Svengoolie horror TV shows – Page 4 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Scorpion” Subtitle: “Stay Out of Trouble Juanito!”

Hey, I watched the Svengoolie show “The Black Scorpion” last night and I think a subtitle could have been “Stay Out of Trouble, Juanito!” Every time I woke up, that seven-year-old kid was getting himself into another jam.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a 1957 film starring Richard Denning as Hank Scott, Carlos Rivas as Artur Ramas, Mara Corday as Teresa Alvarez, and Mario Navarro as the irrepressible Juanito. Perry Mason has a bit part as a scorpion.

Hank and Scott are geologists who get roped into investigating the cause of a disaster in Mexico City after a volcano blows its top, waking up a gang of giant scorpions who can’t stop drooling partly because they’re hungry for human flesh, but vitamin B12 deficiency can’t be ruled out. The scorpions are stop motion animation creations which look pretty good, actually.

Right away, Juanito starts messing around getting attached to Hank, opening doors for him, shining his shoes and just making a general nuisance of himself, especially when he starts ignoring his safety from the scorpions—which in turn necessitates his need for being rescued dozens of times. I think this is just attention-seeking after the first few times, one of which involves wandering around and dropping dead fireflies behind him to get the giant arachnids to follow him within shouting distance of Hank, who has to constantly snatch him away from danger.

Juanito: “Hank, help, Hank! The scorpion is about to catch me!”

Hank: “Thunderation, Juanito! What the heck are you doing down here in the cave?”

Juanito: “Save me, Hank! And then I will shine your shoes for only 11,436 pesos!”

Hank (after getting out his exchange rate calculator): “That’s 600 dollars you little hustler!”

Juanito: “Hurry, Hank, before the rate changes; and now the scorpion is close enough to drool on me!”

I found out one thing on the web about one of the items (which was tequila) that Dr. Delacruz wanted to run further tests on with the corpse of one of the scorpion’s victims. Of course, he was joking about the tequila but I guess there is such a thing as a scorpion drink from a bottle of tequila that contains a scorpion. It turns out that the scorpion shot tequila is a macho thing which the giant scorpions hate and destroying mankind is their revenge for it. Just so you know.

Juanito: “Help, Hank! The scorpion is inches away from me now that I’m in their cave after sneaking down here in the bucket with the weapons and the press cameras!”

Hank: “What on earth made you do a stupid thing like that, Juanito?”

Juanito: “I was bringing you this bottle of tequila with a little, edible scorpion in it because I know you’re a macho guy! Then you could waste your time chewing the little scorpion instead of wasting your time taking pictures of the giant drooling scorpion with the old-fashioned big clunky press camera with the huge bulb.”

Hank: “Shut up, Juanito, and bring me another bulb!

The movie could have been shorter if it had ended after the good guys exploded the rocks into the cave. But no, there was a long segment of a guy explaining in pseudoscientific language why Hank and Artur had to return after they left thinking they had finished off the bugs. The guy used a map and PowerPoint slide presentation, carefully explaining while using a laser pointer to indicate various places that provided an implausible escape route for the scorpion which did not clearly show why the giant scorpion had not been killed in the explosion. So much for PowerPoint!

But it did prolong the movie and provided more gruesome footage of scorpions snacking on various human hors d’oeuvres. None of them managed to catch Juanito.

I fell asleep very briefly only a couple of times during the film, so overall I thought it was OK. I believe there’s a sequel in which Juanito, now a teenager, challenges a giant inchworm to a thumb wrestling match.

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Scorpion”

Svengoolie intro: Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!

I plan to watch the upcoming blockbuster Svengoolie movie this Saturday night, “The Black Scorpion” and so far, I haven’t read much about it except for a couple of lines from a synopsis or two. A volcano erupts and all of a sudden, a little town in Mexico is infested with giant scorpions.

I bet you, just like me, remember the TV series Meerkat Manor. Why would I say that, since probably none of you will fess up to it? Because meerkats eat scorpions! Not to mention the meerkats were often not much bigger than the scorpions. But could a mob of meerkats tip the scales? You’d need more than a mob to take down a bed of giant scorpions.

So, can you use bug spray on them? I mean the scorpions, not the meerkats. It turns out that scorpions are arachnids, not insects—but that doesn’t mean some bug sprays won’t work. On the other hand, you could just stick them in a freezer to kill them—not yours, of course. You’d need a freezer the size of a warehouse.

By the way, a bunch of scorpions is called a bed (see above). And so, I guess you can figure out a punch line for a Chuck Norris joke with the lead-in: What does Chuck Norris sleep on when he camps out in the desert?

Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Cat” vs The Weather Report

The atmosphere for the Svengoolie TV show airing of the 1934 movie “The Black Cat” was nothing short of electric—as in electrical storm. I thought the mood of ambivalence in the film was firmly set for about the first half hour of the movie. That was how long the TV station weather alert was on screen, shrinking the viewing size of the movie somewhat to make room for a map of the counties at risk and the scrolling warnings about which east central Iowa counties were affected by the flood watch and guidance about what to do.

Anyway, the film is not related in any way to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same title. The movie was directed by Edgar Ulmer and starred Bela Lugosi as the Hungarian psychiatrist and ex-WWI POW (that’s right, I said “psychiatrist”), Dr. Vitus Werdegast; Boris Karloff as the satanic and necrophiliac Hjalmar Poelzig, the former WWI commander of the Fortress Marmorisch and a famed architect who built an ultra-modern mansion on top of the grisly site where thousands of soldiers were killed. Vitus and Hjalmar play chess for the souls of the aspiring novelist Peter Alison (David Manners) and his wife Joan (Jacqueline Wells) who, unfortunately get stranded there along with Vitus after the bus carrying them crashes on the way from the train station to various hotels and Disney World.

The mood of ambivalence I thought was evident, contrasting the creepiness of Hjalmar and Vitus grimly gambling in a chess match for the lives of Joan and Peter and the comicality of the two policemen interviewing the Alisons and the two heavies about the bus accident. The lieutenant and the sergeant arguing with each other in a “My hometown’s better than yours” exchange reminds me of Abbott and Costello. I recommend you see it for yourselves on the Internet Archive; it’s about 35 minutes in.

Contrast this with the hysterical cat phobic Vitus (despite being a psychiatrist) throwing a knife at one of the many black cats prowling around the house after it ejects a hairball on the floor! Or Hjalmar thumb wrestling with Vitus until the latter chooses to pick up what looks like an emery board from an array of much larger knives and bazookas on a large table—and prepares to flay Hjalmar with it. This would only make Hjalmar look even more excruciatingly well groomed, along with the precisely trimmed haircut carefully smeared with a pound of Brylcreem.

I think “The Black Cat” is a hoot. It’s a litter box full of nuggets of melodramatic ailurophobia with here and there a hairball of ambivalence but hey, nobody’s purr-fect!

Shrilling chicken rating 4/5

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Cat”!

Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!

What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken? Something else Svengoolie has to dodge. Keep reading for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) attempts at this joke.

The upcoming Svengoolie show movie this Saturday will be “The Black Cat” which I’ve never seen before. One of the posters I see on the internet implies that it’s based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name.

I never read the gory story until a couple of days ago and I’m hoping the film won’t be like that. It also reminded me of a novel about animal cruelty given to me as a gift when I was a kid. “Beautiful Joe” was written by Margaret Marshall Saunders and it emphasized how people can treat animals humanely. It was a true story about a dog that was rescued from a sadistic master who mutilated the animal by cutting off its tail and ears in a fit of rage.

Just for fun I tried to find out AI would come up with when I asked it about a joke which would start with “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a chicken?”

The AI answer: “Something which scratches the furniture and lays eggs.” Other answers were “Cluck-ty cat” or “Meow-ster Hen.”

And when I asked for the AI joke using “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken?” AI came up with:

“That’s a classic riddle! The answer is: A lucky squeak!” And the AI goes on to explain: “It plays on the idea that black cats are considered unlucky, and rubber chickens make a squeaking sound.”

See what he did there? Neither did I.

Svengoolie Movie: “Invaders from Mars” and Zippers are Large!

I watched the Svengoolie movie “Invaders from Mars” last night. I saw this 1953 science fiction film last year but didn’t notice the extraterrestrials wore pretty obvious green velour body suits which zipped up the back.

Anyway, the movie was directed by William Cameron Menzies and starred Jimmy Hunt as the boy, David MacLean, who cried wolf, or at least that’s what everyone, including his parents, thought of his story about seeing a flying saucer land not far from their home, in a kind of sandy outlot which tended to swallow people whole after that.

Shortly after the saucer landed, people started to go missing and when they turned up later, they acted like zombies albeit with a new and nefarious purpose in life not their own.

There were many examples of leadership. Most of the good guys including the astronomer, Dr. Stuart Kelston and psychologist, Dr. Pat Blake fit the mold: respectful, congenial, and not prone to slapping David in the mouth like somebody I could name but who I’ll just hint he’s played by a guy named Leif Erickson, a Norse explorer who discovered America hundreds of years before Columbus and evidently found the fountain of youth.

Dr. Kelston has a theory about what’s happening and even speculates about the connection of the space exploration program he’s involved in which could be causing some extraterrestrials to be leery of its ultimate purpose, which is to build tall warped looking buildings with weird music piped in. Actually, Svengoolie revealed that the settings were purposely built large because the original plan was to shoot the film in 3D.

On the other hand, the leader of the Martians was this head in a glass globe that the guys in green jump suits (the Mutants) carried around, sometimes walking backwards so as to not expose how the costumes zipped up in back. But often they had to run through tunnels, which would have been tough to do backwards. That’s when you see the zippers. They had this stiff gait sort of rocking gait which I think I remember seeing when I was a kid when I saw these scenes on TV decades ago.

Anyway, the leader who was just a head in a globe never talked but communicated telepathically with the Mutants. It was the Martian Intelligence (the head, played by Luce Potter) who did all the thinking and gave all the orders, evidently driven by fear of the humans who were getting ready to shoot into space and ruin their neck of the space neighborhood.

There’s the usual Cold War paranoia but with a focus on inserting alien probes into earthlings that made me think of the X-Files mythology. There’s a fairly frequent inclusion of military stock footage given the us vs them dynamic.

A fairly large number of the actors were also in Perry Mason episodes, which seems to happen to a lot of actors who eventually appear in Svengoolie movies. I had a little trouble remembering a very young Milburn Stone who played Capt. Roth, and who could sling semi-scientific verbiage around pretty well. I remember him as Doc in the TV show Gunsmoke.

There was a disagreement between the United Kingdom and America about the ending of the movie. Was this invasion all just a kid’s nightmare or what? The British rewrote the ending to leave out the dream theme.

Except for the Mutant dress code, I thought the movie was pretty fair.

Shrilling Chicken Rating 4/5

Svengoolie Movie Next Saturday “Invaders from Mars” Triggers Memories!

The Svengoolie TV show movie next Saturday will be “Invaders from Mars” released in 1953 and it triggered some memories. One of them is when I was a little kid. I think I saw parts of it on TV while I was supposed to be down for a nap. I recall seeing these burly guys in green body suits trotting stiff-legged through tunnels. Their gait is something I can’t forget—no matter how hard I try. For a long time, I thought I had just been dreaming. But I’m pretty sure the nightmare was real because when we saw the movie last year on the Svengoolie show, those Martians looked familiar.

The other memory is of a TV public service announcement (PSA) commercial in the early 1970s. I managed to find a YouTube of it that reminded me of the leader of the Martians. He was in a clear globe and the green guys carried him around. He was just a head with tentacles. He was the leader and was very much ahead of his assistants in an evolutionary sense. At least I think that was the idea. He was basically the brains of the extraterrestrial population. He did all the thinking and planning—but he was stuck in this globe.

Anyway, the commercial is from 1971 and it’s a PSA from the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. The commercial shows how we’d be by the year 2000 if we didn’t shape up, literally. Richard Nixon was President; during his presidency Apollo 11 landed on the moon—and he resigned from office because of the Watergate scandal. Anyway, food for thought for the upcoming film, “Invaders from Mars,” which probably has a message about leadership.

Svengoolie Movie: “Return of the Vampire” Hits it On the Jugular

We watched the Svengoolie show movie, “Return of the Vampire.” I should say Sena watched about 10 minutes of it on the Internet Archive and said it was pretty good. The film was directed by Lew Landers. The writers were Randall Faye, Kurt Neumann (The Fly 1958), and Griffin Jay (Cry of the Werewolf 1944).

The movie was produced by Columbia and released in 1943. Bela Lugosi stars as the vampire Armand Tesla (no relation to Nikola Tesla) and never once says “Bluh, bluh!” This distinguishes him from Dracula, which you can’t even whisper by mistake without being ensnared in a net by lawyers who wouldn’t bat an eyelash at bleeding you dry of all your assets, so wear a garlic necklace.

He couldn’t be called Dracula in this production by Columbia because Universal had already made a few dollars on the Dracula name in their production and threatened Columbia to a thumb-wrestling match between top executives if they plagiarized the name Dracula. Soreheads!

You can’t miss Lugosi’s clawlike hands and the cobra-like sinuosity of his fingers as he mesmerizes his victims. If I tried to imitate that, I’d get cramps. Armand Tesla has all the customary power of vampires, and at least in this film, the producers get it right when we see he casts no reflection in a mirror. But he needs a valet named Andreas who is always bringing him a parcel, presumably with fresh capes from the dry cleaners.

The story spans two world wars; in WWI, Tesla gets bumped off with a spike; in WWII, he gets a new lease on undead life from the Nazi bombing and bungling civil servants (see below), regaining control over Andreas which he lost in WWI when he got spiked. Tesla’s new goal is to recruit a fresh vampire and try the new Wendy’s Frosty flavor, the Bloody Nicki.

Matt Willis plays Andreas Obry, the vampire’s hairy butler, a talking werewolf whose diction doesn’t fumble over his fangs. He’s pretty sharp in a suit but why he doesn’t complete the ensemble with a smart pair of oxfords is puzzling. He prowls barefoot across the graveyards, gardens, and sidewalk cafes (he ignores the signs “No shirt, no shoes, no service”). Watch for his pro wrestling moves in an alley with a couple of hapless detectives who can barely lay a glove on him.

Comedy bits are spaced at tolerable intervals, like the two civil servants in the graveyard who fumble about and do something with the spike that, without their scene, would make the film pretty short. That’s “spike,” not “stake.” They’re in England, after all.

Probably the peak moment in the film is when Andreas unexpectedly makes a different kind of transformation.

The little quarrels between Lady Jane Ainsley and Scotland Yard detective Sir Frederick Fleet (no relation to enemas) highlight the dumb male and smart female dynamic, a thread which runs throughout the movie.

Lady Ainsley: Sir Frederick, I declare I can’t abide it any longer; mud tracked all over the carpet, wolf hair on the toothbrush, and dust on the crucifix!

Sir Frederick: My dear Lady Ainsley, there is no such thing as dirt!

And how is all that fog getting into the house? You can barely see the walls—except for the fourth one.

We think the movie is pretty good!

Svengoolie Movie Tonight: “Return of the Vampire”

“Calling all stations, clear the air lines, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!” (Svengoolie show intro).

Tonight’s Svengoolie movie is “Return of the Vampire.” I’m debating on whether to watch it because I’ve heard there’s a talking werewolf. Is that even legal?

Svengoolie Movie: “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster”

So, this movie ‘Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster” is high in cheese content and don’t expect to see the Frankenstein made famous by Boris Karloff. It was released in 1965 and directed by Soupy Sales, no wait, it was Robert Gaffney. Marilyn Hanold played the big female lead, Marcuzan, the amazonian leader who looks nothing like the male Martians, one of whom, Dr. Nadir (played by Lou Cotell), reminds me of Yoda.

Seriously this Nadir to take we are? Fits him the name because at the lowest level his quality is! Hmmmm?

In fact, all the male Martians sort of remind me of Yoda. Marcuzan doesn’t resemble any of them. Other cast members include Jim Karen as Dr. Adam Steele, Nancy Marshall as Karen Grant, David Kerman as General Bowers, and Robert Reilly as Col. Frank Saunders, the android astronaut. You can watch the movie on the Internet Archive, but you’ll miss Svengoolie’s cornball jokes and commentary.

The gist of the story is that the Martians (who are never identified as such, by the way) lost an atomic war and somehow all the females on the planet got wiped out. So Marcuzan and Nadir and a bunch of Martians take off for earth to round up new females to repopulate Mars.

At the same time, scientists on earth have built an android named Frank who is test-driving a brand-spanking new NASA space capsule. Nadir boy and the gang shoot it down over Puerto Rico. Frank gets shot in the brain and goes off his nut, which can’t be screwed back on because none of the Martian repairmen know how to use the metric system in order to select the right size socket wrench.

Marcuzan and Nadir and the gang and Frank all cause mayhem in Puerto Rico. It’s kind of like parallel play until the Martians hustle out their hairy monster champion, called Mull, to thumb wrestle Frank and settle the matter. Guess which one is Frankenstein? That’s right—Marcuzan!

Anyway, if you’re looking for production value, you’re barking up the wrong tree. This is about extreme campiness, which is exaggeration and purposeful emphasis on bad taste. Even though the producers wanted a serious science fiction/horror film, according to Svengoolie and one of the original screenwriters who is still teaching at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virgina, the goal was to make a wild parody of the genre. While the producers insisted on the straight version, somehow the screenwriters obviously prevailed.

That explains the obviously botched makeup jobs, the stock footage making up 65% of the scenes, and the comical and jarringly timed soundtrack. One song called “That’s the Way It’s Got to Be,” done by The Poets seems like a sort of anthem for the movie’s real aim. In other words, don’t complain about the lack of production value because it’s a parody, hence (all together now), that’s the way it’s got to be.

The Martians used a weapon that was a popular toy for a short time, the Wham-O Air Blaster. It could shoot air 40 feet and was banned after the blast ruptured a kid’s eardrum.

Early on in the movie, right after Frank the android gets bunged up after being shot down by the Martians, he ends up looking like he’s got a couple of tubes hanging and bouncing around off his chest for the rest of the movie, so I couldn’t help thinking of him by the nickname “Tubular Teats.”

And for some reason this gets connected to the scenes of the bikini-clad women being rounded up for a weird technical assessment (reminiscent of a sliding cat scan table) of their suitability for repopulating the female population back on Mars. The women obligingly assist the Martians who lift them onto the table. This is bizarre considering the fate for some of them.

Anyway, I have to rate “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster” using a different standard from that which was used by some to rate it as pretty high up on the list of the 50 Worst Movies Ever Made. That’s because I think it’s a parody and therefore not comparable to a serious science fiction/horror flick—because that’s the way it’s got to be!

Svengoolie Schlock Alert!

“Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!” (Svengoolie show intro).

Fee Fi Fo Fum, something shlocky this way comes! Next Saturday the Svengoolie show will present the movie “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster.” It’s not the Frankenstein’s monster you know and love necessarily, and it involves Martians looking to repopulate their planet’s female population. Can I even stand it?