Irwin Allen (1916-1991) wore many different hats during his long career: magazine editor, gossip columnist, documentarian, producer, director. He helped usher in the Age of the Disaster Movie with such 70’s hits as THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and THE TOWERING INFERNO, but before that he was best known as the producer of a quartet of sci-fi series from the Swingin’ 60’s. From 1964 to 1970 he had at least one sci-fi show airing in prime time… during the 1966-67 season, he had three, all complete with cheezy-looking monsters, campy humor, stock footage, guest stars (some on their way up… some down!), special effects by Oscar winner L.B. Abbott, and music by John Williams (who later scored a little thing called STAR WARS )! Here’s a look at the Amazing Sci-Fi Worlds of Irwin Allen:
Allen’s first foray into sci-fi TV was VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (ABC, 1964-68), based…
Today’s music video of the day is for a song that I used to enjoy listening to back when I was living in Vice City. Believe it or not, I used to steal cars just so I could turn the radio over to Wave 103 and listen to songs like Pale Shelter by Tears For Fears. I know I’m not alone. Vice City was a crazy place to live, man.
As for the video, it was directed by Steve Barron (who was responsible for several classic new wave videos) and is about weird things happening in Los Angeles.
It begins with a classic California scene as a woman in a red, one-piece bathing suit dives into a pool. She’s soon joined by an alligator, which causes her to fly straight into the air. This followed by a police officer directing traffic, a child raising his hand in school, a woman taking laundry off a line, a soccer team celebrating a goal, a blonde stretching in bed, and an airplane flying over an airport. When the laundry woman burns a shirt with an iron, it leaves a giant, steaming imprint in the middle of the runway.
Standing in the middle of imprint, Curt Smith drops his guitar which ruins everyone’s day. The police officer loses his cool. The blonde realizes she’s overslept. The laundry woman panics as it starts to rain. The child in school isn’t called on and retaliates by making a paper airplane that he throws out the window.
Soon, hundreds of paper airplane are raining down on Curt Smith and Roland Orzbal. Most of them seem to be hitting Curt.
Everyone in the video looks up to the sky and things get better. The school child is reunited with the laundry woman. Curt fixes his broken guitar. The blonde gets out of bed, drives her car, and catches the eye of the policeman. The soccer players congratulates themselves on a good game.
Curts throw his guitar into the air. Back in the school, all the students start to throw paper airplanes. The alligator gets back in the pool. A paper airplane hits Curt right between the eyes. The woman in the red bathing suit heads back down to Earth while the alligator eats Curt’s guitar.
BEND OF THE RIVER, the second of the James Stewart/Anthony Mann Westerns, isn’t quite as good as the first, WINCHESTER ’73 . That’s not to say it isn’t a good film; it’s just hard to top that bona fide sagebrush classic. Stewart continues his post-war, harder edged characterizations as a man determined to change his ways, and is supported by a strong cast that includes a villainous turn by the underrated Arthur Kennedy .
Jimmy plays Glyn McLyntock, an ex-outlaw now riding as trail boss for a group of farmers heading to Oregon to begin a new life. He encounters Kennedy as Emerson Cole, a horse thief about to be hanged, and enlists his help on the trail west. Both men know each other’s reputations; they were both once raiders along the Missouri/Kansas border. The wagons are attacked at night by Shoshone, an arrow piercing young Laura Baile, daughter of…
Today’s music video of the day is for the song that convinced an entire generation of parents that heavy metal was Satan’s music. Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris wrote The Number of the Beast after watching the second Omen film and a careful listen to the lyrics will reveal that the song is not meant to be taken seriously. Of course, religious groups across America took it very seriously and spent 1982 protesting Iron Maiden.
It all seems a little silly now.
The video was also controversial, even though it was really just clips of old horror movies mixed with footage of Iron Maiden performing. With Lisa Marie’s help, I think I have correctly identified the source of almost every clip featured in the video:
0:10 — The video starts with a scene from 1944’s The Return of the Vampire. Contrary to popular belief, that is not Vincent Price providing the voice over. Originally, the band wanted Price but, when they discovered they couldn’t afford him, they hired an actor named Barry Clayton instead.
0:30 — The Goatman who first appears here and then reappears throughout the video is taken from 1968’s The Devil Rides Out.
0:36 — This clip is from 1922’s Nosferatu.
0:42 — This is the star of 1957’s I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.
0:50 — The fighting dinosaurs are from 1940’s One Million Years B.C.
1:12 — This is from 1958’s The Screaming Skull.
1:19 — The Godzilla footage is taken from 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla.
2:15 — I’m not totally sure but I think this is from 1946’s The Crimson Ghost.
2:19 — The exploding Goatman is, again, from The Devil Rides Out.
2:30 — This is from 1958’s How To Make A Monster, which was a sequel to I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.
2:38 — This is either another clip from How To Make A Monster or a clip from 1957’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf.
2:41 — This scene is from The Crimson Ghost.
3:21 — The scarred giant is from 1958’s War of the Colossal Beast.
3:24 — I like this way this part of the video was edited to make it appear as if Godzilla was reacting to the Colossal Beast.
3:51 — The big spider is from 1959’s The Angry Red Planet.
4:00 — This is another clip from The Crimson Ghost.
Several years ago, Minneapolis-based cartoonist David Tea worked at the comic shop nearest my home, where I am something of a “regular,” and to the best of my knowledge that was the only place that he sold his beyond-lo-fi comics, neatly stacked at the counter, each of them looking like they were run off a printer at Kinko’s, then cut and stapled by hand — which I’m fairly sure is exactly how they were made. Then, one day, he wasn’t working there anymore, and how one was supposed to obtain these utterly baffling little ‘zines became as mysterious a proposition as their contents, given that the only “distribution network” Tea seemed to employ was hustling them in person.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw that an apparently-randomly-selected work from Tea’s oeuvre, the 2005-produced Five Perennial Virtues #2, had been reprinted in the here and now of 2018, and…
It was 56 years ago today that The Amazing Spider-Man made his first appearance in the 15th issue of Amazing Fantasy. After being bitten by a radioactive spider, Peter Parker developed super power but it was not until his uncle was murdered that Parker learned what it meant to be a hero.
With great power comes great responsibility and, as these four shots from four films demonstrate, movie stardom! Over the years, Nicholas Hammond, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland have all played America’s favorite web-spinning super hero.
In honor of Spider-Man’s birthday, here they are
4 Shots From 4 Films
The Amazing Spider-Man: The Chinese Web (1979, directed by Don McDougall)
Spider-Man (2002, directed by Sam Raimi)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014, directed by Marc Webb)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, directed by Jon Watts)
37 years ago today, MTV first started to broadcast. Over the course of the day, the station aired 116 music videos.
Everyone knows that the first video to ever be shown on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles. But did you know that the 36th video aired was Blotto’s I Wanna Be A Lifeguard?.
Who were Blotto? A new wave band from Albany, New York, they had a strong cult following among college students in the late 70s and early 80s. Much like the Ramones, all the band members used pseudonyms and took Blotto as their last name. Among the members were: Bowtie Blotto, Broadway Blotto, Cheese Blotto, Lee Harvey Blotto, Sergeant Blotto, Blanche Blotto, and Chevrolet Blotto.
I Wanna Be A Lifeguard was probably their best known song, as it was adopted as an anthem by the Jones Beach lifeguards. Before they made their MTV debut, Blotto and I Wanna Be A Lifeguard were championed by Dr. Demento and, like all good, quirky New York bands, they appeared on both The Joe Franklin Show and the Uncle Floyd Show. Today, it’s clear to see that Blotto were ahead of their time. The band’s mix of humor and music are tailor-made for the age of YouTube and social media.
As for the video, it was filmed by video production students at SUNY Albany and it feels like a cross between two quintessentially 90s shows. Starting in a shoe store and ending on the beach, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard is Married With Children meets Baywatch. Since the video came out ten years before either one of those shows premiered, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard was as ahead of its time as the band that performed it.
Through the Shattered Lens 