REALLY? TRACI LORDS? AS DEJAH THORIS?

What seems to be turning into a Space Opera special began with HCB sending me this snippet by Ken Hulsey.

“Infamous actress Traci Lords, yes the same Traci Lords who did the nasty as an underage porn star and tried her hand at being a trance DJ, has been cast in the upcoming film from The Asylum called "Princess of Mars." I can smell a lawsuit a brewing, because just last month it was announced that Andrew Stanton was directing "Princess of Mars" for Disney. That film is set to star Taylor Kitsch, Willem Dafoe and Lynn Collins as the princess. Both films are based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel by the same name. In fact Burrough's penned several novels about John Carter, a wounded Civil War veteran, who mysteriously finds himself transported to Mars where he encounters savage Martians, strange creatures, a slew of sexy maidens. From what I can gather, the Disney version will stay true to the original story, and the version produced by The Asylum will be a modern redo. I think that it would be safe to assume that Disney would take a more 'family-friendly' approach to the story, while The Asylum would take a more 'colorful' path with Traci Lords. I honestly can't see two films called "Princess of Mars" coming out without there being legal trouble, so guess what? My money is on The Asylum changing the name of their film in the near future to save themselves the hassle.”

And I didn’t like the sound of this at all. Not one little bit. I still don’t. Movie gossip and lawsuits be damned. I am extremely protective of the Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars novels – what’s know as the Barsoom series. You can do what you like with Tarzan or Pellucidar, but hands off Barsoom. ERB wrote Princess of Mars – the first of an eleven book series - in 1911, and, decades later, it was one of the first pieces of fiction that I ever read – in the immediate wake of Dan Dare and Biggles, and well before Mickey Spillane. Set on the kind of dying desert Mars, beloved by any dreaming schoolboy, the one imagined by astronomer-crazy Percival Lowell, with the last of its dwindling water flowing from the exhaused polar icecap along the network of ancient canals, while sword weilding aliens conducted tribal warfare. Wikipedia described the plot thusly. (When contemplating ERB, one tends to use words like thusly)…

“John Carter, a Confederate American Civil War veteran, goes prospecting in Arizona and, when set upon by Indians, is mysteriously transported to Mars, called "Barsoom" by its inhabitants. Carter finds that he has great strength on this planet, due to its lesser gravity. Carter soon falls in among the Tharks, a nomadic tribe of the planet's warlike, four-armed, green inhabitants. Thanks to his strength and combat abilities he rises in position in the tribe and earns the respect and eventually the friendship of Tars Tarkas, one of the Thark chiefs. The Tharks subsequently capture Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, a member of the humanoid red Martian race. The red Martians inhabit a loose network of city states and control the desert planet's canals, along which its agriculture is concentrated. Carter rescues her from the green men to return her to her people…etc, etc”
(Click here for the whole deal.)

The secret word is Jeddak