Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: the links to reviews, interviews and more (accidentally fortnightly edition)--new links

Universal's 1931 Spanish-language production, Drácula 

Profound apologies to all you readers and all the contributors to this usually weekly roundelay; circumstances got beyond control, including quite a nasty head cold, last week and so the delay and combination of last week's and this week's adventures in audio/visual materials that the reviewers think need at least another look (or, occasionally, actually deserve obscurity); thanks as always to everyone, and please let me know if I've missed your or someone else's notable posts.  Todd Mason, who notes we have two takes each on The Danny Kaye Show and Octopussy in this group...

Allan Mott: Robert Downey's Up the Academy

Anne Billson: Dreams in films; the Rise and Fall of Westerns

Anonymous: Sullivan's Travels; I Married a Witch; Call Northside 777; All About Eve; Hold Back the Dawn

Bhob Stewart: "Tower Bawher"; KUSP Xero discussion; The Dick Cavett Show: the death of Alexander Wolcott; David Lynch...

The Big Broadcast: 8 November 2015

• 07:00p Johnny Dollar
  06/07/59 #642 Wayward Heiress Matter (CBS) (18:20)
• 07:30p Dragnet
  03/16/54 #239 Big Rod (NBC) (26:30)
• 08:00p Gunsmoke
  01/05/57 #248 Devil's Hindmost (CBS/AFRS) (23:44)
• 08:30p Sam Spade
  07/10/49 #159 The Queen Bee Caper (Wildroot Cream Oil) (CBS) (28:18)
• 09:00p Sherlock Holmes
  12/10/45 #196 A Scandal in Bohemia (Petri Wine) (MBS) (29:52)
• 09:30p Dimension X
  07/14/50 #15 The Man in the Moon (Wheaties) (NBC) (29:46)
• 10:00p Lux Radio Theater
  06/11/45 Murder My Sweet (Lux) (CBS) (59:26)

Bill Crider: Fort Ti  [the film]; Ride the Wild Surf [trailer] [theme song]

Brian Arnold: No Man's Land

B. V. Lawson: Media Murder; and the previous week's

Colin: I Walked with a Zombie

Comedy Film Nerds: favorite horror films/Shriekfest; Horror Nights at Universal Studios, etc.; John Matta

Cullen Gallagher: The Cat Girl

Cynthia Fuchs: Heart of a Dog; Brooklyn; Romeo is Bleeding; Our Brand is Crisis

Dan Stumpf: The Neanderthal Man; The Spider Woman Strikes Back; The Creature with the Atom Brain; 

David Vineyard: Bloodsuckers

Dorian Bartolucci: Agnes Moorehead

The Take

Elgin Bleecker: The Take

Elizabeth Foxwell: Kid Glove Killer; The Senator was Indiscreet

Evan Lewis: Fallen Angels: "Tomorrow I Die"; The Rebel: "Judgement"; LanceCon 1986

Gary Deane: Vanishing Point; Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974)

George Kelley: Matilda: the Musical; Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell 

Gilligan Newton-John: Take a Girl Like You; A Guide for the Married Man; The Astro-Zombies; Plankton; Ghoulies IV

Iba Dawson: Dracula (the 1931 Universal Anglophone and Hispanophone versions); You Must Remember This (the podcast)

Dementia

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Seven Angry Men; Greased Lightning; Dementia (1955 film); The Don Rickles TV Specials: 2; The Great American Dream Machine; The Danny Kaye Show; Universal's Sherlock Holmes films

J. Kingston Pierce: Shaft

Jackie Kashian: The Lord of the Rings v. Harry Potter in film; Wil Wheaton; Ryan Stout

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Zasu Pitts

James Clark: Army of Shadows 

James Reasoner: Tarantula; Jupiter Ascending

Janet Varney: Mary Holland

Jeff Segal: Halloweenville; Trick 'r Treat; Lambertville, NJ, Hallowe'en celebration

Jerry House: Sunset Murder Case; Li'l Abner (1940 film)

John Grant: Channel Crossing; Borderline (2002 telefilm); Escape from Broadmoor

Jonathan Lewis: Flight to Mars; The Howards of Virginia

John Knight: underrated 1945 films

Julie Czerneda: five films which help me write

Karen Hannsberry: Noirvember: minor Robert Siodmak films; favorite obscure noirs; Gene Tierney

Kate Laity: World Fantasy Convention (barked toe image warning)

Kelly Robinson: Phantom of the Moulin Rouge; Fall of the House of Usher (1928); The Hands of Orlac (1924); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Ken Levine: Table 47; Undateable

Kristina Dijan: Winner Take All; Four Sided Triangle; The Wicked Lady; The Divorcee; Fright Night (1985); Tower of London; The Monolith Monsters    

Laura G: Consolation Marriage; Kansas Territory; I Sell Anything; The Beginning or the End: Bobby Ware is Missing; The Thing (from Another World); Becky Sharp; Norma Shearer; Follow Thru; Never a Dull Moment 

Lucy Brown: Vivacious Lady

Martin Edwards: London Spy and other recent UK tv; The Paradine Case

Marty McKee: Blood Beast of Monster Mountain; Octopussy

Michael Shonk: The Wanderer (1994 television)

Mildred Perkins: [*rec]

Mystery Dave: The Fog (2005 film)

Natalie Zutter:  upcoming sf/fantasy film and tv adaptations

Patricia Nolan-Hall: Kiss of Death; The Son of Monte Cristo

Patti Abbott: The Twilight Zone: "The Lonely" aka "False Love"; Leave It to Beaver; what draws you to a film?; Room; The Peanuts Movie

Peter "Stoney" Emshwiller: 56 years old interviewed by 18yo self (courtesy Bill Crider)

Prashant Trikannad: five films: Love Punch; Marmaduke; etc. 

Rebecca: I Bury the Living

Rick: Second Sight: A Love Story; The Danny Kaye Show

Rod Lott: My Name is Modesty; The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2005 film); Octopussy; Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter; The Human Centipede III

"Rupert Pupkin": Blue City; Mannequin

Ruth: The Princess and the Pirate   

Sam Juliano: Tannhäuser; The Hallows

Sanford Allen: The Sun in Ultra-HD

Scott A. Cupp: Scared to Death; The Castle of Fu Manchu

Sergio Angelini: In the Valley of Elah; 80,000 Suspects

Stacia Jones: Bop Girl Goes Calypso; Mandalay

Stephen Bowie: Leigh Chapman

Steve Lewis: Miami Undercover; Dead to the World; I Was a Teenage Werewolf; Heat of Anger

Television Obscurities: 90 Bristol Court

Todd Mason: Vincent Price: dramatic readings, narration, radio drama and more

Victoria Loomes: The Count of Monte Cristo; Liberty in Fashion (a museum show)

Vienna: The Great Gatsby (1949 film)

Walker Martin: Pulp AdventureCon

Yvette Banek: 20 Favorite SF Films

The Night We Caught the Hallowe'en Show: guest post by Jeff Segal

I watched the documentary Halloweenville late Friday night, the 30th, taking notes on how enthusiastically Lambertville, NJ celebrates the holiday and which streets to visit. That exposure, plus what I found on the internet, assured us of a more entertaining adventure. Local Lambertville filmmaker/musicians Paul Kaye & Gary P. Cohen helmed the doc and they recruited actress Deborah Reed to narrate. She is known, with good reason, among cult film fans for her role in the legendary Troll 2 as the bespectacled queen of the goblins, vicious vegan monsters who convert hapless humans into greenery so they can be eaten.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

  

Though Saturday's temps never rose beyond the low sixties, the cheery sun was out all day and there wasn't much wind when sundown brought temperatures down to the upper forties and early fifties. I had on my clunky large ankle-cradling shoes, thick jeans, a multi-pocketed zipper up vest that had belonged to my father UNDER my oversized Hawaiian shirt and a large multipocketed black jacket (the heaviest of my lighter jackets, which in conjunction with the rest of them, probably adds up to a winter coat) so I was quite comfortable lumbering around two quaint towns Hallowe'en night: New Hope, PA, where we eventually ate and shopped, is separated from NJ's Lambertville by a sheet-metal automobile and pedestrian bridge that clanks as we walk over it...and we did lots of footwork. My cousin Joe and my buddy Jeff were dressed in traditional more serious winter outerwear.  While killing time in New Hope, waiting for sundown, we ate at the Logan Inn--good, tasty food but too pricy for my comfort. We didn't encounter any scary phenomena, save for the bill, but ghosts would have certainly given us more bang for our buck if we had! Once it grew dusky, we packed our purchases of New Hope fudge and gourmet popcorn away, clanged back over the bridge, and re-entered the transformed Lambertville. I had switched the Christmas-decoration-festooned, guinea pig-sized rubber spider that I had been carrying (Nastassja Kinski once, gingerly, had patted it, its sole brush with celebrity) with the dog-sized rubber cockroach that I had decked out with a Santa cap, a pet sized Santa coat and Christmas mittens, plus a spiked collar and leash. The Christmas roach (as my cousin dubbed it), often evokes cringing revulsion in many onlookers once they realize what it is and I cradled it in one arm like Paris Hilton does her barking rat-dogs, jiggling it around for maximum jointed-leg-twitching effect. It did its magic Hallowe'en night, provoking much conversation and gasps. 

Evidently, there are side streets of decorated houses and neat businesses, most of which we didn't have time to side-track down. But we did tour the most popular street in Lambertville, which the police close to automobile traffic for several hours Hallowe'en evening. Many residential and businesses owners decorate along that drag, with second and third stories featuring illuminated or moving figures against windows, things dangling out of the window frames, webs stretching from top floors down to their postage-stamp-sized front yards. I recognized some of the props as pop-up Hallowe'en store merchandise from the current season or previous years, but the owners often utilized them in ways that maximized their efficiency or modified them. There were plenty of created-from-scratch figures and scenarios, some I recognized from the Halloweenville documentary. I think I saw the one house where the owner made use of hooded, caped performers in expressionless golden masks--she confessed in the film that she had discovered that they disturbed visitors more than the more obvious monsters that she had once employed; the house front and yard looked familiar but I didn't see any masked figures doing odd rituals...they still might have been lurking about.  Amid the concerts of ghostly noises some owners played, a ghoulish rock band pounded out classic dark rock tunes such as a track from the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. To accommodate the hundreds of trick 'r treaters (including parents, older siblings and many costumed pets, some in glow-in-the-dark outfits to prevent them from getting stepped on), many owners stocked BARREL LOADS of goodies. A significant portion of the revelers were costumed. We only saw a portion of them but some folks were pushing a huge enclosed transparent illuminated crib with their multiple monkey-garbed children, another family had their children in a huge carrier dressed like a waste management truck. A child too young to be watching or reading Watchmen was dressed as Rorschach. The most impressive spectacle of the evening had at least two strong adults operating an Imperial Walker the size of of a large bulky camel, complete with classic "Imperial March" theme playing in a loop. The four-legged costume didn't walk swiftly up the street but the crowds did part out of respect for it. 

[Unrelated to the documentary, except from the same year's festivities:]

This is the type of well-populated small-town Halloween celebration nostalgically envisioned by the movie Trick 'R Treat. I'm sure that the revelry could be juxtaposed with adventures down creepier parts of town where there are more shadows than people and among more rural patches in Lambertville; that was the geographical contrast mapped out by the Trick 'R Treat film and could be used as a template for Lambertville as well. 

FFB: HAWKSBILL STATION by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday 1968 et seq.); LOOKING BACKWARD 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy (Ticknor and Co./Houghton Mifflin 1888 et seq.)

These are the first two adult science fiction novels I read (unless we count Our Gang by Philip Roth, a mildly surreal and barely sfnal lampoon of the Nixon Admin, which I read when I was in 6th grade/age 11). They're both about, within their respective compasses, the triumph of socialist and/or anarchist ideas and means of organization...go figure. Another odd and more personal parallel...I read them, one each, on trips to visit my maternal and paternal grandparents.

Looking Backward involves one Julian West, hypnotized into a sort of suspended animation in 1887 which lasts till he is awakened in 2000, to find a rather utopian social-democratic world, a post-scarcity society where want and warfare have fallen away, and worldwide equality (as the sequel would be titled) and harmony are reigning rationally and compassionately. West basically gets the tour of the world at the cusp of the millennium, with the rationalized food distribution, equitable wages and retirement at 45 if desired, and such...the Bellamy was a Huge bestseller in its time, and one of the great popularizers of the democratic socialist vision, helping along both the Populist and Socialist Party causes around the turn of the century in the U.S., and perhaps also the fellow-travelers in the rest of the Anglophone world (albeit the Fabians in the UK and other co-founders of Labour had their own texts).  Among the more minor bits of technological advancement it predicted, almost inarguably more successfully than its political aspirations over the longer term, was the wiring of every household that so desired with high-fidelity telephonic audio reception of classical music...which in the pre-Marconi days, is a pretty damned good anticipation not only of radio but of the internet. (Considering I was reading the book in 1975 or '76, that was still anticipating the nearly universal access to the internet that phones allow today, and often in places otherwise not so blessed with cutting-edge technology or even particularly safe drinking water...domestically and abroad.) I read it, in a Magnum Easy Eye edition from Lancer Books (purchased for a quarter--I would buy it for a quarter--at the W. T. Grant's discount department store, where they had great tables of 3 for a dollar and 4 for a dollar books at all times in '74-'76, most of the cheaper ones Lancer mass-market paperbacks that mobbed-up Lancer might well've made fall off their own trucks. The 33c items were often textbooks and other oversized paperbacks and my parents and I often sorted through those, as well), while sitting on my grandmother's porch in the middle of coal country, in Beckley, West Virginia, her husband my grandfather having been apparently murdered in the mid '40s via an engineered cave-in, reportedly by someone who envied him his supervisory job in the mines...certainly the struggles for unionization and better conditions were hard to forget when there, with, if I'm not mistaken, at least a few of my cousins working the mines at least briefly...oddly enough, my uncles did Any damned thing they could to Not work in the mines. Though one, who became a police officer, was also murdered in the late '60s by someone who came up behind him in a local bar. The legacy of the Bellamy had continued, at least to some extent, to inspire readers even down to the present day...about the time I was reading the original, the radical among US sf writers with the most high-flying resume, Mack Reynolds (among other work, he had written speeches for his father, Socialist Labor Party candidate for President Verne Reynolds)(SLP founder Daniel De Leon having famously been such a doctrinaire Marxist that he called out Marx himself for deviationism and selling out in the 1880s, the SLP being the first socialist party to take the name in the US) was writing and publishing his own updates of Looking Backward and Equality.

Hawksbill Station involves time travel as well, in this case the use of time travel by a fascist future US regime to strand its political prisoners in the Cambrian era, where they are seen as not being able to cause much mischief--the colony of rebels is a stag affair (I vaguely recall the oppositional women being stranded in another remote era) and the prison colony, a sort of gulag, is provided with the barest necessities by what is apparently a one-way-only means of transport from the future. The prisoners are mostly relatively intellectual sorts, no Conrad villains nor Russian Social Revolutionary bomb-throwers (the former were based on), who are basically trying their best to make a tough and boring exile less insane-making...the protagonist, the "uncrowned king" of what nonetheless amounts to an anarchist co-operative, is particularly interested in the study of the trilobites which are the most common sort of animal life in the nearby ocean waters...our prisoners are essentially the only dry land animals extant. No jailers are necessary, beyond the ones back in future U.S., sending back the occasional prisoner or supplies via the time-travel reception device referred to as the Hammer.  Among the most memorable imagery in the book is that of the protagonist contemplating the animals in the littoral waters at his feet, he the alien in their world (and somehow not carrying bacteria to ravage the world of the time nor ravaged by the native bacteria and other microorganisms). The new prisoner sent back at novel's beginning, Hahn, turns out to not be what he claims to be...and the book (without spoiling too much) has a less dystopian resolution than it might. This one was a book, in the 1970 Avon paperback with the ridiculous cover (presumably the artist was given the title and little else to go on), that I was given, after I picked it up at my grandmother and step-grandfather's house in Vermont...it might've been part of my uncle David Wheeler's personal collection, left behind when he enlisted (if you'd like it back, David, I'll happily provide you another copy), or it might well be one of the items Ivan Wheeler had fished out of the dry goods disposal work he did...rubbish collection rather than trash collection, as he made the distinction, in working for himself after leaving the granite polishing sheds in Barre, Vermont, that had left him with permanent black stains on his hands. The unions there had been purged of most of their radicals by the 1940s, and would consistently push for higher wages while making no efforts to curb the horrible working conditions in the polishing sheds (silicosis and too often tuberculosis being a way of life) and related quarry work. The old Socialist Labor Hall in Barre was in the '50s a small packing plant for vegetables. Meanwhile, the novella version of "Hawksbill Station" had been kind of a turning point work of fiction for Robert Silverberg; he'd more or less moved on from writing sf by the early '60s, emphasizing both faster-buck writing of work he wasn't too proud of, and increasingly doing some widely-respected nonfiction writing in anthropology and other sciences that sometimes went beyond popularization to original research (he would receive the occasional letter addressed to Dr. Silverberg in those years, despite having left school with a BA). While Silverberg had kept a hand in the sf/fantasy world, most visibly and regularly as book reviewer for Cele Goldsmith Lalli's Amazing: Fact and Science Fiction Stories (as the title-form had it in the early '60s), he hadn't been publishing much new fiction for several years till Frederik Pohl enticed him to contribute to Galaxy and its stablemates, and while "To See the Invisible Man" (Worlds of Tomorrow, 1963) might've been the first strong indication of the New Silverberg sf and some fantasy which he would contribute over the next decade and more, the 1967 novella version of "Hawksbill" (which Silverberg apparently prefers to the novel, though the novel is fine) was I believe the first of the new crop of stories to get a lot of attention, as well as his longest work in the field aside since one less-well-received novel, The Seed of Earth, published in book form in 1962 (after Pohl had published a heavily cut version in Galaxy that year). Despite Silverberg being a libertarian-leaning conservative for the most part, the tenor of the times was leftwardly radicalizing even the likes of Karl Hess and Gary Wills in those years, and Silverberg's portrait of his rebels is notably more sympathetic than, say, the theoretically more left-leaning Donald Westlake's vile calumny with the "Curt Clark" novel Anarchaos (1967) (perhaps Westlake was on an Al Capp sort of trajectory).

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Sol Dember's cutesy cover illo is for the Zelazny story.

Vincent Price: dramatic readings, audio documentary (of several sorts), and narration....spoken word recordings (and a little singing).

Among the Caedmon covers by Leo and Diane Dillon

I had included links to a couple of the Caedmon recordings in last week's Overlooked A/V...but Horror List member Jeff Swindoll pointing to The Sound of Vincent Price site on Monday, sadly with a number of its links dead or less complete than those below, made traveling down this rabbit hole almost inevitable...that and how much I enjoyed listening to Price's recordings previously linked...another, newer catalog page is at The Vincent Price Exhibit.

Samples of radio drama and cast recordings:

The Adventures of the Saint (CBS, Mutual/MBS, NBC Radio, 1945-51) starring Price as Simon Templar
Escape (repeat performance): "Three Skeleton Key" (CBS Radio 1950 originally)(recorded again in 1956 as an episode of Suspense)

Capitol Custom Records, 1962. Seattle World's Fair speculation on the next century, full of typical gosh-wow boosterism, and Alexander Laszlo's score. Selections audible here, at The Sound of Vincent Price (note blue vinyl).

from Darling of the Day (Original Cast Recording): "He's a Genius" (RCA, 1968) (Price speak-sings; Broadway production which flopped quickly despite major talent involved--co-star Patricia Routledge won a Tony for it.)

Side 1, Track 1: "PTA"

Side 1, Track 5: "The Joke"

(Cadet Records, 1970; sketch comedy featuring Price and a good cast generally.)

The Price of Fear:  the complete series on the Internet Archive

The Price of Fear: "Specialty of the House" (ep. 11; adapting the Stanley Ellin story; BBC Radio 4, 1973)


In 1979, Price was the Wednesday night host for the mystery, suspense and horror episodes of The Sears Radio Theater. I'm not sure if he acted in any episode. (Five nights a week, slotted on CBS Radio with The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, also stripped, with Sears offering westerns (with Lorne Greene) on Monday, humorous drama (with Andy Griffith) on Tuesday, Cicely Tyson hosting romantic drama on Thursdays; Richard Widmark adventure drama on Fridays. Sears at 8p, Mystery at 9p in Honolulu. I don't remember at this point if KHVH-AM chose to continue clearing the Sears series after it went into repeats for a second season, moving to the Mutual Radio network, as the Mutual Radio Theatre...but it was a "faithful" CBS affiliate, and I'm not sure who was running MBS programming in Honolulu in that period (not that missing Paul Harvey broke my spirit in any way).

Spoken Word Records:

 

Poems of Shelley (Caedmon Records, 1956)

"With a Guitar, To Jane" (and several more at adjoining links)

Co-Star: The Acting Game: Vincent Price (Co-Star Records, 195?)
--part of a series of Co-Star albums with actors playing scenes that took the Music Minus One concept to drama...you're acting, with script provided, the scenes with the actor in the album at hand. Albert Brooks must've had some of these...: "The Governor's Son"


America the Beautiful: The Heart of America in Poetry (Columbia Records, 1961) 

Tales of Witches, Ghosts and Goblins (Caedmon Records, 1972)
X

A Coven of Witches' Tales (Caedmon Records, 1973) 

A Graveyard of Ghost Tales (Caedmon Records, 1974) "The Lavender Evening Dress"


The Gold Bug by E. A. Poe [not my favorite of his most revered tales], Caedmon 1974

Edgar Allan Poe: The Imp of the Perverse and Other Stories (Caedmon Records, 1975)  "Morella"

"Berenice"

A Hornbook for Witches (Caedmon Records, 1976) 

Edgar Allan Poe: Ligeia (Caedmon Records, 1977) 


The Goblins at the Bathhouse and [The] Calamander Chest (Caedmon Records, 1978) Part 1 of the Ruth Manning Sanders story

Part 2
Part 1 of the Joseph Payne Brennan story
Part 2

Fancies and Goodnights: The Stories of John Collier (Caedmon Records, 1980)

"Evening Primrose"

"The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It" (rather quiet transcriptions at time of linkage)

HarperAudio, which bought the Caedmon catalog, has reissued some of these recordings in various compilations, and licensed a few others to other labels.






Audio/multimedia documents:

Panorama: A ColorSlide Tour of  the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (Harry Abrams/Columbia Record Club 1960) a book with slide cards (one presumably was provided with a custom projector when one subscribed to Panorama)  and a 7" 33rpm disc, as with several others narrated by Price (at not quite double-time to cram it all in 16 minutes, in this case) among other hosts--I had a secondhand couple of the books in the Panorama series when I was young, with the slide cards but no projector and no records still with them.

Witchcraft--Magic: An Adventure in Demonology (Capitol Records, 1969)
--an attempt at "nonfictional" documentary in a double-album set

Price had also done a fair amount of recording (or endorsing, as in the case of Gallery) about cooking and wine, and audio documentaries about Christian matters, including the double-album His Son, and an earlier LP devoted to musical impressions of artworks Price appreciated, Gallery.

some Beatling; Saturday Music Club in Eastern Standard Time

Beatles covers. 

Fanny: "Hey Bulldog"

Monsoon: "Tomorrow Never Knows"


The Bangles/The Three O'Clock/the Rainy Day band et al.: "Taxman"

The Bangles: "All Together Now"

Kasey Lansdale and RAB4: "A Hard Day's Night"


Mary McCaslin: "Things We Said Today"


Emmylou Harris: "For No One"


Nina Simone: "Revolution"

Esther Phillips: "And I Love Him"


Aretha Franklin: "Eleanor Rigby"

In the studio, brilliantly

St Vincent: "Dig a Pony"


The Breeders: "Happiness is a Warm Gun"

Nanci Griffith: "Things We Said Today"


The Womenfolk: "Yesterday"

Bobbie Gentry: "Norwegian Wood" (sung in Japanese)

The Swingle Singers: "I Am the Walrus"


The Carpenters: "Help!" (in concert)


Siouxsie and the Banshees: "Dear Prudence"


The Rolling Stones: "I Wanna Be Your Man"

The Rolling Stones on The Mike Douglas Show, 1964