Tuesday, October 30, 2007

I'm Not Growing...You're Shrinking!







I'm still listening to that cassette and there's a great trailer from THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, as stated above. I just wished I had thought of posting Col. Glen Manning (after being exposed to a plutonium blast) at the same time I put David Hasselhoff out there. The best part of the film is that, when actor Glenn Langen grows and starts wearing that diaper, everybody normal-size sound like the Pillsbury Doughboy to him. He terrorizes Las Vegas, falls into Hoover Dam after being shot, then appears in the sequel as The Amazing Colossal BEAST, with pretty much half his giant-size face a grinning skull. The man-diaper stayed on during the fateful fall.
Back to last night: Screaming Yellow Theater was on WFLD Channel 12 (now Fox)on Friday nights, starting in 1970, and hosted by Jerry G. Bishop, a radio DJ. Dressed as Svengoolie, he was a hippie vampire with long green hair and red and white striped bell bottoms, and a red sweatshirt and peace medallion. He'd sing the goofy lyrics above and did a bunch of gag jokes, car commercials, and then all of Chicago would see, what seemed like every other week, a Vincent Price movie. In the 80s, Rick Koz took over as Son of Sven, eventually dropping the Son part with Bishop's well wishes as the latter retired to Florida. Koz is one of the coolest, most patient fellows who has hosted or guested at maybe six conventions I've been to this decade. But we had two night of greatness, if only one horror host, as Creature Features aired on WGN Channel 9 Saturday nights at 10:30. The theme was, as Richard Chwedyk emailed me, Mancini's "Experiment in Terror," which was also used in a Sherlock Holmes film. The best thing about CF was that every single film they showed was a Universal Monsters film. The Old Guard themselves, Dracula, The Monster and His Mate, poor Larry Talbot, with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde tossed in along with Abbott & Costello...fun times, a long, long time ago.

Frankenstein's Den




Two posts as day, am I crazy or what? When talking about my cassette mix about 12 hours ago, I neglected to mention one of the all time coolest songs ever, by The Hollywood Flames, a do-wop band barely known outside of LA. Pull up a tombstone and sit down, Frankenstein is back in town. He has a den, forty feet below the ground, all the monsters and ghouls are there, and the house beverage is strychnine and soda pop. The best line is in the chorus, "Frankenstein's got a den, you won't come out a-like a-you went in." One of the band members changed his last name to Byrd and made a hit with "Rockin' Robin" and they did the original version of "Little Bitty Pretty One." The first few lines, as the music kicks in, one of the dudes does a pretty cool accidental Dean Martin, riffing "Ooh, that's mighty fine..." I shall continue my trip down memory lane tonight, sans photos of Merv and the Hass. Oh, the Burger King shot is care of the Ghost Town blog, it was the only Google image I could find...Hallowe'en time sure aint fun at high noon....Wayne