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Book Review: Only the Dead Know Burbank by Bradford Tatum

Only the Dead Know Burbank by Bradford Tatum

HarperCollins Publishers, 2016

ISBN: 9780062428752

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Only the Dead Know Burbank starts out in post-World War I Germany, after the Spanish flu epidemic has passed. Maddy Ulm, a young woman whose mother cast a mysterious spell on her before her premature death, pulls herself out of her own grave. She discovers she cannot die, but she also cannot age, and when she eats, she tastes nothing but ash. She knows nothing of where her mother has gone; she is alone. She sets out to find…something? Someone? She’s not quite sure. She eventually meets and joins up with street performers, including Mutter, an injured soldier with a love of theatrics. Together, they perform dramatic traumas and seeming resurrections on the small stage. Then Maddy discovers film, and her love of the horrific. When Universal Pictures discovers one of her masterpieces, Maddy travels to Hollywood. There, she meets and works with some of the Hollywood greats, creating some of the most memorable images in horror history. She channels her innate knowledge of the supernatural, fear, death, and undeath into her art, but is never allowed to head the projects she loves so much. She wants more. Throughout her story, she catches glimpses of her mother, occasionally meeting with her and her father. As the story progresses, Maddy discovers more about herself, her family, and what she is capable of.

I was apprehensive about this at the beginning. Maddy’s childhood is nothing more than a mother providing for her child and surviving the only way she knew how—through sex, death, and art. Maddy was never shielded from anything happening, and was even present at times. It would be fair to say Maddy was never treated as a child. She came into the world observing the adult world through her mother, a very cold woman who withheld any kind of affection from Maddy. Dealing with her mother makes Maddy a survivor, and she develops skills that aid her through the rest of her life, leading her to become an extremely strong female character.

Mutter is another character in this story worth mentioning. Mutter, before his injury, was a German soldier who Maddy encountered briefly when her mother was entertaining the troops. Maddy feels a strong attachment to Mutter, and he acts as a protector to her, providing her with the familial love that she never experienced as a child.

The historic figures written into the story are fantastic. Cheney was given a very respectful characterization, but I think Tatum was even more sensitive to Boris Karloff. Being an avid fan of Karloff’s, I was pleased with the sensitivity and respect he gave to his characterization of one of the genre’s greatest actors. Maddy is especially drawn to him because of the kindness in the man’s eyes, and his physical stature. She was looking for someone to play the creature in Frankenstein, rejecting the director’s demand for the horrific, and instead obtaining someone with a certain sorrow in the eyes, something which Maddy herself comes to grips with along the way in her own life. Tatum clearly did his research on early horror cinema in both Berlin and Hollywood, and combined with his original approach and well-drawn characters, this is a pleasure to read. Recommended.

 

Contains: physical and psychological abuse, some sex

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

 

Kaiju Movie Marathon on July 18

  One cool thing about running this site is that occasionally I get press releases for stuff that is pretty cool.  I just received one from Famous Monsters of Filmland about an event they are partnering on with streaming television website Shout! Factory: a 24 hour Kaiju movie marathon that will take place this Saturday, July 18.  It will be hosted by Kaiju expert August Ragone. I don’t know if we will get to see any of it here, but the Monster Kid is mega-excited about it. He loves Ultra Seven.

I had not head of Shout! previously, but it claims to be a free, advertising-free streaming channel that also carries a lot of older horror and science fiction movies. So even if Kaiju movies aren’t your thing, you may want to check it out. If you do, I would be interested in knowing your experience and whether you think it’s worth recommending to others.  The lineup for the Kaiju movie marathon is as follows:

12:00AM — Godzilla, The Uncut Japanese Original (1954)
1:45AM — Ultra Q Episodes
5:15AM — Ultra Seven Episodes
6:30AM — Godzilla, King Of The Monsters (1954)
8:15AM — Ultra Seven Episodes
9:00AM — Rodan (1956)
10:30AM — Ultra Seven Episodes
11:15AM — Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
12:45PM — Ultra Seven Episodes
1:30PM — Godzilla Vs. The Thing (1964)
3:15PM — Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster (1964)
5:00PM — Monster Zero (1965)
6:45PM — Godzilla’s Revenge (1969)
8:15PM — Terror Of Mechagodzilla (1975)
10:00PM — Godzilla, The Uncut Japanese Original (1954)
11:45PM — Godzilla’s Revenge (1969)

 

Also, since I received the press release from Famous Monsters of Filmland, I will share with you that the cover of their next issue, #281, looks like a rather remarkable visual interpretation of “Godzilla vs. Cthulhu”, and it’s worth taking a look.

 

The Invisible Man @ your library

No, not Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This one. I understand that it can get confusing. Certainly, the reviewers on Amazon seem confused.

Why yes, I do love this picture.

The Invisible Man is often overlooked, and he’s not only important culturally, but has morphed in some pretty cool ways (link). So I thought I’d shine a light on him, so to speak, and share some information, and some resources, about this unusual monster. Note, if you’re going to be making a homemade Halloween costume for an 8 year old boy who loves monsters, as I am, this is an easy one.

Every single one of the items pictured below is related in some way to the Invisible Man. Want to find out how?

                                    

What with Teen Read Week’s theme this year of “Seek the Unseen” it seems like the perfect time to give some visibility to a human monster often lost in the crowd: the Invisible Man. While the Invisible Man doesn’t have the iconic status of vampires, zombies, man-made creatures, and werewolves, he has, in his invisible way, insinuated himself into popular culture.

As with Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Invisible Man has literary origins, first appearing in a novella of the same name by the famed H.G. Wells. And as with Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man is a cautionary tale about the perils of pride, in taking science just a step too far in the direction of a nightmare. In the novel, Griffin, a scientist who has discovered the secret of invisibility, and tested it on himself, arrives in a small town hoping to complete experiments that will allow him to reverse the process. Obsessed and ambitious even at the beginning, he becomes more and more detached from humanity and willing to commit destructive and amoral acts, until finally he is killed and becomes visible again. The novella was made into a Universal horror film in the 1930s, and since then he has been represented in a number of different ways: as an increasingly psychopathic and violent monster(in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for instance); as a redemptive figure unrelated to the Wells novel except for possessing the power of invisibility(such as the one in the Sci-Fi channel series The Invisible Man); and as an entertaining member of ensemble-related monster movies such as Mad Monster Party and Hotel Transylvania. Queen even introduced him into the world of music with their song “The Invisible Man”. Yet, while he continues to resurface, it doesn’t seem to me that he is especially noticeable (par for the course, I suppose). Many of the tropes of invisibility that appear throughout popular culture (including Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility) can be attributed to The Invisible Man, though, including tween and teen novels (a few are pictured above)  and media (Out of Sight, Out of Mind is a favorite Buffy episode of mine)  I will take a moment to note that the original movie has really awesome special effects– here’s a link— so this is also an opportunity to pull out books on that topic!  As you prepare to seek the unknown for Teen Reed Week you might consider him, and ask teens to consider this: if you had the power of invisibility, what would you do? Where would you go? What kind of person would you want to be?