"RUN AWAY!!!" Celebrating 50 Years of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

I just attended Fathom Events' 50th anniversary screening of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975), the film I have seen countless times since discovering it at age ten. I went With dear old friend Matt Snow, whom I met nearly a half century ago, and one of the many things our adolescent sensibilities bonded over was our love of all things Monty Python. Some things you never outgrow.

Me representing as Tim the Enchanter, and Matt, wielding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

If I had to guesstimate, it was an audience of perhaps thirty people, many of whom were under-16s who had been brought by parents.I wonder how they processed the film, and Python in general, because Python's bizarre style has been well-absorbed into the global language of comedy over the past 55 years, so does their flavor have the same kind of seismic impact on today's youth as it did on my generation? I kinda doubt it, and it saddens me to think that works such as this may now reside in the "you had to be there" category. Nonetheless, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL remains my personal pick as the funniest film ever made. Definitely not for all tastes, but its utter absurdity has always resonated with me.

Representing with a female Sir Bedevere cosplayer, Note her bag: a duck. If you know the movie, you get it.

"HOKUTO SHINKEN WA MUTEKIDA!!!"

While sorting though my stacks, I unearthed a classic. 

Back in the period when I was buying untranslated tapes of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR from Tokyo Video as it was airing new episodes in Japan, I edited together a VHS tape of highlights from the show's second year — arguably when the show really began firing on all cylinders and earned its reputation — and that tape was screened countless times between my final year of college and when I left Connecticut to start working in the Marvel Bullpen. The usual suspects would gather in my college domicile or my mother's TV room in the basement, and we would watch the anime's post-apocalyptic kung fu mayhem splatter across the screen while we swilled adult beverages and smoked roughly a Borg cube's mass worth of kind buds. It was untranslated but we did not care, as it was colorful, lively, and completely out of its mind. A real revelation for American viewers at the time. If you were there for any of those screenings, please stand up and be counted and give a shout out in the comments section.

Anyway, at some point in the '90's I took that beloved tape to a Manhattan camera store that transferred VHS tapes to crude DVD's, and when I handed it to the clerk, he watched a little of it, asked "What the fuck is this?" and "I'm not duping anything illegal, am I?' I assured him that it fell into the vague parameters of the international "gray market," and he soon handed me a DVD transfer. The tape had by that point been through nearly a decade of serial of repeated viewings, so its race was pretty much run, and the new format would allow it to go out with cherished dignity. Then, sometime in the mid-2000's the entire TV series got a proper subtitled translation and was released to the US market in four big boxed sets, thus rendering the old VHS tapes superfluous (though the tapes off of the Japanese airwaves did contain tons of entertaining and baffling commercials). Nonetheless, this self-made highlight package shall always have a place of honor among my video distractions.

OPEN CHANNEL D

 

It’s time for POP CULTURE ARCHAEOLOGY WITH GRANDPA BUNCHE!

While making today’s breakfast, I watched a YouTube article where a mother who’s a bit older than me watches classic TV shows with her 30-something son and they discuss them from the perspective of seeing them during original air versus watching them from the perspective of someone born well after the fact. Today’s subject for examination was THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E, which was easily the biggest ’60’s super-spy item this side of 007 at the time, and definitely the most popular of the wave of Bond imitators that flooded the airwaves during that era (though most of the other Bond wannabes crashed and burned quickly, even U.N.C.L.E.’s terrible spinoff, THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E, starring a young Stephanie Powers). (It should also be noted that the only other spy shows of the ’60’s that did as well in the ratings were THE AVENGERS, an imprt that was picked up by ABC, and IT TAKES A THIEF, which was terrific but for some reason is all but forgotten today.)

So, inspired by the discussion of U.N.C.L.E. and my clear memories of it — I had dodgy bootlegs of it via the Union Square Nazi maybe a decade ago, so it’s fresh in my mind —  thinking of snagging the boxed set of Season 2 of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (hands down the best that series had to offer) but it was only available as individual seasons on Region 2.  I personally have no problem with foreign discs, as I have an all-regions player, but I like to own as much as possible on Region 1 so I can lend to my friends. 

Anyway, I remembered that the only way the show was available on home video in the States was as either a handful of VHS tapes that cherry-picked two episodes per tape (I had a couple of them during my VHS phase) or as a fancy complete series set that came in a metal briefcase. The latter was great for completists, but what most don't recall about THE MAN FROM U..N.C.L.E. is that though it lasted for four seasons (and a terrible reunion TV movie fifteen years later) and had two memorable protagonists, the overall series simply wasn't that good. 

The first season was decent, as it was American TV's first attempt at aping the James Bond formula (the series debuted after the release of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and just a few months before GOLDFINGER, with the latter being where the '60's super-spy mania was ignited), but the show was still little more than an obvious Bond knockoff with the sex and violence toned down for primetime viewing. Season 2 saw the show moving to color, which truly brought it to life, but the showrunners also made the series' tongue-in-cheek aspects more overt, but that was okay because it worked. For my money, Season 2 is all that the casual viewer with an interest in '60's spy pop culture needs to bother with.

Then, halfway through Season 2, BATMAN premiered and instantly became a pop culture phenomenon that ushered in “camp” as the new big thing. Without any real understanding of what camp actually is, network honchos scrambled to create shows with what they thought was a camp sensibility, and also tried to shoehorn it into already existing series, much to the detriment of the existing shows in question. That’s why LOST IN SPACE became so aggressively idiotic during its second and third years (though that idiocy arguably made that show more fun and memorable), and why THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. went full-tilt comedy for Season 3. Those of us who have clear memories of U.N.C.L.E. will tell you in no uncertain terms that Season 3 was ruinous for the show, as its plot veered directly into the outright ridiculous, absurd, and silly, with the emphasis on making everything look as intentionally cheap and bad as possible. Look up “The My Friend the Gorilla Affair” as my go-to example of the absolute nadir of the series. Just appalling in every possible way. There is nothing that fails harder than unfunny comedy, and by that yardstick Season 3 was a massive and embarrassing failure. In one season they managed to undo all of the progress and quality of the previous seasons offerings. And it should be noted that the BATMAN-inspired camp wave was a fad that lasted maybe a year, and ddamned near every American TV series that jumped on the camp bandwagon was dead by the end of a season, or less, and pretty much all of them except for BATMAN, LOST IN SPACE, and U.N.C.L.E. are forgotten today. (Though MY MOTHER THE CAR deservedly lives in infamy.) And super-popular though it was, even BATMAN was dead at the end of its third year, largely because its novelty was over. (The show would have been given a fourth season on NBC, provided that all of the sets like the Batcave and such could still be used, but ABC had all of the sets torn down when they got the cancellation notice.)

Realizing the shift to camp was a terrible idea, the U.N.C.L.E. showrunners again changed gears for Season 4, returning the program to its more grounded roots and even giving it a bit more of a darker adult edge, but by that point the damage was done and it was only a matter of time before cancellation. It was the end of the 1960’s and the spy boom was petering out anyway, so the plug was pulled on U.N.C.L.E. halfway through its final season.

U.N.C.L.E. was fondly remembered for the next 30+ years, enshrined mostly by those who were kids when it first aired and who were too young for the more adult thrills of the Bond franchise, though it surprisingly did not turn up much in sydication in the major U.S. markets. (It mostly aired in regions like the Midwest, for some reason.) But then the home video boom happened and lavish DVD sets of classic TV shows became a thing. It took a while but THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. eventually saw relase in a fancy metal briefcase that collected the entire series rather than putting it out in individual season sets. That edition was released at around a hundred bucks, and despite my avid interest in ’60’s spy pop culture, I had no interest in owning the whole series, and certainly not for a hundred bucks. Apparently the general audience shared my sentiment, thus leading the briefcase set to tank to such a degree that it was seen as lack of interest in the property, so no further relases of the series were forthcoming, not even as individual seasons. 

I like having “comfort programming” close at hand, and the closest I could get for THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. is a set of the theatrical films spliced together from episodes of the series for release in Europe, where they spiced things up for the movie audience by adding levels of sex and violence that would never have been allowed in the original TV versions. 

 

 

Those films sometimes showed up on American TV as filler for afternoon and weekend movie showcases on local TV stations, and that was how I first saw THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., as it never ran in syndication on the East Coast in my youth. I saw ONE SPY TOO MANY (1966), which was the show’s only 2-part story, “The Alexander the Greater Affair," one afternoon on Channel 9 when I was around 11 or 12, and found it a lot of fun, so from then on I kept my eyes open for more. Little did I realize that the much ballyhooed actual series would turn out to mostly be another item that was bigged-up the nostalgia of now-grown children.

And the failed briefcase set now starts at over $200 when encountered on eBay and other collector’s resources. Absolutely NOT worth it.

ADIEU, ARCHER (2009-2023)

Couldn't sleep — yeah, I know, a real shock — so I passed time by watching "Into the Cold," the series finale for ARCHER. 

It's hard to believe that the show lasted for fourteen years, which I watched religiously, and its characters have become as familiar and comfortable as the cast of THE SIMPSONS, only in a setting that deftly lampooned the world of James Bond and the plethora of super-spy entertainment/culture that's been with us since the boom of such in the 1960's and that still persists. It was a satisfying ending and I will be sad to see it go, but if I'm being honest I have to say they should have called it a day when Sterling went into a coma that lasted for several seasons, thus shaking up the spy format with season-long lampoons of various genres that were all creations of Archer's comatose mind. None of that was bad, but it just didn't bear the same focused flavor as what preceded those seasons. It also should have bowed out gracefully when Mallory Archer died, as Lana simply did not possess the same gravitas as a boss, nor the hilariously complex comedic dynamic that was woven from what's basically the dysfunctional relationship between a 007 stand-in and his capable-but-alcoholic mother. Nonetheless, I stuck with it and was rewarded with a dependable source of laughs, so it was a painless decline.

So, I will be wistful about the lack of further ARCHER going forward, but what's left behind is largely timeless and can be enjoyed for as long as home video keeps it available. My hard copy collection of super-spy stuff is considerable, and you had better believe that ARCHER has its place in my DVD library. That said, I salute all who worked on the series. You guys knew your subject and lampooned it with love. "PHRASING!!!"

REGARDING EBON AMAZONIA AND ANCILLARY WHITE-A-TIZING

   

The latest addition to my "to read" stack.

About an hour ago I was talking with Michele about our "to read" stacks, and I forgot to mention to her that I finally got my hands on this pulp era classic from the woman who 26 years later wrote the screenplay for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and am currently reading it. I set about writing her a note explaining the why of my interest in it, and that note instead blossomed to what you are now reading, so I share it with you as well as Michele.

I used to collect coffee table books of vintage sci-fi pulp magazine artwork, volumes that sprung from the 1970's nostalgia boom, and I have been fascinated and enthralled by this cover illustration since I was around ten or eleven, when I first saw it in its original context as the cover for an issue of PLANET STORIES.

The March, 1951 issue of PLANET STORIES, its cover adding further fuel to my developing interests and imagination

At the time I was really into the style and aesthetic of vintage pulp illustration, its elements heavily influencing my sci-fi and fantasy doodles to this day, and this one struck me with the dynamism of its central figure. Who was that fierce warrior? What was her story? For forty-some-odd years I had no answers, but the other day I was looking at the cover on the internet and the thought occurred to me that a sci-fi/fantasy author of Leigh Brackett's pedigree probably had much of her catalog still in print or available somewhere, so I did a bit of sleuthing and found out that it could be had in a slim indie press volume that collected three of her unrelated novellas. It was under ten bucks, so I snagged it as this month's treat to myself.

Upon getting into reading it, I found it to be quite good and briskly paced, with Brackett's self-admitted love of the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard being unabashedly worn on her sleeve, as was evident from the style of storytelling and pacing, and the fact that the story's protagonist — who is not the titular Black Amazon — is an obvious gene splicing of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and Conan the Barbarian. That's a good thing, as the aforementioned authorial influences were two of the top tier writers of the pulp era, when they were writing while firing on all cylinders. 

I was surprised to discover that the novella is actually the fourth in a series about the sword-wielding guy in the lower corner of the cover illustration and that the Black Amazon is (thus far in my reading) somewhat disappointingly not the hero of the story, instead being a warlord and conquest-minded adversary for the actual protagonist. And while looking into whether or not I should read the rest of the series, I found it interesting that on every vintage pulp cover and in every magazine illustration or later reprint book that depicts the hero, John Eric Stark by name, well into the 1970's, he was never once illustrated as he was described. In the stories, due to his having grown up in the weird environmental conditions of a colonized Mercury, his skin is dark, described as almost ebony black, though ethnically he is of European Earth descent. Apparently, in those days it did not matter that he was not a negro, but he was close enough for rock and roll, and depicting a hero with black skin was just never gonna happen during the era between Pat Boone and the advent of Shaft. To the best of my knowledge, it was not until the '70's and '80's that sci-fi prose started featuring POC's as characters at all, let alone as heroes. 

Just one example of the illustrational white-a-tizing of the Stark character. (art by comics legend Jim Steranko) 

The more recent printings of Brackett's Stark stories, however, get his coloration right.

                                                         John Eric Stark, back and black.

Anyway, I was so enthralled by that old cover — an early example of media that fed directly into my adolescent fetish for strong, fierce females in armor —, I used to draw my own comics of what her adventures on Mars would be (comics that, if they still exist, are secreted away somewhere in my mother's files), and I may start sketching her again, though I will not adhere to the description in the novella. There she is described in more realistic and practical armor and a cloak, as she leads a nomadic tribe of brigands who survive in the snowy wastes in the upper northern regions of the planet, and it's clear that Brackett was pretty much dropping hostile Bedouins into the cold, so they had to wear gear that made sense for that environment. The version drew at age 11 looked a lot like the one in the vintage cover illustration, but drawing her today I would make the design of her armor a tad more modern/sleek and, since it's sci-fi/fantasy, I might add pauldrons to the shoulders which a modern illustrator of the bland, too-slick vintage-inspired cover did, to an effect that renders the figure stiff and un-dynamic, and maybe make her boots more like those of Wonder Woman in the movies, complete with greaves, but with visually obvious cushioned soles for the environment.

The modernized version of the classic illustration. Looking like something that would be found emblazoned on the side of a bitchin' van, this bears none of the dynamism and gestural character of its 1951 template.

That said, back to reading.

ME LITTLE DROOGIE

 A few years back, a kind friend who'd received a sudden windfall via a job promotion decided to surprise me with this high-end collector's doll of Alex from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. I had wanted one, but its price of over $200 made it too rich for my blood. Anyway, I now have one, and it is lovely. That said, it will remain in its packaging until I live in a home where I have more space to properly display such treasures. 

Here's the doll, from box and packaging to posing on my kitchen counter top with accessories, the kitchen items serving to provide scale

Barbie's new boyfriend...NOT.

I wonder if one of the companies that makes assorted props and furniture for such high-end figures makes the naked lady tables from the Korova Milk Bar? If so, I must get one for Alex...

OF MUSICAL BONDAGE

A friend just asked me for my list if the Top 10 James Bond songs, so here is my opinion, and I urge you to give each a listen:

1. Thunderball (Tom Jones) My favorite, for its summation of Bond himself in its lyrics. That and Jones belting it out like his life depended on it. This is the one that I break out on the rare occasions when I got to karaoke.
2. Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow) I love the mournful quality of this one, and I cannot restrain myself from wailing along with the chorus. (Yes, I can hit the notes.)
3. You Only Live Twice (Nancy Sinatra) Evocative and haunting, the perfect theme for Bond's adventure in Japan.
4. Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey) Brassy and bombastic, this is perhaps the definitive Bond theme tune, though over the course of almost sixty years it has become something of a self-parody. A classic nonetheless.
5. A View To A Kill (Duran Duran) An absolute banger and arguably the best thing about the movie. The instrumental version on the B-side of the single also slaps.
6. You Know My Name (Chris Cornell) Fraught with tension, the perfect theme tune with which to reboot the franchise.
7. Where Has Everybody Gone (Pretenders) The oft-overlooked song heard during the end credits of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, this should have been the lead song rather than that piece of shit titular number by one-hit wonder a-ha.
8. Skyfall (Adele) They had me at Adele, but her gift for heartbreaking vocals lends itself perfectly to one of the more somber entries in the series, especially considering some of the events in the story.
9. Kingston Calypso (Byron Lee and The Dragonaires) One of the many evocative Jamaican numbers from the first Bond outing.
10. We Have All The Time In The World (Louis Armstrong) If you have seen ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, you know why this made the roster.

 

OBI-WAN KENOBI (2022) or "Here We Go Yet Again..."

 

I can practically smell the patchouli.

Disney STAR WARS continues to treat the franchise like a Play-Doh Fun Factory, with OBI-WAN KENOBI being its latest cranked-out product. Kenobi was my favorite character in the original film, and Ewan McGregor did a good job bringing his younger iteration to life in the prequel trilogy, but now Kenobi is back in what amounts to a pronounced case of ROGUE ONE syndrome, basically yet another prequel that tragically shows how creatively bankrupt those holding the reins are.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Obi-Wan Kenobi, now a hermit in the wastes of Tattooine, is called out of seclusion to rescue a kidnapped Princess Leia (age 10). We already know the guy hermited himself for something like 20 years, until once more called back to action, and by all accounts he kept the lowest of low profiles, with adventure not being a part of his lifestyle at that time. The current story sees agents of the Empire ruthlessly scouring the galaxy in search of disparate Jedi to stamp out once and for all in the wake of Order 66, so Kenobi works as what amounts to a sushi processor on Tattooine.

I watched the first two chapters and it's all well-realized, but once more it is nothing but a feast of 'Memberberries with little else to offer other than immersive production values. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the STAR WARS galaxy is vast, the very definition of "far-flung," but we keep getting the same locations and situations and, frankly, I am quite sick of it. Though not bad by any means, OBI-WAN KENOBI did not excite me in the least, and when Episode 2 ended, I felt like I watched it for no reason other than to comment on it. It was just kind of...there. Honestly, I could bail now and feel that my life would be in no way diminished by not continuing. I may wait and allow a bit more to accrue before I continue, but I could also easily just walk away. I mean, what's Kenobi, a space wizard, if he has to keep his lightsaber and Force skills hidden? I'll tell you what. A bum.

This is no THE MANDALORIAN. Your mileage, however, may vary.

MAY 25th, 1977: KICKED IN THE ASS BY THE FORCE

NOTE: This piece was originally published here ten years ago, on what was then the 30th anniversary. I re-post it in honor of the 45th.

Remember when you were a little kid and your folks took you to the movies for the first time? I can’t speak for everyone else out there, but I still have clear memories of the first movie I saw in the theater, namely a now obscure animated feature called GULLIVER’S TRAVELS BEYOND THE MOON. I didn’t know at the time that it was a dubbed Japanese import, but I will never forget the feeling of having the movie theater’s Stygian blackness envelop me and remove me from the mundane world, placing me firmly in the fantasy world the flickered onscreen. The largeness of the space only accentuated my own three-year-old smallness in that big, cushioned seat, and being utterly sucked in by the storytelling made me feel a sense of magic and wonder unique to the movies for the first time in my life. For me, going to the movies was that most special of treats, and having proven to my parents that I could be well-behaved and sit spellbound, I went to a hell of a lot of flicks in those pre-VCR days, even attractions that were distinctly not for kids (THE GODFATHER and SERPICO immediately spring to mind). 

My first favorite film was the lavish live action Disney version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (one of many influences that lead me to think of becoming a marine biologist, a field that I did not end up pursuing, but still study as an amateur to this day), eclipsed five years later by JAWS, and, yes, all those stories that you’ve heard about how it literally scared people off out of the oceans for years are absolutely the gospel truth (my mom tells me that after seeing Hitchcock’s PSYCHO in 1960 she was too terrified to take a shower if no one else was in the house for quite some time). Such was the power of cinema in the days before “films by committee.” But no movie-going experience before or since has utterly shaken me to the core as both a film fan and a human being as seeing the original STAR WARS on opening night in May of 1977, an event that occurred quite by accident. 

My father had recently moved back to the New York area after nearly two years near Washington, D.C. (where I had visited him during the Bicentennial and we had seen the legendary INFRA-MAN as a first-run movie), and in one of our many vain attempts to foster any kind of real parent/child relationship we drove into Manhattan one evening, intent on seeing Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL. When we arrived in the city, we were dismayed to find that every theater that had the movie was sold out for all shows that night and we were simply shit out of luck. We wandered about Times Square for some time, trying to figure out what to do next, when my dad spotted a movie poster outside the Astor Plaza for some film called STAR WARS. There were no people on line for it, and neither one of us was surprised by that since we’d never heard word one about it. Lacking anything better to do, my dad looked at me and said, “You want to give this a shot?” I said, “Why not?” and we entered the nearly deserted foyer. Once popcorn and sodas had been obtained, we took our seats among the roughly eighty people in the place. Soon the lights dimmed and we readied our selves for what would probably be another cheesy sci-fi potboiler (my parents may not have agreed on much, but neither of them ever forgave me for dragging them to see the horrendous Italian borefest WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS). Assorted trailers came and went, and then the familiar signature tune and logo of 20th Century Fox pictures lit up the screen. Then the audio abruptly went silent and the screen went black, save for tiny blue letters that read, “A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away…” 

Then BAM! 

A blaring musical sting exploded out of the speakers, swiftly cohering into a lush orchestral arrangement, as the camera pulled back on a massive star field to reveal the words “Star Wars.” 

As the title faded further into the distance, a text crawl like those found in the old Flash Gordon serial chapter plays that my father loved during his youth set the scene for the audience. Then a multi-engined spacecraft hauled ass over the camera, firing blast after blast behind it, clearly in an attempt to shake off some pursuing menace. As the embattled cruiser flew into the horizon, the pointed white tip of an obviously bigger vessel loomed into view, itself returning volley after volley at its fleeing prey. And the huge, wedge-shaped ship loomed further onto the screen, giving a clue as to its massive scale. And it kept coming. 

And coming. 

And coming. 

How fucking big was the damned thing??? 

With hugeness like that on display, all I could think of was that this is what a space opera helmed by Cecil B. DeMille would have looked like. And my initial perception was not far from the mark at all; the audience was dropped smack dab into a fully- realized universe of space fantasy, dripping with all manner of indescribable aliens, creatures, robots, spaceships, heroes — both competent and otherwise — lightsaber-wielding warriors, mind-boggling state-of-the-art visual effects, and an asthmatic black-clad villain whose helmet made his head look like a big cock. All of which got capped off with the most spectacular space battle ever seen on film up to that time. In short, everything a lad just a month short of his twelfth birthday would want to see, with the exception of some luscious boobies (which we kinda got anyway since Princess Leia was obviously unencumbered during her stay on the Death Star, especially when she was soaking wet in the trash compactor). When the credits rolled, the entire audience stood and cheered like zealots at a revival meeting. 

Without knowing it, we had become the first generation of STAR WARS cultists. 

Upon reaching the outer lobby I purchased the movie program and pored over every minute detail of the photos that would soon become familiar across the globe, and as my dad and I drove back to his apartment in White Plains neither of us said a word. We were both simply too stunned by the experience. When I returned to school in Westport that Monday, I ranted and raved like a religious fanatic about STAR WARS, and my sixth grade schoolmates looked at me as though they were witnessing my utter mental breakdown. The saddest part was that there was no way for my wild tales to be proven until the film opened in town, something that didn’t happen for another month since this was the days long before multiplexes and saturation openings. But in the end I was proven right, and all of my adolescent contemporaries fell under the spell of STAR WARS and “drank the Kool Aid,” so to speak. 

And the rest was history. 

That’s my story, but please write in with your tale of seeing STAR WARS for the first time, especially if you saw it when it came out. It’s kind of hard to communicate what a kick in the ass that movie gave to the general public at the time, especially when trying to get it across to this current generation who are victims of George Lucas’ — and most of Hollywood’s, for that matter — creative bankruptcy.

DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING

Today's dialysis got off to a late start, thereby guaranteeing my session would not end until late. That sucks for a number of reasons, but the later the ride home begins, the greater the likelihood of being hampered by schools letting out and my car being stuck behind school buses. My session ended at 2pm, so I went down and got into my car, only to be told I was yet again stuck with a double-pickup. I sat in the car for a half hour before calling the dispatcher to complain, and was told that the guy was on his way down. He was a 20-something African guy who was clearly absorbed in whatever he was watching on his phone. He finally got into the back with me and the car took off, and the guy remained riveted by whatever the hell he was watching. I was admittedly in a bit of a mood, but I was curious to know what was so engrossing. I sneaked a side-eye and noted it was anime. It looked familiar, and then I recognized what held his attention so firmly. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All was immediately forgiven

IS THE MCU MAKING ME GAY?

Regarding Chris Hemsworth's god bod in THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER... 

Jee. Zuss. CHRIST.

I wwas on Team Evans for years, but this... Lawd hammercy...

SERIOUSLY???

 

Christoper Neame as... Oh, read it for yourself...

During today's dialysis session I watched DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972). Considered by many to be the weakest of Hammer's Dracula flicks, I didn't hate it and it's far from my least favorite of the run. That said, it's really, REALLY stupid and moving the setting out of the Carpathian mountains in the 1800's to Chelsea as the "Cool Britannia" era was on its last legs just does not work. Also, it includes as a secondary bad guy who sets the plot in motion, a modern Dracula cultist named "Johnny Alucard?" SERIOUSLY??? Gee, I wonder if he could be evil? (massive eyeroll)

 

Johnny. Fucking. ALUCARD. And the fact that Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) didn't instantly go "'Alucard,' my ass..." was just insulting to the intelligence of everyone everywhere ever.

 

Oh, go fuck yourself, screenwriter!

DELECTABLE WEREWOLF CHOW.

 May 1957 PLAYBOY Playmate Dawn Richard, forever burned into my memory as the high school girl who meets her horrifying fate at the hands of Michael Landon's adolescent wolfman in I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957). I saw that film when I was six, the first werewolf movie I ever saw, and her upside down POV of the slavering monster is one of my favorite shots in all of horror cinema.

AN OBSERVATION WHILE GETTING A HEAD START ON THINGS

While getting a head start on refreshers for this year's upcoming run of essays for October's annual 31 DAYS OF HORROR run, last night I as through DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966) for the first time in over four decades, and I have to ask this: 

If you were a British tourist in the Carpathian mountains in the late 19th Century and were vehemently warned by all of the locals to avoid the ominous castle in the distance, a place that does not exist on your map of the area but there it is nonetheless, would you still insist on going there? And when you got there and found the table set for dinner as though they were expecting you and your companions, and you were attended to by this savory-looking dude, would you stick around? 

Before the night is through, one of your number is stabbed in the back, hung upside down over the open grave of an arch-vampire, and his throat slashed so his showering blood could revivify said undead suckface's remains, followed by the vampire putting the bite on the guy's wife, thus transforming her into one of the legion of the damned. 

Seriously, even by horror movie standards, the hapless tourists in this story are among the all-time stupidest in cinema history. I was actually rooting for Dracula to get all of them and do the rest of the world a favor.

AN INTERESTING BIT OF VINTAGE BAT-TRIVIA

 

 

Richard Widmark as Tommy Yudo, cinema's first version of the Joker (sort of).

Just found out that Richard Widmark's performance as his Tommy Udo character in the classic KISS OF DEATH (1947) was modeled after the 1940's original iteration of the Joker, and being familiar with the Joker of the comic's first couple of years, I totally see it. Widmark was reportedly a fan of Batman comics, so there you go. Even crazier, when Frank Gorshin essayed his legendary manic turn as the Riddler on the 1966-1968 BATMAN television series, borrowed (and exaggerated) his famous giggle from Widmark's Tommy Udo.

PROTO-BARBARA EDEN, or "I Cream On Jeannie"

Oh, the things one discovers in a roundabout way...

While chatting with my buddy Johnny Braccioli, who's three years my junior, and discussing the Chinese houseboy stereotype in movies and TV of yore, I cited the now-forgotten William Forsythe sitcom BACHELOR FATHER (1957-1962), a show that was pretty much gone from syndication by the time I was an under-10, so Johnny had never even heard heard of it. I went to YouTube to find examples of the show's houseboy, Peter (played by Sammee Tong), and in doing so I stumbled across a 1957 episode entitled "Bentley and the Revolving Housekeepers." It's of note because it features a bit with 26-year-old Barbara Eden, eight years before her iconic role as Jeannie in I DREAM OF JEANNIE, and yes, she was already rocking her thermonuclear sex appeal for all it was worth.

In a one-shot guest role, Eden plays Patricia, protagonist Bentley's hot fiancee who's coning over for a hot date, only for his image of her to be dashed by his newly-hired spinster housekeeper, a presence brought in to provide a supposedly much-needed female influence on Bentley's adopted adolescent niece (much to the chagrin of houseboy Peter). The new housekeeper, who enforces a regime of healthy (bland) meals, no drinking, and no poker for money, knew Patricia when she was a child, and when smokin' hot Patricia arrives, the housekeeper keeps bringing up what a cute child she was, and then derails the Bentley's hot date by monopolizing Patricia's attention and reminiscing with her for hours while our hero falls asleep. When Bentley wakes up and the housekeeper finally — FINALLY — goes to bed, Patricia sexily entices our hero to sit with her on the couch. Unfortunately, the housekeeper's talk of Patricia as a child has cemented that image in Bentley's head, so now he only perceives her as a little girl, complete with curls, sailor dress, and a lollipop, thus killing Bentley's boner utterly.

 

26-year-old Barbara Eden as "little" Patricia, working that lollipop.

Let me tell you, no one could flash seductive eyes while suggestively licking a lollipop like Barbara Eden, even if she is dressed as a moppet (which lends a disturbing undercurrent to the gag when seen some 64 year later). 

 

 

That signature Barbara Eden "come hither" look, disturbingly superimposed with Shirley Temple cosplay. Nowadays, a gag like this would immediately be pilloried for being "problematic." Nonetheless, in context it's pretty damned funny.

 

Let us not forget that her original take on Jeannie was considerably toned down after  the balck-and-white first season of I DREAM OF JEANNIE, as early Jeannie was unabashedly horny as hell and pretty much a live-action PLAYBOY cartoon. Once that show caught on with kids, especially my generation's little girls, the super-overt sexualization of Jeannie was relegated to the back closet of outmoded Golden Age teevee. 

 

Though rerun all the time when I was a kid, the black-and-white episodes of I DREAM OF JEANNIE were seldom seen, at least that's how it was for the East Coast's Tri-State area, and the only first season episode that I clearly remember seeing was the one that introduced Jeannie and set up the whole series from there. Myself and the rest of my peers mostly absorbed the subsequent color seasons, and that's what most of us remember. Then came the wave of colorization of many classic TV sitcoms, and I DREAM OF JEANNIE got the treatment fairly late in the game, which worked for its benefit because by that time the colorization process was digital and largely seamless. It was thus that I finally saw several first season episodes and finally got Barbara Eden's appeal as an utter sex bomb. Part of the fun of Eden was that she was acutely aware of her own sexiness, and she worked it to great effect in both comedies and dramatic roles, but it was most effective when she worked her seductive talents for laughs. She was always possessed of a devilish smile that was bolstered by those eyes — good lord, those eyes — so when she was fully unleashed in unexpurgated form during I DREAM OF JEANNIE, strutting around Major Nelson's house in naught but a men's shirt, a classic wank fantasy was born. And now I've unearthed what may have been its (now problematic) genesis.

You may now retire for some quality "alone time."

AN UNEXPECTED TREAT/HONOR

 An unexpected treat:

When I got home from dialysis, I found a mysterious package at my door. Upon opening it I found this coffee table book that collects every issue of COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN and includes an all-star tribute to the late, great Jack Abel (whom I worked with at Marvel and whom I watched die on the Bullpen's floor). Among those tributes is a page drawn by yours truly (with a rather unsteady brush pen), and I was unexpectedly honored by it being placed opposite a page drawn by MAD legend Sergio Aragones. 

 

My drunken art next to a piece by one of the all-time masters. Never in a million years would I have imagined such a happenstance. I am delighted, and I consider this a highlight of my life and career.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION Part 1 (2021)

The Masters of the Universe are back, for a new generation, and led by Teela. (Sorry, He-Man boosters.)

After hearing a lot of the complaining from lifelong He-Man fans, I decided to watch MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION to see what all the fuss was about. I figured I'd get the idea with just Episode 1, but I ended up quite invested and watched all five episodes. It was really good, and if He-Man had previously been anything like this iteration, I would have been down with it back in the days.

That said, I can see why the He-Man fan base hates it. Unlike the '80's original, it actually has an involving story, rich characterization, an all-star voice cast that nails it, and it's not exactly the same bland, actionless shit repeated ad infinitum. And if you showed up for He-Man as the protagonist, he's hardly in in it, which to me is only an improvement. He was always a nothing character, so why not shift the spotlight? That's exactly what they did, in essence making this "The Teela Show," which opened the doors for giving the rest of the cast actual characterization that was more than one-note. Hell, it even makes Orko awesome. (Yes, you read that right.)

 

So I say ignore the whining of incel man-babies who can't handle a female lead. It's a fun sci-fi/fantasy series that thankfully skews older than the original, and this five-episode Part 1 leaves off with a good number of questions to answer and situations to resolve, so I eagerly await the continuation. I just hope that the showrunners stick to their vision of the show and don't cave to its detractors. Seriously, it's good, simple fun done very, very well. Far better than the original ever was.

MY BATMAN DAY 2020 TRIBUTE

 

AFTER 48 YEARS...MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!

The "bears" from THE OUTER LIMITS (1963-1965).

When one's bear trap memory finally comes through: While listening to a YouTube critic expound on his favorite James Bond soundtracks, I searched Amazon for expanded CD editions of the Bond albums I've had on vinyl since I was a fledgling collector (age 9), as the vinyls did not feature all of the music used in the individual scores. During the search I stumbled across the 1966 soundtrack to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, and I was reminded of a vintage promotional single I have that features the famous theme tune and an unnamed instrumental on the B-Side. I sampled each album track and finally discovered that the unnamed B-side was entitled "Jim On the Move," but, curious to hear what the other tracks might yield, I tested the entire album. In doing so I quite unexpectedly ended a music search that has taken me nearly fifty years to complete.

Between the ages of six months and just two weeks before turning seven, my formative years were spent in South San Francisco, where I was first exposed to much of the movies and TV that shaped my tastes, and it was there that I discovered the original THE OUTER LIMITS at a very tender age. I don't recall the number of the independent station that it used to run on in repeats — possibly Channel 44? — but I never forgot its commercial for the show's reruns. It was a nicely-edited black & white montage of assorted monsters and aliens— or "bears," as they were referred to behind the scenes when the series was in active production — so my attention was guaranteed, set to a memorable instrumental tune that has been stuck in my head for 48 years. I tried to find out what that tune was via whatever research means were available, but not even the advent of the internet yielded an answer. Until just now.

When sampling the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE soundtrack, the available snippet that set off my memory alarms to red alert was from a piece appropriately entitled "Mission Accomplished," but while I recognized the snippet, it was not the specific hook that had haunted me for so long, so I looked on YouTube for the exact item. Sure enough, "Mission Accomplished" was EXACTLY that long-sought-after instrumental. Do any of you other Bay Area kids of my age remember this tune?