HIM!

After a film career in which played the mythic demi-god Hercules several times, muscle man, body builder and actor Steve Reeves would have been everyone's first choice to portray:



Him! First introduced in the pages of FANTASTIC FOUR, Him would later become Adam Warlock. 

FRIGHTFUL FOUR: MEDUSA

And Raquel Welch as 



The Magnificent Medusa!

FRIGHTFUL FOUR: THE WIZARD

Richard Boone as





The Wizard

THE PUPPET MASTER

The Puppet Master was a creepy bald guy who never got his hands dirty by directly confronting the Fantastic Four. He always struck me as a scheming coward who let his mind controlled puppets (they were sculpted from radioactive clay) do his bidding. That's a pretty good description of this guy:



British actor Donald Pleasance.

 I think Pleasance would have been perfect as the Puppet Master in my imaginary mid 1960s FANTASTIC FOUR film. 

THE MOLE MAN

Short in stature, with a sinister voice and a less than handsome visage, Peter Lorre would have made a great





Mole Man, in my imaginary mid-1960s FANTASTIC FOUR movie

YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT

There are two pieces of music that I want to have played at my funeral. One is "El Paso", Marty Robbins' epic ballad of love and death in west Texas. The other is the magnificently funky (and Oscar winning)  "Theme from SHAFT" by the great Isaac Hayes. I know. These songs have nothing in common except for the fact that I love 'em both.

This desire was brought to mind the other day when I watched SHAFT (2000), starring Samuel L. Jackson in the title role. This new iteration of the classic character is a B movie all the way and I had a blast watching it. Jackson is one swaggering, smart mouthed, bad ass motherfucker as John Shaft, a New York City police detective who is the nephew of the original John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, who appears in a supporting role). Shaft is determined to bring Christian Bale to justice. Bale plays a rich young white man who murdered a young black man outside of a New York City bar. Toni Collette plays a waitress who witnessed the crime but she's disappeared. Bale keeps thwarting justice and Shaft, frustrated by a corrupt system, quits the force and goes out on his own to find Collette and get her to testify against Bale. But Shaft has to contend with a vicious drug kingpin (Jeffrey Wright) and a couple of crooked cops. He's aided by his partner from the police department, the beautiful Vanessa Williams. There's lots of gun play, car chases and beat downs and Jackson delivers some terrific one-liners with his tongue planted firmly in cheek. Beware: there are numerous uses of the "N" word and Shaft tells someone to "shut the fuck up" more than once.

Everyone in the cast appears to be having fun with this gloriously retro material and director John Singleton pays homage to the original blaxploitation classic while still telling his own story in his own style. I like Samuel L. Jackson a lot and he is fun to watch here. It's interesting to note that both Jackson and Bale would go on to play two major comic book superheroes in films later in the decade, Jackson as Nick Fury in the Marvel Avengers movie franchise and Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.

SHAFT isn't a great film but I enjoyed watching it. I knew exactly what I was in for and I wasn't disappointed. I still prefer the original because it was such a groundbreaking, pioneering film in which a tough black guy took center stage in an urban crime flick as the hero of the piece. But whether he's played by Roundtree or Jackson, Shaft is still the cat who won't cop out when there's danger all about.

You're damn right.

WYATT WINGFOOT

Burt Reynolds, as he looked in the short lived TV series HAWK, would have made a good Wyatt Wingfoot in my imaginary mid 1960s FANTASTIC FOUR movie. 

FLAME ON!

Ed Byrnes, who played "Kookie" on the television series 77 SUNSET STRIP, would have made a perfect Johnny Storm in a live action, big budget mid '60s FANTASTIC FOUR film.  

IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!

Character actor William Bendix definitely had the right attitude and voice to play Ben Grimm in a 1960s big budget, live action FANTASTIC FOUR movie. He would have made a great Ben when he was in human form. However, Bendix didn't have the size and physical presence to play the Thing.

 This guy did.




Dan Blocker, who starred as Hoss Cartwright on the long running television series BONANZA, would have made a perfect Ben Grimm, both in human form and made up as the Thing.

MR. AND MRS. FANTASTIC

Imagine for a moment that a Hollywood studio acquired the rights to produce a FANTASTIC FOUR live-action motion picture in the mid 1960s. Who would have been cast in the four starring roles?

I'll come up with my choices for Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm in a future post but for now, I submit that the couple pictured above would have been perfect. Carl Betz as Reed Richards and Donna Reed as Sue Storm.

Whaddaya think?

THREE STRANGERS

THREE STRANGERS (1946) is a nifty little film noir that I watched back around Christmas of last year. It stars two of my all time favorite character/supporting actors, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Any movie with these two gentlemen in it is worth watching in my opinion. Add in the lovely Geraldine Fitzgerald and you've got a winner. Oh, and there's not one but two connections in this film to classic comic book based television series. Robert Shayne, Inspector Henderson on THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN and Alan Napier, Alfred on BATMAN, are both in the supporting cast.

The John Huston-Howard Koch screenplay is capably directed by Jean Negulesco. It's a slightly complicated story that takes several twists and turns before one of the titular three strangers is dead at the hands of another member of the trio while the third finds unexpected redemption.

Set in 1938 London, the story finds Greenstreet and Lorre approached by Fitzgerald to share any future winnings that might accrue from a sweepstakes ticket in her possession. She believes that if three people make the same wish for money on the eve of the Chinese New Year, that their wishes will ultimately come true. Lorre and Greenstreet play along with the superstitious baloney and all three sign a contract agreeing to split any prize money in equal thirds. Then they all go their separate ways.

Fitzgerald is married to Napier who has taken a lover and wants to divorce Fitzgerald and marry his new love. Fitzgerald refuses to grant his wish and does everything she can to undermine her husband and his mistress.

It turns out that Lorre is part of a criminal gang that has just pulled off a daring robbery. The leader of the gang (Shayne) has been arrested and Lorre and his partners are in hiding from the British police. Lorre eventually gets nabbed and set up to take the fall for the gang's activities. He is convicted and is sentenced to death.

Greenstreet is a successful barrister who has been managing a client's trust fund. He invested the money in stocks and bonds but when the market crashes, he's left without a dime and is guilty of misappropriation of a client's money. He faces disbarment and eternal shame and decides to commit suicide. But before he does, he spies a newspaper headline about the Grand National horse race and he remembers the winning sweepstakes ticket.

Greenstreet goes to Fitzgerald to collect his third of the prize money but she's gone completely insane with jealousy over her husband and his mistress and refuses to give Greenstreet anything. Greenstreet murders her just as a recently exonerated Lorre shows up. They decide to flee but once on the street, Greenstreet is overcome with guilt and paranoia and loudly confesses his crime. Lorre, now cleared of any and all criminal charges, is the sole possessor of the winning ticket. But he has his freedom and his girlfriend (Joan Lorring) and he destroys the ticket, content with what he has.

For much of the 92 minute running time of THREE STRANGERS the film does not play and feel like a true, classic noir. Only when Greenstreet finds himself caught in a web of his own devising with death his only recourse, do things take a turn into bonafide noir territory. The third act is textbook noir and it's well done, with a mounting, almost suffocating sense of dread and entrapment.

THREE STRANGERS may not be a great film noir but it's certainly well worth seeing for anyone who is a fan of the genre.

THE RACE UNDERGROUND

I just finished reading a terrific new book that hit the shelves earlier this week. Do I really read that fast? No, I had an advance reader copy.

The book is THE RACE UNDERGROUND by Doug Most and it tells the story of the race to build the first subway systems in two major American cities: Boston and New York (spoiler alert: Boston built the first subway but New York's was bigger).

It's a fascinating story with an large cast of players. There are engineers, politicians, businessmen, bankers, contractors, visionaries and hard working laborers in this story. Oh, and two cities desperately trying to update and upgrade their respective mass transit systems. By the late 1800s it was obvious in both cities that horse drawn carriages, elevated trains and even electric trolley cars were insufficient to handle the ever growing populations in both metropolises. Different plans were conceived in both cities but Boston's won approval and financing first in 1897 making it the first subway system in an American city. But by the time New York City finally approved a subway construction plan in the early 1900s, the system that was built was on a much larger scale that the one in Boston.

Building these systems was no easy feat and both projects were fraught with danger. There was a deadly gas explosion in Boston and a dynamite shack exploded in the Murray Hill section of New York City. But the systems were eventually built and very quickly became a daily routine of urban life.

I've ridden the Underground in London (the first subway system in the world) and the New York subway and I found both systems easy to navigate, fairly inexpensive and incredibly efficient at moving mass numbers of people long distances in a very short time.

The most interesting aspect of this book for me (besides the compelling narrative) is how closely the situations in Boston and New York more than a hundred years ago so closely echo the situation found in current day Austin, Texas. The debate about urban rail in this area continues apace and while there are pros and cons to building rail here, it's clear that something must be done to accommodate our rapidly growing population. I had an opportunity to ride the Metro Rail line yesterday (the one and only urban rail line we currently have) and I found it to be cheap, easy and efficient. I will definitely use the train again and so will all of my fellow commuters. The train was packed in both the early morning journey into downtown and the late afternoon trip back to the suburbs. I suspect that eventually more urban rail will be built here but it's going to be a long and expensive process.

I recommend THE RACE UNDERGROUND for anyone interested in American history in general and in transportation history specifically. It's a story well told.