Pappy readers: this will be the last of my Sunday posts. On Monday, September 7, 2020, I will begin posting each week on Monday and Wednesday. As in the past, I will go back to shorter stories for this blog.
Now on with our regular business:
Fawcett made a one-shot movie comic out of The Man from Planet X. I looked up information on the 1951 movie, and here are a couple of quotes from review by an IMDb contributor, jayraskin1:
“The fact that it was shot in six days on a budget of $43,000 makes it more amazing. Compare that to The Thing From Another World ($1.6 million) or The Day The Earth Stood Still ($1.2 million). While none of the technical aspects come near those two movies, the movie does have an interesting style and look that foreshadows the 1953 classic Invaders From Mars and even has elements from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
“What really carries the film is Edgar Ulmer's energetic direction. Ulmer (Black Cat, The Strange Woman and Detour) always keeps the viewer on their toes, inserting off-beat and unexpected material in nearly every scene.”
The review’s author ends it by stating, “It is a must for film history buffs and others will find it engagingly silly.”
Although they made the “engagingly silly” movie in six days, I am sure it took a lot longer to complete the comic book version. In 2012 I showed the UK version of the same comic, which was printed sans color. You can see it by going to the link below and you can read who the artists were said to be.
In 2012 I showed the black and white UK version of the Fawcett comic. Just click on the thumbnail.
I welcome the coming greater frequency of your entries.
ReplyDeleteIt's very nice to see this as originally printed. I think that I've liked Schaffenberger's art since the first time that I saw any of it.
Ulmer was doing well in Hollywood until he had an affair with the wife of a close relative of the Laemmles (who ran Universal studios). I think that, after that, the only A movie that he got to direct was The Strange Woman. In the course of looking into L'Atlantida (Pierre Benoit's plagiarism of Haggard's The Yellow God and to a lesser extent of She), I watched Journey Beneath the Desert, and discovered that Ulmer had directed it. (It's only for compleatists of one sort or of another.)
The GCD lists the black-and-white reprint only had 27 out of the original 32 pages, so this should hew even closer to the film.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen this film, it's well worth watching. No one seems to know who played the title character.
For another comparable film, see 1954's Devil Girl from Mars.
Thanks!
Whenever you post is aces with me, Pappy.
ReplyDeleteI neglected to add my thoughts on the issue at hand... Since I'm not familiar with the film, this worked fine as a story unto itself for me, although it's choppy enough in places that knowing it's an adaptation helps. I see mainly Schaffenberger myself; the GCD's index now has him credited solo, and it's really interesting to see his style applied with a slightly rougher, more realistic edge beyond the Marvel Family and Superman material I know him from.
ReplyDeleteDetour!
ReplyDeleteShot so fast and cheap that a scene of the "hero" heading west was flopped so that the car was pointed to the left -- and had, as a result, right hand drive.
A pretty cool story ruined in part by a tacked on -- forced on -- moral ending because without it, the poor sap hero would have gotten away with it, so to speak.
So cheap a movie, the lead's claim to fame was bashing in part of Franchot Tone's face (over a woman both were involved with). That didn't help his failure of a career so he retired from show biz, went into landscaping and, shall we say, was involved in his ex-wife's death, if you know what I mean. There was a story about as good as Detour there (and detour's was pretty good). And Detour showed that a big budget isn't everything.
I can forgive John's "aluminum" and "skeptical" - after all he speaks Americanish, not English - but what in all the ten thousand typhoons of Titan makes Enid say "tire" and "recognize"?
ReplyDelete