Saturday Morning Stupid: Challenge of the Superfriends

SCTV's 'Fantasy Island'

SCTV's good material is bafflingly unavailable on home video; you can get a 3-disc set called The Early Years, but there's nothing in there from the first season, when Harold Ramis was in the cast as well as the head writer, and it includes only a couple of episodes from the second season, before John Candy and Catherine O'Hara split. It kept going downhill thereafter.

But thanks to Youtube, these late 70's episodes from their prime are available for our enjoyment. A standout is the episode-long parody of 'Fantasy Island', a piece of inspired, surreal idiocy from beginning to end. It's only 40 seconds in that "Patoo" starts uncontrollably fondling himself in an erotic frenzy, and it gets stranger:



Part 2

Part 3

Movie of the Week: Love at First Bite

Thee One and Only 1979 Retardo-Classic! George Hamilton! Susan St. James! Artie Lange! Richard Benjamin! Disco! Dumber than "Young Frankenstein", but not crazy-stupid like "Transylvania 6-5000". Just awful enough for the Arrested Development Gen-X Monster Kid in all of us. In one of us, at least.

Not on Netflix and barely available on DVD. Even VHS copies go for big bucks on Ebay! But you can see it here, 100% free:

Movie of the Week: Dracula A.D 1972

This isn't the best of the Hammer films, but the period details make it essential. Plus there's one of the best Satanic Masses committed to film, scored to experimental supergroup White Noise, with superbabe Caroline Munro on the unholy alter, no less!

Sunday Shemp: The Brideless Groom

Saturday Morning Dogville: Dogway Melody

Happy Electro-Funk Friday the 13th

Get Off the Grass: Edith Massey's Awful Punk Record

Youtube knows me so well. This video showed up in my "recommended for you" homepage :



When I first heard the "Get Off the Grass" single a few years ago, I assumed Edith wrote those lyrics herself, and it turns out she did. They're awful, and the band is equally awful. Enjoy!



I should admit that the B-side is an improvement, a cover of "Big Girls Don't Cry". Someone else must've thought so, because these two songs were flipped for a later 45rpm release.



Actually, I think I'd rather hear Edith Massey's music over anything Divine recorded. There's nothing more dated, or more abrasive, than 80's techno-rave.

R.I.P. Dolores Fuller

March 10, 1923 – May 9, 2011

Dolores was best known as the long-suffering girlfriend of Ed Wood Jr., as well as his co-star in Glen or Glenda, best movie ever. But she also wrote "Rock-a-Hula Baby","Do the Clam" and several other songs for Elvis Presley, which he sang in his films.

The unforgettable freakout sequence from Glen or Glenda:

Slithis 4

As always, all tracks are live improvisational recordings. This is the first Slithis session to use Clark S. Nova's brand new Eurorack Modular System, which approximates a Buchla for a fraction of the cost. Still waiting for another oscillator module, but up and running:


















And I'm playing the usual things: Moog, Absynth software, homemade electronics (Frankensynth modular, Ribbonsynth, circuit-bent devices).

Movie of the Week: Trick or Treat (1986)

Metal Superstar makes a pact with Satan, then returns from the grave to party on forever! Rock's Chosen Warriors Will Rule the Apocalypse!

Original score by the nearly-forgotten 80's shredders Fastway, and correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the star of this movie a peripheral character on Family Ties named "Boner"? I'm not even going to bother looking that shit up myself.

Not available on home video. A note from the youtube uploader: "this is the opening scene of the movie. The credits have been removed to appease YouTube's administration and, more importantly, allow the upload."

The Worst of Starcrash

Saturday Matinee Featurette: The Bishop of Battle

This half-hour short is one of four segments of a 1983 anthology film Nightmares, which was shot for a television series called Darkroom, then given a theatrical release when Creepshow made a lot of money. The other three stories are forgettable, but this one has a retro-technology appeal to it.

Emelio Estevez is a pre-Repo Man punk, striving to achieve the top level of "Bishop of Battle", a game at his neighborhood arcade. When he finally does, the Bishop (who seems to have stepped out of a Kraftwerk video), comes to collect. (yawn).

It's a lame and predictable story, but the real draw here is the vintage arcade locations in downtown LA and the Fox Hills Mall, the Tron-era computer graphics/optical printing effects and the music by Fear, Black Flag and Negative Trend, recording new versions of their songs specifically for this film.







Extra Bonus Arcade Movie Mashup!

Sure, Emelio can defeat the Bishop of Battle, but is he man enough to take on King Vidiot for a round of Satan's Hollow?

Saturday Morning Sleestaks: Land of the Lost (1973)

Bonus Brain-Teaser: Has anyone ever seen Paul Williams and Cha-Ka in the same place at the same time?

47 Seconds from "One Million AC/DC"

Langue D' Amour

Laurie Anderson's 1984 concert film Home of the Brave generally suffers from the same problem as the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, from the same era; it's an overproduced spectacle, ill-fitting for an artist founded on minimalism and nuance, with too many musicians and backup singers, and an act that seems desperate to graduate from avant-garde to pop star status.

But this rendition of Langue D' Amour, my favorite cut from the Mister Heartbreak album, is done nicely, with little more than minimoog, fairlight and oberheim keyboards accompanying Anderson's take on the creation myth. Nice stuff.