1980s – Page 7 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – The Vanishing

The Vanishing (1988)
Written by George Sluizer & Tim Krabbé
Directed by George Sluizer

Each life hurtles through time & space on a course that the person who bears it can never truly predict. These lives cross with each other, but more often than not, they make no impact, brief encounters that dissolve. We can feel trapped in these lives, a passenger unable to exert their own will on the trajectory. Look at how so many people will simply follow the path of a parent or choose an identity based on how they will be perceived by the society around them. Even many “expressing individuality” are working from blueprints created by others, a manufactured uniqueness. But then some collide with your life, upending the sedate normality. What if our intersection with them is another moment we cannot escape, pulled into the event horizon of chaos? What is it to see something evil coming over the horizon and be unable to fight against its pull?

PopCult Podcast – Phantasm/Phantasm II

It’s spooky season. This episode Ariana & Seth watched the first two installments of a cult horror franchise that delivers a lot of unexpected & unique terrors.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Six

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Six (2014)
Reprints Swamp Thing #57-64
Written by Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette
Art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala

As Alan Moore’s Watchmen maxi-series was making waves in comics, he was also writing the final issues of Swamp Thing. The writer was interested in connecting the elemental hero with the space/cosmic elements in the DC Universe. While the delve into the occult was successful because Swamp Thing’s character lent itself to that genre, this foray into science fiction is a more mixed bag. Moore is clearly being more experimental, and that causes the series to lose some of the humanity that made it so compelling in the early collections. These aren’t poorly written stories, but I could see them turning off some readers because of how Abby gets sidelined for a big chunk.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Five

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Five (2011)
Reprints Swamp Thing #51-56
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala

Coming off an incredible piece of horror writing, Moore keeps things chugging along at full steam in the pages of Swamp Thing. Our hero has faced the ultimate evil and has been the only one to stop it. However, there was lots of trouble bubbling over in the land of the living that directly affected the Swamp Thing. While the Crisis on Infinite Earths seems to have little consequence in these pages, we begin to see our main character connect with traditional superheroes outside of Houma, Louisiana, with this particular volume including a clash in Gotham City with Batman.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of The Swamp Thing Volume Four

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Four (2010)
Reprints The Saga of the Swamp Thing #43-45, Swamp Thing #46-50
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, Stan Woch, Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala, Ron Randall, and Tom Mandrake

This collection from Moore’s Swamp Thing run sealed the deal for me. I haven’t ever read better moments of horror in a comic book than some of the sequences in these issues. Moore knows how to take surreal imagery and turn it into dread-inducing moments where reality bends & warps. In that distortion, we are treated to a story that blends horror with epic dark fantasy. It’s fascinating to see how Moore set a standard for the occult corner of the DC Universe that has held strong four decades later.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Three

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume 3 (2010)
Reprints The Saga of the Swamp Thing #35-38, Swamp Thing #39-42
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, Stan Woch, Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala, and Ron Randall

This third volume of Swamp Thing stories starts with an issue published the same month Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 hit the stands. Now, there isn’t a direct link between the two things right away, but Moore eventually shows he was well aware of the storyline and finds a clever way to fold it into this ongoing series. There are times when Swamp Thing feels wholly disconnected from the greater DC Universe; this would increase more when it became a Vertigo title in the 1990s and became utterly self-contained. Before we get to some of Moore’s big moves, the book begins with a chilling two-parter about how Americans have left their home a toxic nightmare.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Two

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Two (2009)
Reprints The Saga of the Swamp Thing #28-34, Annual #2
Written by Alan Moore and Len Wein
Art by Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, Shawn McManus, Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala, Ron Randall, and Berni Wrightson

Now that Alan Moore has reset the table for Swamp Thing, he wanted to tell stories you weren’t finding in most of the books published by DC and Marvel. Having established that Swamp Thing was not a resurrected Alec Holland but a mass of plant matter imbued with life from the chemicals Holland was doused in allowed different narratives to be spun. To close out that chapter of Swamp Thing’s life, he gave us “The Burial,” the opening story of this collection. The creature is seemingly visited by the ghost of Alec Holland and relives the events that led up to the scientist’s murder. It concludes with Swamp Thing finding Holland’s remains at the bottom of the bog and giving them a proper burial. That part of his life is officially over; now it’s time for something new.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume One

Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume One (2009)
Reprints The Saga of the Swamp Thing #20-27
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Dan Day, and Rick Veitch

By 1983, the “cool kids” knew about Alan Moore and Swamp Thing introduced him to the rest of comics fandom. Before being brought to DC Comics, Moore had been working away on U.K. titles and Miracleman, the revival of a British superhero intended to be their version of Shazam. His work on the weekly science fiction anthology 2000AD got the attention of DC editor Len Wein, who hired Moore to take over the title from Wein himself. Swamp Thing had initially debuted as a one-off in the horror anthology House of Secrets #92. Later, the character would be reworked, transplanted to the modern day, and become part of a relatively formulaic ongoing series. Moore’s arrival drastically changed the book’s status.

Movie Review – Pauline at the Beach

Pauline at the Beach (1983)
Written & Directed by Eric Rohmer,

Eric Rohmer was the right age to join his colleagues from the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in becoming a filmmaker. Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, whom he worked alongside as editor of the magazine, became the two most prominent names associated with the French New Wave. He did make movies, but not at the same breakneck pace as the others, and he didn’t receive the same level of acclaim until much later in his career. The filmmaker was very secretive about his private life, including that Eric Rohmer wasn’t his real name but a combination of actor/director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer. Unlike his colleagues, Rohmer outlasted them in terms of career length, finding his most significant acclaim in the 1970s & 80s. It was in the 1980s that he began a thematic series titled “Comedies and Proverbs,” with each film based on common sayings in French culture. One of these was Pauline at the Beach.

Movie Review – Tender Mercies

Tender Mercies (1983)
Written by Horton Foote
Directed by Bruce Beresford

Tender Mercies will break your heart, but that’s a good thing. It’s a film that is incredibly sensitive & thoughtful. It’s the story of an alcoholic, not during the midst of a bender or at their most self-destructive. Instead, this is a drunk who has lost everything that had any value. His career, his money, his wife, his daughter. He can’t get them back, but he can try and build something new. It’s a film whose presentation is simple, much like the quiet life lived in its desolate setting. It asks us how we can keep living when so much tragedy falls into our laps, some of it our fault and some of it happenstance.