"Although I'm CALLED Killdozer, my real name is 'Gene'"
WORLDS UNKNOWN PRESENTS THE THING CALLED ... KILLDOZER
I don't know if you've ever had the chance to catch this ... this movie, but if you did, it probably means that you wake up really really early on Sunday morning with nothing better to do than watch the local unaffiliated station's lame sci-fi movie show. Film stars Clint Walker as some guy who gets harassed by a Bulldozer, and Robert Urich as I don't remember what,because I haven't bothered to watch this heap of failure a second time 'round.
The front cover of this book shows a glaring, sharp-toothed, flame red bulldozer screaming vengeance and lunging at Clint Walker with death in his voice. The book had no scene whatsoever like this ... and neither did the movie. Mostly, it's a bunch of jump cuts and a bulldozer lumbering around while people lamely run and occasionally bellow. The later part, the comic captures perfectly.
I think this must have been one of Marvel's first attempts at an official movie adaptation - I'm sure you've seen those, where the plot and dialogue are condensed in a ratio of one minute of screen time = one panel roughly a sixth of the size of the total page. Official movie adaptations could reduce "Gandhi" to a two-issue miniseries with a backup featuring "Wings of Desire."
5 comments:
You've seen the Killdozer movie; you've read the Killdozer comic book; you've read the Theodore Sturgeon novella; now play the Killdozer Video Game!
Um, I think the comic book was adapted from the original Sturgeon story, not the movie adaptation. If it doesn't seem to follow the movie it's because the movie didn't follow the story.
A previous comic book version of this story appeared in one of Timely's titles c.1959/60 - written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. (I bought it at the time, but don't recall which mag it was.) I don't recall any reference to Sturgeon (although that doesn't mean there wasn't!) and I'd never read his book, so when I later saw the movie, I rather assumed Lee had scripted it, recycling his comic story.
(Perhaps, if the first comic had "borrowed" the story, the later comic was a deliberate attempt to bury the memory of the first!)
I've traced the comic! It was "Trull the Inhuman", from Tales to Astonish #21: a non-corporeal alien enters the "body" of a steam shovel on a jungle construction site.
Here's a bit of strangeness: Trull made a 2009 appearance in GHOST RIDER: HEAVENS ON FIRE #3:
http://marvel.wikia.com/Ghost_Riders:_Heaven%27s_On_Fire_Vol_1_3
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