Burly Movies: WOLFEN trailer

Happy Halloween! WOLFEN is one of my favorite movies ever, plus it's the perfect "contemporary" horror movie. Prior to the sucktitude of Hollywood, before CGI and sequels and remakes and other horsesh*t, WOLFEN was part of a trifecta of no frills, hardcore make-up effect, story-driven, character-filled horror flicks concerning lycanthropic behavior. This trifecta included AN AMERCAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and THE HOWLING.

What seperates WOLFEN, for me, is the fantastic character work by Albert Finney and Gregory Hines. Finney is particularly feral and craggy in this movie. Also, the "wolf vision" camera work in WOLFEN is unsurpassed for making you feel like, indeed, you're experiencing what it's like to be "unhuman."

Very cool and highly recommended.

Richard Stark and Darwyn Cooke's PARKER: THE OUTFIT

Some years ago, when I was still a young man, I was reading Stephen King's DARK HALF about a writer dealing with his pseudonymous identity, his pen-name and false front behind which this writer published a series of brutal, vicious crime novels starring a dude named Alexis Machine.

King was influenced in real life by Donald Westlake, a superior crime novelist of the 1960s and all the way until his death in 2008. Westlake's body of work is outstanding enough, including screenplays for THE GRIFTERS and THE STEPFATHER, until you realize Westlake also wrote, as many writers of that era did, under another name: Richard Stark.

This was where Westlake got his vicious on, allowing his anti-hero "Parker" to emerge forth from his Richard Stark identity. Parker is the star of 25 novels from 1962 to 2008 with a ten-year gap where Stark didn't write about Parker at all.

Anyway, all this is common knowledge for anyone who knows about Westlake/Stark. Darwyn Cooke, one of the more interesting men working in the comic book biz, shifted completely away from whatever popularity he had garnered as artist for CATWOMAN and JLA: THE NEW FRONTIER for a mysterious project not involving superheroes. I remember thinking that was a shame. Then it was revealed Cooke was adapting Richard Stark's first Parker novels into graphic form.

PARKER: THE HUNTER arrived last year, a textured and flint-sharp piece of work with a retro sensibility that almost made you cry to look at it. Cooke was adapting the books in their contextual time period of the early 1960s, making use of all the brilliant graphical flavor of the time. With a modern society retro-crazed over the "Mad Men" fashions and drama, Cooke's Parker book arrived as a reminder that men were a core audience of cheap mass entertainment in previous times. But the cheapness only defined itself as authenticity, and no one could mistake Parker for a summation of manliness. Parker, as a character, is a unique beast, more than man, less than human.

Now PARKER: THE OUTFIT slapped its way into my hands this week. Cooke goes all-in on this book. Where THE HUNTER involved Parker's last card game with human emotion and vulnerability, THE OUTFIT begins just as Parker has received plastic surgery to alter his appearance. He is a "new" man, a man who cannot be found by a vengeful Mafia, still pursuing him for the events of the first novel. Where the original Parker was an anvil, the "new" Parker is the hammer. The strokes of this hammer are precise and unrelenting but completely devoid of human emotion. To forge his world of uncompromising morality, Parker begins a systematic hammering of the Mob who has continued to dog him. The whole book is about Parker forging a place for himself with the steady shattering force of a mallet. By the end, we have seen the hot iron remolded into exactly what Parker believes it should be. As it cools, we are left with an immutable satisfaction. Parker is unchanged utterly, but everyone around him is reshaped.

This goes for the reader too. THE OUTFIT is educational, a lesson in criminal ethics. This is the way things are and this is the way things will always be. Parker embodies that while completely wholly and bestially alien to this Earth. He might be an invader from Mars, for all the traits of humanity he shares. No one wants to be Parker, but everyone wants to know what he is going to do next. And that is a powerful and literate advocacy for human endeavor.

Nice interview below about Cooke's journey, techniques, and opinions on this work.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/10/05/darwyn-cooke-outfit-interview-tucker-stone/