The writing team of and Jim Mulholland made a career out of writing for Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show," David Letterman on "Late Show" and several Academy Awards ceremonies, but they also got to be bawdy at times, as writers of AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON, BAD BOYS and the Sylvester Stallone comedy vehicle OSCAR. Their sense of knowing cynicism came across in several comedy specials, including THE SELLING OF VINCE D'ANGELO and 1993's Showtime special BASIC VALUES: SEX, SHOCK AND CENSORSHIP IN THE '90s, a one-shot starring Shelley Long as an investigative news reporter hosting a special on controversial media. It's basically just an excuse for off-color gags, but it's well-remembered by the few that saw it.
Fortunately, at least some of the clips from the show have made their way on to YouTube. Here's a tale of Jesus's Last Supper done as a riff on GOODFELLAS, featuring Paul Benedict as a Michael Medved-like movie critic:
A parody of the explosion of urban-set movies for black audiences from the early '90s, a few years before DON'T BE A MENACE TO SOUTH CENTRAL WHILE DRINKING YOUR JUICE IN THE HOOD:
Alex Winter as rapper Stinx on Ice, who has all sorts of suggestions on how to "Kill Your Teacher":
And best of all, a fake trailer for the horror pic THE GRANNY (with Dan Hedaya), two years before the Shannon Whirry film THE GRANNY made the concept a reality:
There has been plenty to say about Roland Emmerich's recent film STONEWALL -- mostly negative, from its lack of historical accuracy to its whitewashing to its less-than-teriffic box office. The makers of the upcoming film STONEWALL: RIOT ON CHRISTOPHER STREET don't really care about historical accuracy either, but in this case, it's intentional.
S:ROCS, directed by Richard Griffin (DISCO EXORCIST, THE SINS OF DRACULA) reimagines the 1969 riots as a '70s exploitation film involving the Black Panthers, and the trailer looks like a hell of a lot of fun, even though some may consider the use of an important historical event blasphemous. I'd say it looks like it serves as a genre-loving response to the previous cinematic incarnations of the event.
Check out the trailer below, and watch for the film soon.
As my CD collection (because I have a CD collection) can prove, I'm a big fan of the Danny Elfman-fronted Oingo Boingo, at least before they became Boingo and became kinda "meh." In one of the odder collisions of pop culture, the band performed on Jerry Lewis's annual Labor Day telethon in 1987, performing "We Close Our Eyes" (which, strangely, seems to be lip-synced) and "Not My Slave" (which isn't?).
But that's not all the live Oingo I've got for you -- here's the band performing "Not My Slave" and "Elevator Man" on the short-lived (Sinbad-hosted!) "Keep on Cruisin'" the same year.
Of course, these clips come from a time after the band had become a bit more pop and less experimental. For a look at them closer to the era of FORBIDDEN ZONE, check them out on "The Gong Show" over a decade earlier, when they were still performing under their full moniker of "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo."
There's a lot going on in terms of fandom history in this clip from a July episode of "The Mike Douglas Show." The man being interviewed is Phil Seuling, a comic book convention organizer and distributor who was responsible for the "direct market" as founder of Sea Gate Distributors in 1972, distributing comics directly to comic book specialty stores. (He was also a voice in Ralph Bakshi's FRITZ THE CAT.) There's Jamie Farr eagerly pointing out all of the Fawcett comics characters and discussing Wonder Woman's "mod" changes. And there's also some early cosplay, as Wendy Pini, who would co-create "Elfquest" with her husband the next year, comes out on stage dressed as Red Sonja. (The guy with the white hair is Jerry Lester, a regular comedian and personality who hosted one of the first late-night talk shows.)
Patrick McGoohan is best known to cult film fans as the star of "The Prisoner," but the classic series amounted to only one year in an impressive career of credits both in front of and behind the camera. His resume as director includes a handful of television episodes (in most cases, appearing as an actor in the project as well), but as far as feature films go, McGoohan only helmed one -- 1974's CATCH MY SOUL, also released in a possibly different cut as SANTA FE SATAN.
CATCH MY SOUL, as its alternate title suggest, was filmed around Santa Fe, New Mexico, where McGoohan and his family had moved to after the end of "The Prisoner." McGoohan got the directing job at the behest of producer/writer Jack Good, the British music producer and occasional actor who had previously been responsible for both "Shindig!" and the now-cult-favorite-but-then-notable-misfire television special "33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee," which deserves its own entry in this blog at some point.
The film was to be a rock opera remake of Shakespeare's "Othello," a source material McGoohan had some experience with, having played the Iago part in the jazz scene-set 1962 film ALL NIGHT LONG. Good had originally developed the project as a stage play, which played in Los Angeles in 1968 with BLACULA's William Marshall and Jerry Lee Lewis (!) in the main roles. (And I now have a new addition to my "to-do" list when I finally get to time travel.) The production moved to the U.K. with a new cast shortly thereafter.
The film was made, but in place of Marshall and Lewis were folk singer Richie Havens and future TV regular Lance LeGault, reprising his role from the U.K. stage version. Also joining the cast were singer Tony Joe White, future VICE SQUAD star Season Hubley and the ever-welcome Susan Tyrrell, who had just gotten an Oscar nomination for FAT CITY. Conrad Hall, fresh off of COOL HAND LUKE and ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE, was brought on as cinematographer. Future TERMINATOR 2 editor Richard A. Harris put it all together.
You can read a lot more about the production in Tom Mayer's astonishingly well-researched piece here, but the film and the soundtrack were released in 1973 to mediocre-to-poor reviews. As was the custom at the time, the film was re-released in 1975 under the title SANTA FE SATAN, in an attempt to get some of that EXORCIST cash. It's been little-seen since.
"Little-seen" understates the point. The film was never released on videocassette or DVD, and may never have aired on television. Until last year, the film had been considered completely lost, even turning up in Chris Poggiali's "Endangered List" on his obligatgory-for-obscure-film-fans "Temple of Schlock" blog.
The film was finally located in 2013 under the SANTA FE SATAN title, in a trailer on a farm in North Carolina (!), and Mayer's piece has a full write-up of the film itself. He also details the possibilities of the alternate cuts -- none of which can be confirmed without the existence of additional prints.
SANTA FE SATANhad something of a re-premiere in 2014, as part of North Carolina's RiverRun International Film Festival. It was stated that this would be the final time the film would be projected due to wear, but a restoration campaign would be taking place.
So why I am my going into great detail about this film you can't see?
Well, because now you can at least see a part of it. A trailer has emerged for the film, containing the first publicly-available footage of it that's been seen in nearly 40 years. It's only sixty seconds, but at least it's verifiable proof that it exists under its original title, CATCH MY SOUL.
The soundtrack has been available for a while, and it's definitely a treat, especially if you're a fan of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. (I'm imagining the film being a bit like that, only without Ted Needy's emo savior.) It's not much to watch, but you can listen to it in full here:
Even if the film is a mess,its remarkable existence makes it a genuine curiosity. The tale of how two British entertainment figures randomly made a religious rock opera based on a Shakespeare play set in New Mexico is an undoubtedly compelling one, and any film distribution company worth their salt should be able to promote it with ease. (This seems like an ideal project for the newly-formed Etiquette Pictures or Grindhouse Releasing, whose recent issues of AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL and GONE WITH THE POPE have brought former obscurities to welcoming audiences.)
Update: Rumor is that CATCH MY SOUL will be making its way onto DVD (and Blu-ray?) next year. Keep your eyes peeled!
Hal Roach's series of kid-centric shorts under the name "Our Gang" or later "The Little Rascals" are nearing a century old, and their legacy lives on today as families still watch the shorts online (at least the ones that aren't culturally problematic) and purchase direct-to-video remakes that nobody really asked for.
But the early years of the Hal Roach shorts were pretty chaotic -- there were the major players that everyone remembers, like Spanky and Alfalfa, but kids came and went so commonly that is became easy to pass yourself off as a former Rascal, just because there were so darn many of 'em.
In this 1953 episode of "To Tell the Truth," the second round invites our panel to guess which of the three heavyset men on stage is the real Jack Bothwell, the actor who played "Freckles" in Hal Roach's "Little Rascals" shorts. (Skip to 9:00 to get to the point of reference.)
The panel fails to guess the correct Bothwell, and a picture is shown of "Freckles"as a child. But even if they'd have all guessed correctly, they'd still have been wrong -- while that was, in fact, Jack Bothwell, there was never a character named "Freckles" in the Little Rascals, and Bothwell was just a restaurant host.
According to this piece by Mark Evanier, Bothwell went on to do talk shows continuing to perpetrate the fraud and, quite possibly, never getting called on it. It was a different time, when researching someone's identity would take some effort. (Unlike currently, when it takes little effort, but it often not done due to laziness - witness any given death hoax on Facebook, or the wonder that is Literally Unbelievable.)
But while Jack Bothwell may have been the first person who impersonated a Little Rascal, he was far from the only. In 1990, a grocery store clerk named Bill English talked the producers of "20/20" into thinking he had played Buckwheat -- an impressive feat, considering William Thomas Jr., the actor who actually played him, had died in 1980, and there were a number of references to his death in the news after Eddie Murphy had played him on "Saturday Night Live" being assassinated.
The episode was noticed by George McFarland, the actor who had actually played Spanky in the series, who went on to confront him on "A Current Affair," as seen below:
Impressively, English sticks to his claim, making for a fantastic look at self-delusion. English passed away in 1994, and I'm unsure if he stuck to his story until his death.
The ruse had apparently been going on a while. This 1999 interview commits to Barron's "Darla" fantasy, claiming that she played it for a year while Minnie Ruth, the "other actress who portrayed Alfalfa's girlfriend, was on sick leave." A cursory search for Ruth's name alongside the Little Rascals reveals nothing other than links to Barron herself.
It's a heck of a lot tougher now to con your way into having people believe you're someone you're not -- or at least more random. All it takes is a few people too intent on believing the lie to bother checking the facts. We may have seen the last of the "Little Rascals" phonies, but the next great short-term media con could only be a Tweet or two away.
Before the Real Housewives and the Paris Hiltons (but after Zsa Zsa Gabor), there was Angelyne, a celebrity solely because she said she was a celebrity. Technically an actress (who had bit roles in the likes of Brian De Palma's PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and the bawdy sketch flick CAN I DO IT 'TILL I NEED GLASSES?), Angelyne rose to a very specific type of fame when she started promoting herself via billboard in 1984 in conjunction of the release of her second album. According to Robinson (THE WOMAN CHASER) Devor and Michael Guiccione's long out-of-print documentary ANGELYNE, the billboards were financed by a wealthy backer in exchange for all of the profits she'd make from her newfound celebrity, though, like everything related to Angelyne, whether or not that's the truth is questionable.
The album may not have taken off (see the music video above), but the billboards became a ubiquitous part of Los Angeles culture. The Angelyne character continues to be a fixture of the city, as she drives around town in her pink Corvette. She's even become, well, technically an actress, with bit roles in EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY, HOMER AND EDDIE and in countless television shows and music videos. She always plays herself, or a character that is essentially a version of herself, even when she's playing Barbara Bush in 1991's THE MALIBU BEACH VAMPIRES. It's no surprise that she's one of the "personalities" visible in the music video for Moby's "We Are All Made of Stars" along with Kato Kaelin, Corey Feldman, Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman and Ron Jeremy.
Even with the benefit of Devor's documentary and brief profiles like the one below, Angelyne remains a completely vapid enigma. The living, committed embodiment of the "blonde bombshell airhead," Angelyne is Anna Nicole Smith without the depth (or tragedy), a bizarre cult phenomenon inspired by simply being the living persona of a Barbie doll. She's not a character that can really be examined or analyzed -- she simply is, and there's no depth beyond the surface. Whether or not this is just an act is irrelevant, as if it's an act, "Angelyne" is so far into character that I doubt there's a "there" there anymore.
(It's not that surprising that she's inspired drag personas like Stangelyne and Trixie Mattel as well, as she's essentially a drag queen without the gender-bending.)
Angelyne is the rare example of a celebrity famous entirely because she says she is -- unlike the current incarnation of the psuedo-celebrity, she didn't even have a reality show to cause her rise to fame. And a TV show about Angelyne probably wouldn't be interesting anyway, as she's so committed to her character that she doesn't really DO anything.
It's a persona exemplified by this exchange in a 2012 interview with Alex Israel in his (deliberately) odd YouTube series "As It Lays:"
Israel: What do you want the world to know about Angelyne?
Angelyne: Absolutely nothing! Oooo!
That's Angelyne in a nutshell. But for the sake of seeing at least a taste of Angelyne not being Angelyne, here's her sharing the screen with John Candy in CAN I DO IT 'TIL I NEED GLASSES?
Today marked the 75th anniversary of Bugs Bunny, who made his debut in Tex Avery's 1940 classic A WILD HARE. And there's plenty of points around the web celebrating such on occasion, so instead of just bringing up Bugsy, why not check out the festivities the last time he had an important birthday?
1990's HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUGS: 50 LOONEY YEARS is about as ridiculous as TV specials get, filled with guest stars (Seriously, look at this cast of guest appearances) and containing very little content about the guest of honor himself. In fact, much of it is presented as though Bugs is an actual person with an acting career rather than, well, going into the actual history of his animated exploits.
Here's what you get:
Little Richard singing "That's not all, folks, we want more!" with a cavalcade of the guest stars you'll be seeing -- you know, animation staples like Jon Voight, Fred Savage and Harry Anderson.
"Pro-Daffy Duck protesters" (including "Moonlighting'"s Allyce Beasley) opposed to the Bugs Bunny event.
An "Entertainment Tonight" profile of the rascally rabbit, which serves as a full "biography" of Bugs' rise to fame claiming that he grew up in Brooklyn and was soon discovered and became a superstar.
Shatner.
Fake talk show segments featuring Joan Rivers, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphael.
A montage of a cross-dressing Bugs backed by Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistable."
A shirtless Chuck Norris working out.
A very strange conversation between Bill Cosby and Raven Symone that I'm not sure Symone is aware is being filmed.
Dan Quayle jokes.
Milton Berle in a bunny outfit claiming that he's the real Bugs Bunny.
Shadoe Stevens shilling for Acme products.
Hulk Hogan.
Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Mel Blanc and Fritz Freling are mentioned in passing, and Freling and Chuck Jones have brief interview segments, but for the most part, it's fully committed to the idea that Bugs Bunny is a real-life being, forcing the concept into as many deeply committed gags as it possibly can while tossing out as many random (and usually unidentified) vintage Warner Bros. cartoon clips as it can.
There are moments of brightness, such as a clever Daffy Duck segment in which he meets his agent and clips of Mel Blanc recording Bugs' voice, but most of it is just random footage of Bugs and celebrities paining themselves to come up with something original to say.
Happy birthday, Bugs! I hope your 75th is much better than your 50th.
If you're a good, wholesome person, you like pinball, but if you're like me, you're basically an amateur when it comes to actual playing. You know not to tilt, you know to make sure ther silver balls need to stay on the playing field and it's your job as administrator of the flippers to keep it there, and you can kind of figure out that it's cool when the ball goes into tunnels and up ramps and on to targets that make the pinball machine react excitedly.
But modern pinball machines are a hell of lot deeper than the "just try to hit all the good flashy stuff" level that the neophyte player enjoys. There is, in fact, a recommended way to play these machines in order to follow the "storyline" and maximize your points.
Williams Electronics, one of the primary producers of pinball machines throughout the '90s, produced a number of promotional videos for their machines, used to sell their wares to perspective amusement locales. And sure, they're just promo reels, but they're more than just sales pitches to buyers -- they're complete guides to how the machines are meant to be played.
The promo 1993's TWILIGHT ZONE (made by Bally, whom Williams had acquired in 1988) features a Rod Serling impersonator along with clips from the episodes that provided the inspiration for the table:
The DOCTOR WHO pinball machine, made to celebrate the show's 30th anniversary, even features a brief recap of the show, though I doubt the statement that there's a WHO convention in the U.S. on every weekend.
1995's DIRTY HARRY machine features "arresting" new features, but somehow misses the chance to ask "Did I shoot three balls? Or only two?" Still, this guide should help you feel lucky. Punk.
The guide to the pinball machine based on 1994's THE SHADOW should help you figure out exactly how the random cavalcade of silver balls bouncing around relates to taking down John Lone.
And who the heck could possibily resist the charms of Elvira, who introduces the 1996 machine SCARED STIFF, featuring six (!) stories sure to entice any pinball boobie-er-newbie.
Lastly, the promo for THEATER OF MAGIC, one of the few machines not based on an existing franchise, has a full story to engage with.
There's a heck of a lot more fun to be had for pinball junkies as well, so check out Jan van den Munckhof's page here. (MONSTER BASH is a must-see for Universal monster fans.)
With the feature film version of PIXELS arriving in theaters this week, I looked at a few other options for video game nostalgia, including the short on which it was based. But what has French director Patrick Jean been up to since the 2010 short went viral?
Well, for one thing, he directed this music video for German electronic musician Boys Noize, which was one of my favorite music videos of 2013, as a man without super powers moves into an area populated entirely by caped crusaders.
His inventive short film MOTORVILLE may not tap into the same nostalgia factor as PIXELS, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun, even if the metaphor ends up being a little messy.
PIXELS opens today, and if the reviews are to be believed, it's somewhere between "pointless" and "awful," and probably not worth spending eleven bucks on. Instead, why not sate your 8-bit nostalgia for free with ten perfectly good, and genuinely entertaining, short videos? Save a few bucks and get WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? on streaming instead, and then you can just stay in your home and not have to deal with the type of people that would willingly spend the cost of a meal on an Adam Sandler movie.
1. PES's impressive stop-motion animated short that reimagines a number of video game classics
2. Lily Tomlin talking about Pac-Man addiction from a 1982 episode of "Saturday Night Live"
3. The incredible video for Royksopp's "Happy Up Here" about video game-related intruders
4. A 1982 animated short about a video game invasion
5. Alex Varanese's nifty stop motion short tribute to R-Type
6. A promotional film for the laserdisc game "Cliff Hanger" (using footage from Miyazaki's CASTLE OF CAGLISTRO)
7. Pac-Man reimagined as first-person driving game
8. Eight minutes of commercials for food featuring video games
9. The vintage arcade game-inspired music video for The Montauk Project featuring a character called "Dookie-Poo"
10. Patrick Jean's original short film that inspired the feature you probably want to avoid
Film icons making their cinematic swan song as the voice in an animated film of questionable repute isn't unheard of -- who can forget Sean Connery's (most likely) final role in the choppy Scotish film SIR BILLI (released to the states as GUARDIAN OF THE HIGHLANDS) or Orson Welles belting out commands as the planet-eating Unicron in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE?
At least those movies were released. Marlon Brando's last foray into features hasn't been so lucky. BIG BUG MAN, an animated feature that uses Brando's voice recorded on June 10, 2004 (three weeks before his death) has yet to see the light of day.
BIG BUG MAN is the story of a candy factory worker (voiced by Brendan Fraser) who is bitten by bugs and becomes a superhero. You can check out the storyboards for the film here.
So who does Brando play? A mob boss? A kindly "Uncle Ben" type to Fraser's Spider-ish-man?
No, Brando plays Mrs. Sour, the elderly owner of the candy company in which our hero works. In fact, he was so committed to the role that, according to writer/director Bob Bendetson, he performed his voice acting in drag, with a blonde wig, a dress, full makeup and gloves.
"He was gorgeous," Bendetson said. "I guess it was part of his Method training or something, where you almost embarrass yourself as the character, so that way you're free to be the character. ... About halfway through he took off the wig because he was getting too hot."
So where is this amazing piece of cinema that you can hear a clip from in this 2004 news report?
Lost to cinematic limbo, unfortunately. The film has yet to find any sort of release, and a search for updated information has yielded no results. Bendetsen, who wrote the infamous final episode of "Newhart," hasn't had a screen credit since. How many SPIDER-MAN reboots do we have to go through in order to make this one see the light of day?
Throughout his decades in the show business industry, Clint Eastwood has become an cultural icon, playing a vast variety of tough guy characters, ranging from cowboys to cops to curmudgeons to chair yellers. Meanwhile, actor Joe Dimmick has become an icon in his own right, playing a vast variety of Clint Eastwoods.
Dimmick is the owner of "Dimmick's Doubles," a celebrity lookalike company he founded in 1979 and of which Dimmick himself is the biggest draw. Dimmick's Eastwood impressions, beginning in 1977 when he answered a "Variety" ad, have led him to a certain degree of squinty-eyed fame and fortune, as Dimmick has portrayed Clint characters in commercials, television and even films, playing Eastwood archetypes in Mel Brooks' ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS and the action comedy ACES GO PLACES 2. (In the latter, his character of "Filthy Harry" is hired by a Henry Kissinger impersonator.)
But his biggest role as "Clint Eastwood" is in the 1987 film FILTHY HARRY, a feature-length epic Dimmick wrote, produced, directed and starred in that serves as an excuse to both parody DIRTY HARRY and give brief showcases to many of "Dimmick's Doubles" themselves, as impersonators of Joan Collins, Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds (as "Slick") and more show up in minimal-to-supporting roles.
FILTHY HARRY is, as you can probably guess, not a "good" movie. The jokes are stale and terrible, the impersonations are only vaguely convincing (Stallone is laughable) and the performances are, to be kind, amateurish. But it also has a strange likeability about it -- there's nothing mean-spirited about the impersonations, and there's nothing in the film other than some comic violence that would give it anything more than a "G" rating if the MPAA ever touched this thing.
Mike Sullivan pretty much nailed it in his "Shock Cinema" review when he called it "an abject failure" as a comedy, but "any film where a Yamaha keyboard actually receives an on screen credit during the opening...has earned the right to be watched sober at least once." It's a ridiculous vanity project that's basically just an advertisement for a company that allows you to hire a mediocre Whoopi Goldberg impersonator, but it's about the most affable mindless monstrosity that you could imagine.
(This 2003 article even suggests there was a sequel, called MAGNUM FARCE, but this may have just been an offhanded comment Dimmick made. Anyone have any ideas if this exists?)
I know, I've been gone for a while. My apologies to the two or three people that actually noticed -- I hope you've been watching something good!
You probably have. There's a lot of neat stuff out there.
Anyway, when I started this vanity blog, my plan was to keep it updated constantly, several times a day, like a real-life website that multiple people were in charge of. That worked for a while, thanks to the ability to plan things on the weekends and have them slowly leak out during the week. Soon, however, it became more of a burden than something fun -- which was the whole point of starting this in the first place.
After a few false re-starts, I think I'm ready to commit again, though this time, I'll just be posting sporadically -- whenever I find something notable enough to write about.
Without further ado...
I miss the time when a movie's soundtrack provided a music video for just about every dang song on it. I have no idea if this tactic worked as a merchandising device, though evidence suggests it didn't, as with few exceptions, most music from '80s movies is remembered only in the context of the movie itself.
FLETCH, the 1985 cinematic adaptation of Gregory McDonald's series of detective novels starring Chevy Chase as the titular character, had not one, not two, but three music videos devoted to the songs on the soundtrack. I hadn't realized this until recently, having only been aware of the video for Harold Faltermeyer's Art of Noise-y instrumental theme music, which features Faltermeyer wandering around a beach and occasionally playing synthesizer. It's "integrated" into the movie in that, er, it's set on the beach, where part of the film is, and one point, he seems to be calling Fletch. Sort of.
The prolific Will Harris, he of the AV Club's excellent "Random Roles" feature, pointed out this second music video, which is significantly more nuts. Stephanie Mills sings the "actual" theme from FLETCH in a bizarre performance art space that's probably best described as "'80s futurism." Clips from the film show up via video screens and sound samples.
But look! Defenseless babies! No, I kid. Things do, however, get even weirder with our final FLETCH video, that actually seems to feature new footage with Chase shot for the video itself. At least, I don't remember a scene in FLETCH where the lead character ran into a tent and watched George Wendt appearing in a crystal ball operated by Dan Hartman. There is leather. And random glitter. And it feels like it was meant for a DEATHSTALKER sequel.
I could be wrong, though. It's been a while since I've seen the film.
Utah filmmaker C. Larry Roberts passed away in 1988 at the age of 43, a talented life cut short after directing a documentary on Steven C. Stewart, the writer and star of Crispin Glover's IT IS FINE! EVERYTHING IS FINE. Roberts' little-seen 1975 short film, now on YouTube, is an endearingly bizarre, trippy ride filled with stock footage, shots of '70s Utah and psychedelic sequences, and delivered with great tongue-in-cheek narration.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's John Franklin, best known as Isaac from Children of the Corn, dressed as a leprechaun singing Lionel Richie's "Stuck on You" on a 1983 episode of "Kids, Incorporated" because the world is full of wonder.
Jeff Hale, the England-born animator who created the Lenny Bruce short "Thank You Mask Man" and worked extensively for animation that appeared on "Sesame Street," passed away in February at the age of 92. Cartoon Brew has the full story, but here is one of his most noteworthy works, a compilation of the "Pinball Count" shorts (with vocals by the Pointer Sisters!) that appeared on "Sesame Street" starting in 1976. 12345, 678910... 11, 12...
In 1985, the Jim Henson-produced "Muppet Babies" spin-off was big on the Saturday morning cartoon scene, so CBS wanted to expand the franchise further. "Muppet Babies" was to be paired with "Little Muppet Monsters," a live-action show much more in line with the "Muppet Show" set-up, with the show depicting the running of the show itself, and with the original Muppets in cameo roles. Animated segments were also added, provided by Marvel Productions.
The show lasted all of three episodes before the "Muppets, Babies and Monsters" combo promised on CBS's Saturday morning promotional materials faded into oblivion. While the series has never released to home video (twelve episodes were left unaired), here are ten minutes from the unaired episode nine, which lacks certain Muppet celebrity cameos and the animated segments.
