Oh man.
AMC today released a banner for season four of “The Walking Dead,” which returns this fall.
The essential elements of the show – well, there’s no sign of Carl, but other than that – are here. You got Rick, you got Daryl.
Tyreese wielding a hammer!
Michonne wielding her katana – from the back of a horse!
The banner was released to promote “The Walking Dead” panel at San Diego Comic Con later this month.
But I like to think of it as a present for us.
Enjoy.
I come to praise Sammy Terry, not to bury him.
With the passing Sunday, at age 83, of longtime Indianapolis music store owner Bob Carter, a chapter of television history closes.
That’s because, of course, Carter was the real-life, not-totally-secret identity of Sammy Terry, horror movie host on WTTV Channel 4 from 1962 to 1989.
I’ve written about Sammy before, but his passing prompts me to recount the Sammy Terry legend at greater length.
Carter was a TV pitchman who claimed to have invented the Kentucky Fried Chicken catchphrase “It’s finger-lickin’ good!” during a live commercial spot. He always seemed like a gentle soul and, on the rare occasions I called him for an interview, answered the phone in a toned-down version of the sepulchural voice he used to play Sammy.
He seemed to take his celebrity in stride. For a couple of generations – at least – of Indiana kids, he was a cultural icon before we knew what that phrase meant. But probably because you couldn’t make barrels full of money taping a once-a-week horror movie show on Indianapolis TV – and no doubt because he loved providing music education to legions of school children – he kept that day job.
But 11 p.m. Friday rolled around and Carter – in yellow rubber gloves with veins drawn on, pasty pancake makeup, a dark purple cowl and cape and plastic skull around his neck – became friend and nemesis to us kids all at the same time.
He was a friend in my household. Because she knew it was important to me, my mom helped me stay up late on Fridays, talking to me and prodding me and even occasionally offering me a McDonald’s hamburger left over from our special Friday night dinner.
For other kids, including some of my cousins, Sammy, his creaking coffin, his spider friend George and his spooky movies were just a bit too much. Sammy’s entrance was a cue for the sleepover to move into deep sleeping bag mode.
And what movies he showed. Channel 4, like stations all over the country, had bought the Shock Theater package of films. The 50-plus films, including many classic black-and-white Universal Studios horror movies like “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man,” had been re-released to theaters for much of the 1930s and 1940s and even the 1950s. But in 1957, the package was released to television and many stations built a weekly horror movie show around it. Thus were born the TV horror hosts, men (and a few women) who dressed up in spooky outfits and presented the classic films, often seasoning their introductions and cut-away bits with campy humor.
Carter – whose stage name was a play on “cemetery” – told me on a couple of occasions how much he enjoyed the gig. He recalled with great fondness how the cardboard dungeon set was created and how the most realistic thing about the show – the coffin from which he arose every Friday at 11 p.m. – had been provided by a funeral home that insisted he never tell its origin for fear it would upset customers.
Carter made appearances here in Muncie over the years, and before one such appearance, in the early 1980s, I had done an interview and asked if I could meet him “backstage” at Muncie Mall as he got into makeup and costume. He graciously agreed and, along with a couple of friends, I was ushered into the room where he was getting ready.
Like three starstruck kids, Jim, Derek and I watched as he got ready and made small talk. When he was finished, I took a picture of the other two with him. That picture hung on Derek’s wall for many years.
Sammy’s time as a horror movie host passed more than a couple of decades ago, a victim of changing tastes and TV economics. He continued to make personal appearances, to the delight of the grown-up kids who remembered him and wanted their kids to know Sammy. In the past couple of years, Carter’s son has been making personal appearances in the character and might continue to do so. It’s a continuation I heartily approve of. Sammy would be pleased to know that he, the ultimate Hoosier TV ghoul, had a life after death.
We’ll miss you, Mr. Carter. And you too, Sammy.
To this day, I still remember the black light poster that hung on the back of the door to one of my cousin’s rooms: The poster, more words, than drawings, contained the lyrics to Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”
The years of my youth, in the 1960s and 1970s, were filled with black light images on posters.
Black light posters are still available, but I’m not sure they could possibly be as pervasive on the bedroom walls of American youth as they were back then.
In this entry, a selection of some that I remember and some that I don’t, but all are pretty damn cool.
Didn’t everybody have a Jimi Hendrix poster?
And that “Stoned Agin” poster. Holy crap. I’m not gonna say that freaked me out or anything but …
This “Afro Warrior” poster had a little too much female boobage for the PG walls of many of us. But it’s pretty amazing.
Last but not least, this cool Silver Surfer poster. Apparently a company called Third Eye did a whole series of Marvel Comics posters. I didn’t see them at the time, but they’re great.
If this blog has a mascot, it must be Madchen Amick, the actress best known for playing waitress Shelly Johnson on “Twin Peaks” in the early 1990s.
Since I reported that the still-beautiful Amick played Andrea, an old flame/continuing flirtation for Don Draper in “Mad Men” last season, I’ve gotten hundreds of visits from Amick fans.
So it’s cool to be able to note that Amick has a recurring role in “Longmire” the A&E series based on Craig Johnson’s mystery novel series about a Wyoming sheriff.
In “Longmire,” Amick plays Deena, an old flame of Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), longtime friend of Longmire.
Amick has had only a handful of short scenes so far, but I’m ready to see more of this mysterious character.
By the way, for a show about a crusty sheriff (Robert Taylor), there are a lot of interesting women on this show. The female cast is topped by Katee Sackhoff, of course, but there’s also Cassidy Freeman as Cady, Longmire’s daughter, and Louanne Mason, who played Matt Saracen’s grandmother on “Friday Night Lights” as Ruby, the Gal Friday at the sheriff’s office.
And there’s Katherine LaNasa as Lizzie Ambrose, a zesty blonde who has her sights set on landing Longmire.
LaNasa is a regular on the show “Deception” and had a memorable role on “Justified” a couple of years ago.
Amick and LaNasa will be fun to watch this season.
The least surprising news out of Hollywood this week: More Marvel Comics movies are on the horizon.
Marvel announced a still-unspecified movie would debut in theaters on July 8, 2016.
That’s in addition to Marvel movies – also unspecified – set for May 6, 2016, and May 5, 2017 that were announced in recent weeks.
Those are all in the wake of previously-announced – and specified – Marvel movies for 2015, namely the sequel to “The Avengers” and “Ant-Man.”
We’ll know – maybe as early as next month’s San Diego Comic Con – details of those 2016 and 2017 movies. Last year, for example, Comic Con audiences were the first to hear the full titles for upcoming Marvel movies like “Thor: The Dark World” (out this November) and 2014 titles like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”
So we’ll know before long if those upcoming movies will be sequels featuring Thor and Cap or new movies featuring the likes of “Dr. Strange” and “Black Panther.”
Some online reports this week indicated that “Dr. Strange” – the movie and character – would be a running thread through future Marvel movies not unlike the way Iron Man has been in the first set of movies.
It would be an interesting choice, considering that Stephen Strange, surgeon turned master of the mystic arts, is a more fantasy-oriented character than any we’ve seen so far (with the possible exception of Thor) and making him a central character like Iron Man is an indication that Marvel is edging further “out there” in its films. It would also, if cast correctly, be a character that could equal Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the hearts of moviegoers – a good move since Downey is only so far signed to appear in the two “Avengers” sequels.
Here’s looking forward to some new news.
It’s impossible to neatly summarize how important author Richard Matheson was to the word of writing, fantasy and science fiction and movies and TV.
Matheson, who has passed away at age 87, left so many great works behind.
Here are just a few.
“I Am Legend,” which inspired movie treatments starring Vincent Price, Charlton Heston (“The Omega Man”) and Will Smith.
“The Shrinking Man,” adapted as “The Incredible Shrinking Man.”
Other works that were made as movies, some of them written for the screen by Matheson: “What Dreams May Come.” “A Stir of Echoes.”
Original movies and TV shows he wrote: “House of Usher.” “The Raven.” “Comedy of Terrors.”
Several of the best-remembered “Twilight Zone” episodes, including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” The “Star Trek” episode “The Enemy Within.”
“Duel.”
“The Night Stalker” and its sequel, “The Night Strangler.”
“The Legend of Hell House.” “Trilogy of Terror.” “Somewhere in Time.” “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”
“Jaws 3-D.”
“Profile in Silver,” the great JFK assassination time travel story for the 1980s remake of “The Twilight Zone.”
“Steel,” the story that was the basis for the Hugh Jackman fighting robot movie “Real Steel.”
Matheson might have been the most versatile and most accomplished writer to ever move between books, short stories, TV and movies.
He will be missed, but his legacy lives on.
In these days of big-budget superhero and sci-fi movies with built-in appeal among young geeks, it’s hard to imagine that movies like “King Kong Escapes” once epitomized the pinnacle of monster movie making.
Okay, well maybe not the pinnacle. But they were our bread-and-butter monster movie in the 1960s.
Released in 1967 in Japan and 1968 here in the U.S. and re-released seemingly endlessly until it showed up in local TV station movie packages, “King Kong Escapes” was directed and produced by many of the creative folks behind the “Godzilla” movies in a puzzling 30-plus-years-after-the-fact attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the original “King Kong” and its sequels and follow-ups.
In other words, guys in suits grappling.
The movie’s story told how a maniacal mad scientist named Dr. Hu (pronounced Who!) needs King Kong – living peacefully, other than an occasional dust-up with a dinosaur, on an isolated island – to try to mine the mysterious Element X.
Along the way, we get James Bond-inspired shenanigans, American actors shoehorned into the plot, the most patently fake helicopters ever and a robot version of Kong that, inevitably, fights the real Kong.
The movie is of the “so bad it’s good” genre, particularly in its awful dubbing, unintentionally hilarious “cold” acting in a freezing jail cell and a performance that’s supposed to be stalwart from 1950s sci-fi actor Rhodes Reason as the American leading a team to bring the evil doctor to justice.
I’ve noted here before that genre entertainment can be marked “before” and “after” a few landmark films, including “Jaws” in 1975 and “Star Wars” in 1977.
Even though it looks like it was made for the cost of a single set from a Spielberg or Lucas production, “King Kong Escapes” was the finest the genre had to offer just a few years before those films.
I’ve been pretty vocal here about my concerns that Marc Forster’s “World War Z” would vary so much from Max Brooks’ terrific 2006 novel that it wouldn’t possibly capture the essence of the book. And to be sure, adapting Brooks’ book faithfully would be nearly impossible.
Brooks’ book is episodic in the extreme in its record of the zombie apocalypse, moving from China to India to New York to Denver to the Great Plains. Although a narrator – writing an oral history of the zombie war from the perspective of 10 years later – is present throughout the book, nearly every chapter features new characters and a new setting. A couple of years after I read the book, some scenes stand out in my mind: A downed flier is guided through the wilderness by a mysterious voice on a radio. Astronauts watch the end of the world from the International Space Station. The military is humbled in the Battle of Yonkers.
So when the makers of “World War Z” the movie said Brad Pitt would play a U.N. troubleshooter jetting around the globe to find a means of turning back the zombie virus, I thought: Well, that might be fun, but that’s not the plot of the book.
Upon seeing “World War Z” today, I thought two things:
I want to read the book again soon.
Forster and Pitt made a pretty good end-of-the-world movie. There’s little resemblance to Brooks’ book, but it’s a pretty fun suspense thriller along the lines of “The Andromeda Strain” and “Outbreak” and “Contagion.” Maybe even like the first book in “The Strain” series.
Pitt is called out of retirement in Philly with his wife (Mirielle Enos) and daughters when the outbreak begins. At first, it’s uncertain what’s happening. Zombies? That can’t possibly be real, can it?
But the U.N, gets with the program fairly quickly and sends Pitt jetting around the world, looking for Patient Zero and clues to how to stop the epidemic. He goes from South Korea to Israel to, eventually, Wales. The last section of the movie is a pleasant change from the “Brad flies in and all hell breaks lose” feel of the first two-thirds of the movie. It’s a nail-biting “how do we get from point A to point B and avoid being bitten?” story and it’s very good.
Pitt is fine here, although the part could have been played by anyone from Will Smith to Clive Owen (two actors with plenty of apocalyptic experience).
The real highlights of the film are the suspenseful scenes leading up to a zombie outbreak and/or attack. Forster builds tension quite well and interjects some good scares.
The zombies here are not the slow walkers of George Romero’s “Living Dead” films or TV’s “The Walking Dead.” They’re not precisely like the sprinting zombies of “28 Days Later” or the “Dawn of the Dead” remake. They’re fast but they’re more like lemmings or ants, throwing themselves against barriers and off the roofs of buildings, piling up in a grinding mass in their efforts to reach their prey.
“World War Z” is a disappointment to anyone hoping for a faithful telling of Brooks’ book. But it’s a good, suspenseful action take on the end of the world.
It’s a big year for the end of the world, with “World War Z” and “This Is The End” and the ongoing apocalyptic TV drama “The Walking Dead.” Later we can expect director Edgar Wright’s “The World’s End.”
It’s safe to say that few end-of-man stories besides “The World’s End” and co-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s “This Is The End” play the end of existence for laughs.
And while my expectations for “The World’s End” are high, I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from “This Is The End.”
Some of the early reviews indicated it was gut-bustingly funny, while others said the overdose of crude humor was just that.
I thought “This Is The End” was pretty funny, but your reaction to it will depend totally on your tolerance for penis and ejaculation jokes, as well as the modern-day Rat Pack of Rogen and other young actors that include Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, James Franco, Jonah Hill and Danny McBride.
A big part of the joke here is that the actors play themselves, or at least versions of themselves. Baruchel comes into L.A. to visit Rogen. Baruchel doesn’t like Los Angeles or the crowd that Rogen hangs with – including most of the above-mentioned bold-faced names, plus others – and is reluctant to go to a party at Franco’s house.
They do go, however, and Baruchel reluctantly mingles with the likes of Rhianna, Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Emma Watson and, most memorably, Michael Cera, playing a (presumably) warped version of himself as a bullying, sex-crazed cocaine user.
During the Franco party, something happens: A firestorm rolls over L.A. People are pulled up into the sky in shafts of blue light. The ground opens up and swallows some people whole.
Earthquakes and even a zombie apocalypse get the blame, but Baruchel comes to believe it’s the real apocalypse, as in the Biblical end time. That would explain the disappearance, into heaven, of all the good people – none of whom are at the party, by the way – and the eventual appearance of otherworldly beasts.
Much of the comedy derives from the contentious relationships between the group of “friends” who survive. They argue over the meager provisions that are left, over the sleeping arrangements and over the pecking order.
Rogen and Baruchel and their relationship are the core of the movie, but Hill – as a supernaturally nice guy who nonetheless gets on everyone’s nerves – and McBride as just an awful human being get the biggest laughs.
Some of the funniest moments come from not only the group’s reactions to the seemingly impossible happenings but also to each other.
One standout scene occurs when Watson takes refuge with the group and the hapless Baruchel initiates a discussion, unfortunately within her earshot, about making sure she’s at ease being the only woman in a house full of men. Before long, the others are accusing him of suggesting they rape her. Watson overhears and, wielding an axe, takes things into her own hands.
As trendy as the main cast and supporting actors are, there are a couple of cameos – I won’t reveal them here – that are surprising even in the context of this story.
As apocalyptic comedies go, “This Is The End” ranks pretty high. It’s quite crude but absurdly funny.
If you saw “This is Spinal Tap” or “Escape from New York” or “The Graduate” or “Phantasm” or “The Fog” or “Scanners” or “The Howling” in theaters – and if you didn’t get there late – you saw the Avco Embassy pictures logo at one time or another.
Blue and green geometric shapes swirling into place and into focus, the logo was a familiar one for devoted movie fans, particularly those with a taste for the low-budget and offbeat.
I still remember the anticipation I felt during the Avco Embassy logo at the beginning of John Carpenter’s “The Fog.” “Halloween” had become one of my favorite horror films of all time and I was looking forward to “The Fog.” I wasn’t disappointed, and I can still see that Avco Embassy logo in my head and will forever associate it with that movie.
Founded in 1942 by producer Joseph E. Levine as Embassy Pictures, the releasing company was more highbrow in its early years. The low-rent and fondly remembered period comes after 1967, when Levine sold the company to Avco and the stuff of low-budget dreams was born.
Under president Robert Rehme, the company released movies like “Scanners” and “Time Bandits” and “Phantasm.” Surely this was its heyday.
Norman Lear, creator of “All in the Family,” bought the company in 1982 and, for the most part, concentrated on television production.
Luckily for us, the studio’s best films live on. And so does that logo.
