YouTube Wednesday: THE GREEN HORNET "Freeway to Death"

Continuing our weekly feature "YouTube Wednesday"...

It's not often someone can take on the captain of the USS Enterprise...and win!

The Green Hornet can!

OK, technically, he's not the captain of the Enterprise here, but Jeffrey Hunter was the first man to sit in the captain's chair during the first Star Trek pilot episode, "The Cage".

When NBC said, "close, but not quite", and ordered a second pilot, Hunter turned down the option to return, preferring to do a pilot for Batman producer William Dozier called Journey into Fear based on a novel by Eric Ambler, previously done as a feature film in the 1940s starring Orson Welles!

Ironically, it was in competition for an NBC schedule slot against, among other shows, a second Star Trek pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" with William Shatner as the new captain of the Enterprise!

Trek sold. Journey didn't.

Hunter began doing tv guest-star roles, and when offered, took the guest-villain gig on Dozier's Green Hornet series, playing construction magnate Emmett Crown, who's also secretly financing an insurance company which offers "protection" to businesses!

Daily Sentinel reporter Mike Axford is investigating the matter and is told by his boss, Britt Reid, to work with The Green Hornet to expose the still-unknown head of the "insurance" company! Axford intends to do exactly that, and capture The Hornet, as well!

It's cross and double-cross as plans are made and plans go awry, resulting in kool fight scenes, Crown being exposed and captured, and The Hornet and Kato escaping the law again!

SideNotes:

More location shooting, this time at an active construction site outside LA, where Britt Reid is almost "accidentally" killed and, later, The Hornet and Kato face several of Crown's bulldozers trying to crush the Black Beauty.

Since the car's rockets are ineffective against the heavy metal blades of the bulldozers, The Hornet and Kato use the previously-unseen Hornet Mortar (located in the same rear trunk compartment where the flying Hornet Scanner is kept), to loft explosive shells over the blades and disable the dozers' treads. The Hornet Mortar is never seen or mentioned again.

Here's the 14th episode aired (but 15th episode filmed), "Freeway to Death".

GANTZ!

She's not Kei or Masaru, but do you really care?

The last thing Kei and Masaru remember was being struck dead by a subway train while saving the life of a drunken bum.
What a waste!
And yet somehow they're still . . . alive?
Or semi-alive?
Maybe it's reanimated . . . by some kind of alien orb with a nasty message . . . "Your lives are over. What you do with your new lives is up to me!"
And what this orb called "Gantz" intends to do with their lives is make them play games of death, hunting all kinds of odd aliens, along with a bunch of other ordinary citizens who've recently met a tragic semi-end.
The missions they embark upon are often dangerous. Many die-and die again.
This dark and action-packed manga / anime / live-action movie deals with the moral conflicts of violence, teenage sexual confusion and angst, and our fascination with death.
Hang on to your gear and keep playing the game, whatever you do; Gantz is unrelenting.

This is the cast, in Japanese. If anyone can translate, please e-mail me.

NEW PEOPLE and NCM Fathom are bringing the world premiere of GANTZ to movie theaters nationwide for a one night live event on Thursday, January 20th at 8:00 pm ET/ 7:00 pm CT/ 6:00 pm MT/ 8:30 pm PT (tape delayed).
This live-action feature, based upon the popular Japanese manga / anime series, is the ultimate survival game. It will be English over-dubbed exclusively for this big screen event.
Following the feature, the two stars, Kazunari Ninomiya and Kenichi Matsuyama will participate in an exclusive live interview that can only be seen at this event.
Click HERE for a list of participating theaters.

Martin Luther King, Jr--the Comic Book

On the day we honor the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr, the gang at Atomic Kommie Comics™ thought it only appropriate to present this item, the first comic book dramatizing his historic efforts.
From the website's intro to the comic...
Most sane thinkers consider MLK to be an important and historic larger-than-life icon, but how did that happen?
Especially given the marginalized press coverage of blacks in the 50s, how was his message galvanized among southern minorities and then spread as a single statement beyond the black community -- and how was it focused so specifically to such seemingly ignorable or boring local incidents as one black woman's refusal to give up a bus seat and a following small-town bus boycott, as well as the concept of Passive Resistance?
Without any need for hyperbole, this comic book is one of the reasons.


Produced by the Fellowship of the Reconciliation and sent very surreptitiously throughout the South (it was dangerous for many to own a copy), then translated, re-drawn, and distributed once again throughout the entire SOUTHERN CONTINENT through Mexico, into Central and then South America, this comic tells the story that established the myth of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks at the time that it mattered, mere months after news events occurred.
Intended for adults, but shown in comic book format for the largest possible distribution and audience and instruction.

It was also produced as a comic because more adult seeming publications and newspapers were often destroyed by white businessmen and other violent types bent on continuing segregation's grip on the South.
But that does not mean people found distributing copies of this comic were not given their fair share of beatings and harassment, nor does it mean thousands of copies were not often destroyed.
Why? This comic is and was dangerously honest.
Featuring the Klan (lynching, bombs, burning crosses), Jim Crow laws, and the entire concept of Nonviolent Protest.
This pamphlet offered advice and instructions on how to use passive resistance and massive non-violent resistance against segregation, just as these ideas were fresh --and it also established a clear connection of MLK to Gandhi, a public connection that continues on to today.


A copy of this comic is held in the Smithsonian and many Civil Rights leaders recognize this as one of the most important AND PERSUASIVE items of the 50s in establishing or explaining their cause to the world, as well as giving many black youths the courage and direction to hold their own political protests.
Many notable sit-ins and demonstrations link to this comic book getting into the right hands - and it did get around, literally devoured by black college students at the time.

We're DELIGHTED to offer you not just the American version of this comic but also the SPANISH edition, of which maybe two or three copies are known to exist.
After extensive effort and search, we were able to find a copy in Uruguay.
Not joking. Completely redrawn and translated, click back and forth to compare art, some of the differences between the two are great.


Ever wonder how much influence and power a small press or self-produced item can have?
This is one of the best examples you'll ever see.

Fantastic Femmes--Aria Prasad

Back in September, we brought you an entry about a kool (and frightening) new on-line game called The Curfew.
Among the reasons for checking it out was: "the captivating Aria Prasad (a future Fantastic Femme) as Aisha: the Immigrant! Yeah, I'm a sucker for a pretty face."
Well, after several months of searching for info on the talented and beautiful actress, I came up with; some interesting theatre work, and her sole film-tv credit: an ep of MI-5 (aka Spooks) VideoClip HERE! That's it!
We want to see MORE of her!

Genre appearances include...

MI-5 aka Spooks "Episode 8.7" (Yasmin)

The Curfew (The Immigrant)

Check out...

Aria's Acting Resume Page

One of her theatre appearances in Wasted

The History of The Green Hornet!

Since The Green Hornet first appeared on radio in 1936, he's made the transition to motion pictures, comics and television.
Very little has been written about the masked marvel and what has been recorded in magazine articles and encyclopedias prior to this publication never explored the character as deeply... or accurately.

A complete history of the radio series from the creation to conception sketches, reprints from production files to the untold adventures, biographic details of the cast and the characters they played (including Mike Axford, Kato, Gunnigan, Lenore Case, Linda Travis, Ed Lowry, Clicker Binney, Commissioner Higgins, etc.) and background information is all provided under one cover.
Also included are details of the two cliffhanger serials produced by Universal in the early forties, the unaired 1952 television pilot, the long-running popularity of the comic books and the William Dozier television series (1966-67) starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee including a complete episode guide documenting every episode including unproduced scripts and plot ideas.
I highly recommend it.