Valerian Volume 1 (1967-69/ Collected 2017): written by Pierre Christin; illustrated by Jean-Claude Mezieres; translated by Jerome Saincantin: Before it was a blockbuster financial bomb of a movie directed by Luc Besson, Valerian was a beloved French comic strip ('Bande Dessinee' or 'BD' for short). It began in the late 1960's and influenced Besson and many others French and otherwise.
This volume collects the first three Valerian story arcs. Thankfully, as anyone can attest who lived through the awful English translations of major European comics appearing in Heavy Metal in the 1980's, the translation here is excellent.
Writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mezieres start off slowly, but by the third adventure ("The Empire of a Thousand Planets"), they've really hit their stride. Valerian is a science-fiction adventure set in the far future. Agent Valerian can travel through both time and space to protect his present day, and he does, recruiting medieval peasant Laureline in the first adventure. The first two adventures involve time travel and are intermittently enjoyable.
By the third adventure, Jean-Claude Mezieres's art has progressed immensely from the awkward cartooniness of the first two adventures. Things are still cartoony, but Valerian and Laureline no longer look like Keane kids. His visuals of alien planets and space battles also take a great leap forward. The third adventure is thoroughly engaging. It would have made a great movie. Too bad Besson chose to throw a bunch of Valerian adventures into a blender and then throw the result on the screen.
Christin's writing doesn't have as far to go as the art, but he has also improved markedly by the third adventure. One can see how the strip became beloved. It may have elements of the then-contemporary and the classic science-fiction strip, from Barberella back to Alex Raymond's beautifully illustrated Flash Gordon of the 1930's, but Valerian is also its own comic strip. BD, that is. Laureline and Valerian are hyper-competent without being boring, and the third adventure involves a pretty solid 'Twist' towards the end.
I don't know that I'll revisit Valerian. But I may -- it's certainly superior by the end of this first volume to an awful lot of science-fiction comics. And the second story arc demonstrates that even French comic-strip creators love them some Jerry Lewis. Recommended.
Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told (a.k.a The Liver Eaters; a.k.a. Cannibal Feast): written and directed by Jack Hill; starring Lon Chaney Jr. (Bruno), Carol Ohmart (Emily), Quinn Redeker (Peter), Beverly Washburn (Elizabeth), Jill Banner (Virginia), Sid Haig (Ralph), Mary MItchell (Ann), and Karl Schanzer (Schlocker) (1967): The Merrye family has a problem: as they age, they gradually turn into cannibals. Then they turn into bipedal spiders. Then they turn into spiders. Yikes.
Made for the grand total of $65,000 in 1964 and unreleased until 1967, Spider Baby is a weirdly awesome piece of schlock cinema. It plays for the most part like a bleak horror comedy. The producers, perhaps not entirely sure of what to do with their movie, placed a jokey credit sequence at the beginning, complete with star Lon Chaney Jr. singing a title song in the vein of "Monster Mash."
Oh, Lon Chaney Jr.. He's a tribute to the working actor here, gamely playing the Merrye family's caretaker/butler/chauffeur with a sort of wounded, lunatic comic sympathy. He got all of $2500 for the role and earned every bit of it.
The actors playing 'normal' people are all pretty terrible, though that may be a matter of direction. The Addams Family-style farce they seem to be acting in doesn't seem to synchronize at all with the bleaker, blacker comedy of the merry mutating Merryes. Besides faithful Bruno, there are Virginia and Elizabeth, homicidal sisters, and Ralph, simple-minded devourer of cats.
The production's cheapness and crudity serve it in good stead, though. There's a perverted sense of authenticity to the movie, along with moments of horror and revulsion. There's no graphic violence to speak of, but what's implied is generally more than enough.
Whether or not later film-makers were actually influenced by the movie may be irrelevant -- though I"d certainly believe that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shares more than a few DNA strands with Spider Baby. It's an authentic, primitive American horror original. Casual racism and what may or may not be a rape scene will almost certainly offend some people. Nonetheless, Spider Baby is a weird little masterpiece when taken on its own terms. Highly recommended.
