David Lee Summers's Blog, page 22

Monster Rally

This time of year, I love to pull out the classic monster films of Universal Studios or Hammer Films. Okay, truth be told, I love to pull those films out any time of year, but the run-up to Halloween seems an especially apt time for a good scary movie. Among my favorite Universal Monster films are House of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf-Man, which allowed their iconic monsters to meet and commit mayhem. These types of films are called Monster Rallies. I recently learned that one of...

Titan A.E.

During my week watching The Pirates of Dark Water, I came across an article that noted how the producer, David Kirschner, went on to produce the motion picture, Titan A.E.. Furthermore, the article noted several character similarities and how Titan A.E. might provide clues for how The Pirates of Dark Water might have ended. This piqued my curiosity and I decided to give Titan A.E. a try.

It’s worth noting that I remember when the movie came out and I decided to give it a pass based on the ...

Vampires of El Norte

One of my favorite classes in high school was United States History. I took it during my junior year from a dynamic teacher named Bryan Burke in San Bernardino. One of the things he brought home was the notion that we owed our homes in Southern California to the fact that the United States invaded Mexico in 1846. It helped me see the United States government and politicians in a more critical light and was one of many ways that particular class helped me become a better citizen. We should never ...

The Pirates of Dark Water

My wife and I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and often watched them even after we were married in 1990. Of course, that was during the period when cable networks were on the rise, and Saturday morning cartoons as we knew them would be mostly gone by the early 2000s. Still, the 1990s produced some interesting animated content. It seemed that as networks competed for viewers, they allowed themselves to experiment a bit more with format and understood their audience wasn’t entirely chil...

Dracula’s Guests

Prompted by a sale over at Big Finish Productions, I discovered an audio drama called “Dracula’s Guests” starring Mark Gatiss as the count. I enjoyed the story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker, which was published after he died by his widow, Florence. It’s believed the story was an early chapter of the novel Dracula, which had been cut prior to publication. This seems borne out by the Icelandic translation of Dracula, which includes elements from “Dracula’s Guest.” The Big Finish production, sta...

Exploring More Strange New Worlds

Over the summer we were treated to the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The series serves as a prequel to the original Star Trek and is set during the period when Christopher Pike commanded the Enterprise. Some characters are younger versions of characters we knew in the original series, while others are characters who had departed the Enterprise before the series began. Like the original Star Trek, Strange New Worlds is told in an episodic format with only a few thematic arcs.

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Interview with the Vampire Revisited

I realized recently that it’s been almost exactly 30 years since I read Anne Rice’s first novel in the Vampire Chronicles. What’s more, I’ve been thinking about it lately in light of my novel Ordeal of the Scarlet Order and the AMC Television series adapting Anne Rice’s novel. So, I decided to dive in and give Interview with the Vampire a fresh read.

As noted in several interviews I’ve read and seen, Anne Rice wrote her novel soon after the untimely death of her daughter. I recall an inter...

Oppenheimer, Lomanitz, and Me

Josh Zuckerman as Rossi Lomanitz in the film Oppenheimer

Last month, my family and I saw Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, which told the story of how J. Robert Oppenheimer came to build the atomic bomb, then fell out of favor with certain people in the United States Government. Overall, I enjoyed the film and I was particularly delighted to see the film’s portrayal of Rossi Lomanitz, one of Oppenheimer’s students. In an early scene, soon after Oppenheimer took a job at U.C. Berkeley he a...

Collecting Strays

When I read Bloodshot by Cherie Priest last year, I knew I would move on and read its sequel, Hellbent. These novels tell the story of a vampire thief named Raylene Pendle who lives in a Seattle warehouse with the stolen loot she’s acquired over the years that has remained unclaimed for one reason or another. Living with her are two human children – a previously homeless brother and sister named Domino and Pepper, who had been squatting in Raylene’s warehouse until she effectively (though not in...

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal

Back in April, the Steampunk Explorer’s Digest featured a nice article about the first Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival in Baltimore, which I was delighted to be part of. That same issue of the digest also included a trailer for a new steampunk series by Genndy Tartakovsky who created Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and the movie Hotel Transylvania. This show would appear during Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block. The new show’s title was Unicorn: Warriors Eternal and I made a mental note to try ...