sid's New Writeups

Weird War Tales #77 (thing)

2006-11-01T09:23:26Z

THREE BROTHERS... THREE DOOMS!"

Okay, when you get a comic with an underwater Nazi frogman knife fight, a huge tentacle dropping a Sherman tank in water, and a smaller tentacled creature lifting an empty Nazi uniform, all surrounding a big gaping skull in a Nazi helmet on the cover...(breath) and it's drawn by war comics master illustrator Joe Kubert...well, this better be good.

This is DC comics' "Weird War Tales" number 77 (July 1979—only 40¢ kids!) and it's all of the above. (Well, good?...eh.) It's a tale called "Triad" about a trio of red-blooded American boys who join the service during WWII. And they have some sort of psychic bond. But it's so much weirder than that.

Many of the issues of this title were anthologies but this one is "SPECIAL! A 23-PAGE BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL!." Disappointment number one: Kubert only did the cover. The inside art is by the supermodel-like named artist "Rubeny."…

Monster on the Campus (thing)

2006-10-30T09:04:14Z

Isn't actually this whole thing improbable?

Only as improbable as life itself.

What do a dead coelacanth, a giant dragonfly, a vicious dog, and Piltdown Man have to do with a quiet suburban university? Well, add in some awful makeup and 77 minutes of bad science and you have discovered the Monster on the Campus (1958).

Welcome to campus
The film opens on the campus of pleasant and oh so white Dunsfield University where paleontologist Professor Donald Blake is about to receive a specimen of the coelacanth—an "evolutionary throwback," a "living fossil, immune to the forces of evolution" (well, not really: all living organisms are acted upon by natural selection, the mechanism behind evolution). Unfortunately, the fish begins to thaw and bloody water leaks onto the ground by the transport van. There the lovable dog Samson laps it up. Not a good move.

Within minutes…

I Bury the Living (thing)

2006-10-29T08:06:32Z

Science has learned that man possesses powers which go beyond the boundaries of the natural.
This is the story of one confronted by such strange forces within himself.

It's Bob Kraft's turn to oversee the Immortal Hills Cemetery. As a member of the board at the Kraft Department store, it is part of his job to take a turn. Pretty simple set up, really. Most of the real work is done by the groundskeeper Andy McKee, the "chairman's" job is really overseeing some clerical things and managing the map. The Map.

On the wall in the drafty, barely furnished office is a map of the cemetery with all the plots drawn on it. In each space there is a stick pin: white for unoccupied, black for occupied (dead). When someone passes, Kraft replaces the white pin with a black one. Simple system.

But what happens if a black pin is put into a spot while the owner still lives?

And therein lies the conceit for this "Twilight Zone"-esqu…

Riders of the Whistling Skull (thing)

2006-10-28T08:02:43Z

A supernatural western? Well, not quite. But there's a missing archaeologist, a lost city full of gold guarded by an ancient "cult" of Indians, murders by weapons with strange "hieroglyphics" that speak of a curse, and that Whistling Skull that provides the title. Even a sacrificial altar and a mummified Indian for good measure. (And for the ladies: Ray "Crash" Corrigan running around shirtless for about ten minutes.)

There was a time when westerns like this regularly filled out the bill as part of an evening out at the movies. Leading up to the main attraction, B movies whetted the appetite of the filmgoer. They ran about an hour (with at least five minutes of medium long shots of men on horses riding from one side of the frame to the other) and were filled with action and folksy humor. But they were also made quickly and cheaply and overly formulaic with more time spent setting up and getting to the gunfight than spent worrying about plot and…

Yakima Canutt (person)

2006-10-10T08:44:28Z

Who? You heard me. Yakima. Canutt. Yes.

One of the greatest stuntmen and stunt coordinators in the history of cinema. No joke. Bar none. He's the man.

Early life
Enos Edward Canutt was born 29 November 1895. He was raised with five siblings in Colfax, Washington (the eastern part of the state) on a ranch that had been started by his grandfather and passed on to his father. This was probably the beginning of his love of horses and first learned to ride while working there.

Canutt never got past elementary school (attended in a suburb of Seattle), but his destiny would be entwined with those horses. By his early teens, he was riding unbroken horses and at age 17 was competing in rodeos and wild west shows. He excelled. He won the "All-Around Cowboy" award at the Pendleton Oregon Round-Up four times (1917, 1919, 1920, 1923—apparently making him "World All -Around Champion"). In 1917, he was…

sea mink (thing)

2006-07-10T08:25:56Z

...these sea mink used to bring considerably more than others on account of their great size...they were persistently hunted...with dogs trained for the purpose. As the price of mink rose, they were hunted more and grew scarcer, 'til in the sixties, when mink skins brought eight or ten dollars apiece, parties who made a business of hunting nearly or quite exterminated the race.

Despite the implication of its name, the sea mink (Mustela macrodon) was not a marine mammal. But similar to the also somewhat implausibly named (but actual sea mammal) the Steller's sea cow, it is very much extinct. Greed and ruthless hunting, wiping out an entire species.

That is not to say that it wasn't a true mink. It certainly was, of the genus Mustela, in fine company with other (non-extinct) minks, ermines, ferrets, a couple polecats, and weasels. Yeah, ...weasels (mustela being Latin for "weasel"). And there's nothing like going out on…