From Mythos Books came The Lovecraft Tarot, a handsome-looking set of seventy-eight illustrated cards by David Wynn and illustrator D. L. Hutchinson, accompanied by a ten-page booklet. A $20 °CD-ROM compilation of the complete archives of Heavy Metal magazine was withdrawn from sale when a number of contributors complained that they had not been notified about the project nor offered any compensation for the re-use of their work.
Night of the Living Dead co-author John A. Russo and composer/computer artist Vlad Licina launched Midnight Comics in November. The imprint kicked off with Children of the Dead, a three-issue mini-series by Steven Hughes, Phil Nutman and John Russo, based on a proposed film written by Russo, that examined the lives of a “special” group of youngsters born during the zombie plague. A special CD soundtrack was composed and recorded for the series by Vlad and The Dark Theater.
Winter’s Edge II, a special from DC Comics/Vertigo, featured a new story about Death written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Jeffrey Jones, plus stories by other hands featuring the Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds, John Constantine, Tim Hunter and several more characters. Meanwhile, artist Yoshitaka Amano produced a new Sandman poster as part of the tenth anniversary of Gaiman’s character.
Dark Horse comics launched a new series based on the popular TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, written by Andi Watson and illustrated by Joe Bennett. As a special promotion, a five-page colour Buffy strip scripted by Christopher Golden appeared exclusively in the 21–27 November issue of TV Guide. Along with its ongoing regular series, Dark Horse also published a three-issue Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Origin mini-series, based on Joss Whedon’s 1992 movie, from the creative team of Dan Brereton, Golden and Bennett.
Also from Dark Horse came The Curse of Dracula, a three-part series in which veterans Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan (reunited from Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula two decades earlier) teamed up for a contemporary version of Stoker’s story. The same publisher also revived its licence for The Terminator, written by Alan Grant and illustrated by Steve Pugh.
Image’s new Cliffhanger imprint added Crimson to the lineup, which was artist Humberto Ramos’ unique look at vampires, and Britain’s Games Workshop launched a series of black and white Warhammer comics set in the popular fantasy gaming world.
At the 70th Academy Awards presentation in Los Angeles, James Cameron’s overblown Titanic (which features a supernatural coda) tied with the Oscar record set by Ben-Hur (1959), picking up mostly technical awards for Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, Sound, Original Score, Film Editing, Costume Design, Cinematography, Art Direction, Director and Best Picture. Rick Baker and David LeRoy collected the Make-up award for their work on Men in Black.
To celebrate a century of American films, in 1998 the American Film Institute created a highly controversial list of the 100 Best American Movies, based on the recommendations of a 1,500 member panel, including President Bill Clinton.Citizen Kane was voted the top film, but the list was so skewed towards contemporary titles that Steven Spielberg was the most chosen director and nothing by Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo or Fred Astaire was even listed. Only nineteen of the final 100 were genre titles: 6: The Wizard of Oz; 11: It’s a Wonderful Life; 12: Sunset Boulevard; 15: Star Wars; 18: Psycho; 22:2001: A Space Odyssey; 25: E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial; 26: Dr. Strangelove; 43: King Kong (1933); 46: A Clockwork Orange; 48: Jaws; 49: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; 58: Fantasia; 60: Raiders of the Lost Ark; 61: Vertigo; 64: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 65: The Silence of the Lambs; 67: The Manchurian Candidate, and 87:Frankenstein (1931).
Starring Vince Vaughn as the nutty Norman Bates and Anne Heche as his shower victim, director Gus Van Sant’s superfluous colour remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was quickly forgotten. However, ten years after the murder by strangulation of actress Myra Davis (the voice of Norman Bates’s mother and Janet Leigh’s body double in the Hitchcock original), Los Angeles detectives used DNA evidence to charge a 31-year-old man with her death and with another, similar killing.
Jamie Lee Curtis returned as Laurie Strode, once again menaced by Michael Myers’ homicidal Shape in Halloween H20, based on a treatment by Kevin Williamson. The title actually celebrated the series’ twentieth anniversary and had nothing to do with water. Meanwhile, police in Riverside, California, reported that a 15-year-old boy claimed that the character of Myers from the latest sequel directed him to stab and strangle a 62-year-old woman who was babysitting other children in his home. The boy, who was found with the knife believed to have been used in the attack, was arrested and placed in a facility for psychiatric observation.
Survivor Jennifer Love Hewitt and her friends found themselves on a vacation from Hell as they were stalked by the hook-handed killer of the derivative sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Disturbing Behaviour should have been called The Stepford Kids as bad teenagers were turned into “A” students by an experimental psychiatric facility, and more stupid teens were bumped off by an unseen serial killer in Urban Legend. Scott Reynolds’ The Ugly was a gruesome serial-killer story set in New Zealand, while Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy was based on the novel by Patrick McCabe.
Scriptwriter Kevin Williamson once again plundered the past and rehashed some old movie plots for Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty, in which a group of teen students discovered that their teachers were really body-stealing aliens.
The most successful film of the year was Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi. Despite being overlong and filled with clichés, Michael Bay’s big-budget disaster movie worked, thanks to memorable characters, strong performances and superb special effects as a team of oilworkers were sent into space to destroy a huge asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth. Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact covered similar ground, as a comet hit the Earth, causing a giant tidal wave which decimated the American east coast and thankfully drowned star Tea Leoni.
Despite a massive publicity campaign in America, the huge boxoffice take for Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s misguided $120 million reworking of Godzilla was still considered a disappointment. Daily Variety reported that the film had trouble in Japan as well. Even though it broke records there when 500,000 people turned out to see it on the opening day, ticket sales dropped considerably during the second week.