Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Richard Matheson

Shatner’s Duality Kirk Splits in Classic Trek

On the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, in honor of William Shatner’s return to the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY, this weekend, Roy made the command decision that we will discuss the original series episode “The Enemy Within” (1966). This is the one in which a transporter malfunction causes Captain Kirk to be split into two people, one “good,” but indecisive and ineffectual, and the other “evil,” impulsive and irrational. Obviously, it was Evil Roy who handed down this unilateral decision.

I’m just kidding, of course. I love this stuff, and it is classic “Trek.” Like the character of divided Kirk, its qualities are many-faceted: at the same time ludicrous, thought-provoking, engaging, and fun.

Shatner is at his histrionic best, underlit and heavy on the eyeliner when evil, and managing to overplay “underplay” when good. But where he really displays his chops is in keeping a straight face while acting alongside a dog in a hairy caterpillar/unicorn onesie.

Famed horror and sci-fi scribe Richard Matheson (“The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “The Legend of Hell House,” “I am Legend”) mines the old doppelganger theme for this exploration of man’s duality. It also happens to be the first episode, thanks to Leonard Nimoy, in which Spock delivers his signature Vulcan nerve pinch.

Join us as my will weakens in the presence of forceful Roy. Saurian brandy will be served in the comments section, as it’s revealed that Roy and I are two sides of the same coin, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., THIS WEEK AT A SPECIAL TIME, THURSDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EST!

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November 15, 2023
October Nightstand Reads Spooky Season Books

Okay! It’s time! Belly up to bar for a glass of hot cider. And let’s hear it. What’s on your nightstand for the month of October?

Me, it’s somewhat of a cliché, I know, but I’ll be reacquainting myself with the tales and poems of Edgar Allan Poe – hardly a curious volume of forgotten lore – as I’ll be in Richmond at a point, and I’ll want to visit The Poe Museum. (Seemingly, every town has one.) My copy is still a cherished one, put out by Philadelphia’s Running Press back in the 1980s. You may remember the cover. All the cool high school kids had one.

This I will supplement with “Poe Pictures,” a lavishly illustrated hardback from Tomahawk Press that pays tribute to Poe’s film legacy. Bruce G. Hallenbeck is the author, with a foreword provided by none other than Roger Corman (who was responsible for American International Pictures’ Edgar Allan Poe cycle starring Vincent Price). I figured this would be a good book to flip through over my afternoon coffee.

I’ve also been able to secure a copy of “A Night in the Lonesome October” by sci-fi/fantasy writer Roger Zelazny. This is one I have not read, but it appears Jack the Ripper meets Dr. Frankenstein, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Rasputin, among others. And it’s narrated by Jack’s dog? There are 31 chapters to coincide with the 31 days of the month. This was recommended to me for the past two years by Bill Montgomery, who follows this page, so when I was able to locate an affordable copy, I figured I’d give it a shot. Mass market science fiction paperbacks of this era used to be much easier to find in used bookstores. Where did they all go? I came across a copy in a secondhand book shop in upstate New York, mylar-bagged, for $50! This is NOT the copy I purchased. Thank you, eBay.

I’m thinking this is also a good time for me to finally read Rosemary Brown’s non-fiction(?) account “Unfinished Symphonies.” I know I’ve written about Brown here a couple of times before. Brown was the English spiritualist who claimed that the great composers were still very much active and dictating posthumous works to her. If you missed my most recent post on the subject, from October 2022, with links to some fascinating related info, you’ll find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=963729637879433&set=a.883855802533484

For variety’s sake, I may also extract a story or two from a collection of Richard Matheson’s short stories a friend gifted me for my birthday. Many of Matheson’s tales have been adapted for film and television. I’m sure you’ve encountered his work, even if you don’t recognize his name. He was responsible for some of the most memorable “Twilight Zone” episodes (including the one with the gremlin that taunts an airborne William Shatner), as well as the stories for what became “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “The Legend of Hell House,” and “Trilogy of Terror,” among many, many others.

I read his novel “I am Legend,” back in the 1990s – well before the Will Smith movie, but with two traumatizing adaptations starring Vincent Price (“The Last Man on Earth”) and Charlton Heston (“The Omega Man”) marring my childhood. Some of you may recall that my father took me to see “The Omega Man” at the drive-in when I was 5! Anyway, for me, the book was a pretty good ride for most of the way, until it crossed over from horror, with admittedly sci-fi underpinnings (plague-induced vampires), to a purely sci-fi ending, if memory serves, that didn’t quite satisfy. I’ll give a few of the shorter tales a whirl. Hopefully they’ll have enough meat on their bones so that I don’t feel like I’m floating away after all the heady atmosphere and rich vocabulary of Poe!

It’s amazing to me that I used to have to pound the pavement in every town I ever visited in the hopes of discovering a used bookstore with even a single copy of anything by any of these cult horror writers I craved (Sheridan Le Fanu, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft) from having encountered a few stories in cheap anthologies, usually offered on remainder tables of the big chains, and now many of them are available as Penguin paperbacks. Of course, the paper is nowhere of the quality of most of the books I purchased 40 years ago. But at least they’re available.

How about you? Any grimoires you’ll be poring over by flickering taper? If so, sound off below. It’s our month to howl!

October 1, 2023
Somewhere in Time John Barry’s Magic Touch

Composer John Barry does a lot of the heavy lifting in the fantasy romance, “Somewhere in Time” (1980).

Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour star in a film about a modern-day playwright, who becomes obsessed with a portrait of an early 20th century actress, and wills himself, through self-suggestion, back through the decades to meet her.

Richard Matheson provided the screenplay, based upon one of his own novels. Matheson is the weird fiction scribe who gave us “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “I Am Legend,” “The Legend of Hell House,” “Duel,” “What Dreams May Come,” and some of the best “Twilight Zone” episodes.

The author felt that “Somewhere in Time”s source material, “Bid Time Return,” represented some of his best writing. But in the movie, it’s Barry that really sells it. And a good thing too, since the director is Jeannot Szwarc – he of “Jaws 2,” “Supergirl,” and “Santa Claus: The Movie” notoriety.

Barry, a five-time Academy Award winner, left his stamp on a dozen James Bond movies. He scored the project as a favor to Seymour, a personal friend. Elsewise, the film’s modest budget would have prohibited hiring the composer at his usual fee.

Barry wrote the score shortly after losing both of his parents, which he credited, in part, for its strong emotional content. He must still have been under its spell a few years later, when he came to write his Oscar-winning music for “Out of Africa.”

Oh yeah, Rachmaninoff gets a pretty good workout too, as the characters are fond of “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”

At the time of its release, “Somewhere in Time” received lukewarm reviews, but the film has been kept alive by an ardent fanbase of hopeless romantics.

You’ll need a steamer trunk full of lace handkerchiefs, when Roy and I make time for “Somewhere in Time,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Leave your implausible timepieces in the comments section (and your pennies at home), when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

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April 7, 2022
Master of the World Vincent Price Takes Flight

A sense of déjà vu hangs like a propeller-driven baguette over “Master of the World” (1961).

Like Jules Verne’s other revolutionary “pacificist,” Captain Nemo, Robur the Conqueror understands that in order to make an omelette, you’ve got to break some oeufs. He spouts Bible passages while hammering everyone else’s swords into plowshares, dropping bombs from his heavier-than-air craft, forged in an apparent “volcano” outside a small Appalachian town in Pennsylvania. (We meet several of the principal characters in Philadelphia.)

At least, that’s the spin we get from American International Pictures, for whom Verne’s miraculous conquest of the skies is not enough, so Robur’s motives are twisted and the “Albatross” is reimagined as a “Nautilus” of the air. And while they’re at it, why not attempt to emulate the breezy romance of Michael Todd’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” so popular and acclaimed (the recipient of five Academy Awards, including that for Best Picture) when it was released only five years earlier? Trouble is, AIP had neither the budget to replicate that film’s scope nor it’s star-studded cameos.

“Master of the World” has everything you would expect from an American International Picture – Vincent Price, abundant stock footage, and a nowhere music score by Les Baxter. Even so, this was AIP’s most expensive film produced up until that time.

Of added interest is the fact that the screenplay is by sci-fi and horror legend, Richard Matheson, whose stories formed the basis of innumerable classic movies and television shows. Matheson also provided the screenplays for AIP’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle, also starring Price.

Je ne sais quoi teeters into WTF, as the film’s schizophrenic tone careens from suspenseful adventure to slapstick comedy (what’s the deal with the beleaguered French chef?) to out-of-left field romance (a title song trying too hard to recall the success of Victor Young’s “Around the World”). Phileas Fogg may have traversed the globe in 80 days, but Robur boasts he can make the trip in three weeks! Mon Dieu! What he would have made of the Concorde is anyone’s guess…

I hope you’ll join Roy and me as we discuss the family-friendly (?) “Master of the World,” co-starring Charles Bronson, in his first leading role, and David Frankham.

Incidentally, Frankham will be our guest for a livestreamed interview from Trekonderoga, in Ticonderoga, New York, on Sunday, September 26, at 1:30 pm EDT! For more information about this three-day event, visit https://www.startrektour.com/

What Price peace? Why, Vincent Price, of course! Drop your bombs in the comments section, as we discuss “Master of the World.” We’ll be donning our propeller hats, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

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September 16, 2021
Trilogy of Terror Karen Black and Zuni Doll Fears

Just as last week there were no vampires in “Planet of the Vampires,” this week there is no sci-fi in “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” Or, for that matter, will there be very much terror, although our topic will be “Trilogy of Terror,” a 1975 made-for-television ABC Movie of the Week.

Roy Bjellquist and I will look back with amusement at our younger selves, and the universal boyhood apprehension of walking across a darkened bedroom, only to be ambushed by a raging Zuni fetish doll. Karen Black is at the heart of these blackened tales, the kinds of stories that, with a little more refinement, might have turned up on “The Twilight Zone” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” It’s no coincidence that the screenplay was adapted from three stories by Richard Matheson, the guy who first envisioned a gremlin standing on an airplane wing outside William Shatner’s window.

FUN FACT: The original Zuni fetish doll sold at auction last year for over $200,000. I’m hoping that’s considered valuable enough that he’s now locked up in some vault somewhere, minimizing the threat of my getting stabbed in the ankles on nocturnal trips to the bathroom.

Share your Karen Black-related neuroses in the comments section of the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Our group-therapy will commence, live-streamed on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT.

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October 2, 2020

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