Trailer for Patrick McGoohan's 1973 lost biblical Othello rock opera CATCH MY SOUL

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 SATAN had 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!

(Movie poster art from Temple of Schlock)

That's Not Ohtay: Will the Real "Little Rascals" Please Stand Up?

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.

"Little Rascals" appropriation can even happen in the days of easy fact-checking.  When Mollie Mae Gottschalck Barron passed away in 2008 at the age of 87, several obituaries reported that she had been the child actress who played "Darla" in the shorts.  Darla Hood, the actual actress, had died in 1979, something that a simple Google search could have verified.

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.

Unraveling the enigma of Angelyne

Who is Angelyne?

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?

Celebrate Bugs Bunny's 75th birthday by watching his 50th!

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.

A treasury of '90s pinball promotional videos provide the guidance you never knew you needed

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.)