'Adventures in the Arcane' gets some ink

Adventures in the Arcane

A Syndicate Publication

$5.99 in print

$1.99 on Kindle

Available from Amazon.com

 

This new anthology of four tales and three essays reignites the fire of old-fashioned weird pulp adventure. It was featured today in The News Herald's weekend Entertainer section.

 

It will make its debut at Panama City Creative Con on Sept. 16-18.

 

Here's the cool book trailer I made:

 

 

Some days the evil loose in the world can’t be beaten by two fists, a trusty sidekick, and a pump shotgun.

Some nights reek of deep time, musty tombs, and creatures spawned from beyond the stars.

When monsters attack, you need heroes with a strong moral compass...and a little supernatural help.

Adventures in the Arcane contains four fantastic stories of pulp heroes, werewolves, pirates, and wizards. Prepare to be thrilled! A Syndicate Production featuring the work of Mark Boss, S. Brady Calhoun, Lou Columbus, Jayson Kretzer and Tony Simmons. 

GIANTS IN THE EARTH — Now available on Kindle!

Ritualistic child murders bring FBI profiler GABRIEL STREET and occultist SIR ARTHUR MAGUS to the town of Junction, Alabama, just as a young woman seeks shelter on her estranged father's farm. REBECCA CALIBAN is pregnant, tormented by the belief her dead husband came to her in the night, leaving her with child. She descends into madness as the investigators battle the killer, an ageless shapeshifter preying upon the innocent in service to a forgotten god.

... Darkness haunts young Tom Caliban, who grows up in the shadow of his mother’s mysterious death, raised by his grandfather. Unaware of Tom or his connection to their shapeshifting enemy, Magus meets each year with the men who helped him battle the Changeling — but distrust begins to grow between them.

... A traveling preacher walks into Junction one summer day, shouldering a rugged cross and promising souls to his unseen Lord. And as Becca’s child reaches his 18th birthday, a new church rises on the site of the Changeling's pyre — and a girl goes missing in Junction. The souleater rises, its hungry call stirring the restless souls haunting the tiny town — including one spirit who has been searching the halls of the hospital for her lost child these past 18 years.

Previously serialized as three novellas, GIANTS IN THE EARTH is the first volume in an ongoing series, The Caliban Cycle. This edition, gathering the entire tale together, includes never-before-published bonus material that includes notes from the author about the origins of the tale and a sneak preview excerpt from the sequel story, AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD, which will be published in early 2016.

Tonight! 'The Souleater' rises!

The thrilling conclusion of GIANTS IN THE EARTH debuts on Amazon Kindle tonight at midnight for only 99 cents!

In the third and final chapter of "Giants in the Earth," the ancient souleater has risen, and its hungry call stirs up all the restless souls haunting the tiny town of Junction, Alabama — including one spirit who has been searching the halls of the hospital for her lost child these past 18 years.

Having barely survived the creature's rebirth, Sir Arthur Magus delves into the tunnel below the ruined church, seeking the prison that held the souleater all these centuries. Down in the dark, he discovers a legacy tying it to Tom Caliban and the hilltop grove where only truth may be spoken.

Tom’s spirit has separated from his gravely injured body, just as Magus and his few remaining allies must stage a desperate last stand against the Great Old One on the sacred hilltop — and not all of them will survive the encounter.

Also tomorrow: Part 2: The Child goes on sale FOR FREE for 5 days!

Drive-In Saturday: "The Devil Rides Out"

(NOTE: This is another in a series looking at occult investigators. Click here to see more entries.)

Based on a 1934 novel by Dennis Wheatley, the screenplay by horror master Richard Matheson elevates this 1968 low-budget Hammer Horror outing starring Christopher Lee as the heroic Nicholas, Duc de Richleau.

I caught the last half hour of this on an afternoon showing in my childhood, and it stuck with me — scared the bejeezus out of me, more accurately. I viewed the movie on the night of June 8 of this year, after I heard Lee had died. It was the second time in about a year's span I'd watched the movie, having caught it on TCM earlier.

Briefly, the plot centers on Simon, the adult son of le Duc's late war buddy, who is mixed up with Satan worshippers. Nicholas and his friend Rex snatch Simon and a girl named Tanith out from under the snout of the goat-faced Baphomet, conjured by the satanists, then try to protect them in the home of another friend. The Angel of Death is conjured by the lead devil-worshipper, and it takes many forms trying to break into a magic circle to attack our protagonists. Without giving away the ending, I must say that Lee's character makes several Christian remarks about the power of God to defeat evil — remarks that completely fit the character and the storyline, but that seemed incongruous coming out of Lee's mouth.

The effects are above standard for the day, and the high concepts are thrillingly enacted. All of the actors are up to the task, though I had trouble being frightened of Charles Gray as the Satanic priest (through no fault of his own) as I kept expecting a drag revue to break out. (Gray is best known to me for his part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)

Very effective movie, showing the main character's use of arcane knowledge and ritual to good effect, and allowing Lee to be a man of action and heroism for once. Lee has famously said in interviews that this was one of his favorite roles, and it shows; he wanted to remake the film with modern effects and once again play Nicholas, but it was not to be.

The film was previously available in HD on the Hammer Horror channel on YouTube. It can currently be viewed in full >>here<<

Drive-In Saturday: 'The Norliss Tapes' still scares

(Continuing our look at the occult detectives that influenced my thinking...)

THE NORLISS TAPES

(NBC - Feb. 21, 1973)

Starring Roy (The Invaders) Thinnes, Don Porter, Angie (Police Woman) Dickinson, and Claude Akins; directed and produced by Dan (Dark Shadows) Curtis; screenplay by William F. Nolan (Logan’s Run) from a story by Fred Mustard Stewart.

This backdoor pilot, presented as a TV movie, owes much to Curtis’ better known effort, The Night Stalker, as it has many of the same characteristics, from the cinematography to the music, to specifics of the plot and how Norliss narrates when supporting characters are about to meet their grisly fates.

Thinnes is writer David Norliss (in this case a journalist who writes non-fiction books and has set out to debunk the supernatural) who, like Carl Kolchak, dictates his work onto a series of tapes; he has disappeared after a cryptic call to his editor, who later breaks into Norliss’ beach house to discover the tapes. The story at hand unfolds as the tape unspools...

Norliss is called to investigate when the widow of a rich and famous sculptor finds her dead husband at work in his studio. He’s sculpting a giant, demonic figure out of clay mixed with human blood. She barely escapes from him. Cops think she’s nuts, of course. There’s a subplot involving an Egyptian scarab ring, tunnels under the property, and an empty coffin. The sculpture is meant to become a living receptacle for a demon lord, who begins to manifest in the fiery climax of the tale.

And as the first tale ends, the editor begins playing Tape No. 2... a story we’ll never know now, as the there were no sequels to the film.

Somehow I watched this movie in my Grandmother Simmons’ living room, on her old TV that was hidden inside a wooden cabinet. It’s possible the adults were watching something else in another room, or just sitting around and telling old family stories. I don’t really remember. What I do recall is hiding behind the couch each time the ashen-faced vampire showed up.

The film is now available on DVD here. The entire film is also on YouTube in a grainy, low-resolution and pixelated format, but is still watchable — and still quite spooky.

There's one shot as a woman opens the curtains at her hotel room that made me jump when I rewatched the movie for the first time in 42 years — and I knew it was coming. I still recalled it, thanks in part to my Uncle Joe having done the very same thing to me about a year or two before the movie came out: I heard a noise at my window one night and looked out, and he jumped up from behind the azaleas to scare me.

Er, "Spoiler alert"?

Whistling Past the Graveyard with Kolchak

My memories of this series, starring Darren McGavin as Chicago newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak, are spotty but intense. So let’s skip straight to them by examining each of the entries in the series, starting with a quick background.

The series grew out of two TV movies written by the masterful Richard Matheson. The first Movie-of-the-Week, The Night Stalker, was based on a novel by Jeff Rice, The Kolchak Papers. (The novel was re-released under the title Kolchak: The Night Stalker to tie in to the movie.) Produced by Dan Curtis (creator of Dark Shadows) and directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, it had Carol Lynley (one of the survivors of The Poseidon Adventure) as Kolchak’s love interest, and Simon Oakland as his irritable editor, and Barry Atwater as Janos Skorzeny, a vampire loose in Las Vegas. Some of the other names on the bill included Claude Akins, Elisha Cook Jr., and Larry Linville.

According to Internet sources, The Night Stalker was the highest-rated TV movie of the year (it aired Jan. 11, 1972), and Matheson won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1973 for Best TV Feature or Miniseries Teleplay. Theme music composer Gil Mellé also scored The Questor Tapes (and you can hear similar themes there).

I first saw the original movie on its initial broadcast, watching it on a small black-and-white TV in my Uncle Joe’s room at the Massey home until it got to be too spooky, and I moved to the family room for the last act, where I could safely stand in the kitchen door to keep an eye on the set. I was 7, and already had been traumatized by watching the original Bela Lugosi Dracula on an afternoon broadcast when I was 6; that viewing made me wander the halls of our house at night, afraid the vampire was inside (I know, it was stupid for a kid to guard his home against Dracula, but did you notice the use of the word “traumatized”?).

This time, I was carrying fear of Skorzeny around when we moved into a new house and my Uncle Joe thought it would be hilarious to make noises outside my window the night we moved in; I looked out, and he jumped up to scare me, and I ran screaming down the hallway to where the adults were in the living room. I seem to recall Joe (who was about 14 years old) getting a sound spanking as a result.

Matheson also wrote the sequel telefilm, The Night Strangler, which broadcast a year later, Jan. 16, 1973. (This time, Rice wrote a novelization of the Matheson script.) This was the tale of a serial murderer in Seattle who drained the blood of his victims to feed his immortality. The cast included Jo Ann Pflug as Kolchak’s new love interest, and Simon Oakland as his still long-suffering editor. Others in the cast included Richard Anderson (known for The Six-Million Dollar Man), Wally Cox, Margaret (Wicked Witch of the West) Hamilton, John Carradine, and Al (Grandpa Munster) Lewis.

I remember watching this one from behind the kitchen counter at my Aunt Dot and Uncle Edgar Croley’s house. (Apparently, "comfort food" means something different to me than most people.) Again, the adults were in the living room, or possibly at the dining room table playing cards. I wasn’t as terrified by this one, and the idea of Kolchak discovering clues that exposed the immortal’s long life (like photos of him from different time periods) was chilling and compelling. (Too bad it has been overdone in genre films and movies since then.)

(Many years later, I had the weird experience one night in my teens of watching TV when Star Trek was being shown in a late time slot, followed by a scary movie — and first, the local station showed a news program looking at the “known facts” of the Ripper murders; the Star Trek episode that night was “Wolf in the Fold,” about a non-physical entity called “Redjac” that was responsible for the Ripper murders; followed by The Night Strangler. The news program mentioned other, later killings that were similar to those attributed to Jack the Ripper; Trek listed “Redjac” killings at various times throughout history; and then Strangler played with the same “periodic resurgence of murder” concept. I have often wondered if anyone else noticed the same synchronicity that night.)

At any rate, ABC recognized a hit, and rather than order up another TV movie (apparently Matheson and William F. Nolan (co-creator of the original Logan’s Run novel) had already written a script for The Night Killers, which would have pit Kolchak against androids), the network ordered a series.

Here’s a personal episode guide:

The Ripper — Director Allen Baron, writer Rudolph Borchert; aired Sept. 13, 1974. Another serial killer, this time actually Jack the Ripper.

The Zombie — Director Alex Grasshoff, writers Zekial Marko and David Chase (who would later create the HBO series The Sopranos); aired Sept. 20, 1974. A woman turns her grandson into a voodoo-style zombie slave.

They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be... — Director Allen Baron, writer Rudolph Borchert (story by Dennis Clark); aired Sept. 27, 1974. In what ABC beancounters must have seen as a brilliant move, no makeup effects are needed after a UFO lands and an invisible alien attacks, draining the bone marrow of victims. (I was 10 and knew they were getting off easy. It’s one thing to “hide” a monster in the dark, and another thing altogether to make “invisibility” frightening. They failed.) Unlike every other episode, which finds our hero somehow foiling the monster, Kolchak fails and the alien returns to the stars.

The Vampire — Director Don Weis, writer David Chase (story by Bill Stratton); aired         October 4, 1974. Kolchak discovers that one of Skorzeny’s victims survived as a vampire; she has made the mistake of moving to L.A., where he gets on her trail. I recall this one being as creepy in many ways as the original telefilm.

(After this episode aired, the series, originally titled “The Night Stalker,” went on a hiatus, and when it returned, it had a new title, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.”)

The Werewolf — Director Allen Baron, writers David Chase and Paul Playdon; aired Nov. 1, 1974. Kolchak goes on a sea cruise and discovers a werewolf killing passengers under the pretty moon. Watched this at the Massey house, which means it was at least memorable, but even as a 10-year-old I knew it was a goofy premise. Caught it on a rerun at home on my old black-and-white TV.

Firefall — Director Don Weis, writer Bill S. Ballinger; aired Nov. 8, 1974. Not too sure I even remember this one. I know I watched it, but it left no impression. It involved a ghost who tries to possess a conductor’s body.

The Devil’s Platform — Director Allen Baron, writer Donn Mullally, story by Tim Maschler; aired Nov. 15, 1974. This one gave me chills for a different reason. Yes, I have always been scared silly by stories about Satan or demons, but this one introduced me to the idea that politicians and authority figures might have an evil agenda; it’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over again in adult life.

Bad Medicine — Director Alex Grasshoff, writers L. Ford Neale and John Huff; aired Nov. 29, 1974. A Native American shaman spirit is committing murders to settle a debt so his spirit can move on. Looking back, it was a precursor for other Indian-legend scares, like The Manitou, and it stoked my interest in Native American beliefs.

The Spanish Moss Murders — Director Gordon Hessler, writers Al Friedman and David Chase, story by Friedman; aired Dec. 6, 1974. I remember this as the “Swamp Thing” episode, as I had read Uncle Joe's few issues of the early Swamp Thing comic by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson, and the moss-encrusted creature birthed from nightmares in this episode seemed to originate from the same region of our collective unconscious.

The Energy Eater — Director Alex Grasshoff, writers Arthur Rowe and Rudolph Bochert, story by Rowe; aired Dec. 13, 1974. Another Native American legend comes to life after a hospital is constructed on land that originally belonged to a tribe. I remember watching this one on a TV in our family room in the “new” house, the one my parents built when I was in second grade (the same one where Uncle Joe scared me).

Horror In The Heights — Director Michael T. Caffey, writer Jimmy Sangster; aired Dec. 20, 1974. I don’t think I understood what this one was about at the time, as it involved a Jewish community being attacked by a Hindu demon and somehow also worked in the swastika (which is a Hindu symbol meant to invite the goddess Lakshmi to visit a home during festival time). A bit confusing for a 10-year-old watching this in the family room.

Mr. R.I.N.G. — Director Gene Levitt, writers L. Ford Neale and John Huff; aired Jan. 10, 1975. The anti-Questor kills whoever it feels threatened by. Kind of a straight-up story, much easier for me to digest. Still didn’t stop me from wanting to be an android.

Primal Scream — Director Robert Scheerer, writers Bill S. Ballinger and David Chase; aired Jan. 17, 1975. Cells discovered in the arctic ice result in deformed homicidal hominids. In my brain, it exists as a precursor to “A Cold Night’s Death,” a 1977 TV movie starring Robert Culp, and even the recent Syfy series Helix.

The Trevi Collection — Director Don Weis, writer Rudolph Borchert; aired Jan. 24, 1975. High fashion meets witchcraft in another tale I have little memory of.

Chopper — Director Bruce Kessler, writers Steve Fisher and David Chase, from a story by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale (the first professional writing credit for the guys who created Back to the Future); aired Jan. 31, 1975. The Headless Horseman legend becomes a story of a headless motorcyclist bent on vengeance.

Demon In Lace — Director Don Weis, writers Stephen Lord, Michael Kozoll and David Chase, from a story by Lord; aired Feb. 7, 1975. A Sumerian succubus stays young by murdering young men; a story that never gets old, as it has cropped up innumerable times over the years.

Legacy of Terror — Director Don McDougall, writer Arthur Rowe; aired Feb. 14, 1975. Not much of a Valentine's Day episode, this time Kolchak fights an Aztec cult trying to resurrect the mummy of their god.

 The Knightly Murders — Director Vincent McEveety, writers Michael Kozoll and David Chase, story by Paul Magistretti; aired March 7, 1975. The ghost of a knight inhabits its former suit of armor and kills people.

The Youth Killer — Director Don McDougall, writer Rudolph Borchert; aired March 14, 1975. Cathy Lee Crosby (who also starred as Wonder Woman in a contemporary pilot) plays Helen of Troy, who sacrifices victims to Hecate to maintain her eternal youth.

The Sentry — Director Seymour Robbie, writers L. Ford Neale and John Huff; aired March 28, 1975. The Star Trek Gorn is takes the place of the Horta in a reworked version of the classic Trekisode "Devil in the Dark." This time it's a lizard creature that kills men working underground because they've stolen its eggs. I watched this on in my friend Randy's house, on a black-and-white set in his parent's room.

Although its stories seemed derivative, it's interesting to me how many modern series have dipped into Kolchak's well, such as The X-Files, where Darren McGavin played a character that supposedly founded the X-Files division. (McGavin also returned in a digital cameo in the pilot for the remade (and doomed) Night Stalker series in 2005, but that's another story.)

Drive-In Saturday: The Doctor is Out — way, way out

VHS Cover

Dr. Strange (CBS-TV pilot aired Sept. 6, 1978)
Starring Peter Hooten as Dr. Stephen Strange; with Jessica Walter and John Mills 

If you’ve got a fever for fantasy TV even the Winds of Watoomb won’t quell, then this might be just the prescription.

Doctor Strange, The Master of the Mystic Arts and Sorcerer Supreme created for Marvel Comics by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, first appeared in Strange Tales No. 110, dated July 1963, a year before I was born.

He came to television in a much watered-down version, via a pilot film that even abbreviated Strange’s title as Dr. Strange, in the autumn after I turned 14. I was already a fan of the source material and at the perfect age for a good horror-tinged magical adventure. I watched the show on my Dad’s TV in the living room area of a mobile home he was renting in Gonzales, Florida, if I'm recalling correctly.

It was miles ahead of other Comics-to-TV efforts of the era, from a Hulk with green body paint, to a Spider-Man who couldn’t realistically fight bank robbers (much less a super villain), to a Captain America who traded his winged mask for a motorcycle helmet. At least with Strange you got to see magic lightning bolts and weird dimensions.

Disco Strange

The treatment was written and directed by Philip DeGuere, whose writing credits included episodes of Bionic Woman, Baretta, Alias Smith and Jones, and many others, and who would go on to create Simon & Simon and much more. A made-for-TV movie intended as a pilot for a potential TV series, Dr. Strange even had Stan Lee as a consultant.

The movie diverged from the original material, although Lee apparently felt it was one of the better of Marvel’s 1970s TV adaptations. In an interview published in Comics Feature magazine (January 1985), Lee recalled being “pleased with Dr. Strange and The (Incredible) Hulk.” He added that Strange might have had higher ratings if it hadn’t been broadcast opposite Roots.

In the comics, Stephen Strange is a gifted but arrogant surgeon who loses his dexterity after a car crash and becomes a drunk because he can’t make tons of cash as a surgeon any more. Hearing talk of an “Ancient One” in Tibet who can heal anyone, he travels there on a quest to restore his hands so he can regain his medical practice.

Instead, he is initiated into the hidden world of magicians and eventually becomes the “Sorcerer Supreme” of Earth. He takes on a servant, Wong, and lives in a weird brownstone in Greenwich Village, NYC. And he soon gets a hot silver-haired girlfriend from another dimension, Clea, who becomes his pupil as well as his lover.

Strange has adventures in other dimensions, superbly psychedelic and appropriate for the 1960s, as originally conceived by Ditko. He fights entities like Mephisto, Nightmare and Dormammu, as well as his mortal enemy, Baron Mordo. He hangs out in his Sanctum Sanctorum and gets into scraps alongside the Defenders (initially, Silver Surfer, Hulk and Namor the Submariner).

These battles and other-dimensional jaunts were beyond the scope of 1978-era special effects (at least, on a TV movie budget), but the pilot film makes a valiant effort. Before it’s over, Strange visits a nether-dimension, we catch glimpses of the demon Balzaroth (voiced by Ted “Lurch” Cassidy, uncredited), and our cast exchange magic lightning blasts.

It’s the changes to the mythos for its TV incarnation that don’t ring true to this True Believer, and one wonders if they were made for fear of how audiences would respond to an Asian master in post-Vietnam USA, or a devilish Mephisto (this was a time when Bible-thumping caused all sorts of censorship in fantasy TV; Google some of the censors’ reactions to Star Trek reruns some time just to boggle your mind).

Wong and Lindmer

For example, the Ancient One is now a disembodied voice (the late, great Michael Ansara, uncredited), while Strange’s mentor is now the British actor Sir John Mills as Thomas Lindmer (or “Merlin” — get it?). Strange (played by Peter Hooten and his spectacular disco mustachio and Caucasian afro) is a thoughtful, slow-to-act psychiatrist who initially seems to get his magic mojo from a ring left to him by his father.

The usually mesmerizing Jessica Walter (lately seen on Arrested Development and heard on Archer) plays Morgan Le Fay, Merlin’s old enemy (who was, as you may recall from repeated viewings of Excalibur, the half-sister of King Arthur and the mother of his bastard son, Mordred). While she is physically voluptuous and tempting in her low-cut tops, her delivery of dialogue is flat, and she’s played a bit too cold for you to ever believe Strange could be swayed to her side of the battle.

Clea is presented as a college student haunted by Morgan; she’s played by Eddie Benton (who later acted under the name Anne-Marie Martin in episodes of Buck Rogers and other 1980s shows, but is perhaps best known as co-writer of the 1996 film Twister with her then-husband, the late author Michael Crichton). Clea falls under Morgan’s spell, and Strange seeks alternative therapies for her.

Strange and Morgana

Lindmer tries to convince Strange that the girl’s troubles are magical rather than medical; he’s also trying to prepare Strange to follow in his footsteps as the next Sorcerer Supreme.

The film opens with an image to excite any Strange fan’s heart: We’re in a weird realm of rocky islands floating in space. A stop-motion demon gives Morgan the chance to redeem her earlier failures by defeating Lindmer and turning his chosen apprentice to the Dark Side, or some such. So far, so good.

But the interest dissipates pretty fast. The film becomes overly talky, and little action of any consequence takes place for the next hour, putting the majority of effects and action in the final segment of the show. Strange doesn’t even dress — well, strange — until the last act, first in a very cool cloak and chains bestowed on him by Morgan, and later in a lame disco blouse with a starburst and yellow cape. Both costumes hearken to the various comic versions of Strange’s attire, but neither one captures the spirit.

Strange by any Other Name

(NOTE: The low-budget movie grindhouse, Full Moon Features, made a Strange-esque film called Doctor Mordrid in 1992 after losing the option for Doctor Strange; it starred Jeffery Combs as an ageless sorcerer assigned to protect our world, and it’s worth checking out. Also pretty good is the 2007 direct to DVD animated feature Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme from Marvel Studios.)

Over the years, the comic Strange has been rebooted, retooled and refocused. He’s been de-aged, split into multiple persons with different names, and even gave up his face for a while, replacing it with a blue “mask.”

Likewise, in some writers’ hands, he’s selfless and heroic, while others paint him as distant and possibly deviant, acting to protect his own power base as much as the innocent souls in this reality. His recent appearance in Matt Fraction’s short-lived Defenders title made him a little scary.

I always was happier seeing Strange as a mixture of the two extremes, much as he was initially portrayed: A self-righteous man who was knocked down, broken, and in the process of rebuilding himself spiritually as he learns to serve others — a hero overcoming deep faults against massive odds.

That’s kind of what this pilot film embodies: It’s obviously broken, but it contains enough magic to make you believe that, if it had gone to series, it could have developed into something deeper — until you realize it was the 1970s and even the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth couldn’t have energized it enough.

We’re probably better off watching Kolchak reruns, dreaming of what might have been, and looking forward to a Marvel motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. But until then, here's  the whole movie from YouTube:

Drive-In Saturday: Gene Roddenberry's 'Spectre'

Not a Gorn.

Spectre

(NBC, May 21, 1977)

It would be wrong for me to claim this film had any sort of influence on my early life, as I didn’t see this in its original broadcast; all I knew of it was a photo of the Gorn-like Asmodeus demon shown in Starlog magazine.

Don’t recall how I managed to miss this; at the time, my parents were on a kick to be sure we didn’t get too much horror/occult intake, but I don’t think I was forbidden to watch this. I know some network affiliates across the country refused to air it because of its demonic and sexual content, but I don’t know if that included my local channels. More likely, it just slipped by.

Culp and Young

Instead, I first caught it on an afternoon movie rerun sometime in the late 1980s, and I watched it again recently, streaming on YouTube. Careful which version you try to watch: One was apparently videotaped from a Syfy (at the time “Sci Fi Channel”) show called Pilot Playhouse, hosted by Robert Englund. The version I initially saw on YouTube appears to be missing some scenes, and not just the nudity in the final orgy/sacrifice sequence. At one point, Sebastian and Ham are speaking with Inspector Cabell and ask questions about “these killings” — apparently a series of gruesome murders have taken place, but no one has mentioned them previously in the film. I don’t know if there was a mention excised from this version to allow more commercials, or if the original cut of the film was missing that scene.

Note: Some versions of the pilot contain topless and bottomless (rear) nudity that was inserted into the pilot's climactic sacrificial scene for a theatrical release overseas.

Also, I think Gig Young might have been inebriated in every scene, listening to his words slur.  He killed himself shortly after the pilot aired.

Also also, Robert Culp is a badass. That is all.

Created, written, and produced by the father of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, Spectre was a supernatural mystery starring Culp as criminal psychologist and paranormal investigator William Sebastian, with Young as his old friend and skeptic Dr. “Ham” Hamilton.

Ham obviously served as a sort of “Watson” to Culp’s “Holmes” — or “Scully” to Culp’s “Mulder” — but their relationship also mirrored that of Questor and Robinson from Roddenberry's other genre pilot of the time, "The Questor Tapes," (or Spock and McCoy of Star Trek) as Sebastian was often brusque and coldly logical, while Ham was better with people.

Englishwoman Ann Bell (as Anitra Cyon) appears at Sebastian’s home in the U.S. to withdraw her earlier request for the men for help her family; she does so while standing in front of a fireplace that makes her dress nearly translucent, so we shouldn’t be surprised that she turns out to be a succubus. Even so, the Cyon family jets the two to London to solve the mystery of the family curse, which devolves into a safe-for-TV version of a Hammer Horror film, with not-too-subtle references to sexual depravity. It seems the family has unleashed Asmodeus, the demon of lust, and one of them is possessed by it.

Culp walks the edge.

In the end (not to anyone's surprise, so this isn't really a SPOILER), Sebastian defeats the demon, and a curse he has suffered is cured. But once they return to America, Sebastian receives a painting from the surviving Cyons, and on it is the symbol of Asmodeus — freeze frame and fade to black as the violins screech.

Co-written by Samuel A. Peeples, and directed by Clive Donner, the film also features a (relatively) young John Hurt as Mitri, the younger brother in the Cyon family. Majel Barrett Roddenberry appears as Sebastian’s housekeeper (and witch) Lilith, who cures Ham’s alcoholism with a spell. The older Cyon brother is played by James Villiers, a British character actor who appeared in numerous movies and TV shows including Hammer's "Blood from the Mummy's Tomb."

Watch the complete pilot here (it is one with momentary nudity, but blink and you'll miss it):

Drive-In Saturday: 'Dark Intruder'

(Welcome to the new iteration of 'Drive-In Saturday.' I'm going to be reviewing a new "dark detective" or paranormal investigator story each week. We'll start with one I watched this week with my son, "Dark Intruder," which you may never have heard of, but in weeks to come we'll also look at more well known such stories of occult detectives, including Kolchak, Dresden, and others.)

I learned about Dark Intruder via an email from Lovecraft Ezine, which regularly reviews and shares movies and books influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's work. There's a great examination of this little 59-minute movie at this link.

The short version: It's 1890, and Leslie Nielsen (best known these days for the Police Squad TV show that gave us the Naked Gun films — though I'll always think of him as the saucer commander on Forbidden Planet) plays the lead, Brett Kingsford, who carefully cultivates the outward appearance of a laughing dandy, while secretly helping local police battle occult menaces. He even disguises himself (a la Sherlock Holmes) to keep the beat cops from recognizing him when he needs to talk to the commissioner and access a crime scene.

This was a pilot for a TV series, but wasn't picked up for any number of reasons. It's easy to see why networks would be uneasy about it, as it is scary (for its day) and doesn't shy from demonic references. Using the black-and-white production limitations to good effect, it incorporates great noirish use of shadows and mist to heighten suspense. It plays almost like a Hammer film, in that respect, and as the above-linked article notes, its writer had some experience in that area also.

But what amazed me most was the fatalism in the script (which, given the Lovecraftian elements, probably should not have been so surprising). Without SPOILING too much (I hope), it shows us a hero who fails at every turn. Like John Constantine in the Vertigo comics, Kingsford manages to survive, but may have a mob of ghosts haunting him — the spirits of those whose lives he failed to save.

>>You can watch the film for yourself here.<<

Of interest to fans of Lovecraft will be mentions of creatures from his mythos, as well as the concept of them returning to our world. I was intrigued also by the body horror inherent in (possible SPOILER) the way the deformed conjoined twin plot line was built.

Finally, it's worth noting that Nielsen is a wonder to watch, shifting from the easily amused socialite to the deadly-serious occult investigator in the blink of an eye. I'd have gladly followed a series of his adventures before the turn of the century.

TBT: Something From The Nightside

(This originally ran in The News Herald on Sunday, Nov. 28, 2004) 

WHAT WE'RE READING: The Nightside novels

In Something from the Nightside, private detective John Taylor returned to the dark, magical heart of London where he was born to find a teenage girl who had been eaten by a house that was not really a house.

The 2003 Ace book introduced Taylor, his preternatural gift for finding things, and the strange segment of the city where it's always 3 a.m., the moon is always full and things are never what they seem.

In the second book (late 2003) of Simon R. Green's projected six-part Nightside series, Agents of Light and Darkness, Taylor found himself fighting angels from both Above and Below after he was hired by a rogue priest to recover the Unholy Grail — the cup from which Judas drank at the Last Supper. Seems both sides thought it would give them the edge they needed to win their eternal war; needless to say, Taylor didn't like the odds of the Nightside surviving Judgment Day.

Now the third book, The Nightingale's Lament (2004), finds Taylor trying to figure out why fans are dying at their own hands after listening to the songs of the Nightside's latest singing sensation, Rossingnol — and what unearthly power her spiderlike managers hold over her.

(In March 2005, Ace is scheduled to release the fourth book, Hex and the City.)

Green is perhaps best known for his science fiction and fantasy series — the Deathstalker books chief among them. But the Nightside novels promise to supplant these, both in depth and scope.

Taylor runs the razor's edge, trusting neither the light nor the darkness — and trusted by neither side. He's an anti-hero for the ages, one who can reference both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Merlin the Magician, for instance. One who is as at ease jousting with knights as with biker chicks hopped up on demonic steroids.

The books are quick reads, mixing pulp detective yarns with Lovecraft all wrapped in wicked British humor. They also tend to follow a pattern that sets their protagonist and his few surviving friends against overwhelming odds — to which they respond with a shrug, a pull on a cigarette, and begin rolling up their sleeves.

You know this is liable to hurt later, but it's better to just get to it.

Now, that's the guy I want at my back when the traffic gets hungry and the spiders come out of the rotted woodwork and the angels turn people to salt at the fast-food joint and the nightingale's song makes death seem like a good idea. Someone to watch over you — to whack you upside the head and kick you in the behind and cast a protective spell and find the hidden path out of this mess.

Someone from the Nightside.