The View From The Mountain

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The Long Walk -- a review

I first read The Long Walk back in the mid 1980s. Stephen King had the book published under Richard Bachman, his pseudonym (King would also publish The Running Man , Rage , and Roadwork under the Bachman name). I probably never would have bought The Long Walk if I hadn’t been tipped off by a bookstore clerk, who informed me in the store that it had really been King who wrote the book. It had also later been widely reported in the media at the time about King having written more books under the Bachman name. The Long Walk refers to a forced march that is made of a group of teenage boys in a dystopian United States. There is no finish line; the boys keep walking until they are shot to death by a military escort that travels with them--usually because they have fallen behind from exhaustion. The last boy remaining is the "winner." I liked the book well enough, but I can’t really say it was one of my all-time favorites. It’s been forty years since I’ve read ...

Tribute to Bob Burns

We lost Bob Burns a few days ago at age 90. Bob was best known for playing gorillas in various films and TV shows, using a gorilla suit. Bob was also an avid collector of props from films and TV shows, including various spaceship models. He was such a knowledgeable film historian that he appeared via interviews in many 'making of' specials on the special features of DVDs and Blu-Rays. A few years back, they released a figure model kit of Bob in his gorilla suit, and this gave me an idea. Using two "Victim" figures from the Monster Scenes line, I converted them into Velma and Daphne, from Scooby Doo. Bob in his gorilla suit made for a great Scooby Doo villain, who's caught in the act here by the girls. Thanks, Bob.

The Conjuring: Last Rites

Whether you believe in the “true” exploits of demonologists Ed & Lorraine Warren or not (I don’t), The Conjuring series of films, based on their “true” stories, have all been very entertaining, with everything now supposedly coming to an end with The Conjuring: Last Rites . After a prologue in 1964, where we witness the traumatic birth of the Warren’s daughter, Judy, the rest of the movie advances to 1986, with the Warrens now somewhat retired. They’re still speaking at colleges, before giggly students who crack Ghostbusters jokes at them, but the Warrens have ceased personally investigating creepy cases on their own. That is, until their good friend Father Gordon (Steve Coulter) winds up hanging from a noose, thanks to a demonic attack. Father Gordon had been trying to get the Warrens to investigate the case of the Smurls--a family in Pennsylvania who are suffering through a severe haunting in their house, and when the Warrens finally do get involved, the demons come...

M3GAN 2.0

I thought the first M3GAN , about a killer robot that goes on a bloody rampage, was fun. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but I didn’t hate it, either. It treaded over the same familiar ground that the original Chucky movies did, but did a slightly better job of it--at least as far as a slasher film about a killer doll can go. The first M3GAN still did well enough to warrant a sequel three years later: M3GAN 2.0 . The sequel was a huge bomb at the box office, with its main producer, Jason Blum, actually going out and doing press to apologize for the “wrong turn” that the sequel made. But that "wrong turn" is exactly why I enjoyed M3GAN 2.0 so much. The sequel wisely throws out the horror trappings of the first film in favor of a more fast-paced, heavily science fiction-imbued action tale. M3GAN 2.0 opens with AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a super spy robot, on a mission into Iran, where she is tasked with finding a kidnapped scientist. But AMELIA goes r...

Fantastic Four: First Steps -- a review

When I was a kid, I collected a series of action figures made from a company called Mego. They produced eight inch tall figures from several IPs back then, like Star Trek and the Planet of the Apes. They also produced superhero figures from DC and Marvel Comics, like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four. I received the Fantastic Four--all four figures--as a birthday gift from my mother one year. The interesting thing was, I never actually asked for them. I never even knew they had made figures of this superhero team, which I didn’t know that much about because I hadn’t read their comics. But I was still very grateful to have the F4 in my League of Superheroes. Created by comic book legends Stan Lee & Jack Kirby back in the early 1960s, the Fantastic Four were known as Marvel’s First Family. They were a superhero team who were truly family. Reed Richards was the stretchy leader who was married to Sue Storm, who had the powers of invisibility and force fiel...

Weapons -- A Review

So many horror movies start out with a really great concept that when you see the basic idea introduced in the trailer, you’re eager to watch the film, just to see how this plays out--only for the movie to fall flat on its face, thanks to the filmmakers being unable to run with the idea. Weapons is one such horror movie that deftly avoids this pitfall. The main intriguing idea that Weapons has is the mysterious disappearance of an entire classroom of students at a specific time--2:17 am--one dark night. But these children don’t just vanish. They’re each seen running out of their homes on security cameras, still clad in their pajamas, with their arms bent back as they run, as if they’re flying. Once out of sight of the cameras, the children--17 in all--seemingly disappear off the face of the earth. If they were abducted by strangers, it would actually make for an easier case for the police to work. But it’s an even more bizarre mystery with the children having all ran off ...