Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #24

Datalog: Approx. 0:1500, Day 2

Just when we thought we were safe, the Alien appeared from an overhead air duct. Junior quickly lured the Alien into the Toxic Waste Disposal, sacrificing his own life. And Dillon reached the control box just in time to close the triple doors and trap the Alien - and Junior - inside.

The New Man by Barbara Owns [Tales from the Darkside - Season 1, Episode 1] - Review

Alan Coombs steps off the bus from downtown and out into a cold winter’s night awash with stinging flurries of snow. Waiting for him amongst the others at the stop is a young boy, maybe twelve, with sandy hair, a slight frame, and a narrow freckled face.

“Hi, Dad.” The boy says to Alan. “I came to meet you. Surprised?”

Without realizing he is doing so, Alan takes a slow step back. He does not know, or even recognize, the boy. After telling him that he is mistaken, Alan turns to leave and the young boy, who has said his name is Jerry, reaches out and touches Alan’s arm.

Even though the fabric of his coat, Alan finds Jerry’s touch repugnant.

And so Barbara Owens’ unsettling short story The New Man begins. First published in the March 1982 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine, The New Man was also adapted for the direct-to-syndication anthology series Tales from the Darkside.

Alan returns home to find his wife, Sharon, and his son, his real son, Pete, just as he knows and remembers them. Until the kid who calls himself Jerry rings the doorbell and Sharon lets him in and then chastises Alan for locking the boy outside. “Look at him - he’s freezing. What made you do such a cruel thing, Alan?”

Sharon and Pete know Jerry and treat him as if he were a part of the family. But Alan knows the kid is not part of the family. He never has been and he never will be. Sharon and Pete both suspect that Alan has started drinking again…

But Alan knows he is sober. Has been sober. FOR A YEAR. He also knows that they DO NOT HAVE A CHILD NAMED JERRY!

So why is Alan's den now Jerry’s bedroom?

Determined to seek out the truth, Alan starts spiraling. He gets angrier, more distant, more abusive, and all the while Jerry watches, eye gleaming, and smiles. And smiles and smiles and smiles.

The story is told in the first person, by Alan, so one must take everything he tells us and claims to experience with certain wariness. As he could be, and is, an unreliable narrator. As much as he claims to be a New Man, he is fast to slip into the aggressive and accusatory behavior of a practicing alcoholic. Too fast, it seems.

The episode, which stars Vic Tayback, as Alan, and Chris Herbert, as Jerry, hews pretty darn close to its source material. A lot of dialogue is verbatim from the story, but there are still some major differences.

Unlike the story, all locations are interior, taking place either at Alan’s workplace or in the Coombs home. A scene where Alan visits his ailing and dementia suffering mother is excised and, truth be told, not really necessary for the episode.

What Jerry is, or what he is supposed to represent, in both versions, is left up to the reader or viewer to interpret. Is he the implacable embodiment of addiction, or the unaddressed, or unresolved, scars of psychological or emotional trauma.

Because the short story is entirely from Alan’s point of view, the ending, and its meaning, varies greatly from the episode. Alan is the observer and narrator until the end of the story, seeing what happens after his own story is resolved. Which is not the case with the episode. As the ending is restructured into a kind of circular bookending. With the beginning of the episode being recreated with another 'New Man". A changes that adds another potential layer to the story. Was Alan in some kind of purgatory? Was Jerry a spiritual test for Alan, before he would be consigned to either Heaven or Hell, depending on his actions and decisions?

I have no idea. What I can tell you is that my own life experience living with an alcoholic who drank herself to death, both the short story and its episode adaptation made my heart ache, even as the slightest of chills ran up my spine.

So, a recommendation from me and, until next time, try to enjoy the daylight….

Mausoleum (1983) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - April 29, 1983

Cool ad for a really trashy (i.e. 'bad') movie. Its biggest selling point for me is that the late John Buechler provided the special make-up and creature effects. Other potential selling points, for others, might include star Bobbi Bresee going topless and co-star Marjoe Gortner getting gnawed to death by a pair of demonically imbued breasts.

Yeah, that happens.

I also recognized Norman Burton, who plays a well-meaning psychiatrist, from his small role in 1974's The Towering Inferno. LaWanda Page, best known to me for playing Aunt Esther on Sanford & Son, shows up for a cameo. Maybe she owed somebody a favor, or lost a bet, or something.

This is Ed Wood level exploitation cheese that few will find entertaining and most an unpleasant and amateurish chore to sit though. One viewing of it was enough for me, it seems.

I checked the listing for the Roxie and discovered it was part of a banger of a triple-bill. For one ticket you Mausoleum, Funeral Home, and The Gates of Hell. Although the paper misprinted Funeral as General.

Oops.

The Parkway had it paired with just The Gates of Hell, while the Four Star was showing it alongside... E. T.!?!

WTAF!?!

Although that double-bill of Xtro and The Gates of Hell looks mighty sweet... 

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #59

Aliens (1986)

 

Congo (1995) - Soundtrack

Despite my having purchased the mass market paperback edition of Michael Crichton's Congo, when it first hit the shelves of our local Waldenbooks, way back in the fall of 1981, I would not read the novel until the mid-90s. Well after having devoured both Jurassic Park and, I think, Sphere. So it goes.

Congo was a fun read and this long-gestating film adaptation, on paper, looked to be just my thing. Director/producer Frank Marshall, who had produced Jurassic Park, was coming off of both Arachnophobia, which I had seen on the big screen and loved, and Alive, which I had seen on home video and enjoyed. The script was penned by John Patrick Shanley, an Academy Award winning writer. Creature creator extraordinaire Stan Winston was tasked with creating both Amy and the albino gorillas. The score was composed by one of my all time favorite composers, Jerry Goldsmith.

Oh, and Bruce Campbell also had a small role in the film. How could this movie miss?

Well, if the lackluster to scathing reviews are to be believed, Congo missed by a country mile. Oops. So I passed on seeing it on the big screen and, because of the non-ending distractions of life, never got around to seeing more than a few clips from the film. What little I saw gave me the feeling that I was not missing out on all that much. Could be wrong, though. Might still give the movie Congo a shot. Maybe. I have no idea.

But I did nab this expanded release of Jerry Goldsmith's score for the film and am very grateful for having done so.

The liner notes penned by Jeff Bond detail Goldsmith's long history of collaborating with Crichton. Goldsmith scored Crichton's first film as a director, a 1972 TV-movie titled Pursuit, as well as two popular theatrical releases from 1978, Coma and The Great Train Robbery. Bond also notes how Goldsmith's score for Congo reflects the composer's conscious decision to work with directors new to him, to better invigorate his creative process and output.

Goldsmith was brought onboard when James Newton Howard was forced off the project by a scheduling conflict. South African composer and performer Lebo M, who had done some preliminary work with Howard, stayed onboard to work with Goldsmith and the result is a bright opening theme. One that Bond describes as being "counterintuitive" to a quasi-monster movie about mutant gorillas.

"...the choice reflect[s] Goldsmith's desire to avoid the obvious," Bond opines. "[To] find the lyrical element of a genre film."

While there is ample warmth surrounding the character of Amy, the intelligent ape that both anchors and bridges the adventure yarn's fantastical elements, Goldsmith does not skimp on the action-adventure sonic fireworks.

The end result is an entertaining listening experience that makes me think I should sit down and watch the damn movie.

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - April 28, 1971

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant was the first of two films about noggin grafting released in the early 70s. The second would be 1972's The Thing with Two Heads, which I still have not seen. But I have seen The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, several times.

For whatever reason, most likely the cast including a young Bruce Dern as well as radio and voice actor icon Casey Kasem, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant seemed a syndication station broadcast workhorse. I know it aired a few times on KTVU's Saturday afternoon Chiller Diller and late night Creature Features programs, as well as KBHK's Saturday afternoon Monstrous Movie. Making it one of the "those" movies I remember as always being on one station or the other with some degree of regularity.

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #23

Datalog: Approx. 0:1400 Hours, Day 2

A huge fireball tore through the passageways when one of the prisoners dropped a flare onto the flammable Quinitricety. The Alien rose up in front of us from out of the flames, its huge shape distorted by the heat. Fire didn't seem to harm this one. Eric was right, it looked just like Satan.

The Guardian (1990) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - April 27, 1990

As entertaining a raconteur as the late William Friedkin was, The Guardian reveals his amusing hurling of verbal brickbats at John Boorman's Exorcist II The Heretic were being thrown from the porch of a fragile glass house.

Because The Guardian stinks. It is a movie that serves as a great of example of "just because I suspend my disbelief does not mean you can insult my intelligence." I walked out of an opening day matinee screening mad as hell at this movie. I hated it.

When it came out on home video I think I gave it a second chance. At least I have a fuzzy memory of giving it second chance. Or maybe I just want to see the scene where the tree kills a trio of miscreants.

No matter, though. It still stunk and was just as insulting to the intelligence as when I sat through it at the Kabuki Theatre in San Francisco, on April 27, 1990.

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #58

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

The H. R. Giger infused 'Tequila Worm' scene is one of the technical highlights of Poltergeist II The Other Side.
 

Carrie by Stephen King / The Swarm by Arthur Herzog - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - April 24, 1975

Finding this ad for the source material for two seminal movies of my youth was a pleasant, even chuckle inducing, delight.

While I do not remember seeing either of these particular editions on bookstore shelves, or nestled in drugstore spinner racks, I do remember picking up one for The Swarm in a used bookstore in Berkeley, way, way back in the day.

The two editions I remember, and actually read, were the movie tie-ins. 

In 1976 I was equal parts fascinated and frightened by the black and white stills in the center of the Carrie tie-in. My interest was fueled somewhat by John Travolta being in it. Because he was one of the beloved Sweat Hogs in the popular sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter.

While I did read Carrie, two or three times, it might not have been until 1979, or maybe even 1980. It was long after I had seen the film's broadcast debut on network television. Which was the first time that I saw it.

The Swarm, which I was obsessed with in the first half of 1978, was my "birthday movie" for that year. Like a great many books at that time, I struggled to get through it. It would not be until 1980 or 81 that I would actually manage to read the entire book, from start to finish.

While not a great book, The Swarm could have made for a pretty good movie. If the person making said movie had understood the kind of movie they were making. Which had not been the case with Irwin Allen. So it goes.