Christmas Comic Book Covers - The Odd Stuff

Not your normal Christmas comic books. 

Brief Thoughts -THE INVISIBLE MENACE (1938)

A week ago Turner Classic Movies celebrated Boris Karloff's birthday by showing a marathon of his films and among them was this little seen and little talked about murder mystery. It's a slight film and really only of interest to Karloff fans and aficionados of the kind of tight, fast mysteries that the major studios would pump out by the dozens in the 1940's. Those films were built to be series with a recurring main character as the sleth (The Falcon, The Crime Doctor, Lone Wolf, etc.) in the mode of the highly successful Charlie Chan films.

THE INVISIBLE MENACE was not built to be the start of a series and for that I am glad! The only character that could possible have fit the mold as a mystery solver/crime fighter in a future film is Colonel Rogers (Cy Kendall) and the guy is a tin-plated jerk! He decides almost immediately that Karloff's character is guilty and then proceeds to spend the next fifteen minutes of the film slapping and punching him around in an attempt to get a confession! And in full view of every officer and witness on the army base where the crime took place. Dumbass! 

Overall the film is a pretty solid murder mystery and, of course, Karloff is a major red herring. There is some not bad comedy, the mystery element is pretty decent and the film runs less than an hour so it certainly doesn't have time to wear out it welcome. Minor Karloff but of interest for those that are curious. 

Argosy Magazine Covers

With the weather turning cooler my thoughts (and reading habits) shift to the pulp-y end of the fiction spectrum. These old Argosy covers show the wide range of genres the magazine printed which mirrors my desire to constantly move between different types and styles of tales. Any of these covers would have enticed me to plunk down my hard earned coins for the promised diversion. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a great day! 

A Bionic Christmas Carol

It being the end of year Holiday season (don't deny it - the ads cannot be avoided!) I have been watching a few genre related Christmas tales. Encouraged by my buddy John Davis' mad collection of such things I convinced him to check out something I haven't seen since its original broadcast back on December 12th 1976. Yes, we watched A Bionic Christmas Carol from the fourth season of The Six Million Dollar Man! Of course this much beloved (by me) series made a version of A Christmas Carol! This was the 1970's when it seemed that every single damned TV series was required by law to craft an episode adapting Dickens' yuletide classic so that even Col. Steve Austin had to find a Scrooge stand-in to set right. Never was the story so bizarrely bent to a concept!

But one of the joys I have found of revisiting this series is getting to see interesting guest stars pop up to add to the novelty. Here we have the great Ray Walston as the Scrooge character and Dick Sargent (the famed second Darren of TV sitcom Bewitched) as the Cratchit stand-in. Walston plays Horton Budge, a cost cutting businessman staying just barely on the legal side of his government contract until his miserly ways nearly get an employee killed - and on Christmas Eve too! Sargent is his nephew who owes the old man thousands of dollars used to pay for his wife's medical treatments. When the Christmas Eve accident threatens delays in the progress of Budge's project he forces his workers to come in on December the 25th to keep costs down. What's a Six Million Dollar Man to do? Why, dress up as Santa Claus and take advantage of Budge's health problems to scare him into being a better person, of course! I love the 70's.

I'm not going to claim this episode is very good but it isn't without its charms. The cast is game and the scenario is rock solid so there is little chance of making a truly bad version of this tale. I'm not sure a non-fan of the series would get more than a passing bit of Holiday entertainment from A Bionic Christmas Carol but I'm glad to have been able to see it again. Oh! One of the great things about seeing these as an adult is being able to spot some sly humor in the show including two neat jokes slid into the proceedings. The first is a carefully framed shot of Austin in a toy store in which the at the time very hot Six Million Dollar Man action figure can be seen on a shelf just to the left of the character's face. Nice! The second actually took me half the episode to catch on to- the project Ray Walston's company is working on for the space program is a Martian exploration experiment. Yes- My Favorite Martian was trying to get folks to his home planet! Very cool.

NaschyCast #54 - MORTAL SIN (1977)

We are back again to talk about another Naschy film. Of course, this one has very little Naschy in it, but at this point we'll take what we can get! MORTAL SIN is a pastoral drama set in a Spanish country in the 1940's with the ghosts of the previous decades civil war hanging over everything. The story plays out as a study of several characters attempting to find their place in the war changed world with particular focus on the three female members of the family - two sisters and the widowed matriarch - as they react to the presence of a young man of marriageable age who moves into the house. The three servants also factor into the proceedings as the relationships become more complicated and the expected romantic entanglements begin to take shape. You might think this is very different from the films we have covered here before but, as we point out, there are many similarities to past subjects of this podcast than you might think.

One note- both Troy and I refer to this as episode #55 at the beginning of the show and we are mistaken. I don't know how we screwed that up but we did. I guess jumping back and forth between this and The Bloody Pit is making us lose track of numbers in general! Sorry! This is #54.

There is no mail in the bag this time around but that doesn't stop us from veering far from our stated purpose in this one. The first half hour we discuss the KickStarter campaign to bring back Mystery Science Theater 3000; the Daniel Craig Bond films and how the new one measures up (spoiler free!); the difficulty of actresses being nominated for genre work and our respective horror Halloween viewings before we segue into going all moist over Paul Naschy. After the discussion and 'Our Man in the Field' Dan's new horror host segment we then talk at length about the SAW movies and the various long running horror film series. Has anyone out there ever watched all the Children of the Corn films? Really?

You can reach us at naschycast@gmail.com or over on the FaceBook page. Don't let us ramble free-range like this again folks! We'll get even further off into the weeds next time without leading questions. 

Direct Download LINK 

iTunes LINK 

KickStarter - Mystery Science Theater 3000!!!

If, like me, you are a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 the recent news that show creator Joel Hodgson is taking a run at resurrecting the series was incredibly exciting. I immediately clicked over to the KickStarter site, read up on the campaign and then contributed to the funding. Their goal is to completely fund the first full season and go on from there. Oh my yes! As much as I have enjoyed the various offshoots of MST3K (RiffTrax, Cinematic Titanic, etc.) the idea of a return of the original show in a new form is the stuff of fanboy dreams. 

Here is Joel's prospectus - 

Hello, People of Earth. 

Welcome! I'm Joel Hodgson. 

Once upon a time, a television series called MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 was born. We debuted on Minneapolis' KTMA, local television, on Thanksgiving Day 1988, as the world was in the final throes of Teddy Ruxpin-mania. That was almost thirty years ago, but for some reason, people still seem to like the show – it’s a mitzvah!

Our show has had a long, strange run. Across a UHF channel, a cable network, cancellation, a feature film, then another cable network, the show lasted for 12 years, two generations of hosts and puppeteers, 2 Emmy nominations and a total of 197 episodes before we got canceled again for good in 1999. Sadly, it was just as Prince predicted.

But maybe that's not where it all ends.

Starting today, we finally get a chance to bring back MST3K.

With your help, we can create a new season of MST3K, prove there's still an audience, and maybe even convince a network to bring us back for more.

KickStarter LINK