Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
This Saturday’s Svengoolie movie will be “Tarantula,” about a giant tarantula in the Arizona desert who developed a huge brain and invented a brand new barbecue-flavored meatballs dish made out of humans and marketed to extraterrestrials who are pretty hungry after traveling from a far-away galaxy and abducting thousands of people who are just looking for a fun new ride on a spaceship and the giant tarantulas have 8 arms and are trying to learn how to juggle 32 persons because it’s well known that people can learn how to juggle 8 items and they have only two hands and—OK, so that’s not quite the story line but fun to think about.
I watched the Svengoolie show movie, “The Baddest Seed on the Planet” yesterday on the Internet Archive because I wanted to see the Iowa Hawkeye vs UMass football game last night. Hey, the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Iowa State Cyclones both won yesterday!
Actually, I thought “The Bad Seed” was a pretty good movie, just to let the shrilling chicken out of the bag. It’s a good break from the rubber mask, stop motion animation, shlocky howlers. It does run long, a little over 2 hours and at times there’s a little too much lofty psychoanalytic dialogue. At times it seemed like a play.
It’s a 1956 Warner Bros. Pictures production. There was a Perry Mason regular on it; William Hopper played Col. Kenneth Penmark (father of Rhoda). Henry Jones played Leroy, the really creepy sociopath handyman who had a lot in common with Rhoda (played by Patty McCormack), the psychopathic 8-year-old daughter of Kenneth and Christine Penmark (played by Nancy Penmark). Eileen Heckart played the heck out of her role as the tipsy Hortense Daigle, mother of her unfortunate murdered child Claude—who is never seen.
The main underlying theme is the question of whether psychopaths are born bad or victims of bad environments.
How this gets treated in the film is fascinating. When Rhoda saws through a fawn with a dull straight razor while singing Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” it really doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
Things start to go bad early when Claude wins a penmanship award instead of Rhoda who is thinking, “OK bud, over your dead body!” I’ve got to tell you; I got chills just looking at her after a while.
The handyman Leroy pegs Rhoda for a bad seed right away, mainly based on the idea that bad seeds think alike. He keeps telling her he’s got her number until he has a close encounter of the excelsior kind, and “excelsior” means ever upward only in the sense that burning wood shavings used for packing fragile items tend to be carried by the wind.
Just to gloss over the scientific psychiatric literature on psychopathy, the most recent paper I could find on the web suggests that structural and functional brain abnormalities of psychopathic persons contribute substantially to the observed behavioral patterns of callousness and poor adaptability to prosocial motivations beginning early in life and which tend to be resistant to change as one gets older. The younger the person, the more plastic the antisocial traits may be to change via behavioral modification, hopefully leading to greater empathy. (Anderson NE, Kiehl KA. Psychopathy: developmental perspectives and their implications for treatment. Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2014;32(1):103-17. doi: 10.3233/RNN-139001. PMID: 23542910; PMCID: PMC4321752.)
By far, Hortense Daigle has the most awkwardly comical role as she combines grief, inebriation and eerie suspicion of Rhoda in her own son’s death. Every time she shows up to the Penmark house, she’s roaring, dramatically staggering drunk. She helps herself to the booze in the house, even making it clear which bourbon she prefers (Never mind my grief! I said I wanted that martini in a dirty glass!).
Other than the movie being a bit too long, I thought it was very good. I could have done without the theater like credits with all the actors coming out to take a bow (or curtsy in Rhoda’s case), a slapstick bit between Christine and Rhoda, and the warning to the audience not to reveal the ending to anyone.
I think I just found out why we have to tune in to the upcoming Svengoolie movie “The Bad Seed” an hour early this Saturday. It comes on at 6:00 p.m. because it’s two hours long!
There’s another crisis. The Iowa Hawkeye vs UMass college football game comes on at 6:40 p.m. tomorrow evening.
That means I’d have to choose between watching “The Bad Seed” or watching the football game. In order to see both I’d have to watch the movie on the Internet Archive.
That means I’d miss Svengoolie’s corny jokes. Hmmmm.
Svengoolie Show Intro: “Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
This coming Saturday’s (September 13th) Svengoolie movie will be the 1956 Warner Bros. production of “The Bad Seed,” which is about a little psychopathic girl who dares another kid to knock a stick off her shoulder and when he does, he finds out with a shock it’s not a stick but a venomous snake which bites him on the nose, sending him to the hospital in an ambulance which careens off a bridge into a raging river full of giant piranha which—OK, so that’s not exactly how the movie goes and I’ve never seen it before.
The show is coming on at 6:00 p.m. central time instead of 7:00 p.m., just to let you know.
I watched the 1956 Universal-International Pictures production of “The Creature Walks Among Us” last night on the Svengoolie show. It’s a movie about chain-smoking scientists who capture the aquatic Gill-Man, transform it into an air-breather and blow smoke into its face to make it cough. This annoys it so much it starts breaking stuff.
The scientist who pushes the whole project is Dr. William Barton (Jeff Morrow) who at times can be seen smoking 10 cigarettes simultaneously which sets his hair on fire. He’s bald for the rest of the movie, which doesn’t endear him to his wife Marcia (Leigh Snowden) who copes with his pathological jealousy by playing several musical instruments throughout the movie.
The team of scientists includes a geneticist, Dr. Thomas Morgan (Rex Reason), a prince of a guy who spars with Dr. Barton about the pros and cons of contributing to the delinquency of a major monster by altering its biology, moving it closer to the “jungle or the stars.” Dr. Barton doesn’t buy this metaphor and is bent only on pursuing a maniacal plan to teach the creature how to shoplift cigarettes and bottles of Thunderbird wine.
Dr. Morgan is sweet on Marcia but so is the guide, Jed Grant (Gregg Palmer). Marcia plays various musical instruments to keep between her and Jed, starting with a piano, progressing to a guitar and, when he gets more insistent on messing up her hair, she hauls out a cello!
The group of scientists catch the creature out on the river. They’re all smoking when it suddenly leaps into the boat and when it picks up a gas can spilling the contents all over itself, all they have to do is flick their cigarettes at it on a pre-arranged signal (Dr. Barton farts). While the creature is wrapped in flames, the crew takes a little while to figure out which fire extinguisher they should use (what works on scales, foam or dry chemical?).
Apparently, the Creature evolves spontaneously once it’s out of the water and grows a feeble set of lungs. The scales fall off to be replaced by skin, and it develops fingers. Then it tries to steal Marcia’s banjo.
The scientists imprison the creature in a pen which has an electrified fence, which Dr. Barton forgets to re-activate after he dumps Jed (whom he has knocked out with Marcia’s clarinet) in there to distract it.
This doesn’t fool the creature but I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending for you. The moral of the story is that smoking is bad for your health.
The Svengoolie show last night was the 1957 Hammer production “The Curse of Frankenstein” starring the 3 stooges. Actually, this film was no laughing matter and this was my first time (and last time) seeing it.
That’s not saying it’s a “bad” movie. It’s just tough to come up with anything comical to say about a gothic horror flick that was inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”
I’ve not read Mary Shelley’s novel and I only skimmed the Encyclopedia Britannica entry. That’s good enough for an old guy pretending to be a movie reviewer.
What hooked me, though, early on the film was a short dialogue between Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) and Elizabeth Lavensa (Hazel Court). Paul describes Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) in contemptible and scary terms, to which Elizabeth reacts by saying that Victor is either “wicked or insane.” Paul answers that Victor is neither—which struck me as odd.
I would have no trouble saying Victor is evil, but what do I know? On the other hand, I ran across a couple of web articles that mentioned “psychopath” as a suitable label for someone who thinks nothing of pushing an old man like the scientific scholar Professor Bernstein (Paul Hardtmuth) over a banister to kill him in order to dig his brain out of his skull to insert into a do-it-yourself hodgepodge of spare body parts in an experiment to create a living being.
Victor, from the time he first meets Paul, presents as an insufferable, entitled brat lacking a conscience and by the time he reaches adulthood he’s the perfect example of someone with the most creepily severe case of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) imaginable.
He gets the housekeeper Justine (Valerie Gaunt) pregnant, tricks her into entering the laboratory where the monster (Christopher Lee) kills her, marries Elizabeth and then abandons her on their wedding night in order to cheat in a cribbage game with the monster.
He pretends to bury the monster in the woods after Paul kills it by shooting it in the eye with an AK-47—then sneaks back to dig it up, carry it back to the lab and reanimates the wreck. He proudly shows it off to Paul, who throws up on him. This makes no difference to Victor who is always smeared with dirt anyway because he hangs out in morgues, graveyards, and golf courses (“as he approaches this critical putt, somebody leaps out and cuts off his feet”), filching eyes, hands, Adams apples and what have you to assemble and repair the monster.
There are big differences between Shelley’s monster and Hammer’s creature—the latter doesn’t speak at all while the former is eloquent. Hammer’s creature can barely stand up or sit down on command while Shelley’s monster can do triple axels skating across the Arctic ice as Victor pursues him.
During the movie, my mind often wandered off to memories of Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”
Svengoolie Show Intro: “Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
The Svengoolie show movie coming up this Saturday is Hammer’s 1957 production of “The Curse of Frankenstein”! Guess what? This time, Christopher Lee plays Frankenstein’s monster and—he has no lines at all. The movie is loosely based on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic novel, “Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus.”
There’s lots of blood and gore, so wear goggles because the film was shot in SpatterVision. Don’t look for screws on the monster’s neck. I guess they were loose and fell off.
Well, last night I watched Hammer Films 1958 production of “Horror of Dracula” and because we had some bumpy thunderstorm weather again in eastern Iowa, the movie had to share TV screen space with the weather report. No matter, it didn’t diminish the total creepy and comedic effect of the film. You heard right; I thought parts of it were comical. I know, Christopher Lee had only 7 minutes of screen time and none of it was humorous.
Now I’m sure you believe I hallucinated the comedy bits, but I can provide links to them to prove it. I never ask Artificial Intelligence (AI) anything, but it pipes up without prompting because I can’t get rid of it. AI denied there was any humor in it at first, but when I put the question indirectly by asking about one of the actors, AI had a different answer.
When I searched using the term “George Benson played what part in Horror of Dracula?” AI said: “In the 1958 film Horror of Dracula, George Benson played the role of a Frontier Official. He appears in scenes that border on slapstick comedy where his authority is undermined.”
I think this is interesting because I didn’t find any other web sites that remarked on humorous elements in the film.
The actor, George Benson, plays a coughing Frontier Official who Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough) are questioning in an attempt to track the whereabouts of Dracula by pressuring the official to reveal where Dracula’s coffin was sent. The official coughs his way through various excuses and expressions of the need to obey the laws and so on. Holmwood makes a good show of dramatically waving money under the official’s nose, eventually succeeding by bribery to get the official’s cooperation.
There’s also some near-slapstick after Dracula crashes through the border barrier in his coach while fleeing from Holmwood and Van Helsing. The coughing Frontier Official has to fix the border crossing barrier with rope and a hammer. Right after that he’s frustrated again when Van Helsing and Holmwood crash through the barrier again.
These occur at 59:17 min and 1:16:13 min, respectively on the Internet Archive film I used for reference.
And there’s also an odd comedy bit with the undertaker at 1:03:34 min. J. Marx the undertaker and mortician (Miles Malleson) actually tells a humorous anecdote and slaps Van Helsing on the chest as he laughs at his own lame joke in the context of trying to find Dracula’s coffin. He can’t find it because it’s missing.
I think the humor helps offset the grim and creepy aspects of the film. Dracula (Christopher Lee) doesn’t have any lines after about the first half hour of the movie. He bares his fangs, drools blood, and ogles women while the women ogle back. There are references to addiction and seduction in the vampire’s motivations and the victims’ collusion with him. But eternal life has its drawbacks—skulking in the dark, fear of the light, and being unable to articulate dramatic lines because oversize canine teeth get in the way, just to name a few.
I think the movie might be too intense for sensitive viewers. Otherwise, I thought it was pretty good.
Svengoolie Show Intro: “Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
This week’s upcoming movie on the Svengoolie TV Show is the 1958 classic “Horror of Dracula.” I don’t remember ever seeing it. Speaking of classic, I admit I read some of the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) comments about the movie which features Christopher Lee as Dracula.
I’m not sure if it’s a typo or not, but one other website besides TCM say that Lee’s total time on screen for this 82-minute-long movie was only 7 minutes. The quote is:
“Ironically enough, Lee is only on the screen a total of seven minutes in Horror of Dracula yet his frightening presence is felt through the film.”
Can that be true? It got me wondering how many minutes of commercials are in a full-length film. I’m not talking about Svengoolie’s comedy bits. I get a big kick out of those! It’s the typical advertisement time I was curious about.
So, I looked this up and the counts vary, but I picked a website called TVWeek to get figures. The article is from 2014 so my guess is that the ad time estimates are even longer now, but in a typical average cable TV hour there was a little over 15 minutes of commercials. There were 237 comments, which I ignored because I figured they were the usual gripes.
And Christopher Lee got a total of 7 minutes screen time? Isn’t that almost the same time the Liberty Mutual star LiMu the Emu gets (“You’re just a flightless bird!”)?
I watched the Svengoolie TV show last night and saw the 1935 Universal Pictures movie “Werewolf of London.” You can watch the movie on the Internet Archive.
This film reminded me of another British movie, “Return of the Vampire” in which there was a comedy sketch between two grave diggers. In Werewolf of London there’s this hilarious scene in which the unfortunate Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Harold Hull) meets with a couple of old women named Mrs. Whack (Ethel Griffies) and Mrs. Moncaster (Zeffie Tilbury).
They were a couple of alcoholic landladies with rooms to let who competed with each other to rent a room to Dr. Glendon, who is trying to prevent his murderous tendencies when he transforms into a werewolf by moving out of his house. The scene is priceless, arguably the highlight of the movie, and begins at about 46.41 minutes into the film. Mrs. Whack and Mrs. Moncaster, even though they seem smitten with Dr. Glendon yet hesitate to offer him a drink, probably because they want most of the booze all to themselves.
Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) who is afflicted with “werewolfery” according to the other werewolf, Dr. Yogami. Warner Oland played Yogami, although he was actually Swedish and had played Charlie Chan in other films. They met briefly under violent circumstances while Glendon was in Tibet looking for the Mariphasa flower—although Glendon doesn’t recall that until later.
The thing about the Mariphasa is that drops from the flower are an antidote for lycanthropy. Or is it lycanthrophobia? Dr. Yogami mentions the latter twice and it shows up twice in print as well during the film. Lycanthrophobia is by definition the fear of turning into a werewolf. Lycanthropy is the process of turning into one—minus the fear factor, presumably. Whatever.
Dr. Glendon prowls around and slaughters a few victims when the moon is full but tries to avoid killing his wife, Lisa (Valerie Hobson) by renting a room above a tavern apparently, and crashes though the window of his room, possibly because of claustrophobia. This of course makes him a victim of multiple phobias and there is no one playing the role of psychiatrist; figure that one out.
Eventually, there’s a showdown between two cops and Glendon which takes the form of a 3-way thumb wrestling match between them, mainly because Glendon has an obvious case of dental caries in his fangs which causes some pain, especially when the vodka-swilling comedy duo of Whack and Moncaster try to get him plastered by pouring liquor down his gullet through a funnel.
You’ll want to watch this when you’re in a good mood and disinclined to watch anything that is consistently horrifying. There is no laugh track.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 