if it's sleaze you want, Fulci never flinches – whether it's a live nude sex show turning on a slumming rich broad (who also gets "toed" in one of the flick's most harrowing scenes), close-up scenes of the Ripper plying his trade on the body of a beautiful victim, or a bloody conclusion that puts an exclamation point on Fulci's horror career.

NEW YORK RIPPER was the end of an impressive five-year run that also includes THE PSYCHIC, CONTRABAND, ZOMBIE, GATES OF HELL, THE BEYOND and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY. Though flicks like MANHATTAN BABY, CONQUEST, MURDER ROCK and THE NEW GLADIATORS would follow, none – for me, at least – would reach the same dizzying heights of his late 70s/early 80s output than ends with RIPPER.

Do yourself a favor and check out the widescreen version currently available on disc or streaming at Netflix. It's like seeing the film for the first time all over again!

Dario Argento's DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? (2005)

I didn't care who won the NBA championship and was too tired to read so Dario Argento's 2005 Italian tv movie DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? felt like just the thing to end my weekend. 90 minutes long and billed as just the kind of "no heavy lifting" genre fare I needed, plus as a Hitchcock fan I was intrigued by what Dario would do with the concept. Hopefully he wouldn't simply trot out the nods to the classics that we've seen ad nauseum.

Ooops.

After a short pre-credit sequence in which young Giulio follows two suspicious chicks into the woods only to witness them sacrifice a chicken and then chase him the scene shifts to then-present-day 2005 where grown-up Giulio (Elio Germano) is a film student with an impossibly cute girlfriend (Spanish actress Cristina Brondo), a video store around the corner and an apartment whose giant windows look out onto the flat of Sasha (Elisabetta Rocchetti), a curvy brunette who likes to admire her form in the mirror... while Giulio stands in the window watching her through his binoculars.

When he's not amateurishly smoking pot and watching German expressionism for his upcoming exams and papers, Giulio continues spying on his neighbors across the way, getting an eyeful of everything from bossy perfectionists to card cheats. But it's the volatile relationship between Sasha and her widowed mom that catches his eyes – and ears – most. The two shout, scream, throw things and generally annoy each another, and you wonder when, not if, one of them will turn up dead.

It isn't long before Sasha's mother gets her head gorily bashed in by an intruder while Giulio sleeps and the alibied Sasha parties with friends. The film buff/stalker turned detective begins to wonder if Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (in which two travelers meet and talk about exchanging murders) is being played out in real life. Could Sasha – who recently struck up a friendship with sexy blonde Federica (Chiara Conti) over the classic thriller – be plotting to swap murders in that film's "criss-cross" fashion?

What follows feels like the low-budget tv movie that it is – not something you'd expect from the man who helmed the intricately-plotted likes of FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, CAT O' NINE TALES, BIRD WITH THE CRYTSAL PLUMAGE, TENEBRAE, OPERA and other hallmarks of the giallo genre. Unfortunately, it's just the kind of thing one might expect from the director of the wretched THE CARD PLAYER (hyped throughout on poster's in the video store shop the main characters haunt).

Argento mainly tries to conjure REAR WINDOW and STRANGERS – two of Hitchcock's masterpieces – but largely comes up flat (there are also nods to DIAL M FOR MURDER, SABOTEUR and PSYCHO). Giulio never comes off like a sympathetic everyman caught up in the plot's twists and turns a la Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart – he's really just an annoying peeping tom and it's hard to root for him, even when he's hobbled and rushing to avoid being caught by a hulking blackmailer who wants to rip off his head. Character motivations come out of left field when convenient while "twists" are largely absent. In fact, HITCHCOCK plays out quite predictably and Argento, once a master at wringing suspense from a scenario, rarely succeeds in creating any kind of tension even when serving up classic genre tropes.

Frankly, I was less concerned with whether or not the killer or killers would get away/get Giulio than I was with whether or not Brondo would take her top off again.

That said, DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? succeeds in being more watchable than the dreadful THE CARD PLAYER and less insulting than the forgettable THE MOTHER OF TEARS, so I suppose it has that in its favor. Again, no heavy lifting is required and you'll identify all the major culprits within moments of their on-screen appearance. Like the mystery movies of the week I watched as a kid it's the perfect Sunday nightcap after a busy weekend.

Buy or rent DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? at Amazon.

DAMNED TO DARKNESS: A Terry Sharp Blog

If you're reading this blog you should be well acquainted with Terry Sharp whose adventures are a cross between "The Saint and Curse of the Demon" in the words of co-creator Adrian Salmon.

Written by Robert Tinnell and illustrated by Salmon, Sharp's 2005 adventure THE FACELESS left this fan wanting more. Now you can follow the latest news as the duo prep Sharp's next adventure... just head on over to DAMNED TO DARKNESS for all the Terry Sharp news that's fit to print.

And if you don't already have a copy of THE FACELESS, well, shame on you and head to Amazon now!

Ever Wanted to Help Finance a Low-Budget Indie Horror Flick?

I'm fascinated by Kickstarter. So far I've chipped in money for documentaries about The Replacements, an arcade in NY and Tower Records. But I haven't dipped in my pocket for any non-documentaries. Yet.

MY CASTLE – described as a "dark, gritty, mind-bending horror story" – caught my eye, especially when they dropped a reference to "Michele Soavi" as one of their influences.

CINEMA ARCANA: The VHS Archives

Though I love the convenience of things like Redbox and Netflix (especially the latter's streaming service, which can keep me glued to the tv all night), I miss the thrill of spending hours milling about a video store. Drinking in the often-outrageous box art, wondering how some of the copy made it past a proofreader (there had to be one, right?), trying to decide if this was just another crappy retitling of a crappy horror (or action or sexploitation) flick I'd already seen.

Good times, good times.

While finding those off-the-beaten path video stores is largely a thing of the past it's good to know dedicated nuts like our pal Bruce Holecheck are keeping the spirit of trashy, low-budget VHS alive. Bruce's newest project at his excellent Cinema Arcana blog is The VHS Archives, a label-by-label attempt to catalog some of the less-heralded and more insane VHS labels from days gone by.

The first label to get examined is MOGUL (and its offshoots) and the project already includes a handful of entries, complete with box art, verbatim copy and – where possible – Holecheck's insights into the flick itself (like CONQUEROR OF THE WORLD).

Check it out!