EXPECT DELAYS

Things are really crazy around Casa Isabella and will remain so through the weekend as I move forward on my most major project of the year while also dealing with some of life's little adventures. My Sharknado 4 review will post sometime this weekend, followed by an announcement of my next convention appearance and my reports on G-Fest, PulpFest, Monsterfest Mania and my Euclid Public Library talk. These reports won't run back to back. In between them, I'll post review columns.

My "July 1963" and "Rawhide Kid Wednesday" features will return in September. Before then, I'll be bringing you more Sanctum Books shout-outs and a new ongoing feature. 

If you're waiting on an email or anything else from me, I'm going to do my best to catch up with all of that over the next two weeks. Sooner if at all possible.

Things are crazy but mostly good. It's gonna be a wild ride for the rest of 2016!

Be well, my friends.

SHARKPOCALYPSE 2016: PART THREE

My favorite of the five new shark movies that aired on Syfy during the week leading up to the channel’s debut of Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens was Ozark Sharks (2016). In retrospect, this surprises me, but I’ll get into that in a little while.

Ozark Sharks (2016) was directed by Misty Talley who was the first woman to direct a SyFy original movie when she helmed last year’s Zombie Shark. This new film was written by Marcy Holland. The story is by Greg Mitchell, who wrote Zombie Shark and the 2014 Snakehead Swamp. Here’s the Internet Movie Database synopsis:

A vacation to the Ozarks turns upside-down when bull sharks somehow infiltrate Arkansas' freshwater lakes and wreak havoc on a town's big fireworks festival.

One of my Facebook friends commented that this movie could’ve taken place on the same river as Dam Sharks! Not only was he right about that, but it made me realize Ozark Sharks is a fairly generic shark movie. What elevated it to “favorite” status for me was the great characters, the great performances by the actors playing them and the over-all direction of the movie.

Molly (Allisyn Ashley Arm) is the daughter who doesn’t want to come on the vacation because she doesn’t want to be separated from her boyfriend. Her older brother Harrison (Dane Davis) is a good guy, who is also friends with her goofy boyfriend Curtis (Ross Britz). Her parents (Laura Cayouette and Michael Papajohn) are very real in their scenes and her grandmother (Sharon Garrison) is delightful. If you knew these people, you’d like them...and that puts viewers on the edge of their seats when they are in peril.

Shark movies often feature quirky characters and no one plays those better than Thomas Francis Murphy, who was outstanding in the Syfy classic Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators (2012). Here he plays Jones, the owner/operator of the general store and the cabin rentals and a man who is prepared for any kind of menace that comes his way. It’s a character type we see in many of these movies, but Murphy is just so good at it.

I should also mention Terence Rosemore turns in a good performance as the worst sheriff in the history of shark movies. Without going back to the movie, I don’t think he ever arrives at the location of the finale - a fireworks festival - even after he becomes convinced that there are actually sharks eating people up and down the river. He should probably look for a new job.

Director Talley keeps the gore to a minimum and I found that very refreshing. She can bring the chills and the scary without tossing CGI blood and rubber limbs around. When a character we have come to care about is in deep trouble, we care about them. When they don’t make it, it hits hard.

Some IMDb trivia: You can see a Zombie Shark coffee mug in one of the shots. The production company Fable House has produced a couple of shark films.

An IMDb error in geography: For a movie that was set in Arkansas they should have included some Arkansas Razorback stuff. In Arkansas you can't go anywhere and not see hats, signs or something that makes reference to the team.

This is a movie I will watch again and will buy whenever it becomes available on DVD. Alas, I could find no release date for said DVD. Come and get my money, Ozark sharks.

I’ve been rating these movies on a scale of zero to five Quints, a tribute to the Robert Shaw character in Jaws. Ozark Sharks earns an impressive four Quints.

Come back tomorrow for my review of Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens. I’ll be waiting for you.

© 2016 Tony Isabella

SHARKPOCALYPSE 2016: PART TWO

The Asylum’s Sharknado: The 4th Awakens was the big finish of the Real Shark Week on the Syfy channel, which ran July 24-31. Five new shark movies made their debuts before the latest in the Sharknado series and two of them also came from The Asylum.

Ice Sharks (2016) was shown on Tuesday, July 26. Emile Edwin Smith directed and wrote the movie. Smith has many more movie credits for visual effects, but he also directed Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark two years ago. With the warning there will be both minor and major SPOILERS AHEAD, here’s the Internet Movie Database synopsis for this new film:

A new breed of aggressive, ravenous sharks cracks the frozen ocean floor of an Arctic research station, devouring all who fall through. As the station sinks into frigid waters, those alive must fashion makeshift weapons or suffer the same fate.

Pun intended, I never really warmed up to Ice Sharks. The opening sequence had a team of sled dogs and their master fall victim to a shark and that kind of soured me from the start. I know it’s crazy to have a stronger reaction to the slaughter of dogs than humans, but there it is.

The actors in this movie all perform well, but none of them gives an outstanding performance. You can pretty much tell from the get-go who the “Rule of Two” survivors will be, though I kept expecting an early scientist victim to reappear. Sure, he had his leg pulled off when a shark ate his ski-mobile, but we never actually saw him die. My expectation was doubtless born of my long decades reading and writing comic books.

I could tell when and how various characters will die with most such of those deaths telegraphed long minutes before they happened. I was not surprised when a really big helicopter, large enough to lift the sunken station, got destroyed by one of the bigger sharks. Because I saw Jaws 2 and the dozen other movies where helicopters and their pilots have met that fate.

On the plus side, the sunken research station bit was an exciting twist. I also give kudos for the no-nonsense rescue attempts that ultimately succeed. In fact, my spirits were so lifted that I was even okay with a shark stuck in a station window and trying to work its way into the station for a quiet meal with the comely scientist inside said station.

Was I surprised when that “dead” shark came to life on the deck of the rescue ship? Come on. You know me better than that.

In the trivial mistake category, IMDb offers this:

The map that is referenced while talking to the Hunters is of Ross Island and the Ross Sea those are part of Antarctica not the Arctic which is where the camp is supposed to be. 

 

Geography is hard.

Ice Sharks was worth a single viewing because all I ask of movies like this is that they amuse me for a couple hours. At the moment, neither Amazon or The Asylum website lists a DVD or digital release for the film. I’ll keep an eye out for it.

On our quality film-making scale of zero to five Quints, Ice Sharks earns a decent two doomed shark-hunters. 

                                                                            

Planet of the Sharks (2016), which premiered on Wednesday, July 27, was my second favorite of the pre-Sharknado 4 features. This movie  was directed and co-written by Mark Atkins, who has many credits as a cinematographer, editor and just about every other movie-making position you can think of. He directed Sand Sharks (2012) and wrote Dragon Wasps (2012), to name but two of his credits. Marc Gottlieb was the other writer. This is the first time I’ve seen one of his movies. The IMDb synopsis:

In the near future, glacial melting has covered 98% of earth's landmass. Sharks have flourished and now dominate the planet, operating as one massive school led by a mutated alpha shark.

That synopsis strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration. I never got the notion that one alpha shark was controlling all of the other sharks on the planet, just the admittedly vast number of sharks in the part of the ocean where this movie takes place.

We see three floating cities, two of which are relatively easy prey for the sharks. The third one is the strongest, a research facility where scientists are preparing to fire a rocket containing “carbon dioxide scrubbers” into the atmosphere. These devices would reverse the global warming that caused this global ecological disaster and get the seas to recede from the land. It’s crazy pseudo-science at best - and not the only such example in the movie - but it doesn’t go beyond my well-developed willing suspension of disbelief.

The Planet of the Sharks acting is above-average. There are women scientists who are tough as nails. There are men scientists who can surprise you. There’s a crusty - but still handsome - boat captain who works for the scientists. There are various “middle management” types who are fun to watch. There’s even an over-the-top queen of the shark-hunters who looks like she could have come out of Mad Max and who chews the water-logged scenery in a most delectable manner. Points to the actors, director and casting director.

The pseudo-scientists figure out the sharks are commanded by that big-ass alpha shark, conveniently marked so we can always tell her from the others. They come up with a clever way of disrupting her power over the other sharks. That I was more than ready to believe this is also to the movie’s credit.

The CGI effects are up to the usual Asylum standards. The plentiful action contains some truly exciting moments. The movie delivers a satisfying ending which, though it exceeded my willing suspension of disbelief by a hair, worked for me. I’d watch this movie again and might even buy it for my home library.

Alas, neither Amazon nor the Asylum’s own website, lists Planet of the Sharks as being available on DVD or digitally. I do recommend watching the film, but your best bet for that is to watch for Syfy channel reruns.

Planet of the Sharks earns four out of five Quints.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my review of Ozark Sharks, my favorite of the pre-Sharknado 4 premieres. See you then.

© 2016 Tony Isabella

THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE #2: DEALERS IN DEATH

It’s been too long a while since I’ve told you about the wonderful pulp hero collections published by my dear friend Anthony Tollin’s Sanctum Books. Fortunately, when I attended PulpFest 2016 a couple weeks back, I got over two dozen of those volumes. I won’t be able to start reading them until later this year, but I can give you a heads-up as to their contents.

The Phantom Detective #2: Dealers in Death & The Yacht Club Murders [April 2015; $14.95] collects two pulp thrillers that foreshadows Batman. Both of these stories were originally edited by the famous and infamous Mort Weisinger, who ruled over DC’s Superman and even Batman comics for decades.

In “Dealers in Death” by Norman Daniels writing as Robert Wallace, newspaper publisher Frank Havens uses a rooftop beacon to call the Phantom Detective into action. The story, originally published in the July 1936 issue of The Phantom Detective, clearly inspired the Bat-Signal, which has been featured in every incarnation of Batman since 1942.

In “The Yacht Club Murders” by Charles Greenberg, the Phantom must save Muriel Havens, the publisher’s daughter, when she is abducted by the Bat, whose garb bears more than passing resemblance to that of the Batman. The story first saw print in the January 1939 issue of The Phantom Detective.

In addition to the two novels, this volume also features historian Will Murray’s insights into the character, his adventures and the inspiration that the Batman comic books took from them. There’s also an eight-page Phantom Detective comic-book story - by “Robert Wallace” and artist Edmond Good - from Thrilling Comics #65 [April, 1948].

                                                                         

Here’s the Grand Comics Database synopsis for the story:

Publisher Havens goes to see a friend of his, Edgar White, in a sanatorium and is told that he had been in an accident. When Havens gets to see his friend, White tells him that the sanatorium is trying to kill him, just as three other patients mysteriously died. When Havens doesn't believe him, he does the next day when he learns that White "committed suicide", so he contacts the Phantom Detective via the red beacon light. The mystery man dons a disguise and has himself entered as a patient in the sanatorium in investigate.

All of the Sanctum Books collections are well worth buying and reading. I’ll be writing about them on a regular basis.

ISBN 978-1-60877-169-1

© 2016 Tony Isabella

SHARKPOCALYPSE 2016: PART ONE

Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, the latest in the series of hilarious and exciting movies in the series, made its debut Sunday, July 31, on the Syfy channel. As was done with the 2015 debut of Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Syfy built to the premiere by showing a brand-new shark movie from Sunday, July 25 through Thursday, July 29. Sorry, Discovery Channel, but, as far as I’m concerned, that was the REAL Shark Week.

Over the next three days, I’ll be reviewing all six movies. Today, you get my thoughts on Atomic Shark and Dam Sharks! There will be some SPOILERS AHEAD, but I’ll do my level best to keep them to the bare minimum necessary to help you appreciate these wild and wondrous adventures in B-movie making.

Atomic Shark (2016) was directed by A.N. Stone, who also directed last year’s Lake Placid vs. Anaconda. It is only his second time at the helm of a movie. The three credited writers for the movie are first-timer Scott Foy; actor Griff Furst, who is credited with the story for 2013's Ghost Shark; and Jack Snyder. Here’s the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) summation of the storyline:

When a lifeguard catches wind of a dangerous anomaly off the coast of San Diego, she commissions a band of unlikely heroes to assist her on a suicide mission to save the west coast from total destruction.

Lifeguard Gina is played by Rachele Brooke Smith, who was Muffy St. Pierre-Radwell on TV’s Scream Queens. She’s clearly the hero of the movie: courageous, determined, smart and gorgeous without allowing the last to define her. She is estranged from her father, played by the always terrific Jeff Fahey, but reunites with him to stop the title shark before it denotes and takes a good chunk of the coast with it.

Let’s talk about the title shark. Created by either previous bomb tests by our secretive government or leaking radiation from a sunken Russian submarine - the movie starts with the one and ends with the latter - it’s a glowing horror that seems to be burning itself out as it preys on helpless humans. While the CGI work on the shark is far from outstanding, it does the job.

Bobby Camp from Scream: The TV Series and Being Human plays Kaplan, the male romantic lead. He’s refreshingly off-model for that role. He’s brave but not really good at his job and this brings him into frequent conflict with the head of the lifeguards. His plans or his part in Gina’s plans are less than well-executed. Still, it’s his creative use of a drone when a leg injury keeps him from the water is pretty clever and essential to the plot.

The rest of the cast is good, especially David “Bud Bundy” Faustino  as a sleazy drone-maker and long-distance voyeur. No one is coming away from this film with an awards nomination, but I can’t recall any distracting moments of bad acting.

The atomic shark starts racking up victims within the first couple minutes of the 90-minute movie. Most of them are as predictable as if the shark had both a quota and a schedule. The ending, which has Gina, her dad and Kaplan trying to lure their radioactive predator away from the coast before it explodes, is honestly exciting with even Kaplan conducting himself well.

Atomic Shark worked for me. I enjoyed watching it and I’ll likely watch it again. No word on a home video release at this time, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for it. It might be worth adding to my home library of cheesy monster movies.

On a scale of zero to five Quints - you will find many a reference to Jaws in this week’s movies - I award Atomic Shark a sizzling four out of five.     

                                                                       

Dam Sharks! (2016) was the second of the “Real Shark Week” films on Syfy. Its premise strained even my well-honed willing suspension of disbelief:

Voracious sharks use human bodies to build dams.

That’s right. Sharks who somehow got into an inland river and were trapped there decide they love their new hunting ground. Which is why they build dams of logs and human body parts to...I don’t know...keep out the riff raff and not have to share all the tasty people who live and vacation on the river. Maybe there was a better explanation for these beaver-sharks in the movie, but I might have been in an incredulous stupor when it was given.

The movie was directed by brothers James and Jon Kondelik, who also directed 2014's Airplane Vs. Volcano. James has more credits as an editor, Jon as an actor. The writing is credited to Cole Sharpe and Joe Chisano, neither of whom appear in the IMDb. I suspect aliases.

Outside of the premise, neither the acting or the writing of this movie are that bad. Dealing with the menace of the sharks falls to a spunky forest ranger type and a crotchety river rat she has let slide on various minor offenses. The sharks obtain their meals and  building materials from a corporate retreat. There aren’t any real surprises in how the CGI sharks take their human prey, but I found something about their menu items interesting.

The purpose of the corporate retreat is to keep employees who are not being fired out of the office while the other 70% of the staff is sent packing. The idiot who owns/runs the company thought that would be bad for morale. The employees are the usual mix of babes, nerds and studs. While they mostly die by the numbers, some of them die quite heroically, trying to help someone else survive. Yes, you can easily predict who will die and who will live - most films like this end with two or three survivors at most - but the deaths hit harder when truly good people get chomped. I give the movie makers points for that.

Dam Sharks! is decent-but-not-outstanding cheesy entertainment for its running time of approximately 90 minutes. I get the feeling it was put on the Syfy schedule quickly because IMDb doesn’t have much information about it. Like Atomic Shark, the movie isn’t listed on Amazon in any form. I’ll let you know if that changes.

On our scale from zero to five Quints, I’m feeling kindly enough to give Dam Sharks! a somewhat respectable two Quints.

Rawhide Kid Wednesday is taking a week or two off, but I’ll be back tomorrow with my reviews of Ice Sharks and Planet of the Sharks. See you then.

© 2016 Tony Isabella

TONY'S TIPS #168

This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...I talk about DC Universe Rebirth and its opening issues!

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY (July 2016)

Were I to heed the shrill warbling of the orange-crested turdbird that is Donald Trump, I would live my life in a constant state of irrational anger, mindless bigotry and constant soul-crushing fear. Fortunately, my natural demeanor leans toward hope and reasonable caution. I like to remind myself on a daily basis of the blessings of my existence in a Facebook and Twitter feature I call “Things That Make Me Happy.”

Here are the things I posted in July...

July 1: Indy Pop Con. It's already one of my favorite conventions. I’ll return to it as often as the event invites me.

July 2: The irony of anonymous trolls calling me a coward for not publishing their garbage comments on my blog.

July 3: Our annual July 3 cookout. Friends and neighbors come over to watch the local Medina Ohio fireworks display, which are visible from our front yard.

July 4: PS Artbooks. Some of their collections of 1940s/1950s comics contain mediocre material, but I love these blasts from the past.

July 5: The Tithe Volume One by Matt Hawkins and Rahsan Ekedal. A hacker goes after corrupt mega-churches. I’ve read the first trade collection. It doesn’t pull any punches or take the easy way out.

July 6: Roger Price’s Mid-Ohio-Con. Thinking about those good times and even the hard work of them makes me smile. They were the best!

July 7: Seeing deer in our yard when I get the morning newspapers. I know they eat our flowers, but they add so much natural beauty to my life that I figure it’s worth the trade-off. Sainted Wife Barb does not necessarily agree with this.

July 8: Sir Patrick Stewart. An amazing actor, an even more amazing human being. My one encounter with him was unforgettable.

July 9: Genndy Tartakovsky’s Cage! It might end up being less than wonderful, but, right at this moment, I’m excited!

July 10: You can buy super-hero bears (Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and others) at Build-a-Bear.

July 11: Hand sanitizer will remove tree sap from the exterior of an automobile. My son discovered this online when he was trying to remove sap from his beloved “Penny.” Yes, we name our cars, though we sometimes disagree on those names. I drive “Monty,” an elderly Ford Monterey van with lousy air conditioning that sometimes hisses in Machiavellian delight. My daughter Kelly insists on calling it “Betsy.” It is definitely not a “Betsy.”

July 12: The love of my family. Something knocked the wind out of my sails yesterday, but I know Barb and the kids will always have my back.

July 13: That no matter how low I get - and, yesterday, I was ready to retire from conventions, the Internet and even writing - I can always fight my way back to the light.

July 14: Cleveland city officials passing a trans-friendly bathroom law before the Republican National Convention comes to town. Once again, I’m proud of the city of my birth.

July 15: Running four errands - groceries, haircut, bank, library - in under 90 minutes. No lines and all green lights from start to finish.

July 16: G-Fest. Such a wonderful and family-friendly convention. I’ll be back in 2017.

July 17: Seeing King Kong Escapes on a large screen in the lovely Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge, Illinois. Most comfortable theater seats ever.

July 18: Akira Takarada and Linda Miller. Such gracious G-Fest guests and so appreciative of their fans.

July 19: Seeing the Chicago Cubs play at legendary Wrigley Field. Classic ballpark and terrific fans.

July 20: Martin Arlt’s Mad Scientist. Every issue has entertaining and informative articles on movie monsters and more. It’s one of my five favorite magazines.

July 21: Comic-Con in San Diego. I’d attend every year if I could. Even when I can’t, just the existence of this wonderful event puts a smile on my face.

July 22: PulpFest. It’s always great to see my long-time pals Tony Tollin, Rob Davis, Ron Fortier and others.

July 23: Doing PulpFest panels with the knowledgeable and talented Anthony Tollin. I learn just as much as the audience.

July 24: Laurie Powers’ PulpFest panel on “Love Story Magazine and the Romance Pulp Phenomenon.” I would totally buy a facsimile of an issue of Street and Smith’s best-selling romance pulp.

July 25: Anthony Tollin’s Spectrum Books. Ten years of very classy reprints of The Shadow, Doc Savage and more.

July 26: My Bernie, Hillary and Obama action figures. Each of which is more qualified to be president than the real-life Donald Trump.

July 27: Michelle Obama. Accomplished, compassionate, intelligent, strong and elegant. Everything a First Lady should be.

July 28: The REAL Shark Week on the Syfy Channel. The movies might not be classics, but they are fun. Sharknado is the gift that keeps on giving.

July 29: Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing. I love writing it and that its daily visitors have more than doubled in the past few months.

July 30: Republicans who put their country before their party by, publically and privately, supporting Hilary Clinton. Welcome into the light. You are the hope of conservatism.

July 31: Ted Sikora. Filmmaker (Hero Tomorrow) and comics creator (Apama). It’s always a pleasure to hang with him at a convention.
         
I hope my wee shout-outs brought as much joy to you as they did to me. I’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff.

© 2016 Tony Isabella