Tag Archives: 1930s

11/21/2017 · 1:29 pm

It’s Not Real To Them, Damnit

So. As an adult, you have a problem with a movie that you loved as a child. I see on social media that this is a common grievance. I don’t need to name a film. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of motion pictures that don’t stand up to the intense scrutiny and overthinking of 2017.

It’s not them. It’s you. You are the problem.

I’ll begin with a contemporary example: any current superhero movie. Marvel, DC, independent degeneracy like Deadpool and Kick-Ass; it’s all the same. Permit me to make another assumption- you got all worked-up over seeing the latest hero flick, and you left the theater three hours later feeling empty and disappointed, without knowing why.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on It’s Not Real To Them, Damnit

Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Tagged as 1920s, 1930s, 1936, 1970s, 1980s, 2017, breasts, corporate crap, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Indiana Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Henson, Joe Dante, laughter, Leigh Brackett, NYC, Optimus Prime, political correctness, Raiders of the Lost Ark, sellouts, Star Wars, Steven Spielberg, The Empire Strikes Back, whores

10/04/2016 · 6:53 pm

Charles Addams

In the 1960s, there were two unusual homesteads on television. One was monstrous, the other creepy and spooky. Both had excellent opening titles music.

Lovely type treatments and title cards, too.

The Munsters was easy to comprehend, for the most part; it was a show about a family of classic movie monsters (hence the pun). Father Herman was the great Fred Gwynne dolled up as a friendly Frankenstein’s monster; wife Lily and Grandpa were vampires. Son Eddie (Butch Patrick) was the wolf-boy, with a prominent widow’s-peak that ensured I would be humiliatingly likened to him, and daughter Marilyn was the freak, with no monstrous qualities whatsoever. They all lived in a spooky mansion on 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Who knew or cared about the genetics involved in such a lineage? Continue reading →

Comments Off on Charles Addams

Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 1930s, 1932, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1991, Alfred A. Knopf, Carolyn Jones, cartoons, Charles Addams, Edward Gorey, Family Guy, Fred Gwynne, Halloween, John Astin, movies, New Jersey, Raul Julia, The Addams Family, The Munsters, The New Yorker

04/21/2016 · 4:16 pm

Lao Che

Lao Che (1885-19??) was a Chinese crime lord, who made several attempts on the life of archaeologist Indiana Jones in the 1930s.

Lao Che (c.), with sons Chen (l., Chua Kah Joo) and Kao Kan (r., Ric Young)

Lao’s nightclub, the Club Obi-Wan, was a front, and the headquarters of his criminal empire. The Manchurian government hired Lao to secure an urn holding the cremains of the first Manchu emperor, which had been stolen by thieves in 1903. Jones brought the urn to Club Obi-Wan, trading it with Lao for a huge diamond, but Lao double-crossed Jones by poisoning his drink. Thus begins a thrilling action sequence as pandemonium and balloons overtake the club, while Jones flails to recover the antidote Lao had taunted him with. Continue reading →

Comments Off on Lao Che

Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Late To The Party, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Tagged as #tbt, 1930s, 1935, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1984, 1990s, 1999, China, Christopher Lee, Flash Gordon, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, I Am Legend, Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Max Von Sydow, movies, Peter Sellers, political correctness, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Star Wars, Steven Spielberg, The Phantom Menace, virtue-signaling

01/07/2016 · 4:51 pm

Squirrel Nut Zippers

Le temps détruit tout; time destroys all things. People, corporations, empires; everything eventually must yield to the Great Abyss. Immortality only exists within the perception of us mortals, meaning, there is no immortality for anything but mountains and tardigrades. We all die, alone and afraid.

Music is a celebration of the immediate present. Musicians agitate the air molecules and create “living” sound. Live audiences receive these vibrations, and are stimulated. This is why recordings seldom deliver the experience that live performances do, and why some dudes have to blast their music loud enough to drive everyone in earshot insane.

Continue reading →