Allen’s Brain Movie Night Suggestions

The weekend's coming. Will you be standing in line to pay exorbitant prices to watch Hollywood's latest proof of mediocrity? Perhaps you'll opt to stay home and rent something.

May I make some suggestions for weekend double features? Fire up your Netflix or locate your nearest B-Movie geek...

“Inspired By”
As you might expect, these feature a lesser-known feature that inspired their more-famous counterparts -- the second feature.

- “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” -and- “Gojira” (a.k.a. Godzilla, King of Monsters, but if you can manage the subtitles, the original Japanese version is a superior film. Really.)
Nuclear tests awake extinct monsters who then ravage major metropolises. "Beast" is beautifully stop-motion animated by Ray Harryhausen; Gojira is a guy in a rubber suit. Both are worth watching.

- “It! The Terror From Beyond Space” -and- “Alien”
Long before Sigourney Weaver evaded and outsmarted the Alien species that smuggled itself onto her ship, another outer space creep got aboard a spacecraft and had to be creatively eliminated. This time, in 1958.
Both are kinda scary and virtually impossible to kill. However, there is a disappointing dearth of women in scanty undies in "It!"

- “Earth vs The Flying Saucers” -and- “Independence Day”
The first film is another featuring Harryhausen effects. The spinning saucer-crafts (and the method of defeat) were imitated in Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks." Both films have just enough admixtures of real and bogus science to make them fun, but the invaders in EvTFS aren't likely to scare your youngest kids -- though I found the stop-motion creatures' lack of facial features to be slightly unsettling.
Maybe you want to watch "Mars Attacks" for a third feature. Warning: Extreme Tom Jones!

- “Bride of the Gorilla” and “The Wolf Man.”
These two don’t seem that close, but “Bride” is what Curt Siodmak originally wanted to do with “Wolf Man.” I hate say anything more, lest I give the plot of Bride away. It features Raymond Burr, if that helps steer you.

- “The Clonus Horror” and “The Island” (2005)
See the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Clonus, if you like. Both are scifi stories about people being cloned for parts.

- “Son of Frankenstein” -and- “Young Frankenstein”
This last pair isn’t really fair, since YF is more of a parody, but they really should be seen together to see just how funny Kenneth Mars doing Lionel Atwill’s Inspector Krogh is! Plus, check out “The Bride of Frankenstein” for the brilliant hermit scene!

So, there you are: a few "inspired by" suggestions. I suppose I could have added Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" and George Lucas' "Star Wars" -- both good flicks -- but they're not that similar. Or any of the Western remakes of Kurosawa's samurai films: Seven Samurai & Magnificent Seven; Yojimbo & Fistful of Dollars, etc., but those are remakes.

What would your suggested "Inspired By" features be?

Things I Learned or Thought About While Watching THEM!

Getting back to my SciFi/B-Movie roots (as an atomically-enhanced brain in a jar is wont to do) with this post.

For 1950s giant atomic monster movie fun, you can scarcely go wrong with THEM!  12-foot ants, people! Some of the best mechanical effects seen in the era.  Creepy atmosphere.  And plot turns:

"We killed 'em all!"
"Nope, some were hiding!"

"Now we have them all!"
"Nope, some migrated and started a new colony elsewhere--but where?"

"NOW we have destroyed all of them!"
"Yes, but what about the OTHER nuclear test sites?"

Not to mention, the BEST creepy monster sound EVER!
Like most of these films, there's the requisite cautionary lesson about nuclear power, but it's not particularly heavy-handed.

SO ANYWAY. . .

Here are some Things I Learned or Thought About While Watching THEM!


"Aw, wouldn't ya know it! Just get sat down for a picnic, and here come the ants!"

- Entomologists can recognize insects by their tracks.

- Giant mutant ants sound like frogs.



Special effects secret: Those are regular-sized ants
with a REALLY tiny helicopter flying past!

 - Famous and brilliant myrmecologists sometimes make up Bible quotations.

We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true. "And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth."

- Ants are just plain evil!

- Giant ants like granulated sugar, but not sugar cubes.



"Merv, I thought you said no one was gonna find out about us!
What am I gonna tell Sidney?"

 - Apparently, “Killed him a b’ar when he was only three,” does not qualify you to hunt gigantic ants. Keep Davy Crockett locked away in the booby hatch!
(Yup, this movie has everything! Davy Crockett, Matt Dillon, and Santa Claus [Fess Parker, James Arness, and Edmund Gwynne] -- AND giant ants!)

- The U.S. Army has a position known as “Sergeant In Charge of the Booze.” If more people knew this, there’d be no more need for recruiting.

- Gigantic Mutant ants can take multiple machine gun bullets to the head at close range and survive quite a lot of fire before they succumb, but they're virtually powerless with damaged antennae.


AND, THEM! is educational! You get to learn words like "Myrmecologist" and "stridulation." Who needs an ant farm when there's some lovely footage from what looks like a classroom film about ants, as well as dialogue from the scientists in the movie explaining all sorts of things about typical ant behavior?


Go watch THEM! Allen's Brain commands it!

Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?

March, 1935, Cover by Howard V. Brown

Invasion of the Bacon People!

Coming soon to breakfast plates around the globe!

"We have found the cosmic egg! Breakfast is almost complete!"

Don't waffle, or they'll toast you!

Earth has one hope: His name is Humpty Dumpty!
*****

Go ahead: caption away!

Allen's Brain reviews "The Black Scorpion"

Okay, so not a review, so much. I just watched this for the first time the other night. It really was pretty decent, special-effects-wise.

Let's see... Mexico. A volcanic eruption releases giant scorpions from their subterranean habitat to destroy villages and eat people and livestock. Can Amercian Richard Denning and Mexican professor Carlos Rivas save the lovely Mara Corday, (veteran of other B-movies, like Tarantula) and her ranch, and Mexico City from gigantic black scorpions? Can you tazer a scorpion to death?

It's 1957, and the giant stop-motion scorpions are by Willis O'Brien, who did the original King Kong. Boy, can they skitter swiftly and move convincingly! And when they strike, I cringed a little. It was pretty unnerving for the time. And for fans of the classic King Kong, one of the creatures from the famously missing spider pit sequence appears in a subterranean scene in Black Scorpion!

Sure, the close-up shots of the monsters' faces are goofy, with their pupilled eyes and drooling giant mandibles flanking a mouth full of saw-tooth teeth (much like the poster art)! Sure, you can read "Lionel" on the side of the train that the scorpion wrecks! Sure, the science is bad! (A live scorpion crawling around inside a bubble in a hunk of obsidian?)

My biggest question is why they decided to go with "Black Scorpion," instead of "Giant Scorpion."

I'd watch this again. Of course, I like old stop-motion flicks. O'Brien and Harryhausen were brilliant.
Keep in mind, I also like giant bug movies, like "THEM!" "Tarantula" and "The Deadly Mantis," or pretty much any other "giant thing (probably atomic in nature) attacks civilization" movies.

"The Brain That Wouldn't Die" Comic

Just for the record, not all of us Brains-in-jars are related, but there's something about this one that I'm simply mad about! Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-HAAAAAAaaaaaa!

Of course, it's 1954, so he can't expect cable or dish, but still--rabbit ears!

THE HORRORS OF IT ALL: The Brain That Wouldn't Die: Not to be confused with the cult classic B-film from 1962 of the same name, today's tale from the January 1954 issue of Web of Evil #10 makes a gloriously revolting mess of science as only pre-code horror knew how.

This classic, pre-code horror comic has a great twist ending!

It doesn't exist, but it should!

Completing Conan

I picked up Conan the Barbarian on the cheap* at Barnes & Noble some time last year as a Christmas gift to my brother-in-law, who likes fantasy and sci-fi. Later on, I couldn't resist picking up a copy for myself. I'd never read any of the Conan stories, nor seen any of the movies. However, it seemed that if they were still being published, they might be worth the read. They are, by the way.

Here's the edition I picked up, published by Metro Books.

There were nine short stories/novellas, and I began to think that perhaps looking into full-length Conan novels by Robert Howard--the original author--would be a worthwhile idea. I consulted Wikipedia (please spare me your judgment) and discovered that the cover blurbs had been a bit misleading. (If you've not yet read the footnote, now would be a good time.) The collection I had purchased only contained some of Howard's Conan tales--the last nine, I believe.

Anyway, if you found yourself in the same predicament, my suggestion is to pick up this one: The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. (Del Rey)

True, there is some overlap (two, maybe three stories,) but it contains the earlier stories you missed--and gives the orginal titles and "Weird Tales" publication dates.
_____
*Well, just under $10, anyway, which seemed like a great deal for "The original, unabridged adventures" of "the original Conan epics."

You know you're a geek, when...

The news anchor says,

"We now turn to the nation's looming debt crisis,"

And your ears perk up, because you thought they said,

"We now turn to the nation's living dead crisis."

Allen's Brain meets Chthulu!

Well, not quite...

I went to a book signing last night for local author Bruce Brown's graphic novel Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom. Bruce is a very cool guy, and was willing to chat and sign books, even though the signing wasn't supposed to start for another 20 minutes or so. Not only that, but his middle name is my first name, his first name is my old college roommate's name, and his last name is the color of my true love's hair. (Robert Burns?)

Without giving too much away, imagine H.P. Lovecraft as a precocious six-year-old. Now, imagine that he receives the fabled Necronomicon as a Christmas present from his father--an inmate at an asylum due to a nervous breakdown. Now, imagine that he begins to read the weird eldritch text, and it opens a portal to R'lyeh. Non-Lovecraft fans are probably already lost. Now, imagine that it's really fun--and often funny--and appropriate reading for young and old. That's this story.

  Bruce definitely did his homework. Apparently, the real H.P. Lovecraft was a child prodigy, quoting poetry at 2, and composing it at 6. And his father did have a nervous breakdown. That certainly explains a few things about his fiction! Then, there are enough references in the story to Lovecraft-y things, places and characters (I almost said people, but I'm not sure the Deep Ones count) to delight well-read Mythos fans, but not so much that the uninitiated is lost and adrift in a swirling miasma of ancient and long-forgotten personified evils wearing smelly gym socks on their thousand-tentacled frames.

If you're a geek like me, and want to introduce the Great Young Ones in your life (I'm guessing about age 8 would be the lower-end of the spectrum) to Lovecraftiana-lite, this'd be the way to go. And it's a rollicking good read, even if you have no desire to become one of those octopus-wearing sci-fi weirdos who delight in lengthy discussions of just what the elder sign looks like.

Oh, and I have it from the Bruce's mouth, that there's already a sequel waiting... patiently... crouching in the shadows for eons-untold... awaiting the moment when enough books are sold to warrant the release of another.

Perspectives in Interplanetary Evangelism, Pt 3

What are visitors to your church looking for?

Some seek fellowship and community, so a church with lots of social outings would suit them well. Be sure to invite such folks to your ice cream social

and annual barbecue cookout.

Of course, if they are vegetarians and/or PETA members, this might be a bad idea.

Some visitors are seeking an exciting, rave-style worship experience.

Others are looking for a church with a strong emphasis on evangelism.

Still others want a church with a powerful social conscience and lots of political activism.

Persepctives in Interplanetary Evangelism, Pt 2

What image does your church project to outsiders?

Do you have parking problems? Not enough space? Perhaps an awkward-shaped lot or an insufficient number of parking attendants? This may drive away nervous first-timers.

Insects seem to invade even the best-kept buildings. Does your church building have a pest problem?

For many, comfort is of optimum importance to the worship experience. Is your building too warm in the winter months? Is your air conditioner freezing out people in the summer?

Finally, what about the members of your congregation? Are they pleasant and outgoing? Do they welcome new people to your service? Oftentimes, visitors craving community are just looking for a friendly face.

Next time, part 3 in our series: What are visitors seeking at my church?

Perspectives on Interplanetary Evangelism, Pt 1

Are you ready for your summer visitors? They're coming to your church. Is the congregation ready to welcome them?

Deep within himself/herself, your visitor longs for a beautiful paradise of perfect relationship with his/her Creator.

Hopefully, they'll be seeking the answers to their inner questions at your church!

Are you short on visitors? Perhaps your outreach program to unreached neighborhood leaves something to be desired.
*****

Next time: What image does your church project to summer visitors?

*****

Images from old "Mars Attacks" bubblegum cards.