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.:

We'll be right back...

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:

We'll be back after these messages...

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:

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

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:

We'll return after the break...

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: