Burly Dames: Genevieve Bujold

Sometimes you see a woman who stirs in you the idea: If I could, I would love her forever.

Like most women who really knock me out in life and culture, I didn't think much of Bujold when I first saw her, in the movie COMA back in the 1980s. I had a whole alternate view of what beauty was back then.

Then I was watching a Sherlock Holmes flick with Christopher Plummer and James Mason, at some point in the early 1990s, called MURDER BY DECREE. Directed by the guy who made PORKY'S, believe it or not, a solid procedural about Holmes and Watson hunting Jack the Ripper. Bujold pops up in what amounts to a cameo, as a patient in an insane asylum who wasn't insane until her heart was broken and she was conspiratorally locked away from the eyes of Man. Plummmer's Sherlock Holmes essentially falls in love with Bujold's shattered character. And so did I.

In some other world, some other life, I kissed her ear while walking in tall grass. Aye, but I did.

Burly Living: What I Learned from Frank Frazetta

I was reading a huge interview with Frazetta just recently. I'd always had Frazetta in my periphery. I knew him for the Conan paperback covers. I remember as a kid being a little freaked out by his paintings. I was a bit of a poosy as a kid, so forgive me. I thought they were neat, but scary in a "I'm glad I'm not a f*cking Viking" sort of way. By chance, just a year ago or so, I somehow discovered Frazetta had been working in the 1950s, had been ground-zero for the pulp mags back in the Real Day, where it was REAL. I saw some of his work and thought, "Sheet, I've been missing out on Frazetta."

Soonafter, I stumbled across the Comics Journal Library edition with the massive Frazetta interview in it. Also some glorious discussions with the great Russ Heath and Russ Manning. In this interview, Frazetta points out where the strength in his figures, his Conans and Death Dealers, actually comes from. It's not about drawing body builders, whom Frazetta called "idiotic." It's all about the glutes. Strength, real strength in actual fighting men, is generated by the muscles of the butt.


And this was a revelation to me, for some reason. Frazetta was probably a better athlete than he was an artist. I think he was drafted by the San Franscisco Giants. He was a fighting street tough in the 1950s, and in the 1970s picked up martial arts with the same natural ease. Brilliant, but never pretentious, about anything he picked up. Frazetta enjoyed life. Until his health problems started to cloud his days, I get the impression Frazetta was 100 percent in on the game of life. Strokes reduced his drawing hand to a twisted claw, and he was teaching himself to draw left-handed. And it was still recognizably Frazetta.

So when Frazetta says a strong ass is necessary for a strong fighter, I believe him. His uncanny anatomy understanding made him a giant.

Recently I snatched up the only copy of a reprint title of Frazetta and Gardner Fox's THUN'DA TALES. Thun'da is Frazetta's Tarzan knock-off, in the 1950s. And when I say the art in this thing blew me away, I'm not kidding. It was like somebody took Joe Kubert and John Buscema and fused them into one god-like being. Thun'da is fantastic stuff, thoroughly pulptastic but unlike anything you've quite seen before.

I guess I'm trying to say, it's good to discover Frazetta, to really appreciate him at a time when he's passed on. Vikings beware...Frazetta is coming.

Burly Movies: ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)

I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid, in the 1980s. Back in those days, in order to get cable television, you had to order a black box programmed by the cable company to allow the cable channels to appear on the television. My mother only wanted "basic cable", the new gamet of channels that were one step above "regular television." Mind-expanding channels like Music Television and Turner Broadcasting.

The cable installer, some beefy local, informed my mother post-attachment of the beetle-like black box to our TV that he'd brought the wrong box. This box was programmed to allow access to all the more expensive cable channels, the ones we couldn't afford monthly, like HBO, Showtime, and the Movie Channel. So, with a wink, the cable guy said, "Well, you don't tell, I won't tell." And thus did my fatherless household become blessed with the Holy Trinity of movie channels. And it didn't take long to figure out that late night cable television was a haven of every early-1980s videotape horror/Alien rip-off/Italian zombie/Slasher movie made up to that point. This included a vast selection of softcore porn. The 1980s cable experience was everything a young teenage boy needed to become a man.

Among other mind-blowing movies like THE BURNING and THE SOLDIER, I recall anticipating ALONE IN THE DARK and being somewhat disappointed. The big draw was Martin Landau, a bit older and returned from deep space after his adventures as Commander Koenig on "Space 1999." Here, he plays a firebug/knife-wielding maniac known as "Preacher", because as the orderly explains, Preacher was a holy man who "likes to burn churches. Only problem, they usually have people in'em." Erland van Lidth, a hulking presence in the movie and far lesser known, plays a brutish child-molester by way of King Kong. A monster, to be sure, and yet not without some sympathy. Craggy, dependable, and menacing Jack Palance rounds out the crazies as a disturbed war veteran. Additionally, Dr. Loomis from HALLOWEEN, the inimitable Donald Pleasance, is again a quirky psychologist.

So the three lunatics escape Palance's asylum in order to lay siege to their new analyst's family, trapped in their farmhouse in a reversal of the previous status quo. I don't remember being riveted by this flick when I saw it as a teen, but I found ALONE IN THE DARK very effective as a middle-aged f*cker. Surprisingly, characters act with reasonable caution and understandable stress, but unlike most '80s horror flicks, logic is adhered to for the most part.

Topping it off, the ending of the movie shows one of the maniacs integrating into the subculture of a violent, twisted society. Turns out, ALONE IN THE DARK is making some very pointed accusations about culture, and the mystery of insanity.

If you've never seen this movie, I recommend it highly. A solid, unassuming thriller with some nice jumps and solid "crazy" performances by a trio of genre veterans. Nobody will be calling for ALONE IN THE DARK to be referentially referred, but I'll call it a minor classic and leave it at that.