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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #23
So this issue continues from Giant-Size Chillers, even though the timeline’s off between that comic and the previous Tomb. Writer Marv Wolfman tries to retcon it a little, with the flashback to Chillers showing Dracula talking to his stooge about his Russian holiday, even though the Russian vacation went unmentioned in Chillers itself.
The timeline disconnect doesn’t end up mattering since the vampire hunters don’t appear this issue. I mean, Taj goes back home to India for a page (his last name’s Nitall, which means his name rhymes with Taj Mahal), but it’s only to keep the burner going on a C-plot. And to reveal Taj has a wife back home no one knows about.
I’m sure it’ll matter eventually.
Anyway.
Dracula.
He’s in a haunted mansion with tortured young woman Shiela. She’s recently inherited the house, and it’s been haunting her ever since she arrived; it also killed her boyfriend, but in a way no one would believe her. Except for Dracula; because when the house starts screaming and the wind blows from closed windows, it’s hard not to believe in haunted houses. However, Dracula’s still relatively unimpressed. He tells Shiela he’s seen lots in his years, and this haunted house isn’t special.
Of course, if it were literally slicing into his skin like it’s doing Shiela, he might have more of a vested interest.
After a couple flashbacks, Dracula decides they’ll solve the mystery the next night and goes out for a snack. When he returns (presumably very close to dawn), the situation has gotten much worse for Shiela, and he’s got to intercede.
In Chillers, Dracula decided Shiela would be his next familiar. It’s been long enough since Clifton Graves screwed up the job; he’s ready for (no pun) fresh blood.
It’s a solid issue; nice art from Gene Colan and Tom Palmer, and some decent character development on Dracula. He does, however, rant about his daughter, Lilith, being more inhumane than even her father… which doesn’t gibe with her solo adventures but whatever. It’s like they figured out the general Dracula timeline, but everything else is up in the air.
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All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s03e04 – What A Balls Up!
No avoiding Nicholas Ralph’s desire to join up anymore. It’s front and center, complete with the questionable choice of playing instrumental cadences in the background when Ralph’s thinking about it. They only do it twice—maybe three times, and I’ve blocked one—but it’s the worst creative decision I can remember on the show.
Thank goodness the interludes are brief because it doesn’t take Rachel Shenton too long to figure out what’s up. Ralph’s been miserable with his genius idea to test the local cattle for tuberculosis, even getting in trouble with the Ministry of Agriculture, plus he’s also feeling like a heel for not going and fighting. He just doesn’t think he’s doing anything important.
Or something. It’s unclear because Ralph still keeps his own counsel, even as everyone else is in desperate need of talking. Shenton’s suddenly worried about her marriage to Ralph, even as they prove themselves a well-suited couple. Anna Madeley’s friendship with Will Thorp is getting near romantic, something Madeley’s been trying to avoid, but it’s finally hit the inevitable stage. Callum Woodhouse is fine, actually; he’s finally feeling comfortable and confident. However, Woodhouse’s confidence and Ralph’s busyness mean Samuel West doesn’t feel in charge of the practice anymore, so he takes to fussing on very special guest star Derek (as the profoundly adorable Pekingese Tricki Woo).
In addition to taking Ralph out of town to the previously unseen ministry (which West speaks about in hushed, fearful tones), the episode’s also got the first swearing I can remember on a “Creatures,” albeit old-timey British swearing. Adrian Rawlins guest stars as the blowhard Ministry guy who is sick of Ralph screwing up his paperwork on the TB testing. Rawlins is hilarious, with more depth than initially suggested.
There’s a lot of depth throughout the episode. Shenton finally gets her own arc, post-marriage. Madeley’s romance arc is devastating. West’s adorable with the dog and has a whole range of stifled emotions.
There’s an action sequence, which is phenomenal—director Andy Hay gets more drama out of thirties automobiles on a picturesque English roadway than most get out of fighter jets or spaceships. Woodhouse has a wonderful subplot, lots of good direction, and lots of good acting. Sophie Khan Levy is back as the rival vet’s daughter, who West learns is friendly with Woodhouse.
Chloë Mi Lin Ewart has the script credit again. It’s shaping up to be her season–this episode’s terrific.
Even with those lousy music choices.
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American Made (2017, Doug Liman)
While Tom Cruise is most of the show in American Made, it’s not a star vehicle. Star vehicle suggests it’s got somewhere to take him. Made exists because of Cruise’s likable performance, not the other way around. Thanks to that likability, he even gets away with an eighties TV “Louisiana” accent. The film also avoids putting an age on Cruise’s character—real-life person Barry Seal was thirty-nine when the movie starts, while Cruise (here in his mid-fifties) can play thirty-nine, mentioning it might get audience members doing math and distract from the fun.
Made’s just fun. Based on the true story of an airline pilot who went to run drugs and guns for the CIA and Pablo Escobar, the film’s a hand-held period piece action crime comedy. Most of the action’s in the first and second acts before Cruise becomes an Arkansas land baron. His CIA handler (an okay but bland Domhnall Gleeson) wants a spot to train the Contras in the U.S.; near Cruise’s private airstrip makes perfect sense since he’s bringing them into the country anyway.
The film avoids all the logistics of Cruise’s operation. If Made’s accurate, anyone with a plane can fly in and out of the U.S., avoiding detection by flying low—the plane photography in Made’s excellent and only occasionally obviously CGI—no filed flight plans, no FAA, no nothing. So who’s lying to us, “Wings” or Made?
Also, getting into the minutiae would cut down on the fun. Director Liman and star Cruise are sure Made is going to be a lot of fun, as Cruise gets favors from a certain Arkansas governor, hangs out with Ollie North and Manuel Noriega, all while avoiding Cruise and Wright’s kids to the point their names and number aren’t necessary. They start with one or two and end up with at least three, but it could be four. Wright’s okay when the movie’s got something for her to do, which isn’t often. Not even after her deadbeat little brother (an okay but bland Caleb Landry Jones) shows up and starts bringing about Cruise’s downfall because he’s a dumb redneck.
There are a lot of Confederate flags in Made and Cruise’s definitely a Johnny Reb, along with all his team of pilots, and the soundtrack’s almost entirely “Country Rock before they started wearing the hoods on stage” classics. We wouldn’t know if anyone was actively racist or bigoty because there aren’t anything but white people in the movie. Cruise has a cute scene with a Black kid at one point, and it’s like someone realized they needed to clarify.
Speaking of the other pilots… while William Mark McCullough is the only one to get any real scenes outside montage or long-shot, I swear one of them is John Glover, but he’s not credited anywhere. IMDb’s missing the character (they’re called “Snowbirds,” which sounds like a Bond villain’s all-female killer ski bunny squad, and there’s no “Snowbird #3,” who’d be Glover).
Anyway.
American Made’s well-produced, with always okay direction from Liman. César Charlone’s photography is occasionally too “DV,” particularly in the cockpit shots, but never bad. Editor Andrew Mondshein does a fine job with the innumerable entertaining montage sequences. Made’s fine and fun, with a delightful Cruise lead performance, but it’s entirely fluff.
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Detective Comics (1937) #479
I wasn’t expecting much from this issue; the team of writer Len Wein, penciller Marshall Rogers, and inker Dick Giordano hasn’t impressed in their one-and-a-fifth (they did a bookend on a reprint) issues of Detective so far. Wein’s writing a sequel to Rogers’s arc with Steve Englehart, trying to maintain continuity, like Batman hallucinating a woman is Silver St. Cloud, so he shakes her. He can’t handle her breaking up with him. I think Wein’s done this issue; did he have an outline for Batman stalking Silver St. Cloud, secreted away in the DC vaults, perhaps? Pretty much nothing else makes sense from here.
Once again, Batman’s trying to stop Clayface II, who’s trying to cure himself of being a murderous jelly protoplasm monster. Batman doesn’t care about any of that nonsense. He’s not interested in the who, the why, or the how, just the where and maybe when. It’s one of those resolutions where Batman doesn’t put the dynamite in the clown’s pants and push him in a hole to blow up, just, you know, doesn’t tell the clown he’s got dynamite in his pants–not murdering on a technicality. Englehart wrote Batman as a childish thug. Wein writes him as a callous one.
As for the art, Rogers and Giordano occasionally have good panels. There are also lots of lazy ones; anything over a medium shot, and neither artist gives Batman a face in the distance. There are some nice moody city shots and rural road shots because Rogers does a swell job with the scenery, but the Batman fights don’t impress much.
After that underwhelming feature story, Wein’s back to writing the Hawkman backup, which features Hawkman talking to birds, who fly him and Hawkgirl across the country or something. Like a few dozen birds getting together, lifting them into the air, and flying with them.
It’s camp.
Even though the story only runs eight pages, it feels longer than the Batman feature. Hawkman and Hawkgirl are back on Earth after getting kicked off their planet by the new leadership, only to discover they’ve apparently lost their jobs at their museum. There’s something strange about the new curator, who has a teleportation cape, which sets up needing bird friends.
Rich Buckler and John Celardo’s art is mostly okay. The eventual supervillain’s absurd even for this story, and Wein’s got the same ending to both this story and the feature as far as villain reveals.
Maybe if the Hawkman weren’t so slow, it’d be better. As is, it’s more sluggish pages in an already sluggish comic.
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American Gothic (1995) s01e05 – Dead to the World
This episode’s got five writers credited, apparently two different teams (Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess on one, Shaun Cassidy, Michael R. Perry, and Stephen Gaghan on the other). Guild arbitration or extreme fairness? Regardless, World works better than almost anything else with five credited writers; the episode’s all “Gothic”’s strengths, none of its… well, weaknesses is a little extreme (though not inaccurate given last episode’s teenage girl objectification issues). None of those problems here, though Barnaby Carpenter is back from last episode, now running the town junkyard.
He’s helping Paige Turco investigate the accidental death of her childhood friend, played by Melissa McBride. Now, we, the audience, know McBride’s death wasn’t accidental. The episode opens in flashback; McBride was dating Gary Cole (then still a deputy, which is an interesting timeline), and he had her snooping on just-born Lucas Black. McBride figures out he’s the baby’s daddy and freaks out, so he drives her into the river to drown her quiet.
The opening flashback, with the sped-up video, is the worst-looking sequence in the episode. James. A. Contner is probably the series’s best director so far, definitely for Turco. Turco’s intrepid reporter is still too bold but has a complex layer of compassion beneath it. Once she starts questioning McBride’s mom, played by Linda Pierce (quietly and eventually devastating as a Southern belle caricature), Turco pretty quickly figures out Cole’s involved somehow. Only when she confronts him he’s not too worked up about the implications.
Cole and Black have the B plot. Black’s in an archery competition with his best friend, Christopher Fennell, and Cole tries to teach him winning’s more important than anything else. So it’s a supernatural villain figure trying to instill toxic masculinity in Black, juxtaposed against the C plot, where sheriff’s deputy Nick Searcy tries (and fails) to protect his ex-wife and son from her bastard new husband (a too soap opera-y John Shearin).
Meanwhile, Sarah Paulson can just watch sadly as Black falls into Cole’s clutches. She and Black have an exceptional scene where he asks her about getting smarter after dying—which she’s done from his perspective, but maybe not her own. The show hasn’t gotten into the rules of Paulson’s spirit existence at all, which allows for big swings (and hits).
Then Brenda Bakke and Jake Weber are both around a bit too. Weber is the one telling Searcy about Shearin being abusive, while Bakke’s using her role as school teacher to screw up Fennell’s chances in the contest. We finally get to see her and Cole canoodling, and it’s fantastic. We also finally get to see the new sheriff’s department set, which is solid; it’s nice they’ve got a recurring location.
There are some 1995 TV bumps, mostly the guest star acting or just the general shot composition, but World’s finally got everything clicking, even if the regular cast’s too big for an episode. Cole’s particularly great this episode, Black and Searcy are fantastic, Turco’s coming along, Bakke’s finally to act even if briefly, ditto Weber.
“Gothic”’s great.
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