20 Million Miles to Earth (1957): The head, the tail, the whole damn thing.

(&)

The Setup

So there I was, minding my own business over at Amazon, when a particular little book flies into my cart and orders itself without my having done a thing to encourage it.

It's true the book had been on my Wish List for quite a long time.... Maybe it got to feeling ignored, even a bit panicky, wondering if it  ever would trade that cold, dark Amazon warehouse for my own tender embrace. Could be the novel felt like it had to take matters into its own hands... or pages. You know what I mean.

Of course I was shocked at its behavior: that's just not the way you win friends and influence people. (You say hello, strike up a conversation, maybe see if there are mutual interests. You don't just hurl yourself unannounced into someone's online shopping cart.)

But in the end, the pleading look that wee tome gave me, I couldn't turn it away.

And THAT, my friends, is a somewhat true story.

Well then, what book am I talking about? I'll bet, having seen the post's title as well as that poster up top, you could make an educated guess that I'm talking about a novelization of the 1957 film 20 Million Miles to Earth. (And you'd be right!) Of course one doesn't talk about a film's novelization without also giving the film a little attention, so buckle in, we're gonna be here a minute....

The (Original) Novelization

1957's Amazing Stories original

Now, if you're saying you never even knew there was a novelization of this particular film, until a year or two ago I'd've been right there with you. I didn't know the book existed until after discovering BearManor Media, where horizons were gleefully broadened on this and many another subject. (Seriously, the place is a treasure trove of film, TV and radio-themed books.)

But this novelization first saw light before BearManor was ever a twinkle in anyone's eye--it was Amazing Stories first (and only) foray into standalone novel-length fiction. This was in 1957 (same year as the movie's release), and it was written by a fellow named Henry Slesar. I didn't recognize his name off hand, but apparently the guy was quite prolific, putting out a ton of dark fantasy, detective fiction, science fiction, mysteries and thrillers in various formats--novels, short fiction, TV and radio scripts, even a stage play--over a 40 year timespan. (Go, Henry!)

Now, take a look at that cover, will you? This 1957 edition looks cool as a pool (hip as a chip), and I'd warmly welcome a copy onto my bookshelf for its hep artwork alone. However. A copy of said original currently runs north of a hundred bucks, and that's a bit steep when I have no idea if what lies behind the cover is anywhere near as cool as the cover itself. Which brings us back to BearManor Media, with its much less expensive (ten to fifteen bucks as I write this) reprint edition of the novelization.

The Reprint

2013's BearManor Media reprint

So it seems not too long ago a fellow named Philip J. Riley put a considerable amount of time and effort into getting several out-of-print horror film novelizations put back into print and available through BearManor--including the one for 20 Million Miles to Earth. He called his project "Philip J. Riley's Nightmare Series," and while I was hoping to give you a list of all the novelizations included, figuring that bit out wound up being harder than I'd thought and so... I gave up. (There you have it--an ugly truth laid bare.)

Turns out neither BearManor or Amazon (or anywhere else I could find) have an out and out list of what titles comprised the series, and since Riley wrote and edited a lot of other classic horror-themed books as well, I got all bogged down searching through synopses and cover blurbs trying to figure out which books were actually novelizations/part of the series and which weren't. So no list. I did send out an email or two that will hopefully net me some info on the subject.

Of course I couldn't speak to Mr. Riley himself, as he has left the mortal vale, but assuming I hear back from any of the folks I did reach out to, I'll update with a list at that point.

UPDATE: I heard back from author Richard Eksted, who contributed to the first few books in the Nightmare Series. He says the following is a definitive list of books included:

• THE BRIDES OF DRACULA by Dean Owen - Book #1
• REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN by Jimmy Sangster - Book #2
• THE RAVEN by Eunice Sudak - Book #3
• THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM by Lee Sheridan - Book #4
• REPTILICUS by Dean Owen - Book #5
• 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH by Henry Slesar - Book #6

So there you go. Although, now that I think, I recall seeing one for Gorgo on Amazon as well. And now that I double think, I'm pretty sure there was one for Dr. Cyclops, too. So maybe Mr. Eksted's list isn't definitive after all....

At any rate, it's a reprint copy of 20 Million..., and not an original, which had (as noted way up top there) stowed away in my shopping cart. Not nearly as cool a cover as that 1957 original had, but it has some nice extras inside to compensate.

How about we take a look?

The Reading of the Reprint

Being a longtime fan of stop motion animation master Ray Harryhausen (pictured at left, alongside his Ymir puppet), I'd already seen the film version of 20 Million... a time or two, though not in a few years. I was of course down for a re-watch, but once the novelization arrived I decided to give it a go before I revisited the film. (As one knows, one does not read a film novelization without also watching its source film within a reasonable time-frame, be it before or afterwards. This is a Law, and I am a Law Abider.)

Anyway, the reprint starts out with an intro by Randall Larson, which contains quite a bit of cool information, including interview excerpts from Slesar on his experience writing the novelization. (Slesar went on [and on] about the screenplay not offering him much to work with and that he wasn't particularly proud of his finished product.) Along with groovy intro, there are a fair number of lobby card, promo still and film poster reproductions to be had, as well as the original edition's interior illustrations (which are extremely cool).

On the down side, this book looks to have been either superficially proofread or not proofread at all. I mean there are tons of typos--enough to be seriously distracting as you read--and I'm assuming story text was scanned from a 1957 original using OCR and then just... left as-is. (Granted, I write/edit/proofread for a living, and I may be more sensitive to this kind of thing than some, but oy vey this book was rife with typos.)

Intros and illustrations aside, I have to agree with Mr. Slesar and say the novelization itself is none too impressive. And you know, Slesar was so well regarded as an author, it makes me want to read some of his other stuff, 'cause this thing couldn't have been his best work. He did gallantly try to shore things up along his way, expanding out a few side plots not in the movie--personal and political problems for the various characters to deal with, etc. And while usually those bits are the things in a film novelization that really get me going, it was falling flat for me here. It was honestly a bit tough to slog through.

Which I'm quite confident is not a reflection on Slesar's talent or lack. The guy had an impressive track record, and I've read enough novelizations where the same author went from amazing to what-the-hell (cough Hank Searls Jaws 2 → Jaws: The Revenge cough) to know the screenplay someone's given to work with can make or break their end result. And that's gotta be what happened here. So yeah, definitely want to give some of Slesar's other novels and short fiction a go, just to broaden my perspective.

The Illustrations

Oh, right. I'd mentioned the novelization's illustrations: Being originally published in pulp/digest format, this book included some sweet interior artwork. We know the original had sweet cover art (by Luigi Garonzi, I discovered), but check out these interior illustrations (artist unknown [to me]) the book had as well. I couldn't find a complete set of these illustrations on the Web, so I snapped photos directly from my reprint (hence the curvature on most of the images).

Okay, after the buildup maybe this first one is a bit underwhelming: weird looking
Ymir and all. Still.

Gronk! If anybody knows who drew these, back in the day, let me know....

Yeah, that caption doesn't match the artwork. The beast would've been coming
out of shock after the electrical equipment shorted out, and no one was calmly
standing around at that point....

...as we see here.

Yeah, so I'm placing these images in the order they're presented in the reprint
copy--can't say if the 1957 edition also used this order--but in the reprint it's out
of sequence with the story: The Ymir didn't find himself atop the Colosseum till
the very end. (Shrug.)

Nuff said.

The ignominious end of a glorious beast....

Nice, huh? Feel free to click through any of those for a larger image.

The Film

By the way, I keep calling this beast the Ymir, and nowhere in the film or novelization is that title actually used--it's always just "beast," "creature," etc. Word has it that Harryhausen had named his creation Ymir after the mythological Norse giant, and the film's original working title was The Giant Ymir, but apparently he got last-minute-worried audiences could confuse "Ymir" with the Arabic title "Emir" and had references to it removed. Too bad. I like the name and could just see a little scene in-film where the scientist dude muses on what to call it and settles on "Ymir."

At any rate, with novelization underwhelmingly finished (took me awhile to get through, even if it is a tiny tome), I finally sat down for a re-watch of the film. My take away from that?

Well, um... the movie wasn't actually as amazing as I'd remembered, either. Now this genuinely surprised me. I mean, I'd seen the film at least twice before and recalled just loving it. But a bit of reflection had me realizing my previous watchings were very Harryhausen-centric (if that wasn't a term before, it is now). I think with previous viewings I'd been so focused on his amazing creature effects, I hadn't really noticed the film in its entirety. And the film in its entirety is chock-full of awkward dialogue and wooden performances.

And the wooden performances part is especially bummersome, since I'm a big fan of William Hopper from his time on the old Perry Mason TV show. I haven't seen Hopper in a ton of things other than Perry Mason, and I'd just assumed he would be shining as Col. Calder in this film the way he does there. Nope. And it had to be the script, etc. holding him back: His character in Perry Mason was surprisingly varied, and playing him clearly called for some versatility from Hopper. I'm just saying the man was a competent actor, and you might not see it in 20 million Miles....

Anyway, here are some notes I jotted to myself as the picture progressed. Probably won't make a lot of sense unless you're quite familiar with the film (and if you're not, give it a watch--warts or not, this movie is worth multiple viewings just for the creature effects, and my notes will make sense as a bonus)....

• Hey, in that long shot the boat hook is already in the kid's hand, then in the subsequent close up the dude tells him to get the boat hook out. Hmm.
• The inside of that space ship has cinder block walls....
• But the tilted camera to mimic the ship's angle is a nice touch.
• Even though they loaded two men in, I am convinced there are no additional people in that boat as they row away.
• I'm not caring much for this actress. Not sure I've seen her in anything else to know if, like Hopper, the script/direction were limiting her performance here....
• Let's see... 1 USD = 625 Lit. in 1949, rate maintained till early 1970s... that means that half million lire the kid gets in reward money equaled about 800 bucks in 1957. Adjusted for inflation, that's a little over 7,000 USD today. Not a bad haul for an eleven year old kid. (My brain just tends to go down rabbit holes like this.... No help for it.)
• Ooh, that life-size Ymir hand and arm in the cage escape scene was nice.
• Okay, in the barn, those chickens we're obviously being thrown onto the set from off-camera.
• Wait, that beast just broke out of a heavy duty metal cage, but you guys think that old wooden farm cart is gonna hold it?
• Oh man. That stop motion Ymir/farmer fight, with live action Hopper worked in, is AMAZING.
• Hey, does that live action elephant have fake tusks? (I'm guessing, after a little research, probably not.)
• Whoa. That live action elephant looks really big next to it's trainer. What's going on, there? (Turns out, since he planned to use a real elephant for some footage, Harryhausen asked for one that was 15 feet tall, but the tallest they could find was eight feet. So to make the elephant look bigger, they got a 4' 6" actor to play the zookeeper.)
• How tall was the Ymir at this point? Let's see, elephant's about the Ymir's height.... Largest recorded Asian elephant was twelve feet high, so I'm going with the Ymir at twelve feet as well. Although if Harryhausen wanted a 15 foot elephant, was he assuming his Ymir was 15 feet as well?
• Huh. I notice the novelization had the Ymir explicitly killing the farm dog, elephant and at least one pedestrian, but the movie makes a point of showing post-battle movement and/or breath in all its victims. I guess the film wanted to garner a bit of sympathy for the beast?
• Oh. Except for the military. Lot's of Ymir-Military-Killing onscreen. Hollywood military is always fair game as creature bait.
• Totally unrelated... recently saw An American in Paris on the big screen and noticed an uncredited Noel Neill in a couple of scenes. Joan Taylor in this movie reminds me of her just a bit. In look and style, not acting.

Yep. Those were my movie thoughts. Well, not ALL of them: Per usual, I got a little preoccupied with creature size while watching the film, and got to wondering just how tall the steadily growing Ymir was in its various scenes. Which led to the following....

 The Ymir

Imagine my horror at doing an internet search, assuming I'd find a plethora of information on the Ymir's various sizes throughout the film, only to find NO SUCH THING exists. All my search got me was a series of terrifyingly general estimatations: "fifteen feet," "twenty feet," "ten to twenty feet," "thirty five feet," "the size of a small building," etc. Nothing solid at all. No way I'm letting that status quo continue.

Check out the following images with my quick, dirty and loose height calculations underneath (this is me taking screenshots from the film and mucking about with my on-screen ruler and half-assed math):

Okay, just eyeballing this one, I'm putting that newly (evening) hatched Ymir at 12-18 inches high. Why? Because he's a bit taller than Actor Guy's head is long, and the average male head (says the internet) is about 14 inches crown to chin.

Whoa! Next morning, maybe eight hours later, my (continued) eyeballing has Ymir at maybe three times the height he was the night before. Say, three to three and a half feet? At any rate, Ymir head to toe is the same height as Actor Guy head to knee in this image. Actor Guy was 66" tall (the internet tells me). Take away 24 inches (the average length of a male's leg, knee to toe, the internet also tells me) and that gives us 42 inches, or a 3.5 foot Ymir. See? Half-assed math....

Okay, now it's that evening (another 8 or 10 hours later?), Ymir has escaped his cage and we've got William hopper at six foot three, but his knees are slightly bent. Ymir is not quite as tall as Hopper as it stands straight across from him, so I'm going with, say, five and a half feet for Ymir. Growing like a weed!

On-Screen Ruler time! Next day, it's a fight to the finish and Flame Thrower Man is 1.75 inches in the image, and lets say that equals his actual height of 6 feet (all men are six feet tall in the movies). If 1.75 inches equals 6 feet, .29 inches equals 1 foot. Ymir is 3 inches high in the image, 3 divided by .29 makes him (about) 10.4 feet tall.

Alrighty. A few (?) days later, Ymir is recaptured and down for the count. Zoo Scientist is 2.4 inches in the image, which equals 6 feet in reel life. That gives us .4 inches equaling 1 foot, Ymir is 6 inches head to toe, giving a reel life Ymir height of 6 divided by .4 equaling 15 feet. Big!

Circumstantial evidence: Just after busting free, Ymir is ready to fight an elephant! Harryhausen wanted a fifteen foot live action elephant (fat chance) so we can assume his stop motion elephant was scaled to be fifteen feet high. Here they are together and sure enough, the two beasts are about the same height. (Wasn't this an amazing stop motion sequence in-film?)

More on-screen ruler math: Ymir is still on the rampage minutes later, six foot tall Lamp Man is 3 inches here, so .5 inches is 1 foot, making Ymir (towering at 8.3 inches) 16.6 feet tall.

Okay, Ymir disappears into the river for several hours and then reappears here, still growing. Definitely bigger here than he was with Lamppost Man.... Check out the two details pulled from this image below.

Barely Seen 6 foot Soldier is 1.3 inches tall, which translates
to one foot equaling .216 inches.

Ymir is 6.4 inches here. 6.4 divided by .216 equals
29.6 tall. Yowza!

And things go a little nuts, size-wise, here at the end as Ymir prepares to meet his demise atop the Colosseum. See that car back there next to the Colosseum? We're calling it five feet high at the roof line. It's half an inch high in the image, which means .5 inches equals five feet, or 1 inch equals 10 feet....

Now here's our scaly friend standing next to the Colosseum. His head is about even with the bottom of that railing there. Ground to that railing is 3.75 inches in the image, which translates to 37.5 feet (1 inch equaling 10 feet). So that gives us a 35 to 40 foot high Ymir right there! GrrrAnimals!!!

And this concludes our demonstration. My math is highly suspect and I do not stand by it except in fair weather. At least we now have something on the internet with reasonable size estimates....

Braaaiiiins!

Brain Counts? Ooh, that's a tough one. The novelization featured a barely readable story and plenty of typos to boot. That's circling One Brain territory right there, but its extras were cool and of course it gets points just for existing at all.... The original edition would score higher as it accesses Vintage Points, but I didn't get the original. Hmm... I'm saying the BearManor edition specifically is gonna land with...

TWO NOT QUITE ORIGINAL BRAINS

The movie? I was surprised at how little of it held my interest when stop motion creatures weren't on screen. As a film, sans creature effects, this would also be circling One, maybe Two Brain territory.... But the creature effects are Five Brain material and worth regular revisits on their own, so for the film I'm going with...

FOUR TINY VENUSIAN PUPPET BRAINS

Quint-style

And there you have it: 20 Million Miles to Earth--the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.

You know, I kept refering to the Ymir as a "he" throughout this post, but who knows? The film and novelization never say one way or the other. Could be a "she." Could be something else entirely; it is Venusian you know. Heck, the Norse giant Harryhausen took its name from was hermaphroditic....

Till next time.

In Case You Were Wondering What Happened

Remember Bookstore Saturday?

Well, I just finished reading the last book from that particular day's adventure (not quite true, but the two leftovers I won't be reading anytime soon, so here we are). At any rate, this is what happened, expectations-met-or-expectations-not-met-wise.

In case you were wondering.

---

My second reading of this one, and it's actually held up pretty well, given the fact that even a 100 foot giant squid isn't nearly as scary as a 20 foot great white shark. (amiright?) And like it was in Jaws, Benchley's writing style here has a bit of a flat affect, so what could potentially be terrifying comes off as less than pulse pounding. Still, a decent read. If I were doing brain counts for these (not sure if I am or not yet), Beast would probably get a solid three.

So, um,

THREE SOFT CORE CSI BRAINS

(brain count added after the fact and makes sense as you keep reading. probably).

You know, I don't think I've actually read anything of Benchley's other than Jaws and this one, but both those books have a kind of low key feel to the writing that tends to keep my heart rate down, even in the sticky bits. (Quick internet check: Oh, I also took in White Shark back in the day. I guess we all know where my Benchley-esque interest starts and stops, then. Speaking of heart rate though, if memory serves and who knows if it does without a reread, White Shark had a little more pep to it than these other two killer sea creature yarns.)

The other thing with this book is that I kept remembering its TV movie with William Petersen, which reminded me of him playing Gil Grissom in CSI (which I loved), which then reminded me of seeing him in some godawful late night cable sexy romance thing, and I was forever scarred because I could never look at CSI's Gil Grissom quite the same after that. Nothing to do with this book. That's just what I thought about.

---

And speaking of Benchley's White Shark, if you ever find yourself needing to choose between reading that half-man-half-shark novel and the one Steve Alten did, go with Benchley's. Please. Trust me on this. And it's a shame, 'cause I've enjoyed everything else Alten has done. Sharkman is definitely his odd man out and I don't know what happened, but it's terrible. It's the only book of his I've read that is done in first person; maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know.

But we're not talking about that book, we're talking about Meg, the first in his Meg series, which is mostly a fine read. Except for its ridiculous climax, where the hero gets swallowed by a giant shark and, using his lucky fossilized megalodon tooth to cut his way through its various body cavities, slices its heart open and kills it dead. (Then escapes to tell the tale!) This book was a second read for me as well, but trust me that ending was as hard to take the first time around.

Well, like I say, the rest of the book is fun, and it definitely does get the old pulse rate up along the way. We get two (count 'em--two!) giant sharks and plenty of mayhem to spread around. Alten writes his characters a little on the one dimensional side, on purpose I think, and as a result you pretty much always know who's gonna end up shark food by the end of things.

Anyway, this one's a solid four on the brain count (I guess I am doing them). Let's see...

FOUR CARTILAGINOUS SKELETON BRAINS

Damn, now I have to go back and make up a clever brain count descriptor for Beast....

There, done.

Huh. Now I'm reading Jason Statham might be involved in the upcoming movie version of this book. Could be it turns into a decent-ish film after all. (Statham always elevates, amiright?)

---

Well then. What else can I say about this one that I didn't already say in the initial post? It was good. Four brains good? No, probably not. But three solid brains (methinks I sense a brain count theme in the works for this post). You know, I thought this one was a first time read, but I was getting major deja vu as I read, so I'm thinking not. Must have read it as a kid. Anyway, characterization is the word of the day, here. Seltzer does a great job writing these characters in a full-fledged way. The monster is cool, and the end is ever so much more satisfying than what the movie came up with. (I'm talking the epilogue, not the main monster's death, although honestly everything monster related works better here on-page than it does on the screen).

I don't know that Seltzer did anything other than this and The Omen, novel-wise, but he's pretty good at it. Wish he'd done more. That being said, I bet I won't pick up The Omen anytime soon--those kinds of stories totally creep me out. (Blech!)

THREE UNBENEVOLENT BEAR BRAINS

---

Also a second read-through for me, and another solid three brainer. I'll tell you this much, James Herbert does the whole British killer animal shtick better than Richard Lewis ever did. This was Herbert's first novel, and he ended up writing over twenty more, including two or three rat infested sequels to this one.

Anyway, this has plenty of action and 70s gore (fairly stomachable these days), several edge of your seat scenes (that school siege and the hero's last minute race to the rats' nest, in particular), and just enough characterization and commentary to keep the boredom away. My general target for a four brainer is will I seek it out more than once over the years (not counting the occasional second read after decades, like most of these have been so far). And... this one doesn't go quite that far. But it's definitely a high-end three:

THREE RAZORED INCISOR BRAINS.

---

Yeah, this really did remind me of The Andromeda Strain. Both really good books and both written in a purposely (unlike Benchley's efforts, I think) informational, news item-like style. Pretty much the polar opposite of Herbert's ratty sensationalism, too. You know, stuffy-scientist-point-of-view and all that. But fun and intriguing, hard to put down in spite of its not being a pulse raiser. I thought I might have read this once before, and yep, I surely did remember it once I dived in.

Where are the killer bees, anyway? I totally remember this being in the news when I was a kid. We were supposed to have just so many years before they'd be spread all across the U.S. and we'd be dying by the thousands. Huh: Wikipedia check (we know it's true!) tells me they've been here since the eighties and currently account for a couple of deaths each year. I guess the threat was over-hyped, back in the day. The end has come and we haven't noticed.

Anyway, the book is a good read, but it doesn't break the four brain barrier:

THREE AFRICANIZED ROYAL JELLY BRAINS (shrug)

---

Oh. Skip this one, if you want. I was originally hoping for something cyborgy, what with the title and all. Then reading the back, I figured "genetically enhanced superman" of some kind, so I bought it anyway. Meh. A guy finds out he's got a genetic predisposition toward violence and ends up killing himself and some other people. No wait, he only puts himself into a permanent coma at the end, so he's not actually dead.

Anyway, the book is bleak, nihilistic, excessively dark, containing not a smidgen of hope between its covers. Nothing against its author, he writes well, but I kind of felt like dying myself after finishing it. And not in a glib "it was so bad I wished I was dead" way; it was just horribly depressing to read. So, if that's your thing, go for it. I'll be steering clear of this guys work in the future, though.

Ugh, just remembering the read has me feeling low. I kept reading, hoping things would finally turn around for, well, any of its characters. But no. Lives ended or otherwise ruined, and not in fun, over the top genre ways--just darkly depressing horrifying real-life type stuff. And I think we know how I feel about this one now.

ONE DEPRESSINGLY GENETICALLY ABNORMAL BRAIN

---

Ah. I think I'll be doing a fuller review of this one, along with the movie that came from it. I also think I originally said it was published straight to paperback, but that might not be true (well, it isn't); I'll look at the various covers and formats when I do the full review. For now I'll just say the book is basically a zombie love story, and mostly works as that, even if it does have a few spots where the plot stretches uncomfortably, mostly due to having a 13 year old protagonist.

What I mean by that is there are spots, plot-wise, where the 13 year old might have worked a little better as a slightly older character. Then again, a lot of the book's charm comes from the fact its main character is a precocious kid, so I'm not really complaining. Overall, I'd say the author did a reasonable job working out the storytelling kinks inherent when children are doing adult-y kinds of things.

In fact, she handled the whole shebang well enough for me to give this book the post's second (and last) jump into upper-level brain count territory, with:

FOUR CYBER-ZOMBIE BRAINS

So there.

---

Hmm. I fear we're ending on a downer, here. If you remember from Bookstore Saturday, I was assuming this book was all ready to give me some genetic-experiment-man-in-ape's-body joy. I mean come on, look at that cover: it's a man's eyes and an ape's eyes and an in-between-man-ape's eyes, right? Right? And it was in the shops horror section, for crying out loud. This thing's got Altered States written all over it!

Nope. It's a soap opera that takes place in a research facility. As in, who's gonna sleep with who and who's gonna make a power play at the office, etc. Oh. And there's an ape in one scene that parrots the word "cup" after hearing it played over and over again on a recording. That's the entire science fiction/fantastical element of the story. "Cup." Sigh.

Well written, no qualms there. It was just so not what I was hoping for. And sure, there's subtext commentary being made by the author about how human beings aren't really all that different from apes, that we're all basically a bunch of clothed beasts running around with a thin veneer of civilization separating us from them, yada yada.

TWO NOT-EVEN-APE-MAN BRAINS

Sigh. Only two books out of these eight that I hadn't already read, and they both turned out to be bummers. Whatta ya do, right? (You go back for another Bookstore Saturday, get more loot and try again, that's what you do!)

---

As for the two books from that day's haul that I haven't read yet, one of 'em (Barnabas Collins) I honestly doubt I'll ever get to. Maybe If I'm bored and feeling unusually curious, one of these days. The other was the "illustrated" horror film history, which I just haven't gotten around to. Well, I have but it's more of a pick-it-up-now-and-again-for-a-few-pages-of-reading-until-it's-finally-done-months-later kind of book. I'll finish it eventually and probably give it a write up then.

Well, they say good things come in threes (do they say that?). If they do, it bears out here, since half of these books ended up as three brainers--with a couple of standouts and letdowns thrown in the mix. All in all, it could have been worse.

Okay then. Now you know what happened with that Bookstore Saturday.

Thale (2012)

This is a seriously underrated little film. 

I don't know how many people even came across it--it mostly played festivals, with a few (really) limited general releases thrown in. But it's more than worth the price-of-rental and 76 minutes it takes to watch it. And true to form, I'm gonna spoil all its secrets if you keep reading. I'm just saying, that's how I roll.

So the thing was shot in Norway, by a guy named Aleksander Nordaas, for a total cost of $10,000. (Cheap!) Not that you would know that as you watched it. I've seen (so) many five or ten million dollar films that came off so much worse than this one. 

Wait. I'm making it sound like the film is just okay but there are worse ones out there, which is not what I mean at all. What I mean is this is a good film, and there are a lot of people out there who've spent a hundred times more money making really bad films.

Of course, Nordaas directed, wrote, produced, edited, worked the camera, built the sets and acted as cinematographer, so that saved a lot of money right there. Plus, he shot most of it in his dad’s basement. But the point I'm belaboring making is you'd never guess all that if you hadn't looked it up before or after the fact.

So. On to the movie itself.

Right off the bat we meet Elvis (Erlend Nervold) and Leo (Jon Sigve Skard). Leo apparently runs a crime scene cleanup business and Elvis, his buddy, is tagging along to make a little extra cash (I'm guessing). We know this is not Elvis' usual line of work because he spends this entire first-scene-interspersed-with-opening-credits vomiting. A lot. In detail. So if onscreen vomiting really gets to you, it'd be a good scene to avert your eyes in. Not that anyone finds onscreen vomiting particularly enjoyable, but if you're especially bothered by it, eye averting is good here.

Elvis the Vomiter (L) and Leo the Crime Scene Cleaner (R)

Anyway, it's worth noting these guys are way out in the middle of nowhere, cleaning up this little mountain cabin where someone has apparently been murdered. No idea how crime scene stuff works in Norway, but they're zipping a guy up into a body bag and cleaning up all this blood and gore. Have cops even been there? Wouldn't a coroner have taken the body away before these guys ever showed up? No idea. But anyway that's what they're doing.

We get a POV flashback scene (lots of those in this movie) where someone we can't see but who we'll call Talking Man is walking through a snow covered forest and talking to someone else we can't see about how he wishes things had turned out differently, and what happens now depends on "them," and so forth. We pass by a cave entrance and Talking Man says something about "that's where I found you, nine years ago. I wish I'd left you there." And we get this quick flashback-within-a-flashback shot of a creepy-not-quite-human-baby, laying there all shrouded in cave darkness. Eek.

In case we had come upon this movie unaware it was a horror film, now we know.

Then we're back to present day and mostly no longer vomiting Elvis. And Leo, too. (I mean Leo is also there. He was never vomiting.) So everything's pretty much cleaned up by now, and Elvis (even though Leo says don't go messing around touching things) starts messing around and touching things. He finds a hidden basement entrance outside, around back of the cabin, and (even though Leo says don't go in there and start touching things) goes in there and starts touching things.

It's a creepy place, with big jars full of formaldehyde-y body parts and stuff, and they (Leo keeps saying stay out but he's as curious as the next guy) find a room with a big tub full of viscous white fluid and a workbench. On the workbench is an old style cassette tape recorder and a bunch of tapes. Elvis can't help but put one in and give it a listen.

I'm not touching, I'm listening....

So the tapes are all of Talking Man (who we never meet and whose body I assume was being zipped up in that bag we saw earlier) telling his story. Elvis is listening away while Leo pokes around in some other room, when all of a sudden a naked woman (who we'll find out later is Thale (Silje Reinamo), the movie's titular character) comes busting out of that fluid-filled bathtub, scaring poor Elvis half to death.

Boo!

Gah!

She's as freaked out as Elvis is and grabs him in a choke hold that he's not gonna live through if she keeps at it, but Leo rushes in and talks her down. She seems to understand Norwegian but apparently doesn't speak, herself. Well, Leo's all like "what are we gonna do now, this is an active crime scene, I gotta go call my boss" and Elvis is like "hey, grab those rolls outta the car while you're at it, this girl looks hungry." So Leo hikes down to the car and that's where we see our first monster, lurkishly skittering (or skitterishly lurking, definitely both happening) across the road as Leo's getting the bad news that his boss is gonna be hours and hours before getting there.

Yikes!

Great. Stuck up in the mountains with monsters that you don't even know are there. This is bad. So. Back at the cabin, Thale (pronounced like you're Canadian and someone says "wow that guy is at least seven foot six" and you reply "tall, eh"?) is pounding down this bag of rolls Leo brought back from the car and the guys are realizing she's been here on her own for awhile, living off a bunch of canned food and bottled water that's pretty much gone at this point. So it's a good thing they came along when they did, right?

Well, we've gotten a little vague backstory on Thale from these tapes Elvis is listening to, but we still don't really know who or what she is and why she's hiding out in this cabin. At one point, Talking Man mentions on one of his tapes that he's surprised at how human-esque Thale is, and it must be her species' ability to adapt to their surroundings at work. Hmm. Anyway, it sounds like she and Talking Man were on the run, hiding from somebody, but we're not sure who. Is Talking Man a kidnapping bad guy? Is he a rescuing good guy? We don't know and Thale's definitely not saying.

After awhile Elvis stops listening to tapes long enough to notice Thale's no longer in the room, and does a bit more exploring to find her in (yet another) hidden room. This one's all done up like a little girl's bedroom, and Thale's hiding under a bed in there, looking all scared and confused. Elvis, being a kind soul, lays down on the floor next to her and tries to soothe her. When she reaches out and touches his face, he has this weird little seizure-y thing, and he's suddenly seeing flashbacks from different times in her life. And thus we learn that while she doesn't talk, she doesn't need to because she can communicate telepathically.

Elvis gets a little more information than he asked for.

In the flashback we see a younger Thale with Talking Man, finding and setting up shop in the cabin, then we see an older Thale wandering out of the cabin one night and getting a glimpse one of those creature-y things we saw on the road earlier, before Talking Man grabs her and takes her back inside. He performs some kind of unanesthetized surgery on her, telling her he knows they call to her but if she goes with them, "the others" will find her and that will not be good. He says some kind of energy or waves are emanating from her and hopes removing whatever he's removing will keep that from happening so neither group finds her again.

Okay, we all know it's a tail he's cutting off, right? It's right there on that movie poster up top. Apparently Thale is one of these forest things we've been catching glimpses of, but she looks more human due to being raised by humans. (Really, she looks more human 'cause $10,000 is not nearly enough money to let you do a movie's main character in CGI.) So sure enough, a minute or two later we see Elvis and Leo opening up a freezer and there's a tail in there.

Eeew.

Now both guys are a little freaked out by this point, but it only gets worse: all of a sudden there are sneaky rustlings outside. Somethings definitely out there. Apparently Thale knows what it is. She jumps up, locks the basement door, and hides in the corner. Elvis and Leo are still trying to figure out what's going on when they realize some kind of gas is being pumped in through the door's keyhole. Just as Elvis is passing out, he reaches out and touches Thale's foot, which gives him (and us) another flashback to fill in the last of her story. Basically, we just see her meet one of her own kind and then realize how different she is from caregiver Talking Man.

Flashback-Thale finally meets up with her own kind...

...and notices the biggest difference between her and that human anatomy book she's reading.

Oh. And I should mention that right before the gas started flowing, Leo was in-process of telling Elvis that he's been diagnosed with cancer and only has a few months to live, as Thale looks on. It's kind of a weird scene that has a tacked on feeling and I'm not sure the movie really needs it, but there it is.

So Leo and Elvis are in a bad way.

Turns out it was a bunch of black ops types feeding that gas through the keyhole, and now both guys are outside, tied to chairs and blindfolded. Leo is still unconscious, and Elvis is being interrogated by The Bad Guy as his minions search the cabin for Thale. Bad Guy fills in what Talking Man hasn't already given us, that Thale was found as an infant and taken by this black ops government group for nefarious study purposes. At some point Talking Man, one of the group himself, grew a conscience and ran off with her to try and give her a better life. They've been villainously looking for her ever since.

I'm not sure I caught (or that he actually said), during his Bad Guy Monologue, how Talking Man died. If these guys had done it, they'd already have searched the cabin for Thale, right? Maybe those forest critters we've been getting all the glimpses of broke in and got him. I don't know.

Minions

The Bad Guy

So back in the cabin (which is really pretty small), no one can seem to find Thale. Until she rears up out of that fluid-filled tub and kills them all, that is. Turns out she's really fast, really strong, and really determined not to go with them. The minions don't stand a chance.

No pun intended with that "rears up out of" stuff. But it worked out great anyway, didn't it?

Necks are fragile.

Do. Not. MESS. With her.

Yes, she really did just shove a rifle through that guy's chest.

So we get a few minutes of awesome Killer-Thale-Action inside, interspersed with less awesome but still interesting Bad-Guy-Exposition outside, until Thale finishes off the minions by poking a hole in their gas tank and running like mad. Explosions ensue.

"Oh sh-" KABOOOOOOM!

"That can't be good," thinks Bad Guy.

So Bad Guy figures it's time to cut his losses and get the hell out of here. He whips out a big gun and points it at Elvis, just in time to realize he's not going to make it home for dinner. Or ever. Seems a few of Thale's sisters were lurking about in the trees nearby, and have decided to show him what they think of people who steal defenseless babies from caves. Which is not only satisfying to watch, but gives us some of the best monster shots of the film, so here are a few screenshots for your viewing pleasure. Okay, the monster shots came off better in-motion, but you get the idea.

Going from Large and In Charge...

...to I May Not Have Thought This Through as Well as I Should Have.

Ask rifle-through-the-chest-man how helpful that pistol will be.

Forest Critters prepare to make a Bad Guy sandwich.

Elvis is really appreciating his blindfold about now.

thisisnothappeningthisisnothappeningiamdreamingiamdreaming

Our work is done, here, sisters. Away!

Well, bad guys are dead and monsters are gone, but what ever happened to Thale? She's around, we find out, as she steals over to just waking Leo and touches his chest before melting into the forest for good. All that's left now is for the guys to be rescued (off-screen) and explain all those bodies to their boss, as he types up the report.

Ah, so that's what she was....

Probably Norwegian audiences already knew this, but I didn't. Hulder is "a seductive forest creature found in Scandinavian folklore." From what little information I found online, female huldrefolk are "seductively beautiful," so I'm not sure what this movie's whole furry forest demon thing was about. One site mentioned something about shape-shifting, so maybe some of that's what was going on here, with Thale shape-shifting from animal to human.

Anyway, last couple scenes are an epilogue, with Leo discovering that Thale's last touch before she ran off cured his cancer, and then Thale waking up in a forest and following a bunch of other huldrefolk off into the trees. With her kind at last for a happy ending and all that. My question is will she continue to look human or revert to her natural state? And will she ever grow that tail back? Enquiring minds want to know.

Maybe the sequel will tell us.

And now for a little secret: My knee-jerk right after I watched it was to give this movie three brains. I thought "That was fun. I probably won't watch it again, though." And while that's still more or less true, learning what I did about it's cost and going back through looking for screenshots, I realized even if I don't seek it out for repeat viewing the way I do some films, I'd definitely re-watch if it ever showed up on TV or if I and a friend who hadn't seen it were looking for a good fantasy thriller to pass the time with. Heck, I might watch it all on my own again, as well.

Anyway. Point being, I decided to up the film's brain count from its initial three to what I think is a well deserved count of FOUR SCANDINAVIAN FOREST CREATURE BRAINS. So there.