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Atari 2600 commercial featuring Pete Rose and Don Knotts(!?!):

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Was there ever anything cooler than the Probot, a robotic squid that explodes when taunted?  I say nay.

As a kid I never realized that these vintage Star Wars toy commercials cheaped out and used generic music instead of the famous and more expensive John Williams theme.

Oh well.

Enjoy:

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"It's gonna be nippy in them thar hills tonight...":

Musica Moonday

"The Senses of Our World" by The Bugaloos:

Krull

How have I never seen this movie before now?

Then again I finally watched The NeverEnding Story for the first time just last summer so I guess there's always "new" stuff out there for idiots like me to "discover" (have you heard of that band Led Zeppelin?  They're totally awesome!).  Having picked up Krull on Blu-ray* for the low, low price of $4.99 (new) at my local MovieStop recently I have to say: I loved the hell out of this fun 1983 sci-fi/fantasy adventure, and I don't care who knows it!  As far as I'm concerned Krull is the best damn Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi.

Prince Colwyn rockin' the Glaive and flippin' the bird

This pulpy swashbuckling Saturday matinee mash-up of Arthurian sword and sorcery and pew-pew laser gun action involves a motley band of outlaws (including a comedy relief shape shifter, a giant melancholic cyclops, and a scruffy Liam Neeson) led by the Robin Hood-like Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall, armed with a big five bladed ninja throwing star called a Glaive) as he and his merry men attempt to rescue Colwyn's betrothed, the Princess Lyssa (Lysette Anthony), held prisoner in the Black Fortress in the clutches of the villainous Beast and his vile army of Slayers.  It's got a rousing score by James Horner, which in my estimation certainly elevates it above mere standard B-movie status, along with some nice action set pieces, some inspired organic/bio-mechanical set designs and beautiful location shots; it also has a couple of actors that would appear together in Dune the following year (Francesa Annis and Freddie Jones), and even the future Keeper of Keys and Grounds of Hogwarts, Rubeus Hagrid himself (Robbie Coltrane).

In this age of overly green-screened, CGI Hobbitry/bombast, Krull is a genre flick that made this viewer particularly wistful for the craftsmanship and handmade artistry of pre-digital cinematic illusion: matte paintings, miniatures, prosthetics, stop motion animation (there's a lengthy scene involving a giant stop motion animated transparent glass spider that was particularly enjoyable); these ancient techniques are all used liberally and effectively throughout this fun film.  Certainly, some of these effects don't look 100% realistic--but then again neither did all the high tech CGI wizardry of Peter Jackson's recent Hobbit trilogy either (budgeted at a whopping $750 million versus Krull's relatively modest $27 million). And for a movie that depicts the magnificent, majestic creatures known on the planet Krull as Fire Mares (horses that are so fast that ribbons of fire literally burst forth behind them from their hooves as they run, much like Doc Brown's DeLorean when it travels through time!  Oh and they can fly too!) do we even care about realism?  Should we even care?

Still, regardless of how ridiculous the whole premise is in the first place, I say give me real live Fire Mares over CGI bunny-sleds any day!

*Just a few words on the Blu-ray: it's super cheap but looks good--crisp and clean while still looking very film like with lots of nice grain left intact, but there are NO extras: no subtitles, no alternate audio tracks, not even a chapter list, let alone a trailer; just a menu screen with a "play movie" button.  It does have chapter stops though, so it's got that going for it.  Hey, it's from Mill Creek, what do you expect?

Here's the trailer:

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Chuck Wagon dog food commercial:

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I'm sure you recognize this lovely melody...

But did you know this was the longest running commercial in US television history (1971-1984)?

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Commercial for Mysteries of the Unknown from Time-Life Books:

Public Service Announcement

And now, financial advice from the Abominable Snowman:

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Commercial for Stretch Monster from Kenner:

The Mysterious Monsters

This may be the most startling film you'll ever see.
--Peter Graves

One of the many pseudo-documentaries exploring the Great Mysteries of the Unknown produced in the witchy 1970s, The Mysterious Monsters was a film I had long heard about but had never seen before; thanks to YouTube that has now been rectified.

This 1975 film from Schick Sun Classic Pictures practically invents the template that the long running television show In Search of... would replicate a year later in 1976, with Peter Graves--Captain Clarence Oveur himself--acting as your onscreen host to the investigatory proceedings, a role Leonard Nimoy would admirably fill for six seasons on In Search of...  The silver haired and humorously monotonic Graves interjects some welcome gravitas in between dramatic recreations of eyewitness encounters with the legendary Bigfoot along with just a bit of the Loch Ness Monster.  But whereas other low budget Sasquatch documentaries of this era might be content to merely suggest the existence of a mysterious monster through teasing glimpses of a beastly silhouette in the woods or film footage from the creature's point of view as it leers from behind dense shrubbery at skinny-dipping coeds or voluptuous snow bunnies frolicking in the woods oblivious to the prehistoric peeper lurking nearby, The Mysterious Monsters is proud to show off its top notch Bigfoot costume; the camera lingering lovingly and frequently on it like one of the weekly "bears" on an old episode of The Outer Limits, so that the viewer gets a good long look at the fine makeup job, one of the creepiest this reviewer has seen.

Though one of the very best films I've seen in the Bigfoot genre, I don't think The Mysterious Monsters ever manages to escape the gravitational bounds of the established tropes of the pseudoscience documentary genre to truly transcend into the refined aether of sublime weirdness that something like Overlords of the U.F.O. does, probably because it rationally sticks to the subject of mainly Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Abominable Snowman/Yeti-kind while only just dipping a big toe into the murky waters of the Loch Ness Monster mythos, choosing not to discuss any other of the Great Mysteries floating around in the 1970s or attempting to tie together all of these disparate threads into one Grand Unified Fortean Theory--so no ancient astronauts, UFOs, ghosts, or demonic possession here, thank you very much.  And there were a few characters and scenes in this film that I was sure I had seen in other documentaries--they all start to blend together after a while--but that could just be my advancing decrepitude and creeping senility.  But in spite of all that seems familiar in this type of film: the standard 1970s synthesized electronic musical score; the always memorable disembodied hairy Bigfoot arm through the window scene; the telegenic host as the voice of reason that surely the facts presented prove Bigfoot must really exist; the beautifully grainy 16 millimeter film look; all these are really first rate examples of the genre, and that's saying nothing of the abundant lens flare from shooting into the sun that would undoubtedly make J.J. Abrams figuratively (and possibly literally) cream his jeans.  To wit, I liked this movie a lot--it's pretty much a perfect example of a mid-1970s Bigfoot documentary.

There's just something about the great dark shape of the untamed Sasquatch that taps into some primal human fear of the unknown, which is probably why films about Bigfoot were so popular in the tumultuous, post 1960s Watergate/Vietnam War era when the whole world seemed turned upside down.  Bigfoot emerged into the collective consciousness of the 1970s as a "known unknown", to nick a term coined by that great American rascal Donny Rumsfeld; a dark and shaggy reflection of paradise lost, a dangerous and foul smelling but almost cuddly folk hero symbolic of our monstrous id.

Best line from this flick is from a pro-Bigfoot scientist defending the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film footage of a purported female Sasquatch:
"I don't know what the breasts of a Sasquatch ought to look like..."

Here's the trailer for your viewing pleasure:

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Aspen apple soda commercial:

Musica Moonday

"Electric Delight" by The Rockets:

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Snow flurries in north Florida?!
Time to grab some Bigfoot snowshoes from K-tel:

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It is cold outside today; even here in sunny Florida it's only 35 degrees out but feels like 23 with the wind chill factor.

Be sure to wear your Freezy Freakies!

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Commercial for beautiful Mount Airy Lodge:

The Hobbit 4: The Battle of the Two Hobbitses

The Hobbit (1977): Bilbo Baggins carries a big pipe

So I finally saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the third and final installment of Peter Jackson's hobbit trilogy this week which inspired me to go back and revisit an old childhood favorite: the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.  This was originally going to be a simple review of that animated version but instead morphed into my thoughts about what I personally think the live action films failed to accomplish that the much maligned made for television cartoon actually got right.

To wit, a simple bedtime fairy story that Jackson and company spent nearly eight hours to tell was accomplished in an economical ninety minutes in the Rankin/Bass cartoon; granted the cartoon omitted a few important threads from the book that are fleshed out somewhat in the live action film, such as Beorn the shapeshifting bear-man and the Arkenstone of the dwarves, and there were some interesting creative choices in the 1977 version that some might not have agreed with, ie: Gollum looked like a big frog, Bilbo looked like my spinster aunt Grizelda, the wood-elves looked like goblins, and the dwarves other than Thorin were all relative nonentities, but I think the Rankin/Bass 'toon still managed to capture the spirit--the tone--of the original book, creating a feeling similar to that of listening to an enchanting fireside fairy tale in a way that the live action films are less successful at, as Jackson's trilogy seems to be more interested in large scale theme park ride-like spectacle and bloodless CGI battles to small character moments, though there are a few sequences of wonderment in the live action films I really enjoyed,  especially Bilbo seeing the butterflies fluttering amidst the tree tops of Mirkwood Forest in the second film and the dwarves singing the Misty Mountains song at Bag End in the first.

Though at this point it's become a cliche to compare The Hobbit trilogy to the Star Wars prequels I think it's actually a pretty fair comparison and a good warning to avoid any big budget prequels in the future: I dutifully went to the theater and watched both prequel trilogies, and can even say I really enjoyed parts of them immensely, but that is as far as my appreciation goes: I liked them, or parts of them.  They were okay... I guess.  But the original untampered with Star Wars (pre-Special Edition) and The Lord of the Rings trilogies?  Those I LOVED--it may simply be nostalgia talking but the earlier trilogy of both series seemingly captured both lightning in a bottle and my imagination; they made me think about them even after leaving the theater, looking forward to my next viewing.  In comparison, the prequel films remained in my mind only as long as I was watching them, and once the credits rolled were then jettisoned from my consciousness--like the recollection of ever having seen Caddyshack II or Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, any feelings of goodwill instantly evaporated upon leaving the theater.  Will I ever watch these films again?  Possibly, but I won't feel compelled to in order to find enjoyment in their predecessors, just as I don't need to watch the sequels to The Matrix to fully enjoy the original film as a standalone story.

My main gripe with The Hobbit trilogy is what I consider to be its major fatal flaw: the expansion of a small story of an unassuming hobbit's adventures in the larger world of Middle-earth that could have been a tight, focused narrative told in one or maybe two parts being stretched out into a trilogy of three extremely long faux-epic action films (see the Narnia films for another example of off-tone faux-epicness infecting simple tales for children) that at the end of the day feel overly padded and yet somehow still incomplete.  For whatever reasons, be they creative or financial, this smaller prelude of a tale should NEVER have been super sized to the epic proportions of the esteemed film trilogy that follows it if only for reasons of simple aesthetics: the smaller, shorter story of The Hobbit is simply out of all seemly proportion when placed next to the truly epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy and thus comes across as bloated and artificial, and the over reliance on CGI characters and scenery certainly don't do it any favors compared to the real life locations and prosthetics used in the earlier films.

A trilogy of butt numbingly long films worked beautifully for The Lord of the Rings trilogy since that story was already an epic saga of good versus evil taking place during war time and those films captured pretty well the tone of the books.  I'm certainly not a book purist and realize some things described on the page may need to be changed or adapted for film but in the expansion of the smaller quest tale of The Hobbit into the larger tapestry of Jackson's previous Middle-earth films, the personal story of Bilbo Baggins--the title character and the audience's entry into this magical world--is overshadowed in favor of the larger geopolitical threads Jackson was more interested in exploring, but giving the director the benefit of the doubt perhaps that was done purposefully?  And that's saying nothing of the addition of invented characters like Tauriel (who I actually thought was decent) and Alfrid (who I thought should have been cut entirely or at least saved for the extended editions) or what could have been exciting cameos for sharp eyed fans of Legolas, Radagast the Brown, or Azog the goblin, who although they are all Tolkien creations don't actually appear in the original story but who have more screen time than a character like Beorn who actually was in the book but barely included in the film.  Did we really need to see back story and character motivations for the orcs and goblins to know these were the bad guys in these films?

A three film telling could probably have worked out ok if planned that way from the start, but since it happened so late in the production the end result was, for this viewer at least, a disappointing albeit not entirely unsatisfying muddle.  I think if Guillermo Del Toro stayed on as director we may have gotten a better, shorter and more magical hobbit story (in one or possibly two parts) than the trilogy of missed opportunities from Jackson we ended up with...and maybe the dwarves could all actually have looked like dwarves with full on ZZ Top beards instead of the well trimmed goatees and fashionable stubble we got on the "hunky" dwarves?  And there could have been less use of CGI and more use of bigatures and prosthetics?  And it could have been filmed on actual good old fashioned two dimensional 24 frame per second film instead of being shot on the ugly high frame rate digital that ended up looking like a big budget 3D soap opera?  I could continue but I fear I'm starting to sound like a Neo-Luddite now.

Of course at this point this is all academic since The Hobbit trilogy is finished and out there and is what it is, which for this viewer is an overlong bloated series slavishly bound to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, bogged down by endless CGI action sequences and full of missed opportunities to simply tell the story of The Hobbit yet--frustratingly--highlighted by occasional flashes of brilliance.  I think there was a potentially great film (or pair of films) hidden in this merely average trilogy.  It will be interesting to see once some time has passed if Peter Jackson ever decides to revisit the series and release an edited down one or two film version.

If that is not in the cards I unreservedly look forward to watching the inevitable fan edits that will trim away the excess fat to reshape the narrative so that The Hobbit is once again about a simple hobbit's adventure instead of what now appears to be the exciting action packed story of a vengeful one handed albino goblin, the forbidden love between a star-crossed dwarf prince and a she-elf warrior, and the greedy machinations of the cross dressing servant to the Master of Lake-town.  Oh, and the guy from the British Office guest stars as a hobbit too.

The Hobbit (2012): Bilbo Baggins carries a big sword

1/18/15 Update:
Well, that didn't take too long.  Some fine fellow has edited down Peter Jackson's three Hobbit films into one 4 hour long epic film, about half as long as the combined running time of the officially released films.  I haven't had a chance to watch it yet so would not be surprised if there are some parts that are a little rough around the edges due to having to work with whatever footage was available, but I imagine this will give a good idea of what a shorter one (or two if split) film Hobbit would have played like in an alternate universe.  Kudos to the phantom editor--I look forward to watching his take on the story.

Here's the link to The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit:
https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com