Rebels of Mars

Ok, Breasts, Now What About Beasts?

All this talk about Breasts (and beautiful breasts they are) reminds me there is the opposite side of the coin -- Beasts! ERB was full of Beasts, such as the Barsoomian spiders in A Fighting Man of Mars.

Wouldn't it be possible, with all the advanced computer graphics today, to take the face of, say the late Betty Friedan and make it into a spider's head? Regular spiders are just so passe' -- we need something truly frightening.

And I know what it is! You're looking at it above!

Posted by Bob Wallace, who screams, "My eyes! My eyes!"

The Angry Red Planet

I saw The Angry Red Planet when I was about five. It scared the daylights out of me, although when I saw it years later it wasn't scary at all, or even very good. But it's different when you're five.

The bat-spider thing didn't really scare me, and I felt sorry for it when it got zapped by some kind of weapon and got blinded.

I was a little scared by the gigantic amoeba that tried to engulf the spaceship, but what really scared me was when one astronaut's arm fell out of a bunk he was lying in, covered by some kind of fungal growth. AHHH!!! That scared me. Fortunately the doc fixed him up right fast. Whew!

Posted by Bob Wallace, who watches all kinds of really awful sci-fi films from the '50's.

You Say Muga-to, I Say Mu-gat-o

The Mugato was a a guy in a white ape suit with an ice-cream cone upended on his head. He was one of the many monsters in the original Star Trek. If you want to take a look at him, cheaply, I recommend Danel Cohen's skinny little paperback book, The Monsters of Star Trek. Actually, I recommend anything by Cohen, all of whose books are skinny little paperback books, really for kids but enjoyable by the kid in adults.

Posted by Bob Wallace, who thinks Mugato sounds like an '80s band on MTV.