Carmine Infantino (1925-2013)

When Carmine Infantino worked for Marvel in the late 1970s, penciling extended runs of Nova, Spider-Woman, and Star Wars, he was frankly one of my least favorite artists, yet I am the first to admit that his contribution to the comic-book industry, without which there might never have been a Fantastic Four or a Marvel Comics as we know it, cannot be overstated.  In 1956, he and writer Robert Kanigher were given six months to turn around the fortunes of the Flash, and their revamped version (which debuted in Showcase #4 and played to Infantino’s flair for fast-paced, dynamic action) is now considered the start of the post-Wertham Silver-Age revival of the super-hero genre.  Difficult though it may be to believe today, Batman was in similar straits by 1964, and Infantino—who later rose through DC’s ranks as art director, editorial director, and publisher—worked with writer John Broome to create the character’s “new look,” which inspired the successful but divisive live-action TV series.

Margalit Fox’s New York Times obituary also credits Infantino with luring Jack Kirby away from Marvel, “a coup akin to the Yankees’ acquisition of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox,” so you could even say he was indirectly responsible for my beloved Bronze Age…

The Character of My Content

First and foremost, I want to apologize, especially to any new or occasional readers, for the dearth of new content on this blog in recent months.  Regular readers probably know it already, but there are two main reasons:  1) My selfish preference for a roof over my head and regular meals keeps me devoted to my day job, and 2) The limited time that leaves for blogging has increasingly been channeled into Marvel University.  I’m not saying it’s all about the numbers…but on a good day, the readership at MU is about five times that of BOF, so it seems silly not to reach the larger one.  I completely understand if those with a less-than-obsessive interest in my blather and/or Marvel Comics choose not to wade through our weekly analysis of a month’s worth of their Bronze-Age output, but I also write some stand-alone articles, the most recent and accessible of which is this.

In terms of actual news, uppermost in my mind is the fact that my daughter, Alexandra—whose own writing has occasionally graced this blog to a warm response—has the lead role in a movie!  Okay, yes, it’s a little indie short (shot in Frederick, Maryland) called My Second First Step that is still in post-production, and I have no idea how or when it will become accessible to the great unwashed masses.  In fact, you may be in a position to affect that outcome, since the filmmakers have launched a campaign on Kickstarter to raise money for post-production and the shooting of the companion piece, inadequate, in which her character will have a cameo.  The clock is ticking on this one, alas; if they don’t receive pledges for the required $4,000 by Saturday, April 13, then the fundraising effort collapses (but not the films).  Check out the infectiously scored teaser here.

With no books or articles to research, I’ve been a little less aggressive about Matheson news, but MGM—having rescued the rights from Eddie Murphy Development Hell at Universal—is going to be doing a remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man, written by Richard and his son R.C. (or, as they put it, “Richard Matheson Jr.”), who will co-produce as part of the Matheson Entertainment deal.  Richard says the story is still relevant and calls it an “existential action movie.”  My response to such things, especially with this long-in-limbo property, is usually to yawn and say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  But if nothing else, this project has been getting lots of ink; I’ve gotten dozens of hits on my Matheson Google Alert.  So it’s great to see some attention being paid, and great to think that Richard will be back in the screenwriting saddle again…IF it happens.  Fingers crossed.

I’ve been trying to keep my hand in on the print side of things, and I am proud to report that the conclusion of my two-part article on 007’s nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, is in the current issue of Cinema Retro (Vol. 9 #25; Winter 2013); meanwhile, the good folks at Filmfax were generous enough to stretch my reprinted interview with the late Ray Bradbury over three issues, ending in #133 (Spring 2013).  And, proving that I still occasionally go to current films, I saw and enjoyed Skyfall, Django Unchained, Lincoln, and part one of The Hobbit with various family members.  I missed the Bond tribute from this year’s Oscars, but saw most of the major awards, and found it interesting that no film(s) made a major sweep this year; I was surprised that Spielberg didn’t get Best Director, yet felt that if Lincoln were going to receive one major award, it got the right one.

Last, but far from least, I would like to stress that even if new posts are few and far between for the immediate future, this blog can still serve as a good source of information and entertainment.  I may be taking concrete steps to make it more user-friendly in that respect in the days ahead, yet even now, for example, clicking on the B100 tab at the top of the page not only takes you to my list of favorite films (“Bradley’s Hundred”), but also gives you links to capsule reviews of each film.  And aside from the obvious subjects such as Matheson, Bond, and Marvel, you can search the site for various…

• stars (Humphrey Bogart, Clint Eastwood, Ingrid Pitt)
• studios (AIP, Amicus, Hammer, Toho, Universal)
• filmmakers (Jack Arnold, Mario Bava, Roger Corman, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, John Frankenheimer, Ray Harryhausen, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa)
• writers (Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch, Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, George Clayton Johnson, Nigel Kneale, Elmore Leonard, William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, Elleston Trevor [aka Adam Hall])

So dip in, click away, and see what suits your fancy; see you on campus!

Bradley out.

Bird-Watching

What I’ve Been Watching: Three Days of the Condor (1975).

Who’s Responsible: Sydney Pollack (director), Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and David Rayfiel (screenwriters), Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Cliff Robertson (stars).

Why I Watched It: I like to revisit it periodically.

Seen It Before? Yes, several times.

Likelihood of Seeing It Again (1-10): 8.

Likelihood the Guys Will Rib Me for Watching It (1-10): 2.

Totally Subjective BOF Rating (1-10): 7.

And? Joe Turner (Redford) is a mild-mannered CIA analyst who returns from buying lunch for his colleagues at the Manhattan brownstone housing their front, the American Literary Historical Society, only to find that they have been brutally gunned down during his brief absence. For years, I have argued that those who considered Redford too much of a pretty boy to be taken seriously as an actor would do well to study his reactions here, as they escalate from shock and horror to fear for his own life and the grim determination that he is not going to be next. This sequence is a tour de force in many ways, but for me at least, the film falls into the unusual trap of never living up to those first twenty minutes.

Turner’s job is to read omnivorously, sifting through novels and articles and feeding them into a computer in search of security leaks or new ideas, and he has recently run across a mystery novel with a very curious publication history. It’s now clear that his dismissed report struck a nerve somewhere in Langley, having unwittingly uncovered something worth wiping out the ALHS, and Turner—code-named Condor—is instantly suspicious when he speaks with Deputy Director Higgins (Robertson). These suspicions are in no way allayed when his last surviving colleague, who called in sick, is killed in his home, and an attempt to bring Condor in from the cold, via a rendezvous with his section chief and an old friend, goes south in the worst way, with Turner framed for his friend’s death.

A lethal game of cat and mouse ensues as Turner, unable to trust anyone he knows, forces himself into the company of a total stranger, Kathy Hale (Dunaway), first to take refuge in her home and then, as they establish a gradual rapport, to enlist her active assistance. The very fact that Turner is an analyst rather than a field agent gives him an unexpected advantage, both because of the arcane knowledge he has assimilated over the years and because his status as an amateur makes his moves unpredictable. With Kathy’s help, he moves back and forth between New York and Washington, D.C., as he tries to get to the bottom of the mystery and avoid getting killed by Joubert (the great Max Von Sydow), a freelance assassin and sometime Company employee who oversaw the hit on the ALHS.

Although I have qualified admiration for this film, I damn it with faint praise by saying that it’s my favorite among the seven that Redford made with Pollack, ranging from the classic Out of Africa (1985) to the soporific Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and the unbearable The Way We Were (1973). If you said that their joint filmography did not augur well for a spy thriller, you’d be right, and my primary objection to the opening sequence is that the main-title theme by Dave Grusin (a lightweight if ever there was one) is too upbeat for the mayhem to follow. Likewise, by the time he shot Condor, Owen Roizman was already the cinematic poet laureate of ’70s New York for The French Connection (1971) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), yet this Manhattan lacks their edge.

It’s interesting to note that the screenplay tries to amp up the tension by halving the time-frame in James Grady’s 1974 source novel, Six Days of the Condor, and the filmmakers were clearly going for a Hitchcock vibe with that whole “an innocent man running for his life must earn the trust, and the heart, of a random woman” thing. But sadly, my lifelong antipathy for Dunaway—whose films such as The Three and Four Musketeers (1973 and 1974), Chinatown (1974), and Network (1976) I loved in spite of, rather than because of, her—blinds me to any chemistry they might have achieved. By the way, I wrote my very first press release for Grady’s 1985 novel Hard Bargains, and he was very kind to a wet-behind-the-ears publicity assistant at his first real job (at Macmillan) in the big, bad city.

Overall, I found the film a little too slick for its gritty subject matter, which is perhaps not surprising coming from impresario Dino De Laurentiis, but Von Sydow predictably tries to make the most of his limited role, and I suppose that Robertson, who always seemed a little sketchy to me, is well cast as a guy who may or may not be trustworthy, interacting nicely with boss John Houseman. This is certainly one of the better efforts from Semple, whose work oscillated from the height of the superior political thriller The Parallax View (1974) to the depths of Flash Gordon (1980) and Never Say Never Again (1983); Rayfiel worked on the Elmore Leonard adaptation Valdez Is Coming (1971). Someday, I’ll have to compare this with Grady’s book and check out his 1978 sequel, Shadow of the Condor.

They’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad

What I’ve Been Watching: Kansas Pacific (1953).

Who’s Responsible: Ray Nazarro (director), Dan Ullman (screenwriter), Sterling Hayden, Eve Miller, and Barton MacLane (stars).

Why I Watched It: Hayden.

Seen It Before? No.

Likelihood of Seeing It Again (1-10): 6.

Likelihood the Guys Will Rib Me for Watching It (1-10): 4.

Totally Subjective BOF Rating (1-10): 7.

And? If you were going to make a Western in 1953, as Allied Artists did here, you could do a whole lot worse than entrust it to Nazarro and Ullman. The former directed scores of oaters on the large and small screens between 1945 and 1960, while the latter’s rather more diverse output also encompassed such SF offerings as The Maze (1953), BOF fave Mysterious Island (1961), and episodes of such genre series as The Outer Limits (“Cold Hands, Warm Heart”). As often noted, I watch Westerns less omnivorously, so I need a hook like a particular star or filmmaker, but we need look no further than General Jack D. Ripper himself, Sterling Hayden, who would star in Nazarro’s Top Gun two years later.

Just before the Civil War, “Bleeding Kansas” is still torn apart by pro- and anti-slavery factions, while the newly formed Confederacy is keenly aware that the Kansas Pacific Railroad now under construction will form a vital supply line for the Union’s Western outposts. Neither side wants to be responsible for starting a shooting war, so the Union declines to send troops to protect the crews, while the Confederates do everything they can—short of killing, at first—to stop them. Into this powderkeg is thrust Captain John Nelson (Hayden), an Army engineer sent undercover to help boss Cal Bruce (MacLane), his daughter, Barbara (Miller), and his train engineer pal, Smokestack (Harry Shannon).

Since the true nature of Nelson’s mission is on a need-to-know basis, the Bruces are, not surprisingly, under the misimpression that he is there to take Cal’s job, and they almost head back East, but Smokestack persuades them that with war imminent, this is no time to turn quitters. MacLane—whom I first saw as the abrasive cop Dundy in The Maltese Falcon (1941)—played so many pills in his career, and played them so well, that when I saw how prominently he was billed, I assumed he would be the villain, and I was thrilled that he got to be a good guy for a change. In fact, one of this film’s greatest pleasures is seeing him slowly begin to trust Nelson…albeit faster than love-interest Barbara, natch!

In a nice touch, when Nelson first gets to town, he sees Bill Quantrill (Reed Hadley) get attacked by three ruffians who want to run him out of town; gentleman that he is, Nelson steps in to even the odds, unaware that he’s assisting the incognito leader of the very men opposing him. In an economical 73 minutes, Ullman skillfully sketches the escalation of the hostilities between the two sides; the growing camaraderie between Nelson and the railroad crew; and his rapport with the Bruces. Smokestack adds an acceptable level of comic relief, annoying Cal with his omnipresent pipe, and several familiar faces round out the cast, including James Griffith and villains Douglas Fowley and Myron Healey.

Lucky ’13?

William Schoell, whose genre-film books The Nightmare Never Ends and Stay out of the Shower are in my personal reference library, has honored me with a brief but very generous review of my magnum opus on his Great Old Movies blog.  Among other things, he notes that “Even if you’re not as enthusiastic about Matheson’s work as Bradley is—and he doesn’t rave about everything—you”ll find this book a good, entertaining and noteworthy film study.”  Bill, 2012 had more than its fair share of unpleasant surprises, but this is the very nicest kind to help get 2013 off to a better start; sincerest thanks.

Telly-Turkies

Okay, I’m the first to admit that this is no big deal, but how often do most of us get to write these words?  “We were on TV.”

As you’ll see in this clip from WTNH-TV, we volunteers from First Church of Christ Congregational (Redding, CT) were caught on camera during the annual Thanksgiving Basket Brigade at New Haven’s Casa Community Center.  Under the inspiring leadership of our friends at Christian Community Action (CCA), groups from various churches and other organizations help assemble food for those in need into single-family grocery bags that are combined with donated turkeys for one-stop holiday meals.  Phase one involves sorting the vast mounds of donations into categories (e.g., vegetables, stuffing, pasta/rice, beverages); in phase two, “shoppers” take bags and make the rounds from station to station so that each item is represented, while the rest of us either supply them or resupply the suppliers…when we’re not unloading further donations from trucks.

As if it’s not enough that she co-chairs the fair that brings in much of the funding for our church’s outreach programs, Madame BOF also helps coordinate this effort with our associate minister, Jack Davidson.  (And sings with me in the choir every week, and cooks for the Dorothy Day soup kitchen in Danbury, and volunteers in countless other ways, and although she’d be mortified that I’m tooting her horn, it’s her birthday today, so I have no scruples about telling you how great she is.)

You can briefly see me crossing behind the stations starting around 0:41.  The guy being interviewed at 0:48, Jeff Braun, was Jack’s predecessor, who now has his own church in Cheshire, so there is a, shall we say, spirited but friendly rivalry between the two churches over how much each group can accomplish.  This year, I’m sorry to say that the lesson was “less is more,” because the Casa Community Center has so much less room than our previous venue that most of our time, especially during phase one, seemed to be spent trying not to step on other volunteers.

Be that as it may, while Jeff is speaking, you can see our awesome senior minister, Dean Ahlberg, chatting in the background to the left, and Madame BOF on the fringe—as I’m sure she would wish it—at right.  She is also visible, again at the right, around 1:06.  You can see the two of us talking in the background on the left at 1:18, and amusingly, I can tell from my body language that at that exact moment, I’m kvetching about how the surfeit of warm bodies actually reduced our productivity.  Fortunately, I’m looking a lot more benign when you get the best opportunity for M/M BOF viewing at 1:33.

As I wrote the preceding, two cats were dozing contentedly within inches of each other on the bed nearby, but the impact of that statement is lost without its proper context.  Ever since our shelter cat Mina died tragically young of unknown causes on the 4th of July, we’ve been worried that her sister, Lucy, would be lonely while we were at work all day; after all, avoiding that was the whole reason we got two cats in the first place.  So when Madame BOF heard from a co-worker about a feral cat that had wandered onto somebody’s deck and jumped up into their lap, we thought it might be time Lucy had a friend.

Sadly, the new arrival (whom we named Sally, thus repurposing Lucy’s name from that of a Bram Stoker to a Charles M. Schulz character) hasn’t gotten the memo yet.  Of course we heard all sorts of cautionary tales about how hard it can be to introduce a new cat into a household, and for the past few weeks we’ve been living the nightmare, with stalking and hissing that occasionally erupts into growling, yowling, and Tasmanian Devil-style tornadoes of fur.  They’re still not friendly, but today’s little encounter, which ended with no worse than a perfunctory, half-hearted hiss from Sally while Lucy amicably quit the field, at least gives us cause for continued hope and gratitude.

Because gratitude is what it’s all about:  gratitude that we’re well enough off to have time and money to share with others who have less, and great people with whom to do so; gratitude that we will have other gifts to share when we sing at the interfaith Thanksgiving Eve service our church is hosting this year, where the sermon will be given by none other than CCA’s own Rev. Bonita Grubbs; gratitude for our amazing daughter, Alexandra, who recently made us proud yet again with her appearance in a production of To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday by a new theatrical group in D.C., and will be joining us on Thursday; gratitude for my friends, who—like us—luckily made it inconvenienced but unscathed through Hurricane Sandy (which left all local family branches in the dark for varying lengths of time) and the follow-up snowstorm; gratitude for the continued presence of my 82-year-old mother, to whom we were able to offer, if not light, heat, or running water, then at least company and safety in numbers for much of her 11 days without power; gratitude for the rest of the extended family that surrounds us with love, even as poor Madame BOF runs the annual gauntlet of preparations for the holiday; gratitude that we can offer a “forever home” to these two beautiful cats, even if they haven’t learned to get along quite yet; gratitude that we’re both employed, even though Loreen’s hours are so demanding; gratitude that in addition to my day job, I have opportunities to pursue my real calling with things like my Cinema Retro article on James Bond (of which I still have yet to receive any copies) and my weekly contributions to Marvel University.

Well, you get the picture.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

And Happy Birthday to the love of my life.

Be Our Guest

Lately, I seem to spend as much time editing other people’s posts as I do writing my own—not that I’m complaining, mind you, since I basically brought it upon myself. Some months ago, I invited my daughter, Alexandra, and her godfather, Gilbert Colon, to contribute guest posts to this site, knowing that they both love to write, not surprisingly share many of my interests, and lack the forums of their own blogs, like those of Simon Drax (currently on hiatus but overflowing with nutritious backlog) or the mighty Turafish. The fruits of Alexandra’s labors have already started to appear here, with the first two installments of her well-received “Chicks in Action Flicks” series, which I am proud to say required but the barest of cosmetic changes by Your Humble Correspondent.

After mulling over possible topics for some time, Gilbert settled on a subject that has long fascinated both of us, a phenomenon that—as far as we know—doesn’t have a formal name. It’s that subgenre of the biopic in which the protagonist is a historical artist of some kind, usually a writer, but instead of being a more or less straightforward account of his life, the film has him actually enter, interact with, or prefigure his own artistic creations. Gilbert was thinking in particular of this year’s The Raven, in which Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) is recruited to trace a serial killer inspired by his own stories, but amusingly, a much earlier precedent is the rock-bottom exploitationer The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974), starring a perennial BOF bête noire, Robert Walker, Jr.

“Huzzah,” says I, “make it so,” and sent him off on his merry way to put pen to paper…but a funny thing happened on the way to the blog. First, he put it on the back burner to write his nice article on Person of Interest for SF Signal (to which I believe Drax gets the credit for steering him), where he had already rhapsodized about Douglas Trumbull and, God bless him, gotten further exposure for his interview with me regarding Richard Matheson on Screen. I was honored to do a little modest blue-penciling on all of those, as well as his long-awaited biopic piece…which, since much of its content was decidedly fantastique, he then decided—with my blessing, naturlich—to pitch to SF Signal, where it has now appeared..

So I’m still waiting for my guest post from Gil, but that’s fine. The longer I wait, the more exposure my little buddy gets (on a real website, yet), which was sort of the idea in the first place. You go, boy!