'Up in the Air' has strong cast and weak script

Up in the Air (1940)
Starring: Frankie Darro, Mantan Moreland, Marjorie Reynolds, Tristram Coffin, Lorna Gray, and Dick Elliot
Director: Howard Bretherton
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When the obnoxious singer (Gray) headlining a radio station's anchor program is murdered, Frankie (Darro) gets his friend Jeff (Moreland) to help him find the killer. Along the way, he tries to fulfill his dreams of stardom while also helping a beautiful young singer (Reynolds) to become the program's new headliner.

Jeff (Moreland) and Frankie (Darro) prove themselves not ready for prime-time.

"Up in the Air" is a film where the cast is doing there very best with weak material. Darro and Moreland are great together--as they are in every teaming I've seen so far--and the other performers are also at the top of their game. If only more effort at been put into the script, as well as the set-piece musical performances by Lorna Gray and Marjorie Reynolds, this could have ranked among Monogram's best efforts. It's always a shame to see actors giving it their best but being undermined by weak material.

I think the film is still worth seeing if you are a fan of either Frankie Darro or Mantan Moreland, and a must-see if you like them when work together. One part of the film that I'm curious about is the "minstrel show" sequence where Frankie and Jeff are trying out for a spot on the radio show. Their routine is intentionally embarrassing--and even more so when viewed through 21st century eyes. Given that black-face was already falling out of favor by 1940, I wonder if that medium wasn't chosen to make Frankie and Jeff's comedy routine seem even more hackneyed and bad.

Psst....

.... didya know that Halloween will be here in just 30 short days? You better get ready!

NUELOW reveals the lives of Fantomah

Many comics fans will tell you that Wonder Woman was the first female superhero. Others will tell you that it was Phantom Lady. True masters of trivia will tell you it was the Woman in Red.

Truth is, they're all wrong.

The first female superhero, Fantomah, saw print in Feb. 1940, in the pages of Jungle Comics #2.

Created by writer/artist Fletcher Hanks (working as Barclay Flagg), the earliest "Fantomah" stories carried his trademark powerful character type dishing out extreme supernatural justice against evil-doers. Here's a splash panel from one of the early Fantomah stories that tells you everything you need to know about her -- other than her habit of turning villains into strange creatures or dispatching them violently. Oh -- and her own ability to turn into a terrifying skull-faced Furie when angered.

The "first life" of Fantomah

Unlike other Hanks creations, Fantomah continued past his involvement with the strip, evolving as it passed through the hands of other creators (working under the name W.B. Hovious). The surreal, macabre flavor that Hanks brought to most of his work faded quickly from the series, and for a time Fantomah was not very different from jungle girls, such as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Fantomah, with Ken and Fury, during her "second life."

Eventually, it was revealed that she was the lost ruler of the City of Khefra, and for the final 20 or so episodes of the series she ruled justly while fighting off challengers to her throne. As she claimed her inheritance, the last vestiges of the powerful magic she had once wielded seemingly faded forever. The series came to a close in Jungle Comics #51.

The undead stalk Fantomah, Daughter of the Pharohs, during her "third life."

NUELOW Games has just released The Three Lives of Fantomah: Book One. It contains four of Fletcher Hanks' best Fantomah stories, as well as one by "W.B. Hovious," all spotlighting Fantomah during her "first life" as a vengeful demi-goddess. The book also contains an all new OGL Modern/d20 System prestige class and related feats that set out to capture the unusual nature of Fantomah's development over the course of her series.

Like most of NUELOW Games' releases, it's co-edited by yours truly, and I am also responsible for the game design. I hope some of you will check it out and let me know what you think.

And, of course, I hope you'll like it well enough to come back for Books Two and Three!

'Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties!

NUELOW Games is celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day with the release of an anthology featuring two comics adventures of Lila the Corsair Queen, and Robert E. Howard's classic pirate tale "Isle of Pirate's Doom."

Click here to see previews or to download your own copy of the book, which also includes a handy guide to pirate vocabulary.

 By way of further preview, here are a couple sample pages...

The time Pamela Green got in touch with her inner Scotswoman...

She became so stingy she would only pay for half a tartan and nothing else.

Dancing into Fall

With the last day of summer officially behind us, Ann Miller dances her way into autumn.

The Big Labor Day Weekend Sale!

(This should have been posted to the NUELOW Games blog, but I stuck it here by accident. Well, since most the books are in black and white, it is kinda-sorta fitting for here too. So, support my blog by buying my books from NUELOW Games. And happy Labor Day!)

All NUELOW Games fiction anthologies, comics/rpg hybrid books, core rulebooks, art packs, and selected other products are on sale this Labor Day Weekend for just $0.99! The special prices are good through September 1.

Treat yourself to some fun games and great games and reading material!

Click here to see the full listings!

The Milla Jovovich Quarterly

As summer is coming to an end, the winds will start to pick up. Ladies in dresses and men in kilts had better be careful.

Or not. The rest of us might enjoy the show....

Sorceress of Zoom... Re-Envisioned!

Back in 2009, Warren Ellis put out a call for artists to have fun with the "Sorceress of Zoom" by redesigning her look and generally "remake" her. Since NUELOW Games has just released a collection of the original "Sorceress of Zoom" stories, this seems like a good time to post my favorite of those "remakes."

First, there are two illos from Valerio "Pupato" Gomez, one draft and one final. The artist named the pictures "The Doom from  ZooM."

I liked Marty Nozz's take on the character, too.

These two drawings update the character while capturing her nature as seen in the original series. Others were a bit further afield, so they don't appeal to my fundamentally conservative nature. You can see the entire thread on Ellis' message board by clicking here.

You can see another modern take on the "Sorceress of Zoom" on the cover of NUELOW Games' first book in their three-volume series by clicking here. It's by Bradley K. McDevitt, and he remained faithful to the original character design as he was drawing an illo that he knew would be used with the original stories.

By-the-numbers mystery with a nice twist

The Lady Confesses (1945)
Starring: Mary Beth Hughes, Hugh Beaumont, Edmund MacDonald, Emmett Vogan, and Claudia Drake
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When her wedding plans are derailed by murder, Vicki (Hughes) sets out to discover why nightclub owner Lucky Brandon (MacDonald) lied to cast doubt on her fiance's (Beaumont) otherwise unshakable alibi.

"The Lady Confesses" is a standard murder mystery that is elevated by a nice third-act twist. As is the case with many of these B-movies, the short running time leaves viewers wanting for a little more background on some of the characters. It would have been nice to know why the eventual murder victim disappeared for seven years, and it would have helped the story if we'd been given more information about Lucky's relationship to Vicki's fiance, Larry. However, I feel inclined to forgive the filmmakers, because there's not a wasted moment anywhere in the film where they might have squeezed such exposition in -- even the obligatory musical number at the night club is truncated when compared to what is typical in a movie like this.

The cast is interesting in this film, especially if you're a big fan of these kinds of movies. Mary Beth Hughes plays a role very different from the bad girl ones she's usually cast in. Hugh Beaumont also gets to play a role that's a little meatier than what we usually expect from him. He doesn't quite rise to the challenge, but nice lighting and some decent dialogue helps prop up his performance.

All in all, this is not a bad little movie.