Deadline Looming...

Hey everybody! I'm on a tight book deadline right now. But I'll be back soon. In lieu of new material here, enjoy "reruns" on the archive at your right!

But have no worries, I shall return, cracking-wise in no time. Well, a little time...

Non Sci-Fi Quote of the Week

A dear friend shared this passage with me the other day. It's a quote that I find fascinating, in part, I suppose, because I live my life in the company of "words." How often, it seems, words prove truly insufficient for the genuine expression of emotion.

And also, I deeply love my cats because, I suspect, in my quiet moments with them I achieve what every writer occasionally needs, a respite from all the words; a freedom to sense and understand a life form without the weight of symbols or pre-conceived notions of "meaning." My communication with the cats is instinctual, primordial, and simple. It relaxes me.

Anyway, this passage is from May Sarton, from The Poet and The Donkey, page 92-93:

"How often, in human affairs...such a simple misunderstanding of motive or need causes all the pain and anger. Because we have words, we think we can explain ourselves to each other, but how often words fail - the elusive fish of personal truth slipping through them unseen and unheard. But, Andy thought, in a relation with an animal, we are back in the good wordless world which tests our naked sensitivity. Intiution, sensing is everything. And as he slipped back into sleep, he promised Whiffenpoof to try to be more aware from now on, to learn her language as best he could..."

TV REVIEW: Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King

TNT termed this horror anthology “the four week television event of the summer” in its advertisements, and for good reason. Horror writer Stephen King is not only a brand-name in movies and television going as far back to the 1970s, but this hour-long series is superbly cast with top stars such as William Hurt, William H. Macy, Samantha Mathis and other first rate talents.

Like Masters of Horror on Showtime, Nightmares and Dreamscapes is a collection of unusual horror stories sans voice-over or narrator, as would be featured on the Twilight Zone, for example. Instead, there is simply an “umbrella” of unity holding the various episodes together. On Masters of Horror, that umbrella is the inclusion of the cinema’s finest horror directors. Here it’s tales (or short stories) of the macabre from Stephen King, still horror’s most successful novelist.

The stories on Nightmares and Dreamscapes run an impressive gamut of styles. “Autopsy Room # 4" stars Gretta Scacchi and Richard Thomas, and concerns a man wheeled into the morgue at a South Carolina hospital after he’s suffered an apparent fatal heart attack on a golf course. Turns out, the corpse (Thomas) isn’t so dead after all...he was bitten by an unusual snake and left paralyzed. The audience hears his desperate thoughts throughout the episode, as the doctors come perilously close to cutting him up. Yes, this is the old chestnut (seen on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the 1960s and in Wes Craven’s film The Serpent and the Rainbow in the 1980s...) about a man who appears dead, but is conscious, alert and feeling everything as he is about to be dissected or buried alive. In previous stories, what’s saved the poor wretch’s life is a biological reflex action: a tear rolling down his cheek at just the right instant. Since this is Stephen King, and this master of horror has a wicked sense of humor, the reflex in “Autopsy Room # 4" is something quite different and unexpected. Just as he is about to be cut open, Thomas experiences an...erection for all to see.

“You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” is a totally different sort of entry. Here, bickering married couple Steven Weber and Kim Delaney take a trip through the Pacific Northwest and end up taking a very wrong turn...into a Norman Rockwellian town called “Rock and Roll Heaven.” There, Janis Joplin is a waitress in a local diner, Ricky Nelson is the short-order cook, Otis Redding is the town sheriff, and Elvis Presley is the mayor. Turns out there’s no escape from this corner of the Twilight Zone...oops, I mean “nightmares and dreamscapes,” and the couple is doomed to an unending rock performance by the genre’s greats. This is a fairly disappointing and nonsensical story, and one that fails to scare in the slightest.

One reason why “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” fails so egregiously is that the writer (scenarist King and writer Mike Robe) fail to make any connection between the personalities of the “victims” and their eventual fate...trapped in rock limbo. In classic Twilight Zone episodes such as “Nick of Time,” which finds a superstitious William Shatner held in thrall to a fortune telling machine, there’s a clear connection between personal foible and ironic twist of fate. No such relationship is forged in this episode of the Stephen King series, and so the episode is without real suspense or character interest. In fact, it comes off campy and ludicrous at times. What's the point?

More genuinely thoughtful (if not terribly frightening...) is another chiller, “The End of the Whole Mess,” a stirring story that asks pertinent questions about human nature and the time we live in. Ron Livingston plays Howard Fornoy, a man spending his last minutes of life recounting for a camera (in a video journal...) how the world is going to end. He tells the invisible audience the life story of his brother Bobby (Henry Thomas), a child prodigy - a Da Vinci or Einstein - who finds his “true north” in trying to cure the ultimate human disease. No, not cancer or AIDS. Instead, he hopes to cure “ meanness” and develops a calmative that suppresses human aggression and makes people unwilling or unable to fight. He calls his invention “pacfist white light” and he is able to deliver it to the world, with catastrophic results. See, there’s a side effect he didn’t reckon on. The calmative also causes early Alzheimers...and so the whole population is doomed.

Because it airs on basic rather than premium cable, Nightmares and Dreamscapes is less gory and graphic than Masters of Horror, but the stories are at about the same middling level. Some are stirring and interesting, but most are simply run of the mill. And very few actually scare. These two series are nice to have around in the age of pabulum like Supernatural, but watching both anthologies, it’s clear that ironic (and classy...) touch of Rod Serling is missing. And missed.

SATURDAY MORNING CULT TV BLOGGING: Flash Gordon: "Vultan - King of the Hawkmen"

Script editor Ted Pederson contributes his first teleplay to Filmation's Flash Gordon with this, the third "chapter" of the ongoing serial.

"Vultan - King of the Hawkmen" finds Aura, Barin, Thun and Flash captured and taken to Vultan's hovering "Sky City." Vultan - who looks and sounds suspiciously like the movie's Brian Blessed - consigns the men to the city's "atomic furnace" and decides he wants to marry the yummy and scantily-clad Aura. Meanwhile, Ming launches his space armada to rescue his daughter and warns that Vultan will soon feel "the wrath of Ming!"

Down in the atomic furnace, Flash instigates the second slave revolt in two weeks and devastates the city's power core just in time for Ming to come and reduce much of the Hawkman city to rubble with his fleet. This is where the episode really takes off as the battle rages. In the air (over the spires of Sky City...) it's laser-firing spaceship versus sleek, flying Hawkmen, and I was amazed to see a children's cartoon featuring images of Hawkmen (and their hawk steeds...) being disintegrated in mid-air by the weaponry! Damn, that's cool...

In the end, the Hawkmen flee Sky City with Ming, Barin and Thun. Vultan resolves to join them as "brothers" since they now "share the same fortune." In just three episodes, Flash has allied three Kingdoms of Mongo, and soon he will begin the rebellion against Ming in earnest...

"Where there's a will, there's a way," he tells his new friends, and again I'm reminded of Flash Gordon's origins in the 1930s...in a time of gathering global danger when tyrants were sweeping through Europe and bringing the tide of fascism with them. The only chance to resist the momentum of evil was for the countries of the world to band together against evil; and Flash Gordon is certainly a metaphor for that idea of uniting: the putting aside of racial and ethnic divides to serve the common good.

That's a valuable message, especially today, when war wages in so many places.

TV REVIEW: Hex (BBC America)

Hex. Rhymes with "sex." And put in an "H" at the beginning for horror.

Described in promotions as a “supernatural coming of age series,” the scintillating adolescent drama Hex began airing on BBC America earlier this summer. Although the series premiered in England (on Sky One) in 2004, BBC America aired all eighteen episodes of the first two seasons in one 2006 sortie. So this is the best time to get hooked.

Hex is set at a countryside boarding school/high school in rural England, called Medenham. There, a beautiful (and promiscuous...) blond student named Cassie (Cole) learns that she’s the reincarnation of a powerful witch. Her roommate, a lesbian named Thelma (Rooper) is killed in a terrible scene, and then becomes Cassie’s constant companion and guardian...as an incorporeal ghost (who can only change her fashions by stealing the clothes off corpses...)

Meanwhile, Cassie falls in love with a hunky and dangerous bad boy named Azazeal (Fassbender), but he’s actually a creature called a ‘Nephilim,’ a fallen angel who hopes to breed with a human and launch a new war with Heaven. Guess who Azazeal’s chosen to be the mother of his child? Worse, as Thelma learns, these events have repeated over and over again through history, with the women in Cassie’s role all suffering horrible deaths.

Cassie is briefly possessed by a demon, and in that compromised state has sexual intercourse with Azazeal, an act which effectively brings about the beginning of the end of days. After an accelerated pregnancy, she gives birth to a son, Malachai, who - once grown - can release two hundred Nephilim monstrosities from their prisons. The only way to stop the apocalypse is by killing Malachai, but that’s understandably difficult for Cassie, the boy’s mother. Another problem: if the baby dies, order in the universe is restored and Cassie will no longer be able to communicate with the ghostly Thelma.

Soon, Ella (Pyper) arrives at Medenham. She’s a witch-hunter determined to stop Azazeal hellbent on murdering Malachai. Other cast members on Hex include Roxanne (Sainsbury), a ravenous schoolgirl trying desperately to deflower a handsome instructor at the school who also happens to be Azazeal’s minion. And Leon (Davis) is Ella’s confused boyfriend, also doomed to some unpleasant “growing pains.”

Critic W.M. Stephen Humphrey at The Portland Mercury insightfully termed Hex “Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossed with late-night Cinemax,” because the series boasts graphic sex scenes with plenty of female nudity. As for the Buffy metaphor, it is appropriate for numerous reasons. Cassie’s relationship with a hulking, brooding, 200-plus year old “monster,” dramatically recalls Buffy’s relationship with the sometimes good/sometimes soul-less vampire, Angel. Fans will also remember that Buffy’s witch friend, Willow became a lesbian in later seasons, and here Rooper - a similar friend supporting character, also plays a woman of alternate sexual persuasion. Man-eater Roxanne is also heavily reminiscent of Charisma Carpenter’s selfish Cordelia character, concerned only with fashion, sex and herself. There’s even a strong accent on comedy and wisecracks, so Hex could - at least on first glance - be aptly termed a clone of the more popular American series.

However, Hex is more frankly and openly sexual, and in some terrible sense, darker than its American cousin. The characters are frequently faced with terrible decisions (like aborting a child that could destroy the world...). They also often act more selfishly and unheroically than the more likable Buffy characters. In one episode, for instance, Thelma makes an alliance with Azazeal to get something she wants...an alliance that nearly kills Ella.

Also, without revealing too much, Hex brazenly pulls a Psycho-style trick mid-way through its second season, killing off a main character and throwing the entire series into disarray and chaos. This move will leave faithful viewers reeling. Finally, Hex features fewer and less impressive special effects than Buffy the Vampire Slayer did, but as characters fumble and fight, and darkness encroaches inevitably on mankind, the series becomes more and more compelling as a statement about tomorrow’s generation heading over the precipice.

A third season lands in America in the summer of 2007...and it’s going to be a long wait. If you miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hex isn't quite the same, but it is an adequate substitute, and getting better on an episode-by-episode basis.

TV REVIEW: Lucky Louie (HBO)

Videotaped before a live audience, Lucky Louie starring comedian Louis C.K. is a sitcom that views itself as the heir to such blue collar classics as The Honeymooners and All in the Family. The series concerns a working class American family run by hapless Louie, living in a tiny, rundown apartment building in an urban setting. The primary sets on this HBO series include a dilapidated hallway (with dents and paint scrapes...), a kitchen, and a tiny bedroom. If the Kramdens were around in the 21st century, this would no doubt be their environs.

Louis is a dopey, overweight working class joe raising his smart-alecky daughter, Lucy (Gould) and engaged in a constant state of war with his wife, a nurse named Kim (Adlon). Louie doesn’t understand Kim, and so his friends at the muffler shop where he works, including Mike (Hagerty), are around to offer sage advice about women. Tina (Kightlinger) is Kim’s friend, performing essentially the same function, only in reverse. The next-door neighbors are Walter (Minor) and Ellen (Hawthorne), a well-to-do, snobby African-American couple. Walter and Ellen wear nicer clothes and own nicer furniture...which raises the practical question of why they’re living in the same rundown urban building with Louie’s one-the-edge-of-poverty family.

In the course of the series, Louie forsakes frequent masturbation sessions when Kim wants more intercourse...a ruse, in fact, for her to become pregnant again (“Pilot”). Another episode, “Kim’s O” revolves around Louie’s wife experiencing her first real orgasm at age thirty-seven...after seven years of marriage! Other plots revolve around other domestic issues, and occasionally, ones involving modern city life, like “A Mugging Story,” wherein Kim goes ballistic after losing her pocket book in a duel with a teenage mugger.

Lucky Louie comes straight from the mind of C.K., who has honed this working-class material for years. “When I started writing this stuff, I didn’t know it would be successful,” he told reporter Ed Condran, for The New York Daily News. “When I said that ‘I now understand why babies get thrown in the garbage,’ I was surprised that Middle America got it. Soccer moms in Cincinnati told me how hilarious the ‘baby in the garbage’ joke was to them.”

Which brings up why many are of two minds about Lucky Louie. The kind of meanspirited humor of “babies thrown in the garbage” is part of the problem with the series. Although Lucky Louie attempts to shatter sitcom conventions by featuring close-up simulated sex (“Kim’s O”), full-frontal nudity (“A Mugging Story”) and scatological language (the word “fuck” is deployed on a regular basis...), the underlying tenor of the series is crass and crude, and rather unpleasant. Married life is depicted ruthlessly, which is an interesting perspective to be sure, yet the characters are all despicable and selfish. Nor do they express themselves cleverly, because swearing is a crutch for bad writers. Why turn a smart phrase when someone can just say "shit" or "fuck?" All these blue collar blues more aptly makes Lucky Louie an heir to Married with Children rather than All in the Family or The Honeymooners.

Also, Norman Lear's classic All in the Family revolved around blue collar people confronting issues such as racism, sexual harassment, rape, menopause. There’s no overarching social value or message in Lucky Louie, as the characters don’t engage the outside world in any meaningful way and remain stubbornly stupid and fail to grow through the run of the first episodes. Archie Bunker was a bigot and ignorant, but in some senses, he grew over the years on the series. By contrast, Louie is a dolt who remains forever a dolt. His character is constantly re-booted to the lowest setting of "stupid" at the beginning of each new misadventure.

However, despite such reservations it is impossible not to appreciate the audacity of Lucky Louie. It doesn’t buy into Hollywood myths about America, and that in itself is refreshing...even liberating. The American dream of prosperity has never looked so unattainable on a TV show...or at least not in a very, very long time, as Neil Swidey writes in The Boston Globe: “Lots of sitcom sets looked this working-class in the ‘70s, in the era of Good Times, before we were all asked to swallow the notion that coffee-house waitresses could afford spacious Greenwich Village apartments with skyline views.”

Thoughts on Contemporary Horror Films...

I just saw this!

Film scholar Kevin Flanagan has a terrific post up at Virtual Fools on the state of the contemporary horror film. It's an insightful, thoughtful read, and eminently worthy of debate and discussion. Kevin is a remarkable writer as well as a first-rate thinker. This guy has interviewed director Ken Russell (and excerpts of that interview appear in my upcoming Horror Films of the 1980s), written meticulously-argued and thoroughly-researched essays about films such as Gothic (also excerpted in Horror Films of the 1980s...) and more.

Here's a sample of Kevin's latest work, entitled Some Casual (But Deadly Serious) Thoughts on Contemporary Horror Films. As you'll see, even when he's casual, Kevin remains damn impressive:

"Last October in Asheville, North Carolina, I had the pleasure of attending a theatrical viewing of Saw II (2005) with a group of experts. Don Mancini (creator of the Child’s Play franchise), Barry Sandler (screenwriter), and Ken Hanke (genre scholar and critic) shared my distaste for the film, which I felt to be slightly hard to pin-down at first. Saw II was imaginative, stylish, and often displayed verve, yet left me sour. It was certainly a cutting-edge (puns aside) horror film, symptomatic of larger trends in the genre at large. Finally, after some discussion, we began to understand our mutual suspicions: films of this cycle delight in the minute, realistic depictions of pain and torture, now entirely possible due to advancements in effects technology (digital or manual). Whereas the greatest films of 1970s horror cinema transgressed towards social ends, this latest subgenre (“pain films”) seemed to remove or avoid marked political, moral, or artistic positions. Evil, sadism, and blood consumed the screen, sometimes without motivation or hope. How, when and where did the horror film lose its status as one of the most consistently socially conscious, probing genres?"

Click here to read the full piece.

Star Trek: Legacy!

Okay, I know all you Trekkers have seen this news, right?

Star Trek captains--William Shatner's Kirk, Patrick Stewart's Picard, Avery Brooks' Sisko, Kate Mulgrew's Janeway and Scott Bakula's Archer--are beaming aboard Star Trek: Legacy, a new videogame marking the 40th anniversary of the legendary sci-fi franchise.

The game, due out this fall from Bethesda Softworks, will be the first time the five stars from the five TV series will team up for a Star Trek project.

Shatner, who will reprise his career-defining role of Captain James. T. Kirk on the original Star Trek voyage from 1966 to 1969, tells Reuters that he hopes his participation in the game might spark renewed interest in Star Trek. The franchise had been labeled "in decay" by Activision, which previously held the game license, and saw its most recent incarnation, Star Trek: Enterprise, fizzle out with lackluster ratings and uninspired plots. Some fans and industry watchers believed the end was near.

"It's been around a long time, it's a staple of American life and I think we need something new and different," Shatner told the wire service, noting that he just couldn't resist returning to the part that made him a legend. "I couldn't imagine someone else playing Captain Kirk, even in a videogame, so I kind of got a little territorial."

Personally, I welcome this news. I was interviewed for a Cinescape article in 1998 about the problems with the franchise following Star Trek: Insurrection, and I noted that there was no Star Trek youth market anywhere. I loved the show as a kid...but I'm 36 now! (Dammit, Jim..!). A kick-ass, state-of-the-art video game would be a lovely and exciting way to bring in the youth crowd, especially if a new Kirk/Spock/J.J. Abrams movie follows soon. And who can resist a game that includes all five captains? (Only problem, no Christopher Pike!). In addition to being wonderfully entertaining, Star Trek is about terrific morall values (like not interfering in other cultures; like relishing diversity...) and I believe that a new generation would benefit from having the franchise around. I'm not talking about the dull-as-dishwater recent series...but a revived, and electrifying Star Trek that speaks to this time, while not forsaking the history of the property.

Anyway, I guess I'm going to have to buy an X-Box now, huh?

Sci-Fi Mantra: Mal Reynolds

Lately, I find myself thinking of these words (spoken in the feature film, Serenity by Captain Reynolds):

"I aim to misbehave."

It sounds flip, but it isn't. What Mal is responding to in the film when he voices that particular thought is the need - indeed, the duty - to sometimes question - and push back - against overreaching governmental authority.

In the film, Mal discovers that his government, the Alliance, has created something called PAX, a pacification drug that Parliament believes will make the citizenry "better." (And also, no doubt - safer.) He sees it for what it is: a new way to "control" and consolidate power for the powerful.

This mantra comes up for me now, because last week I saw the most despicable comments repeated on television. I saw government officials in high office (and wannabe government officials) telling us that to be safe and secure, we have to think just like they do.

Worse, they compared American voters in Connecticut - American citizens, mind you - to the Taliban and Al Qaeda because they didn't like the voters' choice. This is a new lowpoint in political discourse, and it is crass, ugly manipulation. Sorry, but I don't want my government telling me that making a personal choice between two options in the voting booth is tantamount to treason and makes voters "terrorists" or even in league with terrorists. What actually happened in Connecticut? That's called democracy, folks. The voters spoke. For better of worse. Instead of respecting that fact - and I still can't believe I'm hearing this from major politicial figures in the U.S. - the message coming out of Washington D.C. following a foiled terrorist plot in the UK is that only one party is good and American, and that the other is the party of "Al Qaeda." On CNN, I heard an anchor actually question if Ned Lamont could be called "The Al Qaeda" Candidate. What the fuck?! I hasten to add, I would be just as offended if that CNN anchor had asked if Condi Rice could be called "The Al Qaeda" Secretary of State. Disagree with any of these people...but jeez...they aren't terrorists!

This inflammatory, ugly rhetoric is something every American, regardless of party, might very seriously think twice about. Yes, Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives differ on how to achieve national goals, but why can't these differences make us stronger in the War on Terror? Isn't it always better to have more ideas rather than less? What about IDIC, Infinite Diversity and all that stuff? Why must we be in brain-lockstep and define different philosophies as traitorous, appeasing and terroristic? Here's a radical idea: as Americans, we can believe different things, and learn from each other. As Americans we can believe different things, and still be cordial...and still help one another. Hell, as Americans we can believe different things and be...friends. I don't know about you, but when I have conversations with my friends who hold different beliefs, I inevitably learn something from them; or see things in a new way. I might ultimately reject those things or I might not, but in every case I'm stronger and better for having listened to and understood a different point of view.

I tell you, some Americans - and from every end of the political spectrum - are going to sic the (electoral) Reavers on all these bastards if the kind of inflammatory and divisive rhetoric emanating from the tube last week doesn't subside. I direct these remarks in particular to Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman. Truly - they are the most craven politicians I've seen in my lifetime. I now call them the "vote for us or die horribly" bloc - and they are, individually, Republican AND Democrat.

And...they both suck.

As long as men like these control the bully pulpit of the corporate press and use it to cling to power by frightening people, I aim to misbehave and call them out for their crap. Bottom line folks: we can do better. I don't care if you vote Democrat or Republican come November, but please vote your heart and your gut and your brain, and throw the rotten, divisive bastards in both parties out. These jokers serve at our pleasure, so when the time comes, let's misbehave. We can have arguments, we can disagree, but Americans who exercise the right to vote as they wish are not and will never be terrorists. Can't we all - from both parties - at least agree on that?

Captain Reynolds would expect nothing less than some serious misbehavior. Only one thing left to say... "Miranda..."

SATURDAY MORNING CULT TV BLOGGING: Flash Gordon: "The Monsters of Mongo"

The animated Flash Gordon series kicks it to high gear in "The Monsters of Mongo," the second episode of the early 1980s Filmation effort. Here (in a tale written by Sam Peeples), Flash, Dale and Thun (The Lion Man...) escape Mingo City into the caverns below, only to be recaptured by luscious Princess Aura. Then, Ming adds Dale to his harem, and consigns Flash and Thun to radioactive mines beneath the city, a place that "rots flesh and burns eyes."

In the caverns below, whipped and dominated by Lizard Women Overlords (mmm...Lizard Women Overlords...), Flash and Thun organize an impromptu miner's strike. "By sticking by each other, maybe we can accomplish something," Flash tells Thun. There's an uprising in the caves, and in great anti-fascist (pro communist?) imagery, the workers brandish their shovels and pick-axes (seen in black silhouette...) against their masters. The animation here is powerful, by the way. Black shovels jut into the air triumphantly and the background is a fire and revolutionary red. Okay, my friend Rick Coulter -- is this secret Marxist imagery creeping into American mainstream (kids!) entertainment during the right-wing Reagan eighties or what? I know you'd cheer if you saw this episode...

After the slave revolt (which gets flooded out by Ming...), Aura helps Flash and Thun escape to Arborea, but first the unlikely allies must face the god of the caverns, Ti-Sack (not to be confused with the other God of the mines, Ti-Bag.) The episode ends with Flash and Thun fleeing from Arborea (and the arrival of the Hawkmen), as Prince Barin and Aura trade barbs.

One of the things that struck me most powerfully about "The Monsters of Mongo" is the adherence in the series (and indeed, in the very concept of Flash Gordon) to the whole madonna/whore complex. Think about it: Flash is always forced to choose between the abundantly sexy but evil woman in the metallic bikini, or the acceptable, loyal, demure always-in-need-of-rescue Dale Arden, who in this episode lamely declares. "I'm no wilting violet. I share the risk." This is right after she gets scooped up by a dinosaur, by the way, and Flash saves her. AGAIN!

What's interesting is that Flash treats the "whore" as an equal. He's physically aggressive with Aura (he's always grabbing her by the wrist; and here he steals her *ahem* Multi-ray projector rod...). When they are attacked by a giant carnivorous plant [a metaphor for a devouring vagina, perhaps?), he lets her - like his buddy Thun - fend for herself. Whereas he's basically Daddy and protector to Dale, treating her like a child who needs guidance or help. I guess this is a 1930s vision of male/female relations, or is it still in play today? All I know is this: if I treated my wife as patronizingly as Flash treats Dale - indeed as a wilting violet - I'd get a swift kick to the groin. You know? So what's with this two-dimensional treatment of the ladies in Flash Gordon? Harmless male fantasy or something more subversive? Personally, I think if you blended Aura and Dale into one person...you'd have a hell of a woman, instead of two extremes -the virtuous madonna and the hip-swinging whore - but that's just me...

RETRO TOY FLASHBACK # 46: Kenner's Alien

Look who's sitting on my desk today! He just hatched...

Yep, it's that wily "bug" from Ridley Scott's classic horror film, Alien. This unusual and highly cherished toy was released by Kenner (the same company who had the Star Wars license...) in 1979 to tie-in with the Christmas release of the film.

But the monster - who stands a whopping 18" tall - ended up scaring little kids out of toy stores by the dozen and was removed from shelves in a hurry. Ho-ho-ho.

Forget Winnie the Pooh or Teddy Bears or Peter Rabbit, this will be my son's first cuddly "animal" friend...

No, just kidding...my wife won't let me.

As you can see, my alien isn't in very good shape these days. Rubber bands are keeping his barely-attached arms from falling off his body; you can see them in the photos. They are no longer "spring-loaded" to "crush victims" as the toy box once promised.

My alien's head dome is missing-in-action, though he still possesses his inner-jaw; which lunges out to bite people. These are, according to the package hyperbole, his "mechanical, easily operated jaws!"

The alien's finest attribute might be his curled, whip-tail because you can use it to surreptitiously hang the alien on door knobs, in the pantry, from the dish washer, from lamps, etcetera. "Alien can swing from his movable tail!" screamed the box, and I took that advice in earnest.

I enjoy scaring Kathryn with this guy, but truth be told, she's more frightened by my (to scale...) Mogwai/Gremlin figure from the 1984 Dante film. I'm not allowed to leave that Gremlin out anywhere; not after that time I waited until she was asleep and then stood him up on her night-stand so when she woke up, he'd be peering down at her. That was probably very wrong of me...

But that's a different story...