When I blogged that the third season of UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS was eventful I had no idea the fourth season would go “hold my cuppa!” Given that it’s all taking place in WW I, I probably should have anticipated that.
James (Simon Williams) and Edward (Christopher Beeny) go off to the front as respectively an officer and an enlisted man. Georgina (Lesley Anne Downe) goes too, as a nurse; for years I thought a sequence where she lights a dying man’s cigarette came from an adaptation of Testament of Youth, but nope. Richard (David Langton), as an MP, has to deal with the political and strategic side.
Among the servants, the staff has to deal with tight rationing, shortages and Rose (Jean Marsh) going to work as a bus conductor as a second job (manpower shortages were chronic then, as in WW II). There’s a clash with a terrified Belgian refugee family, James and Edward returning on leave scarred by what they’ve seen, Hazel’s (Meg Wynn Owen) charity work, Edward and Daisy getting married and a tragedy as the war ends in the season’s final episode (I’d correctly pegged that death would strike on the home front but now how). As always, great viewing. “It wasn’t very dignified — fighting for my husband in a ward full of injured soldiers.”
Following 2022’s superb Prey and the animated Killer of Killers, PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025) continues the winning streak. I missed hearing about it when it hit theaters last year but as soon as Camestros Felapton blogged about it streaming, I caught it.
The protagonist is Dek (Dmitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a Yautja (Predators’ name for themselves) runt of the litter, thereby deserving of culling. His brother sacrifices himself to give Dek a shot at redemption — hunting and killing the Kalisk, a kaiju no Yautja has ever overcome. Arriving on the Kalist planet, Dek discovers every lifeform on it, even the plants, is hostile. Fortunately he encounters Thia (Elle Fanning), a synth (android from the Alien franchise) who lost her legs trying to capture the Kalisk. She knows this planet; if Dek takes her along, together they might have a chance (“I know the Yautja hunt alone — but they also die alone.”). Suddenly we’re in the Predator/Android buddy comedy I didn’t know I wanted. Of course, Dek is hardly a fun or trustworthy travel companion but it turns out Thia’s got a few secrets of her own … Two thumbs up. “I’ve never been thrown before — what a thrill!”
In a recent substack post, Celeste Davis of Matriarchal Blessing discussed the many rich and famous guys who’ve gone from pudgy and nerdy looking to buff and muscular, including Jeff Bezos and Christ Pratt. I don’t find this terribly remarkable — while the pressure on men to look good isn’t as intense as with women, it does exist. In our modern world I don’t think it’s that far off from someone forty years ago getting rich and switching to bespoke suits.
Davis argues that what this is really about is becoming invulnerable: “The invulnerability arc shows up in just about every myth, story and hero we have for boys—be they modern or ancient, religious or secular. The story goes like this: once upon a time there was a weak, shrimpy boy, who eventually through pain and violence is transformed into a fortress of muscle and power. Now no one makes fun of him. Now he is a hero.” Cases in point, Disney’s Hercules, Harry Potter, Batman, Captain America. Davis goes on to argue that if your goal is a long, healthy life (and for a lot of these dudes, it is), becoming buff or paying for radical medical treatments won’t work as well as having a community of friends around you.
That conclusion I do not dispute. Davis’ interpretation of the “invulnerability arc” as the essential Boy’s Journey … not so much. Since she brings up the Marvel and DC cinematic universes, let’s look:
Iron Man: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. of course) discovers his munitions manufacturing has made the world worse. Sets out to atone. And far from being invulnerable, he starts the movie in good health, then ends up a guy relying on the world’s most advanced pacemaker. The comic book doesn’t start Tony out in such a guilty place, but does emphasize even more that he’s not invulnerable —drain his armor’s power, he’s dead. Jack Kirby cover below.
Superman: No arc. He’s an invulnerable child who grows up into the world’s most invulnerable man.
Thor: Arrogant jackass whose arc is learning not to be such a jerk.
Captain America: (Steve Rogers in the Jack Kirby scene above is saving a Cap imposter, by the way). No question his origin involves going from a scrawny 4-F into the perfect man. But I think it’s more significant that his quest isn’t to become strong, it’s to fight fascists. That’s why he applies in the comics (and IIRC in the film). That’s what drives him. And it’s not that he’s invulnerable —
— it’s his indomitable spirit, as in the Gene Colan image above.
Hercules? Disney’s take is an outlier, portraying him as a wimpy kid; in mythology, Hercules strangles venomous snakes while he’s still in the cradle. Marvel’s Hercules (at the bottom of Kirby’s cover) and most other pop-culture presentations are much the same — superhuman from the get-go.
Harry Potter is far and away the worst argument for her position. Her synopsis: “A shrimpy nerdy orphan is shunned by his family, forced to live in the hall closet and be beat up by his cousin. Eventually he fights in some battles and after securing The Deathly Hallows, becomes the master of death and savior of the world.”
Okay, that’s technically true, but only technically. The real story is a miserable lonely good gets away from his abusive caregivers, make friends, finds a parental figure who isn’t shitty and learns to be happy. The books are an endorsement of exactly what Davis says we need, community. Harry wouldn’t have made it to book two if he didn’t have Ron and Hermione (particularly, of course, Hermione) fighting alongside him. He wouldn’t have finished the series alive if he hadn’t trained his fellow students into Dumbledore’s Army.
Harry is all about community. In a sense that’s what makes him the perfect opposing player for Voldemort, who has no use for other people except as pawns or followers.
Likewise, few superheroes these days come without a supporting cast. Green Arrow and Flash on the CW have sizable backup teams, for instance. Movie Batman is probably the closest to what Davis talks about; I think he’s more an anomaly than a template.
Looking at pop culture more broadly, I think the post underestimates the number of characters who don’t have origins in a conventional sense. In cop shows we may get some backstory but a lot of the time they’re simply there, no origin. Jack Bauer on 24 ditto — his childhood and how he came to be a tough guy is never detailed that I recall.
In short, I don’t think the post nailed the zeitgeist as much as she thinks.
Another pick from the Leonard Maltin book TYG got me last year — AURORA BOREALIS (2005) stars Joshua Jackson as Duncan, a Minneapolis twentysomething who’s stubbornly resisting adulting: he works dead end jobs, sticks with the same group of friends he’s always had, and lets life continue in much the same vein it has since he graduated high school.
As the movie starts, however, Duncan’s just lost his convenience store job. His brother is using Duncan’s apartment to bang women without his wife knowing (inspired, Duncan says, by the Jack Lemmon movie The Apartment). And now his beloved grandfather, Donald Sutherland, is suffering both Parkinson’s and the onset of dementia. Can Duncan get his shit together enough to help both grandpa and grandmother Louise Fletcher?
Things change when Duncan meets Kate (Juliette Lewis), his grandfather’s home healthcare worker, a free-spirited vagabond who never stays long in one place. Sparks fly, they become lovers and she begins nudging him to become more than he is — but will the lure of keeping everything the same make a difference?
While I’m not fond of coming of age/New Adult books, I can enjoy the tropes in a movie and this was a good one, well-acted and well-written. The special features reveal it was based on a stage play which explains why, despite the title, we never see the Northern lights. Curiously, everyone insists the closing scene is open-ended because we don’t know how Kate/Duncan will work out in the long run; as you can say that about most HEAs, I don’t find this striking. Still, thumbs up. “Do you realize you sound like Don King when you use big words?”
A friend of mine used to be a huge fan of THE CLOSER, a 2005 TNT series staring Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Johnson, a former CIA interrogator turned head of a major-crimes unit in Los Angeles. As it turned up on Netflix recently, I gave the pilot a look; it’s solidly done but I don’t know I’ll bother to watch more.
Johnson’s team aren’t thrilled about having an outsider in charge, she has a messy personal life, and in this episode she’s facing a headscratcher: An unknown women has been found murdered in a prominent plastic surgeon’s office. The surgeon’s vanished. The victim’s fingerprints are all over his home while the surgeon’s are nowhere to be found. How does it make sense? Like I said, it’s a solid job, fitting into the subgenre of cops who have One Simple Trick for getting to the truth. The Mentalist and Lie To Me both have someone who can read people like a book; Psych has a guy who’s hyper-observant about everything, HPI has someone who’s hyper-observant and can match up what she sees with a storehouse of knowledge. Here, Johnson’s a genius interrogator; having figured out what’s going on, she calmly guides the killer to a confession.
The results are good and if I were more of a fan of cop shows I might keep up with it. If I had more time for TV (and lately I don’t seem to) I might try a couple more episodes. As neither of these is the case …
As I wrote a couple of weeks back, I found a spate of Jekyll and Hyde-related films right as I was wrapping up. Which is inconvenient but better than finding them after I finish.
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (2003) was unavailable to stream last time I checked but by the vagaries of such things, it suddenly turned up on Prime. John Hannah stars in an unremarkable film following the template of the Spencer Tracy adaptation : Jekyll plans to test his experimental drug on a madman who dies, so why not test it on himself? Oops.
The more adaptations I watch, the more I’m impressed that the Fredric March version takes a half-hour before the first transformation and yet it isn’t boring; this film, like so many, is tedious. The most interesting aspect is that Sir Danvers Carew (David Warner) has Jekyll take a new maid into his household who turns out to be Carew’s illegimate daughter, the half-sister to Jekyll’s fiancee. That feels like it should lead to something … but it doesn’t. “The mind controls the body but who controls the mind?”
The Argentinian EL EXTRANO CASE DEL HOMBRE Y LA BESTIA (1951) is another one that suddenly turned up online, though unfortunately without any subtitles. This starts off like Stevenson (the story of the trampling, the will, the encounter by the laboratory door) then goes it’s own way with Jekyll’s wife’s pregnancy giving Jekyll the strength to resist the temptation to become Hyde. Only four years later, playing with his kid, the doctor notices his hands are turning hairy … From what I’ve read online this has a lot of A-list talent from Argentine cinema but I can’t say it worked for me. Though obviously I’m missing a lot.
CARMILLA HYDE (2010) is an Aussie film in which a straitlaced young woman’s friends decide to loosen her up by getting her drunk, drugged and raped (the term “friends” is doing a lot of work here …). To help deal with it her therapist gives her a split personality to handle the emotions until she can process them; before long, however, “Carmilla Hyde” is taking over and also taking revenge on her so called friends. And it turns out the therapist has some secrets of his own … Appendix material only. “My brother blames me — the evil child that destroyed the family.”
IGOR (2008) is also appendix material but I wish I’d had more time to pay attention to it. The story of a small kingdom of mad scientists has the eponymous assistant hoping his invention will elevate him above a mere lab worker, but a scheming rival plans to steal his secrets with the help of shapeshifter Jacqueline Hyde. “Everyone has an evil bone in their body but it’s up to us to decide whether to use it.”
Discovering the 1970s THE GHOST BUSTERS was available online, I watched their episode dealing with the ghosts of Jekyll and Hyde. This series dealt with three inept ghost hunters (Larry Storch, Forrest Tucker and Bob Burns in a gorilla suit) who work through endless shticks and comedy routines that bury the nominal plot (Jekyll’s scheme to free himself from having to haunt houses alongside Hyde). None of it was funny. This has nothing to do with the later films though Filmation revived it as a cartoon when the first Ghostbusters film hit big; a fight over the name is why the film spinoff cartoon was labeled The Real Ghostbusters.
I was planning to write a movie post for today after I emailed the book off. But Friday was supposed to be a no-work day and I didn’t feel like it. So here’s a movie-analysis post from 2009, when I was working on Screen Enemies of the American Way (my working title was The Enemy Within).
For those who don’t remember, that was my book about political paranoia in American films, the belief Communists/Nazis/Japanese/ETs/etc. were infiltrating us to destroy our way of life from within. My chapter on the Red Menace films of the 1950s made me notice how they approached civil rights:
“Watching anti-Communist films for The Enemy Within, I’m struck by how many of the fifties films make an issue out of race.
It’s not surprising. The Communist Party made civil rights a platform plank at a time neither Democrats nor Republicans wanted to risk it. And when the civil-rights movement really got going, a standard charge against it was that it was a Communist plot, with Red “outside agitators” stirring up the Negroes who were otherwise perfectly happy and knew their place (this theme still has some pull on the right, it seems: One columnist wrote last year that only Communists crossed the color line back in the pre-Civil Rights days, so that proves Barack Obama’s parents were Reds—and therefore, of course, he grew up indoctrinated into Communist doctrine) The movies reinforce the second point while making it clear the Party’s support for civil rights is a myth:
•In I Was a Communist For the FBI, a Red speaker addresses Negroes with “a hellbrew of hate cooked up from a recipe written in the Kremlin.” He tells the hero afterwards that he’s hoping to spark black-on-white assaults or even killings, after which the Party will defend the accused and use the incident to make America look bad. The same man also uses the n-word to refer to his black audience after they’ve gone.
•In Red Menace, a priest preaches the glories of the melting pot—it doesn’t matter if you’re Irish, Jewish, black, once you become American you’re welcome—in contrast to which the Communist party emphasizes how minorities are discriminated against (which is equated to promoting separatism and anti-Americanism). When an Italian-American Party member questions official doctrine, a Party leader dismisses him as a “dago.” Later in the movie, a black writer for a Communist newspaper is told by his father that where America has freed its slaves, the Communist keep thousands in slavery behind the Iron Curtain.
•In one episode of I Led Three Lives (American citizen, Communist agent and FBI counter-agent, in case you were wondering), the Party buys up a newsreel company that will present distorted views of America, for example falsely showing that people living in the slum districts are afflicted by poverty and racial discrimination.
•In Trial, Glenn Ford becomes second chair to showboating Communist attorney Arthur Kennedy on a racially charged murder case. While Ford is clearly shown to be sympathetic to the defendant (a Hispanic kid involved with a white girl), the only organized support for the defendant comes from the Communist Party—and we learn that the donations Kennedy is taking for the legal costs are going right into the Party coffers. Not only that, he plans to lose the case, making the kid a martyr to American racism.
This sort of thing shows why it’s important to watch movies wherever possible, not just read synopses in movie books. There’s a lot of stuff. I probably wouldn’t pick up if I did it that way.”
All rights to cover image remain with current holders.
As the Bill Bixby Hulk TV show wound down, NBC launched THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1982) as a Saturday morning cartoon. It strongly resembles the Hulk’s Silver Age run in Tales to Astonish: in between the Hulk clobbering various threats (Doctor Octopus, Spymaster) Bruce Banner struggles to keep his identity secret with Rick Jones’ help, while fellow scientist and girlfriend Betty Ross wonders where Bruce keeps disappearing to.
It’s adequate but uninspired compared to the X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons of the 1990s. It’s distinctive in making Betty a scientist years before the MCU (in comics she was Bruce’s Girlfriend, General Ross’s daughter, nothing more) and showing her as capable in other ways: in the final episode, when she’s convinced the Hulk has killed Bruce, she goes after him like an avenging fury.
It’s also interesting that “Origin of the Hulk” has all the visuals of the gamma bomb test from the comics but they never spell out that the gamma-ray device Bruce is testing was a weapon. Nuclear testing no longer being cool, it’s the closest anyone’s come to using the comics origin on either the big or the small screen. And finally this gives us She-Hulk’s first screen appearance, though not a memorable one. “Looks like you captured a stuffed gorilla!”
The first season of THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1996) has a stronger voice cast (Neal McDonough as Bruce, Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, Genie Francis as Betty, Cree Summer as Jennifer “She-Hulk” Walters and Matt Frewer as the Leader) and draws more on the Bronze Age when Hulk (created this time by a gamma-powered engine exploding) was restlessly wandering all over the country, pursued by General Ross’s Hulkbusters. Betty is once again a scientist (I’m surprised they never retconned this take into the MU) and we have a huge array of guest stars including Thor, Iron Man and Ghost Rider. A much more entertaining show and She-Hulk’s personality shows how much she improved since her debut: where Bruce is unleashing his buried rage, she unleashes Jennifer’s buried swagger and sense of fun. “Totally irrelevant, Gargoyle — you know I don’t do gratitude.”
BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (1932) is a Jean Renoir film in which a bourgeousie bookstore owner saves a tramp from going down, takes him into his home, then both of them and the businessman’s family have to adjust. It’s a quirky, cynical little comedy of manners, much better than the more pretentious American remake Down and Out in Beverly Hills. However it does not shed as much light as I thought on Renoir’s later The Testament of Dr. Cordelier. “He spat in Balzac! He respects nothing!”
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945) is a vast improvement over Oscar Wilde’s tedious book, though it wasn’t quite what I was in the mood for relaxing after Thanksgiving dinner. George Sanders as Wotton tosses off Wilde’s epigrams, convincing young Dorian (Hurd Hatfield) that nothing is more important than staying young — which Dorian proceeds to do, even as his soul ages from sins such as driving singer Angela Lansbury to suicide and then moving on to innocent Donna Reed. Hatfield’s increasingly flattened affect as the film progresses becomes increasingly creepy. “The only different between a caprice and a life-long passion is that a caprice lasts longer.”
Somehow I never wrote about the Mexican film PACTO DIABOLICO (1969) in which John Carradine uses his deceased friend Dr. Jekyll’s research as the basis for a youth potion so that he’ll never have to worry about someone taking over his research and getting all the glory after he dies. Wouldn’t you know, there are A Few Side Effects, such as gouging out women’s eyes and dressing in a top hat and cape even as Carradine turns into a beastman?
At least, I think that’s what’s going on — whether from subtlety or sloppiness they never spell out clearly that Carradine’s using Jekyll’s chemical theories, so first time through I was a lot more confused. Not the worst movie I’ve watched for Jekyll and Hyde but not particularly good either. “The time has come for a supreme, inevitable meeting with destiny!”
ABC’s ONCE UPON A TIME was a mixed bag for me over the years (sequential season reviews here, here, here, here, here). The initial premises has PI Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) discovering the town of Storybrook is populated with refugees from fairytales, cursed by the evil queen Regina (Lana Parrilla) to live as mortals denied their happy endings. Emma, of course, refuses to believe it, let alone that she’s the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who pulled a Jor-El and Lara to get her to our world before the curse hit.
While Disney frequently used the show to promote their film catalog it did offer clever spins on the old tales (Ginnifer Goodwin as a rebel Snow White was a lot of fun). On the other hand, it was often way too soft on Regina (as I discuss here): while her time as Evil Queen was fueled by tragedy, that doesn’t change that she laid waste to a kingdom and made Snow’s life a living hell over a child’s innocent mistake. Less tragic than psycho.
I rewatched the end of S6 and the beginning of S7 because Jekyll and Hyde play a role along with multiple other fictional characters (Nemo, Count of Monte Cristo). I felt (and still do) that the duo’s appearance comes off largely pointless: it’s more a useful plot point to have Jekyll’s formula split off Regina’s dark side, giving us the Evil Queen as villain while keeping Regina reformed
That said, from the Jekyll and Hyde perspective it has some interest. It’s one of the few (only?) times the formula physically splits good from evil the way Jekylls are always saying it should. Only it doesn’t split them psychologically: Jekyll is odious and Hyde is capable of grief and softness. The show was definitely running out of steam, but it wasn’t done yet. “It appears there was one final twist.”
The Disney + series SHE-HULK, ATTORNEY AT LAW (2022) riffs on both the Dan Slott run on She-Hulk (she’s an attorney tackling superhuman law) and John Byrne having her break the fourth wall (“Excuse me, who’s series is this?”). Tatiana Maslany plays Jennifer Walters, Bruce Banner’s cousin; when she’s injured in an accident, he saves her with a blood transfusion and guess what happens?
I watched this initially for the Hulk chapter of Jekyll and Hyde but Jen doesn’t change from repressed rage the same way — as she points out to Bruce, she’s spent her whole life learning to keep her anger in check, like when some dude lectures her on her own specialty of law. I kept watching because it’s funny. A fight with the super-villain and influencer Titania, who’s trademarked the She-Hulk name. A lawsuit involving an Asgardian shapeshifter who banged a guy by appearing as a big-name rap star. I also like that unlike a lot of the MCU, this has no qualms about letting a villain like the Porcupine show up in costume. The finish suffered from too much fourth-wall breaking but I’d still like to see S2 (Disney is mulling). And I’m sorry I didn’t think of mentioning the show during a recent Con-Tinual panel on TV courtroom dramas. “Either there’s a big twist coming or I’m about to get fridged.”
THE AVENGERS (2012) introduced Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, (following Ed Norton in the 2008 film), a role he’s held in the MCU ever since. The movie holds up well as Nick Fury puts together a team to stop Tom Hiddleston’s Loki conquering the Earth (with a high enough body count his later switch to reluctant hero seems like a stretch) with the help of the alien Ch’Tauri. It holds up well, except the Ch’Tauri didn’t impress me then or now — if Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) can kill them with her trusty automatics, they ain’t that much.
Ruffalo’s more brittle as Bruce than Norton’s more controlled Banner, which fits with his comment at one point that he doesn’t have to get angry — he’s always angry. One of the strengths of the movie is that everyone is aware how dangerous Bruce is: when the Black Widow thinks he’s about to Hulk out, even she’s scared. The film doesn’t have the kick it did originally (whoa, all the MCU characters in one movie together!) but it is still fun. “Until such time as the world ends, we’re going to act as if it intends to spin on.”
She-Hulk cover by Mike Mayhew, Avengers by Kirby. All rights to images remain with current holders.
MY OWN WORST ENEMY (2008) was a short-lived TV series starring Christian Slater as white-collar family man Henry Spivey — who discovers one day that he’s a cover identity for Henry Albright, an agent for the government’s Janus spy network (Edward and Henry, as in Hyde and Jekyll, get it?). This keeps Edward on ice between missions — only the computer implant that creates Henry is malfunctioning so that they randomly shift between identities. Edward’s having to deal with Henry’s kids; Henry’s having to carry out spy missions. Is it just a glitch — or is someone sabotaging Janus from within?
I caught at least some of this originally and it was fun to rewatch — though not so fun I’m wracked by it ending on a cliffhanger after nine episodes. As it’s so marginally Jekyll and Hyde, though, it’s going in the appendix. “Chalk one up for my side of the gene pool.”
Rewatching THE TESTAMENT OF DR. CORDELIER (1961) proved frustrating as the English subtitled version I saw on YouTube has gone and only a French-subtitle one was available. Combined with the notes from the first viewing, it served my purpose well enough though and let me correct a couple of errors in my initial synopsis. Jean-Louis Barrault does an amazing job as both the dignified yet cruel Cordelier and the twitchy, unsettling Opale (his body language is very discomforting) who has a mean streak with even less restraint, for example snatching crutches away from an injured man purely for kicks.
Reading about the film in Ronald Bergan’s Jean Renoir: Projections of Paradise, I learned Barrault’s cane-wielding walk was a twisted version of Charlie Chaplin’s “little tramp” character (Renoir was a huge fan). Renoir aired the film on TV (which I knew) because even for an A-lister like himself, it was getting harder and more expensive to make movies for the big screen. He’d also concluded films didn’t give actors enough time to develop their character before the director yelled “cut!” For this film, he let Barrault and the other cast members decide when the scene was done. It paid off in performance quality but drove the producers nuts (a lot of film got wasted).
When I first saw THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008) it felt like a sequel to Ang Lee’s Hulk. Rewatching right after the other film, I realize they’re not consistent — the back story on Edward Norton’s Bruce becoming the Hulk here is not the same, but it’s close enough it doesn’t feel like a reboot (no worse than many comics have done). That said, it seems to owe more to the Bill Bixby series — the origin visuals are close and we get a quick glimpse of Bill Bixby on TV in one scene (I’m sure he’d have cameoed if cancer hadn’t taken him too soon).
The plot concerns General Ross (William Hurt) hunting Bruce in hopes of studying his green alter ego (nobody calls him Hulk until the very end) and creating an army like him (“You ever hear of the WW II super-soldier project?”). Things get complicated when soldier Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) becomes obsessed with Hulk’s power, enough to transform himself into the Abomination (making him English but born in Russia seems pointless, even though the comics’ Blonsky was born there). Despite Liv Tyler as an unconvincing Betty, this is a much better movie and shows the beginnings of building the MCU, with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Junior) showing up at the end to chat with Ross (what a kick that was at the time). “You won’t like me when I’m hungry.”
Cover by Herb Trimpe. All rights to images remain with current holders.
Back when CBS’ The Incredible Hulk was on the air, I was in college. I largely skipped it but caught one episode when I was home on break. I didn’t care for it.
The plot of “Never Give a Trucker an Even Break” has David Banner (Bill Bixby) unwittingly embroiled in a battle between a pretty trucker (Jennifer Darling) and a gang of hijackers — a battle the latter would win except David keeps getting angry and hulking out. It struck me as a story that could fit into any of TV’s wandering-hero series, except with the Hulk as a deus ex machina.
Wandering heroes were a thing in the 1960s. Route 66. Then Came Bronson. Run, Buddy Run. Characters criss-crossing the country, dropping into small towns or big cities, then moving on; I’m not sure if it was the zeitgeist or the flexibility it gave writers in terms of stories but it was way popular.
Most significant for the purpose of this post was The Fugitive, which ran from 1963 to 1967. Richard Kimble, convicted of the murder of his wife, travels across country hunting the one-armed man who really killed her, pursued by the cop who thinks Kimble’s guilty as sin. That template — wandering hero is both pursuer and pursued — would inspire lots of later specfic show, including The Immortal, The Phoenix, Starman and a bunch of shows that never got past the pilot movie stage.
Rewatching The Incredible Hulk for Jekyll and Hyde, I like it much, much better. I wonder if that’s because wandering heroes, particularly the Fugitive-knockoff type, aren’t as much of a thing any more? But definitely it’s much superior to my memory of it. That’s all the more impressive given that producer Kenneth Johnson wasn’t at all enthused about doing a comic book show. He didn’t like the “incredible Hulk” name, didn’t like Bruce Banner’s alliterative moniker (hence changing his given name to David) and didn’t want it to look too comic-book. Nevertheless, he made a good show out of it.
A lot of that is due to Bill Bixby in the lead (with Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk of course). He’s a good actor and really radiates decency. As my fellow Atomic Junk shop blogger Greg Hatcher (now deceased, alas) puts it, his first thought when he recovers from hulking out is “what did I break this time? Who did I hurt?” The trucker episode works because he spends much of it with this baffled smile reflecting that he has no idea what the heck is going on.
THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1977) was the movie that started it all. A year ago David lost his beloved wife (Lara Parker of Dark Shadows) in a car crash. Since then he and research partner Elaina (Susan Sullivan) have been researching the question of how some people exhibit superhuman strength in a crisis enabling them to save lives, because David would very much like to know why he couldn’t do that. It turns out to be a combination of genetics — David has the same DNA element as the “lift the car off my kid” people — and gamma radiation from sunspots (not hitting David at the time). David decides to test himself late at night by using a gamma-radiation device to dose himself (the one weak moment — I don’t buy he couldn’t have waited) but it’s wired to give off way more radiation than the dial says.
Later, when David’s driving home in pouring rain, his car gets a flat. He gets out to change it, gets increasingly frustrated and suddenly he changes … the Hulk is born.
By the end of the movie, thanks to an unwitting screw up by tabloid reporter Jack McGee (Jack Colvin), Elaina’s dead, the Hulk is blamed for killing both her and David and Dr. Banner is on the run, searching for a cure. McGee, as we learn in subsequent stories, is in pursuit.
It’s a good movie, well acted, mostly effective special effects and the Hulk shows more power than I remembered. It pointedly sets up that for all his rage, the Hulk is still David and “David Banner doesn’t kill.” The Hulk never punches anyone, just throws them aside (which is bad enough but it’s easier to believe they’ll walk away)
The follow up movie A Death in the Family, AKA Return of the Hulk, is underwhelming. David gets a gig working on a paraplegic young woman’s estate, only to discover her widowed stepmom is paying the woman’s doctor to poison her (the real reason she can’t walk). It’s very much a stock Wandering Hero story and made me think I was right to avoid the show.
No, I wasn’t. Johnson and his writers (he wrote some shows, not all), and Bixby’s performance manage to make the shows absorbing. Even the Hulk is more than the deus ex I thought; multiple episodes show that like his comic-book counterpart he’s capable of being tender and protective in many situations. And his feats of strength, if not up to the comics, are pretty impressive. There’s a reason it ran five seasons when other Marvel attempts to hit live-action TV flatlined.
The Wandering Hero aspect does have its drawbacks, particularly as I had to binge the first season. Some sketchy geography (this week in NYC, next week in San Diego!). Too many romances, all the more awkward when he’s still grieving his beloved wife and then Elaina. McGee has little purpose in most episodes other than a goad to keep David moving on. This aspect also makes me aware how times have changed: this was an era when you could walk in and get a job without a background check or providing a list of every job you’ve ever had back to your college days.
I may not get to more of the series before the book wraps up but having bought the DVD set I’ll definitely watch it all.
Art top to bottom by Jack Kirby, Marie Severin, Kirby again, Severin again. All rights to images remain with current holders.
I can thank my brother for reminding me that DARK SHADOWS included a Jekyll and Hyde plotline though my research reading would have tipped me off to it anyway.
The legendary supernatural soap concerns Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), a vampire from the 1700s released in the present where he winds up protecting his modern-day kin from assorted supernatural threats. Other characters included Quentin Collins (David Selby), immortal werewolf; Willie Loomis (John Karlen), Barnabas’ sniveling, perpetually frustrated Renfield; Elizabeth Stoddard, the family matriarch (Joan Bennett); Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall), a doctor and haematologist helping Barnabas; Angelique (Lara Parker), Barnabas’ witch wife and tormentor; and Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott), the reincarnation of Barnabas’ lost love Josette.
The story takes place in 1970 as one of the plot strands in the “parallel time” era. After Barnabas and his kin defeat the Lovecraftian Leviathans, Barnabas wanders into Collinswood’s east wing and discovers a gateway into another timeline. Watching, he discovers that in that timeline he married Josette, lived a happy mortal life and rose not from his grave. He stumbles across the time boundary only for Willie’s counterpart — author Will Loomis — to trap Barnabas in his coffin and force him to recount the truth about his life, which Loomis will turn into a book. This kept Barnabas offstage while filming House of Dark Shadows, the theatrical spinoff movie (I believe Maggie’s absent from a chunk of this plotline for the same evening).
The Jekyll figure is Cyrus Longworth (Christopher Pennock), BFF to Quentin Collins, here the head of the clan and newly married to Maggie. The opening of the story has Cyrus making the usual research into dividing our good and evil natures. As in the Jack Palance adaptation Curtis produced a couple of years earlier, Cyrus wakes up the morning after testing his drug with no memory of where he’s been; there’s a bottle in his pocket, though, and other evidence he’s been having a very wild night.
Initially Cyrus’ new life as John Yaeger follows the movie’s plot arc but not entirely. For one thing he has a fiancee, Sabrina (Lisa Richards), which Palance’s Jekyll didn’t. For another, Cyrus is caught up in the other plotlines swirling around Quentin — is his late first wife Angelique really dead (yes, but she gets better)? Can Maggie step into Angelique’s shoes (a plotline borrowing heavily from Rebecca)? While Yaeger takes the usual mistress (as Palance’s Hyde did), she doesn’t die, she simply vanishes from the story once Cyrus falls in love with Maggie (maybe she was just a placeholder until Scott got through with the movie?).
Once Cyrus meets Maggie, realizes she’s having trouble with her marriage (Angelique’s ghost is undermining it) and falls for her, things get creepy. Cyrus is too inhibited to make a move (his love for Sabrina doesn’t figure in at all) but if he becomes Yaeger again …and he does, and winds up kidnapping Maggie and eventually murdering Sabrina.
While Cyrus’ addiction to his free, daring life as John Yaeger is normal enough for a Jekyll, he’s carrying a great deal of self-loathing. Yaeger laughs at Sabrina “Don’t you have any idea how much he hated being himself?” I think he’s quite sincere.
Overall it’s an interesting take, well-performed by Pennock.
