This was an especially fun episode since Noel and I are joined by our mutual friend, writer Christopher Mills (Femme Noir, Gravedigger, Perils on Planet X, and the excellent blog Space: 1970). We also got to talk about a fun movie: the 12-chapter serial, Tarzan the Fearless, starring Buster Crabbe (Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon) and Julie Bishop (The Black Cat). It's also the first Tarzan film by legendary Tarzan producer Sol Lesser. Notice that I didn't say it was a good movie, but it was still fun to watch and even more fun to talk about.
Wanted to rewatch this and Dawn before seeing War. I'm still amazed by how much this works. Which is to say that it works completely and wonderfully, fully connecting me to its characters regardless of species. And what a great, cathartic finale as everyone gets their comeuppance. In the best Planet of the Apes movies, I should always feel conflicted about where my loyalties are and this is probably the best at accomplishing that in the history of these movies.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
I still care about the humans in Dawn - especially Keri Russell, Jason Clarke, and Kodi Smit-McPhee - but they're ultimately MacGuffins in the movie's real conflict between Caesar and Koba. It's a brilliant clash of ideologies and what I love most about this trilogy is the battle between compassion and hate. Which leads directly to the third film...
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
In Dawn, the compassion-hate conflict is between Caesar and Koba, but in War it's within Caesar himself. His conflict with the human Colonel (Woody Harrelson) has led Caesar down a dark path and threatens the beliefs that he holds most dear. War handles this in a beautiful, emotional way and it's a great conclusion to what's easily my favorite science fiction trilogy of all time (at least until the current Star Wars trilogy is done... fingers crossed).
Grease (1978)
Rewatching Back to the Future for an upcoming Mystery Movie Night got me in the mood for something else from the '50s. And this has been on the list for a while since a couple of shots from it are in that great 100 Movies Dance Scenes Mashup video that my family and I can't stop watching.
And it really is all about the music in this one. The story is mostly bunk and I don't like Danny, Sandy, or really any of their friends except Frenchie. The ending is stupid. But dang those are some great songs and I always forget how awesome Olivia Newton-John's voice is.
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Trying to clear out some room on my TiVo. I recorded this on a lark, because there's a John Denver song with the same title and I'm nostalgic for John Denver. That's a dumb reason to watch a movie, but I also like Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon, so what the heck.
I love this movie so much. Oberon plays a wealthy, young woman named Mary Smith whose widowed father is trying to get a Presidential nomination. Mary's not especially troublesome, but she's under especially tight scrutiny, so her dad sends her to the family's house in West Palm Beach to get her away from the New York paparazzi. There she cute-meets a rodeo cowboy named Stretch (Cooper), but she's pretending to be a lady's maid at the time and... well, you've seen a romantic comedy before, so you know how that goes.
There are some modern romcom tropes, but I found that refreshing in a '30s film. And I love that the story is told from Mary's point of view with Stretch being the love interest. The movie also has some nice things to say about the value of people, with both Mary and Stretch needing to adjust their ideas about what kind of people they're interested in.
Five Came Back (1939)
This one popped on my radar because a bunch of people crash in a jungle. And it's very early Lucille Ball and I'm always interested in her serious roles.
I love this one, too. It's sort of a proto-Lost with a varied group of passengers on a downed plane trying to survive until they can rescue themselves. There are three airline personnel, a young couple in love, an elderly couple in grumpiness, a bounty hunter (John Carradine) and his prisoner, a man escorting a young boy for mysterious reasons, and Lucille Ball's character: a beautiful, but ostracized woman.
What's great is that every one of these characters finds themselves challenged and changed by the ordeal in the jungle. Some for the better, and some not so much. As the title spoils, not all of them make it out, but that's a fascinating and touching story, too.
It was remade in 1956 as Back from Eternity with Anita Ekberg and Rod Steiger, so that also just went on my list.
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
I'm a huge fan of The Big Sleep, both the Raymond Chandler novel and the 1946 movie based on it. But I'm enough of a fan of the movie that I haven't been that interested in seeing other actors in the role of Philip Marlowe.
And here's another thing: my love of the novel is all about the mood and the dialogue. Chandler's an awesome writer, but - at least in The Big Sleep - he's not an awesome mystery writer. There are huge dangling plot threads and red herrings that don't make sense. Maybe he fixed that in subsequent books, but I haven't read them yet to find out. If Murder, My Sweet (based on Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely) is faithful to its novel, though - and I understand that it is - I still have concerns. For most of its run time, the story spins around without going anywhere. It relies on all the things I like about Chandler (mood, dialogue, and Marlowe himself) to keep me going, but the central mystery is kind of dull.
Phantom Lady (1944)
After enjoying The Web, I started looking for other Ella Raines movies to watch and this is a big one. She plays another secretary, but this time her boss is the one who's in trouble for murder, not the one trying to cover it up. And she's great in it, but neither her boss nor the story itself deserve her. The villain is easy to deduce as soon as the character is mentioned, but then the movie still confirms it way too early. The villain's motivation is super flimsy, too, and the scheme to cover their tracks is even shakier. This is a classic only because of Raines herself and an unforgettable scene with a ridiculously lewd drum solo.
Frontier Gal (1945)
Before she was Lily Munster, Yvonne De Carlo had a prolific film career. She made a lot of Westerns, so I wanted to check some of them out. I shouldn't have started with Frontier Gal, though, because hoo boy. Her character's unlikability in this movie is only surpassed by her co-star's.
Rod Cameron plays an outlaw who visits a saloon run by De Carlo. He takes a liking to her, but she insults him, so he kisses her against her will. She slaps him, so he kisses her again. She slaps him again, so he kisses her again. Repeat several times until she falls in love. And that sets the tone for the entire movie, which might as well have been called No Means Yes.
I'll watch more De Carlo Westerns, but yikes... this one.
Spellbound (1945)
One of my favorite Hitchcock films, partly because I love its two leads, but it's also a great story that keeps turning into something new. Showed it to David this viewing and he wasn't that interested to begin with. I asked him to give it 15 minutes and then decide if he wanted to keep going. We kept going.
That awesome dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali is a highlight, but it's the central mystery and the plot twists (and Bergman and Peck) that make Spellbound so rewatchable.
Shock (1946)
Phantom Lady wasn't the only movie I watched this week inspired by The Web. I wanted to see some more Vincent Price noir, too, so that's where Shock comes in. Price plays an adulterous psychologist who accidentally kills his wife. Unfortunately, he's seen by a woman (Anabel Shaw) who's already under a lot of mental stress. Watching the murder sends her into a catatonic state. When Price is called in to minister to her, he discovers that she's a witness to his crime. Under pressure from his girlfriend, he realizes that if Shaw never recovers, he's off the hook.
It's not my favorite kind of Price role. He's still great, but he's too much a victim of circumstance and his girlfriend to thoroughly relish his performance. Give me wicked and conniving - or at least charmingly caddish - any day.
Song of the Week: "Seagulls! (Stop It Now)" by Bad Lip Reading
This doesn't just crack me up; it gets stuck in my head for a week and I don't even complain.
I'm not going to call it my favorite Spider-Man movie, because there's some apples-and-oranges going on here. But it's exactly the Spider-Man movie that I needed right now. No origin story and not even any universe building. In fact, it's the opposite of universe-building, because the whole point is to explain why Spider-Man needs his own special corner of the MCU. And I love that the explanation is built on the phrase, "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man." It makes sense, it's what the character needs, and it's exactly where I want to see him go.
Also, what a great, funny, diverse cast of supporting characters. And Michael Keaton is brilliant. Best movie interpretation of a Spider-Man villain so far, and I'm not forgetting about Doctor Octopus.
Collateral Beauty (2016)
I was warned, but wanted to see it anyway. Here's a written review that told me what I was getting into. Here's a whole podcast episode. David Chen of the Slashfilmcast describes it as "morally reprehensible," which I have to admit made me even more curious to see it. Nor was I dissuaded by having the entire story described to me, beat by beat, twist by weird and ill-advised twist.
"Morally reprehensible" is probably too strong, because I'm not as convinced as Chen that the movie endorses the truly abominable behavior of Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, and Michael Peña's characters. But it certainly doesn't punish them for it either and it does seem super ignorant about just how awful they're being. That's the real problem with the movie: it's oblivious to the huge questions - both moral and logical - that it raises.
But great cast and Will Smith in particular is acting his ass off. It's a fascinating film to watch and try to figure out what happened to make it go so horribly, horribly wrong.
Kongo (1932)
This is an adaptation of a 1926 play by the same name, which had already been made into a movie by Tod Browning in 1928 called West of Zanzibar, starring Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore. I've seen West of Zanzibar and it's good. Chilling, but good. 1932's Kongo is, too.
Walter Huston (Chaney, in the first adaptation) plays a cruel, truly evil ivory trader who's looking for revenge against an old enemy. His plans have been brewing a long time and involve luring his enemy's daughter (Virginia Bruce) into the jungle with a forged letter supposedly from her father. Once she's in the villain's power, he does horrible things to her both onscreen and off. It's hard to watch, frankly, but then things get interesting when a doctor (Conrad Nagel) - outcast from society presumably because he's an alcoholic - shows up. He wants to help the woman, but is challenged by his own weaknesses as well as her hopelessness and lack of cooperation. And then there are revelations that turn the whole thing upside down and introduce all new threats.
It's dark stuff, but crazy compelling. It covers some of the same themes as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but I like it way more.
The Narrow Corner (1933)
Based on a novel by W Somerset Maugham, who was a popular writer of the '20s and '30s. He specialized in melodramas set on tropical islands, particularly ones about British people trying to adjust to island life. He was one of Ian Fleming's favorite authors and "Quantum of Solace" is an homage to Maugham's stuff.
I liked The Narrow Corner well enough. Douglas Fairbanks Jr is a handsome dude and looks great tooling around in island wear. Patricia Ellis is super cute, too, and I liked them as a couple. I wasn't totally invested in the shenanigans going on around them - conspiring to keep them apart - but the setting is great and well-photographed and there are some cool special effects involved in getting a boat over a dangerous reef.
Jam of the Week: "After the Disco" by Broken Bells
Hard to pick one song - of even a few songs - from Broken Bells' After the Disco album that I like better than the others. Usually after listening to a record this many times, I've whittled down the playlist to a handful that I still want to hear over and over again, but with After the Disco it's still the whole album. The title track is representative, though. Deeply infectious and pleasant pop.
By GW Thomas
James Blish won his place in Science Fiction history through the critical and the popular. On the critical side, his novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo for Best Novel of 1959, telling the tale of a Jesuit priest and his struggle with religious belief in an age that includes space flight and aliens. On the popular side he wrote the first novelizations of Star Trek episodes along with the first new novel, Spock Must Die in 1970. Whether you enjoy his original classics like Black Easter or Cities in Flight or are just a trekker, James Blish left his mark on SF. But every good SF icon has to start somewhere. You would not be surprised to know Blish wrote for the Pulps: Super Science Stories, Cosmic Stories, Astonishing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, none of these would be hard to believe. But Jungle Stories?
Blish sold two stories to Jungle Stories, "The Snake-Headed Spectre" (Summer 1949) under the pseudonym VK Emden and its sequel "Serpent Fetish" (Winter 1948-49) under his own name. Confusingly, the sequel appeared first.
"The Snake-Headed Spectre", a 112 page novella, begins with Kit Kennedy, known by the local tribes as K'tendi, being hired to lead a group of arrogant Europeans into the jungle on a mysterious quest. These outsiders are lead by Paula Lee, a beautiful but cold Englishwoman, and the fat and toady Stahl. Along for the ride are Bleyswijck and his marines. The local Africans are lead by Tombu, prince of the Wassabi and friend of K'tendi.
The safari does not go well as the major players all try to take control. Stahl boorishly strikes Tombu and the Africans are close to deserting when they discover a strange plain and then an unknown mountain, higher than Everest. The people who live beyond the plain play a loud work drum, frightening the locals. Kit and Tombu leave the party to scout ahead and run into Manalendi, the giant python. The snake is curious about Kit and they become friends after a fashion. The Europeans are captured by the strangers, who are cannibals, and Kit, Tombu and the giant snake go in search of them.
What the rescuers find in the jungle under the mountain is a village surrounded by a palisade and slaves who are working a strange mine. These poor devils are covered in sores and are missing fingers. Finding Stahl and Paula, Kit discovers the safari's real purpose, to investigate the appearance of radioactive pitchblende on the black market. Since the substance is lethal to mine, Stahl had suspected that slave labour was being used. Kit also discovers the man behind the operation is none other than Bleyswijck. The marine is in league with an Arab woman named Nanan, who acts as high priestess to the local Rock God. To save Paula and Stahl, Kit boldly walks into the village, with Tombu and Manalendi the giant python at his side, to challenge the king of the tribe, N'mbono. They fight on the giant drum with spears. The desperate battle ends with N'mbono dead and Kit now king of the tribe. During the conflict, Kit uses the drum's rhythm to send a message to the Wassabi warriors far away, asking for help.
Overthrowing Bleyswijck and Nanan, Kit's victory is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a triceratops, one of the night shapes rumored to live in the area. The drumming has infuriated it, causing it to crash through the log palisade. In the confusion, the Europeans depart. Paula, her husband dead, is very sick but throws herself on Kit: "...I want someone to make me back into a woman again..." The two become lovers. In the sequel it is suggested they lived together in the jungle a short while but split. Both stories were combined, refitted and republished in 1962 as the novel The Night Shapes. In the novel version, Blish inserts a short reunion conveniently at the end, and Paula returns to Ktendi to live happily ever after .
"Serpent's Fetish" is much shorter than its prequel. It finds K'tendi and his friend Tombu facing a second safari of whites invading their jungle, looking for dinosaurs in the Valley of Dragons, for rumours of Kit and Paula's first expedition have leaked out. Kit Kennedy tries to tell the invaders to leave but they won't. Kennedy knows it is not enough to simply kill the whites, for more would follow and the local tribes would be punished. Instead he concocts an elaborate plan to dispel the rumours of dinosaurs living in the jungle. To do this he pits Tombu's tribes against his neighbor, knowing the two armies would meet near the valley. He also gets a witch doctor to bring the rains early so that the lightning will start a forest fire near the dinosaurs, driving them out. The two armies then join forces to drive the beasts back into the valley before Kit seals it forever with dynamite. The safari and all those after will hear that the dinosaurs were dispersed into the jungle, making them near impossible to find.
There are some mysteries that surround Blish's jungle tales. First off, why was the sequel published first in the Winter 1948-49 issue then followed by the longer prequel in the Summer 1949? The use of the pseudonym VK Emden seems unnecessary if Blish had already published the sequel under his own name. One has to remember that pulp publishing was fast and loose. Perhaps the Winter issue needed a hole filled and Jerome Bixby (fellow SF author and editor) may have plugged it with the shorter sequel? It's confusing, but much of the Pulp business was. Unless an editor survives today to recall what happened, no one left any real evidence for us to sift through. Pulps were ephemera and not worth documenting.
Blish is of the HR Haggard school of jungle writing, presenting a more realistic version of Africa than Edgar Rice Burroughs does. Blish is familiar with Swahili and the customs and actions of Tombu and his people are less stereotypical than much of what appeared in Jungle Stories. K'tendi is not Tarzan, swinging through the treetops naked. Like Allan Quatermain, he wears clothes and carries a large bore rifle. How Blish learned about Africa I don't know. Looking at his bio I was prepared to see he had spent time in Africa, perhaps in the war, but he served in 1942 as a medical technician in Fort Dix. No jungle adventures there. Ultimately, he was a Science Fiction writer from New Jersey, so I have to assume he was a good researcher.
Blish's novel version is a weird combination of 1940s sexism and the growing freedoms of the 1960s. Paula Lee throws herself at Kit like any Pulp heroine while Blish inserts graphic (and gratuitous) descriptions of female circumcision and other details that do not further the plot. While you can make the argument that the idea of the "white hero" is racist (part and parcel of the genre), the relationship between Kit and Tombu is one of virtual equality. (This said Tombu hides Paula from Kit as a joke and Kit is willing to set Tombu's village against another in battle. Strange friends!) The sense of humor between the two friends is much more endearing than the icy cold romance with Paula Lee.
Kit's weird alliance with the giant snake Manalendi is also one of the story's best features. It's not surprising that their meeting was chosen for one of the edition's covers rather than a dinosaur picture. Despite the presence of dinos in the book, there are few good scenes with them. (To misquote Jurassic Park: "Ah, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your... in your dinosaur novel, right? Hello?") Again I suspect the fact that Blish was writing for Jungle Stories and not Thrilling Wonder is to blame. The editors would tolerate a small amount of dinosaura, but the major portion of the story would have to be a "jungle" story. The legend of "Mokele-mbemba" is irresistible to a Science Fiction writer and James Blish does as good a job as any (and better than some, ie: 1985's Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend). Ultimately, Kit Kennedy is an odd but charming part of Jungle Pulp history.
GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.
