Although Daniel Craig is pretty damn good, he looks a bit thuggish for Bond to me.

Apart from ‘From Russia With Love’ and ‘You Only Live Twice’, I find Connery to be too thuggish.

Heck, in ‘Thunderball’ and ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ it’s like watching a drunken seedy old man in a club that’s too young for him, grabbing at passing ladies.

I haven’t seen all of Omega Man, but the line that sticks out to me is when the black zombie talks about Charlton Heston “living up there in his honky paradise” – I love it! That would make a great album title.

As far as fantasy goes, I adore The first Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny, it never fails to pick me up.
Sad, but I often find myself asking “What would Corwin (or Hunter S. Thompson) do?

The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson is also something I can pick up at any time and really get into.

Very interesting series of post Greg, thanks.

BTW: THANK YOU I’ve never heard of Janet Margolin, but I’m going to search out some of her stuff now, whata beauty!

I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned “Soylent Green” with Charlton Heston. A depression-like era science fiction type movie, that leaves you with a sick feeling at the end.

I love Soylent Green, but it hardly seems like ‘comfort food’ to me. Actually I love all the Planet of the Apes movies too; we have them all here, including the TV series and the cartoon… except for the new Tim Burton movie, which I just didn’t care for. But I wouldn’t count any of the Apes movies as comfort food till you get to the TV series. I was trying really hard to stick to my personal definition of unchallenging fun with a happy ending. The only movie that breaks that rule is The Omega Man, but as Bill points out, it’s so full of awesome that I think it still slots in there; I mean, the good guys still sort of win. But yeah, Heston sure did love his dystopias.

(Fun fact — years ago, one of the first magazine review pieces I ever sold was a writeup of Soylent Green. I take a quiet pride in being one of maybe two or three reviewers on the planet Earth that did NOT give away the ending of that movie, even though I was writing it up for a videophile column in the early 90s. I think me and Baird Searles over at Fantasy and Science Fiction are the only ones that were careful about it. Soylent Green is still a detective story and reviewers, one of the cardinal rules of the job is that you don’t spoil the goddamn ending of a detective story.)

Also, Timothy Dalton is my Bond pick too. I think he’s anyone’s Bond pick who came to James Bond from the books. He absolutely is the guy Fleming wrote about. Although Daniel Craig is pretty damn good, he looks a bit thuggish for Bond to me.

I first watched SPECTRE when it ran on TV several years back. Being a huge Robert Culp fan thanks to I, SPY and THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, I was thrilled at the prospect of him teaming up with Gene Roddenberry. This was one of Gig Young’s last appearances and made a good sidekick for Culp. Too bad that it never became a series or that it’s even on DVD yet.

The Omega Man is a fun film and one of the best from Heston’s horror/fantasy period. Anything with John Saxon in it was always cool around that time. And I had completely forgotten about Lee Horsley starring in The Sword and the Sorcerer! Jesus, he looks more like…well, Jesus, rather than Conan in those pics. I remember him better as Matt Houston but it is cool to read that he’s coming back for a sequel after all these years.

Your Batman is pretty much mine, too. It begins with O’Neil/Adams and ends just before Frank Miller revamped him even as the first Burton film was on the way. Some of the 90′s stuff by Alan Grant or Chuck Dixon was kinda 70′s-ish, and we still had Jim Aparo on the art until Knightfall, but it wasn’t the same anymore by then. Spidey, I began reading with Stern and Romita Jr. on board, but I enjoy the classics and most of it I eventually read through Marvel Tales, so I didn’t miss out on those early stories.

I’ve enjoyed reading your columns so much that it’s tough to come up with my own list of comfort stuff. I really wish this became a regular feature from now. Or maybe others can send in their favorites and share some stories through you? In any case, thanks for these great trips down memory lane!

When I was younger though, it was the Dalton Bond films – they guy is hands down the best in the role: everything people complimented Brosnan and Craig on are already on show in the Dalton films… although oddly, I think Living Daylights might work a little better than License to Kill because it was written for Moore, so it’s got those horrifically cheesy one liners, but instead of mugging the camera for them, Dalton just growls them out – and oddly, Ghostbusters 2, but not Ghostbusters 1.
It’s only because that’s the one I saw at the cinema and had on VHS, but despite being able to see these days that it’s totally naff and the first one is stronger, it’s the one I love the most.

What makes it even funnier is that the video game is one of those big, rounded, sparkly-yellow arcade cabinet Asteroid games.

I had seen that movie as a kid and for years I couldn’t remember the title or figure out which movie it was. All I remembered was the 3-bladed shooting sword and the dual at the end with the lizard guy. While scouring the internet a couple years ago, I finally stumbled across a fan site that answered my question. Of course, by then the DVD was out of print, and I had to pay a tidy ransom for a copy on Amazon, but it was definitely worth it.

And speaking of tracking things down, I still need to see about looking for some of those non-Howard Conan books. I love the Howard stuff, but I would love to read some of the other novels too.

Time Tunnel was good enough for its time, but that set for the main control room was cheesy. Time Tunnel was very much the Quantum Leap of its time.

When I was 12 or so, I used to watch on tv, a BBC serial called the Tomorrow People. A weekly series that I could never keep up with ‘cuz life kept interrupting. I never DID find out what happened to the pregnant woman who was put into a lethal tube-like chamber and looked like she was being tortured and being enlarged. Don’t ask me — that series wasn’t even in close-captioned and VHS wasn’t popular then.

Dug Batman Begins. AND the DARK KNIGHT. My guilty pleasure also extends to Batman and Batman Returns.

A little. But more in a “I enjoyed that then, it was OK” (and some of them hold out very well still) not in a “I’m old and outmodded” one. If anything I sometimes pithy people who can’t appreciate the simple taste of movies (or other pieces of work) that aren’t too complex or wold-weary. I need to focus one day on revisiting that stuff. Maybe I’ll go watch Questor on YouTube.

I pretty much agree with Greg, except for one character: Conan. I don’t know why, but I never liked him. Maybe because he was not really a hero- he fought for personal reasons- friendship, hatred, greed, lust etc.- but never for the common good. Nothing wrong with that, but I preferred other “barbarian” character types who were more noble. Conan may be more realistic for his time (so to speak) but hey, comfort food and all that, eh?

Land of the Giants was another favorite from that era.

I loved The Sword and the Sorcerer, but I HATED that ridiculous three-bladed sword.

Anything is better with John Saxon in it.

You mentioned that the attempts to be hip are the parts of ‘Omega Man’ that are most dated. I think that’s true of every movie (or TV show, or Book, or anything else) that has ever tried to be hip. I don’t know why anyone even tries to be hip anymore. It never works well.

I still haven’t seen ‘Genesis II’ or ‘Planet Earth’, but I read once that the evil mutants can be recognised because they have two belly-buttons. Supposedly this was an inside joke by Roddenberry, because he was never allowed to show female bully-buttons on Star Trek, and he wanted to make up for it by doubling the number of them on his new show.

And I loved ‘The Questor Tapes’ when I was a kid.

The deal with the Omega Man is that it is unapologetically awesome. Charlton Heston, dressed as Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who, firing a machine gun out of his window just because the evil albino mutant cult is fucking with him. And his girlfriend is a blaxploitation character. And every line of dialogue is either hilarious or kickass. It easily shot up to my favorite Heston picture, beating out Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes– man, that guy loved his dystopias.

And while I am a Howard purist, I will acknowledge that the pastiche collections have the better covers. Of course, it’s hard to beat Frazetta when he’s on his game.