Trailers From Hell - THE NIGHT STALKER (1972)

I'm not sure I buy all of Dr. Z's tale of how McGavin was cast but its fun to get a little dirt on how the ape sausage gets made. 

Planet of the Apes Joke

Maybe I'm just very tired, but this really made me laugh.

 

Philip Jose Farmer's 'Venus on the Half-Shell'

Lately I’ve been reading some older science fiction novels that I’ve had on the ‘to read’ pile for a while. After Arthur C. Clarke’s excellent The City and the Stars I dove into Philip Jose Farmer’s comic novel Venus on the Half-Shell. Written as if it was a novel penned by the fictional Kilgore Trout (who was created by Kurt Vonnegut) it is very funny and becomes more amusing the more you know about the machine-gun speed references Farmer packs the story with. I’ll finish it up in the next couple of days as time permits, but it is so much fun I kind of want to just sit and laugh my way through it right now!

 

I’ve paused reading because one humorous detail in the story keeps popping back into my head and making me giggle. The protagonist Simon Wagstaff (yes, that is a penis joke) has found a one man escape spacecraft and he relates that it was built by Titanic & Icarus Spaceship Company, Inc. He notes that name does not inspire confidence.

 

It’s not the funniest moment so far but my brain keeps circling back to it and making me smile. Sometimes it’s the smaller bits that stick the longest. 

Super Snooper & Blabber Mouse - James Bomb

I only occasionally caught a Snooper & Blabber Mouse cartoon as a kid. They were part of the Quick Draw McGraw show in the early 1960's and were not rerun in my area during my formative years in the 70's. But, now that I've seen a few of them, I admit to getting a few standard Hanna-Barbera chuckles from the show. I was recently reminded of this lesser known cartoon which sent me on a hunt for connected media and look what I found - an audio adventure in which the detectives respond to the James Bond phenomenon. Check it out! 

Plastic Man Horror Comic Covers

I've been looking over a collection of classic Plastic Man comics and realized how often the character's adventures ventured into horror realms. I had never associated Plas with creepy crawlies but he seems quite at home dealing with monsters and ghouls. This collection of covers will demonstrate what I mean.

 

 

Trailers From Hell - CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961)

Joe Dante talks a bit about one of Roger Corman's goofiest monster movies. I'm glad Dante points out it was a parody as many viewers manage to miss that aspect of this silly film. Plus, the steel-wool monster always makes me smile! 

Valentines Day Wishes From the Batman Family

I think I remember giving out some of these in grade school.

 

State by State Cryptid Guides!

 

These amusing 'guides' to the scary monsters resident in various United States give me a smile and send me searching for more information on the ones I had never heard of before. You can buy prints of these fun images HERE and maybe you should - for your peace of mind!

National Park Monster Posters

If there had been a checklist of these creatures available when I was a kid I would have begged my parents to visit more of these parks on vacations. If you want to see the entire gallery for future reference the full set of images are HERE.

More Weird Vintage Christmas Cards

With dead drunk birds and simply dead frogs, these are some strange holiday images.

 

Weird Vintage Christmas Cards

From what I can tell, Christmas cards used to be very strange. And Melty the Snowman will haunt my evenings for the rest of Winter.