Sunday, March 16, 2014

David Brenner, frequent 'Tonight' guest, dies

David Brenner, frequent 'Tonight' guest, dies

This is David Brenner's first appearance on The Tonight Show.

Female Comic Strip Character Movie No. 2: BRENDA STARR

Brenda Starr and Brooke Shields as Brenda
"She looks like the Sunday comics, She thinks she's Brenda Starr"
 Blondie - Rip Her To Shreds Lyrics | MetroLyrics"

I'm going to say something up front that will make me the most hated person on the Internet (which I was for the first two or three years of my blogging career). I like the 1989/92 movie Brenda Starr more than the 2008 mega-hit The Dark Knight. Of course, everyone who reads this blog, and its predecessor, knows I hated the The Dark Knight before it was ever released. Then again, most of people decided to hate Brenda Starr before it was released to American theaters in the summer of 1992. Looking back, over twenty-five years after being made, the movie may have been ahead of its time.

For one thing, it is not just a movie about a comic strip character, it takes you into the world of Brenda Starr. It takes place in the 1940s. This sort of makes it a precursor to the 1990 Dick Tracy movie. There was a definite attempt to design something that looks like a comic strip world, which would latter be done to a greater effect by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher in their Batman films. Granted, the transitional effects look similar to the Wonder Woman TV series, but it works.

Another thing that make Brenda Starr revolutionary, it was probably the first movie to be influenced by a popular music video. The movie started production in 1986. The year before was the year that the Norwegian band A-ha had a number one hit internationally with "Take On Me." The video to that song features a woman diving into a newspaper comic strip to try to save the lead singer of the band from a gang of villains. It featured rotoscoped animation of the groups lead singer and some actors playing the gang.


Brenda Starr begins with an illustrator complaining about the comic strip and the character being stupid. An animated version of Brenda (voiced by Shields) snaps back that she is tired of listening to his gripping. At that point, she disappears from the panel. Which leads the artist named Mike (played by Tony Peck, Gregory Peck's son) to try to "go in and look for her."


Mike follows Brenda as she tries to find an ex-Nazi scientist played by Henry Gibson (How many Nazi parts did he play in films?), who has invented a additive that turns water into a powerful fuel.  Brenda wants get the first interview with the scientist to save the newspaper she works for, The Flash, from bankruptcy and scoop her rival, Libby Lipscomb (Diana Scarwid) of The Globe.


After visiting with President Truman (Ed Nelson), The Flash's editor, Francis Livright (Charles Durning) introduces Brenda to the mysterious eye-patch-wearing billionaire Basil St. John (Timothy Dalton). Basil tells Brenda that the scientist is in hiding in the Amazon jungle, which is where Basil lives and grows black orchids (They counteract a genetic disease that Basil has). The room has been bugged by the Globe and a gang of Russian spies, who want to find the doctor for themselves.

Dang! She's hot!

Brenda is kidnapped by the Russians and taken to, kidnapped by pirates on the Amazon, forced to walk a tightrope in a circus at gunpoint, water-skies on alligators, all while changing from one snazzy looking Bob Mackie outfit to another. Mike tags along, much to Brenda's chagrin, with Basil frequently showing up just in time to rescue Brenda, much to Mike's chagrin.

In the end, Brenda saves the paper, gets the scoop, embarrasses Libby, receives another black orchid from Basil (who vanishes again) and Mike decides that drawing Brenda is a bad job after all.


Reading some of the other reviews of this movie on other various websites I've come to the conclusion that most of the reviewers were not familiar with the Brenda Starr comic strip, they were also wanting some sort of dire, heavy-handed serious film like The Dark Knight, they don't know the tumultuous history of this film and (the majority of the reviewers) they hate Brooke Shields. I got the feeling some of the reviewers never watched this movie before they trashed it.

First off, the actors actually look like the characters from the comic strip. The actress who played Brenda in the 40s movie serial didn't have the soft features that Shields has in common with the comic strip Brenda (Brenda Starr was modeled after Rita Hayworth).


The character of Brenda's co-worker, Hank O'Hare, as played by actress Kathleen Wilhoite (Gilmore Girls, E.R., LA Law) actually looks like Hank O'Hare did in the comic strip. In the mid 70s made-for-TV Brenda Starr movie (staring Jill St. John as Brenda), the actress who played Hank O'Hare looked more like Katy Perry in the "Last Friday Night" video.


Several reviewers claim the the producers of Brenda Starr had "contempt" for the comic strip. My contention is no, they respected the comic strip enough to try to make the film look like the world featured in the comic strip, right down to stars in Brenda's eyes (see photo above). The reason, I feel the Columbia movie serial and the 70s made-for-TV movie fail is producers made a movie about a newspaper reporter named Brenda Starr, where as the producers of the 80s/90s film made a movie about a comic strip character named Brenda Starr. The only other comic strip or comic book oriented films or TV shows to do this before Brenda Starr went into production was the 1980 Flash Gordon movie and the 1966 Batman TV series. The best example of a movie doing this is the 1990 Dick Tracy movie with used only seven colors to imitate the look of newspaper funnies print.

I say "went to production" and give vague dates on Brenda Starr because it was actually made in 1986, but due to legal issues it wasn't released until 1989 in Europe and 1992 in the United States. This is partially another reason for some of the negative reviews on the Internet as well as when it was released. It is view as a ripoff of Dick Tracy because of the 40s setting, when in reality it was made four years before it. An extra bit of trivia: After filming finished on Brenda Starr, Timothy Dalton began filming The Living Daylights, his first James Bond film.            

Quite a bit of the criticism of Brenda Starr comes from that old fanboy bugaboo of the use of humor. They think that you have "contempt" for the comic if you poke fun at some of the aspects of comic. Two of the funniest jokes in the movie revolve around Brenda self-righteous attitude toward Mike's cursing and his having a "belly button." The last part is an in-joke, because (according to creator Dale Messick) the syndicate would erase Brenda's belly button if it was showing.

I honestly believe that in the future people will change there opinion of this film. It is incredibly underrated as an adaption of a comic strip.  It doesn't try to force Brenda into a serious, scary real world.  To paraphrase what she tells Mike near the end of the film, Brenda Starr stays in the Sunday funnies where she belongs.






Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Female Comic Strip Character Movie No. 1: KISS ME KILL ME a.k.a BABA YAGA (VALENTINA)

Crepax's Valentina and actress De Funes
This is the movie that instigated this series of post. I had mentioned in a previous post the Valentina comic strip by Guido Crepax. I found this movie in a Mill Creek movie set, thinking it may have been a giallo film.

The comic book version

Most American comic strip/comic book adaptations are aimed at kids. The average child wouldn't be interested in this because Valentina is an Italian comic character. That is good, because this is not a children's movie. This is an adult foreign film. While a very good adaptation of Crepax's artwork and story, the best way to describe it to the average person is a kinky, psychedelic mind-f**k (Pardon my French).

Isabelle De Funes as Valentina

Valentina is played by Isabelle De Funes. She is a cute, hip, Marxist, magazine photographer, who is almost killed trying to save a cute, little dog from being smashed by an on-coming Rolls Royce. The driver is a mysterious woman called Baba Yaga, played by 60s American sex symbol Carroll Baker. As you can see from the picture of the comic, Baker looks nothing like the character in the comic book. Then again, do you want to see someone who looks like Crepax's Baba Yaga naked?

Carroll Baker is Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga shows up the next day at Valentina's studio, fondles her (wait for it) camera and invites her to home. After Baba Yaga leaves, the model Valentina is working with tells her that she thinks Baba Yaga is a lesbian. At one point, Baba Yaga steals the tab from Valentina's garter belt lick and suck on it like a Charms Blow Pop.

Can you get one of these at Toys R Us?

Valentina goes to Baba Yaga's spooky old house with a hole in the floor that Baba Yaga says is the entrance to Hell. Baba Yaga gives Valentina a doll, named Annette, that looks like an American Girl doll dressed like a dominatrix. Valentina begins having nightmares about being naked in front of Nazis. She also dreams that Annette turns into a real dominatrix and begins whipping her.

She tells her film director boyfriend, played by George Eastman, that she believes Baba Yaga is a witch. He doesn't believe it until the people Valentina photographs die suddenly. I'll stop here rather than spoil the ending.

Louise Brooks - Valentina's role model

Some interesting trivia about the Valentina strip. Guido Crepax modeled Valentina after an American silent movie actress named Louise Brooks. Her autobiography makes Valentina's exploits look like a Peanuts special. And speaking of Charlie Brown and the gang...

Good Grief! Valentina is naked again

Valentina first appeared in an Italian comic book called Linus that featured Peanuts reprints. She was the Lois Lane to a Superman-like character named Neutron. Eventually, Crepax dropped Neutron and Valentina became the focus of the comic strip.

The theme song is an instrumental entitled "Open Spaces" by Piero Umiliani, the man responsible for the song "Mah-Nah-Nah-Nah," which was made famous in this country by Jim Henson's Muppets.

The story was remade for a TV version of Valentina in the 90s, but it is not as good. It plays too much like a soap opera.

If you like Italian horror films and comic strip history, check this out. Granted, it is not for everyone, but it is interesting.

 

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

FEMALE COMIC STRIP CHARACTERS IN THE MOVIES



I had mentioned last week that I was planing a post on female comic strip characters, who made it to the movie screen. When I came up with this idea last month I thought it would be easy. Then after some research I found out somethings that complicated matters. I was mainly thinking of a handful of well-known film version. I was looking on IMDB and found that there were more than one film for some of these characters. To complicate matters more, these are hard to find. Some never made it to VHS let alone DVD. In a way this is okay, because:
  1. This character is not one of my favorite comic strips.
  2. The descriptions of the plots on IMDB suggest that, like the comic strip, it has a right-wing slant.
  3. There are now three versions of the 70s musical based on this comic, the 80s movie, a made-for-TV version and new big screen version with an all African-American cast.

I was planning to call this "Female Comic Strip Characters on the Big Screen," then I remembered that one of the movies I wanted to feature was a made-for-TV movie. The character has never been on the big screen (However, a big screen version is in the works).

I could only find the trailers for an 80s movie based on a British character, a handful of episodes of a short-lived 80s TV series and some old newsreel footage of the actress, who played the character, and the artist, who created the comic strip (I might post because my juvenile sense of humor enjoys how this man calls his eraser "his rubber").

The Italian comic strip that spawned this post has a few "underground" film versions and a 90s TV series, that apparently aired in this country on the Playboy channel late at night.

I found two other versions of one of the characters I was going to feature on You Tube. There was a Columbia serial of the 40s and a 70s made-for-TV movie. Neither was very good, but at least the 70s TV movie had Jill St. John playing the lead character.

Then I noticed that one of the characters I intended to feature was the star of the "one of the longest running film series in movie history." Was I going to actually buy a box set of these movies and watch them all? I watched them on Sunday afternoons in junior high on KSPR. Isn't that good enough?

Then I realized, I might be over my head. My real aim was to just point out movies about these characters that are out there, not right a book. However, this will probably become an on-going series.


I plan to start with a movie based on Guido Crepax's Valentina and, hopefully, follow it with a post on the 80s/90s Brenda Star movie with Brooke Shields. So, as the old saying goes "See ya in the funny papers!"


Monday, March 3, 2014

THE BOOK THAT MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY


I've been working on a post on movie adaptation of female comic strip characters (Blonde, Little Orphan Annie, Brenda Star, Friday Foster, Wonder Woman, etc). I recently discovered a film based on Valentina, an erotic, psychedelic Italian comic strip illustrated by Guido Crepax (which I plan to mention in my post). I remember seeing sample of Valentina in a book my parents bought me when I was nine years old entitled The World Encyclopedia of Comics by Maurice Horn (I notice in this photo that the biography of Guido Crepax is on the front of the dust jacket, to the left of Yellow Kid).

I tried to look for some updated information of Maurice Horn, but found little on the Internet. I have a video with an interview with him on it and he speaks in French, however, the bio of him in the book indicates he is an American. He was very well-known as an expert on comic art. Milton Canniff even drew Maurice Horn into a Steve Canyon strip. 

The more I thought about this book, the more I realized how much of an influence this book had on my life. It really triggered not only my creative instincts but my need for more knowledge and the realization that somewhere in the world there were people taking the things I was interested in seriously. It also pointed that there were movies and TVs about these comic strip characters, so that made me interested in film and media history. There was a timeline in the front which sparked my interest in modern history. The foreign entries sparked my interest in other countries. This book told me that the was life beyond Laclede County and Lebanon, Missouri. For that I am ever thankful.

   
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