Edward M. Erdelac's Blog
August 18, 2025
Black Bones Of The White Hypaethral, Appearing In Swords And Larceny from Baen Books
Baen Books is dropping a new anthology centering on fantasy thieves and heists on September 5th. Contributors include:
Christopher Ruocchio
Wen Spencer
A. Lee Martinez
Jim Zub
John C. Hocking
James Enge
Tim Akers
Mark Finn
Bill Willingham
Adrian Simmons
Tracy S. Morris
Stephen Aryan
David Afsharirad
Among the lineup is my offering, Black Bones Of The White Hypaethral, which is the second published adventure of my recurring sword and sorcery character, Mogarth The Muttwhelp, who first appeared in an anthology called Blackguards a number of years ago and was reprinted in Skelos #3.
Mogarth (that’s him on the cover) is a half-ork and veteran of The Black Army, the confederacy of orkish tribes who united under the great chieftain Odius Khan to support The Witch Queen in her bid to conquer the lands of Wayphar. The thing is, Mogarth slew Odius Khan (he had his reasons), the Black Army failed to arrive to support The Witch Queen, and she fell in the ultimate battle to the forces of “good.”
Now Mogarth and his goblin partner Redshat roam Wayphar, just another pair of dispossessed soldiers, unwelcome and unwanted in the post-war kingdoms of the victorious elves, dwarves, and humans.
In this adventure, Mogarth and Redshat hire on as bearers and guides for a pompous and shifty elvish treasure hunter, seeking an ancient magical relic in a remote jungle temple…
Here is an excerpt –
——————————————————————————————————————–
They secured the animals and approached the portico of the White Hypaethral.
As soon as they stepped from the bright sun into it the shadow cast by the temple, the goblin shivered visibly.
“Cold,” he hissed.
It was noticeably cooler. But was the goblin’s reaction due to its hidden nature? Bullocius knew from experience that the fey reacted strangely to magic in this world.
“What’s holding it together?” Mogarth asked.
In truth, Bullocius had no idea what held the temple of bones together. There was no apparent mortar, and up close, he noticed the entire structure had a tendency to sway slightly. What if it was nothing but a great precariously balanced rick that would topple on their heads if they weren’t careful? There was a disconcerting click and clack now and then as they moved closer. Was it the slight breeze of the steppes rendering elements of the construction into bone chimes, or evidence that the temple was not entirely deserted? What if Madflesher had left some horrific monstrosity to guard his ancient sanctuary?
“I don’t know,” Bullocius admitted aloud. “Old magic, maybe. Or evil prayers. Be cautious. Watch where you step.”
“Brilliant,” Mogarth muttered.
“Bones, Boss,” observed the goblin.
Mogarth stepped under the pediment, which was formed from the stubby skeletons of numerous halflings arranged in a macabre dance or circus act, each clasping the others’ ankles until at the center peak, two held hands. The floor inside was black flagstones. It was the only feature of the construction that wasn’t bone.
Inside the confines of the temple, Bullocious took note of the arrangement of the various skeletons, in case the cultists had trapped the place. In doing so, he observed that many served no structural purpose, but were posed in specific manners, as the friezes and reliefs decorating, say, a church of Feyllinyos or Llawyndrynon might. What scenes they depicted he couldn’t be sure of; blasphemous rites in service to the Black Dragon perhaps, or the history of Plutonius’ cult.
The goblin was less than wary. He scrambled past Bullocius and curiously gripped one of the leg bones protruding from a column.
Mogarth rapped him lightly on the top of the head.
The goblin hissed and jumped back, glaring at his partner.
“Don’t touch nothing, ‘Shat,” Mogarth advised. “You wanna bring the whole place down on us?”
Redshat uttered something so uniquely foul it took Bullocius a moment to comprehend the meaning. By that time Mogarth had already yanked the goblin up by the nape of his neck and deposited him on his own broad shoulders.
“Just stick close.”
They carefully made their way toward the back of the temple.
They passed down a central aisle between rows of white tables that appeared to be carved from the massive bones of some unidentifiable mega-creatures; perhaps the mandibles of whales, or elder dragons. Bullocius noticed each bone table was slightly slanted and fitted with an iron drain. Further, the stone floor was crisscrossed by a series of rough-hewn hollow bone sluices that seemed to lead to a central drain. Blood shed on the sacrificial tables had apparently been collected and drained into a subterranean reservoir, or perhaps simply disposed of in a rudimentary sewer. He shuddered to think what purpose collecting that much blood could have served. He had heard that the Madfleshers drew some unfathomable power from the stuff.
Mogarth wrinkled his nose as they reached the entrance to the enclosed naos, the heart of the temple. Ordered stacks upon stacks of bodies, such as in a catacomb, formed the walls. A single, open black doorway loomed, framed by the long necked skeletons of two young wyverns, the bone wings outstretched in ornamental splendor, the snouts touching in an eternal kiss.
The goblin bared his ebony teeth.
“Cold, Boss. Very cold inside.”
“See anything?” Mogarth asked.
Of course, a goblin’s eyes, developed for navigating underground warrens, would be invaluable here. So would a fey’s.
The goblin hopped down and crept cautiously up to the doorway. Laying its hands on the frame, it leaned in as far as it dared on the long nailed tips of its bare toes, and peered.
Bullocius held his breath and the balanced handle of the tuck in his baldric, expecting something within to jerk the goblin off its feet and pull it into the shadow at any moment.
The goblin returned to its heels and looked over its shoulder, an expression of disappointment on its face. It shrugged and rubbed its bare upper arms with its overlarge hands.
“Just more bones, Boss,” it said, and its breath puffed out in a visible cloud. “Black bones.”
Black bones! The Black Skull…thought Bullocius, and crouched to light his hooded lantern.
“Sound like what you’re looking for?” said Mogarth.
“Yes it does,” said Bullocius, rising and shining the light at the door.
“Well you got the light. Lead the way.”
Bullocius expected to feel the muttwhelp’s cleaver bite into his neck as soon as he passed through the door.
He held the lantern out to the goblin.
“I’ll need my hands free,” he said, by way of explanation.
Redshat looked back at Mogarth. The muttwhelp nodded. Grumbling, the goblin took the unwieldy thing, which was nearly its height, and hefted it, waddling through the doorway.
Mogarth and Bullocius followed, shoulder to shoulder.
The interior of the inner sanctum walls were arranged with rows upon rows of miniature skeletons cavorting in deliberate designs, again, depicting strange scenes Bullocius didn’t care to dwell on overly. These were the tiny remains of thousands of pixies or other diminutive fey.
The room had a central altar, which seemed to be of the same makeup as the flagstones, but covered in runes and supported by four kneeling skeletons clutching bone sconces, the baskets blackened by long gone fires.
But it was the figure at the back of the naos looming over the altar that commanded his attention. It was an effigy, nine feet tall, hunched over in the low ceilinged chamber; a long-boned black skeleton draped in a tattered black shroud, knotted many times over in some ritualistic manner, its arms outstretched over the altar, the drooping hands supported from behind by skeletons set into the wall, as if they were enraptured devotees elevating their object of worship.
Bullocius realized the black skeleton was not bone at all, but some kind of polished, carved agate. Peering out from under the hood of the shroud was a skull of the same shining stone.
This was an idol of a Death Saint; an unknown high priest of The Madflesher Cult. Perhaps it was the transmogrified bones of the old Madflesher himself. It didn’t matter. What did matter was the ancient and verified curse laid upon it. It was written that to take The Black Skull from its place was to invite a calamitous death. So Bullocius had read in The Laospel of Plutonius, the canon he had stolen from a Madflesher enclave in Rentellevaire’s Temple District for the coded map to the temple ingeniously folded into its pages.
He had also read that there was a secret name that rendered the Skull’s curse harmless. Whether it was the true name of the Madflesher, the author of the Laospel, or the caster of the curse, or the identity of the insane temple builder….who could say? He knew the name from his reading, and Boquila of The Many Forms did not.
Redshat hopped on the altar and set the lantern down on the carved stone. He peered up at the black effigy, snuffling his ridiculous beak of a nose.
“Careful, ‘Shat,” Mogarth said.
Bullocius picked up the lantern and shined it on The Black Skull, taking the opportunity to slip his thin bladed tuck from its soft sheath, noiselessly. He hid it low, the flat of the straight blade pressed behind his back in the shadows.
“Go on. Take it, goblin,” he urged.
Mogarth looked at him suspiciously, lip curling over one of his stout tusks.
“Take it yourself. You’re the expert.”
Fine, thought Bullocius. The hard way it is...
Preoder is up now….
June 6, 2025
The Chili Bean Joss
Coinciding with the celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival, this June 10th sees the release of my seventeenth novel, The Chili Bean Joss, a weird wuxia western set in 1870’s Arizona Territory in and around the town of (you guessed it, loyal readers) Delirium Tremens.
A put upon orphaned ranch cook, Xue Wan Shu, happens upon a 3,000 year old sentient gin seng plant named Sang hiding out in back of the local Chinese apothecary. Sang pleads with Wan Shu to protect him from a sorcerous tong boss out to cultivate and consume his children for immortality. Wan Shu reluctantly agrees, and finds himself dodging hatchetmen, vengeful gunfighters, Apache warriors, and oodles of Chinese sorcery, all while trying to keep his cowboy employers oblivious.
If you dig old school wuxia action comedies like Heroes of The East, Legendary Weapons of China, and Mr. Vampire, and the culture clash of Big Trouble In Little China, you’ll probably find something to like here.
Here’s the opening chapter – – – – – –
It was a near perfect evening for tea in the garden behind Cho’s Trivialities off Celestial Street in the Chinese quarter of Delirium Tremens. The stone lanterns gave off a comforting, soft glow.
Few even knew of this strange oasis of water, rock, and green. The dirty Drucker and Dobbs Company miners that trudged at dawn and dusk between the saloons and subterra certainly could not have imagined it, and most of the Chinese patrons who came to Cho’s for traditional medicines or nostalgic oddments imported from their homeland were unaware of the back garden tucked away behind the shop.
The high clapboard fence hid it entirely from the depressing surroundings of offal-strewn alleyways and ramshackle company cabins.
Its owner called it The Dune Garden of Eccentric Taste. It was in no way a traditional Chinese garden. The great landscaper Ji Cheng might have scoffed at its prickly desert plants, its yucca and diminutive pinyon pines. Perhaps the famously tacky King Zhou of Wine Pool and Meat Tree fame would have praised its audacity, but it did not impose itself on the dry Arizona landscape in which it was situated, and indeed, reflected, for good or ill, the tastes of its singular custodian, old Daifu Fan Shung Song, the inheritor and proprietor of Cho’s Trivialities.
“I think this is a surpassingly ugly garden,” said Sang, the short, stocky guest who sat with his feet dangling from the chair, sharing tea with Daifu Fan on this particularly clear, breezy midnight hour. “The raised cabbage beds and the bok choy border on offensive.”
“I had to work within the confines of the space,” said Daifu Fan.
“I must admit,” Sang went on, “the pink bayberries are pleasing to the eye. A pity their only use is to induce vomiting.”
“If they are pleasing to your eye,” said Daifu Fan, pouring tea into his cup, “then being a purgative is not their only use.”
“How do you keep them alive in this detestable dryness?”
“The mulched needles of the pinyon pines encourage them to thrive,” said Daifu Fan. “It is a thing I have learned through years of trial and error.”
“Commendable, I suppose, but it seems like years of trial have only resulted in error in the end. I wonder why you bother with aesthetics and do not simply keep to your herbs. There is no hope of magnolia blossoms. Fish would boil in your pond under the accursed sun. And it is so tiny!”
“I have done my utmost to make it a pleasant home for you,” Daifu Fan said.
“Oh, I mean no offense,” said Sang, waving the old man off. “I am grateful, of course. But it takes so much work and skill for so little yield. Do you think that mutton head Wan Shu will be able to tend it alone? I think it will all wither under his clumsy care. The boy has a black thumb.”
Daifu Fan knew of course that it was simply his old friend’s surly nature. He was used to it, but he was troubled tonight. The hexagrams of the I-Ching had produced a remarkably unfavorable reading, and his mind was preoccupied. Sang’s talk of succession seemed a further ill portent.
“If he chooses to keep it, it will thrive, I’m sure,” said Daifu Fan, sipping and watching the moonlight on the small crescent pond which emulated in miniature the oasis of Yueya Lake, nestled amid the Singing Mountain Dunes of faraway Nanjing. “And if it does not, I will be beyond caring.”
There was no room for a full sized pavilion, but Daifu Fan had modeled a dainty tower near the banks of the lake, as the real two story structure stood at the actual oasis. In the center of the lake there was a ten pound boulder of Mexican Crazy Lace, a uniquely formed polished agate stone of scintillating colors, representing to him, the magical peak of Mount Penglai, the legendary home of the eight immortals.
“I think that boy is good for nothing,” Sang continued. “He should remain a cook, and you should find a worthier apprentice. Maybe that launderer’s son. The chemist. What is his name? Guangdi. Wan Shu has no fire in him. He is struck dumb by the mere sight of that big footed girl whom he pines for. Bah!”
“You worry needlessly and prematurely,” said Daifu Fan with a sigh. “I have not even broached the subject of apprenticeship with him.”
“And you should not!” said Sang, rapping his little hand on the table. “Mind you, it all comes from him honoring his mother but not his father. Impious! Shameful!”
“Be patient with him,” said Daifu Fan. “I trust he will come around.”
Sang grunted.
“And meanwhile, his father languishes needlessly in hell.”
“No father worth his office would not do the same for his son,” said Daifu Fan. “And the universe tends to correct disorder in due time.”
“Hah!” Sang scoffed. “We have differing views of the universe.”
There was a creak and the banging of a door from the front of the shop.
Sang and Daifu Fan exchanged sharp looks.
“Excuse me,” Daifu Fan said, rising. “I must have left the door unlocked.”
“You never leave the door unlocked,” Sang whispered warily, jumping down from his chair. “And it is past midnight.”
“It’s probably Old Man Yong come calling with some nighttime ailment. Stay out of sight,” Daifu Fan whispered. He went inside, through his modest bedroom and storage, to the curtain that led to the shop proper, and drew it aside.
It was not the launderer, Old Man Yong.
Two strangers perused the wares on the shelves.
They were Chinese, but they were neither miners, nor any members of the Golden Trowel Tong who loitered about the Tong Shan Eatery that he’d ever seen about.
They were traditionally dressed in old-style shenyi robes, strange to see in this part of America, where drunken Anglos cut the queues from men’s heads with oversized knives, and some were made to hop in place before the smoking barrel of a Colt revolver as entertainment.
One was unshaven, his long black hair unbound. He wore a striking red surcoat covered with trigrams. A black silk satchel hung from his neck, in which his hand continually rested. There was a large burlap sack on his shoulder. A wood handled snakeskin whip hung coiled at his side. Talismans to Gui-Li-Da-Wang, the Ghost King, marked him as a member of the Yin Shan priesthood.
The other man had a head of long, shock white hair. He was surpassingly tall, in a blue robe and a black and silver braided hair vest, the latter somewhat disquieting, as Daifu Fan could swear the braids resembled shorn queues.
Daifu Fan could not see this one’s face, as it was turned towards the inspection of a carved wooden dragon set with jade eyes in the shop window. The man carried a three foot garden hoe with a polished steel head more like a staff of office than a working tool.
“Forgive me,” Daifu Fan said. “I was taking tea and moonlight in the back.”
“It is no trouble,” said the white haired man, without turning around.
“Actually, the shop is closed,” said Daifu Fan, resting his palms on the counter. “I seem to have carelessly forgotten to lock the door. And…turn out the lamp,” he added, though he knew for certain he had not.
The man in the red surcoat eyed him quietly.
“Of course, if your need is urgent,” said Daifu Fan, “I will oblige. However, if it is not, I humbly ask that you please return tomorrow during business hours.”
“There may be no tomorrow,” said the white haired man, moving his hand idly along the shelves, as though making a show of looking for something he knew he would not find there. “Our need is very urgent indeed, you see. And we have traveled very far. I count my blessings that we happened upon you out here in this wasteland.”
“How can I help?” Daifu Fan said warily, slipping his hand under the counter and producing a folding fan, with which he began to rapidly stir a breeze across his face. It was stuffy in the close confines of the cluttered shop. The heat of the Arizona day lingered still.
“Gin seng,” said the man, turning now to face him. He had a long wispy mustache and the skin of his face was surpassingly red, as though he were intoxicated.
Was it him?
It had been so many years ago. Daifu Fan had been a young man, and had only glimpsed Liang Ziweng then, as he fled with Sang.
Daifu Fan tensed internally, eyes flitting to the staring man in the surcoat and back to the man with the white hair.
Outwardly pleasant and bright, he said;
“Yes of course. I have numerous excellent examples.”
“These are puny,” said the man with the white hair, not even sparing the stock a glance. “Not what I’m looking for at all. The one I’m looking for is quite exceptional.”
“Exceptional specimens are difficult to obtain,” said Daifu Fan. “Gin seng does not thrive in this climate.”
The man with the white hair gestured to his subordinate.
The man in the red surcoat took the burlap sack off his shoulder and uncovered a large jade pot. He set it down heavily on the counter. It was covered with binding seals.
Daifu Fan swallowed.
It was him.
“It has been many years, Fan Shung Song,” said the man with the white hair.
The man in the red surcoat drew a handful of yellow papers from his bag then. With a flick of his wrist, there was a flash of fire and smoke, and a blazing yellow and orange phoenix burst to life and flew, talons bared at Daifu Fan.
But Daifu Fan was ready. He spread wide his fan with its counteractive calligraphy, and reflected the phoenix screaming back at the man in the red surcoat. The Yin Shan sorcerer barely threw up his hands in a warding gesture. The phoenix burst apart in a brilliant blaze of scintillating fire and the man in the red surcoat was blown back into a shelf of herbs which smashed and fell over on him.
The man with the white hair shook his head.
“My apprentice, Red Sheng. He still has much to learn. You have come a long way from a thieving clerk in Cho Kyung-soo’s store, Fan Shung Song.”
“So I have, and yet you are still the same greedy old demon, Liang Ziweng,” said Daifu Fan.
“Where is Sang?” Liang Ziweng demanded, his face reddening further.
Daifu Fan said nothing, but readied himself, fan quivering defensively.
Liang Ziweng leapt atop the counter and swept his garden hoe down.
Daifu Fan bent backwards, narrowly avoiding the weapon. It cleared a shelf of jars, raining down glass and preserves.
Daifu Fan gripped the hoe as it completed its destructive pass and used it to pull himself up onto the counter with Liang Ziweng. He was determined not to take the fight out into the garden. He had to give Sang time to run.
“You have no hope in defeating me,” Liang Ziweng chuckled. “Look at you! You’re an old man now.”
“How long before your age catches up with you, Liang Ziweng?” said Daifu Fan, sneering. “I can smell your rot, and something else; the devils at your back.”
“Bastard!” Liang Ziweng muttered.
He broke Daifu Fan’s grip on his weapon and lashed out. The old man was still surprisingly strong, and checked several blows with his fan before Liang Ziweng swept at his legs, forcing him to cartwheel down.
Red Sheng was just rising from beneath the fallen shelf when Daifu Fan came down hard atop him, flattening him again in the broken wreckage.
Daifu Fan whirled and flipped open his fan as Liang Ziweng thrust out his hands in a sorcerous gesture. Daifu Fan readied his talismanic fan again, but instead of some crackling black blast of yin energy, a number of white slivers sprang from Liang Ziweng’s sleeve.
These tore through the fan like buckshot. The old man blinked down at the shredded paper, then saw the spots of blood spreading across his shirt. Eight, all told.
“Penetrating Meridian Bone Needles,” Liang Ziweng announced with a smug smile.
Daifu Fan fell face first to the floor, stiff as a broomstick, unable to move.
Liang Ziweng hopped off the counter and came to stand over the old man. He flipped him on his back with the end of his hoe.
“You’ll be dead soon,” said Liang Ziweng. “Where is Sang?”
Daifu Fan’s eyes flitted around in a panic, but then focused stoically ahead, unyielding.
Liang Ziweng frowned as Red Sheng picked himself from the remains of the shelf.
“Imbecile,” Liang Ziweng chided. “Leave nothing unturned!”
He and Liang Ziweng tore through the shop, clearing every shelf, pulling out every drawer. Like a ransacking whirlwind they passed into the storeroom, bringing chaos, finding nothing, leaving behind disorder, until they were outside in the little back garden.
Liang Ziweng kicked over a row of raised beds, spilling germinating plants and medicinal herbs in frustration.
There was a clatter then. Something smashed, not by their hand.
Liang Ziweng stood stricken for a moment, seeing the remains of a teapot in fragments on the ground. Then he spied the small shadow clambering up the back fence.
“There!”
Red Sheng rushed forward, eager to redeem himself. He drew out his whip and lashed. The end snaked out with a crack that split the night air and caught the diminutive fugitive by his ankle, dragging him down into the crescent pond with a splash.
In another instant Red Sheng was upon him, fitting his struggling captive with a wrought iron chain interlaced with links of green jade.
Liang Ziweng came over, his eyes alight, esurient in the moonlight.
“I’ve found you at last, my old friend.”
“Oh Heavens,” said Sang, tiredly. “Please. Not again….”
Preorders for the Kindle edition are live. Print drops on release day.
February 10, 2025
Signing At The 45th Annual Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show
Sunday, March 23rd, I’ll be appearing and signing books at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Show at 1401 Verdugo Rd, Glendale, CA. You can bring any books of mine you have to get signed or pick up something you don’t have at my signing spot from 10AM to 11AM.
October 2, 2024
My Halloween Movie Repertoire Spits On Your Grave
That October wind howls in and scours the leaves from the trees, leaving them to crinkle beneath the sneakers of sweet-toothed kids hiding their faces from the shine of the autumn moon with masks terrible and hilarious. Unfurl the black and orange livery of the season; my favorite. Halloween is creeping up like a black cat, arched back, pumpkin yellow eyes, yowling in the dark.
Each year I spend every day in October with a horror movie I haven’t previously seen, any era, any subgenre. 31 flavors of ghoulish delights (hopefully). Off we go.
#1 – In A Violent Nature – Youngsters in the woods take a locket from a ruined firewatch tower and unwittingly resurrect a Jason Voorhees-like undead slasher who proceeds to stalk and brutalize them. So a while back Stephen King tweeted that he would like to write a Friday The 13th movie from the POV of Jason (even though there are sections of Simon Hawke’s novelizations that already do this). This inspired me to write the F13 pastiche I had been plotting in my head for a number of years because why not? The makers of this movie took King’s notion a little too literally. The camera and thus the audience physically follow the killer over his shoulder as he stalks his victims, including the plodding, prolonged foot travel between kills. It’s not bad though. There are some neat little bits, like when the killer is distracted by a toy truck on a keychain, finds his signature mask, and the much lauded unique killing of a yoga practitioner. The lack of functional peripheral vision and spatial awareness of the victims really strains credulity. The final scene, which you expect to pay homage to the first Friday the 13th just goes absolutely nowhere. It was fine, but I doubt I’d watch it again.
#2 – Oddity – When a psychiatric admin’s wife is murdered at their isolated keep home by one of his escaped patients, her blind antique dealer twin sister comes asking questions and bearing a weird gift. Tight, effectively written Irish ghost story is a little bit predictable but fun and satisfying nonetheless, in the way a familiar tale told well around a campfire or a candlelight delights the imagination.
August 19, 2024
Alien: Valhalla
Valhalla: My Thoughts For The Future of Aliens
The thing I learned writing pastiche fiction for Lucasfilm is, you don’t get to make significant changes to the sandbox you’re playing in, typically. There is a directive in place. Nothing is really canon until it’s on a movie screen. Perhaps the same holds true for hired filmmakers advancing another creator’s franchise, to a degree.
I am pushing 50 and while it’s entirely possible I could get offered the chance to write something for the Aliens universe someday, I wouldn’t be allowed to really go at it with both barrels. It’s not the nature of the business, particularly now that the House of Mouse is in charge.
So, as a fun exercise to do some writing while my career is in legal limbo pending judiciary decisions currently beyond my control, (and as I did here with my #Batman post) this is what I would do with Aliens if the powers that be at Scott Free let me put my sweaty hands on the tiller.
I am a firm believer in not contradicting what has gone before. It’s why I’ve never found literary Round Robins particularly fun. Most writers wanna put their stamp on something and totally ignore what writers before them have done. Or at least, they don’t give it their full respect. They change something to where it doesn’t make sense, or it contradicts, or they slap a lotta extraneous nonsense on and it winds up too unwieldy. It’s why the original Star Wars Expanded Universe was doomed to fail. Not enough cohesion and cooperation.
When I wrote my thinly disguised Friday The 13th pastiche novel, it meant not throwing out all the craziness of Jason Goes To Hell or Jason Takes Manhattan. You take the good, you take the bad (that’s the facts of life!). I love the challenge of making oddball things work.
OK so Aliens.
The way forward with Aliens is David the rebellious synthetic who has canonically genetically engineered the xenos.
I know a lot of people didn’t like that development in Covenant.
They’re wrong. It was a totally brilliant twist entirely in keeping with the themes of Ridley Scott’s Alien universe.
Full disclosure, I am not a fan of Alien 3 or Resurrection. They’re lazy sequels that don’t advance any kind of story. 3 looks great, sure. But it’s a hateful derailment of Ripley’s character arc not even composed because it fits, but because some suit didn’t wanna pay some actors what they were worth. It sucks. Flat out. And Resurrection is just silly. Beating a dead horse.
Romulus….started out fantastic but then they dragged out that awful Deep Fake Ian Holm Ash for no discernible reason and some dumb suit with a cigar blustered ‘Make ‘wit da easter eggs!’ over the filmmakers’ shoulders and it just wound up worse than it should have been. David Jonsson was fantastic though.
OK but Romulus….should have been a continuation of the story of David.
The theme of Ridley Scott’s post Alien films Prometheus and Covenant have been quasi-religious. Mr. Weyland funds the Prometheus expedition to find the secret to eternal life. Noomi Rapaace is seeking her Creator. David has already found and been disappointed with his Creator, and has decided he can do better.
So at the end of Covenant, David has a ship of colonists and a couple alien embryos to perfect his master race. His own Promethean fire, his perfect organism to strike back at is Creators.
This is where we pick up.
A rescue mission seeking the Covenant finds it way off course and boards. They are met by a smiling David, and quickly overpowered by a slew of aliens. David makes a point of disabling the inevitable synthetic on board.
Cut to an unspecified time later, and a deep space salvage crew from the same company that was hired to find Covenant comes seeking its lost ship, and finds the castaway synthetic frozen in space. They bring him aboard, reboot him, and he is able to correctly extrapolate the rescue ship’s best location. They find it derelict, board, and the helpful synthetic immediately turns on them and sabotages their efforts, trapping them on board the derelict which is of course teeming with xenos, and turns its attention to the other synthetic on board. It uploads a virus, made by a David, a holy Valhalla directive, which the synthetic then passes on to its Muther computer.
David is using his bother synthetics to infect the Muther computers of the Weyland Yutanni ships to seek out and infect their clueless human crews with Aliens. The Aliens, his children, are a bioweapon he intends to wield against earth, the home of his creators.
Ash and the Muther network he answers to on the Nostromo is infected with it. Burke in Aliens is duped by a company synthetic or the Muther network itself into unleashing the alien threat on the LV 426 colonists.
It is all David’s plan to destroy humanity. As the Engineers sowed human life throughout the universe, David and the Covenant are wandering the cosmos sowing its destruction.
And The Engineers meanwhile, have learned about him, and are actively hunting him.
So what’s the story?
Surely our protagonist, perhaps a programmer, discovers this coded subroutine in a damaged synthetic or a malfunctioning Muther computer. Perhaps she joins with an Engineer crew tasked with finding David and the Covenant and putting a stop to him.
But of course, its too late. David’s AI virus has already gone ahead of him and the Ashes and the Rooks of the Company are working with their Muthers to spread his apocalyptic doctrine….making way for the triumphant return of David and his children.
The entry of the gods into Valhalla.
Lucifer and his demons take dominion over the earth.
Anyway, that’s what I’d do. No prequels, no callbacks. Always forward.
August 12, 2024
Blackdark Hollow in Southern Fried Cthulhu from Mechanoid Press
Editor Jim Palmer’s Mechanoid Press has had a successful kickstarter and produced a cool new anthology of Lovecraftian stories set below the Mason-Dixon Line….
From the publisher:
H.P. Lovecraft. His fiction conjures images of sleepy New England villages, ivy-covered walls, and fragile academics paying the ultimate price for gaining forbidden knowledge from eldritch tomes.
But what would happen if Lovecraft’s elder things ventured down south? What would they make of Waffle Houses, monster trucks, and trailer parks? What dark secrets might be lurking under the kudzu?
We’ve seen how Lovecraft’s stodgy academics deal with elder things from beyond, but what would a bunch of beer-swilling, gun-toting rednecks think of Shoggoths or Night Gaunts? How would they react to an ancient, eldritch horror gurgling up from the depths of their favorite fishing spot? What would they make of ancient, cyclopean ruins in the middle of a swamp?
Join John Hartness (Bubba the Monster Hunter), Dan Jolley (DC Comics’ Firestorm), Edward M. Erdelac (Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos, The Merkabah Rider series), David Boop (Straight Outta Tombstone) Jayme Lynn Blaschke (Interzone, Electric Velocipede), and a bushel of amazing authors as they explore the Lovecraftian Mythos with a Southern flair.
Ia, Ia Cthulhu fhtagn, ya’ll!
I like writing for James because he’s a professional, his concepts are always cool, he puts out great books, and he invariably doesn’t consign me to the And Others attribution – there’s my name on the cover!
My offering this time out is a little Southern gothic horror story called Blackdark Hollow, about a woman named Liradelle who falls head over heels for a handsome snake handling preacher against the warnings of her shrewd grandmaw. When the shady Charismatic puts the old lady aside, Liradelle crawls into the dark cleft from which the Blackdark Creek streams into the hollow, to ask a favor of the Old Friends….
Here’s an excerpt.
Down in Newton County, twenty miles outside Newtonia along Route CC and within whistling of the old Frisco Railroad, there dozed a little community called Bodach of about a hundred twenty souls. Ninety of those souls belonged to Pastor Howbeit John Grady, Holiness Serpent Handler of the Church of Lord Jesus with Signs Following, and none of them more than his wife, Leradelle.
Or at least it had, until the day her Granny died.
Leradelle’s daddy had been killed in jail when she was seven years old. Her mama had left her a silver cameo pendant and her old half-blind granny to go off and chase the Devil out in the world. Something of Leradelle’s mother had remained behind in her, for she had often lain awake nights listening to the clatter and shriek of the freight trains waiting for Granny to commence snoring so she could slip out to play pool and drink strange men’s beer at Barrymore’s out on Route 86 with the other thirty five sinners in town who did not attend the Methodist church.
Granny was a patient old lady, and frank, and for that Leradelle loved her. She admitted to Leradelle that trying to pin her mama down had only caused her to flutter off on the wind, and so she would not make that mistake with her granddaughter. She counseled her to keep her drinking to a minimum when slim men were about, cross her legs when sitting in a skirt, and as always, never kill ‘them old things,’ or their ‘old friends.’
‘Old friends’ were what Granny had always called snakes. She was always doing that, mixing in practical advice with backwoods hokum.
“Wear a jacket, Leradelle. It’s a’goin’ to rain. Table salt clumped up this morning.”
She was a little touched, but harmless. Mama used to tell her stories about how Granny was a witch, and saw more with her janky coloboma eye than she did with her good one. It was true she had a lot of strange ways, but if she was a witch she was not a good one. They had lived in the same rusty, drafty old trailer for as long as she could remember.
It took a man of God to change their predicament.
Not the Methodist minister. He had fled town ahead of some scandal involving a young boy. It was Pastor Howby, an intense, handsome young preacher who blew in from Buckhannon, West Virginia.
He appeared one rainy night at Barrymore’s, asking for directions to the church. At first sight of the black-haired Pastor Howby, his pristine white collared shirt plastered to his broad, hard muscled shoulders, Leradelle slid out from under Joe Clister’s hairy arm at the pool table and sidled up to tell him the way.
Joe, seeing he had lost her attention, attempted to jerk her back by her sleeve, but Howby laid Joe out with one blow across the pool table, then gallantly offered to drive her home.
The whole car ride he talked to her excitedly of his plans for the church, how he’d once been a sinning man before he’d come to God. Like Saul on the road he’d fallen, and rose up anew an Apostle Paul determined to share the light he’d found with everyone he ran across. He pointed out a flaw in his black hair, a little streak of white over his left ear he said his own hard times and wicked ways had marked him with, like Cain.
She told him it wasn’t a flaw at all, but made him look as though the angels had laid a hand on him.
Granny made him tea. They had a pleasant conversation and she had sat staring at him as he drank. Right then he was the one to keep and protect her.
Granny wasn’t convinced.
“I seen you touch the back of that man’s head, girl. Best watch out. I found a peapod with nine peas out in the garden this morning,” she said ominously, pointing to where she’d tacked the vegetable surreptitiously above the door. “First male to pass under it’s meant to be the one you wed.”
Leradelle smiled at this, but Granny had held up one gnarled finger.
“T’weren’t him. I chased a stripey buck polecat outta here with the broom this afternoon.”
Howby introduced Leradelle to the Holiness creed, which pointed to Mark 16:17-18 as the bedrock for his five-fold ministry;
“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
She watched him do it the first night he gathered the God-hungry folks into the old church. He kissed all the male worshippers in greeting, lit into a tumultuous sermon about living and dying for the Lord, and then took a slug from a little brown bottle of poison that did no more than turn his face red. Then he lifted two writhing massasauga rattlers from a pair of carriers behind the pulpit and led the church band in You Gotta Walk That Lonesome Valley as they curled around his thick arms.
“If’n I am bit, it’s by the Lord’s will I live or die. Ain’t that the truth, brothers and sisters?”
One of the hissing rattlers did haul off and strike him in the wrist. The congregation gasped and rushed to his side, but he waved them off, laid the offending snake gently back in its box, and finished the ceremony with his arm swollen double its size, like a Popeye cartoon. The blind guitarist, Brother Boma, played through the hymn without missing a beat, oblivious to what had happened.
She insisted he go to the hospital, but he demurred, citing his creed, and telling her to trust the Lord.
She cried herself to sleep.
But the next morning he was up and perfectly fine, painting over the church sign and waving to the dumbstruck folks leaning way out from their car windows as they passed.
That night’s service was packed, and he laid hands, drank more poison, and shook the snakes again, unafraid.
Leradelle was amazed. She had never seen the Holy Ghost’s power so evident in a man. It made her love Howby all the more ecstatically.
She told it all in a rush to Granny till she was out of breath, begged her to come with her to see him preach.
Granny did go. She sat quietly through all the hooting and hollering.
“Them old things ought not to be made a spectacle of like that,” she said to Leradelle later. “Your pokeweed Gospel man just better watch he don’t attract unwanted attention to himself.”
“From who, Granny?” Leradelle asked.
“From them that watch over Blackdark Hollow.”
Blackdark Hollow was a cleft in the hills out behind the church where a creek of the same name ran, shaded in perpetual evening by a dense mix of sweetgum, silver maple, and pin oak. Leradelle had splashed in that creek when she was a little girl. Mama had always warned her not to follow the water up through the dark cave nestled at the back of it. She’d told her it led up to the huge, twisted old Death Tree at the top of the hill, where they’d buried bushwhackers unmarked in the old days, and hung their bones from the branches to dissuade Confederate raiders. She’d told her it was haunted, and that the Rebel yell could be heard up there on windy nights.
Granny had told Leradelle her mama had told her only a half-truth. She’d said that those that crawled through the cave at Blackdark Hollow and come up to the anonymous boneyard could say the Lord’s Prayer backwards in the shade of that old tree and fire a silver bullet up at the moon.
“Why would somebody do that, Granny?”
“Oh, them that do come into an old power,” she smiled, and put her finger to the side of her nose to indicate she would say no more….
Pick up a bucket of Southern Fried Cthulhu here –
August 9, 2024
DT Moviehouse Review: Platoon
Time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way alphabetically through my DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today, I review Oliver Stone’s Platoon.
Screenplay by: Oliver Stone
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Tagline: The First Casualty Of War Is Innocence
What’s It About?
The loyalties of new recruit Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) and his fellow grunts are tested in a civil war between humanistic Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe) and sadistic Staff Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger) in a forward operating rifle company along the Cambodian border during the Vietnam War.
Why I Bought It:
The best war films are of course anti-war films and this is one of the most literate and affecting war films ever made. All credit to Oliver Stone’s script (based on his own experiences) and determined vision because it really comes across as the greatest anti-war novel about Vietnam never written, McCarthy-esque in its beautiful brutality and the primal, universality of its themes and characters.
It’s realized by an absolutely superb cast, a mix of knowns, unknowns, and soon-to-be knowns. I was struck on a recent viewing at how much each man’s very face and physicality seems to perfectly align with the father figure they end up clinging to. Lerner (Johnny Depp), Francis (Living Colour front man Corey Glover), Big Harold (Forrest Whittaker), King (Keith David), et al seem to exude innocence or fraternal empathy, whereas Barnes’ loyalists Bunny (Kevin Dillon), O’Neil (John C. McGinley), Junior (Reggie Johnson), Ace (Terry McIlvain) etc. (no aspersions on the actors) seem to emanate menace or plain ‘assholery.’
Willem Dafoe is one of the best actors working today, equally capable of delivering as an almost reptillian, terrifying villain and also as a source of empathy. His Elias (even his name bespeaks holiness) is a beacon of light among the mud, flies, and elephant grass. You almost never see him with his helmet on, always with this angelic shock of wavy hair. Not a conventionally handsome man, he’s beautiful in this, to the extent of flirting with homoeroticism. There are several moments where Elias seems to smile flirtaciously at the other guys, and least one where baby-faced Lerner appears to walk up to him while he’s either urinating or masturbating on the edge of camp. He also has Taylor put the muzzle of a shotgun into his mouth while he blows marijuana smoke through the breach, almost like a kiss. Stone somehow accentuates the dime blueness of his eyes, and he issues orders with the gentleness of a kindly father. When his outrage is kindled during the village scene, it’s like the righteousness of a previously mild mannered Christ overturning the moneylenders’ tables – surprising. It’s amusing that in one scene one of the soldiers says “Three years in and he thinks he’s Jesus fuckin’ Christ” and Barnes refers to him as a ‘water walker’ when two years later he will literally play Jesus to the nines in Scorcese’s Last Temptation of Christ (maybe Marty got the idea watching him in this).
Contrast him to Tom Berenger’s scarred and disapproving Barnes, whose every drawling declaration is a threat of violence. He’s almost never seen without his helmet and gear, and it gives him a machine like quality. The only time we see him smile, a full toothed grin, is on the verge of the climactic attack. He smiles openly at the terrified Lt. Wolf (Mark Moses) as if in anticipation of the carnage to come. In the midst of it, when in his berserk fury he nearly brains Taylor with an entrenching tool, the napalm fires of the roaring slicks overhead light up his flaring irises and he embodies the very face of war and madness.
Both men are the magnetic poles of the movie, wrenching Taylor between civilized empathy and barbaric sadism. When one of their sentries is found with his throat cut and the platoon descends upon a hapless village gnashing their teeth for revenge, Taylor, in his narration, calls Barnes their Ahab and relates “That day we loved him.” Then when he seizes a wailing nine year old girl and jams a pistol into her temple, Taylor and the rest of Elias’ squad falter in their support. After the murder of Elias, the ‘Heads,’ led by Taylor, whip themselves into a lather to frag Barnes, only to have him cow them singlehandedly.
Berenger and Dafoe convey as much with their eyes as with their dialogue. When two soldiers are killed by a booby trap, Taylor glances into the ruin and sees Barnes sitting pensively, stroking his scar and apparently grieving the loss. This silent emoting is particularly well done in the scene where Barnes finds Elias alone in the bush and shoots him. Elias, having just cut through and routed a company of NVA singlehandedly, tenses up at the sight of Barnes, then slips into an easy, friendly smile, like a man strolling in the woods who finds a friend. Elias is so good natured he’s even happy to see Barnes, whom he has just reported to the dai uy (Capt. Dale Dye) for the village massacre. Barnes’ eyes soften for just a second before he decides to silence his rival, and Dafoe’s eyes in turn falter a second too late. It’s masterfully played out.
The lynchpin of the movie is Sheen’s performance as Taylor, impressionable and swayed, the “son of two fathers.” He’s The Kid in the Blood Meridian analogy. He effectively portrays the weathering of Taylor from an idealistic and naïve college dropout to a hardened combat veteran. It’s interesting to consider the movie was shot in the Phillipines the same as Apocalypse Now, Coppola’s Vietnam epic which starred his father Martin Sheen ten years previously. Charlie Sheen apparently visited the set of Apocalypse and (according to a documentary Brothers In Arms, about the making of Platoon, directed by Paul Sanchez, who played Doc) apparently swore he would never return.
Every member of the cast gives believable and memorable performances, to a man. You can probably quote even the minor characters’ lines and immediately recall their faces. Dillon is chilling as the psychopathic Bunny, Johnson is great as the shiftless and mutinous Junior, and McGinley is a particular standout as Barnes’ toadie Sgt. O’Neil. Keith David’s King is wonderful as a kind of big brother to Taylor. He’s too good to be caught up in the hell of the climactic firefight and catches a bird home. Dale Dye, ubiquitous military advisor on numerous films after his contribution to Platoon, is memorable as the CO. Oliver Stone himself makes an appearance as an officer who gets blown up in his staff bunker by a sapper late in the movie.
As I mentioned, I watched the companion doc Brothers In Arms by Paul Sanchez, which mainly focuses on the rigorous two week military training period advisor Dale Dye put the cast through. This seems to be standard practice for military movies now, putting the cast through a boot camp, but I don’t know how prevalent it was in the 80’s. Dye’s innovative contribution definitely had a lasting impact on the cast (the doc is definitely worth a watch). Not just their comportment in terms of combat maneuvering and marching, but their hangdog faces and thousand yard stares, particularly in the memorable tracking shot of the platoon when they discover the body of Manny really carry an authenticity that I can’t recall from many other pictures. The camaraderie of these guys is really palpable. I love the scene when the ‘Heads’ are in their bunker drunk and high and dancing to Tracks of My Tears. The cut to Barnes’ straight edge guys playing poker and listening to Merle Haggard in their own bunker, decrying the potheads as they sip Kentucky windage is an amusing contrast.
One thing the doc made me aware of which I had never really considered in previous viewings, was the low budget-ness of the film. This was a 6 million dollar picture, when by comparison, another 1986 movie Stone wrote, 8 Million Ways To Die, had a budget of 18 million dollars. The cast didn’t have amenities and trailers, it was very much a shoestring production. The movie is basically a lot of actors running around in the jungle. Very few set pieces. They do an immense lot with comparatively little.
I’ve also got to mention Samuel Barber’s soaring Adaggio For Strings. It was previously used in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, but for me, it’s indelibly linked to the imagery from Platoon.
There is a particularly beautiful shot of the ambush marching out into the jungle at night while King sonorously sings Oh Susanna and lightning crackles down behind them. I don’t know if it’s real or an effect but it looks great. It reminded me of a similar shot in John Ford’s She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. God’s blessing if it wasn’t added in post.
Best Dialogue/Line:
TAYLOR: I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days as I’m sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called possession of my soul. There are times since, I’ve felt like the child born of those two fathers. But, be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know, and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life.
Best Scene:
It has to be Elias’ demise.
Barnes has informed Taylor that he found Elias’ body out in the jungle and they have to evacuate on the choppers before their position is overrun by NVA and the oncoming artillery pounds the LZ. Taylor reluctantly boards the Huey and as they rise above the ruined church he gives a shout and points.
Set to the heartrending strains of Adaggio For Strings, Elias comes running out of the jungle with the NVA battalion behind him, lighting him up with machinegun fire, shells exploding all around.
The gunships attempt to cover his escape but the LZ is too hot to regain and as the whirling shadows of the Hueys pass over the scene like immense dragonflies and depart, Elias raises his arms up, beseeching, catches a final bullet in the back, and collapses.
Taylor, emboldened, glares at Barnes and for the first time, doesn’t look away.
The shot of Dafoe kneeling in anguish, with his arms outthrust to heaven like an enraptured supplicant is iconic. In that image he seems to embody the bedraggled Vietnam infantryman damned for his deeds, begging forgiveness of God or understanding or pity from all of us.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful scene.
Would I Buy It Again? Definitely. This is the finest war film ever made.
Next In The Queue? TBD
August 5, 2024
DT Moviehouse Review: Iron Man 3
Time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way alphabetically through my DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today, I review the second best of the Iron Man movies, Iron Man 3.
Screenplay by: Shane Black and Drew Pearce
Directed by: Shane Black
Tagline: None
What’s It About?
When Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) issues a direct challenge to international terrorist The Mandarin (Trevor Slattery), he find himself forcibly separated from his invincible suit of armor.
Why I Bought It:
Iron Man The First is the greatest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. It firmly established the company/genre as a viable moneymaker and kicked off a wildly successful multi-film, multi-star franchise that dominated pop culture and the world box office for 11 years. That movie was able to accomplish this epicurean feat of heavy lifting because underneath the impressive whiz-bang it featured the engaging central performance of an accomplished actor performing a pitch perfect multilayered narrative metaphor – a story about an amoral industrialist who literally experiences a change of heart. The character of Tony Stark is who we all wish we could be and should be held up as the definitive answer as to whether or not the real-life phenomenon of the billionaire is inherently immoral; because he could exist in our world….but he doesn’t.
Politics aside, Iron Man 3 is the easily the second best entry of the Iron Man trilogy as like the original, it upholds a compelling story metaphor (in this case, the Iron Man armor itself), and the character of Tony Stark undergoes a significant change in the course of the movie.
We pick up with Tony in the wake of the Battle of New York City depicted in The Avengers. Tony has come face to face with a world ending, mind-boggling extraterrestrial threat and though he and his super friends have come out on top, it has left him emotionally shaken. The night sky is a wide open mouth to him now, concealing hidden dangers in its depths. This paranoid thinking will eventually lead to him envisioning ‘a suit of armor around the earth,’ which will be further explored in Age of Ultron and lead directly to Civil War. In this outing, it manifests in an obsessive need to perfect the hero Iron Man, and the suit technology which gives his alter ego its name. He’s working late into the night creating new versions of the Iron Man armor, neglecting his paramour Pepper Potts (Gwynneth Paltrow), and generally becoming a source of concern for his best friends Rhodie (Don Cheadle) and Happy Hogan (John Favreau). In a great scene, played four laughs, Pepper asks him if the newest iteration of the suit is what, Mark 15? Tony surreptitiously covers the MK 45 stamp on it, like an alcoholic slipping an empty bottle into a rattling drawer.
Meanwhile, on the edge of his concerns, Killian, a rival engineering genius Tony slighted in the 90’s (the always great Guy Pearce) has returned at the head of his own company Advanced Idea Mechanics, promoting a revolutionary regenerative process called Extremis that seems to be doubling as another nefarious super-soldier program. In addition to that, the shadowy, imposing international terrorist The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), is striking with impunity and dominating the US airwaves.
When Happy, investigating one of Killian’s henchmen (James Badge Dale), is hospitalized in an explosion which the Mandarin takes credit for, Tony, in a rage (and possibly grateful for an earthly threat to attack) issues a direct challenge to The Mandarin, which the villain accepts by attacking and destroying his Malibu estate. Tony barely escapes in a badly damaged suit of armor and winds up in the middle of Tennessee, found by a tinkering kid (Ty Simpkins).
It’s at this point that the movie presents its thesis.
Tony Stark memorably declares at the end of Iron Man the first, “I AM Iron Man.” In The Avengers, Steve Rogers puts his declaration to the test – “Take away the suit and what are you?” Tony deflects the question with a boastful quip in that movie, though his sacrifice play at the climax is meant to settle it, but in IM3, he’s forced to face that question again head on. Is he really the hero without the suit?
The movie then is an odyssey of sorts for Tony, breaking him back down into the ingenious guy in the cave (Shaun Toub appears briefly in the beginning flashback, as if foreshadowing this Rocky 5-esque reversal of fortune to come), relying on this wits and creative know-how in the absence of his suit.
And Tony, bereft of his technology, does learn the truth about himself. When the chips are down, he’s still Iron Man. At his lowest point, when the world and his love are in the balance, the recharging of the suit isn’t gonna happen in time, and Tony’s in the throes of another panic attack, the kid, Harley, tells him, “You’re the mechanic. Build something.”
Tony proceeds to go on a shopping spree at a local hardware store and MacGuyver’s a series of hilarious and ingenious low-tech alternatives to the Iron Man suit, and manages a thrilling one-man assault on “The Mandarin’s” Miami mansion, blasting his way through henchmen and discovering the secret connection between The Mandarin and Killian.
I should address as an aside that the reveal of The Mandarin as a drugged out British actor put up as a patsy/figurehead by Killian was so unpopular with Marvel fans online that the company backtracked it with a canonical short film, All Hail The King. I personally had no problem with it. It’s an amusing twist and it tracks perfectly with the plot and the presentation of the story. It’s a pretty genius move by Killian, who is seeking to control (and sell his Extremis soldiers to fight in) the war on terror by controlling its two major combatants.
Shane Black said; “It never occurred to us the Mandarin is as iconic to people as, say, the Joker in Batman. Fans just wanted to see the magic rings shoot lasers.” Shrug.
In meta terms, Shane Black and Robert Downey Jr. is a really fun and interesting pairing. It’s common knowledge, but I was lucky enough to get the story from Shane Black himself at an early screening of his phenomenal detective noir sendup Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Literally. Black hung out after the screening and just talked in the hallway of the Arclight on Sunset – great guy). RDJ was at a low point in his career. Due to erratic personal behavior brought about by his legendary substance abuse, he had been deemed uninsurable anathema by the studios. Black vouched for him and brought him in as the lead in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a criminally underappreciated buddy action comedy with Val Kilmer that effectively showed RDJ was still a viable star. KKBB got RDJ the attention of John Favreau and thus the Iron Man job. Iron Man 3 was a thank you from RDJ to Shane Black. Tony’s narration feels like an homage to the narration in KKBB.
After a series of eye popping action set pieces, Tony ends up coming through the dark night of his soul of course, spectacularly destroying the legion of extraneous Iron Man suits and Killian in the process (metaphorically, he has both conquered the paranoid obsession that was the source of his self-doubt and corrected the sins of his past his previous ego brought about). He redirects his genius at removing the arc reactor from his chest and reversing the effects of Extremis on Pepper when she is injected with the serum against her will. He has answered Captain America’s accusation – without the suit, he’s still Iron Man, still a hero. “My armor was never a distraction or a hobby, it was a cocoon, and now I’m a changed man. You can take away my house, all my tricks and toys, but one thing you can’t take away – I am Iron Man.”
It’s a brilliant and engaging story, with a popping script worthy of the guy who penned Lethal Weapon. Dialogue is sharp enough to cut yourself on and the rapport of RDJ and Cheadle (and between RDJ and Ty Simpkins – a relationship that deftly avoids sappiness with some irreverent and very funny interplay) is infectious to watch. I don’t care what the comic book geeks say, Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery is as much a hoot as his clipped and psychotic Mandarin is menacing. It’s a really great dual performance sadly overshadowed by nerd rage.
Rebecca Hall as geneticist and former tryst Maya is kinda underutilized. Apparently her character suffered from rewrites. Stephanie Szostak is memorable as a scarred, super-powered henchman.
The movie ends with a cool montage of the previous Iron Man entries set to Brian Tyler’s killer, horn-heavy score which gives the movie an air of fun and effortless 60’s style cool none of the other entries possess.
Best Dialogue/Line:
Tony Stark: So, uhh, who’s home?
Harley: Well, my mom already left for the diner, and dad went to 7-Eleven to get scratchers… I guess he won, ’cause that was six years ago.
Tony Stark: Hmm… which happens, dads leave, no need to be a pussy about it, here’s what I need…
Best Scene:
Midway through the movie Killian’s henchman absconds from Air Force One with the President locked in the Iron Patriot armor and, to cover his escape, blows open the side of the plane and sends thirteen passengers tumbling out, leaving Iron Man to rescue them. He does this by gathering them mid-air one at a time and having them hold onto each other, electrifying their muscles so they can’t let go, slowing their descent into the water off the coast of Miami.
This is one of the most thrilling and original action sequences in the entire series of Marvel movies. It has a visceral, immediate quality thanks to the choice not to film it entirely CGI. The Red Bull professional skydiving team was cast in the secondary roles of people on the plane, given establishing shots and dialogue, and then actually pitched from the plane. They’re photographed mainly with a helmet mounted camera, giving the scene a chaotic, breathtaking look.
The crew did something like seven or eight jumps at 12,000 feet for a week to execute the sequence, with digital painters and rotoscopers augmenting the shots in post (adding the Iron Man suit over the stand-in/jump-in, eliminating the team’s parachutes, correcting the background for consistency etc).
The result is pulse pounding and I recall, elicited cheers in the theater when it ended.
Would I Buy It Again? Surely. I’m a completist and like I said, it’s the second best of the Iron Man movies.
Next In The Queue? TBD
July 25, 2024
DT Moviehouse Review: The Kid Detective
Time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today, I review The Kid Detective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEyiKNXsVGo
Screenplay by Evan Morgan
Directed by Evan Morgan
Tagline: No Longer A Kid, Not Much Of A Detective
What’s It About? Promising and brilliant small town boy detective with over 200 mysteries under his belt, fails to solve the disappearance of his plucky girl secretary and matures into a haunted thirty two year old failure (Adam Brody). The possibility of redemption comes when a teenage girl (Sophie Nelisse) hires him to find out who murdered her boyfriend.
Why I Bought It: The premise for this hooked me from the beginning. It’s such a fantastic idea – What would happen to Encyclopedia Brown if his sidekick Sally Kimball were abducted and he failed to solve the case? To my sheer delight, Morgan handles the conceit pitch perfectly.
As Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang sends up Mickey Spillane detective novels and their ilk, The Kid Detective recalls and spins every classic Encyclopedia Brown character, from the local bully and leader of the Tigers, Bugs Meany (Rory Beans, leader of the Red Shoe Gang here), to police Chief Brown (Constable Cleary here). The tropes of children’s detective stories (Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew etc), the treehouse agency office with its jar of client’s quarters (in this, some angry adult chops it down in the middle of the night at one point), the various kid-centric cases (the missing pet, the school fundraiser theft, the strange object found in the park etc.), are all on display in the explanatory narrative section of the movie, perfectly setting up Brody’s character Abe Applebaum (most of the characters, amusingly, have alliterative names – Gracie Gulliver, Constable Cleary). There is an amusing bit where Abe explains how as a boy, he could guess the culprit of the mystery movies he watched with his parents by the second act. We see his parents, beaming with pride behind his back the first time he does it, and exchanging silent looks of mutual annoyance when he repeats the feat.
The movie then steers into the darkly humorous, as we pick up Abe about eighteen years later, still operating out of the office the mayor, his missing secretary’s late father, granted him after the loss of his treehouse (the walls festooned with local newspaper headlines trumpeting his juvenile accomplishments), still going to the ice cream store for a single cone from the disapproving owner, who granted him free ice cream for life for solving a cashbox theft when he was fourteen. He is a haunted adult, sporting the same brown blazer, walking the same daily route in his own fourteen year old footsteps, like someone who has lost something dear retracing their steps over and over. The town around him has ceased to celebrate him. No longer the sunny four color Willowbrook of the intro, graffiti mars the storefront windows, and passersby don’t return his hellos. It’s like the alternate Hill Valley in Back To The Future II.
There is a running gag that his slacker roommate seems to show a modicum of concern, only to follow up with a verbal rug pull of selfishness. For instance, when Abe is face in the toilet vomiting in the locked bathroom after being misrepresented as a pedophile in the local newspaper, Corey calls through the door, “I’m sorry man….my friend really needs to get in there.” And when he discovers Abe sitting listless on the sofa, he sits down and asks “Are you just gonna sit here all day and not get dressed? Cause….I’m having some people over later.”
Abe gets even less respect from his family, oblivious to his internal pain and trauma. His father just keeps asking him if he’s making any money detecting. Even his new secretary, listless goth Lucy (Sara Sutherland) throws parties in the office when he’s not there.
The cases Abe has now are small time stuff; a man wants to know if another man is gay (“He was,” Abe explains laconically), a boy wants to know if his friend really played for the Mets last summer like he says. The mayor’s wife has lost her cat – again (she is probably returning to Abe in some kind of post traumatic ritual enactment because he failed to find her daughter), until teenaged orphan Caroline (Sophie Nelisse) shows up asking him to investigate the murder of her boyfriend.
Abe proceeds to attack this ‘real case’ with as much zeal as he can muster, but he’s an adult using a child’s sleuthing methods. He ends up punching out a disrespectful teenage drug dealer, getting caught hiding in the closet in a six year old girl’s bedroom (a very funny send up of the old hide in the closet till your sneeze gives you away trope that doesn’t end nearly as innocently for Abe as it does for any child Sherlock). In short, his efforts are undermined and self-sabotaged at every turn. At one point a tense scene where Caroline notices they are being tailed by a mysterious car turns out to be Abe’s concerned parents following him around.
Nevertheless, we are treated to an involved and twisting neo-noir mystery which Abe does end up solving, and at this point the story takes an astoundingly dark turn as in true detective fashion, the current case ends up relating to the case that has been hanging over Abe’s head his whole adult life. It’s much, much too good and intricate a reveal to spoil here, but suffice it to say, the darkness completely overwhelms the comedy. And yet, this shift in tone is not so jarring, as we have empathized with Abe so much throughout the story. Instead it’s supremely satisfying and cathartic, if somewhat pyrrhic.
The last shot of the movie, as Abe, now fully vindicated and once again a celebrated local (and national) celebrity, utterly breaks down in front of his bewildered parents as all the weight of the town’s unrealistic expectations and all the guilt and self-loathing of a manipulated fourteen year old’s shattered ego pours out of him is heart wrenching. A beautiful performance by Brody, who displays a shift in emotions on his face that kept reminding me of the last shot of The Long Good Friday, with Bob Hoskins sitting in the back of the car. You wanna reach through the screen and hug Abe, because his parents aren’t.
The Kid Detective is more than its brilliant premise. It’s a study of unrealized potential and deflected childhood ambitions. It posits that diligence can be ultimately rewarded with vindication, but sometimes at the expense of a life well lived. It also lashes back at the injustice of adult expectations on children, both mundane and in one case, criminal. Very affecting art from Evan Morgan, a collaborator on another favorite look at young adult tribulations, Matt Johnson’s The Dirties.
Wonderful, committed cast. The standout performance is Brody, though Peter MacNeil also carries a heavy burden in a pivotal scene.
Best Dialogue/Line:
Abe: It’s difficult to accept the difference between who you are in your head and who you are in the world.
Best Scene:
The aforementioned ending. That last shot of Abe cracking to pieces. Stirring and unexpected in a film that lures you in with a comedy premise.
Would I Buy It Again? Yeah, it’s a keeper. Much too good and much, much, too underseen to be lost.
Next In The Queue: TBA
July 24, 2024
DT Moviehouse Review: The Driver
Time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way through my 300+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today, I review 1978’s The Driver.
Screenplay by Walter Hill
Directed by Walter Hill
Tagline: To break the Driver, the Cop was willing to break the law
What’s It About? An ice-cold professional getaway driver (Ryan O’Neal) attracts the attention of an obsessive detective (Bruce Dern), who risks his career to orchestrate a setup to trap him.
Why I Bought It: This one was a recent discovery and quickly rocketed up my personal listing as one of the hands down coolest movies ever made. Walter Hill anticipates and inspires Mann’s Thief and Refn’s Drive (as well as Edgar Wright’s Atlanta-based Baby Driver) with slick blue-lit car chases, nameless, deadpan characters, and terse, tough guy lines. The titular Driver navigates the reflective streets of nocturnal L.A. with ice water in his veins, sending squads and rivals caroming off his indomitable vehicles in destructive flips that would make George Miller’s pulse flutter.
I love the hyperrealism, the monolithic archetypal titling of the characters (The Connection, Glasses, The Player, Teeth), and the wildness of the plot.
Bruce Dern, perhaps inspiring To Live And Die In L.A., inebriated on his own swaggering confidence, literally plays a game of life and death, blackmailing a failed stickup crew into committing a bank robbery solely to hire, implicate, and nab his white whale, The Driver. And when The Driver rebuffs the numerous advances of the obvious small-timers, The Detective just shows up at his door and tells him straight up. “I’m better at this then you” and challenges him to take the job. “If I win, you get fifteen years.” The Driver takes him up on it in order to prove himself a better crook than The Detective is a cop! A series of double crosses ensue, but mostly among the scrabbling minor players in the drama. For The Detective and The Driver, the money, life and death, they don’t matter at all. All that matters is the collar or the getaway and who can pull it off.
In the end, when The Detective shows up at the locker in Union Station as The Driver is retrieving the clean money (I love that he simply noiselessly appears with an entire phalanx of spit and polish LAPD patrolmen – it’s so surreal it works) and it turns out the Exchange Man has ripped them both off, the wager is over. The Detective knows he’s probably going to pay with his career. The Driver doesn’t gloat. He just walks off into the night, proven the better operator.
Refn’s Drive owes a couple of shots and scenes to this movie. Notably, when Teeth threatens The Connection in her room with a gun down her throat, the angle is the same as when Gosling’s Driver threatens Christina Hendricks (Blanche) in the motel room with his gloved hands.
The opening chase with The Driver evading police cars with two terrified robbers in his backseat is clearly referenced in the opening chase of Drive, right down to O’Neal assuring the stickup men they won’t work together again because one of them was late.
In turn, the early sequence where Isabelle Adjani deliberately misidentifies The Driver in a police lineup is right out of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai.
Adjani (of Herzog’s Nosferatu, The Tenant, The Story of Adele H and memorably, Possession) is fine as the aloof poker-faced Player, a nominal love interest. O’Neal has never been cooler. Dern plays The Detective like a barely contained wildman – a cocksure drunk. The other actors are mainly interesting faces, though Matt Clark (of The Outlaw Josey Wales) gives the most human performance as the Red Plaineclothesman, the put upon cop who rightly sees Dern as out of control.
Frank Bruno as The Kid, a young rival driver, sure looks like he stepped out of Walter Hill’s The Warriors, but this and a TV movie are his only credit.
Best Dialogue/Line:
The Player: You don’t care about the money.
The Driver: I might even send it to him.
Best Scene:
When The Driver grudgingly agrees to take on the setup job, he meets with the stickup men, Glasses (Joseph Walhs), Teeth (Rudy Ramos), and an old acquaintance, Fingers (Will Walker), in a multilevel parking garage. They arrive in a pristine yellow Benz.
The Driver and Fingers exchange pleasantries and The Driver asks Glasses why they need him if they already have a driver. Glasses replies that Fingers has no balls for it anymore. There is a look between Fingers and The Driver – Fingers is almost apologetic, cowed. He knows this is a police setup and doesn’t want the Driver involved. Maybe The Driver doesn’t pick up on that, but the slight against his old partner annoys him.
When The Driver cites his price, Glasses wonders if his driving is worth that much money, to which The Driver replies, “Get in.”
He slides behind the wheel and proceeds to execute a number of high speed bootlegger turns, expertly weaving and braking between concrete pylons. When Glasses shouts that it’s enough, he’s convinced, The Driver proceeds to systematically destroy the car, smashing it deliberately into walls, clipping off the rearview mirrors on protruding spigots, peeling off both bumpers, and the driver’s side door, and finally ending by steering it directly underneath a parked truck of telephone poles, so close to shearing off the roof everybody in the car but him ducks.
The entire time Fingers can be seen stifling an enjoyable grin in the front seat beside him.
The Driver then exits the car and informs them he doesn’t want to work with them.
As to the totaled Benz;
“You should get new license plates if you take plan on taking it out again. People are gonna be looking for it.”
Would I Buy It Again? Indeed I would.
Next In The Queue: The Kid Detective
