I PIANETI CONTRO DI NOI - Armando Trovajoli - "Planets Against Us" (1962)

What better to follow Black Friday with than Cyborg Saturday! Welcome to the paranoia wing of The Dungeon, and tonight's super special space opera, "I Pianeti Contro Di Noi!" The little bit of Spacey Music you'll hear was created by Maestro Armando (Werewolf In A Girl's Dormitory, How Funny Can Sex Be?) Trovajoli, a master of many styles with over 200 musical credits in a magnificent career that just ended last year!

In English, this film has been known as "Planets Around Us," "The Man With The Yellow Eyes," "The Monster With The Green Eyes," "Hands Of A Killer," and the version I sought out and finally found, "Planets Against Us!"

No, it's not Buddy Holly, it's a man called Bronco as played by Michel ("Succubus," "Run, Psycho, Run," "Sadist Erotica," "Kiss Me, Monster") Lemoine, and his perfectly coiffed 1960's jelly roll!

Unfortunately, he did have the same fate as Buddy Holly! Flying high in April, shot down by a flying saucer in May!

Actually, he wasn't Bronco yet! Before he died, he was the son of a famous scientist! Now, there's a guy who looks just like him named Bronco, who always seems to be around every time there's some kind of major scientific mishap or rocket launching disaster! Nothing to worry about, the Feds are all over this!

An artiste by the name of Audrey Bradbury captures a pretty good likeness of Mr. Bronco, but he doesn't like it, because he didn't give her permission! This combination act of kindness and mystery make Audrey fall head over heels in love with Bronco, although he is unable to reciprocate!!! Audrey is played by Jany (79 A.D., FX18) Clair!

Of course, to find a good lookin ' dude like Bronco, you have to interrogate all the whores in town! And yes, the gal in the middle that looks like somebody's Grandma is a hooker too!

Back at Audrey's studio, Bronco finds a painting of somebody he'd really like to meet, the daughter of a scientist working on a special gas that his people would like to get their mitts on!

It might not look real high-tech, but this camera was capable of doing things back in 1963, that we still can't do today!

Not only does the camera wirelessly transmit the video back to the scientists big screen TV, they're able to somehow miraculously get footage of the people in the car while they're driving it! Pretty wild, huh, especially since the guy with the camera is not laying on the hood!

Audrey tries to put the make on Bronco, but when he touches her, this is what happens to her!

After all the special effects, I guess they didn't have enough money in the budget to buy an iron, so somebody could get the wrinkles out of this guy's lab coat!

After obtaining an X-Ray of Bronco, the Earth Geniuses conclude that he's a robot!

That's when we finally get to see what's going on! Bronco is just one of many robots that the aliens have made, all using the same body mold! That's how he was able to be in so many places at the same time!! That's why he's so cold hearted!

Here's a couple of good shots of the mold machine, and the cyborg factory in action!

One of the special agents finally catches up to Bronco and zaps him with some kind of ray gun before having the life burned out of him! Bronco is damaged, but manages to return to the mothership!

In The End, it all comes down to one thing, it's all your fault!! Mind the man's words, they're out there, and they're going to get you! Have a nice day!!

NEUTRON CONTRA EL DOCTOR CARONTE / Estudios América - 1963

It's time for another trip to Mexico for the third in a series of five flicks starring Wolf Ruvinskis as our man in the black mask, Neutron! Wolf scored 122 acting credits from 1945 to 1999, he died in 1999 at age 78. A few other movies he appeared in are THE BODY SNATCHER, TIGERS OF THE RING, SANTO vs. THE INVASION OF THE MARTIANS, one episode of I SPY and the Mexican version of ISLAND OF LOST SOULS.

Eegah!! sent over a nice sound clip for our approval, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over by our atom powered neutron bomb, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's a taste of... NEUTRON CONTRA EL DOCTOR CARONTE!

Wolf plays Carlos Marquez, he's always with his two other detective pals as they fight against the forces of evil in Mexico. They are here with their crime fighting friend, Professor Thomas, to discuss the reappearance of their nemesis, the dreaded Doctor Caronte! Remember, Caronte has a small army of menacing Death Robots.

Wouldn't you know it, Carlos and his pals are all in love with their singer gal pal, Nora. You can hear the music being played here in the sound clip.

A pack of crooks show up at the professor's lab to steal papers of his experiments, but, Neutron foils their plan by popping in on them!

Here's a very cool photo of the crooks' office, they work for their fat-cat boss man.

Our little pal, Nick, tends Doctor Carontes' Death Robots for him. Nick, who's in all three of the Caronte flicks, gets no credit at all for any of them!

I like this still at the gym, great composition!

And, here's a good look at our hero in his black mask complete with three lightning bolts!

So cute, Caronte reads to Nick from his science book while Nick quietly rests his as he listens.

Caronte also fills him in on all his evil plans to take over the world. This series was the model for our Dungeon movie, SILVER ANGEL vs. THE DEATH ZOMBIES!

Now it's time for Nora to do her show at the club. Hey, she's A-Okay, if you didn't know!

Another shot I like, reminds me of when I was a kid, things have really changed!

Little Nick kidnaps Nora in his taxi cab and takes her to Doctor Caronte's hideaway.

Whoa, it looks like Caronte is a freakin' Nazi after all!

In a twist, the Death Robots go after Professor Thomas and the truth is revealed, Professor Thomas is none other than Doctor Caronte himself!!

Show up tomorrow when we'll feature our last post for November 2014!!

HOOTENANNY HOOT - The Gateway Trio - "Puttin' On The Style" (1963)

Well,  nothing quite says Thanksgiving  and the movies like some good ole fashioned folk music, so on this eve of tasty turkeys, go ahead and fetch yer banjos and mandolins, and let's get the party jumpin' with a down home "Hootenanny Hoot!"

Lucky for ya'll, this ain't no run of the mill hootenanny, this is a MAMMOTH HOOTENANNY, and then some too! Yessireebob!!

 Well, first off, there's some kind of riot going on led by Peter (The Crawling Hand, Shock Corridor) Breck, just like Kevin McCarthy in................

..........."Invasion Of The Body Snatchers!"

But it's all because everybody is that excited about the big "Mammoth Hootenanny" and one of the unforgettable featured acts, The Gateway Trio! I know it's hard to perceive by today's standards, but in 1963, folk music was a flame burning bright! This movie also featured Judy Henske, The Brothers Four, Sheb Wooley, Joe and Eddie, and George Hamilton IV.

Folk music with a whole "West Side Story" style choreographed dance routine, American Pop Culture was on the prowl for something new and different!

And then there were all the crossover acts from the blues and country scenes, like the infamous man in black, Johnny Cash! Just how does any of this add up?

 Over the years, the Hootenanny phenomena has conquered all elements of our culture, like this bitchin'  Bally Hootenanny pinball machine also from 1963!

Mr. Gasser and The Weirdos' album "Hot Rod Hootenanny" featuring Glen Campbell, Leon Russell and Jimmie Haskell, and also appeared out of the blue in 1963! The whole Hootenanny scene was on fire, and a variety act TV show called "Hootenanny" became extremely popular from April of 1963 until September of 1964 before the whole folk scene started to peter out!

These days if you do a search for the word 'Hoot' you'll discover everything you ever wanted to know about the Korean Pop group 'Girl's Generation or...................

...............Everything you never ever wanted to know about the Australian TV kid's show 'Giggle and Hoot!'

Hootenanny was fading fast by 1965, but years later when they released "Once Upon A Coffee House" on DVD, they tried one more time to cash in on the Hoot fad, and renamed this movie "Hootenanny A Go-Go!" Since '65, wild and crazy people have wracked up all these titles for TV and the movies: Acapulco A Go-Gó, She Devils A Go-Go, Caged Lesbos A Go-Go, Hollywood A Go-Go, Roadrunner A Go-Go, Psycho A Go-Go, Winter A Go-Go, Prison A Go-Go, and of course, Monster A Go-go!

In these later days, the Hootenanny concept has been transformed into a theme for Punk Trash-O-Billy concerts all over the country!

The Hootenanny refuses to die, and will now live on for eternity!

Meanwhile, back in September of 1964, the "Hootenanny" TV show quietly exited the air waves, and was replaced with the new hip teen sounds lead by a musical force coming on strong from the United Kingdom, and a new show called "Shindig!" Whereas the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Hootenanny as "a gathering at which folksingers entertain often with the audience joining in," a Shindig is a whole different story, and is defined as a social gathering with dancing, and/or, a usually large or lavish party!!" Now we're talking! Time to loosen those ties, guys!

"Shindig" came on hard and fast, and was one of the best things that aired in the evening on TV for young people! Time for Lawrence Welk to go find something wonderful somewhere else, and make room for music by The Beatles, The Who, The Byrds, Marvin Gaye, Manfred Mann, The Animals, The Zombies, The Yardbirds, The Tempatations, and so much more! The timeless Johnny Cash was one of the very few to make a successful transition from "Hootenanny" to "Shindig!"

Once something gets as big as "Shindig," there's always some novelty acts lurking in the wings! Super-Snooper and Blabber Mouse's "Monster Shindig" album was released in 1966 towards the end of the craze!

Along with Hootenannies, Shindigs are still alive and well today!!

In January of 1965," Shindig" was a little over halfway through it's run when, the all new and in colour "Hullabaloo" came on the scene on NBC while "Shindig" was still going on ABC! Merriam-Webster defines a hullabaloo as "a very noisy and confused situation, or a situation in which many people are upset and angry about something!" Indeed, "The times were a' changin'!"

This "Hullaballo" game wasn't just a game, it was an "Electric Teen Game," and it doesn't seem very angry or upset to me! Maybe it was a different story if you lost!

As far as I know, Johnny Cash never appeared on "Hullabaloo," but just a few years later, he would have his own prime time variety show called "The Johnny Cash Show," featuring the talents of people like Eric Clapton and Carl Perkins! And as you can well see, the term Hullabaloo has persevered all the way into the Simpsons years!

In 1965, "Hullabaloo" hit the height of redundancy when the English group named The Hullabaloos hit the charts with their bleach-blonde Buddy Holly soundin ' release, "The Hullaballoos On Hullabaloo!" I actually have this album! These four poor unfortunate dudes held the honor of the ugliest UK band until A Flock Of Seagulls came along! Hoot, Hoot!!!

 “There's a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there's a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.”
― Johnny Cash