Jason F.C. Clarke

Category: Writing

  • Leviathan

    NOTE: I forgot to take screencaps of Leviathan before returning it to Netflix. You’ll just have to do without. My bad.

    One of my greatest pleasures growing up was catching a stupid monster movie on a lazy weekend afternoon. As a wee tyke, Boston’s WLVI 56 filled that need with the famous Creature Double Feature block. But that was long gone by the time I was in high school; and besides, contrary to popular belief, I did have a social life in high school and had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than watch old Godzilla flicks. Sundays, however, were a different story; and I spent many a Sunday in my room, watching a monster flick on TV while drawing (or, on more than one occasion, working on homework).

    When I say monster movie, I don’t mean slasher flicks like the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th series. I was never into those; psycho-murderers are kind of boring and I don’t like gratuitous gore (though I did enjoy Jason vs. Freddy, by which point both characters had more or less become hammy supernatural monsters). In general, though, give me something with tentacles or gross bug eyes or claws. Give me a bug monster or a sea monster or an alien hellbeast. I always considered C.H.U.D. to be the archetypal Lazy Sunday Monster Flick (partly because it’s the only one I specifically remember watching).
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  • Return of the Living Dead

    In 1968, a relatively unknown filmmaker named George Romero made a little film called Night of the Living Dead. Though relatively low-budget, it became one of the earliest cult films and spawned an entire sub-genre of horror movies that continue to this day.

    Casting calls for Thriller.

    Romero wrote the screenplay with Night of the Living Dead with a fellow named John Russo. According to the film’s Wikipedia entry (which, in a refreshing change, cites most of its sources), the story grew from a horror comedy involving aliens into a straight, gruesome horror film that drew inspiration from Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend.
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  • C.H.U.D.

    Ah, C.H.U.D.. C.H.U.D. (1984) is the archetypal Lazy Sunday Movie. I vaguely remember watching it (probably on WLVI 56, maybe Fox 25) in my room in Carver during early high school.

    I rewatched C.H.U.D. for the purposes of this review. I was mildly surprised to find that I remembered virtually nothing about it except: 1.) “C.H.U.D.” stands for “Cannibalistic Human Underground Dweller,” and 2.) chuds have glowing yellow eyes.

    That’s not Leonardo. Or Michaelango. Or Donatello. Or even Jackson Pollock. Trust me.

    I certainly didn’t remember that the cast included Daniel Stern (of Home Alone, The Wonder Years and Leviathan fame) and a very young-looking John Goodman, not to mention Kim Greist, who I saw a few weeks ago for the first time in Brazil, her second film—right after C.H.U.D.!
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  • An American Werewolf in London

    An American Werewolf in London is one of those cult movies I always meant to see but never did (much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I’ll review later in the month). I knew it by reputation as a darkly comic horror film, perhaps similar to Evil Dead II or Dead Alive.

    Not a werewolf

    Not a werewolf

    One of the reasons it took me a while to see it was that it was a werewolf movie. I’m not a big fan of werewolves. I understand the appeal of vampires; Frankenstein’s monster is cool; demons, sea monsters, zombies I like. But werewolves seem boring to me. They’re big dogs, essentially. And their gimmick strains even the most flexible imagination: the victim only turns into a werewolf at each full moon? Why? Are werewolves affected by gravitational forces, like the tides? And then there’s the problem of mass conversion. Whether the victim turns into a giant wolf-man or a pure wolf, the weight ratios are going to be different, and that just bugs me; where does the extra mass come from (or go to)?
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  • Evil Dead Toy

    NOTE: Originally published under the name “Poe Ghostal” on OAFE on 10/1/02. I’ve revised and updated it for this entry.

    Ashley WilliamsThe first of the Evil Dead films I saw was?I’m fairly certain?Army of Darkness. At the time, I thought it was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. Then I saw Evil Dead 2, deservedly called the best of the trilogy. Finally I saw the first film, which is good but hard to take. Now having seen Army of Darkness about 10 million times, I can’t stand to watch it anymore. But Evil Dead 2…now that’s a classic film. I can watch that over and over.

    As any Evil Dead fan could tell you, those movies begged for toys once the action figure boom of the mid-’90s made it clear that just about anything could be turned into a toy line. And when McFarlane Toys’ Movie Maniacs line rolled around, it was clear that this was a match made in heaven.
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  • He-Man (2002) action figure

    NOTE: Originally published under the name “Poe Ghostal” on OAFE on 8/5/02.

    buy the power of Grayskull!He-Man and the Heroic Masters of the Universe must save Eternia from the clutches of the sinister Skeletor and his Evil Horde…

    A headstrong teenager with a nose for trouble stumbles upon an ancient stone castle deep in the Eternia Forest. There he meets a beautiful sorceress who gives him a magical weapon, the Power Sword, and tells him that only he can save Eternia from the Evil Skeletor. By raising the sword above his head, he transforms into He-Man, the Most Powerful Man in the Universe! Together with his heroic companions, the Masters of the Universe, He-Man takes on Skeletor and the Evil Horde in the battle for all Eternia!
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  • Wolverine (brown costume)

    NOTE: Originally published under the name “Poe Ghostal” on OAFE on 10/5/04.

    I can trace my awareness of the X-Men comics—and by extension, the mutant superhero called Wolverine—to its original source: an advertisement in the back of a comic book. The ad featured a “cool” kid—you knew he was cool because he was wearing a denim jacket and sunglasses—holding some X-Men trading cards, I believe. Far more effective than the kid himself was the tagline above him: “It’s a good bet the kid’s favorite MUTANTS ain’t TURTLES.”

    bring it on

    Now, at the time, I was a hardcore acolyte of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fad. However, I was also dimly aware that the Turtles—with their cartoony, anthropomorphic toy line and surfer-lite catchphrases—were perhaps targeted toward an audience that was a bit younger than I was at the time.

    Thus, this sunglasses-wearing kid threatened me. The ad tapped the core of my adolescent insecurity—dear God, was I worshipping the wrong mutants? While I would say advertisements have never worked particularly well on me (the only thing ads have ever done for me is made me aware of when things I might want, such as new action figures or films, will be available), this one, I have to admit, succeeded in spectacular fashion.
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  • The Descent

    Note: I wrote this review on spec for a local newspaper, but to my knowledge it wasn’t published, so I thought I’d just toss it up here. Enjoy…

    The television ad campaign for The Descent claim the film is “from the people who brought you Saw and Hostel,” two sadistic horror films that focus on human torture. The ads do an injustice both to fans of those films (who may not enjoy this one) and people who don’t like those films (and just might like The Descent).

    The Descent is an old-fashioned monster movie with a modern horror film sensibility. It was released in Great Britain over a year ago (and is already out on DVD over there), but did so well in the UK that “the people who brought you Saw and Hostel” decided to buy the North American distribution rights and give it a theatrical release here–an honor not accorded to Marshall’s previous film, Dog Soldiers (2002), one of the better werewolf movies out there.
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  • “Gotham by Gaslight” Batman action figure

    Though on occasion I’ve gone through a period of interest in comic books, I wouldn’t classify myself as a superhero fan. I do love Hellboy, but I don’t really consider him a superhero per se. At times I’ve enjoyed reading the X-Men and whatnot, but if there’s a superhero I really appreciate, it’s Batman.

    There are countless Batman stories out there, and toy company DC Direct (DCD) has worked hard to give us a figure from each one of them. But one of my favorite Batman stories is Gotham by Gaslight (1989), the first Elseworlds story (the brand was applied retroactively). Gaslight places the Batman story in the late Victorian era, with Batman tracking Jack the Ripper, who’s now running loose in Gotham.
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  • Superman Returns

    In 1962, writer and academic Umberto Eco published an essay called “The Myth of Superman,” in which he outlined how Superman (and superheroes in general) didn’t fit the traditional concept of a mythological hero due to the nature of capitalism and the episodic nature of Superman’s life. In essence, Superman has countless adventures over decades, all of which take place in a continuous present, while he remains the same approximate age. His story has a beginning, but it will never reach its end; but more importantly, he can never make progress, can never develop as a human being.
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