I paid 25 cents for this DVD
-
escalera-2 — 17 years ago(April 28, 2008 04:16 PM)
Speaking of "The Time Machine" I recall reading an early issue of Starlog telling how the original stuff was consumed in a fire and how someone carefully recreated the oversized prop. He invited George Pal over for an inspection and Pal was delgithed to see it. There was a photo of Pal smiling broadly manipulating the controls as he sat on it. He said he had, for some reason, never sat on the original!
Those are interesting observations concerning Ackerman's museum. I remember photos of him with the False Maria. Didn't Bill Malone make that one for him?
Famous Monsters of Filmland. The first issue that mesmerized me was the one with a terrific painting of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. I used to wonder where Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons" got his catch-phrase "Worst Episode Ever!"
then one day I remembers that the "Famous Monsters of Filmland Yearbook every year would be tagged "BEST ISSUE EVER!"
I know that Steven Spielberg was abig fan, as was Marvel's Roy Thomas. Now, you're one more. Forry inspired many minds!
Well, it certainly impressed you and that's a pretty neat turn. -
obit1 — 17 years ago(April 28, 2008 08:13 PM)
Bob Burns knew George Pal ever since he(Bob) visited the set of Destination Moon as a young fellow. The actual big Time Machine was kept at MGM until, in the 70's, it was part of the big backlot auction at Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Burns scraped together $1000.00 but was overbid and the machine went to somebody for four grand.
It was later sold to a traveling show for about $9000.00 and in '75, someone informed Bob that it was in an antique shop.in very bad condition. No chair, the sled rotting, etc.
Bob managed to buy the heap and with the help of Dennis Muren, Tom Sherman, D.C. Fontana, and Mike Minor, rebuilt it to its former glory.
Bob always used to do these great Halloween shows on his property and when the Time Machine prop was finished he designed a Time Machine Show. They asked George Pal to come and see the show. He did, and they asked him to sit in it for a picture. Pal smilingly informed everybody that he had NEVER sat in the seat of the Machine before. LOL. I guess he was too busy producing and directing the picture!
In Bob's own printed words from one of his books, IT CAME FROM BOB'S BASEMENT.
"Today, one of my favorite photos is the one we took that night of George Pal seated in his brainchild, pulling the lever and smiling a huge smile!"
Yes, I believe Bill Malone DID make the robotrix for Forry.
I know that David Allen and Tom Sherman with Jim Danforth and Dennis Muren were working on the script and special effects designs for a project called RAIDERS OF THE STONE RING (this has now become THE PRIMEVALS and is only about 2/3 finished) Forry used to print the progress of these guys in his magazine. The film of course was never made but Spielberg made, years later, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK..I guess Steve knew a catchy title when he read it.
LOL
-WW
http://www.woodywelch.com -
escalera-2 — 17 years ago(April 29, 2008 04:25 AM)
OBIT would you ever submit this stuff to the IMDb under Trivia for the 1960 version of "The Time Machine"? It is good stuff and will be lost in this thread. The 2002 re-make brought out new interest and new fans for the George Pal production and this information would be a real benefit to them and other fans who come along.
Thanks for that and the other. I will dig around for a copy of Bob Burn's book. That sounds like fun, too. -
obit1 — 17 years ago(April 29, 2008 05:21 AM)
Well as far as trivia about the Time Machine, that comes directly from the pages of Bob's books.He first put out IT CAME FROM BOB'S BASEMENT and then a bit later, MONSTER KID MEMORIES, which is more in depth. So anybody could submit the anecdotes that had the books as reference. I don't know if Bob is selling them through his website, but that's a start.
Both books I would highly reccomend.they are full of lots of pictures and Bob writes in a wonderful "Gee-Whiz, Gosh, Golly" style that is evocative of all of us when we were discovering things about movies for the first time.
http://www.woodywelch.com -
escalera-2 — 17 years ago(April 29, 2008 05:57 AM)
Frederick Clarke's "Cinefantastique" used to call it "The Sense of Wonder".
Maybe that is why we are drawn to these old titles and enjoying hearing and telling about those moments.
Whatever the source, the information is still good. I hope you might submit it for fans of this and other movies that Mr. Burns writes about. It's not like he made it up himself, he was, of course, just recording history.
I'll see about his web-site and what he may offer there.
Thanks, again. -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 29, 2008 02:21 PM)
obit,
The photo of George Pal at the controls of the Time Machine is I assume the one that has famously graced things such as the DVD (and earlier VHS) cover, and if I recall it's in the film as well, of THE FANTASY FILM WORLDS OF GEORGE PAL? I loved that documentary, especially the much-expanded DVD version. DESTINATION MOON is among my top three favorite films of any kind, and the huge amount of footage, including the kinescope of the extensive live TV interview done on-set in late 1949, is terrific.
Sorry to intrude, you and escalera have had a great exchnage going here.
Although I'm sure you're sadly right that "the vultures" will move in and strip Forry's collection once he's gone, at least he assembled it, took care of it, and the objects will (we hope) continue to be preserved somewhere, even if not by Bob Burns. You and I have discussed this, and you're lucky to have known him and visited the place before the great clearing-out.
hob -
obit1 — 17 years ago(April 29, 2008 11:18 PM)
hobnob, you never intrude.
Never ever!
LOL
Currently I'm going through all the crazy nickle and dime stuff I loved as a kid.Colonel Bleep, Space Explorers, Diver Dan.andAND (God Bless Youtube!!) I have seen, for the first timeafter forty years, FRANKENSTEIN'S CAT!!!
I have this mental image of Mighty Mouse surfing out of the sky on a tube of IPANA toothpaste.so many images, so little time.lol
http://www.woodywelch.com -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(May 01, 2008 02:25 PM)
FRANKENSTEIN'S CAT???!!! Daughter, bride, son, these I know. Cat?? Do provide the breathless details.
Somewhere or other I recently had a conversation concerning Diver Dan was it with you, escalera? One loses track, especially on a thread with 64 posts and counting, all mixed up in time and spacemuch like the plot of TEENAGERS.
Lest we forget, we forget.
Ipana! Indeed. And how about Stripe? Even Billy Wilder referenced that in ONE, TWO, THREE. -
obit1 — 17 years ago(May 01, 2008 11:48 PM)
Frankenstein's Cat was one of the earliest Mighty Mouse cartoons!!!!
The bucolic countryside was a paradise until a baby bird was blown by a harsh wind all the way to Frankenstein's castle where it narrowly escaped the clutches of
FRANKENSTEIN'S CAT!
Chasing the baby bird out of the castle, the feline Frankenstein monster lays waste to the country side (compared to the mice and birds, he's ENORMOUS!) Until.
Mighty Mouse comes in and kicks his butt!!!!!
Frankenstein's cat walked upright, had mechanical arms and legs, a squared off head, a body like a metal cyclinder , and an organic cat-like face. Intead of meowing, it moaned and groaned and growled like the monster Frankenstein made for the movies and when attacked by the birds, it swatted at them like Kong batting the biplanes.
I'm sure they still have it on youtube.
It was my all time favorite Mighty Mouse cartoon..
.obviously.
lol
p.s. I think there is something in England called Frankenstein's Cat but that has nothing to do with this great cartoon from over a half a century ago!
http://www.woodywelch.com -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(May 04, 2008 05:46 PM)
I am filled with pride and humility at the degree to which we three (obit, escalera et moi) have, on this single thread, raised the cultural threshold of America, if not indeed the entire planet, through our posts.
I think I shall call it The Second Enlightenment.
Or was that what Derek was planning when he crashed the invading lobster fleet?
Oh, darn. Another unannounced spoiler. -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 21, 2008 06:23 PM)
GILA is another p.d. opus also released by Image as part of the so-called Wade Williams Collection, and once again it's by far the best version available great print, andwidescreen! Gulp! Lets you see the entire lizard! (Sullivan had I think three songs, all lousy, ranging from malt-shoppe rock 'n' roll to early hootenany praise-the-Lord stuff. Pardon me while I step outside to be eaten by the gila.)
At least BATTLE OF THE WORLDS had a four-time Oscar nominee to embarrass, and to elevate its public standing. But: "Academy-Award-winner Tom Graeff"? Nah.
Actually, Bill Warren, the author of that book I wrote about earlier ("Keep Watching the Skies"), gives TEENAGERS a fairly decent review, stating among other things that Graeff showed some talent in framing his scenes, camera movement and blocking his actors, and like you escalera he also admired the design of the spaceship. He hardly rates it a good movie but said that, as a teenager himself he howled with resentment at this movie when he saw it in 1959, but that seeing it again two decades later he reversed his derisive opinion about it and saw some things of meritenough to wonder why Graeff never made anything else. Interesting. -
escalera-2 — 17 years ago(April 21, 2008 07:27 PM)
Funny I was thinking of "The Killer Shrews" when I read the reference to "The Giant Gila Monster". I guess I saw them both about the same time.
Now, I haven't seen "Teenagers" in a while, was it a lobster or a crawfish playing the part of the Gargon?
"Teenagers" was well shot and well edited for the most part. I liked the music, too. -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 21, 2008 08:50 PM)
I think it was a lobster, some gourmands insist it was a crayfish (which is the same as a crawfish). Either way, only its dark, unmatted shadow was seen. Ultra-cheap! Although, at that, it was better than the alien invasion fleet, NOTHING of which was ever seen (though Betty and company gave us that breathless, thrilling play-by-play of all the action transpiring that the camera couldn't turn around and show us!).
Yes, I guess on a technical level much of TFOS was a bit above average for a movie that probably cost 25 cents to produce. Too bad the script, story and acting were so awful. But then, it wouldn't be so awfully fun. -
obit1 — 17 years ago(April 21, 2008 09:32 PM)
I believeI am just saying.i seem to remember that Giant Crawfish/Crawdads etc. menaced the players in PANTHER GIRL OF THE CONGO. (I could google this, but then hobnob would lose all respect for me)
It seemed that the big thing in the "trap" in the beginning of Teenagers from Outer Space was a nice lobsterI suppose the one that was matted into the shot at the end there next to the pole was too, but I haven't seen the film in 12 years.
And hey!
While we're talking about movies cheaply made that have actors relating the action in dialogue (saving the time and money to actually show things) never let us forget that the CATWOMEN OF THE MOON ending where a breathless Sonny Tufts (or one of them) runs in and poses in front of a bad painted backdrop and says"The Catwomen are all dead!"
It takes BALLS to do this even in the early fifties.
I guess the antithesis of this would be THE CREEPING TERROR, where every action is narrated. We see Bob (or whomever) sit down on the couch and begin to talk to a girl. There is no sound but the narrator saying."Bob sat down on the couch, and began to tell Tina the events of the day.saying that.."
You get the idea.supposedly a great deal of the soundtrack was lost or stolen or somebody wiped their fanny with it while defecating in a bushI dunno.
As the kids say."it's.SURREAL!"
http://www.woodywelch.com -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 21, 2008 11:48 PM)
Oh, my goodness, obit, how ever could you think I could lose respect for you? I humble myself before you, always!
Yeah, you know, they did have a big lobster trap or something that they let the Gargon loose out ofwhatever. I half expected the Marine Patrol to come along and give them a summons for swiping somebody's lobster pots.
But odd you mention CAT-WOMEN because I was reading something about that just the other day. Great film. I think it was Sonny Himself who did yell, "The Cat-Women are dead, and Helen's all right!" Bang, zoom! Everything resolved in a flash, just slap your hands clean and stroll off. Obviously the production manager had his stopwatch out and realized they'd shot 62 of its 64 minutes and had to make sure they had enough film left for the grand finale aboard the Tuftshuttle. My God, even the really terrible (= wonderful) remake remake! Of CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON?! 1958's MISSILE TO THE MOON, ran 78 minutes. My favorite part: Sonny borrowing a cigarette from Marie Windsor to show what would happen to them if they strayed over the divider onto the bright side of the moon. Apart from the cigarette catching fire and burning up in a vacuum what the hell was Helen doing carrying a pack of butts around in her spacesuit anyway? Can't you see all that smoke swirling about that goldfish bowl she wore for a helmetassuming she found a way to get the Chesterfield into her mouth in the first place? Even for a movie of that sort, you'd expect some idiot to figure that that just didn't make any sense, even by their low standards.
Yep, you're right as usual, that ending is even more ballsy than TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE. At least in TEENs we saw some shots of the protagonist space guys, just no action. In CWOTM, not even any final shots of the Cat-Women, nor any hint of how they all died instantaneously. "Suddenly, everybody was run over by a truck." (Know that one?)
Oh, as lost-soundtrack narrations go, I prefer THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, for its surreal inscrutability and irrationality, to the monster shag carpet and banal off-screen descriptions in THE CREEPING TERROR. But then the artistry of Tor Johnson and Coleman Francis defies even the term "unique". -
escalera-2 — 17 years ago(April 22, 2008 06:32 AM)
"Missile to the Moon"! what a great film! Stay in the shadows! Watch out for Rock Men! Eeeee-ha! And dig that crazy spider!
I believe the correct spelling of Mr. Tuft's name was SONNY TUFTS!
Crawfish/Lobster the controversy continues. I suppose it reveals something about the viewer's personality.
"Someday this war's going to end."
Ginger or Maryann?
PS
hobnob I am not familiar with the "truck" reference. Do tell. -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 22, 2008 06:49 PM)
Hi esc (are we familiar enough now that I may so address you?),
Bowen Charlton Tufts III (1911-1970): a.k.a., Sonny. But the possessive of his last name is, properly Tufts's. Tough -s-s-s-s to say. He was a member of the family whose antecedents founded Tufts University in his native Boston. A long way from there to the dark side of the moon! Booze and showgirls: the path to the downfall of many an old-line Wasp.
Yes, the Rock-Men on the surface of that bright, blue-sky, sunshiny moon! They were actually pretty realistic, in contrast to everything else in MTTM. Poor Cathy Downs certainly had come down from her early Fox years, in THE DARK CORNER and MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. MISSILE TO THE MOON was her last film; she died, impoverished, of cancer, I believe, in 1976, although old friends from her film days had stepped in to help her out financially. Richard Travis was another failed star, promoted into oblivion by Warner Bros. even after his starring roles opposite Bette Davis and Eleanor Parker.
Have you seen CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON (1953)? MTTM's direct ancestor. Not a bad cast, but not as goofy as MTTM. Great double feature, though. Same spider, by the way. But CW is, I think, the more atmospheric, if you'll pardon the expression.
Oh, the "truck" line. In 1972, The National Lampoon ran an article entitled, "Michael O'Donoghue's Learn to Write Good". In it, he gave a number of invaluable writing tips for the beginner, one of which concerned how to conclude a novel. Sometimes, he wrote, a writer finds his story has run its course and has nowhere to go, but is at a loss as to how to properly resolve the various story lines. A technique I use, he went on, is to insert the following sentence: "Suddenly, everybody was run over by a truck." The article went on for a while, before O'Donoghue concluded, "There are many other tips I could offer you, but suddenly I am run over by a truck." As a coda, a couple of months later, the new issue had an article called "Spoilers", in which they gave away the endings to many films, books, plays, etc. (Their means of describing the endings of some sci-fi movies was pretty good; for example "Them" Flamethrowers. "The Thing" Electrocution. They had a mistake with "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", saying, An "oxygen-destroyer" which, of course, was how they killed Godzilla.) Anyway, one of the movies whose ending they gave away was Kirk Douglas's modern-day western, LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (a very good film, if you've not seen it). Lampoon's spoiler read: "Kirk Douglas's horse freaks out on a highway, and he is run over by a truck. (No kidding!)" I loved that as you can tell, since I remember it 36 years later! -
escalera-2 — 17 years ago(April 22, 2008 07:55 PM)
That's great (the truck line).
I am sure I have seen "Cat Women on the Moon" but I can't say for sure as I do not remember much about it. "Queen of Outer Space" "Fire Maidens" "Phantom Planet" "Missle" they all sort of morph. They all start running in my head looking like "Amazon Women on the Moon".
In Los Angeles the long defunct newspaper The Herald-Examiner would distribute the TV Weekly with the Sunday edition. Every time I do mean, every time any movie that even only featured Mr. Tufts would be listed like this example below:
Blaze of Noon (1947) Anne Baxter, Lucille Stewart, William Holden,
Colin McDonald, Roland McDonald, William Bendix and Sonny Tufts!
His name always had an exclamation point. I never found out why. -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 22, 2008 09:18 PM)
Sonny Tufts had, by the late 50s, become a standing joke with stand-up comics. Lots of them would merely mention his name and it brought down the house in gales of laughter. Hard to explain exactly why it did have to do with his well-established (and -deserved) reputation by then as a man of limited talents somehow promoted to movie star for a time, then gradually spiraling downward. More than that, though, by then he had been involved in various scrapes with the law, and once was sued by a stripper whom he had bitten on the thigh. He found work hard to come by and as he sank deeper into alcohol and public hijinks he simply became an object of public ridicule. His name probably added to that sense of derision. He made a big thing of campaigning for the role of Jim Bowie in John Wayne's THE ALAMO, and didn't get it, of course. He wound up his sad career in something called COTTONPICKIN' CHICKENPICKERS. Don't ask. That was 1967, and he died of pneumonia three years later at 58, broke, long divorced and an alcoholic. So this is undoubtedly what the Herald-Examiner meant by its use of an ! after poor Sonny's name. (By the way, he became a star at Paramount for a while in the 40s because he was 4F during WWII and was one of those guys signed by the studios as replacements for major actors away at war. He lasted for a time after the war, but gradually his lack of talent and changing public tastes doomed him to things like CAT-WOMENwhich, nevertheless, must certainly have seemed like GONE WITH THE WIND compared with COTTONPICKIN' CHICKENPICKERS.)
I had not seen CAT-WOMEN for many years, and only after re-viewing it some years ago did I realize that the character in AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON played by Robert Colbert the astronaut who wanted to make money off of lunar real estate was an exact rip-off of the character played by Douglas Fowley in CW, who was always looking for schemes by which to profit from his trip into spacea predilection which leads to his moon doom all too soon!
I have all those titles you mention, but for me they never morpheach just stands alone, occupying its own plateau, separate, distinct, and throughly enjoyable on some weird level! But again, if you like MISSILE TO THE MOON, then CAT-WOMEN is a must. Its stars, besides the inestimable Sonny!, are Marie Windsor, Victor Jory, Mr. Fowley and Bill Phipps who among other roles was one of the first three guys zapped by Martians near the start of the same year's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. (The young guy who says they should tell the invaders, "Welcome to California." He's still around, at 86 I believe.)