Yesterday's blog had an interesting back story I neglected to mention. I was making my usual blog rounds yesterday when I happened to click over to if charlie parker was a gunslinger there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats, where an image of Judi Meredith from JACK THE GIANT KILLER was posted as "Seminal Image #645." This prompted me to remember an article about the film I had left unfinished some time ago. I found it on my computer, dated 3-23-92 and it -- with only slight polishing and updating -- is what you read here yesterday.A few correspondents have written to inquire what prompted that posting, curious if the musical version had turned up again somewhere. But no, it was just the World Premiere of something previously unreleased... and, incredibly, fifteen years old. Not quite ready for print, perhaps, but perfect for blogging.
Some people wrote with information worthy of a postscript. First of all, there was no board game; that was my own childhood hallucination. I was really high on GIANT KILLER during the Summer of '62, when I was an occasional customer at a neighborhood store that had a huge stack of board games on a shelf behind the counter for sale. There were so many other movie and TV tie-in board games, I probably assumed there would have to be a JTGK game and, as if willing it into existence, I spent a couple of weeks collecting enough empty pop bottles to fill the back seat of my mother's car. We took them to that little store to cash them in, but there was no JTGK game, so I took the money home instead. Nevertheless, imagining the game burnt a permanent impression in my memory cells: I can actually visualize the box cover, though it never existed. It has also been suggested to me that it's unlikely that I read the comic book adaptation prior to the film's release, which I suppose is entirely possible. Subjective experience is what it is.
I am also told that the reason the theatrical version has replaced the musical version in circulation -- besides good common sense -- is that the theatrical version boasts the ideal elements; the musical version was cobbled together from secondary elements, to leave the original unviolated, which explains too why it always looked so pasty and washed-out in comparison. I was also told that, although the film was shot to be projected with a 1.66:1 matte, the stop motion effects were filmed open aperture, so the special effects shots lose information on all four sides of the frame on MGM's DVD. It's the prettier of the two available DVDs, but the unauthorized Goodtimes release is the only source for seeing the special effects sequences as they were meant to be seen.
One good-hearted reader also wrote to point out my misuse of the word "lollygog" for "lollygag." I sent him an "Oh, go away" and a smiley face. Being a native Ohioan, I hear (and doubtless use) a lot of incorrect grammar but, in all my years, I've never heard anyone say anything but "lollygog." I suppose it's possible they've been feigning a continental accent when they say it, but I never felt the need to question it. My correspondent and Mr. Webster call it an error, but I reserve the right to call it dialect. My correspondent's correction will affect my future use of the word in print, one hopes, but prolly not in conversation (as people also say in Ohio) and possibly not here either.
The joy of blogging, you see, is that it's one of the few places where a person can write freely and subjectively. What you read here, I guarantee, will be off the top of my head and researched only insofar as I feel like researching it at the moment -- which is, more often than not, not at all. If these blogs are ever collected in book form, then I'll dot the I's and cross the T's. Which is not to say that some e-mailed corrections won't be immediately implemented. Sometimes I'm very responsive; it depends on how busy I am and how important I consider the correction to be. I am nothing if not consistent in my inconsistency. As I think I've said before, consider anything you read here a rough draft.
