Welcome to the World of Ace Kilroy!

In lieu of a Movie Monday segment this week, I'm highlighting a long-gestating project that goes live today: Ace Kilroy!

Ace Kilroy is the creation of artist Dan O'Connor and me; its a brand-new online daily comic strip launching today over on AceKilroy.com!

Ace Kilroy is a project Dan and I have been working on for over a year. He and I attended the Joe Kubert School together, and from the beginning I was impressed by the quality of his work: Dan had a crisp, simple style, dynamic but not flashy--perfect for comic books, and I resented the hell out of him for it!

Anyway, over the intervening decades(!), Dan and I lost touch, and then we ran into one another again virtually on Facebook and then in something called Real Life at the 2009 New York Comic Con. Dan was telling me some horror stories (stories I was all too familiar with in my own life as an artist) about doing comic book work, and I was simultaneously angry and bewildered that a guy this talented has had to deal with some at times shady comic book publishers. Little did I realize, but Ace Kilroy was born on the ride home from the con.

Within a couple of months, I had formulated a basic concept of the strip, what it would be, what kind of tone I was aiming for, and I knew Dan would be the perfect artist to bring it to life: he and I are both aficionados of 30s and 40s culture (Americana specifically), and since Ace Kilroy starts off in 1937 and would steeped in that world, I knew Dan could really sink his artistic teeth into it.

Luckily, he agreed, and within a few weeks we were already working on the strips, having a blast, but with no clear date set when it would officially launch. Since the strip has a prevalent horror theme, I thought October 31--Halloween--would be perfect.

The short of Ace Kilroy is: In 1937, the United States has learned two disturbing facts. One, that supernatural monsters--i.e., vampires, werewolves--are real. Two, the Third Reich, in preparing to start World War II, are trying to take control of these monsters and turn them to the side of the Nazis, making them unstoppable.

President Franklin Roosevelt commissions soldier of fortune, WW I veteran and all-around adventurer Ace Kilroy to head to Transylvania, where there are rumors of some sort of real-life Dracula, and stop whatever nefarious plot is being hatched!

Ace Kilroy will feature adventure, horror, thrills, comedy, political intrigue, and even romance, in (hopefully) the most fun and engaging way possible!


I normally never use my other blogs to pimp my outside projects, but Ace Kilroy is special: I am enormously proud of what we've created so far, and we're going to give it ol' college try in terms of making it a financially viable, ongoing creative project: its nothing less than a daily comic strip, just like the classic adventure strips of old, except Ace Kilroy will appear on the web, not on the back page of a newspaper sandwiched between Ziggy and Mark Trail.

Ace Kilroy will run a black and white strip six days a week, with an extra-sized Color Supplement on Sundays, again like the classic strips of old. Dan and I want to bring back that sense of pure adventuresome fun with the strip, and transport the reader back to a time when the daily adventures of Steve Canyon, Secret Agent X-9, or Dick Tracy were can't-miss, waiting-with-bated-breath-for-the-next-installment affairs for comics fans.

But since the daily newspapers of old are, essentially, gone (the comics pages especially), we're doing it in a very modern way: on the web, with all past strips available with the click of a mouse, with Ace appearing across a wide variety of social media platforms, which will occasionally feature bonus or special side material. Dan and I essentially want to hire ourselves as the artist and writer (respectively) of an daily comic strip...which of course means you!

Not to sound like I'm taking my other blogs hostage or anything, but if we can get enough people to support Ace Kilroy financially, then I can spend more time at home, leaving me the time and ability to subsidize my other, non-profit-generating efforts, like this one. And isn't that what we all want?

So if you're interested in taking a look at Ace Kilroy, and maybe even supporting it, you can do so at the following places, starting off with the official site, where you can learn more about the characters, the creators, and see the first strip:

...and finally, if you like what you see enough to financially support Ace Kilroy, you can visit the Ace Kilroy Fundraising Page on Kickstarter, where you can learn more about the strip, find out what kind of donations you can make, and even watch a short video all about Ace Kilroy. We hope to raise enough money to give Ace (and us!) and a good running start!

Movie Monday: The Thing/The Ward

I happened to see two movies related to one of my favorite directors, John Carpenter, in the same day, so I thought I'd do another Movie Monday double feature and talk about the new remake of The Thing, then check in what Carpenter himself came up with in his newest, The Ward.

First is The Thing, and I have to say I went into this movie with very low expectations. I'm such a fan of Carpenter's 1982 remake (although that film is not really a remake of the 1951 original), that I figured this was maybe little more than one of those modern-day cash-ins, where they take the name of a beloved horror film from the 70s or 80s and then make some lame-ass PG-13 version of it. Apparently I was misinformed, because for a long time I thought this new movie was a remake, when in fact its a prequel. Even still, I didn't expect much when the lights went down.

But it only took a couple of minutes before I really got hooked into the story--a bunch of Norwegian scientists and researchers find a giant spaceship hidden under the ice in Antarctica, and call in a specialist, Kate Lloyd (the easy-on-the-eyes Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to investigate the life-form they also found, frozen in a block of ice a few miles away.

Admittedly, most of the story of The Thing is the same as the 1982 film, but I think my love of that film simultaneously allowed me to just give myself over to the remake; I just love the whole idea of a bunch of people cut off from the rest of the world, as an alien starts taking them over, one by one.

Of course, I completely loved the Star Wars movies too, and that didn't make The Phantom Menace a good film, and maybe in a year or so I'll sit down and watch The Thing again and have a different opinion. But all I know is I found this prequel compelling, filled with tension, solid acting, and (mostly) decent f/x.

The film is, of course, not even close to being perfect, or even anywhere near as good as Carpenter's: most of the characters are cyphers, so when they get assimilated into the alien it doesn't have much of an impact (other than "Ugh, gross!" of course). And while I did find the film suitably tense, that feeling doesn't build: basically once The Thing gets out of the ice, the film is at "11" and stays there, which is a little wearying.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead does a good job as the main character, but since we don't get a single scene of her alone, it was hard (for me at least) to get as invested as I was with Kurt Russell's MacReady. And the film does come dangerously close to being one of those tedious exercises where way too much is explained during a sequence on the aliens' ship.

But overall I enjoyed The Thing quite a bit--it has a nice vague ending, and I loved how it tied itself into the 1982 film during the credits, making it a nice companion piece. Is this film really necessary? Probably not, but I've seen many, many worse horror movies than this. Case in point:

I was so excited when I heard that John Carpenter, having not made a film in a decade, was back with a new movie! Then I read some of the reviews, which were middling at best, but generally negative. Most critics said it was a very generic movie, not the kind of thing you'd expect from John Carpenter, whose films are so distinctive. But I was determined to judge for myself.

The Ward opens with a young woman, looking bruised and battered, burning down a house. After setting it aflame, she staggers out, falls to her knees, and watches it burn. In the distance, a police car approaches:

But instead of comforting the girl, the cops violently grab her, and drag her off, kicking and screaming, into their squad car:

I felt like we were in safe hands here, cinematically, since the cops are being unnecessarily rough and, as far as we know, completely unfair--they didn't know she set the fire, so why are they roughing her up? The world we know being turned upside down is a Carpenter specialty, so this seemed like a great start.

Unfortunately, once the young woman (named Kristen, played by Amber Heard) is taken to a nearby mental institution, The Ward settles into a very predictable, if not tedious, rut. We meet a quiet, studios psychiatrist (Dr. Stringer, played by Jared Harris), and a group of other patients that, to me, didn't for a moment feel like real people: there's the Really Crazy Girl, the Mousy Girl, and the Obviously-Hot-But-Wears-Glasses-So-That-Means-She's-Ugly Girl.

Pretty quickly we see the place is stalked by some sort of ghost, who attacks the girls at different points:

Kristen keeps insisting this ghost is real, and Dr. Stringer keeps insisting she's coo-coo for cocoa-puffs. None of this is particularly scary, and at one point when it seemed like the film was wrapping up, I noticed I had only been watching it for 45 minutes, which means we were only halfway through. I couldn't believe it! I can't think of a single John Carpenter movie--even when the film itself wasn't very good--that I considered boring. But the whole middle section of The Ward could barely hold my attention.

Near the end, we learn the truth about Kristen (which I won't reveal here) and why she ended up torching the house that we saw at the beginning.

The Ward has a "shock" ending, which really wasn't that much of a shock at all; nevertheless, I appreciated the downer, "everything is f*cked" feel to it, which seemed very John Carpenter to me.

So, like most people, I was very disappointed with The Ward. Its not a horrible movie by any means; its just dull, and a dull movie is the last thing you'd expect from John Carpenter.

If you're looking for some scares, I'd say go see The Thing, and let's hope that The Ward is merely John Carpenter's first step back into filmmaking. The man has more great films in him, I just know it!

Movie Monday: She

This week's movie is...yep, one more time with She!

After watching the 1935 version, and then the 1982 version, it only seemed fitting to try what's arguably the most famous movie adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's novel, the 1965 version made by none other than the legendary Hammer!

She opens with a title card that says "Palestine, 1918", but before you worry this is going to be some dry, historical film, the film makes its intentions known from the first shot:

...woo, belly-dancers!

As a bunch of comely girls dance around, we are introduced to our main characters: Leo Vincey (John Richardson), manservant Job (Bernard Cribbins), and Professor Holly, played by the always-delightful Peter Cushing:

Amid talk of an adventure expedition, Vincey spies a gorgeous young girl in the bar named Ustane (Rosenda Monteros) and within a few minutes he's already gotten pretty chummy with her:

Later when they are alone, Vincey and Ustane start mashing, but its interrupted when someone conks him on the head--turns out the whole thing was a trap! And the guy doing the conking is none other than Hammer's go-to bad guy, Christopher Lee as She's priest and right-hand man Bilali:

When Vincey wakes up, he is entranced to meet "She" (Ursula Andress), who promises Vincey riches and, even more enticingly, love, courtesy She herself:

Our three heroes set out into the desert, and the film at this point becomes veddy veddy British--despite all the dangers and death they encounter, there's a whole "stiff upper lip" Gunga Din-feel to it, interspersed with Vincey's visions of She, drawing him deeper and deeper into the desert.

Eventually they make their way to the hidden city of Kuma (with Ustane having genuinely fallen for Vincey), where She talks of the flame of eternal life. She is a despotic ruler, tossing slaves into a pit of flame when they disobey her, much to the disgust of Holly and the rest.

Andress looks great as She, but the closest we get to anything really titillating is when She and Vincey have parallel dreams, and the former writhes around in her bed. Unfortunately her sheets seemed permanently affixed:

Unfortunately for She and Vincey, Bilali wants the secret of immortality for himself, as reward for his faithful service. He doesn't want this interloper stealing his thunder, but when he tries to jump into the flame and become immortal, She stabs him with a spear:

She and Leo enter the flame, with the latter becoming immortal! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have the same effect on She (hasn't she seen the other movies?), and the centuries of life catch up with her all at once:

She dies, and the flame flickers out, leaving Leo immortal. He promises that even though he doesn't know when the blue flame will be seen again, he will be there, so he can undo his immortality. The End!

This version of She has a great credit, right at the end:

...it's not Maria Quasimodo, but "Oo-Bla-Da Dancers" is still pretty good!


Thankfully, this version of She is much more akin to the 1935 one, in that its a fairly-rousing, well-produced adventure film. There's lots of location shooting here, indicating Hammer had some money to spend, and the sets (especially those in Kuma) are quite striking.

Ursula Andress looks great, but of course that's why she's in the movie. She doesn't have much to do beyond that (and occasionally throwing some poor bastard into a flaming pit), but having the always-dependable Cushing and Lee in the movie helps fill the space.

Having the movie end with Leo being immortal--and sort of promising he's going to go on more adventures--is a nice hook for a sequel, and Hammer apparently intended to make one, producing The Vengeance of She in 1968. But apparently at the last minute all references to She were removed, making that film more of a remake than a sequel.


There are even more film versions of She--Wiki lists productions from 1908, 1911, 1916, 1917, 1919, and 1925! The last one is available on DVD, and maybe some day I'll pick that up just for curiosity's sake. But for now I think Movie Monday needs to walk out of the ol' blue flame and try something else next week!

Movie Monday: She

This week's movie is the 1980s adventure fantasy She!

Yes, for those of you paying attention, I did pretty much take last week's opening sentence and replace a "3" with an "8"--that's because right after posting last week's review of the 1932 movie She, my pal Dan O'Connor stated, "I'm not ashamed to say I was really hoping you'd be reviewing the 1982 version." My first response was, "What 1982 version?"

Yes, somehow, despite the ten thousand hours I spent watching cable TV and toiling at a video store, I somehow missed this 1982 version of H. Rider Haggard's She, and was overjoyed to find that it, too, was on Netflix WI! So I queued this baby up immediately.

Over some kinda nifty animated scenes of skulls and grim reapers (the kind of thing you'd see drawn on the notebook of your typical teenaged Iron Maiden fan), this 1982 version opens with a quote from the original novel:

...unfortunately(?), this is the only bit from the original novel that this film gets anywhere near. No, this She charts her own course. You've come a long way, baby!

The film proper starts with a title card that says "23 Years after the Cancellation" (I hear ya, I felt that way about Sports Night), and then we meet two men, Tom and Dick, and Tom's sister Hari (no, really). The three visit some sort of trading post, full of crap left over from the apocalypse. A roving bad of football uniform-wearing Nazis arrive, beat everybody up, and drag Hari off.

Tom and Dick end up in this big castle where all the people inside worship "She", played by Sandahl Bergman:

...as an introduction to a woman warrior, this is pretty weak stuff. She seems more like a hostage than a demi-god. Oh well.

I could get into the plot details, but it would be like describing a dream. She, as written and directed by Avi Nesher, is incomprehensible. There's a scene where She (who gets kidnapped by Tom and Harry fairly easily, again undercutting the whole "She is a God" thing) ends up in this cave full of old crates, which contain bad guys who, presumably, just wait around for days, weeks on end for some poor slob to come wandering by just so they can jump out and grab them.

She is then grabbed by a guy in a Frankenstein mask, wearing a suit and mismatched socks:

For most of the scene, they try and hide the fact that the attacker is just wearing a cheap Frankenstein mask, then they ruin it by showing us a big close-up of the thing, just after She bites off a hunk of his neck:

...if I may pause for a moment, I want to make this point: look at this still. I think this is what George Lucas sees when he looks at the original Star Wars movies. In his mind, the f/x in those movies are so out-dated that they look like this, and he just can't stand it. Hence, the endless fidgeting with movies that were perfect as is. The rest of us can discern the difference between the Holy Trilogy and this cheapjack POS, but to Lucas, A New Hope might as well be She. Okay, back to the review!

The closest She gets to replicating anything from the original book is when, after She is attacked by Frankenstein (whose head bursts as if filled with air...huh?), she/She retreats to a rejuvenating pool (not flame) and is healed. Also unlike the 1932 version, this one has boobies!

This scene is intercut with footage of an old woman who babbles on about She's destiny, or something. The old woman is played by someone named Maria Quasimodo, which is the greatest name in the history of anything.

There's more, so much more. We meet more new characters than you'd see in any five movies: guys dressed as mummies, a big hairy guy in a pink tutu, a gang of sort-of yuppies, who turn for some reason into werewolves:

...a guy with laser eyes...

...and this guy, who clearly had every episode of Mork and Mindy taped on his Betamax:

Director Nesher gives his guy several minutes of scenes to vamp, and he is painfully, excrutiatingly unfunny. Maybe if you were coked up.

There's another scene set in a garbage compactor, but without that cool one-eyed creature that came with Kenner's Death Star playset (remember those pieces of foam that were supposed to stand in for the garbage? They tasted awful!), that's set to horribly inappropriate 80s hair-metal.

She and her best pal Shandra go with Tom and Dick to rescue Hari, and they do. When Tom and Hari leave, She gets upset, because she loves the big lug:

...this guy went straight from here to either Beastmaster or The Blue Lagoon.


As I said, She is a total mess. In the beginning, I thought that it was just a really bad movie; incompetently shot, acted, and scored. But about halfway through, I realized that the filmmakers clearly didn't care, and were going for that kind of "what the hell" kitchen-sink approach that maybe, somehow, congeal Spam-like into something, anything, resembling an actual capital-M Movie. Hell, at one point even She herself says, "This isn't about sense." And how!




I guess this means I have to talk about the 1965 She next week, doesn't it?

The Moon is a Dead World: Dementia 13

Hey folks! For those of who you can't get enough of my movie reviews (and who can?) head over to the Moon is a Dead World blog, where my take on Francis Coppola's Dementia 13 is now up!

Thanks to blog host Ryne Barber for asking me to be part of his Halloween movie extravaganza!

Movie Monday: She

This week's movie is the 1930s adventure fantasy She!

I am sucker for any movie produced by King Kong's Merian C. Cooper (a guy who deserves a bio-pic of his own. Seriously; this is a guy who was falsely declared dead...twice, before he even got to Kong!), so when I saw She was available on Netflix WI I couldn't wait to check it out.

Based on the 1886 novel by H. Rider Haggard, She opens with a scientist, dying of radiation poisoning, who summons his nephew Leo (Randolph Scott) and, supported by his scientific partner Horace Holly (Nigel Bruce, most famous as Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes), reveals he has been searching for a radioactive element that he believes can preserve life, making people nearly immortal.

The scientist's experiments derive from a letter, passed down through his family for generations, about an uncle and his wife who discovered a remote, closed off society living in Siberia. Supposedly in this tiny, hidden spot is something called "The Flame of Life", a sort of reverse Fountain of Youth.

The only piece of evidence of this whole story is a small statue supposedly taken from the village. The scientist implores Leo and Horace to take up the mission and find The Flame of Life. As Leo and Horace agree, the scientist succumbs, and dies.

Leo and Horace head to Siberia, and find a small outpost run by a old man named Dugmore and his daughter Tanya (Helen Mack). At first, Dugmore is less than friendly to strangers:

Dugmore and his daughter join the expedition, and we're treated to some of the really cool, in-camera combos of sets and matte paintings that Cooper's productions were so good at. Sure, they really don't look real, exactly, but they have a classic feel, like they're ripped from illustrations of old adventure novels:

Eventually our little band of explorers (minus Dugmore, who is killed in an avalanche when he lets his greed get the best of him) find the mythical land they've been searching for, hidden inside the crack of a glacier, a place called Kor.

Kor is run by She, aka Hash-A-Mo-Tep (Helen Gahagan), who takes one look at Leo and believes he is actually his older relative, the one who visited Kor with his wife. She, who claims to be immortal, falls for Leo, believing he is the reincarnation of his uncle, a man she loved but had killed when he would not leave his wife.

After promising to share the secret of immortality, Leo falls for She and decides to stay in Kor, even though Holly and and Tanya are told to leave. Tanya, who has fallen for Leo, tries to talk Leo out of it, and is used as a human sacrifice for her trouble.

When Leo sees this, it wakes him from his stupor, and he decides to try and escape with his friends.

A lot of these scenes are very talky, but they're made more lively by the astounding art direction. There's a great scene where the camera pans across a row of toweting statues:

Seeing these, it reminded me of the Seven Deadly Sins statues from the origin of Captain Marvel, and makes me think what an amazing movie could have been made, if somehow The Big Red Cheese and Merian Cooper had ever been paired up for a feature film. But I digress...

Our trio escapes various pursuers and ends up in She's sacred temple, where The Flame of Life resides. She tells Leo to enter, but he refuses, so she does. Unfortunately, this time the effects are less than rejuvenating:

She collapses and dies, and Leo, Tanya, and Holly escape Kor, while the Flame of Life rages out of control. These final scenes in Kor again feature stunning art direction, heavily influenced by German Expressionism:

Leo, Tanya, and Holly make it home, where Holly tries to explain why The Flame of Life did what it did to She. Tanya refuses to believe it, saying she thinks True Love saved them from the villainous She. The End.


Of course, She is complete and utter nonsense; a mish-mash of ideas and tones and influences, but I didn't care. Like Cooper's other movies (most famously Kong, of course), She feels like its a portal into another world, one more grand and fanciful than most films of the time (heck, more than most films now!), and it has just enough verisimilitude that it all feels real, even when you're dealing with immortality, secret societies living inside glaciers, or a giant rampaging ape.

She isn't nearly as fun as Kong, of course--Gahagan as the titular character is fun to look at but fairly one-note--but its well worth your time if you enjoy these kind of crazy fantasy adventure films of the time. They never made them quite like this again.


Fun Fact: She was considered a "lost" film until Buster Keaton (of all people) had a print of it (in his garage!), which he gave to a film historian.

Fun Fact 2: She was originally shot for color, but when Cooper's budget was cut he went to black and white. Supposedly Ray Harryhausen was involved in a colorized version as a tribute to Cooper; man I have to track that down!