Grim Dark Western Films

I'm hard at work on my western series the Dark Trail Saga, and I'm at least halfway done with the first Scavengers - (Cold Slither will fit into this but more as a collection of shorts that pertain to it at large as opposed to the rest which will be novels).

So besides just my readings - (I'm enjoying Killing Trail - Charles) I'm also watching some iconic westerns for that feel. I want to capture the great american mythology of the west and a lot of what I enjoy is the revisionist western.

So I'm catching up on a few that you all may or may not have seen.

The Hateful Eight

I like a lot of Tarantino's work (not everything but you know). With this one I have found myself thinking a lot about it the next few days afterward. If there is one thing I'd like to take away from this is how great Tarantino's dialogue is. The essence of capturing character and slick reveal of motivation is a lot of fun.

I definitely liked this more than Django Unchained as this seemed a lot more realistic and had better reveals.

Slow West 

I had seen ads for this and I wasn't sure I was interested despite Fassbinder's great performance in another weird west role in Jonah Hex.
Then I listened to the Weird West Radio podcast and was impressed by what they had to say about Slow West. It is a pretty gritty western, not so bloody as say a Tarnatino pic or Bone Tomahawk but still, it has a bang to it.

What I liked was the world weary wisdom of Silas (Fassbinder) and the blind optimism of the kid he has been hired to help out. There were  a lot of little asides where you thought something would happen and then great surprises, sometimes with grimdark laugh out loud surprises. There were also a couple of things that reminded me of a classic horror western Blood Meridian. For a new European/New Zealand depiction of the American west this was a great outing.

Bone Tomahawk 

In a way I have certain expectations for Kurt Russell in a western movie but both Hateful Eight and Bone Tomahawk give some character surprises while still allowing Russell to be that tough guy. I wanted to see this for awhile especially considering that the creator behind it is doing weird west books - S. Craig Zahler and his Wraiths of the Broken Land is coming to film soon too.
This one has interesting characters and great play back and forth between the dandy gunfighter and crippled husband and ne'er do well deputy. In some respects I had reservations about the cannibal tribe, it is cool that it is something different from others westerns but in that there were just a few f them made it a little hard to believe they would be that feared by other tribes etc. I did like their body modifications - that was a nice creepy touch.
My one reservation about it was I thought it was overly gory for gores sake. Just my opinion but still it was a compelling story.

The Wild Bunch 

This is another I had meant to see forever and it opens in an epic way, Peckinpah's imagery of the children having the scorpions fight the ants is so telling of our characters and the world they live in.

I loved the premise of the outlaws being a part of the Mexican revolution while still being hunted by  their former partner. betrayal is a powerful theme in this one and what's not to love about Ben Johnson mowing people down with a Maxim machine gun. This one like Tarantino has a pretty bloody ending without feeling over the top gross like Bone Tomahawk. Still I find myself comparing it to the Lee Marvin pic The Professionals which I still think I like better.


A Fistful of Dollars

I grew up watching Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns ( I also recently rewatched The Good The Bad and The Ugly and Outlaw Josey Wales just because) but it had been a long time since I had watched this western reworking of Yojimbo/Red Harvest. It stands up, its one helluva movie.

In my wondering about how to paint the western world I'm writing you can't go wrong with the classic Eastwood films.

I loved seeing the final showdown and Clint's reveal on his invulnerability.

There are a lot of elements in these that I'll sift through and percolate into the upcoming project.

What are some of your favorite western films, scenes etc?

YOR: The Hunter From the Future

I saw this when I was a kid and because it was part of that 80's craptastic fantasy revival its always been in the back of my head to see it again and the other night, Amazon Prime obliged me.

Opening with a theme song about Yor, that sounds like it was a rejected Yes track, I was sure that they chose a place with the most phallic looking rocks possible. Took me awhile to find a screen shot online, that still doesn't do it disturbing justice.

Yor played by Reb Brown (70's Captain America, Space Mutiny-which I just watched via Mystery Science Theater 3000) oh and he was Blaster, in Uncommon Valor - a movie I actually like.

Anyhow he shows up just in time to save the damsel in distress and her dad? from an enraged triceratops. After he kills it with a few good whacks in the head with his ax, he tells them to help him with the best cuts of meat. All in a days work for our hero.

Later the bad caveman attack and take the girl, so Yor and her dad go after them. Rather conveniently Yor kills a bat/pteranadon some winged beastie I never got a good look at and he hang glides into the bad cavemen's open cavern. Unbelievable as that was it is still better than Ator's similar maneuver in Cave Dwellers. Then he has to run with the girl - I'm spacing her name but she was a Bond girl in Moonraker (so she has done better movies)  and they cross a defile
and then run up the cavern past the death god altar and LO! There is a dam at the top of the cavern so that Yor can break it down and flood out the pursuing baddies. Pretty damn convenient.

Later he gets word that there is a goddess who has a similar medallion to his, so he goes in search of her to learn who he is.
Of course its not that hard to find said blonde wench and she tells him the little that she knows before she lets him and the girl and her dad know they are to be sacrificed. And then they escape, not much to go on here it is a sad movie.

Moving along they go to a beach and rescue some peaceful villagers there from some monster then discover that the people had to deal with some kind of futuristic attack and left behind technology nobody understands and say it comes from some kinda forbidden island and so of course Yor is going there.

So moving along, they go to the island, get attacked by some black wannabe Darth Vader bots, find out a guy named the Overlord is behind it and that he = Yor now, is actually one of these futuristic peoples and that his father took him and crash landed in the barbaric wastes. So after a brief incarceration and struggle against the Overlord, Yor triumphs and flies away and the movie ends on the question of will Yor be able to save the remaining members of humanity from destroying themselves through nuclear annihilation?

In hindsight, my memory of watching it on video with my Dad when I was maybe 10 made it a better movie than it really was, but whadaya do? Also, its funny how most of these movie posters make for better entertainment than the actual movie, the story you think you will see always tops what yu get with these = Deathstalker, Barbarian Queen etc etc.

I also watched Fire and Ice with my boys recently and they loved it.

I thought it had its moments but sure wasn't profound by any stretch, I can only hope the upcoming live action one is a little better. I still have hope for S&S cinema.

Orc Wars/Dragonfyre

I'd been meaning to watch Orc Wars for quite some time, especially since I love fantasy and the director is a new friend of mine - Kohl Glass and lo! After some amount of time it was just recently released on Netflix and Redbox etc...

Never mind I actually got a signed copy from Kohl at Salt Lake Comic Con ( we traded - I gave him a copy of Weird Tales of Horror) I just watched it last night with the kids, and since they're my kids they loved it! Could be a bit gory (black Orc blood) and scary for others though. 

Now, I'm not going to say that this is the greatest movie ever - its not - its not Lord of the Rings, but its also not a Sy-Fy abomination either. Great acting and costumes and the premise was pretty solid. I liked that even the Orc's themselves had some interesting characters - Gorejaw and Fangmark!

Before I go any farther here is the back cover synopsis:

A battle-weary ex-Special Forces Operative buys a ranch in remote American West to flee from the world, and encounters a strange series of trespassers, including a beautiful elf princess and a Native American mystic and Orcs. When the Orcs invade his property, John must give up his isolation to become a hero, before the Orcs unleash their dragon god on our world.

The characters got me from the blind Indian mystic, Whitefeather played by the fantastic Wesley John to the princess Masiela Lusha, a powerhouse fighter in her own right. My wife would appreciate that - a proactive female protagonist. And Rusty Joiner plays the lead ex-soldier - John Norton, thrust into the middle of this crossroads of realms. 

I liked the action and suspense and even funny little asides and nods to weird fiction in general, I got kick out of the realty company that John Norton buys his out of the way home from ~ 

I had to tell Kohl I liked that. My kids were drawn in to the suspense of what the Orcs were doing coming into our world and we all dug the action and laughs. 

I also gotta mention a good friend of my wife's is in the movie as a redneck and as Gorejaw - Adam Johnson who I didn't realize was in it til I watched it - I met him at this last Comicon  (And had to relate the story of how he was somewhat involved in bringing my wife and I together) She directed some short parody vids Adam starred in.

But I digress....

I enjoyed the movie and look forward to watching more of Kohl's work and the others.

How Captain America Helped Make Me Who I Am

I still remember my first Captain America comic book. I don't remember which issue it was or the cover and I have tried in vain to find it again online, (I'm sure a major Cap buff will easily be able to tell me-but I couldn't find the issue)  but the real point is the story moved me, it informed me and granted a portion of my hunger for knowledge and sense of true history.

Yes, I got all that from a comic book.

I was likely under ten years old, I collected the bronze age Spider-Man, Hulk, Star Wars and was just starting out with G.I.JOE. I knew who Captain America was but didn't regularly read him. I have always been fascinated with history so I liked that this was another WW2 comic along with Sgt. Rock and the Haunted Tank type others.

I recall Bucky, who would eventually become the butt of every Wizard magazine joke, looking for a heart doctor to save someone? Maybe it was even Cap, I'm not sure. Bucky was told that nobody at this hospital in LA? was skilled enough to help but a nurse took Bucky aside and whispered that there was a Doctor who could do this surgery BUT he was in a Japanese Internment camp!

This floored me when I was under 10, we did that? I did the research - back then it all had to be done in a library - and LO we did do that!

That began a great trip for me on how comics while fantasy and science fiction can inform us of things and give reflection on human nature, because it is still written by people who have the same feelings good bad and ugly that we all have. It showed that those first Dr.'s Bucky talked to were too bigoted to help or even think that that Japanese Dr. could be an option, but that nurse knew and said it! And Bucky went to the camp (which was shown perfectly squalid) and was able to get that Dr. to help whomever it was.

I didn't regularly follow up on that storyline (and that's not the truly important thing, what is-is that it has always stuck with me, it opened a paradigm in a boy under 10 to think about more answers outside the usual paradigm.

Going along that line, I have nothing but great things to say about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, great film and great messages that also show a dark side and lead you down that rabbit hole to think about What have we done and what will we do when faced with it. I think that through great fiction we are seeing things as they really are.

The Counselor and Character

I was excited to watch 'The Counselor', directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy. In part because I have liked a lot of Scott's movies and I love McCarthy's writing but . . .

I was sorely disappointed.

From a cinematic standpoint, its great. Fantastic cast, wonderful imagery and intriguing nuances abound, but story wise it failed and it failed hard.

I read a piece over at word and film about McCarthy writing an unorthodox script that in time will come to be greatly appreciated, I wanted to believe that. I wanted to be "IN" on appreciating something genius that most people missed. But nope, this film just isn't what it was touted to be and I shouldn't be that surprised.

Now I'm not one to be offended at the over the top violence of McCarthy,  I dig Grimdark, he writes as savage as anyone these days - The Road, Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and on the strength of those works I had very high hopes for The Counselor. But one thing McCarthy doesn't ever give is a satisfactory ending, not in any work of his I ever read. I truly hoped for this one to be different (partly because it is film) but alas no.

Ridley Scott who has made some great films is probably in a position where he can do no wrong (at least nobody working for him will tell him,  ala Lucas syndrome) but looking back at his last project Prometheus, we know that logic has just gone out the window in favor of sfx, and while they might be head-rolling sfx in The Counselor, they were just sfx none the less rather than STORY and CHARACTER and that is always a loser tradeoff.

Its not that there aren't merits here, there are, but unfortunately the biggest moment of genius and insight was 12 minutes into the extended cut, where the titular counselor is meeting an old Jewish diamond broker and they end up discussing the meaning of heroes - this scene was brilliant - but that's it, the rest of the movie is telling us how there are no more heroes and even when a character is pushed to the edge, we don't get anything satisfactory - sorry Scott/McCarthy and Word and Film, that's not something revolutionary that people will eventually appreciate. Not gonna happen - you should have all listened to the old diamond broker and represented heroism somehow.

So, I've been listening repeatedly to Robert McKee's STORY (see my last post) and he says true character is what a character does under pressure and that exactly is why The Counselor fails.

They may be portrayed by wonderful actors, but just having the characters have bad things happen to them does not make drama, it does not equal good story, it doesn't even make for a compelling horror movie that you tell your friends they need to see (Heads rolling again, we are informed of a sinister device early in the movie that we see executed toward the end - the old revolver in the drawer in the first act cliché) ~ Instead we see our characters in The Counselor find out they are in trouble and for the most part roll over and die. The one character absolutely still alive at the end isn't even a villain we want to hate, we just don't care, we never had any emotional appeal to be interested enough to hate the character - it is not a compelling tale nor a logical one.

I'm over simplifying things a little, but in essence they don't show us any metal when the going gets hard - they just die. It is not compelling drama and that's why it failed - not because people didn't "Get it".

A quote by David Farland seems appropriate right about now.
"I will respect my characters. This means that at the end of the story, I won't kill my protagonist or have him fail for no reason. I may have him die a heroic death, but if I do, there will be a purpose behind it, a deeper meaning, a compelling reason to end the tale tragically."

Monstrous Perspective

The Blog: Fortean World recently posted a very familiar article to me about the Beast of Gevaudan, it follows :

The Beast Of Gevaudan

In the 1760s, an area of south-eastern France was terrorised by an enormous, wolf-like beast. The animal attacked and killed over 70 people, most of which were children, by leaping on them and landing a fatal bite to the throat.

General descriptions of the creature refer to reddish fur with black stripes and a large, long-snouted head with short, pointed ears. Some cases also mention exceptional leaping abilities as well as bullet-proof skin and an alleged ability to stand bipedally.

Both military attempts, led by Captain Jean-Baptiste Duhamel, as well as attempts by a famous wolf hunter named Denneval (under direct employment of King Louis XV) to kill the beast failed.

Although the singular identity of the Beast of Gevaudan has never been 100% determined, many large wolves and even an escaped hyena were killed in the area as suspects of at least some of the attacks.

I LOVE the film Les Pacts Des Loups or Brotherhood  of the Wolf, I've mentioned it before here numerous times, in any case, it wasn't long after reposting this snippet on my tumblr page when I saw another picture that gave me pause and had me wonder at how we all have preconceptions that can lock our brains into thinking that answers have to come in one set way or another - its this way with stereo instructions, philosophy and religion, all too often we have to open our minds and find a way outside our own blinders.

This photograph, that I imagine most of you have already seen, would have seemed monstrous to the French of the 1760's and no doubt it is still scary today - especially if it is coming for you, and I found myself wondering if this diseased creature could possibly be that particular beast??? Further research said that Bears can be susceptible to rabies as well, though anything with rabies couldn't survive as long as said Beast was attacking people, not to mention being clever about it. I suppose there may be something to the idea that a creature can get a taste for human flesh and be wily about it, lions and tigers certainly do. So just some theories on a a cryptid I've thought about.

47 RONIN

47 Ronin, directed by Carl Rinsch


and

47 Ronin, translated by A.B. Mitford

I watched the movie a couple weeks ago and meant to post a review sooner, but I also just finished reading the original translation this morning and I suppose appreciation for one is stronger with the other.

The premise for the movie remains the same as the original, though Hollywood turned the film into a mythic-fantasy. I will say that at least the theme was overall Japanese = the shape shifting witch, the Tengu, and some psuedo-Oni type beast. I was glad that the film had overall a Japanese cast (excepting Keanu) and that it did remain true to the honor code of the Ronin by keeping the Seppuku (ritual suicide) intact for all necessary characters.

My favorite character was played by Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai, The Wolverine) as Oishi,

who was the lead Samurai of Lord Asano Naganori. After sorcerous treachery forces Lord Asano to commit Seppuku - Oishi regroups Asano's exiled Samurai - now become masterless Samurai or Ronin, including Kai (Keanu Reeves) who is a strange half-breed loyal to the betrayed Lord Asano.

Kai is a runaway from the Tengu (one of my all time most visited blog posts) and as such is capable of bringing some extra special presence to the Ronin's cause. I found Keanu the weakest thing about the movie but I digress, I did honestly really enjoy the film. There is a slight romance between Kai and Lord Asano's daughter but everything - including the sorcery and spectacular fight scenes take a back seat to this being about honor.

 -

For the Samurai honor is everything and this movie didn't wimp out with a non-traditional ending to the original tale, it stayed true enough to that vision of the sacred 47 Ronin. I kinda wish that they had kept the original method of Oishi fooling the enemy Lord, but that might not have translated very well to an American audience.



Either way, this was one of my favorite films I've seen in the theater in a long time. Oh and one more thing I got a kick out of as I watched the closing credits. There was a massive bad Samurai champion, (he never spoke but was simply a juggernaut facing the Ronin) he was credited as the Lovecraftian Samurai I had to check out the actor on imdb.com turns out the guy is the U.K.'s tallest man. He is 7 foot seven and a half. He was sorcerous in nature in the film but I couldn't really say what made him Lovecraftian.

Solomon Kane

Solomon Kane, directed by Michael Basset and starring James Purefoy was released everywhere else back in 2009. I've wanted to see it for years and yet avoided watching it on youtube or other possible sites. I guess I just wanted to see it theatrically first - of course it never came to Montana, so I had to wait for DVD, and even that took me longer than it should have but...


I've been a fan of Robert E. Howard's grim puritan avenger for years, I'm sure I like him more than Kull, and I was not disappointed. Great action, atmosphere and all.

As much as I despise pointless origin stories, this one doesn't bug me. Its quick, its easy and its entertaining. There was no wasted effort and pointless pandering on how and why I should understand Kane's motivations. And I have to add that I'm pretty happy with the casting. Purefoy is magnificent in everything from Mark Anthony in ROME to Marshall in Ironclad, so his Kane is perfect. And most of the supporting cast are well played too.

While this movie is outside the REH cannon, I felt like it was reasonably true to the character - certainly more so than the recent Conan movies - and the S&S elements are well done. Listening to Bassett and Purefoy's commentary on the DVD I do hope that sequels happen, I'd love to see a merging of "The Moon of Skulls" and "Hills of the Dead".

Having a rather dim view of film for the last couple years, I enjoyed this one despite its non-cannon material. Here's hoping for more.

Origin Stories...Why?

This isn't a formal essay by any means, just a rant (and I am all for discussion from any of you) but pondering what I think ruins a lot of films (and some prequel novels) when it comes to beloved characters from books is the idiotic need to give an origin story.

I can think of dozens of films where for the reason of making things "clear" so that we may know and understand the characters motivation, we are actually given a weak, forgettable story.

Taking things back to my beloved pulp roots, all we needed to know in 'Phoenix on the Sword' was that the king, Conan, had once been a barbarian. Solomon Kane is a puritan, Tarzan the ape man, the "Thin Man" and his wife like to drink while solving mysteries, John Carter 'of Mars', the Gray Mouser and Fafrhd are "Ill Met" in Lankhmar, are any of Lovecraft's protagonists not some befuddled scholar who just now stumbled upon some maddening relic or knowledge? (don't answer that)-but we don't need to know anything more do we?

In the Wolverine movie, they managed to take one of the most popular comic book characters and give him a turd movie. Why?
On one hand its the ridiculous Hollywood reliance on special effects over story, but also the tacked on, reaching back to traumatic childhood events that scar our poor hero and he has to spend the rest of the movie dealing with such a far-reaching pain. Same with the recent Conan movie, same with the newly relaunched Spider-man movie. Too much baggage. It is obvious to all the fans of these respective hero's that a film version of beloved story-lines could have been opening weekend gold over the revision "lets explain everything" that the suits give us.

Remember the suits are not artists, they are bean counters.

The making "clear" of a characters past eliminates the wonder and mystery of storytelling, it takes away the needed drama of why people watch/read. The audience doesn't tune in for information - if they did, they would be watching documentaries.

The wonder and mystery is why Harry Potter worked and it's why the original Star Wars trilogy worked. People didn't watch ROME or give Gladiator an Oscar, because they wanted to see what it was like to live back then-it was because of the wonder and drama. As much as I despise and absolutely loathe Avatar it followed the bare bones premise on character back-story too.

I am positive I am not alone in my imagination of what "The Clone Wars" were upon first hearing them in Star Wars, being so much better than what we were given in the latter trilogy.

Thinking about westerns-they all involve the stranger, whom we the audience know almost nothing that are best. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "True Grit", "Unforgiven"; same with the Samurai/Kung-Fu movies, "Seven Samurai", "Yojimbo", "Hidden Fortress", "Enter The Dragon".

All of these display a tendency toward the action tale/movie, but that's what I like. I'm not here to discuss what I don't like/do = period romance pieces on Nantucket island.

In explaining too much to an audience whether film or print, we lose wonder. There is the argument that things need to be understandable and I get that, but no art has lasted the ages that did not make us wonder. Mona Lisa's smile anyone? And without wonder you will never get an art that lasts.

Strange Sights of the Week

I lean Right on this one, just because...

 Meanwhile in the Superstion's

 Some TV series you migt want to watch

 George R.R. Martin - Master of Surprise

Strange Sights of the Week

I am a big fan of the Avengers movie. Its a classic.

 I try to tell my kids this all the time.

 Just where in Middle Earth is this restaraunt?

 Infinite mocking ahead.

 YES!

I am on an Avengers kick.

 I can't believe how behind I am on season 2 of Game of Thrones.

Prince Valiant

I took a break after yard work/writing work/wife in the hospital (she's doing very well) etc etc and saw coming up on HBO (which I have for Game of Thrones) that a Prince Valiant movie was coming up in an hour.

I watched a Prince Valiant movie when I was a kid-I remember that I liked it-but don't know that I could actually recall much of anything about it-I barely followed the daily comics-but as much as I like love comics I found the medium of a daily strip tedious-and Lord help you if you miss a few days.

But I flipped to the channel and LO! Ron Perlman looking as scruffy as ever-this Prince was filmed in 97'!

How did I miss this? I thought I had seen every old fantasy movie there was to see-at least everything predating the millennium-(still haven't watched Name of the King). I honestly thought well it must be because it sucked-but I still want to watch it. So I did, and I was pleasantly surprised.

It has breaks which feature Hal Foster's original art-but I didn't find that technique disturbing, if anything it just speeds us along to get to the action. I thought the cinematography was fine and the costumes were most excellent-often making me feel like some characters looked so grand that when you didn't see them in action you felt disappointed-there was actually a female viking packing some kind of dragons head flame thrower-AND she was clearly wearing some type of medieval garter beneath her armor-WHAT?!?

Don't get me wrong-this is a romanticized fantasy movie, it is not meant to take itself too seriously-it has Joanna Lumley as Morgan LeFay for crying out loud (my wife knows who that is-AB FAb and a Bond Girl) and that Arthurian romantic ideal is probably what made me like it so much-daring heroes and dastardly villains are a nice break from some of the grimmer things of late. This was exactly the type of enjoyable Sword & Sorcery movie that I am inclined to think most of my regular readers/commentators will enjoy.

The director Anthony Hickox (also plays Sir Gwain) typically does horror films (Waxwork, Warlock, one of the Hellraisers) maybe that's why he had a few good spots of tension and some interesting homages. In the beginning when Morgan LeFay and the bad vikings are digging up Merlin-his shriveled body looks like Nicol Williamson-bizarre shiny steel headplate and all. One of the marauding vikings is clearly wearing one of the elongated skull helms that Halfdan the Black's (John Cleese's character) guardsmen wear in Eric the Viking.

Starring Stephen Moyer (I don't really know who that is) Katherine Heigel, Udo Kier, Warwick Davis, and Ron Perlman I was pretty happy with the performances and fight scenes-with the exception of Prince Valiant, for being a good fighter he made a lot of very clumsy moves that should have gotten him killed.

So aside from thinking some characters were underutilized Warwick Davis for one-and that it had a forgettable soundtrack-this was a pretty decent movie. Light on any blood or gore despite the violence and some sensuality but nothing I'm worried about having my kids watch with me again later (I DVRed it).

I recommend checking it out for what it is.

And its funny because I was just recently lamenting that they don't make fantasy movies like they used to in the 80's-but apparently they still did in 97'.