Fear and Monkey Business at Wonderfest 2013

Donna and I with Rondo presenters Nurse Moan-eek (Linda Wylie) and David Colton.

It was an unusual Wonderfest for Donna and me, but also a very happy and successful one. Aside from two brief meetings with Sara Karloff, who had a very warm handshake and seemed a genuinely nice lady, I didn't meet any of the guests. That's not why I go to Wonderfest; I go to see those friends I am not able to see at any other time of the year. I didn't get downstairs to the Dealers' Rooms till an hour before they closed on Sunday, and I didn't cover all the ground or buy a single thing -- with the exception of William Stout's must-have new book LEGENDS OF THE BLUES, which I arranged to obtain from him in advance. I saw Lee Meriwether (my favorite Catwoman since 1966) from afar, thought to myself that I really didn't have anything to say to her that she wouldn't have heard at least a millllion times before (I mean, Donnie Waddell had already played the 4D MAN card), so I decided to keep our happy relationship as it was: real but unrealized, and all in my mind.

A large number of the people we usually see at Wonderfest weren't there this year. No Bob and Kathy, no Frank and Trish, no David J. Schow or Larry Underwood or John Davis, and a few of the Nashville contingent showed up stag, leaving their better halves at home. Most significantly, Gary L Prange wasn't able to host his Old Dark Clubhouse for personal reasons, so Donna and I accepted to pick up the slack by hosting a hospitality suite for our group of friends. We dubbed it The Kogar Suite, in honor of the great ape Kogar and his keepers, our dear friends Bob and Kathy Burns, who have always been as central to the friendships formed at this convention as a family hearth. We informed them of our plans and they provided us with a disc of photos pertaining to Bob's career as the mighty gorilla Kogar -- including his encounters with Elsa Lanchester, Fred MacMurray, Glenn Strange and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo -- which we used to decorate the place, along with other adornments. Chris and Lisa Herzog, who took the other adjoining room and helped out with the suite, brought along a wondrous assortment of monkey-related things, including a monkey piñata (which Lisa called "the monkey autopsy" after hollowing out its belly and filling it with candy) and that perennial game of skill and patience known as Barrelful of Monkeys (in red and green), which -- before the weekend ended, had joined hands and were literally swinging from the chandeliers).

Donna and Lisa Herzog, who painted this fearsome likeness of Kogar for our Wonderfest suite.

With a small select group of early arrivals, including Rondomeister David Colton and his wife Eileen, we toasted Bob and Kathy and our other absent friends. The first surprise of the weekend concerned an absent friend. Literally for months and months, there had been a lot of backstage whispering going on because Jessica Lentz was preparing a surprise 50th birthday party for her husband Jerry, which was going to be the centerpiece of our suite's Saturday night activities. When Jessica and her daughter Erin arrived, they brought  plenty of food with them to be refrigerated... but alas, no Jerry Lentz. Not feeling well, he opted to stay behind in Nashville. Even after the beans were spilled to him about the party plans, he didn't feel well enough to attend. But Jessica didn't want to disappoint Erin, whom she thought would enjoy the show, and Donna introduced her to some of our annual sushi pleasures at Sapporo in Bardstown which, I repeat as I do whenever I mention it, offers The Best Sushi in the World.

Me with Jessica "JL2" Lentz, whom you may remember as our Inside Back Cover model in VIDEO WATCHDOG 165!

As I look back over the weekend, it seems even blurrier than usual and I seem to be having a harder time than usual recovering from it, so I must have had a wonderful time. I certainly had a marvelous time at the Eleventh Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, about which David Colton was a wee bit trepidatious because the majority of acceptances this year were going to be absentees who sent in videos... but it was still a very entertaining program, thanks to the complementary chemistry of the tuxedoed David and his comic foil Nurse Moan-eek (VW's own Linda Wylie). I was especially pleased to accept awards for Writer of the Year and Best Themed Issue (for VIDEO WATCHDOG's DARK SHADOWS round table issue) and to see my pal Stephen R. Bissette inducted into the Rondo Hall of Fame by fellow artist and dinophile Bill Stout. I thought for sure that Bill and I would have an intensive one-on-one conversation about a project we've been discussing for a couple of years now, especially since the weekend was immediately preceded by a sudden flurry of excited emails from Bill, but sadly, that conversation didn't happen. He was present and involved in other discussions of earth-shaking import, however. I almost missed saying goodbye to him, as I found him hastily packing up to catch his plane as I finally made it downstairs to his table. He is due back for Vinylfest in July, however, and I hope to see him then.

Chris and Lisa Herzog, MONSTER KID HOME MOVIES producer Joe Busam, Rondo-winning artist Mark Maddox, Yours Truly and Ted Haycraft discussing something or other in the Louisville Crowne Plaza's Suite 572.  Photo courtesy of Abigail Yates.

I spent most of my time talking with Chris and Lisa, VW 171 cover artist Mark Maddox (who bailed early and did not say goodbye - he will be dealt with later), Frankensteinia blogger Pierre Fournier and Denise Gascon, Max "The Drunkenseveredhead" Cheney and Jane Considine, sushi neighbor Rodney Barnett (who's on some kind of jungle girl movie kick), Danya Linehan and Mike Parks, Ted Haycraft, Donnie Waddell, Carrie Galloway, Melinda Angstrom (who arrived on Sunday night and joined Donnie in a hilarious, extended comedy pas de deux), Ethan Black and newcomer Abigail Yates... In fact, as Donna noted later, there were more women in the hospitality suite than she remembers ever seeing. We counted seventeen. I did not have sufficient time to speak with the charming Belle Dee, the dimpled Terry Pace, the zennish Scott "Belmo" Belmer, the itinerant Steve Iverson or the injured Dave Thomas, which I regret. I'm a bad host; I can help provide the space for friends but I'm not so good at circulating. I tend to sit in one place, get into conversations and delight as they widen and deepen.

Anyway, a lovely time as always, over much too soon. The Kogar Suite was a great success and it shall be again.   

He Moved Us: Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

There could be no "right" time to awaken to the news of Ray Harryhausen's death at the age of 92. His was a life well-lived, a career well-played, and a legacy well-acknowledged; even so, such news crashes, flying saucer-like, into the wide-eyed child in all of us, whom he entertained for so many decades with ideas and imagery consistently larger than life.

He was not the originator but rather the exemplar of stop-motion animation. He took a scientific principle and gave it a consistency and character that was never-before-seen yet part of an essential tradition of storytelling traceable to the earliest etchings on cavern walls, when stories were brought to life by flickering candlelight rather than a rattling neighborhood movie projector. For the Baby Boomer generation, Ray Harryhausen was Mother Goose, the Brothers Grimm, La Fontaine and the Arabian Nights all rolled into one, himself animated by a heart of adventure whose depth and scope were worthy of H. Rider Haggard.

For those of us who saw his work writ large on theater screens, his name summons a seemingly endless ribbon of marvels, unforgettable scenes all the more remarkable in that they were the work of a single man working in a kind of Aladdin's cave of lights, scale models, measuring instruments and rubberized armatures given the illusion of life one meticulous frame at a time. Many of us took our first step beyond monsters, beyond makeup into the larger realm of special effects, under his guiding wing. Anyone who can speak effectively about what made Ray Harryhausen great will note the jagged, angular quality of his stop-motion work, a quality also present in the work of his mentor Willis O'Brien and in that of colleagues like Jim Danforth and David Allen, but there is an additional sleekness, an energy, a tail-thrashing alacrity, a more far-reaching sense of vision in Harryhausen's executions that lends them powers wholly their own. There is something about his fabulous creatures that is both not quite real and yet captivating in a manner that seems to exceed reality and tap directly into the way we imagine, the way we dream.

Moreover, life seemed to burst forth from his creations with a robust exuberance that left the viewer no room to experience anything but awe. When the Cyclops roars into view for the first time in THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, it wasn't just cinema that changed; we all changed -- and you can go through his admirably compact filmography one picture at a time and see how each project advanced not only his art but the art form itself. His BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS seems to stand on the shoulders of Willis O'Brien's work in the silent version of THE LOST WORLD, rising ever higher to give us the cinema's first full-scale dinosaur invasion of a modern city, with sound and an attention to detail that went well beyond the anecdotal. In IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, it was the challenge of animating a series of tentacles -- a dry run for the skeleton armies yet to come, if you will. In EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, it was in the way he achieved a personality for the saucers themselves and dazzled us with suggestions of their vast size by having them interact with reality in matte shots and scale models. In 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, he produced his first superstar, the Ymir, an alien creature wholly of his own design and, for the first time, thoroughly enriched with character and pathos. And yet the leap from that remarkable accomplishment to THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD was almost incomprehensible because, in the course of one story, he gave us an entire bag of tricks, presenting us with seemingly infinite variety -- the Cyclops, the Auk, the Dragon, only to top them all with the unimaginable technical challenge of the Skeleton Army. Though the quality of his own contribution was always impeccable, the rest of these films were generally left in the hands of B-picture directors like Nathan Juran, causing serious imbalances in the overall end products; only Bernard Herrmann, who scored his best work, seemed capable of lending the level of support his genius warranted. When he made JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS in 1963, working with director Don Chaffey, his level of quality was carried throughout the entire production. It remains the citadel of his work and one of the greatest fantasy films of all time. It's the favorite film of a lot of little boys inside a lot of grown men, and had it come out of nowhere -- like the original KING KONG -- it would likely be much better appreciated as the miracle that it is. 

Thanks to the "protection" of his faithful producer Charles H. Schneer, Harryhausen continued to make his leaps and bounds in a blessed state of hermetic purity until the 1970s, when Steven Spielberg and a malfunctioning robot shark redefined cinematic spectacle and Hollywood found new ways for the cart to drag the horse. He had also risen himself, on his waves of success, to a level of production where too much money was riding on his projects to rest too much on the shoulders of a single man. In Harryhausen's last couple of films, SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER and CLASH OF THE TITANS, you can feel his Old World craftsmanship being prodded along by New World production schedules; for the first time, he was being dogged by deadlines, required to hire assistants, to farm out sequences to other animators, and generally pick his battles, reserving his full mastery for those sequences that would best be served by it, like the unforgettable Medusa sequence in CLASH. With word being bandied about of a next project, SINBAD GOES TO MARS, Harryhausen glumly noted "like Abbott and Costello" and announced his retirement in 1984.

Without Harryhausen as an inexhaustible topic of discussion, we would very likely not have anything like the widespread consciousness about special effects that people have today. In 1971, Ernest Farino and Sam Calvin produced FXRH, the first purely technical fanzine addressed to appreciating and deconstructing his backlog of achievement, which in turn inspired other publications such as FANTASCENE and CINEFEX. Harryhausen himself has published a number of books, beginning with his oft-revised and updated FILM FANTASY SCRAPBOOK and including a particularly delectable coffee table devoted to his production art. More recently, Farino has collected the four issues of FXRH in hardcover and has been serially publishing a set of hardcovers assembling Mike Hankin's definitive biography, RAY HARRYHAUSEN, MASTER OF THE MAJICKS. Published in a staggered order, these lush volumes began with Volume II and continued with Volume III (both of which quickly sold out); the first and final Volume, covering Harryhausen's "Beginnings and Endings," was sent to the printer just a few weeks prior to his death today.      
 
It has been said that today's CGI effects have relegated the work of Ray Harryhausen to another time, but it might be more accurate to assign his legacy to another space. Because, unlike CGI effects, whose dimensional quality is absolutely flat and illusory, Harryhausen created alone as an artist what entire armies of people do now as collectives with a series of mouse clicks. His work required him to be a draughtsman and a craftsman -- an idea man, an artist, sculptor, scientist, machinist, mathematician, technician, cinematographer -- and what he produced occupied space as three-dimensional as any ever inhabited by an actor. And through the effort of moving his creations forward by fractions of inches, filling 24 frames per second, he not only moved them, he moved us.

 

andrew j. offutt (1934-2013)

Today's news of the death of fantasy author andrew j. offutt comes to me as half of a very strange coincidence.

Last week on eBay, I scored a small stack of Tom Reamy's deluxe 1960s-'70s fanzine TRUMPET, which I'd always wanted to know more about; they arrived yesterday and I was surprised to discover that my old friend andy had written a column for them. When I say TRUMPET was deluxe, I mean photo-offset and art and writing by the best in the business at that time. Even their letters column was illustrious. And I have to say, I hadn't really thought of andy in years. I read andy's columns and enjoyed them; one of them was illustrated with three pictures of the young fellow he must have been at that time, and they brought back memories of his direct and wily gaze and that impressive Kentucky colonel voice he had etched into ordinary sinew with decades of intensive and unusual reading. ("I've read all of Havelock Ellis," he boasts in one of these columns.) It had the ring of Civil War-era courtliness and Jack Daniels, though I'm told by mutual friend Joel Zakem that his prefered brand was Maker's Mark.

I knew of him because he contributed to other fanzines produced by friends of mine; I sent him my first fanzine, THE HYDRAULIC PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH #1, which looked like absolute crap, yet despite my flat-out lack of credentials, he agreed to write something for my second (which I called APPLES WOOFER #2) -- a very amusing, character-driven overview of the then-current (1972) horror movie scene. This makes him not only the first professional writer I ever met or knew, but the first one I ever presented in print. Either one of those distinctions would make this blog entry kind of a heavy one to write, and I can assure you, especially given yesterday's coincidence of discovering those early columns and those pictures of him in his youth, this is a heavy piece to write.

We met at the 1972 Midwestcon -- he, his wife Jodie and the kids known as the "offuttspring." I was 15 or 16 and, when I expressed an interest in his work, he took me to his hotel room and showed me a book full of the paperback porn he wrote under other names. I wish I could have bought them all, but I could only afford HOLLY WOULD by John Cleve, which he said was the best of them. The only other title I remember from the box was BLACK BUCK, WHITE BITCH -- a title he hated, imposed on another of his aliases by his publisher (my first-ever awareness that writers weren't always on ideal footing with their publishers, or vice versa). His first hardcover was about to be published at that time, and I remember Jodie excitedly sharing with me her handsome husband's first-ever dust jacket and author's photo. andy's forte was sword-and-sorcery, which was never mine, so I never did read much of his work, but I remember him as a strong and razor-sharp personality, a devil and a hedonist and an eccentric in the best of all those terms, and someone who had the stuff of genius in him. He was a verbal gymnast and he communicated to me the joy of writing for a living.

Did he make full use of his genius? I leave that for his steadfast readers to decide. But I can tell you this: When I started watching TRUE BLOOD in its first season, his son Chris was the show's story editor, and I could see a LOT of the andy I remembered in Stephen Moyer's original performance as Bill Compton. I wrote about that here, at the time. Chris didn't stay with the show and Moyer's performance changed -- and not for the better, if you ask me.

During the year or two when I regarded andy as a mentor, he used to sign his letters to me "peace/out, ajo." Peace/out to you, andrew. Thank you for your kindness to the younger me, and for showing me this path.

Update 5/3/13: I'm appending this obit from Andy's hometown newspaper.

On the Set of Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE

LISA AND THE UNNATURALS: A Buzzati Connection?

In my review of SCHREIE IN DER NACHT -- the German DVD release of Antonio Margheriti's CONTRONATURA/THE UNNATURALS, 1969) -- in the current VIDEO WATCHDOG, I mention that it bears a surprising narrative similarity to Mario Bava's heretofore unique LISA AND THE DEVIL (1973).

I just learned from the organizers of the "Contronatura" section of the Operazione Paura Festival that Margheriti's film was loosely based on a story by Dino Buzzati entitled "And Yet They Keep Knocking At Your Door." (This is not mentioned in the film's credits.) Further research revealed that this story was translated into English for a hardcover collection entitled CATASTROPHE: THE STRANGE SHORT FICTION OF DINO BUZZATI, published here in 1965. When I first started looking into this, I thought, on the basis of the film's resemblance to Margheriti's earlier CASTLE OF BLOOD (DANSE MACABRE, 1964), that it might have some basis in the writings of Algernon Blackwood. In looking over some customer comments about Buzzati at Amazon.com, I noticed that one of them described him as a kind of  "Italian Algernon Blackwood."

I was also struck last night, while revisiting Jess Franco's A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1971), by the similarities of this dream-like film to Margheriti's and Bava's, in that it's about a living woman who spends time in a house full of people, one of them blind, who are eventually revealed to be dead, the ghostly figments of a damned existence. In LISA AND THE DEVIL, Elke Sommer plays Lisa Reiner; in A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD, Christina von Blanc plays Christine Reiner. Coincidence?
 
Unfortunately Buzzati's CATASTROPHE is now a very rare book; I could only find a used copy going for more than $300 -- a bit too steeply priced to read just one story. However, Bava supposedly read everything in the genre he could get his hands on and I suspect there is a connection here to be explored.

Hammer DRACULA Restoration... Incomplete!

Hammer fans have been torn on their response to Lionsgate/Icon's new Region 2 Blu-ray/DVD set of Terence Fisher's DRACULA (1958). Everyone is overjoyed to finally see the long-censored decomposition scene as it was intended to be seen, while others have complained that the film now looks too blue or too dark. As it happens, I can't agree with either side of that criticism. The film looks just fine on my 60" Kuro Pro monitor, but after carefully examining the three surviving Japanese reels included as a bonus supplement in the set, I can't agree that we're seeing the decomposition scene as it was intended by director Terence Fisher to be seen either.

Let us begin with a series of frame grabs from the 2012 restoration, beginning with the skeleton of Dracula's hand emerging from the ashes of its disintegrated flesh. This material runs from 79:43-44.

 

The film then cuts to a baleful close shot of Dracula's face, Christopher Lee investing the moment with pathos and defeat.

 

 

 

The film then cuts back to Dracula's arm as the last of the ashen flesh crumbles and the sleeve of Dracula's coat shrinks back to expose the crumbling bones of his forearm.

 Now the same moment as it appears in the Japanese print, Reel 9. The first shot appears to hold slightly longer as the skeleton of the hand disengages from the papery flesh. The restoration holds true to the original release version by retaining only the last frames of the shot. It's much more apparent here that the bones are coming free of what was once flesh.

 

 And now comes the important stuff -- 33:22-23 in the Japanese reel supplement. Here we find a completely unique reaction shot of Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, no longer passively withering into defeat but nearly in tears against his ruthless opponent as the rays of sunlight converge to slay him. I've stepped through the footage and snapped a progress frame with every five beats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It's a wonderful discovery and a tragic omission. In these 30 or so frames, we see the fight bleed out of Dracula; it's his moment of recognition that he's losing everything. The scene then continues with the shrinking of the coat sleeve from Dracula's arm.

 

I don't think this could be a matter of the restoration team choosing to keep the footage we've always known for two reasons: 1) in every other instance, they went with the alternate footage found in the Japanese print, and 2) they have made no mention anywhere of this alternative reaction shot of Dracula. I sincerely believe they overlooked it, so intent were they on the scene's special effects gore that they failed to see a blatant variation of performance.

More about this and my evaluation of the remainder of the restoration in the next issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG -- #174. 

Recipients of the 2012 Rondo Awards

-- BEST MOVIE: CABIN IN THE WOODS

-- BEST TV: WALKING DEAD

-- CLASSIC DVD: A&C MEET FRANKENSTEIN

-- CLASSIC COLLECTION: UNIVERSAL MONSTERS ON BLU RAY

-- RESTORATION: DRACULA (1931)

-- COMMENTARY: David Kalat on Criterion GOJIRA/GODZILLA

-- DVD EXTRA: Universal Monsters ORIGINAL HOUSE OF HORRORS booklet

-- INDEPENDENT FILM: HOUSE OF GHOSTS

-- SHORT FILM: FALL OF HOUSE OF USHER (animated)

-- DOCUMENTARY: BEAST WISHES

-- BOOK OF YEAR: RAY HARRYHAUSEN'S FANTASY SCRAPBOOK

-- BEST MAGAZINE MODERN: RUE MORGUE

-- BEST MAGAZINE CLASSIC: SCARY MONSTERS

-- BEST ARTICLE: Christopher Lee: A Career retrospective, by Aaron Christensen, HORROR HOUND #34

-- BEST INTERVIEW: Michael Culhane talks with original DARK SHADOWS cast, including Jonathan Frid's last interview, FAMOUS MONSTERS #261

-- BEST COLUMN: It Came from Bowen's Basement (John Bowen), RUE MORGUE

-- BEST THEME ISSUE: Tie, MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT #30 (Vincent Price); VIDEO WATCHDOG #169 (Dark Shadows)

-- COVER: Jeff Preston's Phibes cover for LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS #29

-- WEBSITE: DREAD CENTRAL

-- BLOG: COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

-- CONVENTION: MONSTERPALOOZA

-- FAN EVENT: Rick Baker gets star on hollywood Walk of Fame

-- HORROR HOST: Svengoolie

-- HORROR COMIC: WALKING DEAD

-- MULTIMEDIA (Audio/video): FRIGHT BYTES

-- SOUNDTRACK/HORROR CD: ROSEMARY'S BABY

-- TOY, MODEL OR COLLECTIBLE: Jeff Yagher's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN scene

-- WRITER OF YEAR: Tim Lucas

-- REVIEWER OF YEAR: David-Elijah Nahmod

-- ARTIST: DANIEL HORNE

-- FAN ARTIST: MARK OWEN

-- HENRY ALVAREZ AWARD FOR ARTISTIC DESIGN: RAY SANTOLERI

-- INTERNATIONAL MONSTER FAN: Rhonda Steerer (operates Boris Karloff 'More Than a Monster' site from Germany)

-- MONSTER KID OF THE YEAR: SIMON ROWSON (for work in Japan unearthing lost footage in HORROR OF DRACULA)

-- HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES:

   -- J.D. LEES -- Editor/publisher who helped popularize kaiju scholarship with G-FAN, now a giant-sized 100 issues old.

   -- COUNT GORE DE VOL: Still going strong in multimedia, 40 years later.

   -- TED NEWSOM: Opinionated but with good reason -- he was there researching and interviewing long before most others.

   -- STEVE BISSETTE -- Writer's love of the genre has spread across all genres, from comic books to deep research.

   -- JESSIE LILLEY: From Scarlet Street to Famous Monsters and Mondo Cult, she has expanded the outlook of fandom.

   -- And the late GARY DORST: One of fandom's founding forces, gone far too soon.

Aloha, Annette (1942-2013)

Today we've lost Annette Funicello at age 70, after a long and largely private struggle with multiple sclerosis. Wikipedia reports she was unable to walk since 2004 and unable to speak since 2009, enforcing her early retreat from public view. This news is hard to believe for those of us who remember Annette as a 12-year old Mouseketeer (I can, thanks to 1960s reruns of THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB) and her later appearances in a half-dozen BEACH PARTY movies for AIP which, to me as a pre-teen, played like freewheeling, madcap previews of what teenage life might be like.

Walt Disney had seemingly plucked her out of nowhere after spotting her in a juvenile performance of "Swan Lake" at Burbank's Starlight Bowl, in which she played the Swan Queen; she was the last Mouseketeer to be cast and the most popular, even before her puberty hit in a manner television had never documented before. Though noticeably more voluptuous, she wasn't a conspicuously different Annette in the Beach Party films than in the MICKEY MOUSE CLUB serials "Annette" (which launched her hit song "How Will I Know My Love?"), "The Further Adventures of Spin and Marty", or the Disney series ZORRO; there was still something of "Swan Lake's" Swan Queen about her, a warmth and sweetness but also a tacit distance; a hermetic sense of young, grassroots American royalty. With her earnest voice double-tracked, she recorded a number of hit songs ("Tall Paul", "Pineapple Princess"), some of them written by her first serious boyfriend, Paul Anka, who famously spun one of them ("It's Really Love") into the theme music for THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON.

One of the great images of Annette Funicello that I carry with me is one I never saw, but was once described on an episode of THE MATCH GAME by actor Bart Braverman. He remembered seeing her once drive into a studio parking lot in a peach-colored sportscar convertible and stepping out in peach-colored clothes and boots. He said it was the one thing he'd seen in his life that spoke of genuine stardom to him and that he would never forget. I also remember hearing somewhere that Annette and Shelley Fabares were best friends who met once a week to have lunch together, and thinking how many men must see them talking at a nearby table and fight the urge to pick up their check out of simple gratitude.

My own favorite memory of Annette is the opening credits for a certain movie from 1965. I saw this on the big screen as a kid and it may still be the only time a credit sequence has outdone the rest of the picture, even though I like the rest of the picture. Written by the Sherman brothers, it's still the happiest song in the world for me, and I thank her for it -- and for a lifetime of companionship, though she never knew me and I'm sure I knew the real Annette less well than I'd like to believe. To borrow the title of another Beach Boys song, Annette embodied the romance of The Nearest Faraway Place, always close but too far to reach. 

Thoughts About Jess

I want to express my thanks to everyone who has called or written me personally to express their shared sorrow. Naturally I share your regret that Jess is no longer among us, making new movies, but there is still quite a wealth of material out there for us to see, to see again, or to see differently. Will any of us ever truly get to the bottom of all he left us?

Of course I regret that we never met in person, but I think there is no doubt that we experienced a perfect meeting on some special metaphysical level. The one time we spoke on the phone, we both laughed for nearly a full minute before we could begin a proper conversation, so amused were we both to be finally talking together. It was very much like catching up with a friend from some other lifetime. Would shaking his hand have made any difference? We seemed to cross-pollenate one another, odd as that seems; we had a genuine and complete correspondence. I am pleased that I had some hand in reversing what was once the common wisdom about him and his work, and that he acknowledged my efforts on his behalf in a warm and appreciative manner. A shared love of his work also became a password into many important friendships in my life... and there is much more work for us still to do.

Yes, I shed some tears this morning, but listening to Clifford Brown's "I'll Remember April" -- a song I posted on Facebook in tribute to Jess -- reminded me that grief is selfishness. To really be in the presence of Jess Franco, all you need do is listen to great jazz, the most alive music there is. Wherever Jess is, the mystery is taking him into his confidence as a final reward. His best movies addressed the balance of those two great mysteries, sex and death, and he now knows more about the poem he spent his life writing than he ever did while alive.

So I am moved by his death, but not sad; I am actually happy for Jess. No one achieved more; he is the unchallenged King of the Mountain. He went out with a new movie awaiting release. His work just hit Blu-ray this past year and he's got numerous films now being restored and awaiting release on this state-of-the-art medium. He can put his infirmities behind and rejoin the love of his life and the loves of his life. Now that his filmography is complete, its full arc and all its oceanic confluences can be measured and charted; maybe it's the kick in the ass I need to come to complete grips with this book I've been compiling on the back burner and get it done. In the meantime, there are more Blu-rays coming up and I'm hopeful of recording audio commentaries for at least a couple of them.

Jess Franco is finished with life, but life is far from finished with him.

(Photo above, courtesy of Alain Petit's collection.)

Jesús "Jess" Franco (May 12, 1930 - April 2, 2013)

Jesús Franco Manera passed away sometime after 11:00am this morning, from complications of a stroke, at a clinic in Malaga, Spain. He was 82 years old.

Word came at roughly 5:30am (US Eastern time) this morning, on Facebook's El Franconomicon fan page, when Frank Munoz -- stationed at the hospital where "Tio Jess" had been under observation since suffering a serious stroke last Wednesday -- posted this brief message:

"Estoy en el hospital. Acaba de fallecer. Se lo han llevado ahora mismo. Lo siento."

Translation: "I'm at the hospital. He has just passed away. They are taking him right now. I am sorry." 

And so ends -- or begins -- the most epic story in the history of fantastic cinema. The IMDb credits Franco with directing 199 features and the list is surely incomplete, lacking some titles altogether, not to mention variant editions and unreleased titles. Very often, he was also their writer and very often their cameraman, editor, dubber and a member of the cast. No one demonstrably loved making movies more than he.

Of course, Jess has always been the Patron Saint of VIDEO WATCHDOG, the subject of our very first feature article; the way his films invited me in, the way each of his films seemed to open up worlds within worlds, made our obsessive style of coverage possible. I watched two of his films tonight, wanting to be "with" him. I had a feeling this might happen.

Jess was only one month shy of his 83rd birthday, and his final feature -- AL PEREIRA VS. THE ALLIGATOR LADIES, in which his longtime friend and associate Antonio Mayans reprised a role he had played several times -- recently had its first public screening. Of course, Jess's wife and muse Lina Romay (Rosa Maria Almirall Martinez), who became the very essence of his cinema from the time they met in 1973, passed away just over one year ago, on February 15, 2012. 

Go with our blessings, Maestro. And take with you our grateful thanks for all the complex riches you have left behind, which will keep us occupied for so many years to come.

Needless to say, more to follow once I've had a chance to absorb this news.

APRIL FOOL!

On this April Fool's Day, instead of pulling cheap jokes to fool our friends, why not remember the role played by the Fool in the Tarot deck? 

There -- as in this example from the famous Rider-Waite deck -- the Fool is depicted as a vagabond, a fanciful adventurer, less brave than innocently unaware; he seems to know nothing of the world, yet he's out there meeting it head-first, taking risks, ready to step off a precipice as if onto an invisible stairway to Heaven, as the little dog of rational thought yaps and nips at his ankles.

I'd like to reclaim this day for the heroic principle of the Fool, so that it's less an opportunity to mock others than to throw off our shackles of routine and do something foolish ourselves; something that might take us a bit outside our usual comfort zone toward something, anything, that we might look back on in days and years to come as something so unlike us and so worth our time.

Free Look: VIDEO WATCHDOG 173

Boring Saturday? 

Do you know you COULD be kicking back with an advance read of VIDEO WATCHDOG 173, which isn't even in the hands of our subscribers yet?

It's only available for a limited time (a few days), and available exclusively to those folks who have signed up for our eSpecials List. Mind you, there is NO obligation to buy ANYTHING. Signing up just lets us know that you would be interested in receiving announcements of spur-of-the-moment sales, specials and opportunities just like this one!

You can sign up here.

First Look: VIDEO WATCHDOG 173

Click here for the full contents of this exciting new issue, which is shipping soon to our subscribers and retailers, and for the customary four-page free sample!

The Power of THE FURY

Gosh almighty but Twilight Time's THE FURY Blu-ray ($29.95, available here) is one delicious disc. The only other time I've seen this movie, I didn't care for it, but this time it had me absolutely in the palm of its hand, with only one climactic stumble. It's so sensuously filmed, so state of the art in its sinuous, layered technique... and then you notice that everyone is using landline phones and typewriters. There is one video game scene that shows a couple of girls playing Pong. That's how state of the art technology was at the time. Pong. How the world has changed since 1978, but movies have not learned conspicuously more than Brian DePalma was putting into practice 35 years ago.

Likewise, I've never been a John Williams fan -- he's just too cloying for me -- but the disc's isolated music track is a crash course in why he is great. This is what I learned tonight: Williams doesn't just score the action; he scores the performance that goes into a hand gesture, he scores the way light rubs up against the actors, the way the images shock our senses; he has the foresight to time a cymbal clash to the exact second when light flashes off the open eyes of Cassavetes' somersaulting severed head. The man is a freaking painter.

Wishes Still Coming True

I've had this lifelong memory of a time when I was about six years old and already consecrated to the goal of seeing every horror movie ever made. I got permission to stay up all night (it was a Friday, not a school night) to see a "melodrama" listed in TV GUIDE called SHE DEVIL (1957) -- something about two doctors creating a monster out of a beautiful woman. By the time Mom and Granny were ready to turn in, I was getting sleepy too, so they set an alarm clock for the time the movie was scheduled to begin, something like 5:45 a.m., and left it with me, along with a pillow, in front of the television, so I could take a nap, wake up, and be right there when the movie was ready to start. Somehow or other, little Timmy didn't quite make it; I turned off the alarm, struggled to stay awake, and ended up missing all but a few glimpses. I was very angry with myself the next day, especially since no stills from this elusive film ever appeared in any of the monster magazines I collected while growing up. That was a very long time ago, and I never had another opportunity to see SHE DEVIL... until tonight. It's coming out soon on DVD and Blu-ray from Olive Films. In RegalScope. Tomorrow I get to review it.

RIP Armando Trovajoli (1917-2013)

Armando Trovajoli, whose long career as a film composer encompassed more than 200 titles, has passed away at the age of 95. His death was announced only today though he died in late February.

He started out professionally as a successful songwriter and jazz pianist, and evolved from a jazz combo to a full jazz orchestra by 1960, during this period accompanying such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. During the great boom in Italian film production of the late '50s and early '60s, he found his skills increasingly in demand by the movie business. Among his most notable accomplishments as a film composer are the scores for such mainstream successes as TWO WOMEN, BOCCACCIO '70, YESTERDAY TODAY AND TOMORROW, MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, BAMBOLE, THE LIBERTINE, DEADLY SWEET, LONG DAYS OF VENGEANCE, A BULLET FOR ROMMEL, IL COMMISSARIO PEPE, THE PRIEST'S WIFE, THE VALACHI PAPERS, WE ALL LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH, MAN OF THE YEAR, SCENT OF A WOMAN (the original), A SPECIAL DAY, WIFEMISTRESS, BLAZING MAGNUM, LA NUIT DES VERENNES, MACARONI and LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. 

His experience in jazz helped to make him particularly adept at creating atmospheric scores in the genres of horror and fantasy. Among his numerous scores of this kind -- sadly under-represented on CD -- are UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, ATOM AGE VAMPIRE, ALONE AGAINST ROME, THE GIANT OF THE METROPOLIS, MOLE MEN AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, HERCULES CONQUERS ATLANTIS, HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD, WEREWOLF IN A GIRL'S DORMITORY, TOTO VS. MACISTE, THE WORLD OF TOPO GIGIO, SEVEN GOLDEN MEN, PLANETS AROUND US, DR JEKYLL LIKES THEM HOT and FRANKENSTEIN 90.

Trovajoli also excelled at writing Italian popular canzone. Check out his work for Paul Anka, Jimmy Fontana, and this splendid medley of his work performed by Mina. Trovajoli continued to serve as a piano accompanist to Mina and also Johnny Dorrelli throughout the 1970s. His most famous composition in his own country is "Roma nun fa' stupida stasere" ("Rome, Don't Be Stupid Tonight"), made famous in the 1960s by opera great Gino Bechi working in a more popular form, which has since come to be regarded by many Italians as the great city's unofficial theme song.

It's That Time Again!

Time to vote for the 11th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Film Awards!

I'm proud to say that VIDEO WATCHDOG has received 10 nominations in all:
Best Magazine;
Best Cover (Charlie Largent's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE cover for VW 166);
three Best Article nominations:
Robert Guffey's "Charles Darwin and the Suppressed Science of Dr. Mirakle" (VW 166)
Paul Talbot's "The Unmaking of EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC" (VW 171),
and my DRACULA/FRANKENSTEIN Blu-ray coverage in VW 171; 
a Best Interview nomination for "Say Laví," my Daliah Laví interview in VW 170;
two Best Magazine Horror Column nominations:
Douglas E. Winter's "Audio Watchdog" and
Ramsey Campbell's "Ramsey's Rambles" respectively;
Best Themed Issue for our DARK SHADOWS round table (VW 169);
and one for Best Blog (my Pause. Rewind.Obsess., which you can read right here on the VW website)!

Furthermore, I'm honored to also be nominated for Best Audio Commentary (Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON)!

Mind you, there are also "write-in" categories, such as Best Writer, Best Reviewer and so forth, so feel free to write our or my other efforts should you feel they are worthy.

This link will take you right to the ballot.

First Franco

Fun stuff from J.L. Romero Marchent's pioneering paella western EL COYOTE (1954): Jesús Franco's very first screen credits as screenwriter and assistant director, followed by his second screen credit as songwriter (following COMICOS, 1953) and, best of all, what is likely his first-ever screen appearance. He is shown reading a decree of statehood as the American flag is raised in 1848 California.

Add One More To The Franco Roster

Tonight, to my wonderment, I stumbled across what seems to be an otherwise forgotten Jess Franco screen credit. After watching an old VHS tape tonight, I discovered that the remainder of the tape contained the first 45-50 minutes or so of Marcel Ophuls' HAGAN JUEGO, SENORAS (1965; US: FIRE AT WILL), an Eddie Constantine thriller produced by Henri Baum, who also produced THE DIABOLICAL DR Z around this time. Jesús Franco is given an entire screen credit all to himself for writing the story and Spanish dialogues.

I remember Franco saying in an interview that he had been responsible for dubbing a number of Eddie Constantine films into Spanish in the 1950s, but this came much later, and it has generally been assumed that Franco stopped accepting work-for-hire jobs like this by this point in his directorial career. I don't recall seeing this film appear in any of his filmographies, not in books and certainly not on the IMDb. Now I wish I had the full feature! In fact, I do have the French version of this film in its entirety, but of course its credits make no mention of Franco. It would seem accurate, though, to credit him with writing the story (generally credited to Jacques Robert), as it's supposed to feature an all-girl gang led by a gypsy named Soledad! Franco had previously cast Soledad Miranda in her film debut LA REINA DEL TABARIN (1960) and, by this time, he may have taken notice that she was starting to play more prominent roles in films.

Get The Picture?

Seeing this simple but well-composed image from Hammer's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971, which also appeared on the cover of its novelization) earlier today reminded me of a time when every new still to surface from an upcoming horror movie seemed to extend the genre's vocabulary. A new still of Christopher Lee as Dracula, or Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein added on to what was previously known about that series of films. I firmly believe this was one of the secrets of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND's success, and partly why it's so hard for similar magazines of today to equal the power of its zeitgeist. It could be something as simple as a new face screaming, a new slapdash makeup for Frankenstein's monster, a new actor portraying Count Dracula, or an incomprehensible shot from a Mexican monster rally I'd probably never see -- they all conspired to make the genre more vital and fascinating. For me, this sense of perpetually new discovery stopped sometime in the 1980s, but I don't take full responsibility for that. It's not that I lost my love for this stuff, or that horror movies themselves became redundant, but that the Art of the Movie Still itself began to suffer. Most collectors will tell you that lobby card sets from the 1980s are crap. It should be remembered by all filmmakers, active or aspiring, that the best way to generate some genuine excitement about your feature is to take some great still photos while you're in production. If a picture can be worth a thousand words, why can't it sell a thousand tickets?

Loving the Vampire

I watched Jess Franco's FEMALE VAMPIRE (1973) tonight via Netflix on my Kindle Fire HD. It turned out to be an unexpectedly wonderful way of watching it, making it a more intimate and book-like experience. It may be the first time I've seen it in French with subtitles, and the soundtrack is alive from beginning to end with the sounds of nature and people; there is a scene where Jack Taylor follows Lina Romay to a public place scattered with empty chairs though we hear a crowd of children and grown-ups milling about, talking and laughing -- but, you see, he only has eyes for her. This is remarkable stuff and something I've never gotten from the English dub.

FEMALE VAMPIRE, aka THE LOVES OF IRINA aka EROTIKILL, is basically the story of four lonely sexual encounters ending in death; it depicts the grief of solitude in the lives of three of its victims before dispatching them, and we are given glimpses in the aftermath assuring us these lost souls are no longer alone. There's very little script, so it unfolds remarkably slowly for a film whose cult only came about in the age of the short attention span. "Elegiac pacing," they call it.

But what is very obvious to me about the film now, seeing it again and knowing when in their story it was filmed chronologically, is that it's the marriage contract between Jess and Lina. This was Lina's first starring role. She knew that Jess was mourning Soledad Miranda, who had portrayed a premonition of this character in VAMPYROS LESBOS, made the same year (1970) she died in an automobile accident at the age of 27. And she literally gives him Soledad and more. She is not only declaring her love but demonstrating it, serving up all she has to give to his eye and camera. And he worships her in return, which is all she asks in order to give him everything. Which is, in effect, a vision of the remainder of his career. The film begins with them meeting, when he is only a camera; she steps out of the misty woods and he gives her a good look up and down, like one forest creature meeting another. She butts him away so the story can be told, and it only ends when the two characters they play, his (a forensic surgeon) searching for hers ("the mouth that kills") for most of the running time, finally meet on the same plane, in the the same room.

And Jess lives.

FEMALE VAMPIRE is also available on Blu-ray and DVD from Redemption Video.

Thoughts on HITCHCOCK

I found HITCHCOCK kind of fascinating. Never mind the Ed Gein interweavings, which are preposterous, and the extramarital teasings, which at the very least are chronologically misplaced. Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren seem miscast, but they are better actors than their counterparts in THE GIRL and they succeed completely in inhabiting and telling the story of their script, with depth and nuance and power; in the process, they take this tissue of fact-based fabrications and say something true and honest about Hitch and Alma -- not true to the moment of their lives, perhaps, but to its sum. I thought Scarlett Johansson was perfection as Janet Leigh (requiring much more subtlety than I knew she had), and James D'Arcy also a believable Anthony Perkins. The scene of Hitch listening to the first audience's reaction to the shower murder made me wince with emotion.

Tippi and Alfie

The HBO Hitchcock movie THE GIRL (2012) held my interest, not least of all because its casting seems in better focus than the major studio HITCHCOCK, but it's still thin broth. And puzzling: there is so much there that I've never read about in Hitchcock bios, and so much in the bios that wasn't dramatized, I was left questioning scenes as much for what they had to offer as for why such outright invention was considered necessary. When the MARNIE honeymoon rape scene was depicted to suggest that Tippi Hedren actually stood nude on set in front of Hitchcock, and that he included the scene specifically to arrange this, I finally knew enough to call "Fowl' (no pun intended, really). The BIRDS attack scene was nicely restaged, but the opportunity to say something useful about these people, or even about sexual harrassment, was spoiled by the decision to eliminate any glimpses of Hitchcock's humor and make the whole thing a one-sided, one-note tissue of suffering.

From the VW Archives: Boris and Bela

Here's something from the archives I thought might interest you.

While going through a portfolio of some old artwork recently, Donna found this drawing that I did back in 1990. It was done at the dawn of VIDEO WATCHDOG time, at the tail end of the same time I drew several pieces for our very first issue, for the simple reason that we weren't able to illustrate everything. This piece was going to accompany my review of Greg Mank's book on Karloff and Lugosi, and depicts them in their respective roles as Hjalmar Poelzig in THE BLACK CAT (1934) and Ygor in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939), because I intended to note in my review the coincidence of their success during the 1930s with the foreignness of their respective personas. I remembered this piece as almost photo-realistic in its perfection, but now, more than twenty years later, it looks a good deal less accomplished and I'm glad it didn't see the light of print.

That said, I'm happy to share it with WATCHDOG readers here, now, as a page you didn't see.

New Books: The Two Wallaces

Today I received from Amazon my copy of this deluxe coffee table book documenting the amazing career of comics artist Wallace "Wally" Wood. Just a page-through summons so much emotion. I've always been a Ditko guy, but Wood really grabbed me this past year as I rediscovered his astonishingly lifelike, detailed work for early MAD and some of his later adult work like CANNON and THE PIPSQUEAK PAPERS (which I find touchingly funny, tenderly erotic and, I suspect, painfully autobiographical).The text is bilingual (English/Spanish) and the art reproductions are ideal. One big surprise that leaped out at me: on the basis of some daily strips reproduced from "Sky Raiders," Jack Kirby inked by Wood can be indistinguishable from Jim Steranko.

Also new, but available only as a super-pricey import, is this hefty hardbound photo album documenting the 32 Edgar Wallace krimi-films produced by Rialto Film of West Germany during the 1960s and '70s. Co-written by leading Wallace-krimi scholar Joachim Kramp (who tragically died in 2011, before this last dream project was fully realized) and Gerd Naumann, this thing must weigh as much as the Bava book, and in addition to a standard edition being made available to Amazon and similar outlets, it has been produced in four limited editions of 500 each sold exclusively by the publisher, Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf -- personally signed by the buyer's choice of actors Karin Dor, Karin Baal or Uschi Glas, or composer Peter Thomas. I was lucky enough to snag #413 of the Karin Dor set. The fact that this book is essentially a collection of all the photos taken on the sets of these films (including never-before-seen color shots from THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG and THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE) makes the purchase doubly attractive to English-speaking fans; the English text is introductory and minimal, though one-page interviews with Dor, Baal and actor Joachim Fuchsberger are also included. My favorite images in the book show actor Klaus Kinski's happy demeanor on various sets (contrary to his mentions of the films in his autobiography), various gag shots (including one of the Monk with the Whip being instructed in how to snap his lethal weapon by someone in elaborate cowboy dress), and visionary director Alfred Vohrer at work with his assistant Eva Ebner. I have a few quibbles with the end product: in my opinion, whoever was responsible for the layout didn't always pick the best shots to reproduce at full-page size; also, the book's weight and proportions make it a bit unwieldy. A taller book would have been more balanced and easier to peruse. Also, I'm uncertain of how well the book's binding is going to hold up over time, and I was a little annoyed that my copy arrived with its back cover slightly crinkled. Nevertheless, as an artifact, it's damn near irresistible.

According to the S&S website, the book is not being sold outside Europe, but the publisher (who does speak English) agreed to send mine for an additional postage charge of about $65. 

BATMAN Begins

Netflix has added BATMAN, the 1966 movie now redundantly called BATMAN: THE MOVIE. I couldn't resist playing the main titles sequence again, which, for me, is like a PULP FICTION adrenaline shot to the heart.

I can remember seeing it for the first time at Cincinnati's Twin Drive-In Theater, and looking forward to seeing the animated titles from the television show unfold in full color on the giant outdoor screen with Neal Hefti's theme kicking in... but something else happened. Instead, Richard Kuhn -- a titles designer on staff at 20th Century Fox (IN LIKE FLINT, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, etc) -- created the sort of sequence that could only have come from someone who had never seen the series, but was given a brief amount of time to utilize the film's various performers in costume. He created a more monochromatic, yet boldly tinted, high contrast universe for these characters, intercutting them with imagery out of a 1940s French potboiler, coated in washes of deep blue, cautionary yellow, garish green and sexy lavender. Since the Twin had two screens, I was worried for a moment that we'd been given the wrong directions to the right screen, but then Adam West sauntered onscreen in a blue spotlight worthy of Carol Doda and my young heart soared back up to the right place. And when the "Rogues Gallery of Supervillains" made their appearances, this more adult context actually made them look satanic and lethal.

Set to one of the most exciting pieces of music that Nelson Riddle ever performed, with the leitmotifs for the various crooks inserted with terrific timing and flair, the titles are so vibrant, so different, so extraordinarily promising that little 10 year old me was -- incredibly, one would imagine, for a Batfan of my age and intensity -- actually disappointed by the movie that followed, though I sure found Lee Meriwether's Catwoman interesting. And that may point to why: my tastes were maturing, and Richard Kuhn's credit sequence with its manic European flair, may have helped nudge my nascent aesthetics over the edge into puberty, with a little subsequent help from Ms. Meriwether's purring. It took me years to appreciate the comparatively style-less movie as the endlessly quotable, hilarious gem that it is.

Anniversary 38

Married 38 years today. How did this happen?

Like most of the things that have turned out to be good ideas in my life, including VIDEO WATCHDOG, it wasn't entirely my idea.

When we were 19 and 18 respectively, Donna and I had both left our respective homes and found an apartment near the University, only to discover that our landlord -- Lou Franklin was his name -- was not inclined to rent his mousey efficiencies to unmarried couples. Of course it was none of his business; either one of us could have taken the apartment as an individual and left him none the wiser, but we were both so young... I suppose we were accustomed to our elders telling us what to do, and doing just that.

My mother gave us the $25 for our marriage license. Donna was relaxed and confident and loving on our wedding day, while I was... "apprehensive" is a good word. There's a picture of me walking out of the office of the Justice of the Peace with my arms upheld, like a man under arrest -- I meant it as a joke, and it did get laughs, but you know... it occurred to me, and so there probably was some furtive truth in that expression. I still am apprehensive in some ways because, funnily enough, I don't really believe in marriage, unless people want to start a family. Instead, I believe in friendship, and if I have one of the best marriages it's been my privilege to observe, it's because I married my best friend -- someone I first got to know through letter-writing, which let us become deeply attached without the usual distractions of physical concerns like whether or not we were the other's "type." I always thought I would end up with someone with dark hair. Go figure.

We are both aware of aging into a kind of advertisement for marriage and true love, and giving some of our younger acquaintances hope that it's possible to meet and stay with someone for a lifetime. We find this sweet and funny, and perhaps a bit naive. Because no marriage is a cakewalk. Let me amend that: no conscious marriage is a cakewalk. Ours was probably as close to one as you can imagine until we began working together in 1990. Working together means we often have to put our professional life as co-workers before our interests as husband and wife; it sometimes means disappointing each other, contradicting each other, yelling at each other, being impatient with each others' (all too predictable, after 38 years) human failings and frailties. Sometimes we make the dread mistake of talking business in the bedroom.

People often remark that we were made for each other, yet there are vast areas of life in which we don't connect. It must admit it bothers me that we don't share many of those interests where I am most myself and most fulfilled... but how wonderful it is that she loves me anyway, and this is also the gift I give to her. And you know what I've noticed from other relationships? Shared passions don't last. They are potent, ardent and all-consuming, and either burn out or press on to something still more incendiary, like jealousy or hate. If you're asking me, if you want a relationship that will last, don't base your commitment to one another on mutual passions; base them instead on your character, your sense of humor, your shared frames of reference, the ways you look at everyday life -- because it's on those levels where you have the greatest chance of remaining the same person for the rest of your life. That's the constant you who is capable of making and keeping a promise of constancy.

What's it like to be together this long? At some point, you begin to recognize that you're held together as much by time as by love. We remember the same things (though she corrects the way I remember them); we've experienced the same triumphs and losses, the same pleasures and grievings; we've been the picture takers at each other's great moments, and we've fought side by side the yearly, monthly, daily, hourly war that is life all this time. And yet somehow, before any of this happened, there was something binding in our fine print, a promise even greater than the one we initially made to each other. To wit: Who could have guessed that, throughout my now-40 year career as a writer, Donna -- of all people -- would become my most valued and important professional associate? How could I have known that this funny little Munchkin from Western Hills, who drew fetchingly eye-lashed smiley faces at the end of her letters, would become the one person in the whole universe capable of designing MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK? Who would do everything to keep the business of VIDEO WATCHDOG running that I could not personally do? How could I have known that she would someday be able to market my work with greater success than either Dell or Simon and Schuster could? And how could she, The Monkees' #1 fan, have known that this shy, bookish boy from Norwood would someday work for Michael Nesmith and show her the path to her first hug from Davy Jones? It's a mystery, in which the only real certainty is the friendly face that looks back at me in the midst of it.

Of course, being with someone you love is no guarantee against loneliness; it's no guarantee that your heart will never break again. But it does (or should) mean that you don't have to go through life's tests and beatings all alone, because there is always a hand waiting to accept yours in the dark, and it's there for you whether it's awake or asleep. This is a way of life I can recommend.

Living with her these past 38 years has been an adventure in gratitude, and I just felt like saying that.

How did this happen? Just lucky, I guess.