|
Post by jamesdoig on Oct 11, 2019 20:38:20 GMT
I will remain off topic, so be warned :-)
Marvel was – and is – very present in Europe. Like DC. From 1966 to 1973 an outfit called BSV published 238 issues. There were not chronological, more like an anthology. The no.1 for instance was Spider-Man 29, no.2 was Fantastic Four 43 and so on. Later they expanded the line up to series like Iron Man or Captain Marvel. Also they were in black and white. In 1974 BSV underwent a transformation and became Williams. (This is rather complicated, as these publishers were a subsidiary of an American outfit called Williams Communications Group which in turn was a daughter of Warner.) Everything got re-tooled. They started with 7 series chronologicaly, so this time the reader got Fantastic Four 1 or Avenger 1.
Tomb of Dracula and Frankenstein were part of this. ToD was cancelled with issue 33 to my regret. I read the Stoker novel as a young lad and became a life long fan. So everything Dracula was of interest. ToD was a relevation with its great art by Colan and the adultish story-telling. Especially compared to the early superhero work. Even in 74 the early Lee/Kirby books were old-fashioned and seemed poor to my 14 year old taste. While Frankenstein became later an unreadable mess, the first issues with their rather faithful adaption of the novel inspired me to read the book.
The same publisher also did a anthology series called Horror which published material of DC's mystery line, from House of Mystery to Ghosts and so on. 148 monthly issues from 72 to 85. But to my regret I never collected these :-) In hindsight these were so well done, they chose the best covers, among them all the Kaluta or Wrightson works. A similar thing happened in Australia where you had local publishers like Gredown, Yaffa, and Page reprinting a lot of stuff. These are Yaffa publications of, I think, Marvel horror comics, published here in small A5 format: Gredown seems the most desirable these days, probably because of the covers - the stories are pretty ordinary, some outsourced to Spain for some reason.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 11, 2019 21:21:42 GMT
I love those covers, James. So that's the original Vault ... ... of .... .... EEEE-vil! /bwahahahaha!
Love it!
cheers, Steve
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 12, 2019 9:48:07 GMT
.... The godawful Druid Stone by Simon Majors (Gardner Fox) I'm so glad you reminded me. What a waste of glorious cover art. The Druid Stone. The Victor Kalim isn't bad, either. 80+ pages into Fogbound and it's been good value so far. I particularly like that Ross ends each chapter on a cliff-hanger. Since last we patrolled deck, our much persecuted ingénue has been half-strangled from behind by unseen hands during a screening of one of her aunt's most awful movies in the ship's auditorium. Hunky screenwriter Jack Henderson, who arrived as she slumped unconscious in her seat, saw no-one! A distraught Hawley lets on he's been notified by the authorities that the escaped lunatic, Joseph Holland, has almost certainly crept aboard. On the budding romance front, Gale and Jack's visit to ship's luxury heated swimming pool courts disaster. Jack is felled from behind with a wrench before he can even get his toes wet, leaving unseen assailant free to plunge in the pool and drag Gale under by the legs. If handsome young Captain Redman hadn't turned up when he did - well, we dread to think! Everyone seems so desperate to point the finger at the escaped loony that the accusations ring hollow - neither Redman (seems Jack might have some competition) or Gale believe he's even aboard. Returning to her cabin after dark, Gale is pursued by a phantom in a pillbox hat. So it's true. The ghost of her aunt is out to murder her! Or is She ?!!!!!
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 12, 2019 12:02:58 GMT
This is hilarious! Thanks so much for the latest dish from Fogbound, Kev! The genius of Dan Ross lives on.
cheers, Steve
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 21, 2019 2:54:13 GMT
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Oct 21, 2019 8:35:13 GMT
Thanks for the link! This features a LOT of work.
Recently the movie version House of Dark Shadows was on TNT Movies. I discovered it rather per accident. Thanks to my reading of some blogs I am roughly informed about the storylines of Dark Shadows, also I watched the TV remake long ago - the one with Highlander Adrian Paul in a supporting role - and have a hazy recollection of a cut together (?) ghost movie with David Quentin Selby.
Mostly I thought the movie unintentionally funny and badly made. Characters appeared without being properly introduced or just vanished if you blinked. Story-lines were not very well established. On the other hand it had quite a manic and amusing intensity with Barnabas ripping his way through the family and it was surprisingly gory. One aspect I also liked that the movie was produced in a time where not every actor had to look like a model. It was one off-putting aspect when I started watching Vampire Diaries and couldn't believe for a moment that these are supposed to be high school kids or whatever.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 21, 2019 15:53:42 GMT
Hi Andreas,
Thanks for your comments about House of Dark Shadows. I've seen comments from several people over the years who stumbled upon it never having seen the TV show and the comments and reactions are quite similar.
When he helmed this film, Dan Curtis's directing experience had been limited to television. And he had done very little of that, mainly a few episodes of Dark Shadows during a couple of weeks in 1968 and 1969. He was helped on HoDS by Lela Swift, who was an important veteran TV director who had done anthology TV in the 1950s and eventually wound up directing a huge amount of the Dark Shadows TV serial. Curtis was also fortunate on HoDS to have Arthur Ornitz as the principle cinematographer. To the extent that the film looks good at all, it's mainly thanks to Arthur Ornitz.
Both HoDS and the sequel, which you recalled as a patched-together ghost movie starring David Selby, ran overtime. MGM wanted 90 minute features so these could be paired on double bills, which were popular in the 70s. The result with HoDS was that any scene involving characters that did not directly move the action forward was axed. I think Curtis's attitude was that everyone who went to see the movie would already be a fan of the TV show, so there was no need, in his perception, to establish Collinwood or the people who lived there. With the second film, the re-editing resulted in a seance sequence that explained everything that happened in the entire story being deleted. So the movie now makes no sense at all.
The funniest version of how people unfamiliar with the TV show react to HoDS is a video of Elvira, a popular TV horror host in the 1980s and 1990s noted for her extremely large breasts and even bigger hair, narrating a screening of this film on her show. The clips were edited together on you tube a few years ago, which is where I saw it. Elvira keeps rolling her eyes and asking "Who ARE all these people? What are their names again?" I thought it was pretty funny and I think accurate for how a lot of people have watched this film. The barrage of characters in the first 15 minutes or so tends to leave the viewer in a daze and I think the result is that what follows looks pretty funny. Or simply boring if you aren't amused by any of the story.
In my mind, HoDS is now paired with another popular vampire film of 1970, Count Yorga, Vampire. Both have similar plots and similar set-up (courtly mysterious man charms everyone, turns out to be a vicious, voracious vampire), but very different styles. Yorga was originally meant to be a soft-core porn film--I read that most of the actresses worked in porn in late Sixties LA, and it was originally a project for film students. It turned out to make a lot of money for the distributor (I doubt much of the money was seen by anyone involved).
The most effective scenes in HoDS are when the vampire has aged to nearly 200 years old due to a failed attempt to cure him of being a vampire. The makeup for this was the work of Dick Smith and a nearly identical makeup by him was used on Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man which I believe was shot right after HoDS. Smith re-used the makeup again on David Bowie in The Hunger (1983) and again, this scene was the most effectively horrific moment in that film.
There's a marvelous Japanese poster or newspaper ad for HoDS which is like Andy Warhol does Dark Shadows (Warhol and his friends were reportedly fans of the TV show). It's this collage of repeated images of the horrifically aged Barnabas Collins with bared fangs and blood running down his lips. Very Grand Guignol.
cheers, Steve
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 22, 2019 5:02:32 GMT
After the peaks and troughs of flawed masterpiece The Partridge Family #4: The Ghost of Graveyard Hill, back with Fogbound where, as we enter the home stretch, the ship is now literally that. Everyone, living or dead, is still under suspicion of trying to kill young Gale. Whoever is making all these attempts on her life really should give up - they are absolutely hopeless at it. She's been half drowned three times to my knowledge and still no joy. Makes it worse when we learn he, she or it responsible, is packing a gun. That they make such a professional job of eliminating two of the support cast, both efficiently bumped off in quick succession, makes you wonder what they're playing at. A top coat and black felt hat as worn by Joseph Holland when he fled the asylum is found below deck, suggesting there is a stowaway aboard after all! Mervin Hawley, unsatisfied with the film's ending, instructs Jack Henderson to rewrite it, this time casting Hedda's husband, Jerry Hall, as a murderer. Male lead and chief suspect Steve Benson threatens a law suit, fearing his career will be ruined should he play a villain. Jane Fair, the diva of the piece, has gone awful quiet (though not as terminally so as Kate "former star" Paxton). Joseph Holland surfaces from his hidey hole, vaguely threatens Gale, and is easily overpowered and safely locked up. Murderer restrained! Panic over! Everyone agrees. Except Gale. And the ghost of Hedda Grant! The final reveal, while not exactly a cheat, is so outrageous I can only admire Ross his audacity.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Oct 22, 2019 9:42:03 GMT
The most effective scenes in HoDS are when the vampire has aged to nearly 200 years old due to a failed attempt to cure him of being a vampire. The makeup for this was the work of Dick Smith and a nearly identical makeup by him was used on Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man which I believe was shot right after HoDS. Smith re-used the makeup again on David Bowie in The Hunger (1983) and again, this scene was the most effectively horrific moment in that film. cheers, Steve Interesting facts, Steve. You are right, this scene was quite good. I guess it was the right decision in HoDS to ditch the whole Angelique plot and just retain the Dr Hoffman story. From todays perspective it is hard to fathom why DS was such a hit a while back then. But it reads better in a summary then seen on the screen, I guess. I read some of the daily summarys and the pace is - of course - glacial. I browsed one of Ross' DS novelisations on archive org. I think I read the half and then the ending. Barnabas, Quentin and the Serpent. Holy sh*t, Batman, this is truly dire. One of those "historical" novels. The plot is right out of Scooby Doo, Barnabas is suddenly cured - maybe there is an explanation in the half I skipped or maybe not, who cares - and Quentin is some whiny asshole killing some people basically out of spite. I read a lot Gothics over the years and I like the genre because of its unpredictability. But this is without any atmosphere whatsoever, the protagonists are too dumb to live and the plot is beyond stupid. At least the novel is mercifully short. The one thing of advantage considering that today's novelisations are mostly bloated and bland. Frankly I think Ross could do better then this. I seem to remember that I thought some of his independent Gothics readable. But maybe I confuse him with Virginia Coffman, another of those omnipresent writers. The final reveal, while not exactly a cheat, is so outrageous I can only admire Ross his audacity. I know what you mean. Same can be said for this one. When I wrote Scooby Doo above, I meant exactly this. Some fake monster on a pole and a "disguised" with an eyepatch Quentin. Unbelievable.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 22, 2019 10:36:58 GMT
The final reveal, while not exactly a cheat, is so outrageous I can only admire Ross his audacity. I know what you mean. Same can be said for this one. When I wrote Scooby Doo above, I meant exactly this. Some fake monster on a pole and a "disguised" with an eyepatch Quentin. Unbelievable. I think you got off lightly. In Fogbound's case {Spoiler}we've all been shafted by a transvestite!
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 22, 2019 13:28:48 GMT
LOL, Dem. What went through my mind in your initial remarks about the finale of Fogbound was exactly what you clarified in the "spoiler" comment. Haha.
Barnabas, Quentin and the Serpent was one of the last of Ross's DS novels, if I recall aright. I read nearly all of them back when they were published--my only excuse is that I was addicted to Dark Shadows and the show had gone off the air one or two years before the final novels were published. But the thing with the books is that they bear no resemblance at all to the content or style of the TV show. Neither Barnabas nor Quentin bear any resemblance beyond their names to who they were on screen. So why did I persist? Well, the books had really great photo covers. That's my only excuse. Back then, if I bought a book, I read it.
I'm sure I already mentioned that in some cases, Ross would churn out one of these in 2 weeks or less. He did tell the story in an interview of typing the last chapter(s) of one of these books (I don't know if it was a DS novel or another of his Gothics) sitting in the back seat of his station wagon in front of his post office. Marilyn, his wife, was up front at the steering wheel in case somebody wanted them to move the car.
H.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 23, 2019 8:06:38 GMT
LOL, Dem. What went through my mind in your initial remarks about the finale of Fogbound was exactly what you clarified in the "spoiler" comment. Haha. H. To be specific {Spoiler}it's a man masquerading as a woman masquerading as a ghost who is really incompetent at murdering young actresses.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Oct 23, 2019 10:08:46 GMT
LOL, Dem. What went through my mind in your initial remarks about the finale of Fogbound was exactly what you clarified in the "spoiler" comment. Haha. H. To be specific {Spoiler}it's a man masquerading as a woman masquerading as a ghost who is really incompetent at murdering young actresses. Ah, the Agatha Christie school of masquerading. (Which I always wonder if people back then really thought this believable.) Only her villains are more competent.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 23, 2019 10:31:21 GMT
To be specific {Spoiler}it's a man masquerading as a woman masquerading as a ghost who is really incompetent at murdering young actresses. Ah, the Agatha Christie school of masquerading. (Which I always wonder if people back then really thought this believable.) Only her villains are more competent. In which Christie story does this happen? I am sure it does, but I cannot recollect any.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Oct 23, 2019 13:38:46 GMT
That's hilarious, Kev. It does sound like "classic" Dan Ross. (I saw another PR item last night about the reprint of Ross's Dark Shadows series and the books are being described by the publicist as "the classic Dark Shadows novels"--this type of puffery never fails to raise a weary guffaw in Helrunar Hall.)
cheers, Steve
|
|