My 2000th Blog Post

Missed Opportunities

My 2000th Blog Post
 

So here I am on my 2000th Blog Post already. I wanted to do something different for this but, I didn’t have anything I could pull out of my hat that I hadn’t already done before so I had nothing really prepared for this moment. I even did an online search to see what other people do for ‘special occasion’ blogs and what the ‘on blog celebration’ ideas might be but, some of them I’ve already done, some of them were just ridiculous and the one which I’d already wanted to do... which is to give away a big prize or something... well, I’m sorry but I don’t have a budget for that kind of stuff right now.

So, I’m sticking to my usual ‘post numbers blog’ format and doing something which isn’t a review and this time it’s... okay, well I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with list articles but, yeah, this is kind of a list... I’d love it if some movie producer just stumbled on this one and got some ideas from it (like that would ever happen). What it is, is a list of ten cool characters who have appeared in movies either only once or, in the case of one of them here, a number of times in one-off attempts to get the character restarted... who really should have become running characters in a series of movies. I think the movie industry should maybe take a look at some of the characters on this list, many of whom could easily be played by the same acting talent in a number of sequels, because I really think these are missed opportunities in terms of creations who have a lot of legs and fictional people who I would love to see more movies made about.

There’s no ranking involved here... there’s no one character from this list of movie juggernauts (in my eyes) who need consideration over the others... I think all of these people deserve another shot at being turned into a franchise. So the order here is just alphabetical, as dictated by the first name of each character (in the case of all but one... you’ll know it when you see it). So, yeah, Happy 2000th to me, NUTS4R2 and, I hope you have an interesting time reading this. In the case of most of those listed here, if you’ve not seen the films in which they appear in some cases, maybe you should take a look at them because these characters are really cool. Most of these are reviewed here so, in most cases, if you click on the title of the movie in the subheading, it should take you into my review of the original film.

Clark Savage Jr
Doc Savage, 1975
Okay, so if you’re a longtime reader of this blog you’ll know of my love of the Doc Savage novels, kick started by seeing this movie in the cinema in 1975. This is a character who starred in over 180 original novels, published initially in the pulp magazines between 1933 and 1949, under the magazine pseudonym Kenneth Robeson (although almost all of these were written by Lester Dent) and then augmented over the years with new stories by the likes of Philip Jose Farmer and Will Murray. It’s a crime that only one movie has ever been made about him, starring Ron Ely and based on the first novel The Man Of Bronze. There should have at least been a 1930s serial based on this character and it’s terrible that I live in a universe where this didn’t happen. There was an attempt to get a movie made starring Chuck Connor’s as the character in the 1960s and you can read about what happened to that production here in my review of the Gold Key comic based on the unfilmed script. Doc has been picked up a few times over the last decade or so but still no movement on getting another film series of Clark’s 1930s adventures in sight. This needs to change.

Eden Sinclair
Doomsday,  2008
Rhona Mitra played special trooper Eden Sinclair in this post-apocaylyptic blend of Mad Max 2 and Escape From New York, where a wall has been put up outside Scotland to keep a lethal virus out of the UK. Many years later, Sinclair leads a team into what’s left of Scotland, to try and bring out a cure which might possibly be there. She’s a great character who has a bionic eye which she can take out and roll around so she can see around corners etc. I’d love to see another movie using this character and Mitra shows just how good she is at playing these kinds of roles.

Florence Cathcart
The Awakening, 2011
Florence Cathcart is a professional sceptic and debunker of the supernatural, until she runs head on into it, of course, in the supernatural thriller The Awakening. When we meet her, she’s played by the great Rebecca Hall and she’s both a tough as nails but also a fairly vulnerable character to throw into the deep end of the spiritual realm. As the film continues, a certain gift for channeling the spirits is exhibited in the character... even though she doesn’t realise it for a long time (although I’m pretty sure most of the audience will figure out just what that special talent is from very early on in the movie). I’d love to see more films where the previously sceptical Cathcart is involved in adventures in the realm of the supernatural, while trying to find a more explicable cause for them. And I’d love to see Rebecca Hall back in the part now (wow, is it ten years ago already since this one came out?).

Gary Seven
Star Trek - Season Two: Assignment Earth, 1968
Gary Seven was a human(ish) secret agent from Earth’s far future who was sent back in time to 1968 to find out why two other ‘time agents’ have failed to report in to his superiors... which is where he encounters Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, also somewhat misplaced in time. Robert Lansing played Gary Seven and this episode was originally intended as a pilot for a proper full on Gary Seven TV show but, presumably, wasn’t taken up by the studio. He had a sonic screwdriver-like device and a highly intelligent, shape changing cat of dubious origin. The episode also featured actress Terri Garr as someone who was obviously going to carry on as Seven’s new human assistant... you might remember her from such films as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Young Frankenstein. Although Lansing is long dead, I’d love to see the full TV series in development sometime with a bright, young star in the role.

It
It Follows, 2014
Well, I didn’t know what to call this demonic, sexual curse creature but, in some ways, I guess you can imply it’s an ‘It’ from the title, right? This was a big hit horror film when it came out seven years ago and I have no idea why we don’t have at least one sequel to it already... not to mention a franchise. It doesn’t even have to be populated by the same characters as in the first film, obviously, since the sexual chain that 'It' has to kill in descending order can be carried on for anyone, assuming the creature didn’t die at the end of the film... it’s kind of implied that there’s a possibility it’s still out there, still following the chain of sexual encounters back to their centre of origin.

Jerry Cornelius
The Final Programme, 1973
Michael Moorcock’s notorious and changeable Jerry Cornelius character has really only been in one film proper, Robert Feust’s poorly received (at the time) but absolutely incredible The Final Programme. There are a number of stories which could be easily adapted for cinema and, also, some which would not be that easy to adapt (although I believe a couple of them could be cross pollinated as a double adaptation if you wanted to go down that route). Moorcock himself hates this movie but I think it captures the character quite well in the snapshot of the first novel it’s trying to achieve (albeit with a whole load of stuff missed out but... that’s the nature of the medium). Jon Finch did a fine job of bringing Mr. C to life and I think the character, who is supposed to look somewhat like Mick Jagger, could easily be re-tapped for some more ‘truer-to-Moorcock’ on-screen adventures with someone like David Tennant in the role.

John Carter
Princess Of Mars, 2009
John Carter, 2012
I’ve still not seen the decidedly dodgy (by all reports), budget inadequate, 2009 straight to video, very loose adaptation of A Princess Of Mars (aka Under The Moons Of Mars) by Edgar Rice Burroughs but... I’ll get around to it (however much I’m dreading it). I love Burroughs’ series of Martian novels, many of which are headed up by either John Carter, former cavalry man and future Warlord Of Mars or his son Carthoris. The 2012 movie John Carter, starring Taylor Kitsch as the character, was not without two glaring problems... the fact that they wrote in a more scientific way of travelling between worlds rather than the accidental ‘astral projection’ of the novel and, also, the fact that the Martians in the movie wear clothes... but overall it was a pretty great movie and it was just badly marketed. This film deserved at least a couple of sequels and the character is in desperate need of a reboot... which probably won’t happen now due to the poor box office of the 2012 version.

Lilith Silver
Razor Blade Smile, 1998
Jake West’s truly brilliant movie Razor Blade Smile highlights main character Lilith Silver, as played by Eileen Daly. She’s a vampire living in modern times who has been around since she was ‘turned’ sometime in the 19th Century and who is in the thick of it against an evil cult who intend her harm. The film has a marvellous twist to it and it makes it very easy to do any number of sequels. Lilith has a lot of personality (almost like a female version of Jerry Cornelius, see above) and it shines amidst a wonderful atmosphere of blood, nudity and gore. I’d love to see more movies made about this character but, for right now, I’d settle for a decent Blu Ray transfer of this thing by some smart UK label... more people should know about this movie and character. I’m surprised there have been no comic books.

Modesty Blaise
Modesty Blaise, 1966
Modesty Blaise, 1982
My Name Is Modesty, 2004
Peter O’ Donnel’s absolutely brilliant newspaper strip character ran for a long time and, more importantly, was in a string of novels written by him which are absolutely first class ‘ex-head of crime network turns espionage queen’ novels. There have been three attempts to capture the character on screen so far and, each one has had some real problems. The first of these was the Jospeph Losey movie Modesty Blaise, which starred Monica Vitti in the title role. It’s a fantastic film if you can divorce it from the source material but, although it’s based on the first novel, it completely fails to capture the tone of the stories and instead turns it into a comedy. Monica Vitti looks perfect as Modesty... in one scene where she has her trademark black, skin tight jump suit and her dark hair... but looks completely unlike the character for the majority of the film. I can see why O’Donnell hated this one and all subsequent attempts to put her on the screen. The second attempt, Modesty Blaise in 1982, was a failed TV pilot movie and, although I haven’t seen it, the clips I have seen tell you all you need to know as to why it failed. The producers have tried to turn her into something which completely fails, again, to capture the character of the stories. I have recently come into a ‘print’ of this to watch at some stage for the blog but... I’ve not been brave enough yet to unleash that disappointment on myself. In 2004, Quentin Tarantino (who had featured a later edition of the first novel in Pulp Fiction), produced another low budget venture with My Name Is Modesty but, once again, failed to deliver the goods. Although, he and the director really made a rod for their own backs on this by making it an origin story, of sorts, so the only character from the actual stories in this one was a very young version of Modesty herself. O’ Donnel is dead now so I presume the rights to the character may well be on the market again and, seriously, we need someone to do a proper Modesty Blaise franchise of movies... especially since the actress Gal Gadot is an absolutely perfect fit for the character. This needs to happen and someone should tell her she’s perfect for this.

Scarlett Marlowe
As Above, So Below, 2014
Scarlett Marlowe is the young, rogue archaeologist who is the central protagonist in the ‘gates of hell found under the catacombs of Paris’ movie As Above So Below, as played by Perdita Weeks. She’s gutsy, persistent and unflappable... even in the face of being pursued by supernatural demons. It’s an under seen belter of the ‘found footage’ horror cycle and the ending of the film leaves it wide open for us to join the character in another adventure... presumably along the lines of a ‘horror movie meets Lara Croft’ style series of films. I would love to see her further adventures but, like the Florence Cathcart character from The Awakening (as mentioned above) the movie was presumably planned as a one off adventure and, I wish the producers would see the potential of expanding the character out into other adventures.

And that’s me done on the under appreciated, under used characters of film and television over the years... at least as I see them. I think all of the above could be mined for box office gold if done right and the fact that they haven’t been is a real head scratcher to me. Anyway, that’s 2000 posts published and... more reviews to follow. Thanks for reading.

Harryhausen - The Lost Movies

Stopped Motion

Harryhausen -
The Lost Movies
by John Walsh
Titan Books ISBN: 978-1789091106

Many viewers of fantasy cinema love the stop motion worlds created for the screen by the late, great Ray Harryhausen in films such as The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (reviewed here). However, do you remember Ray Harryhausen’s 1959 movie version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars... in Cinerama, no less? Or how about his 1969 version of Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian character?

If you’re scratching your head and thinking quizzically about that then don’t worry, you’re not losing your mind and tripping into some fantastic alternative reality. These are film projects that were planned at the time and never came to pass and, fascinating as they are, this is just scratching the surface of John Walsh’s new book Harryhausen - The Lost Movies.

Written by the current gatekeeper, so to speak, of the legacy of this remarkable stop motion animator and film maker extraordinaire, this book is a nicely illustrated look at the many different projects which are the fabulous “what if?” periods of Ray Harryhausen’s life... mostly but, not always, coupled with his producing partner Charles H. Schneer, of course. And as you can imagine, it’s a treasure trove of lost projects that, in some cases most regrettably, never came to pass. It’s also a source of some quite surprising things, when you look at some of the cinematic treasures which were possibly ‘in the mix’ for Harryhausen’s attention.

Starting off with quote testimonies about the frequency of lost projects the average film maker has to regrettably turn his back on by five famous movie directors... Guillermo Del Toro, John Landis, John Boorman, Mike Hodges and Nicholas Meyer... the book goes through the life’s work of missed or passed on opportunities of the great man chronologically and with chapters set into periods of his work.

The book takes the works of three categories of ‘lost film’(and occasional TV show or series of short films like the proposed 1950 Baron Munchausen shorts) as it goes along with the different types designated thusly:

Projects turned down by Ray - these are ones which, for some reason or another, Ray either wasn’t interested in or saw some huge problems which might scupper the project and so didn’t spend too much time on them. For the Conan movie, for example, Ray knew he wanted to do it ‘straight’ to the tone of the original pulps and was pushing to go for a violent, gory approach for the subject matter... something he didn’t usually entertain as a good route with his work but, for this project, he thought that would be the right choice. Regrettably, various producers didn’t think a fantasy film with that level of violence would be deemed commercial enough for the cinema on the expected release year of 1973 (once all the animated creature sequences were done) so the project didn’t go ahead.

And it’s an impressive and surprising list of projects that Ray turned down, many of them which you could see would have benefitted from Ray’s golden touch and would have made sense if he’d taken them on. They include among them, such famous titles as The Giant Claw, Night/Curse Of The Demon, King Kong Vs Frankenstein, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, The Land That Time Forgot, The Hobbit (in 1974), Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (although that lovely shot of him standing next to the stop motion version of the Tauntaun at ILM is reproduced in this book), The Princess Bride, an early version of the X-Men and David Lynch’s version of Dune. An impressive list of projects to pass on to be sure but there are many others mentioned in this book and in some cases it also talks about who approached him for which project and the reasons why Ray turned them down.

Projects that Ray was developing - these were propositions to make into a film project but which didn’t get finished for one reason or another and they run the gamut from the book being able to show just a single surviving sketch such as a proposed 1948 version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher to having a load of surviving artwork plus assembled models ready to be animated and, in the case of some of the projects (and I guess you’ll need to scour YouTube to see some of these), actual test footage of the models in preparation for filming.

Alas, for some of these projects such as a proposed 1954 version of H. G Wells’ The Time Machine, no preliminary sketches have survived.For others of these though, you can get a real glimpse, sometimes more than a glimpse, of what might have been. For instance, Ray’s version of War Of The Worlds would have included the proper tripods from the book and not what George Pal ended up doing with his movie version. Or the much mooted Sinbad Goes To Mars project.

And then there’s a third category of films, where the movie was made by Ray and is another jewel in his filmography but sequences were either developed but not shot for these or just left on the cutting room floor. So a sequence where two Cyclopses fight each other in The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad was storyboarded out (the book is full of Harryhausen’s illustrations and models of these kinds of things, by the way) but never made it into the final version. Also, scenes with snakes (and also in the case of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad... rats) were cut out from most of the films where they were originally to be included, purely because Charles H. Schneer had a phobia about them and so he always eliminated those scenes first. One has to wonder how the Medusa in Clash Of The Titans got past him. Interestingly, a decade after the film came out, a young 17 year old fan sent a homemade mask of the Cyclops from that film to Harryhausen and Ray responded with an encouraging letter. Ladies and gentlemen, that young fan grew up to be the famous Hollywood creature creator Rick Baker.

And some of the commentary on these existing films contain their own surprises...

So sure, the scene in The Three Worlds of Gulliver where the title character fights a devil homunculus never made it to the cameras but, apparently neither did Danny Kaye, who was wanted for Gulliver but couldn’t get Sam Goldwyn to release him from his contract to shoot the movie.

Or the fact that for The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, Christopher Lee was originally wanted for the main villain of the movie, a part that went to the then unknown Tom Baker (and which brought him to the attention of the producers of the show that shot him to international fame).  Also from this movie, Orson Welles was apparently wanted for the role of The Oracle but an uncredited and completely unrecognisable Robert Shaw plays the role in the final film. As for the Valley Of The Vipers scene originally slated for the movie... well, you can bet Schneer got rid of that one too.

Also, I have to say that, judging from the storyboards in this book, the unused Shadow Men who created the Minoton from Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger would have been a really scary thing for children to view and, perhaps, should have stayed in the movie.

Fans of Hammer movies will also find much of interest in here with the unmade projects like When The Earth Cracked Open (one of the famous 'pre-posters' for that film is reprinted in this tome) and their attempt to make their own King Kong movie.

As for Clash Of The Titans, one of my least favourites of Harryhausen’s ouevre, it explains why the death of Medusa in the film is so different from the one in the Look-In graphic novel sold at the time of the film’s release. However, regarding this motion picture, the most interesting but, also, the most frustrating revelation of this book is the discovery made by the writer when researching this. That is the discovery of a TDK blank cassette on which is recorded John Barry’s rejected demo score for the film. I would love to hear this... as would a lot of people but, I’ve no idea what condition the tape is in or if it could be preserved for a commercial release. It must be a fascinating listening experience though. 

And that’s me done with this book for now. There are a heck of a lot of dead movies covered here and there’s many more you can read about in Harryhausen - The Lost movies. John Walsh has conceived and written a really fascinating book which gives a real insight into what some of these productions might have had going for them, with plenty of the original illustrations and models reproduced here too. A real dream of a book for certain readers, I’m sure and something most cinephiles of a certain kind will want to immerse themselves in. Definitely worth a read.

Under The Moons Of Mars

Dejah View

Under The Moons Of Mars: New Adventures On Barsoom
Edited by John Joseph Adams 
Simon And Schuster
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2029-8

It’s been a while, over two decades in fact, since I read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic tales of life on the planet Mars/Barsoom and its various inhabitants both native (Dejah Thoris, Ras Thavas) and alien (John Carter, Ulysses Paxton). Even so, while I was thrilled at the idea of a collection of short stories by various writers utilising characters found in Burroughs’ tales, I’d have to say that I found this book to be a little less than a worthy addition to the original body of work and more of a parody in homage, rather than something comparable to the real thing.

To be fair, most of the writers, asides from Joe R. Lansdale and Chris Claremont, were unknown to me and so I don’t know how much these people have had to bend their natural style to get something which is closer in flavour to the Burroughsian charm and sentence construction but... I think the stories in here gel less with the original material than I would personally have liked. I think Lansdale’s opening story, The Metal Men Of Mars, probably comes to the closest to the spirit of the source tales.

Not all the stories focus on John Carter and, to be fair, not all of them are deliberately trying to ape the style (or even great white ape the style for that matter... sorry) of the originals. A Sidekick Of Mars by Garth Nix, for example, is very much a satire of the stories in that it gives John Carter an assistant who doesn’t appear in the original tales and, told from that character’s point of view, you can make up your own mind as to whether the character is telling a fictional truth or whether his recollection of events leaves you in any doubt as to his credibility as a person. So that one was kind of fun.

Other characters such as John Carter and Dejah Thoris’ daughter, son and grandson also take up some stories and the fluctuating character focus from tale to tale might be somewhat off putting to some readers, as they probably were when Burroughs was writing his original series, I suspect. In fact, one of my all time favourites of the original Edgar Rice Burroughs tales, The Master Mind Of Mars, focuses on another earth man, Ulysses Paxton, and his arch nemesis, the evil scientist Ras Thavas... with Carter and co only making a brief cameo near the end. Thavas also makes an appearance in these new tales but, like I said, I did find most of the stories in this volume underwhelming and less than copacetic with the style of the original narrative structure, although some obvious attempt has been made by the writers.

Having said that, some of the writers have gone out of their way to either satirise or make critical judgments which allow you to question the basic tenets of the viewpoints and attitudes of the original characters being portrayed. This is very much a double edged sword, however. For example, Peter S. Beagle’s The Ape-Man Of Mars, in which Edgar Rice Burroughs’ other famous character, Tarzan Of The Apes, is transported to Barsoom and stays as a guest of John Carter and Dejah Thoris in Helium, gives the Carter character an almost xenophobic attitude towards Greystoke’s British inheritance. While it’s true a certain amount of wariness on Carter’s part may possibly be understandable in terms of the apparent lack of English involvement in the American Civil War... an interesting idea... the John Carter character is very much portrayed as the villain of the piece, so to speak, and even his incomparable Dejah Thoris’ affiliations are called into question at one point. This, for me, was pushing things a bit too far. Carter is very much a hero of all ages and portraying him with a duplicitous and villanous brush is something I found hard to accept.

On the other hand, a story about the treacherous Thark called Sarkoja, who was in Burroughs’ first martian tale, A Princess Of Mars (originally published as Under The Moons Of Mars, the title of this volume), is an interesting take on the consequences of “things left unfinished” and a tale told from the point of view of John Carter’s pet hound, Woola’s Song, is a welcome break from some of the other ideas in the book. There are also some nice illustrations included, one for each story, by a variety of artists and many of these, I think, are more succesful... perhaps partially because there is nothing too valid in terms of authenticity, due to the nature of illustration, with which to draw a comparison to.

Ultimately, I wouldn’t personally recommend these additional Barsoomian tales to many folks. I think if you are a fan of the original works and have a relationship to those, then you will probably raise the same kinds of mental barriers that I probably did when I read these. If, on the other hand, you have no emotional investment in the original stories and have never read them, then taken in their own right you’ll probably get a lot more out of them and, who knows, it might encourage you to seek out the real goldmine of Burroughs own works set in the Barsoomian landscape... which certainly isn’t a bad thing. Or you could just bypass this volume altogether and read the original tales. The choice is yours.

John Carter And The Gods Of Hollywood

Barsoom Brawl

John Carter And The Gods Of Hollywood
by Michael D. Sellers
Universal Media 
ISBN: 978-0615682310

Okay... so 2012 saw the release of what was for me, at the time, one of the most eagerly awaited films of recent years, the ill-fated John Carter. When it came out I quite liked it but my enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by my bitterness in the way the title character was written, which differed a little to what was in the books, and also the shoe-horned in technological explanation given for the hero’s originally spiritual transportation across the astral planes to Mars - why they thought they should give scientific explanations when there wasn’t any in the source material just to please the majority of the current audience is beyond me (you can read my original review here).

Michael D. Sellers book, John Carter And The Gods Of Hollywood, is written by somebody who feels as close to the original Edgar Rice Burroughs material as I do (again, see my original review for the way the character has impacted on my life) and who, furthermore, actually tried to do something to help put the pre-release buzz back on track to where it should have been after the shoddy treatment that this film had in regards to the marketing push needed by the studio. This is the guy, it turns out, who made that “fan trailer” which was highly regarded as doing the job that Disney themselves weren’t capable of doing at the time and his involvement with the way the movie impacted on his life goes even a bit further than that.

This book is essential in the understanding of what the author calls the “perfect storm” of little things going wrong behind the scenes of the marketing of the film itself and, towards the end, tries to at least give the impression that there’s life in the old Barsoomian war horse yet.

Starting off right from the early announcements of the film as it got into Disney’s hands, it reveals how some accidents in timing, compounded by unbelievably dumb marketing decisions and an enormous lack of attention at just the wrong times in regards to mishandled social media accounts, and the like, led to the premature downfall of the movie that should have been called John Carter Of Mars even before the film had been released. Yeah, I mentioned the stupidity of the title in my original review of the film... John Carter on its own without qualification doesn’t work as a title to the international, young audience who are unaware of Burroughs’ legendary hero and it’s true to say that, when I found out in this book that the decision was made to drop the “Of Mars” was all due to the fact that Mars Needs Moms flopped at the box office... well, anger at the incompetence and buffoonery at the hands of this particular product certainly got an emotional response from me.

The book is extremely educational, even for those with no vested interest in the success or legacy of the movie. This is a great text book to understand just the kinds of “behind the scenes” things that can go wrong with a major Hollywood motion picture when the director, cast and crew are giving it their absolute all but the people at the studio are just tuned out (and it’s still a great film, by the way, check it out if you have a chance, there’s very few people I’ve shown it to who didn’t like it and a friend of mine asked for the novels at Christmas after I’d shown her the DVD). The writer demonstrates a gift for the reading of the market place through various trends and numbers and it’s detailed in all its gory detail, front and centre, in this book... making you wonder why the people in control of the way the marketing was pushed couldn’t do this for themselves. It’s almost like they were trying to kill the movie.

It’s also interesting to note how other things outside the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs' hero affected the fortunes, or should that be misfortunes, of this particular film and I was illuminated by the way films like the first of Marvel's The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble), Bruckheimer’s Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise and the opening shots of Disney’s deal to buy the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas all had a little contribution to the butterfly effect that ended in the inevitably chaotic reaction at the box office. I was also somewhat surprised to learn a few things about the early history of John Carter’s attempts to infiltrate popular culture outside of the “beyond bestselling” original novels... such as the young Alex Raymond who was working on a strip version of the character's adventures before William Randolph Hearst pulled the plug and, as if by magic, the character Flash Gordon was created. I honestly hadn’t put two and two together before but, now that Sellers has documented stuff like this in this book, it’s quite easy to see how certain elements of the culture of Burroughs’ planet Barsoom somehow made it into the culture of Raymond’s planet Mongo.

It’s all fascinating stuff and a really great read. My only real criticisms being two ommissions. One is that there was no real information about Michael Giacchino’s excellent score for the movie... although, to be fair, this really isn’t a concern of Sellers in that it doesn’t really fit into the intentions of this book. That’s just me moaning as a fan.

What I did find, however, was a bit of a glaring error of absence... and I’m sure there must be a good reason for this (and I can kinda guess what that is but, it’s a reason that doesn’t excuse the error, in my opinion)... is that, other than by title, once, in an extract of something else reprinted as facts and figures source material, does Mark Atkins 2009 movie Princess Of Mars (aka John Carter Of Mars), which starred Antonio Sabata Jr as John Carter and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris, get any kind of coverage or even acknowledgement in this book. I’ve heard it’s truly awful (and sometime soon I should be able to find out for myself and review it on this very blog - it’s in the post) but I would have thought the way this low budget, straight to video production would have at least have had some kind of impact on the perception of the 2012 movie. So that was a bit of an omission I thought.

Like I said, though, there may be good reasons why this cheaper (and probably far from faithful) "alternate" version of Burroughs’ classic doesn’t get a look in here and... even so, I have to say that I can only strongly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in the process of the marketing of a movie. Not to mention the actual fans of the movie, who seem to be increasing in number since the film’s DVD and Blu Ray release, as they slowly wake up to the fact that the film, which Disney kinda abandoned, is actually a pretty great movie. The writer explains a lot of what happened and does so in a fairly insightful and, importantly, well balanced style of writing which doesn’t allow his personal agenda to re-educate the potential audience of the film get in the way of his own minor disappointments with the final motion picture, many of which seem to echo my own thoughts on the film as a whole (which surprised me a bit, actually). Hopefully, a lot of educational establishments will choose to stock this in their library for students on film studies courses because it’s a valuable book, in my humble opinion, on the way a movie both can and... erm... shouldn’t be marketed. Definitely worth a read.

Michael D. Sellers wonderful website, The John Carter Files, can be found here... http://thejohncarterfiles.com/

John Carter, Warlord Of Mars

TharkXpress

John Carter, Warlord Of Mars
by Various Artists and Writers
Marvel ISBN: 978-0785159902

When I was about ten years of age I used to love going into science fiction book and comic shops like my all-time favourite shop Dark They Were And Golden Eyed (which sadly didn’t survive into much of the 1980s), Eye In The Pyramid (ditto) and Forbidden Planet... and peering intently at all the books and comics I couldn’t afford. Among all the Doc Savage, Flash Gordon and Conan books and comics were the John Carter tales and I especially used to like the prominently displayed covers of Marvel’s late 1970s run of John Carter, Warlord Of Mars.

I never caught up to the comics at that point but I did, very slowly, put together a library of the US paperback reprints of the series, over time, and thrilled over Edgar Rice Burroughs tales of, initially, a gentleman of Virginia who finds himself thrust into a Barsoomian (aka Martian) world of red men and women, giant four-armed green Tharks, great white apes and many other fantastical elements which brought a similar kind of thrill as those early 1930s Flash Gordon serials I used to watch when I was a kid. I even remember going into a specialist shop in Southend for a copy of The Chessmen Of Mars and getting into a discussion with the know-it-all store owner there who pointed out to me that having written all those stories of Tarzan The Ape Man over the length of his career, Burroughs had never once gone to visit Africa, where Tarzan made his home. I, of course, then felt it beneficial to myself to point out to the store owner that, yes, that was true, and with all those John Carter novels under his belt, Burroughs never once bothered to visit Mars either.

Yeah, I could be a bit sharp when I wanted. It was all said in fun though.

I’ve always loved the John Carter novels and the character’s obsessive love for his Martian wife is something I find admirable and has instilled in me a good sense of loyalty and appreciation of the fairer sex. This is a good thing.

It wasn’t until the early nineties that I finally caught up, properly, with the 1970s Marvel Comics. I had fallen prey to RSI aka Repetitive Strain Injury not too long after starting full-time employment. I don’t expect anyone who has not suffered from this condition to sympathise or to even understand it. I didn’t even take it seriously myself until it, practically overnight, knocked out the strength and ability for me to use both arms for a good few months. At this point I decided to start reading comics again and, frankly, it was a choice made of necessity. Hardbacks were more expensive in those days and paperbacks were something I just couldn’t keep open and practically read in the condition I found myself in for a while. Comics could just be opened flat so, it was at this stage of my life, that I started travelling around the comic fairs again and scouring London for various surviving comic shops. Over the space of a year I managed to put together a full run of the entire 28 issue series of the John Carter, Warlord Of Mars comic, plus the three “annual sized” issues they put out. And they were great.

Just recently, Marvel have reprinted these as a single volume hardback, presumably to tie in with the movie version of John Carter (reviewed here) and it was something I really wanted to revisit in this format, rather than pull out all the back issues and look at them printed on the cheap 1970s paper which suffered from dot gain and other issues at the time. However, the tome in question was very expensive and I ummed and ahhhed over it for a while... until my brilliant girlfriend came to my rescue and purchased said tome for me as a Christmas present. What a gal!

And it’s a really special and beautiful volume, too, it has to be said, The paper stock it’s printed on does absolute justice, probably for the first time ever, in capturing the truly beautiful artwork of the amazing artists, such as Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, and Dave Cockrum, who worked on this series. Heck, there’s even a guest issue or two by a young Frank Miller... those were the days. Seeing these fabulous illustrations printed on a stock which finally brings out the details of the inking and colours of the issues is something of a revelation and reminded me of just why I loved reading these comics twenty odd years ago.

The stories told in these pages take place, according to writer Marv Wolfman (one of a few writers in the series) between two paragraphs in Chapter 27 of Burrough’s first John Carter novel, A Princess Of Mars (originally titled Under The Moons Of Mars on first publication) and the love of the writers working on this for the original material is self evident as soon as you start reading it, as narrated by John Carter himself.

There are always going to be one or two things about the Martian series that modern ideas of censorship won’t allow contemporary translators and explorers of Burrough’s books do right (the first book was written 101 years ago at time of writing this article), such as the fact that Martian men and women really don’t go in much for wearing clothes, but what the writers and artists here were able to get right, they did... for the most part... I think Frank Miller may have screwed up on some of the Barsoomian beasts and the addition of a shipboard “computer” on one of the sail-barges in one of the later issues shows the influence of the then current movie blockbuster Star Wars on the comic more than Burroughs, but without that first Star Wars movie coming out, to be fair, it’s doubtful that Marvel would have bothered buying the rights to these characters in the first place, is my guess.

The book gets the tone of the John Carter character just right... he is forever going on, issue after issue, about his lovely wife, the incomparable Dejah Thoris and he acts as a gentleman, where possible, throughout the entire run, as oppose to the lovable rogue he was portrayed as in the recent movie version (I’ve not seen the low budget movie version before that one yet, featuring ex-porn actress Traci Lords, although I hear its relationship to the actual source material is tenuous at best). The artwork is also, for the most part, totally reflective of the descriptions found in Burrough’s original stories and with little, throw away references to later characters in Burrough’s stories, such as Carter’s future son Carthoris and Ras Thavas - The Master Mind Of Mars, the comics come alive in much the same way that the classic stories do. They are definitely not disrespectful of the original material and equally as entertaining.

If you’re a fan of Burrough’s original ten novels (and the collected short stories) about life on Barsoom then you will certainly find a lot to admire and enthuse over in this hardback reprint, which lovingly reprints the entire 28 issue run plus the three annuals. And if you don’t know the character of John Carter very well, and want to dip your toes into the Martian landscape, then these are definitely the next best thing to the original stories that you could read to give you a flavour of the sprit of adventure and sense of honour imbued in the character. A general, all round recommendation from me on this one... and with much thanks to my gal friend!