F.C. Schaefer's Blog, page 11

Anne Rice and her bitchin' witches.

After years of steering clear of her work, I recently decided to get back into reading Anne Rice, having been a fan of her books years ago. Having dispensed with three of her vampire novels, I waded into THE WITCHING HOUR, a novel which has been on my shelf for quite some time. Like THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES, the saga of the Mayfair Witches was her other great series and I was interested in seeing if she could draw me in the way her adventures of Lestat and his blood drinking companions had. I noticed one big difference right off the bat: at over a thousand pages, this book was way longer than any of her vampire epics. THE WITCHING HOUR is not for the casual reader, as it requires more than the usual patience and attention, as a lot of back story and detail, and description is covered in a multi-generational story stretching from 16th Century Scotland to late 20th Century America, with stops in pre-revolutionary France, colonial Haiti, and Civil War era Louisiana along the way.

THE WITCHING HOUR can loosely be broken down into thirds, with the first section basically setting the table, as we learn about the large and very wealthy Mayfair family of New Orleans through a collection of secondary characters, including a priest and the wife of a mortician. Through their interactions with the Mayfairs, we learn of the many tragedies that have befallen members of the family, the most recent of them being the heir, Deidre, who has been catatonic for decades, ever since newborn daughter was taken from her days after her birth. In this section we also meet Rowan Mayfair, a neurosurgeon in San Francisco, who is gifted with a form of telekinesis, and Michael Curry, a successful businessman, who after a near drowning and rescue by Rowan, has developed extra sensory powers, triggered by touch, powers which torment him so severely that he must constantly wear gloves. Both of the these characters have a powerful attraction to one another, and it gives away nothing to reveal that Rowan is Deidre’s daughter, and that Michael has deep roots in New Orleans as well. A series of events compel both of them to return to The Big Easy, and along the way, they meet Aaron Lightner, an investigator for The Talamasca, a mysterious group that documents the supernatural, an organization familiar to anyone who has read any of Rice’s vampire novels. It seems to be Lightner’s job to fill in the narrative holes in the story, and give the main characters needed information at just the right moment.

The middle of the book is one long piece of back story, as we get learn everything the Talamasca has documented on the Mayfairs down through the years. We learn that an entity has attached itself to the family, specifically to a female with apparent supernatural powers born to each generation. This entity, named Lasher, first appears to be a ghost, but he is much more than that, and though he professes love to each of his “chosen ones,” it is clear that Lasher has a goal in mind, and he is playing a very long game. We meet a lot of Mayfairs along the way: Deborah, Suzanne, Julian, Stella, Anther, Cortland, and Carlotta, all brought to life with Rice’s vivid talent for characterization. The final section of the book centers on Rowan and Michael, now back in New Orleans, and firmly ensconced in the now restored Mayfair mansion in the Garden district, preparing for a showdown with Lasher that has been centuries in coming.

I get the feeling that Rice had a lot of pent up energy after writing all those vampire books, and when she finally sat down to write something different, she really cut loose, as this book has detail and description stacked upon detail and description, from the weather to the clothes any particular character is wearing in any particular scene. Rice is known for this, and at this point in her career (the book came out in 1990), she was successful enough that editors clearly let her have her way – they did the same thing with Stephen King, but while some readers may love too much of a good writer, others just get weary under the weight of all that prose. And it is not always an easy read, though I never found it dull, there were times, especially in the middle, where it felt as if it was taking an eternity to get to the bottom of the page. From a narrative point of view, Rice does shift gears more than once, something which might seem jarring, as characters that are center stage in the first section, fade to the sidelines in the last. And while Rice does have a great knack for making the most bizarre and supernatural of creatures come to life on her pages, she never seems to get comfortable with her main character, Rowan. This is especially true with the ending of THE WITHCHING HOUR, where the story takes some real turns, and Rowan’s character makes choices that appear totally contradictory to the person we have followed for over 900 pages. The ending is a problem of another kind, as it sets things up for a sequel – this book is the first in a trilogy – and I think readers expect resolution after making their way through a book of this length, not “To be continued.” George RR Martin writes incredibly long books in his GAME OF THRONES series, but all of them manage to finish off at least a couple of pertinent plot threads at the end of each volume.

Still, I understand that there is much for many readers, and die hard Anne Rice. fans to love in THE WITHCHING HOUR. Many people are quite drawn to her lengthy descriptions, her florid detail, and her bizarre characters. Though there is nary a vampire in sight, and her main protagonist is a woman, it is obvious Rice still loves her dark and mysterious men; Lasher may be an entity, but he is nothing short of seductive in all of his appearances. Then there is Michael Curry, clearly Anne Rice’s dream hunk, who is described as “walking porn.” The author calls on all her talent for writing erotica when she lovingly describes Rowan and Michael’s love making, as this is undoubtedly one reason for the book’s popularity. I give Rice points for creating her own original mythology, not relying on the usual tropes of witchcraft fiction, and giving us something other than the voodoo priestess clichés one would expect from a novel set in New Orleans; AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN this is not.

So, to answer my own question from the opening paragraph, no, THE WITCHING HOUR did not draw me in the way one of her Lestat books did, but I will say this, both other books in the Mayfair witches trilogy, LASHER and TALTOS, are also on my book shelf, and I will read them. At least they aren’t a thousand pages.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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Bite the Bullet: a nearly forgotten western.

I’ve always been a big western fan, especially those with an epic scope, but BITE THE BULLET has been one of those of this genre that has escaped me over the years, occasionally catching bits and pieces of edited versions on TV. And I wondered why, considering the cast and the director, it was not better known, or held in a higher esteem, among cinephiles; certainly the actors involved have legions of fans. So recently, to fill in this gap in my movie knowledge, I bought the DVD and decided to find out for myself, discovering a lot to like in this film, but also gaining an understanding of why it has never quite obtained the status of a classic.

BITE THE BULLET’s plot certainly grabbed me: set in 1908, it centers on a grueling 750 mile horse race across the American West, with the winner getting a prize of $2,000, no small sum in those days. The film’s protagonists are a motley group of familiar types, each with their own motives for putting themselves through the hell it will take to cross the finish line and claim the prize. They are a pair of ex Rough Riders, played by Gene Hackman and James Coburn, old friends who have gone their separate ways; Candice Bergen as a prostitute who can ride with the best of men; Ben Johnson as an old cowhand on a Last Hurrah; Jan Michael Vincent as a young punk, Johnson’s complete opposite; Ian Bannen as a wealthy English sportsman; and Mario Artega as an impoverished Mexican, whose toothache literally requires him to bite the bullet. There was a lot of star power and talent on display, with all these actors at the peak of their game in roles that fit them like a glove. But the behind the scenes star was writer-producer-director Richard Brooks, who had started in the business making movies for MGM, and had gone on to make CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, ELMER GANTRY, IN COLD BLOOD, and one of the greatest adventure westerns of the '60s, THE PROFESSIONALS, about a sundry group of men paid to go on a dangerous mission. Brooks’ script worked in the themes of friendship and loyalty, sportsmanship and the notion of doing what it takes to win at all cost; the passing of the Old West, and those displaced by it; and animal cruelty, specifically against the horses, some of whom are literally run to death in graphic scenes in order for the their riders to stay in the race. All of this is set to an evocative score by Alex North, and cinematography by Harry Stradling, which makes some striking use of slow motion in order to show the perspective of a character. The American West has never looked better, or more beautiful, this is one '70s western that most definitely was not shot on the Universal back lot.

Gene Hackman was at the top of his '70s stardom at the time, and I think his Spanish American war veteran with a soft spot for horses is one of his better roles, one that highlighted his ability to say a lot without dialogue, he has a couple of truly memorable scenes opposite Jan Michael Vincent, one where he and Coburn literally slap some manners into his punk cowboy, and another one scene, completely wordless, where, on a hot desert floor, there is another confrontation over Vincent’s treatment of his horse. That part of the movie is not for those upset by the sight of animals in distress. Ben Johnson has a monologue delivered so movingly he should have gotten another Best Supporting Actor nomination, and Bergen, who's acting skills came in for a lot of grief during those years, acquits herself well here, although she is just too classy to convincingly play a lady of the evening. It is sad to see the young Jan Michael Vincent now in one of his best '70s films, he really was a big deal back then, and a lot of fans thought he would go on to great things; sadly for him, not to be.

But though there is so much to like in BITE THE BULLET, it never quite seals the deal with me, never hitting that high gear that all of my favorite movies achieve. And I think this has a lot to with Brooks’ script, which to me, never adequately develops, or properly exploits, the full potential of his story’s premise. This is a movie about a grueling cross country race, yet for most of its running time, we never know who is ahead, thus fumbling an opportunity to create and sustain genuine tension, allowing the pace to falter. There is a third act twist with Bergen’s character that comes out of nowhere, with no foreshadowing, it seems to happen only to allow a big action sequence to be inserted into the narrative. The final sequence, where the winner crosses the finish line, something the whole movie should have been building toward, feels very abrupt. Brooks fails to give his protagonists a clear and distinct motive to win the race: Hackman wants to save his ranch; Coburn has gambling debts; Vincent wants to be a big shot; Johnson wants dignity; the Mexican needs the money for his family, but they are mentioned almost as though they are afterthoughts, not goals driving them to win against all obstacles and opponents. I felt like we never become as fully invested in these characters, and their fates, as much as we should. Which is a shame, because a decade earlier, in THE PROFESSIONALS, Brooks made a western about a similar group of characters that was tight, suspenseful, and engrossing from beginning to end; clearly he was going to the same well again in BITE THE BULLET, but not with the same results.

I think BITE THE BULLET suffered from bad timing, it got a big release in the summer of 1975, the year JAWS pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the room as far as its competition was concerned. BITE THE BULLET got decent to mixed reviews, and under performed at the box office. By the mid '70s, American movie critics were very much taken with the young Easy Riders and Raging Bulls generation of directors – Coppola, Friedkin, Bogdanovich, and Spielberg, and they had a noticeable lack of patience with older directors like Brooks, whose careers stretched back to the big studio days. It didn’t matter that Brooks had a string of hits in the '60s, often with edgy material, he was now totally passé, and the fact that he had made a movie which easily could have come out 20 years earlier only proved their point. That BITE THE BULLET was something of a throwback was undeniable, I think with a few revisions, Brooks’ script would have worked well for Howard Hawks in 1954, with John Wayne in the Hackman role.

Still, this movie has many fans, and despite my criticism, I think it earns them fairly, and it certainly deserves to be seen by more people, as there is much to like here, as many of its themes are timeless and universal. I would also add, that I think BITE THE BULLET would be an excellent candidate for a remake, especially for a younger film maker desiring to make a western; the genre hasn’t died, it just doesn’t work as hard as it used to.

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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The true story of High Noon, a movie I adore.

HIGH NOON is one of my favorite films, a movie I have adored since childhood, when I first watched the saga of Will Kane, a small town Sheriff in the Old West, challenged on his wedding day by Frank Miller, a killer he sent to prison years before, who has now been freed to seek his vengeance. While Miller’s gang wait at the station for him to arrive on the noon train, Kane seeks help from the townspeople, literally going hat in hand to friends and neighbors asking them to back him up when the time comes to face Miller and his gang, but one by one, all of Will Kane’s friends desert him, each rationalizing their own cowardice, leaving the Sheriff alone on an empty street to meet his fate. Even Kane’s young bride walks out on him because upholding him in a gunfight would violate her Quaker faith. It’s a great story, simply and well told, and the lessons it teaches are inescapable. I’ve watched HIGH NOON more than a dozen times, and like any true fan, I can recite lines of dialogue from memory right along with the actors, and know every word of Tex Ritter’s theme song by heart.

But in Glenn Frankel’s book HIGH NOON: THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN CLASSIC, I learned the story behind the film, one that is as dramatic as anything on the screen, a story filled with heroes and villains, and just plain flawed human beings. And I learned what every viewer of HIGH NOON has always known in their hearts, that it was not the just the story of a little western town named Hadleyville in the 1880s, but of another small town much further west called Hollywood, and set in the middle of the 20th Century. It is the story of the rise and fall of American Communism, its influence, such as it was, from the idealistic days of the Great Depression, to World War II, when everyone was on the same side to defeat Fascism, to the early years of the Cold War, when the Red Menace turned American against American, as people who considered themselves true patriots waged a new war against a home grown enemy.

The hero of Frankel’s book is Carl Foreman, a young man who came up in the film business in the 1940's, gaining success as a scriptwriter after serving in WWII, and like many of his generation, was drawn to the Communist Party when it seemed like they were the only ones taking a stand against Hitler and supporting equal rights for all Americans. Never a very active member, Foreman drifted away from the Communist Party as he became more successful and the organization’s prominence declined in the post war period. Foreman went into a production partnership with the young producer, Stanley Kramer, who wanted to make important films about serious issues. Kramer owed one more film on an old contract with United Artists, and it was to be a western script Foreman had been working on and revising since the mid '40s. Besides writing the script for HIGH NOON, Foreman handled most of the producer’s chores, being on set every day, and making most major and minor executive decisions, while Kramer was working on getting a multi film production deal up and going with Columbia Studios. Unfortunately for Foreman, he had just been fingered as a member of the Communist Party in testimony by a fellow writer before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which meant that he in turn would be called before the Committee, asked about his membership in the Party, and to name other Party members in an act of atonement. If he did not comply, he would face immediate blacklisting, making him unemployable in Hollywood. In short, Foreman refused to cooperate with the Committee, believing that his conscience wouldn’t let him rat out his fellow Party members – most of who, if not all, were already known to HUAC. For sticking to his guns, Carl Foreman was fired by his friend, Stanley Kramer, denied the producer’s credit he deserved, and ultimately forced to leave the country, working for most of the next 20 years in Great Britain. His marriage would fall apart, his writing would suffer, and his name would not appear in the credits of films he did write, one of which, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAII, would win an Oscar for Best Screenplay. The parallels between Carl Foreman and Will Kane are clear and unmistakable, and the irony is deep.

What I really liked about this book was the deep dive in took into the Blacklist, and Graylist, years in Hollywood, how it came to be that a few opportunistic politicians, and their supporters created a true American reign of terror, driven by fear of a foreign enemy, one whose alien ideology was suspected of having hundreds of thousands of secret adherents in the United States. Frankel shows how HUAC far exceeded its authority, acting not as an investigative arm of Congress, but as a court of law, deciding guilt and meting out punishment, depriving those it found uncooperative of property and the ability to earn a living without anything resembling due process under the Constitution. In time, the Supreme Court would clip the committee’s wings, but by then, a tremendous amount of damage would be done, with lives and careers in ruins. What is also made clear is that the Blacklist would never have been possible if not for groups like then American Legion and the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a cabal of Hollywood super patriots, determined to kick each and every dirty Commie out of the business, and keep them out. Among them were more than a few who cracked under the fear, and threw their fellow Americans under the bus in order to keep on working. The resemblance between them and the good citizens of Hadleyville, not to mention Frank Miller and his gang, is also clear and unmistakable.

Carl Foreman is not the only hero in Frankel’s book, for the Gary Cooper that emerges from the pages in one that very much jibes with the men he played on the screen. Though looking every bit of his 50 years when he signed on to play Will Kane, and with his stardom on the wane, Cooper gave the performance of his life in HIGH NOON, being so much better than Marlon Brando or Charlton Heston, who were considered for the part. The Cooper we meet in this book is a man who stands by his word, and his friends; though a lifelong conservative Republican, Cooper was so impressed with Carl Foreman that he offered to go into partnership with Foreman after Kramer gave him the boot, knowing that an association with a known Communist could have hurt his career. Frankel is honest about Cooper’s womanizing, especially his long affair with Patricia Neal; it is the low estimation of his own talent that is the real reveal in the book; Cooper never considered himself a great actor, and faulted himself for not improving his talent, saying so in an interview only months before his death in 1961. Frankel makes the case that Cooper’s “minimalist” acting in HIGH NOON is anything but, that in fact it is a deeply nuanced piece of work, conveying pain, fear, disappointment, and resolve, often in the same scene, and just as often, wordlessly.

If there are heroes in this book, so are there villains, starting with Martin Berkeley, a scriptwriter who proudly gave up more than 150 of his colleagues to HUAC, among them Foreman’s. There are Alliance members Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, Ward Bond, and Roy Brewer who helped lead the witch hunts for Communists in their midst, along with the studio heads who were more than willing to light the match for this public burning. Both Hopper and Wayne publicly denounced Foreman after his HUAC testimony was deemed insufficient, yet he would patch things both of them in later years, pointedly shaking Wayne’s hand when he encountered The Duke at an LA restaurant in the '70s, telling his family that he held no ill will because he considered Wayne a patriot, who, though mistaken, had done what he thought best for the country. It would be the former friend, Stanley Kramer, who had turned his back in a time of trouble, whom Carl Foreman would pointedly refuse to speak to when they came face to face years later. Wayne, for his part, would never tire of bad mouthing HIGH NOON for the rest of his life, considering it deeply un-American. I do wonder if, in his later years, when he was often defensive about his role in the Blacklisting of his fellow actors, Wayne’s true animus for the film came from the realization that in this real life story, many considered him either one of the cowardly citizens of Hadleyville, or even Frank Miller himself.

Besides the all the politics, the other thing great about Frankel’s book is the pure Hollywood history it recounts. I love reading the details of the creative process, how Cooper took most of the casting budget, necessitating the hiring of supporting actors, like Thomas Mitchell and Lon Chaney Jr., for only a week’s work; how Mexican actress Katy Jurado, who played the awesome Helen Ramirez, Kane’s former mistress, was so new to English, that a character’s name had to be changed because she couldn’t pronounce it; the controversy over who “saved” the film in post production after it was deemed a “disaster” in post production. Film editor Elmo Williams would loudly take credit in later years, but so would Stanley Kramer, who had no small ego himself; Frankel presents the facts as best as they seen decades later and lets the reader decide. How Grace Kelly worried about the overacting she was doing in her part as Kane’s young Quaker bride. I love the story of Dimitri Tiomkin, the Russian who became Hollywood’s master of writing music for American westerns, and how the immortal song, “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,” came to be, and how there were dueling versions on the radio at the same time by Tex Ritter and Frankie Laine. Caught in the middle of all this was the Austrian born director, Fred Zinneman, another immigrant who contributed to one of the most definitive American movies of all time.

HIGH NOON the film is one of those unique movies that speaks across the political spectrum, championed by liberals and conservatives alike, becoming one of the most popular films worldwide. It lost the Best Picture Oscar in 1952 to the inferior THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, in no small part because of its connections to accused Communists, but in the hearts of Americans, and movie lovers in every foreign land, including those once ruled by Communists, it is even more beloved today than at the time of its release. There is something in this story of a frightened, but still brave, man, who shoulders the indignity of betrayal, and walks alone down a street to meet his fate, comforted only by the knowledge that he has done the right thing. Glenn Frankel’s book does this great movie justice, and tells us how it came to be. It is a must read for any movie lover.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv

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My review of AVENGERS: ENDGAME.

If AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is the MCU’s EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, then ENDGAME is more than their RETURN OF THE JEDI, for it is one of the most emotionally satisfying payoffs in movie history, one that is truly bittersweet in the best way possible. We knew that there would be a final reckoning with Thanos if his “Snapture” was to be reversed, and this showdown would surely require sacrifice, that if there was to be a happy ending for anybody, it would likely not be a happy ending for everybody. That said, when the credits rolled after nearly three hours, and all the heroes and villains fates had been revealed, it was not sadness that I felt, but gratitude for a job well done, and a story well told.

ENDGAME is not a repeat of its predecessor, it does not race from one great epic set piece battle to another, instead its focus, at least in the first two hours, is on the surviving characters, and how they grapple with their failure to stop the Mad Tyrant from wiping out half of all living creatures in the universe, and their inability to move on from this loss. The movie is not afraid to confront this grief head on, and really let these characters that we have come to know so well, drive the story. But when the time comes for a big action throw down, ENDGAME delivers.

Anybody who has watched the trailers knows that Scott Laing and the Quantum Zone figure prominently in the plan to undo Thanos’s carnage; it does involve time travel, but it does not take the standard comic book and movie trope of going back and changing the past in order to change the present, a refreshing change. What has been done cannot be erased, but through some deft maneuvering, it can be reversed. So what we get is both a time travel movie and a heist film, where Captain America, Tony Stark, a worse for the wear Thor, and the rest of the surviving Avengers go back to significant points in previous MCU films and surreptitiously lift the all powerful Infinity stones from right under the noses of their former selves. Of course no plan goes smoothly, there are complications that require improvising, and along the way, Thanos and his many minions become wise to what is happening, setting his own counter plan in motion, and putting everyone on a collision course. Robert Redford, Tilda Swinton, John Slattery, and Frank Grillo all make pertinent cameos in roles we saw them play in earlier films, and a fateful glimpse Steve Rogers gets of Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter proves to be pivotal for his character, same for an encounter Tony Stark has with his father in the past. One of the joys of this movie is seeing how seamlessly the plot uses what has come before to build a final resolution.

It is the character arcs of the two great heavy hitters, Captain America and Iron Man, that are at the center of ENDGAME; Steve Rogers and Tony Stark have come a long way during the course of MCU, and we have come to understand that they are truly brothers, part of a family whose common bond is an unbreakable desire to do the right thing, to use the enormous power they have been endowed with to protect their fellow men no matter what the cost to themselves, to take any blow from any foe, to rise again, and again, no matter how many times they are knocked down, and find a way to win. The decision to cast Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. in these parts was the equivalent of picking Sean Connery to play Bond.

But there is so much more to ENDGAME than just Cap and Iron Man. There is Professor Hulk; Korg on the couch playing video games; the many ages of Scott Laing; finding out that Doctor Strange was right; “Hail Hydra” and that winking nod to one of the most polarizing comic book story lines of the past decade; how Gamora and Loki get back into the MCU; seeing the Ebony Maw again; the image of The Hulk holding up a mountain of debris on his back just like he did in that issue of Secret Wars from the 80’s; and Thor meeting his deceased mother in Asgard. Then there is Hawkeye and The Black Widow on Morag, where one of them will have to make the ultimate sacrifice, for me, this is the most emotional scene in the movie beside the final battle. This might be the best work Jeremy Renner and Scarlet Johansson have ever done. And of course, that final battle itself is everything I could have wanted, where there are heartfelt reunions and heart breaking farewells.

There is no post credit scene, which to me was a little disappointing, but it’s probably the right move, as it puts a period on this phase of the MCU, and underscores that we will never again see all of these actors in these roles together in one film. But if there is no hint at what is to come, there is more than enough left on the table, personally I cannot wait for the next GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY with Thor as part of the crew; Chris Hemsworth has proven himself to be amazingly, and surprisingly, funny in the part. Maybe they could finally tackle the Secret Wars story line or the Korvac Saga; after the recent merger with Fox, there is the likelihood that we will see the X-Men brought into the MCU proper. The story possibilities are endless, personally, I’d like to see somebody adapt The Young Avengers, and bring the group into the 21st Century.

So thank you to Kevin Feige, and the Russo Brothers, for pulling it all off, for giving us an epic that will resonate for years to come; and thank you as well to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and all the rest who came together back in the day to create a world of super heroes who were as human as the readers who bought their books. This adult who was once a kid who couldn’t get enough of Marvel comics is forever in awe of what all of you have done. “And I... am... Iron Man.”

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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My thoughts on Shazam!

This lifelong comic book fan must admit, I was never a big fan of the original Captain Marvel, or Shazam, as he has become known; until recently, I have always been a diehard Marvel Comics guy, and I long considered that other Captain Marvel to be a corny character from a long gone era, one whom DC Comics kept trying to breathe life into repeatedly ever since they bought the rights to him in the early 70’s. To me, this square stiff couldn’t hold a candle to Spider-Man and the members of the Fantastic Four; at best it was a comic book for little kids. But times do change, today, I find myself buying more DC titles than Marvel, and the Rebirth version of Shazam managed to draw my interest, and as someone who tries never to miss a live action comic book movie, there was no way I was going not see the live action SHAZAM!

And when it comes to these live action adaptations, I always feel they succeed or fail on the question of whether the film makers understood what made the comic book work, and what drew readers to it in the first place, and kept them there. If they were able to understand this core premise, and get it up there on the screen, then the movie worked; if not, then the results were often not pretty – see Ang Lee and what he did to The Hulk. Happily, the film version of Shazam, directed by David F. Sandberg succeeds mightily in this aspect, giving us an action filled, very funny super hero take on BIG, filled with a lot of heart. And like the recent AQUAMAN, it is blessedly free of the grimness and angst that plagued Warner Brothers recent attempts to bring Batman and Superman to the screen. Shazam was the original teen hero, the story of young Billy Batson, a 14 year old homeless kid, who because of a good deed, proves himself to be worthy in the eyes of an ancient wizard to receive great powers, and transform into an adult super hero. The hook of the story has always been that it is about a kid in an adult body, an adult body with super strength, super speed and the ability to fly among other things. As with the premise, the story all but writes itself.

The movie moves easily through the three act arc, starting with introductions, origins and exposition, then moving on to confrontations and a final resolution. We meet Billy, a kid on the street looking for the mother who abandoned him, once in a new foster home; he comes to the aid a disabled foster brother being picked on by bullies, this prompting the ancient wizard to choose him as a successor. Billy really is a good kid, who might do some questionable things for good reasons, while Thaddeus Sivana, the Big Bad of the story, is selfish and bitter, failing his test when he has the chance to inherit the Wizard’s power, instead being tempted by the Seven Deadly Sins, imprisoned demons who promise him much if he releases them. I give the film makers credit for introducing Sivana’s back story first, giving us the set up for the hero, while giving the villain a believable motive, something too many other super hero movies fail to do. The heart of the movie are the scenes between the transformed Billy, and his foster brother, the crippled Freddy Freeman, as they try to figure out his powers, and exploit them for personal gain as only two 14 year old boys can. There is plenty of comedy as Billy tries to buy beer and get into a Gentleman’s Club using his adult alter ego. This goes to the appeal of the story, and for that matter, the comic book character – the empowerment of teenagers, a time in your life when you are expected to act like an adult, but have absolutely none of the freedom, or power, that comes with it. And they get the right mixture of comedy with darkness; the Seven Deadly Sins are represented as nasty monsters in league with Sivana, a cruel man with no redeeming features, perfectly okay with hurting children.

The other key feature they get right is the casting. Zachary Levi is physically spot on as the transformed Billy – the guy can pull off heroic and comic with ease – but Asher Angel makes it all work as the teenage Billy. Together, these two actors play one character in two different bodies and do it seamlessly. And in Jack Dylan Grazer’s Freddy Freeman, they have a great partner to play off in some of the movie’s best scenes, which unlike some other super hero films, depend on a lot on dialogue. As with the Bond movies, if they get the villain right, half the battle is done and nobody could have played Sivana better than Mark Strong, there really is something about casting a Brit in these kinds of parts. All praise to the young actors they hired to play Billy and Freddy’s extended foster family, and not making them snarky and annoying as so many films do with young characters today. There is a deep supporting cast filled with familiar faces: Djimon Hounsou, Adam Brody, Cooper Andrews, D.J. Cotrona, John Glover, and Ross Butler. Hounsou is becoming something of a go to guy for comic book movies after appearing in this, along with AQUAMAN, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and CAPTAIN MARVEL (the other company’s hero). Brody, Butler, and Cotrona are great choices to play the super powered versions of Billy’s foster siblings, especially Brody as the alter ego of Grazer’s Freddy. The biggest laugh out loud moment in the movie comes when Shazam asks his brothers and sisters to grasp the magical staff that confers power and say his name.

At more than two hours, the film is a tad long, but the fast pacing helps, it also helps that the screenplay manages to avoid the exposition traps that sometimes sink any fantasy project – Billy grabs the Wizard’s staff, says “Shazam” and becomes a super hero – just like that, and while this may seem on the thin side when it comes to super hero origin stories, its simplicity is its strength. The CGI looks like CGI, for good or for bad, but I don’t find it a problem when the movie is not totally dependent on CGI to sell it. Then again, you got to love a movie that plays The Ramones’ “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” over the end credits.

Many have commented that SHAZAM bears way more than passing resemblance to Penny Marshall’s BIG, and there is a great shout out to the latter movie in the film, but Shazam is one of the original archtypes of comics: the teen super hero, predating both Superboy and Spider-Man, and his influence has been significant, as the small teen transformed into a muscle bound hero trope clearly influenced Hanna-Barbera’s Saturday morning creations, YOUNG SAMSON and SINBAD JR. And they in turn were direct forbearers of HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. So it is nice to see the OG finally get his place in the sun in the 21st Century.

Of course, this being a super hero movie, there are credit sequences, and SHAZAM is no exception, as we are introduced to another one of his classic villains, setting up a sequel that hopefully lead to a show down with Black Adam, who might be played by Duane Johnson. Then there is a certain other heavy hitter from the DC movie universe who makes a brief appearance of a sort.

So with AQUAMAN and now SHAZAM, DC and Warner Brothers is clearly on a winning streak, maybe there is hope the cinematic versions of Batman and Superman yet.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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Sex and violence and the Teen Dystopia: Quarantine Two: The Saints.

I make no secret that though I am many years past the target demographic; I have a great fondness for certain teen dystopias such as Michael Grant’s GONE series, and the QUARANTINE series by Lex Thomas. I have finished with the former’s original books, and having read and reviewed the first QUARANTINE novel some time back, I have finally gotten around to reading the second book, subtitled THE SAINTS.

The first QUARANTINE book did a very good job of setting the table for the series, as an entire student body of a suburban Colorado High School is infected with a deadly virus that kills anyone who has passed puberty – the government seals the school off from the rest of the world to contain the outbreak, with snipers shooting any kid carrying the virus who tries to escape. Inside McKinley High, it quickly becomes LORD OF THE FLIES, as various cliques form into gangs that war with each other for scarce resources; naturally, the jocks and pretty girls come out on top and make life hell for everyone else – it’s basically high school on steroids with the kids in charge. The first book followed two brothers, David and Will, and the girl both of them have feelings for, Lucy, as they try to survive in this hell on earth. The first book ended with David narrowly escaping McKinley when he began showing symptoms that the virus is about become active inside him.

The second book follows Will and Lucy, who attempt to go on with life without David, but without his older brother to lead them, Will cannot keep his gang together, and he and Lucy go their separate ways, even though they are clearly attracted to each other. For a moment, it looks like the kids are going to escape their prison, but it turns out to be a fake out, but this allows for the introduction of a new gang from the outside, The Saints, made up of kids from a nearby private academy, led by an unstable charmer named Gates. These newcomers shake things up, disturbing the status quo, and managing to blackmail a group of parents, who have taken over managing the school from the military, into providing things like liquor, video games, and other luxuries. Will becomes best buds with Gates, while Lucy undergoes a harrowing initiation into an all female gang called The Sluts. But things take a turn, and Will and Lucy are fleeing for their lives by the last chapters.

One thing every reviewer of this book has mentioned is the sex and gory violence that pops up regularly in the story, much more so than the first book, which was not shy about it to start with. I have the feeling that an editor told the authors to “take it up a notch” to make the story stand out in an increasingly competitive market filled with YA teen dystopias. There is also a lot of hard profanity, which used to be verboten in teen books, but times have changed. There is attempted prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, outright sadism, some pretty graphic sex scenes, and some animal cruelty. All things that teens would indulge in if left on their own – at least in popular dystopian fiction. None of this bothers me, but parents should be warned that this is not a series for sensitive younger kids.

In Will and Lucy, the authors have created protagonists we care about and root for; we worry for them when they make poor choices, and we are happy when they have a moment of intimate pleasure. But the standout character in this volume is Gates, who is something of a YA trope – the troubled kid from the private academy. Gates is the guy who shakes things up, who brings the party with him wherever he goes, the guy who is always fun to be around, at least at first, before the darkness inside him begins to come out. Then there is the dethroned jock, Sam, and his former best girl, Hilary (who has an interesting quirk), both of them mean and loathsome, yet the authors make us feel for them at some point in the story. And though this book is an installment in a series, it does have an arc that plays out to completion, and one that left me satisfied. There was no treading water the way some series books do while making the reader wait for the finale.

All in all, I think I liked QUARANTINE BOOK TWO: THE SAINTS better than the first book, it’s a quick read and the pace never lags, and though the POV changes often, I never got confused as to who’s eyes the story was being told through at any given moment. But I do note that this book came out six years ago now, and I do wonder if it’s sometimes frank and brutal sexuality might draw condemnation in a changing era of hyper criticism, where “activists” daily point their fingers online and seek to dictate to the rest of us what will be permissible in the popular culture. Oh well, QUARANTINE BOOK TWO: THE SAINTS left me wanting to read more, so as far as the duo known as Lex Thomas is concerned, mission accomplished.

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My thoughts on Season Nine of The Walking Dead.

Last summer, after the less than satisfying Season Eight and the subsequent announcement that series lead Andrew Lincoln would be leaving in the middle of the next season, most of us were ready to give up on THE WALKING DEAD and pronounce the show done. Another seeming nail in the coffin came when longtime regular Lauren Cohan announced that she would be leaving as well, taking a role in a series on ABC. Viewer disenchantment with the whole franchise ran deep, especially after some big changes on the companion show, FEAR THE WALKING DEAD (still miss you Madison and Nick), and the online community of fans were openly saying it was time for this once beloved franchise to shamble off into the distance like an aimless Walker. Too many big (and unnecessary) character deaths, too many bottle episodes, to many strung out plot lines (talking about All Out War), along with a general sense that that the series just wasn’t going anywhere but in a circle (most blamed Executive Producer Scott Gimple) had taken their toll. So, it was with an equal dose of duty and apprehension that most of us diehard fans tuned into Season Nine, and prepared for the worst.

Turned out we were wrong, for new Executive Producer, Angela Kang, was able to breathe new life into TWD, and right the boat on a listing franchise. And she did it by returning the show back to its horror film roots (as opposed to Season Eight, which often felt like an action movie), and dramatically picking up the pace, cramming twice the story telling into these 16 episodes than the two previous seasons combined. By the time it got to the final episode, “The Storm,” the events of the first half of the season, now felt like years ago; which is literally true, as Season Nine employed two major time jumps, leaving no room for bottle episodes, or plodding character studies. Indeed, Rick’s final episode, the 5th one of the season, entitled “What Comes After,” could have stood on its own as a season ender, same for the mid-season finale, “Evolution,” which introduced The Whisperers, the Big Bads of this season, and another big reason why Season Nine was so good.

If there was a theme to Season Nine, it was necessity of community and cooperation, and the dangers that arise when the ties that bind them together fray. This made clear in the five Rick Grimes episodes at the beginning of the season, which picked up the story a year after Negan’s defeat, when Rick’s efforts to keep the peace with former enemies did not set well with some of his closest friends (Maggie and Darryl) who felt Negan got off too easy and that the surviving Saviors could not be trusted. It turns out that peace can be hell too, and it all came to a head when Rick literally had to blow up the bridge he’d built to stop a Walker heard, and sacrifice himself. But that was not the end of it, for Rick’s ultimate fate rested with Jadis (Anne to her new friends) of the former Junkyard Kids, and a big reveal concerning that mysterious helicopter we’d been seeing off and on all the way back to Season One. So Andrew Lincoln goes off to make Walking Dead movies, while the folks back in Virginia believe him dead. There’s a time jump of several years, some new characters are introduced, and meet a very young gun toting Judith Grimes, out on her own in the Zombie Apocalypse.

In this new post Rick TWD, we learn that relations between Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom have deteriorated severely; former friends are no longer speaking, while Negan’s old stomping ground, the Sanctuary has gone by the wayside. A festival has been proposed in an attempt to bring everyone back together, so there is hope that old differences can be overcome; the Walkers are still out there, but they seem to be nothing more than a bother now, but out behind those Walkers, is a new enemy, one as bad, as or worse than anything anyone has seen before. The Whisperers wear the skins of the Dead, and pass among them, and they are not to be messed with, as Jesus is the first to learn. It all comes to a head, literally, in the penultimate episode of Season Nine, “The Calm Before,” when The Whisperers leader, Alpha, proves just how ruthless she can be, and how deadly is her wrath at losing her daughter to the Hilltop, when a bunch of heads go up on stakes while everyone is enjoying the festival. It was one the great horrific moments of the comic book series, and the TV show did it justice, even if they switched out some of the victims.

The season’s final episode, “The Storm,” dealt with the aftermath of those beheadings, as The Kingdom faced a final collapse, and the survivors having to make a forced march to the Hilltop, right through territory claimed by The Whisperers. This episode marked a series first in that it was set deep in winter, allowing the cast to be menaced not just by Walkers, but by a howling Siberian style blizzard descending upon the American South (this is a stretch). This forces everyone to the limits of their endurance one more time, as Carol and Ezekiel’s grief over the fate of Henry ends their relationship, while Lydia, who blames herself for Henry’s fate, contemplates suicide by Walker (a shout out to comic book Carol’s fate), and Negan throws himself into the worst of the storm to save Judith, thus setting up a possible redemption arc for him. This episode was basically a of clearing the table, and setting things in place for Season Ten, but I felt let down by the final bit with the ham radio, I fully expected a recognizable voice to heard before the fade to black. But that snowball fight was a nice touch, and a good place to leave these characters at the end of the season.

To me, the best change they made this year, was to go back and reclaim the horror film vibe the series had in its early seasons, and this was helped immensely by the arrival of The Whisperers, people who have completely gone over to this new world, and now skin Walkers, wearing their faces, traveling among the herds and controlling them. Those scenes in the cemetery in “Evolution,” along with Eugene and Darryl’s futile attempt to outrun and elude a herd were among the best stuff the show has ever done. The casting was key, and this case, nobody could have played Alpha, better than Samantha Morton (loved her in MINORITY REPORT), making it clear in a flashback episode that she was not a nice person even before the world went to hell. Even better is Ryan Hurst as Beta, Alpha’s hulking right hand man, a monster to be feared; you really worry for Darryl when the two of them square off in “Chokepoint.” I do have some minor quibbles, like the quick sacking of Henry, who was supposed to be Carl 2.0, but then again, it’s hard to believe that Carol could have raised up such a dumb kid (some bad writing there). Why didn’t they just keep Carl and recast him in the time jump. And I just don’t get the Gabriel/Rosita/Siddig triangle at all. And just a guest appearance is way too little for Rutina Wesley, but at least we did get a Michonne and Tara Thornton meeting – sort of. Still, it was nice to see Brett Butler again, briefly.

The big question is where does this revitalized TWD go from here, with The Whisperer War set to begin. Danai Guria has announced she is leaving, which creates a problem, as this show is getting low on the kind of bad ass characters that have been its heart since the beginning. Does this mean we will get a full redemption for Negan? Jeffrey Dean Morgan can more than handle the bad ass part, and if they do, I can’t wait for him and The Whisperers to come face to face.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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I came for the Skrulls

I made a conscious decision not to read or listen to any reviews prior to my seeing CAPTAIN MARVEL, the latest origin story from the MCU; this was done out of a desire to avoid even a hint of spoilers, and to avoid being poisoned by the contentious fandom that has surrounded the roll out of Marvel’s latest super hero. And I must say, going in cold certainly added to my enjoyment, and made me appreciate the film so much better. Based on a character created by Jim Starlin back in the Marvel comics of the 70’s, this film centered on the gender swapped modern incarnation that dates from the 90’s, and though I must admit that I never have been a reader of Mar-Vell in the past, this character, a Kree warrior come to earth, has a big following, making her a natural for the MCU. Her entry was assured in the post credits scene of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, where a desperate Nick Fury sends a distress signal in the wake of Thanos’s devastating finger snap; a glimpse of the emblem that adorns her costume told us who Fury was reaching out to seconds before he disintegrated.

This film, directed by indie film makers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, is both tying up a loose end, and a bridge to the upcoming sequel, AVENGERS: ENDGAME. The two things that I liked about it right off the bat was the pacing of the story, which moved a along at a decent clip, and that it didn’t bog itself down with scenes filled with clunky expeditionary dialogue, something the otherwise excellent AQUAMAN was guilty of more than once. The protagonist here is Vers, a Kree Warrior who fights the Skrulls, a shape shifting race who have been in a long war with the Kree. But Vers is more than she seems to be, and is having troubling flashbacks and bad dreams filled shards of a half remembered life. Her team of warriors is ambushed by the Skrulls on a border planet, and she is captured and escapes, afterward, Vers crashes on earth in the mid 90’s (by plunging through the roof a Blockbuster), with her Skrull captors right behind. This sets off a series of chases, more captures, and more escapes, more chases, as Vers hooks up with a younger version of Nick Fury along the way. It turns out that Vers is way more than she appears, it turns out that she once was Carol Danvers (a long time secondary Marvel character), a young Air Force pilot who was believed lost in a crash years before. It is revealed how she came to not only be a Kree warrior, but possibly, one of the most powerful brings in the whole Marvel universe. As it turns out, the enemy turns out not quite to be the villains they first appeared to be either, while an ally turns out to be a hidden enemy after all.

If some of the action scenes are a tad bit perfunctory, and unnecessarily dark, it is more than made up for in a script that gives us plenty of the humor Marvel superhero films are well known for, for many it is their saving grace. Brie Larson and Samuel Jackson, as the title character and the de aged Nick Fury have real chemistry, and I give the film makers points for not weighing down the story by giving her a needless love interest. Larson is perfectly fine as Carol Danvers, though I don’t think she slips into the role as easily as Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans or Scarlett Johansson filled the parts of Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow. But the supporting cast shines, Jackson is in fine form as Fury, but Clark Gregg is back as Agent Coulson, equally de aged. The best performance in the film is from Ben Mendelshon as Talos, the leader of the Skrulls, at first we think he is going to be another under developed Marvel villain, (see any stand alone Thor movie), but the film takes a turn at the half way point and reveals that Talos has very valid reasons for doing what does. Mendelshon has to do lot of acting underneath some unrecognizable makeup, but he is another one of those British actors who can do marvelous things with his voice alone. Jude Law is Vers commanding officer, and Lee Pace returns as Ronan the Accuser. Stan Lee has a wonderful final cameo, one that will surely make fans smile.

But like all Marvel fans, I do have nits to pick, starting with how the Kree leader, the Supreme Intelligence, is presented; I so wish they would have gone with the comic books version instead of giving us a hologram of Annette Bening. And how are they going to handle a character like Captain Marvel, who has Superman levels of power, in ENDGAME; the MCU is at its best when it presents flawed heroes who have to find a way to punch above their weight, as it is, Captain Marvel could just show up and snap Thanos’s neck, and what would the fun be in that. This would be a good time to go back to the comics and introduce Rick Jones to the MCU (after having him MIA from the Hulk films), and borrow a few pages from that epic Kree-Skrull war story that involved Rick, Mar-Vell and the Negative Zone. It would work. And who would have thought the Skrulls would have fared better on the big screen than the Fantastic Four, after the former were introduced in FF #2 all those years ago.

As for a political agenda, which this film has been accused of having, I must say that there is little evidence of it in what I saw, unless you are offended at the sight of a young girl repeatedly getting knocked down and having to get back up. There are a couple of scenes that can be construed as taking shots at “toxic masculinity,” and a vague critique of war mongers and their self perpetuating conflicts, but if you want to ignore it, no problem. What has been harder to ignore is the “toxic fandom” that has surrounded the film, as angry feminists and misogynists projected their own agendas onto it.

There are two post credit scenes, the first of which gets us that much closer to ENDGAME without revealing too much, while the second gives us a good laugh while revealing the whereabouts of a particular McGuffin which might prove to be important.

It all comes together in AVENGERS: ENDGAME, and after that, then what? Now that we've become acquainted with the Kree, how about giving us a movie featuring Noh-Varr, last seen in the Young Avengers comic a few years back. So many possibilities, but I know I want to see a movie with the Fantastic Four, finally done right on the big screen, facing off against their old enemies The Skrulls, and maybe see that Skrull world based on old Earth gangster movies that appeared in Fantastic Four issues #90 to #93. That would be my wish.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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Once upon a time, Sergio Leone made movies.

Sometimes we don’t appreciate a movie the way it deserves the first time we view it. That is case for me with Sergio Leone’s gangster masterpiece, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, a film I was introduced to on network TV a few years after it had a disastrous run in the theaters; that theatrical version had been badly edited and truncated by Warner Brothers after Leone had delivered a cut running more than four hours. The version I saw on TV had many scenes restored, but the non linear way the story unfolded, along with Leone’s very deliberate pace with storytelling simply did not work with commercial breaks every ten minutes, not to mention the editing of content to fit network standards. As far as I was concerned, the energy and verve of THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST seemed to be missing from what should have been sure thing; this was Sergio Leone, and he was making a movie about American gangsters, how could it miss? As far as I was concerned, he had, but then I listened to podcasts extolling the glories of a film that many cinephiles consider the greatest gangster movie ever made, so I forked over the money for the two disc Blu Ray set, and saw with new eyes Sergio Leone’s final masterpiece, and his parting gift to millions of film lovers.

Based on a novel by Hershel Goldberg, Jewish gangster who later went under the name of Harry Grey, Leone adapted the book into an epic that stretches from the New York City at the dawn of Prohibition to 1968, and follows a set of characters through their rise in the American underworld at the beginnings of organized crime to a final reckoning decades later. It is a story of love, friendship, ambition, loss, regret, and the price that the passage of time exacts. At the center of it all is Noodles Aaronson and Max Bercovicz, boys who, along with their immediate circle of friends, find a way out of the poverty of the streets by working for the gangster syndicates who really rule the streets. They learn early the power of violence, the necessity to be utterly ruthless, and to enjoy the riches that come their way. Though Noodles and Max have a bond stronger than most brothers, they are not alike; Noodles is ultimately content to be nothing more than a street gangster, making a living from bootlegging and petty crime, while Max sees beyond the streets and Prohibition, and to the possibilities of merging organized crime with organized labor and big business. Noodles wants nothing to do with it, and this becomes the dynamic that drives the story, a friendship broken by betrayal, but betrayal by whom? Things, and events, are not as they first appear.

That Leone does not tell this tale in a linear fashion can be off putting to some, and this becomes a problem in the first half hour, when the action switches from the early '30s to 1968 in a single quick cut, this plus the fact that we are dropped into the story right in the middle as a group of gunmen hunt down Noodles in a saloon and an opium den in order to get payback for turning some unknown persons into the police – we don’t know yet who has been sold out. This certainly can give many viewers a sense of whiplash, as the narrative switches gears with no warning. Leone does this again multiple times, and what might be one director’s brilliance, can easily be a fan’s annoyance. One has to get with the rhythm of the film, but it is well worth the effort. For me, the movie rights itself when the action shifts to the early '20s, and we get a long, uninterrupted sequence where we learn how Noodles, Max and the rest of their gang came together on the streets of New York. Not only is the recreation of '20s NYC in detail a masterful piece of movie making, but the young actors, especially Scott Shutzman Tiler and Rusty Jacobs as Noodles and Max respectively, are so winning and expressive, and their story so compelling, that I would have been perfectly satisfied with a whole movie just centered on them. This part of the film is filled with iconic images, such as the truly beautiful young Jennifer Connelly, as Deborah, practicing ballet in the back room while Noodles watches through a peep hole, or the whole gang (flush with illegally earned money) in their best new suits walking across the street with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background – this is some of the finest film making Leone ever did, and among the finest anyone would ever do.

Leone assembled a truly magnificent cast, starting with Robert De Niro and James Woods as his lead characters. Watching this film now is to be reminded of the greatness of the young De Niro before the actor’s mannerisms became so familiar and parodied, sometimes by De Niro himself. Nobody could say more without dialog than him – the glance, the shrug, the wary eyes – and Leone took full advantage of De Niro’s talents to create in Noodles a man who often never said what he was thinking, but whom you always knew where he stood. Max might be James Woods’ best performance, a crafty, fast talking street smart guy with ambitions he keeps well hidden until the time is right. Both De Niro and Woods have many great scenes together, but their final confrontation, is for me, the best, where Noodles takes his revenge, only it’s not the revenge Max wants and expects, a perfect example of subverting expectations and going someplace better. And this is the one Leone movie where multiple women play prominent parts in the story, starting with Elisabeth McGovern as the older Deborah, the love of Noodles’ life and the woman he could not win. Then there is Tuesday Weld’s Carol, a masochistic dame who knows how to maneuver her way around in the gangster’s world. In the course of the story, both of these women are raped in graphic scenes that might be upsetting to some, and surely no film maker today would present them in such a way, but I think they are in there because Leone wanted to make it plain that Noodles, Max, and the rest, were not nice guys no matter how much we might come to empathize with them, to let us know that these are men who will take what they want. Burt Young, Joe Pesci, Treat Williams, and Richard Bright appear also in small parts that fit them like gloves. The towering Mario Braga, who was in Leone’s westerns, has a small part. A scene with Louise Fletcher as the administrator of a cemetery was cut and then restored on the Blu Ray. Only Leone could come up with the sequence with Danny Aiello as a corrupt police chief who is brought into line by the gang through his newborn son, it’s like nothing you will see in any other movie, the kind of unique touch that I loved about Leone’s films. And I will say, this is one movie where they got the aging makeup just right, something other films screw up more times than not – see James Dean in GIANT.

And what would any Sergio Leone movie be without Ennio Morricone’s music, the man who made the themes from THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST play endlessly in our heads. Morricone’s music is as much a character in the film as anyone played by an actor. Who else would use Zamfir’s pan flute invoke the NYC streets of the distant past, while the other themes Morricone uses underlines the sadness and the longing of Noodles, both in his prime, and then in later years. Morricone and Leone were one of the great collaborations in the history of cinema, and I love the former’s music here as much as any of the work he did for Leone’s westerns.

Of course, the true star of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA is Sergio Leone himself, his hand is plain in every scene; every line of dialogue bares his stamp. I am sure a lot of fans expected his gangster epic to be The Man With No Name with a Tommy Gun, but that is not the case, for this is a very personal film, one suffused with love for an idealized America, one that meant something to a young Italian growing up under Mussolini. So much about this movie is unique, like nothing to be found in any other gangster epic. The way Leone frames his shots, the deliberate pace with which the story unfolds, the period detail, the editing, the close ups and the jump cuts, the haunting use of an instrumental version of The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” all come together to make a near perfect whole. There is much that is unstated, much that the audience has to fill in for themselves, such as Noodles’ life between the early 30’s and 1968, or the scenes that linger, the ones that let some business play out and tell a story within a story all their own, like when the very young Brian Bloom can’t help himself and eats the sweet on the stair steps he has bought for a whore while waiting to trade it for sex. I think Leone did not intend for his gangster film to be taken as historically accurate the same way his westerns could never be. Noodles and Max, and all the rest, are larger than life, they may be rooted in history the same way Blondie, Angel Eyes, Tuco, Frank, Cheyenne, Harmonica and Jill McBain are, but like his western characters, Leone’s gangsters, and all who inhabit their world, are really myths like Hercules and Jason and his Argonauts, ones that live apart from the world of mere mortals.

This movie was Leone’s labor of love, one he spent more than 15 years getting to the screen; reportedly, he turned down THE GODFATHER because he wanted to make his own gangster epic. Why did Leone’s film fail? Sadly, I think he waited too long, if ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA had opened in 1976, I think it would have found an audience, been a hit, and might have snagged its director an Oscar nomination. Instead it opened in the summer of 1984, a week after INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM came out, and a week before GREMLINS hit theaters. There was no way 80’s movie goers were going to sit still for a gangster epic in this style, and though Leone’s name might have been iconic, he hadn’t had a box office hit in America since 1968, when THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY opened. He was no longer relevant or contemporary. The failure of a movie he had put so much into, and devoted so much time into getting made, took its toll; he died much too soon five years later.

In the end, Leone said farewell with the enigmatic ending of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: the mystery of the garbage truck, the tail lights fading into the dark, and the emergence from it of the old cars filled with happy revelers celebrating the end of prohibition to the strains of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” before they are swallowed up again by the darkness like a receding memory. Then there is the final flashback to the younger Noodles in the opium den, with its implication that it has all been nothing more than a dope fueled dream. But I reject that, I think that final image of De Niro, with a blissful smile on his face, is really the smile of Sergio Leone, the smile of a man who has seen his wildest dreams come true.

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Screaming for Pleasure: a review

Sometimes the only thing more disdained than horror films, is horror film fans. If, like me, you have been one for life, then you know what I am talking about, the roll of the eyes, the dismissive groan, the “I hate those movies” retort when you mention that THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE SHINING are among your favorite films, and God help you when you say you’ve got the DVDs and have watched them dozens of times, that automatically makes you fit company for psycho killers. But the great consolation to all that withering scorn is other horror fans, and the joy that comes from meeting someone who shares your passions, someone who has suffered the derision of those who refuse to get it, and who understands why we love to be scared in the most wonderful way possible again and again. S.A. Bradley, to paraphrase the classic film FREAKS, is “one of us,” and his book, SCREAMING FOR PLEASURE, is a love letter to the misunderstood genre we revere so much, but more than that, a full throttled defense of horror films, music and books, and the people who are drawn to these works of art.

I have been a fan of Scott Bradley’s podcast, Hellbent for Horror, for several years now, and this book is a good companion to the show, where he discusses the many aspects of the genre, and what it is about them that speaks to us so strongly. It is also a deeply personal book, as Scott details how a passion for horror films and books helped him through a less than ideal childhood, and some rough patches as an adult, and along the way gained a deep understanding of why horror connected with him, and more importantly, how it helped him cope with life. Scott also has a keen eye for why the genre has endured, how a film like THE EXORCIST spoke to the anxieties of the 1970’s, or how the 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD commented on the response to 9/11. He also does not waste time defending the un-defendable, such as the endless rip offs of HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH that glutted the slasher subgenre in the 80’s. He gives due deference to George Romero, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, and David Cronenberg, discussing their innovative works in detail, showing how they were onto something at a time when most other film makers had blinders on. There is a chapter devoted to the “Satanic Panic” of the 70’s and 80’s, when the likes of Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Black Sabbath horrified parents and teachers everywhere, and as someone who is not a fan of Metal music, I found this chapter most enlightening. Scott makes the case that horror is alive and well in the 21st Century, and shows how it has changed with the times, appealing to a new audience, now with the help of women directors who often bring a unique perspective to the horror films they make.

The book is easy to read, there is no section that is not on point, or a view not coherently explained in plain language. Though many films are discussed in detail, Scott does not give away any spoilers, even to classics that have been out for decades, he clearly wants the uninitiated to seek them out for themselves and find out what he means. Both the podcast and this book have given me more than a few titles that have prompted a Netflix search, and I am certain more than one reader of SCREAMING FOR PLEASURE will do the same. I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER and THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE are but two horror masterpieces I probably would never have seen if Scott Bradley had not put me on to them first. The book is also filled with more than one great anecdote, but I think my favorite is Scott’s account of being taken by his father to see Carpenter’s remake of THE THING in 1982, and why the excursion did not turn out as expected. I loved his take on Jordan Peele’s GET OUT, and why it is a much better film about race relations in America than Kathryn Bigelow’s heavy handed drama DETROIT, while making the point that it is perfectly okay to enjoy the former as a straight up horror film and forget about the social commentary. Personally, I think GET OUT was overrated as both, and that is the kind of discussion SCREAMING FOR PLEASURE is trying to provoke.

So rejoice horror fans, read SCREAMING FOR PLEASURE and go online and find Hellbent for Horror, you will be right at home.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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