Odd Reviews by Oddcube

Special Announcement!

2011-12-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

Howdy Friends! Everybody's buddy, Oddcube, here with an announcement of epic epidemic proportions!

I've been kicking this around for a few days now, trying to come up with the best way to say it, and I still haven't figured it out. So I'm just gonna say it straight out:

Odd Reviews by Oddcube has lost its sponsorship.

Odd Reviews by Oddcube was concieved by the then-editor of Abandoned Towers Magazine. TBH, your buddy Oddcube was more than a little reluctant to accept the monthly deadline of an ongoing review column. I nearly turned it down all together. What really hooked me was the proposed title "Odd Reviews by Oddcube", it was SO good, I just HAD to do it!

However, Abandoned Towers Magazine, or more appropriately, the parent company, Cyberwizard Productions, has fallen on hard times. Due to circumstances beyond control, CWP was forced to sell off Abandoned Towers Magazine in August. However, Cyberwizard Productions tried valiantly to maintain the monthly serialized stories and a couple of other features, including my Odd Reviews.

Unfortunately, finances and other factors refuse to co-operate, and Cyberwizard Productions has likewise been forced to drop all of these features and concentrate solely on their book publishing. Any and all rights to the Odd Reviews solely belong to me, Oddcube, and I have inherited the Odd Review blog, which is now solely my responsibility to do with as I wish.

I can only assume similar arrangements have been made with the contributors of the serials. Most of them have shut down, but three seem to be continuing on their own, at least for the present. These three are Clockwork, Tales of Coromoor, and The Adventures of Bradley Brackett. They are all good, and you should check them out, if you haven't all ready! I hope these creators are able to continue with their stories.

Now what this comes down to is: I don't know whether or not to continue with the Odd Reviews. The truth is, I was reluctant to start them, and they are kind of a pain to come up with each month. On the other hand, I'm kinda proud that I have kept them going for 3 FULL YEARS! That's a grand total of 36 Odd Reviews, and 24 Oddio Reviews, and during my entire run I've only missed one month, and that's because I was moving into my new Sanctum Sanctorium. That's pretty good, especially for me, and I sorta hate to bring it to a halt. Plus I do have a small but loyal following. On the other other hand, I've got plenty of other projects that I could be working on instead. I have got all sorts of things I want to load on my other blog the problem is that vanity projects have to take a back seat to the ones that might actually bring in some money. And yet on some other, other hand there are a LOT of things I haven't gotten to do a Review of yet: Spaced Invaders, the Rubik's cube, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, Sherlock Holmses' War of the Worlds, Fireball Island...

So I put it to you, my loyal fans: Should I strive to keep the Odd Reviews going? Keep in mind, if they continue, they will revert to a bi-monthly, or perhaps even quarterly schedule. Please leave your comments below.

I am grateful and thankful to have been associated with some great people who do some really fine work. First, there's good ol' Crystalwizard over at Cyberwizard Productions who came up with the idea for the Odd Reviews. Don't be an ignorant twit, buy a book! They help ya look smart! You don't even have to read it, just carry it around! They're useful, too! You can use it to prop up that wobbly table leg! Thanks CW, for the opportunity and the experience! I'm just sorry it wasn't a more profitable undertaking for ya!

Then, there's Paul over at the Beam Me Up blog and podcast, sponsored by WRFR in Maine! In a special arrangement with Abandoned Towers, he aired many an Oddio Review over the actual airwaves, providing audio oddness to his unsuspecting audience (all of whom were appropriately amused, of course)! Thanks a lot Paul! You have a great show and I'm proud to have been a (small) part of it!

And then, of course, there's YOU, my multitude of fanatical fans, loyal listeners, and reliable readers! You fine folks have tuned in month after month from all around the globe to gawk and gander at my readable ramblings! So thanks for tuning in! Let's face it, a review--even one of mine--is no good unless there's someone around to read it, which makes you just as indispensible as I am! Maybe even more so!

That's why I think you deserve a say in what's going on around here! So if you have an opinion on the fate of the Odd Reviews, let it be known! Leave a comment down below! We'll see how it stands at the end of the month and (hopefully) have another announcement to make at the beginning of the year! Well, I guess there WILL be announcement one way or the other. So be there or be square!

In the meantime, you can read my latest (and perhaps last) Odd Review here!

-----Everybody's Buddy, Oddcube

Secret Wars

2011-12-02T12:49:00.001-08:00

SECRET WARS

Felicitous greetings and fanciful salutations fans and friends! It’s a brand new month and that means it is time once again for the greatest online experience you could ever ask for: the Odd Review! And this is everyone’s favorite online idiot intoning (or typing) the unmistakable invitation: welcome to the column!

If you’ve been here before, then welcome back! If this is your first visit, what took ya so long? Well, nevermind that, I gotta let ya know what goes on around here.

Basically, I pick a subject, which could be a TV show, or movie, or novel, or musical band, or whatever, and tell you stuff about it. Why it’s cool, or why it isn’t cool, and whether you should experience it or avoid it like the plague! Then, to support the fragile veneer of the review column, I use a highly scientific method (lol) to devise a rating, but I’ll explain that later on.

This time around, I’m gonna talk about a comic book. Well, a mini-series from the mid-80’s. Its full title was “Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars”. Of course, it wasn’t the first superhero team-up, but it is generally regarded at THE very first company-wide cross-over, paving the way for all those “Crisis on Earths Q Thru Z-Squared” and “Super Zombie Civil War” or whatever.

Wow, I remember when I first found Secret Wars. I was about ten or eleven when it came out in ’84-’85. We weren’t wealthy, but we weren’t poor, either, and we usually spent our mad money on Nintendo games, but there was usually a little cash left I could throw away on comics. The problem was it WAS only a little cash! I was no afficianado, and I had NO idea which ones to get. So I only had a couple issues of this guy and a couple issues of that guy. But then they came out with Secret Wars and EVERYbody was in it! I dutifully purchased the first five issues, but then the rat-finks at my local 7-Eleven stopped ordering it! For YEARS I had only read half the story!

Fear not, eventually I did get to read the rest of the story! In fact, I even own all 12 issues collected in one convenient graphic novel. More than that, I learned about the interesting events that caused its creation!

Without anything as sophisticated as Mr. Peabody’s Waybac Machine, we’ll flash back to the mid-80’s. Now, at the time, action figures were REALLY hot! There was Star Wars, G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, and I don’t even know what else! Well, some smart guy at Kenner thought it would be cool to have action figures based on comic book characters…so he went to DC, made a deal and got production started.

Well, the line of DC superhero action figures did pretty well, so some other guy at Mattel said “Hey! We need to start making superhero figures too!” So they went to Marvel with a boatload of phoney-baloney marketing research. They said “We wanna make action figures of your comic book guys! …But we only want the best-of-the-best, with a HUGE media tie-in that supplies a convenient blanket concept, cool vehicles, weapons, and headquarters so that we can expand the product line with superfluous playsets!”

Marvel liked the idea of the toy line and worked up a nifty concept that offered convenient excuses to include all the conditions the toy company demanded. Some super-duper, extra-dimensional godlike entity called the Beyonder has been pulling a peeping tom on our universe and does not get the concept the desire. So he collected the best of the best Marvel heroes and the best of the worst Marvel villains. He wiped the galaxy away and used fragments of various planets to create a patchwork “battleworld” where the two teams could fight, the winners are promised “anything they desire”.

The toy line SUCKED and didn’t sell very well, but the mini-series did great! It was, like, THE highest sold title at the time.

The story was written by Jim Shooter, who was editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time. It was drawn by Mike Zeck and Bob Layton. The good-guys include Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Spider-Man, and members of the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men! Oh yeah, and Magneto was with them, too. Like I said, EVERYbody was in it! And BIG-name guys, even I recognized most of them! I didn’t know as many of the villains, though. Sure, I knew Doctor Doom, and Doctor Octopus, but that was about it. But with them were the Enchantress, Ultron, the Wrecker and the Wrecking Crew, Kang, the Lizard, the Molecule Man, and Galactus.

So the villains are all like “Oh boy, let’s fight!” The heroes automatically go on the defense and drive them away. But the heroes don’t trust Magneto, nor the X-Men cuz they try to stick up for him, so the mutants disenfranchise themselves to become a non-aligned third force. Galactus summons his homeworld, intending to devour the Battleworld, thus winning the Beyonder’s game. And Doctor Doom makes plans to confront the Beyonder himself!

And BIG things happen to just about everyone through the course of this storyline. The super-villains Titania and Volcana are created by Doctor Doom. The Molecule Man discovers that he was limiting his powers with a self-imposed mental block. Professor X assumed a more direct leadership of the X-Men. Collossus fell out of love with Kitty Pryde. She-Hulk joined the Fantastic Four cuz the Thing didn’t wanna leave Battleworld (cuz he could change back to human). And perhaps BIGGEST of all: Spiderman got the black suit that would eventually become Venom!

Anyway, it’s a wild ride, and pretty cool, although I must admit that the Beyonder’s motivation is not very clear in the story itself. But it says online in a couple of places that he did this in an attempt to understand human desire, and that makes as much sense as anything else. Besides, it’s a comic book, how much of a reason does he need, right? I always thought it was a boring ol’ Tuesday night and he didn’t have anything to do so he did this for a moment’s entertainment.

So, I guess continuity-wise, it’s kinda outdated now, but if you’re interested in the history of super-mega-crossover-comics-events than you ought to check out Secret Wars! *sigh* Except, of course, I can’t just SAY that, I have to include a rating in order to maintain the thin disguise of being a legitimate review column.

To determine the rating, I use a pair of percentage dice. Percentage dice, in case ya don’t know it, are two ten-sided dice used in various role playing games to determine a random number between 0-1 (I’d rather have a sharp stick in my eye) to double-0, which actually means 100 (even better than finding out your pristine copy of Mickey Mouse is worth over a grand!). See how it works is one die represents the tens place and the other die represents the ones place. Here, let me show you. I just give my totally un-biased dice a roll just like that…

…and end up with an 85! I can live with that, but you don’t have to! You could check it out for yourself and form your very own opinions! The original issues can still be found through various online comics sources, and eBay, and Amazon. Plus you can get the collected graphic edition, maybe even in a brick-and-mortar bookstore (that’s where I found mine).

And then, if ya want get radical about it, you could even come here and share your opinion! Have you read Secret Wars? Have you read Secret Wars 2? Did ya like it? Did ya think it sucked? What’s your favorite comics super-crossover story? Leave a comment below and share it with all of cyberspace!

Well, we’ve gotten to the end of another one. This is where I usually tell you to tune in again next month to find out what my next Odd Review will be about. But I don’t know if I’m going to do any more. Why not? Read this Special Announcement for details! Be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Razzle Dazzle at Zazzle!

2011-11-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

Howdy folks! I've got some exciting news for all you friends and fans! Your holiday shopping is about to get a LOT easier! Why? Because Everybody's Buddy (Me) has just opened a Zazzle store!

Here, you'll find all manner of merchandise featureing the Odd One himself, as well as other characters and catch-phrases that appear on Oddcube's various websites! Perfect for Oddcube fans of every level!

For a sampling of the products offered just check out the panel on the right-hand side of the screen, OR scroll down to the bottom of the page for a flash preview, OR better yet, go directly to the store itself and have a look at Oddcube's Emporium!

The Phantom Lady

2011-10-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

THE PHANTOM LADY

Aloha everyone! Once again the occasion has arisen where it is the appointed hour to be awed by the essays and opinions of everyone's most admired online individual! As such, this is the oft-adored Oddcube offering you, my esteemed audience, the latest in my ongoing arrangement of unparalleled and informative articles!

Or, in plain speak; Hi, and welcome to the column! It's time for another Odd Review!

If you've been here before, welcome back, you have excellent taste! If you haven't been here before, congrats, you're becoming even cooler with every word that you read here!* But you probably want to know what goes on here.

You see, it's like this: I, Oddcube, the enviable apex of intellect and unpretentiousness (and yes I DID type that with a straight face), pick a subject that suits my mood, do minimal research to sound like I might know what I'm talking about, then write up an article about it explaining why you should seek out or avoid it! What sorts of subjects do I pick? Oh, movies, books, TV shows, video games...whatever I feel like talking about, really. I give you some facts and opinions about it, and tell ya why it is or is not worth your time. Why do I do all that? Cuz it keeps me up at night to think that you might be missing out on something cool! I also assign a rating to each subject, cuz people dig that and it helps give the impression of a legitimate review.

This month I'm gonna tell you about a book called "The Phantom Lady". Now, I know this sounds like a good Halloween-type book, but it's not really. It's not even supposed to be. It's a mystery story by the late, great Cornell Woolrich! Ever heard of him? Even if you haven't, there's a good chance you know some of his work. Cornell Woolrich was a writer back in the day of pulp magazines. He specialized in mystery stories and his stories defined the moody atmosphere now known as noir. He was a prolific author and his stories were often adapted to various radio shows and movies. Perhaps the most famous movie based on one of his stories is the Hitchcock classic "Rear Window".

Like several other prolific writers of classic pulp, Cornell Woolrich was often credited by a pseudonym. It is under the pen name of William Irish that "The Phantom Lady" was published by J.B. Lippincott as "A Story Press Book" in August of 1942. It was reprinted several times. My copy is a Ballantine Book published in December 1982, runs for 240 pages, not including an introduction by someone named Francis M. Nevins Jr., who tells us a little bit about Woolrich's life and career.

And now the actual story:

It takes place in New York, presumably contemporary 1942, cuz that's when it was written. The story presumably starts either on a Friday or Saturday night, cuz Woolrich keeps going on and on about it being 'date night' and this half of the city is rushing to keep a date with that half of the city. Six pm, Scott Henderson walks down the street in the foul mood. He's just had a fight with his wife and stormed out. See, Henderson is married but he wants a divorce so he can marry his secretary, Carol Richman. He and his wife were supposed to go out to dinner and a show, his way of buttering her up in the hopes of getting her in an agreeable mood, but she wouldn't go. Angry, he threatened to go anyway with the first stranger he chanced to meet, she laughed at him.

So he wanders the streets and on the spur of the moment he decided to go into this bar he happens to be passing. In the bar he meets this woman who wears a hat that resembles a pumpkin...which is about the best Halloween connection we're gonna get out this. Anyway, he invited her to dinner and the show, but because he doesn't wanna talk about his troubles, he suggests that they do NOT exchange any personal information, not even names. Intrigued and amused, she agrees.

So, they go outside and hail a cab. Two cabs stop, one tries to cut off the other and steal the fare. Their cabbie has the unusual name of Al Alp. They take the cab to a fancy restaurant where they dine. Then another cab takes them to a club called the Casino to see a singer named Estella Mendoza—who happens to have the exact same hat as the lady companion. Henderson's date says that Mendoza is totally cheesed off that they both have the same hat, and when the singer tosses flowers to the ladies in the audience, Henderson's date does not get one until she stands up for the whole audience to see.

When they leave the theater they happen to bump into a blind panhandler on their way to a cab. They return to the bar where they met, share a nightcap, shake hands, and go their separate ways.

Henderson goes home and finds cops in his living room. The main cop, Burgess, does most of the talking. Henderson finds out that his wife is dead, throttled with one of his neckties. The cops arrest him for the murder of his wife, he goes to trial, is found guilty, and after every appeal that can be made is made...he awaits his execution.

Of course, he keeps telling everyone what happened, but no one believes him. He doesn't know the name of the woman he was out with, has no way of contacting her. To make things worse, when the cops go around questioning witnesses like the barman, the cabbie, doormen, waiters...they all swear that Henderson was alone! Only his mystery woman can verify how soon they met—which would clear him of the charges—but he can't even prove she exists!

After all the appeals are done with, the cop Burgess comes to see Henderson in his cell. Burgess has changed his mind and decides that Henderson must be telling the truth or he would have come up with a different story by now. So he offers to continue investigating—unofficially, of course—in the hopes of finding this woman. He has the help of Carol Richman, Henderson's secretary/mistress/love interest. Also, Henderson asks Burgess to call in his good buddy, John Lombard, who recently moved to Venezuela as part of a five-year contract he signed with some oil-mining company. Much to Henderson's surprise, Lombard comes back to New York to help look for The Girl.

So Henderson's girlfriend, Carol Richman, goes to Anselmo's Bar and just stares at the bartender. When the bar closes, she follows him home. She never says anything, just stares at him and follows him. This goes on for a couple of days before he finally snaps, yells at her, and darts away...right into the busy street where he gets hit by a car and dies.

She gets tickets to the theater, reserves the table right in front of the drummer...oh yeah. I forgot to mention the drummer, didn't I? Well, the drummer was totally checking out the Girl in the Pumpkin Hat. Anyway, Carol tarts herself up and makes at the drummer through the whole show so that afterward he picks her up. They hit a few clubs with the rest of the musicians, then she gets right nervous when they go into a back room to smoke reefers and jam. The drummer takes her back to his place and she tries to wheedle some info out of him, but he's coming down and gets all paranoid. He babbles about how "they said they'd kill me if I told anyone...and you made me tell!" So she runs away and calls Burgess, but by the time they go back to the drummer's place, the drummer committed suicide.

Burgess is afraid to sent Carol out again, so Lombard sorta takes over the investigation. He tracks down the blind panhandler, who turns out to be a fraud with perfect eyesight. He can confirm that Henderson had a lady with him so Lombard goes to call Burgess. But when they go back into the panhandler's rooming house they find the phony blind man has fallen down the steps and broke his neck.

He talks to cabbies, waiters, and doormen, but they all prove useless. So then Lombard goes to see Mendoza, the singer. She remembers the incident, and is still cheesed off about it. She remembers the woman vividly, but never noticed that anyone was with her! However, she tells Lombard that her hat was supposed to be a one-of-a-kind, specially made for her as a sort of signature piece for her show. She gives him the name and address of the place she got it, in the hopes that he can find the person who made and sold the copy.

So he goes to the hat shop and talks to the owner. He finds out the person that made the hat for Mendoza—a seamstress named Madge Peyton—was fired because they think she was making copies of stuff and selling them. They couldn't prove it, but they were right. Lombard goes to see the seamstress and gets the name and address of the person she made the hat for: Pierrette Douglas. Finally a name!

So Lombard goes to see this chick Douglas...and she hasn't got the hat! She's not the chick we've spent the whole book looking for! It turns out that she wore the hat once, didn't like it and forgot about it. That is, until a friend of hers came over and spied it and tried it on and liked it. So Pierrette gave her the hat! But she didn't want to tell Lombard the Girl's name without a substantial bribe. So he gives her a check and she gives him a first name (no last name) and address. But when he follows the lead she gave him, the address is a fire station, and the name belongs to a Dalmatian! He calls Burgess and they go back to see Pierrette and find her dead, apparently she tripped on the rug and fell out the window.

Then, with about three days left before the execution, Lombard goes to see Henderson in his cell and tell him what's been going on and to go over the story again for some new lead to follow. And they come up with one final last-ditch plan to try and find the Girl with the Pumpkin Hat...but I don't think I should tell you about it cuz it IS supposed to be a mystery and I'd hate to spoil it for you!

It was pretty cool, if a little far-fetched. I mean, ok, technically it COULD happen in real life. And if it did, you'd pretty much be up a creek without a paddle. But the odds on this specific set of circumstances would be REALLY high! I was a little surprised about a couple of things in the ending, but I don't really think I should say what they are. But I guess I can say that I was impressed when I found out why the Girl with the Pumpkin Hat didn't step forward any sooner than she did.

I'm no expert on mysteries, especially in book form, but it seems to me that like all pulp, this was a little hokey. Not necessarily in a bad way, but hokey all the same. I mean, having four or five of the witnesses die during the investigation seemed a bit extreme to me, even if some of them were accidents. Seriously, I haven't seen so many people die in one mystery since "The Private Eyes"...or "Clue The Movie"! But, as long as you don't take the whole thing too seriously, it is an amusing story and well worth reading.

Except of course, I can't just say that, I have to apply a rating to help support my clever disguise as a legitimate review. To do that, I'm going to employ the use of my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice! Don't know what they are? Don't worry, it's easy. Percentage dice are simply two ten-sided dice, one counts as the tens place and one counts as the ones place. So together they randomly determine a number between 01 (so low it makes the bottom of the barrel look like the penthouse) and 00, which actually stands for 100 (the stuff that dreams are made of AND the dreams made out of that stuff!). So I shall give them a nice fair roll like so...

...and end up with a nice, fair, unbiased 83!

So there ya have it friends! That's the way the mop flops! But remember, that's only one idiot's opinion, and you don't have to take it! You could read the book for yourself. It's available at Amazon, and possibly in your local used book store (I find mine in one).) I understand that a movie was made of "The Phantom Lady" back in 1944, but I haven't seen it so I don't know if it's any good.

I guess that's about all I have to say about this. Be sure to tune in again next time when I'll talk about something else! Like what? I don't know yet! So just tune in and find out, ok? You know, be there and be square and all that jazz!

In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment below, telling me if you've read "The Phantom Lady" or any other Cornell Woolrich stories. Or what mystery stories you have read or seen. Yeah, that's a good one! What's your favorite mystery? Let me know in the comments below! Cuz it's the end of the show and I have to go! That's all there is and there ain't no mo'!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Laserblast!

2011-09-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

LASERBLAST

Fasten your seat belts everybody, it's that time again! So this is everybody's buddy Oddcube here to say: Hi there, and welcome to the column! I know you've all been sitting in front of your computer screens waiting impatiently for my next super-insightful soliloquy. Well, it's paid off for ya, cuz I got a real humdinger of a sockaroo ready for ya this month! So with no further ado, and even less adon't, let's get this party started!

If you're new here, first of all congratulations for getting down with O-D-D! You are well on your way to becoming crazy-sexy-cool (like me)! Here's how it works: I pick a subject at random—a TV show, a movie, a book, whatever—and then, I talk about it! I know, its revolutionary stuff, just bear with me here. And then, after I tell you why you should seek it out or avoid it, I come up with Totally Legitimate Rating for the subject of the review with a Very Complicated and Highly Scientific Rating System (comprised primarily of a pair of D&D percentage dice, but more on this later). Cuz, you know, having an actual rating system makes it seem more like a real review.

This time I'm gonna talk about a movie called "Laserblast", if ya don't believe me, just check out the title! How did I come to pick "Laserblast"? Well, I'll tell ya...I THOUGHT my editor liked me. See, she said "Hey Odd! You should review a movie called "Laserblast"!" And I said, "Never heard of it! But if I can find it, I'll review it!" Boy, was THAT a mistake! Why? Cuz "Laserblast" stinks on ice and people must be warned! I'd hate to think of you fine folks wandering blindly into this like I did! Boy, am I great guy or what? Here I am, watching lousy movies so that you don't have to!

So, let's get the behind-the-scenes stuff out of the way so I can tell you what a truly terrible time-wasting travesty this movie really is. "Laserblast" came out in 1978 from Charles Band Productions. It was produced by (surprise!) Charles Band, a creator of bad B-movies and exploitation films. Assuming that "Laserblast" is an indicative example of his artistic inability as a B-movie writer/director/producer, I think I would rank Band just over Ed Wood and well behind Roger Corman. He's had about a half dozen different movie-making companies over the years, and perhaps his best-known movies are the "Puppet Master" series, the "Prehysteria" series, and "Ghoulies". (BTW I have seen NONE of these!)

The movie was directed by Michael Rae, and is his ONLY directorial job. This is NOT a good sign!

The movie was written by Francis Schacht and Frank Ray Perilli. This is Francis Schacht's ONLY writing credit and she had a cameo in the film. Frank Ray Perilli has about fifteen writing credits listed on the IMDB, and I've never heard of ANY of them! I think maybe he was a staff writer for Band's various B-movies.

The movie had a score composed by Richard Band (the producer's brother) and Joel Goldsmith (son of renowned composer Jerry Goldsmith). They both went on to compose music for more prestigious movies and television shows.

The movie features a bunch of people you've never heard of, a few people you'd recognize when you saw 'em, and a couple of legitimate stars who must have lost a bet and had to be in it. I'd like to tell you who plays the hero, but there is NO hero in this flick, just a protagonist. The protagonist is disgruntled teen Billy, played by Kim Milford. Apparently this guy Milford (full name: Richard Kim Milford) did some stage work, and a couple of movies, and a couple of TV shows and made-for-TV movies. Sadly, "Laserblast" seems to be the most prestigious part he had. What a bummer!

His girlfriend, Kathy, is played by Cheryl Smith, sometimes known as Rainbeaux Smith (no lie!). She made a career out of bad sci-fi and horror movies, and is best known for her role in an exploitation flick called "Caged Heat".

Since the flick is about a disgruntled teen killing people and blowing things up with an alien laser gun, we have a token government agent sent out to investigate the situation. This agent is played by a guy named Gianni Russo. I have no idea who he is, but according to the IMDB, he was in the first two "Godfather" films, so other folks might recognize him.

Of course, we have a town sheriff, cuz ya need a town sheriff in these sorts of flicks, to be out of his depth and provide the government agent with people who know the area. Our sheriff is played by Ron Masak, who may be remembered best as the Sheriff who replaced Tom Bosley on "Murder She Wrote". ...I guess he just looks like a sheriff.

This is the very first movie to feature Eddie Deezen (he could only go up from here!), who went on to parts in "Grease", "1941", "Midnight Madness" (read my review here!), and become the voice of Mandark on "Dexter's Lab". Get this, in "Laserblast", Eddie Deezen plays the bully's SIDEKICK! No lie!

To the amazement of all, or at least to me, they actually got a couple of real stars to be in this turkey. One of them was talented character actor Keenan Wynn! Keenan Wynn has been in all sorts of movies, including "Dr. Strangelove", "Once Upon A Time in the West", "The Great Race", and "The Absent-Minded Professor". He's also been in countless TV shows, including being a regular on "Dallas", and he was the only cop to appear in two episodes of the original "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" series (read my review here!).

The other great star to step in this flop was the estimable Roddy McDowall. You gotta know Roddy McDowall cuz he's just plain great and was in at least one episode of just about everything. He was in all the original "Planet of the Apes" movies AND the TV series, and, as I mentioned a few months ago, was a regular on "Tales of the Gold Monkey" (read my review here!). He brings a touch of class to everything, and I've NO idea how he got roped into this one. My theory is that he lost a bet with someone.

And now, I shall tell you the story of the movie so you don't have to watch it!

Some dude with a green face and a long silver tube stuck on his arm is running through the desert of the American southwest. This spaceship lands, and two aliens come out. The aliens are stop-motion and beautifully animated, they're reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen's stuff. Anyway, the aliens shoot the guy with the green face and he disintegrates, leaving a man-shaped burn mark on the ground. Then, to avoid being sighted by regular Earthlings, the aliens beat it.

Then Billy wakes up. Billy is blond, blue-eyed, tan, pretty fit and almost never buttons up his shirt. To be honest, he looks like he should be the popular jock that everybody wants to hang out with, except for the weakling nerds he picks on. But no! Oh yeah, he's supposed to be a teenager but he looks to me like he's in his mid-20's. From some angles, he looks a little like Mark Hamill.

Anyway, he wakes up and finds his Mom packing her bags into the car. She says she was invited to go to Acapulco and it was too good to pass up, but she really means "I read the script and I'm getting outta here while the getting is good!" So she leaves and wisely does not return for the rest of the movie.

So Billy gets in his van—he's got a van, cuz, you know, vans are cool, and we're supposed to think that he's cool cuz he's got one...but he ain't. As I was saying, he gets in his van and goes to see his girlfriend Kathy, but her grandfather, a retired Colonel possibly suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, sends him away. He tries to look dejected, but he can't really pull it off, cuz he had the personality of Styrofoam packing peanuts.

Then Billy stops at what is apparently the only gas station in town. Then this convertible pulls up, driven by rival shmucky "teenager" Chuck (who has the personality of a brick) and his sidekick, Froggy (Eddie Deezen, who has the same personality in every movie he's in). They try to goad him into a street race, but their ribbing is pretty lame. Billy can't get his van to start so Chuck and Froggy laugh at him and pull away.

So then Billy goes out for a ride and gets pulled over by these two deputies that make Barney Fife look like Dirty Harry. They decide to give Billy a ticket...pretty much because he's there and they are bored. I think they were supposed to be amusing, but they were just an embarrassment.

So Billy goes out into the desert for no discernable reason and just HAPPENS to pull up next to the remains of the guy that the aliens killed. He finds the laser gun, and figures out that he has to wear this goofy-looking pendant to make it work and blows up some bushes and trees and things.

Then we cut to the aliens in their spacecraft. The aliens are pretty cool. They kinda look like the turtles in Bugs Bunny cartoons when they take off their shells. Anyway, the ETs phone home and the Boss Alien says "What's the matter with you guys? You left the laser gun there and some hairless ape is playing with it! Now go get it!" Of course, they speak Alien-ese, but you get the gist of it. So the Aliens pull a U-y, a Uey, a Uwie, a Yoo-eeee... You know what? I don't know how to spell "Yoo-eee". But that doesn't matter, despite what they say in Season 1 of "Red Dwarf", the Aliens pull a yoo-eee regardless of how close to light speed they may be going.

Back on Earth, Billy meets up with his girlfriend Kathy. I'd like to say that she has all the personality of a blow-up doll and her head seems to be filled with air just the same, but I don't know if I can get that past my editors. So instead, I shall say that she has all the personality of a store mannequin (NO offense to Kim Cattrall!). Anyway, they go to the lamest pool party the Seventies ever saw. These are the un-swinging-est teenagers I've ever seen in my life, and I'm a total SQUARE! The party is SO boring that Billy sleeps through it. He complains about being tired and there is a weird growth developing on his chest where the pendant rests, but I know it was really how boring the party was.

He wakes up and goes to find Kathy, and finds Chuck hitting on her. So Billy gets into a REALLY lame fight with Chuck and Froggy, and was winning until his stupid girlfriend stopped him (I think it was embarrassing her, and I don't blame her!). So later that night—now get this, folks—he wakes up and his face is all green like the guy the aliens killed at the beginning of the movie. He looks like the illegitimate son of the Hulk and the Mask. In this monstrous form, he returns to the pool party and blows up Chuck's car with the laser cannon. The next day, Billy no longer has a green face, and seems to have to no memory of his actions, which makes him luckier than the viewing audience.

Kathy, his airhead girlfriend, takes him to see Dr. Mellon (no relation to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew). He, of course, has no clue what the thing is in Billy's chest, but he pulls a weird metal disc out of it and plans to take it "into the city" to be analyzed. However, as he drives "into the city" that night, Billy blows him up, too, for no discernable reason other than attempting to save Roddy McDowall's dignity and credibility.

So then this government guy shows up. He's nice and mysterious, looks kinda like Bill Bixby in several shots, and you don't even know if he's with the FBI, the CIA, the MIB, SHIELD, or the Omega Sector. All you know is that he's the government guy, the federali, he has less personality than his own suit, and he's here to find out about mysterious goings-on that have occurred in the area in the past 24 hours, including the exploding car at the pool party. He talks, individually, to all the kids from the party, and finds the weird metal disc among the debris of Dr. Mellon's car. He takes it "into the city" to have it analyzed and learns that it is not of this Earth, and that we have no means of destroying it. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is some important plot point, cuz it isn't!

Billy and Kathy meet up at "their special rendezvous spot" and have a super close-up, out of focus love scene that is easily the scariest scene in the whole flick! Afterwards, she gets dressed, and finds his goofy pendant and finds that it fits EXACTLY on the weird growth on his chest, which is where she lays it down. Instantly, Billy goes all Greenface on her, and growls. She screams and runs away (which she should have done even before the movie started). He gets up--now get this--he gets up to chase her, runs into his own van and knocks himself down! It almost looks like he runs himself over! Epic Fail!

Someplace along the line (I forget where exactly, and do NOT want to watch the flick again to find out) Billy kills those two useless deputies and blows up the town's only gas station. That was some night scene. Some random day scene (definitely after his girlfriend saw him looking like a reject from Jabba's palace) he finds Chuck and Froggy with a new car and kills them. After that, it's just meaningless random destruction! He blows up cars! He blows up buildings! He blows up a pinball machine! Yes, you read that right, I said a PINBALL MACHINE!!! What is up with that?!?! I tried to tell him, I said, "Billy! You're shooting the wrong people! You should be shooting at your agent, the casting director, the screenwriters..." But he didn't listen!

So, the Federali talks to Kathy the girlfriend and they go off to find Billy, and they do find him with conve-e-e-enient ease. Monster-Face Billy is about to blow them up (in the government Caddy) when suddenly, and without warning, an alien shoots Billy from the top of a building, killing him! Then, the alien walks away, across the roof, towards his spaceship in the sky behind him. Kathy inexplicably weeps over Billy's dead body, and no one understands why.

And that's the end.

Now, your first reaction is: but you left the laser gun behind again, you stupid alien! And this time there are TWO stupid hairless apes who could end up using it! But that's not necessarily so. See, Billy gets zapped by the alien's laser beam, then we cut to the alien on the roof, then we cut back to Billy and the laser cannon is mysteriously missing from his hand. Did it blow up? I don't think so. They show every other explosion in this movie from at least three different angles, I can't believe they'd miss this opportunity to film another one. Did he drop it? We don't know! It's only one of many things that never get adequately explained.

This is the same alien who shot the guy at the beginning of the movie. So why doesn't Billy disintegrate into a human-shaped burn mark? Isn't the alien using the same gun? It sure looked like it.

You know, the worst part is that if you cut this down to most basic premise, it has extreme potential for coolness. Check this out: a bullied teenager finds an alien weapon that turns him into a monster who commits acts of sci-fi revenge in a flick featuring Keenan Wynn, Roddy McDowall, and Eddie Deezen! THAT sounds potentially cool! How did THAT turn into THIS!?

So, to make a long story short (yeah, yeah, I know, it's too late!): "Laserblast" stinks on ice! It sucks a dead giraffe! It should be avoided at all costs! It had exactly one redeeming factor: it was marginally better than "Manos: The Hands of Fate", but so is a root canal performed by a dentist with the shakes. If for some reason you absolutely have to watch this movie, try to make it the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version, where you can enjoy at least one-out-of-four obscure references and insults that Mike and the 'bots hurl at the screen.

Yeah, I know. This is supposed to pass as a legitimate review, so I can't just say "Hey! This stinks! Don't watch it!" I HAVE to come up with a rating. So I'm gonna be fair about it, and roll my D&D percentage dice. These are just two ten-sided dice. One die is the ones place, and one die is the tens place, together they randomly determine a number between 0-1 (watching "Manos: The Hands of Fate" while getting a root canal from a dentist with the shakes) all the way up to double-0, which actually means 100 (watching original theatrical cut of "Star Wars"...on my comfy couch...eating mint chocolate chip ice cream...with *sigh* Morgan Fairchild! It CAN'T POSSIBLY get better than THAT!).

...*sigh*

What? Where was I? Oh yeah, dice! Right! Anyway, as I was saying, I give my dice a nice, random, totally un-biased, un-influenced, un-weighted roll just like this...

...and end up with a fair and un-orchestrated 11! Yup, slightly above "Manos", and slightly below "Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings". Sounds about right to me!

Of course, you don't HAVE to take my word on it (though I highly suggest that you do). You could watch it for yourself, if you're the masochistic type. This movie is out there, running wild, waiting to pounce on some poor, unsuspecting sci-fi fan who won't know until it's too late! Don't let it happen to you! Don't let it happen to your loved ones! Spread the word, link to this review, people MUST be warned!

By the way, have you seen any other movies that should be avoided at all costs? Feel free to leave a comment below telling me, and other unwary victims, the titles! In the meantime, I got nothing more to add, so come back next month to see what else I can find to talk about! Be there and be square!

------Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Doctor Demento

2011-08-31T23:39:00.000-07:00

DOCTOR DEMENTO

Hey, there you are! How the heck are ya? How long has it been, about a month, right? Well then, it must be time for another Odd Review! So this is everybody's buddy, Oddcube, saying: Hello, and welcome to the column!

So I don't know what you've been up to, but I've decided, like, two minutes ago, to become slogan-conscious! So I'm gonna claim that I've spent the last month devising brand new slogans. Here, check this out: "Once you go square, nothing else can compare"! How do ya like that? Is that corn that isn't even ripe yet, or what? Oh wait, I got another one! Whattaya think of this: "Don't be a rube, read Odd Reviews by Oddcube"! Yeah, that sounds appropriately catchy and cheesy, doesn't it? Oh wow...I know, I got no shame--I'm Oddcube! :P

And to make it worse, none of that had anything to do with what I'm gonna talk about today. So I guess I better buckle down and get down to business.

As I said before: welcome to the column! This is where I get to talk about whatever I feel like talking about in whatever one-sided, opinionated, biased, or ill-informed manner I feel like! During all of that, I try to tell you why you should seek out or avoid whatever I'm talking about, and then try to justify it with a schlocky rating that is fairly determined by rolling dice and TOTALLY NOT MADE UP AT ALL (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it)! And so, with no further ado and even less a-don't, let us proceed to this month's totally terrific topic: The Dr. Demento Show!

Dr. Demento, of course, is that wacky DJ who showcases novelty music and comedy skits from yesterday, today, and tomorrow! But in real life, Dr. Demento is mild-mannered DJ, Barret Eugene Hansen. He was the son of an amateur pianist, born in Minneapolis, and went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and then went to UCLA and got master's degrees in folklore and ethnomusicology, which totally explains how he knows so much about what he knows so much about! The man's some kind of authority on music in general! He's written articles for Rolling Stone and Hit Parader, and liner notes for all sorts of albums!

But we're not here to talk about his appropriately unusual academic achievements! We're here to talk about something much more fun than that!

The whole thing started innocently enough in 1970 at Pasadena station KPPC-FM, which was an "underground" radio station. As such, there was no definitive format. In other words, the DJs could--and did--play whatever they felt like. So there was a mishmash of musical styles as one DJ might play classical stuff like Mozart, followed by a guy who might play KISS, and then a guy who would play folksy stuff like Peter, Paul & Mary.

During this time, young Barry Hansen, not yet known as Dr. Demento, would (mostly) play rock oldies. But every once in a while he would throw in a novelty record. One of these was an odd little song called "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus. The song is about a driver who constantly gets into accidents--complete with sound effects--and ends up (rather happily) getting yet another blood transfusion at the hospital. Upon hearing the song, one of his fellow DJs remarked "You must be demented to play that on the radio!" This offhand comment eventually evolved into the name we all know and love: Dr. Demento!

Demented or not, the listeners totally digged it the most! In fact, Hansen noticed that the novelty songs received just as much (and sometimes more) positive feedback from his listeners, and they quickly became requested more than the mainstream music. Hansen took note, and eventually transformed his broadcast into an all novelty and comedy show.

By 1974, Dr. Demento had a two hour syndicated show broadcast on stations from coast-to-coast! Which means we've finally gotten to the fun part: telling you about the show itself!

So, the show starts up with a disjointed chorus announcing "The Doctor is in!", followed immediately by his opening theme: an instrumental version of the song "Pico and Sepulveda". Then, after some obligatory "welcome to the show"-type comments, we are treated to an hour of more-or-less random songs and comedy skits. Some of these are usually listener requests, and most are grouped into small blocks with a common theme. Somewhere in the midst of this hour, there is usually a feature called "The Demented News", made especially for the Dr. Demento show by a guy who goes by the name of "Whimsical Will", who basically talks about whatever he wants accompanied by lines and comments ripped from various recordings to help emphasize and embellish his point. The second hour starts up with a half-hour block devoted to this week's featured theme, like "cartoons", or "cars", or "office humor" or whatever. Then the show wraps up the final half-hour with the "Funny Five Countdown", which is this week's Top Five Most Requested songs.

Of course, this is the typical weekly structure for the show, but there were exceptions to the rule. Sometimes ol' Doctor D. would have a guest, like Mel Brooks, or George Carlin, or a member of Monty Python, or the guys from Spinal Tap. He would also have seasonal shows where the entire show featured the theme. This usually occurred around Halloween and Christmas, due to the enormous amount of material available. And the very last show of the year was always the "Funny Twenty-Five", which, you guessed it, was the top twenty-five requested songs of the year!

So what kind of stuff does he play? Well, like I said, novelty songs and humor... type...stuff. There are tons and tons of songs, some are parodies of mainstream songs, but you'd be surprised how many original non-parody songs there are in the world too! Plus, he showcases lots of comedy skits recorded by Saturday Night Live alumni, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and others. He's had stuff from a lot of big names on his show. Names like Judy Tenuta, Emo Phillips, and Steve Martin to name just a few. Heck, I've heard songs by Bing Crosby on the show! A lot of the stuff he plays is by folks who aren't necessarily nationally recognized, but have an enviable following in their own circle or geographic area. Like who? Well, like the Great Luke Ski, he's a "filk singer" who apparently works a lot of sci-fi conventions. Or, like the Capitol Steps, they do political humor in the form of parody songs out in Washington DC.

Likewise, Dr. Demento managed to expose several older artists and songs to the newer generations. Folks like Benny Bell (with "Shaving Cream"), Haywire Mac ("Ain't We Crazy"), Spike Jones ("Cocktails For Two"), and Tom Lehrer ("Poisoning Pigeons in the Park") received lots of airplay and tons of listener requests during the show's entire run.

But that's not all!

There's more?!

There sure is! In addition to all the professional and semi-professional talent he's played over the years, Dr. Demento has graciously received hundreds and thousands of demo tapes from amateurs from all over! People would send tapes in to the address given for his fan club, the Demento Society, and Dr. D listened to them all and stored them away in his massive musical library, and dig them out to play them on the air! How cool is that? Thanks to this insane but fair practice, he has helped all sorts of people break into the funny business. Most prominent of these, of course, is Weird Al Yankovic! You've GOT to know who he is! He's the guy that does "Eat It" instead of "Beat It" and "Fat" instead of "Bad". He's got a new album out right now, and the lead song is "Perform This Way", a parody of "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga.

The short version is that Dr. Demento was a big part in publicizing many of these artists, and some of them even found a way to try and pay it back! Barnes & Barnes (they sing "Fish Heads") put Dr. D into a couple of their videos, and they even featured him and some of his crew as vocalists on a song called "Gotta Get A Fake ID". An English comedian called Ivor Biggun was so pleased to learn his song "Bras on 45" was so popular on the Dr. Demento Show that Ivor wrote a tribute song called "Let's All Get Demented", which was also insanely popular on the show. And, of course, Weird Al has never forgotten that it was Dr. D who discovered him, and Al has featured the good Doctor in several of his videos, and even his movie "UHF".

Anyway, it was a winning formula that lasted well over thirty years. Sadly though, the radio show's popularity has diminished pretty steadily over the past couple of decades. Losing profitability, it also lost advertisers and syndicated networks. In fact, I am sad to report that as of January of 2011, Dr. Demento is no longer on the radio. But it's not all sad, because he has migrated to the internet!

That's right, folks! You can go to http://www.drdemento.com/ and find info and links to various artists, playlists for nearly EVERY show he's ever aired, and even download individual episodes to listen to! The good Doctor has dutifully concocted a new episode every week for over thirty years (with only very few exceptions), and many of the past shows are also up and available for streaming as well as new ones. And in some ways, it's kinda better, because there's no time limits imposed by a radio schedule, and there's no censorship (yes, he's got some songs that wouldn't have gotten on the radio).

Not only that, but over the years Dr. Demento has put together more than 40 albums, collecting some of the best and funniest tracks for your audio enjoyment! That's right; we're talking serious preposterous-ity for posterity here! Including his series of "Basement Tapes", his three Anniversary Collections, and his "Greatest Novelty CD of All Time"!

So at the end of it, it comes down to: if you like to laugh, then you would totally dig Dr. Demento, so give him a listen-to! Except, of course, I can't just say that, cuz just saying that does NOT promote my flimsy façade of an actual-factual review column. So to uphold that particular preposterous pretext, I've actually got to assign a phony-baloney rating here.

To do that, I shall once again employ the invaluable assistance of my o-so-treasured D&D percentage dice! In case ya don't know it, percentage dice are two ten-sided dice. One stands for the ones place, and the other stands for the tens place. Together, you roll them to randomly determine a number from zero-one (I'd rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass), to double-zero, which actually means one hundred (total mega-super-epic-WIN)! So I'll just give my totally fair and unbiased dice a roll just like that...

...and roll an 86! There, see? I told ya it was well worth checking out! But hey, that's only one idiot's opinion, and you don't have to take it! There is another option! What's the other option? I hear you cry. Why, to check it out for yourself, duh!

Hey, whilst we're on the subject...what is YOUR favorite funny song? "The Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley? "Gitarzan" by Ray Stevens? "The Tennessee Bird Walk" by Blanchard and Morgan? Feel free to be sociable and share your song in the comments below! After all, I need SOMEthing to do to keep myself occupied until next month, and time for the next Odd Review! Be there and be square, cuz this is your buddy, Oddcube, saying sayonara senors and senoritas!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Tales of the Gold Monkey

2011-07-31T23:40:00.000-07:00

TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY

I know why you're here! I knew you were coming! I didn't bake a cake though, but I did prepare something even better than that: a new Odd Review! Why is that better? Cuz you can have your Odd Review and read it, too, duh!

So, as if you didn't know, this your buddy, Oddcube, saying hi and welcome to the column! This is where I get to talk about whatever I feel like under the clever guise of a review column, which is reinforced by a phony-boloney rating which is randomly determined by rolling dice. And I've got a true treat this time, team, a terrific trophy of television's times-gone-by called "Tales of the Gold Monkey"!

"Tales of the Gold Monkey" aired its one-and-only season on ABC in 1982. The show was created by some guy named Donald P. Bellisario, who created some other obscure shows with names like "Magnum, P.I.", "Airwolf", "Quantum Leap", "JAG", and "NCIS". In fact, "Gold Monkey" was apparently the very first series that he got a "Created By" credit for.

So, the scuttlebutt from several online sources is that Bellisario created "Gold Monkey", inspired by such classic movies as "Only Angels Have Wings" and "To Have and Have Not" and that he began trying to sell it to the networks since the late 70's. He was repeatedly turned down, as them dumb ol' TV execs thought no one would be interested in way cool adventure series set in the 1930's. And then it happened:

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" was released in theaters, and was a smash hit!

Then all of a sudden, all three networks (yeah, there were only three back then, how did people survive?!) were scrambling to find something similar that they could air. The good news here is that some guy at ABC remembered "Tales of the Gold Monkey", which came complete with a tropical island and a hero in a leather jacket! ...The bad news is that they really wanted it to be more of an action-oriented adventure and less the character-driven drama Bellisario originally intended. The resulting series is somewhere in between, and way cool!

"Tales of the Gold Monkey" takes place in the South Seas in 1938. More specifically, on the fictional island of Boragora, part of the French Mandate which covers the southern half of the volcanic Marivella Island chain. The northern half of the Marivellas compose the Japanese Mandate. The show focuses on the adventures of Jake Cutter, a former Flying Tiger who is now a pilot-for-hire who transports passengers and cargo with his Grumman Goose (that's an airplane, if ya don't know). Jake is played by Stephen Collins, whom you may remember from "Brewster's Millions" starring Richard Pryor and John Candy (he's the guy Richard Pryor gets to slug at the end), or from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (he's the guy who merges with V'Ger at the end of the movie...in case ya fell asleep and missed that part, which is TOTALLY understandable!), or as a priest in the TV series "Seventh Heaven".

Of course, a good hero needs good sidekicks, and Jake has several characters to back him up. His best, or at least most loyal, friend is Corky, the best (and only) mechanic within a thousand miles. Corky is amiable, optimistic, a little naïve, a little dense, and has a poor memory as a result of how much he drinks. Corky is played by Jeff MacKay, who also played recurring roles on "Magnum P.I.", "JAG", "Battlestar Gallactica" (the original one), "Black Sheep Squadron", and "The Greatest American Hero". And on top of all that, I found out that Jeff MacKay was Robert Redford's cousin!

Jake Cutter never went very far without his faithful friend, Jack, who was a one-eyed Jack Russell Terrier. Jack was smarter than the average dog; in fact, he was often smarter than the average human. He could hold a conversation with you by barking once for "no" and twice for "yes"...or is it the other way around? To be honest, I think he switched it around every once in a while, just to confound people. Jack had a glass eye made of opal with a star sapphire center, but Jake lost in a poker game in the pilot and Jack holds a king-sized grudge against him until he tracks it down and gets it back which, of course, Jake tries to do through the entire run of the show. In the meantime, Jack wears an eye patch and is very cool, even though he's kinda contrary.

Next up, we have Sarah Stickney-White, who turns out to be an American secret agent...even though she sounds British...who has been assigned to eavesdrop and relay any information that may be useful to the U.S. in the upcoming war. As her cover, she was the singer in Boragora's central meeting spot, The Monkey Bar. In addition to all of that, she was Jake Cutter's romantic interest throughout the series, cuz you need that sort of tension in a series. Sarah is played by Caitlin O'Heaney who was on "One Life To Live" for a while, and was in the Woody Allen films "Zelig" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo", and for a while she had her own perfume, called "Caitlin".

The most mysterious of Jake's companions is "Bon Chance" Louie. Louie is the French Magistrate in charge of Boragora and also the proprietor of the Monkey Bar. Louie is a likable scoundrel and rogue who occasionally drops little hints about various experiences in his exotic and apparently infamous life. In the pilot, Louie was played by Ron Moody, who has apparently been in tons of things, but I only know him from Mel Brooks' "The Twelve Chairs". Also apparently, he and somebody didn't get along, because in the ongoing series, Louie was played by Roddy McDowall. ...I don't have to tell you who Roddy McDowall is, do I? I mean, he's Roddy McDowall! Everybody knows and likes him, right? He was in, like, EVERYTHING it seems like.

Of course, a hero also needs some opposition, and there were some members of the regular cast to help in that capacity, too. For starters, there was the Reverend Willie Tenboom, who was actually a Nazi spy assigned to Boragora. Of course, he wasn't much of a spy; he was actually quite content to be stationed out on that tropical paradise mostly away from weighty worries like war and politics. He was set up as a Reverend, and his favorite pastime was giving private--ahem--"blessings" to the local native girls. He certainly didn't seem very devoted to the Nazi cause, and in fact was rather fond of the show's heroes. As such a reluctant opponent, he wasn't really played up as a villain, but more as focal point for occasional comedy. Willie was played by John Calvin, who seems to be in one episode of just about everything, and a couple of small movie roles, but "Gold Monkey" seems to be the largest part in his repertoire.

A more affective villainess was the Princess Koji, a half-Irish/half-Japanese princess who governed the Japanese Mandate in the Maravellas. She was sort of a classic Dragon Lady type of character, very clever and cunning, and (of course) intrigued and enamored of our stalwart hero, Jake Cutter. Princess Koji was played by Marta DuBois, who was also Thomas Magnum's wife on "Magnum P.I." and John Larroquette's love interest on the "McBride" series of mystery movies.

Princess Koji had several people at her beck and call, but her best servant is Todo. Todo was some sort of samurai-guy who was fanatically loyal to the Princess. He has a quick temper, unfaltering determination, and a samarai sword--and he's ready to use them all! Todo is played by John Fujioka, who you might remember from "Pearl Harbor", or "Mortal Kombat", but I remember him from "The Private Eyes".

Anyway, "Tales of the Gold Monkey" is an adventure show, and there's plenty of adventure everywhere! There are claim jumpers, guys trying to blow up members of Royal Families, kidnappers, slavers, killer apes, tigers, and curses from ancient island gods! From start to finish, it's just plain cool!

Now, some of these plot elements were part of Bellisario's vision of what the series should be, but some of the more exotic things like ape-men and natives were apparently added at the insistence of the network. Remember, they wanted it to be more Indiana Jones. Well, remember also that this is the first series that Bellisario got "Created By" credit for, and since his name was on it, he was very insistent about how it turned out, too. The short version here is that arguments ensued, and the series was not picked up beyond the first season, much to the surprise of rival networks and the disappointment of their growing fanbase.

Despite stubborn, short-sighted network execs, the show retains a loyal cult following. I guess I'm part of it, cuz I totally dig it the most. And what's not to like? There's adventure, excitement, romance, intrigue, and exotic scenery! So if you like Indiana Jones, or Allan Quatermaine, or Jungle Jim, or the movie "Firewalker", or the Disney show "Talespin" (which itself was supposedly inspired by "Tales of the Gold Monkey"), then you will like this show! ...Yeah, I know, I can't just say that. Some people just have to have the numbers, so it must be time to assign a rating to this thing!

Now I have a highly scientific rating system: a pair of D&D percentage dice! It's very simple. They're just two ten-sided dice, one die represents the tens place while the other is the ones place. So when I roll them, I get a random number anywhere from 01 (even worse than Brussels sprouts!) to double-0, which actually means 100 (even better than all-you-can-eat mint chocolate chip ice cream!). So, I just give 'em a totally unbiased roll like this...

...and roll a 95! There see? I told ya it was good stuff! But hey, you don't have to take my word for it! ...I don't know why you wouldn't take my word for it. You really ought to. I mean, have I ever lied to you as far as you know? No, of course not! ...But that doesn't matter, cuz ya don't have to take my word on it. You know why? Cuz you could watch it for yourself and form your own opinions! You could even post them if ya want. This is the internet, we allow that here and people do it all the time! Even (and especially) idiots who are clearly unqualified to share their opinions! You know, like me! ....Wait, that's not right...*shrug* Oh well, nevermind.

Speaking of my unqualified opinions, I guess that wraps up my opinions for now! So I'll see ya next time when you come back to satisfy your burning curiosity about my next subject! Don't deny it, you know you'll be back! And I certainly hope ya will, cuz I need all the readers I can get! See ya next time, folk!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Dungeon Siege

2011-07-01T01:04:00.000-07:00

DUNGEON SEIGE

Greetings and salutations, reverent readers! Are you ready for the latest, the greatest, and most recent Odd Review EVER? ...I sure hope so, cuz here it is! Now! Live! Comin' at ya! In 3-D! (It was written in 2-D, then converted into 3-D so as to ride on the coattails of trendiness!) And this is everybody's buddy Oddcube, welcoming one and all who have come to see what this particular idiot has to say!

And now: an obligatory word to the unwary who unwittingly but wistfully wandered into my weird little world...

So here's how it is: my name is Oddcube (Hi! How ya doin'?). I talk about stuff! What kind of stuff? Why, pretty much whatever I feel like talking about! Books, movies, TV shows, games, whatever! I try to talk about weird stuff you may have missed, or old stuff you may have forgotten about. I try to tell you a little something about it, and whether or not I liked it and think its worth your time checking out. That's right; I do it so that you don't have to! Is that cool of me, or what? Then I write up my half-baked opinions into an article just like this one, and assign some goofball rating to it so that I can call it a review, and then it gets posted on the internet courtesy of the fine folks over at Abandoned Towers Magazine! Get it? Good! Cuz it's time to move on!

This time I'm gonna talk about a computer game called Dungeon Siege. Dungeon Siege is a role-playing game that was designed by Gas Powered Games and published by Microsoft Games in 2002.

Believe it or not, I really haven't played too many computer games. I have played several on the Nintendo and Super NES, but not on the computer. So when I first got Dungeon Siege, I was pretty impressed with how you could customize the look of your character. You only get to design one character, so that was less overwhelming than some other games where you start with a whole group right away.

Next, I thought the graphics were really detailed. Compared to more recent stuff, it's just not so bad.

You start off as a farmer somewhere in the Kingdom of Ehb, on the continent of Aranna. Your farm is under attack by these monster-guys called the Krug, and a dying friend tells you to get to town and warn the guards. So you fight your way to town, which brings up another cool point. In most RPGs you have to pick if your guy is a warrior or a wizard or whatever. But in Dungeon Siege you develop your skill level in archery, melee fighting, or casting spells (from two different kinds of magic). So, you can specialize in one skill and gain high levels as an archer, or a warrior, or a wizard of combat magic, or a mage with nature magic, OR you can develop ALL four skills and have a well-balanced character! To me, this was a really cool concept!

Once you get to town, of course you learn that the situation is worse than you thought, and you continue onward to the castle where some evil creatures called the Seck have broken out of their prison beneath the castle and sorta taken over, which is why all the bad monsters are suddenly running amok throughout the kingdom. At various points along the way, you can meet other characters who offer to join your group (this often requires giving them money). Once they join your group, you can control them just like you control the guy you started the game with. Plus, you can decide what formation the members of your group march in, and set their basic reactions to nearby monsters (always attack, always retreat, etc). You can also single out one guy and move them without moving everyone else, so as not to get attacked by monsters.

This may have been typical stuff for computer games, but it was new to me and I thought it was plenty cool. I started off trying to really pay attention to the storyline, for vital clues on where to go and stuff. But once I figured out it was a linear game and you could only stray so far off the path, I kinda stopped. Unfortunately, I never finished the game, either, as I had discovered World of Warcraft and began to play it instead.

Plus, there was another version of the game (on the same CD), where you could connect your computer with another computer either through a LAN line or the net, and play in another part of the gameworld with other players. I never had any other players to play with, but that didn't stop me from running around that gameworld alone.

However, somebody must've played through it and thought it was pretty cool, because the game has spawned all sorts of expansion packs and sequels! 2003 saw the release of Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna. In 2005, Dungeon Siege II was released. 2006 was a banner year, seeing the release of the expansion pack Dungeon Siege II: Broken World AND Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony, which was released for the Sony Playstation Portable. And apparently they just released Dungeon Siege 3 in Europe and North America, and will be released in Japan later this month!

To be thorough I suppose I should also mention that there was a movie called "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale". It came out in 2008, was directed by Uwe Boll, and starred a bunch of people and Burt Reynolds and Claire Forlani and the guy who played Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo movie. I have only this to say about the movie: of all the movies I've seen in my life, that was one of them!

Dungeon Siege was pretty cool, but I got distracted by World of Warcraft. But now that I'm bored with WoW, I've rediscovered Dungeon Siege in one of the closets here at my Sanctum Sanctorum. It seems to me I got through the mountains but never got all the way through the swamps. So I'll have to start playing it again. Cuz it is a worthwhile game.

Except, of course, I can't just SAY that. To appear like a real review I have to assign a rating. But I'm too wishy-washy, so I'll have to use my ever-incredible D&D percentage dice to randomly determine the rating for me! Percentage dice are simply two ten-sided dice. One die represents the ones place, and the other die represents the tens place, and together they randomly determine a number between zero-one (I'd rather crawl through twenty miles of sewer pipe than have to live through that) to double-zero, which actually stands for one hundred (the greatest thing EVER, like doubled!).

So I'll just toss the trusty ol' percentage dice like that...

...and roll a 70! Oh yeah, I'd better hastily add that I've never played any of the expansions or sequels, so this only applies to the original game.

But I can live with a score of 70, but you don't have to! You could try the game yourself and form your very own opinions! You know, I can't remember if I found mine in a Wal-Mart or in an Office Depot. But I'm sure you can still find a copy out there somewhere. If nowhere else, there's got to be one on Amazon or EBay!

So there you have it, fanatical fans! Another fix of the freaky and fun! And don't forget to remember to not forget to come back next month to find out what I talk about in my very next Odd Review! So be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Lost In Space

2011-05-31T22:52:00.000-07:00

LOST IN SPACE

Aw man, you found me! I guess that makes me "It"! Well this is everybody's buddy Oddcube here saying "Hello! And welcome to the column!"

So, if you've been here before you all ready know how this goes. But if you never haven't not ever been here before, then you're in for a life-defining experience! So what's it all about, anyway? Well, I'll tell ya: the internet is an ever-ongoing institution where any uninformed idiot can invite any and all to observe his or her unwarranted opinions...and this is where I announce mine! Except, of course, as a courtesy to the fine folks over at Abandoned Towers Magazine (except NO substitutes!) I make the concerted effort to disguise my unqualified ramblings as a review column. ...In fact, you're reading it now!

So what sort of things do I review? That's the best part! I get to talk about almost anything that I want! Books, movies, TV shows, and other miscellaneous things and stuff. Although I do try to find the strange and obscure stuff that you might have missed or forgotten about and tell why it's still cool! Or, conversely, why it should be avoided like a rabid wolverine!

This time around, I'm gonna talk about Irwin Allen's classic sci-fi show "Lost In Space"! Boy was I excited when I found this childhood favorite at Netflix! I remember thinking that Dr. Smith and the Robot were just the FUNNIEST thing, and decided right on the spot to do a review on it!

First, though, I have to give the behind-the-scenes scoop. Inspired by the book "Swiss Family Robinson", Irwin Allen (who also created the shows "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", "The Time Tunnel", and "Land of the Giants") came up with a show he wanted to call "Space Family Robinson". Unbeknownst to him there was already a comic book published by Gold Key Comics using that name and concept, and a lawsuit ensued, which resulted in a change of the show's name and the addition of the characters of Dr. Smith and the Robot (you know, two of the three characters EVERYone remembers!).

The show ran on CBS from September 15, 1965 to March 6, 1968, encompassing 83 episodes over three seasons. The original pilot centered on the Robinson Family and Dr. Donald West (yes, he was a scientist in the original pilot!), who were shot into space with the intention of colonizing a habitable planet in the neighborhood of Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, the pilot was pretty dull. So between that and the lawsuit from Gold Key, Dr. Smith and the Robot were added to the show and Don West was changed to a pilot.

The cast included Guy Williams (who used to be Zorro!) as Dr. John Robinson; June Lockhart (who used to be on "Lassie" and "Petticoat Junction"!) as Dr. Maureen Robinson; Mark Goddard as Major Don West; Marta Kristen as older daughter Judy; Angela Cartwright (who was in "The Sound of Music"!) as younger daughter Penny; and Billy Mumy (who grew up to become half of novelty musical group Barnes & Barnes and then was Lennier on "Babylon 5"!) as child prodigy Will; and "special guest star" Jonathan Harris as Dr. Zachary Smith. One cannot forget The Robot who was performed by Bob May in the suit, and Dick Tufeld provided the voice. By-the-by, the Robot was designed by Robert Kinoshita, who also designed Robby the Robot for "Forbidden Planet" (and appears in not one, but TWO episodes of "Lost In Space"!).

And the story changed a little, too. Some other government wants to be the first to colonize an alien planet, so they have promised Dr. Smith an obscene amount of money to sabotage the Jupiter 2. So he rigs the Robot to start breaking stuff after takeoff while the Robinsons are in suspended animation. Unfortunately for him, he does NOT get off the ship before takeoff. His added weight throws off all the calculations and the ship was thrown slightly off course...right into a meteor shower! As if that wasn't bad enough, the Robot's sabotage programming kicks in, and it destroys some consoles! The Jupiter 2 lands on an unidentified alien planet, which just HAPPENS to have a breathable Earth-like atmosphere.

From here out it becomes a sort of "Gilligan's Island" in space. They manage to meet all sorts of aliens, many of them capable of leaving the planet...but the Robinsons remain trapped. At first, Dr. Smith was intended to be killed off, his role of sabotaging the mission now complete, but for some reason, the character was kept through the remainder of the season.

Granted, he was the only character on the show that had any character at all. All the other characters of the main cast were pretty bland. However, upon re-watching Season One, I found him to be totally annoying! I mean, okay, I can get that he was shifty and sinister and sold out to a rival government. But once they get into space all he does is whine about how he wants to go back to Earth. ...Ok, I can dig that, too, but he doesn't seem to want to get back to Earth badly enough to help accomplish that! He lays around doing his best to do nothing at all, and refuses to conserve supplies when it means any sort of personal sacrifice or inconvenience. He lies, cheats, steals, and/or uses EVERY other character not once, but time and time again!

To make matters worse, the Robinsons forgive and forget his actions time and time again! I mean, come on! I agree we all should strive to be good people, but there's got to be a limit! Whether motivated by greed, cowardice, or slothfulness, Dr. Smith's actions constantly endangered the lives of innocent people, including women and children! He needs just one good butt-kicking, but Robinson refuses to do it, and won't even let Major West do it! The worst Smith gets is a "stern talking-to" (several times) and it never does any good. Obviously Dr. John Robinson is Lawful Stupid.

I only re-watched Season One because it was supposed to be the one that was "straight sci-fi adventure", as opposed to Seasons Two and Three which were more campy and comical, to the regret of various cast members. The first few episodes were the best, and I'm pretty sure of where they intended to kill off Smith. But somebody somewhere really liked him, because he not only lived through the entire run of the show, but actor Jonathan Harris was allowed to rewrite scenes of dialog to develop his character. I understand that with Season Two the show shifted to more prominently feature Dr. Smith, Will Robinson and the Robot, but I couldn't take any more.

It's not all bad; there is some cool stuff in the show. They had a flying saucer, a jet pack, and a robot so coolness has been achieved right there. Plus, they had an amphibious RV to go cruisin' over alien lands and seas. They had nutritional protein pills way before NASA and Pillsbury developed their Space Food Sticks. They also had those shiny silver reflective blankets, which were newly developed by NASA. In later seasons, they also had a space pod.

The stories of the first season weren't bad, either. They salvaged star charts from a derelict alien spacecraft, explored parts of an alien planet including an underground lost city, and fought to survive against extreme temperatures, indigenous alien animals, and visiting extra-terrestrial troublemakers.

Despite its good or bad points, the show only ran for three seasons. A fourth season was expected, but was abandoned. Why? Well, there seems to be some debate about that. The most often stated reasons include budget cuts, that it was disliked by a network exec, low ratings, or a lack of interest among the cast.

But even though the show ended, its legacy endured! There was an official comic book, scripted by Bill Mumy himself, not to be confused with the original "Space Family Robinson" comic published by Gold Key. There was a novel based on the series written by Dave Van Arnum and Ron Archer (who used the name Ted White). A Hannah-Barbara cartoon was featured on the cartoon anthology series "The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie". Then, of course, there was the big movie production with William Hurt, Gary Oldman, and Matt LeBlanc. And the WB commissioned a pilot for a remake back in 2003 that was directed by John Woo, but was not picked up as a series. Not to mention tons of merchandising, the coolest of which HAS to be the limited edition, completely authorized authentic reproductions of the Class M-3 Model B9, General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot which is mechanized, motorized and operated by remote control with all sorts of features including over 500 voice tracks by the Robot's original voice, Richard Tufeld. This is no joke, if you 25K lying around with nothing to use it for, you can go to http://www.blogger.com/www.lostinspacerobot.com and buy your own!

So what's it all come to? Well, I was glad to revisit the stories, because I couldn't remember a single one from my childhood. I still think that Will Robinson was about the coolest 9-year old on TV, and that the Robot was totally wicked! I am disappointed; however, that Dr. Smith annoyed me so much. Like I said, I recall him being very funny when I was in single-digits, but now I just wanted to sock him in the jaw. The Robinsons are a typical 60's TV family, and get along with one another far better than any real-life family I've ever met. But that makes sense to me; I mean you would need that sort of a family for this sort of mission. I don't think a family as dysfunctional as the Robinsons in the movie would be good for such a mission. And although I found Dr. John Robinson annoying that he wouldn't lash out at Smith, in a way I kinda respect that, too, I guess. I mean, he didn't condone violence, and utterly refused to fight against any intelligent being if it could be avoided, and no matter what Smith did, Robinson never faltered. West on the other hand was perfectly willing to smack him down, but Robinson wouldn't let him. Mostly, I think the show would have been better if they had killed off Smith as they originally intended.

So I guess that's another childhood memory mostly ruined. But at least this time it's not because some Hollywood director tried to "update and improve" it and ended up ruining it in the process. And yes I do mean "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe". No, this time it's only because I've changed as I grew up. I guess I can't blame any Hollywood director for that. Must be my family's fault then. Remember folks, psychology teaches us that everything wrong with us is our family's fault!

Anyway, I can't just say "this is my opinion" cuz that doesn't look formal to pass off as an official review column. So I've got to assign a rating, and to do that I'm going to roll my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice! In case you don't know it, percentage dice are two ten-sided dice. One is the tens place, and one is the ones place and they're used to determine a random number between 01 (Danger, Will Robinson!) and double 00, which actually means 100 (a pleasure folded into a rapture wrapped in a euphoria). So I'll just give them a good, un-biased roll just like that...

...and end up with a 49! Gee, no wonder Guy Williams quit his acting career and retired to Argentina after the show.

But hey, you don't have to take my word for it! You can check it out yourself. You can rent the discs from Netflix (and I think you have to have the discs to watch the original unaired pilot!). Or you can stream every episode for free on IMDB.com or Hulu.

Well, I guess that's about all I have to say about that. So I'll wrap this up and tell you to come back and find out what I talk about next time! I know I will! So be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Joe Kubert's Comic Book Studio

2011-04-30T20:18:00.001-07:00

Well crack my Crayolas! Once again, it is the hour of the Oddcube! …I’m sorry; I don’t know why I said that. So I guess I’d better try to cover it up by saying: Hi there! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying hello and welcome to the column!

That’s right! So if you’ve been here before, welcome back! And if you’ve never been here before, what the heck took ya so long? Nevermind, tell me later. I gotta tell ya what you can expect to happen here.

You see, with a VERY complicated system (involving many small notes inside of a hat) I choose a subject for my monthly article. The subjects can be everything and anything I feel like talking about: movies, TV shows, books, music, and the ever-popular et cetera! Then, I try to give you a little pertinent information about it, so that you know why it’s cool enough to check out, or un-cool enough to avoid. Then I wrap the whole thing up with a phony rating system to make it seem like a serious review!

Now, when I was growing up, I wasn’t so very different from all the other square-headed kids. I rode my bike, played video games, read comic books, and had trouble finding a hat that fit. I also was the artistic sort, and liked to doodle instead of doing my schoolwork. So it was a wonderful revelation when it finally occurred to me that somebody somewhere actually got paid to draw comic books!

Of course, it was a major bummer to realize that I couldn’t draw as well as the guys who draw comic books, and that my stories were…well, really dumb! There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes into making a comic book, and you don’t really realize that until you’re dumb, I mean, ambitious enough to try it!

But the whole process has become a little easier to understand thanks to Joe Kubert! Now, if you don’t know who Joe Kubert is, then you’re not a real comic book fan. Cuz he’s a BIG NAME in the comic book industry. He’s probably best known for the work he’s done for DC Comics, first as an artist, then as director of publications. Then, in September of 1976 he and his wife Muriel founded the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, the ONLY accredited school to specialize in the art of cartooning.

But that’s not all, cuz he’s also written a “How To Draw Comics” instructional book, and developed the “Joe Kubert Comic Book Studio”, which is what I’m actually supposed to be talking about today.

Now, I’ll go ahead and admit that I’ve bought more than one of those “How To Draw Comics”-type books, by various authors. Basically, they are all the same, and I don’t really mean that in a bad way. They all basically say “this is how to draw a guy and THIS is how to draw a guy with super-muscles!” The example art is different in each book, of course, and I like to collect them for inspirational purposes.

So when I found the “Joe Kubert’s Comic Book Studio”, I rather assumed it was going to be the same sort of instruction book, but with some supplies included. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that’s NOT what it is at all!

Wait, first of all, let me tell you all the stuff for get with this thing. If you get it new, it looks like a book wrapped in plastic wrap. But when you open it up, you find out that it’s not a book, it’s a portfolio! You open up all these flaps and find that there are three different pockets to store your sketch papers in! One of the inside “pages” has all this nifty pockets to store all your vital art supplies: drawing pencil, colored pencils, eraser, pencil sharpener, outlining pen, and even a triangle! When you buy it brand new, it COMES with all these supplies, plus twenty sheets of sketch paper (suspiciously similar to the paper I put in my printer). It also comes with a blank comic book for you to draw in that has sixteen interior pages (not including the inside covers), and the instruction book!

Now, as I said, the instruction book is NOT simply “how to draw comic book guys”, as I expected. You are guided throughout the book by a little cartoon Joe Kubert, who sums up the entire process of creating a comic book! He starts off by telling you that you need an Idea, and a Story, Characters. There’s some helpful hints and advice on how to come up with these, and a suggested format on how to write the script for your comic, so you know exactly what happens in each panel!

He does NOT dwell on how to draw people, but he does point out that you have to draw more than just people to make a comic book! There are all sorts of props and settings, and if you don’t practice them, too, your book won’t look right! Funnily enough, I’ve seen many “how to draw” books that fail to mention this!

Then, you take your script and figure out the best way to arrange all your panels on the page! You don’t even touch the empty comic book until Chapter Five, and then the first thing you do is draw in the panels! You come back later and actually start drawing the story.

And then you’re still not done! Cuz ya have to put in all your word balloons, caption boxes, and sound effects! Then you ink it, and color it in! There are a few hints and tidbits on inking techniques, and how to mix the colors of these six colored pencils to get even more colors. But that’s basically it. And now that I know how to make a comic book, I feel inspired to re-invent one of the heroes I designed in my misspent youth. Like maybe a modern and gritty update of this guy here:
There are, of course, other techniques than the ones presented in the book, but this was the first book I’d ever seen that took you step-by-step through the entire process, so I was plenty impressed! Plus, I think the whole portfolio-thing is a really neat idea to try and keep all your stuff together. Although, if you’re not careful, the colored pencils WILL fall out!

Now, I found mine at my local Michael’s craft store for $16, so it really wasn’t too bad of a deal. I have seen them cheaper on Amazon, but they may have been used and missing stuff. But they should be available online from places like Michael’s, or Jo-Ann Fabrics, or Dick Blick, and probably other art supply stores as well.

I’ll admit that a serious art student may not be as impressed with it as a tween-aged comic book enthusiast. But it does tell you the basics from start to finish, and comes with all the physical equipment necessary to make your own book. You only have to supply the idea and the talent! All in all, I thought it was pretty neat!

But, I can’t just say that! That’s not how we do things around here! We have to go by the numbers, and around here we determine numbers fairly and randomly with a pair of D&D percentage dice! So, in case ya don’t know, percentage dice are a pair of ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between 01 (think of the most terrible, horrible thing and multiply it by six!) and double-zero, which actually means 100 (if don’t get no better than this!). So I’ll give my handy-dandy dice a nice and un-biased roll just like that…

…and end up with an eighty-four! Well, hey! I can live with that!

But that’s just one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! You can form your very own opinion! You can even share it with the world by leaving a comment below! Go ahead, it won’t hurt! At least, I’m pretty sure it won’t!

But that does bring us to the end of another invigorating, stimulating Odd Review! So be sure to tune in again next time to find out what I talk about next! I have not idea what it may be, so we can both be surprised! And if you're after additional oddness, you are accordingly invited to investigate my other blog, the link is in the right-hand side-bar! So be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

SOAP

2011-04-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

Hello, hey there, hiya, howdy, and how ya doin’! This is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, saying hello and welcome to the column! I’ve some good news and some bad news about it, too. See, on account of April Fool’s Day, I thought it would be appropriately pompous and preposterous to prepare a paper about the Internet itself! Why? Cuz I thought it would be a good laugh for me to be pretentious enough to assign a rating to the Internet! Unfortunately, to do that I had to peruse a little bit of the history so that I could relay some actual facts to You, my loyal readers (cuz you deserve it)! It was a great idea, but the history of the Internet according to Wikipedia is so god-awful BORING that I stopped reading WAY before I got to anything interesting like Rick-rolling, “It’s a trap!” and other Internet memes, or the infamous “Two Girls, One Cup” video. So I’m sad to say that I’ve scrapped that scheme in selection of some other subject. But for those who simply MUST know: I give it a seventy-two.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today! Today I am here to offer you an Odd Review, and that’s just what I’m gonna do! In the unthinkable instance that this is your initial attendance, I shall impart a little introductory information so you have an optimum understanding of our everyday ongoings.

I pick a subject, any subject, usually with the help of a dart board, conduct some minimal research, then write up a brief-but-entertaining essay that is light on facts and heavy on unabashed bias, then present it to You, the loyal reader. Then I sit back and bask in your assumed amazement, imagining the utterance of lines like: “Wow! That Oddcube is a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!” These utterances would be uttered, of course, with the utmost of admiration and esteem, which I, of course, appreciate utterly.

So you can see that there’s nothing wrong with my imagination!

But I digress, and I’m awfully good at it! Because I’m supposed to be informing you that the subject of this Odd Review is Soap, a brilliant American sitcom that spoofed soap operas! Why is it so good? Read on, Grasshopper!

In the days of my misspent youth I was subjected to all the usual forms of childhood torture: being sent to bed without supper, the long-lasting affects brought on by the misinformation of Disney-film realities, and most insidious of all: the afternoon soaps!

I am proud to say that even at that young age, I knew they were totally dumb. I mean, seriously, how many of you have two or three identical twin siblings that you didn’t know about that conveniently showed up out of nowhere to die in the plane crash in your place? It’s never happened to me! How many people do you know have contracted a never-before-encountered disease and/or an inoperable brain tumor and magically got over it? How many people survive an explosion and leave the hospital with a brand new face that does NOT look like Darkman unmasked? Now how many people do you know that have done all three? More than once? Man, I tell ya, if you buy into this stuff it’ll warp your mind worse than those Disney films! No lie!

But then came Susan Harris! Susan Harris was a TV scriptwriter who won the Humanitas Prize (whatever that is) for writing the abortion episode for Bea Arthur’s 70’s sitcom Maude. She was the co-founder of Witt/Thomas/Harris productions, and the creator of several shows including Soap, its spinoff Benson, The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and others. Anyway she created, wrote, and produced the super-campy, slapstick, definitive soap opera parody, Soap.

Soap is the story of two sisters, Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell, who are totally devoted to one another, and their respective families of super-eccentric oddballs, who do not get along at all.

Now, the Tates have money, and live in the mansion that belonged to Jessica and Mary’s parents. Jessica’s husband, Chester is an embezzler, but his main hobby is having a string of affairs behind Jessica’s back. They have three children, two adult daughters and one teenage son. Their oldest daughter, Eunice, is apparently some sort of journalist who is having an affair with a married Congressman. Meanwhile, the younger daughter, Corinne, is very promiscuous, but I think this is a form of compensation because she can’t have her high-school crush who became a priest. Their only boy, Billy, ends up getting kidnapped by a wacky cult and eventually has a brief affair with his teacher. Also in the household is the Major, who is Jessica and Mary’s father, who believes that he’s still fighting World War Two. And last but not least, the dry-witted and long-suffering Benson, easily the most well-grounded character on the entire show.

The Campbells are a middle-class family. Mary is married to her second husband, Burt, who owns his own construction company and suffers impotency brought on by guilt because he believes he is responsible for the death of Mary’s first husband, a mobster who was trying to extort money from Burt with a protection racket. When a situation becomes too complicated for him to handle, he snaps his fingers and believes that he has turned invisible. Mary has two sons from her first marriage, Danny, who is part of the mob, but will be allowed to leave if he kills the man who killed his own father…who, of course, turns out to be his stepfather, Burt; and Jodie who is gay. Burt also had two sons from his previous marriage, first off there was Peter, a tennis instructor who usually held his lessons in the bedroom, and Chuck, a schizophrenic ventriloquist who believed his dummy, Bob, was real and insisted that everyone treat him as though he were.

And that’s just how it starts! Then they proceed to skewer all manner of tried-and-true soap opera clichés and gimmicks, some of them before they got to happen in real soaps! Like, the primary storyline of Season One is finding out who shot, stabbed, and pummeled Peter Campbell to death, YEARS before anyone wondered who shot J.R.! One of the weirder storylines centers on the baby Corinne had with her ex-priest boyfriend…the baby was possessed by the Devil! I mean, how many soaps would use a storyline like that? Perhaps the most appropriate one is Dark Shadows (but they had more class than that). But it happened to Marlena on Days of Our Lives some years later. And I do love it when Burt gets kidnapped by aliens and replaced with an alien double.

Of course, there weren’t any long-lost identical twins, and there was no baby-switching. But there was a case of “I’m not your real Mom”, and a case of “Your Dad isn’t this guy, its that guy!” Actually, most of it was pretty typical soap opera crap, only much funnier.

However, that did not stop all sorts of protest groups from writing letters of complaint to the station and the studio before the show even aired! See, there were some reviews and reports about the upcoming show. Unfortunately (or fortunately) some of these reports were written by people who had NOT seen the show, and were working off of notes, or outlines, or something. Some people were calling it a sex farce, unsuitable for prime time, filled with more sex per minute than any other show ever, and included the seduction of a Catholic priest while in the confessional! …This, by the way, is not exactly true.

But little things like facts are unimportant when you just want to complain about things. And that’s what various religious groups did, because that’s what various religious groups love to do the most. They complained about extra-marital affairs! They complained about impotence! They complained about the gay guy! And they weren’t the only ones, various gay groups also complained about the gay guy for fear that he would be nothing but bad stereotype! Thanks to the supporters of all these various groups, it is estimated that the station and studio received anywhere from 20,000 to 32,000 letters of complaint BEFORE the show even went on the air!

Of course, once it finally debuted, everyone was like “Hey, what’s the big deal?” Only about 26% of the people who watched it claimed to be offended in some way, and half of them said they would watch again next week!

Regardless of these troublemakers, Soap lasted for four seasons, a grand total of 85 episodes. Although the last few episodes were one hour long instead of the usual half-hour, and were chopped up into two episodes for syndication, making a total of 93 episodes.

On the down side, the over-all story arc was planned out for five seasons. But the ratings had dropped low enough that the stupid idiots who ran the network did not renew that final season, and the internet was not yet mainstream enough to run an online petition to save the show. Hey, it worked for Babylon 5! Because of this premature cancellation, there were a collection of unresolved plots, creating what might have been the most excruciating cliffhanger EVER!

See, Jodie was the victim of a bad hypnotherapy session and was stuck in a past life incarnation—that of a 90-year old Jewish man in the Bronx! Chester, who expected to die in a duel to a South American freedom fighter, was threatening to shoot Danny Campbell when he found him in bed with Chester’s new wife, Annie! Mary had a baby that she believes was sired by Burt’s alien duplicate! Burt, who became Sherriff, was about to walk into an ambush set up by a crooked politician! And Jessica was about to be shot by a South American Communist firing squad! And that’s where it ends!

These were all supposed to be wrapped up in the next season, and creator Susan Harris later told fans that if she had known the show was not going to be renewed, it would not have ended that way. She did not divulge any details that I am aware of, except for a promise that “Jessica would have lived”, which I assume means that Jessica would have specifically survived the firing squad, although I would expect both her and Mary to live through the entirety of the series since it is “a story of two sisters”. The only official closure we get is, like, two years later on the spinoff Benson we learn that Jessica is alive but in a coma somewhere in South America.

Soap was truly great, and there’s never been anything quite like it since. It was exceptionally written, and the outrageous plots were expertly enacted by an amazing ensemble which included Katherine Helmond, Cathryn Damon, Richard Mulligan, Robert Mandan, Billy Crystal, and Robert Guillaume, to name only a few.

Should you see it? Yes you should! How? Where? Good questions! If you’re lucky, some local or cable channel will show reruns. I know Nick-At-Nite and Comedy Central have both run marathons, but that was some time ago. The entire run, all four seasons, are available on DVD and can be bought or rented from discerning sources, like Amazon or Netflix. Also, the first two seasons can be watched online for free at places like Crackle or Hulu. The entire show is available for streaming through Netflix.

And now, the time you’ve all been waiting for, time to pull out the good ol’ D&D percentage dice and fairly and randomly determine a rating! For those of you who don’t know, percentage dice are a pair of ten-sided dice used to determine a number between zero-one (almost as bad as Manos: the Hands of Fate) to double-zero, which actually means one hundred (it does not GET any better than this)! So we’ll just give the ol’ dice a roll like so…

…and end up with a enviable ninety-six! Meanwhile the network that failed to renew season five gets a spiteful sixteen, take that, you tasteless twits!

Well folks, I’m afraid we’ve found the finish of our Word file. So be sure to check back next time to find out what I’m gonna talk about next! And just before I leave, I’d like to leave you this bit of advice: if you find a link that’s supposed to lead to the “Two Girls, One Cup” video, be very careful. Because you could get Rickroll’d, and then you’ll know “It’s a trap!” And this is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, saying be there and be square!

-----Everybody’s Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

WEIRD FANTASY

2011-01-31T21:25:00.000-08:00

WEIRD FANTASY

That’s right, folks, there is nothing wrong with your monitor screen. We are controlling the feed! So this is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to say hi and welcome to the column!

I’m sure you already know how this goes, but to pad the word count a little, I shall explain it anyway. Being the utterly great and wonderful person that I am, I have magnanimously taken it upon myself to research various cool things from yesterday and today, subjects that either used up their fifteen minutes of fame or are just too wacky to get the mainstream notoriety that they deserve. Then, I tell you about it, and why I think it is or isn’t worth your time. It’s a vital public service, I tell ya, and I’m sure I’ll get a commendation for it sooner or later!

This time around I’m going to talk about an anthology comic book called “Weird Fantasy”, which was originally published by EC Comics back in the early Fifties. Now you probably know EC Comics, cuz they’re the guys who gained notoriety and infamy with their horror-themed comics like “Tales From the Crypt”, and are the originators of “MAD Magazine”.

In the beginning, EC stood for “Educational Comics” and was owned by Max Gaines, who wanted to make comics about science, history, and the Bible and market them to schools and churches. I don’t know how well that worked out for him, but eventually he died and the business was inherited by his son, William “Bill” Gaines.

It was Bill Gaines who restructured the business plan, and turned it into Entertaining Comics. Apparently, in this early stage, EC tried to chase various comic trends, transforming books from superheroes, to westerns, to romances, to horror, etc. until they finally found what would become their signature “shock” style. “Weird Fantasy” is a perfect example of this transformation process: it started off as a superhero comic called “Moon Girl”, which eventually was changed into the romance comic “A Moon, A Girl…Romance”, and then changed into “Weird Fantasy”. To confuse matters, and apparently to save on postal costs, they tried to continue the numbering. So, “A Moon, A Girl…Romance” number 12was followed by “Weird Fantasy” number 13. After only a few months, the post office caught on to the scam, and they continued the numbering as though issue 13 had been labeled issue 1. Just to make it tricky for collectors!

Apparently staff artists Harry Harrison (creator of the “Stainless Steel Rat”!) and Wally Wood were both really into science fiction and urged Gaines to try a sci-fi comic. They succeeded, and EC began publishing “Weird Science” and its companion title, “Weird Fantasy”! Well, I haven’t tracked read any “Weird Science”, but I can tell you a little about “Weird Fantasy”.

There seem to be no official credits listed in the comics, but from some half-hearted internet research I’ve learned that Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein were the main writers. They would read all manner of sci-fi stories in search of ideas and concepts that would inspire a story of their own, complete with the EC trademark twist ending.

Persons more well-read than myself could tell you more about what stories by what authors could have inspired the stories in the comic. But I can tell you that this method got them in a little trouble. One story that they published, called “Home To Stay”, was a sort of combination of two different stories by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury somehow found out about it and sent them a letter commending them on their interpretation of his stories and informing them that someone must have forgotten to send him his check. It all turned out for the best, though, because they managed to work out a deal with Bradbury to officially adapt several of his stories in their comics.

There were many recurring themes throughout the run of “Weird Fantasy”. Some of these were a product of the times, like the ever-present fear of atomic warfare and the fear of America or all of Earth becoming a Communist Totalitarian society. Other themes were tried-and-true EC standard from their crime and horror titles, usually somebody wanting to kill their wife so they could run off with their mistress, but in “Weird Fantasy” they needed some weird scientific machine to help establish an alibi (it usually backfired, of course). It’s hard to find an issue that doesn’t have an either an alien or a mutant, and many stories take trips out into space or even to other moons or planets, usually either in Flash Gordon-type rocket ships or some variation of the standard flying saucer.

The only bad thing about it is that after reading an issue or two, you kinda get used to their formula, and can make an educated guess about how the twist ending is going to turn out. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t guess exactly right every time, and even when I did, it was still entertaining. Plus, the illustrations are really neat, cuz they had a bunch of top-notch artists. Guys like Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, and John Severin to name only a few.

Despite all this good stuff, both of EC’s sci-fi titles were constantly loosing money, and were financed by their more lucrative horror titles. To cut back, “Weird Science” and “Weird Fantasy” were combined into the single title: “Weird Science-Fantasy”. This title ran for only seven issues before rules made up by the Comics Code Authority banned words like “Weird” from being used in the titles of comics. The title was then renamed “Incredible Science-Fantasy” and ran for four more issues.

Unfortunately, “Incredible Science-Fantasy” now had to deal with the rules and regulations of the Comics Code Authority. One of the stories for what became the final issue was contested and dropped. So Gaines and Feldstein decided to fill the space by reprinting a story called “Judgment Day”, about racial tolerance but using robots instead of people. The incident resulted in Bill Gaines telling the Comics Code Authority representative to do something to himself that is anatomically impossible and which is totally impossible to slip past my Beloved Editor™, so I won’t be repeating it here. But that’s ok, cuz it’s kinda fun to have to talk my way around it. Anyway, this incident caused Gaines to close down EC Comics and concentrate on “MAD”, which, as a magazine, was not subject to the rules and regs of the CCA.

But the legacy lives on! The complete “Weird Fantasy” was reprinted in 1980 as part of Russ Cochran’s Complete EC Library, and again in the 90’s by Gemstone Publishing, who combined all 22 issues of “Weird Fantasy” in five full-color annuals (these are what I have). Plus, thanks to the success of the “Tales From the Crypt” TV show, HBO made a second show called “Perversions of Science”, inspired by the EC title “Weird Science”. It didn’t catch on, and only ran for ten episodes, but one of those episodes, “Planely Possible”, but based on a story that appeared in “Weird Fantasy”.

So, the stories are fun, but short and consequently not too involved. The pics are nicely done, and I do totally dig the 1950’s vision of the future! Of course, the science is comic book science, when it’s explained at all. All in all, any fan of science-fiction or of EC Comics should totally dig ‘em, too. But I can’t just say that, cuz that’s not how we do things around here. Nosirree-bob! Around here we establish the rating of a subject with the help of percentage dice!

In case you’re new around here, I shall explain that percentage dice are a pair of ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between zero-one (which is EVEN WORSE than a world with NO mint-chocolate-chip ice cream!) to double-zero, which actually means one hundred (which is even better than having your cake, eating it, too, and THEN having another piece!). So I give my handy-dandy dice a roll like this…

…and end up with a seventy-one! Seventy-one? ONLY seventy-one? I think one of those notorious EC aliens have sabotaged my dice! Oh well, I think it deserves a higher rating, but that’s just one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! Negatory, Pig-Pen, you could form your very own opinions by checking it out yourself! You should be able to find “Weird Fantasy” and other EC titles, in single issues, collections, and archived editions. These should be more-or-less easily found in the usual places, Amazon and eBay, and the ever-popular Other Places, Too! I managed to find all five annuals—the complete run of all 22 issues—on eBay for a really good price. How good? So good that I had to brag about it right here, that’s how good!

Anyway, I guess that pretty much brings us to the end of another Odd Review, so be sure to tune in again next time to see what I’m talking about, cuz it’s gonna be something extra special! …Well, ok, maybe it won’t, but I gotta say some grand teaser line to try and entice you to come back next time! Anyway, see ya next month, folks, be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

MR. DESTINY

2011-01-01T16:18:00.000-08:00

MR. DESTINY

Guess what folks? If you guessed that its time once again for everybody’s favorite online idiot to expound upon his incredibly unqualified opinions for your entertainment and enjoyment…then you are absolutely right! …And if you guessed something else entirely…I guess you feel like a real twit just about now!

That’s right; this is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to say: Hello! And welcome to the column! As you already know it is my mission, since I chose to accept it, to look for cool and unusual stuff from the present and the past which you may or may not be aware of and put you in the know! And if you didn’t already know that, you know it now, so I’m already doing a good job so far! Then, I sorta slap on a cockamamie rating, and pass the whole thing off as a legitimate review (so don’t tell the editors the truth, they’d be totally heartbroken!).

This time around I’m talking about a movie from 1990 called “Mr. Destiny”. It was directed by James Orr, and written by James Orr and Jim Cruickshank. But that won’t be the reason you remember it, if you remember it at all. You’ll remember it because Jim Belushi was in it, and so was Michael Caine, back before he got knighted.

Hey, did you know that only two actors in the whole wide world have been nominated for an Academy Award for Acting (either lead or supporting) in EVERY decade from the 1960’s to the 2000s, and one of them is Michael Caine? The other one is Jack Nicholson, but he’s got nothing to do with “Mr. Destiny”.

But there are tons of other recognizable faces in this movie, too! There’s Rene Russo from “Lethal Weapon 3 & 4”. There’s Linda Hamilton from “Terminator 1 & 2”. Jon Lovitz from “Saturday Night Live”. Bill McCutcheon from “Murphy Brown”. Courtney Cox from “Friends” (in a VERY UN-friendly role! …I felt obligated to say that.). Maury Chaykin from “Nero Wolf”. And Hart Bochner who turns out to be the guy in “Die Hard” who got shot for lying to Alan Rickman about knowing Bruce Willis…but you might know him from “The Starter Wife”.

So, Jim Belushi plays Larry Burrows, a fairly unremarkable, average person. He’s got a good heart, a loving wife, and an unremarkable office-cubicle type job. Now, before we go into the real story, we have to flash back to a high school memory of “The Big Game”. Larry played baseball in high school, and he was the make-it-or-break-it hitter during The Big Game. Well, he was psyched up and ready to hit the pitch when there was this weird flash—that apparently only he saw—which caused him to miss the ball and strike out and lose The Big Game. Twenty years later, he still dwells on it.

It’s Larry’s 35th birthday, and everything seems to be going wrong. The contractor working on his house still isn’t done AND asked for more money. He ran out of his favorite breakfast cereal. There was no coffee when he got to work. He ends up looking very foolish in front of the President of the company (the jock who married the Boss’ daughter) and then in front of the Boss’ daughter. Everyone seems to have forgotten his birthday. And while nosing around into some suspicious business dealings, he finds out that the VP of the company is secretly buying up company stock so he can make a fortune by pressuring the owner to sell the company. He gets caught finding this out…and fired. And then, on his way home, his car breaks down.

This movie is a comedy, in case ya can’t tell.

Anyway, he breaks down in front of a bar that at first appears to be closed up, but then the neon sign magically turns on to catch his eye. Larry goes inside and finds the place empty except for Mike the Barman, to whom he tells his troubles to. Larry speculates that his life would have turned out a whole lot different—and better—if he had only hit that baseball back in The Big Game in high school.

So Mike the Bartender fixes him a “special” drink of his own concoction, which he calls “Spilled Milk, the one drink there’s no use crying over”. And when Larry drinks it…SHAZAM! The past is altered! Larry hit that ball and won The Big Game! His life has gone in a completely different direction!

This disorients him more than just a little bit. He doesn’t live at his former address anymore. Instead, he lives in a great big mansion…and he’s married to the Boss’ daughter and has two kids with her!

So Mike, who is some sort of “conscience” or something, explains that Larry hit the ball, so the girl he married never came to comfort him for striking out and they never met. Instead he married the prom queen, and became the president in her father’s company (where he was only a cubicle jockey before).

Apparently he’s had other experiences in this alternate life that drastically changed who he is, because he’s cheating on his wife with his psychotic secretary and apparently in cahoots (that’s a fun word “cahoots”!) with the VP who’s trying to make a fortune by destroying the company. However, our Larry is too preoccupied with finding his former wife…I mean, the wife he never really married…in the other life…or whatever. I can dig it, I just can’t explain it.

He’s terribly disappointed to find out that she’s married to another man, but kinda happy to find their having marital problems. She also works for the same company he does (in fact, everyone he knows and is related to seems to), and she is the steward of the local union, who is upset about the many layoffs and extra workloads that are part of the VP’s money-making scheme. So Larry, as the President of the company, states that he’s willing to give in to the union’s demands if she’ll go out on a date with him.

This, of course, ticks off the VP, who calls Larry’s new wife, the Boss’ daughter, and tells her about the dinner date. Like an idiot, Larry had his psychotic secretary/mistress make the reservations, so now both the women in his new life know that he’s hooking up with some other woman.

His wife, the Boss’ daughter, kicks him out of the house, then calls her father and gets him to fire Larry. The Boss writes a note and plans to leave it in Larry’s office, but he walks in on the VP, who is trashing Larry’s office cuz he plans to kill Larry and make it look like a robbery. The VP accidently kills the Boss and frames Larry for the murder. As the cops are taking Larry out of the office building, his psychotic secretary/mistress shows up and stars shooting at him! Fortunately, she’s a lousy shot, and hits lots of tires and windows and radiators on cop cars, creating a nice distraction for him to get away.

Larry goes directly to the home of the wife from his old life, hoping she’ll run away with him. But instead, his date with her inspired her to try to reconcile with her husband. Before Larry can argue further, the cops start catching up to him.

So he takes off in his fancy sports car for the obligatory (but short) chase scene, which ends with him crashing his car and killing the little dog he had saved from the streets in his other life. …This movie really IS a comedy; I swear it, just a little sadistic here and there!

Anyway, he darts down this alley and just HAPPENS to come out right next to the bar where he first met Mike. So he goes in, but nobody’s there. So he tries to mix some more “Spilled Milk” and is magically brought back to his original life. He thanks Mike profusely “for everything” and gets the tow truck guy to rush him to the board meeting so he can stop the evil VP from ruining the company.

Having saved the day, he goes home where there is a surprise birthday party awaiting him, because nobody forgot his birthday. Meanwhile the President of the company and his wife, Boss’ daughter, show up to thank him for saving the company and to make him the new VP! And since it’s a wonderful life, he presumably lives happily ever after.

Now, I saw this movie back when it first came out on video, and rented it again so I could write this review. I thought it was pretty funny then, and I still do. However, I find that I have a few problems with it nowadays.

In the alternate timeline, Larry Burrows obviously grew into a completely different person. He was cheating on his wife and scamming the company he worked for, both of which our Larry would never do. Except that he did, because he had no emotional connection to the Boss’ daughter and wanted his other wife back. But from his alternate universe perspective it wasn’t cheating, and I can sorta see his point, but at the same time, it’s just wrong. But that doesn’t matter; I don’t have a problem with that part.

My problem is that Larry’s an idiot. See, he’s married to the Boss’ daughter, played by the beautiful Rene Russo. This wife loves him completely. She is beautiful, faithful, attentive, and rich (let’s NOT deny it). Now, not only does he cheat on her, but he stupidly cheats on her with his secretary, who is a complete psycho! In the first 90 seconds that her character is onscreen, you KNOW she’s a wacko to be avoided at all costs!

Further stupidity: When he asks his psychotic secretary/mistress if his original reality wife works there, the secretary cannot find a record of her because we don’t know her new married name yet. But the secretary is mad that he didn’t spend his birthday with her, and threatens him rather plainly if he should get involved with her or any other woman. And yet, he gets this same psychotic secretary/mistress to make the dinner reservations! What a moron!

He is SO obviously in cahoots with the evil VP trying to bust the company, and already KNOWS that’s what the VP is trying to do. But he doesn’t seem to pick up on it in any of the conversations!

I also have a problem with the psychotic secretary/mistress coming to shoot him while the cops are trying to take him away. I mean, I know that there are people like that in real life, but it seems really dumb to me! But it seems really dumb to me when people do that sort of thing in real life, too. You don’t know if they arrested her or not, because she served her purpose by inadvertently causing a distraction so he could get away.

But my biggest problem with the whole thing is that he didn’t make the choice. Usually in stories like this, somebody says “Hey drink this, and your wish will come true.” Or sign this, or eat this, or rub this lamp, or whatever. That way you have to make the bad choice, suffer the consequences, and then overcome them. But Larry Burrows didn’t get to make the choice; Mike just sorta slipped him a mickey.

But it is a neat little movie, pretty funny in places, decent story as long as you don’t sit around thinking about it too much. Also kinda deep in a way, with the whole spiel about little things making a big influence on how your life can turn out. Sort of a metaphysical Butterfly Effect. Sort of a double moral, too, I guess. Partly reassuring you that some things happen for a reason, but also that you can’t just blindly follow Fate; sometimes you have to take an active part in shaping your own destiny. And if that’s too deep for ya, you can just back the movie up and re-watch that pan-shot of Rene Russo in the sexy lingerie for Larry’s birthday. Cuz, hey! At times like that, I don’t mind being shallow!

And now, the time has come, my little friends, to talk of ratings and things. Of course, being the fair-minded and un-biased sort of person that I am, I’m gonna randomly determine a rating by using my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice! Percentage dice, in case ya aren’t in the know, are a pair of ten-sided dice. One die represents the tens place and the other represents the ones place, and together they randomly roll a number anywhere between 01 (think of the worst thing EVER, and this is worse than that), to double-zero which actually means 100 (Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee)!

So I just give the dice a nice, fair roll like that…

… and end up with a 74! Hey, that was a good year!

But that’s just one idiot’s opinion and you don’t have to take it! You could watch the movie yourself and form you very own opinions. Go ahead, it won’t hurt or nothin’! You can rent it from Netflix, I know cuz I did. And you can probably find it in other places for sale or rent, if you are so inclined. And if you not so inclined…it’s probably still available for sale or rent in those places!

However, that seems to bring me to the end of this article. So make sure to come on back next month to find out what I talk about then! I know I can’t wait to find out what it’s gonna be! So be there and be square, cuz this is your buddy Oddcube, signing off!

-----Your Buddy Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

THONGOR: AGAINST THE GODS!

2010-11-30T22:59:00.000-08:00

THONGOR AGAINST THE GODS

Everybody’s buddy Oddcube, here to entertain and inform with opulent amounts of interesting and amusing anecdotal information for your illumination and enjoyment! Hey, not bad for a high school dropout, huh?

Friends, do you suffer from a shortage of the surreal? In weary and woeful want for some weirdness? Starving for a small serving of regularly scheduled strangeness? Then have no fear, for Oddcube is here!

As a public service, I offer you some small respite; some brief get-away, an infinitesimal asylum against the ever-present atmosphere of the ho-hum, the hum-drum, the irksome, the boredom, the doldrums, and then some! Why? Because I am a thoughty guy! And I’m armed with a run-on sentence!

That’s right folks, it’s time for another Odd Review (you’re reading it now!), and this one is totally about something that deserves way more attention than it currently gets!

Well, that’s enough of the “used car salesman” pitch. So I’m gonna tell you about this book I recently read. And this one’s a dilly, let me tell you! Oh yeah, that’s why you’re here…

So anyway, the book is called “Thongor Against the Gods”, and it’s written by Lin Carter, I found it some months ago when I took my Poor Old Mother ™ to one of the local used book stores. The cover says it is “A classic of science and sorcery by the master of fantasy” and I just had to chuckle because apparently whoever wrote that doesn’t peruse the same internet sites that I do. Cruising around certain online forums that shall remain nameless, I get the definite impression that Lin Carter is considered a great fan and a wonderful editor who used the extent of his power and influence to promote science fiction and fantasy literature to the very utmost best of his ability. But as a writer, he seems to get shrugged off as a kind of hack.

Now in the undeniable words of Chico Marx (hey, I only quote from the best) from the movie “Duck Soup”: “Atsa not my idea, atsa his idea.” Actually, after minimal online research, I think that if nothing else, Lin Carter knew what he liked…and tried to emulate it. He wrote a whole bunch of books that were homage’s to various classic authors. He basically wrote “His Version Of…” whatever he liked. He’s got a series that’s His Version Of John Carter of Mars, and another series that is His Version Of Doc Savage, and another series that is His Version Of Conan. The man was apparently a master of “the same thing, only different”. You know, like in that episode of “Futurama” when they make fun of “The Wizard of Oz” and the not-Munchkins sing “We resemble, but are legally distinct from, the Lollipop Guild”.

Anyway, as I was saying, I found the book at a used book store. I read the title, I read the blurb, I looked at the cover by Kevin Johnson (of a warrior with sword and shield looking down at the burning skeletal remains of an enemy warrior, all beneath a gigantic sliver of yellow moon) and knew that it was my kind of cheese! There were actually two books there, “Thongor Against the Gods” and “Thongor At the End of Time”. Well, they turn out to be books three and five (respectively) of a six-book series. Ain’t that always the way?

First off, I want to make it clear that this was (more-or-less) a stand-alone story. I think this is a series because they are all about Thongor, not because it’s seriously an ongoing storyline. On the other hand, I think there were some characters and references to events from the two earlier books. So I don’t know if it would have been helpful to read them first or not. I had no problem following the story without them.

The story begins in a shadowy, subterranean meeting-chamber beneath the city of Tsargol, where four or five bad-guys sit around whining about what a pain in the buttocks Thongor is. Apparently Thongor started out as a barbarian wanderer in the northern part of Lemuria, but by the beginning of this book he is the king of the city-state of Patanga, and allied with two other city-states. One of these bad guys, Hajash Tor, general of the armies of Tsargol, has a plan…

So they send Zandar Zan, the Thief of Tsargol into the city-state of Patanga to kidnap Thongor’s wife, Sumia, and his newborn son…whose name I can’t remember and am too lazy to look up. (He was supposed to get kidnapped, but didn’t, then you, like never hear about him again.) Zandar Zan sneaks into the royal bedchambers and grabs Sumia, who calls out in surprise, of course, and alerts Thongor who just HAPPENED to be on his way to her anyhow. Thongor busts in and chases the kidnapper to the roof of the building, where Zandar Zan swipes an airship and runs for it.

Yes, I said “air ship”. There’s a little bit of Burroughs mixed in with the Howardian influence. The air ships are made from a manufactured magical metal called urlium, which floats instead of falls.

Anyway, Thongor hustles to the next convenient air ship and proceeds to give chase. Meanwhile, Thongor’s friends, allies, and advisors say “What happened?” and quickly figure out that Sumia is kidnapped and Thongor is in hot pursuit. But, what if this was a coy ploy designed to get us all in hot pursuit so some bad-guy could march into town with his army and take over? Only one thing to do: go visit the ancient and wise Sharajsha, the Wizard of Lemuria, and ask him for some advice. No lie! The King and Queen of the free world are lured or taken directly into untold danger, including a possible ambush, but we can’t do anything about it until we have a committee! So this prince from another city-state, a guy named Karm Karvus, goes to see the wizard.

Meanwhile, Sumia, the kidnapped queen, gets bored and tries to save herself. She KO’s her kidnapper—while her hands are still bound!—and then tries to get herself untied. Zandar Zan quickly wakes up, but has no idea how long he was unconscious. Their air ship flies into a cloud bank and crashes into a mountain.

Thongor, who was, as you remember, in hot pursuit, sees one person jump from the air ship before it crashed, but could not make out if it was male or female. The front of the ship bursts open at the seams, and the metal spreads out like flower petals (just like in the cartoons!) and gets caught on the mountain. So, of course Thongor just HAS to board the wreck and see if his chick is there. So he anchors his air ship on a rocky outcropping, and walks across the top of the ruined airship. The only way he can find to get inside is by stepping onto a three-inch-wide ledge and climbing in through the big gaping hole in the front of the ship.

Except that when he steps onto the three-inch ledge, he shifts the weight of the ship and it floats away. Oh snap!

So it turns out that the one who jumped was Sumia, and she just HAPPENS to fall into a convenient lake at the base of the mountain. She also just HAPPENS to be spotted by this exiled prince of the Jegga tribe of Rmoahal nomads. These Rmoahal people are humanoid, but eight or nine feet tall, blue, and have no hair. Sorta like the Na’vi from “Avatar”, but bald. His name is Shangoth, and he thinks she’s a goddess who fell from the sky, so he jumps into the lake to save her. When he pulls her out, she is unconscious, and he thinks she’s dead. He realizes she’s not a god because, hey, gods don’t die! So he plans to burn her up in a pyre, cuz hey, it’s the least he can do.

So, Karm Karvus goes to see Sharajsha, the Wizard of Lemuria, who already seems to know what’s going on. Well, he IS a wizard! And he tells Karm Karvus that the whole thing is being orchestrated by some bad-guys in Tsargol and to rally the troops before they conquer Patanga! He also announces that he is dying, cuz he’s like nine hundred years old and is entitled. So he tells Karm Karvus to take this book of magic and lock it up with the most treasured relics of Patanga cuz you guys are gonna need it in the future. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe not until two books later, but you guys are gonna need it! (Spoiler: they did NOT need the magic book in this story!)

Meanwhile Thongor (remember him? He’s the hero? His name is in the title?) is still standing on a three-inch-wide ledge on the mountain waiting for the wind to push his air ship close enough to him that he can make a daring leap. Instead it gets caught in an updraft and Zandar Zan jumps aboard and flies away! Well, the ledge Thongor is standing on begins to crumble beneath him. With no other possible choice, he takes a flying leap…

Sumia wakes up before Shangoth; the big, blue, bald not-an-Indian; can burn her up in a pyre. She kills this wild boar-thing that he’s been hunting so as to make peace with the Gods. She explains what she’s doing there. Shangoth explains that he is the son of the Chief of his tribe, but the evil tribal Shaman got them exiled. Shangoth was going to take her back to camp to meet his dad, but they are inexplicably drawn to a tower of black glass…

Thongor jumped off the mountain and found free-floating debris from the crashed airship. By grabbing some, it acted like a parachute and lowered him safely to the lake below. He captures a triceratops-looking beast to ride, and just HAPPENS to find the exiled Chieftain of the Jegga nomads. His name is Jomdath, and he is being tortured by Tengri, the evil Shaman who got him exiled. Thongor decides that an evil Shaman with three or four henchman beating up on an old guy is dirty pool, and quickly intervenes. His not-a-triceratops tramples over them so only the Shaman and one henchman escape.

Thongor befriends Jomdath and they decide to relocate the campsite to a predetermined alternate site that Jomdath’s son, Shangoth, will be able to find. However, in order to get there, they have to ride through this field of POPPIES, Poppies, poppies; except in Lemuria they are called the Rose-of-Death. Their fragrance knocks you out and as you sleep, their vines suck out all your blood; I expect you can find these in Mr. Mushnik’s Flower Shop down on Skid Row, right next to the Audrey Two. (That’s a “Little Shop of Horrors” reference, folks!)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I mean, city-state…of Patanga: Karm Karvus returns and tells the rest of Thongor’s friends, allies, and advisors that the bad-guys are in Tsargol. They all talk it over and decide to load all the soldiers onto air ships and fly over the enemy’s walls and just plain old, kick butt! They proceed with this plan as the narration cuts to General Hajash Tor, who apparently expects this and hints that he has a secret weapon…bum, bum, BU-UM!

But all this does nothing for Thongor and Jomdath who are sleeping in a field of POPPIES, Poppies, poppies with no means of escape. But that’s okay, cuz Tengri the evil Shaman comes back with more henchmen and save them from the bloodsucking flowers! Tengri takes them back to the ruins that the Rmoahal are currently living out of and plan to burn them at the stake. His fellow nomads are kinda nervous about this, because the lives of Chieftains are supposed to be holy, and they are worried about ticking off the gods. They feel these worries are justified when a big metal thing flies through the sky towards them!

It is Zandar Zan, the Thief of Tsargol wondering where in the heck he is and how to get somewhere that might be safe for him. He decides this ain’t the place. But the chaos his arrival causes is adequate distraction for Thongor to escape. The nomads quickly denounce the evil Shaman and reinstate Jomdath as Chieftain. Jomdath’s first order of business is to banish Tengri and his trusted henchmen, promising to burn them at the stake if they ever dare come back.

Meanwhile, the grappling line Thongor used to anchor his air ship to the mountain was still hanging loose; he jumped for it, climbed up to the airship and fought Zandar Zan, who ends up plummeting to his death in a marvelous accident. The paperwork is always easier when it’s an accident. And then Thongor gets a vision of Sharajsha, the wizard of Lemuria, who says “I’m dying and you can’t do anything about that, but you can stop your chick from dying if keep going this-a-way.” Thongor says “thanks” and floors it!

Meanwhile back with the princess and Shangoth in the mysterious Tower of Black Glass… Well, it turns out to be a wizard’s tower, but who didn’t see THAT coming? The wizard is Adamancus, who is one of the Council of Nine, a group of evil wizards who rule the Black City of Zaar. He has had absolutely NOTHING to do with the story so far, and arrives out of nowhere to try to tie this adventure to the first two books by claiming the evil wizards of the Black City of Zaar have some grand scheme to release these demony things upon the world and that Thongor keeps screwing it up! But now he has Thongor’s wife, Sumia, and he plans to rip her soul out of her body and replace it with an elemental spirit that he can control, bwah-haha-ha! And yes, he even did the evil laugh so that we knew he meant it! Oh yeah, as an afterthought he also mentions that the Patangan armies are rushing into a trap.

Of course, he summons the elemental spirit, but before he came bend it to his will Thongor’s air ship crashes through the wall! Adamancus shrieks an expletive, and it wasn’t “Holy Guacamole!” and jumps back—out of his protective circle—and the elemental spirit, no doubt upset for missing his favorite episode of the Simpsons due to this rude summoning, attacks the evil wizard and drags him back to the elemental’s home dimension.

So after a round of “I’m ok, are you ok”, Thongor takes Shangoth back to his dad and tribe.

Meanwhile, the armies of Patanga are loaded onto their airships and drop in (that’s right, I said it, I ain’t got no shame) on the evil dudes in Tsargol. But General Hajash Tor knew the guy who originally made the anti-gravity metal urlium that the air ships are made out of. He also knows the recipe for another unnamed element that takes away the anti-gravity effect! Oh snap! He’s got this stuff in dust form, in glass orbs that his armies fire with catapults. The air ships get hit and saunter vaguely downwards.

To make a long story short (yeah, I know, too late), our good-guy army is getting their butts kicked. But then Thongor shows up with his airship full of Rmoahal nomads who help us win the day. Whew! I don’t know about you, but I was worried!

Presumably, everyone who lived, lived happily ever after…until the next book!

So, now I’ve read it, I have to say that I was right all along: it IS my kind of cheese! This was a fun book. Was it some highbrow, socially-relevant literature? Heck no! That’s what they used to MAKE you read in high school, this is what you wanted to read instead! This is Grade A Saturday afternoon matinee serial-style material here. I recommend it whole-heartedly. And if this is the sort of “hack” material that Lin Carter came up with, then I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to read some more of his stuff! (Actually I’m relieved about that, cuz I’ve got some other books that he wrote.)

However, I can’t just SAY that. I have to come up with a rating so this will seem like a legitimate review column! So, I shall dig out my highly intuitive D&D percentage dice… For those who are not in the know, percentage dice are two ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between zero-one (Please, just kill me! Kill me now!) and double-zero, which actually means one hundred, the absolute best you can get (Morgan Fairchild! *sigh*).

Oh! Sorry! Where was I? Oh yeah, I roll the dice just like this…

…and end up with an 84! Hey, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye! (Is that a dumb expression, or what?) And, of course, that is only one idiot’s opinion and you don’t have to take it! You could get the book and form your very own opinions, even wrong ones that differ from my own! You can get it second-hand from Amazon right now for less money than the shipping charges! …And probably other places, too! It would make a great gift!

And on that note, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Whatever-Holiday-You’re-Into, and I hope you’ll come back next time when I talk about something else! Like what? I don’t know yet! Sheesh! You’ll just have to tune in and find out! So be there and be square, cuz this is your buddy, Oddcube, signing off!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

THE PHANTOM EMPIRE

2010-10-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

THE PHANTOM EMPIRE

Hello there, all you happy people! How do I know that you’re happy people? Why, because it’s a brand new month, and that means its time for another Odd Review! How could you possibly NOT be happy? …Don’t answer that. And, of course, I am your buddy, Oddcube, here to say “Hello, and welcome to the column!”

So…Hello! And welcome to the column!

In case you don’t know it, my job is to find all sorts of things that you may not be aware are out there…and whether or not they’re worth your time! I get to talk about a wide variety of things, including music, movies, mini-series, and other things that don’t even begin with “M”. Then, to give you a rough idea of how good it is, I roll my D&D percentage dice to randomly determine a rating between one and a hundred. But more on that near the end of the article!

This time around, I’m gonna tell you about a classic movie serial! Now, if you’re of the older generation you probably know exactly what I mean by that, but I’d better explain to the younger ones. Now listen kiddies, if you go talk to Grandma and Grandpa they can tell you that back when movies were new you went to the theater and saw TWO full-length feature films, a newsreel, a travelogue, a cartoon, and a weekly serial—all for about a nickel!

Well, we’re talking about those serials today! Why? Because they were neat! They were cool! They greatly influenced generations of movie-makers! Plus…I don’t have anything else prepared.

The serials evolved directly from the pulp magazines of the time, and comic strips. Several famous heroes appeared in serials, including: Ace Drummond, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, and Zorro! The serial “Undersea Kingdom” is where Ray Corrigan obtained the nickname “Crash”, and the serial “The Phantom Empire” was the very first film to star world-renowned singing cowboy, Gene Autry!

And that’s the one we’re gonna talk about today! I’ve got a really good reason for it, too! It’s the one I’ve most recently seen! If that’s not a good enough reason…I don’t know what you can do about it!

So anyway, there was this movie company, called Mascot (which would later be absorbed into Republic, perhaps the most famous producer of film serials!). Nat Levine was the man in charge, and he instructed one of his writers, Wallace McDonald, to come up with a really boffo storyline for their next film project. Well, according to indisputable internet sources, McDonald read up on the Carlsbad Caverns while waiting in the dentist’s office. When the dentist gassed him, he had this groovy dream about an underground kingdom fighting against the surface people who discovered them! Luckily, he remembered this when he woke up, and viola! They had a plot!

In the serial, Gene Autry plays himself, or at least a character with the same name. He is the owner of Radio Ranch, where he and his musicians broadcast their radio show every day at two o’clock. Somehow, this has become a part of the lease agreement or something, cuz if Gene EVER fails to sing on the two o’clock radio show they will lose the ranch!

Gene has a partner who helps run the ranch, a man named Tom Baxter. Tom has two children, Frankie (played by Frankie Darro, who wore the Robby the Robot suit in “Forbidden Planet”) and Betsy (played by experienced rodeo performer, Betsy King Ross). Frankie and Betsy run a sort of a fan club called the Junior Thunder Riders, which is named after a mysterious company of horsemen who ride across the plains sounding like thunder (get it?) and mysteriously appear and disappear in Thunder Canyon. Frankie and Betsy also have a “secret lab” in the barn, where Frankie tries to invent things.

They allow tourists to come to radio ranch, for the whole “live studio audience” bit, I guess. However, in this batch of tourists is Professor Beetson and his (quote) “vicious band of research scientists” (unquote). Studies suggest that somewhere beneath Radio Ranch is a vast store of the very rare mineral, Radium! So Beetson and his vicious band of research scientists (I LOVE that line!) have come to do some scouting and run some tests to confirm this.

Guess what? It turns out the study was right! There’s just oodles of radium in the area! So Beetson and his vicious band of research scientists (you only get lines like that in old-school stuff like movie serials and pulp mags!) decide they have to drive everyone away from Radio Ranch so they can dig it all up without having to share it with anyone! Why? Well I told ya it was extremely rare, so they can sell it and get filthy stinkin’ rich!

How can they get rid of all the people in Radio Ranch? By getting rid of the reason they’re all there: the show. All they have to do is make Gene Autry miss his two o’clock broadcast—then the terms of their lease will be broken and they’ll get kicked out and the ranch will be deserted! Unfortunately, they turn out to be an INCOMPETENT vicious band of research scientists, and their efforts to detain Gene result in heaping amounts of EPIC FAIL!

So Professor Beetson, compelled by his greed, decides to drastically up the stakes. He kills Tom Baxter, and then frames Gene Autry for it! The only ones who believe that Gene is innocent are Frankie and Betsy, who hide him in the secret lab in the barn so the Sherriff can’t find him. Of course, he doesn’t stay there long before he is discovered, and goes on the run—straight to Thunder Canyon!

Well it turns out that Thunder Canyon hold the secret entrance that leads to the Scientific City of Murania (the mysterious underground “Phantom Empire” of the series title). Murania is a technologically advanced culture with robots, sky-chariots, atomic cannons and other good stuff! It’s implied that the people of Murania are the descendents of the lost kingdom of Mu. In case you don’t know, Mu is a mysterious island kingdom that supposedly sunk into the ocean, and it cannot be proved whether or not it actually existed. Sorta like Atlantis, except Mu was supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Gene manages to escape from the Sherriff and the vicious band of research scientists (it actually says that phrase in the opening of one of the chapters!) by getting captured by the Thunder Riders, who take him into Murania! Ha, take that, surface antagonists!

But—oh snap!—things just got worse instead of better! See, the xenophobic ruler of Murania, Queen Tika (played by Dorothy Christie) has been watching us ignorant and barbaric surface people on her fancy-shmancy television, and wants absolutely nothing to do with us! She has no qualms about killing surface people to keep Murania secret and safe, so she decides to kill Gene Autry!

However, that’s still not complicated enough to stretch out for twelve whole chapters, so to complicate matters the Queen’s trusted advisor, Lord Argo the High Chancellor, is plotting to start a civil war, overthrow the Queen and put himself in charge! The swine! Why do all these rulers of lost kingdoms trust their trusted advisors? Don’t they know the trusted advisor ALWAYS turns out to be the bad-guy?!

Anyway, the traitorous Lord Argo has been slowly building up an army of rebels by saving people from the execution chamber. And he decides to save Gene Autry! But Gene, being the bland but dutiful hero-type, utterly refuses to join up and escapes instead!

So, because this is a 1935 movie serial, there’s a lot of “one damn thing after another” as Gene commutes between the surface world and the secret underground kingdom. He keeps having to sing on the radio show, but has to do it from remote locations so the Sherriff can’t catch him before he can clear himself of murder, and one or another of his sidekicks keeps getting kidnapped by the Muranians so he has a convenient excuse to go back there and help overthrow evil High Chancellor Argo.

I don’t really want to ruin the ending, in case anyone out there wants to check it out first hand. But I will say that I was surprised how…useful a role the comedic sidekicks ended up playing. Cuz in addition to the kids, Frankie and Betsy, Gene had two other sidekicks, Oscar and Pete (played by Smiley Burnette and William Moore). They spend most of the series being silly for the sake of being silly. But eventually, these two guys ended up orchestrating some vital plot points! I was impressed! And pleasantly surprised!

In 1940, the serial was edited down to the more reasonable feature film length of 70 minutes, and issued under two different names: “Radio Ranch” and “Men With Steel Faces”. And that’s not all! “The Phantom Empire” was also the inspiration behind one of the three serials featured weekly on the 1979 TV show “Cliffhangers”, a show which sounds really cool, but sadly didn’t last a full season.

It seems to me that these old-school serials are sort of an acquired taste nowadays. Just like any other film genre, there are some that are pretty good and others that are not. Fortunately, you don’t have to buy one to check it out. Netflix has a few serials for rent, including this one (that’s how I saw it). They have a few others that you can stream to your computer. There are also some other sites where you can stream or download old movies and serials that are now public domain. But you can watch it for free online at archivemovieclassics.com and other places that I can’t tell you about because when I found them I was dumb and forgot to bookmark them. But a web-search should get you more results!

Oh yeah, almost forgot. In order to maintain the disguise of a mild-mannered review column, I’ve got to issue a rating. As I’m the indecisive type when it comes to things like this, I’ve got a pair of handy-dandy D&D percentage dice to do it for me! The concept here is really easy. Percentage dice are two ten-sided dice. One represents the digit of the ones place, while the other represents the digit of the tens place. Together, they randomly determine a number anywhere from 01 (oh dear Lord, make it STOP!) and double-0 which actually means 100 (the unreachable standard to which all projects ought to aspire). So I’ll give my dice a simple toss like so…

…and end up with a fairly respectable 70! I guess that ain’t too bad. I can live with that. Like I said, these old-fashioned serials aren’t for everyone, even if they did inspire things like “Star Wars” and Indiana Jones. However, this was one of the better ones I’ve seen, so if you’re interested in old-fashioned serials, I can recommend this one!

But hey, that’s only one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! You could check it out for yourself and form your own opinion! That’s what I did! And since I can’t really think of anything else to say, I guess I’ll just say so long until next time! Speaking of next time, you should come back and find out what I’m gonna talk about next time, that way we’ll both know! Be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Dark Shadows: The Beginning

2010-09-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

DARK SHADOWS

Hello, all you happy people! How do I know you’re happy? Because it’s a brand new month and there’s a brand new Odd Review out! You’re, like, reading it right now! And if that’s not enough to be happy about, I don’t know what you can do about it!

But this is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying “Hi” and “welcome to the column”! See? That was me right there who said that. And just in case you don’t know what goes on here, I’d better tell ya that my job is to find cool and/or strange stuff that you may not remember, or may not be aware of, dust it off a little bit, and show it to you!

I don’t usually bother trying to be timely and tropical…I mean topical, slight error, sorry. However, the timing on this particular article was too perfect to prevent its posting. Or, in other words, it’s October, Halloween time, and the season for all things creepy, spooky, and sinister! Therefore, it is the perfect time to talk about a classic gothic soap opera called Dark Shadows!

Surely you’ve heard of Dark Shadows. That’s the old soap opera with all the witches and ghosts and werewolves and, of course, iconic vampire, Barnabas Collins. And that’s not all! Other weird and twisted story elements involved travelling into the past, and the future, and even parallel dimensions! Sadly, the show had run its course before I came along. Sure, I’ve seen a few reruns here and there, but not enough to really understand what was going on. Most of what I knew about the show, I had heard from my older relatives and it convinced me that I had missed out on something!

Fortunately for me, the show is now on DVD, and available on Netflix! The show developed a cult following, and the standard fan opinion is that the show didn’t get good until Barnabas was introduced. But I wanted to see it from the very beginning! So I’ve been renting Dark Shadows: the Beginning, and I’m proud to say that I’ve recently finished it! So now I’m gonna tell ya about Dark Shadows Before Barnabas.

The show started off as a pretty normal soap opera, but heavy on the gothic elements normally associated with Victorian romances. We start off by meeting Victoria Winters, a young lady who grew up in an orphanage, who is taking the train to Collinsport, Maine to accept a job as a governess. On the train she bumps into Burke Devlin, a man who went to jail for a hit-and-run murder that he didn’t commit and has now come back to Collinsport for—bum-bum-BU-U-UM!—revenge!

Victoria finds her way to Collinwood, the beautifully drab and forbidding ancestral home of the Collins family, where she meets her employer, Mrs. Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, the stern but likeable matron of the Collins family. Mrs. Stoddard has not left estate for eighteen years, when her husband Paul mysteriously vanished. Elizabeth’s grown-up daughter, Carolyn, is an eat-drink-and-be-merry girl and a total spoiled brat who only wants what she can’t have and doesn’t appreciate what she does have until it’s lost to her. Elizabeth’s brother, Roger Collins, is a smug, arrogant, proud weasel of a man with an inexplicable English accent. Roger has a nine-year-old son named David, who is the creepy and thoroughly unlikable child Victoria has been hired to tutor and supervise and…whatever else governess’s are supposed to do.

Now get this, it turns out that Roger Collins is actually responsible for the hit-and-run death that Burke Devlin went to jail for. Burke has come back to Collinsport announcing left and right that he has come back to wreak his righteous revenge on Roger. Which is pretty dumb, because when the brakes on Roger’s car get tampered with, Burke instantly becomes Suspect Number One, even though he didn’t do that either.

Ya want to know who did it? It was his nine-year-old son, David! See, the two of them don’t get along AT ALL, and David sabotaged his father’s car as a pre-emptive strike cuz he is constantly afraid of being “sent away”. Not only did he try to kill his own father, but he then tried to plant evidence to frame two different people for it! But, you know, he’s a Collins, so Liz Stoddard covered the whole thing up.

But there’s still plenty of unresolved business, especially between Burke and Roger. So Burke keeps making threats and insinuations until he finally ticks off Liz Stoddard’s right-hand man, Bill Malloy. I LIKED Bill Malloy! He didn’t put up with any crap. He wanted to resolve the business between Burke and Roger before Burke caused enough trouble to ruin Liz Stoddard (if I recall correctly he was in love with her and wanted to marry her). So he tracked down the witness, a local artist and town drunk, Sam Evans, and arranged a meeting for a big, dramatic confrontation between Burke, Roger, and Sam. But on the night of this big meeting…Bill Malloy mysteriously vanished!

He was found floating in the water at the foot of the cliffs where Collinwood JUST HAPPENS to overlook. Somebody killed him to drag the story out, and it sure worked! Was it Sam Evans, who didn’t want to admit his part in the cover-up? Was it Roger Collins, who didn’t want to go to jail for manslaughter and lying under oath? No! It was Matthew, the old and mentally unbalanced handyman who is maniacally loyal to Liz Stoddard! …Say whaaa? And you know who stumbled onto this fact? Victoria Winters (remember her?), governess, eternal optimist, and token damsel-in-distress!

Matthew kidnaps her and ties her up in a secret room in the old mansion on the Collinwood estate. The only one who knows he’s hiding out there is young David Collins, who likes to hang out at the old house and talk to ghosts. I told ya he was a creepy kid! Anyway, Matthew managed to elude the police, but gets scared to death by the ghosts that haunt the old house.

Before anyone has time to draw in a breath of relief, Roger’s estranged wife, Laura Murdock Collins, returns to Collinsport. She’s been away to an asylum for years, but now she’s back to finalize a divorce and gain custody of David. Except, there’s more to it then that. She’s not really Laura Collins. She’s surrounded by all sorts of weird coincidences, mostly involving fires. She’s completely enthralled by fires, and actually spends most of her time staring into the fireplace. When she’s not doing that, she’s trying very hard to avoid answering questions.

It turns out she’s some supernatural thing, apparently some weird variation of a Phoenix. Every hundred years there’s a Laura Murdock-something who died in a fire with a child. Apparently she needs the child as part of her phoenix-type regeneration process, this time around, she’s after David.

Laura Collins put Liz Stoddard into a magically-induced coma that baffles all the doctors, who eventually move her to a hospital in some other city. The family lawyer, Frank Garner (well, ok, he’s actually the SON of the family lawyer, but he’s part of the firm, too). …Where was I? Oh yeah! So, the family lawyer, Frank Garner, who has a weak romantic tie to Victoria Winters, suddenly becomes considerably cooler because he knows a parapsychologist who he calls in to help treat Liz Stoddard.

The parapsychologist is Dr. Peter Guthrie (one of my favorite characters on the show so far!). He doesn’t believe 100% in all the occult stuff, and treats the whole thing with the scientific method. But he’s the one who figures out that Laura Collins is actually a blood-sucking succubus-bitch from Hell. …Well, ok, that’s just my little pet name for her…I wonder if I can say that in this column?

The part I didn’t understand was why everyone was trying to save David from Laura. NOBODY LIKED HIM! They kept saying things like, “We have to keep that innocent boy away from her!” Innocent? Did we forget that a hundred episodes ago he tried to kill his own father and frame two other characters for it?!

But, they do save him, and Laura burns up all by herself, presumably this means she will not return in the future. In the past maybe, but not in the future. Anyway, Laura fries and Liz is magically all better and upset that they took her out of the house. So she returns to Collinwood…

Just in time to meet an old “friend” named Jason Maguire, who knows Liz’s terrible secret about her missing husband and why she never leaves the house. Apparently she killed him and had Jason bury him in the basement, which totally blows some of my theories out of the water. Anyway, Jason is here to chisel a bunch of money out of Liz, and has blackmailed her into letting him and his partner, Willie Loomis, stay at Collinwood…much to the annoyance of everyone else who lives there.

Willie Loomis is a total shmuck who manages to ruffle the feathers of, like, EVERYONE else on the show inside of three episodes. He hits on all the girls and totally cheeses off the guys. He’s just a no-account punk and I really love it when he and Burke Devlin finally get into a fight down at the local bar. You know the good ol’ tough-guy line: “Two hits. Me hitting you, you hitting the floor?” Yeah, that’s about how the fight went. Burke totally cleaned his clock, didn’t break a sweat, didn’t even take his coat off! Burke is cool!

BUT! It turns out that it was a good thing they saved David after all. Why? Because he was inadvertently responsible for the arrival of Barnabas. See, he’s been telling Willie all these stories about his relatives and how many of them were buried with their jewels and medals and things. Well, Willie doesn’t have the patience for this long slow blackmail scheme of Jason Maguire’s. No sir, Willie is a grab-it-and-run kind of guy. He’s been advised to steal something that wouldn’t be missed. So he’s tracked down a crypt in a cemetery where members of the Collins family are buried…

And then that was the end of the set! Next up, we’ll be getting Dark Shadows: Collection One, which I understand is supposed to begin with the arrival of Barnabas.

Now, I’ve seen the show this far. I gotta say, it does NOT suck! Ok, it moves at a snail’s pace. If you only watch one episode, you kinda feel like nothing much happened. The show was on every weekday, but it was only a thirty-minute show. And a lot of that seemed to be devoted to re-capping whatever has been happening lately. And there are a LOT of episodes where characters seem to have the same conversations over and over and over again. You really want somebody to say “Why are you even bothering to ask me that? You’ve asked me that every episode for the past two weeks and I haven’t given you a straight answer yet, why do you think I’d start now?”

You often get the impression that the writer’s didn’t really have enough story to stretch it out as long as they wanted to. In fact, the plot I’ve just summed up for you took them about nine months to do. Seems to me it could have moved a little quicker. The special effects were cool and retro…a bit sad by modern standards perhaps, but for a daytime show in 1966 they were top-shelf!

Some actors messed up on their lines, the product of not enough rehearsals before taping. Or worse, having to read directly from cue cards! This totally messed up veteran film actors, like Joan Bennet, who played Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, seemed to be the worst in this area. She’s supposed to be the big-time movie star adding credibility to the show! I guess she was used to more rehearsal time than the daily taping schedule allowed. She was still great, though!

Let’s see now…I’m up to somewhere in March of 1967 and the show was supposed to continue on to 1971 before getting dropped by the network, so there’s still lots more for me to watch. And luckily for fans, there is only one single, solitary episode that did not survive. There’s supposed to be an audio track somewhere that someone tried to construct an episode of still-images from, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. Still, that’s a pretty impressive statistic, considering there were over a thousand episodes of the original series!

Let’s see, the show was supposed to be created by producer Dan Curtis, inspired by a dream he had where some girl went on a trip to a creepy old house. Most of the folks in the show are known best for being on this show. But the guy playing Willie Loomis, John Karlen, might be remembered from the show Cagney and Lacey. And it turns out that Mitch Ryan, who plays Burke Devlin, is the bad guy in the first Lethal Weapon movie. And I’ve already mentioned that Joan Bennet was a movie star before she got on the show.

Anyway, what it comes to is that the show is brilliant. It’s a little tedious in places, with the backtracking in case you missed an episode. It’s also a little annoying some of the stupid things certain characters put up with. And I really wish there had been more to the scene when Burke beat up Willie. But the show is really good, and I can’t wait to see what happens next! People keep telling me the show didn’t get good until Barnabas showed up. Well, I don’t think that’s really true, but I do hope it means that it will get even better!

Here’s an interesting tidbit I came across on my research. Apparently the show was doing pretty badly up to this point. The network was going to cancel the show. So the writers and producers said “Oh well, let’s go out with a bang! Let’s throw in a vampire!” So they came up with Barnabas Collins and hired classic Shakespearean actor, Jonathan Frid for one thirteen-week storyline, expecting the character—and the show—to end. Of course, fans know that Barnabas remained a regular on the show until it was finally cancelled in 1971. Ain’t that always the way it works out?

I almost forgot to mention that the show was so popular that it spawned comic books, tie-in novels, audio-novels, and two movies featuring members of the original cast. In 1991 MGM tried to re-make the show to air on NBC…but it didn’t work I guess. I think you can see all the episodes of the 90’s series on YouTube. In 2004 the WB produced a pilot that was never picked up. Current internet rumors state that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are planning a new movie inspired by the classic series.

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to give this a rating! Well, it’s pretty darn good, but there is room for improvement. So, let’s see what my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice have to say. In case you don’t know, percentage dice are two ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between zero-one (how can you stand it?!) and double-zero, which actually stands for one hundred (how can you stand to be without it?!). So I’ll just roll the dice like this…

…and end up with an eighty-three! Well, I guess I can live with that. I wonder if later parts of the series would rate higher? I may have to review them some time and find out!

But that’s all I’ve got for now, folks! So be sure to tune in next time when I talk about something else entirely! This is Everybody’s Buddy, Oddcube, signing off!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

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Jetpack!

2010-08-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

HOW TO BUILD A JETPACK

Howdy Toonsters! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to welcome you to… (Cue sappy music)…A Very Special Odd Review!

Now, if this were a regular Odd Review, I’d make sure you understand that my job is to find stuff you may not know about and then tell ya why it’s cool (or why you should avoid it like the plague). Then, at the end, I roll a pair of percentage dice to pick a random number to rate it with. You know, so this column looks like a legitimate review!

Well, I’ll tell ya how it is, folksies. I had this idea to tell ya all about Backyard FX, a show over at Indy Mogul (at indymogul.com). Now, Indy Mogul is a site devoted to helping independent filmmakers, with shows about the behind-the-scenes “how-to” stuff, and other shows to help showcase indie films. Now, I’m particularly interested in the “Backyard FX” show, which shows you how to achieve various special effects for cheap. Usually they show you how to build special props, sometimes they show you how to achieve certain make-up effects, sometimes they show you how to build and use your own green screen.

Now, in one of the very first episodes Eric Beck (the show’s creator and former host) shows us how to build a jetpack! And it was a really cool jetpack! He even made it so you could put a small fire extinguisher inside, pull this cable to set it off so it would look like smoke was coming out of the thrusters as the jetpack started up! Much later, Eric got SO busy with other parts of Indy Mogul that he felt he could not devote the proper amount of time to the Backyard FX show, so he held open auditions where anybody could send in a test video of them building a project. One of the entries was a fellow named Mike Smith (he had a cool robot sidekick named Tec!), and he made his own jetpack! …His didn’t have a fire extinguisher, though he did set it up so he could insert dry ice in the hopes of the steam coming out of the thrusters. But he didn’t do that part on camera, so I don’t know if it worked or not.

Anyway, it’s a really cool and informative show, but I thought if I was gonna talk about it, I should build something from one of their tutorials first. This became such a project, that I thought it would be neat just to tell you about that. So I will! And then I can devote the proper attention to Indy Mogul and Backyard FX in a later Review.

So, I think I’ve been watching too much web-TV. I’ve been watching things like “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”, “The Guild”, and “Captain Blasto”, and I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming “Mercury Men” series and “Flash Gordon” series. And I’ve got a groovy idea for a web-series with a plot that incorporates all the cool special effect props that I want to build! And yes! One of them is a Jetpack!

Well, I’d been thinking about it for a couple of months, and collecting potential parts, and finally the time had come to build a Jetpack! Bwah-haha-ha-ha! (You HAVE to do the maniacal laugh, so people know you mean it!)

From the very beginning here, I want to say that I figured it would be incredibly easy to build. And it really was. Kind of time-consuming, but easy. In fact, I basically built the whole thing in one day. However, I sorta wish I had used a few alternate materials, to make it a little less flimsy. But I’ll get to that later.

Step One: You need the idea and the desire to build a homemade Jetpack! Check!

Step Two: You have to figure out what you want the dumb thing to look like, what you are gonna build it out of, and collect your materials! Well, in the Indy Mogul videos, they basically build all of their projects out of everyday items, usually scavenged from thrift stores. I have a collection of small plastic containers, soda bottles, and various bottle caps that I use to decorate the miniature buildings I build for table-top wargaming. So I had some cool decoration-type stuff. But I needed something to use for the actual “backpack” portion of the jetpack.

I ended up with a plastic “bakery box” from my local grocery store. The bakery department uses these as containers for sheet cakes, breads, and other things. Mine was filled with croissants and they were scrum-diddly-umptious! In addition to this, I used two 2-liter soda bottles, two Renuzit air fresheners, two sour cream containers, one Cool Whip container, two liquid laundry soap bottle caps, one soap box, one toilet paper roll, two drinking straws, and one kid’s party favor compass. Oh and some of my Dear Old Mother’s ™ leftover plastic canvas. And paint and duct tape and white glue and hot glue.

See, my thinking was to do something that any idiot could do, without the need of fancy-schmancy tools or handyman know-how. Cuz, you know, I’m just any idiot and don’t have them fancy-schmancy tools or handyman know-how and I wanted to do it anyway. Just to show ‘em I could! Nyah!

Step Three: Build it! So here’s what I did. I took one sour cream container and slammed it onto the bottom of a soda bottle, then glued it with hot glue in the hopes that it will stay there. Onto the bottom of the sour cream container, I glued a laundry bottle cap. Then I took one of those air fresheners and pulled the top off to use it as a thruster. I removed the bottle cap from the soda bottle and glued the air freshener top to it.
Congratulations! We now have a rocket thruster! Then we do it all again so that we have two! Then you take the two rocket thrusters and glue them to the sides of the clear plastic lid of the bakery box. Now we have something that looks vaguely like a jetpack already and we’ve only just started!

Of course, I wanted the back to look cool and not just a big blank square. I wanted interesting stuff sticking out from it, and maybe even sticking into it. So I took the Cool Whip container and cut up the bottom to look like a cross-section with four big ol’ holes in it. Then I filled the holes with plastic canvas so it would look like some sort of exhaust or air intake, or even a fan housing of some sort. I painted the inside black, didn’t bother with a fan, then glued the Cool Whip lid to the Cool Whip container and then glued it to the back of the Jetpack.

Well that covers the “sticking out” part. Now I needed to come up with a “Sticking In” part. So I had this nifty idea for a little window where you can see part of the engine. Now the plastic bakery box lid is already clear, so if I just glue something to the inside of it, the bakery box can be the window…as long as I’m careful to NOT paint over that part.

So I grabbed a bar of soap from the bathroom and cut open the wide side of the box to form four flaps. I removed the bar of soap, of course. Then I took a toilet paper roll and cut a length of it that would fit in the soap box. But the roll was too big around, so I had to cut the back off of it. So now I had, like, one fourth of a toilet paper roll and glued that inside the soap box.

It was boring.

So I took two bendable drinking straws and cut them to fit in the soap box, too, making sure to keep the stretched out bendy part. I glued them in the box. Then I painted the whole thing black, and when that dried, I painted the toilet paper roll and straws with metallic colors to look like they might be part of the engine. Once I was done with all that, I glued it to the inside of the bakery box.

There was one little problem with this. I had cut the straws just a little too short and had to use a BIG blob of glue to hold them in place. It didn’t look good. So I cut a rectangle of cardboard out of a pizza box lid…which I forgot to mention was amongst my materials…and cut a window in it that was slightly smaller than the soap box. Then, I glued this on the outside of the bakery box like a frame, and it helped to cover those unsightly blobs of glue!

Well, I was mostly pleased, but there were still parts of it that were just too darn plain. So I took the two soda bottle caps and glued them onto the back of the jetpack, too. I didn’t like how plain the top was, so I cut a small hole and placed the bottom half of one of those air fresheners into it (stem down). Oh, uh, that scented gel around the center stem will dry up if you keep them long enough, then you just pull it right off the stem. You might need pliers to do this, or you might not.

My original idea was to have some sort of wings, but I was afraid of how wide that would make it. But it had to have some sort of stabilizer fins. So I took one of those sour cream lids and cut it in half and glued them to the soda bottles.

That means that we just need a cool paint job and some straps…preferably with some sort of control panel. Hmm…let’s do the easy part first. Painting!

First off, you need to cover up the parts where you do NOT want paint. I saved the parts that I had cut from the Cool Whip container so I could use them to cover up the black-painted plastic canvas. I also saved the cardboard that I cut out of the pizza box frame, and used it to cover the engine window. First I painted the inside of the air freshener thrusters with black paint, so it would look like it’s been used once or twice. Then I just painted the rest of it with a silver metallic paint…but you could paint yours whatever color you wanted to, really. Black, bronze, steel, pink, whatever you’re into.

And now: the straps! Hoo boy…the straps. Well, my very first thought was to find a small backpack that I could squeeze inside the bakery box, then I could cut some slots in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box to thread the straps through. I still think this is the best method, but I didn’t have a backpack, and I didn’t feel like buying a brand new one for this. Plus, I didn’t really wanna bother with thrift stores.

Instead, I made my own straps! I bought a roll of black duct tape to make them out of. It wasn’t hard, really. I pulled out about a yard of tape, then another. Then I placed one tape sticky side up and covered half of the length with the other tape. Then I just folded the exposed sticky side up over the length of the second tape, so there was only half of the second tape’s sticky side exposed. Then I folded that sticky side over.

I had to do that four times. Then I took one end of each strap and wrapped it around a pill bottle. Then I threaded the strap through the slot I had cut in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box, so that the pill bottle end was on the inside.

Then I thought the shoulder straps should be wider, for comfort’s sake. So I took two more lengths of duct tape and sandwiched the thin strap between them. I did this for each side, of course.

Next came the problem of how to fasten the straps. So I cut a pair of buckles out of the lid of a plastic ice cream tub…which I also failed to mention in the materials. But that’s ok, cuz either I didn’t cut them right, or the duct tape is too slippery, or something. Cuz the straps keep sliding loose. I’m thinking of installing Velcro.

Finally, I needed a control box! I had this nifty idea of a strap that goes horizontally across your chest with the box on it, but that’s not what I ended up with. First off, the box itself is a small sewing kit box, like you find in your local department store or grocery store. I took a shallow bottle cap (from small water bottles works great) and a pair of needle caps from my Poor Old Mother’s insulin needles. I glued all these inside the box to look like a knob and a pair of switches. Then, I just taped a paper clip to the back, because I ended up fastening the straps in an “X” configuration anyway.

I added some duct tape “loops” to my straps, just to help make it look sorta bandolier-style. Then I took a pair of pill bottles and painted them silver to stick in the loops. They could be smoke bombs, or hand grenades, or emergency fuel canisters, or mini tool-cases, or just a place to keep your Tic-Tacs, gum, or change for the toll booths.

In my local dollar store, they have a party aisle. That’s where I found a bag of party favors that were compasses. There were five or six of them in the bag, and I thought they would make good gauges. It was pretty easy to pry the cover off and pull out the arrow, then you just cut a circle of paper to fit and decorate it to look like whatever gauge you want. It could be a fuel gauge, or a temp gauge, or an rpm gauge, or even a clock, or some sort of frequency dial! I made mine a temp gauge, glued the arrow and the cover back on, and glued it onto the bakery box, connected to the Cool Whip bucket. A little extra detail painting here and there, a few serial numbers, and even a corporate or faction logo and shazam! You got a jetpack!

Wait a minute! While doing this detail work I did find a dent in one of my soda bottles. I think I did that with the hot glue gun while trying to add a little glue to help make it more stable. I was hoping I had only caused the air inside to contract, so I poked a little hole in the soda bottle. Wouldn’t ya know? The hot glue gun had melted the plastic! I seriously could NOT do anything about it (short of replacing the whole thruster, which I did NOT want to do). And as if that wasn’t bad enough, now I had a hole in the side of it!

Well, the hole was easily fixed with the some yellow tape. I just drew some black stripes with a Sharpie and just like that I had some caution tape! Of course, I had to do that to both sides so it looked like it was supposed to be there and not like I was covering up an inconvenient hole. I’ve simply accepted the dent.

All things said and done, I’m pretty happy with the end results! It looks like a jetpack and everything! Of course, there are a few things I wish I had done differently. For starters, I think I should have attached the soda bottles to the bakery box with screws for better stability. I sorta wish I had used some hardware store adhesive like Liquid Nails instead of hot glue. It’s supposed to be stronger AND it doesn’t melt the plastic!

Plus, I later found out that the top half of the air freshener is actually two parts! The very top is connected to the stem that connects to the bottom half of the air freshener. If you knock this part out it leaves an open-ended cone that will loosely screw onto the soda bottle directly! That would help the thruster to NOT look quite as much like a soda bottle, plus I think there would be more gluing surface to keep it in place!

Oh well, it was fun to do. And you don’t have to end here! You can accessorize with souped-up dollar store goggles and water pistol, in matching colors! Careful painting those goggles though! I suggest you use a primer, then paint, and then follow with a sealer! …And make sure you remove the lens BEFORE you paint! Then, all you need is a jumpsuit and you’re ready to protect the local Comic-Con from the forces of E-Vil!

So, for inspiration and actually doing it, I say: High Points! For constructing it with everyday items that anyone can get, I say: High Points! I spent less than ten dollars on materials (for silver spray paint and black duct tape), everything else I had lying around or was garbage that I saved specifically for this project. …Of course, I haven’t bought the Velcro for the straps yet. I think it could be built a little sturdier, and if you have mad handyman skills you could trip it out with blinking lights, or make those laundry bottle caps spin like turbines or something.

Oh well, it was just supposed to look cool, and I think I accomplished that! Plus, my Twitty Nephew is visiting for the summer, and he thinks it is “Totally Awesome”… which is pretty much what I was going for!

But, I guess it’s not fair for me to just assign myself a rating, cuz that’s not how we do things around here! No sirree! We roll randomly to determine a score between zero-one, which means “run away, run away now;” and double zero, which actually means one hundred percent, or “I can dig it, I can dig it, I can dig it the most!” Now that that’s all cleared up, I’ll just give my dice a roll like this…

And roll a sixty-nine! …Sixty-nine?! Stupid dice! Must have to turn it upside…no. Must have to read it backwards! That makes it a Ninety-six!

That’s right, folks! My nifty jetpack-building tutorial is rated a ninety-six! And there you have yet another victory for “blatant favoritism on the part of the judges”!

Well, that’s all I got for now. If ya care, I am planning to post a watered-down version of this on my own website, complete with pictures! Including a picture of your buddy Oddcube modeling the finished piece! But there’s no telling when I’ll get around to that. Right now I got to figure out what I’m gonna talk about next month! So you make sure to tune in next month to find out what it’ll be! Be there and be square (I know I will)!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

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Oddcube Reviews "Doc Savage in The Polar Treasure"

2010-07-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

DOC SAVAGE (AND THE POLAR TREASURE)

Hey there, hi there, ho there! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying hi and welcome to the column! This is my own personal little corner of the magazine where I get to expound upon just about any topic that I deem to be expoundable! And, being the civic-minded type that I am, I have chosen to broaden the public awareness by investigating an array of uncommon and even outdated issues, events, and occurrences. Or in other words, I check out the weird stuff so that you don’t have to! …Now, aren’t you glad I’m here? Of course you are! So let’s get going!

In case ya don’t know it, I’m kind of a fan of old-fashioned pulp. See, before there was television, there was radio. Before there was radio, there were the pulps! The pulps were cheap magazines with sensational fiction stories. Generally, they are thought to have evolved from the dime novels and penny dreadfuls of the nineteenth century, and eventually evolve into the comic books that we know today. They featured larger-than-life heroes like the Shadow, the Spider, Secret Agent X, and hotshot pilot Dusty Ayres, to name only a few. They had lurid, exploitative, and often ridiculous stories, and sensational and often risqué cover art. Countless titles were published by several publishers from about 1896 through the 1950’s, usually featuring a full-length novel and then a few short story “B-features”. What’s not to love, right?

Now, these old pulp stories are kinda hokey, and very cheesy at times…which is probably why I like them! You can still find some vintage pulp magazines through EBay and Amazon, but they all cost a fortune! However, there are various collections of pulp stories in book form and a magazine called “High Adventure” reprints stories and art from a wide variety of old pulp magazines.

That brings us up to speed with this article. See, not too long ago I took my Poor Old Mother™ to one of the local second-hand book shops (she digs them second-hand book shops, she digs them the most!), and while she was looking for some kind of mystery book by the likes of Hillerman or Jance (I’m SUCH a name-dropper, and not even ashamed of it!), I was looking for cool-weird stuff in the fantasy/sci-fi section! And much to my amazement, shock, surprise and chagrin I found myself a Doc Savage novel written by Kenneth Robeson himself!

Kenneth Robeson is the pen name of Lester Dent, and he is responsible for almost ALL of the stories about Doc Savage. This particular novel is called “The Polar Treasure” and is, like, the fourth story published by Doc Savage Magazine back in 1933, published by Street & Smith! This book was a reprint by Bantam Books; my copy is a third printing release from July of 1972. The cover shows some guy in the frozen wastes with a polar bear towering over him in a most menacing pose! Looks cool! Accidental pun! I had never read any Doc Savage before, so I was excited!

Now, I have mixed feelings on this adventure. I’ll try and explain why as I go. First off, there’s Doc Savage himself. He’s, like, six foot tall, well muscled, and beautifully bronzed, which just sounds like some sort of girly mag centerfold to me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was raised by a team of scientists to have near-superhuman abilities, strength, endurance, a photographic memory, a mastery of martial arts, and esoteric knowledge of a wide variety of sciences. Throughout his career it has been revealed that Doc Savage is an accomplished physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician. He’s the sort of fantasy over-achiever that makes me feel like the inadequate slacker that I am. Real people don’t achieve that much in a whole lifetime! So partly because of my own insecurities and partly because I believe people in general are too lazy to achieve SO much…I have trouble accepting Doc as a believable character. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s pulp. But I have a much easier time accepting that some wacko with normal human abilities is SO messed up that he thinks putting on a mask and fighting crime in the middle of the night is a good idea.

To make it even worse, this Superman, this Lyle Perfect has five dudes that hang out with him and help him out on his adventures. They are supposed to be the tops in their respective fields. Oops, sorry! I mean that they were Second-Best in their respective fields, cuz Doc is the best at absolutely everything! …Which makes me wonder why he needs these guys? He doesn’t really. In fact, later in the series, these helper-dudes were written out of the monthly stories and would only occasionally make cameo guest appearances.

Ok! Now then, “The Polar Treasure”! Well, it starts off with this blind violinist, he holds a concert and afterwards gets jumped by this gang of sailor dudes who mutinied on a passenger liner the violinist was on eighteen years ago. There was supposed to be millions of dollars worth of gold on that liner, so the crew mutinied, scuttled the boat somewhere in the polar ice and left it there to come back for it later. Doc Savage shows up out of nowhere to rescue the violinist.

Well, it turns out that the mutineers couldn’t get along, and are now divided up into two groups. One is led by a dude named Ben O’Gard, the other by Keelhaul de Rosa. These seem to be the only bad guys worthy of getting names. No wait, there was one other guy called Dynamite Smith, but he was just one of Ben’s lackeys. Ben and Keelhaul are the only two bad-guy names worth remembering.

So it turns out that the blind violinist has a map tattooed on his back, showing the precise location of the scuttled luxury liner. Both groups of mutineers are now after him to get the map, and therefore the treasure. That’s cool! I like that part! The tattoo can only be seen by using an X-ray device. That’s kinda silly, but also kinda cool. I can take it or leave it. The part I don’t understand is why they waited eighteen years before going back for the treasure? I guess once one side decided to go after it, the other side heard about it and just wanted to beat them there. This isn’t adequately explained. But a lot of things in pulps aren’t adequately explained, it’s one of the major drawbacks of old pulp.

Of course, there’s a lot of nonsensical, near-pointless adventure in New York City as both teams of mutineers kidnap the violinist and obtain a copy of the map on his back. Also, of course, Doc Savage and his team find out about it. At one point, Doc and one of his assistants gets locked in a disused vault in an old condemned bank that some bad guys are using as a hideout. Now get this, Doc has two extra upper molars. They are fake and each one contains a chemical. When the two chemicals are combined it makes an explosive compound which he uses to blast the door off the vault.

Now I don’t understand that one at all. I mean, what you get into a fistfight and some dude slugs you in the puss and cracks those two teeth open. Wouldn’t your head explode? Or maybe you would just have explosive spit like in that cartoon where Tweety tricks Sylvester into drinking the nitro glycerin.

Anyway, Doc fixes the blind violinist’s eyes so he can see again. They caught some bad guys…oh yeah! Get this! They catch some of the bad guys and send them to a facility in upstate New York to receive BRAIN SURGERY! Doc fixes it up so that surgeons take out “the part of the brain that makes you prone to criminal activity”. Once receiving this particular lobotomy, you become a useful member of the community!

Oh REALLY? I have a BIG problem with this. Why? Because brain manipulation is a BAD-GUY thing! The good guys are supposed to stop the bad guys from doing that sort of thing! You heard of Fu Manchu, right? The inscrutable Chinese devil-doctor? Well, he has a whole big gang of dudes called Dacoits. You know what makes you a Dacoit? Fu Manchu performs a lobotomy on you, removing your free will making you his Dacoit slave! And yet, the HERO has funded a special facility to do the same thing! That’s just wrong!

Anyway, Doc Savage gets the map off the violinist’s back and tells his guys he wants to go after the treasure, partly to help fund the lobotomy hospital, mostly cuz he thinks neither set of bad-guys should have it. So his group of learned, intellectual cohorts starts hootin’ and hollerin’ and generally carryin’ on like a bunch of frat boys at a kegger and shout “Woo-hoo, we’re going on an adventure, just like in the Goonies!”

Time-out! I’ve met intellectual people and they do NOT act that way! At least, not the ones I’ve met. So I have a problem with that, too.

So, Doc checks the newspaper and finds out that some guys with a submarine just HAPPEN to be orchestrating an expedition to the North Pole and require some extra funding. You guess it; this is one team of the mutineers! Doc and his boys go with them, and there’s a lot of nonsense with people stranding other people on glaciers and stuff. The formerly blind violinist shows up outta nowhere with a rescue plane. Doc gets to kill a polar bear with his bare hands. We find the boat still stuck in the ice and the violinist’s wife and daughter (thought to have died eighteen years ago during the mutiny) are both alive and well, and the daughter is eighteen and beautiful and has the hots for Doc because that’s apparently what the chicks are for in a Doc Savage story.

Of course by the end of the story, all the mutineers are dead and not from anything Doc and his crew did directly to them. Doc does NOT find the treasure, as it was taken off the boat and stashed during the mutiny eighteen years ago. Instead he waits for one set of mutineers to recover it and put it on the submarine, so we can strand them on an ice flow and take the sub and the loot.

Through out the story, Doc does this thing where he lightly touches the bad guys with one finger and they get rendered unconscious. I thought it was sort of cool pressure-point thing, sorta like what Xena does, ya know? But we find out that he has some other chemical built into some false fingertips, and that greatly diminished the coolness in my opinion.

So at the end of it, I can say it was a learning experience. I thought the story was kinda cool, but I didn’t like the characters of Doc Savage and his helper dudes. I guess I prefer the Spider, he just shoots everything. I can dig that. But Doc is all weird chemicals and more scientific knowledge than a real human brain can hold. I swear if he tried to learn something more his head would explode! Sherlock Holmes used to say that a brain was like an attic with only a certain amount of space.

Oh well, the time has come to rate this so as to keep up the weak façade of being a legitimate review column! For this purpose I randomly roll a pair of D&D percentage dice to determine a number from 0-1 or “Totally No-Where, Man, Avoid At All Costs!” to double 0, which actually means 100 percent or “It’s the Ginchiest and the Maximum Utmost!” So I shall give them an unbiased roll like that…

And end up with a 68! Hey, it’s on the internet so it must be true! But hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion and you don’t have to take it! You could check it out for yourself if ya wanted to. You should be able to find the book through Amazon and other such book sellers, or maybe you’ll get lucky in find it in your local second-hand book store!

Well folks, that’s all I got for now! So come on back next month when I talk about something else entirely! You won’t want to miss it, and I won’t want you to miss it, either! …I need the hits! Anyway, see ya next time, folks! Be there and be square!

------Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Oddcube Reviews Princess of Mars

2010-06-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

PRINCESS OF MARS

Felicitous greetings and fanciful salutations, and other things that mean “hi”! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube here saying “Hello, and welcome to the column!”

So basically, what goes on here is that I find myself a subject that fits into one or more of the categories listed in the title there, and tell you about it! Mostly, I try to tell you about cool stuff that you shouldn’t miss! However, it has been pointed out to me that, technically speaking, “Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated” does NOT necessarily equate to “good stuff”. Besides, my Beloved Editor™ likes it when I get my snark on.

On that note, I’ve decided to tell you about a certain cinematic experience that should be avoided at almost any cost! That’s right, as those paying attention to the title already know, I’m talking about “Princess of Mars”, and I’ll be getting snarky with it!

So, on some set of online forums, somebody posted a link to a trailer posted on YouTube for “Princess of Mars”, inspired by the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. The only things I really remembered from the commercial were some aliens that didn’t look too bad, some weird mutant T-Rex steeds, a nifty shot of an airboat, and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris. It didn’t look GREAT, but it did look watchable. Holy misleading advertising Batman!

Ok, to be fair, it wasn’t WHOLLY misleading! …Traci Lords was in it! This must have been a low point in her career, since I’m sure she was in some X-rated films with better plots and characterization. Antonio Sabato Jr. (formerly of daytime soap “General Hospital” and Calvin Klein ads) was John Carter, but…not really. It was written and directed by some shlub named Mark Atkins. After I watched it, I found out it was produced and distributed by a company called “The Asylum”, who seem to specialize in really bad, low-budget movies inspired by the buzz surrounding big-budget features that are coming soon. Although they do technically use original plots, the themes and titles of their movies are suspiciously similar (but legally distinct) from certain widely-anticipated, big-budget movies, and are released directly to video at about the same time the real movie comes out. Thanks to this business practice, their flicks are often referred to as “mockbusters”, a name which at least one of the founders objects to…so that’s the one I’m gonna use.

Fast forward several months. It’s gonna be on the SyFy Channel! I was excited! I mean, ok, SyFy pretty much sucks except for Eureka and possibly Merlin, but they could be showing something really cool by accident! I mean, you can’t put a whole lot of faith in a channel that can’t even spell “sci-fi” correctly. But, being the magnanimous sort that I am, I was determined to watch it! Cuz I’m a glutton for punishment!

So, I missed the first few minutes of the movie, like the opening titles. But I see modern-day army guys fighting somewhere in the Middle East. This one guy is leading a team of other guys to rescue some dude. And I’m like, “Uh…do I have the right day? Maybe that commercial said tomorrow, or next week, or something.” Cuz, I actually read the book, and I know John Carter fought in the American Civil War before the story and was prospecting for gold in Arizona when he got zapped across the void to Mars.

But, somebody calls the leader-guy Carter, so I presume I got the right day after all, and sneer with venomous contempt. Cuz, you know, it bugs me no end when they screw up the good stuff. So, they go in to save this guy, firefight breaks out, the guy we’re trying to rescue gets a gun and shoots Carter…and ya don’t really care cuz you don’t know him yet.

So, he wakes up in the infirmary where an army doctor and an officer tell him he’s about to be subjected to some sort of teleportation experiment which will either heal him up like new or kill him. He’s gonna get zapped to the fourth planet orbiting, like, Andromeda or something, which we call Mars II. And I’m all like…well, I can’t really tell ya my reaction, cuz I’m pretty sure my Beloved Editor would deem it “unprintable”. So, they zap him across space, where stars zoom by in a blur of lines that remind me of an old opening sequence of classic British sci-fi show, Dr. Who (which I’ve just sullied by merely mentioning in this review!).

He falls into the atmosphere, bounces off an airboat, and lands among the Vasquez Rocks of southern California. He wakes up, wanders over to a ledge and jumps like a superhuman grasshopper from rock to rock like he expected to be able to do it! That’s right; this WTF moment was brought to you by The Asylum and SyFy!

So, he gets found by some green Martians who aren’t very green…but they DO have tusks like the Tharks are supposed to have! I actually thought the masks for the Tharks were pretty good! Of course, they still weren’t proper Tharks…they weren’t green enough, they weren’t tall enough, they didn’t have enough arms, and they were WAY overdressed to be proper Tharks! But the masks themselves weren’t bad!

I was impressed that they kept the whole me-no-speaka-you-language bit. Of course, instead of being all intellectual and actually learning it, he was forced to eat some sort of worm and could magically understand Martian-speak.

This is when we finally find out that the locals call the planet Barsoom, and that the aliens are called Tharks, and that this squad is led by Tars Tarkas. They replaced the Thoats with the T-Rex things, and threw in some weird giant spider-things. Cuz, you know, that’s the all-purpose, default fantasy/sci-fi monster! Don’t know what to do next? Throw in some giant spiders!

While traveling home with not-really-John Carter, the Tharks attack an airboat which just happens to be carrying Dejah Thoris and her bodyguard/wannabe-suitor, Sab Than. They were taking some dude to the Air Factory that produces breathable air and allows everyone to live on Barsoom. The Princess flees on a lifeboat, and after she leaves, Carter witnesses Sab Than kill the Air Factory guy!

Well, Carter captures Dejah Thoris (to save her life from the Tharks), and they all go back to the Thark city. Here we meet the leader, Tal Hajus. Tars Tarkas proudly declares that they have captured the Princess of Mars…even though they call the place Barsoom. And John Carter inexplicably introduces himself as John Carter of Mars…even though they call the place Barsoom.

Well, Tal Hajus is not impressed, and throws Tars Tarkas, John Carter, and Dejah Thoris in prison. That’s where John Carter finds Sab Than, and finds out he’s really that (unprintable) Middle East guy that shot him up! He has evil plans to conquer Barsoom and also to marry…and do other things to…Dejah Thoris by seizing control of the Air Factory and threatening to shut it down if everybody doesn’t do whatever he says.

The short version, of course, is that Carter lives and follows Sab Than and Dejah Thoris to the Air Factory where we have an uninspired fight while all the air drains away in a manner far less thrilling than in “Total Recall” (which I’ve also just sullied by mentioning in this review…gee, what a shmuck I am this month).

And, of course, once “his work here is done”, he gets conveniently zapped back to Earth, where he doesn’t say anything about the teleportation experiment, so that we don’t flock to Barsoom and ruin place…like it wasn’t already too late by the end of the movie.

And now, the time you’ve all been waiting for: the assigning of a completely un-biased rating! Hmm, let’s see…I suppose it was better than “Manos: The Hands of Fate” (but what isn’t?), and it moved faster than Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings” (but so does molasses in January)… Nope, I can’t decide, which is good cuz I’m not supposed to. Instead I shall roll my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice.

For those of you who are uninitiated with D&D or my column, I should explain that percentage dice are two ten-sided dice used to determine a random number between 01 (which means it sucks a dead giraffe), to double-0, or 100, which in this case means that some Higher Power is playing a cruel joke on your buddy Oddcube. Now that that’s settled, I shall give my dice a roll just like that…

…and end up with a seventeen! And trust me folks, that’s giving it all the best of it! So there you have it, folks! Beware of the Asylum and beware of the Princess of Mars! However, if there is a B-movie…no, this wasn’t good enough to be a B-movie. Let’s make that: if there is a J-movie buff that you don’t like, you can purchase this on DVD from Amazon and other places who don’t know how bad it is for their reputations to be associated with it!

Of course, that’s just one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! …Although, in this case I suggest that you do! After all, I’m hip, and with it, and jiggy, and fly! And I’m your buddy so I wouldn’t lie! It’s really bad folks! But come on back here next month and I’ll be talking about something totally different! And hopefully better!

------Your Buddy, Oddcube!

Oddcube reviews "The Jack Benny Program"!

2010-05-31T23:41:00.000-07:00

THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM

Hello and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to tell you about something you ought to know about! In the odd event that some uninitiated individual is actually observing this article, I’d best explain the average on-goings.

You see, my mission, which I’ve chosen to accept, is to tell you about all kinds of really nifty things that you may not have heard about. Maybe it’s something weird that’ll never get to be mainstream. Maybe it’s something old enough that people nowadays aren’t so familiar with it anymore. Well, whatever the case, I’m here to tell you about it!

This month’s topic is a perfect example of the effort I put in to broaden your horizons! So sit back and become enlightened!

My Poor Old Mother ™ assures me that once upon a time the world was a very different place. Not only did she have to walk barefoot in the snow uphill both ways to get to school every day! No sir, that’s just the beginning, get a load of this! There were NOT computers small enough to take with you on the bus. There was only ONE computer in the whole country! It belonged to the government and filled up an entire room that was bigger than my apartment! Also, there was no more than ONE telephone per household (IF you were lucky)! It was attached to the wall so you couldn’t take it anywhere, and all you could do was TALK on it! No texting! No pictures! There were NO household video game consoles, not even Pong! But I guess that was a good thing, cuz there were NO television sets to play them on!

Strange and scary, but totally true! (I know cuz it’s confirmed on the Internet!) However, in this particular dark age of primitive man, instead of watching TV folks would gather around the radio! Yes, I know we have radio nowadays, but not like this! These were a gargantuan, prehistoric version of the radio! Instead of sitting on the table or some other piece of furniture, it stood on the floor cuz it was as large as a piece of furniture! And the programming was WAY different than we have on the radio today. They had actual shows, with actors and sound effects, performing dramas and soap operas and adventure shows and stuff!

There were comedies, too, and today I’m gonna tell you about the best one! That one was “The Jack Benny Program”, even though it wasn’t actually called that during most of its run. See, back in the day, it was commonplace for a radio show to be named after its sponsoring product. So when he first went on the air, it was on “The Canada Dry Program” in 1932. Then he was on “The Chevrolet Program”, then “The General Tire Revue”. The show started off primarily as a musical show, with Jack as the master of ceremonies. Slowly but surely, the comedy segments took over the show.

Unfortunately, the various sponsors didn’t see much humor in the good-natured kidding directed at their products during the commercial segments and each of these sponsors dropped the show. So by the fall of 1934 General Foods sponsored “The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny”. By this time, the show had found its identity, and retained it during its run as “The Grape Nuts Program” and “The Lucky Strike Program”.

The show soon adopted the premise of “a show within a show”, and featured fictional versions of the cast as they attempted to put on the show. In the beginning, the jokes, gimmicks, and shticks were carried over from Vaudeville, and included a lot of ethnic characters with silly accents. Eventually, though, especially during World War Two, this style was dropped for comedy based on the characterization of the players and their relationships to one another. Essentially creating the concept of the “situation comedy” as we know it today.

The show, of course, was centered on Jack Benny, and his vain, miserly character was used primarily as a comedic foil for the other characters to play off of. And what a cast of characters he surrounded himself with! There was his wise-cracking girlfriend (and real life wife) Mary Livingstone; overweight announcer and yes-man, Don Wilson; jive-talking bandleader Phil Harris who was far more interested in women and wine than with music; naïve and dim-witted tenor, Dennis Day; and of course, Eddie Anderson as Rochester van Jones, Jack’s overworked and under-appreciated all-purpose valet.

It was also a unique sort of show, because the main star was NOT the only guy with the good lines. See, Jack Benny reasoned that since his name was on the show he would get the credit or the blame. People would stand around the water cooler and say “Man, the Jack Benny show was funny last night!” Or, conversely, that it was lousy. So, since he was already set up for the credit and the blame, he let everybody have good lines…often at his own expense.

That’s probably one of the main reasons he was able to get so many big name celebrities to be guests on his show. His guest stars ALWAYS ended up looking good! And he got ‘em all, too! Jimmy Stewart, Danny Kaye, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sheridan, Frank Sinatra, and Orson Welles all appeared on his show, and that’s not even scratching the surface! In fact, dramatic actor Ronald Coleman and his real-life wife Benita made several guest appearances as Jack Benny’s long-suffering neighbors. Now, nobody had thought of Ronald Coleman in a comedic capacity, cuz, you know, he was a REAL actor! But those segments on the Jack Benny show eventually led to their own radio sitcom, “The Halls of Ivy”.

The Jack Benny Program consistently had high ratings. His cast members and writers were the highest-paid in the business, because, hey! When you got a good thing; you try to keep it going!

And it’s so weird, too, cuz if you listen to several episodes, you find the same jokes used and re-used over and over…and yet…they’re funny EVERY time! I don’t understand how they could do that, but they did! It’s absolutely great! The jokes are still relevant today! And while it is true that a little knowledge of historic pop-culture is helpful, but mostly if you have a nodding acquaintance with film history, you’re able to appreciate the show!

I know there’s no real way I could do the show justice. They best way for you to appreciate it is to dive right in and experience it yourself. A quick web-search will take you to several sites with sound bites and even complete shows. Perhaps the most extensive one I’ve found is the OTR Network Library at http://otr.net/?p=jbny because it looks like they have every episode of the radio show from 1932 to 1955! Fair warning: some of the audio files were made from very old and damaged recordings! So some are just better than others!

Or, if you want to purchase the show on CD, I would suggest you visit Radio Spritis at http://radiospirits.com/ cuz they got a boatload over there, and lots of other cool old radio shows, too!

Of course, the Jack Benny Program moved to television in 1950 and remained on the air until ’65 (while the radio show stopped around 1955). It was pretty much the same show with music, funny business, and guest stars. In fact, stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their very first television appearance on Jack Benny’s show! And you can see them both for free over on YouTube! Uh…let’s see, first you click “Browse”, then “Shows”, then you should have a menu arrow next to the words “Shows/All Categories”. On that menu, click “Classic TV” and the Jack Benny show is right there between Elvira and “Father Knows Best”. …That’s not alphabetical! Stupid YouTube!

Anyway, I’m supposed to give out a phoney-bologna rating to pass this article off as a review. So I’m gonna whip out my trusty D&D percentage dice and determine a rating between 01 (oh dear god, how can you stand it!) and double-0, which actually means 100 (oh dear god, how could you live without it!?). So I give ‘em a roll, just like that...

…and end up with a nice un-biased 97! See that? I told ya it was good and you should check it out! Now we got actual proof!

But hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion! Feel free to form your own! I’ve already said where you can find it so you can! So with no further ado, I shall sign off until this time next month! So be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

Oddcube Reviews "Dungeons & Dragons" The Movie

2010-05-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (THE MOVIE)

Hello, and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying boy, am I glad you showed up! Cuz I have a sneaky suspicion this is gonna be a long one, and the sooner I start on this one the sooner it’ll be done!

First off, some need-to-know stuff for the newbies about what goes on in these articles: See, I try to find stuff to talk about that doesn’t get enough attention here and now. Maybe it’s something completely outdated and out-of-print or off-the-air. Maybe it’s something out right now, but hasn’t made it big enough to get the attention it deserves. Maybe it’s just something weird that I like personally, and am trying to spread the word so it’ll get more popular, and continue ever-on, so I can continue to enjoy it! Yes, I am the sort of person that would promote his own agenda like that, but at least I’m honest about it!

Then, to fortify the flimsy façade of this being an actual-factual review column, I assign a rating number to everything I talk about by using a laboriously contemplated highly scientific method…and a pair of randomly rolled D&D percentage dice. But, more on that later.

Now, this is gonna be sorta unusual for my regular readers (yup, both of you will be surprised!) because I usually try to talk about cool stuff…but not this time. See, my Beloved Editor ™ has observed that in nearly all of my articles thus far I try to talk positively about things, and has suggested I do a negative review! I don’t know, it must be the internet equivalent of sweeps week, or something… Anyway, after giving this much thought, I finally conceded that it would be a sort of public service to tell you about something that should be avoided like the plague! …Okay, it may be a belated public service message, but it ought to count for something just the same!

And speaking of avoiding something like the plague, this month I’m gonna rant with unembarrassed anger and unrestrained ire on that time-wasting travesty of a teleplay called Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, just in case one of the two people in the whole wide world don’t know it just happens to read this, I shall point out that this movie is based on the world-famous grand-daddy of all role-playing games, coincidently also called “Dungeons and Dragons”. It’s a fantasy role-playing game, which involves graph paper, pencils, funny-shaped dice, and offers several different game worlds each with a variation on the fantasy theme, each one supported by enough sourcebooks to give Conan a hernia. This game has inspired enough novels (set in their established game worlds) to fill a whole section of a library; plus had its own comic book, supporting magazines, and even a Saturday morning cartoon show (which, by the way, is better than the movie!).

The movie was produced and directed by Courtney Solomon, who supposedly bought the movie rights when he was only nineteen. He is primarily a film producer, but he did go on to eventually direct “An American Haunting”…which also seems to be a bad movie from what I’ve found online. It was written (and I use the term loosely) by Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien. I notice on IMDB that they have very short credit lists, and only one of them has one credit after this film.

Now it’s time to tell you about the cast. There are only four people in this movie that I knew who they were…and two of them didn’t impress me. I’ll point them out as I get to them. At the time this movie came out, I had never heard of anyone else in it. …And now that I think about it, this movie is still the only thing I know them from. Wow. What a terrible way to be remembered.

The movie stars Justin Whalin, who I had never heard of before. Apparently he used to play Jimmy Olsen on a TV show that I didn’t watch called “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”. LOL. He’s Jimmy Olsen? You know, when I was growing up, the big joke about Jimmy Olsen was that three pages into the issue or about ten minutes into the film, he was tied to a chair and trying to call for help by dialing the phone with his nose! Now he’s supposed to go up against evil wizards and fire-breathing dragons! Oy vey! This movie has jumped the shark already! I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time! It’s bad enough that with his hairstyle and dopey grin he reminded me of Keanu Reeves in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”! I kept waiting for him to tell the bad guys to just “be excellent!”

It gets worse! His sidekick is a very annoying Marlon Wayons. Of course, he was in “In Living Color” with, like, his entire family and apparently carved out a pretty steady career for himself. More recently, he appeared in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”, which wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it was gonna be, but also wasn’t as good as it should have been. His performance is usually cited as one of the major contributing factors as to why this movie sucked so bad. I’m not sure how fair that is. I mean, yeah, he was annoying most of the time, but on the other hand, he was the only good-guy with any personality at all.

The bad guy is an evil wizard played by Jeremy Irons, and is the only part of the movie worth watching! Everybody says bad things about Irons in this movie, and I don’t know why. Ok, it’s not the best performance he’s ever given. It’s also not the best character he’s ever played. He’s a fun-to-watch villain. Some villains are cool, some are scary, some are clever, and some are just plain fun-to-watch!

Rounding out the cast (and I use that term loosely) are Thora Birch (from “American Beauty”) as the young Empress; Zoe McLellan as the hero’s reluctant-but-eventual love interest; Kristen Wilson (from the “Doctor Dolittle” movies) as the boring Vulcan, I mean, Elven tracker; Lee Arenberg (from “Pirates of the Caribbean”, yay!) as a Dwarf who gets to do nothing, but is thrown in cuz it’s supposed to be a fantasy movie; and Bruce Payne as the villain’s chief lackey who gets used and abused, has blue lips, and seriously needs to get a new boss. Also noteworthy are special guest star cameo appearances by cult favorites Richard O’Brien (who played Riff Raff in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”) and the incredible Tom Baker (who played the fourth incarnation of “Doctor Who”, you know, the one with the long scarf)! …I can only guess their careers were at a particularly low point at the time.

So, why does the movie suck so bad? First and foremost, I say “Bad Writing”. Only two, well, two-and-a-half characters in the film have any actual personality at all. The story isn’t very plausible. See, in this fantasy empire ruled by mages, the young idealistic Empress wants to give equality to everyone, whether they cast spells or not. …Um, why? If the place is ruled by mages, isn’t she a mage? If she’s a mage, wasn’t she raised to think that this is the way it’s supposed to be? The evil wizard played by Jeremy Irons wants to keep things the way they are, and tries to manipulate the Council of Mages to take away the Empress’ political power. …Oh really? Now, if you were an Emperor or Empress would you have ANY political body capable of taking away your power? I thought that was the point of being the Emperor or Empress! I mean, every Emperor in every movie ever has been a dictatorial tyrant! Plus, you name a fantasy cliché, and it’s been worked into the movie somewhere!

Now that’s why it sucks as a regular sword-n-sorcery movie. But this was supposed to be a Dungeons and Dragons movie. Good thing it’s the title or you really wouldn’t be able to tell. They mention—but do not use—one specific D&D spell, and use a couple of other spells that may be the ones from game…but might not be. In the game, you go through old ruins or caves and fight monsters. Well, nobody in the movie actually fights monsters. There is some weird monster guy with, like, purple skin and three eyes that I’ve never seen in the Monster Manual! Worse yet, they throw in some Beholders, clever and dangerous monsters from the game, but in the movie they’re used as watchdogs by villains minions! On the up side, they only have about forty-eight seconds of total screen time.

So, if producer/director Courtney Solomon is such a D&D fan, you would think he’d want to celebrate the property by making a good movie, right? So what the heck happened? Well, on an interview on CHUD.com, he explains why it wasn’t his fault. First off, he explains that you don’t get into the movie business to make money; you get into it because of “the passion”. …Yeah, I can see two sides to that argument, so I’ll let that slide. He says he liked D&D and wanted to make a movie, so he bought the rights. But, he was young and dumb and gave up certain decision-making rights to the person in charge of TSR. He knows now what a big mistake that was. Nothing screws up the creative process worse than a corporate mindset. This CEO person, who knew nothing about the movie biz, had final say on the script, the director, and I don’t know what else.

After screwing around with her for a few years, she lost TSR (apparently she didn’t know too much about that business, either), and it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast. Inexplicably, Wizards did not seem to want the movie made. They wanted to buy back the movie rights, but Solomon wouldn’t sell. Even though the movie project was based on what was now their property, they wanted the movie to fail. (Of course, seeing what Wizards of the Coast has since done to Dungeons and Dragons, I have no trouble in believing this.) So they “made” him use an older, poorer incarnation of the script instead of the one he wanted to use. And so he went along with that, instead of selling back the rights. But, you know, it wasn’t his fault.

I don’t know, as a fan, I would think having NO movie based on the property I am a fan of would be better than having a VERY BAD movie based on it. Not to mention a VERY BAD movie that would be a blemish on my career! Oh well, what do I know? I’m just an idiot posting his unwarranted and questionably-informed opinions on the internet! I’ll tell you, though; if the title hadn’t been “Dungeons and Dragons” I don’t think this movie would’ve stayed in theaters more than one weekend!

As it turns out, there are enough D&D fans that the movie did make some money. I think it was still a terrible flop the way Hollywood reckons things, but it made some money. In fact, it made enough that a sort-of sequel was made. It’s called “Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God”, and went directly to DVD and the SciFi channel. This sequel is much better! For starters, it’s just plain watchable! It’s got more flavor, more personality, better characters, and a better-constructed plot than the first one! Plus, it has some sly references to actual D&D material! And just so you don’t think he’s a total schlub, I’ll point out that Courtney Solomon is one of the producers.

Well, I can’t really think of anything else to say, except that all concerned with this movie (and I use that term loosely) should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for helping to deliver this piece of crap to all those trusting fans. I guess they need more stories about D&D players who go nuts and kill people so they’ll be afraid to release something this bad ever again.

And now, as the final insult, I’m gonna use my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice to randomly determine a particularly low rating for this turkey! In case ya don’t know, percentage dice are just a pair of ten-sided dice used to roll a number between 01 (I’d rather get a root canal every day for the rest of my life) to double-0, which means 100, or in this case, that somebody slipped me loaded dice when I wasn’t looking! But I’ll just give them a roll, like that…

and roll a 23, which is far more than it deserves!

But, hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion! If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can rent the movie from Netflix, or even buy from Amazon…or the discount rack in the grocery store! But my advice to you is: DON’T!

And that’s all I have for now, folks! Thanks for listening, I feel a little better now! It’s not good to keep that stuff bottled up, but at least you know I only get worked up over important stuff! Anyway, come on back here next month when I’ll talk about… well I don’t know what! Gee, I guess I’ll have to tune in, too, to find out! See ya then!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

2010-03-31T20:57:00.001-07:00

ODD REVIEWS BY ODDCUBE
Opinions on the Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated

BARNEY MILLER

Hello, and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here with another scintillating subject to share with you! But first, for those of you who are uninitiated and unaware of the usual on-goings that go on in and around my odd little area of the internet, I shall obtain the initiative to explain instantly!

I, Oddcube, gamer geek and total square, utilize my indefatigable devotion to duty to draw a random subject out of a hat and research it tirelessly, ceaselessly, and endlessly… Or until time for dinner, anyway. Now you may very well be asking, why do I do that? Well, because there’s a lot of cool stuff out there that doesn’t get the attention it deserves! And you don’t want to miss out on cool stuff do you? Man! The very thought that you could be missing out on something cool just keeps me up at night! I can’t deal with it, so I write up this column every month in a meager attempt to keep you informed!

Now, what kind of cool stuff do I talk about? Why, the COOL kind, HA! I slay me! Seriously folks, I talk about all kinds of stuff. I talk about movies. I talk about music. I talk about games. I talk about old time radio shows. I talk about cool TV shows. Hey, speaking of cool TV shows…

This month’s review is about an old sitcom called “Barney Miller”, which aired on ABC from ’75 to ’82. The show, of course, is about the titular Captain Miller and the detectives of the 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village, New York. The show was created by Danny Arnold and Theodore J. Flicker, and almost didn’t happen!

See, Danny Arnold had a nifty idea for a show about a Jewish patrolman. Ted Flicker wanted to do a sitcom about an L.A. detective. They put the ideas together and came up a show called “The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller”. The network wasn’t really interested in it, but they did include the pilot as part of a special called “Just For Laughs”, which aired in August of ’74. However, ABC was negotiating with director John Rich to keep him working for the network after his success with “All In The Family”. Well, Rich had seen the special and was interested in working on the show, so he insisted that the show became part of his deal. The network conceded, and commissioned thirteen episodes for season one! And then John Rich had several artistic differences with writer/producer Danny Arnold and left the show after two episodes!

By then, I guess it didn’t matter, the show was saved! Changed, but saved. The title was shortened to just “Barney Miller”, and originally the show was going to follow his life both at work and at home with his wife and children. This concept was altered so that the show only followed the goings-on at the 12th precinct.

The show itself was way ahead of its time; it was politically correct before being politically correct was cool…or required. Precinct 12 did not discriminate due to race or gender, and the cast reflected this. First off, there was Hal Linden as Captain Barney Miller. Then, there was Abe Vigoda (from “The Godfather”!) as aging Jewish detective, Philip K. Fish. Maxwell Gail played Stanley “Wojo” Wojciehowicz, a naïve but gung-ho cop of Polish descent. Ron Glass, perhaps better known today from “Firefly”, played the ambitious, intellectual Detective Ronald Harris. Jack Soo was the dry-witted gambler, Detective Sergeant Nick Yemana of Japanese descent. Gregory Sierra was the dutiful Detective Sergeant Chano Amanguale, who originated from Puerto Rico. James Gregory was Deputy Inspector Frank Luger, the unintentionally insulting old-school superior. Ron Carey played the eager and ambitious patrolman, Carl Levitt. Steve Landesberg played intellectual and enigmatic know-it-all, Detective Arthur Dietrich.

Hmm, I haven’t mentioned any female cops. But trust me, they had some! The most noteworthy one was Detective Janice Wentworth, played by Linda Lavin. The character was a recurring character during the first and second seasons, but did not appear again after Lavin won the starring role on the sitcom, “Alice”. There were a few others, too, but they none of them seem to have lasted very long.

The show was pretty low-key for a sitcom and for a cop show. Sure the characters were kinda wacky in their own way, but none of them were really over-the-top. In fact, they were all pretty believable, probably because of their quirks. In fact, several real-life policemen (including policeman-turned-actor, David Farrina on the show “Dinner For Five”) have claimed that Barney Miller was the most realistic cop show on the air (I don’t know if that is still true today, but at least you didn’t have to see anybody’s bare backside).

The show itself was kinda weird, too, because it almost exclusively took place in the squad room of the precinct house. Out of eight seasons, only thirteen episodes featured some other location. But that was okay, because the show was about the characters and how they responded to all the criminals and wackos that they had to deal with.

The show won a whole slew of awards, including two Golden Globes, a Peabody Award, three Emmys, and a DGA Award from the Director’s Guild of America. Despite all of this, the show was losing its audience, and they decided to end the series before the network pulled the plug. The series ended with a three-part story in which someone finds an old revolver in the precinct house which leads to the discovery that Teddy Roosevelt was once stationed there when he was on the New York Police Force. So the Precinct House was declared an historic landmark, and the 12th Precinct was disbanded, with all the detectives getting transferred to new assignments.

To put it lightly, the show was just great, but has somehow become hard to find now-a-days. If you’re lucky, you can find reruns on some cable channel somewhere. Or you could go the DVD route, but only the first three seasons are currently available. I even found some rumor on the net that “They” (whoever “They” are in this instance) currently have no plans to release the rest of the series. But seasons 1-3 ARE available for purchase from Amazon, and for rent at Netflix. Oddly enough, the first FOUR seasons can (mostly) be seen on crackle.com. I say “mostly” because they are missing an episode or two from each season.

So, there ya have it! It’s a great show and you should check it out! Oh yeah, almost forgot! I still have to give it a rating.

My highly scientific and sophisticated strategy for rating is deceptively simple: I roll a pair of percentage dice from my D&D game. In case ya don’t know it, percentage dice is just a pair of 10-sided dice used to determine a number between 01 (Danger, Will Robinson!) and double-0, which actually means 100 (you have not LIVED until you have experienced this). So with all that in mind, I shall give my dice a toss just like this…

and roll a respectable 93! Read it and weep! Even the dice say it’s too good to miss!

But hey, you don’t have to take my word on it! Go check it out and see for yourself! That’ll give me time to figure out what I’m gonna tell ya about next time! So be there, and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube!

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

2010-03-03T15:49:00.000-08:00

ODD REVIEWS BY ODDCUBE
Opinions on the Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated

HUNTERS OF THE RED MOON

Well hi there! Good to see ya! Glad ya dropped by! You don’t wanna miss this! You know why? Because it’s time for me to say: Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube here, saying Hello and welcome to the column!

First off, just in case you’re new, I’d better tell ya what’s what around here. What it’s all about. Well, it’s like this: I seek out really cool stuff from the past, the present, and the future (cuz I’m that good! …and humble, too!), and tell ya all about it, cuz I’d hate to think that you were missing out on something cool. See that? It’s sort of a public service! Anyhow, sometimes I talk about movies, or books, or music, or games, or whatever else manages to catch my interest. Basically, I talk about everything and anything, and I do so with easily-obtained information, an entertaining attitude, over-inflated opinions, occasional honesty, and often with annoying alliteration!

This time I’m gonna tell you about a book, in a meager attempt to look like the intellectual type! That’s right; I read a novel, a short novel, perhaps, but a novel just the same! It’s called “Hunters of the Red Moon” and was written by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Now, you’ve probably heard of Marion Zimmer Bradley. After all, she’s a BIG name in literary circles of fantasy and science fiction, and not just cuz it takes seventeen letters to spell it! Nope, it’s because she’s got a list of credits as long as your arm! However, she’s apparently best known as the creator of the Darkover series, and for the novel The Mists of Avalon, and the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. But you probably didn’t know that she wrote some gay and lesbian pornographic novels in the Sixties (under pen names, of course). You also might not know that she was a co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and is credited with coming up with the name. Sadly, she died in September of ’99, after years of declining health.

But we’re here to talk about Hunters of the Red Moon. Well, let’s see, it was published in 1973. I found mine in a local second-hand bookstore, attracted first by the author’s name, then by the spiffy cover (credited to a fellow named George Barr). So, I read the back cover, which tells you that these Hunter dudes kidnap intelligent beings from all over the galaxy, give them their choice of weapons and plenty of time to train with them, then dump them on some moon and hunt them down. For sport or something. It sorta sounded like a nifty sci-fi version of “The Most Dangerous Game”, so I decided to check it out.

So, it starts off on Earth, cuz that’s the way these things are supposed to start. There’s this guy, Dane Marsh, a hotshot American adventurer-type. He’s done all sorts of adventuresome things, and is in the process of sailing around the world alone while moping about the modern lack of adventure opportunities.

That’s when the flying saucer comes down and KO’s him with a beam of light.

He wakes up on an operating table with these two lion-faced cat-people standing over him. They just put some sort of translation device in his neck so he can communicate, and refuse to give him any answers. They dope him up to shut him up, and he later wakes up in a cell.

He meets some other prisoners, all kidnapped from various worlds. A human-like lady archaeologist named Rianna, a different human-like empath named Dallith, and a ten-foot tall lizard man named Aratak, among others. From them he learns that the cat-men are Mekhars who have kidnapped them all to sell as slaves.

Of course, Dane and his fellow prisoners observe the sloppy security and organize a break-out. It fails, mostly because it was all a test laid out by the Mekhars! Dane and the other prisoners behind the escape plan were spared from the slave market, and instead sold to the mysterious Hunters for their ritualistic Hunt! They are joined by a Mekhar guard who is disgraced because they overpowered him during the break-out. His name is Cliff-Climber, and he volunteered for the Hunt in the hopes of regaining his honor.

So, on the planet of the Hunters, they are cared for and guarded by a population of robots with a collective consciousness, who all respond to the name Server. They are fed, clothed, and given free-range of the prison they are in, including baths and an armory as big as a football field! They are told that they may use whatever weapons they can carry during the Hunt, and are given plenty of time to train with them so as to use them affectively. There are no guns in this arsenal. They are all swords and axes and slings and other medieval-type weaponry, some of it alien, but mostly recognizable.

The moon that circles the planet falls into the planet’s shadow on a regular basis, like every eleven days or something like that. The “Sacred Prey” are shuttled to the moon and the Hunt begins when the eclipse is over, and ends at the next eclipse. There are some other rules, like the daily hunt ends at sundown every day and is not resumed until midnight. There are certain “safety zones” both for the Prey and also for the Hunters. Any member of the Sacred Prey who is still alive at the end of the Hunt is given an incredible reward, great respect from the Hunters, and a free ride to anywhere in the galaxy in a hundred light-year radius…or something like that.

The tricky part is that no one knows what the Hunters look like. Most races in the galaxy aren’t even sure they really exist. Ha! They’re like an urban legend or something!

Now, I don’t really want to give too much away, cuz it was really cool and you should read it. But they did have some nifty discussions about Universal Sapience, and what each character’s culture considered “Sapience” to be. I also thought that the weird secret of the Hunters was especially clever!

Anyway, it was a really cool book, a stand-alone adventure ringing in at 176 pages. However, a sequel was written called The Survivors which was published in ’79; so I guess I just told you that somebody lives. Both books are available at Amazon and, no doubt, other places.

Well, I can’t just say “if you like nifty outer space, sword-n-planet adventure, then this book is for you!” cuz I claim to be a review column. And to keep up that flimsy premise, I have to give you a rock-solid rating!

To do that, I employ my nifty D&D percentage dice! These are two ten-sided dice that give you any number between 01 (the pits, avoid at all costs) and double-0, which actually means 100 (you have not lived until you’ve seen this). So I shall hastily calculate for wind resistance and give my handy-dandy dice a roll just like that…

...and end up with nice respectable 90! See that? Numbers don’t lie, you should read this book!

Well friends, I guess that’s all I got for now. But don’t be sad, I’ll be right back here again next month ready, willing, and able to instruct and inform you on…uh…well on some other subject that has yet to be decided upon! See ya then, folks, be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

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Oddcube Reviews The Gamers

2010-01-31T22:17:00.001-08:00

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Oddcube reviews People of the Mist

2009-12-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

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