'Rowdy' Roddy Piper, RIP

Roddy Piper as Nada in John Carpenter's "They Live."

The passing of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper at the too-young age of 61 strikes surprisingly hard. Unlike others who have died this year — Leonard Nimoy and Christopher Lee among them — “Hot Rod” died too soon. It’s a fate he shares with too many stars and former stars of professional wrestling.

The matches may be scripted, but wrestling takes a physical toll, none more brutal than what wrestlers do to themselves to make it to the top of their profession.

Still, Piper’s sudden death was a shock. Just hours earlier he was tweeting away on his frequently ungrammatical but always entertaining Twitter account. For a guy who spent the peak of his wrestling career as a heel, Piper always seemed to be the nicest of guys when it came to his fans. And Piper had lots of fans, both in and out of wrestling.

While other wrestlers have come out of the ring to try their luck in movies, few have done it so memorably as Piper did. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson may have racked up more lead roles and a lot more money at the box office, but Piper will always have John Carpenter’s “They Live.”

As a wrestler, Piper was known as much for his mic talent as for his moves in the squared circle. The man had charisma to spare, and that came through just as well on the movie screen.

For me, personally, Piper came along at just the right time. One’s teens are the perfect time to fall in love with wrestling and cheesy movies, and Hot Rod was there for both.

Back in the dark ages of cable TV, when USA Network was really worth watching, a kid could watch Rowdy Roddy ham it up in prime time during WWF (not yet WWE) matches from Madison Square Garden. Then he could tune in late on the weekend to watch Gilbert Gottfried host Piper’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick “Hell Comes to Frogtown” on “USA Up All Night.”

That, my friends, was quality television.

Piper’s death hits my inner teenager pretty hard. Piper was comfort viewing. He played the bad guy, but he was like a best friend. He had your back.

Now the curtain comes down on Piper’s Pit one last time. Cue the bagpipes.

Good night, Sweet Prince (of Darkness)

Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle in 1973's "The Wicker Man."

When you live to the ripe old age of 93, you collect a lot of stories — both the ones you tell and the ones others tell about you.

In the week since news of his death became public, people who knew him, and many who didn’t, have told a lot of stories about Sir Christopher Lee. Lee appeared in roughly 250 films yet never quite escaped his earliest starring role as Dracula in Hammer Films’ 1958 movie “Horror of Dracula.”

My favorite Christopher Lee story goes like this: Asked by an interviewer about his still-classified exploits during World War II, Lee sat forward conspiratorially and asked, “Can you keep a secret?”

Excitedly, the interviewer said, “Yes,” to which Lee, sitting back in his chair and smiling as only he could, with a combination of menace and charm, replied, “So can I.”

Lee’s wartime exploits, some reportedly involving Winston Churchill’s clandestine special ops force, nicknamed “the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” and his postwar Nazi-hunting activities would be enough for most men. You could call that a job well done, a life well lived, and write your memoirs. But Lee was only in his early 20s when the war ended. He was just getting started.

It’s for his second act — as an actor — that we will remember him. It’s not the stories he told — no matter how well — nor the war stories he lived that will endure, but the stories he helped bring to life on the screen. In a movie career that spanned nearly 70 years, he went from “uncredited spear carrier” in Sir Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” to Saruman the White in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies. In between he was Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy and Fu Manchu (all roles also played by Boris Karloff), as well as Bond villain Scaramanga in “The Man with the Golden Gun,” “Three Musketeers” antagonist Rochefort, lecherous Russian holy man Rasputin, and countless other silver screen adversaries.

While somewhat resenting his villainous typecasting, Lee also realized early on that the bad guys got all the good lines — except when they didn’t get any lines at all.

Lee claimed he played the part of Dracula mute in the 1966 sequel “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” because the lines he was given were terrible. (For his part, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster claimed not to recall having written Dracula any lines in the first place.)

The true mark of a great actor isn’t how good he is with great material, or even good material, but how good he is with lousy material. By that standard, Lee was one of the greatest who ever lived.

Even without lines in “Dracula: Princess of Darkness,” Lee hisses and snarls and dominates the screen. Just as his dear friend and frequent co-star Peter Cushing did for the original “Star Wars,” Lee brings menace and gravitas to its prequels, which need all the menace and gravitas they can get. He took his roles, however outlandish, seriously, and when he is on-screen, so do audiences.

Occasionally, Lee’s perseverance paid off and he’d get a great role, such as his own favorite, Lord Summerisle in the 1973 version of “The Wicker Man,” or Mycroft Holmes in Billy Wilder’s “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.” But great role or not, he was a professional, bringing to his craft the same discipline that must have kept him alive during World War II.

Lee may not have won any Oscars, but he racked up the Guinness world records: most screen credits for a living actor (in 2007), tallest actor in a leading role (tied with Vince Vaughn), actor in most films featuring a sword fight, oldest video game voice actor, and most connected living actor (meaning Six Degrees of Christopher Lee is a lot easier to play than Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon).

The man of many roles was also a man of many contrasts. He was a British aristocrat often cast as the shadowy foreigner. He was prickly and reserved, yet warm and generous with those who got to know him. He sang opera, then later, in his 80s, recorded a heavy metal concept album. And he was a serious man who could become a babbling fanboy upon meeting his hero, J.R.R. Tolkien.

For most of the world, though, Christopher Lee was an unforgettable actor who often made even the most forgettable movies worth watching. And for an actor, there’s probably no better life story.

Culture Shock 03.05.15: We are all Spock

In a season 5 episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," "Trials and Tribble-ations," the crew of Deep Space Nine travels back in time to the events depicted in one of the original series' most beloved episodes, "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Seeing Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock walking down an Enterprise corridor, DS9's Dax (Terry Farrell) says, "I had no idea. ... He's so much more handsome in person. Those eyes!"

Avery Brooks' Capt. Sisko says, "Kirk had quite the reputation as a ladies' man."

To which Dax replies, "Not him. Spock!"

Three decades after the fact, "Star Trek" acknowledged what fans had long known: Kirk may have been the "ladies' man," but Leonard Nimoy's Spock was "Star Trek's" real sex symbol.

Nimoy died last week of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at age 83. The emotional outpouring that followed from fans worldwide was swift and overwhelming. No doubt Mr. Spock would have found the reaction fascinating but also logical.

Like most of his "Star Trek" co-stars, Nimoy was a working actor, paying the bills by taking guest roles in some of the 1960s' most popular TV shows before "Star Trek" came along. Mr. Spock was both a regular paycheck — every working actor's dream — and just another character role.

By the decade's end, Spock was on his way to becoming a cultural icon.

For a certain audience, Mr. Spock made being a geek cool decades before being a geek actually became cool. William Shatner's Kirk was for many of us a fantasy, the guy we'd like to be but knew we never could. He wasn't just a ladies' man. Kirk could go toe-to-claw with a Gorn and still trick a computer into self-destruction. The rest of the Enterprise crew were a multicultural collection of aspirational role models. Yet it was Spock — half-Vulcan, half-human — who most spoke to viewers.

Spock was aspirational, too. He was the smartest member of the Enterprise crew, famously logical, meticulous and curious. Yet he was also an outsider. He was the lone Vulcan on a ship crewed by Earthlings, but as half-human, he was also an outsider even on his home planet. His relationship with his father was strained, his love life was complicated and while he claimed to be in control of his emotions, it's more accurate to say Spock was emotionally repressed by choice.

Spock went beyond being a role model for aspiring science nerds. Here was an adult who embodied all of the fears and insecurities of adolescence, no matter how well he hid them.

It was a role Nimoy embraced. Google "Nimoy fan letter" and you'll find his response to a fan letter he received in 1968 from a biracial girl who couldn't fit in among either whites or blacks. Nimoy speaks for his fictional character, but he could easily be drawing on some of his own experiences, growing up the Jewish kid in an Irish Catholic neighborhood.

He titled his 1975 memoir "I Am Not Spock" in part to show the distance between himself and the character he and many talented writers, especially D.C. Fontana and Theodore Sturgeon, had worked over three seasons to create. But Nimoy and Spock proved inseparable.

Nimoy returned to play Spock in eight movies (counting the two J.J. Abrams-directed reboot films) and in a couple of episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Even killing off Spock in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" didn't last. Nimoy also directed two Trek movies as well as the comedy "Three Men and a Baby." He took up writing and photography, and he took on other roles, from Paris in "Mission: Impossible" to, most recently, the enigmatic William Bell in "Fringe." He eventually wrote a second volume of memoirs, this time titled, "I Am Spock."

On Twitter, he invited us to think of him as our grandfather and dispensed grandfatherly advice, always concluding with Spock's Vulcan salutation, "LLAP" — "live long and prosper."

In the end, there is perhaps no better epitaph for Nimoy than the one Kirk provided Nimoy's alter ego in "Star Trek II": "Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most — human."

Culture Shock 03.06.14: Ramis reflected America's love of the little guy

Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a Twinkie is just a Twinkie.

But sometimes a Twinkie is a metaphor for all the smiles and laughter a talented individual gave to the world. In the case of Harold Ramis, that was a big Twinkie.

As a writer, director and actor, Ramis, who died Feb. 24 at age 69, was at least partly responsible for some of the greatest film comedies of his generation, if not ever. "Caddyshack," "Stripes" and his most accomplished work, "Groundhog Day," are classics. Ramis perfected the smart dumb film. Or maybe the dumb smart film, if there's a difference.

With few exceptions, "Groundhog Day" being one of them, Ramis' films pitted ordinary, down-to-earth working stiffs against the humorless bluenoses of the Establishment. The Establishment could be the Army or it could be the old-money fossils who run the country club. It didn't matter. Ramis was on the side of the irreverent Everyman, forever pointing and laughing at the emperor's general state of undress. And we laughed along with him.

Of course we did. Audiences have been on the side of the little guy since Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp.

The late Pauline Kael often wrote that movies are our most democratic art form. It might chafe the egos of certain auteurs, but movies reflect the culture far, far more than they influence it.

As the 1980s got into full swing, Ramis didn't waver in his devotion to the little guy. He just found a different little guy.

The result was the film that first pops to mind at the mention of the name "Harold Ramis."

"Ghostbusters" is the ultimate comedy for the age of the blockbuster. It and "Back to the Future," released a year later in 1985, were comedies for the "Star Wars" generation. They had big budgets and glossy special effects. But they never forgot they were comedies.

And as Ronald Reagan cruised to a re-election landslide, Ramis, along with co-screenwriter Dan Aykroyd and director Ivan Reitman, tapped into the ascendant libertarian strain of standing up for the little guy and sticking it to The Man.

"Ghostbusters" isn't an explicitly political movie. It just reflects its time and place. Start with the brilliantly simple premise of pest exterminators who hunt ghosts instead of cockroaches or mice, and everything else follows. But sometimes a Twinkie has a creamy filling of political subtext.

Like most pest controllers, the Ghostbusters are small businessmen, and who is the enemy of small business? The government, which comes along with petty regulations and needless bureaucracy. In "Ghostbusters," the government is embodied by the humorless and self-righteous Walter Peck, portrayed by a pitch perfect William Atherton.

Peck represents the Environmental Protection Agency. Other Hollywood movies treat the EPA as almost saintly. Those films, however, aren't comedies but allegedly serious dramas.

Lefty writer David Sirota says "Ghostbusters" is a "cinematic version of what would later become the very real Blackwater — and what would be the anti-government, privatize-everything narrative of the twenty-first century." That's like saying just because pest control isn't nationalized, therefore Blackwater. Never mind that the private sector and government contractors aren't a 1-to-1 correlation.

Ghostbusters is capitalism. Blackwater is crony capitalism. Ghostbusters is the outsider. Blackwater is the Platonic ideal of a politically connected insider, trading on special favors rather than entrepreneurship.

Even more so than drama, comedy must reflect the culture. Otherwise no one gets the joke and no one laughs. Ramis always knew that America is the culture of the little guy, even — and especially — in the '80s.

Culture Shock 06.27.13: Richard Matheson is legend

There is only one word that truly describes Richard Matheson. He was a storyteller.

There are writers and novelists and dramatists and screenwriters. But there are precious few storytellers, people who can weave tapestries of words and magic regardless of the medium. Writers for whom the story is everything, who turn out perfectly polished gems that make other writers weep with envious love-rage, and who glide between form — screenplay, short story, novel — as easily as others might change shoes. Or so they make it seem.

We lost one last year when we lost Ray Bradbury. Another, Harlan Ellison, as marvelous as he is often maddening, is still plugging away, despite poor health and a convention appearance "farewell" three years ago, bless his mischievous heart. And now we've lost Matheson, who died Monday at age 87, leaving behind a lifetime of stories.

These are stories you know. The harrowing vampire apocalypse of "I Am Legend," which has been adapted for the big screen three times, with Vincent Price, Charlton Heston and, most recently, Will Smith. His haunting tale "The Shrinking Man," which became the equally haunting film "The Incredible Shrinking Man." The supernatural nail-biter "Hell House," which he later turned into the movie "The Legend of Hell House." The screenplay for "Duel," which set into motion the career of its director, a talented lad by the name of Steven Spielberg.

It's an honorable calling, the calling of storyteller.

But the inevitable is inevitable. The grand old men of storytelling are getting older, their typewriters growing silent. And few have risen to the challenge of succeeding them. Neil Gaiman, perhaps, scribbling away with pen and pad, a master of comic books, fantasy novels and "Doctor Who" episodes, comes closest.

Before television became all about season-spanning story arcs, there was an art to crafting a self-contained story that fit comfortably in an hour or half-hour time slot.

No TV show is more synonymous with the finely honed short story than "The Twilight Zone," and no one is more synonymous with "The Twilight Zone" than its creator and head writer Rod Serling. But another writer was just as responsible as Serling for making the show what it was.

You guessed it: Richard Matheson.

Both he and Serling adapted his short stories for the show. Soon, Matheson began contributing original scripts as well.

Matheson's stories are among the best of the series' run. They include "The Invaders," which pits Agnes Moorehead ("Bewitched") against doll-sized visitors from another world, and "Little Girl Lost."

His two most memorable "Twilight Zone" stories, however, have one thing in common: William Shatner. The first was season 2's "Nick of Time," in which Shatner and Patricia Breslin portray a young couple who become obsessed with a cafe's fortune-telling machine and its uncanny predictions. The second was season 5's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

"Nightmare" is the definitive "Twilight Zone" story, never mind that Matheson adapted it from one of his previous short stories. From Shatner's performance as a man struggling to retain his sanity to the grotesque gremlin clinging to the airplane's wing, so much about the story is now iconic.

But it all sprang from Matheson's typewriter.

Through the decades, Matheson remained versatile. His fantasies ran from the terrifying ("The Night Stalker" with Darren McGavin) to the comic ("The Raven" with Vincent Price) to the romantic ("Somewhere in Time" and "What Dreams May Come"). The form and the style didn't matter.

All that matters to the storyteller is the story.

Ray Harryhausen, RIP

Ray Harryhausen's final film was 1981's Clash of the Titans. While not as highly regarded as Harryhausen's earlier films, especially his 1963 masterpiece Jason and the Argonauts, the Medusa set piece was arguably the high point of Harryhausen's storied career, and a fitting capstone.

The year before, George Lucas, who revolutionized movie special effects with Star Wars in 1977, paid the ultimate tribute to Harryhausen, using the master's stop-motion techniques for the thrilling Battle of Hoth sequence in The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

From It Came from Beneath the Sea to The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (and its sequels) to The Valley of Gwangi, Harryhausen has thrilled generations of moviegovers and fueled the imaginations of generations of filmmakers.

Harryhausen died today in London. He was 92.

At the end of Clash of the Titans, Zeus, played by Laurence Olivier, delivers an epilogue that seems to serve equally as the epilogue of Harryhausen's career.

Like the stars, Harryhausen's inspiration will never fade. Never. It will burn 'til the end of time.



The epic skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts:

Culture Shock 04.04.13: Jess Franco leaves polarizing legacy

The first time I saw "Vampyros Lesbos," I fell asleep, which is surprising on two counts.

Jess Franco

First, as the title indicates, this is a movie about lesbian vampires, and normally I never fall asleep during movies about lesbian vampires. Second, "Vampyros Lesbos" is a film by Jess Franco, and Franco's films are usually, if nothing else, interesting.

Franco, a Spanish filmmaker who directed, by some counts, more than 180 films, died early Tuesday. He was 82.

In America, Franco enjoys little name recognition outside the circle of cult cinema aficionados. Unfortunately, one of his worst major films is probably his most widely seen: 1969's "The Castle of Fu Manchu" became fodder for the third season of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

It's hard to keep up with all the films Franco made because he made so many, often issued under multiple titles, and he directed many of them under pseudonyms. But his better-known films have made him a polarizing figure. Almost no one who has seen Franco's movies is neutral about him. They love him, or they hate him. The closest thing to a middle ground where Franco is concerned comes from those critics who divide his films into two groups: the ones they love and the ones they hate.

And Franco never made it easy. Even his most ardent fans admit he could go a little too far with his mania for zoom shots.

At best, Franco was an uneven filmmaker, but he was almost never boring. Except for "Vampyros Lesbos," but here I'm in the minority; most Franco fans regard it as one of his best films. You definitely have a polarizing filmmaker when even his fans disagree about which are his best and worst films.

Franco burst onto the horror and exploitation scene with "The Awful Dr. Orlof" in 1962. "Orlof" — sometimes spelled "Orloff" — was Franco's answer to Georges Franju's classic "Eyes Without a Face," released two years earlier. Franco would return to the character many times throughout his career, culminating in what was Franco's last good film, 1987's "Faceless" featuring Telly Savalas, Caroline Munro and Brigitte Lahaie.

For a director who seemed bent on erasing the line between art house and schlock, Franco collaborated with a lot of talented performers. He directed Herbert Lom in 1969's "99 Women," the prototype for the women-in-prison genre; elicited the most bizarre, over-the-top performance of Jack Palance's career in "Deadly Sanctuary" (aka "The Marquis de Sade's Justine"); and teamed with Christopher Lee on numerous occasions, including 1970's "Count Dracula," a tedious but unusually faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

Franco also may be the only director who claimed to have had no difficulty working with Klaus Kinski, whom Franco cast in "Deadly Sanctuary" (as the Marquis de Sade) and in his surreal thriller "Venus in Furs," which, despite the name, has nothing to do with book.

In one interview, I recall, Franco said he simply shot take after take until Kinski, exhausted, gave the performance Franco wanted. Who knew the trick to dealing with Kinski was so simple?

Most of what I think are Franco's best films are the ones he made with producer Harry Alan Towers. They include "Venus in Furs," "99 Women," and 1970's "Eugenie."

Those three starred Towers' wife, Maria Rohm, but Franco's two muses were Soledad Miranda, star of "Vampyros Lesbos," who died in a car wreck in 1970 when she was just 27, and the woman who would become his longtime companion, Lina Romay, who starred most memorably in 1973's "Female Vampire." They eventually married and stayed together until her death early last year.

For Franco there was no stopping. He kept making movies until the end.

His last film, "Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies," opened in Spain last month.

Culture Shock 03.08.12: McQuarrie brought Lucas' 'Star Wars' vision to life

Without Ralph McQuarrie there probably would be no "Star Wars." And if there were a "Star Wars" without him, it wouldn't look like the "Star Wars" we know.

McQuarrie, an illustrator and conceptual artist, painted the first visual depictions of George Lucas' galaxy of long, long ago and far, far away. When Lucas sought studio backing for "Star Wars," he used McQuarrie's paintings to sell skeptical movie executives on the film.

And when Lucas couldn't describe to his production designers and special effects technicians what he wanted, he let McQuarrie's illustrations do the talking.

"When words could not convey my ideas," Lucas said, "I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'Do it like this.' "

McQuarrie died Saturday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 82.

Soon after news of his death broke, the first tributes appeared on YouTube — sideshows of his paintings synchronized to selections from John Williams' "Star Wars" score, each one as good a reason to skirt copyright as any.

It was McQuarrie who designed the iconic look of Darth Vader, modeling Vader's helmet on those worn by samurai. And before any footage was shot, he had visualized the climactic attack on the Death Star.

Looking back at McQuarrie's earliest illustrations for "Star Wars," it's striking how similar they are to the finished film — and yet how different. There's a strangeness to some of those paintings. Maybe it's how C-3PO looks a lot like the robot from "Metropolis." And in the very earliest sketches, you get hints of a "Star Wars" that never was, a "Star Wars" Lucas still called "The Adventures of Luke Starkiller."

Others are reminiscent of the NASA concept art you used to find in books published in the 1960s and '70s, when it seemed like a future with daily space flights to huge spinning wheels in the sky was just around the corner. The similarity isn't accidental. Before he helped Lucas envision "Star Wars," McQuarrie was an aerospace illustrator for Boeing and an animator for CBS News' Apollo coverage.

McQuarrie's paintings gave "Star Wars" fans their first peek behind the scenes of the space saga. The illustrations appeared in some of the first official "Star Wars" magazines and were mixed in as inserts in packs of the first "Star Wars" trading cards.

To young fans back in 1977, it was a strange, new side of "Star Wars" we hadn't seen in theaters.

There is real power in McQuarrie's art. A painting for "The Empire Strikes Back" depicting Luke Skywalker running from his crashed snow speeder with an Imperial walker closing in the background manages to be just as menacing as anything in the movie itself.

McQuarrie worked on the original "Star Wars" trilogy as well as related projects like "Shadows of the Empire." But by the time Lucas was ready to make the prequel trilogy, McQuarrie was ready to bow out.

And maybe that's just as well, considering how the prequels turned out. Even he couldn't have saved them.

Besides "Star Wars," McQuarrie contributed to the original "Battlestar Galactica" and films like "E.T.," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." He designed a new USS Enterprise for the proposed "Star Trek: Phase II" TV series. And he won an Oscar for the special effects in "Cocoon."

We may never be sure what the future will look like, but we know what it's supposed to look like. It's supposed to look a lot like a Ralph McQuarrie painting.

Kim Jong Il Is Dead: A 'Tribute'

North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, the world's greatest filmmaker and star of Team America: World Police, has died. With the help of Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, I give you this tribute:

Culture Shock 12.01.11: Ken Russell was uncompromising in pursuit of excess

Challenged to make a movie so offensive even he would say it should be banned, British director Ken Russell came up with an eight-minute film called "A Kitten for Hitler."

The title is just the beginning. It's downhill from there. And did I mention it's a Christmas movie?

Best known for his adaptations of D.H. Lawrence novels and "Altered States," his psychedelic foray into science fiction, Russell died Sunday at age 84 after a series of strokes.

Many filmmakers are described as "uncompromising," but few have earned that descriptive so thoroughly as Russell, who was uncompromising in his pursuit of cinematic excess.

Baffled audiences? An occupational hazard. Outraged critics? Serves the bums right.

Often, to watch a Ken Russell film is to be assaulted by sight and sound. If film is a visual medium more than a narrative one, Russell carried that to its logical — or is it illogical? — conclusion. In his hands, even so straightforward a genre as the biopic becomes a mad experiment in imagery and symbolism. The facts of the matter, when they matter at all, are in service to what you see.

Russell described "The Music Lovers," his 1970 film about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as a movie about a homosexual who marries a nymphomaniac.

That's a cute way of putting it. It's also a story of repression, obsession and madness. One thing it's not is a literal biography of Tchaikovsky. But it shouldn't be taken literally in any case. It's a backdrop on which Russell can project the fantasies, fears, nightmares and delusions of his characters, all set to the compositions of the Russian composer at the center of the proceedings.

By the time the "1812 Overture" inevitably comes along, we're not surprised to see actual canons going off and beheading Tchaikovsky's tormentors.

Even when working with a more traditional narrative, as in "Altered States" or his adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Lair of the White Worm," Russell used dreams and hallucinations to stunning visual and thematic effect.

His frequent collaborator — you might even say "muse" — Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar for her role in Russell's "Women in Love," called him an "incredible visual genius." But he also was a director who got brave performances from his actors, whether from Jackson, as Tchaikovsky's doomed wife in "The Music Lovers," or the temperamental Oliver Reed, who shared an infamous nude wrestling scene with Alan Bates in "Women in Love."

For all his visual flair, it might still be possible to dismiss Russell if all there were to his films was the extravagance. In some of his movies, such as 1972's "Savage Messiah," it seems the only direction he gave the cast might have been, "Act louder!"

Not all of his experiments are successful. "Gothic," his 1986 retelling of how Mary Shelley came up with "Frankenstein," is absurd fun, but I'm not at all convinced it's actually a good movie.

Russell also tested the boundaries of subjects such as sex and religion, both of which tend to get artists into trouble. "The Devils," Russell's 1971's film set in a nunnery, deals with both, and it has yet to get a proper U.S. release in its uncut form.

When he didn't break a boundary, he at least showed the rest of us where it is.

In his later years, Russell returned to making television documentaries, which is where he started, and the cinema lost one of its most daring, original voices.

Ultimately, I'm not sure the world really knew what hit it when Russell burst upon the scene in the late 1960s.

And I'm not sure it knows now, either.

Peter Falk, RIP

James Arness, RIP

Actor James Arness has died, reports Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Fink. Arness was 88.

Although best known for his long-running role as Marshal Matt Dillon on TV's Gunsmoke for 20 seasons (1955-1975), Arness is also known among sci-fi fans as the original "Thing" in 1951's The Thing from Another World, aka The Thing.

Arness' younger brother, Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves, died last year at 83.

Culture Shock 04.21.11: 'Doctor Who' starts new season without best friend

I own a "Doctor Who" T-shirt emblazoned with the caption, "You never forget your first Doctor."

It's a reference to the 11 different actors who have portrayed the Doctor over the decades and how fans of the show usually will tell you their first Doctor is their favorite.

For me, that was Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor. Although he had already moved on by the time I first saw "Doctor Who" on public television in the mid-'80s, I caught him in reruns.

At the time, the Doctor's latest traveling companion in his journeys through time and space was Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen. And maybe it's also true that you never forget your first Doctor's companion, because all of these years and companions later, Sarah Jane is still my favorite.

That made the news even more of a shock when Sladen died Monday at age 63.

Sladen reportedly had been battling cancer for a while but had kept her illness secret from all but her family and closest friends. When her name started trending Tuesday afternoon on Twitter, fans hoped it was just another silly rumor of the sort that goes around Twitter at least once a week.

Then, Doctor Who Magazine and the BBC confirmed the news.

Later, word had spread to Entertainment Weekly's website, which demonstrates just how much of a foothold a formerly obscure British sci-fi series has gained in the often provincial United States.

Sladen's death came not long after the passing of her fellow "Doctor Who" co-star Nicholas Courtney, who died in February at age 81.

Throughout the 48-year history of "Doctor Who," the Doctor's companions have played a vital role. They're our window into the Doctor's wonderful and often inexplicable world. It's hard to relate to a 900-year-old alien who flits about in amazing blue box — called a TARDIS — that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. But we can relate to those lucky Earthlings he deems worthy or interesting enough to invite along on his travels.

And Sarah Jane was arguably the best of the lot, which puts her ahead of some pretty tough competition, from the feisty 18th century Scottish Highlander Jamie McCrimmon in the 1960s to, coincidentally, a feisty 21st century Scot, Amy Pond, today.

Traveling first with the third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and then Baker during 3½ seasons from 1973 to 1976, Sarah Jane was more than just someone the Doctor explained the plot to. She was smart, capable and able to take care of herself, although she did play the screaming damsel in distress on occasion — an unavoidable occupational hazard.

On screen, there was a special chemistry between Sladen and Baker. Of all the Doctor's companions, only Sarah Jane was his "best friend," and her departure from the TARDIS at the end of "The Hand of Fear" is one of the series' most powerful moments.

While most other companions leave never to return, "Doctor Who" keeps coming back to Sarah Jane. The first time, in 1981, was a pilot for a rejected spin-off series, "K9 and Company," in which Sarah Jane was the "company" to K9, a robotic dog who was another of the Doctor's former companions. Next, when "Doctor Who" returned to television in 2005 after a 16-year hiatus, so did Sarah Jane, appearing in the 2006 episode "School Reunion."

A new generation of "Doctor Who" fans was just as taken with Sarah Jane as the old one had been, and soon she was finally starring in her own spin-off, "The Sarah Jane Adventures," which has aired for four seasons. A fifth season was reportedly half filmed at the time of Sladen's death.

Before Tuesday, "Doctor Who" fans were eagerly anticipating the show's new season, which begins Saturday night at 8 on BBC America. Now, however, the occasion will be a little somber.

For a lot of Whovians, it feels like we've lost our best friend, too.

Culture Shock 02.24.11: Catching up with the in-box — Rand, X-Men, notable deaths

I'm going to catch up this week with some odds and ends from my in-box.

First, the trailer for "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," adapting the first third of Ayn Rand's best-selling novel, hit the Internet a couple of weeks ago. That was a surprise to those of us who thought the movie might never be released.

With a budget of just $5 million and a cast of TV actors — some very good, but none household names — "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" looked like a movie rushed into production just so the producer could retain the film rights, which were to expire the week cameras rolled.

Whether or not that was entirely the case, we now have a movie, and it's not going straight into a vault to gather dust.

Based on the preview trailer, "Atlas Shrugged" doesn't look as cheap as I'd feared, but it still looks more like a TV movie than a big-screen epic. And by focusing on scenes in which characters talk about steel mills and railroads, the trailer is not going to appeal to anyone who isn't familiar with Rand's story, which pits heroic entrepreneurs against big government.

You can see the trailer for yourself at www.atlasshruggedpart1 .com.

The movie is scheduled for limited release on, appropriately, April 15.

Another trailer that has defied my expectations is the one for "X-Men: First Class," the prequel to the movie series based on Marvel Comics' "Uncanny X-Men."

Marvel Studios has two movies of its own due out this summer, "Thor" and "Captain America: The First Avenger." But so far, "X-Men: First Class" — produced by 20th Century Fox under a deal that predates Marvel making its own films — looks more interesting than either of them.

Many longtime fans are not going to be happy. "X-Men: First Class" plays loose with established "X-Men" lore. And despite being a prequel to the three previous "X-Men" films, it doesn't really maintain continuity with them, either.

But I'm prepared to let "X-Men: First Class" be its own thing. And it looks like a groovy, 1960s period piece with lots of mod fashions. Now that's something you don't get out of most superhero movies.

The past two weeks have also brought three deaths of note.

Staying in the world of superheroes, writer Dwayne McDuffie died unexpectedly Monday. He was just 49.

McDuffie was the founder of Milestone Comics, an African-American-owned comic-book publisher, distributed and later absorbed by DC Comics. Later, he went to work for Cartoon Network, writing and producing shows like "Justice League Unlimited" — my pick for greatest superhero cartoon ever — and "Ben 10: Alien Force."

David F. Friedman died on Valentine's Day at age 87. A native of Birmingham who had retired to Anniston, Friedman was a groundbreaking low-budget movie producer. He is often credited with producing the first "gore" film, 1963's "Blood Feast," which earned $4 million on a budget of about $25,000.

He produced nearly 50 films, from "Two Thousand Maniacs" to "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" (under a pseudonym) to, finally, 2010's "2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams."

Finally, British actor Nicholas Courtney died Tuesday at 81.

In a career that included playing many authority figures, none was more authoritative than Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, commanding officer of UNIT during the original 1963-1989 run of "Doctor Who."

Although he didn't travel with The Doctor through space and time, he spent more time with The Doctor than any other of the Time Lord's many companions. Through most of the 1970s, he was as much a part of the show as The Doctor himself, and he returned to the role of the Brigadier one last time in 2008, on an episode of the "Doctor Who" spin-off "The Sarah Jane Adventures."

All three will be missed.

Culture Shock 08.26.10: Remembering Jack Horkheimer, the man who hustled stars

The name of his TV show might have changed, but Jack Horkheimer will always be the "star hustler" to me.

Horkheimer, the host of a weekly astronomy program aired by PBS stations nationwide, died Friday of a respiratory ailment. He was 72.

As executive director of the Miami Science Museum's Space Transit Planetarium since 1973, Horkheimer was already helping to bring the stars down to Earth. But his television show brought them to an entire generation, including me.

His show, "Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler" — renamed "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer" in 1997 — was a weekly tour of the heavens. It helped make astronomy accessible both to youngsters too young for Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" and to adults just learning to appreciate the wonders of the night sky.

"Star Hustler" began on Florida public television stations in 1976 and expanded to PBS stations nationwide in 1985, just in time for the return of 1P/Halley — better known as Halley's Comet — in 1986.

Depending on your local station, each episode ran either 5 minutes or 1 minute. In the '80s, Alabama Public Television aired the 5-minute "Star Hustler" on Saturday nights after "Doctor Who." It was a tag-team of science and science fiction.

Horkheimer's final "Star Gazer," taped before his death, airs next week, but it's already online at www.youtube.com/user/MiamiScienceMuseum.

Horkheimer's mission was to make astronomy fun for everyone, but especially beginners. His show focused on "naked eye" astronomy. So, he pointed out things you could see without the aid of an expensive telescope or even binoculars.

Still, a good pair of binoculars occasionally came in handy. Lucky for me, I'd bought a pair for once-in-a-lifetime Halley's Comet viewing.

If there was an interesting planetary alignment or a passing comet, Horkheimer let you know. He also gave his viewers tips for finding particular stars and constellations. For instance, instead of trying to find the constellation Sagittarius, the archer, by looking for the bow, Horkheimer would suggest looking for stars that seemed to form a teapot. Sagittarius is much easier to recognize that way. If only the ancient Greeks, who named the constellations, had known about teapots, maybe they would have thought the same.

Probably not. There's nothing heroic about teapots, but Horkheimer had that covered, too. He told the stories of the constellations, the mythology that drove the Greeks to find their gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, among the stars.

From Horkheimer, I learned even the stars have stories, like the North Star, Polaris. Located in the constellation Ursa Minor, or the Little Dipper, Polaris guided sailors and let them know how far north they were, based on how high it was in the horizon.

The farther north you go, the higher Polaris is, until, at the North Pole, it's directly overhead.

If Sagan came across as the cool college professor who'd invite you out for drinks after class, Horkheimer came across as a somewhat nutty but lovable uncle. As others observed, his on-air delivery was a lot like comedian Rip Taylor, which I suspect he played up, especially in later years, when, like Taylor, he sported a terrible yet endearing hairpiece. He was also a master of bad puns and catchphrases.

Horkheimer's enthusiasm for astronomy was infectious. Maybe it was his lame jokes or just his personality, but when he signed off each week with his signature, "Remember to keep looking up," I ran outside to see what the sky had to offer.

Long before he died, Horkheimer wrote his own joking epitaph: " ‘Keep Looking Up' was my life's admonition / I can do little else in my present position."

He'd want us to keep looking up, too.

Culture Shock 05.13.10: Frazetta leaves behind legacy of fantastic art

Frank Frazetta didn't create Tarzan or Conan the Barbarian, but he did bring both to life. His brush strokes transformed fantasy into reality.

Heroes and villains, monsters and maidens — Frazetta painted them all. His fantasy artwork, appearing mostly on magazine covers and paperback novels, depicted worlds that previously had resided only in the imagination.

Frazetta, the father of fantasy art, died Monday after suffering a stroke at his home in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.

Born in 1928 in Brooklyn, N.Y., Frazetta got his start in the 1940s, drawing for comic books and, later, newspaper strips like Al Capp's "Li'l Abner." But it wasn't until the 1960s that he found his true calling. That was when he began painting the cover illustrations for Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" stories, which were published in a dozen paperback volumes by Lancer Books and Ace Books.

Most of what people now think of when they think of the sword and sorcery genre comes from Frazetta's paintings.

Every cliché is there, but when Frazetta began painting, they weren't yet clichés: the thickly muscled barbarian warrior wielding his ax or sword in battle, naked (or mostly naked) maidens chained to dungeon walls and sacrificial alters, hideous monsters emerging from subterranean depths to prey on the innocent. Every sinewy muscle and every lurid detail pointed to Frazetta's passion for his art, which he pursued at the expense of a professional baseball career.

The 1982 film "Conan the Barbarian" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is as much the product of Frazetta's vision as it is Howard's. And the two visions are sometimes at odds because, as Frazetta once remarked, he never read the books.

"I didn't read any of it. It was too opposite of what I do. I told them that," Frazetta said. "So, I drew him (Conan) my way. It was really rugged. And it caught on. I didn't care about what people thought. People who bought the books never complained about it. They probably didn't read them."

People did read the books, but Frazetta was right about one thing — no one complained.

Frazetta reached his creative peak in the 1970s. He was still painting covers for the Conan series when he took up the adventures of two other classic pulp characters, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, both created decades earlier by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

With John Carter, like Conan, Frazetta had an entire world to imagine — a Mars populated by beautiful princesses and 12-foot-tall, four-armed warriors who call their planet Barsoom. When you see Frazetta's Dejah Thoris, you immediately know why Carter would take up arms against all of Mars to defend her.

Frazetta also painted magazine covers for Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, and the 1983 animated film "Fire and Ice" was based on characters he created.

His admirers include Clint Eastwood, who hired him to paint the promotional poster for his 1977 thriller "The Gauntlet," and George Lucas.

Frazetta also is the subject of Lance Laspina's 2003 documentary, "Painting with Fire." And "painting with fire" is as good a metaphor as you'll find for Frazetta's work.

Unfortunately, Frazetta's final year adds a sad footnote to his story. His wife and muse, Ellie, died after a yearlong battle with cancer, and their children subsequently squabbled over their father's original artwork.

For the rest of us, however, Frazetta's legacy is an enduring testament to the power of what art snobs try to dismiss as mere commercial art. That legacy is right there on our bookshelves.

Culture Shock 04.22.10: Carl Macek, the man who turned America Japanese, dies

You'll seldom see his name mentioned along with the likes of Walt Disney and Chuck Jones, but no one influenced animation during the past 25 years more than Carl Macek.

Macek, more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing Japanese animation, or anime, into the mainstream of American popular culture.

He died of a heart attack Saturday at age 58.

Macek's animation revolution started in 1985, when he produced the 85-episode sci-fi epic "Robotech," a sprawling saga in which humanity must fend off three successive alien invasions that threaten to destroy the Earth.

Macek created "Robotech" by cobbling together three unrelated Japanese series, rewriting each so that it became one chapter in a multi-generational story. He edited out the brief nudity and mild profanity that was fine by Japanese standards but would never fly for a cartoon on American broadcast television. But what he didn't do was tone down the story.

As a result, "Robotech" was, at the time, unique among animated programs on American TV. Major characters aged over time, learned from their experiences and sometimes even died defending their home planet. "Robotech" was a cartoon in which war was real and violence had consequences. As a result, it gained a strong cult following that continues today.

Even so, "Robotech" wasn't quite popular enough for Macek to find stable financial backing for his proposed sequel series, "Robotech II: The Sentinels." So he moved on, co-founding Streamline Pictures along with animation historian Jerry Beck.

Streamline was one of the first companies to dub popular Japanese movies into English for release theatrically and on home video in America. Its films included "Lensman," the adult-themed "Wicked City," the apocalyptic classic "Akira" and director Hayao Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro."

It was the first time mainstream American audiences were exposed to anime more sophisticated than cartoons like "Speed Racer" and "Gigantor." Macek had opened the floodgates for what was to come, both good and bad. By the late 1990s, anime was a fixture on U.S. television, to the delight of children and the horror of parents who found themselves spending hundreds of dollars on their children's Pokémon cards.

Then in 2002, Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" — distributed by Disney — won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, besting the first installment in the seemingly never-ending "Ice Age" series and cementing anime's place in the U.S.

But not everyone was pleased with Macek's efforts at the time. Purist anime fans criticized "Robotech," claiming it ruined three perfectly good Japanese series by combining them into one. And many disliked even more Streamline's policy of releasing only dubbed versions of Japanese films, rather than more faithful, subtitled versions.

What those critics failed to appreciate, however, was the financial environment Macek faced in the '80s and early '90s.

In order to place an animated series into weekday syndication, he needed a show with at least 65 episodes, and none of the three series he incorporated into "Robotech" met that number on its own. Also, anime was still this strange, new import from the Far East. Yet Macek was hoping to reach a broad audience, which meant making compromises.

Love it or hate it, his strategy was successful, and it helped create a market that would eventually make even the purists happy.

By now, an entire generation of Americans has grown up with Japanese animation, helping foster a new appreciation here for Japanese culture in general. And it all started with Carl Macek.

Culture Shock 09.17.09: Swayze leaves behind legacy of classic movie moments

I learned a lot from Patrick Swayze, like "It's my way or the highway," "Pain don't hurt," "Be nice until it's time to not be nice" and, most importantly, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

During a career that spanned 30 years, Swayze did one of the best things any actor can do for an audience. He made a lot of otherwise unwatchable movies watchable. From "Red Dawn" and "Road House" to "Next of Kin" and "Point Break," Swayze did a lot of heavy lifting that too often went unappreciated.

He died Monday after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

The question wasn't if, but when. Swayze had hoped for maybe five more years. He got just less than two. The one-year survival rate for the most common form of pancreatic cancer is just 20 percent, while the five-year survival rate is only 4 percent.

Yet Swayze faced his fate with courage and grace. He continued to work almost until the end, starring in the AMC television drama "The Beast" and appearing in the independent film "Powder Blue" opposite Jessica Biel and Forest Whitaker.

While his brave fight with cancer shouldn't be forgotten, Swayze will always be remembered most as a 1980s movie icon. I admit, I'm not much of a "Ghost" fan — it's the ultimate chick flick, with all that entails. But even I will concede that "Dirty Dancing" is a pretty good movie, carried largely by Swayze's performance as both an actor and a dancer.

Yes, in case you forgot, Swayze was a dancer before he was a movie star, and it was his skill on the dance floor that helped land him his first movie role as bad boy Ace in 1979's now all-but-forgotten disco flick "Skatetown, U.S.A."

By 1983, Swayze was appearing in major motion pictures like "The Outsiders," director Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel.

The next year, Swayze starred in the film that would help cement his presence on cable television for the next decade, "Red Dawn," writer/director John Milius' tale of teenagers fending off a Soviet invasion.

"Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost" made Swayze a romantic lead (and People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive"), while "Road House" — another cable-TV mainstay — made Swayze an action star, a role he followed up with 1991's "Point Break."

And just when you thought you had seen everything, he played a drag queen in "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar."

Swayze never won any acting awards, although he did receive Golden Globe nominations for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and "To Wong Foo." But along the way, he left behind plenty of classic moments, from his "Unchained Melody" scene at the pottery wheel with Demi Moore in "Ghost" to his Chippendales dance number with Chris Farley on "Saturday Night Live."

That's a legacy most entertainers would kill for.

Some of Patrick Swayze's most memorable moments:
His first film, "Skatetown, U.S.A."
"It's my way or the highway" speech from "Road House."
Final dance from "Dirty Dancing."
"Patrick Swayze Christmas" sketch from "Mystery Science Theater 3000."
"Saturday Night Live" Chippendales sketch.