Monday, June 29, 2020

The Blood Moon


Shedjia’s riverboat followed the red moon northward along the muddy, slow waters of the Nahar in full flood. She sat in the prow under a canopy of shadow and watched the land unfold. It had been ten days since the messengers had come, bearing with them Kardan, wounded on a barge like a slain crocodile, and the news that Utuzan had been wounded and lay near to death in the temple of Anatu on the island of the gods. At once, she gathered what little she owned and took to the river to reach him.

The days and nights were an agony of waiting, sleeping in shadow beneath the blaze of the sun, then pacing the deck through the watches of the dark. She allowed no rest, no putting ashore for any reason. The boat was small and coasted easily over the shallows where reeds grew like arrows nested from an unseen battle. Herons flew low over the waters, chasing their reflections as they passed beneath the stars.

The temples and towers of Mutun glowed white in the moonlight, reflected in the river like bones. Shedjia looked at the columns of smoke that still rose from plundered shrines and destroyed mansions. Over all loomed the palace of the kings, and not far from it she saw watch-fires, and she heard the great drums of the temple of the dark goddess, and she sent up a silent prayer to the veiled one herself that the dark son still lived.

Monday, June 22, 2020

The Witcher


It’s interesting how the Witcher franchise has become this kind of cultural phenomenon, when the source material remains the least-known part of it. Originally appearing in a series of books and stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, the character gained momentum mostly due to the series of well-recieved video games by Polish studio CD Projekt Red, culminating in the 2015 game Witcher III: The Wild Hunt. Now Geralt of Rivia has arrived in the mainstream in a major way via his own Netflix series.

It’s a circuitous route to fame, but I suppose it was inevitable with every platform and network trying to make the next Game of Thrones. Whatever you think of that show, GoT has been instrumental in mainstreaming fantasy fiction, taking off from the cultural moment brought about by the Lord of the Rings films. Without the success of those movies, none of this would likely be happening. Now we are living in a time when all kinds of fantasy properties are being adapted for the wider world, and The Witcher is certainly one of the most old-fashioned.

What I find interesting about Geralt as a character is that he is a straight-up pulp hero in the old style. He’s not uncertain of his motives, and he doesn’t spend time philosophizing or doubting himself. Like all the great pulp heroes he comes to us fully-formed, and we don’t waste time on an origin story. Geralt is a badass warrior, already a master swordsman who possesses superhuman physical prowess as well as extensive knowledge of his trade. He’s good at what he does, maybe the best, and he cleaves his way through his world using violence as a solution to a lot of his problems. Like all pulp heroes he is confident, determined, and fearless. We don’t see him question himself or struggle to become skilled – we’re already there.

Another, rather welcome pulp characteristic is that Geralt gets a lot of action. As opposed to modern protagonists who have one true love or just seemingly never get horny, Geralt bangs hot chicks from here to Nilfgaard, and both the character and the stories are entirely unapologetic about it. You can argue that Yennefer is his OTP, but their relationship is, at best, difficult. The fact that Geralt won’t settle down for anything is yet another mark on the “pulp” column. Pulp heroes might try to retire, but they never really do.

The show is an interesting creation. Aside from Henry Cavill in the lead role, the rest of the cast is mostly unknowns, or less-knowns. Freya Allan is solid as Ciri, and Joey Batey’s Jaskier is a welcome dash of comic relief. Jodhi May kills it as the hard-drinking, iron-willed Queen Calanthe, and Anya Chalotra gets the best part as the complex, multifaceted Yennefer, and her performance is just stellar. She has an effortless charisma that just bleeds off the screen every moment she is on it.

The look of it is dirty and grungy, as befitting Geralt’s world, and it also looks a good bit like Westeros, and though they do try really hard to separate them, design-wise, the comparison is unavoidable. I understand they had a rule not to cast anyone from GoT, and when they have a dragon onscreen, you can tell they went hard to make sure it didn’t look like Drogon. That said, the costumes and VFX on this show are generally a cut below what HBO managed, and just retain that TV-look, without the polish I would like.

The first season is strongly episodic, as it is based on short stories set before the main storyline of the novels. That’s another thing that makes it stand out as pulp to me, as the episodes operate on different timelines, skip over events and years between them, and sometimes show the same event from different points of view.

The Witcher is definitely and solidly a Sword & Sorcery show. You have a dangerous, gritty world with no real moral center, and a cast of characters who all exist in shades of gray. At the center is Geralt, a dangerous, wandering adventurer who fucks and kills his way through it all. Also in line with S&S is the lower-class background of the main character. Geralt is not a prince or a knight or an exiled king, he’s just a guy – or he started that way – and he even has a job right there in the title. For all that he gets involved in bigger stories, just as Conan did, at his base Geralt is blue-collar, and he travels around looking for jobs that suit his particular skills. A solid Sword & Sorcery pulp adventure carried off with good performances and definite style.

Monday, June 15, 2020

The Songs of Fallen Gods


Under the delicate shell of night, the heart of High Ashem lay bared to the cold stars, and with the rising of the dawn came her final doom. In the waters of the long lake lay the sacred island of Mannat, and upon the island stood the many-clustered temples and palaces and towers of the city named Mutun – The Place Where the Gods Live Eternally. This place had been the heart of High Ashem for six hundred years, but it would not rule for one more day.

Fires were lit across the city, and the bells rang for prayers to all the gods. The shrines of Hadad and Uanan, of Slud and Anatu were alight with the fires of sacrifice. Lowing bulls were cut open and their blood poured into basins, their entrails fed into burning coals. Incense covered the smell of fear as virgins were offered up in the old rituals. Priests called forth their invocations and choirs sang the songs of supplication and propitiation. The people who dwelled on the shore along the riverside huddled down in their clay houses and made their own small offerings, cast their own small prayers to the fading dark.

All through the days before, those soldiers who had escaped the great disaster had staggered into the city from the desert’s edge. Warriors and porters and men driving wagons filled with supplies had come in a long stream, each of them bearing the same evil tidings. The army had been crushed, scattered across the riverlands, and the invincible Iron King had been cast down and was seen no more. The power of the black sorcerer from the south had proven too great, and even now an army of barbarians marched for the heart of the kingdom.

Monday, June 8, 2020

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter


Remember when I said how awesome it would have been if Hammer had made a Solomon Kane movie? Well, they kind of did. Not a real adaptation, obviously, but still a movie with a lot of Kane DNA in it, right down to the letter of the last name. This is maybe the last of the great Hammer films: Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter.

By the 70s it was becoming apparent that the gothic horror films that had driven Hammer studios to success were running out of steam. Horror had started to go more mainstream, and so there was less market for their kind of genteel grindhouse approach. The main players, from Dracula to Frankenstein to the Mummy had been done and done over again, and it was obvious the studio was starting to run out of ideas in the more traditional vein, and so they were branching out, trying new things and seeking to use their standard characters in new ways. This resulted in some ridiculous films (like Dracula AD 1970 and Satanic Rites of Dracula) but it also brought forth a few gems.

Captain Kronos is a real attempt to create a more serial-style character for the movies, as had been so successful in comics and on TV. In fact, the movie has a definite feel like a TV pilot, setting up the main characters and establishing the rules of the fictional universe to set a longer, continuing story in motion. In most horror films, the monster is the most interesting character, and most Hammer films suffer from a bland, unexciting cast of good guys who nobody in their right mind gave two shits about. Unless Peter Cushing was on hand, the human characters in Hammer movies were pretty disposable, save for the requisite pretty young things running about in their nightgowns.

Played by German actor Horst Janson, Kronos is a hero straight from the old-school pulp tradition. An ex-soldier, he returned home from an unidentified war to find both his mother and sister transformed into vampires and had to destroy them. Then he set forth on his quest to hunt the undead with no more depth or backstory required. He wears a super-cool 18th-century military coat with his “K” initial logoed on it and carries both a Hussar’s saber and a katana – which is never referred to or explained in any way. Smoking a cheroot, Eastwood-style, he cuts a dramatic figure somewhere between The Man With No Name and Vampire Hunter D.

Accompanied by his hunchbacked assistant Professor Grost, he rides into an unnamed village at the behest of an old army friend to address the assault of a vampire upon the populace. This vampire preys on young girls, draining away their youth and leaving them covered in old-age makeup. The killer is only seen as a shadow, and there are some cool effects like the vampire draining the life from flowers as it passes, which are obviously done cheaply but still work.

The movie plays around with expectations and with vampire lore, keeping you guessing who the vampire is, or even what its powers or weaknesses might be. There is a scene that is both horrific and hilarious where they have to experiment on a captured vampire to find out how to kill it, and it’s the most meta thing in the movie. Very much like what might happen in a tabletop RPG under similar circumstances.

All the performers are good. Janson is solid in the lead, though he was dubbed in post as his accent was deemed too strong. BBC stalwart John Cater is fun as the hunchbacked Grost, and Caroline Munro is probably doing the best work she ever did as the peasant girl Carla. Interestingly, the master vampire is not revealed until the very end, and he is played by William Hobbs, who was not an actor, but a stage combat master. Horst Janson was also renowned as a trained swordsman, and this ensures that the final duel between Kronos and the vampire is an epic, swashbuckling showdown like something from a golden age pirate movie.

Everything here just works, from good writing and solid characters to excellent and atmospheric direction and cinematography. It’s a Hammer film, so the effects look cheesy and the blood looks like tempura paint, but that also means it has great locations and sets on top of a ton of mood. The story leads through twists and turns and genuinely surprises you, and it’s a fun ride all the way through.

Despite obviously being set up to create an ongoing series, the movie didn’t do well. The studio didn’t really like it, and shelved it for 2 years before it got a release in 1974 without much publicity. Hammer was on the financial skids by then, and they would shut down just five years later. It’s sad that we never got the ongoing adventures of Kronos and his hunchback sidekick, and this remains a property that could be easily rebooted as a TV show or something in the current era. Watching this, it is surprising how modern so many of the storytelling concepts are, and it makes this movie seem like something really ahead of its time.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Thunder of War


The armies of Meru moved with the night, traveling ancient paths beside the swollen river in full flood. The sky was clear and the stars were bright as glass, lighting the way through the scrubland. Trees grew in the risen waters, their roots arching up from the mud like the legs of crouching animals, their trunks twisted and hardened by the long dry season even as their leaves uncurled like hands.

Utuzan rode at the heart of his army, shrouded and hooded even against the light of the stars. His power caused a pillar of fire to go before them, lighting the way for man and beast alike. The Heart of Anatu glowed in his hand, pulsing with the power he had embraced when he was only a boy. It led him and followed him and whispered to him, so that he knew the power of his goddess was with him.

Close around him rode the nomads of the desert, those who had become his followers. More and more had come in from the waste lands, willing to pledge their swords and their blood to the Black Flame. They had ancestral tales of the lands of the old empire, and they remembered in their legends the time when the Sea of Xis had made the desert a paradise. They believed they were the descendents of the people of Kithara, and they might indeed be – Utuzan himself did not know.

What mattered now was they believed in him, and in the future of conquest and power he promised. Thirty thousand of them rode beneath his banner, and their arrows and spears would carve a path through these lands. He knew what kind of weapon they were, for even in his day there had been those who lived on the edges of the empire. Men who spurned to plant or reap, who lived only by pillage and war. They were a sword in his hand to strike at those who stood before him.