Moby Dick (1956) - Newspaper Ad [ San Francisco Examiner - July 10, 1956]

I remember watching Moby Dick on television and being blown away by it. So blown away that I immediately checked the book out from the local library and attempted to give it a read. I made it through one or two chapters, at most, before giving up. Not bad for somebody that was, most likely, in middle school at the time.

Twelve or so years later, maybe, the novel was assigned reading in an American Literature course I was taking at San Francisco State University. Surprise, surprise, surprise, but I made it through the entire, albeit seemingly endless, book this time around.

While I cannot say that I felt it was the transcendent reading experience the professor teaching the class found it to be, I was surprised at just how much the climax of Peter Benchley's novel Jaws seemed to have cribbed from the climax of Moby Dick. Really.

A few years after that I read Ray Bradbury's novel Green Shadows, White Whale, which was a fictionalized version of his experience working with John Huston to craft the script for the movie adaptation of Moby Dick that I had just so happened to watch and love so many years before.

Bradbury incorporated a great many of his Irish stories, which were inspired by the time he spent in Ireland working on Moby Dick, so the resulting book is more a phantasmagoria of sights, sounds, and experiences than it is a structured story. Which is pretty much par for the course for most, if not all, of Bradbury's novel length works. 

Green Shadows, White Whale was the second novel penned by a disgruntled and traumatized screenwriter dramatizing what it was like working with, or for, John Huston. The other was White Hunter, Black Heart by Peter Viertel. While I have seen the Clint Eastwood movie adaptation, I have yet to crack open the actual book it was based on.

I need to do that, some time.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - April 15, 1983]

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.

The Beast from 20,000 (1953) - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - June 24, 1953]

I have taken to describing Roland Emmerich's ill-conceived 1998 version of Godzilla as "a bloated and overlong, but nonetheless acceptable, remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms."

Movies that had the word "Beast" in their titles were a matter of routine, back in the day. At some point, during any given week, there was bound to be a movie with a titular beast that lurked in some haunted cave, or cellar. One that had five fingers, or a million eyes. That craved blood, or had to die.

But the most coveted beast of them all, for me, was the one that came up from 20,000 fathoms. The infamous moment when a cop gets snatched up and gulped down, while no doubt laughable by today's standards, shook me to my core. Back when I was somewhere between the ages of 5 and 12, that is. 

I have heard and read conflicting stories about this film and its connection, real or supposed, to Ray Bradbury's short story The Fog Horn. Some versions have the filmmakers purchasing the rights to Bradbury's story prior to production. Other versions have the purchasing of the rights occurring during the production, when the similarities between a lighthouse scene and events in Bradbury's story were noticed and/or pointed out.

Here it might be best to invoke what I have come to call The Liberty Valance Rule: Whenever truth contradicts a legend, it might be best to just go with the legend.