Although both films were most likely on home video by 1982, that fact did not stop New Line Cinema from dusting off both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Massacre At Central High (1976) as a double-feature theatrical re-release that very same year.
As much as I would have relished the opportunity to be able to see this double-bill at the nearby Coliseum Drive-In, the way mythical-god intended them to be viewed, that was not to be.
While I do remember watching Massacre At Central High at some point, the only thing I remember about it is the diving board scene. If you've seen the film, you know the scene.
The truth is I don't know what it is (out there). The way it sounds it could be anything. But through deduction, it couldn't just be anything, it's hard for me to be specific and not say it could be her, I think that deep down that is possibly what I think, that's the only explanation as to why I'm not (frightened) out there. What would we do if rednecks shot at us? Suffice it to say, that would be bad, in any case, we're going to be back tomorrow... in spite of the fact that I'm not scared specifically of the noises - I would not want to be out here alone.
While the film it underplays is not all that good, Jay Chattaway's score for Braddock: Missing in Action III is superb. It is my favorite of the bunch.
The original plan was to remix and relayer Chattaway's score for the first Missing in Action film into this new entry. Just as Cannon had done with Jerry Goldsmith's score for King Solomon's Mines in its sequel, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986). There was just one problem, though. Braddock's heroic tone differed greatly from the righteous fury and overt revenge fantasy of the previous entries. "We ended up doing a lot of new original action and heroic music," Chattaway recalls in John Takis' liner notes for this Intrada release.
My choice for the highpoint of Chattaway's new music for the film is Linn's Theme. Described in the liner notes as "featuring flute over a bed of warm strings," this track captures the emotional core of the film in warm tones that are as sorrowful as they are romantic.
This is terrific music that deserved to be in a better movie.
Although Boris Karloff was unable to play Jonathan Brewster in the successful 1944 film version of Arsenic and Old Lace, San Francisco audiences could still delight in his reactions to numerous characters noting how much Jonathan "looks like Boris Karloff."
It seems that Universal Studios 'owed' John Carpenter a movie, which is how and why this remake of Village of the Damned got made. Carpenter had been hoping/trying to remake Creature from the Black Lagoon, but that fell through, or was delayed, and Universal offered Carpenter this instead.
3:00 am. We heard (noises) again. This time they thought it was deer. I think it's because they fear it that they say it definitively is something tangible and earthly. They cannot for a second admit the possibility that it is the Blair Witch. I'm not saying it is, I'm only saying it's possible. I was very calm tonight. So I don't have to go through another day of mending fragile crew egos become I need to get my film shot... it was NOT deer. And I find it incredibly hard to believe that rednecks are chasing us through the woods for the sheer pleasure of stomping around on all sides of our camp at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning.
Tension are high as the Goodwill Event between the Tokyo and Kyoto campuses of Jujutsu High approaches. But before the competition can even begin, a couple of Kyoto students confront Fushiguro and Kugisaki. Meanwhile, Yuji's training gets interrupted by a mysterious crime involving grotesque bodily alterations caused by a cursed spirit...
I purchased the Japanese language edition of this volume during our trip to Japan last year. Why? I thought it might make for a nifty souvenir.
It did not take all that long for me to realize that, since I do not understand Japanese, purchasing the book was a rather impulsive and silly waste of cash. So it goes and lesson learned.
Another lesson I learned while reading this volume is that it would be best for me to not stress over details like keeping track of all the characters and plot lines, of which there appear to be a lot.
That being said, I really enjoyed the six parts of the Young Fish and Reverse Punishment start arc in this volume. It grabbed and held my interest enough that getting and reading the fourth volume, to learn what will happen with Junpei, is guaranteed. I also would like to know who the malevolent curses are and what it is they are up to.
Here's an ad alerting San Francisco filmgoers of their chance to see a Major Studio Preview of the soon to be released 'Super Thriller' Jaws at 8:30 on Saturday night. While The Great Waldo Pepper, which was in general release at the time, was shown before and after Jaws, I don't known if the screening was considered part of a double-bill.
Chances are good that it was, as the idea that a schlocky thriller like Jaws would go on to draw huge crowds, and become a pop culture phenomenon, seemed ludicrous. They also did not clear out theaters after each showing like they do now. If you bought a ticket, and there was room, you could stay for as many showings as you liked.
Well, that is how I remember it being back then, at least.
Cautiously, the three space explorers enter the mysterious, oval-shaped doorway to the derelict. Captain Dallas, teeth gritted, fists clenched, leads the way...
The film adaptation of The Boys from Brazil may or may not have pinged my pop culture radar when it was released in October of 1978. I kind of sort of remember being intrigued by a newspaper advertisement for the film, but that's all.
Until 1980, that is. September 28, 1980, to be exact. That is when The Boys from Brazil made its network television debut. I remember watching that version of the film.
I did not know that there were different versions of the film. Nor that the abrupt ending of the network television version would become the most notorious of them. I just thought the movie ended with Mengele (Gregory Peck) getting ripped apart by dogs.
In 1983 or 84, while my family was living in Hong Kong, I bought the original soundtrack for the film, because the music was by Jerry Goldsmith and therefore it must be good. It was, but I had forgotten how Goldsmith, via a request made by the film's director, Franklin A. Schaffner, had drawn musical inspiration from Wagner and Strauss. But it worked.
When Intrada released this expanded edition of The Boys from Brazil soundtrack in 2008, I was more than happy to make an upgrade and had no regrets when I gave it a listen.
Goldsmith, who received his 11th Academy Award nomination for this score, wrote 55-minutes of music, although only a mere 39-minutes of dramatic score (minus source cues) wound up being used in the film.
Jon Burlingame's liner notes for this release details what was and was not used in the film, information that will be of interest to film music nerds like me.
44 years ago Fear No Evil opened at theaters and drive-ins throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. I remember seeing ads for it on television and reading about it in Fangoria (Issue 11). Although I would have liked to have seen it, I was unable to see to do so until its release on home video. So it goes.
Another (fond) memory I have is of watching John Stanley interview Frank LaLoggia, on Creature Features, and showing a clip from the film, which was its (in)famous dodgeball scene.
I was overjoyed to find the interview available on You Tube.
In any case, the rain stopped, it was a breathtakingly beautiful night. We got some great beauty shots today (yes, more!), now I've just got to write the narration to go with them. Maybe use some of the interviews. The image of the little girl putting her hand over her mother's mouth as she told what she knew of the Blair Witch story still haunts me. Weirdness. Total weirdness.
Although I have not watched eXistenZ from start to finish, I did catch the film's final fifteen or so minutes on cable television at one point. That was enough for me to conclude that Cronenberg had decided to return, revisit, and, if one wants to think uncharitably, recycle themes and elements from his seminal reality-bender Videodrome.
At that moment I thought it would be cool to watch both films as a double-feature, to see if that impression did, in fact, play out. I have yet to do that, but still hope to do so at some point in the future.
If I do, then I expect I will write a more nuanced blog entry about it. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows?
Before the wonder-filled eyes of Dallas and his party stands an incredible derelict spaceship. Can this be where the alien transmissions are coming from?
A card with another iconic and oft-used image from the film.
I remember visual snippets from select moments of Boogeyman, but nothing at all of the film's storyline or characters. Those memorable snippets include an almost comically unnerving action figure (i.e. doll) in the film's opening scene, a tormented soul encased in what looked to be Saran Wrap, a nightmarish hallucination, or dream, involving the protagonist's deceased mother, and a post-credits scene, from the POV of the titular boogeyman, peeking through a cracked open door at a frightened child, who is calling for her mother because she has seen him. That's it.
Yet those snippets seemed to have left enough of an impression on me that I purchased this limited edition soundtrack album of Joseph LoDuca's score for the film, despite my having no idea or memory of what that score sounded like. Turns out that was by design.
"...the Evil Dead films [were] musically big [and] fun as hell," director Stephen Kay remarks in Daniel Schweiger's liner notes. "Yet Boogeyman was going to be very different, because we wanted to get inside [the main character's] head."
This approach resulted in a score with melodic sections woven through a soundscape of ambient dissonance that creates what Schwieger describes as a "continuous mood of tension and pending doom."
Which is a good explanation for why this score is one I notice and appreciate in snippets, but not as a cohesive whole.
Mystery House was a syndicated anthology show produced by "that strange publishing firm owned by Dan and Barbara Glenn, where each new novel is acted out by the Mystery House staff before it is accepted for publication."
What an odd and seemingly unethical business model for a publishing company to undertake. Perform adaptations of a submitted work, which may or may not even be accepted for publication? Even worse, Dan and Barbara never seem to cite the episode's source material. You know, the actual book that they may or may not accept for publication. Who wrote it? Where can the books they did publish be found? Or ordered? Listeners would need to be told these things, if you want to, you know, sell actual books.
But none of that matters, because "that strange publishing firm" did not exist, of course. Neither did Dan and Barbara Glenn. It was all just a nifty little framing device for the show.
Only 15 or so episodes of Mystery House seem to have survived. One of those might feature a performance by Bela Lugosi. You can listen to the show here, or here, or here.
According to the archives, the episode that might correspond with the publication date for this posted ad might be Murder Takes Practice. Enjoy.
Gaining their trust (and respect) has been my biggest issue all along. I am so different from both of them, aside from just gender, that it makes it difficult sometimes for us to relate to each other and to communicate clearly. But, I think things are cool now, as far as I'm concerned my motives were fully justified last night, but my methods lacked refinement. There's something about being jolted from a deep sleep to hear strange noises in the woods, that greatly limits one's capacity to think straight.
I have seen two of the three Herschell Gordon Lewis movies in this gore-laden triple-bill. Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs. No idea if I will ever watch Color Me Blood Red, though. Who knows.
I was super excited at being able to see The Dark Half at a 'sneak preview' screening held at the Alexandria Theater in San Francisco. But the muted and indifferent reaction of the packed house proved to be a dire foreshadowing of the film's lackluster performance at the box office.
Which was too bad, as I liked the film and hoped it would be successful. Not to be, though. So it goes.
Everyone freaked out today, I am sure I know where the car is, it's just taking longer than I thought... The hardest thing about directing is dealing with people, it almost seems as if the smaller the number of people, the harder it is, because you're with them all the time. I truly like these guys. Mike has turned out to be incredibly cool, and Josh, well, Josh, he's always a surprise. Then again, he always works hard, as well as being hard to work with on occasion...
Writer-director Eric Red wrote the liner notes for this soundtrack to his 1991 film Body Parts, wherein he described his film as "a psychological thriller with horror and action elements." Well... okay, then.
Another thing he did that I find artistically suspect is cast considerable shade on synthesizer music. He wanted, "A full orchestral score with all the colors, weight and muscle that only a 107-piece acoustical symphony can deliver."
Well, Loek Dikker certainly delivered a score filled with weight and muscle for the film. Red highlighted two artistic flourishes that make Dikker's score distinctive. One is having a saw played with a bow, which creates a wailing and chilling sound. The other is the use of 'col legno battuto', which is when the string section of the orchestra is directed to beat the sticks of their bows against the strings of their instruments.
The end result is a score that delights every bit as much as it unsettles.
I just so happened to go and see Brainscan at the Alexandra Theater on its opening weekend. My reason for doing so was rooted in the film having been directed by John Flynn, who was a journeyman director that excelled at making lean and entertaining thrillers. Brainscan turned out to be neither and it quickly vanished from theaters. So it goes.
One note of trivia worth pointing out, co-screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker would go on to pen the more successful films Se7en and Sleepy Hollow.
Wednesday, April 16, 1969 saw a re-release of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho hit San Francisco Bay Area theaters and drive-ins. Coupled with this re-release was Strategy of Terror, a film created by editing together a two-parter episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre into a single feature.
As Heather and Josh surveyed the area around their campsite, Mike remained inside the tent, disturbed by the weird, distant thrashing sounds that awakened them. "What bugs me out is that we're so damned deep in the woods (and maybe) people are gonna try and come here and mess with us," Mike admitted the next morning. "(That means) they gotta gave something wrong with them and I'm not gonna play with that."
Body Double would be the fifth collaboration between writer/director Brian De Palma and composer Pino Donaggio. While the movie itself is something of a delirious and self-indulgent De Palma fever dream of silliness, sleaze, and suspense, Donaggio's score for the film contains two of my all-time favorite pieces by the composer. Emphasis on pieces.
The first, and most recognizable, would be Telescope, of course. "A lilting vocal siren song weaves through this cue," Jeff Bond writes in his liner notes. "De Palma evidently found this music so integral to the film that he tracked it into a number of later sequences that focus on Scully's obsession with Gloria."
Second is a low pulsating synthesizer suspense underlay that, in this release, shines brightest on the track Detective McClane, Please! My reason(s) for loving it are most likely do to it sounding, to me, like something John Carpenter and Alan Howarth might have done at that particular period in time.
Despite my not being all that well versed in Ray Bradbury's literary output at the time, I was nonetheless very excited and intrigued by both the premise and promise of this film adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes.
That excitement was the result of my reading several articles about the film in both Fangoria and The Twilight Zone magazines. The former featured a stellar interview with Bradbury, conducted by Lawrence French, that described a sequence that had a "train magically [transform] itself into a standing carnival. Steam from the locomotive develops into tents and cages, which house all kinds of strange creatures." [Fangoria #27, Pg. 28]
My mythical-god, that sounded so cool. I also remember reading a description about a spider's web being transformed into a ferris wheel, which might have appeared in The Twilight Zone. I cannot fact check that memory, though. Because I no longer have the June 1983 issue that features the coverage. So it goes.
47 years ago today the telekinesis-themed thriller The Medusa Touch opened around the San Francisco Bay Area. While I have a foggy memory of sitting in a movie theater and being unsettled by the plane being forced to crash into a building, I know that I did not see the movie itself until it aired on the CBS Late Movie on August 25, 1982.
Although I found it to be somewhat tad talky and slow for after midnight viewing, it nonetheless held my interest all the way to its ominous, albeit grin inducing, ending.
The students were awakened in the middle of their second night by strange thrashing sounds, distant noises that seemed to surround them. Heather, followed by 16mm camera-carrying Josh, ventured into the darkness and called out, "Hello?" There was no reply. "All I could think of was, I gotta get it... I want it on sound, I want to see it on 16," Heather told an apprehensive Mike the following morning.
The arrival of Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his estranged daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) at the Leopold Family Retreat is delayed when their car strikes a unicorn. Reluctant to admit to injuring and then killing a supposedly mythological being, Elliot tries to keep the evidence hidden.
But the unicorn is not dead. It awakens, is discovered, and... well, let's just say things go from bad, to very bad, to nightmarish...
When asked, via text, of what I thought of Death of a Unicorn, I responded, "Pretty good, but not great." There was a lot of stuff about it that I liked, but there were also crucial things that I just could not connect with.
As far as the stuff I liked goes... I thought the casting of every member of the Leopold family was spot on. Richard E. Grant, Tea Leoni, and Will Poulter play the most loveably detestable of human beings. Watching them walk over, talk over, and gaslight everyone around them was equal parts hilarious and infuriating. I loved hating them.
Jenna Ortega is tasked with holding and nurturing the emotional heart of the film, as well serving as both a greek chorus for the audience and a frustrated Cassandra within the film itself, and also does an excellent job.
Writer/director Alex Scharfman also did his homework regarding unicorn mythology and drew inspiration from The Unicorn Tapestries. I also give a nod of thanks for this, as a visit to The Cloisters in New York City has now been added to my bucket list.
That was the good, now, unfortunately, I must turn my critical eye to Paul Rudd's Elliot, which is where I failed to connect with the film. I don't know if it was the writing, or the performance, or, most likely, both, but I just did not like or root for Elliot at any point during his supposed redemption arc. What is missing are glimpses or hints of any self-awareness or self-loathing behind Elliot's smarmy and sycophantic behavior and machinations.
I did not see, much less believe, Elliot's supposed slow and painful journey to reconciliation with Ridley. If I had, then I would be singing praises for Death of a Unicorn. Instead, the most I can about it is that it was, "Pretty good, but not great." So it goes.
Two ads for Anaconda that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner when it opened.
San Francisco Examiner - April 11, 1997
I wanted to see it, but was unable to until it was released on home video. So it goes.
San Francisco Examiner - April 11, 1997
One of my favorite Siskel & Ebert reviews was the one they did for Anaconda. The twinkle in Gene Siskel's eyes, and that goofy grin that spread across his face, when he said, "I give it thumbs up for Jon Voight and the snake, how's that for film criticism!?!"
Yes, Siskel and Ebert could be sticks in the mud regarding b-cinema. But when a delightful piece of entertaining 'trash' did manage to grab their hearts, or tickle their fancies, they would be as gleefully enthusiastic about it as the 'good' stuff.
When John Carpenter performed live at the Fox Theater in Oakland, way back in 2016, a playlist of recordings from his various soundtracks was broadcast over the sound system while the crowd filed in and took their seats.
One of those selections just so happened to be The Coroner's Theme, from the Body Bags soundtrack. Although Carpenter and company did not play it live, I did appreciate that it got acknowledged before the band walked onto the stage.
Body Bags was the first of two score that John Carpenter would compose with Jim Lang. The other would be for In the Mouth of Madness, which is a subject for another post.
The music created to underplay the segments The Gas Station and Eye are solid, albeit unremarkable, offerings. The highlights, for me, are The Coroner's Theme, of course, and the tracks Brain Trouble and Long Beautiful Hair. The latter two being lighthearted jazz adjacent tunes that underplayed my favorite segment of the anthology, Hair.
Mike was (extremely nervous) in the cemetery. I don't know if it was because I found it or because he's scared. My guess is that he doesn't want to look like (a fool) in front of Josh, but he's SCARED. I am interested to see if anything happens. Elly, are you out there? How about saying hello, it would give this film such a jolt, to say the least. I think I gained some respect after finding the cemetery today. I don't think the boys believed there was a cemetery. I think off-trail hiking freaked them out a bit even with a map and compass.
I agree with Heather. An appearance by Elly Kedward would have provided a jolt. It would also have provided the movie with the kind of cheap jump scare catharsis mainstream audiences no doubt expected, hoped, or craved.
One thing I did not mention, as it had not occurred to me at time of writing, was how all this searching and clipping allows me the opportunity to observe the waxing and waning of newspaper advertising for arts and entertainment (i. e. movies, live entertainment, books, etc.) over time. Being able to go day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, decade to decade, and even century to century has offered quite the education in the growth, expansion, and contraction in leisure activity and trends from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
While movie advertisements in daily newspapers were still a thing in 2010. The erosion of readership for daily newspapers, because more and more people were getting their news either from cable television or online sources, was pretty dire. Gone were the days when there were pages upon pages of ads. Now there were, maybe, four or five, at most, on any given Friday or Saturday. But that was it.
One of the dregs from when newspaper movies ads were dying is this one for the remake of Clash of the Titans. The 3D conversion for this particular film was notorious for being a poorly done and craven cash grab, fueled by the massive success of Avatar in 2009. But we did not see it in 3D, thankfully.
Unlike the original film, little to nothing about this one has stuck in my mind. Other than my having a good chuckle at Bubo being given a cameo in the film.
"That message from space... it was more of a warning," determines Ripley. "You'd better tell Captain Dallas." But for some terrifying reason, Ash neglects to.
Jeff Bond, in his liner notes for this Intrada release, states Blow Out had "one of the most devastatingly downbeat and tragic movie endings of the decade," and that is not mere critical hyperbole. It is an observation of a painful and blunt truth. A truth that played no small part in why Blow Out was a commercial and critical disaster in 1981.
I vividly remember sitting slack-jawed and staring heartbroken up at a sobbing John Travolta, fireworks rapturously exploding above him, while Pino Donaggio's solemn music swelled and hammered the inescapable truth and tragic failure home. The soul crushing weight of the film's closing line, "It's a good scream."
Yet I still staggered out of the theater wanting an album of the film's music. But it was not to be, at first.
According to album producer Douglass Fake, in his Tech Talk notes, Donaggio recorded 55-minutes of music for the film. Those recordings were then edited, by Donaggio, down to 48-minutes for a possible soundtrack album presentation. One that did not materialize until Intrada dusted those tapes off and released this compact disc in 2014.
The good news is that Donaggio's 48-minute edit not only survived in pristine condition, but also retained his music for all of the key sequences in the film. Something that make the bad news a tad palatable. The 48-minute edit are the only recordings of the score to have survived the ravages of time and licensor indifference.
Here's an ad for the first Oakland showing of one of those innumerable "old dark house" movies, which might or might not have been based on one of those innumerable "old dark house" plays, that were as popular and numerous in the 1920s and 1930s as slasher films were throughout the 1980s.
John Stanley's scathing review of the film, as it appears in his Revenge of the Creature Features Movie Guide, says, "Mischa Auer is Hanns Krug, your typical movie maniacal idiot who binds Vera Reynolds, your typical movie heroine, and torments her with Yogi the Ape, your typical movie gorilla. After a smattering of this typical behavior, your typical viewer switches channels." [Pg. 221]
Ouch. But I still might give this a chance, though. As I have seen very few, if any, of those "old dark house" movies and none of the plays. So it goes.
Filthy. Stinky. Exhausted. I have no energy to write at night like I thought I would. Mike started a fight with me today, about not knowing where the cemetery was. I knew where it was, where it is. We are next to it now. I'm thirsty. Parched, actually. My shoulders and neck are unspeakably sore, but I think we have good footage. I'm putting a lot of trust in Mike Josh (sometimes they're so easily confused). Not that it would be easy to check up on him because every was handheld.
The image used for this card was also used in a great many articles about, or reviews of, the film. So much so that it might be second only to that iconic upshot on Heather's terrified eyes as the most iconic image associated with the film. Or so I am wont to think.
50 years ago to the day, David Cronenberg's first movie arrived in San Francisco Bay Area theaters. At the Warfield and El Rancho it was double-billed with another Canadian horror offering, Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974). I'm guessing the latter was a re-release.
I do remember being studiously unnerved by this film's poster, when it was displayed at the Alameda Theatre. The artwork was that same as this ad's, only much larger, clearer, and in nauseating color. The bathwater was made to look like a thick, sickly green muck, not water. Was something polluting the discolored water, or was the discolored water itself the threat? I had no idea and was afraid to find out.
Years later, when David Cronenberg was a better known and well-established filmmaker, I learned of his body (horror) of work and knew, post Scanners and Videodrome, I had to get better acquainted with it.
I first learned of the horrific tragedy that befell the crew of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, like so many others of my generation, via the memorable and chilling speech that was delivered by Quint (Robert Shaw) in Jaws.
As hypnotic and vivid as that speech is, it contains two glaring inaccuracies. One can be forgiven and waved away. The other, not so much...
First is the matter of there being no distress signal sent. While the damage those torpedoes did to the Indianapolis was massive and catastrophic, an SOS signal was sent out before she sank. But this SOS did not contain the ship's identification or her position. Because all shipboard communication was non-operational, thanks to the damage sustained. By the time the distress message that did contain that vital information was ready, time had run out. So it's a forgivable inaccuracy. Because there is no way for Quint know this.
The second, and somewhat unforgivable, inaccuracy is Quint getting the date wrong. The U.S.S. Indianapolis did not sink on June 29, 1945. She sank just after midnight, in the witching hour of July 30, 1945. Now if Quint had slurred July 29 instead of June 29, I might be more forgiving of the error. But an entire month? No soap.
I remembered the second time the story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis pinging my pop culture radar as having happened sometime in the very late 1970s. 1978 or 79, maybe. But a quick bit of internet research clarified that it would have been in 1981 when Dean W. Ballenger's novel Terror at Sea caught my eye while browsing the book section of our local Gemco.
As intriguing and enticing as the lurid ad copy and cover illustration for the book were, I decided to give it a pass. No idea why. Because that book looks to have been 100% within my reading wheelhouse at the time. I was pounding down books like The Rats and The Spiders at that time. Jaws was (and is) my favorite movie of all time. I should have read this. Really.
But I did watch the telefilm Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, when it debuted on September 29, 1991.
San Francisco Examiner - September 29, 1991
While my expectations were shaped by the images invoked by Quint's Indianapolis speech, the film did give me a broader understanding of what really happened and the injustice that followed. But there was only so much that a made-for-television movie was capable of showing and exploring, given its time constraints and budgetary limitations.
I knew important details and events were glossed over, or overlooked, or had to be condensed or discarded for reasons of either narrative cohesion and/or brevity, or minimizing monetary expense. That the modest size of the average television screen could not capture or communicate the scope of this disaster. How can you fit miles and miles of ocean and nearly one thousand men into a single framed shot? Only so much of the gruesome ravages from the sinking and exposure, not to mention the shark attacks themselves, could get past the network censors. I knew there was far more to the story and the suffering than what was shown.
There were several other books about the sinking of the Indianapolis that I did not know about, prior to reading this particular work. Abandon Ship by Richard Newcomb, All the Drowned Sailors by Raymond Lech, In Harm's Way by Doug Stanton, Out of the Depths by survivor Ed Harrell, and Only 317 Survived, a collection of first person accounts of the disaster, edited by Mary Lou Murphy. All of which, including Terror at Sea, have been added to my to be read wish list.
Although I doubt that those books are capable of offering the kind of tearful catharsis that Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic's book Indianapolis does. Because none of them will contain what this one has, a sense of closure.
The narrative is comprised of three sections bookended by the ship's creation and the discovery of its final resting place, some 18,000 feet beneath the surface of the Philippine Sea, on August 19, 2017.
Section one reveals that the ship's historical significance and importance extends well beyond its legendary final mission. Section two details the harrowing, horrifying, and torturous hell the survivors endured over the course of four excruciating days. Until one group was spotted by the crew of a Lockheed PV-1 Ventura doing a routine sector search for enemy craft.
One rescuer considered the odds of the survivors being spotted at all to be somewhere in the neighborhood of one in a billion. "It would take sunlight hitting at that exact spot for them to distinguish the black slick from the hundreds of miles of dark blue ocean that surrounded it." [Pg. 256]
But it is the book's third and final section that is the most heartbreaking. Here Vincent and Vladic's coverage of Captain Charles B. McVay's wrongful court-martial, to cover the gross oversights and communication breakdowns that were responsible for the disaster, coupled with examples of the venomous hatred that was poured upon him by grieving families of the dead, are examined with a meticulous eye that makes the pain and injustice of what happened palpable and, more importantly, understandable.
All of which makes the eventual, although always seemingly uncertain, exoneration of Captain McVay so cathartic to read. I admit that I got a tad misty-eyed while reading those closing pages.
Then to end with the ship's remains being discovered. It just felt right. I doubt there could ever be a better 'big picture' overview and dissection of the worst sea disaster in U.S. Naval History than this.
In the blackness of night, Heather's crew went to work, photographing the various rock piles that constituted the "cemetery," or burial grounds, hidden deep in the woods. Interestingly, while many Indian villages flourished near what was later to become the town of Blair, there are no indigenous records of any kind that point to natives in or around the Black Hills forest.
Ah, a riff on the old 'Indian Burial Ground' trope.
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