Can't imagine Halloween without Count Floyd - and here, the host of "Monster Chiller Horror Theater" introduces RUSH, the excellent progressive rock ensemble (Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, Neal Peart).
Like Count Floyd, Vincent Price is always a key Halloween ingredient!
One of our favorite Roger Corman flicks is THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, co-starring Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Boris Karloff.
When Vincent Price and Peter Lorre made a bunch of movies for Corman, it is apparent that they were trying to make each other laugh!
Between takes on THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, no doubt Boris Karloff enjoyed a nice hot cuppa joe.
Then there's the Corman adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's fever dream Masque Of The Red Death, in which I'm shocked, shocked that Vincent Price does not flat-out say "and because I'm so deliciously evil. . . "
And now for something completely different, this blogmeister is a big fan of comedienne Ana Gastayer's dead-on Martha Stewart impersonation and the following Halloween sketch.
On the topic of semi-spooky SNL sketches, it's true - we will NOT feature David S. Pumpkins this Halloween.
From SNL to stop-motion, here's THE OLD MAN & THE GOBLINS, a 1998 film by the stop-motion animators at Screen Novelties - Seamus Walsh, Chris Finnegan and Mark Caballero. It's got the Halloween spirit in a profound way. Love the tie-ins to O'Brien, Starewicz and Svankmajer.
Who made the most vividly Halloween-themed animation? Starewicz, of course!
Favorite Fleischer studio Halloween film? SWING YOU SINNERS!
Almost as cool as SWING YOU SINNERS: the 1933 Screen Song cartoon Boo, Boo, Theme Song.
Another Fleischer classic underscores the reality that if one happens to be an insect, by all means DON'T check into a hotel run by spiders! The Cobweb Hotel is also the diametric opposite of the mid-1930s trend of imitating Disney. Jack Mercer's voices, as always, are a hoot.
How can we properly finish a Happy Halloween post?
With elephants smashing pumpkins (not Billy Corgan & the Smashing Pumpkins but pachyderms) at the Oregon Zoo, that's how!
Before the great and prolific Mark Sandrich (October 26, 1900 - March 4, 1945) became the premier director of classic 1930's movie musicals, including several boffo Astaire & Rogers flicks (The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Follow The Fleet, Shall We Dance, Carefree), he was responsible for making fast and very funny 2-reel comedies for RKO. Several short subjects Sandrich directed starred the aggressively zany, randy and exceedingly pre-Code comedy team of Bobby Clark & Paul McCullough.
Clark & McCullough emphatically give the bird to the world as they pose as various professions, always under false pretenses, in these RKO comedies. Jitters The Butler co-stars the always dignified Robert Grieg (a memorable co-star in the Marx Brothers' 1930 film of ANIMAL CRACKERS) as the funniest - and the most enthusiastically masochistic - of professional manservants.
The Iceman's Ball features a rather amazing cast of 2-reel comedy royalty, including Billy Franey, Laurel & Hardy nemesis Jimmie Finlayson, 3 Stooges arch-nemesis Vernon Dent and perennial cop Fred Kelsey. All the players make sure that the essential premise - the always brazen Clark & McCullough masquerade as cops to pick up girls and crash all the local parties - is also a riot.
Prior to his smashing success as RKO musicals king, Mark Sandrich successfully delivered both key elements of Clark & McCullough's humor, the ultra-zany and that sense of the dark and disturbing, to the silver screen.
C & McC possess a dark sensibility well beyond even that of the early 1930's Marx Brothers, who also gave the world the bird. . . at least until they ended up at MGM.
There is always an palpable uneasiness intertwined with C&McC's distinctive comic anarchy, and not just due to the troubled Paul McCullough's suicide in March 1936.
After directing Bobby & Paul's go-for-broke wacky antics and musical short subjects featuring bandleader Phil Harris (pre-Jack Benny) but before helming Fred & Ginger musicals, Mr. Sandrich made very funny films with a goofier (and substantially less dark) comedy team, Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey.
These include two of our all-time favorite classic comedies, Cockeyed Cavaliers and Hips Hips Hooray.
Love the talented Mark Sandrich's W&W features for the same reasons I love the aforementioned Clark & McCullough comedies and the Marx Brothers at Paramount: that unique 1930-1934 blend of the unabashedly and unrepentantly wacky, the silly, the goofy, the outrageous and the risqué, all served simultaneously.
First and foremost, let's plug some cool screenings.
It's no surprise to readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that we're big fans of Halloween cartoons and Frankenstein (both young and not-so-young).
A Sunday matinee selection of spooky stop-motion madness in GLORIOUS 16mm, Peculiar Puppets vol. VII, shall be the order of the day tomorrow at Roxy Cinema NYC tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. EST.
The press release elaborates:
Roxy Cinema hereby presents a seventh retrospective screening featuring various peculiar examples of puppet films from the 1930s through the 1950s+.
This particular showcase features spooky subjects in celebration of the Halloween season. Warning: You may find some of the offerings to be rather creepy, possibly unsettling, and even potentially controversial!
This event is programmed by early animation archivist and historian Tommy José Stathes, and prints are hand-selected from his personal 16mm film archive. Film presentation will be followed by a live Q&A session with Stathes.
Ten days later on October 30, there shall be a Halloween cartoon program at Manhattan's Metrograph on 7 Ludlow Street. Showtime is 5:15pm. NYC aficionados of vintage animation and classic movies, check these Cartoon Carnival shows out!
Also of note: October 20 is National Chicken & Waffles Day.
Not DON & WAFFLES Day, but National Chicken & Waffles Day!
One way to start celebrating National Chicken & Waffles Day is to watch the following cheesy commercial from the even cheesier early 1970's. This one's cheesy enough to be MST-3K worthy.
Since we did not include Jay Ward ads in recent posts featuring a slew of animated TV commercials, here are two excellent ads for Aunt Jemima Frozen Waffles featuring our breakfast pals, Professor Goody and Wallace The Waffle Whiffer.
The best Chicken + Waffles combo this writer/waffle enthusiast has sampled was at a long-gone but incredible restaurant (the name of which utterly escapes me) in Oakland, CA. The food was outstanding!
That said, the famous Chicken & Waffles chain remains Roscoe's in L.A.
Not surprisingly, there are numerous videos on YouTube about how to prepare chicken & waffles.
There are more chicken & waffle recipes on YouTube than one can actually watch or eat in a reasonable time frame.
Our favorite is invariably Alton Brown, here with the chefs of Cutthroat Kitchen.
First and foremost, it's Tea Time with Ted Eshbaugh, who spun off the glum gloomy gus guys from The Sunshine Makers for this industrial film extolling the virtues of a cuppa hot tea.
Seared into my consciousness as well as the very souls of numerous individuals in my age group: the following much televised Chef Boy Ar Dee spot for Beefaroni and Beef-o-getti.
Levis produced these early 1970's time capsule ads, designed with psychedelic style by Chris Blum.
The following Levis commercial would go perfectly with that advertising film Johnny Carson made plugging his clothing line.
The Simpsons, not surprisingly, starred in commercials. . . LOTS of commercials.
As The Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy were going great guns at the same time, that brings to mind the following question. . . Did Spümcø and John K make commercials? Yes - here are two very good ads Spümcø produced for OLD NAVY.
One source of fantastic stop-motion commercials is the Dutch Animation Project. This masterpiece for White Horse Whiskey would be this scribe's pick for the coolest ad ever.
LOVE this Quaker Oats commercial by Joop Geesink's Dollywood studio.
On Cartoon Research on a Thunderbean Thursday, Steve Stanchield posted the following trio of humdinger animated commercials mastered from 35mm, including a BRYLCREEM ad animated by Fleischer Studio stalwart Bill Sturm (who I did not know worked with stop-motion) and one for motor oil by Ub Iwerks' Animated Cartoon Films studio.
Closing today's post: a selection of pretty darn spectacular ads by the ridiculously talented Canadian-British director, educator, animator, draftsman/illustrator supreme, voice actor and Who Framed Roger Rabbit contributor Richard Williams (1933-2019) of The Thief And The Cobbler fame.
Continuing a thread about vintage TV ads we last did on September 8, today's post delves into 1950's and 1960's Commercial Land, specifically cigarettes.
To get in the mood, it's time for a cuppa joe from Conquistador Coffee!
Since the September 8 post started with animated ads, here are some very good ones plugging Lucky "LSMFT" Strikes.
While I don't know offhand who produced the stylish "It's Light Up Time" ads, they are the epitome of the prevalent 1950's graphic design style in animation, especially commercials, known as Cartoon Modern.
Not sure if a showbiz celebrity is one of the dancing Old Gold cigarette packs in this ad, but that's how we'll start the Celebrity Cigarette Commercials compendium. Didn't Mary Tyler Moore act as a dancing cigarette pack in one of these ads?
With a few cups of java from a roaster other than Conquistador Coffee now consumed, we now watch a Winston Cigarettes ad from the Beverly Hillbillies TV show starring Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan.
In another Beverly Hillbillies Winstons ad, Bea Benaderet joins the cast.
Here, a manufuctured couple (Rob & Laura Petrie played by Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, who previously starred in the Happy Hotpoint ads) and a real one, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, adeptly sell smokes!
The Jack Benny Program on radio and TV was sponsored by Lucky Strikes.
In the early 1950's live Jack Benny shows, guest stars at times delivered the commercials, giving announcer Don Wilson a rare breather. In this case, the great Humphrey Bogart does the honors.
While the following celebrity ads compilation mostly consists of car commercials, there is a great Viceroy Cigarettes ad starring a pre-Batgirl Yvonne Craig; yes, Viceroy's got the taste that's right. It's the third one in the mix and starts at 1:00.
Here, the excellent vocalist and actress Julie London sings one of the Marlboro jingles ("you've got a lot to like with a Marlboro, filter, flavor, flip-top box). Later in the compilation, actor/writer Dennis O' Keefe stars in a bunch of commercials for Camel Cigarettes, as opposed to slapping guys around or terrorizing Ann Sheridan in a hard-boiled film noir thriller.
In closing, we extend a prominent top hat tip to Tim Romano for the following terrific compilation of commercials, mastered from 35mm.
