Flat Allie goes to Hollywood

My niece mailed me a doll she made in school, with a note asking me to show it around the city and take a few pictures. So this morning I strapped "Flat Allie" onto the handlebars of my bike and did my usual short weekend route: a climb through my neighborhood of Los Feliz to the top of Mt. Hollywood in Griffith park, stopping at the Observatory along the way, then dropping down the other side of the mountain into Hollywood Blvd, which I take all the way back. Some highlights:

Orgy of The Dead: For Kids!

It would be a shame to limit the 1965 Necro-Striptacular Orgy of the Dead to just an adult audience. So thanks to my combing of youtube and the generous uploading from other users, I've cobbled together a family friendly version which preserves much of Ed Wood's script and the nail-biting suspense, but still places it firmly within the MPAA's conditions for a "G" rating:















If you're over 18, you can netflix it HERE.

Auction Pick: Shogun Godzilla

Hey look, it's Lynda Carter (hottest thing to come out of the 70's) and none other than the one-and-only Frank Gorshin. And that toy he picks up there is "Dragun" of the Shogun Warriors.

My Grandmother bought me that for Christmas in 1979. Dragun had features that put those boring Star Wars toys to shame: one hand contained a spring-loaded catapult that would hurl battle axes, the other hand held a launcher that you could stack up with some very pointy throwing stars for semi-automatic assaults. Plus, he was two feet tall, and had wheels embedded into his feet. I ended up selling him at a yard sale for 50 cents, and no one stopped me. Today he's so rare that I can't even find a completed auction on ebay to see what they go for. Anyway, more about Dragun over at this blog.

There were four Shogun Warriors. Three robots, and, for some odd reason, Godzilla:



This fine toy is more common than the other three. I think he may have stayed in production much longer, because you can get them relatively cheap. Here's one with a $9.99 opening bid, and the seller has photographed him in his snowy Michigan surroundings:


Near-Mint condition with original box, spring-loaded flying fist, and cellophane fire tongue. Place your bid HERE.

Switchblade Sisters

three moments from my favorite Jack Hill movie:







buy it

rent it

The Stereoscopic Atlas of Human Anatomy

I just dug up a two-year-old NYtimes article about Dr. David Bassett (pictured) and his Human Anatomy project, which involved 3D photographic depiction of the body and took 17 years to complete.

Published between 1952 and 1962, the series used 1,547 3D photographs printed onto view-master reels. They were packaged along with 24 books, and used matching line drawings with labeled areas for reference. Poor Dr. Bassett didn't live long to see the impact of this work; he died in 1966 at the age of 52, possibly due to all those years of exposure to formaldehyde.

The dissection and presentation is incredible. Even in 2D, a project of this breadth will never be done again, as no institution would be willing to finance such an arduous process. The images are increasingly used by medical students in lieu of hands-on gross anatomy. The entire series can be seen here at stanford.edu.

Sorry, I can't locate any anaglyphic conversions online. The color and clarity you get from the view-master format is vastly superior anyway. The original books show up on ebay at criminally expensive prices, but an abridged hardcover book with the original reference illustrations and 12 view-master reels is widely available, and I highly recommend it. Buy it here.

Suicide 1977-1980

includes selections from their two studio albums as well as Martin Rev's 1980 EP. I tried to limit it their more pleasant, melodic material, but if you haven't seen the excellent film shot for perhaps their most unlistenable song "Frankie Teardrop" (1977) in its entirety, you owe it to yourself to sit through this:

?

The Curious Habits of Man

Secrets of the Creation Museum

I've written about the Creation Museum in Kentucky before, even though I've never visited. I probably never will, as my $22 admission fee would go towards the suppression of science education in public schools.

Luckily, someone from Vice magazine has done the deed for us. Lots of pictures, but (typical of Vice magazine) there also tons of snark, and little explanation of the pseudo-science. It's worth a laugh, though. Click on the above picture of neutered Adam and his pet penguin to be directed to the article.

Brave New World

Our Movie of the Week is the 1980 television adaptation of Huxley's Brave New World, which I'm old enough to remember seeing in its entirety during its initial telecast.

It runs three hours, which is roughly how long it would take you to read the short-but-absolutely-essential novel. Try doing both at the same time!

Synth Brittania

Haven't seen this yet, but it looks very promising; a feature-length documentary about UK Synthpop. Part one is above, the rest is linked.
(referred by boingboing.net)

This is a perfect opportunity to post some relevent videos:









UPDATE: Just saw it, and it's a must if you have any interest in new wave music or electronic music production. They give sufficient credit to non-Brits like Walter Carlos and Kraftwerk, acknowledge the impact of industrial experimenters like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, showcase English artists who didn't make a splash overseas but were still hugely influential (The Normal, Fad Gadget, John Foxx) and spend lots of time with the musicians and the technical details of how their music was made. I loved it.

The Smut Peddler Wishes You A Happy Valentine's Day

Chimp Encounter

UPDATE
A loyal reader asked for a soundtrack. I scanned the mp3's I have in the 1:15 range to match this video clip, and I came up with four options. Take your choice:

Raymond Scott:


Einstürzende Neubauten:


A cut from the Haunting sound effects record:


Paul Stanley:

Student Confidential

I've been a huge fan of Student Confidential ever since I rented it at a Blockbuster in 1989, based solely upon the fact that it was distributed by Troma Films. But this is not the usual Troma fare; the trailer makes it look like an exploitation film, but it's more like an after-school special / morality play. With nude scenes. And lots of semi-celebrities: Marlon Jackson (Michael's brother), Eric Douglas (son of Kirk), Playboy playmate Susan Scott, and that woman from Nashville and Nightmare on Elm Street.

Words can hardly describe this bizarre work of outsider art. The film's star, Richard Horian, also wrote, produced, edited and directed (he also composed the soundtrack, which often sounds like someone playing a casiotone keyboard with his feet). He portrays a high school guidance counselor who goes to creepy lengths to help four students with their individual needs. This clip is more accurate than the trailer in capturing the film's heavy and sanctimonious tone:



When he isn't forcing life-changing decisions upon his students at work, he has problems at home with his fashion model wife:



It may seem inept, and it is, but stick it out; in the final reel the film takes a fascinating turn, culminating in one of the most melodramatic, off-the-wall endings ever witnessed. See the first chapter below, or if you have netflix you can stream it.

Auction Pick: Jigglers

I've got quite the find this week, kiddies: a whole box of 1971 Imperial Jigglers!


It looks like you get multiples of six different styles, including the iconic "forgotten prisoner" skeleton, which looks quite refined when hanging from the rearview mirror of your Rascal scooter.

The jiggler was ubiquitous in dimestores of the early 70's, and is probably the low-water mark for what constitutes a toy. If you're over 40, you surely remember the most famous of them all, the Ben Cooper-produced Batman Jiggler. Why, just look at this craftsmanship:


The chemical compound these things were made from was highly suspect. They always smelled like used motor oil and often left a greasy residue on the hands, which couldn't possibly be good. Today there's a dedicated community of hardcore collectors; elsewhere on ebay you'll find some jigglers selling for over $100 each, a testament to the pathology of nostalgia.

But this WHOLE BOX of jigglers is only $50 at a buy-it-now price, and you'll have plenty to give to your friends. Buy it HERE.

Also, there's a great flickr set of jigglers over here.

Circus of the Stars

Welcome to Circus of The Stars. For our first act, Loni Anderson will be walking on broken glass:



Amazing! And now, in the opposite ring, Brooke Shields will be walking on broken glass:



Incredible! We'll take a short commercial break and be right back!



Welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, every so often an act comes along that is simply incomparable. This is such an act. For tonight, in the center ring, Miss Linda Blair will be walking on broken glass:



Outstanding! That's all the time we have for tonight. Tune in to next week's Circus of The Stars and see Lynda Carter standing still.

(more about glass-walking here)

LDS9

Ataricide

Since the mid-seventies, B-Movie mogul Charles Band has been running film production / distribution companies Full Moon Features, Empire Pictures and Wizard Video. He's best known for producing the "Re-Animator" and "Puppet Master" films. In 1982, he dipped his foot into the already-saturated video game market by creating Wizard Video Games, which released two horror-themed titles for the Atari 2600.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is striking in its verisimilitude. A blue figure with a faucet protruding from his stomach shambles along a detailed landscape, dodging wheelchair obstacles, while an unnerving smoke alarm goes off randomly. He makes his first gruesome, gory kill at 0:45. Terrifying!



There's no long-term goal; You keep slogging along until your "chainsaw" runs out of fuel. Then one of the innocent civilians turns the tables by walking up to your Leatherface avatar and kicking him playfully in the tuchus. Aw, cute!

Perplexingly, this game was judged to be way too intense to sell in most stores. The game was only available at a few outlets, making them extremely rare today.

Halloween actually looks pretty good. It has a John Carpenter soundtrack which sounds almost as tinny as the original recording, and I like how that little kid is running around in a panic the whole time. See the babysitter get it at 0:25.



Holy smokes, he just cut off her head, and now she's running around with blood spraying out of her neck-stump! That's awesome!

Halloween may be even more rare than "Chainsaw". As Wizard's videogame division was shutting its doors and liquidating, they sold many cartridges without labels; they simply wrote "Halloween" on the blanks with magic markers.

Besides being a victim (and catalyst) of the 1983 Video Game Crash, Wizard Video made the mistake of marketing games that most stores wouldn't sell. Fortunately, Charles Band survived and has maintained moderate success by releasing direct-to-video exploitation fare. Recent promising-sounding titles include Evil Bong (2007) and Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (2008).

Related: E.T. for Atari and Custer's Revenge

Frankensynth 4

I spent several days trying, in vain, to get the homemade sequencer circuit working properly. Finally, I decided to double-check the nomenclatures of the components. Turns out I had a wrong resistor in there, which I'd pulled from a mislabeled bag and installed without confirming the value. I swapped it for the correct one, everything worked, I plugged it into an amp, set up the camera and recorded this within minutes. Behold, The FRANKENSYNTH.



This uses both of the Paia's oscillators: one is controlled by the sequencer (direct CV), and one is controlled by the midi keyboard (midi-to-CV). The sequencer is using eight of its ten available steps. I haven't yet fine-tuned anything on the modules; the keyboard doesn't even play a proper chromatic scale, and the ADSR envelope control is not yet hooked up, which is why the melody produces a constant drone. But I'm too thrilled to delay from posting the very first moments of this system working properly.

Currently, the sequencer circuit is on a breadboard and the controls are mocked-up on scraps of plexiglass, cardboard and wood. Next I'll be solder down the components, fabricate a custom case (tinted plexiglass) to hold everything, and eventually post a final video of the completed project.

Land of The Lust

From the kiddie matinee klassic, One Million AC/DC. Get it here.

Anachronistic Toys

Skydiving Spock?



Hulk The Helicopter Pilot?



Inter-planetary Ape Phones?

Battle Beyond The Stars

This Movie of The Week, long out-of-print on home video, was Roger Corman's most expensive film (two million dollars!) and still holds up pretty well. It would work nicely at the tail end of a triple-feature with "The Seven Samurai" and "The Magnificent Seven", although the plots might get a bit redundant.

Raiders of The Crystal Skull in The Doom-Temple-Thingy

This outrageous, aggressively stupid sequence is the climax to Treasure of The Four Crowns, part of the 3D wave of 1983.

You have to respect a no-budget movie that emulates a big money blockbuster like "Raiders". Instead of "lets spend millions on optical printing", it's all like, "let's make a big ball of newspaper, soak it in kerosene, attach it to a rope, set it on fire, then swing it towards the heads of those extras." You can actually see them running for their lives. More thrilling than Spielberg's special effects trickery, if you ask me.

If you care to, buy it from this seller on a bootleg that includes both anaglyph and field-sequential 3D. He seems to have run into some trouble with the law recently, but is still operating.

Auction Pick: Pulsar

Pulsar, first released in 1976, was Mattel's answer to the wildly popular Six Million Dollar Man toy line from Kenner. I never had any of the Six Million Dollar Man stuff, but Pulsar was my eighth birthday present. My parents usually only bought me "educational" toys, but I guess my mom figured Pulsar was an anatomy teaching tool. It's also wicked cool. I cherished it, for awhile, then traded it for this comic book (in my defense, this was no ordinary comic, but a giant-sized comic).



About 15 years ago I happened across Hypnos, Pulsar's arch-nemesis, at a thrift store. He's missing the facemask, and his hypno-chest doesn't kick off sparks like this one, but it was cheap.



The Life System Center looks like a real piece of crud. You strap Pulsar in, then push a lever which, in turn, does nothing more than push the air pump button in his back.



I bought a Pulsar on ebay a few years ago as a boyfriend for my Hypnos figure. It was about $10. The red liquid in his veins doesn't circulate, and he's missing the data disks for his brain, but the lungs still inflate and his stylish jumpsuit ensemble is complete.

To save you the frustration and disappointment of bidding, I've found items you can acquire using the "buy it now" feature. Pulsar, Hypnos and the Life Systems Center will run you a mere $530 plus shipping. Buy them here:
Pulsar
Hypnos
Life Systems Center

Bonus: even though Pulsar didn't exist outside of toyland, they actually made a Halloween costume of him.

(related post: six million dollar suite)