From The Asylum Library: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Every now and again, as is true of most motion picture studios, The Asylum will look toward the world of letters for inspiration. The public domain offers an array of spectacular, action-packed, thrilling, and - most importantly - free works ripe for the updating. In this occasional column, I'll take a look at the literary giants from which The Asylum has borrowed. Today, we look at the man responsible for two Asylum films to date, but perhaps he's best known as the creator of that crazy vine-swinging white dude in the jungle, Tarzan; Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Notice how the parrot"s mean-mugging the camera?

Mr. Burroughs, a native Chicagoan, was born ten years after the end of the Civil War to a retired Union Colonel and his wife. For the first part of his life it seemed E.R. was destined to follow in his father's footsteps, attending several military academies as a child and adolescent. But when it came time to take the entrance exam to West Point, old E.R. didn't cut the mustard, and failed the exam. This lead him to join the military as an enlisted man, but this too was to be a brief acceptance: shortly after, he was diagnosed with a heart condition that made him ineligible for service. So to the private sector E.R. was cast.


What followed were years of aimlessness and low-paying jobs, a passionless existence for E.R. but for the introduction and acquisition of one Emma Centennia Hulbert as his wife. 

But then one night, while working as a pencil sharpener - yep, that used to be a job - E.R. discovered the Pulp Magazines and their seedy little stories inside. Though not impressed with the material, E.R. was taken by how popular they were, giving him one of the greatest reasons ever for deciding to become a writer:

"...[I knew that] if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines."

Now, taken by itself, this is a pretty cocky statement. But when you realize that's exactly what old E.R. proceeded to do, it's kinda baller. 

Over the next 40 years, E.R. would write more than 80 novels and short stories, creating some of the finest and most-enduring literature of the 20th Century across a variety of genres: adventures series like "Tarzan," sci-fi series like the "John Carter" or "Pellucidar" novels, western and historical novels, etc. Along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.R. Haggard, the man practically invented - certainly exemplified - the adventure novel. So influential was he, in fact, that there's a freaking crater on Mars named for the dude. A crater. On Mars.


As for E.R. and The Asylum, to date they have adapted two of his novels, both in 2009: Mark Atkins' adaptation of Princess of Mars (also the inspiration for James Cameron's Avatar as well as the upcoming John Carter of Mars, the live-action directorial debut of Andrew Stanton, writer/director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E), and the C. Thomas Howell-helmer The Land That Time Forgot. 


In regards to these films, or rather their source materials, there are sequels to both: there are 11 novels in the "Barsoom" series, of which Princess of Mars is the first, and The Land That Time Forgot is the first part of what Burroughs called his "Caspak Trilogy," followed therefore by two sequels, The People That Time Forgot and Out of Time's Abyss. So somebody get Antonio Sabato Jr. oiled up and lasso C. Thomas Howell back to the helm, cuz these are movies just waiting to be made, folks!


So much more than just the man who gave us Tarzan, the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs is thrilling in a way comparable novels written today can't be; they come with a sense of true exploration, the genuine wonder that comes from living in a world you can't entirely know, of there still being secrets to parts of your very planet - a foreign concept to most of us today.


Great for kids, thrilling still to adults, download you some free ERB today. God bless public domain!

From the Asylum Library: Jules Verne

NEW COLUMN ALERT! Now and again, as is true of most motion picture studios, The Asylum will look toward the world of letters for inspiration. The public domain offers an array of spectacular, action-packed, thrilling, and - most importantly - free works ripe for the updating. In this occasional column, I'll take a look at the literary giants from which The Asylum has borrowed. And whom better to start with than the man many consider to be the father of science-fiction: the inimitable Jules Verne.

Jules Verne was born in picturesque Brittany in the early part of the Nineteenth Century. As a young man, his love for travel and adventure beget an imagination that could transport him places life had yet to. This imagination would in time evolve into an innovative form of speculative fiction that became a telescope into our future. Submarines, hot air balloons, space travel and even the fax machine are among the mechanical realities that first saw description in the books of Jules Verne. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, Mysterious Island, Paris in the 20th Century, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in 80 Days - it's titles like these and dozens more that have made Mr. Verne, nearly two hundred years after his birth, the third most translated author in the world and the source of more than 130 films, including some of the earliest work in special effects from cinematic magicians like Verne's fellow-Frenchman George Melies. 

Though that moniker I mentioned above - "the father of science fiction" - is often shared with his somewhat-contemporary H.G. Wells, it's worth remembering that Monsieur Verne's first notable novel, "Five Weeks in a Balloon," was published three years before Mr. Wells was even born.

As far as The Asylum is concerned, Mr. Verne and his fertile imagination have spawned only two films so far, Journey to the Center of the Earth with DeeDee Pfeiffer and Greg Evigan, and 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Lorenzo Lamas, but his influence can also be felt in films like 100 Million BC and The Terminators, if you'll stretch with me. 

But oh the films they could make: as most of the bigger titles have been mined to death and are in fact just outdated - no matter how inventive you are, it's tough to update From the Earth to the Moon without replacing one or the other - the best place to mine I think would be the lesser-known fare like Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras, In Search of the Castaways, Off On a Comet, Eight Hundred Leagues On the Amazon or dozens others. 

Verne's a proven money-maker, the original Philip K. Dick when it comes to sci-fi writers Hollywood loves to make and remake and remake again. But a run through his back catalog could do for The Asylum what Poe did for AIP. Or not. Either way, we'd get some rad movies out of it.


Something to think about.