arglebargle!

the new adventures of huckleberry finn-intro(full version)

2010-01-31T02:24:00.001-05:00

Wow! I hadn't seen this full intro since like 1970! Ted Cassidy was truly scary in Injun Joe Mode!

Holy old-age Batman!

2009-06-24T21:53:00.009-04:00

The very idea that 20 years has passed since the opening of Tim Burton's Batman movie seems like a plot cooked up the Mad Hatter. For up until this day when most people thought of Batman they thought Adam West, Neal Adams, Frank Miller or Bob Kane. No one had ever heard of Bruce Timm, Shane Glines, Paul Dini, or Dywane McDuffie-- Let alone Harley Quinn or Terry McGinnis. Hell, that dumbass Bane wouldn't be created -- or yell "I will BREAK YOU!"-- for years yet. Even Tim Burton himself was hardly a household name, having only two other feature films (Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice) under his directing belt. Still, outside of Vicki Vale, a Bat-suit that couldn't turn it's head and a weak climax there was a lot to like about the 1989 Batman. People freaked out when they heard Jack Nicholson had been cast as the Joker. Even more freaked out when they heard comedian Michael Keaton was going to be the new Batman! (- and who knew he'd be better than Clooney?)

A lot of water has gone under the ol' bat-bridge since then. The consecutive sequels to this film would eventually crash and burn then be re-invented by Chris Nolan and Bale to come back even stronger. The animated series would live and die and live and die again - then spawn it's own subsequent sequel series... which would eventually lead to the Justice League Unlimited show (for my money, the best animated superhero program ever created for television.)
So, as I sit waiting for the next Bat-chapter in the Gotham Lexicon (which I assume will be the upcoming Arkham Asylum game that will feature the return of the animated series voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill! ) I raise an appropriate glass of La Batts to the next twenty Bat-years!

Here's guano in yer eye, Keed!

KFC -- WTF???

2009-04-29T00:47:00.011-04:00

During the time that I've been doing this blog I have been conflicted at times against the notion of using it as a personal soapbox too much... But doggone it this is just too much!
As many of you are probably aware Kentucky Fried Chicken recently introduced their latest health-conscious chicken choice... Kentucky Grilled chicken. Many a time I've stormed out of our local (Buford Hwy - Clairmont rd) KFC, vowing never to return... But I had to admit - from the ads at least, the chicken looked pretty damn good - and I might just have to give 'em one more chance (yet again). So on friday we relented and picked up the 10 piece grilled meal bucket... and though one of the pieces was literally the size of a golf ball, overall it was easily the best food that I've gotten from that particular location in over a decade.
Too bad it just doesn't end there.

So here on the drive-thru menu board the price for the 10 piece grilled meal is clearly marked at 14.99. Seemed like a good deal to me. But when I checked my receipt at home I discovered I had actually paid 15.99 for the meal. But when I went inside the very same KFC - -the price on the ad board behind the counter read 15.99!! Just look...

Okay... so the people in the drive-thru are being lied to over a dollar. Is that worth blogging about? Maybe -- if you have no life whatsoever. But get this...

My wife and I go out to Smyrna (about 20 miles) on the way back I suggest we press our luck and get another 10 piece bucket of grilled chicken so we pull into the KFC on South Cobb drive and prepare to order when my brain ejects and falls out on the floor. Is that bucket 14.99? No. 15.99? Nope.

Read 'em and weep - THE SAME DAMN BUCKET IS 22.99!!
8 bucks more than the 14.99, and 7 bucks more than 15.99!!!
What's really weird is that this KFC was considerably more run-down than my local one.

When I asked the manager why - he said the price was "based on an estimate" (What it sounded like to me was that he had been in a position to make up a price out of thin air, and that 22.99 what he had come up with). It's been awhile since I worked for a a franchise store, but shouldn't the price be set in the front office, and not just left up to some price-gougin' manager? Grrrrr... This kind of shit shouldn't even be legal.

Is it??

I say being gouged is being gouged... nuff said!

OKAY so there's an update to this sad tale...

Call it curiousity - or maybe that I just tend to OD on new franchise food items ala Homer Simpson - but went I back thru my local KFC Drive Thru a couple more times... and the water gots muddier still.

April 24th - I roll up to the squawk box and tell the over-modulated voice that I want to order the "10 piece bucket" Again, on the outside board it clearly says 14.99.
As I'm driving off I note that the price I was charged looks like 18.99 with a minus 3.00 discount.

April 29th- (5 days later) Okay now dig this. When I order at the squawk box this time I say "I'll have the 14.99 meal"
there's a long pause and voice repeats "The 14.99 meal?" And I say "Yeah, the 10 piece bucket?" There's another long pause before he tells me to drive around. This time when I check the receipt it says 18.99 again - only this time with a discount of 4.00!
It's even a different code that they have to punch in!

So I guess the morale is, when ordering food from the KFC Drive-Thru, make sure you include the price when you order... or don't order at all.

Eat Well!

Say it ain't MOE!

2009-03-26T23:44:00.004-04:00

"Remind me to moider my agent!"

MGM gets its 'Stooges'

From yesterday's (3.25.09) Variety _- read it an' weep!

By Michael Fleming

MGM and the Farrelly brothers are closing in on their cast for "The Three Stooges."

Studio has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans to gain 40 pounds to approximate the physical dimensions of Jerome "Curly" Howard.

The studio is zeroing in on Benicio Del Toro to play Moe.

The film is not a biopic, but rather a comedy built around the antics of the three characters that Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Howard played in the Columbia Pictures shorts.

The quest by the Peter and Bobby Farrelly to harness the project spans more than a decade and three studios. They first tried at Columbia, again at Warner Bros., and finally at MGM, where Worldwide Motion Picture Group chairman Mary Parent championed the cause and bought the WB-owned scripts and made a deal with Stooges rights holders .

Production will begin in early fall for a release sometime in 2010. The Farrellys, who wrote the script, are producing with their Conundrum partner Bradley Thomas, and Charlie Wessler.

Entertainment principals Earl and Robert Benjamin will be executive producers.

Project will get underway after Penn completes the Asger Leth-directed Universal/Imagine Entertainment drama "Cartel." He hasn't done a comedy since the 1989 laffer "We're No Angels."

The Farrellys have long had their eyes on Del Toro to play Moe. Del Toro, who's coming off "Che," showed comic chops in the Guy Ritchie-directed "Snatch."

The surprise is the emergence of Carrey to play Curly. Howard established the character as a seminal physical comedian, from the first time he appeared in the first Stooges short in 1934 until he suffered a stroke on the set in 1946.

Hoo-Lawd!! I've gotta quote Moe and say: "It's moider! It's arson! Let's get outta here!"

Later folks!

Back on the Richter Scale

2009-02-25T17:20:00.003-05:00

Dana Edelson/NBC

From E online - today 2-25-09

The prodigal sidekick has returned.

Andy Richter will be playing McMahon to Conan O'Brien's Carson, as the former Late Night cohorts reteam when O'Brien takes the Tonight Show reins from Jay Leno this summer.

This time around, however, instead of serving as O'Brien's on-air wingman, Richter will take the role of full-service announcer. In addition to serving as Tonight's official voice, he will also regularly appear in comedy bits.

"Andy is one of the funniest people I know, and we've maintained a close friendship since he left Late Night," O'Brien said. "We have a proven chemistry that will be an incredible asset to The Tonight Show."

And one more thing...

"I'm looking forward to working with Andy on a daily basis again, particularly since he owes me $300," O'Brien added.

Richter served as the final nonmusical guest on Late Night With Conan O'Brien when it signed off last Friday. No word was made at the time that he would be part of the Tonight Show's regime change.

The duo first teamed up back in 1993, when an untested—and, at least by the network, untrusted—O'Brien took over David Letterman's late-night show. Richter left in 2000 to pursue an acting career, more often than not backed by O'Brien. (The host produced Richter's most high-profile, ill-fated TV outings: 2007's Andy Barker, P.I. and 2002's Andy Richter Controls the Universe.)

While the Tonight Show gig is good news for Richter fans, it's bad news for Joel Goddard die-hards.

Though O'Brien paid tribute to the Late Night announcer on his final episode, singling him out for his contributions over the show's 16-year run, the Asian boy-toy-lover will apparently not be making the trip to Los Angeles.

Richter's confirmation sets into place the final rundown of on-air talent for the O'Brien-manned Tonight Show. O'Brien announced earlier this month that Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7 will transfer over to become the Tonight Show house band.

O'Brien, Richter & Co. will make their Tonight Show debut on June 1.

Btw - It's amazing to me to find out that Andy's been gone from the show longer at this point than he was part of it the first time around. Hopefully this time he'll have the good sense to stay put.

Bits o' Weirdness #1

2009-02-14T17:12:00.005-05:00

Okay, here's a weird one...
These hand-painted scenes of Disney characters once adorned a Diner wall for 20 or 30 years somewhere in the Upper mid-west. They were for sale on eBay a few years back when these photos turned up. Bootleg Disney characters are nothing new. But check out the third image below...

What you don't often see is Minnie Mouse - topless - and breast feeding young'uns (whose?)
Maybe she's just pullin' a recent Selma Hayek move and "sharing the love" (milk) with some less fortunate wee folk. Here's a better look. Who knew Minnie was so ...matronly?

Hoo-boy. More soon...

Battle of the Brothers!

2009-02-03T18:37:00.022-05:00

Haw! I found this goofy thing the other day cleaning up. Brothers Gargantua "fly chambered" with brothers Moe and Curly Howard. This piece came out of several mid-1990s conversations I had with Dave Strandquest at Design efx that concerning the mystique surrounding Inshiro Honda's 1968 Toho monster minor-classic War of the Gargantuas! (One of Dave's all-time favorite movies, btw) While Gargantuas is generally defined as a sequel to Toho's "Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), it actually equates to a giant-wrestling-Bigfoot movie with some wacky new technology, Kumi Minzuno (cat sound) and one of the Strangest nightclub performances in all of Asian Cinema -- featuring a song so offbeat that even Devo has covered it. But hey, don't take my word for it... See for yourself:

Everybody's a critic. (Yikes! I don't even like my cheese that sharp!)

When I investigated a little further for this posting I found War of the Gargantuas seems to be a touchstone for for all manner of pop culture intersects. The Brothers and their differences and appearance have been the subject of song and story. People making allusions and some rather unlikely comparisons to all manner of actors and personalities. While a fellow on one fan site calls the boys shabby and "looking like old winos fighting", on another a gal insists the Brown one looks just like Nicholas Cage, (*gulp* It's true, he DOES!) and on yet another a woman insists the green one is a dead-ringer for her brother-in-law.

Dave and I went through a myriad of comparisons ourselves. While I had my own favorite targets (which included Butch and Waldo from the Little Rascals, to Georgia brothers Billy and Jimmy Carter), Dave always gravitated back to referring to the Brown one as looking like "Robbie Redford - 'cause he's sorta handsome" and the green one resembling TV's Bonnie Franklin. (Yes, from the 1970s show One Day at a Time -- that Bonnie Franklin.)

All during this time weird Gargantua related material continued to burble to the pop-culture surface. Some REALLY twisted stuff too as illustrated by this disturbing vision included casually - and quite inexplicably - on some 1990 japanese model kit instructions. (They're BROTHERS, for cryin' out loud.)
But Japanese Sci-Fi imagery in general has been a subject for underground and lowbrow art practically from the beginning. Popularized by artists like Gary Panter, Charles Burns, Tim Biskup, Coop, and Glenn Barr, the original source material has by now been turned inside-out several times over.

The Gargantua Brothers are a definite favorite of artist and Lowbrow Painter David Durrett of the Dalton Agency out of Jacksonville Florida. He's featured them in several of his dynamic paintings including this one that's appropriately (and maybe somewhat obviously) titled "Bad Ass".
(image copyright David Durrett)

As well as this one called "The Brown and the Green" which takes the Battle of the Brothers concept to a whole different level.
(image copyright David Durrett)

The exploding Vinyl toy market has seen plenty of Gargantua action too...

At one point Dave wanted us to make Gargantua costumes and play in a Monster band. I suggested if we were gonna make the costumes, then we should wear 'em to some swanky Halloween Party, arrive separately and mingle awhile, but when we saw each other go crazy, start fighting and just wreck the joint. We never did either, o 'course (-- once we realized our swankier pals would realistically probably just prosecute our Monster butts). Too bad I never did the other xerox piece I had planned back then though. Maybe I still should... it'd star MY top picks from the Gargantua Brother look-alikes club namely...

...BROTHERS CLINT AND RON HOWARD!
What the Hell is it about the Howard genepool anyway?... Moe, Curly, These guys... Ah well...

Thanks and kudos for this post go out to Toho, Inshiro Honda, The 4 Howards, David Durrett, and Dave S.

2009 is Bustin' Loose All Over!

2009-01-02T20:37:00.014-05:00

Happy New Year, folks!
My new Years resolution for 2009 (one of 'em) is shorter and more frequent posts.
I gotta say, waking up Jan 1 to a day of Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network was a pretty good start! (...and long overdue if you ask me.)

Especially since the closest Bugs and company have been to the airwaves in the last couple of years has been in new productions like the Duck Dodgers Show and the Tweety and Sylvester Mysteries on Boomerang (And yes, I'm forgetting the Baby Looney Tunes incarnation).

Just ten years ago The Looney Tunes characters (including and perhaps most notably Michigan J. Frog) seemed the cornerstone of the Time-Warner company. Every mall had a Warners store, and every Warners store had an "animation department" in the back that sold both limited-edition and production cels from Warners television and theatrical productions. Thanks in part to the aquisition of Cartoon Network at the end of the 1990s, for the first time in television history one channel would have the rights to show ANY cartoon from the Warner Cartoon canon (except for the dozen or so that they couldn't due to some outwageous steweotypes). Unfortunately this animation heyday was entirely too short-lived.

After 911 and the closing of the Warners stores it seemed interest in Bugs, Daffy -- and in fact, ALL "old product" characters started to wain (With the notable exception of Scooby Doo). There was a definite and conscious effort at CN to leave the past behind and develop new properties to mine.

The Looney interest level continued to diminish however, until a couple of years ago, when the theatrical shorts disappeared from the airwaves altogether -- only to be viewed online and in other high-pixal venues like YouTube. Even though MGM Tom and Jerry Cartoons (and on Boomerang a half-hour block just called "MGM Cartoons") continue to run every few hours.

Oh these? They're pitch boards from Space Jam where the Mon-stars are trashing the Looneys.
The pin-holes prove these ideas were pinned up and part of the working movie storyboard for a period of time. The fact that they exist at all only serves to illustrate nicely the ongoing love-hate relationship Warners seems to have with it's own characters. I'm sure the old Warners cartoon directors woulda had a big larf at the idea that 50 years in the future the company that Jack Warner built would only air the competition's (MGM) cartoons on their (mostly) Cartoon TV Network.

Darned ironic -- That's all I'm sayin'.

Hopefully though, the CN New Years day Looney Tunes Marathon is a good sign for the future!

'Cause as Mark Evanier said almost a decade ago:

You can't kill these films.

They've sure tried. They've cut them and hidden them and traced them and chopped them into little pieces. Over and over, business-types have given up on Bugs; over and over, they've been proven wrong. Like Lazarus, Jason or even Bill Clinton, he keeps coming back, ever stronger. And always will.

The WB cartoons may be the most lucrative things ever put on celluloid. They returned their initial investments when they were first exhibited, and all the thousands of reruns since have yielded almost pure profit. That's not even looking at the billions (with a "b") grossed from toys and comics and other merchandise featuring Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety and the gang.

Hopefully 2009 is the year somebody up the ladder will "re-discover" this (yet again...).

I know the REAL Bugs and Elmer (photo circa 1987) would love to see it happen!

Big Thanks and a HAPPY NEW YEAR go out to J.D.S., Time Warner, Splash News and Mark Evanier!

R. I. P. Bettie Page

2008-12-12T00:21:00.011-05:00

And now Bettie...

Jeez... This has been a tough week... First Forry Ackerman and now Bettie Page.

We were just wondering where to send her Christmas card this year *sigh*.

Bettie has been a part of our Christmas for many years now... Since we were "introduced" to her by Dave Stevens not long after she resurfaced in the early 1990s. It's almost unfathomable to me that they would leave us in the same year. Bettie was always super-nice and more than generous to us when she sure didn't have to be.

Here's a piece from The Times:

Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85.

Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died at a Los Angeles hospital where she had been on life support since she had a heart attack on Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler. A cult-culture figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957.

“Exactly what captures the imagination of people in terms of popular culture is something hard to define,” Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner once said of Page. “But in Bettie’s case, I’d say it’s a combination of wholesome innocence and fetish-oriented poses that is at once retro and very modern.”

Last year Bettie's health took a turn for the worst right before Christmas. It was the first year in over a decade we didn't hear from her during the Holiday season. Just the year before she had sent us this lovely cheesecake... We were honored.

I mean after all -- who wouldn't want a Bettie Page cheesecake? (She obviously still had her sense of humor). We have so many cards and letters from her over the years that it's really surreal - at least at the moment - that we'll never hear from her again. I know both my wife and I are going to be really upset once it sinks in, but for now... Hell, I'm still numb about Forry.

Wow... bad week.

Godspeed Bettie... We'll always love and miss you.

Black & White in COLOR #5 : The CREATURE!

2008-11-25T18:30:00.025-05:00

Wow, just when you think you've seen everything....

Much debate has been made over the years on the subject of our old pal, The Creature From the Black Lagoon and his true pallor pallet. Since color shots of the west coast Production
--outside of a precious few publicity stills-- don't seem to exist, it only added to the legend.

I've even read that these shots were hand-tinted by the studio!

And -- just to give the east-coast production a little equal time -- Note not only the differences in design and stature between the land and water (florida unit) costumes but also in the overall color scheme as well. The water costume (below) was painted with much more of a flat yellow pallor than the land suit was so it would photograph more clearly in the waters of Wakulla Springs.

The underwater suit for Revenge of the Creature (below) was signifigantly darker than the original's.

So just very recently these next pictures surfaced. And -- Holy Cow! They're previously unpublished photos from LIFE magazine's massive archives. Unseen by just a select few until now... Who knew he had that much gold on him?

At least one picture from this shoot -- the black-and-white (below) -- DID appear in LIFE in 1953. It identified Ben Chapman as the actor portraying him for this shoot.

(Yes... also a source of some debate)

And here's some more!

The above and below shot look to have been shot not only on the same day, but look to have been snapped just about a second apart!

So here's the Creature looking like we know him in B & W... But in color he's got the red lip thang goin' on. Hmmm...

Jack Theakston notes on the material:
Here is the B/W photo from LIFE next to the color photo ... I assume they are from the same session and the suit was the same, The lips don't look so "Tammy Faye Baker" in monochrome.

Huh! Well, seeing is believing -- red and green do photograph with much the same value.

Mystery solved?

Nope.

Other sources state that "the suit was repainted for the few color publicity shots. (there are more than these, and they've been circulating for ages.) it only had the red lips there. same with the gold drybrushing. As to the eyes, there were 3 different sets. the close-up and publicity set had a transparent pupil."

Julie (Julia) Adams herself has stated in interviews (and specifically in the "making of" documentary on the Creature From The Black Lagoon dvd) that the lips on the original Creature costumes used during filming were not red:

"Well, the original Creature was this, uh, sort of a softer moss green, a very very subtle color so that it picked up shadows, and...and it had the feeling of a reality of flesh, really, being there, and most of the recreations are too bright. They're...they're much too vivid a green...and sometimes the lips are red, and uh...it's, uh...they're garish compared to the original."

Bob Burns backed this up when I visited his famous Basement in 1998. When I inquired about the true coloring of the costume he showed me a mask made off the original Land costume mold that was painted a "frog green" as he called it. "It's pretty darn close to the original color" he added. It sported no such red lips.

(Wow... what a great shot)

Tom Weaver adds on the Classic Horror forum:

Welllllllll, I think we should still think of the Creature as having red lips, because Universal put red lips on him on the poster and red lips on the costume for the publicity shots and obviously wanted the public to perceive the Creature as having red lips even if, during the actual black-and-white shooting, he didn't. If the Wolf Man was hot-pink during shooting but brown in color publicity shots and brown on the posters, fans can file the "hot-pink" away in their brains as a piece of interesting trivia but all representations of the Wolf Man oughta be brown. IMHO.

So does this really clear anything up?

Nope.

But it sure is COOL!

Big Thanks and a flip of a fin to the Hobby Talk forum, Tom Weaver, The LIFE magazine archives, and everyone else responsible in part or whole for making this post possible!

Black & White in COLOR #4: The Munsters!

2008-09-27T22:38:00.042-04:00

BOO!
Happy Halloween, everybody! That makes it just about prime time for the latest B&WnC installment; this time around showcasing Universal's favorite family of fright The MUNSTERS... in COLOR.

Yeah, sure I know Munsters Go Home was shot in color... but the makeup they used was altered for the big screen and on the green side. Considerably different than these great Frankenstein-accurate shots of Herman from the pilot film.

Curiously the first Munsters pilot (also shot in color) did not yet include Yvonne Decarlo in the cast. Instead, the test audience was treated to the e'en more Morticia-esque character Phobe (above) --played by Joan Marshall-- in place of Lily. Joan was probably best known for her dual-role (playing both sexes) in William Castle's Psychotronic soap-opera Homicial (1961). Can't say I'm sorry she didn't do the series but I can say that ol' Joan had some intense bone structure goin' on --She's really more Chas Addams looking than even Carolyn Jones was.

The first season cast including Beverly Owen as Marilyn. After 13 episodes she was replaced as by Pat Priest. (At her own request, might I add -- actually Beverly wanted to quit the show 'cause she was a-missin' her boyfriend who lived back east real REAL bad (according to Al Lewis at least). Eddie's makeup was still evolving at this point... (Butch still has his own hair!)

Another great shot of Herman and Lily. (I thought at first this was a painting by Ken Kelley... but it ain't.)

Oh man! Munster colorforms? I always hated that they only came with the one background. (No damn car either... that definitely woulda ticked me off.)
Colorforms were, for the uninitiated, sort of like the earliest form of Flash animation.
Think of it as "Flash manual".

Viva, George Barris!
The fusion of the the Monster craze and the Hot-rod craze in the show's second season gave it -- according to many fans -- a definite edge over the abc's The Addams Family.

There was only one Drag-U-La (Grandpa's coffin car,) built for the show. There have been several replicas built since 1967, but the original now hangs from the ceiling in the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Atlantic City.

Okay so this one ain't color... but it's still a fun behind the scenes shot with Fred and Yvonne.

Seems like everybody had a band back then...

1313 Mockingbird Lane

The location that the Munsters lived on was constructed largely for the 1946 film So Goes My Love. The two houses used for the film were constructed on stage 12. In 1950 the stock houses from the sound stage were reconstructed on the new Colonial Street set. The future Munster house was at that time "The Maxim House" and was featured in the movie One Desire in (1955).
Universal Studios soon found itself in the pre-fab Victorian home business. These blueprints would be mixed and matched at Universal for the next 20 years. Below is a rare shot of The Munsters house under construction in 1950.

Universal studios kicked ass in the 1960's -- here comes the tram down what is now *choke* Wisteria Lane (the Desperate Housewives set) passing both The Munsters House and the Psycho-type construct from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. Here's some other nifty shots of of the cast and the house as it evolved over the years.

Years ago (in 1988) I caught one episode of The Munsters Today (directed by Munsters guest-star Bonnie Franklin) and wondered why the house they used was "only a model".
Either it wasn't available or the show didn't have the greenbacks to re-dress the orginal house. (From what I remember I'd have to vote for the latter... yeech! That show was like a high-school play version of the B & W show.)

1967 Universal Post Cards
The year after the Musters wrapped production Universal released a set of postcards that shows what appears to be Grandpa's TV dungeon set with a Herman/Frankenstein Monster dummy strapped to the examination table. Other shots showed a Phantom of the Opera-clone menacing both the dummy and a somewhat grabby tourista. Way too cool!

Lastly, these two pics look like tourist fotos taken of the same set, but they blow up big if you click on 'em!

Time o' yer life, eh kids?

That's about it for this year so Happy Halloween folks!
--and big thanks go out to all things Universal Studios, past and present.

R. I. P. Bill Melendez

2008-09-06T04:34:00.043-04:00

Ah, Linus and the hallowed pumpkin patch. It's with some bitter irony that my first Halloween related post of the season is a sad one.

Last Tuesday the animation world lost another heavy hitter... this time it's longtime Warner Brothers Cartoon and classic CBS-TV Peanuts Special director Bill Melendez.

From the Boston Globe:

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Bill Melendez, the animator who gave life to Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and other "Peanuts" characters in scores of movies and TV specials, has died.

He was 91.

Mr. Melendez died Tuesday at St. John's Hospital, according to publicist Amy Goldsmith.

Mr. Melendez's nearly seven decades as a professional animator began in 1938 when he was hired by Walt Disney Studios and worked on Mickey Mouse cartoons and classic animated features such as "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia."

He went on to animate TV specials such as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and was the voice of Snoopy, who never spoke but issued expressive howls, sighs, and sobs.

Mr. Melendez was born in 1916 in Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora.

He moved with his family to Arizona in 1928 and then to Los Angeles in the 1930s, attending the Chouinard Art Institute.

Mr. Melendez took part in a strike that led to the unionization of Disney artists in 1941, and later moved to Warner Bros., where he worked on Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck shorts.

In 1948, Mr. Melendez left Warner Bros., and over the next 15 years worked as a director and producer on more than 1,000 commercials and movies for United Productions of America, Playhouse Pictures, and John Sutherland Productions.

At United Productions, he helped animate "Gerald McBoing-Boing," which won the 1951 Academy Award for best cartoon short.

Mr. Melendez met "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz in 1959 while creating Ford Motor Co. TV commercials featuring Peanuts characters.

The two became friends and Mr. Melendez became the only person Schulz authorized to animate his characters.

Mr. Melendez founded his own production company in 1964, and with his partner, Lee Mendelson, went on to produce, direct, or animate some 70 "Peanuts" TV specials, four movies, and hundreds of commercials.

The first special was 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas." The show reportedly worried CBS because it broke so much new ground for a cartoon: It lacked a laugh track, used real children as voice actors, had a jazz score, and included a scene in which Linus recited lines from the New Testament.

The show was a ratings success, however, and has gone on to become a Christmastime perennial.

Mr. Melendez created Emmy-winning specials based on the cartoon characters Cathy and Garfield, and was involved in animated versions of the Babar the elephant books and the C.S. Lewis book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

He also was co-nominee for an Academy Award in 1971 for the music for "A Boy Named Charlie Brown."

His productions earned some 19 Emmy nominations, including six awards.

Mr. Melendez leaves his wife, Helen; two sons, Steven and Rodrigo, a retired Navy rear admiral; six grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

Bill could've never met Charles Schultz and still have had what many would consider a full career. After toiling on some of the best-loved works in the Disney canon he really came into his own at Warner Brothers. Bill was not merely an animator at Warners, He worked in the Bob Clampett animation unit (credited as J.C. Melendez) and produced some of the funniest cartoons ever made including Wagon Heels, Book Revue, Baby Bottleneck, Kitty Kornered, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, and The Big Snooze.

After Clampett's departure he worked for both Art Davis' and Bob McKimson's unit on a ton more cartoons featuring Warner Brothers full stable of characters. But it wasn't until after the first few Peanuts Specials aired that he got such notoriety even my mom knew his name.

So here's some vintage shots and insights to the Melendez studio production process during their Peanuts production heyday... a little ditty we'll call:

"It's Old School Animation, Charlie Brown!"

At the start of any Peanuts production the action and the dialogue were always dictated by the comic strip's creator Charles "Sparky" Schultz. Then Bill Melendez would produce a storyboard (below).

When finished, the storyboard was pinned up so the directors could make sure it all flowed properly. In the photo below Bill goes over the storyboard with co-director Phil Roman (of Film Roman Studios) in discussion on how to plot a particular scene.

Animators now followed the storyboard --with direction from Melendez-- and start to create the many pencil sketches of characters and actions. Thousand of these sketches will be prepared for the "pencil test" reel, which shows the action in it's roughest form.

Once the final storyboard was approved, the entire soundtrack would be recorded, with Lee Mendelson directing the voices up in Northern California and Bill directing in Southern California.

Many folks don't know that in addition to his talents as director, Bill also provided the voice of Snoopy. (He's actually recording Snoopy in the above left photo.) Yeah, okay... Snoopy didn't talk per se, (unless you count the off-putting caterwauling of Cam Clarke in Snoopy The Musical) but he did laugh, growl, howl, cry and go "Bleah!" a lot. Next, (above right) the animation exposure sheets (or X-sheets) were made up by Bill. In short, he transposed the dialogue from the sound track by means of these sheets and incorporated mouth and facial movements as well as actions for each character, and how many frames of film it all needed to take. These sheets were then handed off to the animators, with each character's actions and movements already spelled out.

Next, one sketch at a time would be photographed and then all the animated action was checked --in pencil-- on a Movieola (ah, look it up). Editor Roger Donley and Bill (below left) carefully check the character mouth movements and action before committing to ink and paint. Once the pencil tests were approved, the hand-inking of every pencil sketch began (below right). The inking of which required perfectly consistent lines and was a long painstaking and under-appreciated process.

The inking (and subsequent painting) was done on transparent acetate cels so that these drawings could be eventually be placed over scenic layouts which provided a background for the animated characters.
(Yes, boys and girls... it was the dark ages. No computers with flash or after effects programs around to do the hard, dirty, boring or thankless work.)

Jigsaw Pumpkin: "...When it comes to the nitty-gritty, Lucy shoves in her knife..."

(Below left) A color model sheet was used for each of the characters to help the painters maintain consistency throughout the production. After the inking was completed, the cel was tuned over and the demanding task of hand painting each of the inked acetate cels began. Usually ten to fifteen minutes was needed to complete the painting of an individual cel.

When the inking and painting for an entire scene was complete, the cels were laid one frame at a time over the corresponding backgrounds, and cameraman Nick Vasu photographed the final pictures on color 35mm movie film (above).

Meanwhile up in Northern California, the musical composers and directors (seen here with Charles Schultz - Judy Mansen, left, and Ed Bogas, right) were creating the musical score for the show.

Finally the editors would take the sound track, including dialogue, sound effects and music, and match it perfectly to the picture... And somehow, after six to nine months of this effort a television special would miraculously appear! Man, they sure don't make 'em like that any more!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Bill Melendez has left the building.
How EERILY coincidental that he would do so on the very same day that the "Remastered Deluxe Edition" DVD of "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" hits the store shelves. Pretty Halloweeny. (I haven't seen this release yet but I hope to God they've corrected all the miserable single-frame animation compression issues that have plagued the Previous Peanuts releases on DVD. ) Godspeed Bill. You will be missed.

And by the way --here's the "Great Pumpkin" DVD new box art. A new for a 1966 TV special --that's been in wide release --in various formats-- for years now... and still most Atlanta BestBuy stores are already sold out of 'em.

And if that doesn't make your head spin --consider Linus in his oh-so-sincere Pumpkin Patch, and try not to think that this Halloween will be it's 42nd(!) annual airing ...and that in the real world Linus of 1966 would be turning 50 this year.

Big Thanks for this post go out to The Bill Melendez family, and The Boston Globe.

The Stench of Lies

2008-08-18T18:59:00.010-04:00

Oh, for God's sake...

(Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaaaahh!)

Oh bro-ther. Can you believe CNN actually gave these guys airtime? (let alone 12 minutes!) I followed the story along with everybody else last Friday, amazed at the credibility given these Bigfoot-huntin' goofballs. They basically stuffed an off-the-rack Bigfoot costume in a beer cooler with some dentures and some deer guts (to make it fancy) and got international press for a week. It doesn't even look like they made any significant modifications to the costume before they chucked it in there either! (I'da at least got out the ol' airbrush --sheez!) Only in Ameri... er... Georg... uhm... Clayton County.

(Incidentally, if you want to make your own Bigfoot-in-a-cooler this costume is available through Haunted Ventures. --The dentures and deer guts are extra.)

BFRO.net sums up the hoaxsters thusly:

"These Georgia buffoons do not run bigfoot expeditions and never have. That's just another one of their lies. They are simply two clowns in Georgia who put some bogus videos on YouTube that got some attention.
When they first got some press attention in Georgia, the press attention attracted the notorious Carmine Thomas Biscardi. Among other sleazy ventures, Biscardi has been pushing hoaxed bigfoot evidence for several years now. He seems to pop up wherever the bigfoot subject is getting local press attention -- a sort of Reverend Al Sharpton of the bigfoot world. But unlike Sharpton, who has become a respectable defender of minority rights, Biscardi's ploys have won him the well-deserved reputation among the bigfoot research community as a charlatan, a parasite, a hoaxer, and a scam artist."

So there y'are... Sorry, folks.

"Real" Bigfoot found in Georgia

2008-08-15T13:16:00.012-04:00

Northern Georgia? Practically the only place I've ever been camping?

Pfft... I mighta known...

It's all over the news today...

From KNTV-TV (the San Francisco NBC affliate)

updated 4:31 a.m. ET, Fri., Aug. 15, 2008

PALO ALTO, Calif. - "Three Bigfoot seekers, including a Redwood City man who released a documentary titled "Bigfoot Lives," claim they may have the body of one and released a photo (at right) and what they claim is DNA evidence at a news conference in Palo Alto on Friday.

Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, Georgia residents who lead Bigfoot-tracking expeditions, said they found the body of what appears to be a Bigfoot in the woods of northern Georgia. They were to join local Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi at the news conference, according to Robert Barrows, who is publicizing the event.

Barrows' name is known in San Mateo County, where he has made multiple bids as a Democratic primary candidate for the District 12 Congressional seat formerly occupied by the late U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos and now by Jackie Speier.

"I think you'll find that this is the real deal," Barrows said of the alleged discovery.

Whitton, a police officer in Clayton County, and Dyer, a former correctional officer, are not saying exactly where the body was found or where it is now, Barrows said.

Biscardi, a veteran Bigfoot tracker who said he went to Georgia to view the find over the weekend, said DNA tests are being conducted and a team of scientists will study the body, but declined to name any scientists involved.

Officials from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division said the largest wildlife they are aware of in the state are black bears and white-tail deer."

Additionally from NBC11

UPDATED: 10:27 am PDT August 15, 2008

"Two men say they will use a press conference in Palo Alto Friday to prove to the world they have found the body of Bigfoot. Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer claim DNA test results and photographs they plan to present today (noon) will prove a corpse they found in the woods of Georgia is the body of the creature. The remote regions of the Northwest are where people usually have claimed to see the man-ape.

Efforts to reach Whitton and Dyer earlier today on what they call their Bigfoot Tipline were unsuccessful, so it's not clear how Bigfoot could have ended up in the mountains of Georgia.

The men claim to have the corpse of the beast in a freezer in Georgia. But skeptics are saying today's press conference is just another Bigfoot hoax."

And from DBTechno.com:

"Washington - The world is currently waiting for the big press conference, where two hunters have stated that they will reveal photos, as well as DNA evidence to prove that they have found the dead body of Bigfoot.

The press conference is scheduled to take place on Friday morning in Palo Alto, California, following a series of tests that have been reportedly done on the creature.

Two professional Bigfoot hunters were able to find the dead body of Bigfoot in the forest in Georgia.

Once they found Bigfoot, they placed him in a freezer to keep him “fresh.”

Since then, Bigfoot expert Thomas Biscardi has been brought in, who later confirmed that it is the real thing.

Many though are still not very confident in their discovoery, mainly due to the fact that they have, for the most part, kept everybody away from seeing the actual body in person.

Bigfoot, according to the hunters, is 7 feet, 7 inches tall, and has reddish hair. He also has big teeth, eyes, etc.

We will have to wait for the press conference to find out more, and to see whether this is a hoax, or the real thing."

Ahem... I'll go out on a limb and say...It's probably not.

Okay, a big red flag right off the bat should be that two of the guys are "Bigfoot Hunters". Not too credible a group either if you watch some of the YouTube videos. Ol' Tom Biscardi stammers an awful lot when he talks, and he blinks even more. He's been called in the press the "Al Sharpton of Bigfoot". Not to mention, the only picture released so far of the "evidence" looks like a muddy ape costume in a cooler. (below)

Be really weird if it were true. Cool and sad too. But I'd bet the farm it ain't.

I'm just happy to hear Georgia in the news and it not be about war.

Thanks to MSNBC, DBTechno.com, Sara B., Mr. Ray Jr. and Bigfoot.

London After Midnight found?

2008-07-25T21:20:00.007-04:00

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT --

LOST LON CHANEY CLASSIC FINALLY FOUND! (SORTA.)

Can it possibly be true? Sounds like it here --if you read Sid Terror's personal accounts (On The Horror Drunx.com site) of tracking down the elusive 1927 Lon Chaney vehicle thought lost for over 40 years.

Read about it here:
http://thehorrordrunx.yuku.com/topic/753

Sure hope it's true. Guess we'll all see soon enough...

Thanks for this post go to Sid Terror, TheHorrorDrunx.com, FJA & Lon Chaney

Who'll watch The Watchmen?

2008-07-18T15:27:00.020-04:00

Well, everybody who has seen WB's The Dark Knight by now has had the extry-special mighty-fine treat of seeing the long-awaited trailer for The Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' subversive 1986 inside-out take on the Superhero genre.) I can say for a fact that the preview crowd in attendance at The Regal Hollywood 24 last night went nuts when the first images from the trailer hit the screen. Of course, it was small potatoes compared the the near-riot that broke out later,when the projectionist ran The Dark Knight reels out of order.
Wow, what an angst-fest! Palpatating, red-faced and rabid, the battiest of Bat-fans nearly beat down the projection room door, only to be told the Regal's resolve would be a pass for the next day-- because the movie -- still running and entering the climactic third act, could not be halted. Once they realized that, most fans RAN out in droves shielding their eyes, but not before security did some escorting-out of the unruliest.

Okay I digress... but it seems like it's always something at that damn theater.

Aptly timed, The Watchmen movie is the lead and cover story on next week's Entertainment Weekly (7.25.08). I was actually staggered a little when I pulled this cover out of my mailbox today. "A sure sign of the Apocalypse" I said as I showed my wife the cover. She looked at it for a second and then said "Why? Because they got the costumes right?"
"Uhhhh...Yeah..." I answered, looking at it a little closer. "That, too."

The Watchmen has been big-screen bound for nearly two decades. I remember thinking that the Watchmen-esque scenes on the moon in 1989's The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen felt like more-or-less a warm-up act for director Terry Gilliam, who at that time was slated to direct The Watchmen as his next project. The property has gone through many hands since those days.
But in the interim something has happened to the Superhero movie genre. Some might say it's "grown up". It's definitely become more serious. Much less playful. There is little resemblance in tone between say Batman (1966), Batman (1989), and The Dark Knight. Same characters. Whole different feel. (And I ain't even mentioning Schumacher's train wrecks.) Tim Burton's films were dark and ground-breaking for the genre, even though he really never took it beyond the comic booky/can't-take-it-serious tone --even in the most serious of scenes.

The Superhero movie of 2008 looks and feels more like a "real" movie. It's really required to by today's audience standards. With this in mind The Watchmen might have just been in the Hollywood hopper long enough to stand a good chance of turning real profit. Much more so now than say, a decade ago when a cynical group of heroes practically no one had ever heard of (cough... Mystery Men) was way harder to sell John Q. Public. (Reminding myself that HellBoy 2 was #1 at the box office last week) Still, I have to wonder if the movies' adult-oriented themes and apparent "R" rating will hurt the bottom line at the box office (...but then again, when I saw Team America at the Hollywood 24 the audience was almost HALF kids! Hoo-boy!).

EW has a lengthy article about both The Watchmen movie and Comic Con in general --which with over 130,000 attendees expected this year has been super-sized to the point, that for me at least-- it's almost become counter-productive. (Yeah, I said it! Even on Thursday it's crowded as hell now!) Comic Con attendees (presumably thousands) can expect a special Watchmen presentation of previously unseen footage on friday July 25th.
Anyhoo, here's a great who's-who of the Watchmen heavy hitters (put together by EW contributor Jeff Jensen) that should bring the laziest layman up to uh...super-speed.

Hmmm. So, ya think Snyder mighta got it right? The 300 was pretty good, ...right?
Well, since I'm trying to remain optimistic, I'll just have to hold out hope until it's released next year (March 6, 2009) that the original work by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is finally done justice.
At least as of this date, Alan Moore still hasn't requested his name taken off the project. Yet.

Big Thanks (and good luck) for this post go to Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Comics, Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Jensen, Alan Moore and Zach Snyder.

Bakshi Spiderman music

2008-06-24T20:03:00.010-04:00

WFMU'S Blog Beware of the Blog always has some offbeat and ecelectic offerings from the musical fringe, and last month's The Radioactive Bite of a Very Groovy Bug post is certainly no exception.

It features a 65 minute podcast (recorded may 20, 2008) of music featured in the second and third season seasons (the Steve Krantz produced, Ralph Bakshi directed episodes) of the original 1967 Spider-man ABC cartoon series.
The program enjoys cultish adoration due primarily to its incredible music score of original Spider-Jazz (recorded for the show's first season) and the vast library of 1960s production music cues that it utilized. Those tracks have been all but impossible to come by over the 40 years since the series ended. Well, now it seems, that problem has finally been resolved - at least in part.

According to WFMU's Kliph Nesteroff:

"The second and third season music tracks come from the KPM music library in England, they still exist, and they sound great. The podcast also features some reminiscence from the man who provided Spiderman's voice in the series (as well as "Hermie" in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer), Paul Soles."

Listen to the Spiderman Background Music Podcast!

"Perhaps the most revelatory piece of information that the discovery of these KPM masters unearthed is the name of the tracks themselves. Since the music was recorded for generic purposes to be used by anybody for any project or production, the sounds do not possess Spiderman related titles. However, if you've ever had the frightening experience of watching the notorious episode Revolt in the Fifth Dimension, you likely felt that it was a psychedelic cartoon made by animators high on acid. Turns out that the title of the crazy music in that episode was, indeed, titled LSD!"

I have my own memory of that particular piece (which sort of has an early-Pink Floyd-Syd Barrett groove) As a kid when I'd visit my Grandmother in Florida, The only thing there was to watch on Sunday morning was Bullwinkle (and the Munsters, curiously). And the only commercials they'd show during that hour were Florida PSAs. Lots of No-smoking 60 and 90 second spots, including one that showed a guy suffering from nicotine withdrawal --to the LSD beat!

Obvious HUGE thanks to WFMU's Beware the Blog, Kliph Nesteroff, Ralph Bakshi and D.E. O'Connor!

King Kong Cold-Cocked!

2008-06-15T01:29:00.024-04:00

BIFF - BAM - POW!

Burbank is proving more dangerous to Merian C. Cooper's 50 foot gorilla than was his Skull Island homeland.
Last week's fire at Universal Studios (6/1/08) gave the King's career a Kong-sized hotfoot and dealt the Gorilla-God a triple whammy.
The studio, which resides on a 400 acre property nine miles north of downtown Los Angeles has movie-themed thrill rides and the famous Universal back lot where countless movies and television shows are filmed.

It was the second fire at the historic studio in as many decades, taking out much of the historic
courthouse square (used in To Kill a Mockingbird, Village of the Giants, How to Frame a Figg, & Back to the Future, just to name a few) as well as the New York and New England street facades (Dirty Harry, Austin Powers, Spiderman 2). All were lost in the blaze that broke out from a blowtorch on a sound stage roof featuring New York Brownstone facades early Sunday morning on the first day of June. The fire moved quickly and at one point was two city blocks wide. It didn't help matters that Burbank 911 operators were slow to react when they received calls about "New York street" being on fire, saying over and over that they needed an address to send help (as seen on TMZ).
In addition to the back lot exteriors the building that housed the King Kong exhibit (that was part of the tram tour) was incinerated as well as a large building that served as a vault housing many archival prints was a total loss.

The Courthouse set, New York street and the King Kong attraction have all been down this road before --these same three sites were either damaged or destroyed during the November 1990 fire at Universal Studios. (That fire caused $25 million in damage and was started by a security guard who was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to arson.)

The film vault however, is another story...

Meyer estimated there were 40,000 to 50,000 videos and film reels in a vault that burned but said duplicates were stored in a different location. Firefighters managed to recover hundreds of titles. The videos included every film that Universal has produced and footage from television series including "Miami Vice" and "I Love Lucy."It was reported that hundreds of videos were saved from the burning building by firemen and most of what was there were duplicates. However, much of what was lost involved music recording masters from the last century from artists including Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, and many 1940s live jazz performances and soundtracks.

In addition to the initial list of the lost , Universal sent out this e-mail to several dozen film exhibitors on Monday (June 2):

It is with great sadness that I must inform you that yesterdays fire destroyed nearly 100% of the archive prints kept here on the lot. Due to this we will be unable to honor any film bookings of prints that were set to ship from here. Over the next few weeks and months we will be able to try and piece together what material we do have and if any prints exist elsewhere. For the time being please check your rental confirmations and look under shipping instructions. If the print was set to ship from the studio then your date is now canceled. If the shipping instructions say ship from Deluxe then those dates are still good. Please call either myself or Dennis Chong with any questions. I can be reached for the next two days at xxx and you can reach Dennis at xxx. I will be back in the office on Wednesday.

Paul Ginsburg
Vice President NBC Universal Distribution

(The history-engulfing blaze can be seen here roaring just down the hill from the "Psycho" House -at right)

The rarity of archival 35mm prints is driven home further by last year's G-FEST XIV's intended Universal film screenings. When G-Fest's booker arranged for the rentals of King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes from Universal Studios they were told that they had only one archival print of each film in their vault.

So if Mr. Ginsburg's message above is correct, then that would mean that at the very least, the prints of the English versions of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, KING KONG ESCAPES and Hammer Studio’s CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF are gone.
Two of these films have now confirmed themselves gone, as they had bookings that had to be canceled or replaced by a different screening method.

One of the venues affected was the upcoming "Thrillville goes Ape" film festival. According to Thrillville’s host, promoter and programmer Will “The Thrill” Viharo, “I was particularly anticipating my West Coast premiere of the single existing 35mm print of KING KONG ESCAPES next week (The 35mm print of KKE was previously shown at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood back in 2005). But I just got word that rare print has indeed gone up in flames. However, due to the proximity of this catastrophe to the play date, the show will go on - via the magic of big screen DVD".

(“Thrillville Goes Ape” will take place Thursday, June 12 at 9:15pm. The Cerrito Speakeasy Theater is located at 10070 San Pablo Ave in El Cerrito, CA)

No one’s still quite sure just how many films were affected in the vault’s disaster, so the question still remains regarding Universal’s classic Horror, Monster and many other genres of films. Naturally, Universal still has digitalized versions of most films that were used to create the DVDs. But the loss of the archival prints would be devastating.

True, and thankfully, the negatives DO exist at a different site.
But with the rising costs of striking prints and the onslaught of digital distribution and digital projection methods, it is highly likely there may never be a reason to strike these prints --providing they all do still exist-- because of their, shall we say, selective appeal. (Making new film prints can cost $5,000 or more each and take months to produce.)
Meaning, the only way we may ever be able to see certain Universal films again is strictly by DVD or another video means outside the classic 35mm projection method.

And, if that ain't bad enough...

"Built in 1986, the $6.5-million “King Kong” attraction included a 30-foot-tall, 7-ton animatronic gorilla inside a 26,000-square-foot soundstage built to look like a city block, according to The Studio Tour fansite."

Now The L.A. Times reports:
"Universal Studios Hollywood officials said the “King Kong” attraction, a key element of the movie and television theme park’s back lot tram tour destroyed by Sunday’s fire, won’t be rebuilt and will be replaced with an all-new, yet-to-be-determined attraction."

As Richard Pryor woulda said... PI-YOW!!

Bad day for ol' Kong
--not to mention fans of Universal and giant monkeys in general.

Kudos for this post go out to Robo Japan, Sci-Fi Japan, Arron Cooper, The L.A. Times, Thrillville & Will Viharo.

R.I.P. Ben Chapman (1928-2008)

2008-02-21T11:58:00.014-05:00

Hoo-boy... it was already a dreary day and now this....
Hollywood actor Ben Chapman --one of the last men to play a classic Universal monster (and a super-nice guy to boot) passed away in Hawaii early this morning.

From the Creature from the Black Lagoon Yahoo Group:

Ben Chapman passed away this morning at 12:15 AM Hawaii time. He was
admitted to the hospital two days ago and died peacefully in his
hospital bed. He had a living will and they turned off his life
support yesterday about noon Hawaii time. They will be having a
memorial service at a Catholic Church located near the beach and he
will be cremated. He turned 79 last October.

My sincere hope is that he died peacefully and with no pain or suffering.

My best thoughts are for the Gill-man who carried a fallen female and entered into movie monster stardom!
Our Gill Man (on land) will be forever remembered, not just as the body of the imposing Creature, but for his priceless recollections, his detailed memories and willingness to share this will Monster Kids the world over.

A gentle giant and a heck of a nice guy.

Personally I have to include these shots I took as well: The whole Creature gang photo-op for the fans at CreatureFest 2003 in Wakulla Springs. (left to right) Ben Chapman, Julia Adams, Ginger Stanley and Ricou Browning --together again at this event for the first time in 50 years.

And here's Ben with and signing my own Creature Mask for posterity.
Thanks again Ben... and rest in peace.

Incoming: El Superbeasto!

2008-02-05T23:04:00.001-05:00

This Spring will see the long awaited release of The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, a 2-d (!) animated theatrical production written and conceived by Rob Zombie. As 2-d animated feature films grow fewer and farther between I'm pulling for it to be enjoyable --or at least be watchable and turn a solid profit. Different from Rob's own "house" style (as displayed in a Beavis' peyote trip in Beavis and Butthead Do America) the overall look of the film is more like Ralph Bakshi meets Ren and Stimpy, thanks in large part to the talents of Spumco alumnus Director Doug "Spongebob" Lawrence, Co-Director Carey Yost, and Chris Riccardi.

The film centers on a Santo-type, lout of a Mexi-wrestler and his epic battle with Dr. Satan (voiced by the always-great Paul Giamatti). Though a version Dr. Satan appears in House of 1000 Corpses, this guy looks totally different. Tom Kenny of Spongebob fame and Brian Posehn lend their vocal talents as well. This week Rob Zombie posted some new pics from the movie on his Myspace page. Here's some choice selects. Enjoy!

Yow! Zombie Nazis! Shades of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (1977) ...

No denying it's got a nice look... and like Rob's previous films you can bet it's R-rated for violence and what-not. Personally I just really hope it's not as full of the detracting "mean for mean's sake" spirit that has hobbled his 3 previous films -- and escalated with each new script. (I liked House of 1000 Corpses...but hated the Halloween remake.) But I guess we'll all find out once it's released...

For "full disclosure", check out Rob's My Space page at:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=28735418

R. I. P. Vampira (1921-2008)

2008-01-13T13:08:00.000-05:00

Thursday was my forty-sixth birthday. It would also be officially recorded as the day that Maila Nurmi, who became synonymous with her character, Vampira, passed away in her sleep at the age of 86.

She was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi on December 21, 1921, in Petsamo, Finland - now Pechenga, Russia. Her uncle was an Olympic champion in track running, Paavo Nurmi. Maila's family moved to the United States when Maila was only two years old. The young beauty was already dreaming of being a Hollywood star and at the tender age of 17, she took a trip to Los Angeles to seek her fortune. Of course, glory doesn't come easily and Maila became an exotic dancer and photo model to survive.

At some point in 1954, Maila disguised herself as Morticia Addams (Charles Addams ghoulish character from New Yorker Magazine who would eventually become popular on TV and films) for a masked ball. As simply as that, Vampira was born. Maila's appearance appealed to Hunt Stromberg Jr., program director for KABC Channel 7, who was looking for somebody to spice up his night time programming. In a very short time, Maila officially became Vampira to host a show presenting horror movies each Saturday night at 11 PM.In the 1950s she created the character of Vampira, popular for both films and as a television host. Her character was to set the standard for an entire legion of horror hostesses, actresses, and even cartoon characters to follow. From what I have heard she was always kind and gracious with her fans (though some of her co-stars are of a different opinion).

Without a doubt, her striking features, deadpan humor and faux-blasé attitude contributed to make her a fast popular success. Introduced with a music cue (heard twice in The Shining), Vampira came down a fog enshrouded hallway at the start of each show, screaming unexpectedly into the camera and saying: "Screaming relaxes me so." Before commercial breaks, she took the habit of reciting weird poetry or even give out Charles Addams-esque cocktail recipes. She lit and smoked her long cigarettes with her three-inch nails on camera too, which of course would be a huge no-no today.

Her unusual figure was no doubt a large part of her success, as Vampira claimed to be gifted with the following measurements: 38-17-36! (Yoiks!)

It didn't take long before publications like Time or Newsweek gave her some written space.
One of the first first magazines to take notice was Life. Here from their June 14th 1954 issue is that original article in it's entirety:

Fame came fast and furiously, and before long Marlon Brando, Mae West and even James Dean became fans -- Dean even debuting an intimate relationship with Maila. (Orson Welles and she spent some "quality time" together as well.) Oddly, all this attention would be cut short. Dean's premature and tragic death would seriously shake up Maila, not counting ABC trying to stop her in her attempts to pursue different career projects, as their intent was to completely own rights to the Vampira character. Consequently --and somewhat incredibly-- the show would soon be canceled after only one season. It ran less than one year, from April 30 1954 to April 2 1955 but in those 11 months she left an indelible mark on Television and Horror history. Not long after cancellation, Maila was attacked in a beauty parlor by an enraged woman who burned her hair and scalp, causing her to have to totally shave her head . Other unfortunate burns would follow, as Maila later tried to save her cat from a home fire.

Vampira ressurrected with the help of Edward D. Wood Jr., who was shooting his ultimate classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Maila was hired to work a single day on the movie (for a paltry $200 bucks!), playing a ghoul who came back to life via an alien light-ray. Her undead ally was the immortal Tor Johnson, who has become quite the Horror icon in his own right --inspiring a Don Post mask from this epic that even showed up in other films (like Mad Max). It would also make the final screen appearance of Bela Lugosi. Sadly, Bela would not live long enough to work with Vampira onscreen... (But we have this photograph, at least!)

However, after she read the script, she found the story so appallingly bad that she agreed to do it only if she didn't have to speak a word of dialog. She didn't (But since she's supposed to be a ghoul... few notice). She starred in a few other forgotten "classics", but none of them have achieved the popularity of Ed Wood's high-camp firebrand, - hilarious and cherished today.

For a time the spotlight eluded her and Maila owned an antique shop called "Vampira's Attic", and created her own lines of clothing and jewelery.

Interest in camp entertainment in the 1970s would see Ed Wood's films in a new light. The book "The Golden Turkey awards" by the Medved Brothers voted Plan Nine From Outer Space "The worst movie of all time". It wasn't long before sellout midnight showings of Plan-Nine (as depicted on Seinfeld) became hip entertainment. All this attention would make Vampira once again popular for a new generation of fans. Musical groups like The Damned and The Misfits wrote about her in songs. As Vampira, Maila even turned up as a singer for a punk band.
Sometime in 1981, a television station contacted Maila for a renewal of the Vampira concept. According to her, many discussions took place over the next few months and she remains convinced that all her ideas were stolen for the Elvira character. She sued for tens of millions.

A Finnish documentary about Maila was shot in 1995, entitled Death, Sex and Taxes. In 1998, she returned to movies for I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, from an old Ed Wood script and starring Billy Zane. Until just recently she was still active on the star-convention circuit.

While it was thought for years no footage of the old Vampira Show was known to exist, at the end of the late 1990s a friend of mine "in the industry" told me about 5 minutes of footage had been found in the KABC archives and was going to be used in a news story about the aging Vampiress. He'd managed to snag a nice copy of the unedited footage tape (on vhs), and graciously shared it with me. Needless to state I felt very privileged. So much so that I "sat on the evidence" for years. I did somewhat enjoy insisting from time-to-time that the footage did exist in the faces of hard-line fans who were ready to put their careers on the line that it didn't, and then-- BAM --producing the hard evidence. (Ahhh...I might as well also note that while I read on a Horror Host site earlier today that the "only existing footage" came from Dave Stevens, my wife reminds me that we gave him a copy from our tape --so he could show it to Maila herself-- in summer 2000.)

That's not the ONLY Vampira footage out there either, I'm happy to report. A few years ago the History Channel (I think) did a multi-part series on the History of Las Vegas. Somewhere around part 3 the focus shifts to Liberace, and sure enough, Vampira can be seen briefly (about 10 seconds worth) on stage dancing with her old Pal.

I'm assuming this footage is probably all available on the "Vampira: The Movie" DVD
( I still haven't seen it) ...if not it should be.

It's intriguing to guess what kind of cultural impact she could have had if her career had been longer and more profitable. As an immortal cult figure, who knows what kind of importance she could've had if she'd truly been given the chance to become the mistress of her own destiny?

Movie credits

1947 If Winter Comes

1958 Too Much, Too Soon

1959 Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Beat Generation, The Big Operator

1960 I Passed for White, Sex Kittens Go to College

1962 The Magic Sword

1986 Population One

1998 I Woke Up Early the Day I Died

The Vampira Show - KABC-TV 1954-55

Featuring Maila Nurmi as "Vampira"

Channel 7, Los Angeles, California
1.	04/30/1954	Dig Me Later Vampira (Preview Show)
		Saturday Night/Sunday Morning at Midnight
2.	05/01/1954	Charge is Murder
3.	05/08/1954	The Face of Marble
4.	05/15/1954	Revenge of the Zombies
5.	05/22/1954	Fog Island
		Saturday Night at 11:00 p.m.
6.	05/29/1954	Corridor of Mirrors
7.	06/05/1954	(Not Listed)^*
8.	06/12/1954	Devil Bat’s Daughter
9.	06/19/1954	The Flying Serpent
10.	06/26/1954	The Mask of Dijon
11.	07/03/1954	Strange Mr. Gregory
12.	07/10/1954	The Man With Two Lives
13.	07/17/1954	Corridor of Mirrors
14.	07/24/1954	Fear
15.	07/31/1954	Rogue’s Tavern
16.	08/07/1954	Dangerous Intruder
17.	08/14/1954	Mystery of the 13th Guest
18.	08/21/1954	Midnight Limited
19.	08/28/1954	Bluebeard
20.	09/04/1954	Missing Lady
21.	09/11/1954	Murder By Invitation
22.	09/18/1954	Red Dragon
23.	09/25/1954	Missing Heiress
24.	10/02/1954	Missing Corpse
25.	10/09/1954	Fatal Hour
26.	10/16/1954	Phantom Killer
27.	10/23/1954	The Shadow Returns
28.	10/30/1954	King of the Zombies
29.	11/06/1954	Doomed to Die
30.	11/13/1954	House of Mystery
31.	11/20/1954	My Brother’s Keeper
32.	11/27/1954	Dear Murderer
33.	12/04/1954	Castles of Doom
34.	12/11/1954	The Charge is Murder
35.	12/18/1954	Return of the Ape
36.	12/25/1954	Man With the Gray Glove
37.	01/01/1955	Apology for Murder
38.	01/08/1955	Decoy
39.	01/15/1955	Murder is My Business
40.	01/22/1955	Phantom of 42nd Street
41.	01/29/1955	Case of the Guardian Angel
42.	02/05/1955	Lady Chaser
43.	02/12/1955	Killer at Large
44.	02/19/1955	She Shall Have Murder
45.	02/26/1955	The Lady Confesses
		Saturday Night at 10:30 p.m.
46.	03/05/1955	Larceny in Her Heart
47.	03/12/1955	Glass Alibi
48.	03/19/1955	Detour
49.	03/26/1955	Strangler of the Swamp
50.	04/02/1955	Woman Who Came Back

^*The major L.A. newspapers (The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Examiner and The Los Angeles Daily News) list only "Vampira" for this date, as does the L.A. edition of TV Guide. The name of the film shown is not listed. However, the article in the 14 June 1954 issue of Life mentions two films shown on the program: White Zombie and Fog Island. The latter had been shown and listed prior to the article’s publication, so it is likely that White Zombie was shown on this date.

Ironically, when I first googled Vampira's name, this tombstone from Plan Nine came up first.
Rest in peace, Maila. You were the first true Horror-babe. The first cool-ghoul. The first Living-dead girl.

Big thanks and a tip of the cobwebbed hat go out to the Cult Sirens site, The explodingkinetoscope site, The Milwalkee Horror Hosts site and Dick (Nitelinger) Golembiewski (for his exhaustive research on the episode lists) and the 800 pound Gorilla.

Some Classic Christmas

2007-12-17T18:40:00.000-05:00

I've collected so many images the past few years that I guess a post of pix from Xmases past was inevitable. A prime opportunity to start things off with a shot of the always-lovely Miss Bettie Page being positively fetching in festive spirits... (and why not?)

After the end of World War II, Christmas boomed in America and took on heretofore unseen Macy-Parade-Balloon proportions. Decorations themselves became a whole different animal as we reached the middle point of the last century. All new highs in cheerful-insanity and engineering-excess were an integral to the holiday experience...at least the commercial part.

Take this giant fiberglass Santa outside a department store for example... much more detailed and classically surreal than the big inflatable he'd be today.

ahh... and those department store window displays. Not a damn cell phone in sight...

We always went to my Grandmothers in Florida for Christmas, and almost every small town along the way had their own set of main street trappings. I remember this style in particular.

Ad-men reached new heights in abstracting the holiday in the 1940s & 50s... sometimes it was even hard to tell if Santa himself was truly being good or bad. (Wotta Shill, btw.)

Here's a room with an offbeat tree display from 1955 ( I know that smell).

And there was no Amazon or Wallmart... in the 1960s WE had the Sears Wish Book!
( It usually came in the mail around Halloween.)

Where you could order anything you could think of practically!

...The toy sections seemed endless... (and what a great spread this is!)

Yeah... Like I Wish I still had that Bugs Bunny.

And pages and pages of Christmas decor...

Sears, Pennys and all the Catalog stores sold more than a couple of different types of Mangers and accessories...

And all the cheesy crap that I love so much now...

Love the cardboard fireplaces. (Kids in apartments need a Santa snorkel too!)

The door coverings were hot at the end of the '60s. Ehh... not so much now.

Where's all this big-plastic illuminated stuff now? Antique stores? Flea Markets?

There's a couple of these plastic Santas around town that I've noticed... and they're TALL --around 5 feet!

Well, keeping the spirit alive here's our very own front door from last Christmas 2006. (The illuminated Reindeer we bought at sears in 1993 --the last year they sold them... The "Noel pole" I bought at Zayre in 1974 --for 3.99).

And here's the view down our walkway to the front door.

And last, when I went inside I snapped this picture of our own set -- and I didn't fake this, How the Grinch Stole Christmas was actually on Cartoon Network at the time.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FOLKS!
Best wishes to all Arglebargle readers! Stay tuned --much more ahead in 2008!

Inside the Baxter Building

2007-12-08T20:34:00.002-05:00

Behold -- The world-famous Baxter Building!

One of the great things about the Fantastic Four comics was all the super-nutty Kirby gizmos and gadgets.
Crazy stuff --like James Bond gear on steroids and acid!
And talk about high maintenance... the team needed enough space for a Fantasti-car, a Pogo Plane, a Fantasti-Copter, a Private Passenger ICBM, an Observatory, an entrance to the negative zone, a computer room, a chemical lab, a photo analysis lab, a projection room, a gymnasium, trophy room and living quarters (just to name a few). Naturally, a Super-team with this much baggage needed an exceptional uh... "secret" base of operations. Where better, than the middle of Manhattan Island in NYC? (...yeah --good luck with that telescope, Stretcho.) Specifically floors 30 through 35 on the top of the Baxter Building.
Within the confines of these 5 floors lay a virtual crime-fightin' and weird experimentin' complex the likes of which the world had never seen before! So large in scope, that it prompted several celebrated cutaway views of of the Building's insides --presumably to help the reader figure out exactly where all the action was taking place.
I'd thought about doing a post like this last summer... but when I picked up issue #1 of Marvel's new Mythos Fantastic Four book last week and saw that the title artist Paolo Rivera had just done an updated cutaway, I knew the time was right.

So, here --for the first time I'm aware of-- are ALL cutaways of the Baxter building to date!
...featuring insane amounts of Photoshop restoration on the old versions by yours truly so they can be blown up big and still look great. All cleaned up from my own issues of the original books they appeared in, with the original (minus the yellowing) color schemes. Enjoy!

While the F.F. had already defeated the Mole Man and the Skrulls,
it wasn't until issue #3 that we got to see some Fantasti-car (known these days more commonly as the Flyin' Bathtub) and found out the secrets of the "Fantastic Four's Skyscraper Hide-Out!" This was the first time the Baxter Building and it's contents --at least the top two floors of it were diagrammed.

It wasn't long though--just three issues in fact-- before Jack was at it again. From issue #6, here's a slightly more complete look at the top 5 floors of "the world's greatest office building".

Here's Jack's third and final take (to my knowledge) on the FF's HQ innards...
As it originally appeared in Fantastic Four Annual #3 ( this version was also printed in Black and White in the back inside cover of the 1975 over-sized Fantastic Four Treasury. I ran it too, back up a the top... And though on that printing there's a blurb with an allusion made to the then-current book's team of Len Wein and Rich Buckler doing an updated cutaway soon, I don't recall them actually getting around to it.

A decade and over a hundred issues passed before anyone would attempt a new Baxter bldg pin-up, but after the big Gonzo blowout with Dr. Doom in issue #200, Keith Pollard and Longtime-inker Joe Sinnott were ready to tackle the project. Here's their version from Fantastic Four issue 201, December 1978.

It would be 48 issues before anyone else would tackle the 5 story x-ray. Then, when John Byrne took over the book in 1981, he had Terrax destroy the the top 2 floors of the tower (and f-up the lower ones). The FF had to rebuild all 5 floors of their HQ --and once it was completed it was prime time to address the new changes. (Besides, more than anybody else outside of Stan and Jack, John got the FF and brought back a lot of what made the book fun to begin with --that is, before Shooter ruined it all with the Secret Wars books.) Here, from #249 is that cutaway.

And the latest version...Paolo Rivera's aforementioned new version. Nice to see see Paolo's rife and realistic painterly approach to the material. The rest of the book looks like this too, so if you haven't picked it up you probably oughta.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
And a big tip of the hat goes out to Marvel Comics Group, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Keith Pollard, Joltin' Joe Sinnott, John Byrne and Paolo Rivera

Shadows = $$$$!!

2007-11-28T22:31:00.000-05:00

Like Halloween, the 1960s was a golden time for comic book ads. The level of ad-shystery had risen to a level beyond the preposterous with the promises of missile-firing Polaris Submarines and live six foot Monsters delivered to your door for a mere dollar. (Okay, the Submarine was 5.98...)
This one really takes the cake though... seems eerily like the basis of an early Leave It To Beaver episode. (click to enlarge --Haw!)

All you need is a flashlight-- or a candle? Room for hundreds? Damn, sister --sign me up!
How are some of these crazy contortions even possible? If you compare the "Nixon" hands to the artist's conception of Tricky Dick's shadow there's a lot of room for interpretation. How many amputated hands make up that "Dinosaur" anyway? (...And who can't do an effin' bird!)
If this is just the ad -- the book must've been really nutty.

Aheh ...anybody got a copy?

Jack Kirby meets Vincent Price?

2007-11-20T19:37:00.000-05:00

Growing up I saw The Abombinable Dr. Phibes and it's sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again several times on the CBS Late Movie (probably on Friday Night). In both films Vincent Price plays a "dead" man avenging the surgical team that lost his wife on the operating table. Nine doctors in all (one of them a nurse) are treated to nine of the most innovative, creative, outlandish deaths imaginable.

The American International movie was released in May of 1971. Which makes this piece of concept art currently up fpr grabs on eBay all the more curious. Jolly Jack's take on a little character called ...The Sinister Dr. Phibes.

According to the seller (Jack's Grandson Jeremy) this piece conceptual art was drawn up (and inked, too) by Jack during the period when he was considering making the move from Marvel to DC.
Hmmmm... I ain't got my calculator, but wouldn't that make this piece sorta... pre-date the film version by a year or so? Even if it was supposed to be a comic version/tie-in with the first movie, it's still pretty freaking bizarre, I tell ya whut...
...And if the concept piece was somehow the inspiration for the movies --even weirder.
(I wonder if Jack had anything to do with that crazy Kirby-lookin' organ ol' Phibes played in the movies?)

Thanks and a tip of the fedora for this post go out to Jeremy Kirby, John Miller, The estates of Jack Kirby and Vincent Price and American International Pictures.

Ploog-Things

2007-10-23T23:45:00.000-04:00

As a kid Mike Ploog was always some of my favorite artists. One of the first Marvel comics I collected was Man-Thing. Aw, bite me. I won't apologize for that. But talk about a book that was all over the map! Steve Gerber cut his teeth on this book, incorporating elements of human interest, Rod Serling and Sword and Sorcery (Hey, Howard the Duck came out of those early stories). But art-wise pretty much anything could happen. Gray Morrow one issue...the next Jim Starlin, then John Buscema, Tom Sutton, etc.
I picked up my first issues from "Grave Dave" Newton (along with most of my Monster Times issues too) then I started buying it off the stands. I came in the end of Mike Ploog's original run on the book. This comic (ish#5) in particular was particularly notorious since it was the very issue that Power Records --in their infinite wisdom-- chose to adapt to as one of their "See and Hear" Marvel comics book-and- record series.
Right. A jolly story about a depressed circus clown that dabbles in the occult and commits suicide by blowing his brains out. Great one for the kiddies, huh? In fact -- It was the first of a two-part story that ends with cliffhanger --a cliffhanger that somebody at Power records chose to re-write with a ... *choke*...happy ending! (blasphemy!)
Here's a recent recreation of the same issue cover art by Mike which I present here to show not only how his style changed and became more refined over the years, but also to help cleanse the Karmic palette of the the great wrong once dealt it.

Mike worked on other Marvel monsters too. like this issue of Werewolf by Night --but that's just an excuse to show this horror babe.

All this early monster work made Mike the natural choice by Director John Carpenter to help envision The Thing in his upcoming remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks Classic. They delivered a film the likes of which had never been seen before. Here's some of his first design work on the movie...

...And some of Mike's excellent storyboard work he did for the film!

Mike also did these great gag drawings that spelled out --in layman's terms some of the intense special effects needed for the "Norris Sequence" in the film.

Over twelve years later the Thing and it's theories were clearly still on Mike's mind and influencing his illustration work. (Or is it just me?...)

Thanks and a big HAPPY HALLOWEEN for this post go out to Mike Ploog, John Carpenter, Rob Bottin, Universal Pictures, Frederick S. Clarke, Cinefantastique Magazine, and S Q Productions.

Stop-Motion Comic books

2007-10-17T03:51:00.000-04:00

Looking at that old Gwangi comic got me thinking... what captures the fire and excitement of Harryhausen's stop-motion like a Dell comic-book adaptation?
Ah, what the hell...they're still cool! (I was just surprised how many other Harryhausen movies that they covered!)

Looks like Gold Key had to jump in on the excitement (for at least one adaptation)

So read 'em and weep...or vice-versa...
Thanks for this post go out to ol' Dell and Gold Key comic mainstays, as well as Ray Harryhausen and Charles H. Schneer for being silver screen mavericks and doin' it their way.

The Forbidden Valley?

2007-10-10T14:39:00.001-04:00

I was seven in 1969 when this Dell comic came out. I spotted it on the kid-level comics rack at Atkins Drug store on South Cobb Drive and thought from it's cover that it must be the single greatest comic ever published. A herd of cowboys versus GIANT Dinosaurs? --Wow! Once I eyeballed the inside art I equated it more to the best Classics-Illustrated comic I'd ever seen.

Though I wound up not actually seeing The Valley of Gwangi movie (a Ray Harryhausen tour-de-force) until a Saturday afternoon in 1979 the dog-eared comic was still around. I guess the idea of cowboys battling dinosaurs in a "forbidden valley" in the old west stayed with me, inspiring more than one epic dream and tall-tale. The sequence where the Wild-West Show-hand wrestles with and breaks the neck of a Pteranadon stood out more than others for some reason. Probably the whole mano-a-mano thing with a prehistoric beastie.

So recently when I was looking for reference on American Indian Thunderbirds for a short film I want to do, I came across these three seemingly civil war-era photographs... and my first thought was (Gypsy whisper) Gwangi!

--and my second was "why haven't I ever seen these before?"

I guess the civil war extended a little further into that ol' forbidden valley than I thought.

Sure, the probability of fakery is 99%, but even still-- what in Holy Hell is this thing?
A rotting Platypus with canvas wings?
Still interesting as to why (and when) these pictures would have been faked to begin with. They're not like pictures of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or even the Mothman where there's a market for the mania. Plus I've never seen any other "Thunderbird fakes" in books or on the Travel Channel etc. Does that make them any more believable? You decide!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Tom Snyder meets the Monsters (1975)

2007-10-08T16:47:00.001-04:00

It's that time of year again! Halloween is right around the corner and I thought this would be a good way to kick off a backlog of Season-related posts I've been planning (but have been too busy to write) all summer. In this 1975 clip from "The Tomorrow Show" Tom gets down with Peter Cushing and Forrest J. Ackerman to talk up some old-school Monster and Horror classics!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

H-B Animator Carl Urbano for Honda (1987)

2007-08-17T01:26:00.001-04:00

Not many Hanna-Barbera animators were the subject of a Honda commercial campaign... in fact only Carl Urbano was. The longtime Hollywood animation veteran was in the latter part of his long career by this point but he was still going strong! This spot ran on all three networks during the summer of 1987. Nice just to see pencils in a commercial again too.

Charles Lane Dead at 102

2007-07-13T00:35:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday I told my wife that we should write a movie script, get Charles Lane to star in it and call it "The Man Who Plumb Fergot To Die"...And then on Monday he did just that.

Guess I spoke too soon.

Yes, it's true...enigmatic Curmudgeon Charles Lane, one of the only surviving stars of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World passed away July 9th, 2007.

Born Charles Gerstle Levinson January 26 1905, Lane was one of the few people still around who had lived through the devastating 1906 Earthquake in San Francisco. Lane first got the acting bug as a young man at the Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. A young Rabbi there at the time had an interest in the theater, so the Temple had a theater program for young people and Lane played there. Later Lane refined his skills at the Pasadena Playhouse which was widely considered the best training and launching place for actors in what was then Hollywood's Golden age. It was here that he met and married his only wife, a stage actress named Ruth Covell in 1931.

His career spanning more than 60 years is longer than my arm. He appeared in upwards of 500 Television shows and features, including such classics It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't take it with You, and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Yep, Capra used him a lot. In fact one of Lane's most cherished possessions, was a letter from the fabled director declaring, "Well, Charlie, you've been my No. 1 crutch."
He specialized in playing no-nonsense authority figures such as doctors, reporters, judges, lawyers, IRS agents, bankers, irate board members, and policemen.

Lane was also an avid golfer who felt like the only downside to his working so much was that it cut into his golf game. He won several trophies for his skills on the green.

Lane is probably best remembered for his TV roles in the 1960s, particularly the scheming scrooge-like railroad agent Homer Bedloe on the Paul Henning comedy Petticoat Junction.
All of the Henning CBS shows (which included the Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres) seemed to exist in their own universe so there were frequent character cross-overs from show to show, so Lane wound up playing Bedloe on The Beverly Hillbillies as well. After Petticoat Junction was canceled Lane wound up playing a second character on The Beverly Hillbillies in the final 1971 season named "Foster Phinney". The end of the decade found Lane playing a judge on the then-controversial ABC sitcom Soap.
He also had a recurring role on every incarnation of Lucille Ball's TV comedies. They had actually been friends since he met her back when she was a chorus girl in the RKO musicals. If she ever needed a bureaucratic foil, be he sourpuss or grouch, there he was. (Even in the maternity waiting room with Desi Arnez playing an unfazed father-to-be --of his 10th kid-- on the episode where little Ricky is born)

Lane continued to work regularly in the '50s and '60s appearing in such features as the only Abbott-less Costello entry The 50 foot Bride of Candy Rock, (pictured above) and Teacher's Pet with Clark Gable.
During this period of time Lane also appeared in the character actor tour de force, Universal's 1966 feature The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (below). . Virtually every character actor working in Hollywood at the time had a role in this ghost-comedy (which also served as the first of several Don Knotts starring vehicles).

The only thing more impressive than his body of work was his longevity. Charles Lane looked like one of my grandfather's friends when I was a kid...And my Grandfather hasn't been around for almost 35 years now. When asked, Lane himself said he had no formula for his longevity, although he noted his mother lived to be nearly 100.
He was a lifelong teetotaler, too. (Though his son noted that his pop DID smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for 70 years, and he quit only when he eventually became short of breath.

"I know that smoking kills people, and I must be the exception," Lane said then.

Charlie (as his friends knew him) was married to Ruth Covell for 71 years(!) until her death in 2002. The marriage produced a son, (Tom Lane) and a daughter.

When Lane turned 100 in early 2005 he made an appearance on NBC's The Today Show and also on Nickelodeon's TV Land awards where he brought down the house by announcing "...In case anyone's interested, I'm still available." The above shot was taken in Santa Monica in 2005 as part of his 100th birthday celebration. The thing that Charles said he was most pleased by at this event was that this was the first time his name had ever appeared on a theater marquee.
He is survived by his daughter and only son Tom, who said on Tuesday there would be no funeral for his father.

A big thanks for this post go out to Taylor White, Tom Lane, Michael Stein and Filmfax magazine.

Court of Miracle(s)

2007-06-22T09:50:00.000-04:00

40 years ago today, The Miracle Theater opened it's doors to the public. The above picture appeared in the June 22 1967 edition of the Smyrna Herald. I remember the opening fairly well (to have been only five), especially since up the that point in time there had been only two other single-screen theaters in Smyrna --one at Cobb Center Mall and the other at Belmont Hills Shopping Center.
The first thing I actually saw there was a Saturday matinee of a really awful foreign version of Rumpelstiltskin of all things... but over the years I saw TONS of first run features in that place.
I can remember it being packed in the early '70s. I think all 800 seats were filled when I saw The Posideon Adventure with my entire family when it premiered in 1972. I even remember standing in a long line for over an hour to see a Saturday night double-feature of Superdad (with Bob Crane) and Son of Flubber. (Like I said --it was a small town.)

Raymond Stewart of the Cinema Treasures' site had this to offer on the Miracle's heyday:
The Miracle was a gold mine for Eastern Federal at one time, prior to Akers Mill opening and the expansion of Cobb Center from 2 to 4 screens. At that point there were only 5 indoor screens in Smyrna, so everyone did pretty well, and the drive-in was no competition as they screened strictly drive-in fare. I worked as a relief manager there for a week before it went to being a dollar house, but after the twinning (in 79 as best I can recall) and spent the majority of my time handling money. On Friday/Saturday/Sunday it was packed every show.

When Cobb Center went to 6 screens, GCC's Akers Mill and Plitt's Promenade opened business was pulled to these newer screens and the Miracle (and Cobb Cinema) became dollar house.

I still saw plenty of movies there even after "the twinning" including stuff like Brainstorm,
Rumble Fish, and *gulp* even Smokey and the Bandit 3 (on a dare).
I saw Night of the Living Dead there too for the first time --at the only Midnight Movie I ever went to at that locale. In the mid-80s I moved across town and found some new places to "viddy the Cini" and sometime during that time the Miracle closed down.

From the Cinema Treasures site, "Nancy Drew" offers this on the Miracle's closing:

The last movie that played at the Miracle was "My Little Pony," which dates the closing to around 1986. I don't know what was on the other screen, but the "My Little Pony" poser stayed up for years. I remember seeing MLP there, and the theatre closed a few days later.

If one of the last movies was MLP, the other must've been Funny Farm with Chevy Chase, since the wrinkled, crumpled, faded poster hung in the outdoor display box for a LONG time after the theater actually closed. Chevy was already depicted with an egg on his head, but someone matched it with a lugie and a soft drink.
In my opinion he's never looked better.
What happened to the Miracle next? Cinema Treasures' site "Nancy Drew" also offers this:

There was a fire in 1990, but it wasn't severe and the Miracle stood for at least a few more years. When it was torn down no one exactly knew why, because it's not like the rest of the shopping center was in better shape and it still stands. Nothing has been built in its place, and you can still see the slope of the auditorium floor.

Indeed. All that's left now is the sloping footprint where the theater used to stand. I walked up that slope hundreds of times in the near darkness. Visible across the parking lot, and up against South Cobb Drive is the New Deliverance Church, which I also saw tons of movies in (including The Exorcist when it was first re-released in 1975) during the years it was known as "Cobb Cinema. (Quite ironically Deliverance actually DID play there during the major Atlanta ice storm of 1972)

Today also would've been my dad's 83 birthday (He passed in '04). As I write this, I realize I'm older than he was the day that the Miracle opened. I'm trying to wrap my head around that fact today, too.

Thanks to this post go out to The Cinema Treasures site, T. Aguirre, Raymond Stewart and Nancy Drew!

Unlikely Double-Features

2007-06-19T11:57:00.000-04:00

Wow! I didn't think it had been THAT long since my last post... but seven weeks? Sheesh!

True, a lot has happened in the interim, but most of it work related and not much of it worth blogging about when you get right down to it. The main source of the delay was big feature I was working on about Horror Hosts that involved some rare clips I had put up on YouTube, but the folks that represent Vampira's interests (and a certain 4th place network) got me the ol' YouBoot. Right after that, mysteriously my pictures wouldn't seem to load up on blogger either.
Arrr. I was scuttled.

However, I knew I'd get back to it eventually, so despite my hectic schedule, I managed the time to scan or otherwise acquire another 250 or so images in preparation for LOTS of future posts.

But this is one I've been thinking about for awhile... something different to pass the summer TV re-run season...
It's a list of Double-Feature Movies that aren't sequels, have enough in common that if you watch them back to back you get an enhanced perception (or at least more out) of both. Sound like fun? Okay, Let's go.

DOUBLE FEATURES

PLATOON / APOCALYPSE NOW
That guy Sheen? Hell of a soldier. He sure aged a lot in 2 years of duty though. (Or watch them in reverse order and Platoon becomes a sort of "Willard Begins".)

ENTER THE DRAGON / KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE
Okay. Obvious. Makes "A Fistful of Yen" way funnier though. Also, it also makes Enter The Dragon funnier if you reverse the order.

BOYS IN COMPANY C / FULL METAL JACKET
R. Lee Ermey chews the scenery as pretty much the same drill sargeant character almost a decade apart. (He did it again in The Frighteners too --as a ghost!)

THE HOWLING / THE TERMINATOR
Speaking of same characters...
God love Dick Miller. He plays the virtually the same guy dealin' rare books & silver bullets in The Howling, then deals guns and ammo to Arnie in T1. Almost the same dialog even.

WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM /
FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
Run Bill Murray and Johnny Depp through the Fly Chamber and you might get HST. Or more likely Dale Gribble. Both Bill and Johnny play Thompson-like characters but neither really had Hunter's stature or presence.

SID and NANCY / D.O.A. (1978)
Both provide insight into early days of punk and the Sex Pistols. See the actor portrayals, then see the real thing... (and where ol' Alex Cox fudged some facts a bit). Note: Yeah, I can't find a pic of the D.O.A. dvd cover yet... even though it comes out next month!

BORN INNOCENT / RUBY (1977)
Janit Baldwin must've really hated Linda Blair...She somehow manages to screw her in both these flicks...and poor Linda ain't even in Ruby! (only Alan Smithee pic in the lot, btw).

CRUMB / TREASURE ISLAND (1950)
The Crumb brothers' psyches and their fascination for Disney's Treasure Island when it aired on TV drive this duo. Crumb's brother's recollections about TV and Bobby Discroll are made even creepier in the new tech color transfer of the Disney Treasure Island DVD. Jeez, how much rouge IS that kid wearing?

KING KONG (1976) / THE BIG LEBOWSKI
Jeff Bridges sports the same hair in both. Has the same sort of Bad luck. It's pretty conceivable that "The Dude" could be the same guy who'd been mixin' it up with Dwan and Kong. John Goodman is sorta gorilla-sized, besides.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN / WESTWORLD
Yul Brynner plays a gunslinger in one and a robot of the same gunslinger in another.
(I always thought Westworld would've been way better if they'd just owned it and referred to the Gunslinger as "the Yul Brynner robot" the whole time--sure woulda made the ending funnier.

200 MOTELS / DIRTY DUCK
I expected to see a loose version of Bobby London's "Dirty Duck" when I first saw this flick, but no. It doesn't actually say so, but it's a whole movie that's based on the trippy animated segment from Zappa's only feature film (not counting "Head").

GHIDRAH / YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
Both movies were made at about the same time, and the Japanese parts of the Bond movie were made at Toho with their FX crew --and a lot of the same cast as Ghidrah! (There's the James Bond-Godzilla connection --for those of you keeping score.)

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH / THE OMEGA MAN
Watch both Vincent Price and Charlton Heston chew scenery as basically the same character. (Except tragic Vinnie curls up in a ball while Chuck blasts away with a machine gun and gets him some nookie.)

DRACULA / BLACULA
What? -- I can't believe you haven't thought of this one already. More interesting than funny. (that's true of the first half, at least...)

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER / TITANIC
Once again, factual characters in the first film are fictionalized --and trivalized-- in the second.

DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL /
EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS
Washington under Saucer siege in both...And the villain in the first film is the hero in the second!

BURNT OFFERINGS / THE SHINING (1980)
Love the Shining, but without Burnt Offerings I wonder if it would even exist.I'd hazard to guess who's the crazier of the two dads, (Ollie or Jack) but I know who would've won in a drinking contest.

MOMMY DEAREST / MILDRED PIERCE
Joan, Joan, Joan. We see through your act now. It was all a lie.

APOCALYPSE NOW / PORKLIPS NOW
I know Apocalypse Now is already on this list...But here's another way to go, and the jokes are still pretty fresh. (It's a back-up feature on the Star-Wars takeoff DVD Hardware Wars.)

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN / SON OF FRANKENSTEIN
Again, the best way to get all the jokes. I love "Son", but just try not to laugh --this way they're BOTH a riot! Basil Rathbone could've taught a class in overacting --or opened a school!

MEAN STREETS (1974) / HEY GOOD LOOKIN' (made mostly in 1975)
Wha??... How this happen? ...Sorcese to Bakshi with a surprising amount of same cast and tone. Sorta. Richard Romanus and David Proval are featured in both.

COFFY / JACKIE BROWN
What it's all about. Get the Skinny on Pam G before she meets Sam L. Only thing about this pairing is it makes Jackie B seem slow by comparison... And I love Jackie B.

IT CONQUERED THE WORLD / ZONTAR
How do you make a faster, cheaper movie than AIP? Hire Larry Buchanan. A super-cheapie color remake by Azealea productions.

THEM / MATINEE
What if William Castle had made "Them?" You'd get Mant is what! Made 35 years apart William Schallert plays a doctor in both. John Goodman plays Castle in spirit at least.

JAWS / GRIZZLY
It's the same damn movie with a bear! ...Well, It's pretty damn close.

The OMEN 3 / JURASSIC PARK
The Anti-Christ (Sam Neil) turned archeologist doesn't care much for kids, so for kicks he controls some Dinosaurs' minds to terrorize a few. --just like he done with those dogs!

BONUS: TRIPLE FEATURES!
I tried separating these last movies but they're just better in triplicate.

THE INNOCENTS / THE OTHERS / TURN OF THE SCREW
All based on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw". Interesting directions taken... and all sorta different. (Funny the weakest is the one that actually used the book title.)

BRIDE OF THE MONSTER /
ED WOOD /
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
Only for the brave at heart... but for lovers of bad Cinema you definitely get more of an idea of what was genuine Ed Wood, and what parts of the middle flick came straight from Tim Burton's imagination. Reveals a lot actually.

There's tons more crazy possibilities I know... but If you wind up test-driving any of these combos I'd love to hear from you, especially if it's new territory. Thanks and more next week!

Mad about Aurora

2007-04-26T18:53:00.001-04:00

What can I say? --I loves me a post that opens with Frankenstein. (Alfred E. Numan in this case, is just gravy.) When the issue of Mad that sported this cover hit the stands in 1964 the first wave of the original styrene Monster craze was in full swing. The old Aurora factory building in New York (pictured below at the time of it's demolition) was working overtime to meet the demand. Funny, I had always pictured "Aurora's New York Factory" to look more like a Johnny Vita background painting from a Bakshi Spider-Man episode. I guess it sorta does, still --the trees sorta threw me.

When I was a kid, I thought working at the Aurora factory would be a dream job. It seemed like anything made of plastic that I got really excited about had AURORA embossed on it someplace. But things were different in those days. Model kits were everywhere. They had respect. Every department store, grocery store, dime store ... and even convenience stores would stock at least one shelf with a few kits. In fact, on my 12th birthday I remember actually giving a ho-hum reception at receiving a really cool zap-action Pirates of the Caribbean model from a classmate as a birthday gift--but only because I recognized it to be from the Sing food store right down the street by its' price tag. (Incidentally I'd LOVE for somebody to give me that same kit today... It's worth several hundred bucks now.) Even though it was at that this same Sing food store that during the years I bought a couple of hot-rod models, a different Pirates kit, plus the Aurora Endangered Animal series' kits the Komodo Dragon, Bison and Bear.

Straight from the dream factory. How many thousands boxes of models left the New York factory bound for points unknown all over the U. S. during the years? I literally used to have dreams where I would find a box like this, and run around with it the entire dream trying to get the chance to look in it until I'd wake up --and then I'd get pissed! (and yes, I am aware that's like painfully sick-nerdy...)

Here's an early ad (above) for the first of the first-wavers. Eerily prophetic is the opener "This could be so big, it scares us!' Sometimes you just know.
The ultra-cool thing here is --check it out--it's a different Drac kit! Too much like Bela?... Or did it just lack that "Comin' atcha" quality the Aurora kits were famous for?

In 1969 Aurora re-released their first twelve monster kits with new glow-in-the-dark parts and features. Ads like these appeared in comics and full-color fliers.

The really cool Haunted House that graces the cover of the (below) 1964 box set of Aurora Monster paints predates The Munsters and Addams Family abodes by a full year.

MORE ORIGINAL ART : Monsters of the Movies series

Here's some more great Aurora original paintings and drawings...Starting off first with the original painting of the early 1970's Monsters of the Movies series Dracula kit.

And the Canadian version of the same kit, which featured a much more Bela-looking Drac.

Likewise, here's the Monsters of the Movies series Wolfman original painting.

And as it appeared on the box with a finished kit.

No Canadian Wolfman (Lupe Garu) per se, but here's hoser Mr. Hyde.

And his constipated-looking-by-comparison counterpart --U.S. Hyde.

Several "Swimming Creature" variation kits have been done by different studios over the years (Including a dynamite version sculpted by Special FX guru and monster fan Chris Walas) but this one from the 1973 Monsters of the Movies series was the first.

THE VICTIM!
I could really do a whole post just on this one kit alone. It single-handed helped dismantle and ultimately spell doom for the Aurora Monster Scene line. Even the image on the box has the feel of a lurid sixty-cent paperback on a wire rack in a Valdosta Truckstop. Even more insane is the proclamation emblazoned on the box "Rated X... for Excitement!" Jeez, who approved that??

The seediness of this out-of-control comics ad even creeped ME out when I first saw it in the pages of House of Mystery and/or House of Secrets. Not only were we treated to the line (concerning The Victim) "Don't worry --This is New York, no one will help her", but --God help me --Vampi's actually drawn with a camel toe... twice!!

As you might imagine, even in the sex-filled sleazy '70's religious and family groups went way ape-shit over the notion that these little plastic implements of sadism, bondage, torture and weird science could be bought by any bright-faced boy or girl who had the money.
It wasn't long before public outcry led to The Victim being retitled as Dr. Deadly's Daughter (Which I always thought, if the role is the same... Isn't this actually kinda worse?)
Still-- her, and the remaining Monsters Scenes stock mere presence on on store shelves
was controversial enough to create protests of Aurora that continued even after the company was sold to Nabisco. As you might imagine, the new cookie-mogul owners were less than thrilled at the prospect of inheriting a sleaze-merchant moniker along with their toy factory acquisition. It was the beginning of the end really.
Some of the revised art below by Dave (X-Men) Cockrum.

Here's the resin recast of this infamous gal in the form it's available from Monsters In Motion.
With the blonde paint job she sorta looks like a blood-drained bit player in a same-era AIP movie.

MORE ORIGINAL ART: Aurora Monster Scenes

THE GIANT INSECT

AURORA'S PREHISTORIC SCENES:

One night when I was ten I went out for Dairy Queen ice cream on South Cobb Drivewith the Cagle twins (Gary and Larry) and their mom. On the way home we happened to stop at Gibsons department store --just to look around I suppose. But when I walked up on the below display in their toy section I knew my world was changed forever.

I went insane for these kits. I owned seven of the original eight that were released. I can't remember why, but I never got the the Sabre-toothed Tiger kit. It might've just been as simple a reason as a good friend of mine bought the Tiger (the same day I bought the Pteranadon) at Woolworth's, and since I sat there later and watched him put it together, I probably felt like I didn't need it. (Besides, --not like it was a reptile or somethin'!) The worst selling of the original eight had to be the Cro-Magnon Woman. I remember seeing one of those well shelf-worn kits at a Reed's Drugs YEARS after Aurora went out of business.

This same set-up was in the display window at Lenox Toys and Hobbies at Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta that I actually bought my Giant Woolly Mammoth kit. (for *choke*...for a little over six dollars!) At the time it was the biggest model I owned.
I wish I had access to more of the original box paintings from these great 1970s kits, but so far it's limited to just the ones posted below.

The original box painting for the Giant Bird kit...

...As well as the firey-skied Jungle Swamp box art...

And the scared-o'-two-snakes Cro-Magnon Woman wrap-around box art.

AURORA TRIBUTE KITS
As good as the James Bama box paintings were they seldom matched the mood or the pose of the kit contained within. This bothered some folks more than others. I guessin' it REALLY must've bugged this next group of fellers. A few years ago they started to release a series of "Aurora Box-Art Tribute kits every few months. These beautifully meticulous --if not extravagantly opulent-- kits are available through Monsters in Motion in Orange County, if you dare...

THE BRIDE

THE WOLFMAN

DRACULA

THE PHANTOM

JEKYLL and HYDE

KING KONG

...And the original sculpt.
THE INVISIBLE MAN
This kit by Dark Horse is in "Aurora shoulda-woulda-coulda" catagory.

Okay, The above picture on the right and the below shot of the completed kit are from the Dark Horse "Aurora-styled" release of their Invisible Man model. The odd thing here Is that while the above painting on the right was done for a fantasy Aurora Bama-era box (see section below), the differentials between this box-art and the below kit --by 1960s Aurora standards at least-- would be just about right.

"FANTASY AURORA KIT" BOXES
Over at Morbidmonster.com, Pete Von Sholly and Co. have taken the whole "what if?" Aurora query to a whole different level. For the past few years they've been regularly churning out "Fantasy Aurora kit" boxes as shrink-wrapped works of fine art. (Now if we can just get them to spend a few years tooling all the parts to go IN these boxes we'd really be in business.) Below are just a few examples of the kind of product they have to offer at present.

Whew! Allright I'm spent.
For what it's worth, this was going to be a two-part post with the second part being all the Aurora Tribute and fantasy-kit stuff but,... screw it. I've been admittedly lax in posting this Spring (for various reasons) so just consider that I'm making up for lost time. More exotic oddities cool art and and general weirdness coming soon, so stay tuned...

Big kudos and a tip of the hat for this post goes out to Steve Iverson, Cult TV man, Mike Talemal, Pete Von Sholly, Dave Cockrum, KitBuilders Magazine, Monsters in Motion and ...somebody else I probably forgot.

Atlanta TV Kids' Hosts in the 1960s

2007-04-17T21:00:00.000-04:00

If there's something I truly miss about "living in the future" it's all the old 1960s local LIVE television shows. Back then nearly every venue had a "host" of some kind. Even the afternoon movie (a "Dialing for Dollars" feature) had a local personality associated with it. Regrettably this post doesn't feature all of those nearly-forgotten TV mavericks... just the ones I can personally remember at this point.

Bestoink Dooley
I grew up hearing the name Bestoink Dooley more than I remember actually seeing him. (Though I do have a clear memory of my dad running over to the TV and pointing him out to the family when he was doing a live remote segment when I was about four --or roughly in about 1966) Bestoink Dooley (who is in reality, an actor --and later Atlanta theater owner-- George Ellis), had been the host of the Friday night "Big Movie Shocker" on WAGA-TV5 in Atlanta for some time by that point. They showed a lot of the original Shock Theater package which included many of the 30's and 40's movies from the Universal Horror Canon. It proved to be so popular that a second programming block was added on Saturday afternoons. For a short time there was even an afternoon half hour show called "Dooley and Co." where Bestoink dropped the horror schitck in favor of comedy and showed 3 Stooges shorts. A taped segment from Detroit (featuring another Horror host "Morgus" as a gonzo weatherman) also helped add to the silliness.

In 1965 Bestoink Dooley starred in his very own mega-low budget horror vehicle The Legend of Blood Mountain (aka Blood Mountain --and known even in the 1980s as Demon Hunter).
The flyer pictured below reveals that the movie was featured (briefly) at Atlanta's own Starlight Drive-In, which at that time was just a two screen ozoner.
According to Mark Durrett's "CONFIDENTIAL" blog:
I remember the hoopla well. It premiered on a Wednesday and closed on Saturday. That was a good booking in those days. By then, I was working at the Emory Theatre. We were awarded the film second run. It opened on that Sunday and closed Tuesday, very possibly utilizing the Starlight's show print. The single week of engagements in a few neighborhood hardtops and drive-ins was the bulk of the metro area exposure.

The film was primarily shot in and around Stone Mountain park just east of Atlanta. I'd heard about this movie for years, and having started my animation career at Stone Mountain's Lasershow (from 1986 to 1988 --If you ever saw the carving "come to life" in laser animation, I did the majority of that sequence) I was more than a little interested in seeing it. I finally did get a chance, just in the past couple of months, and wow! What a stinker-roo! For a short movie it could not possibly be more padded. LONG sequences of Bestoink doing...well, absolutely nothing. Walking here and there. Driving from place to place. In one extended scene Bestoink prepares for bed. He puts on his jammies. He brushes his teeth. Then he gets into bed with a glass of milk and a big plate of chocolate-chip cookies. He flips on the radio to an easy listening station... and then the viewer is treated to unblinking transfixed horror, as Bestoink settles back and proceeds --in very nearly "real-time", to consume the entire plate of cookies and drink the whole glass of milk. Unreal.
I had always heard that this was the first real "Bigfoot" movie ever made. Well, turns out, it doesn't even have that going for it. [SPOILER ALERT] -The monster, when it FINALLY turns up, looks like a shirtless 20-something-year old wearing monster make-up appliances and mostly painted green. Looks like he's also wearing some fuzzy pants and boots (also sprayed green) with a couple of rubber tentacles thrown in on both sides at the belt-line level. Pfft.. Some Bigfoot. When the film boils down to the "monster" chasing a spats-wearing Bestoink back and forth through the woods at O.J. Bronco equivalent speeds while 1950s music tracks (that were probably last heard in H-B's Snooper and Blabber cartoons) play overly loud on the soundtrack, it's REALLY all over...

Tubby and Lester

In the 1960's, WQXI channel 11 (the ABC affiliate at that time) was generally considered to be the crappiest of the "big three" Atlanta network stations. In the mid-sixties they unashamedly presented a late-nite programming block called the "World's Worst Movie" (Hell, even into the late 70s channel 11 would show a movie in a 90 minute time slot and just leave a reel out --usually the second or third-- to make the fit. Several influential movies I saw that way for the first time, too. Argh... they showed the best bad Horror and Sci-Fi!) The movie was hosted by a guy who was dressed up like a bad movie director (not that unlike "Director Jethro" on the Beverly Hillbillies) with stereotypical bad-director flair; jodhpurs, a megaphone, and a beret. Okay, now get this... This "bad director" host was a fella named Bob Corley. Not only was he the brain trust behind the Bad-movie block, he was ALSO the writer of the (above) Bestoink Dooley low-energy train wreck "Blood Mountain". Given these credentials, I was still surprised to find out that he was ALSO the "creative genius" behind another 1960s channel 11 offering, The Tubby and Lester show (a rather shameless rip-off of 1930s comedy team Laurel and Hardy right down to their costumes). Tubby and Lester was a plodding kids' show that ran in the early morning for 90 minutes daily from 7:30 to 9:oo am.

The Tubby and Lester segments were generally padded bad live set-bound schtick that ultimately served as segues for new Dick Tracy and old Mr. Magoo cartoons. The show, as I'm told, was usually taped in the afternoon and then shown the next morning. There were three rows of bleacher-type seating for the local kids in attendance that day --moms and dads sat in another room with a monitor and a big window that faced the set. As with a lot of kid's shows back then, most of the attendees were either in the boy (or girl) scouts or celebrating birthdays. (My mother-in-law tells me it was pretty easy to get booked on the show in those days...)
Their set was much like a club or playhouse and they would kill time s-l-o-w-l-y since they were filling 450 minutes a week. Most of the time these sketches were accompanied by the routine playing of Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" from Hatari. According to Mike Durrett, the sketches would usually run so long that the music would finish and fade to silence in the middle of their schtick. Then after a few seconds of dead air the control room would start the music over and the bumbling would go on and on.
One regular segment asked viewers to mail in riddles for Tubby and Lester to read on the air. They did... and when they delivered the punchlines, familiar female laughter would echo through the set. This voice was always referred to as "The riddle ghost". Oftimes when skits or projects would start to go south the mocking riddle ghost laugh could be heard --solely to antagonize those who were "muddling through" on camera. At least those parts had the potential to be funny, and sometimes they genuinely were.

My wife remembers this from her experiences appearing on Tubby and Lester:

"The first time I went I think I was with my Girl Scout troop. The second time was for my birthday. There was a birthday window that they would lift you through while announcing your age. I still remember how they walked me around to the back of the set before I was lifted through.
At times, Lester would go off stage into a "closet" to get prizes. On TV he would just go off camera, and you would hear a great big racket and then he would stumble back out with the prize. When I was on the show I remember watching Lester go off stage into the closet and expected to see him do a prat fall or similar shenanigans. I had a clear view of him as he just walked over and banged a trash can lid and made some other noises, then he turned and staggered back on stage with prizes in hand. That's the first time I realized that sometimes TV lied".

A few years ago at Turner I had the chance to talk to a fella in his fifties named Don that had worked on the Tubby and Lester show. He was a fountain of information on the subject. Unfortunately, not long after I met him, the AOL/Time Warner merger came down and he like so many folks who had been with Turner for years and years at that point was cut loose. Even more unfortunate was the fact that I was in virtual "production hell" at the time and I didn't have the chance to write down anything he had said. As a result I don't remember either of the actors names, but I believe he said that the guy who played Tubby had since passed on, and the fella who played Lester was at that time working in a book store. Rest assured, If I get an update or correction on this info I will post it here.

Officer Don and Orville the Dragon: WSB's "The Popeye Club"

If you lived in Atlanta in the 1960s you knew what "Officer Don and the Popeye Club" meant.

Starting in the late 1956, The Clubhouse Gang as it was originally called began airing in the afternoons on WSB TV. The show was created after a program director for WSB went to New York and witnessed the success a sister station was having with an afternoon program called Officer Joe Bolton that had a "cop" host and showed old Little Rascals shorts. When she returned to Atlanta she attempted to draft unwilling booth announcer and station clown Don Kennedy to be Atlanta's own answer to the kid-programming-equation, Officer Don --the friendly cop on the beat. Don put up a fight, claiming not to like kids, but when threatened with unemployment he gave in. Officer Don was born and the Little Rascals shorts started rolling in the broadcast-area afternoons. If Don didn't like kids it never showed. He came off like a wacky uncle interacting with the kids and playing games like "musical chairs" or "untie the knot". Best remembered of these was the "Ooey-gooey game" which usually ended with Don or a kid blindfolded and sticking their hand into a bag of a mixture of egg-yolks and/or some other goo. (Surely the forerunner of "getting slimed") Don always referred to the small audience of boys-n-girls in attendance "gang" because originally, that's what they were...the Clubhouse Gang. In 1962 Clubhouse was briefly re-named Big Adventure then finally, The Popeye Club. It became the longest-running kid's show in Atlanta TV history (and the highest rated kid's show in the nation) and was an afternoon mainstay on WSB for a whopping 14 years total. At the rate of five a day over 18,000 cartoons were shown. The small studio audience tallies added up too... in all 110,00 kids saw Don and Orville live. "I saw you on the Popeye Club" was a familiar phrase at my and Atlanta area schools. The format that I remember with Orville the Dragon ran from 1962 to 1970. The show itself was shot live at the old "White Columns" building off Peachtree Street in Atlanta, and lucky kids who got to be on the show also got a tour of the studio. The show was originally broadcast in black and white, and the cartoons they showed were mostly Fleischer Popeyes, but by the mid-sixties WSB began broadcasting The 'Club in color and they switched to showing mostly (new) King Features Syndicate (and cheap) color cartoons made specifically for television like Krazy Kat, Snuffy Smith, and Beetle Bailey and of course Popeye. Speaking of color-- The Popeye Club proved so popular it was used as the testing ground by RCA for some of the very first color Television cameras.

Eh... A little history on the condition of this still...

Okay, so I personally was never on the Popeye Club, (though my wife got to do the cartoon countdown when she was a kid) but I still got to meet Don when I was about six when he was set up at a table in a Davis Bros Cafeteria in Atlanta. Sometimes, at the end of the show , Don would say something like "Remember folks, I'll be at the Davis Bros Cafeteria on West Paces Ferry road tonight from 7-9, so c'mon by and say hello!" One Thursday night I got to do just that. My folks met some friends of theirs for dinner and we drove the 10 miles or so to the restaurant. I still remember seeing Don through the window as we were walking up to the cafeteria and starting to hyperventilate... (I'd never met anybody off TV before!) After dinner I walked over with my mom to get his autograph and he boomed "What's your name there big fella?" I said Clay, but in true Charlie Brown fashion my mouth was dry and my voice came out in barely more than a whisper. "Craig?" He asked, starting to write --as I was shaking my head no. "Okay Craig! Here ya go, Craig! Thanks Craig! Nice meetin' ya Craig!" Before I knew what happened we were back at our table and I was staring at the 8 x 10 of Officer Don and Orville that said "Hi, Craig!" on it. And before I could talk my mom into going back and getting another one ol' Don packed up and left. I was in shock for a week or two then I guess I snapped and drew all over it. Some of the details included wolfman hair for Don, an arrow in his neck and a little C-5A (that my dad had worked on at Lochkeed) about to crash into his temple. Then I discovered in my "photoshopping" that the ink Don used to write "Craig" with would actually erase! O' course it took a lot of the photo with it... but hell! I erased everything but the "C" and then finished it out the name correctly. Ahh...the things you learn at six. I shoulda just done that in the first place. But now, since the right name was being said "Hi" to, my eh..."artistic commentary" made little sense --so I erased it all too ...and part of Don's face to boot... which I then tried to draw back in. Hoo-boy. (Kids!) I never held the gaffe against Don though (I stayed a fan to the end). If anything I held it against myself for acting like a six year old.

Don has had a full career outside of the spotlight. He was one of the original owners of WKLS, a longtime Atlanta radio station. He's the "K", and the L and the S represented the other two owners. For years Don has hosted a popular syndicated vintage music radio show called Big Band Jump which is heard on nearly 200 stations across America.

In the mid 1990s I wound up being fortunate enough to actually work with Mr. Kennedy on some Space Ghost Coast to Coast episodes and then later on The Brak Show. (He actually replaced me on Space Ghost doing Tansut's voice --which I was fine with-- and did a much better job with it than I would have, basically just by being Don) He was and is overall an old pro. A consummate professional who always willing to do whatever insane thing the Space Ghost writers could come up with. But whatever it was, he'd always do it his way, and it was always funny and it always worked.
On the Space Ghost related Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Don found more on-camera work playing some live-action characters in movies that the food team would watch on TV. One was "Assisted-living Dracula" which chronicled Dracula's antics in an old-folk home, and the other featured Don as a "Vegetable-Man" who jumped out at people from a late-night grocery store vegetable display.

Don's sidekick, a Dragon puppet named Orville proved to be almost as popular. By the mid-60s Orville got his own gig on the side too, hosting episodes of Buck Rogers and other Space ilk on Saturday mornings. Orville was owned and operated by a young puppeteer named Terry Kelley who was just fifteen when he got the job. Orville's inclusion to The Popeye Club mix was almost by accident. Terry was doing a puppet show in downtown Atlanta and had his mom drive him to the WSB studios so he could plug his show on the air. The reaction to Orville was overwhelming and he started appearing on a regular basis. Three days a week at first, and expanded to five soon after. The Orville puppet itself saw so much use that it had to be replaced five times in eight years because the flex point on the mouths kept wearing out. Arguably, it was the Officer Don-Orville dynamic that solidified the show and gave it staying power. There were lots of kids shows on the air in those days but to my knowledge none of them featured the team of a gullible policeman and a dragon the size of a wiener-dog. (That's the kind of entertainment vehicle you have to just wind up with --or evolve into-- rather than to set out to achieve. You try different things on the air... you keep what works.)

Here's my 1968 drawing of Orville --It's actually on the back of my much-maligned Officer Don 8 x 10. (I think I'd just started using colors for outlines around that time after my observation that "real things" didn't have black outlines around them.)

There's also a few shows I remember that there's just no love or info for...
Even though this one's from the '70's I still gotta mention

Buddy Farnan's Magic Funnies (WTCG Channel 17 Atlanta weekday afternoons at 3:30)

"Woo-hoo! Gotta get my Wacky Packs down at the stoe and run home to watch Buddy Farnan's Magic Funnies!" Odds are, that I probably said that sentence at some point.
Buddy Farnan was a magician who had made quite a name for himself in the Chicagoland area, and he was becoming more nationally famous by the early 1970s.
(That's him in the middle of the above pic. It's not from the "Magic Funnies" show... but depressingly it's the only shot of him I could find.) For about a year in the early 1970s he had a half-hour(?) show in Atlanta where he would show cartoons and do magic tricks. Usually at the beginning and end of a segment he would blink in and out of the scene (via crappy chroma-key and an even crappier synthesizer wowmp sound effect)
He'd also say some "zany" magic words while doing his tricks like "Hokus-pokus, fish bones choke us!" While he always seemed a nice enough guy, he was always green-screened, parts of "the act" would often disappear when the script didn't call for it, leaving kids at home scratching their heads. I think he also had some kind of magic kit out that a friend of mine owned around that time.

What are your memories of Kids' Hosted TV? Feel free to post them here as comments!

Thanks and kudos for this post goes out to Don Kennedy, George Ellis, Terry Kelley, Mike Durrett, Tubby, Lester, Jackie & April Stephens, Cartoon Network & Buddy Farnan.

Flintstones: The First Fourteen!

2007-02-22T23:45:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I've been meaning to put this one up since before Thanksgiving. I guess I was just resisting because I wanted to put up a couple of other non-HB related posts that have also been in the works for since last year first. Ahhh, I'll get to those posts soon, I promise... but for now here's the third installment of kick-ass bonus materials from the 1995 Flintstones Laserdisk box set. This time around it's a nifty episode guide to the first fourteen Flintstones episodes (since that's how many came in the box set), in the original production order --and complete with their original airdates. What makes it unique is the dual commentary and funny-as-hell insights by no less than Earl Kress (in column "A") and John K. (in column "B"). But be forewarned --you'll find some of comments offered here are indelibly etched on the side of your brain whenever you watch the episode again. (...that's a good thing.) Some great frame grabs, too. Enjoy!

Special Thanks (and a three fingered salute) for this post go out to H-B, John K, and Earl Kress.

Scott Bradley Soundtracks on new CD

2007-02-10T22:38:00.000-05:00

From the time I first got a cassette recorder as a kid I started recording stuff off of TV. All kinds of stuff. Tons of TV shows, TV specials ...whole Horror, Monster, Sci/Fi, Comedy and Dramatic-type movies (or at least the good parts) and anything else that came along. (I even recently found a tape I made of the cast of the first Star Wars movie on the Mike Douglas show during summer '77) Everything that I probably would've just videotaped if vcrs had existed yet. But since they didn't I spent a lot of time working on projects or school work while listening to just the soundtrack portion of some of my favorite shit. That "must-record" list naturally included a lot of cartoons and short subjects. But it was really through listening to these old films' sound effects and orchestral nuances that I honed my ear enough that even now I can usually tell if I'm listening to a Warners, M-G-M, Universal or Columbia studio movie or cartoon --even if I'm in the next room.
I've always loved the sound of MGM cartoons, (Though a lot of them I originally only saw in Florida when I was visiting my grandparents.) so having a CD release like this still gets me kinda excited. This is the first time that the original Scott Bradley MGM cartoon soundtracks have ever been offered in any format. Well okay...actually there was one other CD release to showcase some of Scott's work simply called TEX AVERY in about 1990...but disc wasn't very long, the soundtracks weren't of the best quality and most still had sound effects and voice tracks.
Not so here.
This new 2-disk, dual-release from Film Score Classics and Turner Classic Movies features no less than 25(!) full cartoon soundtracks...over 2 and a half hours of (mostly) GREAT sounding music tracks from 1950's Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery cartoons --including bits here and there that were "overwritten" and have never appeared ANYWHERE before. The handsome booklet itself is just about worth the price, all chock full of super-nice frame blow-ups as well as providing some limited production notes and insight to the Bradley creative process. Below is an example of some of the eye-candy and info provided on each cartoon and it's soundtrack.

I watched old MGM cartoons all the time as a kid (in Atlanta they were all on UHF stations) but by the time I was a pre-teen their time slots had been replaced with early 1960's Hanna Barbera cartoons and imports like Ultra-man and Speed Racer. Some years later at World Con '78 (held at the long-gone Atlanta landmark hotel The Riviera which sat at I-85 and Peachtree Street) I met longtime-animator Ken Mitchroney and he sold me 4 Tom and Jerry cartoons on 16mm film. Since T&J hadn't been on the Atlanta airwaves since I had started to think about animation as a possible career path, these four cartoons --for the time being at least-- were my only representations of that franchise. One of those cartoons was Uncle Pecos, whose soundtrack is featured here in full clarity.

I'm still a little blown away to find out that via this booklet (especially after watching that cartoon all those years) that Shug Fisher, who provided Uncle Pecos' singing voice was actually "Shorty" on the later episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies!

Another thing I didn't know until I was an adult, is that when ol' Uncle Pecos gives nephew Jerry a samplin' of his electric-geetar encore, it's really just an extended intro of Les Paul's classic How High the Moon?
There are several truly inspired performances and stand alone music tracks in this long-overdue and much appreciated release of a now under-appreciated American art form.

Now on the "cons" side....

This release clearly states on the cover that this is "Volume 1: The 1950's"...which seems really odd to me. As much as I love Scott Bradley's orchestrations, I always thought that his cartoon scores from the 1940's were ultimately superior to his work in the 50's. While as I stated, there are definitely some standout tracks like Dixieland Droopy, Downbeat Bear, Blue Cat Blues, Neapolitan Mouse and TV of Tomorrow, there are also too many representations of Bradley's more frantically-generic chase cartoon pieces. It always seemed to me that in the 40's Scott's scores relied more heavily on refrains from MGM musicals and artists like Fats Waller. (And going in chronological order, shouldn't some of those soundtracks have logically been showcased in a first release? I mean, even a lot of the non-specific images that were chosen for the booklet, back and inside covers are ALL from 1940's productions!) Nothing at all against Scott Bradley, I just feel he was just more at home in the 40's, and as a result those soundtracks are more musical-themed than visual comment. There's so much good material for a release of this caliber just in-between 1945-1950 it's staggering! (Mouse in Manhattan, Tee for Two, Springtime for Thomas, Trap Happy, Solid Serenade, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse, The Invisible Mouse, Kitty Foiled and most of Avery's Red and Screwy Squirrel cartoons --just to name a few!)
Plus I hate that some of my old audio-favorites like The Flying Cat, The 3 Little Pups, Push-Button Kitty, The Flying Sorceress and Baby Butch were left out of this collection.
I would hope it's because volume 2 intends be "More of the 1950's"-- rather than it just be because these particular tracks no longer exist.
(Sheez, I gotta admit... even to me, that sounded kinda "Recliner of rage".)

Still any fan of classic cartoon music should probably pick it up --but be aware, as with many FSC releases, this pressing is limited to only 3000 copies.

Happy National Gorilla Suit Day!

2007-01-31T23:26:00.000-05:00

...Though this particular year might be better remembered as the day of the "Aqua Teen Hoax"...especially if you live in Boston or Atlanta. I'll do a follow-up post to that story once all the facts are in and the dust settles over on my Adult Swimmin' Blog page....but for now let me just say Hoo-boy!

Anyhow, sorry...gorilla suit, gorilla suit... okay. Here's some past observers of the Holiday....

This one goes back a-ways...you had to be really cool to get past the Gorilla doorman at this club.

Ro-Man has looked healthier than he does in this ad for Robot Monster. (Come to think though, Death Wears a Gorilla Suit is a pretty good title...)

They're all out there though...workin' toll gates in the rain...

Providing technical assistance...

Doin' maintenance work...

Fighting Hobbits...

Even drivin' flying saucers...

...And generally just bein' the ever-lovin', brown-eyed idols o' millions!

Kudos for this post go out to Don Martin, Mark Evanier, Charles Gemora, Ray Corrigan, George Barrows, Bob Burns, Rick Baker, and anyone else who has ever put on a Gorilla costume!

Josie, Joe, Bill, Iwao & The H-B Studios

2007-01-16T23:15:00.000-05:00

I can now understand why the guy at "The Astounding B-Monster" website got downhearted because he felt like his site was basically becoming an ongoing obituary column....'cause it seems like almost every day now there comes word that the animation industry or 1960's entertainment has lost yet another personality or visionary. Just in the past month we've lost no less than Joe Barbera, James Brown, Steve Krantz, Yvonne De Carlo and (pictured) Iwao Takamoto.
That's one hell of a list.
And if you go back over the past year, so many icons have passed it's really sobering. It's as if there's some sort of "1960's culture-rapture" goin' on. Almost everyone who entertained me growing up is starting to check out now.
John Buscema died on by 40th birthday...and now Iwao on my 45th. (Also reminding me that at best, my own life-sojourn is probably more than halfway over.)
If you're reading this to begin with I'm going to assume that Iwao needs no life's-work resume from me. He's been widely credited as the creator of the characters from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Hell, even Conan O'brien and Saturday Night Live made Scooby Doo-related jokes about his death last week. (though neither, to my knowledge, made any mention of Joe Barbera's death just 3 weeks earlier --The guy who's show is on after Letterman did that at least!) He also helped create and design several other H-B hounds over the years including "Astro" from The Jetsons, "Muttley" from Wacky Races, and "Krypto" and other characters from the recent Krypto Cartoon Network series.

So, here's a bizzaro comic I dug up after Joe Barbera's passing last month, but with the Holidays n' all I just hadn't had a chance to run it yet...it's a Dan DeCarlo drawn comic from 1970 where Josie and the Pussycats pay a visit to Hanna-Barbera studios in North Hollywierd in conjunction with their new CBS Saturday morning cartoon show. Seems like Dan mighta actually gone to the Studio to do the story --but I still wonder where the gang is supposed to be approaching the building from in the opening panel...

So Alexandra works her charms on team Ruby-Spears, hoping they'll write her some better action with Alan M. Meantime the Pussycat crew works their way down to the animation department...who else would they run into there in 1970 if not Iwao and --making his third appearance in this blog-- Carlo Vinci! (Btw---Did I mention that I always thought of Alex and Alexandra as the Linus and Lucy of the Archie set? Just with more money....)

So the H-B staff play an expensive trick on Alexandra which involves the Pussycats being shown a completed scene that the H-B alchemists have whipped up during their visit(!) in which Alan M hits Alexandra in the face with a pie. (Yeah right...even though in all honesty, a lot of sequences in the actual show often looked like they were animated in a single coffee-fueled afternoon)

Good thing the songs on the show were better than that...'cause even as an eight-year-old I thought this little ditty was pretty lame!
Er...I mean...my sister bought Archie comics...I bought mainly Harvey titles and weird stuff like House of Mystery & Mad.
Thanks and kudos for this post go out to The Dan Decarlo family, The Joe Barbera family, The Bill Hanna family, The Iwao Takamoto family and Archie Comics Publications.

1960 Peanuts for Ford Falcon in COLOR!

2007-01-05T14:28:00.000-05:00

So Mark Evanier just posted this commercial to his site this morning. This was doubly-ironic for me, as I've spent the last few days trying to find some Peanuts Ford commercials on YouTube and the web in general --AND the Ford Falcon in this spot is the EXACT year, model and color that my DAD owned when I was a kid! (I remember thinking back then how the heater vent under the dash looked kinda like a boxcar with an open door on a steep grade.) I love the way the early Peanuts designs are animated here though...too bad ol' Snoopy didn't ALWAYS look this good!

Fantastic Four 2:The Silver Surfer

2007-01-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! So here we are...2007 already. Before you know it it'll be May and the ads for this flick will presumably be everywhere. But for now, here's the all new, first-official look at the Silver Surfer from this Summer's 20th Century Fox release Fantastic Four 2: The rise of the Silver Surfer. Also presented here (for as long as it lasts) is the all-new trailer/extended sequence for the Mega-B epic, (which at least feels a little more like an old 1960's FF Comic than any scene in the 2005 movie did). There's some obvious things I don't like about it right off the bat, but o' course you know me and Hollywood...
Check it out for yourself NOW!:
Fantastic Four 2 trailer (your comments welcome)

Adios Hollywood Joe (1911-2006)

2006-12-20T17:25:00.000-05:00

This has been a bad year for losing people. I know I said that last year and the year before that, but this year has been especially bad. Alex Toth, Ed benedict and now Joe Barbera.
H-B in it's heyday was where any kid interested in animation in the 1960's wanted to work (in fact I'm told that master animator and historian Mark Kausler actually ran away from home at 16 to go to Hollywood and become an animator. He essentially ran away ...to Hanna-Barbera productions in L.A.).

I snapped this pic as I was driving by the old H-B Building on Cahuenga in the mid-90's. Production activity had dropped off to next to nothing by this point in time...But at least the building itself was still in use and both Bill and Joe were still walking it's halls. Now Bill's gone, Joe's gone, the building is gone and their names have all-but-disappeared from public daily viewing.

Well, unless you happen to be on Hollywood Boulevard...(or watching Boomerang, I guess). I love how even though I took this picture probably 15 years ago, light appears to be shining on Joe's name.

The Tom and Jerry unit with the seven oscars the team garnered during their run on the original Tom and Jerry series. A moment frozen in time from Animation's golden age.
When I first came out to to LA it was the early 1990's and I was actually working on a Tom and Jerry project. The call for reference went out and a couple of things surfaced I hadn't expected...one was a rough storyboard for a good portion of Nit-Witty Kitty (1951) I was immediately struck by how both raw and totally on-target this short-hand board was. "Wow, who did these?" I got an answer I wan't expecting --"Joe Barbera". What?? Joe drew? I asked naively (up to that point I had always thought of Joe as more of a businessman than an artist). "Whaddaya mean? He drew great! Those are his story sketches" growled my peer, (a little aggravated by my ignorance) "He always knew EXACTLY what he wanted and he was able to translate it, as well as synthesize other ideas elequently for the layout guys." I didn't know it then, but I have since found out, it was true!
Here's a twelve-page example...
The Setup: Tom has experienced "a sharp blow to the head" while chasing Jerry and now he thinks he a mouse. Mammy Two-Shoes (having inadvertantly administered the blow) is distressed about Tom's condition...but the more he acts like a mouse, the more her fear of mice overrides her concern...

Check out this frame grab from the finished cartoon.
See how the close the attiude and pose is to Joe's original sketch.

This one too...

Yup...that plays just like the Tom and Jerry Cartoon alright.
Joe co-produced and directed hundreds of MGM cartoons before they ever made a penny off of television, the medium they created hundreds of animated programs for ...and what they're probably most remembered and revered (and lambasted) for. I have several posts planned around some old H-B shows coming up soon...so with that in mind, (and the original idea that I was going to TRY to keep this post short) I'm gonna jump all the way into the mid-1990s with sa little genuine (and long overdue) "Hollywood Joe" appreciation...

Now, here's the big lug as we know and love him. A meat-eatin', life-lovin', Pope-meetin', cartoon-makin' Maverick! His visage is featured here with pride... appearing as a cut-out mask on the back of the 1995 H-B/Spumco produced "Huckleberry Hound Show" cel painting kit
box! Now if it only worked the mask in the movie The Mask.

John K's unique instructions for proper Joe Barbera mask use and etiquette. Oddly --as I write this, John just appeared on TV Land talking about Joe and how the catch-phrase "Yabba Dabba Doo!" came to pass. It makes me realize more than ever just how many of us in the industry today are here because of Joe. The world today is a very different and more joyous place than it would 've been without him. Thanks again, Buddy!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Barbera has left the building. Good luck and Godspeed, Joe...
You'll be missed.

Thanks and best wishes for this post go out to the Barbera family, the extended Hanna-Barbera family, John Kricfalusi, Spumco, J. D. Suggs, J. Riechek, Leonard Maltin and Patrick Brion.

The Fantasti-car revealed

2006-12-16T19:33:00.001-05:00

So here's the first look at the long-awaited, Kirby-created, big-screen version of the FF's primary flying, firing and dividing vehicle "The Fantasti-car"...or at least a big chunk of it. Interesting here that The Thing isn't present for this photo-op...and it's kinda hard to tell for sure if there's a seat for him in this nutty gizmo or not. But here (most of ) it is, regardless! The other 3 lead actors from next summer's release are present, (Alba looking more like Sue from the comics here than the first film) all apparently posing for their FF2 action-figure photos...

It sure ain't no flyin' bathtub! ...Maybe a little "Flying Sub" from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in there though. (I still wish it had reflected more of Jolly Jack's original designs...oh well...)

Compleat Bob Clampett

2006-11-27T03:14:00.000-05:00

I recently wrote an article for a fanzine about "The 1970s and the Dark Days of Animation Fandom". And it's true --animation as an art form went underground in the during the '70s both literally and figuratively. If you could find ANY info about classic cartoons you were batting 500...and odds were you would find it in a fan-produced magazine. Arguably the best of what was around was David Mruz's pocket-sized digest mag Mindrot. It regularly boasted such contributors as Jerry Beck, Jim Korkis, Mark Kausler and Paul Etcheverry among others.
Issue twelve (from Nov. 1 1978) was a full issue dedicated to Bob Clampett, containing rare interviews with Bob himself and analysis of some of his best-loved classic cartoons. Also in that issue was a complete listing of all Bob's cartoon work from 1937 - 1962. (Just no decades' worth of the Time for Beany Puppet Show episodes, unfortunately ) So without further ado, here's the full Bob Clampett cartoon listings, as they originally appeared in Mindrot--compiled by Mark Kausler and Paul Etcheverry, with some extra and color artwork thrown in by me. Revel!

Bravo! Just too bad for all of us that this already-prolific list isn't twice as long.
To provide some balance I have some clips from Time for Beany I may just have to You Tube here sometime soon. Sure would be great to see a DVD release of all those long-lost shows.

My thanks to this post go out to David Mruz, Mark Kausler, Paul Etcheverry, Sody Clampett, and the Norse God of the funny and ridiculous, Robert "Bob" Clampett!