The Host

I wrote the following review shortly after viewing The Host at the excellent Galaxy Cinema in Cary, NC.

Just tonight, I watched the DVD… if you haven’t seen this film, you really need to.

From director Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder) comes a monster film that Hollywood is under the impression it has been making for the past thirty or so years.

The Host made cinema history in its home of South Korea in 2006 – a monster film, opening on a record number of screens, and breaking the box-office records throughout its domestic run. From July through November, the film sold over 13 million tickets, making it the highest grossing South Korean film of all time, beating the previous leader The King and the Clown, which had attracted 12.3 million people. Take that TMNT!

While a monster film, The Host has many genre elements of both comedy and drama. The movie follows the after-effects of a large dumping of chemicals from a United States Army base into the Han River. Years pass and the Han riverside is a favorite tourist spot and family picnic location. The focus of the film is a tightly knit family. Hee-Bong, the elder parent of the family, runs a snack bar on the riverside selling junk food and fried squid (I’m assuming it’s the equivalent of my native fried dough). His son, middle brother and co-owner of the snack bar, is the often asleep and dim Park Gang-Du. Park’s daughter, Hyun-Seo is a bright and innocent middle-school girl… things never look good for innocents in any horror film, no matter the language.

Using his limited resources, Hee-Bong has provided for his family as best he can, sending his other son Nam-Il to college and supporting daughter Nam-Joo in Olympic-class archery. Yet Nam-Il is an angry, antisocial drunk and Nam-Joo disappoints her family by bringing home not the gold, but the bronze archery medal.

In no time, the tranquility of the domestic drama is broken by the arrival of the mutated beast. About the size of a suburban vehicle, it lunges out of the water and attacks the holiday makers, finally taking Hyun-Seo with it back into the deeps. The family tries to grieve and draw strength from themselves as the press and military make a botch of things, but due to their almost mutual dislike for each other, even that doesn’t go well. After Park gets a call on his mobile from his daughter, they become motivated. With a single mindset holding them together, they decide to hunt down the monster themselves and rescue Hyun-Seo..

While most monster films I’ve seen (and let me tell you… as a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan, I’ve seen a lot!) feature an intelligent scientist or a pragmatic military as its protagonist, this film has as its hero a quartet of dim-witted, angry people. With no real plan and limited resources, they’re determined to find Hyun-Seo and kill the mutant. In addition to the odd mix of humor and horror, it’s this quality that really makes the film shine for me. I’m a sucker for ‘Sad Sack’ characters and the movie is full of them. Rum notions and bad ideas permetate the story, with even the best of characters’ intentions squashed by even bigger incompetents and a military-spawned solution (a gas dumped from a space-age looking sphere called Agent Yellow) that seems to hurt people far more than the monster.

The Host is probably the best monster film I’ve ever seen, but that’s not why you should see it. The gore and horror are minimal and while the design and effects are top notch, it might bore a viewer looking to see a better Godzilla film. Clocking in at over 2 hours, you’d think I’d have needed that coffee I bought to keep conscious, but really I was wide awake in a way that I am only after seeing a really amazing film. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Trailer

Marvel Horror – The Tomb of Dracula

I’ve always thought that Marvel Comics Horror titles were heavily influenced by the Hammer Horror films of the 1960’s and 70’s. These films were far edgier, darker and funkier than the staid Universal Horror films created in the states.

Don’t misunderstand, I totally dig Bela Legosi and Boris Karloff, but Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing had a lot going for them in films that pushed the envelope for horror films in ways that many movie goers never thought possible.

In much the same vein, Marvel Comics had decided after the success of Morbius the Living Vampire to go all out and publish The Tomb of Dracula. All 70 issues of the series were drawn by veteran delineator Gene Colan and inked by sweet Tom Palmer (his Avengers run with Buscema still fills me with fanboy glee). Marv Wolfman worked on nearly the entire series, bring Dracula to the Marvel Universe in a big way.

Dracula himself was larger than life and fought the tights-wearing fun-lovers of Marvel such as Spider-Man, The X-Men and many others but what many remember more than the lead character is the supporting cast, chiefly Blade (pictured below).

The classic jive-talkin’ goggled version of Blade may seem rather dated and ‘groovy’ by today’s standards, but the vampire hunters who fought the Lord of Vampires really took center stage. It’s a testament to the quality and uniqueness of Marvel Comics as a company that they could take a series like Tomb of Dracula and flesh it out.

The series enjoyed a revived interest thanks to the popular reprint series Essential Marvel which reprinted the entire 70 issue series, the black and white magazine stories and other material. Marvel discovered that there was still interest in the character, so they wrapped up loose ends in the series with a new story by the classic team of Wolfman and Colan, much to every readers enjoyment.

A comic series that was rife with the vibe of 70’s Horror, Tomb of Dracula is a milestone in mainstream horror comics. Not only was the series painstakingly produced by a devoted creative team, but enjoys the following of classic and new fans thanks to the reprint books.

When looking for a good horror comic to read, you’re hard pressed to top this one.

Recommended reading:

Essential Tomb of Dracula, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials)
Essential Tomb of Dracula, Vol. 2 (Marvel Essentials)
Essential Tomb of Dracula, Vol. 3 (Marvel Essentials)
Essential Tomb of Dracula, Vol. 4 (Marvel Essentials)
Marvel Milestones: Blade, Man-Thing & Satana

Marvel Horror: Morbius The Living Vampire

Say what you will about Stan Lee, but the man is a maverick, isn’t he? After Frederic Wertham’s harmful statement that comic books lead to juvenile delinquency, the Comics Code Authority was invented to make sure that nothing like the brilliance of E.C. Comics by William Gaines and company would ever grace the back pocket of a young boy. The result was the era of the fuzzy animal comic and many a comic book creator scratching his head to figure out clever ways around the restrictions put upon them.I doubt that vampires held any interest to Stan. I think he just realized that the word ‘vampire’ along with any blood sucking or other such activities was denied him and that just burned him up. So he called in Roy ‘The Boy’ Thomas and Gil ‘Sugar’ Kane to solve the riddle of how you can create a vampire without it being a ‘vampire.’

The result was the howling success of Morbius, the Living Vampire. Though he appears to be yet another Halloween monster villain for the Amazing Spider-Man in his first appearance, the reader later learns that Michael Morbius was once a biochemist. Stricken with a rare blood disorder, he rather foolishly tries to cure himself with a mix of electro shock therapy and bats.

If that sounds weird, let me tell you that I’ve had kidney stone treatments that are far more sound in their execution, trust me.

In any case, this bypassed the whole supernatural un-Christian vampire bugaboo and left Marvel in the clear. Pretty smart, huh? The experiment turns Michael into a science-based vampire and a virtual freak at the same time Peter Parker is trying to solve his own blood disorder that makes him into Spider-Man… and grants him extra appendages in one of the most incredible visuals of the entire Spider-Man series.

Like many of the web crawler’s super villains, Morbius rides the thin line between hero and villain, earning him a starring role in Adventure into Fear and much later thanks to the blockbuster success of the 1990’s Ghost Rider and the Midnight Sons (think Lorenzo Lamas in Renegade… only on fire).

Like many of his kind, Morbius‘ glamor was short-lived. He dwindled away from the comic scene with nary a notice from readers.

Sad, really.

I’d have loved to see him in a Spider-Man 4 movie.

Marvel Horror: Deathlok the Demolisher

In the near future an innocent man is transformed into a strange half-human cyborg. Enraged at the injustice, he sets on freeing the world from the clutches of the evil corporations that run the show in this strange alternate future.Sound like Robocop? Yeah, I think so, too.

But it’s not, it’s the story behind Deathlok the Demolisher who exploded onto the comics scene in 1974 in the anthology series Astonishing Tales. Created by comic vets Rick Buckler and Doug Moench (who went on to work on many comics including Batman for the Distinguished Competition), Deathlok was a super hero tale with a difference. In many ways, it anticipated the 1980’s with its cyberpunk tales of corporate greed and the obsessions with technology and human frailty that birthed the aforementioned Robocop.

Deathlok traveled back in time and met up with both Captain America and Spider-Man but was essentially a loner. Given that his goal was to rewrite history, I can’t say that I’m surprised he didn’t find many friends.

There have been many other iterations of the character over the years when Deathlok came back into vogue in the 1990’s and who can blame that decade for loving him? He’s a great visual with that red uniform and his undead face is very evocative of Jonah Hex while the computer-zed half of his persona keeps him the perennial oddball.

In the Jim Krueger/Alex Ross series Paradise X, Deathlok appeared and was seen to be talking back to his computer half which is constantly feeding him data while to onlookers it seemed the partially dessicated cyborg had lost his mind. It was pretty amusing but also a dark kind of joke. Deathlok cannot escape his fate and is doomed to remain in his half-robot body for all eternity… thanks to the wonders of modern robotics.Deathlok is a lovely blend of sci-fi and horror elements with a healthy dose of super heroics to keep things interesting. Yet again, a nice little dose of Marvel Comics‘ second birth known as the Bronze Age.

Sometime comic book darling Brian Michael Bendis recently unearthed Deathlok and blew some dust from his joints to includse the character in his New Avengers series. It’s a smart move and a sign of Bendis‘ age at the same time. Deathlok is a superb character who is tragic and hilarious at the same time.

Here’s hoping that there will be more to see of him in the future.

Marvel Horror: Son of Satan

The period of Marvel Comics history known as the Bronze Age is probably the weirdest and most inventive in the entire lifespan of the company itself. In the 1970’s, the company became less of a ‘House of Ideas’ as it had been called in the 1960’s and more of a corporate institution. This lead to many of the mainstays of the company becoming less exciting and wild than they had been in their creation, perhaps because images Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America were appearing all over the place from action figures to party plates.

This is not to undermine any of those comics as being ‘less good,’ but it always felt to me that the spark that had inspired the Marvel Age of Comics born in the 1960’s was hard to find in their flagship titles of the era of Disco and more commonly discovered in lesser known comics such as the ones I will be looking at this week.

Whatever the case, the Bronze Age saw more insanely creative and ‘risky’ comic books born than any other era. This was the period that birthed Man-Thing, Ghost Rider, Deathlok, Werewolf by Night and many more. In short, it was the era of horror.

Daimon Hellstorm (AKA Son of Satan) was a man of conflict. The offspring of a mixing of demonic and human blood, he studied all of the strengths and mysteries of the dark arts at his father’s side, but ultimately used that knowledge to undermine and fight Satan on Earth. Setting himself up as an ‘occult detective,’ (hard to come by nowadays) Daimon cast aside his wing collar to reveal his long flowing robes and bare chest (emblazoned with a pentagram) whenever he fought evil.

As a client, you either went for this or not.

Son of Satan starred in the Marvel Comics Spotlight series and was also seen in the oddball sister comic to the Avengers, the Defenders, but he never really found a home in the sales charts at Marvel. He wasn’t much of a mystic and rarely fought big super villains, making him neither a Doctor Strange type, nor a Spider-Man type.

In many ways, Son of Satan epitomizes the Bronze Age character. He was an attempt by Marvel to strike out and create a new mythology. Drawing on the popularity of black magic and the occult found in youth culture of the time, Son of Satan was basically a poor man’s Ghost Rider.

Nonetheless, Son of Satan is a fun read and a time capsule of the 70’s.

The film The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys taps into the general post-1960’s malaise that is embraced by the comics of that time. The movie also features animation sequences by Todd McFarlane (who apparently still lives in that time period). It’s also a great film that my buddy Greg turned me into.

Recently a sampling of his comics was released in Marvel Horror, which belongs on your shelf and bedside table this Halloween season.

Suggested reading/viewing:

Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials)
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Doctor Fate

The story goes that Gardner Fox was a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s work and wanted to introduce a dark sorcerer in much the same vein as the mysterious tales from beyond.It took a while for Doctor Fate to reach that stage (his early comics feature the strange mystic jumping out of trees and bopping crooks on the nose like any other mystery man), but in the end comic readers received one of the most powerful mages in comics.

Debuting in More Fun Comics in 1940, Doctor Fate began as the squinty-eyed tyke, Kent Nelson. Kent’s father was an archaeologist who died suddenly when he unearthed the tomb of the still living Egyptian mage, Nabu the Wise. Feeling more than a little responsible for little Kent’s loss, Nabu raised him to become a sorcerer. Returning to his home in America, Nelson met his partner Inza who assisted him in his investigations of the occult… and not so occult. When he donned the amulet of Anubis and helm of Nabu, he was imbued with strange magical powers while his mentor spoke to him from beyond.

In time, Fate became a member of the Justice Society of America. Alongside fellow mystical super heroes Green Lantern (wielder of the emerald flame), Hawkman (the reincarnated Prince Khufu) and the Spectre (the Wraith of God made flesh), it’s surprising that this incredibly powerful group of heroes fought subpar villains until the 60’s, when Fox returned to writing super heroes to team the JLA and the JSA against bizarre cosmos-spanning threats. I mean, it took the Spear of Destiny to keep these guys from interfering in WWII. These days, it’s editorial.

As the golden-helmed magician gained a second lease on life thanks to his repeated appearances in the JLA, Doctor Fate was given the back of The Flash comics in the late 1970’s, where Cary Bates, Kieth Giffen, and Steve Gerber fleshed him out into a modern super hero (available in the Immortal Doctor Fate series just waiting in the back issue bins of your local comic shop).

After Crisis on Infinite Earths, the character of Doctor Fate underwent a metamorphosis of sorts and emerged as a woman and a kind of Punisher-meets-Doctor Strange character who hurled ank-shaped knives at his foes.

It was a tough time for everyone.

It wasn’t until the Geoff Johns/David Goyer run on JSA in 1999 that Doctor Fate regained his stature.

The first storyline of the new JSA series revolved around Fate being reborn as a child. Unfortunately, this new version of Doctor Fate (Hector Hall) was obsessed with finding his wife Lyta to the point of mania. In much the same masterful manner that he undid the kinks on Hawkman, Johns knit together all of the tangled threads of Fate and at the same time revealed Nabu to be a conniving twisted manipulator who had imprisoned Lyta inside the amulet that Hector had been wearing all along.

Egg on his face.

In the conclusion of the first volume, Hector found his wife and lost the helm.

Finally, Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, and my favorite… Thundarr the Barbarian) has returned to the character with Countdown to Mystery with hot young artist Justiano (Days of Vengeance) on art chores. The first issue, following the beginnings of Kent Nelson’s distant relative (also named Kent Nelson) toward the realm of the mystical and strange.

This new Doctor Fate is a psychiatrist who is teetering on the brink of greatness or oblivion as the power of the golden helm take him deeper into realms that the intellect cannot explain, beyond the sundered veil that Lovecraft often wrote about, beyond the wall of sleep…. beyond the mystery.

For those of you not familiar with Gerber’s writing, he is really something special. A brilliant writer, Steve Gerber perfectly combines the sardonic and sublime with the awe-inspiring elements of what I like to call ‘real good comics.’ We’ve all had those moments when we read a comic and just sat in a kind of glow afterwards, knowing that we had just consumed something worthwhile and meaningful. Gerber is one of the good ones, and a true gift to the comic reading community.

The series is meeting rave reviews and should help this magical hero climb to his rightful place as DC Comics‘ star sorcerer. First issue was just released this month in time for Halloween, no doubt.

Suggested reading:

Golden Age Doctor Fate: Archives – Volume 1
JSA: All Stars Archives – Volume 1
Justice Be Done (JSA: Justice Society of America, Book 1)
Omega: The Unknown Classic TPB
Essential Howard The Duck
Steve Gerber’s blog

Darth Vader in Love

This has been making the rounds lately and I thought I’d share.

Darth Vader in Love

The attention to detail is astounding and it’s also quite funny. The short is from The Peter Serafinowicz Show, who played the girlfriend stealing bastard from ‘Spaced’ and Pete in ‘Shaun of the Dead.’

You have seen Spaced by now, right?

Justice League movie details

There has been a huge leak of info regarding the upcoming Justice League of America movie. It’ll never be clear if it’s the real deal or not until I’ve paid my money and am sitting stone-faced in the theater, ready to be disappointed, but still… you gotta dream.

The leaked details are good… very good, in fact.

So good, that I wager the script is a fake, but only because I’m a terrible grumpy cynic.

The script seems to be written by someone with a deep understanding for each member of the League and what makes them work. The script includes nods to Kingdom Come (a super hero themed diner) and to the recent Countdown to Infinite Crisis (Brother Eye and the OMACs both feature heavily) along with an opening scene of Barry Allen having a meal with his wife, Iris.

It’s a classic comic book fan’s dream come true.

The script also wastes no time introducing the viewers to the characters which is the way to go here.

The last thing anyone wants to see is a ’secret origin’ story of the JLA (despite the spectacular job by Bruce Timm and Co.). The X-Men trilogy could take its time introducing the viewers to Wolverine, Rogue and the rest because each character carried a heavy emotional story. Unless Mark Waid is writing the script (and it is very good, so… nah) I cannot see how a writer could find an emotional ‘in’ for the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and the other two guys. They are impenetrable icons.This is the meat of the DC/Marvel debate. DC Comics characters are icons, Marvel characters are flawed ‘people.’ You can have fun with both, but it’s very difficult to make an icon work as a movie. You only have to look at the numerous failed DC Comics films to see that.

Justice League of America, as created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, were walking/talking idioms that kids were encouraged to imitate in their backyards with towels wrapped around their necks.

Writers such as Mark Waid and more recently Jim Krueger have delved deeper into their psyches with the aforementioned Kingdom Come and Justice to name a few, but these superheroes simply come out the other end even more statuesque.

If this movie works at all, it has to be air-tight.

And what was the last air-tight super hero movie you saw?

Correct… Batman Begins.

Fingers crossed, everyone.

Suggested reading/viewing:

Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, Vol. 2
JLA: Liberty and Justice
Kingdom Come
Justice, Vol. 1
Justice League Unlimited – Season Two (DC Comics Classic Collection)

First image of Double Doctor Who Special

As I previously mentioned, the upcoming Doctor Who Children In Need Special will reunite viewers with the second most popular living actor to play the role of the time traveling alien, Peter Davison. The special will be written by Jeckyl creator and Doctor Who writer Stephen Moffat (The Empty Child/Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace), promising an adventure to remember.

Peter Davison roamed the universe in his cream-colored frock coat complete with a stick of celery on its lapel during the program’s all too brief resurgence in popularity in its 20th year. The fifth incarnation of the Doctor fought Daleks, Cybermen, The Silurians and even renewed his feud with the Master while dodging the Presidency of his home planet of Gallifrey.

At 30, Davison is the youngest actor to play the role, bringing a unique touch of an ‘old man in a young man’s body’ to his performance. Imbuing the part with little nods to his mentor Patrick Troughton (Doctor #2), Davison left the part after three years and… to be fair… Doctor Who slumped in the hearts and viewing figures of America.

On November 16th he gets to meet ‘the new guy.’

Expect to hear the battle cry of ’squee’ across the land.

Also, don’t expect the American Sci-Fi network to carry it. They skipped the Children in Need Special that featured Tennant’s regeneration spasms and unless they make an exception, they’ll most likely skip this one too.

The Vesuvius Club

Co-creator of the BBC comedy troupe The League of Gentlemen and contributer to the revamped Doctor Who, Mark Gatiss, is once more gracing the airwaves with his work.

The charismatic comedian has been incredibly prolific both on and off the screen. His series ‘The League of Gentlemen’ which ran for three years with a Christmas Special and a feature film, earning numerous awards including the Royal Television Society Award.

The series is more of a tragi-comedy than a sit-com with many of cringe-inducing moment featuring the most outlandish characters this side of Monty Python.The series began as a radio drama and was fleshed out into television with the final season constructed as an experimental drama that is both awe-inspiring and hilarious at the same time.

Inspired by Hammer Horror films, the series paid homage to many classic films from The Shining to Don’t Look Now with amazing alacrity.

In short, the League of Gentlemen are geniuses.

Currently, Mark’s series of Lucifer Box novels are being adapted by the BBC into TV dramas, beginning with The Vesuvius Club. The novels follow the adventures of rakish painter and secret agent Lucifer Box. Like his League work, it is strange, humorous and horrific all at once, with an Edwardian charm.

Hopes are high that if The Vesuvius Club is a hit, the follow-up The Devil in Amber will also be adapted with a third novel currently in the works by Mark which he calls a ‘neat trilogy.’

Word on the street is that Gatiss will play the lead, which will be a real treat given his acting chops.