How Wild Wild West Almost Ruined My Marriage

Back in the 1990’s I lived in a town with a pretty cheap movie theater and an even cheaper second run theater.  Mrs. Slap and I went to the movies a lot, usually once a week or more, and back in those days you assumed that you wanted to see movies in the theater- no steaming yet, no big flatscreens at home, etc.  We also read a lot of movie magazines (that actually came in the mail!) so we knew what was coming out and what we wanted to make sure to see.

In the summer of 1999 I was really excited to see Wild Wild West, with Will Smith as Jim West and Kevin Klein as Artemis Gordon.  I was a big fan of the original series and Smith was on a roll with his buddy action comedies.  Unfortunately, that was also a busy summer, including a move to our first two bedroom apartment, and we didn’t make it the Wild Wild West at the first run theater.  Okay, we’ll see it at the second run.  Then that window was closing, on the last day that we had to move out of our apartment.

I must have been whining about missing the movie, and annoying Mrs. Slap, so she kicked me out to go see the last show at the second run.  The right move would have been to say “no, honey, I love you and supporting you and our family is more important than seeing potentially the greatest movie ever”, but we’d only been married a couple years by that point and I was stupid.  Off I went to see the masterpiece Wild Wild West.

It sucked.

I came home to find Mrs. Slap dirty and tired from the final cleanup of the old apartment.  I caught a look that I had never seen before and, more than two decades later, don’t think I’ve seen since.  We recovered and loved that new apartment for the next two years.  Lesson learned.

Quick Shots: Dust of the Damned

I was really excited to see this novel announced by my (once) favorite western writer Peter Brandvold. 

His first weird western, Bad Wind Blowing, was one of my favorite reads when I jumped into the genre, and I gave it a glowing review here.  The Lou Prophet series was still running strong with great writing, but was starting to fade a bit as Brandvold was getting more into writing under house names for series like Longarm.  His writing was becoming more just the typical paperback western, but surely something like a weird western would let him write something vibrant and unique. 

So how was the book?  There are… goblins in the west?  The Civil War ended with orcs?  Somehow things are just still humming along?  Something like that.  There was a plot, perhaps, and maybe some characters who were flatter than the Llano Estacado.  I read a few very forgettable chapters, put a bookmark in it, then said I’d get back to it.  That was about eight years ago.  I’ve picked it up occasionally, flipped through, and just couldn’t care enough to got back to it.

To be fair, here's the official description: "A novel about werewolves, ghouls, and cowboys, all fighting for their piece of the American frontier.

The Hell’s Angels are a gang of werewolves who have escaped from Hellsgarde Federal Penitentiary. They were the ones who tore the Confederates into submission at Gettysburg for Lincoln, thus ending the Civil War. Now they’ve headed West—to join the legions of other ghouls . . .

Armed with an arsenal of weapons, the deadliest being Marshal Angel Coffin, notorious ghoulhunter Uriah Zane must stop the hordes of shapeshifting creatures pushing west. Together, Zane and Coffin must stop the werebeasts from attaining final dominion over the earth—with humans as their servants..."

Sounds good, I wonder if we'll get it one day?

I miss those early days when Brandvold’s writing was fresh and it was all still new to me.  The buffalo are gone, the railroad’s come through, and the cat house has turned to a Starbucks.

Zombie Saloon

 

Ravenous: “Eat to live. Don’t live to eat.”

Have you seen this movie yet?  If not, do so with utmost haste.  It really is a marvel, and if I write very much about it I will be giving away some of the great twists.  In short, Ravenous is the story of a US Army officer who, after being grievously wounded in the Mexican War, is assigned to a sparsely populated “fort” in deep in a mountainous frontier.  Things go… strangely, and a substantial amount of mayhem, murder, and madness ensue.  Add in fantastic acting (from Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeffrey Jones, Jeremy Davies, John Spencer, Neal McDonough and David Arquette), beautiful scenery, and a haunting score, and it’s a winner. 

It might be a horror movie, a cannibal movie, and/or a western, and one film critic saw it as a gay romance.  See it and let me know.

Cowpoke Pinup of October & Welcome to Weird West Month!

 

Here at Slap Bookleather the posse is eager to round up a bunch of weird western content for the spooky month of Halloween.  We'll kick things off with this pinup from the Western Horror game Darkwatch, reviewed way back in the first year of the blog!