Wyoming Renegades (1955, directed by Fred F. Sears)

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Brady Sutton (Philip Carey) used to be one of the most feared members of the Hole in the Wall Gang. He robbed banks with Butch Cassidy (Gene Evans) and the Sundance Kid (William Bishop) and he developed a reputation for being a ruthless outlaw. But that’s in the past. Brady has spent three years in prison and now, he’s ready to return home, marry Nancy (Martha Hyer), and go straight. Though most of the townspeople don’t trust Brady, he’s managed to find a sponsor in newcomer Charlie Veer (Douglas Kennedy), who has given Brady the money to open his own blacksmith shop.

Unfortunately, Brady might be done with the Hole in the Wall Gang but they’re not done with him. When Brady spots some members of the gang in town, he realizes that they’re casing the bank. Despite Brady’s attempts to warn the sheriff, the town assumes that Brady must be in on the plot. Brady grows so frustrated that he finds himself tempted to go back to his old ways. Meanwhile, Charlie is suddenly very interested in being introduced to the infamous Butch Cassidy himself.

Wyoming Renegades is a straight-forward, B-western. The plot is nothing special but Philip Carey and Douglas Kennedy both give good Western performances and Gene Evans is memorably evil as Butch Cassidy. For those who only know the characters as Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s performances in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the most interesting thing about Wyoming Renegades will be seeing Cassidy and Sundance portrayed as being sadistic and humorless villains. The truth about Cassidy and his gang is probably somewhere in-between the fun-loving rogues played by Newman and Redford and the unforgiving bastards presented in Wyoming Renegades. In reality, it’s said that Butch Cassidy always tried to avoid killing people while Sundance rarely hesitated to draw his gun and start firing.

As for Wyoming Renegades, the ending does feature an unexpected twist, with Nancy proving herself to be more than just a docile love interest. Fans of classic television will want to keep an eye out for a young Aaron Spelling, playing a loathsome outlaw named Petie Carver.

Game Review: The Best Man (2021, Stephen Bond)

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

The Best Man is an entrant in 2021 Interactive Fiction competition. Browse and experience all of the games by clicking here.

In The Best Man, you take control of Aiden. He seems like a classic “nice guy” and that’s the problem. When his best friend Laura calls him and asks if he would be willing to step in at the least minute and serve as the best man at her wedding to John, Aiden agrees. Just from the opening conversation between you and Laura, it first seems that The Best Man is going to be one of those romantic comedy games where a nerdy guy goes on an everyday quest (like getting the wedding rings before the ceremony) and eventually “wins the girl.”

Instead, the game reveals that Aiden is not a reliable narrator. He spends a lot of time in a fantasy world, where he and Laura are together and have a beautiful future but actually, it’s obvious that Laura has never considered him to be anything more than just a friend. Aiden is so delusional and obsessive that, about halfway through the game, I wasn’t even sure that Laura had actually called him or that Laura even existed to begin with. The game itself features a lot of minor tasks that need to get done before the wedding but the fact that the whole thing might be in Aiden’s head adds a new wrinkle to the usual romantic comedy. Aiden may think about Laura abandoning her husband-to-be for him but the player knows that would be the worst thing that could happen. It takes courage to write a game where you actively root against the person you’re playing and considerable skill to actually make it work. Fortunately, Stephen Bond has both.

The Best Man is well-written with enough interesting details to make it worth replaying. The mix of dark comedy and disturbing drama really pays off,

Play The Best Man.

Music Video of the Day: Kid Blue by Louise Goffin (1979, directed by ????)

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

On August 1st, 1981, MTV premiered. Over the course of 24 hours, 116 unique music videos were played on MTV. Yes, there was a time when the M actually did stand for music.

The 97th video to premiere on MTV on its first day of broadcast was this video for Kid Blue by Louise Goffin. Goffin is the daughter of legendary singer/songwriter Carole King.

Enjoy!

The First Videos Shown on MTV:

Afraid of the Dark (1991, directed by Mark Peploe)

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Lucas (Ben Keyworth) is an 11-year-old boy who lives in London and who enjoys watching the neighborhood through his telescope. Because Lucas’s mother is blind, Lucas is concerned that there is a serial killer who is going around and attacking blind women. Lucas is determined to help his father (James Fox), an inspector with Scotland Yard, capture the killer. Lucas starts to sneak out of the house, visiting cemeteries and spying on the same blind women that the killer is stalking. Investigating on his own, Lucas discovers who the killer might be.

Or does he?

Outside of the imaginary world where he spends most of his time, Lucas is a shy boy and his father is not a detective but instead a florist. While Lucas’s mother actually is blind, Lucas himself is starting to lose his eyesight as well. Lucas is scheduled to undergo an experimental surgery. He’s due to go under the knife, just as surely as the victims of the serial killer that he thinks he’s hunting. Meanwhile, his mother is pregnant and the increasingly unstable Lucas is both obsessed with his older stepsister and jealous of all the attention that his new baby sister is already getting.

Afraid of the Dark is a British psychological thriller that deserves to be better known. Intelligently written and directed Mark Peploe, it’s both a poignant and a frightening look at a child who, due to being forced to deal with something that few others can understand, has retreated so far into his own imaginary world (where he can be the hero) that he can no longer tell what is real and what isn’t. Lucas is both frightening and sympathetic and the movie will keep viewers guessing as to what is real and what isn’t. James Fox and Fanny Ardant are perfectly cast as Lucas’s parents and David Thewlis, Paul McGann, and Robert Stephens all make an impression as the men who Lucas investigates in his search for the serial killer. Tense, intelligent, and surprising, Afraid of the Dark is a film that is worth discovering.

Game Review: we, the remainder (2021, Charm Cochran)

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

we, the reminder is an entrant in 2021 Interactive Fiction competition. Browse and experience all of the games by clicking here.

Something has happened. Everyone that you ever knew, including your mother, vanished nearly a month ago. They went up into the air. You are alone in a dilapidated apartment building, confined to a wheelchair and running out of food. Through the living room window, you can see what appears to be a dead body on the street below. Go out into the hallway and you’ll discover the elevator is broken. The stairs are going to be a struggle to get down on your own. But it’s either that or starve to death. If you make it down the stairs, the world outside is a dangerous place and bad memories of your life in a religious cult are triggered. If you can find food, you’ll then be able to solve the mystery of where everyone has gone.

we, the remainder is a vividly written, horror and religious-themed Twine game, one that features a fair number of puzzles and which can be unforgiving if you don’t quickly figure out how to find food. (As I’ve said, puzzles are always my downfall when it comes to IF so I starved to death a few times.) Once you eat, though, the game is a rewarding exploration of a surreal but intriguing world. Play it, solve the mysteries, and be sure to keep a Bible nearby because having a working knowledge of the Book of Revelations will definitely help you out.

Play we, the remainder.

Music Video of the Day: Welcome to My Nightmare by Alice Cooper (1975, directed by Jorn Winther)

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

What better way to celebrate Halloween than with the original horror rocker himself, Alice Cooper? Welcome To My Nightmare is one of Alice Cooper’s signature tunes and this early music video shows that, even before the advent of MTV, both Alice Cooper the singer and Alice Cooper the band understood the importance of matching the right image with the right song.

This video starts out with a Halloween-themed promo for MTV2. Obviously, that was not a part of the original video but it’s still pretty cool.

What I like about Alice Cooper is that once he gets off-stage, he’s just a normal, golf-playing suburbanite.

Enjoy and Happy Halloween!

The Martian Chronicles: Episode 3: The Martians (1980, directed by Michael Anderson)

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Episode 2 of The Martian Chronicles ended with Sam Parkhill (Darren McGavin) helplessly watching as Earth was consumed by nuclear fire. Episode 3 opens with Col. John Wilder (Rock Hudson) returning to Earth in 2006 and discovered that the entire planet is dead. He had hoped to find his brother and rescue him but instead, all Wilder finds is a video of his brother being vaporized by an atomic blast.

Back on Mars, the planet is nearly deserted. Most of the human colonizers were ordered to return to Earth before the war broke out and, as a result, they died in the atomic inferno. Only a few humans remain on Mars. One of them, Ben Driscoll (Christopher Connelly), is excited to discover another survivor named Genevieve (Bernadette Peters) but he abandons her when he discovers that she’s too high-maintenance for him. He decides he’d rather live alone. (Too mean-spirited to really be funny, this was the weakest short story in Rad Bradbury’s collection and it’s also the weakest segment of the miniseries.) Wilder and Father Stone (Roddy McDowall) visit another survivor, a scientist named Peter Hathaway (Barry Morse). Peter lives with his devoted wife and daughter but when he dies of heart attack, they barely notice because they’re robots.

The first hour of the final episode of The Martian Chronicles is considerably weaker than the two episodes that proceeded it. After the effective scenes of Wilder exploring Earth, the series is suddenly taken over by Christopher Connelly, playing a character that we’ve never seen before and who isn’t very likable. The Ben and Genevieve sequence is weak and never that funny, despite Peters’s skill with comedy. The sequence with Dr. Hathaway and the robots feels like a dry run for something Ray Bradbury would have written for The Twilight Zone.

Fortunately, the final segment of The Martian Chronicles swoops in to save the series. Col. Wilder and his family spend the day camping at the same ancient Martian city where, during the first episode, Spender tried to convince Wilder not to allow Mars to be colonized. While walking around the ruins of the city, Wilder meets what is either the ghost or the future projection of a Martian. They have a friendly and philosophical conversation. They talk about how The Martian doesn’t know if he’s from the past or if he’s from the future but it doesn’t matter. Returning to his family, Wilder looks at their reflection in Briggs Canal and he say that, with Earth gone, they are now the Martians. With Earth in ruins and only a few humans left, it’s up to the survivors to combine the ways of Earth with the ways of Mars and create a new world. Though Hudson is usually held up as being the epitome of a stuff actor, when he made The Martian Chronicles, he had the right amount of gravitas to make the final scenes work.

The Martian Chronicles is an uneven miniseries. The first episode is so good that the two that follow struggle to keep up. But just, as in Bradbury’s book, the ending is perfectly realized and it still work, ever after all these years later.

Game Review: What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (2021, Amanda Walker)

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed is an entrant in 2021 Interactive Fiction competition. Browse and experience all of the games by clicking here.

First, I need to warn you that there’s a SPOILER in this review. It’s not a huge spoiler but it might effect how you react to certain things that you discover while playing this game.

In What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed, you discover yourself in a large gothic mansion. You have no memories of how you came to be there. You also have a very limited set of actions available to you. This is because, and this is the SPOILER, you’re a ghost and you no longer know how to communicate with the world of the living. Fortunately, if you were smart enough to accept the game’s opening offer of “helpful information,” you’ll have a list of a few verbs that you can use to escape the room that you’ve found yourself in and explore the house. As you explore, you learn how to do things in your ghostly form, which in game terms means that you learn new verbs. You also start to remember the disturbing circumstances of what led to you becoming a ghost in the first place.

This is a long but rewarding game, a throwback to the type of Interactive Fiction that balanced solving puzzles with telling stories instead of favoring one over the other. The game’s unique command system takes some getting used to but it pays off. Fortunately, there’s not only a very helpful Hints system but there’s also a walk-through, in case you really get stuck. I got stuck but I always struggle with IF puzzles. This is a well-written and thought-provoking game and one of the best of the entrants that I’ve played. I highly recommend it.

Play What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed.

Music Video of the Day: We’re So Close by Carly Simon (1979, directed by ????)

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

On August 1st, 1981, MTV premiered. Over the course of 24 hours, 116 unique music videos were played on MTV. Yes, there was a time when the M actually did stand for music.

The 96th video to premiere on MTV was this soulful clip of Carly Simon performing We’re So Close.

Enjoy!

The First Videos Shown on MTV:

The Martian Chronicles: Episode 2: The Settlers (1980, directed by Michael Anderson)

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

The first episode of The Martian Chronicles ended with a dying Jeff Spender (Bernie Casey) warning John Wilder (Rock Hudson) that humans settling on Mars would be the worst thing that could ever happen to the once powerful red planet.

The second episode, called The Settlers, sets about to prove Spender right. By 2004, humans are desperately leaving the war-torn Earth for a new home on Mars. They rename all of the Martian landmarks, honoring the men who died exploring the planet. In one of the few deliberately funny moments of this entire miniseries, it’s revealed that the canal that Briggs threw his beer cans in was eventually named Briggs Canal. There’s one unfortunate shot of a line of miniature space ships that are supposed to be orbiting Mars and waiting for their chance to land. The episode then gets down to showing what the settlers do to Mars.

It’s nothing good. The main town looks like a traveling carnival, full of bars and crime. Many of the people who come to Mars are people who are fleeing something on Earth and Col. Wilder has his hands full trying to keep the peace. All of the Martians are believed to be dead but it turns out that there are still a few out there. Using their mental powers, they disguise themselves as humans. A large part of the second episode deals with a Martian who approached an elderly couple, disguised as their dead son. Even though they know that he’s not really their son, they allow him to live in their home. But, when the Martian goes to the city, he becomes overwhelmed by all the thoughts that bombard his mind. Everyone sees him as being someone that they care about. Even the local priest, Father Peregrine (Fritz Weaver), sees the Martian as being Jesus. (That’s no big deal today but that had to have been controversial in 1980.) Eventually, the Martian becomes so overwhelmed that he dies while a group of humans gawk at him.

As for Father Peregrine and Father Stone (Roddy McDowall, who spent most of his later years appearing in miniseries like this one), they explore the Martian mountains, searching for three lights that have been reported as hovering in the sky. When they find the lights, the lights explain that they are ancient Martians who long ago abandoned their corporeal bodies. They also somewhat implausibly say that they worship the same God as the two priests. In a departure from Bradbury’s original short stories (in which Bradbury was skeptical about the idea of bringing religion to the Mars), Father Peregrine commits to building a church so that, even on the Red Planet, people can worship.

Finally, Sam Parkhill (Darren McGavin) has achieved his dream of building a restaurant on Mars. He says that, as soon as more Earthlings arrive, he’ll be rich because every trucker will stop off at his place for a bite to eat. When a Martian suddenly shows up in the diner, Parkhill panics and shoots him. When more Martians show up, Parkhill flees. It’s only when the Martians catch up to him does he learn that they’re giving him a grant for half the land on Mars. “Tonight’s the night,” they tell him, “Prepare.” Old Sam Parkhill’s pretty excited until he looks through a space telescope and sees that Earth, the home of his future customers, is now glowing with the sure sign of nuclear fire. I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw this episode on late night Baltimore TV but I do remember being thoroughly freaked out by the scene where Sam watches as a fiery glow encircles the Earth and the planet’s green surface turns brown. It’s the most powerful moment in the miniseries and a fitting visualization of Bradbury’s concerns about the nuclear age.

As for the rest of The Settlers, it’s good but it’s not as strong or as cohesive as the first episode. The Martin shapeshifter story is good but the two priests in the mountains felt like they were included to keep religious viewers happy and their segment takes too many liberties with Bradbury’s original material. Then, Darren McGavin returns to the story. dressed like a cowboy and getting chased by a Martian sandship and The Martian Chronicles goes back to being one of the coolest miniseries to ever be broadcast.

With Earth dead, would Mars follow? That was the theme of the next episode of The Martian Chronicles, which we’ll look at tomorrow.