FUN WITH CAPTIONS!!!

From the Japanese preview run of SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK.

A VAULT RERUN-HOLY SHIT: DECEPTION OF A GENERATION

I just got my grubby mitts on "Deception of a Generation," an unintentionally hilarious Christian scare show from the mid-1980's, and believe me when I say it simply has to be seen to be believed. It was part of a series of exposés on such threats to good Christian values as rock 'n' roll, marijuana and Dungeons & Dragons, only this time around the focus was on the Satanic influences found in media directed at children, all apparently part of a concerted effort to indoctrinate unwitting kiddies into the ways of sorcery and acceptance of alternative lifestyles.

An installment in the Eagle's Nest Ministries' video series, "Deception of a Generation" is hosted by Gary Greenwald, an earnest Bible-thumper whose outraged conviction is matched only by the sheer lunacy of the claims made by his guest, fellow Christian Phil Phillips, whose hair looks like it was crafted from polystyrene, an aspect that when coupled with his disturbingly childlike face makes him look like a live-action, grownup version of Davey Hansen from the old Christian claymation TV series DAVEY AND GOLIATH.

Phil Phillips: what happened to Davey when Goliath inevitably died.

Phillips recounts that during his ministering God spoke to him and ordered him to go on a fast; this fast went on for some two weeks, and during the course of it Phillips wandered into a toy store and was appalled by the "occultic" items being purveyed to children in the supposedly harmless guise of toys linked to syndicated cartoon shows. Bearing witness to a perceived Apocalypse in Toys "R" Us, Phillips launched wholeheartedly into a crusade to make parents aware that the insidious influence of "new age" and other demonic forces had entered their households via daily cartoon shows, shows he was convinced were intentionally "programming kids to evil," "transforming their minds" and leading children to worship TV characters when they should be worshipping God. This crusade unearthed many points of interest and import that opened my eyes to the following:

• Scooby-Doo cartoons promote the "occultic" and glamorize such things as amulets (as worn by fey magician types voiced by Vincent Price), spell-casting and "dark and evil realms."
• Steven Spielberg's E.T. was actually a Satanic message disguised as a childrens' movie; the message was, apparently, that E.T.'s healing powers and levitation ability were meant to confuse children and make them think Jesus was an alien.
• HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, both the toys and the cartoon show, were designed to place "occultic" objects (the toys) into the hands of youngsters and instruct them in the art of spellcasting and the worship of pagan idols and symbology (how-to lessons being found on the TV series). He-Man's transformative cry of "By the power of Grayskull!" is seen as the first of many incantations children learn and imitate by watching the cartoon, a learned behavior that opens the door to outright witchery and the belief — allegedly stated by a little boy after a Sunday school class — that "God isn't the real master of the universe and that He-Man is more powerful than Jesus."

Gary Greenwald demonstrates the obviously Satanic influence of the Snake Mountain playset, hilariously howling "SKELETOOOOOOR!!!" into the "voice-changing" snake microphone. (I don't know about what you think, but this looks to me like some acidheads poured multi-colored candle wax over a Mousetrap game.)

• The THUNDERCATS series promotes paganism thanks to its protagonists being human/animal hybrids, a la the deities of many ancient religions, as well as being extra-Satanic because of their use of the martial arts, practices rooted in Eastern philosophy. Hero Lion-O also talks to the spirit of his dead father (necromancy). Also, the villain Mum-Ra's name is an undisguised shoutout to Ra, the Egyptian sun god.
  
• Superman promotes necromancy because he also communicates with his deceased parents (the fact that they're interactive holograms and not actual spirits appears to make no difference).
  
• THE SMURFS was actually designed to get kids to think that an entirely homosexual community is okay and the reason the Smurfs are all blue is due to them being symbolic representations of the spirits of the dead (read "demonic"), essentially meaning that the Smurf society is in actuality a pack of dead queers. And, contrary to her actual origin, Smurfette was actually a male Smurf transformed into a female, thereby being unnatural as a motherfucker (apparently the state of being three inches tall and bright blue wasn't much of an issue).
• SHE-RA openly promotes witchcraft and spellcasting, as well as her name being an intentional shoutout to Ra, the Egyptian sun god. She also dresses way too seductively to be appropriate for little girls.
  
• MY LITTLE PONY seems cute and all rainbowy and shit, but it's actually a unicorn, an obvious and quite phallic pagan symbol.
• The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS cartoon actively features Satan himself as a main character (despite the character being named Venger and clearly described as a sorcerer), supported by all manner of demons and evil spirits.
• TRANSFORMERS regularly depicted characters being violently shot and killed (something the show's creators apparently thought they could get away with if the characters were all robots, but apparently not).
• The original STAR WARS trilogy actively promotes paganism and Zen Buddhism, and the Force is actually a demonic power that the Jedi tap into. And, in case you didn't know, STAR WARS is extra-offensive because black-clad bad guy Darth Vader was "intentionally designed to look like Odin," the chief of the Norse gods.

Darth Vader, lapsed Jedi and lord of the Sith...

...and Odin, chief of the Norse gods. The similarities are staggering!

• The SECTAURS toy and cartoon series invoke winged horrors as depicted in the Book of Revalations.
• VOLTRON, specifically the five lions version, is apparently Satanic.

There's a ton more of such info in this fully-loaded hour and a half — including an incredible tale of a family whose son became a balls-out delinquent thanks to getting into Dungeons & Dragons, and when his parents threw his gaming dice into the roaring fireplace the dice reportedly screamed as the evil spirits within them were cleansed by fire — and at the same time that the wild and totally unsubstantiated claims made by Phil Phillips are occasionally laugh-out-loud ridiculous, it's also rather saddening to see both Phillips and Greenwald being thoroughly convinced that this stuff is 100% on the money, sharing these imbecilic beliefs with the general public and consequently coming off like they're both bullmoose insane. I'm absolutely certain that they were both well-intentioned, but, ironically, it's long been said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and if that's the case these two have much to think about.

That said, this DVD — actually a somewhat ratty VHS tape transfer — was worth every cent I paid for it, and could cause death-by-laughter if the person or persons watching it are stoned/drunk enough, so TRUST YER BUNCHE and proceed with caution.

A VAULT RERUN-BACK IN THE DAYS: THE SAGA OF "CHICKEN SLAVE"

When I left home to find fame and fortune after college I ended up sharing a foldout bed with my buddy Jared for eight months in an apartment in the remote area of Brooklyn known as Flatlands. The building was a house owned by the father of Dave, one of the residents, and his dad had no clue whatsoever that there were two tenants living there other than his son and the legitimate roommates, John and Eddie. In fact, when Dave mentioned in passing to his dad that a big Black guy was living on the couch, his father said something to the effect of, “Yeah, sure there is. Whaddaya take me for, a schmuck?” Anyway, the five of us lived the swingin’ bachelor life in all its squalid glory, and our existence was enriched by the presence of Dave’s pet bird, a sweet little parakeet named Chicken, or rather he was known as Chicken until Eddie re-dubbed him “Chicken Slave” in honor of lurid gay porn novels with titles along the lines of TEA ROOM CHICKEN SLAVE and CHICKEN SLAVE RIDES A COCKED THUMB.

Not Chicken Slave, but an amazing lookalike.

This teeny bird was an upstanding example of domesticated aviform life, and his cute little songs brightened up the day. We’d often let him out of his cage so he could fly about the flat and get some exercise, but sometimes he would aggressively resist being returned to his gilded enclosure and would zoom around the place like a kamikaze pilot on Benzedrine. There was one such incident when it fell upon me to apprehend him and the little sod eluded my lumbering ass with ease for nearly a half hour, and then I hit upon the brilliant idea of using a deep saucepot to try and scoop him out of the air. After another twenty minutes of interpretive dancing over furniture and bouncing off of walls, the proper angle presented itself and Chicken Slave flew straight into the saucepan with a loud “THUNK!” As loose feathers festooned the dining room, it resembled what I’d imagine a goose down pillow would like after somebody tossed a lit M-80 into it. I reached into the pot and grabbed Chicken Slave — who was quite unharmed, just stunned — and as I put him back into his cage I could have sworn I heard a heard a chirpy little voice say in fluent Brooklynese, “What the fuck just happened?”

My roommates and I soon realized what a bad idea letting the bird fly around was when Eddie decided to include Chicken Slave in his maniacal idea of “playtime.” You see, Eddie has a restless mind, much like that of a bored eight-year-old, and he will create fun for himself out of whatever materials are at hand, and to Hell with the laws of God or man.

Eddie, the scourge of birds smaller than himself.

For example, there was the game of “Chicken in a pillowcase,” wherein Eddie would grab Chicken Slave (who was innocently minding his own business, reading his latest issue of KERRANG) and drop him into a pillowcase. After a few moments of loudly chirped protest, Eddie would lower the opening of the pillowcase so Chicken Slave could see a way out, and as he would gear up to escape Eddie would close the pillowcase again. So it would go until Eddie got bored, or until Dave yelled at him and rescued his pet.

A variation on “Chicken in a pillowcase” was “Chicken in the coffee table,” in which Eddie would place Chicken Slave inside a shelf in the living room’s hideous coffee table and close the shelf door. This door had a latticework front that Chicken Slave could actually fit through, but when he tried to get out Eddie would block his exit with his hand. Again, this would go on until he got bored or the bird got rescued.

But Chicken Slave’s day-to-day grind was not all fiendish James Bondian death traps; John smoked heavily back in those days, and as a consequence his brown fingers reeked of nicotine, a smell that apparently gives parakeets the Horn, and when Chicken Slave would perch on John’s hand he would catch a whiff and then he’d start to fuck John’s finger. His tiny talons would anchor his violently convulsing body, and after about a minute of Herculean effort he’d cum (spelled this way because it’s dirtier) all over John’s hand, an act that never failed to crack John up. Needless to say, that bird was fiercely loyal to John.

Yet such moments of innocent dalliance were short-lived, thanks to Eddie inventing a new game to play, namely “WWII Fighter Pilot.” For this diversion Eddie would assume the persona of a fighter plane, arms outstretched to simulate wings, voicing the sound effect “Nyeeeeeeeeeooooooow” and slowly circling the apartment in search of aircraft that encroached on his territory. In other words, Chicken Slave.

“WWII Fighter Pilot” was by far the least oppressive of Eddie’s scenarios, having no actual physical contact with the parakeet and actually allowing Chicken Slave to practice his flight skills in both senses of the word, so Eddie would run around like a noisy idiot and the bird would evade him. That was all well and good until the day when somebody left the kitchen window open and Eddie chased Chicken Slave right out into the friendly skies of Flatlands, never to be seen again. Legend has it that as the wee budgie fucked off toward the unknown, a small, chirpy voice was heard to exclaim, “Oh, fuck this shit! I’m outta here!”

I just hope he wasn’t eaten by a red-tailed hawk or one of our obnoxious neighbors.

THE SIMPLE FACT OF THE MATTER

Hey gang-

Just a note to tell you that I have just not been feeling my moxie lately. Got a lot on my mind as the holidays approach and I remain jobless, my search for employment yielding fuck all, and I'm feeling financially trapped in a corner. Sure, there have been moments of happiness of late, but overall I'm just rather down and have not felt much like writing, consequently running reruns rather than new stuff. As promised in previous updates, I do have stuff to write about, but I'm just not in a creative place right now. Please bear with me. I'll be back soon.

-Yer Bunche (emotionally pooped)

"A FISTFUL OF LASAGNA"

MAD magazine has been this nation's leading provider of movie parodies for over five decades and the vast majority of their satires of well-known films have been reprinted countless times in special magazine editions and collected book editions. However, for some unknown reason one of my all-time favorites among this humor sub-genre has as far as I know never been reprinted, and that makes no sense because it features art by Jack Davis, one of the great MAD artists, turning loose his gift for depicting outrageous violence and mayhem to hilarious effect. The piece in question sets its sights on the once-popular "spaghetti western" genre of the 1960's and early 1970's, a wave of films that helped catapult Clint Eastwood to iconic status and were often critically lambasted for their escalating levels of graphic violence and sadism. That kind of thing was ripe for a lampoon and MAD provided that it MAD SPECIAL #4 (1971) with "A Fistful of Lasagna," and here it is for your perusal and amusement. Just double-click on each page to enlarge.

And just to cover my ass, the material presented here is owned by MAD magazine and no infringement of copyright is intended, and it is presented here strictly for reasons of showcasing a fun piece of work. All due respect is given without reservation!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS!!!

(Art by Loopydave)

THE BLACKEST DAY OF MY LIFE

The blaxploitation flicks of the 1970's had a tremendous impact on me and many kids of my generation, bringing truly kickass black heroes to the screen for the first time (Herb Jeffries was a pioneer, but his era did not allow for cussing, nudity, or graphic violence). It was a glorious time that unleashed upon the screen a dynasty of ebony demi-gods, both male and female, who could out-fight, out-fuck and outsmart any jive-ass turkey who had the temerity to fuck with them, and while many of these films and their stars were derided for allegedly providing a terrible example of blackness, those of us who dug the stuff dug it with a vengeance and still carry its standard with zeal.

To me, the Holy Trinity of blaxploitation actors are Richard Roundtree, who got the ball rolling as bad muthaSHUTCHOMOUF! John Shaft, Fred "the Hammer" Williamson, who gave his films a sense of cool and machismo only matched by Sean Connery's James Bond, and Jim Kelly, the huge-Afroed brutha who shared the screen with Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON and made me want to see a whole movie about his character, so there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to meet all three of these elder statesmen of Negrotude when they appeared on Friday at the Chiller Theatre Expo in Parsippany, New Jersey. Here is the photographic evidence of this disciple meeting the sacred elders, along with some examples of the work for those somehow shamefully unaware of their oeuvre. First up is me with Richard Roundtree, whose SHAFT hit the screens with seismic impact in 1970.

The "Tree" and me.

Even if you know nothing about the blaxploitation era, you know about SHAFT, if for no reason other than its now-classic and Oscar-winning score. Watch the trailer and if you say you don't know that music, you are a muthafukkin' liar.

Then there's Fred Williamson, who is so personable that he practically gives off superhero radiation.

"Boss Nigger" and Yer Bunche.

I like many of Fred's movies but I have a special place in my heart for BOSS NIGGER (1975), a western that I often describe as BLAZING SADDLES if it weren't a comedy. I'll never forget watching TV at age ten and seeing the ad for it, which featured the theme song heard in the embedded trailer.


When my mom and I saw that, I was stunned and asked "Can they say that on TV?!!?" Having grown up in the deep south during the pre-Civil Rights era, my mom was utterly appalled and tut-tutted the "sorry state" of American blacks, which made me realize the film was likely worth checking out. I did not get the opportunity to see BOSS NIGGER until about two years ago, when it finally came out on DVD under the utterly neutered title of simply BOSS.

Last and definitely not least is Jim Kelly, the celeb who helped spark my interest in learning the martial arts and also growing my 'fro to proportions that almost gave it its own gravitational field. It says a lot that Kelly could be as cool as Bruce Lee in what many consider to be Lee's magnum opus, and he simply looked amazing when kicking ass in that yellow gi.

When I met Jim Kelly, I was so flabbergasted that I almost could not speak.

Kelly made a number of films after ENTER THE DRAGON, most notably BLACK BELT JONES and THREE THE HARD WAY (both 1974), and when the blaxploitation era inevitably waned he became involved in professional tennis and continues to work as a coach.

And, being the autograph-hound that I am, I had to get personalized 8x10's of these titans of the late-20th Century.

A classic shot of Shaft in Times Square, circa 1971 (translation: "before it had its balls cut off).

As seen in the trailer, here's the moment of NYC charm in which Shaft informs an errant driver that he's "#1." When Roundtree saw this photo, he laughed out loud and exclaimed, "Now, here's one that you don't see every day."

It's shots like this that make me glad I'm a collector-geek who brings his own stuff to get signed at shows. Fred had some good pics available, but nothing from BOSS NIGGER.

When I handed this to him to sign, Jim Kelly perused it for a long time, noting that he hadn't seen this promo shot pretty much since ENTER THE DRAGON came out.

As you may have imagined, I was deep in a geekish man-crush heaven, and I would count Friday as the blackest day of my life. *SQUEE*

ZOMBO: CAN I EAT YOU, PLEASE? (2010)

Britain's venerable weekly sci-fi anthology comic 2000 AD has unleashed many memorable series and characters since its inception in 1977, but it's often been argued that its best years are behind it and it continues on solely based upon the strength of its past achievements and its status as a landmark in British comics publishing. For the most part I would agree with that assessment, but every now and then there appears a new strip that reminds me of what 2000 AD can be like when it's firing on all cylinders, and its most recent strip to place a huge, stupid grin on my face is ZOMBO, a welcome return to the mag's signature blend of compelling narrative, twisted humor, and serious lashings of the old ultra-violence.

Debuting in Prog #1632 (April, 2009), the series opens with an inter-planetary charter flight crash-landing on planet Chronos, an incredibly hostile and sentient "deathworld" that lures in hapless victims and where damned near everything on it is lethal to man. In other words, the planet knows exactly what it's doing and has fun doing it. The spacecraft's thirty-three passengers all survive the crash, but in literally no time the planet starts whittling their number down one by one in alarmingly gory and painful ways. Help comes in the unexpected form of Zombo, a decomposing super-zombie who is the ship's top secret cargo.

The survivors meet Zombo, the most polite flesh-eating undead guy you could hope to meet.

Once awakened and out of his container, Zombo is instructed by his government handlers to protect the survivors, and from that moment on it's a chapter-by-chapter festival of creative and beautifully-illustrated carnage, punctuated by Zombo's incongruous good manners and generally cheery attitude. Sure, he's a super-strong mouldering re-animated corpse, but he's also a self-described "good boy."

The second arc is "Zombo's 11," a gloriously ludicrous parody of the original OCEAN'S ELEVEN (1960), with side-splitting jabs at YouTube JACKASS-wannabes and AMERICAN IDOL thrown in to hysterical effect. To give away more would spoil the fun, so I'll just shut up now.

Zombo's first weekly cover appearance. (art by Henry Flint)

Written with considerable verve by Al Ewing (JUDGE DREDD), who seems to be having a ball doing it, and gorgeously drawn by Henry Flint, the cruelly-underrated illustrator of 2000 AD's SHAKARA (among other projects), ZOMBO is the most fun regular strip to appear in the magazine in ages and it cracks me the hell up. The only complaint I have about this collected volume of the series is that there's so little of it to be had, solely by virtue of its relative newness, but that works to the advantage of new readers who would otherwise have to slog through, in some cases, literally decades of JUDGE DREDD, STRONTIUM DOG, SLAINE, THE A.B.C. WARRIORS and several others to have even half a clue as to what the hell was going on. And, frankly, many of 2000 AD's cornerstone series started out strong and then majorly screwed the pooch, some continuing to run interminably when for ages there's been no good reason to continue them (yeah, I'm lookin' at you, SLAINE and THE A.B.C. WARRIORS!), so this is the perfect place to get in on the ground floor.

In short, ZOMBO: CAN I EAT YOU, PLEASE? is a thoroughly entertaining breath of fetid air and I wholeheartedly recommend picking up the collection, the first of what I hope will be many. Now, if only they'd put out CRADLEGRAVE in a collected edition...

A VAULT RERUN-A JAW-DROPPING TIME WARP BACK TO THE SEVENTIES: THE 1976 ABC PAUL LYNDE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

I can't believe I wrote this six years ago. How time flies...

Yesterday I got my hands on what amounts to a wrenching time warp gene-spliced with a memory-jogging roundhouse kick in the skull, and that item is a DVD of the 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special.

Holy fuckin’ Jesus…

If you are of an age that recalls the truly out-of-control excesses of the 1970’s occurring right around the time that you were either waging battles with rudely autonomous public hardons or your crotch hemorrhaging on a monthly basis while your nascent jubblies were first making themselves known, then you no doubt remember the loopy television of that era, television that reflected the “who gives a fuck?” vitality of that cocaine-fueled decade; TV fluff that literally was an opiate for the masses, granting us adolescents refuge from the steadily escalating rigmarole of leaving childhood behind. It seemed that after the cookie cutter, antiseptic fare of the 1950’s and the increasingly bizarre offerings of the 1960’s — to say nothing of the social upheavals that shook the US in both of those decades — network execs had an anything-goes attitude and approach to programming, no doubt spawned by massive consumption of booze and illicit recreational pharmaceuticals, and a veritable avalanche of cheese cornucopiaed its way out of our cathode ray altars.

The networks latched on to whatever was the current fad — disco (original flavor and the roller variety), CB radios and truckers, the kung fu boom, nostalgia for “the good old days,” sci-fi that was more action-oriented than cerebral, hot chicks with feathered hair and nipples as hard as your thumb — and quickly spewed it forth in a diluted fashion onto the airwaves. And then there were the “celebrities” who appeared on virtually every show under the sun, stars like Charo, Dick Gautier (remember him?), Charles Nelson Reilly, Ruth Buzzi, Joey Heatherton, Rich Little, John Byner, and the cultural criminals responsible for subjecting us to mime in primetime, Shields and Yarnell. The list is just as endless as it is riddled with mediocrity.

And the grand poobah of showing up on TV specials and guest starring all over the whole of creation was everyone’s favorite vicious alcoholic queen, the incomparable Paul Lynde.

Legendary throughout Hollywood for his downright sadistic wit and rampaging homosexuality (that was not, technically speaking, public knowledge but was as obvious as the dick on a bull elephant), Lynde gained a name for himself first as a stage actor and standup comedian, achieved TV immortality as the irrepressible and flaming Uncle Arthur on “Bewitched,” and reigned supreme as the resident snarkmeister on “The Hollywood Squares,” a show that he would tape after sucking down copious amounts of booze. It was widely agreed upon that Lynde was already a sharp-tongued S.O.B., but when he had a few drinks in him he became Josef Mengele (according to latter day raging Hollywood queen and bear, Bruce Villanch, who incidentally co-wrote the Halloween special), and nowhere was that more apparent than on “Squares,” a long-running gig that made Lynde rich and introduced us impressionable youngsters to rude, raunchy and hilarious gay humor that went as far as Lynde could get away with for the time; even today some of his quips would never have gotten past the watchdogs at Network Standards and Practices, especially after Janet Jackson so kindly treated us to an unwanted glimpse of her right dairy during an annual festival of man-on-man brutality and ads for Viagra and beer and the networks went into an Islamic-jihad-like frenzy of shielding the public from “indecent” material.

Needless to say, Lynde was extremely popular and, never too slow on the uptake when it came to potential ratings, the networks milked his catty groove for all it was worth and shoehorned him into any available showcase, no matter how ill-suited to his unique brand of bitchery. He appeared in an avalanche of absolute garbage that would have amounted to career seppuku for anyone else, but since he was savvy — and drunk — enough to be aware of just how lousy much of the TV gigs he got were, he rose (or sank) to the level of what he had to work with and became the shining yellow nugget of corn at the precipice of a mountain of shit. No line was too corny and no bit was too shameless for Paul Lynde, and he camped it up to such a degree that one had no conscious choice but to sit in front of the tube and stare like a drooling mongoloid.

Lynde’s 1976 Halloween special is nothing less than a spectacle of cosmic awfulness, something so mind-warping that you could no sooner turn away from it than you would turn away from witnessing the president holding a press conference and suddenly seeing him whip out his turkey neck of a pecker and actually piss out a surf board-riding Jesus Christ who was not only on fire but wearing assless leather chaps while screaming “Hey, kids! It’s the Second Coming!,” at which point Condaleeza Rice begins savagely masturbating on camera with a gravy-smothered leg of Kentucky Fried Chicken and singing “Old Man River.” It’s on a level with the infamous “Star Wars Holiday Special” but unlike that dead-in-the-water Hiroshima of the small screen, Lynde’s show at least has the decency of being mesmerizingly, entertainingly bad.

So just what is contained in the special that makes it so Christfuckingly bad? Here’s a play-by-play breakdown:

SCENE ONE- Paul Lynde is gaily mincing around his home in full Santa Claus drag and singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and decorating a Christmas tree when his housekeeper (Margaret Hamilton, best known as the Wicked Witch of the West in THE WIZARD OF OZ, and later Cora the Coffee Lady in Maxwell House adverts) shows up and lets him know that it ain’t Christmas. Lynde snippily dismisses her with a disdainfully sneered “Why don’t you go dust?” and the camera zooms in on his face as we see that he has just had a clever idea. Cut to Lynde starting the scene over again in an horrendous Easter Bunny outfit, singing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” (by this point during the original broadcast I would imagine that thousands of closets across the nation flung open with a sonic boom as many “sensitive and artistic” young men burst forth and said “fuck you” to a country that hates fags yet gobbles up entertainment created by gays like it was a really good batch of General Tso’s chicken, this particular special being a case in point), only to be clued in on the fact that it ain’t Easter. Lynde again gets an idea and suddenly we are treated to him in a Hugh Hefner-style red smoking jacket holding a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates while mangling “My Funny Valentine” and sitting on one of the ugliest couches in the entire history of furniture, even by the questionable standards of the mid-1970’s. Again, Hamilton shows up and finally clues him in to the fact that it’s Halloween amidst much allegedly witty dialogue. Then we get the announcer stating:

“It’s the Paul Lynde Halloween Special! Starring Paul Lynde! With Paul’s special guests Tim Conway! Roz “Pinky Tuscadero” Kelly! Margaret Hamilton! Billie Hayes! (NOTE: she is best known as Witchie-Poo from “H.R. Pufnstuff”) Billy Barty! (the legendary dwarf actor) And special guest star Florence Henderson! A special appearance by Betty White (before she was two-hundred)! And a rock ‘n’ roll explosion, Kiss! And now, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special!”

SCENE TWO- Lynde launches into a staggeringly stale introductory monologue, followed by a re-written for Halloween version of “Kids,” his signature number from his role in the Broadway show “Bye Bye, Birdie.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, the stage is suddenly infested with poorly choreographed dancers in cheesy devil outfits — accessorized with dime store plastic pitchforks — who antagonize Lynde, but don’t have the decency to kill him, thereby preventing this atrocity from continuing. After being tied up and forced to dance in a satanic chorus line while lyrically bitching about how “there’s too much Alice Cooper, not enough Alice Faye,” Lynde is unceremoniously dumped into a garbage can by celebrated Mormon icons of ‘70’s TV schlock Donny and Marie Osmond (who happen to be dressed in devil suits). The garbage can then explodes for no adequately explained reason.

SCENE THREE- Lynde’s housekeeper drives him to her sister’s house in order to keep him away from the horrible kids of the previous scene, and we immediately discover that the housekeeper and her sister are actually card-carrying witches, specifically the Wicked Witch of the West and Witchie-Poo, both in their famous costumes and totally in character. They let him know that they want him to help them soften the worldwide image of witches despite centuries of evidence which they both deny, with the exception of the torments that Dorothy went through, which were justified because “she had it coming.” Then, Miss Halloween 1976 shows up, courtesy of a terrible video special defect, and it’s Betty White. She totally disses Paul Lynde, disappointed that he’s not Paul Newman (who was supposed to be her prize for winning the coveted title), and she bitches out the two witches as to why they couldn’t have gotten another famous Paul, such as Paul Williams, Paul McCartney, Les Paul, Saint Paul or even Pall Mall. She then disappears after pronouncing Lynde “a nobody.” Anyway, the witches promise him three wishes if he helps them in their cause, and his first wish is to be — now get this — a trucker. He is immediately transformed into what appears to be a Village People reject in a silver, rhinestone-studded jumpsuit with “Big Red” inexplicably emblazoned across the back, and a Tom of Finland-style matching cap.

Paul Lynde as The Rhinestone Trucker. No, you have not gone completely barking insane. This actually happened!

He also sings the indescribably trite “Rhinestone Trucker” jingle and hops into the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. We are then “treated” to the romantic rivalry between the Rhinestone Trucker and another rig jockey (Tim Conway, proving just how unfunny he was when not on “The Carol Burnett Show,” a trend that would continue in his later efforts as the vertically-challenged Dorf) over the attentions of Kinky Pinky (Roz Kelly). This sketch goes on for a short eternity and is replete with gags that were old when dirt was invented. The whole car wreck culminates in an overwrought square dance/disco number that will make you want to eat your own buttocks while jamming a rusty screwdriver into your eardrums. The unhappy ending features the Rhinestone Trucker marrying a woman.

SCENE FOUR- After the previous idiotic scenario plays itself out, Lynde returns to the witches’ place and is offered some soothing chamber music by Kiss. They lip synch through “Detroit Rock City” with all the convincingness of Ashlee Simpson on “Saturday Night Live” while a smoke machine is truly put to the test (or maybe it was the runoff from all of the joints that surely blazed on set during this fiasco). And not that we didn’t already know they looked like idiots, but Kiss’ makeup gimmick has seldom looked more stupid than it did here.

SCENE FIVE- Lynde then goes for wish number two, namely being turned into a Valentino-esque desert sheik, complete with enormous hoop earring, who is vastly wealthy and a master seducer who goes by the name “Florence of Arabia.” He then attempts to force his lusty will upon captive Englishwoman Florence Henderson… Their lip lock will make you cringe, I swear to God. Tim Conway shows up again as a member of the French Foreign Legion who attempts to save Florence Henderson from the swishy sheik. Sheer torture, folks.

SCENE SIX- The Wicked Witch of the West engages in painfully unfunny banter with her diminutive butler (Billy Barty) until Lynde pops back to the scary house. Paul selflessly sacrifices his last wish to the witches, who want nothing more than to go to a Hollywood disco; at this point, the show becomes truly impossible to turn away from since it is a cavalcade of bad TV-friendly discotheque antics such as Lynde spewing forth wretched one-liners (one of which involves bestiality between Tim Conway and an unwilling monkey), Florence Henderson performing a “disco” version of “That Old Black Magic,” and Peter Chris subjecting us to that wimpiest of Kiss tunes, “Beth” (in which the endless close-ups prove that Chris was bloated even then and that though his makeup is allegedly supposed to represent a cat, he looks like a “kitty”), as the band nods in approval as if to say “Yo, man. That shit is deep.” Then Lynde trades ultra-pitiful quips with Kiss until they take pity on the audience and lip synch “King of the Nighttime World.” Then, in a sequence that nearly caused me to have a seizure, Paul asks Roz Kelly to teach him some happenin’ disco moves and she launches into a version of “Disco lady” that somehow manages to be more noxious than the actual hit version. Then, incredibly, Lynde trumps that by singing the song himself; you have not lived until you witness all of the guest stars awkwardly shaking their groove thangs as the queerest man in the universe utters the lines “Move it in, move it out, move it in, and about, disco baby! I like that funky stuff!” Yes, you read that right.

EPILOGUE- Paul Lynde takes time to thank all of his guests and then commits the ultimate Halloween prank by ending the show on a freeze-frame of himself kissing the Wicked Witch of the West full on the mouth as his voice-over exclaims “Happy Halloween, everybody!”

I now have a perennial to run each Halloween, a confection more horrifying than THE EXORCIST, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and FACES OF DEATH combined. Fuck, I miss Paul Lynde…

COLOR ME STUNNED

Renowned comics artist and illustrator Joe Jusko just informed me that Victoria Vetri, aka 1968's Playboy Playmate of the Year, Angela Dorian, the woman who single-handedly ignited my famous jungle girl/cavegirl fixation, has been busted for the attempted murder of her boyfriend. I've had a thing for her since I saw her in WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1970), so this just plain shocks me. It's like finding out that Racquel Welch stuffed a butcher knife through some dude's chest.

Victoria Vetri, the blonde in the middle, as I first saw her when I was five years old. Now she's in jail and bail is set at a million bucks.

If you didn't see WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, you may remember her as the pregnant neighbor who Mia Farrow tells she looks like Victoria Vetri in ROSEMARY'S BABY (a gag that I love), or as the briefly-seen humanoid form of Isis the cat in the classic STAR TREK episode "Assignment: Earth."

Vetri as Isis on STAR TREK.

If there's one thing Ive learned from personal experience, it's that you do NOT fuck over Italian chicks (Vetri was raised here, but her parents are straight from the Boot). If they love you, no one loves you harder, and the inverse of that is also true. If you fuck with an Italian chick in a serious way, you may as well dig the hole yourself.

You can read the news story for yourself here. I just hope that this is proven to be a case of clear self-defense...

I'm rooting for you Vicki. I just hope you had a damned good reason for shooting that guy.