Striking Back With Empire Cards

The cover and a page from the hardcover book Star Wars: The Empire 
Strikes Back: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume Two.

You know time has really passed when the collectibles you purchased as a child find their way to nostalgia-inducing coffee table books. That was the feeling, along with curiosity over who might actually purchase such a publication, I experienced while wandering the shelves at a local bookseller (FYI: this post was first published 8/18/2016). In a time when the demographic (white male nerds, 45-55) to which I belong are willing to part with hard cash for a nostalgic charge, it is not surprising that the hardcover "book" Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume Two is now available. The book is exactly as advertised, each page consists of both the front and back of one of the 132-card base set and 33 stickers that compromised the original wax packet release back in 1980(!).

My collection of the original Empire Strikes Back Topps Picture Card Series Two.

Fortunately, I still have a complete card set (though only a partial sticker set), so can save my funds for other fanboy passions. An key aspect of trading card collecting that is lost with the transition to book form is the tactile charge of flipping each individual card over. One never knew what to expect, but it would be something exciting whether cool facts, silly quiz questions, or behind the scenes production secrets. This was, of course, prior to the advent of the internet when production info as limited to that which could be found only in magazines like Starlog or during the occasional Behind the Scenes television special. I even remember looking forward to The Price Is Right Showcase Showdowns where often one would be based on an upcoming movie and offer a clips package. Damn, those were magic days!

Here are just a few representative cards (with caption comment) from my collection:

Straight from 1980... the "title" card for my set of The Empire Strikes Back
Topps Picture Card Series 2.

Card 138: Back before any mystery was blown up by the prequel trilogy,
all things related to Boba Fett, like his ship Slave 1, were super cool!

Card 164: A suitably Eighties caption to this standard Vader shot.

Card 174: This one is interesting as it pre-dates the current practice of
referring to our robot friend by his government name R2-D2 rather than the
much more humanizing Artoo.

Card 207: Clearly the Star Quiz questions were intended to make young fanboys
like myself feel really confident in their Star Wars trivia knowledge.

Card 261: Prior to the Internet, these special cards, complete with
alliterative caption, were the best way to see any behind the
scenes shots. I still love looking at this sub-series.

Card 263: As a kid, I hated getting these cards (they lacked cool pics!) but now
appreciated knowing what cards I am trying to get when you get down to
only a few left for a complete set.

The original packs came with a single sticker so it was not so easy to get a complete set.
Sadly, I have very few of these as I used most of them spelling out cool things with
the letters, such as the word "Awesome": ah, childhood!

Creature Feature Cards Unearthed!

ON THE FRONT: The amphibious Gill Man from the Amazon, 
"Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954).

Waking up at 3 a.m. I find myself digging through a stained cardboard box of old trading cards, when the time travelling begins... Though not encased in plastic sleeves, and with softened corners and some slightly discolored images, when I purchased these varied sets (most never completed and the result of only a few single packs purchased) issues of preservation or potential value speculation were of little interest. I was ten years old and it was all about the stickers, hard gum and cards.

This morning I dug past those sets (again, in varying rates of completeness) such as Buck Rogers In the 23rd Century (1979), Star Trek the Motion Picture (1979) and Moonraker (1979), for something seasonal. With autumn in the air, and  Halloween just around the corner, I was pleased to find such a large number of Topps' 1980 Creature Feature cards adrift in the box. In addition to the cover card, and two of 22 possible stickers, I cobbled together about 60 different cards with (of course) numerous doubles, While I could give background about the Topps set, I'd rather point you to others (such as Mr. Potter's Fun-time Blog) who have already done so far better than I could have.

The Masked Phantom from
"The Phantom of the Opera" (1925).

Something was clearly in the air back in 1980 as I vividly recall buying these packs up at the Quick-and Easy, our local convenience store which also introduced me to comic books (on the wire spinning rack) and coin operated video games (Space Invaders, naturally). Back then, my brother and I would walk the two blocks to the store, look through the comic books, and check on any new trading cards that may have arrived. Bitten by the collecting bug thanks to Star Wars trading cards years earlier, we were game for nearly anything that came out.

Looking back at these cards now, my response now is likely very similar to the reaction I had many years ago. Hardly as humorous, they are after all from the "You'll Die Laughing" series, as intended, the black and white stills and images of famous (Boris Karloff as the Monster) and not-so-famous (Bela Lugosi as the Monster) actors and the creatures they portrayed are beautiful. The set includes the iconic (such as the aforementioned Frankenstein's monster as well as the prominently featured Creature From the Black Lagoon films) and lesser-known but beloved (by me anyway), Oliver Reed's werewolf in Hammer Films' The Curse of the Werewolf.

On the back of each card, in addition to a lame pun, joke or anecdote, is a very brief caption describing whats "ON THE FRONT." Unfortunately, the actors in each movie still are not credited, but fortunately I watched enough afternoon chillers to figure it out, so I've added (where possible) the names of the actor(s) involved using [brackets].

The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The 22 stickers are of "Monster Hall of Fame" members and original movie posters, or at least those that Topps had the rights to include. I loved the Creature (above) as a child, and feel the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, above, right, is still among the creepiest monster visuals in film.

ON THE FRONT: The air-breathing humanoid known as The Gilman
[Don Megowan] from "The Creature Walks Among Us" (1956).

The card above with a still from the third Creature movie refers to him as "The Gilman," (card #3 above), as opposed to "Gill Man" (card #39, top of post, and #68 below). While very likely a typo, it makes me wonder if the idea was to give him a more human name, though something more traditional might have helped him better acclimate to life on land.

These jokes still kill.

ON THE FRONT: Kharis [Lon Chaney, Jr.] the crumbling one
carries on in his third feature movie, "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944).

ON THE FRONT: A scene from the original "Frankenstein" (1931)
[starring Boris Karloff].

ON THE FRONT: A creature [Eddie Parker] from the past threatens the student
body in "Monster on the Campus" (1958).

ON THE FRONT: A fellow [Bryant Haliday] turned inside-out when an experiment went awry 
in "The Projected Man" (1964).

ON THE FRONT: The Gill Man [Tom Hennesy] was the most famous
movie monster created in the 1950's, from "Revenge of the Creature" (1955).

ON THE FRONT: Two of the screen's mightiest monsters
[played here by Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr.] were 
featured in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1943).

ON THE FRONT: The hairy horror of "The Wolf Man" (1941)
iconically portrayed here by Lon Chaney, Jr..

ON THE FRONT: Only a silver bullet can end 
"The Curse of the Werewolf" (1961)
[here played by Oliver Reed].

ON THE FRONT: Kept alive for 5,700 years, it's Kharis [Tom Tyler]
from "The Mummy's Hand" (1940).

ON THE FRONT: The Cyclopean Xenomorph (got it?) from "It Came from Outer Space" (1953).

I'm definitely using this one at the next happy hour.

ON THE FRONT: Once a household pest, now 100 tons of horror, "Tarantula" (1955).

ON THE FRONT: "Feast your eyes, gut your soul,
behold my horror!" Another scene from the classic "Phantom
of the Opera". (1925) [starring Lon Chaney, Sr.]

ON THE FRONT: "The Mole People" were prehistoric creatures who lived at the
center of the earth in this 1956 chiller.

ON THE FRONT: From "This Island Earth" (1955).

All the creatures depicted in these cards are from films released in the U.S. by Universal. Given Universal Studios' current efforts to reboot their "Classic Monsters" in a shared "universe" (a' la Disney/Marvel's successful films) with the recently released Dracula Untold (2014), one wonders who may show up in future films. While Wolf-man, the Mummy and Frankenstein's monster would appear sure things (if Dracula proves financially successful) how great would it be if we also saw an update of The Mole People or  the long in development Creature from the Black Lagoon update?

Always leave 'em laughing!

Seen It: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

A fan of both spaghetti westerns and horror it was probably only a matter of time before the unrated Cannibal Holocaust found its way into by DVD player. Unfortunately, as Cher once hoped, I, too, wish I could turn back time. After having my nineteen year old son beg out of a viewing this with his [juvenile] old man after seeing the trailer ("I don't think this is my thing, Dad.") his apprehension proved to be justified. Watching what I knew was intended to be shocking, I had a variety of feelings, most of which ultimately led to regret.

Directed by Ruggero Deodato, from a screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici, Cannibal Holocaust  features a collection of incredibly unlikable protagonists played by actors who were rightly never heard from again. While unfortunate for the careers of the actors involved, their anonymity thereafter actually contributes to the movie's faux-reality set-up: they (or the characters they play) are, after-all, presumed "dead."

The most appropriate movie poster
I could find online.

As summarized by Wikipedia, Cannibal Holocaust "tells the story of a missing documentary film crew who had gone to the Amazon to film cannibal tribes. A rescue mission, led by the New York University anthropologist Harold Monroe, recovers the film crew's lost cans of film, which an American television station wishes to broadcast." What Monroe views on those recovered reels prompts him to question not just the perceived heroic nature of the film crew, but also the scruples of the broadcast company which seeks to profit from the footage.

The gore so prominently featured in most of the advertising associated with the movie serves to cement the antagonistic and base qualities of those same characters who are initially presented to we, the viewer, as it's "heroes." The fate of the documentary crew is clear from the onset (and the DVD cover art): they will be eaten by cannibals and it will be graphic. What is not clear until the end is that [SPOILER] their grisly fate is more of a comeuppance for their base and degrading behavior toward the environment and peoples they come across while tramping through the "Green Inferno" [END SPOILER] than the result of random fate.  In the pervasive not-too-subtle irony on display here, they fall victim to the same natives who's death and loss they hope will bring them the fame they intend their footage to gain them.

Some other points of interest include:

• The inclusion of real animal cruelty. Real live animals from the jungle are slaughtered on film in a manner that can be a little disconcerting. That is not an animatronic turtle being dismembered and eaten by the would be documentarians. The charge of animal cruelty was just one of the reasons Cannibal Holocaust  has had a long (proud?) history of being banned. On the DVD I watched there was a "Cruelty-Free" version of the film for viewing in addition to the original edit.
• Never have the Eighties (the movie was originally released in 1980) had such a late-Sixties/ early-Seventies vibe to it. The hairstyles, attitudes, visual hues and music on display have an anachronistic quality. This does however add to the time-capsule tone of the movie. The most memorable line in the movie is when the lone female--in the midst of chaos and mayhem--breaks the fourth wall to her cameraman and suggests "You know if this were New York, I'd probably be shopping right now!" Odd? Yes, but the line's possible comedic delivery loses all humor when taken in the context of the worst part of the movie.
• With a title like Cannibal Holocaust one would reasonably expect the gore and violence to be rough. Surprisingly, though, by far the most offensive part of the movie is not the phony, staged cannibal-feasting scenes or even the real examples of animal cruelty, but rather the truly ugly treatment of women. While I am certain some college student can (and I'd bet dollars-to-donuts many have) write a dissertation on the symbolic nature of the treatment (the most chilling and degrading acts against women all stem from the behavior of the three idiotic Anglo male filmmakers) it plays as unnecessary. While I can stomach stupid, fake horror, the acts perpetrated against the female characters in Cannibal Holocaust are in shockingly bad-taste, even for a grindhouse flick. 

So is Cannibal Holocaust worth seeking out? As an entertainment it falls very flat. As a time-capsule consideration of late-Seventies shock film--or even as an exercise in how Italians viewed American culture--there is some small value to be had, most of which would be better left to hipsters and college students. The likelihood of my ever watching this again (a personal indicator of a movie's appeal for me) is nil, and I am both pleased and grateful that my son had the good sense to walk away from the Cannibal Holocaust experience when given the opportunity.