Friday's Favorite OTR

 Bold Venture: "An Invitation to Death" 1/14/52

A man wants to kill the four men he falsely believes killed his wife. One of those men is Slate Shannon.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Boris Karloff doesn't NEED to Speak to be Scary

 

In between directing Frankenstein in 1931 and The Invisible Man in 1933, James Whale's brought an adaptation of J.B. Priestley's novel Benighted to the screen. The movie version is titled The Old Dark House and, by golly, even though there's no monster, it fits atmospherically into the Universal Monsters cycle. Thought to be lost for years, it isn't as well remembered as the Monster films. But, by golly, it should be.

The novel has a theme of post-war disillusionment running through it. The movie has an element of this, but I think tones that theme down significantly in order to emphasis it's brilliant mix of horror and comedy.

A married couple and a friend are caught in a violent storm while driving and are forced to take refuge in a creepy mansion located in the middle of nowhere. Soon after, they are joined by another couple.

The regular inhabitants of the mansion--the Femms-- have all taken Masters Degrees in Being Creepy. An elderly brother and sister are the owners of the mansion. Their butler--Morgan--is a scary looking mute who--we are warned--becomes quite dangerous when he's drunk.

Gee whiz, Boris Karloff (who plays Morgan) is good at being scary. This is the second film in a row he terrifies you without being given a word of dialogue. 

The rest of the cast is wonderful, including Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughten, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart and Ernest Thesiger. The stranded motorists are tossed into a strange situation that's both frightening and absurd. We learn that the Femm siblings have a 102-year-old father who lives upstairs. We learn that there's a locked room upstairs with... well... someone else living inside. And we learn that Morgan is indeed dangerous when he's drunk.

As he does in movies like The Bride of Frankenstein, Whale seemlessly mixes horror and comedy. The result leads us to a fantastic conclusion, with Melvyn Douglas' terrified yet still determined character confronting yet another Femm sibling--an older brother who might possibly be visiting from Crazy Town. 

Here's two videos. The first is the movie, though I don't know the copyright status and can't promise it will be here if you are visiting this blog in the far future. 

And here's a video giving us a superb analysis of the film--much more detailed than what I've written here:

Narrow Escapes and a Random Lost Civilization

                                                          art by Don Heck and Marie Severin

X-Men #44 (May 1968) takes us back to the Pietro/Wanda situation that began back in Avengers #47 several months earlier. We are getting to the tail-end of the story arc--2 issues of X-Men (including this one) and then a final issue of The Avengers will wrap it up. 

The credits are complicated, so let's just get them out of the way. Roy Thomas plotted the book, then Gary Friedrich wrote the script. Don Heck did the layouts, then Werner Roth did the finished pencils. 

In the last issue, the X-Men has been captured by Magneto at the villain's island HQ. Toad, naturally, is sucking up to Magneto and insisting the X-Men simply be killed. Pietro, though, argues that they should be kept alive. Though the con Magneto ran on him and Wanda earlier in the story arc was a good one--convincing the siblings that he had set aside his murderous ways--it's starting to get to be a bit of a stretch to accept that Pietro still trusts him. 

But Magneto does agree to keep the heroes imprisoned, with each of them attached to a devise or cage that nullifies their powers. But someone has carelessly left a disintegrator ray near Angel's cage, allowing him to free himself. (This seems contrived, but it will eventually be explained.)

Cyclops, in fact, suspects its a trap and tells Angel to just run for it and get help from the Avengers. Quicksilver tries to follow (he claims to have "recently gained the power of flight, but it seems that he just uses his superspeed to jump really far), but Angel outflies him.

It's a long flight back to New York City. Angel is caught in a storm and lands on a rock to rest. But the rock then rises up and reveals an island. Inside is a super-civilization guarded by a guy in a winged suit called Red Raven.

After a brief (and pretty cool) fight, Raven explains the situation: The secret island city is the home of a race of Bird People. When he was a baby, Raven was the lone survivor of a plane crash and was raised by the Bird People. After Raven grew to adulthood, the winged guys unwisely decided to attack the rest of the world. Raven gassed them all unconscious and put them in suspended animation cylinders. The island has risen up out of the ocean because it's time for them to wake up. Raven, though, intends to put them asleep for another 20 years. (By the way, Raven is later retconned into being a construct based on the World War II-era character--but that's a story for another time.)

Angel objects to this plan, thinking that the Bird People technology might benefit mankind. Raven knocks him out, re-sinks the island, and uses an anti-gravity ray to keep Angel afloat until he wakes up again. When he does wake up, Angel resumes his flight to find the Avengers.

So the book advances the main story arc a little, but most of it is given over to a side story. But this is fine, since its a good story and adds another interesting element to the Marvel Universe that other writers can dip into if they ever want to do so. The Angel/Raven fight scene is fun as well. 

Next week, we'll move to the next issue of X-Men, in which the main story arc will begin to gain speed. 

What I Read This Month: October 2025

 

Cover Cavalcade

 OCTOBER IS MARTIAL ARTS MADNESS MONTH!!!

A year after the song came out, everyone was still loving Kung Fu Fighting in this 1975 cover by Dick Giordano.

The Book My Dog Ate! (and books my wife made me read)

 

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Philo Vance: "The Poetic Murder Case" 8/24/48

Someone is murdering the city's top theater critics and leaving a poem pinned to the bodies of each of his victims.

Click HERE to listen or download. 

Prince Raynor, Part 2

cover art by E.K. Bergey

 Read/Watch 'em In Order #187

Just five months after the first of Henry Kuttner's Prince Raynor stories appeared in Strange Stories, the second would appear in the August 1939 issue of that magazine.

"The Citadel of Darkness" is set just a short time after the end of Raynor's previous tale. He, his Nubian servant Eblik and the woman warrior Delphia have fled their decimated homeland. They've found a band of addition survivors, but those guys were apparently wearing Red Shirts and they are all dead and dying when the new story begins.

They've been killed by a bandit gang led by Malric. Delphia was captured and taken to a nearby castle. Raynor and Eblik pursue, meeting a wizard named Ghiar along the way, who gives Raynor a magical talisman to aid him. 

But Ghiar has his own agenda. After bloodshed and magical shenanigans in the castle, Ghiar takes possession of Delphia and takes her to his own fortress--intending to drain her life force to extend his own life span. Raynor and Eblik pursue.

But breaking into that fortress means passing through a succession of dangers that will test Raynor's endurance, his loyalty to his friends and his courage. Along the way, Malric and his remaining bandits show up to throw off everyone's calculations. 

But along the way, Raynor has gained a very... well, unusual ally that might just allow he and his companions to get out of magical fortress alive.

It's a great story--full of action and tinged with horror in a way that is reministant of fiction by Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Eblik and Delphia don't get to do much themselves, which is a bit of a disappointment. But I'm sure they'll get to be more active in later stories.

Oh, wait. There were no later stories. Why weren't there more Prince Raynor stories, Kuttner? You had a good thing started here! Gee whiz!

Read the story for yourself HERE. 

Beanbags, Part 2

 

cover art by Ben Brown

Beanbags #2 (Spring 1952) picked up right where the first issue left off, with Beanbags and his friends shipwrecked in the land of Disturbia, only to discover that it rains Zanymulch, the substance the U.S. government had sent them to acquire.

But then they see a group of men shove a woman off a cliff into the water. The men seem indifferent to Beanbags' accusation of murder. But soon, we get the back story. It involves...

You know what? It can't be done. The first issue was at least able to pretend it had a logical plot--though it didn't actually fool anyone. This second and (sadly) final issue leaps headfirst into absurdity. I'd be here all day trying to summarize the plot.

There's a back story involving a love affair between a woman with two heads and a man with no head. There's a giant sea serpent that turns out to be a vegetarian. There's a trip down into the ocean, where everyone can breath without explanation, and where King Notzo Mportant gets into a fight with Neptune over some pretty mermaids and Davy Jones runs a pastry shop. And there is, eventually, a submarine trip back to the U.S. with the Zanymulch, only to catch the attention of a mad scientist who needs the Zanymulch for a trip to the moon.

As with the first issue, a few of the gags are forced, but a lot of it is funny, with Ben Brown's artwork--including his exaggerated expressions and fluid action lines-- giving it all real charm. 

The series was cancelled at this point. (I found a reference saying that the book was tied to a novelty toy line that flopped, but could not find confirmation of this.) Did Beanbags and his friends end up on a rocket flying to the Moon? Almost certainly they did, but that story is forever lost in Comic Book Limbo.

Oh, well. Next week, we'll get back to the Marvel Universe to find out how the X-Men are faring against Magneto. Until then, enjoy the final recorded adventure of Beanbags HERE. 

My Book Reading Crimes!

 Should I quietly go to prison or go on the run as a fugitive?