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:

A YEAR WITHOUT MAX E. COCO CAT

NOTE: This entry was originally posted last year on this date. It was my wife's birthday, and also the day we lost our precious cat Max. Recently, we got a new cat named Poe who you can read about when you click here. I re-post this now in tribute to Max... we miss you, sweet boy!

RIP MAX E. "COCO" CAT - 1992-2010



This may seem like an odd post. What does a cat have to do with "horror-comedies?" Believe it or not, there is a connection.

Max was my wife Barbara's cat - she raised him from a kitten. I met Max in February, 2001 shortly after meeting Barb. I was not raised with cats, wasn't around cats much and didn't have much knowledge about them. Initially I thought it odd how much Barb interacted with and doted on this cat.

Then Barb and I got married in 2004 and Max moved in. Barb was worried that Max wouldn't take too well to having his "Mommy" share her affections with me (let alone the two other cats who came in the deal - Diva and the late Griffin).

But a wonderful thing happend... Max adopted me! We became the best of pals. He loved having a daddy he could take naps with and hang out with.

Max was a myth-buster. The #1 myth he dispelled for me was the idea I had that all cats were completely selfish and nasty. Max was not this way. He was very, very sweet and demonstrative about the love he gave - you didn't have to meet his needs to get his love. He would often just show his love out of nowhere (something I can't say for the other two cats).

Max had two cuter-than-cute pieces of schtick he performed. One was what Barb calls "cute boy" - where he would be laying down and just tilt his head while making the cutest face and covering his face with his paws. The other was a roll over... yes, this cat when in a state of sheer bliss (usually over being let outside to walk around the backyard or sometimes just because he was happy to be with us) would actually drop and roll to show his pleasure.



The other myth Max busted was the silly superstition that black cats are somehow "evil" or "scary." Max was anything but! He was sweet for starters, but he was also more prone to be the "scared" than the "scarer!" He was primarily afraid of small children and babies. Once we babysat the baby of a friend, and Max actually hid himself in the farthest room he could, using a shoebox for a litter box rather than the nearby litter box in the hall, for fear of seeing that baby!

I mentioned at the top of this post that Max did have a connection to horror-comedies, beyond the obvious lark that he was a black cat. We used to joke that the Hugh Herbert movie, "The Black Cat" (you can read my review when you click here) was named after Max. We built up this scenario that it was initially one of Max's favorite films, but ultimately wore thin with him as I would often put it on (it was a Netflix "instant view" selection after all) only to fall asleep within moments of the film's credits! I was just so familiar with the film that I found it something fun to nap to. In the way we so often did, my wife and I had a "voice" for Max E. that we would use (like ersatz ventriloquists) to have "him" express his feelings. We'd often have him saying, "you fell asleep to that movie again, daddy? I'm sick of it!" :)

Max was nearly 18. The past few days of humidity were tough on him. We did all we could - we kept the a/c going, always had a dish of ice cubes and cold water nearby, used cold compresses, etc. But the humidity wasn't the actual problem - it just served to bring to light a grave internal condition that Max's feline instincts did a great job of masking. He had a tough evening, and was suffering. We just had to let him go. This came just a few minutes after midnight on Barb's birthday of all days. But we have our cherished memories and will never forget this special little life that brightened our world for so many years. While I was only truly involved with Max for the past 6 of his nearly 18 years, I can honestly say that I was mightily blessed to have him in my life, and to call him my "son." Goodbye Max - we love you & miss you forever!

A TALE OF TWO TITANS!

The world lost two major talents and multiple award winners late last week: legendary actor Peter Falk and acclaimed comic book artist Gene Colan. Both figured prominently in my childhood and continued to influence me into my adult years as a pop culture/entertainment professional.

I’ll start with Gene Colan. Colan was one of the major artists of American comic books, creating a body of work few have matched, starting in the 1940s and lasting six decades. Colan worked on a variety of characters over the years including monsters, superheroes and humorous characters. The impressive list of icons that Colan rendered includes Batman, Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil, Wonder Woman, Archie and Jughead, among others.

In addition to drawing the famous comic characters above, Colan is responsible for co-creating two of the greatest African-American heroes in comics: Captain America’s 1970s crime-fighting partner The Falcon (considered the first African-American superhero in mainstream comics) and Blade, the Vampire Hunter (a character that found additional fame in a trilogy of feature films). He is also known as the primary artist on one of the most fondly-remembered, unique comic book series ever, Howard the Duck. Howard, under the authorship of his co-creator Steve Gerber and later Bill Mantlo often deftly mixed humor and horror as the daring duck encountered such creatures as Man-Thing, Man-Frog and even Dracula.



While remembered for all of the above, there is a large contingent of fans that cherish Colan’s horror-related art most of all, with his run on “The Tomb of Dracula” considered one of the greatest comic book titles of the 1970s. Colan also excelled at such superhero-horror hybrids as The Spectre and Doctor Strange. Most of the time Colan’s work graced horror comics that “played it straight,” but as mentioned above there was the odd “Howard the Duck” issue that fell into the “horror-comedy” category, and Colan also penciled the movie adaptation for the 1986 musical-comedy remake of “Little Shop of Horrors” as well as an issue of “Elvira’s House of Mystery.”

A personal anecdote: when I first started on staff at Archie as an assistant editor in the 1990s, one of my responsibilities was making "safety photocopies" of all penciled pages. That way if any of the original pencils got lost or damaged on the way to the inker, the inker could use the safety copy and a lightbox to do the inking job. At the time, Gene Colan was penciling "Jughead's Time Police," so instead of making one set of safety copies, I always made two - a "just in case" set reserved for the inker and my own personal set to just stare at in awe and wonder. Colan's pencils were so good and so interesting that he was just "one of those artists" - an artist whose work could be printed in pencil form without any inks and still look completely finished. Truly Gene was one of the all-time greats!



What can be said about actor Peter Falk that hasn't already been said? He was just one of those singular talents that was always very “real” in any role he played, as if he wasn't an actor but merely someone that had stepped in front of a documentarian's camera. This in spite of… and really because of… his innate “quirkiness.” He didn’t vary too much from project-to-project but it didn’t matter – his characterization was so beloved that you went into one of his movies or TV shows expecting to see your “old friend” in action. Like that other great character actor, Darren McGavin of “Night Stalker” and “A Christmas Story” fame, you knew what you were going to get with Falk in the cast… and you couldn’t wait for him to show up on the screen! Thankfully for his fans, you didn’t have to wait too long because his iconic TV detective character “Columbo” was pretty much a classic-on-arrival and ran for 35 years as both a weekly TV series and a series of TV movies.

Falk didn’t spend too much time in non-realistic settings even though he often came off as a whimsical other-worldly figure, sort of a bemused leprechaun or fairy godfather type dropped into the proceedings from beyond (even in “Columbo!”). He does however have several notable credits in fantasy-based films and TV shows, from appearances on the classic TV anthologies “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” children’s films like “The Great Muppet Caper” and “Shark Tale,” the new age comedies “Vibes” and “In the Spirit,” a TV movie adaptation of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle dinosaur tale “The Lost World,” Wim Wenders’ lyrical tales of angels “Wings of Desire” and its sequel, “Faraway So Close” and a trio of Christmas-themed TV movies where Falk himself played an angel named Max (“A Town Without Christmas,” “Finding John Christmas” and “When Angels Come to Town”). His most warmly-remembered contribution to the fantasy genre has to be playing the grandfather and narrator of the classic, “The Princess Bride.”



Falk’s was a face and voice perfectly suited for comedy, and that is where I found him most often as a child. Be it the annual reruns of the all-star comedy epic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” or the various network and cable broadcasts of films like “The Cheap Detective,” “The Brink’s Job,” “Murder By Death” and “The In-Laws.” “The In-Laws” remains one of the greatest influences ever on my sense of humor and my own writing – turning the ordinary askew in wonderfully hysterical ways. I’ve used that approach when writing comic book stories in everything from “Little Archie” to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” to of course, “Archie’s Weird Mysteries." It is also among the most-quoted films when I get together with my father and brother – it’s a real favorite in our family and remains one of the greatest screenplays ever (you’ll never forget the first time you see it – it’s full of twists, turns and surprises you can’t predict)!

For Scared Silly fans Falk did make one film that is right on-target: the afore-mentioned murder-mystery spoof, “Murder By Death” written by acclaimed playwright Neil Simon. A wonderful homage to both the classic “old dark house” comedies we cherish here at Scared Silly as well as a great satire of the classic movie detectives from The Thin Man to Charlie Chan to Sam Spade (the two-fisted Dashiell Hammett private eye from “The Maltese Falcon” – here rechristened Sam Diamond and wonderfully portrayed by Falk), the film features many of the elements so common to the spooky mysteries of yore. I’ll leave you now with the trailer for the film… enjoy!

HOLD ON TIGHT!...

Hello Scared Silly fans... thought I should check in with an update and an apology for the inactivity here as of late. As so often happens, my day job, freelance assignments and other responsibilities have made it difficult for me to update this blog as much as I'd like. I am hoping to reverse that trend a bit in the near future. On tap in the coming days: my tributes to legendary actor Peter Falk and acclaimed comic book artist Gene Colan, a note about various projects of mine currently or soon-to-be available for purchase, and a review... yes, a review... most likely of Buster Keaton's "The Haunted House." My hope is to be able to get on a fairly regular review schedule in the next few months, with an emphasis on short subjects. Thank you as always for your patience - there's more to come!

Now enjoy this clip from the movie from which I posted the photo above: "The Three Stooges in Orbit." ENJOY!