Author: Bert Ehrmann
Dangerous Universe has been Bert’s web playground since 1998 when personal web sites were a rarity rather than the norm.
Direct Beam Comms #79
TV
Homicide: Life on the Street: The Complete Series
Shout Factory is set to release a DVD set of the entire 122 episode series of the classic show Homicide: Life on the Street for a retail of $120 July 4. Homicide: Life on the Street is one of the finest TV series ever and was a show that would go onto inspire other series like The Wire and The Sopranos years later. What I find funny is that 15 years ago I bought the first few seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street on DVD when those sets were retailing for around $100. Even today those original sets will still retail for around $90. That would’ve meant buying a complete set of Homicide: Life on the Street back then would’ve cost between $600 and $700, making $120 now seem like a bargain.
Executive produced by Barry Levinson (director of Rain Man, Wag The Dog and Bugsy) and Tom Fontana (the creator behind HBO’s Oz), and based on the book Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon (creator and executive producer of The Wire), Homicide: Life On The Street presented viewers with a gritty and realistic examination of detectives working the homicide division in Baltimore.
The Mist TV spot
Comics
DC Comics/Dark Horse: Batman vs. Predator Paperback
A newly reprinted edition of the Batman vs. Predator comics is out this week. I remember buying the first issue of Batman vs. Predator at a drug store on a spinner rack and the story of a Predator invading Gotham City with Batman being the only hope of stopping them has always been one of my favorites. Especially since Bats gets to wear one boss piece of anti-Predator armor in the comic.
After investigating a series of gruesome murders, Batman realizes that these crimes aren’t perpetrated by anyone from Gotham City…or even this planet. Soon, the Dark Knight finds his real enemy—the intergalactic hunter called the Predator! This collection features BATMAN VS. PREDATOR #1–3, BATMAN VS. PREDATOR II: BLOODMATCH #1–4 and BATMAN VS. PREDATOR III: BLOOD TIES #1–4 and is co-published with Dark Horse Comics.
Movies
Predator
The first time I saw Predator I was 13 years old and it was the night before a family trip to Washington DC. My brother, a cousin and myself were camped out that night in the living room and were watching the movie of the week on HBO, which just so happened to be Predator. Even though I hadn’t seen that movie in the theater, nor would I have really had the opportunity to do so back then, I was aware of Predator from it being covered in magazines like Starlog and Fangoria. But still, when I actually saw the movie I was completely blown away. It was like the creators of the film had gotten into my teenaged head, found out all the things I was interested in and put them up on the big screen.
And, nearly 30 years later Predator is still one of my favorite films. Let’s put it this way — at various times I’ve owned Predator on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and I’m sure that whatever the next thing is that comes along to improve on what’s come before be it 3D or holograms I’ll buy that too.
Predator is the rare movie that actually expanded the sci-fi genera, I think by not exactly adhering to just the sci-fi genera. It’s kind’a a war movie with a group of special forces soldiers lead by “Dutch” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) on a rescue mission in the jungles of Central America. It’s also kind’a a horror movie with the alien Predator gruesomely killing just about anyone who gets in its way. And it’s also kind’a a sci-fi movie with the Predator coming from space on a hunting mission here on Earth.
And it’s probably because Predator isn’t just a war movie, or isn’t just a horror movie or isn’t just a sci-fi movie that it’s stood the test of time and is still a beloved movie by fans of those generas to this day.
I think one thing that sticks in my mind about Predator all these years later are the interesting details. Like the way the Predator’s heat vision is shown on screen in big bright primary colors along with a weird “Bwrarrrrrrrrr” sound every time the Predator is looking about. And the details of each soldier in Dutch’s crew, how they’re all different yet all have the same strange professionalism as warriors in the jungle. They feel like guys who are probably screw-ups when they’re back at home in, say, Idaho but are at their best when they’re in the jungle and people are trying to kill them and vice versa.
I’ve seen Predator many times since that first time and everytime since I catch some new detail that I had missed before, which to me is the mark of a great movie.
That being said, looking back at this movie 30 years later there are a few things that make Predator almost a stereotypical 1980s action movie in that I think some elements in Predator would go and be used in future 1980s and 1990s action movies. From how just about all of Dutch’s soldiers have muscles upon muscles, a weightlifters physique not typically seen in soldiers, to carrying around more firepower than a small army would have, let alone six guys. The most famous weapon in the movie is the mini-gun, it’s the kind of firepower usually seen on jet fighters that fires hundreds of rounds a minute, that a) would be practically useless since the amount of ammunition it needs would make it impractical to haul through the jungle along with b) the weight of the gun that would mean someone would need to carry around hundreds of pounds of hot, unforgiving steel in order to fire the thing once for a few seconds of, “Brrrrrap!”
But in the confines of an action movie made in 1987 — it’s a wonderful “Brrrrrap!”
Akira
Back in the early 1990s I bought a copy of the animated movie Akira on VHS for $30, which with inflation is about $60 today. I was getting $5 a week in allowance and saved up any money I got from Christmas to buy Akira on tape I so badly wanted to see. And this version of the movie was cropped from widescreen and in “pan and scan” with the original audio dubbed from Japanese to English without subtitles. Still, for many years until I picked up a copy of the movie on DVD this was the only film version of Akira I’d be able to see. So today when I was wandering around Walmart and saw they had a 25th anniversary edition DVD of the movie for just $5 I was a bit flabbergasted. For a movie that originally took me many months to get — my original VHS order was lost in the mail and I had to convince the company I bought it from that I wasn’t lying and I really didn’t get it — to see a good quality version of the movie for that low price, just $2.65 in early 1990s dollars, was quite a surprise.
Black Panther teaser trailer
American Made trailer
Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars trailer
Toys
Aliens vs Predator figures
NECA is set to release some figures based on the original Aliens vs. Predator comic later this year. First up is a Predator known as “Broken Tusk” that’s the first Predator to have any personality other than “I kill things.” Also being released is a figure based on the character of Machiko Noguchi, a human who ends up joining a clan of Predators at the end of the series.
The Reading & Watch List
This week in pop-culture history
- 1973: Battle for the Planet of the Apes premiers in theaters
- 1982: E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial premiers in theaters
- 1983: Superman III opens in theaters
- 1985: D.A.R.Y.L. premiers
- 1987: Predator opens in theaters
- 1989: Ghostbusters II premiers
- 1990: Gremlins 2: The New Batch opens in theaters
- 1993: Jurassic Park opens in theaters
- 2008: The Incredible Hulk premiers in theaters
- 2013: Man of Steel premiers in theaters
Punisher Saturday: Bill Reinhold and Mark Farmer Punisher #30 page
Den Beauvais Aliens 1994 trading card art
A mummy isn’t scary!
The scary thing about a character thing like the mummy is, well, he or she really isn’t that scary. Ever since the original The Mummy movie was released in 1932 Hollywood has been remaking and trying to make the mummy scarier than it was last time around. But honestly, the mummy is such a benign character it really can’t ever be scary.
I mean, what’s scary about a creature that consists of moldering, rotting bones only held together by a few bands of cloth that can only walk at a snail’s pace? Something that’s so dry any spark would ignite the bandages and so clumsy it seems to want to trip and fall at every step? In many ways a mummy is like a really lame zombie that doesn’t ever really do anything.
That’s not to say mummy movies haven’t been interesting or good ones, just that they’re never all that scary.
The most recent spate of mummy movies began in 1999 with The Mummy directed by Stephen Sommers. That movie was a sort of end film to the 1990s reboots of some of the Universal Monsters that, along with The Mummy, included the likes of Dracula (1992) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). While those two films did play up the scary elements of those characters, the 1999 The Mummy instead pushed that film franchise into adventure territory.
Almost a melding of an Indiana Jones style movie crossed with horror movie, The Mummy starred Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and Rachel Weisz as Evie Carnahan. Rick’s an adventurer who talks with his fists and when his fists are busy substitutes chatting with two blazing pistols. Evie is a scholar who needs Rick to take her to a hidden tomb where they accidentally release an ancient mummy that unleashes its ancient curse on Egypt.
The Mummy was one of the very first movies I covered for my website and I remember liking it a great deal. I saw it in the theater and picked up a DVD copy of the movie as soon as it was available.
There’s lots of action and a little horror in The Mummy, but for the most part The Mummy is a safe film the whole family can enjoy. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what a good horror movie should be. Creatures like Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolfman are there to scare the audiences. But out of all those monsters the one that’s the least scary is the mummy.
Which is interesting because the first film of what’s planned to be a whole interconnected series of films all taking place in the same universe starring the Universal Monsters is a new The Mummy movie out now.
Starring Tom Cruise as Tyler Colt, this The Mummy takes place modern day with a female mummy (Sofia Boutella) accidentally being awakened by Colt and seeking vengeance on our world for what was done to her in ancient times. And, much with like the 1999 The Mummy, the 2017 The Mummy looks to be more like an action-adventure flick than something meant to make the kiddies wet the bed.
Which I guess makes sense. The movies making all the money these days at the box office from Captain America to Star Wars James Bond are really action-adventure movies at heart. And while Universal Pictures does have those kinds of movies like The Fast and the Furious and Jurassic Park, they don’t have any comic book movies like Marvel or DC and are being left out of that game. But they do have all of the Universal Monsters so why not try and make a film series out of that?
I love the Universal Monsters, I just wish that instead of going the action-adventure route, that Universal instead would have the guts, he-he-he, to go for horror instead. Who knows, an R-Rated The Creature from the Black Lagoon might just be what audiences are looking for rather than PG–13 toned-down horror-lite movies that it looks like Universal is set to produce?
If successful, though, expect an Invisible Man movie starring Johnny Depp and a Frankenstein one with Javier Bardem along with Wolfman and Creature from the Black Lagoon to rise from the grave in the near future.
That is if The Mummy is successful.