Friday, August 27, 2021

THE THREE STOOGES In "A Pain In The Pullman" - 1936

Here's a fun one from the boys, the Stooges are small time actors, they take a train to an engagement for a show. They take their pet monkey along with them so you know there's going to be a barrel full of wackiness in store for all the other passengers on the train! It also stars the great Bud Jamison as Johnson, who's in charge of the the travelling acting group.

The whole thing starts right here, at Mrs. Hammond Eggerley's Theatrical Apt's, that's where the Stooges are living with others in the acting profession.

The boys are practicing their dancing act (a free for all) and shuffle off to Buffalo only to end up in their neighbor's room with a crash. The guy whose room it is, is leading man Paul Pain, a real heart-throb he says, and is totally insulted by the Stooges' antics...

To make things worse, the boys' little monkey jumps on the guy's face and rips his toupee off! The Stooges aren't making any friends here.

The boys get the call to join the other acts on the train for an engagement, so they pack up their stuff (one shirt!) and head off to the train depot.

After barely getting past their landlady, the boys mow down this guy walking down the street with the giant trunk.

They're ordered to put their monkey in the baggage car for the trip but get there too late, so they stuff him in a big bag and put him up in their berth...

The boys find an open door and see a big crab and some champagne (ordered by Paul Pain) just sitting there, ready to be enjoyed... Moe cracks the crab on Curly's head.

Larry don't think crab is that great.

When something gets out of hand, Johnson is called on to solve the problem, since he's the trip's manager. He wakes with a start in his berth, and hits his head on the top of the small cubical he's sleeping in..

Pain is calling Johnson to find out what the Stooges are doing in his room! And eating crab shells and spitting out the meat!

At this point Johnson informs the boys that if they don't stop with the antics, well, he'll personally throw them all off the train, while it's moving!!

So, the monkey gets loose and is scampering around in the sleeping car, so, Curly goes looking for him. Then, Curly hears a woman's voice calling to him... Come to me my dear, come to me!.. It's a woman talking in her sleep.

Curly opens the curtain where the woman says... Kiss me my dear... And so Curly bends down and kisses her. And she wakes up.

John is called again and he orders them to get into their berth before he throws them off the train! Larry immediately falls out, so...

Moe and Curly toss him into the berth!

After they all fall out of the berth, Moe hits Larry over the head with another person's suitcase!

Paul Pain is bothered by the commotion and calls on Johnson once again.

Okay, this is like the seventh time Johnson hits his head. He gets out of bed.

Then the monkey hangs on the emergency line and causes the train to come to an abrupt stop. That photo is awesome.

So, now's the time to throw the Stooges off the train and end this crazy adventure. 

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

JAPANESE SPIDERMAN - "Dokuro Dan Tai Akuma No Reikyusha" - "Skull Gang Vs. The Devil's Hearse" (1978)

 
This week's Weird Wednesday presentation is the Japanese version of "Spiderman" from 1978, and take my word for it, it doesn't get much weirder than this!

 
Okay, we've already done "The Turkish Spiderman" from 1972!

 
And we've already done "The Italian Spiderman" from 2007, but nothing quite compares to "The Japanese Spiderman" from 1978!

First off, you've got a villain named Professor Monster, it's hard to get much cooler than that!
Professor Monster cruises around in a hearse so as not to attract attention! WTF!?

This episode of "Spiderman" was titled "Skull Gang Vs. The Devil's Hearse."
Now that title alone has got to make you wonder!

That's a VERY old pinball machine!

"Japanese Spiderman" has a very large bracelet on his wrist, and these are the inner workings!

 Krazy kids!

This looks pretty straight forward Spiderman!

But because this is "Japanese Spiderman," he's got a big flying robot buddy!

I couldn't figure out why he has a crease in his forehead!

He's still got good Spidey webcrawler skills!

This Spiderman doesn't have any web controllers, and is left with rope swinging or mighty jumps like this to get by!

The action is fast and furious!

The head of the biker gang was turned into a chameleon machine by Professor Monster and is controlled by his hot mess assistant Amazoness!

Spiderman's big buddy makes sure it's a fair fight!

The chameleon humanoid monster is defeated, and the world is once again a safe place to live!
That's about as good as it gets!

Monday, August 23, 2021

CALLING DR. DEATH / SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HIS MINDS "BLACKS OUT"! - 1943

Here's the first Inner Sanctum entry starring Lon Chaney as Dr. Mark Steele, Patricia Morison as Stella Madden, J. Carrol Naish as Inspector Gregg, David Bruce as Robert Duval and Ramsay Ames as Maria Steele. Notice the tagline after the title, that's from the original ad, which even has a grammatical error in it! Cool!

David Hoffman is the spirit of the Inner Sanctum, he warns us about the upcoming sinister murder mystery we are about to experience...

This one had me on the edge of my seat, Dr. Steele has been accused of killing his wife, but things get extra weird as the story evolves, amazing what you can do in a 62 minute movie!

Dr. Steele is home at dinner after a day's work, but what's missing is his derelict wife Maria.

After she shows up at 3 am, Mark and her get into an argument. After Maria crashes on the bed, Mark goes in to strangle her but hasn't the guts to do so...

He knows she's having an affair, and after he finds out that Maria has gone to their cabin at Spring Lake for the weekend, Mark gets in his car and speeds away towards the lake on that Friday. He's so caught up in his thoughts that he's not really paying attention to what he's doing and almost hits the train at a crossing, but skids out into the brush.

Then on Monday morning, Mark wakes up at his office when his secretary and assistant, Stella, shows up for work. Mark looks like Hell and thinks it's Saturday, not Monday. He can't remember anything after the incident with the train. What's cool about this story is we get to hear the characters thinking out loud quite a bit! I really liked that.

But alas, Maria has been brutally murdered, the police show up and take him to the lake to identify the body, and Inspector Gregg (not shown) let's Mark know that he's keeping his eye on him for obvious reasons...

Later, Mark meets with Maria's lover, architect Robert Duval, who has been incarcerated for Maria's murder. Even Mark doesn't believe that Robert murdered her. 

Mark is tortured by the fact that he may have been the one that killed Maria because of his lapse of memory and the frame of mind he was in. Again, we get to hear his anguished thoughts.

Okay, here's the thing... Mark is a doctor who uses hypnosis to help cure his patients, in this case, he allows Stella to hypnotize him and ask him questions as to what happened during his memory lapse. She agrees and records his answers on a small record

Inspector Gregg pops in and Stella plays the recording to prove Mark's innocence, and after it plays a bit, Gregg tells her to turn it off. He tells Stella that it doesn't prove anything.

The Inspector asks Mark for some matches to light his cigarette and notices from the cover that it's from Spring Lake, not cool.

Robert is set to die in an electric chair at 6 am in the morning, seemingly depressed by the situation, Mark and Stella decide to go to the movies to get their mind off their troubles. But why did they go to see a comedy, everyone's laughing except them. And after a failed dinner, they decide to just go hang out at the office...

With only an hour to go before Robert is to be executed, Stella is nodding off so Mark has her sit in the hypno chair. He immediately hypnotizes her and starts asking her a few questions...

Stella has no choice but to tell the truth now! 

She spills the beans, her and Maria were both after Mark's money, and Robert was broke and looking to go with either lady that got to the money... The walls were closing in on her!

Oh yeah, she killed Maria with a fireplace poker over the dough!

And, when Mark was hypnotized, she just basically told him what to say before she recorded that segment without her question/statement.

While hypnotized, we see poor Robert walk up to the camera where he faints and drops down, but when the guards pull him up, it's freaking her!!

Low and behold, Inspector Gregg had been there the whole time! And when Stella backs out of the room, two big cops are waiting there to take her away!! The Inspector calls the governor and Robert is saved from the chair. Also, he tells Mark that he was never a suspect, just thought he could help direct him to the murderer. This one's a gem!!

Monster Music

Monster Music
AAARRGGHHH!!!! Ya'll Come On Back Now, Y'Hear??