Curse of the Phantom Shadow!

Hey, film fans, here's a nice Halloween "heads up" for you from independent filmmaker Mark Ross. Mark currently lives in the Las Vegas area and he is in production on a short concept film called "Curse of the Phantom Shadow". The film is a personal homage from Mark, based on his appreciation for The Batman, Dick Tracy, The Phantom, The Shadow, Spy-Smasher, and Captain Midnight. Ross has blended ideas from those original concepts plus elements of old-style B-movies, Republic movie serials, and pulp magazines of the 1930s/1940s. The film takes place in a stylized art deco 1948. Mark is also striving for something more than your typical "fan film", by casting professional SAG actors who have appeared in Hollywood productions. 

Until recently, he was 100% self-financed from his personal savings, but Mark is now trying to raise money to finish his film through Kickstarter. He has two ambitious upcoming shoots that require an infusion of cash to accomplish. "Curse of the Phantom Shadow" needs to film its big action scene on a green screen stage in LA, with a rented vintage 1940s tow truck. As a reminder, unlike most Kickstarter projects, Mark's film is actually in-production and largely complete. Click on the link if you're willing to help him out for as little as $1; but any contribution helps. Oh, and tell them that the Catacombs sent you!

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"Gal" Friday! Pollyanna McIntosh

Since I'm going to the Carowinds Amusement Park tomorrow evening to enjoy their annual "Scarowinds" Halloween event AND with the second season of AMC's "The Walking Dead" premiering on Sunday night, I thought it would be nice to choose an appropriate seasonal lass for this weeks "Gal" Friday post.


Pollyanna McIntosh grew up in Portugal and Colombia before returning to her birthplace in Scotland where she first began performing on stage at The Edinburgh Festival. She left home for London at sixteen, and soon became involved as both an actress and director in indie filmmaking and theatre. A move to Los Angeles in 2004 coincided with her marriage to actor Grant Show.

It was as lesbian party girl, Thumper Wint in the 2007 comedy "Sex and Death 101" (starring Simon Baker & Wynona Ryder), that critics really began to take note of her unique talent, citing a blend of powerful sexuality and irreverent humor. McIntosh can be seen in a limited release suspense thriller opening today that features her in a demanding turn as the titular character in director Lucky McKee's "The Woman", which first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring alongside Angela Bettis (May/Dexter) and Sean Bridgers (Deadwood), McIntosh plays a feral woman at the end of her rope after being forced into "civilized" society by a lawyer and his family who capture and imprison her character. AICN describes the film as unusually brutal and gory, so if it's playing in your area and if you like that sort of thing, then check it out.

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2011 Halloween Film Festival: Stake Land

Once again, the Catacombs has chosen a few select feature films to review in recognition of this months perennial holiday, Halloween. Last years films were all science fiction-horror hybrids with plenty of nudity to appeal to horny genre pervs, and I freely admit that the inaugural selection for my 2011 Halloween Film Festival really made me wish that I had chosen a repeat performance of that. Instead I chose a few random movies, both new and old, that I had not seen. First out of the gate is an independent 2010 post-apocalyptic vampire film from director Jim Mickle. Honestly, Stake Land left me dumbfounded. The reviews for this overly-praised movie used phrases like "gritty", "stylistic flexibility", "nerve-wracking", "harrowing", "bloodcurdling" and "clever". Seriously? What the hell were those critics smoking? Were they paid off or something?  I mean, damn. I totally missed that directors cut, or was sent an entirely different version by Netflix. Does Ashton Kutcher punk bloggers now?

When an epidemic of vampirism strikes, humans find themselves on the run from vicious, feral beasts. Remember that point, because this is actually where Stake Land ultimately fails, by violating its own internal logic later in the film. When his family is slaughtered, young Martin (Connor Paolo) is taken under the wing of a grizzled, wayward hunter simply known as "Mister" (Nick Damici) whose new prey is the undead. As the pair journey through the locked-down towns of America's heartland, they are joined by a ragtag band of fellow travelers including a nun (Kelly McGillis), a marine newly returned from the Middle East (Sean Nelson) and a pregnant woman (Danielle Harris). As this disparate family cautiously moves north toward Canada (which is now New Eden), they are plagued by a fundamentalist Christian militia called The Brotherhood, headed by Jebedia Loven (Michael Cerveris; aka "The Observer" on Fringe) that believes the vampires were sent by God to do his work. This particular sect is much more of a threat to the group than the vampires, who frankly just aren't all that scary. The most threatening type of vampires, called berserkers, are harder to kill as their chest carapaces have become like toughened leather, so they have to be staked through the base of the skull to kill them, and even when some of them actually show up, there isn't any real sense of palpable tension on display in the film. 

Nick Damici as "Mister" (top) and Connor Paolo as "Martin" (bottom)

Only genre veteran Harris manages to evidence any visible degree of fear through her facial demeanor, and that ain't saying much. Most of the time the whole cast doesn't truly seem to take their predicament seriously enough, if you ask me. These aren't Christopher Lee vampires we're talking about, or Bela Lugosi vampires or even twinkly-Twilight Robert Pattinson vampires. The mindless vampires in Stake Land are portrayed as savage, feral, NON-SPEAKING beasts. At least up to the moment when Cerveris cult leader returns after having become a vampire himself. As the cast suddenly starts getting whittled down by an unseen (and thinking) vampiric opponent, Stake Land quickly burns through whatever amount of goodwill you may still accord the film, as this aspect completely breaks with the previously established on-screen scenario. By this point in the film, the characters have survived quite a bit, and this about-face moment mars an otherwise semi-consistent B-film. To its credit Stake Land at least looks greater than the sum of its parts, thanks to effective cinematography, and it is here that perhaps the movie earns comparisons to "The Road", but only here. The overall acting is absolutely sub-par, and its too bad to see Kelly McGillis in a film like this after her sterling early career triumphs in Witness, Top Gun and The Accused. Everything else about this movie is somewhat akin to a film school "Horror 101" student project. I can't recommend this movie at all, other than as a curiosity. There are better post-apocalyptic vampire films of recent vintage available to waste your Halloween rental dollars on (I Am Legend, Daybreakers, Priest, etc.), so skip this utterly shitty romp of a flick. The only other thing that I can add is that I completely understand why this movie only grossed about $22, 970 at the box office.

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My Favorite Martian .... New York Comic-Con Special!!

Hey, if you are planning on attending this weekend’s New York Comic Con, and if you’re a fan of the classic 1960s TV show My Favorite Martian, Starring Bill Bixby and Ray Walston, then Hermes Press has something cool for you.

Debuting at the NYCC, My Favorite Martian: The Complete Series-Volume One will be sold at a special convention price of $29.99, which is a whopping $20 off of its retail cover price! If you’re new to Hermes Press’ line of classic reprints, this is a good one to start with. My Favorite Martian had a great run in comics with scripts by the prolific Paul S. Newman and terrific art contributions from Russ Manning, Dan Spiegle, and Mike Arens. Now, Hermes Press has digitally remastered the original Gold Key comic book of the ‘60s in another of their library of quality hardcovers. Packaged with a sweet retro ‘60s design, My Favorite Martian can be found at the Hermes Press booth (#1903) this weekend at NYCC (while supplies last). A second volume, which collects the British comics, is due out next year.

My Favorite Martian: The Complete Series-Volume One, Hardcover, 224 pages (regularly $49.99), on sale at NYCC for only $29.99!!

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Rulah Jungle Goddess in "Blood Lust of the Biting God" (Fox; 1948)

The Catacombs favorite golden age cutie, Rulah Jungle Goddess reappears after entirely too long an absence in the terrifically-titled "Blood Lust of the Biting God" from All Top Comics #11 (May 1948); originally published by Fox. The Alec Hope credit belongs to either Matt Baker or Jack Kamen, but the GCD doesn't help clarify the matter; so flip a quarter and take your pick. I'll be posting some newly discovered Rulah jungle adventures in the near future, so if you're a fan (like me), please stop by from time to time. The Catacombs is grateful to Don "Zu-Gogo" Falkos for providing the scans for this story. Note: The copyright for this issue, its contents and artwork belong to the original publisher and/or the creators and is reproduced here solely for entertainment purposes.

Enjoy!

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Stargazing Dog

Takashi Murakami tells the story of a man who has not kept up with the rapidly changing pace of society and how that failure has brutally sidelined him as a result in "Stargazing Dog", a smash hit manga bestseller with sales over 560,000 and a movie that opened this summer. 


Daddy is down and out. Life has conspired against him, and everything is coming undone. Fed up, he sets out in his car to just get away from it all to nowhere in particular. All of the people around him having abandoned him, but he discovers that the one companion he can count on utterly is his dog who follows him blindly, faithfully and completely, to the end. 


NBM Publishing proudly presents the original Japanese phenomenon in a new black & white volume for only $11.99. 

Thanks, Stefan!

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"A Never-Ending Battle" at New York Comic-Con (Oct. 13-16, 2011)

Attendees of the New York Comic-Con (next week; Oct. 13-16) will be treated to a special documentary preview of  “A Never-Ending Battle,” the first episode of a new film from the creative team responsible for the award-winning PBS documentaries “Broadway: The American Musical” and “Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America.”

The screening is made possible by special arrangement with Ghost Light Films,Inc., Reed POP and Bonfire Agency, LLC (this early heads up for Catacombs regulars comes from Ed Catto of Bonfire Agency). Featuring rare footage along with new interviews with industry legends such as Joe Simon, Stan Lee, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Michael Chabon and Jules Feiffer, segments of the first episode – “A Never-Ending Battle: 1938-1954” – will be previewed on Friday, October 14, 2011 at 4PM in Room 1B01 of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center at 655 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. An on-stage interview and Q&A with filmmakers and cultural historians Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon will take place immediately following the screening.

With principal production funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, “A Never-Ending Battle” is slated to air as the first episode of a three-part series on PBS stations early in 2013. The series will explore the American art form of the comic book superhero and its complex interrelation with American culture over the last 75 years. Throughout this period, comic books artists, writers and publishers have unleashed thousands of exotic, bizarre, heroic and seductive adventurers upon the American public; some have become instantly recognizable all over the globe, many have crashed miserably under the weight of their own lack of inspiration, but all were created in the hope that they would connect with some aspect of the American consumer. In this regard, the film explores how the evolution of the costumed crusader reflected our social, political and cultural history. Fervent fans, casual viewers, and everyone in between will discover much to marvel over in this informed overview of the adventures of America’s most popular genre of historic fiction.

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