Phenomena - Dario Argento, Jennifer Connelly, and Donald Pleasance

And don’t forget the chimp, the gimp, and the swarms of six-legged creatures.
Jennifer Connelly stars as Jennifer, an American at a creepy European boarding school (see Suspiria).
She’s pretty and rich, but lonely. Her parents have abandoned her and she’s WAY too friendly with bugs. What’s a girl to do? Why become friends with a slightly creepy entomologist dude, that’s what.
I’m sure she only had an eye for his bags and for his cute assistant, a chimpanzee. Something that is now a thing, I’m sure.
Like many Argento flicks, there are decapitations and attempted decapitations. Also lots of blood and broken glass. And mirrors. And useless cops. An excellent follow-up to Suspiria which I’d like to talk about in the future.

Comments

Tokyo Akahon Manga “Gulliver’s Travels” by NAKAMURA Hiroshi

According to a post by akahon manga researcher Yuuzora Retro (pen name), the Tokyo-based publisher Taikōdō ( 泰光堂 ) created their Manga Classics series in response to the PTA backlash against manga contributing to delinquency in Osaka. This is Gulliver’s Travels by NAKAMURA Hiroshi (中村ひろし), a B6-sized 3-color akahon* printed with red ink fills on either blue or green lines costing 85 yen. NAKAMURA seemed to be the main artist for Taikōdō as evinced by the ad pages at the back. There is no publishing date, but it probably wasn't too far from 1951 when "Cinderella" and "Snow White" from the same series were published. Looking at the stamps on the endpapers on the back, we can see that this particular book was rented out at a kashihon-ya (rental comic shop) in Saga, Kyushu called Imazato Neo Shobō. It was lent to me by a Mr. Fujita, a collector heavy into Showa-era items. I will continue to introduce the books I was able to borrow from his...

Int'l Comics Festival Tokyo 2013

I'm home from Tokyo Big Sight and my feet are set on "hurt like hell", but I had an amazing time. I got to meet some greats, sold a good number of books, promoted the Hexenringe webcomic (http://hexenringe.blogspot.com, still promoting :c) ), made some contacts, and picked up some great books! This was the chaos that was the "patokon" booth. Jim R. really helped out with the boothing and stuff. Tomoko Hirabayashi, the artist of Hexenringe, and I gave out sketches to people who purchased the Preview Book Her sketches are the really tight ones. I sold out of the American Comic Sound Effect Dictionary again (woohoo!) and the preview book did really well, but the Zombie Alphabet book didn't do great. It could have been the price and the fact that there's no Japanese (or maybe the art, but I don't wanna go there). After the event, there was an After-Party and I got to talk to two of my favorite Euro comic artists - Guarnido (Blacksad) and dePins ( ...

Reservoir Dogs Mr. Blonde

My favorite Tarantino line of all time delivered by Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.

patokon blog

Search This Blog