Friday, May 8, 2009

We Meet Again, Dr. Jones

Despite "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" I still love Indy.

Thanks to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on the big screen, and to a lesser extent George Pal's "Doc Savage: Man of Bronze" on cable, I discovered the world of the pulps and, eventually, the creations of H. P. Lovecraft. To this day I still think they're all part of the same fictional world, and I imagine both Dr. Jones and Dr. Savage being well acquainted with the materials in the closed stacks at Miskatonic University.

More importantly, at least for this blog's purposes, both the Mythos and the world of Dr. Jones have produced a staggering number of paper props. The grail diary and it's numerous inserts from "The Last Crusade" are probably the most iconic collection of prop documents in film history, and over at Indyquest you'll find downloadable versions of almost every scrap of ephemera that appeared in the Indiana Jones movies. Everything from the ticket Indy used to board the Pan-Am Clipper to the post-war intelligence file on Irina Spalko.

If only Dr. Jones had taken an interest in the rumors of a lost city in the Antarctic...

5 comments:

Christopher B said...

"Despite 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'..."

"Despite"? You didn't like it? *Sigh* I'm beginning to wonder if anybody outside my household liked that movie. :P

As for taking an interest in rumors of a lost city in the Antarctic, you never know. It's been known for quite some time that Del Toro wants to bring "At the Mountains of Madness" to the big screen. Maybe his Lovecraftian chocolate bar will fall into Spielberg-Lucas' Indy peanut butter. Hey - it could happen! :P

Propnomicon said...

An alleged copy of Del Toro's script for ATMOM is available at http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?51nakzztmmn

Having read it, I think the kindest thing to say is that it would make an awesome prequel to John Carpenter's "The Thing".

Marrock said...

You can link the Rocketeer to this world too.

I recall a reference in a Doc Savage comic that mentions "the rocketpack not working right since that kid in California got hold of it".

Just throwing that out there, keep up the great work.

Propnomicon said...

Oh, I wouldn't doubt for a minute that the Rocketeer was part of it.

Are you familiar with the Wold-Newton universe of Philip Jose Farmer?

Marrock said...

Been quite a while, but yeah, I remember that coming up back in my high school english class.

If memory serves, an attempt was made to write up Holmes' investigation into the disappearance of Lord & Lady Greystoke.

I also have here a copy of "Roadmarks" by Roger Zelazny and he makes reference to a man called "Doc", described as a golden haired guy with one hell of a suntan driving a sporty little 20s roadster.

Eventually he does make an appearance in the book to pick up some costumed assassin captured by the book's main protagonist, and when he does, every time he moves, his shirt rips.