Tag: Svengoolie

Svengoolie Triggers Memory Lane Trip to the Drive Ins

Both Sena and I stayed up to see the cheesy 1972 horror flick The Gargoyles last Saturday night. No kidding, Sena stayed up for the whole thing! The show runs from 7-9:30 PM but the actual movie is only a little over an hour long. It’s about a clan of gargoyles that every 500 years hatch from eggs and wage war on humans to take over the planet. They never get the job done, probably because humans have all the guns and all the gargoyles have are claws and flimsy wings which you don’t see used until the very last scene. Like all of the Svengoolie movies, all of the jokes are so bad they’re good.

You can ask a fair question, which would be what else is on in addition to the movie? There’s a lot of commercials, of course, as well as the corny jokes and skits. But the other features last Saturday were excerpts from the Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con, in August 2023. I think it’s an annual historical horror convention that takes place in Rosemont, Illinois.

One of the attractions was a panel presentation about the history of the 90th anniversary of the drive-in theater hosted by Svengoolie and Joe Bob Briggs. It was arguably better than the feature flick. I have heard the history elsewhere about how the drive-in theatre began (I think it was on the travel or history channel).

The most interesting part of the history is how the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the recent history of the drive-in theaters. The point was that, when the pandemic hit the country, all indoor theaters closed, leaving the drive-ins the only place to watch movies for several weeks. They did pretty good business.

Moreover, horror movies and drive-ins go together like cheese and crackers (see what I did there, cheese as in cheesy movies?). OK, fine.

Anyway, horror films were mainly linked to low budget projects that big stars and big directors avoided like the plague. Mainly, those movies were played at the drive-ins—which is how they got a tarnished reputation. That led to cherished stories by older people who used to sneak their friends into the drive-ins by stowing them in the trunks of their cars. That probably did happen, even in the old Mason City Drive-In Theater in Iowa where Sena and I grew up. It was demolished in 1997.

As far as The Gargoyle movie goes, the one thing I couldn’t find out was exactly why Bernie Casey, who played the head gargoyle, didn’t voice his own lines. The web references I found just mentioned briefly that it was because his natural speaking voice didn’t fit the character. They were dubbed in by Vic Perrin who did the voice-over for the introduction to The Outer Limits.

Maybe the funniest scene was when the head gargoyle placated and playfully slapped the fanny of the female head breeder gargoyle after she noticed he was flirting with the human woman he kidnapped. The breeder was obviously really jealous. Maybe this means that the battle between gargoyles and humans will always come to a stalemate because we’re too much alike.

Attack of the Demonic Shrilling Chicken!

Remember that rubber chicken Sena ordered as a joke for what looks like my transformation into a Svengoolie fan? Svengoolie is the longstanding host on the MeTV channel which shows old, cheesy TV horror movies every Saturday.

Svengoolie always gets a lot of rubber chickens tossed at him after he tells a few jokes. Well, the rubber chicken arrived. Actually, I think it’s plastic, about which I’ll have a lot more to say. It’s called Shrilling Chicken. Sena ordered it from Wal-Mart. We’re still waiting for the Svengoolie glow-in-the-dark T-shirt, which she ordered through the Svengoolie web site.

The chicken is about a foot long and squeals when you squeeze it. It’s sold as a dog toy. It’s red and yellow and the first thing I did was to try to juggle with it along with two juggling balls. I thought it would be cool to get a YouTube video of it, especially while wearing the Svengoolie T-shirt.

I was trying to get the hang of juggling a linear chicken with juggling balls and was just getting to where I could do 3 or 4 throws while also squeezing it to make it squeal. And then it happened: the demonic chicken bit me (or is “pecked me” a better way to put it?)! That’s pretty spooky given the connection to Svengoolie, the horror show host.

OK, so it didn’t actually peck me in a satanic manner, but I caught it awkwardly in my right hand. My right index finger swelled up and it got a little sore. It’s healing quickly although it did leave a faint bruise.

Then I looked up Shrilling Chicken on the web. What a rabbit hole! I found warnings seemingly all over the web against getting within 100 yards of the thing because of allegations it contains toxic chemicals. In fact, pretty much all the warnings came from a group called Ecowaste Coalition, with the chief spokesperson being someone named Thony Dizon, Chemical Safety Campaigner.

Thony’s main message is that Shrilling Chicken contains unacceptable levels of “toxic plastic additives.” He cites a long list of European countries that have banned Shrilling Chicken, despite the labels on the package, one of which is “CE” which means that it meets European Union standards.

The warnings go on to say that children should not be allowed to even touch it, although there are dozens of ads on the web showing where you can buy it for kids, with one image of a child hugging a Shrilling Chicken as tall as he is. I didn’t know they made them that big.

Thony also goes on to cite an “FDA Advisory No. 2020-042” which clearly is opposed to Shrilling Chicken being on this planet. I spent quite a while looking for that FDA Advisory in the U.S. FDA website. I couldn’t find it.

If you don’t look closely, you’ll miss the part at the bottom of the page indicating that the “FDA” referred to is the one in the Philippines.

The Shrilling Chicken label also indicates that the toy is approved for kids 6 years and older. It also has the Green Dot symbol on it. Wikipedia says it’s “…to indicate to consumers who see the logo that the manufacturer of the product contributes to the cost of recovery and recycling.” The Shrilling Chicken is made in China.

On the whole, I would say Shrilling Chicken is less than demonic in any sense of the word. However, given what happened to me, I probably would not toss it at Svengoolie.

Also, I would suggest you not try to juggle with it. I had to lay off juggling practice briefly so I can heal up.

Transforming Into A Svengoolie Fan

We’re on a Svengoolie roll lately. I watched the Svengoolie show last Saturday and the made for TV movie was Dan Curtis’ Dracula. It was made in 1974. I thought I’d never seen this film before but that final scene in which Dracula (played by the phenomenal heavy, Jack Palance) gets skewered looked familiar. I may have seen part of it a long time ago.

I read the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula years ago when I was just a kid. It’s a scary book. I haven’t seen many movies about Dracula. I think we saw Bram Stoker’s Dracula produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which came out in 1992.

In fact, Dan Curtis’ Dracula (produced and directed by Dan Curtis) was at first called Bram Stoker’s Dracula, although the title had to be changed so they wouldn’t be confused with each other. I got one joke from Svengoolie:

What’s Dracula’s favorite ice cream? Veinilla.

When you look at Svengoolie’s comments section about the movie, it’s astonishing to see there are over 3,900 comments (still counting) and over 3,000 just during the movie.

I thought Jack Palance was riveting as Dracula. Sena didn’t watch the show with me but she remembered Palance’s antics during the 1992 Academy Awards when he got the Oscar for best supporting actor in City Slickers. After he got the Oscar, he moved away from the podium, dropped to the floor and did one-arm pushups—and he was 72 years old at the time. I never saw that, probably because I was on call as a first-year psychiatry resident.

This upcoming Saturday, the movie will be Gargoyles, which I’ve never seen or even heard of before. Svengoolie is known for cheesy films, but many of the stars in some of them went on to have successful careers.

Sena plans to watch it with me! And she ordered a glow in the dark Svengoolie T-shirt as well as a rubber chicken for me. Svengoolie does a lot of dad jokes and he gets rubber chickens tossed at him. I’ll probably try to juggle using the rubber chicken.

Svengoolie and The Comedy of Terrors

Last Saturday on Svengoolie, I watched for the second time the 1963 movie “Comedy of Terrors,” a slapstick horror spinoff of Shakespeare’s farce, “Comedy of Errors”—which I’ve never seen. I didn’t see the whole movie the first time around, and I can’t remember exactly where I saw it. Most likely it was on Svengoolie.

The movie story is not actually based on the Shakespeare comedy itself. Most of the lines by Basil Rathbone (as Mr. Black) sounded vaguely familiar and I think they were from “Macbeth.” Vincent Price (Mr. Trumbull) plays an evil mortician and Peter Lorre (Mr. Gillie) plays his bungling assistant. They bury people in a casket which they use over and over because they dump the corpses in the graves after the mourners leave. Boris Karloff plays Hinchley, the senile father of Trumbull’s wife, Amaryllis who is played by Joyce Jameson.

Basil Rathbone as Mr. Black is the landlord who threatens to evict Trumbull from his house if he doesn’t come up with the rent sooner rather than later. This leads to Trumbull’s plan to kill Mr. Black—who doesn’t stay dead more than a few minutes, repeatedly springing back to life and flawlessly reciting Shakespeare in a thundering voice, before collapsing periodically back into his lifelong affliction with bouts of catalepsy.

Now, you know I’m going to have something to say about catalepsy because I’m a retired consultation-liaison psychiatrist and I’ve seen enough patients with catatonia who display various signs of that neuropsychiatric disorder, including catalepsy. According to the University of Rochester Bush-Francis Catatonia Rating Scale Assessment Resources, catalepsy is defined as “Spontaneous maintenance of posture(s), including mundane (e.g., sitting/standing for long periods without reacting).”

After Mr. Black has an apparent heart attack after being shocked by the sight of Mr. Gillie, who sneaked into his house, the butler calls for the doctor. The butler reminds the doctor that the distinguished gentleman suffers from periodic episodes of “catalepsy.” The doctor insists that Mr. Black is dead after applying a perfunctory examination.

After that Mr. Black abruptly snaps into and out of periods of catalepsy typically reciting Shakespeare perfectly, even after Mr. Trumbull shoots him a few times. Needless to say, catalepsy is only one feature of many. It almost invariably appears in those who have severe neuropsychiatric illness such as schizophrenia or epilepsy and they would rarely be able to speak so eloquently.

What amazed me is that all of the actors remembered and spoke their lines perfectly, despite being lengthy and polysyllabic.

Although the film didn’t do well at the box office, I thought it was pretty funny. You can view it for free at the Internet Archive.

The Svengoolie Phenomenon

I wrote about Svengoolie a couple of years ago and just for old times’ sake, I watched the 1960 horror film 13 Ghosts on the Svengoolie broadcast by MeTV a few days ago. It had been a while since I watched Svengoolie and I thought I would have the usual experience of being able to sit through the opening credits and then being unable to watch more than 5 minutes of one of the cheesy movies for which Svengoolie is well known.

In fact, I watched and even enjoyed 13 Ghosts which I suppose makes me a hopeless case. The movie is about a family down on their luck and about to become homeless but a rich uncle leaves them a haunted house. It turns out to be haunted by a dozen ghosts, and the surprise ending reveals who the 13th ghost turns out to be.

Back in the day, William Castle, the maker of the film, had a knack for coming up with neat gimmicks for his films. The gimmick for this one was a set of special glasses for the audience, which allowed them to see the ghosts or not, depending on which part of the glasses you looked through.

I recognized a couple of the actors in the movie. One of them was really well known to me and thousands of others. It was Margaret Hamilton as the housekeeper, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz (1939). The other was Martin Milner, who was in the TV crime drama, Adam-12, which ran from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. Hamilton obviously teased viewers by holding up a broom and smiling broadly in one scene.

I really didn’t get a lot of nostalgia from watching 13 Ghosts since I was too young to see it when it first opened. But I watched it from start to finish, something I could never do in the past when watching Svengoolie. Don’t get me wrong; I actually got more of a kick out of Svengoolie’s cornball jokes and gags complete with rubber chicken firing squads.

One thing I am still amazed about is the popularity of the Svengoolie show. There were over 3500 comments about 13 Ghosts the last time I looked, which was days after the movie. There were over 2,000 just during the show!

Another thought about Svengoolie and his rubber chickens. I looked all over the web for a free picture of a rubber chicken. I found only one. Why is that?

Attack of the Giant Fried Rubber Chicken Livers!

Have you ever wondered if anyone ever made a movie about an attack on planet earth by fried rubber chicken livers? Boy, am I glad I’m not the only one. I suppose I could check the MeTV channel to see if any such film was ever aired by Svengoolie.

What do you mean you never heard of Svengoolie?

I used to watch Svengoolie a long time ago. It’s this guy called Svengoolie, played by Rich Koz, who hosts really awful horror movies. I could watch them for about 10 minutes before I had to switch to something which wouldn’t bore me or make me gag—which I realize often can’t be done nowadays.

Svengoolie would make corny jokes and get rubber chickens thrown at him. That was actually the best part of the show.

Part of what made me think about this was reminiscing about the early 1970s when I lived at the YMCA and worked for a consulting engineer company called WHKS & Co.

You got a single sleeping room at the YMCA and there was no kitchen. Frankly, it was for old guys who had no place else to go and for young guys trying to find out how to go somewhere else.

I ate in cafes a lot. I also picked up a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken take out. I realize it’s called KFC nowadays. But back in the 1970s you could openly buy a box of fried chicken livers as a side dish at KFC. I think I began eating them because they’re actually a pretty healthy food item if you prepare them right. You could get a generous serving of them. They were occasionally a little tough to chew—a little on the rubbery side.

You can’t get any franchise owners to admit they sell them now. You’ll see web articles that mention you can still get them at what they call certain “regional” stores. You can also maybe still get KFC chicken gizzards. Neither is on any official menu.

The connection here is fried tough chicken livers and bad old horror movies hosted by Svengoolie who makes corny jokes and dodges rubber chickens. I can easily imagine somebody making a throwback classic B Horror movie called “Attack of the Giant Fried Rubber Chicken Livers.”

Wouldn’t that be great?

Try watching Svengoolie sometime. You might not like the movie, but you’ll get a big kick out of Svengoolie.