Sunday Stooges: They Stooge to Conga

The Chicago 70's Monster Movie Post

Creature Feature (channel 9), a sublime montage of Universal Monsters:




Monstrous Movie (channel 32). The film of the evening is I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, which means that I watched this specific broadcast. I remember it well.




Monster Rally (channel 44), which did a number on my head as a six-year old:





Thing Theater (channel 44), with a theme lifted from funk band Rose Royce's soundtrack to Car Wash:





and of course Jerry Bishop, the original Svengoolie (channel 32), way back in 1973:






On a related note, thanks to Kindertrauma.com for recently posting my horror nostalgia confessional.

Movie of the Week, Seasonally Inappropriate Edition: Sleepaway Camp

The Ultimate Summer Camp Movie: more thrills than Friday the 13th. More poignancy than Little Darlings. More laughs than Meatballs. You don't have to be a sexually disoriented pubescent kid to learn all sorts of important life lessons from this great film. Share it with the whole family this holiday season.

Or, as an alternate plan for something more in the spirit, if you live here in the LA area, Black Christmas (possibly my single favorite modern horror movie) is playing at the New Beverly Theater tonight, so go see it on the big screen and support independently operated cinemas.

Inarguably the Best Part of the Movie "Heavy Metal" (1981)

See it before it gets pulled:

Movie of the Week: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

The Best of Amicus: Part 10 of 10

A long time ago I laid out this ten-part series with chapters from ten different Amicus anthology films, culminating with 1973's From Beyond the Grave. Unfortunately the movie was removed from youtube months ago and hasn't yet returned. If you're interested, it was to be the chapter titled An Act of Kindness, starring Don Pleasance, Pete Cushing and Diana Dors (who hasn't aged well, and seems to take it out on her husband):





So rent it legitimately, via DVD or Amazon streaming or holodeck or whatever gizmo people are using these days, although it's one of Amicus' less essential films overall.

And instead of the planned Futurechimp Featurette, here's a second story from The House that Dripped Blood starring the great Chris Lee. Start at 6:45.




part 2
part 3
part 4

Movie of the Week: Blood for Dracula (1974)

This film carries an X rating, and appears to be unedited. So if you're at work, proceed with caution.

Bask in the Glory of the Megaforce Theme

The Men Who Make the Music

Look, here's an edited version of Devo's straight-to-video promo film, made way back in 1979. Warner Brothers didn't like the anti-corporate narrative the band included in the interstitial segments, so they shelved it. The label changed their minds when Devo became hugely famous in 1981 and released it unedited. It hasn't been re-released since then in any format (I, however, rented the VHS from a local place in 1985 when I was 15 and made my own bootleg, which I still have today).

For copyright reasons, this youtube upload removes videos for the songs owned by Warner Brothers (studio recordings included on either of Devo's first two records), but you can easily find those elsewhere, separately on youtube or compiled on later home video releases. But here you get the material unseen in over 30 years, including their bizarre "Secret Agent Man" video from 1976, lots of songs from their 1979 tour (including their best live recording of "Smart Patrol"), and assorted oddball content they shot exclusively for the home video format.

(the first couple and last couple minutes of this video have been muted by the uploader to remove a copyrighted soundtrack)

Tales from the Darkside Halloween Triple Feature

Tales from the Darkside ran for 90 episodes over four seasons. Unsurprisingly, given the time and budget limitations, most of them were not so great. But these three seasonally appropriate installments are found in most admirers' top ten lists. Watching them back-to-back will take about 70 minutes, less than the running time of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, and significantly better.


Trick or Treat




The pilot used to sell Darkside was written by George Romero and originally pitched as Creepshow: the Series (Romero was unable to secure the title from the studio). It ran a year in advance of the rest of the episodes, on Halloween Weekend of 1983, which was when I made sure to catch it (based upon a promising five-second network promo). As with most pilots, the writing and production quality is on a higher tier than anything that followed.

The plot is pure Halloween, and wouldn't have been out of place as a story in the excellent 2009 anthology film of the same name. A rich miser who has a whole town in debt offers salvation every year: if a trick-or-treater can find the IOU for his parents hidden in the miser's house, the family's debts would be erased. But the old man is quite the tinkerer, filling his home with a p.a. system and horrific automatons to rattle the kids' nerves. This fine piece of family-friendly entertainment deserved to become an annual Halloween TV tradition, but such was not the case. At least there's youtube.


The Cutty Black Sow




Continuing with the "kids in peril" theme, which I find delightful, is this season four traumatizer. A boy's great-grandmother warns him of a family curse just before she passes on Hallow's Eve. He takes all precautions to protect her soul, but with mixed results.


Halloween Candy




Direction by Tom Savini and some very Creepshow-esque sequences elevate this episode above most of the rest. The lesson seems to be "don't deny candy to trick-or-treaters". It is a lesson I follow grudgingly, especially since the trick-or-treaters who visit our house every year are Filipino teenagers, without costumes, being driven around in SUV's. Not very Halloweeny. But we have to roll with the neighborhood and its customs, and I'm willing to contribute a small part to the spirit of Samhain. It never truly feels like Autumn in Los Angeles anyway, you know? I digress.