The Comic Critic's Review of "Master of the World"

It’s very difficult for me to be objective with Master of the World. The film was released in 1961 and I was born in 1962, so I didn’t have a chance to see it in the theater. But I did see it repeatedly on television. I was a voracious reader at a very young age. I loved fantastic tales of grand adventure and read everything Jules Verne wrote. Although people still read his books, I think many pass over “Robur the Conqueror” and its sequel “Master of the World” because the scenarios expressed in these early science fiction books would be kicked to the curb. WWI and WWII quickly revealed the true pros and cons of air warfare. But I found his books fun reading. Verne’s contraptions were a subject of many of my doodles. The Albatross, with its forest of propellers, was my favorite to draw. I’d seen Master of the World so many times that I had its shape and construction memorized. Yes, Master of the World might seem a little hokey by today’s standards. But Vincent Price gives a great performance. Charles Bronson’s star rose quite a bit after he was Charles Buchinsky playing Igor in 1953’s House of Wax, in which Vincent Price was also the lead. And while the war footage might be reused from other films, it does the job of showing fun explosions. Watching it renews my desire to discover and read new books. I still find Master of the World as fun to watch now as when I saw it as a kid. I’d like my friends who are into Steampunk to discover this gem and enjoy it just as much as I do.

The Comic Critic Reviews House of Wax

I’m a huge Vincent Price fan. How huge? His was the first movie actor’s name I memorized. I loved watching him perform. Watching him meant watching a lot of horror movies, and every young boy enjoys horror movies. Vincent Price carried himself with a regal, sophisticated air. He was immensely charming, polite, the quintessential gentleman. His bearing was so elegant that his victims apologized for being such a bother when he slid the knife in. Price’s ability to encapsulate menace with such movement and expression enthralled audiences. While he’d played a number of worthy roles before, it was in The House of Wax that he eased himself so easily onto the throne to became the king of horror. It seemed he’d been there all along, the quiet monarch always in command. The House of Wax was a tremendous box office draw. The rage for 3D films had just begun. That, along with Vincent Price’s performance, gave House of Wax a long run, establishing it as one of the 50s classic horror films. There’s a Blu-ray 3D version available now, but I only hope that I’ll eventually have the opportunity to see Vincent Price in a re-release on the big screen, The House of Wax in all of its 3D glory.

The technology was so new, they had to show this trailer at the theaters:

The Comic Critic Reviews Alien

I saw Alien in 1979 when I was a foreign exchange student in Japan. Because we attended school six days a week, the only time I went to the movies was Sunday afternoons. You’d think that the theater would be crowded, but such was not the case because our hamlet got only one new movie a month. By the time I had a Sunday afternoon to myself, Alien had been in town for a while, and I was one of half a dozen people there. Some might describe Alien as a “horror” film, but I classify it as a “terror” film. I remember walking out into the bright sun, my skin still buzzing from the chills and thrills of the movie, feeling very disassociated from the warmth of the day, oddly enhanced by feeling out of my element in a foreign country. I’d felt this way once before. I was eight or nine and had just seen an afternoon television broadcast of The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price. As the blue skies tried to warm the deep chill in my bones both times, I thought, “So this is what it means to have the friggin’ daylights scared out of you.”