I’m currently busy writing about some of my favorite Post-1966 Elizabeth Taylor films, but I wanted to share some fantastic news I stumbled across while I was roaming around online.
Two of my favorite television shows from the ‘60s and ‘70s are Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959-64) and Night Gallery (1970-73). CBS and NBC recently launched two new sub-sites called CBS Classics and NBC’s Way Back Wednesdays where you can view episodes of these classic horror/science fiction shows free online at anytime. CBS has made many episodes of The Twilight Zone available, as well as episodes of the original Star Trek (1966-69) and Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) and every Wednesday NBC is making an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery available, along with episodes of other popular shows such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-65), the original Battlestar Galactica (1978-79) and Emergency (1972-79).
If you’re somehow unfamiliar with Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery this is a great opportunity to see episodes of these classic television programs. Both shows featured gifted actors often giving some of their best performances and they were written and directed by some of television’s greatest talents, including Rod Serling himself. Many episodes of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery still give me the creeps and they’re guaranteed to give new viewers a nightmare or two. If you’re already familiar with these critically acclaimed shows you can now become reacquainted with them free of charge. For more information please check out the links I’ve posted below:
The third clip in Cinebeats’ ongoing Battle Sequence Series is from Condorman : Symbol of Justice (Seigi no shinboru Kondoruman). Condorman was an entertaining action-packed tokuatsu series created by the great Kôhan Kawauchi (aka Yasunori Kawauchi), which aired on Japanese television in 1975. Kawauchi is responsible for creating the first Japanese superhero television show in 1958 known as Moonlight Mask (Gekko Kamen), which shares some obvious similarities with Condorman. The heroes of Kawauchi’s shows have a similar look and episodes often featured cliffhanger endings. They also both drove their own groovy vehicles. Moonlight Mask had a motorcycle and Condorman had his own special car called the Mach Condor.
Condorman starred a little known Japanese actor by the name of Hitoshi Sato who was a former race car driver. His driving skills gave him the ability to handle driving the Mach Condor on the show. As Condorman, Hitoshi Sato would fight evil monsters who disguised themselves as humans and were out to pollute planet earth’s water and air supply, among other things. Condorman was able to see through the monster’s human disguises with his “Condor Eye” and he used many special powers such as “Condor Thunder” and “Condor Hurricane” to stop them. Besides all the various monsters, Condorman also had to deal with their numerous henchmen who all looked like Nazis wearing Lucha Libre masks.
Just a small sampling of the strange monsters Condorman had to fight.
In some ways the important messages in Condorman that warned viewers about the negative effects of pollution, inflation and other ills made the show ahead of its time. Condorman also featured some spectacular action sequences, as well as colorful costumes and prop designs. The monsters he fought were often very unusual and included a sombrero wearing smog creature, a giant cockroach, a green-haired batgirl and strange robots.
Unfortunately Condorman never really caught on with kids or adults and the show stopped airing after only one season. Some episodes of the series were released on video in Japan and I believe the series was also made available on Laser Disc, but it has never been released on DVD. Information about the series is scarce and the show has never been subtitled, but I think some English dubbed episodes of Condorman aired on Hawaiian television in the late seventies.
The clip below features Condorman battling a robot-like monster called Sadora (aka Sadler), who was played by the Japanese actor and playwright Toshiaki Nishizawa. Sadora has help from his evil henchmen, but fortunately for Condorman, Sadora ends up killing many of his own men in the chaos that follows.
From the trustworthy Arbogast and various other online sources comes the sad news that the iconic horror hostess and actress Vampira (aka Maila Nurmi) has passed away at the age of 86. If you’ve read my blog long enough, you’re probably aware that I have a deep affection for horror hosts and I greatly admired the lovely Vampira. She was the original bad girl of late night TV and paved the way for many other men and women to follow in her footsteps. Even though I’ve never been a horror hostess myself, I’ve definitely been inspired by women like Vampira and her followers such as Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson) over the years.
Maila Nurmi was a beautiful woman and she lived a long and fascinating life. If you’d like to learn more about her I recommend the following links:
Fireman (aka Faiyâman/Magma Man) is an interesting tokusatsu series featuring a kyodai hero (giant hero) that aired in Japan on Nippon Television in 1973. It was made by Tsuburaya Productions, who was also responsible for the popular Ultraman series and Fireman had many things in common with that show.
In the series, the handsome Japanese actor Naoya Makoto (Goranger, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, etc.) plays the powerful hero Fireman. Fireman belongs to a race of unusual beings that live deep inside the earth. When earth is attacked by giant monster-like aliens (kaiju), Fireman rises to the surface, takes a human form and joins Japan’s Scientific Attack Force (S.A.F.) so he can help defeat the evil invaders. Much like Ultraman, Fireman is able to grow and become giant size in order to fight the various kaiju monsters he encounters. He also has many special powers and weapons.
Fireman was directed by Jun Oki and written by Bunkou Wakatsuki. Jun Oki had previously worked on various science fiction shows for Tsuburaya Productions such as Ultraseven (Urutora sebun, 1967), Ultraman Returns (Kaettekita Urutoraman, 1971) and the wonderful mystery/horror series Operation: Mystery! (Kaiki daisakusen, 1968), which I hope to write about in more detail soon. With Fireman, Oki was in control of the direction of the series as well as the special effects, which were often very impressive. Like Silver Kamen which I briefly reviewed here earlier, Fireman was a bit more adult than other similar shows that were airing in Japan at the time. The series often contained more mature stories and some unpredictable twists that were rather unusual for a show typically aimed at a young audience.
Fireman ran for 30 episodes and features a great soundtrack by Toru Fuyuki that was undoubtedly one of the Japanese composer’s best efforts. In the “Battle Sequence” featured in the clip below you can hear some of the terrific music that Toru Fuyuki composed for the series while Fireman fights a kaiju monster called Dorigoras. You’ll cheer, you’ll laugh, and you might even cry, but whatever your expectations are, few things can prepare for you for the action-packed wonder that is Fireman!
Anne Francis as Honey West with her pet ocelot (1965)
Honey West is one of my favorite television shows from the sixties and I just discovered that VCI Entertainment will be releasing the entire short-lived series on DVD sometime in 2008. The series has been available in the U.K. on PAL Region 2 DVD for awhile now, but this will mark the first time that Honey West has been released on DVD in the U.S.
The fabulous Anne Francis plays Honey West, a beautiful judo expert who holds a black belt in karate. After inheriting her late father’s high-tech detective agency, Honey and her partner Sam Bolt (John Ericson) become crime fighters who use lots of James Bond style gadgets and weapons to stop the criminals they go after. Naturally Honey also uses her seductive charms and wits to stop various villians as well. Honey West had a cute, but deadly exotic cat as a pet and she often wore animal prints and fabulous sixties fashions on the show. Anne Francis looks amazing in Honey West, which is a lot of fun to watch. In many ways she resembled an American version of the lovely Honor Blackman from the season two of The Avengers.
If you enjoy great television shows like The Avengers or The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., you’ll probably enjoy Honey West as well. Unfortunately the show only aired for one season in 1965, but all 30 episodes are scheduled to be released on DVD by VCI Entertainment. To get a taste of what to expect from this terrific series check out the opening credits from the show below:
Begining this week, I’ll be welcoming a new regular contributor to Cinebeats who calls himself T3rtiumQuid. T3rtiumQuid will be sharing short “Battle Sequence” clips from rare and hard-to-see Japanese tokusatsu television shows and films produced during the ’60s and ’70s, and I’ll be writing about them. Most of the shows and movies featured in these clips are not available outside of Japan and should appeal to anyone who enjoys vintage Japanese science fiction and fantasy.
The first Battle Sequence is taken from the Sun-Hong/TBS produced superhero series Silver Kamen (or Shiruba Kamen / Silver Mask) which aired in Japan from November 1971 to May 1972. There is basically no English information readily available about the show that I’m aware of, but I can tell you that early episodes of Silver Kamen are credited to the acclaimed Japanese director Akio Jissoji and his cinematographer Masao Nakabori. Akio Jissoji passed away in 2006 and his last film was a modern remake of Silver Kamen that was released in Japan a month after he died.
In many ways the original Silver Kamen series is typical of lots of other Japanese superhero shows. It featured a masked hero who does battle with various evil kaijin (monsters or space aliens) in an effort to save humanity and he has many unusual powers and gadgets. The difference between Silver Kamen and other superhero shows that were airing in Japan at the time, such as Ultraman and Mirrorman (or Mirror Mask), was the dark edge that the show had. The early episodes of Silver Kamen were also creatively shot and in some ways more adult then a lot of similar shows that were airing on Japanese television at the time. After 11 episodes, Silver Kamen started to loose it’s edge and it took a new and more “positive” direction. The Silver Kamen series was transformed into Silver Kamen Giant, but it still didn’t really find an audience and the series finally came to an end after 26 epsiodes.
In the following clip, the original Silver Kamen (played by Toshio Shiba) fights it out with a nasty kaijin called Tigris. If you pay attention to the clip, you’ll notice that Tigris’ costume catches on fire during the battle. I’m unclear on all the details, but it seems that Tigris’ costume caught fire prematurely and the actor playing Tigris was almost seriously burned during the fight. Thankfully for viewers the show must go on, and it did!
AMC is offering free online screenings of two entertaining American thrillers from the sixties as part of their annual Monster Fest which runs from Oct. 22 - Oct. 31. You can currently watch Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13 (1963) and Jack Hill’s Spider Baby (1968) just by visiting the links posted below.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to see these films before I highly recommend giving them both a look. Dementia 13 is one of my favorite Coppola films, even though the plot is rather predictable and Spider Baby is one of Jack Hill’s most interesting and unusual movies.
On Monday I finally got hooked up with Cable TV after years of avoiding it due to the high cost and my tight budget. It’s been well worth it thanks to all the great channels I now get like TCM, which is currently hosting a fabulous Louis Malle birthday bash and playing lots of his films.
Last night I watched Murmur of the Heart, which is one of my favorite Malle movies, along with the director’s impressive Black Moon. Black Moon is a beautiful experimental film that I had never seen before and I really enjoyed it. It was categorized as a horror movie on TCM, but I personally thought it was more of an adult dark fantasy that really defies categorization.
Black Moon follows the misadventures of a pretty young girl named Lily (Cathryn Harrison) who is caught up in a violent civil war between men and women, which seems to take place in a sort of dystopian future. She finds herself at a mysterious house that belongs to a strange old woman and a beautiful sister and brother played by Alexandra Stewart and Joe Dallesandro. The film has no clear narrative structure and Malle’s uses his own kind of dream logic to tell his mesmerizing tale. As I mentioned way back in February, I love the way that Malle explores the complex and often conflicting emotions of young people in his films and Black Moon is no exception. Malle delves deeply into Lily’s subconscious without reservation and we’re offered an intimate look at the inner workings of her young mind. The film plays out like a somewhat more adult version of Louis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where talking unicorns appear and flowers weep when they are stepped on. Cathryn Harrison is very good as Lily and as usual, it was impossible to take my eyes off of Joe Dallesandro every time he appeared. Dallesandro really looks amazing in Black Moon and I only wish he got a little more screen time in the film.
Black Moon was shot at Louis Malle’s French estate and the grounds are rather rural and wild, but extremely lush and lovely. There’s an intimacy to the film and an almost claustrophobic feel at times, which is probably somewhat due to Malle’s closeness with the location. It’s a really fascinating movie from one of France’s greatest filmmakers and it is a shame that Black Moon is currently only available on PAL Region-2 DVD at the moment.
Last week 20th Century Fox released their impressive Land of the Giants - The Full Series (The Giant Collection) (1968) DVD box set and it will undoubtedly be one of the best DVD sets to come out this year. With a list price of $229.00 (currently available from Amazon for $169.99) it’s a very pricey release, but besides getting all 51 episodes of the television show, you also get lots of DVD extras and even reproductions of the original Land of the Giants comic books, plus a booklet with cast interviews and photos, a set of Land of the Giants trading cards, a key chain and even an iron-on patch, which are all contained in an impressively designed carrying case.
I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this DVD release! Irwin Allen has been one of my favorite television show creators since I was a kid and the Land of the Giants is undoubtedly one of his grooviest shows. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to afford this new DVD set myself, but if I had the extra money I would snatch it up in a second. At least I can now finally see all the episodes of this terrific show and I’m really happy about that. Hopefully DVD rental places won’t shy away from the high price and make the show available to those of us who can’t afford to buy it right away.
When I was growing up in the seventies I would catch random episodes of Irwin Allen’s shows like Lost in Space (1965), The Time Tunnel (1966), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964) and Land of the Giants (1968) playing on TV and I always loved them. Thanks to the recent DVD releases of Irwin Allen’s television shows from 20th century Fox I’ve been able to finally see all the episodes I’ve missed and enjoy them without commercials.
The casts of Lost in Space and Land of the Giants
This year I’ve watched the entire Time Tunnel series and I’ve recently started watching Voyage to the Bottom of Sea, but I’ve only managed to get through season one so far. I really enjoyed The Time Tunnel series since I find the concept of the show fascinating and it stars the super cute one time teen idol James “Moondoggie” Darrin. What can I say, except like many red-blooded American girls, I have a bad crush on James Darrin. In The Time Tunnel series James Darrin plays a scientist named Tony Newman, who helps run a billion dollar government time travel project deep beneath the Arizona desert with fellow scientists Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) and Dr. Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether). Together they’ve invented a “time tunnel” that allows people to travel through time and space, but while testing the tunnel Dr. Newman and Dr. Phillips become trapped in time. They find themselves landing in the middle of important historic events such as the sinking of the Titanic and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but they also end up encountering space aliens and unusual characters like Merlin the Magician.
If you enjoy fantasy and science fiction from the sixties I can’t recommend The Time Tunnel series enough. It’s really entertaining and just an all-around fun all-ages show. If you’re looking for high-minded serious drama, look elsewhere. Unfortunately like Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel series was canceled before a final episode was shot which makes the show a little disappointing to watch in the end.
On the set of The Time Tunnel
Land of the Giants is also a really fascinating show and even a little subversive. It involves a group of travelers who crash land on an alternative version of planet earth that is run by giant humans and controlled by a totalitarian government. Our little heroes spend most of the series trying to avoid being captured or killed. I haven’t seen the show in years but I thought the cast was good and I especially liked the two female leads Deanna Lund and Heather Young, as well as the handsome actor Don Marshall. I’m really looking forward to finally seeing all the episodes of Land of the Giants and getting more familiar with the show.
A few of Irwin Allen’s creative creatures
Today Irwin Allen is mostly remembered as being “The Master of Disaster” after making numerous disaster films in the seventies such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) Towering Inferno (1974), but I think he was really a master at making great low-budget science fiction and fantasy television shows. He worked with some talented people who really gave their all to his productions such as composer John Williams, costume designer Paul Zastupnevich, cinematographer Winton C. Hoch, makeup supervisor Ben Nye, art director Jack Martin Smith and talented special effects experts like L.B. Abbott and Art Cruickshank among others. Allen also shamelessly used stock footage from other films, shot episodes on forgotten 20th Century Fox sets, and reused similar props and costumes in many of his productions, but his shows often contained enough imagination, excitement and humor to still keep them interesting and entertaining.
He may have won the infamous Razzie Award for “Worst Career Achievement” in 1984, but I think modern independent filmmakers interested in making fantasy and science fiction films today could probably learn a lot from the amazing Irwin Allen (pictured above directing a monster on the set of The Time Tunnel).
To learn more about Allen I recommend watching The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen, which is a lighthearted look at Irwin Allen’s career featuring interviews with the casts and crews of his most popular productions. I watched it myself this weekend and really enjoyed it.
A quick reprieve from my French obsessions to chat about my obsession with spies & secret agents…
I was recently the very lucky Grand Prize Winner of the first contest held over at Tanner’s wonderful Double O Section blog. I received a brand new Wild Wild West - The Complete Second Season DVD set in the mail on Monday and I couldn’t be more happy about it. Thanks Tanner!
The Wild Wild West has long been one of my favorite TV shows (but I must add that I loathe the Will Smith movie) and I actually prefer Season II of The Wild Wild West to Season I because the show gets more entertaining and just plain crazy at times. The earlier episodes were shot in black and white and they’re a little more subdued. The second season has a few more laughs and it’s shot in color, which adds a lot to the almost psychedelic inspired action that often takes place.
I’m really happy that the success of the recent James Bond film has led to a renewed interest in all things spy related. Lots of great old TV shows like The Wild Wild West and Jason King are now being released on DVD and many old films such as Kommisar X and Espionage In Tangiers are also finding their way onto DVD. This coming weekend there is even a 007 Film Festival happening in San Francisco that I would love to attend.
If you happen to be interested in spies and secret agents yourself, I highly recommend visiting Double O Section. Tanner knows his stuff and shares lots of great info about the latest spy films, books and anything else he comes across that is spy related. He’s also planning to hold other contests in the future.
Many groovy old British television shows have been finding their way onto PAL DVD recently in the UK, but most of them are not available in the US. This is really unfortunate, because there were lots of great television programs produced in Britain during the sixties and seventies, but many of them are almost unheard of outside of the UK. Thanks to Image Entertainment, Americans are finally able to see the popular British crime and espionage series Jason King which ran on British television in 1971-72 and it’s well worth a look if you enjoy other British shows such as The Avengers, Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner, The Saint and The Persuaders.
The Jason King series was a spin-off from another good British series called Department S, which featured a team of detectives who were able to solve the most impossible crimes. For some reason American audiences are getting Jason King on DVD first and I have no idea if we’ll ever see a DVD release of the Department S show in the US, but at least American audiences can now enjoy the exploits of the international man of mystery known as Jason King.
The series features the talented British actor Peter Wyngarde as the suave, witty pulp novelist and detective Jason King, who smoks a pipe and wears tailored suits that would have made Brian Jones envious. He seems to own an endless amount of ascots and beautiful ladies are constantly charmed by him. In the series Jason King wrote crime novels that featured a fictional character called Mark Caine and when he wasn’t writing his trashy novels, he was helping Scotland Yard solve crimes. The “real” world of Jason King often mixed with the fictional world of Mark Caine, which led to some interesting plot twists and laughs.
The show is well written and very entertaining, and it often spoofs the various James Bond type of thrillers that it takes its inspiration from. The humorous elements help keep the show interesting and give Peter Wyngarde plenty of opportunities to have fun with his character Jason King. The series also features lots of beautiful British actresses from the period such as Hammer glamour queens Ingrid Pitt, Yutte Stensgaard and Stephanie Beacham, as well as the lovely Alexandra Bastedo. It might be hard for modern audiences to understand Jason King’s appeal now, but back in the early seventies his big hair, thick mustache and low-cut shirts were considered very sexy.
Peter Wyngarde is a fascinating actor with an interesting background. He was the son of an English diplomat and spent much of his childhood moving around the world. In 1941 he was left in the care of another family living in Shanghai just as the Japanese military took over the city. Following his capture, the young Wyngarde spent four years imprisoned in the Lung-Hai prison camp where he experienced extreme brutality until he was finally rescued by British soldiers.
While Wyngarde was in college he started acting on the stage and finally begun appearing in movies in the early sixties. He was in two of Britain’s best horror films early in his career (The Innocents, 1960 and Night of the Eagle, a.k.a. Burn Witch Burn, 1962), and then went on to have a very successful career in television. He had guest roles in many of the decade’s best television shows including The Avengers, The Saint, I Spy, The Champions and The Prisoner, where he played Number Two in the infamous “Checkmate” episode before he got a starring role as Jason King in Department S. Wyngarde’s popularity on the show led him to star in his own series simply called Jason King.
During this period Peter Wyngarde even recorded an album called When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head which was released in 1970. The album is a strange mix of psychedelic, lounge and folk songs that include Wyngarde’s unusual spoken word lyrics. One of the record’s most memorable tracks is called Rape, where Wyngarde casually explains what rape means in different languages and cultures in 1970. It also includes a song called The Hippie and The Skinhead where Wyngarde reads a letter written by two skinhead girls and then goes on to describe a beating that skinheads give a “queer, pilly, sexy Hippy” named Billy. It’s impossible to take the songs completely seriously, but it seems that many people did. RCA had expected Wyngarde to record some kind of pop record where he crooned sexy songs to his many adoring female fans at the time, but instead they got an extremely odd and experimental album that sounds very campy now, but actually does contain some interesting music. When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head caused such a ruckus that it was pulled from record stores after only a few weeks and disappeared into obscurity until it was reissued on CD in 2001.
When Jason King went off the air in 1972 Pete Wyngarde was one of Britain’s most popular actors, but unfortunately his fame was short-lived. In 1975 he was arrested and convicted for an act of “gross indecency” with a truck driver in the bathroom of a British bus station. Sadly his career never really recovered from that and he had a hard time finding work as an actor in Britain. After losing his celebrity status, Wyngarde began acting and directing at the English Theater in Vienna and appeared on German television. In 1980 he had a role in Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon as Klytus and since then Wyngarde has acted in a few worthwhile television programs like Doctor Who (1984) and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1986), but for the past 14 years he hasn’t seemed to have done much.
It’s impossible to measure the influence that Peter Wyngarde’s Jason King has had on popular British culture. Mike Myers has signaled out Jason King as one of the main influences for his popular Austin Powers films and Jason King has been the inspiration behind many interesting comic book characters including Fireball from Beano’s Bullet series, Jason Wyngarde from John Byrne’s hugely popular Uncanny X-Men series and Mr. Six from Grant Morrison’s brilliant, but brief comic book series The Invisibles.
American audiences now have a chance to enjoy the entertaining Jason King series for themselves with the release of the show on DVD last week. The new Image Entertainment DVD set is very bare-bones, but it includes all 26 episodes of the show without any extras. The picture quality is a little rough on some episodes, but considering that this is a British television series from 1971 shot on 16 mm film, I’m just happy to have access to it. Hopefully it will be successful enough to warrant the release of the Department S series in the future.
Cinebeats is celebrating its 1 year anniversary this month so I thought I would write about two men who changed my life and got me hooked on movies, my dad and the Bay Area horror host Bob Wilkins.
If you’ve read my brief About Me bio, you may have noticed that I talk about my father a lot. My dad is responsible for turning me into a cinema junkie. He loved movies and passed that love on to me when I was just a very young and impressionable kid. What I haven’t mentioned is that my dad and I didn’t have much time together because his life was cut short by a drunk driver when I was only eight years old.
Eight years may not seem very long, but by the time I was eight I already knew the names of all the major stars in Universal and Hammer horror films thanks to my dad. He also taught me to appreciate great TV shows like The Avengers, the original Star Trek and The Wild Wild West, which he watched religiously. We saw many classic monster movies, disaster flicks and low-budget science fiction films together at the local drive-in and on our tiny black & white TV at home.
After my dad was killed unexpectedly my world turned upside down. My mom moved my younger brother and myself to the San Francisco Bay Area to be near her family and I didn’t have anyone to watch horror movies with me anymore. I desperately missed having my dad sitting next to me on our couch in front of the TV every Saturday. He used to be able to answer any question I had about how to kill a vampire or a werewolf, and he loved making jokes while the movies were on so we would laugh together a lot at the bad makeup or terrible acting found in some low-budget flicks. He was also there to hold my hand if I got too frightened by a movie and tell me everything would be fine and that the horror on the screen was all just “movie magic.”
After my father died, the films I loved watching took on new meaning for me and for a short while I was too frightened by the very real horrors I had experienced to enjoy the scary movies I had grown to love.
That all changed when I discovered Bob Wilkins’ fantastic Creature Features show on television. Bob Wilkins was the Bay Area’s premiere horror host in the seventies and he had a great sense of humor about the movies he showed. He played lots of terrific films, but he also played lots of terribly fun B-movies and he often opened his show by reminding viewers that there were probably better movies being shown on other channels.
In some ways watching movies with Bob Wilkins was almost like watching them with my dad. Unlike many other horror hosts Bob didn’t dress-up in any costumes and he would casually sit in his rocking chair smoking a huge cigar while cracking lots of jokes about the movies he was playing. Bob couldn’t hold my hand when the movies got really scary, but I could rely on him to make me giggle during the next commercial break and remind me that I was only watching “movie magic.”
Bob’s Creature Feature show had one of the best theme songs ever that ended with the great line, “The creatures gonna get ya tonight!” which somehow manged to scare me silly when I was a kid. The song was really funky and very ’70s, and you can enjoy it yourself by checking out the original Creature Features opening which Bob posted himself on Youtube:
With Bob wilkins as my guide I was introduced to some terrific films and low-budget B-movies. Some of the movies shown on Creature Features included Night of the Living Dead (1968), Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Homicidal (1961), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Village of the Giants (1965), Mark of the Devil (1970), She (1965) and lots of other Hammer and Universal horror films.
Bob Wilkins taught me that no matter how bad a movie was, you could still find things to enjoy about it. At the very least, the worst movies he showed were often filled with lots of unintentional laughs which he seemed to enjoy pointing out. His way of looking at low-budget films helped shape the way I saw them and he made me appreciate movies that most film critics would probably find intolerable.
On Creature Features Bob often interviewed great celebrity guests like Christopher Lee, Ray Harryhausen, George Romero, Leonard Nimoy and Forest J. Ackerman. These interesting interviews with the people behind the movies and TV shows I loved gave me a whole new appreciation for what I was watching. Thanks to Bob’s show I started understanding what directors did and how special effects worked. Creature Features was always lots of fun to watch, but I almost always learned something new from watching the show
After the huge success of Star Wars, Bob Wilkins created the fantastic Captain Cosmic show in 1977, which I also watched regularly when I was a kid. On Captain Cosmic Bob would dress up in a poorly fitting superhero costume and introduce a parade of Japanese science fiction movies and television shows with his trusty Wonder Robot 2T2. Thanks to Captain Cosmic I was introduced to great shows like Ultraman, Johnny Sokko & His Flying Robot, Starblazers and Thunderbirds.
You can watch the original opening of the Captain Cosmic show on YouTube which Bob has also posted:
Sadly for Bob Wilkins’ Bay Area fans, he decided to retire early and he left Creature Features and Captain Cosmic in 1979. The Captain Cosmic show came to an abrupt end, but John Stanley took over hosting duties for Creature Features until the show was finally canceled in 1984. I really liked John Stanley and even though it was probably hard trying to fill Bob Wilkins’ shoes, I continued to enjoy many great movies with John Stanley as my host.
The golden age of horror hosts may be over, but they are remembered fondly by fans like myself who grew up with them and were introduced to countless movies thanks to their entertaining shows.
While Cinebeats will be celebrating its first birthday this month, Bob Wilkins will be celebrating his 75th Birthday On April 11th and his family and friends are asking for his fans to send in their Birthday Wishes. Bob’s health has deteriorated due to alzheimers, but he still attends fan gatherings whenever he can.
It’s safe to say that without Bob Wilkins and his terrific shows Creature Features and Captain Cosmic, I may have forgotten what movie magic was all about and Cinebeats would of course never have been created. In some ways Bob unknowingly helped me work through my dad’s sudden death and he taught me to enjoy spooky movies all over again. Happy Birthday Bob!
In the series, the handsome Japanese actor Naoya Makoto (Goranger, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, etc.) plays the powerful hero Fireman. Fireman belongs to a race of unusual beings that live deep inside the earth. When earth is attacked by giant monster-like aliens (
Honey West is one of my favorite television shows from the sixties and I just discovered that 
Last week 20th Century Fox released their impressive 
(1968) DVD box set and it will undoubtedly be one of the best DVD sets to come out this year. With a list price of $229.00 (currently available from Amazon for $169.99) it’s a very pricey release, but besides getting all 51 episodes of the television show, you also get lots of DVD extras and even reproductions of the original Land of the Giants comic books, plus a booklet with cast interviews and photos, a set of Land of the Giants trading cards, a key chain and even an iron-on patch, which are all contained in an impressively designed carrying case.
(1965), 
(1966), 
(1964) and Land of the Giants (1968) playing on TV and I always loved them. Thanks to the recent DVD releases of Irwin Allen’s television shows from 20th century Fox I’ve been able to finally see all the episodes I’ve missed and enjoy them without commercials.
This year I’ve watched the entire Time Tunnel series and I’ve recently started watching Voyage to the Bottom of Sea, but I’ve only managed to get through season one so far. I really enjoyed The Time Tunnel series since I find the concept of the show fascinating and it stars the super cute one time teen idol 
Today Irwin Allen is mostly remembered as being “The Master of Disaster” after making numerous disaster films in the seventies such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) Towering Inferno (1974), but I think he was really a master at making great low-budget science fiction and fantasy television shows. He worked with some talented people who really gave their all to his productions such as composer John Williams, costume designer Paul Zastupnevich, cinematographer Winton C. Hoch, makeup supervisor Ben Nye, art director Jack Martin Smith and talented special effects experts like L.B. Abbott and Art Cruickshank among others. Allen also shamelessly used stock footage from other films, shot episodes on forgotten 20th Century Fox sets, and reused similar props and costumes in many of his productions, but his shows often contained enough imagination, excitement and humor to still keep them interesting and entertaining. 
, which is a lighthearted look at Irwin Allen’s career featuring interviews with the casts and crews of his most popular productions. I watched it myself this weekend and really enjoyed it.
I was recently the very lucky Grand Prize Winner of the first contest held over at Tanner’s wonderful 
DVD set in the mail on Monday and I couldn’t be more happy about it. Thanks Tanner!
which ran on British television in 1971-72 and it’s well worth a look if you enjoy other British shows such as The Avengers, Secret Agent Man, The Prisoner, The Saint and The Persuaders.
, 1960 and 
, 1962), and then went on to have a very successful career in television. He had guest roles in many of the decade’s best television shows including The Avengers, The Saint, I Spy, The Champions and The Prisoner, where he played Number Two in the infamous “Checkmate” episode before he got a starring role as Jason King in Department S. Wyngarde’s popularity on the show led him to star in his own series simply called Jason King.
During this period Peter Wyngarde even recorded an album called 
which was released in 1970. The album is a strange mix of psychedelic, lounge and folk songs that include Wyngarde’s unusual spoken word lyrics. One of the record’s most memorable tracks is called Rape, where Wyngarde casually explains what rape means in different languages and cultures in 1970. It also includes a song called The Hippie and The Skinhead where Wyngarde reads a letter written by two skinhead girls and then goes on to describe a beating that skinheads give a “queer, pilly, sexy Hippy” named Billy. It’s impossible to take the songs completely seriously, but it seems that many people did. RCA had expected Wyngarde to record some kind of pop record where he crooned sexy songs to his many adoring female fans at the time, but instead they got an extremely odd and experimental album that sounds very campy now, but actually does contain some interesting music. When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head caused such a ruckus that it was pulled from record stores after only a few weeks and disappeared into obscurity until it was reissued on CD in 2001.
After my father died, the films I loved watching took on new meaning for me and for a short while I was too frightened by the very real horrors I had experienced to enjoy the scary movies I had grown to love.