DUNGEON POST #3000! - HOW TO CURE A PAIN IN THE NECK / Robert Tinnell: Monster Kid Home Movies - 1978

Here's another one of those Monster Kid Home Movies, keep on reading if you'd like to know how to cure a pain in the neck!..

Yeah, this is our 3000th post alright!

So, this cute little girl is walking down the street, minding her own business, when...

A Dracula shows up!.. Hey, it's daytime, leave it up to those stupid kids to change the rules!

Lil' Drac bites her on the neck, but, she seems to enjoy it in a curious sort of way. I wonder what kind of direction she got before they started shooting.

Then, our two heroes appear, they find the girl lying on the ground and after inspection, they determine that she has been bitten by a Dracula! One of them pulls out a cross, it's time to find that Dracula and destroy him... A cross is probably something a Monster Kid would have in his pocket on any given day.

The kids have a hunch to go to the basement. it's not long before the vampire attacks hero 1 from the shadows!!

The fight is on and the little bloodsucker seems to be winning the contest!

In a tricky move, our guy pulls out the cross, which incapacitates Drac.

Then they pull out the heavy artillery and drive a stake through the evil monster's heart. And, that's how you cure a pain in the neck!!

We end with this very cool felt cut out, post #3000 is on the books. Join us again tomorrow for post #3001, here, at The Dungeon!!..

METEOR - "There's No Place On Earth To Hide" (1979)

Tonight's Woeful Wednesday feature is a 1979 Sci-Fi Disaster movie called "Meteor."

I was not really familiar with this film, but I found it streaming on Amazon Prime for $3.99.

If you choose "no rush" shipping when you buy something, Amazon will give you one dollar credit, so I saved up my credits because I wanted to see a movie with Natalie Wood in it, and honestly, she has not been in a lot of movies that we discuss around here, so I really wanted to see this one, and if you don't use your credits in a certain amount of time, they expire! A couple of other one word Natalie Wood titles I'm saving up for are "Peeper," and her last film made in 1983 titled "Brainstorm."

Since Natalie Wood had such a very short life, it's a good thing she got started very young. She was only four years old when she had her first role as Carrie in the 1943 war film, "The Moon Is Down."

In "Meteor," she plays a Russian translator named Tatiana Donskaya. That might seem like an odd role for Natalie, but she was actually of Russian descent, was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, and spoke Russian.

"Meteor" is jam packed with talent, besides Natalie Wood, it starred Sean (James Bond) Connery, and Brian (Family Affair) Keith. Believe it or not, Brian Keith was also fluent in Russian!

More amazing talent was provided by Jane and Peter's Dad Henry (The Grapes Of  Wrath, The Boston Strangler) Fonda as The President, and Karl (Phantom Of The Rue Morgue, Streets Of San Francisco) Malden as Harry Sherwood.

 

Martin (Mission Impossible) Landau is also in there as the generally pissed off General Adlon.

 

Forty-one years later, and I think everybody who lives in Russia or the U.S.A. should watch this movie. Maybe it would convince us all that we're in this together.

 

The basic story is that a meteor of epic proportions is heading towards earth at a rapid speed, and is set to collide, and most likely destroy the world within a week. The U.S. and the Russian governments both have 'top secret' satellites flying around armed with nuclear weapons aimed at the other country, so what they need to do is cooperate, open up and  tell the truth, and both turn their fire power towards the meteor if there's any hope for civilization as we know it! In the meantime smaller pieces of the meteor are splintering off and causing all kinds of destruction just to give us a taste of what is yet to come!

The meteor splinters hit a ski resort in Switzerland hard!

In the story, 12,000 skiers are killed by a massive avalanche while competing in this marathon!

In Hong Kong, the splinters cause a massive tsunami that also kills thousands!

In each location, the movie cuts to one family or group of people conducting their daily affairs when the disaster strikes, and what happens to them.

"Meteor" turned out to be a real 'Disaster' movie, costing over $20 million to make, but was a huge flop at the box office.

The United States' satellite is called Hercules, and this one here, the Russian one is, called Peter The Great!

"Dig Those Crazy Sperms!"

Why is it that they just don't make people like Natalie Wood and Sean Connery any more?

I liked this scene in the cafeteria, where they go and sit down in front of two space themed pinball machines.

The meteor looks like a giant monster about ready to gobble up the Earth!

Then Sean Connery gets the word.......and it goes something like this, "A large splinter is headed towards the Easter Seaboard"

And he asks..."And when is it scheduled to hit?"

"Right about now!!"

 

After that splinter hits, the adventure really starts as the cast is stuck in subway tunnels and gets covered with mud! I don't know how much they got paid, but I don't think it was enough!

According to the IMDB, this four minute scene was shot in a swimming pool at MGM Studios, and cost a half a million dollars. Shooting was delayed for two days after Sean Connery got some kind of respiratory illness, Karl Malden got buried in the mud twice, and Natalie Wood almost got sucked into a pump before it was over.

Talk about disaster, they also claim that the financial failure of "Meteor" is considered to be a large factor in the downfall of American International Pictures.

The "Meteor" was five miles wide. The speed it was heading towards Earth was thirty thousand miles per hour. It was a sad day! Glad it didn't happen!

THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN / A Trip To The Past And Future! - 1962

Boy, this is one complicated story so I won't get very heavy into that, ah jus' lack dem purdy pitchers!.. Anyway, multi-talented Czech writer/director Karel Zeman enriches this version of Baron Munchausen with awesome visuals and a variation of the story by adding the future of space travel into it to compare the two different worlds....

We start in the future, a spaceship has left Earth on its way to the Moon...

The astronaut, Tommy, finds an old rocket that has crash-landed on the Moon, then he meets the famous dreamer, Baron Münchhausen, along with some other dreamers from the past, who are also there on the Moon!

The Baron takes Tommy back to a past time on Earth to show him what it was like to live back then. Looks like they are somewhere in India.

They do a lot of travelling around, and, there's usually some element of danger involved, which naturally makes for a lots more interesting watch.

There's a battle between two armadas with the Baron's ship caught in the middle. At the end of the destruction the Baron is satisfied even though his own ship was sunk, because, all the other ships were destroyed too! I'll be damned if that isn't the most awesome ship sailing there, wow!

So, the Baron, Tommy and the Baron's Princess are swallowed up by a giant fish. Inside, they meet other people living there as the fish heads for frozen territory.

In another scene, he hangs out with a giant Rok and has another wild and weird adventure.

This still is so darn beautiful..

A theme throughout the movie is the appearance of a sparkler, and when it does appear, there is great progress in the history of the world. The spark appears again while the Baron entertains old friends. So, the Baron causes the place to blow sky high, go figure! The bottom pic shows the castle coming apart just before it goes KA-BLOOIE!!

Tommy and the Princess shoot off into space wearing battle armor but the spark changes them into spacesuits with rockets on them!! The two head toward the Moon.

The Baron crashes down while sitting on his chair and rolls down a hill, he's back on the Moon!

It's a happy ending on the Moon, Tommy has his space ship and Princess gets a bouquet of flowers from the Baron... Wow, what a trip, catch this one when you get a chance. Tune in on Wednesday for more who in the Hell knows, here, at The Dungeon!!..