UM, SHE'S NOT EXACTLY STANDING, WARLOCK OL'BOY!

Somebody out there want to explain how in the hell this panel ever got past the Comics Code Authority? From WARLOCK #8, October 1973 Marvel Comics. Script: Mike Friedrich. Art: Bob Brown and Tom Sutton.

RESCUE DAWN

"The jungle is the prison."

Werner Herzog, one of the most influential filmmakers to emerge from the "New German Cinema", started making movies in 1968. He's still at it. But until the other day, when I watched RESCUE DAWN (2006), I had never seen a Herzog film. I was suitably impressed by what I saw and will certainly seek out some of his other films.

Based on true story and set in 1966, RESCUE DAWN details the odyssey of Lt. Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a U.S. Navy pilot who goes down into the green hell of Laos on his first bombing mission. Trouble is, the United States isn't supposed to be flying missions into Laotian airspace. Remarkably, Dengler survives the plane crash and sets out through the impenetrable jungle in an attempt to find his way back to Vietnam or be discovered by a Navy search and rescue mission, whichever comes first.

But it's not long before Dengler is capture by the Pathet Lao who proceed to mercilessly torture and degrade Dengler on a constant basis. They eventually take him a prisoner of war camp deep in the jungle. There's only a handful of guards overseeing the five prisoners being held there, two Americans and three Laotians. The Americans, Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) and Gene DeBruin (Jeremy Davies), have resigned themselves to their captivity, going along to get along and patiently waiting their eventual release. All of the men have suffered both physically and mentally. Dengler refuses to acquiesce to imprisonment and begins to plot and plan an escape from the camp. The other prisoners are at first reluctant to go along with him, favoring the devil they know (their ruthless captors) over the unknown perils and near certain death awaiting them in the jungle.

But everyone eventually agrees to participate in the succeed or die escape attempt. The men do gain their freedom and go their separate ways once outside of the camp. Only Dengler and Martin stay together and their ordeal is unbelievably hellish. SPOILER: Martin is eventually slain by native tribesmen while Dengler is finally rescued by American forces.

Shot on location in Thailand, RESCUE DAWN features stunning cinematography by Peter Zeitlinger. His camera puts us right there in the jungle beside Dengler and the others as they struggle to escape and survive. The score, by Klaus Badelt and Ernst Reijseger is sparse but beautifully haunting. Herzog, who also wrote the screenplay, does a terrific job of making us feel the physical and mental anguish of the men. Most importantly are the performances by the three American actors. Zahn and Davies are both very good but it's Bale's show the entire way and he suffered for his art, losing weight before production began in order to shoot his emaciated final scenes first, then shooting the rest of the story as he gradually gained his weight back.

RESCUE DAWN is a grueling, at times tough to watch, tribute to one man's refusal to surrender against impossible odds. Recommended.

PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP

"Worry about me."

Now this my friends, this is what I'm talking about when it comes to down and dirty crime films. I'll get to the details in a moment but first, as Paul Harvey used to say, over my shoulder a backwards glance.

I saw the original theatrical release of PAYBACK (1999) on February 22 of that year at the Marble Theater in Marble Falls, Texas. How can I remember such a specific date and time? Easy. I spent that day in the hill country combining business with pleasure. I met my writer buddy Ray Bronk for lunch at the legendary Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls. After lunch, I went to Ray's lake house on Lake Buchanan for a glass of smooth scotch and good conversation. Then I went back into Marble Falls where I met the then owners of the Marble Theater (forgive me, I don't recall their names) for a short interview.

In early 1999, I had already sold and had published an article on historic Texas movie theaters to TEXAS HIGHWAYS magazine. I had in mind to eventually write a book on the subject and was still doing first hand research whenever I could. The Marble, which opened in 1942, was still in operation in 1999 as a first run movie theater, which was the focus of my article and proposed book. After the interview, I went for a brief dinner in town and then returned to the theater to see the film that was playing that night. It was PAYBACK. Oh, and how do I know the date? Because film critic Gene Siskel had passed away two days earlier on February 20th and the marquee at the Marble read "So Long Gene. Thanks for the Memories."

PAYBACK was based on THE HUNTER, the first novel about professional thief Parker by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake). The novel was first filmed as POINT BLANK (1967) by John Boorman with Lee Marvin as "Walker". It's a neo-noir masterpiece but it's not exactly the novel. THE HUNTER was also adapted into a brilliant graphic novel by the incredible Darwyn Cooke in 2009. Cooke has done a couple of other Parker graphic novels and they are all highly recommended, as is everything the man does.

The version of PAYBACK I saw at the Marble Theater that night was radically different than the version I watched the other day. That's because after the film was finished by writer/director Brian Helgeland, the studio insisted on some changes, changes which Helgeland refused to perform. The studio made the changes anyway resulting in a longer running time and a less than satisfying narrative. There was an opening scene that showed "Porter" (Mel Gibson) being operated on for two bullet wounds. Thee was a voice over narration through out the film and everything had a washed out bluish tint to it.

Still, with nothing to compare it to, the original PAYBACK was a serviceable enough little crime film. Nothing spectacular but nothing terrible either. In 2006, Helgeland regained the rights to the film and decided to re cut it into a preferred "director's cut" so his original cinematic vision could be seen.

The results are amazing. The film has a shorter running time. Gone is the meatball surgery opening scene. The voice over narration is jettisoned. And most importantly, the superb cinematography by Ericson Core, stripped of a blue filter, is finally given a chance to shine.

Porter is a professional thief who pulls a heist with Val Resnick (Gregg Henry who looks for all the world like the love child of James Caan and Clu Gulager). Resnick and Porter's wife Lynn (Deborah Unger), double cross him, shoot him in the back and leave him for dead. He gets better and comes back with a vengeance. All Porter wants is his money back, a tidy sum of $70,000 and he'll kill anyone who gets in his way.

Parker runs a gauntlet of bent cops, the Chinese mob (from whom the money was originally stolen) and the local "outfit" which is run by Carter (William Devane), Fairfax (James Coburn) and Bronson (Sally Kellerman as a voice heard only on the phone). Porter is aided by high class hooker Rosie (Maria Bello) and the body counts ratchets up until Porter achieves his objective.

The brilliance of this version of PAYBACK is that Helgeland has opted to set the action in an unnamed large American city. Is it New York? Chicago? The location is never identified (although much of the exteriors were shot in Chicago). And it's never clear exactly when this is taking place as vintage '70s cars are front and center in many scenes while '90s models are glimpsed in the backgrounds. Plus, there are rotary dial phones, among other anachronisms. The result is a timeless crime story taking place in a nameless city, all of which infuses the film with a real '70s crime film vibe.

PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP is a first rate little crime film. It has all of the elements of crime fiction that I dig. Read the original novel, check out the graphic novel and see this film for a full dose of the Stark/Parker magic. If you love this stuff like I do there's more of this material to enjoy. Highly recommended.

IT'S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Howard Hawks and John Wayne made some great movies together.

EL DORADO (1966) is not one of them.

Howard Hawks ranks as one of the great directors of the 20th century American cinema. He began making films in the silent era (1926) and ended his long and illustrious career in 1970. Hawks proved himself a master of many genres including film noir (THE BIG SLEEP (1946)), screwball comedy (BRINGING UP BABY (1938), HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), BALL OF FIRE (1941)), crime (SCARFACE (1932)), war (SERGEANT YORK (1941), AIR FORCE (1943), science fiction (THE THING (1951)), musicals (GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953))  and westerns (RED RIVER (1948) and RIO BRAVO (1959)). Those last two starred genre icon John Wayne and both are great films.

The films listed above are merely the cream of the crop of the Hawks filmography. His films were always consistently well made and worth watching no matter the subject matter. A Howard Hawks film was almost always a good film.

But the argument can be made that after RIO BRAVO, Hawks ran out of creative gas. He kept working but his output was less than stellar and frankly disappointing. HATARI! (1962), another John Wayne adventure movie, is bloated and pokey with no real story or conflict and it only comes to life during the animal trapping sequences (which are very well done). MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT? (1964) was a failed rom-com with Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss. RED LINE 7000 (1965) is a racing picture starring a young James Caan that seems better suited to the exploitation/drive-in circuit given the setting, characters and plot. Next came EL DORADO (we'll get to that in a minute) followed by RIO LOBO (1970), another John Wayne western which proved to be Hawks's last film. Not a great way to finish out a long and illustrious career but certainly not a weak enough fade away to tarnish the man's reputation as an important filmmaker.

EL DORADO, which I watched for the first time the other day is not a bad film in and of itself. It's just that I've seen it before. And so has anyone reading this who has ever seen RIO BRAVO. DORADO is a virtual remake of that earlier film as was RIO LOBO. That's going to the same well three times with diminishing results each time.

DORADO has a screenplay by noted science fiction author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett. Hawks liked Brackett's work as she wrote or contributed to the screenplays of THE BIG SLEEP, RIO BRAVO, HATARI!, MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT? and RIO LOBO. She also wrote THE LONG GOODBYE (1973) (another Raymond Chandler adaptation) and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980). So both Hawks and Brackett share some of the blame for recycling material from BRAVO into DORADO, although DORADO is credited to being based on the novel The Stars in Their Courses by Harry Brown.

The evidence speaks for itself. John Wayne stars as Cole Thornton, a gun for hire in the post Civil War west. Robert Mitchum is Sheriff J.P. Harrah, a man with both a badge and a drinking problem. James Caan is Mississipi, a reckless young man out for revenge. Arthur Hunnicutt is Deputy Sheriff Bull, a cantankerous old coot who fancies himself a veteran Indian fighter. There are not one but two beautiful women as love interests for these men: Charlene Holt as Maudie and Michele Carey as Joey.

The four male leads are tasked with keeping a prisoner, land baron Bart Jason (Ed Asner) in jail. They're up against an army of hired guns led by Nelson McLeod (Christopher George). There are a couple of well staged action sequences but there's also a helluva lot of talk and expository info dumps in the 126 minutes of running time.

Everything matches up perfectly with RIO BRAVO. Wayne is Wayne. Mitchum is the drunk lawman played by Dean Martin. Caan is a substitute for Ricky Nelson. Hunnicutt is channeling Walter Brennan and it takes two hotties to fill the tights of smoking hot Angie Dickinson. Hell, even the town and jail set look the same and I'd swear that are scenes in the jail that are framed, shot and written almost exactly as they were in BRAVO.

Still the film was a box-office smash when it was released in 1967. Wayne's name on a movie marquee still sold tickets as did Hawks's name on the credits. Mitchum was no slouch either as far as movie stars go and old fashioned westerns were still popular, the genre having yet to fully experience the paddles to the chest shock of the cinema of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah.

EL DORADO is an entertaining film and it's not a bad way to pass an afternoon. But I honestly wish there was something fresher, something more original going on. I've seen RIO BRAVO and it's far and away the better film.

BERLIN EXPRESS

BERLIN EXPRESS (1948) is a routine RKO spy thriller which is raised a notch by Lucien Ballard's on-location cinematography of war torn Frankfurt and Berlin. Seeing the devastation of those two cities (a result of Allied bombing), it's a wonder that either city was able to rebuild after the war.

The film, written by Curt Siodmak and directed by the great Jacques Tourneur,  plays like a pseudo-documentary with voice over narration explaining the post-war situation and the occupation of Germany by four separate nations: the U.S., Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Representatives from those four countries, along with some German citizens, find themselves on a train ultimately bound for Berlin. One of the passengers is a peace activist professor lobbying for a restored and unified Germany. He's supposed to deliver a report in Berlin that will have a bearing on the reconstruction of Germany. But someone doesn't want the professor to reach Berlin alive. A bomb explodes in his compartment but the man killed is revealed to be a decoy. The real professor (Paul Lukas) and his secretary (Merle Oberon) continue with their mission but when the professor is kidnapped it's up to the four unlikely comrades to team-up and try to find him. The four are American Robert Lindley (Robert Ryan), Frenchman Perrot (Charles Korvin), Brit Sterling (Robert Coote) and Russian Lt. Maxim (Roman Toporow). The professor is eventually rescued but there's a final plot twist: one of the four is actually a German spy who intends to finish the job of stopping the professor.

When the group finally arrives in Berlin they must all go their separate ways, each to their own country's area of occupation. It's a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor of how individuals can work together for the greater good but nations are unable to reach a similar accord.

With a brief appearance by granite jawed Charles McGraw, BERLIN EXPRESS is a tightly constructed little thriller that moves swiftly amid the bombed out ruins of the German cities. Worth seeing.

PRIVATE FILES OF THE SHADOW

THE SHADOW was published by DC Comics from 1973 to 1975. It lasted all of 12 issues. There were, of course previous iterations of the classic pulp hero in comics prior to DC's efforts and there have been many other interpretations in the more than 40 years since this short lived series ran its' course. But in many ways, the 1970s DC version of the character stands as the definitive comic book one, thanks in large part to the work of writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Michael Wm. Kaluta.

The powers that be at DC made the correct editorial decision at the time they acquired the Shadow property and that was that the stories must be set in the 1930s, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines in which the Shadow first appeared. Efforts to update the Shadow and place him and his adventures in contemporary times have been interesting and entertaining to a fair degree but none are as satisfying to the pulp purists among us (myself included) who prefer to see the character in the milieu which best suits him.

O'Neil did a masterful job of crafting original Shadow stories in a mere 17 pages (no easy task) and Kaluta's dark, moody, atmospheric and art eco inspired line work brought everything to vivid and exciting life. He was inked on a few stories by another legendary comics artist, Berni Wrightson. In short, these comics were extremely faithful to the universe and mythos that Walter Gibson (and others) created in the long running pulp series.

But Kaluta didn't illustrate all 12 issues. Artwork in other issues was handled by Frank Robbins (one of my personal favorites) and the underrated E.R. Cruz. When DC comics decided to reprint the Shadow comics in a handsome hardcover volume entitled THE PRIVATE FILES OF THE SHADOW in 1989, they chose only the O'Neil/Kaluta issues (along with a new Kaluta story) to showcase. I wish they had sprung for the extra production cost and reprinted the series in its' entirety. After all, it was only 12 issues. Oh well, at least we have these stories in a permanent edition to savor.

DC's THE SHADOW was published shortly after Marvel Comics published an 8 issue run of DOC SAVAGE (1972-1974). I recall reading a Bullpen Bulletins page announcement about the then forthcoming Doc Savage series that contained these words (or something pretty close): "And to forestall about a zillion questions, yep, we've got the SHADOW lined up in the months to come also." Clearly Marvel Comics never published a SHADOW series but this raises a question I don't believe I've ever seen answered. Did Marvel ever really have the rights to a Shadow comic nailed down for certain or were they just engaged in negotiations with Conde Nast (owners of the Shadow property) to publish the book, negotiations that somehow fell through? Did Conde Nast nix the deal after seeing sales figures for Marvel's DOC SAVAGE and decide to go with DC? Did DC offer more money? Did Marvel drop the hint in that Bullpen Bulletins page hoping to attract the attention of Conde Nast? I honestly have no idea. If one of my readers has the answer to this question, please share it with us.

What if Marvel had acquired the rights to the Shadow? What would the book have looked like? What creative team would have handled the script and art? Who knows (besides the Shadow!) but here's what I would have loved to see. Imagine THE SHADOW published as a black and white magazine (as DOC was after the color comic folded). The larger page count would have given scripter Marv Wolfman room to really cut loose and develop more complex stories. And those stories would have been drawn in pencils only (no inks) by the incomparable Gene Colan. Boy, would I love to have seen that!

FINGERS OF DEATH

FINGERS OF DEATH, first published in March, 1933, was the 25th Shadow adventure. The paperback reprint (pictured above), was published in September, 1977. The fantastic cover art is by the legendary Jim Steranko. I finished reading this one the other night and it's a good one.

The death of a wealthy businessman in the small town of Holmsford leads to a series of gruesome murders, all committed by mysterious "fingers of death". Each of the victims is a prominent businessman and as the plot progresses, we learn that they were all part of a conspiracy to hide a cache of stolen money. The hiding place is about to be revealed and the money will be split between the men. But one man decides he wants it all for himself and sets in motion his evil scheme.

The Shadow and agent Harry Vincent travel to Holmsford to investigate and try and stop the killings. There's a minimum of gun play in this story but the action still moves at a good clip. FINGERS OF DEATH is a bonafide mystery novel with the identity of the killer (and a nice plot twist) being revealed at the end. The Shadow wreaks his vengeance (of course) and leaves town. Not the greatest Shadow pulp I've read but a solid and entertaining yarn nevertheless.