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It’s Not That Deep – Silliness in Entertainment

It’s Not That Deep – Silliness in Entertainment

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Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I’m here to do something angsty, teenage me would be horrified by – defending “bad” entertainment. You know the ones – bad movies that are just a fun time to sit through, even if the only thing they have going for them is epic fight choreography, pulpy books with lead characters whose names are alliterations, and who rock their way through the pages with naught but their wry grins and cheesy one-liners. Video games that attempt a story, but fall short and yet are still really fun to play by virtue of their mechanics or visuals. All these “bad” movies, books and games, if done right, can actually be just what the doctor ordered.

Sometimes you need RPGs that inexplicably change direction to wallop the bad guys. Sometimes you need heroes with flowing locks and bare chests. Sometimes you need the weirdly gravelly-voiced maniac with a gun fetish who saves the day. Entertainment does not need to be deep. Sometimes, the exact thing it needs to be is silly — “Bad.”

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Terrific Little Noir – After Dark My Sweet

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: A Terrific Little Noir – After Dark My Sweet

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

1990 was quite the year for hardboiled and Noir on the big screen. Pacific Heights (Michael Keaton) came in as the 41st highest grossing movie of the year, with Revenge (based on the novella from the uber-talented James Harrison) was 83rd. Those are both solid Noirs.

At 107th was The Two Jakes – the long-delayed sequel to Chinatown. At 109th was Miami Blues, with Fred Ward as Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely. I’ve read the books several times, but not seen the movie.

The 135th highest grossing movie is probably second only to The Maltese Falcon in the harboiled genre for me. It’s the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing. Starring the tastefully-last named Gabriel Byrne! At 155th is a remake of a Bogart flick, Desperate Hours. Mickey Rourke delivered a pretty good Noir.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I Think (Gat Edition)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Things I Think I Think (Gat Edition)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

I don’t think I’ve done a Ten Things I Think I Think, for A (Black) Gat in the Hand. Huh. I guess we can rectify that today.

As I write this, all 2,000+ books which I own are boxed up. They will be moving to the house I close on later this week. They made up 55 boxes of books. There’s a loft that will be my writing room/home office, with bookcases spread out across a few other rooms.

It’s weird not being able to grab a book to read, or look something up. I feel like I’m in a book version of homelessness. Definitely strange. So, I think:

1 – PHILIP MARLOWE HAS STAR POWER

Philip Marlowe was born in 1939, when Raymond Chandler cobbled together parts from short stories featuring other detectives (I’m not exaggerating, I believe he used he word ‘cannibalized’), and wrote The Big Sleep. Marlowe novels were used for movies starring The Falcon, and Mike Shayne. But the character of Marlowe has compelled some big Hollywood names to play him. Such as Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner, Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum, Powers Boothe, James Caan, and Liam Neeson.

These are heavyweight male stars playing a character often from decades before.  For the most part they’re good, though I definitely like them to varying degrees. Sam Spade, Race Williams, The Continental Op: similar big names in hardboiled fiction don’t have nearly the ongoing screen impact of Philip Marlowe. I ruminated on various Marlowe incarnations here.

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Uh-oh: The Bride!

Uh-oh: The Bride!

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Sue Granquist, Black Gate’s own incomparable Goth Chick, died not quite seven months ago, and the hole she left here is impossible to fill. I don’t know about you, but my Thursdays just haven’t been the same.

Sue’s beat was horror in all of its manifestations (well, maybe not all of them — I never remember her saying anything about politics), and she was especially keen on horror movies and television shows. Next to her husband Terry, the genre was the great love of her life.

Sue was always up to date; the avant-garde held no surprises for her, but she was really passionate about the good old stuff. Karloff and Lugosi, Jekyll and Hyde, the Mummy and the Wolfman, all those late-night or Saturday afternoon, black and white television terrors that begin with the little airplane circling the Universal globe — those classics put her in her happy place, if a fog-shrouded moor or cobwebbed crypt are places that foster happiness. For Sue, they were.

The Goth Chick was especially attentive to any new versions of those old stories and characters; any new Mummy or Dracula or Wolfman movie drew her instant attention, and her attitude was always a finely-balanced blend of hope and skepticism, at once generous and jaded. She was prepared to like anything if it was good, but she always had a torch and pitchfork at hand to storm the castle of the shoddy or slapdash.

Which brings us to the most recent “updating” or “reimagining” of one of the Universal Studios classics, The Bride!, writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaall’s take on the 1935 Boris Karloff-Elsa Lanchester Bride of Frankenstein.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Marvel Goes Noir. And NAILS It!!!

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Marvel Goes Noir. And NAILS It!!!

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”
– Raymond Chandler

Spider-Noir is the best thing to happen to Marvel streaming since…well, Daredevil: Born Again. So yeah, not that long ago. I’ve only watched the first three – of eight – episodes so far. Because this is too good to binge. It should be savored. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I LOVE that it’s an homage to hardboiled Pulp and Noir. Which you might know I blog about once in awhile…

No spoilers here (if I can help it). I just wanna talk about the Noir vibe a bit. I’ll do a full blown post after I watch it all (and when some spoilers will be okay). These folks absolutely know their source material. And I’m talking about Pulp, not Marvel.

A little Spider-Man Noir history first. The character appeared in a short comic book run in 2009, which I had certainly never heard of. But I’m not a comic book guy.

Then, back in 2018, the first of the animated Spider-Verse movies came out, with Miles Morales as the main Spider-Man. In the same scene with Spider-Ham (he still cracks me up), Peter and Miles meet a Nicholas Cage-voiced Spider-Man Noir. He has a few scenes after that.

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Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Three

Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Three

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A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (Troma Entertainment, 1990)

A veritable cornucopia of dodgy barbarian and barbarian-adjacent movies that I have never watched before, and will probably never watch again. Enjoy Parts One and Two here and here.

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990) – USA

I can’t help thinking that this one must have disappointed many a randy teenager when they smuggled it out of the video store, only to learn that ‘nymphoid’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘nymphomaniac,’ and were instead subjected to a good hour of aimless wandering before even a glimpse of prehistoric knockers was on the cards.

This is another quick buck-maker from the Troma crew, who surely saw a return on their meagre investment thanks to the aforementioned teen suckers, but it really doesn’t feel like a Troma flick. There’s no sign of the inventive weirdness or inappropriate humour to be found in the usual Kaufman joint; it’s all replaced by a dull story in which the last woman on Earth after the apocalypse, (Linda Corwin) has to contend with wandering gangs of bestial chads, while trying to avoid larger critters in the form of daft-looking dinosaurs.

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Thundarr the Barbarian: Demon Dogs and Lords of Light

Thundarr the Barbarian: Demon Dogs and Lords of Light

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Thundarr the Barbarian (Ruby-Spears Productions/ABC, October 4, 1980 – October 31, 1981)

Thundarr the Barbarian (21 episodes; 1980-81)

Created by Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck; The Defenders).

The look of the main characters was designed by Alex Toth. After he was unavailable to continue working on the series, Jack “King” Kirby was brought in, at the recommendation of Gerber and Mark Evanier (who would later write a biography of Kirby). Kirby designed the look of most of the villains and supporting characters.

What is it?

What is it?? Lords of Light, it’s awesome, is what it is!

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Mortal Kombat II – A Movie Review

Mortal Kombat II – A Movie Review

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Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

This past Saturday, I headed out with a few of my martial arts students, past and present, to watch the second installment of the recent Mortal Kombat adaptations. I’m not going to lie, the draw for me was the involvement of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage. Cage was never a character I played, but the retired action movie star is a fun idea for this franchise, and I will generally support anything Karl Urban does. Even when it’s bad, he’s great in it. And sometimes when it’s bad, it’s good. Ask me about my love of the 2005 film Doom one day. I never said I had great taste.

The point is, I went and saw the movie, and the short review is, I loved it (see afore mentioned note about my tastes). Let’s dive in!

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Ten Things: Tubi TV Edition

Ten Things: Tubi TV Edition

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So, last week, I talked about ten movies that you can stream for free over on Tubi. I could easily list ten or twenty more. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

I’m also watching TV shows on Tubi. Of course, a multiple season show takes a lot longer to work through, than a single movie. It’s got some cool animated shows, like Pinky and the Brain, The Looney Tunes Show, and The Pirates of Darkwater. I’ll probably do a post like this on just cartoons.

But today we’ll talk about live-action shows. Now, PlutoTV is terrific for TV shows. Entire channels dedicated to Star Trek shows, mysteries, Westerns, etc.. And I’m leaning into RokuTV (also free). But let’s look at ten shows you can catch on Tubi. Some of the biggest hits are there, but I’ll try to focus on some others.

A reminder: I talked here about how I was finally fed up with all the streaming apps I needed to watch stuff. So, except for Prime (the family orders a lot of stuff from Amazon), I cut the chord on all of them. I’m missing Daredevil, and didn’t watch a single Pittsburgh Penguins playoff game (I did listen to all of them). But it’s going fine.

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Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Two

Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Two

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Gor (The Cannon Group, May 9, 1987)

A veritable cornucopia of dodgy barbarian and barbarian-adjacent movies that I have never watched before, and will probably never watch again. Enjoy Part One here.

Gor (1987) – USA/Italy

Another nail in the Cannon coffin lid, this effort to start a franchise based on the uncomfortable series of novels by John Norman spawned one sequel, and then went belly up before things could get worse.

It follows the same basic plot of the books; dull physics prof Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barbarini — dull as a dish cloth) owns a family heirloom macguffin that transports him to the barbaric planet of Gor, where he must right some wrongs and show the locals that human is best — so far, so very Barsoomy.

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