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AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: The Invisible Man TV series (2000)

Posted in pop culture, TV shows with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Halloween, holiday, Invisible Man, monsters, pop culture, TV shows on October 16, 2015 by Paxton

There have been a surprising number of invisible man series here and over in Britain. Instead of covering all of them, I decided to look at one that I was the most familiar with.

In the summer of 2000 a TV show premiered featuring a sci-fi based modern interpretation of an invisible man. It was called, oddly enough, The Invisible Man.

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The show would last for two seasons on the fledgling Sci-Fi channel.

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I vaguely remember this show airing. If only for the “quicksilver” effect of the guy turning invisible. It’s a more science-y update of the invisible man story.

Darien Fawkes (as in Dumbledore’s pet phoenix) is a thief. And not a particularly good one. He is caught and sent to prison for his third strike. His scientist brother bails him out and promises him freedom if he’ll participate in an experiment for a few weeks.

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That experiment involves an artificial gland that is surgically inserted into Darien’s head that excretes a special substance called Quicksilver that coats Darien’s body and turns him invisible. At first he can’t control it, it can only be triggered by adrenaline. Darien, at first eager to remove the gland, is just beginning to learn to control the Quicksilver through Tai-Chi when one of the lead scientists on the team double crosses everyone, kills them and attempts to trap Darien. In the process, he kills Darien’s brother.

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Darien barely escapes but is forced to go on the run from the rogue scientist. He is approached by The Agency, the covert government division that funded his brother’s experiments. It seems the rogue scientist also tampered with the Quicksilver gland so it’ll cause Darien to slowly go mad with rage the more he uses his invisibility and the longer he goes without a special serum. The Agency offers their help and access to the serum if Darien works for them.

And that’s mostly the setup of the show. There are some interesting ideas. The effects aren’t that bad. My main problem is with the actor who plays Darien, Vincent Ventresca. He’s kind of a douche bag. He’s supposed to be, but he does it too well. I can’t root for the guy because he’s a dick. And they try to make him rogue-ish and likeable, but that actually works against him. He’s a two-bit crook who robs from elderly old men (as you see in the beginning and it’s actually what he’s put in jail for) yet he quotes Mark f**king Twain to one of the scientists. Annoying.

The concept is interesting enough, that I did wind up watching a few episodes of the show hoping Darien’s edge would be dulled a bit as the show progressed. I watched the 2 hour pilot and a few of the “gimmick” shows like the one with the “evil invisible man” and the possible return of the dead brother. There’s also one with an invisible woman, but I didn’t make it quite that far. But I did read far enough ahead on Wikipedia to discover where the government got the Quicksilver…but that’s a tale for another day.

The show isn’t bad, even if the lead is a bit unlikable.

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This is funny. At one point Darien goes to an out of the way taco place to meet a government agent. As he walks in, hanging just over the cook’s left shoulder, oh so subtle-like, is the poster for the original Universal The Invisible Man. Well played, Sci-Fi.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: Interview with John Carpenter about Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

Posted in magazine, monsters, movies, pop culture, Starlog with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Halloween, holiday, Invisible Man, magazines, movies, Starlog on October 14, 2015 by Paxton

Issue 177 of Starlog magazine featured a cover story on the soon to be released Chevy Chase movie, Memoirs of an Invisible Man (which I reviewed yesterday).

The featured story is an in-depth interview with the movie’s director, John Carpenter. He had just come off a hiatus of several years to direct this big budget studio movie. Being an indie staple, Carpenter had never really done a large studio movie before. In the article, he discusses why he took the job and a little bit about the history of the project.

Talking about the movie, Carpenter mentions that this project had been around since 1986 and that it’s based on a book by HF Saint. Obviously, the part about the novel is true, as I’ve reviewed that novel this month, however, the book wasn’t actually published until 1987. And while studios today will buy up book rights before books are published, it was not done at that time. However, Carpenter could just be off in his memory by a year, not a big deal.

Carpenter also mentions that Chevy Chase himself bought the rights to the book and the first drafts of the movie were written by the great William Goldman with Ivan Reitman attached to direct. However, Carpenter said that after everything was “set to go” Chase decided he didn’t want to do a “Stooge” comedy. He wanted more of an adventure movie. Which seems odd to me because the book is NOT a comedy. I guess Goldman/Reitman assumed that’s what they’d be doing with Chevy Chase attached and adapted the book that way. I tell you what, I’d love to see a Goldman/Reitman/Chase invisible man comedy movie. I’d be 100% on board for that. But that iteration of the movie fell apart and is sadly placed on top of the giant pile labeled “movies we’ll never see”. After Goldman and Reitman left Richard Donner came on to direct and did some work but eventually he left as well. It was then Chevy Chase that brought Carpenter on to the project as director.

So this movie has an interesting back story. Clearly, it was a passion/vanity project for Chase. He controlled nearly every aspect of production. Carpenter’s interview is very informative with lots of “inside Hollywood” info.

Below is the full story. Click the images to make them BIGGER.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1987) – H.F. Saint

Posted in books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Book Report, books, Halloween, holiday, Invisible Man, monsters, reviews on October 12, 2015 by Paxton

In 1987, H.F. Saint would write his first and only book, the sci-fi thriller, Memoirs of an Invisible Man.

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It’s essentially a more modern, comedic take on HG Wells’ classic story. The book had great success after it was first published and subsequently Saint would receive an unusually high sum for the movie rights in the early 90s. This lead to Saint deciding he would rather retire than write a sequel that potentially wouldn’t live up to his first book.

Like most everyone else, I was aware of the 1992 Chevy Chase movie of the same name, but not that it was based on a previous book. I have thoughts on that movie that I’ll reveal in a separate review, and, consequently, I was a little reluctant to start the book because of those thoughts about the movie. But I sucked it up for AWESOME-tober-fest 2015.

So, the plot. Essentially, like I said, this is a new, more modern take on the concept of the invisible man. Nick Halloway is an investment banker. He travels with his sometimes gal pal Anne to a scientific demonstration at MicroMagnetics Labs and becomes caught in a massive explosion and wakes up several hours later completely invisible. While sealing off the area, a shady government agency discovers that Nick survived the explosion, and is invisible, so they do everything they can to capture him. Now Nick must stay one step ahead of his pursuers led doggedly by Colonel David Jenkins who seems to be several steps ahead of Nick who only narrowly escapes being caught on several occasions. Can Nick keep from getting captured and becoming a lab rat/covert government agent for the rest of his life? He’ll certainly try.

The book, to put it bluntly, is pretty damn awesome. Luckily, I haven’t watched the movie since it was in the theater, so I went into this book mostly blind. The events take a while to setup. It’s about 60 pages before the lab explosion. It’s over 100 pages before Nick escapes the labs of MicroMagnetics and goes on the run on the streets of New York. Throughout this book HF Saint really dives into explaining the unique problems Halloway encounters because he’s invisible. Not just the physical stuff like seeing through your eyelids, watching your food digest and walking without any visual body references. Most of this stuff gets mentioned briefly in the original HG Wells book as well as the Universal Invisible Man movie. No, it’s living on the streets as an invisible man where Saint really digs in.

How would Nick find a place to sleep? Sneak into one of the many Manhattan men’s clubs? Or vacant apartments? What about food? How do you walk the crowded streets of New York without bumping into other people and revealing yourself? How do you shed your previous identity and acquire a new one when you are invisible and can’t provide ID or show up to meet anyone? There are lots of problems Nick has to overcome which would be hard enough even without a determined government agency out to capture you at all costs.

The book has periods of Nick living rogue within New York and how his whole “system” works (how he acquires places to live, food and learning about the nature of his invisibility). And then the government agency finds him and we have quick, thrilling periods where Nick is all of a sudden forced to drop everything and go on the run again. It’s a roller coaster ride and one I thoroughly enjoyed which had me guessing and anticipating how it was going to end.

Another thing I like about this book is the way it’s setup. It’s written by the main character sometime in the future. He’s relating the events of the book to us as they happened in the past (like the title states, it’s a “memoir”). This allows the book to drop small hints about how things turn out in the future. Now that the book is over, I wish HF Saint would have continued with Nick Halloway’s adventures.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: The Hollow Man (2000)

Posted in Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Halloween, holiday, Invisible Man, monsters, movies, reviews on October 9, 2015 by Paxton

Today I’m going to look at another more modern take on the concept of the invisible man. Let’s check out The Hollow Man starring Kevin Bacon and directed by Paul Verhoeven.

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It was released in 2000 and had a great supporting cast including Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens and William Devane.

I remember seeing this movie in the theater fifteen years ago. For some reason I remember it being an early screening a week or so before the wide release. Sometimes movies would come and play early at one of my theaters in Birmingham as sort of a promotional/press screening and “regular people” could get any extra seats they couldn’t give away. But I’m not 100% sure that’s what happened. Regardless, I saw this in the theater in 2000.

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From that initial viewing, I remember liking some of the concepts of the movie and the special effects but being underwhelmed by the movie as a whole. I haven’t watched this movie since that day in the theater, so I decided to rewatch it and review it for AWESOME-tober-fest this year.

The movie is pretty good. It’s a mostly closed set environment. The scientists all interact in an underground lab. Once or twice you are taken to the surface, but 90% of the action is in the underground lab. Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, the head of a team of scientists working on achieving invisibility. The team has successfully turned a gorilla invisible, but the issue they seem to be having is turning the gorilla back visible.

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Early on Bacon has a breakthrough and figures out how to possibly make the re-visibility formula work. So they test it on the invisible gorilla. And it works. But Bacon being the smug, a-hole, glory loving scientist he is decides to test the entire process on himself. And that’s where the fun begins.

Bacon is pretty great as Caine who sees himself as a cross between Einstein and Elvis Presley. He plays the total creepy, smug, d-bag to perfection. Elisabeth Shue is his colleague and former flame. James Brolin is another scientist on the team who is currently with Elisabeth Shue. And therein creates the love triangle. There are several other scientists/murder victims that inhabit this lab as well.

Like I said, this movie is mostly executed well. Bacon, even though he’s not seen through most of the movie, believably shows Caine’s slow decent into madness from being invisible for too long. The other actors play against him realistically unlike the actors in Star Wars Episode I against Jar Jar Binks which was only the year before. But the shining star in this movie are the effects. The invisible effects are amazing and they still hold up very well considering they are a decade and a half old. I’m willing to bet that the visual effects in the 1999 The Mummy movie were what convinced the filmmakers that this movie could be made. There are several times where Bacon’s invisible man looks like the mummy in that movie.

Some good moments:

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At this moment in the movie, the team is fresh off turning the gorilla visible again. They are celebrating and Caine asks Shue’s character if she wishes they could turn back the clock, essentially asking if she wishes they were back together. Shue says the line, “I’d say that kind of time travel doesn’t exist.” I assume that has to be a slight nod to her small roles in Back to the Future Part II and Part III.

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Like I said, the effects are pretty great. The transition to invisibility involves each layer of the body disappearing one step at a time, like you’re slowly peeling away the layers of an onion. Lots of data modeling had to be done before hand to make this work as effectively as it does. This “layered invisibility” was also done in the Batman Unseen comic.

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Here is where the title comes from. Instead of wearing bandages and goggles like Claude Rains, Bacon and the scientists have a latex mold of his head created so he can walk around visible to everyone. This “mask” creates a “hollow shell” look that is very creepy and effective.

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The few times he actually leaves the lab Bacon wears more familiar “invisible man” garb.

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There are several scenes in the movie where the environment makes Bacon visible. Things like fire hydrant foam, smoke and water will reveal his body. It looks great and it’s used effectively throughout the movie.

So, overall, a pretty good movie. Similar in some respects to other “stalker in a confined space” type movies but the concept of the killer being invisible sets it a little bit apart. And the phenomenal effects just make the movie that much more real and creepy.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2015: Sherlock Holmes vs The Invisible Man (1989)

Posted in comic books, Halloween, holiday, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2015, Halloween, holiday, Invisible Man, monsters, Sherlock Holmes on October 8, 2015 by Paxton

In 1989, Eternity Comics released a four issue Sherlock Holmes mini-series called a A Case of Blind Fear.

The comic was written by Martin Powell and drawn by Seppo Makinen. I actually bought this off the rack in 1989 mostly because I was and still am a big Sherlock Holmes fan. It has sat unread in my collection since then. I don’t think I even realized until fairly recently while doing invisible man research for AWESOME-tober-fest that this comic was a Holmes vs invisible man story. But when I saw the cover online, I remembered that I had it in my collection and went to dig it up. Now I’ve finally read it. Twenty-six years later (!).

I thought the premise would be Sherlock Holmes solving a mystery involving an invisible man. But it turned out to be a little different and a bit more complex than that. I expected something along the lines of Batman Unseen where Sherlock Holmes was solving the mystery of some murders by a man that had somehow discovered invisibility. What is actually going on here is more of a retelling of the HG Wells novel, but inserting Sherlock Holmes and Watson into the story. But it’s even more than that.

Within the story the main invisible man character is Griffin, the main character from the original HG Wells novel. However, he has a history with Watson. Griffin knows Watson from their time in the military together. Griffin apparently saved his life. This connection causes a change to the story in that when Griffin is in trouble, he calls on Watson and calls in the favor to hide from the authorities. All of this causes deviations from the original HG Wells novel, as it should.

It’s really interesting how Powell takes the events in Wells novel and changes them to accommodate for the appearance of Watson and Holmes who are brought in almost organically and don’t feel “shoe horned” in just to get a story out of it. This comic is actually a pretty good read especially if you have already read the Wells novel. And even with the deviations, there are still some very familiar touchstones within the comic. Griffin still goes to the Coach and Horses Inn to find rooms. And he’s eventually kicked out for non-payment. There’s an invisible cat at one point which in the novel Griffin was experimenting on a cat with the invisibility serum. So even though Powell changed many of the events in the novel, he keeps many of the same events and places in this new story. But maybe used in a different way. I like that.

Also, Seppo Makinen’s art is really good. I’m not a huge fan of black and white comics. When I read Eastman and Laird’s original 80s Teenage Mutant Turtles comics from Mirage I read the newly colorized versions from IDW. But these pages were nicely rendered and looked great.

Overall, it’s a nicely packaged, well written Sherlock story that uses the framework of HG Wells’ Invisible Man novel very well. However, I do have a fear that if you haven’t read the original novel, then you may miss a lot of this subtext and in that case I’m not sure how this story will come over. The story’s strengths could quickly turn into its greatest weakness.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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