ALTERED STATES / Warner Bros. - 1980

Here's we go again, this time we gots a pretty wild flick all about a Harvard scientist who conducts experiments on himself with a hallucinatory drug and an isolation chamber that may be causing him to regress genetically! Stars William Hurt and Blair Brown.

The movie starts off with our scientist, Eddie Jessup, conducting experiments on himself in a water filled isolation chamber...

He's having a good time in one of his hallucinations, everything's fine with the world.

Well, until this multi-eyed ram shows up and ends up slaughtering it for a sacrifice.

Eddie and friends decides to go to Mexico to score some hallucinatory drugs in order to expand his mind even further, the isolation chamber just isn't enough juice.

Speaking of juice, Eddie gets his hand cut and his blood drips into the special mixture of secret psychedelic brew. So, grab a spoon and have a dose!

Oh, great, the artwork on the wall just came to life!

Then, Eddie and his girlfriend turn to dust and the wind blows them all away!... Whoa!!

Even worse, he gets to check in on all the sinners in Hell... This segment is amazing, a top notch depiction of that hot spot we all want to avoid like... HELL!

Eddie eventually transforms into a freakin' spear chucking throwback and either kills or scares everbloody he comes in contact with!

Then, the climax has him and his girlfriend changing into primal beings fighting each other!

Eddie looks like shit here, but, let me assure you, everything turns out fine and the curse is finally lifted! Tune in tomorrow when we'll be back with another cool post, jus' fer ya'll...

POLICE SQUAD - Season One, Episode 01 - "A Substantial GIft" (1982)

Besides boxing and "Night Flight," I didn't watch a lot of TV back in 1982, I had way cooler things to do, like putting the pieces of my life back together, so I'm not really sure if I ever saw "Police Squad" the first time around!  Too bad, it's so dumb, I'm sure I would have loved each and every episode!

The very first episode of "Police Squad" was titled "A Substantial Gift" and substantial it is, in the wacky department!
Here's less than a minute of the theme song by the brilliant composer Ira Newborn. The narrator says that the title of the episode is "A Broken Promise!"

Then immediately after Lorne Greene is announced as the special guest star, he's thrown out of a car as a stabbing victim, and it just keeps on going from there!

 Can't get much better than that! Two of my favourite words, Bijou, and Acme in one show; all it would take to make it a perfect game would be Moxie, and Bitsko!

Kathryn Leigh Scott is Sally, a gal with some orthodontist bills to pay, so she's kind of desperate!

Kathryn was Maggie Evans on 310 episodes of "Dark Shadows" from 1966 to 1970, and is still working today!!

I thought this was Pete Rose, but it's actually Russell Shannon as the innocent, but twisted victim Ralph Twice! His name sets off a series of gags, like "Did you shoot Twice? No, I only shot him once!" etc.

Time for our hero Leslie Nielsen as Detective Frank Drebin to get to work!

Of course Leslie will go on after this to make the "Naked Gun" movies, but I'll always remember him the most for his role as Commander Adams in "Forbidden Planet," the best Sci-Fi movie ever made!

You can tell by the chalk lines how serious this is going to be!

The investigation brings Frank and his partner Ed as played by Alan North to a part of town known as 'Little Italy!'

Tiny Ron is Al, the seven foot man that they never fit in the shot!

A handful of guys get killed as they try to piece together the crime scene using real bullets!
It's not all about wordplay, although there is a lot of that, it's more of a "natural surrealism!"
A mind flip-flop!

There's the all-night wicker store!

And the Orthodontist's office with it's array of tortured rich teens!

Cheaper than Jerry Warren, but yet more effective!!

The elevator scene is very odd!

Sally's true hair colour and identity is revealed, almost, kind of, not really!

The big ending is a shootout between Frank and Sally! They do big closeups, and then the camera backs out, and you see how ridiculously close they are to each other! Frank breaks out the bullhorn to make it even sillier!

"Police Squad" owes a lot to The Firesign Theater in my opinion (As do a whole lot of other people!) If you can't see Nick Danger written all over this thing, you just might need a third eye!

It's short, in color, and a kick in the head from start to finish! There's only six 30 minute episodes, so you could easily binge out the whole show in the morning, and then spend the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what the Hell happened to your life!! You can find each and every one of them right here for free! As crappy as a lot of the world is today, that is a substantial gift!

DISNEYLAND / Tomorrowland: "Man And The Moon" - 1955

Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, and, it wasn't long before me and my cousins were visiting the most amazing place on Earth for kids! Tomorrowland was my favorite...

This was the second Tomorrowland episode and is about the Moon. We start with a little history lesson through the ages concerning that bright object in the heavens. The artwork is just great!

Here, the Moon King tells visiting Earthlings to go the Hell back home!

With the invention of the telescope, man was able to check out some of the Moon's features.

Some people saw weird hills and rocks, some saw strange creatures roaming the countryside.

This poor guy simply has a touch of Moon Madness! A fun way to express the illness.

Then, Wernher von Braun steps in to explain how the space station will be built in space and its function once built.

This is the kind of artwork that captivated me back then, loved those blues and reds.

So, the supply capsule is unloaded, it's full of space station parts.

Now, it's time for an exploratory trip around the Moon, starting from the newly built space station. The Commander is none other than Frank (THE ATOMIC BRAIN and much more) Gerstle!

We're in for a thrilling trip around the Moon. I love those large craters with long shadows. I swear, I actually wanted to live there for the atmosphere!

Okay, this is really wild, when they are surveying the dark side of the Moon with flares, they come across these weird carvings in the surface, suggesting that there's alien life there!!!

Oh well, time to head back to the space station to end the mission.

Hey, Tabonga!.. Could you please turn the still right side up?!!

You ninnies, you're freakin' in space, so, shaddup!

What struck me about this segment is that it looks as good as 2001, A SPACE ODYSSEY in most cases, 13 years before the ground breaking special effects! Be back Wednesday for more from... The Dungeon!