More Rudy Ray

I finally caught the first Eddie Murphy movie i've been excited about in a quite a while - Dolemite Is My Name. 

I've been a fan of Rudy Ray Moore for a long time. Some may recall that when i did this blog's first Xmas Covers collection a few years back, i slipped Rudy's This Ain't No White Christmas album cover in with the comics and magazines of the Blue set. 

Now, you may know that i see no television nor advertising in my hermit cave. I actively avoid trailers. So i hadn't seen Murphy in a fair bit of time. This turned out to be a good thing. Not necessarily the me-not-seeing-him part, the fair-bit-of-time part. The years have served him well, finally outgrowing the over-eager kid from SNL that was always present in the past. 

A character like Rudy Ray Moore could easily have gotten lost in younger Eddie Murphy's animate personality and potentially similar energies. The older Murphy, with more miles on both face and bearing can go deeper and bring us more Moore. Which is not to say that his trademark boyishness is gone, he can still bring it up to the surface when called for.

As you might guess, i was rather pleased with the portrayal of RRM in Dolemite Is My Name. But, more than that, i was quite pleased with how they told his tale. Many might have measured him by what he wasn't - here we focus on what he was and what he accomplished with the people he gathered.

Besides being a fond look at a unique pioneer, the movie is also packed with familiar faces and names - right from the very first scene with Murphy's Rudy hawking his sides to a DJ played by Snoop Dogg (or has he evolved?) We get Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Tituss Burgess, Wesley Snipes, T.I., Chris Rock, Ron Cephas Jones, Luenell, Barry Shabaka Henley, and many more. And a sweet kiss to Da'Vine Joy Randolph, for much the same reason Lady Reed thanked Rudy.

Eddie Murphy gives a good look at Rudy Ray Moore, and Dolemite Is My Name gives a good look at why a hermit Voice Of ODD would be such a fan of the Man (not The Man).

And i enjoyed that they showed the real Rudy Ray/Dolemite footage in the end credits for comparison. And that they noted Rudy and his team went on to make over a half dozen more movies...

Now who's going to give me my Melvin Van Peebles flic?

Before Raiders - Dr. Jones & The Magic Coin

If you're an old geek, you might remember some movies that presaged later big hits. For example, when the first Terminator movie came out, a lot of us saw echoes of Cyborg 2087 - an old Michael Rennie flic wherein he plays a cyborg sent back from a dystopian future on a mission of murder while pursued through time by a pair of 'terminator' (Tracer) cyborgs seeking to prevent him from changing the future.

Terminator was a very different movie, but felt familiar nonetheless.

Today i'm thinking about another old movie i loved in younger days (and still very much enjoyed when viewing it again recently). A couple of decades before Raiders Of The Lost Ark hit the theatres, but several years after the events within the film...

Dr. Jones is using his knowledge of ancient languages to translate the markings on an archeological find - a strange coin held by a religious statue uncovered on a dig. He finds that the coin is a magic artifact, which he's accidentally activated with his blood. It can be used to painfully incapacitate with a gesture, or kill with a gesture and a word (the name of the ancient god). It can even slow the passage of time with "the power of retarded movement".

He tries to tell the Pentagon about the coin's power, but that goes about as well as one might expect. However - enemy agents learn of its existence and Jones must use the power of the coin to protect himself, his country, and one who maybe his new-found love.

Sound like an Indiana Jones movie?

This movie, however, was a romantic comedy first, adventure film second.

That's Jonathan Jones. The movie changed it to Professor Jones from the original Doctor Jones in the book. To an oddnik like myself, it's a treasure - both book and movie, though those, too, are quite different from each other.

This was the movie that first taught me the name William Castle, and that he made films. From the opening frames, he was subverting expectations. The classic Columbia Pictures logo which opened their films was portrayed by an live actress...

 ...with Castle himself sitting in his director's chair looking on...

And then he stood...

Zotz!
And so it began - already flying off the rails before even getting to the title.

Those who remember Tom Poston today rarely remember him back in his leading man days. He's better (and fondly) remembered as George Utley, the handyman of the Stratford Inn on Newhart back in the '80s. (Oddly enough, years later in '01 he married Suzanne Pleshette, who play Bob Newhart's wife on the show. But i digress...)
You might also know him from scores of other roles over the half century of his career. He worked continuously up until his death a dozen years ago. But here (and in the picture above) he's playing Johnathan Jones, eccentric college professor and expert in ancient and archaic languages. And wielder of mystic power.

Poston was joined by Julia Meade as his romantic interest (and inevitable damsel in distress) with a supporting cast that included such familiar notables as Jim Bacchus, Margaret Dumont, Fred Clark, and Cecil Kellaway.

Since the movie has been released on Blu Ray, i won't go all spoilery into the plot. At least, not any more than i already did in the quick summary above. The film keeps a light, slightly off-kilter, comedy tone throughout - even through kidnappings and looming death. To some extent, the characters and situations feel like Kurt Russell's Disney flics of a decade later. One could easily think some scenes might have been lifted directly out of some unseen Dexter Riley movie if this film hadn't come first.

Let me pause to note how much i enjoyed the bubbly jazz music as the society party descends into chaos. Bernard Green did a mighty fine job with the soundtrack. (Enough to make me look to see who did it)

The special effects are simple but generally effective. The power to slow movement is cleverly used at times, and perhaps cruelly at other times. But he doesn't usually drink. (Well - sauerkraut juice...)

It's a fun little film that's stuck with me over the decades, and one of the very few 'special powers' movies in those days so long before comic book heroes ruled Hollywood. (Ever see George Hamilton in The Power - about a war between telekinetics?)
It's worth catching if you enjoy them old black & white films.

The book was very different. (Not the 'worth catching' part - it's an old favorite, too.)

Before we get into that - let's talk about the people who wrote it - Walter Karig, a naval officer who wrote battle reports like Asia's Good Neighbor and War In The Pacific; Carolyn Keene, author of 3 of the first 10 Nancy Drew novels; Detective novelist Keats Partick; Mystery author Clinton W. Locke; and...

oh,wait. Never mind.

The book was written by Walter Karig.

Captain Walter Karig, U.S. Navy, in Honolulu, one year after Zotz! was published.

He's all those other people, too. Along with Julia K. Duncan and maybe some other authors as well.

What exists as a brief diversion in the movie to trigger the story's 'big bad' antagonists is actually the main focus of the book. Part of Karig's time in the Navy was spent in the USN's Public Information Office and, drawing upon that experience, the book was a wicked satire on both the bureaucracy of the government and the nature of people.

The book takes place during World War II, and Jones spends most of the book trying to penetrate the system so he might be able to end the war with his (partially different) powers. But - Spoiler! Select the parenthetically demarcated area to read:
(By the time he finally gets through the layers of government to be actually able to do something, the war has already ended.
In a very different ending from the movie, he waits - exterminating cockroaches to keep in practice for the next war... )

stills from Zotz! (1962)

Return From Fae?

As mentioned yesterday, we're ripping systems open and rebuilding today, so offline most of it. But for a quick post, i'm going do a minor spoiler on Infinity War. Since it's just getting disk release, we'll go ahead and put a spoiler buffer here so you  can avoid even the minor reveal.

Post continues after the trio of Infinity War posters -

  Okay, we're back. 

Now, can we take a moment to appreciate Black Widow's reaction... 

... when she looks over at Thor's arrival with a walking tree and gun-toting raccoon that no-one on Earth has seen before. Obviously, Thor is returning from one of the Fae realms after running around in Faerie Tale land...

...now she really believes he's a "god"

Okay - it's been said before, but - I'm off!

images from Avengers: Infinity War and advertising (2018)

What You Watching Out There?

It likely won't come as any surprise that hermits don't get out to watch the latest movies very often. So, while i obviously likes my movies muchly, i'm often not watching what everyone else is watching at the time.
For example, after Sunday's matinee featuring the Boy King's Giant fighting a Nazi Robot Tyranosaur, i decided i needed to re-watch the movie version...

Hmm...   No. I don't think that's actually what i was watching, just what i saw.

Perhaps i'd best leave it to you readers to identify what i've been watching lately...

(Looking more prescient every day)

what are you looking here for? I already informed you that i'm not telling!

Saturday Night Movie Double Double Feature

Tonight we've got a Double Feature, in two meanings of the phrase. There's the obvious Two Movies meaning with a pair of old RKO Radio Picture features, and the less obvious reference to the dual nature of our titles tonight - both Movies and Un-Comics.
Tonight's movies are comic adaptations that ran in Cavalcade magazine back in 1948. For a while in the late 1940s, they adapted a movie every month. Then they branched out into original comics. Of course, we'll be seeing more of them here over time.

Tonight, however, we've got a couple of big ones - Return Of The Bad Men starring Randolph Scott

(pause for salute)

...Robert Ryan, and Ann Jeffries, followed by Fort Apache with John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Shirley Temple. Both adaptations are drawn by Phil Belbin.
I hope you've got the popcorn ready...

movies illustrated by Phil Belbin for Calvalcade August & December (1948)