Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) was one of the world’s best selling authors from the 1930′s to the 1960′s.  He wrote historicals, World War II adventure, espionage, and occult novels.  THE DEVIL RIDES OUT was actually his second novel (1935).  A direct sequel to his first book, THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORY (1933) a straight adventure which employed the main characters, though  DEVIL is an out and out fantasy.  Probably not the first novel to utilise Satanism as a core plot device, but certainly one of the most popular early ones.

The following review follows my usual novel review format.  Since cover shots of the various editions proved to be almost entirely elusive, all of the images within the body of the review come from the Hammer film adaptation, starring Chris Lee as the main protagonist, the French Duc de Richleau.

Characters: The heroes are all of a common type for the novel’s time period: all, rich, cultivated men with upper class sensibilities.  There’s the giant young American dumbass, the sophisticated, educated, older, French aristocrat, the rich British guy who happens to have his own four seater airplane sitting around when one would be handy, and the Jewish British financier guy, whom, to Wheately’s credit, is just one of the gang but doesn’t really appear to have any overt  Jewish characteristics.  I know that you don’t want him to be going around saying “Oy, gevelt!” continuously, but there should have been something in his manner, actions, or even looks to indicate that he was Jewish.  Other than his first name (“Simon”) and his job as “financier.”  None of the four protagonists show much depth.  Their opponent, the head Satanist Mocata, is somewhat more interesting, but isn’t really on stage all that much.  Sinister when he is, though.  Mocota was apparently based on the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, whom Wheatley apparently knew quite well.  56

Setting: Contemporary England (and bits of Europe), mid-1930s.  It surprised me a bit how casual some things were.  Ah, the villain has fled the country?  Well, let’s hop into Richard’s four seater and chase him across Europe.  Passports?  We don’t need no stinking passports.  Flight plan?  We don’t need no stinking flight plan.  Was it really that easy?  In any case, settings are mostly atmospheric, and Wheately does know his upper-class hangouts.   84

Plot: For largely unspecified reasons, Simon (the Jewish guy) gets involved with Black Magic.  Just dabbling, really, but it gets out of hand, and the boys have to rescue him.  Wheatley throws the occult kitchen sink into this book.  Now it may look cliched, but back then it was largely new stuff.  He even covered (discretely) elements usually shunned by writers of that time period, like orgies (though none take place on-stage), and kissing the Devil’s ass at sabbaths (which does occur), and the mummified penis of the god Osiris (which gets handled a fair bit).  Wheatley gets it mostly right (though he does insists that the druids’ built Stonehenge).  The plot gets talky in places, and is frequently advanced through dumbassery, mostly by the feckless American Rex Van Ryn.  You can count on one thing in this book.  If de Richleau tells Van Ryn that it is imperative that he not do so-and-so, when the time comes he’ll do it.  But the dumbassery is not solely limited to Van Ryn.  The three decide to hie themselves to their friend Richard Eaton’s house after they rescue Simon and are fleeing from Mocata.  The house he shares with his wife and toddler, an overwhelming over-sentimentalized daughter, and when the utterly evil black magician kidnaps the daughter, someone says, “Well, I never expected that to happen!”  Really?  I did, the moment she was introduced.  Overall, a decent occult mystery, though it is also wrapped up by a deus ex machina, literally, as Richleau calls in an occult heavy-hitter to deal with Mocata.  69

Style: Not badly written, though Wheatley does have a tendency to repeat things, description, obvious character traits, and even plot points, a bit too much.  82

Overall rating, 73, which puts THE DEVIL RIDES OUT firmly into my recommend with reservations class.  It compares quite favorably to similar writers of the time period, such as Sax Rohmer (Rohmer’s career started than Wheatley’s).  Particularly recommended if you’re interested in the subject matter.

Both, as it turns out.  But beware of this movie, under either title.

How can you go wrong with a movie named FIRE MAIDENS OF (or FROM) OUTER SPACE, you ask?  Let me count the ways.  There’s the story.  The screenplay.  The acting.  The so-called special effects.  The direction.  The musical score.  The choreography.  I guess that about covers it.

The story is pretty basic (in fact, just this side of non-existent).  A  secret space project lands a team of characterless astronauts on the 13th moon of Jupiter (which, although this movie was made in 1956 wasn’t actually discovered until 1974).  Why the 13th moon of Jupiter?  Who knows?  That is only one of many unanswered questions about this film.

Well, land they do, and discover that the moon has an entirely Earth-like atmosphere, gravity, and environment and that is peopled by refugees from Atlantis who speak English.  Why did the Atlanteans flee from the Earth?  How did they get to the 13th moon of Jupiter?  How come they speak English?  How could this moon way out in space have such an Earth-like climate?  Who knows?

The population of the moon consists of an old coot named Prasus, his daughter Hestia (the princess) and about a dozen Fire Maidens who occasionaly like to immerse themselves in this special fire.  Who were the mothers of the fire maidens?  Was Prasus their father?  Why do they all seem to dislike Hestia, who is pleasant enough?  What’s the deal with this special fire? Who knows?

Why does Prasus immediately drug the visiting astronauts?  What does he want of them?  Why do the fire maidens dance so damn much?  Is the only song they know “Strangers in Paradise”? Who knows?  Who knows? To kill about fifteen minutes of screen time, and, apparently so.  (Finally, some answers.)

The Fire-Maidens Dance

And Dance

And Dance

Also inhabiting the 13th moon of Jupiter is the being known as the Creature.  He lurks in the bushes and occasionally leaps out to attack Prasus and the Maidens.  Is he the only one of his kind?  What is his origin?  Why does he wear a skin-tight black leotard?  Who knows?

So, eventually the Creature kills Prasus, then the astronauts push him into the fire behind the altar that the Fire Maidens were about to sacrifice Hestia on.  Hestia leaves with the astronauts, having of course fallen for the captain.  They go off, though promise to return with more men.  Why were Fire Maidens going to sacrifice to Hestia?  How come there were no hard feelings after she was rescued by the astronauts?  What was that fire about, anyway? Are they really going to return to the 13th moon of Jupiter with more men for the man-hungry Fire Maidens?  Who knows?  Who knows?  Who knows?  Who cares?

The special effects were laughable.  The rocket blast off was stock footage of a V-2.  When it landed, they just reversed the take-off footage.  When it was “traveling” through space, it was an obvious paper cut-out pushed along a paper backdrop.  The direction was horrible, with interminable scenes of people just looking at each other.  Early on there’s this unbelievably agonizing scene of a secretary walking across a room, opening several waist high gate-like barriers, closing them, moving a chair in front of a desk, sitting down, taking two lines of dictation, getting up, moving the chair away, walking through the gates again, and going up a flight of stairs while the two men standing around the desk (and the helpless audience) watches.

Like the rest of the movie, this scene is boring, tedious, and pointless.  In fact, this movie officially ties with “Phantom From Space” as the most pointless science fiction movie of the 1950s.

If you want to see a movie with alien space babes, watch CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON.

Rating: 1+

THE BLOB was not the only blob movie of the 1950s.  By “blob movie” I mean a movie in which the antagonist in a big squelching tub of goo that flops around and ingests whatever it can roll down. Examples are X THE UNKNOWN; the Quatermass movie THE CREEPING UNKNOWN (arguably) and it’s sequel ENEMY FROM SPACE (with a different alien); THE H-MAN; CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER, and, of course, THE BLOB.  Others possibly exist that I haven’t seen yet.

Coincidentally, I saw three of these films over a short time period recently, so this post focuses on them alone.  It will not exactly provide a definitive answer to the question, but hopefully will clear away some of the brush to make it easier for future explorations in the field.

The three movies in question are THE BLOB (1958), THE H-MAN (Japan:  1959), and CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (Italy:  1959).  THE BLOB, as everyone knows, was Steve McQueen’s first film.  Except that it wasn’t.  It was his fourth, and he’d also done a mess of tv work before appearing in this movie.  THE B’s basic plot, aimed squarely at the youth audience, was that no one in authority would believe these crazy kids that something was going around town dissolving people until, finally, it oozes through the movie theatre and basically chases the entire town down the street.

THE B has several problems.  McQueen at the time was 28 and he looked like he was on the wrong side of thirty.  He looked older than the town sheriff.  Hard to play a teen under those circumstances, though he did give it the old college, or rather, high school try.  Second, long-time readers of this column may know that I am not fond of child actors (even competent ones) and this film has perhaps the worst child actor in any 1950s sf film.  That’s saying something.  I don’t want to be too mean to him because, Jesus, he was only a kid, but you’d think that the adults surrounding him would have known better.  Anyway, he was awful.  He appears at the film’s climactic scene, almost ruining it (though McQueen’s love interest quickly muffles him by sticking him under her coat or something).  I wished that the Blob would ooze over his whiny little ass and shut him up, but, alas, it didn’t.  Third, the Blob’s first victim had a dog, who then inserted itself in the plot to appear every now and then to be menaced.  Long-time readers of this blog know that if there’s one thing I like less than child actors, it’s the blatant use of innocent animals as victims to arouse audience reaction.  Fortunately, the dog does finally get away, as one of the teens tells McQueen’s girlfriend that he saw it running down the street.  I like to think that it finally found a home with a caring family that kept it safe from ravening alien killers, but then I am admittedly sentimental.

The treatment of the dog is just one example of THE BLOB’s largest problem:  a meandering, poorly focused screenplay that was unable to build tension to a climax.  It just went from encounter to encounter, showing the Blob gobbling up random citizens, until the big reveal at the movie theater.  Basic idea, okay.  Its execution in the screenplay needed a little more thought.

Not that THE BLOB was a bad movie.  Many of the set pieces are quite good and somewhat squirm-inducing.  The movie theater scene is also quite effective (Though if you look closely you’ll see that some of the people running purportedly from the Blob are laughing.  Amateurs.  They always break character.).  Decent and worth seeing: Rating 7.

CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959), opens on an archeological set, usually a plus in my book.  It’s supposed to be the ruins of the Mayan city called Tikal, which the movie claims are in Mexico, but are actually in Guatemala.  Close enough for movie work, I guess.  Anyway, people from the expedition are going missing, so they decide to muck around in the sacrificial pool in the nearby cave, thereby not only finding some neat treasure, but stirring up, yes, Caltiki, the immortal monster, who, sure enough, is the Blob, but who came down to Earth from a comet rather than in a meteor.
They seemingly destroy the immortal monster by crashing into it with an exploding fuel truck (this was a well-equipped expedition).  But, don’t worry, one of the archeologists got kind of half-way sucked up by Caltiki, and there was plenty of it left on him once they pulled him away (most of him, anyway) to take a sample, which they kept in an open-topped glass container once they’d returned to civilization.

Meantime, the gorily-injured archeologist goes off his rocker right into a maniacal murder spree, the remains of Caltiki escape the terrarium, ingest some protein and gets big, real fast, and before you know it, we have a double-headed crisis on our hands.

Tense and atmospheric (though the film mistakes Carribean dancers for Mayans for the de rigeur native dance sequence), with great special effects by Mario Bava, who also apparently directed bits of the movie after the first director quit or was dismissed or something.  Superior.  8+ rating

THE H-MAN (original Japanese title:  THE BEAUTY AND THE LIQUIFIED MAN) is a curious hybrid of crime/sf, also with Japan’s usual 1950s obsession (of course, they had a valid reason for that) with radioactivity.  It seems that recent atom bomb tests in the Pacific have cause a really virulent form of acid rain.  In fact, it melts human flesh, while leaving clothing and accessories behind.  The film’s first victim is a minor hoodlum who gets melted during a heist.  The police and his gang are both quite interested in his girl-friend, a nightclub chantreuse, because both factions think that he simply absconded with the goods.  No one believes her story that he hasn’t returned to their apartment, except for the mild-mannered atomic scientist who is running down some wild story about a rainstorm at sea (shown in a spooky and very effective flashback) melting the crew of a small fishing vessel.  Except, the crew didn’t die, but can manifest themselves as a runny, gelatinous blobs, or, if they want, eerily glowing (still gelatinous and blobby) human forms.

The scientist goes all out to convince his skeptical cop friend of the truth of his theory, we get to watch several swell nightclub sequences of slinky bikini-clad dancers, and various thrusts, feints, and diversions between the H-Men, the cops, and the gangsters.  The hesitant budding romance between the atom scientist and the torch singer is quite sweet. A little confusing, but stick with it.  Rating 8+.

Best blob movie, by a smidgeon, is THE H-MAN, because of its interesting Japanese sensibilities combined with an equally interesting blending of genres.

1972 was a watershed year for me.  I’m not really sure I can explain how it was back then to you young’uns reading this on the intertubes.  I grew up in rural upstate New York.  We had television, with six channels.  Radio.  Oh, and something called “books.”  That was pretty much it for the contemporary information highway.  Plus – how shall I put this?  We weren’t the wealthiest family on the block.  In fact, we didn’t even live on a block.

We had a senior exchange student program at my high school.  It wasn’t exactly exclusive.  Maybe thirty, thirty-five students took part, which might not seem like a lot but was pretty close to 40% of the class.  That year, we were in an exchange with a school in Cardiff, Wales.  Only thing was, it was big money.  The airfare was like $200 (seriously; talk about the good old days).  I could handle that.  After all, I had my hard-working, sweat-of-the-brow gains from the rat farm stashed away in the bank (Commercial note: If you want the [mostly] true story of my labors at the rat farm, it’s in “Day of the Gerbils” in A CAREER GUIDE FOR YOU JOB IN HELL.  You can purchase it as an e-book from Amazon, or better yet, a signed, real book from me, pretty cheap.  Drop me a line if you’re interested.)

So, I was off to Cardiff (and several days basically unsupervised in London) with my classmates.  It was stupendously amazing.  It was another world, at a time when glimpses into other worlds were almost as scarce as hen’s teeth.  It was jaw-droppingly amazing, and, among other things, it introduced me to decent beef for the first time in my life.  Although the Welsh (who largely consider themselves independent from England) would probably consider this ironic, it made me a confirmed Anglophile for the rest of my life.  I’ve been back to the UK probably almost a dozen times, but never get tired of it.  The country is endlessly fascinating, and although of course it has its own problems, enormously friendly.  Whenever I visit I feel like I’m going home.
But, mainly for reasons of time and money, I’d never made it back to Wales.  Until now.  And, I’m pleased to report, Wales is still absolutely fabulous, though we didn’t get to see nearly enough of it.

Our first stop was Chepstow, which was, as I mentioned in the last post, smaller than I though it would be, though I’d say it was more of a town than a village.  It’s lovely, though it would have been better if it all wasn’t uphill.  We stayed at the Castle View Hotel, a smallish (12 rooms or so) establishment right across the street from the Castle.  Here’s a picture of Lily, the proprietess.

She barked a bit when we first met, but soon trained me to throw her stick properly in the backyard garden.  Accommodations were nice, but I’ve got to say that the food was absolutely superb.  I had one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in my life (and I’ve had a lot of steaks).  And the view can’t be beat, as it is, quite literally, right across the street from Chepstow Castle, which is probably the biggest castle I’ve ever seen.  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The next day we caught the bus to Tintern Abbey, which is located a pleasant twenty minute or so drive away.  Destroyed by good old Henry 8 during the Dissolution in, what, 1538, I’ve seen ruins to rival it but none to surpass it.  Beautiful stuff. [The third photo is of a structure still in use built into the wall surrounding the Abbey, and probably from stone taken from the Abbey after the Dissolution.]

We also checked out the Benedictine Abbey, still in use, in town.  It was a rainy but fanciful day.

We didn’t get to see everything that I wanted to see (Apparently, in a lot of Wales you often can’t get there from there.).  It was then off to Cardiff.  I can’t say I remembered any of it, but the family I stayed with had lived on the outskirts of the city, and I remember more about the countryside than the city center.  In any case, Cardiff has also changed quite a bit in the interim, and we stayed on the bay in the St. David Hotel, which didn’t exist when I was there in the ‘70s.  Great looking hotel.  We ended up eating only one meal (besides breakfast) there, but I highly recommend their chocolate and champagne tea.

The big site in Cardiff is Cardiff Castle (which actually was not open to the public in the 1970s), which, though built on Roman foundations and with a long medieval history, is really the late 19th century brainchild of a coal magnate who was one of the UK’s richest men at the time.  The interiors are really great, but unfortunately they don’t allow photos.  I do have some exterior shots, though there seems to be some sort of problem with loading most of them.  He’s one of the interior medieval keep.

So, that’s pretty much it.  Next, I stop talking about myself, and get into the really important stuff, like answering the question: What was the best blob movie of the 1950s?

After one night at the Royal Crescent, we moved to Marshal Wade’s House (George Wade, Bath MP who obtained the rank of Field Marshal in the army), which is right in the heart of downtown Bath.  I didn’t take any pictures because we had stayed here before (I should have), so have resorted here to the publicity shots from the Landmark Trust website.

Landmark Trust preserves historic buildings and then rents them out for surprisingly affordable prices.  The building (built in 1720) sits right on Abbey Square.  You get a fabulous view of the ancient Abbey’s famous Jacob’s Ladder carvings from the bathroom window, and the entrance to the Roman baths is maybe twenty yards away.  The Jacob’s Ladder photo is from the interwebs.  The photos from the baths are mine.

Taking a slow boat down a River Avon with Gail and Parris (and George).  Not THE River Avon.  There are like seven or eight rivers in the UK named the Avon.  Not surprising, since the Anglo-Saxon word for river is (if I remember my Anglo-Saxon correctly) is “afon.”

George and Parris posing with one of Bath’s famous pigs.  (Supposedly, back in the pre-Roman days, Bath was founded by a swineherd who discovered the healing waters that gush from the ground even onto this day.)

After Bath we said farewell to George and Parris for a day, and went off to Oxford.  I had tried to get to Oxford twice in the past by car, but the traffic defeated me both times.  So this time we took the train.  We were met at our hotel by Carl Q., dedicated Wild card fan whom it was very nice to meet after such a long on-line acquaintance, had a tasty lunch and then went up to the newly refurbished Ashmolean Museum for a quick peek.  One day in Oxford was only enough to whet our appetites.  We will return.
Back to an airport hotel at Heathrow for Eastercon, the Brit national SF Convention.  Nice convention, a lot of nice fans, and a nice Wild Card panel, where we learned that British publisher Gollancz will be bringing out seven Wild Card volumes in the next two years.  So, hurray!  We only stayed for two days at the thoroughly enjoyable con, because we had to go on to Wales.  Our first stop there was Chepstow (photos next installment).
Chepstow is a smaller community than I’d expected, and, like many UK communities, quite hilly.  I realized that I didn’t want to lug around the books we’d bought for the rest of the trip (I got some great bargains at the con), so I boxed them up and dragged them uphill to the post office, where I was horrified to learn that the cost of shipping a medium/smallish box of books to the US was 97 pounds (about $155).  Really?  But, I didn’t want to lug them around anymore and also there was no more room in the suitcases for additional books, so I reluctantly coughed up the cash.  I suspect, in the end, that we got taken.  So much for the bargains, as it turned out that it cost approximately $11 to ship each of the 14 books in the box.

That really cut into my beer money.

As long-time readers of this blog know, your humble Cheese Magnet correspondent rarely complains (much), but, as a general query to whomever it is in the universe who is in charge of germs, WOULD IT BE TOO MUCH TO ASK TO KEEP THEM THE HELL AWAY FROM ME FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS?  Thanks ever so much.

I got hit by my third bad cold since mid-February during the tail end of our vacation.  Actually, it wasn’t too bad until we got home and then it lowered the boom.  Energy evaporated.  Blood sugar soared.  Glaze-eyed zombiism ensued.  I am still gamely battling this viciously slimey microorganism, but seem to be on the verge of finally conquering it.  Needless to say, I am very far behind in everything, but am slowly working my way through the “to do” pile.
Here’s the first half of the trip report I promised, pictures included.

The flight out of Houston was great (or so we thought; more later).  It was one of those great big honking 777s.  We hadn’t flown international for a couple of years, so I was happily surprised to see that entertainment possibilities have improved enormously over the interim.  Each seat had its own computer screen and you actually had a choice of about 180 movies, not just some crap that no one went to see in the threatres (my choice: THE MURAL, an obscure Chinese historical-fantasy that I haven’t been able to find out much more about.  Nicely made, decent story, until the crushing nihilism at the very end soured it for me.  Rating: 4).  I even managed to doze for an hour, hour and a half.  The food was awful, though.  The airlines aren’t even trying anymore.
We landed at Heathrow on time, at about 9:30.  And then we started to taxi, and taxi, and taxi.  Gail and I had a pretty good view from our window when the plane stopped and we realized that we were suddenly surrounded by a ring of police cars in some godforsaken corner of the terminal without a gate in sight.  They made an announcement about “security concerns” and started unloading the luggage.

Uh-oh.

It took awhile.  They finally had it spread all over the tarmac, and then the bomb-sniffing dogs came out.  In the interim, another announcement asked the person who left an “inappropriate” message in one of the bathrooms to come forward and admit to it.  Naturally, no one did.  Later, I discovered that some kind of “I have an explosive device” message was discovered in one of the bathrooms while we were still over Canada and they’d considered diverting the flight to Newark, which would have been a delightful way to begin our vacation.  But, for mysterious reasons of their own, the authorities decided it was all a-okay for us to fly on over the ocean.  I’m sure they were keeping a close eye on us and would have been able to recover most of the pieces if the plane HAD blown up mid-air.  Fortunately for us all, especially your humble correspondent, his wife, and their dogs and cats and goldfish, this didn’t happen.

What DID happen however, when the bomb-sniffing dogs hit the tarmac, they picked two suitcases out of the couple hundred.  Some random person’s.  And someone else’s.

That’s right.  Not your humble correspondent’s.  But his wife’s.  They opened the luggage and spread its contents out on the tarmac.  Thankfully, no embarrassing items were found.  I was going to take a picture through the window, but figured that might not be the smartest thing to do.  Later, we were to meet the bomb-sniffing dogs up close and personal, as they had a go at our carry-ons, but this time they detected nothing suspicious.  Good thing I had eaten our last Chick Fil-A sandwich (which we’d packed as a precaution against airline food) the night before.

Since we were sitting in the last row in the airplane, we were literally the last people off.  It took two and a half hours to get off the plane.  We had train reservations at Paddington, to Bath, where we were meeting George R.R. Martin and his wife Parris McBride Martin that afternoon, for tea, at the Royal Crescent Hotel.  It was a grueling race to the station, and we made our train by five minutes.

Bath is a delightful resort city, about an hour, hour and a half from London, depending upon the train.  We’ve been there several times and enjoy it immensely.  One of the things I’ve always wanted to do was stay at the Royal Crescent Hotel and a one night stay was the luxury we allowed ourselves this time.  As the taxi pulled up, the concierge met us on the street, and said, “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Miller.  Mr. Martin is waiting for you.  Tea is being served.”

I knew we had made the right decision.

As usual, this is running much longer than I intended, and will continue in maybe, three parts?  Maybe six?  Who knows?

Photos of the Royal Crescent Hotel.

Sorry for the long silence.  Your humble Cheese Magnet correspondent has been working his fingers to the bone.  I’ve signed on with Green Ronin to do a number of blog posts on the Wild Card series (You know all about that, right?  The series, I mean.) and I had to get three months worth of posts done in three weeks.  I’m sure that I’ll mention this again, but, if not, look for them starting in June.

Also had a bunch of other stuff to do.  See the feature illo for a hint of another project I just finished.  I’m not being mysterious, just lazy.  I will fill you in later because I am hanging up the keyboard for two weeks to go on a well deserved vacation, like, tomorrow.

I’ll just mention one more thing, then say, “Adios muchachos.”

Much as I’ve enjoyed PULP COVER FRIDAY, I’m going to mothball it as a regular feature at least for awhile.  I figure I’ve put up about 500 pulp covers, and I think I’m running out of quality material.  Of course, if I get a brainstorm I’ll write it up.  And I always take requests.  (Well, reasonable requests.) I’m going to concentrate on books and movies and some music for awhile.  I was hoping to have a movie post up before I left, but it was not meant to be.

Think about this, though.  What was the best Blob movie of the 1950′s?  (That is, a movie where the ravening monster was some kind of slimy, amorphous blob.)  Nothing stopping you from discussing this among yourselves while I’m gone.

I’ll try not to break a leg this time.  See you in two.

First up is Replica — not the first Super-8 movie I made by a long shot, but the first I made with my pal John Howard. I met Howie when he responded to an ad I placed in the old Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom newspaper, looking for artists to contribute to a fanzine I was aiming to publish (Iron Moose, which ran 3 whole issues over the course of about 30 years). I lived in Albuquerque, but it turned out Howie lived in a little town in Kentucky about an hour away from the little town my relatives lived in (Flatwoods, home of the Tops o’ Kreme. I think). We had both been making crappy little Super-8 movies on our own, and to nerds like us, this was like The Avengers coming together to combine our powers for the good of shitty cinema.

Fancy Special Effects!

When you watch Replica, you’ll notice that I play a series of clones (and you can tell us apart by the numbers on our shirts). This is because Howie and I were more or less scared shitless to ask anyone else (especially GIRLS!) to be in our little movies, and we needed lots of people to get killed in the flick. Easy 1970s answer: Clones! Howie plays the dude who kills me over and over again, and that’s pretty much the plot.

And yes, that’s a pair of underwear on Howie’s head, the legs sewn up and eyeholes cut out. You’ll see that mask again in at least one more of these things, assuming I actually post more.

I’m pretty sure this was made in the summer of 1978, when I was 14 (check out my ferocious acne). Howie would’ve been 15 or 16, I guess. Believe it or not, we came perilously close to making a sequel to this thing — I even sculpted some makeup designs for the clones to make ‘em look cooler, and I’ve still got the script sitting here in a box. I think it was called The Body Shop.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, the silent epic Replica (music suggestion: “Black Diamond” by KISS).

Check out my serial novel, Pete, Drinker of Blood — available for Kindle, Nook and at Smashwords!

Produced by Robert Stigwood, the man behind Saturday Night Fever and Grease (among many other movies, both good and bad), the movie version (based on a stage production) of Sgt. Pepper was an obvious attempt at “rock opera” along the lines of Stigwood’s earlier production, Tommy — but one very big difference is that Tommy is based on an actual concept album that tells a story. Lots of folks like to call Sgt. Pepper a concept album but it ain’t, at least not in the strictest sense, and even John Lennon said so (not to mention the movie uses songs from various Beatles records, not just Sgt. Pepper). But using Tommy as a model wasn’t necessarily the best jumping-off point to begin with, considering it was struggle enough to get through every moment in that film when Oliver Reed or Jack Nicholson are singing, so imagine toughing it out through George Burns singing “Fixing a Hole” or Donald Pleasence croaking “I Want You” (a song from Abbey Road, by the way). Steve Martin performing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (also from Abbey Road) is kind of fun, but again, I dare you to sit through that sequence with your mouth closed.

However: as the title of this post might lead you to believe, we’re not here to judge the presumably-cocaine-fueled madness that led to this movie’s existence; we’re here to talk about the awesome fight scene towards the end, wherein Peter Frampton, Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb battle it out with Aerosmith. Steven Tyler and the boys do a freaking monster cover of “Come Together” (again, from Abbey Road) before they’re attacked by our heroes, and what ensues is one of the most awkward girl-fights ever put on film.

Note: the following clip does contain a spoiler or two, but it doesn’t really matter.

Aside from this great fight scene, the movie contains the goofiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life: Peter Frampton running like a little girl while clad in a pink plaid shirt and white bib overalls with the name “Billy” embroidered on the front.

Do yourself a favor and check out Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — it’s currently on Netflix streaming — then get back here and tell me how many dang people are actually in Earth, Wind and Fire (who appear during the Benefit for Mr. Kite) — it’s like Oingo Boingo times ten up on that stage.

Meanwhile, here’s a little old-school Bee Gees for you, circa 1967: “New York Mining Disaster 1941.”

What character had the longest running pulp title?  The Shadow?  Doc Savage?  The Spider?

Nope.  Nope.  And nope.

Personally, I wouldn’t have gotten this one, myself, though astute readers (ie, ones who have glanced at the side image) know the answer.  But really.  The Phantom Detective?  Knock me over with a feather.

The Shadow lasted 18 years on the stands.  Doc 16.  The Spider ten, but they were ten wild and hair-raising years.  The Phantom Detective, twenty (1933-1953).  He was also the second character to have his own self-titled magazine, following the Shadow, and beating Doc to the stands by a month.  Although he didn’t have the most issues published (the Shadow had 325, Doc 181) a respectable 170 issues bore his name.

Just who the hell was this Phantom Detective guy, anyway?  Richard Curtis Van Loan, just your usual orphaned millionaire man about town.  A wastrel playboy until he got into World War I as an aviator, he apparently became addicted to adrenaline during the war and became a crime fighter when he ran out of Huns to shoot down.

More than fifteen different authors chronicled his adventures over the decades, including a couple of the minor Doc Savage writers, Norvell Page (the Spider guy), and well-known sf writers like Henry Kuttner.  I’ve read a few and, frankly, don’t have any memories regarding them.  Much like the covers below, they were kind of bland, but, I suppose adequate.  Perhaps that was the secret to his long-time success.

Anyway, the covers aren’t great, but we do see a number of typical pulp tropes on display, including the ever-popular red robed cultists (I swear, it must be a union requirement or something).  I did include one grey-robed cultist, to celebrate diversity in the workplace.