THE ANNIVERSARY - "She's Got Bette Davis Eye" (1968)

Just when you get to the point where you think you've seen every weird movie made in the last 80 years, something like this pops up out of nowhere. Welcome back to The Dungeon Saturday Night Special! Bang bang, shoot shoot!

"The Annniversary" was written by the Hammermeister Jimmy Sangster, and is based on a popular play of the time that was written by Bill MacIlwraith!

Here she is, the star of the show, Bette Davis as the mean and deplorably horrible rich bitch named Mrs. Taggart! Every year on this day, Mrs.Taggart gathers her three dysfunctional sons and their families together for the anniversary of her and her late husband's marriage! 

Here's the core of the cast all in one nice shot together. Starting on the left is James (Privilege) Cossins as the cross-dressing Henry Taggart, Jack (For Your Eyes Only) Hedley as Terry Taggart, Sheila (But Seriously, It's Sheila Hancock) Hancock as Terry's wife Karen Taggart, Elaine (Casino Royale) Taylor as Shirley Blair, and Shirley's fiancee Tom Taggart as played by Christian (To Sir, With Love) Roberts!

"The Anniversary" is Bette Davis! There's no better way to describe it!

Haven't had a lot of chances to show you a vintage Vauxhall. Still in business, popular Vauxhall models of today include the Mokka X, the Vivaro, the Movano, and the New Grandland X.

Bette plays up the eye patch the whole way, and at times she reverts to being Captain Bligh or Long John Silver no doubt!

Mrs. Taggart asks her soon to be daughter-in-law Shirley to move a little further away because she detests the smell of body odor!

If Gross, Despicable, and Obnoxious were signs of the zodiac, Mrs. Taggart would  have been born in all those houses!

Time to drag the whole proceeding down to the club!

I'm not often speechless, but this film doesn't require much further conversation! These stills speak for themselves!  It's all about obsession!

Bette/Mrs. Taggart is the Queen!!!

And everybody else knows she's full of bullshit!

AARRGGHH!!"

Meanwhile, Henry's out stealing lady's undergarments! Well, not exactly stealing, he takes them off the clothesline, and pins up money in their place!

Somebody calls the cops on Henry, and they find the undies in his car, but he had borrowed his brother Terry's car, and Mrs. Taggart tries to explain to Terry, that it's better for him to take the rap, because he will only have one strike and it will never happen again, but if Henry gets arrested, the next time will be two strikes and they'll take him away for good! Terry is not happy with this concept!

There's not a chance in Hell this is going to happen!

Wherever you are or whatever you do, Bette wishes you "Happy Anniversary!"

The opening segment of "The Anniversary" has The New Vaudeville Band playing a nice version of "The Anniversary Song" or "Waves of the Danube." 

A couple of years earlier The New Vaudeville Band had a killer novelty tune #1 hit with "Winchester Cathedral." So whatever happened to novelty songs? I grew up with "The Purple People Eater," and "The Witch Doctor," and "The Monster Mash," and now there's...........? Oh, that's right, there's no more real radio any more either.......except in the ozone!

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: The Runaway Robot - Season 1 Episode 17 - 1953

Here's a classic episode from the great TV series that all us kids watched the Hell out of back in the fifties. The story's about the inventor of a robot who's kidnapped by burglars that intend to use his robot for robberies. Meanwhile, the police are looking for the inventor, they believe he's responsible for the crimes, and Clark and his pals are out to clear his name.

Besides the gang, this episode features two actors we always enjoy seeing. First is Russell (IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, THE SPACE CHILDREN) Johnson as Chopper and Robert (THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, NEEDFUL THINGS) Easton as Marvin, the inventor's assistant.

It all starts with a robbery at a jewelry store, from out of nowhere a robot enters scene and chases the robbers away.

Professor Hinkle is out testing his new robot, but the damn thing goes haywire!..

It's stepping on the jewelry and then is seemingly ready to stomp on the head of the owner. The Professor runs over and pushes the off button before any damage is done.

The police throw the Professor in a jail cell, thinking he was behind the robbery. But Clark and the gang show up and get their friend released.

In the meantime though, Chopper's men have gone back to the shop and taken the robot to their hideout. They have figured out that they can use the hunk of metal to do the robberies for them... What else?

Jimmy's keeping an eye on the Professor, but when the phone rings, the Professor gets a call from Chopper to meet him at the hideout. The Professor uses some sleeping gas on Jimmy and leaves to go see his robot.

He's thrown into a small room with the robot to keep him from causing any trouble. The Professor opens a small panel on the back of the robot and calls his assistant on a special radio receiver...

Here's Marvin, he's a little slow but gets the message to contact someone at the Daily Planet.

Of course, Lois takes the call and shows up at the hideout by herself. She screams her head off and Rocco grabs his handy hammer to shut her up!.. Seriously, WTF!! That's pretty damn gruesome for a kid to see, jeez!

Then, there's this shot of our hero flying through the air... Check it out! Side shots had George laying on his stomach on a board, he looks like he has skinny little legs and a flat, square chest, funny as Hell.

The Professor has his robot steal a pile of money out of a vault for Chopper, but then, on the way back to the hideout, he has the thing set off some fire alarms to distract the crooks.

Mousey sics the robot on Lois, who keeps screaming, but Superman shows up to prevent the metal menace from its task!

The robot swings away at Supe and rattles itself into pieces, bringing this wild episode to a happy conclusion.

And, we get a laff at the end when Inspector Henderson bends over and gets a tail full o' fire! Hey you!, Yeah, you, check in tomorrow when Eegah!! tries to give us something special for a Saturday, here, at The Dungeon...

LOVING VINCENT - "Awe-Inspiring" (2017)

Tonight's mid-week culture injection is a 2017 Polish film made called "Loving Vincent!" It might just be the most beautiful movie I've ever seen that wasn't boring!

I seriously had no intentions of doing this, but because of a series of events, it just became destiny. We were going to see this movie last Friday at the local Fox Theatre, a classic old downtown venue! It was the first in a new film series they were having!

The movie was supposed to start at 7:30, so after downing a couple of Margaritas, we showed up at the movie house at 7:00, and snagged some nice seats in the front row of the balcony! They didn't start the show until 8:00 because they said there were still people in line. After an introduction, they started the show, but the DVD wouldn't play. It was pixelating, and breaking up, and starting over, so after about 10 minutes of that they said they would try and reboot the machine. 30 minutes later we were headed for the exit. Sadly, they never did get it to play, and gave the money back to whoever wanted it! They have now got their computer fixed and are going to try it again next month.

When we got back home, I looked on the internet and found out that the movie streamed on Amazon for $3.99, so we did some Vincent bingeing yesterday evening, a double feature of this and the Kirk Douglas film from 1956 called "Lust For Life." "Lust For Life" was a little more difficult to watch after watching "Loving Vincent," but I thought Kirk made a pretty decent Vincent! (Good name for a rock band, "Decent Vincent," and I don't think it's ever been used) I'll sell it for five bucks!

The basic premise is that about a year after Vincent's death, "The Man In The Yellow Jacket," Armand Roulin, has been deployed by his postmaster Father to deliver one last letter from Vincent to his brother Theo. Unfortunately, Theo has died from syphilis, so Armand is left to try and find somebody worthy to give the letter too. Armand had been painted by Vincent three times, and his Father respected him a lot, as Armand will learn to do too!

It took over one hundred artists and six years to create to 65,000 paintings needed to animate this movie all in the style of Vincent Van Gogh!

I don't think there's any way to gauge how much thought went into it! "Loving Vincent" is a true piece of art, just like it should be! How ironic in this day and age!

They say that even as a child, Vincent was fascinated by light. He reminded me a bit of Butch in the "Our Gang" comedies! The black and white sequences are all scenes from Vincent's earlier life.

Maybe you have to be a big Van Gogh fan to dig this, but I really don't think so, if you just give it a try! This shot is from an interview with the gentleman who sold Vincent his paint!

The stills I'm showing you are great, but it's pretty unbelievable when they're moving!

It's hard to believe that if Vincent had just even the slightest bit of success, his story would have been so much different, and a lot happier!

This flashback scene is complete despair! Theo Van Gogh supported his brother almost his whole life, and tried desperately to sell his paintings! To see Vincent dying lost and alone is just sad!

 Vincent Van Gogh created 8000 paintings in eight years!

But Vincent sold only one painting in his lifetime!

I can only hope that all the artists that created these gorgeous canvases made more than Van Gogh!

I've always been a big fan of the work of Vincent Van Gogh, but I must admit, I didn't know or remember much about his actual life, so that made this film that much better. Armand has gone to the site where Vincent shot himself, because just like Kennedy, there's something about the story that sounds fishy!

There's another Doctor in town who has a different theory about Van Gogh's death, but he can't really get anybody to listen to him until Armand shows up!

The Doctor gets down on the ground to prove his theories, that number one, from the angle of the wound, a man couldn't shoot himself in the stomach like that, and if he could get his hand that low and all contorted around, a wound from that distance would be much larger, and that the killer had to be at least five or six feet away! Now I don't know if that's all cock n' bull or not, but it makes for a good story!

If you get a chance to see this marvelous film, do yourself a favor, and take the time to do it! I promise you will not regret it one bit, unless you have to wait an hour and a half and it doesn't come on!

The story of Vincent Van Gogh is amazing any way you look at it, but when you realize the man lived in poverty his whole life, but his heirs must be living better than kings and queens, it's pretty strange!

Van Gogh paintings regularly sell for over 80 million dollars each, and "Starry Night" is worth about 100 million! I think it's the world that is crazy, not Vincent Van Gogh, and here's more proof! "Loving Vincent" is rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, some violence, sexual material and smoking! That's not only crazy, it's down right sinful and insane! One of the most beautiful and historical cinematic wonders of the century, and they can't even show it in the schools because there's smoking! The ratings people should be ashamed of themselves!