The B-Masters Cabal

Comment from Tom Meade
Time: April 13, 2008, 11:38 pm

I think I must have read a Children’s Classics version of 20,000 Leagues or a copy with pages missing, because even though everyone always talks about the giant squid, all I remember of it from the book is a bunch of them flopping around on the surface near a river mouth. One day I will have to re-read it, perhaps. Anyway, I feel cheated.

Did you like Around the World in 80 Days?

Comment from JessicaR
Time: April 14, 2008, 12:42 am

I *love* The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, always glad to see a new fan. That’s one in sore need of cult rediscovery.

Comment from Joshua
Time: April 14, 2008, 4:08 am

My most vivid memory from reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was that every description of every undersea life form, be it fish, mammal, or vegetable, concluded with what it tasted like. I’m kind of glad they left that out of the film version.

Comment from lyzard
Time: April 14, 2008, 4:24 am

My last brush with Verne was trying to explain to my uncomprehending local librarians that “From The Earth To The Moon” really isn’t a children’s book….

Comment from hman
Time: April 14, 2008, 7:45 am

I read a 100-page version of 20,000 Leagues and enjoyed it. I remember getting caught off-guard by the giant manatee, as I hadn’t remembered that from the film.

So, “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane” is sort of like a lot of Godzilla movies where we root for the the destructive “protagonist” simply because there are characters (or monsters) even worse than she/it is?

Comment from El Santo
Time: April 14, 2008, 9:30 am

“I read a 100-page version of 20,000 Leagues and enjoyed it. I remember getting caught off-guard by the giant manatee, as I hadn’t remembered that from the film.

So, ‘The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane’ is sort of like a lot of Godzilla movies where we root for the the destructive ‘protagonist’ simply because there are characters (or monsters) even worse than she/it is?”
 
Watching the movie has motivated me into a rematch with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea the novel, but I haven’t as yet come to either a giant squid or a giant manitee. I find that I’m not hating it quite as much as I did the last time I read it, but it’s still pretty infuriating, especially when Conseil gets started reciting the taxonomies of every critter he sees. Incidentally, my guess is the manitee-thing is supposed to be a Steller’s sea cow, a sirenian about three times the size of the Florida manitee that used to inhabit the extreme northern Pacific, up around Alaska and Kamchatka. We hadn’t quite managed to kill them all yet when Verne was writing, and they were impressive enough that I can easily see why he would want to include one. It will be interesting to see if he was as grossly misinformed about them as he was about dugongs, a predatory specimen of which features in Mysterious Island.
 
As for The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, no– it’s more complicated than that. Rynn is actually an extremely likeable and sympathetic character when she isn’t actively poisoning anybody, and even there, she’s merely following her father’s deathbed advice. Also, she kills only in what she thinks of as self-defense, and only when she can think of no other way to eliminate the threat. Nevertheless, the fact remains that she’s not merely capable of murder, but able to commit it without any moral or psychological compunctions whatsoever. You might think of her as an ethical psychopath.

Comment from hman
Time: April 14, 2008, 12:06 pm

Well, according to Wikipedia, my memory failed me and the sirenian was a Dugong and not a Manatee.

Comment from Loki
Time: April 14, 2008, 5:21 pm

“Dugongs of Doom”, a Sci Fi Channel Original Movie, based on the works of Jules Verne.

Comment from hman
Time: April 14, 2008, 7:50 pm

“Dugong vs. Megalodon” starring [insert some centerfold/Playboy model] and Dean Cain.

Comment from Tom Meade
Time: April 14, 2008, 8:02 pm

“Manatee for Two”, starring Shelly Long and George Segal?

Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: April 15, 2008, 3:18 am

‘Twenty Thousand leagues below the Sikh’ starring Mark Dacascos for Asylum films.

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: April 15, 2008, 10:39 am

“Sirenian”, about dugongs mutated by toxic waste dumped by an eeeeeeeevil corporation who can now create illusions, drawing people into the water where the now-carnivorous dugongs devour them?

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: April 15, 2008, 10:44 am

I am hereby changing that title for my film. Too intellectual for the DTSFC crowd. I should have thought of that sooner.
But I am making amends now, to ensure my script is picked up.

MANATEE RAGE!!!!

And I’m still keeping them dugongs so people like Ms. Kingsley (and, frankly, myself) can say, “Hey that’s not a manatee!!”
Like we do when “poisonous snakes” are portrayed by boa constrictors. (She does that, right?)

Comment from El Santo
Time: April 15, 2008, 10:53 am

“(She does that, right?)”
 
Surely.

Comment from hman
Time: April 15, 2008, 12:01 pm

I have a nerdy question. My book on Mythological Creatures says that the Manatee was the grandmother of the mermaids. Fair enough. So what are the parents of the mermaids? And the grandchildren of mermaids? Do mermaids turn into Manatees later on in life?

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: April 15, 2008, 12:23 pm

I’ve never heard mermaids being referred to as the grandchildren of the manatee…I know it’s assumed people mistook dugongs and manatees for mermaids at a distance, but I’ve never seen a myth that combined the two that way. And I read a LOT of world myths…what country is that story from?

Comment from hman
Time: April 15, 2008, 12:35 pm

It’s from the book “Mythological Creatures” by Paulita Sedwick (it was published in the 1970s). That book had a profound impact on my life, and not just because it was a kid’s book that had all of the female mythological creatures with breasts and nipples drawn on them.

Comment from Elizabeth the Ferret
Time: April 15, 2008, 12:53 pm

I don’t remember where I read it (though it might have been The Book of Ratings), but I saw something that suggested (jokingly) that maybe the whole mermaid/manatee thing was due to some sailor who had a major thing for manatees and was too embarrassed to admit it.

Comment from lyzard
Time: April 15, 2008, 4:18 pm

“(She does that, right?)”
Surely.

Worse: she goes “Oooh, oochie-woochie-woochie-wittle-boa-constwictors!”

You DO NOT want to be around when that happens.

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: April 16, 2008, 10:41 am

hman: I don’t know if I will have access to that book. Was that myth from a particular region or country, or was the book just a mishmash of things? Knowing where it originated from would give me the chance to track down more information, and I have to admit this new twist on things has my hunger for knowledge all up and active…and the internet’s not helping much right now in my search.

Ms. Kingsley: Actually, I think I do. I would probably giggle with sheer delight and join in. However, our concurrent, ridiculous babytalk at the animals on the screen would no doubt drive all others near us to flee from the room in horror, lest they be driven mad. MAD I TELLS YA!!

Comment from hman
Time: April 16, 2008, 11:01 am

If you’re interested, you could find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mythological-Creatures-Pictorial-Dictionary-Sedgwick/dp/003012946X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208365171&sr=1-3

The book is a mish-mash and I don’t recall Sedgwick defining where the myth came from.

Comment from Chadly
Time: April 17, 2008, 1:01 am

Santo, if you haven’t seen “The Pick-Up” (1968) yet, you really owe it to yourself to try and track it down. (Something Weird has it on DVR). Dave Friedman may have been all about pushing the tease, but when he teamed up with Lee Frost, Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse — neither of them having any shame whatsoever — no boundary was safe, resulting in the penultimate Sleaze-Noir classic.