WONDERWALL - George Harrison - "After All" (1968)

Welcome to yet another Psycho-Delicious Psaturday down deep in The Dungeon! From 1968, it's "Wonderwall," and what a wonder to behold it is!

I used to see the internet as one big window into the world, and that's kind of like what a "Wonderwall" is too, but on a much smaller, and more personal level! I'm thinking that's where the ww in www. originated!

Jack (THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, THE BRAIN, THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, HOW I WON THE WAR) MacGowran is the absent minded, but brilliant Professor Oscar Collins! Oscar has to constantly remind himself to do almost everything!

After a long week's work, the rather eccentric Professor returns home to his flat to relax for the weekend when he notices a strange little beam of light and the silhouette of what appears to be a beautiful girl dancing projected on his wall! The Professor wastes no time trying to get the hole open a little larger so he can get a better view!

The Professor gets quite an eyeful, and nobody on the other side ever seems to notice that he's spying on them!  The gorgeous gal that inhabits the next apartment is Jane (BLOW-UP) Birkin as the very lovely and uninhibited Penny Lane, and she is indeed inside the Professor's eyes and ears! Jane has continued to work steadily through the years, and currently has a film in post-production!

A lot of reason for all the flamboyant imagery is because Penny Lane is a fashion model, who specializes in having her legs shot!

And when her boyfriend comes over, she is also a specialist in having her legs spread, and it's all to the Professor's delight!

The Professor becomes so possessed, he almost destroys his apartment in an effort to be able to see even more, and ends up making almost as many holes as there are in Albert Hall in the wall to further his voyeuristic viewing pleasure!

Like in "What's Good For The Goose," "Wonderwall" is steeped and heaped with a wide array of male mid-life crises, and man's never ending pursuit of what he thinks love is, a young and beautiful sexy young lady! With his mighty pen at hand, the Professor is ready to do battle with Penny Lane's boyfriend, and run off with her to sexual Neverland forever! The boyfriend was played by Iain (THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS) Quarrier.

"Wonderwall" is almost a silent movie, so it had to have some good music to keep it going, and that's where George Harrison of Beatles' fame and fortune, during his highly influenced Indian music period, comes into play! George wrote an outstanding soundtrack and you can buy it from Amazon right here!! 95% of the music is ragas, sitars, and tablas, but there are a couple of rockin' segments too! Here's just a slight taste of one of Tabonga's favourite riffs!

The Professor is now to the point where he has become so obsessed with this whole scene, that he's almost destroyed his apartment, and isn't taking care of himself at all! He's a literal mess!

The Professor has some incredible fantasies about Penny Lane, like her being at his lab!

Up to this point, the Professor still hasn't met Penny, only the boyfriend! It's pretty sad that when they throw a party on Penny's side of the wall, the Professor decorates his side, cleans himself up, and parties by himself from a distance!

The Professor is too caught up in his own fixations to even notice that everything is not exactly as perfect as it looks on Penny Lane's side of the wall!

More fantasies, and one including an apple, huh, can you imagine that?

The Professor is totally gone now, and his fantasies have become his realities! He really wants Penny Lane bad! He has to have her, and he decides to sneak into her apartment!

Finally, the Professor gets to see what the other side of the wall looks like!

This is the sad and lonely side of Penny Lane that the Professor never sees or knows exists!

Penny Lane attempts suicide by taking a bunch of sleeping pills and turning on the gas while the Professor is hiding in her closet!

In the end, The Professor not only gets to meet Penny Lane, he also gets to save her, and is declared a hero, which is about as close as he's ever going to get to fulfilling his fantasy, but it's good enough for him, and why not!

HORROR HIGH / Crown International Pictures - 1974

It's Friday the 14th High School Freak Out with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Our feature was distributed by Crown International, if you know what that means, you know what I'm saying! It stars child actor Pat Cardi in his last role, Pat also played a young chimp in BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES.

Eegah!! sent over a sound clip from this flick for our approval, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over by our atomic chemistry lab, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's a little taste of... HORROR HIGH!

The last part of the sound clip sure sounds like a nice Emerson, Lake and Palmer rip off!

Really, the first thing I noticed was all the weird seventies clothes that were in style at the time! How about that guy's pants?! I wouldn't be caught dead in them! Filmed in Irving, Texas.

Pat plays Vernon Potts, a skinny little nerd that gets the low IQ jocks all riled up because he's not a muscle bound jerk ass hole like them! Again, those stupid looking clothes, jeez!!

If that isn't bad enough, the weirdo janitor, Griggs, is also a tormentor. Griggs forces Vernon to drink one of his secret chemical formulas, which transforms him into a...

Vernon wakes up in his bed, covered in blood and no memory of what the Hell happened.

Texas may have been a leader in seventies fashion, but, that dress is just a boner butcher!!

A girl finds this in the science lab's acid barrel and you get the feeling that maybe old Vernon's involved, especially since the police identify the skull as Mr. Griggs, the weirdo janitor!

Vernon wants more revenge on the ones who done him wrong, this time it's his teacher, Miss Grindstaff. Throughout the movie she has this huge paper cutter on her desk, and, the blade's always in this position! Needless to say, Vernon uses it to chop her fingers off, obviously!!

As they cart the dead old teacher out of the room, the police photographer seems more interested in the nude mannequin!

Next, it's the athletic coach's turn. Notice he's holding his Texas-sized swat paddle, a nice weapon to use on intruders if needed... When Eegah!! and I met in 1959 in sixth grade, our home room teacher, Mr. Altman, gave out swats whenever a student earned it. You had to pull your punishment out of a hat that contained a number of options to pick from, like, one swat, two swats, etc. There was one that we always strived to pick, that was... the Delayed Swat! Yes, Eegah!! and I got swats!

Here's a close up showing the Hyde-Side of Vernon as he attacks the coach! He's as strong as a gorilla and easily tosses the 250 pound coach against the wall!!

Then, he uses track shoes with cleats to rip the coach's flesh, and, whoa, jumps up and down on him. This part is a little hard to watch because it looks 100% real!!

Back in '74, cops were cool and would chat with you as you cruised along on your bike!

Vernon's addicted to killing now and turns on his one friend, Robin. What I want to know is, why in the Hell would you hide in a brightly lit area?!.. Bib-bida, bib-bida.

He's finally brought down after being shot about 50 times, bringing our tale to an end!

Look for Eegah!! tomorrow with more cool junk from The Dungeon!!

SHERLOCK HOLMES - A Little Journey Through Time

I watched "The Woman In Green" over the weekend on Amazon Prime, and it was going to be my Wednesday feature, but I found out later that Tabonga has a colourized version for you, so I decided to go a different route, and give you a look at some of the many films of Sherlock Holmes that have been made over the years! There have been almost 300 movies and/or TV shows with, or about, Sherlock Holmes, and to think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't even consider Sherlock to be his best work! It just proves what Clifford Coulter said, and I quote, "Do It Now, Think About it Later!!" You will never know what your future might bring you!

The first film ever made featuring Sherlock Holmes was made in 1900 and had the great title of "Sherlock Holmes Baffled!" It was 30 seconds long, and nobody knows who played Sherlock! From 1905 to 1920, a number of actors tried their hand at the role of Sherlock, like Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, Viggo Larsen, Otto Langoni, Georges

Tréville, Mack Sennett, Hector Dian, Hugo Flink, and more!

 After that, Ellie Norwood was Sherlock Holmes in a series of 48 short films from 1921 to 1923! Right in the middle of all that, in 1922 John Barrymore starred in this full-length feature appropriately called "Sherlock Holmes!"

 

In 1932, Arthur Wontner took over the lead role in "The Sign Of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case!"

But even though "The Sign Of Four" was Sherlock's greatest case, they had no plans to stop there! Not at all, Sherlock was just getting warmed up! In 1939, the amazing Basil Rathbone took on the role of Sherlock in "The Hound Of The Baskervilles," and continued as Sherlock for the next seven years in an awesome run of titles!

As much as I like all the others, Basil Rathbone will always be my favourite Sherlock Holmes! Just like Sean Connery as James Bond, Basil Rathbone IS Sherlock Holmes, and as a bonus, the Basil years also had the coolest posters! End of discussion! This one was from the 1939 film, "The Adventures Of Sherlock Homes!"

In 1942 it was "Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon!" All these Basil Rathbone versions also have the fantastic Nigel Bruce as the never to be underestimated Dr. Watson!

Still another one from 1942 is "Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror!" Basil and Nigel continue to kick arse all over the place!

The excitement refused to stop! In 1944 Basil was back with the great title, "The Scarlet Claw!"

I love this poster! Also from 1944, Sherlock Holmes in "The Spider Woman!"

Here's the movie that got my Sherlock up again! From 1945, "The Woman In Green," with the wicked Hillary Brooke as every hypnotist's dream come true!

The last film in this killer run of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes films was called "Dressed To Kill," and was released in 1946!

Through the 50's and 60's Sherlock was on the television countless times played by guys with names like Alan Wheatley, Ronald Howard, and Erich Schellow, but there were only like three movies made, "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" in 1959 starring Peter Cushing in the lead role, "Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace" in 1962 starring Christopher Lee as Sherlock, and this movie, "A Study In Terror," in 1965 starring John Neville as Sherlock! I like this movie, but you can tell by the poster that in a pop culture Batman world, influences are starting to change the way that Sherlock is perceived!

By the 1970's, it became time to have some fun with Sherlock in earnest, and we ended up with titles like this 1970 Billy Wilder film "The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes" with Robert Stephens in the lead role!

Then in 1975, Gene Wilder took Sherlock to the dark side in "The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother,"(And it's not Mycroft!) with Douglas (The Brides Of Fu Manchu, The Vengeance Of Fu Manchu) Wilmer as Sherlock!

In the 80's and 90's Sherlock got serious again, with another completely different gang taking on his personality on TV and the big screen like, (Get Ready!) Geoffrey Whitehead, Vasili Livanov, Tom Baker, Guy Henry, Peter O'Toole, Roger Ostime, Larry Moss, and Jeremy Brett, and those are just the guys with multiple performances! in the 2000's Robert Downey Jr. breathed a new life into the role!

Ross K.Foad also had a nice run as Sherlock too, but these days it's the enigmatic Benedict Cumberbatch who dominates the minds of Sherlock fans all over the world! It cracks me up that Benedict's name sounds like a villain  from a "Batman TV show!" Without the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, modern society would be deprived of two of it's favourite colloquialisms, "No Shit Sherlock," and "What Up Holmes?" I have no doubt that the name of Sherlock Holmes will continue to entertain society for at least another 100 years!