Feature Category: Article

Zack Snyder refined his flair for visuals as a music video director, hence his directorial debut Dawn of the Dead (2004) was indicative of film in the early 2000s, fast paced, bloody with a rocking soundtrack. Zack seemed to have discovered his niche with 2006’s 300 – based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, concerning the battle of Thermopylae, it had gorgeous visuals complete with glistening six packs. It was all action and no story, protagonist King Leonidas / Gerard Butler’s only character trait being that he is tough and likes apples. It seemed as if this would be Snyder’s bread and butter, however he was spurred on by the success of 300 to take on a comic book, said to be unfilmable…

Watchmen to Man of Steel: A Leap of Faith

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel (published in 1987), was successful, not only for its cynical take on a world that had rejected vigilantes, exploring a mystery in the grips of the cold war, but also for its swaths of information between chapters that fleshed out its world, impossible to convey in a feature film. Although the 2009 film is polarizing, it is largely seen as a success, Snyder using visuals effectively yet again. However, doubts started to creep in- his ability to coach actors, his use of dialogue and his concentration on visuals over story were derided. Despite this, his big break came with the announcement that he was taking on DC’s most iconic character with 2013’s Man of Steel. After the success of Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, DC tuned to Snyder, buoyed by his take on Watchmen and convinced a darker last son of Krypton was the way forward. It is unclear whether the executives at DC and Warner Bros. had watched Snyder’s passion project – 2011’s Sucker Punch; a juvenile, unpleasant wet dream featuring scantily clad women fighting robots and Nazis in elaborate dream sequences – this should have been a foreshadowing of things to come. Snyder is bombastic by nature, like the scorpion stinging the frog in the famous parable, he can’t help being who he is, was this the right man to trust with your most lucrative property? Man of Steel was poorly received. It was the first example of a sense of nihilism creeping in, to what would come to define the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) with millions of civilians killed and Superman murdering Zod being real bones of contention for fans. The film also lacked the fun and adventure that Marvel had cultivated so well. The box office was impressive however, so Zack marched on with a sequel.

Batman VS Superman: The Dawn of Depression

There was mass hysteria when DC tweeted that Batman had been incorporated into a Man of Steel sequel and it would be called: Batman VS Superman, never had the two titans of DC comics appeared together in one film. Even when a poster of a Batman/Superman film was shown in Will Smith’s post-apocalyptic; I am Legend, fans lapped it up. This was big news, as it turned out that not only would Superman and Batman face off, this would lead into a Justice League film, teased with the subtitle, Dawn of Justice. But could Zack handle it? The visuals would be great but what about the story? Come March 2016 and the early reviews were not good (they were just out of touch academics who didn’t get comics books, right?). The story was overcomplicated, part of a convoluted scheme by Lex Luthor (an irritating Jesse Eisenberg still playing Facebook’s founder, instead of the calculating, self-assured supervillain so well portrayed by Gene Hackman), to discredit Superman and turn Batman against him. This story was improved by The Ultimate Cut; released on DVD and Blu-ray and totalling 3 hours, it made the overarching plot make more sense, however it couldn’t repair the film’s real problem. This epic is depressing, unpleasant and ultimately pessimistic. Snyder got so obsessed with the dark side of Batman, expertly captured in Tim Burton’s gothic fairy tale and comic book storylines such as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, that he made Ben Affleck’s older, burnt out Dark Knight, unlikeable and, worst of all, stupid. Snyder takes us through the hero’s journey but forgets to end on a triumphant return, instead leaving the audience browbeaten after the Death of Superman (an iconic storyline that needs its own series of films to do it justice). Out of all the issues raised with the film, this feels like the fundamental flaw. Superhero films can be dark and brooding but they are meant to be fun! DC and Warner Bros. were already sold into his vision and had signed a contract for Zack to go onto direct a Justice League film, they were locked in now and just had to pray.

Justice League: A Hog with a Silk Shirt is still a Hog

We finally make it to the big one, the most lucrative DC property that has been around since the 1960s but had never made it to the big screen. What should have been a massive moment for comics and cinema was in trouble from the start. Firstly, unlike Marvel’s Avengers, which had been built up by multiple films, introducing us to the various characters that made up the super team, Batman VS Superman featured Wonder Woman on a laptop, looking at security footage of superheroes. It was no coincidence that Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman was the most popular member of the team after her well received 2017 standalone film. Justice League then had to introduce The Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman within a two-hour film – characters with decades of backstory to comb through. Then a tragic and unforeseen issue arose – Zack Snyder’s daughter committed suicide and he stepped away from the project. Warner Brothers quickly brought in Joss Whedon (who had been instrumental in the MCU by directing the first two Avengers movies) to provide reshoots and complete the picture. The result, released in late 2017, was a horrible mess. The reshoots were disastrous – Ben Affleck looking red and bloated after a stint in rehab, moustache-gate (after Henry Cavill’s handle bar wasn’t allowed to be shaved off while he was filming Mission: Impossible) and terrible humour thrown into scenes, trying to match the banter of Avengers. Although, once again, Synder will now produce his own cut of the film, totalling four hours and streaming on HBO Max from March 18^th. As the saying goes, ‘a hog with a silk shirt is still a hog’.

Conclusion

As the curtain closes on this iteration of the DCEU, the post-mortems are starting. None of this is Zack Snyder’s fault, he has just been playing with his toys, the only way he knows how – fast, bloody and with a grey filter (he evens wants to release a version of Justice League in black and white). Warner CEO Kevin Tsujihara (later resigning in 2019 over a sex scandal) and President of DC Entertainment Diane Nelson (who left in 2018) were both at the helm when deciding Snyder should have the keys to the kingdom. Instead of a steady hand like Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios, they entrusted the representation of DC’s most important characters with a director who wants to blow up the world without rebuilding it. Like Batman, Kevin and Diane were meant to be the master tacticians, however they handed control to the Joker, as we now know, just wants to watch the world burn. The kingdom has not been ruined but now needs serious renovation.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE SNYDER CUT will premiere in the UK on Sky and NowTV March 18^th

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. Dedicated miners of this fecund seam begin to notice the same names cropping up, again and again, as if their whole career was based on a principle of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. What’s more, it isn’t all one-season failures and unsold pilots, there’s genuine gold to be found amongst their hoards; these men are surely the Titans of Telephemera!

STEPHEN J CANNELL

Stephen J Cannell had a ton of hits in the 1970s and 1980s, bringing The Rockford Files, The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, and more, to our screens, but he also had his fair share of misses. Several of those shows actually lasted beyond their first season, and have entered into popular memory, such as The Greatest American Hero, but just as many failed to make any impact at all, not even making it to the end of their recorded run. This is the story of Stephen J Cancelled…

Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980, ABC): By the turn of the decade, Cannell was already becoming known for his quirky crime dramas, with Baretta and The Rockford Files doing big numbers for ABC and NBC, respectively, and despite the hiccup that was Richie Brockelman, Private Eye, he sold ABC on his latest project, a misfit detective agency based in Los Angeles.

Ben Vereen – who had made a splash as Chicken George in Roots – was cast as EL (for Early Leroy) Turner, also known as Tenspeed, a streetwise career criminal who was working as a Private Detective to satisfy his parole requirements. He partnered with Jeff Goldbum’s Lionel Whitney, a staid accountant who had always dreamed of becoming a PI, and indulged his fantasy by reading a hard-boiled detective novel series, The Mark Savage Mysteries.

The pilot featured a wacky plot about stolen Nazi diamonds, but put the pieces in place for the comedic adventures of the mismatched pair, getting involved with motorcycle gangs, beauty pageants, and super computers, with an 8pm Sunday slot inherited from Mork & Mindy initially earning good ratings. Things dropped off towards the end of the fourteen-episode run, but the show still ranked twenty-ninth in the year-end Nielsen ratings, despite running against Archie Bunker’s Place and One Day at a Time.

It was a surprise, then, when ABC declined to renew the show for a second season, and instead moved the final season of Charlie’s Angels into its slot, while Cannell moved on to The Greatest American Hero for the network, debuting in early 1981. Ben Vereen worked again with Cannell on Silk Stalkings and later reprised his role as Tenspeed for a handful of episodes of Cannell’s 1987 one-season wonder, JJ Starbuck, but I wonder what happened to that Goldbum guy?

The Rousters (1983, NBC): 1983 was a huge year for Cannell, with The A-Team and Hardcastle & McCormickstarting their runs on NBC and ABC, respectively, but he also had another series debuting on NBC, the quirky bounty hunter show, The Rousters, which featured a family of circus folks descended from the legendary Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp II – played by Medical Center’s Dr Joe Gannon, Chad Everett – is a bouncer at Slademan’s Circus, and sees his famous ancestor as a burden, but his mother is determined that they should follow in the footsteps of the fabled lawman by becoming bounty hunters, and all sort of circus- and crime-related shenanigans follow.

With an ensemble that also featured Hoyt Axton, Maxine Stuart, Jim Varney, and Mimi Rogers, NBC made the huge claim that The Rousters would be “the show that sank The Love Boat,” but the ratings told a different story, and the show was cancelled after just six of the thirteen completed episodes had been aired. The rest were shown in the summer of 1984 as a schedule filler, and a series of sitcoms were instead lined up against the CBS leviathan.

While the world may not have been ready for a show about carny bounty hunters descended from a Tombstone lawman, Jim Varney found big screen fame as stupid everyman Ernest P Worrell, beginning with 1985’s Dr Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, while Cannell concentrated his efforts on his hit shows, which would soon be joined by Hunter. But it wouldn’t be too long until the idea of comedic crime-fighting misfits would rear its head once more…

The Last Precinct (1986, NBC): Replacing the curtailed final season of Knight Rider in the Friday at 9pm slot, The Last Precinct took its cues from Police Academy and Night Court, both of which were delighting audiences across America. Co-created with Frank Lupo, the show saw Adam West – still trying to throw off his Batman legacy – as Captain Rick Wright, the head of a police precinct staffed entirely by the LAPD’s rejects.

This ragtag bunch includes an Elvis impersonator, a sexy policewoman (who used to be a man), an overweight motorcycle cop and a guy caught sleeping with the Mayor’s underage daughter, and includes a post-Ghostbusters Ernie Hudson desperately looking for another hit. The pilot aired straight after Superbowl XX in January 1986, and a short series began in April, unfortunately scheduled against Dallas (which, even in 1986, was the number six show in the ratings).

Randi Brooks as Mel may have been the first transgender main character on US network TV, and there was a lot to like about The Last Precinct – not least of which was that the men who fell at her feet were the butt of the joke, rather than her being the usual man in a dress. But there was also a lot not to like, with Vijay Amritaj as Alphabet (so called because his real name was the unpronounceable Shivoramanbhai Poonchwalla), the victim of some anachronistic racial humour.

The show did not return for the new season, with the public preferring their unorthodox but surprisingly-effective police officers to stay on the silver screen, where Adam West would soon be seen in Night of the Kickfighters and Omega Cop. Cannell would try another misfit cop show four years later, with Broken Badges, where Miguel Ferrer corralled a bunch of policemen on psychiatric suspension, but that, too, failed to get beyond seven episodes before being yanked from the screen.

The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage (1991, NBC): A literal sea-change from his previous endeavours, the Disney co-produced The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage eschewed Cannell’s usual crime procedural for a fantastic tale of the ghost of a brutal pirate and a crooked Wall Street trader looking to atone for their misdeeds.

Steven Williams, just off four years in Cannell’s 21 Jump Street, is the titular buccaneer, who escaped justice by hiding out in his castle on the Caribbean island of San Pietro. Three-hundred years later, his peace is shattered when Barry Tarberry, a financial con artist on the run from the US authorities, holes up on the island, taking up residence in the pirate’s chateau.

With Savage’s spirit unable to leave the castle lest he be dragged to Hell by the Snarks, and Tarberry constantly dodging extradition, the pair realise that they have to save one-hundred souls to prevent Tarberry joining Savage in eternal damnation. Williams and Daniel Hugh Kelly (McCormick from Hardcastle & … fame) tried hard with the weak material, and there’s some comic relief to be found in Bert Rosario’s banana republic dictator and Black Jack’s audacious inventions, but audiences did not warm to the show, which aired against CBS’s 60 Minutes, the number two show in the ratings, on a Sunday evening.

Still, in a year which also the debuts of Street Justice, Silk Stalkings, and The Commish, Cannell had every reason to be happy with his lot. He’d brought twenty-eight shows to series since enjoying his first hit with Baretta in 1975, and the likes of Renegade was just around the corner. That’s not to say there weren’t projects that didn’t make it to series, however, and we’ll look at those unsold pilots next time out in Titans of Telephemera!

Related Reading from STARBURST:

TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: STEPHEN J CANNELL – PART 1

TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: GLEN A LARSON – PART 1

TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: GLEN A LARSON – PART 2

TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: GLEN A LARSON – PART 3

TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: GLEN A LARSON – PART 4

Here at STARBURST, we’ve been fans of horror films ever since we were allowed to stay up late and watch them. Between us, we’ve clocked up more hours watching scary movies than would be considered normal. We often discuss and argue films whenever we can, but we all agree that among our favourite movie monsters are the vampires. I mean, come on – we’re food to them. They’re hungry predators, looking for their next meal and we’re on the menu. Unless we’re talking about Twilight, True Blood, or The Vampire Diaries. (Come on, you don’t fall for your food.)

Buffy, however, is a totally different matter and was the last word on proper, traditional vampires. It also was the first and last word on teenage vampire romances. Buffy and Angel – never was that dynamic equalled, let alone bettered.

But as a bunch of Buffy fans, it has to be admitted that ingenious as that series was, it owed something to the genius of Tom Holland, who wrote and directed Fright Night. Granted, Buffy owed something to The Lost Boys as well, but Fright Night came first.

Even the Scream films owe a debt to Fright Night when you think about it. The characters in Scream are aware of what’s happening around them because they watch slasher movies and thus, they know the rules and conventions of the slasher genre. In Fright Night, the same concept is true – nine years earlier.

Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a kid in his late teens, and he is a huge horror movie fan. He’s a little bit nerdy, an outsider and mixes with another outsider ‘Evil’ Ed Thompson (Stephen Geoffreys). We asked the film’s director, Tom Holland, if any of the characters in the film were based on himself or any of his friends growing up: “Ed was based on every horror fan that I ever went to high school with. Charley Brewster was me. Evil Ed was all my weird friends. If you were into horror back in those days, oh boy… something was a little wrong with you.”

Charley has a girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and pretty much, all is well in his world. He’s watching his favourite TV show, Fright Night – a horror movie programme hosted by his hero Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) – a fading horror movie actor. Tom explained the concept of the show-within-a-film, “I grew up watching the American International [AIP] horror movies with Vincent Price, and the Hammer horror films and that is my loving homage to those. Peter Vincent is named after Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.”

“It was my memory of growing up being a horror fan, because in the United States, back in the sixties, pretty much the only place you could find horror was on the independent local TV stations,” he continued, “On Friday night, they would run something called ‘The Friday Night Frights’ and they would start them at 11:00 at night. A lot of them had different local horror hosts. You’d have Zacherley coming out of a coffin, or Vampira in a fog-filled set.”  

“You’d have these men and women who were terribly hokey and comical. They had no money because it was the local stations. They’d throw up a black flat behind the host and they’d pontificate in Frankenstein type voices, and I felt a great deal of affection for them. They’d have these god-awful horror films, and in-between the terrible stuff would be the Hammer and the AIP stuff.”

As Charley looks out of the window, he sees a coffin being carried into the deserted house next door. He tries to tell Amy, who doesn’t believe him because a similar graveyard scene of a coffin being carried is being shown on the TV.

Charley is instantly distrustful of the new neighbour – and his suspicions seem founded when some prostitutes go missing, one of whom Charley recognises as a visitor to the house next door. Screams are heard at night, and Charley sees his neighbour seduce a young woman through his bedroom window… it all points to a vampire next door. Makes perfect sense as the only possible explanation to a horror movie fan – right? Sadly, Amy and Ed don’t quite see things the same way. Ed is happy to advise on the best means of dealing with the vampire, though – for some quick cash.

Thus, armed with knowledge gleaned from Universal and Hammer movies via Evil Ed and because he has watched all the old films, Charley believes he can handle a vampire. He seals his windows, knowing that a vampire can’t enter a property unless invited. As he’s driving the last nail into his window frame, Charley is called downstairs by his mother to meet her guest… the new neighbour, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) – the vampire. As he has been invited over, he can now come and go as he pleases.

Charley’s miseries accelerate from zero to sub-light speed when he calls in the police claiming knowledge of how the prostitutes are going missing. Visiting the house with a detective, he announces his vampire theory and is ridiculed by both the cop and Dandridge’s henchman. But Dandridge now sees Charley as a clear threat and must be silenced, either by threat or other, more permanent means.

Dandridge attacks Charley in his home that night but is repelled when Charley drives a pencil through the back of the vampire’s hand. Now desperate for help, Charley approaches Peter Vincent, the famed vampire hunter of the movies he loves so much, but catches the actor on a bad day. Vincent has just been fired from his job as host of Fright Night because, as he puts it: “Nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. Apparently, all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.” Vincent doesn’t want to hear what he believes to be the demented rantings of a crazy fan; he has problems of his own, such as paying the rent now he’s out of work.

When asked about casting the late Roddy McDowall for the role, one of his last and most memorable appearances, Tom had some fond recollections of his time with the legendary actor:

“I can’t remember now, but I wrote Class of 1984, and he starred in that too. I remember him being very moving in that, but to be honest with you, I haven’t seen it in a long time. I could go on and on about Roddy. His passing was a terrible loss to the film community.” Holland continued reminiscing, “Roddy did so much to help me as the first-time director of Fright Night he just loved film. He had the biggest collection of 16mm prints of anybody in town. Whenever I wanted to see a film, and I couldn’t get a print of it, I went to Roddy, and he would run me a dub out of his personal collection. It was an absolutely astounding collection.”

“He also was friends with everybody.” Tom continued, “Every major actor. And he went back and maintained friendships, even go out to the Motion Picture Home and visit with the silent motion picture stars that even at that time, had been forgotten. He walked me around MGM, which is now Sony, telling me where this or that famous moment happened. He pointed out to me where Katherine Hepburn met Spencer Tracy. He was amazing; he’d been a child actor, he’d been through the creation of the studio system. He was just an amazing reservoir of knowledge. If you were a film fan hanging out with Roddy McDowall, it was the ultimate pleasure because he could talk about it so knowledgeably because he’d been there and knew it. He was a living, walking history of Hollywood and film.”

“If he liked you, and thank God, he liked me; he was very supportive.” Holland revealed, coming back to the film, “You’ve got to remember Fright Night was my first directorial effort, and the fact that he took me seriously, he took the other actors and made so much possible for me. He and Chris Sarandon. Chris should not be forgotten either. He’s an extraordinary actor.”

It’s when Vincent receives an eviction order from his landlord that Evil Ed and Amy call, desperate to elicit his help with Charley, who they believe to be delusional. Accepting the offer of $500, Vincent agrees to perform a staged ‘vampire test’ with Dandridge’s co-operation where a bottle of holy water (in reality, tap water) will be drunk thus proving once and for all that Dandridge is not a vampire.

Well, the best-laid plans of mice, men and phoney vampire hunters… Vincent realises – quite by accident – that Dandridge doesn’t cast a reflection in a mirror in a scene that pays homage to Universal’s Dracula (1931). He’s dealing with a real vampire. This is far more than he bargained for.

Matters escalate when Dandridge starts taking Charley’s friends one by one, turning Ed into a werewolf who attacks Vincent and is killed by him, albeit accidentally.

Amy, meanwhile, becomes Dandridge’s vampiric bride, and along with the transformation comes a growth of long blonde hair. The physical change is inexplicable as she was a brunette with short hair previously. But if we can accept that Dandridge’s bite can transform Ed into a werewolf, I guess we can go along with his ability to turn Amy into the apparent reincarnation of his lost love.

With the odds stacked against him, Charley faces the vampire in a deadly showdown, with the resolute vampire hunter heroically, if a little ineptly by his side. The duo survive an ordeal, which is visually reminiscent at times of Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot (1979), but was the vampire menace finally thwarted? After all, we hear Evil Ed’s insane cackle just before the credits roll.

In 1988, Fright Night 2 was ready for release when fate took an unexpectedly sinister and tragic turn. As reported at the time, the chairman of Live Entertainment, Jose Menendez who was handling the film’s distribution and was actively planning for a third movie, was murdered by his two sons on the day he met with Roddy McDowall and director Tommy Lee Wallace. In the confusion that followed, this film was somehow lost in the shuffle, plans for a worldwide theatrical release were shelved, and consequently, many people don’t even know it exists. The film eventually found its audience on VHS and is, to this day, awaiting an official UK DVD release.

Three years have passed since the events of Fright Night. Three years of therapy for poor Charley Brewster, who is now at college. The therapy has been successful, Charley now believes the far more logical explanation that the late Jerry Dandridge wasn’t a vampire at all, but a serial killer masquerading as one.

One evening, he and his girlfriend Alex (Traci Lind) visit Peter Vincent, still a fading, hammy horror star, past his prime, and host of local horror TV show Fright Night and talk about the past. Before leaving, Charley notices four coffin-like crates being brought into Vincent’s apartment building – just as he’d seen Dandridge’s three years earlier. But this time, he draws the curtains and shakes off the supposition that the bloodsuckers are back because after all, vampires don’t exist.

Poor delusional Charley Brewster.

Jerry Dandridge’s sister Regina (Julie Carmen) is in town with her night-crawling posse, looking for revenge on those who killed her beloved brother. While Jerry was basically reasonable and just wanted to be left to kill people in peace until Charley became a nuisance, Regina is far crueller. She follows Charley and Alex as he takes her back to her dorm, and as they kiss – unknown to them, she’s on the roof of their car, manipulating what Charley sees as her seduction begins.

She aims to turn Charley into a vampire, purely for the purposes of extending his life so she can torture him for centuries. But what of Vincent? She replaces him as the host of Fright Night. But he has already realised during a party that he’s again dealing with real vampires and his bid to slay her with a stake live on TV during a transmission of Fright Night only lands him in an asylum. Meanwhile, Charley is succumbing to Regina’s will (and charms) and is in the early stages of becoming a creature of the night. It’s up to Alex to spring Vincent from the state hospital before the final transformation can take place for Charley in a reversal of the events of the first film.

Sadly, there would be no third film, but the ending left the door slightly open. Alex and Charley embrace, as they hear a bat flapping. But the wide shot reveals they’re living next to a field of roses, which are known to be among the aromatic plants that can repel vampires.

Stephen Geoffreys was asked to reprise his role as Evil Ed in this sequel, but couldn’t due to a scheduling conflict with another filming commitment. It’s a shame – it would’ve been nice to hear his immortal line one more time.

All together now: “Oh Brewster, you’re so cooooool.”

FRIGHT NIGHT screens on Horror Channel. Tune in via SKY 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.