A FEAST UNKNOWN

Today I finished reading (for the second time in more than thirty years), A FEAST UNKNOWN, a 1969 science fiction novel by Philip Jose Farmer. The book was reprinted along with several other Farmer titles in 2012 by Titan Books in handsome trade paperback editions.

A FEAST UNKNOWN is a pulp fan's wildest dream come true. It's the story of a fight between Tarzan and Doc Savage, two of the greatest pulp adventure heroes of all time. Except, since this is an unauthorized pastiche, in Farmer's novel the characters go by the names of Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban. A rose by any other name....

Farmer spins an exciting, fast paced adventure yarn which starts with an attack on Grandrith's Kenyan plantation and quickly escalates from there. There's a chase across Africa, a visit to the fabled city (what's left of it) of Opar (here called Ophir), and an ancient secret ceremony in the hidden mountain stronghold of The Nine, a mysterious organization of immortal beings that includes (among others), Odin. Both Grandrith and Caliban are in service to The Nine which has given both men a mysterious elixir that has prolonged their lifespans indefinitely. And that's just for starters.

Grandrith and Trish Wilde (aka Pat Savage) soon find themselves headed from Africa to England to rescue Clio (Jane) from the clutches of a mad Albanian and a final showdown to the death between Grandrith and Caliban. Oh, and along the way, Grandrith discovers that he and Caliban are brothers and that their father was none other than Jack the Ripper.

Farmer complicates this headlong narrative by having both Grandrith and Caliban stricken with a strange mental/physical aberration (a side effect of the elixir which grants them both near eternal life). Both men become sexually aroused at the thought of killing an enemy in battle and both men achieve orgasms when they take the life of another.

That's right folks, this is a pulp novel with plenty of blood and thunder, just like the good old days but with a new element added: sex. The sex in A FEAST UNKNOWN is not of the casual nature either. It's turned up to 11. We're talking erections, orgasms, sodomy, rape, the eating of testes and clitorises, bestiality, incest, coprophagia and more. There's as much (or more) ejaculate spilled as blood. And the scene in which Grandrith and Caliban duel each other with saber like crossed erections at full mast, is something I'll never forget.

The inclusion of such explicit sexual content in a science fiction novel raised quite a few eyebrows when A FEAST UNKNOWN was first published in the late 1960s. It still does. It's over the top. It's shocking. And, in places, it's pretty damned funny. Is it obscene? Pornographic? You bet it is, so, a warning to potential readers, this is definitely X-rated, adults only material.

But the sexual content sheds new psychological insight into these revered and venerable pulp heroes. Farmer writes Grandrith as a human being raised by wild animals would really behave. None of this noble savage crap. And he allows Caliban to come to terms with the enormous stress and strain of his repressed sexuality in ways that Doc Savage would never have approved of.

If you're a fan of the pulps who has ever wanted to see these characters in a new, adult way, A FEAST UNKNOWN comes highly recommended. It's certainly not going to appeal to everyone but open minded pulp aficionados should find it enjoyable. I thought it was one helluva read.

ONE FEARFUL YELLOW EYE

I finished reading ONE FEARFUL YELLOW EYE yesterday afternoon. Originally published in 1966 and recently reprinted by Random House in a handsome trade paperback edition, it's the eighth Travis McGee adventure written by the late, great John D. MacDonald. It's the fourth McGee novel I've re-read this year (after THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY, NIGHTMARE IN PINK and A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING). Like those books (and many other MacDonald titles), I read YELLOW EYE for the first time about thirty years ago. I remember having read it but I didn't recall the particulars of the story.

In this one, McGee gets called to Chicago (a city he doesn't much care for) to aid his old friend Gloria Geis. It seems her late husband, the successful and wealthy Dr. Fortner Geis, converted almost all of his assets to cash before he died of a terminal disease. The trouble is, that cash, in the amount of six hundred thousand dollars, can't be found. It appears that someone put the squeeze on the good doctor. But who, for what reason and where is the money now?

McGee's investigation uncovers some dark family secrets before he finally stumbles upon the truth of what really happened. Oh and he manages to defrost a frigid, sexually repressed young woman with a few waves of his patented "magic dick". After tying up loose ends in Chicago, McGee returns to Florida with the young lady in tow but there's yet one last twist of the narrative knot to come.

ONE FEARFUL YELLOW EYE features a couple of very bad characters as the villains behind the scheme but there's not much action to speak of until the very end of the book and when it comes, it's worth the wait. But before that, MacDonald gives us another cast of well drawn characters, makes McGee and us look one way when what's really going on is right over here and tons of McGee's unique perspective on the modern world. Thumbs up.

GRAND CENTRAL MURDER

The one-sheet (above) for GRAND CENTRAL MURDER (1942) (which I watched yesterday with my buddy Kelly Greene) makes the claim that the film is "screamingly funny" and "screamingly thrilling." That's a lie. It's neither.

What this MGM B-movie (it was made in 22 days) is, is a comedy murder mystery that simply doesn't work. It's not funny at all. The "comedy" bits consist of overacting and mugging by Sam Levene who plays a soda-pop addicted and incompetent police detective. He's gathered a cast of suspects to investigate the murder of gorgeous Broadway diva/gold digger  Patricia Dane. Included in this assemblage is Van Heflin, a young, smarter-than-the-police (you know he's bright, he smokes a pipe) private detective and his lovely wife Virginia Grey. Next to the very young and overly animated Van Heflin, Patricia Dane and Virginia Grey are the best things about this dreary film. They were both very attractive ladies.

The questioning continues, interspersed with flashbacks. At one point, director S. Sylvan Simon seems to have suddenly decided that all of this talk was pretty damn boring and a fist fight between Heflin and suspect Tom Conway was called for in order to liven things up. It doesn't work. All of the suspects are finally gathered in the private rail car where the murder occurred and Heflin reveals the killer. Yawn.

There are many other films out there that meld mystery and comedy much more successfully than is done in GRAND CENTRAL MURDER. If you're a die-hard MGM devotee or a fan of any of the players, you might enjoy this one. Otherwise, GRAND CENTRAL MURDER gets a thumbs down.

INSOMNIA

I haven't seen every film directed by Christopher Nolan but I can tell you that I've enjoyed each and every one of his films that I have seen. I've yet to see his debut feature, FOLLOWING (1998) and THE PRESTIGE (2006) and like many other film fans, I'm anxiously awaiting the release of INTERSTELLAR later this year.

I saw MEMENTO (2000) when it was first released and I was mightily impressed by this clever neo-noir's innovative told-backwards narrative structure. It was a fascinating, difficult to pull off feat of storytelling but Nolan handled it extremely well. I thoroughly enjoyed all three films in his Batman trilogy: BATMAN BEGINS (2005), THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012). A buddy of mine thinks that Nolan's films "ruined" Batman. They didn't. If any filmmaker "ruined" Batman, it was Joel Schumacher, director of the abominable BATMAN FOREVER and BATMAN AND ROBIN. But we just celebrated the 75th birthday of Batman and the caped crusader appears to be very much alive and well in a multitude of media. He's pretty durable for a seventy-five-year-old. Nolan's INCEPTION (2010), is one of the ten best films I've seen so far in this 14 and 1/2 year old 21st century.

I finally got around to watching INSOMNIA (2002) the other day, which comes between MEMENTO and BATMAN BEGINS, in the Nolan filmography. It's another very good neo-noir that starts out as a straight murder mystery and then takes a turn into something far more complex.

Al Pacino stars as a celebrated LAPD homicide detective sent to Alaska (along with his partner) to investigate the brutal murder of a teenage girl. The heat is on back in LA as both men are being investigated by Internal Affairs. Once in Alaska, Pacino is teamed up with a young police woman (Hilary Swank), who has studied every case in Pacino's career. Pacino and the local cops soon corner a suspect in a deserted cabin in the woods but the suspect escapes and, in the ensuing pursuit in a very heavy fog, Pacino winds up accidentally shooting and killing his partner. This is a good thing for Pacino, as his partner was about to sing to IA. Pacino figures he can manipulate the evidence in the shooting and make it look like the suspect shot his partner leaving him free and clear to continue his murder investigation.

But Swank is assigned to investigate the shooting and the facts just don't add up. Meanwhile, Pacino is contacted by the killer (Robin Williams), who knows he killed his partner. A tense game of cat and mouse begins between the two men. They are both guilty of killing but both men see a way out of their respective predicaments by working together. Williams will keep quiet about the death of Pacino's partner if Pacino will help Williams frame a patsy for the girl's murder.

To complicate the issue, Pacino is haunted by memories of a past homicide investigation and he's stressed out by lack of sleep. He can't adjust to the perpetual daylight in Alaska and his sleep deprivation leads to hallucinations, lapses of judgement and a suffocating increase in guilt, remorse and regret.

Nolan puts this cast through a twisty thriller highlighted by gorgeous location photography and two strong performances from Pacino and Williams. Pacino can sometimes be a bit hammy in my opinion but he's good here as a man slowly going insane under the immense mental and physical strains he's experiencing. He makes a great noir protagonist: seriously flawed but desperately trying to do the right thing. Williams dials the mugging down to zero and plays his soft spoken mystery writer turned killer as a calm, cool and collected regular guy which only adds to the creepiness factor.

Will both men get away with their crimes? Will Pacino purge himself of his guilt? Will he ever get a good night's sleep? Those questions (and more) are answered in the climax of the film. I thoroughly enjoyed INSOMNIA. It's yet another Christopher Nolan film that's a winner in my book.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

MARVEL SUPER-HEROES, a 1960s comic book published by, who else, Marvel Comics, had an interesting run. The title began in 1966 as FANTASY MASTERPIECES,  a regular size monthly comic book that reprinted horror, science fiction and fantasy stories from Marvel's past. Then with issue number three, the title became a giant-size comic book with Golden Age Captain America reprints in the front of the book, backed up by the usual horror/sf/fantasy fare. Over the next few issues. the reprinted Golden Age material expanded to include stories starring Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch and the All Winners Squad. The title was a gold mine (you should pardon the expression) of vintage material that I (and many other Marvelites) were seeing for the very first time.

Then, with issue number twelve, the title changed its' name to MARVEL SUPER-HEROES. The lead feature was a brand new character, the Kree spaceman Captain Mar-Vel who went by the name Captain Marvel. The Golden Age material was still there, but was now relegated to the back of the book. After two issues, Captain Marvel was spun off into his own title and the lead spot in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES became a place to spotlight existing Marvel characters and introduce new features. Number fourteen featured a new Spider-Man story, number fifteen starred Medusa of the Inhumans, the WWI aviator avenger the Phantom Eagle flew for the first time in number sixteen and the new origin of the recently revamped Black Knight was revealed in number seventeen.

Issue number eighteen, pictured above, has a cover date of January 1969, which means I bought it sometime in the fall of 1968. I was twelve years-old. It was the first appearance of a new science fiction based team of super-heroes named The Guardians of the Galaxy. With artwork by Gene Colan (one of my all-time favorite comic book artists), this issue of MSH introduced us to (from left to right), Vance Astro, Charlie-27, Martinex and Yondru. These four characters were the original incarnation of the Guardians and they remain my favorite iteration of the team. Over the years, the Guardians have gone through multiple revivals and re-boots and the line-up of the team has changed accordingly. It's the most recent line-up (Starlord, Gamora, Drax, Groot and Rocket Raccoon) that are on display in the new Marvel/Disney film, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, which I saw yesterday.

I must confess that I never thought I would see a GUARDIANS movie of any kind, no matter what line-up was featured. These characters were all strictly B or C listers. Interesting, yes, but lacking the star power and name recognition of Captain America, Spider-Man and Iron Man.

But watching GUARDIANS on the big screen yesterday (in very good 3-D to boot), I was once again that twelve-year old kid who fell in love with the characters way back in 1968. GUARDIANS is pure fun, full of laughs, '80s pop culture references, dazzling chases and battles, jaw-dropping special effects, and a team of losers, misfits and outcasts that bicker and snipe at each other before uniting to become true heroes.

The first part of the film introduces the players (good and bad) and sets up the situation. The five Guardians to be eventually find themselves in a deep-space prison. They escape (of course) and set off to save the universe with plenty of obstacles in the way.

Only one of the original comic book Guardians makes an appearance here. It's Yondru (Michael Rooker) and he's changed considerably. Here, he's the leader of an intergalactic band of pirates named The Ravagers. He's sports blue skin, a modified Mohawk and a flying arrow that he controls by whistling. Other Marvel characters fill out the cast including Ronan the Accuser, the Nova Corps, Nova Prime, Nebula, the Collector and Thanos. And was that a Celestial from Jack Kirby's THE ETERNALS in one shot? Oh, and the after the credits scene has to be seen to be believed.

If you're looking for a serious, sober minded science fiction film you're probably going to have to wait until later this year when Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR is released. But if you're in the mood for a rollicking, fast paced, action packed, funny and FUN movie, go see THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. Twelve-year-old Frank loved it.

CLOVERFIELD

The first modern "found footage" horror film was THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999). Since then, there have been dozens of these types of film produced including PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2007), REC (2007), QUARANTINE (2008) and CHRONICLE (2012). It's easy to see why so many of these "found footage" films have been produced in the last few years. They're relatively cheap to produce, they don't require the presence of big name actors and special effects can be relatively minimal. These low budget horror/science fiction/fantasy films have become their own sub-genre and the format/gimmick has yet to run its' course.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was accompanied by a boatload of online buzz when it was first released back in the infancy of the digital age. Internet chatter had some people convinced that the film was real (it wasn't). The hype positioned BWP as one of the scariest movies ever made (it's not). I saw the film in the theater on first release. I didn't like it. I thought the idea/concept was clever and fairly well executed but I hated the three characters and really didn't care what happened to them. Plus, the "plot" of the film depended upon them behaving stupidly instead of logically in order to place them into increasing jeopardy. And the last shot of the film elicited a "WTF?" from me as I was unsure about exactly what I was seeing and what it was supposed to mean.

Nonetheless, BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, produced on a budget between $500,000 and $750,000, made $248,639,099. The handwriting was on the wall. "Found footage"films could be money in the bank for entry level filmmakers. 

CLOVERFIELD, a found footage science fiction film produced by J.J, Abrams (director of STAR TREK, SUPER 8, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and the upcoming STAR WARS: EPISODE 7) had a considerably larger budget than BLAIR WITCH but it still operates on the same gimmick. I watched the film for the first time yesterday and I really enjoyed it. 

CLOVERFIELD is an Americanized Godzilla movie with a gigantic, bipedal (non-saurian) monster attacking New York City. But the conceit of the film is that we see the attack solely from the point of view of one person's hand held digital camera. The film starts at a going-away party in a lower Manhattan loft attended by a bunch of twenty-somethings. This sequence is necessary to set everything up and introduce the major players but once again, I didn't like any of these kids and I thought the scene went on way too long. I kept wanting the story to get to the monster and it does sooner rather than later. Once the attack begins, everything plays out in real time and the action and suspense never lets up as four young people run through the streets of New York trying to avoid the monster and save one of their friends who is trapped in her apartment near Central Park.

As in BLAIR WITCH, CLOVERFIELD depends upon its' characters behaving stupidly in order to advance the story. And once again, I didn't particularly like any of the young people. What I did like were the special effects and action sequences which are very convincing. There are no cutaways to other characters and story lines. We know practically nothing about the monster. Where did it come from? What is it? Is it really dead at the end of the film? This sense of not-knowing adds to the suspense and reality of the situation.

CLOVERFIELD resonates with images from 9-11. Director Matt Reeves (who helmed this summer's DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) does a masterful job of making everything flow smoothly. The special effects are first rate. Three quarters of the film was shot on back lots and in sound stages in California. The crew spent only one week on location in New York City. But everything fits together nicely and I was convinced that these characters were really in a Manhattan under attack by a gigantic monster.

Once you get past the loft scene, CLOVERFIELD is a pedal-to-the-medal science fiction thriller. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Thumbs up!

ALICE

I watched ALICE (1990) for the second time the other day. I saw this Woody Allen romantic comedy on first release. There was a time in my life when I didn't miss a Woody Allen film. Every year, Allen would release a film and every year, I'd go to the theater and see it. Somewhere along the way, I stopped going to the theater to see first run Woody Allen films. Haven't seen one in several years. I know I'm missing some fine work and I'm sure I'll eventually catch up but the fact remains that at some point in my movie going life, seeing every new Woody Allen film as they came out ceased to be a priority for me.

ALICE isn't a bad little movie but it's certainly not one of Woody's best. This slight romantic comedy traffics heavily in magic realism in the story of Alice (Mia Farrow), a repressed woman who's married to a rich and successful New York City businessman (William Hurt). Alice leads a charmed and pampered life, full of shopping trips, massages and lunch dates with her girl friends. But something is missing from her life. Alice is possessed of a nameless ache and a yearning for something more out of life.

She visits a Chinatown herbalist (Keye Luke), who gives her a variety of alternative medicines (along with some hypno-therapy). Before you know it, Alice becomes invisible, she turns into an oversexed vamp, she sees and talks to the ghost of her dead first lover (Alec Baldwin) and even flies through the skies above Manhattan with him.

Alice begins to come out of her shell with the help of the doctor and she soon discovers that she's attracted to a handsome jazz musician (Joe Mantegna), whose child attends the same private school that Alice's children go to. Before you know it, the newly liberated Alice is having an affair with Joe. She enjoys it but she's also consumed by Catholic guilt. On one of her invisible adventures, she spies upon her husband in his office following a Christmas party and discovers that he is cheating on her. 

Devastated by this realization, Alice abandons both her lover and her husband, leaves New York and heads to India to work alongside Sister Theresa. She then returns to Manhattan a changed, contented and a fully realized woman.

Throughout the film, Alice wears a variety of over sized hats that make her look like a grown up version of the storybook character Madeline. She also wears red in many scenes, perhaps a visual cue of her adultery, expressed in scarlet hues (but no letters). 

ALICE was originally filmed in 1989 as THE MAGICAL HERBS OF DR. YANG. But Allen, always the perfectionist, fussed and obsessed over many details and went back and re shot much of the material before finally releasing it in 1990. His screenplay garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

What bothers me about ALICE, indeed, what bothers me about many of Allen's film, is his apparent obsession with adultery. The subject serves as a major plot element in many of his films including HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY, SEPTEMBER and others. It's a chief thematic concern that runs throughout his body of work but he often portrays it as an act which has little or no consequences, with several of his characters cheating on their spouses in his films and getting away with it. I'm not sure what kind of punishment I want to see meted out to those people or even if they do deserve punishment. After all, they're only human and humans make mistakes. But something about Allen's almost cavalier attitude towards adultery just doesn't sit right with me.

I still like Woody Allen and the majority of his films. I think he's one of the greatest filmmakers of the last fifty years. With as long a career as he's had (and continues to have), he can get away with a lesser film every once in awhile. ALICE is certainly one of those lesser works. It's entertaining and worth seeing at least once if you're an Allen fan but it's definitely not masterpiece material.