Monthly Archives: October 2020

The Problem with Frankenstein Films

Being a universally beloved and known property that exits in the Public Domain there is rarely a shortage of adaptations, reinterpretations, and extension of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

The last really big elaborate adaptation came from producer Francis Ford Coppola and director/star Kenneth Branagh with 1994’s Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I remember seeing this one in the theater and being, well, underwhelmed.

It has a fantastic cast, Branagh as Frankenstein, Robert De Niro as the Monster, Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth and a slew of other great actors of the period, but that couldn’t put the film over the top leaving it as just a couple of hours of entertainment.

I think there’s an element that James Whale and the four writers of the 1931 Universal classic Frankenstein got correct that many later editions failed at and that is getting straight to the point of the story.

The 1931 film opens with Frankenstein’s fiancé concerned because she hasn’t seen her love in sometime. After collecting a mutual friend and an old instructor they head to his lab and barge in on the night of creation. Bam! We’re off and running.

1994’s adaptation returns to the novel’s framing device of an arctic explorer coming across Frankenstein, near death, and hear the tale told as flashback. (A flashback that violates Point of View with Frankenstein recounting details of scenes he never witnessed, but the novel does this as well.) We sit though extended sequences of Frankenstein’s life, his loves, his slowly building obsessions until finally we get to him creating life.

The truth of the matter is we don’t care about the backstory. It holds no suspense. Ask nearly anyone what happens in Frankenstein and they’ll tell you a scientist makes a living monster from dead body parts. This exploration of growing obsession is pointless. We know where he ends up, we know what he is going to do, and unless you have invented a unique take wholly divorced from the source material, you’re just boring us while we wait for the subject matter that brought us to the theater.

 

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Man, I Miss Role-Play Gaming

Last year I launched a role-playing campaign of Fantasy Games Unlimited Space Opera, featuring the worst edited rule book in the history of professional RPGs. This was a return to basics for me as my most successful RPG campaign had been Space Opera ones back in the 1980s and this new campaign included players from those glorious times.

And then 2020 happened.

My novel launched at the start of America’s pandemic induced lock-down and the regular game session were suspended.

COVID-19 took a beloved friend from our circle of gamers.

And still we are restricted, desperately dodging the virus as best we can.

I so miss those twice a month sessions with my friends. Laughing, playing, and having a great time.

I suppose it is possible to have a zoom game, but it wouldn’t be the same.

This will pass but until it does there is little we can do but be smart, be safe, and try to survive.

 

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The Final Six Days — Hopefully

America’s presidential election day, the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, is next week. Where once this day represented the day voters actually went to the polls and cast their ballots this year more than every it is the termination day following weeks of voting and with luck and a motivated electorate, we may have the election’s resolution Tuesday.

If the election is close and with a number of states not counting their mailed in ballots until election day itself it could be days or even weeks before we know the outcome, notwithstanding other intruding events such as court challenges attempting to shut down vote counting early. One persistent fear is that of a ‘red mirage.’ Because supporters of the President are more likely to discount the dangers of the pandemic they had been telling pollsters that they plan to vote in person while Independent and Democratic voters have stated a clear preference for mailed ballots. This could lead to a situation where votes cast in person and reported election night favor Trump but are no reflective of the final result because mailed ballots have yet to be counted. However, if the turnout is high and the results are not close then the hazard of a red mirage is far less likely.

As of this writing 538’s average of national polls has Biden with a lead of 8.5 points and their election model is projecting his odds of winning at 88%, significantly better Hillary Clinton’s odds at this point last cycle.

I am still hoping and can see it is far from impossible that not only does Biden crush Trump is a 1980 style route but that the GOP suffers massive defeats at every level of government throughout the union.

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Quick Thoughts on Lovecraft Country

I have completed HBO’s adaptation of the Lovecraft Country set during Jim Crow America as a Black family fights for survival in a world that in addition to racism contains magic and monsters.

Overall, I rate Lovecraft Country as Good but not Great and I know that puts me at odds with a number of my fellow genre fans. That’s okay, art is subjective and as I often say in my writer’s group meetings, ‘Your mileage may vary.’

The performances are stellar, the production is fantastic, and the writing of each episode overall is excellent so what doesn’t work for me are issues that may not matter to someone else.

For me the narrative momentum drifted in the middle of the story giving it some second act issues which gave some of the middle episodes the same overall feeling of a classic Doctor Who escape, run around, and get caught again episode. Information was gleaned, some characters issues advanced, but the plot remained stuck in place.

I never understood why Christina invoked a convoluted plan that involved bequeathing a fake inheritance to Leticia to maneuver her into buying the old home instead of just going there directly to recover the orrery.

At times thematically it felt a bit heavy handed.

For something invoking the concepts of Lovecraft’s work the absence of cosmic horror is startling.

It was good and should be watched but for my money I think HBO’s sequel/extension of the graphic novel Watchmen is a better series.

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Seasonal Review: Death Line

Death Line (AKA Raw Meat) is a 1972 British thriller/horror film starring Donald Pleasance with a cameo from Christopher Lee and directed by Gary Sherman.

When an important member of the Ministry of Defense vanishes from a tube Station Inspector Calhoun (Pleasance) starts investigation discovering that the station in question has a history of missing persons. More people go missing and one turns up murdered after being impaled by a broom handle. With the assistance of a college couple the mystery is eventually solved and the threat ended.

Death Line is a slow film taking its time to unwind and even at an hour and half it feels a bit long and padded. The concept when revealed is better suited to an hour-long anthology than a full feature film. There is one very impressive single-take tracking shot but overall the film suffers from too slow of a pace.

Pleasance has been noted for giving one of his most eccentric performances and that is well deserved. He doesn’t chew the scenery, but the Calhoun’s characterization is quite unlike the sort of the role one would associate with Pleasance.

Death Line is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of the collection 70s Horror.

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Quick Hits

Suffering a little headache so just a few quick observations and notes this morning.

My Work in Progress novel is coming along nicely, 11,000 words on the rough draft and exploring/discovering aspect of the story within the confines of the outline has been going well.

I have been re-watching Downfall about the final days in Hitler bunker as the Soviets take Berlin and frankly it feels like I am spying on Trump Campaign Headquarters with true Believers unable to accept reality, bootlickers scrambling to save themselves, and rank and file only just realizing that they have been led by a madman to their doom.

Did not watch the Presidential debates. Any event, however unimaginable, that would dissuade me from voting against Trump will be far larger than any verbal contest.

Going to spend at least some time this weekend with a virtual convention.

Have fun everyone.

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A Seasonal Viewing: Horror Express

This week my sweetie-wife and I re-watched 1972’s Horror Express starring those icons of horror film Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing with an additional appearance by America’s favorite lollipop loving detective Telly Savalas as Captain Kazan.

In 1906 Alexander Saxon (Lee) boards the trans-Siberian express heading West with a secret and astounding scientific discovery he found in remote Asia. Also aboard the train is Dr Wells (Cushing) a rival English scientist though not a villainous one, a Polish Count and his wife along with their mad priest very much in the style of Rasputin and an assortment of other curious and dubious characters. Even before the train departs the station a thief attempting to breaking Saxon’s secretive crate mysteriously dies with his eyes suddenly turned an opaque white. En route more terrifying deaths occur turning the passenger cars in a slaughterhouse. Really, for Lee and Cushing movie from the early 70s this movie has an astoundingly high body count. The express stops briefly to board Captain Kazan and his men apparently dispatched on orders from Moscow to deal, ineffectually, with the crisis.

In genre story construction a general rule, particularly in film, if that you ask the audience to accept only one truly fantastic thing in your story. The filmmakers of Horror Express have utterly no regard for this concept. Among the out of the world elements pushed into the plot are, beings frozen in ice reanimating after millions of years, alien visitations, the telepath absorption of someone entire mind, and mind transference. Despite the ‘junk drawer’ approach to genre story Horror Express is a fun watch. Lee and Cushing are great together and unlike many films where they share billing the movie centers on their relationship rather than using the actors as mere advertising props. Savalas revels in playing the cruel Cossack sent to sort thing out and the cast in general are quite enjoyable.

Horror Express is currently available as a VOD rental from Amazon for the princely sum of 99 cents.

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Can Ideas Go Stale?

The answer for me is an unqualified yes. I know that when an idea for a story, a game, or any other sort of creative endeavor first arrives in my shriveled brain that is a window in which if I do not start working on the concept it will never become fully realized.

It doesn’t matter if I have taken the time to produce detailed notes or outlines the idea itself seems to go stale and lose life the more time passes between its inception and its execution. I have folders on my computer of half-started ideas that I failed to follow through on in time and are now adrift without direction or propulsion.

Curious enough this does not seem to apply to any concept that is executed fully and then set aside. If I write a novel centered on a concept and the set that novel aside, I can come back ten years later, re-read it, and its vibrancy is still there, but if it’s only an outline or a synopsis. Nope, that’s as dead a week-old corpse.

Because of that fact or limitation in my creative process I am plowing ahead on my novel without having a signed contract in my back pocket.

The work is not wasted. No writing ever is, it is all honing the craft, but also even if my editor and I cannot come to terms, and that’s an outcome I doubt we have a great working relationship, there are other houses and other editors so forward I go.

 

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Captain America and Magneto: Marvel’s Original Anti-Fascists

It is interesting to contrast Marvel’s best-known Anti-Fascists, one nearly the Platonic Ideal of a modern comic book hero, Captain America, the other a genocidal villain driven by trauma and terror, Magnet. Both gained their anti-fascism during fascism’s original run, World War II but reacted in diametrically different manners. In discussing these two characters I will be referring to their cinematic presentations, Caps’ from the very successful Marvel Cinematic Universe and Magento from Fox’s more erratic X-Men franchise and associated films.

Steve Rogers was an underweight, under-sized, unhealthy man when American entered the war but driven by his intense sense of justice he desperately wanted to serve in the US Armed Forces despite being categorized as ‘4-F.’ After coming to the attention of Dr. Erskine Rogers was recruited into an experimental program to enhance human ability and attempt to create a ‘Super Solider.’ It’s important to note that in his interview with Erskine when asked if he ‘wanted to kill Nazis’ Rogers replied that he didn’t want to kill anyone but that he doesn’t like bullies. With an ideology that was already solidly anti-fascist Rogers also already possessed his most heroic qualities. The Super Soldier Serum may have granted him transhuman capabilities, but it was his moral code that defines his anti-fascism and also governed it limits.

Erik Lehnsherr a Polish Jew who would eventually take up the alias Magento was subjected to the horrors the Holocaust by Germany’s genocidal Nazi regime and while his mutant ability to manipulate all forms of metal was already present its development and his control were insufficient to protect either himself or his parents. Surviving the mass murder of Jews only because the attention of Dr. Klaus Schmidt aka Sabastian Shaw, Erik comes to his anti-fascism as a reaction to the brutal treatment of himself, his family, and his fellow Jews rather than from an innate moral code, despite as a younger man being a man of faith. Following World War II Erik adapts a personal mission as a NAZI hunter particularly interested in finding and taking revenge on Dr Schmidt. After successfully preventing nuclear war in an alternate history version of the Cuban Missile Crisis and targeting for destruction by the government that fear his and other mutant’s powers Erik adapts the name Magneto and identifies more as a mutant than with his Jewish ancestry. Taking the lesson he learned at the hands of Nazi brutality that humanity’s prejudice will lead it to always destroy those who are different he makes mutant survival and dominance his objective. Eventually Magneto attempts a massive attack to transform many of the world’s leaders into mutant regardless of the danger and death his machine will unleash because his objectives have transformed in obsessions.

Here we can compared critical moments between the two characters and how character plays into the importance of these moments.

Rogers, still a scrawny specimen without the benefits of Erskine’s serum, is suddenly confronted with a grenade during training, unaware that is a practice dummy round and while the rest of the trainees run for safety, he throws himself on the device attempting to shield everyone from the blast. He understands on an intuitive level self-sacrifice.

Magento’s mutant creation machine requires his unique abilities as a power source and the power levels needed are likely to kill him. Rather than subject himself to that risk and danger he kidnaps a teenage girl with the ability to steal his power and forces her to bear that risk. Erik’s terror and trauma has transformed him into his own version of fascism sacrificing others for his own goals.

And therein is the critical difference between the character and the moral difference in ways to combat fascism. You cannot adopt fascist ways without becoming a fascist yourself. It is noble to offer yourself up for the cause it is evil to offer up others.

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The Importance of Good Cinematography

I have a bit of a time crunch this morning so this will simply be a quick observation.

During the week I started a re-watch of From Beyond the second H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from Stuart Gordon following his version of Reanimator with returning cast member Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs.

While the script is far from stellar it was perfectly serviceable, at least at the start before it veered into distinctly non-Lovecraftian area of BDSM and sexuality but right from the start the film is undercut and severely damaged by its cinematography.

The scenes are well lit, and everything is clear and shop from the foreground to the background and that is the trouble. Now I do not know if this was because of some budget restraints, directorial edict or simply a stylistic choice by DOP Mac Ahlberg but it doesn’t work.

Even when the characters are supposedly in a darkened space and using flashlights the scenes are well-lit and everything is perfectly visible. There is no use of shadow and darkness of create danger and mystery in the character’s space a serious failing for any horror film. There is nice work when the ‘resonator’ is engaged and the scenes become bathed in lavender and purple as the other-worldly dimension intrudes into our own, but had the other scenes been lit more realistically, with more care to the light and shadow then the drastic change during the inter-dimensional events would have been more effective.

 

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