Musica Moonday

"That Happy Feeling" by Bert Kaempfert:

Don't touch that dial...

Colorful station ID for WPIX, channel 11:

What the Peeper Saw

"Poor Marcus, poor little devil..."

I first came across What the Peeper Saw back in the late 1980s at my best friend Robby McDonald's house in rural New Jersey late one Saturday night as we were channel surfing trying to find something else to watch after Saturday Night Live.  According to James Arena in his fantastic 2012 retrospective tome, Fright Night on Channel 9: Saturday Night Horror Films on New York's WOR-TV, 1973-1987, this 1972 film aired in the final year of Fright Night's fourteen year long run on channel 9 WOR-TV on May 9, 1987, so this was probably the exact date my buddy and I stumbled across it.  I don't think we watched the whole thing but probably caught it already in progress as we flipped back and forth during commercial breaks between Night Flight or Saturday Night Dead, intrigued by the radiant Swedish beauty of Britt Ekland and the suggestive incestuous overtones between her and her young stepson--though admittedly if Britt Ekland was my stepmother I would probably go crazy with Oedipal yearnings as well.

Watching this film again for the first time several decades later I found there was quite a bit of tastefully shot soft focus nudity which I'm sure was mostly cut out of that late night airing so long ago but I do seem to recall seeing quite a bit of skin back then which had kept this memorable title stuck in my brain ever since; for several years afterwards Robby and I--hopped up on coffee and cigarettes or, later on in high school, semi-zonked out of our heads on harsh locally grown skunk weed and/or oregano--would channel surf the analog airwaves late at night in vain, always searching for What the Peeper Saw, hoping to catch another airing of that weird Euro trash movie about the pervy kid and his hot blond step mom we saw that one time.

Marcus, the sociopathic kid at the center of the film played effectively by Mark Lester, has a memorably creepy scene early on in the film where he unabashedly takes a bath in front of his new step mother Elise, the aforementioned Ms. Ekland; he proceeds to play with a rubber bath toy, evocatively squeezing it so that water squirts from it in a not very subtle Freudian act before groping her bosom from behind while she's on the telephone with his recently widowed father.  This was the very scene that Robby and I saw years ago, after which we just looked at each other and said in unison, "what the fuck is this movie we're watching, and how have we never seen it on TV before?".

After finally seeing the entire uncut film again on the recent Blu-ray release from VCI, I can say this really is one great little fucked up movie, with a fucked up ending to match, though I can see why it was probably only ever shown once or twice late at night and not frequently aired during daylight hours in a Saturday afternoon monster movie matinee slot for the kiddies!

A few other small and probably insignificant observations from this sleazy exploitation psycho-drama:

• The main titles look like something straight out of a Wes Anderson film:

• The movie was produced by Leisure-Media, Inc., the most seventies sounding film production name ever.

• Young master Marcus has a German Shepherd named Trotsky(!?)

• There's an odd scene occurring in the background during the latter half of the film that takes place at a swinging shindig where several party guests gather around a human table comprised of a presumably naked black woman laying on her back with fruit perched on top of her body for the guests to partake of and enjoy.

• There's a strange painting of what looks like a three headed horse or perhaps a bull's head in the main couple's bedroom, the type of painting that would traumatize a young child for life.

I'm sure there are other similar little details that I missed but these were the ones that stuck out for me.

Here's the trailer, enjoy!

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At the Earth's Core

As I mentioned in my previous post, I first watched At the Earth's Core (1976) some time in the mid 1980s on a Sunday afternoon airing of "Planet 7 Cinema" on WABC-TV channel 7 out of NYC, and in spite of its pre-Star Wars level low budget special effects, e.g. men in stiff rubber monster costumes; a giant fire breathing toad that explodes like a '75 Ford LTD after being hurled off a cliff; steam train and Iron Mole vehicles that are obviously miniature models; set bound jungle foliage, etc. I, as an ardent fan of Doctor Who was well versed in the ability to overlook such production "quirks" and have loved this juvenile escapist fantasy adventure ever since; to this day I think it's a perfect film to doze off to on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Maybe it's just me but there's something oddly soothing about a '70s synthesizer score combined with weird electronically modulated staccato voices of subhuman pig men that lulls me into a state of altered consciousness, not fully awake yet still just this side of the border of Slumberland.

I love how the film begins with the sounds of electronic synths typical of some arty 70s prog rock song before mutating into a triumphal orchestral score over scenes of British industrial might.  It then moves along at a nice, brisk pace--it's only about twelve minutes and 4,000 miles later before the steampunk'd out earth boring vehicle, the Iron Mole, piloted by the brawny Doug McClure as David Innes and Peter Cushing as Doctor Abner Perry (who is essentially reprising his role of the absent minded genius from the two 1960s theatrical Dr. Who films) burrows beneath the Earth's crust and they're in the fanciful underground world of Pellucidar.  Like Dorothy stepping out of her sepia toned Kansas world into Technicolor Oz, these two nineteenth century specimens of American virility and English ingenuity are here greeted by a weirdly illumined pink sky, and within five minutes of arriving they're attacked by a bird beaked Anglo kaiju before being captured by a band of pig faced troglodytic Sagoth.  A word about the dinosaurs in this film: as mentioned earlier these are not Harryhausen level stop motion creations, but instead are more akin to the man in suit kaiju from Godzilla films, but they still possess personality and their own special charms, particularly the aforementioned giant fire breathing toad and one stiff moving triceratops-like creature that looks as though it lumbered straight out of a Victorian's conceptual etching of an antediluvian thunder lizard.

Though this is essentially a film for kids, it still has a little something for the dads, namely Caroline Munro as the primitive Dia, whose finely shaped bosom--tanned, oiled and fairly busting out of her animal skin brassiere--could have gotten top billing above even Messrs. Cushing and McClure, for Munro's divine bodily architecture surely must have kick started puberty for many a young red blooded male, including yours truly, and probably for just as many young females at that.  Along with such primeval sex appeal there is also a bit of the old ultra-violence present (I'm exaggerating, it's really just regular violence) that may not be appropriate for the youngest or most sensitive of children: in one scene, Doug McClure battles a prehistoric hippopotamus which he then stabs in the ear hole, leaving the side of its head a bloody red mess.  Soon after, one of the pterodactyl like Mahars is violently garroted with a chain around the neck, Jabba the Hutt style.  Really nothing most of us haven't seen by around the age of five years old though.

The film was obviously shot studio bound but due to the lush foliage and set dressing looks more expansive than it surely was, helped greatly by the colorful cinematography; the pink, purple, yellow, green, red, and orange hues lend an air of fantastique luridness that make some scenes look as though they were conjured up directly from the cover of some tattered, dog eared pulp scifi magazine, and as such the recent Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber comes highly recommended.  One wishes that director Kevin Connor could have teamed up with stop motion giant Ray Harryhausen in the 1970s to create a series of similarly pulpy films based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books: Doug McClure could have made a fine albeit burly John Carter and Caroline Munro a voluptuous red skinned princess of Mars.

Here's my favorite bit of dialogue:
David Innes (Doug McClure): "Get a tight hold, Doc."
Dr. Abner Perry (Peter Cushing): "I have a firm grip upon your trousers, David."

Enjoy the trailer:

Don't touch that dial...

Here's a fantastic intro and commercial bumpers for a short lived Sunday afternoon genre movie series called "Planet 7 Cinema" that aired on channel 7 WABC-TV in the New York City area in the mid 1980s.  I always recalled this intro primarily because it was where I first watched At the Earth's Core (1976) one lazy Sunday afternoon at the family home in New Jersey, and since then always associated a strange laughing blue mechanical man and wind up dog with that film due to the great triumphal intro score by Mike Vickers that was also used to good effect in this creative and colorful bumper that really captured my imagination as a kid.

Special tip 'o the hat to YouTuber Tapthatt2012 for preserving this little piece of NYC television nostalgia for future generations.

Enjoy!



Note: I really don't recall if the silence at the beginning of this clip before the music kicks in was intentional or a transmission error, though my guess is it is an error.  One would think the little toy dog's yaps should be audible but until any other version shows up on YouTube, this is all we've got to go by.

TV Guide Tuesday

I've got a few vintage issues of TV Guide that I "liberated" from my good friend Frank Costanza, so I thought it might be interesting every now and then to see what was on television back in the analog days in this new feature on WODS-TV we're calling "TV Guide Tuesday".

First up is a TV Guide for the week of June 10-16, 1978.
Check out that sweet, sweet Close Encounters of the Third Kind inspired cover painting (sorry about that address label, didn't want to risk tearing the cover by trying to remove it):

Very nice!

Ok kids, set your WABAC machine, flux capacitor or TARDIS (depending upon your generational point of reference) to Saturday, June 10, 1978, 5:50 am Eastern Standard Time, head for New Jersey and turn right at the Pine Barrens. Here's the channel line up and early Saturday morning schedule for the New Jersey/Pennsylvania area for this date:

It's hard to believe but there were only seventeen channels total available between New York and Philadelphia back then in '78, and to be honest I don't recall ever getting in channel 23 or 40 where I grew up in central New Jersey--we only ever pulled in fifteen at most, with the UHF channels usually a bit more fuzzy than the majority of the VHF channels (2 through 13).

Even though the listings start at 5:50 am, the actual kid shows didn't really begin until 6:30 am when you had a choice between Casper & Friends on the independent station WNEW-TV channel 5 out of New York or the local live action kid's show Captain Noah on WPVI-TV channel 6, the ABC affiliate out of Philadelphia--unless you were a weird kid and really enjoyed bleary eyed early morning viewings of Agricultural News or the religious program Patterns for Living.

At 7 am you had a few more choices: Underdog on channel 5 being the front runner along with Three Robonic Stooges on CBS channel 10 WCAU-TV out of Philly or Mr. Magoo on WNBC-TV channel 4 out of New York.  If for some odd reason you craved live action instead of animation, you had a few additional options at this hour with several live action kid shows to choose from, including Patchwork Family on WCBS-TV channel 2 out of New York, Chief Halftown on channel 6, and some show I really don't recall called Carrascolendas on both the NBC affiliate out of Philly KYW-TV channel 3 or the independent WPIX-TV channel 11 out of New York; though if you were a glutton for punishment, there was always the dreaded religious killjoy Pat Robertson on the 700 Club on channel 17 WPHL-TV, an independent out of Philly.

At 7:30 you had Muhammed Ali on channel 4, Bugs Bunny & Popeye on channel 5, Popeye and Friends on channel 6, or Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine on channel 10, but it was at 8 am that things really started to "get crazy", kid TV wise.  If you skipped Three Robonic Stooges earlier at 7 am on channel 10, now was your chance to catch them on channel 2, but chances are those robotic knuckleheads would get passed over yet again for more substantial fare, though you had a hard choice ahead of you: Hong Kong Phooey on NBC channels 3 and 4 or Superfriends on ABC channels 6 and 7 (WABC-TV out of New York) being the main contenders, with the Abbott & Costello cartoon on channel 5 running close behind with the slightly more middle brow Gene London show on channel 10, Dusty's Treehouse on channel 11, and the always stalwart Sesame Street on PBS channel 13 WNET-TV in New York bringing up the rear.

Now if you were of the Lutheran persuasion or even a Clokeyite or just an agnostic with a slight Gumbyist bent, you might just decide to forego Zan and Jayna on the Superfriends and switch the dial to channel 9 WOR-TV, an independent in the New York area, to catch up with Davey and Goliath for a half hour of wholesome fun.  Those capsule descriptions above really do sound oddly intriguing: was "Cousin Barney" really Davey's cousin, was Barney even his actual name at all, and why was "Barney's" dad so eager to pawn him off for the whole summer?  And what was the strange machine Davey and Goliath discovered in that abandoned house?  A spinning jenny?  An old bootlegger's still?  A printing press used for counterfeit money?  An atavachron?

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for now so those questions will just have to remain unanswered mysteries.  Until next time!

We'll return after the break...

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

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:

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: