Svengoolie – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Movie: “War of the Colossal Beast”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

I watched the movie “War of the Colossal Beast” last night. Sena saw only the first few scenes of it in the beginning because she took a bite out of a magical cake she got at Hy-Vee, grew into a giant (had to get a new roof), wandered downtown to the Ped Mall until she found a mushroom, nibbled on it till she shrunk down to normal size and didn’t get back home until the movie was over, so like always, I had to explain the show to her. Based on my Svengoolie movie “reviews” you can imagine how well that went!

Anyway, this movie was released by American International Productions in 1958 and it was a sort of but not really a sequel to their film “The Amazing Colossal Man,” released a year earlier. In that movie, a military man, Col. Glenn Manning got exposed to radiation in Las Vegas and grew to a height of 60 feet which meant he could hit the free throw shot from several miles away. He ran amok and the army lobbed bombs and shot bullets at him until he fell 700 feet off Boulder Dam and everybody assumed he died. Although there are restrictions on seeing this movie in certain venues because of a copyright restriction, you can find it on the web, including the Internet Archive.

In “War of the Colossal Beast,” the story picks up sort of where the not-really-a-prequel left off except, in the beginning of the movie, a lot of food trucks are disappearing from the roads. One of them belongs to John Swanson (George Becwar), a food truck owner whose truck got lost and says repeatedly to the police “Get the picture?” when he tells his account of what he knows about the theft. It doesn’t take long to “get the picture” that this is comic relief.

It turns out that Glenn Manning is filching food from trucks and he’s not sharing any of it with the 50-foot woman who has wandered over from a different movie set and is pretty hungry (partly because she drinks too much) after an extraterrestrial has zapped her with radiation leading to a sudden growth spurt.

A scientist, Dr. Carmichael (Russ Bender) and Maj. Mark Baird (Roger Pace) have “cooked up” a plan to catch Manning using Italian bread spiked with chloral hydrate and evidently, Manning’s sister Joyce (Sally Fraser) approves of this plan. Baird and Carmichael both taste the bread, and neither drops dead even though if there’s enough chloral hydrate in all that bread to knock out a 60-foot-tall man, there should be enough to kill a normal size man after just a small bite. Whatever.

After abandoning a plan to hire Manning to round up all the Bigfoot monsters in the country because he’s too brain injured to remember the details which is not to squash them beyond recognition and allow photographers to take photos of the operation, which may or may not have happened when the Van Meter Visitor (a huge pterodactyl) in Iowa hit town in the early 1900s and flew all over the place munching on the cattle until cowboys and farmers shot it down and then took pictures of it which people claimed they all saw in the local newspaper yet those issues are “not available” for some reason so I guess there’s some kind of Mandela Effect going on or some people are prone to telling “tall tales.”

In the meantime, Manning is being held down by ropes and chains and it’s obvious that he was brain injured in that 700-foot fall in the first encounter. His right eye is missing and some of his teeth are pushed to one side, possibly because of a roundhouse kick by Chuck Norris (himself) who caught him trying to steal his chloral-hydrate enriched Italian bread.

Somehow, Manning is able to pick the locks of his chains using the same hypodermic needle he harpooned somebody with in the first movie and which he hid in his giant adult diapers (yes, those would be Shorty’s Adult Diapers that Big Mo aka John Heim the KCCK radio wizard of the Big Mo Blues Show describes, “they’re ready when you aren’t!).

The action and the dialogue start to get more complicated towards the end, which I’m going to defer on revealing in order to avoid spoilers (OK, the butler did it).

This is an OK movie although the dialogue gets a little stilted toward the end. I give it a 3/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.

Svengoolie Movie: “Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

So, you can give me credit for watching the Svengoolie movie “Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb” last night instead of the Seattle Seahawks vs San Francisco 49ers football game. Sena watched a little of it and probably not enough to rate it. You need to know there is such a thing as scalp psoriasis to get the joke in the featured image.

Before I get into this Hammer horror flick, I need to have a little fun at Svengoolie’s expense about his Too Drawn Out picture. You have to know that this is a puzzle game. Svengoolie draws a few cartoons, gives some hints about what the pictures suggest, and puts them together to make a word that is connected to the movie. Some fans give him a hard time about them because, frankly, the clues occasionally reach a little too far.

His first picture in this bit would be familiar to people mainly in my generation or older. Although it’s a bit unfair to kids, you have to give him credit as an artist. The figure actually did resemble a character in a popular (to some of us) TV sitcom years ago. I guessed this one right because we watched The Honeymooners. It was Ed Norton climbing out of (or into?) a sewer because that was his occupation. Art Carney played Norton. Jackie Gleason played the “bus driver” that Svengoolie gives as another clue. The main goal is to name the common underground drainage feature in cities, which was “sewer.”

The next drawing is of a guy either sneezing or coughing and Svengoolie makes it clear that it’s not the former. The clue was “cough.”

The drawing after that was of an ugly old crone, which was a bit difficult to get but turns out to be “hag.”

The last drawing was of some guy with a speech balloon with the cartoon symbols often used to indicate foul language or swearing. This clue was “cuss.”

The final answer? It’s “sarcophagus.” Sewer-Cough-Hag-Cuss. OK, almost there. I’ve done my own version of these in the past and I thought of this one for “sarcophagus.” The word “sewer” is a stretch, especially if you’re not from my generation, given the hints. I use different clues with different hints:

Sir: the drawing is that of a soldier saluting. What do soldiers often say when they salute? “Sir!”

Cuff: the drawing is a shirt cuff with a cufflink. What is this part of a man’s shirt called?

Hog: the drawing is that of a big sow. A large pig, either sow or boar, is often called a hog. What is this large farm animal?

Gust: the drawing is of gusts of wind blowing a flag. What is making the flag fly and flap? A “gust” of wind.

It ends up as Sir-Cuff-Hog-Gust. You’re supposed to say these fairly fast, running the words together to solve the puzzle. If you sound this out right, you get…that’s right, Art Carney!

Moving right along, we need to discuss this 1971 Hammer production movie which doesn’t really have a mummy in it. The gist of the story is that a group of archeologist explorers go digging around somewhere in Egypt and find this tomb with the beautiful but blurred Queen Tera (Valerie Leon) who is more mammarized than mummified, which accounts for the blurring of her chest area. In fact, even the ancient drawings of women on the tomb walls blur their boobs.

The film makers go to a lot of trouble hiding parts of Queen Tera’s anatomy, yet could not come up with a way to prevent Ms. Leon from flinching when one of the priests shoves what looks like a nasal irrigation device up her nose. I mean he really jammed it in there and she reacted by nearly jumping off the table, sneezing blood repeatedly and cussing like a stevedore! In general, this is not the way dead people behave…unless they’re in a Hammer film.

Anyway, after the nasal sinus irrigation leads to the flushing of about a pint of blood and a fairly large mosquito from her nose, the priests proceed to cutting off her right hand, along with a ring with a huge ruby (although not nearly as big as other parts which I will not mention and which are massively blurred in any case). The ruby contains a replica of a constellation of 7 stars which do not include Art Carney.

Actually, the seven stars thing is adapted from Bram Stoker’s novel “The Jewel of Seven Stars,” although, technically, only seven stars would not count as a galaxy, according to Zed from the well-known documentary film, “Men in Black” who had to school Agent J that the galaxy was not on Orion’s Belt, as anybody knows.

The group of explorers take Queen Tera and a lot of artifacts from the tomb, which turn out to be very bad for their health, including the daughter, Margaret (also played by Valerie Leon) of one of them named Fuchs (Andrew Keir). Margaret apparently has a partial exemption from the blurring clause.

Margaret seems to have no fear of the groping chopped off hand (played by Thing from the Addams Family, if you’re curious) of Queen Tera. But the explorers get their throats torn out either by Thing or the Pharoah Hound (also lifted from Bram Stoker), which has an annoying tendency to bark along to “Who Let the Dogs Out” by the Baha Men.

I’m not going to reveal the ending although I can tell you that it involves the only scene which reveals anything that even remotely looks like a mummy.

I think the movie is OK, but a bit blurry in places. I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 3/5.

Svengoolie Movie: “The Brides of Dracula”!

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

It’s almost Christmas and while I was watching the Svengoolie movie “The Brides of Dracula” last night, it struck me that the chief vampire Baron Meinster’s eyes reminded me of holly berries. Yo, Hondo, somebody needs to break out the Extra Strength Visine!

You probably don’t remember the sequels to this film:

The Rides of Dracula, about a vampire’s collection of fancy horse drawn carriages; he’s sort of like the Jay Leno of wealthy car collectors.

The Double Wides of Dracula, about a vampire who’s the landlord of a mobile home park and charges extravagant “rent” (several pints of blood).

Just to clarify, despite the title of the 1960 British bloodsucker movie from Hammer Film Productions, the boss biter is not played by Christopher Lee (because he wanted too much money) but by David Peel so he’s not Dracula but both vampires roll their bloodshot eyes at every girl they meet.

What’s refreshing about this flick is Baron Meinster the monster actually talks, which Dracula didn’t. In fact, Meinster is articulate and suave, as befitting the wealthy nobleman who just happens to sharpen his fangs on the necks of pretty girls.

And Peel actually gets a sarcastically funny line you might miss unless you listen closely. It’s when Baron Meinster meets the headmaster of the Transylvania School for Ladies Who Want to Cultivate Longer Teeth. Herr Otto Lang (Henry Oscar) gets his comeuppance after he threatens to throw Baron Meinster (whose real identity is at first unknown to him) off the school property when he comes to woo the new teacher Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur). But after the gracious Meinster reveals who he is, which is the baron who owns the property on which the school sits (after which Herr Lang abruptly changes his tone), the baron reminds Lang that his school does a great job “for such low rent.”

There’s a fair bit of comedy in the few scenes in which a local country medical man, Dr. Tobler (Miles Malleson) meets Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). When Tobler reads Van Helsing’s business card, he discovers that Van Helsing is a doctor of many disciplines—except medicine. Earlier, Dr. Tobler prepares a quackery-type vaporizer steam therapy home remedy for himself, which includes myrrh of all things. It turns out you can inhale things like frankincense and myrrh via vaporizer; it sounds so three-wisemen-Christmasy that it fits the season!

On the other hand, Dr. Tobler doesn’t buy Van Helsing’s vampire explanation for why so many villagers are dying (in the undead sense), though he is open to taking a cut of the fees for applying the usual remedies like stakes, garlic, crucifixes, and the occasional self-branding with hot coals that goes way beyond vaporizers.

The bats look arthritic, but other than that the movie is OK. I give it a 2.5/5 Shrilling Chicken rating.

Svengoolie Movie: “Duel” Roaring Road Rage!

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

Well, we watched the 1971 film “Duel” on the Svengoolie show last night. This was Sena’s second time seeing it and it was my first time watching this truly gripping movie, which was either Steven Spielberg’s first or second feature-length directing effort, depending on whether you believe Wikipedia or Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It started off as a TV movie and was later made into a movie for theaters, although it was inspired by a short story of the same name by Richard Matheson about a man vs machine cat and mouse game, published in a 1971 issue of Playboy. You can find copies of Matheson’s full story on the web, which is puzzling given copyright laws, but I guess some people are getting away with it.

Anyway, Dennis Weaver starred David Mann as a traveling salesman or maybe it was the rust bucket satanic semi-tanker truck which hunts Mann (a name that makes me think of “man” in the general sense of humankind) down on dusty two-lane highways through the California desert in an apparent act of the worst road rage you ever saw, triggered by Mann simply passing it.

At first, I wondered if there was any person actually driving the truck; maybe it was just a driverless demon truck. But on occasion you see a guy’s arm waving to allow Mann to pass him although one time this was into the path of an oncoming car coming from the opposite direction.

Early in the movie, I thought Mann’s radio in his car, which is a Plymouth Valiant (does the car model’s name Valiant signify something?) there is a goofy-sounding radio question and answer show with some guy complaining about a census question asking who is the head of household. The guy sounds really insecure and he obsesses about not being the head of household because he’s not the breadwinner because his wife is, and I think this set the stage for one of the ideas behind the movie, which is male anxiety about not being the “man of the family” and, by extension, this might point to nagging doubts in general about masculinity and the place of men in society.

This is typically where the TV commercials appear with Frank Thomas and Doug Flutie pushing Nugenix Total-T man-boosting snake oil elixir, guaranteed to grow your package 10 times “normal” size, which should make you ask what was going on with those Popeye cartoons in which he swells up after wolfing down a can of spinach and kicks Bluto’s ass followed by Olive Oyl swooning over him.

This radio program almost counts as a character in the film because almost everything that happens afterward is about who is more of a man—Mann or machine. Is that why some of us are anxious about AI?

By the way, were it not for Svengoolie pointing it out, I would never have noticed that what looks like a highway patrol car, which Mann swerves toward but avoids at the last second is actually a pest control vehicle with the name of the company “Grebleips Pest Control”—which is Spielberg spelled backwards.

One of my favorite scenes is the roadside café where Mann gets paranoid about all the guys in there wearing boots similar to those he saw when the guy driving the truck gets out and walks around. The boots are the only parts visible. There are several boot-wearing guys in the café who act like typical non-Nugenix Triple Total Titanic-T needing men who talk with their mouths full, drink beer, scratch their scrotums, and snicker at Mann—who just wants aspirin. He neurotically wonders which one he should confront and when he does—it’s the wrong guy.

I don’t want to overfocus on it but when the radiator hose fails and steam billows all over, engine temperature rising leading to Mann’s car slowing down, overheating and actually shutting down while the raging truck chases him, Mann is able to restart his car. Is that even mechanically possible? I think he stopped, shifted to neutral and coasted for a while, but he never stopped to make temporary repairs. By the way, is it true you can crack an egg over a busted radiator hose as a stopgap fix?

Would taking a dose of Nugenix Whopping Hairy Total-T help at all? Would a satanic truck politely quit chasing you long enough to allow you to do that? Did Mann buy any groceries at the roadside rattlesnake place including eggs?

Is Nugenix Whopping Whackadoodle Walker Texas Ranger Chuck Norris Plays Jenga with Stonehenge Totally Triple T enough to reverse what is happening to American males so that we can see the sequel to Duel—which would be Double Dammit Duel?

Don’t answer that. In any case, I think this is a pretty cool movie and I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 5/5.

Svengoolie Movie: “The Mummy’s Tomb”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

I watched the Svengoolie movie “The Mummy’s Tomb the other night. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a mummy movie (unless you count the one in which Brendan Fraser appeared in 1999 and I didn’t pay much attention) and most of the hour-long film shared my TV screen with the local weather report, which happens sometimes. This time it was about the snowfall, which dumped 5 inches on Iowa City. We spent about a couple of hours clearing it the following day with the help of Sena’s favorite tool, the cordless electric snow shovel and me with the brand new 48’ snow pusher plow.

Anyway, “The Mummy’s Tomb” is a relatively short movie made in 1942 and starred Lon Chaney as Kharis the mummy. He had no lines because he had to keep mum, evidently. There was plenty of stock footage from “The Mummy’s Hand,” released in 1940. Just so you know, I’m aware of the 1932 film “The Mummy” with Boris Karloff as the mummy, but I’m not planning to watch it unless, of course, it appears on the Svengoolie show.

There’s this character named Babe in “The Mummy’s Tomb” who evidently was also in “The Mummy’s Hand” and the two had different last names and the 1942 version of Babe was more serious.

This movie is a sequel to “The Mummy’s Hand” and they killed off Kharis in that one but resurrected him in “The Mummy’s Tomb” although didn’t give the monster new bandages. Kharis limps around and never uses his right arm early in the show yet is nimble enough to carry Isobel Evans (Elyse Knox) in his right arm while climbing a flower trellis. This is the first clue that Kharis had a personal trainer and despite being thousands of years old, he perked right up after only one bottle of Nugenix Total-T thanks to Frank Thomas and Doug Flutie.

Hey, remember Flutie’s historic last second 64-yard Hail Mary pass to Gerard Phelan in the end zone in the 1984 Boston College vs Miami game? It’s not mummified ancient history, but it’s more fun to watch than this movie!

Where was I? Oh yeah, it was difficult to tell if Isobel fully appreciated this because she fainted as soon as she saw Kharis and remained pretty much unconscious the whole time Kharis was carrying her around (so much for Frank’s “she’ll like it too” promise).

The funny thing is Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) doesn’t get this because he develops a huge crush on Isobel and orders Kharis to fetch her for him. This happens more than halfway through the film but until then, Mehemet’s main goal was to get revenge on the guys who were responsible for “killing” Kharis the first time around. Mehemet has the power to control Kharis, yet pulls a gun on John Banning (John Hubbard) who is the son of Prof. Stepen Banning who started the whole business of desecrating the tomb of Kharis and can by god whip John any day of the week in a game of checkers.

This turns out to be a wrong move because the sheriff just shoots Mehemet, and that’s the end of the boss of Kharis.

The smartest person in the movie is Professor Norman (Frank Reicher) who figures out what the substance is on the throats of Kharis’s victims (myrrh, cedar oil, Nugenix-Total T) proving that these items were used in the embalming process of mummies, thus proving that even scientists can be guilty of fraud.

So, there you have it. Towards the end of the movie, Kharis learns how to play checkers and whips the pants off John Banning. So there, only one spoiler in this review of a movie which I would give a 2/5 shrilling chicken rating.

Svengoolie Movie List for December 2025 and a Quiz Question!

This is partly just an announcement of the Svengoolie show movie lineup for the month of December.

But more importantly, there’s a quiz question to see if you can name the movie the shrilling chicken’s question “What the heck is it, Edgar?” comes from in the featured image above.

There are no real prizes for coming up with the right answer. You’ll just have to use your imagination here. According to the picture below, if you get it right you can imagine getting the first place prize, which is a shrilling chicken.

You can imagine getting the 2nd place prize if you name something other than the right answer which is only partially correct (for example, naming something that has the name “Edgar” in it but is otherwise wrong). The 2nd place prize is a picture of a vintage calculator I used to have which could work for a very long time on a couple of AA batteries (over a decade!). I bought this old Sharp ELSI MATE EL-505 back around 1980 when I went to college at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. You can find them on eBay if you really want to do more than just imagine getting a prize. When we bought the new calculator, I think I threw the old one out, probably because it didn’t work even after replacing the batteries.

You can imagine getting the 3^rd place prize if you can’t make a guess at all. This is something that is still being sold by certain auto parts stores, like AutoZone ($5). It’s a wire spark plug gap gauge and adjustment tool. I used it a long time ago. I couldn’t find it in my toolbox but there’s a short video showing how to use it.

While I was out looking for the wire spark plug gauge tool, I found what I think was another type of tool called a feeler gauge. You can use it to measure spark plug gaps and other kinds of clearances. It’s got some rust on it so you could imagine cleaning it up a little but it’s not a prize level item.

Answer to the quiz question (don’t peek if you’re not done reading the post!): It’s from the movie Men in Black (1997). Beatrice asks her husband Edgar “What the heck is it, Edgar?” when he goes out to investigate a loud explosion caused by a spaceship crash landing in their yard.

Svengoolie Movie: “Devil Doll”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

Well, I watched the Svengoolie movie, “Devil Doll” last night and was that creepy! It’s a British 1964 film directed and produced by Lindsay Shonteff (although I don’t know him from Adam. What do you take me for, a legit movie reviewer?).

Anyway, I noticed right away that I recognized one of the stars, William Sylvester (Mark English) who played a reporter trying to figure out what gives with the Great Vorelli (Bryant Halliday) a really sleazy ventriloquist and hypnotist whose stage act includes stealing Mark’s girlfriend Marianne (Yvonne Romain) and humiliating his dummy Hugo in front of an audience full of well-to-do people who smoke unfiltered cigarettes like they were going out of style.

Anyway, William Sylvester starred as Dr. Heywood Floyd in the 1968 blockbuster film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Who can forget the scene of him puzzling over the long sheet of instructions for using the Zero Gravity Toilet! I don’t think there’s a free copy of it, so it’ll set you back at least twelve bucks.

But what a contrast between the elegantly cryptic Heywood Floyd and Mark English, who is a hard-nosed, cynical journalist trying to figure out whether there’s a little guy inside the Great Vorelli’s wooden dummy Hugo, mainly because Hugo can get up and walk, even sing and dance a few show tunes like Puttin on the Ritz better than Frankenstein’s monster in you-know-which movie! Mark even gets an opportunity to examine Hugo using a set of Stanley tools, x-rays, and X-Acto knives but doesn’t get any reaction from the dummy unless you count a little sawdust.

But the tough-minded Mark gets a surprise visit from Hugo who gives him a few tips on woodworking and a hint that there’s more to him than sawdust.

The Great Vorelli has a master plan and hypnotizes Marianne which leads to a pretty complicated plot twist which involves the hypnotist learning ancient techniques for messing around with peoples’ souls which Dr. Heller (Karel Stepanek) dismisses in favor of a clinical diagnosis of catalepsy (although he didn’t directly imply Marianne was cataleptic) when Mark tries to convince him that Marianne’s personality change and delirious appearance was brought about by Vorelli.

You can check the catalepsy comment on a 16mm film of the full movie at about 1:05:40.

This catalepsy reference fascinated me because I’m a retired psychiatrist and I’ve seen patients with the syndrome. I guess there were no expert consultants available to the director.

There is a fight scene between Hugo and the Great Vorelli, full of switchblade knives, a hybrid chess boxing match, and tag team with Chuck Norris although the roundhouse kick was ineffective.

You didn’t think there’d be spoilers, did you? There were a lot of ventriloquist dummy jokes during the Svengoolie show and my featured image is my stab at it. Anyway, the ending is surprising.

I think the movie is pretty creepy and dark enough that it might not be a good flick for children. I give it a 3/5 Shrilling chicken rating.

Svengoolie Show Movie: “Curse of the Undead”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

I watched the Svengoolie show “Curse of the Undead” last night. Sena watched some of it. I guess I had more stamina. This is a 1959 vampire cowboy flick directed by Edward Dein and starred Eric Fleming as Preacher Dan (if you’re old enough you might remember him as Gil Favor in Rawhide in the 1960s) and Michael Pate as the vampire Drake Robey who could withstand full daylight without turning to mush. Kathleen Crowley plays Dolores Carter, the woman who owns the ranch where Robey does a lot of the biting.

My favorite line from the movie was Drake Robey’s comment about the dead When Dolores Carter asks him if living near a cemetery would bother him: “The dead don’t bother me; it’s the living who give me trouble.”

Once I got past the idea of the vampire not immediately bursting into flames in the daytime, I was pretty much OK with Robey, a man in black gun for hire whose attire reminded me of Johnny Cash. I half expected him to whip out a guitar and start singing “The Ring of Fire, “only Robey didn’t sing because this movie was not a musical.

The action starts in a small western town where everyone smokes cheroots, so popular in Spaghetti Westerns where all the cowpokes eat Italian cuisine lightly seasoned with cigar ash. Young females are dying off from anemia and nobody notices the two small puncture wounds in their necks except Preacher Dan, who wears a lapel pin festooned with a tiny cross made of the wood from the original cross. Something really special happens to this little cross.

One of the major conflicts in the film involves a guy named Buffer (played by Bruce Gordon) who is giving the Carter family a hard time by squatting on hundreds of acres of their land and planting marijuana on it, which his henchmen (yes, the stooges of the boss evil guy are always called henchmen) steal to stuff their bongs, homemade from cattle horns and then try to play poker but can’t win even a single hand because they forget how to play and get the munchies just looking at the chips (“Wow, man, I didn’t know they made potato chips different colors!). Buffer eventually kills two members of the Carter family.

After that, Dolores makes a bunch of help wanted signs advertising her need for a hired killer in order to get revenge on Buffer. The Sheriff (played by Edward Binns) just tears up all the signs citing her for spelling errors and tries to team up with Preacher Dan to strong arm Buffer into a scheme to make a new headache medicine they promised would be named after him if he would just cool his jets.

About this time, the man in black, Drake Robey, arrives in an exquisitely tailored outfit of slim fitting jeans with matching leather vest who evidently has no aversion to sunlight but takes exception to Preacher Dan’s assertion that suicide is a sin punishable by God, which you’ll have to figure out by watching the movie. Obviously, there’s more to Robey than meets the eye because he’s a killer for hire who always seems to win every gunfight even though his opponents always swear they shot first and hit him—just before they die.

Robey’s lack of sensitivity to light can also be inferred from one of the first scenes in which he appears. He “sleeps” during the daytime but with the coffin lid open. Claustrophobia comes to mind.

The big battle between Preacher Dan and Robey begins with a preliminary 2 out 3 fall hybrid chess boxing match in which Preacher Dan gets knocked out despite winning the chess match. The final struggle takes place in the street and you’ll just have to watch the movie because there are no spoilers here on that. However, several members of the cast had roles on episodes of a popular TV show, which is a longstanding joke on the Svengoolie show.

I think this movie is OK and I give it a 3/5 shrilling chicken rating.

Svengoolie Show Upcoming Movie: “Young Frankenstein”

Here we go again with the conflict in schedules of the Svengoolie movie, the 1974 Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein this coming Saturday and the Iowa Hawkeye football game. On October 18, 2025, the Iowa Hawkeyes play Penn State starting at 6:00 p.m. Of course, that interferes with the Svengoolie show which starts at 7:00 p.m.

I saw the Svengoolie show movie “Son of Frankenstein” last year and blogged about it. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen “Young Frankenstein” before, but I think so. It was a long time ago. I’m probably going to watch it on the Internet Archive. Yes, believe it or not, it’s on the Internet Archive!

I think one of the funniest scenes is the dart throwing game between Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced “Frankensteen”) and Inspector Kemp.

Svengoolie Show: “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”

Both Sena and I enjoyed the Svengoolie show movie last night, “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.”

This 1966 film directed by Alan Rifkin and starring Don Knotts as Luther Heggs, Joan Staley as Alma Parker, Liam Redmond as Kelsey, Philip Ober as Nick Simmons, and Dick Sargent as George Beckett is a horror spoof that we’ve seen before but it’s still really funny.

Luther Heggs is a typesetter for a newspaper in a little town who sort of agrees to spend the night in a haunted house where a couple of murders took place twenty years in the past which were never solved. Luther wants to be a reporter and gets his chance when Kelsey talks him into writing a filler story on the anniversary of the murders.

In fact, if not for Kelsey’s slick manipulation of the main characters including George Beckett the editor of the newspaper, a lot of the story wouldn’t take place. A big part of the action is related to bringing whoever killed the occupants of the house (who were related to Simmons) to justice.

A lot of the hilarity comes from Knott’s superb portrayal of the extremely nervous guy who does brave things despite his fears. Luther has a crush on Alma and despite his shyness, to impress her he shows her his karate moves which he has been learning entirely from a correspondence course he’s been taking for years and which has made his whole body a lethal weapon.

Luther convinces the town that he has seen supernatural events in the Simmons’ haunted mansion, which makes him a hero worthy of celebration in his honor. His bungles his acceptance speech and then gets a summons to appear in court to fight a libel charge from Nick Simmons because he doesn’t want the publicity about the haunting to interfere with his plans to demolish the house.

The trial is one of the funniest scenes in the movie, leading to a couple of witnesses inadvertently making things a bit more difficult for Luther to beat the libel charge by revealing that he has a lifelong track record of telling tall tales.

The detective part of this story involves the manipulation of Kelsey, the motive of Simmons to demolish the house, and the perseverance of Luther to confront his terror while confronting the mystery of what happened twenty years previously in the Simmons’ mansion.

I have given this very funny film the highest Shrilling Chicken Rating of 5/5.