I paid 25 cents for this DVD
-
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.) -
hobnob53 — 17 years ago(April 22, 2008 09:35 PM)
NO! NO! NO! MISSILE TO THE MOON is NOT repeat, NOT a color production!
It was filmed in perfect and magnificent black and white. Last year some money-grubbing, anti-artistic, film-defacing, no-talent hack decided to colorize it, to absolutely no purpose whatsoever, except to squeeze some fast bucks from the undiscerning colorization crowd. I haven't seen it, and have had fights with colorizers about that despicable practice on several other boards, but despite claims by some enthusiasts that colorization today looks "fantastic" and other tripe-like adjectives, the stuff I have seen still looks abysmally fake and awful (aside from its inescapable artificiality and inexactitude). It's a safe assumption that the colorized MTTM is as poor as all other colorization.
But you can get the original (from Image), in its pristine b&w format, at a very low price, from several sites. Amazon has both it and Image's CAT-WOMEN on its site and they make a great duo, very cheap as well (under $20 combined). The Image CW is becoming harder to find and may disappear before long, so if you care to you might want to get it now. It's already unavailable from other sites. Oddly, MTTM, despite the colorized version's presence, is still readily available. But definitely get the Image discs of both that's all the catching-up you need, my good friend!
Whew! Please excuse the outburst. Obviously I'm rather outspoken on the subject of colorization. (Don't you see? I had to stop you from getting it at all costs!!) Anyway, on a b&w or color TV, you saw MTTM right and please keep it that way!
An excitable (but preservation-minded!) hob -
obit1 — 17 years ago(April 23, 2008 12:05 AM)
I love it.the colorization with my buddy hobnob is getting like that old vaudeville routine, Niagra Falls
Hey Hobdid you get the colorized BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES? I hear it's really..
"COLORIZATION?!?!?!
SLOOOOOOOWY I TURNED.
INCH BY INCH..
STEP BY STEP.
I.
GRABBED THOSE GUYS BY THEIR LAPELS AND MADE THEM EAT THEIR FLOPPY DISC COLORIZATION PROGRAM WHILE THEIR FAMILIES WATCHED IN HORROR!!!!"
And of course, I'm right with hobnob on that subject.
Oh and while I'm here, the spider in CATWOMEN was a prop made by Wah Chang for the film MESA OF LOST WOMEN.another beauty. The prop was really cool (it didn't do anything but dangle) For CATWOMEN he added a little horn on its head (after all it's a "moon" spider and they should look a little different.the fact that it's big as a couch I guess wasn't good enough.
Anywho.
I know this because I was a working slave to Tim Baar in the early seventies (I was mister odd job special effects geek) when I came to CaliforniaBaar, and Gene Warren and Wah Chang formed an effects company called CENTAUR PRODUCTIONS which changed their company's name to PROJECT UNLIMITED when they began an association with George Pal begining with the stop motion scenes in TOM THUMB.
I don't want to come off as a know-it-all or be arrogant or anything, but Baar used to show me all these pictures of Project Unlimited behind the scenes and stuff and tell me stories about how this was made and how that was shot. Then I'd go out and mow his lawn and do the shrubbery cutting.
Like I said.slave labor.
So.the irony of all of this is that MESA OF LOST WOMEN was originally called TARANTULA but they couldn't use the title because Universal had it for one of their movies.
I'M GETTIN' TO THE SPIDERI'M GETTIN' TO THE SPIDER!!!!!
ahem
At any rateTim Baar used to work at Universal in the prop shop in the late thirties and he knew guys from the lot that had worked there up into the fifties and sixties ( and he was able to get me on the lot for EARTHQUAKE where I stole some stuff.
I mean, where I was given some stuff.
Anyway they had a big prop spider made for Universal's tarantula movie in 55, but it was soooooo dopey looking that they just used it for publicity (seems kind of counter productive, doesn't it) The spider in Tarantula (except for the neat mandible close ups), was a real spider
And here is my pointI think
Richard Cunha (the proud director of MISSLE TO THE MOON and its co hit, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER) said that he had a friend that helped him steal (seeI'm not the only one that does it.) a ratty looking prop spider from Universal's storage bin. I think that the same technician that made the Rock Men "fixed up" the spider head by adding a new face over the old armature.
This has lead me to surmise that the Universal advertising prop was the one eventually used in MISSLE TO THE MOON.The shape of the head is the same even though the eyes are different and the mandibles go snicker snack.
I don't knowcould Chang have sold his spider to Universal and THEY put a new head on it and then Cunha's guy put a new head on it for the MISSLE movie?
I'm starting to get dizzy.
Maybe it's because I am remembering MESA OF LOST WOMEN..
The horror.the horror
Oh and to jump back on this thread.It's been SOOOOOOOOOO long since I have seen TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, but isn't there a really cool painting or optical composite at the end with Derek(from the planet Jeter)like his face in the clouds or something and his voice-over that was like"the earth is my home and I shall never never leave..it" or something.
Am I dreaming or did they have this at the end of the film?
http://www.woodywelch.com