What better way to celebrate Halloween than with the original horror rocker himself, Alice Cooper? Welcome To My Nightmare is one of Alice Cooper’s signature tunes. This video comes from the 1990 concert film, .Alice Cooper Trashes The World.
Enjoy and Happy Halloween!
On March 25th, 1978, the host of Saturday Night Live was horror actor Christopher Lee. The musical guest was Meat Loaf. It led to one of the best introductions in the history of the show, even if Meat Loaf himself was reportedly not amused by it.
Previous Moments In Television History:
Back in the early days of the X-Men, before Wolverine and Nightcrawler and Storm, when the comic book was an acclaimed but perennial low seller, the X-Men celebrated 1967’s Halloween by meeting Frankenstein’s Monster!
He wasn’t actually the Monster. He was a robot who looked like the film version of the Monster and he was destroyed by the end of X-Men #40. Still, this was the first reference to Frankenstein in the Marvel Universe. The “real” Monster would officially join the Marvel Universe a few years later.
Cover art by George Tuska, Marie Severin and Sam Rosen
Previous Great Moments In Comic Book History:
Remember when I was writing about classic Doctor Who for Halloween? Let’s get back to that with a look at the 17th season of the original series. This season is a controversial one. It featured some of the show’s worst serials but also one of its best. Today, it’s remembered for introducing Lalla Ward as the second Romana and for featuring Douglas Adams as the script editor.
One frequent complaint about this season is that, under Adams’s influence, the season featured more comedy than before and it sometimes felt more like a version of Hitchhiker’s than Doctor Who. There’s some truth to that but Adams’s influence also made Season 17 into a season unlike any other. Many of Adams’s ideas didn’t work but he did give us City of Death.
Destiny of the Daleks (1979, directed by Kim Grieve)
Destiny of the Daleks will always have a place in my heart because it opens with Romana regenerating into Lalla Ward. I will admit right now that, as a kid watching Doctor Who on PBS, I had a huge crush on Lalla Ward. So did Tom Baker. He ended up marrying Ward, though the marriage did not last for long. The relationship between Baker and Ward often seemed to reflected in the relationship between The Doctor and Ward’s Romana. Long before the Doctor Who reboot had people buzzing about the Doctor and Rose, fans of the original series knew that the Doctor and Romana were in love.
Destiny of the Daleks opens with Lalla Ward’s Romana cheerfully informing the Doctor that she’s decided to regenerate because she was bored and she’s decided to look like Princess Astra. The Doctor points out that Princess Astra is a real person and Romana can’t just take on her appearance. Romana then tries out several other appearances before The Doctor tells her to go with Astra. This goes against everything that the show had established about Time Lords and regeneration but at least we end up with Lalla Ward as Romana.
It’s too bad that the rest of the serial itself isn’t that interesting, even if it does feature the first appearance by the Daleks since Genesis of the Daleks. Davros returns as well, though he’s now more or less just another generic villain. The Daleks have a new enemy, a group of robots called the Movellans. The war between the Daleks and the Movellans are at a standstill because both are governed by logic. That goes against everything we know about the Daleks.
This was Terry Nation’s final script for Doctor Who. Reportedly, he was angered when Douglas Adams extensively rewrote the script. Nation moved to America and later created the original MacGyver.
City of Death (1979, directed by Michael Hayes)
City of Death is a Doctor Who classic. Romana and the Doctor visit modern-day Paris and the BBC found the money to allow the production to shoot on location. The Doctor and Romana walk around Paris, hand-in-hand. Count Scarlioni (Julian Glover) is actually an alien who wants to steal the Mona Lisa so that he can use it to fund his time travel experiments. Countess Sacrlioni (Catherine Schell) is a classic femme fatale. An American private investigator named Duggan (Tom Chabdon) wears a trench coat and solves problems by punching first and asking questions later. John Cleese and Eleanor Bron appears as museum patrons who think the TARDIS is a work of modern art. Douglas Adams later reworked bits of his script into Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency.
Even people who cannot stand the rest of season 17 will agree that City of Death is one of the best of Tom Baker’s serials. City of Death balances humor and drama and it features an excellent villain in the form of Julian Glover. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are at their best, the story is genuinely interesting, and — much like Jago and Lightfoot from The Talons of Weng-Chiang — Duggan deserved his own spin-off.
The Creature From The Pit (1979, directed by Christopher Barry)
This serial features the season’s first appearance by K-9, who is now voiced by David Brierley. Though this serial was third to be aired, it was the first to be filmed.
It’s not much of a serial. The TARDIS materializes on yet another feudal planet where Lady Adastra (Myra Frances) rules through fear. Lady Adastra’s critics are thrown in the pit, which is said to be home to a great monster. Instead, it’s home to a gentle blob that was sent to the planet as an ambassador. The Doctor helps the blob gets its freedom while Romana and K-9 are briefly detained by a group of bandits. Whatever potential the story had is short-circuited by the very unconvincing monster.
Nightmare of Eden (1979, directed by Alan Bromley and Graham Williams)
Two ships materialize in the same location and end up locked together. Then the TARDIS materializes and the Doctor offers to find a way to unlock the two ships. One of the ships is a luxury space liner and the passengers are soon being menaced by clawed monsters that look like stuntmen in rubber suits. The other ship is a trade ship that the Doctor comes to suspect is involved in a drug-running operation.
Once again, the monsters were not at all convincing but the Doctor investigating the interstellar drug traffic was at least something different. Much like City of Death, Nightmare of Eden, with its luxury spaceliner, had a few moments of satire that worked. Unlike City of Death, the supporting characters were not that interesting and Tom Baker himself just seemed to be going through the motions. Nightmare of Eden was better than a lot of Season 17 but it still ultimately comes across as being rather muddled.
The Horns of Nimon (1979 — 1980, directed by Kenny McBain)
The Horns of Nimon, is it terrible or is it great? Some defend it because of its allusions to Greek mythology, its deliberate humor, and the over-the-top performance of Graham Crowden as Soldeed, the leader of the Skonnan Empire. Others, like me, point out the turgid pacing, the bad creature effects, and the fact that the majority of the serial is just people walking around. Based on the myth of the minotaur, The Horns of Nimon looks and feels cheap. Crowden splits his pants at one point and I guess there was no time to stitch them back up. The whole thing is just too slapdash.
Shada (2018, directed by Pennant Roberts and Charles Norton)
For decades, Shada was the Holy Grail of Doctor Who. The final serial of the 17th century, Shada was in the process of filming when the BBC’s technicians went on strike. With 50% of the serial filmed, production was suspended and eventually canceled.
Afterwards, Shada developed a legendary reputation. It was often described as being a potential masterpiece, despite the fact that Season 17 was not one of Doctor Who‘s best. Footage of the Doctor and Romana visiting Cambridge was widely released and even used in The Five Doctors. The footage itself did look good but that was because it was mostly just Tom Baker and Lalla Ward relaxing and trading funny quips. There was very little of the actual plot to be found in those scenes.
Finally, in 2017, Shada aired. Animation was used for the unfilmed sequences and a white-haired Tom Baker even returned to shoot some new linking scenes. Shada was finally broadcast in the U.S. And, it wasn’t bad. It may not have been the masterpiece that so many assumed it would be but it was certainly an improvement on The Creature From The Pit, Nightmare on Eden, and the Horns of Nimon.
The Doctor and Romana travel to Cambridge to help out another timelord, Prof. Chronitis (Denis Carey). After Chronitis is apparently killed, The Doctor and Romana discover that space criminal Skagra (Christopher Neame) is seeking a Time Lord named Salyavin who is somewhere on the prison planet, Shada. Things get muddled once the Doctor actually travels to Shada but the Cambridge scenes are a definite highlight of the serial, a very British diversion for a very British show. Much as with City of Death, the best moments are the ones where Tom Baker and Lalla Ward just get to play off of each other without having to deal with any sort of intergalactic menace. Also, as with City of Death, Douglas Adams would borrows bits and pieces of Shada for Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency.
Shada may not have been a masterpiece but it would have been a decent end for the seventeenth season.
In this video, Arnold Schwarzenegger is sent to the past to eliminate Guns N’ Roses but ultimately decides that it would be a waste of ammo. Obviously, he knew that fulfilling his mission would change history and the world would never get to hear Chinese Democracy.
This song (and this video) were used to promote Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Enjoy!
This was one of the earliest music videos, featuring a band that seemed to be destined to take advantage of the format. The song was written a time when Jim Morrison was going through a period of depression. While watching the sunset at Robby Krieger’s house, he suddenly had the realization that “If you’re strange, people are strange.”
Enjoy!
L.A. Guns is a band that has had a long and storied history, from their initial formation in 1983 to the brief moment when they joined with Axl Rose and became known as Guns N’ Roses to Tracii Guns leaving Guns N’ Roses after conflict with Rose and then forming a second version of L.A. Guns. At the same time that Guns N’ Roses were releasing their first music videos and making their mark on MTV, L.A. Guns released their video for One More Reason, one of the most apocalyptic looks at Los Angeles ever put on film.
Director Ralph Ziman also worked with Ozzy Osbourne, Toni Braxton, and Faith No More.
Enjoy!
When he was a young boy, Gregory Tudor was traumatized when he witnessed the gangland-style execution of the neighborhood ice cream man. He was retraumatized when he was sent to an insane asylum. Now, Gregory (Clint Howard) has grown up and he’s the ice cream man! Everyone in the neighborhood loves his ice cream but the local kids suspect that he’s using human body parts to get the flavor just right. It turns out that the kids know what they’re talking about.
Ice Cream Man almost feels like a zero-budget precursor to Stranger Things, with the kids knowing what’s happening in their town while the majority of the adults are too self-absorbed to notice. One of the kids is a Macauley Culkin look-alike known as Small Paul (Mikey LeBeau). He comes to admire Gregory and his murderous devotion to ice cream. The movie’s really stupid but it’s clearly not meant to be taken seriously and Clint Howard really throws himself into his role. One thing that makes Ice Cream Man enjoyable is that you know Ron Howard had to sit through it because his brother’s in it.
The most interesting thing about Ice Cream Man is the number of recognizable actors who appear in tiny roles. David Warner is the town’s reverend. David Naughton is a clueless father who is married to Sandahl Bergman. Jan-Michael Vincent is a detective. Olivia Hussey is Gregory’s former nurse. Former baseball player and future senatorial candidate Steve Garvey plays another parent. With the exception of Vincent, it’s hard not to believe that the members of the cast didn’t have anything better to do. Never underestimate the appeal of a quick paycheck.
Clint Howard has said that a sequel is in pre-production. The Ice Cream Man will return.
For today’s music video of the day, we have the second video for Duran Duran’s Lonely In Your Nightmare.
Both videos were directed by Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy.
This is one of two videos for Duran Duran’s Lonely In Your Nightmare. In this one, Simon Le Bon finds old photographs and remembers a past relationship that might have just been someone’s dream. Lonely In Your Nightmare appeared on Rio, one of the defining albums of the early 80s.
Before he made a little film called Highlander, director Russell Mulcahy was Duran Duran’s video director of choice in the early 80s and, of course, he worked with many other bands as well. His stylish music videos dominated MTV and set the template for which most subsequent videos would come.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 