We'll return after these messages...

The worst toy of the 1970s?  I actually received Milky as a Christmas present as a kid (though I'm sure I would have preferred to have gotten an X-wing Fighter).

Here's a commercial for Milky the Marvelous Milking Cow from Kenner:

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McDonald's Star Trek: The Motion Picture Happy Meal commercial:

Musica Moonday

The Shat-Man's spoken word performance of "It Was a Very Good Year":

Merrie Christmas to all!

"Hardrock, Coco and Joe - The Three Little Dwarfs" from Centaur Productions:

Don't touch that dial!

An annual Christmas Eve television tradition in the New York area for almost fifty years, here's the one and only original WPIX Channel 11 Yule Log:

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Coca-Cola commercial featuring "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony) Buy the World a Coke" performed by The Hillside Singers and produced by Al Ham (writer of the immortal Action News theme "Move Closer to Your World"):

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Crazy Eddie commercial:

Musica Moonday

"Suzy Snowflake" from Centaur Productions:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Though not necessarily a Christmas movie per se, this 1979 animated adaptation of C.S. Lewis' 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is inextricably linked to the holiday in my mind, both in its overt religious themes and its general snow covered wintry ambience.  Along with Rankin/Bass' version of The Hobbit, this made for TV movie was one of the gateway drugs into the world of fantasy literature for me, since I saw the cartoon versions first and then read the books they were based on later.  Thanks television!

Compared to the recent 2005 live action feature film or even the 1988 BBC miniseries, this version is a relatively low budget affair directed by Bill Melendez, director of the beloved trilogy of Peanuts holiday specials A Charlie Brown Christmas, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and the slightly lesser A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  Though it lacks the big budget sheen and special effects set pieces of the 2005 film, this is an extemely faithful adaptation of the novel with a narrative that moves quickly but is well paced and about 99% free of any extraneous padding, which is not something I would say for the 2005 live action film (or Peter Jackson's bloated Hobbit trilogy).  Obviously not as polished as a Disney production, the animation is decent for a made for TV movie, though the character design could be considered a bit wonky, especially for the four Pevensie children and their Brady kids fashions; there are a few scenes where these kids just look downright ugly.  Susan fares the worst, usually looking like some type of greasy haired encephalitic inbred; maybe she was just going through an awkward phase since once the kids are portrayed as adults they lose most of the ugliness in their original lumpy, pasty faced designs.

That caveat aside, this adaptation still manages to retain a bit of the "veddy British" cozy tea time atmosphere of the original story, a feeling of homely magic that I personally felt was more or less lost in the 2005 film in favor of Lord of the Rings-lite style battles and CGI spectacle.  And though I can only really remember a Minotaur or two in the White Witch's army of monsters and some Centaurs on Aslan's side in the live action film, this cartoon version features a whole menagerie of weird and bizarre creatures in the two armies, including but not limited to: a unicorn, a flying horse, a couple of dryads, a werewolf, a trio of witches and a plethora of assorted ghouls and goblins.  Not a bad monster count for a kiddie cartoon!

Here's a short clip:

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Hickory Farms commercial:

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Ronco's Mr. Microphone commercial:

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Dispatches from McDonaldland #2

In which Clown Ronald skates on thin ice while cartoon animals strike curious poses:

Musica Moonday

"The Snow Miser Song" from Rankin/Bass' The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974):

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Andre Cold Duck commercial:

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Carvel Santa and Chanukah cake commercial (thank you):

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Common Household Deities of North America, Mid to Late Twentieth Century

No. 6,  The Mother Goddess of Breakfast Syrups:

Musica Moonday

"The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth" duet performed by Der Bingle and Der Bowie:

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Though not held in as high regard as some of its more popular kiddie matinee brethren such as The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, or even Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 film adaptation of Ian Fleming's novel about a magical flying car is still one of the great children's live action films of all time, full of song, spectacle and adventure.

With a 144 minute long running time though, it could be considered a bit too epic for especially hyperactive children or fidgety adults to sit through without squirming; but there is much to delight in here, notably the elaborate, Rube Goldbergesque proto-steampunk mechanical inventions of Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) and some beautiful Technicolor widescreen aerial cinematography as the winged motorcar soars above the English countryside and the working windmill the Potts family live in all the way to a fairytale castle located in Vulgaria, the mythical European country of the stock villain Baron Bomburst--and that's a real windmill, real castle, and real aerial photography, no CGI scenery here.  If only the character of Caractacus Potts were a preteen girl yearning for the freedom of flight instead of good old middle aged Dick Van Dyke, this could almost be a Miyazaki film come to life.

Special mention must be made of the truly scrumptious Sally Ann Howes.  After watching her performance of "Doll on a Music Box" as a young boy, I would never again look at a package of Swiss Miss quite the same way.

And to top it all off, there is the Child Catcher.  Created especially for the film by screenwriter Roald Dahl and played by ballet dancer Robert Helpmann, the Child Catcher is simply one of the most terrifying film characters of all time:

Brrrrr!  To this day just looking at him gives me the willies!

Here's the trailer:

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K-tel Sno-Bloc Maker commercial:

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Hai Karate aftershave commercial:

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Common Household Deities of North America, Mid to Late Twentieth Century

No. 5, The small god of indigestion:

Musica Moonday

Life Day hymn "Tree of Life" aka "A Day to Celebrate" peformed by Princess Leia Organa from the Star Wars Holiday Special (1978):

Salute Your Shorts: The Hobbit

Salute Your Shorts #6: Gene Deitch's 1966 adaptation of The Hobbit:

Don't touch that dial!

This year, why not just say no to the real life mayhem of Black Friday sales at Walmart and yes to sitting on the couch to enjoy a marathon of watching giant monsters attack Tokyo?

And if you're really jonesing for some vintage "Save the Earth" action, here's the American International Pictures English audio track that you can sync up with your official Godzilla vs. Hedorah DVD or Blu-ray:

Happy Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving day Kong!  Black Friday Godzilla!

Compilation of WOR-TV Channel 9 Holiday Movie Special bumpers and commercials:

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Playworld toy store commercial:

Musica Moonday

"The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" by Leonard Nimoy:

JFK

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
5/29/17-11/22/63

Here's the trailer for JFK, Oliver Stone's conspiracy theory magnum opus and in my opinion one of the most truly horrifying films of the past 25 years ("Back and to the left...back and to the left...back and to the left..."):

Salute Your Shorts: Parade of the Wooden Soldiers

Salute Your Shorts #5: Betty Boop in Parade of the Wooden Soldiers:

Friday Filmstrip Funhouse: Our Thanksgiving Day

Our Thanksgiving Day from Film Strip of-the-Month Clubs, Inc.:

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Genesee beer commercial:

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Common Household Deities of North America, Mid to Late Twentieth Century

No. 4, The Doughboy*:



*Note: If I recall my world history lessons correctly, despite the innocent, even adorable appearance of these chubby little fire elementals, during the time of the Great War, millions of roused Doughboys left behind the warmth and comfort of their hearthside haunts to fight and die valiantly on the front lines against the Huns and their legions of barbaric Grünriesen (Green Giants) and bloodthirsty Koolaidmensch (Kool-Aid Men).

Musica Moonday

Anyone growing up in the northeast US during the pre-digital analog TV era in the 1970s-80s will to this very day undoubtedly associate a few specific movies that aired annually in November (usually around Thanksgiving) with the gluttonous turkey-centric holiday: Laurel and Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) on WPIX channel 11 and King Kong (1933) on WOR channel 9 on Thanksgiving Day along with King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971) on WOR the day after Thanksgiving.

(For more about this regional holiday programming see this excellent overview by Joe Cascio at DVD Drive-In.)

There are a few other fantastic films that I also personally associate with late November and Thanksgiving due to having seen them for the first time as a kid around this time of year: The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1976), The Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968) and the Rankin/Bass adaptations of The Hobbit (1977) and its semi-sequel The Return of the King (1980), from whence the following Orc marching/protest song comes from.

Dedicated to anyone that doesn't want to go to work today or is just having a bad case of the Mondays, here's "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way!":

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Carvel commercial (thank you):

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Hey, where did everybody go?
They've gone to Betsons!

Don't touch that dial!

WPVI Channel 6 Action News theme ("Move Closer to Your World"):

Friday Filmstrip Funhouse 16mm Post Election Edition

In light of Amendment 2 (i.e. the statewide legalization of cannabis for medicinal use) failing to pass with a 60% super majority yes vote in Florida this past Tuesday (it received a mere 58% approval, so no cigar, er...funny cigarette?), here's a short educational film about the menace of marihuana, assassin of youth:



Dig that soundtrack!  And be sure to stay for the final line of the film.

Anatomy of a Psycho

From Mill Creek's "Pure Terror" collection comes this exploration of juvenile delinquency that's just a bit more on the mild melodrama side than the purported pure terror it's billed as, but it does have a handful of hoodlums, a touch of facial scarring and just a pinch of arson going for it to keep it from being boring.

Best line:  "Hey Chet, you want some soup?"

The description from the DVD insert reads:

ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO
Starring Ronnie Burns, Pamela Lincoln, Darrell Howe
(1961) B&W Unrated

A young man is despondent over the conviction and subsequent execution of his older brother.  Having idolized his brother to the point of it being an obsession, the young man cannot believe he was guilty, even though he was, and swears to avenge him.

Here are a few minutes of the film for your viewing pleasure:

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Commercial for Goofy Greats album from K-tel:

V for Vendetta

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason 
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

Neither really obscure nor drivel, V for Vendetta (2006) is arguably the greatest comic book/superhero movie celebrating Guy Fawkes Day in recent memory; an excellent film adapted from a great graphic novel and in my opinion the best thing other than the first Matrix the Wachowski siblings have been attached to, though I am looking forward to checking out their pulpy looking Jupiter Ascending next year.

And you just don't ever see people running around wearing Batman or Spider-Man masks at protests around the globe either do you?

Here's the trailer:

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Ginsu knife commercial:

Election Day Public Service Announcement

Hey kids!  Tell everyone it's your DOODY to vote!

Musica Moonday

"I'm Gonna Find a Cave" by The Banana Splits:

Child of Glass

Sleeping lies the murdered lass,

vainly cries the child of glass.
When the two shall be as one,
the spirit's journey will be done.

Child of Glass is a great little creepy ghost story for kids that originally aired in 1978 on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color.  Starring Olivia Barash (Leila from Repo Man and my first childhood TV crush) as the Creole ghost Inez Dumaine.  Also starring Denise Nickerson AKA Violet Beauregarde AKA the girl that turns into a giant blueberry in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory; though here it is the ghostly Inez that is blue tinted instead of Nickerson's character:

Be sure to check out the sweet poster for Laurel and Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers on the bedroom wall of young protagonist Alexander Armsworth during early scenes in the film.  Kid's got good taste in wall art!

Child of Glass is a wonderful film for children of all ages and has something for all members of the family to enjoy: a blue tinted ghost, a kid falling down a well, a drunkard handyman intentionally setting fire to a barn, a young girl that mysteriously dies while under the guardianship of her insane alcoholic uncle, a Southern cotillion that starts off great but ends up a disaster, bats, a leaning gazebo, a seance conducted by children, an adult chasing kids through a graveyard with intent to kill, and a broken heirloom lamp.

They don't make 'em like they used to!

Here's a clip:

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To celebrate Dia de Los Muertos with our friends south of the border, here's a trailer for arguably the greatest adventure video game of all time, Grim Fandango from LucasArts:

Happy Hallowe'en!

Up next on WODS-TV is a special presentation of one of the creepiest TV musical themes of all time.
Without further ado, here's the outré intro to Tales from the Darkside:



Note: I would have liked to have posted a clip from the pilot episode "Trick or Treat" instead for All Hallows' Eve but the blasted official dvd version of Tales from the Darkside replaced most of the original stock music cues on this (and most of the other episodes) with modern synthesizer noodlings that really detract from the creepy mood of these low budget 1980s shows in this purist's opinion, so this intro will have to suffice.

Cheers!

Friday Filmstrip Funhouse 16mm Edition: Halloween Party

Halloween Party (1953) from Encyclopaedia Britannica Films Inc.:

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Pumpkin Kutter commercial:

Satan's School for Girls

Best title of a made-for-TV movie ever?
The Magic 8 Ball says "It is decidedly so".

The film itself is not too bad either, both as an example of the Satan obsessed Seventies and for having the mystical foresight to feature not one but two future Charlie's Angels stars in Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd (nee Stoppelmoor).

Here's a clip:

Don't change that dial!

Creature Double Feature opening/closing from WKBS-TV Channel 48:

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Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker II commercial:

Musica Moonday

Promo clip for Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds:


In some alternate universe the whole thing was released as a full length animated film but alas, we do not live in that universe.

Island of Lost Souls

One of the greatest classic horror films of all time.  Watch the Criterion Collection Blu-ray if you can.

These guys are truly the stuff of nightmares:

Here's the trailer:

Salute Your Shorts: Skeleton Frolic

Salute Your Shorts #4: Skeleton Frolic from Ub Iwerks:

Friday Filmstrip Funhouse: Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween (1956) by Film Strip-of-the-Month Clubs, Inc.:

And now a word from our sponsor...

8 more days 'til Halloween!

Silver Shamrock Novelties commercial:

Count Yorga, Vampire

Just watched Count Yorga, Vampire (1970).  Basically the Caucasian version of Blacula (1972), 70s trappings and all.  I liked it; it was better than I was expecting--I had feared it would be a spoofier fish out of water story, something more like the end of the decade's Love at First Bite (1979) but was pleasantly surprised at the serious tone of the film, and found Robert Quarry's Yorga to be a smooth, sinister and truly bloodthirsty Count.

Here's the trailer:

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Commercial for the Haunted Mansion in Long Branch, NJ:

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Boglins toy commercial:

Musica Moonday

Arguably the greatest music video ever made; directed by John Landis, make up by Rick Baker, voice over by Vincent Price...Michael Jackson's Thriller:

Salute Your Shorts: Betty Boop's Hallowe'en Party

Salute Your Shorts #3: Betty Boop's Hallowe'en Party:

Featuring two of the great American inventions of the Twentieth Century, animation and jazz, here's Betty Boop:

Friday Filmstrip Funhouse: Hallowe'en

Hallowe'en (1948) by Young America Films Inc.:

We'll be back after these messages...

Carvel commercial (thank you):

The Ape

Man, the highest kind of animal...

Just watched the old Boris Karloff film The Ape on my Mill Creek Horror Classics set.  Here's the synopsis from the booklet:

SPOILER ALERT!

The Ape
Starring Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon, Gene O'Donnell
(1940) B&W Unrated
Doctor Adrian (Boris Karloff) is a researcher looking for a cure to polio that would benefit his young friend Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon), who suffers from the disease.  His research centers upon the use of spinal fluid in a serum that could return mobility to sufferers of polio.  The escape of a circus ape and the injury of its trainer provide an opportunity to test his procedure on Frances and it provides positive but limited results.  Hoping to prove his research and cure his friend, Doctor Adrian sets out to use the ape as a means to provide the necessary spinal fluid for completing his research.

I had never seen this creaky old flick before but enjoyed it, though the print on the DVD was in pretty rough shape with lots of missing frames throughout.  There were a few nice scenes of the circus, with a memorable shot of a fire eater in an old fashioned Mephistopheles theatrical costume, and I thought the ape suit was actually a pretty damn good one for the time--maybe it was just the way the actor bowed his legs when he walked or the fact that the skin around his eyes was blacked out to blend seamlessly into the mask but it looked good enough for me to suspend my disbelief so that I could almost think I was watching a real ape and not merely a man in a monkey suit, which made the climax a bit more shocking for me when the ape is finally gunned down and is revealed to be Karloff's Doctor Adrian dressed as an ape in order to secure additional supplies of spinal fluid for his research collected from the corpses of the unfortunate victims of ape attack.  At first I thought the mad doctor was wearing an actual ape costume but then realized to my horror he did not have access to a quality costume shop in the small town where he practiced and was actually garbed in the foetid carcass of the recently deceased simian.  Talk about dedication to your work!

Best line is when a put-upon wife confronts her philandering husband about his obvious affairs:
Wife: I've got no place to go...
Husband: You've got the river.

Ouch!  That's harsh--what a dick!  Though I think he gets done in at the end by the titular ape...or was it Boris?

Anyway, here's a clip for your viewing pleasure:

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Woolworth/Woolco commercial:

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Witch Doctor Head Shrinkers Kit commercial:

Musica Moonday

"The Mummy" by Little Tibia and the Fibias from Mad Monster Party? (1967):

Rest in Peace Saturday Morning Cartoons

Saturday Morning Cartoons
c. 1959-2014

10/4/14 was the first Saturday morning in over fifty years without a block of cartoons on the network television schedule. Though many would probably say good riddance to these more often than not insipid commercials masquerading as children's entertainment, it truly is the end of an era to witness the demise of this shared cultural touchstone for millions of American Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, though it was not entirely unexpected in this age of on-demand instant streaming and complete series DVD box sets.

But what the hell are kids supposed to do on Saturday mornings from now on?
Homework?  Mow the lawn?  Go outside and play?!
Pffft...BOR-ing!

I raise a bowl of artificially colored blue Boo-Berry flavored milk in honor of all the Saturday mornings I personally wasted sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons all those years ago.  How many brain cells did I melt watching the hilarious antics of Squiddly Diddly or Grape Ape?  And I turned out all right!

Hell, in honor of this solemn occasion I think I'm gonna watch every single episode of Secret Squirrel right now here in my van down by the river.

Cheers!

We'll be back after these messages...

Texas Instruments solar calculator commercial:

Cult of the Cobra

Slender hangs illusion, fragile the thread to reality.
Always the question: is it true?  
Truth is in the mind and the mind of man varies with time and place.
The time is 1945.

The place is Asia.

Finished watching this Universal International Picture from 1955 over the weekend--took a few tries, not that it's a bad flick, but just kept starting it too late and ended up falling asleep each time--ah, the joys of getting old.  I enjoyed it, having never seen it before; I've owned it on DVD for around seven years and just now got around to seeing it after putting it off for so long.  The thing with a lot of these old black and white Universals are even if you have no interest in the subject matter (snake cults!?) they're at least well made and entertaining enough to hold your interest for an hour and a half and end up being the audiovisual equivalent of a warm blanket and a hot cup of tea, and after watching it you don't feel like you totally wasted your time, which I can't say about every old film I watch.

Not too heavy on fright other than the thoroughly modern horror of not ever really knowing with certainty those we love, this was almost more of a love story than a horror picture as it depicts the (then) current state of mid-century modern relationships as burly men come to fisticuffs over the affections of the fairer sex, while the woman at the heart of this weird story slinks from the bedroom of one man to another (ever so chastely, any fornication is only implied, ya dirty bastard) as she seeks revenge for the ex-soldiers' blasphemy against her alien religion.

Though there's no real onscreen woman-to-snake transformation scene to speak of until the very end, the film effectively uses the old trick of shadows on the wall to imply the shape shifting of the mythical Lamia.

All in all I found Cult of the Cobra to be a good, pulpy flick with more than a touch of Oriental exoticism and a throbbing Freudian undercurrent of unspeakably lurid sexuality.

Here's the trailer:

Musica Moonday

"Chick-a-Boom" by The Rolling Headstones (from Groovie Goolies):

We'll be back after these messages...

Freakies cereal commercial:

Public Service Announcement

Anti-pay/cable TV PSA:

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Common Household Deities of North America, Mid to Late Twentieth Century

No. 3, The Mermaid aka chicken of the sea:

Musica Moonday

"One More Round, Friend" performed by Bea Arthur:

Salute Your Shorts: Hardware Wars

Salute Your Shorts #2: Hardware Wars

Here's one I remember first seeing at Vacation Bible School(!) back in the day.  Us kids loved it so much they played it twice.

Legendary voice actor Paul Frees narrates this sprawling space saga of romance, rebellion and household appliances.  Without further ado, I give you Ernie Fosselius' Hardware Wars:

It's 10 PM...

Do you know where your children are?:

We'll return after the break...

Lowenbrau commercial:

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Dunkin' Donuts commercial featuring Mason Reese:

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Mount Airy Lodge commercial:

Autumnal Equinox

First day of fall!

Musica Moonday

"Magic Feeling" by Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution:

Phantom of the Paradise

First time viewing of Brian De Palma's 1974 cult classic Phantom of the Paradise.  Would make a great double, triple or quadruple feature with the Lon Chaney The Phantom of the Opera (1925), F.W. Murnau's Faust (1926) or The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

Loved Paul Williams as Swan, the Satanic pop Svengali.

The opening narration was spoken by an uncredited Rod Serling.

Here's the trailer:

Salute Your Shorts: The Collector

Salute Your Shorts #1: In which your humble host introduces a short film that has temporarily caught his Mayfly-like fancy...

In this inaugural edition of Channel 73 WODS-TV's newest weekend feature--which we've deigned to christen as "Salute Your Shorts"--herein lies a personal favorite that I thought was one of the most magical and mind bending things I had ever seen back in 1978:  The Collector, the incomparable Mike Jittlov's stop motion animated tribute to Mickey Mouse mania on the occasion of the ubiquitous rodent's fiftieth birthday celebration.

Enjoy!

Don't change that channel!

Channel 29 WTAF-TV station ID:

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Dispatches from McDonaldland #1

In which six armed Evil Grimace masterminds a daring beverage container heist:

Public Service Announcement

Hanna-Barbera animated anti-drug PSA:

We'll be right back...

Common Household Deities of North America, Mid to Late Twentieth Century

No. 2, The Ty-D-Bol Man:

Musica Moonday

"Rocket Man" as interpreted by Bill Shatner:

Duel

Another one of the great made for TV movies of the '70s that I had never seen before.

Don't have much more to say about Duel (1971) that hasn't been said before or better about this (David) Mann versus machine corker other than it's a lean, mean machine; a nearly perfect action film. The young director will go on to direct The Sugarland Express in 1974--he's one to watch!

Duel theatrical trailer:

Coming up next...

ABC Movie of the Weekend promo for Duel:

Room 237

Just watched Room 237 (2012) on Netflix; an exploration of some truly bugnuts crazy theories on the meaning behind Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining (1980).  I loved it--it definitely made me want to watch The Shining again...and again...and again...

We'll return after the break...

Bubblicious bubblegum animated commercial:

Public Service Announcement

Keep America Beautiful PSA:

Don't touch that dial!

Channel 48 WKBS Station ID:

High School U.S.A.

Two years before they starred as McFly and son in Back to the Future (1985), Crispin Glover and Michael J. Fox (billed here as Michael Fox) appeared together as respectively, a similar uber nerd and too-cool-for-school wiseacre in High School U.S.A. (1983).

Being a made for TV movie and thus not able to resort to the standard titillating scenes of T&A to liven up its fairly typical snobs versus slobs plot like its theatrical brethren would have, the creators of High School U.S.A. instead have their characters chastely trot out an adorable dancing robot...which they later proceed to cruelly euthanize then cannibalize for engine parts due to the ill fated automaton's heat shielding properties just in time for the film's exciting nail biter of a car race finale, so that's a pretty fair trade off.

Best quote is from Anthony Edwards, playing the main douche bag who is 180 degrees opposite in character from the lovable nerd with a heart of gold he played a year later in Revenge of the Nerds (1984): "Nobody breaks up with Beau Middleton; Beau Middleton calls the shots, Beau Middleton'll do the breakin' up."
Beau Middleton: what a douche bag!

The late Dana Plato from Return to Boggy Creek (1977) and the late Tom Villard from Popcorn (1991) also appear in small roles; I also noticed one of the minor douche bags in the movie was played by David Packer, who starred as the young alien collaborationist douche bag in V (1983) the same year.

A cheesy flick to be sure, but I actually really liked High School U.S.A. a lot, which probably makes me the douche bag for liking it.  Oh well; who's got two thumbs up Fonzi style for High School U.S.A. and cried like a little baby when Willis Drummond deactivated his dancing robot?  Ayyyyyy--this douche bag, that's who!

Here's the theme song:

We'll be right back...

Trapper Keeper commercial:

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Common Household Deities of North America, Mid to Late Twentieth Century

No. 1, The Jolly Green Giant:

Musica Moonday

"Wait Til Tomorrow" by The Banana Splits:

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Art Instruction Schools commercial:

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DeVry Institute of Technology commercial:

The Night Stalker

I'm embarrassed to admit that up until last week I had never seen The Night Stalker (1972), its sequel or the short lived series featuring Carl Kolchak before--I was always a Trilogy of Terror, Gargoyles, and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark guy myself--but Kolchak really is right up my alley (1970s, Dan Curtis, made for TV, supernatural).  I had first heard of Kolchak back in the 90s when The X-Files creator Chris Carter admitted Kolchak was the inspiration for and spiritual godfather of Fox Mulder.

Since The Night Stalker is considered one of the great made for television movies of the 1970s, I probably don't have anything new or interesting to say about it that hasn't been said before or better by others, so with that caveat out of the way I will simply say I enjoyed his first outing immensely and look forward to seeing more of Kolchak.

A few things I noticed and/or liked about this movie:

• Darren McGavin was perfect as rumpled newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak.  I had really only known him before as the dad in A Christmas Story but loved him here as Kolchak.
• Kolchak drinks beer out of cans with pull off tabs!  His apartment is small and dingy and there's nothing in his fridge except a few beers.
• Along with his shabby apartment, Kolchak's car is also really beat up and rusted.  He's a real working class schlub which I can totally relate to.
• Hey it's Sheriff Lobo! (Claude Akins).
• I love the neo-noir jazz score that plays while Kolchak is running red lights trying to get to the vampire's latest crime scene.
• Best quote from Kolchak: "I've seen a lot of weird things in my life...I have never, EVER seen anything like this".  I wonder if George Lucas had watched this film right before writing Han Solo's eerily similar statement aboard the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars?

Anyway I'm looking forward to watching the sequel The Night Strangler and the series (which I just picked up on sale for around $25 at Barnes & Noble).

Here're the first ten minutes to whet your appetite:

We now return to our program...

The CBS Late Movie commercial bumper for The Night Stalker (not UHF but what evs...):

Public Service Announcement

Woodsy Owl PSA:

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Crazy Eddie commercial:

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K-tel record selector commercial:

The Amazing Transparent Man

Next up on WODS-TV Channel 73 is The Amazing Transparent Man (1960, though it's so creaky it seems about twenty years older).  This film actually appears on two of my Mill Creek collections: Pure Terror and Sci-Fi Classics, though I would not exactly call it terror inducing or a classic.

The blurb in the booklet reads:

The Amazing Transparent Man
Starring Douglas Kennedy, Marguerite Chapman, James Griffith
(1960) B&W Unrated

Crazed ex-military officer Paul Krenner has dreams of world  domination when he forces unwilling scientist Peter Ulof to do his bidding.  Ulof must develop a process to induce invisibility through atomic radiation.  With this in his armory, Krenner plans to create an invisible military force and sell it to the highest bidder.  They break safecracker Joey Faust out of jail and make him invisible so that he can steal more radium.  Their events take an unexpected turn.

This was another movie I had never seen or heard of and had no idea what to expect other than it sounded like a low budget Invisible Man knock off.  I was surprised to see Jack Pierce, the legendary creator of the classic Universal monsters, credited as makeup artist for this film; the invisibility effect, although not anything groundbreaking, was still a pretty decent effect as a poor guinea pig's skin gradually melts away to reveal its skeleton before it is reduced to full invisibility.

Best quote, by the femme fatale of the flick to the con: "better lay off the giggle water".

Not much more to say about this one, other than the fact that con man Joey Faust reminded me of an unhinged Richard Nixon and the scientist Dr. Ulof looked a lot like Jerry "Frank Costanza" Stiller:


"Serenity Now!"

Here's the trailer:

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Space Dust candy commercial:

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K-tel mood ring commercial:

Viva Knievel!

"One fine day a man came to town, a king of the road with a helmet for a crown, a motorcycle bird who is never comin' down..."

--From the Ballad of Evel Knievel, Anonymous, c. 1776 BC, translated from the ancient Babylonian text by Abed "Fred" Alhazred

Warning: spoilers ahead!

Without resorting to hyperbole, Viva Knievel! (1977) is the greatest action-adventure film of all time.

My history with this film goes back to the spring of 1977 when your humble host was traveling in South America "researching" the hallucinogenic properties of certain psychoactive tree frogs of the Amazon rain forest.  On the return leg of one trip I had a five hour layover in Mexico City and eventually found myself in a small movie theater with a few hours to kill before my flight.  Sitting down in the cool dark of el cine, armed with a small popcorn and a large Sonoran desert toad, I was exposed that day to the magnificent glory of Viva Knievel! and the awesome healing light of the one and only Evel Knievel, and verily I came to accept Him into my heart and soul as mine own lord and savior.

When the credits finally rolled I felt like every single bone in my body, along with my mind, had been broken, and the only way to mend them again was to get back on my hog, lick the toad and watch the film again, and again, and again...which I did several times every day for the next few weeks, until some new sci-fi flick by the director of THX-1138 finally pushed Viva Knievel! out of the theater.

Eighteen grueling months later as a recently converted and fanatical orthodox Knievelist, rabidly and LOUDLY attempting to spread the gospel that "Evel is the reason!" at airports, church socials and county fairs throughout Mexico, I found myself disenchanted with the Church of the Holy Cape and Helmet and eventually hitchhiked my way back to the States in order to lick both my physical and psychic wounds and hopefully return to my former well paying job as astronomer in residence at Underwriters Laboratories, where I had previously worked on various projects under the auspices of an extremely generous MK-Ultra grant.

I have not seen the damned film since then.

Keeping my own personal experience in mind, I warn my readers to tread carefully when dabbling in the red, white and blue arts.  Evel is a charismatic showman and almost as hard a habit to kick as Mexican Coke.

A few points to consider before deciding to embark down the 106 minute long ramp of insanity that is Viva Knievel!:

• Evel Knievel is like Santa Claus, if Santa Claus only brought Santa Claus brand toys to distribute to orphans.
• Evel is the reason that lame children throw away their crutches and walk again.
• Lauren Hutton:  "I've had a front row seat at this ugly spectacle".  So true on so many levels!
• Evel is like a charismatic cross between Jesus, Elvis Presley and Superman, and like the latter two, he's one of the few Caucasian men that can really wear a cape and look good doing it.
• The Stratocycle is ah-mah-zing!  It has an American flag and a bald eagle on it (Stephen Colbert would love it).  And it sounds exactly like what I imagine Darth Vader's space toilet sounds like when he flushes in his executive bathroom/meditation chamber aboard the Super Star Destroyer Executor.

This:

Sounds like this:

• Leslie Nielsen plays a surprisingly great villain.
• Two words: Marjoe Gortner.  He's the standout in the film as Jessie the junkie; he was also disturbingly great as Jody the psycho from Earthquake (1974).  Really, Google this guy.
• Gene Kelly as an alcoholic ex-motorcycle jumper/deadbeat dad?...yes that Gene Kelly.
• There's a byzantine subplot involving the bad guys plotting to create an exact replica of Knievel's jumping cycle and tractor trailer in an overly complicated plan to smuggle cocaine out of Mexico.
• Mr. Kathy Lee "Frank" Gifford gets quite a bit of airtime as Evel's announcer.
• It could just be me and my ears but Gene Kelly's little bastard kid has a preternaturally deep voice; either the kid was going through puberty during filming or his voice was later re-dubbed by a young Don LaFontaine.
• Helmets had no straps back then, you just stick one on your head and hope it doesn't fall off.
• Instead of Viva Knievel! this film could almost be called Fathers and Sons.
• Again this may just be me, but I could swear Steven Spielberg ripped off several scenes for the truck chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark from the final chase scene in this movie.  There are several beats that look almost exactly the same!
• During the end chase scene, Evel Knievel and Leslie Nielsen ride into a small Mexican village, basically terrorizing the entire population of townsfolk, chickens, and goats.
• It's too bad there weren't any sequels; I would love to have seen a whole series of Knievel films that took place in different locales: Konichiwa Knievel!, L'chaim Knievel!, Da Svidaniya Knievel!

Here's the trailer:



And may Knievel have mercy upon your blasted soul if you do choose to look upon His Evel face with your puny mortal eyes.

You have been warned.

Musica Moonday

"On TV" by The Buggles:

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Animated Levi's commercial:

The Alien Encounters

File Under WTF? Part 2

Caution: Spoilers ahead!

Allan Reed: Mrs. Arlyn, for the past five years I've been traveling, investigating every phenomenon from alien astronauts to Atlantis to the Bermuda Triangle, even Bigfoot. I'm a scientist... I'm an astronomer.
Mrs. Arlyn: Really?
Allan Reed: Well, an unemployed astronomer.

After recently re-watching the obscure, nigh forgotten sci-fi flick The Alien Encounters (1979) written and directed by James T. Flocker--creator of the previously reviewed and similarly deranged Ghosts That Still Walk (1977)--I was happy to know that I was NOT hallucinating for the past several decades when a fuzzy childhood memory would occasionally bubble up from the depths of my brain of once upon a time watching a film on TV about a silver spherical alien probe named Charlie that hovers around the desert, observing a scientist and teenage boy hiking near the Devil's Tower-like Eagle Rock as they search for the Betatron, a machine to prolong human life invented by the boy's late scientist father.  

With its pre-CGI practical special effects and 1970s trappings, sitting down and watching this possibly made-for-TV movie again was like taking a time machine back to another era, long before high definition televisions, Blu-ray discs, YouTube, Netflix, or home theater in general existed and before infomercials took over the late night airwaves, an era when in order not to miss a favorite movie on one of just a handful of channels, you had to possess luck or a highlighted copy of TV Guide, along with a strong aerial antenna mounted on the roof to coax down those distant, fuzzy UHF station signals.  The Alien Encounters is the quintessential type of late night UHF movie that you could have once stumbled upon at 2:30 in the morning without ever knowing exactly what the hell you were watching, and then possibly never see again.  Like the fictitious sci-fi B-movie Flaming Globes of Sigmund that Jerry groggily half remembers in an episode of Seinfeld, The Alien Encounters is a film I possessed only hazy memories of watching once or twice as a kid growing up in the NY/NJ/PA tri-state area back in the early 1980s--probably casually watched after the CBS Late Movie or on a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon--but I could never really remember the title or many pertinent details until I recently purchased an Australian PAL VHS copy on eBay.

Without wanting to get into spoilers too much, I’ll just say that if you're an aficionado of such speculative pseudo-documentary 1970s fare like In Search of…, Overlords of the UFO, Hangar 18 or Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot, you should find The Alien Encounters right up your alley.  I’ll admit the film can be a bit talky and poky compared with the seizure inducing editing of current action films, and in fact it really comes across as less of a fictional narrative sci-fi flick than a leisurely paced true-life nature documentary from some parallel universe; with its talk of intelligent signals beamed to Earth from Barnard’s Star, I’m almost convinced it was The Alien Encounters and not The Man Who Fell to Earth that was the real cinematic inspiration behind Philip K. Dick’s 1981 movie-within-a-novel VALIS.

Overlooking the amateur home movie quality of the overall production and obvious ultra low budget special effects, the only major nitpicks I have with the film are that some sequences could have used some tightening up in the editing room, but that said I still found this flick strangely endearing, even occasionally hypnotic—an early scene depicts astronomer Allan Reed (Augie Tribach) as he tries valiantly to flip a switch on a massive mainframe computer terminal amid smoke and fire after electromagnetic interference from a nearby UFO disastrously causes his radio telescope to explode. This sequence comically goes on for at least a minute too long and practically seems lifted from Airplane! or one of the Naked Gun movies, as Reed keeps…reaching…for that…switch that’s just…slightly…out…of…reach.  I will admit I laughed out loud with--but not at, never at--this particular scene.  And though you can occasionally see the wire that keeps Charlie the little silver spheroid alien probe floating aloft in the desert, scenes with the probe and others when a large flying saucer slowly hovers over the desert landscape with a low subsonic rumble are fairly convincing considering the size of the budget director James T. Flocker had making this film was probably just a mere fraction Steven Spielberg had at his disposal for the big budget Close Encounters of the Third Kind produced a couple years earlier.

All caveats aside, Flocker’s UFO conspiracy flick still manages to evoke occasional moments of sheer otherworldly weirdness.  There’s a genuinely creepy flashback about twenty minutes in as Elaine Stafford (Bonnie Henry), a young woman interviewed by the now unemployed astronomer, recounts her sighting of what she originally thought a ghost, but has come to believe was actually an extraterrestrial after reading the late Dr. Arlyn’s book while researching the paranormal.  As Stafford slowly walks down the stairs towards her encounter with the unknown, an atmosphere of unease builds as the camera focuses on a close-up of a round, suspiciously UFO-shaped chandelier at the bottom of the stairs (a shot similar to one David Lynch would use a decade later in Twin Peaks when focusing on the seemingly mundane ceiling fan at the top of the stairs outside the late Laura Palmer’s bedroom door to evoke a sense that not all was as it seemed in the Palmer house).  The faces of creepy cherubic statues are inter-cut with the girl descending the stairs as the sound of agitated birds in the night increases, recalling the preternatural call of the whippoorwill that presages death and cosmic horror in H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Dunwich Horror.  And like Bruce the shark in the first half of Jaws or the xenomorph in most of Alien, the creature in this sequence is never clearly seen by the viewer, but is only hinted at in brief snippets as it slowly turns to face the hapless human as she reaches the bottom of the stairs; one can almost make out a type of bestial face that looks as though it stepped out of a medieval wood carving of the devil, the only details discernible are that the thing's puffy head appears crowned with a pair of antennae and it possesses three or more eyes.  The soundtrack builds to a hypnotic drone as the girl comes face to face with the alien, and the final shot of the thing is so dark and obscured (certainly not helped by the low quality VHS transfer I viewed) that one can only perceive what looks like some kind of strange insectoid shape, glistening like wet, black leather as Elaine screams in terror and then collapses.  I thought it was a truly effective scene and one that I immediately recalled watching and being frightened of so many years ago as a kid, and in my opinion is one of the real highlights of this film.

A couple other minor observations:  a good decade before The X-Files and the later Men in Black, The Alien Encounters might be one of the earliest--if not the first--motion picture to feature both the concept of animal mutilations and the mysterious Men in Black from UFO lore, though instead of driving around in a black Cadillac, the “Mibs” as they’re called in this film cruise around in a gray cargo van and rock dark aviator glasses and porn ‘staches; there's even a car chase thrown in during the climax of the film involving Dr. Allan Reed's beat up station wagon and the Men in Black's sinister gray van, accompanied musically by a requisite 1970s electro-funk groove to emphasize the action.  I also noticed one of the scenes in the desert was scored with what I think are several minutes of music from the Capitol Records Hi-Q stock music library that anyone familiar with the episode "Inside the Closet" from Tales from the Darkside will recognize; I’m not familiar with the title or composer but it’s great--spacey, atmospheric and just overall creepy sounding.*

*UPDATED 1/29/15: That fantastic library track is apparently entitled "Underwater Shadows" by the prolific stock music composer William George "Bill" Loose.  Thanks YouTube copyright infringement lawyer-bots!

Here's a short clip:

It seems surly teenager Steve Arlyn (Matt Boston) presumably shops at the same “Ye Olde Orange Life Preserver Vest Shoppe” at Twin Pines Mall since he dresses eerily similar to Marty McFly in Back to the Future just a few years later.

James T. Flocker’s The Alien Encounters was obviously an ultra low budget labor of love by its director, cast, and crew and yet it still manages to effectively capture an atmosphere of otherworldly alien-ness, due in part to the natural desert landscape used for a majority of the setting, but also because this is a film that is chock-a-block full of ideas, even if those ideas presented through the dialogue and documentary-like narration are frequently wackadoodle and occasionally just bugnuts crazy.  However, I loved this movie and think this film is way past due for a re-release and re-evaluation of its shaggy, 1970s charm on DVD or Blu-ray, even if it’s just in one of those 50-public-domain-movies-for-$20 collections.  I’m not sure why The Alien Encounters has practically fallen off the face of the Earth and is nearly unknown in this day and age when pretty much everything else imaginable--good, bad or otherwise--is available in one form or another, either as an official release or uploaded to YouTube…

...unless that’s just the way the “Mibs” want it to stay.

Allan Reed: What's a "Mib"?
Steve Arlyn: Men in black... my dad called them "Mibs". It's a... code name. They're guys who showed up after UFO sightings asking a lot of questions, with really no reason.
Allan Reed: Steve, your father was being watched by somebody, wasn't he?
[Pause] Who?
Steve Arlyn: For years before he died... my dad was being followed by the men in black.
Allan Reed: What project was he working on?
Steve Arlyn: Betatron.

Note: Earlier versions of this review appeared previously on imdb.com and classichorrorfilmboard.com.

We'll be right back after these messages...

Brigantine Castle (Brigantine, NJ):

We'll be right back after these messages...

Aspen soda commercial--featuring movie star ('s son) Patrick Wayne! (The People That Time Forgot & Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger):

Race with the Devil

Winnebago Warriors Part 2

Race with the Devil (1975) is arguably the greatest genre film ever made involving an RV (recreational vehicle).  OK, so there may not be all that many RV themed films to begin with; the only other one that your humble reviewer is even familiar with is the recently reviewed Ghosts That Still Walk, but Race with the Devil must surely be the most well known.

Released smack dab in the middle of the devil obsessed 1970s,  this film really does have it all: a big ass RV, motorcycle racing, Peter Fonda, car chases, robed cultists, a scary tree, Loretta ("Hot Lips" Houlihan from TV's M*A*S*H) Swit in a tight sweater, animal sacrifice, dirt biking, Satanism, female nudity only partially obscured by flame, that thing when you go to make dinner in your RV and then a rattlesnake jumps out of the cupboard at you, vehicular destruction, poolside leering, human sacrifice, a ring of fire, and last but certainly not least: public library non-circulating reference book theft.

Best line: After Warren Oates takes a spill on his dirt bike into a big puddle of water: "I'm getting too old for this shit!".  This has surely got to be one of the earliest sincere instances of this hoary saying before its eventual descent into action film cliche.

In spite of all joking at the preposterous absurdity of the whole thing, this film is actually really pretty scary and can be downright creepy, especially in the early scenes involving the cult at the sacrificial tree (which looks like a close cousin to the Louisiana devil tree from the recent True Detective).  One memorably terrifying action sequence has the RV vacationeers trying to flee the scene of human sacrifice they've inadvertently witnessed while several murderous cultists cling to the back of their RV, their hooded faces illumined by the hellish red glare of tail lights as they smash in the rear window in an attempt to gain ingress and thwart the protagonists' escape.  It's a truly violent and viscerally effective scene of motor vehicle violation.

But as the tag line says:  "When you race with the Devil, you'd better be faster than hell!"

Trailer:



One thing is for sure, a PG rated movie from the '70s like Race with the Devil could be way more explicit in terms of nudity and violence than a modern PG movie; it's hard to believe this film shares the same exact rating as something innocuous like Disney's Frozen; that would certainly make for an interesting double feature if you'd like to traumatize the kiddies for life!

P.S.: If you have the chance I highly recommend checking this film out on the recent Blu-ray from Shout! Factory (a double feature with Dirty Mary Crazy Larry).  It really looks amazing, almost like it was filmed yesterday instead of forty years ago.

Here's Dead Kennedys' "Winnebago Warrior" performed by The Fractal Cauliflowers to play us out: