In this very special Bonus Episode of Evil in the Stacks, your host Geneveive Newman interviews horror scholar Dr. Johnny Walker. They discuss all things 1980s-90s independent horror comics and more!
Listen to the episode here: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-2yhrb-137ac41
CW: discussion of rape and slavery from 16:30-22:00
In this episode, "Horror Hosts in Comics and TV: Chiller Theatre and Creepy Magazine" host Geneveive Newman discusses horror hosts and interviews Avery Hoover about the University of Pittsburgh's Chilly Billy archival collection within the University Library System.
For more info, visit Archives and Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh!
Find the episode here!
Host Geneveive Newman discusses the history of horror comics and interviews archivist Ben Rubin about archival sources in the first episode of this University of Pittsburgh, University Library System podcast.
For more info, visit Archives and Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh!
Find the episode HERE!
While best known for his horror films, reading through his unproduced writings, it is apparent that Romero was a dedicated fan of science fiction. Many of his writings reflect a deep fandom of not just the genre, but also reflect an interest in space that many of his generation shared growing up during the dawn of the space age and the advent of artificial satellites and human space exploration.
One of my favorite science fiction inspired script is for the unproduced project Aurora. We don’t have much information about the project other than a single draft script, but it appears to have been written in the early 2000s. The story follows the aftermath of a UFO crash in a small town and the reactions of the townspeople.
The story opens with a narrator recounting an event that happened during her childhood, in 1918 in the small town of Aurora, Texas. The town is under quarantine, and so far, safe from the flu pandemic ravaging the globe. While feeling mostly safe cut off from the world, the townspeople fear the Germans using planes or zeppelins to drop the virus onto their town. There is also an underlying fear of Martian craft visiting earth (and perhaps working with the Germans or the US government toward some nefarious means). It is with this mindset they start to react when something crashes into an oil works on the outskirts of town. Pieces of an unknown craft are found, and rumor has it one of the townspeople has saved and is harboring the pilot which may be an alien. Add to this a mysterious sickness that is quickly making its way through the town and the paranoia and fear ratchet up even more leading to a tense narrative throughout.
Our main protagonist (and father to the narrator) is a disgraced local doctor and town drunk. The main townsfolk distrust him and have largely ostracized him, but he continues to practice medicine and provide for other denizens on the margins of the town, namely the indigent who can’t pay for care and the people of color who are excluded from care. He is a proud man who refuses to let the treatment by the townspeople break his spirit. He goes to the site of the crash and rescues the pilot and brings him to his barn to treat it.
From here, we see the main conflict of the story begin to unfold. The doctor and his family (particularly his young son) want to treat the pilot regardless of whether he might be an alien or not and recognize the need to keep him safe from the townspeople (the son is excited about the prospect of the spaceman – alien or not – as he has recently discovered the works of Wells and Verne). The owner of the oil works is our main antagonist: a rich mogul who not only controls the oil, but also the food in town and never hesitates to wield his power and influence over others. He despises the doctor and helps lead the townspeople into a mob. A sickness is also starting to make its way through town, further adding to the townspeople’s’ paranoia and anger as they blame the doctor for its origin. Ultimately, the doctor cannot save the pilot but learns that the sickness was caused by bad meat that the mogul knowingly sold in order to not lose revenue. The mothership arrives to pick up the body of the alien and we find out the doctor swore off alcohol and had his medical license and reputation restored.
The location and seed of the story come from a purportedly real incident that took place in the town of Aurora, Texas in 1897 – a full 50 years before the famous Roswell Incident; and significantly, before the advent of human flight. The incident remains a notable entry within American UFO lore (indeed, Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale references the incident in one of his novels). Even as recently as September of 2021, the local news wrote about the enduring impact of the crash and the burial of ‘Ned’ the alien. A small roadside attraction exists, and folks can visit the gravesite of Ned (the name affectionately given to the supposed alien visitor). He was given a Christian burial so the remains cannot be exhumed for modern forensic examination.
Romero shifted the story forward two decades to take place at the end of World War I and as the 1919 Flu Epidemic is ravaging the globe. He utilizes this new timeline to effectively exploit the fear and paranoia that went on during not only a global pandemic, but also over fears over the impacts of the early days of human flight had upon the expansion of war.
We can also see influences of major science fiction works on the script, most notably War of the Worlds and The Twilight Zone. The behavior of the townspeople is reminiscent of the classic episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” in which a neighborhood descends into fear, paranoia, and violence over the potential of alien invaders after something flies over the neighborhood and causes a blackout. Of course, Serling himself was only drawing upon the experiences of the Cold War for his story. Romero likely also drew upon his own memories of the Cold War; or even reflected on the similar atmosphere of fear, paranoia, and brimming violence that characterized the post-9/11 mindset in the US.
Ultimately, Aurora finds itself among the over 100 scripts that never made it any farther than the page. It is a shame as the story unfolds with great pacing, sympathetic characters, and a healthy dose of his ever present and prescient social commentary. It is also a demonstration of his fandom of science fiction and his fascination with space and the potential existence of alien life and UFOs.
--Ben Rubin
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In 1994, George A. Romero traveled to Valencia Community College in central Florida to make a short film about a swamp-dwelling bigfoot called Jacaranda Joe. Largely unknown and presumed lost, a copy of the film was discovered in the University of Pittsburgh Library System’s Romero archive.
Join us for the film’s FIRST EVER public screening, followed by a discussion with Valencia alums who worked on the film: George Rizkallah, Michael Sellers, and A. Elizabeth Tobin Kurtz.
We've discussed Jacaranda Joe in several blog posts since we discovered it. This post offers a brief summary of the film and a bit of the backstory. This post discusses The Footage, Romero's first attempt at a bigfoot movie, which he reworked into Jacaranda Joe. Here is a brief update of the 35mm camera negative that we tracked down. The most thorough discussion of Jacaranda Joe's history can be found here, based on my discussions with crew members:
the film was the second installment of an innovative program devised by Valencia Community College faculty member Ralph Clemente that brough established filmmakers to campus to direct a short film. The previous year, Robert Wise (director of The Haunting, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music), filmed a short called Best Two of Three with Valencia students. Jacaranda Joe was written by Romero with the scope (and limitations) of filming in ten days in central Florida with a student crew in mind. Romero picked up an idea he had first developed two decades earlier, about a tv show that stumbles across a bigfoot society in the woods. Romero transposed this from the woods to the Florida swamps, reduced the bigfoot community to a single "skunk ape" creature, and built the majority of the narrative around a sleazy talk show host's discussion of the brief glimpse of the creature that had come to be known as "Jacaranda Joe." That meant that most of the shoot would take place on a single set. Joe himself only appeared in a single, blurry shot, which meant that while a full creature needed to be designed and executed, it could be relatively simple compared to a monster that needed to be on camera for long stretches of a movie.
Panelists:
George Rizkallah was one of the editors on Jacaranda Joe. In 2004, he founded The Product Factory, which has provided post-production services (including George's own) for clients including Marvel Animation, Cartoon Network, Film Roman, Lions Gate, The Disney Channel, The Jim Henson Company, Warner Bros, Mark Burnett Productions, and Paramount Pictures. His credits as editorial supervisor include a number of series produced by Marvel Animation, for which Jacaranda Joe actor Isaac C. Singleton Jr. voices Thanos.
A. Elizabeth Tobin Kurtz was the prop master on Jacaranda Joe. She is a film producer, documentary director, and content creator based in Orlando. You can find information on her current project, a feature documentary called Resilience, at the website for Irwin Kurtz Films.
Michael Sellers has worked steadily for 23 years in the film and television industry as an editor and post production manager for high profile network television projects but he also carves time out to manage his own independent production company. Recently Michael started working in tandem with a WWII veterans organization to develop and direct a feature documentary film titled Return To Hardwick. Actor Michael Cudlitz (The Walking Dead, Band of Brothers) narrates the film and also participates in screenings across the country. Return To Hardwick has been picked up for distribution in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. by distributor Gravitas Ventures. It’s available on popular media streaming formats like Amazon, iTunes and Google Play. Learn more here: www.hardwickfilm.com
- Adam Charles Hart
