X Minus One: "First Contact" 10/6/55
A human ship meets an alien ship in deep space. Both sides would like to make friends, but can they afford to trust one another?
The ending is significantly different from the original novella written by Murray Leinster and not as satisfying, but it's still a good story.
Click HERE to listen or download.
Read/Watch 'em In Order #154
The May 1940 issue of Amazing Stories brought us the third tale in the epic life of Hok, the prehistoric warrior and leader, written by Manly Wade Wellman.
(By the way, the International Science Fiction Database is a wonderful resourse for looking up the publication histories of science fiction, horror and fantasy tales. But they did make a slight error with Wellman's Hok series. They include "Day of the Conquerers," published in Thrilling Wonder Tales in 1940, as part of the series. But that tale, though wonderful in its own right and also about prehistoric men, does not feature Hok. It's a cavemen vs. invading aliens story. And, having written that last sentence, I am now driven to re-visit it soon and review it on this blog.)
Anyway, "Hok Draws the Bow" begins with Hok being saved from Neanderthals (called Gnorrls) by a man named Romm. Romm soon proves himself to be arrogant and greedy, looking for ways to discredit Hok and take over leadership of the tribe. He also casts lustful eyes in the direction of Hok's wife Oleana. He is smart, though. He's invented a way of using a piece of rawhide to put spin on a thrown javelin, thus increasing its range.
But Hok is smart himself. He foils Romm's plans to discredit him. The angry man throws a punch, violating the tradition of hospitality that forced Hok to tolerate him. Romm leaves the village, but he's later seen teaming up with the Gnorrls. In fact, this prehistoric con artist has convinced the Gnorrls to worship him.
That can't be good. But for a time, there is peace. This allows Hok to think about Romm's javelin-throwing trick and experiment with it. Eventually, Hok invents the first working bow.
(There's another blink-and-you'll-miss-it technological advancement in Hok's tribe. They are now living in huts rather than caves. The story doesn't dwell on this, but the implication is that Hok's experience in a doomed Bronze Age city during the last story gave him the idea of the tribe building their own shelters.)
Anyway, Hok has a bow and arrows for himself now, but doesn't have time to teach this new skill to his people before the Gnorrls attack. What follows here is yet another epic battle scene--something Wellman excells at throughout the Hok series. The Gnorrls come in large numbers, using tactics taught to them by Romm. Hok's tribe is forced to retreat and all but eight of its thirty warriors are killed. Desperate fighting and rear-guard actions allow most of the women and children to get away.
Hok asks for help from other clans, but his reputation as a warrior is tarnished by the loss. So he realizes its up to him alone. Armed with his bow, he will attempt to find and kill Romm. If he can do that, the Gnorrl army will cease to be an organized threat.
Well, Hok means to go alone. His wife Oleana refuses to stay behind. So when Hok is captured and about to be burned at the stake, Oleana is nearby to take action. A perfectly thrown javelin frees her husband. And, while Romm leads the Gnorrls in a chase after Oleana, Hok recovers his bow and uses a few well-placed fire arrows to turn the tables on his enemies.
We are now 3/5s of the way through the Hok series and it continues to shine as a great example of how entertaining pulp fiction was. The action scenes are expertly crafted and always exciting. Characterizations are strong and we continue to easily believe in Hok as a great leader and kick-butt warrior. These stories are among Wellman's finest.
You can read this one online HERE.
I love the SF anthologies of the 1950s, because of the variety of tales you would find crammed into any one issue. In this case, for instance, we start out with a Martian spy inhabiting the corpse of a human and then move on to a giant baby unwittingly causing mass destruction.
"The Confessions of a Martian," written by Manly Wade Wellman and drawn by Curt Swan, starts on the planet Mars. The Martians are worried about Earth's attempt to reach the moon. There's been one failed attempt that ended with the ship drifting off into space. What if manking is successful on their next attempt? What if a colonized moon is the first step for invading Mars?
The Martians decide to send a spy to Earth. They recovered the drifting Earth space ship, along with the bodies of the astronauts. The spy's consciousness is transfered into one of the dead guys, then he's teleported to Earth.
He arrives on Earth in the buff, but steals clothes from a scarecrow. He approaches a research facility in time to prevent a communist spy from killing a pretty female scientist.
This gets him a job as a handyman, but he soon demonstrates deep scientific knowledge and is helping to develop a new rocket fuel. When I was reading this story, at this point I thought "I gotta make a snarky comment about no background check being done." But... well, that turns out to be a plot point.
The Martian in a Corpse and the girl scientist fall in love with each other. She also tells him that the moon project is peaceful and there are no plans to invade Mars. The spy passes this on to his bosses on Mars, but they are skeptical.
The spy, by now, has switched sides. But his girlfriend, in the meantime, has become suspicious of him. His fingerprints were checked and he's apparently one of the astronauts lost on the moon mission. She figures he must have ditched the mission because he is a Commie spy. He tells her the truth, but she is a bit skeptical. The poor guy can't get ANYBODY to believe him.
His Martian bosses show up on Earth. The ensuing action scene is pretty nifty.. First, the spy at first lands some solid punches and appears to be winning due to his current body being more used to Earth's higher gravity. But he gets zapped with a paralyzing ray. Fortunately, the Martian-spy-inside-a-human-corpse has a human girlfriend with a pistol. She plugs the Martians and the spy, now thoroughly human in feeling as well as form, begins to warn everyone about the threat from the Red Planet.
It's a strong story, smoothly cramming a lot of story into 10 pages and taking some fun twists and turns.
The next story is "Too Big for This World," written by Manly Rubin using the name Robert Starr and penciled by Bob Oksner.
Dr. Harwood, his wife and his toddler son are living on an island, where the good doctor is studying animals of different sizes. His goal is to create a growth serum and thus increase the world's food supply.
Magnus starts growing rapidly. His mom makes new clothes after sail canvas and using the growth serum on cows ensures a supply of milk. Also, Dr. Harwood used a "tortiose element" in the serum, so Magnus is also invulnerable. Finally, when the kid approaches the size of the Empire State Building, his strides are large enough to allow him to move at 300 miles per hour.
Magnus wades across the ocean to the mainland, where he innocently terrorizes a city and then puts out a forest fire before wandering home. That he's able to find his way home after wandering hundreds of miles isn't discussed, but what the hey.
Dr. Harwood, in the meantime, has developed a reverse-growth serum and Magnus returns to normal size. The problem of world hunger is solved and Magnus is taught an important lesson. Actually, he doesn't seem to learn any lesson at all, but what the hey.
"Too Big for This World" is very, very silly. But it's also very, very fun and its inconsistencies really don't matter at all.
Next week, we look at the side effects of suspended animation and meet a planet with tentacles and a bad attitude.
Philo Vance: "The Coachman Murder Case" 8/31/48
A fishing rod and a shiny house key are the clues that lead Vance to the murderer in "The Coachman Murder Case."
Click HERE to listen or download.
I'm having a hernia repaired this week (well, I am if Night Nurse can stop whining about her love life and get back to work). It's a minor surgery with no risk involved, but it will mean that there are no Wednesday or Thursday posts this week.
You Are There: "Storming of the Bastille" 7/14/47
CBS News covers the beginning of the French Revolution.
Click HERE to listen or download.
Read/Watch 'em In Order #153
The Mummy's Tomb was released in 1942, two years after the previous movie. But it's set 30 years after The Mummy's Hand. This retroactively sets Hand in the early 1910s. The timeline of the Universal Monster movies--and the exact time in which they are set--was always a little elastic. But in this case, the time frames work just fine. There's nothing in Hand to firmly indicate it didn't take place 30 years before it was made. In fact, it actually makes sense, since Egypt in 1940 would have been more concerned with the Afrika Korps than with archeology.
Anyway, Dick Foran and Wallace Ford are back as Steve Banning and Babe Hanson. Now, though, they are made up as old men. Steve is a widower and has a grown son.
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George Zucco also makes a reappearance. He was shot by Babe in the first film, but it turns out he survived. The mummy Kharis had been set on fire, but he was apparently only singed.
Anyway, Zucco's character assigns Mehemet Bey (played by Turhan Bey) to take Kharis to the U.S. and wreak vengence on the entire Banning family. As the book Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films 1931-1946 (1990: written by Michael Brunas, John Brunas and Tom Weaver) points out, there's no explanation why the bad guys wait 30 years before instituting this plan.
I remember how surprised I was when I first saw this film when the stars of the first film (both Steve and Babe) end up getting ruthlessly killed by Kharis so early in the film. Steve's sister is also killed. The 30-year time jump helps make this a little more palatible, since both men are implied to have lived full lives, but it was still a shock. This cycle of Mummy movies aren't the equal to the true classics, but I still liked Steve and Babe.
Steve's son John and the cops eventually tumble to the existance of Kharis.
Mehemet Bey, in the meantime, takes a liking to John's girlfriend and has Kharis kidnap her. This brings everything to a head as John and a torch-bearing posse kill Bey and run the mummy into an abandoned mansion, where the mummy is presumably killed in a fire. But fire didn't completely destroy Kharis in the last film, did it?
"There is a pointed emphasis on speed and efficiency at the expense of character development and atmosphere." (page 318)
All the same, I like the movie. Turhan Bey stands out in his performance as the bad guy. Lon Chaney, Jr. takes over the role of Kharis and, though he isn't given a chance to give the monster any real personality, he does make an effective unstoppable killing machine. And the ending, set in that burning mansion with John Banning fighting to rescue his girl and escape, is quite good. On a more minor but very entertaining point, I do enjoy that the good guys eventually decide that they are indeed pursing a 3000-year-old undead killer based on crime scene forensics.
This, though, is not the end of Kharis.
How many times has a young man tried to impress a girl by taking her to a haunted pueblo and then getting into trouble. It's an old, old story. Indian Chief #9 (January-March 1953) shows us this sort of thing was going on even in Pre-Columbian America.
The writer and artist of "The Haunted Pueblo" are unknown, but (like most of the creators who worked for Dell in the 1950s) they were good at their jobs. The story jumps into the action right away as a young Taos Indian boy named Cloud shows a pretty young lady named Aster that he's not afraid of spooks. Without hesitation, he climbs into the ancient ruins of a pueblo that's rumored to be Ghost Central. Well, he's doesn't find any ghosts. He DOES find Apache warriors who are planning to raid his village. Cloud is captured while Aster hides in a large vase.
Cloud manages to saw through his robes with a piece of broken pottery. We then hit the one arguable weak spot in the otherwise strong story. Cloud tricks his guard into looking directly at the sun--a trick that works only because the guard is apparently an idiot. If you are ever a prisoner, try telling your guard there's a picture on the sun so that he looks directly into it. Try. I dare you. See how well it works.
While the guard is dazzled, Cloud makes a break for it. He finds Aster and they get back to the village. But they can't get anyone to believe there are Apaches hiding in the pueblo. Cloud, in desperation, steals the village shaman's prayer stick. This act can potentially carry the death penalty, but he refuses to return the stick unless someone searches the pueblo.
The shaman, to his credit, figures Cloud wouldn't take a chance like that without a reason. So the pueblo is searched. But the Apaches saw the villagers coming and hid. Nothing is found and the villagers still don't believe Cloud. The village is still in danger.
Cloud and Aster return to the pueblo on their own. Cloud steals a bow and arrow as proof that the Apaches are there, but when the Apaches realize those meddling kids have returned, Cloud uses the weapon to shoot fire arrows as a warning signal.
The kids then spend several desperate minutes holding off the Apaches until help arrives. After a short and brutal fight, the Apaches are captured, the village is saved and Cloud & Aster are vindicated.
As is typical with Indian Chief, the story is expertly told. It moves along at a brisk pace, with the art as well as the script combining to tell the short adventure tale in an effective and exciting manner. Giving that Apache guard the Idiot Ball is definitely a weak point, but overall "The Haunted Pueblo" is an example of the excellent storytelling that was regularly found in the pages of Indian Chief.
You can read it online HERE
No comic book review next week as I'll be in the hospital getting a hernia repaired. In two weeks, we'll begin a two-part look at an issue of Strange Adventures. Martian spies and giant babies will soon abound.
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