Todd’s Movie Blog

Last Summer’s Super 8, a movie set in the 70’s about a group of kids making a movie with a super 8 film camera that become involved with an escaped alien and government cover up, could have been a story about Donald F Glut (without the alien part of course).  Back in the 60’s he made scads of horror and superhero super 8 films with his friends  that got him such notice that he made some with professional actors like Kenne Duncan and Bob Burns. In adulthood he has gone on to write comic books for Gold Key, authored books on serials, dinosaurs, and horror films, and directed straight to DVD films.

Back in the 70’s he also wrote several PBO horror books.  Frankenstein Lives Again was the first in what was to be a series of books about everyone’s favorite man made creation.  It starts out like a sequel to the original novel with a scientist traveling to the Artic to find the Frankenstein Monster, using the book by Mary Shelly as his guide. After finding him frozen in a block of ice and fighting off a tribe of natives who worship the creature as a  god, the scientist takes him back to Frankenstein’s castle to revive him.

At this point, about halfway into the book, it morphs into a Hammer Film, with the scientist and his buxom, blond assistant reviving the monster, who isn’t too happy about being revived and escapes from the castle, only to come under the hypnotic influence of an ancient magician who uses the Monster to revenge himself on town leaders who have wronged him. The book ends like a Universal Film as the torch bearing villagers (in 1970?) storm the castle while all the principals are fighting on the roof during a lightning storm.

Like many PBO’s from the time, Frankenstein Lives Again is a short and fast paced adventure that includes sevral bloody murders commited by the Monster, a knock down drag out fight between the scientist and the magician’s hulking assistant, and the obligatory ripping open of the heroine’s blouse by the lecherous villain.  A fun night’s reading all around.

One of my greatest heroes back when I was growing up in the seventies was Carl Kolchak, the rumpled, argumenative and perpetual loser who couldn’t cross the street without running into a monster and couldn’t get anyone to believe him.  He went through two tv movies, the first based on a novel by Jeffery Rice, and a short lived TV show before seemingly disappearing.

But like the supernatural creatures he constantly battled, the intrepid investigative reporter couldn’t stay dead.   The movies and show constantly turned up on TV and always garnered good ratings, something that couldn’t be said of the revamped X Files inspired remake that lacked the charm and humor of Darren McGavin’s original portrayal.

The original’s popularity has of course led to short story collections authored by prominant mystery and horror writers, graphic novels and of course the occasional full length novel.  The latest novel to feature everyone’s favorite hard luck hero by C J Henderson is The Black and Evil Truth.

Picking up from Mark Dawadziak’s Grave Secrets from 1994, Kolchak is still in LA working for the Hollywood Dispatch tabloid with, as always.  Tony Vincinzo as his long sufferiing editor and still fueding with perpetual foil prissy Ron Updike.  When a strange murder in West Virginia comes over the AP, the publisher, who can’t stand Kolchak, sends him to investigate just to get him out of the office.

After arriving in the small town Kolchak, for once doesn’t antagonize the police, mostly because they treat him like a real person instead of an unwanted pest and Kolchak reciprocates.  Which allows him to be on hand when a family and their entire livestock are the next victims, and also blows away any hopes Kolchak harbored that for once he wasn’t going to find a monster committing the murders.  After teaming up with a couple of X-File FBI agents, Kolchak uncovers a  conspiracy so vast that it reaches back to Kolchak’s first encounter with a vampire in Vegas and explains why he is always showing up in cities  just when something weird is about to happen.

The book deages Kolchak a bit, keeping him in his mid to late fifties, when by rights he should be in his late eighties, and brings him into the modern world, with him filing stories via internet from a laptop.  There is also a nod to the web community when a conspiracy buff reveals that Kolchak is a hero to conspiracy advocates and is well known around the world from his many mentions on web sites devoted to alien abductions and governemnt coverups.

Though a bit morose, self pitying, and bording on alcoholism from his many professional setbacks, Kolcak still has a lot fire left in him to discover and report the truth.  Its always good to know that Carl Kolchak is still out there taking on impossible odds armed with nothing but a belief in the public’s right to know and some sharply sarcastic onelines.

Growing up in Ohio in the seventies I was a monster movie junkie, and thankfully had access to two different horror movie hosts to feed that obsession.  There were three things I could count on seeing at some point in any given month; a Universal classic from the thirties or forties, an AIP alien invasion or teen monster movie of the fifties, and a Toho or Daiei giant monster movie from the sixties.  I don’t think there is a kid from the seventies who doesn’t hold a soft spot in his heart for the rubber suited Godzilla or Gamera.

One such kid was definitely Brad Warner.  An ex-pat American and die hard kaiju fan living in Tokyo, and fulfilling every kid’s dream, working at Toho.  While working on the show Ultra Seven, he experienced first hand kaiju fanatics going to ridiculous lengths to get a look at an episode that was pulled from circulation due to a, at the time, controversial storyline.

This event is at the heart of his homage to kaiju movies, Death to All Monsters.  Bob Morningstar is an ex pat American and die hard kaiju fan, working at his dream job for Nakajima Productions, home of the giant radioactive lizard Gorezolla.  The only copy of Death to All Monsters, a never seen Gorezolla film, goes missing and suddenly Bob is contending with American gangsters, Chinese spies, and the two biggest Gorezolla fans in the world (who kidnap his girlfriend), all demanding he find the film for them.  Things get even more complicated when Bob is visited in what he believes is a dream by what looks like the alien featured in the missing film and told that Death to All Monsters contains footage taken at the crash site of one of their spaceships during WWII and that any attempt to replicate the engine shown in the footage could blow up the planet.

This is a fun and funny book featuring lots of chases and escapes, as  the hero is either ordered to or forcibly taken around the world from Tokyo, to Hong Kong, to LA, to Calcutta and finally back to Tokyo;  all the while unsure what to do with the film once he gets it.

One of the funniest scenes in the book is when the hero and his boss, Gorezolla director Nakajima, are in LA to look at a new Gorezolla movie being made by an American company and they can’t get the octopus they bought to move once placed on the table top miniture set.  Nakajima steps in, pours liquor down the octopus’ throat and tosses him onto the set, where the animal thrashes around drunkenly for a few minutes.  After the scene is over, Nakajima grabs up the octopus and has the on set caterers cook it for his lunch.

There is also a hilarious and nail biting escape from a mountain top Buddist monstary on a rusted cable car when Bob’s hiding place is discovered by the American gangsters, and a final confrontation with all the different factions on the Gorezolla set, where Bob and his girlfriend are chased while dressed in kaiju suits and riding bikes, that is literally explosive.

An enjoyable and heartfelt valentine to classic kaiju films, as well as an interesting adventure story with science fiction alien invasion overtones, Warner has crafted a funny and entertaining book that you don’t have to be a kaiju fan to enjoy.