I'm a Marxist, Number 2!

Yes, Grouch Marx remains my patron saint.  Here are some clippings about him and his clan:

The above clipping is from the March 28, 1969 issue of Time.

The book mentioned above, The Marx Bros Scrapbook, is indeed filled with irrepressible reminiscences from Groucho, in the form of long-term quotations/interviews with Richard J Anobile.  Let the SOBs fall where they may, I say!

This January 2, 1977 spread from Family Weekly offers nostalgic balm for all.  Don't ask me where the missing part of the first page went.  The best guess is that it was a photo of the four Marx Bros, and that I cut it out to use as a videotape-case label for home-dubbed Marx movies.

See you next Monday, fellow Marxists!

  

Lois Lane, the First Lady of Comics!

Here's a headstrong, willful heroine we can all vote for!  This article is from the August 1, 1985 issue of the late, lamented Amazing Heroes.

Now dig up the issues mentioned from your bac-issue boxes and reread them!  See you on Thursday!

November's PSYCHOFlairapy Calendar Pages

Only a few days late, here's the art header and the calendar page from 1970/2020:

You can print out the art page and finish coloring yourself!

See you on Monday, my fellow Americans!

  

Two Views of Sergeant Pepper

Below, the Newsweek of January 1, 1968 compares Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to the comparably garish Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones.

Am I evil to admit that I've never heard the Stones' album?  Probably.

And the above is a typical mock-the-teenybopper cartoon from Look's May 14, 1968 issue.  You'll notice that they conveniently added a tagline under the cartoonist's name!

See you on Thursday, friends!  Hope your Halloween was safe and happy!

  

The Two-Faced Halloween of 1968

            On Halloween, 1968, I was twelve years old—almost too old for trick-or-treating.  It was a Thursday night.  And this year I did a sneaky thing, something I’m not proud of now.  But it seemed cool at the time.

            Somehow, this year, I had access to two Halloween costumes.  Don’t ask me what the outfits were—but we can say with certainty that both involved masks.

            After darkness fell, I made the neighborhood trick-or-treat rounds and stocked up on candy.  Then I came home, changed into the other costume, and went out again, to the same houses.

             I remember this caper of shame for two reasons.  At one house the lady said, “Haven’t you already been here tonight?”  How did she know?  I was dressed completely different, including a mask over my face!   But when she said that, friends, I felt about this tall.  I wasn’t raised to be a cheater, but here I was—acting like one.

             Memory number two of this night:  When I wandered home, Mom and Dad were watching Raymond Burr in Ironside.  A vague ancillary memory recalls part of the episode taking place on what I recall as a surrealistic TV stage or play set, surrounded by darkness.

            And that’s how I was able to pin down the date for this memory!  “I, the People,” from Season Two of Ironside, is the only episode of that show’s run to air on a Halloween night.  The date was Thursday, October 31, 1968.

          And, as you can see from the first and following images, much of the show does indeed take place on a TV stage.  The story involves a populist, controversial talk-show host (played by Milton Berle) who receives death threats.

            So, you can see that my memory was pretty accurate!

 Happy Halloween memories!

  See you on Monday!

  

The Munsters Sink Slowly into the West ...

There three pages are the last images from the Munsters coloring book for this year.

I think Marilyn should have said, "It's a dummy, dummy!"  By the way, do you suppose that the label "toxic leaves" was somebody's attempt to remember the term "tana leaves"?

See you back here at the end of the week.  Not on Friday, but on SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31st ... Halloween ... with a special reminiscence of a certain shameful Halloween ...

  

Scary Books, Kiddies! Dracula: Asylum

Scary Books, Kiddies!

Dracula: Asylum. By Paul Witcover. DH Press, 2006. Cover painting by Stephen Youll.

Well, the 2001 Dracula reboot by Christopher Schildt must not have sold, because five years later we’ve got another licensed paperback, re-re-reintroducing the Universal baddie to another flash-fired (or flash-fried?) generation.

This Dracula is an intentional lord of evil, brought back to life from the ruins of Carfax Abbey, ignoring the occurrences depicted in the film Dracula’s Daughter (and all the rest!). It’s set around WWI.

And we have characters named Renfield (nicknamed “Renny”) and Mina, too! Maybe you can figure it out, it’s beyond me.


Hand me that stake, Watson!


See you on Wednesday for more Halloween havoc!

   

In 1977, Reader's Digest Plugged the Crappy King Kong

The 1977 King Kong not only had crummy effects, even at its release, the acting from Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, etc, was cringeworthy.

The final lines quoting the bigshot producer syas it all with its dismissive, imperceptive tone.  What a clown!

  

You may find Monday's offering more exciting.  Check back and see.  It's the final week of BLOG-O-WEEN!

  

TV Guide Wraps Up DARK SHADOWS' Dangling Storylines!

In October 1971, after Dark Shadows' cancellation, a wag at TV Guide put his tongue in cheek and came up with his own "what happened next" for the storylines and characters.

It's from the October 9, 1971 TV Guide.

See you on Friday!

  

Operators and "Things" -- Brrrr!

Scary Books, Kiddies!

I’ll be honest, friends. This paperback caught my eye solely because of its title, which portended something like Frank Edwards’s “Strange Things” series.

No. Check out the subtitle. This book is genuinely disturbing and creepy. It will stir you to horror and compassion for the inner torments suffered by the author, so vividly laid out in mostly flat, emotionless language. I read this only once, in 1991. But now I feel honor-bound to give it another examination.

If you aren’t wigged out by the distorted perceptions narrated by the author, check out the note I found inside after purchase. I’ve transcribed it below:

But I challenge you to read this book and still after having first to its conclusion and be able to positively say that our mad friend was really mad and truly deluded – could it be possible there is an unseen world in which each person can build thought forms that are “real”? in “that” time and “that” place?  [over]  cross circuiting between two realities.  To be able to operate to still exist in this body we must have only one reality hence the necessity for ridding ourselves of any intruding realities or at least being able to keep them separate and under control.

I wonder if the note-writer was familiar with the metaphysical concept of the Tulpa or thought-form. 

Pretty profound, kiddies!

            If you wish, you may download a PDF of the text at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b788/547eda4175033876e4bb6ed3f0bf3c8e7a9d.pdf?_ga=2.147244023.1166368669.1568787635-1864281516.1568787635

             See you on Wednesday, stuffed shirts and humble types!

   

NBC's 1997 HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN

I didn't watch it.  Did I miss anything?

It had to be lame -- just look at the so-called monsters on the first page -- that ain't Dracula or Frankenstein's monster!  It's a bad Dore illustration and a guy with acne.

See you on Monday with another Scary Book, kiddies!

  

Color Grandpa Munster!

It's a cleaned-up page from the Munsters coloring book, for you to print and color!  (Just don't make him any madder than he already is!)

See you on Friday!

   

From Mount Olympus (via Hollywood) to You!

The newest opus from Jacobs/Brown is out!  And I helped!

Swords, Starships and Superheroes – From Star Trek to Xena to Hercules: A TV Writer’s Life Scripting the Stories of Heroes by Paul Robert Coyle is a great read if you want to learn about the production and writing of genre TV like those shows, and others, from Superboy and Simon & Simon to DS9, TNG, and Voyager.

Paul tells his own origin story and shares his excitement and (you guessed it) toils working from Hollywood to New Zealand.  Fans of Xena and Hercules will really like Paul’s discussions of story conferences and plans, complete with alternate endings and script excerpts.

And I got to read it first! (and mess about with some words and spellings).  Yep, it’s another spiffy notch on my editorial belt.  But the best part is I got to read it first (and talk electronically with Paul, too).

You can buy it from Jacobs/Brown, with Paul’s autograph too!

To put it another way:

Screenwriter Paul Robert Coyle has crafted tales for Earth (Jake and the Fatman, The Streets of San Francisco), superheroes (Superboy), Starfleet (STAR TREK series Voyager, The Animated Series, and Deep Space Nine) and heroes of legend (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.

In his new memoir SWORDS, STARSHIPS AND SUPERHEROES:

From Star Trek to Xena to Hercules: A TV Writer’s Life ​Scripting the Stories of Heroes, Coyle shares tales from the 1970s to the present.  His reminiscences unveil the fascinating (and raucous) background of TV production, from Hollywood to New Zealand.

So go get it!

  

Scary Books, Kiddies! - Haining

Scary Books, Kiddies!

            The Midnight People.  Edited by Peter Haining, 1968, Pocket.  No cover credit, but the image is from a triptych created around 1590 by Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser.

            The triptych, reconstructed:

            This anthology is focused solely on the vampire.  It opens and closes with excerpts from Montague Summers’s The Vampire in Europe.

            The first selection is the only nonfiction piece, about Fritz Haarmann, “the Hanover Vampire”—proof indeed that real human behavior can be nastier than anything made up.  The other stories are by the usual suspects:  Bloch, Bradbury, Polidori, Matheson.

See you next time, kiddies!  That's Wednesday!

  

For All You Little Monsters!

Who didn't love being a kid in the 1960s -- complete with monster models from Aurora!

And in 1970 or so, Aurora got fancy, with glow-in-the-dark monsters!  The above ad is on the rear cover of the May, 1970 World's Finest #193.

The above ad is from Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #108, cover-dated February 1971.  I regret to inform you that I did not join the Monster Fan Club, darn it!  If you did, I'd love to hear about it!

See you on Monday, fiends and degredations!

   

You Too Can Be Munster-iffic!

Yes, for the past seventeen zillion Blog-o-Weens we have been wading through Whitman's The Munsters coloring book, and haven't reached the end yet!

Here are pages 101 and 102.

After a thrilling costume party at which Uncle Herman won first prize, Marilyn and her date are, for some reason, taking a tour of the Munsters' attic.

You'll have to wait until later in the month to find out what Marilyn's date is so wacked-out about!

But we'll see you back here on Friday for something else wondrous and/or silly.

  

Scary Books, Kiddies! - Dalton

Scary Books, Kiddies!

The Cattle Mutilators. By John J Dalton. Manor Books, 1980. No cover credit.

This is the tale of a country doctor who notices a pattern of not only indigent male patients with surgical incisions in the family jewels ... but farmers’ cattle with similar (or worse) damage. At least the four-legged victims are dead!


Evidently this is a pretty rare book, ’cause Amazon folks are selling it for northwards of $50.

Maybe the truth is in here! I couldn’t tell you. I finished reading it on June 24, 1990, and don’t recall anything about it. I got 50 pages into a rereading recently but wasn’t sufficiently motivated to go further.

Talk to you next time, kiddies! 

  

MA-149 - An Old-Fashioned Halloween -- Welcome to BLOG-O-WEEN!

Yes, my friends, this is the most delicious time of year -- Halloween time!

To kick off this magic, spooky, wacky season, here's a new music compilation. The tracks:

01 - Halloween Party - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:31)

02 - Main Title (It! The Terror from Beyond Space) - Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter - 1958  (1:05)

03 - Hey Jude - Paul Frees - 1970  (3:53)

04 - Weebles Haunted House - Hasbro Playskool - 1976  (0:29)

05 - Monster Approaches (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (0:45)

06 - Halloween Driving Safety - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:31)

07 - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Underscore #1 - Ted Nichols - 1969  (0:37)

08 - Attack of the Mole Men - The Dickies - 1979  (3:40)

09 - Main Title / Shooting Stars (This Island Earth) - Herman Stein - 1978  (3:49)

10 - The Mad Scientist - The Zanies - 1958  (1:59)

11 - The Munsters (1st Season Opening Theme) - Jack Marshall - 1964  (0:44)

12 - The Munsters (1st Season End Credits) - Jack Marshall - 1964  (0:31)

13 - Hollywood Halloween - Section 8 - 1979  (3:06)

14 - Mysterioso, Burglar Music - J S Zamecnik - 1913  (0:46)

15 - Plodding Monster (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (0:37)

16 - The Raven - Kenny and the Fiends - 1963  (1:55)

17 - The Witch (Album Version) - The Rattles - 1970  (2:56)

18 - Halloween Values - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:28)

19 - Sonik Re-Entry (Fantastic Theatre) - The Electrosonics - 1962  (2:34)

20 - Son of Dracula Main Title - Hans J Salter - 1978  (1:07)

21 - TV Monster - The Bounce - 1980  (2:49)

22 - Return to the the Haunted House - The Fleshtones - 1985  (2:22)

23 - Visitors from Space (It Came from Outer Space) - Herman Stein - 1978  (1:40)

24 - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Underscore #2 - Ted Nichols - 1969  (1:05)

25 - What Can We Be for Halloween? - Jill Gallina - 1978  (2:05)

26 - Halloween Treats & Candy - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:28)

27 - Mysterioso Pizzicato - J Bodewalt Lampe - 1914  (0:22)

28 - Spookie Movies - Gary Paxton - 1962  (2:17)

29 - Night Gallery Theme - Gil Melle - 1970  (0:36)

30 - The Octopus - Angel and the Devines - 1964  (2:13)

31 - Halloween Jingle - William B Tanner Co - 1974  (0:32)

32 - Plan 9 from Outer Space - The Happy Few - 1981  (3:36)

33 - Shocks and Stingers (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (1:11)

34 - Graveyard Theme (It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) - Vince Guaraldi - 1966  (0:53)

35 - Dumb Ways to Die - Metro Trains Melbourne - 2012  (3:00)

36 - Monsters (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (0:51)

37 - Do They Know It's Halloween? - North American Halloween Prevention Initiative - 2005  (5:52)

38 - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Underscore #3 - Ted Nichols - 1969  (0:45)

39 - Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Contest - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:33)

40 - Winged Death (The Deadly Mantis) - William Lava - 1978  (2:53)

41 - Trick or Treat (It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) - John Scott Trotter - 1966  (1:14)

42 - The Night Stalker Suite - Robert Cobert - 1972  (4:00)

43 - Prologue - Welcome to Creepshow - John Harrison - 1982  (4:07)

 

And, to quote the liner notes:     It’s our hope that these selections from TV, film, advertising, and pop music will help rekindle some of the childlike anticipation and corniness inherent in an old-fashioned Halloween!

 

https://www.filefactory.com/file/6fzg0bi84bv2/MA-149.rar

 

Come back on Monday for more!  See you then!