WILD GUITAR / Fairway International Pictures - 1962

It's Musical Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We gots a cool lil' flick produced by Fairway International, who also brought you EEGAH! and THE SADIST. Unfortunately, they also produced the ultimate stink bomb... DEADWOOD '76!

Eegah!! sent us over a musical smathering of tunes from the movie for our listening enjoyment, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there by the lead curtain, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... WILD GUITAR!

Arch Hall, Jr. plays Bud Eagle, a country boy who gets a break in Hollywood and signs a music contract with what else, Fairway Records, run by savy businessman Mike McCauley, played by Arch Hall, Sr.

Mike bribes Bud with a new guitar (Fender Jazzmaster) to get him to sign, Ray Dennis Steckler directs and plays Mike's creepy weirdo assistant, Steak!

Just like these shots, one of my favorite lines from fifties rock 'n' roll is... "Nobody likes a square record!"

Nancy Czar plays Bud's girlfriend, Vickie, which is also a classic love tune by Arch Hall and The Archers. Nancy was an Olympic ice skater and she totally shows off in one scene at the ice rink. She worked background on a few Elvis movies but quit acting in 1970 and became a coach to the South Korean figure skating team!

Mike wants to break up Bud and Vickie, so, he has Steak bring in a showgirl to seduce Bud!

Robert Crumb, not the comic artist, plays has-been alcoholic Fairway Records artist, Don Proctor. Steak don't like him hanging around Mike's place, drinking his booze and running his mouth, so, pushes him down some stairs!

Bud gets kidnapped by a small gang of losers for a ransom, but, they end up working with him to even things up with Mike, who's been cooking the books in his own favor!

Steak delivers the ransom to the specified location, a garbage can! Steak pretends to disappear but hides behind a hedge to find out who the kidnappers are... Duh!

There's a showdown at the end when Bud's older brother shows up. Steak swings away but is the one who gets decked! Everything works out and Mike decides to go legit when confronted with his options.

And, we'll stop here with a happy WHERE THE ACTION IS type ending!

JACK THE GIANT KILLER - THE MUSICAL (1962)

Sometimes when you think it just can't get any weirder, all of a sudden it does, and just like going to dinner after a funeral, and everybody gets food poisoning, tonight's Super Duper Saturday Night Special is a number one candidate in the 'Who'd of Thunk?' Department, and to be honest with you, I still haven't quite figured it out, but it does exist, so here you go! Brought to you once again via "The Trash Palace" it's my honor to present to you "Jack The Giant Killer - The Musical!"

This was the original title card, and as you can well see, it was changed, so as not to be so austere, and to make the whole thing look a lot brighter and happier! If you would like to see Tabonga's review from a couple of months ago of the original "Jack The Giant Killer," you can find it right HERE!!!

So just what the F is "Jack The Giant Killer - The Musical?" Well, it's the same movie as the 1962 feature "Jack The Giant Killer," except with one difference, in a minimum of six key places, the dialogue and whatever original music there was, has been mixed in or replaced with real Broadway musical style songs by the producer Edward Small. Here, let me give you an example!

In the original movie, it's the Princess's birthday, and THIS is how the local denizens react!

BUT, in the musical version, The People Are Quite A Bit More Festive, much more on the scale of a Disney cartoon!

It's a great scene when Walter Burke as Garna comes flying into the room to tell Torin Thatcher as Pendragon that the monster has been defeated by the young farmer named Jack as you will hear in this short Audio Clip! Suddenly a great film seems almost stagnant when you compare that scene to.....

.......how it all goes down in the musical version with "We Have Failed, Master, We have Failed!"

There's so much more, but I can't do it all in one setting by any means, so I'll leave you with this little ditty from the final climactic fight scene between Jack and the dragon himself! Here's just a small taste of what it sounds like the regular super melodramatic way!!

And here's what the souped up version  sounds like with the Leprechaun cheering Jack on to victory with "C'mon Jack,You Can Do It"

Maybe if enough people ask I'll do a sequel someday that will include the theme song, the love song, and a number I call "The Spectacular Spectacle!" All in all, it's pretty much just the way Brian Horrorwitz described it to me, the original is a right fine film, but it just seems flat after you've seen and heard the musical version! I could think of a lot more movies that could use a treatment like this!!!

THE ANATOMIST / Associated-Rediffusion Television - 1956

It's Friday Fright with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon! What we gots is the English TV version of the infamous Burke and Hare (body snatchers) story. It focuses on the Dr. Knox character, the man who wants fresh corpses for his classes. It stars the great Alastair Sim as Dr. Knox, Diarmuid Kelly as Burke and Dungeon fave Michael Ripper as Hare...

Eegah!! sent over a nice lil' soundclip from the production, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button located there next to the atomic soda fountain, NOW, Rufus The Gnat! Here's our audio offering for... THE ANATOMIST!

Dr. Knox starts the program off with some insight into skulls, it happens to be one of the finest examples they've ever examined!

Dr. Knox teaches anatomy classes, thus, the title... THE ANATOMIST!

Burke and Hare are a pair of lowlife entrepreneurs out to make a few illegal bucks helping out local doctors with dead bodies to work on... Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

Dr. Knox is actually a loveable old kook at times!..

But, whenever the doc gets blunt with one of his students, or, they get dumped by their girl, they go running for the comfort of a busty barfly in the nearby pub.

Burke and Hare, up to their devious deeds as usual!

One of their sugardaddys cuts them off due to their incompetence...

So, they grab the easiest target available for some quick cash from Dr. Knox, if you catch my drift!

When it's discovered by students that the girl was murdered by the two creeps, well, all Hell breaks loose!

LA DONNA IL SESSO IL SUPERUOMO - "Fantabulous" (1967)

Tonight's special Pre-Turkey Day flick is brought to you once again courtesy of Brian Horrorwitz over at the Trash Palace. I do hope that's where you plan on spending all that Black Friday dinero, cause you're damn sure to get more bang for your buck! This 1967 Italian film is titled "La Donna Il Sesso Il Superuomo," or roughly translated, "The Woman, Sex, and Superman!"

But the real title in English is "FANTABULOUS!" That's a hybrid combination of fantastic and fabulous, and the insane theme song of the same name is by some krazy kat named Alessandro Brugnolini who as far as I can tell was a jazz composer and saxophonist. I have no idea who is doing the whacked out vocals! Just dig it!!

It's pretty easy to spot the bad guys, they all wear sunglasses at night!!!

The head cheese on the evil side is Adolfo Celi as Karl Maria van Beethoven! I think he's got a chip on his shoulder because his Mom gave him a girl's middle name! Always stirring up trouble, Adolfo was Largo in "Thunderball," and  Ralph Valmont in "Danger: Diabolik!" Adolfo checked out in 1986!

There's a couple of things you need to know about "Fantabulous"  There is a lot of dialogue, which leaves me out some, since it's all in Italian, and when they feel like it, they throw in crazy collages of super heroes and cartoon imagery! They also use a lot of stock footage to flesh out the whole thing!

PTUNG!? An arrow through the head AND a can of beans!!

Can't go wrong with girls and guns!

And indeed this film contains a "Fantabulous" bevy of beauties!

So, what's it all about Ralphie?? Richard Harrison is some poor schmuck named Richard Werner! In the beginning of the movie, after he finishes making love to his girlfriend Judi West as Deborah Sandor, he gets scooped up by all those guys in the sunglasses, and taken off to this place where he is held captive, but he doesn't know why! After a couple of days he tries to escape and ends up in this room full of weird balloons, that he uses to float to safety, so he thinks! But as it turns out, it was just a set up to see how tricky and free form thinking he was, so they could tell whether he was the right guy chosen to be turned into Fantabulous, the Superman!

So they implant a special capsule into his head that does indeed turn him into a Superman! After not being able to land any lead roles in America, in 1961 Richard went to Italy to be in "The Invincible Gladiator!" It was all Sword and Sandal, and spaghetti westerns for almost 20 years after that, and in the 1980's Richard Harrison was in at least 20 movies that had the word ninja in the title!

They can't freeze him!!

And they can't burn him, he is truly indestructible!!!

Here's what one guy looked like who didn't pass the test!!!

Next, they had to strengthen his mind and his will power!! So they test him to see if he has got the balls to machine down these innocent civilians standing on the other side of some plexiglass!

Time for more Pop cartoon imagery, and at one point they even use some uncredited music from the first Mother's of Invention album, and the song, "Help, I'm A Rock!"

Like I said, it's very wordy, and my Italian is terrible at best, but there are Russians and Americans and other Euro military characters melded into the mess, and I'm pretty sure Mr. van Beethoven has his sights set on world domination in some form!

When Fantabulous sees himself as a doll on TV, it brings him back to reality and his former self a bit, and he takes off lickity split to find his girlfriend again!

After another rousing sex session (Deborah has a big sign above her bed that says "I Like Sex!") and some questionable 60's fashion, Fantabulous returns to van Beethoven!

Torn between worlds, Fantabulous is forced to make the final decision as to where his loyalty lies, the boss or the bed, and the musicians just keep on playing the same song over and over but in different variations! If there was ever a truly quintessential WTF?! movie, this one is without a doubt a top contender!!!!!