ON THE (DARK & SPOOKY) ROAD AGAIN!

...but no, I won't be wearing the disguise that Scarlett the Vampire/Vampire Hunter wears in the above illustration.

I will, however be autographing copies of the "Archie's Weird Mysteries" paperback collection - featuring horror-comedy comic book tales based on the animated series of the same name - this Saturday, August 20th at The Little Shop of Comics (great name, eh?) in Scotch Plains, NJ.



I wrote the stories and I'll be joined by artist-supreme Fernando Ruiz (you can read more about the series by clicking here). Fernando will be giving away sketches and we'll both be signing anything and everything we've worked on - not just "Archie's Weird Mysteries." So if you're in the area, stop on by and say hello - we'll be there from 2PM to 5PM that day.

For further details, click right here.

If you need further persuasion, Poe the kitten (and reigning Scared Silly mas-cat) has prepared this special video encouraging you to come out and support your favorite horror-comedy-meister! MUCH THANKS in advance!

THE ALIENS THAT GOT AWAY...

In previous posts (which you can read here and here) I mentioned recently-released comic book projects in which I played a part. I highlighted the “Archie’s Weird Mysteries” paperback collection in particular for its relevance to my “Scared Silly” project – after all, just like a typical Hollywood horror-comedy the comic misadventures I wrote based on the animated series of the same name often had Archie and his friends mixed up with monsters, mad scientists and yes, aliens!

The “Archie’s Weird Mysteries” paperback reprinted one of my favorite stories, about Archie and his friends getting mixed up in an intergalactic baseball game between two rival alien teams. The Brawnux were the champion jocks of the universe, while the Smelltoids were more adept at using their brains than their brawn.

Now comes “The Best of Archie Comics.” This is another project I had a hand in. It was released when I wasn't paying attention (I had no idea when this one was supposed to come out). It’s a whopping 400 pages (and an additional 20 if you get the hardcover) that collects stories of Archie and Archie-owned properties from every decade since the 1940s, by all the top writers and artists of each decade. PLUS it includes insights from many Archie creators and fans, and some historical text on each decade. It includes some quotes from me and I wrote much of the historical text within, but for Scared Silly fans the biggest draw may be the inclusion of a short tale I wrote as a follow-up to that intergalactic baseball game story.



Ultimately, my contributions to “The Best of Archie Comics” are just a small part of what is a massive team effort – credit is due to the great team of staff editors and designers at Archie for putting it together. Plus so many great folks and dear friends quoted within as well as stories they were involved in either as artists, writers, editors, etc. - such a huge list but including Dan Parent, Fernando Ruiz, Michael Uslan, Stephen Oswald, Suzannah Rowntree. Joe Morciglio, Mike Pellerito... heck, so, so many I don't think Blogger offers enough "character" space to mention them all but you get the idea... well done, everyone.

You can pre-order a copy of the deluxe hardcover version (releasing in October) at the bottom of this post, or find the softcover copy at your local comic shop (click here to use the Comic Shop Locator Service to find the store nearest you).

…and for more outer space silliness, here’s John Landis’ commentary of the trailer for the Three Stooges’ feature, “Have Rocket, Will Travel,” courtesy of our friends at Trailers From Hell. ENJOY!

THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1921)

**&3/4 out of ****

PLOT: Buster Keaton is a bank teller at a bank where one of the managers is running a crooked side “business” to fleece customers of their cash. Orchestrating an “inside job” the wayward co-worker’s henchman attempt to rob Buster. Through a series of mishaps that leave Buster’s hands filled with glue, he is able to turn the tables on the would-be-robbers. In the process, however Buster is caught with a gun stuck in one hand and cash stuck to the other, leading the owner of the bank to suspect Buster of the crime. Buster takes refuge in a tricked-out house which is also doubling as the hideout for his crooked co-worker and gang. Meanwhile, an acting troupe run off the stage for their horrible performance of “Faust” also hide in the house. Between the various contraptions like collapsing staircases and trap doors as well as thugs dressed like ghosts and skeletons… and let’s not forget the devil Faust wandering about – Buster must clear his name, catch the crooks, get the girl and keep from being scared!

REVIEW: Never have preconceived notions. I must admit before I started watching this short I had guessed that the highest I could possibly score it would be 2 to 2 and ¼ stars out of 4. The reason? I am one of the few who holds a unique position on Buster Keaton. While I admire Keaton greatly and think he’s a genius filmmaker in terms of his direction, most of the time I don’t laugh much at his films or feel any connection to the protagonists he plays. It really just comes down to his deadpan style. Of the silent solo clowns, I most often throw my lot in with Harold Lloyd. Lloyd was very inventive, too; not genius-level inventive like Keaton (although close) but still he managed to conceive some amazing set-pieces in his comedy. More importantly, he played a character to who I could root and relate. Lloyd’s character, like Keaton’s was a man trying to get ahead but he was not detached. You knew Lloyd’s emotions. He didn’t just wear them on his sleeves but on his trouser legs as well! Which is not to say that one style is “better” than another but just that I personally prefer a character to who I can relate.

Having said that, there are limitations to Keaton’s character that make the horror-comedy in particular a mostly unsuitable sub-genre for him. It pretty much begins and ends with the fact that Keaton can never get too scared, and if he does get scared, it’s not for long – otherwise he threatens to diminish his character’s main feature: the stoic and deadpan “stone face.”

...and yet, as you can see from my rating, the film ends up succeeding more than I thought it would. It’s a close call, but there are enough touches that work to make it almost worthy of a full three stars.

Common to silent comedies, this short starts off with a humorous opening title card: “Wall Street – The palatial parking place of the Bull and the Bear – mostly the Bull.” No time is wasted as the first visual gag follows immediately after the title card: Buster pratfalls out of a taxi on his way to work. As he runs through his routine so he can man his station at the local bank, Buster treats his fans to his time-honed acrobatics – leaping, climbing and tumbling his way through his surroundings.

There is brevity of set-up in this short – one minute in the scene jumps from Buster’s arrival at the bank to an interior of a house with this title card, “The bank cashier and his band of counterfeiters have a strong reason for making people believe this house is haunted.” The burly bank teller demonstrates just how he can make people believe the house is haunted by pulling a lever. His first trick: flattening the stairs so that those climbing fall to the bottom! This will be the first of several “tricked-out house” gags in the short, and they anticipate similar gags in the silent Our Gang shorts “Shootin’ Injuns” and “Shivering Spooks” that would follow a few years later.

Back to the bank, a pretty young girl convinces Buster to open the time-lock on the vault for an early withdrawal. The woman returns a short time later to reveal she received a counterfeit bill, and the bank president says he’ll have the police look into the matter, much to the concern of the crooked bank teller.

Buster then gets into some bits of business with a glue pot, money and bank statements – he has accidentally gotten glue on his hands and everything sticks! Just as he removes one element from his hands, he ends up stuck to another! It is classic Keaton physical dexterity at work. Of course, as he hands off money to a customer, the stickiness just compounds matters! Soon everyone in the bank has money stuck to their hands and feet!

The silent comedies with their knockabout slapstick often get a bad rap from some quarters for (in “their” opinion) being “dated” and having a “sameness” to them but too often what’s forgotten is not only the visually inventive gags but the truly audacious and outrageous lengths comedians would go to get laughs in their films. These bits are usually jarringly unexpected, and “The Haunted House” contains this gem: to get a man who is stuck to the floor by the seat of his pants unstuck, Buster first conks him on the head and then pours boiling hot water onto the floor to loosen the glue’s grip!

Before too long Buster’s hands are stuck in his pockets. Eventually he breaks his hands free, and when robbers come to hold up the bank and carelessly leave their guns at the counter, Buster successfully chases them off… and then is summarily confronted by the bank officials because he’s still holding the guns and looks like he robbed the place himself with all the glue-filled money stuck in his pockets. In his inimitable way, however Buster manages to escape (sort of – he ends up back in the vault).

Continuing with this film’s brisk pacing of transitions (almost as if it’s a comic book and the scene’s abrupt change is easily explained away with a “MEANWHILE” caption) we are taken to a local theater where, a title tells us, “That night the Daredevil Opera Company was executing Faust – and he deserved it!” The title card writer isn’t kidding, either as a man throws a whole head of lettuce (or maybe it was cabbage – hard to tell in a black & white movie) at the performer on-stage, leading to the entire audience chasing the actors out the back of the theater.

…and then we’re back at the bank with Buster, where a wonderfully written title tells us, “After searching everywhere else the police found him where he was.” Buster runs into the blue-tinted night. The sheriff and his men take chase but when Buster runs into the title house, they stop short, exclaiming “That house is haunted.”

Once inside, Buster sees a man in a sheet walk by but is nonplused. He begins to nonchalantly explore the home, touching various objects. When he opens a book it sets off a smoke bomb. Then the ghost (man in sheet) runs in, frightened by a lawman’s rifle being shot and Buster runs up the stairs to avoid the ghost… but the ghost merely runs into another room, leaving Buster on the stairs perplexed… and soon at the bottom of the stairs on his butt as the “trick stairs” are activated.

The actors on the run from the angry audience soon duck into the house just as Buster did. This adds some extra elements to the spooky fun because now “the devil” Faust is in the trick house. Perhaps the funniest moments come in the scene where the actor in the Faust costume confronts Buster. Buster plops down in a chair at the sight of ‘ol scratch and is quizzical about the whole matter. He touches the actor to see if he’s “real”… and perhaps to assure himself he’s not just having a delusion. This one little bit is a brilliant piece of acting on Buster’s part as he acts with his eyes – he keeps his stone face but his eyes belie the fact that he is simultaneously curious and scared out of his wits. By default, that makes this the funniest scene in this “scare comedy” that otherwise finds its hero not-very-scared. The scene gets even funnier as Buster rightly decides the Faust actor is not the real Satan after kicking him in the shin and getting the expected reaction!

Buster’s hysterical attempts to explain the collapsing staircase are met with disbelief by Faust, who walks away only to be replaced by a man in a sheet while Buster isn’t looking! A brief tussle leads to a genuine scare-take from Keaton in inimitable fashion: a back flip that ends up with Buster lying on the ground! This is followed by the classic horror-comedy stand-by of a person pretending to be a chair with a blanket draped over their body. When the “arms” of the chair cup around Buster’s waist, we see one of the few times on film where Buster’s stone face actually registers an emotion!



Genuinely scared now, Buster runs out of the room. He regains his composure a bit then ends up following a couple of men in creepy skeleton outfits (another horror-comedy standby) into a room where they are assembling disembodied mannequin parts into a whole “man.” And a “real man” at that! The effect is suitably eerie and is the first instance in the film where something truly supernatural has occurred, and suddenly at that. This is one of those “just go with it” moments that turns up from time to time in horror comedies – it’s been established that the crooked banker and his gang are aware that “the little man from the bank is upstairs” and are determined to scare him away with tricks, yet they also slip in something totally unexplainable. This would happen again in such films as The East Side Kids’ “Spooks Run Wild,” where Bela Lugosi and his assistant Angelo Rossitto – mere stage magicians – somehow vanish into thin air as bullets are shot directly at them; and the Shemp Howard-Billy Gilbert-Maxie Rosenbloom starrer “Crazy Knights,” where John Hamilton, despite otherwise being presented as a man up to no-good tricks (literally and figuratively) actually turns transparent and floats away without any explanation. These bizarre occurrences are usually tossed off without a second thought, and such is the case here.

As often happens in two reel spook spoofs, the climactic action picks up a frenetic pace as various characters dart from one room to another and various scare gags are pulled off. By the end of “The Haunted House” this means that various combinations of the gangsters, the lawmen, the actors from the Faust play and Buster intersect. The gags are fairly unconnected. At one point, Buster sits on a sofa to catch his breath, putting his arm around a sheet-clad figure with the expected reaction. He sails down the collapsing staircase headfirst as if it is a playground slide when another figure in a sheet approaches. A tried and true gag occurs when one of the sheet-wearing crooks grabs Buster by his coattails and Buster frantically tries to run away but ends up running in place while the carpet under his feet turns in circles!

I mentioned earlier that critics of the day had become all too aware of the typical silent comedy conventions, overused as they were. One such gimmick was “the chase” scene, and “The Haunted House” breaks this trope out for its finale, too. When the Faust actor’s cape catches on fire just as he’s being confronted by one of the sheet wearing gangsters, this film’s obligatory chase ensues as he jumps out the window and scares off the waiting law enforcement officials. But back in the house, to Keaton’s credit the “chase scene” takes on a different, absurdist tone. Buster directs traffic as various sheet wearing gangsters pass each other in the hall as they rather languidly cross from room to room. This scenario of having various characters dart (or merely cross) from room to room became a staple of not only horror-comedies but also animation in everything from the Beatles’ full-length animated feature “Yellow Submarine” to the “Scooby Doo” Saturday morning cartoon series.

One of the best gags soon follows as Buster decides to outwit the collapsing staircase by first gently stepping on one or two steps the way one would dip their foot into a swimming pool to test the temperature of the water, only to promptly sliding down the banister… where he ends up on the 2nd step which promptly collapses, sending him to the ground!

With a minute to go we come to learn there is a trap door that deposits people in the basement hideout of the crooks. Why this device comes into the short so late is a mystery, as surely there could have been great “bits of business” built around this prop.

When all is said and done, Buster saves the day (with a well-tossed vase to a crook’s head foreshadowing the hysterical climax of Wheeler & Woolsey’s 1930s classic, “The Nitwits”) and gets the girl… but in one of the more bizarre horror-comedy endings on par with the “shock endings” in Laurel & Hardy films, the villain knocks Buster dead and he ascends the stairway to heaven… which promptly collapses sending him into hell! Until he wakes up, of course – the villain merely knocked Buster out!

The gags in the haunted house are fun and inventive, but as previously mentioned, Buster in a “scare” comedy can be a disconnect – again, he is the “great Stone Face” and a lot of “scare comedy” relies on “reaction takes.” In the initial sequences inside the “haunted” house, Buster is only ever momentarily “scared.” He shrugs things off so quickly that his emotionless persona doesn’t register the same laughs as say cartoon superstar Bugs Bunny, who didn't scare easily but would generally come at his would-be tormentors with a steady stream of head-spinning double-talk and physical distraction techniques. That may sound like an unfair comparison – after all this is a silent movie – but the physical “recovery” for Buster just happens too fast to elicit many laughs. That’s not necessarily a knock on Keaton as much as it is an acknowledgement that his stock style and the horror-comedy genre are not the best match. Indeed, it seems Metro, distributors of the short felt the same – they don’t even feature one of the haunted house scenes on the movie poster, opting instead for Buster’s gummed-up glue gaggery.

As in many of the silent comedies, the co-stars are game and really bring a lot to the proceedings with their lively playing. Almost by default given Keaton’s deadpan style, the supporting cast comes off alive and kicking indeed with big and broad body language and facial expressions, as well as frantic physicality. Among the cast members are Virginia Fox, who spent the ‘20s as a supporting player in Mack Sennett shorts including several Buster Keaton entries. She also co-starred with other famous silent clowns including Charlie’s brother Sydney Chaplin, Charley Chase, Ford Sterling, Ben Turpin, James Finlayson, Billy Bevan, Vernon Dent, Marie Prevost and others, and was an ex-wife of movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. Also on-hand is Joe Roberts. A family friend of Keaton’s, Roberts was primarily a supporting player in Keaton shorts although he also appeared in Bobby Dunn shorts and a smattering of features including the Mary Pickford version of “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Natalie Talmadge played mostly uncredited bit roles (usually quite small bits) in Keaton films as well as small parts in her sister Constance’s comedies and her sister Norma’s dramas. Outside of Keaton’s “Our Hospitality” the most famous movie Talmadge appeared in was the silent classic, “Intolerance” (which also featured a small part for Walter Long who would become a perennial foil for Laurel & Hardy).



All things considered, the film is much better than one would expect given that disparity of styles… and to Keaton’s credit it soon picks up as he figures out ways to make the horror-comedy trappings work despite his deadpan style. It was the first of only a small handful of “horror-comedies” Buster would make, the others being talkie efforts (none I’m sure coming close to the entertainment value of seeing Buster play in a 1940 charity baseball game alongside Boris Karloff – in full Frankenstein monster makeup! – as previously mentioned here). I recommend “The Haunted House” as your best chance to see Keaton tackle the standard trappings of the genre in the medium where Keaton excelled, the silent film. In that regard, feel free to add an extra star to my rating if you are a big Keaton fan.

BEST DIALOGUE: The aforementioned title card, “After searching everywhere else the police found him where he was.”

BEST GAGS: All the best gags are already mentioned in the body of this review, but I will elaborate on Buster’s successful beaning of the criminal in the film’s finale: Instead of hitting a man directly over the head with a vase, Buster throws it up over the man’s head and it hits its target on the way down. This is an extremely Keaton-esque trifle – expertly planned and timed for maximum effect, sort of a small scale version of the elaborate and famous scene in the classic “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” which followed seven years after “The Haunted House,” where the façade of a house falls directly over Buster but does not harm him as he’s standing dead-center where the open doorway lands.

SPOTTED IN THE CAST: The big talent in the cast besides Keaton is of course Edward F. Kline, aka Eddie Cline, who also co-directed and co-wrote this short with Keaton. Cline gets but a bit part as a bank customer in “The Haunted House,” but of course he is more well-known for his behind-the-camera work. He directed and/or wrote/co-wrote such comedy classics as W.C. Field’s “Million Dollar Legs” “The Bank Dick” and others; several Wheeler & Woolsey movies including the notorious “So This is Africa” and one with horror-comedy overtones, “Hook, Line & Sinker;” a few Olsen & Johnson features including the wild “Crazy House” and their classic horror-comedy, “Ghost Catchers;” the Ritz Brothers’ “Behind the Eight Ball,” programmers including entries in the comic strip-based Snuffy Smith and Maggie & Jiggs series; and the silent horror-comedy “The Ghost of Folly” with Andy Clyde. Cline also directed a pair of “Cracked Nuts” – both the Wheeler & Woolsey vehicle co-starring Boris Karloff and the pseudo-horror-comedy of the same title but with a different plot that featured Shemp Howard and Mantan Moreland. And that’s just scratching the surface!

BUY THE FILM: This one shows up in various DVD collections, but the best print is probably the one offered by Kino in their extensive “Art of Buster Keaton” collection which you can order here:














FURTHER READING: The seminal work on silent comedies in my opinion is Walter Kerr’s “The Silent Clowns.” You’ll find much about Keaton as well as his contemporaries Chaplin, Langdon, Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy and others in this essential volume. Order it when you click on the title here: The Silent Clowns

Books solely about Keaton abound. Two that come highly recommended to me by a film historian friend are "Keaton" by Rudi Blesh and "The Complete Films of Buster Keaton" by Jim Kline, part of that ever-reliable collection of "Films of" books originally published by Citadel Press. There is an additional book I’ve never read it, so I can't vouch for it beyond the fact that it includes coverage of "The Haunted House," and that is Gabriella Oldham’s Book “Keaton’s Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter” which takes a look at Keaton’s shorts from 1920 to 1923. You can order these books here (for the Blesh book click on the title):

Buster Keaton















UPDATE: After this post went up I decided to surf the net to see if any other blogs had reviewed this film. Wouldn't you know that the Pretty Clever Film Gal reviewed it at the Pretty Clever Film blog just a few weeks prior to my review being posted? You can read that review when you click here.

WATCH THE FILM: This film is thought to be in the public domain so you can find it on various websites including the Internet Archive. Here is a brief excerpt from this short, the finale of the film which is chock full of horror-comedy gags – ENJOY!

BEFORE COWBOYS & ALIENS...

Before COWBOYS & ALIENS there were:

COWBOYS & DINOSAURS...



COWBOYS & MONSTERS...



...and COWBOYS & LOST SCIENCE-FICTIONEY CIVILIZATIONS WITH LASERS & ROBOTS!

MORE COMIC-AL DETOURS

In my previous post, I took the opportunity to plug some recent comic projects I've been involved with (and help explain the lack of classic horror-comedy movie reviews as of late).

Chief among my current projects is of course the paperback collection of ARCHIE’S WEIRD MYSTERIES stories I wrote. I had thought that it would be available at comic shops a week ago but it appears I was mistaken - apparently it merely shipped to comic shops last week and should actually show up on those store shelves today... we'll see I guess.

Anyway, I've talked about this one ad infinitum - the short story is that my "Archie's Weird Mysteries" stories should appeal to most "Scared Silly" fans... to repeat what I wrote in my last post, it's "a wild and crazy head-on collision of typical Archie Comics character-driven humor with the bizarre and absurd world of the supernatural, paranormal and extraterrestrial! I got to put the Archie characters through their paces in a world that was one quarter “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein,” one quarter “Kolchak: the Night Stalker,” one quarter “Night of the Creeps” and one quarter “X-Files.”

Read more about "Archie's Weird Mysteries" when you click here.



There was also another project that came out earlier this year that I forgot to mention last time for which I provided some fun (though uncredited) copy. The book "Archie & Friends All-Stars: The Archies & Josie & the Pussycats" reprinted a multi-part story written and drawn by the great talents Dan Parent and Bill Galvan. The storyline detailed the Archies and Pussycats bands co-headlining a concert tour and the budding romance that ends up brewing between Archie and Valerie. My contribution: I was asked to do write-ups on each "band" that appeared at the end of the book... in VH-1 "Behind the Music" style! That was great fun because I got to combine fact with fiction and rib a famous pop culture phenomenon (namely the often-cheesy and sensationalist half hour documentary a la "Behind the Music" as well as "E's True Hollywood Story") in the process. For example, did you know Jughead's bandmates in the Archies had to hold an intervention to curtail his hamburger-eating habit? Or how about Pussycats' drummer Melody, who opened the country's first... and last combination sushi bar and ice cream parlor!

The Josie & the Pussycats characters have an amazing following, due in no small part to the popular animated series from Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s. I'll leave you with one of the songs from the show... but first I will kindly encourage you all to support my various projects if you can, particularly the "Archie's Weird Mysteries" paperback as good sales could potentially lead to more. You can purchase these books at most comic shops (to find the comic shop nearest you just click here to use the Comic Shop.

Okay, I've plugged enough! Hoping to have a review of Buster Keaton's "The Haunted House" up soon. In the meantime, let's go out with a song!

COMIC ASIDES

Greetings Scared Silly fans! Since today is the official opening of the annual San Diego Comic Con, the gigantic pop culture festival celebrating comic books, comic characters and every single ancillary entertainment and product derived thereof, I thought I’d take this opportunity to plug some recently released projects to which I contributed. And to once again remind everyone that I’m not slacking when it comes to “Scared Silly” movie reviews – it’s just that the paying gigs have to come first. So here’s the rundown of what’s been keeping me so busy lately:



Let’s start with ARCHIE ALL-STARS: A NIGHT AT THE COMIC SHOP. This multi-part story originally appeared in the pages of the “Archie & Friends” comic book. It was written by the great Fernando Ruiz with art by Fernando and the equally great Bill Galvan. What’s fantastic about this story is that it brings back many of the obscure comic book characters from Archie’s past, going all the way back to its 1940s beginnings when the company was known as MLJ Comics up through the swinging 1960s. This included such disparate characters as Super Duck, Sam Hill, Pat the Brat, Suzie, Young Dr. Masters, Squoimy the Woim and many others. My contribution? I had the super-fun task of researching the history of most of the characters contained within and doing write-ups on each that appear at the back of the book.



Next up is ARCHIE: A CELEBRATION OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE TEENAGERS. This amazing coffee table book was put together by Craig Yoe and his amazing crew at Yoe Books, with several contributions by various Archie alumni. My contributions? Steven Thompson interviewed me about various factoids, Craig Yoe asked me to identify cover artists from a variety of classic Archie covers, and legendary Archie editor Victor Gorelick commissioned me to write the character descriptions that appeared in the book for Mr. Weatherbee, Archie as Pureheart the Powerful, Betty as Super Teen and Jughead as Captain Hero. I cannot recommend this book highly enough – it is without question the most thorough, essential history of the Archie Comics company ever published.



Also recently released is ARCHIE AMERICANA SERIES: BEST OF NINETIES, BOOK 2. This book is near and dear to my heart and a true milestone. It is the final entry in the ARCHIE AMERICANA SERIES of trade paperbacks collecting classic Archie stories from decades past. Besides Victor Gorelick, I am the only other person who had a hand in each and every edition of this series, starting with the first, ARCHIE AMERICANA: BEST OF THE FORTIES twenty years ago. There were twelve volumes in all, two each covering the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. My credits on the series ranged from Assistant Editor to Compilation Editor to Americana Series Editor, etc. In every case I did extensive research on each decade, suggesting stories I felt should be reprinted using criteria including relevance to each decade, notable first appearances of characters and quality of stories. I also wrote some introductions for some of the volumes as well as the table of contents and back cover blurbs for each volume. You can read an in-depth interview I did with Mark Haney about working on the series when you click here.



Last but not least, the paperback collection of ARCHIE’S WEIRD MYSTERIES stories I wrote lands in comic shops today. This is the series that is likely to be of most interest to “Scared Silly” fans, a wild and crazy head-on collision of typical Archie Comics character-driven humor with the bizarre and absurd world of the supernatural, paranormal and extraterrestrial! I got to put the Archie characters through their paces in a world that was one quarter “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein,” one quarter “Kolchak: the Night Stalker,” one quarter “Night of the Creeps” and one quarter “X-Files.” I’ve spoken about this series a few times here on the “Scared Silly” site, and you can read my most recent entry on it when you click here.

I encourage everyone out there to support these projects, most especially the ARCHIE’S WEIRD MYSTERIES book because good sales on that title could lead to more of my stories being reprinted… and perhaps the commission of new Archie’s Weird Mysteries tales! You can purchase these books at most comic shops (to find the comic shop nearest you just click here to use the Comic Shop Locator Service) or use the Amazon.com links at the bottom of the post.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the caricature of me atop this post, it is by mega-talented cartoonist and long-time pal Chris Allan. Chris has illustrated several of my stories including those starring Little Archie and Sonic the Hedgehog. He is perhaps best-known as a contributing artist to Darkwing Duck and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book tales.

Speaking of caricatures, I leave you now with a video that is a bit of a “horror-comedy” in itself: an “Animutation” featuring a caricature of yours truly! If you’re curious as to what an “Animuation” is just click here. As for my appearance in this video (which I learned about after the fact), an explanation is in order. Back in the 1990s when I worked on staff at Archie Comics, I was the original editor involved in translating the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog into comic book form. Other editors came on-board but it was something of a fraternity – once you were involved in Sonic you were always involved in Sonic in some way or form (for my part, I wrote a couple Sonic stories, corresponded with fans via email and also wrote all the press releases about Sonic comic issues). The letters page for the Sonic comic became something of a party for the editorial staff.

Scott Fulop (my mentor at Archie - I started at the company as Scott's assistant editor) had a blast concocting “The Adventures of Scott and Paul” where I often appeared in caricatured form as the fall guy for various schemes conceived by Scott, Sonic and pals (and sometimes turning the tables on them). Freddy Mendez, aka Justin Gabrie also got into the act when he edited the series. Many of the short strips were drawn by Dave Manak and a few may have been done by Bill Golliher (my memory fails me)… but the bottom line is that one of those caricatures of me from the Sonic letters page has made it into this “Animutation” and now you can view the result in (shocked-I’m-sure) awe. I come in at the 30 second mark wearing a red shirt with a white stripe. My big moment comes around 2:50 with a huge pileup of me’s stacking up to the sky!

Oh, I have no idea who put this video together and why they'd want to include a caricature of me in it, but needless to say… enjoy!

THE SPIRITS OF '76 - 2011 EDITION

NOTE: This is an encore edition of a post I originally wrote in 2010:

Here’s a film that will be going into the “horror-onable mention” section of my book. It’s not a “horror-comedy” per se – it’s more of a fantasy-romance, but it does involve ghosts (albeit friendly ghosts) who take the opportunity to put a good scare in some folks as needed. For me, Abbott & Costello’s “The Time of Their Lives” is every bit as classic a movie as “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein;” even if it has more in common with “Topper.”

It’s also tied into the American Revolution, hence this post falling on America’s Independence Day. The film’s script is very well written. It tells the tale of Horatio Prim (Costello), a bumbling but masterful New England tinker in 1780 who longs to marry Nora, the housemaid of wealthy estate owner Tom Danbury. To that end, Horatio procures a letter of commendation from General George Washington in hopes of obtaining permission to marry Nora from Tom. Unfortunately, Horatio has a rival for Nora in butler Cuthbert (Abbott), who causes him trouble no end. But the real trouble comes from Danbury himself, who is secretly a traitor out to aid Benedict Arnold. Both Nora and Danbury’s fiancé, Melody (the luminous Marjorie Reynolds) learn of Danbury’s plot. Nora is captured and Danbury confiscates the commendation letter from her (she had been holding it for Horatio) and hides it in the mantelpiece clock, but Melody manages to escape on horseback in an effort to warn George Washington. She soon encounters Horatio, and the two are framed as traitors, executed and dumped into a well.

It’s here that the fantasy element kicks in. Horatio and Melody are now ghosts who haunt the grounds of the estate and will continue to do so until they can prove their innocence. They just need to somehow get the letter into the hands of the authorities who can rewrite the history books so the truth can be known. This becomes a more hopeful quest 166 years later when the estate is restored to its original condition, and that includes the original furniture. When the restoration is complete, the new owner invites some guests for the weekend to celebrate. Among the guests are psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenway, a descendent of Cuthbert (also played by Abbott). Horatio and Melody decide to have some fun “scaring” the guests. Horatio takes particular delight in spooking Greenway. A séance is held wherein the identity of the ghosts and their plight is revealed, resulting in the living doing what they can to help set Horatio and Melody free.

The film has grown in status over the years and has quite a following (and may have even inspired a line in the classic Gordon Lightfoot song, "If You Could Read My Mind"). In fact, while embraced by many Bud & Lou fans, it’s also been touted as “the Abbott & Costello movie for people who hate Abbott & Costello movies.” This is due to the exceptional dramatic acting of both Lou and Bud that full-bloodedly brings their well-written roles to life. They are both so good in this that it’s hard to say whether one outshines the other (although I might give the slight edge to Abbott whose rarely used talent for character acting is on full display here). It stands out from the majority of the team’s other films which primarily feature a variation on their con man/patsy burlesque characters. It’s one of the few films where the team stretched beyond their usual archetypes and managed to pull it off (for examples where this departure from the norm didn’t work in my opinion, catch “Little Giant” and “Dance With Me Henry.” Or don’t). It also includes a wonderful supporting cast, including horror-comedy stalwart Gale Sondergaard as the maid of the restored estate who definitely believes in ghosts. And it features beautiful sets, wonderful costume designs and marvelous special effects - a top-notch production all around.

If you haven't guessed by now, I consider "The Time of Their Lives" a wonderful film to watch on Independence Day... or any day, for that matter! Here’s the trailer for your enjoyment: