How do you remake "Faces of Death," not exactly a narrative film that mostly drew attention for including – or claiming to include, anyway – real footage of people dying? It's not like a major studio was going to stitch together genuine autopsy and car wreck footage and drop that shit in AMCs nationwide. Secondly, why would you want to? Does the title have much name recognition among the general public, outside the realm of hardcore horror buffs? These are the debates I recall with my MovieManiacs.net forum bros all the way back in 2006, when it was announced that Universal's genre label Rogue Pictures would be remaking "Faces of Death." This was during the 2000's remake trend, when seemingly every cult classic of any note was getting a greenlight for a shiny redo. So "Faces," of all titles, was an unlikely pick but truly no more obscure than "The House on Sorority Row" or "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." J.T. Petty was attached, a filmmaker who had previously made a mockumentary about snuff films, leading to speculation that his "Faces of Death" would follow a similar route. I vaguely recall some chatter about turning Dr. Gröss into a proper horror villain. Obviously, this iteration didn't get beyond the embryonic stage. Petty made a few more movies but seems to have shifted his focus to writing for video games these days. Rogue Pictures faced death in 2018.
In the intervening twenty years, cell phones with HD cameras, inescapable social media, and a world more divided than ever has made real footage of death and destruction distressingly accessible. Clearly, in such a landscape, the idea of a new "Faces of Death" remained intriguing. This is presumably why Legendary acquired the rights in 2021, Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei attached to write and direct. Considering their film "Cam" had some real insight into life in the digital age, I was very curious about what form this project might take. Filmed in 2023, Goldhaber and Mazzei's "Faces of Death" spent three years trying to find distribution before IFC and Shudder actually did put it in AMCs nationwide this past April. It didn't make a lot of money but won positive reviews from the horror press, so time for me to catch up.
Margot is an adrift twenty-something working as a content moderator at Kino, a short-form video focused app. When an upload is reported, she's the one who has to make the choice of whether it contains objectionable material. She has chosen this difficult job as a way to cope with her own internet-related trauma: While performing a viral dance on some tracks, her sister was killed by an oncoming train. The clip leaked online and Margot became forever known as “Train Girl.” At work, she is presented with a clip depicting a bound person being decapitated by automated mannequins. She assumes it to be fake but the imagery sticks with her. Similar uploads soon appear, each depicting a person being violently killed by mechanized mannequins while a droll voice-over describes what is happening. Margot becomes increasingly convinced that the uploads are real and, after some sleuthing and with help from her horror buff roommate, learns that these are recreations of moments from the infamous “Faces of Death.” She's right. The videos are the work of Arthur, an internet-obsessed serial killer who is capturing people and using them as props in his deadly remake. Margot investigates further, soon drawing the attention of Arthur himself.
As much as tech company overlords hope to eventually replace all paycheck demanding employees with computational models, as of this moment, a human being is double-checking the online content reported by a third party. This means every time a gore video, child pornography, animal abuse, and every other horrible thing you can imagine is taken down off Youtube or TikTok, presumably at least two sets of flesh-and-blood eyeballs had to look at it first. Unsurprisingly, this is a profession with a high rate of turnover, most not willing to deal with the psychological scars of seeing the worst humanity has to offer for eight hours a day. Setting a story around a job such as this is a fascinating premise. Now corporations are essentially paying people to watch private little “Faces of Death” videos every day, all day. If you stretch this idea out further, it means that shocking and violent imagery has become ubiquitous on the modern internet. Every time we open our app of choice, we are all taking a chance of seeing something way worse than staged footage of monkey brains being eaten.
Goldhaber and Mazzei touch on the side effects of this in interesting ways. At the beginning of the story, Margot is no longer phased by videos of people taking nasty falls or of a bear dragging away a possibly dead body. She dismisses the first real murder she observes as a clever hoax. When she wants to get the police involved, her boss informs her to hold back, to allow disturbing content (as long as it's “fake”) to proliferate for now, because it's good for the shareholders. Outrageous content drives eyeballs and that makes money. When trying to determine if what she is seeing is real, she posts the clips to Reddit, where one commenter declares them to likely be real and then says it's a “nice find.” What the fuck has the world done to us, where watching real death and human degradation has become a tedious job to some and a fascinating hobby to others?
The film has few concrete answers, which are probably impossible to find anyway. Margot's own life is a consequence of this modern age. Where we are all obsessed with watching, real tragedies are recorded and spread around endlessly, and we all face it with little sense of injustice or outrage. Watching your little sister get hit by a train sucks and being constantly reminded of this all the time must surely chip away at the soul. Margot's personal tragedy has been reduced to a meme. That viral penetration is what the film's villain hopes to create with his murder clips, to achieve infamy by turning his victims' dying moments into internet hits. One of the first people he abducts is a would-be social media star, a teenage girl whose life seems to revolve around her phone's lens. Eventually, all Margot can do is accept her infamy and do her best to live on. The powers that be – the cops, the corporate overseers, other people with the power to step in – aren't going to do anything about it. It's up to the individual. This is the world we live in and we're stuck with it, some of us doomed to hunger for that viral superstardom and others cursed by it.
It's the most honest conclusion the filmmakers could probably come to, even if it causes their “Faces of Death” to brush up against the often regurgitated horror theme of resolving personal trauma. However, more interesting ideas are within the film and remain frustratingly unexplored. When Margot first sees the violent clips, she doesn't believe they are real. (Much as in the original “Faces of Death,” a movie that less honestly played with the layers of reality.) This is also something all of us must deal with. All of us most be critical and skeptical of everything we see online now, because any of it could be fake. If we doubt our own eyes, what even is reality? The film's murderer is a sociopath, who sees other people as nothing but a means to an end. He cynically decides to pattern his killing spree after a cult classic 1970s mondo movie because “people love remakes.” It'll draw more attention to his crimes and insure his name goes down in history. All of his victims, people with lives and dreams of their own the script reminds us, might as well be A.I. simulacrums to him. This is not unlike an ice-cold studio exec, reducing all artistic endeavor to “content” that must be deployed in a calculated, revenue-generating fashion. Then again, if you watch a video about Iranian children burning to death after their home is struck by a missile and then pause and wonder “Is this AI generated?,” that's a damning statement about how the modern, capitalized era has fundamentally altered the empathy centers in all of our brains.
The film ultimately looses the thread of the malleability of the truth, what that means for us, and how it reflects on our relationship with all the images we see on a screen. This must still be a thrilling narrative. That it certainly is. Mazzei and Goldhaber's script is well organized. They patiently, naturally lays out minor details that will become important later. Rather than Chekov's Gun, we have Chekov's Opioid Antagonist and Chekov's Metal Spike. The film is extremely tight in its editing. A split-screen sequence devoted to showing how Arthur easily determines Margot's identity and location from what she's posted online is a chilling reflection of how fragile our personal safety is now. The killer's identity being revealed right away allows multiple sequences of drawn-out suspense, where we watch as an unaware victim is observed by the person who means them harm. Multiple well done sequences of sneaking around, hoping to avoid detection, follow. The script smartly keeps other information close to its chest, waiting to reveal some aspects of Arthur's operation until Margot herself is discovering it. An attack in a darkened suburban home or a race from the killer's lair, as he spies his fleeing victims through the scope of a rifle, are excellently assembled variations on the same slasher movie tropes and Hitchcockian thriller techniques we've seen a hundred times before.
If 2026's “Faces of Death” falls short of the bigger ideas it plays with, I can't hold that against the filmmakers too much. Goldfaber and Mazzei are extremely smart and know what they are doing. They've made a suspenseful, absorbing, grim horror movie here. More than one person has declared it to be a better “Scream” reboot than the actual “Scream” reboots we've gotten. This is also true, the movie actually presenting interesting observations about our modern relationships with violent images, old and new, within the context of an exciting killer thriller. The killer even wears a white mask, though the red contact lens are a nice touch. Also much like a “Scream” movie, Darce Montgomery's serial killer explains the thesis behind his master plan, also explaining part of what the filmmakers mean too. Montgomery also probably goes a little too far in acting like a screeching weirdo. (He also calls someone a “cuck” which, along with his overall shouting demeanor, causes us to assume he's right-wing or incel adjacent.) There's at least one sick, gnarly reveal that made me gag. The film also includes probably the best depiction I've seen yet of someone falling down an internet rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with a bizarre mystery they've discovered. Margot is so absorbed with getting the truth out that she actually delays escaping from the villain's house sooner, much to the annoyance of the other person there. Which is a good way to signal to the viewer that we are suppose to find her commitment to solving this thing unreasonably. But sometimes you get caught up in stuff.
As a homage to John Alan Schwartz' largely mercenary original, 2026's “Faces of Death” is probably better than it deserves. The infamous Gorgon Video VHS release gets prominently featured. The re-creations of the original's most infamous moments are arguably creepier and better made here than in the seventies film. Should've sneaked the original's corny-ass theme song in there somewhere though. I was waiting for that. I also was amused by the way the remake's marketing played on the sense of being forbidden, much like the original did. Good to know we can still kind of pull that marketing gimmick off in the modern day, even if it's largely ironic. On the short list of meta “remakes,” this is a pretty good one. The ultimate horror film about the terror of the social media age and the dehumanizing effects of living behind a screen has yet to be made but this one is well done. Legendary missed a chance to make a collectable hollowed out monkey head popcorn bucket though. [7/10]
In the intervening twenty years, cell phones with HD cameras, inescapable social media, and a world more divided than ever has made real footage of death and destruction distressingly accessible. Clearly, in such a landscape, the idea of a new "Faces of Death" remained intriguing. This is presumably why Legendary acquired the rights in 2021, Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei attached to write and direct. Considering their film "Cam" had some real insight into life in the digital age, I was very curious about what form this project might take. Filmed in 2023, Goldhaber and Mazzei's "Faces of Death" spent three years trying to find distribution before IFC and Shudder actually did put it in AMCs nationwide this past April. It didn't make a lot of money but won positive reviews from the horror press, so time for me to catch up.
As much as tech company overlords hope to eventually replace all paycheck demanding employees with computational models, as of this moment, a human being is double-checking the online content reported by a third party. This means every time a gore video, child pornography, animal abuse, and every other horrible thing you can imagine is taken down off Youtube or TikTok, presumably at least two sets of flesh-and-blood eyeballs had to look at it first. Unsurprisingly, this is a profession with a high rate of turnover, most not willing to deal with the psychological scars of seeing the worst humanity has to offer for eight hours a day. Setting a story around a job such as this is a fascinating premise. Now corporations are essentially paying people to watch private little “Faces of Death” videos every day, all day. If you stretch this idea out further, it means that shocking and violent imagery has become ubiquitous on the modern internet. Every time we open our app of choice, we are all taking a chance of seeing something way worse than staged footage of monkey brains being eaten.
The film has few concrete answers, which are probably impossible to find anyway. Margot's own life is a consequence of this modern age. Where we are all obsessed with watching, real tragedies are recorded and spread around endlessly, and we all face it with little sense of injustice or outrage. Watching your little sister get hit by a train sucks and being constantly reminded of this all the time must surely chip away at the soul. Margot's personal tragedy has been reduced to a meme. That viral penetration is what the film's villain hopes to create with his murder clips, to achieve infamy by turning his victims' dying moments into internet hits. One of the first people he abducts is a would-be social media star, a teenage girl whose life seems to revolve around her phone's lens. Eventually, all Margot can do is accept her infamy and do her best to live on. The powers that be – the cops, the corporate overseers, other people with the power to step in – aren't going to do anything about it. It's up to the individual. This is the world we live in and we're stuck with it, some of us doomed to hunger for that viral superstardom and others cursed by it.
The film ultimately looses the thread of the malleability of the truth, what that means for us, and how it reflects on our relationship with all the images we see on a screen. This must still be a thrilling narrative. That it certainly is. Mazzei and Goldhaber's script is well organized. They patiently, naturally lays out minor details that will become important later. Rather than Chekov's Gun, we have Chekov's Opioid Antagonist and Chekov's Metal Spike. The film is extremely tight in its editing. A split-screen sequence devoted to showing how Arthur easily determines Margot's identity and location from what she's posted online is a chilling reflection of how fragile our personal safety is now. The killer's identity being revealed right away allows multiple sequences of drawn-out suspense, where we watch as an unaware victim is observed by the person who means them harm. Multiple well done sequences of sneaking around, hoping to avoid detection, follow. The script smartly keeps other information close to its chest, waiting to reveal some aspects of Arthur's operation until Margot herself is discovering it. An attack in a darkened suburban home or a race from the killer's lair, as he spies his fleeing victims through the scope of a rifle, are excellently assembled variations on the same slasher movie tropes and Hitchcockian thriller techniques we've seen a hundred times before.
As a homage to John Alan Schwartz' largely mercenary original, 2026's “Faces of Death” is probably better than it deserves. The infamous Gorgon Video VHS release gets prominently featured. The re-creations of the original's most infamous moments are arguably creepier and better made here than in the seventies film. Should've sneaked the original's corny-ass theme song in there somewhere though. I was waiting for that. I also was amused by the way the remake's marketing played on the sense of being forbidden, much like the original did. Good to know we can still kind of pull that marketing gimmick off in the modern day, even if it's largely ironic. On the short list of meta “remakes,” this is a pretty good one. The ultimate horror film about the terror of the social media age and the dehumanizing effects of living behind a screen has yet to be made but this one is well done. Legendary missed a chance to make a collectable hollowed out monkey head popcorn bucket though. [7/10]
Velnio nuotaka
I don't buy movies on discs as much as I used to or would like to. This is mostly out of a desire to save money and because physical space for my collections is at a premium these days. Another reason is that the boutique DVD scene moves faster than I can keep up with. It seems like every month, a new label devoted to unearthing hidden gems and exporting international obscurities has popped up. What the hell is Deaf Crocodile, aside from a semi-aquatic reptile with a hearing aid? It's a home media company launched in 2025 that mostly specializes in art house cinema and animation from Eastern Europe and former Soviet Bloc countries. They are doing noble work but this is a corner of the film buff world I don't often explore. I first read about "Devil's Bride" years ago, a folk horror-tinged musical considered a classic in its home country of Lithuania. I assumed it was one of those titles so obscure in the English-speaking world that I would probably never get to see it. Instead, Deaf Crocodile gave it a loving restoration and it's currently streaming for free on Tubi. What a time to be alive. Let's delve into this more.
Our story begins in Heaven, with a flock of angels singing the praises of a sleepy, bored God on a golden throne. Whenever he nods off, the angels sneak away to indulge in some earthly vices. One such ethereal being's not-so-virtuous activities are discovered and plucked out of Heaven. The being lands on Earth as the demon, Pinčiukas. He is soon found by elderly miller, Baltaragis, who ensnares the devil and makes him his slave. Baltaragis insists that the demon give him a beautiful wife and success and, in exchange, Pinčiukas will receive the couple's first-born daughter. This comes to pass but demons are a tricky sort and Baltaragis' wife perishes after birthing their daughter. The child grows up into Jurga, a stunning young woman. She quickly catches the eye of traveling laborer Girdvainus and the two fall in love. Determined to get his promised end of the bargain, Pinčiukas goes about manipulating and tricking the people in the village into breaking the young couple up. (While Baltaragis, full of regret, tries to set the demon up with his hefty, sexually veracious sister.)
This is a fitting atmosphere for a musical to capture. Characters bursting into song and dance already establish this as an improbable story so it's good that the environment matches. The clear visual inspiration for "Devil's Bride," at least to my doofus American eyes with no prior familiarity with Lithuanian cinema, is "The Sound of Music." While these hills and field are certainly alive with melodies and harmonies, the soundtrack is far from Rogers and Hammerstein. "Devil's Bride" is instead powered by a consistently groovy rock guitar. There's a little bit of fuzz to the funky chords too, rooting the film's sound firmly to the early seventies psychedelic rock scene. "Devil's Bride" is a sung-through musical and I don't usually like those. It's hard for any song to stick out from the rest when the entire movie is singing. Individual melodies or lyrics tend to fade into a mishmash of indistinct notes. I guess "Devil's Bride" is not immune to this. I wasn't humming any bars or had any single songs stuck in my head after watching. However, the various movements are linked enough to the individual scenes, and the feelings they are summoning, to make it work for me. The music here is fun and bouncy, sung in a meaningful way, and always matches the emotional flow of the story.
"Devil's Bride" is probably not the best choice for an autumnal horror marathon. Yes, there are demons in the story but the main one is a guy with a silly beard in a funny hat, not horns and hooves. His acts of supernatural deception are more mischievous than startling. The eternal damnation that usually follows deals with devils doesn't come up much. (This is opposed to the source material, a 1945 novel by Kazys Boruta with a notably downbeat conclusion.) The element that most pushes the movie into the spooky set is a last act montage of "Witchfinder General" style binding and dunking. Otherwise, this one is heavy on the "folk" but not-so-much the horror. There's been a couple of horror movies made in Lithuania more recently, if you're trying to find a truly macabre example. However, I still had a great time with "Devil's Bride," a brief but delightful dose of music and the fantastique rich with cultural specificity. [7/10]
Much like his “Star Trek” co-lead, Leonard Nimoy was a great Canadian export. This makes it only sensible that, while monologing gravely about preposterous bullshit on “In Search Of...,” that he would discuss what is commonly called Canada's Loch Ness Monster. That would be Ogopogo, a serpent-like creature said to inhabit British Columbia's Lake Okanagan. The “In Search Of...” crew did their due diligence and connect the legend to local tales from the Secwepmc and Syilx tribes. They talk of a spirit dwelling in the lake called Naitaka, who offerings are made to before crossing. The documentary crew also sought out a diver, who swims around the lake and finds nothing much but rocks and cold. Mostly, the half-hour is filled out with stories from people who have claimed to have seen the monster. Before “in Search Of...” presents what they call the most compelling piece of evidence of Ogopogo's existence: A blurry home movie of a dark, splotchy shape moving under the water.
As I mentioned when talking about “In Search OF's” episode devoted to Bigfoot, it's hard to deny that the evidence presented here isn't that convincing. Nimoy's host segments note how sincere and credible these eye-witness accounts are. This is in the same episode where some local pranksters pushed three tires attached to a inflatable dingy out onto the lake to hoax the TV show. When you look at the playful smiles on the faces of the people telling their tales, or the hard-to-believe claim that a couple has seen the serpent “forty or fifty times,” I would say we can never dispel people's tendency to just make shit up for their own amusement. Nor the need of authors to sell their work, as the presenter of the above mentioned home movie also wrote a book on the topic of Ogopogo.
A scientist at an aquarium compares what he supposedly saw in Lake Okanagan to a shark's skin. That would be a more notable statement if even experts weren't susceptible to bias and their own imagination. The episode's most convincing statements come from the episode's resident skeptic, trotted at the end. He points out that the lake is too small to support a breeding population of such a large animal. That it was formed by glaciers millions of years ago, with no connection to larger bodies of water since then. Though he does concede that “sea monsters,” in the sense of a large animal of some sort living in the depths of the ocean, can be said to exist.
This episode probably needed more of “In Search Of's” trademark creaky reenactments. The episode begins with a pretty good segment re-creating a young wake-boarder screaming upon encountering the supposed beast. Otherwise, we simply get footage of some Native Americans sitting around a camp fire. Which isn't to say this episode doesn't have some camp value. The extremely Canadian accents of the people interviewed made me chuckle, with one fellow even ending his sentence with “eh?” Or a reporter who describes coming to the lake and hearing about the monster with baffled amusement. “In Search Of...” was never great television but it was incredibly cozy. I am not immune to the charms of lo-fi blurping seventies electronic music playing over footage of Moray eels squirming around a tank. [7/10]
As I mentioned when talking about “In Search OF's” episode devoted to Bigfoot, it's hard to deny that the evidence presented here isn't that convincing. Nimoy's host segments note how sincere and credible these eye-witness accounts are. This is in the same episode where some local pranksters pushed three tires attached to a inflatable dingy out onto the lake to hoax the TV show. When you look at the playful smiles on the faces of the people telling their tales, or the hard-to-believe claim that a couple has seen the serpent “forty or fifty times,” I would say we can never dispel people's tendency to just make shit up for their own amusement. Nor the need of authors to sell their work, as the presenter of the above mentioned home movie also wrote a book on the topic of Ogopogo.
This episode probably needed more of “In Search Of's” trademark creaky reenactments. The episode begins with a pretty good segment re-creating a young wake-boarder screaming upon encountering the supposed beast. Otherwise, we simply get footage of some Native Americans sitting around a camp fire. Which isn't to say this episode doesn't have some camp value. The extremely Canadian accents of the people interviewed made me chuckle, with one fellow even ending his sentence with “eh?” Or a reporter who describes coming to the lake and hearing about the monster with baffled amusement. “In Search Of...” was never great television but it was incredibly cozy. I am not immune to the charms of lo-fi blurping seventies electronic music playing over footage of Moray eels squirming around a tank. [7/10]
Friday the 13th: The Series: Tales of the Undead
I think we've previously seen Ryan reading some comic books in past episodes of "Friday the 13th: The Series." It would seem it is more of a passion for him than previously revealed, as "Tales of the Undead" begins with him visiting his local comic shop. The owner has recently come into possession of a rare original copy of "Tales of the Undead #1," the first appearance of a hugely popular superhero named Ferrus the Invincible. To increase its value, the book has also been signed by Jay Star, the character's creator. A kid in the shop desires the pricey book and breaks into the display case to steal it. Upon grabbing the comic, he turns into Ferrus and murders the shop owner. Ryan and Micki determine the comic is the latest cursed artifact they have to track down. They reach out to Jay Star, an elderly and ill man who was screwed out of his share of the profits his character has made for the publisher. Upon hearing about what happened, Star tracks down the thief and grabs the magic book himself. Now able to change into the indestructible robot hero he created, the old man sets out to take revenge on those that wronged him. The only way Ryan and Micki can stop the monster, they believe, is to track down the lost artwork for the scraped issue that killed Ferrus the Invincible off.
"Tales of the Undead" is one of those "Friday the 13th" episodes that feature a notable name in the opening credits. Alfred Sole, director of "Alice, Sweet Alice," apparently worked on the story for this one. In some ways, the episode suggests that the writers were quite familiar with the world of comics. The set-up nods at the speculators' market around the hobby that was shortly to reach its peak around this time. "Jay Star" is acknowledged to be a pen name based on the author's possibly Jewish or Polish last name, another insider detail. Mostly, the story of an artist who created a long-running character that has made millions for its parent company. but has been left penniless in his old age is as familiar to the industry as heroes fighting villains. The struggles of Siegel and Shuster or Jack Kirby to regain some control over the iconic heroes they created are well known. Even today, writers and artists whose work formed the basis for billion dollar franchises have to turn to GoFundMe to pay off medical bills or die from treatable conditions.
In other ways, "Tales of the Undead" seems weirdly out-of-touch with the world of caped heroes it's riffing on. The focus on Star writing a story that kills Ferrus off, in the hopes that would at least spite those that betrayed him, is one thing. The idea that the company would not publish such a story, because they can't kill off their golden goose, is frankly implausible. When have comic companies ever been reluctant to kill off popular heroes that can easily be resurrected later? It's also a little weird that a superhero would debut in a comic called "Tales of the Undead." Maybe this was an example of a horror book following market trends and changing its focus after the debut of a popular character. That idea rubs counter to this being a first issue or published in the thirties though. Ferrus, a towering and hyper-violent robot guy, does seem more like a villain than a hero. I guess this could be an Incredible Hulk or Etrigan the Demon situation.
That's just me being a nerd though. "Tales of the Undead" is a decent episode otherwise. Whenever someone transforms into Ferrus the Invincible, there are comic book panel style transitions. This is a clever workaround for what was surely the limited budget the episode had and also a neat homage to the media the episode is based on. A special guest star is brought into play Jay Star: Ray Walston, of "My Favorite Martian." This is the kind of part very much in need of an industry old-timer with plenty of age and experience on his face. Walston is good, showing a genuine anger at those that screwed him and even some creditable villainous cruelty as the episode goes on. The sequences with the killer robot are a bit awkward but mostly decently done. I wish the script was a little more consistent about how indestructible this supposedly invincible guy is though. He goes down fairly easily in two scenes. I also like the detail of Micki initially being dismissive of old comic books before getting hooked on them. The episode uses that turn-of-events as a prelude to more flirting cousins shenanigans, of course. Do you think Ferrus the Invincible ever crossed over with the Escapist or Condorman? [7/10]
"Tales of the Undead" is one of those "Friday the 13th" episodes that feature a notable name in the opening credits. Alfred Sole, director of "Alice, Sweet Alice," apparently worked on the story for this one. In some ways, the episode suggests that the writers were quite familiar with the world of comics. The set-up nods at the speculators' market around the hobby that was shortly to reach its peak around this time. "Jay Star" is acknowledged to be a pen name based on the author's possibly Jewish or Polish last name, another insider detail. Mostly, the story of an artist who created a long-running character that has made millions for its parent company. but has been left penniless in his old age is as familiar to the industry as heroes fighting villains. The struggles of Siegel and Shuster or Jack Kirby to regain some control over the iconic heroes they created are well known. Even today, writers and artists whose work formed the basis for billion dollar franchises have to turn to GoFundMe to pay off medical bills or die from treatable conditions.
That's just me being a nerd though. "Tales of the Undead" is a decent episode otherwise. Whenever someone transforms into Ferrus the Invincible, there are comic book panel style transitions. This is a clever workaround for what was surely the limited budget the episode had and also a neat homage to the media the episode is based on. A special guest star is brought into play Jay Star: Ray Walston, of "My Favorite Martian." This is the kind of part very much in need of an industry old-timer with plenty of age and experience on his face. Walston is good, showing a genuine anger at those that screwed him and even some creditable villainous cruelty as the episode goes on. The sequences with the killer robot are a bit awkward but mostly decently done. I wish the script was a little more consistent about how indestructible this supposedly invincible guy is though. He goes down fairly easily in two scenes. I also like the detail of Micki initially being dismissive of old comic books before getting hooked on them. The episode uses that turn-of-events as a prelude to more flirting cousins shenanigans, of course. Do you think Ferrus the Invincible ever crossed over with the Escapist or Condorman? [7/10]
