THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE - "God Bless America" (1983)

 

If I had to pick one word to describe this week's Saturday Night Special, I don't know if it would be insane, ridiculous, or just straight out weird!

Welcome into The Dungeon!

 

"The Return Of Captain Invincible" has left me speechless, but not exactly for the right reasons!

You literally need to see this thing to believe it!

The movie starts with olde newsreel footage of Captain Invincible during his WWII glory days!

 

The little boy scout that got the Captain's autograph goes on to be the future President of the United States.

Then it happens! The Captain is accused of being a Communist sympathizer, and even though he is completely innocent of the charges he goes from hero to zero in a flash, and is now a drunken bum living in Australia.

 

The marvelous Michael (Curse Of The Undead) Pate plays The President of the United States, and goes to Australia to tell The Captain that there is a dire emergency, and the world once again needs his help!

Alan (Catch-22) is the washed up super hero Captain Invincible. The Cap has some very interesting powers, but his most recently acquired power is to drink himself to death.

 

Kate (Shirley Thompson Versus The Aliens) Fitzpatrick is police officer Patty Patria who wants to help Captain Invincible get back on his feet again. She found his old super hero suit in a pawn shop!

The poor Captain can't even remember the commands to make his super powers work anymore!

The Captain can fly like Superman, but one of his more unique powers is that he can turn himself into a super powerful human magnet!

When he finally got his magnetic power turned on, it stripped everyone in the room because they all had metal in their clothes like zippers.

Well, I told you this film was ridiculous, and one of the main reasons is that it is also a full blown musical, like if Rocky Horror was a super hero flick, and it's not just a couple of songs, there are at least ten fully choreographed songs. I really wasn't ready for that!

 CHEERS!

Sir Christopher Lee is the evil Mr. Midnight!

And Yes, believe it or don't, but Chris Lee is also in two of the song and dance numbers, and if you want to know the truth, they are probably the best part of the movie. If you don't believe me, then check it out yourself!

 

Captain Midnight flies back to America with Patty in tow, and goes back to his old digs in the head of The Statue Of Liberty.

I dig this shot because it looks like Patty has her arm around the Captain, but those are just claw epaulets he has on the shoulders of his costume.

 

The owner of this deli has a very unique automatic weapon!

Mr. Midnight tries to bring Captain Invincible to his knees by offering him every kind of alcohol in the world, and a wild ass song called "Name Your Poison" to go along with it!

I have severe mixed feelings about this movie, but it's always good to see Christopher Lee even in the worst movies, and this one is no different!

And how often do you get to see Chris Lee smile? That grin alone is worth the price of admission!

 "Everything's going to be just great again!"

MERRY MELODIES / "Tortoise Wins By A Hare" - 1943

Today we gots one of my favorite cartoons, and for good reason! It's directed by Bob Clampett and Tex Avery, written by Warren Foster with voices by Mel Blanc, Kent Rogers, Michael Maltese and even Tedd Pierce, how can you lose!

So, Bugs is reviewing footage from his last race where he lost to the turtle, and it's making him very angry! How in the heck does he lose to a turtle?!

Bugs decides to go to Cecil Turtle's home in disguise to try and get some information out of the little guy, to see what his secret to winning is...

Cecil shows Bugs his designs and it boils down to aerodynamics! You see, rabbit ears create wind resistance, and oh yeah, rabbits aren't very smart!!

Bugs goes to his workshop and is busy coming up with his solution to the problem.

And viola, Bugs has made himself a sleek racing shell, now he'll show that little so, and so!

And, the race is on!! Man, it's amazing what a small group of super talented artists can do with a measly 7 minutes!

Bugs has hidden his secret weapon down the road apiece in an old tree trunk, he's raced ahead of Cecil and put on his racing gear. And to solve the problem of wind resistance, Bugs simply uses a green swim cap, genius!!

After watching Cecil trot by, Bugs shoots on down the road so quickly it makes the turtle spin like a top!.. How can Bugs lose?!

Like Cecil said, rabbits aren't very smart. The gambling ring is out in force to make sure that the rabbit wins, as they put all their dough on Bugs!

It's reported, the turtle is on his way!! So, the boys cause a diversion!

Bugs plows into the wall and is then attacked by the gang. Bugs says... I'm a RABBIT!! And they hit him with a mallet and all yell... TOITLE!! It's a RABBIT.. TOITLE.. RABBIT.. TOITLE back and forth, hilarious!!

Cecil's there to affirm that Bugs is definitely a turtle.

As Bugs tries to escape, the gang shoot at him and even launch bombs to stop him.

The guys at the finish line have another special surprise for the turtle!

Bugs is so elated, he just can't believe that he's going to win the race!

The guys hold back the turtle from crossing the finish line, while...

Two other maroons grab Cecil and rush him across, ahead of Bugs!

All Hail Cecil!!..

Bugs reveals to them that.. HE'S THE RABBIT!!

In classic fashion, the guys say... Now he tells us!! That's it for today, now you can go out and play on your slide!

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND Will Always Be An Inspiration To Us!

 

I was looking for some inspiration tonight, so I dug out my copy of the first issue of SPACEMEN magazine, and inspire me it did. Covers painted by Basil Gogos have a tendency to have that effect on you. SPACEMEN was the third movie magazine put out by James Warren and Forrest J. Ackerman in 1961 after their first publication FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND became so popular, and that magazine probably has more to do with why we do this than anything else.

The first issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND CAME OUT IN 1958, and I'm not completely positive, but I think the first issue I got at the newsstand was this one which was # 9 that

came out in 1960. After that, we tried to buy them all as they came out, and ordered as many back issues as we could afford, which wasn't many.

 

In 1960, Warren came out with their second magazine FAVORITE WESTERNS OF FILMLAND, which changed it's name by issue # 3 to WILDEST WESTERNS. There were no monsters, and more gags, so kids got bored, and the magazine only lasted six issues.
 

 

In 1962 Warren Publishing came out with SCREEN THRILLS ILLUSTRATED, which was a great magazine that covered serials and movies that didn't fall into the 'Monster' category, but it never really seemed to take off, and folded after ten issues. To this day, nobody seems much interested in this magazine, and I think I still have all my copies.

 

Other purveyors to the crown were the magazines CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and........

.........FANTASTIC MONSTERS OF THE FILMS.

These two magazines I actually liked, but they still just did not not compare to 

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND! The bar was just raised too high!

We always thought HORROR MONSTERS was a joke. Their covers were so bad compared to those of FAMOUS MONSTERS!

And HORROR MONSTERS sister publication titled MAD MONSTERS wasn't much better at all! The Creature looks like he's about three feet tall on this cover!

MAD MONSTERS, HORROR MONSTERS, and this one shot from 1962 titled WEREWOVES AND VAMPIRES, were all Charlton publications. The price was only thirty-five cents, but they still didn't seem to be worth that much to us.

There were a few more entrants into to the monster magazine race like this MONSTER PARADE from 1958, and ........

..................This MONSTER MANIA from 1967. Take note of the scary fonts they came up with for the word monster.

in 1964 Warren tried to reinvent themselves and came out with MONSTER WORLD, but it wasn't even good enough to compete with the original, and paled in comparison to FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, and because of that, it only lasted for ten issues.

In more modern times, SCREEM was the only magazine that came close to being what FAMOUS MONSTERS was. One of the main reasons SCREEM was good is because frequent Dungeon contributor Greg Goodsell was also writing reviews and interviews for them!

 

Well, that's my personal journey through the world of monster magazines, and I'll leave you where I started with another issue of SPACEMEN. This 1965 Yearbook has a very cool cover done by comic artistes Russ Jones and the beyond phenomenal Wally Wood.

While doing this, I stumbled on a blog that hasn't had a new post since 2010, but is a complete list of all the monster magazines of the 60's and more, and it's all lined out in a clear and concise manner, so if you'd like to see more of these fabulous covers, then head on over to the

MONSTER MAGAZINES blog. It's very well done!