THE DRIVE INS ARE OPEN!

THE DRIVE INS ARE OPEN!!! Oh Thank Ghod I thought this winter would never end!!! Check the links on the right for details and lets cue up the Official Drive In Theme Music...

Massachusetts Uber Alles

Oh Massachusetts, how I love you. When the klaxons go off and shit is going down you never ever flinch. The Earth may open beneath our feet, a river of fire may rise to consume us all, furies will scream down from the Heavens Above, but you will abide by your duty unto The Last. From The Bronx to The Pacific, they heap scorn on us, but you don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks of the Commonwealth, not in Good Times Nor in Catastrophe. Not once in this last endless testing week did anyone self recriminate or second guess or chicken out and when the bombs went off the citizenry of this Commonwealth literally rode to the Sound of the Guns En Masse. You are Proud and Vain Massachusetts, but you will go down fighting long long after everyone else has quit. Massachusetts, you are indomitable. The Other Forty Nine have "lifestyles" and "Attitudes", But Massachusetts has Principles,oft mocked for them, now for a little while will deserved credit be reaped. Inscrutable Providence has tested us and we were not found lacking....I know that reads awfully bombastic but that is how I feel. When it is my turn, bury me anywhere, from the Berkshires to Provincetown, bury me beneath a toxic waste site in Brockton if it comes to that, but Bury Me in the Commonwealth...The Home of the Brave.

Happy Anniversary Superman...

Seventy Five Years Ago Today (or so) Action Comics #1 starring Superman was published at once establishing a whole new publishing industry the American Comics and putting super heroes on the metaphoric map in one swell foop. I freely admit I've always been a "Superman Person", he is the promised of swift incorruptible retribution for wrongdoing, his origin is simple which makes him the perfect adventure character, infinitely malleable and yet somehow "mystically the same" to borrow a phrase from Orwell. Ah but in the midst of triumph there is always the savage thread of catastrophe, Superman's creator's Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster got cheated out of their copyright and pretty much ended up penniless while their character went on rack up a quarter of a billion dollars in profits over a generation or so. Defrauding Siegel and Shuster pretty much set a ruthless exploitive benchmark for the comic book industry that persists and overshadows all and sundry to this day. Ah but Kal El, he is a game changer he took four or five disparate tropes and fused them all into something new and different, would to God I had even one creative notion half so bold and pure. Happy Seventy Fifth Big Guy!

I don't know Paula Soto from a cord of wood

But I wish her lawsuit against the City of Cambridge all the best. Soto runs a film series even smaller and more obscure than Channel Zero (IF that is possible) and she seeks to overturn a dubious city statute seeking to prevent the leafleting of automobiles. As a co-curator of Channel Zero with eighteen years of leafleting behind me, I can well attest to the endless difficulties when it comes to "getting the word out" about a small screening in a town with a chilly snobbish attitude towards fringe artistic events. The main and most heartbreaking battle is always about putting meat in the seats, any tiny advantage however ludicrous is not to be overlooked. And please spare me the windy diatribes about "protecting private property"...where the hell is all this love for the sanctity of My Car when it gets festooned with home cleaner adverts and gym leaflets at the Alewife Station MBTA Garage every week??

Pick of the Week:

I make fun of the Brattle Theater, but any local movie house that is willing to project The Giant Claw (1957) on the biii-ig screen deserves respect. And it's on a double bill with Ray Harryhausen's "Earth Versus The Flying Saucers" (which was remade in 1996 as "The Truth About Cats and Dogs") all justified because the director of both films, Fred Sears was a local boy.

Channel Zero in 1996....

What does the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square and Channel Zero both have in common? A thing for amazon crimefighters apparently. This weekend, in a bid for "psychotronic street cred" The Brattle Theatre actually screening "Wonder Woman" the nigh forgotten super heroine TV pilot from 1974 starring Cathy Lee Crosby as the DC comics super hero. Details may be seen hyar. Let the record show that back when our feckless little film & video series was an irreverent adolescent hanging around the Liberty Cafe in Central Square in the era of VHS, we screened some "Wonder Woman" material as well...of course Channel Zero dug down deep and came up with the infamous 1967 Ellie Wood Walker Wonder Woman TV pilot (in reality a seven minute promo reel)that quite literally has to be seen to be believed. So the Brattle is only now catching up to ideas we had seventeen years ago deploying content we ourselves likely turned down in our quest to reach the absolute pinnacle of worthwhile obscurity. Ah but that is snarkage, I actually hope the Brattle does well with this one, maybe it'll spark a trend towards reviving some other TV-movie titles from the era "The Love War", "The Pueblo Incident" or maybe even infamous "Iron Man" ripoff "Exoman". :D Or you could just wait for Channel Zero to get around to them... :D KIDDING KIDDING KIDDING, I KID BECAUSE I LOVE! Anyway I never begrudge when one of the major venues starts working our side of the street, after all they've got the marketing muscle to make a bigger splash with an obscure title...I just like to tease em' a little thass all.

R.I.P. Roger Ebert....

Roger Ebert is dead. I'll miss him. What I always liked about him was he was a sort of "passionate analyst" of the movies, he could generate credible reasons to champion the directing career of everyone from John Waters to John Ford. He could stand his ground and rarely if ever changed his mind about his own opinions today's punditariat scrounging their last meager pittance from the dino-media, could learn a thing or two from Ebert. His was an important voice, he deserved that Pulitzer believe me. What I won't miss is the self serving wails of self pity arising from his surviving film critic brethren all of whom will insist that film criticism is dead, because the paying opportunities therein have vanished along with Newsweek Magazine, The Boston Phoenix and the Saturday Evening Post. This is akin to a gaggle of philosophers insisting that "philosophy is dead" because no one is willing to pay philosophers for their big thoughts. People need to get a grip quite frankly. Ah but Roger Ebert as a young man he did inspire me, anyone with a high opinion of "Inframan", "Massacre at Central High" and the capacity to write a screenplay as demented as "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" is an official Demigod of the Channel Zero Pantheon.

Elegy for a Phoenix...

It seems crazy, but The Boston Phoenix has abruptly shut down and scattered it's staff to the winds sans severance. Sad. And a serious blow to arts, culture and investigative journalism here in the Boston are, perhaps, dare I say it? a mortal blow. By way of full disclosure let me add that my first published by-line in Boston was a co-written article on vampire movies for The Boston Phoenix in 1991. My long suffering collaborator and I snarked it up for 650 words divided a small sum between us and were off on an improbable adventure as local freelance film writers...we had a good run in part because The Phoenix gave us a good solid shove in the right direction. It is a publication that was vitally necessary and exactly what if anything will replace it cannot be predicted with confidence. In the past twenty years or so, I've had a rueful front row seat on the decline and fall of paper-driven news media in Boston. Hell I started this obscure little blog in 2004 specifically as an outlet for my own admittedly marginal arts writing as a response to the obliteration of the local freelance market. It has been a process that has worked from the "outside in", relentlessly snuffing marginal paper-publications (exp "The Boston Comic News") until at least the inner ring has been penetrated and The Phoenix has gone for the terminal dirt nap. Of course the internet made all this happen, but then the internet is a thing that is viewed, it is not really read at least not in depth...and it is the act of reading that is enduring strength of all the dailies and weeklies out there, even the blustery old Boston Herald. Moreover a host of able reporters and reviewers have all been put out on the streets at a time when their skills have never ever been more needed but the cash value of those skills has never been lower. I'm gonna miss the Phoenix, it was always a good harbinger when Channel Zero could rate a positive mention in those paper pages. Boston's arts scene comes in for too little coverage as it is, the Phoenix always tried to dig down a little deeper than say The Globe (whose idea of cutting edge seems to stop at the "goings on" at the A.R.T.). This is bad news all around for anyone trying to do anything new and different in da Hub. Moreover trimmers and porch-climbers on Beacon Hill and elsewhere sleep a little sounder tonight without The Phoenix looking over their shoulders. That mah frenz is "change", and at the moment it is a Bad Thing at least until we can collectively harness it and set it to work in service of a better agenda.

Pick of the Week...

Hands down the King Hu retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive. Haven't seen the like since the MFA was screening serious Hong Kong Action cinema back in the late 1990's. Hu is one of those rare directors with the innate gift for revitalizing tumbledown genres, he did for Chinese Medieval Swordfighting movies what John Ford did for the American Western. In other words made it something dramatic, some adult driven without sacrificing the visceral pleasures raw physical conflict. Some of his work is a bit of slog, but keep in mind this is the filmography that single handedly educated Tsui Hark, John Woo and many many other Chinese Film-makers desperate to upgrade the national cinema. So this is a rare opportunity, don't miss it, hell if it proves successful maybe the HFA will revisit Hong Kong down the line and start educating some American Film-makers.

The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester Ma

(allegedly the only museum in North America dedicated solely to armor and weaponry) is closing as of December 2013. The Worcester Art Museum is taking over the Higgins' Collection...Although it has been alleged by certain parties that the WAM is taking title to only 250 pieces out of a total inventory of two thousand. The balance of the Higgins' Collection is allegedly going to be auctioned off by Sotheby's, certain high dollar value items have supposedly turned up in catalogues and the closure of the Museum was only formally announced as of Friday 3/8/2013. Who profits from this almighty sell off of museum quality weaponry and armor? What of the Higgins Museum's Endowment? Where is that going? By the way, the Higgins' Endowment is allegedly larger than the available endowment of the Worcester Art Museum.... Maybe I'm all stupid like, I am certainly not any species of "citizen journalist" but an allegedly insolvent specialty museum in Worcester is sudddenly gonna become a veritable cataract of cash, I'd like to know where that money is going thats all. Someone please, prove my suspicions wrong, feel free to patronize me, I'm all ears.

"Ideology is Destiny"

Never moreso than in a "scientifically socialist" Marxist-Leninist State. The purpose of ideology in such nations is threefold, depict to the masses the coming communist eschaton of peace & plenty, explain in Marxist Leninist terms just why said ideology does not "rule the world" and act as a cost effective means of controlling the masses (see Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda" for more on that aspect). autarchy, the promulgation of a completely internally self sufficient economy exerts a powerful fascination for Totalitarian Nation States of all ideological brands. At various times dictators as diverse as Juan Peron, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler Mao ZeDong and Fidel Castro have all made autarchy the central focus of their respective regimes. Autarchy is potentially inflationary and can be ruinously wasteful of public/private resources, tyrants tend to opt for it for strategic military reasons & out of the naive' belief that they can bend the economy to their will they way they have dominated the world of ideas and gotten a stranglehold on mass opinion. Joseph Stalin invented all this virtually single handedly, after a long ruinous civil war in Russia, the death of Lenin, another long ideological civil war with Leon Trotsky and slow realization that the USSR was internationally isolated to a dangerous degree....Stalin proclaimed "Socialism in One Country". Ironically, he stole the idea from his hated rival Leon Trotsky. "Socialism in One Country" literally meant that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was now hell bent to create overnight the very industrial working in whose name the party allegedly ruled! "Socialism in One Country" was bumptious, wasteful and based entirely on the genocidal expropriation of peasantry. But as pure ideology it was a slam-dunk, it lavishly illustrated the coming socialist utopia, neatly explained while "the international balance of forces" did not yet favor said utopia and kept the helots in line...And what the hell, Stalin died in bed while most of the above listed tyrants and dictators swung by their heels in end. This was a fact not lost on the Kim Clan, the Ruling Family in Marxist Leninist North Korea, whose proclaimed doctrine of "Juche" (literally "self reliance") mixes Confucianism and Stalinism in a heady brew that asserts a motivated Marxist North Korean can do anything! In short it is autarchy designed to keep the usual suspects safely in control of the nation, no more no less. Lash the masses on to dig marginally uneconomic iron mines under appalling conditions, because that is North Korea asserting control over it's own Marxist Leninist Destiny! Like I said, heady stuff. So it is will some mirth that Channel Zeroscreen Jim Finn's 2010 mockumentary "The Juche Idea" this Friday Night at 8pm in the micro cinema of the Somerville Theater. Mixing together eye-popping archival footage with deadpan re-enactments, Finn has created a complex docu-fiction that is equally thought-provoking & entertaining. In "The Juche Idea", a sympathetic South Korean filmmaker visits a North Korean artists' colony to bring Juche ideas into the 21st century. She ends up producing hilariously stilted shorts, including a nonsensical sci-fi story and the enigmatic "Dentures of Imperialism." "The Juche Idea" is both sardonic satire and historical excavation, an exuberant collage that reveals the absurdity at the heart of Kim-Jong-il's regime. Friday March 8th at 8pm (Sharp!) The Somerville Theatre, Micro-Cinema 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617 625 5700 In Korea and Bulgarian, Subtitled in English Admission $7.50 "Steeped in the obsolete language of revolutionary art, Mr. Finn's meticulous, deadpan mockumentaries often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe..." —Dennis Lim, THE NEW YORK TIMES Tell yer friends, we are at it again!

Good Lord but Seth MacFarlane is a hack in extremis

punching ineffectually waaa-ay above his weight on the Oscars Telecast last night. I'd a paid Sally Field $10,000.00 of my hard earned money to beat on Seth's no talent ass with a baseball bat like a pinata during a "Flying Nun" sketch early in the broadcast. Ah but nothing quite saves the Oscars from irrelevancy and derision quite like a Nazi Gag derived from "The Sound of Music", a Broadway Musical that is fifty years old....sheer comic genius at work. For that fact I'd a paid Bruce Vilanch $15,000 to waddle out on stage and quietly hand MacFarlane a pink slip and a cab voacher.

Hope everyone got a good night's rest last night....

Because after last night's Waterloo-esque debacle on the Oscar's telecast, now today begins the long twilight struggle to repair William Shatner's Reputation. I suggest an evening of readings from Shakespeare at the A.R.T. with some suitable patter to bridge the varied soliloquys. I'd pay a hundred bucks to hear William Shatner read "Now is the winter of our discontent" at the A.R.T. Proposed titles "Bill & Will, A Love Story"? "Shat-n-Shake"? The mind reels with the possibilities!

Congrats to Hometown Hero Ben Affleck

his latest picture "Argo" won the Oscar last night. That boyo has completed his resurrection from the ashes of "Gigli", "Daredevil", "Pearl Harbor" etc etc. Now he is gonna hafata work 24-7 to mess it all up again and crash back onto skid row...I suggest he start with some parenting advise from Alicia Silverstone or a lecture on exobiology from John Travolta.

Seth "The Family Guy" MacFarlane...is Hosting the Oscars tomorrow night?

My Ghod but Hollywood is desperate for attention isn't it? And doubling down on that whole "we need younger hipper viewers" meme that lead tinseltown to it's Waterloo in 2011 with James "The Sedated Zombie" Franco and Anne "The Zombie's Waitress" Hathaway as the event's co-hosts. Well these "tentpole television events", the Oscars, the Miss America Contest, The MD Labor Day Telethon, institutions that might've predated broadcast television but certainly reached "operational maturity" under the aegis of TV...all have aging audiences, the networks themselves rapidly becoming antiques. A process like that is historic in scope getting some mediocre cartoonist to host The Oscars can't stop it in any manner shape or form. Yup and when Hollywood is Desperate for Attention (over and above the norm) they make all sorts of bizarre entertaining mistakes...

Channel Zero Returns, Friday March 8th at 8pm Sharp!

With a screening of.... Jim Finn's "The Juche Idea" (2008)  an uproarious and provocative mockumentary deconstruction of North Korean propaganda and philosophy. Mixing together eye-popping archival footage with deadpan re-enactments, Finn has created a complex docu-fiction that is equally thought-provoking and entertaining. Translated as self-reliance, Juche (CHOO-chay) is a hybrid of Confucian and Stalinist thought that Kim Jong-il applied to the entire culture. In "The Juche Idea", a sympathetic South Korean filmmaker visits a North Korean artists' colony to bring Juche ideas into the 21st century. She ends up producing hilariously stilted shorts, including a nonsensical sci-fi story and the enigmatic "Dentures of Imperialism." "The Juche Idea" is both sardonic satire and historical excavation, an exuberant collage that reveals the absurdity at the heart of Kim-Jong-il's regime. Friday March 8th at 8pm (Sharp!) The Somerville Theatre, Micro-Cinema 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617 625 5700 Admission $7.50 In Korean and Bulgarian Subtitled in English

Channel Zero Now in our Seventeenth Year of Genteel Cinematic Transcendence!

The Bird Watcher Takes Flight....

Let the record show that one weekends, when he could get away from his family, my honorable father would tip toe into his room and using a pair of binoculars (this a man who'd be half blind from the age of twenty three) would bird watch for hours on end. He knew nothing about ornithology, he simply found the birds that loafed in our back yard droll and interesting. There may have been something of the "consider the lillies" variety going on, who can say, The Old Boy declined to discuss his hobby with the family. When you are Francis L. Galligan Sr, you have endured much and must therefore find grace wherever it may be found. Because if there was a man in this life who suffered, it was my father. He survived being orphaned, The Battle of the Bulge (St. Vith, the 168th Combat Engineers, his first Purple Heart), the Crossing of the Rhine (second Purple Heart wherein he stopped a shell with his head and lived). He endured forty separate plastic surgical procedure six years of hospitalization, a shoulder separation, partial loss of eyesight & hearing, a round of sepsis and a ruptured ulcer that damn near killed him right before my eyes in 1966. In later years there was anemia, vertigo, skin cancer, a prostate problem, eyesight issues, a god-awful stomach hernia, pesky digestive issues, UTIs dementia (induced by "blunt force impact trauma") and a fractured hip. And at long last, eight days ago, at the age of ninety one, the flu and pneumonia fetched Him off to that final muster, the one place I may no longer stand the honorable watch over him. He finally died for his country, it just took him sixty plus years, ah but that was my Old Man, he always took his time with the Big Challenges. And never once in all that time and in all that pain and suffering did I ever hear him express so much as an iota of self pity, he treated his problems with amused contempt and soon enough his problems learned to fear him. That is the secret of being an old disabled veteran, laugh and make witticisms, it scares Inscrutable Fate shitless. And oh how my father liked to laugh and crack jokes, a mere month ago up at the VA Hospital that was tasked with his care these last three years my mother asked my wheelchair bound father if he needed to use the bathroom in an unctuous syrupy tone. My Father templed his fingers with academic hauteur and muttered "That is an awful personal question dear don't you think..?" The man could have taught timing and dry wit to "Bert and I". Along the way he collected some titles: "All Highest, Son of Destiny, Supreme Leader, Boss of Bosses and King of Heroes", only about half of them were in fact tinged with irony. My boisterous uncles all dummied up when he sat down at the holiday feast, at Robbins Farm in Arlington dogs would cease barking & seek him out for vigorous petting and he could use the word "nomenclature" in a sentence correctly and despite the eye patch he taught me how to drive (wanna learn to drive the Right Way? Get a one-eyed man to teach you). The whole cult of "The Greatest Generation" left him cold "everyone has challenges" Father once muttered in response to it all. He was mild, gentle, peaceful, people looked out for him instinctively, he was patient and kind with one and all. What an Honor to be his son. But alas it is required of old men, that they die, it is a miracle he lived so long, truly if ever a man overthrew destiny, it was Francis Leo Galligan Senior, Last of the Stoics my departed Father. Take Care Boss, you are making a sentimental wreck of me at age fifty.

My Top Ten Movies of 2012

(Frankly I am still shocked that I saw enough movies in 2013 to fill up a Top Ten List...Way to go complicated private life!) 1.) Coriolanus Directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. Ralph will always get props from me for adapting a Shakespeare play for the screen that the late Orson Welles insisted was "Shakespeare's worst play for film treatment". And moreover, he got Gerard Butler out of the action movie ghetto and into a serious part, what more can we ask of any Shakespeare movie? 2.) The Avengers. Stan Lee is a credit stealing hack who loves money the way a hog loves slop. Just needed to establish that...because Joss Whedon did indeed take Stan Lee's superhero franchise and did something seemingly impossible, he pulled off a great multiple super hero team up. That and he got Mark Ruffalo off the rom com circuit...hell Ruffalo is best Incredible Hulk since....Bill Bixby. For better or worse this is will be the Gold Standard Superhero movie they will all be riffing off of for the next twenty years. Remember this when it comes time for Superman and Batman to team up in the movies. 3.) The Dictator Normally I can't stand Sacha Ben Cohen's act, mostly because it is predicated on persecuting the unsuspecting in comical ways...but give him a script and a character to play lo Cohen can really step up. Kudos to his sentimentally unsentimental ending as well. 4.) Moonrise Kingdom Best movie I saw all year hands down, Wes Anderson is a genius, Harvey Keitel in a Boy Scout Uniform and a walrus moustache is worth the price of admission alone. 5.) Hit and Run There are some old genres I will always linger over, we thought the car-chase movie had gone the way of Burt Reynolds' hairline...but no thank Ghod Dax Sheperd and Kristen Bell and co-director David Palmer believed enough in this project loopy gearheadeness and all to invest their own money!. And anyway, one willing to drag Tom Arnold out of obscurity and dress him up as a gay US Marshal is ace's high in my books! 6.) Bachelorette Y'know, Kirsten Dunst is funny because she realizes when she has to throw her beauty and poise onto the comic bonfire. The rest of the cast, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Lizzy Caplan have to squeak thru by being merely excellent in every way. Besides we are long past due for a purely distaff response to the berserker antics of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill...and these ladies threw down with aplomb. 7.) Seven Psychopaths Another scene stealing triumph from Woody Harrelson who shines here in every way when he isn't being upstaged of course by Christopher Walken. Yeah I know Colin Farrell is in this thing somewheres as well. 8.) The Queen of Versailles Cautionary tale on what happens when David Siegel a real estate mogul and GOP fundraiser builds a bloated super mansion to dwarf Hearst's own ode to Gigantism, San Simeon, only to have the economy crash as the tile is being laid...How will his willfully optimistic trophy wife Jacqueline ever adapt? I could be a Chevy Chase comedy or a bad sitcom starring Mark Harmon, but no...did I mention this is a documentary? 9.) Flight Denzel Washington has been in some bad movies, but he rarely if every turns in a bad performance. So it's all the more pleasurable when he gets a script worthy of his talents. 10.) Lincoln I was skeptical of Daniel Day Lewis as the Great Emancipator, but this guy IS LINCOLN...the midwestern drawl, the clumsy grace the weird charisma of the man and even the tendency towards prolonged anecdote it is all there in once package. This is another film that'll be the measure of future Lincoln based projects going forward.

Children of a Lesser Tarzan...

As prior mentioned, 2012 marks the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Creation of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. As far as his film career goes, Tarzan's topmost avatar has always been Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic Swimming Champ who took the Ape Man to Glory and Big Box Office back in the 1930's and 40's. Thus Weissmuller is in a rare cinematic category along with Sean Connery as 007 and Chris Reeve as Kal El, consistently everyone's favorite version of their respective characters. Johnny's appeal was simple, he was first Tarzan explicitly marketed to women on the basis of his good looks and simpleminded relationship with Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane. Whatever problems purists may have with the scripts and Tarzan's pidgin english or progeny "Boy"...The approach stands the test of time as the iconic Tarzan interpretation. So far as Tarzan is concerned literally the race is to come in second behind Weissmuller. For me three actors come into contention:

Jock Mahoney The great problem of Mahoney's brief two film reign as Tarzan back in the early 1960's is that he came to the part a decade too late, being almost forty two when he was cast in what is my favorite color Tarzan movie "Tarzan goes to India" (1963). Forty two or not, Mahoney is a lean, quick, slightly feral Tarzan who is trying to save a herd of Indian elephants from a dam project that threatens to flood their home. Its a simple movie and Mahoney plays it with a lot of heart as a very human sort of a Jungle Lord. This is also the first Tarzan film to push Lord Greystoke into the role of "International Adventurer" all in color and shot on location as well.

Ya gotta love Mike Henry last of the original All-Up Color Movie Tarzans, a pro football player turned actor, he reputedly refuses to this day to sell his autograph to fans at nostalgia shows despite the fact that his association with the Tarzan franchise could net him a nice annuity. Nope Mike has wonky sort of integrity and he is in the weirdest of the 1960's adaptations of the character "Tarzan and the City of Gold" (1966) which takes Lord Greystoke from International Adventurer to outright Secret Agent as the Jungle Lord must thwart a coup plot in Mexico! 007 needs a souped up Astin Martin & a Walther PPK, Tarzan gets by with a Bowie knife and some arrows. And anyway, look at Mike Henry's physique...the man is literally a Renaissance statuary come to life! His muscles had muscles! Mike is no scenery chewer, none of the post Weismuller Jungle Lords ever were, but when he goes prowling thru the underbrush, he looks at home like he is the Apex Predator of legend.

Gordon Scott, who must have been a yard across at the shoulders in his prime, can credibly claim to be the Man Who Saved the Tarzan Franchise. Initially cast as the successor to Lex Barker Scott limped thru a few cheerless black and white jungle features complete with pidgin English until Producers Sy Weintraub & Sol Lesser got their hooks into the series shot them in color made lavish use of location work and set Gordon Scott free to speak in proper syntax. The result was a box office bonanza, the films started doing huge business overseas with Scott as the most massive, seemingly unstoppable Tarzan of all...Hell in "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" he throws down with 007 Sean Connery(in a rare villainous role) and wins... All the above mentioned films are available for purchase thru the Warner Brothers Archives, either on Blue Ray or DVD.

FAB R.I.P.

Late word comes to us of the death of British TV Producer, Gerry Anderson creative spirit behind such classic kidvid series as "Stingray", "The Thunderbirds" and that SF-noir for the Elementary School crowd, "Captain Scarlet". I will remember him primary as a technical innovator of the first rank, if the public wanted puppet shows from him then he made sure that the puppets he was using were technological marvels of the first rank. Anderson was smart, maybe not the best writer in the world (this became apparent when he made the leap to human actors in the 1970's) but he reinvested in his own product and tried to do better with each succeeding series. Like The Beatles, he figured out early on that $uccess depended on penetrating the American market, to this end he made sure to leaven his British produced product with some American voices (chiefly US actors Shane Rimmer and Ed Bishop) as his shows became less comical, more adventuresome and violent.

Like William Shatner and Jonathan Harris, Anderson's various characters, the stolid Thunderbirds crew or the pre-liberated Lady Penelope, or the semi suicidal Captain Scarlet, all form veritable pillars in a pre-Star Wars science fiction driven childhood. In point of fact, the whole of the special effects industry in Great Britain has its origin with Gerry Anderson's many supermarionation series, dozens of creatives who worked with Gerry and his talented then-wife Sylvia all went on to work on almost all the major SF films of the 1970s. Truly there is no Star Wars without "Joe 90". Alas though, supermarionation eventually maxed out (ten years of research and still Anderson could make his puppets walk realistically) and Anderson tried his hand at producing an all up live action "Star Trek" style franchise "Space 1999" there some of his creative limitations revealed themselves... But to the end of his life he remained invested in the latest technology, a decade ago he was executive producing a remake of "Captain Scarlet" using CGI animation and at last the immortal Captain could walk right! Anderson must have been relieved....