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I've always really loved pulp heroes. Despite that I grew up on just as healthy a diet of superhero comics as any other red-blooded American twentysomething, I've always preferred the more visceral, more "human" heroics of these throwbacks to a lost age to today's modern man in spandex. I find that rendering the adventures of these less garish figures filmable requires a more artful eye. When done right, the material far surpasses the mundane direction common to superhero films. The source materials in the right hands allow for them to construct a unique identity for the film, making it something truly special. Of course, it doesn't always work. We'll talk about that in this thread too. I'll begin with a list of films I plan to cover, films that either come from pulp or pay tribute to it. Yes, I know some of these suck; I've seen most of them. Feel free to suggest more or shoot down these suggestions. Whatever. · Dick Tracy · The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension · The Shadow · The Phantom · Flash Gordon · Darkman · The Spirit · The Rocketeer · Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow · Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze · The Mummy EDIT: An excellent article with more examples and some good writing on the nature of pulp! Allow me to begin by writing more words than anyone ever has or should on a movie fairly popular around these parts…  Look at that beautiful logo. Simple yet striking. I chose Dick Tracy to start with for two reasons. First, Dick Tracy as a character makes for an interesting comparison to Batman. Chester Gould created Tracy only about eight years before Bob Kane created Batman. As most readers know, Burton's first Batman film came out shortly before this film. In both characters we see shrewd, diligent, punctilious detectives who see the world in very simple terms of good and evil. Both had kid sidekicks and a fear of romantic commitment. Both franchises became memorable primarily for their colorful, memorable villains (my personal favorite aspect of both franchises). Where in the Bat-franchise, mobsters function largely as a more mundane contrast to the "freak" villains, Dick Tracy would, in its second decade, begin to combine the mobsters and the freaks, making grotesque characters who execute their grandiose crimes in suits and fedoras. Both franchises also focused on gadgetry, featuring numerous devices that didn't or couldn't exist, such as Tracy's trademark wristwatch (which I really wish existed in real life, but sadly, technology has taken a track that doesn't include it  ). Just look at that beautiful design, a radio speaker on a rectangular face that looks like something straight out of noir. Second reason: I absolutely and completely love this film, and I have since age 7. As I mentioned elsewhere, this movie had the same effect on my childhood as movies like Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, the Back to the Future series, and (for younger readers) Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings had on most other Internet denizens. To give you an idea, at this very moment I type this post in a room with no less than eight pieces of the film's memorabilia. (In the next room sit 15 books related to the strip.) Interestingly, although I loved this film as a kid, seeing it now, I really consider it an adult superhero film. The cinematography and costume design evoke noir, the sets evoke art deco, and the film relies on an understanding of organized crime. Like, say, Ronin, this film says twice as much in the actors' body language than the dialogue (and adults obviously read body language much better than children do). The film also has a very dark comedy that, like the camp of Adam West's Batman, flew entirely over my head as a kid but seems crystal clear now. Also, Madonna gets more than a little past the MPAA, who apparently not only failed to get the runny "fresh peach" ice cream joke, but their usually adroit nipple-hunting failed to catch this… http://i.imgur.com/G7QqV.png (  for slightly visible left nipple)The Movie vs. the Strip I firmly believe that a movie can only work to the extent that its central conflict works. In this case, that central conflict occurs on the other side of the fourth wall. The conflict between Warren Beatty and Chester Gould drives this film. Gould died five years before the movie came out, but there still exists a distinct and important conflict between their visions of Tracy. Gould's strip achieved renown for its moral absolutism, protracted battles—often having Tracy and a villain go at it for months—and its sanguinary disposal of antagonists. Gould hated hippies and believed in unconditional trust in the police. He also went into his strip without an overarching plan, believing that if he didn't know what would happen next, neither would his audience. (He wrote himself into more than a few corners in the process.) On the other hand, we have Warren Beatty, one of Hollywood's most outspoken liberals. Although he grew up an avid fan of Dick Tracy, he made clear changes in adapting the strip for the screen. The film's villains have a decidedly short lifespan, sometimes dying before we even see what makes them so villainous (besides their appearances). Through the corrupt district attorney, Beatty introduced an element of legal malfeasance, something Gould rarely if ever addressed. Beatty's Tracy experiences moments of doubt and temptation, a marked contrast with his always-correct, always-confident counterpart. Most strikingly, although this film does have mobsters dying en masse, the film's deaths all have a bloodless quality, lacking the angry contempt in Gould's pen as he'd kill off his badguys. (For instance, the Brow—a spy plotting to sell American secrets—died impaled on an American flag, right next to an honor roll of deployed soldiers.) Beatty also contrasted with Gould in his perfectionism, often filming dozens of takes of everything. Even in the film's tie-in graphic novels (by Len Wein and Kyle Baker) and novelization (by Gould's first successor and prolific gangster guru Max Allan Collins) show signs of Beatty's influences, the former using even more villains than the film with a story and pace very dissimilar to Gould's strip. According to Baker, Beatty had a very hands-on involvement in the development of these materials. Beatty's Dick Tracy spends the film learning to accept change, the real central theme of the work. The Tracy we meet in the beginning has spent his career doing his job entirely in black and white, never thinking about the future or any change to his basic formula. As such, the film pits Tracy against ideas entirely new to him, like a femme fatale frenemy, gangsters banding together under one banner, a corrupt district attorney, falling victim to a frame-job, marriage, and adopting a kid. The film's very first shot conveys divergence from the strip…  Gould rarely drew shots like this. He usually either had a subject or—less commonly—a close-up of evidence, in which he'd often indicate something with an arrow. This serves as a sort of equipping-for-battle shot that establishes a pulp hero film as opposed to a pulp hero comic. The film doesn't diverge entirely from the strip cinematographically, though. This shot in the first act looks more-or-less exactly like a Gould panel, with its minimalist composition and use of silhouettes. Gould loving loved silhouettes.  Between the two scenes, we also see a shootout in a garage that references the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and heavily evokes Some Like it Hot. The scene itself works because of the medium and, although I found it a bit tacked-on, it establishes several characters quickly and reminds the astute that Gould considered real life his best source and greatest competition. In any case, technically the movie does one decidedly amazing thing: the makeup. Makeup designers John Caglione, Jr. and Doug Drexler do a stellar job, making the villains look distinctly "inhuman," diverse, and memorable while at the same time deftly avoiding the Uncanny Valley. Al Pacino designed the makeup for Big Boy (in the strip, Big Boy looks much like Al Capone, who stood 9 cm taller than Pacino with a much heavier build), exaggerating his own features to create an antagonist whose rounded chin and jutting facial features darkly contrasted with Beatty's relatively angular face. Beatty included as many villains as he could as a precautionary measure in case the film didn't get a sequel. I found it an extremely shrewd move, as the villains stand as the film's strongest facet and to this day it saddens me that Beatty's decision didn't become the standard for superhero films. (Personally, I watch superhero films for the costume/character designs, since I figured out long ago that I probably shouldn't expect a stirring, soulful story or unique and different cinematography.) The makeup designs work as a mere subset of the entire visual design, primarily using comic strip colors: red, blue, green, cyan, magenta, and of course, yellow. This creates a feeling much like the 1966 Batman series, albeit slightly darker, with much more subtle humor.  Even in the cityscape, we see very bold colors and a simple, almost brutalist, rectangular take on art deco with German Expressionist coloring to create a beautiful effect, successfully creating a world within the film. The noir-like cinematography involves nearly constant changes to the pitch of the shots, bringing out the best in the sets and costumes.  Although it heralds the 90s fad of eschewing subtlety, this shot serves as a typical example of the film's cinematography. The values say everything. Mumbles sits in bright light, half naked, while Tracy stands imposingly over him, the darkest figure in the room. Kathy Bates' Mrs. Green serves no real purpose other than background detail, her not-too-dark, not-too-bright, regular secretary getup making her look like part of the gray negative space surrounding Tracy and bearing down on Mumbles. Notice the slightly-bright-but-still-not-white polar bear watercooler sitting in the background like Chekhov's gun. In this environment, one can hardly find it surprising that Mumbles cracks.  Another shot that says everything. Although it also lacks the subtlety of old school noir films, we know an attempted seduction when we see it. Madonna looks relaxed and presumptuous to Beatty's stiff confusion. This would feel like something from the 40s if the sexuality didn't look so overt. Behind the clear seduction attempt, though, Breathless' pose suggests submission. Her outer amorality masks a very real fear for her safety. Although she appears to want a lover, here she really begs—in her own way—for a protector. The men's costumes, for their part, look like noir uniforms, with just enough individual touches to give each character a unique presence. (I wish the colors had some meaning behind them, as most of the villains have more-or-less random suit colors, but you can't win 'em all.) Although Gould seldom put tremendous effort into backgrounds or establishing shots, we see a lot of detail in the matte paintings, making for some beautiful shots, like this one in the alley behind the 7th St. Garage.  Nothing against CGI, but hot drat do I love a good matte painting. This one has the moodiness, violent angles, and too-saturated colors of German Expressionism with the subtle, simple beauty of art deco. We also can't ignore the musical contributions by Danny Elfman and Stephen Sondheim, both of whom made excellent contributions that match the film quite well. Elfman did this film between the two Burton Batman films, and one can see his sense of ramping excitement used to excellent effect here. He also did the theme song for The Animated Series, which would have sounded right at home in this movie. Sondheim does his usual job, making simple, catchy, memorable little songs that match the mood well and rightfully won him an Oscar. The Characters The film becomes most interesting when we look at the characters relative to their comic strip counterparts. I won't show every character (since the film and the strip both have a gently caress of a lot of characters); just enough to get a good cross-section.   Although Beatty has a few years on your average superhero actor, I can scarcely imagine anyone else playing Tracy in live action. His angular visage, arrogant bearing, and expert timing allow him to play well off this film's numerous respected, venerable character actors. The filmmakers initially planned to give Tracy a prosthetic angular jaw. But Beatty's real jaw does the job perfectly. In fact, Beatty's normal appearance gives him the visual contrast with Big Boy's almost intrusively jutting features and the freakish appearances of the others, giving us the ability to sympathize with Tracy very quickly.   As we see here, in designing Al "Big Boy" Caprice's makeup, Al Pacino completely transformed the character from an Al Capone knockoff into, well, an Al Pacino knockoff, exaggerating his own facial features and film personas. The character becomes the same loud, bombastic antagonist that Alan Rickman would use the next year to buoy Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Here, that explosive personality contrasts quite well with Beatty's sedate leading presence. I used this screenshot for Big Boy's costume: teal and purple, two colors that completely contrast with the yellow and red on Tracy's costume. Big Boy's poor posture also complements Tracy's upright presence.   As with Beatty and Pacino, Madonna's Patricia "Breathless" Mahoney plays on her star persona, a femme fatale with a largely neutral standing, as opposed to the strip's out-and-out villain. As with the other women in the film, Madonna wears no prosthetics in this role, but we can see that she doesn't need them. Sean Young almost got this role, and she insisted that not only did she sleep with Beatty, but she lost the role for breaking up with him. Then again, Sean Young also showed up on the set of Batman Returns in a homemade Catwoman suit, so we should probably take her stories with a grain of crazy.    Sadly, despite Glenne Headly's considerable real-life intelligence and her quietly opinionated portrayal of Tess, she doesn't get the screen time she needs to really explore Tess' potential. Among the film's other flaws, it blazes no new ground for women. Tess functions as the secure, demure woman to Breathless' textbook femme fatale. She comes off depressingly weak, at one point getting dragged across town against her will, rendered powerless simply by having her left wrist grabbed. Her character undergoes a transformation, but it primarily involves becoming better at understanding Tracy. Essentially, she gets "better" at putting up with him, i.e. becoming a "good wife." Interestingly, while the film's Tess works as a florist, her comic counterpart has recently become a private investigator (above right). Notice that her character has evolved tremendously over the years (although unfortunately she doesn't get huge amounts of panel time).   Charlie Korsmo needed very little makeup to become The Kid (who turns out to take the name Dick Tracy Junior). Korsmo brings a bit of attitude that his strip counterpart lacked. Korsmo only acted in a few films (doing a very good job in each that I've seen), eventually quitting entirely. He went on to become extremely successful academically (pulling a 4.0 in loving MIT!), and career-wise he has already succeeded enormously. In fact, if you read this, you probably shouldn't look him up. It will depress you. Although most Batman writers have struggled with reconciling the character's dark, imposing nature with his apparent lack of qualms concerning child endangerment and making use of a sidekick in bright colors, we see Junior's value to Tracy very quickly in the film. He doesn't become a full partner like Robin, but he still idolizes his father figure, saves Tracy several times (and not in that annoying Wesley Crusher way either), and becomes a believable component in Tracy's gradual transformation into a family man.    Mumbles exists in this film as a sort of pathetic lackey, although the strip's Mumbles murdered without remorse. I found this one of the more interesting makeup jobs, since like Pacino, one senses a need to identify the actor under the makeup, but unlike Pacino, the prosthetics don't go far beyond a bent philtrum and fake eyebrows. (Interestingly, Mumbles appears in very little of the movie's memorabilia. I think some likeness rights involving Dustin Hoffman took place, but I don't know for sure.) Most of Gould's villains met with a swift and final comeuppance. Mumbles lives in both the film and strip. In fact, in the strip, he just killed off his old gang a month ago!   Shoulders gives us a good idea of the differences between the strip and live-action. The makeup artists kept the pockmarks of the strip's villain's face (although they missed his deformed left ear). We can see that Caglione and Drexler captured the essence of the character but kept him looking "human." For a long time, rumor had it David Bowie played Shoulders as a cameo. (In reality, Australian stuntman Stig Eldred played him.)   Flattop Jones—the strip's most popular villain with the biggest legacy—appears in the film as "the dragon," the main antagonist's main henchman, a crazy man who knows nothing but murder. Notice the slightly wavy hair, giving the character an appearance flatter than any human skull can become (at least with a living person using it), but—along with the unibrow, chin, and large ears—replicating the strip's character uncannily well. One can barely see actor William Forsythe under all those prosthetics, but Forsythe still conveys Flattop's lunacy in his eyes and smug facial expressions.    Leonard "Littleface" Finney serves as an interesting example of the changes that Caglione and Drexler made in their designs. Notice that the live-action Littleface has a lot more lines, as you need more detail for live-action. As with the other four villains he appeared with, he only got seconds of screentime. In these pre-CGI days the effects people had to make do with two Littlefaces: this front shot and one from behind. That made Littleface the only villain who necessarily had very little screentime, as you really can't do much with such things. Like Mumbles, Littleface appears in the strip even now, playing an important role in the current story arc, in fact. (He did a heel-face turn just a month ago, after over half a century!)   Lorenzo "Pruneface" Prunesti ranks among my favorite make-up jobs. Gould could call it good (or call it… GOULD?!) with a few seemingly-random lines, but Caglione and Drexler had to make all that detail look like human flesh. With the liver spots and whatnot, they do an amazing job while still allowing RG Armstrong to communicate with facial expressions almost as normal.   As with a few of the other villains, the makeup designers gave Lips Manlis a grotesque appearance that his strip counterpart actually lacked. Gould originally based Lips on John Dillinger, only drawing him with hints of the giant maw that Paul Sorvino possessed in the movie. Where the film's Lips looks like a clam with a pompadour, the strip's Lips looks mostly like a normal person. The strip's version had a much better fate as well; Tracy successfully reformed him and renamed him Bob Honor. The film's Lips suffered the most grisly fate in the film. Although not as bloody as the strip's deaths, I still consider "the bath" among the most hosed up ways to do a person.  I mean, getting submerged in a crate full of cement and then dumped into a river? Who wouldn't rather just get shot? (To this day I have a fear of cement trucks. Thanks, Beatty.)   Of all the film's grotesque villains, only the Blank wears a fake face within the movie's story. The film reveals his true identity at the end. (You can't really find it surprising, though, since only one living major character hadn't appeared in the climax.) The Blank allowed for a very versatile performance, really one of the most impressive performances of the film. I'm surprised she had the courage to do something that could've proved pernicious to her vocal cords. (Again, the Blank's identity shouldn't come as a big surprise if you watch the film.) Interesting sidenote: the Blank's action figure had a removable mask, revealing the Blank's true identity. As this severely spoiled the movie, Playmates delayed production on the action figure, eventually releasing it once in one store in Canada, making it one of the rarest mass-produced action figures in the world. (No, I don't have one. Even I don't have enough crazy in my brain to plunk down hundreds for a hunk of plastic.) The Story Unfortunately, the other aspects of the film succeeded, but they had to prop up a story that worked, but stayed relatively simple. The film doesn't explain much of the backstory, causing a very disorienting feeling early on. The film begins almost immediately with Big Boy violently taking over Lips' mob. The graphic novels explain the source of Big Boy's and Lips' schism. To make it brief, Big Boy used to work for Lips. Lips treated him like poo poo. Big Boy seceded and took his men with him. Lips tried and failed to have him killed. Incidentally, a henchman of Lips also killed Tess Trueheart's father, Emil, (Jeremiah in the strip) motivating Tracy to take on the mob. In any case, for all its villains, the plot has a very linear structure. Dick Tracy has already begun battling Big Boy when the film begins. The battle escalates, the Blank complicates matters, all the badguys either die or get arrested, and we arrive at a climax in a gearhouse with Tracy, Big Boy, The Blank, and a kidnapped (of course) Tess Trueheart. Personally, I wish the story had more complications. Like Batman, Tracy starts the story as a detective but ends it as a two-fisted hero, which I liked, but the ending weakened the resolution of the case as a police matter, something Tracy can do that Batman can't. I always thought shifting the movie's time-frame back to a full-on gang war between Lips Manlis and Big Boy (subject to The Blank's interference) would've given the filmmakers all the excuse they need to bring out the villains and draw on the strip's Big Boy/Capone and Lips/Dillinger dichotomies in their strategic decisions. Of course, it would've also weakened the presence of Beatty's lead, which would have created its own set of problems. This becomes another one of the rare instances of real similarity between Gould and Beatty. Gould himself often wrote extremely simple, linear stories, practically a necessity when telling a story through three panels a day. In any case, the story in its current form does allow for some amazing shots, showing off dozens of just beautiful matte paintings and allowing for the chemistry between Beatty and each female lead to build. The gearhouse seems like a very inauspicious place for the final climax, but the acting by the four people involved gets the job done. There also exist quite a lot of sly references the original strip, many of which showed that Beatty did all of this from a place of great affection toward Gould's work. The Future Sadly, Beatty has long wanted to make a sequel, but none of his attempts have ever pushed any plans off the ground. Between him, Tribune Media Services, and Disney, the rights to make a sequel have turned into a massive clusterfuck (yet one more point of comparison with the campy Batman TV series). An attempt to make a live-action TV series fizzled due to the issues. Considering the strip's forgotten status and the film's age, I wouldn't count on seeing anything Dick Tracy-related outside of the comic strip itself for a very, very long time. (I'd bet on never.) But I don't care because we have a Dick Tracy movie (out on Blu-Ray now, no less!) and as you can see, I kinda like it. CloseFriend fucked around with this message at May 4, 2013 around 23:32 |
| # ? Jun 20, 2012 05:57 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 17:30 |
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Does Darkman really count? I always thought of him as a straight up superhero, albeit a low powered one. Maybe that's what makes a Pulp hero? Moderate power and a hell of a lot of gumption? The Rocketeer might be just a really underwhelming Iron Man, fighting nazis instead of... the Mandarin?
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| # ? Jun 20, 2012 13:01 |
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What about the serials or any of the films that came out when the pulp magazines were still in their heyday? Will you be covering any of those? Also Dick Tracy and the rest of the movies on your list are all on my DVD rack.
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| # ? Jun 20, 2012 17:14 |
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Danger-Pumpkin posted:Does Darkman really count? I always thought of him as a straight up superhero, albeit a low powered one. Maybe that's what makes a Pulp hero? Moderate power and a hell of a lot of gumption? The Rocketeer might be just a really underwhelming Iron Man, fighting nazis instead of... the Mandarin? I'd also consider Indiana Jones a pulp hero, but doing write-ups on his films obviously falls way beyond the scope of this thread. Humbug Scoolbus posted:What about the serials or any of the films that came out when the pulp magazines were still in their heyday? Will you be covering any of those? Humbug Scoolbus posted:Also Dick Tracy and the rest of the movies on your list are all on my DVD rack.
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| # ? Jun 20, 2012 17:46 |
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The wikipedia defination of 'Pulp Fiction' is as follows:wikipedia posted:Pulp magazines (often referred to as "the pulps") are inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long. Pulps were printed on cheap paper with ragged, untrimmed edges. Normally what is considered a Pulp Film is one that concentrates on the science fiction/adventure/horror/crime genres that were represented in the magazines. The OPs list of films is an excellent start for the modern era of retro-pulpy film, but for the originals we have to go back to the source. The penny dreadful novels of the 19th century. One of the first was Varney the Vampire from 1845. It was gleefully plagiarized by Bram Stoker for Dracula which was itself eventually made into quite a pulpy movie indeed. Dracula(1931) was about as pulpy a movie as you will ever find. With cheerable heroes, a hissable foe, and pretty girls. The action is slam-bang and logic is taking a vacation. It is not however the first pulp movie, that would have to be Frankenstein(1910) by Edison Studios. Also from 19th century material and also heavy on the shock/heroism elements over the philosophical implications. All the Universal Classic Monster films are pulp at their core, followed of course by many if not most of the science fiction films of the 50s. Forbidden Planet and This Island Earth being touchstones.
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| # ? Jun 20, 2012 19:14 |
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I'd say that Ash from the Evil Dead series would count as a pulp hero. He has an origin and a metamorphosis in ED2 and is full on bad-rear end by the time he lands in Army of Darkness.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 01:45 |
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"Pulp" is just written fiction that's printed in a certain way. Likewise, comic books are just "sequential art" (as Will Eisner called it) that's packaged in a certain way. They're media, not genres. But comic books are (and have been since the 1960s) most associated with superheroes, while pulp was probably most associated with crime stories. On the other hand, there were crime comic books, superhero pulps, and stuff of either medium in lots of other genres. Nearly all early comic books, even through the 1960s, read much like the pulps did, probably because both of them were pumped out quick and dirty, by people living and working in crappy circumstances, typically for an audience that was thought to be unsophisticated (whether or not they really are). You may want to read Jim Steranko's History of Comics, if you can find a copy. He spends quite a while discussing the pulps. You have only 1 1/2 examples of pulp fiction: Doc Savage, and The Shadow, which was originally a radio series. Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, and The Spirit were classic early comics, not pulp. The others are more modern, of course. And I don't think your examples owe anything more to pulp fiction than, say, Batman, which started as pretty straight crime fiction with a masked vigilante. As far as I can tell, what you're looking for is something with some action or heroics, and maybe has a 1930s or '40s style (or 30s/40s futurist), without superheroes in circus strongman costumes. Does that sound about right? Then I'd say Tim Burton's Batman and the Indiana Jones movies fit pretty well, though obviously you'll have seen them. Then again, if you want movies that are like the pulps (and/or like golden-age comics), the closest you can get are old (mostly 1920s-'50s) B-movies. They span almost exactly the same genres as the pulps and comics, with exactly the same quick-and-dirty production. I can't think of any "heroic" ones off the top of my head, but I'll probably think of some later.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 02:32 |
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I'm also a big fan of the pulp/retro adventure/hard-boiled detective/superhero noir genres, although I admit I've read very few of the original pulps themselves. Tarzan, Conan, and (recent cinematic bomb) John Carter were all early pulp heroes, and H.P. Lovecraft and L. Ron Hubbard were pulp fiction writers alongside Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert L. Howard. I haven't seen Dick Tracy since it came out -- I was 13 and going into 7th grade -- but I liked it a lot at the time, even more than Burton's Batman (which I never went crazy over as a superhero-loving kid, and I've had no desire to revisit since). I loved The Rocketeer (which I own) and The Shadow (which I should own), and when I finally saw Buckaroo Banzai in my 20s, I wondered where it had been all my life. What I like the most about pulp characters, movies, and comics is the retro aesthetic -- I am a sucker for anything set in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. I love the fashion, the music, the art, the architecture, the cars, the slang. I love wearing suits and wish I lived somewhere cool enough to wear trench coats with suits, but at least I know better than to attempt the dreaded fedora. CloseFriend, are you familiar with the Sandman Mystery Theatre comics from DC/Vertigo? It was a very noir take on one of DC's earliest Golden Age "mystery men," a '90s series set in the late '30s and early '40s, with all the style and horror that involves. You'd love it. A good chunk of the series is collected in trade paperbacks, and it would make a great movie or cable series. The hero, Wesley Dodds, has no powers but prophetic dreams and a gas gun that puts people to sleep, and he wears the obligatory three-piece suit, trench coat, fedora, and a stylish gas mask.  You'd also love Planetary, comic writer Warren Ellis' love letter to the history of pulp fiction and the comic books that sprang from it. If you haven't read it, do so now. Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at Jun 21, 2012 around 03:11 |
| # ? Jun 21, 2012 03:08 |
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The AV club had a good writeup on John Carter and how while it's not an amazing film (although I and the director disagree) it's not as bad as it's been hyped up (down?) to be.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 03:39 |
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I think John Carter is amazing as well. It feels true to its origins.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 03:47 |
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John Carter was really enjoyable, far more than say The Avengers or other early summer releases.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 04:08 |
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Well, gently caress, I should probably have just said "retro superheroes." I may just have to do some find-and-replacing…
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 06:01 |
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CloseFriend posted:Well, gently caress, I should probably have just said "retro superheroes." I may just have to do some find-and-replacing… Nah, it's fine. At this point "pulp" is used more to describe the tone of a thing more than the material it's derived from.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 06:27 |
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Dickeye posted:Nah, it's fine. At this point "pulp" is used more to describe the tone of a thing more than the material it's derived from. Yeah, it's like how we say comic book movies to describe super hero flicks and don't really mean History of Violence or Ghost World. Pulp is a more useful term, because it tells us more about tone. Plus people who get caught up in genre definitions too much are being pedantic, I knew exactly what you meant when I read the title. Although there is some overlap, Captain America felt like kinda like the old Pulp movies like Rocketeer or The Shadow, and conversely I'm pretty sure of they made a Shadow movie today they would crib so hard from Dark Knight it would be embarrassing. I've seen several of the movies in the OP, but it's probably been at least a decade ago, I've been meaning to re-watch Rocketeer and The Shadow ever since I saw Captain America, just to see if my comparison held up. I should get on that, was The Phantom any good I never saw that one and was curious?
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 07:09 |
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Skwirl posted:Although there is some overlap, Captain America felt like kinda like the old Pulp movies like Rocketeer or The Shadow, and conversely I'm pretty sure of they made a Shadow movie today they would crib so hard from Dark Knight it would be embarrassing. That's partly because the Cap movie drew heavily from the original comics in terms of tone, and the Golden Age's "here's a good guy watch him crush the comically evil bad guy" stories aren't too dissimilar from the pulps.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 07:15 |
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The Phantom has Billy Zane, Kristy Swanson, Treat Williams, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. Itwas written by Jeffrey Boam who was responsible for Brisco County and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and was directed by Simon Wincer. (responsible for Quigley Down Under(yay) and Free Willy (unhh) among others). The film pulls strongly from its comic strip roots, and it is obvious that Boam was a huge Lee Falk fan. I really think the heroic tone of the entire movie is a nice change from the angsty-angry-hero crap that permeates modern action movies. In short, this movie is great in my opinion and has got an undeserved bad rep.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 15:59 |
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I kind of feel like 'Pulp' heroes are just Super/Action heroes from before Stan Lee injected anxiety into the formula. So early Batman, Superman, Kazaar, pre-Avengers Captain America, etc. all fit in with Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy. The only exception I can think of is Noir stories, which are sort of defined by moral ambiguity, story wise. Not that I'm an expert.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 16:40 |
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Danger-Pumpkin posted:I kind of feel like 'Pulp' heroes are just Super/Action heroes from before Stan Lee injected anxiety into the formula. So early Batman, Superman, Kazaar, pre-Avengers Captain America, etc. all fit in with Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy. The only exception I can think of is Noir stories, which are sort of defined by moral ambiguity, story wise. Not that I'm an expert. No, this is pretty accurate. Golden Age comics have that same feeling as crazy pulps, where it's about the morally upright hero kicking the living poo poo out of a comically evil and over the top villain using his fancy powers/gadgets. The Marvel revolution injected humanity into the characters, but by that time comics had already moved on to the wholesome, goofy fun that characterized the Silver Age.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 17:40 |
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That was a great Dick Tracy write-up and definitely more words then I ever expected to read about it. I haven't seen that movie since I was a kid and I should really give it another watch. Darkman is one of my favorite superhero/pulp hero movies. I love how emotionally powerful it manages to be on top of being really violent. Darkman has some unique traits to him and Liam Neeson does a great job playing him. I need to watch this movie again.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 18:23 |
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I haven't had the time to watch and write up another film—and I really want to get some good, real discussion going on Dick Tracy which I consider an excellent movie. In lieu of that… book recommendations! I have two books checked out from the library. (In fact, I've had them for so long that I kind of avoid the librarians on the street now.) Both work off the ideas I wanted to discuss in this thread and both contain lots of pretty pictures. Pulp Art by Robert Lesser (ISBN: 0-7855-1717-7) More or less what it sounds like: a gallery of covers of old pulp magazines. Most of the covers depicted show off the painters' amazing eye for composition, showing a lot of excitement in really not that much space. The Shadow, The Spider, Tarzan, and Doc Savage show up a lot. You can find a lot of great western and retro-futuristic sci-fi in here as well. American Streamlined Design by David A. Hanks and Anne Hoy (ISBN: 2-0803-0499-2) This will interest noir fans more than pulp fans, but it has enough overlap to entertain both. Hot drat, this book has some stunningly beautiful stuff. Planes, trains, automobiles, cookware, and a ton of other poo poo all made to look 40s chic. A must-read for anyone who liked the unity of design of the 1940s or likes to look at objects that complement art deco architecture. Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:CloseFriend, are you familiar with the Sandman Mystery Theatre comics from DC/Vertigo? It was a very noir take on one of DC's earliest Golden Age "mystery men," a '90s series set in the late '30s and early '40s, with all the style and horror that involves. You'd love it. A good chunk of the series is collected in trade paperbacks, and it would make a great movie or cable series. The hero, Wesley Dodds, has no powers but prophetic dreams and a gas gun that puts people to sleep, and he wears the obligatory three-piece suit, trench coat, fedora, and a stylish gas mask. Bo Berry posted:That was a great Dick Tracy write-up and definitely more words then I ever expected to read about it. I haven't seen that movie since I was a kid and I should really give it another watch.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 19:57 |
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Bo Berry posted:That was a great Dick Tracy write-up and definitely more words then I ever expected to read about it. I haven't seen that movie since I was a kid and I should really give it another watch. How do you feel about the sequels? They don't have Liam Neeson, which s a drat shame, but I kind of like them better.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 20:02 |
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Danger-Pumpkin posted:How do you feel about the sequels? They don't have Liam Neeson, which s a drat shame, but I kind of like them better. I haven't seen them yet. I kind of assumed they'd be pretty mediocre. I've been meaning to watch them anyway.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 21:26 |
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Arnold Vosloo does a fine job subbing for Neeson in the Darkman sequels.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 21:28 |
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Can we not do The Spirit? It's just that, The Spirit is one of my favorite characters, and his movie is just so... awful, and so far removed from everything I love about the character, and well.. it doesn't match the spirit of The Spirit.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 23:30 |
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I loving love 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' and I don't care who knows it. The soundtrack absolutely rules, it completely nails the pulp-serial concept it's paying homage to. I've got the movie novelization, and it's really cool because it's written in the classic pulp-novel format - every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, and the book is littered with references to other nonexistent Sky Captain adventures that presumably happened before the movie takes place. Seriously the opening credits music is absolutely perfect. Also it's about as close as I'll ever get to a Crimson Skies movie.  edit-- also would you consider Indiana Jones to be a "pulp hero"? The movies are definitely homages to the old pulp serials.
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| # ? Jun 21, 2012 23:54 |
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Vargo posted:Can we not do The Spirit? You are wrong. The Spirit has nothing to do with Eisner and everything to do with Sam Jackson chewing so much scenery he must have gained 400 pounds by the end of the movie. His performance alone (okay plus Stana Katic's Morganstern) makes this movie silly fun.
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 04:00 |
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I won't lie; I dread watching The Spirit, but only because I heard a rumor that it contains cruelty to cats. Strangest thing. I can sit through body horror, all sorts of crazy alien poo poo, Haneke films, Lynch films, Cronenberg films, Jodorowski films, Irréversible, and Un Chien Andalou, but I can't stomach seeing anything bad happen to a cat.Xenomrph posted:edit-- also would you consider Indiana Jones to be a "pulp hero"? The movies are definitely homages to the old pulp serials.
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 04:16 |
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CloseFriend posted:I won't lie; I dread watching The Spirit, but only because I heard a rumor that it contains cruelty to cats. Strangest thing. I can sit through body horror, all sorts of crazy alien poo poo, Haneke films, Lynch films, Cronenberg films, Jodorowski films, Irréversible, and Un Chien Andalou, but I can't stomach seeing anything bad happen to a cat. I'm assuming you skipped Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then. So for everybody who has seen it, is Spirit really that bad of a movie, or is it just a bad adaptation of the character? I'm not really familiar with the original, so I tried to avoid seeing the film when it came out, but would not knowing about the source material make the film okay, or what?
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 19:06 |
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Spirit is a bad adaption of the character in an okay movie. Sam Jackson however, is amazing in his shredding of every piece of scenery he gets close to.
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 19:14 |
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CloseFriend posted:I won't lie; I dread watching The Spirit, but only because I heard a rumor that it contains cruelty to cats. Strangest thing. I can sit through body horror, all sorts of crazy alien poo poo, Haneke films, Lynch films, Cronenberg films, Jodorowski films, Irréversible, and Un Chien Andalou, but I can't stomach seeing anything bad happen to a cat. 
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 19:15 |
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Danger-Pumpkin posted:I'm assuming you skipped Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then. I think more than anything, The Spirit is Exhibit A for why Frank Miller should never be allowed to direct a film on his own. I didn't think it was particularly bad, (just kinda dopey) but it definitely oozes with all of Miller's pet vices cranked up to 11 and set against the backdrop of the Will Eisner comic. Garish violence, latent racism, overt sexism, female characters inexplicably dressed as pin-up girls, etc., everything we've come to expect out of Frank Miller is thrown up onto the screen seemingly without regard for whether or not it's going to make a watchable film. I still prefer to watch the film as a comedy. Like, if you know you're sitting down to watch a film directed by Frank "I'm the Goddamn Batman" Miller, what else could you possibly expect out of it? (I guess what I'm saying is given the film he made, not knowing anything about The Spirit is fine since he pretty much ignores it anyway.)
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 19:22 |
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So I've decided to table Buckaroo Banzai for now. I don't see much point in doing a write-up that I've already done (especially for a movie that has had a whole month to celebrate it on CineD).Danger-Pumpkin posted:I'm assuming you skipped Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then.  In any case, I put a lot of loving work into that Dick Tracy write-up, so I refuse to let this thread die that easy. Onward to…  As this fairly mundane poster—with its static logo and lack of imagery from the film—may suggest, The Shadow largely plays by the numbers (well, what numbers exist) as pulp hero films go, but I still enjoyed it. Just about all the pulp tropes show up: Tommy guns; old cars; art deco architecture; ritzy nightclubs with beautiful chanteuses singing strangely relevant songs; museums holding powerful relics; inept, moribund guards; powerful/symbolic rings; retrofuturistic gadgets; exotic locales; battles of a physical nature along with battles of mental fortitude; story advancements via spinning newspapers; a curly-haired, vivacious femme fatale; a patrician protagonist fighting evil in a suit and fedora; a scientist in danger because of secrets he possesses; even a shot under an elevated train like Chicago's 'L.' (Dick Tracy—set in a nondescript city obviously based on Chicago—had this too.)  We see another standard in Lamont's Uncle Wainwright: a character who has the exact opposite opinions of the hero and his civilian identity. Here we see him grumbling about that "drat Shadow character." Notice that he wears a ring of his own, but of course he doesn't wear the Shadow's identification ring. Rings can play a big part in pulp character design.  The Cons Overall, I found The Shadow a very endearing and action-packed film beset by one major weakness: everything looks fake and cheesy. But I feel the film should get a pass for that. As a pulp story—the fakeness and cheese work with the entire aesthetic. For instance, a shadow falls right on Lamont Cranston when he uses his Jedi mind trick, even in his civilian identity. It looks silly, but it establishes the character's power in a method very true to its origins. I do think the film could've really used some color correction, though. Everything looks just a little too gray. The film also makes very heavy use of fog, a bit like Blade Runner, but unlike Blade Runner, The Shadow feels like it uses fog more to conceal cheap-looking sets than to complement the visual aesthetic. Still, the Blade Runner similarity injects interest into this shot of New York's Chinatown, which looks like something out of Blade Runner… or would, with red in the place of fluorescent secondary colors.  To demonstrate the need for color correction, I took the very first full shot of the Shadow in costume and applied a perfunctory level adjustment. Removing the blue pall, the shot looks infinitely better, bringing out the contrast between the Shadow and his surroundings, making the hero look that much, well, more "shadowy." Before:  After:  Color correction would also bring out the work that went into the interiors, like the Cobalt Club, which looks dingy and gray in the film, but, with just a tiny bit of effort put into color correction, we see a lively, happening, art-deco-inspired joint where Lamont Cranston goes to socialize. Before:  After:  This wouldn't even bother me so much, except that the bad coloring occludes a lot of the great work done by the crew. Here we see a gray cityscape practically transformed by a very simple color adjustment. Before:  After:  I realize that one could argue that a film that stars the Shadow should logically have a "shadowy" aesthetic, but any artist knows that contrast enhances the power of anything you want seen. If you don't brighten things around the Shadow, you only weaken the Shadow's impact. Going through the first part of the film… Although I don't really consider the Tibet opening strictly necessary, pulp places a great emphasis on exotic locations, especially the Orient. That makes the movie seem truer to its roots somehow.  (Also, I can't complain about the movie having a good excuse to use Al Leong and James Hong.) I also have to admit that beginning the movie with Lamont Cranston as an East Asian villain—going by the alias Yin-Ko—in the vein of Fu Manchu or the Mandarin makes for a great tribute to the pulp ideal (especially with touches like the cloak and the long nails) whilst deftly avoiding the Chinese stereotypes associated therewith. Yes, Alec Baldwin looks silly, but I still think it ultimately works.  We see Yin-Ko's transformation in this prologue, suggested immediately by the Tulku's much bigger temple, which connotes the same kind of implicit one-ups-manship in the vein of the pipes in Inglourious Basterds…  I should probably re-emphasize that all of this looks really silly and fake, but again, the silliness doesn't hurt the film that much. At times, the effects look only a little better than Oley Sassone's contemporary Fantastic Four film, but this film has a much more professional score, cast, and set designer, so the film still doesn't lose the viewer entirely. We can see more of the fakeness shortly after, when the Shadow scares the poo poo out of and then attacks Duke. If you watch as Duke runs up against the "concrete" rail, you'll see that the rail is obviously made of rubber. (This actually stuck in my mind longer than anything else about this film!)  I also find Alec Baldwin a bit miscast. He has a physical resemblance to the Shadow of George Rozen's many striking magazine cover paintings, but he lacks the Shadow's inherent gravitas. The Shadow arrives on the scene with his trademark condescending laugh and his catchphrase, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit," (touches from the source material that I greatly appreciated), but a stentorian basso (like that of Orson Welles in the Shadow radio dramas) would have made the Shadow all the scarier, something Baldwin lacks. The score could have used some work too. Sure, it gets the job done, but it doesn't do anything spectacular. We don't get anything on the level of Danny Elfman's escalation or any old standbys to set the period. In fact, in the first Cobalt Club scene we get the exact opposite of spectacular: Kenny G. The Pros I do want to emphasize that despite the film's flaws, I definitely have a positive net opinion of it. For instance, the supporting characters bring a welcome sense of lightheartedness to the film, like Ian McKellen and Tim Curry (alongside Penelope Ann Miller of Super Mario Bros. fame), two actors who can handle a little cheese. It only takes a quick shot of McKellen as an obsessive scientist and Currry as an opportunistic, obnoxious jerk to know we'll see some good scenery chewing.  The film also contains Larry Hankin from Armed & Dangerous and Vegas Vacation, as well as the fake Kramer in Seinfeld. We also get some voices from Frank Welker, who voices practically every cartoon character. The entire film has an occasional air of light humor, and these actors help. I also really do like a lot of the visuals. In keeping with the Shadow's colors, we see a lot of white, black, and red, even in scenes consisting only of the Shadow's allies.  The cinematography—along with the light humor—also gets better as the film progresses. In the second half of the film, we see this violent three-point perspective matte painting of the Empire State Building. The art deco architecture really enhances this shot. It ramps the excitement up almost enough to make us forget the foregone conclusion of what happens next. (I also have to admit that the subsequent falling cracked me up hard.)  As with any great pulp hero, the Shadow has his share of gadgets. I love the moving walls that admit him to his secret lair, as well as this old-time-radio-looking video transmitter.  Later in the film we also see a bomb with a nixie tube readout, probably the perfect atomic bomb analog in such a film. Nixie tubes scream jet age retrofuturism, especially because of their rarity in the present day. (This particular MacGuffin also becomes the center of the biggest continuity fuckups in the movie.)  I also did like some of the effects (which also get better as the movie goes on), like the shadow that shows in the light when its owner doesn't. The animation here reminded me of a Fleischer cartoon or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The idea itself takes something from the radio dramas and adapts it quite well to film. The subsequent "stepping out" works well too.  Also, while you can't accuse the film of originality, I have to admit that the hall-of-mirrors climax—whether it rips off The Lady From Shanghai or Enter the Dragon—shows the filmmakers have good taste in inspirational material. As soon as I saw multiple Lamont Cranstons (Lamonts Cranston?), I knew where this would go, but I can't complain because I loved both Shanghai and Dragon.  The Antagonist The film adheres to the superhero standard of using a main antagonist who exists as an antithesis to our hero. Interestingly, Shiwan Khan has powers very similar to the Shadow's, but as the Shadow uses them to make bad people do good things, Shiwan uses them to the opposite effect. Like the Shadow, Shiwan loves to appear suddenly. Here we see the first time he engages the Shadow, a Kubrickian cut that has him just… there, out of the blue.  He also begins by referencing Cranston's past as Yin-Ko, and his exotic costume subtly hints that he exists in the film to torment Cranston about his Far Eastern past. His motivation—world domination—would seem played out in a non-pulp movie, but Shiwan also brings a bit of light humor that takes our attention off of it. I can't help but find something silly about Shiwan claiming himself as the last descendant of Genghis Khan, though. A study in The American Journal of Human Genetics suggests that Genghis probably has 17 million descendants, including possibly 1 in 10 modern-day Mongolians! The Rest Overall, I think The Shadow serves as a great survey of superheroics in pulp fiction. It plays by all the rules of the aesthetic, despite looking a bit cheap. There has existed talk for some time of another Shadow movie. Sam Raimi showed great interest in making such a film. (In fact, he made Darkman after failing to get the rights in the 80s.) Everything I've read makes it sound neck-deep in development hell, though, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. It got critically panned and only just broke even at the box office. But you should judge for yourself. You can watch The Shadow on Netflix Instant (the reason I picked this film to write up next, in fact), so none of you have an excuse.
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| # ? Jun 22, 2012 23:59 |
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Did they ever release a widescreen version of that movie? Every dvd I ever came across was fullscreen. Also there is some wickedly obscene innuendo that flew over my head as a kid. "Next time, I get to be on top." I knew nothing about The Shadow before the film, but I think he's actually a really cool character. Baldwin isn't miscast at all to me, but I haven't heard the Orson Welles radio adaptations (did that really happen?). He looks cool, he's got cool gadgets, his beak is always pokin' out of that scarf, he's kind of a like a mildly eviler Batman, or atleast a bit more morally ambiguous. I remember a lot of the ways he handled villains in the film were a bordering a little on crazy, which is why I liked him. He seemed like a hero who could just give in one day and switch back to being a villain. I could be wrong, but that's just what I remember last time I watched it years ago.
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 00:25 |
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I've heard Orson Welles do The Shadow firsthand! (Pretty cool and worth the $2, especially since you also get to hear Orson Welles advertise blue burning logs!)Jack Does Jihad posted:He looks cool, he's got cool gadgets, his beak is always pokin' out of that scarf, he's kind of a like a mildly eviler Batman, or atleast a bit more morally ambiguous. I remember a lot of the ways he handled villains in the film were a bordering a little on crazy, which is why I liked him. He seemed like a hero who could just give in one day and switch back to being a villain.
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 00:31 |
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Shadow fans, you need to read Howard Chaykin's late-'80s mature readers miniseries, The Shadow: Blood and Judgment. It's a period piece that covers a lot of the same ground as the movie, but Chaykin has a real love for pulp/noir period pieces, and that was back when his art and layouts were among the most beautiful and inspired in the industry, instead of the unpolished rush jobs he turns in today. I believe Dynamite recently offered a TPB, even though DC published it originally. Even more interesting is the Shadow series that followed at DC, by writer Andy Helfer and artists Bill Sienkiewicz (who worked on the Shadow-inspired Moon Knight for Marvel) and Kyle Baker. It transplanted the Shadow into the '80s, and it was a bizarre, almost cartoonishly violent farce. What I liked best was that it brought back the Shadow's supporting cast of operatives and informants, mostly people he helped who owed him a debt or criminals he recruited (intimidated) into working for him. I still believe Todd McFarlane ripped off two of these minor Shadow characters for his detectives Sam and Twitch from Spawn, the biggest comic series of the early '90s. Matt Wagner, no stranger to pulpy superheroes himself (having written the aforementioned Sandman Mystery Theatre), wrote a Dr. Mid-Nite miniseries about ten years back that borrowed this idea from The Shadow -- the blind doctor/community activist/vigilante had a network of allies and agents made up of people he had helped along the way, either by providing medical care or interceding when they were in danger. Come to think of it, Dr. Mid-Nite is tailor-made for a pulp/noir movie adaptation as well, although his blindness would invite comparisons to Daredevil. Big Bad Voodoo Lou fucked around with this message at Jun 23, 2012 around 01:40 |
| # ? Jun 23, 2012 01:37 |
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Op you forgot to include The Mummy films in your list. I believe they fit the criteria quite nicely, although they are not exactly the best or even the most entertaining of movies. Also don't mean to nitpick but Penelope Ann Miller wasn't in Super Mario Bros, you're thinking of Samantha Mathis who is apparently starring in Atlas Shrugs II 
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 19:02 |
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The Mummy should most definitely be included and I will fight anyone who calls the first one a bad film.
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 19:16 |
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CloseFriend posted:I've heard Orson Welles do The Shadow firsthand! (Pretty cool and worth the $2, especially since you also get to hear Orson Welles advertise blue burning logs!) http://archive.org/details/RkoOrson...-RadioRecodings Both of those episodes are freely available online, along with 31 others. Bo Berry posted:The Mummy should most definitely be included and I will fight anyone who calls the first one a bad film. I will fight alongside you, like Brendan Frasier and the Egyptian guy in The Mummy.
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 19:22 |
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Bo Berry posted:The Mummy should most definitely be included and I will fight anyone who calls the first one a bad film. I accept that I loved the first one when i first saw it, but we can agree that second film was pretty terrible, although it did have some fun parts like the scenes with the pygmies. On a related note, did anyone feel that the Scorpion King was trying for a very conanesque sort of adventure story, but ended up more like film Conan than book Conan?
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 19:38 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 17:30 |
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Bo Berry posted:The Mummy should most definitely be included and I will fight anyone who calls the first one a bad film. 
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| # ? Jun 23, 2012 21:25 |
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