Halloween Horrors:
A Feast of Faves from Franju, Bava, Roeg, Marins and More!

John Totleben, XQB, my ertswhile Swamp Thing compatriot and longtime friend, circa 1978

Flashback time!

I've been enjoying flashbacks to my own comics college years via the photos old Kubert School classmates like Tom Foxmarnick have been sending in response to my appeal on behalf of Bill Schelly's upcoming Joe Kubert biography. What a blast from the past it's been!

While photos have been zinging Bill's way from a lot of XQBs, Tom has really shared a lot of old memories amid this exchange, and it's been a great treat to savor the pix from thirty years ago. Man, we were a scruffy bunch, but what a time it was! Makes me even happier about my ongoing experiences at the Center for Cartoon Studies, where a new generation of cartoonists are carving out their own paths.

I've also been chipping away at all kinds of freelancing of late, including writing about my friend Neil Gaiman for a book project Chris Golden invited me into about three weeks ago, and a bit of illustration work.

Among the latter is a spot of work for my old amigo John Rovnak's upcoming relaunch of his PaneltoPanel comics and graphic novel retail site; here's what Cat (aka Cayetano Garza) did with one of the black and white 'button' graphics I worked up for PaneltoPanel, which bodes well for Cat and I collaborating on more work in the future.

That said, I've also been pulling together a few more notes for the promised Halloween Horrors posts, and here's two barrels worth, in your face --

A few more fave horrors to consider for your Halloween viewing, folks:

* Mario Bava's I Tre Volti Della Paura (translation: The Three Faces of Fear, 1963) stars the great Boris Karloff in what was at the time a new high in adult portmanteau horror films. An modest international hit in its day (though not in Italy, where it was ignored), released in the US by American-International Pictures (hereafter AIP) as Black Sabbath, I Tre Volti Della Paura in its original form was a far more challenging and carefully-mounted three-story anthology exercise than the version my generation grew up with at drive-ins and late-night TV broadcasts. Thankfully, it's the original version that's now on DVD, and is among the greatest Halloween treasures available this year...

AIP re-edited the film extensively, rearranging the order of the three tales to no good effect (except to postpone the appearance of Karloff in the vampire tale "The Wurdalak" for the final story slot) and in fact gutting the story "The Telephone" completely by removing all references to lesbianism, rendering it senseless. AIP also removed the final shot of the film, which I won't give away here -- among Karloff's personal favorite screen moments of his career!

Should you watch this, you should be screening the original Italian version, Bava's director's cut, if you will, which restores the trio of terror tales to their correct placement, building cumulatively to a truly satisfying horrific climax. Michele Mercier is the young woman plagued by "The Telephone" in the first tale, set in contemporary Rome, setting the stage for the terrors to come in suitably restrained style; as Tim Lucas notes in his fantastic book Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark (2007), "The Telephone" established many of the templates subsequent gialli adhered to, in its way as influential a gialli as Bava's Blood and Black Lace (another of my all-time favorite films).

Trick or Treat: Here's three faces of fear at the window -- you scared yet?

Mark Damon and Boris Karloff star in the second tale, "The Wurdulak," a medieval slice of invented Russian folklore in which a wandering patriarch warrior (Karloff) returns to the family fold and infects his brood with a strain of vampirism which preys only upon its own. This is a gem of the genre, introducing many motifs (the faces at the window, the child ghoul/ghost, etc.) central to most of Bava's subsequent works. Finally, Jacqueline Pierreux dares to pluck a ring from the finger of the dead medium she worked for as a nurse, and is duly haunted by "The Drop of Water" in a tour-de-force of orchestrated visual horror sure to entertain and stir a shriek or two.

Cut for decades from all US versions, restored at last! Eugenio Bava's prop of the severed head Karloff unveils -- which, oddly enough, was central to AIP's original ad campaign!

Unless you count Bava's delirious pepla Hercules at the Center of the Earth/Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) as a horror film, this was Bava's first color horror film, and as such as seminal a work as Bava's official directorial debut, the black-and-white masterpiece Black Sunday (1960). Bava's innovative and always imaginative use of color shaped the genre in its wake, which has infinite relevance to color comics, too -- in fact, I always thought Richard Corben's color comics owed a vast debt to Bava's work. Bava's cinematic universe thrives on the unreal and artifice, and many devices contemporary 2007 audiences ironically might consider 'phoney' in this CGI-dominated era are central to his art. He often created visual splendor, uncanny atmosphere and entire universes out of next to nothing, embracing the unreal and hyper-real (like the grotesque face of the dead medium in "The Drop of Water," carved by his sculptor father Eugenio Bava, whose special effects and cinematography credits stretch back to the beginning of Italian cinema).

Let yourself go, and open your eyes to what these films played like when originally experienced over 40 years ago -- savor I Tre Volti Della Paura!

* It doesn't have to be Halloween for me to go on and on about George Franju's masterpiece Les Yeux Sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face (1959) -- it is, without a doubt, one of the most strangely poetic and absolutely lovely horror films ever made. It is also among the most chilling and disturbing. I once urged my wife to see it with me; she hated it, and though she felt it was silly, she loathed it because it repulsed her so. Lunatic that I am, I love it -- I love it like few other films. It sings to me, a sad, sorrowful, alluring song, via its images and sounds and movement and uncanny icy manner. It begins in desperation and ends in the sweet escape of madness, precise and yet as elusive as the fleeting memory of a dream upon awakening.

I first saw it as around the age of 12 or 13 on our local TV station (WCAX-TV Channel 3 out of Burlington, VT) on The Late Show, in its slightly cut and dubbed US version The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus (US release: 1963, co-featured with the Japanese/American coproduction The Manster aka The Split, 1962). I had seen the movie trailer for The Horror of Dr. Faustus/The Manster double bill in a theater as a mere lad, and that alone had almost traumatized me, as had the coming attractions for The Vampire and the Ballerina, Roger Corman's The Tower of London and The Flesh Eaters. That preview having scorched my brain cells, my anticipation further fueled by the images and review in Castle of Frankenstein (best of all '60s monster zines), I was ever watchful for a chance to see Franju's film, and once it arrived, I seized the opportunity.

Per usual, The Late Show was broken by commercials and I watched the film alone, in the family front room, with the lights out and the volume low so as to not wake anyone else in the house -- and the spell Franju's odd film cast is one I have never, ever shaken. The crass, blaring commercials only emphasized the alluring fragility of the soundtrack, juxtaposing stark naturalism (the sound is crisp, clear, punctuated by stretches of near-silence) with judicious use of Maurice Jarre's insidious musical score, and the grace of the visuals. Rarer still, WCAX evidently hadn't screened the print, as they did show the complete US version, which -- though it had been trimmed slightly -- was pretty strong stuff for late-night TV, circa 1967 or '68. I later saw a more complete version of the film on French Canadian television, which was another awakening experience as I realized the footage I was seeing in the surgery scene was going beyond what I had seen before.

When I see the film today -- as Marge and I did on the big screen at Dartmouth College's Hopkins Center in 2005, my first experience of the film in a proper theater, and via its current restored uncut print -- I am immediately back on our couch in Duxbury, VT, watching the film for the first time that fateful night. It's of course more complete, more vivid now, when I revisit it -- but it's one of the few films that upon every revisitation, I am thrust back in time and again experience it as if it were new, fresh, a first sighting. I have context now I didn't have then: I have since caught up with most of Franju's other films, including his first (more about that another time); I know Eyes Without a Face was Franju's second feature, that he was co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française and an award-winning documentarian, and I've managed to screen all his documentaries at one point or another (including his loving ode to George Melies). I have familiarized myself with the other films screenwriters Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac had a hand in, from Henri Clouzot’s Diabolique and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to tracking down English translations of at least two of their novels. I love it all the more for that, and with 40 years under my belt since, I savor the lyric, unflinching beauty of the film all the more when I see it again.

I don't even have to see it, really -- if I just hear the opening strains of Maurice Jarre's theme to the film, I'm there again, in that darkened room, seeing it for the first time --

Jarre's ominous, sleek music plays over the titles, which unreel from the POV of a car driving a dark country road by night, the spidery tree limbs shifting in the headlights. A fretful woman (Alida Valli) is driving, with what appears to be a body in the back seat, tightly wrapped in a buttoned-up trenchcoat, its face hidden by a pulled-down hat. She stops, and clumsily drags what we now recognize as a young woman's body out of the car and drops it into a canal. Cut to a distinguished surgeon (Pierre Brasseur) pontificating to an audience on some radical new surgical transplant technique -- the “heterograft.” Moments after, the police call upon him to accompany them to police headquarters to identify a body: he says it is that of his daughter. We are shown nothing, but typical of black-and-white horror films, the dialogue is ripe with forensic dread: her face has apparently been disfigured by an auto accident (some time in the past?), but something is suspicious: the facial wounds appear fresh and are surgically precise, as if cut with a scalpel.

We follow the doctor home. The reflections of tree limbs on the hood of his black car are as spidery as the whitened tree limbs splayed beneath the titles, in negative; even as a pre-teen, watching a less-than-razor-sharp TV broadcast, these details registered. The doctor's demeanor is still cold, aloof; Valli is there, attending to him -- and they both attend to a young woman (Edith Scob) in a locked bedroom upstairs, on the uppermost floor. She is laying face down on her bed, depressed, unhappy; nothing can console her. This is the doctor's daughter, and once we see her face -- or rather, the lovely, opaque feminine full-face mask covering her own face, upon the doctor's insistence, with the tender attention of Valli's nurse urging the young woman to comply -- the dream/nightmare begins in earnest.


As the strains of the musical theme swell anew, we see Valli stalk a young woman in the streets of Paris. With her plastic raincoat, her pensive manner, face and eyes, Valli -- female lead of Carol Reed's The Third Man, later the domineering instructor in Dario Argento's Suspiria -- makes for an unusual predator. At this point in my young life, only horror movies had touched upon the then-forbidden theme of lesbianism (Dracula's Daughter, Claire Bloom in The Haunting, etc.), and Valli seemed to be seeking prey -- for herself? For -- ?

Like a waking dream, Eyes Without a Face moved -- moves -- slowly, deliberately, with cruel precision; as cruel as that of its infamous surgery sequence, in which we watch a woman's face methodically removed.

But it is Edith Scob's dance-like performance that indelibly burns Franju's film into the memory. Eugen Schüfftan's cinematography makes her a radiant presence, adorned in her her iridescent white gown and inexpressive mask (but, oh, her eyes, her eyes!), drifting through her purgative ordeal as ethereally as the doves that flit about her in the film's final shot.

Alas, this film isn't for all tastes. Bluntly stated, it's too stately a film in its pacing for many contemporary viewers. As one of the CCSers put it after we screened it, "Eyes Without a Face wasn't as multi-layered as I'd hoped it'd be, it was just kinda, 'welp, gotta cut off this face fer my daughter, I'm evil, and mean to dogs, I wonder if that'll come back to bite me....'." Now, I could counter with the film's reassessment after being so long ignored and maligned -- it was castigated upon its release, like most genuinely innovative and transgressive horror films -- but all that has changed with time. I could cite plenty of kindred voices in the mainstream these days --

-- J. Hoberman's 2003 Village Voice review

and Terrence Rafferty in The New York Times reflect the current critical view --

-- but I needn't call in the troops; cinema is, after all, a purely subjective experience for all of us.

For me, Franju's film (like those of Mario Bava) is all about atmosphere and imagery, eye and ear, an evocation of a dreamlike time and place, not narrative per se, though it's necessary to note Eyes Without a Face was among the most influential films of its era, right up there with the Hammer Films one-two punch of Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula (1957/58), Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1959), and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). But like those pioneering movies, Franju's creation must be considered -- experienced, if possible -- in the context of its time.

Seeing Eyes Without a Face any time in the '60s/early '70s was a revelation, meshing the stately grace, pace and visual care of Jean Cocteau with frightfully contemporary and dispassionate reinvention of the venerable 'mad scientist' horror archetypes. Seen then, it's deliberate narrative pacing was compelling in and of itself, a policier oddly ridiculed and subverted by its vivid horrors, its uncanny poetry.

It was a key influence on all who followed, and impacted my generation of horror film lovers in more ways that I can count here. It was Franju who pioneered the fusion of horror and art films, making all that followed possible -- a fact as prominent practitioners as Clive Barker, Edward Gorey (Eyes Without a Face was Gorey's all-time favorite film!), David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, and others have cited again and again.

However, the current generation of viewers have grown up with the films Eyes influenced, all of which amplified its most obvious effects -- from its almost immediate contemporaries The Head and The Brain That Wouldn't Die (shot in Tarrytown, NY in 1959, released by AIP in 1963) to prominent 1980s-90s opuses from Clive Barker's Hellraiser to John Woo's Face/Off, cable TV series like Nip/Tuck and countless graphic forensic crime programs, Euro-sleaze like Jess Franco's Faceless (a direct remake of Franju's film), all building upon the heavy art/horror/sex spin (for its era) from Europe in the early '60s (e.g., The Awful Dr. Orloff, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, Blood Rose, etc.) and '70s revamps (like the grim Mansion of the Doomed, which swapped face-removal for eye transplants, a film Stan Winston leaves off his career filmography!). This places any older horror film, Eyes in particular, retroactively in the shadow of all that followed, good and bad, and in the 'c'mon, scare me/gross me out' game most horror films/fans savor, an older film seen only in the context of the "NOW" is usually a diminished experience.

Still as horrific as ever it was: The tracing of the crayon on the young woman's face in preperation for the cutting, the methodical process coldly observed, the lifting of the skin from the skull -- images from the central setpiece of Franju's Les Yeux Sans Visage (1959)

The leisurely pace of Eyes is instrumental to its dread, just as similarly 'slow' pacing is critical to Roman Polanski's Repulsion, David Lynch's Eraserhead, etc. Many of my all-time favorite films -- the ones that really affected me, deeply -- are what I call 'trance' films. They mesmerize, slow one's own pace, are meditative experiences -- and while I could glibly summarize any Ingmar Bergman film just as Eyes was dismissed by one of the CCSers (who is, by the way, one hell of an artist and storyteller, among the best!), it would not change the power of Franju's masterpiece.

If one can slow the world for the necessary 90-120 minutes to steep oneself in the experience of the 'trance' films -- like Eyes Without a Face -- the experience is haunting, disturbing, devastating.

(Note: the Criterion release of Eyes Without a Face features photos I contributed to the gallery, hence the 'thank you' I earned -- as you can tell, I really love this film).


* Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) from the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, starring Julie Harris, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn and Claire Bloom, is my amigo Joseph A. Citro's all-time favorite ghost movie, and still considered among the best horror films ever made. Like Franju's Eyes Without a Face, this is a hypnotic film, though it's more in accord with American audience tastes: its characters are more demonstrative and active, as a film it isn't as deliberately icy in nature. Seen with in the appropriate venue -- sans interruptions of any kind -- The Haunting still casts a powerful spell, raising real goosebumps at least three times.

It's what you don't see that chills in this excellent, evocative adaptation of the novel Jackson wrote while living in Bennington, VT, which remains (next to her classic short story "The Lottery") the best-known of her works, but also the best modern ghost novel of the 20th Century, the yardstick by which all others are measured. Robert Wise cut his teeth as editor and director under producer Val Lewton at RKO in the '40s, and was part of Lewton's creative braintrust behind Lewton's powerful 'horror of suggestion' gems like The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, The Leopard Man and -- directed by Wise -- Curse of the Cat People and The Body Snatcher. Along with fellow Lewton veteran Mark Robson, Wise became one of Hollywood's premiere mainstream directors, with films like West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles and The Andromeda Strain among his most popular hits, but his mastery of the Lewton principle was never better expressed than via his atmospheric adaptation of Jackson's novel.


The Haunting is dated in many ways, particularly via Russ Tamblyn's 'daddy-o' hipster dialogue (which Tamblyn resurrected for his Twin Peaks character of Dr. Jacoby) , but Claire Bloom's lesbian psychic was unusually frank for a studio film of this time (and remains "unpunished" for her sexual preference -- rarer still!), and Julie Harris's lead performance remains among the best of any '60s film, much less '60s horror film. Richard Johnson plays the dedicated psychic investigator, precursor to countless paranormal researchers and ghostbusters to follow; Johnson, of course, is best known to gorehounds for his turn as the voodoo-obsessed mad doctor of Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1981).

Be sure to check out the original version -- not the abysmal Jan de Bont 1999 remake -- and enjoy!

Other favorites:

* The Call of Cthulhu (2005) is the most faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's work ever brought to the big screen, care of the H.P. Lovecraft Historic Society. As in Manitoba filmmaker Guy Maddin's films (e.g., Tales of the Gimli Hospital, Careful, The Saddest Music in the World, etc.), this is a 'faux silent' film -- presented as if it had been produced the year Lovecraft wrote his famed short story "The Call of Cthulhu," 1926. Very cleverly and stylishly done, with limited budgetary means and effects (miniatures, stop-motion animation, etc.) and silent-movie intertitles -- no worries, there's also a great musical score. Essential viewing!

* Nicolas Roeg's physic thriller Don't Look Now (1973), starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, has been much imitated (you'll see how once you've seen the film) though it was almost buried when the production company completed this uncanny, almost sui generis drama in tandem with the similarly genre-challenged The Wicker Man (another favorite, natch). Thankfully, the star power alone of Sutherland and Christie led to this being picked up by Paramount for theatrical release, indelibly marking those of us who saw it -- though it's impact was soon drowned out by the blockbuster success of The Exorcist at the end of that very year. Like Walkabout and his first collaborative directorial effort Performance, Nicolas Roeg's distinctive approach to storytelling here weds its perfect complement in its source short story by Daphne deMaurier (author of Rebecca and the short story that inspired The Birds). Roeg's 'fragmented reality' vision of the universe is the ideal methodology to exploring and illuminating the dread nooks and crannies of psychic experience -- we, the audience, essentially experience the psychic visions of the protagonist as he experiences them, and share his uncomprehending rush to -- ?? This is also a truly adult horror film, in that its characters and their relationships are fully realized, dimensional, and strongly felt, as is their world and their plight; thus, the horror of the climax is more potent than that of the typical '70s genre exercise. We care about this couple, their loss, and their fate.

* A genuinely rare slice of '60s cinema that fused fringe movies, Brazilian carnival culture, EC-style horror comics, Catholicism gone mad, and bizarre philosophical rants was Jose Majica Marins's (writer, director and star) At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963)! This was Marins's first film, introducing to the big screen his mad undertaker character Ze do Caixao (US name: Coffin Joe, coined by Something Weird's beloved honcho Mike Vraney), a sort of "Crypt Keeper" type in search of the "perfect woman" to be his wife. Marins and Ze do Caixao went on to become a pop culture star in Brazil: radio, TV, comicbooks, movies, stage, and even pop songs -- Marins did it all. This was the first true horror film ever made in Brazil, and it's surprisingly graphic and sacriligious for its time. Check it out -- IF YOU DARE!!

* The first great political horror film of the sound era was Abel Gance's 1937 J'Accuse! (aka That They May Live, 1939, the cut US theatrical release). Gance's stirring remake of his 1919 WW1 classic (which D.W. Griffith admired and said "wrote history with lightning") expands the silent film's fantasy climax -- in which the dead of WW1 march on the living -- into a passionate anti-war drama, with which Gance (with the foolish optimism of a poet) hoped would prevent what became WW2. Alas, mere weeks after J'Accuse opened in France, the Third Reich had occupied Gance's native country and the film was banned by the Nazis and the French gov't. This is a stunning film; note many of the walking dead are indeed veterans of WW1. Recommended co-feature: Joe Dante and Sam Hamm's "Homecoming" (2005) from Showtime's Masters of Horror TV series, the film that had 'em standing and clapping for five minutes in Italy in 2005! What if the dead soldiers from the Iraq War awoke from their 'sleep' -- and voted? Amazing slice of agitprop horror from screenwriter of Batman Sam Hamm and vet 'monster kid' director Joe Dante (who wrote for Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein monster zines in the '60s, and since his directorial debut co-directing drive-in gem Hollywood Boulevard and solo-directing Piranha has made The Howling, Gremlins and Gremlins 2, The 'Burbs, The Second Civil War, Innerspace, Matinee, etc.).

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Happy Halloween, one and all!

Bava
in a
Box

As noted earlier this week, the upcoming DVD re-releases of some of Mario Bava's key 1960s features is cause for celebration in the Bissette household, and it's amazing to see competing releases of Kill, Baby, Kill/Operazione Paura (1966) popping up after years of public domain videocassettes and DVDs.

The upcoming Anchor Bay boxed set (pictured here) promises transfers of the original European versions (I can't say Italian, given Black Sunday's packaging of US and UK prints only; see the links noted below) along with their US theatrical versions, the American-International Pictures (AIP) edits we all grew up with. Those brassy Les Baxter musical scores defined my generation's only experience with these classics prior to the video bootleg market and eventual official DVD releases, which were at times revelatory: Black Sabbath in particular is a completely different experience and film, from AIP's reorchestration of the order of the three stories to the Boris Karloff Thriller-like intros to the deletion of all lesbian references essential to "The Telephone" (a story that never made a lick of sense in its AIP cut, and I do mean cut). Most infamous of all was/is AIP's removal of Bava's original unusual coda, a comedic flourish featuring Karloff in his wurdulak makeup and costume astride a horse mockup that playfully reveals the artifice of Bava's filmmaking tricks (which makes this a precursor to the ending of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, sans the fusion/faux-religious context). Seeing this at last (it had been mentioned in newsstand monster zines like Castle of Frankenstein and in Karloff bios in the 1960s, but never seen in the US) was the icing on the Bava birthday cake, but there are elements of the AIP version I still love and miss. At last, they'll be together, in one release!


Anchor Bay is also releasing (April 3) Bava's lost film Rabid Dogs/Cani Arrabbiati, which had malingered in post-production limbo and was imprisoned & unreleased for three decades. Only a lucky, attentive and devoted few (including moi) snapped up the limited-edition Lucertola Media DVD release from Germany years ago (1997); Anchor Bay's upcoming DVD represents the film's US debut in any form. Rabid Dogs is a lean-and-mean-spirited gem. It was and is unlike any other of Bava's films, essentially an entry in the ire-fueled Italian crime film cycle of the 1970s caustically fused with a Last House on the Left "anything can and will go bad" intensity unique to the '70s; shot and shelved in 1974 -- the death of one of its key investors in a car accident doomed the raw footage to impoundment, finally 'freed' and edited in 1996 according to Bava's notes! -- this taut, claustrophobic nerve-jangler boasts the tightest script of any Bava film and a volatile, in-your-face ferocity (and morbid final turn of the blade) that razors the edge of Bay of Blood (aka Antefatto, Carnage, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Last House Part II) to a less stylized, more pragmatic & lethal precision. It's a missing link in Bava's body of work, very much of its time and a direct prototype/contemporary of Pasquale Festa Campanile's better-known (and why not? It was completed and released!) Hitch-Hike/Autostop rosso sangue (1977), which starred Franco Nero and Last House on the Left's David Hess. Bava had no such star-power, but Rabid Dogs is the superior film, and it also anticipates more contemporary incarnations of the genre like, well, Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Anchor Bay is offering two versions of this resurrected opus, Rabid Dogs and Kidnapped; I've no idea what (other than the one-minute difference in running time) defines the differences between these two versions, but I can't wait to find out.

This generosity extends to Anchor Bay's Bava boxed set (Vol. 1), which finally preserves both the European and US versions of the two films most often referenced as Bava's best (sorry, Bava diehards like yours truly beg to differ, though they are delicious and deserving of their classic stature). Black Sunday and Black Sabbath are packaged with the seminal giallo (the first of the genre!) The Girl Who Knew Too Much (coupled with its AIP version, The Evil Eye, never released legally in any format since 16mm, and strikingly different from the Italian version in many respects), the spectral Kill, Baby, Kill (which surprising fared best of all of Bava's '60s horror films, in that it was intact in its US releases whatever title it was released under) and Bava's muscular remake of Shane as a Cameron Mitchell viking opus, Knives of the Avenger. That may not sound promising, but it's among my favorite Bava films, eschewing the maestro's usual color schemes for an earthier palette amid inventively restagings of the generic western elements (i.e., six-shooters become thrown knives) while infusing the Shane boy/child relationship with a more primal paternal twist (Viking rape and pillaging yields an illegitimate son, the young boy the now-repentant viking loner bonds with) and showcasing an excellent Mitchell performance. Its among the most heartfelt of Bava's films, and a real treat; give it a look.

The 'Volume 1' status is worthy of notice, too: if a Volume 2 is in the works, one can hope at last for a definitive US release of Antefatto/Bay of Blood, my favorite of all Bava's 1970s films. Image's 2000 DVD release of this classic (as part of their mastheaded "The Mario Bava Collection") was visually impeccable but fatally flawed by a botched soundtrack transfer that distorted the terrific Stelvio Cipriana score on every system I played it on, rendering the film almost unwatchable. Despite mono sound, even Simitar's cheapjack 1999 DVD release was preferable, despite its shoddy image, for being at least listenable; this eventually drove me to purchase the Raro Video/Nocturno/Horror Club import DVD, though that, too, had its problems. Here's hoping Anchor Bay's re-releases and restorations includes salvaging this seminal slasher and Bava's best black comedy, and preserving Hallmark Releasing's delirious Carnage trailer, which is still among the oddest of its very-odd drive-in era.

[An aside: Hallmark -- the Boston-based exploitation distributor who made their indelible mark with their release of Last House on the Left and Mark of the Devil -- test-marketed Bay of Blood in Boston markets under the title Carnage and tried to revisit the boxoffice bonanza of Mark of the Devil by promoting Carnage as "The 2nd Film Rated 'V' for Violence," and with a possessive "Mario Bava's" moniker above the title (!). That apparently failed to produce results, so Hallmark trotted the film back out later that summer under the much more successful (and inspired) Twitch of the Death Nerve title, with aggressive new ballyhoo: "The first motion picture to require a face-to-face warning*" -- the ad then referencing with its asterisk follow-through, "* Every Ticket Holder Must Pass Through The Final Warning Station -- We Must Warn You Face-to-Face!" Ah, the '70s. Anchor Bay can't restore The Final Warning Station, but if they can restore the soundtrack, I'll be happy!]

This all bodes well for those of us who've long waited for definitive releases of these classics, and

Tim Lucas's Video Watchblog is hands-down the best place to find info on this boxed set and the rest of the upcoming Bava releases.

It's also worth nothing that

the Latarnia Fantastique International forum is also keeping tabs on this Bava boxed set release.

Sweetening the Bava Year in Fear of 2007 is also the pending release of

Tim's massive Bava bio (1,115+ pages!), which you should pre-order ASAP if you're a fan of the man's work (Mario's and/or Tim's).

Tim and Donna are closing in on their long-awaited printing date, so keep an eye on the Bava book blog for updates. This is one of those essential & expensive film books that will only become more essential and much, much more expensive after it drops out of print.

30 and 40 years ago, it was almost impossible to find anything on Bava outside of the insightful capsule reviews (many by Joe Dante) in Castle of Frankenstein, and seeing a Bava film was a matter of haunting late-night TV broadcasts and local drive-ins, usually rewarded with cut and pan-and-scanned dubbed prints in rough shape.

2007 is shaping up to be quite a year from where I sit...

Have a great weekend, one and all!

Monday Monkey See, Monkey Do:

Creative Burnouts go Fishing,
Reading Tyrant Aloud to Eli,
Panel to Panel Update,
Trees & Hills,
Blair's Music Blaring,
Mario Bava and More!

Why I Love Mario Bava Fig. 1: The Three Faces of Fear, Indeed!
Intergenerational bonding in Black Sabbath (1963)

A lot of ground to cover this AM, so heeeeeeere goes:
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Colin Tedford, co-founder (with Dan Barlow) of the Vermont/New Hampshire/Massachusetts/New England comics creative collective the Trees & Hills Group, just sent me their February update:

* Tuesday, 2/6: Creator's Group gathering and Comics Schmooze, one after the other in Northampton, MA.

* Saturday, 2/17: Trees & Hills Drawing Social in Keene, NH.

Plus: * Tim Hulsizer is running a comic art auction for charity.
* Keene Free Comics is reviving in honor of TV Turnoff week and calling for submissions no later than 3/18.
* New comics online!
* Brattleboro Commons seeks local political cartoonist (and others - scroll down a few entries for this one & be sure to read the comments).

All this and more awaits you

here, on their site.

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I've been posting a lot of Center for Cartoon Studies student websites of late, but also should keep you abreast of fellow CCSer Blair Sterrett's activities online. Chief among those, archivist of the unusual that Blair is, be his online music posts on WFMU's 365 Days 2007 Project:

His most recent post I know of is 365 Days #27 - General Electric - Go Fly A Kite (mp3s)

365 Days #20 - American Standard - Today We Bought A Home (mp3s)

is, according to Blair, "a mini product musical by American-Standard." It sports artwork by Suzanne Baumann, who Blair met "in person during the small press comic convention last fall. Strangely she recognized me in the crowd from photos of my old radio show... Start off by listening to track 3." BTW, Suzanne's comics website can be found

here; enjoy.

More of Blair's postings as he posts about his posts for us folks.

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This just in from James Kochalka, concerning the ongoing

Fine Toon (here's the link)

Vermont Cartoonists exhibition at the Helen Day Art Gallery in Stowe, VT (catch it twixt now and the end of March, it's a terrific showcase!):

"Eva the Deadbeat interviewed me for her awesome video blog (Stuck in Vermont). She cornered me at Fine Toon: The Art of Vermont Cartoonists opening at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe Vermont, which was a smashing success:

Here's the YouTube clip!

I like the part where me and Eli are reading a page from Steve Bissette's Tyrant.

I provided most of the music too, except for the theme song at the beginning by Burlington band The Smittens."

Thanks, James, and it was great to see you and your family at the opening night gala!

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BTW, at that gallery exhibition, you'll not only see Kochalka originals (including paintings by the grand fellow) and Tyrant original art, but also originals from Rick Veitch's and my first full-color jam creation, "Monkey See" (from Epic #2, circa 1979).

The double-page spread that sold the story: Bissette & Veitch, 1978-79

But don't go scrambling for back issues of Epic via online auctions: Rick is reprinting "Monkey See," along with all his solo creations from the late '70s and early '80s for zines like Epic, in his latest trade paperback collection Shiny Beasts, currently listed in the April Diamond catalogue.

Rick and I have a long-standing agreement to allow one another to anthologize our collaborative work -- particularly our 'Creative Burnouts' creations from the '70s and early '80s -- and Rick's first up to the plate via his ongoing King Hell Press collections of Veitch's out-of-print creations. Shiny Beasts will also include his long-sought-after Epic collaboration with Alan Moore, a tale of love, sex and interstellar venereal disease that also features an eye-popping panel Rick called me in for. You want alien VD imagery to die for, just call Bissette!

Shiny Beasts collects, for the first time anywhere, Rick's key post-Kubert School years, pre-graphic novel period of development, much of which was executed under the steady editorial guidance of the late, great Archie Goodwin. Though Marvel's Epic magazine was initiated by editor Rick Marschall, it was Archie who helmed that publishing experiment (Marvel's short-lived retort to Heavy Metal's unexpected newsstand success) to fruition, and Rick was in every issue of Epic from its debut (wherein he colored John Buscema's art for a one-shot Silver Surfer story). It was the color spread I've posted above that landed Rick and I our foot-in-the-door at Epic, on the heels of our offering the piece to Heavy Metal's beloved art director John Workman; John wanted it, but as a stand-alone illustration, whereas Rick and I were hoping to sell a story using the painting as a springboard.

Now, I'd worked for editor Rick Marschall doing two stories for the black-and-white Marvel comics zines (including Bizarre Adventures, a sort-of precursor to Epic). Rick Marschall was still in the editorial chair when I showed up in his and (then) assistant editor Ralph Macchio's office waaaaay back in 1978. Rick M. liked the piece and immediately requested Veitch and I expand it into a story. We made a couple of attempts, first proposing a fantasy coming-of-age story concept (with roughs) Rick M. shot down. Back to the drawing board we went, and Veitch and I then concocted "Monkey See," which we jammed on as we did everything at that time, literally passing the pages (and bowls) back and forth until we had pulled something together we liked well enough to put to the brush. Thus, we shared all tasks: the scripting, pencils, inks, and colors, though it was Rick who was the airbrush maestro, pulling everything together with his painstaking use of that venerable commercial art tool. Rick was among the first wave of cartoonists to embrace the airbrush after Richard Corben's seminal early '70s underground and Warren creations, and it indeed opened many doors for Rick (and me: Rick graced a number of my first pro jobs with his airbrush tones) at the time. Rick Marschall accepted our revamp of "Monkey See," but by the time we delivered the job, Rick M. had been unceremoniously booted from his Marvel editorial position and Archie Goodwin was the man in the hotseat.

Archie graciously honored Rick M.'s commitment to publish "Monkey See," and thus was Rick Veitch's run of impressive Epic stories initiated (I only did one other, "Kultz," with co-writer Steve Perry, for Epic #6). Rick learned much from his subsequent efforts under Archie's steady editorial hand, culminating in

his first serialized graphic novel for Epic, Abrasax and the Earthman (now available, with a stunning signed and limited print by Veitch and Al Williamson, at PaneltoPanel.net!)

It's all those extraordinary Epic self-standing stories (and more!) that comprise Shiny Beasts; not to be missed!

I'll be posting Shiny Beasts preorder info, and more on "Monkey See" (including a peek at a few more pages) here later in February. Given Rick's ongoing solid relations with PaneltoPanel.net, I'd personally recommend waiting to preorder via PaneltoPanel -- there will no doubt be a limited edition print of some kind to savor! -- and I'll post that link here as soon as P2P guru John Rovnak sends me the specs.

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And speaking of John Rovnak and

PaneltoPanel.net,

I'm deep in work prepping another batch of online reviews for John's site; I'll post those links once the reviews are in John's hands and up for reading (I had two book introductions to get off my desk first, amid the moving and house buying-and-selling and all; as of this past Friday, those deadlines have been met and intros accepted by their respective publishers).

However, that's not the big news. Dig, for a limited time John is promoting his marvelous online comic retail site with the following "catch it while you can!" February promotion:

Join Panel to Panel.Net's comic book subscription service during the month of February, and receive two titles FREE for one year!

Simply order a copy of a PREVIEWS catalog

here,

and then email us back with your desired titles and books. Now you're buying books with Panel to Panel's excellent subscription service; and if your monthly orders are at a minimum $35.00 each month, you'll receive two titles (of your choice) for an entire year absolutely FREE!!

Titles to choose from include:

USAGI YOJIMBO (Dark Horse Comics)
THE SPIRIT (DC Comics)
ARMY @ LOVE (DC/Vertigo)
[Note: This is Rick Veitch's upcoming series, and it looks fantastic from the pencils Rick has shown me.]
GODLAND (Image Comics)
MIGHTY AVENGERS (Marvel Comics)
RUNAWAYS (Marvel Comics)
ELEPHANTMEN (Image Comics)
TALES OF THE TMNT (Mirage Studios)
BRAVE & THE BOLD (DC Comics)
SHONEN JUMP * (Viz Media)
LOVE & ROCKETS (Fantagraphics)

*counts as two titles

Plus, as a subscriber, you'll also receive 10% off all items ordered; and you'll receive the best customer service around, which has kept our subscribers happy for years.

I'm among John's long-time subscribers and customers -- here's my plug, along with one from compadre and fellow cartoonist Mitch Waxman:

"I've been using Panel To Panel's comics subscription service for over a decade and have been overjoyed with every aspect of it: the service, the attention to my interests and needs, and best of all the occasional bringing to my attention something I otherwise wouldn't have known existed. It's my one-stop comics and graphic novel shopping center!" - Stephen R. Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant, Taboo)

"Panel To Panel knows exactly what kind of comics, artists and writers that I like, and makes great suggestions for new ones. They're knowledgeable, approachable and a great comics resource. Panel To Panel's subscription service is invaluable; I get the comics I want, without being overwhelmed in the comic shop (if I can find one near me). Panel To Panel has been sending me a monthly box of goodies for 8 years, making them king of comics convenience years before Netflix or Fresh Direct delivered their first movie or bread stick." - Mitch Waxman (www.weirdass.net)

Give us a try, and make us your online comics resource; We'd love to earn your business.
More information about subscribing with us is available

here!

February is a short month, so don't dawdle! Take advantage of this invite now. There's nothing in this for me, but plenty in it for you. Give John and PaneltoPanel.net a shot; he'll be a resource for my own past and coming work in the comics field for years and years to come.
__________________

Did I say coming work? Why, yes I did.

2007 will be the year of my return to the medium (not the US industry) of comics, and there's much to share -- as and when the time comes. I've been busy, not only scripting but also working my pencil and slinging the inks, thanks entirely to my son Daniel, the folks at CCS, and a few tempting invites from friends.

Keep your eyes on this blog, the announcements will be forthcoming as winter gives way to spring!
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Why I Love Bava Fig. 2: The spectral Melissa at the window in Operazione Paura/ Kill, Baby, Kill!/Curse of the Living Dead (1966), a drive-in fave of my teenage years under any title.

Other excitement for 2007 that's got me wound up of late is the coming wave of Mario Bava DVD releases and re-releases, which my long-time amigo Tim Lucas (who happens also to be the Bava biographer of choice and the venerable creator/editor/copublisher of Video Watchdog, with his lovely Oz-collecting wife Donna) has been touting of late on blog (links below).

As many of you may know, Mario Bava's films were absolutely central to my own growing up. I savored some long discussion board debates about Bava's films on the old Swamp boards (in The Kingdom; alas, all gone and now longer archived online), but you must understand how vital Bava's films were and are to me. I was traumatized as a Catholic youth by Black Sunday; however, Bava's films were forever elusive, often hiding under retitlings and even sans Bava's name in the credits. I thereafter scoured the pages of Castle of Frankenstein and haunted the TV Guide listings, studied the 16mm rental catalogues (in high school, I ran the student film program and snuck Danger: Diabolik onto the programming, much to the outrage of a particular French teacher at Harwood Union High School; at Johnson State College, I booked a then-complete retrospective of Bava's films for the Sunday afternoon "Bentley B-Flicks" matinees) and (once I had my driver's license) the drive-ins and grindhouses for any and all Bava creations.

As I got into underground comics, I became convinced Bava's films were influencing other cartoonists of that generation and my own: consider, for a moment, Richard Corben's color horror comics, which seemed the first overt eruption of Bava's color aesthetic into the medium. I've never had that particular conversation with Corben, but I'm willing to bet Bava was as formative an influence on his Kansas City upbringing as Bava was on my backwoods Vermont adolescence and teenage years.

It was our mutual obsessive devotion and love for Bava's films that brought Tim Lucas and I together, via a letter I mailed to Fangoria in response to their publication of Tim's first article on Bava, and we've been friends ever since. It's sometimes hard to believe that almost every single film Bava made has been released on DVD, but there's more to come, and soon!

Why I love Bava Fig. 3: Another indelible gothic image from Kill, Baby, Kill!

First up, there's the coming

Dark Sky DVD release of a digitally-remastered and restored edition of Bava's Operazione Paura/Kill, Baby, Kill!

Tim's got my appetite up, and given Dark Sky's track record to date (I have nearly all their genre releases on my shelves, and in my head) and the promise of David Gregory's bonus feature, visiting all the key locations Bava used for his gothic gem, this promises to be the definitive release (at last!) of this minor masterpiece.

But there's more!

In his February 3rd post on the Video Watchblog, Tim reveals what's in store in Anchor Bay's upcoming boxed set Mario Bava Collection Volume 1,

and you'll have to excuse me, but I think I just came in my pants. This boxed set provides the best intro to Bava's work to date, and for the uninitiated among you, this is the investment to go for.

Jeez, I better go change my shorts.

_______________

Have a great week!

I don't know if I'll be able to post daily this week, as it's a busy one for me: I'm speaking to two classes at Brattleboro's Center for Digital Art tomorrow, so I'll be on the road early. My daughter Maia is coming up to visit this week (and work on our comic project together; her bro' Dan has already completed his jam with his Pop, namely yours truly) and we have two guest artists at CCS this week --

Tom Hart

and

Leela Corman

-- which will keep us all preoccupied and happy.

Still, I'll be popping up here, too, as time permits.