Travelogue :: April Ghouls Monster-Rama :: Day One :: Getting There...

Getting from where I live to the friendly confines of the Riverside Drive-In in Vandergrift, PA, is relatively simple: Take a left for about 800 miles. Take a right for about 200 miles. And then take another left for 30 miles or so and, voilà, you're there. Simple, right? Right, well...

Our adventure began by nearly derailing itself before we even got started thanks to a certain car rental agency who shall remain nameless. For, upon heading to the local micropolitan airport to pick up our transport, since neither mine nor my companion (and brother from another mother), Mike's, vehicle would never survive the 2200 mile round trip, we found the appropriate counter unattended in complete and utter-defiance of the office hours posted on the sign. And so we waited. And waited. And then waited some more. Well, the car was kind of important to our travel plans, destined to start in a measly seven hours hence at five-in-the-am, and as the first hour of waiting gave way to the second, Mike started working his cellphone, and, long story short, no one would be coming to help us. Nice. However, a call to the national help line soon had a plan B in place, where we would pick up a car at the Omaha airport branch since they operated 24-hours a day as opposed to the whenever the hell they felt like hours of the local, smaller airport. (I blame the Sequestration.) Thus and so, come the dawn, we found ourselves following the directions Mike's smart phone belched out to us until it proudly proclaimed we had reached our destination:

Uhm, no. No we hadn't.

Luckily, Mike realized he'd transposed a couple of numbers on the address and our real destination was about ten more blocks down the very street we were on and not completely on the other side of town.

That's better.

And since they totally borked our original travel plans, the agency gave us a free upgrade, a free rental day, and free parking for our trouble. As for the upgrade, we had two choices, and, gas-mileage be damned, we listened to our testosterone and took the Dodge Charger that drove like a dream and went really, really fast without really, really trying. Punch it, Chewie!

Truth be told, the same agency borked up our rental last September, too, when we went to Pittsburgh for the Super Monster-Rama, also resulting in a free upgrade, which got us to thinking we'd probably wind up with a tank if we dared to try renting from them again. Turns out both Mike and I were game to try...

Me, all giddy about the free sunroof.

More roadside pagan idol manifestation in Iowa.

Preparing to ford the Mississippi by eating cheeseburgers.

Anyhoo, figuring the tank would probably get just as good of gas mileage, we were in for a pleasant surprise. Turns out the car had something called an Eco-Boost that allowed us to basically drive all the way from Omaha to Pittsburgh on a tank and half of gas. (Which we were able to refill only after spending an embarrassing amount of time trying to find the switch that opened the gas cap. *sigh*) That, and the added bonus of engaging the Turbo-Boost to go from 0-70mph in about six seconds coming out of the tool-booths was pretty cool, too.

Thus, before you knew it, with the help of several podcasts, a half-dozen movies on a portable DVD player, and a little lead-footing, we crossed four states, paid a lot of tolls, and reached our hotel after 18 hours of east-bound-and-downing. Now, we choose to stay at Lake's Roadhouse for several reasons. One, the owner and staff are completely adorable. And two, it's just up the road from the Drive-In itself, which may not seem like much, but, after you're brain has been addled by a Dusk til Dawn trash-o-rama a half hour trip back into Pittsburgh in the dark through the winding hills of Pennsylvania is something I know I'd rather avoid.

And so, we arrived and found two more of the usual knuckleheads, Tim and Sean, waiting up for us. And after a few exchanged bear hugs, having been up for nearly 36 hours (long story), we excused ourselves to our room, curled up near the open flames of the Glo-Warm heater, a mere foot from my bed, and went to sleep -- perchance to dream of an all night slasher and zombiethon to be seen as it should be seen: at the drive in.

I tell ya, folks, I was too terrified to fart the whole night long.  

Stay tuned for more harrowing tales from the April Ghouls 

Monster-Rama! Until then, Boils and Ghouls...

Travelogue :: I'm Outta Here!

Off to the April Ghoul's Monster Rama and the Friendly Confines of the Riverside Drive-In, Vandergrift, PA, folks, so the Brewery will be on hiatus for a couple weeks. Updates will resume around April 15. Until then, Boils and Ghouls, stay cool -- and I hope to see ya there!

In Memoriam :: Sometimes You Experience Art...

... And sometimes the art experiences you. 

Yeah, idiosyncratic, obsessive, whatever compulsive term you want to use to describe him or his movies, and yes, these same eccentricities of the former tended to derail the latter, but, sometimes you just have to give the artist free rein and let 'em roll on his or her own terms and let them take you someplace else entirely. And I, for one, am thankful for all of those cinematic trips -- stress on the trip, both coherent and not so coherent. 

Jesús Franco 

(1930-2013)

Genre Mash-Up :: A 13 Vid-Cap Look at Henry Hathaway's Sagebrush Slasher, 5 Card Stud (1968)

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"You've preached a lot of funerals around here 

lately. You got something new for this one?"

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5 Card Stud opens quick and dirty with a tin-horn cowpoke getting caught cheating at cards, which is then compounded when the other players overreact, especially the no-account son of the local land baron (McDowall), leading to some swift frontier justice at the end of a rope over the vehement protests of our hero (Martin). Realizing they went too far too late, all involved, seven otherwise outstanding citizens in total, clam up and make a pact to carry the secret of their dirty deed to the grave. This, of course, sets up our bloody tale as several months later someone starts picking off these conspirators, one by one; and whoever is doing it is making a deliberate point as each victim dies most gruesomely by some form of strangulation -- just like the tin-horn. They can't go to the law without implicating themselves, and therefore can only watch helplessly as shoot-first-and-ask-later vigilante mobs run rampant looking for the elusive killer, waiting and wondering who will be next. But who is doing the killing? One of them? Trying to scare the others into silence? Or maybe to make sure the others stay silent forever. Or is someone else out to knock them off? And if so, for what purpose? Revenge, most likely; an eye for an eye, as the good Reverend Rudd (Mitchum) would proselytize -- and to reap what you sow...














When a person digs back into the fossil records looking for films that helped inspire or establish the ground rules for the Stalk-n-Slash boom of the early 1980's the last thing you'd expect to find is a western. And if I told you that same western was also a starring vehicle for Rat Pack booze crooner Dean Martin, you'd probably think I just took a long walk off a very short credulity pier. But let's look at the evidence: 

Now, a person seeking revenge on those who killed his family is nothing new for this genre. Hell, a lonesome quest to put these kinds of killers in the ground is usually championed and one of the rocks on which the western is built. But here, with the focus on the lynch mob, the line between that old trope and a bloody body-count movie is muddied up pretty good. Look, I am in no way saying or implying that Dean Martin is some kind of ersatz Final Girl, but from the set-up, to the kills, to the killer's modus operandi, 5 Card Stud holds almost all the other earmarks of a later day slasher: a sinister secret that links the victims and triggers the whole thing, a familial need for vengeance on the killer's part, signature slayings, layers of conspiracy, mounting paranoia, and a long suspect list that is whittled down with each body found until the real killer is finally revealed. (It's also kind of like Hang 'Em High in reverse.)

Granted, this sagebrush whodunit works best during the mayhem, so, fair warning, it does tend to clunk along when the film shifts focus to the love triangle between our lothario gambler Martin and parlor madame Stevens and good girl Justice. But, we do get to see Mitchum behind the pulpit again, bringing the fire and the brimstone and the lead to the unrepentant. 

Directed with a steady hand by Henry Hathaway with an adapted screenplay assist by Marguerite Roberts (based on a novel by Ray Gaulden), the film gets extra bonus points from me for a nasty, unflinching mean-streak that is sustained throughout the film. (The very next year Hathaway and Roberts would team again with John Wayne for the original True Grit.) Add it all up and this offbeat genre mash-up definitely rates a look even for those who seldom venture out west, cinematically speaking.

Other Points of Interest:

Newspaper ads for 5 Card Stud at the Morgue.
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Five Card Stud (1968) Paramount Pictures  / EP: Hal B. Wallis / P: Joseph H. Hazen, Paul Nathan / D: Henry Hathaway / W: Marguerite Roberts / C: Daniel L. Fapp / M: Maurice Jarre  / S: Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Roddy McDowall, Yaphet Kotto, Katherine Justice, Inger Stevens

Favorites :: Inks and Paints :: A Coloring Book. A Coloring Book as Big as a Battleship!

Wohoo! Time to break out the Crayolas!

And I never noticed it before, but, yes, according to the majority of the poster and ad artwork for the The Giant Claw, the Anti-Matter Buzzard's head is shoved up its own Anti-Matter ass. (That thing trailing off the top is not the neck, folks. THAT'S THE TAIL!)

Other Points of Interest:

Full film review of The Giant Claw at 3B Theater.

Poster Campaign for The Giant Claw at the Archive.

Newspaper ads for The Giant Claw at the Morgue.

 
The Giant Claw (1957) Clover Productions :: Columbia Pictures / P: Sam Katzman / D: Fred F. Sears / W: Samuel Newman, Paul Gangelin / C: Benjamin H. Kline E: Tony DiMarco, Saul Goodkind / M: Mischa Bakaleinikoff / S: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Robert Shayne, Edgar Barrier

YouTube Finds :: Trick or Treating with Dorothy Lamour, Jack Carson and Boris Karloff !

The Sealtest Variety Theater was a musical and comedy radio program hosted by Dorothy Lamour that aired on Thursday nights for NBC from 1946-1949. Sponsored by Sealtest Dairy Products (mostly Ice Cream), each episode Lamour would sing the audience a couple of songs and perform sketches with her guest-stars of the week. Here, for the Halloween (1948) episode, Lamour welcomes Jack Carson and Boris Karloff for a few tricks and treats:

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Videos courtesy of  OTRHALLOWEENHOLIDAZE.

There's several episodes streaming on YouTube and a bunch more available for free download at the Internet Archive. I've managed to get through about eight episodes so far and they're all just great. Lamour is a warm and welcoming presence with a hideously infectious laugh -- and since the sketches were pretty funny and tended to train-wreck she gets to laugh a lot. There's one particular viking sketch with Bob Hope that went off the rails so badly I thought my sides were gonna split open, and another with Abbott and Costello where Costello loses his place in the script and -- waitaminute. Why am I telling you about this? Just go and listen for yourselves. Trust me. And with that, we'll let Ms. Lamour sign us off:

"Well, I'm sad to say it's time to make our au revoirs. 

This is Dorothy Lamour saying, goodnight, keep well, 

keep happy ... and keep listenin'."