THONGOR: AGAINST THE GODS!

THONGOR AGAINST THE GODS

Everybody’s buddy Oddcube, here to entertain and inform with opulent amounts of interesting and amusing anecdotal information for your illumination and enjoyment! Hey, not bad for a high school dropout, huh?

Friends, do you suffer from a shortage of the surreal? In weary and woeful want for some weirdness? Starving for a small serving of regularly scheduled strangeness? Then have no fear, for Oddcube is here!

As a public service, I offer you some small respite; some brief get-away, an infinitesimal asylum against the ever-present atmosphere of the ho-hum, the hum-drum, the irksome, the boredom, the doldrums, and then some! Why? Because I am a thoughty guy! And I’m armed with a run-on sentence!

That’s right folks, it’s time for another Odd Review (you’re reading it now!), and this one is totally about something that deserves way more attention than it currently gets!

Well, that’s enough of the “used car salesman” pitch. So I’m gonna tell you about this book I recently read. And this one’s a dilly, let me tell you! Oh yeah, that’s why you’re here…

So anyway, the book is called “Thongor Against the Gods”, and it’s written by Lin Carter, I found it some months ago when I took my Poor Old Mother ™ to one of the local used book stores. The cover says it is “A classic of science and sorcery by the master of fantasy” and I just had to chuckle because apparently whoever wrote that doesn’t peruse the same internet sites that I do. Cruising around certain online forums that shall remain nameless, I get the definite impression that Lin Carter is considered a great fan and a wonderful editor who used the extent of his power and influence to promote science fiction and fantasy literature to the very utmost best of his ability. But as a writer, he seems to get shrugged off as a kind of hack.

Now in the undeniable words of Chico Marx (hey, I only quote from the best) from the movie “Duck Soup”: “Atsa not my idea, atsa his idea.” Actually, after minimal online research, I think that if nothing else, Lin Carter knew what he liked…and tried to emulate it. He wrote a whole bunch of books that were homage’s to various classic authors. He basically wrote “His Version Of…” whatever he liked. He’s got a series that’s His Version Of John Carter of Mars, and another series that is His Version Of Doc Savage, and another series that is His Version Of Conan. The man was apparently a master of “the same thing, only different”. You know, like in that episode of “Futurama” when they make fun of “The Wizard of Oz” and the not-Munchkins sing “We resemble, but are legally distinct from, the Lollipop Guild”.

Anyway, as I was saying, I found the book at a used book store. I read the title, I read the blurb, I looked at the cover by Kevin Johnson (of a warrior with sword and shield looking down at the burning skeletal remains of an enemy warrior, all beneath a gigantic sliver of yellow moon) and knew that it was my kind of cheese! There were actually two books there, “Thongor Against the Gods” and “Thongor At the End of Time”. Well, they turn out to be books three and five (respectively) of a six-book series. Ain’t that always the way?

First off, I want to make it clear that this was (more-or-less) a stand-alone story. I think this is a series because they are all about Thongor, not because it’s seriously an ongoing storyline. On the other hand, I think there were some characters and references to events from the two earlier books. So I don’t know if it would have been helpful to read them first or not. I had no problem following the story without them.

The story begins in a shadowy, subterranean meeting-chamber beneath the city of Tsargol, where four or five bad-guys sit around whining about what a pain in the buttocks Thongor is. Apparently Thongor started out as a barbarian wanderer in the northern part of Lemuria, but by the beginning of this book he is the king of the city-state of Patanga, and allied with two other city-states. One of these bad guys, Hajash Tor, general of the armies of Tsargol, has a plan…

So they send Zandar Zan, the Thief of Tsargol into the city-state of Patanga to kidnap Thongor’s wife, Sumia, and his newborn son…whose name I can’t remember and am too lazy to look up. (He was supposed to get kidnapped, but didn’t, then you, like never hear about him again.) Zandar Zan sneaks into the royal bedchambers and grabs Sumia, who calls out in surprise, of course, and alerts Thongor who just HAPPENED to be on his way to her anyhow. Thongor busts in and chases the kidnapper to the roof of the building, where Zandar Zan swipes an airship and runs for it.

Yes, I said “air ship”. There’s a little bit of Burroughs mixed in with the Howardian influence. The air ships are made from a manufactured magical metal called urlium, which floats instead of falls.

Anyway, Thongor hustles to the next convenient air ship and proceeds to give chase. Meanwhile, Thongor’s friends, allies, and advisors say “What happened?” and quickly figure out that Sumia is kidnapped and Thongor is in hot pursuit. But, what if this was a coy ploy designed to get us all in hot pursuit so some bad-guy could march into town with his army and take over? Only one thing to do: go visit the ancient and wise Sharajsha, the Wizard of Lemuria, and ask him for some advice. No lie! The King and Queen of the free world are lured or taken directly into untold danger, including a possible ambush, but we can’t do anything about it until we have a committee! So this prince from another city-state, a guy named Karm Karvus, goes to see the wizard.

Meanwhile, Sumia, the kidnapped queen, gets bored and tries to save herself. She KO’s her kidnapper—while her hands are still bound!—and then tries to get herself untied. Zandar Zan quickly wakes up, but has no idea how long he was unconscious. Their air ship flies into a cloud bank and crashes into a mountain.

Thongor, who was, as you remember, in hot pursuit, sees one person jump from the air ship before it crashed, but could not make out if it was male or female. The front of the ship bursts open at the seams, and the metal spreads out like flower petals (just like in the cartoons!) and gets caught on the mountain. So, of course Thongor just HAS to board the wreck and see if his chick is there. So he anchors his air ship on a rocky outcropping, and walks across the top of the ruined airship. The only way he can find to get inside is by stepping onto a three-inch-wide ledge and climbing in through the big gaping hole in the front of the ship.

Except that when he steps onto the three-inch ledge, he shifts the weight of the ship and it floats away. Oh snap!

So it turns out that the one who jumped was Sumia, and she just HAPPENS to fall into a convenient lake at the base of the mountain. She also just HAPPENS to be spotted by this exiled prince of the Jegga tribe of Rmoahal nomads. These Rmoahal people are humanoid, but eight or nine feet tall, blue, and have no hair. Sorta like the Na’vi from “Avatar”, but bald. His name is Shangoth, and he thinks she’s a goddess who fell from the sky, so he jumps into the lake to save her. When he pulls her out, she is unconscious, and he thinks she’s dead. He realizes she’s not a god because, hey, gods don’t die! So he plans to burn her up in a pyre, cuz hey, it’s the least he can do.

So, Karm Karvus goes to see Sharajsha, the Wizard of Lemuria, who already seems to know what’s going on. Well, he IS a wizard! And he tells Karm Karvus that the whole thing is being orchestrated by some bad-guys in Tsargol and to rally the troops before they conquer Patanga! He also announces that he is dying, cuz he’s like nine hundred years old and is entitled. So he tells Karm Karvus to take this book of magic and lock it up with the most treasured relics of Patanga cuz you guys are gonna need it in the future. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe not until two books later, but you guys are gonna need it! (Spoiler: they did NOT need the magic book in this story!)

Meanwhile Thongor (remember him? He’s the hero? His name is in the title?) is still standing on a three-inch-wide ledge on the mountain waiting for the wind to push his air ship close enough to him that he can make a daring leap. Instead it gets caught in an updraft and Zandar Zan jumps aboard and flies away! Well, the ledge Thongor is standing on begins to crumble beneath him. With no other possible choice, he takes a flying leap…

Sumia wakes up before Shangoth; the big, blue, bald not-an-Indian; can burn her up in a pyre. She kills this wild boar-thing that he’s been hunting so as to make peace with the Gods. She explains what she’s doing there. Shangoth explains that he is the son of the Chief of his tribe, but the evil tribal Shaman got them exiled. Shangoth was going to take her back to camp to meet his dad, but they are inexplicably drawn to a tower of black glass…

Thongor jumped off the mountain and found free-floating debris from the crashed airship. By grabbing some, it acted like a parachute and lowered him safely to the lake below. He captures a triceratops-looking beast to ride, and just HAPPENS to find the exiled Chieftain of the Jegga nomads. His name is Jomdath, and he is being tortured by Tengri, the evil Shaman who got him exiled. Thongor decides that an evil Shaman with three or four henchman beating up on an old guy is dirty pool, and quickly intervenes. His not-a-triceratops tramples over them so only the Shaman and one henchman escape.

Thongor befriends Jomdath and they decide to relocate the campsite to a predetermined alternate site that Jomdath’s son, Shangoth, will be able to find. However, in order to get there, they have to ride through this field of POPPIES, Poppies, poppies; except in Lemuria they are called the Rose-of-Death. Their fragrance knocks you out and as you sleep, their vines suck out all your blood; I expect you can find these in Mr. Mushnik’s Flower Shop down on Skid Row, right next to the Audrey Two. (That’s a “Little Shop of Horrors” reference, folks!)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I mean, city-state…of Patanga: Karm Karvus returns and tells the rest of Thongor’s friends, allies, and advisors that the bad-guys are in Tsargol. They all talk it over and decide to load all the soldiers onto air ships and fly over the enemy’s walls and just plain old, kick butt! They proceed with this plan as the narration cuts to General Hajash Tor, who apparently expects this and hints that he has a secret weapon…bum, bum, BU-UM!

But all this does nothing for Thongor and Jomdath who are sleeping in a field of POPPIES, Poppies, poppies with no means of escape. But that’s okay, cuz Tengri the evil Shaman comes back with more henchmen and save them from the bloodsucking flowers! Tengri takes them back to the ruins that the Rmoahal are currently living out of and plan to burn them at the stake. His fellow nomads are kinda nervous about this, because the lives of Chieftains are supposed to be holy, and they are worried about ticking off the gods. They feel these worries are justified when a big metal thing flies through the sky towards them!

It is Zandar Zan, the Thief of Tsargol wondering where in the heck he is and how to get somewhere that might be safe for him. He decides this ain’t the place. But the chaos his arrival causes is adequate distraction for Thongor to escape. The nomads quickly denounce the evil Shaman and reinstate Jomdath as Chieftain. Jomdath’s first order of business is to banish Tengri and his trusted henchmen, promising to burn them at the stake if they ever dare come back.

Meanwhile, the grappling line Thongor used to anchor his air ship to the mountain was still hanging loose; he jumped for it, climbed up to the airship and fought Zandar Zan, who ends up plummeting to his death in a marvelous accident. The paperwork is always easier when it’s an accident. And then Thongor gets a vision of Sharajsha, the wizard of Lemuria, who says “I’m dying and you can’t do anything about that, but you can stop your chick from dying if keep going this-a-way.” Thongor says “thanks” and floors it!

Meanwhile back with the princess and Shangoth in the mysterious Tower of Black Glass… Well, it turns out to be a wizard’s tower, but who didn’t see THAT coming? The wizard is Adamancus, who is one of the Council of Nine, a group of evil wizards who rule the Black City of Zaar. He has had absolutely NOTHING to do with the story so far, and arrives out of nowhere to try to tie this adventure to the first two books by claiming the evil wizards of the Black City of Zaar have some grand scheme to release these demony things upon the world and that Thongor keeps screwing it up! But now he has Thongor’s wife, Sumia, and he plans to rip her soul out of her body and replace it with an elemental spirit that he can control, bwah-haha-ha! And yes, he even did the evil laugh so that we knew he meant it! Oh yeah, as an afterthought he also mentions that the Patangan armies are rushing into a trap.

Of course, he summons the elemental spirit, but before he came bend it to his will Thongor’s air ship crashes through the wall! Adamancus shrieks an expletive, and it wasn’t “Holy Guacamole!” and jumps back—out of his protective circle—and the elemental spirit, no doubt upset for missing his favorite episode of the Simpsons due to this rude summoning, attacks the evil wizard and drags him back to the elemental’s home dimension.

So after a round of “I’m ok, are you ok”, Thongor takes Shangoth back to his dad and tribe.

Meanwhile, the armies of Patanga are loaded onto their airships and drop in (that’s right, I said it, I ain’t got no shame) on the evil dudes in Tsargol. But General Hajash Tor knew the guy who originally made the anti-gravity metal urlium that the air ships are made out of. He also knows the recipe for another unnamed element that takes away the anti-gravity effect! Oh snap! He’s got this stuff in dust form, in glass orbs that his armies fire with catapults. The air ships get hit and saunter vaguely downwards.

To make a long story short (yeah, I know, too late), our good-guy army is getting their butts kicked. But then Thongor shows up with his airship full of Rmoahal nomads who help us win the day. Whew! I don’t know about you, but I was worried!

Presumably, everyone who lived, lived happily ever after…until the next book!

So, now I’ve read it, I have to say that I was right all along: it IS my kind of cheese! This was a fun book. Was it some highbrow, socially-relevant literature? Heck no! That’s what they used to MAKE you read in high school, this is what you wanted to read instead! This is Grade A Saturday afternoon matinee serial-style material here. I recommend it whole-heartedly. And if this is the sort of “hack” material that Lin Carter came up with, then I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to read some more of his stuff! (Actually I’m relieved about that, cuz I’ve got some other books that he wrote.)

However, I can’t just SAY that. I have to come up with a rating so this will seem like a legitimate review column! So, I shall dig out my highly intuitive D&D percentage dice… For those who are not in the know, percentage dice are two ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between zero-one (Please, just kill me! Kill me now!) and double-zero, which actually means one hundred, the absolute best you can get (Morgan Fairchild! *sigh*).

Oh! Sorry! Where was I? Oh yeah, I roll the dice just like this…

…and end up with an 84! Hey, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye! (Is that a dumb expression, or what?) And, of course, that is only one idiot’s opinion and you don’t have to take it! You could get the book and form your very own opinions, even wrong ones that differ from my own! You can get it second-hand from Amazon right now for less money than the shipping charges! …And probably other places, too! It would make a great gift!

And on that note, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Whatever-Holiday-You’re-Into, and I hope you’ll come back next time when I talk about something else! Like what? I don’t know yet! Sheesh! You’ll just have to tune in and find out! So be there and be square, cuz this is your buddy, Oddcube, signing off!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube




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THE PHANTOM EMPIRE

THE PHANTOM EMPIRE

Hello there, all you happy people! How do I know that you’re happy people? Why, because it’s a brand new month, and that means its time for another Odd Review! How could you possibly NOT be happy? …Don’t answer that. And, of course, I am your buddy, Oddcube, here to say “Hello, and welcome to the column!”

So…Hello! And welcome to the column!

In case you don’t know it, my job is to find all sorts of things that you may not be aware are out there…and whether or not they’re worth your time! I get to talk about a wide variety of things, including music, movies, mini-series, and other things that don’t even begin with “M”. Then, to give you a rough idea of how good it is, I roll my D&D percentage dice to randomly determine a rating between one and a hundred. But more on that near the end of the article!

This time around, I’m gonna tell you about a classic movie serial! Now, if you’re of the older generation you probably know exactly what I mean by that, but I’d better explain to the younger ones. Now listen kiddies, if you go talk to Grandma and Grandpa they can tell you that back when movies were new you went to the theater and saw TWO full-length feature films, a newsreel, a travelogue, a cartoon, and a weekly serial—all for about a nickel!

Well, we’re talking about those serials today! Why? Because they were neat! They were cool! They greatly influenced generations of movie-makers! Plus…I don’t have anything else prepared.

The serials evolved directly from the pulp magazines of the time, and comic strips. Several famous heroes appeared in serials, including: Ace Drummond, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, and Zorro! The serial “Undersea Kingdom” is where Ray Corrigan obtained the nickname “Crash”, and the serial “The Phantom Empire” was the very first film to star world-renowned singing cowboy, Gene Autry!

And that’s the one we’re gonna talk about today! I’ve got a really good reason for it, too! It’s the one I’ve most recently seen! If that’s not a good enough reason…I don’t know what you can do about it!

So anyway, there was this movie company, called Mascot (which would later be absorbed into Republic, perhaps the most famous producer of film serials!). Nat Levine was the man in charge, and he instructed one of his writers, Wallace McDonald, to come up with a really boffo storyline for their next film project. Well, according to indisputable internet sources, McDonald read up on the Carlsbad Caverns while waiting in the dentist’s office. When the dentist gassed him, he had this groovy dream about an underground kingdom fighting against the surface people who discovered them! Luckily, he remembered this when he woke up, and viola! They had a plot!

In the serial, Gene Autry plays himself, or at least a character with the same name. He is the owner of Radio Ranch, where he and his musicians broadcast their radio show every day at two o’clock. Somehow, this has become a part of the lease agreement or something, cuz if Gene EVER fails to sing on the two o’clock radio show they will lose the ranch!

Gene has a partner who helps run the ranch, a man named Tom Baxter. Tom has two children, Frankie (played by Frankie Darro, who wore the Robby the Robot suit in “Forbidden Planet”) and Betsy (played by experienced rodeo performer, Betsy King Ross). Frankie and Betsy run a sort of a fan club called the Junior Thunder Riders, which is named after a mysterious company of horsemen who ride across the plains sounding like thunder (get it?) and mysteriously appear and disappear in Thunder Canyon. Frankie and Betsy also have a “secret lab” in the barn, where Frankie tries to invent things.

They allow tourists to come to radio ranch, for the whole “live studio audience” bit, I guess. However, in this batch of tourists is Professor Beetson and his (quote) “vicious band of research scientists” (unquote). Studies suggest that somewhere beneath Radio Ranch is a vast store of the very rare mineral, Radium! So Beetson and his vicious band of research scientists (I LOVE that line!) have come to do some scouting and run some tests to confirm this.

Guess what? It turns out the study was right! There’s just oodles of radium in the area! So Beetson and his vicious band of research scientists (you only get lines like that in old-school stuff like movie serials and pulp mags!) decide they have to drive everyone away from Radio Ranch so they can dig it all up without having to share it with anyone! Why? Well I told ya it was extremely rare, so they can sell it and get filthy stinkin’ rich!

How can they get rid of all the people in Radio Ranch? By getting rid of the reason they’re all there: the show. All they have to do is make Gene Autry miss his two o’clock broadcast—then the terms of their lease will be broken and they’ll get kicked out and the ranch will be deserted! Unfortunately, they turn out to be an INCOMPETENT vicious band of research scientists, and their efforts to detain Gene result in heaping amounts of EPIC FAIL!

So Professor Beetson, compelled by his greed, decides to drastically up the stakes. He kills Tom Baxter, and then frames Gene Autry for it! The only ones who believe that Gene is innocent are Frankie and Betsy, who hide him in the secret lab in the barn so the Sherriff can’t find him. Of course, he doesn’t stay there long before he is discovered, and goes on the run—straight to Thunder Canyon!

Well it turns out that Thunder Canyon hold the secret entrance that leads to the Scientific City of Murania (the mysterious underground “Phantom Empire” of the series title). Murania is a technologically advanced culture with robots, sky-chariots, atomic cannons and other good stuff! It’s implied that the people of Murania are the descendents of the lost kingdom of Mu. In case you don’t know, Mu is a mysterious island kingdom that supposedly sunk into the ocean, and it cannot be proved whether or not it actually existed. Sorta like Atlantis, except Mu was supposed to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Gene manages to escape from the Sherriff and the vicious band of research scientists (it actually says that phrase in the opening of one of the chapters!) by getting captured by the Thunder Riders, who take him into Murania! Ha, take that, surface antagonists!

But—oh snap!—things just got worse instead of better! See, the xenophobic ruler of Murania, Queen Tika (played by Dorothy Christie) has been watching us ignorant and barbaric surface people on her fancy-shmancy television, and wants absolutely nothing to do with us! She has no qualms about killing surface people to keep Murania secret and safe, so she decides to kill Gene Autry!

However, that’s still not complicated enough to stretch out for twelve whole chapters, so to complicate matters the Queen’s trusted advisor, Lord Argo the High Chancellor, is plotting to start a civil war, overthrow the Queen and put himself in charge! The swine! Why do all these rulers of lost kingdoms trust their trusted advisors? Don’t they know the trusted advisor ALWAYS turns out to be the bad-guy?!

Anyway, the traitorous Lord Argo has been slowly building up an army of rebels by saving people from the execution chamber. And he decides to save Gene Autry! But Gene, being the bland but dutiful hero-type, utterly refuses to join up and escapes instead!

So, because this is a 1935 movie serial, there’s a lot of “one damn thing after another” as Gene commutes between the surface world and the secret underground kingdom. He keeps having to sing on the radio show, but has to do it from remote locations so the Sherriff can’t catch him before he can clear himself of murder, and one or another of his sidekicks keeps getting kidnapped by the Muranians so he has a convenient excuse to go back there and help overthrow evil High Chancellor Argo.

I don’t really want to ruin the ending, in case anyone out there wants to check it out first hand. But I will say that I was surprised how…useful a role the comedic sidekicks ended up playing. Cuz in addition to the kids, Frankie and Betsy, Gene had two other sidekicks, Oscar and Pete (played by Smiley Burnette and William Moore). They spend most of the series being silly for the sake of being silly. But eventually, these two guys ended up orchestrating some vital plot points! I was impressed! And pleasantly surprised!

In 1940, the serial was edited down to the more reasonable feature film length of 70 minutes, and issued under two different names: “Radio Ranch” and “Men With Steel Faces”. And that’s not all! “The Phantom Empire” was also the inspiration behind one of the three serials featured weekly on the 1979 TV show “Cliffhangers”, a show which sounds really cool, but sadly didn’t last a full season.

It seems to me that these old-school serials are sort of an acquired taste nowadays. Just like any other film genre, there are some that are pretty good and others that are not. Fortunately, you don’t have to buy one to check it out. Netflix has a few serials for rent, including this one (that’s how I saw it). They have a few others that you can stream to your computer. There are also some other sites where you can stream or download old movies and serials that are now public domain. But you can watch it for free online at archivemovieclassics.com and other places that I can’t tell you about because when I found them I was dumb and forgot to bookmark them. But a web-search should get you more results!

Oh yeah, almost forgot. In order to maintain the disguise of a mild-mannered review column, I’ve got to issue a rating. As I’m the indecisive type when it comes to things like this, I’ve got a pair of handy-dandy D&D percentage dice to do it for me! The concept here is really easy. Percentage dice are two ten-sided dice. One represents the digit of the ones place, while the other represents the digit of the tens place. Together, they randomly determine a number anywhere from 01 (oh dear Lord, make it STOP!) and double-0 which actually means 100 (the unreachable standard to which all projects ought to aspire). So I’ll give my dice a simple toss like so…

…and end up with a fairly respectable 70! I guess that ain’t too bad. I can live with that. Like I said, these old-fashioned serials aren’t for everyone, even if they did inspire things like “Star Wars” and Indiana Jones. However, this was one of the better ones I’ve seen, so if you’re interested in old-fashioned serials, I can recommend this one!

But hey, that’s only one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! You could check it out for yourself and form your own opinion! That’s what I did! And since I can’t really think of anything else to say, I guess I’ll just say so long until next time! Speaking of next time, you should come back and find out what I’m gonna talk about next time, that way we’ll both know! Be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy Oddcube


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Dark Shadows: The Beginning

DARK SHADOWS

Hello, all you happy people! How do I know you’re happy? Because it’s a brand new month and there’s a brand new Odd Review out! You’re, like, reading it right now! And if that’s not enough to be happy about, I don’t know what you can do about it!

But this is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying “Hi” and “welcome to the column”! See? That was me right there who said that. And just in case you don’t know what goes on here, I’d better tell ya that my job is to find cool and/or strange stuff that you may not remember, or may not be aware of, dust it off a little bit, and show it to you!

I don’t usually bother trying to be timely and tropical…I mean topical, slight error, sorry. However, the timing on this particular article was too perfect to prevent its posting. Or, in other words, it’s October, Halloween time, and the season for all things creepy, spooky, and sinister! Therefore, it is the perfect time to talk about a classic gothic soap opera called Dark Shadows!

Surely you’ve heard of Dark Shadows. That’s the old soap opera with all the witches and ghosts and werewolves and, of course, iconic vampire, Barnabas Collins. And that’s not all! Other weird and twisted story elements involved travelling into the past, and the future, and even parallel dimensions! Sadly, the show had run its course before I came along. Sure, I’ve seen a few reruns here and there, but not enough to really understand what was going on. Most of what I knew about the show, I had heard from my older relatives and it convinced me that I had missed out on something!

Fortunately for me, the show is now on DVD, and available on Netflix! The show developed a cult following, and the standard fan opinion is that the show didn’t get good until Barnabas was introduced. But I wanted to see it from the very beginning! So I’ve been renting Dark Shadows: the Beginning, and I’m proud to say that I’ve recently finished it! So now I’m gonna tell ya about Dark Shadows Before Barnabas.

The show started off as a pretty normal soap opera, but heavy on the gothic elements normally associated with Victorian romances. We start off by meeting Victoria Winters, a young lady who grew up in an orphanage, who is taking the train to Collinsport, Maine to accept a job as a governess. On the train she bumps into Burke Devlin, a man who went to jail for a hit-and-run murder that he didn’t commit and has now come back to Collinsport for—bum-bum-BU-U-UM!—revenge!

Victoria finds her way to Collinwood, the beautifully drab and forbidding ancestral home of the Collins family, where she meets her employer, Mrs. Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, the stern but likeable matron of the Collins family. Mrs. Stoddard has not left estate for eighteen years, when her husband Paul mysteriously vanished. Elizabeth’s grown-up daughter, Carolyn, is an eat-drink-and-be-merry girl and a total spoiled brat who only wants what she can’t have and doesn’t appreciate what she does have until it’s lost to her. Elizabeth’s brother, Roger Collins, is a smug, arrogant, proud weasel of a man with an inexplicable English accent. Roger has a nine-year-old son named David, who is the creepy and thoroughly unlikable child Victoria has been hired to tutor and supervise and…whatever else governess’s are supposed to do.

Now get this, it turns out that Roger Collins is actually responsible for the hit-and-run death that Burke Devlin went to jail for. Burke has come back to Collinsport announcing left and right that he has come back to wreak his righteous revenge on Roger. Which is pretty dumb, because when the brakes on Roger’s car get tampered with, Burke instantly becomes Suspect Number One, even though he didn’t do that either.

Ya want to know who did it? It was his nine-year-old son, David! See, the two of them don’t get along AT ALL, and David sabotaged his father’s car as a pre-emptive strike cuz he is constantly afraid of being “sent away”. Not only did he try to kill his own father, but he then tried to plant evidence to frame two different people for it! But, you know, he’s a Collins, so Liz Stoddard covered the whole thing up.

But there’s still plenty of unresolved business, especially between Burke and Roger. So Burke keeps making threats and insinuations until he finally ticks off Liz Stoddard’s right-hand man, Bill Malloy. I LIKED Bill Malloy! He didn’t put up with any crap. He wanted to resolve the business between Burke and Roger before Burke caused enough trouble to ruin Liz Stoddard (if I recall correctly he was in love with her and wanted to marry her). So he tracked down the witness, a local artist and town drunk, Sam Evans, and arranged a meeting for a big, dramatic confrontation between Burke, Roger, and Sam. But on the night of this big meeting…Bill Malloy mysteriously vanished!

He was found floating in the water at the foot of the cliffs where Collinwood JUST HAPPENS to overlook. Somebody killed him to drag the story out, and it sure worked! Was it Sam Evans, who didn’t want to admit his part in the cover-up? Was it Roger Collins, who didn’t want to go to jail for manslaughter and lying under oath? No! It was Matthew, the old and mentally unbalanced handyman who is maniacally loyal to Liz Stoddard! …Say whaaa? And you know who stumbled onto this fact? Victoria Winters (remember her?), governess, eternal optimist, and token damsel-in-distress!

Matthew kidnaps her and ties her up in a secret room in the old mansion on the Collinwood estate. The only one who knows he’s hiding out there is young David Collins, who likes to hang out at the old house and talk to ghosts. I told ya he was a creepy kid! Anyway, Matthew managed to elude the police, but gets scared to death by the ghosts that haunt the old house.

Before anyone has time to draw in a breath of relief, Roger’s estranged wife, Laura Murdock Collins, returns to Collinsport. She’s been away to an asylum for years, but now she’s back to finalize a divorce and gain custody of David. Except, there’s more to it then that. She’s not really Laura Collins. She’s surrounded by all sorts of weird coincidences, mostly involving fires. She’s completely enthralled by fires, and actually spends most of her time staring into the fireplace. When she’s not doing that, she’s trying very hard to avoid answering questions.

It turns out she’s some supernatural thing, apparently some weird variation of a Phoenix. Every hundred years there’s a Laura Murdock-something who died in a fire with a child. Apparently she needs the child as part of her phoenix-type regeneration process, this time around, she’s after David.

Laura Collins put Liz Stoddard into a magically-induced coma that baffles all the doctors, who eventually move her to a hospital in some other city. The family lawyer, Frank Garner (well, ok, he’s actually the SON of the family lawyer, but he’s part of the firm, too). …Where was I? Oh yeah! So, the family lawyer, Frank Garner, who has a weak romantic tie to Victoria Winters, suddenly becomes considerably cooler because he knows a parapsychologist who he calls in to help treat Liz Stoddard.

The parapsychologist is Dr. Peter Guthrie (one of my favorite characters on the show so far!). He doesn’t believe 100% in all the occult stuff, and treats the whole thing with the scientific method. But he’s the one who figures out that Laura Collins is actually a blood-sucking succubus-bitch from Hell. …Well, ok, that’s just my little pet name for her…I wonder if I can say that in this column?

The part I didn’t understand was why everyone was trying to save David from Laura. NOBODY LIKED HIM! They kept saying things like, “We have to keep that innocent boy away from her!” Innocent? Did we forget that a hundred episodes ago he tried to kill his own father and frame two other characters for it?!

But, they do save him, and Laura burns up all by herself, presumably this means she will not return in the future. In the past maybe, but not in the future. Anyway, Laura fries and Liz is magically all better and upset that they took her out of the house. So she returns to Collinwood…

Just in time to meet an old “friend” named Jason Maguire, who knows Liz’s terrible secret about her missing husband and why she never leaves the house. Apparently she killed him and had Jason bury him in the basement, which totally blows some of my theories out of the water. Anyway, Jason is here to chisel a bunch of money out of Liz, and has blackmailed her into letting him and his partner, Willie Loomis, stay at Collinwood…much to the annoyance of everyone else who lives there.

Willie Loomis is a total shmuck who manages to ruffle the feathers of, like, EVERYONE else on the show inside of three episodes. He hits on all the girls and totally cheeses off the guys. He’s just a no-account punk and I really love it when he and Burke Devlin finally get into a fight down at the local bar. You know the good ol’ tough-guy line: “Two hits. Me hitting you, you hitting the floor?” Yeah, that’s about how the fight went. Burke totally cleaned his clock, didn’t break a sweat, didn’t even take his coat off! Burke is cool!

BUT! It turns out that it was a good thing they saved David after all. Why? Because he was inadvertently responsible for the arrival of Barnabas. See, he’s been telling Willie all these stories about his relatives and how many of them were buried with their jewels and medals and things. Well, Willie doesn’t have the patience for this long slow blackmail scheme of Jason Maguire’s. No sir, Willie is a grab-it-and-run kind of guy. He’s been advised to steal something that wouldn’t be missed. So he’s tracked down a crypt in a cemetery where members of the Collins family are buried…

And then that was the end of the set! Next up, we’ll be getting Dark Shadows: Collection One, which I understand is supposed to begin with the arrival of Barnabas.

Now, I’ve seen the show this far. I gotta say, it does NOT suck! Ok, it moves at a snail’s pace. If you only watch one episode, you kinda feel like nothing much happened. The show was on every weekday, but it was only a thirty-minute show. And a lot of that seemed to be devoted to re-capping whatever has been happening lately. And there are a LOT of episodes where characters seem to have the same conversations over and over and over again. You really want somebody to say “Why are you even bothering to ask me that? You’ve asked me that every episode for the past two weeks and I haven’t given you a straight answer yet, why do you think I’d start now?”

You often get the impression that the writer’s didn’t really have enough story to stretch it out as long as they wanted to. In fact, the plot I’ve just summed up for you took them about nine months to do. Seems to me it could have moved a little quicker. The special effects were cool and retro…a bit sad by modern standards perhaps, but for a daytime show in 1966 they were top-shelf!

Some actors messed up on their lines, the product of not enough rehearsals before taping. Or worse, having to read directly from cue cards! This totally messed up veteran film actors, like Joan Bennet, who played Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, seemed to be the worst in this area. She’s supposed to be the big-time movie star adding credibility to the show! I guess she was used to more rehearsal time than the daily taping schedule allowed. She was still great, though!

Let’s see now…I’m up to somewhere in March of 1967 and the show was supposed to continue on to 1971 before getting dropped by the network, so there’s still lots more for me to watch. And luckily for fans, there is only one single, solitary episode that did not survive. There’s supposed to be an audio track somewhere that someone tried to construct an episode of still-images from, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. Still, that’s a pretty impressive statistic, considering there were over a thousand episodes of the original series!

Let’s see, the show was supposed to be created by producer Dan Curtis, inspired by a dream he had where some girl went on a trip to a creepy old house. Most of the folks in the show are known best for being on this show. But the guy playing Willie Loomis, John Karlen, might be remembered from the show Cagney and Lacey. And it turns out that Mitch Ryan, who plays Burke Devlin, is the bad guy in the first Lethal Weapon movie. And I’ve already mentioned that Joan Bennet was a movie star before she got on the show.

Anyway, what it comes to is that the show is brilliant. It’s a little tedious in places, with the backtracking in case you missed an episode. It’s also a little annoying some of the stupid things certain characters put up with. And I really wish there had been more to the scene when Burke beat up Willie. But the show is really good, and I can’t wait to see what happens next! People keep telling me the show didn’t get good until Barnabas showed up. Well, I don’t think that’s really true, but I do hope it means that it will get even better!

Here’s an interesting tidbit I came across on my research. Apparently the show was doing pretty badly up to this point. The network was going to cancel the show. So the writers and producers said “Oh well, let’s go out with a bang! Let’s throw in a vampire!” So they came up with Barnabas Collins and hired classic Shakespearean actor, Jonathan Frid for one thirteen-week storyline, expecting the character—and the show—to end. Of course, fans know that Barnabas remained a regular on the show until it was finally cancelled in 1971. Ain’t that always the way it works out?

I almost forgot to mention that the show was so popular that it spawned comic books, tie-in novels, audio-novels, and two movies featuring members of the original cast. In 1991 MGM tried to re-make the show to air on NBC…but it didn’t work I guess. I think you can see all the episodes of the 90’s series on YouTube. In 2004 the WB produced a pilot that was never picked up. Current internet rumors state that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are planning a new movie inspired by the classic series.

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to give this a rating! Well, it’s pretty darn good, but there is room for improvement. So, let’s see what my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice have to say. In case you don’t know, percentage dice are two ten-sided dice used to randomly determine a number between zero-one (how can you stand it?!) and double-zero, which actually stands for one hundred (how can you stand to be without it?!). So I’ll just roll the dice like this…

…and end up with an eighty-three! Well, I guess I can live with that. I wonder if later parts of the series would rate higher? I may have to review them some time and find out!

But that’s all I’ve got for now, folks! So be sure to tune in next time when I talk about something else entirely! This is Everybody’s Buddy, Oddcube, signing off!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube


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Jetpack!

HOW TO BUILD A JETPACK

Howdy Toonsters! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to welcome you to… (Cue sappy music)…A Very Special Odd Review!

Now, if this were a regular Odd Review, I’d make sure you understand that my job is to find stuff you may not know about and then tell ya why it’s cool (or why you should avoid it like the plague). Then, at the end, I roll a pair of percentage dice to pick a random number to rate it with. You know, so this column looks like a legitimate review!

Well, I’ll tell ya how it is, folksies. I had this idea to tell ya all about Backyard FX, a show over at Indy Mogul (at indymogul.com). Now, Indy Mogul is a site devoted to helping independent filmmakers, with shows about the behind-the-scenes “how-to” stuff, and other shows to help showcase indie films. Now, I’m particularly interested in the “Backyard FX” show, which shows you how to achieve various special effects for cheap. Usually they show you how to build special props, sometimes they show you how to achieve certain make-up effects, sometimes they show you how to build and use your own green screen.

Now, in one of the very first episodes Eric Beck (the show’s creator and former host) shows us how to build a jetpack! And it was a really cool jetpack! He even made it so you could put a small fire extinguisher inside, pull this cable to set it off so it would look like smoke was coming out of the thrusters as the jetpack started up! Much later, Eric got SO busy with other parts of Indy Mogul that he felt he could not devote the proper amount of time to the Backyard FX show, so he held open auditions where anybody could send in a test video of them building a project. One of the entries was a fellow named Mike Smith (he had a cool robot sidekick named Tec!), and he made his own jetpack! …His didn’t have a fire extinguisher, though he did set it up so he could insert dry ice in the hopes of the steam coming out of the thrusters. But he didn’t do that part on camera, so I don’t know if it worked or not.

Anyway, it’s a really cool and informative show, but I thought if I was gonna talk about it, I should build something from one of their tutorials first. This became such a project, that I thought it would be neat just to tell you about that. So I will! And then I can devote the proper attention to Indy Mogul and Backyard FX in a later Review.


So, I think I’ve been watching too much web-TV. I’ve been watching things like “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”, “The Guild”, and “Captain Blasto”, and I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming “Mercury Men” series and “Flash Gordon” series. And I’ve got a groovy idea for a web-series with a plot that incorporates all the cool special effect props that I want to build! And yes! One of them is a Jetpack!

Well, I’d been thinking about it for a couple of months, and collecting potential parts, and finally the time had come to build a Jetpack! Bwah-haha-ha-ha! (You HAVE to do the maniacal laugh, so people know you mean it!)

From the very beginning here, I want to say that I figured it would be incredibly easy to build. And it really was. Kind of time-consuming, but easy. In fact, I basically built the whole thing in one day. However, I sorta wish I had used a few alternate materials, to make it a little less flimsy. But I’ll get to that later.

Step One: You need the idea and the desire to build a homemade Jetpack! Check!

Step Two: You have to figure out what you want the dumb thing to look like, what you are gonna build it out of, and collect your materials! Well, in the Indy Mogul videos, they basically build all of their projects out of everyday items, usually scavenged from thrift stores. I have a collection of small plastic containers, soda bottles, and various bottle caps that I use to decorate the miniature buildings I build for table-top wargaming. So I had some cool decoration-type stuff. But I needed something to use for the actual “backpack” portion of the jetpack.

I ended up with a plastic “bakery box” from my local grocery store. The bakery department uses these as containers for sheet cakes, breads, and other things. Mine was filled with croissants and they were scrum-diddly-umptious! In addition to this, I used two 2-liter soda bottles, two Renuzit air fresheners, two sour cream containers, one Cool Whip container, two liquid laundry soap bottle caps, one soap box, one toilet paper roll, two drinking straws, and one kid’s party favor compass. Oh and some of my Dear Old Mother’s ™ leftover plastic canvas. And paint and duct tape and white glue and hot glue.

See, my thinking was to do something that any idiot could do, without the need of fancy-schmancy tools or handyman know-how. Cuz, you know, I’m just any idiot and don’t have them fancy-schmancy tools or handyman know-how and I wanted to do it anyway. Just to show ‘em I could! Nyah!

Step Three: Build it! So here’s what I did. I took one sour cream container and slammed it onto the bottom of a soda bottle, then glued it with hot glue in the hopes that it will stay there. Onto the bottom of the sour cream container, I glued a laundry bottle cap. Then I took one of those air fresheners and pulled the top off to use it as a thruster. I removed the bottle cap from the soda bottle and glued the air freshener top to it.
Congratulations! We now have a rocket thruster! Then we do it all again so that we have two! Then you take the two rocket thrusters and glue them to the sides of the clear plastic lid of the bakery box. Now we have something that looks vaguely like a jetpack already and we’ve only just started!

Of course, I wanted the back to look cool and not just a big blank square. I wanted interesting stuff sticking out from it, and maybe even sticking into it. So I took the Cool Whip container and cut up the bottom to look like a cross-section with four big ol’ holes in it. Then I filled the holes with plastic canvas so it would look like some sort of exhaust or air intake, or even a fan housing of some sort. I painted the inside black, didn’t bother with a fan, then glued the Cool Whip lid to the Cool Whip container and then glued it to the back of the Jetpack.

Well that covers the “sticking out” part. Now I needed to come up with a “Sticking In” part. So I had this nifty idea for a little window where you can see part of the engine. Now the plastic bakery box lid is already clear, so if I just glue something to the inside of it, the bakery box can be the window…as long as I’m careful to NOT paint over that part.

So I grabbed a bar of soap from the bathroom and cut open the wide side of the box to form four flaps. I removed the bar of soap, of course. Then I took a toilet paper roll and cut a length of it that would fit in the soap box. But the roll was too big around, so I had to cut the back off of it. So now I had, like, one fourth of a toilet paper roll and glued that inside the soap box.

It was boring.

So I took two bendable drinking straws and cut them to fit in the soap box, too, making sure to keep the stretched out bendy part. I glued them in the box. Then I painted the whole thing black, and when that dried, I painted the toilet paper roll and straws with metallic colors to look like they might be part of the engine. Once I was done with all that, I glued it to the inside of the bakery box.

There was one little problem with this. I had cut the straws just a little too short and had to use a BIG blob of glue to hold them in place. It didn’t look good. So I cut a rectangle of cardboard out of a pizza box lid…which I forgot to mention was amongst my materials…and cut a window in it that was slightly smaller than the soap box. Then, I glued this on the outside of the bakery box like a frame, and it helped to cover those unsightly blobs of glue!

Well, I was mostly pleased, but there were still parts of it that were just too darn plain. So I took the two soda bottle caps and glued them onto the back of the jetpack, too. I didn’t like how plain the top was, so I cut a small hole and placed the bottom half of one of those air fresheners into it (stem down). Oh, uh, that scented gel around the center stem will dry up if you keep them long enough, then you just pull it right off the stem. You might need pliers to do this, or you might not.

My original idea was to have some sort of wings, but I was afraid of how wide that would make it. But it had to have some sort of stabilizer fins. So I took one of those sour cream lids and cut it in half and glued them to the soda bottles.

That means that we just need a cool paint job and some straps…preferably with some sort of control panel. Hmm…let’s do the easy part first. Painting!

First off, you need to cover up the parts where you do NOT want paint. I saved the parts that I had cut from the Cool Whip container so I could use them to cover up the black-painted plastic canvas. I also saved the cardboard that I cut out of the pizza box frame, and used it to cover the engine window. First I painted the inside of the air freshener thrusters with black paint, so it would look like it’s been used once or twice. Then I just painted the rest of it with a silver metallic paint…but you could paint yours whatever color you wanted to, really. Black, bronze, steel, pink, whatever you’re into.

And now: the straps! Hoo boy…the straps. Well, my very first thought was to find a small backpack that I could squeeze inside the bakery box, then I could cut some slots in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box to thread the straps through. I still think this is the best method, but I didn’t have a backpack, and I didn’t feel like buying a brand new one for this. Plus, I didn’t really wanna bother with thrift stores.

Instead, I made my own straps! I bought a roll of black duct tape to make them out of. It wasn’t hard, really. I pulled out about a yard of tape, then another. Then I placed one tape sticky side up and covered half of the length with the other tape. Then I just folded the exposed sticky side up over the length of the second tape, so there was only half of the second tape’s sticky side exposed. Then I folded that sticky side over.

I had to do that four times. Then I took one end of each strap and wrapped it around a pill bottle. Then I threaded the strap through the slot I had cut in the black plastic bottom of the bakery box, so that the pill bottle end was on the inside.

Then I thought the shoulder straps should be wider, for comfort’s sake. So I took two more lengths of duct tape and sandwiched the thin strap between them. I did this for each side, of course.

Next came the problem of how to fasten the straps. So I cut a pair of buckles out of the lid of a plastic ice cream tub…which I also failed to mention in the materials. But that’s ok, cuz either I didn’t cut them right, or the duct tape is too slippery, or something. Cuz the straps keep sliding loose. I’m thinking of installing Velcro.

Finally, I needed a control box! I had this nifty idea of a strap that goes horizontally across your chest with the box on it, but that’s not what I ended up with. First off, the box itself is a small sewing kit box, like you find in your local department store or grocery store. I took a shallow bottle cap (from small water bottles works great) and a pair of needle caps from my Poor Old Mother’s insulin needles. I glued all these inside the box to look like a knob and a pair of switches. Then, I just taped a paper clip to the back, because I ended up fastening the straps in an “X” configuration anyway.



I added some duct tape “loops” to my straps, just to help make it look sorta bandolier-style. Then I took a pair of pill bottles and painted them silver to stick in the loops. They could be smoke bombs, or hand grenades, or emergency fuel canisters, or mini tool-cases, or just a place to keep your Tic-Tacs, gum, or change for the toll booths.

In my local dollar store, they have a party aisle. That’s where I found a bag of party favors that were compasses. There were five or six of them in the bag, and I thought they would make good gauges. It was pretty easy to pry the cover off and pull out the arrow, then you just cut a circle of paper to fit and decorate it to look like whatever gauge you want. It could be a fuel gauge, or a temp gauge, or an rpm gauge, or even a clock, or some sort of frequency dial! I made mine a temp gauge, glued the arrow and the cover back on, and glued it onto the bakery box, connected to the Cool Whip bucket. A little extra detail painting here and there, a few serial numbers, and even a corporate or faction logo and shazam! You got a jetpack!

Wait a minute! While doing this detail work I did find a dent in one of my soda bottles. I think I did that with the hot glue gun while trying to add a little glue to help make it more stable. I was hoping I had only caused the air inside to contract, so I poked a little hole in the soda bottle. Wouldn’t ya know? The hot glue gun had melted the plastic! I seriously could NOT do anything about it (short of replacing the whole thruster, which I did NOT want to do). And as if that wasn’t bad enough, now I had a hole in the side of it!

Well, the hole was easily fixed with the some yellow tape. I just drew some black stripes with a Sharpie and just like that I had some caution tape! Of course, I had to do that to both sides so it looked like it was supposed to be there and not like I was covering up an inconvenient hole. I’ve simply accepted the dent.

All things said and done, I’m pretty happy with the end results! It looks like a jetpack and everything! Of course, there are a few things I wish I had done differently. For starters, I think I should have attached the soda bottles to the bakery box with screws for better stability. I sorta wish I had used some hardware store adhesive like Liquid Nails instead of hot glue. It’s supposed to be stronger AND it doesn’t melt the plastic!

Plus, I later found out that the top half of the air freshener is actually two parts! The very top is connected to the stem that connects to the bottom half of the air freshener. If you knock this part out it leaves an open-ended cone that will loosely screw onto the soda bottle directly! That would help the thruster to NOT look quite as much like a soda bottle, plus I think there would be more gluing surface to keep it in place!

Oh well, it was fun to do. And you don’t have to end here! You can accessorize with souped-up dollar store goggles and water pistol, in matching colors! Careful painting those goggles though! I suggest you use a primer, then paint, and then follow with a sealer! …And make sure you remove the lens BEFORE you paint! Then, all you need is a jumpsuit and you’re ready to protect the local Comic-Con from the forces of E-Vil!

So, for inspiration and actually doing it, I say: High Points! For constructing it with everyday items that anyone can get, I say: High Points! I spent less than ten dollars on materials (for silver spray paint and black duct tape), everything else I had lying around or was garbage that I saved specifically for this project. …Of course, I haven’t bought the Velcro for the straps yet. I think it could be built a little sturdier, and if you have mad handyman skills you could trip it out with blinking lights, or make those laundry bottle caps spin like turbines or something.

Oh well, it was just supposed to look cool, and I think I accomplished that! Plus, my Twitty Nephew is visiting for the summer, and he thinks it is “Totally Awesome”… which is pretty much what I was going for!

But, I guess it’s not fair for me to just assign myself a rating, cuz that’s not how we do things around here! No sirree! We roll randomly to determine a score between zero-one, which means “run away, run away now;” and double zero, which actually means one hundred percent, or “I can dig it, I can dig it, I can dig it the most!” Now that that’s all cleared up, I’ll just give my dice a roll like this…

And roll a sixty-nine! …Sixty-nine?! Stupid dice! Must have to turn it upside…no. Must have to read it backwards! That makes it a Ninety-six!

That’s right, folks! My nifty jetpack-building tutorial is rated a ninety-six! And there you have yet another victory for “blatant favoritism on the part of the judges”!

Well, that’s all I got for now. If ya care, I am planning to post a watered-down version of this on my own website, complete with pictures! Including a picture of your buddy Oddcube modeling the finished piece! But there’s no telling when I’ll get around to that. Right now I got to figure out what I’m gonna talk about next month! So you make sure to tune in next month to find out what it’ll be! Be there and be square (I know I will)!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

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Oddcube Reviews "Doc Savage in The Polar Treasure"

DOC SAVAGE (AND THE POLAR TREASURE)


Hey there, hi there, ho there! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying hi and welcome to the column! This is my own personal little corner of the magazine where I get to expound upon just about any topic that I deem to be expoundable! And, being the civic-minded type that I am, I have chosen to broaden the public awareness by investigating an array of uncommon and even outdated issues, events, and occurrences. Or in other words, I check out the weird stuff so that you don’t have to! …Now, aren’t you glad I’m here? Of course you are! So let’s get going!

In case ya don’t know it, I’m kind of a fan of old-fashioned pulp. See, before there was television, there was radio. Before there was radio, there were the pulps! The pulps were cheap magazines with sensational fiction stories. Generally, they are thought to have evolved from the dime novels and penny dreadfuls of the nineteenth century, and eventually evolve into the comic books that we know today. They featured larger-than-life heroes like the Shadow, the Spider, Secret Agent X, and hotshot pilot Dusty Ayres, to name only a few. They had lurid, exploitative, and often ridiculous stories, and sensational and often risqué cover art. Countless titles were published by several publishers from about 1896 through the 1950’s, usually featuring a full-length novel and then a few short story “B-features”. What’s not to love, right?

Now, these old pulp stories are kinda hokey, and very cheesy at times…which is probably why I like them! You can still find some vintage pulp magazines through EBay and Amazon, but they all cost a fortune! However, there are various collections of pulp stories in book form and a magazine called “High Adventure” reprints stories and art from a wide variety of old pulp magazines.

That brings us up to speed with this article. See, not too long ago I took my Poor Old Mother™ to one of the local second-hand book shops (she digs them second-hand book shops, she digs them the most!), and while she was looking for some kind of mystery book by the likes of Hillerman or Jance (I’m SUCH a name-dropper, and not even ashamed of it!), I was looking for cool-weird stuff in the fantasy/sci-fi section! And much to my amazement, shock, surprise and chagrin I found myself a Doc Savage novel written by Kenneth Robeson himself!

Kenneth Robeson is the pen name of Lester Dent, and he is responsible for almost ALL of the stories about Doc Savage. This particular novel is called “The Polar Treasure” and is, like, the fourth story published by Doc Savage Magazine back in 1933, published by Street & Smith! This book was a reprint by Bantam Books; my copy is a third printing release from July of 1972. The cover shows some guy in the frozen wastes with a polar bear towering over him in a most menacing pose! Looks cool! Accidental pun! I had never read any Doc Savage before, so I was excited!

Now, I have mixed feelings on this adventure. I’ll try and explain why as I go. First off, there’s Doc Savage himself. He’s, like, six foot tall, well muscled, and beautifully bronzed, which just sounds like some sort of girly mag centerfold to me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was raised by a team of scientists to have near-superhuman abilities, strength, endurance, a photographic memory, a mastery of martial arts, and esoteric knowledge of a wide variety of sciences. Throughout his career it has been revealed that Doc Savage is an accomplished physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician. He’s the sort of fantasy over-achiever that makes me feel like the inadequate slacker that I am. Real people don’t achieve that much in a whole lifetime! So partly because of my own insecurities and partly because I believe people in general are too lazy to achieve SO much…I have trouble accepting Doc as a believable character. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s pulp. But I have a much easier time accepting that some wacko with normal human abilities is SO messed up that he thinks putting on a mask and fighting crime in the middle of the night is a good idea.

To make it even worse, this Superman, this Lyle Perfect has five dudes that hang out with him and help him out on his adventures. They are supposed to be the tops in their respective fields. Oops, sorry! I mean that they were Second-Best in their respective fields, cuz Doc is the best at absolutely everything! …Which makes me wonder why he needs these guys? He doesn’t really. In fact, later in the series, these helper-dudes were written out of the monthly stories and would only occasionally make cameo guest appearances.

Ok! Now then, “The Polar Treasure”! Well, it starts off with this blind violinist, he holds a concert and afterwards gets jumped by this gang of sailor dudes who mutinied on a passenger liner the violinist was on eighteen years ago. There was supposed to be millions of dollars worth of gold on that liner, so the crew mutinied, scuttled the boat somewhere in the polar ice and left it there to come back for it later. Doc Savage shows up out of nowhere to rescue the violinist.

Well, it turns out that the mutineers couldn’t get along, and are now divided up into two groups. One is led by a dude named Ben O’Gard, the other by Keelhaul de Rosa. These seem to be the only bad guys worthy of getting names. No wait, there was one other guy called Dynamite Smith, but he was just one of Ben’s lackeys. Ben and Keelhaul are the only two bad-guy names worth remembering.

So it turns out that the blind violinist has a map tattooed on his back, showing the precise location of the scuttled luxury liner. Both groups of mutineers are now after him to get the map, and therefore the treasure. That’s cool! I like that part! The tattoo can only be seen by using an X-ray device. That’s kinda silly, but also kinda cool. I can take it or leave it. The part I don’t understand is why they waited eighteen years before going back for the treasure? I guess once one side decided to go after it, the other side heard about it and just wanted to beat them there. This isn’t adequately explained. But a lot of things in pulps aren’t adequately explained, it’s one of the major drawbacks of old pulp.

Of course, there’s a lot of nonsensical, near-pointless adventure in New York City as both teams of mutineers kidnap the violinist and obtain a copy of the map on his back. Also, of course, Doc Savage and his team find out about it. At one point, Doc and one of his assistants gets locked in a disused vault in an old condemned bank that some bad guys are using as a hideout. Now get this, Doc has two extra upper molars. They are fake and each one contains a chemical. When the two chemicals are combined it makes an explosive compound which he uses to blast the door off the vault.

Now I don’t understand that one at all. I mean, what you get into a fistfight and some dude slugs you in the puss and cracks those two teeth open. Wouldn’t your head explode? Or maybe you would just have explosive spit like in that cartoon where Tweety tricks Sylvester into drinking the nitro glycerin.

Anyway, Doc fixes the blind violinist’s eyes so he can see again. They caught some bad guys…oh yeah! Get this! They catch some of the bad guys and send them to a facility in upstate New York to receive BRAIN SURGERY! Doc fixes it up so that surgeons take out “the part of the brain that makes you prone to criminal activity”. Once receiving this particular lobotomy, you become a useful member of the community!

Oh REALLY? I have a BIG problem with this. Why? Because brain manipulation is a BAD-GUY thing! The good guys are supposed to stop the bad guys from doing that sort of thing! You heard of Fu Manchu, right? The inscrutable Chinese devil-doctor? Well, he has a whole big gang of dudes called Dacoits. You know what makes you a Dacoit? Fu Manchu performs a lobotomy on you, removing your free will making you his Dacoit slave! And yet, the HERO has funded a special facility to do the same thing! That’s just wrong!

Anyway, Doc Savage gets the map off the violinist’s back and tells his guys he wants to go after the treasure, partly to help fund the lobotomy hospital, mostly cuz he thinks neither set of bad-guys should have it. So his group of learned, intellectual cohorts starts hootin’ and hollerin’ and generally carryin’ on like a bunch of frat boys at a kegger and shout “Woo-hoo, we’re going on an adventure, just like in the Goonies!”

Time-out! I’ve met intellectual people and they do NOT act that way! At least, not the ones I’ve met. So I have a problem with that, too.

So, Doc checks the newspaper and finds out that some guys with a submarine just HAPPEN to be orchestrating an expedition to the North Pole and require some extra funding. You guess it; this is one team of the mutineers! Doc and his boys go with them, and there’s a lot of nonsense with people stranding other people on glaciers and stuff. The formerly blind violinist shows up outta nowhere with a rescue plane. Doc gets to kill a polar bear with his bare hands. We find the boat still stuck in the ice and the violinist’s wife and daughter (thought to have died eighteen years ago during the mutiny) are both alive and well, and the daughter is eighteen and beautiful and has the hots for Doc because that’s apparently what the chicks are for in a Doc Savage story.

Of course by the end of the story, all the mutineers are dead and not from anything Doc and his crew did directly to them. Doc does NOT find the treasure, as it was taken off the boat and stashed during the mutiny eighteen years ago. Instead he waits for one set of mutineers to recover it and put it on the submarine, so we can strand them on an ice flow and take the sub and the loot.

Through out the story, Doc does this thing where he lightly touches the bad guys with one finger and they get rendered unconscious. I thought it was sort of cool pressure-point thing, sorta like what Xena does, ya know? But we find out that he has some other chemical built into some false fingertips, and that greatly diminished the coolness in my opinion.

So at the end of it, I can say it was a learning experience. I thought the story was kinda cool, but I didn’t like the characters of Doc Savage and his helper dudes. I guess I prefer the Spider, he just shoots everything. I can dig that. But Doc is all weird chemicals and more scientific knowledge than a real human brain can hold. I swear if he tried to learn something more his head would explode! Sherlock Holmes used to say that a brain was like an attic with only a certain amount of space.

Oh well, the time has come to rate this so as to keep up the weak façade of being a legitimate review column! For this purpose I randomly roll a pair of D&D percentage dice to determine a number from 0-1 or “Totally No-Where, Man, Avoid At All Costs!” to double 0, which actually means 100 percent or “It’s the Ginchiest and the Maximum Utmost!” So I shall give them an unbiased roll like that…



And end up with a 68! Hey, it’s on the internet so it must be true! But hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion and you don’t have to take it! You could check it out for yourself if ya wanted to. You should be able to find the book through Amazon and other such book sellers, or maybe you’ll get lucky in find it in your local second-hand book store!

Well folks, that’s all I got for now! So come on back next month when I talk about something else entirely! You won’t want to miss it, and I won’t want you to miss it, either! …I need the hits! Anyway, see ya next time, folks! Be there and be square!

------Your Buddy, Oddcube

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Oddcube Reviews Princess of Mars

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PRINCESS OF MARS

Felicitous greetings and fanciful salutations, and other things that mean “hi”! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube here saying “Hello, and welcome to the column!”

So basically, what goes on here is that I find myself a subject that fits into one or more of the categories listed in the title there, and tell you about it! Mostly, I try to tell you about cool stuff that you shouldn’t miss! However, it has been pointed out to me that, technically speaking, “Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated” does NOT necessarily equate to “good stuff”. Besides, my Beloved Editor™ likes it when I get my snark on.

On that note, I’ve decided to tell you about a certain cinematic experience that should be avoided at almost any cost! That’s right, as those paying attention to the title already know, I’m talking about “Princess of Mars”, and I’ll be getting snarky with it!

So, on some set of online forums, somebody posted a link to a trailer posted on YouTube for “Princess of Mars”, inspired by the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. The only things I really remembered from the commercial were some aliens that didn’t look too bad, some weird mutant T-Rex steeds, a nifty shot of an airboat, and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris. It didn’t look GREAT, but it did look watchable. Holy misleading advertising Batman!

Ok, to be fair, it wasn’t WHOLLY misleading! …Traci Lords was in it! This must have been a low point in her career, since I’m sure she was in some X-rated films with better plots and characterization. Antonio Sabato Jr. (formerly of daytime soap “General Hospital” and Calvin Klein ads) was John Carter, but…not really. It was written and directed by some shlub named Mark Atkins. After I watched it, I found out it was produced and distributed by a company called “The Asylum”, who seem to specialize in really bad, low-budget movies inspired by the buzz surrounding big-budget features that are coming soon. Although they do technically use original plots, the themes and titles of their movies are suspiciously similar (but legally distinct) from certain widely-anticipated, big-budget movies, and are released directly to video at about the same time the real movie comes out. Thanks to this business practice, their flicks are often referred to as “mockbusters”, a name which at least one of the founders objects to…so that’s the one I’m gonna use.

Fast forward several months. It’s gonna be on the SyFy Channel! I was excited! I mean, ok, SyFy pretty much sucks except for Eureka and possibly Merlin, but they could be showing something really cool by accident! I mean, you can’t put a whole lot of faith in a channel that can’t even spell “sci-fi” correctly. But, being the magnanimous sort that I am, I was determined to watch it! Cuz I’m a glutton for punishment!

So, I missed the first few minutes of the movie, like the opening titles. But I see modern-day army guys fighting somewhere in the Middle East. This one guy is leading a team of other guys to rescue some dude. And I’m like, “Uh…do I have the right day? Maybe that commercial said tomorrow, or next week, or something.” Cuz, I actually read the book, and I know John Carter fought in the American Civil War before the story and was prospecting for gold in Arizona when he got zapped across the void to Mars.

But, somebody calls the leader-guy Carter, so I presume I got the right day after all, and sneer with venomous contempt. Cuz, you know, it bugs me no end when they screw up the good stuff. So, they go in to save this guy, firefight breaks out, the guy we’re trying to rescue gets a gun and shoots Carter…and ya don’t really care cuz you don’t know him yet.

So, he wakes up in the infirmary where an army doctor and an officer tell him he’s about to be subjected to some sort of teleportation experiment which will either heal him up like new or kill him. He’s gonna get zapped to the fourth planet orbiting, like, Andromeda or something, which we call Mars II. And I’m all like…well, I can’t really tell ya my reaction, cuz I’m pretty sure my Beloved Editor would deem it “unprintable”. So, they zap him across space, where stars zoom by in a blur of lines that remind me of an old opening sequence of classic British sci-fi show, Dr. Who (which I’ve just sullied by merely mentioning in this review!).

He falls into the atmosphere, bounces off an airboat, and lands among the Vasquez Rocks of southern California. He wakes up, wanders over to a ledge and jumps like a superhuman grasshopper from rock to rock like he expected to be able to do it! That’s right; this WTF moment was brought to you by The Asylum and SyFy!

So, he gets found by some green Martians who aren’t very green…but they DO have tusks like the Tharks are supposed to have! I actually thought the masks for the Tharks were pretty good! Of course, they still weren’t proper Tharks…they weren’t green enough, they weren’t tall enough, they didn’t have enough arms, and they were WAY overdressed to be proper Tharks! But the masks themselves weren’t bad!

I was impressed that they kept the whole me-no-speaka-you-language bit. Of course, instead of being all intellectual and actually learning it, he was forced to eat some sort of worm and could magically understand Martian-speak.

This is when we finally find out that the locals call the planet Barsoom, and that the aliens are called Tharks, and that this squad is led by Tars Tarkas. They replaced the Thoats with the T-Rex things, and threw in some weird giant spider-things. Cuz, you know, that’s the all-purpose, default fantasy/sci-fi monster! Don’t know what to do next? Throw in some giant spiders!

While traveling home with not-really-John Carter, the Tharks attack an airboat which just happens to be carrying Dejah Thoris and her bodyguard/wannabe-suitor, Sab Than. They were taking some dude to the Air Factory that produces breathable air and allows everyone to live on Barsoom. The Princess flees on a lifeboat, and after she leaves, Carter witnesses Sab Than kill the Air Factory guy!

Well, Carter captures Dejah Thoris (to save her life from the Tharks), and they all go back to the Thark city. Here we meet the leader, Tal Hajus. Tars Tarkas proudly declares that they have captured the Princess of Mars…even though they call the place Barsoom. And John Carter inexplicably introduces himself as John Carter of Mars…even though they call the place Barsoom.

Well, Tal Hajus is not impressed, and throws Tars Tarkas, John Carter, and Dejah Thoris in prison. That’s where John Carter finds Sab Than, and finds out he’s really that (unprintable) Middle East guy that shot him up! He has evil plans to conquer Barsoom and also to marry…and do other things to…Dejah Thoris by seizing control of the Air Factory and threatening to shut it down if everybody doesn’t do whatever he says.

The short version, of course, is that Carter lives and follows Sab Than and Dejah Thoris to the Air Factory where we have an uninspired fight while all the air drains away in a manner far less thrilling than in “Total Recall” (which I’ve also just sullied by mentioning in this review…gee, what a shmuck I am this month).

And, of course, once “his work here is done”, he gets conveniently zapped back to Earth, where he doesn’t say anything about the teleportation experiment, so that we don’t flock to Barsoom and ruin place…like it wasn’t already too late by the end of the movie.

And now, the time you’ve all been waiting for: the assigning of a completely un-biased rating! Hmm, let’s see…I suppose it was better than “Manos: The Hands of Fate” (but what isn’t?), and it moved faster than Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings” (but so does molasses in January)… Nope, I can’t decide, which is good cuz I’m not supposed to. Instead I shall roll my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice.

For those of you who are uninitiated with D&D or my column, I should explain that percentage dice are two ten-sided dice used to determine a random number between 01 (which means it sucks a dead giraffe), to double-0, or 100, which in this case means that some Higher Power is playing a cruel joke on your buddy Oddcube. Now that that’s settled, I shall give my dice a roll just like that…


…and end up with a seventeen! And trust me folks, that’s giving it all the best of it! So there you have it, folks! Beware of the Asylum and beware of the Princess of Mars! However, if there is a B-movie…no, this wasn’t good enough to be a B-movie. Let’s make that: if there is a J-movie buff that you don’t like, you can purchase this on DVD from Amazon and other places who don’t know how bad it is for their reputations to be associated with it!

Of course, that’s just one idiot’s opinion, and you don’t have to take it! …Although, in this case I suggest that you do! After all, I’m hip, and with it, and jiggy, and fly! And I’m your buddy so I wouldn’t lie! It’s really bad folks! But come on back here next month and I’ll be talking about something totally different! And hopefully better!

------Your Buddy, Oddcube!

Oddcube reviews "The Jack Benny Program"!

THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM

Hello and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here to tell you about something you ought to know about! In the odd event that some uninitiated individual is actually observing this article, I’d best explain the average on-goings.

You see, my mission, which I’ve chosen to accept, is to tell you about all kinds of really nifty things that you may not have heard about. Maybe it’s something weird that’ll never get to be mainstream. Maybe it’s something old enough that people nowadays aren’t so familiar with it anymore. Well, whatever the case, I’m here to tell you about it!

This month’s topic is a perfect example of the effort I put in to broaden your horizons! So sit back and become enlightened!

My Poor Old Mother ™ assures me that once upon a time the world was a very different place. Not only did she have to walk barefoot in the snow uphill both ways to get to school every day! No sir, that’s just the beginning, get a load of this! There were NOT computers small enough to take with you on the bus. There was only ONE computer in the whole country! It belonged to the government and filled up an entire room that was bigger than my apartment! Also, there was no more than ONE telephone per household (IF you were lucky)! It was attached to the wall so you couldn’t take it anywhere, and all you could do was TALK on it! No texting! No pictures! There were NO household video game consoles, not even Pong! But I guess that was a good thing, cuz there were NO television sets to play them on!

Strange and scary, but totally true! (I know cuz it’s confirmed on the Internet!) However, in this particular dark age of primitive man, instead of watching TV folks would gather around the radio! Yes, I know we have radio nowadays, but not like this! These were a gargantuan, prehistoric version of the radio! Instead of sitting on the table or some other piece of furniture, it stood on the floor cuz it was as large as a piece of furniture! And the programming was WAY different than we have on the radio today. They had actual shows, with actors and sound effects, performing dramas and soap operas and adventure shows and stuff!

There were comedies, too, and today I’m gonna tell you about the best one! That one was “The Jack Benny Program”, even though it wasn’t actually called that during most of its run. See, back in the day, it was commonplace for a radio show to be named after its sponsoring product. So when he first went on the air, it was on “The Canada Dry Program” in 1932. Then he was on “The Chevrolet Program”, then “The General Tire Revue”. The show started off primarily as a musical show, with Jack as the master of ceremonies. Slowly but surely, the comedy segments took over the show.

Unfortunately, the various sponsors didn’t see much humor in the good-natured kidding directed at their products during the commercial segments and each of these sponsors dropped the show. So by the fall of 1934 General Foods sponsored “The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny”. By this time, the show had found its identity, and retained it during its run as “The Grape Nuts Program” and “The Lucky Strike Program”.

The show soon adopted the premise of “a show within a show”, and featured fictional versions of the cast as they attempted to put on the show. In the beginning, the jokes, gimmicks, and shticks were carried over from Vaudeville, and included a lot of ethnic characters with silly accents. Eventually, though, especially during World War Two, this style was dropped for comedy based on the characterization of the players and their relationships to one another. Essentially creating the concept of the “situation comedy” as we know it today.

The show, of course, was centered on Jack Benny, and his vain, miserly character was used primarily as a comedic foil for the other characters to play off of. And what a cast of characters he surrounded himself with! There was his wise-cracking girlfriend (and real life wife) Mary Livingstone; overweight announcer and yes-man, Don Wilson; jive-talking bandleader Phil Harris who was far more interested in women and wine than with music; naïve and dim-witted tenor, Dennis Day; and of course, Eddie Anderson as Rochester van Jones, Jack’s overworked and under-appreciated all-purpose valet.

It was also a unique sort of show, because the main star was NOT the only guy with the good lines. See, Jack Benny reasoned that since his name was on the show he would get the credit or the blame. People would stand around the water cooler and say “Man, the Jack Benny show was funny last night!” Or, conversely, that it was lousy. So, since he was already set up for the credit and the blame, he let everybody have good lines…often at his own expense.

That’s probably one of the main reasons he was able to get so many big name celebrities to be guests on his show. His guest stars ALWAYS ended up looking good! And he got ‘em all, too! Jimmy Stewart, Danny Kaye, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sheridan, Frank Sinatra, and Orson Welles all appeared on his show, and that’s not even scratching the surface! In fact, dramatic actor Ronald Coleman and his real-life wife Benita made several guest appearances as Jack Benny’s long-suffering neighbors. Now, nobody had thought of Ronald Coleman in a comedic capacity, cuz, you know, he was a REAL actor! But those segments on the Jack Benny show eventually led to their own radio sitcom, “The Halls of Ivy”.

The Jack Benny Program consistently had high ratings. His cast members and writers were the highest-paid in the business, because, hey! When you got a good thing; you try to keep it going!

And it’s so weird, too, cuz if you listen to several episodes, you find the same jokes used and re-used over and over…and yet…they’re funny EVERY time! I don’t understand how they could do that, but they did! It’s absolutely great! The jokes are still relevant today! And while it is true that a little knowledge of historic pop-culture is helpful, but mostly if you have a nodding acquaintance with film history, you’re able to appreciate the show!

I know there’s no real way I could do the show justice. They best way for you to appreciate it is to dive right in and experience it yourself. A quick web-search will take you to several sites with sound bites and even complete shows. Perhaps the most extensive one I’ve found is the OTR Network Library at http://otr.net/?p=jbny because it looks like they have every episode of the radio show from 1932 to 1955! Fair warning: some of the audio files were made from very old and damaged recordings! So some are just better than others!

Or, if you want to purchase the show on CD, I would suggest you visit Radio Spritis at http://radiospirits.com/ cuz they got a boatload over there, and lots of other cool old radio shows, too!

Of course, the Jack Benny Program moved to television in 1950 and remained on the air until ’65 (while the radio show stopped around 1955). It was pretty much the same show with music, funny business, and guest stars. In fact, stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their very first television appearance on Jack Benny’s show! And you can see them both for free over on YouTube! Uh…let’s see, first you click “Browse”, then “Shows”, then you should have a menu arrow next to the words “Shows/All Categories”. On that menu, click “Classic TV” and the Jack Benny show is right there between Elvira and “Father Knows Best”. …That’s not alphabetical! Stupid YouTube!

Anyway, I’m supposed to give out a phoney-bologna rating to pass this article off as a review. So I’m gonna whip out my trusty D&D percentage dice and determine a rating between 01 (oh dear god, how can you stand it!) and double-0, which actually means 100 (oh dear god, how could you live without it!?). So I give ‘em a roll, just like that...

…and end up with a nice un-biased 97! See that? I told ya it was good and you should check it out! Now we got actual proof!

But hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion! Feel free to form your own! I’ve already said where you can find it so you can! So with no further ado, I shall sign off until this time next month! So be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube


Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.