Monday Mix-Up: The Monsters You Could Smell Like
A two-fer here. One monster:
Two monsters:
The second one is from the marvelous little webcomic Gods Playing Poker, which I highly recommend. Go read it.
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
MOONSTONE MONDAY-Interview with Mike Bullock on SAVAGE BEAUTY
MIKE BULLOCKWriter/Co Creator, SAVAGE BEAUTY, Moonstone Books
AP: Mike, just what is SAVAGE BEAUTY?
Mike Bullock: Savage Beauty is a myth, a legend born long ago and whispered down through the ages of the goddess Anaya. The dual divinity of Anaya takes form as either a golden beauty who blesses the faithful or an ebon angel who brings punishment to evil men. For centuries, many worshipped Anaya, and she protected her followers from colonial empires, slaver traders, poachers and the like who sought to exploit her people. Then, suddenly around the beginning of the 20th century, the goddess simply vanished.
Now, as her people cry out for justice Anaya has returned as suddenly as she left. Woe unto those who would visit evil upon her people.
AP: What were your inspirations/influences for SB?
MB: Everything from current world headlines out of Uganda, the Sudan, D.R. Congo and Somalia to a variety of mythology rooted in cultures of Eastern and Southern Africa.
AP: Why, Mike? Why a jungle comic in this modern market? What about SB will make it stand out with today’s readers?
MB: Ed Catto and Joe Ahearn enjoyed what I was doing in the pages of Phantom and had a desire to work with me on a new book. At the same time, Ed also had an affinity for the jungle girl comics and pulps of old, but didn’t want to do one unless it was fresh and real, not “just another pretty face”.
After Ed and Joe batted a few ideas back and forth they came to me and asked if I could do what I was doing in Phantom but with a new character, a jungle girl character. There’s only one rule: it has to be relevant.
The idea intrigued me, and since I really didn’t feel I’d yet scratched the surface of what I wanted to do with Phantom, they had me hooked before they were even done pitching it. I then spent the next few weeks pouring through all sorts of African mythology, which is
incredibly interesting and highly recommended to anyone who likes mythology of any sort, and I cobbled together the myth of Anaya from two or three existing mythologies. One thing I found fascinating is that there are over 1000 languages spoken in modern Africa, yet only a handful of mythologies exist through all these cultures; shared
mythologies that transcend languages, borders, regions and ethnic boundaries.
Anyway, I digress. So, I took that mythology and used it to flesh out the two main characters, Lacy and Liv Ray. I then created a back-story that would give them a reason to be in Kenya, to witness firsthand what you don’t really see on the nightly news. Then, I brought in a shadowy organization that has its own agenda in all this. Once all the
groundwork was in place, it was back to cruising along just as I was with Phantom. Anyone who enjoyed the Invisible Children or Checkmate arcs, will find more of the same in the pages of Savage Beauty.
AP: Where does the goddess Anaya come into play?
MB: Well, the girls become the avatars of Anaya, protecting her people and dishing out healthy doses of smack-down on those who would exploit them.
AP: Tell us about her supporting cast/characters?
MB: The first supporting cast member is the mysterious Mr. Eden, owner of Eden Holdings, LTD, a commodities importer/exporter. He was born in Uganda and used his incredible business savvy to go from the son of a local farmer to one of the world’s wealthiest men. I don’t want to say too much more about him, for fear of spoiling anything, but we’ll soon discover Mr. Eden is a lot more than just a rich businessman.
Next up are Lacy and Liv’s dad, Johnny Rae. Johnny’s an ex-action movie superstar turned film producer. After his first two films were worldwide hits, he and his wife “took the money and” ran to Kenya, where they planned to retire in comfort and raise their daughter, Lacy away from the materialism and moral depravity rampant in the US. Not
long after arriving, they found Kenya wasn’t the utopia they’d first imagined, and found themselves adopting Liv after rebels murdered her mother. They stayed in Kenya for nearly a decade before some venture capitalists and Johnny’s old movie company lured him back to the Southern California. He now runs Rae Gun pictures, which has a
mysterious connection to Eden Holdings, LTD.
AP: What about the villains? You can’t have a good comic story without villains, right?
MB: Glad you asked. The first to show their face are the PLA, a rebel army similar to the LRA, a real life army currently committing unthinkable crimes against humanity in D.R. Congo after having been run out of Uganda. The PLA is led by two men, the first we’ll meet is Lumus Okoye. Another we’ll see throughout the opening story arc is a French arms dealer simply known as Richaud, or The Frenchman, as the locals call him.
AP: What are the immediate plans for SB? Any hints into her upcoming adventures?
MB: the first story arc moves from Kenya, to Uganda and into D.R. Congo. After that, you can expect Anaya’s long arm to reach into Somalia, Mozambique and across to the US, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Author Signing This Saturday!
Barry Reese, Moonstone Contributor as well as writer for Wild Cat Books, Marvel Comics, West End Games, Pro Se Productions and Airship 27, will be signing books at Kema’s Hobby Bookstore in Gray, Georgia from 11 am to 3 pm on Saturday October 23, 2010! The store will have copies of all Barry’s books for sale, including all five volumes in The Rook Chronicles, Rabbit Heart, Guan-Yin and the Horrors of Skull Island, Savage Tales of Ki-Gor and more!
MOONSTONE MONDAY-Interview with Beau Smith, Captain Action Scribe!
Beau Smith, Marketer/Creator, Writer of CAPTAIN ACTION story, Moonstone Books
AP: Tell us a little about yourself and your pulp interests and your mission to make manly comics.
BEAU: I’ve been writing comic books since 1987 as well as marketing them. I was in the third grade when I decided that I wanted to “make” comic books, I was always entranced by the colorful art and characters and spent the next few decades trying to figure out how I was going to put a check beside this goal of mine. Being from a smallish town in West Virginia, it wasn’t easy. Even as a kid I had been drawn to the pulp style painted covers of the magazines and paperback books I would see at the newsstand and drug store. I believe it was Argosy or Stag Magazine that mesmerized me with their sometimes lurid, yet adventurous covers of a manly man saving a beautiful woman with torn clothes from some wild boar or crazed Nazi. I wanted to read and write that kinda stuff.
AP: How did you get your start as a writer and how did it lead to marketing gigs?
BEAU: Tim Truman, creator of SCOUT and co-creator of GRIMJACK, gave me my first break in comics. Tim and I had met at Chicago Con around 1984. We found out we are both West Virginia boys and that set the cart off to full throttle. We also shared the same interests in comics, film, TV and books. Tim introduced me to Dean Mullaney who was the publisher of Eclipse Comics. It seemed at the time (1987) they were in need of a Sales Manager in the direct market. Since my background was sales and marketing, as well as knowing comic books, Tim hooked me up with a meeting with Dean at the American Book Sellers Association in Washington D.C. It was there I also met Chuck Dixon who was also a buddy of Tim’s and writing Airboy for Eclipse. Things started to roll and next thing you know, Dean hired me and Tim asked me to write a one page gag strip in the back of SCOUT called “Beau LaDuke’s Tips For Real Men”, based on the character that Tim and I co-created as a supporting cast member in SCOUT. (The character just happened to look like me…) So there I was in my early 30’s making my third grade dream come true. I wished I had gotten the job a little sooner, but life does tend to throw curve balls at you from time to time.
AP: As a Marketing Advisor you’ve worked for several companies and recently joined IDW Publishing’s Library of American Comics imprint (which includes some pulp like comics within its vast amount of material) as its new Director of Marketing. What can we expect to see from this imprint?
BEAU: We want to continue to collect and publish important comic books and comic strips that have been the foundation to the comics we read today. Readers need to know the history of comics and see where the influences and traditions have come from if they expect to grow into the future. The upcoming Genius Isolated: The Life And Art Of Alex Toth http://www.libraryofamericancomics.com looks to be one of the most anticipated releases in our catalog of books yet. It will appeal to not only readers, but professionals on all sorts of creative levels as well.
AP: There seem to be many different opinions about what can be defined as pulp. How do you define pulp and what do you look for in a pulp story as a writer and a reader?
BEAU: Pulp is like trying to describe the term pop culture, it’s hard to pinpoint it to one certain arena. Personally, I’ve always related pulp to that of noir. A traditional sense of thrilling stories with a grit to it. It’s adventure with a moodier light cast on it. You have examples of Doc Savage, The Shadow, Mike Hammer, there are just so many variants, nothing wrong with that. I like a big canvas. I look for that peculiar slant on adventure or sci-fi that you don’t usually get from mainstream. If someone were to suggest a new book and say “Well, it’s kinda like Tarzan with a sci-fi twist.” I would be the first person to order it. I believe it’s a mix of traditional with a new layer.
AP: Where can readers find information on you and your books?
BEAU: as always, folks can find out what recent crimes I’ve committed on my official website www.flyingfistranch.com or find me on Facebook (Beau Smith) and Twitter. (BeauSmithRanch) As far as the work we’re doing at The Library Of American Comics we have the website http://www.libraryofamericancomics.com and the IDW Publishing webiste www.idwpublishing.com
AP: What upcoming projects do you have coming up that you can tell us about at this time?
BEAU: In December 2010 from IDW Publishing, I will have my new original graphic novel, Wynonna Earp: The Yeti Wars (Full color, 104 pages, $17.99) In January from Moonstone, you can find an action packed Classic Captain Action story that Eduardo Barreto and I are doing called “White Lies.” It’ll be in the Captain Action Winter Special book. I also have a new project, a full blown western coming up from a major publisher for 2011, but that’s all I can say right now on that.
AP: Do you have any shows, signings, or conventions coming up where your fans can meet you and buy you a beer?
BEAU: I will be a special guest at this year’s Mid-Ohio Comic Convention in Columbus Ohio. (November 6-7) http://midohiocon.blogspot.com I hope a lot of folks come by and see me there. I ain’t much to look at, but I can talk the skin off a chicken.
AP: And finally, what does Beau Smith do when she’s not writing, marketing, or kicking ass?
BEAU: I don’t know about the kicking ass part, I’m not getting any younger. I might have to let a ball bat do the majority of the talking for me these days, but mostly I read (A lot!), do five miles a day, work with weights three days a week, watch some fine TV like Human Target and Burn Notice as well as some movies that interest me in a manly sorta way. I walk my dogs, my wife and I enjoy the empty nest thing and I try and run my son’s adult lives as much as I can. I have lunch with my long time buddies once a week and discuss things only adults with 12 year old brains should talk about and I guess that’s about it. If I did anymore we’d hear police sirens in the background.
AP: Thanks, Beau.
DC’s January Pulp Solicitations
DOC SAVAGE #10
Written by IVAN BRANDON
Art by PHIL WINSLADE
Cover by J.G. JONES
It was the war that changed everything and brought Clark Savage, Jr., and Ronan McKenna together. But the things those men had to do as soldiers would one day tear them apart! Don’t miss this thrilling flashback to the history of the First Wave universe; a story that sets the scene for the deadly conclusion of Doc’s adventure in the Middle East!
On sale JANUARY 12 * 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
FIRST WAVE #6
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO 
Art by RAGS MORALES & RICK BRYANT
Cover by J.G. JONES
1:10 Variant cover by JIM LEE
This is it – the cataclysmic conclusion of the miniseries that launched the FIRST WAVE universe! Every life on Earth is threatened by Anton Colossi’s mad ambition. But The Spirit is at death’s door, The Batman is near his breaking point, and Doc Savage is at the mercy of a mad scientist! The stakes couldn’t be higher – and in FIRST WAVE, anything can happen!
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale JANUARY 26 * 6 of 6 * 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US
National Graphic Novel Writing Month, Day 17: Fools! I shall tell you my evil plot!
The month’s half over and amazingly, I have yet to reference former Valiant Comics editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden‘s lecture on “The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot“. This must be remedied immediately because, even though you are probably deep in your story, you may have hit a few snags along the way. Her own plot advice says “steal from the best” and so I’m going to steal from her. Take it away, Teresa:
<
p class=”large”>Start with some principles:
- A plot doesn’t have to be new. It just has to be new to the reader.
- In fact, it doesn’t even have to be new to the reader. It just
has to get past him. (It helps if the story’s moving fast and there’s
lots of other interesting stuff going on.) - A plot device that’s been used a thousand times may be a
cliche, but it’s also a trick that works. That’s why it keeps getting
used. - Several half-baked ideas can often be combined into one fully-cooked one.
- If you have one plot presented three ways, you have three
plots. If you have three plots presented one way, you have one plot. (I
stole this principle from Jim Macdonald’s lecture on how to really
generate plots, which is much better than my lecture on stupid plot
tricks.) - Steal from the best.
Looked at from this angle, the Internet’s various lovingly-compiled
cliche lists are a treasury of useful plot devices. The instructions that
follow are one way to use them.
- Below, you’ll find a comprehensive collection of the various Evil
Overlord lists. Don’t go there yet. First, using whatever method pleases
you, generate five random numbers that fall within the following ranges:
- 1-230
- 1-150
- 1-130
- 1-123
- 1-94
- Now go to the Evil Overlord lists, which I’ve divided into five
categories. Take your five random numbers and match them up to the
appropriate entries in the lists:
- Lead Characters (Bad)
- Lead Characters (Good)
- Auxiliary Characters (Bad)
- Auxiliary Characters (Good)
- Further Evil
You now have five juicy cliches.
You’re going to make a plot
out of them. You’ll find it’s fairly easy to make a silly one, but
it’s not all that much harder to turn them into a decent one. You’ve got a
lot of potential story to work with.
- You’re not done yet. Before you start writing, roll one die. Take
whatever number comes up, and generate that many random numbers which fall
between 1 and 141. Now go to Murphy’s Laws of Combat, which follow the
Evil Overlord lists, and find the laws that match your numbers. These are
plot twists. Use them as needed. If your story absolutely requires that
Gareth go from point A to point B and drop off a package at the Post
Office along the way, but you’re finding that part dreary, tossing in
modifiers like “Every man has a scheme that will not work” or “If your
attack is going really well, it’s an ambush” will suggest ways to liven it
up.
Alternately, you can go here and have them
all generated for you.
- You’re allowed to throw out one cliche, but only if you’re
convinced you know another comparably lurid thing that should be
happening there instead. You’re also allowed to use the cliches
straight or reversed. Say you’ve drawn A-34, “I will not turn into a
snake. It never helps.” You can have a character turn into a snake and
find it doesn’t help, or do it and find it very useful indeed, or decline
to do something so obviously useless and do something else instead. That’s
fine. Just get in there and make the story start happening. -
You may be tempted to throw out awkward-seeming list picks and go for
more obviously writer-friendly cliches. That’s your choice; but try the
awkward set first. It’s figuring out how to make them work together that
produces interesting and unexpected story lines. -
If you’re trying to write science fiction, it may be useful at
this point to pull the same stunt using the mighty and compendious SF
cliches list at http://users4.50megs.com/enphilistor/cliche.htm. For a
perfectly shameless mixture, you can also toss in a few cliches from the
“Things We Learned at the Movies” list—but only if you use them in
reverse.
Me again. And since this is comics, we would be remiss if we didn’t include these comic cliche lists:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2009/11/03/roasting-old-chestnuts-our-favorite-comic-book-cliches/
http://www.jonathancrossfield.com/blog/2008/03/comic-scriptwriting-superhero.html
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/archive/index.php/t-50446.html
And if you have a few hours to burn, you can go through the lists at TV Tropes. But be very careful– you only have two weeks left to finish writing your graphic novel, and if you go there, you can easily spend two months. You’ve been warned.
Remember: you can follow all the NaGraNoWriMo posts here!
Happy 20th Birthday, IMDB!
Did you know that Dougray Scott was cast to play Wolverine, in the summer blockbuster X-Men? He had to leave the project because of his work on Mission: Impossible II. Did you know that in Batman: Forever, strings can be seen on the helicopter after it explodes against the “Lady Liberty” statue? Did you know that Simon Weisse, prop-maker of Hellboy, was an uncredited model maker for Inglorious Basterds!?
Of course you did! And it’s all thanks to the Internet Movie Database, IMDb.com… which turned 20 today, October 17th, 2010.
Nerds, cinemaphiles, and popular comicbook/pop culture bloggers have been turning to this amazing source of sometimes useless, sometimes shocking, always acutely specific database of movies and television information now for two whole decades. Just ask yourself, where would you be without it? How many bar fights did you prevent by using your iPhone to assure your comrades that Wil Wheaton did win the 2002 Melbourne Underground Film Festival’s award for Best Actor for his performance in Jane White Is Sick & Twisted? How much money did you win in that local trivia contest because you knew that the imcomparable John Hoyt played Sire Domra in the episode Baltar’s Escape in the 1979 Battlestar Galactica? And how would you ever have wooed your eventual wife, if you didn’t amaze her by knowing that there was a video camera inside Ludo’s right horn that fed to an external video monitor inside it’s own stomach, assisting the puppeteer perform in Labyrinth? Suffice to say, the unbridled girth of information available to the populace thanks to the IMBd has allowed all of us to become living wikipedias of information!
Speaking of wikipedia…how about a little history, shall we? The IMDb was born from a pair of lists generated in early 1989 by participants in the Usenet newsgroup
rec.arts.movies. In each case, a single maintainer recorded items
emailed by newsgroup readers, and posted updated versions of his/her list
from time to time. The founding ideas of the database began with a
posting titled “Those Eyes”, on the subject of actresses with beautiful
eyes. Hank Driskill began to collect a list of attractive actresses and
what movies they had appeared in, and as the size of the repeated
posting grew far beyond a normal newsgroup article, it soon became known
simply as “THE LIST”.
The other project, started by Chuck Musciano, was briefly called the less capitalized
“Movie Ratings List” and soon became the “Movie Ratings Report”.
Musciano simply asked readers to rate movies on a scale of one to ten,
and reported on the votes. He soon began posting “ballots” with lists of
movies for people to rate, so his list also grew quickly.
In 1990, Col Needham collated the two lists and produced a “Combined LIST & Movie Ratings Report”. Needham soon started a (male) “Actors List”, while Dave Knight began a “Directors List”, and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST, which would later be renamed the “Actress List”.
Both this and the Actors List had been restricted to people who were
still alive and working, but retired people began to be added, and
Needham also started what was then (but did not remain) a separate “Dead
Actors/Actresses List”. The goal now was to make the lists as inclusive
as the maintainers could manage. In late 1990, the lists included
almost 10,000 movies and television series. On October 17, 1990, Needham
posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, and the database that would become the IMDb was born.
In celebration of it’s 20 year history, IMBd is hosting plenty of party games. By party games, we mean video clips (today’s features funnyman Will Ferrell alongside his director/writer in crime, Adam McKay), retrospectives, and tons of stuff to keep your thumbs a’scrollin’. Head over to their Anniversary Page to do what we all do on IMDb… waste a ton of time learning factoids we’ll never need… but can’t stop quoting.
PULP SIGNING AND ALL PULP WAS THERE!
The Broadway Mall bookstore of Denver, Colorado played host on Sunday, Oct. 17th to Laura Givens, pulp/sci-fi cover artist turned writer/editor and she and several of her colleagues greeted the public and signed copies of SIX GUNS FROM HELL.
Seated left to write are David Boop, Carol Hightshoe, Laura Givens, Jennifer Campbell-Hicks & David B. Riley. The book was published by Science Fiction Trails Publishing. The signing attracted a nice crowd of friends, family and fans and a really fun time was had by all in attendance.
Laura Givens is a popular, well known cover artist who will be featured in a full length ALL PULP interview later this week.
For All Pulp – Ron Fortier
Review: ‘The Tudors Season 4’
Imagine if you will that we’re all living in the time of King Henry V. His court would be the A list, their comings and goings the subject of gossip at every tavern and pub in England. They were the celebrities of their day, at a time when England was still a small power, finding their voice and charting their destiny.
For four years, Michael Hirst has been delivering a taste of what it might have been like in the Showtime series, The Tudors
. Now, the fourth and final year, covering the final two wives and his death, has been collected on a four disc set released from CBS Home Entertainment.
The show’s success was attributable to the lush visuals, from the costuming to the locations. John Rhys Meyers was a lusty, virile king, craving a dynasty and constantly thwarted. He was a man of voracious appetites, far beyond food, but history denied him greatness. The first season covered his unhappy first marriage to his dead brother’s wife, Catherine, and his true love, Anne Boleyn, challenging the Pope for his freedom. In the end, he broke from the Church, established the Church of England and found himself challenged at every turn.
Hirst took liberties with characters, characterizations, and sequence of events so don’t use this for your homework, but for a sense of what the time was like and players, this is darn good entertainment. The seasons rolled through his loves and losses, with some of the wives coming to life and others barely sketched out. The fourth season suffers a bit from compressing so much into a mere ten episodes.
His quest for a male heir led him to Katherine Howard then the unhappy final wife, Katherine Parr. Age and illness (the dreaded gout) robbed him of his strength and appeal, letting the upper class maneuver for favor or power.
We open in 1540, thirty years into Henry’s reign and he remains strong as he gets to know his fifth and youngest wife, Katherine, a mere 17 years old. While Henry and Katherine are cordial, Thomas Culpepper covets Katherine while currying favor with the king, a subplot that plays out in the early episodes. Henry also gets a chance to realize what he may have missed during an encounter with wife number four, Anne of Cleves, who compares more favorably than does young Katherine. While Katherine and Culpepper play, Henry and Anne clandestinely reunite. It’s certainly good to be the king.
His rages are legendary and Meyers handles the explosive emotions quite well, especially when Katherine’s affair and sordid past come to light. Also, his rocky relationships with his daughters comes to the fore at mid-season as he restores Princesses Elizabeth and Mary to the line of succession. At the same time, politics and religion clash as the Reformation is weakened when Henry takes the Catholics’ side in matters of state.
We rush through his final wife, Katherine Parr, who is closer in age to the now ailing Henry. Clearly, Hirst could not end the series without covering all six legendary wives but one wishes for more We also get a truncated war with France before illness finally claims the king. Nicely done was a final dream sequence as the dear departed former wives (Maria Doyle Kennedy, Annabelle Wallis and Natalie Dormer) all appear and have final words for their husband.
The show looks wonderful on disc but one wishes the same attention to detail in extras from the first three sets was given to this final set. Instead, there are no extras of any sort but a collection of sampler episodes from Showtime’s other series. A sad way to take our leave of Tudor England but the show is well worth a look.
Ferguson reviews Mitchum in ‘The Wrath of God’ during THE LONG MATINEE
THE LONG MATINEE -Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson
THE WRATH OF GOD
1972
MGM
Produced by William S. Gilmore
Directed by Ralph Nelson
Screenplay by Ralph Nelson and James Graham
Based on a novel by James Graham
Back in the 60âs and 70âs there was a sub-genre of the western that had these elements: a group of American outlaws/mercenaries/rogues would find themselves in Mexico or South America at the turn of the century and get involved in what amounted to a suicide mission that circumstances forced them to accept. Thereâs usually a huge amount of money waiting for them at the end of the mission but during the course of the adventure the outlaws would find their long buried sense of justice and honor awakened and they would abandon the money to take up the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed peasantry. This is pretty much the plot of movies such as âThe Wild Bunchâ âThe Professionalsâ âDuck, You Suckerâ and âVera Cruzâ but Iâve never seen this plot worked in such a goofy and flat out off the wall manner as we see in THE WRATH OF GOD.
Emmett Keogh (Ken Hutchinson) is a wildass Irishman stuck in
Posing as mining engineers,
You see? I told you it was goofy. What makes THE WRATH OF GOD so much fun to watch is that you never know where this damn movie is going to take you or whatâs going to happen next. Thereâs a plot twist every five minutes and just when you think you know whatâs going to happen, it doesnât. There are a lot of really funny one-liners thrown back and forth between the three leading men and from the amount of humor in the story you might think halfway through it that itâs a spoof of the genre. I mean, this is a movie that has Victor Buono as an action hero, for cryinâ out loud. Weâre talking about a guy whoâs best known role was probably as the King Tut villain on the âBatmanâ TV show. In this movie he has a great scene where he drives a car like a battering ram into the barricaded gates of De La Plataâs fortress while firing a Thompson sub-machine and then he jumps out to take on the chief henchman with his sword cane. And heâs totally convincing during his fight scenes of which he has several. And he has a bunch of great one liners, such as âWeâre going to get along famouslyâ which is used in this movie the same way âI have a bad feeling about thisâ was used in âStar Warsâ
Iâve never seen Ken Hutchinson in a movie before and have no idea who he is but heâs immensely likeable as the wily Emmett who seems to tumble in and out of adventures as easily as you or I eat fried chicken. A lot of the humor in the movie comes from him as heâs constantly thrown into situations where heâs clearly way in over his head but he manages to come through with luck and sheer dogged determination that even Dirk Pitt might admire. And as for Robert Mitchumâ¦well, heâs flat out terrific in this. For much of the movie weâre never sure what the deal with Father Van Horn is.  Not only does he carry an arsenal of machine guns and grenades in that big black valise of his but he also has $50,000 dollars that he hints he got by robbing banks. He has a great scene where he tells the villagers that heâs going to hold an all night service in the church where he performs weddings, baptizes babies and hears confessions where it made clear that he knows the rituals of The Catholic Church inside and out but he also indulges in decidedly un-priestly activities like sleeping with whores, drinking whiskey like water and cussing like crazy. He also carries a Bible that has a concealed gun inside and his cross hides a six-inch blade. Nobody in the movie really knows if this guy is actually one really badass priest or a really eccentric badass who likes to pretend heâs a priest until he spills the beans near the end of the movie.
Robert Mitchum is one of those old type movie stars I love because he looks like a man who actually looks like heâs tough enough to kick your ass with just a look, unlike a lot of the current crop of movie stars who are just too damn pretty to look like theyâre as tough as the characters theyâre portraying on screen. Robert Mitchum comes from the crop of actors I like to call âOld School Toughâ. Iâm talking about guys like Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Steve McQueen. You know what Iâm talking about. Whenever heâs on screen in this movie you just canât take your eyes off him, as you want to know just like the other characters what the real deal with him is.
There are a lot of great action sequences in this movie, especially when the three outlaws finally take on De La Plataâs army in a ferocious shootout in front of the church and the final showdown at the fortress. In between weâve got a whole series of double-crosses, fistfights, staredowns and showdowns that will make your head giddy. Trust me, this isnât a boring movie. In fact, despite having been made back in 1972, THE WRATH OF GOD seemed to me a lot more of how current action/adventure are made with itâs healthy mix of violent action, comedy and eccentric characters which is why I think it makes enjoyable watching today.
So should you see THE WRATH OF GOD? Hell yes. If youâre a big Robert Mitchum fan itâs worth seeing just for him alone as obviously heâs having a great time with his role and the material. Victor Buono and Ken Hutchinson also turn in great performances as well. Frank Langella has a wonderful time with his role as a bad guy and his scene in the church where he confronts Robert Mitchum and tells him why he hates priests and God is an example of just plain good solid acting from both of them that goes a long way to establishing both of their characters and sets up the conflict between them nicely. THE WRATH OF GOD works as a really good cinematic pulp adventure that should be enjoyed for what it is: a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon with the snacks and beverages of your choice. If you get Turner Classic Movies on your satellite/cable provider you can wait for it to show up there but if youâre a dedicated pulp or Robert Mitchum fan, spring for the rental fee and give it a try. I donât think youâll be disappointed. I know I wasnât.
Rated: PG
111 Minutes
