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Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Monkees Marooned” (S2E8)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “Monkees Marooned” (Season 2, Episode 8)

Air date: October 30, 1967

I’m gonna flat-out state it first and foremost, Monkee-heads (that’s what we’re called, right?): “Monkees Marooned,” is one charming Monkees episode. Directed by Monkees hero, Jim Frawley, “Monkees Marooned” showcases the boys at their comedic and musical best.

This episode was written zippily by sixties TV stalwart Stanley Ralph Ross, known primarily for his work on the always hysterical sixties Batman series and feels ripped from the pages of MAD magazine. He uses a relatively boilerplate exotic-island-treasure-hunt plotline to poke fun at Robinson Caruso, Tarzan, and the racial stereotyping that still takes place in pop culture today.

In fact, the whole episode feels a little like a lost Danger Island-style Banana Splits segment, except way-not racist. This is the second example that I’ve observed this season of the Monkees throwing racial expectations on their heads, the first one being in my analysis of “Everywhere A Sheik Sheik.

In this particular episode, there is a ridiculous subplot involving stuffy britt Major Pshaw (character actor Monte Landis in one of his many appearances this season) searching for the same treasure as our boys. His “man Thursday” (hardy har) is played by the wonderful Rupert Crosse, not as a wise savage, but instead a goofy trickster fully aware that he’s in a surrealist sitcom. A running gag of this episode has Thursday facing camera and delivering a deadpan, “Who writes that stuff?”

Thursday is fully aware of the metatextual implications of his behavior, and he helps the Monkees win the day at the end of the episode. These are quite the progressive character moves for a stereotype who, in the wrong hands of other creative teams of the era, would have ended up an embarrassment by today’s standards.

Also, a hilarious and subversive sight-and-conceptual gag is the character of Kimba, played by Burt Mustin, a septuagenarian Tarzan knock-off who’s maybe gone a little meshugeh by being trapped on the island for too long. But alas, ol’ Kimba finds a happy ending when the treasure that the Monkees and Major Pshaw have been searching for ends up being the Jane (hiding in a treasure chest) to Mustin’s Kimba all along. Their love, featured in a delightful romp to “Daydream Believer” is reminiscent of the love scenes between Aunt Jessie and Buster Bloodvessel in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour film, which would air on Boxing Day just a few months after this episode, and I mean that in a good way! Seriously!

Those are the highlights, folks, but there’s a lot more in here to recommend it. For starters, the episode starts with a killer dirty-picture joke that I don’t want to spoil for those who have never seen it. The joke leads to poor ol’ hapless Pete getting scammed by swapping his guitar for a treasure map, and before you can say “Robert Louis Stevenson,” the boys are off to a jungle island to go treasure hunting.

But before they leave, Davy Jones has a hysterical turn as a ship commodore on the Monkees’ rowboat, which sinks due to having too many unnecessary items on it. I like Jones’ performance in this episode. Freed from the shackles of being a lovelorn sap, Davy gets a lot of moments to be lighter and funnier, something that I wished happened more often in the rest of the series.

Also notable is director Jim Frawley’s cameo as Dr. Schwartzkopf, a typical German doctor, who just happens to be in the jungle and offering to treat the Monkees for malaria. It’s rare that Frawley gets to perform along with the Monkees in the TV series, and he was very significant in gifting the Monkees their comedic sensibilities. Although they play the scene lightly, it’s cool for a comedy geek like myself to see the boys performing along with their improvisational comedic guru. It looks like they were all having a blast as well.

Musically, this episode hits all the right notes as well (sorry about that one, folks). We’ve got our aforementioned love romp to “Daydream Believer” which features shots of the Monkees swinging on vines and falling into ponds, some of which were famously featured in season two’s opening credits.

We’ve also got a warm and vibrant performance of “What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round” from the recently released Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones LTD, my personal favorite Monkees record (at least as of this writing; that opinion changes almost daily). Mike Nesmith’s vocals on this one are iconic, and for those of you who like the Monkees a little more country-tinged and rustic, this is a performance for you.

Overall, if you showed someone who had never heard of the Monkees before “Monkees Marooned” as an intro, you could certainly do a lot worse. Their subversive senses of humor are on display, as are their deft musical acumen. It’s a shame that there aren’t more episodes of the series that allow for the Monkees to be as vibrantly playful as they are here. But at least, 50 years on, “Monkees Marooned” remains a treasure to be unearthed by fans.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Monkees Marooned” (S2E8) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.


Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Card Carrying Red Shoes” (S2E9)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “The Card Carrying Red Shoes” (Season 2, Episode 9)

Air date: November 6, 1967

I was skeptical when I signed up to review this episode of The Monkees – coincidentally, almost exactly a full year since the first time I saw the show… and my first review for our Every Monkees Episode column. My last experience wasn’t a particularly good one, between the episode being objectively bad and finding out the hard way that Monkees fans get real sensitive about the “Monkees didn’t play their own instruments” thing. (As Allison, our Editor-in-Chief, said at the time, “It’s been a big day for David.”) Suffice to say, I came into this with some reservations.

Turns out that “The Card Carrying Red Shoes” isn’t just a watchable episode of The Monkees, it’s pretty clever and, at times, even subversive. It’s not exactly Monty Python, but it plays on the Cold War-spy genre as well as a vaguely generic riff on American thoughts on the Soviet Union of the time.

The Monkees (sans Mike Nesmith, who is conspicuous in his absence from this episode) are hired to perform music for the Druvanian (henceforth referred to as the Not-Russian) National Ballet. There they encounter ballerina Natasha (Ondine Vaughn), who immediately falls in love with Peter due to his pretty face. (He is referred to as “Face” for much of the rest of the episode.)

Her dancing partner Ivan (played by Vincent Beck of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians fame) and her choreographer Nicolai (Leon Askin) are planning to sneak microfilm over the border in the tip of her ballet shoes — a terrible idea, because BALLERINAS SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THE TIPS OF THEIR TOES, but here we are regardless. Natasha gets tired of the Not-Russian’s bullshit and sneaks out of the ballet in the Monkees’ equipment case.

The Card Carrying Red Shoes stands out from many other Monkees episode in one key way: The girl doesn’t fall in love with Davy this time. Davy even takes exception to this, pointing out that he’s a Pretty Boy Who Deserve Treats. Peter responds completely deadpan: “Can’t be you every week, Davy.” I find The Monkees is at its best when it takes a sledgehammer to the fourth wall — if you’re going to be absurd, go all out. This is a prime example.

Almost immediately after, Natasha tries to threaten Davy and Micky with a gun, before Micky (who is absolutely the MVP of this episode) gives a heartfelt speech convincing her that guns are the coward’s way out. She disarms, gives him the gun, and then he does a quick gangster impression before stating, “Not bad for a long-haired weirdo, huh, America?” right at the camera.

Eventually the central conflict is introduced — Natasha wants another chance to stay in America and the Not-Russians want the microfilm back. A trip by Davy and Micky to the Not-Russian ambassador seems fruitless on their end but triggers them coming to the pad to kidnap Peter. Hijinks ensue.

The color red appears a lot in this episode, between clothes people who are Not-Russians wear and the setting. Besides being an obvious Not-Russian signifier, I suspect they chose that color because deep red is known for translating well to black and white. Either way, it’s a striking design choice that works well.

The climax of the episode sees the Monkees do everything in their power to disrupt the ballet, including Davy trying to stop the cymbals from clashing (the Not-Russians plan to shoot Peter as the cymbals clash to cover the gunshot) to Micky dancing around the stage in a chicken costume kneecapping everyone he can. It’s an amusing enough scene, but it repeats itself and often introduces new characters to chase scenes in a way that’s less “absurd” and more “hard to follow.”

The actual end of the episode — where Natasha admits she isn’t in love with Peter because, even though she loves “Face,” they don’t share a common background and responds by wheeling out a Not-Russian named Alexei who looks exactly like Peter — makes up for it.

Far and away the best gag in the episode is the least expected. Micky and Davy show up in disguise at the ballet, talk to a dancer, and claim to be looking for “a prisoner, possibly being held against his own will, who at this very moment may be in front of a firing squad named Peter Tork.” The dancer smiles, says, “Just a second,” and walks into a back room where a blindfolded man is standing in front of a uniformed Not-Russian firing squad.

The dancer asks the blindfolded man if his name is Peter Tork, which he denies. The dancer says, “Sorry to bother you,” and the blindfolded man nonchalantly states, “It’s alright” and faces the firing squad. As the dancer leaves and closes the door, we hear gunshots. He shrugs, and says, “My error.” That is an remarkably intricate piece of dark humor in a show about a bunch of goofy, horned-up musicians. “Throwaway gallows humor” is not what I expected going into this.

I’d like to give a shout out to everyone’s haircuts in this episode. Peter is rocking a full Will Byers from Stranger Things, and Micky is Eraserhead Chic. Davy is Davy.

The only song in the episode is a variation of “She Hangs Out,” played at the very end. It marks Mike’s only appearance in the entire episode, and he spends it dressed like Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho-Tep.  The music is fine and catchy, but it bears no relation to the plot. Davy also looks confused while singing it, looking nowhere in particular and just kind of aimlessly wandering around. The rest of the band are now playing their instruments much more realistically, so you’ll hear no mention of it here.

“The Card Carrying Red Shoes” is a perfectly pleasant episode of television. It doesn’t get as much play as other episodes in the series, but does a decent job playing up Cold War Intrigue and giving someone else besides Davy the reigns for an episode. The only question I have left: Where WAS Mike?

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Card Carrying Red Shoes” (S2E9) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

FANTASIA OBSCURA: Welcome to the Seventies, Dracula

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you realize that the term “a man out of time” has more than one meaning…

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

Distributor: Warner Brothers
Director: Alan Gibson

There’s a moment when some of us get a brief flash of insight, where we realize that no, what we’re doing isn’t working, and that it’s all about to come to an end, isn’t it? And if we’re lucky, this hopefully happens in private, when we can quietly come to terms with it and find a way to gracefully move on.

When it happened to Hammer Films, unfortunately, they had the bad luck of having it all happen out in the open…

Our film opens the way most Hammer Films focusing on Dracula end: The evil Count (Christopher Lee) is being relentlessly hunted by Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), with their battle atop a runaway carriage in 1872 ending with a crash. Van Helsing dies soon after using one of the carriage spokes as a stake to kill Dracula, and things glide into the denouement…

…during which time one of Dracula’s minions (Christopher Neame) collects his master’s ashes and hides them at the edge of a cemetery. As he does this, the camera takes a quick cut upward to a commercial jet airplane overhead, and we get scenes of London, circa 1972, playing under the credits.

We cut to a wild party, where the band Stoneground (who were Hammer’s second choice to be in the film, as the Faces declined to appear) have an extended two-song set that goes on way too long, sapping a lot of the film’s momentum. During the sequence, which could have been trimmed, we see Johnny Alucard (Neame, again) with his tight friends, all of whom crashed the party on a quest for kicks, one of whom is Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), a descendant of the Van Helsing who dies in the beginning of the film, and the granddaughter of Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing (Cushing, again).

Gathered together after the party at their hangout, a coffee bar called the Cavern (yeah, the décor suggests Todd Browning, while the name screams a whole different scene…),  Alucard suggests for kicks that they hold a black mass at a deconsecrated church. Jessica checks granddad’s library about the gig before showing up, then evades his questions about her interest. She goes to the ceremony, where Alucard is desperate to get her very involved in the ritual, before fellow foolish thrill seeker Laura (Caroline Munro) insists on the honor. For her effort, she becomes the first good meal Dracula’s had in 100 years.

From there, it’s pretty standard set of story beats. Dracula tries to get back at the Van Helsings for staking him last century, wanting to make Jessica his bride and Lorrimer his dinner; Johnny wants to get in on his master’s action and become one of the Undead, which has mixed results for him; and Lorrimer wants to save Jenny and put down Dracula once and for all. All of whom kinda-sorta-not-really gets what they want.

On the way to their resolutions, we watch what should have been a much more engaging film get undercut along the way. Musically, aside from the pointless Stoneground scene, we have a score by Michael Vickers that makes incompetent use of a guitar’s wah pedal that detracts from everything we see on screen. And while Beacham’s Jessica and Michael Coles’ Inspector Murray (the detective taking up the case as the bodies are discovered, who allies with Lorrimer against Dracula) are decent performances, both Lee and Cushing feel tired as they go through the paces, even during their dynamic second end-of-film fight.

The worst element is the script by Don Houghton, who did the film right after doing two serials for Doctor Who. It seems rote and unfocused, especially having the Count stay in a deserted churchyard the whole time instead of reacting to the modern era, which seems to be the point of having Dracula be moved ahead in time. (We don’t get a proper such film that covers that until 1979’s Love at First Bite.) Worse, some of the aspects are just lazy, especially when Lorrimer finds out what ”Alucard” is spelled backward…

No, seriously, try it; we’ll wait…

Yeah, you know? Yeooh fo daol taf elohw a, that…

The end result is disappointing. This should have been a fairly reasonable project to pull off, having Lee and Cushing back on screen as Dracula and Van Helsing; on paper it sounds like the crew could have just given them their marks and just let them go without worry. Moving the setting up to the modern day had plenty of opportunity to add something dynamic to the film, as well, shaking up the look of the franchise to give it a new vibe. But it never comes together, undercut by the weak links noted above and unable to get in sync as it bleeds out from their control like blood from a puncture wound.

As noted, everyone kinda-sorta-not-really gets what they want. You can guess how the Count and Johnny fare, while Lorrimer has to fight Dracula again in The Satanic Rites of Dracula. With most of the characters in the first film along for the ride (along with most of the cast as well, although Jessica was played in the second film by Joanna Lumley), we are left with two truths:

But, that’s a tale of terror for another time; meanwhile…

NEXT TIME: So, we’re about to get Kenneth Branagh’s take as Hercule Poirot. Hopefully he didn’t ask Neil Simon for pointers…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Welcome to the Seventies, Dracula appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

FANTASIA OBSCURA: Have Some Star-Studded, Murder-Mystery Fanfic

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, the term “I guess you had to be there” has never been used better…

Murder by Death (1976)

Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Director: Robert Moore

In “fanfic,” there is a term for putting fictional characters together: “shipping,” or “ship” for short. It’s often meant romantically but can be just as likely having them simply be in the same room together.

It’s a concept that’s been around at least as long as when Neil Simon, of all people, threw five pastiches together for the sake of a comedy:

In a creepy old house in a creepy unidentified area, five detectives roll up in their cars:

Their needs are “attended to” by their host’s blind butler Bensonmum (Alec Guinness) and the deaf-mute cook Yetta (Nancy Walker, in her last feature). They interact with the guests before their host shows up, the notorious Lionel Twain (Truman Capote), who shocks them all by announcing that at midnight, someone in the room where all have gathered would be stabbed twelve times in the back and killed, by someone else in the room.

And from there, it gets nasty…

…not to mention silly and on a few occasions actually funny. Simon manages to set up some decent jokes that could have been funny as anyone’s lines, but that’s the problem: He takes less care fleshing out his Christie knock-offs than he does the other three, who had been in more popular film adaptations before the movie than either of the other two.

As a result, some of the more biting observations of these characters that could have come up in the script just never materialize as well as they do for the American detectives. (Somehow Simon seemed to have missed Murder on the Orient Express; as for Marple, it would still be a few years before a decent model came to screen to build off of, so we can assume that there just wasn’t anything at hand to crib from…)

Allowing for these lost opportunities to slide, the film tries to go back and forth between biting and zany, managing to hit a good line more often than would have been expected in a film with so much talent in featured roles. Some actors in their roles, like Niven’s Dick and Falk’s Diamond, have lots of material to wallow in, and do so gracefully. However, Guinness’ butler pretty much steals every scene he’s in, and his inability to interact with the deaf and mute Yetta is actually a major drive to keep the film’s momentum going for a good third of it.

The big mystery is how they could get a lot of serious film and television talent in the project and think that putting the untrained Capote in his only serious acting role up against them was a good idea. He comes across more annoying and spiteful than anything else, and you never feel like he belongs in the film, that Simon and frequent on-stage collaborator Moore just thought it’d be cool to do it and then live with regret over their choice for the rest of their lives.

Interestingly, the Capote that was making audiences squirm every time he opened his mouth in the film was not that far removed from the real-life Capote during this time as he was doing the talk show circuit, a slow motion train wreck as he destroyed himself before our eyes.

It’s during the time this film was in production that he authorized the four short segments from what was going to be Answered Prayers be published by Esquire magazine; his supposed use of his contacts and confidences among the beautiful people as gist for the work led to his being ostracized from the A-listers and sped up his downward spiral.

Despite the lack of Christie representation, the yellowface, and Capote’s dancing too damn close to the edge right before falling off the cliff, the film did well in its time. Notices were good, and audiences gave the film good box office. Which was a surprise to Nivens and Sellers, who reportedly got the producers to buy back some of their backend shares out of the profits, imagining that their film would not be embraced as well as it was.

Yes, the artwork for the poster is by Charles Addams

Interestingly, despite the success of the film, there was no effort towards further shipping, to replicate another such meeting of fictional detectives like this by this team or any other. The closest we’d get to a continuation would be Falk doing another Hammett character pastiche for Simon in 1978’s The Cheap Detective.

Which leads one to conclude that if asked, that Simon would refuse to go down with the ship…

NEXT TIME: Well, we did films with creepy critters coming for us that featured Spock and Bones, so you know what HAS to come next…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: Have Some Star-Studded, Murder-Mystery Fanfic appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Wild Monkees” (S2E10)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “The Wild Monkees” (Season 2, Episode 10)

Air date: November 13, 1967

Anytime you combine biker gangs, beautiful babes, and our favorite pre-fab four, you’re going to get a wild and raucous episode of The Monkees. Revisiting this one was a real treat. Not only is it a deft parody of the 1954 Marlon Brando motorcycle movie The Wild One, it’s also an oh-so-very Sixties statement on the nature of gender and masculinity.

The swingin’ scene opens with the boys arriving at the Henry Cabot Lodge and Cemetary (misspelling intentional; the name is a play on the old-timey Republican politician of the same name, a reference that was already old 50 years ago!) to play a gig for the octogenarian denizens.

Things are not as they seem, however, and the establishment’s owner forces our boys to get jobs as gardeners (Peter), bellhops (Micky), waiters (Davy), and wandering lute-playing singers (Mike, in his first appearance in the show without his hat! Character development!). Just when you think this is going to be a typical Monkees-do-jobs-they’re-clearly-not-qualified-to-do episode, our expectations are subverted when a gang of leather-clad biker babes (at first disguised as biker-brutes) enter the hotel and demand to be taken care of.

The Monkees are understandably smitten. This is one of the rare episodes where each of them gets an individual love interest, and what love interests they are! The hysterical Carol Worthington! Playboy Playmate Christine Williams! Jennifer Gan, who was blond! Another Playboy Playmate Corinne Cole! These girls are all bold, brassy, and badass. When the Monkees try to woo these girls, they accuse our favorite boys of being sissies: They’re just too soft.

Although I’m not a huge fan of the word “sissy,” and its ugly connotations, I do like the issues that this plot point brings up in “The Wild Monkees.” The Monkees’ characters as a whole are artistic and gently counterculture. I always felt like the show was intentionally trying to bring a positive and constructive dialogue about the anti-war hippie movement to its target tween audience. This episode is interesting in the way that the Monkees have to adhere to more societally acceptable forms of masculinity to impress these girls, and the results do not sit well on their lanky frames.

All of the boys end up dressing in head-to-toe Tom of Finland-style biker leather, and the results (though rather durned sexay from my perspective) don’t sit well on them. They’re just too Haight-Ashbury in their hearts to be convincingly Harley Davidson.

This is especially put in contrast when the girls’ actual biker boyfriends show up, who are real nightmare Road Warrior-types. This, of course, leads to the age-old theme of a race (hello, last week’s Riverdale — it’s literally 50 years ago calling!) and romps ensue. Of note: Micky, Davy, and Mike all did their own motorcycle stunts. Guess their off-camera personas were a little more butch than what we saw onscreen.

All-in-all, the comedic beats and airy premise of this episode play well, even how many years later. The boys look great in their bellhop and waiter outfits, and they have a running gag doing chicken noises that I particularly dig. Their chemistry with their female costars is palpable, as is their fear with their ghoulish biker-gang costars.

Also of note is the music. For starters, this is the first usage of the Goffin-King written “Star Collector,” which would end up being used in a whopping five other Monkees episodes. In some ways, this song is a gentle chiding of the massive fandom surrounding the band at the time but done with a great deal of affection. It’s a super-fun score for this motorcycle-fueled romp.

The episode cold-opens with a wonderful psychedelic rendition of Micky’s jazz-fueled live concert favorite, “Goin’ Down.” Featuring a cavalcade of multicolored, optically printed Micky Dolenzes all in tandem with each other dancing in wild abandon, this is one of the great and iconic Monkee Sixties moments. It’s also the only time in the show’s history in which a musical number opens an episode.

“The Wild Monkees” is definitely another episode of the series to celebrate. Although not one of its very best, it’s a season two offering that sits very nicely into The Monkees‘ distinctly comedic and musical vibe. And, like many of the best episodes, it delves into some sociological elements that you wouldn’t expect on a series primarily meant for the teeny-bopper set.

Getting to see all four Monkees dressed head to toe in leather did give me a bit of a giggly personal thrill. After you watch (or rewatch) “The Wild Monkees,” I hope that the next time you see someone cruising by on a motorcycle that you give them another take. Underneath the black leather jacket could be a bodacious babe… or even a Monkee.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Wild Monkees” (S2E10) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “A Coffin Too Frequent” (S2E11)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “A Coffin Too Frequent” (Season 2, Episode 11)

Air date: November 20, 1967

We all have them: The day we show up for work not feeling like we want to be there. We hoped there’d be a road accident, an earthquake, a nuclear first strike, something to keep us from getting to our desks because there’s no effing way in hell a paycheck can justify making it in. But no, we’ve clocked in, and it’s too many hours before quitting time o’clock to go.

When it happened to the Monkees, unfortunately, we all got to experience it firsthand.

This episode, supposedly involving forces from beyond, is something of a change of pace this season and is set entirely is the Monkees’ pad. Just as they go to bed, the band discovers an uninvited man, Henry Weatherspoon (George Furth, who we met back in season one), prowling around their living room ahead of midnight. Which, for reasons probably best left unexamined, he’s allowed to do, as his commandeering of the house is actually in the lease that Peter reads.

Things get creepier when Henry’s Aunt Mildred (Ruth Buzzi) appears at the door explaining Henry’s purpose: He’s going to raise her beloved husband Elmer from the dead that night.

The boys try and make a run for it. But again, they are deterred, thanks to the Weatherspoons’ faithful manservant, Boris (Mickey Morton). All six foot seven and a quarter inches of him manage to bedevil the Monkees at every turn, although Davy comes closest to getting through to him with an impromptu dance routine.

With no choice, the lads declare that they’ll witness Elmer’s resurrection. They’ll be the best witnesses they can possibly be, and even demonstrate how they’d do in their duties:

Meanwhile, there are matters of life and death other than Elmer’s to take care of, such as Mildred’s attempting to minister to Peter’s “cold” with tea:

From there, it just manages to somehow get weirder. Maybe it’s the drugs, especially as both Mike and Micky get in two too-obvious-to-miss references to hallucinogens; that could be it, yeah, maybe…?

How could this have happened? Probably beginner’s (bad) luck.

Directing credit goes to David Winters, for whom this episode is his first noted directing gig. Having been in front of the camera for 18 years before this, mostly on television (and in movie theaters with a singing part in the film version of West Side Story), it was probably inevitable that he’d have a desire to move into directing. And while he would go on to get good notices for such works as Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare and The Last Horror Film, he was hardly a natural the first time out, and it shows in the episode.

A large part of the problem is what he had to work from on the page. The script by Stella Linden (the second of two women to have written scripts for the series) certainly doesn’t live up to the work she also did that year on the novel and screenplay for the Cliff Richard film Two a Penny. It feels badly disjointed, even for a chaotic romp with random divergences that the show specialized in and runs out of energy in the back half of the episode.

Everyone certainly does the best with what they had to work with, and some folk just run with it. While Furth does a fair, if serviceable, turn and Morton comes across like the poor man’s Ted Cassidy, the show is Buzzi’s for the taking. Her Aunt Mildred feels like she is workshopping her best-known character, Gladys Ormphby, on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. She gives and takes with the band well and makes a great effort to work with her co-stars.

And that’s where the weak parts of the program are most notably evident. The Monkees themselves feel disengaged from the episode; this comes across with every sped-up sequence where something zany is suggested but never turns up. The fact that during the romp that plays over “Goin’ Down” we only get three Monkees for most of it, with Mike nowhere to be seen, just adds to the sense of ennui that comes out of the show.

We end up with a show set entirely at the pad with characters that feel like they’re in the wrong program opposite the stars, and only one song on the soundtrack. Two, technically, if you count the re-use of the “Daydream Believer” music video, which admittedly can cover over a lot of sins:

Watching this episode, you feel the suggested disenfranchisement the band was having with their television show. It doesn’t feel as you watch like they really wanted to be on set for this one.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “A Coffin Too Frequent” (S2E11) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Director May Have Loved This, But the Tarantulas… Not So Much

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, the distance between success and failure can be as thin as the follicle of a tarantula’s abdomen…

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Distributed by: Dimension Pictures
Directed by: John “Bud” Cardos

They’re hard to read about, and sometimes difficult to write about as well. They creep along, low to the ground, willing to go after you if you startle them with a venomous bite. And getting ensnared in their web is torturous as you struggle to break free, ultimately becoming a discarded husk after they get their fangs into you.

So, let’s take a break from looking at film producers and discuss spiders instead.

As our film opens in Verde Valley, AZ, we get the villains’ POV (yes, the spiders’ perspective) of an attack on a calf belonging to Walter Colby (Woody Strode). The poor animal, whom Colby was hoping to get big prize money for in the upcoming county fair, dies in a way that mystifies the local veterinarian Robert “Rack” Hansen (William Shatner).

He sends blood samples to Flagstaff to get answers, and when he gets the results, they are accompanied by scientist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling). And the news is not good: Colby’s calf was killed by potent spider venom in doses way too high for a single specimen to have delivered. It’s such an outlier that Ashley gets a room at the Washburn Lodge, run by Emma (Lieux Dressler), an old girlfriend of Rack’s, to get a better sense of what’s going on.

They soon discover on the Colby farm a large spider hill, where the tarantulas have come together and formed a group in response to all the pesticides killing the insects usually in their diet. To avoid starvation, they got together, established a group mind, and took to going after larger prey, either eating it on the spot or putting it in cocoons for later on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: No, tarantulas are not capable of forming a social order among themselves and would instead kill and eat each other if food got scarce. And no, they don’t use their spinnerets in that manner, ever.

So no, they’d never form a swarm and go after the folks in town like they ultimately do in the film.

And no, we would never ultimately get to the point where Rack, Diane, and Emma would be isolated in the lodge with spiders all around trying to get at them, the arachnid archfiends even going so far as to try and take out the fuse box at the Lodge.

Sure, this cheap and rushed-into-production-for-a-quick-buck entry into the “nature against us” canon of films from the 1970s like Empire of the Ants and Night of the Lepus is clunky and a bit of a stretch to sit through, but hey, you get a chance to see not one but two legends at work here!

The one you may know better, Bill Shatner, was not at his best during the film. After Star Trek went off the air, Shatner shared many frustrations with following up his work on an iconic space show, much the same way Gene Roddenberry had.

He does a good job as the lead, all things said, despite being handed a script that has more holes than an orb spider’s web after a vacuum cleaner gets taken to it. This includes a subplot that has Rack constantly on the verge of having a hot relationship with his brother’s widow, Terry (Marcy Lafferty, who was married to Shatner at the time the film was lensed); the idea that our hero was going at any second to sleep with his sister-in-law produces more creeps on film than any of the wrangled spiders.

And then, there’s John Cardos.

John Cardos, c. 2013

Cardos’ CV is almost a Hollywood legend unto itself. His career starts at age six, appearing in Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” shorts, during MGM’s management of the series. He grows up in the business with his father and uncle managing the Graumann’s Egyptian and Chinese Theaters during the heyday of the studios (one of which, Fox, employs his cousin Spiros in the production office). When he’s old enough, he finds work in film in any way possible; one such early job involved wrangling sacks of sparrows for Alfred Hitchcock in The Birds.

He finds his way into stunt work, which on smaller films often leads due to lack of budget and crew to doing other things as well. His stunt work on both Satan’s Sadists and Nightmare in Wax was supplemented by being both actor and production manager as well for these films, which gave him considerable hands-on experience and lead ultimately to his directing.

To hear him discuss the production in such places as Brian Albright’s Wild Beyond Belief! and an interview he gave in 2013 tied into his later work The Dark (a film he took over the helm for when the original director, Tobe Hooper, backed out), Cardos had the time of his life during this film at the height of his career. His obvious passion for the project is infectious, and you can feel his love for the film every second. Even at its silliest, there’s a warmth that comes through in how he frames and shoots his scenes, like a father showing off his kid’s latest school project as he puts it up on the fridge.

Sure, there are shortcomings in the final product. The script and what it asks of tarantulas has already been noted, but there’s also the music, supervised by Igo Kantor. The quick pulls from stock horror needle-drops pulled from older television shows to the easy country-esque ballads by Dorsey Burnette just keeps you off balance as you try and find a mood to tune into.

Though, let’s be honest: Who among us is going to look a proud papa in the eyes and tell him his kid sucks?

This, ultimately, gives Kingdom of the Spiders its special place as the work of a man enjoying his field during a major highlight in a long career. A fairly long one, it needs to be noted; Cardos, when he reached the age he couldn’t do stunts, transitioned into being a transport captain. He would go on to work as such on the films Memento and D.E.B.S.

If you prefer, you get to instead look at it as the efforts of an actor between serious gigs to make the most out of fairly little. Shatner was still five years away from starring in T. J. Hooker and had to get whatever work he could during the time; the fact that he still made the most of the film speaks volumes about his craft.

It’s that balance between a director working at his pinnacle and an actor hovering near his nadir, like the anchor strands on a well-built web, that keep you looking, no matter how many creepy things are crawling along through the film.

And to be honest, watching spiders on screen isn’t for everyone, either.

NEXT TIME: They keep saying you can’t save the world alone. Acapulco, on the other hand, is doing just fine in the hands of only one young lady…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Director May Have Loved This, But the Tarantulas… Not So Much appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Hitting the High Seas” (S2E12)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “Hitting the High Seas” (Season 2, Episode 12)

Air date: November 27, 1967

Ahoy, mates! The Monkees hit the high seas and rough waters in an episode largely absent of Mike, a stable captain, and a laugh track. Welcome to “Hitting the High Seas,” an episode that Davy Jones said was his favorite in a 1997 interview for the Rhino VHS The Monkees: Our Favorite Episodes.

In an episode written by Jack Winter (a 1962 Harvard graduate and the second youngest member of the class) and directed by familiar James Frawley, Micky, Peter, and Davy are drowning their sorrows in glasses of buttermilk at a random watering hole when they overhear Harry Hooker and Frank Reyolds talking about hiring some new sailors. The boys convince the men to hire them and agree to meet at Pier 3 at 6:00 in the morning. “Pier 6 at 3 o’clock,” quips Davy. Hooker calls his captain and tells him they have hired “the dumbest, dullest suckers in the world!”

This is the first episode not to include canned laughter, which had become a staple of the TV show and comedies at the time. The band had insisted the show get rid of the laugh track, believing their audience was smart enough to know where the jokes were, making the sight gags and punch lines land in silence. Admittedly, it takes some getting used to.

Per their agreement, the boys arrive – complete with handbook and inflatable dolphin – at the pier and are greeted by Hooker and Reynolds. Hooker is played by Noam Pitlik, who would go on to direct TV sitcoms such as Wings, One Day at a Time, and Taxi, and win an Emmy Award for directing Barney Miller. Reynolds is played by Ted de Corsia, mostly remembered for playing a gangster in 1951’s The Enforcer.

The Monkees are given their first order of instructions, and even with conveniently planted signs pointing the way (“MAINSAIL” and “PULL THIS ROPE TO RAISE MAINSAIL”), the boys struggle completing their first task. The episode was actually filmed on an actual schooner — the Seadog, whose only means of navigational equipment was a compass!

Mike takes an anti-seasick pill and ironically gets seasick. His mates instruct him to lie down, and that is the last we see of him for this episode. On the first day of shooting, Mike actually did contract a case of seasickness, making him unable to participate in the filming.

The entire crew reports to the main deck, and the captain orders the boys to the cut their hair. The captain is played by Australian actor Chips Rafferty whose career began in the 1940s. One might remember him as one of the mutineers in Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando. But I digress.

When the Monkees refuse to cut their hair, they are to be punished for disobeying Captain’s orders. Davy protests that the captain is violating Naval law, and when asked who does he think is, he tells them, and the captain associates him with Davy Jones’ locker and makes Davy his cabin boy, while Peter and Micky are ordered to swab the deck.

We next see Davy bringing food to the captain and knocks on several doors marked “CAPTAIN,” only to be introduced to sight gags provided by Micky pretending to be Captain Ahab looking for Moby Dick and Peter attempting to seduce a pretty blonde.

He finally finds the correct room and is kicked out by the captain because he is “in conference” even though he appears to be alone. Back in the hallway, a curious Davy pries open the door and spies on the captain in conference with his parrot “Horace” (voiced by none other than Micky) discussing a plan to make themselves rich.

Davy rejoins his pals who are in the middle of an impromptu rendition of “Tear The Top Right Off My Head.” This Tork-penned tune was recorded during 1968’s The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees but would not find a home until The Monkees’ Missing Links, Vol. 3 in 1996.

Davy believes the captain to be “crackers” and convinces Micky (because he’s the only one who can imitate a parrot — wink, wink) to sneak into the captain’s room that night, pretend to be Horace, and find out what his dastardly scheme is.

As planned, the boys break into the sleeping captain’s room, put a muzzle on the parrot, and Micky goes into action. Imitating Horace, Micky and friends learn the captain is going to rob a fellow ship for all of its gold.

The next morning, Micky attempts unsuccessfully to convince his friends that this is all a fantasy and that the captain and crew are a collective product of their subconscious minds. Sounds like a good spot for a commercial break!

The captain tells his men — now clad in pirate gear — that if anyone is afraid, then he is to step forward. The boys do so but learn their only other option is to be dropped off; not at the next port as Peter hopes, but into the ocean!

Micky suggests a mutiny (as inspired by the aforementioned Marlon Brando), and Peter is seen whispering this plan into the men’s ears. After Micky rallies the crew, he informs the captain of the alleged mutiny, but when the crew fails to respond, Peter confesses that he had literally mumbled into their ears instead of suggesting the plan.

Our boys are found guilty of insubordination to a commanding officer, conspiring to mutiny, and imitating a parrot, and are forced to walk the plank. Thankfully, they’re saved when the ship the captain wishes to rob is spotted in the distance. Micky, Davy, and Peter take advantage of this opportunity to save the ship with a good old-fashioned sword fight to the tune of “Daydream Believer” from their upcoming fifth album The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees, whose album cover includes color stills from this episode.

“Daydream Believer” would become the third and final Monkees song to peak at #1, but its upbeat flavor clashes with the fighting on board. The fighting comes across as more violent and less swashbuckling swordfight slapstick, and the shots of the sunset seem all too foreshadowing of the series’ ultimate demise.

The boys are then congratulated by Captain Mayberry for saving his ship and are awarded to be his First Mates, but that there will be a new captain — Horace the parrot!

The closing video showcases the Monkees (with Mike) performing “Star Collector” from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd., released a few weeks prior to this airing and the Monkees’ fourth and final album to peak at #1. (If you remember, the song was also featured two episodes ago in “The Wild Monkees.”)

The song was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and prominently featured the innovative Moog synthesizer. In fact, Micky owned one of the first 20 sold. Our Monkees are clearly more at home performing their music than they are doing the series at this point.

“Love is Only Sleeping” b/w “Daydream Believer” was initially chosen to be the lead single to promote the album, but because of its suggestive title (at the time), it was replaced by “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” also penned by Goffin/King. The B-side, “Words,” would be a hit both on the charts and the TV show.

In the video for “Star Collector,” our boys are clad in matching white sweaters and are in their psychedelic glory with dizzying colored lights and stage fog. These are clearly not the same clean-cut boys in matching red shirts from the first season.

In spite of the rough sailing and the Monkees’ focus on their music instead of their show, this episode would tie with the future “Some Like It Lukewarm” as the highest-rated episode of the second season, both with 11.1 million viewers.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Hitting the High Seas” (S2E12) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.


Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Monkees in Texas” (S2E13)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “Monkees in Texas” (Season 2, Episode 13)

Air date: December 4, 1967

Containing allusions to popular television Westerns of the day and encompassing an incomprehensible time-traveling premise, this episode takes you for a fast-and-funny ride that leaves you wondering if you just watched Bonanza or The Twilight Zone. But the ’60s were like that with a lot of cross-pollination happening in many series, even between networks.

Speeding up to Mike’s Aunt Kate’s Texas ranch on a golf cart (you knew in the first few seconds this was going to be slightly different), the boys watch as Aunt Kate (Jacqueline deWit) and her daughter Lucy (Bonnie Dewberry) ride up on horses and scurry into her house.

Gunfire then erupts and the boys quickly follow the women into the house where all are identified to each other. Returning fire to three men dressed in black wearing masks, the women are joined in their fight by the boys except for Peter who takes an anti-violence stance, pretending to shoot at the bad men with his finger, proclaiming that his method provides him more ammo than the others.

During the fight, the bad men roll a kitchen sink at the house after Micky sets the gag up by saying they are throwing everything at them but that. Davy runs outside and turns the faucet on in the sink dousing the flames with water from the unconnected sink, and thus saving the day. The bad men realize there are men in there and flee. Slapstick, but cutely effective.

Aunt Kate tells the boys that Black Bart has been attempting to get her land for about a year and that each time he appears, the local rich guy, Ben Cartwheel (Barton MacLane) shows up and offers to buy the land in order to keep her safe from the bad guys.

Meanwhile, Peter and Micky dress up like the locals and go to the nearest town to try to get help. Dressed like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, they continue the allusion to popular Western series like Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and The Big Valley.

Getting no help from the Marshall, they enter a local saloon and encounter a mustachioed stranger who turns out to be Davy in a drive-by gag. Also in the bar are Sneak (Rex Holman) and Red (Len Lesser), who work for Black Bart (alias Ben Cartwheel if you haven’t guessed that by now). Via the usual mix-up, the two boys get recruited into Black Bart’s gang. A few zany sight gags occur with the two Monkees looking like their normal selves.

Sneak later declares that they should attack Aunt Kate’s ranch, so Peter escapes to warn her of the impending attack. Davy jumps on a horse to get help, but lands on the animal backwards and rides to town and finds Ben Cartwheel who then tells Davy to ride back to the ranch to tell Aunt Kate that he will be there shortly with his men. Davy returns to the ranch on the horse backwards.

Mike, meanwhile, has taken a soil sample to the assayer who tells him it contains crude oil and the motivation for Ben Cartwheel/Black Bart’s scheme is revealed. Bart goes to his gang’s hideout and encounters Micky and Peter and discovers who they really are. He ties them up and takes them and his gang to Aunt Kate’s ranch.

Bart has dressed Micky and Peter as members of the gang, but arriving at the ranch, they escape. Bart doesn’t worry though, as he says they can kill them later. They boys get inside the house and tell Aunt Kate that Black Bart and Ben Cartwheel are the same person, but she doesn’t believe them.

Interestingly, when the boys enter the house, Micky turns and gives the bad guys a reverse two-finger sign similar to a peace symbol. In reality, the way he gave it is identical to a British gesture meaning the same as the American middle finger. Somehow, this slipped by the studio powers.

A typical Monkees romp ensues with the bad guys getting beaten and riding off to escape. During this craziness, the gun with the “Bang” flag is shown, Lucy is kissed by Davy, and all kinds of insanity ensues. Accompanying this week’s romp is Boyce & Hart’s “Words.” While a great psychedelic hit and enjoyable, it seems out of place for this scene which then ends somewhat abruptly.

Suddenly then, the show leaps into a slightly edited version of the sublime, but jazzy “Goin’ Down” (the flipside of “Daydream Believer”), which we saw earlier this season in “The Wild Monkees.” Again, a great song, but one which seems to have been an addition out of place with the episode.

The Monkees series was a premise to showcase the boy’s zaniness and their great music and rarely had to make complete sense because we loved them so much. In this episode, they succeeded well, but the ending leaves viewers feeling just a little bit slighted.

Adding to the fun of watching this episode were the many actors who had appeared for years in movies and television playing the supporting cast. For instance, Barton MacLane, who played Ben/Bart, had been a solid supporting actor in major films since the 1930s.

Others had been in successful shows of all kinds (Len Lesser: Outer Limits, Papillion and Seinfeld and Rex Holman: The Man From UNCLE, The Quick Gun, The Twilight Zone, and Mannix), including many Westerns. It was quite fun seeing all these familiar faces.

While we never expected Shakespeare from The Monkees, we did expect a beginning, a middle, and end. In this case, we got just the first two. Nonetheless, a completely enjoyable episode.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Monkees in Texas” (S2E13) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Songs That Made Rock ‘n’ Roll: Carl Perkins, Elvis, and the Story of “Blue Suede Shoes”

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Picture the scene: It’s late 1955, and Elvis Presley is onstage wowing the small crowd in Amory, Mississippi. He’s been on tour with Johnny Cash, but this night is special because another Sun Records artist, Carl Perkins, is also on the bill.

Cash and Perkins, both in their early 20s, their hair slicked and quiffed and looking cooly handsome are backstage hanging out, chatting about songwriting, when Cash tells Perkins a little story that will change rock ‘n’ roll history.

The country legend years later described just what he said to Perkins:

“I was in the Air Force in Germany, and I had a black friend named C.V. White from Virginia. He’d get dressed up for a three-day pass, and in his mind, when he put on his clothes to go out, his black shoes were blue suede shoes.

“He would say, ‘Man! Don’t step on my blue suede shoes; I’m goin’ out tonight.’ Carl Perkins and I were in Amory, Mississippi, with Elvis. Now Elvis, of course, was hotter than a pistol… and Carl hadn’t had a hit. He’d had two country records.

“He asked me to write a song with him. I said, ‘You take this idea, and write it yourself.’ This ‘blue suede shoes’ line that my buddy used to say had been in my mind ever since I went to Sun. I told Carl about it, and he said, ‘That’s the one I’m looking for,’ and he wrote it that night. He started it backstage, but he went home and finished it.”

Perkins himself recalled things a little differently. In his 1996 autobiography, Go, Cat, Go!, he claims he was unconvinced by the idea, telling Cash, “I don’t know nothin’ about them shoes.”

But just days after Cash told him the story, Perkins was onstage playing a dance in Jackson and heard a kid dancing at the front of the stage warning his girlfriend, “Don’t step on my suedes!” The idea resurfaced in Perkins’ mind and, later that night, inspired by this incident, he sat down and wrote “Blue Suede Shoes.”

Perkins was only 23 when he wrote what would become one of the most important rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time, but already he had come far from his impoverished start.

Born in April 1932 in Tiptonville, Tennessee, to share-croppers, it was while working the fields as a child that he heard the workers singing the gospel songs that gave him his love of music. That, along with the country music he heard on the radio, influenced him to learn guitar, taught by an older African-American bluesman, “Uncle” John Westbrook. At a young age, Perkins already had gospel, country, and blues in his life, and all would prove a major influence on his later music.

He began writing songs at 14 while working during the day at a dairy. At night, he and his older brother, Jay, began playing in honky-tonks and taverns, with his younger brother Lloyd later joining the group on bass.

Eventually, Perkins was able to give up his day job and become a full-time musician, but it wasn’t until 1954 when he heard Elvis on the radio singing a song the Perkins brothers had also been performing — Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” — that he was inspired to travel to Memphis where he successfully auditioned for Sam Phillips and became a part of the Sun Records roster along with Johnny Cash and, of course, Elvis himself.

Perkins and Cash

Perkins had a few minor hits, but everything changed that fateful night on December 17, 1955, when he wrote “Blue Suede Shoes.” After writing the lyrics on a brown paper bag, he went into the studio just two days later and recorded it in two takes.

Phillips, at the helm, wouldn’t let Perkins record any more, telling him, “Do you hear that? You burnt it! We’re not changing anything; this record’s a smash!”

They also didn’t wait to release it: The vinyl hit shop shelves on January 1, 1956, backed with “Honey Don’t” (a song the Beatles would later cover). It took a couple of months for the track to catch on, but by March 3, it had entered the Billboard Charts and quickly gained momentum, becoming one of rock ‘n’ roll’s first big crossover hits topping the country charts and making it to #2 on both the R&B and pop charts. (There, it was held off by Elvis’ first hit for RCA, “Heartbreak Hotel,” proving once again all roads lead back to Elvis.)

“Blue Suede Shoes” not only defied genres, it also tapped into the rise of youth culture in the 1950s: the new wave of teenagers looking for their own fashion and music in the post-war years. The lyrics, “You can do anything, but lay off of my blue suede shoes” may well have been poking fun at that self-obsessed kid at the dance, but it was probably true that looking cool was at the center of a lot of teens’ lives (just as it is today).

While obviously humorous, the rebellious lyrics that put a pair of swish shoes over stolen cars, slander, and even liquor, were still undeniably appealing to the new generation of rock ‘n’ roll-loving kids. Plus, imagine in 1956, turning on the radio and hearing those opening lines, “Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go” followed by those distinctive guitar strums and, even then, it must have been clear that this song was a game-changer.

Perkins and Presley exchanging autographs in 1956

Not surprisingly, with its success, Perkins was suddenly in huge demand, and he was booked to make his big TV debut on The Perry Como Show. Unfortunately, while driving to New York to appear on the show, Perkins and his band were involved in a terrible car accident, which left him and his brother Jay with serious injuries. (Jay would tragically die a few years later in 1959 of a brain tumor.)

The band did eventually make it onto the show months later, but there’s no doubt that, by taking Perkins out of the limelight and leaving him unable to promote his hit single just as it was gaining momentum, the accident hampered the song’s success. That said,  it still managed to spend 21 weeks on the charts and, by April, Sam Phillips rewarded him with a new Cadillac for being the first Sun Records artist to sell over a million copies.

Meanwhile, Elvis had also recorded his own more upbeat version of “Blue Suede Shoes” (leaving out the pauses in the intro) just weeks after Perkins’ record was released. It became the first track on his classic self-titled debut album, released in March 1956. He held off releasing it as a single, however, until September of that year due to his friendship with Perkins, waiting until the original had peaked in the charts.

Surprisingly, given its fame today, at the time, Elvis’ version only managed to reach #20 on the pop charts. Elvis did sing “Blue Suede Shoes” on TV three times that year, though, including a fantastic, raucous version on The Milton Berle Show, and it became a staple of his stage shows. He also re-recorded the song for the soundtrack of his 1960 film, G.I. Blues. All of which helped put the Elvis version at the forefront of the public’s consciousness and, to this day, many people associate it only with Elvis.

The legendary Million Dollar Quartet

After the success of “Blue Suede Shoes,” Perkins turned down offers from other labels and went back to Sun to record many great rockabilly favorites such as “Boppin’ the Blues,” “Dixie Fried,” and “Matchbox” but never managed to have another big pop hit.

He still had many more legendary moments though. On the day he recorded “Matchbox,” Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash visited him in the studio, and the infamous “Million Dollar Quartet” session was born.

Then, in 1964, while touring in the UK with Chuck Berry, the Beatles invited Perkins to a recording session at Abbey Road. George Harrison, in particular, was a huge fan; Perkins’ 1958 debut LP Dance Album of Carl Perkins was a huge influence on the young guitarist. he whole band was so excited to meet him they decided to record some of his songs, including “Matchbox,” “Honey Don’t,” and “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” as well as (according to Perkins) a cover of “Blue Suede Shoes” that has never been released. He remained friends with the whole band, and Paul McCartney later asked Perkins to duet with him on the track “Get It” from his 1982 album Tug Of War.

Funnily enough, Perkins himself never owned a pair of blue suede shoes, but Elvis did have a pair specially made for himself in 1956 after his version of the song shot up the charts. Elvis wore them regularly onstage for a few years. When he returned home after his service in the Army, he kindly gifted the shoes to his road manager, Joe Esposito. Decades later, they ended up in a Las Vegas Elvis museum until, in 2013, the blue brogues sold for an incredible $76,800 at auction. With shoes as expensive as that, you certainly wouldn’t want anyone stepping on them!

As for Perkins, despite pretty much saving Sun Records after Elvis left for RCA, he had to sue Sam Phillips in the 1970s after belatedly discovering that he had cheated him on the royalties for “Blue Suede Shoes” as well as his many other songs. Thankfully, the case was eventually settled, and Perkins was finally and rightfully given control of his own songs, including his most enduring hit.

Johnny Cash remained a faithful friend for years after, recording Perkins’ song “Daddy Sang Bass” in 1968 and taking him on the road with him for over a decade. (Perkins was the opening act for Cash’s legendary Folsom Prison and San Quentin shows.)

During the ‘80s and ‘90s, though, Perkins began getting the recognition he deserved for his contribution to rock music. In 1986, a televised concert featuring George Harrison (in his first public performance in over 10 years), Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Dave Edmunds, and of course, Carl Perkins himself celebrated the 30th anniversary of “Blue Suede Shoes.”

The same year, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1987, Perkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He continued to record and perform live, continuing the tradition of playing with his family when his sons Greg and Stan joined his band. Sadly, Perkins battled ill health for much of his final years and died of cancer in 1998, aged just 65 years old.

Of course, Carl Perkins was far more than his most famous song, but its influence and power is undeniable. Without “Blue Suede Shoes” and its phenomenal success, the history of rock ‘n’ roll may well have been very different. Now, go, cat, go!

The post Songs That Made Rock ‘n’ Roll: Carl Perkins, Elvis, and the Story of “Blue Suede Shoes” appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Epsiode: “Monkees on the Wheel” (S2E14)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “Monkees on the Wheel” (Season 2, Episode 14)

Away from their comfy beach house, the Monkees are in Las Vegas to play a gig!

The announcer introduces us to the “Pleasure Capital of the World, where each man seeks the things he loves most” and to a hideaway on the other side of town, where the Boss (David Astor, who provides the voiceover) and “Biggy” (Pepper Davis, who will be seen as “Manny” in the upcoming TV show Vegas) are going over their caper – the Wheel will be automatically fixed to land on 16 Red for 15 minutes starting at eight o’clock.

Meanwhile, Micky is trying to impress a pretty blonde, Zelda at the slot machine, but after he runs out of money, she tells him to buzz off and walks away. When he hits a jackpot at said slot machine, she returns to him, exclaiming he has “magic fingers!” Sound familiar? Think Mike in “Papa Gene’s Blues,” announcing, “Play, Magic Fingers!”

You might remember Zelda – played by Joy Harmon – as the bank teller in “The Picture Frame.”

Written by Coslough Johnson and directed by Jerry Shepard, this episode provides Micky with several opportunities to display his dry wit. When Mike and Micky walk by the roulette wheel, Micky inadvertently places his winnings on – you guessed it – 16 Red! The casino manager running the wheel announces that Micky wins.

The manager is played by Rip Taylor, and we will see him again in the upcoming infamous episode known as “The Frodis Caper” and the children’s program Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. It’s worth watching this episode to see his reactions and cutaways – he is falling apart at Micky’s constant winnings because he might break the bank.

The Boss and Biggy, of course, are not happy. Micky wins again, crediting his “magic fingers!” Peter advises Micky not to quit while he’s ahead, and he wins again! After the manager announces that Micky has, in fact, broken the bank, the band brings the money to their room, and the crooks try to come up with a way to get the money.

Biggy arrives at the boys’ room dressed as a maintenance man complete with vacuum, while “Della” arrives dressed as a sexy maid to distract the boys so Biggy can dispose of the money into his vacuum.

Back at the roulette wheel, the manager finds a wire and frets to the police that the wheel has been rigged and that he is ruined. They approach the boys, convince them to sign a confession, and arrest them. Gasp!

The boys convince the cops they can come up with a plan to get the money back and have the actual crooks arrested. Dressed as a gang, they approach “The Boss” who joins Micky in a James Cagney face-off. Micky convinces him that “The Professor” (Peter) has a guaranteed way to beat the roulette table.

Peter tells him that it’s based on the Equalization Ratio and demonstrates his method by giving them drinks until they pass out. The Boss wakes up and decides to follow the boys to the roulette wheel.

At the wheel, Peter informs everyone that the next number is 24 Red. They win, which is not according to plan. Peter then instructs him to play 212 Green, and since there isn’t any 212 Green, they can’t win. But of course, the ball lands on 212 Green forcing the manager to start falling apart again. The crooks are thrilled, but not the Monkees or the cops.

When Zelda arrives and identifies Micky as “Magic Fingers,” the Boss realizes they are trying to “steal the money we stole from them that they stole from us!” After he exclaims, “Get them!” the Monkee romp ensues coupled with “The Door Into Summer,” written by Chip Douglas and Bill Martin and making its TV series debut here. It is a favorite from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd.

Although it’s not clear, one can assume the money is restored to the proper owners — in this case, the casino/

After commercial break, Mike addresses the audience that this is the part of the program known in the television industry as a “tag,” specifically the “here we go again” tag with Davy and Peter demonstrating and flash cuts of Micky. Mike’s sarcastic, “Isn’t that funny kids?” is only a painful reminder of how he and his bandmates truly feel about the show at this point.

The episode concludes with an alternate video of  “Cuddly Toy,” written by Harry Nilsson and also from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd., that showcases the Monkees’ vaudevillian talents.

Viva Las Vegas!

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Epsiode: “Monkees on the Wheel” (S2E14) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Christmas Show” (S2E15)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “The Monkees Christmas Show” (Season 2, Episode 15)

Merry Christmas, my dear Monkee-heads. Fifty Christmases ago today marks the airdate of The Monkees‘ “Christmas Show,” which has begun to enter into my personal yuletide viewing traditions much in the same vein as Muppet Family Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Batman Returns. (It’s a Christmas movie! Come at me, haters!)

There’s a substantial, palpable tenderness in this episode, written by Monkees stalwart scriptwriter Neil Burstyn and directed by John Anderson, that other installments in the series somewhat lack. I’m going to attempt to pinpoint why the spirit of this show felt so different than other installments, and firstly, I can definitely steer us to the excellent performances of the four Monkees helping this one out a great deal.

It looks like our boys are having a lot of fun here. This is certainly one of the episodes that best uses their individual personas: Micky as the goofy, playful one; Mike as the wise one; and Peter as the dope. Davy isn’t a lovelorn sap here; instead, he’s affable, childlike, and very, very British, which sits well on him!

The episode opens with the Monkees being summoned to play what they think is a Christmas party, but instead, the wealthy Mrs. Vandersnoot is hiring the boys (at $100 a piece! A lot for 1967 money!) to babysit her nephew, Melvin. Apparently, Melvin doesn’t want to go on vacation with her and instead would rather stay home for Christmas. For an unexplained reason, it’s up to the Monkees to look after him instead of the extensive staff their mansion has.

I can’t say enough good things about child-actor Butch Patrick in the role of Melvin. He plays a pint-sized Mr. Scrooge with aplomb. You might know him better as the eternally cowlicked Eddie Munster from The Munsters, but this is a whole new side of him here. He’s dead serious and actually acts as a grounding mechanism for the Monkees, who are about nine years his senior. Grounding the Monkees is a considerable task for any actor, and young Patrick knocks it out of the park.

This dichotomy allows for the rest of the episode to revolve around the various methods that the Monkees try to warm Melvin’s icy heart. They try taking him toy shopping, but Peter runs a bike through the store; they try to decorate a tree with him, but Davy’s too short to put the star on top.

In fact, they don’t succeed until they give him lots of love: what the season is truly all about and also an underlying message of the whole hippie counterculture that birthed The Monkees entity in the first place.

This is absolutely one of my favorite episodes. The Monkees could not be more charming and despite the reasonably typical sitcom-y plot, it’s very well written and directed. I like that this is later in season two: a period of the show where the Monkees have really started gelling comedically, but the structure of the show hasn’t gone entirely off the rails yet. (Hello, “Frodis Caper!”)

And then there’s the iconic rendition of “Riu, Riu Chiu” that closes the episode. Our four insane boys appear to be enjoying a quieter moment here, huddling around a microphone and singing this beautiful 16th-Century Spanish Villancico. Their vocal harmonies are absolutely exquisite: This is definitely one of the clips I show my music-snob friends who accuse the Monkees of “not being real musicians.” Bah, humbug, I say!

The unconventional end of the episode is of note as well. The Monkees graciously introduce their entire behind-the-scenes crew to the folks at home as they stumble into frame: some young, shaggy, hippie entertainment-industry types flashing peace signs and some older industry vets, also happy to be there. This coda serves as a reminder of the equalizer that was Hollywood could sometimes be during the generational Sixties culture wars.

Although it definitely fits the tone of the rest of the series, this episode, as many Christmas specials do, stands alone. During the ending, the Monkees state that they’re just trying to get a message of “peace and love” out there to the people. I think this is fundamentally what made the Monkees as a concept work so well. After all, they’re just trying to be friendly, as their theme song states.

In this special, more than others, the intent of the project really shines through: Although these boys may look and act differently than a lot of the more conservative viewers at home, at the end of the day, they shared values of the peace and brotherhood that unite us all as a species. “The Monkees Christmas” show does a great job of conveying those values through its warm tone, beautiful music, and inherent looniness that made The Monkees such a special show.

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FANTASIA OBSCURA: If Batman Were a Mexican Wrestler… And Also a Woman

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, it takes a special woman to deal with un lote superstcioso y cobarde

La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman) (1968)

Distributed by: Cinematográfica Calderón S.A.
Directed by: Rene Cardona

These days, when we look for Batman, we find him putting together the Justice League:

This is a far cry from his time when William Dozier oversaw Batman at ABC when times were lighter, easier… dare we say, campier then?

And they certainly had enough room for a bit of Bat-mania via Baja way:

If this clip feels disorienting, we’d like to provide some context; un momento por favor

When it comes to heroes in masks, the United States has nothing on Mexico. The grand tradition of lucha libre, Mexican freestyle wrestling, goes back to the days before the Mexican Revolution, which ironically is about the time the roots of Mexican cinema take form.

What differentiates Mexican wrestling from its American cousin is favoring aerial maneuvers over raw limb flailing and the use of masks. The participants, the luchadors, uphold the tradition of the sport in bringing reverence to their masks; often the loser would have to show their face at the end of a match, making a luchador with a long winning streak not only successful but muy misterioso, adding to his mystique and fame.

Luchador and movie star El Santo

The popularity of lucha libre would soon draw the attention of Mexican cinema, and with the first luchador film, 1952’s Huricán Ramírez, a new subgenre was born. As the personalities in the ring were larger than life, it was inevitable that the films would soon become infused with genre elements, with the most popular luchador in cinema, El Santo, starring in 52 films where the wrestler took on aliens, mad scientists, vampires, fellow luchador Demonio Azul, and just about all comers sent him.

And in the midst of this creative environment, there emerged a luchadora (a female wrestler) who was more Gotham City that Guadalajara.

Our film is set in sunny Acapulco, shot on location in fact, where the bodies of wrestlers are turning up dead in the surf. Confounded by the crimes, whose victims share qualities similar to other corpses found on the other side of the Pacific, chief inspector Robles (Hector Godoy) brings in our titular heroine (Maura Monti), who is described as an excellent shot with pistols and an accomplished SCUBA diver, as well as a great wrestler.

She drops in on the case, literally; she parachutes onto the beach wearing only her Bat-cowl, Bat-mini-cape, and Bat-bikini. Picked up by the Inspector, she heads to the morgue, where the coroner, Tony (Armando Silvestre), shares the results of his autopsies: The victims have had their pineal glands removed before they were disposed of, and from the look of it, by someone with the skills of a surgeon.

That “someone” is Doctor Eric Williams (Roberto Canedo), who has a diabolical plan he is executing. Aboard the vessel Reptilicus (no relation to that one, but we will cover that film at a later date), he’s the one responsible for the kidnappings and murders, sending his gang out to the gyms to lure unsuspecting luchadors for his work.

He needs the pineal glands of wrestlers, who are the best specimens of man known (of course), to fuse with fishes to create… gill men! Yes, with the extracts, and the right amount of radiation and sonic inducement, he can turn giant goldfish into gnarly gruesomes.

And why is he creating crimson copies of the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Hey, who knows, but sure, why not? Besides, we need to have an excuse for our heroine to storm the boat and cause mayhem when she’s caught sneaking about.

And an excuse to put her in danger, which she then proceeds to get out of thanks to her fighting skills:

In fact, the Bat Woman is quite a capable crime fighter… except when she’s inexplicably just not, which the script randomly throws in her way every now and then to move the plot along. These momentary bouts of incompetence could be considered lazy storytelling, except that there’s not that much story to tell.

And Cardona didn’t seem all that bothered by the lack of script. By this point in his career, he was doing five films a year, so he may not have even realized there was so little on the page to work from. Trying to get a sense of the goofiness of Batman may have been his only real goal, and for that he just let his cast run around Acapulco (and swim in the waters offshore, with some decent underwater photography to look at) and called it a day.

With a carefree and easy direction, punctuated by a snazzy jazz score from Leo Acosta that would be at home playing in both snazzy lounges and kitschy tequilerias, the movie feels very light, a pleasant way to spend some time when you just want to decompress.

It’s also a decent entry point for those who have never been exposed to luchador films; if the description of the film consists of “Mexican wrestlers facing x” is something you’re not sure you’d like because you can’t envision it, this movie offers a decent sample of what to expect.

And, hey, if the new Justice League needs a little help if they find themselves in, say, Cozumel, there’s someone nearby who could give them a hand; just saying…

NEXT TIME: Everyone loved Star Wars from the first time they saw it… well, everyone but the studio’s exec team.

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Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Fairy Tale” (S2E16)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “Fairy Tale” (Season 2, Episode 16)

Air date: January 8, 1968

Back in the prehistoric era known as the late ’90s, there existed a singular VHS tape. This magical, precious amalgam of plastic held within it four very sacred segments of cinematic history. This tape was, in fact, also included within a holy vessel, preserved and protected by whoever was lucky enough to call it their own.

My precioussss.

Of course, I’m talking about the Monkees’ Our Favorite Episodes video that came inside a replica Monkees lunchbox.

Honestly, I don’t even remember how I got the thing (we may have sent away for it), but what I do know is that for all of those kiddos who discovered The Monkees after Nick-at-Nite reran the series for a few glorious weeks in the summer of ’97, and who couldn’t afford or find the crown jewel of all Monkees collections back then (the whole series on VHS, of course), it was our touchstone to the TV series.

With only these four episodes as my reference to the entire Monkees series for well over a decade, naturally, one of them was my favorite. It also happened to be the favorite of Michael Nesmith: “Fairy Tale.” Though I’ve tried to make up for lost time since, thanks to the re-release of the series in several versions and, oh, yeah, YouTube, and replaced “Fairy Tale” with “The Monkees on Tour” as my favorite, this episode still holds a special place in my heart.

It’s also, as we’re seeing as we venture down the dark and twisty rabbit hole known as The Monkees‘ second season, where the show takes a turn and teeters on the rails, breaking format for the first (but not the last) time. Monkees’ pad? Gone! Vincent Van Gogh Gogh? In the rearview mirror, folks. Indeed, the setting for this episode is a strikingly barebones storybook land; while its minimalism is still beautiful in its own way, it definitely gives credence to the rumor that the series was over budget when it came time to produce “Fairy Tale.”

The episode is heralded by the town crier (Regis Cordic), who introduces us to the residents of the fictional Avon-on-Calling: Mike, the cobbler; Davy, the tailor; Micky, the innkeeper; and Peter, “And I’m outta work.” Although Mike, Micky, and Davy will each take on multiple roles in “Fairy Tale,” it’s technically a “Peter” episode since he only portrays himself. (For good reason, though, many consider this a “Mike” episode, as we’ll see.)

Why is Peter unemployed? Because he’s obsessed with and probably stalking Princess Gwen, who, on cue, appears in a carriage that’s stuck in the mud. (Well, there’s a sign indicating there’s mud, so let’s just go with it.)

Princess Gwen, for the uninitiated, is Michael Nesmith in drag. (Mike, predictably, becomes similarly smitten with the royal.) He’s probably the least likely of the four to suit this role — indeed, he was the last to dress in drag on the show — but that’s exactly why he steals the spotlight.

Gwen’s bae, Harold — kind of a jerk — screams at her horsemen and attendees to pull the carriage “from out the mud in which it is lodged.” No dice, so Peter offers to carry Gwen across the mud. After she puts him in his place, she “honors his spine with a walk across it,” as does Harold — multiple times. Gwen then threatens Harold (played by comic and writer Murray Roman) that unless he gets her the eff outta there, she’s not going to marry him.

While the carriage is presumably getting, uh, unstuck, Harold and his henchman, Richard (John Lawrence), head to Micky’s inn for a bite. After some schtick in which Micky packs the table with food and furniture, Peter overhears the two knights plotting to kill his beloved Princess Gwen.

Peter rushes back to the carriage to try to warn her, but the knights return and the party gets underway back to the castle. Before they leave, however, Gwen gives Peter her locket, “junk” to her, but a treasure to him.

Peter shares the murder plot with the other three. bites the locket and there appears the Fairy of the Locket (Diane Shalet). She give each of the boys jobs to help Peter save the princess: Mike will cut a pair of shoes that can scale high walls, Davy will sew a suit of mail nothing can penetrate, and Micky will forge a kitchen knife into a sword that can cut through iron. (Peter, if you’re wondering, will sit around and collect unemployment while his friends are working.)

She then gives them one more important instruction: not to crush, damage, or lose the locket. Not because it’ll lose its powers, but because “I’ll be killed, stupid, it’s my home.”

At the tower, Harold chains Gwent to the wall as Peter embarks on his quest to save her. As he ventures through the forest, he meets Little Red Riding Hood (Davy), Hansel and Gretel (Micky and Davy, respectively), and Goldilocks (Micky) before he finally makes it to the castle.

There, Peter encounters the Dragon of the Moat, who delivers a very peace-and-love message that Peter should put his sword away, he’s had enough violence in his life. Instead, the dragon asks Peter a riddle: “What has two ears, two eyes, and a very short life?” Peter’s answer: “I don’t know.” Close enough, the dragon says, so Peter enters.

Richard attempts to halfheartedly attack Peter with a barrage of weapons but isn’t successful, thanks to Peter’s wardrobe, courtesy of his pals, and his Magic Locket. He scales the tower’s walls, enters Gwen’s cell, and wants to escape with her down the walls, but she’s afraid of heights.

Peter then makes the mistake of telling her the locket she gave him is magic, so, of course, she wants it back, and he forks it over. Even when Peter engages Richard and Harold in battle, Gwen refuses to give it back to him so he can defeat them.

(By the way, I’m not going to get on my feminist soapbox about how thinly veiled the misogyny is in Princess Gwen’s mannerisms, as she’s clearly meant to depict a stereotypical nagging, fickle, stubborn woman. Everyone, take a deep breath with me and repeat: ‘Twas a different time, ’twas a different time…)

Meanwhile, back in town, the Crier tells Mike, Micky, and Davy that Peter has been caught trespassing and is set to be executed. The three venture through the forest and separate to find the castle. Finally, all three reach the castle and answer the dragon’s riddle correctly. (If you’re wondering, the answer is “three dumb peasants” — naturally, Peter’s riddle was multiplied by three.)

Micky, Mike, and Davy arrive just as Harold is about to throw Gwen over the castle’s parapet and announce that they’re there to save the day. Harold advises Gwen to “flee, flee in terror; this is no place for a woman, this is man’s work.” (‘Twas a different time…)

The battle ensues, and as it looks like the good guys are losing, Gwen tosses Peter the locket and they win.

At the end of the day, Harold is tied up and chastised by Gwen for trying to kill the woman he was going to marry. To Peter, she offers any wish his heart desires in gratitude for her safety. The guys urge Peter to propose, and when he does, Gwen ceremoniously takes off her wig to reveal she’s actually Mike, who informs Peter he’s already married to Phyllis.

As wacky as this entire episode is, this exchange is wild because it goes beyond breaking the fourth wall and oddly unites Michael Nesmith, the actor, with Mike Nesmith, the Monkee.

Without a romp, the episode concludes with a tag interview (in which they’re all clearly baked, except for Mike, who’s dressed in a suit as his three compatriots don their hippie garb, and who also throws some major shade their way) and “Daily, Nightly” a Michael Nesmith-penned poem-turned-song inspired by the riots on the Sunset Strip in 1967 featuring historic Mood synthesizer contributions from Micky.

So, there it is: The Monkees‘ 1968 premiere that signaled a real shift in the series. Where we saw a few indicators that this season was diverting a bit from the first earlier, this is a blunt foreshadowing of what’s to come later.

Watching this episode for the first time in a few years for this piece was fun and more than a little nostalgic; particularly when “Daily, Nightly” comes on, I still feel like I’m 12 years old watching my old VHS at two in the morning, fascinated and a little freaked out by the Moog’s alien sounds. Of course, I’m not any of that anymore, but this episode is a great reminder of another lifetime ago in more ways than one.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “Fairy Tale” (S2E16) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Almost, Sorta-Kinda, Not-Quite ‘Star Wars’ Knockoff

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you place your monies, you takes your chances, and you have to suck it up when you roll snake-eyes…

Damnation Alley (1977)

Distributed by: Twentieth Century Fox
Directed by: Jack Smight

Forty years ago, a seminal work of genre film was released to an unsuspecting world:

Star Wars became a sensation on its release and enticed millions who have watched the film — some of them hundreds of times. The wonder and enchantment the film inspired drew legions of fans who have embraced the film, enough so that a recent sequel to the movie became one of the highest grossing films of 2017, if not the highest grossing.

To its fans and devotees, it seems alien that anyone could ever watch their favorite film and not fall in love with it. The idea that anyone would not have become obsessed with it is just inconceivable.

They probably never met the management of Twentieth Century Fox circa 1977, apparently, who thought this film would be their genre break-out that year:

We open here on Earth in the present at what the onscreen chyron helpful tells us is, “123rd Strategic Missile Wing, Tipton AFB, California.” We watch what looks to be a maybe-too-casual work environment for an ICBM base under the credits, before we see Major Eugene Denton (George Peppard) and 1st Lieutenant Jake Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) assume their posts at their launch station.

After a quick interaction with Airman Tom Keegan (Paul Winfield), Denton lets Tanner know that he’s put in to be paired up with a different missile man on duty, showing us that these two aren’t supposed to be together were it not for circumstances beyond their control.

And when we talk “circumstances,” we mean it, as in a first strike by the USSR’s incoming ICBMs. Coldly and professionally, Denton and Tanner launch their 10 birds (which we see through lots of DoD stock footage of Atlas and Titan II launches) while the United States gets bombed back beyond the Stone Age,  via lots of DoD footage of nuclear tests. (Interestingly, there are anti-missile defenses deployed, and yet 40% of the Soviet warheads hit their targets; make your own “star wars” joke here, folks.)

So, having seen close to 85 missions die before the end of the first reel, we get told through onscreen text that radioactive dust enshrouds a world knocked off its axis. At which point, we revisit Tipton, where Tanner and Keegan are mustered out of the USAF but still hanging around because, no, there really is nowhere else to go, while Denton and Lt. Perry (Kip Niven) tool around in the workshop on a project.

A project that becomes essential to their survival, and the plot of the film, when another airman accidentally blows up the silo complex with a cigarette and a copy of Playboy (no, don’t ask, really). Having nothing to keep them there, the four survivors head for the one place that still sends out an active radio signal regularly, the last bastion of civilization: Albany, NY.

Now, no disrespect to the fine folks of the Capital Region, but, well… to be honest, if Albany is the last bastion of civilization, the Russians must have used a LOT of bombs on the rest of the country.

It’s at this point the real star of the film comes on screen: the Landmaster, designed for the film by Dean Jeffries, the father of the Monkeemobile. There’s actually two that roll out of Tipton, but one is claimed by a tornado (along with Perry), leaving only one machine to make its way east.

There’s a brief stop in what’s left of Las Vegas, where they pick up survivor Janice (Dominique Sanda) before heading to Salt Lake City, where Keegan meets a horrific end at the mandibles of some horrifically rendered roaches (and starts a long streak of Paul Winfield roles where he never sees the end credits):

We end up with a quick stop to pick up young survivor Billy (Jackie Earle Haley) and a sequence of shots that encourage the audience to whine, “Are we there yet?” successively before the film pulls out a Deus ex Nihil ending that leaves a few questions, like, how could the good money at Fox gone to this film?

One possible theory is that the original source novel by Roger Zelazny, which had as its original story a more of an Escape from New York-meets-Mad Max kind of plot, may have been more relatable to Fox’s executives than the story about robots finding a mystic knight on a desert planet that George Lucas presented. And perhaps if the more faithful screenplay that Lukas Heller started with had not gotten a re-write by Alan Sharp, there might have been a better film at the end of the process.

Unfortunately, the “brain trust” couldn’t stop meddling there. Convinced that there needed to be more glowing effect-sparkling skies in every shot, and just blown away by the Landmaster, notes from the studio forced the film to add shots of the vehicle and re-master scenes so that glowing skies would be more prominent. This added almost a year to post-production, and in addition to costing the film time (forcing it to premiere in October of 1977), it also meant many scenes that would have made the characters more than just empty tics and talking points never left the edit bay.

Considering these were the same execs who allowed Lucas to keep most of the marketing revenue for Star Wars, one has to really wonder about leadership at the studio at the time.

The end result was a film that was not only disjointed and half-baked but had its popped seams easily seen by the audience. It was filmmaking by corporate committee; whatever good anyone involved could have brought to the table was lost in studio notes sent by folks who tried to second guess the audience, and did badly doing so. About the only contributor whose work was allowed to flourish was Jerry Goldsmith, who managed to give the film a better score than it deserved.

If only the folks at Fox could have been more hands-off; one could only imagine what might have happened had someone been allowed to do a genre film there with minimal interference…

…ohwaitaminutehere!

NEXT TIME: Why some people blame Jodie Foster for what Bill Shatner did to Elton John.

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Almost, Sorta-Kinda, Not-Quite ‘Star Wars’ Knockoff appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.


Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Monkees Watch Their Feet (aka Micky and the Outer Space Creatures) ” (S2E17)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “The Monkees Watch Their Feet (aka Micky and the Outer Space Creatures) ” (Season 2, Episode 17)

“The Monkees Watch Their Feet (aka Micky and the Outer Space Creatures)” is flat-out one of the best of the series. It also represents a distinct break from the typical Monkees format. When the minds behind the show gave our four Monkees more of a challenge, it often resulted in innovative results.

The best thing about “Monkees Watch Their Feet” is that each cast member is utilized to the full extent of their comedic abilities. My only big complaint is that the always solidly funny Mike Nesmith is only in the opening and closing of the episode. However, he’s still pretty hysterical playing off of the main narrator, the Smothers Brothers star Pat Paulsen.

The whole thing is a send-up of flying saucer flicks: a film genre that was getting long in the tooth into 1968. Although I can’t find any evidence of it, I have a strong suspicion that stalwart Monkees teleplay writer Coslough Johnson (also known for era variety and comedy shows such as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and The Sonny and Cher Show) had seen 1959’s Plan 9 From Outer Space.

There are several similarities between this Monkees outing and Ed Wood’s eternally awful sci-fi film, including the use of a stodgy narrator (here Pat Paulsen, similar to Plan 9‘s Cristwell) and aliens who are inexplicably wearing medieval-style tunics. (Maybe left over from last week’s “Monkees Fairy Tale”?)

Johnson also throws in some fun in-jokes for hardcore sci-fi aficionados at the time, like weird evil alien Micky murmuring “Klatauu Barada Nikto” and invoking Robbie the Robot’s clicking and clacking noises while he’s having an alien spell.

What differentiates “Monkees Watch Their Feet” from more wooden sci-fi fare is the fact that it’s a pretty astute and thorough parody of its source material and is as gently antiestablishment as anything else that was coming from the Monkees camp at the time.

We open on a cautionary monologue from Pat Paulsen and then cut to the Monkees getting ready for a gig. Micky’s clothing starts mysteriously flickering on and off. Although this is a fairly typical Monkees gag, the more racy undertones are certainly hinted at here and set the tone for the rest of the episode.

When Micky traces his clothing to the beach, he is beamed onto a flying saucer, where he is cloned by blue-skinned Captain and his assistant (the delightfully hammy Stuart Margolin and Nina Talbot). Micky’s evil double is then unleashed upon Monkeedom.

There’s only one flaw to the aliens’ plans: evil Micky’s feet are on backward! I’ve already written about Micky Dolenz’s deft ability to commit to a double role, and he surely does again here, this time with the acting challenge of… er, having his feet on backward.

All of these absurd hijinks are punctuated by freeze frames and interjections from the wonderfully dry Pat Paulsen, who functions as the glue for the episode. This episode hits on a good time for the Monkees themselves in their story.

The day before filming commenced for “The Monkees Mind Their Feet,” the Monkees’ third album, the masterpiece Headquarters had been released. The boys must have been feeling pretty good about themselves while they were shooting this one: They are on-point here. All jokes and gags land well, something that cannot be said for every entry in this uneven series.

The episode wraps itself up with one of the more manic and sloppy romps of the series, with the three Monkees (sans Nez, of course) causing havoc within the small confines of the aliens’ spaceship. All this is scored to the appropriately frenetic Goffin/King-penned “Star Collector.”

Finally, with the aliens defeated through the power of a good Monkees romp, we are left with a final warning about the impending threat of backward feet and aliens from Pat Paulsen. He awkwardly urges us to “stop bayonetting each other and instead bayonet SPACE!” while swatting at a fly and having a hard time putting on his glasses. The military industrial complex has never been so absurdly skewered, folks.

Despite the lack of the indispensable Mike Nesmith, “Monkees Watch Their Feet” is definitely a winner, even 50 years after it aired. As a fan of old sci-fi, it works as a deft parody. As an exercise in pure absurdism, it works quite well, also. Just make sure you’re putting your shoes on the right way after watching this one!

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Monkees Watch Their Feet (aka Micky and the Outer Space Creatures) ” (S2E17) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

FANTASIA OBSCURA: ‘The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane’

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, you never know what you may find if you wander too far away from the main road…

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

Distributed by: American International
Directed by: Nicolas Gessner

So, you probably have heard a story where there’s something sinister, and there are kids involved. Some reworking of a story the Brothers Grimm have told or something by or inspired by Stephen King with the kids coming face-to-face with something disturbing or unsettling.

But what about a story where the kids are the unsettling thing?

It’s hard to summarize this film’s plot objectively in print, especially for people who haven’t seen it before, because there’s something lost in doing so. Because the movie unfolds in dialogue through characters relating their own secrets, or secrets held by others and used against them, there’s an aura the film builds through their words, like blood spatter dripping down softly colored paper and making intricate patterns, which can’t be appreciated in the retelling. It’s like photos of unfamiliar food; yes, you know what it may look like, but without the aromas there’s no context to what you’re seeing.

We can give some sense of what the film is through describing its elements, while encouraging that you watch the film itself for the full effect. We can start with the setting: Wells Harbor, Maine, an out of the way town built on quaint isolation and underlying racism, where the well-heeled hate those outsiders, all those Italians coming in and all and can’t accept anything that’s too outside their experience.

We have 13-year-old Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster), who is very outside their experience. She’s a young lady who lives in a rented house with her father, a man who we never see for reasons we’re ultimately allowed to know. She behaves like an adult many years older than she states her age to be, and one who’s clearly cleverer than anyone else whom she runs into.

We have Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen), whose mother (Alexis Smith) rented the house to the Jacobs. While his mom is snobby and takes airs with Rynn, Frank is into the young tenant, and would like to get to know her better. Intimately, in a very pervy manner.

Then there’s Mario (Scott Jacoby), a young man Rynn’s age, who limps and does magic for children’s shows. He has an immediate connection with Rynn, because like her he doesn’t defer to adults either, and only seems to get along with one, his uncle, police officer Miglioriti (Mort Shuman) — and yes, we mean that Mort Shuman, who with Doc Pomus and others would write many of the songs that made up the early canon of rock and roll. Originally, Shuman was asked to do the score for the film as well, but his arranger Christian Gaubert ended up taking on the task. Shuman does, however, end up in the credits as “Music Supervisor.”

Speaking of writing, the screenplay by was adapted by Laird Koenig from his 1974 novel of the same name, which started out originally as a play. The fact that so much unfolds through character monologues, going at its own pace to catch you up with the backstory and accompany you along with the unfolding action, shows its DNA quite plainly and could have been a fatal flaw in the wrong hands.

Which the material was certainly not. Foster was seven years into her busy career, and had just finished doing Taxi Driver for Martin Scorsese; going straight to Quebec where the film was shot (one of the first productions encouraged to shoot up north thanks to Canadian tax credits, which are common today) right after playing Iris, the street-smart child hooker, made her the most qualified actor at the time for the role. She could pull from places for her character few known actors at the time could have, and the character fits her well.

In terms of handling the material placed before them, most of the rest of the cast does quite well with the passages they have to unpack, but Sheen’s Frank is of special note. He brings the right level of menacing and pathetic to give us the full worth of his Frank, such as it is; the way he plays off of Foster’s Rynn propels the film into a final showdown with considerable tension as the two square off with dialogue that moves like a well-choreographed duel.

The end result of such fortuitous casting did manage to get some notice. While many professional critics were unable to warm up to a story about a precocious young girl fending off a child molester on her own, the film was recognized at the 1977 Saturn Awards, and won that year for Best Horror Film and Best Actress for Foster, a good 15 years before she would be in a similar position at the Academy Awards for The Silence of the Lambs.

It’s an accomplishment, however, that most people lost sight of; that year, the ceremony was syndicated on television, and host William Shatner burned himself into our psyches with an audacious bit for the audience:

That’s what sometimes happens when you go places too far off the main path. And while we could do as Sheen would advise while playing Willard a few years later in Apocalypse Now, “Never get out of the boat,” we’d probably miss something if we did.

NEXT TIME: So, how did you survive the horrifying musical dystopian world of 1980?

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: ‘The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane’ appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” (S2E18)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” (Season 2, Episode 18)

Air date: January 22, 1968

As anyone who’s been keeping up with this column should have realized by now, the popular format for a Monkees episode is to take a location, trope, or theme and then have the Monkees romp all over it. When done poorly, this comes off as corny and predictable, but when done well, it can be surprisingly subversive, especially for a 1960s sitcom aimed at kids. In the case of “The Monstrous Monkee Mash,” the basic concept may seem unoriginal, but it ultimately gives way to some laugh-out-loud clever moments.

This is not The Monkees‘ first dip into the horror genre — “I Was a Teenage Monster” featured a Frankenstein parody — but “Monkee Mash” is more of a Monkees-meet-Dracula situation. With all of the Universal Monster derivations we’ve seen over the decades, modern viewers may not be particularly excited by this idea.

Crossovers, however, do have the potential to create new and interesting dynamics with familiar characters, and classic monsters like Dracula and the Wolfman have achieved a level of timelessness that’s made them beloved and immediately recognizable to contemporary audiences without being cringy, allowing this episode to hold up better than one about, say, Captain Kangaroo or sheikhs.

At its start, “Monkee Mash” presents a typical Monkees setup wherein Mike, Micky, and Peter have to help Davy with some girl trouble and escape from the bad guys. Lorelei isn’t just any girl, though. She’s a vampire who has chosen Davy for her uncle, Count Batula, to transform into a fellow creature of the night.

Fortunately, Davy gave his bandmates the phone number and address of where he was going, and when Mike makes a call to check up on him, all he hears is the Count laughing menacingly into the phone. Yeah, looks like it’s time to go save Davy again.

If you want some instant Monkees hi-jinks, there’s no easier way to get them than by locking the guys in a big house with some zany characters. It’s certainly worked on more than one occasion anyway. Ron Masak and Arlene Martel are delightful as Count Batula and his niece Lorelei, and you can’t help being enchanted by Martel’s killer ’60s vamp look, complete with minidress, thigh-high boots, dramatic cut-crease eye makeup and bump hairdo. No wonder Davy followed her into that scary castle without a second thought.

As silly as Lorelei and her uncle are, with their affected Transylvanian accents and dramatic personas, these standard-issue Monkees villains really keep the episode grounded, giving the boys more freedom to mess around.

When Mike, Davy, and Micky show up at the castle to get Davy, the Count singles out Peter for another monster experiment; he wants to switch Peter’s brain with Frankestein’s (or, for literary savants, Frankenstein’s monster). Eventually, Micky is taken as well to be made into a werewolf.

All the while, Davy is chained in the dungeon, guarded by the Wolfman — played by the Monkees’ friend and stand-in, David Pearl, though you wouldn’t know it from his mask. Fortunately for his friends, Mike is on the way. He puts on a mummy costume and tricks the Count into thinking he really is a monster by screaming “MUMMY!” and scaring the Wolfman. Don’t mess with Mike!

It’s worth noting how “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” breaks down the fourth wall even more than a typical episode. Meta jokes were an essential part of the Monkees‘ formula from the beginning, but in this case, the show actually ends up inverting its own plot.

The fourth wall breaks come more and more frequently, building to a genuinely surprising turn, wherein Davy and Micky have a fantasy sequence about what their lives will be like as monsters. The Count comes crashing into their daydream, and when Micky tries to kick him out of their fantasy and Davy explains how a Monkees episode is supposed to go, the Count says, “It seems this show is different,” and challenges them to take off their monster make-up.

Surprise! They can’t do it, and the Count is suddenly seated in a director’s chair next to a camera, telling them, “This is reality, and you are not in charge here. I am, and I control you anytime I want to simply by thinking about it.” That’s heavy, man!

There are some dated jokes here, though the references are specific enough that they actually come off as interesting time capsules. There’s a reoccurring gag that the werewolf needs to cut his hair or he won’t be let into Disneyland — ragging on Disney’s unwritten dress code against bearded and long-haired men. Also, the Count says that the last time he flipped the switch, “New York went out,” referring to the Northeast Blackout of 1965.

When the Count pulls the switch this time, however, the result is a romp! The Frankenstein monster awakes and begins chasing the Monkees around the castle to their jazzy B-side, “Goin’ Down.” The usual zaniness ensues, with one of the funnier moments being Lorelei and Frankenstein fighting over who gets to dance with a knight in a top hat.

Overall, “Monkee Mash” is a fun watch, thanks to a healthy balance of playing it straight and goofing off. Many of the jokes land well, with one of my favorites stemming from Peter’s interaction with an animatronic bat. Moreover, the Monkees’ tongue-in-cheek, exaggerated delivery tends to make otherwise unremarkable or unfunny lines entertaining.

As lighthearted as it seems on the surface, though, this very self-aware episode takes on new meaning when you take a look at what was going on behind the scenes. While The Monkees was never known for having complex plots, throughout season two, the show was devolving into an even looser barrage of riffing and wacky antics than it already was.

There is certainly a good deal of that happening here as the episode progresses, but you slowly begin to realize that the Monkees are not just poking fun at old monster movies, but at their own TV show.

The final scene features the four friends, having escaped the castle, talking about how everything is back to normal now, and there are no more monsters to worry about. Suddenly, the book they’re holding begins to float, and Peter screams that it must be the Invisible Man.

If this were an early season one episode, maybe this “here we go again” ending would have ended with everyone freaking out and running away. But instead, Mike and Micky calmly point out that the book is suspended on strings and demonstrate by cutting it down with a pair of scissors.

The closing scene subtly indicates where the Monkees were at this point in their careers as a made-for-TV band. After taking the reigns on their 1967 Headquarters album — released six months before this episode was filmed — they’d clearly established they were done playing the game, having cut some of the metaphorical strings dictating their movements. No longer would the powers that be control them, like Count Batula with his mind powers. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be transformed into the mindless, moneymaking monsters that their superiors wanted.

But when you’re done with the charade, where do you go from there? Breaking away is one thing, but deciding what to do with your newfound power and trying to maintain it is another. Throughout this final season, we see the Monkees expressing their freedom more on set, as they already had in the studio, trying different things, taking on new roles, improvising, breaking character, and infusing countercultural elements into the show.

With this in mind, “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” is more than just a fun pop culture crossover — it’s a commentary on the Monkees themselves, an indicator of how things were changing, and a harbinger of things to come.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” (S2E18) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

FANTASIA OBSCURA: A ’30s Sci-fi That Imagined a Very Different 1980…

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There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.

Sometimes, though, a little song and dance will not do you any good…

Just Imagine (1930)

Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Directed by: David Butler

You may be one of those folk who cry, “But I was promised a flying car!”

And if you go on to say, “And I’ve been waiting since 1980 for it!”, well, that makes you kind of special, don’t it…?

If you don’t remember this film, which puts you in the vast majority of people, it takes place in 1980, 50 years in the movie’s future. After a brief segment establishing how fast technology can move with a set of brief scenes (with some not very funny gags baked into them) set in 1880 and its present, we move to a narrated-over title card explaining the situation in that year, along with some shots of New York.

According to our narrator, this city with personal airplanes is one where everyone has a number, not a name, and the government tells you whom you can marry. Which is a problem for the two lovebirds the film focuses on, J-21 (John Garrick) and LN-18 (Maureen O’Sullivan); his petition to the court to wed his beloved is being turned down in favor of getting her married off to MT-3 (Kenneth Thompson).

And yes, you’re reading that right: The two guys are in court fighting over a woman to marry, a woman who doesn’t get a say in this! Like the creepy feel of referencing this country’s experiments in eugenics isn’t enough of a turn-off here…

Our star-crossed-and-court-banned suitor seeks solace from his friends, roommate RT-42 (Frank Albertson) and LN-18’s confidant D-6 (Marjorie White), who have a moment with him before the three of them go off to another engagement.

Their appointment is to watch a scientific experiment to see if a man who was killed by lightning 50 years prior, in 1930, could be revived. The experiment is a success, but the subject is abandoned as the doctors don’t care about him once he’s revived. The man, who abandons his now-worthless name for the number Single-O (El Brendel), becomes J-21 and RT-42’s companion, and gets shown around the town by the boys.

Hijinks, or something trying to be that, ensue when J-21 tries to visit LN-18 on the down low, which Single-O manages to mess up. Desperate and on the verge of suicide, J-21 is recruited by the famous scientist, Z-4 (Hobart Bosworth), who needs a pilot for his experimental rocket for Mars. Considering that the fame and glory from the trip might help his appeal in marriage court, J-21 agrees.

What makes him qualified for such a gig? Well, it does get mentioned early on that he has a career as the pilot for the passenger dirigible Pegasus, a flying luxury liner. We get reminded of this when he has a scene with his co-workers, during which they go into their… hearty drinking song…?

Okay, how worried should we be that there’s a musical number sung by folks about how much they like to drink? Said folks being the crew of a large passenger-carrying vessel? Would you fly with these inebriants, really…?

It’s this “anything we can” approach that makes it feel very much like Butler and the Jazz Age musical writing team of DeSylva, Henderson, and Brown just threw a lot of stuff on screen, in an effort to go big as they went first. The film is credited as the first ever talkie genre pic, which is hard to dispute, and the first ever genre musical, which isn’t that much to brag about.

Although this is supposed to be a talkie (and a musical to boot), the constant use of title cards to switch a scene betrays a lack of comfort or faith in the new technology. Compared with the model sets built for the film that give Metropolis a run for its money and the shots of spacecraft that get reused later in the original Flash Gordon being so heartily used, this suggests a lack of faith in the use of sound, which can be confused with a lack of faith in the script itself.

The script certainly seemed to have given the cast some pause. Not entirely sure how to project themselves into the mindset of characters 50 years hence, into a world that was hard to fathom, everyone from the future seems to breeze through their lines as though its reading for a commercial. Only Brendel seems comfortable in his role, but as a man from the present who can bury himself in his established vaudeville shtick, he has the lightest load in approaching the script.

And what a script it is, giving modern viewers a dystopia that suggests sourcing from Margaret Atwood via Eddie Cantor. The attitudes conveyed are as dated as the humor; references to the Volstead Act still being in place alongside laws that take assigned marriage partners without a woman’s say-so are more creepy than funny. The fact that this is a pre-Hays Code film with backward attitudes about women while giving off a strange vibe about J-21 and RT-42’s living arrangements seems to have been another not-well-thought-out bit, especially while watching it in the #MeToo Age.

If anyone didn’t think this out well, it was probably Fox. The investment that they made in a beautiful looking mess like this kept them from doing another science fiction picture for years; the next time Fox would produce such a film would be 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. And they would not try another genre musical until 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was a film that didn’t have nearly as problematic a script as Just Imagine did.

Really, it’s hard to walk away from writing that just leaves a viewer numb. Like the throw-away gag about the flying cars that makes a not entirely oblique reference to Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism that pretty well brings the film to a stop in the first act.

This is a comedy? Oy gevalt…

What, you want a flying car that badly…?

NEXT TIME: Not every introduction to Eastern culture in 1966 were as pleasant as “Norwegian Wood;” some were down-right cold-blooded…

The post FANTASIA OBSCURA: A ’30s Sci-fi That Imagined a Very Different 1980… appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Devil and Peter Tork” (S2E20)

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Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Monkees as a band by counting down our top 50 Monkees songs. Now, we’re celebrating The Monkees TV show by profiling each and every episode — exactly 50 years after it first premiered.

Tonight’s episode: “The Devil and Peter Tork” (Season 2, Episode 20)

Air date: February 5th, 1968

In my early days of my Monkees obsession, I thought I knew them, and that I couldn’t love them any more than I already did. Then, during a rerun on The Antenna Network, “The Devil and Peter Tork” came into my life, and my perception of the Monkees changed yet again. The first time I watched this episode was pivotal to my understanding of the band and the vigorous fandom that surrounds them, even 50 years after their debut.

In a way, the Monkees were a crass experiment to popularize on the success of The Beatles by a very smart entertainment industry think-tank. The TV show was supposed to function as a delivery system for the countless records, dolls, clothing items and other merchandise crudely stamped with the pre-fab four’s cute mugs. However, there was a spirit behind the TV show and the music itself that transcended the purposes that it was created for. That is what makes the Monkees so fascinating: the moments where the songs on their albums or the episodes of the TV show were so good, beyond the confines of the era and the project.

“The Devil and Peter Tork” is an excellent example of this Monkees paradigm shift. There are certainly other funny and poignant episodes of the show, as have been chronicled in our recaps. And “The Devil and Peter Tork” isn’t exactly the funniest episode of the series. In fact, a lot of the jokes in this one fall flat 50 years later, especially during the courtroom sequence during its final act. However, one could argue, “The Devil and Peter Tork” is the most poignant Monkees episode of all time.

We open on Peter Tork, (in the most gentle performance, I would argue, of his career) wandering into the pawn shop of Mr. Zero (a perfect Monty Landis). Tork sees a beautiful harp and inadvertently signs away his soul to take the harp home. When the rest of the Monkees object to the harp taking up space in their pad, they realize that not only has Peter signed away his soul, he’s also gained the ability to play the harp beautifully. It’s worth noting that although Tork is an accomplished musician in his own right, he mimes playing the harp for this episode. Peter’s newfound skills give the Monkees the fame and fortune they’ve been craving during the entire series when Mr. Zero returns to collect on their bargain.

A sexy romp with some devil girls in hell commences, all to the Nesmith-sung “Salesman,” from the recently released Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD. This song, penned by composer Craig Smith, is about a drug dealer, but could surely be about the devil himself.

We then are taken back to the pad, in which the Monkees clearly say mouth the word “hell” on network TV five times, all the while we hear the noise of a coo-coo bird over the top of their naughty words. This sequence caused much ire for the network censors and is what prompted NBC to delay the airing of this episode, although it was filmed earlier on in the season. It’s lucky that NBC didn’t shelve it altogether. There’s a gutsiness and subversiveness to this gag that really reads here.

In fact, you can tell that the Monkees and director Jim Frawley knew they were pulling off something special with “The Devil and Peter Tork.” All of their performances have a gravitas not seen in the rest of the series. It feels like the boys are all really looking out for each other here. I think we’re picking up on the vibe that was happening off-camera. The Monkees had recently finished their rebellion against their music supervisor, Don Kirsher and had recorded Headquarters: an album that they played every single note on in between the grueling shooting schedule of their series. This impressive feat bonded the four young Monkees in ways that we outsider-fans can only imagine. The Monkees’ love for each other is palpable here.

This feeling could not be more prevalent than at the end of the episode. After a strange trial for Peter’s soul featuring historical witnesses from different eras and juried by a rough looking group of convicts (these are the gags here that I feel are the weakest in the episode), one Robert Michael Nesmith delivers what is the most stunning speech in the history of the series.

Mr. Zero claims that the only reason that Peter can play the harp is his devilish manipulations. Mike has this folksy and bold retort that never fails to bring a tear to my eye:

“No, you didn’t give him the ability to play the harp. You see… you see, Peter loved the harp. And he loved, he loved the music that came from the harp. And that was inside of him. And, eh, it came, uhm, it was… the power of that love was inside of Peter, eh, it was inside of him from the first. And it was that kind of power, that made Peter able to play the harp. And, eh, you didn’t have anything to do with it at all… And if you love music, than you can play music. And all it takes is just love, because eh, because baby, in the final analysis, love is power. That’s where the power’s at!”

If you think about the reverberations the Sixties youth movement: the political strife, families torn apart and needless death that propelled this country into the Seventies and beyond, and you look at the Monkees, which at best were a cuddly, stoned-out mirror of their surroundings, you wouldn’t believe that such a smart summation of the sentiments of the era would be contained in the show. But there it is: “In the final analysis love is power. That’s where the power’s at.”

Love is power.

I don’t know if there’s a better distillation of what the era was all about or the reasons why members of future generations like myself are still fascinated by it. And there it was, at the tail end of a goofy Monkees episode for the nation to be witnessing through their TV sets while eating their compartmentalized TV dinners. Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, here in status symbol land, indeed.

After Mike’s speech, Peter walks over to the harp and proves that the music was in him all along by playing a lovely rendition of “I Want to Be Free.” It brings the jury to tears, and he is exonerated. The Monkees celebrate. They sing and dance and romp. Peter’s soul is saved. And maybe, in some weird way as only the Monkees can do, our souls are too in the process.

“The Devil and Peter Tork” ends with a music video for the Monkees’ song “No Time.” It’s goofy and wonderful and could not be a better ending to my favorite episode.

The post Every ‘Monkees’ Episode: “The Devil and Peter Tork” (S2E20) appeared first on REBEAT Magazine.

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