REEL RETRO CINEMA | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Aug12

THE HAND: When Michael Caine Met Barry Windsor-Smith – Sort Of

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Aug 12, 2018

THE HAND: When Michael Caine Met Barry Windsor-Smith – Sort Of

REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks and their comic-book connections… — By ROB KELLY The Hand is a 1981 horror film directed by Oliver Stone(!) starring Michael Caine (in what he himself described as “a money job”) as a writer/artist who produces a very successful adventure newspaper strip called Mandro, a Prince Valiant/Conan hybrid. Over the opening credits, we see Jon Lansdale (Caine) hard at work on the newest installment. Jon is married to Anne (Andrea Marcovicci), and they have a young daughter, but it doesn’t take long to see that they’re not happy. Anne wants to move to New York and get into some New Age-y stuff but Jon is content to stay in Vermont where his work, as he puts it, “pays the bills.” Indeed it does—Jon’s strip must have circulation equivalent to Peanuts or Doonesbury, given the size of the lakefront property that he and his family live on. While on a drive, a fight breaks out when Anne reveals that when—not if—she goes to New York, she’s not all that interested in having Jon come with her. Jon starts to yell and Anne, rattled by Jon’s fury and an impatient driver behind them, veers off into the opposite lane. Unfortunately, she does this just as a garbage truck is coming the other way! She tries to swerve, and mostly does, except Jon’s outstretched hand gets smashed by the truck, shooting blood in every direction! As you might imagine, this doesn’t make things better between them. Even worse, Jon has lost his drawing hand, which leads to his agent suggesting he partner up with another artist to continue Mandro. Jon goes to New York to meet the guy (played by Roger Rabbit himself, Charles Fleischer), but, in the midst of a deep depression, he’s so rude that the whole arrangement collapses and the agent fires him off his own strip. Right around this time, we see that Jon’s right hand, last seen in a field, has come alive and has started to move around on its own. It finds its way to New York (boy, that must have taken a while) where it kills a homeless man (played by Stone). Jon’s career in comic strips is over, so he takes a teaching gig in California where he starts a relationship with one of his...

Aug08

Corman’s FANTASTIC FOUR: Still Bad After All These Years

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Aug 8, 2018

Corman’s FANTASTIC FOUR: Still Bad After All These Years

REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks and their comic-book connections… Fantastic Four returns this week after a long layoff and we’ve been celebrating the First Family’s illustrious past (click here). Of course, as great as FF has been on the printed page, the team hasn’t fared quite so well on screen – and the Four’s schlockiest adventure is doubtlessly Roger Corman’s zero-budget “extravaganza.” So who better to tackle the epically bad epic than Rob Kelly – he of our REEL RETRO CINEMA column? No one, I tell you. No one. – Dan — By ROB KELLY To celebrate the return of the Fantastic Four to the pages of Marvel Comics, 13th Dimension major domo Dan Greenfield asked me to review Roger Corman’s infamous 1994 attempt at a live-action FF film. Presumably I have done something to anger him, and this is his passive-aggressive way of getting revenge on me. But since I want to keep writing REEL RETRO CINEMA columns, I guess I have no choice. So, suit up, everyone, this is going to be a bumpy ride. I am old enough to remember hearing about some sort of FF film in the early ’90s, via fan magazines. Every so often, Stan Lee would talk about it in a Bullpen Bulletins column, but I had long before dismissed anything in those as Mighty Marvel Manner-esque hyperbole. But then, one day, I saw this: I remember my reaction was two-fold. First, wow, this is really happening—there’s really a Fantastic Four movie! Second, wow, this does, uh, not look good. What’s with the weird face Johnny is making? Why does Sue look bored? Those costumes look kinda cheap. Is this what a Fantastic Four movie is going to look like? And then…nothing. I basically never heard of the movie again, as if it had never existed. Marvel never brought it up, it was certainly never released, so, as much as I thought about it (which wasn’t much — I had the utter collapse of the Batman movie franchise to worry about), I assumed the movie was never finished. Then one day I saw a bootleg of it at a comic con, and was floored—wait, this movie really exists? There’s a Fantastic Four movie out there and no one’s talking about it? How can this be? I bought a...

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