PARADISE CITY - "When The Music's Over" (2021)

 

Well, you didn't have to look too far to see this coming!

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is somewhere I don't usually go, that being the present day, but I just had to follow the further adventures of Johnny Faust and his band, and what a strange journey it has turned out to be.

If you watch this series that plays on Amazon Prime, you will no doubt notice the constant references to Hit Parader magazine, and all I could think of was...........

.........Is Hit Parader even a thing anymore? I hadn't heard of them in years!

And this is what I found out!

Hit Parader magazine was a Charlton Publication that first came out in 1942, and was designed to appeal to young people, and anyone else who enjoyed music and wanted to know what the lyrics were.

By 1984, the music scene had changed slightly, and Hit Parader became dominated by Heavy Metal music!

Not long after that, Big Hair and Heavy Metal bands started fading in popularity, and in December of 2008, the magazine stopped publication completely!

Enter Ash Avildsen, Matt Pinfield, and Josh Bernstein, who purchased the rights to Hit Parader in 2020, and brought it back as a production company with plans to focus "on original content and immersive experiences."

Gee, it's all starting to make sense now!

Besides Hit Parader magazine, over the years Charlton Publications pumped out some of the cheapest looking comics and magazines of any company, and why did they look so cheap? Because that's exactly what they were! Charlton cut corners wherever and whenever they could, and even with the talents of somebody like Steve Ditko, kids just never fell for quantity over quality. Except for their 1950's horror comics like "Thing!" their superheroes sucked, their science fiction was boring, and their monsters weren't scary!

 

Charlton at one time or another tried absolutely everything!

If you have twenty or thirty minutes to spare, read this amazing account of what happened at Charlton over the years, from how they did everything in house, to the storm of 1955 that dropped eleven inches of rain and left the whole 129 acre grounds of Charlton Enterprises under eighteen feet of water, and nearly destroyed the whole company.

 Read the whole unbelievable Charlton story!

 

 Maybe not the best comic in the world, but at least it was still 10¢.

 

I think the last nail in the coffin for us as kids were the Charlton Monster Magazines like Mad Monsters, and Horror Monsters. After seeing the amazing artwork of Basil Gogas and others on the covers of Famous Monsters of Filmland, how in the Hell were we ever supposed to accept something like this? At least all these years later, I can appreciate the fact that they weren't cheap as much as they were thrifty! Tabonga can tell you all about it. I don't know if he ever got paid for the work he did for them!

Most of the band is still intact with Johnny Faust as the front man! Booboo Stewart is still guitarist Vic Lakota, and Ben Bruce is still guitarist Leo Donovan, but the drummer Dylan James who was played by Sebastian Gregory is now played by James Cassells, and the bass player Lily Moonflower is now played by Bella Thorne, instead of Jesse Sullivan.

 

Olivia Culpo continues her role as Johnny's girlfriend Gretchen. Not only is Olivia beautiful, but she also plays the cello!

 

Because this was an eight show series, new regular characters are introduced! Here's Brittany Furlan as Janis, and Rhys Coiro as Adam.

And here's Perrey Reeves as the stoner mother of Simon, the up and coming rocker as played by Cameron Boyce. Sadly, Cameron never lived to see this show, as he died during an epileptic fit at the age of 20.

In the movie it was Goldberg representing the wrasslin' community, but in this TV series, legendary announcer and color commentator Jim Ross has a small part as Ned.

 

Another new character introduced is Andrea Donna (Sons OF Anarchy) de Matteo as Maya.

I like Bella Thorne as Lily Mayflower, but I've always had a problem when it comes to accepting a different person playing a character, even if they do a good job, and especially when it's one of the main characters.

This show is now turning into a Hard Rock soap opera!

One of the big parts of "American Satan" was the young girl who wanted to give up her virginity to Johnny Faust, and it was all with her Mother's permission!

Well, she got pregnant, and now Johnny has a daughter he doesn't know about!
 

Not only has Heavy Metal music lost a lot of it's lustre, CD's are no longer a thing since streaming music has become all the rage. Elias has thousands of dollars invested in his band's CD's and loses his shit, destroys them all and passes out in the process!

The young Mother can no longer afford to have this child, and although her Mother thinks she's their meal ticket, she opts to give the baby to her rightful owner, Johnny Faust.

The baby ends up with Elias instead ala "The Hangover," but that's getting into the next episodes.

In the meantime, a now totally clean Johnny wants to propose to Gretchen, but he doesn't want to tell her about the baby until she says yes!

I watched two more episodes after this, and I still don't know where this is heading.

What happened to The Devil? Which way did he go, George?

Johnny's life is going to Hell, I guess that's close enough!

NIGHT GALLERY / "Big Surprise" - 1971

Here's a big surprise for a Friday, the story and teleplay was written by Richard Matheson, it stars our pal John Carradine as Mr. Hawkins, Vincent Van Patten as Chris, Marc Vahanian as Jason and Eric Chase as Dan.

Here are Chris, Dan and Jason, they are walking home after school, makes me wonder where the heck they live!

The boys have to pass by creepy old Mr. Hawkins place, he comes out to greet them and tells them to come closer, he has something to tell them.

Chris is the only one that dares to go up and see what the old man wants. Mr. Hawkins ask Chris if he knows where to find an old oak tree near there, he says he does. Then he tells Chris to take ten paces from the tree and dig four feet down, and...

He'll get a Big Surprise!

When the Mr. Hawkins starts laughing, Chris splits and runs back to his friends where he tells them what the old man said. 

Jason and Dan think that Mr. Hawkins is playing a trick on them but they finally agree to join in on the quest, Chris says there might be a treasure. So, they start digging away.

They dig and dig and dig and dig, but they find nothing...

Then, Jason says that, lookit, we've dug down four feet and haven't found anything. Chris says that it's not four feet yet, let's just keep digging!

Jason's not buying it and tells Dan to go with him and get something to eat at his house, Jason and Dan take off running, they've had enough..

Chris notices that the weather's changing, a wind has come up and things seem to be getting a little creepy.

Undaunted, Chris keeps digging for the imagined pay off, a treasure.

And he finally uncovers a big wooden box with a lock on it, he takes the shovel and knocks the lock off and starts to open the lid, when...

It begins opening on its own!

The box is now fully opened and Chris is completely horrified by what he sees!

SURPRISE!!

Well, there you have it, kinda corny episode, but we love John to pieces, here at The Dungeon! Eegah is up tomorrow with more who knows what, just for you.

AMERICAN SATAN - "Let Him Burn" (2017)

 

It's Wicked Wednesday down in The Dungeon and tonight's post strawberry moon extra-special feature is................

 

......."American Satan!"

Okay, so you can see from the start that there are differences in opinion about where this is going!

The other morning I was watching Gordon Ramsay's show called "Scrambled," that had Rowdy Rhonda Rousey on it, and that one was followed by one that had a gorgeous and funny gal in it by the name of Olivia Culpo.  besides being Miss Universe in 2012, was also an actress, so when I looked on IMDB, I found out that she was in this movie called "American Satan," and that's how we ended up here! The likeness on the record album doesn't do her any justice at all!

At first I didn't even recognize Malcolm McDowell, but after I did, it seemed perfect that he would be playing the Devil tempting a rock and roll band, especially if you've ever seen the movie "Get Crazy!"

So that's it! "American Satan" is your basic 'sell your soul to the Devil' story, and then sit back and see what happens!

You wanna play at "The Whiskey," then you better get out there and sell some tickets!

"American Satan" is a film made by Ash Avildsen about a band called The Relentless. There's a soundtrack album you can buy for the movie, and there's also an album out there by The Relentless, but since there's no real band called The Relentless, it's more like "Cow Pie" by The Masked Marauders!"

The always enjoyable Mark (Sons Of Anarchy) Boone Junior has the role of the big shot record producer Elias!

Ash Avildsen is no stranger to making movies, his Father John G. Avildsen was the Director of some minor movies like "Rocky," and "The Karate Kid," even though apparently they had a zero relationship. Ash Avildsen is also a songwriter responsible for some of the songs in this film, and is also the founder of the primarily Heavy Metal Sumerian Records label, that has bands like my new favourite Starbenders on it!

The lead character in "American Satan," and The Relentless is named Johnny Faust, and is played by Andy Biersack who is a real musician in a real band called Black Veil Brides, who just happen to also be on the Sumerian Records label.

The first half of the movie is pretty good. Johnny's a good guy with a sweet girlfriend and a bunch of goofy band mates. The music is all good too, and then it all goes dark! 

The band gets more and more popular, but more and more bad things also keep happening!

The second part of the film is all sex, drugs, rock and roll, and trouble, lots of trouble!

Olivia Culpo is Johnny's girlfriend named Gretchen. They had a nice love story going until he screws it all up!

The other woman in Johnny's life is Lily Mayflower, the bass player in the band, as played by trans actress Jesse Sullivan.

Just about the time I was getting tired of this film, they threw in Big Time wrassler Bill Goldberg as the band's new road manager Hawk. Multiple Champion Goldberg is the master of moves like the 'Jackhammer,' and the 'Pumphandle Drop.'

The band's life is going up in flames, and at the same time their single is going up the charts!

This movie is crazy! Even though Andy Biersack was a singer with Black Veil Brides, for some reason, they decided to use song vocals for his character by Remington Leith, the lead singer in another Sumerian signed band named Palaye Royale, instead. 

And just as I suspected, Olivia looked great throughout the whole ordeal!

There's also another beauty, Denise Richards as Johnny's Mother, and too many other characters to list, so you're just going to have to watch it for yourself if you want to find out.

You can find "American Satan" streaming all over the place. 

I watched it in all it's glory on this Plex site!

AND...........

Now I just found out that Ash and company made a spinoff TV show last year called "Paradise City" using many of the same characters, but a different story line, that streams on Amazon Prime for eight episodes! Rock on!!