Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Carmen Elizabeth Ejogo (Tricky/Wright)

You'd think British citizen Carmen Ejogo was fated to work in genre media since she began her career as a kid's tv host on Saturday Disney!
Though almost half of her roles have been genre, she's best known for her performance in the title role in the mini-series Sally Hemmings: An American Scandal (released on DVD as Sally Hemmings: An American Love Story.)
Carmen is also an accomplished vocalist and has appeared in several videos.
She's currently in the now-cancelled CBS action-adventure series CHAOS.
Trivia: The series Kidnapped, which Carmen co-starred in made history as the first network series to finish it's run on the Internet! (Cancelled after only five episodes aired, the remaining eight episodes were posted, one a week, until the series' conclusion. They're available on the DVD box-set.)
She re-teamed with Kidnapped co-stars Jeremy Sisto and Linus Roache when she guest-starred on Law & Order, where Sisto and Roche were now regulars!
Genre appearances include...
Zero Hour (Rebecca 'Beck' Riley)
Alex Cross (Maria Cross)
CHAOS (Fay Carson)
Law & Order Season 18 "Burn Card"
Perfume aka Dress to Kill (Chloe)
Kidnapped (Turner)
Cold Lazarus (Blinda)
The Avengers [1996] (Brenda)
Saturday Disney (Host / Presenter)

Check out...
Regrettably, I couldn't find any pages dedicated to the lovely lady!
If you know of any, please e-mail the links to me and I'll happily include them!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

CAVE GIRL in "Man Who Served Death"

Note: racial / ethnic stereotypes common to the 1950s in this story.
May be NSFW.
Another exciting adventure featuring Gardner Fox and Bob Powell's leopard-skin-clad adventuress, this time from Thun'da #3!
You'll note that the original concept of a prehistoric Lost World-type setting had been jettisoned in favor of the more-or-less standard African jungle with evil and/or idiot White hunters creating trouble.
Presumably, this was done to facilitate a potential movie serial deal like the one made for Cave Girl's companion strip Thun'da. which Fox and Powell were also handling since it's creator and original artist, Frank Frazetta, had quit when the series' editorial direction was abruptly changed! (Following standard editorial practice of the period, he had not retained copyright or editorial control of the character.)
The occasional lost ancient city or lone prehistoric beast would still pop up, but the emphasis was on a present-day "darkest Africa" motif which would remain both in her Thun'da backup tales and her own short-lived title.
plus these jungle goodies from Amazon...

Monday, June 13, 2011

Heather Langenkamp (Anderson)

Sometimes it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Heather Langenkamp was attending high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, near the location filming for the movie The Outsiders.
While hanging around the location, she was offered the chance to be an extra, and then a small speaking role.
From there she went on to full-time performing, including the tv series Just the 10 of Us and three of the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Recently, she's gone behind the camera doing film production and directing, including sfx work on Evan Almighty, Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Angels and Demons as well as directing the segment "Jessica" in the new horror anthology film Prank.
Trivia:
Much of the plot for the film Wes Craven's New Nightmare is based on Heather's experiences with an Elm Street-obsessed stalker.
She runs an environmentally-friendly candy company!

Genre appearances include...
Perversions of Science "Ultimate Weapon"
Never Sleep Again: the Nightmare Legacy (as self)
Wes Craven's New Nightmare (as Heather Langenkamp playing Nancy Thompson)
Shocker (Victim)
Fugitive Mind (Suzanne Hicks)
Nightmare on Elm Street / Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Nancy Thompson)

Check out...
Heather's MySpace Page
Heather's candy company: the Malibu Gum Company
Other actresses to play Nancy Thompson include...
Rooney Mara in Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

PHANTOM LADY in "Beauty and the Brain"

We begin presenting the COMPLETE 1940s Fox/Farrell Phantom Lady saga with this torrid tale from #13, which is her first issue. (Before this, the comic was titled WottaLife and featured funny animals.)
The art was by the incomparable Matt Baker, perhaps the premier "good girl" artist of the Golden Age.
As we mentioned at the top of this entry, we'll be presenting the complete run of stories including her All-Top Comics appearances.
PLUS: while we're not going to do most of the Quality Comics appearances (in the yellow and green ensemble), we will be doing the multi-issue crossover with Spider Widow which ran in both Police Comics and Feature Comics in a one-week daily presentation.

featuring goodies emblazoned with the cover art from this issue of Phantom Lady.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Diahann Carroll (Kay/Glusman/DeLeon/Damone)

In the 90s, she was the insufferable Whitley Gilbert's equally-insufferable mother on A Different World!
In the 80s, she was elegant Dominique Deveraux, who went toe-to-toe catfighting with Alexis (Joan Collins) and Krystle (Linda Evans) on the legendary prime-time soaps Dynasty and The Colbys!
In the 70s, she appeared as a sultry hologram on the nigh-legendary Star Wars Holiday Special!
And, in the 60s, while she was the second Black woman to star in a tv series titled after her character, she was the FIRST to play a non-servant as Julia Baker, RN in Julia! (The first series, Beulah, was about a maid.)
A classically-trained singer, Diahann has over a dozen albums to her credit, and won a Tony for her performance on Broadway in No Strings!
She's a breast cancer activist / survivor, and even invited a camera crew into her treatment room for a national broadcast special to draw public attention to the disease.
Definitely one of the classiest women ever to grace the Fantastic Femmes section of our blog, Diahann's just written an autobiography entitled The Legs Are The Last To Go, but in her case, they ain't gone yet! In fact, she's still going strong at 74, having just done a tv pilot called White Collar!

Trivia: She attended NYC's Music and Art High School with fellow Star Wars actor Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian).
While they have performed together on other projects, they didn't work together on Star Wars. (She did the Holiday Special, he did The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi!)

Genre credits include...
Disney's the Legend of Tarzan (Queen La)
ABC WeekEnd Special "Jirimpimbira: an African Folk Tale" (Narrator)
Touched by an Angel "The Driver"
Perry Mason: the Case of the Lethal Lifestyle (Lydia Bishop)
From the Dead of Night (Maggie)
Burke's Law [1994] "Who Killed the Beauty Queen?"
Murder in Black & White (Margo Stover)
Star Wars Holiday Special (Mermeia the Hologram)
Death Scream (Betty May)
Naked City "A Horse has a Big Head"
Peter Gunn "Sing a Song of Murder"

Check out...
Diahann's Official WebSite
Queen La of Opar has also been played by...
Lilian Worth in Adventures of Tarzan (1921)
Mademoiselle Kithnou in Tarzan the Tiger (1929)