THE SPY IN THE GREEN HAT - "The Concrete Overcoat Affair Redux" (1967)

This week's Saturday Night Special is the "Man From U.N.C.L.E." movie called "The Spy In The Green Hat" from 1967, that was originally two episodes from season three of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." TV series called "The Concrete Overcoat Affair" Parts One and Two that aired the previous year!

"The Spy In The Green Hat" is a nice distraction from the current events of the day! It's silly, but not stupid, it's sexy, but not dirty, and it's got a stellar cast and a swinging soundtrack by Nelson Riddle! The theme song was written by Jerry Goldsmith!

What else can you ask for?

"The Spy In The Green Hat" starts off with our heroes Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo, and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin in pursuit of a Nazi scientist with an evil plan to turn Greenland into Freshland, and the Northern hemisphere into a frozen wasteland!

They don't get too far!

The always amazing Leo G. Carroll reprises his role as Alexander Waverly, the man in charge of  U.N.C.L.E.

Just in case you don't know, U.N.C.L.E. is an acroynm for "United Network Command for Law and Enforcement!"

Jack Palance is absolutely charismatic as the top bad dog Louis Strago. Here he's joined by Ludwig Donath as Dr. Heinrich von Kronen. Ludwig Donath was also in "The Twilight Zone" episode titled "He's Alive."

I thought Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame was excellent as Miss Diketon!

She's gorgeous, smart yet dingy, sexy, and very dangerous!

There are actually a couple of stories going on here. While in Sicily working on this case, Solo gets caught up in an Italian family affair. He needed to hide, so he hid under the bed in a young lady's room. When Strago's men find him, they think he's the wrong guy, so they let him go, but now he's in big trouble, because this incident will ruin the girl's reputation! That's when her Uncles, The Stiletto Brothers get brought into the story!

Hey, this doesn't look like something that should be on TV in 1967! 

The dishonored gal with the beautiful back is Letícia (The Evil Eye) Román as Pia Monter!

Talk about a shotgun wedding! 

Solo is about to get hitched, but lucky for him the ceremony gets broken up, and he can get back to the States!

The always fabulous Joan Blondell has a very small part as the wife of one the Stilletto Brothers named Fingers, and they do an homage to James Cagney in "White Heat!"

Joan acted from 1930 to 1981 and she was in "The Twilight Zone" episode titled "What's In The Box?"

Almost every scene that Jack Palance is in is a crack up! He's freakin' hilarious!

You can't go wrong with some of Hollywood's finest character actors in bit roles! Here's Elijah Cook, as Stilletto henchman Arnold! Elisha Cook Jr. might have just been on the set in more cool movies than anybody, like "The Killing," "House On Haunted Jill," Black Zoo," "Blacula," "Voodoo Island," "Hellzapoppin'," "The Maltese Falcon," "The Haunted Palace," and "Messiah Of Evil," just to name a few!

Another member of the gang is another Dungeon fave, and former professional boxer, Slapsy Maxie Rossenbloom as Crunch Battaglia!

Solo is caught by the Stilletto Brothers and another wedding ceremony is planned for him and Pia, this time at the klassy Kit Kat Klub!

Janet Leigh seems like she must have been a good sport.......

....And she looks great in electric blue!

Finally, the head of T.H.R.U.S.H., the man in the green hat shows up!

Why this movie is called "The Spy In The Green Hat," I'll never know. "The Man In The Green Hat" sounds so much better, and is actually what he's called in the movie!

Will Kuluva has the distinction of being in two of "The Twilight Zone" episodes, "The Mirror," and "The New Exhibit!"

They throw a party for the boss, and he seems much more interested in drinking and dancing than he does in taking over the world!

There's a funny scene toward the end when the T.H.R.U.S.H. chief asks an uncomfortable Illya, who is pretending to be one of Strago's men, for a tour!

When it's all over, Solo asks Illya how he's doing, and he says "I'm pooped!"

KILLER DILLER - "Kickeroonie" (1948)

 I've got a real killer Saturday Night Special for you this week!

It's an "All-American" film from 1948!

 "Killer Diller" is actually the most exciting film I'm seen lately, and right up there with "Hellzapoppin" in the sheer entertainment category!

 "Killer Diller" is an amazing musical variety show wrapped around a small unnecessary story line to try and make it cohesive! I'm not going to explain the short story line, but instead I'll just tell you that it was written by Hal Seeger, who went on to produce and direct hundreds of cartoons starring characters like Milton the Monster, Batfink, etc.

It's all happening at The Lincoln Theater in Los Angeles. The Lincoln was built in 1926, and was sometimes referred to as the "West Coast Apollo" because it featured popular African-American acts, many of whom also played at The Apollo in Harlem.

 Andy Kirk and his Orchestra are the house band on this fine night!

The first performance is by Andy's Orchestra and is called "Gator Serenade." It features saxophone solos by two killer players, Hank Abrams playing tenor sax on the left, and Shirley Green playing alto sax on the right.

"Gator Serenade" seriously rocks, and Hank Abrams delivers an awesome solo, so much, that he just doesn't want to quit!

When it's Shirley Greene's time to solo, Hank gets so excited that he tries three or four times to get involved again and Andy Kirk has to run him off each time. It's really quite funny!

I just love this shot of the Andy Kirk horn section!

Next up, Beverlee White serves up a couple of  tastee dishes, "It Ain't Nobody's Business What I Do," and "I Don't Want To Get Married."

Then it's "Two tons of Melody and Mirth" with Patterson and Jackson with "If I Didn't Care,"  "I Believe," and "Ain't Misbvehavin.'" Don't be fooled by these guys girth, because they've got some moves!

 A very young Moms Mabley was known as Jackie Mabley back then.

The phenomenal James and Steve Clark, performing as the tap dancing Clark Brothers are nothing but fun to watch. This was their first recorded performance, and they went to to be on all kinds of TV shows, like The Ed Sullivan's.

Most people only know Nat King Cole as being a soulful crooner, but he was a very talented jazz pianist. The other two members of the King Cole Trio are guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince. It's cool that Nat sits side saddle when he plays. The Trio performs three songs, "Breezy and the Bass," "Now He Tells Me," and  "Ooh, Kickeroonie." There's another funny sequence in this set when Nat and Wesley and playing notes together like crazy, and Nat stops, but Wesley just keeps on going.

This is a high energy show, and it doesn't stop here. The Congaroos do a couple of numbers where I'm not sure how nobody gets hurt. These folks are crazy, slinging each other around to a point that I can't even describe! This is a truly Mind boggling performance, it wore me out just watching so bad that I had to take a nap afterwards!

And as the man says himself, you can't have a show like this without some beautiful dancing girls, and they are lovely, no doubt

The Lincoln sat 2,100 people, and I'll tell you what, this crowd sure got their money's worth!

Today, the Lincoln Theater is the home of Iglesia de Jesucristo Ministerios Juda, a Spanish-speaking church.

Here's a Killer Diller early X-Mas present for you, Enjoy!

THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL - "Gorilla Suit Blues" (1941)

If you have one nostalgic bone in your body, you've got to miss the good olde 'Gorilla Suit' days of yesteryear! I know I do! I waited a long time to see tonight's feature film, because "The Monster And The Girl" is a hard little movie to hunt down, but it's worth the effort!

"The Monster And The Girl" is not as lively as "The Monster And The Stripper," but then how could it be, but it's a good little film.  This is almost the most basic story line you could ever imagine, but just like three chord rock songs, simplicity can be perfection if properly applied!

The 'Girl' in the title is the enchanting Ellen Drew as Susan the bad penny Webster! Ellen bantered around Hollywood for a couple of years in the 30's doing uncredited or bit parts sometimes using the name Terry Ray in roles such as secretaries, switchboard operators, and party guests, but in 1941 she was in "The Mad Doctor" with Basil Rathbone and then in 1945 she co-starred with Boris Karloff in "Isle Of The Dead!"

This is the story of a small town brother and a sister who really have a close relationship, maybe too close! Scott Webster is the post office working, organ playing in the church brother as played by Phillip Terry of "The Leech Woman" fame!

But Susan is tired of small town life, and leaves her brother behind to move to the big city, where she almost immediately falls in love with a scumbag con man!

Said scumbag con man is Robert Paige as the charming Larry Reed! Robert's 87 credits include "Hellzapoppin,'" "Abbott And Costello Go To Mars," and "Son Of Dracula!"

Susan marries Larry, and wakes up the next morning and this guy is in her room! So, just what the Hell is going on here? Her husband has disappeared and Susan needs to pay for the wedding party and the room, and the only way she can do that is to work for these mobsters entertaining men! This guy is Giuseppe Maria Spurrin-Calleja, ask consummate bad guy, Joseph (Johnny Cool) Calleia!

Susan breathes the words, "WTF?"  I think most men would agree, women always look beautiful when their hair is not perfectly coiffed!

Cut! Back to the first picture!  Where'd the story go? Scott Webster is in court for a murder he was framed for, when he was trying to find Larry Reed! His sister Susan is in court testifying, and telling the whole back story, but the court doesn't believe it, and Scott is sentenced to death..........

.........But he is given one last option! He can give his brain to science!! Enter the always great George Zucco as the mad scientist with a plan to transplant a man's brain into a gorilla for the good of mankind!

If this gorilla looks like he has a little more character than your run of the mill simian, it's because it's makeup artiste Charles Gemora inside that skin! Besides his many appearances inside a gorilla suit, Charles was also the Martian in "The War Of The Worlds," AND the alien in "I Married A Monster From Outer Space!"

I'm thinking that the headline "Mangle Murderer Strikes Again" to this day has never been used again! The monster is on the loose, and George Zucco doesn't seem to notice or care at all!

The last movie we tried to make was titled "Voodoo Club!" We only got about 25% done when the whole thing imploded, but we were planning on using a gorilla in some of the final scenes, so I started looking into costs of gorilla suits, and this is what I found out!

On the left is a gorilla suit you can buy for about $100.00, and the gorilla suit like the one on your right is what you can rent for a week for about a thousand bucks!

The gorilla busts out seeking revenge, and reeking havoc on the mobsters that besmirched his sister, and got his human brain put inside a gorilla's skull! In this scene, this one hoodlum is feeling a little paranoid after a couple of his buddies have been knocked off, and he turns the radio on and up loud, and the swinging music by the prolific Gerard (Dr. Cyclops) Carbonara kicks in. This guy was so far down that after the gorilla crushes him, one of his mobster buddies comes in an shoots him too!

Hard to believe by today's standards, but at one time not that long ago, gorillas were just as popular as vampires and werewolves!

Here are some classic comic covers to illustrate how popular gorillas were in the 40's, 50's, and 60's

Well, just like the rest of the Bozos in the gang, Larry Reed gets what's coming to him too!

Susan's a little slow, but by the time it's over, she figures out that it's her brother inside that great big ape's head! To put an exclamation point on the whole subject, here's a catchy little ditty from a musical pal of ours!
          
                             Glen Armstrong - "Gorilla Suit Blues"